Diseases That Will Kill

If you weren’t already alarmed by our impending economic doom, here’s some chipper news on the health front!:

-Tuberculosis infections in Washington State are at a 30-year high.

-Public Health has no funding past 2009 (Good thinking, guys!), jeopardizing local prevention efforts by cutting outbreak response staff, killing off the satellite TB clinic that serves the homeless (TB-infested pirates, they are), and weakening the State’s ability to ensure that active TB patients complete treatment.

-Outbreaks will become more likely, and more difficult to respond to/control.

-Multi-drug resistant TB costs $250,000/person to cure.

-Run for the hills!

-81% of active TB patients are low-income, 80% are ethnic minorities, and 76% were foreign-born. Blacks (46 per 100,000), Asians (30 per 100,000) and Hispanics (17 per 100,000) continue to have disproportionately higher TB rates than whites (2.3 per 100,000).

-Super! If you’re white like me, you don’t have anything to worry about!*

*Save for the possibility our underfunded Public Health system misses a multi-drug resistant TB outbreak and we all consequently die.

30-year tuberculosis high in King County reflects ongoing health threat

That’s an old cornea.

An 80-year-old man in Oslo, Norway can still see with a 123-year-old transplanted cornea, although his vision is no longer great. Bernt Aune received the transplant in 1958. The donor was a man born in 1885!

“I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the oldest living organ in the world,” eye doctor Hasan Hasanain at Namsos hospital told the Norwegian daily Verdens Gang.

In the 1950s, doctors expected it to work for just five years, Hasanain said. Such cornea operations date back to the early 20th century and were among the first successful transplants.

“It wasn’t unusual to use corneas from elderly people who had died,” Aune said.

Link

Via Neatorama via Microsiervos.

Links for Monday

I really hate beggars. Something needs to be done about them. Perhaps more laws against their presence in public coupled with more rehabilitation and job training dollars. Atlanta just installed little banks on the street in which to give money to support the needy instead of giving directly to the homeless. Seattle and Portland NEED to do this.

Atlanta Cracks Down On Panhandlers - NPR

Nutjob Critic Roger Ebert Answers Your Questions About Creationism (Hilarious)

Baskin Robbins Heath Bar Shake has 2,300 calories (92% of the RDI for men, 115% of the RDI for women), HALF A POUND of sugar (SERIOUSLY), 3 times the recommended daily intake of saturated fat. Call it the Death Shake?

Baskin Robbins Death Shake Has 2,300 Calories - Consumerist

Point-Counterpoint

How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis - Bloomberg (Great Read)

Loan titans paid McCain [campaign manager] nearly $2 million - IHT

Lesson: Both major political parties are responsible for the banking mess, as are the investment banks who sold the securitized mortgages, as are the real estate investment promoters on late-night tv who sold the public on the home price boom, as are the banks for buying the sludge, as are the people who bought the homes they really couldn’t afford.

Edit: John McCain denies that his campaign manager received money from Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae, noting that Mr. Davis left his former firm in 2006 and has not received a penny in distributions from the firm in that time, nor does he hold an equity stake.

Every Minute, Every Hour, Every Day

4.2 children are born every second, 253 per minute, more than 15,000 per hour. Each year sees 133,398,951 new births. That’s 133 million children that will need education, shelter, food, water, energy, clothing, computers, and transportation for at least 66 years (the WHO’s estimate of global life expectancy). These requirements are too taxing on our planet’s natural resources. Even when accounting for human innovation which aims to maximize everything from crop yields to water reclamation, our birthrate and resource usage is unsustainable.

Only 55 million humans die each year, which, measured against the amount of humans added, is extraordinarily out of proportion.

US Census Bureau

America’s Waistline By The Numbers

Bespoke Investment Group just posted some interesting graphs on domestic retail sales trends.

“…over the last ten years, Americans have been spending more of their money on eating out and less of their money on playing sports.“

Perhaps the extra food/drink and the less exercise has something to do with our obesity epidemic.

Also, I read recently about a new term being being tossed around, passive obesity.

