So I’m on a roll. Another let’s-beat-up-Arnold-evening, but what can I say? The man is pissing me off big time and I used to be a real fan of his. I admired the work he’s done with children, and I do admire that he has not reneged (so far) on his promises not to sell out California on environmental issues.

But for God’s sake, Arnold, leave the damn nurses alone. They’re not protesting just because they have nothing better to do. I dare you to spend one day as a nurse, working under the ratio that you think is just fine and dandy. Better yet, go be a patient–an ordinary schlep without any special privileges–and see how well your nurse is able to attend to your needs. Go do it, Arnold. Put your health and well being where your mouth is.

Anyway, here’s another tidbit, which caused the rant that I just made. According to the Sacramento Bee, Gov. Schwarzenegger had this to say about protesting nurses in California:

“They are becoming now more and more part of the set dressing,” he said in an interview this week. “It’s kind of like the extras when you do a movie and you need extras in the background. That’s what they’ve become. That’s fine with me.”

Set dressing? Nothing like demeaning, dehumanizing, and devaluing the VOTER. Every time he opens his mouth, he is inserting his foot deeper and deeper down his throat. Way to go, Arnold. Why don’t you pay some actors to pretend that they’re nurses, and then put them on TV so they can tell the world how much they love what you’re doing to California’s healthcare.

Dan Gimor, that noted pain in the ass who dares to question the powers that be and who has the audacity to work on a project to encourage and enable more citizen-based media, has an interesting post in his grassroots journalism blog. It seems that paid pseudo-journalism is catching on big-time, in order to push dubious agendas and fool the public into thinking that these are real new stories.

The story, which orginated in the LA Times, tells another sad tale about my friend Arnold Schwartzenegger, who I really used to like when he was an obsolete model of Terminator. This time, Arnold and his friends are stooping to Bushism tactics, in order to starve employees.

Using taxpayer money, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration has sent television stations statewide a mock news story extolling a proposal that would benefit political boosters in the business community by ending mandatory lunch breaks for many hourly workers. The tape looks like a news report and is narrated by a former television reporter who now works for the state. But unlike an actual news report, it does not provide views critical of the proposed changes. Democrats have denounced it as propaganda. Snippets aired on as many as 18 stations earlier this month, the administration said.

While Dan Gilmor is focused on the story about paying actors to play journalists and gush support for the measure, I am looking at the issue at hand. Hourly workers includes nurses, among others, so once again, it seems that Arnold just can’t get enough of hitting on those poor little nurses. First he stalls on laws designed to help nurses do their jobs efficiently, and now he wants them to go hungry.

According to the LA Times, the video shows construction workers, waitresses, nurses, farmworkers and a forklift operator at their jobs, and includes interviews with a farmer and a restaurant manager. The narrator says the proposal would permit workers to “eat when they are hungry, and not when the government tells them.”

The tape makes no mention that organized labor opposes the changes, or that workers would have a harder time suing employers over missed meal breaks.

The law in question is one passed under the administration of former Gov. Gray Davis, which gives workers the right to an extra hour of pay if employers don’t give them half-hour breaks within the first five hours of a shift. You better believe that this law was passed for a reason. As I was once an hourly paid worker in California, I can assure you that it can be horrendously difficult to get paid for a missed break. The law was passed to make sure that employees have a legal standing when push comes to shove.

Arnold’s administration is trying to “decide” whether California should modify this law. The bogus video that was made and passed off as a real news report, tries to depict changes in the law as being beneficial to the employees.

On the tape, the narrator says the Davis administration’s rule “resulted in much confusion, penalties and even litigation.”

At another point, the narrator says that “workers with special conditions such as medical conditions, child-care issues or caring for elderly parents would have flexibility with their work schedules.”

The bottom line is that they are trying to weaken the law so the employees don’t have a leg to stand on if they are forced to miss their breaks–which frequently happens when you are working in a hospital.

Now here’s an example of how unbiased the video is. There have been quite a number of lawsuits filed against employers who have ignored this law.

Mimi’s Cafe, a restaurant chain, is a defendant in one such suit. San Diego attorney Michael D. Singer, who represents the workers, said the chain could be liable for damages of as much as $10 million to several thousand past and present employees.

The Schwarzenegger administration video includes comments from a Mimi’s executive extolling the proposal. The tape makes no mention that the chain is embroiled in litigation over the lunch break rule.

On the bright side, maybe this is just an example of Arnold trying to improve the health of California employees. There is way too much obesity in this country, and doing away with lunch breaks will help keep those waist lines slim and trim. Keep ‘em hungry, and they’ll work harder for da man.

And maybe this is just another ploy to keep those damn nurses in line. If they won’t listen to reason, then let’s starve them into submission.

Using taxpayer money for propaganda films passed off as “real news.” Well, I’m not even going to go there. That issue is being taken up by the likes of Dan Gilmor and others.

I HAD A little bird, and its name was Enza,
I opened the window, and in-flew-Enza.”

Cute little tune, huh. That’s what the kiddies used to sing while the Spanish flu was decimating populations across the globe. Funny how some nursery rhymes came about. We think that they’re these innocent little kiddie chants, so sweet and cutesy, but in fact, they are macabre tales of dreadful death and disease.

Take another one:

Ring around the rosy,
A pocket full of posy,
Ashes, ashes, all fall down.

That is believed to have originated during the period of the Black Death aka Plague, which wiped out at least a third of the population of Europe.

Anyway, not to harp on nursery rhymes, but what to make of all the news about the avian flu? Is it overhype or a real threat? It’s so hard to tell what’s really going on.

Some health officials are warning that we have to act aggressively now, before the flu turns into a pandemic, and point out that the deadly Spanish flu (which didn’t originate in Spain, by the way) didn’t kill milions overnight.

The NY Daily News quoted this analogy from the head honcho at the CDC.

“When avian virus evolved to form the 1918 [Spanish] flu strain that caused the global pandemic, it didn’t happen overnight,” said CDC chief Julie Gerberding. “That’s why it’s important to have flu vaccine and antivirals, to be ready to react when it starts to emerge.”

I definitely don’t want to underestimate the power of the avian flu, or its possible potential. And yes, there is something creepy about catching a disease from a chicken. If you also go with the theory of how AIDS began, that too, is believed to have jumped species from monkey to human (no, I’m not getting into all of the AIDS theories right now).

