Health : The Atlantic

The U.K. Food Industry Successfully Fights Package Labeling Efforts

2012-02-10T18:07:29-05:00

In what is essentially an invitation to the fox to guards the chickens, the UK government has asked big food to help develop new policies.

Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University, London, writes that the U.K. food industry is fighting back over initiatives to reduce calories and mitigate climate change.

He sends an article from the British trade publication, The Grocer, about how the U.K. government has reneged on its "responsibility deal" with industry to reduce calories in food products.

The idea was to demand that food companies reformulate products, control portion size, and take "action to shift to lower calorie options."

But now, in response to industry protests, the U.K. Department of Health is simply inviting food companies to help in the development of calorie-reduction policies.

To this invitation to the fox to guard the chickens, professor Lang comments:

Those of us following the currently fashionable 'nudge' theory and other 'Food Policy lite' initiatives will note this leak about softening the Responsibility Deal on calorie reduction here in England with concern.... Perish the thought that sections of the Food Industry might have lobbied hard to stop any efforts to reduce portion size. Perish, indeed.

Another article in The Grocer points out that Tesco, Britain's leading food retailer, is pulling out of an agreement to put carbon labels on products because doing so is too much trouble.

Professor Lang writes:

Here is the world's 3rd largest food retailer, Tesco, apparently saying that the carbon label (a weak system for changing behavior in the first place, perhaps) takes too much time. Well, well, well.

If this is true ... the implications are considerable, not least for the planet, given that a third of European (i.e., rich consumers) greenhouse gas emissions are due to food.

He gives as sources for that statement:

Tukker, A., et al., Environmental Impacts of Diet Changes in the EU. 2009, European Commission Joint Research Centre Institute for Prospective Technological Studies: Seville.
Tukker, A., et al., Environmental Impact of Products (EIPRO): Analysis of the life cycle environmental impacts related to the final consumption of the EU-25. EUR 22284 EN. 2006, European Commission Joint Research Centre.: Brussels.
Audsley, E., et al., How Low Can We Go? An assessment of greenhouse gas emissions from the UK food system and the scope for reduction by 2050 2010, FCRN and WWF: Godalming, Surrey.

So much for voluntary actions by industry. Regulation anyone?

This just in: The European Commission issued a statement of regret that the European Parliament vetoed its proposal to allow "percent less" health claims on food packages. These are statements that a product contains 15 percent less sugar, for example.

The Commission thinks such claims will encourage reformulation of food products. The Parliament believes that such claims are misleading and will promote sales of junk foods.

Which is right? Who knows?

Image: Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock.

This post also appears on Food Politics, an Atlantic partner site.

Using Low-Intensity Electric Fields as a Form of Cancer Therapy

2012-02-10T16:03:53-05:00

Bill Doyle of Novocure, a company that developed non-invasive technology to control cell division in glioblastoma tumors, spoke at TEDMED 2012 about the role low-intensity alternating electric fields can have on cancer therapy:

This post also appears on medGadget, an Atlantic partner site.

A Brief History of the To-Do List and the Psychology of Its Success

2012-02-10T14:01:47-05:00

"The list is the origin of culture," Umberto Eco famously proclaimed. (Leonardo da Vinci, John Lennon, and Woody Guthrie would have all agreed.) But the list, it turns out, might also be the origin of both our highest happiness and our dreariest dissatisfaction. So argue New York Times science writer John Tierney and psychologist Roy F. Baumeister in Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. While the book is fascinating in general -- an unconventional self-help tome that, much like Timothy Wilson's Redirect, grounds its insights and advice in 30 years of serious academic research into willfulness and self-control -- its third chapter, titled "A Brief History of the To-Do List, From God to Drew Carey," is particularly interesting. In it, Tierney and Baumeister dissect the sociocultural anatomy of our favorite organizational tool, from the storytellers who crafted the Bible and wrote the Genesis myth with its six-step world-creation plan, to Benjamin Franklin's fastidious pursuit of virtue bound by goal-setting lists, to comedian Drew Carey's quest for supreme personal productivity.

These anecdotes and pieces of cultural mythology are interwoven with ample psychology experiments from the past century and, ultimately, distilled into insight on how to make the to-list a tool of fulfillment rather than frustration.

Franklin, for instance, demonstrated one of the greatest pitfalls of the to-do list: trying to do too much at once, letting different goals come into conflict with one another:

Franklin tried a divide-and-conquer approach. He drew up a list of virtues and wrote a brief goal for each one, like this one for Order: 'Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.' ...

When, as a young journeyman printer, he tried to practice Order by drawing up a rigid daily work schedule, he kept getting interrupted by unexpected demands from his clients -- and Industry required him to ignore the schedule and meet with them. If he practiced Frugality ('Waste nothing') by always mending his own clothes and preparing all his own meals, there'd be less time available for Industry at his job -- or for side projects like flying a kite in a thunderstorm or editing the Declaration of Independence. If he promised to spend an evening with his friends but then fell behind his schedule for work, he'd have to make a choice that would violate his virtue of Resolution: 'Perform without fail what you resolve.'

The result of conflicting goals, the authors argue, is unhappiness instead of action. But deciding on the right goals can be a daunting task.

Tierney and Baumeister recount a revealing experiment: When a psychologist was invited to give a talk at the Pentagon on managing time and resources, he decided to warm up the elite group of generals with a short writing exercise. He asked them all to write a summary of their strategic approach limited to 25 words.

The exercise stumped most of them. None of the distinguished men in uniform could come up with anything.

The only general who managed a response was the lone woman in the room. She had already had a distinguished career, having worked her way up through the ranks and been wounded in combat in Iraq. Her summary of her approach was as follows: 'First I make a list of priorities: one, two, three, and so on. Then I cross out everything from three down.'

Unscrupulous, perhaps, but the authors argue this is a simple version of an important to-do list strategy for reconciling the long-term with the short-term, or "the fussy with the fuzzy."

Comedian Drew Carey took a different approach to mastering his to-do list -- he outsourced his strategy to productivity guru David Allen, author of the cultish, modern Bible Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, who taught him how to adhere to specific next steps rather than abstract larger goals. The latter loom in the back of our mind like a nagging mother, never fully silenced until specific actionable steps are taken.

In fact, our brain appears to be wired to nag about unfinished to-do list items as uncompleted tasks and unmet goals continue to pop up into our minds. This is called the Zeigarnik effect and explains phenomena like earworms -- when you hear only a portion of song, the song is likely to run through your mind at odd intervals as your brain struggles to finish it. Originally, the Zeigarnik effect was believed to be the brain's way of ensuring goals are eventually accomplished, by prodding you into urgency until they are. But recent research has shed new light on the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious in our cognitive to-do lists.

[It] turns out that the Zeigarnik effect is not, as was assumed for decades, a reminder that continues unabated until the task gets done. The persistence of distracting thoughts is not an indication that the unconscious is working to finish the task. Nor is it the unconscious nagging the conscious mind to finish the task right away. Instead, the unconscious is asking the conscious mind to make a plan. The unconscious mind apparently can't do this on its own, so it nags the conscious mind to make a plan with specifics like time, place, and opportunity. Once the plan is formed, the unconscious can stop nagging the conscious mind with reminders.

The moral, then? Unless you are Woody Guthrie, keep your to-do list to a few very specific, actionable, non-conflicting items, then go fly your kite in peace.

This post also appears on Brain Pickings, an Atlantic partner site.

Spending 1 Month in Beijing's Smog Is Like Smoking 5 Cigarettes

2012-02-10T12:06:15-05:00

Crazy bad days [in Beijing], according to [Dr. Richard] Saint Cyr, are the equivalent of 75 percent of one cigarette a day. "So if you don't smoke and you are really healthy, it is something to think about," he admits, although he argues that the health effects of being overweight and inactive are far worse than a little air pollution. "My overall theme is that people, if they're freaking out about air pollution and they're five or ten kilograms overweight, they're really missing the point about their relative risks, what they're gonna die of," he says.

At the same time, Saint Cyr acknowledges that mortality from air pollution is a problem in Beijing. Lung cancer, heart disease, and strokes all rise in polluted cities like Beijing. In China, the individual risk might not be significant but because of the size of the population, the pollution could mean that "hundreds of thousands die prematurely," he says.

Air quality in Beijing isn't expected to improve any time soon, but the transparency of reporting took a great leap forward just before the lunar new year, when the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center started to publish its own 2.5 particulate matter readings. On his website, Saint Cyr compared the readings from the U.S. Embassy and the Chinese, and found that the numbers were comparable. That's a dramatic improvement over the city's earlier monitoring system, which limited itself to a daily report on larger particulates of 10 micrograms and had the audacity to claim that there were 286 "blue sky days" in 2011.

Read the full story at The Atlantic Cities.

Who Bullied the Susan G. Komen Foundation Into Cutting Funding?

2012-02-10T11:30:20-05:00

Karen Handel, the recently-departed Komen VP contradicts her organization in explaining the reasoning for defunding Planned Parenthood.

Karen Handel, the former VP of Susan G. Komen for the Cute who recently left after being outted as the architect of their decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood, sheds some light on the fiasco in an interview today with the Daily Beast. At one point in the interview, she insists that the decision was made because "Komen regulations not to fund organizations that have been barred from receiving government funding. Planned Parenthood has been barred from receiving funding in some states" This echoes the argument made by Komen leaders throughout the ordeal.

