Looks like Governor (and Democratic Presidential Candidate) Bill Richardson is going through all the motions necessary to implement a state sponsored medical marijuana program without actually doing it.
Gov. Bill Richardson ordered the state Health Department on Friday to resume planning of a medical marijuana program despite the agency’s worries about possible federal prosecution.
However, the governor [...]
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The L.A. Times has an excellent article about the practice of inducing labor, which has been on the rise for the last twenty or so years. Apparently, for a variety of reasons, some hospitals have been trying to control this trend.
Some hospitals and healthcare organizations across the nation share her concerns. Several have barred elective [...]
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A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that terminally ill patients whose only chance of survival lies in investigational medicines should, essentially, suck it up and wait it out ’til the FDA rules that the drugs are 100 percent without risk.
That makes sense. I mean, if terminally ill patients take some drug without the FDA’s [...]
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A 50% cut in health insurance premiums would only reduce the number of uninsured Americans by 3%, estimates a Rand study out Monday, which suggests that incentives and government tax cuts won’t lead to universal coverage.
The study, published online Monday in the journal Health Services Research, says cost is just one obstacle to health coverage, [...]
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Via WSJ:
Anti tobacco groups also have been advocating a higher tobacco tax, which also appears to be getting attention in the House. Recently, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids presented to House Democratic aides a survey it funded that showed substantial support – even among smokers — for raising tobacco taxes.
So I was skeptical [...]
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I think we should start taxing people based on their weight. Weight tax, if you will. Healthy weight? Then you don’t have to get weight taxed. Overweight? Well, then you get taxed. And the taxes increase incrementally for every 5 pounds over healthy weight you are. Maybe if you don’t like it you’ll stop eating [...]
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Posted in Health Morality, Media on June 7, 2007 | 1 Comment »
There’s an article in Salon today that I don’t quite know what to make of. In MeMe Roth style, the article’s author, Debra Dickerson, takes on some woman known as “Buffie the Body,” who apparently regularly appear in magazines aimed at black male audiences. Dickerson is appalled that this large woman is being held [...]
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Oh, wow. I was pretty excited about the existence of the Big Donor Show, an alleged Dutch reality show in which patients compete for a kidney from organ donor “Lisa,” a 37-year old terminally ill woman. The show was criticized for being “tasteless” and disgusting, but the show’s creators said the program was intended to [...]
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Apparently a study announced by researchers at Johns Hopkins last week found evidence that oral sex leads to increased chances of getting throat cancer.
If you and your girlfriend have had more than five oral-sex partners in your lives … you are both 250 percent more likely to develop throat cancer than some sad asshole [...]
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Via Erin, students at Hunter College have created Guerilla Nutrition Labels to “inform the public about the harmful processed ingredients in foods like partially hydrogenated oil (trans fat), high fructose corn syrup and sodium benzoate” and encourage consumers to print the labels themselves and “surreptitiously plant them on products in stores or even private homes.” [...]
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Via Michael Siegel at The Rest of the Story, an op-ed in The Australian by Simon Chapman, a professor of public health, about the ethics of public health policy, and tobacco policy in particular.
Apparently, Australia has enacted some pretty intense smoking bans lately: ban on smoking in cars with children, ban on smoking in [...]
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Posted in Health Morality on February 22, 2007 | No Comments »
Jesse Walker at Reason on the various sides of the HPV vaccine debate:
Which leads to the next question: Even if the vaccination isn’t compulsory now, should it be obligatory sometime down the road? The knee-jerk libertarian reaction is to say no, and at least one of my knees is a confirmed libertarian. But there are [...]
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Posted in Health Morality, War on January 26, 2007 | No Comments »
What would James St. James say?
But research has not proved that moderate or low doses of ecstasy are particularly dangerous. And avant-garde psychiatrists have long argued that in a controlled clinical setting, low amounts can play a role by reducing fear, without sedation, and so encourage openness and emotional insight.
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The New York Times has an interesting piece today on obesity report cards.
The practice of reporting students’ body mass scores to parents originated a few years ago as just one tactic in a war on childhood obesity that would be fought with fresh, low-fat cafeteria offerings and expanded physical education. Now, inspired by impressive [...]
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The Washington Post has published an earth-shattering revelation today: extensively reading diet articles can be unhealthy for teen girls!
Teenage girls who frequently read magazine articles about dieting were more likely five years later to practice extreme weight-loss measures such as vomiting than girls who never read such articles, the University of Minnesota study found.
The [...]
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