There is not much of a legal basis for "I let someone video me having sex, let them keep the recording, and now I want to kill myself because they posted it online".
Nope. I have a couple of friends who are photographers and photo editors. They take pictures all the time, but if they want to use them commercially they have to get a model release or other permission. If you want to use a picture of Albert Einstein or Marilyn Monroe, you have to get permission from their estate.
Non-commercial use would be different in some ways, but you have enough rights to your own image that the offended party and her lawyers could find something to hang you on in most states.
I also thought that 18 years was pretty harsh, compared to the penalties for crimes in which the victim dies.
His problem: He managed to hit every hot button that makes a defendant unsympathetic. Posting naked pictures of women that were stolen for the purpose of humiliating and harming them is essentially on-line sexual abuse. Blackmail is another hot button.
That's the way the system works. If you make enemies of a lot of angry, articulate, politically influential victims and their families out for revenge, you don't get a fair trial.
If he did it deliberately, he did a great job.
He reminds me of those kids who went into the San Diego zoo and started taunting the tiger.
Intellectually, I can see how the sentence may have been too harsh. But I'm not going to start a "Free Kevin" web site.
I must be missing something, because this is not anything new, except that technology enables the patient to have a little more information and perspective than before. Anyone given prescription medication always had possibility (actually the duty) to monitor their symptoms and responses, and to seek additional medical intervention if warranted. They may be worse off now because the Internet gives their doctor and pharmacist less of an obligation to provide them with sufficient information to monitor their condition between consultations.
In order to understand why you're wrong, why don't you apply the same logic to the war on terrorism. Technology allows the cops to have more information and perspective than before. In terrorism, or medicine, you're not getting more information and perspective, you're dumping more hay on the haystack with the needle in it.
The problem is that in medicine tests give you information with well-documented false positives. If I take a standard 21-item composite blood test, and each of those components has a documented 5% false positives even with perfectly healthy people, what are my chances of getting through that test without some "red flags"?
In fact, many of these tests are only accurate for patients who already have conventional symptoms for a disease.
For example, you may have a blood test for rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis is a disease with symptoms of painful joints and a process of your immune system destroying your joints.
If you use that blood test on people who have painful joints, it's positive 50% of the time. 45% of those people actually have rheumatoid arthritis and 5% of those positives are false positives (because they have other painful diseases).
But if you use that blood tests on people who don't have painful joints, it's positive 50% of the time and all of those positives are false positives. Why? Because if you don't have painful joints, you don't have rheumatoid arthritis.
Suppose you urge men to get pregnancy tests. For every 1,000 men, 1 of them will get a positive result, indicating pregnancy. How does that give you more information and perspective?
Cuban was advocating for regular baseline lab tests so that doctors would have a trend analysis available to them when he gets sick.
Yes, I read that debate.
The same big-data arguments for medicine can also be used for national security.
If more medical information is good, why isn't more national security information good?
Why shouldn't we have TV cameras on every public road, scanning every license plate, so we can have a record of everybody's travel? How can that be bad? Can't we just ignore the information we don't need?
And if that information doesn't help us stop terrorists, why shouldn't we have records of every phone call in the country? Then we can add that to the license plate travel information.
What's wrong with that?
That's what you're doing when you collect information from indiscriminate medical tests.
The more medical tests you get, the more hay you're piling on the haystack.
Forbes would argue that lots of tests will lead to a false positive
Isn't it bizarre that they admit the methods they use to analyze data will eventually lead to a false positive and, as a result, it is bad to collect "too much" information? Sounds like there is something wrong with the methods if too much information is a problem for them.
The reason that too much information is bad is because of the way it's used.
The doctor, or whoever explains the test results to you, says, "This test shows that you have a 1% chance of having cancer. If you take a *further* test we can find out whether you really have cancer. If you have cancer, and we can catch it in time, it can save your life. If you don't take the further test, you might die."
Here's an example: A friend of mine was diagnosed with pneumonia. A pulmonologist took an x-ray. The pulmonologist gave him antibiotics for the pneumonia, but found a spot on the x-ray. The pulmonologist told him that the spot could be cancer, and he should get a biopsy to rule it out.
I and another friend tried to talk him out of it, because a lung biopsy is very invasive. Lung biopsies have a low but significant rate of serious complications, including death. Besides, lung x-rays always show spots. The odds that it's cancer are very low. Even if it is cancer, you can wait to see if it grows, and *then* do a biopsy.
My friend told me (reasonably) that his doctor knew more than I did, and he had to follow his doctor. So he had the biopsy. Contrary to what the doctor told him, it was invasive, and painful afterwards.
3 months later he died. We could never find out for sure whether his death was the result of the biopsy, but at 50 years old it was very unusual.
If a doctor tells a patient, "Your test (x-ray) shows you have 1% chance of cancer, and the only way to rule it out is with *another* test (biopsy), which I strongly recommend, even though it's invasive," it's pretty hard to refuse a biopsy, and most people get the biopsy.
You can go through all the decision flow charts you want, but this is what happens in the real world. You get a test where the lab says, says, "You have 1% chance of cancer, and we need *another*, more invasive test to rule it out." That's a pretty hard sales pitch to resist.
