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So, in summary, you're ignorant of history, religion, -and- ghost stories.

But here is some peer-reviewed grounding for you.

Had they been born in Mumbai, to Hindu parents, they would be Hindus.

And if you were born to Christian parents, you would be Christian? Of course, your notion that people are unconscious and cannot change their belief systems is nonsense, and contradicted by reality a thousand times a day. But, you probably already knew it was nonsense, the whole point was to suggest while the masses of humanity are unconsciously determined by their environment, you are the enviable exception.

Oh, you wanted something other than circular logic? Here's something peer-reviewed by one of the top medical journals in the world:

http://www.thelancet.com/journ....
http://profezie3m.altervista.o...

One reason to believe in God and Jesus rather than Zeus and Odin, is it's the afterlife predictions of the former that people actually experience when they die. Keep telling yourself it's merely "circular" though. I know you'll reject evidence, even peer-reviewed evidence, the instant you hear it, because it's not what you want to hear.

Earth to astronauts: Go to sleep
By Emily Underwood
7 August 2014 6:30 pm

It's hard to sleep in outer space. On the International Space Station (ISS), the sun rises every 90 minutes when the station circles Earth. Space suits can be uncomfortable, too: After landing on the moon in 1969, Buzz Aldrin reported getting only âoea couple of hours of mentally fitful drowsingâ due to the noise and the cold.

Now, a new study published online today in The Lancet Neurology shows the extent of sleep deprivation among astronauts. Researchers tracked the sleep patterns of 85 crew members aboard the ISS and space shuttle and found that despite an official flight schedule mandating 8.5 hours of sleep per night, they rarely got more than five.

In fact, getting a full night's rest was so difficult that three-quarters of shuttle mission crew members used sleep medication, and sometimes entire teams were sedated on the same night. Although, unlike astronauts from Aldrin's day, crew members now sleep in quiet, dark chambers, lack of gravity itself may contribute to the problem.

Given that sleep deprivation contributes to up to 80% of aviation accidents, it's important to better understand why sleep is so difficult in space, the authors say.

I used this: http://www.viewcached.com/http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2014/08/earth-astronauts-go-sleep
Yahoo is the only site that had it cached.

The problem with the VAST majority of criticisms against drone warfare is this: /They don't cite alternatives./

This is the most blatant straw-man argument I have ever seen. You don't target the actual study named in the story, but some nebulous cloud of "... majority of [all] criticisms."

You imply this is a criticism of intervention policy generally.

Drones are incidental to the intervention policy...

It is not. It is a specific criticism of the current use of drones as a strategy.

And finally I take issue with your assertion that a criticism should be required to suggest an alternative.

I am wearing a dead toad around my neck to ward off the plague. You argue that all available statistical evidence shows that wearing dead toads has no effect on whether or not a person will contract the plague.

The fact that you don't provide an alternative to dead toads doesn't change the fact that my dead toad is completely ineffective.

Mainly because the "leaves no evidence anywhere" is directly false, and it would be formally epistemologically impossible for you to make such a statement as something you actually know, as it is tantamount to a claim to psychic powers on your part to review all the lives and experiences of everyone else on Earth, and thereby note the absence of validating experience.

You neither could, nor do, know there "is no evidence," nor could you even possibly. At most, you can claim there isn't evidence manifested that you're aware of when using your preferred methodologies.

Something peer-reviewed for you, so you can stop claiming there is "no evidence," particularly since doing so just embarrasses yourself with respect to anyone who knows anything about valid epistemology:

http://www.thelancet.com/journ....

http://profezie3m.altervista.o... (alternate no-registration)

Is there data available on how many people got measles in the bay area outbreak? How many were vaccinated, etc?

3 cases requiring hospitalization, 14 cases total, not all of them traceable to the same patient zero U.C. Berkeley student; 5 more cases traceable to recent travelers returning from the Philippines.

Generally stats are not published until after the quarter is over, and then it requires some time for the reporting window to close.

U.S. Immunization rates for measles by age 1 is 92%, according to WHO: http://gamapserver.who.int/gho...

I typically would not expect them to publish stats on vaccination failures to non-medical professionals, so no idea if any of the 14 cases so far were persons who were vaccinated. According to PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... published in 1996, the apparent failure rate is http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... published in 2004.

It also appears that about 70% of the people actually contracting measles are accounted for as vaccine failures, if this NIH report from 1987 is to be believed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

The numbers are within an order of magnitude of what you'd expect for a 92% vaccination rate, with a 10% failure rate (leaving the unvaccinated 8% to account for the other 30% of cases, since one would expect them to be predominantly rurally and regionally isolated at about that a 2.8x rate compared to "vaccinated, but failed").

Of course, failure rates vary by vaccine, as this 1988 Lancet article points out comparing the Edmonston-Zagreb vaccine to the Schwartz vaccine in 4-6 month year olds: http://www.thelancet.com/journ...

So we can guess that out of the 14 total cases, we can guess ~10 are vaccine failures, and ~4 are non-vaccinated, with about a 4% margin of error allowing a 9/5 split instead.

Like I said, they really do not like to publish numbers like this, and in a small sample like this, there are HIPPA considerations to publishing such data, since it would violate medical privacy for those who were vaccinated, but in whom the disease occurred anyway.

