Slashdot Mirror

The largest number of animals that are infected are raccoons on the East Coast: Raccoons: 2778 Skunks: 2223 Bats: 1240 Foxes: 453 Cats: 249 Dogs: 114 Cattle: 83 Coyotes: 8 CDC Statistics Human cases 1990-2002: Bats: 27 Dogs: 9 CDC Statistics

The largest number of animals that are infected are raccoons on the East Coast: Raccoons: 2778 Skunks: 2223 Bats: 1240 Foxes: 453 Cats: 249 Dogs: 114 Cattle: 83 Coyotes: 8 CDC Statistics Human cases 1990-2002: Bats: 27 Dogs: 9 CDC Statistics

Here are some facts to consider.

Number one killer in the US- Heart Disease.
Second most prolific killer- Cancer.
Number one actual cause of death- Tobacco.

Meanwhile, the US government resists allocating federal research funds for a treatment that might lengthen peoples' lives. It also desires an international treaty against researching this medical technology- Stem Cell Research.

In 2018 benefits owed will be more than taxes collected, and [the current] Social Security will need to begin tapping the trust funds to pay benefits.

The US Government continues to subsidies tobacco farmers and resists holding the tobacco companies responsible for the damage incurred by their products.

Good for the economy, good for the future of social security: fewer humans living longer.

Here are some facts to consider.

Number one killer in the US- Heart Disease.
Second most prolific killer- Cancer.
Number one actual cause of death- Tobacco.

Meanwhile, the US government resists allocating federal research funds for a treatment that might lengthen peoples' lives. It also desires an international treaty against researching this medical technology- Stem Cell Research.

In 2018 benefits owed will be more than taxes collected, and [the current] Social Security will need to begin tapping the trust funds to pay benefits.

The US Government continues to subsidies tobacco farmers and resists holding the tobacco companies responsible for the damage incurred by their products.

Good for the economy, good for the future of social security: fewer humans living longer.

Could you be more specific?

Are you talking about the 1,000,000+ casualties when Saddam invaded Iran in 1980?

Or are you talking about the 300,000-400,000 casualties of Saddam's war on the Iraqi people?

Or are you talking about the 20,000 - 35,000 casualties when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990?

Or are you talking about the the 14,000 - 17,000 counted at Iraqibodycount which is a one time cost to stop Saddams murderous regime?

Or are you talking about the ... "creative" numbers in that now famous Lancet article? It is really amazing. The United States has a mortality rate of 8.5/1,000 whereas they found Iraq had a mortality rate of 5/1,000 before the war (p. 4, results) which they used to "calculate" a total of 8,000 to 194,000 excess deaths with the "most likely" value of 98,000. (Check out those confidence intervals.) Some find those numbers fishy, or simply unrealistic.

Do you care about the millions that Saddam killed? If so, don't worry, he won't be killing anymore.

Of course, this isn't an absolute correlation; Bush also took seven of the twelve states with the lowest rates. I suspect it's mostly due to a regional correlation of both, er, problems. =)

Just where is the evidence that having an abortion is "safer" than carrying your child to full term? Let's see ... about 2 minutes of googling reveal that we can find the mortality rate per childbirth here. And the rate of deaths (of the mother) per abortion here and here. And we can conclude that having an abortion is something like 4-6 times safer than carrying a child to term.

Just where is the evidence that having an abortion is "safer" than carrying your child to full term? Let's see ... about 2 minutes of googling reveal that we can find the mortality rate per childbirth here. And the rate of deaths (of the mother) per abortion here and here. And we can conclude that having an abortion is something like 4-6 times safer than carrying a child to term.

Six fatalities in 28 years (or even four years) sounds pretty damn good compared to the coal mining fatality rate in this country.

Have you ever seen a crack baby?

Have you ever seen a baby with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome? Ever noticed the 25,000 deaths on the US highways that result from driving while intoxicated?

