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Not to condone obesity or bad lifestyle decisions, but seriously, have you spent much time reading ingredient labels in the US? The number of items that have high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) added to them are simply staggering. It's actual work to try to avoid HFCS. So simply saying, no one forces them to eat corn syrup, is somewhat disingenuous. Sure, no one's holding a gun to their heads and handing them a bucket of HFCS and a spoon, but it's not immediately easy to get away from the stuff, either.

(My wife has a form of systemic candidiasis compounded by hypoglycemia and a family history of diabetes. She's tiny to begin with at only 4'10", but once we discovered that her real issue was sugar / HFCS related and started really clamping down on our intake, she lost 30 lbs in a month -- and also became the bitch from hell for the first few weeks while going through what was effectively withdrawal. Getting away from HFCS and excessive added sugars helped immensely, but it was no easy matter. We read ingredients labels before buying anything these days, also avoiding any added yeast [which is also in a heck of a lot where you wouldn't expect it], and our shopping habits have changed quite a bit.)

Cheers,

One of the oddest aspects of this case is the way that Ivins supposedly chose to commit suicide. Tylenol typically causes a horrible, drawn-out death that takes two to three weeks. The impression given by the media is that he tossed down a bottle of Tylenol, grabbed his throat and keeled over. But that just isn't the way it happens, and Ivins would have known that.

This article provides an excellent discussion of the time line of deterioration and eventual death that results comes from Tylenol poisoning.

Yes, it is interesting if you prefer sensationalism to relevant facts. Iatrogenic illness is common, doctors (and pharmaceutical companies) make mistakes. I am satisfied with my research and with my results. This and this also are good places to start. I do not have time to post all the evidence I dug through, but if you are sincere you should have no trouble finding the truth for yourself. The fact that I still have my leg (and remain the same rosey beige I always was) is good enough for me. Another friend was cured of a recurring urinary tract infection using the same colloidal silver. She also retains her original color.

It may be amusing to pass around FUD, but in a case like this one it is no laughing matter. Do yourself a favor and learn the truth about health care issues if you plan to speak on them, otherwise you are simply a part of the problem. I only posted what I did out of a genuine desire to help others who may have endured the kind of horrific suffering I did. If you prefer to believe something else, fine. But don't preach about things you don't understand.

Patients with acetaminophen-induced hepatotoxicity present in 4 clinical phases.

• Phase 1 (0-24 h)
• • The first phase lasts up to 24 hours.
  • Patients have anorexia, nausea, vomiting, malaise, and diaphoresis. Because these clinical signs are nonspecific, patients might inadvertently be given additional doses of an acetaminophen-containing product for treatment.
  • Some patients remain asymptomatic, but they can still develop clinically significant toxicity.
  • Neurologic, respiratory, and cardiac symptoms are rare in phase 1.
  • Subclinical elevation of serum liver transaminases (alanine aminotransferase [ALT], aspartate aminotransferase [AST]) occurs about 12 hours after ingestion.
• Phase 2 (24-72 h)
• • The second phase begins 24 hours after ingestion and lasts for another 48 hours.
  • Phase 1 symptoms become less evident than before and/or resolve.
  • Patients present with pain and tenderness in the right upper quadrant. Liver enlargement (hepatomegaly) can be present. Some patients report having decreased urinary output.
  • Serum studies reveal elevated ALT and AST levels, prothrombin times (PTs), and bilirubin values.
• Phase 3 (72-120 h)
• • Phase 3 develops 3-5 days after ingestion.
  • The symptoms seen in phase 1 (eg, anorexia, nausea, vomiting, malaise) may reappear.
  • Patients have symptoms of hepatic failure with jaundice, hypoglycemia, bleeding, or encephalopathy. Renal failure and cardiomyopathy may also occur.
  • Hepatic centrilobular necrosis is evident on liver biopsy. Almost 4% of patients who develop this degree of hepatotoxicity progress to fulminant hepatic failure.
  • Death may occur because of cerebral edema, sepsis, or multiorgan failure.
• Phase 4 (5-14 d)
• • Phase 4 occurs 5-14 days after ingestion. This phase can last as long as 21 days.
  • Patients either have a complete recovery of liver function or they die.

Physical

Physical findings vary and depend primarily on the phase of hepatotoxicity.

• Phase 1 (0-1 d)
• • Physical findings are nonspecific.
  • Pallor, diaphoresis, and compromised hydration status due to repeated emesis and increased insensible losses may be present.
  • Malaise and fatigue are reported.
• Phase 2 (1-3 d)
• • Abdominal examination reveals tenderness in the right upper quadrant and hepatomegaly.
  • Vital signs show tachycardia and hypotension as indicators of ongoing volume losses.
• Phase 3 (3-5 d)
• • Physical findings reflect clinically significant hepatic injury, such as abdominal pain, jaundice, and GI bleeding due to coagulopathy.
  • Encephalopathy due to severe hepatic injury occurs.
• Phase 4 (5-21 d): Physical findings resolve or death occurs.

