Vision Circle

Rumsfeld's growing stake in Tamiflu

The prospect of a bird flu outbreak may be panicking people around the globe, but it's proving to be very good news for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other politically connected investors in Gilead Sciences, the California biotech company that owns the rights to Tamiflu, the influenza remedy that's now the most-sought after drug in the world.

Rumsfeld served as Gilead (Research)'s chairman from 1997 until he joined the Bush administration in 2001, and he still holds a Gilead stake valued at between $5 million and $25 million, according to federal financial disclosures filed by Rumsfeld.

oops there it is, oops there it is, 1ll-33t modernist humanism at its nekkid best...,

Acid Reflux in Babies, AKA Cholic

My new born suffers from "the cholic".

The doctor has said it is actually a case of acid reflux and it's "finally" being recognized as such. The doctor also said there is a rising incidence of acid reflux/cholic and she believes it is because new parents are being told that it's safer for newborns to have them sleep on their backs vs. sleeping on their stomachs.

This change in sleeping habits is because of the fear of SIDS.

Meanwhile, older mothers are saying that doctors are full of it, because babies sleep better on their stomachs. Additionally, sleeping on the back helps promote acid reflux, just like it does for some adults.

All I know is, the first day, my kid slept in the hospital bassinet on his back and it was flat. The next few days in the hospital, the bassinet bottom was raised so that the head was elevated higher than his feet.

When we got him home, the cholic started. After speaking with the doctor and having him examined, it was determined that he was suffering from acid reflux.

Now we have a choice between sleeping on his stomach and taking something like Zantac after over the counter drugs failed.

I find this interesting...

More later...

August Wilson Has Liver Cancer

Diagnosed with liver cancer, August Wilson continues to write

By MICHAEL KUCHWARA
AP DRAMA WRITER

NEW YORK -- Even after a diagnosis in June of inoperable liver cancer, August Wilson has continued to work on "Radio Golf," the final play in his epic 10-work cycle about the black experience in 20th-century America.

"He completed another draft of the play in early July," his assistant, Dena Levitin, said Friday in an interview from Seattle where the 60-year-old Wilson lives with his wife, costume designer Constanza Romero, and their daughter, Azula.

News of Wilson's illness was first disclosed Friday in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "It's not like poker, you can't throw your hand in," the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright told the paper. "I've lived a blessed life. I'm ready." He said he has a life expectancy of three to five months.

Know Your Health

Black leaders urge shared health knowledge

By DANIEL YEE
Associated Press Writer

ATLANTA (AP) -- Although an avid tennis player and very trim at age 58, Terrell Slayton Jr. has a host of chronic conditions - including diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. But he knows that many other black men in his community don't even know the status of their health.

"Even the most learned among us sometimes, for whatever reason, don't get that checkup as often as we should," said Slayton, who has learned to balance regular exercise and a medication schedule with his busy role as Georgia's assistant secretary of state.

A program created by former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher and a group of the city's top leaders - the 100 Black Men of Atlanta Inc. - is aimed at raising health awareness among black men. They are working to first educate themselves about their own health so they can teach others and serve as role models.

"I started the program ... to take advantage of the fact these men are leaders in the community - they were in a position not only to improve their own health but to influence the health of other people," said Satcher, now interim president of the Morehouse School of Medicine and member of the 100 Black Men group.

Steroids

Rafael Palmerio is back from his suspension for taking steroids.

I think that the powers that be of baseball knew that McGuire, Sosa, Barry Bonds, and others were "doing something" and they didn't care because of the balls that were leaving the park, which made the game more exciting.

If grown men want to take drugs that may shorten their lives, shrink their testicles, and possibly cause depression, so be it. Let them do it. I don't care. Just make it legal for people 21 and above and let the pro sports of baseball, football, and basketball deal with it.

Congress shouldn't be involved in this and they wouldn't be involved except that it gives those pompus media hounds a chance to have their mugs on television.

Congress Mulls Cutting Food Stamps

WASHINGTON, July 28 (Reuters) - Leaders of a U.S. House of Representatives panel were to meet privately Thursday in the second of a series of sessions to reduce farm spending by $3 billion, with some lawmakers fearing cuts could target the food stamp program that helps poor families buy groceries.

tsk, tsk, tsk, full monty here; and some folks ack like they don't understand my emphasis on food security...,

Eating Right

For the past couple months, I've been trying to maximize fruit and vegetable consumption within the Nulan household. Well so, I buy a bunch of bananas every few days as part of this regimen. Anyway, I accidentally picked up a bunch of organic bananas at my local HyVee store yesterday. They were conspicuously large and unlike the regular bananas about ready ripeness-wise for eating. {the usual suspects were all bright green and looked at least a couple days from table ready}

I didn't find out they were organic until I looked at them just a minute ago, and they had a little *organic* sticker on them. So I peel and bite one of these barnaynays and KAPOW!!!!, discover that I haven't eaten a real banana in years. It was so sweet, firm in texture, and like I said above, conspicuously large - that I was shocked by the difference in flavor intensity between it and the high-yield agro product I've grown accustomed to.

From now on, I'll be doing vastly more careful shopping and testing the difference between organic and mass agro produce. If this banana was not merely a fluke, but instead the rule concerning the differences, then the often mulled engagement with gardening, farmer's market co-oping and emphasis on organic produce just went to the top of my priority list.

Dopamine Addicting Hegemony

Cobb's piece here on marketing;

set off a cognitive avalanche;

Compulsive gambling, attendance at sporting events, vulnerability to telephone scams and exuberant investing in the stock market may not seem to have much in common. But neuroscientists now have uncovered a common thread.

Such behaviors, they say, rely on brain circuits that evolved to help animals assess rewards important to their survival, like food and sex. Researchers have found that those same circuits are used by the human brain to assess social rewards as diverse as investment income and surprise home runs at the bottom of the ninth inning.

And, in a finding that astonishes many people, they found that the brain systems that detect and evaluate such rewards generally operate outside of conscious awareness. In navigating the world and deciding what is rewarding, humans are closer to zombies than sentient beings much of the time.

The findings, which are gaining wide adherence among neuroscientists, challenge the notion that people always make conscious choices about what they want and how to obtain it. In fact, the neuroscientists say, much of what happens in the brain goes on outside of conscious awareness.

Brand Black

NitroMed has asserted..,

An FDA Advisory Panel has approved their assertion..,

both contrary to known genetic fact, and baseline ethical understanding..,

that blackness is substantially more than shared cultural identity - and they're intent on telling you what you think. Cause it's an equally well-established fact that if you repeat a lie often enough and for long enough, it becomes a truth in consensus reality...,

Hell Is...

Craving a banana split when you know you are lactose intolerant.

And LactAid does no damn good.