Here We Go Again

I have said before in this blog that 'we need an agency whose overarching mission is to ensure the safety of our food and drugs.'

My point, one that I seem to be repeating a lot, is that our current FDA is more akin to a trade association. It's natural instincts are to downplay risks to prevent undue harm to large corporations, during which time great harm could be ensuing amongst the public at-large.

Here, for example is a quote from agency spokesperson, Judy Leon, concerning the recent discovery of melamine contamination in baby formula.  You'll detect that the reflex action of the FDA is to conceal information, rather than to put out information and let the consumer make up his own mind about what is safe.

“There’s no cause for concern or no risk from these levels,” said Judy Leon, an agency spokeswoman. Ms. Leon said the contamination was most likely the result of food contact with something like a can liner, or from some other manufacturing problems, but not from deliberate adulteration. She declined to name the company that made the tainted infant formula.

The effort to withhold the name of the formula maker was soon abandoned, however. Perhaps the agency didn't want infants to be denied their right to gorge themselves at Thanksgiving dinner like everyone else, and so waited a couple of days to release this new and decisive statement:

clipped from www.google.com Food and Drug Administration officials on Friday set a threshold of 1 part per million of melamine in formula, provided a related chemical is not present. They insisted the formulas are safe. The FDA had said in early October it was unable to set a safety contamination level for melamine in infant formula. The standard is the same as the one public health officials have set in Canada and China, but is 20 times higher than the most stringent level in Taiwan.

The small problem alluded to is that the danger of melamine is potentiated  by the presence of another substance, cyanuric acid. While none of the samples of US formulas tested positive for both chemicals, they were each found separately in single samples. Lesson learned: don't mix and match formulas! I recommend that every parent test each container of formula they purchase before they feed their infant. Sound troublesome? Let's just say you're going to need one fancy chemistry set. Oh, and don't forget this:

The agency still will not set a safety level for melamine if cyanuric acid is also present, said Dr. Stephen Sundlof, the FDA's director of food safety.

So for now, parents, just wing it. After all, if your baby drinks 25 fluid ounces of formula a day, in the first 12 months, that only amounts to a total of 9,125 fluid ounces. At the recommended mixing level of 4.35 grams of Good Start powder per fluid ounce that is a mere 39,693.75 grams for the year. For those of you who still despise the metric system, that's a paltry 87.5 pounds of powder. My baby drank 34 fluid ounces a day, so this calculation may be a little conservative.

Those who argue that the potential exposure to melamine set by the new limits is small can feel good about it. As for me, I wonder how extensive a testing program will have to be deployed to determine the breadth of contamination. And I wonder what 'safe' means for infants with special risk factors, kidney problems for instance. Right now there are no answers and the only advice the FDA can come up with is 'don't do anything differently, for the moment.'

Here, perhaps, is an example of the kind of straight talk we need from the FDA:

"This is a slippery slope of rationalization by FDA," said Urvashi Rangan, a senior scientist with the Consumers Union in New York. "FDA needs to get a handle on how widespread the problem is and, most important, if both these chemicals are occurring in any products. They just haven't tested enough to know that yet."

Foremost, we need choices, and the agency should be capable of offering the public an array of them, so the individual can decide for herself what comfort level to target. This is the problem that arises time and again, choice is withheld from the consumer, whether it be by obstructing Country of Origin labeling, or preventing complete disclosure of food irradiation with an icon-based sticker program. The Agency is making safety decisions on your behalf, but it is altogether unclear for whom their greatest allegiance is reserved.

The Ironic Rule of Law

With regard to the imminent release of 17 Uighurs from their indefinite detention at Guantanamo, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has demanded their repatriation, offering assurances that they would not subsequently be tortured, because China is a nation ruled by law and does not torture. Did they copy this from a US Justice Department press release? First they pirate our DVDs and now our legalistic dissembling? Pioneering torture-policy authors like John Yoo are apt to be pretty steamed.

The main concern for the US is that they be deported to a Muslim nation where no one speaks Uighur, as it would be unseemly to have accounts of their Gitmo imprisonment appear concurrently with China's pitching of itself as a human-rights friendly country.

