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Depends.

Metallic tin is not very toxic due to its poor gastrointestinal absorption.

Aluminum ... is not a necessary substance for our bodies and [though] too much may be harmful.

However, both of these refer to minute aluminum particles, not large (>1cm^2) pieces of foil, and much less amounts than a tinfoil hat would consist of.

Additionally, the aluminum foil will react violently with hydrochloric acid in your stomach, producing aluminum chloride and hydrogen. Assuming your stomach doesn't rupture from the pressure, AlCl3 has toxicity of Oral rat LD50: 3311 mg/Kg. Oral mouse LD50: 770 mg/kg
Tin is unreactive with HCl.

So assuming he got real tin foil, he should be fine. The Al foil would be quite dangerous, depending on how much his hat is made out of. There is also the added danger of being cut from the foil.

Why don't you just admit that you were talking out of your arse? I know what I am talking about because I have experienced it. Arguing over exactly how many points my IQ dropped isn't going to change that. Why don't you cite some references, smart guy. I had to reply because you are just spreading misinformation due to obvious ignorance. Or maybe you are a young kid who heard it somewhere. If brain injury causes 'dead' areas of the brain that show up in testing, then at least give a few more details about how you know that. As well as to how you know that brain injury doesn't cause any congitive impairment.

Here's a link. MTBI or mild traumatic brain injury is a common result of automobile accidents and bicycle accidents. It results in relatively obvious cognitive impairments as I described.

Suicide rate for divorced men is 30%? According to the Census Bureau, about 10% of the US adult population (or approx 20 million people) are divorced (and haven't remarried). If we assume a 50/50 male/female split, that's about 10 million divorced men.

According to the CDC, 30,622 people killed themselves in 2001, or approximately 0.01% of Americans. If we assume ALL suicides were divorced men, we'd get only about 0.3% of divorced men killing themselves in any given year. Clearly, that metric is off by at least two orders of magnitude.

Now, whatever you say about the benefits to poor people for joining the military, is it really fair that during wartime our most disadvantaged citizens are the ones who get killed? That's not a very nice option... "Be poor, or risk your life."

More of these "disadvantaged citizens" have died in poor urban areas due to violence in the last two years than have died from enemy fire in the last two years.

From the CDC page "n 2002, more than 877,700 young people ages 10 to 24 were injured from violent acts. Approximately 1 in 13 required hospitalization (CDC 2004)."

While the death of 1000 troops in two years is horrible, it isn't exactly death in mass numbers.

Thanks for all of the info. We have been working toward home schooling our children, and have already started with our 4-year-old. But having an excellent school system will allow us to take advantage of cooperative educational opportunities that we otherwise wouldn't have. And by the time they transition to high school, they'll have something phenomenal to go to! Plus, the school system helps maintain housing values. I just heard about an hour ago from our realtor that they're about to break ground on the new high school.

As for the environmental areas, I'm most worried about the East Fork Poplar Creek that runs through Y-12 and then heads north and west to run along the west end of the Turnpike. It was used basically as an "industrial ditch" by Y-12 for a long time. I absolutely love the houses along that western ridge, but I'm a bit worried about my kids playing in what was contaminated with lots of mercury for many years. They still can't get the levels down in the fish. And my wife would like to do organic gardening. I don't think it's much of a problem for that, but she's rather worried. We are likely to buy in the Emory Valley Road area.

I'll be working in the Computer Science and Mathematics Division, heading up a scientific visualization team. Just did the physical this morning, and I hope to start in a few weeks.

LC Manley asked if there had been problems with frogs, especially at ORNL. Gordon Blaylock answered that frogs would get into pond 3513, a waste disposal pond, and reproduce. The sediment and water in the pond contained relatively high levels of radionuclides from the waste disposal system. As the frogs matured from tadpoles to adult frogs, they were exposed to relatively high levels of radionuclides. The adult frogs, which contained high body burdens of radionuclides would leave the pond and were run over in the street or stepped-on on the sidewalk.

Quoted from http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HAC/oakridge/meet/pha/m1_ 20_04.html

The CDC disputes that claim. This has links to more recent research which also calls your claims into question. Unless you have evidence, you would be well advised to shut up and let us find the real cause so we can actually help people.

Using google to find this data, and a few minutes with matlab, I produced some charts for approximately how long you have left given a certain age, 1-100.

