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Here's some perspective from these two sets of statistics from the Guttmacher Institute. To give you the benefit of the doubt, we'll assume that every woman who claimed the reason for having an abortion was because of health risks or concern for the health of the fetus (~2%) had it after 19 weeks, and that the health risks, or health defects were all of the utmost gravity. For the sake of this argument we won't discuss anything before 12 weeks, although it is important to note that at 12 weeks the brain has already divided into 5 regions and has been developing as a cohesive whole for 5 weeks.
Now, there were 1.21 million abortions in the United States in 2005. That means that there were at least 111,320 (9.2% of 1.21 million) fetuses aborted between 12 and 19 weeks of development (more developed than this little guy). That's over 110,000 fetuses who are as able to feel pain as anyone else, and make facial expressions, being aborted every year with various descriptions of (in)convenience being the reason given by the mother.

In comparison, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports the number of fatalities for 2005 (in the U.S.) involving alcohol was 17,590. The fatalities for all other accidents was 25,920. Pediatric cancer killed 2,200 children in 2004. Deaths attributed to HIV/AIDS for children and adults was 25,000 in all of North America in 2008. So the deaths attributed to all these hot-button issues combined is less than the deaths of fetuses.

Regarding the "they'll still do it no matter how strict the law" argument:
This argument only works on the premise that there is nothing wrong with the activity itself. For example, statistics demonstrate that men will still rape women, regardless of how harsh the penalty (even in countries where the penalty is death). Legalized rape means fewer women die, because the rapist will not feel the need to kill the woman to prevent her from reporting him to the police. Which do you want, brassy moral superiority and thousands of women dead, or an unpleasant feeling and those women still alive?

Do you see that just as you believe that rape is an intrinsically unacceptable act, and therefore there can be no justification for it's legal acceptance, so do the anti-abortion believers believe that the abortion of a fetus for the sake of convenience (being seen as murder) is an intrinsically unacceptable act?

There are actually surgeries that they won't even try if you're a smoker. Most operations involving tissue grafts won't heal on heavy smokers because their capillaries are too badly constricted by the nicotine to heal. I just had a spinal fusion, they used cadaver bone to fuse my vertebra together. If I'd been a smoker they would have had to use an autograft and cut a chunk of bone out of my thigh for the bone graft needed for the fusion, which is really painful and makes the operation more complicated. I'm really glad I never mastered the whole "smoking a cigarette without coughing and throwing up" thing. It doesn't matter how old you are; if you're an otherwise healthy 25 year old smoker and need a spinal fusion you're going to get an autograft, and doctors won't even try a free flap tissue graft for plastic or reconstructive surgery.

Back to the original topic, I think that Apple is handling this poorly. If they want to make the case that smoking coats the inside of your computer with lots of tar and micro-particulate crap and therefore you're violating the warranty that's one thing. If they're trying to say that handling a computer coated with nicotine is a HazMat situation they're full of shit and coming off like a bunch of self-righteous anti-smoking fucktards who are trying to cheat their way out of honoring their warranties.

This paper:

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/252560-overview

states: Fetal indications for abortion

... The most common fetal anomalies encountered in abortion counseling include most **fetal cardiac anomalies**; trisomy 21; open and closed neural tube defects; limb, face, or cleft abnormalities; esophageal

There is the issue of what makes a person gay, straight, or bi.

It goes beyond that. Unlike what most people think not everyone is either male or female. Some people are born with body parts that are "male" and "female". Genetically females are said to have two X Chromosomes, XX, while males have an X and a Y, XY. However some people are born with XXY, XXXY, and XXXXY karotypes. These people are said to have ambiguous genitalia and are called Intersexuals. The more commonly known name for them is hermaphrodites. I don't know but the South African female athlete who's been in the news because of the question of her sex, with some saying she's not female, may be one.

Falcon

some clearly self-identify as gay but don't actually have same-sex intercourse.

To muddy the waters, there aren't just 2 sexs as witnessed by the controversy over the gender or sex of that South African athlete in the news. Fact is is there are people who are neither male nor female and those who are both. As an intro "MS magazine" has the article "Making The Cut: It's a Girl! ...Or is It? When there's doubt, why are Surgeons Calling the Shots?" emedicine and WebMD have the science behind Ambiguous Genitalia and Intersexuality. I didn't find it but one athlete was barred from compeating in the 2000 Olympics because she had an X chromosome and therefore the Olympics Committee ruled she was a male, that despite the fact that she gave birth to a baby before their ruling.

