I have an unfair advantage because I subscribe to the NEJM, and I actually read the article.
But you can too because they apparently put it on the Internet free http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/370
New England Journal of Medicine
The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years
Nicholas A. Christakis, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., and James H. Fowler, Ph.D.
357:370-379 July 26, 2007
Slashdotters will no doubt be interested in the Kamada-Kawai algorithm in Pajek software which is used to generate the social network images like this one http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/370 /F1 Networks are where it's at today.
They had 12,000 subjects (from the Framingham Heart Study) who had filled out detailed questionnaires, including the names of people (often also in the study) whom they regarded as friends. They compared friends, spouses, siblings and neighbors.
There were 3 kinds of friends: (1) I consider you my friend, and vice versa (2) I consider you my friend, but you don't consider me your friend (3) You consider me your friend, but I don't consider you my friend.
The strongest influence was on mutual friends. In case (2), if you were fat, you would influence me, but not vice versa.
They tried to prove that it was a causal effect, and not just an association, by watching to see what happens over time. If friend A gets fat, friend B gets fat a year later.
Mutual friends had the strongest influence. Women friends had a stronger influence than male friends.
Opposite-sex friends had no effect on each other.
Siblings had an effect on each other. But same-sex siblings had the strongest effect, and opposite-sex siblings had the least effect (almost none).
Spouses had a slightly weaker effect. (Which is surprising if you expect them to eat the same food.)
Neighbors had no effect on each other. So it has nothing to do with the driving distance to Macdonalds.
You could run that social networking analysis program on Slashdot.
That's interesting about Nader -- I did see a book about this once, but didn't read it. That's probably Unsafe at Any Speed. Even though it was published in 1965, it's still a great book about how automotive engineering failed -- the engineers did a great job of figuring out how to save lives, but the politicians and corporate owners brushed them aside for reasons that I still can't understand.
Every engineer should read this book. (The Wikipedia entry sucks BTW.)
If this event and 9/11 had happened around the same time, Nader would have been laughed at compared to The Evils of Terrorism. While 3000 people dying in one year is a tragedy that would be great to avoid, obviously, 25,000 a year is a greater tragedy
Thomas Schelling, the Nobel laureate in economics, said that 9/11 is three months of auto fatalities, and more people die every year in bathtubs.
It really does put things into perspective. Nader deserves a lot more respect than being the butt of many jokes, especially compared to what his opponents have achieved. I'd compare Nader to Michael Moore. Sicko is also dramatic and slightly overstated, but its facts are basically right. Same with Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.
I believe that scientists and engineers, technical people generally -- like the ones who read Slashdot -- have a special obligation to look at the facts, because they can understand the science better than most people.
They should also look at the politics behind the science (as Nobel laureate chemist Mario Molina said), because all your science doesn't mean shit if some stupid corporate shill like George W. Bush can brush it off.
When they start ridiculing Nader and Moore and Gore, that's when, instead of joining in, you have to look at the facts. These corporations are spending billions of dollars to put one over on you, and if you fall for it, they'll be laughing at you too.
The point Nader and Moore and Gore are making is that there's a problem with democracy when these wealthy interest groups are running the country, and we have to take it back.
Aortic dissection. This is what kills you. It's the most common, lethal deceleration injury. Of course if you're going fast enough you're simply crushed, but at "lower" speeds a sudden deceleration is enough to rotate the heart (which is fairly mobile in the chest) and rip it off the aorta (which is fixed to the posterior chest wall). The arteriovenous ligament doesn't help, either. So the aorta ruptures and you die of a cardiac tamponade. Oh and this is how Princess Diana died.
That's a good story. I wonder if it's true.
By a strange coincidence (only on Slashdot), I just went to a conference on aortic surgery. And I used to edit the Stapp Car Crash Conference Proceedings in the 1970s (great series) and I remember at least one article on aortic damage.
Bottom line: Most of the aortic damage in automobile collisions occurs to people who weren't wearing their seat belts. Those lap and shoulder belts (which the U.S. auto companies refused to install until 1967) really work well. You can thank Ralph Nader for saving about 25,000 lives a year. The auto companies also made steering columns that were positioned exactly right and strong enough to impale the driver's chest, often with a heart puncture. Thanks to Ralph Nader, they replaced them with a collapsable steering column around 1967.
Let's see the latest stuff, um, http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/332/6/356 Smith MD et al, Transesophageal Echocardiography in the Diagnosis of Traumatic Rupture of the Aorta, N Engl J Med 1995 332:356-362. (Well worth reading; great X-rays.) 7 were not restrained, 2 were. Smith says:
Blunt chest trauma commonly results from motor vehicle accidents in which the sternum of an unrestrained driver strikes the steering wheel at impact.5 Rupture of the aorta has been estimated to account for up to 18 percent of deaths in motor vehicle accidents.19 As a result of rapid deceleration of the thorax and compression of the diaphragm, the aorta is subjected to extreme torque and compression at points of attachment: the sinuses of Valsalva, the isthmus, and the diaphragm.20 With compression of the mediastinum, the heart may be displaced into the right or left side of the chest, producing further stress at these points. The severe aortic-wall stress from intraluminal hypertension results in rupture through the intima, often continuing into the media and adventitial layers. Complete rupture usually results in death at the scene, whereas patients with a contained hematoma may survive to reach the hospital.
Whaddya know, the poster has a point. Aortic trauma is still a major cause of automobile fatalties, usually but not always when people aren't wearing seat belts (Diana wasn't).
But wait, Smith also says,
Thirteen patients (14.0 percent) ultimately died during hospitalization as a result of associated injuries, but no deaths were related to aortic injury (Table 1). The four deaths in the group with aortic injury were due to multiorgan-system failure (two patients), acute myocardial infarction (one patient), and hemorrhage from pelvic fracture (one patient).
I forget how to do the equations, but as I recall when a car collides against a solid barrier at 50mph, it has about 50 inches of crush space in which to come to a halt, and that comes to about 50g, which everybody told me is survivable. (One of you young whippersnappers can check my numbers.) John Paul Stapp tested it himself on his rocket sled and lived. But if you subjected 100 people to 50g, I don't know how many of them would get aortic rupture.
The other major cause of death (mostly to people who aren't wearing seat belts) is head injury. Thanks to Ralph Nader, those windshields are carefully designed with plastic laminate that has just the right elasticity to bring a passenger's head to a stop with low enough force to avoid breaking his
Regarding the female suicide bombers, perhaps their rationale wasn't sex-related at all? Maybe they lost a family member or loved one in the fighting? Yes, you're right.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?ite mNo=350272
Ticking bomb
By Vered Levy-Barzilai
What made a young lawyer from Jenin enter a packed restaurant and blow herself up, killing 20 people and wounding dozens of others? The story of Hanadi Jaradat, the bomber from Maxim restaurant in Haifa, combines a tough family situation, religious zealotry - and revenge.
Maybe they just really, really believe in the cause? Your'e right there too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanya_Kaplan
When I go into a computer cafe and sign in, they (apparently) copy a disk image of the hard drive onto my computer. If I pick up any malware, it's eliminated because the whole hard drive is erased and the OS reinstalled for the next customer.
Why can't I do that at home? I could (and do anyway) make a disk image of the partition with my operating system and apps with GHOST or something, save it on a DVD, and re-install it whenever my computer seems to be infected with malware or is acting funny for any reason.
