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IMHO, the renal-bone marrow transplant development has more potential than the liver tranplant story, because the chimerism is a deliberate, designed, and -- from the sounds of it -- meticulously documented intervention. In contrast, the girl covered in the article above was 'lucky': a combination of events converged to allow the hematopoietic stem cells to graft on. (It is not a common finding, but sometimes blood stem cells decide to reactivate themselves in the liver. One could speculate that they migrated from the liver to a bone marrow that was depleted by whatever initial infection and subsequent immunosuppression she had).

Though I'm not really sure how widely applicable even the kidney-bone marrow technique could be. The authors of the study chose relatively young people, who, aside from their poor kidney function, were able to withstand the initial doses of radiation, the bone marrow transplant, then a major operation for the kidney. But kudos to them.

IMHO, the renal-bone marrow transplant development has more potential than the liver tranplant story, because the chimerism is a deliberate, designed, and -- from the sounds of it -- meticulously documented intervention. In contrast, the girl covered in the article above was 'lucky': a combination of events converged to allow the hematopoietic stem cells to graft on. (It is not a common finding, but sometimes blood stem cells decide to reactivate themselves in the liver. One could speculate that they migrated from the liver to a bone marrow that was depleted by whatever initial infection and subsequent immunosuppression she had).

Though I'm not really sure how widely applicable even the kidney-bone marrow technique could be. The authors of the study chose relatively young people, who, aside from their poor kidney function, were able to withstand the initial doses of radiation, the bone marrow transplant, then a major operation for the kidney. But kudos to them.

Yeah, those Canadians sure are happy with their health care. There are pros and cons to all systems. You pay less directly overall in Canada, but you have longer waiting times and higher taxes.

What's to say some variant of a protein created in a GM crop won't trigger massive alergic reactions in a very small proportion of the population.

How about brazil nut allergen in genetically-engineered soybeans? It happened: "Identification of a Brazil-Nut Allergen in Transgenic Soybeans."

Conclusions: The 2S albumin is probably a major Brazil-nut allergen, and the transgenic soybeans analyzed in this study contain this protein. Our study shows that an allergen from a food known to be allergenic can be transferred into another food by genetic engineering.

What's to say some variant of a protein created in a GM crop won't trigger massive alergic reactions in a very small proportion of the population.

How about brazil nut allergen in genetically-engineered soybeans? It happened: "Identification of a Brazil-Nut Allergen in Transgenic Soybeans."

Conclusions: The 2S albumin is probably a major Brazil-nut allergen, and the transgenic soybeans analyzed in this study contain this protein. Our study shows that an allergen from a food known to be allergenic can be transferred into another food by genetic engineering.

Before you read all the comments about dog noise and feces, it might be interesting to know the on topic reason for the Chinese rules about dogs.

In 1979, China adopted its One Child Policy. That was in response to calculations showing that, it China did not reduce its population growth, hundreds of millions of people would die of starvation by 2025, because China does not have enough productive farm land to feed everyone projected to be alive if there was no birth rate limit.

The idea of limiting dog size is to reduce the competition for food from pets.

Also see The Effect of China's One-Child Family Policy after 25 Years.

This requirement for open publication is very nice for researchers and the public, but it's not completely new for research articles.

At The New England Journal of Medicine, subscribers have full access to all content, but folks who register - for free - have access to all research articles six months old and older. At Science, registered users have access to research articles at least twelve months old back to 1997. Science and NEJM are not the only journals or organizations with this option for registered users.

The real boon will not be in access to research articles for free, but in the ability to seach in a single location, rather than looking in forty places for information. The other real boon will be in access to summaries and reviews that are partially sponsored by NIH. There are many review articles in journals that aren't even abstracted at PubMed right now.

Couple that with the difficulty of applying the scientific method to humans (average life span of 75 years and ethical problems) and I think you'll see why medicine is a 'non-science.'

That difficulty is only a logistic difficulty, how to track a large number of people over a long period of time. But it is possible to overcome this difficulty, as is shown in the ERGO research project, where 10.000 people over 55 have from the Rotterdam district 'Ommoord' been tracked since 1990 (including yearly MRI scans of every single person). Since last year they've expanded this research to people over 45. This research already led to an astounding numbert of publications.

And indeed, some ethical issues, even by just following normal seamingly healthy persons: what do you do when you find abnormalities during the MRI brain scan? Dutch article with a picture and English article -that's not very useful is it- for subscribers only.

Patents, legislation & belief in what is good for you are what ruin medicine. Look at all the Hindu medicine that was ignored by the West for the longest time because it was ... well, Hindu.

Which is just as silly as using Hindu medicine because it was ... well, ignored by the West.

I'm a researching physician -- You did not take your own points to the logical conclusion:

A great deal (almost all) research has an NIH component of funding. Thus, if the bill goes through, *all journals will open their access* rather than have the scientists publish in lesser known journals, which will instantly become prestigious. The only articles that a 'closed' journal could publish would be those from industry or private/semiprivate funding sources (e.g. HHMI).

This is an indirect way of forcing open access to journals, which is a *great* thing.

Many journals have already opened up archive access. For instance, the New England Journal of Medicine http://nejm.org/ has its archive with free access, and also releases "important" or widely read articles for free immediately.

For the average scientist (including me) at a large institution, this has no effect. All of the hospital / university computers are whitelisted for almost all major journals by IP given the hospital / institution subscription. This will still occur, as I need journal access for articles when they come out, but this open archive access will benefit those not tied to major universities or private doctors out in the community.

