From the frequency of my posting recently, my overwhelmed readers can see I'm hacking away at a hugh backlog. Here's another in the Casting the Net series, which makes the job easier for me, if not for you. The good news is, like the can't-pass-this-up offer at the bottom of my inbox, and that $1 off coupon that's been in my wallet for six months, several of my must-posts are enough out of date I can cheerfully hit the delete key and not trouble you with them.
Free-Range Kids. I've only begun to explore Lenore Skenazy's site, but I like the premise, and it goes well with this cartoon. Skenazy found herself plunged into controversy after whe wrote a column for The New York Sun entitled, Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone.
I started this site for anyone who thinks that kids need a little more freedom and would like to connect to people who feel the same way. We are not daredevils. We believe in life jackets and bike helmets and air bags. But we also believe in independence. Children, like chickens, deserve a life outside the cage. The overprotected life is stunting and stifling, not to mention boring for all concerned. So here’s to Free Range Kids, raised by Free Range Parents willing to take some heat. I hope this web site encourages us all to think outside the house.
George F. Will's What Fear of Liability Has Wrought has unfortunately not gone out of date.
Called to a Florida school that could not cope, police led the disorderly student away in handcuffs, all 40 pounds of her 5-year-old self....No official at the...school would put a restraining arm around the misbehaving child lest he or she be sued, as a young member of Teach for America was...because the teacher put a hand on the back of a turbulent seventh-grader to direct him to leave the classroom.
In Indiana, a boy did what boys [and girls, I might add] do: He went down a slide head first—and broke his femur. The school district was sued for inadequate supervision.
A volunteer for a Catholic charity in Milwaukee ran a red light and seriously injured another person. Because the volunteer did not have deep pockets, the injured person sued the archdiocese—successfully, for $17 million.
The warning label on a five-inch fishing lure with a three-pronged hook says, "Harmful if swallowed"; the label on a letter opener says, "Safety goggles recommended."
The thread connecting such lunacies is a fear permeating American life. It is, alas, a sensible fear arising from America's increasingly perverse legal culture that is the subject of what surely will be 2009's most needed book on public affairs—[attorney Philip] Howard's Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans from Too Much Law.
Time was, rights were defensive. They were to prevent government from doing things to you. Today, rights increasingly are offensive weapons wielded to inflict demands on other people, using state power for private aggrandizement. The multiplication of rights, each lacking limiting principles, multiplies nonnegotiable conflicts.
But in such a society, dazed by what Howard calls "rule stupor" and victimized by litigious "victims," the incentives are for intensified complaining. Read Howard's book, and weep for the death of common sense.
Babies Know: A Little Dirt Is Good for You, from Jane E. Brody in The New York Times. Handwashing is a good thing, especially after using the bathroom, before preparing food, and during the time in our church service between the Peace, in which we've shaken hands with anyone and everyone we can reach, and the Eucharist, in which the bread is placed in those same hands and tranferred directly to our mouths. Nonetheless, I agree that the germ-free life, like the risk-free life decried above, is unheathy, especially for our children.
In studies of what is called the hygiene hypothesis, researchers are concluding that organisms like the millions of bacteria, viruses and especially worms that enter the body along with “dirt” spur the development of a healthy immune system. Several continuing studies suggest that worms may help to redirect an immune system that has gone awry and resulted in autoimmune disorders, allergies and asthma.
“What a child is doing when he puts things in his mouth is allowing his immune response to explore his environment,” Mary Ruebush, a microbiology and immunology instructor, wrote in her new book, “Why Dirt Is Good” (Kaplan). “Not only does this allow for ‘practice’ of immune responses, which will be necessary for protection, but it also plays a critical role in teaching the immature immune response what is best ignored.”
“Children raised in an ultraclean environment,” [said Dr. Joel V. Weinstock, the director of gastroenterology and hepatology at Tufts Medical Center in Boston], “are not being exposed to organisms that help them develop appropriate immune regulatory circuits.”
Studies he has conducted with Dr. David Elliott, a gastroenterologist and immunologist at the University of Iowa, indicate that intestinal worms, which have been all but eliminated in developed countries, are “likely to be the biggest player” in regulating the immune system to respond appropriately, Dr. Elliott said in an interview. He added that bacterial and viral infections seem to influence the immune system in the same way, but not as forcefully.
