TresSugar

Volvo's 2020 Vision: Death-Proof Cars

LibertySugar — Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:40 -0700

Volvo has launched a plan to eradicate deaths of Volvo drivers involved in accidents by 2020. Every year car accidents cause 1.2 million deaths and 50 million injuries. The Swedish car company already has ignitions that turn off when the driver is drunk, and sensors that sound alarms when they detect drowsiness.

After they eradicate death in their cars, Volvo will move onto accidents in general. By turning the car into one giant bumper, and expanding "smart engine" capabilities, Volvos will think for the driver, hopefully avoiding accidents.

Will consumers gravitate toward a car that guarantees to be death-free? Should buyers get a cut in insurance rates? Should governments invest more in this type of research, or is this an example of how the private sector is sometimes better at solving problems? How much would you pay for one of these buggies?

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PETA Will Pay $1 Million For Lab Meat

LibertySugar — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:15:00 -0700

What if you could have your animal and eat it too? Or even better, not have your animal and eat it too.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is offering $1 million to whomever figures out how to grow meat in labs. The winner must develop a commercially viable chicken-meat product that does not contain, or make use of animal-derived products, except for starter cells obtained in the initial development stages.

Basically, PETA wants someone to use stem-cell science technology to skip the whole bird, and go straight to the bucket of chicken. Sound like you want an extra order of biscuits? To see what animal activists have to say, read more.

Animal activists, including those within PETA, feel the contest abandons the philosophy that animals are not ours to eat. They also argue that the health risks of a carnivore diet - including obesity, diabetes, and cancer - will not be appeased.

Proponents counter that this is a practical solution, which could end the maltreatment of animals, such as caging, drugging, and brutal slaughtering.

Do you think PETA is compromising its mission with this contest, or making the ethical treatment of animals more realistic? With all the news about the origins of meat and its environmental impact, is this a step in the right direction? Would you eat an in vitro chicken-meat product?

Some Overweight People Are Calling For a Law to Protect Them

TresSugar — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:00:00 -0700

Overt racism is not tolerated in most places, but fatism is flourishing in our society. Many overweight people say that the normal rules of decency and common courtesy don't seem to apply to them, and they're trying to organize a new rights movement.

In a news article yesterday, the BBC recounted the plight of an overweight train passenger who was beaten up by another commuter for taking up two seats. The aggressor yelled "you big fat pig" before she kicked the victim in the stomach. In addition to suffering verbal and physical abuse, overweight people who are speaking out say they are victims of systemic discrimination. For example, many airline companies in the US now charge larger passengers for two seats. Such a policy is considered illegal discrimination in Canada, where there is a one-person-one-fare law. The US has no such rule, nor is there a federal law forbidding employers from firing people because of their weight. (Michigan is alone in prohibiting employers from firing people for being overweight.)

Last year, a study from Yale revealed that weight discrimination is tolerated because many believe that people have control over their size. The truth is more complicated. Economics, health issues like type 2 diabetes, and genetics can affect a person's weight.

The study also revealed that overweight women are twice as vulnerable to discrimination than overweight men. If you want to find out if you have implicit biases against overweight people take this quiz developed by Harvard researchers. You might be surprised by the results.

Would you like to see a federal anti-weight discrimination law?

70,000 Women a Year Die From Unsafe Abortions

TresSugar — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:00:00 -0700

After three years of research, the New York-based Guttmacher Institute has concluded that although contraceptive use has lowered the number of abortions worldwide, unsafe abortions still account for a staggering 70,000 deaths a year, particularly in the developing world. More than half the deaths are in sub-Saharan Africa, a region with the lowest rates of contraceptive use and the highest rates of unintended pregnancies.

"In much of the developing world," said the Institute's president Sharon Camp, "abortion remains highly restricted, and unsafe abortion is common and continues to damage women's health and threaten their survival."