I think that even Islamic Fundamentalism hasn't killed as many people as coal mining and its effects. The coal industry is practically bragging (see http://coalage.com/ar/coal_coal_mine_deaths/) that only about 30 people are killed every year as a direct result of coal mining accidents. Never mind its effects on the environment, or the long-term effects on people, miners and otherwise (black lung disease, acid rain, etc.). Yes, I know that uranium is mined, and it kills people (see http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/pgms/worknotify/uranium.h tml), but I think it's a lot fewer.
But there's no chance for increased nuclear power with the current administration. GWB was president of an oil company, for goodness's sake! Plus, he's so tight with the Saudis, it's ridiculous. No, we'll have to stick with more instability in the Middle East, and US troops on the ground to protect oil^H^H^H democracy.

Sounds like somewhat more than one issue to me.

Put yourself in the position of one who believes, as I do, that a fetus possesses the same right to life as anyone else. Given the amount of people I've heard saying that Bush's actions in Iraq were unjustified, and let to the death of a whole pile of innocent lives (somewhere in the neighborhood of perhaps 100000 or so), try looking at some abortion statistics which indicate about 2500 deaths a day due to this procedure. In a little over a month you've outnumbered the amount of deaths in Iraq.

I am quite cynical about the war in Iraq, dislike the patriot act, etc. but at the same time feel that there are greater issues of concern.

Seals and dogs are evolutionarily related thus: Mass Die-Off of Caspian Seals Caused by Canine Distemper Virus And Infection studies with canine distemper virus in harbour seals.

I felt lucky and got a different conclusion.

Are you saying that babies are mistreated now because of of public law?

Kindof, yeah.

I think the numbers you're using include infant deaths. The huge decrease in infant deaths affects the final number a great deal without extending anyone's ability to go deeper into "old age".

(Rats, now I wish I hadn't posted the grandparent article as AC).

Yes and no. You are right: decreases in infant and child mortality brought up the average a lot, but didn't do anything for the life expectancy of people who survived childhood. "average life expectancy at age 0" is not relevant to a 20-year-old or a 40-year-old or a 60-year-old.

However, life expectancy for old people has been going up too. Here are some tables:

Life Expectancy by Age, 1850-2001

For example: American white male, age 60. Life expectancy in 1900: 14.35 years. Life expectancy in 2000: 20.0 years. That is a 39% increase in one century.

That's not as pronounced as "American white male, age 0", which improved from 48.23 years to 74.8 years, an increase of 55% in one century.

NCHS - FASTATS - Life Expectancy

Again limited to the United States. The second table is a nice PDF, "Life Expectancy at birth and 65 years of age by sex and race, 1900-2000".

The earliest figures for 65 year old life expectancy are from 1950. Let's grab one: "all races, both sexes, 65 years old". 1950 expectancy: 13.9 years. 2000 expectancy: 18.0 years. That's a 29% increase in half a century.

I don't have any figures for maximum life span, which would be hard to measure. I agree with you that it doesn't look like we're going to get to 180 just by curing all forms of cancer and stenting up our hearts.

What I'm trying to say here is that "lifespan extension" appears to me to be something of an illusion."

Lifespan extension is real.

But at this rate, in 2050 the life expectancy of an American 60-year-old will be about 23 years. (29% increase from 18.0 years). That is nowhere near "live long enough to live forever".

Personally, I am hoping for "live long enough for a revolution in medicine" or "live long enough for workable cryonic suspension" or "live long enough for uploading".

Yes, but the context of the article is of using these rather potent substances as propellant or high explosive. Many of those applications involve rather more than a few grams.

Incidentally, we use sodium azide in my lab too. No deaths, but it does have the nastiest warning on the side of the bottle of all our chemicals. Except for that one bottle of ricin, which is potentially fatal with a mere 0.5 milligrams.

Is the averge american family that large?

Here's the trends from the Centers for Disease Control http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/prev _char.htm

Currently, more than 44 million Americans are considered obese by BMI index; that is, have a Body Mass Index (Kg/m2) greater than or equal to 30. This reflects an increase of 74 percent since 1991.

Back on-topic, the car weights 1500 pounds. You won't see it hauling 2 300-pounders with a sub-700cc motor. Then again, as gas prices keep doubling, Mr. and Mrs. Lard-belly won't have the $$$ to both stuff their faces AND run their 8mpg SUVs/cattle haulers, so either they or their vehicles are going on a diet, one way or another.

