Tag Archives: medicine

Legalize pot, save a lot of energy

by LibbyThalberg Posted on December 8, 2013

Legalize pot, save a lot of energy

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[COUGH! COUGH!] What were we talking about? Oh right, right, right. Marijuana’s continued prohibition in 48 mellow-harshing states has an unintended side effect (besides making Phish unlistenable): It narfs $6 billion in energy costs and pumps out as much greenhouse gas as 3 million cars. Scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that the marijuana industry is responsible for about 1 percent of all U.S. electricity usage.

The reason is simple. To evade detection, growers work indoors — where lights, ventilation, temperature controls, and presumably industrial-grade lava lamps suck up a lot of juice. From ThinkProgress:

… Colorado growers with utility bills of $20,000 to $100,000 per month are warning that indoor growth may not be sustainable.

“Energy consumption in this business is pretty astronomical,” marijuana business owner John Kocer told CBS Denver. “As this industry expands at its current pace I do believe that we will be a tax on the energy grid: something has to change.” …

Marijuana growers cultivate indoors for several reasons. But one of the primary ones is to keep their business hidden from view. Even in states where marijuana is legal, growing marijuana outside would put their federally illegal operations right under the noses of passers-by. It also makes them vulnerable to theft from the still-vibrant illicit marijuana market.

So long as marijuana is federally prohibited and regulation is suppressed, this will be one of many adverse environmental consequences of illicit marijuana growing. Unregulated outdoor farms impose harms from unchecked forest clearing, filling and diversion of streams, use of toxic pesticides, and even road building.

Washington and Colorado, the two states that legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, each allow outdoor crops. But since the medicine Schedule I drug remains federally prohibited, both states incentivize contained, indoor crops. (In Washington, for example, indoor farmers can harvest four times a year, while outdoor growers can only harvest twice a year.)

Here’s where we could go on forever about about the winds of culture and how climate hawks and weed ravens ought to join forces and get organized to move this issue forward. But since Grist’s offices are in Seattle, I’m just gonna switch over to side B of “Dark Side of the Moon” while you contemplate the injustice.


Source
How Marijuana Prohibition Drives Up Energy Costs And Warms The Planet, ThinkProgress
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Legalize pot, save a lot of energy

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Maps: The Mysterious Link Between Antibiotics and Obesity

by h0di80ju Posted on November 18, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Lately, I’ve been fascinated by a study on antibiotic prescription rates across the United States that was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The researchers found a surprisingly wide variation among the states, and the rates—expressed in terms of prescriptions per 1,000 people—seemed to follow a geographical pattern: The Southeast had the highest rates, while the West’s were lower. West Virginia had the most prescriptions, and Alaska had the fewest. The rest of the country fell somewhere in between. Here’s a map of the findings:

As I thought more about the map, I wondered whether the prescription rates followed any demographic patterns. Lauri Hicks, a lead author of the study and a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told me that her team had initially expected to find certain correlations—for example, higher prescription rates in states with large elderly populations. But that didn’t turn out to be the case. Take Florida, which has a sizeable elderly population, but only an average antibiotic prescription rate.

Yet Hicks’ team did find one very strong correlation: The states with higher rates of antibiotic use also tended to have higher obesity rates. Take a look at this map of obesity rates by state and see how it reflects the antibiotics map above:

When we mashed up the data behind these maps, we confirmed the strong correlation between obesity and antibiotic prescription rates (we got an r of 0.74, for the statistically inclined). We also found a correlation between the states’ median household incomes and antibiotic prescription rates: States with below-average median incomes tend to have higher antibiotic prescription rates. This makes sense, considering that high obesity rates correlate with low income levels. (You can see the data sets for antibiotic prescription rate, obesity, and median household income level here.)

Hicks and her team can’t yet explain the connection between obesity and high rates of antibiotic prescription. “There might be reasons that more obese people need antibiotics,” she says. “But it also could be that antibiotic use is leading to obesity.”