It’s definition: “flabbiness caused by physical inactivity rather than caloric excess.” Recent studies blame much of the obesity epidemic on the increasing amount of time people spend seated — at desks, in cars, and on couches. Corpulence, the theory goes, is the fault of modern lifestyles, not individual behavior.

I combat this daily by reading news and doing work while walking on the treadmill at three or four miles per hour (and switching to the stationary bike if I want to get my heart rate up a bit higher). I find the exercise keeps me on task (it’s good for your brain/productivity), and keeps me in decent shape.

Wired Magazine - Jargon Watch: Passive Obesity

Bespoke Investment Group - Retail Sales Review: More Food, Less Sports

Reshaping Foreign Aid

As President Bush embarks upon his 6 day tour of Africa, visiting Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, and Liberia, I find it a good time to reflect on America’s aid to developing nations.

I’ve heard quite a few criticisms of the way US foreign aid is doled out. For instance, with regard to country appropriations, political considerations often trump the demonstrated needs of countries for aid. One common example of this is our financial support of Israel. Israel comprises just .001 percent of the world’s population yet receives 1/3 of U.S. foreign aid. Is Israel a third-world country desperately in need of aid? Not in the least. Israel has one of the world’s higher per capita incomes. Israel’s GNP is higher than the GNPs of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine combined. At $28,800, Israelis enjoy a higher per capita income than oil-rich Saudi Arabia, and are on equal footing with Monaco, Greece, and Spain. In 2007, the Bush administration asked Congress for $20 billion in foreign aid: $2.4 billion to Israel, while Ukraine (with 1/10 the GDP per capita of Israel and much more need for aid) received $71 million, 1/35 of Israel’s haul. This amount does not include loans to Israel that are often forgiven. With these loans taken into account, the much needier Ukraine gets 1/100th the financial support given to Israel.

Why does Israel get 100 times the amount of aid given to its poorer neighbor?

Another common criticism of our foreign aid is our food aid program, which has caused quite the controversy. The U.S. insists that its food aid be grown at home, and this extra demand for domestic grain amounts to a subsidy to American farmers. “Many European NGOs argue that this policy, coupled with the U.S. law that 75% of food aid be carried by U.S. ships, means food often arrives too late, floods local markets and damages indigenous farming.”

Flooding local markets and damaging indigenous farming doesn’t equate to help. Isn’t help what aid is supposed to be?

Food aid shouldn’t exclusively come from major mechanized producers, it should be grown locally to where it is distributed. This is a more permanent kind of aid because it encourages farmers to build a sustainable infrastructure that will pay dividends far into the future by stimulating farm employment. Reporter Eben Harrell says that E.U. policy reflects this sentiment: “less than 10% of [the E.U.'s] food-aid budget is [...] reserved for European-grown food.”

Obviously, something needs to be done to change our foreign aid system, whether it is distributed as hard-currency or food. And the man asking for change may surprise you.

It’s none other than George W. Bush.

“We have also revolutionized the way we approach development,” Bush said Thursday. “Too many nations continue to follow either the paternalistic notion that treats African countries as charity cases, or a model of exploitation that seeks only to buy up their resources. America rejects both approaches. The United States demands clear results for the billions of taxpayer dollars [sent] to Africa.” He accused other nations of exploiting the continent’s resources or irresponsibly offering aid as charity, according to the Associated Press. “America is serving as an investor, not as a donor,” Bush said.

“The between-the-lines message is that countries that shower budget support on all countries, such as the World Bank and the Europeans, are often merely pouring good money after bad,” said Joel Barkan, a specialist in African issues at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. He said Bush’s comment was also likely a “not so subtle dig at the Chinese,” who are a major investor in the African continent and a competitor for oil and other resources.

Along with trade and education initiatives, Bush is touting a broad investment package that, in his view, shows the generosity of the American people.

This package may be just what the doctor ordered.

Time Magazine - CARE Turns Down U.S. Food Aid
Israel still top recipient of US foreign aid
Bush Says Paternalism Over in U.S. Aid
Fiscal Year 2008 Budget Request (PDF)