Parenting advice from Economists – essential advice for all parents
The great thing about podcasts is the gems that turn up unexpectedly in the listening queue. The Freakaonmics podcast on “The Economist’s Guide to Parenting” was one of those for me and not only did I laugh a lot I learnt a lot.
You can download the podcast here or listen to it here
A round table of economists who despite having the insight of data and the ability to analyse that data are still unable to behave rationally when raising their own children.
The data suggests that most of parenting has little impact on the eventual outcome – with the exception of personal habits (smoking and drinking for instance) and personal behavior (how you treat other people for example)
You see that children are picking up their parents’ smoking and drinking habits with a very high degree of correlation, and it’s the same with the adoptees and the non-adoptees, they really pick up their parents’ habits, those type of habits explicitly. Another thing that’s undoubtedly contagious is that behavior of how you interact, how you treat other people, how you treat employees at a restaurant, or a retail store or something. I think those things are probably highly contagious as well.
Nurturing is the most important behavior. But when it comes to their future parents have a very limited effect in the early years and by the time the child reaches 27 the impact has almost disappeared. In an interesting study of Korean War orphan adoptions:
And yet, the finding of the study by Bruce Sacerdote was that the kids raised by the very poorest families grew up to have the same income as the kids raised by the very richest families. It’s striking that it’s the kind of thing that you would think of as being more about upbringing broadly defined than a lot of other traits. So it could be that it’s actual upbringing where your parents instill the value of a dollar and hard work in you. Or it could be something more like nepotism where because you get raised by the right kind of parents you get good connections, they actually make a phone call for you. And yet, actually the very best studies of the nature and nurture of income find that parents do have a moderate effect on your early income when you’re in your twenties, but basically zero for the rest of your life
So the advice is:
- Chill out
- Love your kids
- Don’t worry
Cancer Vaccine?
As the world’s population lives longer than ever, if we don’t succumb to heart disease, strokes or accidents, it is more likely that cancer will get us one way or another. Cancer is tough to fight, as the body learns how to outsmart medical approaches that often kill normal cells while targeting the malignant ones.
In a breakthrough development, the Israeli company Vaxil BioTherapeutics has formulated a therapeutic cancer vaccine, now in clinical trials at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem. If all goes well, the vaccine could be available about six years down the road, to administer on a regular basis not only to help treat cancer but in order to keep the disease from recurring.
The vaccine is being tested against a type of blood cancer called multiple myeloma. If the substance works as hoped — and it looks like all arrows are pointing that way — its platform technology VaxHit could be applied to 90 percent of all known cancers, including prostate and breast cancer, solid and non-solid tumors.
“In cancer, the body knows something is not quite right but the immune system doesn’t know how to protect itself against the tumor like it does against an infection or virus. This is because cancer cells are the body’s own cells gone wrong,” says Julian Levy, the company’s CFO. “Coupled with that, a cancer patient has a depressed immune system, caused both by the illness and by the treatment.”
The trick is to activate a compromised immune system to mobilize against the threat.
A vaccine that works like a drug
A traditional vaccine helps the body’s immune system fend off foreign invaders such as bacteria or viruses, and is administered to people who have not yet had the ailment. Therapeutic vaccines, like the one Vaxil has developed, are given to sick people, and work more like a drug.
Vaxil’s lead product, ImMucin, activates the immune system by “training” T-cells –– the immune cells that protect the body by searching out and destroying cells that display a specific molecule (or marker) called MUC1. MUC1 is typically found only on cancer cells and not on healthy cells. The T-cells don’t attack any cells without MUC1, meaning there are no side effects unlike traditional cancer treatments. More than 90% of different cancers have MUC1 on their cells, which indicates the potential for this vaccine.
“It’s a really big thing,” says Levy, a biotechnology entrepreneur who was formerly CEO for Biokine Therapeutics. “If you give chemo, apart from the really nasty side effects, what often happens is that cancer becomes immune [to it]. The tumor likes to mutate and develops an ability to hide from the treatment. Our vaccines are also designed to overcome that problem.”
For cancers in an advanced stage, treatments like chemo or surgery to remove a large tumor will still be needed, but if the cancer can be brought down to scale, the body is then able to deal with it, Levy explains. ImMucin is foreseen as a long-term strategy — a shot every few months, with no side effects — to stop the cancer from reoccurring after initial treatments, by ensuring that the patient’s own immune system keeps it under control.
In parallel, the company is also working on a vaccine that treats tuberculosis, a disease that’s increasing worldwide, including in the developed world, and for which the current vaccine is often ineffective and treatment is problematic.
