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No, we walked ten miles up hill both ways. It's fine, keep your head in the sand.

https://www.psychologytoday.co...
https://www.news-medical.net/h...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/a...

And yet, we have this story from just a few months ago: https://www.ageofautism.com/20... Do vaccines work? Yes. Are they safe? For most, yes. However, some people have had adverse reactions, including death, after a vaccine shot: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/b... Why is it assumed that vaccines are 100% safe for everyone? I can eat a bag of peanuts, but some people can die from just a trace of peanut. Why wouldn't vaccines be the same? Also, vaccines contain some toxic chemicals. I know the levels in an individual vaccine shot should be safe, but how about when a doctor administers multiple vaccines at once? Here's a list of vaccine ingredients: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/p... Then we have stories like this: https://www.news-medical.net/n...

IQ is genetic and adoption studies kind of confirm it. Is this so surprising? After all, some genetic traits lead to larger people (Northern Europeans vs. Southern Europeans) or more fast-twitch muscles for some groups over others, why wouldn't we expect race to impact intelligence?

Does anyone know if the auto-immune suppressant supplied by intestinal worms would "stop the immune system in the type 1 diabetes (autoimmune) from just destroying all of the new islets from this process"?

See http://www.news-medical.net/ne... for the news blurb of a pacemaker under research in India a while ago, and http://www.inderscience.com/of... for the abstract of the paper.

For more current news, see the Telepatch: https://www.medicompinc.com/in...

6.8 mSv [britannica.com]

This is a general encyclopedia, who knows how old or where this came from.

3 - 20 mSv [radiologyinfo.org]

The publication they reference at the bottom of the page is from 2007. I didn't look at it, or where it got it's numbers from either.

2 - 16 mSv [theguardian.com]

It's the Guardian. Assuming it's written by a typical reporter, who knows where they got this number from.

30 mSv [wikipedia.org]

This is a value in the page about "Sievert". I doubt anyone has looked at the value given for a CT scan since it was entered.

1 - 100 mSv [wikipedia.org]

That last article lists Head CT as 56 mSv, and Cardiac CT angiogram as 40 - 100 mSv.

You're looking at the wrong column. The values you are giving are in mGy (milliGray) not mSv. It lists a head CT as 1-2 mSv and a cardiac as 9-12mSv

I didn't look too closely at the citations, but did skim them. The one used for the cardiac scan in mSv was from 2010. The value in mGy was from 2008. The head CT dosage in mSv was also from the 2010 paper, but the dosage in mGy was from 2003.

Here's a couple of links from 2013: http://www.news-medical.net/ne... This one's specific to 620 slice scanners: http://www.radiologytoday.net/...

FWIW The most common treatment today for lazy eye (Amblyopia) is to simply patch (i.e., think pirate patch) your good eye and hope your brain will stop relying on your good eye and start learning how to see again through eye that the brain was ignoring (suppressing). So it is basically a type of blindfold for one eye.

For children with lazy eye, the patch is generally worn for a few hours a day for 6 months to a year. The older you are, the less well patching works (presumably because your brain is less plastic in these regards).

However, new research suggests that there might be a way to retrain your brain (without resorting to trying to "reboot" your brain) by a form of vision therapy that attempts to reinvigorate the part of your brain that uses both eyes to see, by forcing it to exercise.

One researcher has been experimenting with having people play a special version of tetris where each eye gets part of the information and the brain has to integrate both views to successfully play the game. Initially each eye would get a version that would be easy to fuse (depending on the problem that caused the lazy eye, such as out-of-alignment/direction), as the treatment progressed, the versions would progress toward the normal viewing. Seems like they got reasonably good initial results which were better than patching

Maybe not every problem needs to be solved by rebooting the system.

The Chinese did not have electricity nor does anyone claiming to be an acupuncturist use electricity.

I like people who have strong opinions about things they know nothing about.

http://www.acupuncturetoday.co...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

http://www.news-medical.net/ne...

From what I've heard ...
Well I'm convinced. I'm sure you avoided any kind of confirmation and selection biases in your discussions.

Polls in Canada indicate that the system there is very popular. Why is that, if it's so awful?

You know those awful Hollywood movies, where the needle just has to go into the eye.
NO Not the EEYEE! Yes, the eye.
Has to be a needle. Has to go in the eye.
So eyeballs are the new bat placentas.
Females give birth upside down, and the goo drops down.
That's just great. Things are looking up.

Actually, if all goes well, you may want to retract that part about lettuce and insulin... http://www.news-medical.net/ne...

It is just like requiring everybody to play a musical instrument.

Yep. http://www.news-medical.net/ne...

Coding needs insight, talent and dedication.

