President Obama's overall approval rating has climbed to 50 percent, according to a new poll. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.
With the economy showing signs of life, so too are President Obama's re-election hopes, according to a poll released Tuesday
by the New York Times and CBS News.
The president's overall approval rating has climbed to 50 percent, up five points from the beginning of the year. Forty-three percent of Americans said they disapproved of his job performance. On his handling of the economy, 44 percent of poll respondents approved, compared to 50 percent who said they disapproved.
When respondents were asked if they thought the economy was getting better, getting worse or staying about the same, 34 percent said better, 22 percent said worse and 43 percent said about the same. That represents a turnaround from September, when only 12 percent said the economy was improving, compared to 43 percent who said it was getting worse.
Mr. Obama received lower marks for his approach to dealing with the federal budget deficit, with 59 percent of respondents saying they disapproved. Only a third said they approved of his handling of the issue.
Still, the improved economic outlook has Mr. Obama in good shape against the four remaining Republican presidential candidates seeking the opportunity to challenge him in the general election.
President Obama leads Mitt Romney by six percentage points (48/42 , Rick Santorum by seven (49/41 , Ron Paul by 11 (50/39 and Newt Gingrich by 18 (54/36 .
The New York Times' Jim Rutenberg and Allison Kopicki
put February's snapshot into perspective:
Polls can capture only a specific moment in time. To the extent that Mr. Obama's improved standing is tied to the economy, it is tenuous. Grim economic news continues to trickle out of Europe. Iranian saber rattling is increasing the sense of instability in the Middle East. Even the White House warns that jobless numbers are as likely to rise in the coming months as they are to dip.
THE BATTLE FOR MICHIGAN
As polls show Romney trailing Santorum in the state where he was born, the former Massachusetts governor is stressing his Michigan roots in an ad that shows him driving a Chrysler through neighborhoods.
"Now when I grew up in Michigan it was exciting to be here. I remember going to the Detroit auto show with my dad. That was a big deal. How in the world did an industry and its leaders and its unions get in such a fix that they lost jobs, that they lost their future?" Romney says in the ad. "President Obama did all these things that liberals have wanted to do for years. The fact that you've got millions of Americans out of work, home values collapsing, people here in Detroit are distressed."
He ends with a pledge: "I want to make Michigan stronger and better. Michigan has been my home and this is personal."
Watch the ad
here or below:
The new TV spot and
his op-ed in Tuesday's Detroit Free Press are all part of Romney's strategy to shield himself from attacks for
his 2008 stance against the auto bailouts for Chrysler and General Motors, actions that remain popular in the state.
But Michigan Democrats are crying foul. In a Tuesday afternoon conference call, former Gov. Jennifer Granholm charged that Romney had "stabbed us in the back in our darkest hour" by calling for the car manufacturers to go through the bankruptcy process.
While acknowledging that all four GOP hopefuls opposed the auto bailouts, Granholm contended Romney's stance was "particularly acute" given his Michigan ties. "All of them are wrong," Granholm said. "But for Romney, in particular, it shows that the man has no principles, no core."
Santorum began airing a new television ad of his own in Michigan on Tuesday,
a sunny, 30-second spot that includes video of the former Pennsylvania senator on the campaign trail and with his wife and children.
"Who has the best chance to beat Obama?" the male narrator asks at the start. "Rick Santorum, a full-spectrum conservative."
The ad goes on to tout Santorum's "rock solid" positions on values issues, support for Tea Party principles and his foreign policy experience. The spot also highlights the his jobs plan that aims to bolster the manufacturing sector.
It closes with the line: "Rick Santorum, a trusted conservative who gives us the best chance to take back America."
Politico has
an early look at another Santorum campaign spot that takes direct aim at "Romney's negative attack machine." The humorous ad uses a hulking Romney doppelganger with a machine gun firing mud at a cardboard cut-out of Santorum, with all of the shots missing their intended target. The punch line comes when the mud splatters on the Romney stand-in's white dress shirt, with the narrator saying, "In the end, Mitt Romney's ugly attacks are going to backfire."
Campaigning Tuesday in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which holds its caucuses in March, Santorum asserted that Romney's efforts to pitch himself as a conservative are not authentic.
"Gov. Romney is now casting himself in this new role as a conservative and he has no track record of having ever been elected as one," Santorum said. "That raises a lot of questions for people as to whether, when the primary is over, whether he'll still be a conservative."
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll found Santorum leading Romney in popularity. But it also showed Romney
regaining some of the traction he lost with independents.
Jon Cohen writes:
60 percent of Republicans view Romney favorably; it's 61 percent for Santorum. Romney also gets nearly double the number of unfavorable reviews as about one in four Republicans expressed no opinion about Santorum.
Among Republicans, Santorum has jumped from 48 to 61 percent since early January. The increase is entirely among Republicans without college diplomas, echoing some of the main intra-party cleavages between Santorum and Romney. Those with college degrees are unmoved over this period of time, with still largely favorable views of the former senator.
That might be one reason Romney boosters want to bring Santorum down a notch. The pro-Romney Restore our Future super PAC is taking aim at Santorum with a new spot airing in Michigan, Ohio and Arizona focusing on Santorum's votes to increase the debt ceiling. Watch it
here.
PAYROLL PUSH
As the NewsHour went on air Tuesday night, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, was presenting a deal on extending the payroll tax cut, payments for doctors that serve Medicare beneficiaries and unemployment insurance benefits to his GOP conference.
The Takeaway's Todd Zwillich outlined the broad parameters of the still-in-the-works deal in a conversation with Judy Woodruff.
Watch.
A Republican aide familiar with the talks told the Morning Line what members are hearing behind closed doors.
"The plan provides temporary tax relief for American families and takes off the table a false political attack the President and congressional Democrats wanted to use all year long -- that somehow Republicans were standing in the way of a middle class tax cut. There are no job-killing tax hikes to pay for more government spending," the aide said.
Among the details the House GOP is still reviewing in a Wednesday morning meeting: Unemployment benefits will last a maximum of 63 weeks in most states, and people getting the money must be searching for a job. Anyone who lost a job because of a failed drug test would be subject to drug screening before getting benefits.
The "doc fix" payment to Medicare doctors would last through the end of the year.
The aide noted that government spending in the deal is "fully offset" with cuts and reforms and said the proposal includes cuts to the president's health care law. But in a signal that Republicans have given in to the political reality that they were losing on the issue, the aide noted that the "underlying policies are flawed."
Democrats still need to sign off on the details, but aides were feeling confident Tuesday night that a deal will indeed be forged. Should everyone at the table agree on Wednesday, members could still vote on Friday and head home for their planned President's Day recess.
However, as President Obama said Tuesday during an appearance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House, "[Y]ou can't take anything for granted here in Washington until my signature is actually on it."
2012 LINE ITEMS
Texas officials are acknowledging
the April presidential primary will have to move due to redistricting legal battles. Some are advocating May 22 as the new date.
Santorum mega donor Foster Friess told Politico's Ken Vogel that
he tried to convince Gingrich mega donor Sheldon Adelson to support Santorum and also planned to solicit donations from donors linked to the libertarian billionaire industrialist Koch brothers. Their most recent gathering of major donors, held late last month in Indian Wells, Calif., was attended by both Adelson and Friess. A source close to the Adelsons dismissed the Bloomberg report that Adelson intended to cut off the flow of cash to the pro-Gingrich super PAC, explaining Adelson has not made it known whether he intends to continue contributing to Winning Our Future and would not be influenced by pressure from other donors or candidates. Meanwhile, Gingrich's campaign is considering assisting the fundraising of a supportive super PAC.
A Quinnipiac University poll of released Wednesday
showed Santorum leading Romney 36 percent to 29 percent among Republican voters in Ohio, one of the big Super Tuesday prizes on March 6. The survey also found that President Obama leads all of his potential GOP opponents in the Buckeye State, with Romney posing the toughest challenge.
Eric Russell of the Bangor Daily News writes about the pressure building on the Maine Republican Party
to reconsider its declaration that Romney won Saturday's caucuses. The state GOP had called the race despite Washington County having postponed its caucuses because of a forecast of snow. A review of town-by-town results suggests that other communities might not have had their votes counted.
Given the difficulties experienced by Iowa, Nevada and Maine, the Washington Post's Felicia Sonmez asks the question,
"Should parties say farewell to caucuses?"
Roll Call's Shira Toeplitz writes that redistricting shenanigans in Pennsylvania
could muck up the presidential primary calendar.
The Los Angeles Times' Mark Barbarak and John Hoeffel report that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
has been selected chairman of the Democratic National Convention to be held in Charlotte, N.C., this September.
