Miss Kelly

Kill the Bill - It's Not Dead Yet!

Don't let up your efforts to kill the health bill that the White House and Pelosi/Reid are trying to force on the American public, despite the fact that the majority of Americans (73%) are opposed to this monstrosity.  Who would ever want Congress to control health care, which represents one-sixth of our exconomy?! 

As Ed Morrissey of Hot Air said at a "Kill the Bill" rally in Minnesota over the weekend, this is "the most expansive government takeover attempt in our history."  Once you enact massive entitlement programs, you simply can't go back, as we see with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  The proposed "health care bill (AKA insurance company bail-out) is 1) way too expensive and 2) way too far-reaching. 

The FAR better choice is to enact a series of incremental steps, including separating health care from employment, allowing health insurance companies to sell their coverage across state lines, and allowing companies to offer an array of coverages, not mandate what insurance companies must provide. 

This deal is still in the works, and the American people (you and me!) must keep calling and writing our senators and representatives to let them know we want to Kill the Bill. Scrap it and start over.  As the HillBuzz boyz say, "Not. This. Time.

Find out how to contact your Representative here and how to contact your Senator here, and CALL, WRITE, CALL, E-MAIL, CALL, CALL, CALL!  Better yet, go to the local office of your Congressmen (info here).  Chop-chop! Now!

If you can make it to DC for the Tuesday, March 16 demonstration against health care, then please go! It's "The People's Surge Against Obamacare."

Lack of Vitamin D Behind Rising Cancer Rates?

Make sure you get out and get some sunshine every day and take your daily vitamins.  Two epidemiologists, brothers Frank and Cedric Garland from John Hopkins University, hypothesized back in 1974 that a lack of Vitamin D is linked to an increase in all kinds of cancer, most pronounced for colon cancer:

"Their hypothesis, painstakingly developed and published six years later in the International Journal of Epidemiology, was that sunlight has a powerful anti-cancer effect through its role in producing vitamin D in bare skin. Those living at northern latitudes, they theorized, receive less sunlight and make less of the vitamin, which in turn increases their risk of dying from cancer."

"....But the benefits of vitamin D are no longer restricted to cancer prevention: Studies have linked a shortage of the compound to such serious, chronic ailments as multiple sclerosis, diabetes, heart disease, influenza and schizophrenia."

Trans Fats the New Bogeyman?

I haven't made up my mind yet on trans fat.  The current hysteria about it leaves me skeptical.  First New York City passed a ban on trans fats in restaurants, and now other cities are following suit.  I believe it when someone says "This is a good idea" (Keith-Thomas Ayoob, associate professor in the department of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine).  But I don't believe it when people say "The trans-fat ban will save thousands of lives over the next decade" (Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C.)  That's hyperbole, I'm not buying it.  How does something that we've been consuming for decades suddenly become a killer substance?  The late expert nutritionist David Kritchevsky called the trans fat ban in NY the "panic du jour."

Nutrittionists state that trans fats raise "bad" LDL cholesterol and lower "good" HDL cholesterol, which contributes to heart disease.  The latest news from the Harvard School of Public Health is that trans fats could also be causing fertility problems:

"Fats hidden in thousands of foods can harm a woman’s chance of having a baby, scientists said yesterday.  They can increase the risk of fertility problems by 70 per cent or more. Eating as little as one doughnut or a portion of chips a day can have a damaging effect. The scientists behind the study advised women who want to have a baby to avoid the fats, known as trans fats."

"Infertility is also a growing problem, with one in six couples having problems conceiving. In the study, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston looked at 18,500 women trying to conceive and found 438 cases of ovulatory problems."

Call me anti-science, but I just don't believe these folks, and I'm not impressed that it's coming from Harvard.  Infertility is clearly a growing problem, but among the folks I know, it's because nowadays so many women wait until their mid-30's and 40's to try to conceive.  I haven't seen fertility problems in teens or women in their 20's. 

There's an awful lot of "the sky is falling" going on these days, for the oddest things.   

Breast Cancer Linked to Hormone Therapy, How About IVF?

Last week, we learned of a link between breast cancer and hormone replacement therapy:

"In a startling turnaround, breast cancer rates in the United States dropped dramatically in 2003, and experts said they believe it is because many women stopped taking hormone pills. The 7.2 percent decline came a year after a big federal study linked hormone replacement therapy used at menopause to a higher risk of breast cancer, heart disease and other problems. Within months, millions of women stopped taking estrogen and progestin pills. A new analysis of federal cancer statistics, presented Thursday at a scientific conference called the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, revealed the drop in tumors."

"The researchers stressed that because their analysis is based on population statistics, the reasons for the drop are not completely certain. But evidence showed that the steepest decline in breast cancer diagnosis, at 12 percent, occurred in women between the ages 50 to 69 with estrogen receptor positive breast cancer. These types of tumors are fueled by the hormone estrogen."

"A big study in 2002 suggested that the combination of estrogen and progestin raised the risk of breast cancer and brought a premature halt to a Women’s Health Initiative study of more than 16,600 women between 50 and 79 who were taking hormones. The news caused widespread alarm and confusion."

I suppose the observed reduction is good news, but I wonder why these women were guinea pigs in the first place.  Very sad for all the women who unneccesarily suffered from this terrible disease.   

So what would happen if there was a moratorium on in-vitro fertilization procedures?  Might we also see a steep decline in breast cancer?  I've read that there's no link between IVF and breast cancer, but I don't quite believe it.  It's known that hormones taken during IVF can stimulate an existing breast cancer.  But how many women yearning for a baby stop to think about that possibility? IVF treatments involve self-administration of follicle-stimulating hormones before eggs are harvested, and progesterone afterwards to prepare the uterine lining for implantation of the fertilized egg. 

Two women in their mid-30's whom I know were diagnosed with breast cancer within several months of undergoing IVF treatments.  One has survived five years and is doing well.  The other woman is not doing well, she's valiantly fighting a cancer that has now spread to her spine.  She and her husband have three young children, whose mother has been sick for most of their lives.  Yes, I know, this is limited, anecdotal evidence.  But l don't have a good feeling about the medical experimenting we're allowing on young women.