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.

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:

Sexy Feminst

I have no idea of her intention or ability, but if supermodel, Gisele Bundchen, continues to speak her mind, she could become the new spokesmodel for the feminist agenda.

At fashion week in (way Catholic) Brazil, she spoke out in favor of condoms …

"It's ridiculous to ban contraceptives -- you only have to think of the diseases that are transmitted without them. I think it should be compulsory to use a contraceptive."

… and a woman's right to abortion:

"If she thinks she doesn't have the money or the emotional condition to raise a child, why should she give birth?"

Last month, Bundchen admitted that when she was going through an emotionally hard time, she too, shaved her head like Brittany Spears. While the tribulations of the rich and beautiful are inconsequential to the rest of the world, there's something very genuine about this gesture of public disclosure. It's a clear confirmation of the pressure of womanhood (not that it needs confirmation). These two woman have only superstardom in common, yet their experiences are the same.

Gisele's a classy dame to be sure. She dates Superbowl quarterbacks and Academy Award nominees. When she quit her Victoria's Secret gig she said she had bigger plans. Her web site has the civic minded aroma of an ethic evolved since that of the 21 year old girl who agreed to hawk furs.

For us lefties, Gisele could breath a sweater full of fresh air into the Women's Movement.

ps - If Feminism is getting a new look, we may as well look again at the ERA, or whatever it's called now.

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.

Go For Throttle Up: Will the Feds put a choke-hold on your CPU?

  It's worth recalling that the first computer to break the teraflop barrier, in 1997, was a behemoth assembly of 9,326 Pentium pro chips that sucked down enough electricity to power a high-rise building. Because now there is a desktop version.

Will this amount of computing power make it onto your desktop?

For a moment, let's imagine that teraflop computing on the desktop would be an enabling technology, the emergent features of which would precipitate qualitatively novel forms of communication. Urban legends of errant futurists abound, often taking the form of a noted luminary who underestimates what Joe Six-pack might do with the tamed silicon wafer. Treat them as a morsel of evidence lending an infinitesimal degree of plausibility to this hypothetical.

Among the many current uses for this league of high-performance computers are several that stand out for their security risks: nuclear weapons design simulations, and decryption, for example. Ostensibly, export controls on high-performance computers put in place by the federal government exist to keep this capability from falling into the wrong hands. There is a list of countries that Uncle Sam thinks shouldn't be sold such machines. Pakistan is on the list but Somalia is not. 

In light of the appearance of the "home-grown terrorist cell", which, like the ivory-billed woodpecker, may or may not have been sighted in the wild, how long will Uncle Sam be able to resist domestic curbs on access to high-performance computing? If a teraflop machine using as much power as a light bulb becomes affordable, the natural barriers of cost and power consumption will have disappeared, and for the first time this question will suddenly seem relevant. Given the array of surveillance programs launched after 9/11, it doesn't take much of a stretch to imagine this scenario. Would this amount to a further erosion of civil liberties?

One could argue a case for first-amendment protection of access to computing power. Without the means for communication, what does it matter whether there is a Constitutional right to free speech?

Cancer Cures Promiscuity

Perplexed? I was too until I penetrated the inner logic of this argument against mandatory administration of the HPV vaccine.

So here it goes: fear of contracting cervical cancer will suppress promiscuous urges and encourage moral and upright behavior, in the same way that AIDS and pregnancy have done in the past. This is just one more arrow in the quiver.

Now I have a daughter, and it is my hope that, when faced with decisions of consequence, she will be able to rely on her judgement and strength of character, two parentally-mediated traits that come from within, but hey- that's just me. Fear is so popular these days, I can see why parents would embrace it.

To be effective, the fear of cancer must itself be innoculated in the budding youth. For example, you could say "if you have sex, you'll get cancer!" This works so well with smoking and lung cancer, I'm sure it will easily overpower teenage groinal urges.

As a fallback option, should the vaccine become mandatory, you could say "if you have sex, I'll burn you with a hot poker!" Is that more mean-sounding? I can't tell.

Baby Brain Bleeding

It's a special day when any form of the word VAGINA appears in a mainstream headline, as in Vaginal Births Cause Tiny Brain Hemorrhages.

(I'd feel the same about PENIS, too).

But articles about Baby Brain Bleeding may signal our arrival at a place even fear mongers are afraid to go:

Natural Child Birth ... If You DARE!

FDA. Trusty Guardian of Corporate Health

Part One: "I'll have what he's having."

Now that the FDA has determined meat from cloned animals is safe to eat, all that remains to be decided is the matter of labeling: to label or not to label?

On the one hand, not labeling meat sourced from cloned animals could be seen as overly paternalistic, given that it confers the power to decide what's ok to eat to an agency of the federal government, a decidedly anti-conservative policy stance for a government run by a conservative party. Of course I mean "anti-conservative" in the old-fashioned sense, not in the nouveau, bloated-government, record-deficit sense.

On the other hand, not labeling meat sourced from cloned animals could also be seen as pro-business, which clearly is a conservative policy stance, inasmuch as it secures the ability of producers to enhance their profitability by whatever cost-savings cloned meat can provide, without the looming threat of superstition-fueled neo-commie farm-hippie protestors fire-bombing our Mickey D's. It calls to mind just how much nepotism has done to destroy the family farm, now a mere withering vestige of its Norman Rockwell heyday, perhaps even beyond the salving powers of a permanently dead death-tax.

