Remember to check

http://vote.wa.gov/Elections/general/Turnout.aspx

Preparing to vote

United States Senator

Mike McGavick - "I believe that the choice should exist and therefore do not support a constitutional ban on the practice. However,[we should] work to change the hearts and minds of those who would seek an abortion - to show them that there are other options available. I support parental notifications, a ban on partial birth abortion, and a restriction on federal spending for abortion related services. The fact remains that this deeply personal issue needs to remain personal and the choice should exist." - from http://www.issues2000.org/social/Mike_McGavick_Abortion.htm

All of the others are openly pro-choice, just flat out.

United States Representative

Larry W. Ishmael - "Mr. Ishmael believes that there are two instances where abortion is acceptable and those are: 1) when the pregnancy resulted from incest or rape, (2) when the health of the mother if at stake. He has had personal experience with the latter and it took a heavy emotional toll on he and his wife, but the circumstances dictated it. The exceptions Mr. Ishmael draws are because only in those instances does the woman not have control over the decision to become pregnant." - from http://www.vote-smart.org/npat.php?can_id=MWA78412#0

WA state Senator

Toby Nixon

Getting less exciting at this point. My "dummy litmus" issue is making the decision way too easy. Will post the rest if something exciting happens or if real introspection is required.

http://www.wanaral.org/politicalupdates/voteprochoice.shtml - a great place to see who NOT to vote for.

How much phenylalanine?

Aspartame: "In the synthesis of aspartame, the starting materials are a racemic mixture (equal quantities of both isomers) of phenylalanine, and aspartic acid."

So, about half. And Diet Pepsi contains about 124 mg of aspartame per 355 ml bottle. That makes it about 62 mg of phenyalanine per 11.8 ounce bottle. A big refillable cup of about 32 ounces then would net you about 180 mg.

Phenylalanine administration influences dopamine release in the rat's corpus striatum

Entrez PubMed: "A dose of 200 mg/kg phenylalanine increased basal dopamine release by 59%, peaking at 75 min. There was no change in basal dopamine release after the 500 mg dose, whereas the 1000 mg/kg dose significantly reduced (26%) dopamine release. No significant changes were observed in the concentrations of DOPAC and HVA with any of the treatments, indicating that changes in brain phenylalanine and tyrosine levels may selectively affect production of the dopamine molecules that are preferentially released into synapses."

Phenylalanine is a component of aspartame or Nutrasweet. I thought we did studies on rats so we could extrapolate data for human use.

Dopamine Transporter Tryptophan Mutants Highlight Candidate Dopamine- and Cocaine-Selective Domains

Lin et al. 58 (6): 1581 -- Molecular Pharmacology: "Dopamine transport has been modeled as involving a number of discrete steps likely to involve many different domains of the DAT protein. These could include sodium, dopamine, and chloride recognition by an 'outward facing' transporter state, dopamine and ion translocation, intracellular unloading of dopamine and ions, and return of the unloaded carrier to its extracellular-facing state (Povlock and Schenk, 1997). DAT's turnover rate for dopamine could be influenced by mutations that altered any of these processes. Interestingly, dopamine turnover was altered by a higher fraction of the normally expressed DAT tryptophan mutants, 43%, than the fraction at which mutations alter affinities for either dopamine or CFT. Proline, phenylalanine, and aspartic acid mutant series also displayed prominent alterations in turnover number: 41% of phenylalanine substitutions display turnover number changes, although the maximal magnitude of the change is larger for the phenylalanine mutants "

Man, I wish I could figure out what all of that meant! :)

Behavioural and biochemical effects of tryptophan, tyrosine and phenylalanine in mice

SpringerLink - Journal Article: "Tyrosine decreased immobility in the swim test and markedly increased activity in the open field test, an action similar to the psychostimulants amphetamine and caffeine. Phenylalanine decreased immobility in the swim test, but did not affect open field activity. Thus, its behavioural effects are similar to those of an antidepressant. As expected, tryptophan increased brain tryptophan and serotonin in a dose-related fashion. Tyrosine did not alter dopamine or noradrenaline levels, while phenylalanine lowered dopamine, noradrenaline and serotonin."

Whoa, now ... phenylalanine has the behavioural effect of an anti-depressant but a blood-level effect that simulates depression?

Effects of phenylalanine on the release of endogenous dopamine from rat striatal slices

Entrez PubMed: "We conclude that phenylalanine is a less effective precursor of DA in rat striatum than tyrosine and that it can also act to inhibit DA synthesis, depending on its concentration." - J Neurochem. 1986 Nov;47(5):1444-8.

Now I'm looking at the studies to back up a phenylalanine-dopamine connection.

The Diet Pepsi connection

Fox, Michael J.: "He was a blur. That's how I remember Michael J. FOX the first time we talked. It was 1987. I'd come to Los Angeles to interview him for a Maclean's cover story, and we met at a Family Ties rehearsal at Paramount. He bounced around the set like a hyperactive kid, cranking Diet Pepsi, and kept ducking out to smoke Export 'A's, lighting one off the other. During a break, we hopped into his black Ferrari for a quick trip to his house halfway across town, and he tore down the Hollywood Freeway at twice the speed limit, his seat belt unbuckled, the dashboard dusty with cigarette ash, the floor of the car littered with beer cans." - an excerpt from a Maclean's interview with Michael

I'm just looking up sites that mention Michael's heavy use of Diet Pepsi, for future reference. I had heard it batted around as a potential cause of Parkinson's but didn't really dig into it or anything.

from the New England Journal of Medicine

A Randomized Trial of Multivitamin Supplements and HIV Disease Progression and Mortality: "Results Of 271 women who received multivitamins, 67 had progression to World Health Organization (WHO) stage 4 disease or died — the primary outcome — as compared with 83 of 267 women who received placebo (24.7 percent vs. 31.1 percent; relative risk, 0.71; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.51 to 0.98; P=0.04). This regimen was also associated with reductions in the relative risk of death related to the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (0.73; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.51 to 1.04; P=0.09), progression to WHO stage 4 (0.50; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.28 to 0.90; P=0.02), or progression to stage 3 or higher (0.72; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.58 to 0.90; P=0.003). Multivitamins also resulted in significantly higher CD4+ and CD8+ cell counts and significantly lower viral loads. The effects of receiving vitamin A alone were smaller and for the most part not significantly different from those produced by placebo. Adding vitamin A to the multivitamin regimen reduced the benefit with regard to some of the end points examined. "

So, multivitamins increased longevity and/or survival over placebo by 6.4%.

AIDS reappraisal movement

Here's one summary of the movement from Wikipedia.

Doctors Find AIDS-Like Disease Without H.I.V. Virus Is Growing - New York Times

New York Times: "European and American doctors added new reports today to earlier descriptions of patients with an AIDS-like disease but no detectable evidence of infection with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.

The reports raised several possibilities. The new condition, reported in about 30 patients, may be caused by a third variant of H.I.V. Or it may be a deficiency of the immune system caused by some other condition or agent. The new agent might be a microbe or some environmental factor.

American health officials appealed to doctors today to report any similar cases to the Federal Centers for Disease Control. They said the case reports would be used in an intense effort to determine precisely what factors were shared by the men and women with the AIDS-like illness. They said the cases might not be linked. 5 Cases Described

Several researchers have said privately that they believe they have found evidence that patients with the mysterious condition have been infected with previously unidentifed microbes or mutants of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. But they have not formally reported their findings.

If a new microbe is involved, a screening test to protect the blood supply can be developed after it is isolated, the health officials said.

