Bangladeshi chest doctor Kazi Saifuddin Bennoor has seen many misleading cigarette advertisements, but the one that suggested smoking could make childbirth easier plumbed new depths. … “[I]f a lady smokes, her baby will be smaller and it will be easier to deliver, the labour will be less painful“. Read more
Category Archives: Politics & Issues
Taking natural foods too far
The description of Rentokil’s Rodine Rat & Mouse poison includes the following assurance: “Contains natural whole wheat.” Doesn’t this take the sales appeal of healthy ingredients just a bit too far?
What are the mice and rats expected to make of this? Will the mummy and daddy rodents take the poison home and say to their children, “Eat up, it’s good for you. It’s made from whole wheat”? Or are the humans who use the poison supposed to feel good about killing small animals using healthy organic ingredients?
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Tony Judt lives on
It might be thought the height of poor taste to ascribe good fortune to a healthy man with a young family struck down at the age of sixty by an incurable degenerative disorder from which he must shortly die. But there is more than one sort of luck. To fall prey to a motor neuron disease is surely to have offended the Gods at some point, and there is nothing more to be said. But if you must suffer thus, better to have a well-stocked head. Read more
An Edgar Allan Poe moment
The other day, I couldn’t find FuFu after the repairman left. I went out and did errands, came back, and still no FuFu. I walked around the house calling and whistling. The cats dislike whistling, and they usually come running to investigate the sound. Finally I heard a faint meow. I tracked it down to the area where the repairman had been working. It was coming from behind the wall! Read more
Healthy lifestyles serve political interests
Ultimately, decisions about a country’s health are not a matter of science, medicine, research, or scholarship. They are essentially political choices. When the US leans right, the solution to the health care crisis is to emphasize personal responsibility (aka prevention through healthy lifestyles). When the country leans left, there’s increased interest in the “negative externalities” of advanced market capitalism (pollution, climate change, ethnic inequities). Neither one is exclusively right or wrong. But when the political climate puts the spotlight on patients who are guilty of unhealthy lifestyles, the focus goes dim on those “fundamental mechanisms leading to disease” that have nothing to do with lifestyle. We lose sight of the genuine solutions that an increased focus on those mechanisms could provide. Read more
The politics behind personal responsibility for health
Another great example of neoliberal insistence on personal responsiblity: In a 1980 report on the impact of carbon dioxide on climate change – a report requested by Congress – physicist and free-marketer William Nierenberg argued that we should do nothing to prevent climate change because people could simply migrate. “Not only have people moved [in the past], but they have taken with them their horses, dogs, children, technologies, crops, livestock, and hobbies. It is extraordinary how adaptable people can be.” Read more
Water privatization in South Africa: Victory and reversal
Here then, we have the highest court in the land saying that those poor people with pre-paid water meters must not think that their water supply has discontinued when their taps run dry because the meter has cut the supply … they must imagine that it is “temporarily suspended” until such time as they can find the money to buy more water credit or until the next month arrives. Such “logic” … is … an insult both to the poor and to the constitutional imperatives of justice and equality. Read more
Water privatization in South Africa: Prepaid meters
The supply of water was controlled by prepaid water meters that were installed for each household. Once the “free” allocation was exhausted, the water meters prevented additional water from flowing. That included emergency situations, such as the need to put out a fire. When a fire broke out in Phiri, an urban neighborhood of Soweto in Johannesburg, the outcome was tragic. Read more
The Cochabamba water wars
in the developing world, over a billion people lack access to safe drinking water. Many women spend over six hours a day collecting enough water for their families (and wait until after dark to relieve themselves). When it comes to sanitation, 2.6 billion do not even have access to “improved” pit latrines – open pits with simple modifications to reduce flies and odors. Read more
Water privatization: An investment bonanza
From Buenos Aires to Atlanta to Jakarta, the liquid everybody needs–and will need a lot more of in the future–is going private, creating one of the world’s great business opportunities. The dollars at stake are huge. … Water promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th century: the precious commodity that determines the wealth of nations. … To turn a profit, [the privatizing corporation] must collect far more in water charges than it pays out in salaries, equipment, and interest. Read more
The Affordable Care Act and the Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act barred private businesses such as hotels, bus companies, and restaurants from refusing to sell their products or services to customers on the basis of race. The ACA bars state-licensed health insurers from refusing to sell products to individuals on the basis of health status. … This basic reconceptualization of health insurance as a good whose availability is a matter of national public interest essentially frames health insurance the way the Civil Rights Act framed other business interests. Read more
Updates: Commercialization of infidelity, medical rivalry, conservatives on climate change, football concussions
As a practicing pediatrician, I, too, feel the nobility and privilege of my profession, and count myself lucky every day that I am able to do what I do. But to denigrate lawyers and journalists as somehow less valuable to society is beneath us as a profession. Read more
The tyranny of health then and now
When we hear the words “tyranny of health” these days, it’s usually a reference to the tyranny of health care. It brings to mind images of protesters carrying signs that denounce the “socialism” of Obamacare. As recently as 1994, however, the tyranny of health had a different meaning … the idea that patients should be coerced into being healthy. Read more
“Tyranny of health” on KevinMD
That we’re not routinely made seriously ill by this shortfall … is due largely to the fact that most medical interventions and advice don’t address life-and-death situations, but rather aim to leave us marginally healthier or less unhealthy, so we usually neither gain nor risk all that much. Read more
Soft drinks and food stamps: From bad to worse
Science aside, I find it objectionable to single out low-income people for control by their government. Let’s not further insult the dignity of those who need food stamps in these difficult economic times by fighting the obesity battle on their backs. Read more
Democrats and Republicans: How they differ
In the face of all this, it seems not to have occurred to a single prominent Democrat, from Obama on down, to say something like: We love our country every bit as much as they do, and we believe patriotism means expanding access to health care, protecting the environment, and imposing effective new rules on Wall Street. Democrats have thus crippled themselves by adapting comparatively limited ideas of legitimate political action, and by ceding to Republicans the strong claim of love of one’s country. Read more
Health care reform and the 2010 elections
Bottom line: If you want to avoid a government shutdown, or the “dysfunctional and failed republic” scenario, vote on November 2 for candidates who support health care reform. Read more
Should doctors work weekends?
