I went to see Dr Strangelove at the theatre this week (featuring Steve Coogan). Precious bodily fluids and fluoridisation and all that, but what about precious bodily tooth enamel?
I was surprised to see a map of fluoridisation levels in UK water recently (almost nowhere fluoridises water now - most high-level areas were naturally occurring, I seem to recall) but I cannot find it now.
There were also claims that adding it here would have a dramatic effect on infant tooth decay - tooth extraction is now the most common (or one of) reason for hospital admission in young kids here these days.
PS That production in London is highly recommended for anyone able to get to it.
Chris Van Tulleken has been investigating UPFs here in UK for a while.
At the foot of this article there is a link to BBCâs iPlayer for watching his documentary (may need VPN).
I watched it and the deep research about the influence of tobacco companies here was eye-opening - as were several other revelations. A highly recommended documentary - well worth an investment of the hour or so it takes.
ETA hereâs the direct link to the programme on iPlayer
I love this. The focus on amyloid plaques always struck me as the drunk looking for his keys under the lamp post âbecause thatâs where the light is.â The fact that the drugs developed to decrease these plaques were never shown to improve the clinical progression just prove that. (See Aduhelm disaster). Ironically, my wife informs me that this very thing is a major plot point in the recent season of Grayâs Anatomy! Life imitating art?
At the risk of #NotAllHealthCareCompanies, this one is a bit more complicated, and it seems like it may actually be worse (for patients) that they backed off.
Providers â not insurance companies â are the primary drivers of high health care costs
This is flat out bullshit. Are anesthesiologists overpaid? Maybe, but thatâs debatable. There are specialties that are unquestionably overpaid, but they tend to be the bougie specialties, like cosmetic surgery (to be clear, this is separate from plastic surgery.) Providers, especially primary care providers, are overworked, overextended and undercompensated for what we do. This article looks to be an insurance company hit piece. The insurance industry has done absolutely nothing to earn any benefit of the doubt whatsoever, and to try to claim that the billions that they siphon off out of our healthcare system does not affect the prices pain is just plain nuts. And this bolded headline (IMHO) invalidates any other claims that this author might make.
Just to add to the cherry picking, there is this:
In 2023, the average physician salary in the United States was $352,000. In Germany, that figure was $160,000; in the United Kingdom, it was $122,000; in France, it was $93,000.
True. Now do the average insurance executiveâs salary! And they donât carry $250-300k student debt and 11-20 years post-secondary education to get there. Yeah, this âItâs not us, itâs themâ is the plutocrat playbook exactly.
I ran across that article earlier in the week. I lost all confidence it may be true when there was no discussion of extra risk to patients. The only harm to patients the article discusses is monetary. It mentions the public reaction of fear that anesthesia would be discontinued during a surgery as a way of dismissing any concerns about patient safety as hyperbolic. But discontinuation of anesthesia during surgery was never the real safety risk to a policy like this. The real risk would be anesthesiologists putting pressure on the rest of the surgical team to move faster. Which means more mistakes
If over compensation of anesthesiologists is a thing, this tactic to reduce cost unnecessarily puts patients in harmâs way.
And then I got the part about providers being the primary driver of healthcare costs in the US. That is bullshit. Do providers and hospitals charge more here than other counties? Yeah. But they also have mountains of paperwork to get done just to get paid at all. That means armies of employees whose sole job is dealing with insurance companies and their routine denial of claims and partial payments.
As for doctors making more here than in European countries- that is a deceptive use of statistics. Comparing average income of all medical specialties without accounting for the outliers who would jack that number up (like cosmetic surgeons) and cost of living adjustments is disingenuous and manipulative. As well as lazy reporting. That comparison can only be made by accounting for cost of living differences and comparing specialty to specialty.
And then there is the burden US doctors must carry in the form of malpractice insurance and their own health insurance. How much of that allegedly fat salary is going to insurance? Did that comparison take into account that US professionals will be paying thousands of dollars from their salaries for their own health insurance? A country like Germany has socialized medicine. Which we know is ultimately cheaper for an individual to pay in their taxes than the bullshit system we have.
Fair enough. I have no love for Private insurance companies. I do generally find Vox to be better than most outlets, but thatâs no guarantee that theyâre above distorting the truth.
The eventual list particularly warns against listening to these songs while driving, as their beats per minute (BPM) are considered too high, potentially impacting mental and cardiovascular health and encouraging risky driving behaviour.
Wouldnât playing slow tempo Christmas songs lull you to sleep? Wouldnât fast tempo non-Christmas songs also be dangerous?
Topping this list is the 1950 hit âFrosty The Snowmanâ with a BPM of 172, making it the most hazardous tune for drivers.
Lightweights
Still no human-to-human transmission in the US documented,* but:
Infectious disease experts have recently warned that H5N1 may only need to acquire a small number of mutations to become a greater threat to humans. For example, last week, researchers published a study in Science finding that a single mutation in the H5N1 dairy strain would make it better at latching onto human cells. The more the virus circulates around us, the more opportunities it has to accumulate such mutations and adapt to infect our respiratory tracts and spread from person to person.
Keep rolling those diceâŚ
*there have been a couple cases (1 in MO and 1 in Canada) where the origin of the virus is unknown, with no obvious animal contacts, but with this spreading via wild birds, âlack of contactâ is always relative.
The gambling hall set up in Alabama in a commercial operation not far from me and in a backyard flock in one of the poorer counties of the state.
On Tuesday, NYU announced that Looney is recuperating well. She was discharged from the hospital just 11 days after surgery although she was temporarily readmitted this week to adjust her medications. Doctors expect her to return home to Gadsden, Alabama, in three months. If the pig kidney were to fail, she could begin dialysis again.
Not ready for primetime quite yet, but incredibly promising. The number of folks who die waiting for transplant could be dropped to damn near 0 in a very short time. Stay tuned!
Blacksburg, Virginia-based Revivicor provided Looneyâs new kidney from a pig with 10 gene alterations. Its parent company, United Therapeutics said Tuesday it plans to file an application with the FDA âvery soonâ to begin clinical trials with that type of kidney.
I bet Revivicorâs gene-altered pig kidneys are going to be very, very expensive. You canât just use a kidney from any pig.
True, but barring a Clonus Horror type situation, you can breed up a whole herd a whole lot easier than non-pig kidneysâŚ