medicine | Millard Fillmore's Bathtub

Straight talk: Berenbaum on DDT and malaria

August 12, 2009

Plus, she’ll answer your questions.

But hurry.

One of the world’s great authorities on mosquitoes, May Berenbaum at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, spends this week talking about mosquitoes and malaria, and answering your questions.

Public Radio International runs a feature this week with Dr. Berenbaum answering questions.

(Hey, Beck! Are you decent this week?)

(Steven Milloy? Got the guts to ask a real scientist a question?)

You should see these first:

The World, report on the politics of DDT and malaria in Uganda (this story actually asks and gets answers to questions about DDT use in Africa — why so many Africans oppose it, for example)
Dr. Berenbaum’s 2005 op-ed in The Washington Post, still valid

Life Cycle of Malaria, WHO and Campaign to Roll Back Malaria

You like straight talk – why not share it with others?

13 Comments | Africa, Cost of Green, DDT, Disease, Green Politics, Health care, History, Malaria, medicine, Public health, Rachel Carson, Radio, Research, Science, WHO - World Health Organization | Tagged: Africa, Berenbaum, Cost of Green, DDT, Disasters, Disease, Environmental protection, Foreign Aid, Green Politics, Health care, Malaria, medicine, Politics, Public health, Science, UIUC | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

MoveOn.org: Top 5 health care reform lies

August 11, 2009

I get e-mail from all sides — this one reflects a lot of my thinking, and came suitably footnoted:

Dear MoveOn member,

The health care fight has turned ugly, fast. Right-wing mobs are crashing congressional town halls,¹ lies are spreading via anonymous email chains,²and Sarah Palin bizarrely said that President Obama was going to set up a “death panel,” whatever that is.³

Many of these claims are just incredible—but if we don’t fight back with the truth, the right will continue to poison the health care debate. So as part of our Real Voices for Change campaign this August, we’re working to set the record straight.

Check out the list below: “Top Five Health Care Lies—and How to Fight Back.” Can you spread the word by passing this email along to 10 of your friends today?

Also, if you’re on Facebook, please post the list today by clicking here: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51746. If you’re on Twitter, retweet: @MoveOn Check out the Top 5 Health Care Lies—and How to Fight Back. http://bit.ly/Bncs5

Top Five Health Care Reform Lies—and How to Fight Back

Lie #1: President Obama wants to euthanize your grandma!!!

The truth: These accusations—of “death panels” and forced euthanasia—are, of course, flatly untrue. As an article from the Associated Press puts it: “No ‘death panel’ in health care bill.”⁴ What’s the real deal? Reform legislation includes a provision, supported by the AARP, to offer senior citizens access to a professional medical counselor who will provide them with information on preparing a living will and other issues facing older Americans.⁵

Lie #2: Democrats are going to outlaw private insurance and force you into a government plan!!!

The truth: With reform, choices will increase, not decrease. Obama’s reform plans will create a health insurance exchange, a one-stop shopping marketplace for affordable, high-quality insurance options.⁶ Included in the exchange is the public health insurance option—a nationwide plan with a broad network of providers—that will operate alongside private insurance companies, injecting competition into the market to drive quality up and costs down.⁷

If you’re happy with your coverage and doctors, you can keep them.⁸ But the new public plan will expand choices to millions of businesses or individuals who choose to opt into it, including many who simply can’t afford health care now.

Lie #3: President Obama wants to implement Soviet-style rationing!!!

The truth: Health care reform will expand access to high-quality health insurance, and give individuals, families, and businesses more choices for coverage. Right now, big corporations decide whether to give you coverage, what doctors you get to see, and whether a particular procedure or medicine is covered—that is rationed care. And a big part of reform is to stop that.

Health care reform will do away with some of the most nefarious aspects of this rationing: discrimination for pre-existing conditions, insurers that cancel coverage when you get sick, gender discrimination, and lifetime and yearly limits on coverage.⁹ And outside of that, as noted above, reform will increase insurance options, not force anyone into a rationed situation.

Lie #4: Obama is secretly plotting to cut senior citizens’ Medicare benefits!!!

The truth: Health care reform planswill not reduce Medicare benefits.¹⁰ Reform includes savings from Medicare that are unrelated to patient care—in fact, the savings comes from cutting billions of dollars in overpayments to insurance companies and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.¹¹

Lie #5: Obama’s health care plan will bankrupt America!!!

The truth: We need health care reform now in order to preventbankruptcy—to control spiraling costs that affect individuals, families, small businesses, and the American economy.

Right now, we spend more than $2 trillion dollars a year on health care.¹² The average family premium is projected to rise to over $22,000 in the next decade¹³—and each year, nearly a million people face bankruptcy because of medical expenses.¹⁴ Reform, with an affordable, high-quality public option that can spur competition, is necessary to bring down skyrocketing costs. Also, President Obama’s reform plans would be fully paid for over 10 years and not add a penny to the deficit.¹⁵

We’re closer to real health care reform than we’ve ever been—and the next few weeks will decide whether it happens. We need to make sure the truth about health care reform is spread far and wide to combat right wing lies.

Can you forward this email to your friends today? And remember, also post it on Facebook by clicking here: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51746. And on Twitter, by retweeting: @MoveOn Check out the Top 5 Health Care Lies—and How to Fight Back. http://bit.ly/Bncs5

Thanks for all you do.

–Nita, Kat, Ilya, Michael and the rest of the team

P.S. Want more? Check out this great new White House “Reality Check” website: http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/ or this excellent piece from Health Care for America Now on some of the most outrageous lies: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51729&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=1

Sources:

1. “More ‘Town Halls Gone Wild’: Angry Far Right Protesters Disrupt Events With ‘Incomprehensible’ Yelling,” Think Progress, August 4, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51733&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=2

2. “Fight the smears,” Health Care for America NOW, accessed August 10, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51729&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=3

3. “Palin Paints Picture of ‘Obama Death Panel’ Giving Thumbs Down to Trig,” ABC News, August 7, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51728&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=4

4. “No ‘death panel’ in health care bill,” The Associated Press, August 10, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51747&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=5

5. “Stop Distorting the Truth about End of Life Care,” The Huffington Post, July 24, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51730&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=6

6. “Reality Check FAQs,” WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 11, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#i1

7. “Why We Need a Public Health-Care Plan,” The Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51737&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=7

8. “Obama: ‘If You Like Your Doctor, You Can Keep Your Doctor,'” The Wall Street Journal, 15, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51736&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=8

9. “Reality Check FAQs,” WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 10, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#r1

10. “Obama: No reduced Medicare benefits in health care reform,” CNN, July 28, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51748&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=9

11. “Reality Check FAQs,” WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 10, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#s1

12. “Reality Check FAQs,” WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 10, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#c1

13. “Premiums Run Amok,” Center for American Progress, July 24, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51667&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=10

14. “Medical bills prompt more than 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies,” CNN, June 5, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51735&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=11

15. “Reality Check FAQs,” WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 10, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#c1

Sources for the Five Lies:

#1: “A euthanasia mandate,” The Washington Times, July 29, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51732&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=12

#2: “It’s Not An Option,” Investor’s Business Daily, July 15, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51743&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=13

#3: “Rationing Health Care,” The Washington Times, April 21, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51742&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=14

#4: “60 Plus Ad Is Chock Full Of Misinformation,” Media Matters for America, August 8, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51734&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=15

#5: “Obama’s ‘Public’ Health Plan Will Bankrupt the Nation,” The National Review, May 13, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51744&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=16

Want to support our work? We’re entirely funded by our 5 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.

Agree with MoveOn? Disagree? Please share:

Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Health care, Hoaxes, Legislation, medicine, Politics | Tagged: Accuracy, Death Panels, H.R. 3200, Health Care Reform, Hoaxes, Legislation, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Palin proposes “death panels”

August 11, 2009

Isn’t that a fair headline?

She must be proposing them — they don’t show up in the health care bill before Congress.