The other thing I do is, when I install my OS and apps, I make a detailed log of the configurations, so I can easily reinstall them again. (I'm following the example of a friend who was a nuclear engineer.) That makes it relatively easy to reinstall the system. Yeah, reinstall takes an hour or so, but it's a lot easier, faster and more reliable than trying to eliminate malware or to trouble-shoot whatever is really causing the problem.
Here's a comparison of Canadian vs. U.S. health care from a peer-reviewed medical journal, by Gordon Guyatt, who is one of the world's top experts on comparing health care systems. The article points out that the U.S. health care system costs about twice as much per capita for the same or worse results.
A systematic review of studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the United States
Gordon H. Guyatt, P.J. Devereaux, Joel Lexchin, Samuel B. Stone, Armine Yalnizyan, David Himmelstein, Steffie Woolhandler, Qi Zhou, Laurie J. Goldsmith, Deborah J. Cook, Ted Haines, Christina Lacchetti, John N. Lavis, Terrence Sullivan, Ed Mills, Shelley Kraus, Neera Bhatnagar
ABSTRACT
Background: Differences in medical care in the United States compared with Canada, including greater reliance on private funding and for-profit delivery, as well as markedly higher expenditures, may result in different health outcomes.
Objectives: To systematically review studies comparing health outcomes in the United States and Canada among patients treated for similar underlying medical conditions.
Methods: We identified studies comparing health outcomes of patients in Canada and the United States by searching multiple bibliographic databases and resources. We masked study results before determining study eligibility. We abstracted study characteristics, including methodological quality and generalizability.
Results: We identified 38 studies comparing populations of patients in Canada and the United States. Studies addressed diverse problems, including cancer, coronary artery disease, chronic medical illnesses and surgical procedures. Of 10 studies that included extensive statistical adjustment and enrolled broad populations, 5 favoured Canada, 2 favoured the United States, and 3 showed equivalent or mixed results. Of 28 studies that failed one of these criteria, 9 favoured Canada, 3 favoured the United States, and 16 showed equivalent or mixed results. Overall, results for mortality favoured Canada (relative risk 0.95, 95% confidence interval 0.92-0.98, p = 0.002) but were very heterogeneous, and we failed to find convincing explanations for this heterogeneity. The only condition in which results consistently favoured one country was end-stage renal disease, in which Canadian patients fared better.
Interpretation: Available studies suggest that health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent.
The British police could catch many more car thieves than they do now by using the cellular phone networks to trace cellphones installed in stolen cars. But the police rarely take advantage of this and most officers seem unaware that the facility even exists - even though more than a million people in Britain now have cellular phones.
In addition, the operators of the cellphone networks are giving subscribers the wrong advice when their car is stolen. They advise cutting off the phone, which then prevents its use for tracing the car.
This problem was highlighted recently when the novelist Margaret Drabble had her car stolen from outside her home in Hampstead, North London. Her husband, historian Michael Holroyd, tried phoning the mobile phone in the car. A man answered, and said to Holroyd: 'I'm the thief who has stolen your car. Piss off!'
I was immediately stopped by a park employee who wanted to know what I was doing with my video camera. After explaining what we wanted to do, he told us we would need a permit, which he conveniently had nearby.
He then told me I could either pay for the permits then, or leave the park immediately (under threat that if I didn't, he'd call the cops!). You could pay him for the permit? Right then and there? That's ridiculous. The permits are issued by the Mayor's Office for Film, Theater and Broadcasting (which is only open Monday-Friday 8:30am-4:30pm). He was trying to shake you down.
As one of the other posters said, I would have called him on it, and let him call the cops. (In NYC, you have to be confrontational just to get through the day.)
I would have asked him for his identification -- and taken his picture. Turn on the camera and ask him to tell you on camera that you need a permit and he can sell you one right there.
I think that would be a good video. Go around the City with a camera, and record park department employees and cops when they come up to you telling you that you need a permit, and record the idiotic conversations that ensue. "I'm an amateur. What makes you say I'm a professional?" etc.
Go to the Mayor's Office for Film, Theater and Broadcasting and ask them, on camera, how they tell the difference between an amateur and a professional.
Tell them at the Mayor's Office those stories you've just told us, and ask them how you're supposed to get a permit just to take a video of some friends.
I wish I had mod points for this. This is one of the most thoughtful, balanced comments on the Cuban health care system I've seen in a long time. It gives me hope in democracy that 5% of Americans can see through the bullshit, maybe more.
I've read articles about the Cuban health care system in the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, and other responsible publications. They basically support what you say. Cuba has an excellent health care system, an excellent educational system, and has eliminated extreme poverty and starvation. It's a shame they couldn't do that and have democracy and freedom too, but in the U.S. under George W. Bush I'd rather get my own house in order first.
I also read the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and I'm familiar with all the anti-Castro nonsense of the rabid right. Whatever evidence you come up with, they simply reject it. CIA statistics? Not good enough. WHO statistics? Not good enough. But when the Manhattan Institute wants to compare Canadian to U.S. health care outcomes, WHO statistics are good enough for them (as long as they can pick and choose and misinterpret them).
STATEMENT OF FCC CHAIRMAN KEVIN MARTIN ON 2ND CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS INDECENCY DECISION
Reaction
Today, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said the use of the words "fuck" and "shit" by Cher and Nicole Richie was not indecent.
I completely disagree with the Court's ruling and am disappointed for American families. I find it hard to believe that the New York court would tell American families that "shit" and "fuck" are fine to say on broadcast television during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience.
The court even says the Commission is "divorced from reality." It is the New York court, not the Commission, that is divorced from reality in concluding that the word "fuck" does not invoke a sexual connotation.
These words were used in prime time, when children were watching. Ironically, the court implies that the existence of blocking technologies is one reason the FCC shouldn't be so concerned. But even a vigilant parent using current blocking technologies such as the V-Chip couldn't have avoided this language, because they rely on the program's rating, and in this case the programs were rated appropriate for family viewing.
If ever there was an appropriate time for Commission action, this was it. If we can't restrict the use of the words "fuck" and "shit" during prime time, Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want.
The Court Decision
As part of its March 15, 2006 Omnibus Indecency Order, the FCC determined that the 2002 and 2003 Billboard Music Awards broadcasts were indecent and profane.
During the 2002 Billboard Music Awards, the entertainer Cher made the following comment:
"I've had unbelievable support in my life, and I've worked really hard. I've had great people to work with. Oh, yeah, you know what? I've also had critics for the last 40 years saying that I was on my way out every year. Right. So fuck 'em. I still have a job and they don't."
During the 2003 Billboard Music Awards, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie took part in the following exchange:
Paris Hilton: "Now, Nicole, remember, this is a live show, watch the bad language." Nicole Richie: "Okay, God." Paris Hilton: "It feels so good to be standing here tonight." Nicole Richie: "Yeah, instead of standing in mud and [audio blocked]. Why do they even call it 'The Simple Life?' Have you ever tried to get cow shit out of a Prada purse? It's not so fucking simple."
Fundamentally, the Commission acted in accordance with its Congressional mandate to prohibit indecency and profanity on the airwaves, and in keeping with previous court decisions regarding indecency.
In the 1978 Pacifica case, the Supreme Court affirmed the Commission's finding that the broadcast of comedian George Carlin's monologue about the "seven dirty words you can't say on TV and radio" was indecent. In the case before the court today, the Commission was restricting only the use of two of those seven words. But as a result of this ruling, the New York court may have prohibited the Commission from enforcing any restrictions on language.
Potential Solution
Today's decision by the Court increases the importance of Congress considering content-neutral solutions to give parents more tools and consumers generally more control and choice over programming coming into their homes. By allowing them to choose the channels that come into their homes, Congress could deliver real power to American families.
