Links With Your Coffee - Friday
- Living in Fear and Paying a High Cost in Heart Risk - New York Times
Which is more of a threat to your health: Al Qaeda or the Department of Homeland Security?
An intriguing new study suggests the answer is not so clear-cut. Although it’s impossible to calculate the pain that terrorist attacks inflict on victims and society, when statisticians look at cold numbers, they have variously estimated the chances of the average person dying in America at the hands of international terrorists to be comparable to the risk of dying from eating peanuts, being struck by an asteroid or drowning in a toilet.
. . .After the attacks of Sept. 11, the scientists monitored people’s fears of terrorism over the next several years and found that the most fearful people were three to five times more likely than the rest to receive diagnoses of new cardiovascular ailments. - Unfavorable drug studies don't get into print: report - Yahoo! News Surprise, corporations fucking over the American People.
- Conversational Reading: Why Be Anonymous?
- Anecdotal Evidence: `What a Queer Spot for a Bookshop!'
- The Free For All - Civil Anti-Libertarians
President Ryan is apparently blind to the fact that in America, and at public colleges like BCC, people enjoy freedom of speech and conscience, which means that they cannot be compelled to respect each other or to refrain from expressing their disrespect. Besides, it’s hard to imagine this code being enforced indiscriminately. Would students be punished for disrespecting the views of neo-Nazis, or even neo-conservatives who mock affirmative action?
- Still Don't Think Theism is a Mind Disorder...Part Deux | Rational Responders
- Pharyngula: “Crazy” is when you start regarding the crazy as normal
- BBC NEWS | Health | Green light for hybrid research (tip to pedantsareus)
- Voters Favoring Men More Likely To Vote For Women, Polls Say
- Exclusive: The Cruise Indoctrination Video Scientology Tried To Suppress(tip to Geoff)
Comments
I found that amusing. I'm a huge anti-theist, but, like I said before, I still have to disagree with the labeling of mental disorder. As a pejorative it may work but anything more is just pseudoscience (the very thing we atheists are supposed to be against).
While searching on another subject, I ran across this quote from Andrew Jackson.
"Never take counsel of your fears."
And this one,
"As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending."
Re: Unfavorable Drug Studies
While I can see what the authors are saying and even agree with it to a point, I wonder if they might be making a mountain out of a mole hill.
Frequently, an existing drug is found to be an effective treatment for conditions other than what it was originally designed for.
One might conclude from this article that Wellbutrin is not effective for depression when there are probably hundreds of thousands of people whe know it is extremely effective at treating depression. After Wellbutrin came on the market, doctors started to notice that people who were taking Wellbutrin were more successful in their attempts to stop smoking. Could there be other addictions Wellbutrin or other existing medications would be effective in treating? We can't know until there has been studies to find out.
For instance, if a study to find out if Wellbutrin is effective in treating an addiction to gambling concluded it was not effective in treating gambling, an article like this one would only report that it did not work. We don't know what it did not work at doing.
Also, many medication studies are done to find out if an existing effective medication could be more or less effective by adjusting the dosage. Birth control pills of the 1960's were effective at birth control, but the high levels of hormones had some unwanted side effects. Since then, studies have helped drug companies lower the hormone levels (and side effects) and still achieve near 100% effectiveness.
I have not doubt this article will be cited by folks like Kevin Trudeau to convince gullible insomniacs to stop taking the meds their doctor prescribed and replace it with what ever crap he is selling this week.
Yeah, as much as I want to love the rational response squad, I think they make some arguments just for shock value and get pretty defensive with folks when they call them on it.
Religion is better described as a crutch used by people with everything from run of the mill laziness and need to belong to those with serious psychiatric disorders.
Bobby Fischer dead.
http://tinyurl.com/ytqu6n
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