Not very difficult, according to Jeffrey Sachs. 

Hard as it is for us to imagine, Africa’s households simply can’t afford even $10 for a net, or a dollar for medicines when a child falls sick. Nor can African governments carry these costs on meager budgets or take extra vital steps to train local health workers and ensure that every village has reliable access to effective medicines.

Here is where you and I come in. Considering the costs of the nets, medicines and other components of malaria control, a comprehensive program would cost about $4.50 per African at risk, or about $3 billion a year for the whole continent. This is an amount that is too large for Africa but truly tiny for the rich world.

Let me put the $3 billion in perspective: there are a billion of us in the high-income world–that amounts to $3 a person, or one Starbucks coffee a year. It’s around 12.5% of the estimated $24 billion in Wall Street’s Christmas bonuses.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University.

In a tragic story from my own state of Wisconsin, an 11-year-old girl died last week because her parents trusted God to heal her. The parents apparently didn’t realize that their child had diabetes, so they never sought medical help. Instead, they prayed.

Though not reported in the StarTribune article, local radio reported that the parents did not blame God for letting their daughter die. Instead, they blamed themselves…not for failing to seek medical help, but for failing “to have enough faith” to heal their daughter with prayer. Sheesh.

Check out this current website from Tylenol.   You’ll see that McNeil (maker of Tylenol) has heroically and voluntarily removed all of these medicines from the market:

Concentrated TYLENOL® Infants’ Drops Plus Cold
Concentrated TYLENOL® Infants’ Drops Plus Cold & Cough
PediaCare® Infant Dropper Decongestant
PediaCare® Infant Dropper Long-Acting Cough
PediaCare® Infant Drops Decongestant (containing pseudoephedrine)
PediaCare® Infant Dropper Decongestant & Cough
PediaCare® Infant Drops Decongestant & Cough (containing pseudoephedrine)

Why remove all these children’s medicines?  According to Tylenol, it’s because:

[W]e have become aware of rare instances of misuse leading to accidental overdose, especially in children under the age of two. Therefore, we are voluntarily withdrawing [these] concentrated cough and cold medicines from the market.

Really? Does the manufacturer of Tylenol really believe that it is removing these drugs only because consumers are misusing Tylenol products?  Or could it be something else, perhaps this relatively recent and damning press release by a reputable group of pediatricians:

Cold and cough medicines given to infants and toddlers work no better than dummy pills and can be dangerous, pediatricians seeking to curb their use told government health advisers Thursday.

The doctors told the Food and Drug Administration advisers that the over-the-counter medicines shouldn’t be given to children younger than 6 because they don’t help them and aren’t safe. Such a prohibition would go beyond last week’s drug industry move to eliminate sales of the nonprescription drugs targeted at children under 2.

The group petitioned the FDA seeking in part a government statement saying the medications shouldn’t be used in older children as well. The expert advisers began a two-day meeting to consider the issue. The FDA has yet to act, in part pending a recommendation expected late Friday from the joint panel of outside experts in pediatrics and nonprescription drugs, said the agency’s Dr. Joel Schiffenbauer.

The medicines have been marketed for use in children for decades, with drug companies spending $50 million a year on heart-tugging ads in parenting magazines and elsewhere. Still, it has long been acknowledged there is little or no data from studies in the very young to show the medicines are safe and work. Worse, some studies suggest the medicines are no better than dummy pills in treating cold and cough symptoms in young children, the petitioners said.

“When a treatment is ineffective, its risks — if not zero — always will exceed its benefits,” said Dr. Michael Shannon, a Children’s Hospital Boston pediatrician and Harvard Medical School professor who was another of the petitioners.

It’s quite amazing that the drug companies might be selling chemicals that don’t really do what the drug manufacturers say they do.  It’s most amazing because it happens so incredibly often.  

What do I mean?  Consider the recent news regarding the scam regarding Prozac and other modern antidepressants.   And remember Vioxx, the “miracle” drug that created 100,000 widows and widowers?   Not only are some of these drugs dangerous; another aspect of the scam is that many of these medical “miracles” don’t function any better than placebos for many patients.  

But back to Tylenol.  This isn’t the first time Tylenol has been caught scamming the public.  If you Google “acetaminophen” and “liver,” you’ll see hundreds of sites that talk about the danger of taking a too much Tylenol (which might surprise you, given the common belief that there is considerable tolerance built into the product and given the existence of Extra-Strength Tylenol).  Follow this link to see that the makers of Tylenol have fought hard, at least since 1977, to keep the public from knowing that overdoses of Tylenol can cause liver failure.  

How else would you explain that the FDA and the pharmaceutical makers delayed giving liver failure warnings for decades?  Since 2003, Tylenol has carried a liver toxicity warning, but it makes you wonder how many lives it cost when it delayed giving that warning.  It cost more lives when consumers use the cup that comes with Children’s Tylenol (see above photo) with the concentrated formulas of cough and cold concoctions (now discontinued) that should be administered with a dropper. You see, the discontinued formulas had higher concentrations of acetaminopen.  A parent mistakenly using the little plastic cup (that comes with children’s Tylenol)  instead of the dropper (that came with the (now-discontinued infant formulas) could destroy childen’s livers.  According to the manufacturer, it’s the consumer’s faut, even though swapping the cup for the dropper was entirely foreseeable.  But now, the maker of Tylenol can blame the consumers for the need to take these products off the market rather than admit (because the pediatricians were correct) that these products didn’t really work.

Aside from the risk of liver toxicity (which exists only when the consumer more than the recommended dose of Tylenol), isn’t Tylenol an important and effective way to reduce your child’s fever?  Is fever always a bad thing?

Mass marketing has programmed parents to fear all fevers and to feel a deep need to prove their dedication to their children by pouring bright red chemicals into their children’s mouths at the first sign of fever. 

