Slashdot Mirror

A worm or two might help: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/11/15/parasitic-worm-eggs-ease-intestinal-ills-by-changing-gut-macrobiota/
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/44092.php

But stool transplants might still be preferable...

The original post specified pesticides, and correctly, GMO is often about "planting seeds that are super resistant to special proprietary pesticides".
Instead of belitteling your post and your envy of abuse of environment, health, risk and irresponsibility, I urge you to start here:

Death Sentence for Monsanto--Roundup Resistant Weeds

Higher Grocery Bills? Blame Insecticides

Roundup(reg) highly lethal to amphibians, finds University of Pittsburgh researcher

"Relyea found that Roundup(reg) caused a 70 percent decline in amphibian biodiversity and an 86 percent decline in the total mass of tadpoles. Leopard frog tadpoles and gray tree frog tadpoles were completely eliminated and wood frog tadpoles and toad tadpoles were nearly eliminated. One species of frog, spring peepers, was unaffected."

GMOs and pesticides are basically a losing battle against nature itself. And for what? More toxins in the body and in the earth? For eradicating bees and amphibians? For unknown side-effects and massive global beta-testing of GMO food?

Why, when the alternative is so much better. Contrary to myths there is not lack of food on this planet. In fact, we throw away MASSIVE amounts of food EVERY DAY. It's no less than insanity to keep on lowering our standards for profit, or when people actually know better, it's just downright evil.

11 Facts About Organic Food

Or they become part of the couch?

it turns out that scientists find more and more interesting information in 'junk' DNA that is necessary for an organism to grow and function.

Just as with software development. What looks like junk is usually the core of the system.

When I was a student in the early 1990s I was introduced to the concept of 'junk' DNA. I didn't believe in it then, and now it turns out that scientists find more and more interesting information in 'junk' DNA that is necessary for an organism to grow and function.

Some top Google results for "fasting cancer chemotherapy": http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fasting-might-boost-chemo
"Fasting appears to protect normal cells from chemotherapy's toxic effects by rerouting energy from growing and reproducing to internal maintenance. But cancer cells do not undergo this switch to self-repair and so continue to be susceptible to drug-induced damage -- making for what the researchers call a differential stress resistance. Fasting, then, the authors wrote, should enhance the power of chemotherapies without having to resort to "the more typical strategy of increasing the toxicity of drugs.""

So fasting during chemotherapy works in part precisely because it protects the chemotherapy patient's normal cells from becoming weakened.

Human trials are starting up:
"Clinical Trials: Short-Term Fasting Before Chemotherapy in Treating Patients With Cancer"
http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT01175837

Research by Valter Longo, of the University of South California (USC) in Los Angeles on mice:
"Fasting May Boost Chemo By Weakening Cancer Cells"
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/241454.php
"He and his colleagues found, for example, that repeated cycles of fasting with chemotherapy cured 1 in 5 mice with a highly aggressive form of children's neuroendocrine cancer, and 40% of mice with a less severe form. In either case, no mice survived when treated only with chemo. For their study, in which they used used cancer cells and mice, Longo and colleagues found that for all the cancers they tested, fasting combined with chemotherapy improved survival, slowed tumor growth and/or limited the spread of tumors. They found that fasting without chemotherapy, slowed the growth of breast cancer, melanoma, glioma and human neuroblastoma. In several cases, fasting was as effective as chemotherapy."

Cancer patients looking into it:
"48 hr Fasting before Chemo"
http://csn.cancer.org/node/237518

Here are two books related to fasting in general.

One is from a century ago by Upton Sinclair:
http://www.healingcancernaturally.com/fasting-cure-for-health.html

One from a decade or two ago by Joel Fuhrman:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-food-dr-fuhrman-on-fasting.html
"Therapeutic fasting accelerates the healing process and allows the body to recover from serious disease in a dramatically short period of time. In my practice I have seen fasting eliminate lupus and arthritis, remove chronic skin conditions such as psoriasis and eczema, health the digestive tract in patients with ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, and quickly eliminate cardiovascular diseases such as high blood pressure and angina. In these cases the recoveries were permanent: fasting enabled longtime disease suffers unchain themselves from their multiple toxic dugs and even eliminate the need for surgery, which was recommended to some of them as their only solution."

One problem of course in Western Medicine is than an oncologist can't justifying charging, say, $20,000 for telling a potential customer just to stop eating for a bit. Not sure if the source is accurate, but the sentiment probably is:
http://www.doctoryourself.com/longevity.html
"One-quarter of what you eat keeps you alive.
The other three-quarters keeps your doctor alive.
(Hieroglyph found in an ancient Egyptian tomb.) "

But ultimately, while fasting can help some people, people need to eat healthier long term. One big problem with people today fasting is that there is so many to

You could do something really exhausting for a short period of time.
Get a chin/pull-up bar and use it before work. Do 3-4 reps where you're about completely drained of energy after each rep.
Here you could see how GH and testosterone levels depend on rest length in between repetitions http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20555276.

For back and stomach you can do V pull-ups:
http://www.chunkfitness.com/exercises/back-exercises/lat-exercises/v-pull-up-calisthenics

Or; easier but less muscles (breasts, back, biceps, forearms):
http://www.chunkfitness.com/exercises/back-exercises/lat-exercises/pull-up-chin-up-calisthenics

(If you really need front shoulders and triceps as well, you could complement with push-ups).

