You may live forever if you can maintain 20s weight/height.

My doctor worked next to a doctor with the best aquarium ever. Salt water with a huge reef in the middle and all manner of fish, plant, bug and oddball animalito.

Fat people not more jolly
study says By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer
Mon Jul 3, 4:45 PM ET



CHICAGO - Fat people are not more jolly, according to a study that instead found obesity is strongly linked with depression and other mood disorders.

Whether obesity might cause these problems or is the result of them is not certain, and the research does not provide an answer, but there are theories to support both arguments.

Depression often causes people to abandon activities, and some medications used to treat mental illness can cause weight gain. On the other hand, obesity is often seen as a stigma and overweight people often are subject to teasing and other hurtful behavior.

The study of more than 9,000 adults found that mood and anxiety disorders including depression were about 25 percent more common in the obese people studied than in the non-obese. Substance abuse was an exception — obese people were about 25 percent less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol than slimmer participants.

The results appear in the July issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, being released Monday. The lead author was Dr. Gregory Simon, a researcher with Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, a large nonprofit health plan in the Pacific Northwest.

The results "suggest that the cultural stereotype of the jolly fat person is more a figment of our imagination than a reality," said Dr. Wayne Fenton of the National Institute of Mental Health, which funded the study.

Fenton said.

Both conditions are quite common. About one-third of U.S. adults are obese, and depression affects about 10 percent of the population, or nearly 21 million U.S. adults in a given year.

Previous studies produced conflicting results on whether obesity is linked with mental illness including depression, although a growing body of research suggests there is an association.

This latest study helps resolve the question, said Dr. Susan McElroy, a psychiatry professor at the University of Cincinnati and editor of a textbook on obesity and mental disorders.

she said.

The study was based on an analysis of a national survey of 9,125 adults who were interviewed to assess mental state. Obesity status was determined using participants' self-reported weight and height measurements.

About one-fourth of all participants were obese. Some 22 percent of obese participants had experienced a mood disorder including depression, compared with 18 percent of the nonobese.

McElroy said the study bolsters previous research suggesting that drug and alcohol abuse are less common in the obese. One reason might be that good-tasting food and substances of abuse both affect the same reward-seeking areas of the brain, McElroy said. Why some people choose food as a mood-regulator and others drugs or alcohol is uncertain, she said.

The study found the relationship between obesity and mental illness was equally strong in men and women, contrasting with some previous research that found a more robust link in women.
Source
___

That face transplant is really amazing. There was a movie a few years ago with Nicholas Cage and John Travolta where their faces were exchanged. Truth really is stranger than fiction. It was a very good movie, BTW.

Face Off.

Good luck to her. I feel sorry for the "facially impaired". It's one of those biases nobody talks about.

Damn my eyes, spite my nose and screw my teeth. I'm partying now and through tomorrow. (I hope)

I bought Dr Pepper after racquetball, so my partying will consist of staying up to watch Futurama and Yes Dear. Pure hedonism.

We're celebrating the way we always do. Real homemade picnic of fried chicken and potato salad and bread and butter pickles and deviled eggs and, of course, olives the kids can stick on their fingers and all that stuff.

Then down to the park with it and pig out and wait for the 5th largest fireworks show in the country and make nice to the tourists who come to see it. (Though I think we fell to 6th this year.)

For years I had an art studio downtown in the midst of the celebration. It was easy to come early and stay late. Now I don't want to fight the 50,000 or so folks who come for the fireworks.

Staying home.

Since I've been screwed out of a driver's license I'll be watching fireworks from the roof.

Hopefully tomorrow the judge sets things right.

Good luck with that Keep in mind that you're entitled to ask to meet with the prosecutor (or, in reality, merely request such a meeting) and show him your evidence and request that charges be dismissed. He's allowed to dismiss in the interests of justice if he believes your evidence is persuasive and you've been wrongly accused, and even to initiate his own investigation into who is forging your sig and using your SS number.

Also you might want to bring the other evidence you have on the bogus loan, to support your identity theft case.

Thanks. Since it's civil I think the meeting with the judge may be as far as it has to go.

