Slashdot Mirror

And this folks is proof positive, that aluminum foil is bad for you.

Intriguingly, when you see the notes of batshit-crazy bimbo Jenny McCarthy's "treatment regimen" for her "autistic" son, one of the major things they did is switch him to a gluten-free diet .

Of course, this nutjob also threw every new-agey piece of crap nonsense therapy anyone suggested at the kid, so who knows.

But telling in her case is that first, the doctors were thinking epilepsy; then she got a "second opinion" from someone who has a financial interest in diagnosing as many kids with "autism" and "adhd" as possible.

Not being a doctor, but following from basic first aid training, it's quite probable that McCarthy's unfortunate son (unfortunate in his condition as well as the misfortune to be born to that batshit insane nitwit) was actually suffering from allergy-related seizures that were - no surprise - cleared up when she switched him to a gluten-free, dairy-free diet. The rest of his "symptoms" are also consistent with other cases involving developmental delays due to undiagnosed food allergies.

It's just sad that her boob-to-brain-mass ratio is so large that she's completely incapable of grasping this simple concept, and instead goes around convincing parents to kill their kids by not vaccinating.

Can alzheimers be the cure for cancer?

That's not far off being true.

http://www.healthcentral.com/alzheimers/news-456179-98.html

Taking an aspirin a day will keep you headache-free

      Dear submitter,

      Since you insist on doling out pharmaceutical advice be aware that your statement is utterly false. Fortunately you won't be held as accountable as we practitioners are. Lucky you. I could lose my house because of something like this.

      You obviously have never heard of analgesic rebound headaches.

      Just in case you don't believe me. There, I'm bored. You look for the rest.

      A tip - if you have constant headaches, see your doctor instead of taking aspirin or some other analgesic every day.

      Love,

      A physician.

Have you read any of the latest research about nicotine? It seems to promote neuron growth.

Now, let me be very clear. Consumption of tobacco in any form, be it smoking, chewing, or snuffing, will give you cancer. There are lots of crazy chemicals in that old tobacco leaf, and many more are synthesized during curing processing, and burning.

But the drug by itself is not carcinogenic. It's one of those drugs that are shaped like neurotransmitters. As for why it's addictive, I think it's because it casus relaxation, focus, and concentration, and for those people who are constantly stressed out and unable to relax themselves, rely on a drug to do it for them.

So, you might take it as a prophylactic as you age. I plan on chewing the gum when I enter my 60s.

Just as an anecdotal story, my grandma died last year at age ninety. She was losing her marbles, but she was never officially diagnosed with anything. She would mix up dates, still think I was seeing a girl from 5 years ago ( you could see how excited she was that she was able to recall the name of this girlfriend.) After she died, my parents found a scrap of paper on her make-up table where she had written her name.

My grandpa is 91 now, and he's still a cogent storyteller. He has strident opinions about current politics and sports, and also an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Toledo, Ohio, a lot of which he personally lived through. He smokes a pipe.

I'm sorry for your family heartache.

I recognize Wikipedia is not definitive, but everything linked below has references, so it allows these to be tied up with a bow quite nicely.

However, correlation is not causation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_causation. Assuming you're from the US or Europe, Thimerosal is not used in vaccines except for influenza (which isn't required) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thimerosal. In addition, the CDC, FDA, and WHO categorically reject any relationship between Thimerosal and autism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controversy. The CDC, Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences,and the UK National Health Service have determined no link between MMR and autism.

The risks of not vaccinating children far outweigh even the real risks of the vaccine. Multiple-vaccine shots don't "overstimulate" the immune system. Not vaccinating your children can expose populations to previously squelched or heartier strains of disease. http://www.healthcentral.com/ency/408/002024.html
http://www.boystownpediatrics.org/HealthTips/immunization.asp
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/285/12/1573 (warning, login needed)

True, autism rates have been rising over the years. However, it's unclear how much of this is really "new" or incremental, and how much is due to attention paid to it and more advanced diagnosis mechanisms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism

. There are many, less nefarious but more plausible explanations. The vaccine hysteria is simply not supported by any real evidence. To be honest, most mothers of autistic children also probably ate carrots during pregnancy or (more recently) used their wireless phones. That doesn't mean either caused the autism. I realize your family tragedies are tied closely with significant, stand-out events. Augment this with pseudo-scientific fear-mongering about vaccines, and I can see why you might feel this way. However, thoughts and beliefs simply don't equal fact - no matter what you (or anyone), well, believes.

