meta-roj

healthcare is a problem in this country, but i haven’t had the time or inclination to dig into it much… so i bounce thoughts off the surface every once in a while, and today i have a number to hang a thought on.

Health Spending In The United States And The Rest Of The Industrialized World [health affairs, july/august 2005]

U.S. citizens spent $5,267 per capita for health care in 2002—53 percent more than any other country.

so, with a 40-hour week and a 50-week year, there’s 2000 hours in a working american’s life (for now i’m going to ignore non-working americans even though they count as “capita”). $5267/2000 = $2.63 per hour for health care (if you put in the rest of the “capita” it’s higher, of course).

this isn’t going to be quite fair, but with the federal minimum wage at $5.15 per hour, oddly enough, that $2.63 works out to just a shade over half (51.1%) of the minimum-wage. the reality is probably much simpler – real minimum-wage workers don’t get health care.

bbc news (radio) is reporting confirmation that the bad news from angola is, indeed, the marburg virus.

bhutan bans smoking

a news release from the university of pittsburgh medical college suggests that methylisothiazolinone interferes with neuron development in rats.

methylisothiazolinone is “an antimicrobial agent found in many shampoos and hand lotions and widely used in industrial settings.” so, before you go shampooing your smart rats, read the label on the shampoo.

personally, i think the whole anti-bacterial anti-microbial thing is a bad idea.

ot quite in time for halloween, which is sad, really. i noticed this headline from the ap wire… Ohio Clinic Plans Human Face Transplant.

i think for now, i’ll stick to donating hair.

in a previous life, i ran sound for local bands, and was pretty much constantly trying to fight the “louder is better” approach to music. i’d talk to musicians about their playing, and their sound, and all that… and once in a while the conversation would turn to volume. i may have been pretty radically conservative in my youth, but i kept trying to explain to people who love music that if they love it so much, they might want to retain their hearing for a while and not abuse it quite so much.

the thing about hearing is that it depends on little hairs in your ears to work, and those things can get bent, broken or otherwise damaged by all kinds of things – one of them being REALLY LOUD NOISES. and once your hearing is shot, well, it’s shot.

so, being a music fan, and being exposed to musicians for most of my life, hearing is a sensitive subject. so when news of people doing restore-the-hearing research, i took notice.

jeffrey corwin and stefan heller are working at the marine biological laboratory on mouse adult stem cells to grow replacement inner-ear noise sensors. for now, there’s a link right on the front page of the lab’s site, but you can see the press release as well.

i’m not sure what mouse stem cells are doing in a marine biological laboratory, but as long as they’re on a track to fix aging rockstars, i guess i won’t ask silly questions.

Lab-made prions trigger mad cow symptoms [nature, july 26, 2004]

Researchers have created a synthetic protein that makes mice display symptoms similar to those of mad cow disease

this is important, of course, if for no other reason than the expansion of human knowledge. but we live in a time of fear and terror, so now the clock is ticking on the “mad human bioweapon,” right?

onset of symptoms in mice is one to two years, so we’ll be ok as long as the terrorists aren’t patient.

a while ago, i posted a brief comment on the news from new york on the economic impact of the smoking ban in the city.

since then, that story proved a bit controversial as smoking proponents complained that the study didn’t represent the real picture – it lumped mcdonalds in with the local bar. ok, so the economic case may be harder to make. we also recently saw much news of the smoking ban in ireland.

now we have a study based on data fom montana. it’s getting some coverage around the world. but this isn’t without controversy either (statistics are just like that, i guess).

Six-Month Public Smoking Ban Slashes Hart Attack Rate in Community [university of california, san francisco]

In the first study of its kind, researchers have found that the number of heart attack victims admitted to a regional hospital dropped by nearly 60 percent during the first six months that a smoke-free ordinance was in effect in the area.

Smoking ban could halve number of heart attacks [the independent]

…a study conducted in a town that outlawed smoking in enclosed public places. It showed that hospital admissions for heart attacks fell by 40 per cent in the six months covered by the ban.

How anti-smoking law saved lives [edmonton journal]

Every year the town of Helena, Mont., counts how many people suffer heart attacks. Every year the number stayed about the same — until the town banned smoking in workplaces, bars and restaurants in 2002.

Instantly the number of attacks among Helena’s townspeople plummeted by more than 40 per cent.

so, 40% or 60%… i guess someone should take this to the next level and compare the public-health economic impact to the retail-sales economic impact…. and pity the poor tobacco farmers.

if you’ve been with me a while, you know it’s all about the polyphenyls – so you know that chocolate and red wine will save your life. those polyphenyls are just amazing. really.

but wait. maybe it’s the flavanols! the seattle times has the details.

flavanols or polyphenyls, tj knew chocolate was it. and when it comes to chocolate, i know that valrhona is it.

ew numbers from the cdc

U.S. Life expectancy at birth:

Overall:
2002: 77.4 years
2001: 77.2 years

Men, 2002: 74.7
Men, 2001: 74.4 years

Women, 2002: 79.9 years
Women, 2001: 79.8 years

Whites:
2002: 77.8 years
2001: 77.7 years

Blacks:
2002: 72.5 years
2001: 72.2 years

what are you gonna do with your life?