But elsewhere in the interview, she says:

It's no secret that for some years -- long before my time -- Komen was dealing with a controversy regarding Planned Parenthood grants. The issue would flare up, then die down, then flare up again. It was fairly cyclical. But over the summer, it intensified. More donors said they were pulling out. The issue was ratcheting up. It wasn't dying down. Two dozen Catholic bishops were saying not to support Komen. ... We needed to find some options for moving to neutral ground.

So did Komen stop funding Planned Parenthood because of the spurious Congressional investigation launched against it, or because the group was getting pressured by outside groups? Handel implies it was the latter, while the former seemed to provide some pretty good cover.

Also in the interview, she describes Planned Parenthood as a "gigantic bully" -- but according to the quote above, it seems like it was someone else who bullied Komen into the decision to defund the organization in the first place.

Image: Getty Images.

The Link Between Obesity and the Early Mother-Child Relationship

2012-02-10T10:57:50-05:00

We talk about exercising more and eating less, but to truly fight obesity we must also consider attachment, the early bond with one's mother.

The standard advice for weight loss is to eat less and exercise more. Although a sound approach, this strategy appears to be falling short in the war against obesity, particularly among children. A recent study proposed a very different take on overweight prevention starting in early childhood. Instead of focusing on the body's energy balance, the researchers suggest improving the mother-toddler relationship, often called attachment.

The researchers explored the effect of maternal-child bonding during the preschool years on the likelihood of obesity during adolescence. Their results were striking.

Professional Help: 5 Tips for Senior Citizens on Simple, Healthy Living

2012-02-10T10:02:24-05:00

When it comes to their well-being, older adults shouldn't act like victims to aging. They should be active—physically, socially, and spiritually.

To slow down the physical and mental decline that comes with age, drugs and exercise aren't enough. According to a study out of the University of Southern California, a lifestyle makeover is necessary.

This week on Professional Help, professor and occupational therapist Florence Clark shares five tips for seniors on sustainable, successful aging from her Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health paper (PDF). Thankfully, her method, while backed by rigorous research, is also surprisingly simple: walk outside, meet up with friends, go to church, and just be as active as possible.

It's never too late to go healthy. Anybody, young or old, can successfully redesign the way they live to be healthier. While we don't have a say in our own genetic makeup, greater than 50 percent of our mental and physical health status is related to lifestyle. You can even start small: ride public transportation, reconnect with a long-lost friend, join a ballroom dance class, or follow guidelines on how to safely move around the community. The point is, try something new and be willing to learn.

Take control of your health. Appreciate the relationship between what you do, how you feel, and their impact on your well-being. Our research suggests that social and productive activities are as important as physical ones for staying healthy. As we age, even deceptively simple or downright mundane pursuits like reading the newspaper, cooking a potluck dish, walking the dog, or going to church have a powerful influence on our physical and mental health.

Know thyself. The guiding principle of Socrates rings just as true today as it did in ancient Athens. Lifestyle changes are most sustainable when they fit into the fabric of your everyday life -- your interests, schedule, and self-concept. Identify supports on your journey that are strong enough to counterbalance the obstacles you face. Set goals that are challenging but still realistic enough to be achieved.

Anticipate how chronic conditions may affect your plan. Over 70 percent of seniors age 65 and older have a chronic condition, such as hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, COPD, or cataracts. Don't let these impede your progress. Before a big game, elite athletes visualize their performance in their minds' eye. So too should you be prepared for the potential ways you might have to adapt or improvise. And, of course, consult your physician in advance about any new activities.

Living longer can also mean living better. Our research demonstrates that maintaining a mix of productive, social, physical, and spiritual activities as you age can lead to increased vitality, social function, mental health, and life satisfaction, along with decreased symptoms of depression and self-reported bodily pain. Even better, activity-centric lifestyle interventions to ward off illness and disability may also be more cost-effective and have fewer negative side effects than prescription drugs.

Image: Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock.

Mindful Eating and Fast-Food Buddhism

2012-02-10T09:54:12-05:00

"Mindful eating" has officially entered the memosphere. An article about it reached the very top of The New York Times most-emailed list this week, and two days later it's still hanging in there at number three.

What is mindful eating? The Times piece gives step-by-step instructions. "Chew slowly. Stop talking. Tune in to the texture of the pasta, the flavor of the cheese, the bright color of the sauce in the bowl, the aroma of the rising steam."

And what is the point of the exercise? For one thing, it's a kind of fast-food form of Buddhism. If you don't have time to go off to a monastery and sit in silence for a week, you can still get little tastes, here and there, of what such a retreat might be like.

And when I say little tastes, I mean little tastes. The Times story says of Jan Chozen Bays, a pediatrician and meditation teacher:

Sometimes, even she is too busy to contemplate a chickpea. So there are days when Dr. Bays will take three mindful sips of tea, "and then, O.K., I've got to go do my work," she said. "Anybody can do that. Anywhere."

Even scarfing down a burrito in the car offers an opportunity for insight. "Mindful eating includes mindless eating," she said. " 'I am aware that I am eating and driving.' "

It may sound like I'm about to make fun of the mindful eating movement--and that last quote is certainly a tempting springboard--but instead I'm going to spring to its defense. First, though, I have to disclose something about myself.

Three times over the last nine years I've gone on one-week silent meditation retreats at a Buddhist retreat center. Seven days of no talking, no reading, no phone calls, no email, no news whatsoever from the outside world. Five and a half hours of sitting meditation each day, five and a half hours of walking walking meditation each day. And, more to the point, three meals a day.

But the term "meals" doesn't do justice to these experiences. When I got to my first meditation retreat, I didn't understand why so many people in the dining hall were eating with their eyes closed. Three days later I was just like them--eyes closed, eating in slow motion, totally absorbed in the taste and texture of foods that, a few days earlier, I would have dismissed as offputtingly wholesome and lacking in sex appeal. (None of the food was even made of dead animals!)

Now that I've established my credentials, I just want to make two points:

(1) If you dabble in mindful eating as prescribed in the Times piece, do not be under the mistaken impression that this is anything like the real thing. The level of sensual emergence in food that I reached would not have been possible without getting totally off the grid and using intense meditation to fundamentally alter my frame of mind.

(2) Do not be under the impression that this sensual indulgence is the ultimate point of the exercise. Because meditation can involve a lot of inward focus, it is sometimes belittled as egotistical or solipsistic. But the overall effect is supposed to be roughly the opposite, and that held true for me. The retreats made me way more open to other people and less judgmental of them. I felt a true kinship even with non-human animals (even non-canine non-human animals!). That this was intertwined with a much deeper sense of aesthetic appreciation--of both food and non-food items--certainly made the whole experience gratifying, but it was a paradoxically selfless kind of gratification.

The transforming effect that a silent meditation retreat can have doesn't magically last forever, though you can hang on to an appreciable part of it if you practice daily meditation and mindfulness in a disciplined fashion after the retreat is over (which is way easier said than done). So I'm not the wonderful human being I so briefly was at the end of my first meditation retreat. But I think I'm better than I was before I went on it (leaving aside the question of how high that's setting the bar).

Anyway: Yes, by all means, read the Times piece and experiment with mindful eating. But don't think that, amid the hubbub of your daily life, you're going to get more than a taste of what mindful eating can be like. And don't think that even full-fledged, mind-blowing mindful eating is more than a taste of what Buddhism can be about.

[Postscript: Judging by early commenter reaction, I've written this in a way that makes it seem like I'm denigrating everyday mindful eating, or looking down on people who haven't been on meditation retreats. I plead innocent! Here's my alibi.]

Death by Flavored Vodka

2012-02-10T09:05:42-05:00

If spirits writers and apocalyptic cults are right and the world actually ends in 2012, it will be because of the new wave of flavored vodkas that evoke a stream of childhood memories.

According to the Mayan calendar, 2012 may well be the end of the world. Spirits writers and apocalyptic cults seem to converge on this point. Of course, we'll all have to wait and see. No one can truly predict the world's demise. But, if we can't predict the end of the world, perhaps we can suggest the means by which the end will come.

While most people likely picture the end as a series of catastrophic events -- meteorites crashing into earth, John Cusack racing his limo over rupturing fault lines, or even streaking missiles staring down nuclear annihilation -- my prediction is, perhaps, a little less theatrical: death by flavored vodka.

We're currently awash in a new wave of flavored vodkas that evoke an endless stream of childhood memories: gummy vodka, cookie dough vodka, bubblegum vodka, chocolate milk vodka, and so on. In fact, this is among the most prolific trends facing alcohol consumers today. It also happens to be one of man's oldest pyschological states: nostalgia.

Whipped cream vodka tastes like, well, whipped cream vodka, which mostly tastes like whipped cream.

Referencing a similar trend in pop music, Frank Zappa wrote in his memoir, The Real Frank Zappa Book, "It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."

Formerly thought of as a medical disease -- according to the man who coined the word in the 17th century, Johannes Hofer -- nostalgia is taken from the Greek to indicate the pain of longing for a place, generally the place of one's birth. However, its present day incarnation is just as likely to reference a clothing or music fad from one's youth, or even an ingredient, which is exactly what manufacturers are counting on with these new flavored vodkas.

