Twitter Message Of The Day

Loved this Twitter message by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson:

Q: What do you call Alternative Medicine that survives double-blind laboratory tests? A: Regular Medicine.

Twitter Message from @neiltyson

The difference between science and pseudo-science is the skeptical process used by the former to arrive at a conclusion. If "alternative medicine" can survive that process, it is actually medicine. If it can't, it's witchcraft.

Cartoon Of The Day

xkcd, on that whole correlation/cause thing:



Once again, what the data actually says is important. What one thinks it may imply is just that, an implication drawn that needs to be investigated or proved using other knowledge.

Judging A Player

Caption: San Francisco left fielder Barry Bonds swinging in a game against the Cincinnati Reds, Aug. 26, 2006.

Image credit: Kevin Rushforth/Flickr


It looks like the once amazing career of Hall of Fame player Barry Bonds is about to come to a sad end:

Barry Bonds was convicted of obstruction of justice Wednesday in Federal Court in San Francisco. A mistrial was declared on two other counts.

The case, of course, was about performance-enhancing drugs. Our sibling blog L.A. Now explains: "Bonds was charged with four federal felony counts for denying under oath to a grand jury in 2003 that he had knowingly used steroids or human growth hormones and for maintaining that his personal trainer, Greg Anderson, had never injected him."


Barry Bonds Convicted Of Obstruction Of Justice: Two Books Tell The Backstory

Yes, he was already retired, but the arguments about who was the greatest of all time at this or that go on forever. Bonds was, after all, the game's most prolific home run hitter. He was one of only a few players who both stole 40 bases in a year and hit 40 home runs, baseball feats that require very different skills. One of the few other players who ever managed that feat was his father, Bobby Bonds. Well, almost. Bobby missed that mark by one home run.

It almost goes without saying that Bonds would have been a great ballplayer even without taking steroids. It seems unlikely he could have beaten Hank Aaron's home run record, but that's not terribly relevant. To illustrate why, let me take you back to an earlier time.

Mike Schmidt was probably the greatest ballplayer of his era. He was certainly one of the best home run hitters, and one of the best fielders. Yet he ended his career with fewer than 600 home runs, not even in the top five when he retired in 1989 (he was the seventh all time then). He might seem, just looking at that statistic, one of the lesser stars of the game all, Willie Mays, Harmon Killebrew, Frank Robinson, and Reggie Jackson all hit more, and they were all part of the modern era. Since he retired, Ken Griffey, Jr., Alex Rodriguez, and Sammy Sosa have all hit more than 600 homers. But just looking at that stat ignores the most important aspect of judging any player's career: the time in which he played.

Baseball has had a deceptive sameness to it over the century or so that it has been played. Ever since the modern rules were put in place early in the 20th Century, the game's basic statistics and accomplishments have changed little. Equipment has changed, and there have been minor adjustments to the height of the pitching mounds, and other things, but anyone watching a game in 1910 or 2010 would understand what was going on with either.

Still, as I wrote, that sameness is somewhat deceptive. For starters, in 1910, the population of the U.S. was about 100 million people, a third of its current size. African Americans weren't allowed to play in the Major Leagues. They had their own league. Most of the rest of the world didn't play the game, or didn't play it well enough to produce players who were good enough to play in the majors. There were fewer teams, but they had a far smaller population from which to find talent. Thus, the talent itself is much better, on average, than it was back then.

The other thing that has changed is that managers have learned to run the games better. Teams are much better at training players, and rehabilitating them when they are injured or get into some personal difficulties or have health issues. Relief pitching has become a specialty, and players are substituted in much more technical ways than they were in the past. Teams want to make sure the have utility infielders and left-handed pinch hitters almost as much as they want to have home run hitters.

So, even though the game is fundamentally the same, there's a whale of a difference between the Major Leagues of 1910 and 2010. And, thanks to various factors, the 1970s and 1980s, Schmidt's era, is rather different from Barry Bond's.

Schmidt, who played his career with one team, the Philadelphia Phillies, was the dominant hitter of his time. He led the National League in home runs in eight seasons, more than anyone. He led the Major Leagues in home runs six times, more than anyone except Babe Ruth. He also won numerous Gold Glove awards for his defensive play at his position. Given that there was a larger pool of talent in the 1970s and 1980s, it is hard to credit the idea that he was somehow in a less talented league than Mays or Killebrew. And while there have certainly been some refinements in how the game has been managed since, it's hard to think that he was facing less talented pitching than A-Rod or Junior were. He was one of the most dominating players of his era, by any measure you can think of. Yet, as I've noted, he has been eclipsed by several players since then, including Bonds.

Similarly, Barry Bonds was one of the most dominant players of his era. He probably would have been anyway, even without the steroids. The only thing that seems less likely is that he would have hit as many homers, but it's always possible that he might have lasted a little longer had he not taken them. In any event, he played in an era when steroid use was pretty common. Other top hitters of the time, including Rodriguez, Sosa, Jose Canseco, and Mark McGwire (who also surpassed Schmidt's home run total) all have admitted using steroids. Others, such as one-time Mariners second baseman Bret Boone, were accused of abuse after large improvements in their hitting in the middle of their careers. Schmidt, in one of his more candid moments, admitted that, had he played during that time, probably would have taken them, too.

A couple of years ago, I wrote that I don't have much use for the government's obsession with steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. There's little medical research that shows whether steroids are harmful; mostly there are scary stories of shrunken testicles and anger management issues. Until there's more data, I'm not inclined to think that the Congress' and the Department of Justice's interest in this is anything more than bread and circuses. While I think that baseball needs to make sure that it doesn't have a steroid abuse problem, it's hard to see it as anything more than a sign of the times we live in. It's also pretty clear that baseball didn't start paying attention to steroid abuse until it was impossible to ignore the problem. Players will use whatever they can to make their performance better. Blaming Bonds for that condition is a bit like blaming the rivets on the Titanic for sinking the ship. It was part of the problem, but it wasn't why it got a chance to be a problem.

It's pretty clear that steroids were part of the game when Bonds played. He still played better than the competition. That's probably what we should remember him for.

Odds 'N Ends For The Fourth

Image credit: Cujo359

Just a few things around the 'Net that might be of interest...

First of all, Liz Ditz of I Speak Of Dreams has written a terrific post that links to my article about DDI and Quackwatch. There's an executive summary:

The very, very short version: an independent health-care-fraud muckraking association is being intimidated, via a law suit with a $10 million dollar claim. The suit has been filed on behalf of a for-profit laboratory that does millions of dollars of business providing tests that enable quack or questionable "therapies" for heart disease, autism, and other conditions.

The for-profit laboratory has deep pockets and has associates with even deeper pockets.

If you want to support health-care-fraud muckraking, go here to donate. If you are a skeptic or dislike legal bullying, you should donate.

