The Vitamin Myth

There's a reason why every product at your local GNC or Vitamin Shoppe is labeled with, "These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to treat, cure, diagnose or prevent any disease." Yet Americans spent more than $23 billion on vitamin, herb and other supplements in 2007. As I noted a few months back, you might as well flush your money down the toilet:

Ten years ago the government set out to test herbal and other alternative health remedies to find the ones that work. After spending $2.5 billion, the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do.

Echinacea for colds. Ginkgo biloba for memory. Glucosamine and chondroitin for arthritis. Black cohosh for menopausal hot flashes. Saw palmetto for prostate problems. Shark cartilage for cancer. All proved no better than dummy pills in big studies funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The lone exception: ginger capsules may help chemotherapy nausea.

There is one other exception that I'm aware of: Fish oil (omega-3 fatty acids). Although the link between omega-3 fatty acids and cardiovascular disease risk reduction are still being studied, research has shown that omega-3 fatty acids may decrease risk of arrhythmias (which can lead to sudden cardiac death), decrease triglyceride levels, and decrease growth rate of atherosclerotic plaques. The best way achieve these benefits is by eating fatty fish (salmon, mackeral, sardines, albacore tuna, and herring), but considering that overfishing may leave us without fish in a few decades and concerns of mercury contamination, fish oil tablets may be an acceptable alternative.

Operation Funny Bone

It's officially Stephen Colbert week. Not only is he doing his show from Iraq (and shaved his head!), but he's the guest editor for this week's issue of Newsweek. Although it's a serious issue about Iraq (Fareed Zakaria's piece is very good), he included a few comedic nuggets for us:

I know what you're thinking: "Isn't the Iraq War over?" That's what I thought, too. I hadn't seen it in the media for a while, and when I don't see something, I assume it's vanished forever, like in that terrifying game peekaboo. We stopped seeing much coverage of the Iraq War back in September when the economy tanked, and I just figured the insurgents were wiped out because they were heavily invested in Lehman Brothers.

Turns out there are still 135,000 troops in Iraq, which I don't understand because we've already won the war. And we've won it so many times. We should win something for the number of times we've won it. We eliminated the weapons of mass destruction by having them not exist. We took out Saddam Hussein—or a really convincing and committed Saddam Hussein double. We helped write the Iraqi Constitution and clearly gave Iraqis the right to bear a lot of arms. And by August of next year we'll withdraw every single one of our troops, leaving behind only memories and 50,000 troops.

Here's a clip from his show in Iraq:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Stephen Strong: Army of Me - Basic Training Pt. 2
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Stephen Colbert in Iraq

Global Pandemic

I know the 24 hour news media is on to the next shiny thing, but this is still a story (and a source of important lessons if the Big One ever hits):

The World Health Organization raised its alert on swine flu to the highest level on Thursday, in its first designation of a global pandemic in 41 years.

Calling further spread of the virus “inevitable,” the organization’s director general, Margaret Chan, said, “We are at the earliest days of a global pandemic.” The new H1N1 strain, she said, is “spreading easily from one person to another, and from one country to another” in more than one region of the world.

But the pandemic is “moderate” in severity, she noted, with the overwhelming majority of patients experiencing only mild symptoms and a full recovery, often in the absence of any medical treatment. And scientists are painstakingly tracking its every movement.

Science Can Be Fun

Really?

As usual, Hannity is high on crack (or telling blatant lies):

The Socialists are Coming!

Since Obama's election, the Republicans have been desperately trying to warn us that the Democrats are taking us towards socialism. Connor Clark, a reporter for The Atlantic, shows us how far we've gone:

Betty Bowers Explains Traditional Marriage

I loved this video! Not only does it show how ignorant of history people who are against gay marriage are, but also why the Bible should not be our all-encompassing guide to morality:

A Giant Falls

Wow, we own a failing car company now (to go along with our "nationalized" insurance and financial companies):

General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday as part of the Obama administration’s plan to shrink the automaker to a sustainable size and give a majority ownership stake to the federal government.

According to GM's bankruptcy filing , the company has assets of $82.3 billion, and liabilities of $172.8 billion. That would make GM the fourth largest U.S. bankruptcy on record, according to Bankruptcydata.com, just behind the 2002 bankruptcy of telecom WorldCom.

