I meant to post this earlier today. Oh well….

Check out the Google design for today. Whoever that artist is over there, well, now that’s talent.

So here we go, a multinational company and a talented boy. The boy, because he lives in Cuba which the US has declared a land verboten (never mind the 11 million people living there who have suffered due to the US actions), has been denied a prize that he won fair and square.

It makes me sick. It makes me sick that Nikon thinks it needs to kiss ass with some American politicians.

Nikon withdraws prize to Cuban boy

Cuban President Fidel Castro presented a digital camera to a Cuban boy Wednesday after Nikon refused to give the 12-year-old a camera he had won in an international painting contest for children. Nikon invoked a backlash in Cuba by refusing to send Raysel Sosa the camera, citing economic sanctions imposed on Cuba by the United States.

As a co-host of the contest, Nikon presented digital cameras to all the other winners at the competition ceremony held in Algeria in June.

But the Tokyo-based company skipped Sosa because the camera contained U.S.-made parts that are prohibited from being exported to Cuba by the U.S. government, giving him a painting set instead.

A Nikon spokesman said the company is considering giving Sosa a camera that does not conflict with the ban.

Now is this one of the most sickening stories of the year, or what? The 12 year old won a painting competition. Art is not politics and should be kept free from it. If Nikon is awarding a camera as a prize, then so be it. Everyone gets the same prize, and if some dork from the US gets his knickers in a twist, well, he’ll get over it. What is the US going to do, ban Nikon from the U.S. because of this?

Nikon should have stood its ground, or simply given the boy a camera without any parts made in the US. But now with this fanfare, and making themselves look like fools, they have also made this boy feel inadequate as well. Everyone else got a prize except him. Nice going, Nikon. You should get the Mother Theresa award for compassion.

Good for Castro for giving him a camera.

And the next time that Nikon holds an international competition, or any other company for that matter, make sure to tell the talking heads that politics will be left out of it.

The story appeared in the Seattle Times, and probably elsewhere

Well, in theory it sounds good. Male Contraceptive in the Works.

Not a condom, but something that the boys ingest and makes their little spermies go belly up.

From WebMD:

Scientists report promising results with a male contraceptive drug tested on rats.

The drug, called Adjudin, is a long way from human use. But lab tests on rats showed no signs of side effects, and the drug’s effects wore off in 20 weeks.

The researchers included Chuen-yan Cheng, PhD, of the Population Council’s Center for Biomedical Research. The Population Council is a New York-based international nonprofit organization that conducts biomedical, social science, and public health research.

About Adjudin

Basically, Adjudin nips wannabe sperm cells in the bud. Those cells, called germ cells, ordinarily develop into sperm. But they need the help of other cells, called Sertoli cells, to reach that destiny.

Okay, so it’s a long way yet from human use. But when you think about it, would you really want to trust a guy to be in charge of contraception? Afterall, he’s not the one who’s going to get pregnant if he forgets to take his Adjudin, now is he. At least with a condom, you can see him put the sucker on.

Uh, thanks but no thanks. Whatever the hassles of birth control, I prefer to be the one in charge of that portion of my life.

The is especially interesting reading if you happen to be insured by Blue Cross Blue Shield, and have just gotten sick! And I don’t mean with the flu, but with an illness that might rack up a nice hospital bill.

Blue Cross In Crisis Hires PR Firm that Specializes in ‘Keeping Clients Out of the Press’

Firm’s Clients Include Halliburton, Exxon, & Tenet

As public outrage increases over Blue Cross’s practice of illegally dumping policyholders when they get sick, Blue Cross has hired a crisis management PR firm whose client list is heavy with other corporate wrongdoers in need of an image make-over.

According to its website, the PR firm Sitrick and Company specializes in “sensitive situations, such as those involving litigation, criminal or government investigations, environmental disasters, consumer complaints” and “enjoys unsurpassed access to the media.” It specializes in the “difficult task of keeping clients out of the press” and “reputation management.”

Last week, Blue Cross settled more 70 lawsuits brought by patients who were left with hundreds of thousands dollars in medical bills when the company canceled insurance policies. The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights has condemned “window-dressing” reforms proposed by Blue Cross that do nothing to protect patients.

“Blue Cross is more concerned with improving its public image than honoring its promises to patients,” said Jerry Flanagan of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights.

Blue Cross is facing widespread complaints that people who bought individual insurance policies and then fell seriously ill found their policies illegally cancelled. The complaints show that Blue Cross hid behind bogus claims that patients lied about their health condition on enrollment applications. With no employer to stand behind them, individuals have few avenues of appeal.

News stories have revealed that Blue Cross operates a department dedicated to rescinding the policies of customers who become ill, combing their applications for any excuse to cancel the policies and refuse payment even for treatment already approved. The applications themselves are complicated, technical and vague, and out of compliance with state laws requiring clear, understandable applications.

FTCR has called on state regulators to end the practice and issue fines for each of the illegal cancellations, which could easily number in the thousands.

Sitrick’s client list includes:

* Halliburton - Allegations of war profiteering have shadowed Halliburton in recent years.

* Exxon - Exxon is combatting public outrage over its multibillion-dollar record profits while motorists suffered record gasoline pump prices.

* Dynegy, Inc - Along with Enron, Dynegy was accused of illegally driving up the price of electricity during the California energy crisis in 2000 and 2001.

* Tenet Healthcare Corp. - In the largest penalty of its kind, Tenet agreed to pay $725 million and return $175 million in fees in a case alleging that the company had defrauded taxpayers by over-billing Medicare.

* Tosco Corp - Tosco was found guilty of illegal underground discharges of the cancer-causing chemical benzene and toxic toluene (Communities for a Better Environment v. Tosco).