They're also counting on nostalgia as pandemic. When we face diffcult or trying times, our thoughts naturally turn to things that posses some inheritance of a simpler era. Thoughts, ideas, and objects imbued with an innocence that we, ourselves, can no longer obtain in the current fractious order. That makes it one hell of a marketing device.

What it doesn't do well, or promise to do well, is taste good. It may well taste like something candied, spicy, syrupy, or sweet, but the entire product is a ruse. Flavor or authenticity are less important than the emotional impact of the product.

I don't believe that nostalgia is without merit. I can certainly understand the use of nostalgic elements in food and drinks. For instance, Christina Tosi's famous cereal milk from Momofuko Milk Bar, or cheeky references to drinks from our childhood in cocktails. The difference is that these references are a kind of phrasing. The same thing that happens in jazz when muscial phrases from other songs are transposed and improvised within an original work. Nostalgically-flavored vodkas are more likely to apply a literal interpretation of flavor. Whipped cream vodka tastes like, well, whipped cream vodka, which mostly tastes like whipped cream.

This literal interpretation of flavors from our childhood undermines conventions of drinking, which began as medicinal and not a medical condition. The point is that while cocktails and spirits may express a diversity of flavors and levels of complexity, those that sit at the bottom rung for me are those that express very little complexity and seek to deliver the package (intoxication) without asking for the toll. Alcoholic beverages shouldn't necessarily taste good to both children and pets.

I may seem like the proverbial grizzled old man who beckons the end of the world while wearing a sandwich board and shouting prophetic epitaphs. But, even if we do escape armageddon, drinking such nostalgic flavors as Atomic Fireball vodka will certainly make one feel like the end is near.

Image: bogdanhoda/Shutterstock.

Do Mothers Matter?

2012-02-10T08:07:28-05:00

How surrogacy and egg donation, which first gained national attention in the 1980s, are bringing into the world a class of children beset by confusion, depression, and loss.

Do mothers matter? Having no mother was -- at least until recently -- widely agreed to be a tragedy. Psychiatric case studies, Disney movies, and well-known spirituals such as "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" have testified to the importance of mothers and the pain of mother loss. But such views have not meant that every child has lived in a society that affirms the importance of the child's bond with his or her mother. Children have been denied their mothers because of class biases (see, poor); racial and ethnic biases (Indian, Aborigine); as part of severe civil conflict (Argentina, Dirty War); amid widespread, institutionalized human rights abuses (slavery); or because their mothers were rightly or wrongly perceived to be unfit (see: history of adoption, good, bad, and ugly).

Yet even as the broad history of helping ourselves to other people's children continues to be probed and largely condemned (except in the case of adoption, where most reasonable people agree that such an institution must exist in order to find loving homes for children in need of them), a newer and notably deliberate form of mother loss has sprung up, one that receives relatively little debate and is often presented as benign or even good, without question. I am referring, of course, to the practices of surrogacy and egg donation.

Most sperm donor-conceived persons strongly object to anonymous donation of sperm. Nearly half feel troubled by the role of money in their conception.

When surrogacy and egg donation first gained national attention in the 1980s the children in question usually had a social mother, a woman, herself infertile, married to a man and seeking to achieve pregnancy with the use of another woman's body. Today we are witnessing an equal opportunity run on deliberately conceiving motherless children. Men, alone or in pairs, can buy eggs and rent wombs, too. A child can be denied knowledge of and a relationship with his or her generally fit mother simply because other adults -- the child's prospective legal parents -- wish it to be so, and are willing to pay to make it so. These transactions occur with the aid of doctors, lawyers, and clinics licensed by the state, and thus with tacit approval from the state.

I wrote about some of these new single fathers by choice in my recent report, "One Parent or Five: A Global Look at Today's New Intentional Families." There is Ian Mucklejohn, father of three. In 2001, at the age of 54, the British citizen became the father of triplets conceived with an egg donor and a gestational surrogate mother, both living in the U.S. Mucklejohn soon became a hero for other single fathers-to-be when he won British citizenship and birth certificates with a blank in the space for "mother" for all three children.

Or look to in India where, in 2005, a middle-aged accountant, Amit Banerjee, became that nation's first known single father by choice. His doctor enthused that the new father "was a perfect candidate for ART. As a physician I could not deny him the available technology that hundreds of childless couples are opting to fulfill their dreams of a family." A reporter asked, what about the child's loss of ever knowing his mother? The doctor replied with a question: "What about a child whose mother dies on the delivery bed?" In other words, some children already begin life under the gravely tragic circumstances of their mother dying in childbirth. Is it not the right of would-be parents intentionally to create such children -- and is it not the obligation of doctors to help them do it?

Single fathers by choice are found in the U.S. too. Andy Abowitz, a "successful, single gay man living in Philadelphia," twice paid a 25-year-old doctoral student to donate her eggs and a gestational surrogate to carry the pregnancy, resulting in a girl and, 20 months later, twin boys. The egg donor enthused, "I think it's really fantastic when children are born into situations where they're wanted that much." And while it's true that Abowitz seems to want the children very much, how will the children make sense of an egg donor and surrogate mother who did not want them? How will they even make sense of what "mother" means when they have a genetic mother and a separate birth mother, neither of whom are in their daily lives?

Sometimes it is two men rather than one who conceive this way. Picking an egg donor and a surrogate, gay couples from the obscure to the wildly famous -- examples include Elton John and David Furnish, or Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka -- can do this too. Generally moneyed and armed with a team of baby nurses, nannies, and house cleaners, most of these fathers probably do fine in providing material comfort, opportunity, and a loving home for the children. But what about the children? Do their mothers matter to them?

We are now learning more than ever before about the experience of an arguably similar class of children, those deliberately denied their biological fathers via sperm donation. In studies such as "My Daddy's Name is Donor: A New Study of Young Adults Conceived Through Sperm Donation," which I co-investigated with University of Texas sociology professor Norval Glenn and donor-conceived adult Karen Clark; or in stories posted at the popular AnonymousUs.org website; or found in a newly-released documentary, Anonymous Father's Day, we are hearing that being deliberately denied your father can be both painful and bewildering, especially in a society that says your loss should not matter.

Based on a representative sample, in "My Daddy's Name is Donor" we reported that most sperm donor-conceived persons strongly object to anonymous donation of sperm. Nearly half feel troubled by the role of money in their conception. Most want to know about their biological father's family, and they wonder if that family would want to know about them. Compared to their peers raised by biological parents, sperm donor-conceived persons are more likely to struggle with delinquency, addiction, and depression.

Clearly, at least some of these kids are not really all right. It seems entirely plausible that at least some conceived never to know their mothers might share the feelings of the sample in our study. For decades we have debated whether fathers matter. Must we now debate whether mothers matter, too?

Image: Essl/Shutterstock.

Study of the Day: Gene Therapy Can Restore Vision One Eye at a Time

2012-02-10T07:00:00-05:00

New research shows promising results for the cure of congenital blindness and suggests that our eyes may be "immune-privileged."

PROBLEM: A few years ago, researchers behind a gene therapy trial on a form of inherited blindness reported partial success in deterring its progression into total blindness by adulthood. Half of the patients whose worse-performing eye was tested on improved their vision enough to no longer be classified as legally blind. Can the same remedy work on their other eye without triggering a vaccine-like immune response?

METHODOLOGY: Scientists led by the University of Pennsylvania's Jean Bennett and Manzar Ashtari injected a virus that carried a normal version of a mutated gene associated with inherited blindness into the untreated eyes of three subjects in the previous trial. They measured this vector's effect through standard eye tests and neuroimaging.

RESULTS: The procedure did not prompt any adverse reactions. The patients became better able to see in dim light, and two were able to navigate obstacles in low-light situations. There was also an unexpected benefit. The functional MRI results showed improved brain responses not just in the newly injected eye, but in the first one as well, possibly because the eyes were better able to coordinate with one another.

CONCLUSION: Gene therapy can restore vision one eye at a time without eliciting an immune response.

IMPLICATION: Our eyes have a natural ability to tolerate foreign substances and may be "immune-privileged."

SOURCE: The full study, "AAV2 Gene Therapy Readministration in Three Adults with Congenital Blindness," is published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Image: Science/AAAS.

Today in Research: A Rehab App; How Female Fertility Affects Men

2012-02-10T05:56:39-05:00

Discovered: 150 billion tons of glaciers melt each year, the fourth warmest January recorded, a rehab app, female fertility changes the way men speak, the benefits of a normal name.

A rehab app? They have dubbed it the oh-so-original iHeal. And iHeal will incorporate "biosensors," which will measure "arousal" levels. "When the software detects an increased stress or arousal level, it asks the user to annotate events by inputting information about their perceived level of stress, drug cravings, and current activities," explains the study. "iHeal's ultimate goal is to identify, in real-time, drug cravings and deliver personalized, multimedia drug prevention interventions precisely at the moment of greatest need." This is one of those things that sounds good in theory, but we imagine won't work too well in real life. Drug addiction is probably strong enough to out will a computer program, unless the app involves some sort of shock therapy. [Journal of Medical Toxicology]

Female fertility makes men talk different. Romantic partners who spend a lot of time together tend to talk alike, unless the woman happens to be ovulating and the man wants to implant himself into her body, finds a new study. Weird, right? That a woman's internal, biological goings-on can have such a profound effect on a man's speech pattern. We wonder what it has to do with reproduction, though. Perhaps it's sexier than hearing an echo of oneself, drawing the couple together? Just a guess. [PLoS ONE]

Read the full story at The Atlantic Wire.