Three of the largest bankruptcies in history - GM, Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers and savings and loan Washington Mutual, have occurred in the last nine months.

So what's it gonna cost us?

As it reorganizes, the fallen icon of American industry will rely on $30 billion of additional financial assistance from the Treasury Department and $9.5 billion from Canada. That’s on top of about $20 billion in taxpayer money GM already has received in the form of low-interest loans.

What does it mean for everyone involved?

The plan is for the federal government to take a 60 percent ownership stake in the new GM. The Canadian government would take 12.5 percent, with the United Auto Workers getting a 17.5 percent share and unsecured bondholders receiving 10 percent. Existing GM shareholders are expected to be wiped out.

GM will use the trip into bankruptcy court to shed plants, dealerships, debt and other liabilities it can no longer afford. Emerging out of bankruptcy quickly will be a "new GM," made up of the four brands that GM will keep in the U.S. market -- Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick..

More than 650,000 retirees and their family members who depend on the company for health insurance will experience cutbacks in their coverage, although their pension benefits are unaffected for now.

Conservatives Move to Block a Gay Marriage Loophole

Hilarity from The Onion:

Conservatives Warn Quick Sex Change Only Barrier Between Gays, Marriage

Andalé!

Pretty interesting:

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have now genetically engineered a strain of mice whose FOXP2 gene has been swapped out for the human version.

 

Keep in mind that this sort of thing is done all the time. Scientists "knock out" or replace genes in mice (creating what we call transgenic mice) in order to study the gene's function (basically, by eliminating the gene, we can guess what the gene does by comparing the transgenic mice with normal mice). So what's special about FOXP2?

..FOXP2, was identified in 1998 as the cause of a subtle speech defect in a large London family, half of whose members have difficulties with articulation and grammar. All those affected inherited a disrupted version of the gene from one parent. FOXP2 quickly attracted the attention of evolutionary biologists because other animals also possess the gene, and the human version differs significantly in its DNA sequence from those of mice and chimpanzees, just as might be expected for a gene sculpted by natural selection to play an important role in language.

So what happened when the researchers replaced the mouse's FOXP2 gene with the human version?

..the human version of FOXP2 does in fact change the sounds that mice use to communicate with other mice, as well as other aspects of brain function. In a region of the brain called the basal ganglia, known in people to be involved in language, the humanized mice grew nerve cells that had a more complex structure. Baby mice utter ultrasonic whistles when removed from their mothers. The humanized baby mice, when isolated, made whistles that had a slightly lower pitch, among other differences, Dr. Enard says. 

However, don't expect to see talking mice or animals anytime soon.

..the study showed lots of small effects from the human FOXP2, which fit with the view that FOXP2 plays a vital role in language, probably with many other genes that remain to be discovered. “People shouldn’t think of this as the one language gene but as part of a broader cascade of genes,” he said. “It would have been truly spectacular if they had wound up with a talking mouse.”

Fight the (Liberal) Power, Yo

I guess when the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, said he was planning an  “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, he wasn't kidding. Please note this is not a parody or satire:

What's next, a re-mix featuring Rush Limbaugh beat boxing?

Ancient Ice Grills

This guy would have made Flavor Flav jealous: 

Sophisticated dentistry allowed Native Americans to add bling to their teeth as far back as 2,500 years ago, a new study says.

Ancient peoples of southern North America went to "dentists"—among the earliest known—to beautify their chompers with notches, grooves, and semiprecious gems, according to a recent analysis of thousands of teeth examined from collections in Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (such as the skull above, found in Chiapas, Mexico).

Scientists don't know the origin of most of the teeth in the collections, which belonged to people living throughout the region, called Mesoamerica, before the Spanish conquests of the 1500s.

But it's clear that people—mostly men—from nearly all walks of life opted for the look, noted José Concepción Jiménez, an anthropologist at the institute, which recently announced the findings.

Pathetic

Stories like this make my blood boil:

The mother of 13-year-old Daniel Hauser testified Friday that she and her son would refuse to comply with any court order requiring the boy to resume chemotherapy for his cancer.

"Danny clearly made up his mind. He's not doing it,'' Colleen Hauser, of Sleepy Eye, Minn., testified on the opening day of a trial over whether a court should order the boy into medical treatment against the family's wishes.

