As President Obama is looking for ways to improve the quality and financial aspects of medicine in the United States, he has now nominated Dr. Regina Benjamin for the job of Surgeon General of the United States. Dr. Benjamin is a rural physician from Alabama. She first came onto the national scene when her clinic in Bayou la Batre, Alabama, was first destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and then burned down after being rebuilt. She is a recipient of the 2008 MacArthur Foundation’s so-called “genious grant”, a half-million dollar grant given to people who make a difference in the world. There is no doubt that Dr. Benjamin has the know-how and will have the resources to take action on all sorts of health issues in the country. The question is how much cooperation we, the public, and we, the public health professionals, can give her.
Losing weight as a nation should be our Manhattan Project, something we can all rally behind and contribute to. Drop the rate of obesity and we drop the rates of heart disease, diabetes, and maybe even cancer. Get smokers to quit and the rates of lung disease (and the loss of productivity) drop dramatically. Help drug users get clean, and we get rid of crime. Teach effective sexual health, and there will be less unwanted pregnancies (in turn, less abortions, less sexually transmitted diseases). The list goes on and on…
Dr. Benjamin and others in leadership positions in Public Health will need all the help they can get from the American public and those of us in Public Health. After all, you can take the horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink… Unless you trick it into losing weight.
I dunno….does anyone else see a problem here? Should the Surgeon General be a role model for a healthy lifestyle? What if she was a smoker? Am I just being too nitpicky?
What do you think? So many questions.
I can see S&B’s tinfoil hat is fitting a bit tightly there… but that’s good… shield him from those mind rays from the black helicopters. 🙂
64 – Phydeau
Coming from someone suffering from anal asphyxiation, I’ll take that as a compliment.
Here is another “tinfoil hat”
Deadly Immunity by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy,_Jr.
When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism in thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data — and to prevent parents from suing drug companies for their role in the epidemic.
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/06/16/thimerosal/index.html
Excerpt: “Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. ‘You can play with this all you want,’ Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results ‘are statistically significant.’ Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meeting’s first day, was even more alarmed. “My gut feeling?” he said. ‘Forgive this personal comment — I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on.’
But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry’s bottom line.”
Carry on, S&B… wouldn’t want to ruin your fun. Everyone’s gotta have a hobby! 🙂
Phydeau – You feel this is funny? I say feel because you are not thinking, direct result of an infection of bias.
This was posted days ago on dvorak.org
CBS ” 60 MINUTES” segment regarding The Swine Flu epidemic of 1976 in the U.S. It aired once.
Swine Flu 1976 & Propaganda
http://dailymotion.com/video/x9mh9f
Perhaps you did not watch but there were 300 death clams as a result of the vaccine this is opposed to one death from the swine flu. 300 to 1. And you believe this is FUNNY!
Mr. Fusion
These should be of interest:
Here is a list of scientific citations linking vaccines and cancer
http://thinktwice.com/s_cancer.htm
Vaccine scandal revives cancer fears, vaccines contaminated with a monkey virus linked to cancer
http://medicalnewstoday.com/articles/10443.php
Phydeau and S&B: You guys are having a real run at each other and it’s kind of fun to watch. As far as the connection between autism and thimerosal preserved vaccines, the science is shaky (IMH -yet informed- O) but I will tell you this: They are planning a massive vaccination campaign against the H1N1 with a vaccine that is still untested. The last time they did that, we got a more deaths from the vaccine than the flu and all learned a new syndrome: Guillain-Barre.
Ain’t no way they’re sticking an untested vaccine in my arm. Besides, I’m “lucky” enough to be a baby boomer which means I probably already have some immunity to this flu. (http://tiny.cc/eYpFu )
Wouldn’t that be ironic if they really were trying to kill off 95% of the world’s population and they ended up with a bunch old farts like me?
She could always star in her own own weight-loss reality show. Americans love that crap.
#55, Confederate Traitor,
Do you even know what the book is about? Using 1970s knowledge, Holdren et al are pointing out the limits of growth in the US and world. They then offer some solutions that might be feasible to limit growth. These are ideas to be discussed.
Just reading some of your intros, you lost it. You take conditional suggestive terms and turn them into claims. Wrong. You end up claiming things that were not said. “Might” and “could” have different meanings yet you use them interchangeably.
I am not planning on re-reading the book just for you as it is over 30 years old and too many ideas have been supplanted. Nor were many of the authors’ predictions very accurate. I will suggest that you might also read several other titles from the same era raising the same flags.
The Limits of Growth
Meadows et al
Universe Books
ISBN 0-87663-222-3,
(1974, 2nd Ed.)
While the predictions of famine have not come to pass, that is largely because of the continuing “Green Revolution”. Cows that gave 3 gallons of milk in 1970 now give over 6.5. Corn used to produce less than 80 bushels per acre today approach 200. Beef, pork, and poultry all require less food and take less time to reach marketable weight with less fat. At some point though, the ever increasing production has to level off.