Coding professionally requires insight, talent and dedication. Learning to code doesn't. All learning to code requires is the instruction of a new way of thinking that a vast majority people currently alive in the computer age haven't touched. I'll never be a professional musician, despite my having been a marching band captain in high school. I had the talent and insight, but not the dedication. Friends of mine went on to have careers in music (either teaching or playing professionally), but that wasn't for me. However, I am better for having learned it.
Similarly with programming, I coasted through CS. Talent and insight galore. But I only wanted to code what *I* wanted to code, so I used my CS degree in something less programming-related (but I do have to fix scientists' code on occasion). Beyond scripting and fixing others' code, learning to code in procedural, logical, and functional languages helps me in work related tasks and every-day living. When computers become even more integrated into everything, it will be useful for the bulk of society to be aware of the limitations of computers instead of thinking of them as magical black boxes.

They in fact are. Nicotine is harder to quit than heroin. Sigmund Freud, an early proponent of cocaine quit it when he realized the toll it was taking on himself. However, even after losing his jaw to cancer he never quit smoking cigars.

While alcohol addiction doesn't occur as rapidly, it is one of the few addictive drugs from which withdrawal can be lethal. Nobody dies from heroin withdrawal or methamphetamine withdrawal. People do die from alcohol withdrawal.

These are the hardest of the "hard drugs".

Godel set out an ontological proof for the existence of God which, like the earlier Saint Anselm proof that he built his on, boils down to "God exists because he is good, and good things must exist." In the Anselm proof, the 'good' quality is "greatness;" in Godel's, it's (moral) "positiveness." Such ontological proofs categorically rely on premises that are incompatible with empirical realism, and are ultimately circular. (Which is fairly ironic, as Descartes himself proposed one.)

I don't think it's fair to characterise his opinion of set logic as being a "failure," either; his theorems established limitations on what it could describe, and as a result helped precipitate the end of positivism, but to have the conviction to pursue such ideas he must have seen set theory as incomplete and accepted it that way to begin with. It's not that he thought it was a failure, it's that other people felt it was a failure after he showed them the truth about what it could and could not do. Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and many other prominent logicians had already been doing this for thirty years when Godel's big works were contributed.

He definitely was a little crazy, though—he starved to death, weighing less than half his healthy weight, obsessively paranoid that someone was trying to poison him.

As far as the physical laws of the universe go—keep in mind that the impact on science of Godel's work has been the acceptance that we may not know everything about the universe because we cannot detect it. If, once technology has reached its absolute maximum, we still cannot detect a phenomenon, then in all likelihood it will be something that does not affect us—otherwise we'd be able to detect its effect!

As far as we know, the human mind doesn't depend on any of that stuff, though. There's enough mystery about how the brain works, and we're making enough headway in figuring it out, that at present we're not even sure the quantum randomness implied by this weird story is required.

Remember, the universe is plenty capable of being beautiful even when it isn't inexplicable.

Remember, you started it with the snarky "cesspools" swipe.

Anyway, I live in a very large house on 1+ acres in a serene and heavily wooded area, with every rural activity close at hand. And also easy access to multiple cities (not like the little towns you think of as cities). You did imply you lived at least 1,000 miles from the coast, so I can only imagine what you think you know about a real city.

And hey, did you see this? http://www.news-medical.net/news/20130723/Study-upends-common-perception-that-urban-areas-are-more-dangerous-than-small-towns.aspx

Enjoy your 20% more dangerous little town. Feel free to post a desperate response, and I'll let you have the last word (I won't even read it).

Just like the driver with seatbelts who gets stuck in a burning car, the man who finds out at the wrong time he is allergic to latex in condoms, or the patient who gets a vaccine develops the disease because the virus in the vaccine batch was not really dead after all.

Not owning a gun makes you safer . You may feel safer with a gun because you think you are in control, just like people feel safer in their cars but not in aeroplanes (even though last year only over 30,000 people died on cars in the US, none in airliners AFAIK).

The whole picture includes you having a gun during a serious depression and killing yourself over a moment of desperation, your children finding the gun the one time you left it loaded, you discovering you are a sleepwalker the day you shoot your wife in your dreams, and that angry dumb person with a gun (who might have been satisfied by robbing you) that turns out to be a faster shot than you are, and leaves you in a pool of blood.

Are you always less safe with a gun? No, in some limited cases it makes sense, such as when going in areas with aggressive wildlife (e.g. polar bears). In some occasions even in normal, civilian life it might be advantageous to have a gun to scare a casual would-be thief. But on average, all things considered, statistics shows that it is a safer decision not to have a gun around.

You are a fucking retarded. I hope you come accross a person trying to rob you and you have no "gun". Your worthless ass will be toast. people like you is whats WRONG with the world. Guns do NOT kill peole. PEOPLE KILL People idiot.

Just like the driver with seatbelts who gets stuck in a burning car, the man who finds out at the wrong time he is allergic to latex in condoms, or the patient who gets a vaccine develops the disease because the virus in the vaccine batch was not really dead after all.

Not owning a gun makes you safer . You may feel safer with a gun because you think you are in control, just like people feel safer in their cars but not in aeroplanes (even though last year only over 30,000 people died on cars in the US, none in airliners AFAIK).

