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Basics: Sonic Hedgehog

Every time I mention this developmentally significant molecule, Sonic hedgehog, I get a volley of questions about whether it is really called that, what it does, and why it keeps cropping up in articles about everything from snake fangs to mouse penises to whale fins to worm brains. The time seems appropriate to give a brief introduction to the hedgehog family of signaling molecules. First, a brief overview of what Sonic hedgehog, or shh, is, which will also give you an idea about why it keeps coming up in these development papers. We often compare the genome to a toolbox — a collection of…

Yet Another Last Chance to Step Up that We Blew...Ho Hum

So everyone raise your hand if you are shocked, shocked and appalled, that the sum up for the Earth Summit Rio+20 conference was, as the UK's Deputy Prime Minister put it "Insipid." The meeting, marking 20 years since the iconic Earth Summit in the same city and 40 since the very first global environment gathering in Stockholm, was aimed at stimulating moves towards the "green economy". But the declaration that was concluded by government negotiators on Tuesday and that ministers have not sought to re-open, puts the green economy as just one possible pathway to sustainable development. Mary…

OMG - Saudis Dare to Use Own Oil?!?!

If you aren't familiar with the Export Land Model for oil, you should be - I've posted about Jeffrey Brown's incredibly important work many times in the past, but it is still common for even people who otherwise grasp the basic points of peak oil to not thoroughly understand that internal consumption dramatically affects potential decline rates. In the simplest terms, oil exporting nations are also nations with oil money coming in and that creates economic growth and modernization that encourages domestic oil consumption. The more oil consumed internally, the less that gets exported. When…

Robert Rapier on Misconceptions About Peak Oil

Robert Rapier was one of the great pleasures of ASPO-USA's recent conference - his presentation was one of the best and as a long-time admirer of his work, it was a pleasure to finally meet him personally. I also like his current piece on the most common misconceptions about peak oil. Like him, I don't like the term peak oil at all - because I think it fixates us on precisely the wrong things - the downslope matters more than the peak. I particularly like this point: Misconception 2: Peak Oil Beliefs are Homogeneous The beliefs among people who are concerned about resource depletion cover…

AWOL

The phone rang about 2 on Thursday afternoon, just as I was about to settle down with my book draft for a long, dull afternoon of revisions. If I was implicitly fantasizing about something to get our adrenaline pumping, I got it. Our social worker called and asked if we would consider taking a 17 month old boy with severe speech delays and special needs. Oh, we'd need to come pick him up downtown before 4:30. Yikes. My first inclination was to say "no" since we've wanted to take a sibling group, but there was something about this that just felt right to both Eric and I. We had planned to…

We're So Lucky

The first thing you need to know is that no one ever complains. I've seen a few people cry, mostly about lost pets, but what they say is "we're so lucky." They say "We're so lucky" as elders in their 80s and 90s put all the possessions of a lifetime out on the street to be hauled away as trash. One couple told me "We're so lucky - we saved our wedding album and one picture of all the grandchildren together." There wasn't time for more before they evacuated. "We're so lucky - the kids lost all their toys, but we're staying with friends who have girls the same size as mine, so they have…

Climate and Food: Bad Enough Without Exaggeration

A number of readers asked me to comment on the recent Argentine report that predicts disaster for world food supplies based on Climate Change in the near term. I hadn't done so because I was honestly puzzled by the report, which got a lot of attention, and raised awareness of climate food issues, but seemed to be predicting a much greater degree of near-term warning than is likely, barring extreme climate forcings. I was a little surprised to see such a comparatively obscure report get so much attention, when in fact, more reputable analyses have been largely ignored. I'm grateful then that…

31 Books - Gardens of Use and Delight

As I mentioned in a previous post about Carol Deppe's wonderful _The Resilient Gardener_, all garden books are fundamentally local. That localness is why I so love _Gardens of Use and Delight_ by Jigs and Jo Ann Gardner. I discovered this book last year at my local library, and have taken it out half a dozen times, enough that I must, finally, purchase it. The Gardeners bought an old farm in Cape Breton and gradually, over decades, transformed it into a place that is both beautiful and productive, despite terrible soil, a cold climate and a host of disadvantages. What's wonderful about…

