The original version of this blog is HERE. Dissecting Leftism is HERE (and mirrored here). The Blogroll. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here. Other mirror sites: Greenie Watch, Political Correctness Watch, Education Watch, Recipes, Gun Watch, Australian Politics, Tongue Tied, Immigration Watch and Socialized Medicine. For a list of backups viewable in China, see here. The archives for this site are here or here. (Click "Refresh" on your browser if background colour is missing)


A major cause of increasing obesity is certainly the campaign against it -- as dieting usually makes people FATTER. If there were any sincerity to the obesity warriors, they would ban all diet advertising and otherwise shut up about it. Re-authorizing now-banned school playground activities and school outings would help too. But it is so much easier to blame obesity on the evil "multinationals" than it is to blame it on your own restrictions on the natural activities of kids

NOTE: "No trial has ever demonstrated benefits from reducing dietary saturated fat".

A brief summary of the last 50 years' of research into diet: Everything you can possibly eat or drink is both bad and good for you

****************************************************************************************



21 August, 2008

Psychologists find video games 'not all bad'

PLAYING video games improves manual dexterity among surgeons, making them faster and less likely to make mistakes, researchers have found. The findings were contained in a raft of research about how video games effect the people who play them, discussed at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in Boston.

"The big picture is that there are several dimensions in which games have effects," including their content, how they are played, and how much, said psychologist Douglas Gentile of Iowa State University. "This means that games are not 'good' or 'bad' but are powerful educational tools and have many effects we might not have expected they could."

Dr. Gentile presented several studies on video games including one involving 33 surgeons specializing in laparoscopy, the use of a thin lighted tube to inspect and treat various conditions in the pelvic and abdominal cavities. Laparoscopic surgeons who played video games were 27 per cent faster at advanced surgical procedures, and made 37 per cent fewer errors, compared to their non-gaming colleagues, the study found.

Studies involving high school and college students confirmed previous findings about the social effects of playing violent video games, the Iowa State researchers said. Students who played violent games were more hostile, less forgiving, and more apt to view violence as normal, than peers who played non-violent games. But students who played "prosocial" games got into fewer fights at school and were more helpful to other students, the researchers reported.

Yet another study at Fordham University measured the effect of learning a new video game on problem-solving skills in middle-school-age children and found that "playing video games can improve cognitive and perceptual skills." "Certain types of video games can have beneficial effects improving gamers' dexterity as well as their ability to problem-solve - attributes that have proven useful not only to students but to surgeons," the researchers found.

Source




Fortifying bread with folic acid is 'no protection from heart disease'

Taking vitamin B or folic acid supplements does not prevent death in patients with heart disease, a study has shown. The research is the latest to demonstrate that money spent on vitamins is often wasted. But it also suggests that fortifying bread with folic acid - a measure under consideration in Britain to prevent birth defects - would not have the additional advantage of protecting the nation's hearts.

Earlier work suggested that folic acid, either alone or combined with vitamins B12 and B6, reduced levels in the blood of homocysteine, an amino acid linked to a higher risk of heart attack. Proponents of vitamin supplements argued that lowering homocysteine levels through supplements would also reduce heart attacks. But the new study seems to disprove that.

While homocysteine levels did fall by 30 per cent after a year of treatment with folic acid and B12, there was no corresponding fall in heart attacks or strokes. In the group given folic acid, there was a decline in strokes, but an increase in cancer, though neither was significant.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, involved more than 3,000 patients in two Norwegian hospitals between 1999 and 2006. Patients were given folic acid plus vitamin B12 and vitamin B6, or folic acid plus B12, B6 alone, or a placebo. "Our findings do not support the use of B vitamins as secondary prevention in patients with coronary artery disease," the team concluded.

Since folic acid fortification of flour began in the US and Canada ten years ago, deaths from stroke have fallen faster than in England and Wales, where fortification has been discussed endlessly but never implemented.

Source




Alexander Technique effective for back pain

An alternative therapy used to improve posture and to help women to cope with labour pain can be more effective at treating backache than conventional treatments, a study suggests. Combining exercise with practising the Alexander Technique could significantly reduce back pain and improve mobility, researchers found.

The technique was developed by the actor Frederick Alexander (1869-1955) to help his vocal and breathing problems. It is designed to change the way people move their bodies, with an emphasis on balance, posture and co-ordination. A team from the universities of Bristol and Southampton compared the effectiveness of massage, exercise and the Alexander Technique in 579 patients with back pain. Those who had received 24 lessons in the Alexander Technique reported 18 fewer days of back pain over four weeks compared with those who had been taking exercise alone, according to the study published online by the British Medical Journal today.

Source





20 August, 2008

Basic mathematical ability appears to be innate

Those pesky genetics again! Note that the findings concern differences between Aboriginal groups, not black/white differences. Note also that once again culture is not found to be the explanation for ability differences that Leftists routinely claim. Leftists would have predicted that the more acculturated blacks would have done better. The finding of zero differences due to culture makes it very hard to assert that culture is the explanation for lower black average IQ. Mathematical ability is of course a major component of IQ

Basic mathematical ability appears to be innate, or hard-wired into the human brain, according to an international study. The research found that outback Aboriginal children with only a few number words in their language can still "count" just as well as English-speaking children.

The results of the joint study by University College London and Melbourne University, challenges notions that we need language in order to think and count. It also suggests that mathematical disabilities such as dyscalculia, the little known maths version of dyslexia, is a genetic or neurological disorder rather than a memory or language deficiency. The results have been published this week in the Washington-based journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Study co-researcher Bob Reeve, associate professor at Melbourne University's School of Behaviourial Science, said the findings may have implications for early maths teaching as well as the early identification and treatment of dyscalculia. "The (teaching) language needs to support or focus on the more basic concepts and that may be slightly different to what is going on now," Professor Reeve told The Australian.

The study tested 45 indigenous children aged between four and seven years old. Researchers contrasted children of the Walpiri language group in the Central Desert and that of the Anindilyakwa language group on Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria with a group of English-speaking indigenous children in Melbourne.

Using simple tasks with sticks, counters and play-dough, the study found that the outback children, despite having just three or four generic number words such as "one", "two" and "more than two", still demonstrated strong numeracy skills matching the English-speaking children in Melbourne. This contradict earlier results that found that some indigenous communities in the Amazon with similarly few number words in their language had difficulty with some basic mathematical tasks.

Professor Reeve said the Australian findings suggested that while language is needed for more complex mathematical tasks, humans nevertheless have an innate "starter kit" for mathematics that is likely in the genome. "Nobody is disputing the fact that you need language to build a more complicated set of ideas, but (language) isn't the starter kit," he said. "There is a clear basis on which children can build, but it isn't a linguistic basis."

One of the co-authors is UCL's Professor Brian Butterworth who has written about dyscalculia in his book The Mathematical Brain, and and has written a test to screen for the disorder. Studies have suggested that dyscalculia, in which sufferers are unable to carry out basic mental arithmetic without a calculator, could affect between 3.4 and 10 per cent of the population. "Whether we can remedy the situation (for dyscalculacs) by particular forms of instruction is interesting, but recognising the problem is the first point here," Professor Reeve said.

Source




Breast cancer hope as brittle bone drug gets clinical trial in UK

A treatment for brittle bones can have a dramatic effect on breast cancer when combined with chemotherapy, research has shown. Scientists found that the two drugs acted together to slow down the growth of tumours. In mice given the therapy, growing breast tumours were almost stopped in their tracks.

A clinical trial is under way in the UK that could lead to the treatment becoming widely available to patients. Since both drugs are already well established, and need only the terms of their use to be changed, this may not take long, the researchers suggest. The therapy involves the breast cancer chemotherapy agent doxorubicin and the bisphosphonate drug zoledronic acid.

In the mouse study, doxorubicin was given first, followed 24 hours later by zoledronic acid. When the order was reversed, or the drugs administered on their own, the treatment had little effect. The scientists said that the chemotherapy drug appeared to "prime" the tumour and make it sensitive to the bisphosphonate. Tests showed that the treatment triggered a "suicide" response known as apoptosis in the cancer cells, causing them to self-destruct. It also blocked angiogenesis, the process by which blood vessels are created that fuel tumours with oxygen and nutrients.

The researchers, from the University of Sheffield and the University of Kuopio in Finland, published their findings in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Bisphosphonates are normally used to prevent bone thinning in patients with osteoporosis. They also protect bones from the destructive effects of tumours. For this reason they are sometimes given to men with prostate cancer, which has a habit of spreading to the bones. The new study showed that zoledronic acid can have a powerful direct effect on breast cancer without any bone involvement.

The results of the clinical trial, led by Professor Robert Coleman, of the University of Sheffield, should be known this year.

Source





19 August, 2008

University of New Mexico opens quack medicine center

A fool and his money are soon parted, I guess

Many academic health centers offer programs that include traditional Chinese treatments or Ayurvedic medicine from India. The University of New Mexico goes beyond that, says management of its new Center for Life. "The uniqueness of our program is that we not only embrace Eastern and Western philosophies, but we try to integrate the traditions of New Mexico," said Dr. Arti Prasad, the center's director. Thus, Native American healers and Hispanic curanderas are invited to work with patients at the clinic.

The Center for Life, which opened Friday, offers what Prasad prefers to call "complementary medicine" - augmenting modern medicine with practices and treatments that may go back thousands of years in other cultures. The philosophy has its basis in preventing disease, what Prasad describes as "keeping the body in balance, staying healthy, exercising, eating healthy and doing good things in your life."

Western medicine works to find disease early with such tests as mammograms, while Eastern medicine steps in earlier to try to prevent disease, she said. If there's an imbalance in the body and a person becomes ill, Eastern medicine tries to get the body back in balance, she said. The center's physicians work with yoga instructors, doctors of Oriental medicine or hypnotherapists "to achieve one goal of health and wellness in our patients," said Prasad, a native of India who graduated from conventional Western medical schools but grew up with traditional folk medicine as part of the Indian lifestyle.

The clinic is located miles from the university's hospital. That tends to reduce the anxiety many patients feel in a hospital setting, Prasad said. "That's different from a place where you can sense healing right from the beginning," she said. People enter through a reception area with a water fountain. "The sound of water is very soothing and healing," she explains.

Vibrant, sherbet-tone colors were chosen specifically for healing, giving a sense of joy and liveliness. Music plays throughout the clinic and in the rooms - which are called treatment rooms, not examination rooms. Instead of numbers, the rooms have names: Heal, Hope, Calm, Relax, Pleasure, Longevity. Instead of examination tables and fluorescent lights, they have small water fountains, massage tables and cushy furniture.

The building is new, but the center began last year when the Health Sciences Center expanded the integrated medicine section it started in 2001. Prasad acknowledges that some doctors don't support the idea of integrative medicine, but said more patients are demanding options. "It's here because our consumers are wanting it, our consumers are asking these questions so we have to go out and find the answers for them," she said.

Source




FDA concludes bisphenol A chemical used in baby bottles, canned food is not dangerous

One in the eye for the alarmists -- but it won't change their minds. They NEED to believe in their own superior wisdom

Despite ongoing safety concerns from parents, consumer groups and politicians, a chemical used in baby bottles, canned food and other items is not dangerous, federal regulators said Friday. Food and Drug Administration scientists said the trace amounts of bisphenol A that leach out of food containers are not a threat to infants or adults. The agency acknowledged that more research is needed to fully understand the chemical's effects on humans, and noted "there are always uncertainties associated with safety decisions."

The FDA previously declared the chemical safe, but agreed to revisit that opinion after a report by the federal National Toxicology Program said there was "some concern" about its risks to infants. The plastic-hardening chemical, similar to the hormone estrogen, is used to seal canned food and make shatterproof bottles. It is also used in hundreds of household items, ranging from sunglasses to CDs.

The FDA's draft report was greeted with enthusiasm by the American Chemistry Council, which has defended the chemical's safety. "FDA is the government agency we rely upon to assess food-contact products. They've assessed this issue in great detail and their conclusion is very reassuring," said Steve Hentges, an executive director with the council.

But environmental groups were quick to criticize the agency's conclusions, which they said relied on industry-funded studies. "It's ironic FDA would choose to ignore dozens of studies funded by (the National Institutes of Health) - this country's best scientists - and instead rely on flawed studies from industry," said Pete Myers, chief scientist for Environmental Health Sciences. Myers said the agency disregarded recent studies of bisphenol's effects included in the National Toxicology Program's April draft report. That group's review of animal studies suggested low doses of bisphenol can cause changes in behavior and the brain, and that it may reduce survival and birth weight in fetuses. A final version of the group's findings is expected next month.

Commenting on those studies in its 105-page assessment, the FDA said they had "inconsistencies and inadequacies which limit the interpretations of the findings."

About 93 percent of Americans have traces of bisphenol in their urine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And while studies have suggested the chemical can disrupt hormones in mice, the FDA concluded that the levels people are exposed to are thousands of times below what are dangerous. The FDA released its preliminary re-evaluation ahead of a September meeting where outside advisers will debate the chemical's safety.

Many lawmakers at home and abroad aren't waiting for the agency to complete its review. Canada has announced its intention to ban the use of the chemical in baby bottles, and state and federal lawmakers have introduced legislation to ban bisphenol in children's products.

Some environmental groups questioned the timing of the FDA's report, noting California lawmakers are expected to soon vote on removing bisphenol from children's products. If signed into law, it would be the first state ban of the chemical. "For this to come out on a Friday afternoon, just before California takes action, it definitely raises some eyebrows," said Renee Sharp, a senior analyst with the Environmental Working Group.

At least 10 states besides California are also considering bills to restrict use of the chemical. More than 6 billion pounds of bisphenol are produced in the U.S. each year by Dow Chemical, BASF, Bayer AG and other manufacturers.

Source





18 August, 2008

Rutgers University study links moisturisers to skin cancer

Only worry if you are a gene-altered hairless mouse exposed to heavy doses of UV light.

Moisturizers used by millions of people have induced skin cancer in experiments on mice, a new study says. Researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey tested four common skin creams on gene-altered hairless mice exposed to heavy doses of cancer-causing UV light. The scientist who led the study cautioned that rodent skin was more sensitive than human skin, while other experts said they had reservations about the relelvance of the study's conclusions.