'We do not know of any evidence of transmissibility,' Dr. James Allen, who directs the National AIDS Program Office in Washington, said at a news conference. He said that because the mysterious cases are rare and because the blood supply is subjected to rigorous testing, transfusions are safer today than ever.

But Dr. James Curran, an AIDS expert at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, said here it was not clear whether the known cases represent a new syndrome or a variety of rare medical problems that pose no threat to the nation's health. It is also possible that some longstanding, rare disease of the immune system is being identified now because doctors concerned about AIDS are giving new attention to their patients' immune systems."

Note that this is a news article from 1992.

A Closer Look FAQ's : Proof that HIV Causes AIDS?

Proof that HIV Causes AIDS?: "Since the 28 AIDS-defining illnesses are only defined as AIDS when they happen to people who test HIV positive, it's clear why there would be a 100% correlation between HIV and AIDS. These diseases can only be called AIDS when they happen to someone labeled HIV positive even though they can and do occur in people considered HIV negative. This circular logic renders the argument 'HIV causes AIDS because it's present in 100% of AIDS cases' meaningless. The 100% correlation between HIV and AIDS is an artifact of the definition of AIDS. Here is one example you may wish to use for your debate: Tuberculosis (TB) is a serious health threat to impoverished people in the US and to the populations of many developing countries. Worldwide, TB takes millions of lives every year. Although TB is caused by mycobacteria tuberculosis and not by HIV, since 1987, people with TB who also test positive on an 'HIV test' receive a diagnosis of AIDS. As you may know, TB existed prior to its inclusion as an AIDS-defining illness in 1987 and was described in the medical literature in the early 1900s.

To further clarify the point of the circular definition, take a look at cervical cancer and candida. These AIDS-defining conditions are commonly found among people in non-AIDS risk groups who do not 'have HIV.' Despite the fact that over 90% of women with cervical cancer are not HIV positive, cervical cancer is called AIDS in women who do test HIV positive. Although 30% of all Americans are thought to suffer from chronic candida (John Hightower, MD 'The Yeast Connection') and candida is caused by a bacterial imbalance, not HIV, candida is called AIDS in a person who tests HIV positive."

What Causes AIDS?

HIV & AIDS - What Causes AIDS?: "While HIV infection remains steady at this modest level in the United States, World Health Organization officials claim that the same virus is spreading rapidly in Africa and Asia, creating a vast 'pandemic' that threatens to infect at least 40 million people by the year 2000, unless billions of dollars are provided for prevention to the organizations sounding the alarm. These worldwide figures, especially from Africa, are used to maintain the thesis that 'everyone is at risk' in the United States. Instead of telling Americans that AIDS cases here are almost 90-percent male, authorities say that worldwide the majority of AIDS sufferers are female. With the predictions of a mass epidemic in America and Europe failing so dramatically, AIDS organizations rely on the African figures to vindicate their theory.

But these African figures are extremely soft, based almost entirely on 'clinical diagnoses,' without even inaccurate HIV testing. What this means in practice is that Africans who die of diseases that have long been common there---especially wasting disease accompanied by diarrhea-are now classified as AIDS victims. Statistics on 'African AIDS' are thus extremely manipulable, and witnesses are emerging who say that the epidemic is greatly exaggerated, if it exists at all.

In October 1993, the Sunday Times of London reported on interviews with Philippe and Evelyne Krynen, heads of a 230-employee medical relief organization in the Kagera province of Tanzania. The Krynens had first reported on African AIDS in 1989 and at that time were convinced that Kagera in particular was in the grip of a vast epidemic. Subsequent years of medical work in Kagera have changed their minds. They have learned that what they had thought were 'AIDS orphans' were merely children left with relatives by parents who had moved away and that HIV-positive and HIV-negative villagers suffer from the same diseases and respond equally well to treatment. Philippe Krynen's verdict: "There is no AIDS. It is something that has been invented. There are no epidemiological grounds for it; it doesn't exist for us."

Krynen's remark calls attention to the fact that AIDS is not a disease. Rather, it is a syndrome defined by the presence of any of 30 separate and previously known diseases, accompanied by the actual or suspected presence of HIV. The definition has changed over time and is different for Africa (where HIV testing is rare) than for Europe and North America. The official CDC definition of AIDS in the United States was enormously broadened for 1993 in order to distribute more federal AIDS money to sick people, especially women with cervical cancer. As a direct result, AIDS cases more than doubled in 1993. Absent the HIV mystique, there would be no reason to believe that a single factor is causing cervical cancer in women, Kaposi's sarcoma in gay males, and slim disease in Africans. "

eMedicine - Hepatic Cysts

Article by Heidi Holman Jackson, MD: "Adult polycystic liver disease (AD-PCLD) is congenital and is usually associated with autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (AD-PKD). Mutations in these patients have been identified in PKD1 and PKD2 genes. Occasionally, PCLD has been reported in the absence of polycystic kidney disease. In these patients a third gene, protein kinase C substrate 80K-H (PRKCSH), has been identified. Despite these differences in genotype, patients with PCLD are similar phenotypically.

In patients with polycystic kidney disease, the kidney cysts usually precede the liver cysts. PKD often results in renal failure, whereas liver cysts only rarely are associated with hepatic fibrosis and liver failure."

Elsewhere in this article about liver cysts:

"Hydatid cysts

Hydatid cysts are caused by infestation with the parasite Echinococcus granulosus. This parasite is found worldwide, but it is particularly common in areas of sheep and cattle farming. The adult tapeworm lives in the digestive tract of carnivores, such as dogs or wolves. Eggs are released into the stool and are inadvertently ingested by the intermediate hosts, such as sheep, cattle, or humans. The egg larvae invade the bowel wall and mesenteric vessels of the intermediate host, allowing circulation to the liver. In the liver, the larvae grow and become encysted. The hydatid cyst develops an outer layer of inflammatory tissue and an inner germinal membrane that produces daughter cysts. When carnivores ingest the liver of the intermediate host, the scolices of the daughter cysts are released in the small intestines and grow into adult worms, thus completing the life cycle of the worm."

Polycystic disease of the kidneys complicating the diagnosis of myocardial echinococcosis

Entrez PubMed: "The case of a 30-year-old woman with polycystic disease of the kidneys and a large cyst in the interventricular septum is presented. The hypothesis of an echinococcal disease or of a cardiac manifestation of a polycystic disease was raised. The patient's history, serologic data, and the morphological aspect of the cyst did not give evidence for echinococcal disease before surgery. However, the postoperative pathological evaluation confirmed the diagnosis of a single echinococcal cyst. The presented case shows that even in cases without proven diagnosis of echinococcal disease and preexisting hereditary cysts in other organ systems, care should be taken during surgery to avoid anaphylaxis and preoperative spread of the parasite throughout the body."

They do occasionally crop up together, apparently.

A New Way of Looking at Molecular Motors

HHMI News: "All complex organisms use myosin and its relatives, kinesin and dynein, to move substances around inside cells and to help cells move from one place to the other. Myosins also help parasites enter and infect hosts. Defects in the motors play a role in a variety of human and animal disorders, including retinitis pigmentosa (which causes blindness), polycystic kidney disease, brain development defects, neurodegenerative diseases, muscular dystrophy, skin pigmentation problems, and genetic hearing loss. All complex organisms use myosin and its relatives, kinesin and dynein, to move substances around inside cells and to help cells move from one place to the other. Myosins also help parasites enter and infect hosts. Defects in the motors play a role in a variety of human and animal disorders, including retinitis pigmentosa (which causes blindness), polycystic kidney disease, brain development defects, neurodegenerative diseases, muscular dystrophy, skin pigmentation problems, and genetic hearing loss. "

Then, where do we get myosin?