Gingrich took a break from campaigning Tuesday in California
to visit the San Diego Zoo. As Morning Line readers know, the former House speaker is a
well-known lover of zoos and
zoo animals.
Emma Fitzsimmons of the New York Times
reports on the "Dogs Against Romney" rally outside the Westminster Kennel Club dog show in New York on Tuesday. The protest was organized to draw attention to the story of how 25 years ago Romney drove from Boston to Ontario, Canada, with the family's Irish Setter, Seamus, in a carrier strapped to the roof of the car.
TOP TWEETS
SuperPAC parade MT @
HotlineReid Romney Restore Our Future buy: $640k in MI, $121k in AZ, $252k in OH, $184k in TN, $118k in GA & $40k in OK
February 15, 2012
Newt Gingrich feeding a panda at the San Diego Zoo
twitter.com/ccadelago/stat...
February 14, 2012
The Obama campaign buys Google ad for "Westminster Dog Show" to mock Mitt on Mutt-gate.
politico.com/politico44/201...
February 14, 2012
OUTSIDE THE LINES
Roll Call's Emma Dumain writes that some of the Tea Party freshmen on Capitol Hill are finding
"It's not easy to get the government to stop giving you money -- or to give money back the way you want to." She notes, "In the 13 months since they entered office, these Members have found themselves running up against institutional barriers that have kept them from making gestures as seemingly simple as returning cash from their office budgets to the Treasury Department or opting out of the Congressional retirement system."
Club for Growth President Chris Chocola wrote an op-ed in the National Review Tuesday
announcing the PAC's endorsement of Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock in his GOP primary bid to unseat Sen. Richard Lugar.
In the editorial, Chocola cited earmarks as the "final straw" for the the group's decision to endorse the six-term incumbent's rival. (It's a theme Mourdock is using himself in
a new TV ad called "Earmarks."
But even with the Club for Growth endorsement, Murdock faces a stiff headwind. A National Research poll commissioned by Lugar's campaign
showed him leading his challenger 55 percent to 30 percent. Not to mention his $4 million war chest compared with Mourdock's paltry $362,000 in the bank as of Dec. 31.
A WBUR poll released Tuesday
showed a close race for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, with Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren leading Republican Sen. Scott Brown 46 percent to 43 percent. The three-point advantage for Warren is within the poll's margin of error.
The Newseum has an exhibit opening Friday called
"Every Four Years: Presidential Campaigns and the Press." It explores how the media's coverage of elections has evolved from William McKinley's 1896 front-porch campaign to Barack Obama's web-driven model in 2008. Among the items on display: the "Florida, Florida, Florida" white board used by NBC's Tim Russert on election night 2000 and the suit, flag lapel pin and eyeglasses worn by Tina Fey as Sarah Palin for a "Saturday Night Live" sketch during the 2008 campaign.
The NewsHour tackles Linsanity.
Watch.
NewsHour politics desk assistant Alex Bruns contributed to this report.
ON THE TRAIL
All events are listed in Eastern Time.
Rick Santorum campaigns in North Dakota, touring Hess Oil in Tioga at 11 a.m., hosting a Tioga town hall at 1:30 p.m. and holding a rally in Fargo at 8 p.m.
Mitt Romney visits office furniture manufacturer Compatico in Grand Rapids, Mich., for a roundtable on jobs at 5:50 p.m. and a rally at 6:15 p.m.
Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul have no public 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.
How the Death of Whitney Houston, and Countless Others, Could Have Been Prevented
My first reaction to the news of Houston’s death was to wonder if anyone ever taught her the basics of how-to-use-drugs-and-not-die. Essentially, we’re willing to let people die because we’re so fearful that teaching people how to use drugs in a less risky way “enables” them to keep using drugs. But shouldn’t we do whatever is necessary just to keep people alive? Alive long enough to help get them into drug treatment. Alive long enough to work through their troubles. Alive long enough to help them find some measure of peace in their lives.
Read the full editorial at:
AlterNet
NPR's This American Life Takes On The Police
Stories about people who have the right to remain silent... but choose not to exercise that right—including police officer Adrian Schoolcraft, who secretly recorded his supervisors telling officers to manipulate crime statistics and make illegal arrests.
MORE
"Attractive Undercover Cop Poses As Student And Entraps Teens To 'Sell' Her Marijuana"
Last year in three high schools in Florida, several undercover police officers posed as students. The undercover cops went to classes, became Facebook friends and flirted with the other students. One 18-year-old honor student named Justin fell in love with an attractive 25-year-old undercover cop after spending weeks sharing stories about their lives, texting and flirting with each other. One day she asked Justin if he smoked pot. Even though he didn't smoke marijuana, the love-struck teen promised to help find some for her. Every couple of days she would text him asking if he had the marijuana. Finally, Justin was able to get it to her. She tried to give him $25 for the marijuana and he said he didn't want the money -- he got it for her as a present. A short while later, the police did a big sweep and arrested 31 students -- including Justin. Almost all were charged with selling a small amount of marijuana to the undercover cops. Now Justin has a felony hanging over his head.
Tony Bennett is Right: Legalizing Drugs Would Save Lives
It doesn't matter if you're hooked on alcohol, Xanax or illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine -- prohibition for some drugs stigmatizes all people struggling with addiction. Period. Addicts are not defined simply by their drug of choice nor the drug that is or is not their ultimate cause of death. Their entire lives are tragically plagued by the stigma that criminalization heaps upon them, and the marginalized underworld prohibition thrusts them into.
That is a painful and deadly component of the experience of anyone unlucky enough to live with a disease that, unlike cancer, our government tries to battle with handcuffs.
Read the full editorial at:
Huffington Post
North America
In a shocking about-face, the administration has launched a government-wide crackdown on medical marijuana
"Over the past year, the Obama administration has quietly unleashed a multiagency crackdown on medical cannabis that goes far beyond anything undertaken by George W. Bush. The feds are busting growers who operate in full compliance with state laws, vowing to seize the property of anyone who dares to even rent to legal pot dispensaries, and threatening to imprison state employees responsible for regulating medical marijuana. With more than 100 raids on pot dispensaries during his first three years, Obama is now on pace to exceed Bush's record for medical-marijuana busts. "There's no question that Obama's the worst president on medical marijuana," says Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. "He's gone from first to worst.""
Read more at
RollingStone.com.
Marijuana Law Reform at the Statehouse 2012
"Each year, these bills are easier to introduce, there is less controversy, and the media reaction is generally neutral to positive," said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of
NORML. "Baby boomers, medical marijuana, the Internet, and the state of the economy have all had an impact, even, finally, on legislators and their staffs," he explained.
"Before 1996, nobody invited NORML; now our staff is regularly going to meetings requested by legislators around the country," St. Pierre recalled. "First, we couldn't get them to return our phone calls; now they're calling us. Everything is in play because of activists around the country doing years of work."
Read the full article at:
Stop the Drug War
New Definition of Addiction Stirs Up a Scientific Storm
Indeed, the new neurologically focused definition debunks, in whole or in part, a host of common conceptions about addiction. Addiction, the statement declares, is a “bio-psycho-socio-spiritual” illness characterized by (a damaged decision-making (affecting learning, perception, and judgment and by (b persistent risk and/or recurrence of relapse; the unambiguous implications are that (a addicts have no control over their addictive behaviors and (b total abstinence is, for some addicts, an unrealistic goal of effective treatment.
The bad behaviors themselves are all symptoms of addiction, not the disease itself. "The state of addiction is not the same as the state of intoxication," the ASAM takes pains to point out. Far from being evidence of a failure of will or morality, the behaviors are the addict's attempt to resolve the general "dysfunctional emotional state" that develops in tandem with the disease. In other words, conscious choice plays little or no role in the actual state of addiction; as a result,
a person cannot choose not to be addicted.
Read the full article at:
The Fix
Should Officials Be Allowed to Search Students' Bras for Drugs?
A divided state Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in favor of the student, finding the search was “degrading, demeaning and highly intrusive.” The state appealed that decision. The state Supreme Court decision is expected to affect 1.5 million public school students.
Powell said the search was not unreasonable because there was “a compelling governmental need” that outweighed the rights of individual privacy, she said. The school’s primary responsibility “was to promote the health and safety of students,” she said.
Read the full article at:
The Washington Post
Europe/UK
Health Alert Over Drug Sold as “Safe Ketamine”
Methoxetamine, known as MXE or "mexxy", mimics the effects of the banned anaesthetic ketamine, and its use has grown over the last six months in Britain as well as northern Europe, say charity workers.
