Is the underlying point fair? Absolutely—simply training more scientists in order to “solve” our economic and environmental problems is like ordaining more priests to “solve” the current marriage decline. But Joe’s details get sucked into the quagmire of poor logic, to the point where a few of them border on ludicrous. Take his stance on health care:

 Given the spiraling cost of healthcare, and the fact that few people are satisfied with our system, this is obviously one of the most fertile industries for growth. But our problem isn’t a lack of science. Our problem isn’t that engineers haven’t created enough dubious miracle pills. It’s that our conception of the system is wrong. We have antiquated models for healthcare delivery on all kinds of fronts, from how it’s paid for to who patients see when they get ill.

We’ll be the last to say there’s no room for improvement in the health care system. There are countless opportunities for improving treatment effectiveness and efficiency that don’t involve just training more doctors (though we need those too, in a BIG way). Computerization of medical records, while not a simple task, will ultimately save time, money, and lives. But halting funding for drug research—particularly when we’re on the cusp of some pretty remarkable new stuff—is pretty absurd.

Then there’s his take on education (we’re assuming he means the larger education system, and not just scientific courses of study):

Our system is in shambles and has been dysfunctional for a long time. We have a huge problem of matching students up against the type of education that would suit them — more vocational training for many of them would be good — and for many students there’s no upside in being educated. It’s a gaping opportunity, but it’s not a science question. It’s more a matter policy and design than anything else.

Well, actually, there is an upside in properly educating our population: Not doing so leads to a disastrous, dogmatic mess that erodes the integrity of education—not to mention causes expensive and pointless ideology battles that take our attention away from problems like oh, say, the looming financial and environmental apocalypses.

But the main problem with Joe’s central argument is this:

Science education isn’t just about teaching 11th graders where dinosaurs came from (which we can’t even do correctly). It’s about investing in our role as a superpower. Since the second World War, the superiority of American science and technology is what has made the U.S. a world leader, with our engineering/tech/medical innovation pumping billions into the economy and establishing all that world dominance we’re now so in danger of losing. If we stop valuing (and funding) research labs that house scientific innovators, and squelch scientific progress for dogmatic reasons—both of which we’ve been doing steadily over the past 8 years—then we risk losing that innovation to other countries—which has already begun happening.

So no, the answer isn’t simply to throw money at education—or at banks, or newspapers, or corn farmers. We need careful assessment of the specific issues in each science-related industry, and enactment of a variety of solutions. But education in all its forms has been, and remains, a pretty crucial cog in this wheel.

Plus we really do need more doctors—unless Boomer-spawn like us want to care for all those aging parents ourselves.

• Scientists give a big thumbs up to Obama’s environmental plan.

• A handy list of all the biggest “global cooling” hacks, now in bar graph form.

• Poor Tesla. The bad news just keeps on comin’.

• A universal flu vaccine nears completion—but will we have the cash to distribute it?

• Finally, some sliding profits news to be happy about. Oh no wait, never mind.

• Senate decides (thank goodness) that children and health insurance are two things that should really continue to go together.

So what are some top science priorities that President Obama can stick on his “ASAP” list? Here’s a few ideas, along with the likelihood that they’ll be addressed in the super/semi/not-so-near future:

Abortion: The most likely candidate on the list. CNN reports that the new president may repeal a 2001 Bush policy that prevents federal money from going to international family planning groups that perform abortions as early as today or tomorrow.

Stem Cells: Lifting the ban on federally-funded stem cell research is another move that’s likely to happen quickly.

Energy/Environment: So, uh, how ’bout those emissions cuts? Chances are, they won’t come until later in the year, with alt-energy legislation taking priority. And in the meantime, halting that environmental fire sale sure would be nice.

Health care: We need action. Fast. As in, yesterday. Yes, the task is huge and the hurdles enormous. But the costs of doing nothing to reform the American health care system will be crippling in every sense of the word. So where does the Big H.C. stand on the agenda? According to the Wall Street Journal, the new administration will “move fast on [Obama's] proposal to overhaul” health care, with a “major event at the White House” likely happening sometime in March.

Specifically, the new regulations allow drug companies to “distribute copies of medical journal articles that describe unapproved uses” of their drugs to all the doctors they want.

Technically this reg isn’t new; it was in place until 2006, then lapsed until industry lobbyists made sure it was proposed again last year, despite heavy criticism from Democrats and drug industry critics. And now, conveniently one week before the Bush administration draws its final, sputtering breath, the rule has made its way back into the final FDA guidelines.

Big pharma spokespeople pooh pooh the reg as nothing more than a formality: “Physicians need timely access to the latest medical information to keep abreast of the best practices in patient care,” said Alan Bennett, an attorney representing the pharmaceutical industry.