Abstract for "Getting the Jump on Amphibian Disease"

This article on "Getting the Jump on Amphibian Disease" talks about one documented cause of polycystic kidney disease, in a frog, at least:

"A number of hyperolid frogs were captured in the wild in Tanzania and imported to Germany for scientific reasons in December 1999. The species is as yet unidentified. The frogs were imported as Hyperolius marmoratus but this species does´not seem common in Tanzania. 5 adult frogs (3 males and 2 females) died in air transport and were dissected routinely. 3 specimens showed signs of ascites. In these animals (2 males, 1 female), a polycystic change of the kidneys was discovered by macroscopic examination. The kidneys appeared swollen and contained numerous cyst-like processes (up to 1 mm in diameter) on the surface. These cysts were filled with pale yellowish fluids containing red blood cells, granulocytes and masses of free spores, plasmodia and other developmental stages of a myxozoon parasite."

From the way PKD is described, a parasite theory would seem to fit. Like, starts with a few cysts, they replicate and shut down the organ they're living on, eventually (potentially) "travelling" to other organs.

Something to try

Pumpkin Power Block LP: "This product is a true physical sun block. Titanium dioxide is a natural earth mineral that completely deflects harmful UV rays. A physical sun block is very different from a sunscreen. Sunscreens absorb and diffuse sunrays where sun blocks completely block them. This product is indicated for skins with pre-cancerous lesions, skin cancer and skins using acids of any kind. Clients using Retin-A, skin peels, or acid based products need physical sunblocks. "

Just blogging this for future reference.

Irreversible suppression of gastric acid secretion

Pharmacodynamic modeling of pantoprazole's irreversible effect on gastric acid secretion in humans and rats.: "The relationship between the pharmacokinetics of pantoprazole, an irreversible proton pump inhibitor, and its effect on gastric acid secretion was evaluated in humans and rats."

Does this sound like a drug that should be available to anybody, at any time? Um, no.

Novel treatment for acidosis

Toxemia and Alkalosis Treatment with Hydrochloric acid--1935: "What is acidosis? An accumulation of acids or a diminution of the pH reaction. But what acids? We can glibly say: carbonic acid in the blood or lactic acid in the tissues, uric acid in the joints and blood vessels; lactic, diacetic, butyric in the stomach or intestines, and so forth. We may even visualize hepatic acids in the liver, but unless we know why these acids appear in excess and their relation to alkalosis we shall never be able to understand their true significance or marshal our remedies effectively against them. The only normal acid in the animal body is, of course, hydrochloric acid--- found in the gastric juice. All other acids are waste products. The carbonic acid of the breath is created by the oxidation of the lactic acid of the tissues; therefore, an excess of lactic acid is a failure to oxidize this acid sufficiently. In diseases, such as cancer, tuberculosis and fevers, this failure of complete oxidation is present, particularly so in cancer, where the cancer cells, too, throw off this substance. The amino acids are but stages of food digestion, and, when present in excess, show impaired hepatic and pancreatic functions. The most pernicious form of acidosis is that produced when a stoppage occurs in the duodenum or pylorus. In this condition the HCI of the gastric fluid disappears, and other acids, such as the acetic, butyric, lactic, take its place. Also Dr. L. G. Rowntree, of Philadelphia, says in this condition the chlorine of the blood is usually diminished, the urea increased and the capacity of the blood to combine with carbon dioxide increased."

Bad cholesterol?

The Water Cure recipe drinking water, chlorine, minerals: "In truth, the so-called 'bad' cholesterol is actually far more beneficial than is appreciated. The reason for its rise in the body is because of complications caused by chronic unintentional dehydration and insufficient urine production.

Dehydration produces concentrated, acidic blood that becomes even more dehydrated during its passage through the lungs before reaching the heart – because of evaporation of water in the lungs during breathing. The membranes of the blood vessels of the heart and main arteries going up to the brain become vulnerable to the shearing pressure produced by the thicker, acidic blood. This shearing force of toxic blood causes abrasions and minute tears in the lining of the arteries that can peel off and cause embolisms of the brain, kidneys and other organs. To prevent the damaged blood vessel walls from peeling, low-density (so-called 'bad') cholesterol coats and covers up the abrasions and protects the underlying tissue like a waterproof bandage until the tissue heals.

Thus, the vital, life-saving role of low-density cholesterol proves this substance is of utmost importance in saving the lives of those who do not adequately hydrate their bodies so that their blood can flow easily through the blood vessels without causing damage."

Good grief!

GovTrack: Senate Record: CHILD CUSTODY PROTECTION ACT--Continued (109-s20060725-10): "You wouldn't want your children to drive home from the hospital after having surgery, but this legislation will result in young women driving themselves after having a medical procedure."

And should children be electing to have any surgical procedures, let alone ones that might impair their ability to drive, without their parents' knowledge or consent? That's why they're minors, babe. And if the pregnancy is as a result of incest or abuse in the home, is the answer to have a "caring adult" help the child terminate the pregnancy so that they can remain in the home without the parents ever having to know what happened? If they're being sexually, emotionally or physically abused, take them from the home! Remove the parents' rights to call the medical shots! Then play the "caring adult" role.

Ugh. Senator Murray, you employ weird logic.

on Rep. Jim McDermott, WA

Search Results - THOMAS (Library of Congress): "Whereas the right of families to choose both the number of children they hope to have and the timing of the births of those children is a fundamental human right;"

Wow, that is blissfully ambiguous and could mean all kinds of things that I wouldn't want it to mean, if it were a bill I would feel comfortable supporting.

And I'm seriously wondering where the idea that this is a fundamental human right came from. Like, it isn't listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights or the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. I'm not saying that it isn't. I'm just saying that I'm not clear on the precedent for the statement that it is.

2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There is an ongoing summary of the events of this conflict at Wikipedia.

Perhaps even more telling

Impact on mortality of the AIDS epidemic in northern Namibia assessed using parish registers.: "OBJECTIVES: HIV spread rapidly in Namibia in the 1990s. As in most of Africa, however, few data exist to document the impact on mortality of AIDS. Such data can contribute to knowledge of the epidemiology of HIV infection and inform the development of programmes to mitigate the impact of the AIDS epidemic. DESIGN: This study analyses death records from the registers of eight Evangelical Lutheran parishes in northern Namibia. The dataset covers the experience between 1980 and January 2001 of 4680 couples who married between 1956 and 2000 and their children. METHODS: We examine trends in post-neonatal and 1-4-years mortality, and the age-standardized death rates at age 20-64 years of both men and women. Poisson regression for rates is used to smooth the data and test for statistically significant discontinuities in the trend. RESULTS: Post-neonatal mortality increased more than sixfold and 1-4-years mortality more than threefold between 1991 and 2000. By 2000 adult mortality for women was 3.5 times, and for men 2.5 times its 1993 level. The increase in adult mortality was concentrated at ages 30-54 years for men and 25-49 years for women. CONCLUSIONS: The pattern of mortality increase by age is consistent with the hypothesis that it is entirely due to AIDS. While not widely available, parish registers exist elsewhere in Africa and are potentially a low-cost source of data for study of the impact of AIDS on mortality and demographic trends more generally."

Bra free

Medical Research on Bras and Breast Cancer and Fibrocystic Disease: "A study of almost 5000 women, half of whom had been diagnosed with cancer. Breast cancer rates are related to the number of hours per day that women wear bras. More hours of bra wear per day had higher rates. Women who wore bras 24 hours per day had a breast cancer rate 125 times higher than braless women. More red marks and grooves left by bras were reported by women with breast cancer."