But the origins of the Spanish flu are really unknown. If it originally came from a chicken, a cockroach, a magpie, or a wolverine, we will never know. The virus, contrary to its name, seems to bear the seal “Made in America.”

The first recorded case appeared in Kansas on March 11, 1918, when Pvt. Albert Gitchell, a mess cook at Fort Riley, showed up at the infirmary with a fever and complaining of muscle aches and a sore throat.

By the end of that day 107 soldiers came down with the flu. By the time the disease ran its course it killed 675,000 Americans.

Unlike the bird flu, the Spanish flu spread a lot more quickly. It was airborne immediately, and spread from person to person. In contrast, the avian flu is spread from bird to person, through direct contact. So far, there have only been 55 cases since January 2004, and considering the number of chickens and ducks (zillions), as well as the intense population density, that is not a lot of people. Last year, 40 people died from the avian flu. Still not huge numbers, and no comparison to the Spanish flu, which killed between 20-50 million people between 1918-1919.

There has been only one confirmed case of an infected person passing the flu to another person. Thus far, the primary mode of transmission is between bird and person.

A coming plague? The new pandemic? One reason I am skeptical is because of all of the other “warnings” which have been decimated into dust. First, the threat of a smallpox bioterrorist attack, which quietly disappeared when the vaccines were snubbed. Next, all of the studies which have shown that previous hype and benefits regarding the flu vaccine have been mostly incorrect.

Stay tuned, I will be throwing updates your way.

Forget Osama. Forget al Queda. Forget everything you’ve been reading about terrorists. That is so old, so 2004.

You want to know who we need to be watching out for? This is the face of the new terrorist, the most lethal threat against our nation.

Don’t let that sweet face and cute little cap fool you. This bitch means business. Nurses are bad news, particularly the ones who masquerade in their sweet nursey uniforms. If you happen to see one of these cuties coming your way, run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. Call the police, the FBI, the CIA, the FDA, anyone you can think of. Make no mistake about it, these chicks mean trouble.

No, I haven’t lost my mind. At least, not yet. But I think some of our higher powers are in danger of losing theirs. Wearing a nurse’s uniform is now considered a threat to national security, at least in the state of California.

In another boxing match between the governor and California’s nurses, Kelly Di Giacomo, a nurse employed at a Kaiser hospital near Sacramento, was detained for questioning at the Feb. 15 screening of the movie “Be Cool.” She was also asked if she planned on harming the governor (as though the Terminator could be injured by a mere mortal.).

Her crime? Wearing a nurse’s uniform. Yes, it’s true. When Di Giacomo asked why on earth anyone would think that she wanted to hurt Arnold, a bodyguard told her, “Well, you were wearing a nurse’s uniform.” As though that made it a done deal.

Nurses were protesting the governor’s policies outside of the screening, waving signs and booing. Di Giacomo, who had gotten a ticket to the event from a friend, first protested outside and then went in to watch the movie. Soon afterwards, she was approached by a plainclothes security officer who asked her to follow him to a back room. A California Highway Patrol officer stood guard at the door, and the security officer asked her if she intended to harm the governor. I guess he figured that she had an AKA 47 hidden in her crotch, or a grenade stuck between her boobs.

Di Giacomo tried to explain that a nurse’s uniform was not the new symbol of terrorism, but that she had merely worn it as a symbolic gesture, to show solidarity. But they grilled her for an hour, asking her pertinent questions such as where she worked (would she admit if she truly was Osama’s agent?), why she was at the event, and so on. Tammy DuTemple, a spokeswoman for the governor’s CHP security detail, claimed that Di Giacomoc was only questioned for about 30 minutes. As though that makes it okay.

Di Giacomo was finally allowed to return to her seat but instead, went outside to rejoin the protest. I’m sure at that point the last thing she felt like doing was spending any more time inside of that theater.

DuTemple was quoted as saying that precautions are taken “any time the governor is out on any kind of public platform. It’s not just the nurses. It’s any group which might turn and cause harm.”

The California Nurses Association has been very vocal about Arnold’s policies and how they affect healthcare, but never once have they threatened him with physical harm. Their protests are against his actions, but not against him. If anything, Arnold is the one who has spoken passionately about inflicting bodily harm on nurses. Afterall, he wants to “kick their butts,” and said so quite publicly. So it’s really the nurses who should be afraid that the governator is going to come after them.

This story is so pathetic, and really a sad statement for what our law enforcement is turning into. We are now using valuable resources to attack nurses–people who slave away caring for the sick and infirm. The nurses in California called for safer patient care and the governor jeers about “kicking their butts” as well as calling them a “special interest group.” Now a uniformed registered nurse sitting quietly in her seat at a film screening in Sacramento attended by Arnold Schwarzenegger is identified as a security threat, detained by armed CHP guards and questioned about any plans to harm the governor.

This scenario goes well beyond shameful. It is obscene, a disgrace, and also frightening that innocent people are being treated and harrassed in this manner. What’s next–arrest nurses who protest and ship them off to Guantanamo Bay as enemy combatants? Send a SWAT team to the headquarters of the California Nurses Association?

The LA Times had a good article about this incident.

Did you know that reality shows are really just rehashed stuff from 30 years ago? Really. On Feb 26, 1975 (I’m a day late for my “this day in history”) the Today Show went au natural. They actually broadcast a live, as in real time, kidney transplant on television. Lucky for them that the everything went okay. But can you imagine, back in 1975, turning on your TV set and seeing a surgeon holding a kidney, all nice fresh and bloody? TV was a little more innocent back then, so it must have been a bit of a shock.

Well, I take that back. The Vietnam War began to appear in people’s living rooms, and it was one of the things that really got the anti-war movement going. So maybe the public wasn’t quite so naive.

Anyway, after the show ended, 20,000 people contacted the NBC show to offer their own kidneys for transplant.

This should be a final destination for those who think it’s okay to dump unwanted crap on poor and developing nations. Like dumping genetically engineered foods that are not wanted, that are prohibited in the nations where they are being sent, and that have been banned for human consumption worldwide.

From the Organic Consumers Association (I know, their attitude is sooo anti-corporate, sooo 1960s Haight Ashbury Summer of Love)

DUMPING FRANKENFOODS ON THE POOR

World Food Programme (WFP) food aid shipments, predominantly from the United States, have been found to be heavily contaminated with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), including Starlink, a genetically engineered (GE) variety of corn banned for human consumption worldwide.