Most worms are harmless, especially in well-nourished people, Dr. Weinstock said.
Amen to all but the last statement, which unfortunately would discourage visits from Grandma: having cats as pets did not teach my own immune system not to overreact to the presence of their dander.Dr. Ruebush deplores the current fetish for the hundreds of antibacterial products that convey a false sense of security and may actually foster the development of antibiotic-resistant, disease-causing bacteria. Plain soap and water are all that are needed to become clean, she noted.
“I certainly recommend washing your hands after using the bathroom, before eating, after changing a diaper, before and after handling food,” and whenever they’re visibly soiled, she wrote. When no running water is available and cleaning hands is essential, she suggests an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
Dr. Weinstock goes even further. “Children should be allowed to go barefoot in the dirt, play in the dirt, and not have to wash their hands when they come in to eat,” he said. He and Dr. Elliott pointed out that children who grow up on farms and are frequently exposed to worms and other organisms from farm animals are much less likely to develop allergies and autoimmune diseases.
Also helpful, he said, is to “let kids have two dogs and a cat,” which will expose them to intestinal worms that can promote a healthy immune system.
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Category Health Children & Family Issues Random Musings
Two of my favorite bloggers have written recently about the perils of allowing ourselves to be too busy.
Surely You Can Work a Little Harder, from John Stackhouse
Some of us need to work harder than we do. Students fool themselves, thinking they are “studying” when they are just hanging out with their friends with open books in front of them. Professors think they are working when they are merely chatting with colleagues or fussing about some minor matter of campus politics....Many of us, however, work harder than we should. For whatever reason, and there are a lot of possible reasons, we are pushing ourselves beyond the limits of our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health.....So let us hear some wisdom from a very hard-working Christian brother who flourished four centuries ago. His name is Vincent de Paul, and he was an astonishing minister for good in the church....Be careful to preserve your health. It is a trick of the devil, which he employs to deceive good souls, to incite them to do more than they are able, in order that they may no longer be able to do anything.
Many of us, and I count myself chief of sinners, need to heed both warnings: do less and work harder. Jennifer at Conversion Diary talks about natural limits and making choices in Thoughts on Letting Yourself Get Overbooked.
Make wise choices and live within your limits, or your world will come crashing down. Sound advice for time or money. It doesn't guarantee financial security—as we have so dramatically seen, the wise and prudent can be hurt badly by other people's foolish choices—and it won't fix all our time problems, either. But it's the right path, and the most sane.[A] good way to figure out how much God expects you to get done in a week is to attempt to do no more work than you could get done in a six-day week, during daylight hours only, allowing ample time throughout the days for prayer breaks and calm, nourishing meals.
I've been thinking about how much I use modern technology (mainly artificial light) to push myself way past these natural limits—how I abuse the fact that I can add more hours to a day or week simply by keeping the all lights on until midnight or blowing off Sunday as a day of rest—and I realize that I do it to keep myself from having to make painful choices about what I can and cannot realistically commit to.
When you live your life within the constraints [of the] natural, God-given work/rest rhythms of the days and weeks, you have buffer. There's some wiggle room in your schedule when urgent, unexpected situations arise. ....[T]he amount of work that I attempt to do in a week spills far over those natural borders of how much one should work, but it all turns out fine and I can maintain the illusion of control...as long as nothing goes wrong. As long as everyone is healthy and there are no emergencies, I can get it all done without too much stress. But...when the slightest thing does go wrong, like a juggler who's barely able to handle all the balls he has in the air, it all comes crashing down.
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Category Health Random Musings
Jon shared Controlling Our Food on Facebook, but as that leaves out most of my readers, I'll post it here. I almost didn't, because whoever put it up on Google Video is some sort of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist. That doesn't negate the importance of what this French documentary has to say, however, so in the spirit of "the wise man recognizes truth in the words of his enemies," I recommend taking the time to watch this video, because it raises some critical issues about the environment and the future of our food supply. (It's nearly two hours long, but it not content-dense, so you can do something else while listening or be liberal with the fast-forward button.)