Of note, it is an unspoken agreement in science that researchers at major institutions help others. Rarely we will receive an email from a doctor / researcher in Bumbletown, Argentina asking "Can you send me article from 1997 in X journal, they want $399 USD for an archive copy," I have a patient with this reported disease, etc.

They get a .pdf attachment in reply.

The study says that having friends who make unhealthy life choices tends to lead to one making unhealthy life choices. This is not incompatible with the idea that it's your choice, but you seem to make it out like it's nothing more than an excuse -- as if to say that no one is ever influenced by the choices of those around them, and we should never look to the outside for why we make the choices we do.

You dismissed a rigorous study that examined 32 years worth of data about over 12,000 people based on a dogmatic belief that all choices occur in a vacuum and that no one should ever look to their surroundings for why they might be acting the way they do. Did you read the study before giving it a knee-jerk dismissal, or were you too much in a rush to dominate the discussion by trying to get your personal anecdote of "real life experience" in early? Read the study. It's pretty interesting, but you might want to bone up on confidence intervals first.

To summarize, you took the exact same stance of dogma over reason as a young-Earth creationist, a global-warming skeptic, or a flat Earther would. It was your sheer wrongheadedness and your belligerent attitude about it that caused your post to be deservedly marked as Flamebait.

But you can too because they apparently put it on the Internet free
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/370
New England Journal of Medicine
The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years
Nicholas A. Christakis, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., and James H. Fowler, Ph.D.
357:370-379 July 26, 2007

Slashdotters will no doubt be interested in the Kamada-Kawai algorithm in Pajek software which is used to generate the social network images like this one http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/370 /F1 Networks are where it's at today.

They had 12,000 subjects (from the Framingham Heart Study) who had filled out detailed questionnaires, including the names of people (often also in the study) whom they regarded as friends. They compared friends, spouses, siblings and neighbors.

There were 3 kinds of friends: (1) I consider you my friend, and vice versa (2) I consider you my friend, but you don't consider me your friend (3) You consider me your friend, but I don't consider you my friend.

The strongest influence was on mutual friends. In case (2), if you were fat, you would influence me, but not vice versa.

They tried to prove that it was a causal effect, and not just an association, by watching to see what happens over time. If friend A gets fat, friend B gets fat a year later.

Mutual friends had the strongest influence. Women friends had a stronger influence than male friends.

Opposite-sex friends had no effect on each other.

Siblings had an effect on each other. But same-sex siblings had the strongest effect, and opposite-sex siblings had the least effect (almost none).

Spouses had a slightly weaker effect. (Which is surprising if you expect them to eat the same food.)

Neighbors had no effect on each other. So it has nothing to do with the driving distance to Macdonalds.

You could run that social networking analysis program on Slashdot.

But you can too because they apparently put it on the Internet free
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/370
New England Journal of Medicine
The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years
Nicholas A. Christakis, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., and James H. Fowler, Ph.D.
357:370-379 July 26, 2007

Slashdotters will no doubt be interested in the Kamada-Kawai algorithm in Pajek software which is used to generate the social network images like this one http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/370 /F1 Networks are where it's at today.

They had 12,000 subjects (from the Framingham Heart Study) who had filled out detailed questionnaires, including the names of people (often also in the study) whom they regarded as friends. They compared friends, spouses, siblings and neighbors.

There were 3 kinds of friends: (1) I consider you my friend, and vice versa (2) I consider you my friend, but you don't consider me your friend (3) You consider me your friend, but I don't consider you my friend.

The strongest influence was on mutual friends. In case (2), if you were fat, you would influence me, but not vice versa.

They tried to prove that it was a causal effect, and not just an association, by watching to see what happens over time. If friend A gets fat, friend B gets fat a year later.

Mutual friends had the strongest influence. Women friends had a stronger influence than male friends.

Opposite-sex friends had no effect on each other.

Siblings had an effect on each other. But same-sex siblings had the strongest effect, and opposite-sex siblings had the least effect (almost none).

Spouses had a slightly weaker effect. (Which is surprising if you expect them to eat the same food.)

Neighbors had no effect on each other. So it has nothing to do with the driving distance to Macdonalds.

You could run that social networking analysis program on Slashdot.

Aortic dissection. This is what kills you. It's the most common, lethal deceleration injury. Of course if you're going fast enough you're simply crushed, but at "lower" speeds a sudden deceleration is enough to rotate the heart (which is fairly mobile in the chest) and rip it off the aorta (which is fixed to the posterior chest wall). The arteriovenous ligament doesn't help, either. So the aorta ruptures and you die of a cardiac tamponade. Oh and this is how Princess Diana died.

That's a good story. I wonder if it's true.

By a strange coincidence (only on Slashdot), I just went to a conference on aortic surgery. And I used to edit the Stapp Car Crash Conference Proceedings in the 1970s (great series) and I remember at least one article on aortic damage.

Bottom line: Most of the aortic damage in automobile collisions occurs to people who weren't wearing their seat belts. Those lap and shoulder belts (which the U.S. auto companies refused to install until 1967) really work well. You can thank Ralph Nader for saving about 25,000 lives a year. The auto companies also made steering columns that were positioned exactly right and strong enough to impale the driver's chest, often with a heart puncture. Thanks to Ralph Nader, they replaced them with a collapsable steering column around 1967.