The US task would seem to be an easy one if it weren't for the fact that Albania has to be crossed off the list, having accepted the previous group of Uighur detainees. I'm sure they are enjoying their greatly-improved living conditions in Tirana, but their comrades may have to settle for the Maldives. Or perhaps India will allow them sanctuary in the Nicobar Islands, which, though generally off-limits to outsiders, might open its gates if Washington sends New Delhi a nice little gift of fissionable materials.

clipped from voanews.com In 2006, U.S. authorities released five Uighurs from Guantanamo and sent them to Albania. Now, though, the Bush administration has been having a harder time finding a third country to accept the Chinese Muslims. The White House fears the detainees could be tortured if they are turned over to China. Qin Gang talks to reporters in Beijing Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said fears of persecution are not valid. Qin says people who worry that the Uighurs will be tortured if returned to China have a "biased mind." He says China is a country ruled by law, and that Chinese law forbids torture.

Krugman: Nostradamus in a Suit?

I read this when it first appeared and thought his analysis was an extreme worst-case scenario.

Of course, the reason I bother to keep up with Krugman is that his economic insight is always illuminating, even when I disagree with him. This time he gets extra points for seeing into the future. The date on the column is March 17, 2008.

clipped from www.nytimes.com The U.S. savings and loan crisis of the 1980s ended up costing taxpayers 3.2 percent of G.D.P., the equivalent of $450 billion today. Some estimates put the fiscal cost of Japan’s post-bubble cleanup at more than 20 percent of G.D.P. — the equivalent of $3 trillion for the United States. As Bear goes, so will go the rest of the financial system. And if history is any guide, the coming taxpayer-financed bailout will end up costing a lot of money. If these numbers shock you, they should. But the big bailout is coming. The only question is how well it will be managed.

Simulated Fine Dining

Capgras Delusion is a psychiatric syndrome that manifests itself in this way: one morning a person awakes to find that the people close to him have seemingly been replaced by exact duplicates, each a perfect impostor in every way, lacking only in authenticity. It can happen also that one so stricken gains a sense that he, himself, is a mere facsimile.

Perhaps this is something like waking in Las Vegas, where the simulacrum of reality has appropriated the original, engulfing it in the way that one snake might swallow another. Any preservation of serpentine morphology asserts itself as a mockery, where the joke is on you. And though in many ways this can be, perhaps inexplicably, an entertaining experience, I am always left feeling that, somehow, reality is just out of reach. You grab for it and your fingers slip through handfuls of anhydrous desert air.

My bewilderment overflows its vessel at the prospect of having a gondola ride in a shopping mall. Nonetheless, I urge you to visit the Venetian Hotel and Casino. Watch the passengers, a fascinating demographic spectrum, from grannies with kids to mischievous intoxicated business travelers, all bobbing along peacefully as they traverse the 100 meter length of a concrete pool, led by the operatic whooping of their 'gondolier,' which echoes through the cavernous shopping arcade. After such an observation, I challenge you to compound your own explanation. Is this a representation or is it a real experience? The answer, I suppose, is that it is a little of both, yet surely one's 'willing suspension of disbelief ' must soar to previously unattainable heights to overcome the brute fact that the actual tour, through dyed and heavily-chlorinated 'canal water,' occurs not at ground level, but on the second floor of this miraculous destination-attraction.

Is it not delectable to imagine an abandoned, primordial, subterranean level, concealed beneath the verity of Venice, and what treasures, in place of gaming tables and slot machines, would now lie crumbling amongst long-forgotten ghostly forms of ancient pelagic concretions? For my part, I'll wager that more than a few American tourists would happily lob chlorine pellets into that renowned, opaque Venetian broth, which has steeped nastily for many more generations than there has been a nation called "The United States of America."

