Kid’s Unlimited Welcome to Dr. Armand Rossi’s email newsletter:
Kid’s Unlimited
November 23, 2004
Kid’s Unlimited is a monthly, or semi-monthly, newsletter of various articles, funnies, tidbits and opinions relating to our children and chiropractic. My opinions will always be in red and italicized. Please feel free to share the appropriate articles with patients, friends, and other chiropractors. I never buy any lists or put names on my email list unless the names were submitted to me directly. If you wish to be removed from my list, just reply with the word “remove” in the subject line.
Thank you… Together we will make a difference.
Yours in Chiropractic, Armand Rossi
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This message comes with a heart-felt wish of peace and happiness this Thanksgiving. It is, for me, a time of reflection for everything in my life that I am thankful for. I am blessed with a wonderful wife. She is my balance and my strength. She inspires and guides me. I love her dearly. I am blessed with the most wonderful family. My children and grandchildren. Could not have asked for anything better. I don`t want to forget the rest of my family. My father, aunt, sister and her family, my brother-in-law and his wife. They all serve God in their own way which enhances everyone`s lives. I am blessed with wonderful friends. Those who love me, no matter what and support me with their encouragement and guidance. I am also blessed by my students and teachers. They can be one and the same. I grow and learn from them.
I am blessed to be chosen as a tool for this great mission of mine. To serve God by serving mankind. To be a facilitator in allowing people to re-connect the physical to the spiritual. I am totally blessed and humbled to be a chiropractor. What else could I possibly do that shapes my life physically, mentally and spiritually. What an honor. What a blessing! And I even get paid for doing this! Thank you one and all...
The Liberty Committee wrote:
ACTION ALERTNovember 8, 2004
High-priced lobbyists in Washington are tough to beat; especially the ones who represent the pharmaceutical industry. But we can`t let them win this time.
On September 7th, we told you about the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health`s plan (a presidential commission) to subject every child in America to mandatory mental-health screening; a plan that will result in the forced drugging of children. Two days later, Congressman Ron Paul tried to stop this insidious plan by offering an amendment to the Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Act for FY 2005. The amendment received 95 "yes" votes, but it failed to pass.
However, Congressman Paul and several of his colleagues are not giving up. Neither are we. They have drafted a letter to Congressman Ralph Regula, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education Appropriations, asking for his help. The letter will be sent to Mr. Regula this Friday. As of today, 11 House members have signed the letter which is a very good start. But the high-priced lobbyists representing the drug companies are already working to oppose our effort, so we need to get additional support for our side.
Read the letter and then urge your U.S. representative to sign it. If you think mandatory mental-health screening can’t happen in the good ol` USofA, think again. In 1995, while George W. Bush was governor, the state of Texas launched the Texas Medication Algorithm Project. The state of Illinois launched a similar program in 2003. Backers of those two state programs now want to go nationwide! We must stop them!!
To read the letter and send your message, go to
http://www.thelibertycommittee.org/regula.htmBackground
http://www.thelibertycommittee.org/update09.07.04.htmKent Snyder
The Liberty Committee
http://www.thelibertycommittee.orgNovember 9, 2004
ESSAY
Germs, Germs Everywhere. Are You Worried? Get Over It.
By MARY ROACH
I saw a television advertisement recently for a new product called an air sanitizer. A woman stood in her kitchen, spraying the empty space in front of her as though using Mace against an imaginary assailant. She appeared very determined. Where others are satisfied with antibacterial-laced sponges, dish soaps, hand sanitizers and telephone wipes, here was a woman who sought to sterilize the air itself. As a casual student of microbiology, I find it hard to escape the absurdity here. This woman is, like any human being, home to hundreds of trillions of bacteria. Bacteria make up a solid third, by weight, of the contents of her intestines.
If you were to sneak into her bathroom while she was showering - and based on my general impression of this woman from the advertisement, I don`t recommend this - and secret away a teaspoon of the water at her feet, you would find some 820 billion bacteria. Bacteria are unavoidably, inevitably - and, usually, utterly benignly - a part of our world. (Statistics courtesy of a University of Arizona microbiologist, Dr. Charles P. Gerba, a man who gave his son the middle name Escherichia, the E in E. coli.)
