Our Planet Weekly - Week of September 27th, 2009

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Week of September 27th, 2009

You are receiving Our Planet, our FREE newsletter, because you provided your e-mail to us at an event, on emagazine.com, or through the mail. If you do not wish to receive Our Planet, please use the link above to un-subscribe. NEWS THIS WEEK Brighter Idea Than the CFL May Soon Hit the Market Reported by Jessica Rae Patton Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), though far more energy efficient than their incandescent forbears, leave a lot to be desired. Go to all articles - Go to this article Grizzlies Make the List Reported by Jessica Rae Patton According to the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, "In the past two years grizzly mortality has risen alarmingly...[and] their future remains precarious." Go to all articles - Go to this article   Reporting by Jessica Rae Patton THIS WEEK'S COMMENTARY Igniting Activists It's the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day-Are You Ready to Get to Work? Last year, Earth Day took some heat by online green scorekeepers, but this year-the celebration's 40th-it's reasserting its prominence. By Brita Belli Go to all articles - Go to this article IN THE CURRENT ISSUE OF E GREEN LIVING Lessons from Etsy Tips for Taking Your Eco-Ideas Online Get crafty with home-biz tips from these eco-entrepreneurs. By Jessica A. Knoblauch Go to all articles - Go to this article CURRENTS Surviving the Downturn Environmental Nonprofits Face a New Economic Reality Environmental nonprofits are riding out the recession by joining forces-and office space. By Kristin Bender Go to all articles - Go to this article EARTHTALK Week of 9/27/09 Dear EarthTalk: As I understand it, hair salons are pretty toxic enterprises on many counts. Are there any efforts underway to green up that industry? Dear EarthTalk: Not long ago there were concerns about honey bees disappearing. Are the bees still disappearing, and if so do we know why and do we have a solution? Go to this week's EarthTalk WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT This content is brought to you as a free public service by E/The Environmental Magazine, which is published by Earth Action Network, Inc., a non-profit 501 (c) (3) organization. Our address is 28 Knight Street, Norwalk, CT 06851. We ask that you: Subscribe to our magazine ($24.95/yr. US) Order a Free Trial Issue Make a tax deductible donation   Commentary Archive – News Archive

www.mocamobile.org AND www.dossia.org

Today at lunchtime I attended an HSPH presentation on www.mocamobile.org (MIT and HSPH developers for global health applications by cellphone/wireless devices that transmit photos and patient info to secure servers) and www.dossia.org (employer-insured systems that collaborated with MIT and HSPH developers - builds in patient incentives to personal responsibility for maintaining and developing personal wellness).

Very promising!

Dr. Leon Eisenberg, Pioneer in Autism Studies, Dies at 87

Dr. Leon Eisenberg, who conducted some of the first rigorous studies of autism, attention deficit disorder and learning delays and became a prominent advocate for children struggling with disabilities, died on Sept. 15 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 87.

Dr. Leon Eisenberg

The cause was prostate cancer, said his wife, Dr. Carola Eisenberg.

The field of child psychiatry was dominated by Freudian psychoanalysis when, in the late 1950s and 1960s, Dr. Eisenberg began conducting medical studies of children with developmental problems. Working at Johns Hopkins University with Dr. Leo Kanner, who first described autistic behavior, Dr. Eisenberg completed the first detailed, long-term study of children with autism, demonstrating among other things that language problems predicted its severity.

In a similar study among children who were developing normally, Dr. Eisenberg showed that reading difficulties early in school predicted behavior problems later on.

In the 1960s, he performed the first scientific drug trials in child psychiatry, testing stimulants like Dexedrine and Ritalin to soothe the behavior of children identified as “delinquent” or “hyperkinetic.” These studies, which became the basis for drug treatment of what is now called attention deficit disorder, ran counter to psychoanalytic theories on the most effective treatments.

“Leon took a very courageous stand and denounced the way psychiatry treated children, this whole system in which we had a few rich kids and their parents getting psychoanalysis five days a week and still not being cured,” said C. Keith Conners, a professor emeritus in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University. “No one even knew what a cure looked like. He had this conviction that nothing was being done for the bulk of children who needed help, and that we had very little scientific data to guide us.”

