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In addition to police uses, one of the major applications would be better childproofing (of 28,000 US gun deaths in 2000, a whopping 12,000 of them were accidental deaths among children 19 and younger; see source). Then again, I can't imagine anyone irresponsible enough to leave a gun inappropriately secured and away from children who would have the brains to spring for one of these super-fancy firearms anyway.

From Cigarettes: A Huge Cost to Society:
Smoking as of 2002, costs Americans $157.4 billion per year. The annual amount is about $3,391 per person. Each pack leads to medical costs. Each pack reduces productivity. The total per-pack cost is calculated at $7.18. -- U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Some people say this is all just "opinion." But think about it, the mathematical calculation aspect. Add up the costs of the tobacco-related medical care, divide by number of packs.
As each pack costs smokers far less than the actual cost impact on America, nonsmokers pay the difference. Nonsmokers pay the difference via increased taxes and insurance premiums.
For this reason alone, the per-pack tax should be $7.18. States receive only about $16 billion a year from tobacco taxes and the widely touted Attorney-General-initiated settlement. This is barely 10% of the aforesaid costs.

The Centers for Disease Control has much more on this.

....and, correct me if I am wrong, but aren't there already reports of Vancomicyn resistant strains of MRSA? There are a variety of other reports besides that one.

I think Chris Rock said something to the effect that we haven't cured a disease in 50 some odd years

I find him funny, too, but never quote Chris Rock as the authority on morbidity and mortality. It makes one look silly. :)

we used to do it twice a week. It's really sad.

I have no idea where that statistic might've come from but, for argument's sake, let's say it's true. Couldn't it be that we solved all the easy ones first and that those that remain are friggin difficult?

If Pfizer could cure you of something tomorrow, it would, because you'd give them a big chunk of dough for the cure. True, it's a better economic model to 'treat' you over time than it is to cure but do you really think the scientific community would accept a pharma company knowingly doing this when a cure was available and locked up under patent?
-j

Look, you are satisfied with the safety of a NASA design based on a NASA and DOE press release. Come on, doesn't that strike you as silly?

What I'm saying is: neither of us is qualified to determine whether these designs are safe. And given NASA's recent track record, I simply do not trust them to make the call by themselves--they have screwed up too much. I'm glad that Greenpeace and lots of other organizations scrutinize, pressure, and protest: it will hopefully get NASA to take more precautions than they seem to be capable of by themselves.

As for the general question of plutonium toxicity, don't take my word for it, look at the CDC site. Or, even take the plutonium-friendly LLNL report, which, in whatever way you look at it, ultimately does argue that there can be around a thousand deaths per kilogram of plutonium released over, say, Munich. But it, like you, assumes that if the additional risk is small compared to other risks, the additional deaths just don't count.

Five gallons of gasoline have the destructive power of a stick of dynamite.

The explosive force of vaporized gasoline when mixed with air in the right proportions is

1 cup of gasoline = 5 pounds of dynamite.

National Ag Safety Database

So the explosive potential of a full automobile gas tank under the right conditions is truly staggering.

They also can predict you will die on average at age 76.9 years if born in 2000. (American born in 2000) but are not able to tell you within 10 seconds.

In Australia today, police can enter your house and search for guns, copy the hard drive of your computer, seize records, and do it all without a search warrant.

Bzzzzt. Wrong answer. Police need a search warrant to enter your house to search for anything.

Port Arthur (a Tasmanian resort)

Bzzzzt. A resort, yeah right. It's a collection of ruins that is a tourist attraction.

crime Down Under has escalated

Bzzzt. To quote from the Aust. Bureau of Statistics : Between 1993 and 2001, there has been an 11% decrease in murders where a weapon was used over this period....while the number of victims of murder has increased slightly from 296 to 306, as a rate per 100,000 population there has been a slight decrease from 1.7 to 1.6 victims.

"And consider the fact that over the previous 25-year period, Australia had shown a steady decrease both in homicide with firearms and armed robbery - until the ban.

Funnily enough it is still decreasing, as I have just shown.

There is obviously a highly intelligent and well-read author at work (Dr. Miguel A. Faria Jr.) saying, inter alia:

• "Australia remained a subject of Great British [sic]",
• "the leftist Australian government" after having just described it as centre-right,
• "this last one [citing the "Australian Democratic Party" [sic] -- I assume he's referring to the Australian Democrats] easily tilted the balance of power toward stringent gun control" which is totally false, as the present conservative Prime Minister introduced the bill himself.

