Science headlines: vaccines and GM Food are life saving

CDC report on the use of vaccines around the world. For later reading since it is ocmplicated.

the use of DPT vaccines has lagged at 85 percent, and countries with internal wars are especially at risk for not getting their kids vaccinated.

another problem: not all the kids got all their shots, so could get the disease.
The good news is that one shot will give you some immunity and since you are now older and healthier (most of the deaths from DPT and measles and HIB etc are in toddlers) but it will wear off. We saw this with measles vaccine, where we had an epidemic in our high school and not all the younger doctors had ever seen a case.

all the anti vax people in the US seem to think vaccines are a NWO plot to kill people to keep down the population. Actually it is the opposite: It cuts down the number of poor children dying in the third world.

Of course, when the moms realize they no longer have to give birth to 5 kids to make sure they have one or two survive to adulthood, they are willing to use contraception etc. to limit their families.

another note: LATIMES article saying the WHO has called off the Zika emergency.

You know, the "R" in the MMR vaccine is rubella, which causes a lot more brain damage to the fetuse in pregnant women than Zika.

But then I'm old enough to remember the last rubella epidemic in the US, where so many women faced giving birth to a retarded child (and in the UK,, thalidomide cases) that it led to more support for legalized abortion...

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CDC reports that if you overdose on immodium, you might get a heart irregularity.

Don't worry about taking one or two for diarrhea however, the dosages are higher here...

. Serum loperamide concentrations were obtained from four patients and ranged from 77–210 ng/mL, representing 25–875 times the therapeutic range of 0.24–3.1 ng/mL (6).

 people use it to get a cheap high, or to decrease withdrawal symptoms from opioids.

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we grow organic rice, and it is healthier but the dirty little secret is that if we all ate organic rice grown in the traditional ways, there would be millions of people starving to death.

GM food hysteria kills.

LATIMES has an article on a GM crop that increases the food produced by making photosynthesis more efficient

GM is a technique, that allows the manipulation of crops and animals faster than by breeding/ choosing crops with positive traits.

Like any technique, it is morally neutral, and can be good or bad.ed

and chimeras with one human gene are not the problem: but too many genes and you could get a scenerio like Cordwainer Smith's underpeople...

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Improbable research: Death by selfies.

cross posted from my medical blog