A survey of drug trends published in November showed that the use of both ketamine, which is a class C drug, and methoxetamine, its "legal doppelganger", is on the rise in several areas of the UK.
Read the full article at:
The Independent
Mobsters Without Borders [documentary]
This documentary film investigates the European leader’s cocaine importing network stretching from Calabria to Milan, Italy and from Costa del Sol, Spain to Ruhr Valley, Germany. Infiltrating sectors such as real estate and healthcare to government contracting and marketing to laundering illegal drug trafficking and weapons smuggling profits, Calabrian mobs permeate economies across the European Union.
Latin America
Mexico Seizes 15 Tons of Methamphetamine
“The big thing it shows is the sheer capacity that these superlabs have in Mexico,” said Rusty Payne, a spokesman for the
Drug Enforcement Administration. “When we see one lab with the capability to produce such a mass tonnage of meth, it begs a question: What else is out there?”
Read the full article at:
New York Times
Off the Beaten Path, Chile Still Caught in Drug Supply Chain
Sharing a border with two of the world's top cocaine producers -- Bolivia and Peru -- makes Chile's involvement in the narcotics trade a virtual inevitability. However, unlike its northern neighbors, Chile is strictly a drug-consuming nation. With Brazil and Argentina, it accounts for two thirds of cocaine consumption in Latin America and the Caribbean. Alone, it makes up 10 percent, according to the
UN's 2011 World Drug Report.
Read the full article at:
InSight
Middle East
No Help for Kashmir's Female Drug Addicts
"Keeping in view the social stigma which female drug addicts face, it is important to set up a de-addiction centre for them," said Sameena (name changed , a 22-year-old college student and former drug addict.
Sameena said she began with glue sniffing "for fun" during her school days and then moved on to opiates. Fear of social stigma and lack of facilities forced her parents to take her outside Kashmir for treatment. Sameena has been under medication for 11 months now.
Read the full article at:
IPS News
Other News
New Exile Nation Video: Lynette Shaw
Lynette Shaw was the owner of the very first legal cannabis dispensary in the State of California, which she opened in Fairfax in the early 1990s. A key figure in the fight to legalize medical cannabis, Shaw's life as an activist began when her home was raided by police, after a dealer turned her in. But that's only one small aspect of her extraordinary life story, recounted here, which at one point saw her living underground while authorities scoured the world for her, after she became a suspect in the 1980 overdose death of actor John Belushi.
Lynette Shaw from
Charles B Shaw on
Vimeo.
View the entire extended interview archive for The Exile Nation Project.
Newsletters and Weekly Features
“Drinking water can help dieters lose at least five per cent of their bodyweight,” the Metro has reported.
The story is based on research that hoped to find evidence to support the common sense theory that replacing high calorie drinks with water or diet drinks helps weight loss. While patients in all groups lost weight on average, the study failed to prove this intuitive method of weight loss was better than simply advising overweight people on how to lose weight.
The news was based on a small study of overweight or obese adults, which looked at whether encouraging them to drink water or diet drinks rather than sugar-sweetened drinks could help with weight loss, without other dietary changes. It found that those who were encouraged to drink water lost on average 2.0% of their body weight, those on diet drinks lost 2.5% of their body weight and those in the control group lost 1.8%. The difference in weight loss between the groups was not statistically significant.
A separate analysis did find that people switching to water or diet drinks were more likely to lose 5% of their body weight, but the overall, more important findings suggest that, on average, the groups did not differ in weight loss.
It’s worth pointing out that the study was funded by a leading bottled water company in the US. It’s also noteworthy that people in the water/diet drinks groups were given the bottled water or dietary beverages. In real life, people who had to buy their own drinks might not be as good at sticking to drinking low calorie alternatives.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from the University of North Carolina and was funded by Nestle Waters USA. It was published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
It was reported uncritically in the Metro, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail. The claim that people who switch to water or diet drinks are twice as likely to lose 5% of their body weight sounds dramatic, but overall there was no significant difference in average weight loss between the groups.
What kind of research was this?
This was a randomised controlled trial, which is the best way to find out about the effectiveness of an intervention.
The researchers investigated whether encouraging people to switch from sugar-sweetened beverages to water or diet drinks, without any other changes to diet or lifestyle, was an effective weight loss method. They did this by comparing drink replacement to just giving people information about a healthy diet.
The researchers point out that increased consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks is linked to several health problems including obesity. They argue that replacing high calorie drinks with water or low calorie drinks could be a simple strategy for promoting modest weight loss.
What did the research involve?
Between 2008 and 2010, the researchers recruited 318 overweight and obese people. The average age of the study’s participants was 42, most (84% were women and a significant proportion were black (54% . To be eligible for the study people had to report consuming 280 calories or more of calorific drinks (including juice and juice drinks, sweetened coffee and tea, sports drinks and alcohol daily.
Participants were allocated at random to one of three groups: the water group, the diet beverage group and the control (advice only group. All three groups had the same contact time with researchers, monthly weigh-ins, group sessions and weekly monitoring.
Two of the groups were encouraged to replace two or more servings a day of drinks containing calories with either water or diet beverages. Four single servings of these drinks were provided daily, with two additional servings given in case family members drank them. Participants in both of these groups were given a choice of different beverages at their monthly treatment meetings. They were also given monthly group behavioural counselling to encourage them to adhere to their substituted beverages.
Members of the control group were given general weight loss information – for example, they were told to increase their physical activity and vegetable consumption, and to read product labels. They were not given specific weight loss plans, nor goals for physical activity. They were not encouraged to change beverage intake, nor were they provided with beverages.
All groups had access to a study website where they could report their weekly weight, receive feedback and view advice. The water group and the diet beverage group could also use the website to record how much of which drinks they consumed.
Participants’ body weight and height were measured at the start of the study, and at three and six months. Waist circumference and blood pressure were also measured. Researchers also collected information on dietary and calorie intake.
At six months, the researchers compared the weight of participants in all three groups, using standard statistical methods. In a further analysis, they examined whether more people in either the water or diet beverage groups had achieved a 5% weight loss target than in the control group.
What were the basic results?
At six months, all three groups had achieved small amounts of weight loss, but the difference between the groups was not statistically significant.
The average percentage weight loss in each group at six months was:
- 2.03% (about 1.9kg in the water group
- 2.45% (about 2.6kg in the diet beverage group
- 1.76% (about 1.9kg in the control group
In a separate analysis, researchers found that the chance of achieving 5% weight loss at six months was greater in the diet beverage group than in the control group ( odds ratio 2.29, 95% confidence interval 1.05 to 5.01; p=0.04 . In a combined analysis putting together both drink replacement groups, people in both the water and diet beverage groups were twice as likely to have achieved a 5% weight loss as those in the control group (odds ratio 2.07, 95% confidence interval 1.02 to 4.22 . However, the study did not report exactly how many people in each group achieved this degree of weight loss.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers conclude that replacing high calorie drinks with water or diet drinks resulted in average weight loss of 2-2.5% of body weight. They say that replacing high calorie drinks with low calorie ones could be a simple strategy to reduce obesity and an important public health message.
Conclusion
This was an appropriately designed study for looking at the effect on weight of switching to non-calorific drinks. However, it does have some limitations, including that:
- The study included only people who consumed more than 280 calories in beverages each day. Almost 40% of the people assessed did not consume this many calories in beverages, and could not be included in the study. The results of this study may not apply to those who consume fewer calories as beverages.
- The researchers had calculated that their study should be large enough to detect a difference of 1.8kg in weight loss between the groups, but that it might not be statistically able to detect smaller differences in weight between groups.
- The study was relatively short and may not represent what would happen over a longer period of follow-up.
- The people in the drink replacement groups received behavioural counselling to help them stick to the drink replacement programme – and they were more likely than the control group to attend group sessions.
- Participants were provided with water or diet beverages as part of this study. People who had to buy their own drinks might not be as good at sticking to drinking low calorie alternatives.
- The people taking part in the study were typically black, middle-aged women in the US. Its findings may not directly translate to all people in the UK.
Most importantly, the results did not show any significant difference in average weight loss between those who were encouraged to switch to water or diet drinks and the control group. A secondary analysis found that those in the water and diet beverage groups were about twice as likely to achieve a 5% weight loss as those in the control group. However, the proportion achieving this level of weight loss was not reported.
Sugar-sweetened drinks, juices, alcohol and similar beverages are a hidden source of calories and most dietitians would advise limiting intake of these in order to maintain a healthy weight. However, it is also important to maintain a healthy diet overall and to do regular exercise. There is no short cut to sustainable weight loss.