Health Consumer Activist Group Subject to Legal Threats -- Send Help

[link from original]

This article goes into a lot of detail that I skipped in mine. It's worth a read, I think. It turns out there's now a petition to sign as well. That's the link to the text of the petition. You do read the text of petitions before you sign, don't you?

The second bit of business is this article by Ian Welsh on what it ought to mean to be American:

On this, the 4th of July, I, a Canadian, want to talk to Americans about their values. Perhaps that’s presumptuous. Perhaps I should just shut it and say “it’s none of my business.”

I could argue that it’s my business on purely pragmatic grounds: where goes the US, Canada often follows. We are a US subject state in all but name, and your failure to fix your problems makes it much harder and sometimes impossible to fix our problems.

But forget that. I don’t primarily care about the US because of Canadian interests, I care about the US because I care about the American dream.

America Cannot Be America At Perpetual War

I think that the best way to remember what has made America great, and what's really worth fighting for, is to learn what foreigners say about what America means to them. What makes us great isn't baseball, Disneyland, or our military, it's that tradition of citizens being involved in their country, and having a framework that allows them to do so without fear. We're losing that, and with it we're losing the only thing that makes us special.

So if you want to get fighting mad, go read.

Finally, Dana Hunter wrote yesterday about her trip to Lincoln Park:

Like many parks around these parts, it has interesting rocks. I encountered one almost immediately upon hitting the beach, which meant the beach got neglected[.]

Lincoln Park

So here you are, some Lincoln Park beach:
Image credit: Cujo359

Click to enlarge. I know sometimes it's hard to see the beach for the driftwood, and the rocks.

Have a good Sunday. If you're anywhere near America, enjoy the fireworks.

Medical Quackery Meets Legal Quackery

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's lawsuits that are only filed to intimidate people into silence. Well, there are lots of things that I can't stand, actually, but this one sucks because, not only does it inconvenience the people who run web sites and news businesses, but it often deprives us, the readers, of useful information. Hiring lawyers is expensive, even when all you have to do is show up and ask the legal equivalent of "why are they wasting our time by filing this suit?"

A case in point is a suit recently filed by a medical laboratory that was accused of fulfilling requests for tests of dubious medical value. The lab, Doctor's Data, Inc. (DDI), was identified as having performed such a test by Steven Barrett, a retired psychiatrist according to his web bio, who runs a website named Quackwatch. The article begins:

Many patients are falsely told that their body has dangerously high levels of lead, mercury, or other heavy metals and should be "detoxified" to reduce these levels. This article explains how a urine test is used to defraud patients.

The report pictured to the right is a "urine toxic metals" test from Doctor's Data, a Chicago-based laboratory that caters to chelation therapists and other offbeat practitioners. The patient who gave it to me was told that his mercury and lead levels were high and should be reduced with EDTA chelation therapy.

How the "Urine Toxic Metals" Test Is Used to Defraud Patients

Chelation, incidentally, is a treatment where chemicals are introduced into a patient for the purpose of removing metals from his body. What that does is raise the level of mercury detected in the subject's urine:

In contrast, Doctor's Data uses reference values of less than 3 ug/g for mercury and 5 ug/g for lead. Standard laboratories that process non-provoked samples use much higher reference ranges [4,5], which means that if all other things were equal, Doctor's Data is far more likely than standard labs to report "elevated" levels. But that's not all. A disclaimer at the bottom of the above lab report states—in boldfaced type!—that "reference ranges are representative of a healthy population under non-challenge or nonprovoked conditions." In other words, they should not be applied to specimens that were obtained after provocation. Also note that the specimen was obtained over a 6-hour period, not the standard 24-hour period, which raised the reported level even higher.


How the "Urine Toxic Metals" Test Is Used to Defraud Patients

As befits a medical site, it goes on for some length about why this isn't a valid test. The upshot is that a patient who was given this test would assume he had unhealthy levels of mercury or other heavy metals in his body, when that was not really the case. Several states, according to Dr. Barrett, have found that using this form of test was worthy of censure or suspension of a doctor's license.

To make matters worse, one of the cures for excess heavy metal toxicity is chelation, which has some dangerous potential side effects:

Absolutely! All chelating agents have both minor and potentially life threatening side effects. They must be used under the supervision of a physician in a hospital setting.

Side effects of CaNa2-EDTA include: [kidney damage, loss of nutrient metals like iron and zinc, skin peeling]

Your Doctor: Chelation Therapy

It's not something you want to go through if you don't have to.

Orac, who writes the medical blog Respectful Insolence, takes up the tale from there:

[P]rovoked urine testing is a bogus test. According to Dr. Barrett, only does DDI use reference ranges for unprovoked urine tests, values that are utterly meaningless for provoked urine testing, but it uses reference ranges that are lower than what is commonly accepted by reputable laboratories and academic medical centers. This combination of factors virtually guarantees that it will produce many "positive" results for "elevated" mercury and other heavy metals in the urine, which practitioners can then apply dubious therapies, such as chelation therapy, to treat. Obviously DDI disputes this, but it doesn't provide any quality scientific data to do so, in my opinion. Consequently, in my view, what DDI does in essence is to do a technically sound measurement of mercury and heavy metals in the urine but on urine specimens collected using a completely inappropriate methodology that is not scientifically or medically valid.

More Legal Thuggery

As you might expect, DDI took action, which was to sue Dr. Barrett. They sent a cease and desist letter to Dr. Barrett which did not identify the specific things they found wrong with his article. The letter is reprinted in that link, by the way. Barrett requested that they identify the portions of the article that they found objectionable, and he would try to correct it if possible. They did not. As Orac explains:

This is typical. Note that [DDI lawyer Algis] Augustine doesn't actually list which specific parts of Dr. Barrett's article are incorrect, false, fraudulent or otherwise not truthful in the view of his client. Doctor's Data doesn't appear to be interested in accuracy, at least not if the letter from its lawyer is any indication. It appears far more interested in shutting up the opposition, of purging the Internet of material that can be used against it in the lawsuit it is facing in Texas. The rest of the text of the letter comes close to actually admitting this.

More Legal Thuggery

Which is what honks me off. As I said, lawyers are expensive. This kind of lawsuit, commonly referred to as strategic lawsuits against public participation or SLAPP suits, are discouraged in some states by making the losing party in such suits pay all court costs. But that's not true everywhere. According to John Pieret, an attorney who runs the site Thoughts In A Haystack, DDI's case has little merit. In his first reaction, he wrote:

As I explained in my post about the the suit by the doyen of the anti-vaccination movement, Barbara Loe Fisher, against Dr. Paul Offit, under US libel law, specific words must be alleged that make a factual claim about a person. Complaining that you are described as part of a class of people who are irrational, uneducated, unscientific, controlled by fear and/or a danger to public health is not enough to allege defamation under US law.

So, saying that someone is "catering" to loonies "nonstandard practitioners" is not good enough. Not only is that not a factual claim, but no reasonable person could interpret that as anything other than a statement of opinion, which is fully protected speech under the First Amendment. As I pointed out before, even calling someone a "pathological liar" is protected speech, so it is hard to see how calling someone a 'caterer' could rise to the level of defamation.