You're right, there's something wrong with the methods. The right way to use tests is for the doctor to take a standard history and do an office exam to follow up suspicions raised by that history. Then, based on the history or exam, the doctor might suspect a diagnosis. Sometimes an appropriate test can confirm the diagnosis.
But if you use tests without first having a suspicion, and a reasonable basis for taking the test, you're more likely to get false positives and recommendations for *further* tests. When you use those methods, too much information will be a problem for you.
For a games-theory argument, consider that the regulatory agencies are free to require any safety requirements at no cost to themselves, but if something goes wrong they are held responsible. As a result we have a system where it costs 2.5 billion dollars to bring a drug to market, so that it's economically infeasable to implement existing cures for rare diseases. It's also impossible for individuals to manage their own risk with informed consent.
(1) If you read a little further down that Google search, you find out that maybe it doesn't cost $2.5 billion after all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11... $2.6 Billion to Develop a Drug? New Estimate Makes Questionable Assumptions Aaron E. Carroll NOV. 18, 2014 The bottom line is that the report contains a lot of assumptions that tend to favor the pharmaceutical industry. While the Tufts Center reports that $2.6 billion is the cost to develop “a new prescription medicine that gains marketing approval,” it might be more accurate to say that it’s the cost to develop certain new molecular entities for which pharmaceutical companies did all of the research. That’s very few drugs, in the scheme of things.
(2) Another game theory argument is that drug companies and doctors will sell drugs to make as much money as they can, even if they give people drugs that they don't need and it harms them. The Nobel-prize winning economist Kenneth Arrow wrote that a free market in health care is impossible, because the consumers (patients) don't have enough information to evaluate what the doctor is telling them.
(3) Most scientists agree that theory should be confirmed with empirical fact. In fact, there are countries that until recently had almost no government regulation, and they bring new drugs to market all the time. Unfortunately, most of those new don't live up to their claims when western doctors try to use them. So their drugs aren't any good. Those facts disconfirm your theory.
(4) In fact, without regulation, drug companies and doctors sell drugs with unfounded claims, and give patients drugs that are inappropriate and harmful, following their financial motivation rather than the interests of their patients. This confirms Arrow's theory.
For example, China has relatively few government regulations.
JAMA Intern Med. 2014 Dec;174(12):1914-20. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.5214. Use and prescription of antibiotics in primary health care settings in China. Wang J, Wang P, Wang X, Zheng Y, Xiao Y.
RESULTS: Most staff in the primary health care facilities had less than a college degree, and the medical staff consisted primarily of physician assistants, assistant pharmacists, nurses, and nursing assistants. The median (range) governmental contribution to each facility was 34.0% (3.6%-92.5%) of total revenue. The facilities prescribed a median (range) of 28 (8-111) types of antibiotics, including 34 (10-115) individual agents. Antibiotics were included in 52.9% of the outpatient visit prescription records: of these, only 39.4% were prescribed properly. Of the inpatients, 77.5% received antibiotic therapy: of these, only 24.6% were prescribed properly. Antibiotics were prescribed for 78.0% of colds and 93.5% of cases of acute bronchitis. Of the antibiotic prescriptions, 28.0% contained cephalosporins and 15.7% fluoroquinolones. A total of 55.0% of the antibiotic prescriptions were for antibiotic combination therapy with 2 or more agents. In nonsurgical inpatients in cities, the mean (SD) duration of antibiotic therapy was 10.1 (7.8) days. Of the surgical patients, 98.0% received antibiotics, with 63.8% of these prescriptions for prophylaxis.
CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Antibiotics are frequently prescribed in Chinese primary health care facil
On March 24, 2008, a US Airways pilot's gun went off on Flight 1536 from Denver to Charlotte, North Carolina. The pilot was a Federal Flight Deck Officer and was authorized to carry the weapon by the US Transportation Security Administration. No one was injured and the aircraft landed safely.[4] According to the pilot, the gun fired while he was trying to stow it. The bullet went through the side of the cockpit and tore a small hole in the exterior of the plane. The plane was pulled from service for repairs.[5]
Much less likely, I'd be more worried about the "depressed narcissistic arsehole" overpowering the stewardess and crashing the plane anyway.
Or just pulling out a gun and shooting the other person in the cockpit, locking the door, and doing the same thing that happened here. All flight crew members are automatically Federal Flight Deck Officers and are allowed to carry guns on the plane, and other flight officers are prohibited from knowing that their coworkers may be carrying guns.
That's reassuring I guess.
On March 24, 2008, a US Airways pilot's gun went off on Flight 1536 from Denver to Charlotte, North Carolina. The pilot was a Federal Flight Deck Officer and was authorized to carry the weapon by the US Transportation Security Administration. No one was injured and the aircraft landed safely.[4] According to the pilot, the gun fired while he was trying to stow it. The bullet went through the side of the cockpit and tore a small hole in the exterior of the plane. The plane was pulled from service for repairs.[5]
So then the next thing you'd say is priests and lawyers should also not have confidentiality, because that would be inconvenient.
Lawyers and doctors have a relationship worthy of protection for very clear reasons. Same with spouses. But priests/clergy? Not really agreeing with that one. Why should a relationship between a priest and anyone else be a legally protected one relationship? What benefit to society is provided by protecting that relationship? I cannot think of a single benefit to society by protecting that relationship as something special when investigating a crime or inquiring about mental stability.
