Slipping Point

The phrase 'tipping point' has been flogged nearly to death in the media, both old and new lately. Every event these days, it seems, is called a tipping point by someone for whatever reason. The popularity is tied to this book by Malcolm Gladwell. He defines a tipping point as ""the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable." I won't use that to describe the article from today's Telegraph. Instead I'll call it a slipping point, defined as that point when the slippery slope becomes a reality and a society begins the long slide.

Britain has begun the slide.

Don't treat the old and unhealthy, say doctors

Doctors are calling for NHS treatment to be withheld from patients who are too old or who lead unhealthy lives.

Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.

Fertility treatment and "social" abortions are also on the list of procedures that many doctors say should not be funded by the state.

The findings of a survey conducted by Doctor magazine sparked a fierce row last night, with the British Medical Association and campaign groups describing the recommendations from family and hospital doctors as "out­rageous" and "disgraceful".

About one in 10 hospitals already deny some surgery to obese patients and smokers, with restrictions most common in hospitals battling debt.

Managers defend the policies because of the higher risk of complications on the operating table for unfit patients. But critics believe that patients are being denied care simply to save money.

It is an ugly article, with much sanctimony on the part of proponents of the death by government neglect approach. define a set of unapproved lifestyle choices - such as getting old, you'll notice - and deny them services to save money. This is the logical destination that socialized medicine ends at. Or rather there is one more step which is not far off now. That's when they begin getting rid of the outcast and the elderly outright.

I expect that day will arrive rather quickly. Still think letting the government be in charge of health care is a good idea?

Fact Or Figment?

I have no idea what to make of this front page article from the Washington Post. It is rather long, fairly bizarre and ultimately asks more questions than it answers. I'll simply direct people over to read about what may be a new disease - or a complete figment of a number of people's imagination.

Paging Doctor Frankenstein

As the AFP report puts it, this would make the fictional Dr. Frankenstein quite jealous. American researchers have essentially made a brand new animal heart out of the stripped down remains of a once living heart. And they have made that sucker beat as well.

If extended to humans, the procedure could provide an almost limitless supply of hearts, and possibly other organs, to millions of terminally ill people waiting helplessly for a new lease on life.

Approximately 50,000 patients in the United States alone die every year for lack of a donor heart, and some 22 million people worldwide are living with the threat of heart failure.

"The idea would be to develop transplantable blood vessels or whole organs that are made from your own cells," said lead researcher Doris Taylor, director of the Center or Cardiovascular Repair at the University of Minnesota.

While there have been advances in generating living heart tissue in the lab, this is the first time an entire, three-dimension bio-artificial heart has been brought to life.

The core procedure making this possible is called decellularisation.

In this process, all the cells from an organ — in this case the heart of a dead rat — are stripped away using powerful detergents, leaving only a bleached-white scaffolding composed of proteins secreted by the cells.

In the experiments, this matrix was then injected with a mixture of cells taken from newborn rat hearts and placed in a sterile lab setting, where the scientists hoped it would grow.

After only four days, contractions started, and on the eighth day, the hearts were pumping, according to the study, published in the British journal Nature Medicine.

It is a long first step toward truly cloned organs, from the sound of it. If they can get to that point, there would theoretically be no chance of organ rejection. This is only a first step, the new heart only worked at about 2% of the efficiency of a normal rat heart. But it is a step in in interesting direction.

No Link Between Vaccinations And Autism

A definitive study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry shows that there is no link between childhood vaccinations and autism. Despite the sharp reduction in the use of a preservative, thimerosal (which contains mercury), since 2001, autism rates in California continued to rise.

The findings came from a look at children diagnosed with autism in California from 1995 to 2007. It found that the number of autism cases continued to rise through that period even though the preservative thimerosal — nearly half of which is made of ethylmercury — was removed from most vaccines in 2001.

The data "do not show any recent decrease in autism in California despite the exclusion of more than trace levels of thimerosal from nearly all childhood vaccines (and) do not support the hypothesis that that exposure (to it) during childhood is a primary cause of autism," the study concluded.

Some earlier studies had linked mercury to autism, theorizing that as more and more children were being vaccinated against more health threats, it could explain increases in autism.

But a 2004 report from the U.S. Institute of Medicine said a review of existing studies did not appear to back the mercury-autism theory.

What causes autism remains a mystery. Some experts have said the increased number of cases is due at least in part to more awareness, an expanded definition, education and other factors.

This, of course, will not change the mind of a certain scion of a political dynasty who has made a living off his scaremongering. What is of concern is the number of people who have bought into that mendacious mercury mythology and have kept their children from being properly immunized. That may be a public health crisis in the making. We have already seen epidemics of mumps break out in the Midwest. Failing to vaccinate your children is so seventh century.