Update: Over at Le-gal Ins-ur-rec-tion, Cornell Law prof William A. Jacobson dug out an article by Rahm Emanuel’s brother Ezekial, a respected bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health, and suggests strongly that Palin is just contributing to the the debate. In the paper (at Lancet, subscription required, but access to this paper is free because it’s so important), Dr. Emanuel and others discuss how to allocate health care resources to provide the greatest healing among many competing, worthy patients, when resources cannot be allocated to all of the worthy patients. Jacobson said:

Put together the concepts of prognosis and age, and Dr. Emanuel’s proposal reasonably could be construed as advocating the withholding of some level of medical treatment (probably not basic care, but likely expensive advanced care) to a baby born with Down Syndrome. You may not like this implication, but it is Dr. Emanuel’s implication not Palin’s.

Jacobson misses the greater point here, the part the sticks in the craw of those of us who have lived with these issues for 20 years, or 30 or 40: Dr. Emanuel’s paper discusses how to improve the current system of allocation of resources.

We aren’t debating whether to have “death panels.” The discussion is on how to make them work more equitably, and how to expand health care resources to make the need for such decisions less frequent. Palin’s point is to defend unfair death panels used often. She doesn’t know that, and Jacobson should realize that and not defend it.

Here’s the summary at Lancet:

Allocation of very scarce medical interventions such as organs and vaccines is a persistent ethical challenge. We evaluate eight simple allocation principles that can be classified into four categories: treating people equally, favouring the worst-off, maximising total benefits, and promoting and rewarding social usefulness. No single principle is sufficient to incorporate all morally relevant considerations and therefore individual principles must be combined into multiprinciple allocation systems. We evaluate three systems: the United Network for Organ Sharing points systems, quality-adjusted life-years, and disability-adjusted life-years. We recommend an alternative system—the complete lives system—which prioritises younger people who have not yet lived a complete life, and also incorporates prognosis, save the most lives, lottery, and instrumental value principles.

He’s working to make the death panels more fair, more accurate, more beneficial. Palin suggests we should leave the current system in place where Palin’s death panels, though working hard, often are unfair and inaccurate, and waste resources.

In the present system, resources generally are allocated first on the basis of who has money. De facto, the system writes off to death anyone with a serious disease who is poor. “Poor” in this case doesn’t mean destitute. An annual income of $60,000 would put one into the category of “poor” I’m talking about here.

Jacobson said:

These critics, however, didn’t take the time to find out to what Palin was referring when she used the term “level of productivity in society” as being the basis for determining access to medical care. If the critics, who hold themselves in the highest of intellectual esteem, had bothered to do something other than react, they would have realized that the approach to health care to which Palin was referring was none other than that espoused by key Obama health care adviser Dr. Ezekial Emanuel (brother of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel).

I took the time to find out. I knew in advance. I’ve sat through hours of legislative hearings on this issue. In my opinion, Sarah Palin is still a carbuncle on the face of this debate. Her calling these panels “death panels” is designed to obfuscate the issues and deny the debate Jacobson says we need to have. She’s providing heat for cheap political gain, not light. She’s defending death, not life.

Shame on her. Jacobson should know better, too. I can all but guarantee that Palin didn’t read Dr. Emanuel’s paper, and didn’t consider the issues at all. I’ll wager she does not know that hospitals in her state make these decisions regularly.

Under Palin’s way, death panels already exist. Death panels make decisions on life or death every day, and the poor and uninsured are at the bottom of the scale of who gets to live, top of the list of who gets to die. Uninsured people often get shut out of the process, allocated pain and death from the start, because they lack insurance.

H.R. 3200 doesn’t do much to change this equation, the authors and legislators hoping to avoid cyanide politics like Palin plays; instead the bill encourages programs to help patients be on the “live if I want to live” side of the equation. These encouraged programs should be bread and butter to legal clinics at most law schools, by the way — great help to the poor in anticipating what to do in life-threatening emergencies. (I mention that because Jacobson is a clinical law professor — I don’t know which end of the legal clinics he works in, but he should know better anyway.)

We’ve already got the debate, and we already know that Palin’s trying to poison the well and fog up the lecturn, so that health care resources are misallocated. In reality, this leads to more unnecessary and preventable deaths.

Yes, let’s have the debate: Palin’s wrong to stand with unfair death decisions. She’s had her say, and she should be held accountable.

Agree or disagree, invite others to join the discussion:

7 Comments | Accuracy, Death Panels, Health care, Hoaxes, Legislation, medicine, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Reason, Science | Tagged: Bioethics, Death Panels, H.R. 3200, Health Insurance Reform, Hoaxes, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Sarah Palin, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

No, WHO is not taking over the world with swine flu scares

August 9, 2009

Turn up the craziness that is opposition to health care reform, and you get genuine, full-blown “hot zone” conspiracy wholly ungrounded in reality.

Like coathangers, hoaxes multiply in the closet! Put ’em in the dark, they’ll invent stuff beyond your wildest imagination. It’s a perfect storm of voodoo science, voodoo history, paranoia and just plain hysteria.

TinFoilHatArea sign

But they’ll swear it’s true.

A new hoax claims the World Health Organization (WHO) got a secret law passed to allow them to take over the world just as soon as they can get a few more people to catch swine flu. No, really.

Under special pandemic plans enacted around the world including the USA, in 2005, national governments are to be dissolved in the event of a pandemic emergency and replaced by special crisis committees, which take charge of the health and security infrastructure of a country, and which are answerable to the WHO and EU in Europe and to the WHO and UN in North America.

If the Model Emergency Health Powers Act is implemented on the instructions of WHI, it will be a criminal offence for Americans to refuse the vaccine. Police are allowed to use deadly force against “criminal” suspects.

Through their control of these special pandemic crisis committees with the power to enact legislation to be set up most countries, the WHO, UN and EU become the de facto government of a large part of the world.

Mass murder and death will also bring economic collapse and disruption, starvation and wars – and these events will lead to a further population reduction.

Absolutely false. WHO has no such plans. Check with your health professionals, they’ll tell you swine flu is a real concern (even though it looks like swift action has prevented a lot of trouble so far, and may prevent a lot of ill health later).

If you made up this sort of stuff for a movie, they’d tell you “Dr. Strangelove” pushed the envelope as far as parody would go, and you should give up writing comedy, even dark comedy.

Did you notice the typographical error there in the second paragraph, where “WHO” turns into “WHI?”

That’s a DNA-style marker for this hoax. Watch for it as it shows up at other sites where tinfoil-hat bedorned people mindlessly copy this chunk of fiction and pass it along as if it were just news about the new shopping center going in around the corner.

Much of the nuttiness appears to originate at WakeNews, from someone named Jane Bürgermeister who has grabbed .pdfs of a couple of WHO memoranda on the dangers of swine flu, and claims that instead of warnings about swine flu based on research, they are textbooks for how to use swine flu as a weapon of war against civilians. Or it may be originating at a website she may run, Case About Birdflu (this is the url, I kid you not: http://birdflu666.wordpress.com/) (This post, about her being fired, and with lots of “attagirls” from too-willing nutters, should be a roadmap for Prozac salesmen.)

Do not any of these people ever stop to wonder, “Hmmmm. Curious about how this doesn’t appear on the WHO website, and how there are no links to anything that sounds even tangentially rational — I wonder if it’s true?”

Wall of Shame: Here are sites that repeated the hoax blindly, without even bothering to correct the typo (notice how few of these sites will allow you to point out an error):

Socio-economics History Blog
The Tree of Liberty discussion board
Farmwars
The Universal Seduction (unable to resist being seduced itself . . .)
Citizens for Legitimate Government
World News Bulletin (hoping somehow to spread the truth of the Bible by spreading untruths)
Battalion of Deborah
One Radio Network
Educate Yourself
Heidi Lore
Conspiracy Central (finally truth in advertising!)
TruInternational
SOTT.net (signs of the times)
[watch for updates; this hoax rumor is multiplying like maggots on a roadkill armadillo on a hot Texas day]
Labor Day update: If Dr. Mercola at Mercola.com has a doctorate to practice anything — medicine, law, psychology, cosmetology, barbering — it should be yanked. He is misinforming people with feeble minded tendencies on this issue for his own profit (see his sales section). I think one can make a good case that a physician advising patients as his blogging does, would be open to malpractice. (Thanks for the warning in comments, Angeleyeslady.)

Reality: No plans to take over the world; tough plans to fight swine flu

Swine flu, more specifically the H1N1 virus, poses severe threats to real people, including you. WHO has plans to combat the disease and its spread — laid out publicly here, for example. There is even a Center for Strategic Health Operations (SHOC in the odd acronymical lexicon of the UN).

