[quaist]

Seems that this ban is totally scientifically unfunded, but I do wonder how they'd possibly check if people are HIV-positive?!

[sunnykerr]

That's an excellent point.

It's not like they have symbols sown into their clothes, is it?

You can't tell from looking at someone if they are HIV positive.

You can tell when someone has AIDS, if you know what to look for, but until then...

You're just going on prejudice.

[quaist]

And HIV tests do take time.

The only way they could perhaps manage it would be to compile a registry of people wanting to attend these baths beforehand, test them and only after the results have been proven negative permit them entrance. However, even by doing so they wouldn't be able to detect new infections.

Plus, HIV is oftentimes only traceable after six months time, so they can't even be sure that those who initially tested negative weren't actually infected already at the time.

Either way, the whole concept is insane.

[sunnykerr]

It's scientifically untenable.

And therefore unenforcable.

Which means that it'll just be an excuse for harassment and prejudicial behaviour.

[quaist]

I can already see it coming; people getting denied entry on the grounds of 'suspiciously looking like being HIV positive'. Oh well.

On another note, I've come across an interesting article addressing the problem with taking too many vitamins. It's pretty long but I think it's worth a read.

Essentially, it is saying that there are circumstances in which taking vitamin supplements may be useful or even necessary, but in most cases, it's not needed if not actually harmful.

I am taking supplements, not on a regular basis, but sometimes I take zinc, vitamin A and/or iron. In my view, like the author of the article points out, it comes down to 'not too much and not too little'.

[sunnykerr]

I also take supplements.

I live quite north of the Equator and so, even in summer, it's considered that we don't get enough exposure to the sun. So I take vitamin D supplements, which I double during the winter months when I definitely don't see much of the sun.

I also take garlic and ecchinacea supplements for immune system boosting.

Vitamin C when I feel a cold coming on.

And a multivitamin every day to round everything out.

I expect that I fall in the "too much" side of things, but these studies change their minds every freaking day. I do the best I can, so I refuse to add stress to my daily regimen just because I may be taking too many supplements.

I try to have a balanced diet, but it simply doesn't happen each and every day. So I have supplements.

[quaist]

Originally Posted by sunnykerr (View Post) I also take garlic and ecchinacea supplements for immune system boosting.

And you've seen improvements?

Sounds like I should consider taking something like that too... As you know I've had my tonsils removed last summer, but the throat is still my weak point, it seems. Currently having a sore one yet again

[sunnykerr]

Well, I mostly take them to stave off minor illnesses, so in that regard it would be hard to detect and actual improvement. I have to go on faith that the fact that I rarely get very sick is a sign that things are going well.

When I get the odd cold or sinus infection, I double my intake and that does seem to help, though.

If your throat's the bother, I would recommends cough drops with menthol in them.

That's always done me a world of good, just because it numbs the painful area.

And, of course, plenty of fluids.

[Nick HeyRee]

Lord Saatchi: 'Let new cures be tried out on cancer patients'

Doctors are too scared of legal action to try innovative treatments, the peer tells Steve Connor
Steve Connor Author Biography

Sunday 13 October 2013

An ambitious attempt by cancer doctors to make it lawful to take measured risks with their patients, when the standard medical treatment is almost certainly doomed to fail, has been blocked by the Department of Health.

The department is opposing a Private Members' Bill on medical innovation, on the grounds that there is no need to introduce legislation to protect doctors who try new and risky treatments that could lead to their being sued for medical negligence.

The Medical Innovation Bill by Lord Saatchi, whose wife, the author Josephine Hart, died of ovarian cancer, attempts to protect doctors from being struck off or sued when they prescribe innovative treatments that do not conform to standard medical procedure.

In an interview with The Independent on Sunday, Lord Saatchi said that he has received widespread support from different levels of government, as well as from the medical and legal professions. "There has been a wide consultation at all levels," he said. "I've yet to hear any objection to the Bill. It strikes people as necessary and logical."

"The view I've received from the medical profession is that there will be no cure for cancer until real doctors with real patients in real hospitals can attempt some kind of innovation, and that is not possible under current law," he said.

"It's not giving freedom to doctors to do what they want. We don't want patients to be treated like mice and we don't want reckless experimentation that puts patients' lives at risk. On the other hand, we do want bold, scientific innovation," he added.

However, sources close to the Department of Health said that officials will try to persuade Lord Saatchi that legislation is not necessary and that the existing law is more than adequate to encourage innovative, but risky, medical treatments.

"We welcome an open debate on how to encourage innovation in the NHS, but the current system does not prevent doctors from doing their best for their patients," said a spokeswoman for the department.

"There is nothing to stop doctors considering novel and innovative treatments to help their patients, but what is crucial is that patients are involved in the decision-making process and are fully informed of the risks and benefits of any treatment," she said.