Based in Ness Ziona, Vaxil was founded in 2006 by Dr. Lior Carmon, a biotechnology entrepreneur with a doctorate in immunology from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. In June, Vaxil signed a memorandum of understanding to merge its activities into Sheldonco, a company traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
Why Steve Jobs’ Magic Doesn’t Work In Medicine
Like Matthew Herper from Forbes I have great respect for Steve Jobs and even had the privilege thanks to our company CEO Paul Ricci in hearing first had from Walter Isaacson as he addressed our annual corporate kick off and provided individually signed copies of Steve Job’s autobiography.
We heard how Steve Jobs had deeply regretted his decision to delay treatment of his cancer – preferring to try “alternative therapies”. And while I have an appreciation for alternative therapies (who cannot when you consider how much of our innovation has come from things that came from plants or concepts that were completely foreign until we understood the science) I remain steadfastly behind science based medicine.
Alternative therapies are great but not based on heresy and anecdotal evidence. I find the whole idea very troubling that we spend millions on therapies that are unproven and in some cases are positively dangerous. Especially when the unsuspecting patent is coaxed into believing the alternative can heal them and decline or cease using any regular medical treatment.
Vaccinations spring to mind – where the anti vaccine lobby continues to damage a program with proven benefits that save lives that have to be measured in millions. Yet with one faceless comment from a politician or worse a celebrity and suddenly clinicians are fighting an uphill battle to persuade patents of the need to vaccinate their children and themselves. We’ve heard all about the autism association but seen no proof tat this is linked to vaccination (correlation does not imply causation). When their theory of the mercury in vaccines causing the autism was disproven – not least of all when the Mercury was removed and the autism rate continued to climb yet there was no pull back and honest assessment.
The same is true of alternative therapies and patients should assess treatments in the light of real science and not anecdotal medicine. Is these therapies work why oh why would the medical profession not adopt them and treat patents with these alternatives. We want our patients to get better…..
One Statement from Bachmann, Two Steps Back for HPV Vaccine
But the harm to public health may have already been done. When politicians or celebrities raise alarms about vaccines, even false alarms, vaccination rates drop.
“These things always set you back about three years, which is exactly what we can’t afford,” said Dr. Rodney E. Willoughby, a professor of pediatrics at the Medical College of Wisconsin and a member of the committee on infectious diseases of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The academy favors use of the vaccine, as do other medical groups and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The vaccine, recommended by the medical groups for 11- and 12-year-olds, protects against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, a sexually transmitted infection that can cause cancer. Use of the vaccine was disturbingly low even before the Bachmann flap, health officials say. That is partly because of the recent climate of fear about vaccines in general, and partly because some parents feel that giving the vaccine somehow implies that they are accepting or even condoning the idea that their young daughters will soon start having sex.
Allegations that vaccines could cause autism have frightened some parents away from giving them to children. But the question has been studied repeatedly, and there is no evidence for such a link; the research that first promoted the idea was subsequently proved fraudulent.
Indeed, a report published last month by the Institute of Medicine, which advises the government, found that the HPV vaccine was safe.
It did find “strong and generally suggestive” — though not conclusive — evidence that the vaccine could cause severe allergic reactions. But such reactions have been rare.
Historically, Dr. Willoughby said, vaccine scares have caused vaccination rates to drop for three or four years, and have led to outbreaks of diseases that had previously been under control, like measles and whooping cough. Measles cases in the United States reached a 15-year high last spring, with more than 100 cases, most in people who had never been vaccinated.
Once the disease begins to reappear, parents become worried and start vaccinating again. With cervical cancer, Dr. Willoughby said, “unfortunately, the outbreak is silent and will take 20 years to manifest.”
This time, he said, there will be no symptoms to scare parents back into vaccinating their daughters until it is too late.
HPV infection is extremely common — the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States. More than a quarter of girls and women ages 14 to 49 have been infected, with the highest rate, 44 percent, in those ages 20 to 24.
Millions of new infections occur each year, and researchers think that at least half of all adults have been infected at some point in their lives. The genital region is teeming with HPV, and any kind of intimate contact — not just intercourse — can transmit the virus. In most people, HPV is harmless: The immune system fights it off. But in some people, for unknown reasons, the viruses persist and can cause cancer.
Although the HPV vaccine was initially approved in 2006 to prevent cervical cancer, more recent data has shown that HPV also causes cancers of the penis, anus, vagina, vulva and parts of the throat. Many scientists think that the vaccine can prevent those diseases as well.
Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report on vaccination rates in girls that was “a call to action” to do a better job with the HPV vaccine, according to Dr. Melinda Wharton, deputy director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
“We’re not meeting our goals,” Dr. Wharton said. “Girls are not getting an important preventive measure that they need.”
Nationwide, last year only 32 percent of teenage girls received all three shots needed to prevent HPV infection, the disease centers found. Rates of vaccination were much higher (at least 45 percent) in a few states — Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Washington and South Dakota. Those furthest below average (20 percent or less) included Idaho, Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama.