I've got signed statements. Examples of my signature. (as well as the forgery on the copy of the ticket) The name of the likely perpetrator. They know who the car is registered to and the reality is only the driver's license infraction is specific to me. I have proof I sent a registered letter involving identity theft. A post from C-Span sucks dated within fifteen minutes of the supposed incident and the invoice to prove I administer the site.

I also have a signed note from 2004 (by myself and the owner) that I have permission and access to a car and thus have no need to drive any other car. Also the proof of insurance for that car and a driver's license that shows I have no need to just tell an officer who I am.

I have three good friends who know what I drive and the problems I've had with Terry Borg and their phone numbers and addresses on paper. The guy that gives me rides signed a statement to that effect, and another friend signed underneath as a witness.

I've done my homework, I just can't seem to find many examples of my problem online, so I have no idea how fast a judge may be able to solve my problem. Hopefully he can make me legal to drive on the spot. The rest I can work out at leisure, but people are counting on me to be able to drive legally.




Have a copy of the collector's letter, my letter, and the reciept for registered mail, all in the envelope.

Of course this all implicates my wife, and may hurt my chances to get her to quit claim on the house, so I have to be careful.

Sounds like you have done all that you can. Good luck. I predict victory on all fronts.

Good luck. It must be hard to prove a negative in court.

Come to think of it, documenting that your job involves driving people who need help might speed up the restoration of your DL too.

Yep. I hope the judge has some immediate remedy available. Though with government involved and MVD especially I have some cause for reticence.

I am not sure I've gathered all the relevant details, having come to this matter very late, but it sure sounds like a pain-in-the-ass.

All the best, a.v., it looks like you oughta be made 'whole', eventually. Hopefully, sooner rather than later.

On a different front, I am still waiting for the plumber that was supposed to come yesterday at 4, 5, 7, and 8 pm.

Hmm, yeahsh.

My friend is still waiting for a the gardner that was supposed to come in mid-June. Good luck, I hope you have a shovel in case a latrine is needed.

plumbing?


<<<shudder>>>

He actually graced me with an appearance yesterday early evening. Of course, that was the 'inspection and assessment' part. He told me he was going to call around 9 p.m. last night. Yeah, right. I called him a few mins ago and left a message. According to his greeting, he'll be getting back to me within 10 minutes.

This guy has "thrassos" (hutzpah in Greek).

Is he the only plumber in your phone book?

What with advances in sex change technology and your sundry historical references I can see how you might be apprehensive.

Just hold it.

I wonder if anyone ever sues for an exploded bladder?

Plumber jokes. Let's see...Crapper, Store High In Transit, WC (Westminster Church, 15 miles away, seats 200, most people bring a picnic basket and make a day of it) anon.

Tell me bub, is your obsession with davis' implied proclivites based upon a jewel of a blurb made some time back or is it a reading into layered words you pick up? Just want to know which way to face when we meet. I sort of enjoyed the barbs I read when first logging on w/moniker. Some folks couldn't guess my gender for a while. I chuckled when astonishment came thundering down for 1 or 2.

AV, sup? Hope the cutie is in charge of your file.

Hardly an obsession...simply difficult to resist the occasional pot-shot; but the lad has cast some jaded pearls before us swine. You sound more accomodating than discriminating...maybe we should hold off on the meet.

Tease.

Feeling good about donation is killing people. Time to offer some INCENTIVES for organs?


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/magazine...gin&oref=slogin

Flesh Trade


By STEPHEN J. DUBNER and STEVEN D. LEVITT
Published: July 9, 2006

Weighing the Repugnance Factor
Skip to next paragraph
Illustration by Paul Sahre

How's this for a repugnant situation? Take someone you love, perhaps your spouse or your sibling, and find a stranger who will accept a really big bet that your loved one will die prematurely — and if indeed that happens, you pocket a few million dollars.

This, of course, is how life insurance works. And most Americans don't find this idea repugnant at all. They used to, however. Until the mid-19th century, life insurance was considered "a profanation," as the sociologist Viviana Zelizer has written, "which transformed the sacred event of death into a vulgar commodity."

Alvin Roth, a Harvard economist who studies the design of markets, has done a lot of thinking about repugnance. On some issues, he notes, repugnance will recede, as with life insurance — or, even more momentously, the practice of charging interest on loans. In other cases, the reverse happens: a once-accepted behavior like slaveholding comes to be seen as repugnant.

