Is there any evidence that antibiotic resistance in any significant way crosses from livestock pathogens to human pathogens? I had a medical professor lecturing a couple years back saying it was basically a myth.
Currently 2 of 18 resistant bacteria considered less urgent threats by the CDC are associated with farm animals. However, bacteria exchange DNA between species so the concern is significant even if it’s hard to prove these links.
What’s most concerning isn’t antibiotic use by farms but how wide a range of antibiotics are used. If we limited the industry to only use a specific set of antibiotics that would be one thing, but they keep having access to newer drugs.
"Doctors have for decades refused to learn to use this technology"
In Sweden this is actually standard practice. It's used for patients who have syndromes that guarantee them to get cancer several times over in their lifetime. IIRC some get an MRI every 6 months. The reason it's not done to a wider population.. well you can't justify the cost in a state funded healthcare system. The health benefit just isn't justifiable when MRIs are so scarce and expensive to run.
The most common category is "primary spontaneous". Predominantly young (85% <40yo), healthy males (6 times more common). Smoking contributes, and I believe being tall and skinny does so as well.
Short and fat--never a smoker. Still collapsed my right one and then the left one a week later. The doctors said they'd never seen that (bilateral in such a short timespan with no apparent cause) and had no idea what could be causing it. I had to laugh. Pectoris Excavatus or other skeletal abnormalities can cause it but I don't have any of those either. Just luck of the draw I guess.
Please don't post like this to HN. It poisons the ecosystem and destroys what HN is supposed to be for. Someone posting an incorrect number through what was most likely a typo or transcription error does not deserve to have a ton of internet bricks dropped on them, which is basically what you did here. You can provide correct information without treating others that way.
> There is very little good scientific evidence that it is important to breastfeed.
I wish you would back up such a strong statement. In medical school we were taught the complete opposite. From my notes:
- there's a x36 decreased risk of Sudden infant death syndrome if the child has been breast fed a single(!) time compared to no breast feeding.
- no breast feeding vs only breast feeding: x15 risk of pneumonia, x11 risk of diarrhea
- x14 lower risk of premature death compared to no breast feeding
Other pros include: optimal composition of nutrients, doesn't constipate, creates a connection between the mother and child.
While formula may be nutritionally complete, it does not include immune component. Breast milk literally contains antibodies that a new born is able to pick up and use.
Emily Oyster wrote good books about how a lot of the popular claims around giving birth / raising children have quite a severe lack of data that supports those claims. For breastfeeding in particular there isn't much data to separate whether breastfeeding is actually helpful at all vs being in an economical position that would allow someone to breasfeed.
> In the first camp — the randomized trial camp — we have one very large-scale study from Belarus. Known as the PROBIT trial, it was run in the 1990s and continued to follow up as the children aged.
And then later
> The researchers analyzed the impacts of breastfeeding on allergies and asthma; on cavities; and on height, blood pressure, weight and various measures of obesity. They found no evidence of nursing’s impacts on any of these outcomes.
If you go to the PROBIT trial, you see it clearly stated that they did find an impact from nursing:
> Conclusions: Our experimental intervention increased the duration and degree (exclusivity) of breastfeeding and decreased the risk of gastrointestinal tract infection and atopic eczema in the first year of life.
> Infants in the treatment group — who, remember, were more likely to be breastfed — had fewer gastrointestinal infections (read: less diarrhea) and were less likely to experience eczema and other rashes. However, there were no significant differences in any of the other outcomes considered. These include: respiratory infections, ear infections, croup, wheezing and infant mortality.
Apparently so, did you read the post you are criticizing?
The author made it seem like breastfeeding had no impact, but rather they just cherry-picked the conditions to look for from the study, making no mention of things that were impacted.
The author did not make it seem like that, they explicitly pointed out otherwise, the 5th paragraph:
> This is not to say that there aren’t some benefits to breastfeeding. In poor countries where water quality is very poor, these benefits may be very large since the alternative is to use formula made with contaminated water. In developed countries — the main focus of the discussion here — this isn’t an issue. Even in developed countries, there are a few health benefits of breastfeeding for children in the first year of life (more on this below).
They literally linked to a study, said "this is the best study", then said "this study didn't show benefits in [any] these areas", without mentioning the benefits the study did show. Belarus is/was not a country at risk of contaminated water, even after the collapse of the USSR.
Huh? That's consistent, isn't it? No impact on cavities, height, blood pressure, etc. but an impact on GI tract infection and eczma. Well, those don't sound like serious problems so maybe it's not worth it.
I think the general consensus (WHO, CDC, American Pediatrics, etc) is that breastmilk is beneficial and reduces the risk of things like asthma, digestive issues, SIDS, etc, but there are a lot of questions of whether it needs to be exclusive and for how long it needs to be to get the benefits.
