On published research:

'Well, here’s a medical expert. For 20 years, she had a front-row seat that very few doctors or researchers ever occupy. Thousands of medical studies arrived at her desk. She was a “queen of judgment.”

She is Dr. Marcia Angell. She was the editor of the most prestigious medical journal in the world, The New England Journal of Medicine.

On January 15, 2009, the NY Review of Books published Dr. Angell’s devastating assessment of medical literature:

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” —(Marcia Angell, MD, “Drug Companies and Doctors: A story of Corruption.” NY Review of Books, Jan. 15, 2009.)'

1.Yes you are.

2. Choosing to continue smoking and choosing to not take steps to get your weight under control and or stop overeating are well paralleled as demonstrated above. Feel free to argue it.

3. Being overweight in the playground DOES make them more likely to die of heart disease in later life.
Here's a quote for you.
“This is incredibly important,” said Jennifer L. Baker of the Institute of Preventive Medicine in Copenhagen, who led the research, being published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. “This is the first study to convincingly show that excess childhood weight is associated with heart disease in adulthood, or with any significant health problem in adulthood.”

To you point about it being his business etc... You know what, you're right. It isn't his business.
Does that matter? Not a whole lot. In fact he IS doing her a favor.
Hurting her feelings however unkind may be an important catalyst in getting her to change her habits.
Vanity is an INCREDIBLY powerful driving force for people.

In my view, someone who knows there is a problem and chooses to ignore it is a bigger (although perhaps socially nicer) coward.

Oh and people get away with comments like that in public all the time. I don't know what fantasy world you live in where no one chastises anyone, must be nice.

>> ^Jinx:


Oh, I'm making hyperbolic conclusions and then you equate smoking to being overweight? Being fat in a playground doesn't make the kids more at risk of heart disease.

so I guess you're right then. I dont get it. I don't get why her weight is your business if its not some wrong headed belief that she is a poor role model (that at least seemed to be the point of the email no?)
There is no easy solution. I'm not suggesting we ignore obesity or its health risks but there are right ways of tackling problems and there are the futile ways. If it was as fucking easy and emailing fat people to point out that they are fat and oh, here are the health risks then, err, why are people still overweight? So stop pretending that this email is in any way helpful. At best its tactless, at worst its cruel. Now, if I had a family member with weight problems I would consider it my place and indeed my duty to not just confront them about it, but also help them maintain a healthier lifestyle. I'd hope they'd do the same for me, but a stranger who is unwilling to invest any assistance to me beyond their critique? Fuck that. Mind your business.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
The answer is yes - of course Al Franken is just as guilty of cherry picking his numbers. I don't care what system you talk about, there is no such thing (statistically) as a ZERO when you are talking about a population in the millions. He's either making that up, or using some report that excludes medical bankruptcies. It doesn't matter what system the U.S. cooks up in Congress - there is never going to be a single day in the entire history of humankind that there will be 'zero medical bankruptcies' in the U.S. Such a claim is absolute bunk based on "cherry picking" how you define bankruptcy.

All untrue, except possibly for the last sentence. Note that the Fraser Institute's study (and BTW, Fraser is a Canadian version of CATO), doesn't look at medical bankruptcy at all. It basically just looks at the per capita bankruptcy rate of Canada and the US, finds them similar, and declares Canada's program as being no help in general bankruptcy.

It doesn't define "medical bankruptcy" at all, nor does it attempt to breakdown the causes of bankruptcy in any way.

The latest study from the American Journal of Medicine on this topic, at least attempts to do all of those things.

He also probably isn't too eager to say that his desired system will be shutting off the tap of so-called 'free medical care' to millions on a regular basis based on economics. He also didn't seem to eager to quote the words of his own fellow democrats who say that grandma better get ready to "take the pain pill" and "we're going to let you die".

Liar liar, pants on fire. That's not what was said, dingus.

If you don't work, have no income, and have medical issues then you are 'medically bankrupt' even in Germany, France, and Switzerland. Zero - what a dingus. And some of you think this guy is smart?

Ahh, I see. So you make up your own standard of "medical bankruptcy" that doesn't match that of any reasonable person, and declare Franken a moron or liar.

"Medical bankruptcy" is shorthand for "bankruptcy caused by medical costs." There's a huge amount of wiggle room about how much medical cost means that it "caused" the bankruptcy, but it's pretty straightforward to say that if no one pays out of pocket for medical treatment, it won't make them go bankrupt.