The report was particularly troubling, Dr. Wharton said, because it showed use of the HPV vaccine lagging far behind that of two other vaccines that were licensed around the same time, one for meningitis and a combination shot against tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough.
“This vaccine has been portrayed as ‘the sex vaccine,’ ” said Dr. Mary Anne Jackson, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a member of the infectious disease committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “Talking about sexuality for pediatricians and other providers is often difficult.”
Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University, acknowledged that 11 or 12 is “a pretty tender age, and parents are having a hard time getting used to this concept.”
But like the measles vaccine and others, this one must be given before a person is exposed to the virus or it will not work.
“Here we’d like to get it completed before the young woman initiates her sex life,” Dr. Schaffner said. “Of course parents, particularly fathers, think that’s going to happen at around age 34.”
The average age of first intercourse in the United States is about 17 for both boys and girls, according to the Kinsey Institute. About 25 percent have had sex by age 15.
Even before Mrs. Bachmann’s comments, family doctors were negotiating with reluctant, confused parents. Dr. Schaffner said he knew a pediatrician who postponed the HPV shots until most patients turned 15 specifically to avoid parents’ objections at the younger age.
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In what is an increasingly common occurrence we find someone with a stage making unfounded statements (and later apologizing stating that “she is not a doctor or scientist”. But the damage is already done.
Vaccines are safe and the diseases they prevent are potentially lethal. As people stop vaccinating disease will occur and it could be your relative/child. THere is no evidence that vaccines cause autism and the original research that suggested this has been subsequently shown to be false.
Don’t be fooled by brash unfounded statements and if in doubt study the evidence. All my family are vaccinated…I would not do it if I did not believe it to be safe.
Women Still Opt for Home Births
Home births in the U.S. climbed by 20% between 2004 and 2008, in spite of policies against the practice espoused by major professional societies, according to a report from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
“By comparison, the percentage of preterm infants for hospital births was 12.4% in 2008,”
The results regarding risk profile dovetail with findings from a 2009 Canadian study that planned home births attended by registered midwives were associated with a very low rate of perinatal death.
Easy Way to Debunk Healthcare Myths
Excellent posting on FishBarrel tool that provides an easy way to report misleading claims online
FishBarrel: The easy way to report misleading health claims online
. As the author states:
With thousands of misleading health claims on the web and a report to the ASA taking around ten minutes, I’d regularly come across misleading claims but do nothing about them. So I built FishBarrel. FishBarrel is a plugin for Google Chrome that manages the process of making an ASA or Trading Standards complaint so that it takes just a few seconds. FishBarrel also tracks all text complained about in a central database. When you turn on FishBarrel, any text complained about by other users is automatically highlighted. This prevents you from submitting duplicate complaints to the ASA. Finally, FishBarrel can automatically revisit the websites later and check if the claims have been removed.
You can see a demo here
Robotic Surgery Coming to a Hospital Near You
Longer delays between heart attacks and elective surgeries lowers death rates and subsequent heart attacks
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20110324/Longer-delays-between-heart-attacks-and-elective-surgeries-lowers-death-rates-and-subsequent-heart-attacks.aspx
Forget the Treadmill – Get a Dog
Among dog owners who went for regular walks, 60 percent met federal criteria for regular moderate or vigorous exercise
“There is exercise that gets done in this household that wouldn’t get done otherwise,” he said. “Our dogs demand that you take them out at 10 o’clock at night, when it’s the last thing you feel like doing. They’re not going to leave you alone until they get their walk in.”
To the surprise of the researchers, the dog walkers showed a much greater improvement in fitness. Walking speed among the dog walkers increased by 28 percent, compared with just 4 percent among the human walkers.
Homeopathy Overdose Day
Over the weekend of February 5th-6th 2011, protesters around the globe took part in the 10:23 Challenge. Protestors in seventy cities, over thirty countries, across all seven continents, held ‘overdose’ demonstrations at 10:23AM, to tell people there is nothing in it.
The defibrillator was a Homeopathic defibrillator – working on the memories of being plugged in
Skeptics of homeopathy also have long asserted that homeopathic medicines have “nothing” in them because they are diluted too much. However, new research conducted at the respected Indian Institutes of Technology has confirmed the presence of “nanoparticles” of the starting materials even at extremely high dilutions. Researchers have demonstrated by Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), electron diffraction and chemical analysis by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-AES), the presence of physical entities in these extreme dilutions. (24) In the light of this research, it can now be asserted that anyone who says or suggests that there is “nothing” in homeopathic medicines is either simply uninformed or is not being honest.
Homeopathy is an unscientific and absurd pseudoscience, which persists today as an accepted form of complementary medicine, despite there never having been any reliable scientific evidence that it works.
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