Seth's Blog

This is from Confessions of a Nicotine Addict:

Last night at dinner I met a Beijing high school student. He wants to finish high school in America. “Was that your idea or your parents?” I asked.

“Both,” he said.

“What’s the reason?” I said

“Chinese high school is too stressful,” he said. “The test [tests?] is too hard.”

He left the dinner early to study for the TOEFL.

In the latest BMJ, a group of epidemiologists reports that SSRI’s (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, a commonly-prescribed type of anti-depressant) are associated with a certain type of birth defect when the mom takes the drug early in pregnancy:

There is an increased prevalence of septal heart defects among children whose mothers were prescribed an SSRI in early pregnancy,

We have a health care system built on dangerous drugs — and those drugs are poorly tested for safety. It isn’t in the drug companies’ interest to do so, of course. In this particular case, I wonder if the drugs were safety-tested on pregnant rats and if so what happened.

T. R. Reid has just published a new book called The Healing of America that compares American health care to health care in other countries. One comparison is with Japan:

The world champion at controlling medical costs is Japan, even though its aging population is a profligate consumer of medical care. On average, the Japanese go to the doctor 15 times a year, three times the U.S. rate. They have twice as many MRI scans and X-rays. Quality is high; life expectancy and recovery rates for major diseases are better than in the United States. And yet Japan spends about $3,400 per person annually on health care; the United States spends more than $7,000.

Life expectancy is better. Even though the Japanese smoke more than Americans. Is it all those MRI scans? (Which in Japan cost a small fraction of what they cost in America?) Or all those trips to the doctor (where, by American standards, nothing appears to happens — that is, expensive drugs are rarely prescribed — judging by overall costs)?

I believe that that Japanese do so much better because of a factor that Reid probably doesn’t consider: They eat tons more fermented food than Americans do. In a Tokyo restaurant, the woman sitting next to me, a nurse, said she believes that regular consumption of fermented foods is important for health. Does everyone in Japan think this? I asked. A large minority, she said.

The eating habits of the Japanese, as far as I could tell, bear this out. On a Japanese food blog, the writer described a breakfast that had five fermented foods: pickles, miso, yogurt, natto, and kimchi. The Japanese eat miso at every meal, more or less. They also eat lots of pickles. Natto is popular in some parts of the country but not others. They eat lots of yogurt; they are the country that gave us Yakult. They drink vinegar drinks. (Whereas in America only health nuts drink apple cider vinegar.) In other words, their diet is loaded with fermented foods. If I’m right about this, Japanese rates of autoimmune diseases should be much lower than American rates.

When people get sick much less, health care costs go way down.

Nine months ago, the New York Times reported that Lila Nachtigall, a New York University professor of obstetrics and gynecology, put her name on an article ghost-written for her by a drug company. The article, when published, failed to disclose the ghost-writing. In response, New York University officials have done nothing, as far as I can tell.

In response to the same fact about one of their professors, McGill University opened an investigation. The same document that revealed what Nachtigall had done showed that Barbara Sherwin, a professor of psychology, obstetrics and gynecology, had done the same thing. Supporting my idea that medical school professors have different ethical standards than the rest of us, an article about the McGill case by Montreal Gazette reporter Peggy Curran used the word plagiarism. One comment was “plagiarism, pure and simple.” Does NYU president John Sexton find plagiarism completely acceptable? Apparently.

Thanks to Anne Weiss