Sippy Cups, Hard Core Porn and Human Mortification

Well, I'm headed off for my weekend away - I'll be at NOFA NH on Saturday giving the keynote and at the NESEA Building Energy Public Forum Panel on Tuesday night. Posting will be intermittent while I'm gone, but I figure I'd leave you all with a laugh at my expense. Eric had a horrible moment the other day in class. Students were coming in and he was calling up a youtube video on space exploration for his students to see. But somehow while answering a student question, he committed a typo, which brought up, on a huge screen a hard-core porn site with very explicit visuals. After a second…

Into the Well of Souls and Other Tales from Life with Nearly Four Feet of Snow

On Saturday evening as my family went out to synagogue for purim, I was astonished - driving through Schenectady there were only a few inches of snow on the ground. Now we often get more snow than lower elevations, but this time the difference was astounding - we have nearly four feet of snow on the ground. I like snow, but I admit, I've never dealt with this much, accumulated so quickly - it snowed non-stop from Tuesday morning until Saturday night. Sometimes we had gentle flakes, other white-out, but snow it did, and looking out this sunny morning, my four and a half foot goat fences are…

Buck-Bees-Sheep, Buck-Bees-Sheep

Earlier this week I wrote in "Pyr-Buck-Bees-Sheep" that I was struggling to get excited by my present book (still true, although a little better), and that what was keeping me going was farm planning - thinking about what I really want to be doing. I made my list of sustaining plans, to be paid for by the book advance - a Great Pyrenees dog as a guardian for our livestock, a Nigerian Dwarf buck for our breeding program, Honey Bees, and Sheep for our pastures. Oh, and there's some incidental poultry in there, and my seeds and fruit trees, but that ruined the rhythym of my new chant. Well,…

Unapproved results from the LHC: preview of the next 6 months

Last talk of the LHC Shows the Way workshop, with the most provocative title. Entries in this post may or may not be mangled misrepresentations of stuff the speaker made up just to be provocative... Starting point: there is something at ~ 125 GeV and it is consistent with a boson, possibly a scalar, and quite likely a standard model Higgs boson. Agreed. Preliminary results for CMS experiments show branching ratio to ττ decay mode a little bit lower than normal. ATLAS initially did simple crude analysis of this channel. Now redone with more data and better technique. ATLAS expect to make…

JWST muddling along

Congress is moving on 2012 appropriations, and the Science agency "minibus" bill has reported out of conference... So, fiscal 2012 started last month, and funding is currently under a short term "continuing resolution" through friday. Three of the appropriation bills the House and Senate had worked on were combined into a "minibus" bill (as opposed to an omnibus bill of all appropriations), and the differences between the Senate and House versions were hammered out in conference over the last week. Yesterday the conference report came out, and supposedly will be voted on thursday. The bill…

OSHA takes US Postal Service to task for electrical hazards

I happened upon a statement issued last week by the Labor Department saying that OSHA was seeking a first-ever "enterprise-wide" remedy to compel the US Postal Service (USPS) to fix electrical hazards in its 350 processing and distribution (P&D) centers. Twenty-nine of the 350 P&D facilities are designated as OSHA VPP sites, but we don't know if any of those sites are plagued with these electrical hazards. In the statement, OSHA Asst. Secretary David Michaels said: "Even though it was aware of the hazards, USPS failed to institute the necessary measures to protect its workers. The…

Lessons from Exxon Valdez on Worker Health and Safety

A month after the March 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, a small team of public health experts prepared a report identifying the potential health hazards and making strong recommendations for protective action for the cleanup workers. The team included Eula Bingham, PhD (former OSHA chief), Matt Gillen (now at NIOSH), Mark Catlin (now at SIEU), Don Elisburg, and Jane Seegal. The team had been assembled at the invitation of the Alaska Commissioner of Labor after concerns were expressed "about whether the cleanup workers' health and safety have been adequately protected. Among other things,…

Surgeon General warns about asbestos, or not??