Preparations to fight epidemics and pandemics are part and parcel of public health operations around the world. Almost every county in the United States has a public health office that makes plans for how to protect the local community from such diseases, and how to treat people who get the disease to help them survive. Those who spread these hoaxes rarely know that they have people in their towns to do this work — the United Nations and WHO have no authority to intervene in these cases.

What about the Model Emergency Health Act? Proposals under that name exist — none allow people to be executed for refusing vaccinations. As a matter of U.S. policy, almost all health legislation includes an out for religious objectors — Christian Scientists, for example, generally refuse vaccinations and much other treatment. Jehovah Witnessses refuse transfusions. In almost every case, those religious beliefs can be accommodated so long as the rest of us bother to protect ourselves against disease.

All of the proposals are designed to help public health officials fight disease. Public health officials might be described as the embodiment of the name Milquetoast. They are rarely in the forefront of your run-of-the-mill power-mad megalomaniac. Former public health officials who rose to power in any circumstance can be counted on one hand, if there are any. Contrast that with former religious officials, or former business executives, or former college presidents, and you begin to see reality. WHO is not populated with people who wish to take over the world á la Pinky and the Brain. WHO does not answer to people who resemble Pinky or the Brain in any way, either.

You may review the first (and most worrisome) draft of the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act in .pdf here. Note carefully the strong defense of the rights of individuals recognized in the preamble to the draft bill. The 2003 version of the Model Act can be reviewed at Alaska’s site; you can also find a section-by-section analysis and other explanatory material.

This document tracks state legislative actions so far — I dare anyone to find the trampling of civil rights and lunatic claims made at the websites listed above. If you do find troubling actions, please note them in comments here. Note well that the documents in the previous three links are maintained by officials at the State of Alaska — Sarah Palin’s appointees and public health team. It’s unlikely that Sarah Palin would be involved in a massive, international conspiracy to imprison millions of citizens just because they are not immune to influenza. Of course, maybe you know Palin better than I do and you think she’s a megalomaniac just looking for her chance to play Mussolini in America — but I doubt it.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are deeply involved in preparations for influenza outbreaks, and swine flu is no exception. CDC features a page showing international preparations for swine flu; note that plans to round up recalcitrant non-inoculants for execution are not in the program. From that page you can get to the WHO page on international preparations, and there you can link to to international health regulations on the issue. WHO’s “edict” so far:

Concerning public health measures, in line with the Regulations the Director-General is recommending, on the advice of the Committee, that all countries intensify surveillance for unusual outbreaks of influenza-like illness and severe pneumonia.

That’s it.

There is an Emergency Committee set up to deal with H1N1 specifically. The group has met four times; here is the report from the fourth meeting, in June:

11 June 2009

DG Statement following the meeting of the Emergency Committee

The Emergency Committee held its fourth meeting on 11th June 2009.

The Committee considered available information on transmission of New influenza A (H1N1) in a number of locations in countries in different regions of the World Health Organization, and concluded that the criteria for a pandemic have been met.

Following the advice from the Committee the WHO Director-General decided to raise the level of influenza pandemic alert from the current phase 5 to phase 6. At this early stage, the pandemic can be characterized globally as being moderate in severity.

As previously recommended by the Director-General, countries should not close borders or restrict international traffic and trade.

Countries should assess their specific situation and make a timely transition from focusing national efforts on containment to focusing on mitigation measures, including appropriate non-pharmaceutical interventions.

WHO remains in close dialogue with influenza vaccine manufacturers. It is understood that production of vaccines for seasonal influenza will be completed soon, and that full capacity will be available to ensure the largest possible supply of pandemic vaccine in the months to come.

You can see that the paranoia reflected in the sites on the Wall of Shame, is unwarranted.

Coda: You gotta love the guys who quickly see a way to make a buck on this fear. Here’s a guy who will sell you a “smartroom” decontamination unit to retrofit any room in your home to make you safe from swine flu — just $1,899! Crazy with dollar signs in his dreams.

The SmartRoom is designed to protect you and your family from all viruses and bacteria. It can be quickly and easily installed. The SmartRoom is lightweight, compact and is totally collapsible for storage.

The SmartRoom features an Ultraviolet Biological Airlock that you attach to any room entry in your home or office. The Smartroom Tri Filter Biological Filtration Unit creates a Biological Saferoom under positive air pressure or a Quarantine Room under negative air pressure.

If it were only so easy to protect from swine flu. If only it were so easy to protect ourselves from the conspiracy crazies.

Update, August 11, 2009: More than 19,000 tinfoil hatters (TFH) have signed a petition against WHO’s imagined mandatory vaccine campaign. Sign a petition against a problem that doesn’t exist!

Update, September 12, 2009: See this debunking of pseudoscience anti-vaccine claims at Respectful Insolence.

Friends don’t let friends be hoaxed: Don’t be fooled! Share the news.

251 Comments | History, Hoaxes, Junk science, medicine, Paranoia, Tinfoil Hats, United Nations, Urban Legend, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: FEMA, H1N1, Hoaxes, Mandatory Vaccinations, Paranoia, Politics, Public health, Swine Flu, Tinfoil Hats, United Nations, Urban Legend, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Think you have health insurance? Wrong

August 7, 2009

Baseline Scenario lays out the facts: People fear government reform of health care because they think it will interfere with their own health insurance. Such people need to understand that they don’t have health insurance, and a broader government plan is the only saftey net they have to protect them from going naked against major health expenses.

Right now, it appears that the biggest barrier to health care reform is people who think that it will hurt them. According to a New York Times poll, “69 percent of respondents in the poll said they were concerned that the quality of their own care would decline if the government created a program that covers everyone.” Since most Americans currently have health insurance, they see reform as a poverty program – something that helps poor people and hurts them. If that’s what you think, then this post is for you.

You do not have health insurance. Let me repeat that. You do not have health insurance.

Just one more point in a series of misconceptions, misperceptions, and unwarranted listening to false claims about health care and legislation designed to save our tails. James Kwak and others at The Baseline Scenario do a good job explaining economics in the U.S. today. In this piece he makes the point that in terms of health care, we are all among “the poor” (save for those few of you who make more than $1 million a year and have done for the past decade).

Ask not for whom the health insurance reform bill tolls; it tolls for you.

10 Comments | Economics, Health care, Legislation, medicine, Poverty, President Obama | Tagged: Economics, H.R. 3200, Health care, Health Care Reform, Legislation, medicine, Poverty, President Obama, Recession | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Geographical lottery: Gambling with health care

August 4, 2009

Is it true that kids can’t get insured in Texas if their parents have two vehicles? I mean, this is Texas, the anti-mass transit state — how can you get a kid to the emergency room for the high-cost health care if you don’t have two cars, one for work, one for the family?

Children’s Defense Fund will help you contact your legislators to recommend improving health care for children.

How is the insurance weather where you are? Share the news:

1 Comment | Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Government, Health care, Legislation, medicine, Politics, Public health | Tagged: children, geography, H.R. 3200, Health care, Health Care Reform, Health Insurance, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

New Survey: Health Care Leaders Say Need for Reform Is Urgent; Broadly Support Public Health Care Option, Provider Payment Reform

August 3, 2009

Press release from the respected Commonwealth Fund, with views much to rare in blogging:

New Survey: Health Care Leaders Say Need for Reform Is Urgent; Broadly Support Public Health Care Option, Provider Payment Reform

Majority of Health Care Opinion Leaders Believe Other Key Elements of Comprehensive Health Reform Are Critical, Including a National Insurance Exchange with Standard-setting Authority

New York, N.Y., July 27, 2009—By a wide margin, health care leaders believe that individuals should have a choice of public and private health plans, and strongly support other central components of health reform such as innovative provider payment reform and a national insurance health exchange with strong standard-setting authority. In addition, two-thirds (68%) of opinion leaders feel it is urgent to enact comprehensive health care reform this year, according to the latest Commonwealth Fund/Modern Healthcare Health Care Opinion Leaders Survey.

“These results show that leaders from all the key stakeholder groups agree: comprehensive health care reform is urgently needed, to rein in costs and ensure that all Americans have access to affordable quality care,” said Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis. “Leaders also agree that offering a range of insurance options, and changing the way we pay for health care are critical steps for controlling the growth in health care spending over the next decade.”

