Congress, NIH at it Again!

As many of you already know I write about medical topics because, prior to my retirement, I was both a physician's assistant and an ultrasonographer with special interest in cardiovascular testing. However, every time I run across something as ridiculous as the following item, I'm glad that I am no longer guilty by association with the clown behind this waste of the taxpayer's money.

This week marks the American Academy of Neurology's 59th Annual Meeting, held this year in Boston, Massachusetts. It also marks the release of the following item by Medscape Medical News, a subsidiary of WebMD. First, the headline:

Second Hand Smoke Linked to Increased Dementia Risk

That one got my attention and I decided to read on. In the first paragraph I was informed that:

"Secondhand-smoke exposure has been associated with an increased risk for dementia, particularly among elderly individuals with subclinical carotid artery disease who have lived with a smoker for 30 years or more, new research has shown."

That sounded pretty important. Until I read further, that is.

What this taxpayer-funded (via the National Institutes of Health's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute) study did was examine a subset of just under a thousand healthy volunteers who were enrolled in a larger study evaluating cardiovascular risk factors in healthy adults 65 years of age and older.

The study concluded that those subjects with exposure to second-hand smoke and subclinical carotid artery disease (defined as 25% or less obstruction in the artery) had a 2.5 times higher risk for the development of dementia that those who were exposed to second hand smoke but had no carotid artery disease. The study reported that second hand smoke alone was associated with a 30% increased risk for dementia but did not comment on any association between second hand smoke and subclinical carotid artery disease.

Wow.

To his credit Ted Haight, the principal investigator behind the study, did go on record as stating:

"We found secondhand smoke itself did not independently contribute to the incidence of dementia. But we did see a greater prevalence of dementia among individuals with subclinical [carotid artery] disease as demonstrated by abnormal ultrasound findings ..."

Allow me to translate the above:

"We couldn't link secondhand smoke to dementia, so we added something else to the equation ("Mickey Mouse" disease in the carotid arteries) so we could prove that secondhand smoke was possibly responsible for something in this group. What we didn't bother to tell you is that practically everyone over the age of 65 has the previously mentioned degree of "Mickey Mouse" disease in that artery."

I have been screaming about the introduction of such potentially misleading information to the "popular (the non-medical) press" for years. But, being content to remain the voice of one crying in the wilderness I think that a letter to my congresswoman and both senators is long overdue.

We stand on the verge of a health care crisis, one that makes the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic look small. The first wave of the "baby boomer" generation has hit retirement age and even more are coming. And how do our wise and caring lawmakers respond? They respond as they always do, by funding an agency that wastes money on "medical research" that serves no purpose other than to waste money.

It is this lack of concern for the elderly of America that led our "new, caring, Democratically-controlled Congress" to vote down a measure (Cochran Amendment. No. 1010), that would have allowed American consumers to buy cheaper prescription drugs from abroad in order to stretch their often limited health care dollars.

Those senators whose names are bandied about most often (for one reason or another) and there votes (a yea vote is in support of the measure) include:

H. Clinton (D-NY) Nay

J. Biden (D-DE) Not Voting (Absent)

B. Bayh (D-IN) Yea

B. Obama (D-IL) Not Voting (Absent)

O. Hatch (R-UT) Yea

E. Kennedy (D-MA) Yea

J. Kerry (D-MA) Yea

P. Domenici (R-NM) Yea

To see how your local influence peddler voted, visit www.senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/g_three_sections_with_teasers/legislative_home.htm