Health – Page 71 – artdiamondblog.com

Entrepreneur Mackey Says Whole Foods Drops Prices as Larger Size Creates Economies of Scale

“John Mackey.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 16) In your new book, “Conscious Capitalism,” you write that Whole Foods sees its customers as its “most important stakeholders” and that the company is obsessed with their happiness. The biggest complaint I hear about Whole Foods is how expensive it is. Why not drop prices to make your customers happier?
People always complain about prices being too high. Whole Foods prices have dropped every year as we get to be larger and we have economies of scale. Also, people are not historically well informed about food prices. We’re only spending about 7 percent of our disposable personal income on food. Fifty years ago, it was nearly 16 percent.
. . .
In 2009, some Whole Foods customers organized boycotts after you wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal expressing opposition to Obama’s health care proposals. Do you wish you hadn’t written it?
No, I don’t. I regret that a lot of people didn’t actually read it and it got taken out of context. President Obama asked for ideas about health care reform, and I put my ideas out there. Whole Foods has a good health care plan. It’s not a solution to America’s health care problems, but it’s part of the solution.
So did you vote for Romney?
I did.
I imagine a certain percentage of Whole Foods customers will also boycott because of this.
I don’t know what to say except that I’m a capitalist, first. There are many things I don’t like about Romney, but more things I don’t like about Obama. This is America, and people disagree on things.

For the full interview, see:
Andrew Goldman, Interviewer. “TALK; The Kale King.” The New York Times Magazine (Sun., January 20, 2013): 16.
(Note: ellipsis added; bold in original, indicating interviewer questions.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date January 18, 2013, and has the title “TALK; John Mackey, the Kale King.”)

Mackey’s book is:
Mackey, John, and Rajendra Sisodia. Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2013.

Admiring Jobs’ New Products, Gates Wistfully Wondered If “Maybe I Should Have Stayed in That Game”

(p. 553) Bill Gates had never lost his fascination with Jobs. In the spring of 2011 I was at a dinner with him in Washington, where he had come to discuss his foundation’s global health endeavors. He expressed amazement at the success of the iPad and how Jobs, even while sick, was focusing on ways to improve it. “Here I am, merely saving the world from malaria and that sort of thing, and Steve is still coming up with amazing new products,” he said wistfully. “Maybe I should have stayed in that game.” He smiled to make sure that I knew he was joking, or at least half joking.

Source:
Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Entrepreneur Kurzweil Says If He Gets Cancer, He Will Invent a Cure

“Ray Kurzweil.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 12) As a futurist, you are famous for making predictions of when technological innovations will actually occur. Are you willing to predict the year you will die?
My plan is to stick around. We’ll get to a point about 15 years from now where we’re adding more than a year every year to your life expectancy.

To clarify, you’re predicting your immortality.
The problem is I can’t get on the phone with you in the future and say, “Well, I’ve done it, I have lived forever,” because it’s never forever.
. . .
You’ve said that if you woke up one day with a terminal disease, you’d be forced to invent a cure. Were you being serious?
I absolutely would try. I’m working now on a cancer project with some scientists at M.I.T., and if I develop cancer, I do have some ideas of what I would do.
I imagine a lot of people would hear that and say, Ray, if you think you’re capable of curing yourself, why don’t you go ahead and start curing others?
Well, I mean, I do have to pick my priorities. Nobody can do everything. What we spend our time on is probably the most important decision we make. I don’t know if you’re aware, but I’m joining Google as director of engineering.

For the full interview, see:
Andrew Goldman, Interviewer. “TALK; The Life Robotic; The Futurist Ray Kurzweil Says We’re Going to Live Forever. Really.” The New York Times Magazine (Sun., January 27, 2013): 12.
(Note: ellipsis added; bold in original, indicating interviewer questions.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date January 25, 2013, and has the title “TALK; Ray Kurzweil Says We’re Going to Live Forever.”)

Entrepreneur Peter Thiel Says We Should Fight for Longer Lives

Source of book image: http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-PJ926_bkrv10_DV_20110829191924.jpg

(p. C13) Sonia Arrison’s “100 Plus” was first published in 2011, but its message is evergreen: how scientists are directly attacking the problem of aging and death and why we should fight for life instead of accepting decay as inevitable. The goal of longer life doesn’t just mean more years at the margin; it means a healthier old age. There is nothing to fear but our own complacency.

For the full review essay, see:
Peter Thiel (author of passage quoted above, one of 50 contributors to whole article). “Twelve Months of Reading; We asked 50 of our friends to tell us what books they enjoyed in 2012–from Judd Apatow’s big plans to Bruce Wagner’s addictions. See pages C10 and C11 for the Journal’s own Top Ten lists.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., December 15, 2012): passim (Thiel’s contribution is on p. C13).
(Note: the online version of the review essay has the date December 14, 2012.)