The fantasy of a germ-free home is not only absurd, but it is also largely pointless. Unless you share your home with someone very old, very young (under 6 months) or very ill, the few hundred bacteria on a countertop, doorknob or spoon pose no threat. The bacteria that cause food poisoning, the only significant rational bacterial worry in the average home, need to multiply into the thousands or millions before they can overwhelm your immune system and cause symptoms.
The only way common food poisoning bacteria can manage this is to spend four or five hours reproducing at room temperature in something moist that you then eat. If you are worried about food poisoning, the best defense is the refrigerator. If you don`t make a habit of eating perishable food that has been left out too long, don`t worry about bacteria.
Viruses are slightly different. You need only pick up a few virus particles to infect yourself with a cold or flu, and virus particles can survive on surfaces for days. So disinfecting the surfaces in the home should, in theory, reduce the chances of picking up a bug. (Some antibacterial products also kill viruses.)
In practice, the issue is less clear. A study by Dr. Elaine Larson at the Columbia School of Nursing called into question the usefulness of antibacterial products for the home. In New York, 224 households, each with at least one preschooler, were randomly assigned to two groups. One group used antibacterial cleaning, laundry and hand-washing products. The other used ordinary products.
For 48 weeks, the groups were monitored for seven symptoms of colds, flu and food poisoning - and found to be essentially the same. According to Dr. Gerba`s research, an active adult touches an average of 300 surfaces every 30 minutes. You cannot win at this. You will become obsessive-compulsive. Just wash your hands with soap and water a few times a day, and leave it at that.
I suspect that a minority of the Americans who buy antigerm wipes and sanitizers are motivated by concerns over food poisoning or colds and the flu. Their behavior is a product not so much of prudence, but of phobia. Phobias are irrational fears, wrought of the union of dread and misunderstanding. People see a headline - an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 at a hamburger chain, say - and they start to worry.
In the case of bacteria, they cannot see the source of their worry, and they do not know much about it, so they go overboard. They add a few more "wiping events," as the cleanser market researchers say, to their daily routines. Where there is an irrational fear, there is a product-development team to fan it and feed it and exploit it.
According to the research firm Mintel International, 11 new home antibacterial products have appeared on the market this year, more than twice the number in 2003. It is the biggest marketing coup since bottled water.
The makers of antibacterial products are fond of the word "germs." It is purposefully vague. Do they mean bacteria? Viruses? Both? Neither? Because the idea is simply to connote contamination. These products are as much about cooties as they are about viruses or bacteria.
Contamination is in many ways a psychological construct. It is the notion that our belongings or our loved ones can become unclean by the mere touch of a stranger. Nothing is actually transferred by the touch. The contamination is symbolic, magical, irrational. It makes sense that the extravagantly rich - Howard Hughes or Donald Trump, for instance - are our most notorious germphobics, people made uncomfortable by the thought of shaking a stranger`s hand.
The higher you rise and the better sequestered you are from the "unwashed masses," the smaller and dirtier the average Joe must begin to seem. Other human beings become our germs.
A plea, then, for a little calm, a little rationality. Try to look upon bacteria as did their discoverer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, "For me, this was among all the marvels that I discovered in nature the most marvelous of all, and I must say, that for my part, no more pleasant sight has met my eye than this of so many thousand living creatures in one small drop of water."
Mary Roach is the author of "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers."
should adopt universal hepatitis B immunisation, says a senior doctor in this week`s BMJ.The Britain is one of the few developed countries that have not implemented universal immunisation. Because the burden of hepatitis B was low and individual rights were considered paramount, a policy of selective immunisation of high-risk groups, such as health care workers, homosexual men, and drug addicts, has been followed. United Kingdom However, this approach has failed to provide adequate coverage in
and should be replaced by universal immunisation, writes Nicholas Beeching of the Britain . Royal Liverpool University Hospital The hepatitis B virus causes up to a million deaths worldwide every year. In the
, 4,500 acute hepatitis B virus infections, 7,500 new cases of chronic infection, and up to 430 cases of hepatitis B related liver cancer are thought to occur, with estimated NHS costs of up to {pound}375m. United Kingdom The availability of effective and safe vaccines makes primary prevention of hepatitis B an attractive strategy. Universal immunisation has been adopted by over 150 countries, with evidence of effectiveness lasting more than 10 years in preventing infection, carriage, and liver cancer.