Falcon

I can't find the study, but IIRC, adults don't need (much) less sleep as they get older, they just get used to working with less. The information that I did find suggests that sleep needs change considerably during childhood, but adults basically need 7-8 hours per night. My guess would be that sleep requirements are correlated with metabolic activity (highest in childhood, but for adults the basal metabolic rate is fairly constant given body type/size). Getting by with less is certainly possible, but you're reducing your mental/physical performance and increasing the risk of stuff like diabetes and heart disease. Working long hours pretty much came about with agriculture, so I'm doubtful the human body is terribly well adapted to it.

and as an antipyretic you should take what exactly? The WHO recommends children take paracetamol for fevers above 38.5C.

why not Ibuprofen?

It has its flaws, as any large institution does, but these are flaws that are siezed upon by opponents and used as propaganda (check out the raft of TV commercials on US TV during Clinton's attempt to get a national system running in the US - "you can't choose your own doctor! you won't have access to cutting edge treatments! the doctors don't get paid a decent wage! you'll have to wait years for lifesaving surgeries!)

And what part of that is not true in different health care systems around the world? More importantly, what part of that was not true with Hillary care that was being pushed in 1993?

Now, in a system like the UK NHS you do have long wait times for certain things if the system is busy, and if there's one major criticism to be levelled at it, it's that it is a behemoth organisation with a lot of bloat in it, soaking up money like a sponge, yet still requiring huge investment with a lot of faults. It is still recovering from 15 years of neglect from a Tory government in the 80s, but it is coming around gradually.

If by coming around you mean providing substandard treatments, denying treatment to anyone they can justify, and killing treatment for anyone who wants to pay the difference for better treatment, then I guess your right.

Even with the horror stories that the newspapers and private healthcare shills love to jump on (I waited 4 hours in the ER when I broke my leg!), these are totally atypical of the experience, and even with these issues that arise (which do need to be addressed), it is still vastly superior to the US system which exists solely to make drug companies, senators, congressmen and other select individuals very rich and has nothing to do with actual health care, other than as a side effect.

Read some of the links I provided above. This isn't a 4 hour wait for a broken leg. It's a refusal to provide effective treatment, long wait times for things like MRI scans and medically necessary procedures and so on in the various different health care systems.

And yes, it's so bad in Canada that it's economically viable for insurance companies to offer wait list insurance that will take you to another country is necessary to get treatment. Try taking a look at medical tourism where a lot of brits seem to be going to India and parts Asia if not just others parts of Europe for cheap medical coverage that they already have in the UK.

Thanks for clarifying that. Turns out I understood a few concepts wrong. When I heard about it, it was over a cancer patient who after paying out of pocket for a drug that was supposedly 3 times as effective, was booted from the system and had to find a way to pay 11000 ero for two or three months treatment before he died.

The worse part about this is that the people paid into the system all of their lives thinking they were getting proper coverage just to find out that someone is making penny pinching decisions concerning their lives and if the patient attempts to make up the difference, they are booted from the system and in one case charged for treatment to date. Cancer survival rates in Europe itself is dismal but it seems that with universal government health care, you a die more often from cancer then a country without it.

Back in the 1970's after President Carter screwed up the US economy with his failed foreign and domestic policies, inflation was rampant and seniors who were living from Social security and pensions were running out of money. It took the US government almost 6 years and Reagan's deficit spending in order to start compensating for the amount of inflation we saw. To the date, the purchasing power of SS retirement payments aren't what they were in 1972 or 1975. Now you have the UK NHS threatening to withhold treatment from people who are over weight, who smoke, or do anything else they don't like in order to pinch more pennies. I just don't see how this is good.

At least with private coverage, I can attempt to find another provider and sue the current one if they pull that crap at the last minute.

I'm sorry but I was being serious. It's hard to tell sometimes with me.

Placebo effects are real. Here is an interesting case where placebo surgery is as effective or more effective than real knee surgery. There are literally thousands of studies showing placebo effects. The placebo effect is considered to be a substantial part of any clinically accepted treatment. Wikipedia has a good article on the placebo effect.

Many people are dismissive of placebos. Bah, they say. Placebo means no effect. The truth is different! I often wish I wasn't so cynical and well informed. Antibiotics don't work as well on my colds as they do on my less informed friends. Homeopathic remedies do nothing for me. Even my foot surgery went badly, possibly because I didn't believe in it with a childlike absolute faith.

