Shaw's Eco-Logic

This HND piece covers the devastating report released a few days ago by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA). Murray was dragged into the world of endoscope reprocessing and infection control when famous Virginia Mason Medical Center of Seattle became one of the first hospitals to report deaths related to tainted endoscopes. Who knows how many went unreported?

Making matters worse is that the entire situation reveals epic failure at all levels, not the least of which is the good old FDA. Bear in mind that the processing (cleaning and sterilizing) of these scopes is left up to hospital employees who are among the lowest paid.

Murray's report proffers a number of recommendations, and we comment on these.

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This HND piece begins with the new 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines, and then segues into the so-called paleo diet.

All told there is at least a bit of sense in the guidelines, even if they still get it wrong about sat fat and salt. At least, they didn't succumb to the anti-meat morons or the insane low salters (less than 15t00 mg per day), led by the ridiculous Dr. Elliott Antman. Now maybe if people were ants...

As to the paleo diet, once you get past its low carb aspects, it is little more than a silly celebration of the Noble Savage. That is to say, it is mostly bunk. And, cavemen DID get heart disease.

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This one, over at the Mike's Comments—and mirrored a few other places—puts an epilogue on this hack's downfall. I think you'll like the irony.

Sabrina, like so many others before her, was able to fashion a career solely because she wrote PC stuff. I guess no one ever told her that if she was going to lie, choose the lies carefully—or at least do some fact-checking. The smart crisis PR move would have been to visit the fraternity in question and do a big fat mea culpa, replete with a nice puff piece. Heck, she could have even foisted some of the blame on Jackie Coakley.

No doubt, though, she got legal counsel advising against it. Bad move.

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This HND piece examines some of the science (good and bad) behind low carb. The bad stuff takes advantage of no formal definition of the term "low carb," to mock its efficacy. In that case, 40% carbs was considered "low," and in fairness could be, since the recommended diet—incredibly—is still at 60% carbs.

We quote diet expert and friend of this column Diane Kress, and mock a big study or two.

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This piece, over at the Mike's Comments, traces the history of the not exactly recent "Republicans In Name Only" phenomenon. Of course, hating RINOs is a big part of Donald Trump's appeal.

Arguably, one of the earliest RINOs was the comically overrated Teddy Roosevelt, and it marches on from there, getting worse by the decade, with only brief interludes at Coolidge and Reagan.

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We end the year with a recap of five of the year's most popular HND pieces. For your reading pleasure...

1.     No Minnesota Nice For Dan Markingson

2.     Scaring People About e-Cigarettes: A Public Health Disgrace

3.     Pernicious Junk Science

4.     Research Using Fetal Tissue

5.     More On Walking Back The Low Fat