Your Quiz Score: Libertarian

I like the Libertarian website, anyway. It linked me to a quiz to find out where I stand politically: It said that I'm a Libertarian. Here's my place on the political map.



LIBERTARIANS support maximum liberty in both personal and economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence. Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties.

I don't like the word Libertarian though. Sounds too much like libertine.

The Progressive Party of Washington

The Progressive Party of Washington: "If those dwelling in the same household want the right to make medical descisions together, pay taxes as domestic partners, or even to marry, as long as they are not first degree relatives [emphasis mine]--it is not up to the state to interfere."

Hey ... it's either up to the state to interfere or it's not. You can't have it both ways. Annoyingly inconsistent. And all those spelling errors weird me out. Makes me a snob, I'm sure.

Constitution Party of Washington State

They lost me at doing away with minimum wage.

Reform Party of the United States of America

This is the platform that I have resonated the most with so far. The "immigration" section has some bumps in it but I see what they're getting at. I'm all about the "employer liability for illegal workers" thing; that's a definite plus. But I'm disappointed that there's no mention of USCIS reform, since they talk about reforming other federal agencies. It's all very well and good to say "Expel the illegals!" if you have a system that makes legal immigration process sensible. But I was a Canadian who tried to do the legal route myself but had to hire a lawyer and call a congressman just to get my basic green card to be here with my American-born citizen spouse. The current system is so convoluted and broken that your average Joe (or Jose, as the case may be) can't navigate it unless they have pots of money to piss in a hole, years to put their life on hold while waiting for "due process" and an incredibly strong grasp on the English language ... which will still do them no good when dealing with forms where the instruction guide doesn't match the line numbers and the "application requirements" vary depending on what each individual USCIS officer had for lunch.

American Heritage Party

OK, I just got all weirded out reading the AHP Platform. I don't even know where to start. I went back and forth between agreement and "what was that!" all the way down. I'm more than a little weirded out by juxtaposing the claim that a party is advancing Christian ideals with the front-page statement "Imagine a political party that is unafraid to attack socialism at its secular, unbelieving, religious roots!"

Like, they've never read Acts 4:32-35.

State Offices Subject to Election

I quickly found my list of what's up for grabs. And it looks like Representative Rick is due for another election. I also have to look into Senator Maria Cantwell. She failed the first test too.

The first test

Oh dear. It looks like Rick failed my first test. Maybe the guy never actually read the bill before he voted on it. Which still wouldn't get him out of my ethical doghouse.

At this point in my research, I suddenly wonder who is up to be voted for in this election. I know that not every position is voted on every year. So, what is it important that I find out and about whom? My next quest begins.

C-SPAN: CONGRESS GUIDE --

I found a website where I can discover how Senators and Representatives have voted. This is what I was hoping to find, to help me with my "litmus test" of sensibility and compatible ethics.

Congressman Rick Larsen - Issues Section

I like that Rick Larsen supports importing cheaper drugs from Canada. Not that I've given it tons of thought or anything. Just that the argument that Canadian drugs might not be as safe as American ones is so asinine that it makes the rest of the argument about Canadian drug importation suspect, in my mind.

My dad is a Canadian pharmacist. The drug companies are currently economically blackmailing Canadian pharmacists against exporting meds to the US. They have threatened to cut off sales to individual pharmacies whose wholesale demand for any particular drug suddenly(suspiciously) increases. Which would, in practice, destroy that pharmacy's business outright. If you can't provide a whole list of drugs to your regular customers because the makers of those drugs refuse to sell to you, you lose those customers. And you don't get new ones.

I guess I'm just pissed off at drug companies trying to dictate government policy and personal purchasing power.

My elected officials

As my current permanent residence is in Bellingham, WA, that's where I'll have to register and vote. Which is fine. Then, I should be talking to the Harrises to see what's up and how they think I should be voting, on a local scale.

FEDERAL
UNITED STATES SENATE
UNITED STATES SENATOR POSITION NO. 1 - Maria Cantwell

UNITED STATES SENATOR POSITION NO. 2 - Patricia Murray

UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
REPRESENTATIVE CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT NO. 2 - Rick Larsen

STATE
GOVERNOR - Christine Gregoire

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR - Bradley Owen

SECRETARY OF STATE - Sam Reed

STATE TREASURER - Michael Murphy

STATE AUDITOR - Brian Sonntag

ATTORNEY GENERAL - Robert Mckenna

COMMISSIONER OF PUBLIC LANDS - Douglas Sutherland

SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION - Terry Bergeson

INSURANCE COMMISSIONER - Mike Kreidler

LEGISLATIVE
LEGISLATIVE DISTRICT NO. 40
STATE SENATOR DISTRICT NO. 40 - Harriet A Spanel

REPRESENTATIVE DISTRICT NO. 40 POSITION NO. 1 - Dave Quall

REPRESENTATIVE DISTRICT NO. 40 POSITION NO. 2 - Jeff Morris

WHATCOM COUNTY COUNCIL
COUNTY COUNCIL DISTRICT NO. 1
POSITION AL - Ward Nelson

POSITION B - Dan McShane

COUNTY COUNCIL
AT-LARGE - Seth Fleetwood

WHATCOM COUNTY
PUBLIC UTILITY DISTRICT NO. 1
COMMISSIONER DISTRICT NO. 1 - Robert E Ebright

CHARTER REVIEW COMMISSION
COUNCIL DISTRICT NO. 1

PORT OF BELLINGHAM
COMMISSIONER DISTRICT NO. 1 - Scott L Walker

PROSECUTING ATTORNEY - David Stuart McEachran

COUNTY EXECUTIVE - Pete Kremen

COUNTY ASSESSOR - Keith M Willnauer

COUNTY AUDITOR - Shirley A Forslof

COUNTY SHERIFF - Bill Elfo

COUNTY TREASURER - Barbara J Cory

JUDICIAL
STATE SUPREME COURT JUSTICE
POSITION NO. 1 - James M Johnson

What's crazy is how few of these names I actually recognize. Sure, I didn't have a right to vote last year so it didn't really matter. Maybe I should have gotten a head start, though.

I do know the name Rick Larsen. His office helped me with my immigration issues, when my green card was MIA. Of course, I feel inclined to vote for him! I'm wondering about his politics. But I feel strangely inclined to vote for him, regardless. I just have such thankfulness for the intervention of his office in my citizenship proceedings. Which I should. Which is the point, I guess. And ... darn it all ... it's working.

Citizen Sni

I have decided to blog my investigation into the US political system, as it pertains to my upcoming exercising my new-found right to vote. I became a US citizen in April and realize that I don't know enough about voting to actually pull it off. So, I'm going to track how difficult voting really is, for the immigrant citizen. I will log information that I find online, my primary information source, and record it as it influences me, one way or another.

I begin, on Independence Day, to attempt to be an American.


image plucked from: www.wisopinion.com/ blogs/whatsleft/

Shock About the Return of Polio

allAfrica.com: Namibia: "Yet, in Namibia's case, the health authorities have managed to eliminate the indigenous polio virus. The current polio virus is an imported one similar to one in India. Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo had an outbreak of the virus recently."

My rat sense is tingling.

Changes in suicide rates

WISQARS Injury Mortality Report:
Year(s) Suicides Population Rate
1981-1985 142,872 1,168,670,842 12.23
1981 27,596 229,465,316 12.03
1982 28,242 231,664,211 12.19
1983 28,295 233,792,237 12.10
1984 29,286 235,825,040 12.42

1987 30,796 242,289,046 12.71
1990 30,906 249,464,396 12.39
1993 31,102 259,918,595 11.97
1996 30,903 269,394,291 11.47
1997 30,535 272,646,932 11.20
1998 30,575 275,854,116 11.08

1999 - 2003 152,310 1,424,340,747 10.69
1999 29,199 279,040,181 10.46
2000 29,350 281,421,906 10.43
2001 30,622 285,093,870 10.74
2002 31,655 287,974,001 10.99
2003 31,484 290,810,789 10.83

So general suicide rates do seem to be on the decline, in the long-term, with a small, unstable increase in the last bundle of recorded years.