Controlling Our Food is primarily about the Monsanto Corporation. To bolster the claim that Monsanto will do anything to increase profits, including lie and cover up and put people at grave risk of illness and death, the first part of the documentary is old news about PCBs and dioxin and industrial/agricultural pollution. True enough, but old, and overly long, so that even in two hours there is not enough time given to the main points.
My main points, anyway. Perhaps the creators of the video intended it to be primarily an anti-Monsanto slam. To confess my own biases, I prefer organic, locally-grown, heirloom products produced on small farms as naturally as possible, but this does not make me anti-technology, anti-agribusiness, or even anti-GMO food (in principle), any more than being strongly in favor of educational choice, and homeschooling in particular, makes me blind to the benefits of public education. Mankind has been "engineering" his crops and livestock from prehistoric times, and in most cases this has been a good thing. There is a place for insecticides, herbicides, antibiotics, and other chemical interferences with nature. We take for granted the abundance of inexpensive food produced by our "factory farming," and those who would destroy the system need to consider the impact of that destruction, especially on the poor.
It's the long-range impact and unintended consequences of our technological innovations that concern me, and that's what I took away from Controlling Our Food. Perhaps Monsanto is evil incarnate and its executives are conspiring to poison us all and take over the world—but I doubt it. I distrust them, because I distrust any large organization that dominates a field, whether it's Monsanto, Microsoft, Google, the Teamsters Union, or the national government. But one doesn't need to have bad intentions to provoke evil consequences, and here are a few that should concern us:
- Monsanto's "Round-Up Ready" soybeans have been genetically engineered to resist Monsanto's popular herbicide, Round-Up. Farmers who plant this seed variety can drench their fields with herbicide to keep them weed-free while allowing the soybean plants to grow. It doesn't take much thinking to realize this means Round-Up will be used extensively rather than judiciously.
- Injudicious use of herbicides threatens the non-GMO crops of neighboring farmers.
- And what about the effect of those herbicides on farm workers and their families?
- And on those of us who subsequently eat those Round-Up laced soybeans?
- Because GMO seeds are patented, farmers are forbidden to save seed for next year's planting, and Monsanto aggressively pursues lawsuits against anyone they think is violating this agreement.
- This is especially disconcerting because the modified genes are distributed by natural forces beyond the boundaries of the originally-planted field.
- Which is concerning in itself, and threatens all non-GMO varieties, especially heirloom and native strains.
- More and more farmers are planting GMO crops, in order to remain competitive, and because non-GMO seeds are becoming increasingly unavailable.
- Poor farmers are especially hard-hit, because the natural strains of a crop that their families could subsist on—replanting the "seed corn" from year to year—are being lost; often high-cost GMO seeds are the only choice available.
- Anything that threatens our biodiversity is potentially a major, long-term problem. Not only does the lack of variety give us a bland sameness—all store-bought orange juice tastes the same—but any disease or pest threat to the one remaining strain endangers the entire food supply.
- When we reach the point where we cannot get seed for the future from our current crop, we are standing on top of a house of cards far more serious than the one that collapsed in our current financial crisis.
As I wrote in my review of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:
Our food supply is no longer self-sustainable. Plants and animals have for years been bred for many characteristics, but those which encourage reproduction, by seed or by sex, are not among them. Those who sell seeds have little interest in plants that will allow the farmer to save seeds from his current crop rather than purchasing new seeds for the next year. Characteristics that make animals successful reproducers are not generally compatible with the technique of keeping animals in close confinement, and besides, artificial insemination is more reliable and predictable, so that’s the way our agricultural animals are reproduced. I find the idea of a food supply that can’t last beyond the current generation without artificial intervention to be very, very scary. Closely related is the way we have bred variety out of our food plants and animals. Ninety-nine percent of the turkeys we eat, for example, are of a single breed, the Broad-Breasted White. All I can think of when I hear numbers like that is the Irish Potato Famine. We may end up owing our lives to heritage and heirloom plant and animal breeders like our friend at the Claude Moore Colonial Farm.
