Early this morning, Dr. Jack Kevorkian was released from prison after an 8 year term.  I am pretty sure we all remember just who Dr. Kevorkian was, so I’ll spare the background information for now.  Kevorkian was charged with 2nd degree murder in after he helped numerous terminally ill patients to commit suicide.  Given the moniker “Dr. Death”, most Americans thought his crimes were terrible at the time he was sentenced.  Since then, we have seen a great deal of cases that are beginning to swing public opinion in the other direction.  With events like the Terri Schiavo fiasco and the legalization of doctor assisted suicides in Death With Dignity act that was passed in Oregon, our public is more willing than ever to accept assisted suicide out of mercy and with the patient’s permission. 

The interesting thing about Kevorkians release is that people still look down upon him.  While I don’t necessarily agree with Kevorkian’s actions, or the full premise of assisted suicide, I think that Americans are being too harsh on him.  Even this morning, I saw several papers refer to him as Dr. Death (my title is further this point).  It is as though we have branded this man as being the devil incarnate, even as most Americans now agree with what he was doing back then.  It seems to me as though this man is the victim of a great deal of hypocritical malice, mostly generated by the media.  Doctors are now practicing his exact methods in Oregon, yet we don’t recognize him as an important pioneer.  I don’t even fully agree with assisted suicide, but I do regard him as the person who brought this important issue to the forefront of political, social, and ethical discussion.

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I stumbled across this article about Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee’s decision to require all morbidly obese people under their coverage to take an IQ test before being covered for a gastric bypass surgery. After reading the article, I found myself asking two questions: 1. Is it right to require that patients have a certain degree of intelligence before recieving a potentially life saving operation? 2. Since many cases of obesity are the result of bad eating habits rather than disorders, should those without a disorder recieve coverage for something they caused themselves?

I do not mean to be insensitive to anyone who is overweight or obese, as I am not a twig myself, but there are certain proven trends in obesity. Obesity tends to be more common in the lower social and economic groups. This is a fact. Mississippi, one of the poorest states in the nation (if not THE poorest) has the highest percentage of obese residents in the US. If you look at the shift in advertising for such fast food chains as McDonald’s and Burger King, you see that more and more commercials are geared towards minorities and teenagers, and often have a rap, hip hop, r&b feel to them. This is hardly a coincidence, as these are the most likely groups to be attracted to cheap food. Unfortunately, in our culture of supersizing, obesity is becoming a huge problem and many people are looking towards gastric bypass as a cosmetic procedure rather than a life saving one.

Insurance companies have an obligation to cover their customers from anything that may befall them outside the realm of their control. Just as burning your house down purposely does not allow you to clain your insurance money, I do not think people with bad eating habits should be able to claim health insurance to finance this operation. People who are eating badly KNOW that continuing on the path they are on will lead them to obesity. This is common knowledge and anyone who does not know this will certainly not pass an IQ test given to them by their insurer. Why should insurance companies reward money to people who could have controlled their weight easily with a little bit of self control? Now, if a customer has a disorder in which they cannot control their weight, they should be allowed full coverage, especially if it is a matter of life and death.

On the issue of the IQ test, first we need to determine if IQ should have anything to do with someone recieving the medical care that they require. I think that requiring someone to be of a certain intelligence before recieveing treatment is blatant discrimination and is just plain wrong. Now, all of this was about medical attention, not about whether the insurance company should pay for these people or not. Of course the insurance company should pay for these people, but I suppose they reserve the right to require this of all people purchasing policies AFTER their change in doctrine. If this is the inevitable decision of the insurance company, I suggest that they make some changes to it. Perhaps instead of requiring an IQ test from everyone, it should only be required from people whose obesity was caused by their own bad eating habits. All people with disorders should recieve the operation with the full insurance coverage. Now from those taking the IQ test, the people on the LOW end of the spectrum should recieve the coverage because they are less likely to be able to realize and understand the consequences of their diet. Those who know the consequences but continue on the path should not recieve coverage.