Some related ideas can be found in an essay by Ada Louise Huxtable, from her 1997 book The Unreal America, where she deconstructs Las Vegas at some length in a chapter originally appearing in the NY Times, as "The Real Fake and the Fake Fake." Certainly I've unearthed a few of her ideas from my cranium here, however, in the intervening years since the publication of her book, events have unfolded that transcend the situation she described. Huxtable drew a connecting line between Las Vegas and art museums, the traditional "guardians" of authenticity. But the notion of "authenticity" itself has been mutating lately, and is possibly, even perhaps probably, headed toward obsolescence. Enough has been written about the innate property of the digital world to reproduce artifacts as perfect clones, so I would like to turn to a different domain, the subject of "simulated fine dining." Its essence is the cloned restaurant, a high-brow manifestation of the franchise-restaurant form we have come to associate with McDonald's and its kin.

My first experience with simulated fine dining occurred a number of years ago at Todd English's Olives restaurant in the Bellagio. We ordered a few dishes we knew from his original restaurant in Charlestown, MA. The food arrived, plated elegantly and bearing an uncanny resemblance to real food. But the first bite gave me a shudder, as if I had watched a dear friend metamorphose into a Madame Tussaud wax doll, the wisp of animation departing for parts unknown via unseen routes. I suppose it was akin to eating the sushi in the window of the sushi restaurant instead of the sushi behind the sushi bar. Not that Todd's Las Vegas crew had served us actual plastic, just that they had served us something that tasted like actual plastic.

And as regards sushi, I recall a visit to Nobu, at the Hard Rock Casino in LV, which was kicked off by a memorable delivery from a young, mustachioed waiter with a Nevadan accent. "Now if you take a look at our menu," he said with a modest squeamishness, "you will see listed the 'sushi', and that's going to be your raw fish." It brings to mind a quote from the Huxtable essay, where André Corboz describes a quality he names the "the poverty of the re-invention of the not-known."

So here we find ourselves in the 21st century, an era replete with simulated happiness, simulated arousal, and even simulated money- itself a mere simulation of wealth. And this, perhaps, is the nature of the schism that separates the Information Age from all that has preceded it. We have now entered the Capgras World, where everyone has been replaced by their exact duplicate.

del.icio.us tags: simulated fine dining, replacement reality

Shred Everything

 

When the Bush administration finally passes the torch, how much evidence will they need to destroy? Granted, their brand of hubris has been marked by a willingness to perpetrate crimes in the light of day, but still, there will likely be troves of documents in need of rapid destruction. Look for smoke coming out of the White House. Cheney, I suppose, has already had to get a jump on things.

That's why I wish I lived in a society where Elliot Spitzer could have only been caught by his wife. Because, in the aftermath of the purge of federal prosecutors by that disaster of a man, Alberto Gonzales, the investigation of the ex-governor bears all the hallmarks of a well-oiled political vendetta. I'm not saying it is, although the fact that he was ratted on by a Republican operative does appear unseemly. At least Boyd R. Johnson III, the prosecutor from the office of public corruption, looks like he's a sincere crime-fighter. Unfortunately, so did Spitzer, for a while at least.

So I'm wondering, where is the dividing line between police state and free society? Elliot Spitzer was taken down by the existence of detailed financial reports provided by banks where he held accounts used to fund his adventures. Prior to 9/11, the Bank Secrecy Act, dating back to the 70s and designed to identify money laundering, generated 205,000 bank reports a year, and now, after the various Executive Omnipotence Acts have been shoved through Congress by the Bush administration, that number has swollen to over a million. Presumably someone somewhere has the job to look at them and stamp them with the FBI inkpad. Maybe they just sit on a shelf and collect dust, waiting for their moment in the sun.

Throw in a little complicity from the telecommunications companies and the portrait is nearly complete. It reminds me of the Stasi, and their obsessively effective information-collection network of spies and collaborators. When the jig was up, they shredded, by shredding machine where available, by hand if necessary. Where is the dividing line between police state and free society? Well, the Stasi used intimidation and tortured prisoners...  Oops!

Does Diet Soda Make You Fat?

If you're reading this post because of its eminently Google-able title, you've come to the right place.