* WellPoint Health Systems - Blue Cross’s corporate parent, WellPoint, is recovering from a public bruising over its recent merger with Anthem in which it awarded executives hundreds of million of dollars in bonuses paid for by raising policyholder premiums.

* Global Crossing - Global Crossing went bankrupt following an FBI and SEC investigation into allegations that the company illegally inflated its profits.

-End-

The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) is California’s leading public interest advocacy organization. Visit us on the web at: http://www.ConsumerWatchdog.org

I received this in my email with a note to pass it along…and so I am. It is interesting to hear some people say that overpopulation is “no longer a problem,” as though somehow, Planet Earth has suddenly expanded. Or that the human population is shrinking (psst..it’s not). Just because a few nations have complained that their birthrates have declined and horror of horrors–they’re worried about who is going to support all the old folks–that doesn’t mean that overpopulation has somehow gone bye bye. And a few of the countries who have been griping, such as Japan and Germany, are extremely densely populated, so where they would squeeze in new people is rather a mystery.

Anyway, here is a very thoughtful and informative article about overpopulation, Bush’s war on contraceptives (and how it increases abortion rates–duh!), and so on.

The population bomb is ticking again
Scenarios are dire, but solutions may be surprisingly easy

Ecology and You

Erik Curren

erik@planetdharma.com

Sometime during October, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, America will add its 300 millionth resident. While profiling the candidate may be a quirky exercise in fiction writing - it will be a baby of Anglo or Hispanic parents in Los Angeles, say experts - the issues behind America’s rapid population rise are real.

The U.S. is expected to reach 400 million by mid-century. Whatever happens as a result of global warming or the energy crisis coming when world oil production peaks, overcrowding alone will make America a very different place than it is today. And not a better one.

Every day, we see the consequences of too many Americans: temper-testing traffic; a shortage of affordable housing nationwide; trash at parks and on beaches; pollution in rivers, lakes and bays; and sprawling development that covers the best farmland and diverse wildlife habitat with master-planned suburbs, miles of freeways and acres of parking lots.

Basically, everything we love about America - from amber waves of grain to purple mountains majesty - is threatened by overcrowding.

And now our population seems about to collide with global warming. Coastal communities are some of the fastest growing, and more than half of all Americans now live within 50 miles of a coastline in areas that will be vulnerable to worse storms and more flooding.

It was only in 1967 that the U.S. reached 200 million. At that time, Paul Ehrlich’s controversial book The Population Bomb, predicted that the explosion of our species would overwhelm the earth’s natural resources and lead to pestilence, war, famine and death.

But then the eco-aware 1970s gave way to the greed-is-good 1980s, and the world’s natural systems did not indeed collapse. Many people started claiming that the population bomb was a dud. Free-market enthusiasts said that better technology could feed the world for decades to come and that there was no need to worry about keeping our numbers down.

The bomb defused, for a time

“One of the reasons why the population bomb didn’t go off is because some of the warnings were heeded, and the U.S. and other donor nations started programs to help couples choose how and when to have kids in the developing world,” says Tod Preston, senior advisor with advocacy group Population Action International. “Birth rates are still very high in some areas, but they’ve come down. Our efforts have been a success.

“Yet today around the world, you still have huge and growing problems in terms of resource scarcity, water, arable crop land, forests and other resources. And that’s only going to get much, much worse if we don’t do more.”

Like many experts on population issues, Preston is less concerned with the U.S. than with developing nations, who are the main contributors to a runaway world population of 6.5 billion.

America reaching 300 million is “indicative of a much bigger story in the developing world,” Preston says. “Here we’re talking about sustainable development, sprawl, habitat loss and other problems. But if you look at the developing world, the situation is much more serious. In Uganda or Ethiopia, for example, populations are doubling every 30 years. They already have huge issues with hunger and famine and are already dependent on food aid from foreign donors including the U.S.

“Imagine if we were talking about the likelihood that our population would jump to 600 million in 30 to 40 years. There would be a strong sense that this was a very grave problem. People would term it a crisis or a catastrophe. But that’s the reality in some countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Unfortunately, it’s not being talked about much here, and some easy, popular programs to ease this crisis are being neglected by the U.S. and other rich countries.”

When you hear so much bad news from places where population growth is a problem, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, it’s all too easy to fall into fatalism and apathy. The place is beyond help, so what can we do? And anyway, doesn’t America have enough problems at home to solve before we worry about places far away?

But this kind of compassion-fatigue is shortsighted. And it is not necessary.

Overpopulation in poor countries is our problem, too

With globalization, the world’s problems are now our problems. “After 9/11, people are starting to realize that there’s no part of the globe we can write off in terms of security,” Preston says. “The Pentagon is talking about setting up a command dealing with Africa. Al-Qaeda trains there.”

So if our security requires that we try to relieve suffering worldwide, the most effective population control measure, family planning, is many times cheaper than any military option. It is even cheaper than famine relief.

Family planning has been so effective that, because of efforts to educate women and couples about contraception so that they can choose to have the number of kids they want at the time they want them, birth rates have fallen in many developing nations. In Mexico and Egypt, for example, birth rates have been halved in the last 35 years, according to Preston.

Yet despite its proved effectiveness, family planning has dropped to a small percentage of the U.S. foreign aid budget. “U.S. taxpayers spend $1 billion on food aid yearly. Last year in Ethiopia alone we spent more on food aid than we did on family planning across the planet,” Preston says.

Since it came into office, the Bush administration has cut family-planning funding significantly. Population experts like Preston say that this is not because family planning doesn’t work - it does - or that people in developing countries don’t want contraceptives - they do, even in strongly Catholic or Muslim nations - but for domestic political reasons.