The women suicides are just continually decreasing. Which is odd because I've recently heard the opposite. Gotta check my facts, man:

Women
1981 - 1985 32,818 600,541,759 5.46
1986 - 1990 31,843 627,389,427 5.08
1991 - 1995 30,046 664,371,154 4.52
1999 - 2003 29,950 724,905,030 4.13

Polio vaccinations gone wrong

This is taken from the searchable Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System database.

Case #1
VAERS ID - 53808
Vaccination Date: 1993-02-17
Age - 29.3
Date filed: 1993-06-22
Sex - F
State - PA
Died? Yes (date died: 1993-03-17)
ER or Doctor Visit? Yes
Hospitalized? Yes (days in hospital: 3)
Prolonged Hospitalization? No
Diagnostic Lab Data: cultures & florescent antigens neg;
Previous Vaccinations: NONE
Other Medications: NONE
Preexisting Conditions: allergy: PCN [penicillin]; splenectomy 1972 due to trauma;
Vaccination - OPV, LEDERLE, Lot#0669H, Dose 2

Onset Date: 1993-03-11 Days since Vaccination: 22
Symptoms: ABORTION COAGUL DIS FEVER FLU SYND INFECT KIDNEY FAIL SEPSIS SHOCK
11MAR93 w/fever, cough, flu-like sx; seen by MD collapsed & taken to hosp; presented typical septic process of meningococcal, pneumococcal or H. flu; was 5 wks pregnant spontaneously aborted; went into renal failure; COD DIC;

Case #2
VAERS ID - 101313
Vaccination Date: 0000-00-00
Age - 16.0
Date filed: 1997-08-08
Sex - M
Life Threatening Illness? No
Died? Yes (date died: 1990-10-01)
Current Illness: common variable immunodeficiency synd
Diagnostic Lab Data: IgG 1975-81-42-330 mg/ dL; IgA 1975 3.8 mg/dL; IgM 1975 4.5 mg/dL; stool specimens 1981-1982- positive for polio type 1
Other Medications: FFP [fresh-frozen plasma]
Preexisting Conditions: allergies to cats, dogs, food items, grass, trees; hx of multiple episodes of upper respiratory infect,otitis media, recurrent fever, chronic cough, cinusitis & skin infections
Vaccinations - OPV, LEDERLE

Onset Date: 1981-07-01 Days since Vaccination:
Symptoms: ASTHENIA DIPLOPIA HYPOXIA IMMUNE SYSTEM DIS NO DRUG EFFECT PARALYSIS PNEUMONIA POLIOMYELITIS
pt recv 3 IPV 1964-5&OPV 1967-74;12 YO pt dx w/immunodeficiency synd;tx included infusion of FFP 1975-81;jul81fever 104,diarrhea & general weakness;4 days later stiff neck,diplopia & generalized paralysis requiring ventilation;dx polio

Case #3
VAERS ID - 101803
Vaccination Date: 1996-03-28
Age - 42.5
Date filed: 1997-08-25
Sex - M
State - MD
Life Threatening Illness? Yes
Disability? Yes
Recovered? No
ER or Doctor Visit? Yes
Hospitalized? Yes (days in hospital: )
Prolonged Hospitalization? Yes
Vaccinations - OPV, LEDERLE, Lot# 0738A [plus other vaccines]

Onset Date: 1996-04-26 Days since Vaccination: 29
Symptoms: PARALYSIS FLACCID POLIOMYELITIS
severe flaccid paraparesis onset w/in 30 days of child recv polio vax;

Case #4
VAERS ID - 115107
Vaccination Date: 0000-00-00
Age - 27.0
Date filed: 1998-10-21
Sex - M
Life Threatening Illness? Yes
Disability? Yes
Recovered? No
ER or Doctor Visit? No
Hospitalized? Yes (days in hospital: )
Prolonged Hospitalization? No
Diagnostic Lab Data: LP (day 1 of hosp) CSF w/126 RBC/ml, 531 WBCC, 35% polymorphonuclear cells, 54% lymphocytes;MRI of cervical spine (6wk p/onset) smooth hyperintense band in location of ventral horns;CSF cult (2mo p/onset) positive for poliovirus type 3;
Vaccinations - OPV, LEDERLE

Onset Date: 0000-00-00 Days since Vaccination:
Symptoms: APNEA CNS DEPRESS CSF ABNORM INFECT NEUROPATHY PARALYSIS POLIOMYELITIS QUADRIPLEGIA
A literature report described a man devel rapidly ascending paralysis 3wk p/infant recv orimune;the man devel flaccid quadriplegia & resp failure requiring mechanical ventilation;LP produced CSF w/531 WBC & 126 RBC;cult positive for polio

Fun in Parliament

An excerpt from a Parliamentary transcript on Canadian health care and direct to consumer advertising (DTCA) of medications:

Mr. Jean Joubert: I didn't come here to support advertising. I'm just saying it's a fact; it's there. I'm proposing more education, more information. So don't take my position as supporting advertising.

The Chair: Good. That's what I was hoping you would say.

Mrs. Anne Kothawala: If I could just make one last point....

The Chair: I'll refute it if you do.

Mrs. Anne Kothawala: I can't let this go unchallenged. You say, should we encourage it or discourage it? Our view is that you can't discourage DTCA, because it is here. We have American DTCA, and you can't discourage that.

The Chair: You don't have enough faith in Canadians, because Canadians were also exposed to 18 months' worth of propaganda, George Bush's propaganda, about all the reasons we needed to go to war in Iraq. They saw that on American television every single day for hours, and on every newscast, and they rejected it. It's the same with the tobacco thing and it's the same with split-run magazines.

Mrs. Anne Kothawala: You don't have faith in Canadians if you don't think they can take this information that they say they want and deserve. Let's listen to what Canadians think about this.

The Chair: I think you've spent too much time on this one project, Anne. Your newspaper association better get you out doing something else, a variety of projects. I'd better adjourn before someone hits me over the head with this.

Sure sounds like they're having fun, don't it? :) I inadvertently found this while searching on the official Canadian government website.

CNN.com - Knives, guns, fake bombs elude airport security - March 26, 2002

I guess I wasn't watching the news on March 26, 2002 because I missed this report: "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Security screeners at 32 U.S. airports failed to detect most knives and simulated explosives -- and one of every three guns -- that federal investigators tried to smuggle past security checkpoints in tests after the September 11 attacks, a government official said Monday.

In hundreds of undercover tests conducted between November and February, security screeners missed 70 percent of knives, 60 percent of simulated explosive devices, and 30 percent of guns. Overall, screeners failed 48 percent of the time. "

Jury: Merck Liable for Man's Heart Attack

Merck Liable for Man's Heart Attack:

"ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - A New Jersey jury found Merck & Co. concealed the dangers of its once-popular painkiller Vioxx in a split verdict that gave one of two plaintiffs in the trial $4.5 million in compensatory damages.

The trial was the first to address long-term use of the drug and some analysts said the Superior Court jury's decision Wednesday could prompt Merck to rethink its policy of battling each lawsuit individually.

Jurors said the company also had failed to warn doctors and the public about risks associated with the drug.