I'd like to welcome you with this suggestion: we should have an agency whose mission it is to help ensure the safety of our food and drugs. I know there's something called the "Food and Drug Agency," but it's clear that their charter is strictly one of reassurance, and they exist mainly to calm jittery markets, like the Federal Reserve Bank does in the realm of finance.

For example, in the aftermath of the deaths of scores of pets from melamine-tainted food, when it was revealed that pigs raised for human consumption had also consumed the poison, the FDA stepped in to tell us "hog meat (is) safe to eat, testing shows." Take note of how relieved you feel after reading this excerpt:

Testing confirms that meat from these hogs is safe for human consumption... that there is very low risk of human illness from eating such meat.

From time to time it may prove unfeasible to paint a smiley face on some problem that crops up, like contaminated spinach or canned chili that could cause botulism. Fortunately, the news cycle is refreshed so frequently these days, these things tend to blow over quickly and the only people who remember are the relatively few families of those who were killed.

Though a morass of regulations exists to control the sale of dietary supplements, certain non-specific quasi-medical statements are permitted. The result? Indistinct claims of vaguely healthful-sounding properties that confer supernatural powers to dietary supplements and give those who are ill and those who are merely hypochondriacs equal-opportunity expectations for amelioration of their afflictions.

Often encountered in the wild is a species of vapid gibberish that tries to evoke a complete theoretical framework to account for its existence. I found this in a brochure I picked-up from my local health food store:

FOOD IS THE KEY TO NUTRIENT UTILIZATION

Nutrients in their FoodState have the inherent benefits of Vital Food Factors not found in ordinary vitamins and minerals.

FoodState nutrients have potencies as found in FOOD which facilitates absorption and reduces potential for side-effects.

Doesn't it make you wonder 'why not just eat food?'

Acting as enablers in this tableau are news outlets that obfuscate as efficiently as they illuminate.

Results from studies of widely-varying significance take on similar weight when they are reported without sufficient context and critique. How is anyone supposed to reconcile a study purporting to show the anti-cancer properties of beta-carotene with another showing its pro-cancer properties?

Bottom line: Some good research—mostly involving beta carotene from the diet—suggests that beta carotene could lower the risk of cancer and possibly other diseases...Then came two first-rate studies showing that beta carotene supplements could cause serious harm, at least in smokers.

It's in this spirit of "everything is true and its opposite" that I return to the question "does diet soda make you fat?" There are a couple of studies that would tend to support an answer in the affirmative. One, from Sharon P. Fowler, MPH, and colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio used data that was collected for 8 years.

Now, here is the interesting thing about science: sometimes something that seems completely obvious can be shown to be incorrect.

In keeping with the open-minded approach of a dedicated researcher, this is Ms. Fowler's reaction to her own findings, as reported at an annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association in San Diego:

What didn't surprise us was that total soft drink use was linked to overweight and obesity. What was surprising was when we looked at people only drinking diet soft drinks, their risk of obesity was even higher.

Contrast that with analysis given by well-known diet guru Dr. Dean Ornish:

"There is no plausible physiological mechanism to explain this, and that causes me to question the accuracy of the methodologies used in this study."

Does he undercut this position with his role as a consultant to PepsiCo and chairman of its Health and Wellness Advisory Board? No more so than he undercuts his advocacy of a low-fat diet for heart health with his appearance on the McDonald's web site.

Frankly, Dr. Ornish, it makes you look like a corporate shill, endowed with the power to turn fish oil into snake oil. No offense intended.

So there it is, a complete interlocking system of news outlets, celebrity diet doctors, unscrupulous supplement manufacturers and willfully uninformed consumers. Maybe we deserve the FDA we've got.

For more information on the questionable validity of vitamin consumption, have a look at this BBC trailer:

The Auteur's Heavy Burden

Watching the sublimely perfect Soprano's farewell episode got me thinking about Ken Burns.

Why? Because no one told David Chase how he should finish his movie. He gets to sing "I did it my way." Not so for Ken Burns, who has been pressured by Latino activists and even the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to include more Hispanic perspectives in his documentary "The War", a history of WWII.