PS You forgot to have a look at comparative staistics between countries: Gee, doesn't the data show what a tragedy Australian and English gun control is for children. I'll leave you to search for statistics on adult deaths; which will be higher, as the US adults "have the right to bear arms".

[ I'm sorry, but I just want to scream when I hear people talk like this. "It won't hurt my kids; we did that all the time when I was a kid; I never got sick from it." You sound like my father-in-law, who would be very lucky to make it to age 70 after all his occupational exposures to various chemicals. He has certainly been crippled by them. ]

Lead is toxic in any quantity. It doesn't change toxicity just because you have less of it. The real issue is "at what quantity does this toxicity pose an unacceptable risk to me or my child?" Do you know how much lead you or your child can safely tolerate? Did you look it up? I'll save you the trouble. According to the CDC the current action level for lead is 10 micrograms/dL. That's been reduced about 10 micrograms/dL per decade since the 1960s, when they first decided 40 micrograms/dL was too much.

An average adult has about 5.6 liters of blood. Figure a child under 12 as having about half of that. That means you should be concerned if your child's blood contains more than 280 micrograms of lead. .00028 grams. A 1-ounce fishing sinker contains one million times this amount. If you can see the gray smears on your hands and fingers after handling the lead, you probably have more than that right there on your hands. Wash it off.

Children also have a much higher absorption rate of ingested lead -- adults absorb about 11% of the lead that reaches the digestive tract, while children absorb about 35%. For this fact, others, and a listing of the damage lead can do to a human, read this FDA report.

Keep in mind that lead does not exit the body. Lead builds up over time. If your child acquires .0001 grams of lead this year, .0001 grams next year and .0001 grams the year after, he will exceeded the actionable amount of lead.

The CDC and other federal agencies have been lowering the acceptable limit of lead dramatically every decade since the sixties, and not just for children. They lower it because they know the dangers of lead poisoning are real, and the studies keep showing neurological damage occurs at lower and lower levels. They don't know at what level (other than zero) it's safe.

And regarding telling the kids about "aerodynamic glue", I didn't know if you were the sort of person who would feel the need to have a cover story to hide behind. As you may have guessed, I certainly told my son the truth about the lead sinkers we were using, and we washed our hands carefully afterwards. Hell, I made our whole family wash our hands after working with the Christmas tree light strings this year, because I discovered they use lead-based pigment in the green electrical insulation!

Lead exposure is a serious health problem, and one that you can help avoid every time you avoid exposure. And this is an easy one to avoid -- use an alternate substance. If your car is .1 gram overweight at the official scale, use a drill and remove wood instead of lead.

But don't go telling people stuff like "it's OK, that's not enough lead to hurt you or your kid." That's irresponsible in the extreme.

There were 46,509 deaths in the same period from transportation-related injuries. Why are you not as concerned about those deaths? Are they any less dead? I will posit that someone in the US is far more likely to come into contact with a dangerous vehicle than they are with a dangerous firearm.

Check out the CDC statistics here.

You are only more likely to hurt yourself or someone you know if you are suicidal, engage in domestic violence or are living a criminal lifestyle. The original bogus statistic included all those categories.

The reality is that nationwide, every year, year after year, accidental handgun fatalities are less than drowning, poisoning and other accident fatalities. In fact, it is the lowest fatality rate among the "non-transport accidental fatalities" tracked by the CDC.

See for yourself on page 37: Centers for Disease Control Mortality Report

Among children, falling, poisoning, fire/smoke and drowning are all VASTLY more fatal than accidental handgun discharges. The idea that handgun safety is a public health issue is simply propaganda and is unsupported by facts.

Actaully, I did look at the statistics before I posted. I had always heard this was true, but I took the time to verify it on the CDC page. Admittedly, on second try, I found that I made an error in my selection of accident category giving me the false result. I checked again and got a rate similar to what you have. Thanks for the correction, but save the self-rightous "advice". I check my facts, and being human, also make mistakes from time to time.

Being a NJ resident I am happy to finally see SOMETHING/ANYTHING being done to control gun violence. I'm just surprised the NRA couldn't lobby its way out of this, although I'm sure they tried like hell.