In light of this evidence, it is time that
`s policy was reviewed, he concludes. Britain Contact:
Nicholas Beeching, Clinical Lead and Senior Lecturer, Tropical and Infectious Disease Unit,
Royal Liverpool University Hospital ,Email: nicholas.beeching@rlbuht.nhs.uk Liverpool ,UK 1)
SEES STEEP RISE IN `NO INDICATED RISK` CAESAREANS US Online First
(Rise in "no indicated risk" primary caesareans in the
, United States 1991-2001: cross sectional analysis)
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/rapidpdf/bmj.38279.705336.0B
The
has seen a steep rise in caesareans to women with no reported medical risk, according to research published today on bmj.com. United States Researchers analysed information on four million births per year between 1991 and 2001, identifying mothers with no medical risk or labour and delivery complication noted on the birth certificate. From this group of mothers, they examined those cases where mothers had a first-time caesarean.
Results showed that caesarean rates increased by 67% among these mothers. First-time mothers aged 34 and over were the most likely to have a `no indicated risk` caesarean, with almost 1 in 5 giving birth by caesarean in 2001.
Caesarean births also rose steeply for `no indicated risk` mothers under 30, increasing by 58% between 1991 and 2001. For first-time mothers over 40, the odds of having a `no indicated risk` caesarean were over 5 times that for mothers aged 20-24.
Undergoing caesareans where there is no reported medical indication raises serious questions, say the authors, not least for younger mothers who plan to have further children. More research is needed on whether the risks associated with surgery outweigh the benefits in these circumstances, they conclude.
Contact:
Professor Eugene Declercq, Maternal and Child Health Department,
University Boston School ofPublic Health ,Email: declercq@bu.edu Boston ,USA
| Top Stories - USATODAY.com |
 FDA scientist details problems of five drugs
By Liz Szabo and Rita Rubin, USA TODAY During a Senate hearing Thursday regarding Vioxx, the arthritis blockbuster pulled off the market in September over concerns about increased risk of heart attacks and strokes, FDA (news - web sites) scientist David Graham dropped a bombshell about five other drugs on the U.S. market. Graham, associate director for science in the FDA`s Office of Drug Safety, said the five drugs pose serious safety concerns: • Abbott Laboratories` weight-loss drug Meridia can cause high blood pressure, Graham said. When he raised a question about the drug`s usefulness in a report, though, Graham said he was forced to delete it. Abbott spokeswoman Laureen Cassidy defended Meridiaby saying it has been studied in morethan 100 studies and has been used by 15 million patients worldwide. (Related story:Scientist says FDA system `broken`) • AstraZeneca`s Crestor is the "only cholesterol-lowering drug that causes acute kidney failure," Graham said. Emily Denney, a spokeswoman for AstraZeneca, says the drug has been prescribed to more than 3.5 million people worldwide and has been extensively tested. • Roche`s drug Accutane, approved to treat severe acne, is a "20-year regulatory failure," Graham said. Accutane can cause serious birth defects if taken by pregnant women, he said, and the agency`s efforts to prevent this problem are ineffective. He said the FDA should institute a system that would restrict the distribution of the drug. Carolyn Glynn, a Roche spokeswoman, said the company will now require all patients - as well as their doctors and pharmacists - to register with an independent agency that will track patient use. • Pfizer`s arthritis medicine Bextra is in the same drug class as Vioxx. A recent study showed that the incidence of heart attacks and strokes among Bextra patients was more than double that of patients taking sugar pills. Pfizer spokeswoman Susan Bro says an analysis of previous studies found no increase in "serious cardiovascular events" in nearly 8,000 arthritis patients. • GlaxoSmithKline`s drug Serevent treats asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Before the FDA approved this asthma drug, a British study found with 90% certainty that it increased the risk of death from serious asthma complications, Graham said. There have been reports of patients "found dead clutching their Serevent inhaler," he said. GlaxoSmithKline issued a statement defending the medication, saying the FDA "fully considered" safety concerns last year when it issued a black box warning in the medicine`s label. It was clear Thursday that Graham was not speaking on behalf of the FDA. Sandra Kweder, deputy director of the Office of New Drugs in the FDA`s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, told committee members there`s no evidence that these five drugs are any more dangerous than others. Graham`s testimony hurt the manufacturers` stock prices. AstraZeneca dropped $3.80 or 8.6%. GlaxoSmithKline dropped $1.45 or 3.2%. Pfizer was down 22 cents, or 0.8%, while Abbott Laboratories was down 28 cents, or 0.6%. Roche, a Swiss company, doesn`t trade on U.S. exchanges. DRUG PROBLEM "Why didn`t we have a drug problem when you and I were growing up?" It just so happened that I had saved something that had been sent to me a few weeks ago. So, I printed off a copy and took it to him the next day. I smiled when I handed it to him and said, "I did have a drug problem when I wuz a kid growing up on the farm in southeast Here`s what the sheet said:
Or if I didn`t put forth my best effort in everything that was asked of me. Those drugs are still in my veins; and they affect my behavior in |
I never checked the validity of this story, but I think it is good enough to share, even if it is not true.