Will Walmart's New 'Great for You' Initiative Get People to Eat Better?

2012-02-09T18:06:03-05:00

Walmart has announced a new FOP labeling program.

The logo will go on Walmart's in-house brand products that meet the company's nutritional criteria. These criteria are similar (but not identical) to those recommended by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in its recent report advising the FDA about what should be included in front-of-package labels.

Because the FDA has not yet acted on the IOM report, Walmart -- like other retailers -- is jumping the gun in doing its own thing. Its thing, however, is a substantial improvement over the Facts Up Front scheme put in place by the Grocery Manufacturers Association and Food Marketing Institute.

In general, strict nutrition criteria for salt, sugar, and saturated fat exclude most supermarket products.

Walmart's criteria are pretty strict. They exclude 80 percent of Great Value products.

In the cereal category, for example, only these Great Value items qualify:

Extra Raisin Bran Cereal
Raisin Bran
Bran Flakes
Crunchy Oat Squares
Frosted Shredded Wheat
Crunchy Nugget Cereal
Toasted Wholegrain Oat Cereal

But these Great Value cereals do not:

Cocoa Cool Cereal
Cinnamon Crunchy Oat Squares Cereal
Apple Blasts Cereal
Sugar Frosted Flakes Cereal
Toasted Corn Cereal
Crisp Rice Cereal
Fruit Spins Cereal
Fruity Puffs Cereal
Crunchy Honey Oats Cereal
Vanilla Almond Awake Cereal

OK, but I wish the company had waited for the FDA to decide on a plan for FOP labeling (and I wish the FDA would get busy on that plan).

All of these schemes are ways to avoid putting negative information on package labels. No seller or retailer wants a red traffic light -- "don't buy me" -- on its products, especially because research shows that stop signals work. Customers tend not to buy products marked with red traffic lights.

The IOM report concluded that negatives ("don't buy") worked better than positives ("buy me") in guiding consumer choice. A more recent study confirms that finding.

Companies much prefer green-light systems like the one Walmart is doing.

The Walmart press release explains:

Walmart moms are telling us they want to make healthier choices for their families, but need help deciphering all the claims and information already displayed on products.... Our 'Great For You' icon provides customers with an easy way to quickly identify healthier food choices ... this simple tool encourages families to have a healthier diet.

But does it? Will Walmart customers buy more of the items marked with the logo instead of the other kinds? The company says it is doing the research. Will customers who buy products with the logo be healthier as a result?

I can't wait to find out.

This post also appears on Food Politics, an Atlantic partner site.

Building a Better Heart Stent

2012-02-09T16:03:56-05:00

Can We Achieve Perfect Health?

2012-02-09T14:53:00-05:00

We can't evolve or engineer our diseases away. And besides, the arms race between viruses and our genes may mean health is a moving target, one that would be dangerous to reach.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on research suggesting why natural selection hasn't succeeded in eradicating our susceptibility to disease, and why breeding other animals for health or productivity also has a dark side.

You'd think that evolution would weed out the bad seeds. People who carry them get sick and die, while those with good genes thrive and have more children -- shouldn't their genes crowd out the bad ones? But no. Instead, there is an astounding diversity of those genes, which belong to a group called the Major Histocompatibility Complex, or (luckily) MHC for short.

"There are hundreds of varieties of MHC genes in most vertebrate species," says Wayne K. Potts, a professor of biology at the University of Utah. "One gene has 2,300, which holds the record." And since the weaker varieties persist, so does vulnerability to disease.

But when researchers transferred viral particles among strains of mice that had developed different genotypes to resist them, they found that, in each strain, some of the viruses were able to penetrate defenses and infect the mice. If all the strains had developed identical defenses, this could not have happened. But the mice would then be more susceptible to a devastating new supervirus that could wipe out all the strains.

The mouse and human species are thus protected by genetically diverse responses -- but it's imperfect protection. And a continuing arms race between viruses and MCH genes may mean that health is a moving target, and one that would be dangerous to reach even if we could. By breeding cattle, pigs, and other animals to resist disease and administering antibiotics, we are also reducing diversity and increasing the likelihood of diseases that may jump to human beings.

"We could back off the antibiotics if we bred back in some MHC diversity," [Wayne Potts] says. Range cattle still have it, and could be bred into dairy herds. Of course, range-cattle MHCs may be accompanied by genes that don't produce as much milk. Farmers may be reluctant to cut their sales, and consumers may be unwilling to pay higher milk prices. That's another kind of arms race: economics and health.

When I spoke to an agricultural marketers association in the 1990s, the members were talking about PRRS -- Porcine Respiratory and Reproductive Syndrome -- an autoimmune disease of swine that is as awful as it sounds. According to my hosts, it had developed in large farms where pigs were treated with antibiotics for "enhanced health status." It had become such a threat that trucks servicing possibly affected farms had to have their tires disinfected each time they left. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) PRRS has since become a threat in Asia.

And a crucial (though not sufficient) step in the spread of human AIDS was the campaign of colonial powers in Africa to inoculate both locals and colonists. Inexpensive machine-made syringes, an innovation of the 1920s, thus became one of the most lethal as well as life-saving medical innovations in history. (See this review of Jacques Pépin's Origins of AIDS.) So the quest to conquer all disease, in humans as in the animals they have domesticated, can have tragic unintended consequences.

Over 50 years have passed since publication of René Dubos' Mirage of Health, which injected skepticism into medical discourse at the height of therapeutic optimism in 1960. Its opposite pole is the quest for human biological immortality through the convergence of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and computer science, the Singularity. Yet no matter how many practical, ethical, and even evolutionary obstacles can be argued against the goal of perfect health, there's part of the human spirit that resists reality in favor of the impossible dream. And I'm not sure it's a bad thing.

Image: Reuters

1939: The Year of Goldfish Gulping

2012-02-09T13:57:41-05:00

It started out with one. One live goldfish, swallowed up by a Harvard freshman on a dare. Three weeks later it rose to three, and four days after that it jumped to 24. By the end of April 1939, the record for the number of goldfish swallowed stood at 101. Students at colleges across the country -- the University of Michigan, Boston College, New Mexico State, among others -- had popularized a quest to see how many goldfish a single person could eat in one sitting.

As an intern in the Division of Culture and the Arts, I did not begin my research with this topic in mind. My job was to find headlines describing major news events that occurred in 1939. These would be used to border the walls for the 1939 exhibition on the third floor of the museum. But what began as a simple search for headlines ended with a collection of news titles about gulping (and in some cases, chewing) goldfish. I knew I would probably find some quirky headlines from such a momentous year, but I never expected to find this.

Of course, college crazes are nothing new. In the 1950s, students stuffed themselves in phone booths to see how many bodies they could cram inside; in the 1970s, students streaked naked across campus. But 1939 featured a trend unlike any other. Students bet goldfish as if they were poker chips, constantly raising the stakes by downing more fish than the previous record-holder. Some goldfish gulpers paired their scaly little victims with chasers or condiments. While one student doused his fish with salt and pepper before ingesting them, another accomplished his feat with the help of three bottles of milk. The originator of the craze, Lothrop Withington, Jr., actually chewed his fish before swallowing and chased it with mashed potatoes, according to a letter written 24 years later by his friend and published in the New York Times.

1939 exhibition.

It didn't take long for adults to step in and try to put a stop to the craze for various reasons. College administrators found one student's conduct "unbecoming" and suspended him. Administrators at the California Institute of Technology called off one student's attempt to set a new gulping record after animal rights activists voiced opposition to the event. Animal rights supporters in Boston even threatened to sue Boston College officials if contests continued. Doctors weighed in on the physical dangers of eating live fish, warning youngsters about fish tapeworms and anemia. A member of the Massachusetts Legislature sponsored a bill to "protect and preserve the fish from cruel and wanton consumption."

In a letter written to the New York Times, one incredulous observer wrote, "I am a believer in education -- even in higher education for those worthy of it, but I have always maintained that a large percentage of those attending our colleges should never have been admitted. Some evidence of the truth of this is evident in the present epidemic of live goldfish swallowing in some colleges. Although fish, as a food, has had the reputation of being an exceptional brain builder, I understand that this reputation has been proved false."

Yet interference from administrators and medical professionals could not put a stop to the craze. Instead, like most fads, it simply died off. A few collegiates at the University of Chicago turned to swallowing phonograph records instead of fish in the wake of the dying trend. Not surprisingly, record swallowing didn't prove too popular in the long run, but one student did manage to choke down one and a half. Soon after it began, however, the goldfish gulping contest ended with little fanfare.