Citing a pro gun control website, in 1999, New Jersey had 366 firearm related deaths (Suicide, Homicide, etc). Compared to my state, Tennessee, with its 848 firearm related deaths (with 3 million less people), I'm trying to grasp your problem with New Jersey's ability to "control gun violence." Your state seems relatively safe to me (stat-wise).

Could you provide a little more data for your area besides ranting? I can easily tell you how much crime happened in my city. One death may be too many, but technology cannot protect everybody.

Second it can hopefully prevent little Johnny from ... B) prevent him from bringing it to school and harming anyone.

Less than 1% of all homicides among school-aged children (5-19 years of age) occur in or around school grounds or on the way to and from school. (Centers for Disease Control, 1997)

...overturned by gun nuts.

I've never ran into a "gun nut" that thought people using firearms in aggressive manners did not deserve: a) an a$$ whopping and b) prosecuted. Pretty low-tech / law-lite ways of handling the problem, aren't they?

With today's high-tech antibiotics, I seriously doubt an influenza epidemic could get very far.

I would love to see this used on process mechanically reclaimed meat. I understand that it breaks things up to the molecular level. This means it would break apart those nasty prions that survive autoclaving. Note that prions are organic molecular compounds, meaning that they consist of more than one molecule.

I can no longer donate blood due to the FDA's concern about nvCJ. All for being in the U.S. Army in Europe during the 80's when they imported their beef from the UK.

The CDC collects the best statsitics on what everyone in the US dies from. These statistics will quickly show that your chances of dying from a gun are extreemly low. Combined with the fact that in 1999 57% of the gun related deaths were suicides makes it even less likely that you will be unintentially killed by a gun.

I found this link to a report from the CDC. It makes a comparison of firearm and vehicle related deaths since 1968. It references a steady decrease in vehicle accident deaths with a steady increase in firearm related deaths and suggests the rates will flip flop with firearm deaths taking the lead by 2003. It makes a strong point that the vehicle related deaths have dropped because of numerous technical and systematic improvments to vehicle saftey (laws, roads, cars, etc) and notes the lack of these types of measures for firearms. I think you'll find it a good read. http://wonder.cdc.gov/wonder/prevguid/m0023655/m00 23655.asp#Table_1

I found this link to a report from the CDC. It makes a comparison of firearm and vehicle related deaths since 1968. It references a steady decrease in vehicle accident deaths with a steady increase in firearm related deaths and suggests the rates will flip flop with firearm deaths taking the lead by 2003. It makes a strong point that the vehicle related deaths have dropped because of numerous technical and systematic improvments to vehicle saftey (laws, roads, cars, etc) and notes the lack of these types of measures for firearms. I think you'll find it a good read. http://wonder.cdc.gov/wonder/prevguid/m0023655/m00 23655.asp#Table_1

The point on the political spectrum that the original post may be searching for is Americans for Gun Safety -- which is a very moderate group that acknowledges the right to bear arms while making a strong factual case for laws to ensure that everyone who buys a gun goes through a background check.

The Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis is run by Garen Wintemute MD, who is an emergency room physician, licensed gun dealer, and sometimes gun owner. He is highly respected in the field. His research generally supports laws that make it harder for people with minor criminal records to get guns, but he is not afraid to tell the gun violence prevention advocates when they've got it wrong.

The CDC WISQARS statistics system will let you find out how many people died from gun injuries (and other causes) by year, age, cause, state, etc. You'll find things that neither side is willing to say loudly -- like the majority of gun deaths in America are suicides. It's also nice technology.

Last year the Economist run an article (subscription required) focusing on the strong link between suicides and firearms in the US.
Nearly 3 of every 5 suicides in the US in 1999 (57%) were committed with a firearm, according to the Center for Disease Control. Suicide is the number 11 cause of death in the US, and in 1999 it outnumbered homicides 1.7 to 1.
Apparently, the suicide rate among US youth is much higher than in similar industrialized countries, because of the ready availability of firearms, especially because suicides are often impulsive (article on the Journal of Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior) and can be thwarded if the person gets to think long enough. Clearly, this is not possible when a gun is around.

