Author Archive

Prescription Drugs as Birth Control

June 8th, 2010. By Hunter West

Can a medication designed to minimize epileptic seizures, serve as birth control? 

Can an antidepressant, also serve as birth control? 

Indirectly, yes—if women who depend on various drugs to stabilize their lives opt to shun having children rather than risk the possibility of birth defects. 

It’s an interesting conundrum—that a society that depends more and more on various drugs to treat our diseases and keep us living longer, might suffer a detrimental effect on birth rates and experience a shrinkage of the population. 

But while the long-term effect may be less dramatic, the short-term debate is no less real. 

There are various drugs that are designed to treat specific conditions, such as valproate for the treatment of bipolar disorder, or migraine headaches. While the drug, marketed as Depakote, is without doubt effective for the treatment for that for which it was intended, it can also have a devastating effect on a fetus if taken by an expectant mother. 

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) noted in December of last year, “Valproate use during early pregnancy increases the risk of major malformations in the baby,” the FDA said. “The rates for neural tube defects in babies exposed to valproate during the first trimester are 30 to 80 times higher than the rate for neural tube defects in the general US population. In pregnant women with epilepsy, valproate monotherapy is associated with a four-fold higher rate of major malformations than other antiepileptic drug monotherapies. 

“Healthcare professionals should counsel women of childbearing potential taking valproate about the increased risk of major malformations…” 

A far more common drug is the SSRI antidepressant. Critics of antidepressants and the doctors who prescribe them, say that antidepressants are over-prescribed. While there is little doubt many individuals would not be able to get through the day without potentially doing harm to Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Antidepressants, depakote, SSRI, valproate
Posted in Drugs/Medical | No Comments »

Best Explanation of what’s going on with BP Spill

June 3rd, 2010. By Hunter West

I don’t live anywhere near the Gulf Coast, so the Great Oil Spill does not affect me. But I am mad as hell on behalf of the people who DO live there, and earn their livelihoods from the sea, and the fresh air. What has lately been described as easily the worst oil spill in US history is going to have lawyers locked up and busy for years, acting on behalf of those whose lives have, or will be ruined by all of this. 

And with good reason… 

What were they thinking? Were there interventions planned for this type of disaster? If a drill rig topples, or a submarine rams the pipe, should there not be provision to instantly and automatically cap the wellhead on the ocean floor? Isn’t this just common sense? 

I caught a fast-and-dirty explanation of what’s going on the other day via satellite courtesy of the CBC in Canada. Bob McDonald, the science guy who hosts a radio show called ‘Quirks and Quarks for the radio side of the network,’ is the guy CBC turns to in an effort to explain in layman’s terms, what all this means and why it’s happening. 

He was on camera for no more than 90 seconds, but he nailed it. 

Picture the Deepwater Horizon sitting on top of a pipe—or a super-long straw, if you will—sucking up the oil from the wellhead deep on the ocean floor. The explosion and fire on April 20^th decimated the drill rig and platform, and it toppled into the ocean—taking the pipe—or straw—with it.

Now that pipe is laying on the ocean floor, pretty much in one piece, but with kinks and bends. Like a kinked drinking straw after a child has done using it. There are, as McDonald explained, two or three kinks in the pipe—and the oil is leaking out of those kinks, as well as the end. 

BP has twice tried to cap the leaks, the latest effort failing last weekend when ‘Top Kill’ didn’t work. 

Now BP is trying to cut the pipe at the wellhead, with a clean cut, and cap the well. Drilling additional relief wells to stem the pressure will, hopefully, also help. 

But McDonald puts it all into perspective. According to his observations, the kinks in the pipe are effectively helping to stem the crude oil flow, serving as a governor. The kinks are limiting the pressure. Even though millions of gallons have spewed out into the Gulf in the last 6 weeks, it could have been a lot worse had the crude been allowed to be relaesed totally unimpeded. 

Well, that’s what BP, if I understand McDonald correctly, is about to do: cut the pipe cleanly at the wellhead, and then attempt to cap it. 

McDonald said it would be like opening up a fire hydrant completely, then attempting to cap the rushing water with a cap not much larger than the opening itself, and doing all this from miles away with rushing fluid at high pressure, as your guide and adversary. 

Omigod… 

Legal eagles will be hovering over this for years. Lawsuits are now, and will continue to roll out and meander through the system forever and a day. Let’s just hope there are sufficient resources, either on BP’s part or the feds, to compensate people properly. 

In the meantime… 

Pray. 

Tags: BP, BP Oil Spill
Posted in Emerging Issues, Environment | No Comments »

Button Batteries: Convenient for you – and Baby, too

May 28th, 2010. By Hunter West

One can’t imagine the horror of discovering that your child has swallowed a battery. But it happens—and it’s occurring with increasing frequency, according to a study published this week in the medical journal Pediatrics.

