http://www.fairwarning.org/writer/bridget-huber/

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California Lawmaker Seeks Federal Probe of New Tanning Industry Group

By Bridget Huber on February 7, 2013

A California lawmaker is urging federal regulators to investigate a new tanning industry group he says is using “junk science” to mislead the public about the risks of sunbeds.

http://www.fairwarning.org/2013/02/california-lawmaker-seeks-federal-probe-of-new-tanning-industry-group/

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New Tanning Industry Campaign to Dismiss Skin Cancer Threat Draws Fire from Doctors’ Group

By Bridget Huber on January 22, 2013

A new campaign by the tanning industry to promote the safety of sunbed use has come under fierce attack from a national doctors group.

http://www.fairwarning.org/2013/01/new-tanning-industry-campaign-to-dismiss-skin-cancer-threat-draws-fire-from-doctors-group/

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Burned by Health Warnings, Defiant Tanning Industry Assails Doctors, ‘Sun Scare’ Conspiracy

By Bridget Huber on August 23, 2012

The $4.9 billion tanning salon industry repeatedly has faced charges of misrepresenting health risks. So how is the industry responding? By going on the offensive with an audacious campaign to blunt skin cancer fears by discrediting physicians and health groups as members of a ‘Sun Scare’ conspiracy. Using tactics that seem cribbed from Big Tobacco’s playbook, the industry has challenged widely accepted scientific findings and funded advocacy groups to spread its message that sunbed use is a healthful source of vitamin D.

Quote “Yet the close ties between the tanning industry and the web of nonprofit groups that promote the health benefits of Vitamin D often are not readily apparent. The website for the Vitamin D Foundation, for example, discloses no industry affiliation, though 2010 tax documents reveal that its top personnel were all people in the business. In addition to Levy, they include the CEO of Beach Bum Tanning, a chain with 53 salons, and the president of the Joint Canadian Tanning Association, who also owns a large chain of salons.

These groups raise money at salons by selling tanning lotions, wrist bands and T-shirts. Then they funnel the funds to vitamin D researchers and organizations that reinforce the industry’s claims about the vitamin’s health benefits, while directly or indirectly promoting the idea that tanning is healthful. One such organization is the Breast Cancer Natural Prevention Foundation, which promotes vitamin D for breast cancer prevention.

The founders include Dr. Sandra K. Russell, an obstetrician-gynecologist who appeared in advertisements for Smart Tan wearing her lab coat and a stethoscope.”

http://www.fairwarning.org/2012/08/burned-by-health-warnings-defiant-tanning-industry-assails-doctors-sun-scare-conspiracy/

Would the proper plural be pancrei?
Pancreata, if you must know.

Buzzkill

@Sialis – Too true…and it’s not just folks with undiagnosed diseases either. I’ve know several relatives of folks with Rheumatoid Arthritis who express beliefs that the sufferer “doesn’t need all those drugs, they just need to exercise more and eat better.” Of course it’s true that a good lifestyle can help elevate some of the problems with RA, but it’s not “treatment”. Jeez, I even know a guy with Polycystic Kidney Disease (now transplanted and doing well) who took criticism from friends and family about his “poor” diet and exercise (all that time on dialysis is no reason to slack off on the exercise, I guess.)

Okay, nuff said. I don’t want to beat a dead horse.

There are some chronic conditions that are chronic because of the patients inability to obtain an accurate diagnosis, and what may seem to be their poor lifestyle choices may actually be a manifestation of their untreated disease process. When patients are given no accurate diagnosis and fall into a dustbin of ‘something’s wrong, but we don’t know what it is, so we can’t treat it’, are left basically twisting in the wind they have little choice other than do the best they can with what they’ve got. In general I get tired of people who too quickly label others as making poor lifestyle choices, such as diet and not enough exercise. What do you do if you have a recognized and established disease process which greatly effects your ability to exercise or cook, grocery shop, or work and you are left without treatment to care for yourself?

Sedentary lifestyles lead to weight gain. Do people consider those with undefined and untreated chronic disease as always merely making poor lifestyle choices? It seems that too often people judge others without knowing all the details of their conditions. They see people with heart, weight, muscle or other problems, and assume is preventable and solely due to poor lifestyle choices – exercise more and eat better and everything will be fine. Sorry, but I just get tired of hearing that some days.

My comment starts at “Heh, I’ve edited that wikipedia page” and everything before is a quote of Mousethatroared.

Chronic: “A chronic condition is a human health condition or disease that is persistent or otherwise long-lasting in its effects.[1] The term chronic is usually applied when the course of the disease lasts for more than three months.[1] Common chronic diseases include arthritis, asthma, cancer, COPD, diabetes and HIV/AIDS.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_(medicine)

I only say this because I get tired of folks trying to get me to go off medication for my chronic condition(s) and treat it with ‘lifestyle’ changes.Heh, I’ve edited that wikipedia page.

