Circus of the Spineless #34 is up on Gossamer Tapestry

The latest edition of Change of Shift is up on 20 Out of 10

The Carnival of the Liberals #76 is up on Situation Awareness

The 94th Carnival of the Godless is up on Earthman's Notebook

Friday Ark #197 is up on Modulator

Carnival of the Green #134 is up on Two Hands Worldshop

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I am not entirely sure that the FDA has actually identified a tomato with Salmonella on it. The tomato hypothesis was based on recall data, which is notoriously iffy. Not totally useless, but iffy.

The FDA, gutted by years of uncaring neglect by evil Republicans, today finds itself incapable of addressing the food safety issue, it would seem. Over 800 cases of food poisoning since April 10th is apparently considered a bit high. And there seems to be no reasonable explanation or anything close to an explanation as tomatoes become increasingly innocent looking.

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Science Daily has an interesting item called Canine Tooth Strength Provides Clues To Behavior Of Early Human Ancestors. It concerns a recent analysis of primate canine strength by Michael Plavcan and Christopher Ruff:

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tags: Seed Media Group, ScienceBlogs, ScienceBlogs.de

I have been made privy to a special 1 July 2008 press release from Seed Media Group, the parent organization for ScienceBlogs, which hosts my blog. The news is good.

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In the news this week: aminopyralid:

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tags: West 34th street Penn Station subway art, Circus of Garden Delights, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC

According to the artist, this subway station artwork "depicts a commuter being drawn into the bizarre and surprising world of the circus, meeting animals, clowns, acrobats and fire-breathers on his way to work."

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A study just out in PLoS Medicine suggests that an increasing trend of delaying childbirth is associated wiht a rising rate of the use of cesarean delivery. The explanation appears to be impared uterine function.

From the editor's summary:

Though it was not studied here, the researchers hypothesize that impaired uterine contractility may be a consequence of prolonged stimulation of the uterus by estrogen and progesterone, resulting from a prolonged interval between menarche and first birth. Further research is needed to understand the determinants and management of dysfunctional labor in older women to help design strategies for reducing population cesarean delivery rates without adversely affecting maternal and infant outcomes.

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According to a new survey the USA has highest level of illegal cocaine and cannabis use in the world. Thank goodness the War for Drugs is working so well! Ohh... wait... that's the war ON drugs and it's supposed to protect us from ourselves and our nasty drug habits. Well anyway.. here's the details on the study:

A survey of 17 countries has found that despite its punitive drug policies the United States has the highest levels of illegal cocaine and cannabis use. The study, by Louisa Degenhardt (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia) and colleagues, is based on the World Health Organization's Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) and is published in this week's PLoS Medicine.

The authors found that 16.2% of people in the United States had used cocaine in their lifetime, a level much higher than any other country surveyed (the second highest level of cocaine use was in New Zealand, where 4.3% of people reported having used cocaine). Cannabis use was
highest in the US (42.4%), followed by New Zealand (41.9%).

In the Americas, Europe, Japan, and New Zealand, alcohol had been used by the vast majority of survey participants, compared to smaller proportions in the Middle East, Africa, and China.

The survey found differences in both legal and illegal drug use among different socioeconomic groups. For example, males were more likely than females to have used all drug types; younger adults were more likely than older adults to have used all drugs examined; and higher income was related to drug use of all kinds. Marital status was found to be related to tobacco, cannabis, and cocaine use, but not alcohol use (the never married and previously married having higher odds of lifetime cocaine and cannabis use than the currently married; tobacco use is more likely in people who have been previously married while less likely among the never married).

Drug use "does not appear to be simply related to drug policy," say the authors, "since countries with more stringent policies towards illegal drug use did not have lower levels of such drug use than countries with more liberal policies." In the Netherlands, for example, which has more liberal policies than the US, 1.9% of people reported cocaine use and 19.8% reported cannabis use.

Data on drug use were available from 54,068 survey participants in 17 countries. The 17 countries were determined by the availability of research collaborators and on funding for the survey. Trained lay interviewers carried out face-to-face interviews (except in France where the interviews were done over the telephone) using a standardized, structured diagnostic interview for psychiatric conditions and drug use. Participants were asked if they had ever used alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, or cocaine.

The study's main limitations are that only 17 countries were surveyed, within these countries there were different rates of participation, and it is unclear whether people accurately report
their drug use when interviewed. Nevertheless, the findings present comprehensive data on the patterns of drug use from national samples representing all regions of the world.

Citation: Degenhardt L, Chiu W-T, Sampson N, Kessler RC, Anthony JC, et al. (2008) Toward a global view of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and cocaine use: Findings from the WHO World Mental Health Surveys. PLoS
Med 5(7): e141. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050141.

So the take home messages... people in the U.S. have a bunch of disposable income for drugs and we really f'n love cocaine! Although (I should really look at the article directly), it doesn't look like they check out the countries in which the cocaine was produced. I'd be curious to see a survey on a wider variety of countries.

And finally... the most important take home message: Drug Policy has NOTHING to do with drug use. We can put users, dealers, producers, cousins of uncles of friends of users, their dogs, cats, guinea pigs, or the lint under their couches in jail or to death and it will have no effect on whether people use drugs or not. Education however... just maybe that will help. Oh.. that and taxation - Heavy heavy taxation. After all tobacco use has gone drastically down in the last decade with more education and higher drug prices.

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A study released today in PLoS Medicine compares alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use across seventeen different countries participating in the World Health Organization World Mental Health Survey Initiative.

Alcohol seems to be widely used in the studied countries, tobacco less so but fairly evenly used. Major variation was found with marijuana and cocaine use, with the US and New Zealand at the top of the list for pot, and the US as a significant outlier with cocaine use, to the extent that if cocaine was not used in the US, it seems unlikely that it would even be a major part of a study such as this one.

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The Washington Post points out that:

as justices finished their work last week, two overarching truths about the court remained unchanged: It is sharply divided ideologically on some of the most fundamental constitutional questions, and the coming presidential election will determine its future path.

A victory by the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, would probably mean preserving the uneasy but roughly balanced status quo, since the justices who are considered most likely to retire are liberal. A win for his Republican counterpart, John McCain, could mean a fundamental shift to a consistently conservative majority ready to take on past court rulings on abortion rights, affirmative action and other issues important to the right.

Among those issues is surely evolution education. Twenty-one years ago, the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law requiring equal time for evolution and creationism. Last week, Louisiana passed another creationist bill – the leading edge of the next generation of creationist assaults on evolution, one designed to dodge existing legal precedents.

Should that law, or one like it, reach the Supreme Court, what would happen?

In 1987, the Court voted 7-2 to strike down the law. Scalia and Rehnquist voted to uphold the law. Since then, Rehnquist was replaced by Roberts (a wash), and the court gained conservative Justices Alito and Thomas (who is more conservative even than Scalia). Justice Kennedy, who voted against the Louisiana Bill, is now the crucial swing vote on the Court, and shows a disturbing tendency to waffle on key issues. Assuming he remains firm in his anti-creationism, though, we now have a 5-4 court if the same law were presented. A single McCain judge could overturn Edwards v. Aguillard.

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