The reason clergy have confidentiality, and equivalent secular counselors do not, is because of the political power of religions. L. Ron Hubbard figured that out.
So Kenneth Starr subpoenaed Monica Lewinsky's therapist to testify and bring his records. What would the political response have been if he subpoenaed Lewinsky's rabbi?
I think it's a violation of the First Amendment to protect religious but not secular counselors.
Since we've lost doctor-patient confidentiality, and therapist-client confidentiality, we should resolve the inconsistency by requiring clergy to testify.
But in our politicized legal system, I can't imagine that happening.
Gee, and one wonders why people might not be forthcoming with their doctors.
As soon as you say "fuck doctor patient confidentiality" then WTF would you expect people to tell doctors anything for?
That's what happens in the military, in the special combat services. The military has a high suicide rate. They've been trying to encourage combat personnel to talk about that with doctors or therapists.
Military personnel believe, with some justification, that if they went to a doctor or psychologist about a mental problem, it would be the end of their career.
And there's a military culture being against psychotherapy and against acknowledging mental illness.
(This is assuming that psychotherapy can actually prevent suicide. There was no evidence it can, last time I did a literature search.)
So then the next thing you'd say is priests and lawyers should also not have confidentiality, because that would be inconvenient.
One of the few ways you can have therapy that is still kept confidential is to see a clerical counselor. Kenneth Starr subpoenaed Monica Lewinsky's therapist to give his records and testify, but Starr didn't subpoena Lewinsky's rabbi. Also, unlike health professionals, the clergy aren't required to keep written records.
I've never heard of a prosecutor subpoenaing a clergyman to testify about his congregants. They're privileging religious counselors over secular counselors, which is one more example of hypocritical favoritism towards religion, but our government always ignores the First Amendment when it's politically expedient.
I realize that randomized, controlled trials in peer-reviewed journals may not be the whole, final truth, but this is a nice catalog of everything that you can argue over.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1... Myths, Presumptions, and Facts about Obesity Krista Casazza, Kevin R. Fontaine, Arne Astrup, et al. N Engl J Med 2013; 368:446-454. January 31, 2013. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa1208051 [FREE]
Results. We identified seven obesity-related myths concerning the effects of small sustained increases in energy intake or expenditure, establishment of realistic goals for weight loss, rapid weight loss, weight-loss readiness, physical-education classes, breast-feeding, and energy expended during sexual activity. We also identified six presumptions about the purported effects of regularly eating breakfast, early childhood experiences, eating fruits and vegetables, weight cycling, snacking, and the built (i.e., human-made) environment. Finally, we identified nine evidence-supported facts that are relevant for the formulation of sound public health, policy, or clinical recommendations.
Read the article and weep. Of course, there's no need to weep for Monsanto, who are slaughtering their way to the bank.
Not a hell of a lot to back up those claims. As the article says, there's "limited evidence." Case-control studies never prove anything; they're merely hypothesis-generating. You can never be sure that you've controlled for every factor. They use case-control studies to "prove" that marijuana causes schizophrenia. I'd like to see the written record of the Working Group that classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A), and how they came to that conclusion.
The Lancet Oncology
Available online 20 March 2015
Kathryn Z Guytona,
Dana Loomisa,
Yann Grossea,
Fatiha El Ghissassia,
Lamia Benbrahim-Tallaaa,
Neela Guhaa,
Chiara Scocciantia,
Heidi Mattocka,
Kurt Straifa,
on behalf of the International Agency for Research on Cancer Monograph Working Group, IARC, Lyon, France
Show more
doi:10.1016/S1470-2045(15)70134-8
Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum herbicide, currently with the highest production volumes of all herbicides. It is used in more than 750 different products for agriculture, forestry, urban, and home applications. Its use has increased sharply with the development of genetically modified glyphosate-resistant crop varieties. Glyphosate has been detected in air during spraying, in water, and in food. There was limited evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of glyphosate. Case-control studies of occupational exposure in the USA,14 Canada,6 and Sweden7 reported increased risks for non-Hodgkin lymphoma that persisted after adjustment for other pesticides. The AHS cohort did not show a significantly increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In male CD-1 mice, glyphosate induced a positive trend in the incidence of a rare tumour, renal tubule carcinoma. A second study reported a positive trend for haemangiosarcoma in male mice.15 Glyphosate increased pancreatic islet-cell adenoma in male rats in two studies. A glyphosate formulation promoted skin tumours in an initiation-promotion study in mice.
Glyphosate has been detected in the blood and urine of agricultural workers, indicating absorption. Soil microbes degrade glyphosate to aminomethylphosphoric acid (AMPA). Blood AMPA detection after poisonings suggests intestinal microbial metabolism in humans. Glyphosate and glyphosate formulations induced DNA and chromosomal damage in mammals, and in human and animal cells in vitro. One study reported increases in blood markers of chromosomal damage (micronuclei) in residents of several communities after spraying of glyphosate formulations.16 Bacterial mutagenesis tests were negative. Glyphosate, glyphosate formulations, and AMPA induced oxidative stress in rodents and in vitro. The Working Group classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A).
6
HH McDuffie, P Pahwa, JR McLaughlin, et al.
Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and specific pesticide exposures in men: cross-Canada study of pesticides and health
Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev, 10 (2001), pp. 1155–1163
7
M Eriksson, L Hardell, M Carlberg, M Akerman
Pesticide exposure as risk factor for non-Hodgkin lymphoma including histopathological subgroup analysis
Int J C
Each kindle comes stocked with over 1,000 educational books. The literacy rate *shoots up* in every area they deliver them, mostly in Central and East Africa. They have a *very* small operational budget, so anything you give them goes a *long* way (compared to most charities).
I started working in educational technology in the 1960s. I've seen major fads come and go.
Here's the most important thing I've learned: Always ask them if they have published a study in a peer-reviewed journal about their success (or failure). I didn't see any studies like that on their web site.
It's pretty easy to put together a pr stunt for the cameras and collect some happy kids who love reading. It's pretty difficult to deliver useful results with a sustained effort.
They're not educating people. They're teaching rote memorization.
A friend of mine was in the Peace Corps teaching science in a small village in Africa.
They had never seen ice before.
He decided to show them ice. He used a portable gas-powered refrigerator to freeze some water. He put a piece of ice in a test tube, heated it with a candle, and showed them how the ice became water.
One kid, who was a little more clever than the others, challenged him. The kid didn't accept my friend's argument that the ice became water. He thought that the water was coming from the candle.
Actually, that's a good point. How do you know that the water is coming from the ice rather than the candle?
You could come up with an experiment and see what happens. Then you'd be doing science rather than memorizing facts.
The really important lesson comes when the kids come up with an idea that isn't in the script, and ask a question that isn't in the script. The scripted instruction teachers will be helpless in that situation. They'll just tell the kid to be quiet and go on with the script. They have to. The teachers are being rated according to how well they follow the script.
I dont see a problem with changing "choke hold" to "arm bar" is that is what the police call the move that was done.
I see a problem with it, but I just looked at the article and it appears the changes have been reverted to say choke hold once again. Hopefully further edits to the article will come under close scrutiny now.
The other change that got reverted back to choke hold was "headlock."
some of the stuff is clear cut abuse. on the other hand some of it is semantics. I dont see a problem with changing "choke hold" to "arm bar" is that is what the police call the move that was done.
No, changing it from "choke hold" to "arm bar" is changing a word in simple English that everybody understands to a word that is in jargon that only the police would understand.
Wikipedia guidelines say that it's written for the general public, not specialists in a field.
It's a deliberate effort to obscure the truth and deceive.
wikipedia is not nor is intended as a primary information source. What information is on there, if it is to remain, is backed by citations to original source.
The purpose of an encyclopedia -- any encyclopedia -- is to provide an introduction and overview, and sources for further information.
It's possible for partisans, like the cops, to edit Wikipedia in a way that gives a biased account to favor their side. For example, the medical examiner reported that Eric Garner's death was a "homicide," but a lot of editors who were either cop fanboys or cops themselves kept adding the "explanation" that a homicide isn't identical to a crime. Most eyewitness accounts said that Pantaleo pushed Garner's "face" into the ground. They changed it to Pantaleo pushed Garner's "head" into the ground. They waged a big battle over changing "chokehold" into "headlock," which didn't even have a source.
They're trying to turn it into a defense attorney's version of the killing. That's not NPOV.
So the purpose of their editing of Wikipedia, Google's first hit, is to frame the story their way, for what is most peoples' initial version of the events.
Of course the pigxxx police union didn't like it when mayor di Blasio referred to the "alleged" attacks by demonstrators on police. Presumption of innocence is something they only want for cops, not for other criminals.
Wikipedia does not qualify as evidence--it would not be admissible as evidence of a crime. Don't cry wolf on that because when police really do tamper with evidence, it's a *LOT* more serious than making updates to Wikipedia.
Sometimes the court of public opinion is the only place you can get justice, because you won't get it in the (snicker) grand jury or the courts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... .
Tampering with evidence is something that the courts regard as a venial sin a few steps lower in their priorities than caging free coffee and donuts from coffee shops.
There's a long history of pigsxxxx cops getting caught red-handed lying under oath, not just once but as a routine practice. I'm hard pressed to think of a case when they were held to account (except for one with a probationary officer who knocked an innocent cyclist off his bicycle and arrested him).
http://observer.com/2015/03/ca... California Prosecutor Falsifies Transcript of Confession Court of Appeal slams Attorney General Kamala Harris again By Sidney Powell 03/04/15
Holding a cop liable for tampering with evidence is about as likely as the Ferguson government saying, "You're right. Our conscience can't take any more demonstrations. We'll abolish the government and hold new elections, democratic ones this time."
In the case of an m2f transsexual, you can see here how it's done. As you can see, they don't just "chop it off", which is why orgasmic function (which starts and ends in the brain) is successful in 80% or more of all cases post-op.
Slashdot Mirror
Correct.
There is not much of a legal basis for "I let someone video me having sex, let them keep the recording, and now I want to kill myself because they posted it online".
Nope. I have a couple of friends who are photographers and photo editors. They take pictures all the time, but if they want to use them commercially they have to get a model release or other permission. If you want to use a picture of Albert Einstein or Marilyn Monroe, you have to get permission from their estate.
Non-commercial use would be different in some ways, but you have enough rights to your own image that the offended party and her lawyers could find something to hang you on in most states.