Permitting parents to have more choice in the channels they receive may prove to be the best solution to content concerns. All of the potential versions of a la carte would avoid government regulation of content while enabling consumers, including parents, to receive only the programming they want and believe to be appropriate for their families. Providing consumers more choice would avoid the First Amendment concerns of content regulation, while pro
May 31, 2007 -- CSO -- Forensic investigations start at the end. Think of it: You wouldn't start using science and technology to establish facts (that's the dictionary definition of forensics) unless you had some reason to establish facts in the first place.
Actually the dictionary definition of forensics is, "of, characteristic of, or suitable for a law court, public debate, or formal argumentation." (Collins New World Dictionary, 2nd ed.)
It's amusing to me that the summary tosses around words like "wrongly brand", when MySpace hasn't "branded" - which implies a public, overt identification - anyone as anything. Sentinel Tech Holding Corporation branded Jessica Davis, the University of Colorado student, a sex offender, and communicated that identification to MySpace.
I don't think I'm going to convince you, so for the benefit of Slashdotters I'll use your post as a lesson in logic and scientific validity.
But what I don't agree with is that we can do anything substantial to curb anything that is currently happening with the global warming. Here's the issue: a question of fact. Do natural variations in the heat of the Sun cause more temperature variation than all the greenhouse gases humans have manufactured? OK, good question.
there is a good possibility that the sun has more to do then we expect.
Recently a Canadian university release a study on the GHG and the proxy measurements. It seem that most of the early global warming studies cherry picks information in order to make the case for a rising Co2 level in the early 20th century.
Well, nobody likes cherry-pickers.
And no, I'm not going to find a link for this. I first heard it on Paul Harvy and then it was talked about on a local talk show. If you don't give me a link, I can't check your facts.
In contrast, I can give you a good link that explains why the arguments you make about CO2 and other criticisms are wrong -- last week's New Scientist
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/ climate-change/ which explains everything you brought up. The reason that 3% is so important is because it makes the system 3% out of balance.
That's one of the reasons the global warming scientists are right and their critics are wrong -- the scientists cite sources, the critics don't. That's a good sign the scientists are right.
When you try to separate good science from pseudoscience, look for citations, folks. That's the lesson.
"publish first verify later" attitude. As a journalist myself I can tell you something about that attitude.
There are different news sources for different purposes, and each one requires a different degree of verifiability.
I knew a guy who edited an electronic newsletter for metals traders. In their business, they have a saying, "buy on rumor, sell on fact." They wanted rumors, and they wanted them immediately. They were paying $1,000 a year subscription for that privilege.
If you happen to be living in New Orleans, and the weather station finds out about a hurricane headed your way, you might want to know about that immediately rather than wait for the White House to verify the facts.
OTOH when I read about the potential dangers of a new drug that millions of people may be taking http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMe0780 99 , I want the facts to be checked pretty carefully. They've got plenty of time, and that's their responsibility. I read the Wall Street Journal, and they did a pretty good job of verifying the story. And they did it by their midnight deadline. I think the major news media did a pretty good job on the Avandia story -- considering that we won't be able to really verify the facts for another 5 years when the big randomized controlled trials are finished.
I think readers have a certain responsibility to learn how to think. As the New Scientist suggested last week, people who know how to think will turn the argument around and look at it from the other guy's perspective.
It's not fair to complain about the news media just because the stories report facts you don't agree with. If you did agree with them all the time, they wouldn't be doing their job -- which is to give your preconceived notions a kick in the ass sometimes.
The principle utility of this discovery -- if it leads to a test -- is that it will help in screening patients who need immediate treatment for their prostate cancer from those where it is reasonable to wait and see how fast the cancer progresses. That's important because a large number of elderly men have prostate cancer (50% is a common estimate) and there aren't close to enough resources to treat them all. Nor, probably, is there any need to do so.
I went to a prostate cancer research conference, and over lunch, I asked one of the investigators, "You're working on this gene that only affects 5% of men with prostate cancer. What good is that? How does that help the other 95%?"
He said, when we find that gene that causes prostate cancer in 5% of the men, we can go back and find the protein that the gene produces, and find all the other proteins that it interacts with. It often turns out that the other 95% of cancers involve defects in the other proteins it interacts with.
Then, he said, we can figure out the chain of events, and figure out a way to interrupt that chain.
In order for a prostate cell to become cancerous, several of those proteins have to get disrupted -- first the cells go through uncontrolled growth, then the orderly organization of the cells in the tissue becomes disrupted, then they leave the tissue to move to other parts of the body, then they find someplace else in the body where they can survive, then they start reproducing and forming metastases in that other place in the body. (Prostate cancer cells often wind up in the bone, because there are growth factors there that keep them going.)
Once they figure out those cancer pathways, he told me, they can try to find a way to block one of them. If you can do that, you can stop the cancer.
The big home run in cancer treatment was imatinib (Gleevec). They found one critical step in the uncontrolled growth of white blood cells in chronic myelocytic leukemia, which used to have a survival of about 5-8 years. Imatinib http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imatinib controls the growth of those cells and extends survival substantially. (Sorry I don't have the numbers handy.) I have a friend in her 30s who is alive today because of imatinib.
Another valuable use of these genetic tests is to tell you whether the cancer really is an aggressive cancer that you have to worry about, or whether it's one of the cancers that will just grow slowly and harmlessly for the rest of your life, because it didn't go through all those other steps.
The recent diagnostic success story is chronic lymphocytic leukemia. CLL usually affects men in their 60s, and is usually found when they go to a doctor for a routine physical and get a routine blood test. There are two types of CLL: one has a survival of 6-8 years. The other has a median survival of 22 years. They can now tell patients which ones they have with a genetic or protein marker test. If you're 65 years old, there's a big difference between knowing you have 6-8 years to live and knowing that you have 22 years to live.
Same with prostate cancer. As you said, most prostate cancers will grow so slowly that (especially if you're 65) they won't cause any symptoms during your lifetime. If only we knew which ones they were. Now you get a PSA test, a biopsy, and a recommendation for surgery if under the microscope the orderly organization of the cells is disrupted. If these scientists can find genes that can tell the difference between aggressive prostate cancers and the ones that are harmless, then we'll know which of those disrupted-looking biopsies will go on to the next step of invasive cancer, and which will remain harmless, and most of that surgery will be unnecessary.
The 11 May Science magazine just had an article on genetic research in prostate cancer and other diseases (subscription only, sorry). You Republican voters may not like to hear this, but one scientist said, "Yes, when you cut taxes and create a deficit and spend hundreds of billions of dollars on an unpopular war, it leaves you with precious little to spend on anything else."
As a published writer myself, I agree. I got a lot of my early science education by reading Dover Publications, which started out by reprinting out-of-print technical classics which weren't economically feasible for commercial publishers. There were lots of little publishers that specialized in reprinting important, out-of-print books that nobody could get.
The current copyright laws prohibit you from reprinting anything published after 1923 without permission, and sometimes you can't locate the heirs or find out what happened to the author, or whether he's dead or alive. Walt Disney couldn't find the author of Wimoweh, whose copyright they violated, until after they released The Lion King. Edward O. Wilson is trying to compile a compendium of every species on earth, and one of his big problems is getting permission for the original species descriptions that were published after 1923.
I can't buy some of those classics anymore because they're not in public domain yet and orphaned under the new copyright laws.
These copyright laws will mostly benefit the big corporations that deal in entertainment and are creating brands (not great entertainment). They also benefit the miniscule percentage of creators who strike it big.