Lord Saatchi's Bill goes through a crucial phase this week in the House of Commons, where it is about to enter the committee stage. It has received strong support from some sections of the medical profession concerned that doctors are fearful of being sued or struck off if they veer away from standard medical practice, even when the outlook for patients is dismal.

"The problem is that cancer is relentless, remorseless and merciless, and that treatment is medieval, degrading and ineffective. Therefore, we can all agree that more innovation is required to reach a cure for cancer," Lord Saatchi said.

"Under current law, any deviation from standard procedure is likely to result in guilt for medical negligence, that is because current law defines medical negligence as deviation from standard procedure," he added.

"Therefore the doctor is obliged to stick to the well-worn path even though the doctor knows that it leads to poor quality of life, followed by death."

Lord Saatchi's wife of 27 years, Josephine, author of Damage and a number of other best-sellers, died two years ago. She had a rare tumour that can be hard to treat because so little is known about it from large-scale clinical trials – the gold standard for evidence-based medicine.

Professor Stephen Kennedy, clinical director of women's services at Oxford University NHS Trust, supports Lord Saatchi's Bill because he said doctors are more risk averse in a more litigious culture, where they face being disciplined by the General Medical Council if they do not conform to standard practice.

"Doctors are afraid of being struck off for not following standard practice and they are afraid of how innovation is seen by the general public," Professor Kennedy said.

"The problem is particularly acute for rare cancers. What do you do when confronted with a patient with a rare cancer where the evidence base is not strong or when there is no evidence?" he said.

Andy Hall, professor of experimental haematology at Newcastle University and an expert on bone cancer, said: "There have been major advances in some areas, but in others it has been agonisingly slow, and we are still left with treatments that are extremely blunt instruments.

"Take, for example, bone cancer. Treatment frequently involves amputation and extremely toxic chemotherapy. Lord Saatchi's Bill draws attention to the need to innovate when the prognosis of an individual patient is poor."

Lord Saatchi's Bill proposes that doctors and patients agree on a non-standard treatment only with the approval of a multidisciplinary team of experts. This would circumvent the risk of litigation if it went wrong, Lord Saatchi believes.

"Lawsuits against the NHS have doubled in the past four years. The payout last year was £1.2bn," he said. "The Treasury's provision for likely liabilities for medical negligence claims against the NHS is now £23bn. That is up £4bn from last year."

"It is not logical to believe that this climate does not create a risk-averse culture in which the safe path is the status quo. In those circumstances, science cannot advance," he said.

"I am more of the view that the insistence on the status quo in the law on the repetition of standard procedure is a block to scientific advance and, at least in part, an explanation for why there is no cure for cancer.

"The good doctor will be encouraged and the bad doctor will be more easily exposed than under current law."

Lord Saatchi: 'Let new cures be tried out on cancer patients' - Profiles - People - The Independent



Provided that there has at least been some preliminary testing and the patient is both willing and aware of the risks, a reduction in some of the red tape sounds like a good idea to me.

[quaist]

Originally Posted by Nick HeyRee (View Post) Provided that there has at least been some preliminary testing and the patient is both willing and aware of the risks, a reduction in some of the red tape sounds like a good idea to me.

I think so, too.

In case a patient's already undergone all 'traditional' forms of treatment, these didn't succeed and death would be the inevitable consequence -- then frankly I don't see any harm in trying out something new.

[quaist]

And it's already the third recall in two months time...

Listeria Concerns Prompt Chicken, Ham Recall Milwaukee-based Garden-Fresh Foods Inc. is recalling 50 more tons of chicken and ham products over concerns of possible listeria contamination, its third recall in two months. The latest recall was announced Friday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Officials were concerned the food was possibly contaminated with listeria, which can lead to miscarriages in pregnant women and serious illness for those with weakened immune systems. There have been no reports of illnesses. The products include several varieties of ham and chicken salads, among other things, sold under the Garden-Fresh, Grandpa's, Archer Farms and D'Amico & Sons brand names. A message left Saturday with the company wasn't immediately returned. Garden-Fresh first recalled more than 9 tons of food on Sept. 25, and recalled an additional 6,700 pounds this month.

[Ann357]

Very scary!

'We've reached the end of antibiotics': Top CDC expert declares that 'miracle drugs' that have saved millions are no match against 'superbugs' because people have overmedicated themselves A high-ranking official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared in an interview with PBS that the age of antibiotics has come to an end. 'For a long time, there have been newspaper stories and covers of magazines that talked about "The end of antibiotics, question mark?"' said Dr Arjun Srinivasan. 'Well, now I would say you can change the title to "The end of antibiotics, period.”' The associate director of the CDC sat down with Frontline over the summer for a lengthy interview about the growing problem of antibacterial resistance. Srinivasan, who is also featured in a Frontline report called 'Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria,' which aired Tuesday, said that both humans and livestock have been overmedicated to such a degree that bacteria are now resistant to antibiotics. ‘We're in the post-antibiotic era,' he said. 'There are patients for whom we have no therapy, and we are literally in a position of having a patient in a bed who has an infection, something that five years ago even we could have treated, but now we can’t.’.

more of the article here: 'We've reached the end of antibiotics': Top CDC expert declares that 'miracle drugs' that have saved millions are no match against 'superbugs' because people have overmedicated themselves | Mail Online

[quaist]

Yeesh!