Analysis by Bazian
Links To The Headlines
Drinking water can help dieters lose at least five per cent of their bodyweight. Metro, February 15 2012
Switching to diet drinks can help you shed 5% of your body weight in just six months. Daily Mail, February 15 2012
Water 'helps you lose weight'. Daily Express, February 15 2012
Links To Science
Tate DF, Turner-McGrievy G, Lyons E, et al. Replacing caloric beverages with water or diet beverages for weight loss in adults: main results of the Choose Healthy Options Consciously Everyday (CHOICE randomized clinical trial. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Published online February 1 2012
It is feared that the UK could face a “Blindness epidemic”, the Daily Express has claimed today. The newspaper has reported that Britain faces a sight loss epidemic, caused by progressive eye conditions, that is being grossly underestimated by the NHS.
The story is based on research that estimates the number of people affected by advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD . AMD affects the part of the retina at the back of the eye that is responsible for central vision. It is the most common cause of age-related sight loss in the developed world. AMD is thought to affect half of the 370,000 people registered as blind or partially sighted in the UK.
The study estimates that the current UK prevalence of late stage AMD is actually 2.4% of the adult population (513,000 cases and that this figure is set to rise by one-third over the next decade, totalling nearly 700,000 cases by 2020.
AMD is a progressive condition that causes loss of vision and leads to loss of independence. Therefore, it is important to have an accurate estimate of projected numbers who have, or will develop, this disorder. While estimates provided by this research are higher than previous ones, they do not represent an ‘epidemic’ or an increase in cases of the disorder per se. Indeed, the risk of AMD increases sharply with age and the principal reason for the projected increase in cases by 2020 is the growing proportion of elderly people in the UK population.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from the University of London and was funded by the Macular Diseases Society. A spokesperson for the society reportedly called for the government to give AMD a higher priority.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed British Journal of Opthalmology. It was generally covered accurately in the papers, aside from the Daily Express’ alarmist headline predicting a forthcoming ‘blindness epidemic’.
What kind of research was this?
Age-related macular degeneration affects the macula, a highly sensitive part of the retina at the back of the eye that is responsible for central vision. As the name implies, the condition is associated with ageing, and it is a leading cause of visual impairment among the elderly. As AMD progresses a person will gradually lose the ability to see things in their central field of vision, which is needed for important activities, such as reading, writing and driving. There are two different types of the disease: dry AMD and wet AMD (also called neovascular AMD or NVAMD . Wet AMD involves the formation of new blood vessels.
Dry AMD, the most common form, is associated with a gradual breakdown of the cells in the retina. Dry AMD is usually subdivided into early and late stages. In early-stage dry AMD there may be a few characteristic yellow deposits (known as drusen under the retina, but there is minimal effect on vision. In advanced or later-stage dry AMD, there will be both drusen deposits and breakdown (atrophy of the retinal cells.
This later-stage dry AMD is sometimes called ‘geographical atrophy’ and is associated with gradual loss of vision.
A small proportion of those with dry AMD will go on to develop wet AMD. This is where new and abnormal blood vessels start to grow in an attempt to re-supply the damaged retina with oxygen and nutrients. These vessels are fragile and can leak blood and fluid, causing more sudden and rapid loss of vision than dry AMD.
While little can be done to prevent the progression of dry AMD, the blood vessel growth of wet AMD is usually treated by laser, photodynamic (light drugs or injections of drugs that prevent the growth of the abnormal blood vessels (called anti-vascular endothelial growth factors, anti-VEGFs .
The authors point out that AMD is a major cause of eye disease, accounting for more than half of those registered as blind or partially sighted in the UK. However, they add that registered numbers do not reflect the full proportion of people who experience visual loss caused by the condition, and that estimates of incidence vary. They argue that accurate estimates are needed to help provide sufficient healthcare in the future.
This research was an analysis of the data from a recent systematic review and meta-analysis of the prevalence of ‘late’ AMD. This was based on 31 populations of European ancestry, ranging in age from 50 to 97 years. They used these figures to produce models to estimate the prevalence and incidence of late AMD in the UK population, both now and in the future. They then constructed separate models to look at the prevalence of:
- late/advanced dry AMD (or geographical atrophy [GA]
- wet AMD (or neovascular AMD, NVAMD
- late AMD overall (both GA and NVAMD
‘Prevalence’ is a specific term referring to the number of cases of a disease within a population at any given time. The related term ‘incidence’ refers to the number or rate of new cases that develop in a specified period.
What did the research involve?
The researchers based their models on a meta-analysis of 31 population studies featuring a combined population of 57,173 participants. They say it is the most complete meta-analysis of late AMD prevalence in white populations. The study populations were from Europe, North America and Australia, which they say are largely similar to the middle-aged and older population of the UK.
They applied these figures to the UK population aged 50 to 97 years old, calculating prevalence using statistics for the years 2007 to 2009 obtained from the Office of National Statistics. They calculated prevalence in the UK by year, by age (from 50 to 97 years , by gender and for both genders combined.
They used projections of numbers within these age groups in the UK population to calculate prevalence figures up to 2020. Their estimates allow for a 95% ‘credible interval’, representing the range within which true prevalence is expected to lie with a 95% probability.
The researchers then used the models of age-specific prevalence to estimate the annual incidence (new cases of age of late AMD overall, GA and NVAMD in men and women between the ages of 50 and 97 years.
What were the basic results?
Overall prevalence of late AMD in the UK population aged 50 or over was 2.4% (95% credible interval [CrI] 1.7% to 3.3% . This is equivalent to 513,000 cases (95% CrI 363,000 to 699,000 and is estimated to increase to 679,000 cases by 2020.
- In those aged 65 or over, prevalence of late AMD was 4.8% and in those aged 80 or over, 12.2%.
- Prevalence of GA was 1.3% overall (95% CrI 0.9% to 1.9% , 2.6% in those aged 65 and above (95% CrI 1.8% to 3.7% and 6.7% in those aged 80 and above (95% CrI 4.6% to 9.6% .
- Prevalence of wet AMD (NVAMD was 1.2% overall (95% CrI 0.9% to 1.7% , 2.5% in those aged 65 and above (95% CrI 1.8% to 3.4% and 6.3% in those aged 80 and above (95% CrI 4.5% to 8.6% .
- The estimated number of cases of late AMD were 60% higher in women than men (314,000 cases in women, 192,000 in men .
- The authors say that by 2020 there will be 394,000 women and 285,000 men (679,000 in all with late AMD. This equates to an increase of a third over current rates.
- They calculate that until 2020 there will be 71,000 new cases of late AMD each year, with higher numbers in women.
- Annual incidence (new cases each year of late AMD overall was estimated at 4.1 per 1,000 women (95% CrI 2.4 to 6.8 and 2.6 per 1,000 men (95% CrI 1.5 to 4.4 .
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers say that their review provides the best estimates of the prevalence and incidence of late AMD in the largely white older population in the UK, and suggest that by 2020 cases of AMD will increase steadily by one-third. The authors say these evidence-based estimates are higher than previous estimates, and argue that they can be used to help plan both social and healthcare support, now and in the future.
Conclusion
This study has provided estimates of the current prevalence and incidence of late-stage AMD in the UK (including late-stage dry AMD and wet AMD . It predicts that the prevalence of the condition will rise over the coming decade. These late stages of AMD can lead to loss of vision and of independence, so it is important to have an estimate that is as accurate as possible of projected numbers who have, or will develop, this disorder.
It is important to point out that the projected increase in numbers of those with the disorder is not due to an increase in the condition per se but to the UK’s ageing population. It is also worth noting that these estimates are based on complex statistical models and, as is clear from the results, the probable range within which true prevalence lies is quite wide.
The authors also point out that their figures are based on cases of AMD in ‘either eye’ so may overestimate the potential visual loss associated with the condition, though, as they say, late stage disease in only one eye may still need treatment.
Links To The Headlines
Blindness epidemic fear. Daily Express, February 14 2012
Number of Britons suffering macular degeneration to rise by a third by 2020. Daily Mail, February 14 2012
Progressive blindness cases to rise by a third in a decade. The Independent, February 14 2012
Links To Science
Owen CG, Jarrar Z, Wormald R et al. The estimated prevalence and incidence of late stage age related macular degeneration in the UK. British Journal of Ophthalmology, [Online First] February 13 2012
Much of Heartland Institute's work funded by one anonymous donor, but some corporations also gave cash, documents show
A libertarian thinktank devoted to discrediting climate change received funds and other support from major corporations including some publicly committed to social responsibility, leaked documents reveal.