1-5 76.278 75.275 74.279 73.288 72.302
6-10 71.32 70.342 69.367 68.394 67.423
11-15 66.453 65.485 64.517 63.549 62.581
16-20 61.613 60.644 59.674 58.703 57.731
21-25 56.757 55.782 54.805 53.826 52.846
26-30 51.864 50.881 49.896 48.91 47.922
31-35 46.934 45.944 44.954 43.963 42.972
36-40 41.98 40.989 39.999 39.009 38.021
41-45 37.034 36.05 35.067 34.088 33.111
46-50 32.139 31.17 30.206 29.247 28.294
51-55 27.347 26.406 25.473 24.547 23.629
56-60 22.72 21.821 20.931 20.052 19.184
61-65 18.327 17.483 16.651 15.833 15.028
66-70 14.239 13.464 12.705 11.963 11.237
71-75 10.529 9.8394 9.1681 8.5161 7.8839
76-80 7.2721 6.6813 6.1119 5.5646 5.0399
81-85 4.5383 4.0602 3.6063 3.177 2.7728
86-90 2.3941 2.0414 1.7152 1.4158 1.1437
91-94 0.89932 0.68293 0.49493 0.33568
95-97 0.20547 0.10462 0.033396
98-100 -0.0079334 -0.019137 0

The data that I used is in my journal if anyone wants to play with it, or find any glaring errors that I made.

30 years of evidence shows that anorexia and bulimia, while existant, are virtually a non-issue as a serious public health problem. Lindsey Lohan is about the only American LOSING weight nowadays, while all the rest of the kids and adults are getting seriously fat. They've got drastically increasing type 2 (dietary) diabetes rates to prove it. Jesus, get out of the house and look around you. You want to talk about deadly boundaries? Look no further. The CDC diabetes and obesity maps for the last 15 years track each other in lockstep.

There may be a few overexposed upper middle class teenage princesses that are wasting away because daddy's an asshole, but parents for most kids need control of what goes down the pie hole if they want their brats to live long enough to slap them into an old folks home.

(rant)
First, did you know that you can actually die from alcohol withdrawl? And that it is as bad or worse than heroin withdrawl in terms of pain and suffering? Really, look it up, but I digress...

I agree that opiates are pretty damn addictive, but LSD? LSD has got to be the most non-addictive substance ever. It almost has an anti-addiction property built in, where people almost always say "wow, let's wait a few weeks before we try that again". Sure, there are some wackos who trip for days and days on end, but there are wackos for every substancem legal or illegal.

As far as I can tell, there has NEVER been a death attributed directly to LSD overdose, although I'm sure many people have somehow killed themselves while high on LSD becuase of lack of sober supervisors. That's a problem caused by law enforcement, which forces people to go underground and into uncomfortable/unsafe situations to use drugs, where unsafe things can happen. If you could just hang out in the park while tripping witha sober buddy, and didn't disturb anyone, who would you be harming?

On the other hand, in 2001 there were 75,000 alcohol-related deaths in the United States, which took an average of 30 years off the lives of each person that died. That's a staggering figure. For the same year, there were only 21,683 drug-related deaths, and that ANY drug, legal or illegal, meaning botched prescriptions and overdoses on aspirin and tylenol and everything else included (opiates too).

I know, alcohol is much more readily available than drugs, so there are more deaths, but think about all the expense, pain, and misery people are put through just because they want to get high.

Is that such a crime? Since when is being sober 24/7 a necessary requirement to be a good person? Illegal drugs can lead to amazing emotional/personal breakthroughs, or just plain enjoyment. If people want to get fucked up and (eventually) damage their health, there are MUCH better ways to do it that by using alcohol. The gov gives you the least fun and most damaging of intoxicants and says "have at it!" Brilliant....=(
(/rant)

I trust Slashdot, but I trust scientific journals more.

The Center for Disease Control, a US Government agency, is watching the issue.

Here is some info from a study on mice. It's bibliography should be of some help if you care to research this further.

If that isn't enough, here's another paper.

The saying "the jury is still out" applies, but there's more than enough evidence to say "no" to blindly racing ahead with this technology without stopping to think about the possible consequences to human health, which was the whole point of my post that you replied to.