Indeed, a growing body of evidence suggests that antibiotics might be linked to weight gain. A 2012 New York University study found that antibiotic use in the first six months of life was linked with obesity later on. Another 2012 NYU study found that mice given antibiotics gained more weight than their drug-free counterparts. As my colleague Tom Philpott has noted repeatedly, livestock operations routinely dose animals with low levels of antibiotics to promote growth.

No one knows exactly how antibiotics help animals (and possibly humans) pack on the pounds, but there are some theories. One is that antibiotics change the composition of the microbiome, the community of microorganisms in your body that scientists are just beginning to understand. (For a more in-depth look at the connection between bacteria and weight loss, read Moises Velasquez-Manoff’s piece on the topic.)

Hicks says that more research is needed on the potential connection between antibiotics and obesity. But there are other reasons for doctors to change the way they prescribe antibiotics. As I noted a few weeks back, a recent study in JAMA Internal Medicine found that doctors commonly prescribe antibiotics for symptoms such as sore throat and bronchitis—which don’t usually require the drugs. Considering that bacteria are already evolving to withstand many antibiotics, it’s probably time to figure out how to use them more prudently.

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Maps: The Mysterious Link Between Antibiotics and Obesity

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Blistering exposé prompts Johns Hopkins to suspend black-lung screenings

by turystycznypbs700 Posted on November 4, 2013

Blistering exposé prompts Johns Hopkins to suspend black-lung screenings

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The coal industry has a decades-old friendship with Johns Hopkins University, but now that cozy relationship is being torn apart by the scrutiny of investigative journalists.

When employees filed for black-lung-related benefits, coal companies paid the Baltimore-based university handsome sums to screen the claimants for the disease. After reviewing chest X-rays, the university’s scientists almost always concluded that the scans did not show black lung — a conclusion which often overwhelmed any other medical opinion in the case.

(Black lung disease, or coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, kills an estimated 1,500 former coal miners every year. It is a painful and preventable ailment contracted by inhaling coal dust.)

The racket was exposed by the ABC, working in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity:

For 40 years, these doctors have been perhaps the most sought-after and prolific readers of chest films on behalf of coal companies seeking to defeat miners’ claims. Their fees flow directly to the university, which supports their work, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News has found. According to the university, none of the money goes directly to the doctors.

Their reports — seemingly ubiquitous and almost unwaveringly negative for black lung — have appeared in the cases of thousands of miners, and the doctors’ credentials, combined with the prestigious Johns Hopkins imprimatur, carry great weight. Their opinions often negate or outweigh whatever positive interpretations a miner can produce.

For the credibility that comes with these readings, which the doctors perform as part of their official duties at Johns Hopkins, coal companies are willing to pay a premium. For an X-ray reading, the university charges up to 10 times the rate miners typically pay their physicians. …

In the more than 1,500 cases decided since 2000 in which [senior university scientist Paul] Wheeler read at least one X-ray, he never once found the severe form of the disease, complicated coal workers’ pneumoconiosis. Other doctors looking at the same X-rays found this advanced stage of the disease in 390 of these cases.

After the results of the investigation were broadcast late last week, the university announced on its website that it was suspending the screening program:

Following the news report we are initiating a review of the pneumoconiosis B-reader service. Until the review is completed, we are suspending the program.

United Mine Workers called on the federal government to take action following the revelations.

“Whatever penalties or punitive actions that can be taken with respect to Dr. Wheeler should be,” union spokesman Phil Smith said. “But whatever they are, they will pale in comparison to the pain and suffering he has caused thousands of afflicted miners. There is no penalty which will make up for that.”


Source
Johns Hopkins medical unit rarely finds black lung, helping coal industry defeat miners’ claims, Center for Public Integrity
Statement from Johns Hopkins Medicine Regarding ABC News Report About Our B-Reads for Pneumoconiosis (Black Lung), Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins suspends black lung program after Center-ABC investigation, Center for Public Integrity

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Blistering exposé prompts Johns Hopkins to suspend black-lung screenings

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Blistering exposé prompts Hopkins to suspend black-lung screenings

by NannieWhitelegg Posted on November 4, 2013

Blistering exposé prompts Hopkins to suspend black-lung screenings

By

Shutterstock

The coal industry has a decades-old friendship with Johns Hopkins University, but now that cozy relationship is being torn apart by the scrutiny of investigative journalists.