I think I read once (no citation, sorry) that something like 80% of drivers believe they're above average in driving skill. They can't all be right!

I've heard that too. It is unlikely that they are all correct. It is actually more likely that >50% are below average drivers, although to some extent it depends on what you mean by "average driving skill". One of the general assumptions in statistics is that the general population follows a gaussian distribution. If you place a minimum qualification on a given activity then the distribution skews to the left, and the average (arithmetic mean) and the mode is less than the median (the middle person). While a driving test is not the most rigorous guarantee of minimal qualification standards, other qualifications means such as license suspensions also skew the distribution.

But it is also a possibility that drivers surveyed are right. Check out http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/702946. If a small portion of the population engages severely in behaviours that significantly lower the scores, and the other, majority part of the population improves with practice, you end up with a bimodal distribution with the arithmetic mean between the two modes. In such a distribution >50% of the population is greater than the mean.

Of course, many people are probably thinking of the median as the average driver, which makes the quoted statistic (80 % think they are better than average) that much more an indication of the implications of self image.

lithium can cause cardiac birth defects when taken in the first trimester, so unless they're going to put pregnant women on a separate water system this is probably a bad idea. http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/154447-overview

Genetic analysis shows that our gastrointestinal tracts are home to more than 100 000 billion (1014) individual micro-organisms of perhaps 36 000 different species. And more than 90% of the cells in our bodies are non-human.[1] These bacteria form a diverse and complex ecosystem with a total gene pool (microbiome) more than 100 times larger than the human genome -- in effect we are hybrid "superorganisms." The types and numbers of bacteria differ from the stomach to the distal colon, reflecting the changes in pH, concentration of oxygen, and availability of nutrients. Small numbers persist in the stomach (notably Helicobacter pylori, which causes ulcers) and the small intestine, but most of these organisms are found in the anaerobic environment of the large intestine ( Table ).

To see the full article you need some kind of login which I don't have, but SlashDot had a similar story a couple of days ago: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/15/0252219

So I think there's a lot of tough questions to ask before allowing legislation like this to pass. We can't even define "human" very well, and we already appear to be hybrids (mitochondrial DNA etc).

Not only will TV not increase your kid's IQ, it will also lower it.

Since when does he have the right to pick and choose which laws he enforces?

Are you kidding me? He is just following the example set by the rest of the law enforcement agencies in the US.

The US (especially over the last 8 years) loves to make things illegal that a huge % of the population does and then they use selective enforcement to exercise their prejudiced, corrupt agendas.

Need some examples:

Picking on LGBTs
Selective enforcement of marijuana laws (over other drugs)
Selective enforcement of drug laws in black/latino communities
The DMCA

Instead of banking the cord, I would like to suggest you delay clamping of the cord and let the newborn have the blood themselves, when they're born. There are many benefits to this:
Prevention of anemia, Jundice, and many others.

The above articles all state that there is no scientific reason for early clamping of the cord, and imply that there are significant benefits to waiting until the cord has finished pulsing to clamp and cut.

Unfortunately, the best cure for this sort of thing- seriously- is to consume more meat, and less starch and vegetable matter. More likely, he will treat it with steroids, DMARDs, immunomodulators, and maybe even TNF inhibitors, which is the usual course of treatment. Unfortunately, this just draws it out and makes it last longer, while the dietary route will treat it directly.

Just a couple of observations:

How many times have terrorists used planes as weapons before or since 9/11? Anywhere in the world? That's not even addressing the concerns of those that think it was an inside job which would make airport security the biggest joke. ever. period.

How many houses are broken into daily across the country? Way more than the number of airplanes being hijacked by terrorists!

Why would an airplane be a much bigger target than a train loaded with chlorine gas or other toxic chemicals while it's moving through Chicago or some other metropolitan area? I don't want to scare anyone, but there are a shit-load of ways to do more damage than flying an airplane into a building.

18 organized terrorists with good timing and good planning could bring any US metropolitan area to it's knees in about 45 minutes, at which point they would have their choice of targets, both human and infrastructure. It would not take hi-tech gadgets per se' and would be unstoppable once initiated. All that could be done is triage in the wake of the 'disaster' initiated by the terrorists. I do mean ANY US metropolitan area, including Washington D.C.

