Cupcake saviour

Weeks have passed since Michael Benjamin's fling as a cable news sensation, but the Democratic assemblyman from the Bronx insists he hasn't figured out why people cared so much about his battle to save the cupcake.

When he first heard that several Long Island school districts were forbidding parents from bringing the frosted treats to their children's birthday parties, Mr. Benjamin never anticipated that his decision to take action would forever brand him as the nation's leading cupcake advocate.

"I was ticked that people had the temerity of banning food products," he said in a recent interview. In his opinion, the Long Island superintendents were "robbing children of pleasant childhood memories."

His solution was, of course, a legislative one. He cranked out a bill to make cupcakes the official state children's snack and thereby thwart the bans. In days, he was passionately standing up for the little cupcake before a national audience, appearing on Fox News, NBC Nightly News, and the "The Daily Show."

Source





A third of passive smokers have lung damage

These findings don't seem very robust: Small sample; doubtful diagnoses; no real baseline

One third of people who breath in high levels of secondhand smoke have damage to their lungs similar to that seen in smokers, doctors say. They used a special kind of magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scan to look at the lungs of non-smokers who had high exposure to other people's cigarette smoke and found evidence of the kind of damage that causes emphysema. "We interpreted those changes as early signs of lung damage, representing very mild forms of emphysema," said Chengbo Wang, a magnetic resonance physicist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, who led the study.

"Almost one third of non-smokers who had been exposed to secondhand cigarette smoke for a long time developed these structural changes," Dr Wang said. "To our knowledge, this is the first imaging study to find lung damage in non-smokers heavily exposed to secondhand smoke. "We hope our work strengthens the efforts of legislators and policymakers to limit public exposure to secondhand smoke."

Dr Wang, who presented his team's findings to a meeting of the Radiological Society of North American in Chicago, said 35 per cent of US children lived in homes where someone smoked regularly. The team studied 60 adults between ages 41 and 79, 45 of whom had never smoked. The non-smokers were considered to have high exposure if they had lived with a smoker for at least 10 years, often during childhood. "It's long been hypothesised that prolonged exposure to secondhand smoke may cause physical damage to the lungs, but previous methods of analysing lung changes were not sensitive enough to detect it," said Dr Wang.

His team used a technique called long-time-scale, global helium-3 diffusion magnetic resonance imaging. "With this technique, we are able to assess lung structure on a microscopic level," Dr Wang said. They found 57 per cent of the smokers and 33 per cent of the non-smokers with high exposure to secondhand smoke had signs of early lung damage as measured by the scan. In February, US researchers reported that up to 20 per cent of women who developed lung cancer have never smoked.

Source





Australia: Kids must not run in park

Obesity, anyone?



A GROUP of children have been nabbed for running around a park and threatened with fines by their council. Glen Eira Council has ordered these cute "crooks" out of a Caulfield park and threatened to hit each one with a $250 fine if they return. The children and their parents are furious after they were challenged by Glen Eira officers last Thursday and ordered out of Princes Park during after-school exercise.

The council says it is trying to protect the drought-affected park by making it off limits to any organised sporting groups without a permit. However local families say the fun police are a bad joke. In recent weeks, about eight children and parents from the three families have been meeting at the park after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The energetic youngsters run a lap of the three-oval park and play games.

Dad Grant Cohen said they were approached last week by a Glen Eira local laws officer who told them organised groups weren't allowed on the grounds. "It's ridiculous -- we're just three families who all live five minutes away," Mr Cohen said. "We started coming down here because the kids would be getting home after school and playing computer games all arvo. We wanted to give them a chance to run around. "This park should be full of kids doing exactly that."

Now the kids have gone from running around to being on the run -- forced to be fitness fugitives. "We rang the council and they said that even if we went down the road to Caulfield Park, as long as we were in a group we'd still be fined," Mr Cohen said. The group were told even a single family of eight kids would not be allowed to run around together.

Glen Eira director of community relations Paul Burke said the by-law banning unauthorised groups from parks had been in place since 2000, and council had stepped up enforcement because of the drought. While Mr Burke wouldn't say the minimum number that constituted an organised group, he stuck by the decision to ban the kids.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correla-tion coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic condi-tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

*********************

Global Warming May Trigger Rise in Heart Deaths

The fact that there are many more health problems in winter than in summer must not be mentioned of course. Both warm and cold weather can have their problems but, on balance, warm weather is better for you. People in frail health don't usually go to Iceland. They go to warmer places. But I guess we ought to feel sorry for all those elderly people who retire to Florida. The government should FORCE them to go to Alaska instead -- for their own good, of course

Soaring temperatures and high ozone levels work together to boost death risks from heart disease and stroke, researchers report. They believe that global warming -- which brings more heat and more ozone -- may further increase the number of people who die of cardiovascular events. "Temperature and ozone are strong factors in cardiovascular mortality during June to September in the Unites States," noted the study's lead author, Cizao Ren, from the Department of Epidemiology in the School of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine. "Temperature and air pollution combine to affect the health of large populations," he added. Ren expects the problem will get worse as the earth becomes hotter. "Increases in temperature and air pollution will have a strong affect on health," he said.

His team based its findings on data on almost 100 million people living in 95 different areas across the United States from June to September. These Americans were included in the National Mortality and Air Pollution Study, which tracked links between health and air pollution for the years 1987 to 2000. Four million deaths from heart attacks or strokes occurred during the study period. Ren's team compared death rates against changes in temperature during one day.

