Rick Santorum greets supporters during a rally Saturday in Springfield, Mo. Photo by Whitney Curtis/Getty Images.
In the fight for delegates, the weekend resulted in a split decision for Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.
Santorum captured 33 of the 40 delegates doled out in Kansas after receiving 51 percent of the vote in the state's caucuses on Saturday. He swept every county in the state except for one -- Lane -- which Romney eked out by seven votes.
Romney, meanwhile, picked up 22 delegates by sweeping weekend contests in Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the Virgin Islands.
The former Massachusetts governor also won seven of the 12 delegates at stake in Wyoming, where caucuses began last Tuesday. Romney got 44 percent of the vote there, followed by Santorum at 27 percent. Texas Rep. Ron Paul placed third with 12 percent.
Get the full results in our
Vote 2012 Map Center.
The latest count in the delegate race,
courtesy of the Washington Post, looks like this:
Romney: 454
Santorum: 217
Gingrich: 107
Paul: 47
Santorum and Gingrich took to the Sunday morning news shows to push back on the argument that Romney's nomination is a mathematical inevitability.
Santorum appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press," where he contended that Romney "can't close the deal" and won key contests in Michigan and Ohio "by the skin of his teeth," despite significant financial advantages.
Santorum said that the upcoming contests would favor him over Romney. "We've been slowly crawling our way back -- clawing our way back into this race, and, you know, we're in a great position right now as we go forward with states that are very favorable to us in favorable areas of the country," the former Pennsylvania senator said. "I've got my home state yet to go. I mean, Gov. Romney's had about three of his home states already. So it's important for us to look to the future and see the opportunities we have. That's how we get back in this race."
But Santorum refused to call on Gingrich to exit the race to allow him to challenge Romney directly. "The speaker can stay in as long as he wants, but I think the better opportunity to make sure that we nominate a conservative is to give us an opportunity to go head-to-head with Gov. Romney at some point, and hopefully that will occur sooner rather than later."
For his part, Gingrich predicted he would win Tuesday's primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, and that the nominating battle would carry on into the summer.
"Yes, he is a front-runner. He's not a very strong front-runner," the former House speaker declared on Fox News Sunday. "Almost all conservatives are opposed, which is the base of the party. And I think we are likely to see after the last primary in June, we're likely to see a 60-day conversation about what's going to happen as we already see Romney dominating."
As we wrote in this space last week, as long as the conversation focuses on Romney's delegate lead over his competitors, it would appear to benefit him. With Santorum and Gingrich showing no signs of ending their respective bids -- and thus continuing to split the conservative, anyone-but-Romney vote -- it's unlikely that either will be able to surpass Romney unless that dynamic of the race changes.
Politico's Mike Allen got an early look at a memo from Team Santorum suggesting they will argue that Romney has his own problem with delegate math. "Time is on Rick Santorum's side," writes John Patrick Yob in a memo to campaign manager Mike Biundo. "Despite the Romney campaign's smokescreen, they cannot change the fact that he can't inspire the base of the party, has a delegate problem, and has a very difficult time getting to a majority." See the
state-by-state breakdown.
The Real Clear Politics average of Alabama polls finds Romney
with a slim 2-percent lead. In Mississippi,
it's Gingrich with a 2-percent lead.
OBAMA'S OUTLOOK
President Obama's poll numbers have been moving upward in recent months as the country's employment outlook has gotten brighter, but a poll released Monday reveals that
his re-election prospects are still precarious.
The Washington Post/ABC News survey put disapproval of the president's overall job performance at 50 percent, compared to 46 percent of respondents who said they approved. That was a reversal from last month, when Mr. Obama's job approval rating stood at 50 percent, with 46 percent disapproval.
The president's lowest marks came on his handling of gas prices, with nearly two-thirds of respondents saying they disapproved, while just 26 percent supported him on the issue.
On the broader issue of the economy, 59 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of the job the president was doing.
The Post's Dan Balz and Jon Cohen look at the cause of the reversal from last month:
The downshift is particularly notable among independents -- 57 percent of whom now disapprove -- and among white people without college degrees, with disapproval among this group now topping approval by a ratio of more than 2 to 1, at 66 versus 28 percent.
These groups are also the ones whose shifting support has re-shuffled prospective general-election matchups. Among registered voters, Obama is now on par with Romney (47 percent for the president, 49 percent for Romney) and Santorum (49 to 46 percent). Previously, Obama held significant advantages over both.
NEWSHOUR NOTES
Gwen Ifill (
@pbsgwen)
asked five questions on Super Tuesday. In her blog on Friday,
she answered them.
Mark Shields evaluated Romney's Super Tuesday victories with some letter grades: "If you were giving him his report card, you would say he is A-minus [in] arithmetic. The math is very much on his side. He's D in chemistry, because he just is not connecting, all right?"
David Brooks said it's time for Romney to say something along the lines of:
"Look, I don't make your heart beat...And I'm not going to be the heartthrob that you have always wanted to give you an emotional lift or anything of the sort. What I am is, I am an incredibly dependable and competent person. I will be a great steward of this nation's economy. I have no vices. I am a good family man. And this is who I am. I'm not going to be touchy-feely."
Watch
here or below.
Christina filled in for Hari Sreenivasan to host the Doubleheader, tackling the sports of politics and the politics of sports with Mark and David.
Watch that here.
DISPATCH FROM AUSTIN
Most people don't come to South by Southwest for the political panels. But sessions on shaping campaign messaging, partisan media and voting were packed at the interactive portion of the annual festival, best known for its offerings in music and film.
The
Americans Elect panel, billed as the promotion of an online primary, drew tons of interest for its heavy promotion and also by staging "fights" between two people dressed in donkey and elephant costumes all over downtown Austin. During the panel, CEO Kahlil Byrd and chief technology officer Josh Levine got people to download the Americans Elect iPhone app and outlined just how their idea would work.
The basics are that people can sign up now to become "delegates" to the bipartisan nominating process. There already are 400,000 people on the books, they said. Candidates can enter their names or be drafted, and in May the first rounds of online voting will begin. That will eventually winnow the field for a June decision, and each of the candidates left standing must announce a running mate from the opposite party who must also have been a member of that party for four years.
As all of that is happening online, the organization is gaining ballot access across the country by collecting signatures. By next week, there will be efforts afoot in 30 states, and Levine and Byrd said they are confident they can get access in all 50 states. Adviser Mark McKinnon said he's confident, as well, that the candidate would meet the 15 percent polling threshold to be included in the general election debates.
Their process would end outsized importance of a handful of contests in either the primary or general election. "Every American voter has a chance to choose a presidential candidate -- even Texas," Byrd told the crowd. "Your votes absolutely mean something in this process."
Levine said the economy, education and energy remain the most important policy issues for Americans Elect voters. They each said they imagine the Americans Elect effort this year will "filter down" to generate state and local versions in 2014 and beyond.
Among the candidates already being mentioned and featured in their panel PowerPoint: Howard Dean, Jon Huntsman, Colin Powell and Stephen Colbert.
Also Sunday, Christina moderated a panel about the impact that social media has made on the presidential campaign. During the
Socializing the Presidency panel, the group outlined the rapid changes since the 2008 race.
For Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, social media gives voters a chance to truth squad politicians and movements, and he's urging people to join him in "preventing disinformation."
Heather Smith of Rock the Vote noted that in 1992, the group registered 200,000 people in a major feat. In 2008, that swelled to 2.2 million thanks to technology. Rock the Vote has found that texting people to urge them to show up at the polls yields the same turnout as a live phone call. Texting is personal, she said, and politicians are learning they can't abuse that.
Political commentator Mary Katharine Ham said that social media has opened up a new dynamic that changes the politician/voter relationship, and that 2012 could be the last election where engagement online will be predictive of the result, because everyone will be doing it.
The panelists touched briefly on money in politics, with Smith saying that if everyone participated in elections, "People would kick money's ass." Maria Teresa Kumar of Voto Latino agreed, saying that people can use their voices to combat the influence of super PACs. She also believes technology has strengthened grassroots organizing on the ground.
The Daily Caller wrote up our panel
here, and
here's a collection of live tweets during the conversation.
Finally, NewsHour's managing editor of education Leah Clapman presented during SXSWedu. She joined Austin High School teacher Gil Garcia to showcase
Student Reporting Labs with teens who produced a report on the impact of budget cuts on schools and how younger teachers are the last hired and the first fired. You can see the students' video
here.
2012 LINE ITEMS
A poll from
the Chicago Tribune and WGN of Illinois Republican voters found a close result ahead of the March 20 primary. Romney had 35 percent and Santorum had 31 percent, within the poll's 4 percent margin of error. Gingrich was at 12 percent and Paul was at 7 percent. A whopping 46 percent of voters said they could change their minds.
Politico's Jonathan Martin learns about
a private Texas meeting with conservatives who pledged nearly $2 million to Santorum and said they were "all-in" to help him defeat Romney.
The Las Vegas Review Journal has a fascinating look at how
Paul supporters are flooding the ranks of the Clark County Republican Party and could complicate things for Romney come convention time.
Karen Tumulty looked at
the GOP's problem with female voters in the Washington Post.
Stephen Braun of the Associated Press reports that when Romney was governor of Massachusetts, he and some of his top aides
"used private email accounts to conduct state business." According to the story, the communications were legal, but the state now says the private emails "should have invoked rules about preserving copies of state records."
"Four years after the fact, the Federal Election Commission
has gotten around to chastising the man behind a political action committee called 'Californians for Obama' for raising thousands of dollars in support for then-Sen. Barack Obama while obscuring the fact that it didn't have any actual connections to the future president's campaign," Ryan J. Reilly writes for Talking Points Memo.
TOP TWEETS
Two not-Romney voters start their Saturday morning.
twitter.com/rchammond/stat...
March 10, 2012
Nothing like ice cream on a Friday afternoon @
NewsHour !!! Thank you @
cbellantoni !!!
twitter.com/georgenewshour...
March 9, 2012
Just about covers it: "Floating Perry as running mate before AL and MS could energize conservatives or turn them off."
bit.ly/zRJx0M
March 12, 2012
OUTSIDE THE LINES
Seven-term Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., is resigning his seat before his term ends in January
so that he can run fulltime for governor.
The Hill writes that in a new book former Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter complains
he didn't get enough help from the White House after voting for health care.
Roll Call's Janie Lorber writes about
the Cato Institute's feud with the Koch brothers.
Roll Call's Eliza Newlin Carney offers analysis Monday about
the strange conundrum of super PAC coordination.
USA Today writes about
a strange super PAC that may have illegally pushed for an obscure candidate who won an upset in Ohio in the Democratic primary.
Christopher Lee Carlson of Oregon was arrested Friday
on charges he sent threatening letters to members of the House and Senate containing white powder.
ON THE TRAIL
All events are listed in Eastern Time.