Let's see the latest stuff, um, http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/332/6/356 Smith MD et al, Transesophageal Echocardiography in the Diagnosis of Traumatic Rupture of the Aorta, N Engl J Med 1995 332:356-362. (Well worth reading; great X-rays.) 7 were not restrained, 2 were. Smith says:

Blunt chest trauma commonly results from motor vehicle accidents in which the sternum of an unrestrained driver strikes the steering wheel at impact.5 Rupture of the aorta has been estimated to account for up to 18 percent of deaths in motor vehicle accidents.19 As a result of rapid deceleration of the thorax and compression of the diaphragm, the aorta is subjected to extreme torque and compression at points of attachment: the sinuses of Valsalva, the isthmus, and the diaphragm.20 With compression of the mediastinum, the heart may be displaced into the right or left side of the chest, producing further stress at these points. The severe aortic-wall stress from intraluminal hypertension results in rupture through the intima, often continuing into the media and adventitial layers. Complete rupture usually results in death at the scene, whereas patients with a contained hematoma may survive to reach the hospital.

Whaddya know, the poster has a point. Aortic trauma is still a major cause of automobile fatalties, usually but not always when people aren't wearing seat belts (Diana wasn't).

But wait, Smith also says,

Thirteen patients (14.0 percent) ultimately died during hospitalization as a result of associated injuries, but no deaths were related to aortic injury (Table 1). The four deaths in the group with aortic injury were due to multiorgan-system failure (two patients), acute myocardial infarction (one patient), and hemorrhage from pelvic fracture (one patient).

I forget how to do the equations, but as I recall when a car collides against a solid barrier at 50mph, it has about 50 inches of crush space in which to come to a halt, and that comes to about 50g, which everybody told me is survivable. (One of you young whippersnappers can check my numbers.) John Paul Stapp tested it himself on his rocket sled and lived. But if you subjected 100 people to 50g, I don't know how many of them would get aortic rupture.

The other major cause of death (mostly to people who aren't wearing seat belts) is head injury. Thanks to Ralph Nader, those windshields are carefully designed with plastic laminate that has just the right elasticity to bring a passenger's head to a stop with low enough force to avoid breaking his

Here's the way they do it today:

http://content.nejm.org/content/vol352/issue20/ima ges/large/02f2.jpeg

Sergeant David Emme, a supply officer with a U.S. Army Stryker Brigade, was stationed at a submachine gun on a truck rolling through northern Iraq last November, in a convoy transporting Iraqi volunteers to Mosul for military training. As they entered the town of Talafar, Emme noticed that the streets were unusually quiet: no children were outdoors running toward the vehicles demanding sweets. Emme got on the radio and warned others in the convoy: "Something might happen. They might have some plan for us." Moments later, as they slowed at a traffic circle, an improvised explosive device (IED) went off right next to Emme's truck, knocking him out....

New England Journal of Medicine
Traumatic Brain Injury in the War Zone
Susan Okie, M.D.
Volume 352:2043-2047
May 19, 2005
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/352/20/20 43

They can survive, but life after a severe head wound is pretty bad:

Jason Pepper can't see the deer and wild turkeys that feed in the pasture in front of his new home, an hour's drive from Nashville. But when he sits and smokes on his front porch, he likes knowing they're out there -- and even more, he savors the silence. Pepper, who was blinded by a bomb in Iraq in 2004, completed a rehabilitation program for blind veterans last year at the Edward Hines, Jr., Veterans Affairs Hospital in Illinois, learning to find his way using a cane and a personal global positioning system (GPS) device. With this device he was able to travel alone by public transportation into downtown Chicago. By moving to the country, Pepper has given up that independence: his wife or her brother must drive him to his college classes and other appointments. But to Pepper, a former Army combat engineer still struggling with disabling headaches, episodic anxiety, and other sequelae of the blast that blinded him, damaged his brain, wounded both arms, and destroyed his sense of smell, it seemed more important to escape from the sounds he associates with danger and combat....

New England Journal of Medicine
Reconstructing Lives -- A Tale of Two Soldiers
Susan Okie, M.D.
Volume 355:2609-2615
December 21, 2006
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/25/26 09

Here's the way they do it today:

http://content.nejm.org/content/vol352/issue20/ima ges/large/02f2.jpeg

Sergeant David Emme, a supply officer with a U.S. Army Stryker Brigade, was stationed at a submachine gun on a truck rolling through northern Iraq last November, in a convoy transporting Iraqi volunteers to Mosul for military training. As they entered the town of Talafar, Emme noticed that the streets were unusually quiet: no children were outdoors running toward the vehicles demanding sweets. Emme got on the radio and warned others in the convoy: "Something might happen. They might have some plan for us." Moments later, as they slowed at a traffic circle, an improvised explosive device (IED) went off right next to Emme's truck, knocking him out....

New England Journal of Medicine
Traumatic Brain Injury in the War Zone
Susan Okie, M.D.
Volume 352:2043-2047
May 19, 2005
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/352/20/20 43

They can survive, but life after a severe head wound is pretty bad:

Jason Pepper can't see the deer and wild turkeys that feed in the pasture in front of his new home, an hour's drive from Nashville. But when he sits and smokes on his front porch, he likes knowing they're out there -- and even more, he savors the silence. Pepper, who was blinded by a bomb in Iraq in 2004, completed a rehabilitation program for blind veterans last year at the Edward Hines, Jr., Veterans Affairs Hospital in Illinois, learning to find his way using a cane and a personal global positioning system (GPS) device. With this device he was able to travel alone by public transportation into downtown Chicago. By moving to the country, Pepper has given up that independence: his wife or her brother must drive him to his college classes and other appointments. But to Pepper, a former Army combat engineer still struggling with disabling headaches, episodic anxiety, and other sequelae of the blast that blinded him, damaged his brain, wounded both arms, and destroyed his sense of smell, it seemed more important to escape from the sounds he associates with danger and combat....