A sobbing little girl stood near a small church from which she had been turned away because it was "too crowded. "I can`t go to Sunday School," she sobbed to the pastor as he walked by. Seeing her shabby, unkempt appearance, the pastor guessed the reason and, taking her by the hand, took her inside and found a place for her in the Sunday school class. The child was so happy that they found room for her, and she went to bed that night thinking of the children who have no place to worship Jesus.
Some two years later, this child lay dead in one of the poor tenement buildings. Her parents called for the kindhearted pastor who had befriended their daughter to handle the final arrangements.
As her poor little body was being moved, a worn and crumpled red purse was found which seemed to have been rummaged from some trash dump.
Inside was found 57 cents and a note, scribbled in childish handwriting, which read: "This is to help build the little church bigger so more children can go to Sunday School."
For two years she had saved for this offering of love.When the pastor tearfully read that note, he knew instantly what he would do.. Carrying this note and the cracked, red pocketbook to the pulpit, he told the story of her unselfish love and devotion.
He challenged his deacons to get busy and raise enough money for the larger building. But the story does not end there...
A newspaper learned of the story and published It. It was read by a wealthy realtor who offered them a parcel of land worth many thousands.
When told that the church could not pay so much, he offered to sell it to the little church for 57 cents.
Church members made large donations. Checks came from far and wide. Within five years the little girl`s gift had incr eased to $250,000.00—a huge sum for that time (near the turn of the century). Her unselfish love had paid large dividends.
When you are in the city of Philadelphia, look up Temple Baptist Church, with a seating capacity of 3,300. And be sure to visit Temple University, where thousands of students are educated.
Have a look, too, at the Good Samaritan Hospital and at a Sunday School building which houses hundreds of beautiful children, built so that no child in the area will ever need to be left outside during Sunday school time.
In one of the rooms of this building may be seen the picture of the sweet face of the little girl whose 57 cents, so sacrificially saved,made such remarkable history. Alongside of it is a portrait of her kind pastor, Dr. Russel H. Conwell, author of the book, "Acres of Diamonds".
This is a true story, which goes to show WHAT GOD CAN DO WITH 57
CENTS.
You Live in
1. You are willing to park 3 blocks away because you found shade.
2. You can open and drive your car without touching the car door or the steering wheel.
4. You would give anything to be able to splash cold water on your face.
5. You can attend any function wearing shorts and a tank top.
6. "Dress Code" is meaningless at high schools and universities. Picture lingerie ads.
7. You can drive for 4 hours in one direction and never leave town.
8. You have over 100 recipes for Mexican food.
9. The 4 seasons are: tolerable, hot, really hot, and ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!
10. You know that "dry heat" is comparable to what hits you in the face when you open your oven door.
You Live in
1. You make over $250,000 and you still can`t afford to buy a house.
2 The high school quarterback calls a time-out to answer his cell phone.
3. The fastest part of your commute is going down your driveway.
4. You know how to eat an artichoke.
5. You drive your rented Mercedes to your neighborhood block party.
6. When someone asks you how far something is, you tell them how long it will take to get there rather than how many miles away it is.
You Live in
1. You say "the city" and expect everyone to know you mean
2. You have never been to the Statue of
3. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from