The headline that wound up in the exhibit is from relatively early on that year, when the record stood at a mere 25: "Goldfish Gulping Derby Lead Taken by Penn, 25 to 24," from the March 29 edition of the Washington Post. As random and ridiculous as the activity of swallowing goldfish is, it seems somehow appropriate that it should populate an exhibit about entertainment in a year filled with economic uncertainty and the possibility of American involvement in a world war. Americans sought entertainment as a way of escaping from these concerns. Asked about the goldfish swallowing craze in April 1939, one doctor explained: "A fad that can be rationalized, that has some definite value, will stay. Those which do not will go." This was one craze that could definitely not be rationalized. After all, that was the point.

This post also appears on the Smithsonian's O Say Can You See? blog, an Atlantic partner site.

Disaster Cooking 101: The Limits of Our Changing Food System

2012-02-09T13:06:20-05:00

Editor's Note: Last year, an enormous blizzard blanketed much of the Midwest on Groundhog's Day. An estimated 46 tornadoes touched down in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Kentucky, killing nine on April 4th and 5th. A 300-percent increase in the amount of rainfall in the Ohio valley pushed the Mississippi River over 45 feet, and thousands of homes were evacuated. It was a record year for weather-related problems -- a new record was set when the 12th natural disaster to cost more than $1 billion swept across the states.

There are plenty of places across the country that weren't directly affected by the flooding, tornadoes, and snow. But we've all been affected in another way: The disasters -- and our shifting climate, in general -- have dramatically changed food production systems in the U.S.

For example, "Hurricane Irene flattened feed crops, flooded farms, and racked up over $10 million worth of damage in Vermont alone," according to the Climate Desk's James West. "They had trouble just reaching the farms because there were road closures due to the storm, so that impacted a lot of the dairy products -- and that's why Lidia had a course based on that," adds CNN's Bonnie Schneider, who is working with restauranteur and celebrity chef Lidia Bastianich on a one-of-a-kind class. "So the way is to preserve the milk in other ways -- and that is to cure it, to make cheese out of it," Bastianich says of Vermont's problem. "I remember my grandmother, she cooked it again, she took the whey, added a little bit of milk and made ricotta -- ri-cotta, re-cooked."

In the video below, West visits Bastianich and Schneider's class, which teaches students how to recycle food and work within the limits of our changing food system.

The Man Behind 5-Hour Energy

2012-02-09T12:07:16-05:00

It turns out the mastermind behind the $3 cough syrup craze 5-Hour Energy is a 58-year-old Indian-born monk who takes a shot of the chalky drink every morning. In the latest issue of Forbes, Clare O'Connor offers the first press interview with Manoj Bhargava, a man who turned a two-ounce elixir of caffeine and vitamins into a beverage giant with $1 billion in retail sales. He's a bit of a boaster, telling O'Connor he's "killing it" and comparing his teenage math skills to Matt Damon's prodigy character in Good Will Hunting. But who can blame him as he's managed to convince a generation of truckers and amateur athletes to guzzle his bad-tasting energy drink? Apparently, much of his company's success is due to litigation.

Read the full story at The Atlantic Wire.

The Health Problems With Apple's iPad and Other Tablet Computers

2012-02-09T11:04:29-05:00

Desktops and laptops have been around long enough for usage guidelines to be established, but not so with tablets, which strain users.

Love your iPad? Take care how you use it. As convenient as iPads and other tablet computers are, they can cause physical problems because people often peer down at them in their laps. Viewing a computer screen is less stressful on the body when users are seated looking straight at the screen, not from above or below.

Desktop monitors and laptops can also cause problems for their users when placed too low, forcing their user to hunch over to see the screen. This places a strain on the neck muscles and can lead to pain and discomfort. Neck pain isn't just an annoyance; it can have serious consequences. A 2007 study found that chronic neck or back pain was the leading national cause of missed work days.

The Quintessential American Burger Joint

2012-02-09T11:04:07-05:00

The folks who've been working at New York City's Prime Burger for decades say it's a little like the mafia -- once you're in, you don't leave. The restaurant has been in business since 1938, and the staff are in it for the long haul. This documentary is one in a series of short films, This Must Be the Place, which explores the deeply personal connections between people and the spaces they inhabit. David Usui and Ben Wu of Lost & Found Films talk about the making of the series in a short interview below.

Stills from the video

The Atlantic: What inspired you to do this series?

David Usui and Ben Wu: We look at the series like a passport that allows you to see how people live -- across cultural, class, socioeconomic and racial lines. What better way to sum up that idea than explore people's spaces: their homes, their places of work, their hangout spots. It’s an opportunity to really examine, both visually and emotionally, the places that people LIVE. So we decided to make that the focus of our series.

How do you find the stories you tell?

So far it’s been a combination of the usual subjects: through friends, blogs, articles and word of mouth.

You do a lot of documentary work for clients, but this is a personal project. How does your creative approach change when you work on this series?

We’ve been pretty fortunate with our clients. They’ve provided us with the subject matter but have for the most part allowed us to inject our own style. With our series though, we have the chance to seek out our own stories.

What's next for you?

We’re working on a few feature-length documentaries that we’re hoping to have done in the next year or so. We’re also editing the next piece in the series about a man who live out in Detroit in an abandoned auto plant.

For more videos by David Usui and Ben Wu, visit http://lostfoundfilms.com/.

Accidental Tourists: How 2 Gerontologists Found Their Field

2012-02-09T10:04:50-05:00

Judy Howe and Bob Maiden both stumbled into their careers, but are now committed to making students aware of joys of working with the elderly.

We have both dedicated our careers to working with older adults. Now that we are in our sixties, we hope that younger people will be drawn to us. However, that doesn't seem to be happening at this point -- why aren't young people selecting careers in aging? Being a gerontologist or geriatrician is a rewarding career, with complexities, challenges, and opportunities given the aging of our cohort, the Boomers. Gerontologists study and teach about the aging process and the issues related to aging, whereas geriatricians practice a specialized field of medicine and provide clinical care to older adults. Gerontologists work in a wide variety of occupations from social workers to certified nurses aides, from directors of area agencies on aging to in-home health aides, from certified planners to financial planners, from biologists to thanatologists and so on. But younger people are not choosing gerontology or geriatrics as a career in part because it is an unknown profession to most students. Those who have been working in the field of gerontology and geriatrics have been struggling for years about the flat rate of recruitment into the field.

The 2008 Institute of Medicine report, "Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce," underscores that our current health care system is ill-equipped to deal with this pending crisis. The report lays out the demographics, health status, and long-term needs of this population, and the challenges in caring for the aging population. It recommends that all health care professionals be trained to care for older adults and that there needs to be increased recruitment and retention of geriatric specialists in all fields of practice. There have also been several bills before Congress to provide incentives for individuals working with older adults, including the Caring for an Aging America Act co-sponsored by Senators Boxer, Kohl, Collins, and Sanders. This bill provides loan forgiveness for health professionals who pursue geriatrics and gerontology training into law.

One colleague polled her students about gerontology's meaning. Responses: "It is the study of fossils" and "It is about the study of the earth."

In New York State, a study co-directed by one of us was undertaken to establish a better understanding of the number of programs and courses that exist in the field of gerontology or aging studies. At first, it was generally believed that the state inventory would show that most schools in higher education offered courses on aging and that the majority of them would have programs in gerontology. The findings of the survey, however, were shocking and mystifying. Of the 241 colleges and universities surveyed in the state, 137 schools had no courses on aging at all. Of the remaining schools that offered courses on aging, four percent had majors, two percent had minors, 16 percent had certificates and only one school (Fordham) had a Ph.D. program in gerontology (which is now defunct). This situation has not changed to this day despite the fact that we are an aging society. If anything, there are fewer programs today than there were several years ago.

Explanations for this institutional lack of interest in developing courses and programs on aging have been provided in the literature. It has been noted that most agencies do not require any education in aging for their new hires, for example, relying, instead, on their life experiences or learning on the job. Other factors include low salaries for positions working with people, and a lack of a mechanism such as service-learning courses that can excite an interest in students to work with older adults in their communities. Another consideration is that the fields of gerontology and geriatrics are not well known and therefore not as respected by peers as other professions.

Students and the public in general are ignorant of the meaning of gerontology. One of our colleagues who polled her students about the meaning of gerontology received responses such as: "it is the study of fossils" or "it is about the study of the earth." Perhaps the students were confusing the word gerontology with geology. Others believe that gerontology has something to do with the study of plants or insects. Those of us working in the field of aging have not done a good job in connecting the demographic imperative with the need for professionals to work in the area.

With this type of misunderstanding of the term gerontology, it is not too surprising -- as we found in an article we recently published -- that there is a critical shortage of specialists in the field of aging. There is national shortage of physicians trained in geriatric medicine. There are only 7,000 physicians nationally certified to treat and manage the multiple and chronic medical conditions of older adults. This number actually represents a 22 percent decrease in the number of geriatricians practicing over a seven-year period. Because of the exploding older population, it is estimated that 37,000 geriatricians will be needed. Like Groundhog Day, we see this same picture play out over and over again in the workforce for older adults. For example, it has been estimated that the United States has only five percent of the geropsychologists currently needed to provide clinical psychology services to the elderly. Of the 76,000 active psychologists nationally, only 200 to 700 devote a minimum of part-time services to older adults, and, of these clinicians, three-fourths of them have received little or no specialized training in working with older adults.