The inner workings of the Heartland Institute were laid bare on Tuesday night after an "insider" emailed confidential documents detailing its strategy and fundraising network to DeSmogBlog, which monitors industry efforts to discredit climate science.
Much of Heartland's work to discredit climate change is funded by a single anonymous donor, the papers reveal. However, a 2012 fundraising plan also indicated that Heartland has in the past received funds from a host of major corporations for other projects – including companies that publicly support action on climate change.
Along with tobacco giants Altria and Reynolds America, and drug firms GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Eli Lilley, major corporations have given over $1.1m in the past two years to the institute, and are planning to give another $705,000 this year.
Some of the companies included on Heartland's list of donors were surprising. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft Corporation, has vigorously promoted clean energy in a number of speeches, and his charitable foundation works on helping farmers in the developing world, who will be badly affected by climate change.
But Heartland claims in a fundraising document to have received $59,908 from Microsoft in 2011.
Microsoft said the donation to Heartland was confined to its global programme to provide free software licences to non-profits. "As part of that programme the organisation requested free software licenses, and Microsoft provided them, just like we do for thousands of other eligible non-profits every year," Katie Stainer, a spokeswoman for Microsoft, said in a statement.
"Microsoft's position on climate change remains unchanged. Microsoft believes climate change is a serious issue that demands immediate, worldwide attention and we are acting accordingly. We are pursuing strategies and taking actions that are consistent with a strong commitment to reducing our own impact as well as the impact of our products.
"In addition, Microsoft has adopted a broad policy statement on climate change that expresses support for government action to create market-based mechanisms to address climate change."
A spokeswoman for GSK said the $50,000 the company donated in the last two years was for a healthcare initiative. She could not comment on whether GSK would be working with Heartland in the future.
She said: "GSK absolutely does not endorse or support the Heartland Institute's views on the environment and climate change. We have in the past provided a small amount of funding to support the Institute's healthcare newsletter and a meeting."
General Motors Foundation, which is committed to social responsibility, has also made modest donations to Heartland, contributing $15,000 in 2010 and 2011, though for projects other than climate science.
There was no immediate response from the foundation, but GM itself defended its $30,000 donation. Greg Martin, GM's director of policy and Washington communications, said: "We support a variety or organisations that give careful and considerate thought to complex policy issues and Heartland is one of them."
He said GM's cash was not donated for a specific programme.
Diageo, the drinks company which owns Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker and Baileys, said its funding of Heartland was now under review. It gave $10,000 over the last two years, according to the leaked papers, and was projected to give another $10,000 this year.
A spokeswoman said the money had been given for a project on excise duty and the company did not agree with Heartland's views on climate change.
The leaked documents provide an intriguing view of the inner workings of an organisation that has been at the forefront of undermining climate change, and suggest Heartland is on the cusp of a fundraising blitz.
The plan proposes raising revenues by a staggering 170% this year, to $7.7m. Heartland proposes to do this in part by hiring a direct mail firm that has been prominent in Republican election campaigns. The firm Griswold & Griswold Inc promised to expand Heartland's donor list tenfold from 1,800 to 18,000 within the year.
But the cache raises an equal number of questions – such as the identity of an anonymous donor that has been a mainstay of Heartland. The unnamed donor, who contributed $4.6m in 2008, has since scaled back contributions. Even so, the donor's $979,000 contribution in 2011 accounted for 20% of Heartland's overall budget, the fundraising plan says
According to the fundraising document, Heartland hopes to bump that up to $1.25m in 2012.
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Study Abstract - Ambient Air Pollution and the Risk of Acute Ischemic Stroke
Study Abstract -Exposure to Particulate Air Pollution and Cognitive Decline in Older Women
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Harvard Medical School
Brown University
Harvard School of Public Health
Rush University Medical Center
“Scientists have shown how some cells in the body can repel attacks from HIV by starving the virus of the building blocks of life,” BBC News has reported.
The news is based on a study that had discovered how some cells may restrict HIV infection. The study looked at why a protein called SMADH1 was able to help certain immune system cells resist the HIV virus, with researchers finding that the body uses the protein to break up the building blocks of DNA, called dNTPs. This is of interest as the HIV virus spreads by initially constructing DNA segments from dNTPs. This DNA is then inserted into our normal DNA sequence, tricking the body into making HIV particles and spreading the infection.
However, the SAMHD1 protein appears to restrict HIV infection by reducing levels of dNTPs needed for it to initially make DNA segments. The researchers predict that lowering levels of dNTPs could therefore be a general mechanism for limiting infection by any organism that needs to make DNA in order to replicate.
This interesting research demonstrated how some cells can resist HIV infection. However, HIV targets a type of immune cell called a ‘T cell’ that has low levels of SAMHD1 and high levels of dNTPs. In addition, the ability to translate this finding into a therapy is hampered by the fact that many cells, including T cells, are continually dividing and therefore need dNTPs to replicate their own genetic material.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from scientific and medical institutions in France, the US and around the world, including the Institut Cochin, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and the Universite of Paris Decartes, the University of Rochester Medical Center, and the New York University School of Medicine.
The study was funded by a number of charitable, academic and governmental research organisations, including the US National Institutes of Health and the European Research Council. It was published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Immunology.
This story was well covered by the BBC.
What kind of research was this?
This was a laboratory study that used purified protein and cells grown in cultures to investigate the role of a protein called SAMHD1 in HIV infection.
SAMHD1 is a protein that is thought to play a role in immune responses and the amount of SAMHD1 produced varies between different types of immune cells. For example, immune cells like dendritic cells (or antigen-presenting cells have high levels of SAMHD1, while other immune cells like T cells have low levels. SAMHD1 restricts the infection of dendritic cells by HIV.
This study aimed to determine the mechanism through which SAMHD1 might restrict HIV infection. This is the most appropriate study design to explore this question.
What did the research involve?
The researchers performed a number of experiments to determine the role of SAMHD1:
- they examined the effect of reducing SAMHD1 levels in cells grown in culture
- they purified SAMHD1 and looked at whether it could break up dNTPs
- they looked at the effects of introducing SAMHD1 to cells that do not normally produce it
- they looked at the ability of HIV to infect cells when SAMHD1 was and was not present
What were the basic results?
Through their experiments the researchers found that SAMHD1 breaks up the building blocks of DNA, called deoxynucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs . In order to spread, HIV needs to replicate its genetic material inside host cells by producing DNA. SAMHD1 was found to restrict HIV’s infection process in cell samples by reducing levels of dNTP molecules, meaning the virus cannot make the DNA necessary for replication.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers conclude that ‘by depleting the pool of available dNTPs, SAMHD1 effectively starves the virus of a building block that is central to its replication strategy.’ They add that depleting the pool of available nucleotides could be a general mechanism for protecting cells from infectious agents’ that make DNA.
Conclusion
This interesting research has shown that a protein called SAMHD1 breaks up DNA buildings blocks (dNTPS . This limits HIV infection in cells that express high levels of SAMHD1, like the immune system’s dendritic cells (antigen presenting cells . The researchers conclude from their lab tests that reducing the levels of dNTPs could potentially protect cells from any infectious agent that needs to make DNA.
However, while this laboratory based study has found some rather intriguing results, the ability to translate its finding into a therapy for limiting infection is hampered by one key fact: DNA reproduction is an important process constantly performed within our bodies as our cells replicate. It therefore remains to be seen whether we can harness this defensive mechanism as a way to fight HIV or other viral infection without negatively affecting vital processes in the body.
Links To The Headlines
Immune cells use 'starvation tactics' on HIV. BBC News, February 13 2012
Links To Science
Lahouassa H, Daddacha W, Hofmann H, et al. SAMHD1 restricts the replication of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 by depleting the intracellular pool of deoxynucleoside triphosphates. Nature Immunology, 2012
Influential group calls on regulators to ensure safe handling of toxic fluids used in controversial hydraulic fracturing
An influential group of scientists has urged US officials to step up their policing of shale gas operations and to consider stronger regulations to reduce environmental and health risks at the facilities.
The scientists called on regulators to revisit, and in many cases beef up, their guidelines to avoid surface spills at shale gas works, and to ensure the safe storage and disposal of toxic fluids used in
controversial hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations.
Though some US states have updated historic oil and gas regulations to encompass fracking and shale gas work more generally, many lag behind and lack enough qualified people to enforce regulations properly, the researchers said.
Writing in a major
report released yesterday, the scientists found "little or no evidence" to support claims that fracking had contaminated aquifers, but recommended that states do more to prevent accidents, such as spillages, underground leaks and gas explosions.