I have a different understanding of fever than most American consumers.   I believe that Tylenol’s multi-billion dollar budget (more money is spent per year on Tylenol than on Coca-Cola) is geared to making people needlessly anxious about fevers.   A low grade fever is not always dangerous.   In fact, it is rarely dangerous. Here are some guidelines as to when to treat a child’s fever.  

The maker of Tylenol (and those who manufacture other fever-reducing products) have successfully convinced the public that something absolutely must be done to bring down all fevers in young children.  Is that good medical advice?  Usually not.  The pediatrician treating my children made it clear to my wife and me that even a fever that spikes up to 106 is not a problem in a young child as long as that child is hydrating (drinking fluids and peeing regularly).   At some point, of course a sustained fever should give a parent concern.  But a few days of 102 or 103 is usually nothing to be worried about—unless you watch a lot of television commercials that tell you that you MUST get that fever down by pouring those bright red chemicals into your child’s body (chemicals that are potentially harmful to your child’s liver). 

Here’s one other thing to consider.  (more…)

The disturbing part of this story is the reactions of so-called medical professionals to this couple’s situation and decision.

Now there are two ways to look at this. The one that might make more sense (though certainly no more palatable) is that these physicians et al are concerned with Insurance issues. What’s covered here? How does malpractice potentially enter into it? And while these folks are relatively well off and can carry their own expenses, what kind of precedent might be set here that will spread to the uninsured or Medicaid?

Unpleasant, but it would give a dimension to it that we could wrap our disgust around.

The other way to see it is as an example that, much as we might as a society wish to see ourselves as maturing, getting beyond such primordial reactions (namely—”Ugh! You different! You die!”), it turns out not to be true. That what we have is a facade and as long as no one really tests it, we can be what we think we are, at least to ourselves.

My reaction to what this couple is doing was initially (and continues to be) “Wow, cool!”

But I may well be in the minority.

This is a no-brainer, or so I thought.  Before asking my extended family this question at a family gathering this weekend, I assumed that everyone would agree to my hypothetical proposal.  As distasteful as it might seem at first, I assumed that everyone in the room would (if given the opportunity) agree that they would eat nothing but dog food for one year in return for $1 million.

I write this post having tasted dog food on two occasions in past years.  On those two occasions, I’d chomped on a nugget of dry dog food, the kind that comes in a 40 pound bag.  I thought it tasted like cardboard, but it was not disgusting.  On the other hand, it was not food I would be inclined to eat again unless given an incentive.  Note: I have smelled canned dog food before, and I would not be inclined to eat that stuff.  The canned dog food I smelled had a strong disgusting odor to it.  It looked and smelled like it was no longer safe to eat.

So there I stood with various members of my family in my mother’s kitchen when I raised the question: who would be willing to eat nothing but dog food for the next year in return for $1 million?  To my surprise, the rejections and objections started pouring in, even though I went first and even though I proudly stated that my answer was absolutely “yes.”

Two of my sisters and my mother each rejected the idea out of hand. I listened to their excuses and I thought that I addressed all their objections, but they continued to reject the hypothetical offer.  One sister was concerned that if she went to all that work eating dog food for one year, they wouldn’t actually pay her the $1 million.  Therefore I changed the hypothetical so that it included an escrow account held by a person or institution she trusted.  Still, she refused to buy into the program.

Another concern (raised by a brother-in-law) was that even if dog food might provide most of the nutrition needed by a human being, it might not provide all of the vitamins and nutrients needed by humans.  Therefore, it might be dangerous over the course of the year.  Fair enough.  In response, I agreed that anyone engaging in this endeavor could take any vitamins or supplements that one might need (but that dog food might not provide).  That same brother in law then indicated that he might be willing to join the program, but only for $2 million.

I urged everyone to be honest.  We were talking about $1 million.  This is enough money to allow people to retire. I reminded everyone that they could buy their dog food at any supermarket or any pet store.  Their dog food could include any commercially available product labeled “dog food,” and this could include any type of dog food, dry or canned food, entrées or dog treats (I was hoping that the phrase “dog treats” would get everyone more excited about signing up for this hypothetical deal, but it didn’t).

I wasn’t suggesting that they would have to eat their dog food on the floor or that they would have to eat it out of a doggie dish.  They would merely have to agree to eat dog food, in any position.  They could light candles before dinner if that ambiance made the difference.  The main rule is that all of the food that they ate would have to be actual dog food.  The only fluid that they would be able to drink would be water, since that’s the only liquid that most people give to their dogs. (more…)

At Daylight Atheism, Ebonmuse puts Rand’s theory of objectivism under a bright analytical light and finds it wanting:

Since Objectivists reject all notions of a social safety net, it’s natural to ask what would happen to the poor and needy in an Objectivist society. This is Ayn Rand’s answer: “If you want to help them, you will not be stopped” (p.80).

This chilling response, which carries with it the unmistakable implication that she will not be participating in any such effort, illustrates Objectivist philosophy’s cruel, heartless ethic of social Darwinism. Its guiding principle is not “we’re all in this together”, but rather “every man for himself” - and whatever misery strikes the worthless and the inferior as a result ought not to trouble the brave, heroic, superior souls whom Rand imagines are mankind’s salvation. The parallels between this doctrine and the beliefs of tyrants throughout history should be too obvious to need pointing out.

Rand based many of her conclusions on her unwarranted belief in the allegedly perfect wisdom of the “free market,” an (unfortunately) common belief that I have repeatedly criticized at this site.  

As a teenager, I was briefly enchanted with Rand’s writings.  I pulled away, though, for many of the reasons Ebonmuse eloquently raises in his detailed post.

