The only logical inference

From an NPR story on how a recent UC Davis study showed that autism diagnoses are significantly higher in upper income, well educated, white communities:

The California results also show how widely autism diagnosis rates can vary from place to place, Novella says. In some areas of the state, children were four times as likely to be diagnosed as in other areas.

That suggests that in many areas there are still a huge number of children with autism spectrum disorders who are slipping through the cracks, Novella says.

I can think of at least one other possibility that the data suggests.

Continue reading The only logical inference

More about rabies

From my old hometown:

1/16/2009



The Suffolk County Department of Health Services reported that terrestrial animal rabies has been confirmed in a raccoon found in Huntington, Suffolk County. The raccoon was found dead on Dewey St. on January 8, 2009. The Suffolk County Department of Health Services submitted the specimen to the New York State Department of Health Rabies Laboratory, where the rabies virus was confirmed. There was no known human contact with the raccoon.

This is Suffolk County's nineteenth case of terrestrial animal rabies since March of 2006 when the first case was found. All cases have been from the Huntington/Lloyd Harbor area.

. . .

Suffolk County has been actively distributing oral rabies vaccine to wildlife since September 2006. This has been complemented by similar efforts in Nassau County. The goal of this program is to vaccinate terrestrial wildlife against rabies in order to prevent further spread on Long Island.

In this map of Long Island, Suffolk County essentially extends from "Melville" on the west all the way to Montauk and Orient Points on the east.

And this closeup shows the area where all of the rabies cases have been found.

Suffolk's got about 6 times the population of Durham County, but only about double the population density. Huntington Township, the area where all of Suffolk's rabies incidents have occurred, has a population nearly that of Durham's (just under 200000 in 2000) in about 1/8 the area. Compare Huntington to the City of Durham, however, and things are much more alike, with both municipalities covering an area a little under 100 square miles, and densities around 200 people per square mile.

19 rabies cases in 3 years averages a little over one every two months. In Durham, we've had 4 in about 6 months.

Do we even have a response from the County Health Department, or is all of this being placed on our already overworked Animal Control Department to manage?

Continue reading More about rabies

Priorities

North Carolina's pork lobby swings into action, following reports that poor management practices on hog farms in Mexico may have been a contributing factor in the spread of swine flu this spring:

The N.C. Pork Council would prefer you not call it "swine flu."

The industry association for pork producers thinks the colloquial name for the virus being closely monitored by global health officials is inaccurate.

Following the lead of their national organization, they have suggested "North American influenza" — a variant on the other alternative name, "Mexican flu," which has upset some officials from that country.

Officially, the virus is known as H1N1, after two of its proteins, hemagglutinin and neuraminidase.

In an e-mail to Dome, N.C. Pork Council spokeswoman Deborah Johnson said the linkage between pigs and the flu "should have never been made."

Fortunately, the virus does not appear to be as contagious as creeping veganism. (FYI - i had the barbecue at Charlie's on Ninth St. for lunch today. No ill effects so far.)

Continue reading Priorities

Followup on N&O post

Just wanted to note this article in the Guardian, especially in light of yesterday's post about the N&O's execrable reporting on animal issues. The significance of the N&O's failure to actually investigate issues of animal production is heightened, i think, by all this swine flu stuff.

Since its identification during the Great Depression, H1N1 swine flu had only drifted slightly from its original genome. Then in 1998 a highly pathogenic strain began to decimate sows on a farm in North Carolina and new, more virulent versions began to appear almost yearly, including a variant of H1N1 that contained the internal genes of H3N2 (the other type-A flu circulating among humans).

Researchers interviewed by Science worried that one of these hybrids might become a human flu (both the 1957 and 1968 pandemics are believed to have originated from the mixing of bird and human viruses inside pigs), and urged the creation of an official surveillance system for swine flu: an admonition, of course, that went unheeded in a Washington prepared to throw away billions on bioterrorism fantasies.

But what caused this acceleration of swine flu evolution? Virologists have long believed that the intensive agricultural system of southern China is the principal engine of influenza mutation: both seasonal "drift" and episodic genomic "shift". But the corporate industrialisation of livestock production has broken China's natural monopoly on influenza evolution. Animal husbandry in recent decades has been transformed into something that more closely resembles the petrochemical industry than the happy family farm depicted in school readers.

In 1965, for instance, there were 53m US hogs on more than 1m farms; today, 65m hogs are concentrated in 65,000 facilities. This has been a transition from old-fashioned pig pens to vast excremental hells, containing tens of thousands of animals with weakened immune systems suffocating in heat and manure while exchanging pathogens at blinding velocity with their fellow inmates.

Last year a commission convened by the Pew Research Center issued a report on "industrial farm animal production" that underscored the acute danger that "the continual cycling of viruses … in large herds or flocks [will] increase opportunities for the generation of novel virus through mutation or recombinant events that could result in more efficient human to human transmission." The commission also warned that promiscuous antibiotic use in hog factories (cheaper than humane environments) was sponsoring the rise of resistant staph infections, while sewage spills were producing outbreaks of E coli and pfiesteria (the protozoan that has killed 1bn fish in Carolina estuaries and made ill dozens of fishermen).

Any amelioration of this new pathogen ecology would have to confront the monstrous power of livestock conglomerates such as Smithfield Farms (pork and beef) and Tyson (chickens). The commission reported systemic obstruction of their investigation by corporations, including blatant threats to withhold funding from cooperative researchers.