One case of repugnance is far from settled: the dispute over how human organs for transplantation should be allocated — and, perhaps, even sold. If you happen to have a failing heart or liver or kidneys, you will almost certainly die without a transplant, but if you aren't lucky enough to get an organ through an official registry, you can't legally purchase one at any price. So instead of a free market in organs, we have a volunteer market. Some people agree to give up their usable organs once they die. In the case of a living donor, someone sacrifices a kidney or a portion of a liver to a recipient, most likely a family member.

In the space of just a few decades, transplant surgery has become safe and reliable (to say nothing of miraculous). But success breeds demand: as more patients get new organs, more patients want them. In 2005, more than 16,000 kidney transplants were performed in the U.S., an increase of 45 percent over 10 years. But during that time, the number of people on a kidney waiting list rose by 119 percent. More than 3,500 people now die each year waiting for a kidney transplant.

To an economist, this is a basic supply-and-demand gap with tragic consequences. So what can be done to increase the supply of organs?

A big problem is that would-be suppliers are not given very strong incentives to step forward. In much of Europe, the choice is made for them: instead of "opting in" to donate, the default assumption is that your usable organs will be harvested upon your death unless your family "opts out." But Europe, too, still has a sizable organ shortage, in part because traffic fatalities — which tend to produce desirable organs for harvest — are on a downward trend in Western countries.

If it's hard to get people to give up their organs upon death, consider how much harder it is to persuade a living person to donate a kidney. (From a medical perspective, a kidney from a living donor is far more valuable than a cadaver kidney.) Even though most people can live safely on one kidney, there is still a price to be paid in discomfort, risk, fear and lost wages. But the United States, like pretty much every other country in the world, forbids a donor to collect on that price, or any other.

It is hard to find an economist who agrees with this policy. Gary Becker and Julio Jorge Elias argued in a recent paper that "monetary incentives would increase the supply of organs for transplant sufficiently to eliminate the very large queues in organ markets, and the suffering and deaths of many of those waiting, without increasing the total cost of transplant surgery by more than 12 percent."

Some noneconomists may well find this reasoning repugnant. There are many reasons, after all, for banning the sale of organs. Some people consider it immoral to commodify body parts (although it is now commonplace to not only sell sperm and eggs but also to rent a womb). Others fear that most organ sellers would be poor while most buyers would be rich; or that someone might be pressured into selling a kidney without fully understanding the risks.

Commodifying blood-'donating' (i.e. paying for it) led to a much lower-quality supply. And, there was actually no significant increase in sheer supply because the traditional real donors were turned off by the commercialization of their sacrifice. Some things are worth doing specifically because they're not paid for in a quid pro quo fashion.

I'd rather see a real study.

Clash Over Stem Cell Research Heats Up
Scientists Dispute Claims of Leading Foe of Bill to Ease Embryo Restrictions

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 15, 2006; Page A04

With just days to go before the Senate is scheduled to vote on a hotly anticipated bill that would loosen President Bush's restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research, both sides of the scientifically and ethically charged issue have ramped up their publicity machines and attacks on each other.

As the week drew to a close, commentators opposed to the research, such as William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, released fiery commentaries urging senators to reject the bill. And several scientific and medical groups, including the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, released countervailing warnings that patients and their families would suffer if the bill failed.



Yesterday, in one of the more incendiary volleys, the journal Science published a letter by three researchers documenting apparently significant misstatements made by a leader in the movement to block the bill.

The legislation, already passed by the House, would for the first time allow scientists to use federal funds to conduct research on new colonies of the medically promising cells, which are controversial because human embryos must be destroyed to obtain them.

The bill would override rules put in place by Bush five years ago that restrict federal funding to research on only those embryonic stem cells that were in existence as of August 2001. That policy is aimed at protecting human embryos, but it has been widely decried by researchers and patient groups as a roadblock to the development of treatments for a range of diseases.

The letter to the journal focused on David A. Prentice, a scientist with the conservative Family Research Council. Prentice has been an adviser to Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) -- a leader in the charge to maintain tight restrictions on the research -- and an "expert source" often cited by opponents of embryonic stem cell research.