The book Thiel endorses is:
Arrison, Sonia. 100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, from Careers and Relationships to Family and Faith. New York: Basic Books, 2011.

The War on Drugs Likely “Increased the Rate of Addiction”

Source of graph: online version of the WSJ commentary quoted and cited below.

(p. C1) President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs” in 1971. The expectation then was that drug trafficking in the United States could be greatly reduced in a short time through federal policing–and yet the war on drugs continues to this day. The cost has been large in terms of lives, money and the well-being of many Americans, especially the poor and less educated. By most accounts, the gains from the war have been modest at best.

The direct monetary cost to American taxpayers of the war on drugs includes spending on police, the court personnel used to try drug users and traffickers, and the guards and other resources spent on imprisoning and punishing those convicted of drug offenses. Total current spending is estimated at over $40 billion a year.
These costs don’t include many other harmful effects of the war on drugs that are difficult to quantify. For example, over the past 40 years the fraction of students who have dropped out of American high schools has remained large, at about 25%. Dropout rates are not high for middle-class white children, but they are very high for black and Hispanic children living in poor neighborhoods. Many factors explain the high dropout rates, especially bad schools and weak family support. But another important factor in inner-city neighborhoods is the temptation to drop out of school in order to profit from the drug trade.
The total number of persons incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the U.S. has grown from 330,000 in 1980 to about 1.6 million today. Much of the increase in this population is directly due to the war on drugs and the severe punishment for persons convicted of drug trafficking. About 50% of the inmates in federal prisons and 20% of those in state prisons have been convicted of either selling or using drugs. The many minor drug traffickers and drug users who spend time in jail find fewer opportunities for legal employment after they get out of prison, and they develop better skills at criminal activities.
. . .
(p. C2) It is generally harder to break an addiction to illegal goods, like drugs. Drug addicts may be leery of going to clinics or to nonprofit “drugs anonymous” groups for help. They fear they will be reported for consuming illegal substances. Since the consumption of illegal drugs must be hidden to avoid arrest and conviction, many drug consumers must alter their lives in order to avoid detection.
Usually overlooked in discussions of the effects of the war on drugs is that the illegality of drugs stunts the development of ways to help drug addicts, such as the drug equivalent of nicotine patches. Thus, though the war on drugs may well have induced lower drug use through higher prices, it has likely also increased the rate of addiction. The illegality of drugs makes it harder for addicts to get help in breaking their addictions. It leads them to associate more with other addicts and less with people who might help them quit.
. . .
The decriminalization of both drug use and the drug market won’t be attained easily, as there is powerful opposition to each of them. The disastrous effects of the American war on drugs are becoming more apparent, however, not only in the U.S. but beyond its borders. Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon has suggested “market solutions” as one alternative to the problem. Perhaps the combined efforts of leaders in different countries can succeed in making a big enough push toward finally ending this long, enormously destructive policy experiment.

For the full commentary, see:
GARY S. BECKER and KEVIN M. MURPHY. “Have We Lost the War on Drugs? After more than four decades of a failed experiment, the human cost has become too high. It is time to consider the decriminalization of drug use and the drug market.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., January 5, 2013): C1 & C2.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date January 4, 2013.)

Lichen Fungi May Never Age

“ANNUAL VISITOR; For the last eight years, Anne Pringle of Harvard has been collecting data about the lichens on the gravestones at a cemetary in Petersham, Mass.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. D3) PETERSHAM, Mass. — On a sparkling New England afternoon, as hawks coasted overhead and yellow leaves drifted to the ground, Anne Pringle stood before a large granite obelisk that marked the graves of a family called French.
. . .
For eight years, Dr. Pringle, 42, has been returning to this cemetery each fall, to measure, sketch and scrutinize the lichens, which belong to the genus Xanthoparmelia. She wants to know whether they deteriorate with the passage of time, leaving them more susceptible to death.
. . .
Lichens are not individuals but tiny ecosystems, composed of one main fungus, a group of algae and an assortment of smaller fungi and bacteria.
. . .
While lichens are communities, Dr. Pringle is largely interested in the fungi. Mycologists, the scientists who study fungi — not the most glamorous corridor of biology — have long assumed that many of these organisms don’t age.
. . .
“What you know is based on the organisms you study,” she said. “What would you say about the evolution of senescence if instead of working with insects, you worked with modular organisms, which is what lichen are?”
Daniel Doak, a University of Colorado ecologist, agrees that the question is worth asking. Research like Dr. Pringle’s — along with other studies of species including the bristlecone pine tree and the wandering albatross, a bird, both of which may avoid senescence — suggests another possible path.
“It’s saying something fundamental,” Dr. Doak said, “that senescence is not an inevitable part of life. Which means there might be ways to prevent it.” That idea could eventually have implications for human medicine.
. . .
Dr. Pringle’s preliminary results show that as a lichen grows older and larger, it is less likely to die. “If you made me answer the question now,” she said, “I’d say there can be senescence of parts of an individual. But I don’t think an individual ever senesces.”

