Archive for the ‘Science’ Category

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More on Blood Pressure medicines

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

oopsI’ve published twice (➡ and ➡) now on Big Pharma, Blood Pressure medicines and the ALLHAT Study that has shown (and been replicated) that cheap diuretic pills are equal or superior to the expensive blood pressure medicines Big Pharma is pushing.

Well, the other day, I went in to see my GP and I carried along a copy of the most recent study replicating the 2002 ALLHAT Study’s conclusions.   I wanted to talk with him about this because he’s prescribed one of these blood pressure medicines for me (Diovan).

He agreed that if the measure is just how much the pills lower one’s blood pressure, then diuretic pills may, indeed, be equal or superior to Big Pharma’s products.  But, he also said that there was more to the big picture than just looking at the blood pressure values.

The blood pressure medicine he prescribes for me, Diovan, is part of the class of blood pressure medicines called Angiotensin II Receptor Blockers (ARB).   Other drugs in this class are: candesartan (ATACAND), eprosartan (TEVETAN), irbesartan (AVAPRO), telmisartan (MYCARDIS), valsartan (DIOVAN), and losartan (COZAAR).

He said that long term studies had been done that had showed that folks that take ARBs tend to live longer and have less cardiovascular problems – quite independant from how much the drugs lower one’s blood pressure numbers.

So, as in many things, there’s more to the story than first meets the eye.

Posted in CounterCurrents, Personal, Science | No Comments »

Alarm Sounded On Social Security

Saturday, May 16th, 2009

– Social Security will be broke by 2037 and Medicare by 2017.  Those are today’s best guesses.   And, if our economic problems continue to worsen, which they show every sign of doing, then these figures will get worse and the time between now and when these systems go broke will get shorter.

– At 61 years old, it is conceivable that Social Security’s bankruptcy could impact me, but I doubt it.   And Medicare will be irrelevant to me because I will have been in New Zealand long before then.   But, my wife’s nine years younger than I am and my boys are 29 and 40 now.

– As Americans, the younger you are, the higher the likelihood that you will see and be impacted by the failures of these systems.   Congress has known about this problem  for literally decades and they could not find the will to fix it in the good times.   What do you think the chances are that they are going to fix it in the midst of a recession?   Un-hum, that’s what I thought too.

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Report Also Warns Of Medicare Collapse

The financial health of the Social Security system has eroded more sharply in the past year than at any time since the mid-1990s, according to a government forecast that ratchets up pressure on the Obama administration and Congress to stabilize the retirement system that keeps many older Americans out of poverty.

The report, issued yesterday by the trustees who monitor the government’s two main forms of help for the elderly, shows that Medicare has become more fragile as well and is at greater risk than Social Security of imminent fiscal collapse. Starting eight years from now, the report says, the health insurance program will be unable to pay all its hospital bills.

The findings put a stark new face on the toll the recession has taken on the two enormous entitlement programs. They also intensify a political debate, gathering strength among Democrats and Republicans, over how quickly President Obama should tackle Social Security when health-care reform is his administration’s most urgent domestic priority.

More… ➡

Posted in Financial melt-down, Mental Irrationality, Politics - The Wrong Way, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm | 1 Comment »

Captive Knowledge

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

The funding for academic research has been taken over by business

Why is the Medical Research Council run by an arms manufacturer? Why is the Natural Environment Research Council run by the head of a construction company? Why is the chairman of a real estate firm in charge of higher education funding for England?

Because our universities are being turned by the government into corporate research departments. No longer may they pursue knowledge for its own sake: now the highest ambition to which they must aspire is finding better ways to make money.

At the end of last month, unremarked by the media, a quiet intellectual revolution took place. The research councils, which provide 90% of the funding for academic research in Britain(1), introduced a new requirement for people seeking grants: now they must describe the economic impact of the work they want to conduct. The councils define impact as the “demonstrable contribution” that research can make to society and the economy(2). But how do you demonstrate the impact of blue skies research before it has been conducted?

The idea, the government says, is to transfer knowledge from the universities to industry, boosting the UK’s economy and helping to lift us out of recession. There’s nothing wrong, in principle, with commercialising scientific discoveries. But imposing this condition on the pursuit of all knowledge does not enrich us; it impoverishes us, reducing the wonders of the universe to figures in an accountant’s ledger.

Picture Charles Darwin trying to fill out his application form before embarking on the Beagle. “Explain how the research has the potential to impact on the nation’s health,
wealth or culture. For example: fostering global economic performance, and specifically the economic competitiveness of the United Kingdom … What are the realistic timescales for the benefits to be realised?”(3) If Darwin had been dependent on a grant from a British research council, he would never have set sail.

The government insists that nothing fundamental has changed; that the Haldane Principle, which states that the government should not interfere in research decisions, still holds. Only the research councils, ministers say, should decide what gets funded.

