Health – Page 30 – artdiamondblog.com

Most in NYC Oppose Bloomberg’s Nanny State Soda Ban

“Theodore Ogunbiyi-Roche, 10, who is visiting from London, drank a large soda in Times Square . . . ” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A18) . . . , New Yorkers are cool to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plan to prohibit sales of large sugary drinks in city restaurants, stadiums and movie theaters, according to a . . . poll by The New York Times.

Six in 10 residents said the mayor’s soda plan was a bad idea, compared with 36 percent who called it a good idea. A majority in every borough was opposed; Bronx and Queens residents were more likely than Manhattanites to say the plan was a bad idea.
. . .
. . . those opposed overwhelmingly cited a sense that Mr. Bloomberg was overreaching with the plan and that consumers should have the freedom to make a personal choice . . .
“The ban is at the point where it is an infringement of civil liberties,” Liz Hare, 43, a scientific researcher in Queens, said in a follow-up interview. “There are many other things that people do that aren’t healthy, so I think it’s a big overreach.”
Bob Barocas, 64, of Queens, put it more bluntly: “This is like the nanny state going off the wall.”

For the full story, see:
MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM and MARJORIE CONNELLY. “60% in City Oppose Soda Ban, Calling It an Overreach by Bloomberg, Poll Finds.” The New York Times (Thurs., August 23, 2012): A18.
(Note: ellipses in caption and article added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date August 22, 2012, and the title “60% in City Oppose Bloomberg’s Soda Ban, Poll Finds.”)

Stanford Meta-Study Finds Organic Food Is No More Nutritious than Much Cheaper Non-organic Food

“Conventional strawberries in Watsonville, California. Researchers say organic foods are no more nutritious and no less likely to be contaminated.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A20) Does an organic strawberry contain more vitamin C than a conventional one?

Maybe — or maybe not.
Stanford University scientists have weighed in on the “maybe not” side of the debate after an extensive examination of four decades of research comparing organic and conventional foods.
They concluded that fruits and vegetables labeled organic were, on average, no more nutritious than their conventional counterparts, which tend to be far less expensive. Nor were they any less likely to be contaminated by dangerous bacteria like E. coli.
The researchers also found no obvious health advantages to organic meats.
. . .
The conclusions will almost certainly fuel the debate over whether organic foods are a smart choice for healthier living or a marketing tool that gulls people into overpaying. The production of organic food is governed by a raft of regulations that generally prohibit the use of synthetic pesticides, hormones and additives.
The organic produce market in the United States has grown quickly, up 12 percent last year, to $12.4 billion, compared with 2010, according to the Organic Trade Association. Organic meat has a smaller share of the American market, at $538 million last year, the trade group said.
. . .
In the study — known as a meta-analysis, in which previous findings are aggregated but no new laboratory work is conducted — researchers combined data from 237 studies, examining a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and meats. For four years, they performed statistical analyses looking for signs of health benefits from adding organic foods to the diet.
The researchers did not use any outside financing for their research. “I really wanted us to have no perception of bias,” Dr. Bravata said.

For the full story, see:
KENNETH CHANG. “Stanford Scientists Cast Doubt on Advantages of Organic Meat and Produce.” The New York Times (Tues., September 4, 2012): A20.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date September 3, 2012.)

Organic Food May Be Less Healthy than Non-Organic Food

Source of book image: http://www.leckeragency.com/sites/default/files/books/Schwarcz,%20Joe%20-%20The%20Right%20Chemistry%20Cover.jpeg

(p. D7) . . . , when did “chemical” become a dirty word? That’s a question raised by one of Canada’s brightest scientific minds: Joe Schwarcz, director of the Office for Science and Society at McGill University in Montreal. Dr. Schwarcz, who has received high honors from Canadian and American scientific societies, is the author of several best-selling books that attempt to set the record straight on a host of issues that commonly concern health-conscious people.

I’ve read two of his books, “Science, Sense and Nonsense” (published in 2009) and “The Right Chemistry” (2012), and recently attended a symposium on the science of food that Dr. Schwarcz organized at McGill.
What follows are tips from his books and the symposium that can help you make wiser choices about what does, and does not, pass your lips in 2013.
. . .
ORGANIC OR NOT? Wherever I shop for food these days, I find an ever-widening array of food products labeled “organic” and “natural.” But are consumers getting the health benefits they pay a premium for?
Until the 20th century, Dr. Schwarcz wrote, all farming was “organic,” with manure and compost used as fertilizer and “natural” compounds of arsenic, mercury and lead used as pesticides.
Might manure used today on organic farms contain disease-causing micro-organisms? Might organic produce unprotected by insecticides harbor cancer-causing molds? It’s a possibility, Dr. Schwarcz said. But consumers aren’t looking beyond the organic sales pitch.
Also questionable is whether organic foods, which are certainly kinder to the environment, are more nutritious. Though some may contain slightly higher levels of essential micronutrients, like vitamin C, the difference between them and conventionally grown crops may depend more on where they are produced than how.
A further concern: Organic producers disavow genetic modification, which can be used to improve a crop’s nutritional content, enhance resistance to pests and diminish its need for water. A genetically modified tomato developed at the University of Exeter, for example, contains nearly 80 times the antioxidants of conventional tomatoes. Healthier, yes — but it can’t be called organic.