That's about the whole upperbody if you put in some ear wiggling.

If you're really nerdy, you can build this one for recovery:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/august/cooling-glove-research-082912.html
A cooling glove, that vacuum pumps the hand in order to keep up circulation from the hand, while cooling it, in order to quickly cool the core temperature after
exercise, without cooling the muscles. According to this Stanford article, this will give better recovery than steroids, for some very strange reason.

Here's something about high intensity training, where you do 3 minutes of really uncomfortable exercise per week:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/242498.php

5 minutes on google will tell me that.....

Will tell you what? Not as much as you think, apparently.Thank you for illustrating this. ~2 grams/day (some say more, but 2 is solid) of acetaminophen/paracetamol/tylenol/etc have been studied and accepted as safe in chronic liver disease. 500 mg PO QID if you are so inclined.

The therapeutic use of acetaminophen in patients with liver disease.

Alcoholic liver disease: Is acetaminophen safe?

Acetaminophen, When Taken as Directed, is Safe for Patients with Liver Disease

etc......

I don't see how it would be an issue though,

Now you see

An irritant, but nothing that would impede your work unless you have a lot of apps that start with the same number of characters

Well, while opening the start menu and typing the required characters to select the application, I can pause at any time, corresponding to a mental "pause" while mentally assimilating something from the currently used app. With a start screen, there is not only a discontinuity, but any non-trivial usage of start screen is an active distraction. Placement of email, stock, weather etc. tiles on the screen amplify the doorway amnesia effect. The tool (computer in this case) is trying hard to not let the user concentrate on one task at a time.

Industrial design has to keep attributes of human body in mind while designing. This includes physiological attributes (not needing more than 2 hands, easily reachable handles even for someone not in the prime of health etc.) and psychological ones (doorway amnesia, more pictorial nature of human thought and memory rather than olfactory/aural etc.) If they don't, it is bad industrial design.

It is not that one can't adapt to it, but it is a travesty that one has to. If most car manufacturers collude to creating cars that punches all occupants every 10 minutes, users might get used to it, but it is no cause for celebration as I see in your posts. Like so many major computer manufacturers have colluded to sell devices with Microsoft software with these serious industrial design issues.

I've been in an accident where the airbag deployed. It had no noticeable effect on my body at all. I had a bump on my head from hitting the roof, but the worst was the seat belt. That left some nasty marks and it took weeks to heal. No biggy, I'd rather be hurt than fly through the front window, but the airbag didn't hurt me at all. That's my antidote. Which for me is proof by contradiction.

However, the facts don't add up either. Which shows 238 deaths and 10,000 lives saved.

How do you define `homosexual'? Is it what you feel or how you act on those feelings. If a man who finds that every time he falls in love it is with another man chooses to fight those feelings, even tries to shut them out of his awareness completely, and not start a relationship or have sex with other men, do you call him homosexual or not?

If it is about the act then the question whether or not homosexuality is genetic is about as useful as the question whether or not driving a car is genetic. Would this man who fights his feelings ever have done so in a society that has no problem with homosexuality? Probably not, how he acts is determined by culture or religion rather than by genetics. If you want to discuss the genetic basis of homosexuality focus on how people feel.

And that is not a choice. Assuming for the moment you're a man, do you get up in the morning and decide that today you will fancy fat women with a strong personality, because yesterday you chose to fancy skinny women who are shy? And in the subway you see one of those women you chose to fancy today and you are smitten, while the skinny shy women next to her doesn't invoke any feelings, but yesterday you would have had strong feelings for her? Do you have this kind of control over whom you fancy? For me, everyone I know, and in every story I ever heard or read about falling in love, it was not a choice. If you happen to fall in love with people of your own sex it's not a choice either.

But it may not be genetic, no gene has been found that codes for homosexuality as far as I'm aware. And I suspect homo- and heterosexuality are just extremes on a bisexual scale. There are neurobiologists (not pseudo-scientists I think) who see it as a consequence of influences during early fetal development. That would mean that a child's future sexual orientation is not genetic but nevertheless determined before birth. Fun fact: the more older brothers a man has the more likely he is to be homosexual. Sons of the same mother, that is, they don't have to be raised together for the effect to occur, and step- or adopted brothers don't increase the likelyhood. That points to a biological explanation, a prenatal factor, and a possible explanation is that the mother's immune system responds to succeeding male fetuses and influences how they develop. You can read about it here and here.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/247321.php
http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/tools-toys/this-is-your-brain-on-fmri

http://gizmodo.com/5922208/scientists-invent-mind+reading-system-that-lets-you-type-with-your-brain

http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/high-tech-mind-readers-are-latest-effort-detect-lies

http://www.hlntv.com/article/2012/04/06/mobile-brain-scanner-ibrain-stephen-hawking

Do more research. It's already here even if you don't know about it.

You're an idiot. We get it. Next you'll be question evolution, quantum mechanics and whether the Earth is round.

It's very well established that Americans avoid even going to doctors because they can't afford to pay for either what must come out of their pockets, whether they have insurance or not because it's that uncertain. They don't even get up to bat to be denied.

• 
  Major Medical Mystery (sic) why people avoid doctors

  Do Americans avoid going to a doctor because it will cost them money?