Today, Andrew Schneider at Cold Truth tells us  that way back in April, acting Surgeon General Steven Galson issued a long-awaited statement about the dangers of asbestos, a statement urged for years by asbestos-disease victims, their families and public health advocates.   Galson's action was so stealth (intentionally, perhaps?) that the individuals who had been calling for it were never even notified--Not the Senators who marshalled a  Senate Resolution urging a Surgeon General's warning or the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) who supported the congressional…

Chao's Priorities on Display in Postville

Kathy G directs our attention to Thomas Frankâs Wall Street Journal column (sub only), which uses the AgriProcessors meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa to illustrate Labor Secretary Elaine Chaoâs record. In May this plant, which happens to be the countryâs largest kosher meatpacking facility, was the site of the largest single immigration enforcement operation at a single workplace: 389 workers were detained. It turned out that several of these workers were underage â an especially serious problem given that meatpacking is such a dangerous job. The New York Times followed up on the issue of…

FDA Hiring for Public Health

After so many stories about tainted drugs and food, here's some good news for a change: The FDA plans to hire hundreds of new employees to help it fulfill its responsibilities to assure the safety of food, drugs, cosmetics, and medical devices. They've identified a critical need for "medical officers, consumer safety officers, chemists, nurse consultants, biologists, microbiologists, health/regulatory/general health scientists, mathematical statisticians, epidemiologists, pharmacologists, pharmacists and veterinary medical officers" in their DC-area office as well as U.S. regional and…

Bisphenol A Saga Continues

Today the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and other news sources report that the National Toxicology Program has issued a draft brief stating concerns about the effects of low levels of bispehnol A on fetusus and children. Exposure to bisphenol A can interfere with the development of children's brains and reproductive organs, including alterations to breast and prostate tissues that can incrase the risk of developing cancer later in life. Bisphenol A is used in many plastics and in the liners of some food and beverage containers, and most of us have measurable concentrations of it our…

Swine flu and Tamiflu resistance

by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure Currently the only antiviral drugs effective against the swine flu (novel H1N1) virus are the two neuriminidase inhibitors, oseltamivir (trade name Tamiflu) and zanamivir (trade name Relenza). Relenza is in active form at the outset and cannot be absorbed orally. It must be inhaled, leading to asthmatic reactions in some, ineffective dosage in those with breathing difficulties, and no drug at sites beyond the respiratory tract. Despite these drawbacks, it has so far produced little or no viral resistance. Tamiflu is absorbed orally and converted by…

Climate Bill is Less Than Ideal, But Necessary

Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (aka the Waxman-Markey bill), which sets up a cap-and-trade system to cut greenhouse-gas emissions 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% by 2050. It also includes other provisions to promote renewable energy, energy efficiency, and green jobs. As Paul Krugman noted in a recent NYT column, this isnât the legislation weâd ideally want, but itâs the best weâre going to get right now â and this isnât a problem that can wait. A bill with more ambitious targets and fewer giveaways to polluting…

MSHA's Office of Circumlocution

By Ellen Smith The nation may have a new President with grand ideas about the Freedom of Information Act, but letâs be clear: at MSHA, nothing regarding FOIA has changed. The same people are still in charge of FOIA, offering ridiculous redactions and refusing to divulge information which, previous to 2002, was openly shared with the public.  The latest redaction battle comes from Tony Oppegard, a minersâ rights advocate.   (See Oppegard's response to MSHA's FOIA denial.)   Oppegard has filed 135 cases on behalf of miners, but in his latest case, MSHA is denying Oppegard information…

Getting rid of dry cleaning solvent

by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure If you have any of your clothes dry cleaned it's more than likely you are being exposed to a chlorinated solvent called PCE (for perchloroethylene aka perc aka tetrachloroethylene/tetrachloroethene). You may be lucky enough to also get some in your drinking water, too (which means you are also breathing it and absorbing it through your skin) -- because PCE is also one of the most prevalent groundwater contaminants in the US. It has some other nice properties: it causes cancer and birth defects and probably autoimmune disease. And it isn't needed to…

A new class of air pollutant?

by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure I used to joke that the only plan the Bush administration had for dealing with air pollution was to put all the free radicals in jail. If you don't know what a free radical is, it is a highly reactive form of a chemical, usually involving an unpaired electron. Radicals often are short lived intermediates in other reactions and can have half lives in the microseconds or less. In any event we're talking seconds. It is free radicals that are formed by ionizing radiation. They quickly react with whatever chemicals are in their vicinity and if that…

BRAVO! Wireless Tracking Device for U.S. Miners

Two high-tech communication firms, Venture Design Services, Inc and Helicomm, Inc., teamed up to create a wireless tracking system for underground miners, and it is the first product of its kind to be approved by MSHA since the Sago, WV disaster.  That 2006 event, which claimed the lives of 12 coal miners and forever changed the lives of their families, coworkers and community, was the impetus for the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act (MINER Act) and its requirements for wireless tracking systems. Helicomm has been using the CONSOL Energy's Big Branch mine in Mingo County, WV…

Why do OSHA Standards Remain the Same, Even When the Science Changes?