This Could Take Awhile

In a later article, he added:

The Doctor's Data, Inc. (DDI) suit against Dr. Stephen J. Barrett and his excellent resources Quackwatch and The National Council Against Health Fraud is a piece of work. It's not loony-tunes, like the Institute for Creation Research's lawsuit against the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. In some ways, it is much worse. It is a professionally drafted complaint that throws plenty of s**t against the wall in hopes that something might stick. It is nothing but (a lot of) smoke and mirrors in furtherance of an obvious SLAPP suit.

The DDI DDIdn't

It appears that John hasn't quite gotten all the way through the complaint yet, so he may have additional thoughts. I doubt, though, that this basic opinion will change.

Which means that there's a website that needs help. Quackwatch provides a valuable service, which is to warn us against the sort of quackery that this lab seems to be enabling. Letting miscreants intimidate expert bloggers into silence will only make it that much harder to get honest information.

So, if you can, please drop a bit of change at Quackwatch's contributions page.

UPDATE: John Pieret was kind enough to add this in a comment:

Just so you know, I've been through all the allegations of fact and I don't see any viable actions for libel. But the plaintiff has included claims for "restraint of trade" under Federal law, "trademark dilution," "consumer fraud" and "deceptive trade practices" under Illinois law, "tortious interference with contracts," "fraud" and "civil conspiracy." None of those should survive a determination that Barrett was exercising his freedom of speech but they introduce nuances that I'm not yet willing to pontificate on.

Medical Quackery Meets Legal Quackery: Comment #1

Thanks for that update, John. As a non-lawyer, it's hard for me to believe they'd have much of a case with any of that, but the courts seem to make a habit of surprising me.

Why We Do Science, Revisited

Caption: An illustration of a telomerase molecule

Image credit: Sierra Sciences, LLC/Wikimedia

This year's Nobel Prize for Medicine has been announced. The winners are three American scientists whose research discovered telemorase, a chemical that limits how often deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) replicate:

The recipients solved a longstanding puzzle involving the ends of chromosomes, the giant molecules of DNA that embody the genetic information. These ends, called telomeres, get shorter each time a cell divides and so serve as a kind of clock that counts off the cell’s allotted span of life.

Three Americans Share Nobel for Medicine

As this article on cell biology notes, the existence of telemorase has important implications:

A telomere is a repeating DNA sequence (TTAGGG) at the end of the body's chromosomes. The telomere can reach a length of 15,000 base pairs. Telomeres function by preventing chromosomes from losing base pair sequences at their ends. They also stop chromosomes from fusing to each other. However, each time a cell divides, some of the telomere is lost (usually 25-200 base pairs per division). When the telomere becomes too short, the chromosome reaches a "critical length" and can no longer replicate. This means that a cell becomes "old" and dies by a process called apoptosis. Telomere activity is controlled by two mechanisms: erosion and addition. Erosion, as mentioned, occurs each time a cell divides. Addition is determined by the activity of telomerase. (view animation)

Telomerase, also called telomere terminal transferase, is an enzyme made of protein and RNA subunits that elongates chromosomes by adding TTAGGG sequences to the end of existing chromosomes. Telomerase is found in fetal tissues, adult germ cells, and also tumor cells. Telomerase activity is regulated during development and has a very low, almost undetectable activity in somatic (body) cells. Because these somatic cells do not regularly use telomerase, they age. The result of aging cells is an aging body. If telomerase is activated in a cell, the cell will continue to grow and divide. This "immortal cell" theory is important in two areas of research: aging and cancer.

Facts About Telomeres And Telemorase

[italics and links from original]

A little further on in the New York Times article I quoted makes this observation:

The discoveries were made some 20 years ago in pursuit of a purely scientific problem that seemingly had no practical relevance. But telomeres have turned out to play a role in two medical areas of vast importance, those of aging and cancer, because of their role in limiting the number of times a cell can divide.

Three Americans Share Nobel for Medicine

This is yet another breakthrough that happened because someone was curious. As I've written before, this is why we do science. It's why we spend money finding out things that aren't immediately useful. Knowledge is often useful in ways those who created it can't imagine. Often, that realization only comes with time, after other discoveries are made, perhaps made by other people who are merely curious, and their implications realized.

Quackery And AIDS

On a day when a lot of Christians are talking about morality, renewal, and hope, it's more than a little ironic that I should read this:

This chapter did not appear in the original edition of this book, because for fifteen months leading up to September 2008 the vitamin-pill entrepreneur Matthias Rath was suing me personally, and the Guardian, for libel. This strategy brought only mixed success. For all that nutritionists may fantasise in public that any critic is somehow a pawn of big pharma, in private they would do well to remember that, like many my age who work in the public sector, I don’t own a flat. The Guardian generously paid for the lawyers, and in September 2008 Rath dropped his case, which had cost in excess of £500,000 to defend. Rath has paid £220,000 already, and the rest will hopefully follow. Nobody will ever repay me for the endless meetings, the time off work, or the days spent poring over tables filled with endlessly cross-referenced court documents.

Matthias Rath - steal this chapter

It was another of those nuisance lawsuits, brought by a huckster who figured he could keep his con going a little longer by suing the people who were exposing him. This isn't the tragedy, sad as it was for the author of this book, Ben Goldacre, and for his employer. The tragedy is that Goldacre was trying to expose Rath's efforts to hawk his vitamin cure to AIDS victims, particularly in South Africa.

How's that going for South Africa? Here's a summary:

In South Africa it kills 300,000 people every year: that’s eight hundred people every day, or one every two minutes. This one country has 6.3 million people who are HIV positive, including 30 per cent of all pregnant women. There are 1.2 million AIDS orphans under the age of seventeen. Most chillingly of all, this disaster has appeared suddenly, and while we were watching: in 1990, just 1 per cent of adults in South Africa were HIV positive. Ten years later, the figure had risen to 25 per cent.

Matthias Rath - steal this chapter

While this can't all be blamed on Rath, his actions helped make the situation worse. Many patients there refused or dropped legitimate AIDS treatment in favor of Rath's patent medicine. When they write up a list of people whose greed has killed countless people in this century, Matthias Rath will surely be high on that list.

Ben Goldacre has released the contents of this chapter of his book under the Creative Commons license, no doubt hoping it will go viral. I'll be copying it to an article sometime soon, but in the meantime, I suggest that you either read it over at Goldacre's site, or better yet, read it at Dana Hunter's site. She's added graphics and links that illustrate some of the things Goldacre has written.

Personnel Issues

The Obama Administration ran into a couple of personnel issues today. Bloomberg reports:

Former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission member Annette Nazareth has taken herself out of the running to be deputy Treasury secretary, according to people familiar with the matter.