Gentlemen, We Can Rebuild Him…

…We have the technology. That comes from the old television show The Six Million Dollar Man, of course. But now, the real world has caught up with that television show that went off the air in 1978. Because they can, indeed, rebuild someone. At least the hands.

The cutting edge headquarters of a Scottish firm behind the world’s first commercially available bionic hand was officially opened today.

Government ministers toured Touch Bionic’s plant in Livingston and met the first recipient of the firm’s pioneering i-LIMB hand.

UK Minister of State for Competitiveness Stephen Timms, and Scotland Office Minister David Cairns, went on to officially open the plant.

More than 70 of the hands are now being used by amputees around the world after the product was launched last July.

About half of these are in the US although there are no plans at the moment to make the hand available on the NHS.

They have pictures of the hand in use. Here’s the Touch Bionics website. It is amazing when the real world catches up with science fiction, isn’t it?

Warning: Your Computer Can Give YOU A Virus

Here's some happy news from Healthday. Your computer keyboard or mouse is quite capable of transmitting the stomach flu to you or from you to others. The nasty little norovirus can live on those - and other - surfaces for days. Yes, Virginia, you can catch this particular little sucker from a doorknob.

THURSDAY, Jan. 3 (HealthDay News) — The highly contagious norovirus, often called the stomach flu, can be passed from one person to another through contact with commonly shared items such as computer keyboards and computer mice, U.S. health officials report.

The virus, which is common in winter and is the most frequent cause of outbreaks of vomiting and diarrhea in the United States, is often contracted in schools, at work and on cruise ships.

On Thursday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on a norovirus outbreak at a Washington, D.C., elementary school last February in which some of the victims picked up the virus from contaminated computer equipment.

"There is evidence that shared objects and surfaces help transmit disease," said Dr. Shua Chai, a CDC epidemiologist and co-author of the report, published in the Jan. 4 issue of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

"This is the first time that we have demonstrated that keyboards and computer mice can be a source of transmission of norovirus," he added.

Of the 314 students and 66 staffers at the D.C. school, 103 came down with the illness — 79 students and 24 staff members. To find the sources of contamination, samples were taken from various surfaces around the school. In one first-grade classroom, a computer mouse and keyboard tested positive for norovirus, according to the report.

Obviously, the best technique to avoid spreading this is the simplest: wash your hands. A lot. And stay home if you're sick. We do not recommend trying extreme methods to decontaminate surfaces, however. Flames will also kill the virus, but wreak havoc on the computer. After the firemen get done here, we'll be back with more posts.  

National Health Incompetence Service

Happy Christmas, Britain. Just ahead of the holiday, the National Health Service delivers a gift to hundreds of thousands of victims patients of the socialized medical system. Yes, indeed, the NHS, shows its Christmas spirit, indeed.

By losing the medical records of hundreds of thousands of Britons.

Nine NHS trusts have admitted losing confidential patients’ information in the aftermath of the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) data loss scandal, it emerged today.

Hundreds of thousands of people are thought to have been affected by the breaches of strict data protection rules by the health service.

The losses were disclosed by the Sunday Mirror newspaper as police continued to hunt for two HMRC computer discs containing the details of 25 million child benefit claimants.

Since the tax discs went missing in the post it has also emerged that three million motorists’ details have been lost in Iowa, in the American mid-west.

The sheer level of bureaucratic incompetence involved here is stunning. The excuses trotted out by the NHS are pathetic:

“There is no evidence of any data falling into the wrong hands."

Oh, they promise that the guilty will be punished. They'll probably complete their investigations sometime around the next millennium. Or the one after.

Still think socialized medicine is a great idea?

Another Day Another UN Fraud

The United Nations will be issuing new AIDS estimates - they will be revised sharply downward. UNAIDS has long been the target of researchers who have consistently found substantially lower rates of AIDS infection than the UN kept reporting. How much lower will the figures be? How about 40% lower. Why were the numbers so wrong for so long? Promoting hysteria to gain extra funding. 

The latest estimates, due to be released publicly Tuesday, put the number of annual new HIV infections at 2.5 million, a cut of more than 40 percent from last year's estimate, documents show. The worldwide total of people infected with HIV — estimated a year ago at nearly 40 million and rising — now will be reported as 33 million.

Having millions fewer people with a lethal contagious disease is good news. Some researchers, however, contend that persistent overestimates in the widely quoted U.N. reports have long skewed funding decisions and obscured potential lessons about how to slow the spread of HIV. Critics have also said that U.N. officials overstated the extent of the epidemic to help gather political and financial support for combating AIDS.