I also thought that 18 years was pretty harsh, compared to the penalties for crimes in which the victim dies.
His problem: He managed to hit every hot button that makes a defendant unsympathetic. Posting naked pictures of women that were stolen for the purpose of humiliating and harming them is essentially on-line sexual abuse. Blackmail is another hot button.
That's the way the system works. If you make enemies of a lot of angry, articulate, politically influential victims and their families out for revenge, you don't get a fair trial.
If he did it deliberately, he did a great job.
He reminds me of those kids who went into the San Diego zoo and started taunting the tiger.
Intellectually, I can see how the sentence may have been too harsh. But I'm not going to start a "Free Kevin" web site.
Conceded. This isn't a civilized country. We haven't even gotten rid of the last vestiges of slavery.
Another example was Eugene V. Debs, who ran for president from jail. He was convicted of encouraging people not to join the military in WWII.
We don't really have freedom of speech in the U.S. It comes and it goes.
http://972mag.com/the-hater-in...
I must be missing something, because this is not anything new, except that technology enables the patient to have a little more information and perspective than before. Anyone given prescription medication always had possibility (actually the duty) to monitor their symptoms and responses, and to seek additional medical intervention if warranted. They may be worse off now because the Internet gives their doctor and pharmacist less of an obligation to provide them with sufficient information to monitor their condition between consultations.
In order to understand why you're wrong, why don't you apply the same logic to the war on terrorism. Technology allows the cops to have more information and perspective than before. In terrorism, or medicine, you're not getting more information and perspective, you're dumping more hay on the haystack with the needle in it.
The problem is that in medicine tests give you information with well-documented false positives. If I take a standard 21-item composite blood test, and each of those components has a documented 5% false positives even with perfectly healthy people, what are my chances of getting through that test without some "red flags"?
In fact, many of these tests are only accurate for patients who already have conventional symptoms for a disease.
For example, you may have a blood test for rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis is a disease with symptoms of painful joints and a process of your immune system destroying your joints.
If you use that blood test on people who have painful joints, it's positive 50% of the time. 45% of those people actually have rheumatoid arthritis and 5% of those positives are false positives (because they have other painful diseases).
But if you use that blood tests on people who don't have painful joints, it's positive 50% of the time and all of those positives are false positives. Why? Because if you don't have painful joints, you don't have rheumatoid arthritis.
Suppose you urge men to get pregnancy tests. For every 1,000 men, 1 of them will get a positive result, indicating pregnancy. How does that give you more information and perspective?
This is interesting, given a conversation between Mark Cuban and some doctors/researchers yesterday:
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/responding-to-mark-cuban-more-is-not-always-better/
Cuban was advocating for regular baseline lab tests so that doctors would have a trend analysis available to them when he gets sick.
Yes, I read that debate.
The same big-data arguments for medicine can also be used for national security.
If more medical information is good, why isn't more national security information good?
Why shouldn't we have TV cameras on every public road, scanning every license plate, so we can have a record of everybody's travel? How can that be bad? Can't we just ignore the information we don't need?
And if that information doesn't help us stop terrorists, why shouldn't we have records of every phone call in the country? Then we can add that to the license plate travel information.
What's wrong with that?
That's what you're doing when you collect information from indiscriminate medical tests.
The more medical tests you get, the more hay you're piling on the haystack.
Isn't it bizarre that they admit the methods they use to analyze data will eventually lead to a false positive and, as a result, it is bad to collect "too much" information? Sounds like there is something wrong with the methods if too much information is a problem for them.
The reason that too much information is bad is because of the way it's used.
The doctor, or whoever explains the test results to you, says, "This test shows that you have a 1% chance of having cancer. If you take a *further* test we can find out whether you really have cancer. If you have cancer, and we can catch it in time, it can save your life. If you don't take the further test, you might die."
Here's an example: A friend of mine was diagnosed with pneumonia. A pulmonologist took an x-ray. The pulmonologist gave him antibiotics for the pneumonia, but found a spot on the x-ray. The pulmonologist told him that the spot could be cancer, and he should get a biopsy to rule it out.
I and another friend tried to talk him out of it, because a lung biopsy is very invasive. Lung biopsies have a low but significant rate of serious complications, including death. Besides, lung x-rays always show spots. The odds that it's cancer are very low. Even if it is cancer, you can wait to see if it grows, and *then* do a biopsy.
My friend told me (reasonably) that his doctor knew more than I did, and he had to follow his doctor. So he had the biopsy. Contrary to what the doctor told him, it was invasive, and painful afterwards.
3 months later he died. We could never find out for sure whether his death was the result of the biopsy, but at 50 years old it was very unusual.
If a doctor tells a patient, "Your test (x-ray) shows you have 1% chance of cancer, and the only way to rule it out is with *another* test (biopsy), which I strongly recommend, even though it's invasive," it's pretty hard to refuse a biopsy, and most people get the biopsy.
You can go through all the decision flow charts you want, but this is what happens in the real world. You get a test where the lab says, says, "You have 1% chance of cancer, and we need *another*, more invasive test to rule it out." That's a pretty hard sales pitch to resist.
You're right, there's something wrong with the methods. The right way to use tests is for the doctor to take a standard history and do an office exam to follow up suspicions raised by that history. Then, based on the history or exam, the doctor might suspect a diagnosis. Sometimes an appropriate test can confirm the diagnosis.