Nazareth, who hadn’t been nominated, was warned that her SEC work would be assailed at Senate confirmation hearings, the people said. Before becoming a commissioner, Nazareth was head of the SEC’s market regulation division where she helped design an oversight regime that has been criticized for missing Wall Street’s excessive risk taking.

Nazareth’s decision is a setback for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who is without any confirmed senior aides as he grapples with the global financial crisis.

Nazareth Said to Withdraw for Deputy Treasury Post (Update4)

Yes, it's true, I don't know much about banks and other financial institutions. But can it really be that tough to find someone who wasn't asleep at the switch for the last ten years while all the shenanigans were going on? It's hard to believe this is the best they can do.

On a related note, Dr. Sanjay Gupta has decided he doesn't want to be considered for Surgeon General. Back in January, I argued that there was already a better alternative:

Why don't I find Gupta all that inspiring a choice for Surgeon General? After all, he's someone who's used to communicating with the public, which is an important part of the job. He's an accomplished doctor and academic, even though his specialty strikes some as a bit limited. However, besides his apparent bias toward keeping the broken parts of our medical system the way they are, there's a more basic difficulty - the possible alternatives. There are plenty of good choices who have at least as much relevant experience, and who aren't influenced by big pharma or the insurance companies. John Conyer's choice for the job is an example:

Alas, although CNN, Politico.com and other national news organizations have covered Conyers' opposition to Gupta, they've failed to raise the public profile of Dr. Herbert Smitherman, the assistant dean at the WSU School of Medicine who is Conyers' on-record pick as the surgeon general.

Universal Health Care? Dream On

He sounds like he's worth a look. Let's see if the Obama team finally gets this right. (h/t Lotus)

Senator Kennedy Collapses At Inauguration

Image credit: Senator Kennedy's official Senate website.


I really don't know much about this, but since folks have been searching for information about this and landing on my article from last year on his previous episode, I'll quote this from Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, who is battling brain cancer, was recovering at a Washington hospital on Tuesday after suffering a seizure at an inaugural lunch for President Barack Obama.

According to witnesses, Kennedy collapsed during the meal but recovered enough to smile and talk with his fellow lawmakers as his stretcher was wheeled to an ambulance and he was taken to Washington Hospital Center.

Testing suggested the seizure was "brought on by simple fatigue," said Dr. Edward Aulisi, the hospital's chairman of neurosurgery.

"Senator Kennedy is awake, talking with family and friends, and feeling well," Aulisi said in a statement.

Sen. Kennedy collapses at Obama inaugural lunch

Click on that article title for more.

Over at Firedoglake, Egregious wrote about the collapse while liveblogging the inauguration.

It looks like it's too soon to say how serious this is, though the implications aren't good. If you check out that earlier article of mine, you'll notice that the descriptions of his condition sound remarkably like this one. That was before he was diagnosed with brain cancer, of course.

Looking For Hate In The Wrong Place

[Updated below, with a link to a response by David Neiwert.]

Yesterday, David Neiwert, a reporter with a well-deserved reputation for exposing hate groups and racists, wrote this at FireDogLake:

Two days ago, a gunman walked into the offices of the Democratic Party in Little Rock, Arkansas, and shot the state's chairman to death. The motives are still unclear, but it is starting increasingly to look like yet another case in which an unhinged wingnut decided to "take out" more liberals.

Looking For Hate In All The Wrong Places

As I commented there yesterday, I find that article's title ironic. In fact, the picture I see emerging is that of a man who was barely stable and isolated from his community. Local TV station KARK wrote:

KARK has also learned that [assailant Timothy Dale] Johnson was fired from his job in Conway before the shooting Wednesday.

Conway police were called to the Target just before 8 a.m. Wednesday, because of some anti-target graffiti he had written on the wall. Employees there say he was irate, but he left the scene before officers arrived.

More Information on Gwatney Shooting Suspect

The Searcy, Arkansas Daily Citizen offers some troubling details:

A property receipt from the Little Rock Police Department, filed in White County District Court, Searcy Division said police had confiscated a personal computer, a bottle of Effexor XR medication in the name of Tim Johnson, a sticky note with “Gwatney” and a phone number, various paperwork, two sets of keys with the Gwatney dealership emblem on them, the last will and testament of Timothy Johnson, a Smith and Wesson gun box and 14 guns. Two guns were found in Johnson's pick-up after he died.

Evidence Suggests Planned Shooting

Effexor XR is an anti-depressant. Both depression and the the effects of anti-depressant drugs can be dangerous, as the website on Effexor XR points out:

Patients and their families should know that both adults and children taking an antidepressant medicine should be watched closely for signs that their condition is getting worse or that they are becoming suicidal. Pay close attention to any changes (especially sudden changes) in mood, thoughts, or feelings. This is very important when an antidepressant medicine is started or when the dose is changed. All patients should be watched for becoming agitated, irritable, hostile, aggressive, impulsive, restless, or anxious. Such symptoms or any new or sudden changes in mood, thoughts, or feelings should be reported to the patient's health care professional right away.

Taking EFFEXOR XR: 10 Things to Know

Johnson lived alone and had little interaction with his neighbors. If he'd had some of these reactions it's quite possible no one, including his doctors, would have noticed.

What evidence is there that Johnson was a right wing nutjob? Very little, it would appear:

Several people said they had not heard him make any overtly political comments or criticize Democrats. According to the Arkansas Times, Johnson was a former member of the Cleburne County Shooting Club, where he participated in rifle competitions.

Johnson did not indicate his party preference on his voter registration, but he voted in the Republican presidential primary earlier this year, according to records at the White County registrar. He voted in Republican primaries in 2002 and 2004 and in a Democratic primary and runoff in 2006.

Evidence links killer to Arkansas Dem chief

Johnson sounds like what passes for "independent" these days. The NYT article also indicates that the police found no literature in Johnson's residence that would indicate a political motive.

There seems to be no reason to believe that Johnson's actions were any more than a result of the unfortunate combination of a depressive personality and firearms. He could have felt as though he, or an acquaintance, was cheated by one of the used car dealerships Gwatney owned. In any event, there is no evidence linking Johnson to any of the sorts of right wing hate-mongers Neiwert mentions.

I can understand Neiwert's apprehension. As he wrote in that article:

Two weeks ago, another gunman walked into a liberal Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville, Tennessee, and began shooting, killing one man and wounding several others before he was tackled. He had written a manifesto before the rampage indicating his belief that "all liberals should be killed." At his home, investigators found books attacking liberals by the likes of Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and ... Bill O'Reilly.

Looking For Hate In All The Wrong Places

There is no doubt that liberals and progressives are the target of hateful rhetoric these days. There is no doubt that, at least on occasion, there are unstable people who take that rhetoric too seriously. Our case isn't helped, though, by unsubstantiated charges. If anything, the reverse is true. This article is the sort of thing that those same hateful people will use later as evidence that we don't know what we're talking about.

When people aren't inclined to believe you anyway, crying wolf never makes them any more interested in what you have to say.