The math on your 'waste of resources for a door lock' statement is farcically fallacious. A one time $40 expenditure. This is not the case for TSA/DHS efforts in airports. We spend more money NOT catching terrorists every month than is believable. Upgrading equipment, installing new screening equipment, new checkpoint equipment, check point employees etc. The weakest point in the whole system is TSA itself. More specifically, the more people they need to hire, the more chance there is of an airport or TSA/DHS employee being a terrorist plant, and who could easily bring a bomb into the airport and put it on a plane. There have been incidents of TSA failures that are unbelievable, and make mockery of your opinion of the current airport security systems. I seriously doubt that we are any safer as a country now, than we were before 9/11, and in some ways we are less safe because of misappropriated resources for security.

Its true currently an average of 50% of adults are seropositive for HSV1, but as an individual statistics state 80% - 85% of people over the age of 60 are infected, so odds are slim you will avoid being inflicted with the HSV1 virus (cold sores)before you die. However with the advances being made in understanding the virus' ability to reactivate and stay hidden, drugs will most likely be developed within the next ten years that destroy the virus' ability to replicate making it almost entirely non-contagious, and within twenty years we'll have a technique/drug that will be capable of killing it where it hides in the trigeminal ganglion located in the brain, which extends to the face/lips. However newer research is indicating that not just HSV1, but a large host of viruses previously thought to be harmless (such as other members of the HSV family Cytomegalovirus & Epstein-Barr virus) eventually cause build up of plaque in the brain causing cognitive decline, particularly combined with the ApoE4 gene variation, which I believe this study linking HSV1 & Alzheimer's is referring to. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/541533 http://genome.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX038956.html

Its not "foolish" its a fact. Perhaps you should google before calling people foolish, eh?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/01/040105071229.htm

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5576/obesity_and_poverty_the_poorest_of.html

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/correlation-between-obesity-and-poverty-health-people-2010-should-increase-attention-those-poverty-14046.html

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/469027

http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/2/0/6/1/p20614_index.html

Anything that could live in such extreme environments such as bleach, a high concentration of alcohol, boiling water, etc. wouldn't exactly be well-adapted to living in the human body. Consider hyperthermophiles, which have proteins that function well above boiling but can't survive at "normal" temperatures. Even if they could survive in multiple extreme environments and still be able to live in the body, they would need multiple sets of proteins and be at a huge disadvantage.

Endospores, which can tolerate extreme conditions and come back to life as infectious bacteria, are a real threat. For example, alcohol hand rubs are useless against the spores of Clostridium difficile.

Anything that could live in such extreme environments such as bleach, a high concentration of alcohol, boiling water, etc. wouldn't exactly be well-adapted to living in the human body. Consider hyperthermophiles, which have proteins that function well above boiling but can't survive at "normal" temperatures. Even if they could survive in multiple extreme environments and still be able to live in the body, they would need multiple sets of proteins and be at a huge disadvantage.

Endospores, which can tolerate extreme conditions and come back to life as infectious bacteria, are a real threat. For example, alcohol hand rubs are useless against the spores of Clostridium difficile.

Recent experience with EV71 epidemic disease also evokes a sense of déjà vu for those familiar with the history of poliomyelitis, he notes; 100 years ago, few had heard of the disease, and only a few geographically and temporally separate outbreaks had occurred over several decades in developing countries. "But over time, these outbreaks increased in frequency and size and ultimately evolved into the major epidemics that swept through cities in Northern Europe and North America in the first half of the 20th century.

"Do the recent epidemics in Southeast Asia portend annual summertime outbreaks in North America and other regions that have thus far been spared large-scale outbreaks of neurotropic enterovirus 71 infection? Without a crystal ball, it would be presumptuous to make predictions," Dr. Modlin concludes. "However, if history is any guide, it would also be foolish not to be better prepared than we are now. It would be prudent to add enterovirus 71 to the list of emerging infections that threaten us, develop a plan to respond to an outbreak, and take the first steps toward developing a vaccine."

a bit more exercise would help a world more than changing you diet.
Exercise? The cure sounds worse than the disease!

health levels are based on about 80% diet and 20% exercise. the problem is, very few people know what a healthy diet is. the folks over at Harvard medical School's joslin diabetes center have studied the latest research on diet and came up with these guidelines:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/502699

for folks who know their diets, they will recognize this as the zone diet, first put forth by dr. sears (PhD, lipid researcher, not medical) over 15 years prior to joslin jumping on the zone diet bandwagon.

the results of this diet are staggering. a few of the highlights include:

