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"GE’s Vscan is a handheld, pocket-sized visualization tool that allows for non-invasive ultrasounds."

I can only imagine the military-grade ultrasound cannon required for an invasive ultrasound exam.

No cannons ( they didn't say invasion ultrasound...) but :

Transesophageal echocardiograpy (heart) : http://pie.med.utoronto.ca/TEE/TEE_content/TEE_standardViews_intro.html

Endobronchial ultrasound (lung and mediastinum) : http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/455720_7

Endoscopic ultrasound (pancreas liver etc) : http://www.asge.org/patients/patients.aspx?id=380

Intravascular ultrasound (coronoary arteries etc) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intravascular_ultrasound

Transrectal ultrasound(guess) : http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/457757-overview

As mentioned by others trans vaginal is pretty common.

Most of these are usefull technologies but not the priority for resource constrained environments. The device featured in the TFA is intriguing. The question is how flexible a crystal they'll put in it, eg how specialized a device will it be will it see only very shallow structures only deep? Can they make a device at this cost with a useful resolution? The answer is probably yes but it will be interesting to see.

"GE’s Vscan is a handheld, pocket-sized visualization tool that allows for non-invasive ultrasounds."

I can only imagine the military-grade ultrasound cannon required for an invasive ultrasound exam.

No cannons ( they didn't say invasion ultrasound...) but :

Transesophageal echocardiograpy (heart) : http://pie.med.utoronto.ca/TEE/TEE_content/TEE_standardViews_intro.html

Endobronchial ultrasound (lung and mediastinum) : http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/455720_7

Endoscopic ultrasound (pancreas liver etc) : http://www.asge.org/patients/patients.aspx?id=380

Intravascular ultrasound (coronoary arteries etc) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intravascular_ultrasound

Transrectal ultrasound(guess) : http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/457757-overview

As mentioned by others trans vaginal is pretty common.

Most of these are usefull technologies but not the priority for resource constrained environments. The device featured in the TFA is intriguing. The question is how flexible a crystal they'll put in it, eg how specialized a device will it be will it see only very shallow structures only deep? Can they make a device at this cost with a useful resolution? The answer is probably yes but it will be interesting to see.

Don't walk around bare foot.

Aren't you thinking of hookworms?

Don't eat raw vegetables from fields people or dogs poop in

Dogs? Because only dogs can have tapeworm infections? If you want to be safe you should avoid eating any raw vegetables that weren't grown somewhere protected from wild animals. Like hydroponic or greenhouse vegetables.

Don't eat raw meat.

Or rare meat. The core of the meat has to reach a high enough temperature to reliably kill the parasites. 145F for pork and fish. 165 for everything else. Note that chefs routinely go lower than these temperatures in order to avoid tough, leathery meat. I would imagine that fish tapeworms are the most common in the US since cooking fish too long will ruin it. And then of course there is sushi.

Get regular checkups, you can always ask for blood tests to see if you have blood parasites.

Blood tests are not considered reliable

Eosinophil counts are not diagnostically reliable. Eosinophilia is sporadically present and does not correlate with the severity of the infection. Eosinophil counts also do not help in monitoring treatment modalities.

Part of the problem with this sort of thing isn't just that it only works when it isn't widely known. Even if it is only marginally known, it will make criminals take security systems (even real ones) less seriously because they know there's a decent chance the system is fake. Since there's evidence that criminals already have poorer impulse control and less are less risk averse than the general population http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/294626-overview, http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/71/6/720.full, http://web.utk.edu/~wneilson/EcLett-Crime.pdf, this is likely to make them more likely to break in general. This will make alarm systems be less effective deterrents. Essentially this is very close to defecting in the n-player version of the prisoner's dilemma.

Even if it does deter people, it could easily lead to more and more intimidation required to get criminals to take the threat seriously, which could lead to an arms race of ridiculous looking security measures. Overall, this seems socially irresponsible.

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/218901-overview

The possibility of transmission of disease through human bites must be considered. Human bites have been shown to transmit hepatitis B, hepatitis C, herpes simplex virus (HSV), syphilis, tuberculosis, actinomycosis, and tetanus. Evidence suggests that it is biologically possible to transmit the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) through human bites, although this is quite unlikely. (SeePathophysiology, Presentation, and Workup.)

A shark is considerate and will masticate and shred you into edible pieces in the course of minutes, you will be out of your misery in no time.

But what you are proposing dooms the shark to die a slow miserable death due to the load of nasty diseases you carry in your mouth as a member of diseased lecherous species, homo sapiens.

Pedestrians and cyclists are rarely hit on highways, which would be more or less the only place where faster car speed would come into play. Such accidents usually happen in cities and residential quarters. And - at least in Europe, I don't know about the US - car safety design has increasingly led to improvements for pedestrians/cyclists, in step with the required testing procedures focusing more on such accidents. Improvements include passive stuff like avoiding design features that hurt pedestrians/cyclists, and active stuff like, e.g., bonnets that are moved by explosive charges in case of an accident, or radar systems that reliably reduce speed before an accident happens even if the car driver is asleep at the wheel. As a consequence, pedestrian/cyclist injuries in car accidents have significantly declined.

Declan McCullagh doesn't understand the way the First Amendment works in this country. It doesn't protect you from prosecution if you go into a bank and say, "This is a stickup." It doesn't protect you from from prosecution if you say, "I'll sell you this drug which will cure your cancer for $1,000," when you're not a doctor and the drug doesn't cure cancer.