But how about that Smithfield company? Sounds like an honorable ancient Virginia lineage of proud ham craftsman to me. Why not just leave it at that? Who needs to look under the hood if the car runs fine? Feed-lot politics, with its wearying entourage of nattering nabobs harping on antibiotics, hormones, overflowing ponds of fecal waste and E. Coli in our organic spinach, only serve to obscure the honorable image of a venerable American company spirally dissecting our holiday meal with love, care and a high-fructose corn syrup glaze.

Now, as policy, protecting the public from information has succeeded admirably in the past. The deployment of recombinant BST in the milk-supply went almost unnoticed after the FDA forbade milk-producers from making specious claims that natural BST produced by cows was any better than the recombinant version, produced by bacteria. After all, genetically-engineered bacteria are friendly bacteria. They are the microbial world's version of the golden retriever, wanting nothing more than to fetch your slippers, or in this case bovine somatotrophic growth hormone.

Sure, when rBST was introduced, there was some brouhaha about bovine mastitis and pus in the milk supply, but by now all that has faded away like a bad nightmare. Just try finding pus in your milk.

And harken back to the shining example of "country of origin" labeling for meats. Although the original law requiring such labeling was signed by President Bush in 2002, subsequent, better laws have since been signed, again and again in fact, busy beaver that he is, all serving to delay the implementation of labeling for the purpose of gathering further rounds of illuminating comments from AgriGeniuses. So don't sweat it until September 2008, at least. I'll bet the President gets a lot of comments saying "delay it some more." Think about it, why would you need to crowd more information on those tiny little labels, already over-burdened with so much nutritional gobbledygook, especially now that scientists have got the mad-cow problem all worked out.

Hello Dolly!

So, to consumers already made jittery by information-overloaded labeling, and gripped by irrational fears of things already officially deemed safe, I say:

Let's make this a time to honor the hero's journey of Dolly the cloned sheep, and her infinite-series of sisters, as they doggedly make their way onward to the dinner plates of all free Americans. Not free, in the sense of being "free to choose what's best for oneself," but free in the more symbolic sense that our enemies love to hate so much.

Apocalypse Soon: The Trouble With Space

The feat of knocking a golf ball into orbit got me reminiscing about a joke I tried out a few months ago. Nobody thought it was funny, and because I couldn't figure out why, I decided to provide a detailed explanation to go along with it. Here's what I came up with-

JOKE:

The first European lunar mission, SMART-1, ended today in a dazzling success when it crashed into the moon’s surface after a three-year journey.

Leading European space scientists hope to crash men into the moon in a future mission. 

EXPLANATION: 

Forty years ago the US landed Surveyor 1 on the moon and it didn't crash. It made a soft landing and sent back data, and that, justifiably, was considered to be a success. Could it be that the European Space Agency set their sites a bit low?  Was a crash landing the only successful outcome they could guarantee? Has some cabalistic recalibration brought about a situation where zero is the new +1? Maybe they are so SMART they will crash spacemen into the moon next. Keep in mind this is supposed to be a joke.

AFTERMATH:

The billion-dollar "International Space Station", which seems primarily to have served as a research platform for determining the best ways to ferry garbage back to Mother Earth, has now become the ultimate 18th hole. Slice it to Venus or hook it to Mars. If you've got the twenty million, you've got your tee time. A new crop of space-golf tourists is certain to pump up the flagging space exploration coffers.

Think of the payoff to Mankind. Maybe we'll find a cheaper way to  produce Polonium-210. Who knows when the possibilities are endless?

Perhaps the notion of "technology transfer", which had previously found its most perfect expression in the form of Tang, the powdered orange breakfast drink, could now be applied to the thorny problem of, say, trash removal in New York City, which has vexed mayors from Thomas Willett to Michael Bloomberg.

 This latest development comes on the heels of a giant copper spheroid hurled at a comet, the meanest beebee ever, the high aspiration of the pocket-protector set: the World-Crushing BeeBee. I know there is a compelling need to study the ensuing dust plumes, but the resemblance to conceptual art is hard to efface.

The Fading Rubric of Mankind's Curiosity

Meanwhile back on Earth, ideologies grate on one another, producing conflict with no apparent end.  Among the greater community of faith, the transcendent belief that God has divinely authorized the destruction of non-believers has served to perpetuate war, even as the means for nuclear devastation proliferate.

Here all paths cross. The scientific method perfects ever-deadlier weapons of war faster than blind Nature can raise a pond full of amoebas. From brilliant pebbles to smart bombs, proof of innovative prowess is proudly stenciled on ordinance to be lobbed amongst the seamy nests of the enemy.

Neo-apoclayptists are lapping it up. Milleniallists transform themselves effortlessly into peri-milleniallsts and wait fretting for the next significant date. Could it be 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar? What about the Doomsday Clock, which stands at 17 minutes before midnight and keeps on ticking, hastening forward and falling back ever more infrequently?

Does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad believe he can hasten the coming of God's dominion on Earth by obliterating Israel with a freshly-minted Islamic bomb? Does President Bush study the Book of Revelations? We shall see.

Recall that science too has its myth of an end time, expressed in the avatar of the Doomsday Asteroid, aloof now and roaming the Kuiper belt with impunity, but always on the look-out for that one perfect trajectory which leads imperturbably to Earth and the subsequent annihilation of all of its living inhabitants. Anyone doubting this proposition need only examine the fossil record.