  Avoiding the Doctor's Office

And yes Virginia, Americans absolutely do get turned away from hospitals and doctors:

• 
  Uninsured Americans Still At Risk For Getting Turned Away By Hospitals
  Critically ill uninsured Americans still at risk of being turned away from hospitals despite law
  Ambulance Diversion

People to do manage to get care also go bankrupt primarily due to medical bills (not covered by insurance)

• 
  Medical bills prompt more than 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies

  Plaintiff challenging healthcare law went bankrupt – with unpaid medical bills

  Towering Medical Bills Leave Many Americans Bankrupt

The fact is that America has the WORST HEALTHCARE SYSTEM of ANY developed or even most developing countries. The only par countries are the lower rungs of developing countries and undeveloped countries. Other far less wealthy nations manage to deliver far better healthcare than the US. I know personally because I've lived overseas in these countries.

Your ship has sailed for specious and ignorant rhetorical tricks and debating games. The facts are clear.

BTW I don't even bother getting health care in the US any long. I have group insurance that covers international providers so my primarily care doctors are in Mexico, Thailand and Germany now. Even with airfare it's still cheaper, less stressful, better quality and more certain than getting the same in the USA now! I only carry insurance in the US for being hit by a bus - my group plan is set up to transport me overseas once I'm stable in such situations (again still cheaper than standard US insurance).

ObarmaCare is a day late and dollar short as far as I'm concerned. But the Republican alternatives are even much worse. Basically criminality of political and immorality of leadership dominates both parties completely. To regain my trust it will take decades of a clean track record and that clock has yet to even start.

You post is just a bunch of straw men attacks.

You do know that the authorities want to administer Gardasil to boys, right?

What's wrong with that?

The flu shot contains mercury (it's good for your baby, "they" say)?

It contains a tiny amount of mercury, smaller than you'd get from eating fish. So, what's the problem? If you dread mercury that much, don't drink water or eat fish.

They are also recommending lithium be added to drinking water, as well.

Who are "they"? It was just a simple study! You make it sound like there's a hidden conspiracy for drugging Humanity!

Don't be afraid to re-evaluate your beliefs from time to time. Culture, attitudes, environment...life...changes, and so should you.

I do, you clearly don't. Otherwise, you'd be showing me any valid data, not trying to fool me into your beliefs using out-of-context data and alarmist bullshit.

Clearly you've made up your mind based on something someone told you at a very young age. No amount of discussion is going to budge your pro-vax mentality, but stop for a moment. 30 years ago I would have believed that vaccination was a little bit more about public health than what it is today. You do know that the authorities want to administer Gardasil to boys, right? The flu shot contains mercury (it's good for your baby, "they" say)? They are also recommending lithium be added to drinking water, as well.

Don't be afraid to re-evaluate your beliefs from time to time. Culture, attitudes, environment...life...changes, and so should you.

Fructose is processed by the liver much like alcohol, but the brain isn't affected by fructose so you don't feel the same effects.

Oh really?

He died the year after that article was written, at 31 years post-transplant. His heart was still healthy, he died from cancer

As far as I know even treatments prescribed by you MD does assert to cure cancer, but is only measured in 5 year survival rates, and if a treatment can get an extra few people out of a hundred to live past five years it is considered a success.

5 year survival rates are common in studies because it's a decent trade-off between relevance and time. That said, there are long term studies, like this one, and many look at all-cause mortality so if, by statistical fluke, 10 patients on a drug get struck by lightning (above the control group), that would probably be listed as a known side effect. And that sort low percent risk reduction of 5-year mortality is only acceptable in third or fourth line treatments. By the time you get to your third or fourth chemotherapy drug your cancer has proven itself to be treatment resistant, so it's more of an act of desperation in terminal patients rather than a truly ineffective drug (i.e. it would work in most cases, but has too many side effects so people only get it after normal therapy fails). But these issues were addressed by the palliative care movement (i.e. why shorten people's lives for an insignificant hope of cure), which was well before my time. IIRC, only a nominal percentage of doctors still recommend such drugs, although most will let people know the option exists.

Then we have Avastin, a drug that actually can kill the patient without provided any proven benefit for those diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. Are the doctors following the science?

Yes. Avastin lost its indication for metastatic breast cancer. I'm sure this was preceded by doctors not prescribing it after the studies came out, since otherwise there'd be a lot more conflict about it. The FDA can't move instantly so that's why doctors keep up on studies (they'd also fail their 10 year re-certification if they didn't keep adapting). And any drug can kill a patient, (someone has probably managed to die from a placebo, truth be known). We tolerate more risk with anti-cancer drugs since it's a trade-off between too risky and not effective enough, but catastrophic complications can proceed in a Rube Goldberg fashion from even minor treatments.

If he had something real, he'd go through the accepted channels and right now would likely be getting ready to cash his first massive check from some Big Pharma company.

He's been doing this since the 80's. The FDA had at one point attempted to patent his research.

Why would big pharma want cancer cured? Oh, yeah, I remember now - so they can stop selling all of those expensive cancer drugs.

For a quack, it's interesting to note that he got FDA approval for one of his treatments:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/131693.php

Usually a young person can handle 100% pure oxygen with no problems for up to 24 hours

I find this hard to believe. Everything I've read indicates that pure oxygen begins to cause brain damage within a few minutes. A quick search led me to this link, which is more recent that the 1998 study that I had previously read (which suggested that 4 minutes was just about safe and anything beyond that could cause brain damage). After 24 hours, I'd expect to see permanent brain damage in any animal.