Rates of non-melanoma skin cancers increased between 24 and 95 per cent compared to control mice not treated with creams, the study found. Non-melanoma skin cancer is very common in humans, and is curable surgically. In very rare cases, however, it can prove fatal.

When the scientists, led by Allan Conney, repeated the experiments with a made-to-order cream missing several suspect ingredients - including mineral oil and sodium lauryl sulphate - the cancer rates dropped sharply. Dr Conney said further studies were needed to test the impact of topical creams on people as rodent skin, usually covered by fur, is thinner and more permeable than human skin.

His findings were published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, part of the Nature Publishing Group in Britain. Experts familiar with the study doubted its significance for humans. "The UV source used to pre-sensitise the mice is a very poor surrogate for sun exposure,'' said Brian Diffey, an emeritus professor at Newcastle University in Britain. The dose the rodents received exceeded what most people would experience in a lifetime, he said.

Gordon McVie, a senior consultant at the European Institute of Oncology said: "This has no relevance to causation of human skin cancer and does not prove in any way whatever that moisturising creams are cancer-causing in humans.''

Source




The internet shrinks your brain? What rubbish

One lot of assertions is countered by another lot of assertions below.

Winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature are entitled to grand pronouncements, or else what is it for? So Doris Lessing, last winter, anathematised the entire internet, declaring that it had "seduced a whole generation into its inanities". According to Lessing, the web helped to create "'a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned, and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education to know nothing of the world".

One might wonder how she knew this with such certainty. How many of these young men and women had she met, and held conversations with? Slightly more, perhaps, than the average immobile person in her late eighties.

But Lessing has received confirmation in recent weeks from much more contemporary quarters. In the latest Atlantic Monthly, the headline over a major article by Nicholas Carr asked the question: "Is Google making us stupid?" to which Carr's answer was a Dorisian affirmation. Not long afterwards, Bryan Appleyard penned a long piece entitled "Stoooopid... why the Google generation isn't as smart as it thinks", which - as you can imagine - also took the Lessing line.

"Once," wrote Carr, "I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski." The culprit was the net, which, with its search engines, YouTubes, blogs and Facebooks, seemed to be "chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation". And not just his. Carr quoted a writer who blamed the internet for changing his mental habits. "I can't read War and Peace any more," this writer complained, leaving unclear whether he was trying to re-read Tolstoy's masterpiece, or had got halfway through before webweariness overtook him.

Carr's view was that there are two kinds of reading: deep reading, which - essentially - is books, and web reading, where all we're doing is the much lesser decoding of information. In the first we make "rich mental connections" and in the second we just don't. In one we are properly engaged, in the other we ain't. "In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book," says Carr, invoking an ideal, "or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas." With the net and its instant access to information we turn into "pancake people", widely and thinly spread.

Appleyard had just been inside that quintessential British experience-former, the intercity train carriage. On the train to Wakefield, with his new 3G iPhone, he was "distracted from distraction by distraction". There were the calls, the texts, the e-mails, "and I'd better throw in the 400-odd news alerts that I receive from all the websites I monitor via my iPhone". I get seven or eight a day on my phone - Sky news, Tottenham Hotspur and London weather. Four hundred on one train trip seems excessive. Anyway... "The digital age is destroying us by ruining our ability to concentrate... it's killing me and it's killing you," says Appleyard, who might die more slowly if he elected to receive fewer news alerts.

"Attention," he asserts, "is the golden key to the mystery of human consciousness... the opposite of attention is distraction, an unnatural condition." Which argument, if taken to its logical conclusion, would make the idiot savant, with the inability to be distracted, the most natural human being of all.

The rot set in with television, but "the internet multiplies the effect a thousandfold... Now teenagers just go to their laptops on coming home from school and sink into their online cocoon," wasting their time on stuff like MySpace on which, apparently, they create connections which are all "threadbare", lacking "the complexity and depth of real-world interactions", lacking in loyalty and feeling.

Appleyard fears that we are now "infantilised cyber-serfs", whose lives the internet has made easier, "but only by destroying the very selves that should be protesting at every distraction, demanding peace, quiet and contemplation". Yes, we all should all be monks. Matins, then work in the fields, then simple food, then Compline, some contemplation, then up - slowly - to the Scriptorium to illuminate some manuscripts, supper, prayers and bed.

How often do such Weh ist mir [Woe is me] arguments rest on an idea of our "natural" selves being alienated by the world of progress? Wasn't it better when we all skinned our own rabbits and made our own music? Let us salute the ideal, St Simeon Stylites, up his pillar in the Syrian desert. Now there was an undistracted man.

Let us begin then at the level of personal experience. I have no problem with reading long novels, despite being a daily and constant user of the internet. I was one of the few people I knew who had read War and Peace 35 years ago, and I still am. Far from turning me into a bibliphobe, the internet has made it much easier for me to find and buy books that were hard to get before.

Nor do I recognise in Lessing's and Appleyard's strictures the experiences of my own daughters. I think they know, not just as much as Lessing did in her teens, but a lot more. Nor, from what I can see, are their Facebook contacts "threadbare". They are almost all people the girls know in real life and see regularly, supplemented with contacts that might otherwise have easily been lost, such as friends from earlier schools. In this sense the internet has helped my kids' social life be just as rich, if not richer, than my own was.

How can, for example, the Google project to place on the internet as many books as possible be productive of anything other than greater learning? What we are asked to do is to look. If we have that capacity, then we don't need to be ordained into the learned priesthood, or try to wangle ourselves library cards to which we aren't entitled. Just type three words, in the right order, and as Aladdin says, Open Sesame, and connections are made - some predicted, many fortuitous. Perhaps it is this uncontrollable, self-sustaining spread of knowledge that threatens the "certainties" that Lessing recalls.

Of course, what all three of my Jeremiahs entirely miss about the internet is its quality of engagement. That's what makes the new era so much better than the television age. As Clay Shirky, the American writer, put it, the new media are a triathlon: "People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share..." Isn't that superior, he asks, to being stuck in a basement watching reruns of Gilligan's Island? The challenge is not to lament, but to equip, to teach ourselves how to search and how to discriminate. A GCSE [diploma] in search engine skills, perhaps.

Source




One injection 'vaccine' cure for arthritis within five years

A single injection that could cure rheumatoid arthritis is being developed by British scientists. The treatment works like a vaccine and could be available within five years. Cells would be taken from the body, altered, and injected back into the affected joint.

A team at Newcastle University will now test the vaccine on volunteers with the disease. Scientists in the field are extremely excited about the development. There are 350,000 people in the UK with rheumatoid arthritis, which is a condition where the body's immune system attacks the joints, unlike oestoarthritis which is more like wear and tear of the joints. Rheumatoid arthritis is difficult to treat because it is caused by a malfunctioning immune system, causing inflammation in the wrong places.

Prof Alan Silman, medical director of the charity Arthritis Research Campaign, which funded the research, said: "This is an important potential cure. It is possible one injection could switch off the abnormal immune response. "If it works it could reverse the disease and stop further episodes."

The Newcastle team will test the effectiveness of the new vaccine in eight volunteers with rheumatoid arthritis from the Freeman Hospital as part of a pilot study, which could then lead to larger trials.

The vaccine works by reprogramming the body's own immune cells. Using chemicals, steroids and Vitamin D, the team has devised a way to manipulate a patient's white blood cells so they surpress, rather than activate, the immune system. It is thought the cells will then act as a brake on the over-reacting immune system and stop it attacking its own joints. Although a similar technique has been used in cancer research, this is the first time it has been adapted to rheumatoid arthritis.

John Isaacs, Professor of Clinical Rheumatology at Newcastle University's Musculoskeletal Research Group, who is leading the team, said that although the work was in a very early, experimental stage it was "hugely exciting". "Based on previous laboratory research we would expect that this will specifically suppress or down regulate the auto-immune response," he said. Samples will be taken two weeks after the injection to establish whether it has induced the expected response.

The team also hope to find out if the vaccine is effective only in the joints it is injected into, or whether the new cells spread throughout the body. Prof Silman said the treatment may prove expensive as each patient would have to have their own cells taken and manipulated rather than a drug which can be made in bulk and prescribed to all people with a condition. He said it would be unlikely that the vaccine could be offered in normal local hospitals because of the expertise necessary to manipulate the cells in the laboratory.

It raises fears the vaccine would have to go through the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence cost effectiveness tests. But if the vaccine did work with a one off injection and completely stop the disease it is likely to offer such a huge benefit to the patient that even a relatively large price may be deemed acceptable. Prof Silman said he expected the jab to cost less than $50,000. The research is being funded by medical research charity the Arthritis Research Campaign, which is providing $432,000 over 18 months.

Source





17 August, 2008

"Junk" diet makes kids naughty

What utter crap! All the data show is that mothers who fed their kids disapproved food had kids who were less well behaved -- i.e. working class mothers had rattier children. It's entirely explicable as a class effect, not a diet effect

Eating junk food as toddlers makes kids more badly behaved at school, medics reveal today. Sugary and fatty snacks have been blamed for naughtiness and poor concentration, leading to campaigns for healthier lunches. But research has now found that if children are given bad diet as young as THREE the damage has already been done by the time they go to school.

Studies showed that pupils who had been fed processed grub as toddlers were the worst-behaved in class and performed the worst in tests. The findings emerged from a major study by the University of London's Institute for Education. The probe, part of the Bristol Children of the 90s medical research project, looked at data from 14,000 children. It found that those on a junk food diet aged three were less likely to achieve the expected levels of improvement between six and ten.

Dr Pauline Emmett, a nutritionist from the University of Bristol, said: "We are confident that this is a robust association. "It indicates that early eating patterns have effects that persist over time, regardless of later changes in diet. So it is very important for children to eat a well-balanced diet from an early age if they are to get the best out of their education." The study showed that a child's diet at a later age has less impact on their school performance.

Turkey twizzlers, burgers and chips have been blamed for behaviour problems and the Government has spent millions overhauling school meals following a campaign led by TV chef Jamie Oliver. Many schools have banned junk food completely as a result. Improved meals are expected to boost performance in the classroom.

Source




British fat Fascists want to seize kids

Grossly overweight children may be taken from their families and put into care if Britain's obesity epidemic continues to escalate, council chiefs said yesterday. The Local Government Association argued that parents who allowed their children to eat too much could be as guilty of neglect as those who did not feed their children at all.

The association said that until now there had been only a few cases when social services had intervened in obesity cases. But it gave warning that local councils may have to take action much more often and, if necessary, put obese children on "at risk" registers or take them into care. It called for new guidelines to be drawn up to help authorities deal with the issue.

There have been some reported cases where children under 10 have weighed up to 14st (89kg) and a three-year-old has weighed 10st - putting them at a high risk of diabetes and heart disease. Only last week a 15-year-old girl in Wales was told by doctors that she could "drop dead at any moment" after tipping the scales at 33st.

David Rogers, the Local Government Association's public health spokesman, said that by 2012 an estimated million children would be obese and by 2025 about a quarter of all boys would be grossly overweight. "Councils are increasingly having to consider taking action where parents are putting children's health in real danger," he said. "As the obesity epidemic grows, these tricky cases will keep on cropping up. Councils would step in to deal with an undernourished and neglected child, so should a case with a morbidly obese child be different? If parents consistently place their children at risk through bad diet and lack of exercise, is it right that a council should step in to keep the child's health under review?"

"The nation's expanding waistline threatens to have a devastating impact on our public services. It's a huge issue for public health, but it also risks placing an unprecedented amount of pressure on council services."

The association called for a national debate on how much local authorities should intervene in obesity cases. As a basic minimum, social services or health visitors should talk to the families involved, give them advice and show them how to provide healthy meals. "But in the worst cases [the children] would need to be put on `at risk' registers or taken into care."

Last year Cumbria County Council put an eight-year old girl into care as she was dangerously overweight. Anne Ridgway, of Cumbria Primary Care Trust, said that it was extremely rare for a child to be put into care just because of their weight. "Even then the care proceedings may well have been instigated because of related problems rather than exclusively because of their weight," she said. Extreme cases of obesity could become a child protection issue because obesity "can have very serious consequences for a child's health and the parental behaviour that leads to childhood obesity can be a form of neglect".

Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said: "Children who are dangerously overweight should be brought into hospital, where they can be given 24-hour care for several weeks or months. But their parents should have access to them."

The Conservative Party said that taking children into care was a serious step. Andrew Landsley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said that in many cases "it would be better to help the parents provide better nutrition for their child rather than break up the family".

Source




Why seizing fat kids would solve nothing

A recent Department of Health study showed that one schoolchild in three is either overweight or clinically obese - and they were the ones who agreed to be weighed. A fifth of the children opted out of their appointment with the scales. I'm willing to bet that an even higher proportion of them would have been wearing clothes labelled "XXL".

I usually meet at least one fat child a day in my surgery and I can guarantee that they will have been brought along to talk about a cough, a verruca, anything apart from their weight. More often than not the accompanying parent is also markedly overweight.

We learn how to cope with stress on our mother's knees. It would seem that these children have learnt how to comfort eat from one parent or both. I know that these children will grow up to suffer heart problems, premature arthritis and early-onset diabetes as a direct result of their obesity. I also know that if I comment on it their parent will go on the defensive. They usually make light of it, asking why I am making a big deal about a couple of inches of puppy fat.

Some experts argue that these children will do better if they are removed from the parental home. They need to consider two issues. First, the child may have developed the comfort-eating habit as a way of coping with stress, so being moved to another family will not undo that. Secondly, removal from the family is the most stressful event that could happen in a young child's life and could well lead to even more overeating.

It is easy to talk about "tough love" and locks on the fridge door but the only way to get to the root of the problem is to deal with the family as a whole.

Source





16 August, 2008

Obese people can be healthy too

Some obese people are in good health and are not predisposed to heart ailments, according to a new study. And another shows that being slim doesn't automatically protect you from heart-related illnesses such as high blood pressure and cholestrol, and diabetes.