Tell that to these people:

"During the 2-day period, 43 persons were injured by gunfire. Of these injuries, 28 (65%) were identified as unintentional; 19 (68%) of those met the case definition for probable celebratory gunfire injuries. Median age of the 19 persons injured from celebratory gunfire was 24 years (range: 4 months--82 years); 12 (63%) were male. Four (21%) persons were hospitalized, including one who died from a head injury. The most common body location for injury from celebratory gunfire was the head (36%), followed by foot (26%) and shoulder (16%)"

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5350a2. htm

But if you want some links here is its.. from those wacky untrutable types at the CDC

Approximately 20 million people are currently infected with HPV. At least 50 percent of sexually active men and women acquire genital HPV infection at some point in their lives. By age 50, at least 80 percent of women will have acquired genital HPV infection. About 6.2 million Americans get a new genital HPV infection each year.

The types of HPV that infect the genital area are spread primarily through genital contact. Most HPV infections have no signs or symptoms; therefore, most infected persons are unaware they are infected, yet they can transmit the virus to a sex partner.

There is no "cure" for HPV infection, although in most women the infection goes away on its own. The treatments provided are directed to the changes in the skin or mucous membrane caused by HPV infection, such as warts and pre-cancerous changes in the cervix.

Some of these viruses are called "high-risk" types, and may cause abnormal Pap tests. They may also lead to cancer of the cervix, vulva, vagina, anus, or penis.

I do -- detecting the interaction between spatial and temporal disease effects was my research area. Spatiotemporal effects may be described as follows:

spatial effect - disease is in a geographical area, regardless of time. ex: a disease as a result of a chemical spill

temporal effect - disease occurs in a given time frame regardless of geographical location. ex: spring allergy-related issues

spatial-temporal ("spatiotemporal") effects: disease occurs due to place and time. ex: the Titanic (not a "disease" per se, but you get the idea)

A package that may be of interest would be CLUSTER found at http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HS/cluster.html the CLUSTER download area

The STEM package will allow researchers the chance to test out their theoretical models for disease spread.

Not Captain Tripps, but there has been a recent Marburg Outbreak.

Yikes! What happens when the entire company calls in sick? http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/vsp/pub/Norovirus/Noroviru s.htm

One small nitpick. While humans don't become ill from Ebola Reston (that's the strain from the primate lab here in the states), eight individuals have developed antibodies to Ebola Reston. This document has a list of all the Ebola outbreaks. There are five listed for Ebola Reston, with no cases of humans becoming ill. If I recall correctly, Preston had two of the workers from the Reston facility going to the hospital with a high fever and soreness, but otherwise no effect from Ebola Reston.

Oh, and if you think "The Hot Zone" is a chilling tale, read Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It by Ken Alibek. I would also recommend "The Demon in the Freezer" by Preston.

1500 dead soldiers out of 200K+ over there over 4 years are dead thats ~375 per year, or ~1 per day. or 1 per day per 100k individuals. or 187.5 per year per 100k. If you assume that we are sending primarily poor minorities as has been alleged by various media and other organizations, it is safer to be a Black Soldier in Iraq, than to be an average Black Male between 25 and 34, which is the age of your average soldier. the CDC report can be found here.

What a great idea. I'm sure this will work just as effectively as the USA executing alleged murderers - brutal as it sounds, it has at least reduced the murder rate to one of the lowest in the world.

I'm not sure if that was sarcasm, but in case it wasn't ... We're actually in the top 10, we're very much one of the highest. Here's a well documented report on the issue.

An older article, though its more about gun deaths I believe it is still relavent.

~Rebecca
(Posted anonymously as this has nothing to do with cell phone viruses)

Let's see if I can reconstruct my sources. BTW, my post wasn't intended to be a paper or taken as fact. It's a post on Slashdot. Let me repeat that: it's a post on Slashdot. I would hope interested readers would look it up for themselves.

"Hopefully, politics be damned, he will show that schools which teach abstinence-only sexual education have significantly higher rates of teenage pregnancy than districts with real sexual education courses"
What source did you get this information from?
What is defined as 'real sexual education courses'?

The latest example I've heard of came out of england a few months ago. NPR did a pretty substantial segment on it. But I've read it many places and many sources throughout the years. The American Medical Association and Planned Parenthood both have official negative stances on Abstinence-only education for this very reason.

I'm defining "real sex education courses," as one whose primary goal is to educate about sex. Education in this context is to provide a broad spectrum of information that a person will need to make informed choices. Abstinence-only isn't an education because it isn't providing information about the activity, it's just a policy to try to swear people off of it. Like how "Rock the vote" isn't really voter education, it's a get-out-the-vote drive.