I have little to no sympathy with Seidel. Thiomerisol, a mercury(!) compound, deals enormous damage to a child's (and an adult's) brain. Basically it boils down to a needle full of lobotomy. If she is defending Thiomerisol then either she hasn't done her homework or knowing the facts she is on their payroll.

What the fuck hyperbole train did you just ride in on?

The amount of ethyl mercury in a dose of vaccine is tiny, and ethylmercury is eliminated so quickly (half-life 18 days or less) that it does not bioaccumulate. You're putting your kid in more danger by feeding them a tuna sandwich once a week than you are by giving them the standard childhood vaccinations, even if you go back in time to 1998 before the US started phasing out thiomersal. Unlike ethylmercury, methylmercury does build up in the body (half-life 44 days), and methylmercury is found in tuna and other large, long-lived ocean fish. (It's also found in large, long-lived land mammals like humans, and babies receive noteworthy amounts of mercury through breast milk.)

The reality is that toxicity depends on dose. Oxygen is a deadly poison at a high enough concentrations: divers at 600m generally use breathing gas that's 98% He and 2% O2, because 21% O2 would kill them more-or-less instantly. Iron, an essential nutrient, is acutely toxic at a dose that's not much larger than a healthy amount: iron overdose is a leading cause of poisoning deaths in young children, and it used to be even worse thanks to the iron in Flintstone's chewables. (I myself had my stomach pumped when I was 4.) Methyl salicylate, better known as Ben-Gay and closely related to aspirin, killed a cross-country runner last year because she didn't know that it's poisonous in large doses.

On top of that, thiomersal has been phased out of the routine childhood vaccines for years now. There was no resulting drop in autism rates; there was no resulting drop in mercury poisonings; there was no resulting increase in cognitive function, or test scores, or any measurable thing whatsoever. All the available evidence shows that removing thiomersal did absolutely nothing.

On top of that, thanks in large part to the autism-vaccine controversy, mumps is making a comeback, and pertussis is now endemic in the area around Boulder, CO, thanks explicitly to unvaccinated children and a failure to reach herd immunity (which for pertussis is 92-94% vaccination).

I mean, hell, at least autism won't kill you.

Without therapy, patients with GBMs uniformly die within 3 months. Patients treated with optimal therapy, including surgical resection, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy, have a median survival of approximately 12 months, with fewer than 25% of patients surviving up to 2 years and fewer than 10% of patients surviving up to 5 years.

The impurities is not what kills you with cocaine or heroin. The impurities may not be good for you, and may certainly kill you if you have an asshole (although it's usually just dumb) drug dealer, but it is the cocaine and the heroin that is the actual problem. They destroy your organs, and no amount of purifying them will stop that. Used "responsibly" and in moderation you can give yourself time to recover, but any use on an addictive level is going to kill you.

You really could not be more completely and utterly wrong. The worst physiological affect of pure heroin is constipation. Heroin was invented to be, and heralded as, a pain killer that does not harm the body even with prolonged use. There's a source, and the answers here give a dozen more. Overdose is the only risk associated with heroin.

Cocaine, similarly, only has risks associated with overdose and adulterants.

Neither pure cocaine nor pure heroin "destroy your organs."

What are the sources for your claims? D.A.R.E.?

The impurities is not what kills you with cocaine or heroin. The impurities may not be good for you, and may certainly kill you if you have an asshole (although it's usually just dumb) drug dealer, but it is the cocaine and the heroin that is the actual problem. They destroy your organs, and no amount of purifying them will stop that. Used "responsibly" and in moderation you can give yourself time to recover, but any use on an addictive level is going to kill you.

You really could not be more completely and utterly wrong. The worst physiological affect of pure heroin is constipation. Heroin was invented to be, and heralded as, a pain killer that does not harm the body even with prolonged use. There's a source, and the answers here give a dozen more. Overdose is the only risk associated with heroin.

Cocaine, similarly, only has risks associated with overdose and adulterants.

Neither pure cocaine nor pure heroin "destroy your organs."

What are the sources for your claims? D.A.R.E.?

Which is why imho vaccine efforts should be directed at the animal host pool in order to eradicate the filovirus, ie make it extinct.

The host is widely considered to be bats http://www.emedicine.com/MED/topic626.htm and if only a tiny portion of the grant money spent on dna twiddling was spent establishing this and looking at either eradicating the bats or vaccinating them then, perhaps, the whole filovirus family could be eradicated.

Before all the bat-lovers start crying foul I would like to point out that it is only ebola's high mortality rate that keeps it contained. If mother nature dose a bit of her own dna twiddling and hits the sweet spot for mortality versus infectivity then haemorrhagic fever will reach Hollywood proportions.

But, call me cynical, this would leave no recurring income for vaccine makers.

If you think thimerosal-based vaccines are so safe you should consider the latest flu vaccine in a lead-based hypodermic. Heavy metals (mercury, lead, arsenic) do, in fact, affect the CNS http://www.emedicine.com/EMERG/topic237.htm and cause dysfunction in children. Many, but not all, children's vaccines are thimerosal-free or use thimerosal as a binding agent during the mixing of multiple vaccinations. http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/thi-table.htm
In the latter case, the thimerosal is removed, but a trace amount still remains. Is this trace amount the sole cause? Likely not, but for those with a genetic predisposition it could be a trigger. The initial scare of developmental disorders associated with vaccinations are largely derived from a rescinded study on the link between autism and thimerosal from a competing vaccine manufacturer. Unfortunately, the name of the initial study escapes me (likely because my vaccine had thimerosal in it ;-)).