Starlink corn, which is gene-spliced with an insecticidal protein, was registered for animal feed use in the U.S. in 1998, despite protests from scientists that it would inevitably contaminate human food supplies. As predicted, in 2000 Starlink contaminated a full 10% of the U.S. corn harvest, prompting complaints from hundreds of U.S. consumers who suffered allergic reactions after eating Starlink-tainted corn taco shells and other products.

Recent tests have found 80% of food aid corn sent to Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala contains GMOs which are prohibited in these countries. Julio Sánchez from Centro Humboldt in Nicaragua said it’s outrageous that the WFP would purchase GE corn from the U.S. that is not fit for human consumption, jeopardizing the health of vulnerable populations like pregnant women and children, while contaminating indigenous corn fields and seed banks. Sanchez added that there are massive amounts of surplus non-GE corn produced by nations other than the U.S. that should be used for food aid instead.

I suppose that as a Seattle resident, I should be offended that the UK is less than thrilled by our very own, homegrown Starbucks. In fact, whenever I have friends visiting me in Seattle, I always point out the cafe “where it all began.” The birthplace of Starbucks. A shrine to the Starbucks devotees around the world.

But to be quite honest, I don’t consider Starbucks anything special. Their coffee is okay, and they finally caved in to public pressure to begin offering shade grown coffee ( essential for the health of the planet), fair trade, organic (but not necessarily shade grown), and to make more of a committment to be environmentally savvy. However, it would be nice for them to take the lead and only sell shade grown coffee.

Also, and I have to add this since my blog is supposed to be about health, there was some controversy a few years ago about Starbucks refusing to guarantee that the milk, beverages, chocolate, ice cream, and baked goods they are serving or selling are free of recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) and other genetically engineered ingredients (including soy derivatives and corn sweeteners). I don’t know if this has changed (the last article I read was from 2001 and I can’t find an update at the moment) but I only order tea when I’m there. Sorry, but I try to stay GMO free.

Starbucks is a pleasant place to sit and relax, but I find that many of the indie cafes in and around town are sooo much nicer. Better selection of food and snacks, better ambiance, and some offer only organic coffee–and I like to support those efforts. I don’t hate Starbucks, I don’t go out of my way to boycott them, but let’s just say that I don’t intentionally seek them out. If I feel like taking my laptop out, I do not head to Starbucks. If I’m out somewhere, tired, thirsty, and a Starbucks is in front of me, then I may go inside.

So it is without shedding a tear that I can post this story–customers in the UK think that Starbucks basically sucks.

Global Empire Not Doing So Well

Starbucks has come under the wrath of the anti-globalization movement, and now they are scrambling to reinvent themselves as an ethically-responsible company. Hence, the offering of shade grown coffee.

But according to an article in the Daily Telegraph (UK) Starbucks has not been welcomed with open arms every where they plant themselves. At first, people see them as a novelty, but then that novelty wears off.

Starbucks is still struggling to crack the British market, one of the few to prove resistant to its marketing campaign, and is estimated to have made losses of £50 million in the seven years since it launched here.

The decision to look for another PR firm follows a recent survey of 8,000 consumers which found that Starbucks was seen as “arrogant, intrusive and self-centred”.

The Starbucks empire has more than 8,000 stores in 34 countries, with 400 outlets in Britain. But like most empires, they may topple over if they don’t clean up their act. Obviously, the British are not pleased with the attempted take over. It seems to me that Starbucks will have to do more than just switch PR firms. They may actually have to change their way of doing business, their attitude, and clean up their act. Painful, I know.

This is really disturbing news, because many people who would like to continue using dairy products prefer that they come from cows sans hormones, antibiotics, and at low risk of mad cow disease (as in not being fed tainted animal parts). And prefer that the cows be treated in a humane manner, unlike the hideous factory farming which has became so pervasive.

According to a news release (which follows) from the Organic Consumers Association, you may be getting more than you bargained for. Those scrubbed, fresh faced cows may not be all that they seem to be, and guess what, our friends at the USDA just let it slide through their fingers.

STOP FACTORY DAIRY FARMS FROM LABELING THEIR PRODUCTS AS ORGANIC

Now that organic agriculture is a $15 billion industry and growing, it is squarely in the crosshairs of multinational corporations. Major food manufacturers are entering organic production, cutting corners, inflating prices, and endangering the integrity of organic agriculture (factory farms, nonorganic inputs, and imported ingredients with questionable certification).

Some large corporations, along with a complacent USDA, have become masters at creating loopholes for corporate organic farming, such as:

* Importing vegetables or feed grains from Third World countries without USDA site certification visits.
* Raising chickens without access to the outdoors.
* Including unapproved preservatives in products.
* Buying replacement dairy heifers shot-up with antibiotics and from nonorganic sources.
* Operating a factory farm with 70,000 chickens or 5000 cows.

“Organic” Factory Farms?

After years of inaction, the USDA’s National Organic Program has recently been forced to address a number of large, industrial dairy farms-without adequate pasture that are producing “organic” milk. These factory farms range in size from approximately 3,000 to 4,000 cows and are basically confinement feedlots without legitimate access to pasture for feed and exercise, as required by the federal organic regulations. Milk from most of these mega-farms is being distributed by Dean/Horizon, the largest milk bottler in the United States, and under a number of private-label brands that are available at natural food and conventional grocers.

These corporate farms and their wealthy investors are jeopardizing the livelihoods of organic family-scale dairy farmers throughout the United States, along with the more modest-sized companies and cooperatives that market their milk.

Turf War

Recently, The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based advocacy group that supports family farmers, filed formal complaints against three of these farms operating in Idaho, California, and Colorado. This issue will come to a head at the semiannual meeting of the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) in Washington, D.C., March 1-3.

Farmers and consumers will make their voice heard at this meeting. Many farmers in the Northeast, and others as far away as California, will be coming to testify in support of enacting strong rules requiring access to pasture for dairy cows, sheep, goats, and beef cattle. They will also call for enforcement of the requirement for access to the outdoors for other species such as poultry.

If you are interested in making your voice heard, please go the Organic Consumer Association’s website and read more about it, sign their petition, etc.

Image courtesy of Stock-xchng.com

I nearly forgot about governor Arnold, as I thanked George Bush for having a moment of sanity during his presidency. The last few weeks I have been lambasting Arnold over his treatment of nurses and healthcare in California, but today, I send him my kudos as well.