"There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda," said Helen Epstein, author of "The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS." "I hope these new numbers will help refocus the response in a more pragmatic way."

The man in charge of UNAIDS has a history of writing prefaces to the reports that should sound a bit familiar:

For years, UNAIDS reports have portrayed an epidemic that threatened to burst beyond its epicenter in southern Africa to generate widespread illness and death in other countries. In China alone, one report warned, there would be 10 million infections — up from 1 million in 2002 — by the end of the decade.

Piot often wrote personal prefaces to those reports warning of the dangers of inaction, saying in 2006 that "the pandemic and its toll are outstripping the worst predictions."

Sounds rather like some other warnings issued by UN bodies, doesn't it? One researcher quoted in the report says that the UN's revision downward is still much to high and that the number of AIDS cases worldwide is much lower. The UN has proven inept, crooked or wrong repeatedly. Why do people still trust then on any subject at all?

“Well, She Turned Me Into A Newt.”

Sir Bedevere: What makes you think she's a witch?
Peasant 3: Well, she turned me into a newt!
Sir Bedevere: A newt?
Peasant 3: [meekly after a long pause] … I got better.
Crowd: [shouts] Burn her anyway!
(Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

Scientists may one day turn people into newts to make them get better - sort of. Researchers have isolated a key protein that allows newts to regenerate lost appendages. They hope it will provide clues that might someday allow humans to regenerate lost limbs.

Biologists have long been intrigued by the ability of newts and salamanders to renew damaged body parts. But how they do it has been unclear.

Now new research by a British team published on Thursday shows that a protein called nAG, secreted by nerve and skin cells, plays a central role in producing a clump of immature cells, known as a blastema, which regrows the missing part.

The importance of nAG was demonstrated by the fact that even when a nerve was severed below the stump tip, which would normally prevent regrowth, the scientists were able to coax regeneration by artificially making cells produce the protein.

Anoop Kumar and colleagues from University College London (UCL), writing in the journal Science, said the finding "may hold promise for future efforts to promote limb regeneration in mammals."

David Stocum of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis said it could help explain why mammals have limited regrowth abilities and thus help direct the field of regenerative medicine.

A clear understanding of the molecular signals involved in blastema formation and limb regeneration could eventually allow medics to program similar patterns into cells of non-regenerating body parts.

It is a clever trick — but understanding how they do it does not mean humans will necessarily be able to copy them and regrow lost arms or legs, according to Jeremy Brockes of UCL.

There is no guarantee that this will ever come to anything, of course. But it is a fascinating research path.

Chicago Hospital Begins Universal MRSA Testing

The Loyola University Medical Center will be testing every incoming patient for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) in an effort to control the spread of the superbug.

CHICAGO - Loyola University Medical Center on Monday announced plans to start testing all incoming patients for a drug-resistant staph germ and isolating those who carry the dangerous bacteria.

The 589-bed hospital in Maywood, just west of Chicago, is among the first in Illinois to start universal screening for the superbug.

The germ in question is called MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

A new Illinois law requires hospitals to test high-risk and intensive-care patients for MRSA.

The nation's Veterans Affairs hospitals began universal MRSA testing this year. And Evanston Northwestern Healthcare has reported a substantial drop in MRSA cases at its three suburban Chicago hospitals since it began universal testing in 2005.

I suspect we'll see this become common. LiveScience has a feature up on MRSA today:

MSRA spreads via surface-to-surface contact, developing into a staph infection if conditions are right. The first symptoms can include pimple-like sores on the skin where the bacteria launch their attack, while rarer but more advanced infections can enter the bloodstream, attack organs and lead to death.

But need the masses live in fear of stubborn yet deadly microbes such as MRSA as their numbers rise worldwide, or are we overreacting?

Most medical experts think superbug diseases are here to stay but offer a major caveat: Only a fraction of the population need worry a little, if at all.

I'm always a bit leery when I hear things like that. I rather suspect the testing is a better idea than just trusting the odds.

‘The Waking Pill’

The Daily Mail reports on a new BBC documentary that is due to air tomorrow about the stunning success of Zolpidem (Ambien) in treating people who are in a persistent vegetative state. (I first posted about this here.) People who have not responded to anything in years are waking up out of comas after being given Zolpidem, a sleeping pill.

A woman who has been in a coma for the past six years is slowly coming back to life after being given sleeping pills.

Amy Pickard, from Hastings in East Sussex, was only 17 when she slipped into a coma in 2001.