The whole picture includes you having a gun during a serious depression and killing yourself over a moment of desperation, your children finding the gun the one time you left it loaded, you discovering you are a sleepwalker the day you shoot your wife in your dreams, and that angry dumb person with a gun (who might have been satisfied by robbing you) that turns out to be a faster shot than you are, and leaves you in a pool of blood.

Are you always less safe with a gun? No, in some limited cases it makes sense, such as when going in areas with aggressive wildlife (e.g. polar bears). In some occasions even in normal, civilian life it might be advantageous to have a gun to scare a casual would-be thief. But on average, all things considered, statistics shows that it is a safer decision not to have a gun around.

Please stop this bull crap. You are not "safer" in not owning a gun. Suicide being the most common cause of death in homes with guns should relieve all mentally stable people out there.

If you fit the first half of that list don't buy a gun.
If you get past all the bullet points before owning a gun, you are OK.

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/suicide-in-the-us-statistics-and-prevention/index.shtml#Firearms

Research shows that risk factors for suicide include:
depression and other mental disorders, or a substance-abuse disorder (often in combination with other mental disorders). More than 90 percent of people who die by suicide have these risk factors.2
prior suicide attempt
family history of mental disorder or substance abuse
family history of suicide
family violence, including physical or sexual abuse
firearms in the home,3 the method used in more than half of suicides
incarceration

I think roughly as many people die from auto accidents as intentional suicide (all forms), and death by gun is just more than half of suicides... think people... think.

If you honestly think you do not meet those other gigantic blinking neon suicide risk indicators, and think gun ownership might seriously be a deciding factor in choosing to commit suicide... please just go find somebody to talk to. Everyone else, talk to that person, and stop blaming the GOD DAMNED TOOL THEY USE.

Just like the driver with seatbelts who gets stuck in a burning car, the man who finds out at the wrong time he is allergic to latex in condoms, or the patient who gets a vaccine develops the disease because the virus in the vaccine batch was not really dead after all.

Not owning a gun makes you safer . You may feel safer with a gun because you think you are in control, just like people feel safer in their cars but not in aeroplanes (even though last year only over 30,000 people died on cars in the US, none in airliners AFAIK).

The whole picture includes you having a gun during a serious depression and killing yourself over a moment of desperation, your children finding the gun the one time you left it loaded, you discovering you are a sleepwalker the day you shoot your wife in your dreams, and that angry dumb person with a gun (who might have been satisfied by robbing you) that turns out to be a faster shot than you are, and leaves you in a pool of blood.

Are you always less safe with a gun? No, in some limited cases it makes sense, such as when going in areas with aggressive wildlife (e.g. polar bears). In some occasions even in normal, civilian life it might be advantageous to have a gun to scare a casual would-be thief. But on average, all things considered, statistics shows that it is a safer decision not to have a gun around.

"I just wish they would make an exception for pharmaceuticals, because getting the fruits of someone else's labors for nothing is a moral issue."

There, fixed that for you.

Meanwhile, here in Reality, pharmaceutical companies are doing just that, and jackasses are jumping blindly off the cliff to defend them...

Because some vaccines are difficult to create on a large scale through certain methods. Furthermore, companies may hold patents on certain vaccine creation techniques, and are asking for sums that the vaccine producers find non-economical.

See here for a source: http://www.news-medical.net/health/Vaccine-Production.aspx

That turns out not to be correct even in general.
Specifically for humans, retrotransposition turns out to be commonplace.
About 3,000 times over a lifetime commonplace.

Everytime I see this argument, I question the educational background of the person posing it.

That field of weeds and trees does have significant value exactly as it is. Contrary to many people's opinions on the matter, rampant destruction of biodiversity to develop farmland has a significant detrimental effect on the quality and viability of the total biosphere, human requirements included.

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20091204/Habitat-destruction-and-biodiversity-loss-can-increase-the-incidence-of-infectious-diseases.aspx

This means that such so called "undeveloped areas" serve a fundemental and necessary function for society exactly as they are, other than mere asthetic and entertainment values. They are NOT "worthles unless exploited".

The lack of total biodiversity is one of the reasons why the biosphere 2 project failed so miserably. The idea of a giant citywide metropolis like those from science fiction is not sustainably realistic, and human carry capacity of the planet is not merely bounded by bulk storage and nutritional requirements. The earth's biosphere is a terribly complex thing, and treating it as though it weren't and without due caution invites very serious consequences.

Quoting Marcia Angell:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
"The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine."

For example:
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20110701/Bone-fusion-drug-comes-under-scrutiny-due-to-researcherse28099-vested-interests.aspx
"The Spine Journal has dedicated its June issue to a series of papers that carefully reject previous research supporting the use of Infuse, a controversial, but popular bone growth product commonly used in spinal fusion surgeries.
    Infuse is used in a quarter of the estimated 432,000 spinal fusions performed in the U.S. each year. In a new study in The Spine Journal experts assert that the data backing Infuse's widespread use were published by researchers who received large sums of money from its maker, Medtronic, and who exaggerated the product's benefits while concealing its risks. Fifteen of the surgeons got at least $62 million from the company over the past decade, the paper said, citing an analysis of Medtronic documents and disclosures on the company's website.
    The purported side effects, they said, include male sterility, infection, bone loss and unwanted bone growth. A stronger version of Infuse, called Amplify, was recently rejected for approval by the FDA because of concerns about possible cancer risks"

If you eat well, and you take the right amount of vitamin D (typically, from a pill), and you do some other good things, then your risk of most cancers drops way, way down. And you also reduce your risk of diabetes, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and dementia. What is not to like?