Courts draw a fairly clear line between OTOH publishing a book or magazine article or having a discussion with a friend over dinner, and OTOH offering yourself to the public as an expert, giving specific advice to individuals about their specific conditions, and charging money for it. According to TFA, Steve Cooksey crossed that line. They're giving him a chance to stop, and he better take it. I'm sure he's sincere, but sincere stupid people do a lot of damage.

Doctors have to draw the same line. When are they treating a patient, and when are they just giving general advice, as they do when they write a book, teach a class or discuss a case with a colleague in the cafeteria?

That comes up a lot in malpractice cases. A patient can sue a doctor if they have a doctor-patient relationship, but not when the doctor was simply giving educational advice.

A doctor is treating someone as a patient when he asks questions about the patient's specific conditions, gives specific advice, and (especially) charges money for advice.

(Here's an article about that on Medscape, with a free but annoying signin required http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/759163?src=ptalk)

It sounds like Steve Cooksey was soliciting questions about peoples' specific conditions, giving specific advice, and taking money for his advice in the treatment of diabetes. That's the practice of medicine.

Diabetes is a medical condition. It's not like being a life coach.

If diabetes is treated right, you're often likely to live a long, reasonably healthy life. If it's not treated right, you can die, lose a foot, go blind, and get strokes (which are sometimes worse than death). Lots of people (including children) with diabetes have died because they (or their parents) refused conventional medicine.

That includes diet. In diabetes, diet is a serious business.

North Carolina decided that they didn't want to let anybody without medical qualifications put up a web site and advertise that they're treating a medical condition. You can't practice medicine without a license. That's the legislature's right. We settled that at the beginning of the 20th Century. It doesn't violate the First Amendment.

You seem to be thinking of mild depression or even subclinical sadness

No, counseling is equally ineffective against major depression.

The last hundred years or so of medical research specifically tests for effectiveness VS a placebo, so it's not like people are just shooting in the dark here. (To throw you a bone, medications don't seem to be very effective against mild depression.)

The best supported counseling method, CBT, is no better than placebo for depression. Consider this metaanalysis Particularly look at figure 4 and see how the error bars for the effect size of CBT on depression overlaps the Y axis for every disorder except PTSD.

CBT is a well supported treatment for anxiety, not depression. No other form of therapy is well supported for anything at all. SSRIs, like you say are only effective in major depression. For those of us with mild depression, there is no well supported mainstream treatment at all.

Also, stop getting your medical knowledge from TV, it's wrong

Stop getting your medical information from salesmen (aka psychologists), it's wrong. These people have a vested interest in delivering you services, whether or not they're any help to you. A combination of confirmation bias on their part, and the placebo effect on your part fools both of you.

IMO, the real solution to depression, major and minor, is ketamine. It's safe, it's FDA approved, it's out of patent, and it's effective within hours and lasts for a week with one treatment. The only problem is you have to go through the entire battery of SSRIs, MAOIs, tricyclics and atypicals before they'll let you try something quick, easy, safe, and effective.

You're exactly right. This kind of electrical stimulation ends up overstimulating neurons and leading to a downregulation of excitatory neurotransmitter activity, much like that seen in NMDA receptor antagonists. And so it happens that at least one NMDA receptor antagonist, ketamine has remarkable antidepressive activity, producing relief in hard to treat patients withn a day of treatment. It also induces profound out of body experiences, and has been a popular recreational drug.

I'd suggest that learning to enjoy the dissociative experience is probably a superior option to having electrodes implanted in one's head.

Well, maybe I could say that says all I need to know about where *you* are coming from regarding "science"? :-) Oh yea of so little faith in science and inquiry and so much faith in unquestionable dogmas? :-) Did you bother to do even the slightest bit of research before your reaction? See for example:
"Variety in Fruit and Vegetable Consumption and the Risk of Lung Cancer in the European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition"
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/729525
"The results show that the risk for lung cancer decreased with increasing variety in fruit and vegetable consumption. The hazard ratio for the quartile of participants with the greatest DDS was 0.77 (95% confidence interval, 0.64-0.94) compared with the quartile that had the lowest dietary diversity (P = .02). Intermediate DDS results were associated with intermediate reductions in lung cancers. The inverse association between dietary diversity and incidence of lung cancers was limited to current smokers, and there was a lower risk for squamous cell carcinomas but not other lung cancers. Data on known potential confounding factors, particularly consumption of meat and alcohol, as well as physical activity and education levels, were available but did not affect the outcome."

And that result is not even by focusing on a possible synergetic effect of bringing together really superior nutrition like Dr. Joel Fuhrman talk about with lots of fruits, vegetables, and beans (plus some nuts, seeds, whole grains, and omega 3s), good vitamin D levels like Dr. John Cannell talks about, and Iodine like others talk about, and wellness strategies like Dr. Andrew Weil talks about. Together, these things may well have a much bigger benefit to someone than quitting smoking, and then, when a person doing these other things is healthier overall physically and mentally, quitting smoking may be much easier. That was Dr. Mercola's point if you watched the video, and he tells the story in relation to his success in getting his own sister to quit smoking but all the health problems she had because he did not focus first on helping her eat better. Sometimes when you want to get a pool ball into a pocket you need to do a bank shot. :-)

Science is a process, not just a storehouse of stale factoids (many of which may even have been imparted due to someone's profit motive and may not be very true, or may be out of context or incomplete). And what facts science as a social enterprise chooses to collect and organize also has a lot to do with politics. See also, by an editor of Physics Today: http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