The jury, which spent a month hearing the cases of former Vioxx users John McDarby and Thomas Cona, returned a split verdict after two days of deliberations, finding that Vioxx caused McDarby's heart attack but not Cona's. Cona was awarded only the cost of his Vioxx prescription.

'This case was about the McDarbys and the Conas, but it was about more than that,' said Robert Gordon, one of McDarby's lawyers. 'It was about the 100,000 people in this nation who had heart attacks. It's about the tens of thousands doctors who were lied to by Merck about the dangers of Vioxx.'

The verdict sent Vioxx shares down 3 percent in late trading Wednesday evening."

Booyah!

A Brief and Humorous History of Medicine

courtesy of Alternative Biotechnology:

~ A Brief and Humorous History of Medicine ~

100,000 BC: This mixture of roots and leaves will cure you.
2000 BC: Roots don't work. If you're sick, sacrifice a goat.
0050 AD: Sacrifice is for pagans! If you want to get well, you must pray.
1000 AD: Prayer is just superstition. Some blood-letting will do you good.
1870 AD: Blood-letting weakens the patient. This potion will fix you up.
1920 AD: Potions are pure quackery. Here, swallow this pill.
1950 AD: Pills don't work. Now we have antibiotics.
2000 AD: Antibiotics can cause more harm than good. Here, apply these roots and leaves.

The Town of Allopath

Check out this clever video: The Town of Allopath. Nicely put, Dr. Mercola!

Some good "seal hunt activism" points

Check out this Victoria news column.

"If we're to ban the seal hunt on the basis of cruelty, by the same logic shouldn't we ban the slaughter of cows and pigs? The activists will argue that baby seals are defenceless animals. So was the chicken I had for dinner last night, but I don't see the pro-poultry lobby picketing my house."

"Taking the concept one step further, we have disclaimers on tuna cans declaring the product inside "dolphin free." Everyone's worried about harming innocent dolphins, but nobody seems to care about the tuna. Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-dolphin. I'm just pro-tuna."

Cute ... and true.

Conservation basics

Web Talk - Newfoundland and Labrador: "Notably, the McCartneys have never come up with an answer with what should be done when the seal population grows too large for its food source. (Even now, with the hunt still going on, the seal population has tripled since the '70s, growing faster than the fish the seals eat.) Will the McCartneys be so eager to have their photo taken with starving seals when their food source becomes overwhelmed by an unchecked seal population? "

Good point, Scott.

As a Newfoundlander tells it

Ottawa Fails to Support Atlantic Canada: "We've all heard the misinformation some of these activist groups spread. An example of this is the recently published list of restaurants that are supposedly boycotting Canadian seafood. According to one activist group, the boycott is going great and gaining momentum. A consumer group recently contacted over a third of the restaurants named and found that many were still serving Canadian seafood. Those particular restaurants did not even know they were on the list. Others contacted were vegetarian outlets that never did serve seafood and many others never served Canadian seafood in the first place. According to the report, only about 13% of those listed were actually supporting the anti-seal movement in their boycott. "

You tell 'em, Myles.

He's probably a very nice man

CBC News: Bardot protests seal hunt, disappointed by PM: "Paul Watson, one of the co-founders of Greenpeace, helped organize the first campaign to protect East Coast seals in 1976. Thirty years later he's sending a petition with 25,000 signatures to the Canadian government asking it to stop the commercial seal hunt.
'The only reason it exists is because of a stubbornness of the people who are running the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. And we've got to have a fisheries minister who is not from Newfoundland, who can take an objective look at this,' said Watson."

Yes, preferably one that didn't grow up with actual seals or sealers. Better yet, find one whose only source of information is the slanted pap you suckle him with, right?

What is it with linguists and activism?

Another good use for seals

Research Report 2005 North Atlantic Biopharma Inc: "North Atlantic Biopharma Inc. (NABPI) was founded in 2001 and is currently owned by four professors of Memorial University of Newfoundland, Drs. Hu Liu, Lili Wang and Taki Kara from the School of Pharmacy, and Dr. Philip Davis from the Department of Biochemistry. The company develops pharmaceuticals derived from marine biological materials from the North Atlantic Ocean. The marquee pharmaceutical product being developed is a unique seal oil-based lipid emulsion used in feeding patients who have difficulty digesting essential nutrients orally such as traumatic and post-surgery patients."

Senate subcommittee passes breast-feeding bill

Senate subcommittee passes breast-feeding bill: "(Columbia-AP) March 22, 2006 - A Senate subcommittee approved a bill Wednesday to allow mothers to breast-feed their children without fear of humiliation.

The House has already approved the measure.

Advocates hope the bill will encourage mothers to breast-feed, rather than bottle-feed, their children. They testified about the health benefits of breast-feeding to both the mother and child.

Mary Beth Mullaney says women often go to a hot car in 90-degree weather or sit in a dirty public restroom to breast-feed because they fear being asked to leave.

The bill was written after a clerk at a Victoria's Secret store in Mount Pleasant last year suggested that a woman go to a bathroom to nurse her child."

How crazy is that? Been in a Victoria's Secret store lately?

Canadian Seal Hunt Continues - OhmyNews International

This is a pretty well-written article on the seal hunt. There have been reader comments that amend or expand some of the information, including a comment of my own.

Celebrity manipulation

CBC Newfoundland and Labrador - McCartney used by groups, Williams says: "Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams took on ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and his wife during a heated debate Friday night over the Canadian seal hunt, accusing the high-profile couple of being misinformed and used by some animal rights groups.
'My concern here is that the McCartneys are not completely informed,' Williams said during the debate aired on CNN's Larry King Live."

This article is worth a read. Also worth reading is material published by the Canadian government on the seal hunt.

Right ... Newfoundlanders, internationally known for their brutality (check out our crime stats ... 0.4 homicides per 100,000 people in 2004) - NOT! - must support the seal hunt because we're just generally violent and know nothing about it. And our country, Canada, also internationally known for brutality - NOT! - supports the hunt for the same reason. Argh.

Please, come to our country. Tell us how to manage our national resources. You're famous and, where YOU come from, that matters.

Prosecutor: Taunts led to stabbing

Prosecutor: Taunts led to stabbing: "An argument that ended with a knife blade embedded in an 11-year-old boy's heart had begun hours earlier as a childish taunt about a pair of shoes, a prosecutor said in a Cook County courtroom Friday."

Now, what would you assume if this was as far as you got in the article? I assumed that the person who got stabbed was the person who had done the taunting. Not so ... read on ...

"At some point, Terry argued with Clay and made fun of the younger boy's shoes, saying they were "hand-me-downs," Garcia-Camilo said. Clay then left the apartment. A bit later, Terry went to the building's backyard, where he allegedly sold drugs, Garcia-Camilo said.

Two people later told police they saw Terry standing near the open back door of Clay's apartment, Garcia-Camilo said. About 2:30 the next morning, screams came from Clay's apartment, Garcia-Camilo said. He had been stabbed through the heart, investigators say."

Pays to read the whole thing, eh?

This is essentially an overblown bit of conspiracy theory fun but I did a cross-ref google on Miranda and Paxil and found these pictures:


Sarah Paulson, whose character said tearfully, "It's the Pax ..."


Miranda Hitti (click on her name for her bio and an even better picture, that won't display here), a writer for WebMD, who has written such articles as:

• Paxil: Stronger Birth Defects Warning
• Depression May Return During Pregnancy
• Depression Drugs Linked to Withdrawal in Babies
• Paxil May Ease Hot Flashes In Men
• Antidepressants May Be Tied to Bleeding in Gut
• Do Some Foods Battle Depression?

This is contrived, of course, but hubby laughed when I showed him the pictures side-by-side.