1. Stanford swimmers brought home 8 gold medals in the 1992 Olympics.
2. Stanford swimmers brought home 8 gold medals in the 1996 Olympics.
3. the top two medal winners in the history of the modern day olympics are both zoners - jenny thompson and dara torres.
4. the top gold medal winner in the history of the modern day olympics is a zoner - jenny thompson.
5. The oldest swimmer to make the Olympic team has been a Zoner ever since Dr. Sears introduced his diet. That's 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004. Oh, and it was 4 different swimmers each time, so you can exclude a single freak athlete as the root cause.
6. dara torres set the american 50m free record as a 40 year old while competing at the 2007 nationals. she also won the 100m free event. she looks to make the 2008 olympic team as a41 year old - the oldest person ever to make the team and the 5th straight olympics that a zoner will be the oldest olympian on the team.
7. manuel uribe has lost over 400 lbs on the zone diet, as well as his depression and hunger. he still weighs over 800 lbs and consumes only 2,000 calories a day. his lipid profile is one of the better lipid profiles in mexico! http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=2799700&page=1 . you can read dr. sears' response to the show and see the lipid profile of the then 800 lb man (he weighs less now) here: http://www.drsears.com/tabid/399/itemid/10218/Its-good-medicine-not-a-medical-mystery.aspx

my results have been incredible, too. i *love* my diet - i feel great, i'm much less hungry, i love what i eat, my energy has sky rocketed, i've dropped from 20% body fat to 11% body fat and I've gone from a 36" waist to a 32" waist in less than 9 months. my abs look better in my 40s than they did at any prior point in my life because i *never* had visible abs before. my body fat drips away and my muscles grow at twice the rate of when I was in my late teens, early twenties. oh, and my allergies are 95% diminished and i went a full year without calling in sick for the first time in my life. all this on less than 1800 calories per day (you need fewer calories on the zone diet because you can generate more atp from a calorie of fat than a calorie of carbohydrate (glucose)). my friend ended a 5.5 year constant back pain nightmare within one day of going on the zone + fish oil. she resisted changing her diet until she dropped $10k, out of pocket, on an mri to help identify her problem. Now she doesn't have a back problem - and her nsaid induced ulcer problem is now gone, too.

go the following page and download the pdf on the Anti-Inflammatory Medicine Monograph link (upper right hand corner).

http://drsears.com/ZoneResources/tabid/384/Default.aspx

not mentioned here is the correlation found between waist size and dementia - and I guarantee that this correlation is lot more serious than not drinking coffee. drinking coffee to reduce the risk of dementia and alzheimers (up to 270% greater risk co

This isn't the best reference but it's the best I could come up with in a few seconds:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/406083

you mean like this: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/25/2038217

or this: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/546153

or this: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/16/1859251

there a plane, a medical device, and a car all faulting because of software glitches. Thanks for making all that stuff work!

like you said *some* software engineers work with fault-intolerant devices... *most* real engineers work with fault-intolerant devices.

Somebody hasn't looked up the references! There was a prior 6 month study with IIRC 15 participants. Linky: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/529176

Etanercept is not a "new" drug, in the sense that it has already been trialed and approved for use in various inflamatory conditions such as Rheumatoid Arthritis. What concerns me is use of the perispinal injection and what trials have been conducted for this method of delivery. It looks like there is a link between this study and other research by Dr Edward Tobinick. I found a reference to a 6 month trial of this treatment involving 15 patients: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/529176 (registration required) I also found a Medline reference to an article on "Efficacy of etanercept delivered by perispinal administration for chronic back and/or neck disc-related pain: a study of clinical observations in 143 patients" Current Medical Research & Opinion 20(7):1075-85, 2004 Jul

Yeah, that's great.

I tell you what, I'll vote for a socialized health-care system if you volunteer you and yours to always lose the treatment lotto for cancer patients.
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=5720758a-c427-45b0-96f1-0960771f6278&k=85427&p=1
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061120.wxcancerdrugs20/BNStory/cancer
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5413132.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/politics_show/regions/east_midlands/7012406.stm

Or when the treatment stinks, guess what Canadians do?

" In Ontario, new drugs have become bogged down in paperwork and a slow review process, the report says. Private cancer clinics have sprung up to offer the drugs to patients who can afford to pay for them." Quoted from the first link above.

"The United Kingdom in particular comes out badly in the tables, showing cancer survival rates that are among the worst in Europe." Quoted from the article below.