I agree with your final statement as it would assure an international ban on your procreation.

Actually, the fingers are surprisingly spare when it comes to muscle. What's actually keeping them curved around the jungle gym are muscles in your arms which pull on the fingers via tendons, in a vaguely marionette-like fashion. As I understand the issue with regards to crucifiction, the more important issue with nailing through the palms of the hand is that the bones at that point are all more or less radial. They go out to become your fingers, but they lack any cross-pieces to trap a nail. (see http://www.emedicine.com/plastic/topic296.htm) Therefore, it seems to me that the question of whether or not the metacarpals or phalanges (bones in your palm/fingers) could support the weight is immaterial; the nail doesn't need to break the bones, it just needs to tear the flesh between the fingers and slip out that way. This would take far less force, especially when the nail has already been driven through the hand between two of the metacarpals.

Bringing language back into things, the division of the body into parts has historically been a bit arbitrary, and the modern English distinction between "hand", "wrist", and "forearm" is hardly universal. (I couldn't find a quick overarching study, but as an example info on body parts in indo-european languages is at http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/iedocctr/ie-ling/ie-sem/pie-body.html) If the hand and wrist were labeled as a combined unit in Aramaic or ancient Greek, the original word would not have contained enough information for later translators to know which of the two terms would be most accurate.

And finally, to bring this back within a hundred miles of the purported topic, looking it up I can't find many references to crucifiction in video games. Looking at Thompson's statements in the past, I do at least have to give him credit for being consistent in opposing both religious and secular violence in video games. Although I can't find any examples of religious crucifiction in video games, he did come out strongly against "Left Behind." (See http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6669946

Here's how I see your argument: There are 3 groups of people. 1) Those who get vaccinated. 2) Those who cannot be vaccinated. 3) Those who can be vaccinated, but choose not to. Group 2 is soooo important that we have to force group 3 to get vaccinated against their will!

The problem I have with that argument is that group 2 is not more important than group 3. If they were, you could say a number of ludicrous things, like... doctors should be forced to treat members of group 2 for free! People with strong potential to be good doctors should be forced to become doctors for group 2's benefit! etc

It's especially ridiculous when you consider fairly benign diseases like chicken pox (mortality rate 6.7/100,000).

Enzymes, being proteins, aren't normally absorbed by the body. (Which is why insulin, for example, can't be taken in tablet form.) Also, these enzymes aren't supposed to be floating around in the blood (which is where they'd be if they were absorbed) - Liver function tests measure the presence of these enzymes in the blood, since they show that liver cells have been damaged/lysed, releasing their contents.

Vitamin A deficiency is still a big problem in developing countries, though, and liver is definitely the best source of it. Of course, too much of a good thing can also be a problem.

Would you care to share what meds you had been taking, for what length of time, and an example of the diet you've been using. Also, did you stop eating/drinking any of the "no-no's," e.g., caffeinated drinks, vanilla, chocolate, spicy foods(?),...? Were there any other meds (or other things you changed) you started or stopped at about that time? It's not that I doubt the results,... it's that I can't

Me, I had gastroesophageal reflux disease or GERD which at first my doc gave me a prescription of Cimetidine, however because it wasn't that effective, she switched to prevacid which was changed to Omeprazole (Prilosec) after my insurance changed, When that wasn't enough she had me take prevacid/prilosec in the morning and Cimetidine at night. I took them for a few years, however during the last year I took them someone here at slashdot told me yogurt with live acidophilus culture helped him. Not having anything to loose, and liking yogurt, I went ahead and tried it. Prior to trying it I'd occassionally miss taking prevacid/prilosec in the morning, when I did within a few hours my throat woud be burning. However after starting to eat yogurt with acidophilus the tyme it too before the burning started got longer and longer until I was able to stop taking the drugs.

What is so sad is that only "liberals" would care if you were set to be executed for a murder you didn't commit. I'm a conservative when it comes to the budget, but when it comes to issues like this, I would be ashamed to stand on the same side of the room as conservatives. This is also why their "right to life" movement rings so hollow. It isn't life they cherish. They just don't want women escaping the consequences of sex.

Amen! Or whatever. It seems most antichoice, anti-abortion, people support the death penalty. And most of them are Christian as well. I ask them where their "pro life" stance went when it comes to the death penalty, as well as what happened to "turn the other cheek"? The rest of your post sounds like you're fiscally conservative and socially liberal. That's like a Libertarian. I'm that way myself. Socially I've against victimless crimes and for liberty, such that I support ending the "War on Drugs", I'm for allowing "homosexuals" to marry (though I have a real big problem with assigning homosexuality because it ignores those who are neither male nor female or are both, intersexuals), and I am very much pro small government.