The report calls for easing developing nations' abortion laws, citing that laws banning or restricting abortion don't keep it from happening, they just make abortion unsafe and either self-induced or performed by unskilled people in any unhygienic conditions.

The Guttmacher Institute's recommendations: expand access to family planning and modern contraceptives and to legal and safe abortion, and improve the coverage and quality of post-abortion care.

Their recommendations have been criticized by Deirdre McQuade, a policy director for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for Pro-life Activities who also castigates priests or nuns who make referrals to family planning services, which she says veers from church policy. "We need to be much more creative in assisting women with supportive services," she said, "so they don't need to resort to the unnatural act of abortion."

Yaz and Yasmine: Are These Birth Control Pills Safe?

TresSugar — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:00:00 -0700

Anne Marie Eakins, a 34-year-old history teacher in Grafton, OH, developed blood clots in both lungs in 2007 and even lost partial use of her right lung. The cause, as she sees it? The newish oral contraceptive Yaz, the top-selling birth control pill in the US, which she switched to after a decade of using different kinds of birth control pills without incurring health problems. She is now suing the makers, Bayer HealthCare pharmaceuticals.

Like 74 other plaintiffs against the makers of Yaz and its sister pill, Yasmine, which was introduced a few years before, Eakins decided to make the switch in part because of the added benefits touted in multimillion dollar ads that ran on television. Yaz, which contains even less estrogen than low-estrogen Yasmine, is advertised as a product that could reduce acne and severe PMS, in addition to preventing pregnancy. How do Yaz and Yasmine differ from other birth control pills? To find out, read more.

Although both Yaz and Yasmine come with the standard warning that the hormones in birth control pills (estrogen plus progestin) can increase the risk of stroke and blood clots in a woman's legs or lungs, lawyers representing the plaintiffs and regulatory agencies claim that Bayer's ads overstate the products' effectiveness and don't adequately warn of possibly higher risks of clots unique to Yaz and Yasmine.

They say Bayer doesn't take into account research that indicated that a hormone unique to the products (drospirenone) increases the likelihood of clots compared to birth control that has the standard levonorgestrel hormone. (Lawyers claim Bayer relied on its research findings in Germany that concluded there is the same risk, over Dutch and Danish research that had the opposite conclusion.) Other criticisms are equally troubling: that the manufacturing plants in Germany responsible for the hormones in Yaz and Yasmine differ in quality control from what is required for US products; that studies conducted were performed with an ethnically homogeneous group, not taking into account blood-clot risk factors in a more ethnically variable US market; and finally, that Yaz and Yasmine are marketed for conditions like PMS, for which the drug is not approved.

I considered switching to these kinds of birth control pills because of the claim that they prevented severe PMS. Do you believe the marketing for products like Yaz and Yasmine or do you do your research before you buy?

Genetics Could Trump Daddy Issues in Sexually Active Teens

TresSugar — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:00:00 -0700

The age at which you lost your virginity could be programmed in your genes. Though researchers have often suspected that having an absent father, a single mom, or sexually active single parents could lead teens to have sex earlier, genetics seem to play a larger role than previously thought.

According a new study published in Child Development, the average age at which teens with absent fathers lost their virginity was 15.28, compared to age 16.11 for kids whose fathers were always around. Children whose fathers were sometimes absent lost their virginity at an average age of 15.36.

The findings are based on a study of 1,000 cousins at the University of Oregon, and the familial relations of the subjects led to some other interesting conclusions. Namely:

The more genes the children shared, the more similar their ages of first intercourse, regardless of whether or not the children had an absent father.

This doesn't mean there is an "absent father gene," says University of Oregon's Jane Mendle. But the researchers did observe parental traits - such as impulsiveness, addiction, and "sensation seeking" - that led to earlier sexual activity in teens.

At what age did you lose it? And do you think your early sexual urges were genetically predetermined?