I’ve sometimes wondered this, and this article in Discover Magazine presents the answer.  Four percent of men are raising another man’s child:

From the clinics to the courts, routine DNA tests uncover genetic identities—and even family secrets. British public-health researchers examined nearly 50 years of medical data from around the world and came to a startling conclusion: One in 25 men unwittingly raises another man’s child.

The researchers found evidence of mismatched paternity in each of 14 countries studied—from the United States to South Africa. Few socioeconomic groups seem immune, but the probability of parental discrepancy seems higher among unmarried couples, the poor, and women under 35 (who are more likely to have more than one sexual partner).

4% might not seem like a large number, but every big classroom probably has a student who is being raised by a man who falsely believes that child to be his child. 

It’s hard to know what to do with such numbers.   For instance, I am the father of two adopted girls.  To me, the fact that I am not their biological father is of no importance whatsoever when evaluating my relationship with them.   Then again, that’s how my wife and I planned it.   There weren’t any surprises sprung on us.

I would fear for those children involved, were it to become known to the man who is raising them and loves them that he is not there biological father, where he currently believes that he is.   I would hope that that relelationship wouldn’t change anything at all between the father and the children, but it would be naive to expect this.  

How important is it to people that they are raising children who are their biological children?  Just consider the vast amounts of money many couples spend on extraordinary medical treatment so that they can have their “own” children.

I understand that impulse, but it is clear that the great majority of our genome is exactly the same as that of every other person on Earth.   Rather than worrying about whose child is whose, it would be far healthier to acknowledge that we are all related to every child on the planet–they are all our children. 

Fifty people stared straight at the sun to see the Virgin Mary and caused themselves to go blind.  It happened in THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India.

At least 50 people in Kottayam district have reportedly lost their vision after gazing at the sun looking for an image of Virgin Mary.

Though alarmed health authorities have installed a signboard to counter the rumour that a solar image of Virgin Mary appeared to the believers, curious onlookers, including foreign travellers, have been thronging the venue of the ‘miracle’.

This is not the first time I’ve heard of people staring at the sun to see the “Virgin Mary.”  Thousands of people have flocked to Medjugorje (in the former Yugoslavia).

Accounts of miraculous healings began to occur with frequency. . .  A cross on a nearby hill was said to sometimes turn into “a pillar of light,” and as at Fatima, the sun was said to “dance” in the sky—although only some of those present on these occasions saw the transmutation of the cross or the dancing of the sun.

One of my pals from childhood became a Catholic priest (I, on the other hand, became an ordained minister over the Internet).  He made a pilgramage to Medjugorje about 15 years ago.  He told me (shortly after he returned) that he believed that he saw a magic movement of light that represented the Virgin Mary communicating with him.  He said that dozens of people gathered to stare at the sun every day in Medjugorje.    I told him that I didn’t believe that he was looking at the “Virgin,” which didn’t go over very well. 

The point of this post is that religion can (sometimes) be harmful to your health.   Perhaps this standardized warning should be stamped onto the back of every church bulletin.

For its entire existence as a sport bodybuilding has struggled to gain acceptance with a mainstream audience. Some say it never will. They say that the freakishly exaggerated physiques of bodybuilders will never be applauded by the general public. And so, bodybuilding remains a cult sport. Looked down upon by many as a freak show.

As hard as it is for male bodybuilders to gain acceptance as legitimate athletes, it’s even harder for female bodybuilders. The male bodybuilder creates an exaggeration of the male form. They have taken the shape and the characteristics of male-ness and pushed it to its limits. They give the impression of being a “super-male”. Though freakish to some, at least it’s consistent with their gender.

The problem for very muscular women is that as they become more muscular the general public sees them as becoming less feminine and more manly. This has been a growing problem for women’s bodybuilding since the early nineties as advances in training and chemistry have enabled female bodybuilders to far exceed their natural muscle building capacity. Debates about “feminity vs masculinity” in female bodybuilding are an eternally hot topic on bodybuilding forums around the world and discussed with the same fervor that “God vs no God” is debated here on Dangerous Intersection.

Into this fray jumps celebrated photographer Martin Schoeller. Martin’s latest project is a series on female bodybuilders that is being exhibited at the Ace Gallery starting in March. Known for his stark brand of portraiture, Martin’s work has a frankness that is often controversial. Presidents, royalty and celebrities have all sat in the glare of his harsh lighting. The result has been described as honest or raw; real or unflattering, depending upon your point of view.

Martin’s art intrigues me as a documentary filmmaker. Martin attempts to get a photograph of the “real” person by removing all artifice and getting them to let down their guard. He does this by stripping away every crutch that photographers, the photographed, and we as viewers have come to expect. There are no costumes, no props, no scenery, no backdrop, sometimes no makeup, no sense of place or time or fashion. What is left is deceptively simple and leads people to think that it is cheap or easy. It is not, because the hard part comes when he then attempts to disarm his subject, relax them and catch them off guard. A tactic that I endeavor to employ every time I shoot footage for my films.

True to form Martin photographs the bodybuilders when they are at their most vulnerable. Spirited away in the midst of their contests before they know their placings, some of them literally right off the stage, the women are exhausted, insecure and dehydrated. He then strips them of their last crutch…he does not allow them to pose. Asking a bodybuilder not to pose is like asking a singer not to sing, a dancer not to dance or a politician to be silent. There is nothing left to do but be yourself. (more…)

Are they gone?  Are all the millions of people who take Prozac, Effexor, Paxil and Serzone-who-are-not-severely-depressed gone?  Good.  Now we can talk. The rest of you have probably already read the news that:

Antidepressant medications appear to help only very severely depressed people and the drugs work no better than placebos in many patients, British researchers said Tuesday.