Seven of 10 respondents to the survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, support the creation of a national health insurance exchange with the authority to enforce standards of participation by carriers, standardize benefits, set rating rules, and review or negotiate premiums. Two-thirds (65%) say that the exchange should offer a public plan that incorporates innovative payment methods, moving away from traditional fee-for-service and toward bundled payments. Half of opinion leaders (51%) support setting provider payment rates in a public insurance plan either at Medicare levels or between Medicare and commercial plan levels.

Other findings from the survey include:

Fifty-six percent of respondents believe that, in designing an individual mandate, the required benefit package should be similar to the standard BlueCross/BlueShield option offered in the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program.

In considering strategies to reduce health costs, opinion leaders express substantial support for new insurance reporting requirements (78%), joint negotiation of pharmaceutical prices (72%) and provider payment rates (61%), and limits to high cost providers and overvalued services (71%).

Forty-five percent of respondents believe provider participation in the public plan should be linked to Medicare, while 43 percent believe it should not, with the strongest opposition among those working in health care delivery.

Nearly three quarters of opinion leaders (72%) support ending the two-year Medicare waiting period for the disabled.

When asked to indicate their support for a variety of approaches to financing coverage expansion, more than three-fourths of survey respondents (79%) support increasing the federal excise tax on alcohol, cigarettes, and sugar-sweetened drinks, and 77% support requiring employers to offer coverage or pay a percentage of payroll to finance coverage (pay or play).

The survey is the 19th in a series from The Commonwealth Fund, and the eleventh conducted in partnership with the publication Modern Healthcare. Commentaries on the survey results by Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Congressman Michael C. Burgess (R-TX) appear in the July 27 issue of Modern Healthcare. The commentaries are also posted on the Fund’s Web site, http://www.commonwealthfund.org, along with a Commission data brief discussing the survey findings.

Methodology: The Commonwealth Fund/Modern HealthCare Health Care Opinion Leaders Survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of The Commonwealth Fund between June 8, 2009 and July 8, 2009 among 585 opinion leaders in health policy and innovators in health care delivery and finance. The final sample included 208 respondents from various industries, for a response rate of 35.6 percent. Data from this survey were not weighted. A full methodology is available in Appendix A.

The entire survey, “Health Care Opinion Leaders’ Views on Health Reform” is available here.

1 Comment | Health care, Legislation, medicine, Politics, Polling and Public Opinion, Taxes | Tagged: H.R. 3200, Health Care Reform, Legislation, Politics, Public Insurance Option, Taxes | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Another way to tell Republicans and opponents of health care reform have lost their minds, or their hearts, or their conscience

August 1, 2009

Republicans and opponents of health care reform make Dave Barry look like the prophet Isaiah with greatly improved accuracy. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried, as Dave Barry often says.

Included in the massive health care reform bill is some extra money to help out states and communities that have had difficulty getting effective programs going to combat child abuse. Pilot programs demonstrated that community health workers could provide a few parenting programs and dramatically reduce child abuse.

These are programs that prevent dead babies.

According to the text of H.R. 3200, “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act,” starting on page 838 is a description of a program under which states and communities can get money to fight child abuse, if they have large populations of poor families, where child abuse is a problem, and where anti-child abuse programs need more money. That’s pretty straightforward, no? [That’s a hefty .pdf file, by the way — more than 1,000 pages.]

Parenting instruction and help can be offered, in private settings, and in homes where struggling parents need help most.

Money goes to states that want it and can demonstrate a need. Parenting help programs are purely voluntary under H.R. 3200.

Who supports child abuse? Who would not support spending some of the money in health care reform to save the saddest cases, the children who are beaten or starved or psychologically abused?

Is it not true that the prevention of child abuse would contribute to better health care for less money?

This is politics, you know. Non-thinking conservatives pull out the stops in their desire to drive the health bill to oblivion, claiming that these anti-child abuse sections are socialism, liberty-depriving, and a threat to the designated hitter rule. (I only exaggerate a little on the third point.)

This isn’t stripping liberties is it, we want someone else coming into our homes and telling us how to raise our children and live our lives.

This is right out of the Book 1984. If you had not read it I suggest it.

“Right out of 1984?” Isn’t this a violation of Godwin’s Law?

The Heritage Foundation appears to have taken a turn to radicalism, now advocating against fighting child abuse, and calling anti-child abuse programs a “stealth agenda.”

Have the Heritage Foundation, and these other people, lost their collective minds? They complain about the provisions of this bill because — this is their words:

One troublesome provision calls for a home visitation program that would bring state workers into the homes of young families to improve “the well-being, health, and development of children”.

Well, heaven forbid we should improve the well-being, health and development of children!

It is fair to conclude from this report that the Heritage Foundation does not want to prevent dead babies.

Years ago, when Father Reagan presided over the Conservative Church, one of the Heritage Foundation favorite deacons, a guy named Al Regnery, was appointed to be assistant attorney general over programs dealing with youth — juvenile delinquents, drug users, etc. His chief qualifications for the job included that he was a faithful aide to Nevada Sen. Paul Laxalt, and that he toed the party line on almost all issues, including shutting down federal funding for programs that might prevent juvenile delinquency, or treat it.

Republicans controlled the Judiciary Committee under Sen. Strom Thurmond, so Regnery’s confirmation was never doubted. But as if to throw gasoline in the face of advocates of anti-delinquency programs, When Regnery drove up to the Senate office buildings for his nomination hearing, his car had a generally humorous bumper sticker. “Have you hugged your kid today” showed on about 200 million of the 100 million cars in America at the time — it was a cliché. To fight the cliché, Regnery had the anti-fuzzy bumper sticker, “Have you slugged your kid today.”

When the issue hit the news, Regnery backpedalled, and said it was just a joke sticker that he probably should have taken off his car under the circumstances, but he forgot — and Regnery disavowed the bumper sticker, as humorous or anything else.

Comes 2009, we discover that the Heritage Foundation wasn’t kidding — slugging your kid is acceptable behavior to them, and creating programs to fight child abuse, is evil — to the Heritage Foundation.

Ronald Reagan would be ashamed of them. Somebody has to be ashamed — there appears to be no shame at Heritage Foundation offices.

One wouldn’t worry — surely common sense American citizens can see through these cheap deceptions — except that Heritage has a massive public relations budget, and there is a corps of willing gullibles waiting to swallow as fact any fantasy Heritage dreams up — see this discussion board on ComCast, where the discussants accept Heritage claims at face value though anyone with even a dime-store excrement detector would be wary; or see this blogger who says he won’t let the feds “take away” his liberties (to beat his children, or the children of others?); or this forum, where some naif thinks the bill will create a federal behavior czar. Glenn Beck, whose religion reveres children, can’t resist taking a cheap shot at Obama, even though doing so requires Beck to stand up for child abuse.

Beck falls into the worst category, spreading incredible falsehoods as if he understood the bill:

This doesn’t scare me! No way. Just the crazies like Winston Smith — you know, the main character from “1984.”

When did we go from being a nation that believed in hard work and picking yourself up by the bootstraps, to a nation that wants government to control everything from our light bulbs to our parenting techniques?

This bill has to be stopped.

Gee, Glenn — when did we go from a nation that thought government was for the people, as demonstrated by the Agricultural Extension Service, or the Air Traffic Control System, or the Tennessee Valley Authority, to a nation that fights to bring back Czarist Russian government in the U.S.? Stopping this bill won’t resurrect Czar Nicholas, and it will kill at least a few hundred American kids. Excuse me if I choose living American kids over fantasies of a new and oppressive monarchy.

These people are not journalists. Beck isn’t like Orwell — maybe more like Ezra Pound, in Italy. These people are not commentators, or columnists. These people are not editorial writers. They are not, most of them, lobbyists who give out information for money, having sold their souls away from the angels of serious public discourse.

They are crass propagandists. They should be regarded more like the guy Tom Lehrer warned us about, the old dope peddler in the park, who always has just a little bit of poison for the kids or anyone else. (“Don’t worry; you won’t get hooked.”)