Makes it feel a little less like Bush America

http://articles.cnn.com/2006-07-19/politics/stemcells.veto_1_embryonic-stem-cell-destruction-of-human-embryos-moral-boundary?_s=PM:POLITICS
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/obamastemcells2/
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/24906.php

I for one believe that this along with nano technology can bring about a whole new age of medicine.

By defining the role of the understudied adipocyte lineage cells in the skin, we have identified that these cells dynamically promote epithelial stem cell activity. Whether cells of the adipocyte lineage also play a role in other processes in the skin, such as tumorigenesis and wound healing, is not known.

This is important information on cell signaling, the implications of which are still unknown. This might be a step in curing cancer, or treating burn victims. The most immediate and attention-grabbing is potential baldness treatment, but that's not the full use of this research.

Anyway, we can already prevent both of those diseases. The continued spread of malaria and HIV is not a failure on the part of researchers. Malaria could be prevented for 3 billion dollars. HIV could be prevented with education and condoms. Baldness, on the other hand, cannot be prevented without expensive drugs, if even then.

"According to a report in the British Medical Journal, use of DDT in Mozambique "was stopped several decades ago, because 80% of the country's health budget came from donor funds, and donors refused to allow the use of DDT." Roger Bate asserts, "many countries have been coming under pressure from international health and environment agencies to give up DDT or face losing aid grants: Belize and Bolivia are on record admitting they gave in to pressure on this issue from [USAID].""

As for resistance: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/79127.php

"A study published by the Public Library of Science (PloS) One found that three out of five DDT-resistant Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, carriers of human diseases like dengue and urban yellow fever, avoided huts sprayed with DDT. The chemical's unique spatial repellent action, combined with its moderate irritant and toxic properties, reduced the risk of disease transmission by nearly three-quarters. "

Care to alter your reality to fit the real world a bit? :)

Honey is not antiseptic due simply to a high sugar rate.

This page says that honey is antiseptic in various ways and that some types of honey are more antiseptic than others. And this research seems to suggest that a part of the antibacterial activity might be of plant origin and the major part of the antibacterial activity of honeydew honey is of bee origin.

Put simply: It's complex, and we don't know it all yet.

Medical grade types of honey are still being discovered. "Medical grade honey"? Yes, this article claims that eight species of problematic wound pathogens, including those with high levels of innate or acquired antibiotic resistance, were killed by 4.0–14.8% honey , meaning that they're effective even when diluted.

It's an intersting read, especially the 1st article.

There's a similar problem with women's birth control pills:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/35663.php

Messing with hormones could also alter the sort of people you find attractive:
http://www.livescience.com/2781-pill-women-pick-bad-mates.html

Not sure if he will, but I'd be happy to oblige.

Abra Kadabra!

http://covertheuninsured.org/content/children

http://www.emaxhealth.com/1506/cdc-number-americans-without-health-insurance-coverage-increases

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/80897.php

I already have, have you?

There isn't a single piece of hard evidence that the two are linked. Again, very qualified opinions by doctors who have studied the issue lead to the belief, and it's probably true.

However, second hand smoke is a different story altogether.

This article from Medical News Today says it's a widely accepted notion and goes on to say more research is needed.

This article from Cancer.org says there is strong evidence that the two are linked, and that more research is needed.
In 2006 the UK Scientific Community on Tobacco and Health issued a report describing "a tentative link between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and lung cancer."

Of course there are no real scientific studies to show why people who have never been exposed sometimes die of lung cancer, but George Burns lived to 100 and died from fluid buildup in his skull from a fall in the bathtub.

So to sum up, invitation preemptively accepted, although it appears I'm the only one in this conversation who actually has done any research.

And to give a specific example of a well-studied off-label use of a drug:

Prochlorperazine (aka Compazine) has been used for decades to treat migraines, but it isn't approved by the FDA for this. There are lots of studies supporting this use, including randomized, double-control studies.

FDA approval for a new indication costs $12-15 million. When the marked for a drug is dominated by a cheap, low-margin generic version, there is simply no economic incentive to seek FDA approval for a new indication.

The same thing is about to happen with using ketamine to treat depression. Ketamine is cheap and long out of patent, and apparently it works wonders for depression. It is highly unlikely that any company will bother spending the money to get FDA approval for this indication.

I admit being truly scared of alzheimer's.

It may be completely irrational, but cancer looks much less scary in comparison.

You should take up smoking: Cigarettes delay onset of Alzheimer's disease

"By the best count, only 1.5 percent of the nation's roughly 6,000 hospitals use a comprehensive electronic record." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31766190/

"If these results were to hold for all hospitals in the United States, computerizing notes and records might have the potential to save 100,000 lives annually,"
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/136847.php

Yes, the availability of a specialist to treat a patient globaly is a huge advancement in the field. However making changes in the way we do simple paperwork can save thousands of lives localy.

Until last year tobacco was not regulated by the FDA, and I'm pretty sure the active ingredient in it was known to be "potent enough to have an effect on your health" even way back in the dark ages of 2008.

Of course, that's why treatments based on nicotine (and there certainly are some) are classified as drugs, and have been regulated by the FDA for some time now. (Nicotinic agonists are being investigated for things like asthma.

