“A study of Medicare patients shows that costlier, more complex spinal fusion surgeries are on the rise -- and sometimes done unnecessarily -- for a common lower back condition caused by aging and arthritis. What's more alarming is that the findings suggest these more challenging operations are riskier, leading to more complications and even deaths.
Dr. Charles Rosen, a spine surgeon at the University of California, Irvine, founded the Association for Medical Ethics to nudge doctors toward scientific evidence over vested interests. Forty-nine spine surgeons have joined, pledging to refuse any type of compensation or earnings from companies for using a product.
Rosen applauded a provision in the new health care law that requires device makers and others to file annual reports to the government on their financial ties to doctors. Patients will be able to look up possible conflicts in a government database.
"Too much fusion surgery is done in this country and often for inappropriate reasons," Rosen said. While complex fusions are needed for some conditions, he said, patients "should not hesitate to get a second opinion." “
More at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36197896/
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For last night's dinner, I ate some meatloaf that Claudia had made, and started itching a little while later. So I am allergic to beef, or something that has been fed or added to it. She gets her meat from Sam's Club, and if they do the same as WalMart, it has been cut up and packaged in Bentonville or somewhere, and trucked in. So, no doubt it is full of preservatives or something to keep it red. As much junk as they feed the cattle in the feed lots these days, there is no wonder folks have allergies!
I have some range fed, organic beef here, so I will try that.
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What About Grass-fed Beef?
" Feeding grain to cattle has got to be one of the dumbest ideas in the history of western civilization.
Traditionally, all beef was grass-fed beef, but in the United States today what is commercially available is almost all feedlot beef. The reason? It's faster, and so more profitable. Seventy-five years ago, steers were 4 or 5 years old at slaughter. Today, they are 14 or 16 months. You can't take a beef calf from a birth weight of 80 pounds to 1,200 pounds in a little more than a year on grass. It takes enormous quantities of corn, protein supplements, antibiotics and OTHER DRUGS, including growth hormones.
Switching a cow from grass to grain is so disturbing to the animal's digestive system that it can kill the animal if not done gradually and if the animal is not continually fed antibiotics. These animals are designed to forage, but we make them eat grain, primarily corn, in order to make them as fat as possible as fast as possible."
More very interesting info at: http://www.foodrevolution.org/grassfedbeef.htm
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This morning, Ray did some more Dicor caulking, and smoothing on the B+ windows, they should be ready for painting tomorrow.
Jay took off the gutters over the big doors on the workshop, they weren't doing much good the way they were. Just a place for pine needles to collect against the roof. I will have to get a different kind. Ray inspected my roof while we had the ladder there.
In the grooming room, Jay and I packed up the hand-held vac back in it's box, as it is just too heavy, so I don't use it. It is easier, and quicker, for me to use a broom and dust pan. By the time it would take to get the hand vac opened, emptied, filter cleaned, and put back together, I'd have it done. There is a stick vac kept plugged in the grooming room, for sucking up stray cut hair, then for deep cleaning, I have a shop vac.
Then we hung some more winter clothes up in the store room attic, for sale later in the year. The consignment, and donation places don't want them right now. Spring has really sprung, so we put away my electric mattress pad, too.
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Grifters!
Yesterday afternoon, a fancy new truck with a roofing company name on it, pulled up in my driveway. The uniformed man with a clipboard said he was supposed to check all the roofs in the area because of the bad hail storm we had on the 7th. April.
He got a ladder out of his truck, looked at my roof, and said he could see white places where the hail had damaged it.
How can a black asphalt-based 30-year shingle roof have white places on it. I wasn't born yesterday!
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