UPDATE: Corrected spelling of David Neiwert's name.

UPDATE 2 (Aug. 17): David Neiwert has written a response to this article. He points to an interview done by another local TV station with one of Johnson's classmates:

[Arkansas State University at Beebe classmate Reggie] Tucker graduated from ASU Beebe in White County, but during the 2007 spring semester Tucker had two or three computer technology classes with 50-year-old Timothy Dale Johnson, the man who murdered Bill Gwatney.

Tucker explains, "He was socially awkward and made weird comments that kind of gave you pause but didn't make you think he is going to come after us you know."
...
Tucker says he and other classmates do recall Johnson being vocal about his views.

"I would always remember going to class and I would see that he had a Bill Clinton anti-campaign sticker [on his car] that says I don't miss Bill. "He would surf the internet and he would see that a Democrat had died and he would laugh about it."

Update: Shooter's Classmate Speaks To Today's THV

This article was posted "one day ago", according to the information at the top of the page. The blog article that pointed to it was written yesterday afternoon. It wasn't available when Neiwert wrote the article I was referring to. I might have found it had I looked hard enough. The publication time for the blog article was Aug. 15, 4:37 PM (Central Time?). Neiwert's was at 8:21 AM (PDT) on that same day.

While I'm not surprised at the sentiments Johnson expressed here, it only suggests that this was his motive. His ownership of a large cache of guns, and presumed sympathy with National Rifle Association positions, doesn't strike my as prima facie evidence that his motives were political, just more suggestion. There are progressives who have similar views. They're just a rarer than conservatives who feel that way.

It looks as though we'll never know for sure what Johnson's motives were, but will only be able to list, and maybe rank, his possible motives. Based on this new (to me) interview, I'd say that political hatred has a higher ranking than it did two days ago.

UPDATE 3: Interesting eyewitness account from the Associated Press:

When the elevator door opened, Johnson was standing there. Instead of lunging at the man, [Arkansas Baptist Convention building manager Kirby] Martin held the door open and Johnson stepped in. Martin pushed the button for the first floor. And on the ride down, he never looked at the gunman's hands, only his face.

"In his face, I saw just a pale, lost-looking, desperate man," Martin told the newspaper. "He was wearing khakis and a nice shirt. He was well-groomed. What came to my mind was that he was a pastor or staff member of a church that was in serious trouble."

Before the elevator door opened again, Martin asked Johnson: "What is it?"

Johnson got out of the elevator, walked toward the front door, and as he was walking out of the building, he answered: "I've lost my job."

Building Manager Recounts Horror of Arkansas Gunman

While it might have been the event that started this, there's no explanation there of why Johnson chose Gwatney as his target after losing his job.

Some OK News, And Some Good News

Following up on the story of the fire at Darcy Burner's house, the news seems to be as reported yesterday by the local papers:

As many of you may be aware, early this morning my home was destroyed by a fire. It appears to have been caused by a faulty lamp in my son's room. Unfortunately, our home and all of the possessions in it are a total loss, but I am so grateful that my family and I escaped safely. We may have lost our home and our possessions, but for the most part they can be replaced, and I feel like a true tragedy was narrowly avoided today. Please rest assured that while we have been a bit shaken by what happened, Mike, Henry and I are all okay.

Particularly, I am grateful to the wonderful men and women of the Redmond and Kirkland Fire Departments, and the investigators from the King County Fire Investigation Unit. Their rapid response and incredible professionalism brought the fire under control and kept it from spreading to our neighbors' homes. And these brave first responders even miraculously rescued my son's puppy, who we initially thought had perished in the flames. Sadly, our cat, Charlotte, did not survive the fire.

Darcy Burner: Thank You for Your Concern

She asks that if anyone wants to make a gesture of support that they give to their local humane society in Charlotte's memory.

On a happier note, it appears that One Fly received good medical news today. If you know him, go on over and share in the joy.

UPDATE: Dave Neiwert has an article up at FDL about how the netroots can help Darcy. Another way you can help is to feed her campaign money via Slobber And Spittle Blue.

Attack of the Salmonella Tomatoes

[screenshot from Attack Of the Killer Tomatoes from Badmovies.org]

Yesterday, while I was ordering breakfast, the waitress said that they had recalled their tomatoes. I thought she said it was due to a USDA request, but I could be wrong. All I heard for sure was that I wasn't getting any tomatoes on my omelet. Turns out this has been in the works for a bit:

The Food and Drug Administration yesterday issued a broad warning, telling consumers not to eat raw Roma, red plum or red round tomatoes, or products that contain these types of raw red tomatoes unless the tomatoes are from the following places:

California, Georgia, Hawaii, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Belgium, Canada, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Israel, Netherlands, and Puerto Rico

The FDA will continue to update this list of safe sources here.

Also safe are cherry, grape, and tomatoes sold with the vine still attached.

You Say Tomato, I Say Salmonella

[links from original, of course]

That's a pretty broad warning, alright. Take away that list of places that have been cleared so far, and you still have, let's see here, yep, just about the whole world. Why are tomatoes that still have vines considered safe? I can only guess that such tomatoes haven't been associated with any salmonella cases. Market Watch reports that at least one grocery chain has removed tomatoes from its shelves:

Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. is removing from shelves certain tomatoes following a Food and Drug Administration warning on the link between salmonella and select types of tomatoes, the retailer said Monday. Winn Dixie will destroy the tomatoes after removal and is advising consumers who have already bought these products not to consume them. The move comes after the FDA on Saturday expanded its warning to consumers that a salmonellosis outbreak has been linked to consumption of certain raw red plum, red Roma, and red round tomatoes, and products containing these raw, red tomatoes.

Winn-Dixie pulls some tomatoes on FDA Salmonella warning

The Los Angeles Times adds:

Major supermarket chains including Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons have stopped selling the three kinds on the FDA list. Other types of tomatoes remained for sale, said Brian Dowling, a vice president of public affairs for Vons owner Safeway, based in Pleasanton, Calif. "It's a precaution."
...
Fast-food chains, including Irvine-based Taco Bell Corp. and Denver-based Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., have also stopped offering tomatoes.

Salmonella outbreak clears three tomato varieties from many markets, menus

I suspect there will be others, particularly on the East Coast:

Washington-area readers might find it interesting that FDA focused it's Tomato Safety Initiative on the eastern shore of Virginia as well as Florida. Over the past 10 years, the FDA says, most tomato-associated outbreaks have been traced back to the eastern shore of VA.

You Say Tomato, I Say Salmonella

Apparently, this has been a rather widespread outbreak:

Round red tomatoes, Roma tomatoes and red plum tomatoes (oblong varieties) are among the suspect varieties behind a nationwide Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak that has sickened at least 145 people since April 16, hospitalizing 23.