Why would the news media ever report the truth regarding these wildly-hyped antidepressants?   After all, scientists have long known that most of the power of these drugs is in the placebo effect.  Or, at least, scientists should have suspected this, because the FDA was refusing to release the full data sets regarding these drugs trial, at least until the good scientists who work on this new report (Prof Irving Kirsch and colleagues) requested “the full data under freedom of information rules from the Food and Drug Administration, which licenses medicines in the US and requires all data when it makes a decision.”  Gosh, it appears that some of the relevant data wasn’t available to the forty million people taking these drugs, until long after the release of these drugs through massive corporate guerilla marketing.

In its advertisements, the manufacturer of Prozac, Lilly, doesn’t say anything about the drug not working well for large numbers of the patients for whom it was being prescribed.  In fact, Lilly makes this claim:

The safety and effectiveness of PROZAC have been thoroughly studied in clinical trials with more than 11,000 patients. There have been more than 3,500 publications on PROZAC in medical/scientific journals.

It’s that three thousand five hundred and EIGHTEENTH publication (or whatever) that gets you every time, especially when the full data set is finally made available.   

But enough attacking of soul-less pharmaceutical companies.  Well, almost enough.  Forty million people paying good money to use this stuff?  Egads!  Kirsh and colleagues sum it up for me when they say:  “This study raises serious issues that need to be addressed surrounding drug licensing and how drug trial data is reported.”  Ouch.  I could sum up this quote in my own way, using richly deserved expletives aimed at Big Pharma, but this is a family site, so I’ll refrain.  Instead, I’ll simply disclose a new creative spelling for Lilly:  L-A-W-S-U-I-T.

But now, the irresponsible news media has blown it too, and the news about these depressingly ineffective drugs is now available to the public at large.   Because the media has reported that the effect of Prozac, Effexor, Paxil and Serzone is mostly due to the placebo effect, there won’t be any more placebo effect, at least for those people who saw the news and who understand the placebo effect.

Therefore, please keep your non-severely depressed friends away from the news media for the next several days.  If they accidently see that the placebo effect is the main effect of Prozac, Effexor, Paxil and Serzone, they won’t be able to take those drugs any more to counter their mild depressions. (more…)

The March 2008 addition of Consumer Reports contains an article called “Nine Ways to a Longer Life.”  There’s lots of common sense advice, such as get enough sleep, exercise and don’t smoke.  There is also some less-obvious good advice, including the need to eat the right kind of fat.  For instance, the monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats found in nuts, seeds, vegetable oils and fish have been demonstrated to keep people healthier.

What is the number one way Consumer Report lists for living a longer life?  It’s eating whole grains.

(I photographed this bowl of my favorite whole grains: oat groats) 

What are the benefits of eating whole grains?

They reduce the risk of heart disease, several cancers, and inflammatory diseases such as asthma.  Studies have shown that breakfasts are can be a good way to get grains.

What’s a good way to learn about whole grains?  I’ve talked about them before.  My first foray into whole grains was Walter Willett’s excellent book, Eat Drink and Be Healthy.

I recently attended a lecture on how to make bread.  The chef spoke quite highly of a website sponsored by the Whole Grains Council.  What kinds of information are offered at the Whole Grains Council?

The Whole Grains Council helps consumers find whole grain foods and understand their health benefits; helps manufacturers create delicious whole grain products; and helps the media write accurate, compelling stories about whole grains.

What are whole grains?

Whole grains or foods made from them contain all the essential parts and naturally-occurring nutrients of the entire grain seed.

Some of the most common types of whole grains are:

• Wheat Berries
• Kamut 
• Spelt 
• Rye
• Triticale
• Oat Groats
• Barley 
• Brown Rice
• Wild Rice
• Job’s Tears
• Millet 
• Quinoa
• Amaranth
• Teff
• Kasha (Buckwheat Groats)
• Bulgur 

Here are some more of the incredible health benefits of eating whole grains on a regular basis (and see here).  All health-conscious people should flock to eat lots of whole grain food, of course.   I’ve saved the best two reasons to eat whole grains for last. 

Whole grains are easy to cook.  You don’t need a fancy steamer (really, you don’t).  Just spend about $30 for a Black & Decker Flavor-Scenter steamer; Diana Mirkin has published easy directions for cooking all of the types of whole grains.  Recipes for using whole grains are available all over the Internet, including at the Whole Grains Council (I often stir them into chili, soups and salads, and use them where ever I’d use rice).  It’s incredibly easy. 

The other reason for blending whole grains into your diet is that they taste delicious.  After you eat whole grains for awhile, you’ll never get excited about refined grains (e.g., white rice) again.   Another bonus is that eating whole grains makes it easier to lose weight, due to the increased fiber.

Here’s the catch.  It is sometimes not easy to identify the products that are truly made out of whole grains.  In fact, the Whole Grains Council dedicates a long webpage on how to decipher misleading packaging claims that a product contains whole grains.

Ralph Nader recently sent a pointed letter to President Bush.   The letter concerned a annual national tragedy of 58,000 of needless workplace deaths.  Here is an excerpt (from Common Dreams):

Dear President Bush:

I was listening to your address before the self-described Conservative Political Action Committee gathering in Washington, D.C. last week, while reviewing materials on occupational hazards in the workplace. The contrast between your declarations and the ongoing annual tragedy of 58,000 Americans losing their lives due to workplace diseases and traumas (OSHA figures) was astonishing and deplorable.

Your remarks included such phrases as “You and I believe in accountability;” “People should be responsible for their actions;” “Maintaining a culture of life;” and that “My number one priority is to protect you;” “All human life is precious and deserves to be protected.”

These are words and phrases that you have been using year after year in your capacity as a judicially-selected President who has sworn to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the land.

Therefore, let us apply your verbal sensitivities about accountability, responsibility and the safety of working Americans, to your sworn duty to uphold the job safety laws of your Administration.