"Or even that 50% of high school students are already sexually active"
What source did you get this information from?

That's a pretty widely known statistic, man: sources abound. Here's one, from the department of Health and Human Services.

"Of course, it might be stepping over the line to point out that the bible belt has the highest rates of teenage pregnancy, higher than the hedonistic blue states"
What source did you get this information from?

That would be the CDC.

While I respect almost anyone's comments don't be so hasty to bash the religious yet neglect the "scientific superiority" of cited sources. The well known and well-cited 'they' always come back to haunt you.

Whenever someone doesn't cite their sources, google it. There is a wealth of information out there at your fingertips.

a good page to take a look at is http://www.cdc.gov/nip/dev/jetinject.htm Its the CDC's index to the technology and hasa lot of useful information

Yes, you're right. Except for the part where you're completely wrong.

I am not more likely to hurt myself or an innocient bystander. There are irrefuteable statistics gathered by the government - not a partial agency - which support this.

From the US DOJ:

On average in 1987-92 about 83,000 crime victims per year used a firearm to defend themselves or their property. Three-fourths of the victims who used a firearm for defense did so during a violent crime; a fourth, during a theft, household burglary, or motor vehicle theft.

This, despite the fact that according to the CDC (here's a Google cache) says that accidential firearm deaths are decreasing.At the same time firearm ownership is on a greater increase per capita in the US than it has been at any other time in history (for the last 20 years).

Actual accidential death counts make you appear to be a complete idiot, I might add. In 2002, there were 776 accidental firearm deaths. Contrast this to the 3,059 deaths due to medical care/surgery, the 3,377 due to exposure to smoke, fire, or flames, 3,842 drownings, 12,757 accidental poisonings, 13,322 accidental deaths from falls, or 43,354 accidental motor vehicle accidents. You are over 40 times more likely to die of Septicemia (?!) or renal failure than of accidental firearm discharge.

If you want to just look at the total firearm death rate, you're still looking at a very rediculous disproportion that points out your childish fears: 28,663 firearm deaths total, which is still less than Septicemia (which I just found out is blood poisoning) and renal failure (kidney failure). This is further marginalized if you're a convicted criminal, as the majority of firearm deaths are perpetrated by such people, against such people. (Sorry, but about 5 minutes of googling didn't turn up this information; if you're interested in the topic, however, I'm sure you'll find it, as I did at one point. It was an FBI-released document, if I recall correctly, composited from all US police precinct data.)

Seriously. Don't buy into the media's perpetration of firearms as a great evil. Don't fear guns in and of themselves: they're just tools. Fearing an inanimate object is just irrational emotionalism - not something I'd hope an educated citizen (as opposed to an uneducated consumer: someone that doesn't value their rights, know what they are, etc.) would fall prey to willingly.

All it means is that black babies are killed at a higher rate than others.

No, since a fetus is not a baby.

And since fertility rates for blacks are in fact higher than those of whites, if there were some sort of conspiracy to reduce the proportion of black persons in the population by reducing births, it would be failing badly.

(Of course, under your reasoning, giving out free condoms to black men and women to help prevent unplanned pregnancies would also be some sort of eugenics program...)

If that many Americans were being killed every year by terrorist attacks there would be demands for wars to be waged, countries to be invaded and death to be met out to all responsible. But when the terrorism is in the form of home grown violence idiots point meekly to an obscure clause in the constitution and shrug off the carnage.

Correlation, not causation. If video games could so drastically affect behavior, where are all the Pac-Man addicts who should be running around eating everything in sight?

I'd say pretty much everywhere
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/02news/obesityon rise.htm

Its called hookworm , bubba.

> And stop worrying about all of the germs. ...
> Where did you get those numbers from? Roland? Fox?

BAD doctor! Stop bullying that nurse. Be humble.

The nurse is absolutely right. *Obviously*, increasing the density of sick people increases the risk of infection there. The CDC says as much:


The Impact of Hospital-Acquired Bloodstream Infections ...
Baseline Data

Population-based surveillance studies of nosocomial infections in U.S. hospitals indicate a 5% attack rate or incidence of 5 infections per 1,000 patient-days (3-5). With the advent of managed care and incentives for outpatient care, hospitals have a concentrated population of seriously ill patients, so rates of nosocomial infections are probably correspondingly higher (6). For many larger institutions, the nosocomial infection rate may be closer to 10%.