How many other provisions of the health reform act are being distorted by conservatives in a desperate attempt to keep President Obama from “looking good,” despite the costs to America’s children and families?

These attacks on the health reform bill fall out of the category of robust discussion. They disgrace our polity, and they erode the dignity of our democratic system.

Please share the information on this bill:

Below the fold: An example of the type of program Beck and Heritage call socialism, 1984-ish, and dangerous.

Read the rest of this entry »

142 Comments | children, Civil Rights, Education, Ethics, Government, Health care, History, Law, Life, medicine, Paranoia, Politics, Poverty, President Obama, Public health, Rampant stupidity, Scams, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, War on Education, War on the Constitution | Tagged: 1984, America's Affordable Health Choices Act, Child Abuse, Glenn Beck, Government, Health Care Reform, Heritage Foundation, Law, President Obama, Propaganda, Section 440, Socialism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The article the British Chiropractic Association hopes you will not read

July 31, 2009

Science-based Medicine carried this article yesterday, and several other blogs have joined in. Below is the article Simon Singh wrote for which he is being sued for libel by the professional association for British chiropractors. It’s a good cause, so I’ll stretch it another little while.

Science-based Medicine introduced the article with this:

Last year Simon Singh wrote a piece for the Guardian that was critical of the modern practice of chiropractic. The core of his complaint was that chiropractors provide services and make claims that are not adequately backed by evidence – they are not evidence-based practitioners. In response to his criticism the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) sued Simon personally for libel. They refused offers to publish a rebuttal to his criticism, or to provide the evidence Simon said was lacking. After they were further criticized for this, the BCA eventually produced an anemic list of studies purported to support the questionable treatments, but really just demonstrating the truth of Simon’s criticism (as I discuss at length here).

In England suing for libel is an effective strategy for silencing critics. The burden of proof is on the one accused (guilty until proven innnocent) and the costs are ruinous. Simon has persisted, however, at great personal expense.

This is an issue of vital importance to science-based medicine. A very necessary feature of science is public debate and criticism – absolute transparency.This is also not an isolated incident. Some in the alternative medicine community are attempting to assert that criticism is unprofessional, and they have used accusations of both unprofessionalism and libel as a method of silencing criticism of their claims and practices. This has happened to David Colquhoun and Ben Goldacre, and others less prominent but who have communicated to me directly attempts at silencing their criticism.

This behavior is intolerable and is itself unprofessional, an assault on academic freedom and free speech, and anathema to science as science is dependent upon open and vigorous critical debate.

What those who will attempt to silence their critics through this type of bullying must understand is that such attempts will only result in the magnification of the criticism by several orders of magnitude. That is why we are reproducing Simon Singh’s original article (with a couple of minor alterations) on this site and many others. Enjoy.

Here it is:

Beware the spinal trap

Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all but research suggests chiropractic therapy can be lethal

Simon Singh
The Guardian, Original version published Saturday April 19 2008
Edited version published July 29, 2009

You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying – even though there is not a jot of evidence.

I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.”

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

—
Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

Other venues:

Related material:

2 Comments | Academic freedom, Accuracy, First Amendment, Free press, Free speech, Freedom of the Press, Health care, History, Journalism, Junk science, Jurisprudence, Justice, knowledge, Law, medicine, Science, Weblogs, Woo | Tagged: British Chiropractic Association, British Law, Chiropractic, First Amendment, Free press, Free speech, Journalism, Junk science, libel, Science, Voodoo science, Woo | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Newsmax turns to medical quackery?

July 30, 2009

You are surprised that Newsmax would engage in medical quackery? They make their money engaged in news quackery, they are principal exponents of political quackery, they practice history quackery, they support science quackery in schools — is this a trend yet?

FDA, FTC, where are you?

To the extent this is not quackery, it’s known, published material your physician has access to and can advise you on. To the extent this is not known, published material, it’s quackery. Where the information is good, it should be a violation of journalistic ethics to package this as somehow secret, unknown or suppressed by the medical establishment and news organizations — and available to you alone, if you only pay the fat fee demanded. Where the information is suppressed, it is suppressed because it is dangerous to patients — the real problem with quackery.

Do not ever think that Newsmax is engaged in news, after this.

Here’s the e-mail text Newsmax sent out today — the only thing missing is their actually calling this stuff “snake oil”:

Dear Newsmax Reader:

David Brownstein, M.D., one of the foremost American practitioners of conventional as well as holistic medicine, has some urgent health information that could dramatically affect your health and well-being. Please take a moment to read his information below.

Newsmax.com

How to Prevent Arthritis, Cancer and Alzheimer’s!

Try this simple remedy for rheumatoid arthritis!

Use this mineral to protect against skin cancer!

See what to do now to prevent multiple sclerosis,
Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s!

Plus, why a deficiency in this nutrient puts you at greater risk for heart attack and stroke!

Dear Friend,

Today I’ve got important news for you on preventing heart disease, stroke, skin cancer, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s . . .

I’ve got an update on which vitamins (in addition to calcium) can strengthen your bones and fight osteoporosis . . .

I’ve got a simple, inexpensive, and almost entirely overlooked remedy for rheumatoid arthritis . . .

Plus, the risks of diuretic drugs, the importance of detox, and why most people are dehydrated and don’t know it!

Hi, I’m Dr. David Brownstein, editor of Natural Way to Health, the newsletter for folks looking for real solutions, not more drugs with harsh side effects.

In one moment, I’ll show you how to get a FREE copy of my latest report, “A Simple Way to Radically Improve Your Health,” covering all the topics above . . .

Plus, full access to all of my previous reports, including the two most popular ones, “The Biggest Fraud In Medicine: Cholesterol Leads to Heart Disease” and “How To Stop Heart Disease In Its Tracks, Naturally.”

But first, let’s look at how I successfully treated one of my patients for rheumatoid arthritis, and also how to safeguard against multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Crippled by Arthritis But Now
Up and Out of the Wheelchair

My patient Susan had suffered from rheumatoid arthritis for 20 years. Her hands were swollen and deformed. Harsh drugs were robbing her of energy. And her painful joints had forced her into a wheelchair.

Susan had tried many conventional treatments, including taking large amounts of the steroid drug Prednisone, but nothing much helped.

“I really did not know what to do,” she told me. “My rheumatologist had nothing good to offer me . . . just one toxic medication after another that I could not tolerate.”

The conventional treatment for rheumatoid arthritis is anti-inflammatory agents such as Naprosyn, Motrin, and Voltaren. But as the disease progresses, conventional doctors prescribe harsh drugs such as methotrexate and Plaquenil.

Unfortunately, these immune-suppressing drugs have bad side effects, including depressed bone marrow function, low white blood cell count, low platelet counts, anemia and loss of energy.

Newer drugs like Enbrel and Remicade are no better . . .

They block a protein the body produces as part of the inflammatory response. But blocking this protein for any length of time increases your risk of life-threatening infections and even cancer.

A Safer and More Effective Course . . .

The first thing I told Susan is I wanted to test her for a bacteria that has been associated with rheumatoid arthritis since 1938 (see your FREE report for details).

Sadly, most physicians, even specialists, never bother to test for this bacteria because conventional medicine focuses myopically on expensive drugs that treat only symptoms (see why just ahead).

When I told Susan that her test came back positive for this bacteria, and that I could prescribe an inexpensive antibiotic to treat it, she was overwhelmed . . .

“I began crying when I found out that I was positive,” she said. “It was the first time that I could connect the dots on why I have rheumatoid arthritis.”

In your FREE copy of “A Simple Way to Radically Improve Your Health,” you’ll get the name of this bacteria (so you can ask your doctor for the test), as well as the name of the antibiotic (and dosage) I prescribed that has proved successful in treating it.

Next, I also addressed Susan’s diet because she was making her arthritis worse by eating refined foods and sugars.

Most people don’t realize how devastating sugar is to their bodies and how it leads to serious problems such as arthritis, arrythmia, arteriosclerosis, edema, and Type 2 diabetes (see your FREE report for details).

How’s My Patient Doing Today?

Within four weeks, Susan began to feel significantly better. After eight weeks, we began to wean her off the anti-inflammatory and steroid medicines.

And the best news of all: On her last visit, she told me, “Now I feel I can get out of the wheelchair.” That’s exactly what she’s doing and today she’s in therapy to strengthen her leg muscles!

