Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Stuff below the fold

Ah, Berkeley, famous for radical chic, free speech, and...DNA Checks?
No, they aren't checking for sexual predators, it's the nanny state:

"...The confidential process is being overseen by Jasper Rine, a campus professor of Genetics and Development Biology, who says the test results will help students make decisions about their diet and lifestyle.
..."

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I wrote about the trouble with those "scientific" studies that plan to tell docs how to practice HERE.

Well the NYTimes magazine points out the problem too...

"...Because so many criteria can be used to assess effectiveness — median or mean survival times, side effects, quality of life and the like — there is a case to be made against mandating that doctors follow what seems at any given time to be the best practice....A squishier analogue for the field of social measurement would say something like this: No method of measuring a societal phenomenon satisfying certain minimal conditions exists that can’t be second-guessed, deconstructed, cheated, rejected or replaced...."

Or, as geeks say: Garbage in, garbage out...

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Do pesticides cause ADHD?

There are reasons to think so, but I remember the "preservative" hysteria in the past.

Ah, but who made the diagnosis of ADHD? Yes, there are severe cases, but it is overdiagnosed, especially in poor kids...who often eat fast foods, have high lead levels, have an increased prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol, and who live often live in chaotic family situations...

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The "Dirty Harry" gambit: You want to boycott Arizona goods, then fine: we'll keep our electrons.

Actually, the law doesn't seem much different from what is being done...my son used to carry his passport with him because he got stopped so often for minor traffic violations and they always questioned his citizenship...

My opinion is that they need an amnesty for those who can prove they have lived and worked in the US for years, while being strict against newcomers and suspected drug runners.

LINK


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did vaccination for Smallpox keep HIV from spreading?
no, it spread due to social changes, but it might have kept the disease a milder form that was less prone to spread because the immune system kept it from multiplying.

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