In the first study, conducted by Norbert Stefan and a team at the University of Tubingen in Germany, the researchers studied the fat around the internal organs and under the skin of 314 individuals with an average age of 45. The obese individuals in the study were divided into two groups: those who were resistant to insulin and those who were not. Insulin resistance is a pre-diabetic condition, meaning some symptoms of diabetes are present and progression to full-blown diabetes is likely.

Those who were obese and resistant to insulin had more muscle fat, fat in their livers and thicker carotid-artery walls - an early sign of artery narrowing, which is a heart-disease risk factor - than obese individuals without insulin resistance, the study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found. As well, obese individuals who were not insulin-resistant had no differences in artery-wall thickness from the normal-weight group. "We provide evidence that a metabolically benign obesity can be identified and that it may protect from insulin resistance and atherosclerosis,'' the researchers wrote.

The second study carried out by Rachel Wildman at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York examined body weight and cardio-metabolic abnormalities - including high blood pressure, elevated triglycerides and low levels of so-called good cholesterol - in 5440 individuals between 1999 and 2004. The study found that some obese people were metabolically healthy. "Obese individuals with no metabolic abnormalities were more likely to be younger, black, more physically active and have smaller waists than those with metabolic risk factors,'' the authors wrote.

Those of normal weight with health risks were older, less active and had a larger waist than the average population. Among the US population aged 20 and older, some 23 per cent (16 million adults) of normal weight had metabolic abnormalities, while 51 per cent (36 million) of overweight adults and 32 percent (19.5 million) of obese adults "were metabolically healthy", the authors wrote.

Source




Patients 'free from cancer' after immune-boost treatment

Cancer patients have been left free of the disease after being treated with a new drug which harnesses the power of their own immune cells. Four of 38 patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma have seen the disease disappear following treatment, while five others saw reductions of 50 per cent in their tumours. The drug, which could prove cheaper than other similar therapies, works by activating the body's own defences to attack the cancer.

The results have been described as an "exciting" and "significant" development in the use of immunotherapy, the process of using the body's own immune system to fight disease. While the trials were only carried out on patients with the blood cancer, it is hoped the methods can be adapated to tackle other cancers. The disease claims the lives of more than 150,000 people in the UK every year and more than one million people are suffering from cancer at any one time.

Earlier this year doctors announced that a patient with advanced skin cancer was free of the disease two years after they injected him with billions of his own immune cells using a different method. However, experts warned at the time that the process could prove extremely expensive. The development of the drug could prove a much cheaper alternative way of providing immunotherapy treatments.

Professor Peter Johnson, Cancer Research UK's chief clinician, said: "These exciting preliminary results come from using them to harness the body's own immune response in a new way. Although the side effects need to be monitored carefully, we hope that this type of treatment will prove to be active in larger trials in the future"

"This a significant study," said Dr Cassian Yee, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, who has had significant results using the alternative method of treating patients with white blood cells grown in the lab. "It remains to be seen if most of the responses are longlasting. Certainly the results are very promising."

The drug, which has been developed by Micromet, in Bethesda, Maryland, was trialled by a team led by Dr Ralf Bargou at University of Wuerzburg in Wuerzburg, German. Of the 38 patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma who took part in the most recent study, two of the seven who received the highest doses of the drug saw their cancer disappear while five others had reductions in their tumours of more than 50 per cent. One patient on a lower dose also became cancer free and remains so after more than a year. The results, published in the journal Science, are encouraging because they suggest that the bigger the dose, the bigger the effect.

Coauthor of the study Dr Patrick Baeuerle, of Micromet, said all seven who received the highest dose responded to the drug. "Two of the seven had a complete response, and five a partial regression (greater than 50 per cent reduction of tumour).". The longest duration of a response was so far seen in a patient who received one quarter of their dose. After 13 months, he remains free of the blood cancer.

There are adverse side effects involved, however, such as fevers and chills, occasionally with confusion and tremor, though all stopped after treatment ceased. Now a further trial is investigating how the drugs works in patients with another form of blood cancer, called acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. Trials with a similar drug are also under way on patients with another type of cancer, which affects glandular tissue and can appear in the lungs, prostate, breast, colon and elsewhere in the body.

Source




Red Bull gives you wings - and heart trouble

ONE can of Red Bull might "give you wings" but it could also cause a heart attack. Young people are being warned to treat the caffeine drink "with caution" after Australian research revealed it could increase risk of cardiac arrests and even death.

The study found one can of sugar-free Red Bull can cause the blood to become sticky -- an indicator of cardiovascular problems such as stroke. Lead researcher Scott Willoughby, from Adelaide Hospital, yesterday warned that the drink "could be deadly" for people with heart abnormalities.

While the prevalence of sudden cardiac death is very low, "it could be more deadly for people who have an unknown cardiovascular abnormality", Dr Willoughby said.

University student Tim Piper admits to drinking Red Bull a "couple of times a week" on its own, as well as with alcohol. "It's a good pick-me-up," the 20-year-old said. "(But) I'll think about it more now." The North Shore resident said he hasn't had any negative side effects, although his heart raced after drinking it. "But that's the whole thing, it's meant to do that," he said.

Red Bull refused to comment yesterday.

Source





15 August, 2008

Vengeful Australian drugs regulator costs taxpayers $55 million

The TGA does not like alternative medicines generally and they were particularly cheesed with this guy because they had lost previous legal battles with him. So they used faults in a few of his products as an excuse to shut down his entire business -- even though there was no evidence of problems with over 200 other products. The fact that they had been too lazy to do any inspections in response to earlier complaints would also have counted against the TGA. The big damages payout is clear evidence that the TGA is a typical bureaucracy: At once lazy and irresponsible in the use of its powers. Since they control all access to drugs in Australia, new and less capricious management for them would seem urgent

The former chief executive of Pan Pharmaceuticals will get $55 million in compensation from the Commonwealth government, after the Federal Court found a government agency had been negligent. Jim Selim was the chief executive of Pan Pharmaceuticals, which went into liquidation in 2005, owing some $180 million after faulty batches of its travel sickness remedy Travacalm resulted in at least 87 adverse reactions and 19 hospitalisations. Symptoms included psychotic episodes, hallucinations and blackouts.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) suspended Pan's licence and ordered the immediate withdrawal of 219 of its products. After Pan pleaded guilty to 24 charges relating to defective medication, Mr Selim launched legal action, claiming the TGA had pursued a vendetta against him and Pan.

Today, Justice Arthur Emmett congratulated legal counsel for reaching a settlement in a case he said could have continued for several more weeks. "I see no reason why the court shouldn't act in accordance with the wishes of the parties,'' Judge Emmett said. He made an order confirming the settlement, which will see $50 million compensation paid by the Commonwealth to Mr Selim and an extra $5 million for legal costs, to be paid within 28 days.

Outside the court, Mr Selim said he was thankful for the result but he was still waiting for a public apology from the TGA for its actions, which he said had come at great personal cost to himself.

Source. More background here




The Pill may put you off smell of your man and ruin your relationship. An update

To millions of women it has been the great liberator over the past four decades, allowing them the freedom to control their fertility and their relationships. But the contraceptive Pill could also be responsible for skewing their hormones and attracting them to the "wrong" partner. A study by British scientists suggests that taking the Pill can change a woman's taste in men - to those who are genetically less compatible.

The research found that the Pill can alter the type of male scent that women find most attractive, which may in turn affect the kind of men they choose as partners. It suggests that the popular form of contraception - used by a quarter of British women aged between 16 and 50 - could have implications for fertility and relationship breakdowns.

The findings, from a team at the University of Liverpool, add to growing evidence that the hormones in the Pill influence the way that women assess male sexual attractiveness. The Pill is thought to disrupt an instinctive mechanism that brings together people with complementary genes and immune systems. Such a couple, by passing on a wide-ranging set of immune system genes, increase their chances of having a healthy child that is not vulnerable to infection. Couples with different genes are also less likely to experience fertility problems or miscarriages. Experts believe that women are naturally attracted to men with immune system genes different to their own because of their smell.

Commenting on the latest study, the researchers said that it could indicate that the Pill disrupts women's ability to judge the genetic compatibility of men by means of their smell. They said that this might not only impact on fertility and miscarriage risk, but could even contribute to the end of relationships as women who stop or start taking the Pill no longer find their boyfriend or husband so attractive.

Several previous studies have suggested that women tend to prefer the smell of men who are different from them in a cluster of genes called the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which governs the immune system. Some of these studies have also found that this effect is not seen among Pill users.

The latest study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society, has now assessed the impact of Pill use in the same women, both before and after they began using oral contraception. A group of 97 women was tested, some of whom started taking the Pill during the course of the research. All had their MHC genes tested and were asked to sniff T-shirts worn in bed by men with different patterns of MHC genes.

Unlike some previous studies, the research did not find any preference for dissimilar MHC genes. However, when the women started taking the Pill their preferences shifted towards the scent of men with more similar genes to their own. This suggests that Pill use has an effect on perceptions of scent attractiveness, even if there is no underlying female preference for similar or dissimilar MHC genes.

Craig Roberts, who led the study, said: "The results showed that the preferences of women who began using the Pill shifted towards men with genetically similar odours. Not only could MHC-similarity in couples lead to fertility problems, but it could ultimately lead to the breakdown of relationships when women stop using the Pill, as odour perception plays a significant role in maintaining attraction to partners."

The research also found differences between women in relationships, who tended to prefer odours of men with different MHC genes, and single women, who tended to prefer the smell of MHC-similar men. This could potentially indicate that if women are tempted to have an affair, they are more likely to choose a man with very different genes, to maximise the diversity of any offspring that they might have.

The scientists said that more work was needed to explain the way various studies have obtained different results on whether women naturally prefer men with different or similar MHC genes. They also cautioned that the importance of scent in human mating preferences remains uncertain.

The research backs up an earlier study of how women's perceptions of partners can alter when taking the Pill. Psychologists from St Andrews and Stirling universities found that women on the Pill tend to prefer macho types with strong jaw lines and prominent cheekbones. However, women who are not taking that form of contraception seem to be more likely to go for more sensitive types of men without traditionally masculine features.

Source




Improved IVF process

A couple have become the first in Britain to have a baby using a new fertility technique, after seven years of trying to become parents. Evie Bloomer was conceived using vitrification - a method of embryo storage that has a higher success rate than the standard slow-freezing process. Her parents, Ian and Rebecca, from Cwmbran, South Wales, have been trying for a baby since marrying in 2001. Mrs Bloomer, 28, suffers endometriosis, a condition in which womb tissue grows elsewhere in the abdomen.

Evie's birth is a landmark because vitrification could deliver substantial improvements in fertility treatment. Embryo freezing allows parents to store surplus embryos should the first cycle fail, or to try for further children later on. The first such baby was born in the United States in 1984 and thousands have since been born in Britain.

But only 50-80 per cent of frozen embryos survive the thawing process because of ice crystals, which can cause fatal damage. Vitrification is an improved method by which embryos are flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen, together with an antifreeze. Around 98 per cent of embryos frozen this way survive thawing. Lyndon Miles, head of embryology and andrology at IVF Wales, who treated the Bloomers, said that a vitrification programme started in August last year was already delivering very promising results. Of 39 couples treated so far, 17 have had a pregnancy and the success rate of 43.5 per cent is more than double the 21 per cent that the clinic has achieved with slow-frozen embryos.

Dr Miles said wider use of vitrification could help the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to persuade more couples to use just one embryo in IVF treatment, potentially cutting the multiple birthrate from one in four to one in ten. "If you are going to have single embryo transfer, your embryo freezing programme has to be very good so you have embryos available as a back-up," he said.

"Though this is a new technique for the UK, early results and publications in Japan and the USA have been extremely encouraging. The first published study on babies born from vitrification shows no adverse effects and there are no implications to Evie's health as a result of the process."

Source





14 August, 2008

Are you eating arsenic with your picnic?

The article below from an Australian sociologist shows some restraint but omits entirely to note the central truth of toxicology: That the harm lies in the dose. The amount of arsenic ingested under the circumstances concerned would be extremely small. For context, note that arsenic was up until not long ago widely used in medicines, so its toxicity results only from a fairly HIGH dose.

The article also makes no mention of why CCA treatment is done. Could it be a scheme by evil businessmen? No: "Wood, such as radiata pine, is treated with CCA to prolong its life. CCA is used for the `control and prevention of damage to timber and timber structures by insects, wood rot, wood fungus and general timber decay. CCA is generally used on wood intended for outdoor uses, such as telegraph poles, decking and fencing, in landscaping, and in building structures'. It is also commonly used in playgrounds, children's cubby houses, public picnic tables, garden edgings, handrails, boat bulkheads, dock pilings and vineyard stakes. CCA-treated timber can often be identified when it is new by its green tinge but this fades with time"

So it would be costly to cease such treatment and would require a lot more trees to be felled in order to replace the timber more frequently

They're panicking in Indiana, US. When TV news show 13 Investigates tested the surface of picnic tables there recently, it found high levels of arsenic. Now, thousands of picnic tables are being removed from parks or painted with an oil-based stain. The picnic tables are made of timber treated with copper chrome arsenate (CCA), used in most of Australia's park picnic tables. Should we also be panicking?

Scientists have demonstrated that arsenic leaks out of CCA-treated timber, even 20 years after it has been treated. It is also known that exposure to arsenic can cause cancer. According to the World Health Organisation [A UN body and a prolific fountain of nonsense], arsenic is a known carcinogen and is acutely toxic. It can cause lung, bladder and skin cancer, as well as reproductive and neurological problems.

But is there enough arsenic in Australian picnic tables to cause such dire consequences? We don't really know because no one has done wipe tests. Without such data, and given the high levels of arsenic found by such studies overseas, can we be complacent about the risks involved? Some nations have taken a precautionary approach. CCA-treated timber has been banned altogether in Switzerland, Vietnam and Indonesia and severely restricted in Japan and Europe. In 2005 the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority cancelled the use of CCA for treating timber destined for garden furniture, picnic tables, exterior seating, children's play equipment, patio and domestic decking and handrails.