From what I read, it seems a lot of the cancer treatments you can get at an onocologist don't really statistically promote survival all that much (although some are indeed better than others). The problem is, once you have cancer, stuff like vitamin D and vegetables is not going to work so well. So, you really want to prevent cancer as much as possible. If there was a drug that a doctor, based on research, could say take this drug every day and your risk of all cancers on average goes down by, say, 50% or more, what would you pay for it? Well, take your vitamin D and eat well (lots of vegetables as Dr. Fuhrman suggests) and that is what you will probably find (maybe not that exact percent, and it depends on the cancer). And at no extra charge, you will reverse heart disease and get other good benefits.

Instead, people seek for the magic bullets and kids grow up eating junk. Very sad. But we've built a sick care system where the profit is in palliation not prevention, in treatment but not cure. We need to build a true health care system someday that promotes wellness.

From:
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART03076/A-Health-Care-Call-to-Action-by-Andrew-Weil-MD.html
"We currently have an expensive system that is not making people well. While there has been tremendous debate over access and payment, there has been less focus on the content of health care. Without a change in that content, we will never have a sustainable system; all attempts at reform will be taken down by unmanageable costs."

And no one goes out looking for someone with deformities or obesity and VERY few people can seriously "look past" them.

That's actually not true. Multiple scientific studies show that most people tend to have a preference for other people of comparable levels of attractiveness and weight. People who are a little overweight tend to shoot for people a little overweight on average. People who are morbidly obese tend to shoot for people who are morbidly obese.

Looks like stupid and pissed off is the new cool. Science and facts just get you cussed at ... its sad.

Yes, they do, and it is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Probably plummetted like a rock. Most of those executives are paid in stock options too, so their compensation imploded.

Aren't you the lazy one? Here's Pfizer's stock The fine was announced on Oct 19, 2009. It paid a 16 cent per share dividend on November 4, 2009.

I'm sure, if you try really hard, you can find all kinds of alternative explanations. Unfortunately, when the same races show the same characteristics all over the world, under all kinds of environments, Occam's razor, as well as the bulk of research on the the matter, tells us those characteristics are at least to some degree heritable.

Sorry, but there's been plenty of research done on this topic, and your spew of liberal talking points, have been refuted a dozen times over. Give it up.

MRSA bugs immunity to hospital disinfectants and antiseptics

Again, Google upstages Microsoft.

Well, to be fair, that wasn't Microsoft, it was Bill Gates. Yes, he built his money from Microsoft but we need to wait and see what Larry and Sergey do with their cash when they hit Gates' age.

The impact of the Gates' money is immediate, but in the long run a well-funded knowledge base is much more effective at raising the standard of living worldwide.

Now you've gone and done it. Now you've put me in the very awkward position of defending William Gates. Recently the foundation committed $10 billion to Malaria Research and Development . Not distribution and deployment but R&D. Technically this has no immediate effect but instead contributes to our "well-funded knowledge base" of vaccine development. It's entirely probable that the first world will benefit from $10 billion being dumped into any medical R&D. I'm not even going to get into the number of zeros that ten billion has compared to two million but I trust you to be able to discern between the significance.

I got my own problem with the Gates Foundation ... like who gets the money, where the money is spent and how American companies keep building their infrastructure off of it when you should probably be dumping it into the countries that you pledged to help.

Is there anything they [Google] can't fail at?

The summary lists Knol. Recently I watched Wave flounder. You're being disingenuous to claim that all Google touches is gold. Their advertising revenues support a lot of their endeavors similar to how Microsoft operating system stranglehold allowed them to elbow their way into hardware and gaming. Impressive? Yes. King Midas? No. Infallible? No.

This seems to be what you are talking about:

http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/09/01/12896.aspx

Even poverty doesn't cause starvation. In the USA, arguably the biggest health risk faced by the poor is not starvation, but obesity. People living below the poverty line have abnormally high rates of obesity. Our only problem is too much food

We passed a tipping point a little while ago. Today, there are more people in the world who are obese than starving.

Wealth is so much taken for granted that a significant percentage of the population of the USA actually votes AGAINST anyone who has a clue. They've gotten to the point where they view intellectuals as "bad people" and work against energy saving and economic development social programs!

Well-meaning friends would mention Lance Armstrong, or another survivor, in an attempt to foster hope, but I had to explain that those "lump" type tumors were very different and in (relatively) easy-access locations. I used this analogy for her GBM... Mix salt (cancer cells) and sugar (normal cells) in a bowl and then try to remove only the salt. Every sugar cell removed is irreversible brain damage. If you leave even one salt crystal, everything grows back.