Essentially you're saying that we should scrap the entire US system that has it's ups and downs but has covered the essential needs of all fairly well. For instance, all of Europe lags behind the US in detection and treatment of cancer, therefore survival rates are lower.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/561737 Reg required (sorry) interesting bits below.
colon and rectum (56.2% in Europe vs 65.5% in the United States)
breast (79.0% vs 90.1%)
prostate cancer (77.5% vs 99.3%)

The above statistics were compiled in a study by an Italian doctor.

Thanks, but no thanks. As the government has been shown to be incompetent at everything it attempts to do, I would rather it do less, so that I can do more. Your inability to cope with responsibility casts a shadow on your parents and educators, who should have taught you more about the ideology behind the USA's governmental system.

Less than one percent of smokers die of lung cancer. 90% of lung cancer is caused by smoking.
About twenty percent of smokers will get COPD (chronic bronchitis and emphysema). 90% of COPD is caused by smoking.

Most people will not get lung cancer or COPD no matter how much they smoke. It is very likely those affected have some sort of susceptability triggered by smoking.

These situations are exactly the same. And newer journal articles do not agree with this blogger.

There are aspects of our immune system that deal with macroscopic threats - parasites, foreign bodies, etc. In modern, industrialized society intestinal parasites and unremoved splinters aren't really a problem so a part of our immune system is left with very little to do. Like a bored child or pet, our immune system goes looking for something to do. It overreacts to pollen, proteins in common foods, and animal dander.

The War on Bacteria is about as futile as a war on the laws of thermmodynamics. You can't win. You can't even break even. And you have to play the game.

But, hey, thanks for playing!

"...if you want to damage your kidneys, starve your brain of glucose, and generally damage your body, that is. "Low carb" diets are toxic."

You know, I've heard this many times (mostly on the internet, of course) and never seen a shred of evidence to back it up. I have seen studies that found low carb diets safe and effective, though (Example of a study from the Journal of the American Medical Association).

"The body needs carbohydrates for energy, protien for tissue building, and fats for a variety of metabolic purposes. Carbs are what you're supposed to be burning, not protein; protein doesn't burn clean."

The body certainly needs protein and fats, but aside from being found with other important nutrients (vitamins and fiber) carbohydrates are not essential, strictly speaking.

"Eat less ... exercise more, and learn to de-stress - I think the constant low-level stress of American society is an under-explored cause of our obesity problem."

I agree completely with the above statement.

How stupidly selfish do you have to be to not want more women to be vaccinated against HPV?

Your post is utter shit. Really, it is. You write:

I'm overstating it. Sometimes the generic works fine, sometimes it doesn't. A Z-pack (prescription 3-day antibiotic) always wiped out my wife's sinus infections... The generic one she got when pregnant... didn't do anything. It could be the pregnancy, but I've had bad luck with many generics... One of the advantages of being the son of a Doctor, you know when a generic is just as good and when it's crap.

So basically we have a bunch of anecdotal evidence from you that generics don't work. A sort of anti-placebo affect. Unfortunately your experiences mean nothing. Really, they don't. Can you show me double-blind tests of generics v. brand names that prove that generics aren't as good as brand name drugs? No, you can't, because they don't exist, if a generic doesn't match the brand it doesn't get approved. If you had bothered to read the webpage you cite, you would have noticed this FDA requirement "Generic drug manufacturers must show that a generic drug is bioequivalent to the brand-name drug, which means the generic version delivers the same amount of active ingredients into a patient's bloodstream in the same amount of time as the brand-name drug."

There are no special carve-outs or gimmes in the FDA's regulations for manufacturers of generic drugs, nothing in . So why do doctors recommend brand name drugs? Well let's see, a lot of doctors are really fucking ignorant and a lot of doctors are being paid off by the drug industry with special junkets, trips, gifts, et al. If some guy comes down to your dad's office and hands him 5,000 samples of drug X and pays for a round of golf and a nice lunch at a local club I'm willing to bet that your dad is going to hand out those samples and I'm willing to bet that he writes more scripts for drug X. This problem has gotten so bad that major hospitals are banning drug salesmen from meeting with individual staff members and have banned free samples.

Drug companies have a huge incentive to confuse this issue as much as possible to preserve their profits just as they have an incentive to get people to use . Or in pushing drugs that are no more effective than existing drugs, such as the COX-2 inhibitors, and which have deadly side effects that far outweigh their benefits, or come up with minor reformulations of existing drugs which are patentable but which are no more effective than the existing drug or a generic version (Serafem anyone).