This is humbug of the same species as newspaper proprietors use. Some of them insist that they never interfere in the decisions their newspapers make. But they appoint editors who share their views and know exactly what is expected of them. All the chairmen of the five research councils funding science(4), and the chairs of the three higher education funding councils(5) (which provide core funding for universities) are or were senior corporate executives.

More… ➡

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, CrashBlogging, Culture - How not to do it, Mental Irrationality | No Comments »

Carbon Nanotubes: Innovative Technology Or Risk To Health Or Environment?

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

– I’ve written before about my concerns on the nanotechnology they are gleefully rolling out into our environment.   :arrow:, :arrow:, ➡

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Carbon nanotubes have made a meteoric career in the past 15 years, even if their applications are still limited. Recent research results show that – apart from their favorable mechanical and electrical properties – they also have disadvantageous characteristics.

One aspect which has rarely been considered so far is now addressed by researchers of the research center Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf. “If the application of products and commodities containing carbon nanotubes will increase in the future, then there will be a higher probability for the tubes to get into the environment during their production, usage or disposal, to be distributed there, and to bind pollutants such as heavy metals on their way trough the environment”, says Harald Zaenker, scientist at the FZD.

Via water into the environment

An important way for carbon nanotubes of getting into the environment is the way via the water. In their original state, the flimsy carbon fibers with a diameter of less than 50 nanometers (1 nanometer = 1 millionth of a millimeter) are hardly water-soluble. At first glance, they should therefore not be mobile in groundwater, lakes etc., i.e. they should rapidly settle or deposit. However, carbon nanotubes are able to form colloidal solutions if their surface structure is changed. Changes in the surface structure can be brought about deliberately during the production of the tubes or can be induced by natural processes if the tubes are released into the environment.

A colloidal solution, unlike a true solution of water-soluble substances, is a solution in which the apparently dissolved substance is finely dispersed in the solvent forming tiny particles. These particles are still much bigger than the molecules of a dissolved substance in a true solution. As colloids, carbon nanotubes might be transported anywhere in environmental waters. It is known meanwhile that the tubes can even penetrate cell walls and, thus, might theoretically be able to enter also animal or human cells. In addition, changes in the surface structure of carbon nanotubes cause another effect: their capability to bind heavy metals is increased.

More… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Mental Irrationality, Nanotechnology, Pollution, Science, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

UN ‘stunned’ by scale of bail-out

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

– Yes, isn’t it amazing we’ve found ALL this money to try to fix the financial systems – when we could hardly find any to help fix the world’s environmental problems?

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The UN’s head of environment has been left “stunned” by the billions of dollars pumped into ailing companies following the global financial crisis.

Achim Steiner told the BBC One Planet programme that he had fought for years to secure much smaller sums to tackle poverty and climate change.

“We waited perhaps a decade to get $5bn ($3.3bn) to accelerate development of renewable energy,” he said.

We now see $20bn (£13.3bn) paid [to] a car company simply to keep it alive.”

He said he was surprised that such huge amounts had “suddenly been found” to tackle the crisis.

‘False story’

Vast sums of money have been spent on bank bailouts in the UK and the US alone.

Billions more has been promised in aid for struggling industries, such as automotive manufacturers.

But Mr Steiner, who is based in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, warned we are passing the bill to the next generation, and stressed that if extra investment is not found to tackle climate change, the bail-outs would be “a terrible waste of money”.

More… ➡

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Financial melt-down, Mental Irrationality | No Comments »

Subprime lobbyists in $370m battle

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

– Want to know who some of those responsible for the current economic mess are?   Read the following.

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The top 25 US originators of subprime mortgages – the risky assets that sparked the global financial crisis – spent almost $370m in Washington over the past decade on lobbying and campaign donations as they tried to ward off tighter regulation of their industry, an investigation has shown.

The study, which will be released today by the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit investigative journalism organisation, is likely to strengthen public calls for much tougher financial regulation in the US.

It shows that most of the top 25 originators, most of which are now bankrupt, were either owned or heavily financed by the nation’s largest banks, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan and Bank of America. Together, they originated $1,000bn in subprime mortgages in 2005-07 – almost three-quarters of the total.

The banks, which have received the vast bulk of the $700bn in troubled asset relief funds issued since last October, also supported the lobbying effort to prevent tighter regulation of the subprime market.

Nine of the top 10 lenders were in California, one of the states badly affected by the housing crisis that emerged after a surge in lending to riskier, or subprime, borrowers, many of whom were forced to foreclose.

More… ➡

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, CrashBlogging, Financial melt-down, Mental Irrationality, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

New, Fast-Evolving Rabies Virus Found — And Spreading

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

Evolving faster than any other new rabies virus on record, a northern-Arizona rabies strain has mutated to become contagious among skunks and now foxes, experts believe. The strain looks to be spreading fast, commanding attention from disease researchers across the United States (U.S. map).