But they don't benefit most writers, who would rather have their works read after their death than locked up forgotten as orphan works for 100 years, and finally forgotten forever.
As John Lennon said, there have been lots of advances in medicine, thanks to war. They improved the treatment of head wounds like this in the Vietnam war, and they got it down to a science in the Iraq war.
Sergeant David Emme, a supply officer with a U.S. Army Stryker Brigade, was stationed at a submachine gun on a truck rolling through northern Iraq last November, in a convoy transporting Iraqi volunteers to Mosul for military training. As they entered the town of Talafar, Emme noticed that the streets were unusually quiet: no children were outdoors running toward the vehicles demanding sweets. Emme got on the radio and warned others in the convoy: "Something might happen. They might have some plan for us." Moments later, as they slowed at a traffic circle, an improvised explosive device (IED) went off right next to Emme's truck, knocking him out....
They can survive, but life after a severe head wound is pretty bad:
Jason Pepper can't see the deer and wild turkeys that feed in the pasture in front of his new home, an hour's drive from Nashville. But when he sits and smokes on his front porch, he likes knowing they're out there -- and even more, he savors the silence. Pepper, who was blinded by a bomb in Iraq in 2004, completed a rehabilitation program for blind veterans last year at the Edward Hines, Jr., Veterans Affairs Hospital in Illinois, learning to find his way using a cane and a personal global positioning system (GPS) device. With this device he was able to travel alone by public transportation into downtown Chicago. By moving to the country, Pepper has given up that independence: his wife or her brother must drive him to his college classes and other appointments. But to Pepper, a former Army combat engineer still struggling with disabling headaches, episodic anxiety, and other sequelae of the blast that blinded him, damaged his brain, wounded both arms, and destroyed his sense of smell, it seemed more important to escape from the sounds he associates with danger and combat....
This is the war that George W. Bush got us into. I've never met a military man who could explain how he could have respect (much less vote) for a commander-in-chief who dodged the draft in Vietnam himself.
Here's something that may encourage safer drugs of abuse. It's easier to beat the drug tests after marijuana than after cocaine.
(Doctors told me that it's safe for a healthy person to drink a gallon of water, but maybe not if they have kidney disease. Ironically, one of the cases in the medical literature of someone being injured from water intoxication was a woman who was forced by her employer to drink water in order to give a urine sample for a drug test.)
SIMPLE WAY TO BEAT URINE TESTS -- JUST DRINK WATER
Report from American Academy of Forensic Sciences
Forensic Drug Abuse Advisor, Vol. 6, Issue 3, March 1994
Workplace drug testing programs can be foiled by adulterating the specimen, and the adulterants can be added inside or outside of the body. Last summer it became apparent that many peole were cheating by adding solutions of concentrated glutaraldehyde (Urinaid) to their voided sample. New data, presented in February at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS), suggests that there is a simpler way to foil urine screening tests: drink lots of water.
Dr. Edward Cone of the Addiction Research Center (ARC) in Baltimore, described the results of a study he had undertaken at the request of Donna Smith, Acting Director of the Department of Transportation's (DOT) Office of Drug Enforcement. Smith was concerned that advertising claims for some herbal teas and "internal cleansing" agents might actually be true. Cone was at first skeptical, but, as he reported at the AAFS meeting, the study was a "sleeper."
Cone set up a series of experiments designed to assess the effect of various measures on "in vivo adulteration." Two of the most popular "teas" were chosen for study; Naturally Klean Herbal Tea" and "Golden Seal" root capsules. Healthy drug-free volunteers with a history of recent drug use were recruited for the study. They were housed in a closed ward for six weeks. The participants were tested under a number of different protocols during that six week period.
At 9:00 AM on the morning of Day One the study subjects smoked a standardized marijuana cigarette (3.58% THC). On Day Three they snorted 40 mg of cocaine. Twenty three hours after each drug was given, they drank one of the following combinations: (1) "Naturally Klean Herbal Tea" in one gallon of water, (2) one gallon of water without any "cleansing agent" (3) one gallon of water with 50 mg of hydrochlorothiadize (a diuretic), (4) four "Golden Seal" capsules and one gallon of water, or (5) twelve ounces of water. Each participant was tested under each protocol and all of the urine was collected.
The urine specimens were then tested by EMIT II assay for cannabinoids at a 50 ng / ml cutoff, and cocaine at a 300 ng / ml cutoff. Specific gravity and creatinine content was measured for each sample, and the two indicators were found to co-vary almost identically. Just drinking 12 ounces of water was enough to cause a significant decrease in both specific gravity and creatinine, but not enough to cause a negative test response. For example, urine cannabinoids levels which were higher than 10,000 ng / ml dropped to the low 100's after drinking 12 ounces of water. After drinking a gallon of water, with or without one of the "cleansing agents" added, it only took an hour for the specific gravity to drop to less than 1.005.
When one gallon of water was drunk, not only did specific gravity fall to very low levels (creatinine20, and specific gravity 1.003), but the marijuana assay turned negative and stayed that way, even after specific gravity levels had returned to normal! The cocaine tests turned negative for a few hours, but then turned positive again. The same results were observed whether or not tea was used, however, when diuretics were given, the test for both cannabinoids a
How on Earth would this "return in the hands of the consumers" be organized. How do you imagine the logistics of such an outcome. Maybe you bring your receipts and they give you 1 cents for each disk or something? How about a copyright moratorium for a month?
In order to compensate consumers for overpaying, we can download and copy anything we want royalty-free.
When I was a kid in, say 1966, people could go downtown and buy a record album. There wasn't widespread ability to reproduce the record in any way, except a few audiophiles with their expensive reel-reel recorders, and the average person just bought vinyl disks to listen to.
When you were a kid in 1966, Dover Publications was making a good living, and making a lot of science and math students happy, by reprinting rare, long out-of-print math, science and engineering classics, that nobody could get, usually by authors that were long dead, who would have been dismayed to know that their books were unavailable and would have been happy to have their books reprinted and enjoyed by future generations, even if their heirs (if any) didn't get anything from it. I read a lot of those books and I was grateful to Dover for them.
Now there are lots of science classics that were once in print by reprint houses like Dover, that have reverted to copyright limbo, and either aren't available anywhere or are only available as rare books for $200-300 or more apiece. This at a time when the Internet finally has the technical capability to make books available free. I know because I've tried to get books like that, and libraries 500 miles away from me are no longer willing to copy an entire book even if I'm willing to pay them for it. I can't even get the same books I used to read to give to my nieces and nephews. This was further documented in the Supreme Court case of Eldred v. Ashcroft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft.
When you were a kid in 1966 you could buy cheap records of music that had passed into public domain (or from the Soviet Union, which didn't believe in copyright). As late as the 1980s I bought a re-release of a 20-year-old public domain German recording of Wagner's entire 4-opera Ring cycle for $10. The Sonny Bono act has taken that out of the public domain, and it would cost me $100 today.
This is a subversion of the Constitution. The only reason Congress passed the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act is that they were bribed by the entertainment industry.
You're worried about crime and being fair and doing the right thing? Doesn't Congressmen taking money from the entertainment industry to pass laws that violate the Constitution count?
Because Sony and BMI wants to peddle their crap music I can't get French, German and Russian texts on vector analysis and biophysics any more. I can't even get cheap classical music, or the now out-of-print old folk music and jazz that I grew up with, or the rock-and-roll of the 50s.
I don't download music, so I'm not arguing from personal interest in defending it. But the entertainment companies themselves are greedy motherfuckers, who broke the law themselves by paying off Congressmen to pass laws that violated the Constitution, and stole our books, music and movies from the public domain.