For the full story, see:
HILLARY ROSNER. “In a Place for the Dead, Studying a Seemingly Immortal Species.” The New York Times (Tues., January 1, 2013): D3.
(note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date December 31, 2012.)

“THRIVING; Dr. Pringle’s initial results show that as a lichen grows older and larger, it is less likely to die.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Dr. William House “Faced Stern Opposition” to Bring Cochlear Implants to the Deaf

“Dr. William F. House in 1981 with Tracy Husted, the first pre-school-age child to get a cochlear implant.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT obituary quoted and cited below.

(p. 34) Dr. William F. House, a medical researcher who braved skepticism to invent the cochlear implant, an electronic device considered to be the first to restore a human sense, died on Dec. 7 at his home in Aurora, Ore. He was 89.

. . .
Dr. House pushed against conventional thinking throughout his career. Over the objections of some, he introduced the surgical microscope to ear surgery. Tackling a form of vertigo that doctors had believed was psychosomatic, he developed a surgical procedure that enabled the first American in space to travel to the moon. Peering at the bones of the inner ear, he found enrapturing beauty.
. . .
More than a decade would pass before the Food and Drug Administration approved the cochlear implant, but when it did, in 1984, Mark Novitch, the agency’s deputy commissioner, said, “For the first time a device can, to a degree, replace an organ of the human senses.”
One of Dr. House’s early implant patients, from an experimental trial, wrote to him in 1981 saying, “I no longer live in a world of soundless movement and voiceless faces.”
But for 27 years, Dr. House had faced stern opposition while he was developing the device. Doctors and scientists said it would not work, or not work very well, calling it a cruel hoax on people desperate to hear. Some said he was motivated by the prospect of financial gain. Some criticized him for experimenting on human subjects. Some advocates for the deaf said the device deprived its users of the dignity of their deafness without fully integrating them into the hearing world.
. . .
When his brother returned from West Germany with a surgical microscope, Dr. House saw its potential and adopted it for ear surgery; he is credited with introducing the device to the field. But again there was resistance. As Dr. House wrote in his memoir, “The Struggles of a Medical Innovator: Cochlear Implants and Other Ear Surgeries” (2011), some eye doctors initially criticized his use of a microscope in surgery as reckless and unnecessary for a surgeon with good eyesight.

For the full obituary, see:
DOUGLAS MARTIN. “Dr. William F. House, Inventor of Pioneering Ear-Implant Device, Dies at 89.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., December 16, 2012): 34.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date December 15, 2012.)

Dr. House’s memoir is:
House, William F. The Struggles of a Medical Innovator: Cochlear Implants and Other Ear Surgeries. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011.
(Note: the copyright page of the book gives neither city nor name of publisher; the publisher in the reference is as given by Amazon.com.)

“Dr. William F. House sitting at an operating microscope.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT obituary quoted and cited above.

Rupert Murdoch and Steve Jobs “Hit It Off Well”

(p. 508) Murdoch and Jobs hit it off well enough that Murdoch went to his Palo Alto house for dinner twice more during the next year. Jobs joked that he had to hide the dinner knives on such occasions, because he was afraid that his liberal wife was going to eviscerate Murdoch when (p. 509) he walked in. For his part, Murdoch was reported to have uttered a great line about the organic vegan dishes typically served: “Eating dinner at Steve’s is a great experience, as long as you get out before the local restaurants close.” Alas, when I asked Murdoch if he had ever said that, he didn’t recall it.

Source:
Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

The Project Entrepreneur: Never Say Die

(p. 485) . . . [Jobs] chafed at not being in control, and he sometimes hallucinated or be-(p. 486)came angry. Even when he was barely conscious, his strong personality came through. At one point the pulmonologist tried to put a mask over his face when he was deeply sedated. Jobs ripped it off and mumbled that he hated the design and refused to wear it. Though barely able to speak, he ordered them to bring five different options for the mask and he would pick a design he liked. The doctors looked at Powell, puzzled. She was finally able to distract him so they could put on the mask. He also hated the oxygen monitor they put on his finger. He told them it was ugly and too complex. He suggested ways it could be designed more simply. “He was very attuned to every nuance of the environment and objects around him, and that drained him,” Powell recalled.

Source:
Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.
(Note: ellipsis and bracketed “Jobs” added.)

David Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research

“Dr. Robert Langer’s research lab is at the forefront of moving academic discoveries into the marketplace.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 1) HOW do you take particles in a test tube, or components in a tiny chip, and turn them into a $100 million company?