Mr. Burns, in precise form, supplied the standard auteur response: "It would be destructive, like trying to graft an arm onto your child,'' he said. ''It would destroy the film.'' A few weeks later, he himself performed the grafting procedure.

It must be challenging to be forced to learn the first two rules of filmmaking at such an advanced stage of your career, and I, for one, feel his pain. For uninitiates who are curious about these two rules, here they are:

#1: Every filmmaker has a client. The client is the person who can capriciously change your masterful handiwork without notice, transforming it in one swipe from art object to shameful hack job. The client has something the filmmaker needs(money). Some examples of clients are: HBO, CPB (hey- what does the "P" stand for?)

#2: Though it is not widely acknowledged, film and video are properly classified as plastic arts. Historically they have been captured on a physical medium made of plastic, for one thing, and, beyond this material classification, they are infinitely pliable in a metaphorical sense and are able to be molded to fit any content. Two important corollaries of this rule are:

a) there are a million perfect ways to construct any film

b) Mr. Burns' Frankensteinian claims notwithstanding, anything can be changed at any stage of the filmmaking process. Not all changes are improvements, but there are always equally satisfying alternative choices available. Gazing upon your creation and declaring its immutable perfection is hubris of the highest order.

Still, there are merits to his case. While "artistic independence" is largely a myth(see rule #1), there are occasions when filmmaking has to bear a burden from which other forms of artistic expression are largely exempt. Here I am reminded of Oliver Stone's JFK. Call it 'seeing is believing', the inherent verisimilitude of the medium can foster an expectation that what you see is truthful. Compounding the problem, Stone's use of the Zapruder film thrust the issue in your face. For many, the cathexis attached to Kennedy and his assassination was so strong that Stone's effort to stage a pitched battle between 'film' and 'the truth' was merely a churlish affront.

Yet the "founding myth of cinema" remains its invincible power of illusion. Perhaps one day, when moving holograms supplant the 2-D world of the movie screen, it will become more apparent that film never could depict reality. The best it can do is to appropriate it. This fact conflates the role of the director in the two genres, dramatic feature and documentary, genres separated only by a tissue of ethics.

Gonzales Has Earned Medal of Freedom

I remember well the distinct feeling of being punched in the gut, though it wasn't the first time and wouldn't be the last.

The date was December 14, 2004, and President Bush had just awarded the Medal of Freedom to George Tenet, Tommy Franks, and Jerry Bremer. In the President's words,

These three men symbolize the nobility of public service, the good character of our country, and the good influence of America on the world.

The BBC must have skipped out on the ceremonies because the next day they were busy frothing over this quote about Abu Ghraib:

This kind of widespread abuse could not have taken place without a leadership failure of the highest order," said Anthony D Romero, director of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups given access to the documents.

The skirmish which followed Tenet's recent book tour, with demands that he return his medal parried deftly by a "Royal We" backhand, represent a missed opportunity to better understand the new world that is represented by the transmutation of this medal.

In a kind of reverse alchemy, George Bush has turned gold into lead, debasing one of the nation's highest honors in a bid to politically cheer on his failed and stupid war. So let's rename this award the Medal of "New" Freedom.

"New" Freedom is the freedom of the government to spy on its citizens without search warrants, to interminably detain prisoners without charges, and to rationalize torture with grade school word-play. It's a familiar list and too long enumerate faithfully.

Longtime hanger-on Attorney General Al Gonzales would be the next logical recipient of this honor.

I'm recommending that the Medal of "New" Freedom be crafted in a much smaller size than its old counterpart, and that it be minted from purest polonium-210. Hanging over the mantelpiece, it would pose no great hazard, but I guarantee- it will surely be a bitter pill to swallow.

Treating Reefer Madness With Good Old Pot

A recent study suggests that THC can trigger psychotic symptoms. Researchers observed that experiment subjects sometimes experienced hallucinations and feelings of paranoia after being dosed with straight-up tetrahydrocannabinol. While this effect has generally been verified by countless millions of individual pothead investigators worldwide, it remains unclear whether or not this is a big deal.