However now, after being given over-the-counter miracle pill Zolpidem, her devoted mum Thelma says the "old sparkle" has returned to her daughter's eyes.

Amy, who is the subject of BBC One documentary 'The Waking Pill' tomorrow night, has been in a persistent vegetative state for the past six years after suffering severe brain damage after experimenting with heroin.

Until last month she remained lifeless in bed.

But now, barely four weeks after taking her first pill Amy, now 23, from Hastings in East Sussex, is slowly starting to come back to life.

Speaking today, Thelma, 54, said: "She is changing and it is amazing.

"When she takes the pill, I see her face relax and the old sparkle return to her eyes. It's incredible."

Amy is one of 360 people taking part in a worldwide revolutionary drugs trial which could see coma patients "miraculously" come back to life.

Zolpidem has been tried on about 360 people worldwide so far. 60% respond to the drug, to varying degrees. But that is still a miracle for these people. I'd only caution that L-DOPA made patients suffering from Encephalitis lethargica wake briefly before they fell back into their comas. It is still an amazing discovery and has huge potential.

Traveling For Treatment

The Daily Mail reports that record numbers of Britons are traveling abroad for medical treatment. This despite the fact that those people pay taxes - and quite a lot of them - for "free" health care.

Record numbers of Britons are travelling abroad for medical treatment to escape the NHS - with 70,000 patients expected to fly out this year.

And by the end of the decade 200,000 "health tourists" will fly as far as Malaysa and South Africa for major surgery to avoid long waiting lists and the rising threat of superbugs, according to a new report.

The first survey of Britons opting for treatment overseas shows that fears of hospital infections and frustration of often waiting months for operations are fuelling the increasing trend.

Patients needing major heart surgery, hip operations and cataracts are using the internet to book operations to be carried out thousands of miles away.

India is the most popular destination for surgery, followed by Hungary, Turkey, Germany, Malaysia, Poland and Spain. But dozens more countries are attracting health tourists.

Research by the Treatment Abroad website shows that Britons have travelled to 112 foreign hospitals, based in 48 countries, to find safe, affordable treatment.

Almost all of those who had received treatment abroad said they would do the same again, with patients pointing out that some hospitals in India had screening policies for the superbug MRSA that have yet to be introduced in this country.

Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said the figures were a "terrible indictment" of government policies that were undermining the efforts of NHS staff to provide quality services.

What's interesting here is that people are avoiding the "free" health care if they can afford it. That speaks volumes about the socialized medical system in Briton - none of it good. I have pointed out many of the failings of the British NHS in earlier posts, regular readers know how bad the situation can get over there. Meanwhile, the left in this country continues to push for socialized medicine. So-called medical tourism also exists in the US, incidentally. In rather large numbers, according to AARP. But the drivers are completely different:

Cherkas is among an estimated 500,000 Americans treated abroad in 2006. As U.S. health care and insurance costs soar, more people are opting for medical and dental care in unfamiliar surroundings and thousands of miles from their families and doctors. "Medical tourism" has morphed in recent years from an obscure phenomenon into a global industry, fueled by the Internet, ease of travel, shorter wait times for appointments and greater international sharing of medical "best practices," says Karen H. Timmons, CEO of the Joint Commission International (JCI), the overseas arm of the nonprofit Joint Commission, which accredits U.S. health facilities.

Some U.S. companies and insurers, anxious to lower care costs, are driving the trend by urging employees to be treated in one of a growing number of countries that cater to foreign patients, among them India, Singapore, Hungary, South Africa, Dubai, Costa Rica and Brazil. Thailand remains a top destination, with Bumrungrad hospital alone treating 64,000 Americans last year—up 11 percent from 2005. Patients checked in for everything from hip repair and prostate operations to root canals and eye surgery.

Cost appears to be the main driver here. Some of the people profiled in the article have dropped health insurance and are opting to go overseas for medical procedures.

National Health Death Service Just Got Easier

New rules just published by the British National "Health" Service have abolished the need for a doctor to make the ultimate decisions in health care. The new rules will allow nurses - on their own - to end the life of patients under their care. No Physicians, no waiting.

For the first time in the history of the profession, senior clinical nurses have been given the authority to decide whether or not patients should be resuscitated.

The official guidance, issued by the British Medical Association, started a fierce debate last night. Although some medical professionals welcomed the new rules, patient groups voiced concerns that they could place unfair pressure on nurses.

Previously, only consultants and doctors of General Practitioner rank had the power to decide not to resuscitate. However, under the new rules, "properly experienced" clinical nurses will be able to make that judgment.