In October 2004, the Governator signed two bills that allows California students to self-administer asthma medications, as specified. California Senate Bill 1912 permits students to self-administer asthma and auto-injectable epinephrine medications at school. This allows a student to take, during the regular school day, medication prescribed for him or her by a physician.

Assembly Bill 2132 authorizes a student to self-administer asthma (inhaler) medication at school if the student’s parent provides written consent and the student’s physician verifies that the student needs and is able to self-administer the medication.

The inhaler access bill, in particular, is a major policy achievement, consider the number of children with asthma in California–and a number which is growing by leaps and bounds. An estimated 800,000 children, or one in seven, are affected by asthma, the prevalence has jumped 160% since 1980, and there seems to be no end in sight. It is estimated that asthma accounts for 7 million absences from school each year in California and costs schools $231 million annually.

So my belated thanks to Arnold. This is a really important measure, and signals a return to sanity. Having kids die or suffer undue stress due to some anal fool’s interpretation of “drug abuse” has to be one of the most devasting policies ever dreamed up. Denying one the right to breathe is not the same as trying to control illicict drug use.

I have to pause and take one minute of silence…this is the second time in four years of Bush that I have actually agreed with something that Bush did. Or should I say, something that he signed, since neither law was anything that emerged out of his brain. Okay, okay, I’ll be nice. The dor…I mean the man, signed it.

First time was the bill restricting telemarketers from jangling my phone off the hook. I am quite thankful for that, as I work from my home office, and was choice prey for them. This time, Bush signed signed the Asthmatic Schoolchildren’s Treatment and Health Management Act of 2004 (HR 2023) on October 30.

In case this means nothing to you, this bill supports the right of schoolchildren to carry their emergency medications, such as inhalers, on their person, as opposed to being locked up in a school office. This measure was passed by unanimous consent in the House and Senate earlier in October. It provides asthma-related funding preference to states having laws that protect students’ rights to carry and self-administer asthma and/or anaphylaxis medication.

Unbelievable as it may seem, a number of children have died because they could not access their emergency medications. Many others have suffered undue stress. This idiotic policy of not permitting children to carry emergency meds (hint, the name emergency tells you something) came out of the “zero tolerance” drug policies of the 1980s. Unfortunately, some dimwit threw essential, life saving medictions into the deal. For the longest time, children were told that they had to keep all medications in the nurse’s office, or the school office. Well, that sounds well and good, but many schools don’t have a school nurse, or at least one present full time. What if the school office locked when the child needs the drug? What happens if the child is on the athletic field and has an attack?

The scenarios I mentioned have occurred, and many children have ended up in the emergency room because they could not access their medication fast enough. Anyway, thanks to public pressure, more and more states are changing their policies. This new law gives them a boost to do so.

And now, another page from the annals of health history…

Before there was AIDS, polio, anthrax scares, antibiotic resistant bacteria, SARS, Ebola, and Hepatitis C….the big worries of the day for the U.S. were plague, yellow fever, small pox and malaria.

The early colonists quickly caught on that many of these deadly diseases originated in the tropics, and carried aboard ships arriving from the Caribbean. They didn’t know how the diseases were actually transmitted, but they did figure out that those early 17th century sailing ships, filled with coconuts, spices, slaves, and bananas reeked with diseases.

And so, in what may be considered a decision rather ahead of its time, the Massachusetts Colony passed the first quarantine legislation in 1647. All ships arriving from “down South” would not be allowed to enter the harbor or unload either passengers or cargo until they passed some sort of inspecton. Later on, when epidemics began to devastate communities, “pest houses” were established at some ports. These were facilities to isolate sick or possibly ill passengers, and keep them from coming in contact with the public at large.

But as with many things, enforcement of quarantines was not standardized, and varied widely among the colonial ports. Diseases were still slipping in, epidemics were occuring regularly. In 1793, Philadelphia was hit with a devastating yellow fever epidemic, the largest in the short history of the United States. It killed nearly 4000 people.

As a result, the new Congress of the newly independent United States of America passed the first national quarantine legislation on February 25, 1799.

This is the type of news that no one wants to hear about (just like most of the news which swamps the media), and it is certain to open old wounds. But most importantly, it tells a story that most Americans would probably not like to hear.

Agent Orange. That creepy, crawly, lethal toxin widely used during Vietnam to exfoliate the jungle, and flush out the Viet Cong. It is estimated that the U.S. poured 20 million gallons of herbicides, including Agent Orange, in Vietnam between 1962 and 1971. Unfortunately, Agent Orange remained in the water and soil decades later, and has been responsible for causing monstrous birth defects, cancer, organ dysfunction, and chromosome damage.

However, about 100 Vietnamese have filed a lawsuit against more than 30 corporations, including Dow Chemical Co and Monsanto Co, the largest makers of Agent Orange. Filed in New York, they are seeking compensation and a clean-up of contaminated areas, and this actions represents the first time that the Vietnamese have asked for any type of compensation or reparations from the U.S.

According to Reuters,, the plight of the Vietnamese has created an unusual bond among old adversaries. In an interesting twist, US war veterans, who were also sickened by Agent Orange, are “rallying behind” the Vietnamese. Many veterans have felt betrayed by the U.S. government’s reluctance to admit that Agent Orange and other chemicals that they were exposed to in Vietnam were now having deleterious effects on their health.

From the Guardian

Almost immediately after the war finished, US veterans began reporting chronic conditions, skin disorders, asthma, cancers, gastrointestinal diseases. Their babies were born limbless or with Down’s syndrome and spina bifida. But it would be three years before the US department of veterans’ affairs reluctantly agreed to back a medical investigation, examining 300,000 former servicemen - only a fraction of those who had complained of being sick - with the government warning all participants that it was indemnified from lawsuits brought by them. When rumours began circulating that President Reagan had told scientists not to make “any link” between Agent Orange and the deteriorating health of veterans, the victims lost patience with their government and sued the defoliant manufacturers in an action that was finally settled out of court in 1984 for $180m.

Why do we treat our soldiers so poorly? Is it that once they’ve done their job, they serve no other purpose? How about Gulf War Syndrome? Those poor soldiers have been pushed around, ignored, told that their symptoms don’t exist, and so on.

It would take the intervention of the former commander of the US Navy in Vietnam, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, for the government finally to admit that it had been aware of the potential dangers of the chemicals used in Vietnam from the start.