You're absolutely right that the money is not a solution especially because it would put them into an eternal hell of discrimination (which is already the case because a lot of Japanese treat anybody who got anywhere near radioactivity as if they had some infectious disease). I was tempted to write more on this, but the comment was long enough as it was and I thought the reference to the tsunami victims was enough to show the problems with that.

The most important thing that should be done is to talk rationally about radioactivity. But so long as the anti-nuclear shills keep screaming at the top of their lungs, this is not going to happen - but this is exactly where the psychological problems and the trauma are coming from. It is also where a lot of deaths are coming from and the reason why the evacuations that were supposedly going to safe peoples lives were so incredibly botched that people people died in the vehicles they were evacuated in. Which is hardly surprising, when hospitals are evacuated and incapacitated patients are put in hospital gowns and driven for over 100km without any medical attention.

The blame for the terrible death of those people rests solely with an international movement that is spreading fear and panic in order to gain political power, without any regard for the people they harm. And this harm is much worse than the radiation they claim to be protecting people from.

I think people sometimes underestimate how awful coal power is.

Sherco was the quintessential baseload coal fired power plant cranking out 2400MW through three units.

Assuming the 2400MW was running continuously, that amounts to 21TWh per year. According to this article (free copy here), the air pollution produced by 21TWh of coal power generation in a developed country is estimated to cause about 500 deaths and almost 5000 serious illnesses. Using the estimate from another article (free copy here), the externalities due to air pollution from 21TWh of coal power generation are about $2 billion, excluding costs associated with climate change.

Making a car safer to drive because accidents becmoe more survivable is not the same thing as making accidents less likely, which is what we've been discussing. Those two cars will of course behave differently. Do you think that the presence of an airbag or a seat belt materially affects the car's handling? Of course not. The differences are due to a litany of other changes to cars over time.

As for that limb you're on. Don't look down:
https://news.uns.purdue.edu/html4ever/2006/060927ManneringOffset.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8198694?dopt=Abstract
http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2006/failure%20of%20seatbelt%20legislation.pdf
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Presence-of-Mind-Buckle-Up-And-Behave.html

And it's not limited to cars:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IB2xRfRHOA
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/07/peltzman-effect.html
http://www.damninteresting.com/the-balance-of-risk/
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673607603134/abstract
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/27/AR2009032702825.html
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)61755-3/fulltext?_eventId=login
http://web.williams.edu/Economics/wp/Wilson_Circumcision.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation

Making a car safer to drive because accidents becmoe more survivable is not the same thing as making accidents less likely, which is what we've been discussing. Those two cars will of course behave differently. Do you think that the presence of an airbag or a seat belt materially affects the car's handling? Of course not. The differences are due to a litany of other changes to cars over time.

As for that limb you're on. Don't look down:
https://news.uns.purdue.edu/html4ever/2006/060927ManneringOffset.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8198694?dopt=Abstract
http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2006/failure%20of%20seatbelt%20legislation.pdf
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Presence-of-Mind-Buckle-Up-And-Behave.html

And it's not limited to cars:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IB2xRfRHOA
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/07/peltzman-effect.html
http://www.damninteresting.com/the-balance-of-risk/
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673607603134/abstract
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/27/AR2009032702825.html
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)61755-3/fulltext?_eventId=login
http://web.williams.edu/Economics/wp/Wilson_Circumcision.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation

Mar 2011: "Tokyo Electric, the owners of the plant, said five workers had been killed at the site, two were missing and 21 had been injured." link

Apr 2011: "On March 24, three workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plant were exposed accidentally to high localised radiation while standing in contaminated water". link

Jul 2011: "A newly released document says the Japanese government estimated in April that some 1600 workers will be exposed to high levels of radiation in the course of handling the reactor meltdowns at the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant". link

Dec 2011: "Masao Yoshida, who led the fight to bring Japanâ(TM)s crippled Fukushima nuclear station under control, steps down tomorrow for medical treatment after almost nine months directing the disaster response from inside the plant". link

Dec 2012: "Dozens of workers received potentially cancerous doses of radiation to their thyroid glands during recovery work at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, according to data submitted to the World Health Organization. link

July 2012: "An executive at construction firm Build-Up in December told about 10 of its workers to cover their dosimeters, used to measure cumulative radiation exposure, with lead casings when working in areas with high radiation, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper and other media said." link

July 2012: "Japanese officials are investigating whether workers cleaning up in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster were pushed to shield their radiation meters so they could keep working for longer on the contaminated plant". link

I actually think this is if not the thing physicians are concerned about WRT records it's definitely a huge part of it. And they're perhaps right to groan about it ... I'm sure they get real tired of being the second opinion for WebMD. But you know what? I don't care.

It's a good thing if an obnoxious patient is asking 'why do you think that about my condition?'

If the patient/family member has a point, listen to them. That way, you won't be the one asshole who told me my wife was terminal and there wasn't anything to be done, then when I asked about a treatment I read about in The Lancet tell me smugly that "there's no support for that treatment in the literature." I had a copy of the journal with me. It shut him up. I also had the phone number for an academic medical center a couple of towns over. When she got there, the first thing they did was the treatment that this doctor said was bogus. She's fine now. I think that doctor may have actually had more than 10 years of medical training. Too bad he didn't spend a few minutes learning to Google.