Dr. Robert Langer, 64, knows how. Since the 1980s, his Langer Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has spun out companies whose products treat cancer, diabetes, heart disease and schizophrenia, among other diseases, and even thicken hair.
The Langer Lab is on the front lines of turning discoveries made in the lab into a range of drugs and drug delivery systems. Without this kind of technology transfer, the thinking goes, scientific discoveries might well sit on the shelf, stifling innovation.
A chemical engineer by training, Dr. Langer has helped start 25 companies and has 811 patents, issued or pending, to his name. More than 250 companies have licensed or sublicensed Langer Lab patents.
Polaris Venture Partners, a Boston venture capital firm, has invested $220 million in 18 Langer Lab-inspired businesses. Combined, these businesses have improved the health of many millions of people, says Terry McGuire, co-founder of Polaris.
. . .
(p. 7) Operating from the sixth floor of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research on the M.I.T. campus in Cambridge, Mass., Dr. Langer’s lab has a research budget of more than $10 million for 2012, coming mostly from federal sources.
. . .
David H. Koch, executive vice president of Koch Industries, the conglomerate based in Wichita, Kan., wrote in an e-mail that “innovation and education have long fueled the world’s most powerful economies, so I can’t think of a better or more natural synergy than the one between academia and industry.” Mr. Koch endowed Dr. Langer’s professorship at M.I.T. and is a graduate of the university.

For the full story, see:
HANNAH SELIGSON. “Hatching Ideas, and Companies, by the Dozens at M.I.T.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., November 25, 2012): 1 & 7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date November 24, 2012.)

Students Protest (and Toss) Federally Mandated “Healthy” (“Gross”) Food

“Lunch hour at Middle School 104 in Manhattan, where, on Friday, several seventh graders pronounced vegetables “gross.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) Outside Pittsburgh, they are proclaiming a strike, taking to Twitter and Facebook to spread the word. In a village near Milwaukee, hundreds staged a boycott. In a small farming and ranching community in western Kansas, they have produced a parody video. And in Parsippany, N.J., the protest is six days old and counting.

They are high school students, and their complaint is about lunch — healthier, smaller and more expensive than ever.
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which required public schools to follow new nutritional guidelines this academic year to receive extra federal lunch aid, has created a nationwide version of the age-old parental challenge: persuading children to eat what is good for them.
Because the lunches must now include fruits and vegetables, those who clamor for more cheese-laden nachos may find string beans and a peach cup instead. Because of limits on fat and sodium, some of those who crave French fries get baked sweet-potato wedges. Because of calorie restrictions, meat and carbohydrate portions are smaller. Gone is 2-percent chocolate milk, replaced by skim.
“Before, there was no taste and no flavor,” said Malik Barrows, a senior at Automotive High School in Brooklyn, who likes fruit but said his classmates threw away their mandatory helpings on the cafeteria floor. “Now there’s no taste, no flavor and it’s healthy, which makes it taste even worse.”
Students organized lunch strikes in a suburb of Pittsburgh, where in late August the hashtag “brownbagginit” was trending on Twitter, and outside Milwaukee, where the Mukwonago High School principal, Shawn McNulty, said participation in the lunch program had fallen 70 percent.
. . .
(p. A3) In Sharon Springs, Kan., lunch protesters at Wallace County High School posted a video on YouTube, “We Are Hungry”; in it, students faint in the hallways and during physical education class, acting as if they had been done in by meager helpings of potato puff casserole and chicken nuggets. To the tune of the song “We Are Young” by Fun, one student on the video sings, “My friends are at the corner store, getting junk so they don’t waste away.”
Since it was uploaded three weeks ago, “We Are Hungry” has had nearly 900,000 views.
Callahan Grund, a junior who stars in the video, said, “My opinion as a young farmer and rancher is that we produced this protein and it’s not being used to its full advantage.” He wakes up early every morning to do chores, stays after school for two hours of football practice and returns home for another round of chores. If it were not for the lunches his mother now packs him, he said, he would be hungry again just two hours after lunch.
In New York City, where school officials introduced whole-wheat breads, low-fat milk and other changes several years ago, the most noticeable change this year is the fruit and vegetable requirement, which has resulted in some waste, according to Eric Goldstein, the Education Department official who oversees food services. It is not hard to see why. At Middle School 104 in Gramercy Park on Friday, several seventh graders pronounced vegetables “gross.”
“I just throw them out,” said Danielson Gutierrez, 12, carrying a slice of pizza, which he had liberally sprinkled with seasonings, and a pear. He also offered his opinion on fruit: “I throw them out, too. I only like apples.”

For the full story, see:
VIVIAN YEE. “No Appetite for Good-for-You School Lunches.” The New York Times (Sat., October 6, 2012): A1 & A3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date October 5, 2012.)

“Dissatisfied with healthier school lunches, some Kansas students made a video parody.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.