Month: December 2006

Key Word Omission Watch

Uh-oh:

Circumcising adult men is an effective way to limit transmission of the virus that causes AIDS. The National Institutes of Health announced today that two clinical trials in Africa have been stopped because an independent monitoring board determined the treatment was so effective that it would be unethical to continue the experiment.

“We now have confirmation — from large, carefully controlled, randomized clinical trials —showing definitively that medically performed circumcision can significantly lower the risk of adult males contracting HIV through heterosexual intercourse,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. “While the initial benefit will be fewer HIV infections in men, ultimately adult male circumcision could lead to fewer infections in women in those areas of the world where HIV is spread primarily through heterosexual intercourse.”

The key word here should be obvious: adult. Ultimately, I don’t care if adult men want to make less-than-optimal choices for themselves regarding circumcision. Personal responsibility (condoms, monogamy, etc.) are much more effective at preventing HIV infection. Adult circumcision is consistent with my position (body, his rights), regardless of the wisdom involved in the adult male’s choice. People should retain the right to be stupid with their own body.

The predictable outcome, though, is that the word adult will inevitably drop out of the article as it’s picked up by other news outlets and blogs. Parents will think that it’s good enough for adults, so better to save their children now. In a worse development, by promoting an idea outside of its legitimate scope, the government will continue its complicity in the unnecessary and unethical surgical alteration of children. The legitimate function of government is to protect the rights of individuals, not encourage parents to violate the rights of their children.

The often-overlooked details, as evidenced by this paragraph, shows how selective information can derail the best of intentions:

This finding appears to apply only to heterosexual transmission which is the main mode of spread in Africa. Officials estimate that at least 25 million people in Africa are currently infected with the AIDS virus.

Both studies undertaken so far apply only to heterosexual transmission. What’s missing here is the key component, that the study investigated female-to-male transmission. Female-to-male is the least common involving men. When someone says circumcision offers a 48% or a 53% reduction in infection, keep in mind that the benefit only applies to a small percentage of the risk. Absolute numbers matter. Women will still become infected. Gay men will still become infected. Straight men will still become infected. There is no immunity. Personal responsibility still matters more.

The findings are useful for scientific progress, given that everyone involved volunteered. But consent is still the primary ingredient. It is absent in America in the overwhelming majority of circumcisions. Those who use this announcement to perpetuate circumcision against non-consenting, sexually inactive infants participate in violating every circumcised child’s rights. That is wrong, no matter the potential protection against HIV.

Merit is not fixed at birth.

There is nothing that government can’t achieve, if we funnel more money and social equality into addressing so-called problems:

One of the most important things that government could do to reduce drug use, fight the obesity epidemic and deal with a host of other youth problems is quite simple: Include more kids in organized after-school sports.

But to do that, we must first make some major changes in interscholastic sports programs in the nation’s public middle and high schools. The goal should be full inclusion: Nobody gets cut from the team.

The essay is bad, with little that is practical or desirable. But there are two points that get lost in this recommendation. First, kids in organized sports use drugs. I recall this from my one year of high school baseball, but it’s not a leap to realize that kids in sports are still kids. Kids make bad choices. Maybe lack of participation in sports plays a role in increasing drug use, but I want evidence before accepting it as truth. It’s dumb to throw more money at something with hope that it’ll fix what we’ve only assumed.

To the second point, there are other outlets for organized sports, but the school team carries greater weight. I agree. Yet, merit is vital as a measuring stick for kids. I wanted to be on the baseball team in high school, but I wasn’t good enough to play beyond one season. That was tough, but I dealt with it by working hard to improve. If I’d known I would make the team, I would’ve had no incentive to practice. Toss in this suggested implementation strategy and there is little reason to care:

To ensure that schools would field the most competitive teams, the most skilled players would still get the bulk of the playing time at the varsity level. But no one would be cut.

Pardon me for disagreeing, but I never wanted to sit when I played organized sports. As a kid, I’d rather play for a losing team than watch from the bench as a good team wins. I even skipped a season of Little League as a kid because I knew I wouldn’t get to play much. The effort involved to practice with the team only to watch other kids play would not have been worth the minor payoff of being included. I played catch and practiced with my brother to play the game.