"Do a little research on the subject first, will ya."

OK, I'll start. Your turn.

Oh, and that figure I quoted earlier of 11,000 tests already? It's actually over 25,000 according to a more recent source. My bad.

Are you saying that the concept of 'Autism Spectrum Disorder' doesn't exist?

Of course not, the concept of walking through walls exists since there is more empty space in my body and the wall, but in my experience people don't walk through walls.

rocking back and forth in chairs

This is a symptom of a psychological problem, not a neuroligical one. Its very common for humans, especially those when psychologically hurt to rock back and forth. However, most humans grow out of that kind of behavior with socialization by the time they reach 9-10 years old, but some still do this kind of behavior when they are alone. Is there documentation of Bill Gates rocking back and forth in a chair as an adult in public? If so, then he has some pretty strong psychological problems. I've known people with mild terrets syndrome that could control their chirps and whatnot in public, but it wasn't worth their energy to do so with friends.

Oh, and what about Temple Grandin?

She is the poster child for autism, Asperger's, or something. After all, she has a PhD, and people that sell books for a living http://www.fhautism.com/ created a website for her, http://www.templegrandin.com/ so she must have it, or something right?

On her own, personal website, http://www.grandin.com/ she says she has a visual thinking problem _like_ some people that were not clinically diagnosed with autism here http://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html .

Here is an interview with her where the editor and interviewer say over and over again she has autism, but the only instance where she says anything remotely that she has autistic-like features is "I can remember, after lunch, I had a rest period when I could revert to autism, and I would pick the fuzz off the rug and eat it, and dribble sand through my hands -- I can remember just getting hypnotized doing this. If I had been allowed to do that all day, I wouldn't be here now." If I had an child whose only problems in life were picking fuzz off of the rug and eating it, I would be grateful.

Here is another account by her regarding here visualization problems. http://www.autism.org/temple/visual.html In this article she alludes that she has autistic-like features, and to overcome these she says "I describe a squeeze machine I constructed to satisfy my craving for the feeling of being held. The machine was designed so that I could control the amount and duration of the pressure. It was lined with foam rubber and applied pressure over a large area of my body."

Now, I don't know how old she was when she created this squeeze machine, but this puts her in at least a 1 in a million category here. I've known people to make machines like robots and things as adults for intellectually stimulating (again about 1 in a million here, maybe 500,000) but I seriously doubt that any females I know have built a stimulating machine (most likely a vibrator) over buying one.

I will put Temple Grandin in at least a 1 in a million category, but being that nobody of authority, including herself definitively says she has autism, and being that over 99% of those with autism cannot speak, I would say its safer to say she is not autistic.

Here is an interesting article about where the health care money actually goes. Purportedly, about 30% goes to the insurance companies, not to doctors, nurses, pharmaceutical companies, or anyone else actually involved in delivering medical care.

(The article is free, though you have to sign up, for free, with Medscape before getting access to it.)

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/508911

Here's just one discussion re brain lesions and the parasite: http://www.atdn.org/simple/toxo.html

And they find toxoplasmosis associated with brain lesions in AIDs patients: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/448708_3

Your comment: "However, the immune system attacks these tachyzoites, eliminating most of them before they can become cysts."

That is an invalid model. The immune system does not function as effectively in all parts of the body. The question is how effective the immune system is in the brain. The blood-brain barrier prevents molecules from entering the brain that are injurious to neurons. This can include antiparasitic drugs as well as regular immune system components. The immune system chemical signalling system does not work as effectively because the brain protects against some of its components. Thus it is not reasonable to assume that the immune system can detect or attack tachyzoites within the brain. Indeed in AIDS patients apparently they are more likely to spread. I suspect that even in more commonly immune-weakened patients in the general population, for example having severe flu, that the parasite enjoys growth.

I've seen these arguments before. Mostly from people who have some irrational dislike of cats. I can't say I really get it. But to each his own. Just so long as they don't try to shove their odd view on the rest of us, I don't give a damn.

Indeed. Yes, saying 'I've seen it all before and it doesn't agree with my worldview, and people who disagree must be cat-hating weirdos' makes for an effective argument. But hopefully the ones with the odd view might end up living longer and healthier than the smug ones.

NY started clamping down on trans fats in restaurants, it was just a matter of time 'til someone went after Oreo.

Medscape Medical News "Vegetable Consumption Slows Rate of Cognitive Decline" http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/546472?src=mp

It sounds like an easier path than the old fashioned imperialism thing which isn't working too well now.

