devinhelton
Joined 11 years ago
Karma
520
Submissions
111
Member since
Mar 31
Recent submissions
Comment · 6 years ago
The test-kit that the CDC sent to local labs had a faulty reagent, so all test requests have to be sent back to the CDC.[0]
Local labs could develop or purchase their own test kits, but during an a public health emergency, they must get FDA authorization before launching such a test.[1]
This seems to me like a giant institutional and bureaucratic screw up.
Hopefully the FDA may be finally getting its act together and fast-tracking approval of local tests: https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/12330216819181936...
[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/20/cdc-coronavirus-116...
[1] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1231944326827081729.html
Comment · 7 years ago
While publishing the negotiated prices for each procedure code would be interesting, I don't see how it would change much since it wouldn't necessarily be the price they would actually charge me, and it wouldn't help me know beforehand what sort of add-on procedure codes/bills were going to be part of my care.
The policy I would like to see is that patients should only be legally liable for costs that they sign off on up front (at least for most elective care). It never ceases to bother me that every time I go to the doctor I have no option but to give the hospital a blank check and have to cross fingers that they will not hit me a month later with ridiculous charges.
Comment · 7 years ago
Every book taking a stance on a controversial subject is going to have those kinds of criticisms from the opposite side. It doesn't make those criticisms true.
I don't endorse the book or her particular worldview 100% but I believe she does bring some true evidence to light about the good aspects of meat.
Comment · 7 years ago
However tasty meat may be, it’s ethically and environmentally bad.
I disagree entirely, but there is no need to relitigate this debate here. If by any chance you have never read the pro-meat argument, the book The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith is a pretty good primer.
Comment · 7 years ago
It makes perfect sense: meat is expensive and difficult to work with, so low-cost chains like these have been serving really disgustingly low-quality meat for quite some time now; in some cases it could barely even be called meat.
Consumer advocates in the past few years have actually done a pretty good job at pressuring the top fast food chains to not dilute their beef with additives.
McD's, Burger King, and Wendy's all advertise their hamburger patties as being nothing but 100% USDA inspected ground beef, salt, and pepper. https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/hamburger.html https://menu.wendys.com/en_US/product/daves-double/ https://www.bk.com/food-quality/our-burgers https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-our-food/our-food-y...
It's all the other stuff (the bun, the fries, etc. ) that have preservatives, fillers, and shady additives.
(When traveling, I sometimes just buy a bunch of MdD's patties a la carte. Tasty, nutritious and very filling).
This "impossible burger" trend basically reverses the work of consumer advocates. The one element of fast food that is actually an all-natural, nutritionally complex whole food is replaced with a patty that is nothing but processed food and additives -- https://faq.impossiblefoods.com/hc/en-us/articles/3600189374... The fast food restaurant will likely save money -- but because of how fashionable vegetarianism has become, instead of being condemned, they will be actually praised as being eco and health conscious.
Comment · 7 years ago
On their ingredients page ( https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/hamburger.html ) it says that the patty consists of:
"100% Beef Patty. Ingredients: 100% Pure USDA Inspected Beef; No Fillers, No Extenders. Prepared with Grill Seasoning (Salt, Black Pepper)."
That seems pretty clear to me. USDA defines beef as flesh of cattle. If there is anything but "flesh of cattle" in the patty, McDonald's is committing fraud.
Comment · 7 years ago
That is why McDonalds undergoes the painstaking process of sanitizing their meat with an ammonia wash (prompted by the 90's nationwide beef e-coli outbreaks that resulted in serious litigation against popular burger joints), then adding in artificial flavorings back in to make it taste like a burger again (furthermore this is how McDonalds achieves that "miraculous" feat often described here when this topic comes up of having their burgers taste the same and have the same consistent product everywhere for over 20 years).
For what it is worth, McDonald's says on their web site that this is not true. So either you are mistaken or McDonald's is committing fraud. Do you have a source for your claim?
From the McD's web site ( https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-our-food/our-food-y... ):
"Every one of our burgers is made with 100% pure beef and cooked and prepared with salt, pepper and nothing else—no fillers, no additives, no preservatives."