Is the United States doing everything it can to protect its citizens from deaths and injuries from exposure to chemicals?  Not at all.  In fact, the U.S. is working hard to keep its citizens in the dark, according to this disturbing article from Harpers.  The Harpers article concerns the E.U. chemical regulation called REACH—Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals:

Europe is now compelling other nations’ manufacturers to conform to regulations that are far more protective of people’s health than those in the United States. Europe has emerged not only as the world’s leading economic power but also as one of its moral leaders. Those roles were once filled by the United States.

The U.S. media needs to focus harder.  A death is a death, but we get distracted in this time of our “war” on “terrorism.”   For our news media, a death at the hands of a “terrorist” is 1,000 times more newsworthy than most other deaths (including most other preventable deaths).  There is no good reason for this disparity.

For more on deaths and statistics, “mere statistics.”visit this article regarding some of the many ways 3,000 people could die.  And see this post for many examples of mere statistics that should deeply move us.  Real life spiders make us jump and the cancellation of a TV show makes us visibly angry, while most real life deaths bore us. 

I have long been suspicious of chiropractors.  Why?  One reason is that the practice has a wobbly foundation.  In 1895, D.D.  Palmer declared that “95% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrate, the remainder by luck stations of other joints.”  His conclusion is that most diseases could be cured by adjusting vertebrae that interfere with nerve vibrations flowing from the brain through the vertebrae.  Recent studies have shown that while spinal manipulation can be helpful to treating some back pain, “there appears to be little evidence to support the value of spinal manipulation for non-musculoskeletal conditions.”  (Shekelle, P.G. “What role for chiropractic and healthcare?” New England Journal of Medicine 339:1074-1075.) 

Another reason for my skepticism regarding chiropractors is that I’ve heard too many tales of highly suspicious sounding chiropractors.  I’ve heard, for instance, about the “need” to be treated two to three times per week for years on end for nebulous sounding conditions.

I’ve never before been to a chiropractor. Five weeks ago I would’ve assure you that I would not likely ever go to a chiropractor.  That was before my pain got bad, however.  For the past five weeks, I’ve been suffering from a pain on the left side of my upper back.  It comes and goes during the day, ranging from a dull ache to a severe stabbing pain that makes it hard for me to concentrate anything else.  The pain sometimes borders on disabling.  Sometimes, lying down is the only thing that settles down the intense stabbing pain.  I’ve tried working out more, resting more and stretching more.  I’ve tried ibuprofen and, later, Naprosyn in various doses. 

I arranged for a massage last week, from a woman who has given me massages a few times over the past few years.  She exclaimed that I was holding my left shoulder much higher than my right and that she had never before seen such an extreme case. After working on my back for almost 2 hours, she gave me the business card of a chiropractor who did acupuncture.  The massage gave me some relief, but most of the pain returned a day later.  My medical doctor gave me a prescription to a double dose of Naprosyn (he diagnosed me over the phone).  I considered that if I pursued my problem with a medical doctor, he or she would probably refer me to physical therapy.  It occurred to me, however, that I’ve had two rounds of treatment from physical therapists in the past and that both of them were unimpressive due to the nonchalance of the therapists. 

It was time to do something about my problem, because I was losing valuable hours of productive time because of the pain in my back.  To make things worse, ibuprofen has been hard on the stomach, causing something bordering on nausea.  Therefore, I picked up the phone and I called the chiropractor/acupuncturist to set up a visit.

Two days ago (Monday), I visited the chiropractor/acupuncturist.  I felt it was worth a try given several discussions I’ve had with people who claimed that acupuncture brought substantial relief to them.  Further, this particular chiropractor is well known for treating quite a few professional athletes, including Olympic athletes and members of the St. Louis Rams and St. Louis Blues.

I was impressed with this chiropractor during my first visit.  He took a lot of time trying to determine what was causing the condition.  This is in direct contrast to my own experience (and the experiences of others) regarding medical doctors, who typically try to treat symptoms with drugs or cortisone, without taking a detailed history to determine the root cause.

Not that the root cause was hard to determine in my case. My chiropractor quickly determined that I was locked over a computer keyboard many hours every day.  And after I’m finished hovering over a keyboard at the office, locked like a statue, 10 or 12 hours per day at work, I do more of this hunching over a keyboard at home while writing for this blog.  He explained that this unvarying posture is hard on the body and that the sort of pain that I was experiencing was common among people who spend many hours sitting in front of a computer.  It was his theory that my pain emanated from my pelvis (even though my pelvis doesn’t hurt) which is fixed in a locked position on a chair hour after hour without relief.

He recommended two or three sessions of acupuncture a series of simple exercises that I could do at home or at the office.  Then he would be done with me.  His simple exercises don’t require any equipment and can be done in a couple of minutes every hour or so.  He also urged me to take periodic breaks from sitting in front of the computer.  I have been directed to stand up and do some simple stretches while at the computer (these one-minute breaks are to be taken every 15 minutes or so).  I have carefully complied with the chiropractor’s instructions ever since I received them two days ago.

What is modern acupuncture?  It’s quite different than traditional acupuncture in that it involves not only needles, but slight pulsing electrical current that is run through the affected tissue through the needles. The purpose of acupuncture is to relax the overwrought muscles and thereby reduce the pain.  My chiropractor readily admitted that the mechanism for pain relief is not well understood, though it often works. He made it clear that others have lots of detailed ancient hocus-pocus theories for why acupuncture works, but he doesn’t rely on those teachings (many acupuncturists still do, however). 