I coached Little League one season. I made a rule in the beginning of the season that playing was more important than winning. Every kid would play an equal amount of time, regardless of skill or the score of the game. I communicated this at the first practice. When the season was over, every kid had played the same number of innings. We didn’t win much, but the kids played together as a team as the season progressed. They helped each other and the team played better every week.

I wouldn’t implement such a policy in business, but extracurricular activities is not business. Kids are smart enough to understand who has more (and less) talent. What that team found out was that every kid could develop the talent he or she had, no matter how limited or expansive. Isn’t that more important for kids than being included on the periphery?

Instead of spending more money so that everyone (allegedly) feels good about themselves, communities should address the problem with an approach open to the best solution. It should not flow from a preferred political outcome. If involvement is so important with sports, and I believe it is, kids need an environment where they know their efforts will be rewarded. Merit is a vital measuring stick, regardless of how abundant that talent is, but it’s measured individually as much as it is collectively.

Central planning is not an economic policy.

Here’s an interesting but misguided study:

A new poll shows that the overwhelming majority of Americans favor allowing the government to negotiate prescription drug prices for the Medicare program, suggesting there will be considerable political pressure on the next Congress to do so.

Eight-five percent of the 1,867 adults polled in the Kaiser Family Foundation survey released yesterday said they favored such negotiations, including majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents.

So people presumably understand that negotiating in the marketplace makes sense. Why include government? Do people not pay attention to results?

Julie L. Goon, special assistant to Bush for economic policy, said that Medicare beneficiaries are saving an average of $1,200 a year on drugs and that the existing program is popular and efficient.

“The government doesn’t do a particularly good job of negotiation,” Goon said. “I think it would be a mistake to open up the political process to what particular prices are available for drugs.”

Success is measured by beneficiaries saving money without noting that the cost is that someone else pays that $1,200. Of course, we could look no further than the stunningly frank admission that government doesn’t do a particularly good job of negotiation. The trade-off for those savings-that-aren’t-really-savings is fewer choices. Well done.

Welcome to government meddling with healthcare. Anyone who wants more is crazy.

Destroying an Admirable History

Many have pointed out that the notion of civil liberties in the United Kingdom is now a sham, but this is ridiculous:

Commander Dave Johnston, giving a personal point of view, said that samples could also be taken from people renewing passports and from migrants.
…

The head of the Met’s Homicide and Serious Crime Unit also suggested taking DNA from dead people might help “cleanse” the database.

He added that blood samples were already taken from babies at four days old to test for genetic diseases but stressed it was important to have a debate over the human rights issue.

A debate? Do you think? A child’s future is unknown, which is just part of life. Are we ready to assume that children are guilty until proven innocent, and that solving hypothetical, unlikely crimes trumps any rights a child has?

DNA samples are retained from those arrested but not convicted and from victims and witnesses who give their consent.

Apparently.

Does the baby Jesus hate Tofurky?

Speaking of science and kooks, too much soy will allegedly make you gay (Source):

The dangerous food I’m speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they’re all over the place. You can hardly escape them anymore.

I have nothing against an occasional soy snack. Soy is nutritious and contains lots of good things. Unfortunately, when you eat or drink a lot of soy stuff, you’re also getting substantial quantities of estrogens.

Estrogens are female hormones. If you’re a woman, you’re flooding your system with a substance it can’t handle in surplus. If you’re a man, you’re suppressing your masculinity and stimulating your “female side,” physically and mentally.

With such claims, a few citations of medical data might help. They’re nowhere to be found. But that’s okay. Proof is unnecessary when a child’s sexuality is at stake:

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That’s why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today’s rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t homosexual.” No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can’t remember a time when excess estrogen wasn’t influencing them.

And so it goes. Instead of scientific proof, or even theories with a scientific basis, we get the basic statement that “homosexuality is always deviant.” Note that the author discusses medical blame rather than explanation. Even if soy is as dangerous as the author claims, his real concern is not physical health. Moral health trumps any reality we face here. Of course, a reasonable person might just as easily attribute the alleged rise in homosexuality to reduced stigma that allows gays to come out of the closet rather than pretending to be straight. Incidence and reporting are different.