RTFA, its HPV not HSV. big difference (warts or herpes). Its a virus too, it doesn't go away it just hopefully gets suppressed by the immune system. It is spread by direct skin contact downstairs, condoms are only 30% effective.

You can carry HPV for months/years without symptoms, or you can grow warts on your naughty bits! It can be a precursor to cervical cancer!

According to the CDC http://www.cdc.gov/std/HPV/STDFact-HPV.htm#common 80% of women will be infected at some point in their lives (and presumably equal % of men that is.... well lower on slashdot of course).

-Anon male coward w/HPV

Consider that there are thousands of experts in the medical and electronic fields who've been working on this exact problem for years.

Sorry, I have to take issue with this statement. Just because there is an industry-standard way of doing things or that hundreds (or thousands? really?) of "experts" have weighed in on a topic doesn't necessarily make it right.

Take for example birth by cesarean. According to the CDC, 26.1% of births in the U.S. are performed by cesarean. (In 1970 the cesarean rate was 5 percent.) At least four times as many women die of causes related to cesarean birth as those related to vaginal birth. Why do cesareans continue to be on the rise and popular despite increasing risk to the mother? Because it's cheaper for the hospitals to do it that way. "Experts" recommend cesareans in order to reduce the insurance payments hospitals make. Doctors are advised to recommend cesareans routinely, even when not at all necessary, because of the bottom line: the almighty dollar.

I am not saying any of this as a racist. I don't think the problem is the "white man" but instead a problem within the black community, specifically the poor family structure. According to planned parenthood

Each year, approximately 19 percent of black women, 13 percent of Hispanic women, and eight percent of white women aged 15-19 become pregnant

The proportion of all births that occurred to unmarried women was 22.1 percent for white women, unchanged from 1999; it declined for black women from 69.1 to 68.7 percent. Among births to Hispanic women, the proportion increased from 42.2 to 42.7 percent

IMO, when the black community can fix these problems, they will experience the same success rate as anyone else. For example, according to the Census Bureau

Black households had the lowest median income. Their 2003 median money income was about $30,000, which was 62 percent of the median for White households (about $48,000).

Median money income for Hispanic households was about $33,000 in 2003, which was 69 percent of the median for White households.

Asian households had the highest median income among the race groups. Their 2003 median money income was about $55,500, 117 percent of the median for White households.

The above was not to start a flame or be racist. It is just MHO on what is causing the biggest issues in the black community; those being high crime percentage, high percentage of out of wedlock child births and poor family structure. Affirmative action won't fix these problems. No government social policy would fix these problems. Each Black American will need to make the change for themselves, and then they as a community can have unlimited success like any other American.

Or unless you're a horse. Our 4-legged friend can readily indicate that it's not feeling well to its handlers, unless of course its handlers are worth their salt and then will of course know the horse feels ill before it does.

Look. The birth rate and the per-capita birth rate are different things! The former is the product of the latter and the total population. The fact that per-capita birth rate is decreasing (in some places) doesn't mean the earth's population isn't increasing enormously.

It's unavoidable that the global birth rate is slowing down- why, if 1981's rate continued until 2041, there'd be a 70 billion population!

Even if this currently-reduce birth rate continues, we'll still hit the 10 billion before 2050.

the US there are less than 25 Births per year per one thousand addults

That's a funny thing to say. It's true, but misleading, because it suggests the number is nearly 25, when really it's less than 15

I bet the consumer reaction would be similar to how I recall people reacting to Irradiated foods in biology class (link for the use of it). Here's a link against the use of it.

The CDC disagrees

Page 12 says ~5,250 hemophilia cases and ~9,000 transfusion cases in the USA 1982-2001.

America has the lowest rate of TB infection because we manage the disease differently than the rest of the world.

The rest of the world gives the ineffective TB vaccine, while the US doesn't. The TB vaccine is known not to work, and it ruins the best test we have to screen for infection - the ppd (TB skin test).