Rules should be in place to establish responsibility if groundwater supplies become contaminated by shale gas works, with clear guidelines set out for replacing water supplies when drinking wells are affected, the report adds.
More stringent rules and better surveillance of well construction could prevent future cases of houses exploding after methane from fracked wells seeped along underground fractures and collected beneath homes. A handful of high-profile blasts have been traced to shale gas wells in Ohio, Colorado and other states.
The independent review of fracking by senior academics at the University of Texas in Austin said that the development of shale gas was "essential to the energy security of the US and the world", but that the process had become mired in controversy after claims that fracking causes damage to health and the environment.
Fracking uses high pressure water mixed with particles and chemicals to break gas-rich shale rocks apart more than a kilometre underground. Critics have blamed the technique for a range of undesirable effects, from air pollution and contaminated water to minor earthquakes. In Britain, the protest group,
Frack Off, has staged demonstrations at fracking test sites, while Greenpeace has argued that exploitation of shale gas deposits draws momentum away from alternative green energy projects.
Charles Groat, associate director of the university's Energy Institute and lead author of the report, said: "The most important underlying scope of this study has been separating fact from fiction. The resource is so important to the US and the globe that if there are legitimate concerns about the impact on the environment of producing and transporting this resource, we need to understand that."
Shale gas production rose nearly fivefold in the US between 2006 and 2010, when it accounted for 23% of the nation's natural gas. By 2035, nearly half is expected to come from shale gas operations.
The authors focused on three major shale works in the US, namely Barnett shale in north Texas, Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania and Haynesville shale in western Louisiana and northeast Texas. They found that many problems blamed on fracking were common to all oil and gas drilling operations, and that reports of water contamination could often be traced to surface spills of waste water.
But the authors made clear that their environmental review of shale gas was hindered by the industry's limited disclosure of chemicals added to fracking fluids, and a widespread failure to sample and record baseline levels of water quality in aquifers before drilling began.
"In many, if not most places, what the water was like before oil and gas development took place is not recorded, so how do you know whether you have had an effect or not, or whether the effect that's happening is due to what you're involved in, or what someone else is involved in?" Groat said. Improving baseline records of water quality, better groundwater sampling, and reliable ways to confirm the causes of problems were crucial for policy makers to draw up, amend and enforce regulations, he added.
The authors identified more than 800 violations of environmental regulations involving most stages of shale gas operations, from drilling and fracturing to waste disposal and well plugging, at sites in four states dating back to 1999. Of these, 58% were procedural or had little or no impact, with 42% ranked as having a major, substantial or minor impact on the environment.
Groat said the industry needed to demonstrate that it could minimise violations through self-policing. "They know where the problems are and should show the public they are responsive, not defensive," he said. We are seeing signs of this in efforts to deal with flow back and produced water disposal issues, but need similar efforts in ensuring upper well bore integrity improvements," he added.
Drilling at shale gas sites has led to prominent claims that chemicals used in fracking are behind cases of discoloured, cloudy and bad-smelling water. But the report says many of these changes may be due to vibrations and shockwaves from shale gas works disturbing particles of iron, manganese and other materials that had settled in water wells.
Though chemicals make up less than 1% of the millions of gallons of fracturing fluid used at a single shale gas well, the authors raised concern that there was still no clear understanding of the key chemicals or the concentrations used, despite broader disclosure from companies.
Several chemicals that are known to be toxic and used in fracking are widely used in other products, the report states. They include 2BE, a surfactant that can destroy red blood cells, which is found in solvents, paints and household cleaners; benzene, a carcinogen that is already widespread in the environment; and naphthalene, a probable carcinogen used in mothballs and toilet deodorisers.
Though the release of more toxic chemicals into the environment was "not totally acceptable", people should take into account their uses in other products, and the great depths at which they are released in fracking, the report states. Details of the report were announced at the annual meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver.
The report raises further concerns about the impact of shale gas on forests and ecological habitats. Studies of shale gas development in the Marcellus Shale area show that two-thirds of well pads will be built on cleared forest land, leading to a clearing of 34,000 to 83,000 acres for well pads, and a further 80,000 to 200,000 acres for roads. For shale gas operations near "sensitive areas", schools and public water supplies, the authors urge states to consider setting minimum distances for drill pad sites and other shale gas facilities.
The report says little about health concerns from benzene and other volatile organic compounds that are released from fracking plants, either as air emissions or in waste fluids,but adds that much more research was needed to investigate claims that the chemicals caused a wide range of health problems, including cancer, headaches and nosebleeds.
Follow up reports from the group will focus on atmospheric emissions and seismic activity triggered by shale gas extraction.
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Shyama Rajagopal
KOCHI : Psychiatrist Thomas John, former deputy director, Kerala Health Services, has devised a scale to quantify autism in children. Dr. John, who has termed his work ‘CREPS Scale' (communications, reciprocity, education, play and self injurious/psychotic behaviours or ‘Dr. Thomas's scale', has drawn extensively on his work over the years as district officer in psychiatry attached to the District General Hospital, Ernakulam.
The work is part of a book authored by Dr. John, ‘Handbook of Disability Certification in Psychiatry.' How does a doctor quantify the failure to develop certain abilities of the mind? Or, how does he pronounce to what extent the mental health is disturbed? These and some more questions find answers in the handbook.
Autism, a disorder of brain development that affects social and communication skills, is something understood by few. Many do not perhaps understand how an autistic person behaves or what are their capabilities and failures.
The book handles topics such as mental retardation, mental illness, autism, multiple disabilities, and learning disorders in children. The scale helps quantify the autistic disability. For most other disorders, there is scale for assessment, says Dr. John, who is both a psychiatrist and paediatrician.
Psychiatrist Mohan Isaac, Visiting Professor at NIMHANS, Bangalore, and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Western Australia, Perth, has lauded the ‘original work' in his foreword to the book. The disability certification does not come naturally to most clinicians and can pose specific problems and confusing issues, writes Dr. Isaac. The main strength of the handbook is that it is borne out of the author's several years of practical experience as a public sector psychiatrist working at a district-level government hospital as well as in community settings in outreach camps in the district, he says.
Dr. John has attempted to clear the confusion that exists among teachers, educators, and mental health professionals regarding mental health sub-normality, says Dr. Isaac.
Assessing the abilities of children with different kind of mental difficulties always poses a problem when such certificates have to be issued in camps, says Dr. John. The final framework of the scale is based on a pilot study conducted three years ago. It helped discard and add some salient features of the assessment, Dr. John says.
The modified tool has been tested on 120 samples with 40 each from North, Central and South Kerala.
Thomas John, psychiatrist, has developed a scale to quantify autism in children
What exactly is a small farm?
The last Census of Agriculture data is from 2007, although a new census will be made this year. In 2007, there were 2.2 million "farms." About 1.3 million of these had farmgate gross sales of less than $10,000. Only 57,000 of them had farmgate sales of $1 million or more (sales, not profit . (1
This is about the sales volume of a medium-large urban food co-op in the 1970s, 40 years ago, when a million was worth a million, you might say. All of agriculture in the U.S. had farm sales of around $300 billion, roughly equivalent to a single major multi-national oil company.
Almost all the farmers I work with are part of the 57,000. But the 57,000 are as stratified as the whole farm population. About 10 percent of them (5,600 have farmgate gross sales of $5 million or more. Some of the farms I work with are among those 5,600. The USDA doesn't break down the 5,600 any further, but there are also a wide range of farm sizes within the category "$5 million or more."
Some are truly 'superfarms' with significant share of production of an entire commodity. When I analyzed California leafy greens using the 2002 Census of Agriculture data, for example, 59 lettuce farms grew 69 percent of the state lettuce crop on 1,000 acres or more. In 2006, USA Today reported that a single spinach grower produced almost all of the spinach for Fresh Express, at that time the largest fresh-cut processor in the country.
What is the definition of a "superfarm"? There are both organic and conventional vegetable operations in California that farm more than 20,000 acres -- almost 30 square miles. They could certainly qualify, but where the cutoff would be is not clear. Some are simply outstanding operations, including for food safety. Perhaps 10 percent of the farms with sales above $5 million, or about 500 farms, have very large roles in many produce categories.
In 2011, the USDA's Economic Research Service published
"Financial Characteristics of Vegetable and Melon Farms" by Mir Ali and Gary Lucier, which shows continuing concentration across all vegetable and melon types (2 .
The fact that the same individuals may control more than one farm "entity" complicates matters, but in general this means that farm statistics understate the degree of concentration and disparity between farm sizes.
The term "farms" includes farms and ranches, both crops and animal production, including large CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations , as well as woodland and pasture farms.