You’ll get Susan’s full case study in your FREE copy of “A Simple Way to Radically Improve Your Health.” And I hope you’ll share it with everyone you know who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis.

But why didn’t Susan’s rheumatologist test her for the bacteria? And why didn’t he discuss nutritional alternatives that would’ve helped her?

What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know Can Hurt You

I’m sorry to report that conventional doctors have no knowledge of — and thus very little interest in — natural therapies. And that’s because “health and nutrition” are NOT taught in medical school.

What is taught there? The two Ds: Disease and Drugs.

Physicians are trained to diagnose illness and disease, and then to prescribe the approved drug (or drugs) that will treat that illness or disease. People are often surprised to learn this but . . .

The emphasis is on disease, not health. And on drugs, not nutrition. Nothing is taught about how to achieve optimal health or prevent disease.

How did we get such a narrow-minded medical system in America? In the early days of medicine here, drug makers formed an alliance (some say an unholy one) with the newly founded American Medical Association.

The drugmakers provided education (on drug use) to AMA-affiliated doctors and also helped this fledgling organization win out over its competitors to become the dominant force in American medicine.

In return, the AMA endorses Big Pharma’s drugs and teaches drug therapy in their schools (generally disparaging other therapies).

Don’t get me wrong: Drugs play an important role in medical treatment, and there are times when they literally save your life . . .

But they are not the best solution for every problem. And drugs that do more harm than good should never be promoted in favor of natural therapies that are both safer and more effective.

And yet that’s exactly what happens every single day because of this unholy alliance between the AMA and Big Pharma.

But you don’t have to be victimized by this narrow-minded approach even one day longer. I believe . . .

You deserve to know how to really prevent heart disease, cancer, fatigue, diabetes, arthritis, weight gain and many more health problems!

You’ll discover several of them today, but before we return to these subjects, let me just say . . .

I’m going to extend a special offer to try my Natural Way to Health for just 14 cents a day. That’s not a misprint — I really mean 14 cents a day!

Each month in Natural Way to Health I routinely . . .

Expose the hidden dangers in common foods and medicines . . .

Reveal the truth about conflicting medical reports in the press . . .

Offer safer and healthier alternatives to harsh drugs . . .

Give easy tips for preventing disease and feeling your best!

And by signing on today . . . you’ll not only get 12 monthly issues of Natural Way to Health for just 14 cents a day but also gain access to all of my previous health reports, plus receive FREE copies of my three most popular health books, just go here now.

But first, let’s get back to the important remedies in today’s report . . .

Today’s Epidemic of Dehydration

This one will surprise you . . .

Today, the majority of people are going through their lives in a constant state of dehydration. And that’s putting them at greater risk for several serious diseases . . .

Heart disease . . . Stroke . . . Multiple Sclerosis . . . Parkinson’s . . . Alzheimer’s are all linked to a sustained state of dehydration. Let’s find out why.

Your body is 75 percent water. Your brain is 80 percent water. Because of your body’s high water composition, you need sufficient water intake to achieve optimal function at the cellular level.

In my own practice, I’ve found that every patient suffering a chronic illness also was dehydrated. Every single one! Can this be a coincidence? No.

We are all creatures of habits, and we’ve developed some bad ones over the years.

Typically, when I ask new patients how much water they drink a day, they tell me they don’t drink much pure water, but they do drink plenty of coffee, soda pop, juice, and even beer, so they’re sure they’re getting enough.

No, they are not! Coffee, soda pop, juice, and alcoholic beverages are all dehydrating. If you’re drinking them, you need even more water!

Caffeine, especially, is a potent diuretic, forcing the body to expel water. It’ll also over-stimulate your adrenal hormones, exacerbate hormonal irregularities, and weaken your immune system.

Are you also fatigued? See your FREE REPORT to find out why!

Of course the sugar in soda pop, in juices, and in alcoholic beverages causes dehydration. And that holds true for what you may think of as healthy fruit juice.

Check the sugar content on that carton of orange juice in your refrigerator; you’ll see it’s got more sugar in it than the ice cream in your freezer.

Another problem with sugar is that it leads to a number of degenerative diseases, including heart disease, kidney disease, osteoporosis, obesity, diabetes, and even cancer.

Did you know that cancer cells thrive on sugar? See your FREE report.

How about diet sodas? Worse yet. The sweeteners NutraSweet and Splenda have their own bad side effects that can lead to serious health problems (see your FREE REPORT for details).

Okay. How much water should you drink a day?

In your FREE copy of “A Simple Way to Radically Improve Your Health” I’ll give you a simple formula that’ll tell you exactly how much water to drink based on your weight, and also what kind of water to drink.

Yes, you can have other beverages, but get your water first. And here’s why it’s vitally important . . .

Dehydration, Toxic Buildup, and Disease

Remember, your brain is 80 percent water. It needs sufficient water to bring nutrients in, and it needs sufficient water to flush toxins out. Neurological disorders such as . . .

Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and multiple sclerosis are occurring at epidemic to pandemic rates today for a reason . . .

Widespread dehydration is causing a buildup and concentration of toxins in the brain, and this problem worsens over time.

Remember, we are bombarded every day with poisonous lead, mercury, aluminum, cadmium, arsenic, and bromine. These toxins are in our food, air, water, and thousands of consumer products, even in medicines!

Your first line of defense is the work your liver and kidney do to remove these toxins. But they can’t do their jobs without an abundance of water. Water makes detox possible.

And if you’re not getting enough water (most people aren’t), toxins will build up over time and become concentrated in your tissue and organs. That’s how disease gets started.

See your FREE report, “A Simple Way to Radically Improve Your Health” for complete details on the link between dehydration and neurological disorders — just go here now.

The Link Between Heart Health and Water

Few people know that dehydration is also an independent risk factor for heart disease, and one that is far more critical than “elevated cholesterol.”

Dehydration promotes thicker blood. And thick, sticky blood is more prone to plaque buildup and eventual clotting that can cause heart attack and stroke.

For more than 30 years, heart disease has been the No. 1 killer in America, and we’ve made very little progress against it. Why? Because we do not treat the underlying causes of heart disease.

The culprit is not “elevated cholesterol.” And if you’re taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, you’re wasting your time. You’d be far better off just drinking more water.

But there’s more you can do . . .

Be sure to read my two most popular reports — “The Biggest Fraud in Medicine: Cholesterol Leads to Heart Disease,” plus “How to Stop Heart Disease In Its Tracks, Naturally” (details on getting FREE copies just ahead).

But look here . . .

In your FREE copy of “A Simple Way to Radically Improve Your Health,” I’m going to show you the startling results of a six-year study in Vienna that compared the amount of water intake to the incidence of heart attack and fatal stroke. After you see these results, you’ll know how much water to drink and why.

Want to know more about these and many more important health issues?

Try Natural Way to Health
For Just 14 Cents a Day

Each month in my advisory letter, Natural Way To Health, I report on the most important issues regarding your family’s health, sorting out what’s really useful to you, even life-saving, and also what’s harmful and sometimes life-threatening.

I don’t take anything away from what’s good about conventional medicine — and much is good. But . . .

Those who practice conventional medicine want to make drugs the solution to every problem, even when those drugs are harmful and ineffective. And again, that’s because of the unholy alliance between Big Pharma and the AMA.

You should know that, in many cases, there are safer, gentler, and more effective natural solutions. And you will know once you start reading Natural Way to Health each month.

Yes, I went to medical school and received the conventional training, but I’ve also spent the last 17 years studying holistic medicine.

Today at my clinic, The Center for Holistic Medicine in West Bloomfield Michigan, I’m integrating the best of conventional medicine with safe and natural therapies that in many cases work even better.

I’d like to share these good results with you. And that’s why I’m extending this special offer to try Natural Way to Health for just 14 cents a day. It’s a great time to join us because . . .

Today’s offer includes 12 monthly issues, three of my most popular books FREE (see titles just ahead), full access to all of my previous reports (titles to follow), plus a FREE copy of today’s report . . .

A Simple Way to Radically
Improve Your Health

Discover the bacteria associated with rheumatoid arthritis and the inexpensive antibiotic that kills it!

See which foods are anathema for arthritis sufferers and why!

Find out why most people are dehydrated and don’t know it!