If the patient is a total idiot, learn how to slip him or her a print out from Up-to-Date on your way out the door. And if you're bothered by patients asking questions -- then go into research, 'cuz you shouldn't treat patients. If you're bothered because those questions are stupid, you should have become a veterinarian, because people are stupid and that'll never change.

In 2010, the three leading risk factors for global disease burden were high blood pressure (70% [95% uncertainty interval 62—77] of global DALYs), tobacco smoking including second-hand smoke (63% [55—70]), and alcohol use (55% [50—59]). In 1990, the leading risks were childhood underweight (79% [68—94]), household air pollution from solid fuels (HAP; 70% [56—83]), and tobacco smoking including second-hand smoke (61% [54—68]). Dietary risk factors and physical inactivity collectively accounted for 100% (95% UI 92—108) of global DALYs in 2010, with the most prominent dietary risks being diets low in fruits and those high in sodium. Several risks that primarily affect childhood communicable diseases, including unimproved water and sanitation and childhood micronutrient deficiencies, fell in rank between 1990 and 2010, with unimproved water and sanitation accounting for 09% (04—16) of global DALYs in 2010. However, in most of sub-Saharan Africa childhood underweight, HAP, and non-exclusive and discontinued breastfeeding were the leading risks in 2010, while HAP was the leading risk in south Asia. The leading risk factor in Eastern Europe, most of Latin America, and southern sub-Saharan Africa in 2010 was alcohol use; in most of Asia, North Africa and Middle East, and central Europe it was high blood pressure. Despite declines, tobacco smoking including second-hand smoke remained the leading risk in high-income north America and western Europe. High body-mass index has increased globally and it is the leading risk in Australasia and southern Latin America, and also ranks high in other high-income regions, North Africa and Middle East, and Oceania.

The news here is that the risk factors have shifted in the last 20 years, not that "OMG cars are baaaaad", still, salty foods are a lot more likely too kill you than a car exhaust.

Thanks for the additional feedback, even as you are still discounting that this also reflects what Fuhrman and his colleagues have seen in clinical practice across a broad range of disease, and that there is essentially very-little-to-no funding to trial non-patentable medical interventions. Many medical interventions do not have "gold standard" double blind scientific support, and often as not it seems such expensive studies can't be replicated anyway -- even in the rare cases when someone can get funding just to duplicate an existing study,.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/04/06/139231/majority-of-landmark-cancer-studies-cannot-be-replicated
http://www.businessinsider.com/reproducibility-initiative-study-replication-2012-8

Or:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/
        "Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors -- to a striking extent -- still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice? Dr. John Ioannidis has spent his career challenging his peers by exposing their bad science."

To raise the stakes a bit to a disease that affects many more people than Fibromyalgia, I'd be curious what you thought about the following cited study and Fuhrman's comments on the implications for the scientific basis of the multi-billion dollar industry of cardiac surgery vs. nutritional interventions?
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx
"In the most recent study investigators reviewed 61 trials, involving 25,388 patients, in a meta-analysis comparing angioplasty and stent placement with no treatment or medications alone. A meta-analysis pools numerous studies on the same subject. The findings indicated that there was no evidence that angioplasty and stent placement for coronary artery disease resulted in fewer heart attacks or deaths when compared to patients with the same level of disease who were not treated in this manner.
Trikalinos TA, Alsheikh-Ali AA, Tatsioni A, et al. Percutaneous coronary interventions for non-acute coronary artery disease: a quantitative 20-year synopsis and a network meta-analysis. Lancet 2009; 373(9667):911-918."

A link on that study:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)60319-6/abstract
"Sequential innovations in the catheter-based treatment of non-acute coronary artery disease showed no evidence of an effect on death or myocardial infarction when compared with medical therapy."

I wish I had known all this over a decade ago before my father went through an invasive angioplasty and stent emplacement procedure and died some few months afterwards of a heart attack it was supposed to prevent. After reading that study, would you let an MD perform an angioplasty procedure and put a stent in you or a loved one under typical circumstances for heart disease? Or might you instead opt for aggressive nutritional intervention like Fuhrman does with his patients? Or maybe do something else?

The three WHO Africa studies did not survive review:

http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2012/05/when-bad-science-kills-or-how-to-spread-aids/

http://www.publichealthinafrica.org/index.php/jphia/article/view/jphia.2011.e4/html_9

Not application:

http://www.theafricareport.com/index.php/20120711501815186/southern-africa/zimbabwe-concern-over-high-hiv-rates-among-circumcised-males-501815186.html

http://www.measuredhs.com/pubs/pdf/CR22/CR22.pdf (botton of p135)

Also, infection of men by heterosexual sex is the least important transmission vector in the West, nor does circumcision apparently influence the infection of women by men:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)60998-3/abstract

Besides, how rational is it to tell men that they must be circumcised to prevent HIV, but afterwards they still need condoms to be protected from STDs?