It’s bad enough when a child swallows anything not meant to enter the mouth and the life-threatening choking hazard that can ensue. But just as dangerous—if more so—is the potential for an ingested battery to do permanent damage resulting from the electric charge still inherent with the ingested battery.

As reported earlier this week by CNN, there has been a 6.7 fold increase in the percentage of severe outcomes from battery ingestion over the last 24 years. What’s more, the severity of those outcomes, or injuries, has worsened. Reports have included damage to, and destruction of the esophagus, perforation of the aorta and vocal cord paralysis.

A common culprit, as described in the study, is the 20mm lithium battery.

You know these batteries. They’re the ones that look like a dime, or a penny. It’s the same concept as the small, button batteries that power your watch. And you can see the need for using these compact batteries, given the ever-shrinking size of electronics. Everything is getting smaller, including remotes for electronic devices. Remotes are everywhere, and most households have a collection of them lying around, in plain view and available for a toddler to locate, pick up and jam in his mouth.

That’s what children do. Everything goes in their mouths. And it always happens just when your back is turned for a split second. Call it Parental Murphy’s Law.

While I don’t dispute the need for smaller batteries (some products are so small and thin, even the small, ‘AAA’ batteries are way too big), where is the caution on the part of electronics manufacturers to baby-proof their devices?

I have four children. The oldest is 35 and the youngest is 14—so I’ve been through a lot of parenting and a basketful of toys, some of which were battery-powered. Most of the toys designed for children Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Batteries, Button Batteries, Lithium Batteries
Posted in Personal Injury | 1 Comment »

With where Cars are Heading, my Money’s Going in Funeral Homes

May 21st, 2010. By Hunter West

I love to drive—but I just may have to give it up and be done with it. Because I don’t like where the cars of the future are going. 

For that matter, I don’t like where they are now. 

A recent article in The New York Times focused on the cars of the future and what our dashboards are going to look like. Specifically, a demonstration by Cisco Systems showed how an LED dashboard display can be manipulated and customized much like the screen on your smart phone, iPad or laptop. 

In other words, if you don’t like the fuel gauge over HERE, you can drag and drop it over THERE. 

Same with the icons for the car’s web browser, the weather channel, the stocks channel, the news feed, the video screen, the keyboard and the GPS. 

Here’s the problem…  

It’s one thing to have the dashboard evolve from a collection of mechanical dials to integrated electronic bars, and graphs. This gee-whiz stuff has been happening since the 1980’s. 

The problem—and I’ll say it again—is all the interconnectivity that automotive manufacturers have, or are bringing into the car. 

Were cars to have the capacity to drive themselves, then I’d be all for it. Just like the cockpit of an airliner, where you can throw the multi-million-dollar jet on autopilot and play with your laptop while the plane overshoots the airport by an hour… 

Oh, wait a minute. That’s not so good, either. 

The point is, even if cars were to have the kind of sophistication that commercial jets have, Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Automobile, Automotive, Cars, Cisco, LED Dashboard, Smart Car
Posted in Accidents, Automotive, Defective Products | No Comments »

A New Litigation Target: It’s in the Air…

May 13th, 2010. By Hunter West

It was revealed this month that yet another study—this one originating with researchers in Ottawa on the Chilean population—suggests that air pollution carries with it risk for stroke and thrombosis. 

We already know—and have for a long time—that bad air can make you sick. Employees have sued their employers for the bad air coursing through a building’s ventilation systems. Air travelers have sued airlines for the bad air found in some commercial jets. 

The latter is a real concern. If the air inside a commercial jet is making you sick, it’s not like you can just get off at the next stop. Short of getting them to drop the oxygen mask so you can get relief that way, there isn’t a lot you can do but suffer in silence—and sue the bastards when you land. 

Which is what some people have done. 

So you work in a sick building. Short of launching a formal complaint against your employer, you can always get outside and get some fresh air when you find the air in the workplace, overwhelming. 

(Workers sue anyway). 

But what happens when the air outside, is worse than the air inside? 

Research is suggesting that the air pollution out there can be hazardous to your health. Sure, we’ve all joked about it—and even sensed it—but now research is suggesting we’re not far off the mark. 

So you don’t like the air in, say, Detroit or in the valleys of California where the mountains trap the smog. Okay, so you move. 

But what if you can’t? What if your job ties you to that city, that area? What if you work outside, exposing your lungs to countless hours of polluted air? 

What happens if you suffer a stroke? 

Just watch…somebody, somewhere is going to sue the municipality for bad air. For a decades- Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Air Pollution
Posted in Environment | 1 Comment »