Finally, I wonder how the author would explain lesbians? I understand that the real disgust is aimed at gay men, but I wouldn’t expect the bigotry to be this obvious.

Afterthought: As a vegan, I have no stance in this argument. Avoid soy or don’t. I eat soy products and I’m fairly certain it hasn’t made me gay. But I’m just one guy. Here is some information about soy that challenges a few claims. I make no claims about it’s accuracy, but there are citations. That’s instantly an improvement over the WorldNet Daily nonsense.

Obvious Headline of the Day

Because we need research to reach this conclusion:

Newborns probably able to feel pain: research

More interesting is the collective denial involved leading up to such a not-stunning finding:

“New measurement techniques show that even premature babies display all the signs of a conscious experience of pain,” the research institute said in a statement, citing a doctoral thesis by Italian-Swedish researcher Marco Bartocci.

“For many years, doctors have assumed that foetuses, premature babies and fully developed newborn babies do not have the cerebral cortical functions required to feel pain,” it said.

“Babies’ reactions to potentially painful stimuli have been explained away as unconscious reflexes and so doctors have felt it justified to withhold painkillers during surgery and the like so as to avoid adverse reactions,” the institute said.

It’s amazing the number of people who will listen to a baby wail during circumcision and believe that only the restraint generates the crying. Silly and indefensible assumptions should not be tolerated.

But Bartocci’s research shows that the brains of premature babies are far more developed than previously thought.

His studies “using infrared spectroscopy … show that pain signals from a pin prick are processed in the cerebral cortex of premature babies in the same way as in adults.”

This should not be used as an excuse to administer pain relief to babies and sweep the more fundamental flaws of the process aside. Again, it’s useful to accept facts but that does not mean assumptions should remain unchallenged. Non-medical circumcision on a non-consenting individual with pain relief is still unacceptable madness.

Sports is a business.

First, with the Phillies’ recent acquisition of starting pitcher Freddy Garcia, we the team now has one too many starters. With many teams in need of a proven starter, a trade will occur before spring training. The odd man out is Jon Lieber, but that’s not what’s important. This quote from Phillies assistant GM Mike Arbuckle explains how to operate in a market.

“If we’re sending Christmas gifts to starting pitchers, we’ll probably only have to send out five,” he said with a laugh. “But we’ll let numerous teams come to us and see what the best offer is. Supply and demand may work in our favor.”

Bud Selig and the other owners in Major League Baseball talk a lot about parity, which can be seen as little more than talent redistribution when carried to the extreme. Yet, it doesn’t work out that way. Some teams seem to build talent in excess of what they need.

In this case, the Phillies and starting pitchers. Would it make sense for Major League Baseball to take one of the Phillies’ pitchers and give him to the Devil Rays, for example, because they need starters? Of course not. The Devil Rays, and every other team, are left to extract that player from the Phillies in exchange for another player. As any reasonable person could predict, the Philadelphia will try to improve its roster (demand) by offering a starter (excess supply). This is logical, so why do so many in our government feel that this does not apply to every other situation in economics?

Next, Senator Arlen Spector has interesting opinions about the NFL and its collectivist bargaining of television rights. Consider:

Whatever his motivation, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., claimed at the end of a Thursday hearing that he will sponsor legislation to strip the NFL of the antitrust exemption that permits the league to negotiate its television contracts for all 32 franchises, rather than have the teams do so individually.

“Wouldn’t consumers be better off if teams could negotiate [individually]?” Specter said. “This is the NFL exerting its power right down to the last nickel.”

..

Specter said the NFL should not use the exemption to negotiate exclusive programming packages such as DirectTV Inc.’s “Sunday Ticket,” which allows viewers to watch teams outside their regional market.

“As I look at what the NFL is doing today with the NFL channel with the DirectTV … a lot of people, including myself, would like to be able to have that ticket,” Specter said.

Among the grievances cited by Specter in what he termed a “fans be damned” mentality demonstrated by the NFL was the relocation of franchises, and decisions like the one that moved Monday Night Football from ABC, an over-the-air network broadcaster, to ESPN, a cable entity.