Of course my proposed idea is discriminating, but it is less discriminating than that put into place by Blue Cross Blue Shield. Ultimately we are all responsible for ourselves, and for most people, obesity is within your control. Should this allow insurance companies to decide whose life they save? Absolutely not. Everyone in America should recieve the medical care they need. Operate first and worry about the money later.

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Vegetarian and Vegan diets are becoming more and more popular by the day.  Some would call this trend positive, while many others would call it negative.  While I tend to believe that human beings are natural omnivores and should maintain that natural diet, I didn’t see any harm in pursuing the vegetarian or vegan diet.  That is until I read this article today in the New York Times.  The article is about the dangers that a vegan diet presents to babies.  Recently, another baby died as the result of a vegan diet that his parents we administering to him.  The baby was six months old and was being fed mainly soy milk and apple juice. 

The article is fairly detailed, and I won’t try and explain the concepts the author elaborates on.  What I will say is that mothers and future mothers must be more responsible with the diet that their children follow.  If you are a vegan, you need to put your beliefs aside in order to raise your child to be healthy.  A vegan diet does not contain enough protein to foster a healthy child, and nothing you can supplement will change this.  If you read the article, make sure to pay close attention to the benefits of changing to a non-vegan diet during your pregnancy.  This is for the good of your child.  If you can’t eat a hamburger or a steak for the sake of your child, perhaps you aren’t fit to be a parent.

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While a lot of the issues I blog about aren’t really emotionally charged, every once and a while I will find something that hits a nerve.  Today is one of those days where I am so worked up over this that I am not going to attempt to be non-biased or look at this objectively.  Sometimes it just isn’t possible.  Sorry to leave you hanging in suspense but I am going to take this one nice and slowly, that way I don’t lose anyone.  About an hour ago, I was over on the 9rules homepage, which is one of my favorite places for picking up good ideas.  On the RSS feed of their members, I decided to click on an article that caught my interest.  The feed took me to a blog called Donklephant, one that I had not yet visited.  The immediate vibe was that it was a strongly liberal blog.  My rule of thumb is that I do not take anything as fact from a blog that is heavily biased towards one end of the political spectrum, so I always do my homework after the fact to make sure I am getting reality and not 100% opinion.  The entry that I was reading on Donklephant covered the debate being waged between conservatives (the religious right) and health officials (and everyone who isn’t religious right) over the release of the new cervical cancer vaccine that has been in the works for a long time now.  This debate was news to me because, last I heard, the vaccine was still in development.  Apparently it has been completed, but it has not made it into the hands of health professionals and doctors yet because of the ongoing stalemate between the aformentioned parties. 

For those of you who don’t feel like heading over there and reading about the details, I’ll explain them for you, along with what I have learned from my own individual research into the treasure trove of online articles.  First of all, in order to understand the debate, you have to understand where cervical cancer comes from.  The leading cause of cervix cancer (and cervix cancer can only occur in women for those of you who are anatomically challenged) is the Human Papilloma Virus, otherwise known as HPV.  HPV is a sexually transmitted virus with many different strains and variations.  According to womenshealth.gov, most sexually active people will have contract HPV during their lifetime, but will never know because it rarely shows symptoms and usually goes away on its own.  However, though most women’s bodies can fight off the HPV, it is known to cause cervical cancer during the course of this battle.  This new vaccine is proven to defend against the two most popular strains of HPV that account for 70% of the cases of cervical cancer.  The vaccine would be administered to 11-12 year old girls in their pre-pubescent years in order to protect them against HPV for the rest of their lives. 

The debate is not over if the vaccine works, but whether it should be administered.  Health care officials are on one side arguing for its obvious lifesaving ability.  At the same time, the religious right is claiming that the vaccine should not be administered because of the sexual promiscuity it may encourage.  This debate has become so serious that conservatives have actually blocked the administration of the drug in some states.  While the drug itself is able to be purchased, campaigns for widescale distribution have not been allowed.  Health care workers have said that it shoul be considered mandatory for school attendance, much as other vaccines are.  Until this conflict is resolved, countrywide vaccination does not appear likely.

