Odds and Ends

Okay, just a few closers for the week.

The first I think I may have already covered.

Gardasil: This vaccine, one of two found effective, is used to prevent some strains of the human papillomavirus which can lead to cervical cancer which is detected through the Pap smear, for females. I believe my intention was to note that of the 26 million doses administered there have been nearly 16000 reports of adverse events. The adverse events are usually non life threatening (93%) but there have been 44 deaths. We cannot know for sure what caused the deaths, but when a death does occur after a vaccine and it is reported to VAERS even if causality has not been determined, it is counted. Other serious adverse events include the GBS I noted recently and blood clots. I did not make a note of this because I intended to scare people away from Gardasil, but because I had wanted to contrast it against Cervarix and Chantix. I have to say, I cannot find the same type of simple data for Chantix as it is not a vaccine. This is just the odds and ends post so I think I will look into that later. Cervarix has been discussed.

Breast Cancer: Earlier in the week I talked about preventing a second occurrence of breast cancer and that the most common second case was a distant metastasis. Because I had studied that and you read it, you might not be surprised by a rather sad and startling statistic I read later in the week. Numbers aside, the issue was a significant percentage of women who had had a mastectomy because of a tumor in one breast then had the other breast (disease free) removed. The article discussed how this had no impact on long term survival. And you know why.

Also this is Breast Cancer Awareness month. Get your mammogram if you are a woman over 40 or if you have a reason to have it sooner. Did you notice that the NFL is in support of breast cancer awareness and research? Look for pink shoes, wrist bands and the like during the games this month.

Slender Life: Okay just please tell me you won’t do this. Lose 20 inches in one hour. Find 20 inches in the next 24.

Natural and Organic: There may be some benefit in choosing foods that are organic and natural though research isn’t really backing that up. What I do want to bring to your conscious thought is this: A natural or organic food is not necessarily a LOW calorie or safe or healthy food. Read your labels.

Conservation, etc: I do not recall the news program, but some pundit was going on about how saving energy or switching fuels was going to cost more money and take more time and was quite plainly inconvenient. YES and losing weight and having good health are hard work... what seems to be the problem here? Sacrifice, people. It’s the new in thing!

Two friends, readers even! Alerted me to valuable links this week:
This one is so that you can see the health reform agendas or platforms, of which there are several, yourself - http://www.kff.org/healthreform/sidebyside.cfm#
This link can aid you in protecting YOURSELF from adverse events due to medication interactions - http://www.iguard.org/