Shaw's Eco-Logic

In this HND piece, we salute the late rock legend Eddie Cochran and focus on two serious health care issues of this summer.  The first one involves a major scandal at a Johns Hopkins affiliated clinic, just settled for a record $190 million.  The other involves a bacterial outbreak at a Greenville, SC hospital that has claimed four lives.

In both cases, malfeasance is indicated.   Just a reminder that with all the high-tech modern medicine in the world, it still comes down to the people.

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This HND piece compares the faux reality/science fiction series Dark Secrets to the pathetic current state of "true" science. Our starting point is the incandescently ridiculous notion of peer review—especially these days with big money and PC controlling all science.

We include details on one recent scandal, but volumes could be written. The sad fact is that at least half of today's published science really is junk science.

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This HND piece starts off by defining "iatrogenic," and then moves into the sorry business of healthcare-acquired infections.  While most of the attention to HAIs is directed at acute hospital care, people are starting to realize that dental offices are far from immune.

Indeed, with upwards of 500 million dental visits annually, and almost all of these involving blood, saliva, or tissue, infection control in this setting should be a much bigger deal than it currently is.

We give a shout-out to Support Clean Dentistry, and tell the sad story of a woman who lost an eye--needlessly--because of an infection acquired in a dental office.

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This HND piece names some names (including Adolf Hitler as the founder of government-controlled health care), and explains why the Feds are the worst possible entity to be running this. As if the VA debacle weren't enough proof.

Notably, the VA is the only built-from-the-ground-up government-controlled health care system in the world. All others were originally run privately. More than that, considering that the VA has essentially an unlimited budget, it is truly frightening (or it should be) how badly they've screwed that up.

As always, we include the reminder that our current system is not health care at all, but is disease care. And, there is simply not enough money in the world to support a disease care model. Rationing, if not euthanasia, is inevitable.

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I got this one off Jason Mattera's wonderful Daily Surge website. I agree with Eubanks on pretty much everything except soccer. Here's the piece in its entirety...

Two embarrassing news stories draw attention to one very salient point.

First, the University of Florida (and, full disclosure: I’m a Georgia guy so I take great glee in poking fun at the Gator Nation), made the tragic error of putting Aaron Hernandez, the former Gator and New England Patriot tight end who is sitting in jail awaiting trial for murder, in this year’s calendar as “Mr. July.”

Secondly, UFC president Dana White announced that the mixed martial arts league is severing all ties with Chael Sonnen, the middleweight and light-heavyweight contender, for repeatedly failing drug tests for steroids and human growth hormone.

So what do these two stories have in common? Simple: both reinforce the axiom that sport does not build character: it reveals it.

Anybody who spent five minutes around the Florida football program during the Gators’ championship run knew that Hernandez was the worst kind of thug, an unbridled sociopath who made you want to keep your distance. It might have shocked the casual fan when he was arrested for murdering one man who was allegedly threatening to expose Hernandez’s role in the killing of two others, but those who knew him from college simply nodded and said, “What took so long?” You only had to see him in a locker room once or twice to know that this guy was missing a chip.

The same is true for Sonnen, a man who copped a plea to felony mortgage fraud and conspiracy. Did any really think he was clean in all other aspects of his life? MMA insiders long suspected that he was dopping. The only question was: what would Dana White do about it?

The moral of the story is easy: image and PR consultants can’t hide your true character during the heat of competition. The character you see on the field, on the course or in the ring – the guy you suspect is a class act or a phony or a really bad dude – is, more often than not, exactly that.

Just as alcohol tends to loosen the tongue on what you really think, top-level competition almost always drops the mask and reveals your true character.

This HND piece proves that there's more to mobile apps than games, still cameras, social media, music, and video. Among other things, we discuss a cool new app, that ties a personal emergency warning device into a mobile phone.

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