Autism and the Environment

I think the autism/vaccination link has been put to rest but perhaps it is only a distraction from the real problem: the thousands and thousands of new chemical compounds released into the environment without any real safety testing. Here is a series of articles that consider the subject deftly and straightforwardly. It worth reading.

Wednesday...

For an interesting look at the value of a Masters Degree over its costs, take a look at this Times article. Clearly there are significant differences from field to field, but the perspective of several long time academics and administrators is interesting:

The next bubble to burst will be the education bubble. Make no mistake about it, education is big business and, like other big businesses, it is in big trouble. What people outside the education bubble don’t realize and people inside won’t admit is that many colleges and universities are in the same position that major banks and financial institutions are: their assets (endowments down 30-40 percent this year) are plummeting, their liabilities (debts) are growing, most of their costs are fixed and rising, and their income (return on investments, support from government and private donations, etc.) is falling.

This is a darker perspective, and one I share, but it is interesting, isn't it? The whole industry doesn't seem sustainable. Check the debate out, there are three perspectives to consider.

MJ

I have largely ignored Jackson's passing, not for lack of interest but for general revulsion at the whole celebrity/tragedy angle. Let me leave it at this, he was obviously and chronically terrorized by his father and exploited by just about everyone else. Then the pharmaceuticals found a home, to wit, his being sued a couple of years ago for 100,000 in pharmacy bills.

as per Furious Seasons:

I was blown away on Saturday when, during cable news coverage of Michael Jackson's death, two doctors offering analysis were very critical of Jackson's reported long-term, chronic use of both painkillers and anti-depressants and noted that they could affect someone's heart health (while that's likely obvious to one and all with painkillers, it's probably not so obvious with anti-depressants). Sadly, I cannot find transcripts of either doctor on Fox News and CNN, but I can assure you they said it and it was a stunner to me, given how the mainstream media ignored the connection between anti-depressant use and sudden cardiac death in women, as reported by researchers in the Nurse's Health Study. It's also a stunner to me in light of how naive we've been as a culture when it comes to using anti-depressants very casually while assuming that there's no long-term impact from using the drugs.

Jackson was allegedly on a staggering cocktail of prescription drugs: thrice daily injections of Demerol; Dilaudid; Viccodine; and 120 mgs. a day of Zoloft and 40 mgs. a day of Paxil. He was supposedly taking the anti-depressants for OCD and social phobia issues. What Jackson was taking at the time of his death isn't entirely clear, since his toxicology report won't be available for many weeks and also since last night his personal physician, Conrad Murray, reportedly told Los Angeles police detectives that he hadn't injected Jackson with Demerol and, in the words of the doctor's lawyer, "There was no Demerol. No OxyContin."

He said nothing about anti-depressants, however.

So we shall see how all this prescription business plays out. Of course, Jackson was known to have used painkillers for many years to treat chronic pain problems and it's entirely possible that he'd become addicted to them. It's entirely possible that Michael was hooked on anti-depressants as well. Certainly, SSRIs can be very addictive (or create physical dependency, if you prefer) for some people.

That said, I want to make it clear that I am not blaming Zoloft and Paxil for Jackson's death. I am not saying that taking either drug will give any specific person a heart attack. But I am saying that, for now, that the two anti-depressants are inextricably entwined and linked to the death of MJ.

The research on long-term anti-depressant use is thin to begin with and there's not a lot of research on links between anti-depressant use and heart problems, but it is obvious to me that there is clearly something going on here and, as I wrote back in March, the nurse's study should be a big wake up call to doctors who've had patients on anti-depressants for many years and for patients themselves.

An Estimable Monday...

It is a little cool, but my summer begins with my first swim in the very chilly Cook's Creek. Last nights swim was a bit of a shock, but this morning after a longish run in the hills me and my hot pup Milton splashed around until our bones began to crack from the cold.
Whenever I take him running in a new place I leave a long rope on him. It gives me an extra moment to grab him, should we run into anything untoward (like the skunk that pasted us last week). Milton isn't terribly obedient; he is, however, fairly reasonable. Our interests largely overlap.
I noticed this morning something about the processes of information. Picture this: You are running down a steep, narrow, wooded path. It is mostly stones jutting this way and that, green and blue-grey with moss and lichen. The soil is damp, and the small logs here and there are slippery. A large, red-brown, and joyful dog runs ahead of you, dragging behind him an eight foot long yellow rope which drifts side to side and occasionally under your feet as you run.
Your footing is very particular, and a fall would be pretty painful. Yet your brain negotiates the whole complex exercise smoothly, despite very different foot falls being required every running step.
What complicates things is the rope. If I step on the rope I will suddenly yank Milton's neck, which I do not want to do; if I hesitate, I would likely twist an ankle and fall. Unfortunately, the rope is necessary at this stage of Milton's "training", especially in those woods.

While running I recognized three rather distinct and surprisingly non-influencing lines of mental activity. By this I mean that the first two did not effect each other and the third, though a product of the first two, took a while to come to any action:

1) running down the rocky path requires snap experience- and coordination-based judgments that also tap into a feedback loop regarding the body's strength and performance. These tiny adjustments seem to use primarily the eyes, the conforming of the feet on the uneven ground, an awareness of general inertia, and an awareness of general ability to meet each feature of the path safely.

2) tracking the rope and not wanting to land land on it made no difference whatsoever whether or not I landed on it. I was running quite fast, for me anyway, and clearly the judgments about what my feet should do and what I should do were insulated from each other. A safe step trumped skipping the rope.

3) lastly, the awareness of these two processes not only operating, but of their each having an independent time sense. And then there is the recursive aspect of being aware of being aware, etc etc.

Normally, we assume that time is relatively uniform, at least subjectively speaking. Anyone reading this blog probably has some idea of Einstein's frames of reference in his Special Relativity (i.e. time elapses at different rates for different observers of a given event). Interesting to think, then, that within our own brains are very different rates of time.

Think of summer. I can hold these two thoughts simultaneaously: it seems like a long time ago that we had graduation/I can't believe it is almost July, summer is evaporating. Or, when each day seems so long and the weeks shoot by. Time is not uniform even for ourselves.

Fortunately, someone is working on it:

Your brain, after all, is encased in darkness and silence in the vault of the skull. Its only contact with the outside world is via the electrical signals exiting and entering along the super-highways of nerve bundles. Because different types of sensory information (hearing, seeing, touch, and so on) are processed at different speeds by different neural architectures, your brain faces an enormous challenge: what is the best story that can be constructed about the outside world?

Here's a link to the rest.