Some right-wing opponents of abortion also oppose contraception, and since the White House has been eager to obtain the support of the Republican base, it has tried to distance itself from birth control. But since Americans overwhelmingly support access to contraception - 91 percent in a Harris Interactive poll from July - the administration has hesitated to declare open war on birth control. Instead, it has quietly cut funding to support family-planning programs abroad.

“This administration is in thrall to a domestic political base that is fundamentally opposed to the right of women to use contraceptives,” said Brian Dixon, director of government relations at another advocacy group, Population Connection.

“One of the first things that this president did in 2001 was to implement a global gag rule, to cut off U.S. aid to any family-planning providers around the world who had any connection to abortion.”

The gag rule said that if health-care providers wanted to receive U.S. funds, then they couldn’t even counsel patients on abortion or bring it up as an option. Because many doctors, nurses and medical aides were not willing to play by Washington’s new restrictions, they lost funding.

“The rule caused clinics to close in Zambia and Kenya, and it caused the laying off of healthcare staff. It has also led to a shortage of contraceptives in Ethiopia. But the gag rule has had no impact on abortion, except maybe to increase it, because we’ve cut off access to contraception. The U.S. no longer contributes to the UN Population Fund because the president refuses to release the funds that Congress has appropriated for it. The target in all of these cases is contraceptives.”

Also a problem at home

While Dixon agrees that the developing world should be the focus of family planning and other measures to control population growth, he feels that we need help in America, too.

Noting that a third of all births in the U.S. are unintended, Dixon says that “we’re not really paying attention to teen-age pregnancy, though we have the highest rate in the industrialized world.”

Though the effects of overpopulation worldwide and even in the U.S. could be horrific - imagine Blade Runner, Escape from New York or your favorite sci-fi vision of an overcrowded apocalypse - Dixon says that the main solution, family planning, is relatively simple to implement.

“The real cause for hope is that we know how to do this. There’s no need to make huge sacrifices. We’re giving people the tools to make decisions about their lives. Not only does it help the global picture but it helps individual families. Women can become part of their communities through work. Kids can go to school. Countries can catch up. It allows nations to start improving the quality of life for their people.

“Family planning is a relatively simple and cheap solution. That’s very hopeful. We just need the political will. We don’t need to find new technologies and complicated solutions. It’s really about giving people what they already want.”

Surveys consistently show that couples in developing nations want more access to birth control than they have now.

Environmentalists also support controlling population growth, but they add other solutions which are more applicable to the U.S. than a place like Egypt or Mexico.

“First, if we’re going to grow, we need to grow smart,” says Eric Antebi of the Sierra Club. That means building up and not out, and focusing new development in dense urban areas rather than letting it sprawl out into suburbs. High-density development uses less land and requires less driving, thus saving fuel and cutting pollution, especially the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

“Second, we need to look at the international drivers of population growth. We should then look at our international policies, whether it’s our trade policies or foreign aid, to see how they exacerbate poverty and environmental degradation that tend to contribute to international migration patterns.

“Third, we need to make sure that families have the information and the resources to plan their own growth. That primarily means access to health care and family planning options. That’s as important domestically as it is internationally.”

Aside from supporting family-planning efforts both here and abroad, ordinary Americans can also mount their own personal campaigns against uncontrolled population growth and its negative effects. First, couples who want children can consider having smaller families or even adopting a child. Then, all of us can try to reduce our individual impact on the earth, to make our “ecological footprint” smaller.

Today, the average American requires about 20 acres of land to provide his or her food, water, energy and other daily needs. That means 300 million of us draw from an area twice as big as the U.S. for our needs.

One American uses as many resources and creates as much waste as 10 or 15 Chinese or Indians - and twice as much as someone from Britain or France for basically the same lifestyle.

Our population may not be the biggest, but with our unbridled consumption and criminal waste, America’s population is certainly the baddest.

So, while America’s main problem might not be cutting our population growth, we have an even more crucial role to play to build a sustainable world by just scaling down our lifestyle.

We can start by driving and flying less, buying less stuff and using less energy. Then, we can advocate for the big changes necessary to help redesign the American lifestyle away from profiting corporations and gratifying consumers and towards allowing a humane, satisfying life for families and communities.

This may be humanity’s big adventure in an age of global warming, peak oil and overpopulation.

Erik Curren is a regular contributor to The Augusta Free Press. Curren is the author of Buddha’s Not Smiling: Uncovering Corruption at the Heart of Tibetan Buddhism Today. More information about Curren’s works is available on-line at www.alayapress.com . The views expressed by op-ed writers do not necessarily reflect those of management of The Augusta Free Press.

What do you think? Share your thoughts on this story at letters@augustafreepress.com.

(Published 10-02-06)

This press release would be interesting, but it should have been issued a few years ago, when George W. was trying to get everyone on the we’re-about-to-die-of-smallpox bandwagon, and was screeching for universal innoculation of first responders.

The campaign was a dismal failure, not only because no one really believed that a threat was evident and because there were so many things wrong with the program as it was introduced. Namely, no compensation for injury or death from the vaccine, no compensation for time lost from work, the possibility of a health worker infecting an immunocompromised patient or family member with the shedding virus, and so on.

So is this press release just an “I told you so” sort of thing, or was it designed to save the face of the federal agencies who advocated it. Hard to tell.

Mass vaccination unnecessary in the event of a large bioterrorist US smallpox attack
Prompt surveillance and containment of victims would effectively thwart an epidemic

SEATTLE – Mass vaccination would not be necessary in the event of a large-scale smallpox bioterrorist attack in the United States, according to a study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center that appears online in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.