P.S. To the makers of the video: You do not inspire confidence in your findings by showing us that most of your research was apparently done via Google searches. Perhaps it was intended to assure us that the information is readily available, but I find it to be like a college student submitting a research paper in which all his sources are cited from Wikipedia. If you do a search for "dangers of epidurals" you will (currently) see this on the first page (click on the image for a larger view):
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Category Health Random Musings
This morning Google News reported the following two stories sequentially [emphasis added]:
An 11th-hour ruling from the Bush administration gives health care workers, hospitals, and insurers more leeway to refuse health services for moral or religious reasons.
The rule, issued today, becomes effective in 30 days. Its main provisions widen the number of health workers and institutions that may refuse, based on "sincere religious belief or moral conviction," to provide care or referrals to patients.
"This rule protects the right of medical providers to care for their patients in accord with their conscience," says Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt....
A wide number of medical groups strongly oppose the new ruling. These groups include the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Nurses Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and 27 state medical associations.
"Today's regulation issued by HHS under the guise of 'protecting' the conscience of health care providers, is yet another reminder of the outgoing administration's implicit contempt for women's right to accurate and complete reproductive health information and legal medical procedures," says a statement from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Shocking revelation: Santa Clara University professor mirrors famous torture study
Replicating one of the most controversial behavioral experiments in history, a Santa Clara University psychologist has found that people will follow orders from an authority figure to administer what they believe are painful electric shocks.
More than two-thirds of volunteers in the research study had to be stopped from administering 150 volt shocks of electricity, despite hearing a person's cries of pain, professor Jerry M. Burger concluded in a study published in the January issue of the journal American Psychologist.
"In a dramatic way, it illustrates that under certain circumstances people will act in very surprising and disturbing ways,'' said Burger.
The study, using paid volunteers from the South Bay, is similar to the famous 1974 "obedience study'' by the late Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. In the wake of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann's trial, Milgram was troubled by the willingness of people to obey authorities — even if it conflicted with their own conscience.
I'm sorry I've been too busy to write much lately. Here's a quick tidbit for the one or two of you who check here daily and may be wondering where I am. (Thank you, loyal reader!)
Here's an article that debunks some common medical myths. I don't know as I believe everything they say (I mean, what parent hasn't seen a child go crazy after eating lots of sugar?), but here's an interesting take on the idea that it's important to wear a hat because we lose most of our body heat through our heads.
Interesting. I'm keeping my winter hat, though; there are times when I need that 10%.[T]he US Army Field manual for survival recommends covering your head in cold weather because around 40-45% of body heat is lost through the head. A recent study, however, showed there is nothing special about heat loss from the head - any uncovered part of the body would lose heat. Scrutiny of the literature shows this myth probably originated with an old military study in which scientists put individuals in arctic survival suits (but with no hat) and measured their body temperature in extreme conditions. If the experiment had been done with the participants wearing only swimsuits they would not have lost more than 10% of their body heat through their heads, the researchers said.
The difficult task of developing a vaccine for malaria appears to be making progress. The RTS,S vaccine, developed by GlaxoSmithKline, has reduced malaria cases by about half in field trials, which is a significant breakthrough, even if not perfect.
It's frustrating, how much of a role fashion and politics play in determining where medical research is directed. Ask the man on the street to name the disease that's devastating Africa, and nearly everyone will answer, "AIDS." Granted, it's huge problem. But I'd be willing to bet that lack of clean water, good nutrition, and basic health education and services is the bigger issue. When it comes to research and funding efforts, since AIDS, being sex- and blood-borne, is nearly 100% preventable, while mosquito-transmitted malaria is nearly unavoidable if one lives in Sub-Saharan Africa, aren't our priorities a little skewed?
This is where I'd usually complain about all the effort and publicity that's gone into Viagra, a drug which at best enhances the quaility of life for a few, while over a million people die each year from malaria—but I'm pretty sure it's income from drugs like Viagra that make it possible for pharmaceutical companies to work on the more important issues.A recent news story highlights the perils of giving birth in Afghanistan. It's a great thing that midwives are being trained to help improve the country's appalling maternal mortality rate, which is as bad as it gets unless you give birth in Sierra Leone. However, the article indicates to me that we are training them in the medical model of care when it comes to childbirth. Given that childbirth is a natural and normal process for all but a small percentage of births, lack of access to (or willingness to use) doctors and hospitals is hardly the main problem. Promoting the Midwives' Model of Care along with good nutrition and prenatal care would probably do more than anything else to reduce the grip fear, pain, and death on Afghani mothers.