New England Journal of Medicine
Reconstructing Lives -- A Tale of Two Soldiers
Susan Okie, M.D.
Volume 355:2609-2615
December 21, 2006
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/25/26 09

Here's the way they do it today:

http://content.nejm.org/content/vol352/issue20/ima ges/large/02f2.jpeg

Sergeant David Emme, a supply officer with a U.S. Army Stryker Brigade, was stationed at a submachine gun on a truck rolling through northern Iraq last November, in a convoy transporting Iraqi volunteers to Mosul for military training. As they entered the town of Talafar, Emme noticed that the streets were unusually quiet: no children were outdoors running toward the vehicles demanding sweets. Emme got on the radio and warned others in the convoy: "Something might happen. They might have some plan for us." Moments later, as they slowed at a traffic circle, an improvised explosive device (IED) went off right next to Emme's truck, knocking him out....

New England Journal of Medicine
Traumatic Brain Injury in the War Zone
Susan Okie, M.D.
Volume 352:2043-2047
May 19, 2005
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/352/20/20 43

They can survive, but life after a severe head wound is pretty bad:

Jason Pepper can't see the deer and wild turkeys that feed in the pasture in front of his new home, an hour's drive from Nashville. But when he sits and smokes on his front porch, he likes knowing they're out there -- and even more, he savors the silence. Pepper, who was blinded by a bomb in Iraq in 2004, completed a rehabilitation program for blind veterans last year at the Edward Hines, Jr., Veterans Affairs Hospital in Illinois, learning to find his way using a cane and a personal global positioning system (GPS) device. With this device he was able to travel alone by public transportation into downtown Chicago. By moving to the country, Pepper has given up that independence: his wife or her brother must drive him to his college classes and other appointments. But to Pepper, a former Army combat engineer still struggling with disabling headaches, episodic anxiety, and other sequelae of the blast that blinded him, damaged his brain, wounded both arms, and destroyed his sense of smell, it seemed more important to escape from the sounds he associates with danger and combat....

New England Journal of Medicine
Reconstructing Lives -- A Tale of Two Soldiers
Susan Okie, M.D.
Volume 355:2609-2615
December 21, 2006
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/25/26 09

It's not that there's any free lunch, but Americans pay more per capita in taxes to health care than the Japanese do in both public and private costs combined.

The United States has the Hummer of health care systems.

Gordon Guyatt et al. just published "A systematic review of studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the United States," in volume 1, issue 1 of Open Medicine, a new Canadian journal with an editorial board composed of some of the world's top medical experts, and a staff that just quit or got fired from Canada's formerly top medical journal.http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/ 1 The review's conclusion is:

"Available studies suggest that health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent."

The article also says that, in 2003, Americans spent an estimated US$5,635 per capita on health care, while Canadians spent US$3,003.

The journal Open Medicine is another story. John Hoey, editor of CMAJ, the journal of the Canadian Medical Association, was fired last year by the CMA, and most of the staff resigned. http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/354/19/19 82 http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/174/1/9 http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/173/12/1435 Hoey sent reporters to buy morning-after pills in pharmacies around Canada. They found out that pharmacists illegally asked for personal information, which was entered in their computers. The Canadian Pharmacists Association complained to the CMA, and the CMA censored the story. The CMAJ staff now founded this new journal, Open Medicine, and they have loaded the first issue with the best studies they could get.

UT, modern "western" medicine is something called evidence based medicine. You don't get to just try random stuff on people until you've got some evidence it's likely to do more good than harm, and then you have to set it up in such a way that it can be confirmed whether it does more good than harm, with as few subjects as possible.

My understanding is that this would only be true if it were year round. Accidents increase on both the days that we spring forward (less sleep) and the days that we fall back (interruption in our "circadian rhythms").

Of course, it turns out that it might not even save lives if year round (search for "school bus accidents").

Did you even read your source? YOUR source said that there were 88 less deaths per year in the entire US. That is 88 people out of 300,000,000. When someone says that you have a 1 in a million chance, they are talking about this. That 1 in a million is even including those who are severely ill with other things, the elderly, those with compromised immune systems, and whatnot. The reason there was a 92% drop in childhood deaths is because a child dying of chicken pox is so rare that 1 less death shows up as a huge percentage. Using percentages with such low numbers is the "desperate" argument. Here are some death numbers to ponder before claiming that the chicken pox vaccine is even worthy of notice:

Estimated deaths due to no chicken pox vaccine: 88
Deaths due to lightning strike: 82
Alzheimer's: 60,000
Assault: 17,500
Driving: 40,000
Flying: 200
High School Football: 30
Traveling to and from school: 800

The numbers of possible lives saved by this vaccine is so low as to be under the radar. You could get almost half as good results by just banning high school football. Heck, you could get just as good results by having 10% of the current school kids moving to home schooling. Using risk of death by chicken pox as an excuse for the vaccine is simply FUD, so that the parents who don't want to take a week off work can feel good about their decision. It is also entirely possible that the numbers of deaths due to chicken pox has actually been increased dramatically, but pushed off for 20 years. Ask your pediatrician. They will tell you that the vaccine might not last into adulthood, and we all know how much worse that will be.

So, if you are really interested in reducing the risk of death for your child, you would take your kid to a pox party, and start home schooling immediately. Heck, just not letting your kid play football is better protection than the chick pox vaccine.

Here's a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine indicating a [statistically] significant reduction in the number of deaths due to varicella [and its complications] since the vaccination program began. Note the highest rate of reduction (92%) was in children ages 1-4. This study indicates that while breakthrough cases can happen in vaccinated individuals, such cases are typically of the mild variety and that the vaccine had a high (97%) effectiveness against moderate to severe infections.

