"In the nearly 48 hours since President Obama, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul made their comments on vaccination, the issue has become a partisan sideshow...
...To stand against science in many places is to invite stigma and disdain...
In the quest for partisan advantage, everyone scrambles to clothe his or her beliefs in the guise of objectivity. The reality, however, is that our beliefs are nothing of the sort. We construct them outside the scope of scientific observation, with ideas that come to us through custom, experience, and education, and for which science gives little confirmation or support. 'We see what we want to see,' writes John Dewey in Human Nature and Conduct, 'We dwell upon favoring circumstances till they become weighted with reinforcing considerations.' In that environment, honest deliberation, he says, 'needs every possible help it can get against the twisting, exaggerating, and slighting tendency of passion and habit.'
Instead of trying to attack each other for our fealty to science—or lack thereof—let’s acknowledge the deep subjectivity of our views but try to use the tools and methods of science to help us inform and strengthen them; to challenge them, to sharpen them, and to try to root them in our shared reality."
Among New York Subway’s Millions of Riders, a Study Finds Many Mystery Microbes →
Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College released a study on Thursday that mapped DNA found in New York’s subway system — a crowded, largely subterranean behemoth that carries 5.5 million riders on an average weekday, and is filled with hundreds of species of bacteria (mostly harmless), the occasional spot of bubonic plague, and a universe of enigmas. Almost half of the DNA found on the system’s surfaces did not match any known organism and just 0.2 percent matched the human genome.
Bubonic plague?!
Run Fast, Die Young? →
For decades, we've been told that the more exercise you get, the better off you'll be. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, recommends at least two and a half hours of moderate-intensity exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous activity, making it clear that "more time equals more health benefits."
But less may be more, according to a study just published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. In fact, those who engage in light exercise may actually live longer than those who run longest, hardest, and most often.
So says Peter Schnohr at the Copenhagen City Heart Study, a long-running survey of the habits and health of residents of the Danish capital city. Since the 1970s, the study has reported time and again on the health benefits of jogging and other sorts of exercise. In a recent analysis, however, Schnohr and his team found that athletes who ran more than four hours a week, more than three times a week, or at a fast pace "appeared to lose many of the longevity benefits noted with [a] less strenuous dose of jogging," Schnohr writes.
Dead Letter Office →
But now, Republicans have all of Congress. If they want to replace Obamacare, they can. And on Wednesday, they took a step in that direction. With little fanfare, Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah, Richard Burr of North Carolina, and Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan unveiled their blueprint for Republican health reform. Called the “Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment Act,” it is mostly identical to an outline released last year by Hatch, Burr, and now-retired Sen. Tom Coburn.
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The consequences of the proposal are straightforward: By ending Obamacare in its entirety and placing limits on Medicaid, it would eliminate insurance for millions of Americans and make it harder for middle- and working-class people to purchase coverage. And while it’s described as a plan to save money, the truth is that it accomplishes this by reducing care for the poor and raising costs on everyone else.
In other words, this isn’t a plan to achieve universal coverage. That’s simply not a Republican goal, and it’s part of the reason it has proven politically difficult to craft an alternative. We don’t think everyone should have health insurance just isn’t an appealing message. Which gets to something important about this whole enterprise: The CARE Act is a blueprint. There is no legislation to score or any bill to debate. It’s just a package of ideas—one approach for when, or if, the party decides to pass a genuine alternative to Obamacare.
Put differently, it’s probably a dead letter.
UN chief: More peacekeepers for Central African Republic →
The U.N. secretary-general is asking for more than 1,000 additional peacekeepers for the Central African Republic to help bring violence between Christians and Muslims under control outside the capital of the Texas-sized country.
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The sectarian violence that erupted in 2012 in Central African Republic has killed at least 5,000 and forced tens of thousands, mostly Muslims, to flee.
Representatives of the country’s two warring factions signed an unconditional cease-fire in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, their mediator said Thursday, but there was no representative of President Catherine Samba-Panza’s government.
Previous cease-fires agreed to by various alleged representatives of the two sides have quickly fallen apart.
Defence Ministers agree to strengthen NATO’s defences, establish Spearhead Force →
As the situation in Ukraine gets worse:
Ministers approved plans in the light of the changing security environment to the east and south of the Alliance’s borders. The NATO Response Force will be enhanced. The Defence Ministers agreed on the size and scope of a new very high readiness force or Spearhead Force. “We decided that this very high readiness force will consist of a land brigade of around 5,000 troops. These will be supported by air, sea and special forces,” said Mr Stoltenberg. He said the Spearhead Force would be backed up by two more brigades “as a rapid reinforcement capability in case of a major crisis. Altogether, the enhanced NATO Response Force will count up to around 30,000 troops.”
Defence Ministers also decided to immediately establish six command and control units in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania.
GNC, Target, Wal-Mart, Walgreens accused of selling adulterated ‘herbals’ →
A big moneymaker, and no regulation, either public or private. No surprise.
That’s according to an investigation by the New York State attorney general’s office into store-brand supplements at four national retailers — GNC, Target, Walgreens and Wal-Mart. All four have received cease-and-desist letters demanding that they stop selling a number of their dietary supplements, few of which were found to contain the herbs shown on their labels and many of which included potential allergens not identified in the ingredients list.
“Contamination, substitution and falsely labeling herbal products constitute deceptive business practices and, more importantly, present considerable health risks for consumers,” said the letters, first reported today by the New York Times.
The tests were conducted using a process called DNA barcoding, which identifies individual ingredients through a kind of “genetic fingerprinting.” The investigators tested 24 products claiming to be seven different types of herb — echinacea, garlic, gingko biloba, ginseng, saw palmetto, St. John’s wort and valerian root. All but five of the products contained DNA that was either unrecognizable or from a plant other than what the product claimed to be.
Draft of Arrest Request for Argentine President Found at Dead Prosecutor’s Home →
An increasingly bizarre situation:
Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor whose mysterious death has gripped Argentina, had drafted a request for the arrest of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, accusing her of trying to shield Iranian officials from responsibility in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center here, the lead investigator into his death said Tuesday.
The 26-page document, which was found in the garbage at Mr. Nisman’s apartment, also sought the arrest of Héctor Timerman, Argentina’s foreign minister. Both Mrs. Kirchner and Mr. Timerman have repeatedly denied Mr. Nisman’s accusation that they tried to reach a secret deal with Iran to lift international arrest warrants for Iranian officials wanted in connection with the bombing.
The new revelation that Mr. Nisman had drafted documents seeking the arrest of the president and the foreign minister illustrates the heightened tensions between the prosecutor and the government before he was found dead on Jan. 18 at his apartment with a gunshot wound to his head. He had been scheduled the next day to provide details before Congress about his accusations against Mrs. Kirchner.