Instead, the current U.S. government policy of post-release surveillance, prompt containment of victims and vaccination of hospital workers and close contacts would be sufficient to thwart an epidemic, according to lead author Ira M. Longini Jr., Ph.D., a world leader in using mathematical and statistical methods to study the natural course of infectious diseases.

“We found that a well-prepared response of surveillance and containment, if done quickly, within a day or two of detecting the first smallpox case, would contain a large attack if up to 500 people were infected,” said Longini, a member of the Public Health Sciences Division at the Hutchinson Center and a professor of biostatistics at the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine. These results apply to scenarios involving even the most virulent, fatal forms of the virus.

However, Longini emphasizes, failure to quickly isolate known smallpox cases and vaccinate their close contacts could thwart the containment of an epidemic.

These findings emerge from a committee of smallpox experts – including infectious-disease modelers, epidemiologists, statisticians and clinicians – who were commissioned by former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson to evaluate a variety of intervention strategies to determine whether the United States could contain a large-scale smallpox bioterrorist attack and, if so, how.

Specifically, the researchers were charged with determining whether surveillance and containment – isolation of detected smallpox cases and vaccination of their close contacts – would be sufficient to contain a large attack. They also wanted to find out whether other interventions, such as mass pre-vaccination of the general public, pre-vaccination of hospital personnel, vaccination of the target community and closure of schools after a smallpox release would help contain the spread of the disease.

Thompson’s senior science adviser, Donald Ainslie (D.A.) Henderson, the physician and epidemiologist who oversaw the World Health Organization’s successful campaign to eradicate smallpox from the world in the late 1970s, served as a consultant to the committee, known as the Smallpox Modeling Working Group. The group was convened by the Secretary’s Advisory Council on Public Health Preparedness, a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“Earlier studies recommended mass pre-vaccination of the general population to protect against a smallpox attack. None of us on the committee believed this was necessary, including D.A. Henderson, who intimately understands the natural history of the virus,” Longini said. “The secretary of Health and Human Services wanted to settle such issues regarding smallpox containment once and for all, and this was our charge.”

While the researchers did find that mass vaccination would slightly reduce the number of deaths from smallpox, they also found that the rate of severe illness and death caused by the vaccine itself would cancel out any benefit from mass vaccination. One person in 10,000 will have a severe reaction and one in a million will die from the vaccine, Longini said.

“Precautionary vaccination of hospital personnel and post-release vaccination of the target population would further contain the spread of smallpox, but at a cost of many more people being vaccinated,” said co-author and Hutchinson Center biostatistician M. Elizabeth (Betz) Halloran, M.D., D.Sc. “The financial cost and potential illness and death related to vaccination must be weighed against the potential benefits in the event of an attack. In our opinion, pre-vaccination of the population at large is unnecessary,” she said. Longini, Halloran and colleagues also found that closure of schools after a smallpox attack would have a minimal effect in preventing transmission of the disease, and that any delay in quarantining infected individuals would take a much greater toll on the community than failing to pre-vaccinate potential cases.

To conduct the study, Longini and colleagues created a computer model that calculated the spread of smallpox via aerosol dissemination – the most likely choice of terrorists – within a community of 50,000. Members of this virtual community interacted the way people normally do: within households, neighborhoods, preschool groups, schools, a community hospital and the community at large. The age distribution and household sizes were based on the U.S. census for 2000.

Predicting the spread of an infectious disease such as smallpox requires much more than simply connecting dots on a map. Instead Longini and colleagues rely on a tool called stochastic modeling to take into account real-world unpredictability, as well as many factors about the disease and the affected population. In constructing these models, Longini and colleagues begin with assumptions about how people interact and how the virus spreads. They also introduce and evaluate the effectiveness of various intervention strategies.

The study represents the first attempt to integrate what science knows about the natural history of smallpox – how various forms of the disease manifest over time – with human patterns of behavior to construct the most-comprehensive model of a smallpox epidemic to date.

“If smallpox appeared in Seattle tomorrow, which it could do, I’m absolutely confident that we could contain it if our recommendations for surveillance and containment were put into practice. I rest easier now that we’ve done this study,” Longini said. “The process was kind of like unveiling the enemy to the point where we really understood it. This research has helped us demystify the threat a bit.”

Although smallpox has been eliminated as a naturally-occurring disease, the virus still exists in two approved laboratories in the United States and Russia. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classifies it as a “Category A” agent, presenting the greatest potential threat for harming public health if developed and used as a bioterrorist agent.

Smallpox is caused by the variola virus, which emerged thousands of years ago. Variola major, the most common form of the virus, is divided into four subcategories: ordinary (which accounts for about 90 percent of cases and has a fatality rate of about 30 percent), modified (which occurs in people who have been vaccinated and has a death rate of about 10 percent), and flat and hemorrhagic (both very rare and uniformly fatal).

According to the CDC, exposure to the variola virus is followed by an incubation period of seven to 17 days, during which people are not contagious and feel fine. The first symptoms emerge during what is called the prodrome phase, and they include head and body aches, fatigue, a high fever and, sometimes, vomiting. This phase lasts two to four days and at this point people may or may not be contagious. Then a rash emerges all over the body and grows increasingly severe over the next 20 or so days, eventually forming scabs; during this period people are contagious, particularly during the first seven to 10 days of the rash. The disease eventually resolves and contagion ends after all of the scabs have fallen off. People who survive are then considered to be immune from smallpox.

A person can become infected by prolonged, face-to-face exposure with someone who is contagious, direct contact with infected bodily fluids or a contaminated object, such as bedding or clothing, and exposure to an aerosol release.

Routine smallpox vaccination ended in 1972, which leaves at least 43 percent of the U.S. population unvaccinated, Longini said. Research suggests that those previously vaccinated may still have substantial residual immunity although, if infected, they could still transmit the virus to others. Those most vulnerable to the virus are the very young and those whose immune systems are compromised due to HIV/AIDS, cancer or some other medical condition. An estimated 50 million Americans fall into this category, Longini said.