It’s true that these journal articles are required to be peer-reviewed—though whether that means anything remains to be seen:

The reliability of medical journal articles came into question earlier this year when drugmaker Merck & Co. Inc. was accused of ghostwriting several articles about its painkiller Vioxx, which was withdrawn from the market in 2004 for safety reasons.

Reports published in the Journal of the American Medical Association alleged that Merck paid academics to take credit for articles which were actually written by the company. Merck denied the allegations, calling them false and misleading.

For every one step forward, two steps back.

Related:
RB: Bye Bye Freebies! Drug Companies Ax Free Goodies to Doctors
RB: Is Nothing Sacred? Nobel Prize Engulfed in Drug Company Scandal
RB: Clinic to Reveal All Doctor-Drug Industry Ties on the Web

How many times do we have to say it? At least once more, apparently: The anti-vaxer movement is wrong, it’s dangerous, and it’s having major effects on public health. Like this one: More than 12,000 cases of measles, around four-fifths of which were in unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated children, surfaced in Europe in the two-year period from 2006 through 2007, with an additional 6,000 infections reported in the first three quarters of 2008.

These results come from a study published in the upcoming issue of The Lancet, and were written up by Mark Muscat of Copenhagen’s Statens Serum Institut. The study includes data from 32 countries, though 85 percent of the cases were in Romania, Germany, the U.K., Switzerland, and Italy—all of which have vaccination rates below 90 percent, well below the World Health Organization’s 95 percent recommendation.

So here it is, a highly-contagious and also highly-preventable disease making its way into children because their parents saw some study or read some pamphlet filled with inaccurate and scientifically disproved information.

To make matters worse, there’s also the class problem that anti-vaxers are causing:

People in wealthy countries (like the U.S. and U.K.) refuse to vaccinate, and then transport their diseases to poorer countries—a phenomenon noted by Jacques Kremer and Claude Muller of the WHO Regional Reference Laboratory for Measles and Rubella:

The more pressing question is how much measles does Europe export to countries with poor health systems and high fatality rates. Importations of measles virus from Europe have already triggered several outbreaks in South America… Rich countries need to be responsible for avoiding cases by implementation of high vaccination coverage, to make it the privilege of resource-poor countries not to worry about reintroductions from Europe.

Related:
RB: While the Anti-Vax Movement Strengthens, Their Arguments Only Get Weaker
RB: And So It Begins: U.S. Sees Big Measles Spike in Unvaccinated Kids
RB: Autism and Vaccinations: A Celebrity Smackdown
BadAstronomy: Countering antivaxxers

Steve Jobs looks terrible. He has for months. After losing a reported 30 pounds last year, the Apple CEO has been the subject of constant scrutiny concerning his health, sparking media coverage that’s bordered on the morbid—including a mistaken obituary and a false report that he’d had a heart attack

The speculation reached a frenzy when Jobs announced he wouldn’t give the keynote speech at this month’s Macworld Expo. While Apple originally denied that the cancellation was due to their CEO’s poor health, they later conceded that Jobs had pulled out because he was ill. Exactly what this illness could be, however, remains the subject of mass conjecture.

In August 2004, Jobs announced he had had surgery to remove an islet cell tumor in his pancreas—a form of cancer that’s far rarer and less deadly than regular pancreatic cancer. It was later reported that he’d delayed the surgery 9 months after his diagnosis in order to pursue holistic treatments—a dangerous move that likely gave his doctors, and Apple’s board members, at least one ulcer apiece.

According to the New York Times, Jobs underwent another surgical procedure in 2008, the “details of which remain unclear.” Off the record, Jobs told Times reporter Joe Nocera that the CEO’s health problems “weren’t life-threatening, and he doesn’t have a recurrence of cancer.”

Still, Jobs’s current illness has reached a point where no one—not even the notoriously secretive Apple and its even more secretive CEO—can deny it.

In a somewhat unprecedented move, Jobs posted an open letter on Jan. 5 stating the following:

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors….

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it.

So could the mysterious ailment really be nothing but hormones? And is treatment simply a matter of nutrition?

“If a patient came to me with [Jobs's] history, the two big questions that would come to mind are: 1) is this a [recurrent] tumor, and 2) was there sufficient pancreas removed with the original surgery that he’s gradually lost his ability to digest and absorb food,” says Michael Jensen, an endocrinologist and nutrition specialist at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine.

“The third option, when you take out the pancreas and see weight loss like this, is that it’s diabetes,” Jensen says. “But this would be something so well-known and treatable, we would have heard about it. Just the fact that they didn’t say it was diabetes means it probably isn’t.”