I would also note that, so far, the possible need for booster shots of the varicella vaccination in early adulthood is still not certain. While there is evidence that an effective late-childhood (13+ years) requires two vaccinations four weeks apart, we've had only 11 years with the vaccine. Besides, part of the reason such a concern exists is because the vaccine does have a reduced effectiveness after the first year - a reduction that does not seem to continue throughout childhood. If the data becomes available supporting a significant attenuation in the effectiveness of the vaccine (represented either by testing the varicella titers of vaccinated individuals or by adult varicella outbreaks) over such an extended time, then steps can be taken at that point. In the meantime, why put children at increased risk unnecessarily?

As for your faulty, and somewhat desperate IMHO, comparison to riding in a car, I would say that the goal is never - and can never be - to eliminate all risks to a child's health. That's obviously impossible. If, however, a health risk can be reduced significantly by a vaccination, it makes zero sense not to do so.

Here's a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine indicating a [statistically] significant reduction in the number of deaths due to varicella [and its complications] since the vaccination program began. Note the highest rate of reduction (92%) was in children ages 1-4. This study indicates that while breakthrough cases can happen in vaccinated individuals, such cases are typically of the mild variety and that the vaccine had a high (97%) effectiveness against moderate to severe infections.

I would also note that, so far, the possible need for booster shots of the varicella vaccination in early adulthood is still not certain. While there is evidence that an effective late-childhood (13+ years) requires two vaccinations four weeks apart, we've had only 11 years with the vaccine. Besides, part of the reason such a concern exists is because the vaccine does have a reduced effectiveness after the first year - a reduction that does not seem to continue throughout childhood. If the data becomes available supporting a significant attenuation in the effectiveness of the vaccine (represented either by testing the varicella titers of vaccinated individuals or by adult varicella outbreaks) over such an extended time, then steps can be taken at that point. In the meantime, why put children at increased risk unnecessarily?

As for your faulty, and somewhat desperate IMHO, comparison to riding in a car, I would say that the goal is never - and can never be - to eliminate all risks to a child's health. That's obviously impossible. If, however, a health risk can be reduced significantly by a vaccination, it makes zero sense not to do so.

I just heard a lecture on this subject today, so I can assure you that there has *NEVER* been any reputable study that showed a link between autism and childhood vaccinations. The entire argument is based on a post-hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy: children get their vaccinations while around 1 years old, and the first signs of autism are noticeable about 6 months later, therefore the vaccinations cause autism.

What have the studies shown?

1) There is no difference in the rates of autism between vaccinated and un-vaccinated children.

2) Rates of autism have increased even though thimerosal was removed from the vaccines.

3) The increased rate of autism diagnosis is due to better identification and broader criteria, not due to a new cause.

Regardless, this has generated so much controversy that thimerosal has been removed from nearly all vaccines.
Don't get me wrong: vaccines do have a risk associated with them. But as far as the best science shows, autism is not one of them.

The withdrawal was basically P.R.. There seems to be a growing attitude that any risk is unacceptable; the Vioxx numbers before and after they got in trouble are basically the same. You are spot on though, if someone could get by on something else, the risk was enough for it to be a good idea.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/354/11/11 96

But would the person who lives longer and does not smoke be in better health and require less medical care in theory?

Yes and no. The smoker is more likely to get lung cancer at 60, with large medical expenses and death as a common result. The nonsmoker will have fewer expenses at 60, but may live 30 more years and have more of an opportunity to have even more expensive conditions, plus they'll receive more Social Security and other government payments. From the New England Journal of Medicine: "If people stopped smoking, there would be a savings in health care costs, but only in the short term. Eventually, smoking cessation would lead to increased health care costs."

(Apropos to my sig, this is yet another reason to cure aging; the economic benefits alone would be enormous).

"The OP has a choice about which coverage option to choose, and can change if it's not the best option given individual circumstances. You don't and can't."

Incorrect. Canadians are free to purchase additional coverage over and above the provincial plans at their own cost or with costs shared by employers. The provincial plan is a *baseline*, not a *ceiling*.

"Things don't come for free. It's all about how you choose to pay for it. Personally, I'd much rather have the choice in my own hands, rather than in the hands of a politician who can't possibly know what's best for me as an individual, and has only weak standards of efficiency to live up to."

You clearly don't know about how private insurance works, if you think "efficiency" has anything to do with it. Private insurers eat up to 30% (industry average of between 10% and 15%) of all premiums in "overhead" costs (salaries, buildings, processing, etc.), compared to less than 5% for public insurers (See http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/349/8 /768 and http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/ 24/6/1629 and http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=16 23 for starting sources and you can continue your research from there).

What's far more amusing in your stance, however, is your willingness to trust profit-motive-driven corporations with knowing what's best for you as an individual (you don't pick your health plan--your employer does, and even then they can only pick what plans are *offered* by the insurance companies) which have no accountability to you whatsoever, rather than trust someone who is ultimately accountable to the citizenry such as elected provincial officials and the offices they oversee.

In short, you may be right that second hand smoke is bad for you, but if you don't do the research to actually find out whether and how much of an effect it has, then you are just as bad as creationists.

Here you go:
Epidemological study on the correlations between exposure to SHS and severe childhood asthma attacks.
A study showing the increased risk of developing heart disease from SHS.
An analysis of 37 studies on SHS and lung cancer.

Is that evidence enough for you? If not, you can play for days on Google's Scholar search putting in "second hand smoke" and various diseases caused by it. You will find next to no studies claiming that SHS is harmless. Much like global warming, you have to step outside the realm of experts on the subject to find "debunkers." I'm not sure what sort of logical process would invoke such a strong skepticism over the idea that the same chemical stew that kills smokers might also have effects on the people not holding the cigarette without questioning the effect on smokers themselves. Skepticism's healthy, but there's a limit.