In America, we treat everyone that converts their skin test and we don't administer the TB vaccine. Our public health officials deserve a big pat on the back for this decision.

1. The CDC (U.S. center for disease control) inTrends in Tuberculosis --- United States, 1998--2003 states

   "During 2003, a total of 14,871 tuberculosis (TB) cases (5.1 cases per 100,000 population) were reported in the United States."

   While Eurosurveillance in 2002 reports on data (which may have been gathered in 2000) at Tuberculosis control in Europe needs expanded DOTS, linked HIV/TB control, and improved surveillance reports:

   "In most countries of western Europe, reported TB incidence is below 15 per 100 000 and continues to decrease slowly. In central Europe, reported TB incidence ranges from 20 to 40 per 100 000 and is decreasing in most countries. TB incidence is much higher in Bosnia-Herzegovina (65/100 000) and Romania (124/100 000), where it has increased significantly in recent years. In eastern Europe, a further increase in reported incidence was observed in 2000 to an overall 89/100 000, a 56% increase since 1995. In countries providing representative data, the overall levels of drug resistance at the beginning of treatment remained low both in Western and Central Europe (less than 1% of patients never previously treated had primary multidrug resistance) and remained extremely high in the Baltic states (9-12%)."

   So the U.S. may have a lower rate of TB than western europe, and definitely has a lower rate than central or eastern Europe. However, I was not able to find a supporting reference for the U.S. having the lowest Rate of infection.

2. Khaled Mohammed Abu Khadra's thesis abstract (Ph.D. thesis?) (the thesis itself was not directly linked), but the abstract gave hard numbers of preventive vaccination (vaccination prior to exposure) for the BCG vaccine in Jordan. The last paragraph of the abstract reads:

   "The overall vaccine effectiveness was 88% ; 85% for pulmonary TB and 95% for Extra-pulmonary TB. The vaccine was more effective (92%) when given shortly after birth, compared to 62% when given at school age."

3. However, vaccines appear to become less effective after widespread usage (try googling on Ineffective TB vaccine), so they may be ineffective after all (a BBC Article gives 70% effectiveness ratings).
4. Potential Public Health Impact of New Tuberculosis Vaccines by Ziv E, Daley CL and Blower, S. describes the outcome of a mathematical epidemiological model of Tuberculosis, which appears to indicate that vaccination AFTER exposure (post exposure) is likely to be more effective than pre-exposure vaccination at preventing disease (the authors make an interesting point that disease prevention is more important than preventing infection).

America has the lowest rate of TB infection because we manage the disease differently than the rest of the world.

The rest of the world gives the ineffective TB vaccine, while the US doesn't. The TB vaccine is known not to work, and it ruins the best test we have to screen for infection - the ppd (TB skin test).

In America, we treat everyone that converts their skin test and we don't administer the TB vaccine. Our public health officials deserve a big pat on the back for this decision.

1. The CDC (U.S. center for disease control) inTrends in Tuberculosis --- United States, 1998--2003 states

   "During 2003, a total of 14,871 tuberculosis (TB) cases (5.1 cases per 100,000 population) were reported in the United States."

   While Eurosurveillance in 2002 reports on data (which may have been gathered in 2000) at Tuberculosis control in Europe needs expanded DOTS, linked HIV/TB control, and improved surveillance reports:

   "In most countries of western Europe, reported TB incidence is below 15 per 100 000 and continues to decrease slowly. In central Europe, reported TB incidence ranges from 20 to 40 per 100 000 and is decreasing in most countries. TB incidence is much higher in Bosnia-Herzegovina (65/100 000) and Romania (124/100 000), where it has increased significantly in recent years. In eastern Europe, a further increase in reported incidence was observed in 2000 to an overall 89/100 000, a 56% increase since 1995. In countries providing representative data, the overall levels of drug resistance at the beginning of treatment remained low both in Western and Central Europe (less than 1% of patients never previously treated had primary multidrug resistance) and remained extremely high in the Baltic states (9-12%)."

   So the U.S. may have a lower rate of TB than western europe, and definitely has a lower rate than central or eastern Europe. However, I was not able to find a supporting reference for the U.S. having the lowest Rate of infection.

