Overdosing on homeopathic drugs?

I recently ran across this 2009 article about a young woman who apparently tried to overdose on a homeopathic drug called "Traumeel." I'm not trying to make light of a sad situation, but only to use this example to illustrate the widespread ignorance regarding homeopathy. A good description of homeopathy was given by James Randi in his 2001 talk at Princeton: Note the math lesson beginning at the five minute mark. Homeopaths argue that the more dilute a solution is, the more powerful it is. At the 7:30 mark, Randi explains that a "30X" solution is so dilute that it reaches the "number of no return." "30X" is so dilute that it is the equivalent of placing 15 drops of water in a container more than 50 times the size of the Earth. Other homeopathic solutions are available in 1,500x solutions. How dilute is that? It's the equivalent of (12:00) smashing one grain of rice into a sphere of water the diameter of the solar system, shaking it up, and then further diluting that same solution 2 billion more times in an equivalent sized sphere. To bring the matter full circle, at the ten-minute Randi explains how he ate two entire packages of a popular homeopathic sleeping pill (sold at nationwide pharmacies) without overdosing. Believe it or not, the active ingredient was caffeine. At 13:30, Randi characterizes the people who sell these "medicines" "swindlers, liars, cheats, frauds, fakes, criminals." For more on homeopathy, now used by five million people world-wide, consider the many statistics in my earlier post and consider viewing this video by Richard Dawkins. At the 3-minute mark, Dawkins wryly notes that if water really had "memory" of the ingredients it formerly contained (as fans of homeopathy contend), what should we make of the fact that "in each glass of water we drink, at least one molecule has passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell." At the 5-minute mark, when discussing whether homeopathy theory is plausible, the Director of a brand new English hospital (who actually was trained as a rheumatologist) unleashes this whopper of a quote: "The fact is that I couldn't stop what I do even if I wanted to. My patients wouldn't let me. They say it helps." BTW, check out the not-so-impressive medical research by the manufacturer of Traumeel. The manufacturer's recipe of a British narrator uttering big scientific words is featured in this video, and it is doubtless irresistible to many potential purchasers. Here's a bit of much needed skepticism regarding Traumeel. Whatever you do, don't utter the word "placebo" to anyone who pays big money for these "medicines."

Continue ReadingOverdosing on homeopathic drugs?

On the monogamy of birds

Birds are often reputed to be "monogamous." Is that true? At Salon, Jed Lipinski discussed the topic with Bernd Heinrich, a renowned naturalist at the University of Vermont, who has recently written "The Nesting Season: Cuckoos, Cuckolds, and the Invention of Monogamy." Here's an small excerpt from a larger discussion that touches upon monogamy, "love," navigation and other topics:

Monogamy among birds is mostly social monogamy, in that they will pair off, but they won’t necessarily be sexually monogamous. Some of them are, of course, but most try not to be, as there are certain advantages to being not monogamous. Monogamy is often forced upon birds because of certain conditions. Mates might be scarce, say, and it's safer to have a mate around. Or a female needs a mate to keep the offspring alive, to make sure all the courting and mating and nesting hasn’t been a big waste. It takes a lot of resources and help to raise baby birds -- so the parents have to have a lot of investment. Social monogamy works for food and protection, especially in the case of geese or birds of prey. So no, most birds are not monogamous. But monogamy is relative. It differs not only between species but within species as well, and often according to gender. Male birds of paradise are extremely promiscuous, whereas the females are extremely picky. They may only mate once in a breeding cycle, while a male will mate with hundreds of females and at any time. But then there are precocious birds, like ducks and quail, whose females manage to do all the feeding themselves, so a male isn't really required. . . . And some birds are not at all polyamorous. Ravens, for example, stay in pairs year round. That's unusual.

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Conservation could eliminate the need to drill for any oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

The U.S. consumes about an almost unimaginable amount of oil every day: 20,680,000 barrels of oil per day (and see here). Keep in mind that each barrel contains 42 gallons. Thus, Americans currently use 20,680,000 barrels per day = 239 barrels per second = 10,000 gallons of oil per second.Therefore , we desperately need to maintain almost 4,000 drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico in order to keep drilling for oil, right? Not so fast. Why aren’t we seriously discussing our ability to entirely eliminate offshore drilling by getting just a little bit serious about conservation? Consider the following statistics, which should be on the front page of every newspaper in the United States because [caption id="attachment_12529" align="alignright" width="210" caption="Image: creative commons"]Image: creative commons[/caption] they prove that we don't need offshore drilling but that we do need to seriously implement conservation measures for many reasons (one of which is impending peak oil):

Projecting ahead to the year 2016, the total oil production from the Gulf of Mexico will never exceed 2.1 million barrels of oil per day. Within the next 10 years, total GOM oil production is expected to exceed 1.7 million barrels of oil per day (MMBOPD), a projection based on existing shallow and deepwater operator commitments as shown in Table 2 and Figure 2. If industry-announced discoveries and undiscovered resources realize their full potential, production could reach 2.1 MMBOPD.

This information comes from page 12 of “Gulf of Mexico Oil and Gas Production Forecast: 2007-2016,” published by the U.S. Department of the Interior. See also, this chart, Figure 2 on page 14 of this same report:

Continue ReadingConservation could eliminate the need to drill for any oil in the Gulf of Mexico.