Dear AC,

The article states "German professors Dr Andreas Hahn and Dr Moritz Hagenmeyer, who advise food manufacturers on how to advertise their products, asked the European Commission if the claim could be made on labels."
Did I miss something? Do you believe their request was disinterested?

If the unbranded source is readily available and consumed in every home, the promotion of the branded version with misleading therapeutic claims is debatable, ethically at least.
Here's a better analogy: Should I be allowed to sell oxygen tanks and claim that "regular breathing of significant amounts of oxygen helps fight hypoxia" ?

The science is weak, especially when the claim recommends "regular consumption of significant amounts of water". What is a "significant amount" ? Excess water intake does have detrimental health effects. Proactive drinking is recommended to prevent dehydration in some circumstances (lasting physical exercise, exceptional heat, to the elderly), but in general listening to one's thirst is adequate. Also, if someone actually suffers from dehydration, a significant water intake can be dangerous; if you want a simple advice, slowly chewing and eating a vegetable is a better bet.

I'm not saying the EU doesn't have more urgent things to deal with, but had I been asked to rule on the appropriateness of the claim, I would have reached the same conclusion.

My friend living in Japan was bringing local colleages to a training to be performed in Germany. As they passed through the security controls (this was before the US 9/11), he discovered that one of his Japanese friends had dozens of bottles of water in his carry-on. He asked him why...
The explanation given by the colleague was that he had heard that beer is the water of Germans, Germans only drink beer (yes, it's a popular joke...). But he doesn't drink beer and he needs water...

Through most of Europe, tap water is perfectly drinkable, and healthier that bottled water. So what this European committee ruled on is whether companies selling bottled water have the right to promote them by claiming that they have a therapeutic benefit. I think it's quite ok to reject this claim.

In my office, we have this big fridge distributing bottled drinks, made available by a company linked to Coca-Cola. It comes with printed claims and brochures explaining what we need to drink at least 4 x 5 dl per day (the machine contains free bottles of 5 dl).
I'm an MD, and while a liquid intake of 1.5 to 2 liters is generally needed, it is wise to get most of it from the tap, or from soups and vegetables. You can certainly live well without any "drinks" - and premature death is guaranteed to those who would drink four bottles of these sugary drinks every day.

As much as I hate the anti-vaccine FUD, constructive science cannot use the same tactics. Science and Pharma companies also make mistakes, and some vaccines have been withdrawn for very valid scientific reasons after years of use.

When Bill Gates says "Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn't have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today", it suggests that all mothers who refused that their child gets vaccinated by measles had their child die, which is total BS. His intentions may be good, but I reprove the tactic.

When you look at a disease like Chicken Pox in childhood, in our developed countries, the complications are rare enough, that it is fair to demand hard proof of the benefit and safety of the vaccine - while I might send my 5 year old child to play with a neighbor who has Chicken Pox, knowing that at that age the disease will be mild (if at all, if he has not unknowingly been exposed in the past). A choice I make for myself or my family, and a solution that a company sells to our society, do require different levels of scrutiny.

I was also skeptical of H1N1 vaccines last year, did not go for it. This year the current flu epidemic in Switzerland is predominantly H1N1, and guess what, we now handle it just as any other flu, and all is ... as with any other flu. Thinking of the billions that were spent on H1N1 flu vaccines last year, I remain certain that there could have been better uses for these funds (e.g. obesity prevention).

So yes:
Pharma companies must be held accountable, and ought to demonstrate the efficacy and safety of the products that they sell. And when it comes to the scientific or pseudo-scientific communities, whether pro- or anti-vaccine, we must be equally weary of the financial or egotistic interests they may have. As a discerning society, we must carefully choose the solutions that we invest in.

There is one simple thing to keep in mind: the real customer that Facebook cares for is not you, but the advertisers. They are the ones who bring revenue to them.

What you get is some web pages to play with, in exchange of the personal information and eyeball time that you give to their paying customers.

I really would not worry about WPMs; but how would I look at a programmer who has never bothered to learn touch-typing?

A self-respecting programmer ought to learn touch-typing, just as he ought to know more than one programming language, ought to read and educate himself to new techniques, and ought to master an editor, and to use other tools that relate to his field of activity (profiler, packet-sniffer, debugger, ...).

Looking for the next key to type takes away some of your attention; and you don't want a programmer to pick short variable names only to save himself some typing (seen before...).

I also hope you were joking...
When the VW claims 60 MPUSG combined, it is a (weighed) average of the City and Highway scores.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_signals

Interesting follow-up announcements by WHO today (source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35057450/ns/health-cold_and_flu/ )
[[[
WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said the relatively low number of confirmed deaths from swine flu didn't mean the virus wasn't a pandemic.
"A pandemic has nothing to do with severity or number of deaths," he told The Associated Press. "A pandemic literally is a global spread of a disease."
He said WHO was "always very measured and sober in what we said and we always described the virus as causing overwhelmingly mild disease. "We cannot control how people react to this information," he added.
]]]
So the WHO says that it is technically a pandemic, but that did not mean that it is critical since it produces a "mild disease".
The problem is still with the media coverage that has surrounded a single strain among the existing flu pandemics - and the influence it has had on decision-makers (biased risk management).