The issue with tobacco is that it's been a long time since cigarette makers have made any claims about the health benefits of smoking. The cigarette companies are now regulated to the extent that they're not allowed to say "light" or "low tar" in their marketing, they have to have larger warning labels, etc. That's quite different from the regulations the FDA puts on other drugs, because the claims are different.

Caffeine, your other example, is also subject to FDA regulation, when it's claimed to actually do something.

To say nothing of caffeine, which is not regulated by the FDA as a drug but as a food ingredient or dietary supplement... like an "herbal".

Caffeine absolutely is regulated as a drug by the FDA, when it's added to a product. There are levels of caffeine recognized as safe by the FDA, and those levels are adhered to. Caffeine drinks (e.g., Red Bull) carefully avoid making health claims, which is why they're not subject to the same testing, but instead are only subject to the regulation about caffeine content. Coffee, as one example, isn't subject to FDA regulation because it's not added, but naturally occurring. This is why the FDA is stepping in with alcoholic drinks that contain caffeine.

The bottom line is, if a health benefit is claimed, the FDA classifies it as a drug and regulates it. If it's not regulated by the FDA, it can't make any health claims (legitimately), and you might as well be eating PEZ.

I don't know about sperm count, but I do remember this study:

Bicycle Seat Design Can Directly Affect A Man's Sexual Function

You are right they don't dedicate the manpower they just don't keep up or cut corners to keep up.

Then they aren't spending 15 extra minutes per visit. I merely noted that your assertion implied a significant increase in labor which didn't appear to be true.

What purpose does the system serve if you need MORE staff to use it? Are we just going digital for its own sake? The point of the system is to reduce errors and cut labor requirements.

If it significantly reduces errors, then that in itself is a vast improvement over older systems even if it does need more staff. For example, a recent report claimed that almost 200,000 people die a year in the US (the news story implies that there was somewhere around 75 million hospitalizations over the time period of three years, meaning we have more than half a percent death rate from medical error in hospital stays for the data in question). That same report indicates that there is massive error in the system (roughly 3% of all the hospitalization records had some sort of "patient-safety incident" in them). In comparison, auto deaths are somewhere less than 20% of that number.

All say that government owns the means of production. Aka government run.

Actually all say that the people own the industries instead of corporations. Very different than government run.

it means something if you die waiting

Bullshit. Never happened in Canada, except maybe on Fox News. No one ever dies waiting for health care in Canada. But I would say a lot of people die in the US because they cannot get healthcare at all.

It means something if your town has lottery to determine who gets a family doctor.

A single incident taken out of context and blown out of proportion. No lotteries exist to get access to family doctors. (you may be thinking of Oregon, not Canada: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/99623.php) However small towns all have a shortage of family doctors both in Canada and in the US. Not having a family doctor (I never had one for years by choice) does not mean you cannot get access to medical help or visit any doctor of your choosing.

It means something if your life threatening illness is somehow classified as optional.

Resources are not allocated like that. If someone doesn't like the service they are getting they are free to go get a second, third, forth opinion, or go to whatever hospital they like.

All of which are very real scenarios in canada.

Only on Fox "News". More accurate would be to call it Fox Lying for Ratings.

the US lacks almost any market forces to get prices low.

In fact the insurance industry is artificially driving prices high. The same drugs and services here in Canada cost far less than they do in the US.

You don't have a right to those things. You don't have a right to other people's services

I have a right to life which includes quality of life. You are right I do not have a right to peoples services in that no one doctor can be forced to serve someone, it's their choice. But I have a right to equal access to healthcare.

And that changes what? We get lots of things from outside the US.. the prices don't go down in other areas of healthcare.

The US is benefiting off of other peoples social programs which you consider bad for some strange reason. Just pointing out the irony.

Lastly, pork is far from the 'other white meat'. Compared to chicken or turkey its incredibly unhealthy.

From the couple of searches I did, pork is (recently at least) very close to chicken and also has other nutrients in addition:

FOR YEARS CHICKEN has been the white meat preferred by Americans--and for good reason: It's naturally low in fat, fairly tasty (what doesn't it taste like?) and a good source of vitamins and minerals. But a study by Duke University showed that lean pork could be just as effective as chicken in helping to lower LDL ("bad") cholesterol--that's the bad stuff, y'all.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1608/is_8_19/ai_105853400/

How exactly does pork hold its own on the pollo grounds? Mainly because one-third of its saturated fat comes from stearic acid, which does not contribute to increased bad cholesterol levels. But pork is also low in sodium and a good source of potassium, iron, magnesium, zinc, riboflavin, and vitamins B12 and B6.

Pork also packs a significant amount of nutrients in every lean portion. A 3-ounce serving of pork tenderloin is an "excellent" source of protein, thiamin, vitamin B6, phosphorus and niacin, and a "good" source of riboflavin, potassium and zinc, yet contributes only 6 percent of the calories to a 2,000-calorie diet.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/46034.php

Also, I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think(?) that anything other than radiation can break down dna.

Epigenetics are proving to be far more influenced by our environment than we thought. Here's one article that suggests BPA affects the epigenetics of mice.

As far as DNA goes, it's actually pretty easy to break down or otherwise make inoperable. Ionizing radiation does do it quickly, but normal cellular processes even damage it. Thousands of chemicals and proteins are mutagenic. Fortunately, your cells, skin, and clothing help protect the DNA, and there's a lot of active repair. Still, it seems that many (almost all?) cancers are caused initially damage to the DNA.