Jensen estimates that the chances of tumor recurrence versus impeded digestion are 50-50. But Jobs’s claim that the problem is a “hormone imbalance” that can be treated through “nutritional” means (both terms that rank high on the obfuscation and vagueness scales) raises some questions. If the second option on Jensen’s list is true, and the CEO’s pancreas is no longer making the enzymes he needs to digest food, the problem is in fact dietary—but not hormonal.

“The kind of hormonal imbalances [that are possible] in his case cannot be treated by simple nutritional intervention. If he’s undergoing simple nutritional treatment, then it wouldn’t be a hormone problem,” says Jensen.

While the contradiction remains unexplained, other physicians have raised plenty of possibilities, such as the tumor removal upsetting the balance of hormones like insulin and glucagon, which help control blood sugar levels, or somatostatin and gastrin, which aid digestion and other functions. But there’s a very real possibility that Jobs may once again have cancer.

If this worst-case scenario is true, it might not be devastating for Jobs. In all likelihood, the recurrence would be of the same islet tumor removed in 2004. A malignant islet tumor that recurs still isn’t as deadly as normal pancreatic cancer, and while it could eventually be fatal, an islet tumor recurrence “does not typically cause a rapid, severe [decline] if you can control the hormonal problems, which you usually can,” says Jensen.

Just how important is the truth? After the rumors of Job’s growing illness flamed in the blogosphere last summer, Apple’s stock plummeted 11 percent. At one point, an analyst estimated that the loss of Jobs could mean a 20 percent drop of Apple stock overnight. Then, of course, there’s the matter of a 53-year-old father and creative genius battling a potentially fatal disease—which, depending on your perspective, is the biggest risk at issue.

Related:
DISCOVER: The Truth About McCain’s Melanoma: He Faces a Very Low Risk
RB: Note to Politicians: Medical Prevention May Cost More Than Treatment

Critics poo poo the measure as little more than lip service, a PR move that doesn’t address the far bigger issue: that the drug industry and medicine are hopelessly financially intertwined. (Want proof? Exhibits A, B, and C.) Doctors, meanwhile, brush off the idea that logo-ed pens and Post-Its could alter their prescribing habits.

Still, there’s plenty to be said for the influence of everyday objects, not to mention the power of advertising. Surround yourself with enough Burger King merchandise, and you’d be amazed at how often you start craving Whoppers. Wouldn’t the same principle apply when it comes to physicians and drugs?

(Full disclosure: RB is the child of two doctors, and our childhood desk was filled to overflowing with pens, paperweights, magnets, notepads, and countless other booty emblazoned with words like Diflucan, Avandia, and Provigil. We never went to med school, but we’d probably prescribe Lipitor simply because of their awesome mousepads.)

The pendulum has already started shifting towards greater disclosure in the medical industry, and eliminating freebies is a good move in that direction—not to mention an acknowledgment by the industry that the obscene amounts they’ve been spending on marketing may not be good for medicine.

Now if we could just get them to do something about those free lunches.

Related:
RB: Is Nothing Sacred? Nobel Prize Engulfed in Drug Company Scandal
RB: Clinic to Reveal All Doctor-Drug Industry Ties on the Web
RB: Drug Company Pocket-Padding: The Latest Chapter

Welcome to today’s heaping dose of cynicism, to start off the weekend right: Scandal has hit none other than the Nobel Prize, after it was revealed that a member of the Nobel selection committee also sat on the board of AstraZeneca, a pharmaceuticals juggernaut that will benefit from this year’s award for medicine.

The 2008 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine went to three people this year, Luc Montagnier and his (ahem, female) partner Françoise Barre-Sinoussi for discovering HIV, and Harald zur Hausen for his work on the human papilloma virus (HPV) and its link to cervical cancer.

Wouldn’t you know it, AstraZeneca just happens to have a big fat stake in two lucrative HPV vaccines.

To make matters worse:

Two senior figures in the process that chose Mr. zur Hausen have strong links with the pharmaceutical company, which has also recently begun sponsoring the Nobel website and promotional subsidiary. The company strongly denies any wrongdoing.

Ah yes, well as long as they deny any wrongdoing! No matter that these sponsorships are estimated to cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next three years. Also mildly fishy is the fact that the chairman of the five-person committee that assesses Nobel candidates served as a paid consultant for AstraZeneca in 2006.

And as if improper drug company ties weren’t enough, there’s also the little matter of expenses-paid trips to China for Nobel committee members, made with the intention of “tell[ing Chinese] officials how candidates are selected for prizes.”