This doesn't mean you're an "indoctrinated idiot" - by your own admission, you're fairly biased based upon personal experience. I might be afraid to get back on a roller-coaster if I survived a horrible accident (or lost a close family member in one). However, I (would like to think that I) would not go so far as to suggest that my personal experience and bias ought to be construed as factual, even if it were in line with a bunch of people who were for the closing of amusement parks and dismantling of all roller-coasters.

Is it? After you take out the deaths caused by damage from the sport, both immediate (eg, broken necks) and delayed (eg, cumulative brain damage from repeated concussions)?

I have a hard time believing that any difference in life expectancy isn't _far_ more related to the damage done to their body rather than their BMI. You also, of course, have to account for the damage done by illegal steroid use....

You'd have to eat nearly a pound of milk chocolate to get the amount of caffeine in one cup of coffee.

http://www.healthcentral.com/peoplespharmacy/408/6 0913.html

Future cures for type-I diabetes:

Dr. Faustman's complete cure for diabetic mice:
http://www.mgh.harvard.edu/diabetes/%5Claboratory_ type1.htm

INGAP Peptide:
http://blogs.healthcentral.com/diabetes/david-mend osa/the-ingap-revival-2006-05-30

Keep your pancreas crossed for good luck.

That's easy, I'm homeless and have no friends. Maybe I'm not, but how are they going to know? No address, no contacts, no email, no phone. Are you going to deny someone travel because they can't afford these things? Or choose not to have them?

Probably. The last time I booked a flight online with a credit card I voluntarily handed over quite a bit of the information the CDC would already like the airlines to keep on file (for a retention period of one year, according to TFA). So I'm not entirely sure what the problem is, vis-a-vis wanting to lie about one's personal information in this case but not the other. One day some hapless campaigner is going to ring one tinfoil hatters' doors and upon asking "How are you?" get a "I DON'T HAVE TO TELL YOU THAT!" and a slam.

I kid. But seriously, while it's not impossible that this information could be abused, from what I've understood, it's about as likely as an actual pandemic in the first place. SARS fizzled out, and the avian flu also failed to fulfilled any predictions of doom. In fact, if there's going to be any threat of a pandemic, I'd put my money on the re-created Spanish flu virus that the CDC has, samples of which it is sending out to certain labs in the mail!

Have you ever heard of carcinogens? How about Acrylamide? What is Acrylamide? It is just a chemical that food manufacturors put in French Fries and Chips.

http://www.cspinet.org/new/200206251.html

And don't even get me started with using the word "chemicals" as a scary bugaboo word to mean "evil substance that doesn't have a natural origin and is therefore dangerous."

There are thousands of more chemicals which will kill a person than a person can eat. Do you remember sacchrinne? It was used in diet soda, then they discovered it caused cancer. Think about it, not just foods but all chemicals. Stuff like Tobacoo, which the tobacco industry lied and said was healthy have killed more people than Hitler gassed. I am sorry, I don't want to trust a chemist to tell me eating something that he made in test tubes is good for me. I rather eat what my great grandfather ate, and he lived to be 104 and very sharp, no mental slowdown like people get today. Speaking of mental slowdowns, do you know where it comes from? Aluminum in the diet. Where does the Aluminum come from? From all the machines that process food.

Processed foods do cause cancer. Why is it that 30 years ago most Ice Creams were made from milk and sugar, and a flavoring like vanilla beans or chocolate, but today they are made with an ingredient list of 20 chemicals?