Salmonella outbreak linked to some tomatoes

Sfgate reports:

No one has died from the recent outbreak, though at least 23 people have been hospitalized. The majority of the infections have occurred in New Mexico and Texas, but cases also have been reported in Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

The Contra Costa resident was not identified, but county health officials said Friday she is older than 35, did not have to be hospitalized and has recovered. Investigators are working to determine whether the woman contracted the illness locally or elsewhere. She recently traveled to a state where several other cases have been reported, according a release issued by Contra Costa Health Services spokeswoman Kate Fowlie.

Salmonella outbreak prompts FDA tomato warning

The last paragraph demonstrates why isolating the cause of an outbreak can be so difficult these days. Both the foods and the people who consume them are traveling all over the country.

So, it's probably safest for now to only consume cooked tomatoes, unless you know that the tomatoes came from a part of the world that's been cleared.

For further information, I recommend that you read the FDA release about this issue.

UPDATE (Jun. 10): An update on this issue is here.

Kennedy's Operation Termed "Successful"

Updated Aug. 26, 2009. See note at end of the article.

According to the New York Times, Senator Edward Kennedy underwent a successful surgery today:

Senator Edward M. Kennedy successfully underwent surgery on Monday in Durham, N.C., for a malignant brain tumor, his surgeon said.

“I am pleased to report that Senator Kennedy’s surgery was successful and accomplished our goals,” the physician, Dr. Allan H. Friedman, co-director of the Brain Tumor Center at the Duke University Medical Center, said in a statement about 2 p.m.

Kennedy’s Surgery for Tumor Called Success

As I've mentioned previously, Sen. Kennedy was diagnosed with glioma, a rather nasty form of brain cancer. This apparently was a long and difficult operation:

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Edward M. Kennedy underwent a 3 1/2 -hour targeted brain surgery at Duke University Medical Center today to remove a malignant tumor.
...
The procedure was intricate, complicated by the fact that the tumor cells can be very difficult to distinguish from surrounding brain tissue and because the tumor is located very close to centers of the brain that control motor function, speech and memory.

Doctors call Sen. Kennedy's brain surgery successful

The NYT elaborates on the goal of the surgery:

The surgeon’s challenge in any such procedure is to remove as much of the tumor as possible while avoiding sensitive areas.

“We call it debulking, and we like to get a very high percentage of the tumor, say 90 percent, which can help a lot” with overall treatment, said Dr. Robert Goodman, an associate professor of neurosurgery at Columbia.

Dr. Friedman at Duke did not report what percentage of the tumor he had removed.

Kennedy’s Surgery for Tumor Called Success

Bear in mind that I have absolutely no qualifications in medicine, but it looks like what they're trying to do is reduce the amount of cancer that has to be killed off by chemotherapy or radiation. That reduces the doses that have to be given to the patient, thus making the treatments less damaging and debilitating. Anyway, that's what I'm getting from the articles.

Meanwhile, Kennedy appears to be in good spirits, if the various reports can be believed. He's also clearly not planning on taking it easy:

Kennedy spoke on Sunday with Connecticut Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd, one of his closest friends. But in his typical fighter's style, there was little talk about the cancer or his impending surgery. Instead, it was all about a pair of legislative measures — on mental health care and education — that Kennedy has been working on for months.

"He wants to get them done and he expects to be here when they are done," Dodd said. "He plans on coming back as soon as the doctors will let him."

Chemo and radiation next for Kennedy after surgery

As I've said, if spirit and determination count for anything, Ted Kennedy's going to be around a lot longer.




UPDATE (Aug. 26, 2009): As readers of this article are undoubtedly aware, Sen. Kennedy died last night. See this memorial article and this article on succession for more information.

Kennedy Out Of "Imminent Danger"

Image credit: Senator Kennedy's official Senate website.


Updated. This is not an article about Sen. Kennedy's collapse at the 2009 Inauguration.


I started surfing the web today after work, where I'm largely isolated from news, the web, and most forms of reality, and saw this:

Senator Edward M. Kennedy was hospitalized today after suffering a seizure, triggering shock in the political world and drawing an outpouring of support from across the nation and the ideological spectrum.

The 76-year-old Democrat, a tireless advocate for liberal causes and the surviving patriarch of the storied Kennedy political dynasty, was talkative and joking with family members this afternoon, friends and associates said. His condition was considered serious, they said, but his life did not appear to be in imminent danger.

...

By the evening, the mood of Kennedy family and friends contrasted markedly to that of the morning, when he was stricken at his Hyannis Port compound at about 8:15 a.m., rushed first to Cape Cod Hospital and then transported by helicopter to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Ted Kennedy not in immediate danger; seizure cause sought

Ted Kennedy is not only one of the most prominent people in American politics, he is also a rare thing in politics these days - someone who is fabulously rich and yet never tires of trying to make the lives of working people in this country better.

I wish him and his family the best.

UPDATE (Jan. 20, 2009): If you're looking for information about Sen. Kennedy's collapse at the Inauguration, go here, or better yet, go here.

Tula Connell On Health Care

No, that's not Tula Connell, that's Micheal Moore. Same subject, though.

Over at Firedoglake, Tula Connell wrote about our health care system yesterday with a clarity I wish that more people in the news business could do:

Many people who wrote in had experienced the health care systems of Canada, Great Britain, France or Sweden—and say, by comparison, the U.S. system stinks. Their firsthand experiences are a stark contrast to the media noise machine that repeats ad nauseum (pun intended) how lucky we are in this country not to suffer through state-backed health care systems where we would—gasp—wait in line for care. Like what planet without HMOs do those writers live on?

Sick, Sick, Sick. Health Care in America

Ms. Connell has been helping the AFL-CIO conduct a health care survey, and she's reporting on some of the responses. It's not an eye-opener for anyone who's had to deal with the health care system as an ordinary working stiff. My guess, though, is that it's going to cause a few editorialists a bit of vertigo if they ever bother to read it.

It's appalling that even the most progressive health care proposal of the candidates for President, which was John Edwards', still meant to leave the financing of the health care system in the hands of the people who have screwed it up so badly. As I mentioned before, Edwards' was the only one that even took the idea that the insurance companies had an obligation to reform their practices seriously. It has to be one of the most inefficient ways of doing this. Ezra Klein quotes California Health Care Foundation CEO Dr. Mark Smith:

Perhaps at the end of this someone can explain to me why we would insist on paying Aetna 12 bucks so Aetna can pay Medco 10 bucks, so Medco can pay CVS 7 bucks, so CVS can collect a 5 dollar copay per patient, for a drug that the patient could have gone to Costco and paid 4 dollars for. I’m not sure how that is good for society. I understand it’s how we’ve been financing this. But that's different.

How Insurance (Doesn't) Work

Yet this is the system that every Presidential candidate, and many people running for Congress, insist we must preserve.

Whoever wins in November, you can be sure that he, or she, will do nothing useful on behalf of the people who need health care in this country. If positive change is going to happen, the impetus will have to come from elsewhere. Following that link will lead to this petition (more of a pledge, really) on health care.

Don't Fetch My Torch Just Yet ...