Do I (or Dr. Mercola in that video) recommend smoking? Of course not. It's a dirty habit, and an expensive one too, and it is harmful to your health and that of those around you. But it is quite likely that smoking is far less dangerous to your health than the Standard American Diet when you consider a SAD diet puts you at increased risk for all sorts of other cancers, plus heart disease, plus diabetes, plus dementia, and so on. Put the two together (SAD and smoking) and that is, of course, really bad news for many people in the USA. As Dr. Mercola points out in the video, most MDs have been trained to prioritize addressing the less important one first (smoking), a prioritization that may indeed be shortening the lives of their patients compared to doing things the other way around of focusing on nutrition first, like Dr. Mercola suggests. Once people are eating better, and reducing stress in other parts of their lives (see Andrew Weil's work or "Blue Zones"), then maybe they eventually will be able to move beyond the "pleasure trap" of smoking.
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Anyway, about all I have time for. Perhaps you just can't hear what I'm saying right now b

Dang, first post got eaten. Anyways - on enforcing the law. I did some research. It bans the importation and manufacture of non-compliant bulbs. It doesn't make selling them domestically illegal, nor possession, etc... So unless you're running a factory or importing business, I don't think you have to worry. Just like the toilets. They aren't going to break down people's doors looking for them.

Even you can see the right answer. So why go with a wrong one?

Remember I only stepped in to explain the analogy. Didn't say I agreed with it. I think we can both agree that pollution, especially too much of it, can be bad.

But not from light bulbs.

Let's see: ~70k deaths from air pollution in the USA per year. The UK is 50k. Worldwide is 1.3M per year.
Lighting is 9% of electricity usage.
Eyeballing this and averaging the four sources, I get 24% of air pollution from energy production and distribution. EPA says 67% sulfur dioxide, 23% nitrogen oxide. I dropped CO2. That would be 45%. I'll stick with 24%.

Using a straight blame - 70k deaths from air pollution. 17k would be from electricity generation. 1.5k for pollution from powering lights, on average. 28k worldwide.
So yeah, I can trace thousands of deaths to the pollution from light bulbs. Making matters worse - there's plenty of survivors affected - per 75 deaths there are '505 hospital admissions for asthma and other respiratory diseases, 3,500 respiratory emergency doctor visits, 180,000 asthma attacks, 930,000 restricted activity days, and 2,000,000 acute respiratory symptom days.' Per 75 deaths seems an odd measure to use, but it's what the article listed. That's a lot of lost labor due to the pollution.

As for the baseload vs peak - 'not many lights are left on overnight'? I refer you to this image. And coal power isn't entirely baseload - fire up another boiler, spin another turbine. It might have to be scheduled a bit more compared to hydro or NG, but it's there.

Look, it's not that we don't agree on some things, it's just that, well, if you're going to argue this stuff, you need to do it right, and denying facts isn't going to help. I lean majorly libertarian, but given the pollution levels in my town on occasion,

They're also insensitive clods for not thinking of those of us who suffer from Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy, where seizures are often induced by sleep deprivation. Or not; I've had trouble with myoclonic lapses of conciousness even after getting the full 8 hours of rest. Pretty annoying, although it seems much more under control now that I'm in my 40s.

Just look at a normal sleep EEG and tell me that you're reaching consciousness naturally during these periods. You naturally sleep the whole night. I don't see where they're getting "you will wake up at least once and that's fine" from the fact that they're reading 500-year-old accounts of people who basically had trouble sleeping.

Not all vaccines contain egg protein. At least according to this MMR is safe for egg allergies. For other vaccines (and other allergic reactions like those to gelatin) the recommendation is to see an allergist that can do skin-test of the vaccine to evaluate the reaction. Of course your doctor should have told you that and if he didn't you probably don't want to use him anyway.

Doctors... could you perhaps ask your billing office to do a statistical analysis on how much you actually ended up getting paid for various procedures?

Larger organizations will actually do this regularly, and there are actually consulting agencies that can do the analysis for small offices. For an example of some aggregate data:
http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/insurerreport
 

There must be some positive benefit to working with the insurance companies or you would have found a better way?

Insurance companies have the customers captive. If you don't work with them, you don't get the patients in their pool.

The old fashioned style of solo private practice is gradually going extinct due to the overhead and lack of negotiating leverage vs. insurance companies. Now, if you're good at marketing and handling the business side of things, you may be able to do a "concierge" or "boutique" medical practice -- which is part of the reason for the popularity of specialties such as dermatology and cosmetic surgery (who handle lots of cash-only patients).

Transcribing from http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/780639-overview#aw2aab6b3 , regarding an external pacemaker:

The average current necessary for external pacing ranges from about 50 to 100 milliamperes (mA); 100 mAs applied to an average chest with 50-ohm () resistance for 20 msec delivers 0.1 Joules (J). This is well below the 1-2 J required to cause an uncomfortable tingling sensation in the skin.

See how they account energy transfer(J), and not current by itself? And see how far away are the values of current, from the 1mA you're talking about?

Note also, how all the examples you're talking about, are discussing the medical uses for electrical stimulation, wherein they're highly concerned with not killing the patient?

The point was never "1 mA *will* kill you" the point was that even 1 mA, if it finds a current path through the heart muscle, can induce fibrillation.

Which you've been saying clearly can't happen because, there are medical uses for this in defibrillators?

Moreover, again, why limit the shock time to such a low number? 1 mA is not a lot of current. Amongst other things there's a serious danger someone would be shocked for considerably longer time then 20 milliseconds.