Mysterious Expenditures

So, I'm reading this tax return for Heifer International, trying to figure out where their money goes, when it goes. There's a list of expenditures at the end of this return, which I am trying to decipher. Here's one of the expenditures that I can't figure out what it is, from page 16:

21-0300-00 Field Ofc - Fund:Kenya Co Rep 458,052.00

Now, it looks at first blush like someone in Kenya, a Heifer International Representative, made $458,052. But I can't be sure. There are a bunch of entries like this one, beyond the obviously goat, sheep and cow projects, all for different countries. That seems like a hefty overhead for a field office, seems to me.

Point is, I don't know what I'm seeing.

Tax returns for charitable organizations can be accessed for free at www.guidestar.org.

The Empire (Wyeth) Strikes Back

Wyeth wants to keep the market cornered on "helping" women with hormone imbalances, as keep be seen in this FDA docket. Like, they manufacture hormones from horse's urine, which women afflicted with menopausal symptoms take so they can enjoy those symptoms later in life, when they're not quite so busy. And now they want the FDA to crack down on compounding pharmacies that make individualized hormone blends for these women, derived from plants, custom blended on the basis of hormone-levels testing.

A foot note in the complaint said that the only reliable way of testing a woman's hormone levels is by blood sample. I think they've gone from horse p*** to horse s***, if you'll pardon my starry French. See, I've had my hormone levels tested - by saliva. A single blood sample is about as useful as asking a woman once a month whether she's hungry. If you check my estrogen levels on day 20 of my cycle, they'll look pre-menopausal. Trick is, you have to do a sample every 2 or 3 days, graph the results to see how your hormones levels are fluctuating ... which they do, naturally.

Ask a woman on Premarin or any of those other classic HRTs if they had their estrogen levels tested, blood or otherwise, prior to being prescribed these conventional treatments for their menopausal symptoms. Ask them if they had it retested before (or even after) their dosage was increased. Ask them ... then let me know the answer, in a comment.

Let's call this a survey.

Suicidality, violence and mania caused by selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors

"Evidence from many sources confirms that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) commonly cause or exacerbate a wide range of abnormal mental and behavioral conditions. These adverse drug reactions include the following overlapping clinical phenomena: a stimulant profile that ranges from mild agitation to manic psychoses, agitated depression, obsessive preoccupations that are alien or uncharacteristic of the individual, and akathisia. Each of these reactions can worsen the individual’s mental condition and can result in suicidality, violence, and other forms of extreme abnormal behavior. Evidence for these reactions is found in clinical reports, controlled clinical trials, and epidemiological studies in children and adults. Recognition of these adverse drug reactions and withdrawal from the offending drugs can prevent misdiagnosis and the worsening of potentially severe iatrogenic disorders. These findings also have forensic application in criminal, malpractice, and
product liability cases."

A must read for anyone who knows someone taking an SSRI or who is contemplating doing so themselves.

Imaging X-rays Cause Cancer: A Call to Action for Caregivers and Patients

"Imaging and Cancer: Kids Most in Peril

The above being said, the indisputable fact, and in my opinion rendered truly indisputable by the BEIR VII report, is that medical x-rays cause cancer. BEIR VII also emphasizes that there may be no safe lower limit. This statement taken as said has the potential to cause considerable alarm, so my intuitive modification is that perhaps below the dose of a standard body CT, which is approximately 10 mSieverts (mSv; units that radiation dose is measured in), there is likely negligible if any risk for an individual test.

However, even 1 body CT scan (1 CT scan of only 1 of the following regions: the chest region, the abdominal region, or the pelvic region) carries with it some element of risk. The risk that BEIR VII reports is 1 in 1000 chance of developing cancer from a 10 mSv radiation dose. In my prior report, I described what is written on the US Food and Drug Administration Web site, which is a 1 chance in 2000 of developing cancer from a dose of 10 mSv. The BEIR VII report doubles that risk. The risk in children is even higher, with a reported chance of 1 in 550 of developing cancer."

A table then follows with radiation doses for each procedure, of which I'm listing a few here:

X-rays:
Chest - 0.02 (mSv)
Head - 0.07
Upper GI - 3.6
Lower GI - 6.4
Mammogram - 0.13

CT Scan:
Head - 2.0
Abdomen - 10.0
Chest - 20-40
Pulmonary angiography - 20-40

PET - CT - 25

This article then says "Risk escalates with multiphase acquisition in a single CT study, and with multiple individual CT tests."

If you can, sign up to Medscape; you can access articles like this which may not make it to the news.

Which Cut Is Older? (It's a Trick Question) - New York Times

Which Cut Is Older? (It's a Trick Question) - New York Times: "Both of these steaks were red when bought on Feb. 3. Kept refrigerated, they were then photographed on Feb. 16. Why the difference? The one at top was treated with a process that has some consumer groups angered."



I'll just go ahead and kill the punchline - carbon monoxide.

Fat-Reduced Diet May Not Reduce Risk for Cancer or CVD

Fat-Reduced Diet May Not Reduce Risk : "Feb. 7, 2006 - At 8 years of follow-up, a fat-reduced diet was not associated with reduced risk for breast or colon cancer, heart disease, stroke, or cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to the results of the randomized Women's Health Initiative (WHI) dietary modification trial reported in 3 articles published in the February 8 issue of JAMA. Two accompanying editorials note the limitations of this trial, particularly that the diet studied is not consistent with current guidelines for a heart-healthy diet.
'The hypothesis that a low-fat dietary pattern can reduce breast cancer risk has existed for decades but has never been tested in a controlled intervention trial,' write Ross L. Prentice, PhD, from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute in Seattle, Washington, and colleagues. 'Supported by early rodent experiments, country-to-country comparisons linked higher dietary fat intake to breast cancer risk. However, case-control and cohort studies have had mixed results.'

The WHI dietary modification trial took place at 40 US clinical centers from 1993 to 2005 and enrolled 48,835 postmenopausal women, aged 50 to 79 years, without previous history of breast cancer. Of these participants, 18.6% were of minority race or ethnicity. Women were randomized to the dietary modification intervention group (40%; n = 19,541) or to the comparison group (60%; n = 29,294).

The diet was designed to reduce intake of total fat to 20% of energy and to increase consumption of vegetables and fruit to at least 5 servings daily and grains to at least 6 servings daily. Women in the comparison group were not asked to make dietary changes. The primary endpoint was incidence of invasive breast cancer."

In my mind, the most shocking part of this article is actually the bolded portion.

Who does these studies?

In the hormone-migraine study, I came across a reference to this study -

Sexual experience interacts with steroid exposure to shape the partner preferences of rats.: "A three-phase experiment manipulated sexual experience and hormone exposure (perinatally and in adulthood) in female rats housed individually from weaning so as to limit peripubertal social and sexual experience. Noncontact partner preference for a male or estrous female rat was measured both before and after sexual experience, first while rats were under the influence of circulating testosterone propionate (TP) and later after priming them with ovarian hormones (estradiol benzoate and progesterone; EB & P). When implanted with TP capsules and tested while sexually naive, all groups of female rats preferred females to males without differing statistically. However, following three sexual experience sessions with estrous females, differences emerged between the masculinized and control groups in the magnitude of their female-directed preference, with masculinized females demonstrating a significantly greater preference for estrous females. Sexual experience with male rats under EB & P did not result in a significant shift in preference in any group. Histological assessment indicated that the volume of the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area (SDN-POA) was increased by exposure to TP postnatally, and SDN-POA volume correlated positively with partner preference scores but only when rats were both sexually experienced and exposed to circulating TP in adulthood. These results suggest that sexual experience interacts with steroid exposure to shape partner preference."