Afghanistan needs Ina May Gaskin—albeit with a bit of censorship required, especially the part about orgasmic childbirth. That wouldn't go over with the imams, no, not at all....The American Academy of Pediatrics has recently doubled its recommendation of vitamin D intake for children, from 200 IU to 400 IU per day. Not only is vitamin D important in the prevention of ricketts, but there is increasing evidence that its deficiency can promote type 2 diabetes, cancer, and autoimmune diseases. Some doctors think 400 IU may not be enough.
This recommendation is all well and good, but I draw the line at this: Breastfed and partially breastfed infants should be supplemented with 400 IU a day of vitamin D beginning in the first few days of life. The reason? [B]ecause of vitamin D deficiencies in the maternal diet, which affect the vitamin D in a mother’s milk, it is important that breastfed infants receive supplements of vitamin D.There's a point there. If the nursing mother isn't getting enough vitamin D, one or both of the pair will suffer. And I suppose the widespread recommendation of supplementation is the best a group like the AAP can do to address a general problem. But I would be more inclined to address the real problem by making sure the mother is properly nourished, and in ways as natural as possible rather than through artificial supplements.
How can one acquire 400 IU of vitamin D? A teaspoon of cod liver oil will get you more that, but if you want more palatable sources, 3.5 ounces of cooked salmon have 360 IU, the same amount of cooked mackeral has 345, 1.75 ounces of sardines in oil have 350, and 6 ounces of tuna canned in oil have 200.
Then there's my favorite source: playing outside in the sun. It doesn't take much, although the amount is variable, depending on latitude, time of year, and cloud cover. The factors that affect UV radiation exposure and research to date on the amount of sun exposure needed to maintain adequate vitamin D levels make it difficult to provide general guidelines. It has been suggested, for example, that approximately 5-30 minutes of sun exposure between 10 AM and 3 PM at least twice a week to the face, arms, legs, or back without sunscreen usually lead to sufficient vitamin D synthesis.
There you go: permission granted to play outside a few minutes several times a week. Maybe schools should re-institute a sound recess policy. Northern children would need longer playtimes, however. The UV energy above 42 degrees north latitude (a line approximately between the northern border of California and Boston) is insufficient for cutaneous vitamin D synthesis from November through February; in far northern latitudes, this reduced intensity lasts for up to 6 months. Latitudes below 34 degrees north (a line between Los Angeles and Columbia, South Carolina) allow for cutaneous production of vitamin D throughout the year. [Pardon the source's obvious prejudice against the southern hemisphere.]
Did you note the clever design here? The northern climes, in which sun exposure is insufficient for at least part of the year to produce adequate levels of vitamin D, have the cold-water fish whose oils are high in that vitamin. How efficient is that? It's another indication to me that the system was designed to work, and since babies were designed to subsist solely on mother's milk for at least the first several months of life, it makes much more sense to me for the mother to make sure she gets plenty of vitamin D herself, and to take her baby outside with her now and then, than to give artificial supplements.
Legal disclaimer: I'm a grandmother, not a doctor. This is my opinion, not medical advice. Check with your own doctor, do your own research, and use your own common sense. [No, I'm not paranoid about the recent lawsuits against bloggers...not really....]Permalink | Comments | Edit
Category Health Children & Family Issues
Years ago, when a friend recommended Airborne for staving off colds, I was skeptical, as I always am with such claims. But after reading the ingredients and deciding they wouldn't hurt me (and I'm past the age of worrying that what I ingest will hurt someone else), I tried it. And it worked. Repeatedly. The number and the severity of my upper respiratory tract infections were drastically reduced, even though I was travelling and visiting young children, two definite risk factors. One year I had none at all. Zero. At the time, I exclaimed to all who would hear, "Maybe it really works, or maybe it's just the Placebo Effect. I don't care. I'm quite willing to pay a dollar a tablet for something that 'doesn't work' but so obviously improves my health."