2. Khaled Mohammed Abu Khadra's thesis abstract (Ph.D. thesis?) (the thesis itself was not directly linked), but the abstract gave hard numbers of preventive vaccination (vaccination prior to exposure) for the BCG vaccine in Jordan. The last paragraph of the abstract reads:

   "The overall vaccine effectiveness was 88% ; 85% for pulmonary TB and 95% for Extra-pulmonary TB. The vaccine was more effective (92%) when given shortly after birth, compared to 62% when given at school age."

3. However, vaccines appear to become less effective after widespread usage (try googling on Ineffective TB vaccine), so they may be ineffective after all (a BBC Article gives 70% effectiveness ratings).
4. Potential Public Health Impact of New Tuberculosis Vaccines by Ziv E, Daley CL and Blower, S. describes the outcome of a mathematical epidemiological model of Tuberculosis, which appears to indicate that vaccination AFTER exposure (post exposure) is likely to be more effective than pre-exposure vaccination at preventing disease (the authors make an interesting point that disease prevention is more important than preventing infection).

According to the CDC, about 10 million 18-25 year olds were aborted as fetuses. I wonder how that impacts Kerry's chance of success.

Did you know that flouride is related to florine, and that it isn't an accident that "florine" sounds like the poison "chlorine"? There is a reason why you aren't supposed to swallow the flouride at the dentist's. Floride is toxic. Too much of it causes severe bone trouble, and even brain damage.

"People who live in areas with high levels of naturally-occurring fluoride in the water should use alternative sources of dinking water, such as bottled water."(atsdr.cdc.gov)

So you're claiming that bullets used "defensively" are 3% as likely to kill someone as bullets used in any other way?

Firearm assaults - which shooting at someone in a DGU counts as - are fatal approximately one third of the time. With this more specific data, Kleck's numbers actually suggest that about 65,000 firearm deaths due to DGUs should occur each year, making his results even more suspect.

There are only 60,000 total non-fatal gunshot injuries treated in US hospitals every year, but Kleck's numbers suggest DGUs alone account for 200,000 wounds (fatal and non-fatal). Unless you're saying that somehow the large majority of DGU-caused firearm wounds are never reported to a hospital, Kleck's numbers still don't add up.

Guns fire bullets in exactly the same way, regardless of whether the situation is a DGU or not. Intentional, non-suicide firearm injuries will have about the same rates of injury and lethality, regardless of whether the situation is a DGU or not. Kleck's numbers paint a picture that is demonstrably at least an order of magnitude different from reality.

Kleck's numbers are not reliable.

The deer mouse might be dead and the odor gone, but any hantavirus present will live on. I doubt that Febreeze is an adequate antidote!

CFS is not very well understood, but the CDC does have some criteria that can be used to diagnose CFS.

There is some recent research (International Journal of Epidemiology, 2004 Jul 15) that indicates that at least some folks with MCS may have a genetic predisposition -- certain genes help regulate how the body inactivates toxins, and a correlation was detected between folks with MCS and those with certain PON* and NAT* genotypes (or whatever -- I'm a geek, not a geneticist!). That gives a good explanation why some folks' bodies just can't deal with what the rest of us shrug off.

One explanation for the effect this has that you can find on the web is that with CFS, the immune system is hyperactive, so when you get exposed to something like a very fragrant shampoo :), your body kicks in, and it's like you have the flu -- lethargy, muscle and body pain, etc. If I'm remembering right, it's similar to how allergies work -- your body starts producing histamines to counter what it sees as an invader, but overdoes it, causing congestion/sneezing/headaches/etc., and causing some great financial results for the makers of Allegra, Sudafed, etc.

My wife got a skin rash last weekend from some fragrance-laced (saturated!) water that got spilled on a restroom countertop -- that's not hypochondria! And my toddler son gets hives (little red bumps on his skin) if he eats wheat products. (We've carefully done numerous experiments to prove, to my engineering satisfaction, that wheat is the key. This isn't a one-time occurrence, but a proven pattern.) I don't know of anyone who can use their brain, consciously or unconsciously, to make these kinds of physical manifestations occur.