> there's a x36 decreased risk of Sudden infant death syndrome if the child has been breast fed a single(!) time compared to no breast feeding
I'm a supporter of breasfeeding but there's approximately a 100% chance that this is correlational and not causal; wealthier parents with time and resources to breastfeed also have lower SIDs prevalence because they drink less, smoke less, are less obese, have less drug use while pregnant and generally practice safer sleep habits.
Which of the stats do you think sounds ridiculous? SIDS for example is pretty rare to begin with (33.3 deaths per 100,000 per Google). At the end of the day I'm guessing the advice maybe saves a few lives on a population level, but only gives a slight statistical advantage to a proactive parent.
I wish I had links to actual publications. I copied the numbers from a lecture given by a senior obstetrician.
The effect sizes are implausibly large. Breastfeeding would not be a live debate if the causal effect was that large. For example, a 36x risk of SIDS is really just too much to believe. This lit review:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/apa.13...
Doesn't mention any studies with effect sizes larger than 4x. And it is concerning habitual breastfeeding or other feeding treatments. If breastfeeding a single time provided a 36x safety factor, these kinds of results would be impossible. A 14x reduction in infant mortality is similar far beyond the reasonable belief.
Personally I wouldn't toss out a claim like that without strong evidence to cite.
Breastfeeding once reduces SIDS risk by 36 times? If that’s even remotely accurate, which I doubt, I’m 100% sure it’s correlation not causation. People who breastfeed are much more likely to be higher income, more informed about keeping toys and blankets out of the crib, have baby sleep on their back, etc.
> People who breastfeed are much more likely to be higher income.
The median income of a breastfeeding mother is probably at least 1/10th of US median per capita GDP. E.g. Rwanda has some of the highest breastfeeding rates in the world.
I'm neither an obstetrician nor a researcher in that field. But if I had to guess, this Wikipedia paragraph sumarizes things nicely regarding infection:
"Passive immunity is also provided through colostrum and breast milk, which contain IgA antibodies that are transferred to the gut of the infant, providing local protection against disease causing bacteria and viruses until the newborn can synthesize its own antibodies."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_immunity
I'd have to read up to even speculate about the SIDS risk.
If a DNA sample is taken from an assault victim, how is the DNA from the victim (technically) distinguished from that of perpetrator? Why isn't the readout an average of perpetrator and victim? Of course the perpetrator's readout should be saved but not the victim's.
At least where I am from (iirc) there is no sequencing involved. Instead the DNA is cut with restriction enzymes. Basically restriction enzyme + a persons DNA gives a unique fragment pattern.
Speculating here, but presumably the victim is willing and able to supply their own DNA as an elimination sample. Whatever DNA is left over gets run through a database, and possibly matched with an identity. If the identity comes with a photo, the victim may well be able to verify whether that photo is that of their attacker.
DNA samples would have been taken from victim directly, for comparison. I guess samples and records also include location of sample collection (hair, skin, mouth, etc), time, date, circumstance, etc.
I assume that police departments will retain DNA from every sample they can get their hands on, just like fingerprints. You're in a DB at that point, and it's useful data (demonstrably). I'd be surprised if many police departments have a privacy policy, much less comply with it, regarding your rights after a DNA sample is taken, relative the auspices under which they collected it. Assume the worst if you're at all worried about your DNA being on file somewhere.
I guess I could have been more clear. My question is about the lab side of things. Indefinite and indiscriminate data retention is definitely a problem although a different one.
Fun fact: the number needed to treat (NNT) for SSRI, the first line medication for depression, is a whopping 11! The NNT tells us the number of people we need to give a drug to in order for just one person to receive a benefit. I.e. if 11 people with depression are prescribed SSRI, only 1 of 11 will benefit from it. At least that's what I was taught in med school. Psychiatry has in the past decades been a game changer for schizophrenia, bipolar etc. But I feel like there room for so much more to be done for people with 'mild' anxiety and or depression.
Tangent: I have years of academic studies. And yet it can be time consuming to truly understand where and how ideas came to be. I might have an equation but to understand how it was initially thought of or derived might require access to physical contemporary books. At least once I've had to resort to 18th century handwritten manuscripts. Wikipedia can be great. But I often wonder if historical scientific progress can be made even more accessible.
This etiological approach is captured, for example, in the book "Inventing Temperature" by philosopher of science Hasok Chang. It chronicles the meandering, dialectical and controversial journey scientists pursue in order to discover what exactly temperature is - now elegantly captured in concise but sterile formulas. It demonstrates the process of science, as opposed to merely its output.