Now isn’t that news. The government was well aware that Agent Orange was highly toxic, could injure out own soldiers, yet took no action to protect them in Vietnam. What a legacy!

Zumwalt also uncovered irrefutable evidence that the US military had dispensed “Agent Orange in concentrations six to 25 times the suggested rate” and that “4.2m US soldiers could have made transient or significant contact with the herbicides because of Operation Ranch Hand”. This speculative figure is twice the official estimate of US veterans who may have been contaminated with TCCD.

Most damning and politically sensitive of all is a letter, obtained by Zumwalt, from Dr James Clary, a military scientist who designed the spray tanks for Ranch Hand. Writing in 1988 to a member of Congress investigating Agent Orange, Clary admitted: “When we initiated the herbicide programme in the 1960s, we were aware of the potential for damage due to dioxin contamination in the herbicide. We were even aware that the military formulation had a higher dioxin concentration than the civilian version, due to the lower cost and speed of manufacture. However, because the material was to be used on the enemy, none of us were overly concerned.”

Anyway, it should be interesting to see the outcome of this lawsuit. Generations of Vietnamese are now going to have to deal with the aftermath of Agent Orange. At the very least, we should be helping them provide medical care to the innocent victims of this war–the children being born misshapen and mutated, keeping the legacy of this terrible war alive and well.

Well, not really, because no one sponsors this blog except me. But this is a press release from the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR), a non-profit and non-partisan consumer advocacy organization. Healthcare spending and waste, overspending and overwaste. So what else is new?

Patients and Taxpayers Pay the Price for Drug Co. & Insurer Waste and Profiteering

A report released yesterday found that by 2014 taxpayer-funded programs will account for half of total U.S. health care spending because President Bush and Congress have failed to address waste and profiteering in the health care system, according to the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR).

FTCR sponsored two chartered train trips, dubbed the Rx Express, that took uninsured and underinsured patients, small business owners, and seniors from throughout the West and East Coasts to Canada to buy lower cost prescription drugs. Drug prices are 30-70% lower in Canada than in the U.S. because Canada, like the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, negotiates bulk discounts on behalf of all residents. Rx Express rider’s saved an average of $2000 on the prescription drugs they purchased in Canada. For more information visit: http://www.RxExpressCanada.org

This has not been a good year for flu shot. First, there was the Great Vaccine Shortage of 2004. Along with that came an assorted cornucopia of misinformation, vaccine hoarding, price gouging, “vaccine tourism” trips across the border to delve into the Canadian supply, and all sorts of unanswered questions (which are still unanswered) about vaccine supply and safety.

After the Great Shortage of the autumn of ‘o4, came the Great Vaccine Surplus of the winter of 2005. When after carefully restricting and siphoning out vaccine doses only to those most in need and at highest risk, voila, the inevitable happened. Suddenly, there was too much. Doses upon doses of influenza vaccine that no one wanted. Millions of excess doses, in fact. Restrictions were lifted, people were being told “it’s still not too late to get a vaccine,” and indeed, the big scramble was on to make sure that those doses didn’t go unused.

Oddly enough, despite the fact that many people, including those at high risk, didn’t get vaccinated, the death rate from the flu has not been exceptionally high. Certainly, no difference than in previous “high vaccination” years. There are, of course, other factors at play. This was a mild season, it wasn’t all that widespread, and so on. But still, this is not the news that vaccine manufacturers want to hear.

Anyway, getting back to the story….okay, we have shortage then surplus. Then, to add a little zing to the sory, a study comes out announcing that flu vaccines are not the life saver they were once thought to be, when it comes to the elderly. In case you happened to miss that bolt of lightening, flu vaccines are not making a tremendous difference in the death rate among persons over the age of 65. While the of flu vaccination in the United States has jumped from 15-20% prior to 1980, to 65% in 2001, influenza-related mortality actually increased. The new study contradicts past government estimates that the vaccines reduced influenza-related deaths among the elderly by 60 to 80%.

Okay, so the benefits were a little overestimated. And now, for the final smack in the face, comes more bad news. Vaccines do not make a difference in babies and toddlers. For children under the age of 2, there is no evidence whatsoever that vaccination reduces deaths or complications from the flu.

Shock of shocks, how can that be? The CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics specifically recommend the flu vaccine to this age group. In fact, the AAP just revised its guidelines that the flu vaccine should become part of the normal vaccine schedule.

But this news comes from a comprehensive review that was made of 25 studies that looked at the impact of vaccines in reducing the number of cases of influenza and its symptoms in children up to 16. And they found zilch benefit.

So if so many studies found no evidence that flu shots were effective in young children, where on earth did these recommendations come from? Why is the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommending that children between the ages of 6-23 months be routinely immunized against the flu? I assumed that these recommendations are based on scientific evidence, not on whimsical ideas or good intentions. Pray tell, whose data were they looking at when they developed these “guidelines” in the first place? Or was it just one of those things that seemed to be a good idea at the time?

“Immunization of very young children is not lent support by our findings,” said Dr Tom Jefferson, of the Cochrane Vaccines Field in Rome, part of the international Cochrane Collaboration that evaluates medical research.

“We recorded no convincing evidence that vaccines can reduce mortality, admissions, serious complications and community transmission of influenza,” he added.

Jefferson said that there was no difference between the vaccine and a placebo, in young children below the age of 2. And while the researchers stated that the findings don’t necessarily mean that the vaccines don’t work, they found no evidence to indicate they were effective.

So now even more comical is a press release from the CDC, dated Feb.10, which gushes and gloats about how the number of young children being vaccinated, and how many “lives” have been saved.

Data collected during the first three weeks of January by the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) indicated that 57.3 percent of children aged six to 23 months were vaccinated during September through December 2004, the first year that influenza vaccination was added to the childhood immunization schedule. A 2002 survey indicated only 7.7 percent in the same age group were vaccinated for influenza.

“It is wonderful news that so many children are being vaccinated against a potentially life-threatening illness like influenza,” said Dr. Julie Gerberding, CDC director. “We must continue to urge parents to vaccinate their children and urge those at high risk for serious complications from influenza to step up and get vaccinated because the shot can save lives.”

Seems like the usual canned quotes given without substance. So is the CDC going to continue to “urge” parents to get their young children vaccinated, because it “saves lives,” when it has been clearly shown that the vaccine has no effect?