Orszag is an economist who wants the medical “industry” to be run as efficiently as any other business. “[I]f you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” he says. But medicine is not like other business ventures. For one thing, its services are responsible for the life, death, and suffering of human beings. This is unique. Also, it doesn’t operate with the usual economic model of supply, demand, and shopping for competitive prices. When health hangs in the balance, time is limited and choices are few. You don’t decide to forego surgery the way you postpone the purchase of a new car. Read more
The dismal future of unemployment
The only thing highly developed countries can do in the face of cheap foreign labor is to play their ace card. Where these countries excel is with industries that are knowledge intensive – “capital-intensive advanced industries where knowledge counts for everything.” But we are unable to teach the skills required for those jobs as rapidly as the need for employment requires. Those skills constantly go out of date. Read more
Michelle Chappel – No Place Like Home
October 10, 2010 — 10/10/10 — is World Homeless Day. My friend Michelle Chappel Millis has written a song and made a video in support of this cause. It’s called “No Place Like Home.”
Michelle encourages all viewers to share the video – here’s the YouTube link – as a way to raise awareness of the problem of homelessness. If you’re so moved, please contribute to registered charities in your locality. Read more
Support the Fair Elections Now Act
Watching political news on TV can be depressing and distressing. Even the most respectable news organizations treat politics as a sporting event. The Fair Elections Now Act is a chance to express support for something that could make a positive and important difference in the legislative future of the United States. It would be an enormous win for the common good. Read more
Lobbying against formula for babies
You might think that companies confident in their products’ value would welcome the chance for a federal stamp of approval, not fight it. But the Big Three formula manufacturers—Nestle, Mead Johnson, and Abbot Laboratories – did just that. … Without a show of courage from the House leadership, the story of WIC and functional ingredients could turn out to be yet another well-known Washington narrative — powerful, wealthy corporations fighting straightforward, evidence-based policymaking. Read more
Century-old kerfuffle over the “syrup” in corn syrup
I see that the Corn Refiners Association is petitioning the FDA to change the name of their ingredient – as it appears on food labels — from corn “syrup” to corn “sugar.” There’s an amusing footnote to this story. A hundred years ago, Karo Corn Syrup – a product still on the market – was fighting to be listed as “syrup,” not glucose (a simple sugar), on its label. Read more
Merchants of Doubt
It’s easy to understand – if not condone – the behavior of politicians who are financed by tobacco and oil companies. They oppose the regulation of smoking or pollution because they benefit from the financial contributions of those industries. But what motivates certain scientists to relentlessly cast doubt on peer-reviewed scientific evidence that’s inconveniently contrary to financial interests? Read more
Childhood obesity and will power
Between 1985 and 2000, the retail price of carbonated soft drinks rose by 20%, the prices of fats and oils by 35%, and those of sugars and sweets by 46%, as compared with a 118% increase in the retail price of fresh fruits and vegetables. …
Healthy, low-calorie foods cost more money and take more effort to prepare than processed, high-calorie foods. … Drewnowski estimated that a calorie-dense diet cost $3.52 a day compared with $36.32 a day for a low-calorie diet.
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The tyranny of health
A recent commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association asks: If individuals don’t use preventive services, “what kind of penalty … would be ethically and morally acceptable?” The question wasn’t “How do we account for unhealthy behavior,” but what punishment would be sufficient either to change that behavior or at least to save money by denying these people health care. Read more
Tony Judt — continued
“Why is it that here in the United States we have such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society from the one whose dysfunctions and inequalities trouble us so?” he asked from his wheelchair. Read more
I am saddened by the death of Tony Judt
The vocal muscle, for sixty years my reliable alter ego, is failing. Communication, performance, assertion: these are now my weakest assets. Translating being into thought, thought into words, and words into communication will soon be beyond me and I shall be confined to the rhetorical landscape of my interior reflections. Read more
The end of the American dream?
The future I most fear for America is Latin American: a grossly unequal society that is prone to wild swings from populism to orthodoxy, which makes sensible government increasingly hard to imagine. Look at the Tea Party. People think it came from nowhere. While I don’t agree with their remedies, most Tea Party members are middle-class Americans who have been suffering silently for years. Read more
Afghan women empowered to practice beauty
The preoccupation with female appearance encourages evaluation of women in terms of sexual attractiveness rather than character, competence, hard-work, or achievement. Although some women benefit from their beauty, it is not a stable form of self-esteem. Read more