Dr. James Harris, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Johns Hopkins University, said that Dr. Eisenberg was “the pivotal person in 20th-century child psychiatry who moved the field from simple descriptions of childhood disorders to actually looking at the science behind both the diagnosis and treatment.”

Leon Eisenberg was born in Philadelphia on Aug. 8, 1922, the eldest child of immigrants from Russia. He earned his undergraduate degree and, in 1946, his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, before taking an internship at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, where he developed an interest in psychiatry. He completed his psychiatric residency at Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Towson, Md.

After two years in the Army teaching physiology (Carey incorrectly said psychology), in 1952 he began a residency at Johns Hopkins and his collaboration with Dr. Kanner. In 1967, he took over as chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he continued to publish and, among many other projects, helped formulate and carry out affirmative action policies at Harvard Medical School.

In 1980, he established the medical school’s department of social medicine, with the aim of applying the tools of social science to improving access to and practice of medicine worldwide.

In addition to his wife, a co-founder of Physicians for Human Rights, Dr. Eisenberg is survived by two children from a previous marriage, Kathy and Mark Eisenberg; two stepchildren, Alan and Larry Guttmacher; two sisters, Essie Ellis and Libby Wickler; and six grandchildren.

For two days last week, Harvard lowered its flags to half-staff in honor of Dr. Eisenberg.

In his later years, Dr. Eisenberg became increasingly alarmed at trends in the field he helped establish, criticizing what he saw as a cozy relationships between drug makers and doctors and the expanding popularity of the attention deficit diagnosis.

The diagnosis “has morphed from a relative uncommon condition 40 years ago to one whose current prevalence is 8 percent,” he wrote. “Correspondingly, the prescription of stimulant drugs has gone up enormously. The reasons are not self-evident.”

Good law from tragic facts--Congress, the FDA, and preemption

Good law from tragic facts--Congress, the FDA, and preemption.
Annas GJ.
N Engl J Med. 2009 Sep 17;361(12):1206-11. No abstract available.
PMID: 19759383 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Related Articles


The New York Times heralded "A Win for Injured Patients,"¹ while the Wall Street Journal said that the U.S. Supreme Court was "Pre-empting Drug Innovation."² To the New York Times, the Court's decision in Wyeth v. Levine was "wise and surprising."¹ To the Wall Street Journal, it was a "defeat for drug innovation and public health"²; the editorial expressed surprise because the Supreme Court had earlier ruled that Congress had preempted state civil lawsuits alleging device misbranding, and many persons thought that the Court had turned relentlessly pro-business and would therefore also rule that civil lawsuits alleging drug misbranding . . . [Full Text of this Article]
The Facts in Wyeth
The Law of Preemption
"Tragic Facts"
Preemption after Wyeth

Source Information
From the Department of Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston.
References

1. A win for injured patients. New York Times. March 5, 2009. 
2. Pre-empting drug innovation. Wall Street Journal. March 5, 2009:A16.
3. Rosen J. Supreme Court, Inc. New York Times Magazine. March 16, 2008.
4. Wyeth v. Levine, 129 U.S. 1187 (2009).
5. Curfman GD, Morrissey S, Drazen JM. Why doctors should worry about preemption. N Engl J Med 2008;359:1-3. [Free Full Text]
6. Northern Securities v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, 400 (1904).
7. Glantz LH, Annas GJ. The FDA, preemption, and the Supreme Court. N Engl J Med 2008;358:1883-1885. [Free Full Text]
8. Kennedy D. Misbegotten preemptions. Science 2008;320:585-585. [Free Full Text]
9. Warning signs. Nature 2008;452:254-254. [Medline]
10. Committee on the Assessment of the US Drug-Safety System. The future of drug safety: promoting and protecting the health of the public. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2007.
11. Psaty BM, Burke SP. Protecting the health of the public -- Institute of Medicine recommendations on drug safety. N Engl J Med 2006;355:1753-1755. [Free Full Text]
12. Gilhooley M. Drug preemption and the need to reform the FDA consultation process. Am J Law Med 2008;34:539-561. [Web of Science][Medline]
13. Wyeth v. Levine, 944 A.2d 179 (Vt. 2006).
14. Riegel v. Medtronic, 128 U.S. 999 (2008).
15. 71 C.F.R. 3922 (2006).
16. Geier v. American Honda Motor Co., 529 U.S. 861 (2000).
17. Curfman GD, Morrissey S, Drazen JM. The Medical Device Safety Act of 2009. N Engl J Med 2009;360:1550-1551. [Free Full Text]
18. Obama B. Memorandum for the heads of executive departments and agencies: preemption. Washington, DC: White House, May 20, 2009. (Accessed August 27, 2009, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Presidential-Memorandum-Regarding-Preemption/.)