Nervous Nellie schizophrenia experts like Professor Robin Murray at the Institute of Psychiatry might tell you this news should be enough to convince you to add concrete mix to your bong water, sealing it permanently and thereby sparing your jittery synapses any more damage. But this action would be premature.

Nature, which abhors a vacuum, apparently loves balance. Though she has packed a walloping large amount of THC into modern marijuana- and let's not fool ourselves, it's strong stuff these days- she has also seen fit to add a substance called cannabidiol. In back-to-back studies with antipsychotics, cannabidiol has shown promise in alleviating psychotic symptoms.

Professor Murray speculates that, because today's street pot contains so much more THC than cannabidiol, the psychotic-potentiating effects of smoking it would swamp any mitigating effects. Granted, this guy has a lot of academic schizo cred, but pray tell, Professor, where are your legions of psychotic pot-heads? Because frankly, I'll see your speculation and raise you a stack of anecdotal evidence. A very high stack at that. [Schizophrenia afflicts around 0.5% of the population. I personally know more pot smokers than that.]

Nevertheless, let me be generous and give you that one, Professor. I don't need it to make my point. THC content of marijuana hasn't doubled over the last ten years because of random mutations, it's been the result of market-driven horticultural perseverance. After all, marijuana is a huge cash crop, and, in the absence of government regulation, is guided by the Invisible Hand to meet the demands of the market ever more closely. So, in some sense the market has been asking for stronger and stronger pot and this has equated to greater percentages of THC. 

I suggest we treat reefer madness with good old pot. Paradoxical? Think again. If contemporary pot has double the THC content of old-fashioned pot, we should try going back to the old stuff. But that's one of the major problems with criminalizing drugs: you never really know what's in them. Greater awareness of the mental health risks of high-THC pot could lead growers to hybridize varieties with increased cannabidiol levels. Does this sound patently absurd? Hey, if McDonald's can be compelled to make a trans-fat-free French fry, anything is possible.

ps- i am not high. if you require proof, furnish a SASE and i will forward a lock of hair for testing. sorry, no urine will be shipped.

Rethinking No-Bid Contracts

First, in the spirit of full disclosure, I'd like to divulge the fact that, until recently, I owned Halliburton stock. I dumped it when the misunderstanding which developed surrounding certain unintended KBR billing overages made me nervous. It's one thing to add extra sand to the concrete, after all Iraq has plenty of sand, but please, no-bid contractors, don't mess with my boys' MREs.

War profiteering has a long noble history in this country, and over the years it has created a lot of millionaires, so when the US marched on Baghdad to get those WMDs, I fought the feeling of being powerless over my own government the only way I knew how: I bought stock in corporations that manufacture weapons or otherwise supply our military.

I reasoned that, since my tax dollars were pouring into these companies I had every right to tap some back out. It's like springtime, when the sap begins to rise in the great sugar maples of North America. That is the time to pound your little metal tube into the xylem. Where is the ethical dilemma in that?

But now it's starting to look like a few bad apples are trying to ruin this war for the rest of us. Critical infrastructure projects built in Iraq by US contractors are "crumbling" even before the "Made in the USA" labels peel off. Could some of our corporate citizens have behaved in an unscrupulous manner? I thought Sarbanes-Oxley was supposed to fix all of that. Perhaps now we can rid ourselves of the onerous accounting burden of this typically liberal-knows-best legislation. It's a pity that Ken Lay isn't alive to see it.

 As for me, I'm about to reinvest the money I made off of Armor Holdings, the little company that cornered the market on up-armoring Humvees,  and I'm starting an export company. [FYI- Humvees are produced by a privately-held company and I couldn't figure out how to buy  their stock.] I'm calling the new venture "Blackbush Trading Company." In 4Q '07 Phase One of the business plan commences, when we lobby Prince Bandar for the exclusive rights to sell Just For Men Gel to the House of Saud. We'll be doing our patriotic best to level out the trade imbalance in viscous black liquids.