President Obama gives in a series of local television interviews from the White House beginning at 11 a.m. and meets with local elected leaders representing the National League of Cities at 2:50 p.m.
Mitt Romney holds a campaign event in Mobile, Ala., at 9:20 a.m.
Rick Santorum holds a meet-and-greet in Ocean Springs, Miss., at 9:30 a.m., addresses the Gulf Coast Energy Summit in Biloxi, Miss., at 12 p.m., holds another meet & greet in Tuscaloosa, Ala., at 2:30 p.m., attends the Alabama GOP presidential forum in Birmingham at 6 p.m. and holds a rally in Montgomery, Ala., at 9 p.m.
Newt Gingrich delivers remarks to the Gulf Coast Energy Summit at 11:15 a.m. and participates in the Alabama GOP presidential forum at 6:30 p.m.
Ron Paul has no public campaign events scheduled.
All future events can be found on our
Political Calendar:
For more political coverage, visit our
politics page.
Sign up here to receive the Morning Line in your inbox every morning.
Questions or comments? Email Christina Bellantoni at cbellantoni-at-newshour-dot-org.
Follow the politics team
on Twitter:
@cbellantoni,
@burlij,
@elizsummers and
@suddinengel.
Harvard Medical School found that
1 in 10 premature deaths is caused by eating red meat:
Small quantities of processed meat such as bacon, sausages or salami can increase the likelihood of dying by a fifth, researchers from Harvard School of Medicine found. Eating steak increases the risk of dying by 12%.
***
Red meat often contains high amounts of saturated fat, while bacon and salami contain large amounts of salt. Replacing red meat with poultry, fish or vegetables, whole grains and other healthy foods cut the risk of dying by up to one fifth, the study found.
***
The study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine followed more than 100,000 people for around 28 years asking them periodically about their diet and lifestyle.
It was found that for every serving of red meat – equivalent to 3 ounces (85 grams) – eaten each day there was an 18 per cent increased risk of dying from heart disease and a 10 per cent increased risk of dying from cancer.
***
“The research itself seems solid and is based on two large scale cohort studies monitored over a long period of time.”
Other studies have also found that eating too much meat causes cancer and other health problems.
But how much of the problem isn’t red meat … but the fact that what we’re eating isn’t what our grandparents wouldn’t even recognize as meat at all?
For all of human history – until the last couple of decades – people ate beef from cows (or buffalo or bison) which grazed on grass. The cows were usually strong and healthy. Their meat was lean, with very little saturated fat, as the critters ate well and got outdoor exercise. Their meat was high in good Omega 3 fats. See
this and
this, and
humans evolved to consume a lot of Omega 3 fatty acids in the wild game and fish which they ate (
more).
Today, on the other hand, beef is laden with saturated fat and almost entirely lacking healthy fats like Omega 3s, because the cows are force-fed food which makes them sick. Specifically, instead of their natural menu - grass - they are force-fed corn, which makes them sick. Because their diet makes them ill, they are given massive amounts of antibiotics. Even with the antibiotics, the diet and living conditions would kill them pretty quickly if they aren't slaughtered.
They are also given estrogen to fatten them up. And they are fed parts of other animals, which can
give them mad cow disease.
Well-known
food writer (and meat-lover) Michael Pollan gave a
must-read account of modern beef practices in the New York Times in 2002:
Cows raised on grass simply take longer to reach slaughter weight than cows raised on a richer diet, and the modern meat industry has devoted itself to shortening a beef calf’s allotted time on earth. ”In my grandfather’s day, steers were 4 or 5 years old at slaughter” …. now we get there at 14 to 16 months.” Fast food indeed. What gets a beef calf from 80 to 1,200 pounds in 14 months are enormous quantities of corn, protein supplements — and drugs, including growth hormones.
***
Calves have no need of regular medication while on grass, but as soon as they’re placed in the backgrounding pen, they’re apt to get sick. Why? The stress of weaning is a factor, but the main culprit is the feed. The shift to a ”hot ration” of grain can so disturb the cow’s digestive process — its rumen, in particular — that it can kill the animal if not managed carefully and accompanied by antibiotics
.
***
Growing the vast quantities of corn used to feed livestock in this country takes vast quantities of chemical fertilizer, which in turn takes
vast quantities of oil — 1.2 gallons for every bushel
. So the modern feedlot is really a city floating on a sea of oil.
***
Tanker trucks back up to silo-shaped tanks, into which they pump thousands of gallons of liquefied fat and protein supplement. In a shed attached to the mill sit vats of liquid vitamins and synthetic estrogen; next to these are pallets stacked with 50-pound sacks of Rumensin and tylosin, another antibiotic.
***
Corn is a mainstay of livestock diets because there is no other feed quite as cheap or plentiful: thanks to federal subsidies and ever-growing surpluses, the price of corn ($2.25 a bushel) is 50 cents less than the cost of growing it. The rise of the modern factory farm is a direct result of these surpluses, which soared in the years following World War II, when petrochemical fertilizers came into widespread use. Ever since, the U.S.D.A.’s policy has been to help farmers dispose of surplus corn by passing as much of it as possible through the digestive tracts of food animals, converting it into protein. Compared with grass or hay, corn is a compact and portable foodstuff, making it possible to feed tens of thousands of animals on small plots of land. Without cheap corn, the modern urbanization of livestock would probably never have occurred.
We have come to think of ”cornfed” as some kind of old-fashioned virtue; we shouldn’t. Granted, a cornfed cow develops well-marbled flesh, giving it a taste and texture American consumers have learned to like. Yet this meat is demonstrably less healthy to eat, since it c
ontains more saturated fat.
A recent study in The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that
the meat of grass-fed livestock not only had substantially less fat than grain-fed meat but that the type of fats found in grass-fed meat were much healthier. (Grass-fed meat has more omega 3 fatty acids and fewer omega 6, which is believed to promote heart disease; it also contains betacarotine and CLA, another ”good” fat.)
A growing body of research suggests that
many of the health problems associated with eating beef are really problems with cornfed beef.
In the same way ruminants have not evolved to eat grain, humans may not be well adapted to eating grain-fed animals
.
Yet the U.S.D.A.’s grading system continues to reward marbling — that is, intermuscular fat — and thus the feeding of corn to cows.
The economic logic behind corn is unassailable, and on a factory farm, there is no other kind. Calories are calories, and corn is the cheapest, most convenient source of calories. Of course the identical industrial logic — protein is protein — led to the feeding of rendered cow parts back to cows, a practice the F.D.A. banned in 1997 after scientists realized it was spreading mad-cow disease.
Make that mostly banned.
The F.D.A.’s rules against feeding ruminant protein to ruminants make exceptions for ”blood products” (even though they contain protein) and fat.
Indeed, my steer has probably dined on beef tallow recycled from the very slaughterhouse he’s heading to in June. ”Fat is fat,” the feedlot manager shrugged when I raised an eyebrow.
F.D.A. rules still permit feedlots to feed nonruminant animal protein to cows. (
Feather meal is an accepted cattle feed, as are pig and fish protein and chicken manure
.) Some public-health advocates worry that since
the bovine meat and bone meal that cows used to eat is now being fed to chickens, pigs and fish, infectious prions could find their way back into cattle when they eat the protein of the animals that have been eating them
. To close this biological loophole, the F.D.A. is now considering tightening its feed rules.
***
”When we buy supplement, the supplier says it’s 40 percent protein, but they don’t specify beyond that.” When I called the supplier, it wouldn’t divulge all its ”proprietary ingredients” but promised that animal parts weren’t among them. Protein is pretty much still protein.
Compared with ground-up cow bones, corn seems positively wholesome. Yet it wreaks considerable havoc on bovine digestion. During my day at Poky, I spent an hour or two driving around the yard with Dr. Mel Metzen, the staff veterinarian. Metzen, a 1997 graduate of Kansas State’s vet school, oversees a team of eight cowboys who spend their days riding the yard, spotting sick cows and bringing them in for treatment. A great many of their health problems can be traced to their diet.
”They’re made to eat forage,” Metzen said, ”and we’re making them eat grain.”
Perhaps the most serious thing that can go wrong with a ruminant on corn is feedlot bloat. The rumen is always producing copious amounts of gas, which is normally expelled by belching during rumination. But when the diet contains too much starch and too little roughage, rumination all but stops, and a layer of foamy slime that can trap gas forms in the rumen. The rumen inflates like a balloon, pressing against the animal’s lungs. Unless action is promptly taken to relieve the pressure (usually by forcing a hose down the animal’s esophagus), the cow suffocates.
A corn diet can also give a cow acidosis.
Unlike that in our own highly acidic stomachs, the normal pH of a rumen is neutral. Corn makes it unnaturally acidic, however, causing a kind of bovine heartburn, which in some cases can kill the animal but usually just makes it sick. Acidotic animals go off their feed, pant and salivate excessively, paw at their bellies and eat dirt. The condition can lead to diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, liver disease and a general weakening of the immune system that leaves the animal vulnerable to everything from pneumonia to feedlot polio.
Cows rarely live on feedlot diets for more than six months, which might be about as much as their digestive systems can tolerate.
”I don’t know how long you could feed this ration before you’d see problems,” Metzen said; another vet said that a sustained feedlot diet would eventually ”blow out their livers” and kill them. As the acids eat away at the rumen wall, bacteria enter the bloodstream and collect in the liver. More than 13 percent of feedlot cattle are found at slaughter to have abscessed livers.
What keeps a feedlot animal healthy — or healthy enough — are antibiotics. Rumensin inhibits gas production in the rumen, helping to prevent bloat; tylosin reduces the incidence of liver infection.
Most of the antibiotics sold in America end up in animal feed — a practice that, it is now generally acknowledged, leads directly to the evolution of new antibiotic-resistant ”superbugs.”
In the debate over the use of antibiotics in agriculture, a distinction is usually made between clinical and nonclinical uses. Public-health advocates don’t object to treating sick animals with antibiotics; they just don’t want to see the drugs lose their efficacy because factory farms are feeding them to healthy animals to promote growth. But the use of antibiotics in feedlot cattle confounds this distinction. Here the drugs are plainly being used to treat sick animals, yet the animals probably wouldn’t be sick if not for what we feed them.
I asked Metzen what would happen if antibiotics were banned from cattle feed. ”We just couldn’t feed them as hard,” he said. ”Or we’d have a higher death loss.” (Less than 3 percent of cattle die on the feedlot.) The price of beef would rise, he said, since the whole system would have to slow down.
”Hell, if you gave them lots of grass and space,” he concluded dryly, ”I wouldn’t have a job.”
***
I stopped by the shed where recent arrivals receive their
hormone implants
. The calves are funneled into a chute, herded along by a ranch hand wielding an electric prod, then clutched in a restrainer just long enough for another hand to inject a slow-release pellet of
Revlar, a synthetic estrogen
, in the back of the ear. [This] is virtually a universal practice in the cattle industry in the United States. (It has been banned in the European Union.)
