In the UK, health care is nationalized but a trial lawyer for maternity cases says that has made money a bigger concern in deciding who gets quality medical care. 

A report by The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) said there was enormous disparity in the quality of care patients received across the country. It looked at the performance of maternity units in England during 2011/12 and found that rates of inductions, emergency cesareans and assisted deliveries were twice as high in some hospitals as others.

I was struck by the subject matter of three articles that had been posted recently.

Egg White Protein May Help Lower High Blood Pressure

Chlorogenic Acids In Green Coffee Beans Help Control Blood Sugar Levels

Balkan Bean Remedy Traps Bedbugs

There is no question that increased use of natural gas has been good for the atmosphere - energy CO2 emissions are down to early 1990s levels in America and coal is at early 1980s levels of emissions, just like we all said we wanted.

Enhanced extraction methods like hydraulic fracturing - fracking - have also been good for the local economies in places like Pennsylvania. But as with any industry, Not In My Backyard (NIMBYism) occurs in residents of Pennsylvania just like it does yacht owners in Massachusetts. 

Reuters gets dinged for being off-kilter journalistically when it comes to politics; to the current generation of independent voters they became famous for their Mid-East coverage last decade by retouching photos to make Israelis look bad and Arabs look persecuted, adding in smoke from explosions that didn't exist, etc. Editors and journalists at other corporate media companies never noticed, but bloggers tripped them up.

“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” is the beginning to one of the world's most popular hymns, yet while millions of people can oddly identify Nicki Minaj, almost no one knows the name of Charles Wesley or his Hymns and Sacred Poems. “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” became regarded as one of the Great Four Anglican Hymns and was published as number 403 in "The Church Hymn Book". It has been recorded by everyone from Frank Sinatra to the kids on "Charlie Brown"(1) and now the private letters of the composer have been edited by Dr. Gareth Lloyd of The University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library and Professor Kenneth Newport of Liverpool Hope University and published by Oxford University Press. They provide a rare glimpse into both the man and the birth of Methodism.

The segment of society that puts an anti-corporate mentality hand-in-hand with being anti-science is not just on the left; a whole lot of people are now cynical about the goals of the $29 billion organic food industry, especially after their well-publicized effort in California to label GMOs but exempt organic food, alcohol and restaurants. It was regarded as cynical opportunism, a way to get the government to grant their business an opportunity the free market did not.

Surveys show people care more (or less) about the environment based on the economy; if that hierarchy of needs is not being met, people are not worried about who is flying off to global warming conferences, they care about jobs.

Mothers are more likely than fathers or childless people to leave jobs that require long hours - unless the occupations are female-dominated, according to sociologists.

More than one-third of men and nearly one-fifth of women work more than 50 hours a week. Mothers are far fewer than fathers in those numbers. What explains that? Are male-dominated jobs harder on mothers or do some occupations become female-dominated because they are more conducive to women with kids? Does that explain the difference in income?   Male-dominated engineering pays women in America better than any other field while heavily female occupations such as environmentalism and social work pay women far worse than men.

Businessman Jim McCormick Guilty

Fake Bomb Detector Vendor Convicted For Fraud - Assets Seized

For some years now, scientists, science writers, bloggers and others have been writing about the bogus bomb detector scam perpetrated by Jim McCormick.  Now, at last, Britain's Crown Prosecution Service has done what it should have done sooner: put on its best hobnail boots and jumped all over the guy.


Image source: explosivedetectorfrauds.blogspot.co.uk

At least when it comes to an analysis of malpractice lawsuits, diagnostic errors - not surgical mistakes or medication overdoses - accounted for the largest fraction of claims, the most severe patient harm, and the highest total of penalty payouts. Diagnosis-related payments amounted to $38.8 billion between 1986 and 2010, they found.  

The new analysis looked only at a subset of claims, those that rose to the level of a malpractice payout, but they estimate the number of patients suffering misdiagnosis-related, potentially preventable, significant permanent injury or death annually in the United States ranges from 80,000 to 160,000.