Again, we see this pattern in the field of social work, a field renowned for its compassionate therapists, where less than five percent of the social workers have identified a specialization in gerontology even though it is common for them to work with older adults and their families in health care and other settings. The Department of Labor has selected social work as a growth field, but the number of social workers trained to work with older adults is far below the 60,000 to 70,000 projected need over the next few decades. Other areas in the workforce such as service providers and home health care specialists also report similar shortages.

So, how do we recruit people into gerontology and geriatrics? Many colleagues in our generation have noted that they stumbled into the field -- now we need to figure out a way to move from accidental gerontologists and reshape the landscape so that it is viewed as an attractive, rewarding, and esteemed career. In late 2010, the State Society on Aging of New York (of which we are both past presidents), surveyed past presidents to find out what got them into the field of aging. This was an initiative geared to providing students potentially interested in the field with information about this career choice. Some noted a close relationship with a grandparent. Another common avenue was being in a graduate program and taking a course in aging, or being assigned to a research grant, or meeting a dynamic faculty member interested in the then-emerging field. Other past presidents were early in their careers and were presented with specific projects (management, research, policy) which sparked their interest while working in a related field such as social work or demography.

OUR STORIES: HOW WE GOT INTO THE BUSINESS

The research has shown that many of us who come to the field of aging do so by way of early experiences with our grandparents, as was true for both of us. Our affinity for older adults began as young children. We also were lucky to have interesting opportunities in the field of gerontology presented to us, and excellent mentors along the way.

JUDY'S STORY: Both of my parents grew up in intergenerational households, and while I lived with my nuclear family, I spent a lot of time with older relatives. I was always fascinated by family stories and histories during the time I spent with my maternal and paternal grandparents during the summer. My family had older women who helped out and were nurturing, but also direct, about life and did not hesitate to discipline me if necessary. The book, The Help, resonated with me. I was particularly close to Pops, my maternal grandfather, who had an easy way and exposed my to "country life." He was the ultimate rural multi-tasker -- into rural real estate, raising various crops and animals, some exotic.

My undergraduate university did not offer any courses in aging, and when I decided to switch graduate programs three weeks before classes began, the only funding remaining was a federal Administration on Aging traineeship in gerontology. I remember asking the chair of the sociology department at Syracuse (where I was in a Ph.D. program) what gerontology was -- I only knew from my Latin studies that it was the study of something. He said that I should just check it out, that there was not an obligation to stay in the field. However, like many of my colleagues, I was hooked immediately, despite dissuasion by some about why I would be interested in working in such a "depressing" field. This was no doubt due to my inherent interest in older people, desire for a career in a service profession, and the engaging and interactive environment of the All-University Gerontology Center. All graduate students in the program were required to enroll in a semester-long practicum, an unusual educational experience at that time, now referred to as service-learning. I was assigned to the Syracuse Department for the Aging where I conducted a small study to assess older persons' views of the accessibility of public transportation, which involved riding on city buses and interviewing older riders.

My gerontology programs made me realize I wanted to connect with this population rather than pursue a more theoretical academic career.

My father, Charles Howe, a Unitarian-Universalist minister, as well as a university professor in his earlier career, was influential in my life. He expected his children to enter a helping profession, and since I was floundering a bit as I entered graduate school, he encouraged me to "be involved" with older people in the community and "not just study it." My father was very persistent, and as the church minister, decided that I should become co-chair of a church committee to start an arts and crafts program for older adults, which was named "The Recreation Generation" (this was 1973). The co-chair was an older, dynamic, artistic member of the church. While the name of the program now seems a bit antiquated, it continues 40 years later with the same name and is now co-sponsored by the Town of Dewitt Parks and Recreation Department. It offers workshops in watercolor, Chinese brush painting, fiber loom weaving, stained glass, and needle work, and is a senior nutrition site.

Also, while in graduate school, I was asked by a sociology professor, Jerry Jacobs, to assist in a participant observation study for a book he was writing on a retirement community in the southwest. I ate many meals over the course of a semester in the dining room of Toomey Abbot Towers, senior housing which was adjacent to the Syracuse University Gerontology Center, conversing with the older residents and learning about their lives. Having shared numerous meals in my early life with older people, it was comforting to spend mealtimes with the older residents. I also visited on older man (then referred to as a "shut in") in his home as a friendly visitor on a regular basis. He was quite depressed and not doing well, and sometimes I felt that I was not equipped to carry on a conversation with him or help him with some daily chores. But I quickly adapted, and realized that I had an innate ability to communicate with an older person, even one that was not my relative.

At this time I was feeling a bit disconnected with my highly theoretical Ph.D. program in sociology. I was struggling with how the social theoretical debate between Weber and Marx was going to lead me to a satisfying career. My gerontology experiential programs made me realize that I wanted to somehow connect with this population rather than pursue a more traditional and theoretical academic career.

My accidental career continued throughout the decades and was enriched by a mentor, Marjorie Cantor, a major figure in the field of gerontology who examined the lives of New York City elders. I would say she was my most significant mentor. In 1988 we talked on the Amtrak coming back from a meeting in Albany and we struck up a relationship that ended up with me receiving a doctorate (finally) in social welfare with a concentration in gerontology from Fordham with her as my advisor. I was also fortunate to work for many years with Dr. Robert N. Butler, founding director of the National Institute on Aging and then the first chair of the department of geriatrics at Mount Sinai. He opened doors for me, as did Rose Dobrof, another well known gerontologist.

My particular interests in the field of gerontology are education, policy, interdisciplinary teamwork, community services, housing, curriculum development, and teaching methods. Since 1999, when the course was established, I have been a small group co-facilitator in the Mount Sinai School of Medicine Art and Science of Medicine program for first year medical students. In this course, we expose students to the so-called soft areas of medicine, including communication, policy, and interprofessional teamwork. The first year medical students have brief immersion experiences in the community of East Harlem, New York, including a walking tour and visiting a site serving indigent clients, many of them older. One of the sites that they visit is Linkage House, a housing model for older adults which I was involved in developing almost 20 years ago, and for which I remain board chair. Medical students, geriatrics fellows, and graduate students in a variety of fields have had service learning experiences at Linkage House, including assessing the need for assistive devices in the residents' apartments, studying their social networks, initiating a program for Chinese residents, and giving talks on healthy aging. Linkage House is an excellent example of how community-based experience can be successfully integrated into learning strategies for students.

As a gerontologist, I wear several hats, which makes my career particularly rewarding. I develop and direct interprofessional learning programs for allied health trainees and palliative care fellows and I oversee a federally funded consortium of three universities that provides interdisciplinary education in aging. I am also the editor of a journal that publishes on topics in gerontology and geriatrics education. I have had a very rewarding career in large part because the field of gerontology is an ever-changing, dynamic, and exciting interdisciplinary field which allows one to expand professionally in many directions. Career opportunities are boundless for those who are forward looking and like to think outside the box.

BOB'S STORY: I am fortunate to have two paternal grandparents. One through my biological family, which was ruptured by mother's early divorce when I was 7 years old and the second through my step-father, later to be my adopted father. Although both of these men were entrepreneurs of a sort, they could not be more different from each other. My biological grandfather was rough honed. He was Catholic and Italian who as a merchant marine prior to the advent of World War I jumped ship onto the Philadelphia docks. He never returned to Italy. Instead, he became a self-employed painter in Philadelphia, his adopted city.

As a child, I can remember spending virtually every Sunday afternoon after church at my grandfather's house. We would have a family dinner composed always of pasta (still my favorite) and other Italian delights. His approach to life was direct, vigorous, and aggressive. He took no prisoners nor made any excuses for himself. He believed in hard work and had little compassion for others. He painted water towers and worked on constructing the bridges that connected the Florida Keys in the early part of the 20th century and cost the lives of hundreds. He prepared me for toughness in a harsh world.

My other grandfather, whom I came to know after my mother married for the second time, was a conservative Protestant. He was also an entrepreneur of a small trucking business who believed strongly in providing honest work. His handshake was his bond. He believed in fair play and was extremely ethical, non-emotional, and somewhat distant. He was the kind of person who would never say he loved you, but you knew he did. He was tough in a different way than my biological grandfather. His toughness was not so much displayed in physical aggression and attitude toward the world, but rather in his firm belief in honesty, frugality, and fairness. I would spend my summer weekends with him, helping him to repair or build extensions to his house and properties at the Jersey Shore (a place where I vacation to this day). He was so frugal that he would only pay me two or three dollars for the 16 or so hours of work I gave him every weekend, but I didn't care. I was just happy to be able to spend time with him and learn from him. In all his transactions with others that I observed, I heard him only curse once (and that was in a whisper out of earshot of others). This is in stark contrast to my Italian grandfather.

Lately, an incredible thing has been happening. Undergraduates are beginning to take an interest in the field of gerontology.

Maybe it's because I lost contact with my biological grandfather after my mother got divorced that, as a child, I enjoyed being close to and listening to the stories of the older folks in my neighborhood. I remember the McCanns with great fondness. They were an octogenarian couple who lived across the street from me. And on summer evenings (before air conditioning was common), they would sit outside their house to cool off in the evening air from the sweltering heat and regale me with stories of their youth -- the roaring '20s or the hardships they experienced in the devastating Depression. I was endlessly fascinated by their stories and the tales of other older adults who resided in my neighborhood, which in those days was a close community. I would offer to assist, gratis, the older adults, especially the single or widowed older women, with their chores. Or I would go to the store, or walk their dogs, or take out their storm windows in the spring and put them back in the fall.