American regulators permit hormone implants on the grounds that no risk to human health has been proved, even though
measurable hormone residues do turn up in the meat we eat. These contribute to the buildup of estrogenic compounds in the environment, which some scientists believe may explain falling sperm counts and premature maturation in girls
. Recent studies have also found elevated levels of synthetic growth hormones in feedlot wastes; these persistent chemicals eventually wind up in the waterways downstream of feedlots, where scientists have found fish exhibiting abnormal sex characteristics.
The F.D.A. is opening an inquiry into the problem, but for now, implanting hormones in beef cattle is legal and financially irresistible: an implant costs $1.50 and adds between 40 and 50 pounds to the weight of a steer at slaughter, for a return of at least $25.
***
The unnaturally rich diet of corn that has compromised [the cow's] health is fattening his flesh in a way that in turn may compromise the health of the humans who will eat him. The antibiotics he’s consuming with his corn were at that very moment selecting, in his gut and wherever else in the environment they wind up, for bacteria that could someday infect us and resist the drugs we depend on. We inhabit the same microbial ecosystem as the animals we eat, and whatever happens to it also happens to us.
I thought about the deep pile of manure that [the cows] and I were standing in. We don’t know much about the hormones in it — where they will end up or what they might do once they get there — but we do know something about the bacteria. One particularly lethal bug most probably resided in the manure beneath my feet. Escherichia coli 0157 is a relatively new strain of a common intestinal bacteria (it was first isolated in the 1980′s) that is common in feedlot cattle, more than half of whom carry it in their guts. Ingesting as few as 10 of these microbes can cause a fatal infection.
Most of the microbes that reside in the gut of a cow and find their way into our food get killed off by the acids in our stomachs, since they originally adapted to live in a neutral-pH environment. But the digestive tract of the modern feedlot cow is closer in acidity to our own, and in this new, manmade environment acid-resistant strains of E. coli have developed that can survive our stomach acids — and go on to kill us. By acidifying a cow’s gut with corn, we have broken down one of our food chain’s barriers to infection. Yet this process can be reversed: James Russell, a U.S.D.A. microbiologist, has discovered that switching a cow’s diet from corn to hay in the final days before slaughter reduces the population of E. coli 0157 in its manure by as much as 70 percent. Such a change, however, is considered wildly impractical by the cattle industry.
So much comes back to corn, this cheap feed that turns out in so many ways to be not cheap at all. While I stood in [the] pen, a dump truck pulled up alongside the feed bunk and released a golden stream of feed. The animals stepped up to the bunk for their lunch. The $1.60 a day I’m paying for three giant meals is a bargain only by the narrowest of calculations. It doesn’t take into account, for example, the cost to the public health of antibiotic resistance or food poisoning by E. coli or all the environmental costs associated with industrial corn.
For if you follow the corn from this bunk back to the fields where it grows, you will find an 80-million-acre monoculture that consumes more chemical herbicide and fertilizer than any other crop. Keep going and you can trace the nitrogen runoff from that crop all the way down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, where it has created (if that is the right word) a 12,000-square-mile ”dead zone.”
But you can go farther still, and follow the fertilizer needed to grow that corn all the way to the oil fields of the Persian Gulf. [The cow] started life as part of a food chain that derived all its energy from the sun; now that corn constitutes such an important link in his food chain, he is the product of an industrial system powered by fossil fuel. (And in turn, defended by the military — another uncounted cost of ”cheap” food.) I asked David Pimentel, a Cornell ecologist who specializes in agriculture and energy, if it might be possible to calculate precisely how much oil it will take to grow my steer to slaughter weight…. roughly 284 gallons of oil. We have succeeded in industrializing the beef calf, transforming what was once a solar-powered ruminant into the very last thing we need: another fossil-fuel machine.
***
Much of what happens next — the de-hiding of the animal, the tying off of its rectum before evisceration — is designed to keep the animal’s feces from coming into contact with its meat. This is by no means easy to do, not when the animals enter the kill floor smeared with manure and 390 of them are eviscerated every hour. (Partly for this reason, European plants operate at much slower line speeds.) But since that manure is apt to contain lethal pathogens like E. coli 0157, and since the process of grinding together hamburger from hundreds of different carcasses can easily spread those pathogens across millions of burgers, packing plants now spend millions on ”food safety” — which is to say, on the problem of manure in meat.
***
It’s accepted that the animals will enter the kill floor caked with feedlot manure that has been rendered lethal by the feedlot diet. Rather than try to alter that diet or keep the animals from living in their waste or slow the line speed — all changes regarded as impractical — the industry focuses on disinfecting the manure that will inevitably find its way into the meat. This is the purpose of
irradiation
(which the industry prefers to call ”cold pasteurization”). It is also the reason that carcasses pass through a hot steam cabinet and get sprayed with an
antimicrobial solution
before being hung in the cooler at the National Beef plant.
***
I discovered that grass-fed meat is more expensive than supermarket beef. Whatever else you can say about industrial beef, it is remarkably cheap, and any argument for changing the system runs smack into the industry’s populist arguments. Put the animals back on grass, it is said, and prices will soar; it takes too long to raise beef on grass, and there’s not enough grass to raise them on, since the Western range lands aren’t big enough to sustain America’s 100 million head of cattle. And besides, Americans have learned to love cornfed beef. Feedlot meat is also more consistent in both taste and supply and can be harvested 12 months a year. (Grass-fed cattle tend to be harvested in the fall, since they stop gaining weight over the winter, when the grasses go dormant.)
All of this is true. The economic logic behind the feedlot system is hard to refute. And yet so is the ecological logic behind a ruminant grazing on grass. Think what would happen if we restored a portion of the Corn Belt to the tall grass prairie it once was and grazed cattle on it. No more petrochemical fertilizer, no more herbicide, no more nitrogen runoff. Yes, beef would probably be more expensive than it is now, but would that necessarily be a bad thing? Eating beef every day might not be such a smart idea anyway — for our health, for the environment. And how cheap, really, is cheap feedlot beef? Not cheap at all, when you add in the invisible costs: of antibiotic resistance, environmental degradation, heart disease, E. coli poisoning, corn subsidies, imported oil and so on. All these are costs that grass-fed beef does not incur.
In addition to antibiotics and estrogen, industrial meat operators feed other chemicals to the animals shortly before slaughter … which end up in our bodies.
As Alternet
reported in 2010 that chemicals which can cause severe adverse health effects, and which have been banned in China and 159 other nations, are added to the feed of cattle, pigs and turkeys shortly before slaughter – and a
lot
of the chemicals are contained in the meat we eat:
The FDA approved a livestock drug banned in 160 nations and responsible for hyperactivity, muscle breakdown and 10 percent mortality in pigs, according to angry farmers who phoned the manufacturer.
The beta agonist ractopamine, a repartitioning agent that increases protein synthesis, was recruited for livestock use when researchers found the drug, used in asthma, made mice more muscular says
Beef
magazine.
But unlike the growth promoting antibiotics and hormones used in livestock which are withdrawn as the animal nears slaughter, ractopamine is
started as the animal nears slaughter
.
As much as
twenty percent
of Paylean, given to pigs for their last 28 days, Optaflexx, given to cattle their last 28 to 42 days and Tomax, given to turkeys their last 7 to 14 days, remains in consumer meat
says author and well known veterinarian Michael W. Fox.
Though
banned in Europe, Taiwan and China
–more than 1,700 people were “poisoned” from eating Paylean-fed pigs since 1998 says the Sichuan Pork Trade Chamber of Commerce– ractopamine is used in 45 percent of US pigs and 30 percent of ration-fed cattle says Elanco Animal Health which manufactures all three products.
How does a drug marked, “Not for use in humans. Individuals with cardiovascular disease should exercise special caution to avoid exposure. Use protective clothing, impervious gloves, protective eye wear, and a NIOSH-approved dust mask” become “safe” in human food? With no washout period?
***
In fact, in 2002, three years after Paylean’s approval,
the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine’s Office of Surveillance and Compliance accused Elanco of withholding information about “safety and effectiveness” and “adverse animal drug experiences”
upon which ractopamine was approved, in a 14-page warning letter.
“Our representatives requested a complete and accurate list of all your GLP [Good Laboratory Practices] studies involving Paylean® (Ractopamine hydrochloride), including their current status as well as the names of the respective study monitors. In response, your firm supplied to our representatives multiple lists which differed in the names of the studies and their status. In addition, your firm could not locate or identify documents pertaining to some of the studies. This situation was somewhat confusing and created unneeded delays for our representatives,” wrote Gloria J. Dunnavan, Director Division of Compliance.
Where was mention of the farmer phone calls to Elanco reporting,
“hyperactivity,” “dying animals,” “downer pigs” and “tying up” and “stress” syndromes, asks the FDA letter. Where was the log of phone calls that included farmers saying, “animals are down and shaking,” and “pig vomiting after eating feed with Paylean”?
But, not to worry. Despite ractopamine’s dangers and the falsified approval documents, the FDA approved ractopamine the following year for cattle–and last year for turkeys.
According to Temple Grandin, Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University, the “indiscriminant use of Paylean (ractopamine) has contributed to an increase in downer non-ambulatory pigs,” and pigs that “are extremely difficult to move and drive.” In Holsteins, ractopamine is known for causing hoof problems, says Grandin and feedlot managers report the “outer shell of the hoof fell off” on a related beta agonist drug, zilpateral.
A[n] article in the 2003
Journal of Animal Science
confirms that “ractopamine does affect the behavior, heart rate and catecholamine profile of finishing pigs and making them more difficult to handle and potentially more susceptible to handling and transport stress.”
Nor can we overlook the effects of “adding these drugs to waterways or well water supplies–via contaminated animal feed and manure runoff– when this class of drugs is so important in treating children with asthma,” says David Wallinga, MD of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
The FDA’s approval of a drug for food that requires impervious gloves and a mask just to handle is reminiscent of the bovine growth hormone debacle.
Like rBST, ractopamine increases profits despite greater livestock death and disability because a treated animal does the work of two in a macabre version of economies of scale.
Like rBST, food consumers are metabolic, neurological and carcinogen guinea pigs so that agribusiness can make a profit.
As can be seen from the discussion above, our grandparents would not recognize what we’re eating today as meat. (And – on top of that – there are all of the
meat additives.)
And yet the government is so protective of the current model of industrial farming that private citizens such as ranchers and meat packers are
prohibited
from testing for mad cow disease, and even investigating factory farming may get one
labeled as a terrorist, even though a paper in the American Society of Microbiology’s newsletter
mBio
shows that
overuse of antibiotics by factory farmers creates “superbugs”.
Healthier Alternatives
If you’re going to eat red meat, make it grass fed beef.
Cows fed grass don’t require massive amounts of antibiotics … the cows stay healthier because they’re eating the food they were designed for. The meat is much lower in saturated fats and higher in good Omega 3 fats (which makes
you and
your kids smarter). In addition, if they are fed grass, they are much less likely to get mad cow disease.