If 35 million patients are admitted each year to the approximately 7,000 acute-care institutions in the United States, the number of nosocomial infections--assuming overall attack rates of 2.5%, 5%, or 10%--would be 875,000, 1.75 million, or 3.5 million, respectively. If 10% of all hospital-acquired infections involve the bloodstream, 87,500, 175,000, or 350,000 patients acquire these life-threatening infections each year. ...
In SCOPE, 49.4% of all nosocomial bloodstream infections occurred in intensive-care units.


Yes, the article uses suspiciously grand words. But half of Slashdotters would not be able to knock up a unit in a day or even a month. I would like to, but can't. (See my other post - any move towards something like this is a good idea)

You can't find better references because you're wrong.

http://atsdr1.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts143.html

Chemicals with low water solubility have a low toxicity rating. You could eat a lump of plutonium and you'd probably be fine because it would go right through you. It also settles out of the air quickly in particulate form because of it's density.

Also for reference, the south had an overall violence-related mortality rate of 19.40, the overall US 17.41, and the northeast 12.01

So, while it appears there is indeed a higher rate of gun deaths in the south, it appears that people just kill each other more often in that area overall. I'm not sure a lack of firearms would change that.

bear in mind that around fifty eight thousand Americans are killed by guns every year

That number was killed in 1994, not every year. According to the CDC, the authoritative source for this information in the US, gun deaths in 2002 (the most recent year with available data) there were 30,242 deaths for a rate of 10.50 deaths per 100,000 people. Of those, homicide accounted for 11,829 deaths. Total homicides were 17,638, of which firearms accounted for 67%.

I do not own a gun, and at this time have no intention to. However, I regard the right to own one highly, and think that the best method to reduce gun deaths is education and responsible ownership.

Guns may make it a little easier to commit a crime, but leveling the playing field by removing them from everyone except law enforcement will have 2 effects: First, it will cause criminals to simply use other means of committing crimes, including black market acquisition of firearms. Second, it gives law enforcement and military bodies undue control over the citizens of this country, which is one of the primary reasons for this right.

America needs to stop living in fear and start addressing the real threats to society - one of them being the gun culture.

I agree that culture needs to change, but it's not gun culture. It's the thug culture common among Blacks and "macho" Hispanics (and now being adopted by young white men encouraged by things like video games.)

Selected U.S. Homicide Rates by Race for 2000 (per 100,000)

Race Total Non-gun
White-Non-Hispanic 2.76 1.31
Black 22.28 6.14
White-Hispanic 9.59 3.14
All U.S. 6.09 2.17

Data obtained from theCDC.

Are you serious? The avg life expectancy in the US is 77 years. That is, unless you're a rhesus momkey...

A bit of Googling provides multiple respectable sources stating that HIV is categorised as biohazard level 3. CDC has some information on biosafety (2.8MB - pretty slow) which includes requirements for handling of agents at different levels.

And then there's this http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/research_data/health_co nsequences/mortali.htm:

Each year, more than 400,000 Americans die from cigarette smoking

2 million Americans killed by tobacco since Bush took office.

C'mon the if the trend is to attack a threat pre-emptively, then why is nothing being done? Or would that be too much like being productive?

Really? So if ethylmercury is so safe then why did the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) release a jointed statement concerning questions over the safety of it in children?
http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vacsafe/concerns/thimerosal /thimerosal-AAP&PHS.htm

Here are some interesting tidbits:

* Vaccines are injected straight into the bloodstream, bypassing much of the body's natural defenses in the digestive, respiratory and skin systems.

* Polio is cited as an example of the success of vaccines, yet.. "In June of 1959...all non-paralytic cases of poliomyelitis were to be henceforth recorded as 'meningitis, viral or aseptic,' a disease which itself only became reportable in 1952 (Canada)." - Catherine Diodati MA (Immunization History, Ethics, Law and Health p116)

* Beddow Bayly, author of the book "The Case Against Vaccination" said: "After vaccination was introduced, cases of aseptic meningitis were more often reported as a separate disease from polio, but such cases were counted as polio before the vaccine was introduced. The Ministry of Health admitted that the vaccine status of the individual is a guiding factor in diagnosis. If a person who is vaccinated contracts the disease, the disease is simply recorded under a different name."