So while I can't speak about whether your relatives are nuts :), I can say that there are at least some folks who aren't nuts, and there are at least some folks (but not very many) in the medical community that are working on helping these folks.

BTW, the Seabiscuit book author has CFS as well -- if she's a hypochondriac, she's managed to fool quite a lot of people.

You mean this?

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/cjd/cjd.htm

Minor nitpicks...

The teenage pregnancy (and abortion) rates in the United States are actually significantly lower now than they have been in the past two decades. (CDC release.) Teen pregnancy fell steeply throughout the 1990s, and continues to decline. Teen pregnancy is still higher in the United States than in other developed countries, but I suspect that that can be largely attributed to the deliberate policy of restricting information about and access to birth control techniques.

Use of most illegal drugs (including marijuana and cocaine) is actually falling. Use of alcohol among young people has also declined. (CDC summaries.

Minor nitpicks...

The teenage pregnancy (and abortion) rates in the United States are actually significantly lower now than they have been in the past two decades. (CDC release.) Teen pregnancy fell steeply throughout the 1990s, and continues to decline. Teen pregnancy is still higher in the United States than in other developed countries, but I suspect that that can be largely attributed to the deliberate policy of restricting information about and access to birth control techniques.

Use of most illegal drugs (including marijuana and cocaine) is actually falling. Use of alcohol among young people has also declined. (CDC summaries.

Here is the US CDC's page about BSE (aka "mad cow") and CJD (it's human cousin).

And call me paranoid, but I haven't had beef in seven months. (I live in the US and seven months ago was the first confirmed case of BSE in the USA)

That's odd, because I'm left with the impression that 120/80 is actually an optimal BP.

It used to be, but they changed the standard.

In November 1997, the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation and Treatment of High Blood Pressure (JNC) issued the report that classified 120/80 and below as "optimal", which is a standard that many are familiar with.

However, after further research, the JNC concluded that the risks are greater than previously realized. On May 21, 2003, they published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that set new standards. This article is commonly called JNC7.

The new standards classify anything below 120/80 as normal, but at or above that as prehypertension. Hypertension is still at 140/90 and above.

References:

• NIH press release discussing the JNC7 report
• A chart comparing the old standard vs the new one
• The JNC7 report, and related materials

Personally, I generally would tend to question a standard which classifies 22% of the American adult population as diseased. Still, given how many deaths are attributable to heart disease (29% in 2001, according to the CDC), I'll go with the more conservative figures.

this doesn't even include those that get black lung disease and are incapable of moving around without oxygen tanks as early as their 30s.

The question isn't if nuclear power or coal are totally safe, the question is which is safer per power production. The answer is nuclear, hand down

All for a drug which by all accounts is potentially deadly after long-term use but is comparatively benign.

Whoah, whoah, whoah! Comparatively BENIGN? Nicotine is a virulent toxin. One cigarrette contains a lethal dose, if administered orally. According to the CDC:

Tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, causing more than 440,000 deaths each year and resulting in an annual cost of more than $75 billion in direct medical costs.

I don't see how by any stretch of the word that benign could be applied to the use of tobacco.

The bee is such an insect. But there might be things like ants starting to attack beehives as an food source. Extreme severe colds could suddenly kill a lot of bees which means that the next season might suffer diminished crop yield. This in turn mean less food supply and thus even greater competition by insects and us to it. Imagine a small grain yield, attacked by grasshoppers. Do you think we can really win that one.

This doesn't include the secondary affects by people. I mean once that crap hits the fan society collapse. An easy way to notice that is simply to notice how people change in a large power blackout. If you can't get diesel or poison to fight the insects, the yields go down further. If people want something bad enough they'll take it, once city dwellers goes to occupy farmland we have real big problems. The infrastructure is simply not there to support it, also those people don't have the experience to produce food in large enough quantities let alone in the "new" environment.