In Washington, DC, which for all intents has a ban on civilian handgun ownership, a significant percentage of handguns are used in "gun related" crimes. The largest single source of hand guns used in the crimes are stolen from the police. Statistics on this can be looked up, but it has been _years_ since I actively researched all this. As for accidental deaths, guns rate the lowest of the catagories. See pages 30-31 of the CDC report found here. You'll want the National Vital Statistics report. 776 deaths of 97,900 accidental deaths. Lets have society concentrate on saving more lives by working in areas that will have more impact.

No objections whatsoever if any requirements for reporting, etc. are uniformly enforced. I'd like to also see stricter enforcement of DUI/DWI laws and stricter penalties for them. You'll save significantly more lives if you can keep intoxicated individuals from driving than from elimination (by magic or other means) all firearms from the US civilian population.

Sorry, someone else may have already provided this information for you, but I get tired of sifting through flamewars to get to meaningful information.

I was once looking for unbiased gun violence statistics, myself, and I came across unbiased statistical information from the following sources:

United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics
This site page presents firearms and crime statistics.

United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention
This page links to several data sets that present mortality and morbidity statistics, including deaths and injuries from firearms

United States 2000 Census
This site contains information about gun ownership and gun-owner demographics.

I hope you find this to be more useful than all of the squabbling. :)

Here is the address of a statistic search engine from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10.html

The page has many search options - I tried searching for unintentional firearm related deaths, separated by age. Interestingly, you are most likely to die by gun (unintentionally) if you are from 15-25, and second most likely if you are 35-45. My take is you are most likely to accidentally kill yourself or others as a teen, or when going through a mid life crisis - WATCH OUT!

The Center for Disease Control keeps very detailed records of how many children die each year in the United States from firearms violence. Suffice to say, I have yet to see any organization, Brady or NRA, that gets these figures right.

Americans buy approx. 400 billion cigarettes each year (extrapolated from this CDC data). At ten cents apiece, that's $40 Billion each year, and it's not hard to argue that cigarettes cost way more than 10 cents apiece. So in about 20 years Americans have spent almost as much on a fantastic piece of hardware as they do on cigarettes every year. Which is better?

Operation Plumbbob ran from May to October 1957. It released 58,300 kilocuries of radioactive iodine into the atmosphere. It is projected that this will lead to 38,000 cases of thyroid cancer, estimated 1900 civilian deaths.

Which civilians will contract thyroid cancer? Who knows? The US? Anyone within the fallout shadow of the atmospheric testing...?

See also (Adobe Acrobat)

STF

Completely false. What the Heck is an E. coli ?

E. coli live in the gut. If they were to become "systemic" in the cow -- even a "friendly" strain --- the cow would likely die.

It takes careful reading of the USDA or FDA materials to find anything even close to an admission that the problem lies in spreading fecal matter (shit) around during slaughter -- understandable from a beef marketing standpoint, but not consistent with informing the public of the truth. The USDA emphasizes testing, irradition, recalls, cooking .... but not source reduction. Here's as direct as they seem to get:

"How is E. coli O157:H7 spread?

The organism can be found on a small number of cattle farms and can live in the intestines of healthy cattle. Meat can become contaminated during slaughter, and organisms can be thoroughly mixed into beef when it is ground."

CDC (E. Coli)

The truth shall set you free. But maybe not that cow.

I don't mean to over-hype my de-hype (to further abuse the language); just a grain of salt in the context of the article about staph, which I felt to be misleading. This misdirection doesn't imply there's nothing to fear, and infectious disease is certainly going to be a growth business for some time to come. (Of course, it is the job of specialists in the field to worry about what's to come.) But the antibitoic resistant bacteria problem is still largely in the future, a class different from the sort of infections most of us face.

Maybe that future is arriving faster than I thought... Be nice if we could do something about those "breeding grounds" in the meantime. It's depressing to see someone older go to the hospital with a broken hip to die of pneumonia. Also, the kids who have died because of the poor sanitation in meat packing are so betrayed by a system that responds not with rules but "cook the meat more."

On prescribing antibiotics, assuming the clinician is not ignorant or pandering, it must be difficult. There's always going to be a fear of injury and liability resulting from undertreatment. This comes up with the treatment of ear infections in infants and toddlers. Most such infection resolve themselves without treatment, but the 1 in 5 (or whatever -- there was a study) that don't can cause hearing loss, impaired learning of speech, and so on.

FWIW -- not too helpful -- here's the CDC page on antibiotic resistance with a quiz!