First time I am referred to as the bottom of class type of guy. I would never have mentioned my background if it was not because of a comment in the message I replied to. I am a doctor, I do talk with specialists, and I do put together my own opinion which may or may not be aligned with the mainstream.

My statement was that some new techniques and adjuvants were used in the manufacturing of some of these vaccines, and that the market launch and broad use of them were initiated without some of the precautions that are usually taken.

The risk may have been acceptable, but has to be considered as part of the global assessment.

Wow, I have never heard of this happening. Any references?

The greatest contribution to human health has been improved sanitation. Vaccination against small pox, DiTePer, Tuberculosis, etc has also been a real leap forward.
But as you probably know, when it comes to measles, mumps, chicken pox, and flu (outside of specific target populations), the benefit remains debated in the scientific community - especially when it comes to long term effects on the population or following generation.

I am not in contact with patients; this said, I do not consider that personnel who refused the vaccine (2/3 of them in some areas) are unethical: transmission is primarily prevented by hygiene measures (hand washing...), and by taking a leave(and/or mask etc) once getting symptomatic.

Wow talking about fallacies... Are you suggesting that the H1N1 vaccine has not been a profitable venture for their manufacturers? Have you not seen how shares of H1N1 vaccine-making companies were influenced by related news reports?

You sound like: "Pharma companies only care for you. You need them. Watch more TV."

My key point remains that, in this case like in others, there are real unknowns - still today, even if less than a few months ago.
We can only wish that political decisions would always be fact-based and objectively weighed. The truth is that they are not, as history and lobbying has often proven.

When there are uncertainties, and a powerful group benefits from a given decision, I simply advice everyone who is able to think in his own mind to think critically.

My family and myself (3 to 70 years old) have chosen to not be vaccinated, and I believe like many that money has been squandered in this H1N1 "pandemic" affair.

This is a neutral and uninterested opinion, from someone who has some understanding of medical issues and risk management in general. I have no love or hate for pharma companies, and have absolutely no conflict of interest.

Kind regards,
Ivan

I am a doctor, and like many in the medical field, I am fed-up with all the BS related to the swine flu.

Every time that news agencies (Reuters, AFP, etc) publish headlines saying "12500 deaths from the Swine flu" but omit to state in the article that the "classic" seasonal flu kills hundreds of thousands worldwide every year, this is inappropriately biased. I think we can call this fear-mongering.

Ok, the H1N1 strain might be a bit more aggressive. But the vaccine itself has also been more aggressive, and normal safety checks and clinical studies were bypassed; the vaccine injections themselves have caused hospitalizations and casualties. And many have been put under pressure to get vaccinated, even if we did not want to ("you don't get vaccinated for yourself, you get vaccinated to protect those around you..."). I am fortunate that I have been able to resist.
So the "pandemic" might have been worse, but the negative side effects of the vaccine itself might have been much more dramatic as well.

Another core issue is that we must manage risk objectively, and focus our resources (which are always limited) in the areas where are going to provide the best return, to the best of our knowledge at that point.
We have squandered billions of dollars on flu shots, benefiting the pharma industry, with a probably dubious and very short-term benefit to the people. With their powers, and leveraging WHO announcements, big pharma corporations have pulled all these funds towards them, benefiting only themselves and their shareholders.
Some flood-resistant levies and earthquake-resistant buildings are still waiting to be built. New sports facilities, more gym hours in school, promotion of healthy lifestyles, are all things which may have been better investments, providing better returns for the money.

Governments and health authorities must objectively assess which investment is likely to be the most beneficial to their community.
Because of pressure from pharma lobbies, and the leverage that the WHO has provided by declaring a pandemic, I am certain that the risks were not weighted and assessed objectively, and that precious health funds were squandered in a way that only benefited to the pharma industry.

This is not only a "hindsight is 20/20" kind of thing, but a real societal problem.
  -Ivan

That's for a personal (or small-team) task list: a simple text file under revision control.
One line per task, indented subtasks, interspresed notes.
Moving a file to the 'DONE' log section comes down to: dd'dp[CTRL-O]
    (can be a 1-key custom shortcut).

Of course, this won't be suitable for a larger team ;)

I believe that musing is distracting; some studies have shown that performance/productivity are affected by listening to music, just as other forms of multitasking. However, so is office chatter, phone or paging system calls, email alerts, chat alerts, requests from other colleagues, and other interruptions. A symptom to watch for is programmers saying that they prefer to come in early or staying in late in order to be more productive - you must then consider making alterations to the office/work environment. But this is to be done by working *with* the team and look for ideas/improvement options that are accessible to the business.

But the manager is wasting his time when he focuses on music listening habits - music might be better (for one) than ambient noises.

An internet-connected multimedia computer (pretty much anything nowadays) counts as a TV+radio set.
Which means that even if you do not have any other apparatus (no TV...), you have to pay quarterly fee of CHF 115.50 - about 300 Euros per year.

And yes, this is to sponsor contents and broadcasts from the Swiss television and radio stations.

Allows us to have less advertisement time than in the USA, and to have some "quality programs" that are not always maket-/audience-driven.

Not always a bad thing... like all taxes ... although one might disagree with how the money is used.

Atheists should pay lower health insurance premiums.

As a significant portion of overall health care costs are imputable to intensive care and other reanimation-related costs, this is a logical commercial conclusion. ...at least for those who support a fully privatized and market-driven health insurance system.