Look at what is happening in Zimbabwe due to Robert Mugabe's farm resettlements. Basically people without skills are given farmland, they simply cannot produce food on a large scale. As soon as that happens, you end up with people dieing from hunger. Or basically you diminish the population's immunity to diseases, then suddenly plagues start to spread much easier. Imagine a new out break of the Bird Flu with not enough resources to "manage" it and a population more susceptible to disease. There is one out now as I am writing this.

These are all things that no "modern human" has experienced before, maybe that is what happened to the people from Atlantis or the Mayans. Are we prepared, do we even have enough time still left to prepare ?

Funny.

There's actually quite a bit of data about the danger of ingesting, inhaling, or otherwise coming into contact with plutonium. I'd start with ATSDR's PDF on plutonium biological effects.

And to start, I'd note that pretty much the entirety is consumed by discussions of the radiological toxic effects of plutonium, because the chemical toxicity is pretty much negligible by comparison.

Before you talk out of your ass and say things like "No one knows the danger of inhaling or contacting plutonium", make an attempt to look for things like MSDS or CDC's ToxFAQs, okay? Otherwise you just look like a tinfoil wearing paranoid crank.

Unless you like looking like what you obviously are, of course.

Let's put this number in perspective for a second. According to death stats for 2001, on average 6,620 people died every day in 2001. 1,918 of those from heart disease - every day! How about the European heatwave of 2003? 35,000? 11,000+ in France alone? Not to mention we've lost 880 US soldiers in Iraq.

I've seen reports of Iraqi civilian casualties over the 11,000 mark. A people that we haven't even proved had anything to do with the attacks. Who's the terrorist now?

Yes, it's terrible that 3,000 people were murdered on a single day which also took down the WTC towers. The reason it hits you hard was because it was in one place in which you could watch it unfold on TV. Taken in perspective though, I don't think it's worth losing the freedoms and liberties that those who came before us fought and died for. To quote another famous figure in US history, FDR, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

US has 4 murders per 100,000 people

7.12 homicides per 100,000 in 2001, according to the Centers for Disease Control

and that's homicides - if you look at all firearm related deaths, irrespective of intent, over the same period, it's 10.36 per 100,000.

Of course, the CDC only publishes US stats, so we can't compare with the other countries in your list.

Since when is an ulcer an infectious disease?

On the hepatitis card we learn (gather round, kiddies) that this disease "is found mainly in bowel movements". No helpful "poop" translation on this one -- sorry, kids!

Mind you, I *do* believe that immune deficiency exists and that people die from it. But, examining the many changing claims of the AIDS church has left me with questions, not answers, about the "HIV==AIDS" theory.

It would take several months to manufacture smallpox vaccinations for the population at large.

The United States government has stockpiled enough small pox vaccine to cover every man, woman, and child in the country. More is in production.

Also note that the vaccine can be applied after exposure and still be effective (within a few days).

reference

(Appologies if you aren't American.)

As for Soviet smallpox being bio-engineered... that could be a problem in theory, but given the track record of Soviet technology, it's probably not as great as it's cracked up to be.

Right. Here's my summary based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevetion site:

o Routine vaccination of the American public against smallpox ended in 1972.
o infants must be 1 year old.
o infants between 1-3 years can be given the vaccine in emergency.

So the bottom line is, if you're born after 1969 +/- a little, you probably weren't given the shot.

Interesting. Note that bio-warefare agents getting out of control dates back quite a bt further - likely to the 1346 Siege of Caffa. This page from our government's center for disease control has interesting details.

On the basis of a 14th-century account by the Genoese Gabriele de' Mussi, the Black Death is widely believed to have reached Europe from the Crimea as the result of a biological warfare attack. This is not only of great historical interest but also relevant to current efforts to evaluate the threat of military or terrorist use of biological weapons.

One interesting point is lightning damage while sailing on fresh water the damage is worse than when sailing on salt water!

A long Video with really neat post-lighting photos at: http://www.thomson.ece.ufl.edu/lightning/video.htm l

Some good scientific works at:
http://www.thomson.ece.ufl.edu/lightning/SGEB17.ht ml
http://www.cdc.gov/nasd/docs/d000001-d000100/d0000 07/d000007.html