Prentice has repeatedly claimed that adult stem cells, which can be retrieved harmlessly from adults, have at least as much medical potential as embryonic cells. He often carries a binder filled with references to scientific papers that he says prove the value of adult stem cells as treatments for at least 65 diseases.

In the letter to Science, however, three researchers went through Prentice's footnoted documentation and concluded that most of his examples are wrong.

"Prentice not only misrepresents existing adult stem cell treatments but also frequently distorts the nature and content of the references he cites," wrote Shane Smith of the Children's Neurobiological Solutions Foundation in Santa Barbara, Calif.; William B. Neaves of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Mo.; and Steven Teitelbaum of Washington University in St. Louis.

For example, they wrote, a study cited by Prentice as evidence that adult stem cells can help patients with testicular cancer is in fact a study that evaluates methods of isolating adult stem cells.

Similarly, a published report that Prentice cites as evidence that adult stem cells can help patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma does not address the medical value of those cells but rather describes the best way to isolate cells from lymphoma patients and grow them in laboratory dishes, the letter said.

And Prentice's reference to the usefulness of adult stem cells for patients with Sandhoff disease -- a rare nerve disorder -- is "a layperson's statement in a newspaper article," the scientists reported.

All told, the scientists concluded, there are only nine diseases that have been proved to respond to treatment with adult stem cells.

"By promoting the falsehood that adult stem cell treatments are already in general use for 65 diseases and injuries, Prentice and those who repeat his claims mislead laypeople and cruelly deceive patients," the scientists wrote.




Prentice, in a brief voice message left for a reporter as he embarked on a trip yesterday, said, "I appreciate them pointing out some of the things . . . that need to be changed and updated." But he accused the letter writers of "mental gymnastics" by focusing narrowly on proven therapies, as opposed to the large number of diseases for which the value of adult stem cells is now being tested.

Majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) announced this week that the Senate will debate the bill to loosen Bush's rules on Monday and vote on Tuesday. Under the terms of an agreement worked out with Democrats, the bill will need 67 ayes to pass, a count most observers believe will be achieved.

The Senate will also vote on two other bills -- one aimed at preventing abuses in fetal research and one encouraging a search for non-embryonic stem cells that might have the same healing potential as embryonic cells.

Both bills are expected to pass easily and to be taken up and passed by the House on Wednesday and Thursday, congressional aides said. At that point, President Bush would be free to follow up on his oft-repeated promise to veto the bill that would loosen his rules.

That could come as early as Thursday, the aides said, and would constitute the first veto of Bush's presidency.

The House could follow by Friday with an attempt to override that veto. Current head counts suggest that an override attempt in the House would fail. If so, the bill would be dead without the Senate having to reconsider the issue.

Last week, the two leaders in the effort to loosen Bush's rules -- Reps. Michael N. Castle (R-Del.) and Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) -- sought an audience with Bush as part of a last-ditch effort to persuade him not to veto the measure.

Last Friday, they said they were told he would not have time.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...71401380_2.html

Need a new kydney? One day, it might be made using cellular ink
By Susan Brown
UNION-TRIBUNE

July 20, 2006

If one of your organs malfunctions, modern medicine can help you along for a while. But if one fails for good, your best hope is a replacement. The trouble is, the supply of available organs falls short of the number of people who need them. You could die waiting. Each year, thousands do.

Right now, some 86,000 people in the U.S. are waiting for a kidney, liver or heart. Of the 63,000 hoping for a kidney, only 16,000 got their wish in 2004, according to the National Kidney Foundation.


Organs on demand
Humans could use better replacement parts. Artificial organs could slash the waiting lists. If created with a patient's own cells, they would solve the problem of rejection. Still, after a decade of trying, bioengineers are far from creating a whole, implantable organ.

Most bioengineers begin with a rigid scaffold that they “seed” by dipping it into a solution of living cells, then bathe in nutrients. The idea is for the cells to multiply and fill in the spaces, eventually creating a whole, living tissue.

So far, this approach has only been successful for thin sheets, such as skin or cartilage. It doesn't work for whole organs, in part because they are thicker, and the nutrients only penetrate through a few layers of cells.