"Do you use so-called 'pink slime' in your burgers or beef treated with ammonia?"
"Nope. Our beef patties are made from 100% pure beef. Nothing else is added. No fillers, no additives and no preservatives.
"Some consumers may be familiar with the practice of using lean, finely textured beef sometimes treated with ammonia, which is referred to by some as “pink slime.” We do not use this. "
Comment · 7 years ago
Super-star athletes aren't really good examples to learn from. They often have to do unhealthy and extreme things to their body in order to achieve absolute peak performance at one specific task. NFL linemen and sumo wrestlers are unhealthily overweight. Boxers and wrestlers have unhealthy levels of body fat and hydration in order to squeeze into the lowest possible weight class. And long distance runners avoid developing any upper body muscle, because every pound of additional weight costs seconds on their time. That's not something a normal person should do.
60kg at 1.82m strikes me as really fricking thin. I'm your height, and have considered myself a lean, athletic guy, but at 13% bodyfat I weigh 80kg.
Comment · 7 years ago
and a low BMI (body-mass index) indeed (I'm around 18)
A BMI that low is not a good thing. It is evidence against your diet being optimal. Mortality rates are actually higher when BMI is below 20 (https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2156 https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/353/bmj.i2156/F3.large.jpg -- although causality is not established). And from a common sense or aesthetic perspective, such a low BMI almost certainly means you lack ideal muscle mass.
Comment · 8 years ago
So does the New York Times owe an apology and a correction for this article? "Sitting, it would seem, is an independent pathology. Being sedentary for nine hours a day at the office is bad for your health whether you go home and watch television afterward or hit the gym. It is bad whether you are morbidly obese or marathon-runner thin. “Excessive sitting,” Dr. Levine says, “is a lethal activity.”" https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17sitting-t.... And this one? "Too much time spent in a chair could shorten our lives, even if we exercise" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/well/move/get-up-stand-up...
I just find it disconcerting that the New York Times publishes an article like this, without any acknowledgement that it has been pushing a different conclusion for the past eight years. I get that that this article is from a different author, but when people go to the New York Times, they are usually trusting the overall institution and editorial controls more than the byline. I also get that new studies comes in and the evidence changes -- but that still requires some sort of acknowledgement that they were wrong before.
Comment · 8 years ago
Anything that makes the user invest a bit in the reputation of their account before they are allowed to message strangers would do the trick. Charge $10 for signing up. Limit @-mentions until you have built up a small following and activity track record. Require an application to join the forum. Etc, etc.
If a cost is evenly moderately costly to create, and abusive comments quickly result in bans, then the ratio of abusers quickly goes down to a very low level.
The problem is that making it costly to sign up goes against the business model and growth model of sites like Twitter, Reddit, or Instagram.
Comment · 8 years ago
Existing laws we already operate under have much more severe maximum penalties than people realize, and judges are (relatively) reasonable at applying them correctly.
I don't think the system is working well at all. We have a situation where vague laws with severe penalties allow prosecutors to grossly overcharge. This is then used to coerce the accused into waiving their rights to a trial, in return for the certainty of a more limited punishment.
Comment · 8 years ago
It seems what happened is that all the promising/useful areas of inquiry from ancient philosophy have since become their own fields. "Natural philosophy" became physics/biology/chemistry and so forth. Thus university philosophy departments were basically left with the dregs -- lots of debates over non-falsifiable claims, lots of debates caused by poor definitions of words. Ethics is the only subfield of modern philosophy I can think of that seems useful and interesting to me. Maybe political philosophy too, but that has mainly moved to the political science department.
Comment · 8 years ago
"The dollar represents a claim against the government."
What does this even mean? A claim means that I can turn in the piece of paper and get something back. I can turn in my coat check claim paper and get my coat back. Under a gold standard, I can turn in my paper bill and get gold back. But we are no longer under a gold standard. What is the thing I get back with regards to a dollar?
The actual thing bootstrapping the value of a dollar is that the dollar is legal tender for paying taxes and for "all debts public and private." The dollar isn't a claim against the government -- it's a token than can extinguish the government's claim over you.
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