Using Sen. Spector’s logic, couldn’t individuals better negotiate wage contracts with employers tailored to meet their own needs? Perhaps collective bargaining is a great benefit for those involved. Perhaps not. But those involved should decide how they best wish to negotiate, free of government intervention or protection. The NFL’s structure is a voluntary club in which individuals and corporations transact with known rules. This is not the problem.

I could get behind Sen. Spector’s sabre-rattling about antitrust exemptions, but he’s attacking the wrong beast. He apparently can’t fathom the idea that the government should have little role in the operation of business. Remove/reduce the concept of antitrust and this matter goes away. Sen. Spector doesn’t want that; he is a politician, after all. But he seems to believe that being a football fan also entitles him to manipulate a market because he’d rather get the NFL and DirectTV’s combined product without having to include DirectTV. No. Subscribe to DirectTV or don’t, but leave the government out of it.

On Sen. Spector’s last point, what would he propose regarding Monday Night Football? That ABC receive a monopoly on broadcasting that, even if someone else (ESPN, like ABC, owned by Disney) is willing to pay more? I don’t recall reading anything about a fundamental right to free broadcasts of the NFL in the Constitution.

Finally, the Orioles are getting a new JumboTron, except they don’t want it. They’re not paying for it, so they want a bigger JumboTron.

The Maryland Stadium Authority agreed yesterday to move forward with the purchase of a new Mitsubishi video screen for Camden Yards despite objections from the Orioles.

Orioles officials say the DiamondVision screen is too small and technologically inadequate and plan to file a temporary restraining order in Baltimore Circuit Court today to block the $1.5 million purchase. The restraining order would give the Orioles time to move the dispute to arbitration as is called for in the team’s lease for the stadium.

On the surface, this is little more than a contract dispute. It should be decided as such given the constraints of reality. It’s possible to accept the facts while rejecting the assumptions. The taxpayers of Maryland should not be forced to subsidize the purchase of a bigger video screen for a private business.

Major League Baseball and the NFL are businesses and should be treated as such. Politicians who interfere *cough*Tom Davis*cough*, for whatever reason, are anti-capitalists trying to break fundamental laws of economics. They should not be tolerated.

Hat tip to Baseball Musings for the last item.

“…whether their use should be restricted…”

But we’ve done it this way for a long time; it must be effective.

New drug-releasing stents used widely to keep clogged heart arteries open appear to increase the risk for potentially life-threatening blood clots more than older bare-metal versions, government investigators told an expert panel assessing the safety of the devices today.

But the blood clot risk from the tiny metal mesh struts, known as drug-eluting stents, appears relatively low and it remains unclear whether it translates into an excess risk for heart attacks or deaths, according to the Food and Drug Administration analysts.

Nevertheless, because some studies have suggested the increased risk of blood clots, known as thrombosis, may be causing thousands of excess heart attacks and deaths each year, it is urgent that experts determine whether their use should be restricted and patients who already have them should be treated longer with anti-clotting drugs, the agency officials said.

My opening statement is stupid because it lacks the logic involved in questioning and striving for something better. Yet people do this all the time and think nothing of it. Progress is good, but sometimes it requires a retrenchment to a prior point. Not necessarily with heart stents, but we must be open to ideas.

Why does anyone care?

No doubt this is for the children:

Focus on the Family, a Christian group that has provided crucial political support to President Bush, released a statement that criticized child rearing by same-sex couples.

“Mary Cheney’s pregnancy raises the question of what’s best for children,” said Carrie Gordon Earll, the group’s director of issues analysis. “Just because it’s possible to conceive a child outside of the relationship of a married mother and father doesn’t mean it’s the best for the child.”

Of all the issues in the world, this raises the question of what’s best for children? A reasonable person might respond that just because it’s possible to conceive a child inside of the relationship of a married mother and father doesn’t mean it’s the best for the child. A reasonable person might also ask Focus on the Family what makes them experts on how to best raise children. What is the ideal situation? Should we find the two most supreme married, heterosexual parents and award them custody of all children? They’re married, they’re straight, so they must be great.

Darwinism is true, but sometimes I wonder if it’s working as fast as it can.