To meet this challenge, a determined group of biologists and materials engineers has come up with an audacious new idea. They hope to make better replacement parts for humans using a new technology they call organ printing. The scientists who hatched this plan use a machine similar to a desktop printer to precisely place living cells. By building up layer-upon-layer of patterns of cells, they hope to make three-dimensional living structures.

They are aiming high.


“I want to print three-dimensional organs suitable for clinical transplantation,” said tissue engineer Vladimir Mironov of the Medical University of South Carolina, one member of the team.

So far, team members have printed short segments of blood vessels and a small patch of heart muscle that began to beat within a day, they reported at a conference in San Francisco in April. Next up, they say, is a kidney.

For “ink,” the team uses living cells. To make it, they spin cells in a centrifuge, which packs them into a solid pellet. Then they chop the pellet into bits, each with about 10,000 cells, and tumble them to round off the sharper edges. They end up with tiny balls of cells that roll by each other to flow like a fluid. These they load into syringe-like nozzles on the printer.

A computer controls the arm of the printer as it moves slowly back and forth, gently spurting the balls of cells out one-by-one. Different cell types could be placed into separate nozzles, just like different colors of ink fill the jets of a printer cartridge, so they could be arranged into a precise pattern.

Right now, the team is using cells that can be ordered from biological supply companies – the precursors to muscles, for example. Eventually, they would take small biopsies from patients, separate out the types of cells they need, and encourage them to multiply in the lab until they have enough to make the ink.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science...20bioi-jmp.html

How Faith Saved the Atheist

By PAMELA R. WINNICK
July 21, 2006;
Wall Street Journal Page W11

A medical resident -- we called her "Dr. Death" -- at the Intensive Care Unit at Long Island's North Shore Hospital chased us down the hallway.

"Your husband wants to die," she told my mother, again. Just minutes before I had asked her to leave us alone.

"He can't even talk," I reminded her.

"He motioned with his hands when we tried to put in the feeding tube," she said.

Not exactly informed consent, I pointed out as we turned our backs on her and walked down the hallway, trying to avert our eyes from the other patients in the ICU that night, each of them at various points in the so-called "twilight zone" between life and death.

Afflicted with asbestos-related lung cancer, my father, Louis Winnick, was rushed into the ICU in late May after a blood clot nearly killed him. The next day, my husband and I raced to New York from Pittsburgh. I packed enough work and knitting for what might be an extended stay, but I also put in a suit for what I was certain would be my father's imminent funeral. Still, he wasn't dead yet. And we had no intention of precipitating the inevitable.

"Dr. Death" was just one of several. A new resident appeared the next day, this one a bit more diplomatic but again urging us to allow my father to "die with dignity." And the next day came yet another, who opened with the words, "We're getting mixed messages from your family," before I shut him up. I've written extensively about practice of bioethics -- which, for the most part, I do not find especially ethical -- but never did I dream that our moral compass had gone this far askew. My father, 85, was heading ineluctably toward death. Though unconscious, his brain, as far as anyone could tell, had not been touched by either the cancer or the blood clot. He was not in a "persistent vegetative state" (itself a phrase subject to broad interpretation), that magic point at which family members are required to pull the plug -- or risk the accusation that they are right-wing Christians.

I complained about all the death-with-dignity pressure to my father's doctor, an Orthodox Jew, who said that his religion forbids the termination of care but that he would be perfectly willing to "look the other way" if we wanted my father to die. We didn't. Then a light bulb went off in my head. We could devise a strategy to fend off the death-happy residents: We would tell them we were Orthodox Jews.

My little ruse worked. During the few days after I announced this faux fact, it was as though an invisible fence had been drawn around my mother, my sister and me. No one dared mutter that hateful phrase "death with dignity."

Though my father was born to an Orthodox Jewish family, he is an avowed atheist who long ago had rejected his parents' ways. As I sat in the ICU, blips on the various screens the only proof that my father was alive, the irony struck me: My father, who had long ago rejected Orthodox Judaism, was now under its protection.