If somebody sets up a web site to legally distribute torrents outside the influence of their bribery, it serves the entertainment companies fucking right and I don't have any sympathy for them.
If somebody illegally distributes torrents, it also serves them fucking right and I don't have any sympathy for them, because they ripped me off first.
If the billion-dollar entertainment companies go out of business like the carbon paper companies did, it also serves them fucking right. For 75 years they've been living a great life with $100,000-a-year (or $1 million-a-year) jobs, fucking actresses and models, drinking good booze and snorting coke, on a market model based on mass marketing plastic records and movie film. Well, it's all over. You're technologically obsolete. The American manufacturing workers got screwed, so I'm not going to worry about you. We don't need you to tell me what music I'm supposed to like.
If we still had fair, reasonable copyright laws like we did before 1998, that wou
Canadian health care is as good as or better than U.S. health care, at half the cost.
Gordon Guyatt et al. just published "A systematic review of studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the United States," in volume 1, issue 1 of Open Medicine, a new Canadian journal with an editorial board composed of some of the world's top medical experts, and a staff that just quit or got fired from Canada's formerly top medical journal.http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/ 1 The review's conclusion is:
"Available studies suggest that health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent."
The article also says that, in 2003, Americans spent an estimated US$5,635 per capita on health care, while Canadians spent US$3,003.
The journal Open Medicine is another story. John Hoey, editor of CMAJ, the journal of the Canadian Medical Association, was fired last year by the CMA, and most of the staff resigned. http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/354/19/19 82http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/174/1/9http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/173/12/1435 Hoey sent reporters to buy morning-after pills in pharmacies around Canada. They found out that pharmacists illegally asked for personal information, which was entered in their computers. The Canadian Pharmacists Association complained to the CMA, and the CMA censored the story. The CMAJ staff now founded this new journal, Open Medicine, and they have loaded the first issue with the best studies they could get.
Slashdot Mirror
But you can too because they apparently put it on the Internet free0
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/37
New England Journal of Medicine
The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years
Nicholas A. Christakis, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., and James H. Fowler, Ph.D.
357:370-379 July 26, 2007
Slashdotters will no doubt be interested in the Kamada-Kawai algorithm in Pajek software which is used to generate the social network images like this one http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/370 /F1 Networks are where it's at today.
They had 12,000 subjects (from the Framingham Heart Study) who had filled out detailed questionnaires, including the names of people (often also in the study) whom they regarded as friends. They compared friends, spouses, siblings and neighbors.
There were 3 kinds of friends: (1) I consider you my friend, and vice versa (2) I consider you my friend, but you don't consider me your friend (3) You consider me your friend, but I don't consider you my friend.
The strongest influence was on mutual friends. In case (2), if you were fat, you would influence me, but not vice versa.
They tried to prove that it was a causal effect, and not just an association, by watching to see what happens over time. If friend A gets fat, friend B gets fat a year later.
Mutual friends had the strongest influence. Women friends had a stronger influence than male friends.
Opposite-sex friends had no effect on each other.
Siblings had an effect on each other. But same-sex siblings had the strongest effect, and opposite-sex siblings had the least effect (almost none).
Spouses had a slightly weaker effect. (Which is surprising if you expect them to eat the same food.)
Neighbors had no effect on each other. So it has nothing to do with the driving distance to Macdonalds.
You could run that social networking analysis program on Slashdot.
Oh, yeah, that's true too.
She's a member of the Federalist Society, isn't that enough? http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/id.54/author.a sp
What more could you want?
Every engineer should read this book. (The Wikipedia entry sucks BTW.)
If this event and 9/11 had happened around the same time, Nader would have been laughed at compared to The Evils of Terrorism. While 3000 people dying in one year is a tragedy that would be great to avoid, obviously, 25,000 a year is a greater tragedy
Thomas Schelling, the Nobel laureate in economics, said that 9/11 is three months of auto fatalities, and more people die every year in bathtubs.
It really does put things into perspective. Nader deserves a lot more respect than being the butt of many jokes, especially compared to what his opponents have achieved. I'd compare Nader to Michael Moore. Sicko is also dramatic and slightly overstated, but its facts are basically right. Same with Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.
I believe that scientists and engineers, technical people generally -- like the ones who read Slashdot -- have a special obligation to look at the facts, because they can understand the science better than most people.
They should also look at the politics behind the science (as Nobel laureate chemist Mario Molina said), because all your science doesn't mean shit if some stupid corporate shill like George W. Bush can brush it off.
When they start ridiculing Nader and Moore and Gore, that's when, instead of joining in, you have to look at the facts. These corporations are spending billions of dollars to put one over on you, and if you fall for it, they'll be laughing at you too.
The point Nader and Moore and Gore are making is that there's a problem with democracy when these wealthy interest groups are running the country, and we have to take it back.
Aortic dissection. This is what kills you. It's the most common, lethal deceleration injury. Of course if you're going fast enough you're simply crushed, but at "lower" speeds a sudden deceleration is enough to rotate the heart (which is fairly mobile in the chest) and rip it off the aorta (which is fixed to the posterior chest wall). The arteriovenous ligament doesn't help, either. So the aorta ruptures and you die of a cardiac tamponade. Oh and this is how Princess Diana died.
That's a good story. I wonder if it's true.
By a strange coincidence (only on Slashdot), I just went to a conference on aortic surgery. And I used to edit the Stapp Car Crash Conference Proceedings in the 1970s (great series) and I remember at least one article on aortic damage.
Bottom line: Most of the aortic damage in automobile collisions occurs to people who weren't wearing their seat belts. Those lap and shoulder belts (which the U.S. auto companies refused to install until 1967) really work well. You can thank Ralph Nader for saving about 25,000 lives a year. The auto companies also made steering columns that were positioned exactly right and strong enough to impale the driver's chest, often with a heart puncture. Thanks to Ralph Nader, they replaced them with a collapsable steering column around 1967.
Let's see the latest stuff, um, http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/332/6/356 Smith MD et al, Transesophageal Echocardiography in the Diagnosis of Traumatic Rupture of the Aorta, N Engl J Med 1995 332:356-362. (Well worth reading; great X-rays.) 7 were not restrained, 2 were. Smith says:
Whaddya know, the poster has a point. Aortic trauma is still a major cause of automobile fatalties, usually but not always when people aren't wearing seat belts (Diana wasn't).
But wait, Smith also says,
I forget how to do the equations, but as I recall when a car collides against a solid barrier at 50mph, it has about 50 inches of crush space in which to come to a halt, and that comes to about 50g, which everybody told me is survivable. (One of you young whippersnappers can check my numbers.) John Paul Stapp tested it himself on his rocket sled and lived. But if you subjected 100 people to 50g, I don't know how many of them would get aortic rupture.
The other major cause of death (mostly to people who aren't wearing seat belts) is head injury. Thanks to Ralph Nader, those windshields are carefully designed with plastic laminate that has just the right elasticity to bring a passenger's head to a stop with low enough force to avoid breaking his
Yes, you're right. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?it
When I go into a computer cafe and sign in, they (apparently) copy a disk image of the hard drive onto my computer. If I pick up any malware, it's eliminated because the whole hard drive is erased and the OS reinstalled for the next customer.
Why can't I do that at home? I could (and do anyway) make a disk image of the partition with my operating system and apps with GHOST or something, save it on a DVD, and re-install it whenever my computer seems to be infected with malware or is acting funny for any reason.