Grass fed cows also use much less oil – which goes into the industrial fertilizer, pesticides and other parts of growing corn and mixing industrial chemicals for cattle – and so are better for the environment (and reduce the “need” for foreign oil wars). Indeed, grass not only contributes less carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than corn, but may actually be a “carbon sink” for greenhouse gasses –
taking more out than they add.
Stores like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods prominently market grass fed beef.
Ranching cooperatives are popping up. I predict they will grow in popularity, as people learn what’s in their meat.
Backyard chickens are also becoming very popular. You can get chickens and buy or
build a chicken coop for eggs and chicken meat.
Democracy itself is being undermined by publicly funded agencies crawling with conflicts of interest and devoid of scrutiny
'From any single perspective',
Bertrand Russell said, "power always seems to be elsewhere". This article is about one of those elsewheres. It is about the network of unelected committees, boards and commissions, operating below the public radar, through which governments pursue the aims that weren't disclosed in their manifestos. The people they appoint are an index to the interests they serve. To list them is to expose the gulf between what a government claims to be and what it is.
It would be misleading to suggest that the process I'm about to discuss is new. Blair and Brown began the abuses that the coalition government is refining: purging countervailing voices from public bodies and stuffing them with the representatives of business.
But Cameron and his ministers are extending this project to serve what seems to me to be their core aims. These are to marketise and covertly privatise what remains of public provision and to create a welfare state for corporations and the ultra-rich, whose income will be sustained by public contracts and captive markets for essential services.
I'll begin with the government's "reform" of the National Health Service. The body charged with
breaking an integrated, co-ordinated system into warring kingdoms whose commercial interests discourage collaboration is called Monitor. Its role will be to enforce competition, ensuring that "any qualified provider" can enter the NHS.
The current government has made two new appointments to
Monitor's board, including the chair, who is also the body's chief executive. Both were previously senior partners at the consultancy company McKinsey. Of the six members of Monitor's senior management team, two previously worked for McKinsey (including the chief executive) and two at a similar company, KPMG.
As an investigation by Spinwatch, carried in the Mail on Sunday, shows, both board members and executives at Monitor have been lavishly entertained by McKinsey, which, like KPMG, is
picking up fat contracts from NHS reforms. The company, the Mail reports, drew up many of the proposals in the health and social care bill, which were "included in the legislation wholesale". Both
McKinsey and KPMG have been major beneficiaries of previous privatisations or private finance schemes.
Other health agencies seem similarly unbalanced.
MHRA, the medicines and healthcare products regulatory agency, is the body that has been criticised for failing adequately to regulate breast and hip implants, with grim consequences for some patients. While the board contains retired senior executives from AstraZeneca and Merck Sharp & Dohme, it includes no one from a patient group, or any other body representing people whose health could be damaged by its decisions.
The Medical Research Council, which disburses research funds for the preservation of life, is chaired by a man who runs a company specialising in weapons technology.
Sir John Chisholm was the
civil servant in charge of privatising the government's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. While doing so, he bought a ?129,000 stake in the company. The value of this stake rose to ?26m when the new defence firm,
QinetiQ, was floated. This was described as "obscene" by the former defence minister Lord Gilbert and "greed of the highest order" by the agency's former managing director.
The
other council members include executives or directors from Pfizer, Kardia Therapeutics and Microgen Ltd, but no one who makes their primary living working for a medical charity or any other public interest group. It seems to me that the direction of publicly funded medical research is being set by a weird and unbalanced board.
You can see something similar across government. The
Office of Rail Regulation, for instance, is supposed to ensure that the railways are safe, efficient and "meet the needs of passengers and freight customers". Yet its board contains no members from passenger groups, unions or transport campaigns. The government did, however, find room for current or former executives of National Express, BAA, Rolls Royce, National Grid and Thames Water.
Soon after this government took office it set up a
Farming Regulation Task Force. It was chaired by the ex-director general of the National Farmers Union. His deputy was another NFU official. Other members consisted of two more farmers, three corporate executives, onecounty council official and someone from the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, which claims to defend wildlife but gives advice on setting snares and spring traps. There was no one representing groups protecting the environment, landscape or animal welfare.
Its report was titled, with crashing irony, Striking a Balance. It insisted that "government must trust industry". Among its recommendations were that the government should relax the rules on the stocking density of chickens reared for meat, that new pesticides should be approved more quickly, that farmers should be given 24-year water abstraction licences (madness in view of the fluctuating pattern of droughts) and that "industry representatives" should have special, confidential access to the government's draft legislation. The body the government has set up to implement the taskforce's proposals will be chaired by the same man.
This is just a snapshot of the committee-nobbling in which successive governments have engaged. As well as excluding people who represent the wider public interest, David Cameron's government has snuffed out the bodies which might have balanced these one-sided boards, such as the Sustainable Development Commission and the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Its bonfire of the quangos was in fact a bonfire of dissent, as committees which told it what it didn't want to hear were selectively purged.
I am not arguing that there should be no corporate representation on government bodies, but that it should be one strand among many. For every corporate executive on these boards there must be someone who represents an opposing interest; otherwise they become clubs for crony capitalists, feather-bedding their industries, acting against the public good.
The web of unelected bodies functions as a kind of shadow government, drafting and enforcing policies, disbursing money, regulating – or failing to regulate – business, quietly, unobtrusively, without effective public scrutiny or restraint. When it is unbalanced, crawling with conflicts of interest, it makes a nonsense of democracy. This is how governments get what they want, regardless of what the voters might think.
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It is no consolation to the
roughly one out of 600 families who lost their homes in the U.S. but Wall Street made a lot of money slicing and dicing mortgages it knew would implode, while hiding risks. Financial giants, like AIG, are still
buzzing along and neither penalties or new laws will prevent a future crash, say financial analysts, because the risky business models have not really changed.A similar Big Pharma bubble, leavened with risky blockbuster drugs that also blew up, is now bursting. Like Wall Street’s bundled high risk loans, the “tide” created by Big Pharma’s high risk drugs raised many ships during the 2000s from advertising, public relations and medical communication agencies to TV and radio stations, medical journals and doctor/pitchmen who shoveled in its marketing budgets. But now the joy ride is over and Pharma is shedding jobs and settling billions in claims without changing its risky business model, like Wall Street.
In Europe, governments are no longer willing to pay the high prices for drugs that they once did say
published reports
and some countries are drafting laws making drug makers “prove their drugs are effective or risk having them dropped from the coverage list, or covered at a lower rate.” Imagine!
Germany has already saved 1.9 billion euros in 2011 by refusing to pay higher prices for drugs unless they are clearly superior to existing medicines, and Pharma worries that other countries will also get tough and want scientific proof for drug effectiveness instead of marketing and spin. In the U.S. and elsewhere, a drug only needs to be superior to no drug (placebo) to be approved by regulators — yet “new” is conveyed as “better than any drug to date” in advertising. Some clinicians say Haldol, an inexpensive antipsychotic, and lithium, a similar affordable bipolar drug are
better than blockbuster antipyschotics and bipolar drugs that created Pharma’s 2000 bubble.Before the
Vioxx scandal and major settlements over blockbuster drugs like
Zyprexa,
Bextra, Celebrex, Geodon and
Seroquel, being a Pharma rep was probably the next best thing to working on Wall Street. Direct-to-consumer advertising did your pre-sell for you, and all you had to do was show up with your snappy Vytorin tote bag and samples case. Some Pharma reps had their own reception room with ice water, swivel chairs, and laptop ports at medical offices, and most waltzed in to see the doctor right in front of waiting and sick patients. (It didn’t hurt that reps were usually “hotties,” both men or women).
But, by 2011, the bloom had fallen off Pharma reps’ roses. The number of prescribers willing to see most reps fell almost 20 percent, the number refusing to see all reps increased by half, and eight million sales calls were “nearly impossible to complete,” reported
ZS Associates. Blockbuster drugs that were found to be unsafe after their big sales push or even withdrawn altogether, did not help the reps’ credibility with doctors. After the aggressively marketed hormone therapy was linked to high incidences of cancer, stroke and heart attack, Wyeth (now Pfizer)
announced it was eliminating 1,200 jobs and closing its Rouses Point, New York plant where Prempro products were manufactured.
As government and private insurers increasingly say, “You want us to cover what?” about expensive, dangerous drugs that are not even proven effective, Pharma bubble jobs are evaporating. Almost 20,000 jobs have vanished at
AstraZeneca,
Novartis and Pfizer in the last 12 months alone. (AstraZeneca scrapped 21,600 more since 2007). Meanwhile, Pharma is outsourcing more of its operations to poor countries.
Workers and people willing to be trial subjects are both a bargain in poor countries where many can’t understand drug risks or refuse them if they did (and most can’t afford the very drugs they help sell). In January the Argentinian Federation of Health Professionals
accused drug maker GlaxoSmithKline of misleading participants and pressuring poor families into joining a trial for the Synflorix vaccine, which the company says protects against bacterial pneumonia and meningitis, reported CNN. In 2010,
10 deaths occurred during Pfizer and AstraZeneca drug trials at the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre which was ironically built for survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster, reports MSNBC. 3,878 workers perished in Bhopal when chemicals leaked at a
Union Carbide pesticide plant.
Outsourcing drug manufacturing to cheap venues also contributes to Pharma’s cascade of “quality control” problems in which drugs are mislabeled, contaminated or otherwise made dangerous. It is speculated that Johnson & Johnson’s CEO William Weldon “was pushed to retire because of all of the quality issues at McNeil as well as with the company’s hip implant products, which have resulted in a raft of litigation,” reports
FiercePharma.
Like the Wall Street bubble, the Pharma bubble was built on products that industry, but not the public, knew were risky, sold for quick profits. Now regulators are examining some of these “assets” more closely and with disturbing findings. The
FDA now warns that bestselling statin drugs like Lipitor and Crestor, even approved for
children, are linked to memory loss and diabetes associated with. The equally well selling proton pump inhibitors like Nexium and Prilosec for acid reflux disease (GERD) are now believed to increase the risk of
bone fractures by 30 percent.
In March, the FDA even rejected a Merck drug that combines the active drug in Lipitor with the active drug in Zetia and Vytorin, a drug that
Forbes
calls Son of Vytorin. Vytorin (the father) was advertised to treat both food and family “sources of cholesterol” until results from a study that Merck and Schering-Plough appeared to withhold from regulators showed the drug had no effect on the buildup of plaque in the arteries (believed to correlate with heart attack and stroke). There was such a gap between marketing and science, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)
asked the General Accounting Office to investigate why the FDA was approving “drugs that appear to have little to no effect in protecting lives and increasing health.”