See why multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s are on the rise, and the simple way to protect yourself!

Find out why a deficiency in this nutrient dramatically increases your risk of heart attack and stroke!

Also in Your FREE Report . . .

See a study showing how a Vitamin B-6 deficiency increases your risk for colon cancer!

See why high doses of both types of Vitamin K should be included in every osteoporosis treatment plan!

Discover which mineral produced a 57 percent decrease in skin cancer in an eight-year Australian study!

Find out the risks of diuretic drugs, plus how you may be able to get off of them by following a different plan!

See how age-related macular degeneration can be avoided by adopting a healthier diet!

There’s more in your FREE copy of “Simple Nutrients and Foods That Can Save Your Life,” too. And don’t forget when you take advantage of my 14-cents-a-day subscription offer today, you’ll gain full access to all of my previous reports, including:

Stop Heart Disease In Its Tracks, Naturally

The Biggest Fraud in Medicine: Cholesterol Leads to Heart Disease

A Safe Effective Vitamin (B-12) That Can Change Your Life

Hidden Dangers of Popular Stomach-Acid Drugs

Big Pharma’s Big Lie About Osteoporosis and Aging

Simple Nutrients and Foods That Can Save Your Life

As a valued Newsmax customer, I don’t want you to get tainted health news, bad advice, or to be strictly limited to drug-based conventional medicine when safer, gentler, and more effective natural therapies are available!

Once you start receiving Natural Way to Health each month, you’ll get the valuable information you need to make smart healthcare, nutrition, and lifestyle choices for yourself and every family member. Now look here . . .

Special Reports and 3 Valuable Books FREE!

Today, you can get a one-year subscription (12 issues) to Natural Way to Health for just 14 cents a day. And your no-risk subscription includes the valuable report we’ve been discussing today, access to all of my previous reports, plus three of my most popular books, ALL FREE!

With your one-year subscription, you’ll receive THREE FREE BOOKS worth $60.00!

You’ll not only get Dr. Brownstein’s newsletter and current issue “Stop Heart Disease In Its Tracks, Naturally” . . .

You’ll also receive three of Dr. Brownstein’s most popular books — Drugs That Don’t Work and Natural Therapies That Do, The Guide to a Gluten-Free Diet, and The Miracle of Natural Hormones (each one a $20 value).

In fact, we’ll even pay the postage for you!

No kidding . . .

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53 Comments | Business Ethics, cancer, Health care, Journalism, medicine, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Warning: Universal coverage will save lives, money and pain

July 22, 2009

Utah Savage tells the story:

My friend Z is doing amazingly well, considering. She is complying with her oncologists. But now that the radiation is burning her throat, and the chemo is making her queazy, the doctors are prescribing drugs that will alleaviate these problems. But Z doesn’t believe in Western medicine and when it came time to sign up for Medicare she assumed that she would never get sick enough to ever need the part A, B and D of Medicare coverage. Now she needs them all and the enrollment period won’t come around again until November. It is part D that would have paid for her drugs. It is part D that would make a drug that costs $150 at most $3.50. I audibly gasped when she told me that she didn’t have part D. I couldn’t help myself. I said, “But you need part D.” She was furious and shouted, “Don’t tell me what I should have done. That doesn’t help me now.” And of course she’s right. Now that it’s too late, it doesn’t help to tell her what she should have done.

If you’re healthy, you never think you’re going to need insurance and prescription drug coverage. And if you’re young you never think your going to get ill. But everyone needs insurance. That is why the healthcare debate is so terribly important. We need a public option. Please call your Congressional Representative and lobby for a public option for healthcare. We need you healthy. We need you paying attention to the issues that will make a difference in all our lives.

We are not allowed to drive a car without insurance and we don’t think twice about that. But we are so careless when it comes to insurance for our own health. It should be mandatory that everyone is covered with health insurance.

Does your mileage differ? Tell us in comments.

5 Comments | Citizenship, Health care, medicine, Politics | Tagged: cancer, Health care, Health Insurance, Medicare Part D, Politics, Universal Health Coverage | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Probably not the way to get a good reputation among scientists

July 19, 2009

Tensions between science and religion, and science and business, continue to drag down Texas’s hopes to be known as a major research location.

A hard look shows it’s not just the Deliverance-style local politics at the State Board of Education on science standards. Texas has trouble in a lot of areas.

For example, imagine a hurricane wiped out the town where one of the state’s major medical schools resides, and in the aftermath, rather than working to preserve the jobs of professors who agree to come back to the damaged buildings and storm-wracked town, the university uses the troubles as an excuse to get rid of faculty — not bad faculty, necessarily, just faculty the administration doesn’t like, or doesn’t know, or just for the heck of it.

This ain’t no way to run a medical school.

The rolling disaster that hit the Universityof Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, starting with Hurricane Ike, continued through unexpected layoffs of faculty on top of the 3,000 people laid off due to storm damage. The layoffs were unjustified, too, many thought, and so they appealed. The appeals process seems to have offered only a semblance of justice, to many of those involved, according to an article in The Scientist (free subscription required).

The story hasn’t got much traction in Texas media.

4 Comments | Health care, Higher education, History, Labor and unions, medicine, Science, Texas, Texas Lege | Tagged: Appeals, Faculty, Firings, Health care, labor, Layoffs, Medical School, medicine, Science, Texas, Universityof Texas Medical Branch Galveston | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Treatments for multiple myeloma? Take it easy with green tea

June 23, 2009

Contrary to Tinfoil Hat Philosophy, researchers are rather intensely studying green tea and potential good health effects it may have.

The bad news is that an early study shows green tea inhibits the effects of one of the common treatments for multiple myeloma, Bortezomib. Bortezomib (BZM) causes tumor cells to die, but some elements in green tea inhibit that effect. Does the tea keep the cancer cells alive, or interfere with the cancer-killing drug? Not sure.

It’s clear that cancer patients undergoing treatment that includes drug or chemo therapy need to inform their physicians if they are using green tea or other alternative treatments in addition.

Is this such a surprise? We’ve known for years that grapefruit juice multiplies the effects of some blood pressure medicines, which means that grapefruit is one fruit blood pressure and cardiac patients probably need to avoid. Foods that have medicinal effects may also have effects that counteract the medicines physicians provide.

The paper shows up in the current issue of Blood (free subscription may be needed for access to the full text):

“Green Tea Polyphenols Block the Anticancer Effects of Bortezomib and Other Boronic Acid–Based Proteasome Inhibitors”

Blood. 2009 Jun 4;113(23):5927-5937, EB Golden, PY Lam, A Kardosh, KJ Gaffney, E Cadenas, SG Louie, NA Petasis, TC Chen, AH Schönthal

Here’s the abstract:

The anticancer potency of green tea and its individual components is being intensely investigated, and some cancer patients already self-medicate with this “miracle herb” in hopes of augmenting the anticancer outcome of their chemotherapy. Bortezomib (BZM) is a proteasome inhibitor in clinical use for multiple myeloma. Here, we investigated whether the combination of these compounds would yield increased antitumor efficacy in multiple myeloma and glioblastoma cell lines in vitro and in vivo. Unexpectedly, we discovered that various green tea constituents, in particular (-)-epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) and other polyphenols with 1,2-benzenediol moieties, effectively prevented tumor cell death induced by BZM in vitro and in vivo. This pronounced antagonistic function of EGCG was evident only with boronic acid–based proteasome inhibitors (BZM, MG-262, PS-IX), but not with several non–boronic acid proteasome inhibitors (MG-132, PS-I, nelfinavir). EGCG directly reacted with BZM and blocked its proteasome inhibitory function; as a consequence, BZM could not trigger endoplasmic reticulum stress or caspase-7 activation, and did not induce tumor cell death. Taken together, our results indicate that green tea polyphenols may have the potential to negate the therapeutic efficacy of BZM and suggest that consumption of green tea products may be contraindicated during cancer therapy with BZM.

Watch. The crank science sites will pick up on this study and argue that it’s just one more demonstration that scientists can’t get the story right. Reading just the abstract, however, you can see that the paper talks about a specific chemical action of specific components of green tea against a specific type of cancer treatment. This paper could just as easily be read to say that green tea helps prevent senescence in cells, and it does the same thing it tumor cells, which isn’t at all what we want.