But should we be worried about the picnic tables (and play equipment) already out there in our parks and on our beaches? Should our councils be allowing parents and children to eat food off treated timber picnic tables that could be coated in arsenic? People can be exposed to arsenic through touching CCA-treated timber because surface arsenic sticks to human skin. It then can be transferred to the mouth, for example by subsequent handling of food. It also can be transferred to the mouth by eating food placed directly on CCA-treated surfaces.

Yet how many people think twice about eating off council picnic tables? Surely that is what they are there for? The APVMA claims it has no power to control how people use the structures made from CCA-treated timber. It is local councils that control the ongoing use of existing picnic tables. Local councils may be comforted by the fact that picnic tables have been around for many years and no one has yet set out to prove that they got cancer from them.

But who would dream that their lung or bladder or skin cancer might have been caused by eating off picnic tables in their youth? Especially given that Australian authorities didn't admit to the potential problem until recently. The lack of past lawsuits will not provide comfort to the wider community. Perhaps only tests showing picnic tables are arsenic-free will do that. Otherwise there might be good reason to follow Indiana park authorities and do something about all those picnic tables.

Source




New pill to offer respite from the common cold

A PILL to cure the common cold has been developed by scientists. The holy grail of cold research, it could be used to clear up sniffles in healthy people and prevent life-threatening infections in asthma and cystic fibrosis sufferers. Trials on hundreds of British volunteers started yesterday. If successful, the cold-busting pill could be on the market in five years. Effective against the bugs that cause half of colds in adults and almost all colds in children, it could net its Australian creators billions of dollars a year.

The drug, which is known as BTA798, latches on to cold-causing human rhinoviruses (HRV), preventing them breaking into the body's cells and causing infection. In a double-pronged attack, it also stops any infection that has taken hold from spreading. In lab tests, the drug killed large quantities of cold virus within a couple of hours. The first limited human trials finished last year and showed BTA798, which is being developed by the Victoria-based Biota Holdings, to be safe.

Peter Cook, the company's chief executive officer, hailed the results as a significant milestone in the development of what could be a world-first anti-viral treatment for HRV in high-risk patients. Larger-scale trials are now under way to determine whether it can actually prevent people from catching a cold. Two hundred healthy people will be given the drug or a dummy pill before being exposed to human rhinovirus. Three different doses of the drug will be used, in order to determine which, if any, can keep the infection at bay.

Source





13 August, 2008

BOOK REVIEW of Hyping Health Risks By Geoffrey C. Kabat

Review By RONALD BAILEY

Does the wearing of shoes with heels cause schizophrenia? That was the contention made in 2004 by a Swedish physician in Medical Hypotheses, a scientific journal that specializes in out-of-the-box thinking. "Heeled footwear," the physician observed, "began to be used more than 1,000 years ago, and led to the occurrence of the first cases of schizophrenia." As heeled shoes sprinted across the world, he said, so did the incidence of the disease. He called for epidemiological studies to check his hypothesis.

It is possible that some epidemiologist somewhere is crunching heeled-shoe data and preparing a paper on the subject. And if such a paper appears, the media will treat it with sober regard -- assuming that it confirms the doctor's wild idea. A Nexis survey of newspaper headlines from the past week finds epidemiological studies playing a role in all sorts of claims: that sleep apnea increases the risk of early death; that thunderstorms provoke asthma attacks; that cellphones might cause cancer; that flu shots may not help the elderly; that consuming fruit drinks increases the risk of diabetes in women. Some of these reports may turn out to be important but most will amount to a kind of scientific noise, adding to our uneasy sense that, in the modern world, danger lurks on every side.

In "Hyping Health Risks," Geoffrey Kabat, an epidemiologist himself, shows how activists, regulators and scientists distort or magnify minuscule environmental risks. He duly notes the accomplishments of epidemiology, such as uncovering the risks of tobacco smoking and the dangers of exposure to vinyl chloride and asbestos. And he acknowledges that industry has attempted to manipulate science. But he is concerned about a less reported problem: "The highly charged climate surrounding environmental health risks can create powerful pressure for scientists to conform and to fall into line with a particular position."

Mr. Kabat looks at four claims -- those trying to link cancer to man-made chemicals, electromagnetic fields and radon and to link cancer and heart disease to passive smoking. In each, he finds more bias than biology -- until further research, years later, corrects exaggeration or error.

In the 1980s, some women on Long Island thought they noted a high incidence of breast cancer in their community and charged that man-made chemicals were to blame. In 1993, a tiny, overhyped study, examining the blood of Long Island women, announced that it had found a strong association between DDE, a metabolic molecule derived from the pesticide DDT, and breast cancer. Alarmed activists persuaded Congress to fund a massive epidemiological study devoted to the causes of breast cancer among women on Long Island.

In 2002, the Long Island study found no association between cancer and blood levels of DDE or other synthetic chemicals, including PCBs. That same year the American Cancer Society reported that 22 studies could find no association between breast cancer and compounds like DDE and PCBs. "The politicization of breast cancer," Mr. Kabat notes, "led initially to the carrying out of the studies based on weak hypotheses and inadequate methods, which were greatly oversold."

In 1979, a small study suggested that electromagnetic fields (EMF) from power lines and home appliances might cause cancer, especially in children. In 1989, Paul Brodeur played up these findings in the New Yorker and charged industry with a coverup. Mr. Kabat explains in detail how several epidemiologists slanted their studies so that, he believes, they could justify further funding for their EMF research. Indeed, epidemiologists kept torturing weak data with sophisticated statistical techniques, trying to force electromagnetic fields to confess to murder. They never did. Physicists eventually showed the biological implausibility of the EMF claim. One physicist, Mr. Kabat says, "likened concern over weak EMF from power lines to the fear that leaves falling from trees could fracture a person's skull."

In the 1990s, EPA regulators were eager to charge that residential exposure to radon -- a gas that arises naturally from certain geological formations -- was a major cause of lung cancer. They pointed to several studies to make the case and proposed a host of expensive regulations. It turned out that 90% of the lung cancer that the EPA's studies attributed to radon was actually associated with cigarette smoking.

Finally, Mr. Kabat takes up the vexed case of passive smoking. He shows how anti-smoking activists, in collusion with EPA regulators, steam-rolled over evidence that passive smoke is a very minor cause of chronic lung disease. An irritant, yes, but a death sentence for bystanders, no. The EPA's 1992 meta-analysis -- the source for anti-smoking regulations ever since -- simply tossed out studies that failed to show an association between cancer and passive smoking.

I know whereof Mr. Kabat speaks. In 1992, as the producer of a PBS program, I interviewed an epidemiologist who was on the EPA's passive-smoking scientific advisory board. He admitted to me that the EPA had put its thumb on the evidentiary scales to come to its conclusion. He had lent his name to this process because, he said, he wanted "to remain relevant to the policy process." Naturally, he didn't want to appear on TV contradicting the EPA.

Mr. Kabat himself got burned by activist fury when, in 2003, he and a colleague published a study using 40 years of American Cancer Society data. The study found "no evidence of an elevated risk of coronary heart disease or lung cancer" in the nonsmoking spouses of smokers. Activists attacked the study before publication by saying that Mr. Kabat had been funded by tobacco money. In fact, only the last seven years of data collection had been funded by a research center supported largely by tobacco companies. Mr. Kabat was not prepared for this kind of scientifically irrelevant and dishonest assault. But some good came of it: It provoked him to write this book.

Source




Breakthrough curbs cancer cells

Australian scientists are hoping to cure leukaemia, asthma and rheumatoid arthritis after their breakthrough discovery of how to stop killer blood cells growing. The team has unlocked the secrets behind the protein which controls the way the blood cancer cells spread when it is damaged - and have found a way to stop its deadly process.

Work is now starting to design a drug to prevent the damaged proteins operating, effectively stopping the cancer as well as asthma and inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.

After spending a decade uncovering the structure of the receptor protein, which sits on the surface of white blood cells, lead researcher Professor Michael Parker, of Melbourne's St Vincent's Institute, said scientists could now build a drug to attach itself to the protein and stop it sending messages into the cells telling them to multiply unchecked. "If we can stop the signal for the proliferation of uncontrolled growth of the cells then we can stop the leukaemia in its tracks," he said.

Working with molecular biologists at Adelaide's Hanson Institute, the Melbourne scientists used X-ray and synchrotron imaging to build an image of the structure of the protein for the first time, hoping to find a way to block its process. The GM-CSF hormone - which controls the production of blood cells in the body - works by attaching itself to the receptor proteins, which then send a message into white blood cells telling them to multiply. When damaged, the protein's messages cause an over-production of cells or cells which persist too long, resulting in diseases such as leukaemia as well as some inflammatory conditions.

The major breakthrough came when the researchers realised the proteins linked together to form networks on the surface of white blood cells after being activated by the hormone, and that by stopping the networks forming they could also stop the growth.

While the drug development phase has only just begun, Professor Parker said it would be easier to target a protein on the surface of the cell rather than trying to come up with a molecule to break its way into the centre of the cell.

Source





12 August, 2008

Medical breakthrough? Lettuce, tobacco and diabetes

This story has been around for a while. I must say I do not understand the logic of it. But in vivo trials have apparently been successful

Capsules of insulin produced in genetically modified lettuce could hold the key to restoring the body’s ability to produce insulin and help millions of Americans who suffer from insulin-dependent diabetes, according to University of Central Florida biomedical researchers. Professor Henry Daniell’s research team genetically engineered tobacco plants with the insulin gene and then administered freeze-dried plant cells to five-week-old diabetic mice as a powder for eight weeks. By the end of the study, the diabetic mice had normal blood and urine sugar levels, and their cells were producing normal levels of insulin.

Those results and prior research indicate that insulin capsules could someday be used to prevent diabetes before symptoms appear and treat the disease in its later stages, Daniell said. He has since proposed using lettuce instead of tobacco to produce the insulin because that crop can be produced cheaply and avoids the negative stigma associated with tobacco. The National Institutes of Health provided $2 million to fund the UCF study. The findings are reported in the July issue of Plant Biotechnology Journal.

Insulin-dependent, or Type 1, diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system attacks and destroys insulin and insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. Insulin is a hormone that is needed to convert sugar, starches and other food into energy.

Insulin typically is given through shots and not pills so the hormone can go straight into the bloodstream. In Daniell’s method, plant cell walls made of cellulose initially prevent insulin from degrading. When the plant cells containing insulin reach the intestine, bacteria living there begin to slowly break down the cell walls and gradually release insulin into the bloodstream. “Currently, the only relief for diabetes is a momentary relief,” Daniell said. “Diabetics still have to monitor their blood and urine sugar levels. They have to inject themselves with insulin several times a day. Having a permanent solution for this, I’m sure, would be pretty exciting.”

Though produced in lettuce, the insulin would be delivered to human patients as a powder in capsules because the dosage must be controlled carefully. If human trials are successful, the impact of Daniell’s research could affect millions of diabetics worldwide and dramatically reduce the costs of fighting a disease that can lead to heart and kidney diseases and blindness. About 20.8 million children and adults in the United States, or about 7 percent of the population, have Type 1 or 2 diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association.

Daniell’s method of growing insulin in plants is similar to what he used for an earlier study to produce anthrax vaccine in tobacco. In the earlier study, which also involved mice, Daniell showed and the National Institutes of Health confirmed that enough safe anthrax vaccine to inoculate everyone in the United States could be grown inexpensively in only one acre of tobacco plants

Source. A more recent report here




Preferences genetically encoded in the brain

A team of researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has used brain imaging, genetics and experimental psychology techniques to identify a connection between brain reward circuitry, a behavioral measurement of preference and a gene variant that appears to influence both. The report in the August 4 issue of Archives of General Psychiatry describes how variations in a gene involved with the brain's reward function are associated with the activity of a key brain structure and, in parallel, with the effort study participants 'invest' in viewing emotion-laden facial images. The findings have implications for how genes may influence healthy or dysfunctional behavior involving choices in many different areas.

"This work helps connect our psychological understanding of why we like some things and not others with the genetic mechanisms that define our range of behaviors," says Hans Breiter, MD, senior and corresponding author of the study and principal investigator for the Phenotype Genotype Project in Addiction and Mood Disorders, an interdisciplinary project involving the MGH Departments of Radiology, Psychiatry, and Neurology. "In the ongoing discussion about how much the environment versus genetics determine behavior, this study points to how the interaction between these factors influences our judgment and decision-making."

The current study is part of a decade-long effort to link studies of reward and aversion in animal models to human psychology and neuroscience. In the mid-1990s, Breiter and other MGH researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques to demonstrate how structures deep within the brain were involved with the experience of reward, how that experience was connected to motivated behavior, and how the reward system could be co-opted in situations like drug addiction.

In 2001, Breiter collaborated with Daniel Kahneman, PhD, of Princeton University and Peter Shizgal, PhD, Concordia University, Montreal, to show how the brain's reward/aversion circuitry followed the principles of what is called prospect theory when responding to the anticipation and receipt of a financial reward, helping to lay the groundwork for the field now called neuroeconomics. Kahnemann was a co-recipient of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics for his earlier development of prospect theory, which describes the different ways people evaluate positive and negative outcomes in uncertain situations.

The current report connects molecular genetics with earlier studies of choice and preference and with investigations of the brain's reward circuitry. The researchers focused on a gene called CREB1 that has been implicated in animal studies of the brain's reward/aversion function. Study lead author Roy Perlis, MD, medical director of the MGH Bipolar Program, and colleagues previously found that depressed men with a particular variation near the gene coding for CREB report greater difficulty suppressing anger. Another study of theirs associated the same variation with a threefold greater risk of suicidal thinking in major depressive disorder patients soon after beginning antidepressant therapy. The 28 participants in the current study had no evidence of any psychiatric disorder or physical disorder that might influence brain activity.

In addition to analyzing each participant's version of the CREB1 gene, the researchers conducted a set of experiments. As the participants viewed facial expressions reflecting different emotional states - happy, neutral, sad, fearful and angry - fMRI scans were taken to examine the activity of brain structures associated with processing pleasant or unpleasant experiences. In another test, participants viewed the same pictures and could change how long they viewed an image by the way they pressed keys on a keyboard. Many earlier studies have established the keypress experiment as a quantitative measure of preference. In the version used in this study, keypress responses reflected participants' judgment and decisions about how much or how little they preferred the facial expressions.