The average current necessary for external pacing ranges from about 50 to 100 milliamperes (mA); 100 mAs applied to an average chest with 50-ohm () resistance for 20 msec delivers 0.1 Joules (J). This is well below the 1-2 J required to cause an uncomfortable tingling sensation in the skin.

See how they account energy transfer(J), and not current by itself? And see how far away are the values of current, from the 1mA you're talking about?

Maybe not... The law firm is probably not a HIPAA covered agency. If the law firm got the records because their client was a covered entity, they might be in trouble under HIPAA. If they got the records because they were suing a covered entity, they probably aren't in trouble under HIPAA. They'd still be in trouble for disclosing private information, though.

Here's a writeup.

"Africa is both the epicenter for the disease, and is a poverty-stricken continent where people need to have families, and relatively large ones at that, in order to be taken care of in their old age. These features are sufficient to explain the sustained high infection rate without resorting to the racist twaddle you're apparently peddling. "

Oh boy, you're so full of bullshit.

"Medical experts have shown a clear association between HIV exposure and coerced sex. Wives who suffer violence if they request condom use or faithfulness are at higher risk of AIDS than unmarried women and girls. That is why defeating the AIDS pandemic requires a second radical proposition: that African women and girls have the right to protection under their own countries' laws.

Why is this concept radical? Because public justice systems in many AIDS-burdened countries are broken or virtually inaccessible to poor girls and women. Rape and beatings are simply the norm, and deterrence and accountability for these crimes in Africa is as rare as AIDS drugs used to be."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/13/AR2006081300716.html

"Rape, including child rape, is increasing at shocking rates in South Africa. Sexual violence against children, including the raping of infants, has increased 400% over the past decade (Dempster, 2002). According to a report by BBC news, a female born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped in her lifetime than learning how to read (Dempster, 2002). When South Africa became a democracy in 1994, there were already 18,801 cases of rape per year, but by 2001 there were 24,892 (Dempster, 2002). Numbers vary by different institutions, but are nevertheless extremely troubling. The Institute of Race Relations found that more than 52,000 rapes were reported in 2000, and 40% of the victims were under age 18 (du Venage, 2002). The University of South Africa reports that 1 million women and children are raped there each year (South Africa: Focus on the Virgin Myth, 2002)."

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/444213
http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2002/april/virgin.htm

Also, big families don't cause rape, you can't catch an infection from a clean partner no matter how many times you have sex.

Were you better afterwards that you were before? He's exactly the same.

Well, I'm no longer at a serious risk of dying from a kidney infection. What do you think? And you know, it would've been nice if somebody figured this shit out and treated it when I was a child. It'd have been nice to grow up to have two fully functional kidneys.

You don't describe precisely what's the boy's condition, but hey, you're missing the point, which is that medical conditions that are minor at birth, if left unchecked, may compound over decades and threaten your life (or just outright kill you!) in adulthood. We are now increasingly able to detect, monitor and treat such issues early in life. This does lead to a lot of children receiving minor treatment for issues that wouldn't even be in the radar 30 years ago, but hey, better safe than sorry.

I'm going to quote from a reference page on what I had:

UPJ obstruction is the most common cause of neonatal and antenatal hydronephrosis, occurring in 1 per 1500 live births. Prior to the use of prenatal ultrasonography, most patients with UPJ obstruction presented with pain, hematuria, urosepsis, failure to thrive, or a palpable mass. With the enhanced ability and availability of prenatal ultrasonography, urologic abnormalities are being diagnosed earlier and more frequently. Fifty percent of patients diagnosed with antenatal hydronephrosis are eventually diagnosed with UPJ obstruction upon further workup.

Initially, most children are treated conservatively and monitored closely. Intervention is indicated in the event of significantly impaired renal drainage or poor renal growth.

So, 0.06% of children born (presumably in the USA) show some evidence of antenatal kidney problems similar to what I had. In the end only about half of those in the end are diagnosed with the condition. Most of these are monitored periodically to make sure that complications aren't developing, and given conservative treatment, with an eye on whether the issue corrects itself—and it often does as the child grows.

All this shows is that today we can detect a lot more than we could 30 years ago, we can detect it earlier, and we can better keep an eye on it. Where's the bad?

Why do you accuse me of peddling dodgy treatments? Just google for zinc and cold.

It works better than placebo.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12462910
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/for-cold-virus-zinc-may-edge-out-even-chicken-soup/
http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Zinc-HealthProfessional/

Stick to the pills/lozenges, take them at early onset of symptoms, don't overdose and definitely don't spray your nose with it (or you might damage/lose your sense of smell). May not be a cure, but most subjects would feel better and that's good enough for most people.

AFAIK doctors in some countries are still prescribing antibiotics to those with colds and flu. Despite being told year after year not to:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/20/coughs-colds-cures-treatment-antibiotics
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6526575/GPs-told-to-stop-prescribing-antibiotics-for-coughs-and-colds.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1574995/Stop-giving-antibiotics-for-colds-doctors-told.html

My current guess (not enough proof yet :) ) that most people get antibiotic resistant bacteria from hospitals, not farms.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20524852