Ozone was a common link, they found. In fact, the higher the ozone level, the greater the risk of cardiovascular death attributable to high temperatures, Ren's team concluded. Ozone levels ranged from an average of 36.74 parts per billion to 142.85 parts per billion, while daily temperatures ranged from 68 to around 107 degrees Fahrenheit. When the ozone level was at its lowest, a 10-degree increase in temperature was associated with about a 1 percent increase in deaths from heart disease and stroke. However, when the ozone level was at its highest, there was a more than an 8 percent increase in deaths from heart disease and stroke, Ren's group found.

The findings are published Nov. 21 in the online edition of the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Ozone is a pollutant strongly linked to weather conditions, particularly the amount of ultraviolet light in the atmosphere. Ozone is generated by a reaction between airborne nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and oxygen in sunlight. Exposure to high levels of ozone can affect the airways and the autonomic nervous system, making people more susceptible to the effects of temperature changes, Ren's team explained.

One expert agreed with the team's conclusions. "This paper reinforces what we know -- that both temperature and ozone affect health, even to the extent that they affect mortality," said George Thurston, an associate professor of environmental medicine at New York University. Global warming will increase both temperatures and pollution, Thurston added, because higher temperatures are conducive to the production of ozone. "This will be a growing problem," he said. For the general public, the study raises questions about pollution and climate change, Thurston said. "The health effects may be even worse than thought," he said. "There are health benefits to reducing climate change." Cutting back on the use of fossil fuels will help, Thurston said. "Reducing fossil fuel combustion will reduce climate change and pollution," he said. "We have seen the problem, and it's fossil fuel combustion. Now, all we have to do is come up with an alternative," he said.

Source




AND GRASS IS GREEN

Amazing stuff you get in the medical literature sometimes. The study below proves that more active parents tend to have more active children. Who would have thought? Is the deteriorated quality of the BMJ becoming so well known that lightweight submissions like this are needed to fill their pages?

Note also that the speculative last sentence below shows that the authors do NOT believe that personality characteristics are genetically transmitted -- despite the overwhelming evidence from the behaviour genetics literature showing that they are. The BMJ seems to have become a propaganda sheet for some weird Leftist cult rather than a worthwhile medical journal

Early life determinants of physical activity in 11 to 12 year olds: cohort study

By Calum Mattocks et al.

Objective: To examine factors in early life (up to age 5 years) that are associated with objectively measured physical activity in 11-12 year olds.

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Setting: Avon longitudinal study of parents and children, United Kingdom.

Participants: Children aged 11-12 years from the Avon longitudinal study of parents and children.

Main outcome measure: Physical activity levels in counts per minute (cpm) and minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity for seven days measured with a uniaxial actigraph accelerometer.

Results: Valid actigraph data, defined as at least three days of physical activity for at least 10 hours a day, were collected from 5451 children. Several factors were associated with physical activity at ages 11-12 years. Regression coefficients are compared with the baseline of "none" for categorical variables: maternal brisk walking during pregnancy (regression coefficient 5.0, 95% confidence interval -8.5 to 18.5; cpm for <1 h/wk and ~ 2 h/wk of physical activity 24.2, 7.8 to 40.7), parents' physical activity when the child was aged 21 months (28.5, 15.2 to 41.8 and cpm of physical activity for either parent active and both parents active 33.5, 17.8 to 49.3), and parity assessed during pregnancy (2.9, -7.6 to 13.4 and cpm of physical activity for 1 and ~ 2 parity 21.2, 7.1 to 35.3).

Conclusions: Few factors in early life predicted later physical activity in 11-12 year olds. Parents' physical activity during pregnancy and early in the child's life showed a modest association with physical activity of the child at age 11-12 years, suggesting that active parents tend to raise active children. Helping parents to increase their physical activity therefore may promote children's activity.

BMJ, 23 November 2007

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correla-tion coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic condi-tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

*********************

Thanksgiving for fast food

We can thank Thanksgiving for the TV Dinner. The ‘TV Dinner’ was a brand of frozen ready meal invented in 1953 by CA Swanson, a major American food company. The story goes that they had massively overestimated how many turkeys they would need to meet Thanksgiving demand. How to get rid of the excess? The company realised that packaging the whole Thanksgiving meal on one, compartmentalised aluminium tray that you could pop in the oven, then tuck into in front of the television, might be popular with customers. They reckoned they would sell 5,000 in the first year. They sold 10 million. As one wag wrote in the Christian Science Monitor a couple of years ago: they came, they thawed, they conquered.

Then there’s the man who invented mass production of frozen food in 1923 - Clarence Birdseye. (Unfortunately, Birdseye wasn’t a ship’s captain with a gnarly voice and a crew of child pirates who ate fish fingers all the time, but an American inventor.) By being able to store food until it is required, we’ve been able to get away from the drudgery of the daily shop.

The king of fast food was Ray Kroc, who realised that the restaurant set up by the McDonald brothers in California in the Fifties would fit in with the American desire to eat out, but without the formality that Europeans were used to. He worked with, then bought out, the brothers and through a ruthless approach to sales and a thoroughly efficient operation, McDonald’s gave people quick, cheap, tasty food and revolutionised the food business.

For all the snootiness of food critics, and the panics about obesity, fast food has freed people - and that pretty much means women - from the need to spend hours in the kitchen. It means we have affordable, hot food anywhere, anytime. For every evening I’ve needed a snack while rolling home merry, for every TV show I’d have missed if I’d had to cook instead of waiting for the microwave to go ‘ping’, I’d like to salute these great American pioneers.