The anti-corruption unit of the Swedish police is reportedly starting a preliminary investigation—though Michael Sohlman, executive director of the Nobel Foundation, has dismissed the whole hubbub as a media ploy. Meanwhile, the rest of us can cry into our smörgåsar and wait for Santa to announce his sponsorship deal with Pfizer.

Related:
RB: Note to Media: They Give Nobel Prizes to Women These Days
RB: Clinic to Reveal All Doctor-Drug Industry Ties on the Web
RB: Drug Company Pocket-Padding: The Latest Chapter

• Don’t have ADD, or any conceivable medical need for prescription drugs like Ritalin? Take ‘em anyway, says a group of experts. Granted, whether the people who do need them really need them is still up for discussion.

• Next in this week’s “just what the health care system needs” news: Special guns for the elderly may be classified as medical tools.

• Ask Obama! The transition team launches a new site to take your questions for the president-elect.

• Muslim countries are charging into the evolution/creationism debate. May they approach and handle the topic with the same sanity, respect, and rationality as their Western counterparts.

• Christmas, green-style: solar gingerbread houses!

• And finally, the best global warming protest we’ve seen yet.

It’s been a rough few weeks for anything male. According to a study released this week, males of just about every species are being feminized—or even wiped out of existence—by the slew of unregulated chemicals in our water and environment.

And for those already locked in male adulthood, there’s more bad news: Men in New York City are reportedly losing their desire for sex because of the financial crisis. According to a (highly non-scientific, but not unbelievable) trend piece in the New York Post, many former masters of the universe are shunning coitus due to anxiety over job losses, lost wealth, and other monetary realities of 2008.

While a host of psycho-social factors are likely behind this reported mass libido-loss (assuming that it’s true), it’s possible that a growing disinterest in sex during an economic crisis is linked to physiology, and perhaps even evolution. In other words, hard economic times may translate into a built-in desire for less procreation.

We know that economic hard times and sex/birthrates are linked: fertility declines during recessions, primarily due to the fact that families know they’ll have a harder time raising children. Children born during downturns may also feel the brunt of the economy during gestation and infancy, according to recent research indicating that being born during a recession could lead to a shorter life span.

Given these factors, it’s not a stretch to think the male libido might slow down as a natural reaction to drastic economic conditions. On a physiological level, a man who loses his cave/401K/high-powered job will likely experience a drop in testosterone, one of the hormones primarily responsible for sexual functioning.

Granted, whether or not all the laid-off female bankers are feeling similarly less-than-aroused has yet to be explored.

Related:
RB: Sexual Harassment: A Bad Plan for Population Growth

• It’s no surprise that Americans are losing sleep (though the label “sleep epidemic” is a bit extreme). So cue the comprehensive guide to insomnia treatments.

• The implosion of media spares no one: CNN cuts science and tech unit, bloggers mourn.

• Greening Mexico City? If it happens, color us impressed.

• Michigan legalizes medical marijuana, but patient’s can’t use it ’til April. Ah government bureaucracy.

• The Facebook virus is coming! The Facebook virus is coming!

• Is the Bureau of Land Management holding a “fire sale” for Utah’s oil-and-gas drilling leases?

• Um, duh. Seriously, is this even a question?

Doctors and drug company money have gone together like peas and carrots for as long as most of us can remember. By now, it’s become almost a cliche to note that Big Pharma continues to spend billions every year “influencing” docs, some of whom are pocketing seven-figure checks for notoriously-nebulous “consulting fees.”

All of which makes it pretty remarkable that major medical centers are now planning to disclose the drug company ties of every one of their doctors. While criticism of the chummy relations between the medical and pharmaceutical communities has been on the rise in recent years, a move like this is unprecedented—and has the potential to set a new standard in the industry.

The leader of the disclosure charge is none other than medical behemoth the Cleveland Clinic, which will announce this week that it plan to disclose every physician and researcher tie to the pharmaceutical industry… on its Web site no less. Granted, the number of other hospitals that plan to take such a public and widespread approach to disclosure isn’t huge, according to ABC News, but it includes some pretty big names, including the University of Iowa and Duke University’s Clinical Research Institute.

But is it enough?

Critics say that disclosure in and of itself does little to discourage conflicts of interest, and that the self-policing of these policies gives physicians incentives to under-reveal. Cynics even say the ties between the two industries are so deep that reporting them is just shy of pointless. Plus there’s the argument that doctors need the drug industry (and vice versa) for its funding of continued medical education and important research.

Still, when given the option of mandatory disclosure versus condoned secrecy, we’d say it’s an easy choice.