Well I pity the poor cancer patient without stellar health insurance. This has to be one of the most astoundingly shocking stories of the year.

Abraxane, a new version of an old cancer drug, is now being re-packaged in a new and pricey form. It doesn’t help patients live any longer than the old treatment, and in fact, there is nothing new about it except the price. Get ready, hold on, buckle your seat elt….

It cost $4,200 a dose.

Roughly 20,000 people have been treated with Abraxane, and this year’s sales should approach $200 million. Annual sales may reach $1 billion by 2010. The older version, Taxol, has similar effects, and costs 25 times less.

However, Abraxane has been marketed as a last-ditch drug for those who have not had success on other treatments, prompting many to try it in desperation despite the price. Taxol itself was initially considered expensive, and its price of $986 a dose led to Congressional hearings.

From the Wilmington Star:

Ohmigod, such a thing is unknown. The FDA is such a pure and pristine agency, dedicated to the health and well being of the poor ignorant consumer, and it is an agency free from any political or commercial bias. And their track record over the past several decades proves it.

Uh, that is the FDA of mythology. The real one smells worse than a dead fish that’s been marinating for 10 years in an open sewer.

So once again, another tale of woe. This time it concerns former commissioner Lester Crawford, who rather abruptly left his position without an explanation.

From the Seattle Times:

Former FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford pleaded guilty Tuesday to conflict of interest and false reporting of information about stocks he owned in food, beverage and medical-device companies he was in charge of regulating.

Crawford admitted to falsely reporting that he had sold or did not own stock when he continued holding shares in the firms governed by rules of the Food and Drug Administration. Beginning in 2002, Crawford filed seven incorrect financial reports with a government ethics office and Congress, leading to the charges.

Poor Les. The article says that he was all choked up when he spoke with the press. And now off he goes to the private sector. The ever revolving door between the FDA and the industry they are supposed to be regulating.

There’s an interesting article about fixing hospitals on MSNBC.com. I’ll save my comments until later, because I have to finish editing an article right now and zip it off into cyberspace tonight–so my editor back East will see it first thing in the am.

This is a story that appeared in several media outlets this morning, and it is interesting how some choose to present. It is about breast cancer in Australian women. Now, here’s a blip from the Sydney Morning Herald, and take note of the order of the news items:

MORE women are surviving breast cancer than ever before, with higher rates of early detection and advances in treatments ensuring 86 per cent are alive five years after diagnosis.

Yet the incidence of breast cancer continues to rise and it remains the cancer that kills most women in Australia.

Figures released today from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show there were 113,801 women and 730 men alive who had been diagnosed with breast cancer in the past 20 years. The report estimated that 13,261 women and 100 men would be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, with rates for women more than doubling in the past 20 years.

In fact, the title of the article is “More Women Surviving Breast Cancer,” and yes, that is good news. But almost as an afterthought, they mention the most crucial component–that the rate of breast cancer has DOUBLED over the past 20 years. Duh…is this doublespeak or what? It’s great that more women are surviving the trauma of breast cancer, but isn’t the most important story the rising rates? And why are these rates rising so dramatically?

I guess they figured that they would begin with a “let’s feel good and warm and fuzzy” type message, and then slip in the diabolical stats while no one is looking.

Now, here’s a second article from the Australian:

Breast cancer rates double in 20 years
October 16, 2006
NEW figures show breast cancer rates have doubled in 20 years but still not enough women are having regular mammograms Health Minister Tony Abbott says.

While new figures showed more women were surviving the leading cause of female cancer deaths, Mr Abbott said statistics showed only 56 per cent of women were having regular mammograms.

“I’m a little disappointed that so many of us, out of a misguided sense of stoicism, don’t go to the doctor as soon as we detect problems,” Mr Abbott said.

Mr Abbott launched a national breast cancer report when he spoke to more than 800 people at the National Breast Cancer Centre’s (NBCC) Pink Ribbon Breakfast in Sydney this morning.

“It’s very important that the message go out from this room to all of those women who aren’t here this morning - go and get screened and if there is a problem go and see the doctor because the last thing we want is more tragic statistics in the months and years ahead,” he said.

Releasing the results of the national report into breast cancer from the NBCC and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), Mr Abbott said breast cancer rates had more than doubled over the past 20 years.

Notice, they begin with the real story of the day, that breast cancer rates are at an alarming high. The better survival rate of breast cancer patients isn’t even mentioned until two-thirds into the story. While neither article is great journalism, the second story is certainly more focused on what is the more important issue to highlight.

There are over 50 news stories reporting on this, and it is interesting (and a little disturbing) to see how they twist the news. One short article from eCanada Now doesn’t even mention the doubling in breast cancer rates, but makes it a hip-hip-hooray kind of anecdote, about how breast cancer patients have increased their survival. Not one peep about the dire increase in the incidence of the disease.

Another silly article from an Australian paper begins by telling us how Western lifestyles having fewer babies are the main contributors to the doubling of breast cancer rates in the past 20 years, and then rushes off to talk about the greatly improved survival stats. Only at the end of the article, does it bring back the doubling of rates.

While it is fine to mention that some women are surviving the disease, and the odds have improved, a better service would be to focus on the doubling of rates and offer some explanations as to why this is happening. Couldn’t any of these journalists find any physicians or scientists to interview about increasing cancer rates? And offer these reasons to the public? Let people know that breast cancer just doesn’t happen by the throw of the dice, but there are some real, identified risk factors.