Hauser, whose son was diagnosed in January with Hodgkin's lymphoma, said conventional treatments such as chemotherapy conflict with the family's religious beliefs. She said they prefer natural remedies such as herbs and vitamins.

Dr. Bruce Bostrom of Children's Hospitals and Clinics, who first diagnosed the cancer when the boy arrived at a Minneapolis emergency room in January, said Daniel has a 95 percent chance of survival if he receives chemotherapy.

The Hausers declined to speak to reporters after Friday's court session. But Dan Zwakman, a member of the Nemenhah religious group to which they belong, acted as the family spokesman. He argued that this is a case about religious freedom, noting that the group's motto is "our religion is our medicine."

Medical experts testified Friday that X-rays showed that Daniel's tumor had grown between early and late April. The doctors called that an alarming finding, and said the cancer could become even more difficult to treat the longer they wait.

I should mention that there are NO randomized clinical trials which have shown that "natural remedies" can treat Hodgkin's lymphoma or any cancer for that matter. So does the refusal of the parents to give the child treatment (that cures 95% of patients!) constitute child endangerment, thus allowing the courts to come in and force the child to undergo treatment? I hope so. Sadly, these incidents are becoming more and more common.

UPDATE: Alas, there is some sense in the world:

A Minnesota judge ruled Friday that a 13-year-old cancer patient must be evaluated by a doctor to determine if the boy would benefit from restarting chemotherapy over his parents' objections.

In a 58-page ruling, Brown County District Judge John Rodenberg found that Daniel Hauser has been "medically neglected" by his parents, Colleen and Anthony Hauser, and was in need of child protection services.

While he allowed Daniel to stay with his parents, the judge gave the Hausers until Tuesday to get an updated chest X-ray for their son and select an oncologist.

If the evaluation shows the cancer had advanced to a point where chemotherapy and radiation would no longer help, the judge said, he would not order the boy to undergo treatment.

UPDATE II: Geez, this kid's mother is really bending over backwards to kill him with her ignorance (speaking of which, it was recently revealed that Daniel is "home schooled" and is functionally illiterate. I guess I shouldn't be surprised):

A courtroom clash between medicine and faith took a criminal turn, with police around the country on the lookout Wednesday for a Minnesota mother who fled with her cancer-stricken 13-year-old son rather than consent to chemotherapy.

A court-ordered X-ray on Monday showed a tumor growing in Daniel Hauser's chest, and doctors said it will probably kill him without conventional medical treatment.

And did she really think this wouldn't happen?

A felony arrest warrant for deprivation of parental rights was issued today for Colleen Hauser..The new warrant carries a potential two-year prison term, "but I'm not interested in prosecuting Colleen Hauser," [Brown County Attorney James] Olson said.

As soon as Daniel is taken into custody, he will be returned to Brown County, placed into foster care and examined by a pediatric oncologist, Olson said.

Cool Pic

In five spacewalks over the last week, astronauts on board the Space Shuttle Atlantis fixed ailing instruments on the Hubble telescope and replaced the orbiting observatory’s gyroscopes and batteries. On its way to capture the telescope, French astrophotographer Thierry Legault snapped this cool picture of the shuttle as it crossed the face of the sun:

Bush's Holy War

Sigh. It’s not enough that the Bush administration lied to us to take us to war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and was not a threat to us (and tortured people in order to get them to say that Saddam was involved in 9/11), but now we find out that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s intelligence briefings to Bush had cover sheets that invoked a combination of G.I. Joe war imagery and militaristic bible verses.

Click here to see examples of other cover sheets.

Jon Soltz, who served as a Captain in Operation Iraqi Freedom, explains why this is problematic:

..in the opening days of the war in Iraq, even the flimsy intelligence took a backseat to the idea that this was a Biblical fight between the forces of good (those who worship the God of the Old and New Testaments) against those who worship the God that is chronicled in the Koran.

It doesn't just offend me as a Jew that I was apparently fighting for the New Testament in the eyes of the Bush Administration. And it doesn't just offend me as an American that they thought it proper to engage our troops in what they obviously saw as a religious crusade.

As someone who still has friends over in Iraq and Afghanistan, it boils my blood to think that insurgents and terrorists now have something else to show around as "proof" that America is "fighting a war on Islam." Rumsfeld and those at the Pentagon (as well as the White House) had to know that there was a possibility that these would come out, and only exacerbate the religious and cultural misunderstandings about the United States in the region. And yet, they didn't care.