The Federal Trade Commission disagrees, claiming there is no evidence for the efficacy of Airborne's products, and requiring the company to issue refunds for the price of up to six packages to those who request them. That won't include me. Not only am I not certain that $30 would be worth the paperwork involved, but more importantly, I don't see how I could in good conscience ask for a refund when the product worked.
Even Steven Gardner, director of litigation for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which was part of a class-action lawsuit against Airborne, admitted, ""It is pretty much impossible to prove that it didn't prevent a cold if you don't get a cold." And that's the point. Doctors, lawyers, and the government can worry about advertising claims and scientific proof of efficacy, but my concerns have a narrower focus: if I don't get a cold, that's good enough for me.
Speaking of the Placebo Effect, here's an interesting story on how it relates to exercise and fitness.Last night our neighbors called to ask if we had noticed a terrible odor. They had just returned home after a few hours away and smelled something awful as soon as got out of the car; it was so strong they couldn't tell if it was widespread or localized. We stepped outside of our house and smelled no more than the normal hot-and-humid Florida vegetation smells.
Until we approached their house, that is. We were then hit with what was, indeed, a foul odor. But not, I was certain, a what-died-in-here? odor; it was something chemical rather than biological. Don't get started on the truth that biology is also chemistry; I'd say it was an inorganic smell rather than organic, but that's not true either. I know what I meant, and you would, too, if you'd smelled it.
But where was it coming from? Although the house and the yard were permeated with the smell, it seemed pretty clear that the garage was the source, not that that narrowed the possibilities down much. Diligent dog-like sniffing could not pinpoint the origin. Well, not really "dog-like"; our noses were not in danger of physical contact with anything, and we made frequent retreats outside for fresh air. I did more thinking than sniffing, myself, in an effort not to complicate the scents by vomiting on the garage floor.
My first reaction was "propane," but a brief opening of the valve of a known propane tank proved that the scents were not the same. There's no gas line to the house, so it couldn't have been a gas leak. Finally, my eyes lit on a container of weed killer, and I had a "Eureka!" moment: Insecticide. The smell was the chemical reek left in the wake of some pest control operations.
With that in mind, it was not long before our neighbors found—behind closed doors, in a box, on a shelf in the back of a cabinet—a leaking bottle of malathion. They carefully bagged it up, removed the wooden shelf onto which it head leaked, and set it all outside to be taken on the morrow to the county's toxic waste facility. Mystery solved, and the garage and house could begin to air out and detoxify.
The atmosphere in the neighborhood, on the other hand, deteriorated rapidly. Even bagged up, the permeation of the malathion was amazing. After returning home, opening either the front or the back door immediately let in an overwhelmingly foul odor. We turned off the air conditioner so as not to bring outside air into the house. I, worried about what harm our exposure might have done, and whether or not our neighbors should spend the night with us instead of in their polluted house, turned to Google. I was somewhat reassured that malathion is not one of the banned pesticides, but still in use, and that we'd probably already received far greater exposure through mosquito-control spraying.
We had planned to go to bed early, but the adventure had already scotched that idea. Furthermore, since I'd read that symptoms of malathion poisoning can take 30 minutes to a couple of hours to appear, we decided to stay up a bit longer and watch the final episode of Season Two of Monk. (Monk is our latest Netflix TV show venture about which I intend to post at some point; we tried it at the recommendation of a friend, and because Season Four of Numb3rs is not yet available. So far we have found it very enjoyable.)
If the point was to keep us awake, it succeeded. If the point was to distract us from worrying, it was the wrong show to watch. The lyrics of the theme song, in case you don't know it, are thus:
It's a jungle out there
Disorder and confusion everywhere
No one seems to care
Well I do
Hey, who's in charge here?
It's a jungle out there
Poison in the very air we breathe
Do you know what's in the water that you drink?