Teen Pregnancy Project Scraped For Causing Pregnancies

TresSugar — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:00:00 -0700

The UK has the highest teen pregnancy rate in all of Europe and the second highest in the developed world after the US. Deciding to address the problem, the UK dedicated millions of pounds to a project aimed at at-risk youth. Now, that project has been abandoned because it was unsuccessful in cutting conceptions. Of the teens who participated in the program, 16 percent became pregnant, compared to 6 percent of teens in other groups considered at risk.

So why has access to contraception, advertising campaigns, and more sex ed caused an increase in teen pregnancy rates? No one really knows exactly, but it appears throwing money at the problem is not the simple solution. Programs were effective when a charismatic staff facilitated access to reproductive health services, connected with the teens, and conveyed a strong and clear message about avoiding unprotected sex. When one or more of these factors was not present, the success rate dropped. In addition, researchers suspect that the program may have been more successful if it had been rooted in smaller communities, instead of implemented by pulling together kids from different places. In fact, they wonder if the at-risk kids might have negatively influenced each other more than the program.

One British commentator thinks the country needs broader policies that don't just take on teen pregnancy, but rather focus on general education and job training for youth.

Daddy Issues: Depressed Fathers Affect Kids Too

TresSugar — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:00:00 -0700

Blame the mother? Not so fast. Turns out, depression in dads can be just as bad for kids as having a mother with mental health issues. According to experts from the University of Oxford, doctors have been focusing far too much on the mothers' problems. Kids, especially boys raised by alcoholic or depressed dads, are far more influenced by troubled fathers than previously thought. But until recently, no one was paying much attention:

The Oxford team said it was not surprising much of researchers' emphasis had focused on mothers as, in most societies, it is mothers who provide the majority of childcare - particularly when children are very young. But they said the role of men had been "underemphasised" . . . In addition, the peak age for men to be affected by psychiatric disorders is the same as the peak age for becoming a father - between 18 and 35.

As a result, young kids can develop behavioral problems, while teens are at a higher risk of depression and other mental-health issues. Do you think daughters are more affected by their mothers' mental health, while boys are more impacted by dads?

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Do You Support Funding Stem Cell Research?

CitizenSugar — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:30:00 -0700

Today President Obama overturned President Bush's strict limits on stem cell research. Some Americans oppose studying stem cells extracted from human embryos because the embryos are destroyed in the process. Still, a majority of Americans support President Obama's decision to roll back restrictions on federal funding of the promising research method.

Under Bush, scientists relied on private money to work on hundreds of stem cell lines covered under the ban. Obama's executive order gives the National Institute of Health 120 days to develop new rules to replace Bush's. Obama says his administration will "make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology."

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The Green Monster: 8 Acts of Eco Extremism

CitizenSugar — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 09:30:47 -0700

Yesterday the crying-hippies video resurfaced on the ever-recycling Internet. (Well worth a watch!) Sobbing at the base of a North Carolinian forest, members of radical environmental group Earth First! cried for rocks and trees and pesky weeds that (they insist) are as alive as your typing fingertips. A young man cried until he wanted to scream. So he did.

But that's child's play! Environmentalists - extreme environmentalists - have more than tears and tree houses to show demanding Mother Earth. What does it take to go from eco friendly to eco terror? Check out my eight environmental no-nos, or do-dos (depending on your goal).

Arson. Particularly setting new housing developments, car lots, and SUVs ablaze. Another? Horse slaughterhouses. Neigh!
Not breeding because, obviously, Earth is better off without people.
Harassing, sabotaging, and sinking whaling ships is as old as my first recycling bin.
Poisoning bottles of POM Wonderful juice to protest animal testing. Guess it won't make you immortal after all!

To see four other acts of eco insanity, read more.

Raiding zoos and aquariums to kidnap animals.
Endangering loggers and spiking trees to discourage logging.
Forcing entry, harassing, and attacking university professors involved in animal research. Masks are optional but preferred.
And bombs - a tried and true method of dissent. Even the worst bomb will get attention!

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