The fMRI study showed that, during the viewing of angry faces, the activity of a structure called the insula, involved in the response to unpleasant situations, depended on which version of the CREB1 gene a participant inherited. In the keypress experiment, responses indicating a preference against the angry expression paralleled the CREB1-affected fMRI activity seen in the insula in the first experiment and also differed depending on the CREB1 variant that had been inherited.

"We were surprised to see that variation in the CREB1 gene would account for more than 20 percent of the difference in how healthy participants weighed different options and expressed specific preferences," says Perlis. "Our previous studies and the work of other groups suggested that variation in this gene could be important for judgment and decision-making by the brain, but we needed to connect this to a measurable decision-making effect in both behavior and brain activity."

Breiter adds, "This study connects quantitative measurements across three levels of observation - brain activity, genomic variation and the expression of preference. We now are investigating the potential role of other genes and will go on to assess how this relationship across three levels of observation may be affected by conditions such as depression and addiction."

Source





11 August, 2008

Stepdads 'make better fathers'

The secrecy about race that prevails in so many American publications can be DAMNED annoying. It is absolutely notorious that black inner city U.S. males are overwhelmingly "absent" fathers -- vastly more so than whites. Yet this study says absolutely nothing about the race of those surveyed. For those used to the primness of the American intelligentsia, however, the following sentence gives a large clue: "The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study is following a cohort of nearly 5,000 children born in large U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000 (roughly three-quarters of whom were born to unmarried parents)." Most of the participants (if not all) would have been black. Given the known black/white differences, therefore, there is NO reason to generalize these finding to whites. Race matters and racial differences cannot be made to go away by closing your eyes to them

STEPFATHERS make better parents than biological dads, a controversial study has found. In a finding that is certain to spark rigorous debate, stepfathers were found to be "more engaged, more co-operative and shared more responsibility than their biological counterparts did". The US study contradicts a popular view among social workers and family experts that biological fathers invest more in their own flesh and blood.

Sydney psychologist Grant Brecht said that, while the results of the study certainly apply to "some stepfathers", it was wrong to generalise. "There is no reason why stepfathers cannot make incredibly good parents and they may be more attentive," Mr Brecht said. "But I think you have to look at it case by case."

The findings were drawn from 2098 interviews with urban mothers from the Fragile Families And Child Wellbeing study. The children, born from 1998 to 2000, were aged five at the time of the last interviews.

Mothers reported that stepfathers shared their parenting views and talked to them more about their parental wants than natural fathers did, said the study's author, Lawrence Berger of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "(Stepfathers) have to work harder to fit in and to have a useful productive role," psychologist Rebekah Levine Coley said.

Source




Australia: Kids defy food fanatics



Children are defying a junk-food ban in school canteens by smuggling in fattening snacks and selling them to classmates. Frustrated teachers reveal they are powerless to stop many children who bring unhealthy treats from home in their bags. ``I've even seen them selling chocolates to their classmates at school. It's almost like they're dealing drugs,'' said a teacher from a prominent Perth southern suburbs public school.

Education Minister Mark McGowan conceded he could not halt the junk-food flood, even though the Government stopped it from being sold in canteens last year. ``What students bring to school in their lunchboxes is not covered by the canteen policy,'' he said. ``And we can't police what foods children bring to school. If teachers notice a particular child selling junk food on the side, I encourage them to alert the school principal. ``We as a Government can only do so much. It is important parents keep a close eye on their child or children to make sure they are doing the right thing.''

Obesity was a serious issue, which was why the Carpenter Government required all public school canteens or food services to have healthy menus, Mr McGowan said. A healthy canteen menu, combined with the required two hours of exercise a week for Years One to 10, were great initiatives. ``But parents also need to come on board in the fight against obesity. This is not the sole responsibility of the Government,'' he said.

Rob Fry, president of peak parent group the WA Council of State School Organisations, said parents should realise they were ``killing their kids'' with bad food. They should pack healthy lunches, or pre-pay for canteen meals, so children had no cash for junk.

WA State School Teachers Union general secretary David Kelly said teachers could contact parents if they were concerned about certain students. But parents and schools had to work together to address obesity. The southern suburbs teacher said: ``When they banned junk food from canteens it came back into school with a vengeance. They just started bringing their own from home, like chips and chocolates. ``I'd love to be able to confiscate it. But we're not allowed to take food off kids because they can just say `mum gave me this for lunch'.''

Another southern suburbs teacher said: ``Most teachers I know are all for the ban. But there's no use having a ban if you can't stop them from bringing it to school. ``Some kids are selling it to their mates, which would be funny if our kids weren't so fat. ``But you can't really say anything to your students these days. They swear at us in the classroom and get away with it, so this would be hard to stop.''

Another teacher said healthy canteen food had great potential to help children who weren't getting good food at home and it was a pity the situation had deteriorated to this. Canteens have a ``traffic light'' system banning ``red'' items such as soft drinks, confectionery, deep-fried foods, chips, chocolate coated ice-creams and cakes. [All of which are completely harmless -- or we would all be dead]

Source





10 August, 2008

Prostate screening dubious

Doctors should stop routine prostate cancer screening of men over 75 because there is more evidence of harm than benefit, a federal task force advised Monday in a new blow to a much scrutinized medical test. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which made the recommendation, reported finding evidence that the benefits of treatment based on routine screening of this age group "are small to none." However, treatment often causes "moderate-to-substantial harms," including erectile dysfunction and bladder control and bowel problems, the task force said.

The new guidance is the first update by the task force on prostate cancer screening since 2002. The last report on the subject from this panel of experts, which sets the nation's primary care standards, concluded there was insufficient evidence to recommend prostate screening for men of all ages.

In recent years, there has been a growing debate about the value of the somewhat imprecise PSA test to detect cancer, as well as the value of treating most prostate cancers. A number of experts contend patients are being overtreated. Most major U.S. medical groups recommend doctors discuss the potential benefits and known harms of prostate screening with their patients and make individual decisions. And most agree such testing shouldn't occur before age 50.

The federal task force reviewed past research in reaching its conclusion and "could not find adequate proof that early detection leads to fewer men dying of the disease," task force chairman Dr. Ned Calonge of Denver, said in a statement.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in American men -- about 220,000 cases will be diagnosed this year. It is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in men. But most tumors grow so slowly they never threaten lives. There is no accurate way to tell which tumors will.

Earlier this year, a study found that older men who already had early-stage prostate cancer were not taking a big risk by not treating it right away. The vast majority were alive 10 years later without significantly worrying symptoms or had died of other causes.

Prostate cancer treatments are tough, especially on older men. Some doctors instead recommend "watchful waiting" to monitor signs of the disease and treat only if they worsen, but smaller studies give conflicting views of the safety of that approach. The new guidelines from the Preventive Services Task Force were published in this month's Annals of Internal Medicine.

Source




Study Confirms Abortion Increases Risk of Depression

I would be surprised if it were otherwise. It goes against every motherly instinct

A 2008 study by the University of Oslo in Norway has found that young adult women who have had abortions are more likely to become depressed. The study, which involved 768 women between the ages of 15 and 27, was carried out in order to "investigate whether induced abortion was a risk factor for subsequent depression."

According to Willy Pedersen from the University's Department of Sociology and Human Geography, who conducted the study, past studies have suffered in accuracy due to bad design, specifically a lack of control of "compounding factors."

The new study strove to prevent this problem by creating a comprehensive list of factors to question women on, including, "depression, induced abortion and childbirth, as well as sociodemographic variables, family relationships and a number of individual characteristics, such as schooling and occupational history and conduct problems."

Women in the sample who had abortions while in their twenties were "more likely to score above the cut-off point for depression," and although the likelihood was reduced when the compounding factors were accounted for, their propensity to become depressed "remained significant." The study concluded that, "Young adult women who undergo induced abortion may be at increased risk for subsequent depression."

Source





9 August, 2008

Common fertility treatments are 'no better than nature', study finds

Once again, conventional medical wisdom fails under test

Fertility treatments offered to couples trying for a baby are no more effective than attempts to conceive naturally, a study suggests today. Couples who attempt artificial insemination or use a drug designed to aid conception do not have significantly higher chances of a pregnancy than those not receiving treatment, the researchers found.

One in seven couples in Britain experiences problems conceiving, with about a quarter of these having unexplained infertility. Treatments are offered in line with fertility guidelines issued by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). They include artificial insemination, and the drug clomiphene citrate, which is believed to correct subtle ovulatory dysfunction. Such treatments are relatively inexpensive and do not involve stimulation of a woman's ovaries or IVF (in vitro fertilisation).

Researchers writing in the British Medical Journal, however, have thrown into question the provision of such treatments on the NHS. Intrauterine insemination (IUI) and clomiphene citrate (Clomifert or Clomid) are recommended for couples who have had difficulty conceiving, but where investigations have failed to find out why. Couples would typically be offered these methods before considering IVF, which involves collecting a woman's eggs, fertilising them outside the body and returning them to her womb.

For the study, 580 women who had been trying unsuccessfully to conceive for more than two years were recruited from four teaching hospitals and one general hospital in Scotland. One group of 193 women were given advice on having sex regularly but were left to try to conceive naturally. Another 194 women were given clomifene. The remaining 193 were given IUI, which is thought to enhance the chance of pregnancy by injecting sperm behind the cervical barrier. All treatments were followed for six months.

At the end of the study, there had been 101 live births - 32 among the 193 women trying to conceive naturally (17 per cent), 26 among those on the drug (14 per cent) and 43 among those having insemination (23 per cent). The researchers, from the universities of Aberdeen and Oxford, and hospitals in Edinburgh, Dundee, Falkirk and Glasgow, said that these differences were not significant enough to be attributed solely to treatment or lack of it. They suggested that the NHS could be wasting time and money on providing the therapies and called for the NICE guidelines to be reviewed.

Siladitya Bhattacharya, Professor of Reproductive Medicine in Aberdeen, who led the study, said that it was difficult to estimate how many women currently used IUI or clomifene citrate treatments, but added that it must be "hundreds of thousands".

NICE endorses the use of up to six free cycles of IUI without ovarian stimulation in couples with unexplained infertility. Thousands of couples are being denied the three free cycles of IVF recommended by NICE as an advanced treatment, largely because of the expense. Figures from the Department of Health showed in June that nine out of 151 primary care trusts in England provided three cycles of IVF, leaving many patients to pay up to $4,000 per cycle for private treatment.

NICE said that the fertility guidance published in 2004 set "clear standards by outlining which types of treatment offer couples the best chance of conceiving, based on the best available evidence from around the world".

Source. Another account of the above findings here.




Researchers Say Antibiotic From Maggots May Kill MRSA

British researchers said Tuesday they've developed an antibiotic from maggots that can be used to fight different kinds of bacteria including certain strains of deadly methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The team from Swansea University in south Wales has developed a drug called Seraticin, which is made from the secretions of green bottle fly larvae, Agence France-Presse reported. The researchers are hoping to turn the antibiotic into a drug that can be injected, swallowed as a pill or used as an ointment.

More than 90,000 Americans get MRSA infections each year, according to a study released by the government last October. Medical and government experts worry annual deaths from the drug-resistant "superbug" may soon exceed deaths from AIDS.

MRSA bacteria can be carried by healthy people, living on their skin or in their noses. Most infections occur in hospitals. However, in recent years, the bug has invaded schools, locker rooms and fitness centers.

Source





8 August, 2008

Vitamin C slows cancer in mice

Oxygen for the vitamin C freaks. If you do enough studies, one will come "right" by chance alone. Pesky that you've got to inject it rather than eat it, though

HIGH doses of vitamin C injections reduced the size of tumours and slowed cancerous growths by about 50 per cent in laboratory mice, according to US research released today. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health noted the phenomenon in brain, ovarian and pancreatic cancers, according to findings published in the August 5 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Researchers discovered that high concentrations of ascorbate had anticancer effects in 75 per cent of cancer cell lines tested, while sparing normal cells," the report said. "The researchers traced ascorbate's anti-cancer effect to the formation of hydrogen peroxide in the extracellular fluid surrounding the tumours. Normal cells were unaffected," it said. Injections were necessary because the body regulates vitamin C when ingested, so that higher doses cannot be attained.

"When you eat foods containing more than 200 milligrams of vitamin C a day - for example, two oranges and a serving of broccoli - your body prevents blood levels of ascorbate from exceeding a narrow range," said Mark Levine, the study's lead author and chief of the Molecular and Clinical Nutrition Section of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Scientists "injected ascorbate into the veins or abdominal cavities of rodents with aggressive brain, ovarian, and pancreatic tumours", the report said, delivering "up to four grams per kilogram of body weight daily". By injecting mice with 43 cancer and five normal cell lines, "the researchers discovered that high concentrations of ascorbate had anticancer effects in 75 per cent of cancer cell lines tested, while sparing normal cells."

Scientists involved with the study also pointed to evidence that "these high ascorbate concentrations could be achieved in people." "In immune-deficient mice with rapidly spreading ovarian, pancreatic, and glioblastoma (brain) tumours ... the ascorbate injections reduced tumour growth and weight by 41 to 53 per cent."

The researchers concluded that the findings "provide the first firm basis for advancing pharmacologic ascorbate in cancer treatment in humans." Vitamin C was considered as a possible treatment for cancer three decades ago, but subsequent studies showed oral doses provided no benefit.

Source




High-Aptitude Minds: The Neurological Roots of Genius

Researchers are finding clues to the basis of IQ in the brain and the article excerpted below is a surprisingly positive summary of the work -- surprising for SciAm. I have long been saying that high IQ is usually just one aspect of general biological good functioning and the work discussed below could also be seen as conducing to that conclusion

Key Concepts:

* Smarter brains tend to be bigger-at least in certain locations. Researchers have fingered parts of the parietal and frontal lobes as well as a structure called the anterior cingulate as important for superior cognition.

* Some studies suggest that the brains of brighter people use less energy to solve certain problems than those of people with lower aptitudes do. But under certain circumstances, scientists have also observed higher neuronal power consumption in individuals with superior mental capacities.