As though to confirm this, there came a series of miracles. Just a week after he was rushed to ICU, my father was pronounced well enough to be moved out of the unit into North Shore's long-term respiratory care unit. A day later he was off the respirator, able to breathe on his own. He still mostly slept, but then he began to awaken for minutes at a time, at first groggy, but soon he was as alert (and funny) as ever. A day later, we walked in to find him sitting upright in a chair, reading the New York Times.

I've never been one of those Jews who makes facial contortions at the mere mention of the Christian Right; I actually agree with them on some matters. And this experience with my father has given me a new appreciation for the fight many evangelicals have waged against euthanasia.

But I'm offended that so many conservative Christians believe that theirs is the only path to salvation. I'm sick of being proselytized. We Jews enjoy a more basic type of faith, a direct relationship to God that requires no salvation, no penitence, no supplication. We do not proselytize. And we don't worry about the next life; we conduct mitzvahs -- good deeds -- that enhance life for ourselves and others in the here and now. Religion is said to have no grandparents -- meaning, we each find our own path to (or away from) faith. Yet it's my grandparents' faith -- and not my father's Jewish atheism -- to which I find myself being drawn.

A few years ago -- perhaps just to fend off the Christians -- I joined a local synagogue in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. But the annual dues shot up from $750 to $1,000. And the fund-raisers called nonstop seeking donations to the temple's capital fund. "Jesus saves, Moses invests," my father always joked. Hey, that's our tradition.

On Father's Day, we packed my father's hospital room: his wife, daughters, grandchildren, each of us regaling him with our successes large and small. "Life's not so bad, after all," the atheist said. I wanted to go back to ICU, find Dr. Death, drag her to my father's room and say: "This is the life you wanted to end." But if I'm really to be a person of faith, I'll have to tackle forgiveness.

Ms. Winnick is writing a book about Democrats and the religious vote.

Wonder what she has to say about that.....

Blah, blah, blah.

Who cares?

You people want to tell everyone how we should live, love, and die too. Is nothing off limits to you zealots?

I know this is a cartoon.... but I've long maintained that fructose made from corn is a big contributor to obesity. Prior to adding fructose to everything, people were not as heavy as they are now. Not saying that our enemies are behind it......however.

Supervisors give go-ahead to medical marijuana ID program


SLO County will be the 21st in California to issue the cards, which will cost between $75 and $100
By Sarah Arnquist
sarnquist@thetribunenews.com

County staff report on the medical marijuana ID card program (3MB PDF)
Toni Paradis of Atascadero will no longer have to make the 500-mile round-trip to Oakland to renew her disabled son’s medical marijuana identification card because a local program will begin soon.

The Board of Supervisors directed the Public Health Department on Tuesday in a 3-2 vote to implement a medical marijuana ID program as mandated by state law. Supervisors Jerry Lenthall and Harry Ovitt dissented.

Paradis said the ID program validates and protects legitimate medical marijuana users such as her son, 26-year-old Matthew Green, who is permanently disabled with spastic quadriplegia. Green uses marijuana to control his movements, improve his appetite and sleep, Paradis said.

"I don’t want people exploiting the system so they can smoke pot," she said.

A 2003 state law requires counties to issue cards to qualified medical marijuana patients and their primary caregivers. Those names then go into an online registry that law enforcement officers can use to verify an ID card’s validity.

San Luis Obispo County will be the 21st in California to issue the cards. The decision came two weeks after supervisors directed staff to draft an ordinance regulating the sale and distribution of medical marijuana in unincorporated areas.

Supervisor James Patterson said.

There is one dispensary in the county, currently operating in Morro Bay.

The supervisors discussed at length the discrepancies between state and federal law regarding marijuana use. Federal law prohibits the use or sale of marijuana. In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 215 — also known as the Compassionate Use Act — legalizing marijuana for medical use.

The county will recoup the costs for the program by charging between $75 and $100 for the ID cards. The program limits the amount of marijuana a person can have at one time to 8 ounces, six mature plants or 12 immature plants.

Lenthall, who with Ovitt voted against creating a local ID program, suggested waiting six more months to see if the California Attorney General’s Office came out with an official opinion on whether government employees who issue medical marijuana patient ID cards are helping someone violate federal law.

County counsel advised the supervisors they should follow current state law.

Supervisor Shirley Bianchi said.

Good for 'em.