Don’t cry for me Sam Walton. Your dream of a discount store for the average Mr. and Mrs. Joe has turned into a nightmarish monster that’s eating into the soul of the planet. Here’s the latest one for wonderful Wal-Mart, the company that stands out as one of the most vile on the planet (well, it is behind Monsanto in that sense.)

Once again, Wal-Mart has proven to be a good neighbor and employer. They just lost another lawsuit leveied by their dear and loyal employees.

From Bloomberg:

Chances are, if you read about a strange new medical discovery that sounds too good to be true–chances are, it is. Or it’s a paid for advertisement in disguise, designed to deceive the public. You really have to wonder, how do people get the balls to do this?

Nutrition Journal Hid Contributors’ Ties to Food Industry

* Nutrition Journal Hid Contributors’ Ties to Food Industry
Supplement Published in Journal of the American College of Nutrition Pooh-Poohs Salt Intake Recommendations
Center for Science in the Public Interest, OCTOBER 2, 2006
Straight to the Source

PRESS RELEASE

CONTACT: Center for Science in the Public Interest 202.332.9110

Nutrition Journal Hid Contributors’ Ties to Food Industry
Supplement Published in Journal of the American College of Nutrition Pooh-Poohs Salt Intake Recommendations

WASHINGTON - October 2 - A nutrition journal published by the American College of Nutrition failed to tell readers that a special supplement on salt intake was written and edited by consultants to the salt industry. The editors also failed to inform the National Library of Medicine (NLM), which included the abstracts from the supplement in MEDLINE. NLM rules state MEDLINE will not carry abstracts from sponsored supplements unless conflict-of-interest disclosure statements are prominently featured in the supplement.

This blatant failure by the Journal of the American College of Nutrition (JACN) to adhere to its own conflict of interest disclosure policies and federal guidelines was revealed in Integrity in Science Watch, a weekly alert from the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

The “guest editor” of a June supplement in JACN that focused on sodium and human health was Dr. Alexander G. Logan, a paid consultant to the salt industry. He also serves as scientific advisor to the sodium committee of the industry-backed International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), which funded the supplement. The regular editors of JACN also allowed ILSI’s sodium committee, which includes Frito-Lay, Heinz, Kraft, and Proctor & Gamble, to name Logan to edit the special supplement. This fact was not revealed to readers.

No articles in the supplement, most of which downplayed the risk of excessive salt consumption, contained conflict of interest disclosures, even though several were written by past and current consultants to the Salt Institute, which is the industry’s lobbying arm. Moreover, JACN’s managing editor confirmed that supplement articles did not undergo normal peer review.

“The editors of the Journal of the American College of Nutrition should apologize to their readers, publish full conflict-of-interest disclosures and a disclaimer that none of the pseudo-science in the supplement underwent peer review,” said Merrill Goozner, director of the Integrity in Science project at CSPI.

In a letter to JACN editor John Cunningham of the University of Massachusetts, Integrity in Science Project Coordinator Corrie Mauldin wrote, “No respectable journal should be renting out its name to the highest bidder and let industry-funded groups hand pick ‘guest editors.’”

In a separate letter to the National Library of Medicine, CSPI asked that the articles from the supplement be withdrawn from MEDLINE for failing to adhere to the government’s rule requiring full conflict-of-interest disclosure. The rule states:

Supplements or other publications that indicate funding derived from private, for-profit organizations will not be routinely indexed for MEDLINE unless certain conditions are met. A disclosure statement should be included within the text of each article that might be cited for MEDLINE, preferably on the title page of the article, that indicates any financial relationship that each author has with the funding source and with any product discussed or implied in the text of the article.

I didn’t realize that today was Friday the 13th, until uh, just now. If I don’t have a deadline, I do become oblivious to the dates. But except for some nice morning fog, it was a sunny day. The leaves are turning colors and I drove down one of my favorite blocks in Queen Anne–a favorite in the fall because the whole street is lined with identical trees that turn identical spectacular colors. And they were turning. Sometimes the autumn colors just don’t look real.

The pumpkins are all out and this year I am going to make pumpkin pie. In fact, I’m going to Whole Foods tomorrow and buying the pie shells. And then I’m going to bake a spectacular pumpkin pie, with tofu instead of condensed milk. Don’t make a face, it actually tastes pretty good.

Ah, the late great nursing shortage. The woe is me stories and how all we need to do is mass produce nurses on the assembly line and then all will be well in healthcareland.

But as anyone with any degree of gray matter knows, the healthcare industry is doing its best (and I speak in general terms) to keep a nursing shortage running full steam. This way, they can turn around and cry, “But I can’t hire anyone so this is the way we have to do it.” Or “We need to bring in foreign indentured servants, oh, I mean nurses, and that will solve the problem.”

So here’s another one for you, which shows how eager the industry is to perpetuate the shortage. This is another major step backward for the human nurse.

ANA Rejects NLRB Decision to Block Nurses’ Freedom to Unionize

Silver Spring, MD - The American Nurses Association (ANA) denounced today’s decision by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Oakwood Healthcare to broaden the definition of “supervisor,” saying it could effectively deprive hundreds of thousands of registered nurses (RNs) and licensed practical nurses of their right to choose to impact their work environment through collective bargaining.

The ANA, as it has for over 100 years, will continue to oppose policies and practices that undermine registered nurses’ ability to have an impact on the workplace and to improve patient care, and will work to support RNs who seek continued access to collective bargaining.

In essence, this can include an RN working in any aspect of healthcare, as nurses often have to instruct other personnel and are in “charge,” so to speak. For example, a group of patients on a med/surg floor may be assigned to one RN and an aide. The aide answers to the RN. So does that make the RN a superviser? You better believe that facilities that have been trying to break unions will jump on this opportunity to declare that any RN who oversees anyone else is a “superviser” and therefore not eligible to take part in collective bargaining.