Hmm, cranberry juice cocktail might be used against infection. You never know what will help.

I don't mean to over-hype my de-hype (to further abuse the language); just a grain of salt in the context of the article about staph, which I felt to be misleading. This misdirection doesn't imply there's nothing to fear, and infectious disease is certainly going to be a growth business for some time to come. (Of course, it is the job of specialists in the field to worry about what's to come.) But the antibitoic resistant bacteria problem is still largely in the future, a class different from the sort of infections most of us face.

Maybe that future is arriving faster than I thought... Be nice if we could do something about those "breeding grounds" in the meantime. It's depressing to see someone older go to the hospital with a broken hip to die of pneumonia. Also, the kids who have died because of the poor sanitation in meat packing are so betrayed by a system that responds not with rules but "cook the meat more."

On prescribing antibiotics, assuming the clinician is not ignorant or pandering, it must be difficult. There's always going to be a fear of injury and liability resulting from undertreatment. This comes up with the treatment of ear infections in infants and toddlers. Most such infection resolve themselves without treatment, but the 1 in 5 (or whatever -- there was a study) that don't can cause hearing loss, impaired learning of speech, and so on.

FWIW -- not too helpful -- here's the CDC page on antibiotic resistance with a quiz!

Hmm, cranberry juice cocktail might be used against infection. You never know what will help.

My understanding from the article was that this strain was due to 'stealing' of genetic material from another bug: "By stealing genetic material from another bug, the new strain became totally resistant to vancomycin".

This CDC article mentions that the gene may have come from enterococci (don't know what that is).

Seems this baby really wants to survive.

Perhaps Dirk Gently was on the right track when he stated that he believed in the 'fundamental inter-connectedness' of all things.

Indeed. I stand corrected, not that I put much stock in CNN's science reporters, who seem mostly interested in citing other CNN stories- I followed the links in that story two deep and couldn't get to the primary reserach.

This looks like the real deal, though, and this woman's work is pretty interesting, as well.

What will they sell us once their magic potions no longer work?

Well, there's always the Chicken Pox vaccine. Merck is making a killing (sorry) by preying on the fears of parents. Despite the fact that 99.99% of children recover from the disease (caveat emptor on that link), the vaccine is being pushed with FUD directed at health professionals (leading to news articles like this one). These tactics have been wildly successful -- now, schools are requiring students to be vaccinated against Chicken Pox as though it were as deadly as measles or whooping cough.

This despite the fact that your child is more likely to die on the way to the doctor to get the shot, than to die of Chicken Pox.

My wife is a clinical tech at a major Dallas children's hospital, and the off-the-record opinion among all the health workers there is that the vaccine is nothing but a boondoggle for its manufacturer. Meanwhile, she and the rest of the team are dealing with bugs like MRSA -- Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus. In fact, this BBC article from last month details the fear that MRSA staph would pick up Vancomycin resistance because of antibiotic overuse.

Gee... I wonder who stands to gain the most from both the current overuse of antibiotics and from the development of the "next generation" of overprescribed medications?

Isn't this just another strain of the MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus) superbug. If so, the UK has already had 2 deaths in Edinburgh (after it infected 13 patients). There was a death last year from it after a 14yr boy broke his ankle (see BBC News for more articles).

I am a little confused but is this Hepatitis B vacine the same one that I just got a booster for about 4 years ago I didn't know it was banned and then why is it still being used every where?

So, what might cause Asthma (Which may be leveling off as we speak), childhood Diabetes, increased incidence of autoimmune disorders and cancer, and increased incidence of autism?

It isn't vaccines! The science doesn't stand up. If you think it's vaccines, we'll agree to disagree, okay?

I blame the chlorinated carbon molecule.

Organochlorines have been absent from the earth, in any appreciable amounts, since before the appearance of multicelled life. They are immensely stable, but nothing natural creates them - for energetic reasons, they are purely synthetic. They have unique (powerful, TOXIC) chemistry that we can "exploit but never control", in the words of Pandora's Poison author Shalini Ramanathan. This is an excellent book if you're interested in which feature of our 20th century lifestyle is raising disease incidences.

The following data is lifted directly from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and can be found at http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vacsafe/concerns/autism/aut ism-mmr.htm.