RESULTS:
Neither the preintervention rate of MRSA colonization or infection (0.56 cases per 1,000 patient-days [95% confidence interval {CI}, 0.49-0.62 cases per 1,000 patient-days]) nor the slope for the rate of MRSA colonization or infection changed significantly after the first intervention. The rate decreased significantly to 0.28 cases per 1,000 patient-days (95% CI, 0.17-0.40 cases per 1,000 patient-days) after the second intervention and to 0.07 cases per 1,000 patient-days (95% CI, 0.06-0.08 cases per 1,000 patient-days) after the third intervention, and the rate remained at a similar level for 8 years. The MRSA bacteremia rate decreased by 80%, whereas the rate of bacteremia due to methicillin-susceptible S. aureus did not change. Eighty-three percent of the MRSA isolates identified were clonally related. All MRSA isolates obtained from healthcare workers were clonally related to those recovered from patients who were in their care.
CONCLUSION:
Our data indicate that long-term control of endemic MRSA is feasible in tertiary care centers. The use of targeted active surveillance for MRSA in patients and healthcare workers in specific wards (identified by means of analysis of clinical epidemiology data) and the use of decolonization were key to the success of the program.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/718935

March 22, 2010 â" A multifaceted infection control program led to a significant decline in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) cases in Paris-area hospitals with high endemic MRSA rates, according to an article in the March 22 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

There are other superbugs too:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/enemy_pr.html

It's true that many species of acinetobacter flourish widely in the environment. Thriving colonies have been recovered from soil, cell phones, frozen chicken, wastewater treatment plants, Formica countertops, and even irradiated food

Colloidal silver is considered a "health drink" by some, however, imbibing too much or taking it too frequently causes your skin to turn a very noticeable grey.

Yes, and carrot juice is also considered a "health drink" by some, however, imbibing too much or taking it too frequently causes your skin to turn a very noticeable yellow. It is called carotenemia.

Yet carrots are still generally considered to be healthful.

Note that both conditions are purely cosmetic and neither is actually harmful to you, other than to your social life. And the solution to either of them is simply to avoid consuming excessive amounts of that substance before it starts making your skin change color.

Unless someone makes a device to measure the prostate's volume, texture, density, etc., which will definitely not be a camera.

It's called an ultrasound. Now, roll up your sleeves and bend over.

The psychosocial implications of in-flight sex and reproduction are at least as problematic as the related physiological challenges. For the foreseeable future, space crews will be relatively small in number. If pairing off occurs within the crew, it can have serious ramifications on the crew's working relationships, and therefore, on mission success and crew operations. Former astronaut Norman Thaggard commented, "[Issues associated with romantic relationships are] just one more problem that can potentially cause the whole thing to come apart."

Not quite. It's included in the tetanus booster. It's called DTAP for Diptheria, Tetanus, Acellular Pertussis. It has long been known that childhood pertussis vaccination loses efficacy over time, however the old 'whole cell' pertussis vaccine caused bad local reactions in adults and really wasn't tolerated. The newer vaccine is much 'cleaner' - less extraneous proteins for your immune system to have hissy fits about.

This becomes important since we've found out that adults are the biggest reservoir of the disease - it causes an annoying and irritating cough / upper respiratory infection but won't kill a healthy adult. Giving it to a 6 month old child just might kill them. So it's important that we immunize the general adult population. Probably more important that immunizing for tetanus since 3 vaccinations over a lifetime is probably enough to confer lasting immunity.

It's the "logical next step" in all the "break this sticker with a screw hidden underneath and void your warranty" crap.

And of course, it's got 90% of the consumer population so fucking scared that they won't break that sticker even when they need to repair a device that's 5 years old and 4 years, 9 months out of the stupidly short 90-day warranty.

It's the same kind of brainwashing crap you get with expiration dates on bottled water (also found on non-expiring foods/spices such as honey and salt) and stupidly short expiration dates on medicines.

Pop Sci still runs a great "void your warranty" column. I recommend reading it on a regular basis and learning to say "fuck it, void the warranty, I'm going to improve/repair my own fucking property" whenever possible!

... The problem is that once you fuck up herd immunity, you've fucked it up for everyone, including the very young, the very old, and those with compromised immune systems. ... In short, and pardon my directness, but speaking as a parent, fuck those who don't get the shots for themselves and their kids right in their entitled, self-centred, arrogant asses. They and their spawn should be given the choice to get them, and then airdropped on a remote island with all the rest of the assholes who think that the chance of their precious little snowflake having a disability is more important than the life of other people's so they can't screw it up for the rest of us.

In short, and pardon my directness, but speaking as a parent, what about those who don't breastfeed their children for at least two years and beyond (WHO advised), and who don't get enough vitamin D, and who don't read about nutrition and "disease proof" their children?
    http://www.amazon.com/Disease-Proof-Your-Child-Feeding-Right/dp/0312338058
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
    http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/infantfeeding_recommendation/en/index.html

And what about all those parents who spread disease by sending their children to day prisons so they can work, rather than homeschooling?
    http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/734486

Not to mention the socio-psychological fallout:
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue.htm

Should they and their "spawn" be airdropped on a remote island with all the rest of the "assholes" who think that the habit of feeding their precious little snowflake junkfood or putting them in school for convenience is more important than the life of other people's so they can't screw it up for the rest of us?

How many people would that leave in the USA? 1%?

Any votes on how long the policy lasts after someone 'transgendered' files a lawsuit requesting permission to live in the opposite-sex barracks and wear the opposite-sex uniform?

Go for it, I don't have a problem with it.

Now what would you say if the person was an intersexual, ie someone with either Ambiguous Genitalia or with both male and female sex organs? Would you make the cut?