There are a lot of new treatments being investigated - Reovirus comes to mind. They're working on breast cancer at the moment, but it works on several types of cancer, like Metastatic Melanoma, as well. The problem is delivery as something like 99% of the population has antibodies for it. In addition, Scorpion Venom is being investigated for brain cancer. All too little, too late for now.

My best to you and yours.

Advocates call the law a necessary control on hate speech in an age where the Internet makes the spread of messages easier and faster. Opponents say it's censorship and has no place in a free society.

Not only are we divided on whether it should be legal, we are divided on what it should be.

Is it hate speech to call other races subhumans, but legal to note in a scientific paper that there IQ differences between races, moral evolutionary differences, or even that statistically, crime is not distributed evenly between all groups?

Half of scientists say race doesn't exist, the others keep quiet.

The bigger issue here is what we're obscuring the pursuit of truth with all sorts of social pretense. Let's look at the facts and keep emotion (true hate speech) and censorship out of the debate.

Of course medicare is not -at all- sustainable. That's the little devil under the sheets.

Unreformed medicare is exactly as sustainable as unreformed private health care insurance in the US - which is to say, not at all. The era of stratospheric health care inflation is about to end no matter what we do, because we can't afford it any more.

Btw : it's not a death panel if you can choose your own panel. Only forced government coverage which outlawed or sabotaged private insurers (e.g. "single payer") would have death panels.

Most people already have no control over who their insurer is - your boss decides for you, or for an increasing number of people, you have no coverage at all.

The difference is that you know in advance what a private insurer's panel is going to say, so the decision (cost and benefit) is basically your own. You don't know in advance what a government panel is going to say, and you don't get to select another one.

That's nonsense, private insurers surprise people by denying coverage all the time. For that matter, even if your condition IS covered, they can still deny it; they'll go back through their records to find any excuse to retroactively cancel your insurance, like you saw a doctor for a hangnail 10 years ago and didn't state it as a pre-existing condition on your application.

Anyways, all the options that exist today will still exist, unless (I suppose) they run themselves out of business with ridiculous overhead, high advertising costs, and inflated executive pay. And if that's what you meant by "sabotaged" private insurers, I'd call that self-sabotage.

Therefore if a government panel like Obama suggests would come into existence, it's refusal to cover some life-saving treatment is a de-facto death sentence.

Certainly no more than what insurance companies do today. By the time you deny your claim, it's far too late to choose another insurer, since you obviously have a pre-existing condition.

Besides, doesn't it offend your sensibilities to accuse the government of pinching pennies?

The Dutch actually do this. If you're over 65 most care is actually denied.

Wow, that's quite a scary story, but at least some kid believed it enough to turn it in as a homework assignment. Hey, did you ever notice how the Dutch live longer than Americans on average? Pretty good for being routinely denied life-saving medical care. I wonder if the teeming droves of Dutch people fleeing their land for the American medical paradise are counted in those longevity stats? Which reminds me, I sure wish we Ameicans were allowed to buy medicine from Canada, but I guess it's too cheap to be good anyways, right?

Do you see anything odd about scare-mongering that people might be denied coverage while defending a system under which 1 in 6 people have no coverage at all?

And then you go on about euthanasia, as if elderly Americans weren't already under a government plan. It's called Medicare. Try putting the elimination of Medicare on the ballot sometime and see how that flies with the 65+ crowd. The truth is nothing could be more empowering for old people than government run health care. Under private insurance, they're just a liability, they produce little and cost a fortune - but they do vote in droves. We can't muster the political will to make them stop driving after they lose their sight but now you think we're one step away from sending them to the glue factory? Oh yeah, I'd love to see somebody run for re-election on that platform.

I'm aware. My point is that I'm tired of "but how much CO2 does it generate?" being tacked on to everything because it's the current fad question.

Fair enough, the answer has such a large range of possible answers that it is meaningless.

The coming ice-age was a science disaster fad.

Well there were a few papers on the subject. But it was more speculation than accepted scientific consensus. Would you rather all scientist in a field focus on one thing, or explore every conceivable angle?

So was the coming overpopulation and world famine.

Well I can't easily believe the Earth can harbour 6.7 billion people with the level of affluence that the west have. Something has to give, either quality of life or population. Also there are 1 billion who are hungry in the world. Don't you remember the food riots last year?

And the ozone holes that would cause everyone to get skin cancer. And....

What everyone? Don't make up straw man arguments. What you have done is taken the sensationalism of the press and applied their echo chamber to what the experts think. What the papers say is not what the experts think! Or to put it another way what the news says is mostly bullshit, with an element of truth. If it tires you then ignore it.

First, you have to consider the source. Of course Nalgene would say that. What else would you expect them to say?

But, since you brought it up, here are a few papers that contradict what you say.

Endocrine disruptors and reproductive health: the case of bisphenol-A.

Bisphenol A (BPA) has been linked to damage in developing brain tissue.