Here is where my article stops the neutrality act.  I have given you more than enough information to make an intelligent decision as to where you stand on this, but if you feel I haven’t, feel free to do your own research.  It is purely my opinion, but I believe the religous right is being absolutely ridiculous in their attempts to block this vaccine.  It appears as though they care more about stopping pre-marital sex than they do about saving the lives of young women, to whom cervical cancer is a death sentence.  I realize that pre-marital sex is a sin.  However, so is lying, cheating, killing, rape, swearing, over drinking, and a million other things.  Let’s examine the consequences of lying and cheating.  If you get caught you might lose a friend.  At the worst (perjury, con artists), you might wind up in jail.  If you have pre-marital sex, you could wind up dying a horrible death.  Makes perfect sense to the religious right.  If you kill or rape, you may wind up facing the death penalty, but not the majority of the time.  In fact, those people are probably sentenced to death about as often as a girl having pre-marital sex develops cervical cancer.  By those standards, killing, rape, and pre-marital sex must all be on the same plane!  Makes perfect sense to the religious right.  I keep hearing fathers commenting that they want their daughter to realize the seriousness that comes from the unholy act of pre-marital sex, but are those same fathers going to stand by while she is on her death bed and tell her she deserved to die? 

The religious right just doesn’t get it sometimes.  They keep preaching abstinence only education and acting as if anything less than perfect following of God’s will is unacceptable.  First of all, I don’t even have to talk about the failure rate of abstinence only education because it is already well documented.  I keep seeing these hypocritical born-agains telling us that we are going to hell for the course we are on, but at the same time, they were much worse than we are in their youths.  They act as if you can’t screw up and return to the path of God, when they themselves did that very thing.  I am willing to wager that the majority of Christians out there fighting this vaccine probably had pre-marital sex.  If you are a Christian and you are reading this piece and shaking your head, think about all of the mistakes you made throughout your life.  Think about all of the sins that you have committed and be honest with yourself.  Then ask yourself if maybe slipping and having pre-marital sex isn’t a sentence to hell.  Maybe that same girl who gave into her passion and had sex deserves a chance to avoid that potential death sentence you are imposing upon her.  The sad thing about all of this is that I am a Christian.  I am almost ashamed to lump myself into that category because of things like this.  So what if your daughter has pre-marital sex!  Great, so she sinned once.  I just don’t understand how you can justify, as a Christian, not saving a potential life.  The bible says thou shalt not kill, and that applies to anyone, whether they are  a sinner or not.  I think that maybe we can approve of something that could save the life of a girl who maybe didn’t consider the consequences of her actions. 

You know, instead of banning this vaccine, maybe you should think about educating kids to all the other sexually transmitted diseases out there.  No offense, but HPV isn’t very scary to a kid when their hormones are raging.  Teach them about AIDs, genetal warts, herpes, and other gross diseases.  I really don’t think many girls are going to say to themselves, “Hey! I can’t get cervical cancer!  I’m going to go and have lots and lots of sex with unclean guys!”  And even more logical, did it ever occur to these anti-vaccine advocates that married women who wait their entire young adult lives to lose their virginity when they are married can still contract HPV and cervical cancer?  Probably not.  Who would have thought that maybe their husband might have given into his primal urges as a teen and gotten the virus?  Or maybe he was unfaithful and gave it to his loving, wonderful Christian wife who did nothing wrong and didn’t deserve to die.  Dare I continue with the extremely common scenarios?  Sure, why not.  How about if a woman gets raped?  I am going to go out on a limb and guess that most rapists are probably carrying some kind of disease.  But apparently that woman should have kept her guard up, because if the circumstances are right and she contracts cervical cancer, its her fault.  Great logic.  The sad thing about our society is that they can be so narrow minded.  They consider one possible effect of an action, but ignore all of the others.  Switching back into Christian mode, humans are supposed to care for one another, regardless of what they do.  Christianity is founded on forgiveness, and you can’t give forgiveness to someone who is dead.  Christians need to stop judging their fellow humans and let God worry about that.  Humans are here to choose their own destiny and path through life.  God doesn’t force anyone to believe in him or live according to the bible.  Just because they choose a different way through life than you do, does not mean that they should have to live with a potential death sentence. 