But if you use tests without first having a suspicion, and a reasonable basis for taking the test, you're more likely to get false positives and recommendations for *further* tests. When you use those methods, too much information will be a problem for you.
For a games-theory argument, consider that the regulatory agencies are free to require any safety requirements at no cost to themselves, but if something goes wrong they are held responsible. As a result we have a system where it costs 2.5 billion dollars to bring a drug to market, so that it's economically infeasable to implement existing cures for rare diseases. It's also impossible for individuals to manage their own risk with informed consent.
(1) If you read a little further down that Google search, you find out that maybe it doesn't cost $2.5 billion after all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11...
$2.6 Billion to Develop a Drug? New Estimate Makes Questionable Assumptions
Aaron E. Carroll
NOV. 18, 2014
The bottom line is that the report contains a lot of assumptions that tend to favor the pharmaceutical industry. While the Tufts Center reports that $2.6 billion is the cost to develop “a new prescription medicine that gains marketing approval,” it might be more accurate to say that it’s the cost to develop certain new molecular entities for which pharmaceutical companies did all of the research. That’s very few drugs, in the scheme of things.
(2) Another game theory argument is that drug companies and doctors will sell drugs to make as much money as they can, even if they give people drugs that they don't need and it harms them. The Nobel-prize winning economist Kenneth Arrow wrote that a free market in health care is impossible, because the consumers (patients) don't have enough information to evaluate what the doctor is telling them.
(3) Most scientists agree that theory should be confirmed with empirical fact. In fact, there are countries that until recently had almost no government regulation, and they bring new drugs to market all the time. Unfortunately, most of those new don't live up to their claims when western doctors try to use them. So their drugs aren't any good. Those facts disconfirm your theory.
(4) In fact, without regulation, drug companies and doctors sell drugs with unfounded claims, and give patients drugs that are inappropriate and harmful, following their financial motivation rather than the interests of their patients. This confirms Arrow's theory.
For example, China has relatively few government regulations.
JAMA Intern Med. 2014 Dec;174(12):1914-20. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.5214.
Use and prescription of antibiotics in primary health care settings in China.
Wang J, Wang P, Wang X, Zheng Y, Xiao Y.
RESULTS: Most staff in the primary health care facilities had less than a college degree, and the medical staff consisted primarily of physician assistants, assistant pharmacists, nurses, and nursing assistants. The median (range) governmental contribution to each facility was 34.0% (3.6%-92.5%) of total revenue. The facilities prescribed a median (range) of 28 (8-111) types of antibiotics, including 34 (10-115) individual agents. Antibiotics were included in 52.9% of the outpatient visit prescription records: of these, only 39.4% were prescribed properly. Of the inpatients, 77.5% received antibiotic therapy: of these, only 24.6% were prescribed properly. Antibiotics were prescribed for 78.0% of colds and 93.5% of cases of acute bronchitis. Of the antibiotic prescriptions, 28.0% contained cephalosporins and 15.7% fluoroquinolones. A total of 55.0% of the antibiotic prescriptions were for antibiotic combination therapy with 2 or more agents. In nonsurgical inpatients in cities, the mean (SD) duration of antibiotic therapy was 10.1 (7.8) days. Of the surgical patients, 98.0% received antibiotics, with 63.8% of these prescriptions for prophylaxis.
CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Antibiotics are frequently prescribed in Chinese primary health care facil
What happens when the autopilot becomes suicidal?
How is that proposed program doing that would let pilots have a pistol in the cockpit?
About as you'd expect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
On March 24, 2008, a US Airways pilot's gun went off on Flight 1536 from Denver to Charlotte, North Carolina. The pilot was a Federal Flight Deck Officer and was authorized to carry the weapon by the US Transportation Security Administration. No one was injured and the aircraft landed safely.[4] According to the pilot, the gun fired while he was trying to stow it. The bullet went through the side of the cockpit and tore a small hole in the exterior of the plane. The plane was pulled from service for repairs.[5]
Much less likely, I'd be more worried about the "depressed narcissistic arsehole" overpowering the stewardess and crashing the plane anyway.
Or just pulling out a gun and shooting the other person in the cockpit, locking the door, and doing the same thing that happened here.
All flight crew members are automatically Federal Flight Deck Officers and are allowed to carry guns on the plane, and other flight officers are prohibited from knowing that their coworkers may be carrying guns.
That's reassuring I guess.
On March 24, 2008, a US Airways pilot's gun went off on Flight 1536 from Denver to Charlotte, North Carolina. The pilot was a Federal Flight Deck Officer and was authorized to carry the weapon by the US Transportation Security Administration. No one was injured and the aircraft landed safely.[4] According to the pilot, the gun fired while he was trying to stow it. The bullet went through the side of the cockpit and tore a small hole in the exterior of the plane. The plane was pulled from service for repairs.[5]
So then the next thing you'd say is priests and lawyers should also not have confidentiality, because that would be inconvenient.
Lawyers and doctors have a relationship worthy of protection for very clear reasons. Same with spouses. But priests/clergy? Not really agreeing with that one. Why should a relationship between a priest and anyone else be a legally protected one relationship? What benefit to society is provided by protecting that relationship? I cannot think of a single benefit to society by protecting that relationship as something special when investigating a crime or inquiring about mental stability.