On Monday February 4th, Iâll be doing the Public Health Reportsâ monthly webcast, discussing the recent article Celeste Monforton and I wrote entitled Berylliumâs âPublic Relations Problemâ: Protecting Workers When There is No Safe Exposure Level. Hereâs some background: In a 1947 report, entitled Public Relations Problems in Connection with Occupational Diseases in the Beryllium Industry, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) asserted that the ability of the US government to produce nuclear weapons was threatened by the high incidence of severe health effects associated with exposure to…

"My father died doing what he likes to do: helping people and working"

These are the words of Linden High School student Omar Diaz, 17, remembering his father Victor Diaz, 42 who died on December 1 at North East Linen Supply Company.  Mr. Diaz and a co-worker Carlos Diaz, 41, were asphyxiated by chemical fumes while they were cleaning out a 20,000 gallon storage tank at the industrial laundry facility. New Jersey Asssemblyman Joseph Cryan called immediately for state and federal probes into the workplace deaths, and yesterday, Cong. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Cong. Donald Payne (D-NJ) and Cong. Robert Andrews (D-NJ) held a congressional hearing "Workplace…

Black Lung: Enough Study, More Action

Every few months like clockwork, news stories have been appearing to report a rise in incidence rates for coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP).  The format goes something like this:  Headline: Black lung on the rise! Lead: NIOSH reports sharp increase in black lung cases Body: How can this be?  It's so perplexing. You'd think they're talking about a never-seen-before viral disease.  Instead, it's all about CWP, a disease that is 100% preventable, yet it's being treated as if it is a mystery that can't be solved.  This time, the story appeared in the Beckley, WV Register-…

Industry-funded CPSC Travel: What's Legal vs. What's Appropriate

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Consumer Product Safety Commission acting chair Nancy Nord and her predecessor, Hal Stratton, accepted dozens of trips paid for by companies and industries they oversee. (Nord, you might remember, is in the spotlight for objecting to legislation that would give her agency more money and authority.) Nord defended her actions by saying that they all went through the agencyâs usual approval process, though she also called for an outside review of CPSC travel policies after news of her trips sparked anger in Congress. In todayâs Washington Post,…

Antidepressants, physical dependence, and semantics

Antidepressants are a very useful class of medications. With the introduction of the first modern antidepressant, fluoxetine (Prozac) in the U.S. in the late 1980's, the pharmacologic treatment of depression has undergone a revolution (and an enduring controversy). Older classes of antidepressants were often effective, but came with a host of unpleasant toxicities---MAOIs can lead to potentially fatal interactions with certain other drugs, and even foods, and tricyclic antidepressants, when misused, can lead to fatal overdoses. Prozac, the first of a new class of medications known as SSRIs…

Choosing a medical specialty

It's that time of year, 4th year medical students (like me - kind of) are choosing their future careers and starting to interview all over the country in their residency programs of choice. I've been notably quiet - subsumed in work, study and applications - but I am catching up on writing about the clerkships I've done in the meantime (Pediatrics, Psych, OB/Gyn and Family Medicine). But since I'm applying for residency now (MD/PhDs have an abbreviated 4th year) I figured now would be a good time to tell people about what this is like, and in the coming months what cities I'm going to be in…

Some days it's harder

I'm a little down today. I've told you before that I take care of my own patients in hospice. I've also told you about watching patients and friends lose their battles with disease. This week I had serious talks with several people about end-of-life issues (the details of which I can't really share at the moment). I've also had to tell someone about an abnormal lab result (a very bad one). In fact, the best news I've delivered all week was telling someone they had mononucleosis (rather than something worse). I've found, in my limited experience, that terrible illnesses don't change…

The end of ignorance

The folks at bloggingheads.tv whoring for some link love sent me an interesting link. They had a talking heads session ("diavlog"---damn, that's hard to say) between John Horgan and some other guy (sorry, "Some Other Guy"). Horgan is the guy who brought us The End of Science, a book which was more widely criticized than read. I haven't read it either, but after watching him, I think I need to do a little reading. He's a bright guy, and interesting to listen to, but as live chats often go, there were some errors that deserve parsing, not just because they are errors of fact, but because…

Can't get into med school? Legislate your own doctorate!