Report of the task force on circumcision

Male circumcision for HIV prevention in men in Rakai, Uganda: a randomised trial

Just the first 2 links from scholar.google.com

For the record in advance, I don't smoke pot. I don't enjoy being "slowed down" or not being able to think clearly (for the same reason, I'm very cautious with alcohol as well, and generally avoid it).

What drug can be consumed at a very high rate and not kill? I am betting your thinking of pot.

Personally, I'd love to watch someone TRY to overdose on LSD... 75 micrograms gets most people somewhat tripping; 200 micrograms is a good trip for an experienced user; 500 micrograms gets pretty much anyone to a point where they're unable to function (total loss of ego, awareness of world or self, etc); and the lethal dosage is assumed to be somewhere around 12 milligrams. That is, 24 times the amount that even a serious LSD user (such as myself) would consider extreme.

If you can get studies done by people who have nothing to gain by pot being legal or for it remain illegal you might have a chance. Those groups are the only ones who could deliver a clear unbiased result. Anyone else will have a biased result. All results from the biased groups for either side should be tossed. They have an agenda.

How's this one suit?

And while not a study, this is a pretty good related read for some "non potheads" trying to aim for the same thing.

... and wouldn't the "hunk" become sterile from the nearby radiation and heat...

The brain damage is obvious (well, at least to anyone who thinks about it - I honestly doubt the majority of American Football fans do).

What has been in dispute is whether the adoption of safety measures (helmets, padding, etc) has helped or hurt. The tide of medical opinion seems to be that it has hurt, that all the gear gives an illusion of safety that doesn't really exist, leading to more frequent, high momentum impacts. What has also been in dispute is whether players have been placed in excessive danger due to the machismo involved - that concussions have been treated as no big deal, resulting in players with potentially serious head injuries being ordered back onto the field, and that the desire to win at all costs by managers, sponsors and players has resulted in a level of injury and death that simply wouldn't exist if the players were more concerned with playing well than with the scoreline.

Certainly, you don't see reports of multiple suicides by New Zealand All Black Rugby players (although Rugby is arguably a more vicious game). Soccer players have reported deafness as a result of head injuries, but you don't see the massive incidents of domestic violence. That's usually left to the fans. (Ooops, did I say that?) Formula 1 drivers suffer incredible head trauma, but injuries of that kind are treated with extreme caution (neurologists are included amongst the circuit medics and brain scans after an accident are standard).

I'm not saying any of these sports are "safe" - soccer has worked on making the ball lighter to reduce head trauma, which is good, but all of these involve participants suffering brain injuries from time to time. What I am saying is that American Football appears to have both a higher incidence of brain injury AND a greater severity of brain injury when incidents occur than any of the other sports I listed. Which is impressive, when you think about it, given that F1 cars can slam into a barrier at 170 mph.

Of course, the big difference is that most F1 drivers have a major shunt perhaps two or three times a year, but American Football players can suffer head trauma every play and there will typically be between 60-80 of those per game (http://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/plays-per-game) over 16 games per season (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League_regular_season), which gives you between 960-1280 potential head injuries per year.

Repetitive, untreated head trauma is going to be worse than a very few, treated head injuries even if the latter are more severe in a given incident.

Ok, what about soccer? It has plenty of head impacts. Well, according to studies, players head the ball 6-12 times in a game. (http://journals.lww.com/neurosurgery/Fulltext/2012/01000/Heading_in_Soccer___Dangerous_Play_.1.aspx) That's a tenth the number of head impacts of American Football. The mass of a soccer ball is 1 lb, but the mass of an American Football player can be 290 lbs. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Castillo_%28American_football%29) If the impacts were at the same speed, you've vastly more momentum per collision in American Football -plus- vastly more collisions.

There's plenty of evidence that some brain injuries occur in soccer, though it's not easy to see how this can be reduced much further given that we've gone from pig-skin leather soccer balls to ultra-light plastic. (http://www.oysan.org/Assets/oysa_assets/doc/coachingarticles/ConcussionFindings.pdf and http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(03)00579-9/fulltext) This needs to be publicly recognized. It is NOT a risk-free sport and brain trauma IS inevitable.

Rugby is perhaps a more difficult sport to explain. Head crunches aren't uncommon (although leg tackles are the standard), all manner of injuries are very common, and the forces are absolutely incredible. (A rugby scrum can put 20 tonnes of force down your spine.) True, the All Black's Haka (htt

Did they limit their study to only "normal" circulating variants you'd find in a population of typical, healthy subjects? Or was any consideration given to very rare variants?
http://jmg.highwire.org/content/18/6/410.full.pdf
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(70)91848-9/abstract

100-Year Old Wonder Drug Now Shown To Prevent Cancer and Heart Attacks

Hmmm, that's odd, this "news" story reads like one of those ads trying to sell me something. Is this ancient Chinese secret or midwest housewife research?

Maybe you like it straight from 'The Lancet': Short-term effects of daily aspirin on cancer incidence, mortality, and non-vascular death: analysis of the time course of risks and benefits in 51 randomised controlled trials, Effect of daily aspirin on risk of cancer metastasis: a study of incident cancers during randomised controlled trials, and Long-term effect of aspirin on colorectal cancer incidence and mortality: 20-year follow-up of five randomised trials.