I suppose there will be the usual scrambling and babbling, doubletalk and sound-bytes…all of the agencies and organizations jumping in to defend their policy. Business as usual.

So now we know that American babies may be getting a yummy dose of rocket fuel with their feedings. How about topping that off with some trans-fats?

A comment on one of my previous articles alerted me to the fact that trans fats are a component of many foods sold for infants. Isn’t that terrific? What a great start in life.

So I did a little research, primarily to find the source of a quote from a Dr. Steed Stender of the Danish Nutrition Council, as I figured he had a lot more to say. And he does. Apparently, trans fats are essentially banned in Denmark.

In Denmark, regulators have taken a dim view of trans. The country has adopted legislation that limits trans fats to between two and five grams per 100 grams of oil, depending on the product. Since that’s a tiny amount, the rules are essentially a ban on trans fats.
For example, a product labelled trans-fat free in Canada and the U.S. can contain approximately triple the ratio of trans fats to total fats allowable in Denmark.

“Instead of educating mothers about the dangers of trans fat, we have simply removed them,” says Dr. Steed Stender of the Danish Nutrition Council.

Danes now eat just a fraction of the more than 10 grams eaten by Canadians every day.

“It is a pity for Canada that mothers have the opportunity to ingest so much,” says Stender. “And that was the very reason we had this legislation in Denmark. We don’t want these mothers to have the possibility of having junk food. We can’t avoid all junk food but we can at least remove products that have a suspicion of harmful effect.”

That was from CTV.ca

Under Canada’s new nutrition labeling laws that take effect in mid-December, 2005, foods that are designed for children under the age of two will not have to comply with the new labelling rules. Is that insane or what? I thought the Canadians would do better than that, although, maybe it’s better than our laws. I really don’t know what labelling laws say about infant foods produced in the U.S.

Stender, as well as other advocates of removing trans fats from foods, point out that most consumers don’t read labels, or don’t fully understand what they’re reading. So in Denmark, they just found it to be a better solution to simply remove trans fats from food. And if it can be done over there, in a modern “first world” nation, it can be done here.

Stender doesn’t think very highly of the Canadian and U.S. governments’ approach to the issue.

“As they say in North America: ‘You can put poison in food, if you label it properly.’ Here in Denmark, we remove the poison and people don’t have to know anything about trans fatty acids,” he says.

Just an update to the highly disturbing news that some breast feeding moms may find that their babies are getting an unintended substance in their milk–rocket fuel. Yuck, gross.

But according to an article in USA Today contamination is especially widespread in California because of the many current and former defense and space program sites in the state. According to public health advocates, perchlorate is in the water that quenches the thirst and washes more than 16 million Californians. It has also been found in the Colorado River, the major source of drinking water and irrigation in Southern California and Arizona.

The rocket fuel, aka perchlorate, has been linked to thyroid ailments, and is considered particularly dangerous to children. The study found that drinking water in 35 states was contaminated from it, and it was also found in vegetables (as a result from being irrigated with that “energized” water). The chemical does occur naturally, but the National Academy of Sciences has said most of the contamination is from its use in rocket fuels, fireworks and explosives.

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency adopted a safety dose for perchlorate set by the National Academy of Sciences — then approved a “drinking water equivalent level” of 24 ppb.

That, however, is not an enforceable standard, and some environmental groups criticized the agency’s number, saying it was geared to protect a 156-pound person drinking 2 liters of water a day — and not to protect infants and children. Also, the number considers exposure to perchlorate only from drinking water and doesn’t take into account exposure from food.

So where are all of our “family friendly” and “pro-family” and “family first” politicians when you need them? Surely they can’t think that it’s okay for infants to be sucking down rocket fuel? But then, the word “environment” is not welcome is some circles, especially if it means money must be spent on clean-up, or that it might inconvenience some big businesses. I imagine soon we’ll be hearing from the “other side” of the coin, that rocket fuel isn’t all that bad for babies, or that this “incident” is being hyped out of proportion. What’s wrong with spicing up breast milk? Perchlorate is just the thing to give it a little zing…

I can just hear it now: Rocket fuel builds strong bones and teeth, and will give your baby that get-up-and-go-feeling….

This particular article is biased, because it comes from a pro-life organization. However, it does point out a number of facts which are getting very little attention in this case, such as the possibility that Michael Schiavo may have physically abused Terri prior to her collapse in 1990. Also, her husband has actively refused to supply Terri with any sort of rehabilitation therapy, even though he was awarded a huge settlement to provide for her care.

Mary Jane Owen, a longtime disability rights activist who has worked in Catholic circles to oppose assisted suicide and euthanasia, discussed the recent entrance of the Florida Department of Children and Families into the case.

“It would seem if unfounded accusations about his possible involvement in her disabilities
persisted Michael would want, at the very least, postmortem confirmation that she was not beaten,” Owen explained. “Yet Michael has requested Terri be cremated immediately
following her death.”

Terri Schiavo lives, then dies, then lives. And so it goes in the life of someone who can’t speak for herself, and tell the world that she would prefer to starve to death. Or that she would prefer to live.

It seems that the poor Terri’s life is just a seasaw of judicial decisions and no one can make up their mind if the woman is a living vegetable, or a human who still has potential to emerge from the state that she’s currently in.

An appeals court ruled that her husband could have her feeding tube removed and allow her to starve to death, and almost immediately following that ruling, another judge promptly blocked the removal for a few more days. Basically, Terri has been given another stay of execution.

But Pinellas Circuit Court Judge George Greer issued an emergency stay about an hour later blocking removal of the feeding tube until 5 p.m. EST Wednesday. Greer, who has been overseeing the long-standing dispute, scheduled a hearing on the case for Wednesday.

This is such a messy case, but in a way, it is doing much good in bringing to public light some of the gray areas and boundaries of life and death. Now, as I have said before, I am NOT one who believes that life must be maintained at any cost. I am not in favor of keeping hopelessly ill and brain dead people “alive” on artificial ventilation, particularly when they have made it clear in a living will that they definitely do not want this type of intervention. I also believe that a terminally ill person can refuse food and water, and especially, the placement of a feeding tube. In fact, I believe that any mentally competent adult has the absolute right to decide on medical treatment, and to refuse it, even if it will kill them. It is their choice, and if they are in sound mind, that choice should be honored.