The other thing I do is, when I install my OS and apps, I make a detailed log of the configurations, so I can easily reinstall them again. (I'm following the example of a friend who was a nuclear engineer.) That makes it relatively easy to reinstall the system. Yeah, reinstall takes an hour or so, but it's a lot easier, faster and more reliable than trying to eliminate malware or to trouble-shoot whatever is really causing the problem.
Here's a comparison of Canadian vs. U.S. health care from a peer-reviewed medical journal, by Gordon Guyatt, who is one of the world's top experts on comparing health care systems. The article points out that the U.S. health care system costs about twice as much per capita for the same or worse results.
0 7.marmorsul.html
http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/1
Open Medicine, Vol 1, No 1 (2007)
A systematic review of studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the United States
Gordon H. Guyatt, P.J. Devereaux, Joel Lexchin, Samuel B. Stone, Armine Yalnizyan, David Himmelstein, Steffie Woolhandler, Qi Zhou, Laurie J. Goldsmith, Deborah J. Cook, Ted Haines, Christina Lacchetti, John N. Lavis, Terrence Sullivan, Ed Mills, Shelley Kraus, Neera Bhatnagar
ABSTRACT
Background: Differences in medical care in the United States compared with Canada, including greater reliance on private funding and for-profit delivery, as well as markedly higher expenditures, may result in different health outcomes.
Objectives: To systematically review studies comparing health outcomes in the United States and Canada among patients treated for similar underlying medical conditions.
Methods: We identified studies comparing health outcomes of patients in Canada and the United States by searching multiple bibliographic databases and resources. We masked study results before determining study eligibility. We abstracted study characteristics, including methodological quality and generalizability.
Results: We identified 38 studies comparing populations of patients in Canada and the United States. Studies addressed diverse problems, including cancer, coronary artery disease, chronic medical illnesses and surgical procedures. Of 10 studies that included extensive statistical adjustment and enrolled broad populations, 5 favoured Canada, 2 favoured the United States, and 3 showed equivalent or mixed results. Of 28 studies that failed one of these criteria, 9 favoured Canada, 3 favoured the United States, and 16 showed equivalent or mixed results. Overall, results for mortality favoured Canada (relative risk 0.95, 95% confidence interval 0.92-0.98, p = 0.002) but were very heterogeneous, and we failed to find convincing explanations for this heterogeneity. The only condition in which results consistently favoured one country was end-stage renal disease, in which Canadian patients fared better.
Interpretation: Available studies suggest that health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent.
Further reading on the Canada vs. U.S. comparison is:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/00
Canada's Burning!
Media myths about universal health coverage
By Theodore Marmor & Kip Sullivan
Technology: The case of the novelist's car-phone
0 -technology-the-case-of-the-novelists-carphone-.ht ml
* 02 March 1991
* BARRY FOX
* Magazine issue 1758
The British police could catch many more car thieves than they do now by using the cellular phone networks to trace cellphones installed in stolen cars. But the police rarely take advantage of this and most officers seem unaware that the facility even exists - even though more than a million people in Britain now have cellular phones.
In addition, the operators of the cellphone networks are giving subscribers the wrong advice when their car is stolen. They advise cutting off the phone, which then prevents its use for tracing the car.
This problem was highlighted recently when the novelist Margaret Drabble had her car stolen from outside her home in Hampstead, North London. Her husband, historian Michael Holroyd, tried phoning the mobile phone in the car. A man answered, and said to Holroyd: 'I'm the thief who has stolen your car. Piss off!'
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12917584.90
He then told me I could either pay for the permits then, or leave the park immediately (under threat that if I didn't, he'd call the cops!).
You could pay him for the permit? Right then and there? That's ridiculous. The permits are issued by the Mayor's Office for Film, Theater and Broadcasting (which is only open Monday-Friday 8:30am-4:30pm). He was trying to shake you down.
As one of the other posters said, I would have called him on it, and let him call the cops. (In NYC, you have to be confrontational just to get through the day.)
I would have asked him for his identification -- and taken his picture. Turn on the camera and ask him to tell you on camera that you need a permit and he can sell you one right there.
I think that would be a good video. Go around the City with a camera, and record park department employees and cops when they come up to you telling you that you need a permit, and record the idiotic conversations that ensue. "I'm an amateur. What makes you say I'm a professional?" etc.
Go to the Mayor's Office for Film, Theater and Broadcasting and ask them, on camera, how they tell the difference between an amateur and a professional.
Tell them at the Mayor's Office those stories you've just told us, and ask them how you're supposed to get a permit just to take a video of some friends.
I wish I had mod points for this. This is one of the most thoughtful, balanced comments on the Cuban health care system I've seen in a long time. It gives me hope in democracy that 5% of Americans can see through the bullshit, maybe more. I've read articles about the Cuban health care system in the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, and other responsible publications. They basically support what you say. Cuba has an excellent health care system, an excellent educational system, and has eliminated extreme poverty and starvation. It's a shame they couldn't do that and have democracy and freedom too, but in the U.S. under George W. Bush I'd rather get my own house in order first. I also read the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and I'm familiar with all the anti-Castro nonsense of the rabid right. Whatever evidence you come up with, they simply reject it. CIA statistics? Not good enough. WHO statistics? Not good enough. But when the Manhattan Institute wants to compare Canadian to U.S. health care outcomes, WHO statistics are good enough for them (as long as they can pick and choose and misinterpret them).
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 4, 2007
STATEMENT OF FCC CHAIRMAN KEVIN MARTIN
ON 2ND CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS INDECENCY DECISION
Reaction
Today, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said the use of the words "fuck" and "shit" by Cher and Nicole Richie was not indecent.
I completely disagree with the Court's ruling and am disappointed for American families. I find it hard to believe that the New York court would tell American families that "shit" and "fuck" are fine to say on broadcast television during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience.
The court even says the Commission is "divorced from reality." It is the New York court, not the Commission, that is divorced from reality in concluding that the word "fuck" does not invoke a sexual connotation.
These words were used in prime time, when children were watching. Ironically, the court implies that the existence of blocking technologies is one reason the FCC shouldn't be so concerned. But even a vigilant parent using current blocking technologies such as the V-Chip couldn't have avoided this language, because they rely on the program's rating, and in this case the programs were rated appropriate for family viewing.
If ever there was an appropriate time for Commission action, this was it. If we can't restrict the use of the words "fuck" and "shit" during prime time, Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want.
The Court Decision
As part of its March 15, 2006 Omnibus Indecency Order, the FCC determined that the 2002 and 2003 Billboard Music Awards broadcasts were indecent and profane.
During the 2002 Billboard Music Awards, the entertainer Cher made the following comment:
"I've had unbelievable support in my life, and I've worked really hard. I've had great people to work with. Oh, yeah, you know what? I've also had critics for the last 40 years saying that I was on my way out every year. Right. So fuck 'em. I still have a job and they don't."
During the 2003 Billboard Music Awards, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie took part in the following exchange:
Paris Hilton: "Now, Nicole, remember, this is a live show, watch the bad language."
Nicole Richie: "Okay, God."
Paris Hilton: "It feels so good to be standing here tonight."
Nicole Richie: "Yeah, instead of standing in mud and [audio blocked]. Why do they even call it 'The Simple Life?' Have you ever tried to get cow shit out of a Prada purse? It's not so fucking simple."
Fundamentally, the Commission acted in accordance with its Congressional mandate to prohibit indecency and profanity on the airwaves, and in keeping with previous court decisions regarding indecency.