The NY Times also reported on these studies. Some of the findings of these studies found were that after five years the risk of dying of cancer was reduced by 37 percent among those taking daily aspirin, that over six and a half years, on average, daily aspirin use reduced the risk of metastatic cancer by 36 percent and the risk of adenocarcinomas by 46 percent, daily aspirin use reduced the risk of progressing to metastatic disease in patients with colorectal cancer.

It was found that the risk of bleeding in aspirin users diminished over time, and that the risk of death from brain bleeds was actually lower in the aspirin users than in the comparison group.

100-Year Old Wonder Drug Now Shown To Prevent Cancer and Heart Attacks

Hmmm, that's odd, this "news" story reads like one of those ads trying to sell me something. Is this ancient Chinese secret or midwest housewife research?

Maybe you like it straight from 'The Lancet': Short-term effects of daily aspirin on cancer incidence, mortality, and non-vascular death: analysis of the time course of risks and benefits in 51 randomised controlled trials, Effect of daily aspirin on risk of cancer metastasis: a study of incident cancers during randomised controlled trials, and Long-term effect of aspirin on colorectal cancer incidence and mortality: 20-year follow-up of five randomised trials.

The NY Times also reported on these studies. Some of the findings of these studies found were that after five years the risk of dying of cancer was reduced by 37 percent among those taking daily aspirin, that over six and a half years, on average, daily aspirin use reduced the risk of metastatic cancer by 36 percent and the risk of adenocarcinomas by 46 percent, daily aspirin use reduced the risk of progressing to metastatic disease in patients with colorectal cancer.

It was found that the risk of bleeding in aspirin users diminished over time, and that the risk of death from brain bleeds was actually lower in the aspirin users than in the comparison group.

100-Year Old Wonder Drug Now Shown To Prevent Cancer and Heart Attacks

Hmmm, that's odd, this "news" story reads like one of those ads trying to sell me something. Is this ancient Chinese secret or midwest housewife research?

Maybe you like it straight from 'The Lancet': Short-term effects of daily aspirin on cancer incidence, mortality, and non-vascular death: analysis of the time course of risks and benefits in 51 randomised controlled trials, Effect of daily aspirin on risk of cancer metastasis: a study of incident cancers during randomised controlled trials, and Long-term effect of aspirin on colorectal cancer incidence and mortality: 20-year follow-up of five randomised trials.

The NY Times also reported on these studies. Some of the findings of these studies found were that after five years the risk of dying of cancer was reduced by 37 percent among those taking daily aspirin, that over six and a half years, on average, daily aspirin use reduced the risk of metastatic cancer by 36 percent and the risk of adenocarcinomas by 46 percent, daily aspirin use reduced the risk of progressing to metastatic disease in patients with colorectal cancer.

It was found that the risk of bleeding in aspirin users diminished over time, and that the risk of death from brain bleeds was actually lower in the aspirin users than in the comparison group.

Funding: None

This surely means that this study probably consisted of data mining, and that's about it. That's enough to establish correlation, but correlation != causation.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(12)70112-2/fulltext http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)60209-8/fulltext http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)61720-0/fulltext Well the real question is the reputation of the articles above, because that's what he cited.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(12)70112-2/fulltext http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)60209-8/fulltext http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)61720-0/fulltext Well the real question is the reputation of the articles above, because that's what he cited.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(12)70112-2/fulltext http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)60209-8/fulltext http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)61720-0/fulltext Well the real question is the reputation of the articles above, because that's what he cited.

You cannot be an LSD addict - LSD is not addictive.
Here, educate thy ignorant sefl.

These are differentiated Retinal Epithelial Cells (RPE). http://download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/pdfs/S0140673612600282.pdf This is neither rash, nor precocious. This is a Phase I/II trial, not some mad scientist shooting up random cells into rubes in the woods. I'd recommend that anyone reading this exchange read the linked journal and not put an excessive amount of faith into people talking authoritatively and with big words :)

Sorry it took me so long to get around to writing this -- I decided it had been a bit too long since I've really studied the "legalize hard drugs" question. After some looking, the best research I know of on the topic is Some of David Nutt's work in the UK ( http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61462-6/abstract and also Nutt et al's 2007 paper cited in that one). It agrees with our opinions that alcohol is some pretty bad stuff, but unfortunately it can't differentiate between effects caused by the drugs themselves versus effects caused by their legality/illegality -- a ranking based purely on pharmacological considerations may well come out differently. I suppose no study will be able to truly compare (accounting for both pharmacological and social effects) alcohol to things like crack and heroin until some place just legalizes everything.

Given what we currently know, I just think outright legalization (i.e., regulating them like alcohol) of hard drugs would be much more of a gamble than legalizing soft drugs. Certainly there are a ton of problems caused by their prohibition, but the problems that may occur from things like heroin and crack due to increased usage after legalization are a big unknown. For example, although alcohol is very physically addictive, it isn't nearly as psychologically reinforcing as heroin and crack, and that could cause some serious problems that don't occur with alcohol. I think the harms of soft drugs are clearly limited enough, though, that the effects of legalization aren't so uncertain in their case.