For the full story, see:
JANE E. BRODY. “PERSONAL HEALTH; What You Think You Know (but Don’t) About Wise Eating.” The New York Times (Tues., January 1, 2013): D7.
(Note: ellipses added; bold in original.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date DECEMBER 31, 2012.)

The Schwarcz books mentioned above, are:
Schwarcz, Joe. The Right Chemistry: 108 Enlightening, Nutritious, Health-Conscious and Occasionally Bizarre Inquiries into the Science of Daily Life. Toronto, Ontario: Doubleday Canada, 2012.
Schwarcz, Joe. Science, Sense & Nonsense. Toronto, Ontario: Doubleday Canada, 2009.

Entrepreneur Mackey Says Whole Foods Drops Prices as Larger Size Creates Economies of Scale

“John Mackey.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 16) In your new book, “Conscious Capitalism,” you write that Whole Foods sees its customers as its “most important stakeholders” and that the company is obsessed with their happiness. The biggest complaint I hear about Whole Foods is how expensive it is. Why not drop prices to make your customers happier?
People always complain about prices being too high. Whole Foods prices have dropped every year as we get to be larger and we have economies of scale. Also, people are not historically well informed about food prices. We’re only spending about 7 percent of our disposable personal income on food. Fifty years ago, it was nearly 16 percent.
. . .
In 2009, some Whole Foods customers organized boycotts after you wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal expressing opposition to Obama’s health care proposals. Do you wish you hadn’t written it?
No, I don’t. I regret that a lot of people didn’t actually read it and it got taken out of context. President Obama asked for ideas about health care reform, and I put my ideas out there. Whole Foods has a good health care plan. It’s not a solution to America’s health care problems, but it’s part of the solution.
So did you vote for Romney?
I did.
I imagine a certain percentage of Whole Foods customers will also boycott because of this.
I don’t know what to say except that I’m a capitalist, first. There are many things I don’t like about Romney, but more things I don’t like about Obama. This is America, and people disagree on things.

For the full interview, see:
Andrew Goldman, Interviewer. “TALK; The Kale King.” The New York Times Magazine (Sun., January 20, 2013): 16.
(Note: ellipsis added; bold in original, indicating interviewer questions.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date January 18, 2013, and has the title “TALK; John Mackey, the Kale King.”)

Mackey’s book is:
Mackey, John, and Rajendra Sisodia. Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2013.

Admiring Jobs’ New Products, Gates Wistfully Wondered If “Maybe I Should Have Stayed in That Game”

(p. 553) Bill Gates had never lost his fascination with Jobs. In the spring of 2011 I was at a dinner with him in Washington, where he had come to discuss his foundation’s global health endeavors. He expressed amazement at the success of the iPad and how Jobs, even while sick, was focusing on ways to improve it. “Here I am, merely saving the world from malaria and that sort of thing, and Steve is still coming up with amazing new products,” he said wistfully. “Maybe I should have stayed in that game.” He smiled to make sure that I knew he was joking, or at least half joking.

Source:
Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Entrepreneur Kurzweil Says If He Gets Cancer, He Will Invent a Cure

“Ray Kurzweil.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 12) As a futurist, you are famous for making predictions of when technological innovations will actually occur. Are you willing to predict the year you will die?
My plan is to stick around. We’ll get to a point about 15 years from now where we’re adding more than a year every year to your life expectancy.

To clarify, you’re predicting your immortality.
The problem is I can’t get on the phone with you in the future and say, “Well, I’ve done it, I have lived forever,” because it’s never forever.
. . .
You’ve said that if you woke up one day with a terminal disease, you’d be forced to invent a cure. Were you being serious?
I absolutely would try. I’m working now on a cancer project with some scientists at M.I.T., and if I develop cancer, I do have some ideas of what I would do.
I imagine a lot of people would hear that and say, Ray, if you think you’re capable of curing yourself, why don’t you go ahead and start curing others?
Well, I mean, I do have to pick my priorities. Nobody can do everything. What we spend our time on is probably the most important decision we make. I don’t know if you’re aware, but I’m joining Google as director of engineering.