I assume this was bound to happen, though. Nature will always find a way around everything we try to come up with.

[sunnykerr]

I was gonna say something very similar to that, Christina.

Part of the problem with these superbugs is that we're entirely too sterilized, for the most part.

It's a vicious cycle that was bound to result in this outcome.

Bugs adjust and mutate to take into consideration what's out there. As our antibiotics get stronger, so the germs and bugs.

There was no way we would ever be able to keep up.

[quaist]

The wonderful Nicholas Kristof making the case for Obamacare:

This Is Why We Need Obamacare THE biggest health care crisis in America right now is not the inexcusably messy rollout of Obamacare. No, far more serious is the kind of catastrophe facing people like Richard Streeter, 47, a truck driver and recreational vehicle repairman in Eugene, Ore. His problem isn’t Obamacare, but a tumor in his colon that may kill him because Obamacare didn’t come quite soon enough. Streeter had health insurance for decades, but beginning in 2008 his employer no longer offered it as an option. He says he tried to buy individual health insurance but, as a lifelong smoker in his late 40s, couldn’t find anything affordable — so he took a terrible chance and did without. At the beginning of this year, Streeter began to notice blood in his bowel movements and discomfort in his rectum. Because he didn’t have health insurance, he put off going to the doctor and reassured himself it was just irritation from sitting too many hours. “I thought it was driving a truck and being on your keister all day,” he told me. Finally, the pain became excruciating, and he went to a cut-rate clinic where a doctor, without examining him, suggested it might be hemorrhoids. By September, Streeter couldn’t stand the pain any longer. He went to another doctor, who suggested a colonoscopy. The cheapest provider he could find was Dr. J. Scott Gibson, a softhearted gastroenterologist who told him that if he didn’t have insurance he would do it for $300 down and $300 more whenever he had the money. Streeter made the 100-mile drive to Dr. Gibson’s office in McMinnville, Ore. — and received devastating news. Dr. Gibson had found advanced colon cancer. “It was heartbreaking to see the pain on his face,” Dr. Gibson told me. “It got me very angry with people who insist that Obamacare is a train wreck, when the real train wreck is what people are experiencing every day because they can’t afford care.” Dr. Gibson says that Streeter is the second patient he has had this year who put off getting medical attention because of lack of health insurance and now has advanced colon cancer. So, to those Republicans protesting Obamacare: You’re right that there are appalling problems with the website, but they will be fixed. Likewise, you’re right that President Obama misled voters when he said that everyone could keep their insurance plan because that’s now manifestly not true (although they will be able to get new and better plans, sometimes for less money). But how about showing empathy also for a far larger and more desperate group: The nearly 50 million Americans without insurance who play health care Russian roulette as a result. FamiliesUSA, a health care advocacy group that supports Obamacare, estimated last year that an American dies every 20 minutes for lack of insurance. It has been a year since my college roommate, Scott Androes, died of prostate cancer, in part because he didn’t have insurance and thus didn’t see a doctor promptly. Scott fully acknowledged that he had made a terrible mistake in economizing on insurance, but, in a civilized country, is this a mistake that people should die from? “Website problems are a nuisance,” Dr. Gibson said. “Life and death is when you need care and can’t afford to get it.” The Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council this year ranked the United States health care system last or near last in several categories among 17 countries studied. The Commonwealth Fund put the United States dead last of seven industrialized countries in health care performance. And Bloomberg journalists ranked the United States health care system No. 46 in efficiency worldwide, behind Romania and Iran. The reason is simple: While some Americans get superb care, tens of millions without insurance get marginal care. That’s one reason life expectancy is relatively low in America, and child mortality is twice as high as in some European countries. Now that’s a scandal. Yet about half the states are refusing to expand Medicaid to cover more uninsured people — because they don’t trust Obamacare and want it to fail. The result will be more catastrophes like Streeter’s. “I am tired of being the messenger of death,” said Dr. Gibson. “Sometimes it’s unavoidable. But when people come in who might have been saved if they could have afforded care early on, then to have to tell them that they have a potentially fatal illness — I’m very tired of that.” Streeter met with a radiologist on Thursday and is bracing for an arduous and impoverishing battle with the cancer. There’s just one bright spot: He signed up for health care insurance under Obamacare, to take effect on Jan. 1. For him, the tragedy isn’t that the Obamacare rollout has been full of glitches, but that it may have come too late to save his life.

The thing is, I bet you'll find thousands of cases like this one in the US.

So people should definitely try seeing the bigger picture there.