5 Minutes with Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins, renown Oxford evolutionary biologist and author of (the supremely awesome book) The God Delusion, talks about death, atheism, and the point of life:

Moving Towards Energy Independence

More evidence of change:

President Obama will announce tough new nationwide rules for automobile emissions and mileage standards on Tuesday, embracing standards that California has sought to enact for years over the objections of the auto industry and the Bush administration.

The rules, which will begin to take effect in 2012, will put in place a federal standard for fuel efficiency that is as tough as the California program, while imposing the first-ever limits on climate-altering gases from cars and trucks.

The effect will be a single new national standard that will create a car and light truck fleet in the United States that is almost 40 percent cleaner and more fuel-efficient by 2016 than it is today, with an average of 35.5 miles per gallon.

Most importantly, this will help make our country more energy independent. It's utter madness that we continue to send hundreds of billions of dollars every year to countries like Saudi Arabia (where the 9/11 attackers came from) for oil.

Fear and Loathing in the GOP

Over the past few months, a number of states (with Maine and New Hampshire being the most recent examples) have legalized gay marriage.  This, of course, has conservatives with their panties in a bunch:

What's ridiculous is there's no point trying to stop gay marriage. Putting aside the idea that the government should not be involved private affairs, every group that has fought for civil rights in this country has won. More importantly, Americans, especially younger Americans, support it. 

Man, the GOP has really put itself in a serious predicament. Republicans are now generally perceived as anti-gay (and anti-gay marriage), anti-immigrant, anti-science, anti-environment, anti-choice, pro-torture, pro-Iraq war, pro-Wall St, racist, primarily responsible for the economic crisis, and the party of old white guys. Is there any wonder why only 21% of people self-identified as Republican? Perhaps they should take Stephen Colbert's advice on how to re-brand the party.

Considering their policy views, how can the GOP be competitive in the 2010 and 2012 elections? Mark Nickolas at Huffington Post says they can't win without independent voters:

Assuming that each party gets 90 percent support from its base, Republicans would have to win independents by a 59 to 41 margin to win a typical election. Nevermind that it's Democrats who are handily winning independents these days.

But if you want one pretty dramatic example of the uphill battle Republicans face in trying to win over independents -- as they spend an inordinate amount of time attacking President Obama and his agenda and policies -- it's the right track/wrong track trend among those very independents.

Right Track/Wrong Track (Independent Voters only)
(CBS News polls)

May 2009: 42% right track, 52% wrong track
Apr 2009: 35% right track, 54% wrong track
Feb 2009: 21% right track, 68% wrong track
Oct 2008: 4% right track, 89% wrong track

Again, those numbers reflect independents only.

It doesn't take a political rocket scientist to understand this spiral death trap that the GOP seems to be in when it comes to the most critical bloc of voters that will decide their immediate electoral future: independents.

Aside from independents' strong approval of President Obama's job performance (they give him 59/28 approval in this week's poll), they are growing massively more comfortable in the direction of the country -- the very direction which the GOP is fighting tooth and nail.

Good luck with that, GOP...

Republican Mad Libs

The Daily Kos is on point with this one:
 

No doubt about it---the GOP knows how to scream "Danger!!!" better than anyone. But how do they do it so effectively? It's simple, really, and you, too, can convince people they should be scared of their own shadow. Just pick a phrase from List A, another from List B, and one from List C. Here...try it:

List A
A public option in health care reform
Curbing CO2 emissions
Gay marriage
Public funding of stem cell research
Immigration reform that doesn’t include mass deportations
Talking with our adversaries
Releasing the report/study/memo/photos
Restoring Clinton-era tax rates on multi-millionaires
Enacting tighter regulations in the financial sector
Investigating "enhanced interrogation techniques"
Closing down offshore tax loopholes
Actually listening to ordinary Americans
Anything President Obama does

will...

