..is a “Faustian bargain“?
Really?
This is ridiculous. The wealthy have always had more access to better medical treatment, and always will. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t develop new medical treatments.
Category Archives: Health
Gene Editing And Designer Babies
Joel Achenbach attended today’s summit.
Stem Cell Implants
…to grow new teeth.
They’ve been working on this for a while, but it looks like it’s almost ready for prime time. I just got a new implant a few months ago. I hope it’s my last.
Rejuvenation
Well, this looks pretty exciting:
Systemic attenuation of the TGF-β pathway by a single drug simultaneously rejuvenates hippocampal neurogenesis and myogenesis in the same old mammal.
As an oldish mammal myself, I say “faster please.”
The Low-Fat Diet
…will be viewed by history as the worst fad diet ever. And yet Michelle’s school-lunch program continues to abuse millions of children.
Cryopreservation
This looks like a huge breakthrough in vitrification. Note that they don’t mention the implications for cryonics, though.
ObamaCare
…will be Barack Obama’s Iraq:
The best medicine for the exchanges? It might involve letting the insurance industry offer pared back, cheap coverage at prices that reflect the risk profile of patients. This would bring back the young invincibles, but jack up prices for sicker patients. That problem could be solved by targeting subsidies on these patients on a strict means-tested basis rather than showering them on everyone up to 400 percent of the poverty level. The crucial upside to this approach is that it would allow the insurance marketplace to function again. However, market pricing based on health is against the religion of liberals. Clinton won’t go there. She could twist the screws on opt-outs by raising their penalty to something close to the price of the coverage they are refusing. But that would require Congress to override the statutory limits on these penalties in ObamaCare. And so long as the House remains in Republican hands, that ain’t going to happen.
Not really fair to compare it to Iraq. Iraq was a bi-partisan project. This disaster is all on the Democrats.
DARPA’s Biotech Lab
This is interesting. I didn’t know it existed. I’m glad at least some of the federal money going toward health research is taking a more high-risk high-payoff approach.
Top Nutritionists Attempt To Reach A Consensus
…and end up in a food fight. This would be funnier if it didn’t have such profound implications for health. I don’t know why anyone pays attention to that quack Dean Ornish. It was low-fat recommendations like his that almost surely killed my father thirty-five years ago. I enjoyed this, too:
In the spirit of the conference, he did make a concession: Red meat, a staple of a Paleolithic diet, “is a real problem” due to its carbon footprint, said Eaton, and he proposed a more sustainable Paleo diet that instead derives its protein from plant sources, poultry, and seafood.
Because nothing is more important when it comes to nutrition than carbon footprint. And this:
Those who follow a low-glycemic diet might eat, for instance, pasta but not bagels, parsnips but not potatoes, grapes but not raisins.
Bagels are worse than pasta? Who knew?
From Hunting/Gathering To Farming
Yes, humans evolved in the age of agriculture.
Per the end of the piece, this doesn’t really invalidate the paleo diet theory. It makes sense that we would have adapted to milk; it’s a useful high-protein food source. There would have been less evolutionary pressure to be able to handle grain, because the ill effects don’t occur until later in life, past child-bearing age.