It's pretty easy to guess that the 1.3 million farms with less than $10,000 in sales should be in the "very small" farm category. But where this category ends is not clear.
The Tester Amendment to the Food Safety Modernization Act, under which the FDA is writing new farm food safety regulations, establishes a kind of definition of small as less than $500,000 in (farmgate sales and selling most production "locally" within a state, or within 275 miles if sales cross state lines. From my perspective, and looking at the O104:H4 outbreak in Germany, this sounds more regional than local, but regional is not a defined category.
The FDA briefly describes the FSMA as follows:
"FSMA is the most sweeping reform of FDA's food safety authority in more than 70 years, and a law of this scope and complexity often comes with direction from Congress for the federal agency responsible for implementing it to go through a process called rulemaking..."
Under the new food safety law, FDA will be issuing
a number of rules including a preventive controls rule in food facilities, a foreign supplier verification rule, and a produce safety rule."
For farmers, the question of how a "food facility" is defined -- because it can include on-farm basic operations -- and how rules for produce are developed, and where federal regulation stops and state regulation takes over, are all crucial questions, which are partly dependent on the size of the farm being "small" or not. Very different language is used by different parts of the industry for both "small" and "local."
One could say that a small farm has average annual sales somewhere in the range of from $10,000 to about $500,000, but less than $1 million dollars, recognizing that a lot of jockeying is going on because of the legal implications of the categories for food safety. By this very inclusive definition, there are about 840,000 "small farms," if by "small" you include what might be more reasonably called "medium" or "medium-large" farms.
There are no "average" farms except as an inappropriate statistical fiction.
Crops are not evenly distributed geographically. For example, California grows about 1/2 of U.S.-produced fruits, vegetables and nut crops, and for produce like leafy greens, the Salinas valley and the desert production of the Imperial Valley and Arizona dominate U.S. production in very specialized sub-regions, which are often dominated in turn by the largest farms.
It might make more sense to write leafy green regulations geared toward the largest farms in these areas rather than trying to impose a one-size-fits-all on smaller farmers growing a variety of crops in varying climates and geography. Many fruits and vegetables to be regulated as "produce" have similar concentrations, with large farms producing much of the crop in specific regions.
Just using very broad statistical indicators, it should be obvious that U.S. agriculture is highly heterogeneous. At an ecological, geographical, geological, biological, social, and farm or farm-field level the heterogeneity is infinitely more complex.
It does not seem like a rationally conceivable project to write national regulations for food safety on-farm, although it may be legally mandated.
Not, that is, if by regulation one means detailed instructions for every farm and farm size and crop and diversity of production and integration of production between crops and animals and ecosystem interactions and farm benefits to the environment. Even looking just at what I look at (mostly in food safety, the production of "specialty crops" (fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts and other raw products , U.S. farm complexity defeats centralized rule-making that could function.
The knowledge needed, if anywhere, is in the fields.
One could get far more impact for every regulatory buck spent if the initial goal were the regulation of the 6,000 largest farm operations. These truly approach what we think of as "industrial agriculture," with very large field sizes -- often in large monocultures, and often collectively dominating the overall production of a particular commodity.
They have many characteristics in common and look like the place one could start implementing national regulations. One could make sure these 6,000 farms had good food safety procedures and then perhaps move on to the next 50,000 farms with sales over $1 million -- a tougher nut to crack but conceivable. If we had well-validated food safety procedures for the very largest farms, that is. Do we?
Apparently not. Otherwise hundreds of millions of dollars of ongoing and new research projects -- federal, state, and private -- would not be going into fundamental and operational (or validational research on farm food safety, in particular aimed at these kinds of farms. A several-year
study headed by the University of Maryland will for the first timehave some access to the private data of the largest produce farms and processors, for example.
There is a further problem in fitting on-farm food safety to the scale of farming. If one looks at some of the metrics and "'supermetrics" developed by groups like the California Leafy Green Marketing Board and private buyers, respectively, it looks to me like the very largest farms and superfarms have the best fit to the metrics and face the least economic damage from applying them.
One of the metrics commonly used is to buffer production away from natural habitat. This can be a reasonable issue for a 1,000 acre field situated on a multi-thousand acre production farm. But it gets more expensive the smaller the field and the closer the natural habitat. At the limit of difficulty would be a small field, close to habitat, where the requirements for buffering (set on a national standard leave no field left to farm.
But my impression is that economic constraints start with even quite large farms.
There is quite a lot of well-validated data, not on how to farm safely, but on how to farm unsafely in particular ways, on how to specifically screw up. Some of these are general principles that appear truly scale neutral. Some are commodity-specific and one hopes reflected in parts of the commodity-specific guidances by the FDA and others, and are mostly scale neutral.
The human pathogens of major concern in food safety have their individual ecologies and preferences. Situations where each pathogen thrives can be looked for. These include Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (such as O157:H7 , Listeria, Salmonella, Shigella and Campylobacter. There are also common pairings between a particular crop and a particular pathogen found to be of greatest concern for that crop. Salmonella on cantaloupes is a common pairing.
So I could imagine several thousand pages of regulations being written for food safety on "small" and "very small" farms being replaced, instead, by one sentence: "Don't screw up."
For example: "Don't harvest strawberries, produced near ground level, next to wild animal droppings. And if rain or sprinkler irrigation could have splash-dispersed potential pathogens, expand the area where there is no harvest."
This is a strategy of known defect reduction, or elimination, often used in sensory control of food quality. Defect reduction is an achievable process of improvement on any farm. It would seem to be more effectively approached through education and cooperative efforts, leaving farmers in control -- as they should be. They know their farms. It could have dramatic impact, over time, in reducing food safety hazards on-farm. This is a statistical reduction of harm, effective on average, and not a guarantee. There are fairly simple steps that farmers have control over that would increase food safety.
On the farm, water quality, presence of excrement that can contact a crop, worker health, and crop "handling" -- preparation for sale off farm -- seem to be the main hazard points under control. Yet most regulations try and comprehensively detail every aspect of growing a crop. Growing crops up until harvest might be the least important factor in increasing overall food safety. The steps from harvest to the consumer are the places that seem to have the greatest impact on food safety. Those steps include handling, processing, commingling, storing, packaging, labeling (such as use-by dates, use-instructions , transportation (and consumer or retail behavior , which can have far more destructive effects. Except insofar as a grower is involved in all of these, they remain out of the grower's control.
In 2007, we found that processor/handlers of whole produce, and fresh-cut products, were the known sources of many multistate produce outbreaks and recalls over the previous 20 years. We also found that fresh-cut produce, compared to whole produce, looked like the cause of more outbreaks than would be the case if on-farm contamination was all that mattered.
For E. coli O157:H7 and many produce categories like leafy greens, we came up with the notion that the introduction of a new pathogen into a new kind of processing and food category without a kill step -- fresh-cut for both retail and food-service/wholesale --- combined with certain commercial realities to create the majority of the outbreaks and recalls in the U.S. (3 . Consequently, the greatest impact on food safety would come from better and specific regulation of the fresh-cut industry, or self-regulation for that matter, rather than regulating "farms."
One type of regulation that, from the record, could have great impact is simply to have use-by dates on bagged fresh-cut produce for consumers, or containerized fresh-cut for food service, be determined with food safety criteria, as well as by "freshness" and, in fact, to be under some regulation of any kind.
The three outbreaks in 2011 mentioned at the beginning of this commentary show the limitations of this approach as the sole analysis -- it is only true as far as it goes.
(1
2011 Census of Agriculture
(2
Financial Characteristics of Vegetable and Melon Farms
(3 September 22, 2009
testimony of David Runsten, Director of Policy and Programs, Community Alliance with Family Farmers, Davis, California, at the USDA hearing on the proposed National Leafy Green Marketing Agreement, Monterey, California
------------------------
Daniel B. Cohen is the owner of Maccabee Seed Co., an agricultural research-and-development and consulting company in Davis, CA.
Category: Health News
Created: 2/14/2012 2:05:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 2/15/2012
That last assertion comes in an
op-ed Mr Romney wrote for the
Detroit News
today. And it's not untrue, per se. The candidate was born in Detroit, though he grew up in
Bloomfield Hills, one of America's wealthiest cities. He probably cheered for the Tigers as a kid, but his position has since
evolved. And cars may really be "in my bones", as he claims, but he advocated letting
Detroit go bankrupt in 2008.
