pootimes

California schools’ risks rise as vaccinations drop

The rise in unvaccinated children appears to be driven by affluent parents choosing not to immunize. Many do so because they fear the shots could trigger autism, a concern widely discredited in medical research.

The Times found that 1 in 11 elementary schools statewide may be at risk of an outbreak of an infectious disease such as measles, mumps or whooping cough. It’s a risk some parents are willing to take.

For generations, most children went unimmunized only if their parents couldn’t afford the shots, a problem now remedied through federal funds. A tiny percentage of children cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.

This is so troubling.  We know the safety and efficacy of vaccination programs.  We know that herd immunity is extremely important, especially because, as the article notes, some individuals are unable to receive vaccinations.  Blehck.  I can understand objections to newer vaccines more than older vaccines.  But the vaccines for MMR have been around for ages and have saved millions from morbidity and mortality associated with those diseases.  Stop being hoity!

How to End the War over Sex Ed

Jewels Morris-Davis is a no-nonsense kind of girl. When the high school sophomore turned 16 recently, she didn’t celebrate with any My Super Sweet 16 foolishness. Nor did she rush to get her driver’s license and race around the back roads in this rural northwest corner of South Carolina. But Jewels did quietly revel in one achievement. “I am,” she says a few weeks later, a proud smile spreading across her face, “the first person in my family to reach 16 without getting pregnant–or getting somebody pregnant.”

Shit.

Later this spring, Congress will dive once more into the war over sex education when it decides whether to eliminate $176 million in federal funding for so-called abstinence-only programs, which instruct kids to delay sex until marriage.

Oh gosh.  Emotions raging through me…

We now have a pretty good sense of which sex-education approaches work. Substantial research–including a 2007 Bush Administration report–has concluded that comprehensive programs are most effective at changing teen sexual behaviors. They are also largely uncontroversial outside Washington. Vast majorities of parents favor teaching comprehensive sex education. What we haven’t seen is the political will and community investment necessary to educate kids about sexuality and healthy relationships in a truly responsible and honest way.

Wasap wasap.  I want to emphasize the coupling of education about sexuality with education about healthy relationships.  Elsewhere in this article it referred to a program that teaches all three years of middle school (and beyond).  And I firmly agree with this.  I’m reminded of the campaign ad against Obama about “teaching kindergarteners about sex” when it was more about appropriate personal space.

Kristen Jordan is not one of those teachers. Walk past her classroom on the first day of sixth grade and you’ll hear her leading the students in an enthusiastic chorus of “Penis! Penis! Penis! Vagina! Vagina! Vagina!” “Until they can use the real names for their body parts without giggling,” she explains, “you can’t talk to them about anything serious.”

If we didn’t have such a taboo around sexuality, if we accepted that for this one everyone actually really does it (and expression varies significantly and all are beautiful if they do not post harm)… if only.

Douglas Kirby, a neutral analyst who has studied sex-education programs for more than three decades, says most evaluations of abstinence-only programs have found “no impact on sexual behavior.” However, nearly half the comprehensive programs that have been studied reduced sexual risk in three areas: delaying the age at which teens first have sex, reducing the number of sexual partners they have and increasing their use of condoms.

What is UP.

While most states and local school districts have policies regarding sex education, very few set standards on how to give students factual information about sex or teach them to develop healthy relationships. Even fewer attempt to evaluate what is covered in the classroom, and 17 states don’t even require sex education to be taught in public schools.

Epic fail of our school system.  This is how it goes in most classrooms about most topics.

Blushing Drinkers at Risk for Esophageal Cancer

Eee aldehyde dehydrogenase… go blame your mummies and daddies, my poor Asian kiddies.

Philippine “rape” victim recants

Blehck.  Politicize a rape case.  I don’t know if this is a real rape case or not.  Sort of doesn’t matter.  Point is that it makes rape seem like a small issue.  And this is detrimental to the real victims.

