Health Bill and Race

This new effort to consider characteristics like ethnicity to maximize the health bill is a pretty novel idea.

But since there is no race gene, would that complicate matters? Or will it be more like certain races are more likely to be overweight, because of income discrepancies? ...If that's the case it might make more sense to target that variable instead.

No more Botax, but Tan Tax

So much for botax. I really liked the idea but I guess more people use tanning beds than Botox, and the cosmetic surgery industry has more lobbying power than the tanning industry, so we've got the tan tax now.

Of course now the tanning salons are up in arms about the 10% tax effective in July, which is to raise $2.7 billion over the next decade (compare to Botax which was 5% to raise $6 billion).

But unlike arguing that clients are average wage-earning Janes as the botox group did and that the measure would be sexist (86% of Botox takers are women), people are saying it's racist(against pale-skinned types), unfair (tax the travel industry too?), and targets mom-and-pop stores more (I'll give them that).

But ridiculously, some are saying that tanning is not all that bad for you (from the Indoor Tanning Association) and the tax interferes with what some people ocnsider a way to keep them healthy with Vitamin D.

First of all, 10% on a tanning session is $1 to $2. I don't know if that's much obstruction. Second, scientists have consistenly been calling out the dangers of tanning beds-that they're as poisonous as arsenic, they're so dangerous that there should be a minimum age of 18 requirement, and oh right they cause cancer to a scary high degree. So actually this tax is better than Botox. Making yourself look better doesn't add to the healthcare system burden, but giving yourself cancer does. Not to mention the number one reason why you get wrinkles is because of UV rays, not aging.

All this really shows it like climatologists, tannings salons need some better PR skills too.

Snow Brands Magic Fat-Fighting Yogurt

Never mind feeling betrayed about yogurt using calcium as a reason for why it makes you lose weight. It might actually do the trick now so they can drop those snake oil tactics.

According to a recent study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, one type of bacteria - LG2055 was found to be the magic bug.

One of the largest dairy companies in Japan (besides us food schizo Americans, they always find the most interesting ways to trim the fat) called Snow Brand Milk Products had 87 people drink 100 grams of fermented milk twice a day, with no other change in diet. After 12 weeks, they had lost an average of 1 kg, 4.6% of bad fat (which surround internal organs) and 3.3% of fat-fat. Hips slimmed 1.7 cm, while waist 1.5.

Now before you rush to get this stuff, the company also caused the worst case of food poisoningin Japan in 2000, where more than 14,000 people got sick from old milk and failed to recall quickly. Then in 2002, a (now-dissolved immediately post-scandal) subsidiary called Snow Brands Foods labeled Australian beef as Japanese to receive government subsidies and five execs were arrested on fraud charges.

But EJCN is a respected journal, so hopefully there's nothing to fear.

Anti-Health Bill Folk

Yikes. Some ammo for Democrats: tea party folk protesting the "socialist" bill with interesting literary skills.

Autism 0, Vaccine 2

So last time in the Vaccine v Autism court battles, the court found that mercury preservative plus MMR vaccine does not equal autism.

Just on March 12, the same court also declared that there was no proof that the children's autism was caused by the preservative alone.

So just as we thought we were getting closer to resolving this (first the retraction, then the first ruling, now this ruling...) apparently vaccine-autism believers are now saying that it's just that children are receiving so many vaccines, it causes autism.

Well. I don't know about that. If the vaccine doesn't cause autism, why would more together be evil? Likening vaccines to collateralized financial derivatives seems a bit desperate. But hey, I'm no toxicologist. So if anyone's an expert about vaccines, I'd love to know.

Human Guinea Pigs

Newscientist has a very interesting article today on metabolic syndrome. Apparently your body would rather you be obese than have excess fat build up in your bloodstream, by depositing fat and sugar somewhere safer. In other words, getting fat is a defense against unhealthy eating.

More interestingly, this was tied to another study which injected volunteers' bloodstreams with the amount of fat found in a large beef burger.

Well naturally, it got me wondering. Why would anyone volunteer to do this??

Always a favorite site, McSweeney's has an interesting interview with a human guinea pig ($8,000 a study, 98 percent are men...I think that might say something).

Sleep and Obesity Again and Again

A study was published this month in the scientific journal Sleep on how you're at greater risk of being fat if you're sleep deprived.