In the few minutes he talked about it he seemed to be taking a reactionary stance against people like you who attack and namecall based on your unsupported assumptions. If you want to sway the middle-of-the-roaders like me, you need to provide scientific evidence rather than conjecture blown way out of proportion by people with extreme views.

Hrm. It seems interesting that a "middle of the roader" will hold me to standards of intellectual integrity that you won't hold Crichton to. I mean, nowhere do I see him making any support for his assertions (which is the bulk of what I actually wrote about, if you go back and actually read my post). Also, I do provide links to articles thoroughly debunking the assertions he makes in his books (even though there's nothing directly refutable in his empty statements of "they're just wrong" in his speeches). The best he ever gets is, "Scientists were wrong on this other completely unrelated subject material, so why trust them on this?" But, hey, I'm the one not backing myself up, right?

If you are simply asking for supporting evidence of global warming, then please go and read the many articles in RealClimate's archive. For a more layman's approach, go see the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." There is no lack of consensus within the climate research community.

If you're actually attacking my assertions on SHS and not global warming, then fine. I did not back them up initially because I thought it was freaking obvious and because my post was excessively long at that point anyway. It was pretty rushed and had some nasty grammar errors because of cutting and pasting sentences into a more cohesive whole. (That's also how I lost the bit about DDT being banned because of effects on wildlife.) In my experience, the only people who seriously question SHS's effects on others are smokers in denial. Why bother trying to reach them? They've built up a lifetime of mental and emotional defenses against the ramifications of their actions, and no amount of truth will reach them.

Jehovah's Witness have a theological objection to blood transfusions, but unlike Christian Scientists, not to medical treatment in general. In fact, they are quite insistent on high quality healthcare.

As such, they advocate the use of blood transfer alternatives.

There are various groups of Witnesses that advocate changing the doctrine, but, however odd it may seem to the rest of us, it's one of core teachings of the church and has survived even when other once-rejected medical technologies (organ transplants, certain immunizations) have now been accepted.

This doctrine has caused the Witnesses to push the medical community to come up with many alternatives to transfusion. These alternatives include Erythropoietin Therapy, Hemopure, a bovine-hemoglobin based blood substitute (this was quite a surprise, as previously even animal blood was considered taboo), perfluorocarbon based blood substitutes (back when I was young, I knew Witnesses who had been guinea pigs for this stuff), and a host of others. There are also specific surgical guidelines published in dealing with Witnesses.

All in all, the Witnesses are one of the main driving forces for research into lessening the need for blood transfusions. There are others to be sure (type matching, blood shortages, infectious diseases carried by tainted blood, etc.), but nothing beats having a large pool of otherwise healthy patients who are highly motivated to be test subjects.

I see no reason to not allow built in hands-free kits when many drivers can use them safely. I really wonder about the accuracy of the ONE study that claims talking while driving is as bad as driving drunk.

I've actually more thoroughly addressed this in another post. It's not just ONE study. That post is just about the body work of a single researcher, but he's one of the few researchers to actually put people in simulators and measure reaction times instead of doing after-the-fact statistical analysis of accidents.

Hands free vs. handset is mostly irrelevant for reaction time, so it's not possible to use a hands-free set "safely." It's the problem of dual-task separation that causes slower reaction times when using a cellphone. You can't concentrate as well on the road when concentrating on a conversation. We aren't as capable of multitasking as we think we are, and controlled experiments have measured the difference.

From the 7th study on Strayer's site:

Compared to single-task conditions, cell-phone drivers' reactions were 18% slower, their following distance was 12% greater, and they took 17% longer to recover the speed that was lost following braking.

Incidentally, in the 8th study where he compares people with a BAC of 0.08 vs cellphone drivers, the drunk drivers manage to get away without an accident while the cellphone drivers had 3. I found that funny.

I made the mistake of digging for primary material last year, after an argument with my boss about the effectiveness of Tamiflu. (My employer's classed as 'critical infrastructure', so we have 500 full courses of Tamiflu stockpiled with our names on; the boss asserted that this meant we had nothing to worry about.) However, if you look for coverage in respected journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine or 'Nature', you will see that one of the major problems being planned for is the sudden disposal of millions of corpses. Sounds funny, huh? Go read the articles and tell me you still find it funny.

Right on. Look at the two articles published the other day in the New England Journal of Medicine regarding the use of hypertonic saline in patients with Cystic Fibrosis. Both of those studies were supported by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation which has done a tremendous job marshalling resources toward finding a cure and new treatments for a rare disease.

New England Journal of Medicine: http://content.nejm.org/
Cystic Fibrosis Foundation: http://www.cff.org/

Here are the current physician points of interest being batted about on this topic:

Avian Flu Deaths Linked to Tamiflu Resistance:

• Advise patients who ask that the H5N1 strain of avian flu - while seen as having the potential to spark a human pandemic - is so far mostly confined to birds and shows little sign of being able to cause widespread disease in humans.
• Note that this study shows that the H5N1 virus, when it does infect humans, can develop resistance to the antiviral drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir) with fatal consequences.
• Advise patients that this study suggests stockpiling Tamiflu may not be appropriate, and inappropriate or inadequate use of the drug may lead to resistance; such improper use is likely without medical guidance.
• Note that accompanying editorials to this study suggest that the public health perspective clearly indicates that a physician has an obligation not to prescribe Tamiflu for stockpiling- a position that is tantamount to a prohibition against prescribing it. (my emphasis)

Two patients from Vietnam, 18 and 13, that died to to compications from avian influenza were recently shown to harbor oseltamivir (Tamiflu) resistant strains fo the virus. The 13 year old female was give 75mg doses at the first symptoms of the infections, keeping the virus in check for approx. 3 days. She succumbed several days later. The 18 year old was given a full 14 day treatment with oseltamivir, died, and replicating virus was still isolated from her.