*
From ECOSCIENCE: POPULATION, RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT
United States Assistant secretary of State, John Richardson
Department of State News Release, May 108, 1976
*
Having said all that though, what the eff does it have to do with Dr. Regina Benjamin?
#55, Confederate Traitor
You posted that list of vaccine / cancer articles before. None of the list are linked and of the half dozen recent ones I checked, none are available on line. In fact very few are less than 20 years old.
Since several studies were apparently related to SV40, I did a little fact checking.
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SV40#Theorized_role_in_human_disease
And while hundreds of millions of people were vaccinated with polio vaccines, there are so very few cases that the brain cancer is still referred to as “rare”.
…
Executive summary
Abstract
Immunization Safety Review: SV40 Contamination of Polio Vaccine and Cancer ( 2002)
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10534&page=1
During my research I noticed that the only references to these articles all seem to quote the same list. Coincidence?
If I’m ever sick in DC, I hope she doesn’t treat me.
On the comments, I had never before realized what a twisted bunch of minds there are that waste their days proselytizing on this blog.
I think the surgeon general should be the most unhealthy person we can find. Then, everybody does the opposite of everything the surgeon general does.
(part1)
#71 – Mr. Fusion
Using 1970s knowledge, Holdren et al are pointing out the limits of growth in the US and world.
The alarmist predictions about overpopulation which were made in the 1960’s and 70’s have proven to be spectacularly wrong, wrong and wrong again in every instance.
What we have is faulty reasoning as illustrated in this May 2000 article from Reason Magazine. http://reason.com/news/show/27702.html
Phrases such as “it has been concluded” are used in the book alongside proposals for forced abortion, such as the passage on page 837 which reads, “Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”
Holdren and the Ehrlich’s do not identify who “it has been concluded” by, leaving the reader in no doubt that “it has been concluded” by the writers themselves that forced abortion should be introduced. This is called “hiding behind the passive voice.” It provides the writers plausible deniability, but only the idiotically naive would deny that it represents anything other than an endorsement of forced abortion and sterilization.
Furthermore, the whole tone of the Ecoscience book is directed against those who would disagree with coercive population control measures. These people are even referred to in a derisory tone as “pro-natalists,” a word invented purely for the purposes of the book. The book does not merely present a neutral stance on “formulations” as is claimed – the endorsement of these proposals is implicit in the fact that opponents of them are scorned throughout the book.
Holdren’s attempt to use the fact that the book is over 30 years old to distance himself from its content is also a deceptive move, because before this controversy arose, Holdren was perfectly happy to conduct a major interview with the Associated Press with the book proudly displayed on his bookshelf in the background. If Holdren has changed his mind about the proposals in the book, or never agreed with those presented by his fellow authors in the first place, then why does he prominently display a copy during this interview? Watch the clip below.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mmr5gdOOWU8
In the video, Holdren talks about “geoengineering,” effectively terraforming the planet by injecting untested aerosols into the upper atmosphere in an apparent attempt to offset “global warming,” with unknown side effects.
#75, Confederate Traitor,
Geeze man, you are totally fucked up. You take passages from a book you haven’t read. Instead you rely upon someone else for their interpretation and then you twist the words to suit your schizoid mind.
What about the first 500 pages? Were they filled with qualifying material? Aahhh, you don’t have a fucking clue.
Then, to explain it all, you go flying off on multiple tangents. You use blogs, opinions, and youtube for sources.
When someone proposes something to counter the proved effects of Climate Change you start ranting about how the Over-Government is in charge of all this.
They are ideas, worthy of discussion for the good that may, or may not, come of them. They provide a learning experience for all. For example, seeding the upper atmosphere with sulfur will never fly. Simply because as it joins with moisture in the atmosphere in the presence of ozone, WILL create sulfuric Acid. BUT it is an idea worthy of thought. Maybe something other than sulfur could be used.
As far as I’m concerned, someone is thinking about it. I would be more worried if no one was. There are too many questions about our own atmosphere we don’t know the answers to.
And I bet you believe there is a massive cover-up of aliens in Roswell New Mexico too. And the CIA got Kennedy. And Foster was murdered to cover up illegalities by Hillary. 9/11 was a Bush operation to take over the government. The black helicopters are coming for you.
Mr. Fusion
It is not the motives, it is the methods which are in question. Poisoning the population to reduce both the numbers and the lifespan is criminal.
It is not just here, John Porritt Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers believes the population must fall to 30 million.
http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5950442.ece
BTW, Kennedy was assassinated because he was pulling the teeth of the FEDERAL RESERVE.
http://middleeast.org/comments/1/5672.shtml
I consider Kennedy the last REAL President this country elected.
On a side note, how do you feel about Obama Extending Cheney’s Secret Service Protection?
http://usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2009/07/10/obama-extends-cheneys-secret-service-protection.html