A modern acupuncture treatment lasts 15 to 20 minutes.  The acupuncture was not painful, although it was a just a bit uncomfortable.  It is done without any anesthesia.  After receiving the acupuncture treatment on Monday, I thought that I felt some good relief from the sharp pains I have been experiencing in my back.  At the same time, however, I was well aware of the placebo effect and I wanted to make sure that I was not simply psyching myself out.

I went back for a second acupuncture treatment today.  My wife (Anne) attended with me because she is interested in knowing more about acupuncture.  She brought a camera and took a couple of pictures so that I could show what acupuncture looks like.  This first picture shows the chiropractor inserting a needle into my back. 

He used a short straw looking sleeve, which he taps along with the needle, which distributes the sensation of the insertion so that it is not sharp or painful.  (more…)

If you would like to review the sad details of this lost “war,” visit Rolling Stone’s recent article, “How America Lost the War on Drugs.”

Thanks to new research, U.S. policy-makers knew with increasing certainty what would work and what wouldn’t. The tragedy of the War on Drugs is that this knowledge hasn’t been heeded. We continue to treat marijuana as a major threat to public health, even though we know it isn’t. We continue to lock up generations of teenage drug dealers, even though we know imprisonment does little to reduce the amount of drugs sold on the street. And we continue to spend billions to fight drugs abroad, even though we know that military efforts are an ineffective way to cut the supply of narcotics in America or raise the price.

All told, the United States has spent an estimated $500 billion to fight drugs - with very little to show for it. Cocaine is now as cheap as it was when Escobar died and more heavily used. Methamphetamine, barely a presence in 1993, is now used by 1.5 million Americans and may be more addictive than crack. We have nearly 500,000 people behind bars for drug crimes - a twelvefold increase since 1980 - with no discernible effect on the drug traffic. Virtually the only success the government can claim is the decline in the number of Americans who smoke marijuana - and even on that count, it is not clear that federal prevention programs are responsible. In the course of fighting this war, we have allowed our military to become pawns in a civil war in Colombia and our drug agents to be used by the cartels for their own ends. Those we are paying to wage the drug war have been accused of ­human-rights abuses in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. In Mexico, we are now ­repeating many of the same mistakes we have made in the Andes.

Today, the following Associated Press article was run on page-19 of my local newspaper (the St. Louis Post-Dispatch):

An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions. Florida doesn’t have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York’s reservoirs have dropped to record lows. And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year.

Across America, the picture is critically clear — the nation’s freshwater supplies can no longer quench its thirst.

The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperature, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.

“Is it a crisis? If we don’t do some decent water planning, it could be,” said Jack Hoffbuhr, executive director of the American Water Works Association, based in Denver.

Water managers will need to take bold steps to keep taps flowing, including conservation, recycling, desalination and stricter controls on development.

The price tag for ensuring a reliable water supply could be staggering. Experts estimate that just upgrading pipes to handle new supplies could cost the nation $300 billion over 30 years.

“Unfortunately, there’s just not going to be any more cheap water,” said Randy Brown, utilities director for Pompano Beach, Fla.

Truly, this is a major story; our country is running out of a critically important resource.  Combine that lack-of-water news, though with the equally unreported news that the world is running out of another critically important resource: oil. How bad is it?  I’ve previously reported on the issue of peak oil before (and see here).

Recently, I’ve read a book that, even if it is only partially accurate, should be front page news in every newspaper in America, day after day.  

The book is The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century, by James Howard Kunstler (2005).   Kunstler writes that

America is still sleepwalking into the future.  We walked out of our burning house and we are now headed off the edge of a cliff.  Beyond that cliff is an abyss of economic and political disorder on a scale that no one has ever seen before.  I call this coming time The Long Emergency.

Kunstler writes that the main problem is the end of cheap oil and natural gas.  These resources

underlie everything we identify as a benefit of modern life.  All the necessities, comforts, luxuries and miracles of our time-central heating, air conditioning, cars, airplanes, electric lighting, cheap clothing, recorded music, movies, supermarkets, power tools, hip replacement surgery, the national defense, you name it-we owe their origins or continued existence in one way or another to cheap fossil fuel.

Kunstler argues that the steady technological progress we’ve experienced thanks to cheap oil has tricked us “into a kind of Jiminy Cricket syndrome, leading many Americans to believe that anything we wish for hard enough can come true.”

What are Kunstler’s facts?  Here are some of them (starting on page 66):

The total planetary endowment of conventional nonrenewable liquid oil was roughly 2 trillion barrels before humans started using it.  Since the mid-19th century, the world has burned through roughly one trillion barrels of oil, half the total there ever was, representing the easiest to get, highest-quality liquids.  The half that remains includes the hardest oil to get, lowest quality liquids, semi-solids, and solids.

Worldwide discovery of oil peaked in 1964 and has followed a firm trend line downward ever since. (more…)

According to this article at Alternet (”The War on Pot: America’s $42 Billion Annual Boondoggle“) we should “regulate marijuana just as we do beer, wine, and liquor.”  Why?  Consider the human toll:

The new FBI stats show an all-time record 829,627 marijuana arrests in 2006, 43,000 more than in 2005. That’s like arresting every man, woman and child in the state of North Dakota plus every man, woman, and child in Des Moines, Iowa on marijuana charges … every year. Arrests for marijuana possession — not sales or trafficking, just possession — totaled 738,916. By comparison, there were 611,523 arrests last year for all violent crimes combined.

If that amount of arrests doesn’t concern you, then consider the economic toll.  The war on marijuana is costing the United States $42 billion per year.   What could you do with that kind of money?  You could hire “880,000 schoolteachers at the average U.S. teacher salary of $47,602 per year.”

Is the war on marijuana saving the lives or health of Americans?  Far from it, according to honest medical information.

I’m not advocating the use of marijuana (or any other mind-altering or mood-altering drug).  I believe in natural highs, the type triggered by good health and an active intellect. 

