Health
Health
Fair Observer's analysis of issues in medicine, public health, disease prevention and disease control, drugs, nutrition, and fitness.
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Commentary on the supply and demand of medicine, its overuse, and the need to regulate and optimize the accessibility of medicinal drugs in the US and beyond. This is part three a series of four articles on the topic. Please click here for part 1, part 2, and part 4. PART 3 Direct and Indirect Cost of Wasted Medicines The 2007 cost of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) prescription program was $74 billion and is predicted to be over $100 billion when the first of 79 million “baby boomers” enter the program this year. In 2009, the Poison Control System, Hennepin County, Minnesota reported the average person over 65 takes between two and seven prescription...
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Commentary on the supply and demand of medicine, its overuse, and the need to regulate and optimize the accessibility of medicinal drugs in the US and beyond. This is part two a series of four articles on the topic. Please click here for part 1, part 3 and part 4. Part 2 Non-adherence to Medical Treatment Underuse of properly prescribed medicines is common. However, the elderly are more likely to forget to take their medicine as prescribed, stop when they have an adverse drug reaction or interaction, think they are well when they are not, or wish to save money by stretching their medicines. A major difficulty with reading prescription labels and instructions is sufficient to discontinue the...
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Commentary on the supply and demand of medicine, its overuse, and the need to regulate and optimize the accessibility of medicinal drugs in the US and beyond. This is part one a series of four articles on the topic. Click here to read part 2, part 3 and part 4. Part 1 The legitimate use and equitable distribution of medicines to restore and maintain health should be based on the public health perspectives of doing the greatest good for the greatest number of our world’s seven billion people. Every country in our global community struggles to establish priorities to address evidence-based needs for safe, effective, and judicious use of prescription and over-the-counter medicines....
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360° Analysis / Asia / HealthBy Zhang Hongzhou The 130 million people who are left behind in China’s rural areas are posing a severe challenge to the country’s food security -- for the food producers as much as consumers. The conundrum of the abandoned farmers and farmland may have global implications. Reports by Xinhua News Agency indicated that the migration of over 250 million rural labourers to the cities is hollowing China’s countryside. Besides those working in the cities all year round as unskilled labour, a large number of rural people have migrated to the cities to enter colleges as students or joining the army. For practical reasons, these rural people have to leave behind...
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Benjamin Maier investigates the thinking about ourselves, which takes place precisely when we are not perceiving, reasoning or making decisions. Viewed from a purely neuro-scientific perspective, it appears that the ego, which is associated with the sense of self, makes up the most important part of all our mental operations. In some ways, we even think about ourselves when we do not think. In general, all cognitive processes − mental operations such as perceiving, reasoning, memorizing, or learning − occur at two stages. There is an active stage, in which the brain is processing sensory information, and a passive stage, during which no external stimuli act on the brain. In the...
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By Benoît WolffBenoit Wolff interviews Elmar Kaiser. BW : What are disorders of the self ? EK : If we talk about disorders of the self, we mean states that are related to disintegration of the self, especially states related to the disintegration of one’s notion of body and mind. BW : Can you name some ? EK : Depersonalization and derealization. These are two special states that are connected to disintegration of the self. Depersonalization means that you do not know the borders of your body any longer. A person suffering from depersonalization might have the impression that she is losing control of her outer body borders, whereas in the case of derealization, the...
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By James HenryJames Henry states that under current regulation, it is illegal to publish statements on the health benefits of naturally occurring foods. Drug and pharmaceutical interests directly benefit by having an exclusive monopoly on claims for the treatment of disease in the sale of their products. This is the first in a series of three articles on this and related subjects. Food and drug regulatory agencies in the United States and Europe act as competition police for the biggest pharmaceutical firms. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is no exception to this troubling tendency. The regulatory agency creates financial barriers that make entry impossible for all but the largest firms....
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By Benoît WolffInterviewee: Samuel Weber, an American philosopher and outstanding thinker across the disciplines of literary theory, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. He is the Paul de Man Chair at the European Graduate School (EGS) and the Avalon Professor of Humanities at Northwestern University. Interviewer: Benoît Wolff for Fair Observer BW : What does Freud mean by ‘I’ : a body, a person, the psyche – or a bit of everything ? SW: Freud doesn't use the term "person" very much, so I will concentrate on the two other terms you mention. In both cases he breaks with the dominant tradition. Since Plato and Aristotle, and continuing in...
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This is the first in a series of musings about the inter-relatedness of the ego, awareness, sense of self, cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Science is trying to solve the deepest mysteries and Benoit Wolff and Vaughn Gray bring us the latest on this. It is in the center of our lives and yet fairly unknown: our self. At least from a scientific standpoint, the self remains a mystery that has lead to a never-ending scientific debate and countless pages of theory. Disciplines like philosophy, psychology, psychoanalysis and the neurosciences, to name only a few, have come up with a plethora of possible explanations concerning its nature and functioning. Philosophy On the...
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