Posts tagged health

In letters to Colorado public health officials, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) opposes a rule requiring workers in health care facilities to have an annual influenza vaccination or lose their jobs. Workers who had a rare religious or medical exemption would be required to wear a mask in patient care areas from November through March.

The religious exemption is too narrowly drawn, AAPS writes, and should be a philosophical exemption, as accepted in many states, to “to avoid inquisitions into matters of faith.” The mask requirement “seems to be nothing more than a punitive retaliation against those who decline the vaccine” and should be dropped, the AAPS letter states, as both immunized and nonimmunized individuals can transmit influenza or other illnesses.

The New Mexico study cited in support of the policy shows a tiny effect: an adjusted odds ratio of only 0.97 for confirmed influenza “outbreaks” (at least one case) in residents of long-term care facilities where 60% of direct-care workers were immunized compared with facilities with a 51% immunization rate. This means that in facilities where more workers were immunized, residents were still 97% as likely to get influenza. “Many other factors could account for the small difference,” states AAPS executive director Jane Orient, M.D.

In the age of “evidence-based medicine,” AAPS notes that there is surprisingly little evidence supporting the efficacy of influenza vaccine, and evidence of safety is also limited. According to a 2006 article in the British Medical Journal by Tom Jefferson http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626345/, the coordinator of the vaccines section of the Cochrane Collaboration, safety data are reported in only five randomized studies with 2,963 observations. Many repeated doses of similar vaccines likely increase the risk of allergic reactions, and no data exist on the safety of a large number of doses, states Dr. Orient, citing a 2006 article in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. http://www.jpands.org/vol11no3/geier.pdf

Immunizations and pertinent information should be made conveniently available to all workers in medical facilities, states AAPS. But the judgment of medical professionals should be respected; more than half choose to decline the annual shot.

Click here to read the letter to Colorado officials.

Blink and it’s gone. The ephemeral McRib sandwich appears at McDonald’s infrequently and only for a limited time. If you haven’t indulged in one yet, here’s what you’re missing: azodicarbonamide, ammonium sulfate and polysorbate 80 — those are just three of the 70 ingredients (34 in the bun alone) that go into the BBQ pork sandwich, according to the restaurant’s website.

These components are in small enough quantities to be innocuous. But it’s still a little disconcerting to know that, for example, azodicarbonamide, a flour-bleaching agent that is most commonly used in the manufacture of foamed plastics like in gym mats and the soles of shoes, is found in the McRib bun. The compound is banned in Europe and Australia as a food additive. (England’s Health and Safety Executive classified it as a “respiratory sensitizer” that potentially contributes to asthma through occupational exposure.) The U.S. limits azodicarbonamide to 45 parts per million in commercial flour products, based on analysis of lab testing.

If the chemistry-lab ingredient list isn’t enough to put you off the McRib’s saucy allure, perhaps the nutrition information will: with 980 mg of sodium (more than half your recommended daily intake) and 10 g of saturated fat, the sandwich is, quite literally, not for the faint of heart.

(Source: TIME)

Editor’s note: If you believe that fluoride is in any way beneficial for people, I have a bridge to sell you.

It was only a matter of time. The Tea Party has risen up in Pinellas County, Fla., and ensured that kids who live there will face a lifetime of dental problems, risky oral infections and big hits to their wallets, all done in the name of moral blindness and scientific stupidity. They have gotten the county commissioners to agree to take fluoride out of the water supply.

Pinellas County — basically Tampa-St. Petersburg— provides water to about 700,000 people. Like most Americans, those people, particularly children, have benefited from the addition of fluoride to the water supply. The rate of tooth decay in the U.S., Europe and many other nations has fallen dramatically, between 18 to 40 percent, since the pre-fluoride days of many decades ago. Dentists and scientists know why — fluoridation.

Cavities are not just a minor nuisance. They lead to the loss of teeth, chewing problems, dangerous infections that can kill, and ultimately to a lousy quality of life as you get older and cannot eat. Since access to dental care in America is crummy, this is a huge problem.

Too many kids don’t learn to practice good oral hygiene, a whole bunch eat too much sugary food and way too many live in families that cannot afford to see a dentist at all. For them, fluoridation is far and away their best hope. 

Yet, despite overwhelming evidence that fluoridation is safe, it somehow remains controversial.

Aside from some tooth discoloration, which may be able to be fixed by lowering the amount of fluoride used, there is no health risk. In January, in response to the cosmetic issue, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced a proposal to change the recommended fluoride level to 0.7 milligrams per liter of water. That’s down from a range of 0.7 to 1.2 milligrams per liter, the standard since 1962, reported the Associated Press.

Story: Florida county to take the flouride out of water

The fears of the far-right John Birchers of yesteryear, the spiritual forefathers of the Tea Party of today, have not proven true.  No one has grown a second head, had his or her pure bodily fluids corrupted or become a dupe of the Soviet Union or its rapacious capitalist successor Russia due to fluoride in the water.

What we are left with is kids being harmed by know-nothing ignorance from a group of people more interested in talk of freedom than the facts of science and public health. Morally, fluoridation is something we do to help one another and to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Apparently the Tea Party of Pinellas County, and the county commissioners who bought their drivel, do not give a damn about either.

(Source: MSN)