Source





Food fanatics now targeting hospitals

Apparently adults have to have their decisions made for them by these Fascists too

CANCER Council Victoria is heading an alliance of key health groups accusing the Brumby Government of failing to fight obesity by refusing to ban junk food in hospitals. The cancer council, Diabetes Victoria, Vic Health and Deakin University - which form Victoria's Obesity Policy Coalition - want to ban junk food in vending machines and canteens.

The New South Wales Government has done so, but a spokesman for Victorian Health Minister Daniel Andrews said canteen and vending machine food was a matter for individual health services to address.

Health groups say hospitals should be leading by example. "In hospitals we are dealing with the effects of chronic diseases, conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer which are all affected by weight," OPC senior policy adviser Ms Jane Martin said. "These conditions are a big burden on hospital budgets yet chocolate bars, sugary drinks and chips are available in vending machines 24 hours a day. "We have seen changes made in school canteens and suppliers to schools have been able to make this shift. "It is not difficult to refrigerate vending machines in order to supply healthy choices."

Hospitals were also one of the first places to go smoke-free and tackle tobacco, she said. "We need to treat being overweight like tobacco," Ms Martin said. "It's about doing the right thing for people who are sick and their families." "Patients, visitors and staff need to be surrounded by the right messages."

Department of Human Services spokesman Bram Alexander said hospital canteens did provide a range of healthy choices, but they could not make people buy them

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correla-tion coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic condi-tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

*********************

THE OBESITY WARRIORS NEVER STOP TRYING

I guess it makes me weird but I do find the medical literature to be a barrel of laughs. They are so determined to come to their predetermined conclusions and the data keeps letting them down so badly! Read either the media summary below or the conclusion to the journal abstract also below and you will be left with the impression that being overweight is a bad thing. Read the bit I have highlighted in red and I think you will have a little laugh, though. Even in this highly selected group, fatties were NOT likely to die sooner. They did have more trouble with their prostate cancer but they obviously had less trouble with other things!

Excess weight a risk to surviving cancer

A new study has found that overweight or obese men are at greater risk of death following prostate cancer treatment. Published online this week in the journal Cancer, the study involved 788 men with prostate cancer who were followed for more than eight years. Compared to men with a normal body mass index (BMI, calculated as the weight in kilograms divided by the squared height in metres) of less than 25 at the time of diagnosis, men with a BMI between 25 and 30 were more than 1.5 times more likely to die from their cancer following treatment. Similarly, men with a BMI of 30 or more were 1.6 times more likely to die from the disease. Further research is needed, say the authors, to test whether losing weight after cancer diagnosis could improve survival time.

Source

Obesity and mortality in men with locally advanced prostate cancer

By Jason A. Efstathiou et al.

BACKGROUND: Greater body mass index (BMI) is associated with shorter time to prostate-specific antigen (PSA) failure following radical prostatectomy and radiation therapy (RT). Whether BMI is associated with prostate cancer-specific mortality (PCSM) was investigated in a large randomized trial of men treated with RT and androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) for locally advanced prostate cancer.

METHODS: Between 1987 and 1992, 945 eligible men with locally advanced prostate cancer were enrolled in a phase 3 trial (RTOG 85-31) and randomized to RT and immediate goserelin or RT alone followed by goserelin at recurrence. Height and weight data were available at baseline for 788 (83%) subjects. Cox regression analyses were performed to evaluate the relations between BMI and all-cause mortality, PCSM, and nonprostate cancer mortality. Covariates included age, race, treatment arm, history of prostatectomy, nodal involvement, Gleason score, clinical stage, and BMI.

RESULTS: The 5-year PCSM rate for men with BMI <25 kg/m2 was 6.5%, compared with 13.1% and 12.2% in men with BMI 25 to <30 and BMI 30, respectively (Gray's P = .005). In multivariate analyses, greater BMI was significantly associated with higher PCSM (for BMI 25 to <30, hazard ratio [HR] 1.52, 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02-2.27, P = .04; for BMI 30, HR 1.64, 95% CI, 1.01-2.66, P = .04). BMI was not associated with nonprostate cancer or all-cause mortality.

CONCLUSIONS: Greater baseline BMI is independently associated with higher PCSM in men with locally advanced prostate cancer. Further studies are warranted to evaluate the mechanism(s) for increased cancer-specific mortality and to assess whether weight loss after prostate cancer diagnosis alters disease course. Cancer 2007. c 2007 American Cancer Society.

Source




Dads 'make young sons dumber'

The original paper is here. It is a long (155 pages), verbose and exhausting paper to read and I do not remotely have the time to read it all but two things I note is that we are primarily talking about lower class (unemployed) fathers here and that the analysis was very "lumpy". Appendix D shows that only two categories were used to examine the amount of time fathers spent with children. That very effectively obscures any possibility of discovering curvilinear relationships -- which are certainly not a possibility that can be excluded a priori in this case.

I also note that the author seems to contradict herself in the first and last paragraphs below. Amusing. Easy to see why, though. We are not allowed to come to conservative conclusions and the paper does come to the thoroughly conservative conclusion that children are best cared for by their mothers! Horrors!

YOUNG boys end up being dumber when it is the father who looks after them as toddlers, a study from Bristol University in the UK has found. A researcher from the University of Bristol in the UK has found that boys are doing worse at school when it was their fathers who spent at least 15 hours each week taking sole care of them.