I can give you an even better example. Sour Cream. Sour Cream used to be made with bacteria and acidophilus. This is very healthy for people. Do you know how Sour Cream is made today? They take guar gum or starch and thicken milk. It is not even Sour Cream, but they keep calling the thick product that name. Without the acidophilus in the digestive tract, people are more vulnerable to illness.

http://www.healthcentral.com/encyclopedia/408/7/Ac idophilus.html

Back to your original statement:

There aren't all that many chemicals that cause cancer.

Look up Free Radicals. Most foods are filled with them, and they cause people to age and get old and get sick and get cancer. They destroy cell membranes. But the body has a way of fighting them, a natural system. Foods rich in Vitamin E for example can stop free radical damage. And Vitamin E is found in natural foods that are not processed. Once a food is processed, the vitamins are greatly removed. It is not the same food anymore.

Look at a 50 year old in France and a 50 year old mid-level manager in the USA. Which one looks healthier? Which one has less wrinkles and healthier looking skin and hair? We already know the French ARE healthier, but they look it too.

Their experiments indicate that we pick up the sugars from the foods we eat--in particular beef and other meat from mammals. Our cells absorb the foreign Neu5Gc and stick them on their surfaces, alongside their normal Neu5Ac sugars. It's possible that their similarity fools our cells into making this mistake. This happens only rarely, but often enough that we develop antibodies to Neu5Gc.

Check out this article. It talks about "altruistic punishment," which is exacting revenge on behalf of a stranger.

Personally I've recently taken a liking to the sugar free crystal light I can get at Sam's Club or Walmart. I am enjoying the "Pink Lemonade" flavor as I type this. I am talking about the stuff sweetened with sucralose (Splenda) and not the headache inducing Nutrasweet. So far I have only seen this stuff in 4-packs of 16 oz. bottles. My goal is to displace my beloved high-carb Mt. Dew in my diet with something that will let me lose weight.

To answer your question in general:

What's the point? The point is that we need as many people as possible gaining as much exposure to science education as possible. You don't teach people about things like "scientific method" or the notion that we have theories that are constantly revised under scrutiny, or Occams razor, and 20 years down the line you have a five billion dollar a year "magnetic medicine" industry.

Sadly, as it's not legal for me to wait around the corner and thrash the people coming out of, say, the magnet shop with a broom, it looks like the best we can do is try to educate their children to think for themselves. Here's a prescription: scientific education helps treat and prevent anxiety, gullibility and irrational prejudice.

Sure, it does indeed change the dynamics of sex a little, but from what I understand, a circumcised penis is usually more pleasurable for the woman.

That's a myth. See here for an explanation.

Plus, factor in the danger of thousands of Americans trying to learn this new gesture technology in their new car (turned guided missle) while doing 65 down the freeway. Oh, learn it in your driveway? Yeah right, we are talking about Americans, here...

Coupled with the latest study on alcohol and the heart, it looks like we can now officially say that Linux is good for your health!

It not only sounds cruel, it is cruel. You're speaking with only a tiny smidgen of real-life experience, and not from any real knowledge. Educate yourself before spouting nonsense next time.

This site has the rate at 18%.

This one has it at 33%.

Another says 35% of women are sexually abused as children.

This one (currently down, check Google cache) gives the magic 25%, listing Mary Koss, et al., A Criminalogical Study, 1990 as the reference.

HealthCentral says 50+% of women have been physically assaulted and 1 in 5 raped, citing the HHS/DoJ survey from the first link.

So... not just a concoction of my imagination, not just more bullshit to prop up my thesis... sadly, it's true.

BTW, PK (Photo Keratectomy, I think) is where they just burn the surface of the cornea with the laser. LASIK is where they slice a flap off the cornea, which is left attached by a little "hinge". They then burn the cornea to reshape it, then fold the flap back over. This apparently speeds healing and helps prevent infection and other complications. "Burn," BTW, is a bit of a misnomer, but you understand.

--

The biggest problem with using the brain as a reliable memory system is, well, it's not very reliable. Here's a story from Dr. Dean about how easy it is to implant a false memory.