With Terri, there are no clear parameters. Is this a woman pleading to be allowed to die, or a woman pleading to be allowed to live? Who can make that decision for Terri? She has not unanimously been declared “brain dead” as different experts have come away with conflicting opinions of her state of being. And removing someone from a feeding tube is quite different from taking them off of a ventilator.

What if Terri were able to swallow on her own? Would the experts still be saying it was a “reflex?” Terri breathes on her own, and does not require any extraordinary medical care to keep her alive. She is merely being cared for and fed. And her mental status is up for grabs.

Also, it is disturbing how some think that removing the feeding tube will allow her to die “naturally.” There is nothing “natural” about starving a person to death. If you think that her tube should be removed, then just say it for what it is–euthanasia. Just say that Terri should be killed, because that is what it is. And quite frankly, I find death by starvation to be rather cruel and inhumane. Why not give her an overdose of morphine, and be done with it? Is there a difference? Will the outcome somehow be different; a quick and human death by overdose versus a long and drawn out demise by starvation?

When you remove someone from a ventilator, there is a chance that they may begin to breathe on their own. That is what happened with Karen Anne Quinlan, the girl whose landmark case opened the door to allowing medical treatment in hopeless cases to be terminated. And I am all for that. But Karen didn’t die when the ventilator was removed. She went on to live several more years in a coma, but breathing on her own.

So with the vent, you are indeed, allowing nature to take its course. A person may die, a person may live, but at least you are no longer prolonging life, or delaying death, by extraordinary means.

But what happens when you remove a feeding tube? Is there any question that the person will die? I know, there are some Indian yogis who have been said to be able to live without food or water, but that is not the case for the average hospital patient.

No food=starvation=death. That’s the equation. So please, guys, just come and out say that you want to kill Terri, and not “allow her to die.” She is not dying now, or anywhere near death. She will only die if she is actively killed. I mean, if I had a child and didn’t feed her and she died, could I say that I was only allowing “nature to take its course?” Or would I be arrested for murder?

Terri has never said what she wants, (her husband did state that Terri had “once mentioned” she wouldn’t want to be kept alive, but his memory was only jogged after the fight began to kill her), she can’t now say what she wants, and there is no firm concensus on her mental ability. And even if it was proven that she is in this persistant vegetative state, do we have the right to withhold food? It’s one thing not to intervene should she become ill, except to make her comfortable, but quite another to actively euthanize her.

Image courtesy of #1FreeClipArt

Hey, no joke. It’s real. Wow, should give your baby a boost…

No, in all seriousness, it’s really quite disturbing. It’a a contaminant from rocket fuel that was found at levels in breast milk five times the average level found in dairy milk. The chemical, called perchlorate, is a component of fuel for rockets and missiles and also appears to be made naturally in the atmosphere and stored in the soil. It can disrupt metabolism in adults and lead to mental retardation in children.

And this rather noxious chemical is widely found in the US water supply and has previously been detected in samples of dairy milk and lettuce. Now it has apparently found its way into breast milk, and into babies.

From the LA Times:

At the levels they found in breast milk, the scientists reported that 1-month-old infants would take in enough perchlorate to exceed a safe level, called a reference dose, that was established last month by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences.

“It is obvious that the NAS safe dose … will be exceeded for the majority of infants,” the report published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology says. Some infants would ingest so much that they would exceed levels that altered the brain structure of animals in laboratory tests.

The findings come as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is developing an enforceable limit on the amount of perchlorate in drinking water based on the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences panel. Currently there is no national standard.

“This is not just another study,” said Renee Sharp, a senior analyst at the Environmental Working Group, which advocated a strict national standard. “It ends the questions about whether women are passing along perchlorate to their kids through breast milk, and the sky-high levels the scientists found put more than half the kids over the safe levels the NAS now recommends.”

No, I’m not beating a dead horse. But because of the inane remarks which have emerged from the lips of this supposedly knowledgeable scientist, I really want to get the word out that this woman is wrong! wrong! wrong!

Okay, here’s another comment she made.

Meat provides a concentrated source of essential micronutrients such as zinc, vitamin B12, calcium, iron and vitamin A, which cannot easily be obtained solely from plant foods,” she told the conference.

This is total idiocy. It appears that Allen needs to go back to school and begin with nutrition 101.

Vitamin A–the precursor form, beta-carotene, is found in plants. Sources of beta-carotene are carrots, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, winter squashes, cantaloupe, pink grapefruit, apricots, broccoli, spinach, and most dark green, leafy vegetables. Moral of the story–eat some carrots, probably one of the least expensive and most readily available vegetables on earth. And as a boon, vegetable sources of beta-carotene are free of fat and cholesterol.

Are you listening, Lindsay Allen? Vitamin A is easily found in veggies. Sorry, strike one for you.

Calcium–ah, the myth of the dairy product. I guess Allen never dreamed that several zillion people, over the course of several millenniums, never had the opportunity to ever even see a cow, let alone drink milk. Good veggie sources of calcium are beans, almonds, sesame seeds, dark green leafy vegetables, broccoli, tofu, soy milk, calcium fortified juice.

Calcium, easily obtained from veggie sources. And here’s a mind twister for you, Lindsay. Osteoporosis is almost non-existant in many parts of the world, even where the calcium intake is far lower than in the US. In fact, the nations with the highest intake of dairy products also appear to have the highest rates of osteoporosis. North America has one of the highest consumptions of dairy products, and also the highest incidence of osteoporosis.

Zinc–a tricky one, but zine can be found in peanuts, peanut butter, and legumes. All inexpensive and easily grown products, particularly for developing nations. Sorry, strike three for you.

Iron–yes, Lindsay, even iron is readily available from non-animal sources. You can get iron from almonds, apricots, beans, whole wheat, broccoli, dates, molasses, prunes and prune juice, raisins, brown or enriched white rice, and spinach.

Sorry, strike four for you. It really does seem that you have no business giving a lecture on nutrition, since you have obviously morphed into a propaganda puppet.

The Guardian in the UK also reported that nutritional experts were less than impressed with Allen’s diatribe:

However, the British Dietetic Association said the study looked at impoverished, rural children with a poor background diet low in essential nutrients such as zinc, B12 and iron, and its findings were not applicable to vegan children in the developed world.

“There is no evidence that our vegan and vegetarian children in this country suffer impaired development,” a spokeswoman for the association said.

She said Prof Allen’s assertion that some nutrients could only be obtained from animal sources was incorrect. Even vitamin B12, which is only found in animal products, was used to fortify vegan alternatives such as Marmite.