According to Elizabeth Washbrook's study of more than 6000 children found that "some fathers appear not to provide the same quality of intellectual stimulation as mothers, at least to their sons". "I find robust evidence that boys - but not girls - who spend at least 15 hours a week in paternal care when they were toddlers performed worse on academic assessments when they started school," Ms Washbrook wrote in the Research in Public Policy journal. "This cannot be explained by the economic or psychological characteristics of parents in these families, nor by the characteristics of the child."

Ms Washbrook said that the findings suggest that fathers may be more inclined to believe that taking care of their son was more about "monitoring the child" than devising creative activities. She said that two possible reasons why daughters were not affected by similar time with their fathers were because dads may behave differently around them and girls may be less sensitive to a lack of creative activities - although she also said that there was no definitive proof that supported either argument.

But Ms Washbrook said that the introduction of paid paternity leave in the UK may have led to greater social abilities in children of both genders. "If paternity leave encourages fathers to undertake moderate childcare responsibilities when their children are toddlers, this may have beneficial effects on children's social development."

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correla-tion coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic condi-tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

*********************

Another confirmation that middling weight is best

It's been a tough time the last little while for the fatties among us -- which is supposedly most of us. According to the just released report from the American Institute for Cancer Research being fat and eating certain foods increases our risk for cancer. The secret to a long life according to the report's authors is to be as thin as you can, while avoiding red meat, processed meats, alcohol, French fries, milk shakes and, well, you get the picture.

But in contrast to the cancer report, which received enormous and largely uncritical media attention, a new study about obesity by Katherine Flegal and colleagues from the Centers for Disease Control and the National Cancer Institute made few waves. Yet Flegal's quiet and careful study could do much to calm our growing national hysteria about obesity.

Flegal used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which is a representative sample of the US population, to find the connections between being underweight, overweight and obese and cardiovascular disease (CVD), cancer and many other causes of death. The results are startling since they confound much of the received wisdom about being fat in America.

Flegal discovered that being overweight (BMI's of 25-30) was not responsible for increased mortality. In fact for CVD, cancer and all other causes, being overweight actually increased one's chance of living longer. In total, overweight was associated with a total of 138, 281 fewer deaths. Being overweight is not likely to kill you.

She found that being obese increased the risk of premature death for the most part in only the most obese, that is those with BMI's over 35. In other words, even modest obesity is not a death sentence. For example, those with BMI's of 30-35 aged 25-69 did not have a statistically significant increased risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. Indeed, for cancer the results are even more startling since even those with BMI's in excess of 35 did not have a statistically significant increased risk of dying. And for all other diseases other than CVD and cancer, obesity up to a BMI of 35 was modestly protective -- that is, likely to result in a longer rather than a shorter life.

She also found that being underweight carries substantial risks. Whereas obesity accounts for 95, 442 deaths, being thin is associated with 46, 398 -- almost half as many deaths as obesity. But then one is unlikely to ever hear about the risks of being thin or the mortality toll associated with underweight.

Nor are these findings a fluke. In 2005 Flegal and the same team found that being overweight reduced one's chances of dying, that the majority of deaths due to obesity were in the morbidly obese, and perhaps most surprisingly, that there was no statistically significant increased risk for death associated with even modest obesity.

The implications of these findings, which barely registered in the news cycle, are significant. They suggest that most Americans need not worry about being too fat, since most mortality is associated with BMI's in excess of 35. They suggest that the continual message from the government and the public health community to lose weight or to be as thin as possible lacks a credible scientific basis. And they suggest that it is those who weigh too little whose plight also deserves some attention.

Source




A guy who is drunk as a skunk gets aggressive and it is a a drug that he is taking (not the booze) that is to blame??

Why are tales of side-effects so often plagued by such bogus causal reasoning? You can draw NO valid causal inferences from rare episodes. Coincidence is not cause

Government scientists are investigating whether a drug from Pfizer used to help smokers quit cigarettes also increases suicidal thoughts and violent behavior. The Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday that it had received reports of mood disorders and erratic behavior among patients taking Chantix, Pfizer’s prescription drug used to help quit smoking.

The F.D.A. said it was still gathering information about the drug, but advised doctors to closely monitor patients taking Chantix for behavior changes. Sales of the drug totaled $101 million last year. The agency said it was investigating at least one incident involving Chantix and a violent death.

Family members of a musician in Dallas, Carter Albrecht, recently said that Chantix might have caused the rage that led to his death. Mr. Albrecht was shot in the head in September by his girlfriend’s neighbor as he tried to kick down the man’s door. An autopsy report showed that Mr. Albrecht’s blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit.

The agency said it had asked Pfizer for information on additional cases that might be similar. Regulators said it was unclear if Chantix was directly responsible for the behavior, because nicotine withdrawal often aggravates existing mental problems. Pfizer, which is based in New York, also submitted reports to the agency on increased drowsiness among patients taking Chantix.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correla-tion coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic condi-tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

*********************

Smoking and mental illness

Smoking correlates with ALL indices of social disadvantage. You mostly have to be dumb, poor or mad to smoke these days

Virtually everyone knows about the connection between smoking and health. Smoking causes 440,000 deaths a year in the United States (50,000 of which are from exposure to secondhand smoke) and 5 million worldwide. It shortens smokers' lives by 10 to 15 years, and those last few years can be a miserable combination of breathlessness and pain.

But few are aware that smoking is concentrated among people with mental illness, often compounded by substance-abuse disorders such as alcoholism. Go to most Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and the room will be so full of smoke that you can cut it with a knife. Ask the members, and they will tell you that it was much easier to stop drinking than to stop smoking. Indeed, nicotine, the addictive component of tobacco smoke, is as habituating as cocaine or heroin, and it has a similar effect on chemical receptors in the brain.