*This was not meant to offend anyone, especially Christians.  You are entitled to your belief, but maybe you should open up your minds to other ways of thinking.  Christians are normally good people, but sometimes we can get a bit close-minded and try to take too many things into our own hands. 

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As a college student, I live on energy drinks.  I am lucky if I get more than five hours of sleep a night, as evidenced by the fact that I am writing this post at almost 3 AM.  My personal brand of choice is Monster, but I am always open to change.  As I was scanning the headlines today, multiple news sources were reporting that Censored Energy Drinks were returning to the shelves.  For those of you that are energy drink aficionados, you may remember this brand better as Cocaine Energy Drink.  This brand was pulled from the shelves after the FDA deemed the drink illegal.  Now, I know what you’rethinking, but it wasn’t illegal because of the contents of the drink.  Cocaine Energy Drink certainly didn’t contain any cocaine, but they were marketing the drink as “the legal alternative”.  The FDA and several states didn’t like this one bit.  Apparently you can’t market something as the legal alternative to an illegal drug (though this strongly conflicts with my article on binaural beats at I-Doser, which is marketing their product as an alternative to multiple illegal drugs).  The drink has been renamed Censored (an obvious poke at the FDA) and will be back on shelves very soon.  The drink itself contains more caffeine than any drink on the market.  It packs more caffeine than a large Starbuck’s coffee into an 8 oz. can, and contains 3.5 times as much caffeine as a Redbull.  Needless to say, I might be trying it soon.

The issue at hand is whether the FDA is overstepping its bounds on this one.  Should they be allowed to censor certain brand names and advertising campaigns because of content like this?  It seems to me that marketing this drink as a legal alternative to Cocaine is exactly what it says: a legal alternative.  While anyone with half a brain knows that a ton of caffeine is NOT the same as doing cocaine, maybe the campaign was asking for trouble.  Nevertheless, it doesn’t seem like it causes any harm to anyone.  I can’t see too many Cocaine (energy drink) overdoses occurring, though you never know with kids these days.  I am an advocate of free speech, but I do draw the line when it comes to issues of health.  With that being said, I really don’t see the harm that could have come from this.  Who knows?  Maybe some cocaine (the drug) users get hooked on Cocaine (energy drink) instead!  While the name is controvertial, you have to hand it to the makers.  That name would have sold like wild fire, probably more out of curiosity than the desire for a “legal alternative” to the illegal drug.

For the story, click here.

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We all know there are a number of Americans who detest abortion.  In fact, “a number” is probably a vast understatement.  With the religious right and even more moderate Americans stating that abortion is wrong, its been an increasingly controvertial issue, especially with the right wing majority in the Supreme Court.  However, whether you support abortion or not, I would like to direct your attention to China. 

I came across this article in the New York Times that touched upon some things about abortion in China that I already knew, as well as some facts that I was not aware of.  After reading it, my first thought was, “why are abortion activists making such a fuss about the abortion rates in America when they are so dramatically worse in China?”  In China, there has been a system in place that restricts the number of children one can have for quite some time.  All children that a mother has after that quota has been reached are aborted.  This is a method of population control to keep China from becoming overcrowded.  This is pretty brutal, even to someone who is pro-choice.  In fact, there is no “choice” involved because the government tells you when you have to abort your pregnancy. 