Epidemiologic studies have shown no relationship between MMR vaccination in children and development of autism:

* In 1997, the National Childhood Encephalopathy Study (NCES) was examined to see if there was any link between measles vaccine and neurological events. The researchers found no indication that measles vaccine contributes to the development of long-term neurological damage, including educational and behavioral deficits (Miller et al., 1997).
* A study by Gillberg and Heijbel (1998) examined the prevalence of autism in children born in Sweden from 1975-1984. There was no difference in the prevalence of autism among children born before the introduction of the MMR vaccine in Sweden and those born after the vaccine was introduced.
* In 1999, the British Committee on Safety of Medicines convened a "Working Party on MMR Vaccine" to conduct a systematic review of reports of autism, gastrointestinal disease, and similar disorders after receipt of MMR or measles/rubella vaccine. It was concluded that the available information did not support the posited associations between MMR and autism and other disorders.
* Taylor and colleagues (1999) studied 498 children with autism in the UK and found the age at which they were diagnosed was the same regardless of whether they received the MMR vaccine before or after 18 months of age or whether they were never vaccinated. Importantly, the first signs or diagnoses of autism were not more likely to occur within time periods following MMR vaccination than during other time periods. Also, there was no sudden increase in cases of autism after the introduction of MMR vaccine in the UK. Such a jump would have been expected if MMR vaccine was causing a substantial increase in autism.
* Kaye and colleagues (2001) assessed the relationship between the risk of autism among children in the UK and MMR vaccine. Among a subgroup of boys aged 2-5 years, the risk of autism increased almost 4 fold from 1988 to 1993, while MMR vaccination coverage remained constant at approximately 95% over these same years.
* Researchers in the U.S. found that among children born between 1980 and 1994 and enrolled in California kindergartens, there was a 373% relative increase in autism cases, though the relative increase in MMR vaccine coverage by the age of 24 months was only 14% (Dales et al., 2001). For more on this study, see California Data on Theory of Autism and MMR Immunization.
* Researchers in the UK (Frombonne & Chakrabarti, 2001) conducted a study to test the idea that a new form, or "new variant," of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) exists. This new variant IBD has been described as a combination of developmental regression and gastrointestinal symptoms occurring shortly after MMR immunization. Information on 96 children (95 immunized with MMR) who were born between 1992 and 1995 and were diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder were compared with data from 2 groups of autistic patients (one group of 98 born before MMR was ever used and one group of 68 who were likely to have received MMR vaccine). No evidence was found to support a new syndrome of MMR-induced IBD/autism. For instance, the researchers found that there were no differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups with regard to when their parents first became concerned about their child's development. Similarly, the rate of developmental regression reported in the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups was not different; therefore, there was no suggestion that developmental regression had increased in frequency since MMR was introduced. Of the 96 children in the first group, no inflammatory bowel disorder was reported. Furthermore, there was no association found between developmental regression and gastrointestinal symptoms.
* Another group of researchers in the UK (Taylor et al., 2002) also examined whether MMR vaccination is associated with bowel problems and developmental regression in children with autism, looking for evidence of a "new variant" form of IBD/autism. The study included 278 cases of children with autism and 195 with atypical autism (cases with many of the features of childhood autism but not quite meeting the required criteria for that diagnosis, or with atypical features such as onset of symptoms after the age of 3 years). The cases included in this study were born between 1979 and 1998. The proportion of children with developmental regression or bowel symptoms did not change significantly from 1979 to 1988, a period which included the introduction of MMR vaccination in the UK in 1988. No significant difference was found in rates of bowel problems or regression in children who received the MMR vaccine before their parents became concerned about their development, compared with those who received it only after such concern and those who had not received the MMR vaccine. The findings provide no support for an MMR associated "new variant" form of autism and further evidence against involvement of MMR vaccine in autism.

On the other hand, people was going somewhat overboard in their enthusiasm of spraying with DDT, and the long time for natural decomposition meant it would accumulate through the food chain. One of the effects spotted was weaker eggs in birds of prey, especially those eating fish, such as in the antarctic region. As usual, it was the continued increased exposure that worried scientists, not the short-term effects (and yes, we live on top of the food-chain too).