If someone is sick, gets free care, and then goes bankrupt, they didn't go bankrupt from medical costs.

Unfortunately, we're not even talking about setting up some sort of universal, no out of pocket system for the US. What we're talking about mostly is mandated insurance, which should make it easier for families to budget their health care costs. Most of why they cause bankruptcy here is that no one plans to have major medical problems, nor do they plan on having their coverage rescinded by their insurance company, nor do they plan on getting laid off and losing their benefits.

The whole point of the health care reform is to attempt to address those issues.

More polling information about health care (from actually reputable sources):

Poll Finds Most Doctors Support Public Option (published originally in the New England Journal of Medicine)

Obama job approval on the rise

NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds 76% support public option

And a de-spun ABC/Washington Post poll shows 76% support a public option if it's reserved for those unable to get health insurance now -- which is the way it would work in all the drafts of legislation being considered.

Mostly though, there's one trend I've seen in all the polls, and a professional poll-watcher like Nate Silver backs me up on this, but the more specificity you provide, the more support for the package rises.

It's something I noticed during the election too -- the more information people got about Obama and his platform, the more support for him rose. Same thing is happening with health care.

>> ^blankfist:
Your hyperbolic example of a person choosing between bankruptcy and "life and limb" confuses morality with fear.

As many as 22,000 people die each year because they don't have health insurance (PolitiFact
).

Medical bills are responsible for most bankruptcies in the US (American Journal of Medicine, via NYT).

I think it's safe to say that the people bankrupted by medical bills didn't do it with elective procedures. I don't know how many of those bankruptcies involved treatments that were life saving, but certainly you would concede that my overall description of our system was accurate: people sometimes have to choose between bankruptcy or death. I think that's a broken system.

Most of your anti-government rhetoric is based on the slippery slope fallacy. In this case, you're saying that if we give the government the power to, say, outlaw insurance companies from rejecting or rescinding coverage from people on the basis of their medical conditions, the next step is forced labor exercise camps, and curfews.

Which of us was using hyperbolic fear tactics again?

If all you've got is to feed me a line of bull about how healthcare reform will lead to totalitarian socialism, and that therefore medical bankruptcies are just the price of freedom...you aren't really adding anything to the debate.

However, if you have a cure for the problem that doesn't involve government, I'm all ears.

"In 1991, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that Hart's voice had triggered seizures in an epileptic woman.[4] This was later referenced in an episode of Tiny Toons[5] and the NBC sitcom Seinfeld, where Kramer (Michael Richards) suffers from convulsions whenever he hears Hart's voice."

--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Hart_(TV_personality)

^Doc_M bear with me as I address your assertions one by one.
you stated
"First on novaccine.com itself. Having looked through the list of references and their summaries, I would say that 1 in maybe 80 to 100 is from a reliable scientific source. The vast majority are poorly reported from simple newspapers and such. Most look like BS, sorry to say."

Maybe you didn’t follow my directions to click the link that said “scientific literature” or perhaps I was wrong about you wanting to understand the “other side of the issue”. Considering your rushed perusal of the site and that you somehow overlooked the multitude of “scientific literature” here is a small sampling of 220 sources taken from scientific literature for you.(only under the section of Vaccine Ineffectiveness) more can be found by following my directions under the Vaccine Risks section (about 1500 references)

Since you couldn't find any (except 1) of these, i cut and pasted them into a webpage for you.

http://www.archetype-productions.com/nfo/vaccines/scientific_literature.htm

Let me know if you don’t consider the sources below as scientific literature.

The New England Journal of Medicine
The Journal of the American Medical Association
The American journal of medicine
The British Medical Journal, a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Medical Association.
The Journal of pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition
The Journal of hospital infection
CMAJ, Canada’s leading medical journal
Cleveland Clinic journal of medicine
Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America
Scandinavian Journal of Infectious Diseases

the sources listed above were culled from the first three pages, so there are still more "scientific literature" to list. Keep in mind the total list reflects studies done worldwide.

Keep in mind. I don't have to prove that vaccines are harmful. I only have to prove that there is real research being done by real scientist who have evidence contrary to what you say does not exist (or is fringe, conspiracy). Let's also remember MycroftHomlz said he couldn't find any. I have now presented to you over 200 sources and pointed you in the direction of another 1500.