In addition to the above, this article points out that abortions to young, single women are rising at an alarming rate.  In fact, it looks as though these abortions may soon surpass those of married women.  This is happening because sexual education in China is practically non-existent.  These women, or couples in general, don’t understand the purpose of condoms or birth control.  They aren’t educated enough to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies.  The aspect of the article that caught my eye was that many of the women who are recieving these abortions have had to have multiple procedures.  They don’t learn from the first time, and they continue to have unprotected sex.  I believe one clinic’s statistic was 65 abortions in a month to single women, of which 42 were repeat patients (or customers).  This shows a significant problem that needs to be resolved.  In fact, it seems like many of the women are using abortions as a form of birth control, rather than the last resort it should be. 

Being a pro-choice myself, I feel that abortions should be a last resort.  If birth control and condoms fail, than maybe you can get an abortion, if you feel that you can not take care of a child in anyway and cannot spare nine months to give that baby over to adoption.   However, what is going on in China is just plain terrible.  Instead of lobbying to outlaw abortion here, in a country with a fairly low abortion rate, those pro-life people should be lobbying the Chinese government to slow down the abortions occurring over there.  Why focus on America when America is not the biggest problem?  If you look at the issue from a pro-life perspective, why does it matter what country you focus on, as long as you are saving the most potential lives?  Really, all it would take to decrease the abortion rate in China is more sexual education and cheaper birth control. 

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If anyone watches the Colbert Report frequently, you might have seen the interview he had with a woman named Gina Kolata (or as Colbert called her, Pinacolada). Kolata was on the show to market her new book, Rethinking Thin, a book about how obese people may not have any control over their weight. She cites many bits of evidence, though none are convincing. First she uses poll statistics from a University of Pennsylvania study that showed very few obese people were able to lose a significant amount of weight, even while on a strenuous diet and exercise routine. She then goes on to say that obese people are the product of genetics, a force they can’t control. She points out that 80% of children born to two obese parents become obese themselves. She also explains that people with these genes in an environment where food is cheap (McDonalds) is a recipe for obesity, which she links to the high obesity rate for those in the lower economic branches. Finally, she claims that dieting is more harmful to people than being obese because of the unhealthiness of most fad diets.

First of all, how can you claim that obese people have no control over their weight? While there are disorders that make it almost inevitable for people to become fat, the majority of people in our world do not have those disorders. What always gets to me is people claiming to that they can’t do anything about their weight. That is a completely ridiculous statement. ANYONE can lose weight by dieting and exercising. If you cut down on the amount of food you eat, and exercise daily, I guarantee you will lose weight. Even if you only lose 10 pounds in a year, that still shows that you are losing weight. To claim that these methods of diet don’t work for people facing obesity is absurd. It defies the laws of science which state that if you intake less calories than you burn, you will lose weight. It is a formula that doesn’t change for anyone.

The next argument she tries to make is the role of genetics. She attributes obesity in children with two obese parents to the genes that child recieved. Did it ever occur to Pinacolada that maybe the parents had bad eating habits that they passed onto their child? If your parents eat at McDonald’s every day, chances are you will too. I don’t want to hear this genetics stuff because I have seen plenty of skinny people with fat parents. It’s all about the eating habits you acquire. If you are groomed from a young age to eat nothing but low fat foods, vegetables, and other healthy snacks and meals, you are almost guaranteed to retain those eating habits throughout your life.

Finally, an interview with an obese person yielded this statement; “we eat not just because our appetites drive us to but because our psyches do.” All I have to say to that is, EVERYONE’S psyche drives us to eat! We all desire good tasting food and we all want to eat tons of it. The only difference is that people who are not obese have will power. They can say, “I’m not hungry anymore so I won’t eat for the sake of eating.” The second you blame your body or accept that it’s beyond your control, you lose. You will continue to eat unchecked because you feel like there is nothing you can do about it. Instead of buying what is said in this book, continue to take it upon yourself to eat right and exercise. You can lose weight, but it rides on YOU and how determined you are.

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