Oblinks:

• ToxFAQ from CDC for DDT
• Short article about DDT usage in Australia
• More from the CDC about DDT and Malaria, look especially at figure 7
• Another overview article
• A typical "let's all spray with DDT again" article

So, it seems reasonable that we could continue to use some DDT, but because of the worrying long-term effects, it shouldn't be used as freely as in the 40's and 50's. The fact that we are still debating it's effects after 60 years shows us that Malaria/DDT is not an easy issue. As an added complication comes the economic divide between north and south, if it was us living in malaria-infected areas, we would probably have kept spraying...

On the other hand, people was going somewhat overboard in their enthusiasm of spraying with DDT, and the long time for natural decomposition meant it would accumulate through the food chain. One of the effects spotted was weaker eggs in birds of prey, especially those eating fish, such as in the antarctic region. As usual, it was the continued increased exposure that worried scientists, not the short-term effects (and yes, we live on top of the food-chain too).

Oblinks:

• ToxFAQ from CDC for DDT
• Short article about DDT usage in Australia
• More from the CDC about DDT and Malaria, look especially at figure 7
• Another overview article
• A typical "let's all spray with DDT again" article

So, it seems reasonable that we could continue to use some DDT, but because of the worrying long-term effects, it shouldn't be used as freely as in the 40's and 50's. The fact that we are still debating it's effects after 60 years shows us that Malaria/DDT is not an easy issue. As an added complication comes the economic divide between north and south, if it was us living in malaria-infected areas, we would probably have kept spraying...

Have we seen a spike in violence in children since video games became more prevalent? Yes. But why is the question.

Calm down, everybody.

If you studied English in college you'd know that there was a "little ice age" in Europe from around the time Elizabeth I came to the throne (think Shakespeare) to about the time that George I came to the throne (think Defoe). (Disclaimer: both "thrones" are that of England -- I'm not that up on the history of other European countries. Sorry)

It wasn't that big of a deal. People lived. Massive migrations didn't happen. Life adjusted -- in fact, you barely hear about it in writings of the period -- the most knowledge we have is from paintings, like this one.

Besides, they're getting these conclusions from only 40 years of oceanic data? I'm not even an engineer or scientist and I understand that in massively complex natural systems fluctuations happen.

NP, i just feel bad when i make other people feel bad (innocent people anyway)..

If you're interested here's a breakdown of causes of death by age provided by the CDC, it's actually pretty interesting... starting on page 13 or so: cdc.gov...pdf :)

take care,

-tid242

911 isn't even a crisis like heart disease is a crisis. In one crisis, 5000 people die in a week. In the other crisis, 3000 people die in a week. The media doesn't report the 5000 people dying in a week -- because it happens every week, year in and year out. So what if 5000 people died this week; it's not news, it doesn't sell any papers.

But 3000 people dying in one week (check the overall death stats (page 2 of PDF) -- it didn't even make a little blip) means "everything is changed"? Get a grip. An idiot shooting some diplomat in Central Europe was the excuse for starting World War I, too -- but was it really worth all the death and destruction that followed?

You can't get laid listening to cd's anyway.


You can get syphilis from the skanks who hang out at rawk concerts, though.

Because people don't respond to pain unless it's concentrated. Simple as that.

20,000 americans die from the flu each year, but the death is spread out over 365 days. The 3,000+ deaths and destruction on 9-11 was FOCUSED like a the point of a needle. It was a highly televised event for which millions could empathize. And because the pain was inflicted by a human vector (rather than disease/natural/accidental/etc), vengence enters the mind (vs. futility).

--

In fact, most new drugs don't pass the "effective" test. Most are rejects. This is good; progress comes from surviving testing. Once something has been demonstrated to work at all, there's the possibility of figuring how to make it work better. Without testing, nothing gets beyond the "sort of works, maybe" stage.

The FDA tolerates homeopathic drugs for "self-limiting conditions", i.e. things on the threshold of hypochondria, but not for anything serious. It's worth noting that all the "alternative therapies" for AIDS proposed by various activists, none are still taken seriously.

There has been, famously, at least one major attempt by the drug industry to stop a new treatment that threatened profits. This was the discovery that ulcers are a bacterial disease that can be cured with antibiotics. Drug companies were making billions selling people Tagamet and such for years, when a two-week course of antibiotics usually knocks the disease out permanently. This was discovered in 1982, but it took a decade to convince people. The Center for Disease Control made a major effort to get the word out to doctors, too many of whom get their drug info from drug company sales reps. This worked, and finally, Tagamet has been relegated to an over-the-counter medication for indigestion. That's an unusual case, but it's real.