The facts about smoking and mental illness are stark. Almost half of all cigarettes sold in the United States (44 percent) are consumed by people with mental illness. This is because so many people who have mental illnesses smoke (50 to 80 percent, compared with less than 20 percent of the general population) and because they smoke so many cigarettes a day - often three packs. Furthermore, smokers with mental illness are much more likely to smoke their cigarettes right down to the filters.

Yet for years, mental health professionals ignored smoking. Why did patients, their families and clinicians do nothing to help smokers quit? One reason is well-intended but uninformed compassion. The reasoning goes something like: "Poor Joe is suffering so much from his illness and gets such pleasure from his cigarettes that I don't want to take them away from him."

Another reason lies in the extent to which smoking is integrated into mental health treatment. In psychiatric hospitals the denial of the opportunity to take a smoke break is used as a disciplinary tool, and cigarettes have become part of the culture - often being traded for goods or sexual favors as a form of currency.

Another factor is that many clinicians who work with people with mental illness have themselves recovered from psychiatric conditions, including substance abuse, but have not been able to stop smoking. They feel hypocritical about trying to help patients quit when they are unable to do so themselves.

After years of tolerating, and even encouraging, smoking among people with mental illness, mental health professionals are beginning to recognize the hazards of smoking. Two things have been especially powerful: the spread of facts about secondhand smoke dangers and a recent analysis showing that people with chronic mental illness die 25 years earlier than the rest of the population, with many of those lost years attributable to smoking.

So, what can be done to help people with mental illness stop smoking? Despite strong addictions or concerns about patients' quality of life, this isn't a futile effort. Like the general population, most smokers with mental health conditions would like to quit. Although their odds of actually quitting are not as high - about half that of smokers who don't have mental health conditions - there are many success stories.

Opportunities exist in both hospital and community settings. There is a growing trend to make mental health hospitals smoke-free, both indoors and on their campuses. For the first time ever, more than half of these institutions in the United States are now smoke-free, and those numbers are increasing. Predicted complications of increased violence and the need for disciplinary actions in the wake of going smoke-free have proved false. In fact, removing smoking as a cause of staff-patient friction has meant fewer violent incidents and more opportunity for staff to interact therapeutically with clients. Tools to help smokers quit - including counseling and drugs such as nicotine replacement, buproprion and varenicline - are available but are still greatly underused.

It will not be easy to reverse the long alliance of smoking and mental illness. But the fact that mental health clinicians and patient and family advocacy groups have recognized the problem and are willing to address it is an essential first step toward wellness.

Source





Researchers strike gold in meningococcal disease fight

Meningococcal disease can strike with frightening speed. Its victims can present with symptoms in the morning and be dead by nightfall. But now, a breakthrough by researchers might go some way to reducing meningococcal fatalities by making it significantly easier to detect the bacteria. It involves the use of nanotechnology, and more specifically, the use of small gold particles being injected into suspected sufferers.

Larraine Pocock knows more about meningococcal disease than most. But it hasn't always been that way. It wasn't until her 21-year-old son Troy travelled to England for a working holiday that she began learning all about the deadly disease. "We got a call from Chelsea Hospital - he'd been admitted and he was critical," she told AM. "We were to ring back in an hour, and I asked them what they thought it was and they thought it was meningitis, and I just realised how serious that was, so I rang back in an hour and he was actually on life support. "So, we rushed to Sydney to try and get to London, but he was to pass away that night."

Ms Pocock now runs a meningococcal foundation named in honour of her son, the Troy Pocock Foundation, based on the New South Wales south coast. She has welcomed the news that new technology might be able to detect the disease within 15 minutes, a far cry from the current testing procedure, which can take up to 48 hours. "Meningococcal disease attacks very quickly and you can be well at breakfast, and you can be actually dead by dinnertime," she said.

Meningococcal disease affects 700 people in Australia each year and 10 per cent of those who contract meningococcal will die from the disease. About 20 per cent of those who contract it will have permanent disabilities.

A prototype device has been developed for the new technology, which involves molecular-sized flecks of gold being covered with antibodies that will attract the protein present in meningococcal bacteria. Jeanette Pritchard is involved in the development of the new technology, which has been designed by Melbourne's RMIT University. She says it has already proven highly successful in tests, and could pave the way for a significant reduction in deaths from meningococcal. "The test result will show either a yes that bacteria are present in the sample, or no the bacteria aren't present," she said. "So, it will basically given an indication that yes, treatment needs to be administered." She says the technology is still in development, but could be in clinics within three years.

Ms Pocock says that while the development of the new technology is welcome, it's far from being a panacea. "We've still got to like raise the awareness for the parent or the teacher or the carer to, you know, take the child to the doctor or the hospital first," she said.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correla-tion coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic condi-tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

*********************

USING YOUR BRAIN A LOT DOES HELP PROTECT YOU FROM ALZHEIMER'S -- BUT WE STILL DON'T KNOW HOW

The study below had a fairly good range of controls, though the reliance on self-report is troubling. Nonetheless the controls used do confer some authority on the conclusion. A bit puzzling that they observed no brain changes that could explain the effect, however. More fine-grained brain observations may be needed or the reliance on self-report abandoned. Peer ratings would be one alternative to self-reports. Abstract below

Relation of cognitive activity to risk of developing Alzheimer disease

By R. S. Wilson et al.

Background: Frequent cognitive activity in old age has been associated with reduced risk of Alzheimer disease (AD), but the basis of the association is uncertain.