It will be very, very interesting to see how this research gets covered in the popular, mass and internet press.

1 Comment | cancer, Health care, medicine, Research | Tagged: Bortezomib, BZM, cancer, Chemotherapy, Green Tea, Health care | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Swine flu shuts down prisons: Let the prisoners out?

May 3, 2009

This headline from the Sacramento Bee sure caught my eye:

Swine flu case shuts down visits at all 33 state prisons

Of course, I read it too fast, and skipped over the word “visits.” I had to click on the story to see whether they were going to tell the prisoners to stay at home for a week, like the Fort Worth, Texas, school district did. I suppose, after a fashion, that was exactly the message.

At the Officer of the Receiver for California Prison Health Care Services, spokesman Luis Patino said Sunday that an inmate in Centinela State Prison in Imperial County was diagnosed as probable for the H1N1 virus, or swine flu.

“The inmate and his cellmate have been isolated, Patino said. “They remain at the prison.”

Whew!

Ticket sales for movies are way up in those areas where the schools are shut down — good news for the opening weekend of X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Maybe we’d be better off if the kids remained in school, as well as keeping the convicts in the prisons.

Is the panic over swine flu too much? If we go back to the week ending March 21, 2009, we find that there were already more than 22,000 cases of influenza in the U.S., with 35 pediatric deaths. Has the swine flu added to either the rates of infection or the rates of death? If the dramatic steps, the event cancellations and school closings, are appropriate for the swine flu, shouldn’t they have been appropriate for the other flu viruses, too?

Do we really need to close schools? What do you think — tell us in comments.

See the CDC’s report on swine flu at their site: H1N1 (Swine Flu)

Other resources:

Grrl Scientist posted a short, informative video about how viruses jump species, at Living the Scientific Life:
Tara Smith’s blog, Aetiology, is loaded with solid information; “Why are the schools closing,” “What does the WHO’s pandemic scale mean?,” “Swine flu – deja vu all over again?” and others
Effect Measure, “Swine flu: mini science primer on anti-virals“
Discovering Biology in a Digital World, wonders whether you cough safely

Leave a Comment » | Disease, Health care, History, Influenza, Journalism, medicine, News | Tagged: CDC, Disease, Epidemic, Health care, Influenza, Journalism, medicine, News, Pandemic, Swine Flu | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Atomic history, nuclear future

October 19, 2008

We’re going to see more nuclear power plants in the U.S., it’s a safe bet. Both presidential candidates support developing alternatives to oil and coal. Nuclear power is one of the alternatives.

John McCain kept repeating his comfort words, that ‘storage of wastes is not a problem.’ There is not a lot of evidence to support his claims. With turmoil in financial markets, however, the nuclear power issue has gotten very little serious attention or scrutiny. From the push to get compensation for radiation victims of atomic weapons and development in the U.S., I learned that the issue is not really whether wastes and other materials can be safely used and wastes stored. The issues are entirely issues of will.

Advantage to Obama, I think. He’s not claiming that the storage problems are all solved. A clear recognition of reality is good to have in a president.

Son Kenny sent a link to a history site, Damn Interesting, and it tells the story of the Techa River in the old Soviet Union — a place condemned for generations by the nuclear excesses of the past.

To make the story briefer, in their rush to produce nuclear weapons, the Soviets did nothing to protect Russia from radioactive waste products until it was much too late. Efforts to reduce radioactive emissions, by storing them in huge underwater containers, resulted in massive explosions that released more radiation than Chernobyl (What? You hadn’t heard of that, either?).

It’s a reminder that safety and security with peaceful uses of nuclear power depend on humans doing their part, and thinking through the problems before they arise.

Can we deal with radioactive wastes? We probably have the technology. Do we have the will? Ask yourself: How many years has the U.S. studied Yuccan Mountain to make a case to convince Nevadans to handle the waste? How many more decades will it take?

How is our history of dealing with nuclear contamination issues? Not good.

Last spring SMU’s history department sponsored a colloquium on a power generation in the southwest, specifically with regard to coal and uranium mining on the Navajo Reservation. We’ve been there before.

One of the photos used in one of the lectures, by Colleen O’Neill of Utah State, showed two Navajo miners outside a uranium mine during a previous uranium boom. Neither one had a lick of protective equipment. Underground uranium mining exposes miners to heave concentrations of radon gas, and if a miner is unprotected by breathing filters at least, there is a nearly 100% chance the miner will get fatal lung cancers.

Of the 150 Navajo uranium miners who worked at the uranium mine in Shiprock, New Mexico until 1970, 133 died of lung cancer or various forms of fibrosis by 1980 ([Ali, 2003] ).

Our Senate hearings on radiation compensation, in the 1970s, produced dozens of pages of testimony that Atomic Energy Commission officials understood the dangers, but did nothing to protect Navajo miners (or other miners, either). It is unlikely that anyone depicted in those photos is alive today.

"Mine memory - Navajo miners work the Kerr-McGee uranium mine, 7 May 1953. Today, uranium from unremediated abandoned mines contaminates nearby water supplies. image: AP Photo" (borrowed from ehponline.org) This photo is very close to the one used by Prof. O'Neill. It may have been taken at nearly the same time. If you know of any survivors from this photo, please advise.

At a refining facility on the Navajo Reservation, highly radioactive wastewater was stored behind an inadequate earthen dam. The dam broke, and the wastes flowed through a town and into local rivers. Contamination was extensive.

Attempts to collect for the injuries to Navajo miners and their families were thrown out of court in 1980, on the grounds that the injuries were covered under workers compensation rules (where injury compensation was also denied, generally).

Navajos organized to protest the power plant. One wonders whether they can win it.

Sen. McCain seems cock sure that radioactive wastes won’t kill thousands of Americans in the future as they have in the past. The uranium mining and uranium tailings issues occurred in Arizona, the state McCain represents. Does he know?

We regard ourselves in the U.S. as generally morally superior to “those godless communists.” Can we demonstrate moral superiority with regard to development of peacetime nuclear power, taking rational steps to protect citizens and others, and rationally, quickly and fairly compensating anyone who is injured?

That hasn’t happened yet.

When [uranium] mining [on the Navajo Reservation] ceased in the late 1970’s, mining companies walked away from the mines without sealing the tunnel openings, filling the gaping pits, sometimes hundreds of feet deep, or removing the piles of radioactive uranium ore and mine waste. Over 1,000 of these unsealed tunnels, unsealed pits and radioactive waste piles still remain on the Navajo reservation today, with Navajo families living within a hundred feet of the mine sites. The Navajo graze their livestock here, and have used radioactive mine tailings to build their homes. Navajo children play in the mines, and uranium mine tailings have turned up in school playgrounds (103rd Congress, 1994 ).

Think of the story of Techa River as a warning.

Resources:

A recent study shows uranium wastes in low levels act as endocrine disruptors in drinking water; “The current study is of immediate relevance to the Navajo Nation of Arizona and New Mexico, where many rural Navajo water supplies currently contain uranium at concentrations exceeding the U.S. EPA standard. The uranium boom of the 1950s and 1960s left thousands of abandoned mine sites and derelict milling operations on Navajo lands. Uranium mining has been banned there, but there are active efforts to revive uranium mining in the Navajo town of Crownpoint, New Mexico. The findings may also soon apply to other populations living amid the uranium boom now under way in central Colorado, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere.:
See this site: Impacts of Resource Development on Native American Lands (from Carlton College?); see especially the link on uranium development on Navajo lands.
Douglas Brugge and Rob Goble have a remarkably brief but comprehensive study published in The American Journal of Public Health in 2002, “The History of Uranium Mining and the Navajo People.“
Radiation Protection, at EPA’s website (features information about cleanups of abandoned uranium mines and facilities on the Navajo Reservation)

5 Comments | Atomic Bomb, Barack Obama, Economics, Environmental justice, Environmental protection, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Health care, History, John McCain, McCain 2008, medicine, Native Americans, Natural resources, Navajo, Nuclear power, Obama 2008, Politics, Science | Tagged: Arizona, Environmental protection, health, History, McCain, Natural resources, Navajo Reservation, Nuclear power, Nuclear Waste, Obama, Politics, Science, Techa River, Uranium Mining | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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