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submission
uncleO writes:
An article in today's New York Times describes two studies that measure the harm causes by early detection of cancer. From the article, "screening [for prostate cancer] often leads to what can be disabling treatments for men whose cancer otherwise would never have harmed them ... In recent years, researchers have found that many, if not most, cancers ... grow very slowly or stop growing altogether. 'We are going from an 1845 definition of cancer to a 21st-century definition of cancer,'"
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submission
uncleO writes:
The current issue of Scientific American has an interesting article,
Impact from the Deep, about the possible causes for the five major global extinctions. It contends that only the most recent one was caused by a "dinosaur killer" asteroid impact. Evidence suggests that the others were caused by "great bubbles of toxic H2S gas erupting into the atmosphere" from the oceans due to anoxia.
From the article: "The so-called thermal extinction at the end of the Paleocene began when atmospheric CO2 was just under 1,000 parts per million (ppm). At the end of the Triassic, CO2 was just above 1,000 ppm. Today with CO2 around 385 ppm...climbing at an annual rate of 2 ppm...to 3 ppm, levels could approach 900 ppm by the end of the next century."