Related:
RB: Drug Company Pocket-Padding: The Latest Chapter
RB: Drugonomics: Cash-Strapped Americans Taking Fewer Prescription Meds

This month in DISCOVER, Mark Anderson has a feature story on the medical controversy surrounding shaken baby syndrome (SBS). The crux of the debate is this:

On one side of the courtroom, representing mainstream medical opinion, are those who believe shaken baby syndrome (SBS) is a valid diagnosis. They say that decades of clinical experience and criminal confessions—in which a parent has admitted to shaking a child with symptoms of SBS—bolster their case to the point of near-certainty. On the other side, a growing number of skeptics are now claiming that the evidence for the syndrome rests on dubious medical ground with questionable biophysical models supporting it.

The confusion centers around the trio of symptoms that lead to an SBS diagnosis: bleeding between the brain and skull, bleeding behind the retinas, and brain swelling. Conventional medical wisdom holds that some or all of these mean a baby is suffering from SBS. But a growing number of skeptics say the symptom list could come from any number of other sources, from infections to diet to a fall.

While the final medical verdict is still up in the air, the issue highlights the tricky—and potentially devastating—fallout when medical uncertainty headbutts the legal system. SBS presents a clear dilemma: If a baby has it, the “fact” that the baby’s death or injuries were caused by SBS is in and of itself evidence that a parent, caretaker, or other handler intentionally committed a crime.

Of course, if SBS is, as one neurosurgery professor called it, “a sham,” then anyone convicted of abuse, negligence, or even murder in an SBS case has potentially been put in jail for a nonexistent crime.

The sticky law-versus-medicine issue came to a head with the 1997 trial of British nanny Louise Woodward, who was convicted of second-degree murder in Massachusetts after a baby in her charge died. While Woodward was accused of other acts of negligence such as dropping the baby, the cause of death was a subdural hematoma, and SBS was declared its source. The case received intense media scrutiny, and a judge later reduced the charge to involuntary manslaughter and sentenced Woodward to time already served.

If Woodward had in fact dropped the baby, chances are the fall caused far more damage than any shaking could. But dropping an infant would rarely if ever lead to criminal charges as serious as murder. What the SBS diagnosis brought to Woodward’s case was intention—no one accidentally shakes a baby hard enough to cause internal bleeding. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak. Except that if these deadly injuries are unrelated to shaking, the pudding is proof of nothing.

Related:
RB: American Political System Prevents Tyranny But May Prolong Use of Torture
RB: Brain Research for Sale? Gaming Industry Looks to Science to Beat Class Action

What would happen if the U.S. government announced a new obesity-fighting initiative whereby every chronically obese person in the country was given up to two federally-funded Big Macs a day? That’s basically the plan of attack Switzerland is taking with its heroin addicts. The BBC reports that the Swiss have passed a “radical” health policy that allows long-term addicts to receive the drug at government clinics, free of charge.

A whopping sixty-eight percent of voters supported the policy, which would allow addicts to inject the drug up to twice a day under medical supervision. Granted, the scheme has some benefits: it increases control of needle use and disposal, provides incentives for addicts to come into clinics regularly and be treated for other medical or psychological problems, and removes the need for them to resort to crime to pay for their habit. Part of the bill’s popularity also comes from the fact that the scheme has already been underway in Zurich for 14 years, and many consider it successful.

Still, at the end of the day, the bill is exactly what it sounds like: a plan to have the government pay to shoot its citizens up with expensive and extremely dangerous drugs.

It’s hard to imagine that lesser alternatives, like offering free methadone instead of a syringe full of Harry Jones, wouldn’t be a better plan, even for the worst addicts. And it would be interesting to see whether Zurich has seen any unintended consequences from its free heroin policy, such as an increase in the number of heroin users who cross the line to addiction or a migration of hardcore addicts in search of a free and unlimited source of smack.

And for the day’s big dose of irony, in another referendum vote at around the same time, 63 percent of the country voted against de-criminalizing cannabis. Where to even begin on that one.

• The New York Times advises us to approach the Thanksgiving meal “the way a CEO might.” Uhh, not even sure where to start on that one.

• Some good news this holiday: Cancer diagnoses are on the decline.

• The newest in medical technology: A barcode chip that tests your blood for disease.

• The latest in climate change research: A shrimp on a treadmill. Seriously.

• You know it’s bad out there when gaming companies are seeing their stock take a hit.

• And to top it off, the financial crisis hits Google. It’s official: No one is immune.

• Sketchy study finds that more people believe in aliens and ghosts than God. Or perhaps they just think God is an alien?

• And here’s a fun idea in the obesity era: health waivers for Thanksgiving dinner guests. More casserole, anyone?