LearnOutLoud.com Audio

LearnOutLoud.com Audio

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"Whatever you do may (well) be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it (well)."

Whatever you do may (well) be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it (well).
 - Mahatma Gandhi

09/13/2009 Harvard Crimson: 09/12/2009 "Is Eating Animals Ethical?" debate

Why not just email me at Maynard.Clark@GMail.com?

The Harvard Crimson's blog article on yesterday's "Is Eating Animals Ethical?" debate
c

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PETA Debate: On Tolstoy and Bonzai Trees

Published by amcleese on Saturday, September 12, 2009, at 9:07PM

There's a lot of irony here. Bullhorns. Resemblances. Soak it in.

Most Harvard students eat meat. And most Americans probably think of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as an extremist group.
You wouldn’t have known it at the debate the Harvard College Vegetarian Society organized this afternoon between Wesley N. Hopkin ’11, a social studies concentrator and member of the Harvard Speech and Parliamentary Debate Society, and Bruce G. Friedrich, vice president of policy and government affairs for PETA.
The most heated dispute concerned our own Harvard University Dining Services. Hopkin praised HUDS: “They are moving in the right direction,” he said. “We can, generally speaking, eat meat or eat meat products with a relatively clear conscience even now.”
Friedrich responded sharply. He noted that HUDS buys eggs from cage-free farms, but said that is the only bright spot. “Eating meat in HUDS when they are doing nothing for farmed animals, and eating meat in the real world, in any restaurant around here,” he said, “for people here who said you do eat meat: that is unethical.” Get the skivvy on Hopkin’s response and more after the jump.
Throughout most of the debate, though a slim majority of the packed Science Center audience admitted to eating meat, Hopkin conceded Friedrich’s arguments about the immorality of being a carnivore in today’s world. PETA seemed downright reasonable.
Hopkin and questioners from the audience rarely presented compelling reasons to dispute the main thrust of Friedrich’s well-supported argument. The PETA leader argued that facts overwhelmingly show that eating meat is bad for the environment, for the world’s poorest, and for the conscious experiences of animals. Instead of disputing Friedrich’s figures, Hopkin and others raised abstract intellectual questions heard in Social Studies 10 and “Justice”: How can we compare animal pain with human pain? And can animals be a part of the social contract?
Friedrich’s argument, by contrast, was direct and sure of its moral clarity. Throughout the event, he peppered his arguments with colorful quotations from celebs and intellectuals alike:
From Paul McCartney: “It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty.”
From Leo Tolstoy: “Vegetarianism is the root of humanitarianism.”
And from Cameron Diaz, on eating bacon: “It’s like eating my niece.”
Hopkin, the subtle debater, conceded that today’s factory farming practices are “unconscionable, and should not be permitted.” Instead, he wondered whether better farming techniques could ever create a world in which eating meat was ethical. He advocated an approach to animal rights that focused on the social contract instead of utilitarianism, and on leveraging consumer power to work for better farming practices instead of abstaining from eating meat.
During the question and answer session, Harvard’s lofty minds posed provocative questions:
Is it ethically permissible to eat the meat leftovers of your friend sitting across the table at dinner?
How anthropocentric is the social contract, after all?
Cuteness aside, can we kill kangaroos in the barren outback of Australia?
And: is it morally responsible to own a pet—or should you buy a bonzai tree?
Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons

This was written by amcleese. Posted on at 9:07 pm. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.