In the 1978 Pacifica case, the Supreme Court affirmed the Commission's finding that the broadcast of comedian George Carlin's monologue about the "seven dirty words you can't say on TV and radio" was indecent. In the case before the court today, the Commission was restricting only the use of two of those seven words. But as a result of this ruling, the New York court may have prohibited the Commission from enforcing any restrictions on language.
Potential Solution
Today's decision by the Court increases the importance of Congress considering content-neutral solutions to give parents more tools and consumers generally more control and choice over programming coming into their homes. By allowing them to choose the channels that come into their homes, Congress could deliver real power to American families.
Permitting parents to have more choice in the channels they receive may prove to be the best solution to content concerns. All of the potential versions of a la carte would avoid government regulation of content while enabling consumers, including parents, to receive only the programming they want and believe to be appropriate for their families. Providing consumers more choice would avoid the First Amendment concerns of content regulation, while pro
when they finish paying the royalties they owe on the Internationale.
o pyright_status
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale#C
Debout les damnés de la terre
Debout les forçats de la faim
Recently a Canadian university release a study on the GHG and the proxy measurements. It seem that most of the early global warming studies cherry picks information in order to make the case for a rising Co2 level in the early 20th century.
Well, nobody likes cherry-pickers.
And no, I'm not going to find a link for this. I first heard it on Paul Harvy and then it was talked about on a local talk show.
If you don't give me a link, I can't check your facts.
In contrast, I can give you a good link that explains why the arguments you make about CO2 and other criticisms are wrong -- last week's New Scientist http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth
That's one of the reasons the global warming scientists are right and their critics are wrong -- the scientists cite sources, the critics don't. That's a good sign the scientists are right.
When you try to separate good science from pseudoscience, look for citations, folks. That's the lesson.
There are different news sources for different purposes, and each one requires a different degree of verifiability.
I knew a guy who edited an electronic newsletter for metals traders. In their business, they have a saying, "buy on rumor, sell on fact." They wanted rumors, and they wanted them immediately. They were paying $1,000 a year subscription for that privilege.
If you happen to be living in New Orleans, and the weather station finds out about a hurricane headed your way, you might want to know about that immediately rather than wait for the White House to verify the facts.
OTOH when I read about the potential dangers of a new drug that millions of people may be taking http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMe078
I also expect that when the President of the U.S. gives us reasons why we should go to war, the newspapers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller_(journ
There's plenty of news sources that do that. http://pulitzer.org/ http://pulitzer.org/cgi-bin/year.pl?1979,16 If you don't like the news you see on Google, be a little bit more selective in what you read.
I think readers have a certain responsibility to learn how to think. As the New Scientist suggested last week, people who know how to think will turn the argument around and look at it from the other guy's perspective. It's not fair to complain about the news media just because the stories report facts you don't agree with. If you did agree with them all the time, they wouldn't be doing their job -- which is to give your preconceived notions a kick in the ass sometimes.
The principle utility of this discovery -- if it leads to a test -- is that it will help in screening patients who need immediate treatment for their prostate cancer from those where it is reasonable to wait and see how fast the cancer progresses. That's important because a large number of elderly men have prostate cancer (50% is a common estimate) and there aren't close to enough resources to treat them all. Nor, probably, is there any need to do so.
I went to a prostate cancer research conference, and over lunch, I asked one of the investigators, "You're working on this gene that only affects 5% of men with prostate cancer. What good is that? How does that help the other 95%?"He said, when we find that gene that causes prostate cancer in 5% of the men, we can go back and find the protein that the gene produces, and find all the other proteins that it interacts with. It often turns out that the other 95% of cancers involve defects in the other proteins it interacts with.
Then, he said, we can figure out the chain of events, and figure out a way to interrupt that chain.
In order for a prostate cell to become cancerous, several of those proteins have to get disrupted -- first the cells go through uncontrolled growth, then the orderly organization of the cells in the tissue becomes disrupted, then they leave the tissue to move to other parts of the body, then they find someplace else in the body where they can survive, then they start reproducing and forming metastases in that other place in the body. (Prostate cancer cells often wind up in the bone, because there are growth factors there that keep them going.)
Once they figure out those cancer pathways, he told me, they can try to find a way to block one of them. If you can do that, you can stop the cancer.
The big home run in cancer treatment was imatinib (Gleevec). They found one critical step in the uncontrolled growth of white blood cells in chronic myelocytic leukemia, which used to have a survival of about 5-8 years. Imatinib http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imatinib controls the growth of those cells and extends survival substantially. (Sorry I don't have the numbers handy.) I have a friend in her 30s who is alive today because of imatinib.
Another valuable use of these genetic tests is to tell you whether the cancer really is an aggressive cancer that you have to worry about, or whether it's one of the cancers that will just grow slowly and harmlessly for the rest of your life, because it didn't go through all those other steps.
The recent diagnostic success story is chronic lymphocytic leukemia. CLL usually affects men in their 60s, and is usually found when they go to a doctor for a routine physical and get a routine blood test. There are two types of CLL: one has a survival of 6-8 years. The other has a median survival of 22 years. They can now tell patients which ones they have with a genetic or protein marker test. If you're 65 years old, there's a big difference between knowing you have 6-8 years to live and knowing that you have 22 years to live.
Same with prostate cancer. As you said, most prostate cancers will grow so slowly that (especially if you're 65) they won't cause any symptoms during your lifetime. If only we knew which ones they were. Now you get a PSA test, a biopsy, and a recommendation for surgery if under the microscope the orderly organization of the cells is disrupted. If these scientists can find genes that can tell the difference between aggressive prostate cancers and the ones that are harmless, then we'll know which of those disrupted-looking biopsies will go on to the next step of invasive cancer, and which will remain harmless, and most of that surgery will be unnecessary.
The 11 May Science magazine just had an article on genetic research in prostate cancer and other diseases (subscription only, sorry). You Republican voters may not like to hear this, but one scientist said, "Yes, when you cut taxes and create a deficit and spend hundreds of billions of dollars on an unpopular war, it leaves you with precious little to spend on anything else."
As a published writer myself, I agree. I got a lot of my early science education by reading Dover Publications, which started out by reprinting out-of-print technical classics which weren't economically feasible for commercial publishers. There were lots of little publishers that specialized in reprinting important, out-of-print books that nobody could get.
The current copyright laws prohibit you from reprinting anything published after 1923 without permission, and sometimes you can't locate the heirs or find out what happened to the author, or whether he's dead or alive. Walt Disney couldn't find the author of Wimoweh, whose copyright they violated, until after they released The Lion King. Edward O. Wilson is trying to compile a compendium of every species on earth, and one of his big problems is getting permission for the original species descriptions that were published after 1923.
I can't buy some of those classics anymore because they're not in public domain yet and orphaned under the new copyright laws.
These copyright laws will mostly benefit the big corporations that deal in entertainment and are creating brands (not great entertainment). They also benefit the miniscule percentage of creators who strike it big.
But they don't benefit most writers, who would rather have their works read after their death than locked up forgotten as orphan works for 100 years, and finally forgotten forever.
I hear this argument a lot - That doesn't make it any more accurate.
It very much still counts as censorship - Just not the "protected" kind that the government can't do.
You're right. For example, if a university fired a professor for expressing unpopular views, as they often do, that would be censorship.
And in this case, if they were motivated by their upcoming merger, then it's government censorship after all.
Here's the way they do it today:
http://content.nejm.org/content/vol352/issue20/ima ges/large/02f2.jpeg
They can survive, but life after a severe head wound is pretty bad:
This is the war that George W. Bush got us into. I've never met a military man who could explain how he could have respect (much less vote) for a commander-in-chief who dodged the draft in Vietnam himself.