This subject relates nice to the Atkins diet craze. Not to reopen old wounds, but despite the absurd implication that obesity paralleled the rise in "healthy" eating (avoiding fat), doesn't it seem obvious -- and shouldn't both Atkins fans and those who's diets are based on actual research happily agree -- that increasing the average dose of coke from 10oz bottles to 32oz big gulps (an increase of more than 200 calories) would be expected to cause a dramatic rise in the rate obesity?

Gosh, per capita consumption of soda has doubled since 1974. Not at all surprisingly the obesity rate in the US has risen more or less in synchrony.

You are an annoying zealot. Die.

Yeah, I remember hearing stuff like that, which is why I left the door opened. It's unverified... but of COURSE it's unverified, as to be fair it is exactly the sort of thing the military would justifiably suppress. (That said, I doubt it's useful, but I don't really know.)

Regarding your last paragraph, check my last paragraph. Also, watch your dB, remember, they are exponential. A gun shot tops out at around 140... at 170, they may not have an eardrum left.

(You can get some fun results with that... a nuclear bomb is actually only in the low 200s, as I recall.)

Well, are "fast killers" possible? If they are, even if rare, could offer sinister ideas for terrorists to combine the killing aspect of those viruses with the easy-to-spread aspects of say cold viruses.

How about Ebola? Ebola takes a week or two to kill a human, and does it in a quite gruesome fashion. If it could be spread airborne like a cold or flu, it could be the bio-terrorist's Holy Grail.

Interesting note: The Ebola virus's exreme lethality in primates is probably somewhat of an accident - as was being discussed, killing your host too quickly is an evolutionary disadvantage. Thus, it is assumed that the virus has evolved to inhabit a different host, although this true host is unknown currenrly. There is some speculation that it may be a bat.

Excuse me?

Actually half the reason we have as much waste as we do is because of the moratorium on breeder reactors. The U-238 (nuclear waste/depleted Uranium) coming out of traditional Light Water Reactors can be used in Breeder Reactors to generate more power (and reducing the need to store waste materials). This end product of the process, however, is weapons grade Plutonium-239 and some more U-238 (a smaller amount of U-235 is required as an initiator for the reaction).

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/ fasbre.html

What alarmists also fail to note is that the resulting Plutonium can be used to fuel yet another form of nuclear reactor. Plutonium Pellet based reactors are not only very efficient, but also one of the safer forms of reactor.

Unfortunately concerns about both weapons grade and reactor grade plutonium (the latter produced in small amounts by standard reactors) being potentially used in nuclear weapons has prevented the widespread construction of breeder reactors and a number of moratoriums for such projects came into being.

Most of the problems occurring in areas such as Iraq caused by depleted uranium dust are related to children ingesting it from untreated drinking water that has become contaminated by UN/NATO forces spent ammunition.

The "military" aspect is also at the root of the public's biggest misconception about plutonium; that the radiation off of plutonium is the "strongest". Plutonium in fact gives off mostly alpha particles which can be stopped by shielding as weak as a piece of normal writing paper or the layer of dead skin cells that covers your body.

Plutonium is however very toxic and radioactively hazardous if ingested or placed on open wounds/etc.

http://www.vnh.org/BUMEDINST6470.10A/Plutonium.htm l

Something else that bothers me about everyone screaming bloody murder over the Yucatan and similar storage facilities is this bizzare belief by people that these materials are somehow magical evil concoctions that were given form in a lab. Most people honestly do not understand that uranium is mined from the ground like any other ore. And that the danger posed by nuclear waste is less one of radiation than of toxicity (radioactive damage stems mainly from consumption or absorbtion into the bloodsteam). The concept of shorter half-lifes being more radioactive also seems to elude people.

You are in far far more danger from walking into your house then you are from nuclear storage.

Most people in the US that are getting into a panic over relatively safe nuclear materials being stored in secure facilities many miles away are not even aware of how near they live to a superfund site. Most superfund sites revolve around heavy metals and other exceedingly toxic substances and are far more common than people think.

Nuclear power is (right now) one of the cleanest and safest power sources available. Too many people are stuck in some sort of a terrified cold war stupor and have been failing to do enough research.

And everyone reading this has to go read Zodiac