Methods: More than 700 old people underwent annual clinical evaluations for up to 5 years. At baseline, they rated current and past frequency of cognitive activity with the current activity measure administered annually thereafter. Those who died underwent a uniform postmortem examination of the brain. Amyloid burden, density of tangles, and presence of Lewy bodies were assessed in eight brain regions and the number of chronic cerebral infarctions was noted.

Results: During follow-up, 90 people developed AD. More frequent participation in cognitive activity was associated with reduced incidence of AD (HR = 0.58; 95% CI: 0.44, 0.77); a cognitively inactive person (score = 2.2, 10th percentile) was 2.6 times more likely to develop AD than a cognitively active person (score = 4.0, 90th percentile). The association remained after controlling for past cognitive activity, lifespan socioeconomic status, current social and physical activity, and low baseline cognitive function. Frequent cognitive activity was also associated with reduced incidence of mild cognitive impairment and less rapid decline in cognitive function. Among 102 persons who died and had a brain autopsy, neither global nor regionally specific measures of neuropathology were related to level of cognitive activity before the study, at study onset, or during the course of the study.

Conclusion: Level of cognitively stimulating activity in old age is related to risk of developing dementia.

NEUROLOGY 2007;69:1911-1920






Cannabis compound 'halts cancer'

I kinda think I have heard all this before

A compound found in cannabis may stop breast cancer spreading throughout the body, US scientists believe. The California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute team are hopeful that cannabidiol or CBD could be a non-toxic alternative to chemotherapy. Unlike cannabis, CBD does not have any psychoactive properties so its use would not violate laws, Molecular Cancer Therapeutics reports. The authors stressed that they were not suggesting patients smoke marijuana. They added that it would be highly unlikely that effective concentrations of CBD could be reached by smoking cannabis.

CBD works by blocking the activity of a gene called Id-1 which is believed to be responsible for the aggressive spread of cancer cells away from the original tumour site - a process called metastasis. Past work has shown CBD can block aggressive human brain cancers. The latest work found CBD appeared to have a similar effect on breast cancer cells in the lab.

Lead researcher Dr Sean McAllister said: "Right now we have a limited range of options in treating aggressive forms of cancer. "Those treatments, such as chemotherapy, can be effective but they can also be extremely toxic and difficult for patients. "This compound offers the hope of a non-toxic therapy that could achieve the same results without any of the painful side effects."

Dr Joanna Owens of Cancer Research UK said: "This research is at a very early stage. "The findings will need to be followed up with clinical trials in humans to see if the CBD is safe, and whether the beneficial effects can be replicated. "Several cancer drugs based on plant chemicals are already used widely, such as vincristine - which is derived from a type of flower called Madagascar Periwinkle and is used to treat breast and lung cancer. It will be interesting to see whether CBD will join them."

Maria Leadbeater of Breast Cancer Care said: "Many people experience side-effects while having chemotherapy, such as nausea and an increased risk of infection, which can take both a physical and emotional toll. "Any drug that has fewer side-effects will, of course, be of great interest." But she added: "It is clear that much more research needs to be carried out."

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correla-tion coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic condi-tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

*********************

Health Fascism in America

Scores of grumbling parents facing a threat of jail lined up at a courthouse today to either prove that their school-age kids already had their required vaccinations or see that the youngsters submitted to the needle. The get-tough policy in Prince George's County was one of the strongest efforts made by any U.S. school system to ensure its youngsters receive their required immunizations.

Two months into the school year, school officials realized that more than 2,000 students in the county still didn't have the vaccinations they were supposed to have before attending class. So Circuit Court Judge C. Philip Nichols ordered parents in a letter to appear at the courthouse today and either get their children vaccinated on the spot or risk up to 10 days in jail. They could also provide proof of vaccination or an explanation why their kids didn't have them.

By about 8:30 a.m., the line of parents stretched outside the courthouse in the county on the east side of Washington. Many of them complained that their children already were properly immunized but the school system had misplaced the records. They said efforts to get the paperwork straightened out had been futile. "It was very intimidating," Territa Wooden of Largo said of the letter. She said she presented the paperwork at the courthouse today and resolved the matter.

"I could be home asleep. My son had his shots," said Veinell Dickens of Upper Marlboro, who also blamed errant paperwork. Aloma Martin of Fort Washington brought her children, Delontay and Taron, in 10th and 6th grade, for their hepatitis shots. She said she had been trying to get the vaccinations for more than a month, since the school system sent a warning letter. She had an appointment for Monday, but came to the courthouse to be safe. "It was very heavy handed," she said of the county's action. "From that letter, it sounded like they were going to start putting us in jail."

School officials deemed the court action a success. School system spokesman John White said the number of children lacking vaccinations dropped from 2,300 at the time the judge sent the letter to about 1,100 Friday. After today's session, 172 more students were brought into compliance, including 101 students who received vaccinations at the courthouse and 71 whose records were updated. That still left more than 900 students out of compliance with vaccination requirements, White said. "Obviously, we still have some more work to do," he said.

Any children who still lack immunizations could be expelled. Their parents could then be brought up on truancy charges, which can result in a 10-day jail sentence for a first offense and 30 days for a second. Prince George's State's Attorney Glenn Ivey couldn't say today whether he would prosecute parents who fail to comply. "We have to sit down with school and health services," he said. "We haven't ruled anything out. We need to figure out where we stand."

White said the school system, with about 132,000 students, has been trying for two years to get parents to comply with state law. That law allows children to skip vaccines if they have a medical or religious exemption. It was unclear how many medical or religious exemptions were involved.