I agree, though, that are current system is broken and is doing a lot of harm, often to people who have nothing to do with drugs, as made clear by the current situation in Mexico. I think we should clearly treat hard drug use and addiction more as a health problem than a crime problem. Since most of the prohibition-related harms come from the black market, the big question there is whether or not there is any way to legitimize the supply of such drugs without completely legalizing them. I believe some European countries have experimented with that but I haven't had time yet to explore the effectiveness of those experiments. I'm not sure if it is possible for that to work from a supply and demand standpoint, but if it is possible, I'd be all for it. The consequences of full legalization of hard drugs are still just too blurry for me to strongly support it at this time, though. If we try some other approaches first and the black market violence remains, it may eventually appear to be the best option, but I think we should try a more moderate approach first.

Certainly not daylight, but probably quite visible to any decent gamma ray detector. If you did a Google Earth but at the gamma or x-ray frequencies, the Irish Sea would certainly be the brightest mass of water anywhere in the world and quite possibly THE brightest mass of anything outside of the remnants of nuclear test sites.

Well, the one from the NRPB might be a better one to look at. There have certainly been more than 5 cases - indeed the only 5 I could see in this report is to a specific section in the references. The Gardner Report, which DOES mention 5 cases, refers to 5 cases that occurred in a specific time interval over the entire nation where 4 of those occurred in Seascale. The Gardner Report is the one which is the most-cited reference to childhood leukemia in Britain.

In fact, the table at the bottom-right for the Gardner Report is the most interesting for this purpose - a six-fold rise in leukemia incidents in the region surrounding Seascale with levels of leukemia remaining (a) constant and (b) at expected levels everywhere else over the same time period.

Radionuclide research groups *fried* the attempts by BNFL to conceal the link at the time and would doubtless be disgusted by the other posters here trying to attribute the cancers to "natural lead poisoning". I look forward to seeing these alleged papers "proving" that these distinguished experts were wrong and that a pseud-anonymous Slashdot poster is so vastly better and brighter that they can identify a wholly imagined lead isotope as the cause without having done an ounce of legwork.

Other links to papers that may be of interest:

• The Seascale childhood leukaemia cases-the mutation rates implied by paternal preconceptional radiation doses
• Childhood leukemia and radioactive discharges at Seascale
• Leukemia Clusters Near La Hague and Sellafield
• The CERRIE Report
• An index of anything I might have forgotten

No one from Iraq attacked the US. From 2003 to 2006 the US military killed some 600 000+ people in Iraq, mostly civilians. During which time Iraqis killed some 3000 US and UK soldiers. A reasonable interpretation of the sequence of events is that the US started the killing. This leads to the view that the Iraqis defended themselves against aggressors. A typical ethical position would be for the US to stop killing Iraqis, with the result that Iraqis would probably stop killing their attackers.

I am glad we are much more effective than they are.

Your indoctrination is complete, Winston, you are free to go.

Because we're talking about mines in context of the Ottawa Treaty, not UXO.

You keep bringing up the Ottawa Treaty, which bans land mines. Your support of clever designs in land mines violates the treaty you keep mentioning. Do you know the the US has not signed the Ottawa Treaty?

Killing people automatically is the problem.

Then we have no problem, because we don't do that.

1600-2600 people in Pakistan killed by drones from 2004 to 2011 (for a specific event: NY TImes).

Good point. Convince those people to stop trying to kill us, and we'll stop killing them.

Let's take Iraq as an example. No one from Iraq attacked the US. From 2003 to 2006 the US military killed some 600 000+ people in Iraq, mostly civilians. During which time Iraqis killed some 3000 US and UK soldiers. A reasonable interpretation of the sequence of events is that the US started the killing. This leads to the view that the Iraqis defended themselves against aggressors. A typical ethical position would be for the US to stop killing Iraqis, with the result that Iraqis would probably stop killing their attackers.

The policy is post-Vietnam. More recent policy is post-Desert Storm after we had experience with scatterable mines. Even then, policy says to not use them indiscriminately as in Vietnam, but for specific targets with specific tactical goals just as we would use artillery. We only shot about a thousand groups of these in Desert Storm, and none since.

So the US attacked Vietnam and used a huge number land mines, similar with some kind of policy modifications in 1990s Iraq, and "only shot about a thousand groups of these" during the 2003 invasion of Iraq (emphasis added). Therefore, by your own admission, the US kills people indiscriminately, automatically. The opposite of what you say above.

And the above would put the US is in violation of the Ottawa Treaty, which you and I agree is a pretty good treaty, if the US were a signer.

But I have a feeling all of these facts will fall on deaf ears/blind eyes. You've made up your mind that all of this is EEEEEEVILLLLL! and no facts will get in the way of that.

Comments like this show an emotional attachment to your position. Such attachments make you vulnerable to selecting data, misinformation, and opinions that agree with your position. Facts which disagree with your position make you feel even stronger that you're right. You would like me to consider your views, and reassess mine. I have done so and learned about mine history and policies, and am a little less ignorant thanks to you. Are you willing to do the same?

Given the amount of fraud in Chinese science it makes a lot of sense to wait for confirmation from a more credible source.

And even if Chinese science were whiter than white, your blind-acceptance is decidedly un-scientific.