With life experiences like these, it was not surprising that I decided to accept a paid fellowship at the Philadelphia Geriatric Center (PGC) when I was completing my doctoral studies at the New School For Social Research in New York City. At the time, some of my friends were excited for me and thought I was embarking on a burgeoning career full of lucrative opportunities. Others thought I was crazy. At that time there were virtually no courses or books available on aging and they though I was wasting my time chasing after an illusion. Gerontology for all practical matters was an unknown field that barely existed.

Crazy though the decision to accept the fellowship may have been, it was one of the best moves I ever made. Because PGC offered to grant me time to work on my dissertation so long as it was in the field of gerontology, I put aside a Ph.D. proposal I had already drafted on the cognitive development of children and began studying learned helplessness in older women.

At PGC I was heavily influenced by M. Powell Lawton, a preeminent figure in the study of aging, and a Quaker who, like my adopted grandfather, lived and walked his philosophical or ethical principles in his day-to-day life. He was my inspirational mentor, my model for carrying out research projects with the practical aim of improving the lives of older adults, my most vocal supporter, and, in the end, my friend and colleague. He was a very caring and compassionate man who, I believe, was driven more than anything else by the sincere humanitarian motive to help others through his research, teaching, and leadership. I have modeled my entire professional life after him. I have endeavored to carry out Powell's commitment of keeping the voice of gerontology alive and maintaining a positive impact in my academy, community, research, and teaching.

At Alfred University, where I am professor of psychology and director of its gerontology program, I was the first to develop a service learning course in aging where students had the opportunity to engage in an activity with older adults who resided in the community. I also developed cross-listed courses in psychology, sociology, political science, philosophy, and biology. Our service learning courses have also had tremendous influence on the shape of programs at the local county's office for aging as well as on state policies related to improving the quality and access to aging services.

The gerontology faculty at Alfred University has developed a multidisciplinary major and minor that emphasizes the interdisciplinary roots of social sciences, psychology, and biology that distinguish the field of gerontology. For more than two decades our enrollments and participation in our major and minor has remained relatively flat. This has been very disappointing and administrators would suggest that our program in gerontology should be eliminated or at the very least embedded in another major as a concentration within it.

But lately, an incredible thing has been happening. Undergraduates are beginning to take an interest in the field of gerontology. Last year, a freshman in the fine arts program approached me and announced that she had started a gerontology club of 15 undergraduates. I was stunned. This was amazing. Our courses in gerontology are becoming heavily enrolled, indicating a growing interest in students in the field of aging. This growing interest after a recent stall in participation in gerontology is occurring at the national level. Last year, the Gerontological Society of America reported that its membership is growing again after years of decline. Another national organization in the field of aging, the Association of Gerontologist in Higher Education, has also reported an uptick in its membership. The annual meeting later this month has the highest registration that it has seen in a long time. Perhaps the service learning courses are having their intended effect.

Image: 1. Nejron Photo/Shutterstock; 2. Yuri Arcurs/Shutterstock; 3. tepic/Shutterstock.

Restaurant A: How Bill Marler Tied Taco Bell to Salmonella Outbreaks

2012-02-09T08:56:25-05:00

A recent outbreak sickened 68 people, but the CDC refused to make the name of the source of the contaminated food available to the public.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) handling of a recent investigation into a salmonella outbreak that sickened 68 people in 10 states -- sending more than 20 to the hospital -- had all the elements of a B-grade spy movie. The CDC identified the source of the contaminated food but refused to make the name public, instead calling it Restaurant Chain A, and saying only that it was a Mexican chain. It could have been any one of six such chains that operated in the affected states.

Marler is nothing if not tenacious -- just ask the food processers who have paid more than $600 million to his clients in the past two decades.

That seemed like odd behavior from an agency whose responsibility is to save lives, protect Americans, and save money through prevention. Although no one died in this outbreak, which came to light last fall, salmonella is frequently fatal, so outing the culprit could have saved lives. Revealing the identity of the mysterious Restaurant Chain A would have allowed customers to protect themselves by avoiding the place, if they chose. And a little negative publicity might have been just what was needed to convince those in charge of the company to clean up their act, perhaps preventing future outbreaks.

But the CDC kept the restaurant's identity under wraps.

This did not sit well with Bill Marler, a Seattle attorney whose firm specializes in litigating food-borne illness cases. Marler is nothing if not tenacious -- just ask the dozens of food processers and fast-food outlets who have paid more than $600 million in claims to his clients in the past two decades.

The CDC has a policy of seeking "cordial relationships" with companies who supply information voluntarily," its deputy director, Robert Tauxe, said in an interview with MSNBC that was quoted on Marler's blog. It publicly identifies a source of food-borne illness, he said, "only when people can use that information to take specific action to protect their health." The reason Restaurant Chain A had been admitted to the CDC's equivalent of a witness protection program was that the outbreak had already run its course.

Reporters from Food Safety News, the online newspaper funded by Marler's firm, contacted all six of the possible companies. They either refused to reply or insisted that they were not Restaurant Chain A. The reporters kept digging and eventually came across a document from Oklahoma's Department of Health. (Oklahoma was one of the affected states.) Marked "for internal use only" the document was called "Summary of Supplemental Questionnaire Responses Specific to Taco Bell Exposure of Oklahoma Outbreak Associated Cases Multistate Salmonella Enterititis Outbreak Investigation" (PDF). It's a long, convoluted title, but the important words were "Taco Bell."

Even once Food Safety News made the finding public, the CDC maintained its code of omerta. Taco Bell, which the CDC found to have been responsible for a 2006 E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak that sickened more than 70 customers in the Northeast, did not return my call, but the company did put a cryptic post on its website linking to the CDC's investigative report about the recent salmonella outbreak but did not own up to being at fault.

A restaurant poisons its customers. A government agency colludes to keep its identity under wraps. And it takes a scrappy trial attorney to uncover the truth for Americans. Talk about a sickening situation.

Image: Fred Prouser/Reuters.

What Do We Know About Fluoride?

2012-02-09T08:06:01-05:00

Earlier this year, officials in Pinellas County in Florida decided to remove the cavity-fighting chemical from its water supply. Was it a mistake?

The government has been drugging us for years.

Since the 1940s, municipalities across the United States have been voluntarily adding fluoride to their water supplies. Fluoride, as we all learned in elementary school, protects teeth against cavities. You'll find it in toothpaste and in vitamin supplements. Children regularly get fluoride treatments at the dentist. We bathe in it, we eat it, and we drink it, knowingly or not, all of the time. This has been going on for nearly 70 years. Yet recently, it has become a source of contention for several communities across the country.

At the beginning of the year, Pinellas County in Florida halted water fluoridation for its nearly 700,000 residents. This, the result of a months-long campaign against what local tea-partiers saw as a Big Brother public health mandate. Pinellas County represents the largest population in the U.S. to halt the measure, but as The New York Times reported in October, "a growing number of communities are choosing to stop adding fluoride to their water systems." The article cites 200 municipalities across the country that decided in recent years to forego the practice.

But why is politicized opposition to fluoride happening now?* The process has been in use since the 1940s, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hail it as one of the top preventative public health measures of all time. It is thoroughly supported by the American Dental Association, and when it was initiated in the middle of the 20th century, rates of dental cavities fell by 50 percent or higher, arguably because of fluoride. But opposition groups, notably the Fluoride Action Network, a non-profit dedicated to fluoride-danger awareness, put forth a much darker picture. They say the effect of tap water fluoride on tooth decay is hard to pinpoint, and in a large enough quantity, fluoride is a toxin -- one that can possibly make bones fragile, lower IQ in children, and contribute to bone cancer. They insist cavities can be prevented by brushing alone.

Like many environmental issues turned political, the two opposing sides in this debate present a dichotomous, confusing picture. What should residents in a community debating the practice believe? Ask the CDC whether fluoridation is worthwhile, and the answer is a resounding yes. Ask the Fluoride Action Network, and it is a fearful no. When it comes to environmental issues, misinformation runs rampant and so does emotion. At the intersection of politics and science, it's often hard for the public to arrive at an objective truth.

A BIT OF BACKGROUND

Sugar does not rot your teeth, bacteria do.

Just as the body uses sugar as fuel, cariogenic (cavity-forming) bacteria start a feeding frenzy when you chew on a candy bar, and continue when bits of that candy get left behind. With the sugar, the bacteria create a corrosive acid, and like a drill boring into the surface of a tooth's hard enamel, they burrow their way to their desired treasure -- the teeth's inner soft tissues. A cavity forms.

Fluoride intervenes in two ways. It reacts with the minerals in your teeth and fortifies them against the corrosive acid, even re-mineralizing already decayed teeth. And it sabotages the bacteria's metabolism, limiting its ability to grow and attack the teeth.

"The beauty about fluoridation is that you come in contact with the fluoride throughout the day," says William Bailey, acting dental director at the CDC's division of public health. "That's why water fluoridation works so well, you don't have to remember to do anything. It's an ideal public health measure."