.....physicians should decline any request for a prescription for the purpose of stockpiling oseltamivir....

As a side not to all of this, the other drug is Relenza (zanamivir). It is great, with one downside. Currenty prearation is inhalation delivery. Which means if you are in respiratory distress, say like you have bird flu, or ARDS or similar, the delivery method is not the best.

(Via New England Journal of Medicine De Jong MD et al. Oseltamivir Resistance during Treatment of Influenza A (H5N1) Infection. N Engl J Med 2005;353:2667-72. .)

In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, multifocal consolidation involving at
least two zones was the most common abnormali-
ty among patients at the time of admission. Pleural
effusions are uncommon. Limited microbiologic
data indicate that this process is a primary viral
pneumonia, usually without bacterial suprainfec-
tion at the time of hospitalization.
Progression to respiratory failure has been as-
sociated with diffuse, bilateral, ground-glass infil-
trates and manifestations of the acute respirato-
ry distress syndrome (ARDS). In Thailand, the
median time from the onset of illness to ARDS was
6 days (range, 4 to 13). Multiorgan failure with
signs of renal dysfunction and sometimes cardiac
compromise, including cardiac dilatation and su-
praventricular tachyarrhythmias, has been com-
mon.
  Other complications have included influenza A infection,
ventilator-associated pneumonia, pulmonary hem-
orrhage, pneumothorax, pancytopenia, Reye's syn-
drome, and sepsis syndrome without documented
bacteremia.

-----
"This is not correct. The crime rate in the U.S. has been declining since 1993:"
-----

So what? You seem to forget what happened after Katrina and Rodney King trial. Your massaging of the data also neglects to mention by what standard your judging and why crime is decreasing. Pay close attention what countries resemble your murder rate, rapes, drug use and assults. Nothing remotely like a fully developed first world nation. (per capita)

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_mur_cap (
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_rap
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_dru_off
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_ass_cap

Not that you not trying to arrest people. For a "free" nation you seem to have BY FAR the highest incarceration rate in the world despite all the high crime stats.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_pri_per_ca p&int=50

For the real badasses there is always enlightened execution to "fix" the problem. (Right up the their with China, The Republic of Congo and Iran.)

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_exe

"That's an interesting theory, but not proven by sources. A typical Chinese citizen lives just under 71 years, but a typical US citizen lives just under 78 years."

Hmmmm... I did read this somewhere however the balance of sources makes me think I have been misinformed on China's status.

HOWEVER----- it really doesn't dismiss the general point I was making as you seem to rank 48th in the world right below Puerto Rico (this despite massive technological leaps in the 20th century and supposedly the best medicine money can buy)

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/hea_lif_exp_at _bir_tot_pop&int=50

Furthermore the point also made on the comment on the possibility of decreasing lifespans in the short term. This is only a theory but pay close attention to which "journal" this was published in.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/352/11/1 138

Of course there are plenty of things nice about America. Unfortunately your adversion to violence, greed and pollution are not among them.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/mil_exp_dol_fi g&int=-1

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/env_co2_emi&in t=50

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_eco_aid_do n_cap

Cold war is over. No reason to not join the human race now-- that is unless you have something else in mind? Let's see what the extreme right wing in the US has to say on this?

http://groups.google.ca/group/humanities.philosoph y.objectivism?lnk=sg&hl=en
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism_in_th e_United_States
http://www.weeklystandard.com/

So in the end the world is protecting it's interests. Maybe they'll stockpile a new collection WMDs as large as your own eventually. Congrats on the new philsophy that everybody take whatever you can get and don't give

If you read the article, you see that this gene apparently increases bone mass and musculature while perhaps increasing the risk of diabetes. A gene by itself doesn't do anything. It has to be expressed in some way. So, what does this gene do? It sure seems like it must play a key role in the regulation of growth hormone. Previous trials of human growth hormone have shown benefits in the geriatric crowd of increased bone mass, increased musculature, and a hightened glucose intolerence. Why not skip the gene therapy and get the growth hormone injections instead?

i recommend a game of "Go" a day

"It's official: playing go really does keep your mind sharp. Researchers have just released a comprehensive study of the benefits of challenging intellectual activity among the elderly and found that exercising the mind through board games, social activities and education offers powerful protection against mental deterioration and disease.

'Those who played board games had a 74 percent lower risk and those who played an instrument had a 69 percent lower risk. Doing crossword puzzles cut the risk by 38 percent,' reported Shankar Vedantam in the June 19 Washington Post. The report found that seniors who regularly engaged in mentally challenging pastimes reduced their chances of developing Alzheimer's disease and other dementias by as much as 75 percent, compared with those who didn't exercise their minds."

More info on Go, the game that exercises both sides of your brain!

You simply confuse my point but bring to light some interesting ideas. Anyway the primary purpose of sex is to reproduce. This happens to be fun therefore recreational because of some evolutionary process. So yes the primary purpose of sex is recreational. The primary purpose happens to share the characteristic of being recreational.