Many drugs probably have mutagenic properties and could damage your DNA. Having said that, it wouldn't make -specific changes- to the DNA in your -whole body- and thus would not fundamentally alter your DNA sequence. Maybe cocaine would cause breaks in your DNA at random places. There's a lot of DNA, the chances that it would break your DNA at a specific point in every single cell in your body... it's virtually impossible.

Well that's new.

There may be one person with an artificial heart (unless he's already got his replacement.)

It's amazing that BP can drill for oil with no provable solution to a catastrophic failure. It's like operating on a patient and going 'Trust me, I'm a doctor'.

I've got some scary news for you about what doctors actually do... (195,000 deaths from medical error per year, etc)

Heck, while I'm at it, I found some studies for you. Here's a reference to a study that found exercise even keeps your telomeres in your cells longer. This one at Stanford that lasted 20 years found that running specifically helps keep you healthy, they said, "Elderly runners have fewer disabilities, a longer span of active life and are half as likely as aging nonrunners to die early deaths."

And then there's this one, a study of over 100,000 people that basically found the more you run each week, the less likely you are to develop high blood pressure, diabetes, or high cholesterol, although the study author thinks (for whatever it's worth) that a similar effect would be found for swimming or cycling or any other aerobic exercise.

So yeah, there's tons to back up what I said. You may disagree with those studies, and no science is perfect, but there's a good bunch of evidence.

Or it could just be carried down the female line. Also, if it is X-linked, gay men who reproduced due to social pressures wouldn't pass it along to their sons. Here's a more nuanced summary of the idea:

A large set of models were examined by the researchers and excluded individually if they implied that alleles would go extinct too easily or overtake the population. The paper concluded that the only model that fit the empirical data was based on sexually antagonistic selection, based in particular on two genes, at least one of which must be on the X chromosome, which determines the maternal genes in male babies. This model implies that there is an interaction between male homosexuality and increased female fertility. This complex dynamic results in the maintenance of male homosexuality at a stable but low frequency, as well as a hereditary effect on male homosexuality through the female line.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/111843.php
http://www.plosone.org/doi/pone.0002282

In the US, they treat the test results, regardless of the condition of the patient. Outside the US, they treat the patient, using the test results as a tool to that end. That difference alone is a major factor as to why the US has the most expensive health care on the planet, yet a middle of the pack (for industrialized nations) life expectancy.

25% of US healthcare spend is on admin and associated paper pushing, according to these chaps, and this article puts the estimate at over 30%. For the UK, for example, I've seen estimates of between 5% and 15%, and everyone over here thinks the NHS overly bureaucratic.

Here are the links I promised earlier
Annoyingly enough I can't find the survey itself, but I have found a few articles dating from 2001 to 2009, concerning the subject.
If anyone is interested the survey was, as far as I can tell, carried out by Opinion Health on behalf of Bayer Schering Pharma AG

Dated July 16th 2001 - BBC. Article on Teenage myths about contraceptives
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1441898.stm

Dated May 21st 2005 - Medical News Today. Article on the (mis)use of contraceptives
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/24840.php

Dated August 20th 2006 - The Medical News. Article on rising STD's(STI's in the article) and the appearent lack of sex ed
http://www.news-medical.net/news/2006/08/20/19538.aspx

Dated September 5th 2009 - Health News. Blog referring to the suvey, which I can't find
http://blog.taragana.com/health/2009/09/05/kebabs-coca-cola-chocolate-contraceptive-myths-still-rampant-in-uk-11384/

Date September 7th 2009 - Netdoctor. Article referring the the survey
http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/interactive/news/theme_news_detail.php?id=19348358&tab_id=131

and just for good measure here's the wiki statistics on British teen pregnancy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_pregnancy_and_sexual_health_in_the_United_Kingdom

Why do they require this? Christian families (Such as my own) don't want our kids to learn this at school. It's my personal belief that kids should be taught this at home.

Does that mean that you actually intend to teach your kids about safe sex, or is it your intent to prevent them from learning in the first place in the hopes that this will somehow discourage them from partaking in sex despite peer pressure and possible misinformation from peers at an age when they are starting to become independent and place less weight on your words than that of those peers?

It's important for parents to have the right to pass their values on, but don't place too much reliance on your ability to get your kids to do what you want. After all, that's why kids taking "virginity pledges" are more likely to engage in oral & anal sex, are more likely to forgo protection, and end up with rates of pregnancy and STD infection on par with kids taught about safe sex.

So, please don't be naive with your kids, and please don't take the hardened stance that if they don't obey your wishes about when to start having sex, that they deserve any "consequences" such as an STD or an unwanted pregnancy.

Parents should be able to choose whether or not sex-ed is right for their own kid.

If they're actually involved enough to care. But why should the kids of parents who are negligent (or who just find the whole subject immensely awkward) have to suffer for having sucky parents? What about parents who actively lie about sex to try to scare their kids into not having it?

Do you want your kids possibly going out with other kids that have really poor education about sex? (Or do you plan to try to lock up your kids so they don't date? Maybe you plan to have "the talk" with their girlfriend/boyfriend?)

Teen pregnancy and STDs are a societal problem, and part of the major role of schools in society is to pick up after crappy parents. Maybe you're awesome. Maybe your kids are great. But do you seriously think we should just give everyone the benefit of the doubt and try to pick up the pieces later? Or is an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure? I'm quite obviously in favor of the latter view.