Bailey says fluoridated tap water provides 20 percent more protection against tooth decay than brushing alone and that communities risk harm by halting the process. This level of protection is more significant in low-income areas and for people who may not have regular access to dental care.

While some areas around the country have naturally occurring fluoride, others add fluoride -- typically purchased from fertilizer companies -- to their municipal water supplies. The CDC's ideal concentration for health benefits is between .7 and 1.2 ppm (parts per million, or one milligram in every liter of water), but this is only a recommendation. As made clear by Pinellas County, communities are free to fluoridate as they see fit.

THE OPPOSITION

Perhaps what re-engaged the public doubt of fluoride was a 2006 report by the National Research Council (NRC) that reviewed the history of research on fluoridation. Its non-binding analysis concluded that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should lower its maximum permissible tap-water fluoride concentration from 4 ppm to 2 ppm. This is different from the CDCs optimal level mentioned above; beyond the EPA concentration ceiling for fluoride, water is considered contaminated.

In its review, the NRC found that exposures of 4 ppm place children at risk for dental fluorosis (cosmetic speckling of the teeth due to fluoride), and elevates the risk of bone fracture and skeletal fluorosis (a condition which results in stiffening of joints). Five years later, the EPA has not changed its fluoride ceiling. Earlier this year, the CDC followed the NRC's lead and proposed lowering its suggested optimal level of fluoridation to .7 ppm. No decision has been made yet.

What worries anti-fluoride activists such as Paul Connett, a retired chemist and executive director of the Fluoride Action Network, is that narrowing gap between ideal and dangerous concentrations. He believes that cosmetic fluorosis is indicative of fluoride exposure throughout the body's organ systems. "No other public health policy would get away with this today," he says. "A risk-benefit analysis would knock this out of the water."

For just about every point the CDC makes in favor of fluoride, Connett has a counterpoint. For his full argument, read through his co-authored book, " The Case Against Fluoride." But here, his most pressing concerns:

Fluorides' benefits are overstated. Connett says tooth decay rates in unfluoridated countries have decreased just as much as in the U.S. In addition, he points to other dental measures such as regular bushing and pit-and-fissure sealants that contribute to the decline in cavities.
Fluoride is a poison in high doses, which makes Connett worry about lifetime exposure. There are several studies from China which suggest that fluoride can affect IQ in developing children at levels of 2 ppm or greater. The NRC determined these studies to be methodologically flawed, but no researcher in the U.S. has pursued this topic.
Connett argues that the margin of safety of just a few parts per million is too small. "One of the things that makes this a very bad practice is that once you put fluoride in the water, you can't control the dose," he says. Someone who drinks two liters of water at 1 ppm is going to get as much fluoride as somebody drinking one liter of water at 2 ppm.

The CDC doesn't make much of these claims, and contends that the NRC report does apply to community fluoridation. They back fluoridation programs wholly and make no disclaimers, aside from the possibility of cosmetic fluorosis. "Fluoride is a poison at high concentrations, but almost anything is toxic at high concentrations," Bailey says. "If you get high concentrations of salt, that is toxic to your body."

OUR EXPOSURE TO FLUORIDE

Stephen Levy, a researcher at the University of Iowa College of Dentistry, has been heading one of the nation's longest running studies on the public health effects of fluoride. With 20 years of research behind him, Levy concludes that fluoride is still a benefit to society, although its impact is waning.

"We consistently find a difference for those people in our study who are not having fluoridated water -- they are on average having more decay," Levy says, but with a qualifier. "It's clear that, on average, the benefits of community water fluoridation would not be as great as they were many decades ago when we had many fewer other fluoride exposure sources and when caries rates were so much higher. So, the absolute benefit is less; the percentage benefit is less."

The other fluoride sources Levy refers to are soft drinks, packaged food, and anything made with fluoridated water. In 2008, Scientific American reported on the various sources of fluoride in diets and found that some are higher than the CDC recommendations for tap water. For instance, the magazine found that brewed black tea contains 3.73 ppm, raisins contain 2.34 ppm, and white wine has 2.02 ppm.

Levy does find some weight in the claim that fluoride can cause problems with bone structure, but only at exposures to concentrations of 8 or more ppm for 20 years or more. "There have only been two or three documented cases ever in this country," he says, adding that there is a slight increased risk of bone fractures for communities exposed to 4 ppm.

WHAT ABOUT COSTS?

Even if fluoride still has a noticeable, however waning, effect on dental health, is cutting it a legitimate cost-saving measure as some opponents contend?

For cash-strapped municipalities, the $200,000 that Pinellas County will save annually could be put to good use. But this too might not be the case. According to CDC data, the net cost of not fluoridating (accounting for the cost of extra cavities and missed work) Pinellas is $11,200,000 to $13,300,000 per year. Fluoridated water, the CDC says, saves society $16 to $19 per person per year, yet it only costs $0.50 per person for communities of 20,000 or larger.

But Connett has a rebuttal to this, too: In his book, he says the study discredits the costs of cosmetic treatments and overstates the amount of work lost for taking the time to get a cavity filled.

WHAT WE KNOW

Any public health initiative is going to be doubted by some. We can't prove definitively that fluoride is 100 percent safe and will not negatively affect public well-being. Dental research does not lend itself to causational studies -- researchers can't exactly separate people into random fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities and observe them like mice.

"Fluoride has been scrutinized intensely," Levy says. "The EPA continues to look at it, the NIH, researchers, policy makers.... But for the individual who is arguing against it, we can never reach the burden of proof that they put out there."

Connett and his colleagues don't want to be seen as paranoid environmentalists; they're concerned scientists who want their grievances fairly heard. "I wish we could have debate," Connett says of the CDCs insistence on benefits, but he doesn't want it be political. "All these liberal commentators around the world immediately jump in and use the fact that the tea party is involved to slam us as being crazy conspiracy theorists. We might be wrong, but we're not looney."

The best science is filled with questions and caveats, and those fearful of government initiatives based on science will always have some material to aid their arguments. What Connett and Levy both agree on is that more research will clarify the situation. Currently, the real question communities have to answer about fluoride is, can they live with a bit of doubt?

Image: 1. jonrawlinson/Flickr; 2. Front teeth with moderate fluorosis/CDC.

*Fluoride skepticism is nothing new. It fluctuates with the political climate and manifests with varying degrees of paranoia. In the 1950s, for example, a rumor circulated that fluoride was a communist plot to "deplete the brainpower and sap the strength on American Children."

Study of the Day: Older Women Need More Sex Education Too

2012-02-09T07:00:00-05:00

Research shows women over 50 are concerned about STDs but feel uneasy discussing safe sex practices with their primary physicians.

PROBLEM: Though many women over 50 are sexually active, very few educational campaigns to prevent the spread of STDs are designed for them.

METHODOLOGY: University of Florida researchers led by Cynthia Morton examined the attitudes and beliefs of women aged 50 and over about sexual health. They conducted several focus group discussions to talk about challenges in finding male partners, negotiating condom use, and seeking credible information sources to help them make the best decisions about sexual health.

RESULTS: The respondents were aware of the risks for STDs but were uncomfortable seeking information about safe sex practices from their regular physicians who may erroneously believe that they already possess this knowledge. Although they know the importance of condoms, they avoid discussing their use with their partners as well, often to avoid conflict or rejection.

CONCLUSION: Older women lack important information about sexual health, and need help talking with their partners and physicians. The authors state in a news release that more social marketing campaigns are needed to educate them about safe sex.

SOURCE: The full study, "Safe Sex After 50 and Mature Women's Beliefs of Sexual Health," is published in the Journal of Consumer Affairs.

Image: Shutterstock.

Today in Research: Breakfast Dessert; Giving the Finger Is Hard

2012-02-09T06:02:39-05:00

Discovered: Mars's ocean, cake for breakfast, giving the middle finger is hard, and conservative movies sell.

Cake for breakfast. Best discovery ever, ever, ever: doctors have sanctioned eating dessert first thing in the morning. (We do this anyway, but it's nice to have science on our side.) Adding a treat to a 600-calorie balanced breakfast helps dieters lose more weight in the long run, found research out of the Tel Aviv University. And, it gets better. The research found that cutting carbs in the morning hindered long-term weight loss. "But the group that consumed a bigger breakfast, including dessert, experienced few if any cravings for these foods later in the day," said researcher Daniela Jakubowicz. Chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast every day, doctor's orders. [Tel Aviv University]

Giving the middle finger is harder than it looks. Physically speaking. We have no moral qualms with flipping the bird. But research tells us that outside fingers have the quickest reaction time, meaning that middle one has the worst performance. Here's why: "In other words, the high level of inhibition received by the nerve cells of the middle fingers mean that it takes longer for the excitement to build up -- they therefore react more slowly," said Dr. Hubert Dinse. But Dinse has come up with a way to help our little offensive buddy. "If, for example, you stimulate one finger electrically or by means of vibration for two to three hours, then its representation in the brain changes," Dinse explained. That sounds like a lot of pain and effort for quicker flip-offs. [Neural Plasticity Lab at the Institute for Neuroral Computation]

Read the full story at The Atlantic Wire.