I guess it's not just doctors watching this one---an alert reader and a fellow SciBling both picked up on this one. Apparently, in my neighboring state of Minnesota (really, check the map), home to Greg Laden, PZ Myers, and lutefisk, doctor wannabes have legislated themselves into "doctorhood". You see, there is this entity called a "naturopath", or "naturopathic doctor", which is some sort of shaman that likes to think that if you study woo long enough, it becomes science. OK, OK, I'll settle down, but let's examine this "naturopath" thing. You see, to be a real doctor, you must attend…

Surgeons have cool tools

Surely no one can be pissed at me for pointing out that surgeons have some of the coolest tools, so I think I'll describe a few of them that I've seen used a great deal in general surgery. The one most frequently in use is referred to simply as "the Bovie" and it is used for electrocautery. Named for William Bovie it was first used by the famous surgeon Harvey Williams Cushing almost a century ago. The patient in the OR is laying on a large conductive pad that grounds them, and the Bovie device, which resembles a little plastic pencil with a flat, rounded metal tip, generates an…

Attacking the FDA - Pseudoscience masking itself as patient advocacy

Speaking of libertarians, reading the JCI this week I came across this wonderful review of Richard Epstein's new book, "Overdose: How excessive government regulation stifles pharmaceutical innovation". We've discussed Epstein, and his ilk before. The libertarians that routinely attack the FDA as some kind of bogeyman, killing kids, eating babies, blah blah blah, when the market could be making all these drug decisions for us. David Ross, writing for JCI, sees through the nonsense. Although Epstein terms Overdose a study, it's really a legal polemic that could be subtitled "What's good for…

Now I can't wait to see the Golden Compass (what kind of daemon do you have?)

It's already got the fundamentalists up in arms. Apparently, one of them managed to read something outside the accepted cannon of Christ-like books and now they're all bothered about the December 7th release (see trailer) of the first installment of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy - the Golden Compass (IMDB). According to CNSNews.com, leading atheist writers and intellectuals are engaged in a "scientific" quest to ultimately destroy organized religion, particularly Christianity. Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, author Sam Harris and journalist Christopher Hitchens are some of…

Missile defense is a boondoggle

This is why we need the Office of Technology Assessment (and listen to it), Bush is trying to bring back SDI, big time. President Bush said yesterday that a missile defense system is urgently needed in Europe to guard against a possible attack on U.S. allies by Iran, while Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates suggested that the United States could delay activating such a system until there is "definitive proof" of such a threat. The seemingly contrasting messages came as the Bush administration grappled with continuing Russian protests over Washington's plan to deploy elements of a missile…

Mythbusting - it's harder than you think

The Washington Post reports on research that correcting mythical beliefs is more difficult than you'd think. The interesting finding seems to be that if you repeat the myth in the course of correcting it, people are more likely to forget the correct information and remember the myth! When University of Michigan social psychologist Norbert Schwarz had volunteers read the CDC flier, however, he found that within 30 minutes, older people misremembered 28 percent of the false statements as true. Three days later, they remembered 40 percent of the myths as factual. Younger people did better at…

Who are the denialists? (Part II)

What kind of family value is lying? That's the foremost question in my mind when I consider the family values organizations that use false research, lies and denialism to justify their agenda of disparaging contraception, sex education, homosexuality, and exaggerating the dangers of abortion. In light of Falwell's death, I thought it would be appropriate to advance the discussion of the use of denialist techniques to reinforce bigotry and an anti-feminist agenda in the name of family values. I think a good starting point for the discussion of what a family values denialist looks like is Paul…

Speaking of 9/11

You know the most obnoxious thing about 9/11 conspiracy theorists? They make idiots like Jonah Goldberg look right about something. Goldberg, who as far as I can tell has never made an accurate prediction, finally has figured out a great way to make Democrats look bad rather than just embarrass himself and the Republicans. He writes for the LA Times "Just How Crazy are the Dems?", and sadly, he's got a point. The Democrats, their candidates, and sites like Daily Kos have failed miserably to quash support for conspiratorial thinking about 9/11. And it makes them look, really, really bad.…

Another advantage of blogging

As you may have noticed from the extended radio silence, it's been a busy few months between classes (both taking them and giving them), tenure packaging, and research. To add another responsibility to the mix, I gave a talk a few weeks back at the National Institute for Animal Agriculture's annual symposium. This year, the featured topic was antibiotics and agriculture, so I was invited to give an overview of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and livestock. While I'm always happy to give talks to new audiences, discussing my work and the state of the field in general, I have to…

Vaccination doesn't cause autism volume what-are-we-up-to-now?