I know this is against /. 's unwritten rules, but here are actual results of previous tries:

http://www.cehd.umn.edu/research/highlights/Sleep/ and http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080609071202.htm and http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/133246.php

Ok, now back to fantasies about sex-crazed teens left unattended but apparently with the means to get to their FWB's house at 7 AM...

It's like saying that your microwave oven is broken because a can of tomato soup sitting on the counter isn't getting hot. You have to open the can of soup and put it in the microwave, and then turn the microwave on, before you can expect the soup to get hot.

There's a big, huge, massive difference between them. You have to put the can in the oven, then watch it explode. Teens on the other hand have to agree to abstinence, which most will not. Even those who sign an abstinence pledge don't keep the pledge. Studies support this:
Final Nail in the Coffin
"In the most recent study, researchers compared teens who had taken the virginity pledge to those who had not taken a pledge. The researchers found results similar to the aforementioned studies.'

"First, the rate of the teens taking part in sex was the same. Those taking the virginity pledge were just as likely to have intercourse. The only positive, statistically small, was that those taking the pledge had 0.1 fewer sex partners over the five year study than did those who did not take such a pledge. "

Here are more:

• Many Teens Who Take 'Virginity Pledges' Substitute Other High-Risk Behavior for Intercourse, Study Says.
• The Problem With Virginity Pledges"
  "...The problem is that even when these sex ed programs are effective in encouraging teens to remain virginal, "effective" may only mean that the programs have convinced teenagers to avoid vaginal intercourse. But vaginal intercourse is not the only sexual activity that can be hazardous to a person's physical and emotional health; oral and anal sex may not lead to pregnancy, but they can spread sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) such as gonorrhea, herpes, and HIV."
• Are virginity pledges effective?
  "Although they were once the sole province of religious organizations, many secular groups and schools now host events where students sign "virginity pledges" as a way to promote pre-marital abstinence. Today, virginity pledges are also part of most abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula and programs. Research has found that under certain conditions these pledges may help some adolescents delay sexual intercourse. When they work, pledges help this select group of adolescents delay the onset of sexual intercourse for an average of 18 months--far short of marriage. However, the studies also found that those young people who took a pledge were one-third less likely to use contraception when they did become sexually active than their peers who had not pledged. These teens are therefore more vulnerable to the risks of unprotected sexual activity such as unintended pregnancy and STDs, including HIV/AIDS. Further research found that, among those young people who have not had vaginal intercourse, pledgers are more likely to have engaged in both oral and anal sex than their non-pledging peers. In fact, among "virgins," male and female pledgers are six times more likely to have had oral sex than non-pledgers, and male pledgers are four times more likely to have had anal sex than those who had not pledged. And, the research has confirmed that, although some students who take pledges delay intercourse, ultimately they are equally as likely to contract an STD as their non-pledging peers. In fact, researchers found that the STD rates were higher in communities where a significant proportion (over 20%) of the young people had taken virginity pledges. Clearly, virginity pledges are not an effective strategy for keeping young people healthy."

There's plent

The number of Americans without health insurance is 47 million, according to the U.S. census.

Go and check the methodology for that number, firstly it is not sourced from the census it is sourced from two surveys. Secondly it covers everyone including resident aliens and those on temporary visas. Thirdly when you drill down in to the data you will note a significant number (~30 million) are firmly in the middle classes and can afford insurance but choose not to.

Many people do not want insurance.

Further, according to Paul Krugman, the U.S. spends over 15% of GDP on healthcare, nearly twice that of the U.K at around 8%.

Again you get a much clearer idea with the raw data as compared to the opinion on the issue - countries report healthcare spending in extremely different ways, primarily the US reports on all spending including cosmetic and other quazi-healthcare spending whereas other countries do not.

Besides this I clearly stated that non-medical costs consume 80% of the spend, the expense is largely down to people wrongly assuming that they need full coverage insurance, they don't and until fairly recently insurance didn't cover visits to the dr etc.

Perhaps rather than mandating insurance government should be raising awareness on why the alternatives are often preferable.

According to Google the life expectancy of the UK is 79.3 years, and 78 years in the U.S.

Supportive healthcare is less important then lifestyle, a minority of early deaths can indeed be explained by lack of access to healthcare but as the US already has supportive care for the elderly (not to mention in excess of that in most of Europe) but lifestyle choices such as eating habits and smoking (Both of which are generally higher in the US) have a much larger impact. As an indication of this 8 times the number of Americans have heart attacks compared to Britons yet the survival rate is better then the UK (In the UK 48% die within 28 days of having a heart attack, in the US this is 12%).

The infant mortality rate in the U.S. is higher than the U.K. also (by about 1% I understand).

Again lifestyle choices are in play here as much, if not more, then healthcare access.

All to say this post – like many on this topic with an agenda – is utter, mindless drivel.

You don't have an agenda here? clearly you support socialised medicine of one form or another so clearly you have an agenda as much as I do, the difference being I don't want to force my view on to other people - they can have their single payer system as long as it remains voluntary and doesn't restrict my property rights via taxation.

The U.S. would have a much better healthcare system (among other things) if there weren't so many people like this with baseless yet entrenched positions.