Emphasis added.

The N&O may have been inadvertently correct. Meat eating "as we know it" may be undergoing some profound changes in the future. But it will come about as a result of the failures of the meat production industry itself, not because a bunch of dirty fucking hippie vegans started lobbying the legislature.

Adding, this story is worth reading too. All the way to the end.

Continue reading Followup on N&O post

Didn't see that coming

We need more parking decks in Durham!

New research illustrates the health benefits of regular biking, walking or taking public transportation to work, school or shopping. Researchers found a link between "active transportation" and less obesity in 17 industrialized countries across Europe, North America and Australia.

"Countries with the highest levels of active transportation generally had the lowest obesity rates," authors David Bassett of the University of Tennessee and John Pucher of Rutgers University conclude.

Americans, with the highest rate of obesity, were the least likely to walk, cycle or take mass transit, according to the study in a recent issue of the Journal of Physical Activity and Health. The study relied on each country's own travel and health data.

Only 12 percent use active transportation in the United States — 9 percent walk, 1 percent ride a bike and 2 percent take a bus or train — while a quarter to a third are obese, the study said.

Continue reading Didn't see that coming

Another court rebuffs the Bush administration

This time over mercury emissions.

A federal appeals court said Friday the Bush administration ignored the law when it imposed less stringent requirements on power plants to reduce mercury pollution, which scientists fear could cause neurological problems in 60,000 newborns a year.

A three-judge panel unanimously struck down a mercury-control plan imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency three years ago. It established an emissions trading process in which some plants could avoid installing the best mercury control technology available by buying pollution credits.

Environmentalist and health experts argued that such a cap-and-trading mechanism would create "hot spots" of mercury contamination near some power plants. Seventeen states as well as environmental and health groups joined in a suit to block the regulation, saying it did not adequately protect public health.

It's not the first time the administration has been taken to task for ignoring the Congress when it comes to protecting the public health, and when added to the recent statements by the Attorney General, demonstrates a very clear pattern of the application of what the administration claims are its virtually unlimited powers under the theory of the "unitary executive."

The court decision was the latest in a string of judicial rebukes of the Bush administration's environmental policies. The Supreme Court last year took the administration to task for not regulating greenhouse gases. Courts have also rejected administration attempts to overhaul federal forest policies and streamline fuel economy standards for small trucks.

In this case, the Clinton EPA had instructed operators of coal power plants to install best available technology to remove up to 90% of mercury from power plant emissions. The Bush EPA replaced that instruction with the one just overturned. Here's athe kicker. Even though the Bush rule wouldn't have taken effect for another 10 years or so, an industry spokesperson is complaining that now, power plant operators are rudderless.

Dan Riedinger, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, an association of power companies, called the court decision "a major setback ... to establish clear mercury regulations for coal-burning power plants."

"Now EPA has to go back to the drawing board, pushing mercury regulations far off into the future," said Riedinger.

I don't get it. Seems to me we had a perfectly good regulation eight friggin' years ago. If the current ruling has been held to be in violation of the law as written by the Congress of the United States, wouldn't the previously existing regulation come into play? What's the need to go back to the drawing board? It's not like there's anything controversial about mercury's status as a neurotoxin.

Some 450 existing coal and oil burning power plants emit 48 tons of mercury into the air each year. Yet only 1/70th of a teaspoon of mercury is needed to contaminate a 25 acre lake to the point where fish are unsafe to eat.

More than 40 states have warned their residents to avoid consuming various fish species due to mercury contamination, and more than half of those mercury advisories apply to all water bodies in the state.

But there you go, nothing is more important to these guys than the exercise of power. Not your kid's health, not your job, not your right to be "secure in [your] persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."

Here's some more reading on this case.

Continue reading Another court rebuffs the Bush administration

Why am i not surprised?

Here's some news from the AP:

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved implanting microchips in humans, the manufacturer said it would save lives, letting doctors scan the tiny transponders to access patients' medical records almost instantly. The FDA found "reasonable assurance" the device was safe, and a sub-agency even called it one of 2005's top "innovative technologies."

But neither the company nor the regulators publicly mentioned this: A series of veterinary and toxicology studies, dating to the mid-1990s, stated that chip implants had "induced" malignant tumors in some lab mice and rats.

That's not terribly surprising, but the lack of surprise there is not significant.

There's this:

To date, about 2,000 of the so-called radio frequency identification, or RFID, devices have been implanted in humans worldwide, according to VeriChip Corp. The company, which sees a target market of 45 million Americans for its medical monitoring chips, insists the devices are safe, as does its parent company, Applied Digital Solutions, of Delray Beach, Fla.

. . . snip . . .

The FDA also stands by its approval of the technology.

Did the agency know of the tumor findings before approving the chip implants? The FDA declined repeated AP requests to specify what studies it reviewed.

But wait, there's more.

The FDA is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, which, at the time of VeriChip's approval, was headed by Tommy Thompson. Two weeks after the device's approval took effect on Jan. 10, 2005, Thompson left his Cabinet post, and within five months was a board member of VeriChip Corp. and Applied Digital Solutions. He was compensated in cash and stock options.

(emphasis mine in all cases.)

There's simply no aspect of our lives that's safe from the Bush administration and the Republican Party in general. None.

Continue reading Why am i not surprised?