Well I do, and it's amazing
People think I'm crazy, 'cause I worry all the time
If you paid attention, you'd be worried too
You better pay attention
Or this world we love so much might just kill you
I could be wrong now, but I don't think so
It's a jungle out there
When they got to "poison in the very air we breathe," I took notice, and by "if you paid attention, you'd be worried to" I'd decided to make a call to Poison Control. Our neighbors were going to call the fire department, which in the past has been very helpful with oddball situations (including the time an insect set off our smoke alarm), but there is no longer an off-hours phone number, and it didn't seem like something to bother the 9-1-1 folks about. Fortunately, Poison Control is a different system, and they were not only avaiable, but very helpful. We were able to sleep well, and our neighbors were glad to know that they didn't have to evacuate. Here's a tip from Poison Control that I woudn't have thought of: Today's kitty litter is very useful for cleaning up liquid chemical spills.
This morning when we awoke a sniff out the back door revealed nothing but a chlorine smell from the pool, but the front yard was as bad as ever. I find that pretty amazing. That's powerful stuff! We're fine now, though, as the offending substance has been properly dealt with. I'm very glad it all happened in a situation in which it was discovered quickly—no more than a couple of hours from leak to clean up. What if our neighbors had been on vacation, or even just gone for a normal work day?
I's a jungle out there.
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Category Health Everyday Life
I don't recall the era of the 1960s with fondness; it wasn't all bad, but it was a messy, unkind time that accelerated our culture's decline in the areas of civility and decent behavior. However, there must be more of the 60s in my make-up than I thought: I'm finding good reasons to distrust The Man. :)
Just as the National Education Association adamantly opposes home education, the American Medical Association, unnerved, perhaps, by Ricki Lake's popular home birth movie, The Business of Being Born, has taken direct aim at home birth.* Reaction against yet one more threat to personal freedom has come from across the political spectrum, from the far left to the far right. Congratulations to the AMA for provoking agreement between pro-choice and pro-life groups.
Naturally one would expect professional associations for doctors (and teachers, and plumbers for that matter) to fear and oppose anything that threatens to take even a small amount of business away from their members. This conflict of interest, however, does make it difficult to believe that the driving motivation for their actions is altruistic. They would do better, I think, to consider the advice of wise Gamaliel to the Sanhedrin (Acts 5:12-39) when they threatened to kill Peter and the other apostles who were disrupting Jerusalem (and the Sanhedrin's business) with their stories about Jesus:
Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.
*If you follow this link to the U.S. News and World Report article, some of you will be particularly interested to note the first comment.
Confessions of a Medical Heretic, by Robert S. Mendelsohn, M. D. (McGraw-Hill, 1979)
A quick review of this so I can get it off my desk and back on the bookshelf: There's no doubt that modern medicine has lengthened and improved our lives; the underside of that story is that modern medicine has also shortened our lives, and in many ways diminished their quality. If you're not already half convinced of the second part of that statement, you'll find Dr. Mendelsohn's style hard to get through. I believe him, and I still wanted to scream by about the 40th time he beat to death his otherwise illuminating analogy of modern medicine as a religion.It's worth reading, however, especially if your faith in doctors, hospitals, and prescription medications is strong. A little exposure to the harm that has been done in the name of health care is enough to let in some creeping doubts that nationalizing this commodity is the right path to take. At the very least it will make you a little more alert next time you step into a medical facility.
Sceptics will be quick to point out that the book was written in 1979, but if anyone thinks the basic situation has improved in the last 30 years, I'll point out that while progress has been made in some areas, the underlying philosophies and approaches remain.
I am not denouncing all of modern medicine, much less renouncing it. Mendelsohn himself has good things to say, especially about emergency medicine. But even religion shouldn't be taken completely on faith. An awareness of the dangers lurking behind hospital doors can be very good for our health.The spectre of mercury poisoning from dental fillings has made the leap from alternative medicine/tabloid fodder to official health concern, as the FDA now acknowledges the possible danger to children, unborn babies, and other sensitive populations. I doubt it's worth having fillings replaced (which I'm guessing could release more mercury than leaving them alone), but certainly a good idea to check with your dentist.
I'd much rather get my mercury from eating tuna and swordfish.I actually enjoy airplane food, perhaps because I don't eat it all that often. It's part of the adventure of flying, and something to break up the monotony of a long flight. But maybe next time I should wave away the attendent with the tempting tray. Recent research has shown that fasting for about 16 hours can reset the circadian rhythms and speed adjustment to a new time zone.
At least if you're a mouse.