It’s not so unusual for rabid animals to attack people on hiking trails and in driveways, or even in a bar—as happened March 27, when an addled bobcat chased pool players around the billiards table at the Chaparral in Cottonwood.

Nor is it odd that rabid skunks and foxes are testing positive for a contagious rabies strain commonly associated with big brown bats.

What is unusual is that the strain appears to have mutated so that foxes and skunks are now able to pass the virus on to their kin—not just through biting and scratching but through simple socializing, as humans might spread a flu.

Usually the secondary species—in this case, a skunk or fox bitten by a bat—is a dead-end host. The infected animal may become disoriented and even die but is usually unable to spread the virus, except through violent attacks.

(See pictures of infectious animals.)

Skunks have already been proven to be passively transmitting the strain to each other, as documented in a 2006 study in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

More… ➡


Posted in CrashBlogging, Pandemics, Science, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Pakistan, the Taliban and Nuclear Weapons

Friday, May 8th, 2009

swat-taliban1This story has really grown legs.    In spite of strong assurances from President Obama, that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are in no danger of falling into the Taliban’s hands, the number of stories on this topic seem to be increasing by the day.   I know that in private discussions with friends via the Internet and over coffee at Starbucks, many people are concerned about this and many people have opinions on what should be done about it.

Here are a series of stories I’ve culled in the last week or so:

➡ – from The New York Times May 3rd

➡ – from The New York Times May 4th

➡ – from The BBC May 4th

➡ – from The New York Times May 5th

➡ – from Spiegle International May 6th

➡ – from The BBC May 6th

➡ – from The Council on Foreign Relations May 6th

And, if that’s not enough, then follow this link ➡ which results when one Googles for “Obama Taliban Nuclear Weapons”.

I’ve written previously about all of this as well here ➡ and here ➡ .

If Pakistan falls and the Taliban gain access to their nuclear facilities (or even only part of them), it will likely become one of the bigger stories of the 21st century.  Stay tuned.

Posted in CrashBlogging, Fundamentalism, Mental Irrationality, Social Breakdown, Terrorism, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Food safety at a crossroads

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

By Zhou Li

In the wake of the melamine scandal in China, attention has turned to food safety issues. But tighter safety standards are of little help without robust moral standards, writes Zhou Li.

Last year’s melamine-in-milk scandal led to sombre reflection in China. According to the health ministry, 294,000 babies and infants acquired kidney stones due to drinking contaminated milk; 154 became seriously ill and six died.

The event has been seen as a failing of the dairy industry, a problem with supply chains and corporate governance. But the melamine scandal was not simply a business issue.

Plenty of energy has been expended handling these incidents, but our efforts have been misdirected. These events cannot be prevented until we realise that simply pursuing the culprits after the event is an ineffective response.

Unfortunately, this is where most of our attention is now focused. It is also naive to think that external supervision, such as the new food safety law, or internal controls, such as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) or ISO certification, will solve the problem.

The underlying cause of the melamine scandal was the food industry’s pursuit of profit – and the complete lack of moral standards of those involved.

Where there are no moral standards, there is scope for public harm in the pursuit of profit. Members of the public only know about food products at the point of consumption; there is no knowledge about the long-term or hidden dangers. One party can make a profit, while the other suffers. Honest manufacturers cannot survive, and neither can healthy patterns of consumption.

A moral vacuum means that members of the public pay with their health and environment. And this is a rising price that is difficult to quantify. Bad money drives out good; poor quality milk drives out high quality; unethical businesses drive out ethical ones; and bad systems take over from good systems.

More… ➡


Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, CrashBlogging, Culture - How not to do it, Human Rights, Mental Irrationality, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

‘Safe’ climate means ‘no to coal’

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

About three-quarters of the world’s fossil fuel reserves must be left unused if society is to avoid dangerous climate change, scientists warn.

More than 100 nations support the goal of keeping temperature rise below 2C.

But the scientists say that without major curbs on fossil fuel use, 2C will probably be reached by 2050.

Writing in Nature, they say politicians should focus on limiting humanity’s total output of CO2 rather than setting a “safe” level for annual emissions.

The UN climate process focuses on stabilising annual emissions at a level that would avoid major climate impacts.

But this group of scientists says that the cumulative total provides a better measure of the likely temperature rise, and may present an easier target for policymakers.

“To avoid dangerous climate change, we will have to limit the total amount of carbon we inject into the atmosphere, not just the emission rate in any given year,” said Myles Allen from the physics department at Oxford University.

“Climate policy needs an exit strategy; as well as reducing carbon emissions now, we need a plan for phasing out net emissions entirely.”

More… ➡

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Mental Irrationality, Pollution, The Perfect Storm, Weather deterioration | No Comments »

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