* People often overestimate the importance of intellectual ability. Practice and perseverance contribute more to accomplishment than being smart does.

Within hours of his demise in 1955, Albert Einstein's brain was salvaged, sliced into 240 pieces and stored in jars for safekeeping. Since then, researchers have weighed, measured and otherwise inspected these biological specimens of genius in hopes of uncovering clues to Einstein's spectacular intellect.

Their cerebral explorations are part of a century-long effort to uncover the neural basis of high intelligence or, in children, giftedness. Traditionally, 2 to 5 percent of kids qualify as gifted, with the top 2 percent scoring above 130 on an intelligence quotient (IQ) test. (The statistical average is 100. See the box on the opposite page.) A high IQ increases the probability of success in various academic areas. Children who are good at reading, writing or math also tend to be facile at the other two areas and to grow into adults who are skilled at diverse intellectual tasks [see "Solving the IQ Puzzle," by James R. Flynn; Scientific American Mind, October/November 2007].

Most studies show that smarter brains are typically bigger-at least in certain locations. Part of Einstein's parietal lobe (at the top of the head, behind the ears) was 15 percent wider than the same region was in 35 men of normal cognitive ability, according to a 1999 study by researchers at McMaster University in Ontario. This area is thought to be critical for visual and mathematical thinking. It is also within the constellation of brain regions fingered as important for superior cognition. These neural territories include parts of the parietal and frontal lobes as well as a structure called the anterior cingulate.

But the functional consequences of such enlargement are controversial. In 1883 English anthropologist and polymath Sir Francis Galton dubbed intelligence an inherited feature of an efficiently functioning central nervous system. Since then, neuroscientists have garnered support for this efficiency hypothesis using modern neuroimaging techniques. They found that the brains of brighter people use less energy to solve certain prob-lems than those of people with lower aptitudes do.

In other cases, scientists have observed higher neuronal power consumption in individuals with superior mental capacities. Musical prodigies may also sport an unusually energetic brain [see box on page 67]. That flurry of activity may occur when a task is unusually challenging, some researchers speculate, whereas a gifted mind might be more efficient only when it is pondering a relatively painless puzzle.

Despite the quest to unravel the roots of high IQ, researchers say that people often overestimate the significance of intellectual ability [see "Coaching the Gifted Child," by Christian Fischer]. Studies show that practice and perseverance contribute more to accomplishment than being smart does.

Size Matters

In humans, brain size correlates, albeit somewhat weakly, with intelligence, at least when researchers control for a person's sex (male brains are bigger) and age (older brains are smaller). Many modern studies have linked a larger brain, as measured by magnetic resonance imaging, to higher intellect, with total brain volume accounting for about 16 percent of the variance in IQ. But, as Einstein's brain illustrates, the size of some brain areas may matter for intelligence much more than that of others does.

In 2004 psychologist Richard J. Haier of the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues reported evidence to support the notion that discrete brain regions mediate scholarly aptitude. Studying the brains of 47 adults, Haier's team found an association between the amount of gray matter (tissue containing the cell bodies of neurons) and higher IQ in 10 discrete regions, including three in the frontal lobe and two in the parietal lobe just behind it. Other scientists have also seen more white matter, which is made up of nerve axons (or fibers), in these same regions among people with higher IQs. The results point to a widely distributed-but discrete-neural basis of intelligence

The neural hubs of general intelligence may change with age. Among the younger adults in Haier's study-his subjects ranged in age from 18 to 84-IQ correlated with the size of brain regions near a central structure called the cingulate, which participates in various cognitive and emotional tasks. That result jibed with the findings, published a year earlier, of pediatric neurologist Marko Wilke, then at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, and his colleagues. In its survey of 146 children ages five to 18 with a range of IQs, the Cincinnati group discovered a strong connection between IQ and gray matter volume in the cingulate but not in any other brain structure the researchers examined.

Scientists have identified other shifting neural patterns that could signal high IQ. In a 2006 study child psychiatrist Philip Shaw of the National Institute of Mental Health and his colleagues scanned the brains of 307 children of varying intelligence multiple times to determine the thickness of their cerebral cortex, the brain's exterior part. They discovered that academic prodigies younger than eight had an unusually thin cerebral cortex, which then thickened rapidly so that by late childhood it was chunkier than that of less clever kids. Consistent with other studies, that pattern was particularly pronounced in the frontal brain regions that govern rational thought processes.

The brain structures responsible for high IQ may vary by sex as well as by age. A recent study by Haier, for example, suggests that men and women achieve similar results on IQ tests with the aid of different brain regions. Thus, more than one type of brain architecture may underlie high aptitude.

Low Effort Required

Meanwhile researchers are debating the functional consequences of these structural findings. Over the years brain scientists have garnered evidence supporting the idea that high intelligence stems from faster information processing in the brain. Underlying such speed, some psychologists argue, is unusually efficient neural circuitry in the brains of gifted individuals.

Experimental psychologist Werner Krause, formerly at the University of Jena in Germany, for example, has proposed that the highly gifted solve puzzles more elegantly than other people do: they rapidly identify the key information in them and the best way to solve them. Such people thereby make optimal use of the brain's limited working memory, the short-term buffer that holds items just long enough for the mind to process them.

Starting in the late 1980s, Haier and his colleagues have gathered data that buttress this so-called efficiency hypothesis. The researchers used positron-emission tomography, which measures glucose metabolism of cells, to scan the brains of eight young men while they performed a nonverbal abstract reasoning task for half an hour. They found that the better an individual's performance on the task, the lower the metabolic rate in widespread areas of the brain, supporting the notion that efficient neural processing may underlie brilliance. And in the 1990s the same group observed the flip side of this phenomenon: higher glucose metabolism in the brains of a small group of subjects who had below-average IQs, suggesting that slower minds operate less economically.

More recently, in 2004 psychologist Aljoscha Neubauer of the University of Graz in Austria and his colleagues linked aptitude to diminished cortical activity after learning. The researchers used electroencephalography (EEG), a technique that detects electrical brain activity at precise time points using an array of electrodes affixed to the scalp, to monitor the brains of 27 individuals while they took two reasoning tests, one of them given before test-related training and the other after it. During the second test, frontal brain regions-many of which are involved in higher--order cognitive skills-were less active in the more intelligent individuals than in the less astute subjects. In fact, the higher a subject's mental ability, the bigger the dip in cortical activation between the pretraining and posttraining tests, suggesting that the brains of brighter individuals streamline the processing of new information faster than those of their less intelligent counterparts do.

More here





7 August, 2008

Health nuts Slam Chain Restaurants for Unhealthy Kid-Meal Options

There is no basis for any of this in the double blind studies. It is all just attention-seeking behaviour based on epidemiological speculation. The "low-fat=good" claim embodied in it is KNOWN TO BE FALSE. See here, here and here. And calories are bad! How awful! All food contains calories. All that matters is how much you eat. You can eat moderately anywhere.

Parents looking for healthy meal choices for their children are likely to find slim pickings on the menus of the nation's top restaurant chains, according to a report released this week by a nonprofit public health group. Nearly every possible combination of the children's meals at Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Sonic, Jack in the Box and Chick-fil-A are too high in calories, the report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest said, the AP reports.

The report looked into the nutritional quality of kids' meals at 13 major restaurant chains. The center found 93% of 1,474 possible choices at the 13 chains exceed 430 calories - an amount that is one-third of what the National Institute of Medicine recommends that children ages four through eight should consume in a day. For example, Chili's Bar and Grill has 700 possible kids' meal combinations, but 658, or 94%, of those are too high in calories. While there are some healthy choices on restaurant menus, "parents have to navigate a minefield of calories, fat and salt to find them," the report said.

Subway's kids' meals came out the best among the chains examined in the report. Only six of 18 "Fresh Fit for Kids" meals - which include a mini-sub, juice box, and one of several healthful side items such as apple slices, raisins or yogurt - exceed the 430-calorie threshold. But Subway is the only chain that doesn't offer soft drinks with kids' meals, which helped lower the calorie count. The report notes that eating out now accounts for a third of children's daily caloric intake, twice the amount consumed away from home 30 years ago.

"Parents want to feed their children healthy meals, but America's chain restaurants are setting parents up to fail," CSPI nutrition policy director Margo G. Wootan said in a statement. "McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, and other chains are conditioning kids to expect burgers, fried chicken, pizza, French fries, macaroni and cheese, and soda in various combination at almost every lunch and dinner."

The report also found that 45% of children's meals exceed recommendations for saturated and trans fat, which can raise blood cholesterol levels and increase the risk of heart disease, and 86% of children's meals are high in sodium [By sodium they mean salt. Kids can and do die from the lack of it. See here and here. "Hyponatremic" means "not enough salt"]

Source




More cellphone nonsense

Please put your cell phone in the "calm down" position. Dr. Ronald B. Herberman may or may not have been seeking international attention when he, as director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, sent a memo to about 3,000 faculty and staff to limit their cell-phone use because of the possibility of a link to cancer. But Herberman's warning traveled at seemingly the speed of light, because his memo drew swift reaction.

The response ranged from alarm to deep skepticism. The warning hit the news, and fears and questions flew. Every cell-phone user wondering about the safety of cell phones should know that the latest conclusive evidence is that the evidence is inconclusive. Sometimes, the best scientific answer to a question is, "We don't know yet." That's the best answer here.

Herberman certainly prompted phone calls among families and associates with his warning, although one must assume many of them were conducted on landlines. But if people are looking for the real skinny on cell phones and cancer, there simply is not enough evidence to make that call. If it helps, the largest single published study to date, which involved 420,000 Danish people and was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 2006, found no increased risk of cancer among those who used cell phones.

Herberman believes in early information in a still unpublished study, and he cites the lack of speed in getting such information out as the basis for his warning to the faculty and staff at the institute. Herberman's opinion should be respected. He seems quite serious in his concern. But there is no large, substantiated study showing a direct link between cell-phone use and cancer. Such evidence may emerge one day, but it hasn't happened yet. The best advice is to be practical. People should use their own common sense. If they believe the warning in Pittsburgh has merit, they should do what they have to do to reduce cell-phone use. If people see no basis in the warning, they will react by doing little to change.

There are, however, broad principles to remember when assessing such issues. For example, be skeptical of any study that might be funded by a cell-phone company. A conflict of interest is always possible when researchers believe their financier wants a particular outcome.

As with many health issues, it might be prudent to pay even more attention to science as it pertains to children. Kids' development can be quite different from effects on adults in a wide range of medical issues. The Pittsburgh warning is naturally causing increased concern among parents whose children use cell phones. But again, there is not enough information to make a case, either way, on what to believe. It is always good to urge government regulators to get the facts and be aggressive in protecting consumers. The public deserves reliable regulation.

The cell-phone controversy is reminiscent of a claim in the early days of color television that radiation from the color TVs was dangerous. Some people may still have that concern. It is also a reminder that, for a long time, cigarettes were not considered dangerous. Tobacco companies even advertised about brands' soothing effects. The world now knows the truth about tobacco.

Herberman's warning is certainly worth attention, but the bottom line on cell phones and cancer is that not enough is known to make the determination that a link exists. But it's certainly right to say scientists need to get a definitive answer for everyone, whatever that answer might be.

Source





6 August, 2008

Religion and health

Does religious diversity go with poorer health? It says below that it does. But surely the USA has huge religious diversity and also high health standards? But I guess that most American denominations could all be lumped together as "Protestant" or some such. A Baptist, for instance, would not normally feel uncomfortable in a Methodist church (though he might feel uncomfortable in some other Baptist churches!)

Some people, notably Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford University, regard religion as a disease. It spreads, they suggest, like a virus, except that the "viruses" are similar to those infecting computers-bits of cultural software that take over the hardware of the brain and make it do irrational things.

Corey Fincher, of the University of New Mexico, has a different hypothesis for the origin of religious diversity. He thinks not that religions are like disease but that they are responses to disease-or, rather, to the threat of disease. If he is right, then people who believe that their religion protects them from harm may be correct, although the protection is of a different sort from the supernatural one they perceive.

Mr Fincher is not arguing that disease-protection is religion's main function. Biologists have different hypotheses for that. Not all follow Dr Dawkins in thinking it pathological. Some see it either as a way of promoting group solidarity in a hostile world, or as an accidental consequence of the predisposition to such solidarity. This solidarity-promotion is one of Mr Fincher's starting points. The other is that bacteria, viruses and other parasites are powerful drivers of evolution. Many biologists think that sex, for example, is a response to parasitism. The continual mixing of genes that it promotes means that at least some offspring of any pair of parents are likely to be immune to a given disease.

Mr Fincher and his colleague Randy Thornhill wondered if disease might be driving important aspects of human social behaviour, too. Their hypothesis is that in places where disease is rampant, it behoves groups not to mix with one another more than is strictly necessary, in order to reduce the risk of contagion. They therefore predict that patterns of behaviour which promote group exclusivity will be stronger in disease-ridden areas. Since religious differences are certainly in that category, they specifically predict that the number of different religions in a place will vary with the disease load. Which is, as they report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, the case.

Proving the point involved collating a lot of previous research. Even defining what constitutes a religion is fraught with difficulty. But using accepted definitions of uniqueness, exclusivity, autonomy and superiority to other religions they calculated that the average number of religions per country is 31. The range, though, is enormous-from 3 to 643. C"te d'Ivoire, for example, has 76 while Norway has 13, and Brazil has 159 while Canada has 15. They then did the same thing for the number of parasitic diseases found in each country. The average here was 200, with a range from 178 to 248.

Obviously, some of the differences between countries are caused by differences in their areas and populations. But these can be accounted for statistically. When they have been, the correlation between the number of religions in a place and how disease-ridden it is looks impressive. There is less than one chance in 10,000 that it has come about accidentally.

The two researchers also looked at anthropological data on how much people in "traditional" (ie, non-urban) societies move around in different parts of the world. They found that in more religiously diverse (and more disease-ridden) places people move shorter distances than in healthier, religiously monotonous societies. The implication is that religious diversity causes people to keep themselves to themselves, and thus makes it harder for them to catch germs from infidels.