* Formaldehyde is classified as a carcenogen by the FDA (http://cis.nci.nih.gov/fact/3_8.htm) so why do you want to inject it straight into my baby's bloodstream?

* My baby's doctor once told us that one injection gave about the same amount of mercury as you would have eating fish once per week for a year. Lets do the math. My baby is about 1/8th my weight, so the dose-per-weight increases eight-fold, and is supposed to receive a large number of thesebefore he's two years old. Then there's also the fact that again it goes straight into the bloodstream rather than the digestive system, therefore it would have a stronger effect on my baby's body.

* Economics... if vaccines were so good for us, then why aren't they free for everyone? Why are these pharmacutical companies making fortunes selling them? How many schools do you that are making money hand-over-fist, yet those are also for the public good?

* The disease life cycle is changing. Before vaccines you got certain diseases as a child (when your body was able for them) and built up life-long resistances to them; this resistance was then passed on to children via the mother's milk for the first few years until the child's own body was able to fight disease sufficiently, and onwards, continuing the cycle. Compare that today when children are given vaccinations against normal childhood diseases, the vaccine wears off by the time they reach adulthood, they come in contact with the disease (often from someone who was just given the vaccine) and contract it, developing more serious symptoms than if it had been contracted as a child. As a result of this many "booster" vaccines are promoted to help you through adulthood. I think breastmilk is a better way to go with it, actually.

* The whole US medical establishment blows off the side effects of vaccines. My niece developed what the CDC labelled as serious side effects from one vaccine - labored breathing, diziness, etc, etc. When the parents brought this to the attention of their doctor it was blown off saying "ah sure she's fine now" and "well that kind of thing can happen". I'm sorry, if you develop what the CDC says are "serious side effects" then there's something wrong. Another niece developed seisures twice, both within a few days of receiving vaccinations, but again this was blamed on something else, in this case an ear infection (?!?).

Damien

Really? So if ethylmercury is so safe then why did the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) release a jointed statement concerning questions over the safety of it in children?
http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vacsafe/concerns/thimerosal /thimerosal-AAP&PHS.htm

Here are some interesting tidbits:

* Vaccines are injected straight into the bloodstream, bypassing much of the body's natural defenses in the digestive, respiratory and skin systems.

* Polio is cited as an example of the success of vaccines, yet.. "In June of 1959...all non-paralytic cases of poliomyelitis were to be henceforth recorded as 'meningitis, viral or aseptic,' a disease which itself only became reportable in 1952 (Canada)." - Catherine Diodati MA (Immunization History, Ethics, Law and Health p116)

* Beddow Bayly, author of the book "The Case Against Vaccination" said: "After vaccination was introduced, cases of aseptic meningitis were more often reported as a separate disease from polio, but such cases were counted as polio before the vaccine was introduced. The Ministry of Health admitted that the vaccine status of the individual is a guiding factor in diagnosis. If a person who is vaccinated contracts the disease, the disease is simply recorded under a different name."

* Formaldehyde is classified as a carcenogen by the FDA (http://cis.nci.nih.gov/fact/3_8.htm) so why do you want to inject it straight into my baby's bloodstream?

* My baby's doctor once told us that one injection gave about the same amount of mercury as you would have eating fish once per week for a year. Lets do the math. My baby is about 1/8th my weight, so the dose-per-weight increases eight-fold, and is supposed to receive a large number of thesebefore he's two years old. Then there's also the fact that again it goes straight into the bloodstream rather than the digestive system, therefore it would have a stronger effect on my baby's body.

* Economics... if vaccines were so good for us, then why aren't they free for everyone? Why are these pharmacutical companies making fortunes selling them? How many schools do you that are making money hand-over-fist, yet those are also for the public good?

* The disease life cycle is changing. Before vaccines you got certain diseases as a child (when your body was able for them) and built up life-long resistances to them; this resistance was then passed on to children via the mother's milk for the first few years until the child's own body was able to fight disease sufficiently, and onwards, continuing the cycle. Compare that today when children are given vaccinations against normal childhood diseases, the vaccine wears off by the time they reach adulthood, they come in contact with the disease (often from someone who was just given the vaccine) and contract it, developing more serious symptoms than if it had been contracted as a child. As a result of this many "booster" vaccines are promoted to help you through adulthood. I think breastmilk is a better way to go with it, actually.