King Kaufman seems to have been reading my mind. A couple of days ago, while flying across the country (someone else was doing the actual work of piloting the plane, thankfully), I couldn't help but wonder about all the nonsense I've read and heard about drugs in sports. Don't get me wrong, some drugs, like cocaine for instance, are clearly health hazards, not to mention illegal. There's a problem with that. Beyond that, though, we seem to have drawn some rather arbitrary lines. Today Kaufman observes:

What I'm trying to do here is keep from joining the torch-bearing mob. [Former track star Marion Jones] [r]isking her health? Unlike most commentators, I'm happy to admit that I don't understand the health implications of taking so-called performance-enhancing drugs and, barring a midcareer dive into medical school, I don't have much hope of ever understanding them.

I also don't really understand the physics and physiology of these drugs. What can I say? I'm no Jose Canseco. I don't have a mind for science.

Steroids And The Mob

I don't have a mind for science, either, although I'd have to say I come nearer to that level than most sports writers. Maybe that's why I'm confused as to how those lines are drawn:

What I don't get, and I realize it sounds like I'm joking when I say this, and I also realize that people who have spent a lot of time arguing about this subject roll their eyes when someone says it but I'm sorry I still don't get it: Why is it wrong to improve performance by injecting testosterone but OK to improve it by injecting cortisone or having Lasik surgery?

Steroids And The Mob

Why is it OK, even fascinating, for an athlete in one sport to use a hyperbaric chamber:

A hyperbaric chamber requires both a prescription and an open mind.

[Seahawk defensive end Patrick] Kerney's got both.

He suffered a ruptured triceps on the first play last year in Atlanta. Teammate John Abraham suffered an injured groin muscle later that same game, and suddenly the Falcons were staring at the possibility of being without both their starting defensive ends the next week.

"I knew a triceps [injury] was more playable," Kerney said.

Falcons teammate Travis Hall swore by his hyperbaric chamber, which can cost about $20,000. Hall lived halfway between Kerney's house and the Falcons' practice facility. Kerney spent the next few weeks sleeping in the chamber in Hall's basement.

Seahawks | Rituals of recovery

while blood doping is grounds for cheating in another?

"It was only attempted doping," said 29 year-old Ivan Basso to a conference room full of journalists and photographers in Milan's Hotel Michelangelo. The 2006 Giro d'Italia winner called the press conference following his admission of involvement in the Operación Puerto blood doping scandal.

Basso: "It was only attempted doping"

In short, if you leave your blood in your body while you oxygenate it, it's OK. If you take it out of your body to do it, it's not.

That article about the Seahawks player is what really set me to thinking about this issue. It's a long list of the things that professional athletes, football players in particular, do to keep themselves in top condition. That's an important thing in a field where even a little edge can be the difference between being a hero and a goat.

Sports medicine has been one of the fastest-growing fields in medicine. Athletes have been learning how to get more performance out of their bodies using diet, exercise, and medically prescribed drugs for the last four decades. Is it cheating for modern baseball players to eat a balanced diet, while Babe Ruth prefered hot dogs? Is it cheating for Patrick Kerney to use a hyperbaric chamber, while Alex Karras didn't?

One of the other things about this is that while there's been a whole lot of bloviating on the issue of hormones and other performance-enhancing drugs, there's been remarkably little research done into their actual medical effects:

Most data on the long-term effects of anabolic steroids in humans come from case reports rather than formal epidemiological studies. From the case reports, the incidence of lifethreatening effects appears to be low, but serious adverse effects may be underrecognized or underreported, especially since they may occur many years later. Data from animal studies seem to support this possibility. One study found that exposing male mice for one-fifth of their lifespan to steroid doses comparable to those taken by human athletes caused a high frequency of early deaths.

NIDA: What are the health consequences of steroid abuse?

Anecdotal information and studies on rats are what we're going on. Not much information when you compare this with what we know about cigarette smoking or alcohol.

As Kaufman observes, that lack of research extends to the drugs' effect on sports:

So, just to review for baseball: We don't know who took illegal drugs and who didn't, we don't know which drugs or how much of them the drug takers -- whoever they were -- took, and we don't know what effect, if any, the drugs had once they were taken by whoever took them, whom we can't identify.

But they're all a bunch of cheats!

I'll keep my torch unlit, if you don't mind.

Steroids And The Mob

Admittedly, this is sports we're talking about, where the rules are often arbitrary. Why four downs, and and not three? Why is a bat containing only ash OK, but if it's filled with cork, it's cheating? Of course, part of the answer is that everyone's supposed to play that way, but it sure doesn't explain the vehemence of peoples' reactions.

So, as Kaufman says, I'm not going to be picking up my torch and pitchfork just yet.

Clinton Office Hostage Crisis Resolved

According to the New York Times:

Shortly after 6:15 [EST], a young man, presumably one of the last hostages, was led out of the office.

Moments later, Mr. Eisenberg was led out of the office — an older man, wearing a white shirt, dress pants and a tie. He unwrapped a large piece of clear plastic from around his body and held his hands in the air. He then lay down spread eagle on the street and was patted down by police. A state police explosives unit moved into the office.

Suspect Is Arrested in Clinton Office Standoff

A local TV station reports that no one was injured, including the hostage taker. He is identified as Leeland Eisenberg, who apparently is going through a divorce. The TV station also reports that he has spent time in prison:

NewsCenter 5 confirmed that Eisenberg was scheduled to appear in Strafford County Superior Court at 1:30 p.m. Friday with his wife for a domestic violence hearing. Eisenberg also spent time in prison in Massachusetts. He was released from MCI Concord on March 16, 2005.

"This gentleman is known to the Rochester Police Department," Dubois said. "There is a public record. I've got to protect his privacy rights."

Hostage-Taker Arrested Outside Clinton Office

CNN reports that he called the network to say that he was a mental patient who had been trying to get help.

Eisenberg said he was a mental health patient who had been trying to get help. He'd been unsuccessful, he said, because he didn't have the "thousands of dollars" he was told he'd need.

He tried several mental health facilities, he said, "even called the Department of Health and Human Services." But no one could help him, he said.

Hostage taker complained of lack of access to mental health care

The CNN report goes on to say that Eisenberg wanted to speak with Sen. Clinton about the state of mental health care. So far, this is the only connection I can see between the two.

That no one was injured speaks of the professionalism of the police who handled this situation. My somewhat faulty memory tells me that these things don't usually end this well. Hopefully, Mr. Eisenberg will get the treatment he needs, and the former hostages can go on about their lives.

UPDATE: Dangerous irony level alert:

The incident was a grim reminder that no matter how much protection a candidate has — and Mrs. Clinton has more than most — there is no way to watch every door of every office in the carnival that is a national campaign.