When employees filed for black-lung-related benefits, coal companies paid the Baltimore-based university handsome sums to screen the claimants for the disease. After reviewing chest X-rays, the university’s scientists almost always concluded that the scans did not show black lung — a conclusion which often overwhelmed any other medical opinion in the case.

(Black lung disease, or coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, kills an estimated 1,500 former coal miners every year. It is a painful and preventable ailment contracted by inhaling coal dust.)

The racket was exposed by the ABC, working in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity:

For 40 years, these doctors have been perhaps the most sought-after and prolific readers of chest films on behalf of coal companies seeking to defeat miners’ claims. Their fees flow directly to the university, which supports their work, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News has found. According to the university, none of the money goes directly to the doctors.

Their reports — seemingly ubiquitous and almost unwaveringly negative for black lung — have appeared in the cases of thousands of miners, and the doctors’ credentials, combined with the prestigious Johns Hopkins imprimatur, carry great weight. Their opinions often negate or outweigh whatever positive interpretations a miner can produce.

For the credibility that comes with these readings, which the doctors perform as part of their official duties at Johns Hopkins, coal companies are willing to pay a premium. For an X-ray reading, the university charges up to 10 times the rate miners typically pay their physicians. …

In the more than 1,500 cases decided since 2000 in which [senior university scientist Paul] Wheeler read at least one X-ray, he never once found the severe form of the disease, complicated coal workers’ pneumoconiosis. Other doctors looking at the same X-rays found this advanced stage of the disease in 390 of these cases.

After the results of the investigation were broadcast late last week, the university announced on its website that it was suspending the screening program:

Following the news report we are initiating a review of the pneumoconiosis B-reader service. Until the review is completed, we are suspending the program.

United Mine Workers called on the federal government to take action following the revelations.

“Whatever penalties or punitive actions that can be taken with respect to Dr. Wheeler should be,” union spokesman Phil Smith said. “But whatever they are, they will pale in comparison to the pain and suffering he has caused thousands of afflicted miners. There is no penalty which will make up for that.”


Source
Johns Hopkins medical unit rarely finds black lung, helping coal industry defeat miners’ claims, Center for Public Integrity
Johns Hopkins suspends black lung program after Center-ABC investigation, Center for Public Integrity
Statement from Johns Hopkins Medicine Regarding ABC News Report About Our B-Reads for Pneumoconiosis (Black Lung), Johns Hopkins University

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Blistering exposé prompts Hopkins to suspend black-lung screenings

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Kosher salt: Don’t stress about sodium intake (unless you’re an average American)

by RubinkJoseph Posted on May 15, 2013

Kosher salt: Don’t stress about sodium intake (unless you’re an average American)

By Claire Thompson

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Go crazy, dude.

Salt’s membership in junk food’s holy trinity (along with sugar and fat) means it’s one of the food industry’s essential tools for making its products addictively good. (Journalist Michael Moss reveals this in his eye-opening book Salt Sugar Fat, but if you’ve ever housed a box of Cheez-Its solo, you already knew that.) For decades now, limiting salt intake has been part of the public-health mantra; groups like the American Heart Association vilify salt for its links to high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease and recommend that we all aim for no more than 1,500 milligrams a day of salt consumption.

But all of a sudden a new report is causing a stir by saying that recommendation may be meaningless, and that consuming extremely low levels of sodium could actually be harmful.

Far out. Pass the Cheez-Its!