Yet even as clouds develop over Pharma’s top-selling drugs, some say the FDA is too hard on new drugs, not too easy. “
The FDA is impeding useful innovations in the U.S.,” says former FDA deputy commissioner Scott Gottlieb in the a
Wall Street Journal
oped and lagging behind other countries. Former FDA commissioner Andrew Von Eschenbach, also writing in the WSJ, agrees. The FDA should improve U.S. drug competitiveness by
allowing drugs “to be approved based on safety, with efficacy to be proven in later trials,” while the public is already taking the drugs. Isn’t that what’s happening now?
“Experts are calling for controversial metal-on-metal hip implants to be banned,” according to The Guardian. The newspaper said that research has found “unequivocal evidence” of high failure rates of these hip implants, particularly among women.
In recent months there has great deal of scrutiny about the safety of some types of metal-on-metal hip replacements, with concerns they wear out much faster than implants featuring plastic and ceramic parts. To examine the issue researchers working on behalf of the National Joint Registry in England and Wales analysed data on 402,051 hip surgeries performed using implants attached to the thigh bone by a metal stem, including 31,171 metal-on-metal implants. Researchers found that these had higher failure rates than other types of hip replacement, with an overall five-year failure rate of 6.2%. Those with larger ‘heads’ (the part of the implant fitting into the hip joint socket) had a higher failure rate than those with smaller heads, as did hip implants in women.
This study provides more information on the longer-term performance of metal-on-metal hip replacements, and supports claims that they do not last as long as other types of hip implants.
The use of this type of implant in England and Wales is reported to have dropped dramatically since 2008, and the ongoing concerns seem likely to reduce its use further. Overall, this study supports the recent recommendations by UK health regulators. It states that people with large-headed metal-on-metal implants should be monitored carefully over time to identify whether their implants are wearing down at a faster rate.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Exeter, and the Centre for Hip Surgery at the Wrightington Hospital in Lancashire. It was performed on behalf of the National Joint Registry of England and Wales, which also funded the research.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet.
This story is covered in a balanced way by the Guardian.
What kind of research was this?
In recent months there has been some concern over the use of certain all-metal hip implants, particularly over whether they wear down at a faster rate compared to other types of implants.
Hip implants come in a variety of different sizes and materials, but the debate has centred on large-headed ‘metal-on-metal’ implants. These implants are designed so that both the ball replacing the top of the thigh bone and the artificial socket placed in the pelvis are made from metal.
This research was a registry study looking at data on hip implants collected in the National Joint Registry of England and Wales, which records all hip and knee replacement surgeries. This includes the first operation to install the implant, and any revision operations carried out to replace or remove part of the original implant.
Just like with natural bone, metal hip implants experience wear and tear and can eventually deteriorate. This means any implant may eventually need revision surgery, although analysing the revision rate gives an estimate of how often and how soon implants fail early. While the revision rate is an important indicator of the outcomes of hip replacement, it should be noted that not all hip implants that do not function well or cause pain will be replaced.
The researchers say that due to their resistance to wear, large diameter metal-on-metal hip stemmed implants have become popular. ‘Large diameter’ refers to the size of the ‘head’ part of the implant that sits in the hip socket section of the implant. Stemmed means the head is attached to an elongated stem that sits inside the top of the high bone and holds the head in place.
The study’s authors note that there have been concerns about the high failure rate of one particular brand of metal-on-metal hip stemmed implant called ASR, which was withdrawn from use in 2010. Given this withdrawal and fresh concerns about other types of metal-on-metal implants, the researchers aimed to look at whether general metal-on-metal hip stemmed implants fail any more regularly than other implants (ceramic-on-ceramic or metal-on-polythene). They also looked at whether large diameter implants lasted any longer than implants with smaller diameter heads.
This type of registry analysis is useful for monitoring the long-term performance of devices once they are in use. It can help to identify any problems that are occurring with the implants. Ideally, data on the comparative performance of different implants would come from randomised controlled trials, but the researchers report that there are few such studies available.
What did the research involve?
The researchers looked at 402,051 first total-hip replacements using a stemmed implant carried out in England and Wales between April 2003 and September 2011. They then identified any revision operations carried out to these hip implants to allow them to determine how long it took before a revision operation was needed for each type.
The researchers did not include data on ASR implants in their analysis, because they are already known to have much higher revision rates than other brands and have already been withdrawn from the market. The researchers also only included data on hip replacements that had sufficient data recorded to allow them to identify which operations were revisions of which earlier hip replacements. This allowed them to analyse data on 82% of all first total-hip replacements using a stemmed implant performed in the study period.
The researchers tried to make sure the hip implant operations being compared were as similar as possible. For example, they only included those where the implants were not ‘cemented’ in, and where the operation was being performed in ‘typical’ patients.
Typical patients were defined as those whose hip replacement was needed due to osteoarthritis only, and who were generally healthy or with only mild illness at the time of primary surgery as defined using a recognised measure of pre-operative health. The researchers also took into account the age of the patient, and looked at men and women separately.
What were the basic results?
The researchers found that metal-on-metal hip implants were used in 8% of the 402,051 first total hip replacements using a stemmed implant. This equated to 31,171 replacements. Use of these types of implants peaked around 2008 but then reduced sharply after this.
Overall, metal-on-metal implants required revision due to failure more quickly than other implants, with a 6.2% needing revision within five years of implantation. The size of the head of the metal on metal implant affected the failure rate in men and women, with larger heads failing earlier. Overall, each 1mm increase in head size increased the risk of revision over time by about 2% (hazard ratio [HR] 1.020 in men, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.004 to 1.037; HR in women 1.019, 95% CI 1.001 to 1.038).
In men aged 60 years, the five-year revision rate was 3.2% for 28mm head metal-on-metal implants, and 5.1% for 52mm head implants. In younger women, the five-year revision rate was 6.1% for 46mm head metal-on-metal implants, compared with 1.6% for 28mm head metal-on-polyethylene implants.
Revision rates for metal-on-metal implants were higher for women than men, even with implants with the same head size. For example, a 36mm head metal-on-metal implant in women aged 60 had a five-year revision rate of 5.1% compared to 3.7% among men of the same age and implant head size.
However, larger head sizes were more durable for ceramic-on-ceramic hip implants. In men aged 60 years, the five-year revision rate was 3.3% with 28mm head ceramic-on-ceramic implants, and 2.0% with 40mm head ceramic-on-ceramic implants.
Age also had an effect on implant survival for women, with younger women receiving hip implants more likely to have revisions.
The most common reasons for revisions were loosening and pain, and these were more common in people who had metal-on-metal implants.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers concluded that metal-on-metal stemmed hip implants have a higher failure rate than other options, and should no longer be implanted. They say that all patients with these types of implants should be carefully monitored, particularly young women whose hip implants have large diameter heads. They say that their findings support the continued use of large diameter ceramic-on-ceramic bearings as they seem to perform well.
Conclusion
Metal-on-metal hip implants have been under intense scrutiny in recent months, and this analysis provides useful data on how often they require revision and how they compare to implants made of other materials. Overall, this research indicates that metal-on-metal hip implants have higher revision rates (rates of replacement) than other types of hip implants in England and Wales.
As with all such studies, there is the possibility that factors other than the implant type differed between the groups being compared, and that these other factors may influence the results. The researchers tried to minimise the risk of this by:
- comparing similar operations in similar patients
- looking at men and women separately
- looking at the effect of age and implant head size
However, there are other factors such as activity levels that could still be having an effect.
As the data used in this study came from a surgical registry, not a lot of information was available about factors such as body mass index (BMI) or activity levels. These two factors could potentially influence the stress implants are placed under and therefore the wear that they display. The researchers say that in their opinion there is no obvious reason to suppose that these factors would vary to a large extent between people receiving the different large head metal and ceramic hip implants.
Due to these inherent limitations with observational research it is difficult to conclude that the differences seen are definitely due to the implants alone. The advantage of this registry data is that a large number of people were assessed. Furthermore, this is not a selected subsample of people receiving hip implants but all patients from different surgeons and using different implants. The researchers say that these strengths and the consistency of their findings support the suggestion that these findings do represent the true effects of the implant types.
Overall, these findings do seem to suggest that metal-on-metal hips do require revisions more frequently than other types of hip implants. This study reports that since 2008 there has been a dramatic reduction in the use of metal-on-metal hip implants in England and Wales. Overall it found that most hip replacements analysed in the study period (92% between April 2003 and September 2011) did not use metal-on-metal implants. It seems likely that based on this study their use may decline further. It is important to bear in mind that the overall five-year revision rates with metal-on-metal hips is 6.2%, so the majority of these implants have not needed revision in this time. This study supports the authors’ suggestion and MHRA recommendation that people with these implants should be monitored carefully over time, to identify when such revisions might be required.
Analysis by Bazian
Links To The Headlines
Metal-on-metal hip replacements 'high failure rate'. BBC News, March 13 2012
Ban metal-on-metal hip replacements, experts urge. The Guardian, March 13 2012
ALL metal hip joints 'must be banned': Failure rate 'four times higher than other types'. Daily Mail, March 13 2012
Links To Science
Smith AJ, Dieppe P, Vernon K et al. Failure rates of stemmed metal-on-metal hip replacements: analysis of data from the National Joint Registry of England and Wales. The Lancet, Early Online Publication March 13 2012
A team of researchers at Duke University has determined the structure of a key molecule that can carry chemotherapy and anti-viral drugs into cells, which could help to create more effective drugs with fewer effects to healthy tissue.
"Knowing the structure and properties of the transporter molecule may be the key to changing the way that some chemotherapies, for example, could work in the body to prevent tumor growth," said senior author
Seok-Yong Lee, PhD, assistant professor of biochemistry at Duke.
The article was published in
Nature online on March 11.
The transporter molecule, called a concentrative nucleoside transporter, works by moving nucleosides, the building blocks of DNA and RNA, from the outside to the inside of cells. It also transports nucleoside-like chemo drugs through cell membranes.
Once inside the cells, the nucleoside-like drugs are modified into nucleotides that are incorporated into DNA in ways that prevent tumor cells from dividing and functioning.
"We discovered the structure of the transporter molecule, and now we believe it is possible to improve nucleoside drugs to be better recognized by a particular form of the transporter molecule that resides in certain types of tissue," Lee said. "Now we know the transporter molecule has three forms, which recognize different drugs and reside in different tissues."
The team determined the chemical and physical principles a transporter molecule uses to recognize the nucleosides, "so if you can improve the interactions between the transporter and the drug, you won't need as much of the drug to get it into the tumor cells efficiently," Lee said. "Knowing the shape of the transporters will let scientists design drugs that are recognized well by this transporter."
Because the drugs enter healthy cells as well as tumor cells, giving a lower dose of drug that targets tumor tissue would be the best scenario, said Lee, who is also a member of the
Duke Ion Channel Research Unit. "Healthy cells don't divide as often as tumor cells, so lowering the amount of drug given overall would be an effective approach to killing tumors while protecting patients."