Falcon

Well, this has been studied before. This isn't anything new. Alcohol in moderation has been proven to reduce lots of types of disease and medical problems in those who only drink a little. The studies form a J-Curve where those who don't drink in a population have a certain number of (Strokes, heart attacks, etc). Those in the population who drink 1-2 drinks a day show a significant lowering of those symptoms. However, those who drink more than 3 drinks per day have a DRASTIC increase as they have more health problems like Cirrhosis of liver and other alcohol related problems.
Here's an article from 2004 about the effects of alcohol and strokes and has an image of the J-Curve graph.

In the US, you worry about the government spying on you or infringing on your rights, while giving the corporations free pass to fuck you in the butthole all day and night.

Corporations can't assfuck you unless you do business with them. You don't have a choice about doing business with the Government. That's the difference.

You guys won't even allow homosexuals to marry, wtf is that for civil liberties

The proper way to fix that is to get the state out of the "marriage" business altogether. Civil unions that recognize one's legal rights regarding their partner (right to make medical decisions, tax benefits, etc.) should be the only involvement that the state has in "marriage". Let the churches argue about what "marriage" is. As far as the state is concerned it should be nothing more than a legal agreement between two consenting adults.

BTW, per capita cost of health care in Norway (the most expensive country to live in in the world) costs less than half what it costs in the US, yet covers everyone.

So what? What are the disease survival rates in Norway? The United States boasts higher cancer survival rates than Europe. If your socialized health care systems are so superior why do people receive less access to cancer screening tests that could save their lives? Perhaps our health care system is more expensive because it delivers a better quality product?

Actually, in the link I gave above, it says that the antibodies are present for only 6-12 month. I personally think that this does not come under the definition of "a very long time", but you may think otherwise.

Well, according to the text books and updated sites, biopsy of the gut is still a criterion standard for diagnosis of Gluten and thus needs to be performed so the presence of the disease is confirmed. I suspect that many times biopsy is not performed because of non-medical reasons - either financial ones or because the patient is unsuitable/unwilling to undergo a biopsy.

isn't it odd that many traditional, ancient rituals suggest that girls and boys reach "adulthood" at 12 and 13 respectively, ages at which today almost all children have passed puberty

(1) "today" (emphasis mine), and (2) entered puberty, not "passed" it (they're still growing).
That said, I am not familiar with "many" rituals, so I can only comment on some. In the Jewish tradition 13/12 is the age at which a person is considered responsible for their actions, whether it coincided with puberty at that time is speculation.

This suggests that the data used in that (and other studies that show similar things) is either anomalous over that time period or subject to bad methodology

If several independent studies reach the same conclusions, which is inconsistent with "ancient rituals" there is a possibility of all the studies being flawed but a much more likely explanation is a misrepresentation of the rituals.

Now, if you have better sources, by all means post them. Otherwise, here is what I was able to find on the subject:

There is an interesting page with information at the Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health (amazing...) but you have to be careful when reading and interpreting it as they conflate published research and "student papers" (not to mention the "how not to make a web site" theme). The information suggests that the onset of puberty in the 19th and early 20th centuries was definitely later than it is today.

A Medscape article states that "... the age of menarche has been declining from the early 1800s until the 1950s" and gives a long list of citations to support it.

There's an interesting article that purports to explain the discrepancy with the "ancient rituals" though. It states: "Disease and poor nutrition became more common as humans settled, causing puberty to be delayed. Modern hygiene, nutrition and medicine have allowed the age of menarche to fall to its original range.". I am not necessarily agreeing with this premise but it is one way of addressing the issue.

As I said above, if you disagree, feel free to refute.

the suggestion the other poster makes is that until recently medicine did a poor job of identifying puberty

In girls, menarche is commonly viewed as the "central event" of puberty. As a parent of a teenage girl I can tell you that it is pretty hard to misidentify.

The big reason physicians are less productive with EMR systems is that they need to learn how to use a computer properly. This means using password-protected screen savers instead of fully logging out, and spending $35 a month on a network connection faster than dial-up. It means taking some typing lessons, and getting used to the feeling of a keyboard rather than a pen.

I also note that you very carefully mention only private practice, rather than doctors in any large organization. That reminds me an awful lot of the "get off my lawn" mentality held by most private practices. They have THEIR way, and God forbid anybody try to recommend changing it. Never mind that it would decrease errors, which would make malpractice insurance cheaper, which would bring more profit, but I digress.

Regarding EMR and insurance, your point is moot. Insurance claims are ALREADY required to be filed electronically as part of HIPAA. Now the records will just be stored in a computer in the hospital, reducing the error rate introduced by transcriptionists. If there's going to be any change, it's more likely to be positive. The insurance company can, in one request, see that tests were run that indicated a specific treatment, rather than ask ten times for the results of each test.

Since you seem to appreciate studies, here's a few nice ones (found by searching on Google for "study emr effectiveness":

• The Effect of Organizational Factors on the Effectiveness of EMR System Implementation"For practitioners considering or about to begin an EMR system implementation, these results highlight the importance of considering organizational factors before, during and after EMR system implementation"... In other words, if it doesn't help, you're probably doing it wrong.
• Can Electronic Medical Record Systems Transform Health Care? - A rather comprehensive examination of costs and savings. Here's a spoiler: EMR costs far less than non-EMR.
• EMR Reminder Improves Osteoporosis Management: Discussion - "EMR reminder intervention resulted in 51.5% of patients receiving a BMD measurement or an osteoporosis medication, compared with 5.9% in usual care."

Looking at those listed credentials, it seems the research is being funded by drug companies. I know from personal experience that drug companies love EMR for the same reason I do: hospitals using EMR are easier to work with for exchanging medical data. Again, the insurance companies don't care, because they've enjoyed electronic records since 2003.