List B
Tear at the fabric of
Have a chilling effect on
Ignite a firestorm of woe upon
Erode the foundation of
Wreak incalculable havoc on
Lead us down a dark and dangerous path toward destroying
Lead us down a slippery slope on the way to bankrupting
Plunge a dagger into the very heart of
Unleash destruction on
Tear a giant hole in
Break the back of
Have devastating consequences on
Forever doom

List C
Our society
This great nation
Our national security
The family structure
Small businesses
Democracy as we know it
Our children!
Our children's children!
Our children's children's children! (etc.)
The Judeo Christian values on which this country was founded
The Homeland/Fatherland/Motherland
Everything we hold sacred
Our ability to prevent the socialists from taking over
Our vital institutions
My chances of getting re-elected

And, if you're feeling frisky, you can add a rhetorical flourish:

List D
Just wait---you'll see! And then you'll come crawling back to me!
I weep for my country!
My people don't want to secede from the U.S., but...we may have no choice.
This is the worst thing that's happened in the history of the world!
It's time to start stocking up on food and water. And gunnnnns.
Gosh darn it!
Also!!!

Reigning in Wall Street

It's about damn time we did something about this:

In its first detailed effort to overhaul financial regulations, the Obama administration on Wednesday sought new authority over the complex financial instruments, known as derivatives, that were a major cause of the financial crisis and have gone largely unregulated for decades.

The administration asked Congress to move quickly on legislation that would allow federal oversight of many kinds of exotic instruments, including credit-default swaps, the insurance contracts that caused the near-collapse of the American International Group.

The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, said the measure should require swaps and other types of derivatives to be traded on exchanges or clearinghouses and backed by capital reserves, much like the capital cushions that banks must set aside in case a borrower defaults on a loan.

“This financial crisis was caused in large part by significant gaps in the oversight of the markets,” Mr. Geithner said in a briefing. He said the proposal was intended to make the trading of derivatives more transparent and give regulators the ability to limit the amount of derivatives that any company can sell, or that any institution can hold.

The administration is seeking the repeal of major portions of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, a law adopted in December 2000 that made sure that derivative instruments would remain largely unregulated.

The law came about after heavy lobbying from Wall Street and the financial industry, and was pushed hard by Democrats and Republicans alike. It was endorsed at the time by the Treasury secretary, Lawrence H. Summers, who is now President Obama’s top economic adviser.

At the time, the derivatives market was relatively small. But it soon exploded, and the face value of all derivatives contracts across the world — a measure that counts the value of a derivative’s underlying assets — outstanding at the end of last year totaled more than $680 trillion, according to the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland. The market for credit-default swaps — a form of insurance that protects debtholders against default — stood around $38 trillion, according to the international swaps group. That represents the total amount of insurance that has been written on various kinds of debt, but the amount that would have to be paid out if the debt went into default is considerably less.

Derivatives are hard to value. They are virtually hidden from investors, analysts and regulators, even though they are one of Wall Street’s biggest profit engines. They do not trade openly on public exchanges, and financial services firms disclose few details about them. The new rules are meant to change most, but not all, of that opacity.

Used properly, they can reduce or transfer risk, limit the damage from market uncertainty and make global trade easier. Airlines, food companies, insurers, exporters and many other companies use derivatives to protect themselves from sudden and unpredictable changes in financial markets like interest rate or currency movements. Used poorly, derivatives can backfire and spread risk rather than contain it.

For more on the role credit default swaps played in the financial crisis, check this out.

Momentum Grows for Relaxing U.S. Policy on Cuba

We can only hope to see more of this. Jim Acosta, correspondent for CNN's "American Morning," has been reporting live from Havana since last week. Acosta, a Cuban-American whose father left the island in 1962, reported live on Friday from Havana's May Day parade and has been filing reports as well as blogging the trip.



If you are interested, there are more video reports available on his blog.

Also, I came across a petition for lifting the travel ban to Cuba. Considering that 67% of Americans already support ending the travel ban, by visiting http://www.opencuba.org/ and signing their online petition, you can add your name to the growing chorus of voices supporting the idea that every American should have the freedom to travel to any country in the world, including Cuba, because the interaction between peoples from different countries is the single most powerful way to advance the causes of peace and prosperity.

Can You Change?

An eye-opening assessment of what it really costs to produce all the things we buy and how much we waste:

Chris Matthews Defends Science

Personally, I would have held his feet to the fire on the evolution question, but I'll still give Chris Matthews kudos for even asking the question and bringing up the fact that the GOP is anti-science: