Because if you don't know about it, it doesn't happen

 

RFK Jr. pledged more transparency. Here’s what the public doesn’t know anymore

I'm still here! Just distracted by real life...

How prisons profit.

We must move humanity to Mars.

An apple a day will actually do you a world of good.

Biking across Africa.

Saving our post offices one by one.

You're either fer us or again us...

For:

Wonderful little known part of the ACA.

Teaching children how to enjoy vegetables.

Against:

By tilting the playing field in favor of industry... and against the environment and people's overall health.

By enchanting people with blunt talk... and disguising the fact that the Koch brothers LOVE Governor Christie. (transcript found here.)

By ignoring all the things in your 21st century house that will mess with your hormones and health.

By believing Obamacare will kill you, abort your babies, prevent your children learning about creationism, and all the things the evil Kenyan illegal president has done in his life and in his two terms. (How do you reason with people who accept these as fact?)

By believing corporations who lie to you to bend democracy for their benefit.

By not caring that our oceans are broken.

And then there are those who explain both sides extremely well.

Wash your hands!

This doc says it better:



h/t to Steve Bates in comments.

After all the bad press, the poisonous food and the deadly toys....

Here we go again... and again and again.... Now China is producing defective and smelly drywall:

(CNN) -- Officials are looking into claims that Chinese-made drywall installed in some Florida homes is emitting smelly, corrosive gases and ruining household systems such as air conditioners, the Consumer Product Safety Commission says.

The Florida Health Department, which is investigating whether the drywall poses any health risks, said it has received more than 140 homeowner complaints. And class-action lawsuits allege defective drywall has caused problems in at least three states -- Florida, Louisiana and Alabama -- while some attorneys involved claim such drywall may have been used in tens of thousands of U.S. homes.

Homeowners' lawsuits contend the drywall has caused them to suffer health problems such as headaches and sore throats and face huge repair expenses.

The drywall is alleged to have high levels of sulfur and, according to homeowners' complaints, the sulfur-based gases smell of rotten eggs and corrode piping and wiring, causing electronics and appliances to fail.

"It's economically devastating, and it's emotionally devastating," said Florida attorney Ervin A. Gonzalez, who filed one of the lawsuits. It would cost a third of an affected home's value to fix the dwelling, Gonzalez said.

"The interior has to be gutted, the homeowners have to continue paying mortgages, and they have to pay for a [temporary] place to live," Gonzalez said.

Apparently they aren't going learn any time soon that producing deadly products kills people and pisses off the ones that live. I put back on the shelf almost everything I can that has 'Made in China' stamped on it.

What is John McCain hiding by not releasing his medical records?

Update 9/28: DaveV at Daily Kos notes the noticeable droop of the left side of McCain's face.

Update 10/1: Steve Bates of The Yellow Doggerel Democrat notes the various stages of melanoma that McCain has had and what the survival rate is.

Just what is wrong with John McCain's health?

That he pulls a 'now you see it, now you don't' Rovian style stunt? The man is 72 years old, for god's sakes! There will be things clearly going wrong with him and all this stupidity does is focus even more closely on him: (my bold)

After a long delay, John McCain finally allowed a hand-picked group of journalists very limited access to a small portion of his medical records. The campaign is spinning the event as a release, but it's no such thing. McCain hosting a game of telephone and congratulating himself for transparency.

The LA Times got the real story behind the so-called release: all the strings attached. Campaign staffers told the paper that the chosen reporters would be given only three hours to view about 400 pages of documents from 2000 to 2008. They wouldn't even allowed to make photocopies for their own reference, or to show to experts.

Curiously, this year's crop of journalists were not given access to the records that McCain released to an equally select group during his last presidential bid. The last batch of records covered McCain's lifetime medical history through 1999.

The favored news outlets are the Washington Post, the Arizona Republic, Bloomberg, Reuters, and the Associated Press. All other media will have to make due with a pool report generated by the elect, a 90-minute conference call with McCain's doctors and campaign-produced summaries to be posted online.

McCain let a group of hand picked lay-people view an incomplete set of medical records for a ridiculously short period of time. Their access was so limited as to render their opinions worthless.

This so-called release was a clever bit of media manipulation. The campaign made its hand-picked journos complicit in the records charade. Friendly media got a scoop. With that scoop came a vested interest in downplaying the ridiculous restrictions placed on them. If the public understood the conditions under which their were reporting, their coverage wouldn't seem impressive at all.

Does he have Alzheimer's? He's getting kinda confused. Did the few reporters get to that page? Did they call any recognizable disease by another more obscure name so they can say they told us? How will we know? Just how many cancers have they found in him? Can we ever actually know?

This is stupid. Why on earth would anyone vote for someone who clearly has something to hide? Or, maybe, McCain can let the reporters actually do their job and assure the American people that McCain is really and truly healthy rather than just guessing.

It all comes down to this:

Getting between the need and the person, all because of greed.

Washington, DC (AHN) - A national campaign to help educate mothers about the benefits of breastfeeding was "toned down" to the point of futility in response to pressure from the formula industry, The Washington Post reported Friday.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, babies who are not exclusively breastfed for their first 6 months are more likely to develop a wide range of health problems, including ear infections, diarrhea and respiratory illnesses. They also show a 21% higher mortality rate. However, former Surgeon General Richard Carmona, who recently testified that the Bush administration let political considerations interfere with public health campaigns, says that only about one in four babies are breastfed long enough to receive the benefits.

That's why the federal Office on Women's Health developed a "Blueprint for Action on Breastfeeding" in 2000 to help educate women about breastfeeding. The campaign included hard-hitting ads, such as one featuring an asthma puffers that looked like a bottle of formula, warning, "babies who aren't breastfed are up to 250% more likely to suffer respiratory diseases."

The formula industry fought the ads, brining in powerful lobbyists, such as Clayton Yeutter, who served as agriculture secretary during the administration of George H.W. Bush.

Carmona was removed from the campaign and political appointees were brought in to drop the ads in favor of toned down messages. "Babies are born to be breastfed," one ad states simply.

In 2004 letters obtained by the Post, Yeutter and other lobbyists thanked then-HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson for his staff's action to eliminate "the most egregious distortions" aimed at "scaring expectant mothers into breast-feeding."

Meanwhile, breastfeeding rates have actually decreased.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating the allegations of political meddling in public health concerns.

So NOW they make a reset button for rich people

To allow you to have a copy of your DNA when you were young and healthy:

Imagine having a spare copy of your immune system on ice, ready to replace your existing one should you fall victim to AIDS, an autoimmune disease, or have to undergo extensive chemotherapy for cancer.

An Anglo-American company called Lifeforce has received permission from the US Food and Drug Administration to do just that. The firm collects 480-millilitre samples of blood from healthy individuals, extracts the white blood cells and stores them as an insurance policy against future disease. The service comes at a price, though: around $800 for taking the initial sample then $25 per month for storing the cells at -196 °C. "That sample would have the complete repertoire of all your white blood cells," says Del DelaRonde, co-founder of Lifeforce in Newport, UK.

Hmmm. I see future kidnapping threats: I have your white blood cell test tubes! Hand over one Meeeelllion dollars....

Flying while high?

Um... shouldn't this on the to do list?

Toxic fumes on planes are poisoning pilots and rendering them unable to fly safely, say pilots, who are campaigning for "aerotoxic syndrome" to be recognised as a disease.

Two official investigations are being opened after concerns that highly toxic oil contaminants are leaking into cabin air supply on commercial airliners in flight. The UK government is to fit air-monitoring equipment on board aircraft amid increasing concerns that passengers, pilots and cabin crew are being exposed. And 1500 pilots will take part in the first major health study designed to establish the extent of the problem.

"We're basically the canaries – getting knocked down by the fumes first," says Susan Michaelis, a former pilot who believes she was poisoned by fumes from leaked engine oil while flying. She and other grounded pilots launched a campaign for the condition to be recognised, at a meeting at the UK's Houses of Parliament on 18 June.

Compressed air is routinely drawn off engines and supplied to aircraft cabins. If the seal inside the engine is not secure, engine oil can leak into the cabin and contaminating air with toxic tricresyl phosphate (TCP), says Michaelis.

You could have your kids taken away from you

If they are too fat.

How about taking them away if they show any tendency towards being a Republican, believe in UFOs, know the FDA is doing a great job keeping our food safe, trust our medical system and doctors implicitly, or think Bush is a good president?

Update: More on how dieting doesn't work. Eating crap and not exercising is the danger.

Fake blood protein found in China

Just to stay with the theme we've got going here:

BEIJING, June 12 Thousands of vials of fake human blood protein have been seized from hospitals and pharmacies throughout China, the country's drug safety agency reports.

The State Food and Drug Administration's Web site posted the news late Monday, saying in Jilin province alone, more than 2,000 vials of fake albumin had been identified in 59 facilities. Some 1,554 bottles had already been administered to patients, a Wall Street Journal correspondent in Beijing reported Tuesday.

So if a product says Made in China you may want to think twice.....

Why would you spend 250 to 10,000 times more than what you need to

When you buy bottled water instead of tap water? Via Eli at Multi Medium, an article on the benefits and disadvantages of the waters:

Market studies show that the reason most Americans drink bottled water is its perceived superiority—most importantly in taste, and then in safety—compared to municipal tap water. But a widely publicized 1999 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council debunked at least some of these perceptions. The study found that the source of about a quarter of bottled water was municipal tap water, usually filtered to remove chlorine—the primary objectionable taste—and other chemicals such as fluoride. So much for the idea of pristine, undisturbed sources.

And instead of the widely held notion that bottled water harbored fewer chemicals and microorganisms, the study found little difference between the two; both are usually of exceptionally high quality in the United States. In fact, water quality standards in this country are more rigorous for tap water than for bottled. (Bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration; tap water is overseen by the more stringent Environmental Protection Agency.)

Besides the enormous cost of bottled water compared to tap water (bottled water is between 250 to 10,000 times more expensive), there’s an additional expense: its effect on the environment. First there’s the crude oil necessary to produce the plastic bottles, which the Earth Policy Institute estimates at about 1.5 million barrels of oil a year in the U.S., enough to power 100,000 cars. Then there’s the transportation of this weighty product (though about 75 percent of bottled water is produced and consumed regionally). Finally, there’s the issue of getting rid of the empty bottles, only about 10 percent of which are recycled.

Sicko

Michael Moore's film about American Health Care is being reviewed: (my bold)

It's both a more finely calibrated film and one with more far-reaching consequences than any he's made before. Moore is trying to rouse Americans to action on an issue most of us agree about, at least superficially. You may know people who will still defend the Iraq war (although they're less and less eager to talk about it). But who do you know who will defend the current method of healthcare delivery, administered by insurance companies whose central task is to minimize cost and maximize shareholder return? Americans of many different political stripes would probably share Moore's conclusions at the press conference: "It's wrong and it's immoral. We have to take the profit motive out of healthcare. It's as simple as that."

"We have to take the profit motive out of healthcare. It's as simple as that." Thank you, Michael. We have seen this horror up close and personal and it is choking the system to death.

May your movie rally the voters of this country to action!

Toxic indifference from the White House

Toxic World Trade Center dust is linked to sarcoidosis:

Rescue workers and firefighters in New York City contracted a serious lung-scarring disease called sarcoidosis at a much higher rate after the Sept. 11 attacks than before, said a study that is the first to link the disease to exposure to toxic dust at Ground Zero.

The study, published by nine doctors including the medical officer monitoring city firefighters, Dr. David Prezant, found that firefighters and rescue workers contracted sarcoidosis in the year after Sept. 11, 2001, at a rate more than five times higher than the years before the attacks.

Unlike previous studies that have linked exposure to the toxic dust cloud that enveloped lower Manhattan after the World Trade Center's collapse to many different respiratory illnesses, this study zeroes in on one disease.

Sarcoidosis, which can be life-threatening, causes an inflammation in the lungs that deposits tiny cells in the organs, leaving scar tissues that damage them. Several rescue workers and others exposed to WTC dust have claimed they contracted the disease from their work at Ground Zero.

Just remember:

NEW YORK -- In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available.