What a sweetheart deal for the industry. This will certainly go a long way in keeping nurses on the job, and recruiting new ones. I mean, doesn’t taking away rights and options make a job more desirable?

I certainly hope that nurses overwhelmingly protest this ruling, and refuse to do charge work and any other kind of “supervisery” duties.

I don’t like to get into politics unless it is health related, but this is too sad. And I suppose that over half a million needless deaths is related to health.

From Medpage:

If Iraq had not been invaded it is estimated that 654,965 people who died, would not have done so, according to an article in The Lancet, Thursday October 12, 2006.

Two years ago another article, also published in The Lancet, had estimated that about 100,000 extra lives were lost because of the invasion between March 2003 - September 2004.

In this new paper, Gilbert Burnham, John Hopkins Bloomberg University, USA, and team came to the 654,965 figure by calculating total deaths between March 2003 to June 2006, and comparing them with total deaths during January 2002 to March 2003 (before the invasion).

47 sites throughout the country were selected, each containing between 1849 households and 12,801 household members. Each household was asked about births, deaths, in-migration and out-migration between May and June 2006. When a death had occurred in a household death certificates were produced 92% of the times. The researchers did not ask household members whether the dead household members were civilians or combatants.

It is any wonder that the so-called “insurgents” are trying to get the occupying armies out of their country. Does this smell like Vietnam to anyone? If it doesn’t, you’d got your head in the sand.

654,965 people represents 2.5% of Iraq’s total population. 2.5% of the USA would be 7.5 million deaths, 2.5% of the UK’s population would be 1.5 million deaths. During The Second World War the United Kingdom lost 0.94% of its population, France lost 1.35%, China lost 1.89% and the USA lost 0.32%.

Have we progressed since the Reagan days, when our esteemed president suggested that ketchup be considered a vegetable for the school lunch program? Shows you what he thought of American children.

But school lunches have been notorious for filling kids up with high fat, low fiber, high calorie lunches that are devoid of anything that might be deemed slightly nourishing. I don’t consider a cheeseburger (made with commercially raised cattle meat that is laden with hormones and antibiotic residues) served on a bun made from bleached white flour, and served with a side order of French fries to be a healthy lunch. Maybe if you are trying to raise an obese kiddie, with clogged arteries, who’ll spend his life constipated…

There was actually a short FOB piece in the September 2006 issue of National Geographic about school lunches. It compared what is served, and the cost, in the US, Russia and Japan. Not only were the typical lunches served in Japan and Russia healthier, but they were also cheaper and lower in calories.

Anyway, there seems to be hope for school lunches. This is a press release from the damn bleeding heart liberal pinko organization called Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, with their secret agenda of turning all of us into vegetarians and putting the dairy industry out of business. And to think that humans can survive eating raw beets and carrots. They also would like to put the health care industry out of business by promoting prevention of illness, rather than good old all-American style treatment and cure (sometimes). You know, like saving someone from a lifetime of popping expensive pills. Sounds very subversive to me.

Doctors Name Healthiest School Lunches in United States

Schools in California, Florida, New Mexico, New Jersey, and Georgia Take Top Honors; Vegetarian Items Available Daily on All Menus

WASHINGTON—”Mystery meat” is losing ground to fruits, vegetables, and low-fat vegetarian meals. It’s National School Lunch Week, and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) announces the winners of its 2006 “Golden Carrot Awards” for innovation in school food service. The grand prize went to Irmgard James, food service director at Oak Grove School in Ojai, Calif. Four second-place prizes went to food service professionals in Albuquerque, Atlanta, Morristown, N.J., and Pinellas County, Fla.

PCRM established the Golden Carrot Awards in 2004 to recognize food service professionals doing an exceptional job of improving the healthfulness of school lunches. PCRM looks for programs that encourage kids to eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables and that offer plenty of vegetarian, low-fat, whole grain, and nondairy options. Children who are raised on a healthy vegetarian diet have a lower risk of obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and some cancers compared with those who grow up on an average American diet.

This year’s Golden Carrot winners:

* Irmgard James won the grand prize for the creative food service program she runs at Oak Grove School in Ojai, Calif. James will win $1,500; the school will receive $3,500. Oak Grove School serves only vegetarian food, and students enjoy fresh fruit platters and a salad bar with raw and steamed vegetables.

* Gray Miller, food service director for the Pinellas County School District in Florida, won a $500 second prize for making major strides toward improving student health by serving more vegetarian meals and emphasizing fruits and vegetables.

* Judy Mancici, food service director at the Unity Charter School in Morristown, N.J., won a $500 second prize. The school serves only vegetarian meals, and students participate in planting and harvesting vegetables in the school’s garden.

* JoAnne DeShields, food service director at Grady High School in Atlanta, won a $500 second prize. Grady High School offers the “Creations Line,” an all-vegetarian lunch line featuring such healthy options as garden burgers, quesadillas with Mexican rice, and vegetarian spaghetti.

* Laura Gilbert, food service director at Albuquerque Academy in New Mexico, won a $500 second prize for serving up high-fiber, low-fat vegetarian entrées such as portabella fajitas and cheeseless veggie garden pizza.

For more information about any of the Golden Carrot winners, please contact Patrick Sullivan at 202-686-2210, ext. 311, or psullivan@pcrm.org.

Founded in 1985, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is a nonprofit health organization that promotes preventive medicine, especially good nutrition. PCRM also conducts clinical research studies, opposes unethical human experimentation, and promotes alternatives to animal research.

I just wanted to add this to the story that I just entered below.

Connecticut Health Association spokeswoman Jennifer Barrows said there has been a shift across the state since the 1980s to providing more outpatient services, yet between 1994 and 2005 there has been a rise in both inpatient and outpatient services.

