What's killing us this week?

[sparks]

This explains why Jenny didn't breast feed.

Is there an autism connection?


You be the judge.

[Pyrrho]

Now I got the staggers.

[Doctor X]

Upgrade your stereo.

--J.D.

[Anaxagoras]

First Vaccination (Smallpox): 1796

First Incidence and Diagnosis of Autism: 1943

EXPLANE THAT SKETPICS!!!

Sorry to make you cry.

J&D

I'm guessing that the thing we now call autism existed before that under a different name or names? "Feeble-minded" or some other obsolete term depending on the severity. Or just "odd" for high-functioning ones.

[Doctor X]

We just exposed them on wind-swept crags.

--J.D.

[shemp]

"Tetched in the head."

[Anaxagoras]

Household disinfectants could be making kids overweight, study says

[Doctor X]

Not the food they eat and the exercise they do not do.

--J.D.

[shemp]

Not the food they eat and the exercise they do not do.

--J.D.

Why do you hate science!?

[Doctor X]

Tits are not big enough.

--J.D.

[Anaxagoras]

Sperm Count Zero

Yeah, sure. That'll be what does our species in. Falling sperm counts.

[Witness]

↑ Aha! The Planet™ fights back!

[Bruce]

This explains why Jenny didn't breast feed.

Is there an autism connection?


You be the judge.

Studies show that traces of silicone in breast milk can lead to symptoms in infants that lead mothers into believing they have autism and convince an entire generation to believe it's linked to vaccines without any scientific evidence or even so much as an official medical diagnosis.

Other studies show that real boobs are nice.

More at eleven.

[Bruce]

This explains why Jenny didn't breast feed.

Is there an autism connection?


You be the judge.

Studies show that traces of silicone in breast milk can lead to symptoms in infants that lead mothers into believing they have autism and convince an entire generation to believe it's linked to vaccines without any scientific evidence or even so much as an official medical diagnosis.

Other studies show that real boobs are nice.

More at eleven.

[Bruce]

Double post because boobs come in pairs.

[Pyrrho]

Shitting my brains out here, Boss.

[Witness]

Dubious "via Internet" research, but here you go:

Here are the top ways people die while taking selfies and “being cool”

The top way to go while snapping a self-portrait was drowning. This includes being washed away by waves on a beach, capsizing in a boat, and getting into picturesque water while not knowing how to swim. Transportation came next, with the biggest risk being clicking a pic in front of a moving train. Selfie deaths from falls and fires followed, along with animal mauling, electrocution, and firearms. Most of the fatalities involving pics with firearms occurred in the US.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/10 ... -top-list/

[Anaxagoras]

'The food supplement that ruined my liver'

Green tea capsules. Seems a little odd to me. My wife and practically every other Japanese person drink loads of the stuff as tea. Perhaps it just wasn't meant to be eaten as capsules? Or maybe they're misattributing the cause. I don't know.

But as we all know, supplements don't have to be subjected to the same kind of testing for safety as drugs. So maybe something that is perfectly safe as tea, isn't so safe when you eat it raw?

Jim McCants took green tea capsules in a drive to get healthy in middle age. His doctors now say they left him needing an urgent liver transplant, writes the BBC's Tristan Quinn.
It should have been one of the happiest days of his life. But Jim McCants looks back on his youngest son's high school graduation with mixed emotions. As he sat down next to his wife Cathleen in the university auditorium, just outside Dallas, Texas, she turned to look at him.
"She said 'Do you feel OK?'" Jim recalls. "I said, 'Yeah I feel fine, why?' 'Your face is yellow, your eyes are yellow, you look terrible.' When I looked in the mirror it was shocking."
It was shocking partly because Jim, then 50, had been working on improving his lifestyle and losing weight, focusing on eating more healthily and taking regular exercise.

As part of his mid-life health kick, Jim had started taking a green tea supplement because he had heard it might have cardiac benefits. These supplements have grown in popularity in recent years, often breathlessly promoted online for their antioxidant benefits, and their supposed ability to aid weight loss and prevent cancer.

He had been taking the green tea supplement for two to three months when he became ill. According to Jim's medical record this is the presumed cause of his liver injury. "It was shocking because I'd only heard about the benefits," remembers Jim. "I'd not heard about any problems."
After his admission to hospital, Jim went into a "holding pattern", waiting for the results of a series of blood tests to establish the seriousness of his liver injury. Then, about three weeks after his wife had first noticed he looked ill, one of his liver doctors delivered the news he had been fearing: "She said you need a liver transplant. This has to happen fast. You have days - you don't have a week."
Jim was stunned.

What is it about green tea supplements that might cause harm at certain doses to some people? Scientists do not know for certain. Because green tea has been drunk for thousands of years, supplements consisting of its concentrated form are regulated in the US and Europe as foods, not medicines. That means that specific safety testing has not been required, so the scientific picture of how green tea supplements might affect our health is incomplete.
"If you are drinking modest amounts of green tea you're very safe," says Prof Herbert Bonkovsky, director of liver services at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, who has been tracking injuries linked to green tea supplements for nearly 20 years. "The greater risk comes in people who are taking these more concentrated extracts."
Concern has focused on a potentially toxic ingredient called Epigallocatechin-3-gallate or EGCG, the most abundant of the naturally occurring compounds with antioxidant properties in green tea, called catechins. There are likely to be a number of factors that might make an individual susceptible to harm from EGCG including genetics, and the way supplements are used.
"Usually people are taking these green tea extracts trying to lose weight, so they're often not eating," Dr Bonkovsky explains. "We know from animal studies that fasted animals absorb a much higher percentage of the catechins than do fat animals. There may well be other factors of other drugs, other chemicals, use of alcohol that are also important as modifying factors."

We've probably all heard that green tea has health benefits (but I don't know how strong the science behind that really is). But people normally consume it by making tea with hot water, not eating the leaves themselves. Anyway, very few supplements have any serious science to back them up. That's the main thing to remember. Or there might be some science, but it's tangential. Not double-blind placebo-controlled studies of the supplement itself.

[Witness]

Dangerous sex games blamed for dozens of deaths a year

As many as 100 German people a year die due to reckless self-gratification practices, a coroner has claimed, with the most common cause of death recorded as asphyxiation.

The estimate, made by Harald Voss in Bild newspaper, comes after a police investigation into the death of a man found in circumstances suggesting that he died during autoerotic activity.

The man’s body was discovered in a cellar tied up with chains, including one around his neck. The authorities found no evidence of violence and concluded that he had died of suffocation, the newspaper reported.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/auto ... -7zjd8wzlb (rest behind paywall)

[Anaxagoras]

Doesn't surprise me.

If you think about it more broadly, not just people who accidentally suffocate themselves (I've never got why that is a turn-on for some people), a lot people are killed by "thinking with their little head instead of their big head" in one way or another. Nobody is more foolish than a horny man (or woman).