Scientists issue group warning on plastic chemical's hazards.

The Real Story Behind Bisphenol A

That last one is perhaps the most telling: "... consider this: Of the more than 100 independently funded experiments on BPA, about 90% have found evidence of adverse health effects at levels similar to human exposure. On the other hand, every single industry-funded study ever conducted -- 14 in all -- has found no such effects."

Sometimes it pays to spend just a few minutes on Google, rather than just arguing from ignorance.

The Tasmanian plant has been cloning itself for at least 43,600 years, so its genetic code hasn't changed. A part of the point of sexual reproduction is 'swapping' our genes so that our descendants are more readily adaptable to new or changed environments: in a sense, 'editing' our genetic code for each new generation. Although some single-celled organisms do reproduce sexually - in bacteria that's called conjugation - many (usually) don't. So... in the sense that each of us humans is the "same" organism even though we have new cells / some of our cells have died, some blue-green algae are at least a billion years old, some amoeba are more than a million years old, etc. If "continuously existing community of genetically identical cells" is how you define "individual," then some algae mats are awesomely ancient beings!

There is no need to go all tinfoil hat regarding implants, just go with real news that suggests there may be a cancer issue.

"Earlier this month, it was reported that some lab animals implanted with chips developed cancer and sarcoma. Other possible adverse effects include tissue reactions, migration of the implanted chip, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) incompatibility, electrical hazards, infection and even compromised information security."
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=30061

If you have a pre-existing condition, depending on the condition there almost always is a way to find coverage in the US. (Having dealt with asthma, diabetes, cancer, hbp, and smoking in one family member or another.) If the gov't turns you away? You have to fly to another country to get help. This was popular in London when I lived there.

The efficiency of HMO's have already shown us a way... Prevention costs them less money therefore they pay more willingly for preventative care, which is believed to be the driving force behind the better survivability rates in the US. They also ask for increased rates for certain risky behavior i.e., scuba diving, rock-climbing, competitive athletics, smoking, and obesity, but they still provide care, whereas smokers are often refused care for conditions in socialized medical systems. The medical system dares to refuse them care even though they pay more into the system than the average tax-payer.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2859623.ece
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=20771
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:T02b2uvFa7AJ:www.west-dunbarton.gov.uk/clydebank/documents/8_-_Impact_of_Tax.pdf+compare+NHS+cost+of+smoker+to+taxes&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us

The HMO's have a vested interest in providing better, more efficient service than gov't care. I don't know about where you live, but competition is alive and well here in Oklahoma between various healthcare providers. I have seen gov't care first hand as a Marine, and later as a expat in the UK. I was not impressed on either occasion.

Also, HMO's are not the only plans or services available. PPO's, EPO's, HDHP's, and plain ol' cash also work for the gainfully employed. For those who are not, Medicaid, and the various state run programs pick up the slack. Do people fall through the cracks? Sure, but would I rather have the ability to pull myself out of the crack without the gov't workers unions and medical workers associations stepping on my head by decrying the use of private physicians? You bet your ass I would.

Universal healthcare is a sucker's bet. Just as sure as Social Security and perpetual motion are sucker's bets. The only difference is that a lot of us will be able to have our suck at the teat before it runs dry, our children will not be so lucky.

Look at the reforms in the Euro nations regarding healthcare. They are finding the burden is too much for the tax system to bear. Over time they have to cut costs (by cutting benefits) or raise taxes.

As for positives? I can pick and choose my doctor without anyone's approval. I pay a pittance more for the privilege. The emergency room shortage due to flooding caused by low income/no income populace? I can get around that by going to an urgent care facility, of which there are 7 within a 3 mile radius. I don't have to win a lottery to get cutting-edge treatment, I can pay, or I can appeal to many avenues of assistance, including test trials for treatments. (One of which saved my father-in-law in the sixties from a near-death asthma attack, his family had no running water at the time and lived 14 people to a two room farmhouse.)

In socialized medical systems they are suffering from shortages in doctor availability because of the low-rates mandated by the gov't. In the US? We have glut of physicians to choose from. Dentistry? Why do Europeans sing about wanting American teeth? (Quite literally, a phrase to that effect was heard by myself in a little pop-club in London.)

By using a bureaucracy to disseminate treatment you are taking the power of choice away from the individual. That mind set is antithetical to the liberal concept of more freedom an

I think you might be missing something. At least according to one source they're supposed to have a non-toxic glue. Unless information comes forward saying they were actually designed for this drug, it leaves the door open to the possibility that a contaminant got into the toys or a factory swapped to the chemicals as a cost saving measure. Unless people from the supplier start getting arrested, the story seems to lend itself to something happening factory side.

I will agree, however, that there's a pretty quick rush to throw "Chinese" into everything on this one, especially lacking some info that'd clear the whole thing up.

We can't figure out what causes a disease we've knows about for 75 years and that affects half of million people.