Between 2004 and 2005, Barrows said inpatient admissions for all of the state’s acute care hospitals increased from 413,972 to 420,856 and in-patient days from 2.02 million in 2004 to 2.06 million in 2005.

Within those statistics, however, Barrows said CHA is seeing dramatic shifts from hospital to hospital, depending on community demographics. Insurance co-pays, Medicare reimbursements, and an increase in uninsured and underinsured patients all play a role, she said.

New Milford Hospital is far from alone in struggling with financial viability, Barrrows said.

“Most of our hospitals are fiscally fragile and operate on very thin margins,'’ she said. “Staff expenses represent the largest portion of a hospital budget, so it is often an area targeted to keep a hospital running.'’

Now, if the hospital is struggling financially, why haven’t they laid off any of their senior executives? Someone on a website who knows the facility well, pointed out that they have six VPs! Do you think that they could manage with 4 or 5 VPs, and keep the staff who actually do patient care?

These are the jobs they are cutting:

The cuts

New Milford Hospital plans to lay off 22 people and cut the hours of four others.

Nurses in these departments will be affected:

{”Graphic text”/}n Endoscopy

n One-day surgery
# Blood collection
# Cardiac rehabilitation
# Operating room
# Clinical resource management

Remaining layoffs will come from:
# Accounts receivable
# Purchasing
# Patient accounts
# Admitting
# Secretary
# Unit clerks
# Employee health
# Laboratory

Do you see any executives among them? Any of the people who will probably be getting their 7 figure bonus this year?

As another bulletin member pointed, they may just be shuffling senior people out the door, and will eventually replace those laid off. Replace them with lower waged personnel, and offering less benefits.

Cool. Glad to see that there is still a powerful disconnect between hospital executives, their staff and the public.

So much for the great nursing shortage. As I’ve often preached, the shortage is merely a shortage of desirable places to work. There are hospitals with waiting lists of nurses who want to come to work for them, and not because they are the only employer in town. But here’s a typical story, that echoes the scenario of the early 1990s:

From NewTimesLive.com:

NEW MILFORD — Registered nurse Joanne Chapin is afraid New Milford Hospital administration’s cost-cutting decision to lay off 22 employees and reduce hours for four others will not only hurt those losing jobs but the hospital’s reputation as a good place to work.

After negotiations with administrators, the nurses’ union president said Wednesday it appears one full-time operating room nurse and a part-time blood collection nurse will lose their jobs, six will be forced to take reduced hours and at least two will have to switch from day to midnight shifts. In total, the hospital administration is reducing the nursing staff by 122 hours in endoscopy, one-day surgery, cardiac rehabilitation, the operating room, clinical resource management and the autologous blood department.

“In the nursing community, this really hurts our reputation, and that’s something we are going to have to work to overcome,'’ said Chapin, a 15-year veteran who represents the hospital’s 175 full- and part-time nursing staff. Skilled nurses are in demand, and this layoff could adversely affect future recruitment, she said.

The hospital administration disagrees. Administration officials said this week they are still seeking staff for select positions, and regularly accept applications from experienced nurses and other personnel. Five clerical and secretarial staff who are losing jobs will have an opportunity to be moved into vacancies in other departments, officials said.

If you notice, quotes from hospital officials are invariably the same. The same stupid, meaningless drivel which conveniently ignores the reality of the situation. If you take a look at the article, you’ll see what I mean. Now, in this day and age of the so-called great shortage, this facility is laying off people, but yet still seeking staff for select positions? What kind of mental vacuum is that? In other words, they don’t think that the fact that they are laying off both nurses and support staff will affect their ability to recruit nurses for “select positions.” Or reducing the hours of others. What are these people smoking?

Just in case anyone left me a legitimate comment between now my last posting, well, sorry. It’s been deleted. There were almost 1100 comments in the box, and all I could was spam galore. Delectable topics meant to entice me, with juicy titles like “pussy galore,” and “fat lesbian pussy (although it doesn’t specify whether the lesbian is fat, or just her pussy, or both)”, and so on.

I deleted all of them because I just can’t bear the thought of wading through all of that trash. What a nice welcome home. Thank you spammers, for clogging up my site.

Yes, I’ve been AWOL, primarily because I have been traveling and attending medical conferences and have barely had a minute to breathe. First I was in SF with a hectic schedule, but managed to squeeze in some time hunting for rocks with my brother. Yes, real rocks up in the wilds of Tiburon. He’s a geologist, and I enjoy hiking around and spending time with him, even if I don’t share his passion for rocks–although some of them were quite nice, especially the ones that shimmered. I pretended I discovered gold.

Then I was home for one day after I got back from SF, and took off to Chicago for another conference. I have never been to Chicago before, and I think it’s just about the only major US city (aside from Atlanta) that I have not at least visited once. I LOVED Chicago–it was like a clean and scrubbed version of NY with incredible architecture, bordering a lake that resembles the open sea. It is like NY in many ways, especially the insane taxi drivers and the crowds strolling Michigan Blvd. I’ve also turned into such a West Coast wimp, and actually have come to expect that pedestrians have the right of way. Well, trying to cross the street in Chicagoland cured me of that.

Terrific shopping, restaurants, cafes, ambiance–yes, I know, there are some not so nice areas, just like everywhere else. But given a choice between NY and Chicago, I would choose Chicago. For one thing, you can actually afford to live there. Of course, there is that little problem of the winter…. The weather was really nice this weekend, and I had all day Saturday to be outside and explore, and it was warm and sunny.

So now I’m back, and posting. I don’t anticipate going anywhere else for at least a month, when I head to Florida to see the folks.