Sadly, it’s not quite that simple. The report, commissioned by the Institute of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, confuses more than it clarifies. It looks at studies on sodium intake and health outcomes conducted since 2005 — the last time the U.S. issued dietary guidelines on salt. Back then, the USDA recommended that the general population consume 1,500 to 2,300 milligrams a day, and that populations at risk for heart disease and high blood pressure limit intake to 1,500 milligrams. The more recent evidence calls those guidelines into question. The New York Times reports:

“As you go below the 2,300 mark, there is an absence of data in terms of benefit and there begin to be suggestions in subgroup populations about potential harms,” said Dr. Brian L. Strom, chairman of the committee and a professor of public health at the University of Pennsylvania. He explained that the possible harms included increased rates of heart attacks and an increased risk of death. …

There are physiological consequences of consuming little sodium, said Dr. Michael H. Alderman, a dietary sodium expert at Albert Einstein College of Medicine who was not a member of the committee. As sodium levels plunge, triglyceride levels increase, insulin resistance increases, and the activity of the sympathetic nervous system increases. Each of these factors can increase the risk of heart disease.

“Those are all bad things,” Dr. Alderman said. “A health effect can’t be predicted by looking at one physiological consequence. There has to be a net effect.”

Medical and public health experts responded to the new assessment of the evidence with elation or concern, depending on where they stand in the salt debates.

Some experts worry the report will send the wrong message — that we’re off the hook in terms of watching our salt. A spokesperson for the AHA said the group “remained concerned about the large amount of sodium in processed foods, which makes it almost impossible for most Americans to cut back.”

When average sodium consumption in the U.S. and around the world is still 3,400 milligrams a day (that’s according to the Institute of Medicine; Moss puts the figure at 8,500 milligrams), the report’s warnings are useless at best and misleading at worst. Americans’ sodium problem has never been a matter of oversalting our potatoes at the dinner table, as we were originally led to believe (in his book, Moss recounts the campaign to demonize the household salt shaker). Rather, our problems stem from overconsumption of sodium-laden processed food.

But while misguidedly health-conscious Americans have been suffering bland food in fear of heart disease, the processed- and fast-food industries have made little effort to reduce the sodium content of their products. A single serving of chicken strips or Caesar salad dressing can negate any table-salt stinginess. A recent study found that between 2005 and 2011, the salt content of processed foods declined by an average of 3.5 percent; for fast food, it increased 2.6 percent. The Christian Science Monitor reports:

Both of these changes were so small that they could have been due to chance, said study researcher Dr. Stephen Havas, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. …

Currently, 9 in 10 Americans eat too much salt, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The government recommends people limit their salt intake to 2,300 milligrams per day. …

“That’s nearly impossible for people to do right now, given how much salt is in restaurant and processed foods,” Havas said.

As with anything, a moderate amount of salt is good for you, and for some people, consuming less than 1,500 milligrams of it a day could apparently lead to low insulin levels, heart attacks, and death. But if you’re anything like the average American, you’re nowhere close to levels that low. So carry on with what you already knew: Fast food and processed food are loaded with salt and other ingredients designed to get you hooked. Avoid them as much as possible, and you should be just fine. Pass the salt shaker.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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Bacon is really bad for you

by DonnieaBlevins Posted on March 7, 2013

Bacon is really bad for you

By John Upton

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/ Slavica StajicProcessed meat: Delicious but deadly.

Hot on the heels of the horse-meat scandal, here’s more bummer meat news.

Eating more than 0.7 ounces a day of processed meat — salami, cured bacon, sausages, that kind of thing — will make you more likely to die prematurely, killed by a heart attack or cancer.

That’s the conclusion of a new study published in BMC Medicine. Scientists tracked almost a half million people in 10 European countries and concluded that 3 percent of premature deaths could be avoided if everybody ate less than three-quarters of an ounce of processed meat every day.

It’s not just the fat in the processed meat that kills: The researchers say it’s the chemicals and salt used to preserve it.

Meat eaters who down 5.5 ounces of processed meat every day — roughly two sausages and a piece of bacon — were 44 percent more likely to die during the 13-year study than those eating just 0.7 ounces, the BBC reported.

But meat eaters with otherwise healthy lifestyles shouldn’t panic too much about that 44 percent figure. BBC noted:

[P]eople who munched on a lot of processed meat were also more likely to smoke, be obese and have other behaviours which are known to damage health.

However, the researchers said that even after those risk factors were accounted for, processed meat still damaged health.