For the full interview, see:
Andrew Goldman, Interviewer. “TALK; The Life Robotic; The Futurist Ray Kurzweil Says We’re Going to Live Forever. Really.” The New York Times Magazine (Sun., January 27, 2013): 12.
(Note: ellipsis added; bold in original, indicating interviewer questions.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date January 25, 2013, and has the title “TALK; Ray Kurzweil Says We’re Going to Live Forever.”)

Entrepreneur Peter Thiel Says We Should Fight for Longer Lives

Source of book image: http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-PJ926_bkrv10_DV_20110829191924.jpg

(p. C13) Sonia Arrison’s “100 Plus” was first published in 2011, but its message is evergreen: how scientists are directly attacking the problem of aging and death and why we should fight for life instead of accepting decay as inevitable. The goal of longer life doesn’t just mean more years at the margin; it means a healthier old age. There is nothing to fear but our own complacency.

For the full review essay, see:
Peter Thiel (author of passage quoted above, one of 50 contributors to whole article). “Twelve Months of Reading; We asked 50 of our friends to tell us what books they enjoyed in 2012–from Judd Apatow’s big plans to Bruce Wagner’s addictions. See pages C10 and C11 for the Journal’s own Top Ten lists.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., December 15, 2012): passim (Thiel’s contribution is on p. C13).
(Note: the online version of the review essay has the date December 14, 2012.)

The book Thiel endorses is:
Arrison, Sonia. 100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, from Careers and Relationships to Family and Faith. New York: Basic Books, 2011.

The War on Drugs Likely “Increased the Rate of Addiction”

Source of graph: online version of the WSJ commentary quoted and cited below.

(p. C1) President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs” in 1971. The expectation then was that drug trafficking in the United States could be greatly reduced in a short time through federal policing–and yet the war on drugs continues to this day. The cost has been large in terms of lives, money and the well-being of many Americans, especially the poor and less educated. By most accounts, the gains from the war have been modest at best.

The direct monetary cost to American taxpayers of the war on drugs includes spending on police, the court personnel used to try drug users and traffickers, and the guards and other resources spent on imprisoning and punishing those convicted of drug offenses. Total current spending is estimated at over $40 billion a year.
These costs don’t include many other harmful effects of the war on drugs that are difficult to quantify. For example, over the past 40 years the fraction of students who have dropped out of American high schools has remained large, at about 25%. Dropout rates are not high for middle-class white children, but they are very high for black and Hispanic children living in poor neighborhoods. Many factors explain the high dropout rates, especially bad schools and weak family support. But another important factor in inner-city neighborhoods is the temptation to drop out of school in order to profit from the drug trade.
The total number of persons incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the U.S. has grown from 330,000 in 1980 to about 1.6 million today. Much of the increase in this population is directly due to the war on drugs and the severe punishment for persons convicted of drug trafficking. About 50% of the inmates in federal prisons and 20% of those in state prisons have been convicted of either selling or using drugs. The many minor drug traffickers and drug users who spend time in jail find fewer opportunities for legal employment after they get out of prison, and they develop better skills at criminal activities.
. . .
(p. C2) It is generally harder to break an addiction to illegal goods, like drugs. Drug addicts may be leery of going to clinics or to nonprofit “drugs anonymous” groups for help. They fear they will be reported for consuming illegal substances. Since the consumption of illegal drugs must be hidden to avoid arrest and conviction, many drug consumers must alter their lives in order to avoid detection.
Usually overlooked in discussions of the effects of the war on drugs is that the illegality of drugs stunts the development of ways to help drug addicts, such as the drug equivalent of nicotine patches. Thus, though the war on drugs may well have induced lower drug use through higher prices, it has likely also increased the rate of addiction. The illegality of drugs makes it harder for addicts to get help in breaking their addictions. It leads them to associate more with other addicts and less with people who might help them quit.
. . .
The decriminalization of both drug use and the drug market won’t be attained easily, as there is powerful opposition to each of them. The disastrous effects of the American war on drugs are becoming more apparent, however, not only in the U.S. but beyond its borders. Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon has suggested “market solutions” as one alternative to the problem. Perhaps the combined efforts of leaders in different countries can succeed in making a big enough push toward finally ending this long, enormously destructive policy experiment.

For the full commentary, see:
GARY S. BECKER and KEVIN M. MURPHY. “Have We Lost the War on Drugs? After more than four decades of a failed experiment, the human cost has become too high. It is time to consider the decriminalization of drug use and the drug market.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., January 5, 2013): C1 & C2.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date January 4, 2013.)