According to researchers at North Carolina's Wake Forest University, if you sleep less than 5 hours, you (people under 40, that is) gained 1.8 kg or almost 4 lbs more than if you slept 6 or 7 hours.

On the other hand, sleep more than 8 hours and you gain 0.8 kg or 1.76 lbs more.

Two things I don't get:

1. Considering you burn more calories while you're awake, shouldn't you get fatter sleeping more? That is..if we're not spending that time eating/drinking Red Bulls.

2. These sorts of fat/sleep studies have been done so many times (here's one done six years ago by Columbia University in the same journal and another one five years ago in JAMA)..why is this still news?

H1N1 fallout

This is why we need an improved health communication system, besides the sad display of unnecessary paranoia last year concerning H1N1. Whatever our new healthcare system is, this communication problem has to be addressed.

So at some point even after H1N1 vaccine paranoia instigators panicked everyone out of getting vaccinated, everyone clamored to get vaccinated first, got scared there wasn't enough to go around, and now there's too much of it, with the Dutch government trying to sell vaccines back to manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis. And why the Dutch ministry ordered 34 million doses-enough to give two shots to every person in the Netherlands-is beyond me.

Fertility transplant...T + 2 years

For the first time, a woman who had her only ovary removed and frozen, then transplanted back again, successfully conceived naturally and gave birth. Oh, this all happened in Denmark and was published in 2008, but for some reason we are all noticing it now. Anyone know why?

Obama takes on obesity

Obesity has been quite the ubiquitous, serious issue talked about for some time. And our government's realized that posting calories and banning trans fats (in NYC at least) might not be enough to keep us Americans from eating ourselves to death.

So here is a more unique government program created in some time: LetsMove is the new initiative, to be led by Michelle Obama, to promote healthy diets for children.

The program is a partnership between the US Departments of Treasury, Agriculture and Health, and Human Services, which will put in $400 million a year to make sure children eat the right kinds and right amount of food with more well-placed grocery stores and placement of healthy foods. How? Through "innovative financing" and grants.

Maybe they should just get rid of agricultural subsidies and save us $12 billion annually on higher food prices from backwards Great Depression-era protectionism.

Stem cell research gets a leg up

Here's some good news for the $1.5 billion vitamin industry, especially for vitamin C, which makes up for the most of that market share.

According to a study published in Cell Stem Cell, a ton of researchers supported by grants and foundations in China, vitamin C is not useless! Apparently vitamin C can greatly in stem cell development.

Ever since scientists figured out how to turn human adult cells into stem cells in 2007, therefore bypassing that ethical issue, research still hasn't gone the way researchers hoped because it the transformation was frustratingly inefficient- only getting 0.01 percent of of cells to change into stem cells.

Well these researchers discovered vitamin C can speed up that process over 100 times, making transformation and thus research much more viable, and also increase chances of survival for the stem cell.

Besides that very interesting development, maybe even more intriguing is that this research was supported by 13 grants from China, with one of them, EFBIC RED, being related to China. One of my friends who works in biotech has been complaining about the dangerous shortage of grants in the US, despite this administration's friendlier attitude toward scientific research. So China has been drawing scientific talent instead.

But scientific research is one of those things that builds on other's research, and it doesn't really matter where that research came from except when it comes to patents. Maybe Obama knows this and is willing to take the backseat for now (since we are battling greater troubles). But either way we should really step it up soon or risk losing to China in more ways than Americans would like.

Gene therapy is the new steroid?

In a report published today by three researchers in Science journal, steroids won't be the only thing athletes might be seduced by. Gene therapy might become, or already is, an untested and extremely risky way for athletes to gain an edge over competition:

"Some athletes and coaches will be tempted, prematurely and unwisely, to take advantage of results packaged by some as performance enhancement 'breakthroughs,' even if they are untested in humans and the only 'breakthrough' is faster or stronger mice."

And they aren't just speculating. From athletes begging for help from gene therapist Lee Sweeney and a doctor caught trying to give gene therapy to a fictitious American Olympic swimmer in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the market is certainly there. Plus two of these researchers have worked with the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, established more than a decade ago with International Olympic Committee funding.

So if there's going to be gene therapy doping, we need new tests since steroid doping isn't going to detect anything. And they're on that too, with WADA doing research into developing "biological passports" to monitor an athlete's biological profile over time.