Oh, let's go back to the start... --Coldplay, "The Scientist" A decade ago, a paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues was published in The Lancet, detailing the cases of 12 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Anecdotal reports from parents of several of these children suggested that the onset of their condition followed receipt of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Wakefield concluded following this research that the MMR vaccine was unsafe, and could play a causative role in the development of autism as well as gastrointestinal disease--the first volley in the…

Mumps in the midwest: a 2006 retrospective

It's hard to believe that it's been 2 years since Iowa's 2006 mumps outbreak (more background and details on that here, here, here, and here). By the time the outbreak ended, 8 states had been heavily affected (and 45 reported at least one case), with a total of 6584 cases of mumps and 85 hospitalizations reported by the end of 2006. All told, this was the largest outbreak of the virus in approximately 20 years, after a 1986-1990 outbreak resulted in a change in the recommended vaccine schedule (adding a booster shot of MMR). A paper out in today's New England Journal analyzes the…

Microbes on a plane

I blogged back in March about World TB day, the theme of which was "TB anywhere is TB everywhere." We know that someone can simply hop on a plane halfway across the world, and be practically anywhere else on the globe in the span of about a day--and their bacteria and viruses are just along for the ride. This is particularly disconcerting when it comes to respiratory diseases, where fellow airline passengers may be coughing and sneezing all over you, or touching shared objects without washing their hands. This is also a scenario that's known to have spread SARS, and may spread a future…

Duesberg on cancer, deconstructed

A few readers have asked me what I thought about HIV "dissident" Peter Duesberg's recent article in Scientific American, entitled Chromosomal Chaos and Cancer. Duesberg's cancer ideas--and his claim of novelty for researching how chromosomal abnormalities, rather than more simpler gene mutations, cause cancer--are something I wanted to write about months ago, after I came across an interesting reference in this post over at Panda's Thumb, where it was noted that "...in certain kinds of cancer, chromosomal instability prevents tumourogenesis, the exact opposite of what Wells [and Duesberg--TS…

The mess that is Project Bioshield

From the New York Times: The last of the anthrax-laced letters was still making its way through the mail in late 2001 when top Bush administration officials reached an obvious conclusion: the nation desperately needed to expand its medical stockpile to prepare for another biological attack. The result was Project BioShield, a $5.6 billion effort to exploit the country's top medical and scientific brains and fill an emergency medical cabinet with new drugs and vaccines for a host of threats. "We will rally the great promise of American science and innovation to confront the greatest danger of…

NIEHS Director Schwartz (temporarily) steps aside

Cross-posted by Revere at Effect Measure In an email letter sent internally to all National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) personnel, its Director, Dr. David Schwartz, has announced he is temporarily stepping aside while the NIH Director, Dr. Elias Zerhouni, conducts an internal review of NIEHS and the National Toxicology Program (NATP), both of which have come under fire from congressional, internal and outside critics (see our posts, here, here and here). Here is the text of Dr. Schwartz's email, as we received it: Dear Colleagues: As you know, there have been recent…

Why Are California Workersâ Comp Insurers Smiling?

by Les Boden Iâm going to answer this question. But before I do, Iâm going to have to explain a few things about (ugh!) insurance. If something bad happens to an insured person or company, the insurer is supposed to help soften the financial blow. You need a $50,000 operation and your medical insurer is supposed to cover most, if not all, the cost. A restaurant burns to the ground and the property/casualty insurer is supposed to cover much of the cost of the damages. But insurers also are investment institutions. We pay the premium, they invest it, and then they pay it back to those of us who…

Can the FDA End the U.S. Tobacco Problem?

Today, the Institute of Medicine released its report Ending the Tobacco Problem: A Blueprint for the Nation. In a public briefing Richard J. Bonnie, Chair of the IOM Committee on Reducing Tobacco Use, explained that âending the tobacco problemâ means reducing tobacco use âso substantially that it is no longer a significant public health problem.â In the U.S., tobacco use claims an estimated 440,000 lives and rings up an estimated $89 billion in health care costs every year. Worldwide, itâs responsible for five million deaths each year, making it the second major cause of death. The reduction…