The BMA's guidance is partly in response to the Mental Capacity Act, which came into force earlier this month. This introduced the concept of a living will, which allows patients to state in advance their wish not to be resuscitated in the event of their heart or breathing stopping, or to choose someone to make the decision for them if they are incapable of doing so.

These changes have already proved controversial and granting powers to nurses over resuscitation has intensified the debate over the ethics of caring for the seriously ill.

Dr Peter Saunders, general secretary of the Christian Medical Fellowship, of which more than 4,500 doctors are members, said of the guidance: "Nurses should not be making such a decision.

"It is always going to be a difficult call to decide whether someone should live or die. The decision should always be taken after very careful consideration by senior doctors.

"There is absolutely no way this can be delegated to nursing staff. It's unfair on them to make such a call — they have neither the training or the experience."

No matter, the bureaucrats have spoken. Nurses (who I have great respect for, don't get me wrong here) will now have the ability to end lives. The American left wants the US to emulate the British model of socialized medicine. Still think that's a good idea, folks? What about when they authorize orderlies to make the call? What about when patrons in pubs are asked to decide?

Competition

John Stossel points out how real competition is really driving down prices while increasing quality - in medicine.

Health-care costs overall have been rising faster than inflation, but not all medical costs are skyrocketing. In a few pockets of medicine, costs are down while quality is up.

Dr. Brian Bonanni has an unusual medical practice. His office is open Saturdays. He e-mails his patients and gives them his cell-phone number.

"I need to be available 24 hours a day," he says. "I want to be there when a patient has questions, and I want to be reachable."

I'll bet your doctor doesn't say that. Bonanni knows he has to please his patients, not some insurance company or the government, because he's paid by his patients. He's a laser eye surgeon. Insurance rarely covers what he does: reshaping eyes so people can see without glasses.

His patients shop around before coming to him. They ask a question that people relying on insurance don't ask: "How much will that cost?"

"I can't get away with not telling the patient how much exactly it's going to cost," Bonanni says. "No one would put up with it. And the difference of a hundred dollars sometimes makes their decision for them."

He has to compete for his patients' business. One result of that is lower prices. And while the procedure got cheaper, it also got better. Today's lasers are faster and more precise.

There are other areas as well. One doctor Stossel mentions does not accept any insurance at all - and office visits are cheap. Government control of health care is not the answer.

Individual Choice And Better Health Care

John Stossel continues to counter the propaganda of the people who are trying to bring socialized medicine to the United States. Today, he highlights an approach taken by the Whole Foods supermarket chain - a company generally considered to be very well run, as witnessed by its performance over the past few years. (This is completely aside from Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's recent problem with sockpuppets.)

We'd each be better off if we paid all but the biggest medical bills out of pocket and saved insurance for catastrophic events. Truly needy people would rely on charity, not government, because once government gets involved, unintended bad consequences abound.

If people paid their own bills, they would likely buy high-deductible insurance (roughly $1,000 for individuals, $2,100 for families) because on average, the premium is $1,300 cheaper. But people are so conditioned to expect others to pay their medical bills that they hate high deductibles: They feel ripped off if they must pay a thousand dollars before the insurance company starts paying.

But high deductibles may be the key to lowering costs and putting you in charge of your health care.

Five years ago, the Whole Foods grocery chain switched to a high-deductible plan. If an employee has a sore throat or a sprained ankle, he pays. But if he gets cancer or heart disease, his insurance covers it.

Whole Foods puts around $1,500 a year into an account for each employee. It's not charity but part of the employee's compensation. It's money Whole Foods would have otherwise spent on more-expensive insurance. Here's the good part for employees: If they don't spend the money on medical care this year, they keep it, and the company adds more next year.

It's called a health savings account, or HSA.

CEO John Mackey told me that when he went to the new system, "Our costs went way down."

Yet today, some workers have $8,000 in their accounts.

"That's their money," Mackey said. "It builds up over time because the money is compounding for them."

The money in the HSA belongs to the employee, not the company. Depending on how those accounts are set up, they can pay for a wide range of uninsured expenses. There are people in this country who are pushing for "free" health care. The examples of what free care is worth abound in Canada and Mexico and Cuba. A high deductible private plan gives the individual control, not the government.

Have you ever seen a well run government program? Why in the world would you want them controlling your health care? Stossel (and Mackey) both dismiss the notion that people will make bad choices if they have to make their own decisions. That is a particularly arrogant and elitist view of others. Saying that a bureaucrat will make better decision - for your own good - is simply a way of allowing government to take away your choices and assume control of your life. It is the subjugation of the individual to the will of the state.

That is never a good idea.