I guess the fear surrounding what people don't understand will never go away.

It's justified. Back in the seventies everybody was into strobe lights and using them in theater productions left and right. Until people started falling over.

The law of unintended consequences could still be at work here.

Umm. Actually, no. It isn't. The research to date has turned up that caffeine, if it is a diuretic, is a very weak one and it only seems to have an effect when there are massive changes in the amount consumed.

The study everybody refers to was done in 1928. The study referenced had precisely three (3) subjects and the observations spanned only a few hours. Since then, this one study has been taken as gospel truth.

It has been demonstrated using a much better design (more subjects, proper double blind, placebos, etc.) and the results are that caffeine is not a very good diuretic if it is one at all.

Since I know the next post after this will be "reference required", I offer http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/559762_2 which provides a summary of the research performed by Lawrence E. Armstrong, Douglas J. Casa, Carl M. Maresh, and Matthew S. Ganio. This is a meta-analysis of 15 different studies done on this topic. I wish I could post more, but it is behind a pay wall. grrr.

    I drink Dr. Pepper.

    Directly from their site.

Regular Dr Pepper = 28 mg of caffeine per 8 fluid ounces

    So 3.5mg/oz

    I drink two pints first thing in the morning. 32oz * 3.5mg = 112mg. Then about 12oz/hr after that throughout the work day, and back to pint glasses when I get home.

    32 + 108 + 64 = 204oz Dr Pepper = 714mg caffeine. Or on the generic coffee scale that you provided, about 8 cups a day. To scale this in medical levels, I drink a lot, but well under the toxic level. :)

This has more to do with doctors who are too full of themselves. When I was in Saint Louis I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. When I asked my doctor to explain something about it so I could learn about the condition, he told me that I didn't need to know anything and just take the medicine at the dosage he prescribed. Because I was living and working in Saint Louis and had a good insurance plan, I was able to see a specialist (an endocrinologist) fairly quickly (in Canada it is debatable if this would even be possible since specialists are fewer, and the family doctor's office has to make the appointment assuming he thinks it appropriate... which a dick head like this wouldn't).

The endocrinologist asked me if my family doctor had checked for antibodies. I said no and asked 'antibodies for what?'. He said for antibodies that might be attacking the thyroid and explained it is a good idea to figure out why someone's thyroid is failing, to make sure there was nothing that could cause other issues. He did the test and found I have a condition called Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, a kind of autoimmune disease where the body goes after your thyroid (kind of like a rheumatoid arthritis of the thyroid). If you have HT, it is important to keep your TSH at the very low end of the scale using thyroid hormone replacement (levothyroxine/synthroid) to keep the body from attacking the thyroid. It really is the same lifelong daily medicine used to treat all forms of hypothyroidism, but with Hashimoto's it is important to keep track of levels, more so than other types of hypothyroidism, since with higher levels of TSH the body creates more antibodies to attack the thyroid, which can lead to other issues later on. As well, it turned out I had atypical hypothyroidism in that my TSH levels were above normal but below 10 where levels typical of the condition would be above 90 (can't remember the units). Even though the levels were somewhat low, I still require high levels of synthroid to get my levels to a safe level, on a par with a buddy of mine who had his thyroid removed due to cancer. But my family doctor didn't want to listen since he knew all and I was just a patient. If I would have left it where it was when he told me to not bother understanding or learning about my condition, I would still probably be feeling like shit, fogged out, always cold, depressed, and gaining weight, develop coronary artery disease, which will develop if HT is not properly treated. Also chances of nodules on the thyroid...

I am glad I went to the specialist since my family doctor had not prescribed high enough levels of synthroid. He didn't consider that a patient may be as intelligent or more intelligent than him, was able to understand the condition, and had a higher stake at understanding the disease, since the patient (me) was the one who had it. I fired the doctor and found a better one who was smarter and less full of himself. If you are going to be a doctor, learn from this. You don't know it all. Of course you know more than your patient, but that doesn't mean your patients are not capable of finding out things you don't know. Listen first, judge what you hear, then make a decision on whether to disregard it based on the merits of the information, not on the surety that you are smarter and know more than your patient possibly could... especially since no one can know it all, and everyone is capable of learning something that you don't.

Actually, the Epley maneuver is about 95% effective in treating BPPV ( http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/884261-treatment ) and in many patients it is a permanent cure (the recurrence rate is 10-25% - http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/884261-followup). The fact that for you it is not so, does not mean no one will benefit from it. P.S. You do not need to move the Calcium particles back to their original place for the maneuver to be considered a cure. Having them someplace "out of the way" is enough.

Actually, the Epley maneuver is about 95% effective in treating BPPV ( http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/884261-treatment ) and in many patients it is a permanent cure (the recurrence rate is 10-25% - http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/884261-followup). The fact that for you it is not so, does not mean no one will benefit from it. P.S. You do not need to move the Calcium particles back to their original place for the maneuver to be considered a cure. Having them someplace "out of the way" is enough.

Not really a smart answer. You mentioned toxic gases with PROVEN harmful effects. Now, I want you to learn a bit, please read on...

From:
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/832708-overview

"Oxides of nitrogen

Inhalation of nitric oxide causes the formation of methemoglobin. Inhalation of nitrogen dioxide results in the formation of nitrite, which leads to a fall in blood pressure, production of methemoglobin, and cellular hypoxia. Inhalation of high concentrations causes rapid death without the formation of pulmonary edema. Milder yet still severe exposures may result in death with production of yellow frothy fluid in the nasal passages, mouth, and trachea and marked pulmonary edema. The symptoms following the inhalation of NOx are mostly due to nitrogen dioxide.

