Letters to the Editor
firefly82
Published Letters: 276 Editor's Choice: 30
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For Brightstar and Silenced
[Read the article: If Crocs could kill]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The French prion study...
http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/full/77/15/8462
It's pretty dense, but long story short, quinine has been found effective in reducing the ability of prions to reproduce and accumulate in brain tissue, though not to mitigate effects if the disease (BSE/CJD in this case) is already advanced.
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Oops, I was wrong
[Read the article: If Crocs could kill]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion
Prions are indeed an altered version of a normal brain protein. It's believed they cause disease by somehow directly inducing the normal prion protein to warp to the infective form, causing fibrous plaques to accumulate in the brain.
Can anyone tell I'm bored at work?
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Nobody really knows what's up with all the autistic kids....
[Read the article: Take two pills and don't get pregnant]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But there's a good case to be made that the increase is due mainly to changing and more inclusive diagnostic criteria of autism (and it's spectrum disorders).
Barring the MMR vaccine controversy, no prescription drug has been tied, even correlationally, to autism or its increased diagnosis.
I know Anne in NYC is just idly speculating, but for some reason, speculation on autism tends to induce some of the most alarmist, un-scientifically-founded fear responses in people.
And not to diminish the seriousness of the issue, but there is a faction of autistic people who would strenuously object to the categorization of autism as a birth defect.
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Drug studies, autism, boys and girls
[Read the article: Take two pills and don't get pregnant]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]<<And any documented link in the medical and scientific literature between certain drugs/vaccines and autism will have to account for the great gender disparity in diagnoses of autism and its spectrum disorders--boys are much more vulnerable (susceptible?) than are girls.>>
Well, not right away, in an observational study that would just demonstrate a link or correlation between usage of a drug and autism. But eventually, yeah...this is something that any comprehensive theory of autism causation is going to have to address. Boys are diagnosed at a rate 4 times higher than girls. Ten times higher for "high-functioning" autism. It might be that there's a genetic, hormonal, or some other biological reason for boys to be more vulnerable. Or it might be a diagnostic gap. As has been publicized a lot recently about ADHD, ASD's seem to affect girls differently; they don't behave in all the same ways, and so a doctor who's learned from stereotypical male cases may not know what s/he's looking at with a girl. So the actual disparity *might* be a whole lot less than what it looks like.
For extracurricular reading, the NY Times Magazine has an enlightening article this week about how observational/epidemiological surveys and studies are performed, and the flaws and risks inherent in them...highly relevant both to this (off) topic and the original post.
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The same boat as us, whatever boat that is
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's healthcare 2.0]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was just thinking what cfuller was--as long as Congress doesn't have to have any experience of what the rest of us deal with and spend trying to get competent care, they have zero incentive to do anything.
Force members of Congress to buy insurance from one of the major private carriers, and actually get their care through them, and we'd see change quick.
Hillary's plan is nothing but a love sonnet to the insurance industry. And it KILLS me that Romney has the gall to shout Hillary's plan down as "socialized medicine." It's the same as his, exactly what he did in his own state, to just require everyone to buy a plan. Which even so was NOT universal care, but left intact precisely the original problem of a sector of working people not poor enough for Medicaid, but unable to afford even a government-subsidized plan.
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Probably real...
[Read the article: My boyfriend has no front teeth, and he won't go to the dentist]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think everyone who insists this letter must be a fake have no idea of the number of people out there who have absolutely no concept of what a "deal breaker" is, or of what constitutes grounds for ending or not even starting a relationship. Or who think that a few general good qualities are reasons enough to ignore major red flags. Don't you guys read much Dan Savage? Even when I'm listening to the relationship travails of acquaintences, half the time I'm thinking "and you got into this relationship why?"
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Male and female circumcision are not analagous
[Read the article: Genital mutilation: Good news, and bad]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First, ml66uk, the extensive mutilation that is usually called "female circumcision" in no way resembles "male circumcision." Whether male circumcision is wrong or not, it does not utterly destroy male sexual function and sensation and carry the lifelong risks to fertility, sexual ability, health and life that female clitoridectomy (and often removal of labia and obstruction of the urethra and vagina) does.
I am not arguing for snipping off the most sensitive part of a little boy's genitalia. I'm just saying it's NOT a comparable procedure.
And yes, I believe it's wrong--just wrong--to back up our white conservative anonymous. And we should try to stop it. But what we don't have a right to do is swoop in imperialist-style and say "it's just wrong so you have to stop," without a real grasp of what it means and the purposes it serves (or appears to) in those cultures, without giving fair rebuttal to the real misinformation that underlies it, without understanding why sometimes even the women of that culture support it, without giving them (men and women) real chances to see other possibilities and stand up for themselves and their daughters.