On the other hand, the “War on Drugs” is horribly counter-productive and it is devastating to the lives of good and decent Americans and their families.  And because that “war” is a massive drain on the national economy, it hurts people like you.

What’s the preferred treatment for Major Depressive Disorder?  According to this study by a large team of researchers, anti-depressant medication and exercise led to comparable results.  The exercise consisted of 10 minutes of warming up, then 30 minutes of jogging or brisk walking, enough to get to 70% of maximum heart rate reserve.

The king of bad food, “the only specific food that clinical research has directly linked to weight gain,” is soda pop (though see here for an opposing viewpoint).   Nutritionally, there is almost nothing good to say about soda.  That is the focus of an article entitled “Nutritionists: Soda making Americans drink themselves fat.” 

The rise in soft drink consumption mirrors the national march toward obesity. At the midpoint of the 20th century, Americans drank four times as much milk as soda pop. Today, the ratio is almost completely reversed, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Meanwhile, in the past 30 years the national obesity rate has more than doubled, and among teenagers, more than tripled, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Soda pop is a quintessential junk food,” said Michael Jacobson, who heads the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which lobbies for government restrictions on foods it considers unhealthy. “It’s just pure calories, and no nutrients. It’s like a bomb in our diet.”

Not only is soda loaded with empty calories. Some scientists point to the high fructose corn syrup found in soda as the real problem.  Drinking it also sets up a vicious cycle of eating and hunger that lasts all day long:

The sugar in soda pop not only provides a massive dose of calories, but triggers a vicious appetite cycle, said [Dr. David] Ludwig, [a Harvard endicrinologist]. . . “It’s rapidly absorbed, which raises blood sugar and in effect causes the body to panic.” The body releases insulin to break down the sugar, “but the body overcompensates, and blood sugar drops below the fasting level,” lower than it was in the first place.

Recognizing low blood sugar, the body releases ghrelin and other hormones, inducing hunger, inducing us to eat even more, Ludwig said.

Here’s a doctor’s description of what all that sugar does to your body when you gulp down that soda.

These are not poor cities, yet their citizens prefer getting around by using bicycles.

There are lots of reasons for you to be commuting by bicycle, but many of you who could cycle to work are still burning expensive gasoline to get there.  What’s it going to take to get you out of that expensive car and onto a high-precision, environment-friendly, health-enhancing bicycle?  How about some money?  Not just gas money, either. Read on.  This post might change your life in a dozen healthy and bank-account enhancing ways. 

More than half of Americans live less than 5 miles from the place where they work. That’s easy striking range for a bicycle.  Studies have shown that trips of less than 3 miles are often quicker by bike, and urban trips of 5 to 7 miles usually take about the same time.  Here are more statistics to consider:

According to the Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey, 25 percent of all trips are made within a mile of the home, 40 percent of all trips are within two miles of the home, and 50 percent of the working population commutes five miles or less to work. Yet more than 82 percent of trips five miles or less are made by personal motor vehicle.

I’m one of the many people who live about five-miles from my place of employment.  Traveling five miles to work takes me only about 25 minutes.  This is only about 10 minutes more than it would take to drive to work in good traffic. 

I have commuted to work by bicycle since 1998.  Making the change from car to bike seemed so difficult and intimidating, until I made the change.  Looking back, I wonder why it seemed like such a difficult decision. 

[My trusty Trek 7900.  I purchased it 5 years ago for $500] 

I admit that cycling to work is not for everyone. Many people live long distances from their place of work.  Many people need to transport several children or heavy equipment every morning and evening.  Some people really do have physical limitations that make bicycle commuting impossible.  But chances are that many of you who are reading this don’t fall into any of these categories.

Many millions of Americans are terrific candidates for bicycle commuting.  Some of you can even combine use of a bicycle with public transportation, stretching your transportation access across your city.  Where I live, for example (in St. Louis, Missouri), you can roll your bicycle onto a light rail train or place it on a rack in the front of a public bus.  This has allowed me to quickly “bicycle commute” to places 10 or 15-miles away from my home. 

I’ve tried to anticipate many excuses for not cycling to work.  People who having tried bicycle commuting yet will resist the thought.   Many of you just don’t want to consider this healthy and cost-saving change.  Why?  Because it’s a change . . .  Check out these lists of responses to the most common excuses for not commuting by bicycle, here and here As you can see, they’ve anticipated your main concerns.  BTW, there are TONS of good bicycle websites out there.  You have no excuse for lacking information on how to buy a bike, how to repair it and how to enjoy it.

I started commuting by bicycle because I was compelled to work especially long stressful hours for several months straight.  After several weeks of this crushing work, it became apparent that I was not getting enough exercise and that I was feeling over-anxious while sitting at my desk.  I decided to run an experiment one morning: I hopped on my bicycle and rode to work for the first time. It felt a little strange and I felt out of place rolling up to my office building on a bicycle—it even felt a bit embarrassing.  After all, this is not how most people who work in office buildings get to work. Not in a conservative city of the American Mid-West, anyway.  I quickly got used to this change, though. I have been commuting by bicycle ever since.  In fact, when I die, they will have trouble prying my handlebars from my cold dead fingers.

Statistics show that only 2% of Americans take the opportunity to commute by bicycle.  Here’s another interesting bicycle statistic: Nineteen percent of those who rode their bicycles to work reported that their commute was the most pleasant activity of their day. In contrast, only two percent of workers who drove to work liked that part of their day. The advantages to commuting by bicycle are numerous.  The exercise of cycling to work lowers your stress level at work.  You will find that you no longer need to make time to exercise, because you will be building your exercise into your day, making exercise a natural and sustainable part of your life. 