Say you decide to limit your processed meat intake to bacon. How much bacon could you eat to keep within the 0.7-ounce limit? One small rasher. That’s it! One small strip of bacon every day. No more ham, salami, or pastrami. Just one small rasher of bacon.

“I’d say it’s fine to eat bacon and sausages,” University of Zurich epidemiology professor Sabine Rohrmann, the study’s lead researcher, told NPR. “But not in high amounts and not every day.”

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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We are learning mosquitoes are basically invincible

by 9ji7g4x Posted on February 21, 2013

We are learning mosquitoes are basically invincible

By Philip Bump

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Mosquitoes are, at best, horrible annoyances. At worst? They are genocidal maniacs, responsible for more than half a million deaths a year, transmitting malaria and other diseases. Were causing extinction subject to popular vote, mosquitoes would win in a landslide.

All of that, relative to the moment, is the good news. Now, the bad.

Mosquitoes laugh at your so-called repellant.

Well, they don’t laugh, as such, lacking the capacity for forced expulsion of air from their probosci and, likewise, any sense of humor. Point is, the most common chemical used to repel the little idiots is losing its effectiveness. From Smithsonian.com:

A group of researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine discovered that three hours after an exposure to DEET, many Aedes aegypti mosquitoes were immune to the chemical, ignoring its typically noxious smell and attempting to land on irresistible human skin. …

So why did the mosquitoes, as a whole, overcome their dislike of DEET? Previous studies by this group and others have found particular mosquitoes with a genetic mutation that made them innately immune to DEET, but they say that this case is different, because they didn’t demonstrate this ability from the start.

They suspect, instead, that the insects’ antennae became less chemically sensitive to DEET over time, as evidenced by electroantennography on the mosquitoes’ odor receptors after each of the tests — a phenomenon not unlike a person getting used to the smell of, say, the ocean or a manufacturing plant near his or her house.

In other words, all picnics should now be scheduled for two hours, 55 minutes in length.

That point about genetic mutation is an interesting one, worth pulling out. After all, one strategy used in Key West last year called for releasing genetically modified mosquitoes that would deplete the region’s supply of blood-suckers by greatly decreasing the bugs’ lifespans. The proposal prompted some concern, quite understandably: Regular mosquitoes are bad enough. But mutants?

It’s not clear what the repercussions of mutated mosquitoes might be.

In a very good, thoughtful article that will appear in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Maggie Koerth-Baker looks at the unintended consequences of tweaking skeeters. After noting how mosquitoes are adapting to mosquito nets (feeding more often during the day), Koerth-Baker considers the consequences of proposed plans to modify the insects or the malaria virus to reduce the damage each can do.

[A]ll solutions, whether as simple as a net or as complicated as splicing genes, come with risks. For instance, Aedes aegypti is the species primarily responsible for spreading dengue. It’s present around the world, but outside North Africa, it’s an invasive species. If scientists use flightless female modifications against A. aegypti and succeed in decreasing its presence in, say, Mexico City, then what will fill its ecological niche there? (What is its ecological niche anyway? One entomologist told me that we don’t even have a great understanding of mosquitoes’ place in our ecosystem, because we have focused our efforts on killing them rather than observing them.)

Even curing a disease poses risks, because in all likelihood it won’t stay cured forever. If G.M. mosquitoes completely neutered the malaria parasite’s threat, even in one part of the world, it would be an incredible success story. But what happens if the parasite adapts to circumvent the tools we’ve used to fight it? Today we know how to take precautions to prevent malaria transmissions and fight the disease with antimalarial drugs. But in the future, some version of malaria could surge through a population of humans without the cultural knowledge or pharmaceuticals necessary to defend themselves against it.

So, to summarize: Using repellant deters mosquitoes for a few hours. Genetically modifying them bears unknown risks. Oh, and as the world gets warmer, the insects’ range and seasons of activity expand, as we saw last year in Alaska.

But don’t worry. It’s winter. It will be weeks before mosquitoes are hovering over stagnant pools of water, attuned to your exhaled breath and ready to suck your blood. Make the most of it.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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