If you can stop you're not an alcoholic. You may drink every night, but if you can exhibit the self-control to have only one drink then you're not an alcoholic. An alcoholic can't have just one drink. Yes, that's simplistic but it delivers the point.

And for your reference:

Background: Delirium tremens (DT) is a potentially fatal form of ethanol (alcohol) withdrawal. Symptoms of ethanol withdrawal and DT have been recognized for hundreds of years, but the debate over their etiology continued into the 1950s. The work of Victor and Adams as well as Isbell finally demonstrated the symptoms related to ethanol abstinence.

http://www.emedicine.com/EMERG/topic123.htm www.emedicine.com

I suggest you look up "knowitallatosis" while you're at it

      Here, some links from reputable sources for the terminally lazy. I don't know it all, but I know a lot more than you about this particular subject, at any rate. Sure, you can believe that doctors are "making this stuff up". Or you can believe the snake oil salesman when he promises to cure everything with silver. Eventually you'll come to us anyway. I have a special rate for people like you.

http://www.emedicine.com/derm/topic595.htm

http://dermatology.cdlib.org/111/case_reports/argy ria/wadhera.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=11107524&dopt=abstrac t

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Search&db=pubmed&term=argyria&tool=QuerySuggestion

We sue for-profit companies who produce products which are known to be harmful to us, even after being told for three decades that what they produce is harmful, yet still continued to buy and use the product, and win.

And for how many of those decades were we told that nicotine is as physically addictive as heroin?

Tobacco companies have known since the fifties of this addictive nature, but I don't recall seeing it mentioned on the packaging of any tobacco product, ever.

Even when told how dangerous it is, virtually no smoker has the ability to quit once they've started, regardless of their desire to do so. Of all the smokers you've known, how many would have started if they'd known it was that addictive? A lot of people willingly submit to brief danger (like unintentionally inhaling gasoline fumes) but would think differently if they knew one moment of contact would force them into a lifelong spiral of increasing exposure to the same danger.

Fellow Dilbertites,

It seems the great overloard Adams was in fact inflicted by the great malady. Rejoice at his miraculous recovery!

PS - I was quite confused at first as to the authenticity of this until I got goog-learned. It seems it really does exist, he very well may have had it, and if he recovered was indeed a miracle. However, it could also be an elaborate ruse, as I would expect from a satirist of his pedigree. :)

Alcohol doesn't "create fatal dependencies in your body" either.

You just keep telling yourself that.

Background: Delirium tremens (DTs) is a severe manifestation of alcohol withdrawal. Pearson first described it in 1813 as an acute psychosis following abstinence from alcohol. Although it only occurs in a relatively small number of patients who undergo alcohol withdrawal, it can be fatal. DTs is a medical emergency that requires prompt recognition and treatment.... Mortality/Morbidity: Despite appropriate treatment, the current mortality for patients with DTs ranges from 5-15%. Mortality was as high as 35% prior to the era of intensive care and advanced pharmacotherapy. The most common conditions leading to death in these patients are respiratory failure and cardiac arrhythmias.

- eMedicine.com, "Delirium Tremens"

I don't see this project taking off to become what its creators dream of. Having an overly broad encyclopedia written by numerous experts is going to be tough to sustain. A better idea is to follow the trail of eMedicine, a niche group of medical articles, written by doctors, for doctors. I could envision O'Reilly developing a similar system for computer users...

Okay, fair enough, but is this sufficient reason for choosing to be the highest point in the landscape? I would think that getting lower would be a better idea.

Unless the ground is very dry, precipitation tends to form a thin layer of conductive water across the surface of ground. If you're laying in this, your body has numerous entry and exit points for the current of the lightning strike. If you're crouching, however, your shoes actually provide a good degree of protection. Typical shoe materials (leather, plastic, rubber) are good resistors and separate your conductive body from the conductive water layer.

This spread of lightning across the surface is called the 'ground current effect' and occurs even without the aid of said water layer. A quick google turns up some limited details.

Keep in mind that the extra meter of height you present by crouching instead of lying is offset by the several thousand meters of air above you in either case. That's a relatively small difference, so the odds of you being struck directly are still low. However, the current can travel across the surface for 'long' distances (I've never seen it quantified), allowing you to be affected by any strike in a 'long' radius - obviously greatly increasing your odds of being injured. This ground current effect is responsible for 30% of lightning-related injuries. Direct strike injuries are only one-eighth of that, 3%-5%.

This is referred to as "delusions of parasitosis".

http://www.emedicine.com/derm/topic939.htm

The *sensation* they have is "real", not to sound like Morpheus: feels like bugs in skin. The sensation goes away quickly when Pimozide is prescribed.

It's not all that uncommon.

It's very hard to convince patients that they need Pimozide, and not a can of "Raid" to spray on themselves.

There's another web site that has been around longer relating to the same issue:

http://www.skinparasites.com/

They misinterpret lint, fibers, dust, and other debris as parasites; sort of a variant of hearing voices/OCD/other disorders where sensations are spurious or can't be correctly decoded.

The optic nerve extends from the back of the eye, traverses through the orbit and optic canal to the optic chiasm. The intraocular optic nerve is about 1 mm in length, the intraorbital segment 25 mm, the intracanalicular segment about 9 mm, and the intracranial component is about 16 mm long.