The researchers studied transporter molecules from
Vibrio cholera
, a comma-shaped bacterium. The bacterial transporter serves as a good model system for studying human transporters because they share similar amino acid sequences. They found that both the human and bacterial transporter use a sodium gradient to import nucleosides and drugs into the cells.
The next step will be to try to understand which features of the transporter confer the ability to recognize certain chemo drugs and ultimately to design drugs that can easily enter the cells.
This work won a prize for Dr. Lee, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences Award, which he will receive at the Biophysical Society meeting in February.
The work was funded by the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Klingenstein Fund, the Mallinckrodt Foundation, the Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar Research Award from the March of Dimes Foundation, and the NIH Director's New Innovator Award, in addition to start-up funds from the Duke University Medical Center.
Other authors include Zachary Lee Johnson and Cheom-Gil Cheong also of the Department of Biochemistry and the Ion Channel Research Unit.
Botox injections may help women with urinary incontinence, The Daily Telegraph has today reported. The newspaper said that injecting the muscle-freezing toxin into the wall of the bladder can have a long-lasting impact on overactive bladder syndrome, a major cause of incontinence.
The newspaper’s story is based on a UK medical trial that investigated whether the paralysing properties of botox were effective at reducing the symptoms such as frequently using the toilet, feeling an urgent need to urinate, and leakage in patients with overactive bladder syndrome.
The trial featured 240 women who had not responded to medical treatments for overactive balder syndrome. The researchers found that women who received the botox injection experienced these symptoms significantly less frequently than women who received a dummy injection of saltwater. However, women given botox were more likely to get urinary tract infections.
The results of the study indicate that botox may be effective in treating a common and upsetting health condition. However, if it does get adopted into use in this way there are several other treatment options (including lifestyle measures, bladder training exercises and medication that would be considered first. Botox may be considered as an option only if these treatments fail, and the benefits would have to be considered in relation to its potential harms.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from the University of Leicester and was funded by the Moulton Charitable Trust and the women’s health charity Wellbeing of Women.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal European Urology.
The Telegraph covered this study appropriately, covering the study size and design, as well as the treatment benefits and harms.
What kind of research was this?
While it is hard to gauge the true scale of the problem, research suggests that around 13% of women in the UK may have some form of urinary incontinence. Although many conditions and factors can cause urinary incontinence, one major cause is overactive bladder syndrome. The condition is marked by uncontrolled contraction of the bladder that results in an urgent need to pass urine. While this can lead women to need the toilet frequently, some also experience a form of leakage called urge incontinence.
An overactive bladder can be a cause of urge incontinence, which is when urine leaks at the same time or just after you feel an intense urge to pass urine. Urge incontinence differs from stress incontinence, where the pelvic floor muscles are too weak to prevent urination. This causes urine to leak when your bladder is placed under pressure from actions such as coughing or laughing.
This was a placebo-controlled randomised controlled trial that examined the effectiveness and safety of using botulinum toxin (botox) as a treatment for overactive bladder syndrome. A randomised controlled trial is the best way to measure the effectiveness of a treatment, as the randomisation process helps to ensure that any patient characteristics that may influence the outcome have an equal chance of appearing in either treatment group. This allows researchers to be confident that any observed effect is due to the treatment under study.
What did the research involve?
The researchers enrolled 240 women with bladder muscle overactivity, or overactive bladder syndrome, that had not responded to previous treatment. The women were randomly allocated injections of either Botulinum toxin A (botox) or placebo (saltwater) into the wall of the bladder. Women with another common type of incontinence, stress incontinence, were not included in the study.
The participants kept a diary over three days, recording the number of times they:
- emptied their bladder
- felt an urgent need to empty their bladder
- experienced an unintentional passing of urine (or leakage)
The women also completed a questionnaire that assessed their quality of life, as overactive bladder syndrome often has a significant negative impact on patient quality of life.
The researchers conducted follow-up sessions with the women on average at six weeks, three months and six months after treatment. They assessed differences in the frequency of the above three symptoms between the two treatment groups. They also compared quality of life scores, treatment complications and time until troubling symptoms returned between the two groups.
The researchers used appropriate statistical methods to assess differences in frequency of symptoms between the two groups.
What were the basic results?
There were 122 women allocated to the botox treatment group and 118 women allocated to the placebo group.
The researchers compared the outcomes in the botox and placebo groups at the six-month follow-up. They found that in any 24-hour period women in the botox group:
- emptied their bladders less often: 8.33 times versus 9.67 times, a difference of 1.34 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.00 to 2.33, p=0.0001)
- experienced fewer leakage episodes: 1.67 versus 6.00, a difference of 4.33 episodes (95% CI 3.33 to 5.67, p
<0.0001) - experienced fewer episodes of urgency to urinate: 3.83 versus 6.33, a difference of 2.50 episodes (95% CI 1.33 to 3.33, p
<0.0001)
Almost a one-third of women in the botox group (31.3%) developed bladder control (or continence) following their treatment, compared to 12.0% in the placebo group (Odds Ratio [OR] 3.12, 95% CI 1.49 to 6.52, p=0.002).
However, urinary tract infection was reported at least once during six months by a one-third of women in the botox treatment group, compared to 10% in the placebo group (OR 3.68, 95% CI 1.72 to 8.25, p=0.0003).
Those given botox also reported greater difficulty emptying their bladders, which required self-catheterisation to remove their urine: 16% of the botox group compared to 4% of the placebo group (OR 4.87, 95% CI 1.52 to 20.33, p=0.003).
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers concluded that injections of botulinum toxin A into the bladder wall is an effective and safe treatment for overactive bladder syndrome in women who have not responded to previous treatment.
Conclusion
Urinary incontinence can be a distressing and problematic condition, and although we cannot be sure of the number of people affected, research suggests it is surprisingly common.
While there is a range of potential treatments and ways to manage urinary incontinence (including medication, bladder training, lifestyle changes and surgery) not all people respond to them, and they can have problems. This randomised controlled trial provided good evidence that botox injections may be a useful treatment option for women with incontinence due to overactive bladder syndrome that has proven difficult to treat with other methods.
The researchers say that the relief of symptoms reported by the participants was considerably better than those who used oral anticholinergic drugs. These drugs act on the nerve supply to the bladder and are the standard medical treatment used for this condition. They add that other randomised controlled trials have reported similar effects.
The researchers say that since they designed their trial, other studies have published results that support using a lower recommended dose of botox for this type of treatment. Therefore, it is unclear if the same results would be found at this reduced dose. They also say that their study recruited participants with severe cases of overactive bladder syndrome, and that it is unclear if the treatment would be as effective in less severe cases.
It is important to note that the study participants did not have stress incontinence, which is a common cause of urinary incontinence. Therefore, the results of this study cannot be generalised to all women with symptoms of overactive bladder or incontinence, but can only be applied to those with diagnosed overactive bladder syndrome (or detrusor overactivity).
Botox is not routinely used by the NHS in this way, but if it were then it would probably be considered as an option only among women who have required specialist referral for their condition. This would be given after they had tried other treatment options first, which may include lifestyle measures and bladder training exercises in addition to oral medications. If these treatments fail, the benefits of botox would have to be considered in relation to its potential harms.
Links To The Headlines
Botox 'stops the call of the bathroom'. The Daily Telegraph, March 12 2012
Links To Science
Tincello DG, Kenyon S, Abrams KR et al. Botulinum Toxin A Versus Placebo for Refractory Detrusor Overactivity in Women: A Randomised Blinded Placebo-Controlled Trial of 240 Women (the RELAX Study). European Eurology, Published online 5 January 2012
"The men in our lives, including members of the General Assembly, generously devote time to fundamental female reproductive issues—the least we can do is return the favor," Senator Turner said. "It is crucial that we take the appropriate steps to shelter vulnerable men from the potential side effects of these drugs.Sen. Turner isn't the only legislator to introduce a "Viagra bill" or amendments in response to what mostly male legislators have been proposing around the nation."When a man makes a crucial decision about his health and his body, he should be fully aware of the alternative options and the lifetime repercussions of that decision," Senator Turner said today. Men will be more easily guided through the process of obtaining treatment for impotence so they can better understand and more effectively address their condition.
In Illinois, for instance, state Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D) introduced an amendment to a bill requiring ultrasounds before a woman can get an abortion that would require men to watch an explicit video about the side-effects of erectile dysfunction drugs. And, Missouri state Rep. Stacey Newman (D) introduced a bill that would allow a man to obtain a vasectomy only when not doing so could cause him serious injury or death.
Some people may take these proposals as jokes. But the problem they spotlight, the war on women's reproductive rights and privacy, isn't funny at all.
•••
Please sign a petition in support of Turner's, Newman's and Cassidy's proposed legislation here.
UGC & DST sponsored national seminar on
Role of Microbes in Health,
Agriculture
and Industry
March 26-27, 2012
Oranized by
Department of
Biotechnology
Alagappa University, Karaikudi
Department of Biotechnology , Alagappa University, Karaikudi is organizing a national seminar on Role of Microbes in Health, Agriculture and Industry
Thrust area of seminar :
1. General
Microbiology
2. Molecular
Microbiology
3. Medical
Microbiology
4. Microbial Pathogenesis
5. Agricultural
Microbiology
6. Host Pathogen Interaction
7. Industrial
Microbiology
8. Microbial
Biotechnology
9. Environmental
Microbiology
10.Antimicrobials
Call for Abstracts :
Original research papers in the thrust areas mentioned are invited for presentation as posters during the seminar. You are requested to submit an abstract (not exceeding 200 words) through Email to
rmhai2012@gmail.com on or before 18.03.12. Abstract should contain a title, list of authors clearly indicating the presenting and corresponding author and the email address of the corresponding author.
Registration Fee :
1. Students / Research Scholars : Rs 500/-
2. Academicians / Scientsts : Rs 1000/-
3. Students / Research Scholars (Spot Regstration) : Rs 750/-
4. Academicians / Scientists (Spot Regstration) : Rs 1500/-
DD has to be drawn in favour of "RMHAI-2012" payable at "Karaikudi" and the original DD has to reach us by 23.03.12
Important Dates :
- Registration opens on : 07.03.12
- Abstract Submission Deadline : 18.03.12
- Abstract Acceptance Notification : 19.03.12
- Registration Deadline : 22.03.12
Contact Details :
Dr S. Karutha Pandian
Professor & Head
Department of
Biotechnology
Alagappa University
Karaikui-630003, TN
Email :
rmhai2012@gmail.com
Phone : +91-4565225215
Deadline : 22.03.12
As part of our project to create a new vision for London, we're crowdsourcing views on making the capital clean and green
The ideal of a clean, green sustainable city is one to which every serious mayoral candidate subscribes. That's a measure of how important the environmental agenda has become in the capital, helped by Ken Livingstone placing it at the centre of his mayoral terms, with the Green party, in the form of its London Assembly members, as allies. Liberal Democrat members too put the environment high on their agenda. Conservative mayor Boris Johnson, a former climate change sceptic, has recognised his continuing need for some green credentials. Last week he welcomed the government's decision to base the financial transactions wing of its new green investment bank in the capital.