I thought they found it was an autoimmune disorder caused by the absence of intestinal parasites (it mostly affects people in developed countries). The human gut has coevolved with its parasites and your immune system depends on them somehow. It uses them for practice. Link: http://www.news-medical.net/?id=6855 (I just googled "helminth crohn's".)

I had ulcerative colitis in college. I took sulfa drugs which did nothing. I had severe anemia and I was always popping iron pills and folic acid. I was always lightheaded, I could barely study, and I had to run to the toilet constantly. I could barely finish exams with all the running to the bathroom. Every bowl I flushed was an angry red color. I thought I was dying. If I had known about the curative powers of parasitic worms in college, I would have eaten them for breakfast lunch and dinner. I would have gone to third world countries just to get my hands on filthy doorknobs and toilet handles. That wouldn't have been quite as gross.

Does your wife smoke? Nicotine also has some effect. (Smokers love to light up on the throne and they rarely have these disorders.) Maybe the nicotine patches work. My UC went away once I started smoking and since I quit it's only flared back once. I didn't start smoking again; I took Colazal (new drug, suck on it Intel!) and that was the end of that.

"but you are relying on unscientific methods..."

Really? Are you sure it's just unscientific speculation?

(apologise for including a fox news link, I think my point stands nonetheless)

"to conduct your 'survey' and concluding based on these biased methods (that you created) that your results are the only results possible"

My survey? Biased methods? That I created? All those articles aren't quoting me you know! I wasn't even alive for the 1958 study!

"Btw something which has 'exceptions' doesn't make 'fact' status"

Did I say 'fact' or did I say 'trend'? (problems with vocabulary recall?) I think you'll find it was the latter (and here's the link to my post if you're in doubt)... although, it is a fact that there is a trend, as the numerous research projects have shown. The fact that there are exceptions is what makes it a trend, not a law.

This post is NOT a troll.

So many rich, spoilt yanks (I am a rich, spoilt Brit) are posting to this discussion as if they have something to contribute based on their western decadent upbringing. The fact is that they are not even planning for a single one of these machines to end up in the US of A. They are intended to go to THE THIRD WORLD.

The third world consists of a great many places where buying even 1 text book for each child would break the bank for the government.

If you are going to contribute something to this discussion please try and put yourself in the position of a child in africa, who has no toys other that what they can make themselves, probably very few books and can only go to school once per week as that is all the country can afford teachers for.

As for talking about eye strain, please follow the link below and read up about the infant mortality rate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality

In short, the kids have far worse things to worry about than eye strain, like dying of Aids because some western drug company wants a bit more profit and put the price beyond what poor countries can afford because it makes more profit in the west.
And when a country refuses to follow western drug patent laws like India, did the US of A government lobbies the WTO until the country gets financially punished for trying to save some lives. (more links below)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0 7EED7163FF937A15750C0A9639C8B63&sec=health
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=8684

The idea of the OLPC program is that by providing children in the third world with a decent education we can try and level the playing field in the future and enable these countries to better compete with us economically in the west. This has to done soon or the gap between rich countries and poor will become so huge that the idea of joining some looney religious sect that promotes suicide bombing will become very appealing.

If you knew that there was a high chance of dieing of starvation you might just commit suicide too, especially if you have had to watch someone starve to death as this is supposedly one of the worst ways to go. As it is a great many people from the third world are willing to risk some pretty hairy sea voyages on home made rafts just to end up in our countries and work for less than we would consider. Fast forward 10 years and who knows how bad things will get.

Once again, this post is not a troll, so please don't moderate it as such just because you dont like hearing anything bad said about the US or its residents.

There are practical advantages in problem solving which have been tied to the language used in mental formulation, for example the development of what is metaphorically called "logical circuitry" has been shown to diverge between native English and Mandarin Chinese speakers.

My expectation is that spoken language will eventually go the way of handwriting: creature comfort, dying art, what once defined the best of us but becomes in many cases an indulgent inefficiency. How?

Anybody who dares to at this point, has realized they can jam wires into the human brain and let it learn to control machines on the other end. It's already beyond that in fact, with embedded communication devices being the next step, stepping shoe now currently in air: you'll see in a few days in Nature how real the "Neurochip" already is.

People should stop pretending this is about helping paraplegics by playing Space Invaders or moving a cursor with mind control, or that we're only trying to help brain injury, stroke, or paralysis patients. This is about construction workers with better than human strength in their better than human limbs. We drive vehicles through obstacles on land at 10 times the speed human beings can run, and we fly vehicles at 800 times the speed we can biologically move ourselves. We are mentally capable of managing bodily abilities far beyond those with which we are born.

This is not only about helping the disabled, and it's not only about incredible speeds or strengths. It's also about perfectly able people who would rather control personal electronics with their thoughts than search for or decipher other remote control electronics. Personal electronics are going to be a lot more personal, too; these people will eventually prefer to have personal electronics embedded in their bodies and networked with their minds.

Don't worry about losing human language: we will only lose it when we'll be better off for it, when we communicate and think better without it. The translator here, with IBM and elsewhere is of course more narrowly focused, but with this we are converging on technological telepathy and obsoleting human language.