The reason clergy have confidentiality, and equivalent secular counselors do not, is because of the political power of religions. L. Ron Hubbard figured that out.
So Kenneth Starr subpoenaed Monica Lewinsky's therapist to testify and bring his records. What would the political response have been if he subpoenaed Lewinsky's rabbi?
I think it's a violation of the First Amendment to protect religious but not secular counselors.
Since we've lost doctor-patient confidentiality, and therapist-client confidentiality, we should resolve the inconsistency by requiring clergy to testify.
But in our politicized legal system, I can't imagine that happening.
Gee, and one wonders why people might not be forthcoming with their doctors.
As soon as you say "fuck doctor patient confidentiality" then WTF would you expect people to tell doctors anything for?
That's what happens in the military, in the special combat services. The military has a high suicide rate. They've been trying to encourage combat personnel to talk about that with doctors or therapists.
Military personnel believe, with some justification, that if they went to a doctor or psychologist about a mental problem, it would be the end of their career.
And there's a military culture being against psychotherapy and against acknowledging mental illness.
(This is assuming that psychotherapy can actually prevent suicide. There was no evidence it can, last time I did a literature search.)
So then the next thing you'd say is priests and lawyers should also not have confidentiality, because that would be inconvenient.
One of the few ways you can have therapy that is still kept confidential is to see a clerical counselor. Kenneth Starr subpoenaed Monica Lewinsky's therapist to give his records and testify, but Starr didn't subpoena Lewinsky's rabbi. Also, unlike health professionals, the clergy aren't required to keep written records.
I've never heard of a prosecutor subpoenaing a clergyman to testify about his congregants. They're privileging religious counselors over secular counselors, which is one more example of hypocritical favoritism towards religion, but our government always ignores the First Amendment when it's politically expedient.
I realize that randomized, controlled trials in peer-reviewed journals may not be the whole, final truth, but this is a nice catalog of everything that you can argue over.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1...
Myths, Presumptions, and Facts about Obesity
Krista Casazza, Kevin R. Fontaine, Arne Astrup, et al.
N Engl J Med 2013; 368:446-454. January 31, 2013. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa1208051 [FREE]
Results. We identified seven obesity-related myths concerning the effects of small sustained increases in energy intake or expenditure, establishment of realistic goals for weight loss, rapid weight loss, weight-loss readiness, physical-education classes, breast-feeding, and energy expended during sexual activity. We also identified six presumptions about the purported effects of regularly eating breakfast, early childhood experiences, eating fruits and vegetables, weight cycling, snacking, and the built (i.e., human-made) environment. Finally, we identified nine evidence-supported facts that are relevant for the formulation of sound public health, policy, or clinical recommendations.
Read the article and weep. Of course, there's no need to weep for Monsanto, who are slaughtering their way to the bank.
Not a hell of a lot to back up those claims. As the article says, there's "limited evidence." Case-control studies never prove anything; they're merely hypothesis-generating. You can never be sure that you've controlled for every factor. They use case-control studies to "prove" that marijuana causes schizophrenia. I'd like to see the written record of the Working Group that classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A), and how they came to that conclusion.
The Lancet Oncology
Available online 20 March 2015
Kathryn Z Guytona,
Dana Loomisa,
Yann Grossea,
Fatiha El Ghissassia,
Lamia Benbrahim-Tallaaa,
Neela Guhaa,
Chiara Scocciantia,
Heidi Mattocka,
Kurt Straifa,
on behalf of the International Agency for Research on Cancer Monograph Working Group, IARC, Lyon, France
Show more
doi:10.1016/S1470-2045(15)70134-8
Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum herbicide, currently with the highest production volumes of all herbicides. It is used in more than 750 different products for agriculture, forestry, urban, and home applications. Its use has increased sharply with the development of genetically modified glyphosate-resistant crop varieties. Glyphosate has been detected in air during spraying, in water, and in food. There was limited evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of glyphosate. Case-control studies of occupational exposure in the USA,14 Canada,6 and Sweden7 reported increased risks for non-Hodgkin lymphoma that persisted after adjustment for other pesticides. The AHS cohort did not show a significantly increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In male CD-1 mice, glyphosate induced a positive trend in the incidence of a rare tumour, renal tubule carcinoma. A second study reported a positive trend for haemangiosarcoma in male mice.15 Glyphosate increased pancreatic islet-cell adenoma in male rats in two studies. A glyphosate formulation promoted skin tumours in an initiation-promotion study in mice.
Glyphosate has been detected in the blood and urine of agricultural workers, indicating absorption. Soil microbes degrade glyphosate to aminomethylphosphoric acid (AMPA). Blood AMPA detection after poisonings suggests intestinal microbial metabolism in humans. Glyphosate and glyphosate formulations induced DNA and chromosomal damage in mammals, and in human and animal cells in vitro. One study reported increases in blood markers of chromosomal damage (micronuclei) in residents of several communities after spraying of glyphosate formulations.16 Bacterial mutagenesis tests were negative. Glyphosate, glyphosate formulations, and AMPA induced oxidative stress in rodents and in vitro. The Working Group classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A).
6
HH McDuffie, P Pahwa, JR McLaughlin, et al.
Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and specific pesticide exposures in men: cross-Canada study of pesticides and health
Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev, 10 (2001), pp. 1155–1163
7
M Eriksson, L Hardell, M Carlberg, M Akerman
Pesticide exposure as risk factor for non-Hodgkin lymphoma including histopathological subgroup analysis
Int J C
Each kindle comes stocked with over 1,000 educational books. The literacy rate *shoots up* in every area they deliver them, mostly in Central and East Africa. They have a *very* small operational budget, so anything you give them goes a *long* way (compared to most charities).
I started working in educational technology in the 1960s. I've seen major fads come and go.
Here's the most important thing I've learned: Always ask them if they have published a study in a peer-reviewed journal about their success (or failure). I didn't see any studies like that on their web site.
It's pretty easy to put together a pr stunt for the cameras and collect some happy kids who love reading. It's pretty difficult to deliver useful results with a sustained effort.
They're not educating people. They're teaching rote memorization.
A friend of mine was in the Peace Corps teaching science in a small village in Africa.
They had never seen ice before.
He decided to show them ice. He used a portable gas-powered refrigerator to freeze some water. He put a piece of ice in a test tube, heated it with a candle, and showed them how the ice became water.
One kid, who was a little more clever than the others, challenged him. The kid didn't accept my friend's argument that the ice became water. He thought that the water was coming from the candle.
Actually, that's a good point. How do you know that the water is coming from the ice rather than the candle?
You could come up with an experiment and see what happens. Then you'd be doing science rather than memorizing facts.
How could you possibly teach a lesson like that with "scripted instruction"? http://m.theatlantic.com/educa...
The really important lesson comes when the kids come up with an idea that isn't in the script, and ask a question that isn't in the script. The scripted instruction teachers will be helpless in that situation. They'll just tell the kid to be quiet and go on with the script. They have to. The teachers are being rated according to how well they follow the script.
I dont see a problem with changing "choke hold" to "arm bar" is that is what the police call the move that was done.
I see a problem with it, but I just looked at the article and it appears the changes have been reverted to say choke hold once again. Hopefully further edits to the article will come under close scrutiny now.
The other change that got reverted back to choke hold was "headlock."
some of the stuff is clear cut abuse. on the other hand some of it is semantics. I dont see a problem with changing "choke hold" to "arm bar" is that is what the police call the move that was done.
No, changing it from "choke hold" to "arm bar" is changing a word in simple English that everybody understands to a word that is in jargon that only the police would understand.
Wikipedia guidelines say that it's written for the general public, not specialists in a field.
It's a deliberate effort to obscure the truth and deceive.
wikipedia is not nor is intended as a primary information source. What information is on there, if it is to remain, is backed by citations to original source.
The purpose of an encyclopedia -- any encyclopedia -- is to provide an introduction and overview, and sources for further information.
It's possible for partisans, like the cops, to edit Wikipedia in a way that gives a biased account to favor their side. For example, the medical examiner reported that Eric Garner's death was a "homicide," but a lot of editors who were either cop fanboys or cops themselves kept adding the "explanation" that a homicide isn't identical to a crime. Most eyewitness accounts said that Pantaleo pushed Garner's "face" into the ground. They changed it to Pantaleo pushed Garner's "head" into the ground. They waged a big battle over changing "chokehold" into "headlock," which didn't even have a source.
They're trying to turn it into a defense attorney's version of the killing. That's not NPOV.
So the purpose of their editing of Wikipedia, Google's first hit, is to frame the story their way, for what is most peoples' initial version of the events.
Of course the pigxxx police union didn't like it when mayor di Blasio referred to the "alleged" attacks by demonstrators on police. Presumption of innocence is something they only want for cops, not for other criminals.
Wikipedia does not qualify as evidence--it would not be admissible as evidence of a crime. Don't cry wolf on that because when police really do tamper with evidence, it's a *LOT* more serious than making updates to Wikipedia.
Sometimes the court of public opinion is the only place you can get justice, because you won't get it in the (snicker) grand jury or the courts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... .
Tampering with evidence is something that the courts regard as a venial sin a few steps lower in their priorities than caging free coffee and donuts from coffee shops.
There's a long history of pigsxxxx cops getting caught red-handed lying under oath, not just once but as a routine practice. I'm hard pressed to think of a case when they were held to account (except for one with a probationary officer who knocked an innocent cyclist off his bicycle and arrested him).
http://observer.com/2015/03/ca...
California Prosecutor Falsifies Transcript of Confession
Court of Appeal slams Attorney General Kamala Harris again
By Sidney Powell
03/04/15
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04...
Videos Challenge Accounts of Convention Unrest
By JIM DWYER
April 12, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepa...
Holding a cop liable for tampering with evidence is about as likely as the Ferguson government saying, "You're right. Our conscience can't take any more demonstrations. We'll abolish the government and hold new elections, democratic ones this time."
In the case of an m2f transsexual, you can see here how it's done. As you can see, they don't just "chop it off", which is why orgasmic function (which starts and ends in the brain) is successful in 80% or more of all cases post-op.
One technique using penile inversion, and another technique using a portion of the colon.
I am unable to come up with a joke for a surgeon named "Gary Alter" who performs gender reassignment surgery.
I always knew Perrier was missing something.