You just wonder, with all this superhuman business going on, from Speedo LZR bodysuits to simply changing yourself biologically, what the point of sports will be. Watching people do incredible stuff with aids of all kinds? Then again I'm not a sports fan in the first place, so even without the doping I wouldn't know the answer.

Vaccines: Good For You!

Autism to H1N1, I can't say enough how important vaccines are. And it's truly scary how few people are getting vaccinated now.

According to a study released today by the Trust For America's Health, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 50,000 people die from vaccine-preventable illnesses a year. This year, only a third of adults were vaccinated flu.

But again this might not be exactly newsworthy, since it happens a lot. In fact, this year had twice the number of people getting vaccines than usual, with H1N1 and FluMist spurring people to action.

So I'd love to see number of vaccine taken charted against flu cases. Unfortunately I don't have access to VaccineTrack by SDI, which seems to be the only thing that records vaccine data. Until I get my hands on the info, let's keep getting vaccinated anyway.

Vaccines & Autism

I've always been skeptical of vaccine paranoia. Not only was all that fuss about H1N1 turned out to be just fuss, it looks like vaccines' link to autism might finally see its day of reckoning.

Andrew Wakefield is the one we can thank for all the hubbub about the vaccine-autism thing, when he came out with a paper in 1998 that said autism was a rare side effect of vaccines against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). So he recommended that the vaccines be given space out, a year apart.

Even when the paper came out, it was pretty controversial. But leave it to parents to shun vaccines altogether, despite countless studies proving the contrary (Danish study, Court of Federal Claims), with even people trying to rationalize such irrational paranoia. Thankfully though, parents might just stop needlessly endangering their kids to scare diseases like MMR (death, infection of spinal cord, swelling of testicles or ovaries, just to name a few).

In a statement by the editors of The Lancet last week, they found in an investigation panel that "several elements of the paper are incorrect," therefore fully retracting the paper from public record. Looking forward to seeing what anti-vaccine camp responds with.

Homeopathy, Beware

Yesterday 400+ Brits took a "massive overdose" of homeopathic remedies to protest Boots' (their equivalent of our Duane Reade, but with better, actually fresh, food) endorsement and sale of homeopathic remedies.

Homeopathy has always struck me as a strange science, if science at all. The vitalist philosophy, born all the way back in 1796 to a German doctor, doesn't just concern all things herbal - it's based on a few (interesting) principles, some of which include the following:

1. Water has memory

2. Therefore diluting something with water makes it stronger, making some remedies so diluted that there aren't even any molecules from the original solution

These two are pretty much agreed upon actual homeopathic ideas. But certain homeopaths also adhere to others, like what ails you can cure you (ie caffeine - diluted, remember - to cure insomnia) and stuff involving pinning the patient with a piece paper with the remedy written on it, which borders on superstition.

Anyhow homeopathy is much bigger in Europe (compared to Americans, where most just think it's "something herbal..?"), where insurance covers it and even Sweden did some 5 year study and found it wasn't cost-effective enough to concern itself with the idea. It seems to be the biggest in India actually, where it's recognized as a national system of medicine.

Yesterday's stunt, called the 1023 campaign, was actually preceded by a letter of complaint the Merseyside Skeptics Society sent to Boots protesting homeopathy a week ago. So I guess there are other people besides me who aren't exactly convinced of homeopathy's efficacy.

They don't really say why they're targeting Boots and not homeopathic manufacturers and physicians themselves. Maybe Boots sells so many of the homeopathic remedies, that Boots is where MSS can dent?

It's hard to tell as the company was taken private in ₤11.1bn takeover in 2007 by now-Executive Vice Chairman Stefano Pessina, so sales figures on homeopathic or even health products aren't available. But he did say in May 2009 that the health and beauty division had sales of ₤6.2bn, so looks like there's a lot at stake, anyway.

Well I guess since this is not taking place in the US, few Americans care. I don't know if I believed much in homeopathy in the first place, but who knows about these things? Just as long as another philosophy doesn't get in the way of you getting medical attention or care when you need it (vaccines, surgeries, which MSS says severe homeopathics do cut out), I don't see why it's so bad. They just better not touch acupuncture, because I tell you that stuff really works.