Not only that, but many cancers are now curable if caught early enough. Especially cancers that are most common in children and young adults, because typically the tissues and cells that are in overdrive in the developing stages (and most susceptible to becoming cancerous) are less active in adulthood.

Good examples of cancers with excellent cure rates are Wilm's tumor, acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), neuroblastoma,retinoblastoma, and Hodgkin's lymphoma.

And this is just breaking the tip of the iceberg. Most of that NIH money actually goes to good use, unlike a lot of government spending.

You are thinking of codeine which is a morphine, i.e. opium, derivative.

Currently, the medicinal use of cocaine is limited to topical anesthesia of the upper respiratory tract and eye because the vasoconstrictive properties of cocaine are desirable during procedures.
Ref

Flouride is poison.

http://www.fluoride-history.de/
http://www.fluoridealert.org/
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/fluoride.htm
http://www.fluoridation.com/
http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/topic181.htm

That's a bit of a stretch. Most of us won't find A. Baumannii on our keyboards, it's commonly isolated from the hospital environment. Hospitals are full of nasty stuff that isn't common in the outside world.

I'm not sure, but I think most common are S. Aureus (aka staph) and S. Pneumoniae (aka pneumonia). It's not that you won't find these outside, but the concentration is much higher or the pathogen is much nastier in intensive or acute care settings. In your house you're more likely to find Staph or E. Coli, but they're more benign than their hospital equivalent would be.

As far as badness, pathophys of your baby is roughly the same as other gram-negatives, and it's drug-resistant, like MRSA or some forms of TB. The big guns (new generation fluoroquinolones and similar antibiotics) still work, but it's getting to be a problem.

Doctors and nurses, please wash your hands!

...all cause cancer by essentially turning on a cell's replication machinery and reverting the cells back to pluripotent and proliferative states,...

By the above is it then fair to say that teratoma, ( "The best evidence suggests that most [teratoma] are due to abnormal differentiation of fetal germ cells that arise from the fetal yolk sac..." )..." made up of a variety of parenchymal cell types representative of more than a single germ layer, usually all 3. Arising from totipotential cells"..., exhibit the dynamics of cancer in embryology?

Thanks for lending some clarity to my initial question.

A) Cars, Busses - if you're correct - move to a hydrogen economy - this doesn't refute my statement about cigarettes

parent: There has never been any study that remotely suggested that dilute second hand smoke has any appreciable effect on health.

Wow you're dead wrong. Incoming source citations.

http://www.chestjournal.org/cgi/content/full/123/1 _suppl/21S
http://www.epa.gov/nceawww1/ets/pdfs/etsch8.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/ncea/ets/pdfs/acknowl.pdf

Passive smokers inhale a complex mixture of smoke that is now widely referred to as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Passive smoking was first considered as a possible risk factor for lung cancer in 1981 when two studies were published that described increased lung cancer risk among never-smoking women who were married to smokers. Hirayama89 reported the findings from a cohort study in Japan, which showed that among nonsmoking women, those whose husbands smoked cigarettes were at higher risk for lung cancer than those whose husbands were nonsmokers. A case-control study in Athens reported by Trichopoulos and colleagues90 shortly thereafter replicated this finding. Additional evidence rapidly accrued so that by 1986 two important summary reports were published. The National Research Council reviewed the epidemiologic evidence and concluded that nonsmoking spouses who were married to cigarette smokers were about 30% more likely to develop lung cancer than nonsmoking spouses who were married to nonsmokers, and that this relationship was biologically plausible.91 Almost one fourth of lung cancer cases among never-smokers were estimated to be attributed to exposure to passive smoking.91 The 1986 report of the Surgeon General also judged passive smoking to be a cause of lung cancer,14 an inference corroborated by the 1992 review15 of the evidence and risk assessment by the US Environmental Protection Agency, which classified ETS as a known human (class A) carcinogen. Estimates indicate that passive smoking accounts for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths per year in the United States.15

Increases Severity of Asthma: http://www.chestjournal.org/cgi/content/abstract/1 22/2/409
Harder to detect, nonthreshold exposure to lower levels of ETS could account for worsening more than 1 million cases of asthma in children. http://www.emedicine.com/ped/byname/passive-smokin g-and-lung-disease.htm

Pregnancy and smoking:
when adjusted for maternal smoking during pregnancy, the effects of current smoking on the children's lung function were markedly decreased and were no longer significant. Boys showed greater ETS-related deficits in all these measures of lung function than girls" [which translates to: ETS is bad, but smoking while pregnant dwarfs it]

parent: It's not going to hurt you. Just learn not to flip out over little things man.
It's scientifically proven that it IS going to hurt you -- and demeaning your opponant by calling them "little man" is pathetic.

I could go on and on and on with the evidence. You ahve fallen into the FUD marketing by the tobacco companies and their lap-dog politicians when you say there is no evidence.