Pope Says Condoms Won’t Solve AIDS

“You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope told reporters aboard a plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

1. No one intelligent is saying that condoms are the panacea for the HIV/AIDS epidemic.  Condoms are a tool to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections/diseases (STIs/STDs).
2. Proper condom use  decreases the risk of acquiring/spreading STIs/STDs.  This is has been extensively researched.
3. Distribution of resources (condoms included) does resolve issues.  Vaccines, chemoprophylaxis, treatments, and proven prevention measures abound for many infectious diseases (e.g., hepatitis B vaccine, HIV/AIDS treatment, Ivermectin as an anti-helminth [yay HUMBIO 153]).  Fair distribution is the answer.

Edit:

Pope, in Africa, Says Condoms Aren’t the Way to Fight H.I.V.

The pope said a responsible and moral attitude toward sex would help fight the disease.

Responsible and moral attitude towards human life would help fight (nay, eliminate) the disease.  If we treat all people with the respect they deserve, HIV/AIDS and a plethora of other ills (social or biological!) will be effectively eliminated.

But no.  Let us instead use the plight of the impoverished as a symbol of low morality.

Jesus would be proud, Ratzinger.

—- after rereading I realize this is rather scathing, but I’m not going to change it.

Officials Weigh Response to D.C. AIDS Epidemic

A report showing that 3 percent of residents are infected with HIV or AIDS

Hader said that the District’s HIV/AIDS rate is the highest in the nation — higher even than West Africa, and “on par with Uganda and some parts of Kenya” where the disease is considered to be a crisis.

African Americans are most severely impacted, followed by gay white men and Latinos. Nearly 80 percent of residents with the virus are black. Seven percent of black men in the District have HIV or AIDS.

I had a discussion where I worked over the summer and a man said that talking about HIV/AIDS internationally is better than recognizing, acknowledging, and addressing HIV/AIDS in the US because it’s still too taboo to admit that the crisis exists here.

Stereotype Threat class piqued my interest in this article:

Women opt out of math/science careers because of family demands

Women today comprise about 50 percent of medical school classes; yet women who enter academic medicine are less likely than men to be promoted or serve in leadership posts, the authors report.

The authors concluded that hormonal, brain and other biological sex differences were not primary factors in explaining why women were underrepresented in science careers, and that studies on social and cultural effects were inconsistent and inconclusive. They also reported that although “institutional barriers and discrimination exist, these influences still cannot explain why women are not entering or staying in STEM careers,” said Ceci. “The evidence did not show that removal of these barriers would equalize the sexes in these fields, especially given that women’s career preferences and lifestyle choices tilt them toward other careers such as medicine and biology over mathematics, computer science, physics and engineering.”

I need to think more about this before making a semi-intelligent comment.

RP has second-dirtiest seas, report says

Way to go, Philippines.  Papa luin kita!  >_<.

I manage to cram an immense amount of information into my head right before finals.  The information is usually soon lost, whether this is because I never really understood it or because it was regurgitation is irrelevant.  I decided to try to remember things from each of my classes.  This resulted in a study break haha.  Here are the results, which I guess are the main things I took from each of the classes:

IHUM 61
Race, Gender, and the Arts of Survival
- Othella was the shit

MATH 41
Calculus
- College doesn’t teach lo di hi, hi di lo

SPECLANG 144A
Beginning Tagalog, First Quarter
- Nothing

ATHLETIC 88
Pilates Mat
- Pilates is hard

IHUM 23A/23B
The Fate of Reason
- Uh nothing I can really remember
- “I think, therefore I am” is a logical fallacy, but I can’t explain why anymore

POLISCI 141
The Global Politics of Human Rights
- Argentina had some bad history
- The US doesn’t adopt the UN Resolution against genocide
- Armenian first case of “genocide” in early 20th century

RELIGST 6N
The Life of Buddha
- Oral traditions make it such that the suttas are written repetitively
- History of Buddha so complex
- I love the “don’t worry about that which you won’t be able to understand” sutta

STATS 60
Introduction to Statistical Methods: Precalculus
- Chi-squared is pronounced “kigh”

EDUC 193S
Peer Counseling on Comprehensive Sexual Health
- Spectrum of sexual euphemisms
- IUDs are most frequently used form of contraception in the world
- Pee after sex
- Spermicide is bad, and used frequently in Trojan condoms, so don’t use the brand!