Vegetarians could obtain sufficient calcium from sesame seeds, nuts and fortified soya milk, and iron from dried fruit and fortified breakfast cereals, the spokeswoman added.

Some “Real” Data on Vegans

Professor Tom Sanders, research director of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London, also didn’t think too highly of Allen’s research. From the Independent:

“Taking people who have limited food choices and adding animal products will provide elements missing from their restricted diets. But where you have a good choice in developed countries, you can select a balanced vegan diet even for children,” he said.

Professor Sanders made a study of vegan nutrition which followed children from conception to the age of 26, to show that the development of vegans was normal. “Their diet in developed countries contains plenty of wheat, soy, pulse and salads, and provided they avoid Vitamin B12 deficiency by eating fortified foods or supplements, they are not at any disadvantage,” he said. He admitted that a vegan diet for children under the age of five might pose a risk of malnutrition if there was too much reliance on vegetables.

What, no evidence of the dwarfed, stunted, developmentally injured, mentally deranged, pathetic little waifs? How can that be? According to Allen, children brought up as strict vegetarians suffered mental and physical problems that could affect them for the rest of their lives.

Sir Paul McCartney (as in the Beatle Paul), a strict vegetarian for 20 years, said he had raised his children as non-meat eaters with no ill-effects.

“It has been a good thing for me and my children, who are no shorter than other children,” he said. Britain’s 500,000 vegans and vegetarians had half the mortality rate of the general population, he added.

The Intolerance of Lactose

One final word, and then I’m done with this silly woman. But Allen seems especially focused on milk, and that somehow, depriving chidlren of cow’s milk is the same thing as depriving them of oxygen. The Book of Genesis, according to Lindsay Allen, probably began this way:

And the Good Lord put the bovine on earth and said, “Thou shalt supply the human race with your milk. That is your purpose for being here, your reason for being.”

In addition to returning to nutrition 101, Allen needs to take a course in basic zoology, or visit a barnyard. Cows produce milk to feed their calves. All mammals, including humans, produce milk for thier babies. And once the babies are weaned, milk no longer plays a part in their diet. Nor is it needed.

Despite what the dairy industry tells you, there is no physiological requirement in humans to consume milk after infancy/toddler age, and especially, the milk of another species. Drinking cow’s milk has been linked to a large and ever growing number of ailments and serious illnesses, including ear infections, tonsilitis, allergy, sinusitis, headache, congestion, runny nose, rash/eczema, fatigue, lethargy, irritability, bedwetting, asthma, intestinal bleeding, colic, childhood diabetes, even bovine leukemia virus, or AIDS-like virus. Type 1 diabetes in infants under six months of age is linked to cow’s milk.

More evidence that we don’t need milk past toddlerhood is that mysterious condition called lactose intolerance. While we think of it as a type of disease, it is really the norm. People who reach old age and who are not lactose intolerant to some degree are really the oddity.

At about the age of four, most people around the world begin to lose the ability to digest lactose, the carbohydrate or sugar found in milk. This results in a condition known as lactose intolerance that causes a range of unpleasant abdominal symptoms, including stomach cramps, flatulence and diarrhea. Lactose intolerance is a reality for 75% of the world’s population, (with Caucasians having the lowest rates) and it is believed that about 90-95% of Africans or those African descent are lactose intolerant.

So did Allen take this into consideration when she was trying to ply those Kenyan children with milk? Did any of them have digestive problems? Did she notice or care? Did she mention it in her research? And how can Allen even think that milk is going to be a cure-all for the world’s nutrition problems when most of the people are unable to drink it? Especially those in developing nations.

Good science, as always. And here’s when the eyes roll around my head and finally pop out.

Milk, Meat and Pregnancy

I just have to mention my own experience with the meat/milk/pregnancy connection. Several years ago I was writing an article for a magazine about vegetarian pregnancy. It was a short article, and my editor was obsessed (almost as badly as Allen is) with making sure that milk was mentioned as being necessary for a healthy pregnancy. Turns out that milk is a big advertiser for the mag…does this story sound familiar?

Anyway, since the article was short, I used two sources. One was a very well known and highly regarded nutritionist, who specialized in pregnancy. She sneered when I told her about my editor’s frantic attempt to stuff milk into the article. “Milk is not a necessity for any adult, pregnant or not,” she said. “If a pregnant woman wants to drink milk, fine. But if she doesn’t, that’s fine too.”

And as far as it being necessary for lactacting women, she laughed. “Does a cow need to drink milk to produce milk? Then why should a human female need to drink milk in order to make her own.”

Basically, she had advised thousands of pregnant women on nutrition, including vegetarians and vegans, and did not find that vegan women gave birth to the bizarre shrunken and developmentally delayed babies that Allen spoke of. Bottom line, eat a healthy diet, no matter what your preference.

The second person I spoke to was a physician who was recommended to me by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). It would be hard to get more conservative or mainstream than ACOG, and this nice doctor became outraged, when I started asking him the questions my editor had put to me.

“Most of the women on this earth are vegetarian or almost vegetarian,” he said. “And most go on to have healthy pregnancies and babies.”

He also emphasized that milk was not a requirement for a healthy baby, nor was meat, nor was any animal product. He also said that of all of his patients, the vegetarian/vegan ones generally had the best diets because they really made sure that they ate a diverse diet. Many of the meat eaters, in fact, were not eating enough veggies and fruits, and were not getting enough vitamins and minerals from their food.

My editor, of course, was very upset at the content of my interviews. In fact, she was so upset that she had me speak to a nutritionist of her own choosing, a woman who did regular consulting for some dairy related association. Just what I love, non-bias. But I grilled the nutritionist when she started in about milk, and when she realized that I was a nurse with years of experience in maternal/child health (ie, no way that she was going to be able to spoon feed me corporate drivel)–in the end, she did reluctantly agree that dairy products were not essential to human survival. I turned in my article without one word about milk, except to casually include it in a list of sources of calcium.

Yes, Lindsay Allen no doubt will not find me an ally to her grand plan of turning the earth into a carnivore haven. I’m sure that she and her friends are flailing their arms desperately, in an attempt to halt the exodus from meat eating and milk drinking. But hopefully, people will continue to rely on their instincts and on good science to guide them in making choices about their diets. And not on the distorted and invalid views that spew from the likes of people like Allen.