The first doctor to ever discover the health effects of smoking (in 1950!) was a smoker. He quit on the spot. [he died recently - may he RIP]

IIRC, Plague's primary tranmission vector was fleas:

The classic mode of transmission to humans is a fleabite. Alternately, broken skin serves as a portal when tissue or blood of an infected animal is handled (skinning or evisceration of infected animals). Competency of the flea to serve as vector for transmission of plague to humans depends on its willingness to feed on a human host and its tendency to regurgitate intestinal contents during a blood meal. Fleas from sylvatic rodents feed on humans only reluctantly. However, the Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis) is an effective vector because of its tendency to regurgitate and to feed on nonrodent hosts. When the flea takes a blood meal from an infected rodent, stomach enzymes cause a clot to form, blocking the flea's proventricularis. At its next attempt to feed, unable to swallow due to the blockage, the flea regurgitates plague bacilli into the bite wound.

http://www.emedicine.com/ped/topic1819.htm

Not sure if you can catch/spread the plague by eating an infected corpse. Seems unlikely this would move through the food chain.

Gradually, men begin to disappear as old ones die and no new ones are born to replace them, until finally Earth is entirely populated by women.

Actually this could help save humans because as it is now the humans male is headed for extinction anyway... Generally what makes a human a male is the X chromosome. Most, not all (more explained later), humans have two sex chromosomes, either an X and a Y chromosome or two X chromosomes with females having two Xs. The SRY gene on the Y chromosome acts like a switch that controls male sexual differentiation. However the gene is decaying and will disappear.

The exceptions mentioned above are intersexuals commonly called Hermaphrodites. There are different types of intersexuals with different karyotypes. Some have the "normal" XX or XY but other may have XXY, XXXY, or XXXXY. Most intersexuals born with ambiguous genitalia go through Genital Plastic Surgery. However, no matter how they're medically treated and reared as children many don't fit into "normal" society and some may be considered "homosexual", gay or lesbian because they had their gender surgically altered, said ambiguous genitalia may include a larger than average clitoris or a smaller than average penis.

Doctors and scientists are so quick to point at ketosis as a dangerous thing... But, is ketosis dangerous? Has there been a single case of someone being hospitalized or killed by excessive ketones in the blood?

Thank you for your learned discourse on ketones. You sure showed those "doctors and scientists." Your common-sense approach is so much easier to understand than their high-and-mighty "scientific method" and "evidence-based" attitude.

Oh, incidentally, most people who have Type I diabetes discover it when, one day, they are rushed to the hospital after turning blue and collapsing from ketoacidosis.

Hope this helps.

--
Dum de dum.

In previous discussions about a mission to Mars, the suggestion often comes up about a one-way trip -- one or more explorers who make the trip with no intention of coming back. Pioneers, really, rather than explorers.

This poor guy, who keeps getting tapped for "hey, ya think you can spend another year or so in zero-g, tovarisch?" is probably having it worse and worse when he comes back to Terra. How much of his "stamina" is due to some freak of biology, and how much comes straight from a Soviet-era "We invented it first, and better!" mindset?

If he's starting to feel those months in space when he's back on Earth, maybe Krikalev might want to take it easy in his retirement. Like, about 62% easier? Although medical facilities on Mars might be a bit lacking, even by Soviet standards.

First successful appendectomy in the U.S. wasn't until 1886/7.

It wasn't until that period of time that it was generally understood what appendicitis was, thus it wasn't considered a curable ailment.

And the caffeine in coffee and chocolate ISN'T natural? Natural != healthy. The nicotine found in tobacco is perfectly natural: the plant makes it as an insecticide. And even though it's perfectly natural, I doubt snake venom beer would be very good for you (okay, okay, it has been found that small doses of certain snake venoms can actually help patients overcome certain disorders, but in general, not a good idea.) Or how about a nice tetrodotoxin saki? It's made from the all natural pufferfish, a Japanese delicacy.

And then there's the fact that guarana has not been evaluated by the FDA for safety, effectiveness, or purity. All potential risks and/or advantages of guarana may not be known. Additionally, there are no regulated manufacturing standards in place.

Now, the caffeine in guarana beans is generally disgested much slower than in, say, a cup of coffee. However the effect when you grind up the bean and mix it with a carbonated alcoholic beverage would probably be to extract the caffeine directly into the liquid, where it can be digested quicker. Not that I'm against mixing caffeine and alcohol within moderation... just as long as you know what's going on and understand that, yes, you are taking risks.

Just a proper response to this and, no mods, no ideology here just info....

The requested data on debilitating neurologic damage is all there if you wish to dig into the Nursing Texts. Nobody has time on /. for this kind of denial or data. So lets just be polite and let you look up a few bits of data on Tardive Dyskinesia . Be sure to crank up your search engine on the various drugs used to treat and I noted the general classes.