Oh, yes. I promised to tell you how to make money by commuting on a bicycle . . . (more…)

As Eliott Spitzer writes:  

SCHIP is a program that provides health care to children whose families make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private health insurance.

It’s a program that provides medical care, including preventive medical care, to innocent children.  According to the Bush Administration, we shouldn’t offer it, because these families can supposedly drive their kids to hospital emergency rooms for their preventative care.

These kids are from families that don’t make much, in the range of $51,625 for a family of four.  These are the working poor and the working middle class.  To put this in perspective, the cost of insurance for a family of four is closing in on $1000/month.  What are the odds that a family making in the range of $51,625 is shelling out 20% of their gross income for health insurance?

What should a responsible government do to make certain that children who are not covered by Medicaid (these children aren’t) are covered?   It’s difficult to find an issue where the differences in ideology between conservatives and progressives are more stark. 

To learn more, see the video at this site. 

Richard Dawkins is famous for his criticisms of organized religion. 

In this new two-part video (see here and here), he moves on to examine spiritualists, faith healers, dowsers, homeopaths, astrologers and others who shun evidence in order to practice their unsubstantiated trades.

Much of this video is straightforward and succinctly edited. Dawkins restrains himself in his many conversations that appear in the video.  He lets the quacks speak their own words and he allows them to put their best foot forward.   Not that he doesn’t sometimes get in his digs, for instance with Deepak Chopra, who exhibits absolutely no understanding of quantum physics despite making millions on books in which he allegedly invokes principles of quantum physics.

The general themes are well stated in the video.  We are disparaging real science and medicine yet giving unsubstantiated alternative medicine a free ride.  Why?  Because we are a society that is, more than ever, willing to value private feelings over evidence.  Unfortunately, this makes us vulnerable to those who obscure the truth (e.g., charlatans like Chopra).

There’s this odd thing about alternative therapies:  the more we look at them, the weaker they look.  At least this is true for those who aren’t striving to believe in them.  Why do we do this?  Dawkins suggests that it is perhaps an evolutionary adaptation.  We have evolved to see patterns even when they don’t exist.  To be that other kind of animal, one that tends not to see patterns, would be too dangerous.  That might actually be a predator behind that bush!  For many of us, this over-tendency to see patterns has apparently generalized into a form of naiveté when it comes to alternative therapies. 

To see Dawkins’ encounter with Chopra, go to Part II, about 19:00.  To see the section on homeopathic medicine, see Part II at 23:00.  

In the meantime, spiritualist book titles outnumber real science books 3-to-1.   And one-fourth of the public believes in astrology, which serves as a sort of poster-boy for all of these shoddy disciplines:  What makes them “work” is that they allow us to keep thinking that humans are the true center of the universe.  All of the stars revolve around us.  Therapies work because we want them to work.  Ergo, no need for evidence.  Just keep believing . . . 

I know that numerous chiropractors swear by homeopathy. I even know of a couple MD’s who push homeopathic “remedies.”  It makes me shake my head because A) homeopathic theory (e.g., “the law of infinitesimals” and “the law of similars”) makes no sense and 2) homeopathic remedies and double-blind studies don’t mix.

Homeopathy is a painfully well-known placebo that millions of well-educated people just can’t bear to give up.  They know that it can’t really work according to the theory of its promoters, but they just can’t part from that juicy hit of placebo.

I recently ran across a science website with good energy, lots of engaging stories and commentors chomping at the bit.  It’s called Bad Science.   The post that most recently caught my interest is on homeopathy, more specifically a highly suspicious article in the “British Journal of Homeopathy” that claims that water “has a memory.”  Check out the comments for a rousing tour of the many failings of homeopathy.   One fellow apologizes for peeing in the ocean when he was young, because he didn’t realize the effect that it was going to have on everyone in the future.

For more information on the bad science of homeopathy, including a stab at one of my favorite psuedo scientists, Deepak Chopra, consider this article from the Skeptical Inquirer.  Here’s an excerpt:

Quite apart from the matter of how the water/alcohol mixture remembers, there are obvious questions that cry out to be asked: 1) Why does the water/alcohol mixture remember the healing powers of an active substance, but forget the side effects? 2) What happens when the drop of solution evaporates, as it must, from the lactose tablet? Is the memory transferred to the lactose? 3) Does the water remember other substances as well? Depending on its history, the water might have been in contact with a staggering number of different substances.

Homeopathy is only one of many forms of medical quackery being hawked to a scientifically naive public by researchers and public spokespeople who refuse to allow facts get in the way of their favorite version of snake oil:

The public is spending billions of dollars annually on sugar pills to cure their sniffles, hand waving to speed recovery from operations, and good thoughts to ward off illness, all with assurances that it’s based on science. Society has been set up for this fleecing in part by the media’s sensationalized coverage of modern science. Popular discussions of relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos often leave people with the impression that common sense cannot be relied on — anything is possible. Scientists themselves often feed the public’s appetite for the “weirdness” of modern science in an effort to stimulate interest — or simply because scientists, too, can be beguiled by the mysterious.

I wish there were more of a placebo effect associated with the reading of science done carefully.  Maybe then we wouldn’t waste so much money and energy on all of those other placebo-effect inducers, including homeopathy.

In an article from the Washington Post we learn that the United States has slipped in the ranking for life expectancy in the world to number 42. Douglas Adams aside, this is not a good thing.

The article lists a good many factors contributing to this fact, which seems paradoxical since, as stated, we spend more on health care than any other nation. I’m not surprised. Americas in general live as though built like Abrams tanks. We work hard, we party hard, and we loaf hard. We eat badly, pay no attention to our personal health, assuming that if anything really goes wrong “the doctor can fix it.” We believe, innately, that we’re indestructible and can do anything. This leads to careless habits. One factor cited is that 45 million of us lack health insurance. Which brings me to the peeve