I narrowly missed being able to get into a lab class when I started pursuing a psych degree, back in 1991. Later, I was glad I had missed it when I went with my friend Kristen to feed her lab rat, which she was doing as part of that class. Rats, with their slinky tails, just kind of gross me out. And when I read articles like this, I'm even more glad I didn't end up firmly on the lab science track. Like, who drew the short straw for this one?

Summation on Ovarian Hormones and Migraines

Ovarian Hormones and Migraine Headache: "A number of neurotransmitter systems and pain processing networks thought to be important to the pathogenesis of migraine headache can be modulated by estrogen and progesterone. Estrogen appears to enhance neurotransmission within the TNC in rat models of trigeminal activation, while progesterone has been shown to inhibit neurotransmission. Knowledge of the effects of ovarian hormones on the central nervous system is essential to an understanding of the pathogenesis of migraine headache."

More on Ovarian Hormones and Migraines

Ovarian Hormones and Migraine Headache: "While ovarian hormones could potentially affect numerous loci within the trigeminal vascular pain pathways, their effect on the trigeminal nucleus caudalis (TNC) has been best studied. Modulation of neurotransmission within the TNC by ovarian hormones could play an important role in the pathophysiology of migraine headache. ... Progesterone may also affect neurotransmission within the TNC as well as decrease plasma extravasations in an animal model of migraine headache. Fos expression in the TNC was decreased by 42% in animals pretreated with allopregnanolone (a progesterone metabolite) after activation of the trigeminal nerve with capsaicin."

This is more like it.

Ovarian Hormones and Migraine Headache

Ovarian Hormones and Migraine Headache: "Cortical GABA levels may vary during different phases of the menstrual cycle. Epperson et al. examined cortical GABA levels with magnetic resonance spectroscopy in 9 menstruating women with premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) and 14 healthy controls. The women with PMDD demonstrated increased cortical GABA levels during the luteal phases (high progesterone/high estrogen) of the menstrual cycle when compared to the follicular phases (high estrogen/low progesterone). The control group showed the opposite results with higher cortical GABA levels within the follicular phases than the luteal phases."

This seems significant but I wish I knew what this actually means, in terms of treatment options.

More on the 2-Day Method ...

"A clinical trial that followed 450 women in Guatemala, Peru and the Philippines, for up to thirteen cycles of TwoDay Method use, found that the method is highly effective. First year life-table pregnancy rate for correct use was 3·5. When all cycles and all pregnancies were included in the analysis, the pregnancy rate was 13·7 (Arévalo et al., 2004)."

Natural Family Planning (NFP)

Natural Family Planning (NFP): "The TwoDay Method is a new simple approach to NFP. It relies on a simple algorithm to help women identify when they are fertile, based upon the presence or absence of cervical secretions.
If the woman notices any secretions on the current or previous day, then she is probably fertile and should not have unprotected intercourse to avoid pregnancy.
If she notices no secretions on either day, then she is not fertile. "

If it's this easy to avoid pregnancy...

RxList - Top 300

The most prescribed medications in 2004. Codeine tops the list at more than 92 million scrips. Yeehaw.

Zoloft (for everything ...) comes in at 14th, with almost 30 million prescriptions. Fluoxetine HCl (generic Prozac) gets more than 21 million. Amitriptyline HCl, another mood-med, gets more than 15 million. Celexa has more than 10 million scrips per year. Paxil CR, more than 9 million scrips. Wellbutrin XL, more than 9 million. Wellbutrin SR, more than 4 million. Abilify, more than 2 million.

These are just the ones I can readily identify of the psych meds. That's at least 100 million scrips written in 2004. There were 293.5 million people living in the U.S. in 2004. You mean to tell me that at least 1/3 of the people in the U.S. are some kind of mentally ill? Why, at that point, you would almost have to redefine normal ...

EXTOXNET PIP - DDT

"Carcinogenic Effects: The evidence regarding the carcinogenicity of DDT is equivocal. It has been shown to cause increased tumor production (mainly in the liver and lung) in test animals such as rats, mice and hamsters in some studies but not in others (73) In rats, liver tumors were induced in three separate studies at doses of 12.5 mg/kg/day over periods of 78 weeks to life, and thyroid tumors were induced at doses of 85 mg/kg/day over 78 weeks (73). In mice, lifetime doses of 0.4 mg/kg/day resulted in lung tumors in the second generation and leukemia in the third generation; liver tumors were induced at oral doses of 0.26 mg/kg/day in two separate studies over several generations. In hamsters, significant increases in adrenal gland tumors were seen at doses of 83 mg/kg/day in females (but not males) , and in males (but not females) at doses of 40 mg/kg/day (73). In other studies, however, no carcinogenic activity was observed in rats at doses less than 25 mg/kg/day; no carcinogenic activity was seen in mice with at doses of 3-23 mg/kg/day over an unspecified period, and in other hamster studies there have been no indications of carcinogenic effects (73). The available epidemiological evidence regarding DDT�s carcinogenicity in humans, when taken as a whole, does not suggest that DDT and its metabolites are carcinogenic in humans at likely dose levels (73). In several epimiological studies, no significant associations were seen between DDT exposure and disease, but in one other study, a weak association was observed (73, 80). In this latter study, which found a significant association between long-term, high DDT exposures and pancreatic cancers in chemical workers, there were questions raised as to the reliability of the medical records of a large proportion of the cancer cases (73,80"

Wiki section on DDT

DDT - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "As of 2005, DDT continues to be used in other (primarily tropical) countries where mosquito-borne malaria and typhus are greater health problems than DDT's potential toxicity. Use of DDT in public health to control mosquitoes is primarily done inside buildings and through inclusion in household products and selective spraying; this greatly reduces environmental impact compared to the earlier widespread use of DDT in agriculture. It also reduces the risk of resistance to DDT."

What the EPA has to say about DDT

EPA History - DDT Ban Takes Effect: "DDT was developed as the first of the modern insecticides early in World War II. It was initially used with great effect to combat malaria, typhus, and the other insect-borne human diseases among both military and civilian populations.
A persistent, broad-spectrum compound often termed the 'miracle' pesticide, DDT came into wide agricultural and commercial usage in this country in the late 1940s. During the past 30 years, approximately 675,000 tons have been applied domestically. The peak year for use in the United States was 1959 when nearly 80 million pounds were applied. From that high point, usage declined steadily to about 13 million pounds in 1971, most of it applied to cotton.
The decline was attributed to a number of factors including increased insect resistance, development of more effective alternative pesticides, growing public and user concern over adverse environmental side effects--and governmental restriction on DDT use since 1969."

What is DDT?

ATSDR - ToxFAQs�: DDT, DDE, and DDD: "What are DDT, DDE, and DDD?
DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) is a pesticide once widely used to control insects in agriculture and insects that carry diseases such as malaria. DDT is a white, crystalline solid with no odor or taste. Its use in the U.S. was banned in 1972 because of damage to wildlife, but is still used in some countries."

On DDT and malaria

Junkscience.com -- Main Page: "In May 1955 the Eighth World Health Assembly adopted a Global Malaria Eradication Campaign based on the widespread use of DDT against mosquitos and of antimalarial drugs to treat malaria and to eliminate the parasite in humans. As a result of the Campaign, malaria was eradicated by 1967 from all developed countries where the disease was endemic and large areas of tropical Asia and Latin America were freed from the risk of infection. The Malaria Eradication Campaign was only launched in three countries of tropical Africa since it was not considered feasible in the others. Despite these achievements, improvements in the malaria situation could not be maintained indefinitely by time-limited, highly prescriptive and centralized programmes"