Of course, correlation is not causation. But religion is not the only cultural phenomenon that stops groups of people from mixing. Language has the same effect, and in another, as yet unpublished study Mr Fincher and Dr Thornhill found a similar relationship there too. Moreover, their search of the literature turned up work which suggests that xenophobia is linked psychologically with fear of disease (the dirty foreigner.). Perhaps, then, the underlying reason why there is so much hostility between ethnic groups is nothing to do with the groups themselves, but instead with the diseases they may bring.

Source




Antibiotic HINDERS treatment of AIDS

A drug used to fight tuberculosis also hampers the effectiveness of an HIV treatment widely used in Africa, the world's worst AIDS-hit region, a study published today says. The antibiotic rifampicin reduces concentrations in the blood of nevirapine, a low-cost agent that is part of the frontline therapy against HIV in poor countries, especially Africa.

The study was presented ahead of the start of the 17th International AIDS Conference, which runs in Mexico City until Friday. The evidence comes from a study, unfolding in South Africa between 2001 and 2006, among 2,035 individuals who began their treatment with efavirenz, 1,074 of whom had TB, and 1,935 others who initiated with nevaripine, of whom 209 also had TB. In the nevaripine group, 16.3 per cent patients with TB were nearly twice as likely to have elevated levels of HIV in their blood at a six-month follow-up check compared to 8.3 per cent among those without TB. They were also twice as likely to develop treatment failure faster than patients who did not have TB. However, a large majority - 80 per cent - of TB patients using nevirapine also succeeded in suppressing the virus at an 18-month check-up.

The findings are of high importance for sub-Saharan Africa, which is home to two-thirds of the 33 million people infected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Around the world, an estimated one-third of the persons living with HIV are co-infected with TB. For reasons that are poorly understood, co-infection can cause a lightning-fast decline in health, especially if the TB strain is resistant to frontline antibiotics. The death rate among cases of co-infection is five times higher than for tuberculosis alone.

The JAMA study, led by Andrew Boulle of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, said it was unclear why rifampicin had such an impact on nevaripine. One possible reason could be a shared toxicity. Another could be a drug interaction, caused by rifampicin, when the patient started to receive early doses of the antiretroviral. Anti-HIV drugs suppress the virus but do not eradicate it completely. If the drugs are halted, the AIDS rebounds.

The study appears in next Wednesday's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Source





5 August, 2008

Brain study shows differences between homosexuals, straights

Brain differences are now well established and are becoming more so. The only question is whether the differences are genetic. There are arguments either way. The fact that heritability seems to be poor and no gene has been so far located argues against a genetic explanation. A developmental accident in utero seems more likely. My late sister was queer but there is no other known instance of it in the family -- JR

Is there such a thing as a "gay brain"? And, if so, are some people born with brains that make them more likely to be homosexual? Or do the brains of gay people develop differently in response to experiences? Those are some of the thorny questions that have been raised by a provocative new study that found striking differences between the brains of homosexuals and heterosexuals in both men and women.

Some scientists say the new findings are part of an increasingly convincing body of evidence that suggests sexual orientation results from fundamental developmental differences that are probably caused by hormonal exposures in the womb. "This research is pointing to basic differences in the brain between homosexual and heterosexual people that are likely there right from the beginning," said Sandra F. Witelson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at McMaster University in Ontario. "These could be reflecting some genetic or hormonal factors that predetermine your sexual orientation."

Others, however, argue that such research is far from conclusive. "I remain skeptical," said William Byne, a professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. "There's been a history of jumping to conclusions and overinterpreting findings in this field."

Several earlier studies have found what appear to be differences between the brains of gay and straight people. In 1991, brain scientist Simon LeVay reported that the hypothalamus, which is involved in sexual behavior, tended to be smaller in gay men [Size matters!]. Other researchers subsequently showed that the brains of gay and straight people appeared likely to respond differently to sexual images. The researchers who conducted the new study previously reported that the brains of gay and straight men seemed to react differently to suspected pheromones -- odors thought to be involved in sexual arousal.

But such research is fraught with uncertainty, and it could not rule out that the findings were the result of changes that occurred in response to experiences and behaviors, rather than being inborn. "The next question was 'If there is a difference, could there be differences in parts of the brain that have nothing to do with sexual behaviors?' " said Ivanka Savic of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, who led the new research published online last week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

So Savic and her colleague Per Lindstrom first used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, to compare the symmetry of the brains of 25 straight men and 25 straight women with those of 20 gay men and 20 gay women. Gay men tended to have brains that were more like those of straight women than of straight men -- the right and left sides were about the same size, the researchers found. Gay women's brains tended to be more like those of straight men than of straight women -- the right side tended to be slightly larger than the left.

Next, the researchers used positron emission tomography (PET) scans to examine how a part of the brain involved in processing emotions -- the amygdala -- was connected to other brain regions. Again they found that gay men tended to be more like straight women, with a stronger link between the amygdala and regions involved in emotions. Gay women tended to be more like straight men, with stronger connections to motor functions.

Savic and Lindstrom stressed that their findings need to be confirmed by additional research and that it remains unclear how the differences might affect behavior. While other researchers agreed, some said the findings about the amygdala could help explain why gay men tend to respond to emotional situations more like women and gay women more like men, and could even play a role in their sexual orientation. "This ancient structure is involved in 'orienting' our attention to biologically important stimuli in our environment (such as attractive partners . . .)," Qazi Rahman, who studies sexual orientation at Queen Mary, University of London, wrote in an e-mail.

Others said that that interpretation was highly speculative, but at the very least the findings support the idea that there tend to be fundamental differences in brain structure, supporting the idea that sexual orientation is inborn. "This suggests that there's something going on during development that influences sexuality and the brain," LeVay said. "It points more persuasively to some early biological difference." LeVay and other researchers said the findings fit with studies that found gay people tended to have different ratios in the lengths of their fingers and in the frequency of imperceptible clicking sounds in the ear.

"There's this cluster of interrelated findings," said Richard A. Lippa, a professor of psychology at California State University at Fullerton, who has found evidence that in gay men, the hair on the back of the head is more likely to curl counterclockwise than in straight men. "These are all biological markers that something must have gone on early in development."

These findings also fit with studies showing gay men tend to choose professions that typically attract women, such as teaching and social work, and have verbal and other cognitive skills that tend to be more like women's, he said. "You get a sort of global shift in gender traits in gay people and straight people that affects not only their sexual orientation but other things as well," LeVay said.

Many researchers suspect that changes may be the result of the levels of hormones, such as testosterone, that fetuses are exposed to in the womb. "We see the same asymmetries in the brains of rats and mice, and in rats and mice testosterone seems to be controlling it prenatally," said Marc Breedlove, a neuroscientist at Michigan State University.

But researchers say many questions remain about all this research. And there are as many differences within groups individuals of the same sexual orientation as between those of different orientation. Moreover, the new work involved adults, meaning there is no way to know with certainty when the structures and connections formed and why. "It takes a snapshot of a group of people at a particular age," said Anne Fausto-Sterling, a professor of biology and gender studies at Brown University. "Even if there are reliable brain differences, it doesn't tell you anything about how those brain differences came into being."

Source




California nonsense comes to Australia

Push to ban 'dangerous' trans fats

The South Australian Government will push for a national ban or tougher controls on the use of trans fats in foods. The Government will use the next meeting of national food and health ministers in October to push for tougher regulations controlling the use of trans fats which have been linked to heart disease, strokes and diabetes.

Most trans fats consumed today are created by the hydrogenation of plant oils, a process that adds hydrogen atoms to unsaturated fats to render them more saturated, making them attractive for baking and extending their shelf life. "These really dangerous fats are in everyday foods that people eat and particularly in junk and processed foods," said SA Premier Mike Rann. "Trans fats offer no nutritional value whatsoever and indeed are linked to serious health issues."

Mr Rann said the state government also wanted restaurants and food manufacturers to label their menus and products to allow consumers to know exactly what they were eating. He said the Government was about to start working with other states on a national survey to determine how much trans fats were in common foods. "We believe the time to act on trans fats is now," Mr Rann said. "We need to regulate these fats and protect Australians."

Source





4 August, 2008

Humans are tougher than mice

Animal models continue to influence our understanding of immunity to infection, but how accurately do they predict how our own immune systems respond to different pathogens? Von Bernuth et al. (p. 691) continue a series of studies in which they use rare human immune deficiencies to help unpick the roles played by distinct innate immune pathways. The study focuses on MyD88, a signaling adaptor that is crucial in mice for protection against a wide range of pathogens by connecting key Toll-like receptor (TLR) and interleukin-1 (IL-1) pathways to the activation of immune response genes. In contrast to findings in mice, deficiency of the same protein in the human patients caused susceptibility to only a handful of pyogenic bacteria, despite leaving the subjects with broad deficits in their TLR and IL-1 responses.

Source

Abstract follows:

Pyogenic Bacterial Infections in Humans with MyD88 Deficiency

By Horst von Bernuth et al.

MyD88 is a key downstream adapter for most Toll-like receptors (TLRs) and interleukin-1 receptors (IL-1Rs). MyD88 deficiency in mice leads to susceptibility to a broad range of pathogens in experimental settings of infection. We describe a distinct situation in a natural setting of human infection. Nine children with autosomal recessive MyD88 deficiency suffered from life-threatening, often recurrent pyogenic bacterial infections, including invasive pneumococcal disease. However, these patients were otherwise healthy, with normal resistance to other microbes. Their clinical status improved with age, but not due to any cellular leakiness in MyD88 deficiency. The MyD88-dependent TLRs and IL-1Rs are therefore essential for protective immunity to a small number of pyogenic bacteria, but redundant for host defense to most natural infections.

Science 1 August 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5889, pp. 691 - 696

Hormone hope in schizophrenia fight

The "female" hormone estrogen promises new hope to both men and women who suffer from the debilitating symptoms of schizophrenia. Sydney researchers are about to begin a trial of the hormone on people with the mental illness, following a discovery of a genetic glitch that impedes estrogen from doing its job in the brain. The finding comes from an international team led by neurobiologist Cyndi Shannon Weickert, head of a project initiated by the University of NSW, the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute and the Schizophrenia Research Institute.

Professor Shannon Weickert's team discovered that mutations in the estrogen receptor alpha (ESR1) gene disrupt a cascade of biochemical events in the brains of people with schizophrenia. The result is that estrogen is less able to moderate emotions and thinking. The report -- published recently in the journal Human Molecular Genetics -- "confirms" that estrogen is an important target for drug therapy, said Melbourne University psychiatrist Michael Berk, also with Barwon Health, The Geelong Clinic and the Orygen Research Centre.

Just over 1 per cent of people worldwide suffer the hallucinations, delusions and disordered thinking of the developmental brain disorder. They also may experience "negative" symptoms such as depression, loss of motivation and social avoidance. While anti-psychotic drugs such as chlorpromazine manage "positive" symptoms such as hallucination, they do little for the negative ones.

Monash University psychiatrist Jayashri Kulkarni who is currently heading a three-centre trial of the hormone, involving Professor Berk, said: "The evidence is very clear that estrogen protects the brain from symptoms of psychosis."

Source





3 August, 2008

Dangerous salt phobia in Britain

Moves to cut salt levels in bacon and ham risk increasing potentially fatal cases of the paralysing food bug botulism, the Food Standards Agency has been warned. Ham processors are particularly concerned at moves to reduce salt content to 2.13g per 100g by 2010 and to 1.75g by 2012. They said their concern was not because of a resistance to change, but was related to the health risks. Other food sectors are also unhappy about the revised salt reduction targets from the watchdog, which they insist are putting consumers off sandwiches and ready meals.

The issue threatens to create a rift between the food industry and the agency. But health campaigners are urging the FSA to stand firm and to resist what they say is scaremongering from an industry reluctant to change its manufacturing practices. Malcolm Kane, an independent food technology consultant who advises the campaign group Consensus Action of Salt in Health, suggested that the objections from industry were because companies feared the shelf-life of products may have to be reduced below the current average of ten-day "use by" dates: "I'm disappointed. It is just a feeble excuse for doing nothing about salt levels. They don't want to lower salt levels because they are nervous about consumer reaction and people not liking the taste with less salt."

The agency suggested last month that 14,000 premature deaths a year could be avoided if adults reduced salt intake to 6g a day. The current average is 8.6g a day, already down from 9.5g in 2001.

Claire Cheney, director-general of the Provision Trade Federation, which represents leading processed meat companies, has denounced the targets as unrealistic and a potential risk to human health. "If you have not got sufficient preservative in a product like ham you get pockets where the salt levels are too low to prevent the formation of the botulism toxin."

She told The Grocer magazine: "This will force us to reduce it [the shelf-life] further and with that come serious food safety concerns, not least the risk of botulism." She said that salt was in the product for technological reasons not for taste. Her view is supported by the British Meat Processors Association. Elizabeth Andoh-Kesson, its technical manager, said: "We are very worried about the stricter targets and believe that reducing salt further has implications for food safety and shelf life of products," she said.

Other trade associations are also objecting to further salt cuts. Jim Winship, the chairman of the British Sandwich Association, denounced the targets as "absolutely staggering". He said: "We are already getting complaints from retailers that consumers don't like the blandness of many sandwiches to meet existing salt targets. Sandwich makers don't add salt to sandwiches at all but it is in products such as cheese, bacon and ham. We'll soon be at a point where people stop buying sandwiches and make them at home where they add as much salt as they want. This would affect an important industry. We sell 2.8 billion packs of sandwiches a year with a market value of 5.25 billion pounds."

Ready-meal manufacturers such as Northern Foods and Kerry Foods, which are represented by the Chilled Food Association, are also anxious that further salt reductions will affect their œ9 billion a year market. Kaarin Goodburn, the secretary-general, said: "We are already reformulating many recipes but we have got reports that consumers don't like the taste especially in some healthy ranges of meals, such as lasagne, where there has been a decline in sales. What's the incentive to reformulate if it results in falling sales? People are already putting in lots more herbs instead of salt but many people don't like the taste. " Peter Sherratt, the general secretary of the Salt Association, said that feed-back from its members suggested that the agency targets had gone too far."