As I mentioned earlier I recently migrated to the US. I have used the healthcare systems in the UK, France, SA and the US. While France was marginally better then the UK (I was able to actually visit a dentist for instance) they are both nothing in comparison to my experiences with the US system. I am middle class earning slightly above average (~2%) for where I live which is precisely the same to my situation in the UK. How many healthcare systems have you used first hand rather than simply reading aggregated statistics that can be used as opinion pieces as much as an article in the Guardian or Washington Post?

Do you just re

Sir —

This post is apparently written without regard to widely established facts. For example:

The majority of people in the US do have access to the high quality care, the fact that roughly 10 million US citizens do not have access to regular healthcare and need it is not a reason to penalise the other 300 million.

The number of Americans without health insurance is 47 million, according to the U.S. census.

Further, according to Paul Krugman, the U.S. spends over 15% of GDP on healthcare, nearly twice that of the U.K at around 8%.

According to Google the life expectancy of the UK is 79.3 years, and 78 years in the U.S. The infant mortality rate in the U.S. is higher than the U.K. also (by about 1% I understand).

All to say this post – like many on this topic with an agenda – is utter, mindless drivel.

The U.S. would have a much better healthcare system (among other things) if there weren't so many people like this with baseless yet entrenched positions.

Privatization! All the same mistakes the government makes, plus the cost of profits, administrative overhead, plain old greed, no transparency, and no incentive to make things right.

The Pentagon’s reliance on outside contractors in Iraq is proportionately far larger than in any previous conflict, and it has fueled charges that this outsourcing has led to overbilling, fraud and shoddy and unsafe work that has endangered and even killed American troops. The role of armed security contractors has also raised new legal and political questions about whether the United States has become too dependent on private armed forces on the 21st-century battlefield...

“This is unprecedented,” [Charles Tiefer] added. “It was considered an all-out imperative by the administration to keep troop levels low, particularly in the beginning of the war, and one way that was done was to shift money and manpower to contractors. But that has exposed the military to greater risks from contractor waste and abuse.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/washington/12contractors.html

"Right now the government is paying health insurance plans that administer Medicare Advantage, on average, 12 percent more per person than it spends on patients enrolled in traditional Medicare," said AMA Board Member Cecil Wilson, MD. "With Medicare payments to doctors who care for seniors slated for a 10 percent cut next year, Congress must put the money used to subsidize the insurance industry to better use."

At the AMA's Annual Meeting late last month, America's physicians sent a resounding message to Congress - eliminate the Medicare Advantage subsidy. AMA policy clearly states that subsidies to private plans offering alternative coverage to Medicare beneficiaries should be eliminated, and that these private Medicare plans should compete with the regular Medicare program on a fiscally neutral basis.

"While groups that truly represent physicians fight to preserve all seniors' access to health care by stopping Medicare physician payment cuts, the insurance industry and its partners are solely focused on preserving their $65 billion government subsidy," said Dr. Wilson.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/76805.php

Engineers hired to investigate the cause of September's massive Big Dig tunnel leak have discovered that the project is riddled with hundreds of leaks that are pouring millions of gallons of water into the $14.6 billion tunnel system.

While none of the leaks is as large as the fissure that snarled traffic for miles on Interstate 93 northbound in September, the breaches appear to permeate the subterranean road system, calling into question the quality of construction and managerial oversight provided by Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff on the massive highway project.

Finding and fixing all the leaks will take years, perhaps more than a decade, said Jack K. Lemley, an internationally known consultant hired by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority to investigate the problem. Just repairing the section of wall where the September leak occurred will take up to two months and require closing of traffic lanes.

The engineers also said they have discovered documents showing that Bechtel managers were aware that the wall breached this fall was deficient from the moment it was built in the late 1990s, yet did not order it replaced and did not inform state officials of the situation.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/11/10/big_dig_found_riddled_with_leaks/

If 3% of "tech firms" and 1% of "high-tech firms" were founded by women, and yet 19% are primarily owned by women, that seems to suggest that women position themselves very well in terms of getting to the top of these companies.

In terms of founding firms, if one gender wants to found more firms --- then maybe they should just found more firms? I don't see how anything but the most abstruse and heavy-handed affirmative action is going to change that. ("Oh, you want a business license? But you're a male and we've already completed our quota of patri-licenses! Try again next decade.")

Maybe male-dominance of firms can be explained by three facts: (1) founding a firm is one of the more risky ways to try to secure wealth for oneself; (2) tendency to take greater risks is positively associated with testosterone levels (link and link); and (3) males have higher testosterone levels than women.

Sure, there is much more that needs to be done in the realm of women's rights. But that men tend to want to found firms and women do not, is not really high up on the list. Let's try making sure women do not get assaulted as much as they do. This will probably increase their mental well-being and self-confidence such that they will be even more able to succeed in things like finance and high-tech as well!

Links that are not reputable or factual but seem to support my case... (but I'm not a doctor so I can't tell)

http://archinte.highwire.org/cgi/content/summary/90/4/513
http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/a0442e/a0442e0m.htm
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/28630.php
http://www.alternet.org/story/274/
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/280264/obese_britons_also_at_risk_for_malnutrition.html?cat=51
http://www.springerlink.com/content/r718533228ph9g55/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8581766
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S155072890800600X ...but in all truth I am not nearly as qualified as you are to talk about these things. I'm parroting things I've seen in biased documentaries. I bow before your might.