* The whole US medical establishment blows off the side effects of vaccines. My niece developed what the CDC labelled as serious side effects from one vaccine - labored breathing, diziness, etc, etc. When the parents brought this to the attention of their doctor it was blown off saying "ah sure she's fine now" and "well that kind of thing can happen". I'm sorry, if you develop what the CDC says are "serious side effects" then there's something wrong. Another niece developed seisures twice, both within a few days of receiving vaccinations, but again this was blamed on something else, in this case an ear infection (?!?).

Damien

Each year, more than 400,000 Americans die from cigarette smoking

That's just the CDC's estimate for the US. World-wide, it's 4 million a year and rising ...

Completely preventable. More than 100 times the casualties EVERY YEAR. So, why isn't the government grabbing the tobacco manufacturers and throwing them in jail? These guys make bin laden look like a wanna-be. More than 1000 Americans killed each and every day ...

TLA overload alert:

CDC = center for disease control.

I have yet to see a private charity that disburses 99.2 percent of what it brings in.

That is not quite an accurate assessment. See Robert Genetski's essay to understand why. Summary: the SSA is actually extremely efficient at disbursing benefits, but some expenses are outsourced and are not accurately reflected in the efficiency figures you see generally bandied about. When accounting for all costs like the very low returns, the overall program's efficiency fares very poorly.

And if private charities are so hot, why did we need SS in the first place?

Statements like this without discussing the context of the Great Depression carry no weight. While it is impressive to say for example, 4 hospitals in New York reported 95 deaths from starvation, mortality surveys result in summaries that say "There was no sharp rise in deaths from starvation and disease. On the contrary, the world death-rate declined in the 1930's, and life expectancy continued to rise." As for people freezing to death, in the late 20th century in America, the CDC reported an annualized rate of 1,552 deaths from hypothermia over a 9 year period. As late as 2003, we simply expect about 600 deaths from hypothermia per year. If you want to refute the League of Nations' morbidity tables that show no statistically significant increase in malnutrition and hypothermia related deaths, then please share the source material you reference for your claim whose sum total of these deaths exceeds the per capita rate in the ten year periods immediately before and after the Great Depression.

While the nation suffered hardships, and there undoubtedly were some people who passed away because the economic impact mortally affected their nutrition or sources of heat, it was not noticeably more than any other period, and the records say it was actually less.

If the rationale for establishing Social Security was because people were starving to death and freezing to death, then we did not "need" Social Security then, and we don't need it now. It was a political football from its genesis to its current form today. You can cry all you want about "heartless extreme right wingers", but the simple fact of the matter is that as a nation, we simply lack the out of pocket funds to pay for its future liabilities as currently constituted. Billions of Chinese, Japanese, and to a lesser extent Europeans via their central banks are floating the entire American financial house of cards, which is the only reason Social Security even stands today. Dude, you have not seen heartless yet. The day Mr. Market comes to collect rent, interest, and back penalties, you'll see heartless that will take the breath away of even the spawn of Sauron and Darth Vader.

The choice is as stark as it is simple. Either let social welfare programs' fiscal demands continue to erode the nation's financial standing, and one day figure out how to deal with the aftermath of a collapse worse on senior citizens than the Soviet Union's. Or figure out today how to restructure the nation's finances to a sustainable footing while we still have the thin resources to even contemplate doing so.

I have yet to see a private charity that disburses 99.2 percent of what it brings in.

That is not quite an accurate assessment. See Robert Genetski's essay to understand why. Summary: the SSA is actually extremely efficient at disbursing benefits, but some expenses are outsourced and are not accurately reflected in the efficiency figures you see generally bandied about. When accounting for all costs like the very low returns, the overall program's efficiency fares very poorly.

And if private charities are so hot, why did we need SS in the first place?

Statements like this without discussing the context of the Great Depression carry no weight. While it is impressive to say for example, 4 hospitals in New York reported 95 deaths from starvation, mortality surveys result in summaries that say "There was no sharp rise in deaths from starvation and disease. On the contrary, the world death-rate declined in the 1930's, and life expectancy continued to rise." As for people freezing to death, in the late 20th century in America, the CDC reported an annualized rate of 1,552 deaths from hypothermia over a 9 year period. As late as 2003, we simply expect about 600 deaths from hypothermia per year. If you want to refute the League of Nations' morbidity tables that show no statistically significant increase in malnutrition and hypothermia related deaths, then please share the source material you reference for your claim whose sum total of these deaths exceeds the per capita rate in the ten year periods immediately before and after the Great Depression.