Source




Cut out those peas if you really want a bundle of joy

'Tis the season to go on a diet. The bikini diet. The beach body diet. Or, the latest diet on the scene: The Fertility Diet, which claims that cutting out certain foods can help maximise your chance of having a baby "at any age".

Thus it is a diet that, if successful, will actually make you gain weight, but no matter - 21st-century women with careers and chaotic love lives adore this kind of thing, for it allows us to stick our fingers in our ears and say "la, la, la, I CAN'T HEAR YOU", to our biological clocks, safe in the belief that when we are in our forties - or even fifties, according to this book - a bouncing bundle of joy will be ours if we cut out peas.

Seriously. According to the author, Sarah Dobbyn, peas are the enemy of women trying to conceive. As is rhubarb, but how often do you eat that? Eggs and fruit juices should also be avoided. Meat, sugar, dairy, alcohol... anything that might remotely pass for fun or get you in the mood is a no-no.

Ms Dobbyn, who also explores the effect of the moon on fertility, has no medical qualifications. She is a nutritionist who used to be a barrister, so we must credit her with some intelligence, but her assertion that your diet might lead to you getting pregnant in your fifties is a tad moronic considering only a handful of people around the world have babies at this age, usually thanks to IVF rather than the waxing and waning of the moon. The fact remains that fertility still declines rapidly once we hit 35.

To claim otherwise sends out a dangerous message to young women, who already believe that IVF will sort things out. Witness Angelina Jolie, whose new-born twins were apparently made in a test-tube because she couldn't be bothered to try to conceive naturally - and this woman goes out with Brad Pitt.

Dobbyn says her book will allow the Bridget Jones generation to hit the snooze button on their biological clocks, so they can "find the right man without that element of panic", which is very kind of her, if a bit patronising.

Dobbyn herself is 43 - young in the grand scheme of things, but cutting it fine when it comes to starting a family, which she said she shortly hoped to do in an interview at the weekend. I wish her luck, but can't help thinking that life would be easier if we admitted that Mother Nature, cruel mistress that she is, has precious little time for members of the sisterhood over 35.

It could be worse. We could live in Russia, where a woman has lost her case for sexual harassment after a judge ruled that employers were obliged to try it on with staff to ensure the survival of the human race. And no, I am not making this up.

Apparently, it's all part of the job description over there, where a recent survey found that 80 per cent of women believed that the only way to get a rise is to carry out sexual favours. Western women may want it all - work and babies - but as this case proves, perhaps we should be careful what we wish for.

Source





2 August, 2008

The state-sanctioned bullying of fat kids

Why is Britain opening so many `fat camps'? The evidence suggests they don't work, and only make overweight children feel isolated and ashamed

Last year's erroneously titled Foresight report on obesity, published by the UK government, recommended `fat camps' for overweight British teenagers, because apparently radical strategies are necessary to avert a public health catastrophe. This draconian policy found its way into the government's evidence-free obesity strategy, Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives, which prescribes anti-obesity interventions at the local level.

Consequently, Rotherham Primary Care Trust, as part of the new Rotherham Obesity Strategy, has unveiled a three-year plan targeting families with overweight children. The Trust identified Rotherham's fattest children and this summer banished 38 of them to a fat camp, the Carnegie Residential Weight Loss Camp, in Leeds.

This is not the first time that fat British children have been sent away because they are aesthetically unpleasing to their parents, peers and the public health establishment. The summer of 1999 saw Britain's first residential fat camp (based on the American model) open its doors to 40 overweight children. The Too Fat to Toddle camp, the first British fat camp for under-fives, opened for business late last year.

This week, officialdom's war against fat children was stepped up a mark. The government revealed that, starting in the next school term, parents will be sent `fat reports' on their children. As part of the anti-obesity crusade, schools will weigh children at the age of four to five and again at 10 to 11 and send details about their Body Mass Index to parents, with advice on whether their child's weight is unhealthy. And Sunday's Observer reported that Britain's first live-in fat camp - a `boarding school exclusively for overweight and obese teenagers' - will open soon in the Lake District.

It is deeply frustrating that British policymakers did not heed the lessons of the American experience, where fat camps have existed for 45 years, before unleashing yet another futile childhood obesity intervention.

The first fat camp for children, New York State's Camp Napanoch, opened in 1963. Three years later, it was out of business. During the next 30 years, a large number of fat camps appeared across America. Eventually, the fat camp business turned sour and most camps went bust. By the mid-1990s, there were fewer than 20 fat camps in operation. Today, there are only a dozen left.

Why is business so bad in America, the world leader in fat children and obsessive parenting? Because the dirty little secret of fat camps is that they do not work. It is true that often a child will go to a fat camp and return home a stone or two lighter. At the UK's original fat camp in Leeds, obese teenagers typically lose 12lb over a one-month residential stay.

Chances are, however, that they will regain the weight in a few months. The Los Angeles Times reported that only one in 10 American campers actually keep the weight off. A New York Times investigation found that the majority of campers attending these programmes are repeat customers.

Individual camp's self-reporting success stories are littered with methodological problems, as most fat camps neither track nor report post-camp outcomes. Most do not remain in contact with their customers and camp `graduates' cannot be trusted to honestly respond to questionnaires that attempt to keep tabs on their weight history.

Most fat campers regain substantial amounts of weight within the first year. In a warning to parents, Dr Oded Bar-Or, director of McMaster University's Children's Exercise and Nutrition Center, said: `If you think the camp is going to solve the problem - the child will at long last lose weight and keep it that way - you can forget it.'

Therefore, it is unsurprising, yet deeply revealing, that the Rotherham Obesity Strategy provides information neither on the anticipated effectiveness of its own fat camps nor on the effectiveness of similar camps. To be fair, it cannot do so because there is no empirical evidence, as the Foresight report acknowledged, that government intervention in this area produces the desired outcome.

Most tellingly, perhaps, last autumn a qualitative study of the management of childhood obesity was published in the journal, BMC Family Practice. In this study, a representative group of primary care doctors in the 39 general practices that contract with Rotherham Primary Care Trust concluded that the evidence base for these programmes remains poor.

Earlier, the prestigious Cochrane systematic reviews of interventions for childhood obesity, which included 18 studies of various different treatments, found none of them to be effective....

Fat camps isolate children with a weight problem and add to the distress of an obese child. Professor Nick Finer of Luton and Dunstable Hospital's Obesity Research Centre, says: `You have to consider the psychological effects of sending your child away to such a place. Society already discriminates against fat people and I'm concerned that children might see being sent to these camps as a punishment for being fat.'

Fat children are expected to suffer, with stereotypical jolliness, the slings and arrows of a society dangerously obsessed with thinness. Probably, school playgrounds will always witness the bullying of fat children. But, as adults, we can and should eliminate fat-based bullying from government policy.

Source




LA blocks new fast-food outlets from poor areas

Arrogant and ill-informed paternalism redeemed only by its total ineffectiveness

City officials are putting South Los Angeles on a diet. The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to place a moratorium on new fast food restaurants in an impoverished swath of the city with a proliferation of such eateries and above average rates of obesity. The yearlong moratorium is intended to give the city time to attract restaurants that serve healthier food. The action, which the mayor must still sign into law, is believed to be the first of its kind by a major city to protect public health."Our communities have an extreme shortage of quality foods," City Councilman Bernard Parks said.

Representatives of fast-food chains said they support the goal of better diets but believe they are being unfairly targeted. They say they already offer healthier food items on their menus. "It's not where you eat, it's what you eat," said Andrew Pudzer, president and chief executive of CKE Restaurants, parent company of Carl's Jr. "We were willing to work with the city on that, but they obviously weren't interested."

The California Restaurant Association and its members will consider a legal challenge to the ordinance, spokesman Andrew Casana said.

Thirty percent of adults in South Los Angeles area are obese, compared to 19.1 percent for the metropolitan area and 14.1 percent for the affluent Westside, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

Research has shown that people will change eating habits when different foods are offered, but cost is a key factor in poor communities, said Kelly D. Brownell, director of Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. "Cheap, unhealthy food and lack of access to healthy food is a recipe for obesity," Brownell said. "Diets improve when healthy food establishments enter these neighborhoods."

A report by the Community Health Councils found 73 percent of South Los Angeles restaurants were fast food, compared to 42 percent in West Los Angeles.

South Los Angeles resident Curtis English acknowledged that fast food is loaded with calories and cholesterol. But since he's unemployed and does not have a car, it serves as a cheap, convenient staple for him. On Monday, he ate breakfast and lunch _ a sausage burrito and double cheeseburger, respectively _ at a McDonald's a few blocks from home for just $2.39. "I don't think there's too many fast food places," he said. "People like it."

Others welcomed an opportunity to get different kinds of food into their neighborhood. "They should open more healthy places," Dorothy Meighan said outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. "There's too much fried stuff." Councilwoman Jan Perry said that view repeatedly surfaced at the five community meetings she held during the past two years. Residents are tired of fast food, and many don't have cars to drive to places with other choices, she said.

Los Angeles' ban comes at a time when governments of all levels are increasingly viewing menus as a matter of public health. On Friday, California became the first state in the nation to bar trans fats, which lower levels of good cholesterol and increase bad cholesterol.

The moratorium, which can be extended up to a year, only affects standalone restaurants, not eateries located in malls or strip shopping centers. It defines fast-food restaurants as those that do not offer table service and provide a limited menu of pre-prepared or quickly heated food in disposable wrapping.

The definition exempts "fast-food casual" restaurants such as El Pollo Loco, Subway and Pastagina, which do not have drive-through windows or heat lamps and prepare fresh food to order. The ordinance also makes it harder for existing fast-food restaurants to expand or remodel.

Rebeca Torres, a South Los Angeles mother of four, said she would welcome more dining choices, even if she had to pay a little more. "They should have better things for children," she said. "This fast food really fattens them up."

Source





1 August, 2008

Study shows exposure to some types of air pollution raises blood pressure in some rats in some circumstances

My heading above is accurate. The original heading was: "Study shows exposure to bad air raises blood pressure"

The air people breathe while walking in the park, working in the garden or shopping downtown may be unhealthy enough to seriously spike their blood pressure, a new study suggests.

Cardiovascular researchers at The Ohio State University Medical Center are the first to report a direct link between air pollution and its impact on high blood pressure, or hypertension. If the results from these animal studies hold up, this could be important for human health. "We now have even more compelling evidence of the strong relationship between air pollution and cardiovascular disease," said Sanjay Rajagopalan, section director of vascular medicine at Ohio State's Medical Center and co-author of the study. This builds upon previous research from Rajagopalan's team published in the journals JAMA, Circulation and Inhalation Toxology.

Researchers exposed rats to levels of airborne pollutants that humans breathe everyday, noting the levels were still considerably below levels found in developing countries such as China and India, and in some parts of the U.S.

Researchers found that short-term exposure to air pollution, over a 10-week period, elevates blood pressure in those already predisposed to the condition. The results appear online and are scheduled for publication in an upcoming issue of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, a journal published by the American Heart Association. "Recent observational studies in humans suggest that within hours to days following exposure, blood pressure increases," Rajagopalan says.

In a highly-controlled experiment, hypertensive rats were placed in chambers and exposed to either particulate matter or filtered air for six hours a day, five days a week, over a period of 10 weeks. At week nine, researchers infused angiotensin II, another pollutant, into mini-pumps within the chambers and monitored responses in blood pressure over one week.

The air pollution level inside the chamber containing particulate matter was comparable to levels a commuter may be exposed to in urban areas with heavy traffic such as downtown Manhattan. "Pre-exposure to air pollution markedly increased blood pressure responses following infusion of angiotensin II," added Rajagopalan.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the four most common pollutants emitted into the air are particulate matter, ozone, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide. Air pollution is commonly the result of industrial emissions, coal burning, power plants and automobile exhaust. "This study provides guidance for the EPA to change pre-existing stringent standards in the effort to reduce air pollution," says Rajagopalan. "Our study also confirmed a need for a broader based approach, from the entire world, to influence policy development."

Qinghua Sun, first author of the study, will analyze vascular function in humans before and after the upcoming summer Olympics in Beijing, China. With stringent laws to ensure good quality during the games, it is anticipated that the air quality will improve significantly in and around Beijing. "We expect to find a tangible impact on vascular function and blood pressure because ultimately the only thing that will have changed is levels of air pollution," says Sun.

Source




DNA discovery in schizophrenia

Those pesky genes again!

THREE studies of more than 60,000 people have identified a range of genetic abnormalities linked to schizophrenia, including missing sections of DNA. The discoveries represented a milestone in determining the genetic basis of the complex mental disorder which affects one in 100 Australians, scientists said.

Bryan Mowry, executive director of the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research, and a co-author of one of the studies, said the findings could help determine the biological causes of the debilitating disease so new treatments could be developed. They could also eventually lead to tests for earlier diagnosis of the condition, which doctors can only identify now from symptoms including hallucinations and delusions. "Hopefully, that will be one of the outcomes," he said.

The study, in which Professor Mowry took part, included people with bipolar disorder, and the results suggested this condition had genetic risk factors in common with schizophrenia, he said. The three studies, published in the journals Nature and Nature Genetics, succeeded where smaller studies had failed because they looked at large numbers of people and searched right across the 3 billion letters of the human DNA code.

Two types of abnormalities were found: in single letters in the code, and in large chunks of DNA involving more than 100,000 letters, which were either missing or repeated in some people with the disease.

A team led by scientists at an Icelandic company, deCODE genetics, identified three genetic deletions which can occur spontaneously when eggs and sperm are created. These gaps in the DNA code were rare but increased the risk of schizophrenia between three- and 15-times.

The International Schizophrenia Consortium, involving researchers from 11 institutes in Europe and the US, also independently discovered two of these three deletions. They also found that people with schizophrenia were more likely to have other gaps or duplicated sections elsewhere in their genetic code that could disrupt the action of other genes.

The third international team, which included Queensland researchers, identified three single letter mutations linked to increased risk. The researchers cautioned it would be premature to develop genetic tests for a predisposition to schizophrenia based on the findings because they did not account for all cases of the disease.

Source