The Drug Problem in America


The other day, someone at a store in our town read that a methamphetamine lab had been found in an old farmhouse in the adjoining county and he asked me a rhetorical question, ''Why didn't we have a drug problem when you and I were growing up?''

I replied: I had a drug problem when I was young:

I was drug to church on Sunday morning.

I was drug to church for weddings and funerals.

I was drug to family reunions and community socials no matter the weather.

I was drug by my ears when I was disrespectful to adults.

I was also drug to the woodshed when I disobeyed my parents, told a lie, brought home a bad report card, did not speak with respect, spoke ill of the teacher or the preacher, or if I didn't put forth my best effort in everything that was asked of me.

I was drug to the kitchen sink to have my mouth washed out with soap if

I uttered a profane four-letter word.

I was drug out to pull weeds in mom's garden and flower beds and cockleburs out of dad's fields.

I was drug to the homes of family, friends, and neighbors to help out some poor soul who had no one to mow the yard, repair the clothesline, or chop some firewood; and, if my mother had ever known that I took a single dime as a tip for this kindness, she would have drug me back to the woodshed.

Those drugs are still in my veins; and they affect my behavior in everything I do, say, and think. They are stronger than cocaine, crack, or heroin; and, if today's children had this kind of drug problem, America would be a better place.

~author unknown

Indian state bans soft drinks after Coke, Pepsi gets toxic label
Aug 04 11:05 AM US/Eastern

An Indian state has banned the sale of soft drinks as the country's highest court told the US beverage giants Pepsico and Coca-Cola to reveal the ingredients of their products.

a spokesman from the administration of northern Rajasthan state announced Friday.



He argued that soft drinks producers were required to print statutory warnings on their products.

"Manufacturers are required to print 'not only dangerous for human consumption, but also the quantity of the residues, if any, on each label,'" said spokesman K. Tiwari.

The Press Trust of India said the state legislative assembly of the northern state of Punjab also removed soft drinks from the menu of its lawmakers beginning Friday.

"The restriction will remain in force until the controversy regarding harmful ingredients in soft drinks is cleared," said assembly Secretary Nachhattar Singh Mavi.

Federal MPs Thursday demanded a nationwide ban on Pepsi and Coke after the privately-funded Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said 11 drinks sold by the two US companies contained unacceptable doses of pesticides.

A two-judge bench of India's Supreme Court, meanwhile, gave the two firms a month to reveal the ingredients of their products, officials said.

The court reacted to a public lawsuit which argued products sold by both the firms were deeply laced with harmful chemicals such as phosphoric acid, caffeine and aspartame.

Pepsico and Coca-Cola have rejected the CSE's report, saying customers interests were their paramount concern. http://www.holycoast.com/

http://www.newstarget.com/020066.html

Now that's gonna be a real marketing challenge!

If it works, smart people will use it. I take acidophilus now and then, sort of the same principle.

Advertise it as a breath freshener. That'll sell.

For the Dragon Mouths!!

There are good bacteria just like there's good cholesterol. Better to be upfront about it, and beat the paranoid conspiracy nuts to the punch.

I'm sure you saw this:

FDA allows viruses for meat and poultry
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A mixture of six bacteria-killing viruses can be safely sprayed on meat and poultry to combat common microbes that kill hundreds of people a year, federal health officials said Friday.

The mixture of special viruses, called bacteriophages, would target strains of Listeria monocytogenes, the Food and Drug Administration said in declaring it safe to use. The viruses are designed to be sprayed on ready-to-eat meat and poultry products just before they are packaged.

The bacterium they target can cause a serious infection called listeriosis, primarily in pregnant women, newborns and adults with weakened immune systems.

In the United States, an estimated 2,500 persons become seriously ill with listeriosis each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those, 500 die.

Click Here for rest of article

Yes, I saw it, and I particularly didn't like this part of it:


I guess I'll be going kosher on my lunch meat from now on.

Anything that 'eats' bacteria, and selectively so, is good. So long as it does just that, and ONLY that.

Stay away from the olive loaf.

Nope, I'm glad you posted it. I've spent a lot of time in the last couple years researching various medical treatments, techniques, innovations. It seems almost everything has either a downside, a possible downside, or something that just sounds bad.