I long ago found that those who demanded such proof usually don't accept it when presented. Regards to the Zoloft, Prozac etc class of stuff the data is coming up everywhere to the point that the FDA is starting to have to take note. The black box warnings are starting to show up! About 20 years late! Just for the record if you go to the PDR (An advertizement by the drug company) and look up Ritalin, Prozac and several other drugs you will get a real eye full when you take a look at if the drug is effective in children and when you read the warnings. Go ahead if you dare. You may find that as an RN one is a patient advocate and yes I am well supported and yes I have personal clinical experience with this and non-clinical experience. A fellow RN was MURDERED by her son who was on this crap trip passed off by these "Legal" drug pushers who lie a lot. So was her husband! One of their children was murdered and two others were badly hurt. NAMES: YES! Jeffrey Franklin in Huntsville, Alabama was the Murderer. This came out in the court cases and it came out in family lawsuits that succeded in supporting the two badly hurt kids for the rest of their lives. The companies involved had such a damning case against them that they settled out of court eventually in order to hide their guilt.

The specific routes and conditions of damage are well documented. As an RN having to administer such drugs I had to daily document for the side effects that you question if they exist. This is in the extreme level of documentation required by law.

It's not a habbit, but an addiction!

If you are truly discusted, don't support us idiots in our attempt to justify stupid behaviour!

Well... there *are* known propensity for differences based on gender. Some of which are:

- Muscular strength (advantage males)
- Dexterity (advantage females)
- Constitution (advantage females)
- Spatial analysis (advantage males)
- Multitasking (advantage females)
- Lifespan (advantage females)

These are all measurable.

The danger of making broad statements like this, however scientifically accurate, is that people tend to read them and say "Oh, I'm a woman, that must mean I'm not good at spacial analysis and that I will live longer than the men in my life." That's not necessarily true, and I know you're not saying it's true, but most people will read those statments and start to make assumptions based on someone's gender, which is where bias and predjudice begin.

I'm a female geek, and that already puts me in the minority. I happen to have extremely well-devloped spacial skills. In a high school art class I once drew a made-up glass box with interconnected passages for an exercise on perspective (such exercises usually involve rulers and a dot on the horizon). The art teacher (also female) thought I had drawn a bunch of nonsense until I sketched out the box from a top-down view. From that she helped me work out the shading so it looked more realistic. I still have that picture, and most people who look at it will have no idea what's going on unless they stare at it for a while or until I show them the top-down sketch. But it's exactly what a box like that would look like.

I also am extremely good in math. I never had to put any effort at all into my math or computer science classes and always got As. When I went to college I was afraid that my high school had gone easy on me and that I was going to be slaughtered by the Calculus 2 class I took in my first semester, but I aced that as well with barely a sweat.

If women are scientifically pre-dispositioned to be poor at math, why did I do so well? Oh, simple: I'm the exception to the rule. But this is science we're talking about. There are no exceptions. If you have exceptions it means that you need to redefine your rule. Rather than simply saying "women are worse at math than men," find out why!

Now, here comes the controvertial part. The closed-minded and faint of heart need not read any farther. What if gender is not a digital (1 or 0) quality? What if gender is an analog (a range between 1 and 0) quality? Scientifically, sex is an analog quality. For those who don't know, "sex" refers to the physical sex of a being (usually defined by the genetalia) and "gender" refers to the self-identity of the being as either male or female. Different quantities of hormones can create males with female secondary characteristics or vice-versa. You can read more about sex and gender here.

It makes people uncomfortable to think of someone as being anything other than "male" or "female." Gender is a digital quality, but sex is an analog quality. You might also say that the analog-ness of sex is abnormal, and only occurs with genetic mutations. Well, men and women produce BOTH of the sex-related hormones, testosterone and estrogen. It's really these hormones that determine someone's sex. In a way, every male is part female because he produces estrogen, and vice versa because females produce testosterone. Perhaps if a female produces more testosterone than normal, but not enough to cause her gender to switch to male then she'll show traditionally male qualities, like improved math skills.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that using "gender" as a basis for anything scientific will run you into trouble because it's really just a concept we've made up so we can slap people into two neat and separate groups. If you tell me that the presence of testosterone leads to improved math skills (and show me studies to prove it!) I won't doubt it. But if you tell me that being a man leads to improved math skills I'm going to tell you your science needs work.

Finding a good doc is like finding a sysadmin (or car mechanic, or plumber, or electronics engineer) who actually knows how things work as opposed to being adept at the 'good practices' dance.

About 15 years back a friend had psittacosis that was so bad they had him on IV antibiotics for a year. It's pretty rare in humans and usually not so severe.

It took him forever to find a doc who recognized what he had.

I'm no doc, but common sense would suggest that if symptoms suggest an infectious agent, sampling and investigation of the site of infection would be in order.

As for docs, I had one who looked at an x-ray of my hand in which three bones were clearly broken with a good 3/8 inch between the broken ends and tell me that my hand was fine! Even the x-ray tech didn't see the breaks. It was a surreal experience. Ditto for my moms fractured pelvis (she fell through a rotten section of floor in a building we we're thinking of buying). X-ray tech and doctor did not see the fracture until I pointed it out on the film. They were going to send her home with some pain killers!

Last example was bicep torn completely off the bone in my forearm. Pretty obvious something was wrong. Bicep all bunched up near my shoulder. It was the THIRD doctor who looked at it that finally agreed something was wrong (although he still misdiagnosed). Finally found a good orthpedist who had seen the condition (pretty unusual) before.

http://www.emedicine.com/MED/topic31.htm

Prognosis:

* When actinomycosis is diagnosed early and treated with appropriate antibiotic therapy, the prognosis is excellent.

* The more advanced and complicated actinomycotic forms require aggressive antibiotic and surgical therapy for optimal outcome; however, deaths can occur despite such therapy.

WebMD was no help, that's rather surprising!

Found this and this if you want some more info. Deep medical geekness on the first one, the NIH.GOV link is a little better for us laypeople. Sounds like Mr. Volkerding has a much more serious version than these talk about.

Dammit man, this is /., not a doctor! Get your ass to the ER NOW! Anything that has a treatment of IV Antibiotics is inherently a bad-ass motherfucker, don't wait for it to kill you before you decide to get treatment.

As per the dude's post, googling for sulfur lung granules works fine.

The first hit is fine.

WebMD didn't have anything that I could find, but a google found this eMedicine
I am not anything near a Md so this makes no sence to me. But as they say the half of knowledge is knowing where to find knowledge.

The plural of "anecdote" is not data!

Even though you acknowledge the overall statistics, you then rely on one person's experiences for choosing not to wear a seatbelt in many circumstances to overrule the statistics.

To see why this is crazy, imagine asking a 1000 people all across the country to toss (fair and balanced) coins. Ask the 500 or so people who get heads to toss again. Ask the 250 or so people who get heads that time to toss again. And so on, through 125, 62, 31, 15, 7, 3, till you're left with 1 person. Now this 1 person has tossed a coin 10 times and it's come up heads every time! [1]

Now if you didn't know much about coin tossing, except a statistic that said they come up tails about 50% of the time, and you only knew that one person, should you believe her if she says "Well, the statistics say tails comes up 50% of the time, but from what I've seen, it's heads all the way!"?

Unless you know of a broad survery of many accident investigators who detect a tendancy for low-speed or low-traffic density accident injuries to be increased in either number or severity because of seat belts, then you must take what you're hearing with a hefty grain of salt, even if what they are saying is 100% true[2]. (By the way, I fail to see the difference in between accidently wrapping oneself around a telephone pole on a busy road vs. a quiet road.)

Don't forget there's an obvious potentail for observer's bias here too: you're not seeing his formal reports, but just the stories he's choosing to share with you in an environment which encourages entertaining conversation, not neccessarily statistically accurate conversation.

In the absence of such of survey, perhaps the best thing is to consider the failure mode you're really concerened about: it's not that wearing a seat belt is bad during the accident, but that you may be trapped afterwards. Put a box cutter or similar within reach, say in the door drawer. If you can't operate the cutter because of unconsciousness or severe injury, well, in your condition, you weren't getting of that car anyway .

[1] There's actually a well known stock-market scam which operates in very much this fashion.

[2] The furor over silicone breast implants is another good example: a lot of women honestly reported problems after breast implants, but when all was said and done, their problems were coincidental.

Main Entry: toxic
Pronunciation: 'täk-sik
Function: adjective
1 : of, relating to, or caused by a poison or toxin
2 : affected by a poison or toxin
3 : POISONOUS

Carbon dioxide is toxic.

Your friend has been the victim of job security bullshit. Or, you have. There is no scientific basis to differentiate between toxic waste and waste that is merely "hazardous". CO.2 is toxic. It's that simple. If you have waste CO.2, that's toxic waste. In a sealed room you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning before you die of asphyxiation from the lack of oxygen.

Here, you clearly have no clue. Withdrawing from severe alcoholism can be lethal.

There is one more kind that people can get: Mycobacterium marinum . This is the mycobacterium that, as the name suggests, primarily infects aquatic critters such as fish and frogs. It seems one of the most common ways a person gets infected is through fishtanks. If your tank is contaminated and you're cleaning it out and your hands have open wounds you can get infected. The infection fortunately isn't nearly as bad as tuberculosis, as the bacteria tend to stay localized just under the skin. But the linked pagee does mention that it can hit the joints causing arthritis. Also like tuberculosis, you have a long treatment ahead of you to clear it up, on the order of two months.

There is a tuberculosis model system utilizing M. marinum and the zebrafish (Danio rerio) and a second one using M. marinum and Xenopus laevis, a frog. M. marinum model systems, despite being "hosted" by organisms that are evolutionarily quite distant from humans are pretty good, as M. marinum is very closely related to M. tuberculosis and the infection M. marinum causes in its natural hosts manifests pathological hallmarks of tuberculosis, including granulomas.

"...an editorial in the journal Science describes schizophrenia as the worst disease affecting mankind (not excepting AIDS)"

Schizophrenia is a terrible disease--it must be devastating. I hope that your parents don't feel they did something wrong in raising her... that's an old misconception.

A detailed peer-reviewed description by a medical professional is here.

Actually, I have to admit that the first thought that came to mind when you mentioned hair in the context of growing teeth was that of a dermoid cyst, which then led me to thinking about what might happen if, say, the programming of the stem cell were to have been a little "buggy". I mean really - tinkering with totipotential cells and having them implanted in your mouth? What if it turns into some kind of giant tumorous megatooth? You'd have to drink thousands of litres of cola to kill it...