While the nation suffered hardships, and there undoubtedly were some people who passed away because the economic impact mortally affected their nutrition or sources of heat, it was not noticeably more than any other period, and the records say it was actually less.

If the rationale for establishing Social Security was because people were starving to death and freezing to death, then we did not "need" Social Security then, and we don't need it now. It was a political football from its genesis to its current form today. You can cry all you want about "heartless extreme right wingers", but the simple fact of the matter is that as a nation, we simply lack the out of pocket funds to pay for its future liabilities as currently constituted. Billions of Chinese, Japanese, and to a lesser extent Europeans via their central banks are floating the entire American financial house of cards, which is the only reason Social Security even stands today. Dude, you have not seen heartless yet. The day Mr. Market comes to collect rent, interest, and back penalties, you'll see heartless that will take the breath away of even the spawn of Sauron and Darth Vader.

The choice is as stark as it is simple. Either let social welfare programs' fiscal demands continue to erode the nation's financial standing, and one day figure out how to deal with the aftermath of a collapse worse on senior citizens than the Soviet Union's. Or figure out today how to restructure the nation's finances to a sustainable footing while we still have the thin resources to even contemplate doing so.

What type of definition is this?

Job stress results when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities, resources, or needs of the employee.

In other words it is completely your employers fault, not yours.

That whole page is an absolute bunch of garbage. F'en OSHA

The way the word "epidemic" is used in medical terminology is different than the lay-mans term. An epidemic is an exponential increase of a disease. So the flu which normally kills 10k people per year does so every year on average and is not increasing. Malaria kills at least hundreds of thousands if not millions each year, again these numbers are normal and not considered an epidemic. By comparison there are typically 5-15 cases of bubonic plague in the united states each year, if for some reason 50 people contracted the disease this would be an epidemic.. And 1 case of smallpox probably wouldn't be an epidemic, but 3 or more probably would...

Anyway, SARS, being a "new" disease is growing rapidly... 0 deaths/year - 850 deaths/year... thus it's growth is exponential and therefore it gets labeled as an epidemic.

See the entry for epidemic on this page

Accidental discharge of firearms All 5-14

762 48

Drowning or submersion All 5-14

3,447 321

Assumption are that if you're less than 5 years someone else is doing the 'accidental discharge' for you (i.e. on-topic). You're therefore 6.5 times more likely to acccidentally drown. 5-14 years deaths make-up 6% of accidental discharges and 9% of drownings.

So put this against the background of childhood. Would an average child spend 'only' 6.5 greater time swimming, taking baths, etc., or being exposed to accidental gunshot discharge? Rather undermines the original 'plastic bucket' comment.

Since the infection cause is not broken down into long term relationship details, then I believe a rather liberal number of 'all heterosexual contact' would cover those in either category who are acting responsibly.

There's no easy way to tell, however. I suppose it's within the realm of possibility that more than 10% of those infected in either category are in committed, long term relationships and are not at any higher risk than I am. But if that were the case, I'd expect more than 2% of the population to be affected.

The CDC has a more comprehensive report but it only breaks it down a little bit - heterosexual contact with IV drug users, etc. It doesn't comment on how long these partners were together.

The report is very interesting overall.

-Adam

According the Center for Disease control: "The abortion ratio for black women (491 per 1,000 live births) was 3.0 times the ratio for white women (165 per 1,000)".

In terms of raw numbers, abortions by white mothers outnumber those by black mothers, but this may just mean that a black minority is disappearing ever so much faster.

Quite easily.

Quite easily.

To date only six documented cases of human survival from clinical rabies have been reported and each included a history of either pre- or postexposure prophylaxis.

Willoughby said he had not expected Giese to survive when she was admitted to the hospital. But he said he studied numerous cases of the disease, and a team of consultants, including CDC officials, decided within four hours to go ahead with the experimental treatment.

"I knew that this was a 100 percent fatal disease, so I knew there wasn't much we could do," Willoughby said.

Willoughby said he could not reveal the exact drugs that were used because medical protocol requires scientists first to publish the results in a medical journal. He said they were two anesthetic and two antiviral medications.