MUSIC 8A
Rock, Sex, and Rebellion
- I wrote an essay on censorship, and used Snoop as a central point

PWR 1
Writing and Rhetoric 1 (I forget which PWR class I took)
- Nothing

SOC 46N
Race, Ethnic, and National Identities: Imagined Communities
- Irish people were “black” until the next set of immigrants came

EDUC 193A
Listen Up! Core Peer Counseling Skills
- Had a progressive during section

HUMBIO 2A
Genetics, Evolution, and Ecology
- LACTOSE LACTOSE LACTOSE!!!!!  Genetic variation can be traced geographically.  Vitamin D.  Inuits eat raw liver.
- I’m probably a tolerant malabsorber, but slowly becoming intolerant as I consume less milk and more processed dairy products

HUMBIO 2B
Culture, Evolution, and Society
- Human evolution is hotly contested even among the people who believe in human evolution (e.g., what the steps were, why the steps continued, etc.)

SOC 123
Sex and Love in Modern Society
- Cohabituation is up

CASA 82
Medical Anthropology
- Foucault created this idea of the Panopticon.  Prisoners would regulate their own behaviors.  Ideas of power.
- Biomedical model sucks

HUMBIO 3A
Cell and Developmental Biology
- Dorsal/ventral, anterior/posterior, distal/proximal
- Stem cell differentiation is madness
- Proteins are ridiculous

HUMBIO 3B
Behavior, Health, and Development
- Babies learning language is AMAZING

PSYCH 102
Longevity
- Reproduction rates are screwing almost all countries over
- Exercise helps the brain

HUMBIO 4A
The Human Organism
- Kidneys are incredible.  <3 loops of Henle
- Action potentials are regulated by ligand or voltage gated ion channels that are either metabotropic ionotropic (wow this I actually sort of remember???!)
- Enteric system = senses in the gut

HUMBIO 4B
Environmental and Health Policy Analysis
- Funding is everything
- Tragedy of the Commons means we’re going to run out of resources
- If you’re not white, you’re screwed

HUMBIO 175S
Novels and Theater of Illness
- Stories about illness are tragic

PATH 105Q
Final Analysis: The Autopsy as a Tool of Medical Inquiry
- I am going to die of atherosclerosis or pulmonary embolism (the latter is the most common cause of death in the hospital… walk around the plane and hospital!)
- I hope my insides look good

CS 105
Introduction to Computers
- Phishing is like rickrolling

CTL 177
Performance of Power: Oratory and Authority from the Ancient World to the Post Modern
- So much about my speaking abilities.  Habits.  And ways of improving

HUMBIO 139
Sports Medicine
- How to perform a knee exam… except this knowledge is beginning to escape me!
- The kneecap is moveable WEIRD

HUMBIO 197
Human Biology Internship
- N/A

PSYCH 30
Introduction to Perception
- Learning about audition was hard because my grasp on sound and its elements is poorer
- Ganglion, receptive fields, lateral geniculate nucleus, all cool!
- Eyes are so easily deceived it’s not even fair.. it’s amazing that my brain can process anything at all from the visual system

HUMBIO 153
Parasites and Pestilence: Infectious Public Health Challenges
- Don’t poop in water, wear shoes, cover skin, cook your food properly
- After the first dose MDT, leprosy patients are no longer infectious
- Exposed individuals have a 10% chance of developing tuberculosis
- Plasmodium falciparum accounts for only 15% of malaria infections, but causes the majority of the deaths (largely because it exhibits cytoadherence, which can lead to rosetting, and has more severe anemia as a result)

HUMBIO 183
Astrobiology and Space Exploration
- They can filter pee so it’s drinkable.. and more pure than regular water

PSYCH 101
Community Health Psychology
- Self-efficacy is key

PSYCH 119
Psychology and Public Policy
- The criminal justice system is failing
- Research is so focused and hard to include in policy because policy is so broad
- People are racist

PSYCH 125
Beyond Stereotype Threat: Claiming a Rightful Place in an Academic Community
- Stereotype threat is a phenomena that can hamper performance in an domain that is considered important; repeated exposure can lead to disidentification
- Simple interventions can mitigate negative consequences
- Theories of intelligence (entity or incremental) influence academic performance