Elevated estrogen and estrogen mimicking substances have made it into our rivers and streams, causing signs of hermaphroditism in fish. Scientists have discovered a wide range of other drugs in our drinking water, from pain killers to birth control pills to antidepressants. High levels of rocket fuel toxins have been found in mothers' milk. My city still uses lead piping to transfer most of its water, and they alkalinize the water to reduce lead levels to "acceptable" levels, even though scientists have pretty much shown that the only acceptable lead level is no lead at all.

It's not entirely clear what, if any, effects these substances have on developing children. Personally, I'd rather be safe than sorry and remove these contaminants from my water.

Hummm, I think you have been free market/profit motive theory indoctrinated.

I used to believe the free market is always best in every situations theoretical redirect as well. I was raised that way. However, after I chanced to read a few follow up studies and have got out and learnt to think on my own, I have come to believe the scientific approach is the only way to go: a theory, while it might be a good starting point, is only as good as it works in reality.

Under this measure, ya ya, ra ra, free market is always the best has a lot of answering to do. For example, a quick google for "cost of healthcare canada us" paints an interesting picture: the administration overhead costs in US and Canada are 31% and 17% respectively; the per capital expenses for health care is $2548 and $1886 (USD) respectively; the average life expectancy is 77.0 and 79.3 respectively; and the Harris polled population satisfaction relative to other industrialized nations is least and most respectively.

It should, at least, give one pause for thought.

PS: I know we feel invested in our viewpoints (which, ironically, are not usually ours in any sense of the word, but, rather, those of our parent's and our early educator's), however, there is nothing inconsistent or wrong with changing them as we feel fit. My favourite philosopher quote is something to the effect of "of course I don't feel the same as I did yesterday -- today I know more."

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/462311
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID =10515
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_and_American _health_care_systems_compared
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/health/healthwatch/canada .html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/US/healthcar e031020_poll.html

(and so on)

There is a study at http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/464830 on the topic of having pets about babies and if it affects them. In this study it was found that having a couple pets about a baby helped decrease the chance of the child being allergic to that pet later in life.

More to back up the "That which does not kill me only makes me stronger" theory.

This company has been known to be associated with April Fool's type hoaxes and controversy... "Seattle officials have introduced "Safe Harbors." An Orwellian phrase. Many homeless will not get a home, but they will be tagged and surveilled as they slog through the labyrinth of services and shelters. Safe Harbors will be a component in the federal Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). Participation is not mandatory. But programs that choose not to participate in the monitoring of misery will lose funding. Abuses are certain to arise. source But they also have some pretty nifty ideas. For example, the company planned to work with DoD on replacing dogtags with these chips. One of the benefits is that they will be able to track soldiers' movements and vitality statistics... "Is the soldier alive, what is his temperature, etc."

There are also security flaws with the chips... Unauthorized persons can access information on the chip, according to Mr. Swire, which exacerbates the potential for improper use of medical data. Similar problems exist with new biometric passports, because the biometric information is broadcast "in the clear" rather than in encrypted formats that avoid transmitting the information to unauthorized readers. source Also at issues was the possibility of third party vendors accessing information off those chips (remember its RFID based).

Using your fists on someone ... that I can see. The damage level is low ...

Interesting anecdote... but ulcers are not caused by stress. Two weeks of antibotics should set you right as rain, thanks to Dr. Marshal and Dr. Warren.

When Australian researcher Barry Marshall, MBBS, first suggested in the early 1980s that stomach ulcers were caused by the bacteria Helicobacter pylori, he was nearly laughed off the stage at an international infectious disease conference. But 20 years later, H pylori is acknowledged as the chief cause of peptic ulcers, and antibiotics are their preferred treatment.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/514219?src=hp3 0.lead

To prove it, he downed a whole load of pylori, giving himself the mother of all ulcers. Now that's science (both in the mainstream refusal, and the evidence required to prove it).

Recently it was reported on Slashdot that drinking even one cup of coffee was linked to some kind of adverse health issue.

I believe you're thinking of this article. Which specifically stated that decaffeinated coffee is unhealthy, not the caffeinated kind.

Finally, there are those people who consider themselves well learned and so propose that its the caffine in coffee that is beneficial, so drinking a couple cups of cola should also be beneficial, or popping a couple of caffine pills or those high-caf beverages.

Well, the original study that this article is based on did show that the association was with caffeine, not just coffee.