You're assuming the article is true. Chinese scientists have a reputation for making stuff up.

Oh and in china you don't need to provide healthcare, and wouldn't want to anyway, since if your employees die due to disease you don't need to replace them and no one will do anything if you don't try to help.

Surprise! They may get better healthcare than most Americans do pretty soon. See http://www.thelancet.com/series/health-system-reform-in-china

I use Google Reader to gather data from any rss feed of interest and also download weekly about 60 podcasts from various sources each week using the Feedreader aggregator. I have to plug, in particular, podcasts (or videocasts) from This Week in Virology, This Week in Parasitism, and This Week in Microbiology, all available via a starting point of www.twiv.tv . (If you think Parasitism is not interesting, listen to TWIP 22.) The Naked Scientist based in Britain offers a nice weekly collection of news gathered from that area. The Australian Broadcasting Network at www.abc.net.au/radio/ offers podcasts about technology oriented towards that part of the world. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp and the BBC also offer podcasts which include new developments in all areas, but don't allow you to specialize in one area, such as medicine or computers. Futures in Biotech ( http://twit.tv/FIB ) has produced some terrific interviews in that area and Leo Laporte and his This Week in Technology does a few podcasts that offer more than his usual troubleshooting genre. http://www.podnutz.com/ is strictly computers, but three podcasts in particular are of interest as trendsetting. They are 274, 302 and 316. They deal with the development and growth of Lisa Hendrickson's career. She's a female computer troubleshooter who is rapidly building a large business that repairs computers remotely and worth watching and learning from as an example of how to grow a new business in the US. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute produces podcasts and videocasts about advancing technology Do a search for NIH Videocasts for presentations by this organization. Econtalk may not be strictly technical, but has outstanding interviews about developments and history that disproves that idea that economics are dry and boring. I've been saving a list of Best Podcasts for over a year and they number now about 90, but amount to over 2GB, so are not readily posted. I also have the addresses of podcasts that are plugged into the Feedreader aggregator that I'll try to add here in case that's of interest if the moderator agrees to include them. Several of these were worth noting, too, like NY Times Tech Talk and RadioLab: http://rss.conversationsnetwork.org/ppq/56641.xml http://podcast.seti.org/index.xml http://www.rtve.es/podcast/radio-5/asunto-del-dia-en-r5/SASUNTO.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/booksandideaspodcast http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/clickon/rss.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/Cyberspeak http://feeds.feedburner.com/diffusionradio http://www.econlib.org/library/EconTalk.xml http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510030 http://feeds.feedburner.com/GlobalChallenges http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/healthc/rss.xml http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/HHMI_Lectures.xml http://podcast.thelancet.com/laneur.xml http://www.materialstoday.com/rss/podcasts/ http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/podcasts/techtalk.xml http://dow

And its reported schizophrenia links.

Sorry I provided the chart out of context.

Chart visible at WP article on drug abuse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_abuse

Data from 2007 Lancet article "Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse":

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)60464-4/fulltext

Worldwide, 40% of children, 33% of male non-smokers, and 35% of female non-smokers were exposed to second-hand smoke in 2004. This exposure was estimated to have caused 379 000 deaths from ischaemic heart disease, 165 000 from lower respiratory infections, 36 900 from asthma, and 21 400 from lung cancer.

So yeah, it's not that big issue for lung cancer, but a stunningly large for heart disease.

To refute my point, please provide links to peer reviewed studies contradicting the study I linked, no older than 5 years, otherwise I have to say that your statement "tremendously trumped up and in some cases just as falsified as the wakefield BS" seems like astroturfing propaganda from some of those PR companies working for the tobacco industry.

TMS / TCMS has also shown promise in the treatment of migraine [ http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(10)70054-5/abstract ] and a simple handheld device has been tested [ http://www.science20.com/news_releases/transcranial_magnetic_stimulator_claims_to_zap_away_migraines ] with positive results. The magnetic fields involved are much more intense than environmental magnetism, but the sensitivity of the brain to these effects raises questions about prolonged exposure to electromagnetic noise.

[citation needed]

Here you go kind (anonymous) sir:
Nutt, King, Saulsbury, & Blakemore: Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse. Lancet, 2007 369, 1047-1053

Not only do they not want state hospitals to look inept, but they don't want to admit there's a problem they can't solve... they don't want AIDS to be a problem in China, so they are just denying it.

Quoting Wikipedia: Early efforts to control the HIV/AIDS epidemic emphasized enforcement of laws against high-risk behavior, but later lessons from effective interventions in pilot programs and in other countries (e.g. needle exchange programs in Australia and condom campaigns for sex workers in Thailand) have led to a more evidence-based approach... Three major initiatives are being scaled up concurrently. First, the government has prioritized interventions to control the epidemic in injection drug users, sex workers, men who have sex with men, and plasma donors. Second, routine HIV testing is being implemented in populations at high risk of infection. Third, the government is providing treatment for infected individuals."

Wikipedia cites this paper from the Lancet (as authoritative as you can get), and the abstract seems consistent with what Wikipedia says.

I'm sorry, but a vaccine that gives people autism is pretty much the definition of 'defective in design or manufacture.' Not that there is such a thing, but if there were, the company that produced it would be at fault.