Human logic and good intentions have come at it from a more traditional, less technological direction, giving us Esperanto, Loglan, Lojban, etc. You've probably heard of only one of these, which you probably laughed at somebody for being Geek enough to know any of. Most of them have been great ideas and well executed, but despite inherent gains in efficiency or intellectual force they are nowhere near the markets and their returns depend on mass adoption. Technology is different, it's tied directly to markets and to private profiteering with immediate amplification of wealth among the wealthy. Human beings are not going to create a better enough language, soon enough, before we create a technology which in itself superior to all human language. BG

http://www.news-medical.net/?id=17014

"The researchers at the Swedish National Institute for Working Life looked at the mobile phone use of 2,200 cancer patients and an equal number of healthy control cases.

They found that of the cancer patients who were aged between 20 and 80, 905 had a malignant brain tumour and about a tenth of them were also heavy users of mobile phones."

Although you don't mention it, the first link shows only a minor 4.1 pt decrease and only for heavy current users. Moderate and former users showed an increase greater than non-users - 5.8 and 3.5 vs 2.6 pts, respectively.

Inhaling smoke of any kind is, of course, not good for your lungs. There are other admittedly less popular means of administration.

It does appear that marijuana may cause immune system depression, but the extent and ways in which it does so is still being researched. This article explores the counter-viewpoints. Another study has shown a decrease in tumor resistance with injected THC in rats, but I'm not sure of the doses. It should be noted as well that in some people, like MS patients, a supressed immune system can be a good thing.

Although psychotic symptoms can be produced by Cannabis consumption, it's certainly not typical. Just as some people have severe reactions to peanuts, some may have psychotic reactions to Cannabis. However, due mainly to heavy restrictions on studies, we still don't know much about endocannabinoids' role in the nervous system and the actions of various cannabinoids. This study suggests that endocannabinoids may actually prevent psychosis; since smoking Cannabis would cause stimulation of endocannabinoid receptors, cannabinoids may be useful in preventing psychosis. Or, it might further reduce your body's production of endocannabinoids and lead to greater psychotic effects when you quit smoking. Or something else, it's hard to say at this point. Research is still being done, however, and I certainly wouldn't suggest getting high to get rid of psychotic symptoms - in fact, I would actively advise against it.

I can't read your memory and learning study, so I can't really comment on it. Cannabinoids certainly have been shown to impair memory and learning in various degrees under different circumstances, but their role - believed to be effected in the hippocampus - may, as this article (the one the post is on) may have positive effects as well.

Conclusion: Cannabis is not a panacea. It should come as no surprise to anyone that there are both good and bad sides to Cannabis - as with all medicine, as with everything. It's absurd to pretend that there are no negative effects, but it's also absurd to pretend like we have all the answers. We have to keep researching, and we have to make sure the government allows needed research. That being said, overall, cannabis has relatively few and insubstantial side effects compared to other drugs, and it's ridiculous beyond comprehension that it's a Class I substance.

Hmm, interesting..

So where is this reality you speak of that does not involve survival?

These butterflies are exhibiting racism! They are selecting their own race within their species.

Humans naturally do this too; it is instinctual common sense. It is also common sense to know that this is true.

Unfortunatly humans have such powerful intellects that they can be brainwashed to think things (ie: multiculturalism) against their inherent knowledge (ie: diversity good, miscegenation bad). They can even be brainwashed to consider it taboo to discuss (usually a crime) or even think (soon to be a crime :) about such realities.

Such radical idealogical beliefs in such an unforgiving reality that is life are blatantly obvious to thinking people as nothing but recipies for suicide for the people or races (ie: white Europeans) practicing them.

When something is less of a threat to your life than eating (pdf) or bathing (pdf), well, it just seems a little unwise to get too frantic about it. Don't ignore it, certainly, but don't blow it out of proportion - dying from a heart attack or stroke because you were stressing too much about terrorism would be painfully ironic.

Before anyone accuses me of not taking terrorism seriously, keep in mind that I took a Newark-to-California flight---just like one of the hijacked 9/11 planes---a few weeks before the hijackings; change the dates a little, and I could have been on one of those flights. It's because I take terrorism seriously---and rationally---that I accord it such a low level of worry.

By all means, we should aggressively combat terrorism---address its root causes, win over the hearts and minds of populations that might support terrorists, and capture or kill hard-core terrorists that cannot be reasoned with---but losing our heads and shooting ourselves in the foot will do nothing to keep us from harm.

Especially our feet...

There are a few implants that they are doing. The first is in the ear (http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/treatment/coch lear_implant.htm). While this is normally not "computers", I have seen someone with an implant that has a wire coming out of their head, so that they can hear. It does have s speach processor, so it does have a processor. The second is the eyes, see here (http://www.news-medical.net/?id=8953).

They also have RFID chips that they can implant people with (http://www.greaterthings.com/News/Chip_Implants/) .

They have a heart that is mechanical, but the FDA rejected that.