Science treats every condition as specific – so while “healthy lifestyle” will be good for many conditions and keep many people healthy, it won’t be good for all of them and scientific reasoning will never suggest they would be. Stan’s nonsense claims are the usual gross-oversimplifications and sometimes outright lies that characterize the pharma-fearing SCAM crowd. He’s not interested in specific or evidence, he just wants to pimp his woo (specifically vitamins I believe).

So yeah, my statement was a gross oversimplification; some chronic conditions are lifestyle conditions, some aren’t. Type I diabetes is at a coincidentally unique situation in that it shouldn’t be a lifestyle condition (yo pancrease be ded) but can be treated through lifestyle measures (diet and exercise – before insulin was readily available, the only way to treat hyperglycemia due to type I diabetes was exercise)!

It really comes down to a false dilemma – Stan wants medicine to fail, or be “bad” so his preferred form of woo therefore is good, and damn the real evidence. Makes for a simple story but a lot of unnecessarily dead people.

Would the proper plural be pancrei?

Pancreata, if you must know.

Of course we are basically in agreement WLU – but – only SOME chronic conditions are lifestyle conditions. It is true that most people think that you should be able to treat ALL chronic conditions with lifestyle changes, but you can’t.

Chronic: “A chronic condition is a human health condition or disease that is persistent or otherwise long-lasting in its effects.[1] The term chronic is usually applied when the course of the disease lasts for more than three months.[1] Common chronic diseases include arthritis, asthma, cancer, COPD, diabetes and HIV/AIDS.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_(medicine)

I only say this because I get tired of folks trying to get me to go off medication for my chronic condition(s) and treat it with ‘lifestyle’ changes.

(until we can grow new pancreases).

Would the proper plural be pancrei?

homeopathy is natural, Western medicine only treats the symptoms and not the cause of disease, and that homeopathy is “holistic.”

How is taking a material, grinding it finely and diluting it a 100 times in any way natural?

How is homeopathy, based on matching symptoms, not treating symptoms? How is it holistic? Because it uses more symptoms in its diagnosis?

That’s a nice ad slogan, but medicine doesn’t offer these benefits, as far as many of us are concerned. Their approach is entirely about treating symptoms — not actually improving health. There’s a big difference. Treating symptoms with prescription drugs is not the ticket to a longer, healthier life — just a longer one.

Vaccination doesn’t treat any symptoms. Antibiotics eliminate bacterial infections. Surgery to remove tumors improve health, treat symptoms and address the root cause of disease (the tumor). Insulin to treat diabetes addresses a root cause as best it can (until we can grow new pancreases). Chronic conditions are lifestyle conditions, which doctors urge patients to address through lifestyle changes. The fact that prescription medications are used to treat these lifestyle problems when patients do not follow basic medical advice can not be blamed on doctors.

What myth? The US spends more than double what any other Westernized country spends on what we call ‘health’ care, yet we rank dead last among those countries in most of the categories that measure health. Clearly, our healthcare system does not work as well as other countries, even though we allegedly have the “best” science.

Again, one must distinguish between lifestyle conditions, pills and compliance with preventive advice. Not to mention the US essentially doesn’t have a national heatlh care system. The US clearly has excellent science, scientists and scientific medicine for those who can afford it, but most can’t and further, much of the country doesn’t follow the recommendations of those scientists. Medicine involves drugs, but medicine is not solely drugs.

There are words that can be both a count noun and a mass noun, e.g. “coffee.” I ordered two coffees at Starbucks vs. I bought two pounds of coffee. One could make an argument that “data” has two legitimate uses, which I disagree with, but even if one agrees with that, it’s clear that the singular mass noun form is the dominant one, and the plural form is the one whose validity is debatable.

It is not grammatically incorrect to construe “data” as a mass noun and apply a singular verb. By analogy, for example, “mathematics” and “physics” are construed as singular even though they were originally the plurals of count nouns. I can legitimately say, for example, “This data is unreliable,” referring to a data set. To say “These data are unreliable” might even be incorrect, because some of the (singular) data elements in the set could well be reliable; but the unreliability of some of them renders “the data,” as a singular mass, unreliable.

This is a perfectly normal feature of English grammar and occurs with many other originally plural forms. Anyone who aspires to copy editing needs to learn about this and many other nuances.

My wife and I are both highly skeptical, science-based dentists. If a thought of giving something that we know does not work to our child has crossed our minds…. imagine someone who has no scientific or medical training.

This is where Dr. Oz is wrong in what he does. It is the job of the doctor to inform the patient… to EDUCATE the patient and let him know what works, what does not work, how it works, and why. And this is why parents should not treat their child either… luckily for us, I’ve got three very nice Science-Based Pediatricians whom I can consult whenever I want.

It’s hard to sell truth on cable tv. People like tabloids… why do you think Fox News, NYPost, National Enquirer and the like are so popular? They exaggerate the truth.

Maybe in the future we could have a YouTube channel, or Hulu webisode for on-line/streaming programs…

http://www.periopr.com