That finding is included in a report released Friday by the Office of the Inspector General of the EPA. It noted that some of the agency's news releases in the weeks after the attack were softened before being released to the public: Reassuring information was added, while cautionary information was deleted.

"When the EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement," the report says. "Furthermore, the White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced . . . the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."

How many times must we be shown the Bush administration is indifferent to US citizens? ... Hell, indifferent to humanity?

Is China hiding a new epidemic?

Will we get to hear the truth before it affects all of us?:

HONG KONG, May 7 — A mysterious epidemic is killing pigs in southeastern China, but international and Hong Kong authorities said Monday that the Chinese government was providing little information about it or the contaminated wheat gluten that has caused death and illness in pets in the United States.

The lack of even basic details is reviving longstanding questions about whether China is willing to share information about health and food safety issues with potentially global implications.

[snip]

Because pigs can catch many of the same diseases as people, including bird flu, the W.H.O. and F.A.O. maintain global networks to track and investigate unexplained patterns of pig deaths.

Hong Kong television and newspapers were full of lurid accounts on Monday of pigs staggering around with blood pouring from their bodies in Gaoyao and neighboring Yunfu, both in Guangdong Province. The Apple Daily newspaper said that up to 80 percent of the pigs had died in the area, that peasants were engaged in panic selling of ailing animals at deep discounts and that pig carcasses were floating down a river.

The disease reportedly started killing pigs after Chinese New Year celebrations in February, but is now spreading. The state-controlled news media in China have had a few reports on the wheat gluten problem and almost nothing on the pig deaths.

Maybe they were just too small to get over the guard rail?

Tamiflu:

TOKYO, March 24 Japan is looking into the possibility that the anti-flu drug Tamiflu may be causing hallucinations and other neuropsychiatric symptoms in young children.

A health ministry affiliate has received nearly two dozen reports of the antiviral drug, made by Swiss-based Roche Holding, being associated with neuropsychiatric disorders in children under the age of 10, the Kyodo news agency reported Saturday.

However, none of the cases in 2004 and 2005 resulted in the children falling or jumping from buildings, as had been previously reported in 15 cases of older youths, ages 10-19, and seven cases of adults who allegedly had taken Tamiflu, Kyodo said.

Wait a second....Wasn't Rumsfeld involved in Tamiflu? Why, yes, he was!

Tomorrow we will find out exercise kills!

Vitamins may not be so good for you:

Taking certain vitamin supplements may adversely affect people's lifespan, researchers have suggested.

Millions worldwide use antioxidant supplements such as vitamins A and E, and beta-carotene.

Looking at dozens of previous research studies, Copenhagen University researchers suggested these appeared to raise, not lower, the risk of death.

A supplements industry expert said the Journal of the American Medical Association study was fatally flawed.

But nutritionists said it reinforced the need to eat a balanced diet, rather than relying on supplements.

While vitamin supplements have been popular for decades, the precise benefits they offer - if any - remain uncertain, despite hundreds of research projects.

Supporting the veterans

With excellent health care:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 Trauma center doctors in the United States can't access medical information needed to treat soldiers severely injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Physicians at four Veterans Administration trauma centers were receiving complete digital records from the Pentagon until the end of January when access to the Joint Patient Tracking Application was suddenly cut off, The Washington Post reports.
The action was ordered by the director of the Pentagon's Health Deployment Systems who said federal regulations and public law required that data use agreements and controls be in place in order for the physicians to use the system.

Since the cutoff, there have been meetings between the VA and Pentagon officials but access has yet to be restored.

Digital medical records track the care given wounded troops from the moment of their arrival at a field hospital through their evacuation to the United States.

Strange....

I know just how she feels...

Helena, MT (AHN) - A 36-year-old Idaho woman became frustrated and allegedly used pepper spray on hospital employees when they refused to discharge her.

Susan Kollars sprayed employees at St. Peter's Hospital on Sunday and then ran towards Interstate 15. According to AP reports, it is not clear why Kollars was denied discharge from the hospital or why she was admitted.

According to Police Chief Troy McGee, a man driving a pickup saw Kollars but she tried to spray him as well. She was then taken into custody and returned to the hospital. She now faces three counts of misdemeanor assault resulting from the incident.