The purpose of Mr Romney's op-ed is to clarify his position on the auto bail-out ahead of Michigan's primary on February 28th. And the piece rivals Cirque du Soleil in its display of contortions. Mr Romney seems loth to gush about the success of the bail-out, noting only the good news that "Chrysler and General Motors are still in business". He certainly doesn't mention that 2011 was the best year for America's carmakers since the financial crisis, with each of the big three turning a solid profit. But he does imply that this achievement is a result of his own advice. "The course I recommended was eventually followed", Mr Romney writes.
As with much of Mr Romney's excessive rhetoric, there is some truth to this statement. Following the bail-outs, the president eventually forced Chrysler and GM into bankruptcy, a step Mr Romney thought should occur naturally. And the government oversaw painful restructurings at both companies, which were largely in line with Mr Romney's broad suggestions. But the course Mr Romney recommended in 2008 began with the government stepping back, and it is unlikely things would've turned out so well had this happened.
Free-marketeers that we are,
The Economist
agreed with Mr Romney at the time. But we later
apologised for that position. "Had the government not stepped in, GM might have restructured under normal bankruptcy procedures, without putting public money at risk", we said. But "given the panic that gripped private purse-strings...it is more likely that GM would have been liquidated, sending a cascade of destruction through the supply chain on which its rivals, too, depended." Even Ford, which avoided bankruptcy, feared the industry would collapse if GM went down. At the time that seemed like a real possibility. The credit markets were bone-dry, making the privately financed bankruptcy that Mr Romney favoured improbable. He conveniently ignores this bit of history in claiming to have been right all along.
In other areas of his op-ed Mr Romney is more accurate. Unions did win some special favours in the bail-out deals, though they are not as egregious as the candidate claims. For example, a health fund for retired workers was unfairly favoured over secured bondholders at Chrysler. But an issue like that is unlikely to resonate in Detroit. So Mr Romney must find a way to re-write history, lest he fall
further behind Rick Santorum in his state of birth. Mr Santorum didn't support the auto bail-out either, but he evinces a genuine compassion for blue-collar workers. And he didn't pen an op-ed predicting, "If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye." That's a difficult statement to walk back.
(Photo credit: AFP
The health care products giant Johnson & Johnson continued to market an artificial hip in Europe and elsewhere overseas after the Food and Drug Administration rejected its sale in the United States based on a review of company safety studies.During that period, the company also continued to sell in this country a related model, which earlier went on the market using a regulatory loophole that did not require a similar safety review.
It is not known how many people overseas received the replacement hip after the agency decided in 2009 not to approve it, nor the number who received the closely linked implant sold in this country. During some eight years on the market, the two implants were used in about 93,000 patients worldwide, about one-third of them in the United States. Both models were based on the same component, an all-metal hip socket cup that experts say was faulty in design.
The DePuy orthopedic division of Johnson & Johnson, citing declining sales, began phasing out both models of the device — formally known as an articular surface replacement device, which DePuy marketed under the name ASR — in November 2009 and formally recalled them in August 2010 amid reports in databases of orthopedic patients abroad showing they were failing prematurely at high rates.
But in a confidential letter, the F.D.A. told Johnson & Johnson in August 2009 that company studies and clinical data submitted to gain approval in the United States to sell the model available overseas were inadequate to determine the implant’s safety and effectiveness, according to a summary of the letter reviewed by The New York Times.
The agency also told the company it would need added clinical data to pursue the application, a process that would probably have taken a year or more. DePuy’s receipt of the notice came as regulators and surgeons abroad as well as doctors in this country were raising serious questions about growing failures of both models of the implant.
A spokeswoman for DePuy confirmed that the company had received the agency’s so-called nonapproval letter. But the spokeswoman, Mindy Tinsley, declined to release the letter or to respond to questions about when, or if, DePuy disclosed the ruling to doctors, patients, investors or regulators abroad.
A principal researcher on the clinical studies submitted by the company to the F.D.A. said he was not informed of the agency’s decision. Also, a review of publicly available information indicates that the company did not discuss the agency’s nonapproval letter in financial reports or in presentations to analysts while the device remained on the market.
There is no suggestion that Johnson & Johnson broke the law. Regulatory standards in other countries, like those in Europe, for approving the sale of medical devices are typically lower than here. A spokeswoman for a British regulatory agency, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, said that companies like Johnson & Johnson were not required to notify it when the F.D.A. refused to approve a product that was used in patients there.
However, the F.D.A.’s rejection may further deepen the company’s legal and financial problems surrounding the ASR. Last month, the company took a special $3 billion charge, much of it related to anticipated legal and medical expenses associated with the recall. An estimated 5,000 lawsuits involving the device are pending, including some from patients crippled by tiny particles of metallic debris shed by the implants.
William Vodra, a lawyer who specializes in F.D.A. regulation, said that, in general, drug and medical device makers typically disclose nonapproval letters if they might have a material impact on a company’s finances. Mr. Vodra added that apart from that financial calculation, there was no hard-and-fast rule about making such rulings public.
Mr. Vodra said that if a company decided to withhold a nonapproval letter that contained important safety information about a device used by doctors, it could face damage to its brand. “They have to think long and hard of the reputational impact,” he said.
The handling of the ASR highlights how the F.D.A., by keeping its approval process confidential, may affect the health and safety of patients. An agency spokesman, Morgan Liscinsky, declined to disclose the letter on the ASR, saying the agency had a policy of not releasing such notices because they might contain confidential business information.
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Category: Health News
Created: 2/13/2012 8:05:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 2/13/2012
The Case for Big Government
and he is working on another to be called
The Age of Greed
about the economy since 1970. At New Deal 2.0, he
writes:
President Obama’s budget for 2013 is a sharp improvement over his 2012 budget. What a difference a year makes. Back then, the emphasis was all deficit all the time. If I exaggerate a bit, it is because the Obama administration was so wrong-headed. He wanted to reduce discretionary spending to Eisenhower lows, for example. He told us a country must tighten its belt like a family, despite Keynes’s convincing analysis otherwise. Since then, inside-the-beltway analyses have claimed he had little choice but to focus on the budget deficit given the Republican strength in Congress, their propaganda offensive, and what the opinion surveys showed. For what it is worth, I think this is badly wrong. Why should people have thought anything other than that the deficit was our problem — and therefore big government as well? Almost no Democrats with a national platform were saying otherwise.
Last September, Obama changed his tune. He at last conceded that jobs were America’s biggest problem, not the federal deficit. Fortunately, he has kept talking that line. The new budget reflects that wisdom. Was it the Occupy Wall Street effect? I think to some degree it was. But the relentlessness of high jobless numbers until recently could not be ignored.
So we now have a pretty good budget proposal from the president — that is, if we are content to put it in political context. Above all, the economy still needs stimulus, and he wants to extend the payroll taxes. The Republicans seem to have caved on the issue, a sign American voters may be waking up from their long sleep.
But more important, he is now willing to make proposals that will not win congressional support, a strategy he and his Clinton holdover advisers long resisted. He would tax high incomes at 30 percent, the Buffett tax. He would raise taxes on dividends for better-off Americans to the ordinary rates, and raise the capital gains tax as well. He will refuse to endorse a tax cut for those who make more than $250,000 a year — that is, he will allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for the well off. Remember, he threw in the towel on that one in December 2010, a stunning concession. If Republicans say no, they will now bear the stigma going into the election.
Importantly, he is proposing some serious long-term investment in the economy, partly to be paid for by the wind down in military spending as wars end in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But in the end, the nation won’t have all it will need. The obsession with cutting the federal deficit is still the subtext even of this proposal. He will generally keep federal spending historically low as a proportion of GDP. This is a national focus to which the Obama administration contributed enormously. Since he took office, deficit cutting was a key target for him. [...] Throughout most of 2011, but for a brief exception following the November 2010 electoral rout, the administration was still refusing to raise jobs creation as a priority over deficit battles. The mantra was some stimulus now, but not much, and put in place a strong deficit-cutting program to kick in shortly thereafter.
Now we have a decent budget proposal, but only in the context of these political pressures. We have to face the fact that we won’t have enough stimulus to result in a strong recovery or enough mortgage relief to get people spending adequately. We will not spend enough on rebuilding the country. [...]
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2003:
Well, the CIA is "almost certain" that the voice on the most recent Al Qaeda release is that of Osama Bin Laden.
Osama Bin who? The guy behind ...
You know, the most brazen, destructive attack on US soil since the Civil War?
Since the president has apparently forgotten this little fact, I thought I might offer the helpful reminder.
High Impact Posts are
here. Top Comments are
here. Overnight News Digest is
here.
Category: Health News
Created: 2/14/2012 8:06:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 2/15/2012
Category: Health News
Created: 2/14/2012 11:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 2/14/2012
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