[...]

Sulfur trioxide

Since FS is an intermediate used to produce sulfuric acid upon its reaction with moisture, the resulting toxicity is that of an acidic irritation to mucosal membranes and even skin. The corrosive effect of acid on mucosa and keratinized skin causes significant irritations and chemical burns."

Sulfur dioxide also forms acid in presence of moisture.

They talk about NOx concentration >1.5 ppm.

From:
http://www.inspectapedia.com/hazmat/CO2gashaz.htm
"Outdoors the typical carbon dioxide CO2 level in air is 300 ppm to 400 ppm.
[...]
Toxic levels of carbon dioxide: at levels above 5%, concentration CO2 is directly toxic. [At lower levels we may be seeing effects of a reduction in the relative amount of oxygen rather than direct toxicity of CO2.]"

That means 50000ppm.

See the difference?

CO2 is not considered a toxic gas.

Apparently you don't know what you're talking about -- again.

While I agree that many Americans prefer to believe that the magic man in the sky is responsible for everything, I have to disagree with you a bit on bringing up the infant mortality rate. One of the most significant reasons (if not the primary reason) that the mortality rate is higher in the US that other countries is due to the number of premature births in this country. 12.5% of births in the US are premature, and a premature baby has a much higher incidence of mortality. Premature birth is the number 2 reason for infant mortality behind congenital defects. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/541368 The reasons for premature birth are many and varied, but in many cases in the US a couple/mother will opt to carry a child to term that is at significant risk for mortality that would otherwise be aborted in may other developed countries. Please note that this is not a statement in approval or disapproval. I believe that the numbers will show that if you control for the rates of premature birth (which are incredibly high in the US) you will see that the US is on par with most of Europe. Also remember that many countries count things differently. In many countries, for example, it is common to count a live birth that does not live for 24 hours, or is underweight, as still born, whereas in the US a live birth is counted immediately. For example:

Switzerland doesn’t count the death of very small babies, less than 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) in length, as a live birth, according to Nicholas Eberstadt http://www.aei.org/scholar/62, a former visiting fellow at Harvard’s Center for Population and Developmental Studies. So comparing the 1998 infant mortality rates for Switzerland and the U.S. (4.8 and 7.2,respectively, per 1,000 live births) is comparing apples and oranges.

In other countries, such as Italy, definitions vary depending on where you are in the country.

Eberstadt notes “underreporting also seems apparent in the proportion of infant deaths different countries report for the first 24 hours after birth. In Australia, Canada and the United States, over one-third of all infant deaths are reported to take place in the first day.”

The child mortality rate is too high, but I'm not sure what you are trying to imply? I don't think the issue is a simple or cut and dried and you seem to imply, and I don't see any relationship to the topic at hand.

This article suggests that Clostridium difficile spores (mentioned in TFA) can be found "on hospital items such as over-bed tables, side curtains, lab coats, scrubs, plants and cut flowers, computer keyboards (especially computers on wheels), bedpans, furniture, toilet seats, linens, telephones, stethoscopes, jewelry, diaper pails, and under fingernails."

As flowers can not be cleaned and disinfected as easily as the other surfaces mentioned, this seems like a reasonable preventative measure to me.

The limit on how things sound is based on how densely they can pack the electrodes on the implant. Each electrode corresponds to a frequency, so the world sounds a bit like it's on autotune.

Nice, two things I wondered about these summed up in two consecutive sentences, thanks!

I would have thought the electrode problem solved by now with silicon processes - any idea why things like this (first one I found on a google search) wouldn't work for a large frequency range?

The US has the best health care available, if not the best "system". I'm tired of seeing the same old lies about e.g. infant mortality where the US measures them differently than other countries. We have the best medicine. I have access to that medicine, as do a majority of Americans.

Where the US falls short is that not all Americans have access to that system, and it can place a financial burden on some people.

Between 1979 and 1984, the researchers recruited pregnant women living in poor areas of Cincinnati, which had a high concentration of older, lead-contaminated housing, into the Cincinnati Lead Study. They measured the women's blood lead concentrations during pregnancy as an indication of their offspring's prenatal lead exposure and the children's blood lead levels regularly until they were six and half years old. They then obtained information from the local criminal justice records on how many times each of the 250 offspring had been arrested between becoming 18 years old and the end of October 2005. The researchers found that increased blood lead levels before birth and during early childhood were associated with higher rates of arrest for any reason and for violent crimes. For example, for every 5 g/dl increase in blood lead levels at six years of age, the risk of being arrested for a violent crime as a young adult increased by almost 50% (the "relative risk" was 1.48).

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/576717_sidebar1
http://toxicology.suite101.com/article.cfm/irreversible-effects-of-toxic-lead-brain-damage

Here's a link: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/168402-overview

And if anyone ever wonder what, say a 90 year old brain looked like, instead of comparing with a healthy brain, here you go.

Although, technically, it isn't an entirely healthy 90 YO. That white bulge in the bottom left is swelling from whacking against a freshly waxed floor.

Yes, you do in fact see a much greater incidence of addiction amongst schizophrenics than the general population. That's for all addictive substances, from tobacco to heroin. Here is a reference I found with a couple seconds of googling: "Nearly half of the people suffering from schizophrenia also present with a lifetime history of substance use disorders (SUDs).[1,2] This rate is much higher than the one seen in the general US population "