But any appearance of a vast, verdant consensus conceals a very wide range of shades. The issues too are hugely varied, with some likely to be more prominent than others as the election campaign intensifies. London's contribution to combating climate change has slipped down the pecking order as a campaign theme compared with 2008, though Johnson's 2008 commitment to cutting London's carbon emissions by 60% by 2025 is an interesting example of continuity between the Livingstone and Johnson administrations. This decline reflects the times, with bread-and-butter cost of living issues dominating debate. Should the manifesto of our model mayor turn that decline around?
At the other end of the scale is a cluster of what some serious environmentalists call the "soft" green issues but have everyday resonance for Londoners, as they do for urban-dwellers everywhere: stuff like trees, parks, gardens and waterways. Boris Johnson's nine-point plan for London includes restoring green space and planting 20,000 trees to add to what he claims he's already achieved. However, a London Assembly report expressed concern about future funding and what might be happening at borough level.
Strong feelings are aroused by too much commercial and antisocial use of London's many precious public parks. Shouldn't these be places of tranquillity? Last year the mayor was given a measure of control over the capital's eight royal parks, promising that Londoners' views on their use would be better taken into account. What advice what you give the Royal Parks board? Boris Johnson has expressed enthusiasm for taking control of the capital's network of waterways. Good idea? With the capital's numbers of boat-dwellers increasing, what, if anything, should be done to change how those waterways are run?
Other parts of the environmental agenda overlap substantially with transport issues. We dealt with road management and congestion last week, but don't let that stop you from addressing the subject again here. The same goes for encouraging cycling and walking, though bear in mind that these two travel modes will have the whole of the coming Thursday dedicated to them.
Of central interest here, though, is the general issue of air pollution, which could well have some campaign traction. Johnson has attracted fierce criticism from political opponents and the Campaign for Clean Air in London for slow progress in encouraging electric vehicle use and diesel-electric hybrid buses, and for delaying and fudging measures to bring London's air quality up to the required EU standards.
His defence on the latter has been that some of the measures required would damage London's economy, especially small businesses requiring vans, when the capital was battling the recession. How should a model mayor square this circle? A bolder idea for fixing our air quality has come from London Lib Dems, who've proposed a central London clean air zone, which the most polluting vehicles would be excluded from.
There are many other environmental issues our model mayor needs to take a stance on, from local food production, which even some of his opponents think Boris Johnson has had a small but significant success in, to waste management, to home insulation, to planning for a second Thames barrier against floods. Please raise any of these topics and others that I am sure to have forgotten. As we enter the second week of our manifesto project, I'm greedier than ever for your ideas.
bromley suggests:
Are we Londoners more remote from our waste other? It is shipped to the home counties and beyond for landfill. Are homeowners more likely to recycle than non-homeowners? London has a much lower rate of owner-occupation than average due to the stupidly high prices.
This also brings me onto insulation. Private rented accomodation accounts for 25% of housing in London. This needs to be made more energy efficient. Private renters have very little security of tenure and move much more frequently than those in social housing or home owners. Because of this they are less invested in the upkeep of their properties. Neither are the landlords who don't get a return on investment from insulation - unless they're selling up. I'm loathe to subsidise landlords to get this done so regulation is the only option.
DaveHill responds:
Hello Bromley. Boris's defence has been that some transport policies that would improve air quality have had to be diluted or delayed because otherwise they'd have damaged London's economy. His putting back phase 3 of the LEZ was a good example of this. I completely agree with you that improving air quality should be a huge priority. The challenge, I think, is to win the argument that greening our transport systems would also help London's economy. For example, reducing road traffic would mean time and money saved because of fewer traffic jams and a healthier environment would make London a more attractive place to visit and invest in.
AnUncivilServant suggests:
I've mentioned this in other comments I've made but I think there needs to be a more joined up approach to parks and public spaces in London. The transfer of the Royal Parks Agency to the GLA Group provides an opportunity to make things better by providing a vehicle for a London wide parks agency which experts in this area such as Tony Leach of the London Parks & Green Spaces Forum have long called for.
I'd like to see this new agency mandated to run parks across the whole of the capital including those which are currently neglected such as Crystal Palace Park and those parks which have a pan-London significance (Crystal Palace again, Hyde Park, Lea Valley Regional Park, the Olympic Park). It would be funded by the precept and central government grant (the RPA is currently funded by DCMS), which would allow all Londoners to contribute to the cost but also reap the benefits. This new organisation would also take responsibility for major public spaces like Trafalgar and Parliament Squares as well. Finally, I would also nominate Tony Leach as it's first CEO.
Similarly, the Port of London Authority provides a vehicle for establishing Mayoral control over the water ways (posibly by merging it with TfL), which I think would be a good thing not least because London doesn't exploit the potential of its waterways to move people and goods as much as it could. It would be interesting to see how effectively Londo's waterways could be used to reduce the number of polluting and cyclist killing HGVs on the road.
On air pollution the main issue is to reduce traffic and I think the best way of doing this is road pricing, pure and simple. The WEZ should go back in place and we should pedestrianise more of central London (e.g. Parliament Square should stop being treated like a roundabout).
Domestic energy efficiency also needs to be tackled as it is energy efficiency as much as finding new sources of power generation which will save this planet (if it isn't too late). So, I'd want the Mayor to use the funds at his disposal (JESSICA and other financing tools) to do more to put energy saving light bulbs, insulation etc into people's homes. These programmes were initiated under Ken but then scaled back by Boris and the money channeled into vanity projects.
DaveHill responds:
Hello and thank you for all those thoughts. Readers might like to follow links to the London Parks & Green Spaces Forum and Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas. Just wondering if the Bromley would resist or welcome Crystal Palace park being taken off its hands. And how would the dinosaurs react?
Bluecloud suggests:
I constantly highlight London's waterways because they are vital to a number of policy areas in London, such as open spaces (the river Thames IS London's biggest open space), as well as important transport arteries and many other functions besides.
For any mayor, championing the
Blue Ribbon Network policies in the London Plan is the litmus test if they are serious about sustainability in London.
So far London has done nothing much for the river Thames and its tributaries and it's time it did. The Thames remains an open sewer when the floods come. Only the elite get to live alongside it, often in luxury flats, some of which remain empty objects of speculative investors.
We need to highlight the role of the river for freight and passenger transport and open it up to recreation, assuming we are able to keep it as clean as it deserves to be.
DaveHill responds:
Thanks for this. As you probably know there's been a new London Plan in effect since last year. I'd be interested to know if the Blue Ribbon Network features more or less strongly than before.
Existangst suggests:
There are thousands of empty properties (residential, shops, offices) and derelict sites in London.
No more new developments until all of these have been brought back into use.
There should be a total ban on building in gardens. (other than a shed).
DaveHill responds:
Hi. Yes, empty homes in London are a big issue and there are several angles on it - as in, why are there so many - as set out here. The one that gets me narked is smart flats bought by investors than then stand empty or are used just for occasional visits, though how you stop that is difficult. Boris produced some proposals in 2010 for bringing neglected homes back in to use, though I don't know how effective they have been. Will investigate.
AndyLucia suggests:
Dave, how about turning that on it's head? I'm sure a lot of people don't bother recycling because it is too much effort; as Pagey points out, we've got all of these extra bins and on top of that there seems to be little consistency as to what can be recycled and what can't. So let's get radical, let us bring the refuse collection back in house and let them employ extra people to sort at their end of the process. That way the maximum amount will be correctly recycled (as opposed to a lot of it going to landfill because people can't be bothered) and some jobs will have been created into the bargain.
DaveHill responds:
OK, thanks for that idea. I'd like to see an economic model of it. Don't think I'll be applying for one of those new jobs!
Nestled within the results of a new joint lifestyle survey conducted by Yahoo! Finance and Fitness magazine is an interesting little NBA nugget. Asked to identify people who make way more money than they deserve, nearly a quarter of survey respondents picked LeBron James.
In addition to questions about monthly finances, planned uses for tax refunds, spending preferences and how money impacts relationships, 2,000 Americans were asked, "Who do you think makes way more money than she/he deserves to?" The most popular choice was mom-and-wife-to-be Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi of "Jersey Shore" fame, picked by 51 percent of those surveyed. She was followed closely by Kim Kardashian (45 percent), with whom we are all very familiar.
There's a big gap after the two reality stars — the third-most popular answer didn't get even a quarter of respondents' votes — but James is No. 3 on the list. Twenty-four percent of the 2,000 people surveyed said the Miami Heat superstar and two-time league Most Valuable Player gets paid more money than he deserves.
The view on James was pretty consistent across age groups, with 24 percent of respondents in both the 18-34 and 35-54 demographics calling him overpaid, and 25 percent of participants 55 and older agreeing. The only real differential came in the gender split — 27 percent of men said they think LeBron is overpaid, compared to 21 percent of women. (The data wasn't broken down along racial/ethnic lines; a Y! consumer communications spokesperson told me that only age and gender get analyzed in these surveys.)
The results make sense in real-world terms, of course — most people would likely argue that nobody "deserves" to make $16 million a year to do anything, let alone play a sport as a job. That, of course, to some degree trivializes not only the incredible amount of work that NBA players do, but also the value of the natural talent they must have to reach and remain at the highest level of their chosen profession, but still, it makes sense.
It also shows just how large a chasm exists between the "real world" and the world of the NBA. Because in the latter, if anything, LeBron James is underpaid.
For the record, James, 27, is making just over $16 million to play during the 2011-12 season, the second year of the six-year, $109.8 million contract he signed with the Cleveland Cavaliers before being traded to the Heat in July 2010. He's slated to make $17.55 million next year, just under $19.1 million in 2013-14, $20.6 million in 2014-15 and $22.1 million in the final year of the deal, according to the ShamSports.com salary database.
Heading into this season, James had earned $76.5 million in NBA salary; factoring in his myriad endorsement deals and holdings, some estimates peg his net worth at somewhere between $100 million and $120 million.
The $16,022,500 that James is being paid by the Miami Heat this year puts him in a tie with teammate Chris Bosh for the 16th-highest salary in the NBA, according to HoopsHype's salary listings. He makes less than Kobe Bryant, Rashard Lewis, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Gilbert Arenas, Dirk Nowitzki, Pau Gasol, Carmelo Anthony, Amar'e Stoudemire, Joe Johnson, Dwight Howard, Elton Brand, Deron Williams, Chris Paul and Kevin Durant.
Some of those names are obvious outlier-laughers; others are legitimate, world-shaking stars. But even if you don't think James "deserves" to make more than all 15 of those players — if, say, you favor Paul's contributions from the point over LeBron's contributions from the wing, as Wins Produced often tends to — that metric still suggested James would be worth roughly $27 million more than the $16 million he's making in a league unfettered by salary structures and rules about how much players could make.