Maryland, like all states, requires children to be immunized against several childhood illnesses including polio, mumps and measles. In recent years, it also has required that students up to high school age be vaccinated against hepatitis B and chicken pox.

Nichols said nobody actually came before him today, but he was there if any parent asked to see him. The judge noted the unhappy looks of some of the kids in line waiting for vaccinations. "It's cute. It looks like their parents are dragging them to church," Nichols said.

Several organizations opposed to mass vaccinations demonstrated outside the courthouse. While the medical consensus is that vaccines are safe and effective, some people blame immunizations for a rise in autism and other medical problems. "People should have a choice" in getting their children immunized, said Charles Frohman, representing a physicians' group opposed to vaccines.

Source




Parents no longer needed

Comment on the story above. Excerpt:

"An incredible story in the The Washington Post reports that the parents of around 2,300 Maryland suburban students who failed to get needed vaccinations may now face a $50 a day fine and up to 10 days in jail if their children fails to meet the state's immunization requirements. ...

My wife and I would not allow our doctor to stick a needle into our two little girls with hepatitis B vaccine, not because we're anti-vaccine, but because we deemed this vaccine unnecessary at such a young age. But even if Prince George parents are wrong about the shots effectiveness and worth, are we now a country where an attorney general coerces parents to inject pharmaceuticals into their children? If parents fail to walk lockstep will they now regularly be threatened with prison?"

Source




A Lesson in economics for the food freaks

Boulder Weekly covers the city public schools' burgeoning black market in ... wait for it ... candy. Black market in candy? Yep -- it's all courtesy of a new school district policy "that has removed all unhealthy, sugar-laden snacks and sodas from vending machines in schools. The new policies are part of a national trend, in which foods are forbidden at schools if they don't meet strict nutritional criteria that limit calories coming from sugar and fat."

How restrictive is the policy? Boulder's new policies apply to vendors of food services, snack and beverage vending machines, student stores, fundraisers and "any regularly offered food during a child's school day." The policy allows water and seltzers, low-fat milk, fruit juice (no less than 50 percent real juice), and electrolyte sports drinks with 42 grams or less of added sweetener per 20-ounce serving. Allowed snack items include nuts, seeds, dairy products, fresh fruits and vegetables, dried fruits and vegetables, and some packaged fruits. Other food items are allowed only if calories are comprised of 35 percent or less fat, 10 percent or less of saturated fat plus trans fat, and if sugar comprises 35 percent or less of the total weight of the product.

All very well-intentioned, I'm sure. But school administrators clearly forgot one of the iron laws of economics: If you ban it, they will come ("they" being underground entrepreneurs, of course).

The money to be made sounds pretty impressive. The story details kids buying iPods and new clothes -- and even taking their own parents out to dinner -- from the profits made off marking up candy bought in bulk at Costco. At least one set of parents actually bankrolled their entrepreneurial offspring.

The laws of economics rule across the board, of course. Profit margins have apparently drifted down because of the influx of competition from other kids who have turned their lockers into convenience stores. Unsurprisingly, similar black markets have appeared elsewhere when school administrators imposed nutritional restrictions that ran contrary to consumer tastes. Huh. These modern kids have it so easy. In my day, we had to sell dope to make a buck between classes.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correla-tion coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic condi-tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

*********************

Talking to blondes makes you dumb?

According to the study reported below, men know less after talking to a blonde woman. Those of us who have been married to a blonde lady sure must have had a tough time in life! I am not going to question the findings at this stage as the article had not yet appeared in the online version of the journal at the time of writing, but if it is like most articles in the journal, it is not based on a representative sample of any known population so has no known generalizability. The people studied appear to have been French but it may not even apply to all Frenchmen.

What I DO want to do, however, is highlight the fallacy of the explanation given. The explanation in terms of stereotypes accepts the old view that stereotypes are in some way imprisoning. Studies of stereotyping have however long ago shown just the opposite: that stereotypes are highly flexible and responsive to new information. See here and here.

That some psychologists still believe the old myths about stereotyping is true to form, however. Psychologists tend to live in an eternal present with very little awareness of the research literature on the subjects they discuss. See here.

A more plausible explanation would be that brown-haired people are very often blonde in childhood so blonde is a signal of childhood and we have evolved to interact differently with children. But the best explanation should I think be obvious: For whatever reason, blondes are seen as more sexually attractive and sexual arousal is notorious for addling the brain -- particularly among Frenchmen, perhaps?

When men meet fair-haired women they really do have a "blonde moment". Scientists have found that their mental performance drops, apparently because they believe they are dealing with someone less intelligent. Researchers discovered what might be called the "bimbo delusion" by studying men's ability to complete general knowledge tests after exposure to different women. The academics found that men's scores fell after they were shown pictures of blondes.

Further analysis convinced the team that, rather than simply being distracted by the flaxen hair, those who performed poorly had been unconsciously driven by social stereotypes to "think blonde". "This proves that people confronted with stereotypes generally behave in line with them," said Thierry Meyer, joint author of the study and professor of social psychology at the University of Paris X-Nanterre. "In this case blondes have the potential to make people act in a dumber way, because they mimic the unconscious stereotype of the dumb blonde." The research adds to a body of evidence that people's behaviour is powerfully influenced by stereotypes. Previously scientists have found that people walk and talk more slowly in front of the elderly, while other studies have revealed that unconscious racial assumptions and prejudices emerge in written tests.