Lichen Fungi May Never Age

“ANNUAL VISITOR; For the last eight years, Anne Pringle of Harvard has been collecting data about the lichens on the gravestones at a cemetary in Petersham, Mass.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. D3) PETERSHAM, Mass. — On a sparkling New England afternoon, as hawks coasted overhead and yellow leaves drifted to the ground, Anne Pringle stood before a large granite obelisk that marked the graves of a family called French.
. . .
For eight years, Dr. Pringle, 42, has been returning to this cemetery each fall, to measure, sketch and scrutinize the lichens, which belong to the genus Xanthoparmelia. She wants to know whether they deteriorate with the passage of time, leaving them more susceptible to death.
. . .
Lichens are not individuals but tiny ecosystems, composed of one main fungus, a group of algae and an assortment of smaller fungi and bacteria.
. . .
While lichens are communities, Dr. Pringle is largely interested in the fungi. Mycologists, the scientists who study fungi — not the most glamorous corridor of biology — have long assumed that many of these organisms don’t age.
. . .
“What you know is based on the organisms you study,” she said. “What would you say about the evolution of senescence if instead of working with insects, you worked with modular organisms, which is what lichen are?”
Daniel Doak, a University of Colorado ecologist, agrees that the question is worth asking. Research like Dr. Pringle’s — along with other studies of species including the bristlecone pine tree and the wandering albatross, a bird, both of which may avoid senescence — suggests another possible path.
“It’s saying something fundamental,” Dr. Doak said, “that senescence is not an inevitable part of life. Which means there might be ways to prevent it.” That idea could eventually have implications for human medicine.
. . .
Dr. Pringle’s preliminary results show that as a lichen grows older and larger, it is less likely to die. “If you made me answer the question now,” she said, “I’d say there can be senescence of parts of an individual. But I don’t think an individual ever senesces.”

For the full story, see:
HILLARY ROSNER. “In a Place for the Dead, Studying a Seemingly Immortal Species.” The New York Times (Tues., January 1, 2013): D3.
(note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date December 31, 2012.)

“THRIVING; Dr. Pringle’s initial results show that as a lichen grows older and larger, it is less likely to die.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Dr. William House “Faced Stern Opposition” to Bring Cochlear Implants to the Deaf

“Dr. William F. House in 1981 with Tracy Husted, the first pre-school-age child to get a cochlear implant.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT obituary quoted and cited below.

(p. 34) Dr. William F. House, a medical researcher who braved skepticism to invent the cochlear implant, an electronic device considered to be the first to restore a human sense, died on Dec. 7 at his home in Aurora, Ore. He was 89.

. . .
Dr. House pushed against conventional thinking throughout his career. Over the objections of some, he introduced the surgical microscope to ear surgery. Tackling a form of vertigo that doctors had believed was psychosomatic, he developed a surgical procedure that enabled the first American in space to travel to the moon. Peering at the bones of the inner ear, he found enrapturing beauty.
. . .
More than a decade would pass before the Food and Drug Administration approved the cochlear implant, but when it did, in 1984, Mark Novitch, the agency’s deputy commissioner, said, “For the first time a device can, to a degree, replace an organ of the human senses.”
One of Dr. House’s early implant patients, from an experimental trial, wrote to him in 1981 saying, “I no longer live in a world of soundless movement and voiceless faces.”
But for 27 years, Dr. House had faced stern opposition while he was developing the device. Doctors and scientists said it would not work, or not work very well, calling it a cruel hoax on people desperate to hear. Some said he was motivated by the prospect of financial gain. Some criticized him for experimenting on human subjects. Some advocates for the deaf said the device deprived its users of the dignity of their deafness without fully integrating them into the hearing world.
. . .
When his brother returned from West Germany with a surgical microscope, Dr. House saw its potential and adopted it for ear surgery; he is credited with introducing the device to the field. But again there was resistance. As Dr. House wrote in his memoir, “The Struggles of a Medical Innovator: Cochlear Implants and Other Ear Surgeries” (2011), some eye doctors initially criticized his use of a microscope in surgery as reckless and unnecessary for a surgeon with good eyesight.

For the full obituary, see:
DOUGLAS MARTIN. “Dr. William F. House, Inventor of Pioneering Ear-Implant Device, Dies at 89.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., December 16, 2012): 34.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date December 15, 2012.)

Dr. House’s memoir is:
House, William F. The Struggles of a Medical Innovator: Cochlear Implants and Other Ear Surgeries. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011.
(Note: the copyright page of the book gives neither city nor name of publisher; the publisher in the reference is as given by Amazon.com.)

“Dr. William F. House sitting at an operating microscope.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT obituary quoted and cited above.