Well let's see

Andrew Wakefield (born 1956) is a British-born surgeon and researcher best known for his discredited work regarding the MMR vaccine and its possible connection with autism and inflammatory bowel disease.[1] Wakefield was the lead author of a 1998 study, published in The Lancet, which reported bowel symptoms in twelve children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders, to which the authors suggested a possible link with the MMR vaccine. Though stating "We did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described," the paper tabulated parental allegations, and adopted these allegations as fact for the purpose of calculating a temporal link between receipt of the vaccine and the first onset of what were described as "behavioural symptoms". Andrew Wakefield

His "test subjects" were attending a birthday party hosted by a lawyer suing drug company over immunizations causing "autism". Wakefield was one of the last authors of the paper published in the Lancet, 10 of the 12 Co-Authors had had their names removed from the paper and finally the Lancet took the almost unprecedented action of officially retracting the paper.

In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were “consecutively referred” and that investigations were “approved” by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published record.
The Editors of The Lancet The Lancet, London NW1 7BY, UK

Furthermore the British General Medical Council detremined that Wakefield was dishonest, irresponsibile and showed callous disregard for the distress and pain of children.
Autism Spectrum Disorders are genetically based and the rates of diagnosis are increasing long after thimersol has been discontinued in vaccines. It's just coincidence that the symptoms of profound Autism become unavoidably obvious at the same time the MMR is given to toddlers.

Here is the Lancets published reasons for the retraction http://download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/pdfs/S0140673610601754.pdf

Food additives and hyperactive behaviour in 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children in the community: a randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial

Even that study could have been done better but it was enough to get the point across. Petrochemical food additives such as artificial coloring (FD&C anything), flavoring and preservatives (BHA, BHT, some others) are inherently toxic and immune response to them varies wildly between individuals. With some people you'll never notice a difference. With others, the tiniest bit of, say, red dye will make them hyper, violent, you name it. Synthetics are a major reason why ADHD has become epidemic.

For me, synthetics were making me more impulsive and a bit mean. Nothing dramatic but switching to a clean diet made a noticeable difference in my psychology and I'm in better shape now too.

Keeping synthetics out of your diet can be difficult. It helps if there's a nearby Whole Foods Market or similar store that bans all synthetics. There is NO REASON for synthetics in food other than that they save food processors from having to buy real ingredients.

Why haven't you heard more about this? Who's going to pay for the research? It won't lead to a prescription drug, surgery, or any other medical intervention. It'd wipe out most of the market for ADHD meds (not all, some people have congenital neurochemical imbalances). It would require people to learn how to cook again.

Much more info at the Feingold Association research page.

Here's an example of decisions by a death panel

What Obamacare would do is outlaw going beside this. If you're decided to be "too old" and not "worth" life-saving treatment, there's nothing you can do. That's what Obama wants to do.

Typical Alcohol Side Effects:

Most of yours...

• Enhanced cancer risk
• Diminished or extinguished sexual pleasure
• Psychological dependence requiring more of the drug to get the same effect
• Sleepiness
• Difficulty keeping track of time, impaired or reduced short-term memory
• Reduced ability to perform tasks requiring concentration and coordination, such as driving a car
• Increased heart rate
• Potential cardiac dangers for those with preexisting heart disease
• Decreased social inhibitions
• Paranoia, hallucinations
• Impaired or reduced short-term memory
• Impaired or reduced comprehension
• Altered motivation and cognition, making the acquisition of new information difficult
• Paranoia
• Psychological dependence
• Impairments in learning and memory, perception, and judgment - difficulty speaking, listening effectively, thinking, retaining knowledge, problem solving, and forming concepts
• Intense anxiety or panic attacks

Plus...

• Risk of liver disease
• Increased agression and irritability
• Dizziness
• Vomiting
• Chemical dependence
• Depressed immune system
• Weight gain

According to the Lancet journal (simplified graph on the Wiki), alcohol is both more addictive and more dangerous than cannabis. If adults can be trusted with booze, they should be trusted with weed.

I'm sorry about your friend, I really am, but I can tell you a thousand stories of lives ruined by alcohol and tobacco, two products that are medically more dangerous but legally more available. If you want to learn from your friend's example and never smoke weed, good for you. But you don't have the right to make that decision for me, or for any other adult.

If a man is not free to chose wrongly and irresponsibly, he is not free at all.

BodyCount is one source, at around 100 000. The Lancet survey, a fairly well-respected medical journal, puts the number of Iraqis killed at 600 000+ as of 2006. The Opinion Business Research journal puts the number of people killed at over 1 000 000 (update here).

You are keeping in mind that Saddam was supported (including obtaining chemical weapons) by the US throughout the 80s? Also, he and his military were allowed to kill many Kurds at the end of the Gulf War in the 90s (didn't you wonder why General Schwartzkoff gave him permission to fly his bombers?). You're right about one thing, let's not delude ourselves even if we don't like what we find out, particularly if it's about ourselves.

Once I got my ADD sorted out, video games became much less addictive. In my case all I needed to do is remove artificials from my diet:

The Lancet: Food additives and hyperactive behaviour

For many people it's more complicated but it's a great place to start.