However for the gun or whatever weapon, the primary use is to kill. It is used as a weapon of war. The secondary use is for recreation which is just shooting. The act of shooting a gun is recreational but that is its secondary use. The primary use is to kill which maybe fun or not. I would think its not fun to kill or be in war. Then again I haven't so I can't say first hand. However the mental impacts of war tend to point that it is not fun.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply all journals do this but many well-known ones including the New England J Med, Springer and Elsevier (includes many, many journals) do:

http://authors.elsevier.com/getting_published.html ?dc=CI

http://www.springeronline.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0, 11855,5-40007-70-1119401-detailsPage%253Djournal%2 57CcopyrightInformation%257CcopyrightInformation,0 0.html

http://authors.nejm.org/Misc/MsSubInstr.asp

Redelmeier DA, Tibshirani RJ. Association between cellular-telephone calls and motor vehicle collisions. N Engl J Med 1997;336:453-458. ( Abstract/Full Text)

Prepare for the chants of "but it will after more development!"

Doesn't matter. It isn't needed. It tries to address a threat that is not there now and NEVER will be. Even the most hare-brained dictator knows that lobbing ICBMs at the U.S. mainland isn't going to work and will just result in the "liberation" of their country.

At least some of the world is trying to abandon the path of large-scale war and high-tech weapons as a means of resolving disputes and protecting your interests. Financial war can be messy but at least you don't get this.

There's no evidence to suggest that it was either systematic or at "very high levels" of either the Military or Executive branch.
The general in charge of Iraq operations failed to provide sufficient force levels or adequate supervision of activities at Abu Ghraib. Further prisoner abuse was reported in other military prison facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Abuse was widespread enough that there's good reason to label it as systematic, even if the generals can scapegoat some poor grunts and low level officers and hide behind plausible deniability.

I'll remind you that every prisoner left with his head on his shoulders.
Did you know about this and this?
Dead is dead. So Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib were carried out in a body bag with their heads attached to their shoulders.
The level of gruesomeness doesn't change that both were murder, some done on behalf of a country that claims to be above torture and murder of prisoners. When word gets out, it supports Zarqawi and his ilk who claim "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose", and weakens any legitimacy of the U.S presence in Iraq. Shouldn't US citizens know what is being done in their name and how it affects the Iraqi population's view of the occupation? When it affects the ability to obtain intelligence that might stop the kidnappings and beheadings and win some battles in the war on terror instead of fanning the flames of Islamic mistrust?

But no, that would be unfair. Instead, keep on fanning the flames of moral outrage sparked by 9/11. The U.S.A. never does anything wrong and it's the terrorists that are bloody murderers.

The USA is making the same mistakes the French made in Algeria and it look increasingly likely that it may end in the same way, in civil war with thousands deads and the country in the hands of Islamic extremists. If that happens President Bush will have achieved what no one thought possible, making Saddam Hussein look good by comparison.

You're right. Not everything on the web is real. However, there is an occasional kernel of truth.

You're right. Not everything on the web is real. However, there is an occasional kernel of truth.

What you do not seem to realise that there are several factors at play here, some of which are:

- governments of any stripe just as any private enterprise (ever hear of bankrupcy?) can be incompetent and not being able to manage money or medical equipment

- many healthcare workers and doctors are greedy and quite willing to sabotage the whole system to make a killing when things go private and thus prone to keeping MRIs not running full capacity, overprescribing the test to fill the devices capacity etc etc.

- for the same reasons, the people who wish to make a killing on privatisation also tend to create an illusion of great efficiency by collaborating to make the "for pay" version seem speedy and affordable while the public one unuseable. As soon as this "for pay" version is the only option, while it remains speedy, the "affordable" part disappears in a hurry. Oh, and any two-tier manouvers always lead to all the medical workers wanting to work for the one which has greater pay. Guess what happens to the public one if they all spend 100% of their time trying to get out of it for their slice of the "bonanza".

- private clinics have to get paid by someone and would have to serve the same number of patients as current public ones and turn a profit. Tidy one at that. What do you suppose the overall cost will be? Add at least 50% to our current cost. Are you not aware of efforts within US to reduce their truly gigiantic and costly (much more expensive then ours, nearly double per-capita) system by introducing Canadian style administration? See, turns out we spend a fraction (3%) of the money on administration while they spend 30%. Add 27% to our current cost. Small "use" fees? Thats how they start. Once you get that, its just a matter of "improving service" and "offerring new options" before the fees are on par with the US. You do realize that 1/7 (43 million) of all US citizens do not have any medical insurance or benefits? That dying from uncured illness is a normal thing among those people? But then on the other hand, doctors in the US are over twice as richas ours. I wonder if there is any connection. No... scratch that, actually I believe that this item alone is one of the leading causes of all of our equipment and resource "shortages".

While problems and wait lists and all sorts of other crap happens with our medicare, the solution is most certainly something other then throwing the whole thing over to the opportunistic hyenas lurking in the dark and waiting for easy spoils.

... at least not about the total number killed...

That is not the point. Noone claims that Saddam is a saint. Murderous, imbecillic dictator? Sure. Number of dead? Huge, 150.000 of them alone killed by allies in the first gulf war (remember the Highway of Death?). War to remove him? Impractical, ill-advised, badly planned, rush, worst alternative of all choices. Anyone with a brain knew this beforehand although the general public seems to be waking up only now and spin control is in full force. Iraq is just about gone. International laws fucked. Support for US world-wide abysmal. Osama Bin Laden? Having a field day setting up new network in previously near-unreachable to him Iraq, quite a comeback after actually getting near defeated in Afghanistan.

Bushists did make up so many imbecillic lies and overexaggerations that noone can tell if "gasing the Kurds" was a PR stunt (over an Iranian war crime) designed to enrage people into believing that Saddam is about to nuke New York.

Real agendas of neo-cons are suspected by many to be different and quite contrary to the public chest beating displays.

Ever heard of a Bragg Peak?

Ever heard of multi-beam treatment?

Sheesh!