Here's something that may encourage safer drugs of abuse. It's easier to beat the drug tests after marijuana than after cocaine.
(Doctors told me that it's safe for a healthy person to drink a gallon of water, but maybe not if they have kidney disease. Ironically, one of the cases in the medical literature of someone being injured from water intoxication was a woman who was forced by her employer to drink water in order to give a urine sample for a drug test.)
Here's a report from the Schaffer Drug Library http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/misc/drinkwate r.htm
SIMPLE WAY TO BEAT URINE TESTS -- JUST DRINK WATER
Report from American Academy of Forensic Sciences
Forensic Drug Abuse Advisor, Vol. 6, Issue 3, March 1994
Workplace drug testing programs can be foiled by adulterating the specimen, and the adulterants can be added inside or outside of the body. Last summer it became apparent that many peole were cheating by adding solutions of concentrated glutaraldehyde (Urinaid) to their voided sample. New data, presented in February at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS), suggests that there is a simpler way to foil urine screening tests: drink lots of water.
Dr. Edward Cone of the Addiction Research Center (ARC) in Baltimore, described the results of a study he had undertaken at the request of Donna Smith, Acting Director of the Department of Transportation's (DOT) Office of Drug Enforcement. Smith was concerned that advertising claims for some herbal teas and "internal cleansing" agents might actually be true. Cone was at first skeptical, but, as he reported at the AAFS meeting, the study was a "sleeper."
Cone set up a series of experiments designed to assess the effect of various measures on "in vivo adulteration." Two of the most popular "teas" were chosen for study; Naturally Klean Herbal Tea" and "Golden Seal" root capsules. Healthy drug-free volunteers with a history of recent drug use were recruited for the study. They were housed in a closed ward for six weeks. The participants were tested under a number of different protocols during that six week period.
At 9:00 AM on the morning of Day One the study subjects smoked a standardized marijuana cigarette (3.58% THC). On Day Three they snorted 40 mg of cocaine. Twenty three hours after each drug was given, they drank one of the following combinations: (1) "Naturally Klean Herbal Tea" in one gallon of water, (2) one gallon of water without any "cleansing agent" (3) one gallon of water with 50 mg of hydrochlorothiadize (a diuretic), (4) four "Golden Seal" capsules and one gallon of water, or (5) twelve ounces of water. Each participant was tested under each protocol and all of the urine was collected.
The urine specimens were then tested by EMIT II assay for cannabinoids at a 50 ng / ml cutoff, and cocaine at a 300 ng / ml cutoff. Specific gravity and creatinine content was measured for each sample, and the two indicators were found to co-vary almost identically. Just drinking 12 ounces of water was enough to cause a significant decrease in both specific gravity and creatinine, but not enough to cause a negative test response. For example, urine cannabinoids levels which were higher than 10,000 ng / ml dropped to the low 100's after drinking 12 ounces of water. After drinking a gallon of water, with or without one of the "cleansing agents" added, it only took an hour for the specific gravity to drop to less than 1.005.
When one gallon of water was drunk, not only did specific gravity fall to very low levels (creatinine20, and specific gravity 1.003), but the marijuana assay turned negative and stayed that way, even after specific gravity levels had returned to normal! The cocaine tests turned negative for a few hours, but then turned positive again. The same results were observed whether or not tea was used, however, when diuretics were given, the test for both cannabinoids a
How about a copyright moratorium for a month?
In order to compensate consumers for overpaying, we can download and copy anything we want royalty-free.
If it works out well, we can do it every year.
When I was a kid in, say 1966, people could go downtown and buy a record album. There wasn't widespread ability to reproduce the record in any way, except a few audiophiles with their expensive reel-reel recorders, and the average person just bought vinyl disks to listen to.
When you were a kid in 1966, Dover Publications was making a good living, and making a lot of science and math students happy, by reprinting rare, long out-of-print math, science and engineering classics, that nobody could get, usually by authors that were long dead, who would have been dismayed to know that their books were unavailable and would have been happy to have their books reprinted and enjoyed by future generations, even if their heirs (if any) didn't get anything from it. I read a lot of those books and I was grateful to Dover for them.
Now there are lots of science classics that were once in print by reprint houses like Dover, that have reverted to copyright limbo, and either aren't available anywhere or are only available as rare books for $200-300 or more apiece. This at a time when the Internet finally has the technical capability to make books available free. I know because I've tried to get books like that, and libraries 500 miles away from me are no longer willing to copy an entire book even if I'm willing to pay them for it. I can't even get the same books I used to read to give to my nieces and nephews. This was further documented in the Supreme Court case of Eldred v. Ashcroft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft.
When you were a kid in 1966 you could buy cheap records of music that had passed into public domain (or from the Soviet Union, which didn't believe in copyright). As late as the 1980s I bought a re-release of a 20-year-old public domain German recording of Wagner's entire 4-opera Ring cycle for $10. The Sonny Bono act has taken that out of the public domain, and it would cost me $100 today.
This is a subversion of the Constitution. The only reason Congress passed the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act is that they were bribed by the entertainment industry.
You're worried about crime and being fair and doing the right thing? Doesn't Congressmen taking money from the entertainment industry to pass laws that violate the Constitution count?
Because Sony and BMI wants to peddle their crap music I can't get French, German and Russian texts on vector analysis and biophysics any more. I can't even get cheap classical music, or the now out-of-print old folk music and jazz that I grew up with, or the rock-and-roll of the 50s.
I don't download music, so I'm not arguing from personal interest in defending it. But the entertainment companies themselves are greedy motherfuckers, who broke the law themselves by paying off Congressmen to pass laws that violated the Constitution, and stole our books, music and movies from the public domain.
If somebody sets up a web site to legally distribute torrents outside the influence of their bribery, it serves the entertainment companies fucking right and I don't have any sympathy for them.
If somebody illegally distributes torrents, it also serves them fucking right and I don't have any sympathy for them, because they ripped me off first.
If the billion-dollar entertainment companies go out of business like the carbon paper companies did, it also serves them fucking right. For 75 years they've been living a great life with $100,000-a-year (or $1 million-a-year) jobs, fucking actresses and models, drinking good booze and snorting coke, on a market model based on mass marketing plastic records and movie film. Well, it's all over. You're technologically obsolete. The American manufacturing workers got screwed, so I'm not going to worry about you. We don't need you to tell me what music I'm supposed to like.
If we still had fair, reasonable copyright laws like we did before 1998, that wou
Gordon Guyatt et al. just published "A systematic review of studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the United States," in volume 1, issue 1 of Open Medicine, a new Canadian journal with an editorial board composed of some of the world's top medical experts, and a staff that just quit or got fired from Canada's formerly top medical journal.http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/ 1 The review's conclusion is:
"Available studies suggest that health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent."
The article also says that, in 2003, Americans spent an estimated US$5,635 per capita on health care, while Canadians spent US$3,003.
The journal Open Medicine is another story. John Hoey, editor of CMAJ, the journal of the Canadian Medical Association, was fired last year by the CMA, and most of the staff resigned. http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/354/19/19 82 http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/174/1/9 http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/173/12/1435 Hoey sent reporters to buy morning-after pills in pharmacies around Canada. They found out that pharmacists illegally asked for personal information, which was entered in their computers. The Canadian Pharmacists Association complained to the CMA, and the CMA censored the story. The CMAJ staff now founded this new journal, Open Medicine, and they have loaded the first issue with the best studies they could get.