And that was back in 2010 — if you check the numbers, you see that this year James is performing at an even higher level than he did back then, producing at a level of efficiency that, if sustained, would rank as arguably the greatest regular season in NBA history. Even if you don't buy the numbers, just watch LeBron this year — the range of defensive assignments he takes on, the responsibility he has for keying Erik Spoelstra's high-octane attack on both sides of the ball, the bad shots he's taken out of his game, the increased emphasis on post work, and on, and on. He's been the best player on the floor all regular-season long, and frankly, it hasn't been close.
Those two words — "regular season" — will probably present a sticking point for a lot of fans. OK, fair enough — if you think LeBron's overpaid because he hasn't won a title yet, you're probably going to think that no matter what he does (averaging 40-12-9 a night, hitting 80 percent of his shots, not committing another turnover for the next calendar year, whatever) until he wins one. But there are a lot of guys in the league making more money for a lot less work than James, and if you think there aren't 29 general managers in the league who, given a blank checkbook and a wide-open market, wouldn't fall all over themselves to pay LeBron James more than any one of them, you're kidding yourself.
Fine print: Conducted online in partnership with Ipsos MediaCT in November 2011, the Yahoo! Finance Financially Fit survey asked 2,000 Americans "representative of the U.S. online population" between the ages of 18 and 64 an array of questions related to their spending and saving habits, according to a statement. The results appear in the April 2012 issue of Fitness, which hit newsstands Tuesday, as well as online at the Yahoo! Finance and Fitness Online websites.
The government in India has granted the rights to an indigenous pharmaceutical group to manufacture a generic version of the cancer treatment drug Nexavar.
For the first time, an Indian drugs firm has been approved to produce a medication under licence when the original's still patent-covered.
As a result of the agreement, the firm - Natco Pharma - is obliged to forward six per cent in royalties back to Bayer, which presently markets Nexavar alongside Onyx Pharmaceuticals.
Bayer, meanwhile - according to reports - isn't best pleased with the Indian government's move. "We are disappointed about this decision", company representative Sabrina Cusimano stated in comments made to the Associated Press. "We will see if we can further defend our intellectual property rights in India".
Nexavar Cancer Drug
Nexavar is the market name for sorafenib, an orally-taken medication now approved to treat two types of cancer - advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer) and advanced renal cell carcinoma (kidney cancer).
The kidney cancer approval came first, in 2005, when the US FDA declared its satisfaction with the product. It did the same for the drug as a liver cancer treatment two years later and, with clinical trials now in progress, thyroid cancer could be the next condition added to this approved treatment list.
Controversially, the drug's not available as a UK liver cancer treatment, after being rejected - on grounds of cost - by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in November 2009.
Natco Generic Nexavar Approval
The Natco generic Nexavar approval decision will see the production of drug copies priced at the equivalent of £112 for a box of 120: less than £1.00 each. This is dramatically cheaper than the original drug, with the same quantity presently priced at over 30 times that cost.
The Indian pharmaceutical firm believes that the drug's availability is key to the treatment of close to 9,000 cancer patients in India.
"This is a victory for Indian patients and for India's generic manufacturers, which are under attack", Natco Pharma's General Manager, Madineedi Adinarayana, stated according to the BBC, adding: "many more such cases will follow."
Category: Health News
Created: 3/9/2012 4:06:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 3/12/2012
Logic seems to dictate that the New Orleans Hornets should do
something
before Thursday afternoon's NBA trade deadline — the team isn't playing for anything this year and has to go about the business of planting roots for the future. The $64,000 question, though: What exactly
should
GM Dell Demps do?
More to the point: What can the Hornets front office do, with the sale of the team — perhaps to a California-based ownership group that includes former NBA coach and general manager Mike Dunleavy — reportedly close? Is the deadline about stockpiling assets or clearing up the books as best Demps can?
A season that was likely going to be lost anyway following December's Chris Paul fiasco has been totally doomed by injuries and apocalyptic offense, as a crawl-it-up Hornets squad that's been without Eric Gordon for 40 games, Carl Landry for 18 and Emeka Okafor for 15 has averaged less than one point per possession this season. The only team worse at putting the ball in the hole? The Charlotte Bobcats, who beat the Hornets in New Orleans on Monday night in a ghastly affair.
Despite game work from the likes of point guard Jarrett Jack, 26-year-old Mexican rookie Gustavo Ayon and head coach Monty Williams, the Hornets have struggled to the league's third-worst record through 42 games, and look like a sound bet to stay in the Western Conference's cellar for the duration of the 2011-12 campaign, casting their eyes skyward with a "wait 'til next year" gaze all the while. But what about next year?
Demps aimed to lock up Gordon, the centerpiece of the Paul trade and one of the precious few viable young scoring options at off-guard in today's NBA, with a four-year deal back in January. But the combination of the Hornets' stewards in the league office not approving a max deal for Gordon and the Indiana University product reportedly wanting to see if some other team would max him out led him to
eschew an extension in favor of pursuing restricted free agency this offseason.
That could be a good thing for New Orleans in the long run, but it also puts the Hornets in a position where just about nothing is certain — a look at the Hornets' roster reveals relatively few assets worth hanging onto for the long term.
Looking into the future, New Orleans has four players on rookie deals — Ayon, Al-Farouq Aminu, Greivis Vasquez and Xavier Henry — who are under the team's control through the 2014-15 season at a total cost of $33,101,728, according to the ShamSports.com salary database. Ayon and Vasquez have both shown this season a capacity to contribute — the former, in particular, could prove to be a massive frontcourt bargain if the efficient work he's doing in the screen-and-roll and on the defensive end hold up.
On the other side of the coin, Aminu has mostly looked worse on both ends of the floor for New Orleans than he did in his rookie year with the Los Angeles Clippers, but he is putting up strong rebound rates for a swingman at age 21, so there may be something salvageable there. Similarly, Henry hasn't looked especially impressive in 22 games since coming over from the Memphis Grizzlies, but both player and team are still very much figuring out who he is after a right knee injury cost him more than half his rookie season and torn ligaments in his right ankle delayed his New Orleans debut until late January. His combination of size, athleticism, the rumor of a 3-point stroke and outings like his recent 19 points in 24 minutes effort against the defending champion Dallas Mavericks make the 20-year-old an intriguing low-cost option for Demps to nurture.
None of those cheap young things look to be world-beaters, though, which is why it would make sense for Demps to jettison as much veteran talent as he can in search of future draft choices. But while several of the Hornets' vets could help contenders on paper, it's difficult to see many teams lining up to, say, offer New Orleans draft picks and young players for the right to pay Trevor Ariza $15 million for the next two years.
The contracts of veterans Landry, Marco Belinelli and Chris Kaman all come off the books after this season, which could make them more appealing to teams looking for rentals, though it's unlikely that the former two would inflame opposing GMs' interest or return much in trade. (A healthy Landry might be a different story, since frontcourt scoring's always in demand, but he's been out for a month with a
PCL strain, although he's reportedly close to return.) While
several teams have expressed interest in Kaman as a frontline contributor on the offensive end, rumors that New Orleans could look to buy the big man out if no deal gets struck by the March 15 deadline may make it hard for Demps to get much of value for him.
As it stands now, New Orleans holds two first-round picks in the 2012 NBA draft — its own, which is likely to carry with it quite a few ping-pong balls, and whichever is "the more favorable" between the first-round selections of the Los Angeles Clippers and Minnesota Timberwolves, a pick that came over in December as part of the Chris Paul trade. With the Paul-led Clippers battling for a top-four slot in the Western Conference, it always seemed like the Wolves' pick was the prize there ... and then Kevin Love became the best power forward alive, Nikola Pekovic became a center that nobody wanted to play against, Ricky Rubio became America's basketball sweetheart and the Wolves became a playoff contender.
Losing Rubio for the season to an ACL tear, however, figures to make it awful tough for Rick Adelman's squad to continue its postseason push, which could give New Orleans two lottery picks in what has frequently been referred to as a deep 2012 draft. The Hornets don't have a second-round pick this summer, though; they traded 2010 and 2012 second-rounders to the Miami Heat for the rights to Marcus Thornton following the '09 draft, and the Heat flipped the 2012 No. 2 to the Cleveland Cavaliers as part of the sign-and-trade package that brought LeBron James to Miami. As a matter of fact, according to the future pick debt chart at RealGM.com, past trades will have New Orleans shelling out second-rounders until 2016.
If Demps can locate a team willing to pay a second-rounder for Landry on the chance that his knee comes back strong enough to provide toughness and scoring down the stretch, he should take it. If he can find one desperate enough for a spot-up 3-point shooter to give up a far-future No. 2 for Belinelli, he should say yes as fast as humanly possible and say three Hail Marys as soon as he gets off the phone.
While Kaman's a significantly more valuable player than Belinelli, and while sources have told SI.com's Sam Amick that New Orleans is considering extending the 29-year-old center's deal, it's hard to imagine the Hornets being able to bring Kaman back at a price he's worth to a team unlikely to be competitive until he's well into his 30s. Unless Kaman's willing to come back at a steep discount — and as a 7-footer who can score in the NBA, why would he be? — it probably makes the most sense for Demps to get whatever draft choices he can for the former Clipper and move on.
Sadly, the most intriguing option for the Hornets might be taken off the table by (what else?) injury. The prospect of Rubio's absence making the Minnesota first-rounder into a lottery pick could open the door to packaging a No. 1 with New Orleans' most onerous contract — the two years and roughly $28 million owed to Okafor, a defensive-minded big who could help any of the myriad contenders that seem to be one frontline rotation piece short — to sweeten the deal.
To be sure, a potential lottery pick would be an awful steep price to pay to send Okafor packing, but doing so would eliminate the last serious financial obligation on Demps' books without totally sacrificing the chance to import an elite talent in the 2012 draft, giving the Hornets' incoming ownership group (which is seriously like five minutes away, the NBA swears — they just called from the car, they're right down the block) as close to a clean start as they'd ever get. It would definitely make business sense; since Okafor figures to have no role on the next competitive iteration of the Hornets, you could argue it would make sense from a roster-building perspective, too.
Okafor's continued absence with a sore left knee, which is apparently undergoing even more tests, likely scuttles that option, though, putting the Hornets back in a holding pattern. Which, of course, is where they've been since George Shinn sold the team in December 2010. That's life over a barrel in the NBA, where for some of the sport's most diehard fans, even the promise of next year always seems out of reach.
Related NBA video on Yahoo! Sports:
Category: Health News
Created: 3/9/2012 4:06:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 3/12/2012
Category: Health News
Created: 3/9/2012 2:06:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 3/12/2012
Category: Health News
Created: 3/12/2012 11:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 3/12/2012
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