Researchers believe that blondes have been particularly vulnerable to stereotyping over the past century. The image of the dizzy blonde came to prominence in the 1925 Anita Loos novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Film stars including Marilyn Monroe, Suzanne Somers and Goldie Hawn further popularised the "dumb blonde". The persona has more recently been boosted by celebrities such as Paris Hilton, the member of the hotel family nicknamed the "heirhead", and Jessica Simpson, the singer.

Others believe its origins go far deeper. According to researchers at St Andrews University, north European women evolved blonde hair and blue eyes at the end of the Ice Age to make them stand out from their rivals at a time of fierce competition for scarce males.

Psychologists have suggested that because white babies are often born blond, there is a primal association between blondness and childhood, encouraging people to admire and fawn over the pale-haired.

The new peer-reviewed study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, was based on two trials. In all cases those participants exposed to images of blondes recorded the lowest scores.

Source





FAT GENE DISCVERED

A gene that contributes to obesity has been identified for the first time, promising to explain why some people easily put on weight while others with similar lifestyles stay slim. People who inherit one version of the FTO gene rather than another are 70 per cent more likely to be obese, British scientists have discovered. One in six people have the most vulnerable genetic makeup and weigh an average of 3kg more than those with the lowest risk. They also have 15 per cent more body fat.

The findings provide the first robust link between any common gene and obesity, and could eventually lead to new ways of tackling one of the most significant causes of ill health in developed countries such as the UK. One in four British adults is now classified as obese, and half of men and a third of women are overweight. Obesity is a major cause of heart disease, cancer and type-2 diabetes, and an adviser to the Government's health spending watchdog described it recently as a bigger national hazard than smoking, alcohol or poverty. If the biological function of the FTO gene can now be understood, it could become possible to design drugs that manipulate it to help people to control their weight.

"Even though we have yet to fully understand the role played by the FTO gene in obesity, our findings are a source of great excitement," said Professor Mark McCarthy of the University of Oxford, who led the research. "By identifying this genetic link, it should be possible to improve our understanding of why some people are more obese, with all the associated implications such as increased risk of diabetes and heart disease. New scientific insights will hopefully pave the way for us to explore novel ways of treating this condition."

While it has long been understood from family studies that obesity is heavily influenced by genetics, scientists have struggled to pin down individual genes that are involved. A handful of serious genetic mutations that cause rare obesity disorders such as Prader-Willi syndrome have been found, but the search for common genes that affect ordinary people's risk of becoming obese or overweight has remained elusive.

The effect of FTO emerged from a major study of the genetic origins of disease funded by the Wellcome Trust known as the Case Control Consortium, in which 2,000 people with type-2 diabetes had their genomes compared to 3,000 healthy controls. Scientists from Oxford and the University of Exeter first found that certain versions of the FTO gene were more common among people with type-2 diabetes, but that the effect disappeared when the data were adjusted for obesity. This led them to wonder whether FTO actually influenced obesity instead, and they followed up their theory in a further 37,000 people.

FTO comes in two varieties or "alleles", and everyone inherits two copies of the gene, one from each parent. The team found that people who inherit two copies of one variant - 16 per cent of white Europeans - were 70 per cent more likely to be obese than those who inherited two copies of the other allele. The 50 per cent of subjects who inherited one copy of each FTO variant had a 30 per cent higher risk of obesity. Those in the highest risk group weighed an average of 3kg more and those at medium risk were an average of 1.2kg heavier. In each case, the extra weight was entirely accounted for by more body fat, not greater muscle or extra height. The results, which are published in the journal Science apply to both men and women, and to children as young as seven.

FTO will not be the only gene that influences obesity, and inheriting a particular variant will not necessarily make anyone fat. "There are going to be lots of slim people with two copies of the bad allele, and if people who have the more favourable version overeat or don't exercise they are still going to become obese," Professor McCarthy said. "This is not a gene for obesity, it is a gene that contributes to risk." The biological function of FTO remains unknown, and the scientists now plan to study this by creating genetically modified mice in which the gene is knocked out.

Professor McCarthy said the gene is highly active in the hypothalamus, a part of the brain involved in appetite control, suggesting that one potential way it might have its effect. The gene could also influence how readily fat cells are laid down.

The research involved too many people to control for exercise and diet, so it is not yet known whether FTO affects how much people eat or how active they are. Andrew Hattersley, who headed the Exeter group, said it might nevertheless explain how people with apparently similar lifestyles differ in their propensity to put on weight. "Our findings suggest a possible answer to someone who might ask: `I eat the same and do as much exercise as my friend next door, so why am I fatter?'" he said. "There is clearly a component to obesity that is genetic."

Professor McCarthy played down the idea of screening people for FTO, so they can change their diet or exercise habits if they are found to be at higher risk. "We are not pushing genetic testing here. A 3kg increase is significant, but it is not 30kg, and there are always going to be other genes and environmental factors involved. The best way of predicting who is becoming obese is to weigh them."

Independent obesity experts said the discovery was highly significant. Susan Jebb of the MRC Human Nutrition Unit said: "This research provides clear evidence of a biological mechanism which makes some people more susceptible to gaining weight in a world where food is plentiful and sedentary lifestyles the norm. By studying the action of this gene we may learn more about the detailed causes of obesity."

Professor Steve O'Rahilly of Cambridge said: "It is unlikely to be the only such genetic variant, but it is the first to be discovered. Unfortunately we have no idea what this gene actually does to alter our degree of fatness. It is made in every cell in the body and doesn't look like any genes whose functions we understand so we have very few clues as to how it might affect a person's risk of obesity. This is a very exciting first step but there is much work still to do."

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correla-tion coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic condi-tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

*********************