Clinton: ‘Everything Stopped’

The irony, of course, is that this is a political blog at the New York Times online edition. The sort of folks who seem to always find a new terror incident to obsess about while the things that are really killing us, like traffic, alcohol, smoking, crime, and lack of health care, go largely unremarked. There's extra irony, of course, because the NYT was one of the places you could go to read all about how dangerous Saddam was in the run-up to our "War On Terrah" in Iraq.

Gosh, Thanks Senator Clinton

"Individual mandates". It's the new way for politicians to say that insurance companies count more than their constituents do.

Senator Hillary Clinton has just announced her (yawn) health plan:

"I believe everyone — every man, woman and child — should have quality, affordable health care in America," the New York senator told an audience in Iowa. She vowed to accomplish the goal in her first term.

Clinton unveils health care plan

Uh huh. So, you know what's coming next, right? Grab your wallet:

The centerpiece of Clinton's "American Health Choices Plan" is the so-called "individual mandate," requiring everyone to have health insurance — just as most states require drivers to purchase auto insurance. Rival John Edwards has also offered a plan that includes an individual mandate, while the proposal outlined by Barack Obama does not.

Clinton unveils health care plan

"Individual mandates", as far as I'm concerned, mean that health insurance providers still get to determine who gets health care, and they get to set the price. The insurance companies have a history of intimidating people who try to collect the money they are owed. And as Jane Hamsher pointed out not too long ago based on her own experiences, they aren't in the least bit shy about doing it to people who are sick. In fact, as PBS's Now showed not too long ago, that's become their policy in home insurance, and profits have soared. The government doesn't interfere, because political candidates love all that money they receive from insurance companies. That's one thing that no fault auto insurance should have taught us. And here's another fun thing - if your credit rating is low, like as in you're poor, insurance companies are allowed to charge you more. Don't believe me? Read the fine print on your next insurance bill.

So far, I'm not impressed by any of these plans. As NOW observed recently:

"Universal health care" has become the grand Democratic mantra, found on every campaign web site and repeated in every stump speech and debate. But the phrase itself is misleading—most often, it actually means "universal health insurance." While the plans do outline some modest and not altogether meaningless reforms, especially when it comes to care for children, most are designed to preserve—and even benefit—the twin scourges of the U.S. health care system: the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry. With the exception of the acknowledged mavericks Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Mike Gravel, no one has suggested anything resembling a single-payer national health care system (that is, one that is managed and administered by the federal government), which would boot out the rapacious middlemen of the insurance industry and reign in Big Pharma—the primary obstacles to quality, affordable health care in this country.

Health Care and the Horse Race

As Taylor Marsh has observed, Clinton's plan is rich in details. Yet, you can provide details out the wazoo and still be spectacularly and utterly wrong if you start with wrong assumptions. That's what Clinton and John Edwards have both done. Obama's plan hasn't really been fleshed out yet, but I suspect it will have similar flaws, minus "individual mandates".

They need to do better.

UPDATE: One difference I'm seeing between Clinton's health plan and John Edwards' (PDF) is that the latter clearly states that individual mandates don't start until the rest of the plan has kicked in and lowered health costs:

Finally: Individual Responsibility. Once insurance is affordable, everyone will be expected to take responsibility for themselves and their families by obtaining health coverage. Some Americans will obtain coverage from public programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP and others will get coverage through their jobs. Other families can buy insurance through the regional Health Care Markets. Special exemptions will be available in cases of extreme financial hardship or religious beliefs.

Universal Health Care Through Shared Responsibility

I find this an optimistic feature, but at least it moves the burden to where it should be - after costs have been reduced.

UPDATE 2 (Sept. 18): Since a giveaway to the insurance industry seemed to be daft enough, I didn't even touch on other issues. One is Clinton's proposed tax break for medical expenses. Not only is there already such a tax break, this is obviously, to anyone who's been in this situation, almost no help at all. Suppose you're earning $30K a year and have $100K in medical expenses that your insurance doesn't cover. This situation isn't at all unusual. How much good is the $8K a year (maximum) that you'd see from this tax break? I suppose after you've sold your house and all your other assets, you can use that $8K to put an addition on your refrigerator box.

Scooter In The Dock: Part Deux

image credit: Library of Congress

Happy Flag Day.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is once again in court, this time for sentencing. It's starting to look like there won't be a decision today, but stay tuned. Firedoglake is live blogging the proceedings. Here's today's first installment.

Needless to say, the drumbeat from the Republican shills for a pardon hasn't let up. If anyone doubts that Libby will be pardoned, consider this - these guys never do anything because it's the right thing to do. They've been put up to it. By whom, you wonder? I hope not for long. The only question is when it will happen. The Bush Administration doesn't care about public opinion at this point, since nothing's likely to change that short of a complete turnaround in Iraq. They clearly don't care about the Repbublican Party's future, just their own. As for the idea that Bush won't do it because he could be impeached? Do you really think that this crew of marshmallows is going to impeach anyone? He could eat a baby on the White House lawn in broad daylight and they wouldn't touch him.

Meanwhile, Taylor Marsh has a couple of interesting bits in her Hot Topics column today. The first is the article where I found today's picture. Thank you. The second is about the universal health care plan John Edwards announced more details about today. So far, it's been an interesting read. The goals are well thought out. I'm not so sure about the methods, but with something as complex as this problem I suspect that's inevitable. For my part, I think making things simpler is a good way to go. Anything that tends to make the problem even more complicated is probably not such a good idea. Hopefully, I'll be a little more specific later after I've read and digested.

UPDATE: Judge Walton has ruled that Libby must begin serving his jail sentence, which will be for a maximum of 30 months. Firedoglake has a live blog account of the events.

UPDATE 2: Larry Johnson's come up with an activity schedule for Scooter while he's in jail. Personally, I think he, Cheney, Abu, and W. should all spend some quality time experiencing what they were glad to subject others to.

Steve Gilliard, A Voice Gone

Steve Gilliard, a powerful and insightful voice on the left-wing blogs, passed away this morning. This is a quote from his website. I have no idea what will become of The Newsblog, so I'll quote it in its entirety for whatever posterity that serves:

Steve Gilliard, 1966-2007

It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog (www.thenewsblog.net), passed away early this morning. He was 41.

To those who have come to trust The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects and interest categories where others feared to tread.

We will post more information as it becomes available to us.

Please keep Steve's friends and family in your thoughts and prayers.

Steve meant so much to us. We will miss him terribly.

As will I. My condolences to his friends and family.

UPDATE: Among Steve's many Internet friends was Jane Hamsher. She wrote a wonderful tribute today.

UPDATE 2: The Rude Pundit wrote about his friend as well. As RP points out, much of Steve's work is still visible on his old blog.

UPDATE 3: (June 6) An obituary appeared today in the New York Times. One sentence stuck out for me:

In what is a now-familiar story among Internet collaborators, many of the thousands who posted online reactions to Mr. Gilliard’s death wrote that they had known little about him, even the fact that he was black.

I found out fairly early on that Steve was black, but it was because he or someone mentioned that he was. He wrote about the things that concern us all, and he did it very well.