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Primary Prevention NOW !! [That's evidence-based health education for cost-savings]

http://maynardclark.spaces.live.com

The signature I sign in health care petitions is the signature that  includes the clarification that I would support universal inclusion that is truly caring for health, not merely managing disease, and that I believed we could afford to guarantee THAT kind of healthcare as a fundamental right IF we include primary prevention that is behaviorally-oriented and evidence-based.

Ensuring healthy vegetarian (read vegan) meal options (along with suitable health education that sees the benefits of plant-based diets) for students, we cannot deliver the experiential knowledge of what health-supporting eating actually is (and providing a health-aware future for those young citizens going forward).

Primary Prevention NOW !! [That's evidence-based health education for cost-savings]

http://maynardclark.spaces.live.com

The signature I sign in health care petitions is the signature that  includes the clarification that I would support universal inclusion that is truly caring for health, not merely managing disease, and that I believed we could afford to guarantee THAT kind of healthcare as a fundamental right IF we include primary prevention that is behaviorally-oriented and evidence-based.

Ensuring healthy vegetarian (read vegan) meal options (along with suitable health education that sees the benefits of plant-based diets) for students, we cannot deliver the experiential knowledge of what health-supporting eating actually is (and providing a health-aware future for those young citizens going forward).

Vegan advocacy for introverts

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Vegan advocacy for introverts

September 10, 4:02 AMRoanoke Vegan ExaminerCorey Wrenn

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     Vegan activism need not be intimidating!

 












Vegan advocacy is often veryoff-putting for introvertive folks who find speaking to others about moral or political issues terrifying.  However, even the very shy can make a difference for non-human animals.  When it comes down to it, you can go very far in your outreach without having speaking to anyone face to face.  By adopting these ten easy activities, the number of people reached could be substantial.  Vegan outreach need not be intimidating, but it should be pervasive and persistent.  There's no reason for anyone who recognizes the inherent injustice and the terrible truth of non-human animal use to stand by idly.

1.    The Vegan Car
Those in traffic will have no choice but to read your thought-provoking bumper stickers.  From parking lots to interstates, a well-labeled vegan car is effective outreach en mass.  Vanity  plates, too, while limited in their breadth, are excellent vehicles for outreach.

2.     Vegan Voicemail
A vegan-related voicemail or answering machine message is great for frequent-callers, new friends, and businesses who must listen to the voicemail to leave a message.  Often you will find your message is prefaced by the caller's reaction!

3.     Vegan Snail Mail
Always slip vegan literature into all outgoing mail, especially bills.  Don’t forget to seal the envelope with a vegan sticker!

4.     Vegan "Litter"
Always carry vegan literature with you.  Small brochures like Gary Francione’s Abolitionist Approach pamphlet, are easy to carry in your purse, backpack, or glove box.  Leave them in veterinarian’s offices, gyms, public spaces on campus or at work, etc.

5.    Internet Social Networking
By regularly posting articles, videos, or comments regarding vegan abolitionist animal rights on networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter, you can access a large network of friends and friends of friends.

6.     Vegan Email
Add a vegan-oriented quote to your email signature.  If your email allows, a small photograph also draws attention and sparks thought.

7.     Vegan News
While writing an editorial might seem daunting, non-human animal issues are often popular with newspapers and magazines.  The uniqueness of the abolitionist vegan approach is also useful for getting printed.   If one source turns you down, simply send it to another.   If the writing is good, it is unlikely it will be rejected indefinitely.

8.     Vegan Food
Bring a delicious vegan dish to company, group, or family get togethers.  Make sure it is labeled vegan.  If the crowd is likely to be closed-minded to death-free dining, don’t mention the dish to be vegan until after they’ve enjoyed it.

9.     The Vegan Public Space
Offices, dorms, cubicles, etc. are seen by countless persons.  If permitted, post vegan fliers and lay literature out for the passerby to peruse.  If possible, plaster doors with bright, eye-catching vegan material to enlighten.

10.     Be Vegan and Stay Vegan
Simply being vegan is in itself superb direct action for non-human animals.   Living your life day to day, you will make choices that will positively impact non-human animals and those around  you.  Help destroy the negative stereotype surrounding vegans.  Maintaining a well-adjusted, happy vegan front is the easiest and most effective activism you can accomplish.