Disparity of Weight Perception, by Ethnicity

I was leaving Trader Joe’s the other morning at the same time as an obese White family. After loading the food in the back of the van, the woman removed what looked like a can of Pringle's potato chips, opened it, and handed the full container to the seated child. I have seen Black women do exactly the same thing. This scenario had me curious to the intersection of obesity and perception, and specifically that Blacks and Whites perceive fatness differently, even as they pursue it with the same behavior.

If I was to venture a guess, the White woman surveyed about her weight would snarl ‘yes, I’m fat and it’s none of your freakin’ business’. A Black woman, alternately, might say that she is ‘big-boned’ and her weight is normal for her – and then say it is none of your freakin’ business. But, in a way, it is all of our business. More than seventy-percent of America is overweight and obesity is literally killing our health care system, and us along with it.

I found a study (here) that measures the difference in weight perception across sex and race. The research proves perception differences are significant. Blacks and Latinos see fat differently than Whites, but the researchers do not postulate why. It would not be PC. So, I will take a SWAG (scientific wild-ass guess). Black Americans, with the lingering influence of their geographically challenged West African location of ethnic origin, continue to seek fat storage as a positive indicator of health and longevity against the historical threat of famine. Simply put, fat black women look and feel like better mates under this view, and the behavior of Black men backs this up (and vice versa). Of course, Black folks like sitting on their butts, in front of HDTV flat-screens, just as much as White folks, so perception is just one part of the influence.

White men and women are less influenced by famine perspectives and seek slimness for the more empirically realized longevity and health benefits, resulting from stable agricultural societies (see Fertile Crescent). Hence, the obese White woman with the Pringles is more likely to defend herself and her behavior purely with attitude, and not argument.

Other thoughts on the subject? Remember, these are musings. Rubber bullets please.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Disparity of Weight Perception, by Ethnicity, Obesity, Big-boned, Health Care Crisis, Acting Black, Acting White

Syndrome Gives Blacks Blue Eyes

A recent commenter on this blog suggested that the blue-eyed Black boy, in an earlier post, may present Waardenburg Syndrome, a rare autosomal genetic disorder that has possible bright blue eyes as one of its qualifying criteria, along with possible deafness (common). Actually, the cause of the blue eyes is a form of albinism that may include patches of non-pigmented skin or forehead hair, regardless of ethnicity.

There are four types of Waardenburg Syndrome, with a mix of possible characteristics as the determinant. Medical challenges increase with type. The boy in the picture is displaying two major symptoms of type 1, as does the previous boy (perhaps) (here); bright blue eyes and dystopia canthorum, a condition where the inner corners of the eyes are set more widely apart, but with normally distanced eyes.

Waardenburg occurs once in every 42,000 births, and is a deficiency inherited from a single parent, who may or may not display similar characteristics. Regarding the eye, color abnormalities come in three forms; heterochromia (multiple colors), bilateral isohypochromia (pale blue eyes), or fundus (reflective) pigmentary alterations (spottiness).

So, besides naturally occurring genetic blue eyes in dark skinned people, as previously discussed, understanding Waardenburg's is another avenue of accurately recognizing phenotype (gene expression) in eye color.

James C. Collier

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TSA Body Scan Safety OR Grope My Wife, Please!

I had to fly to Chicago for a meeting last week, and as luck would have it, I was singled out for a full security going-over, courtesy of Oakland TSA officials. With this selection, I had the choice of the default full-body scan or the alternative ‘pat-down’. Of course, all the propaganda I had read and heard said that the body scan delivers a low level of radiation and is entirely safe. But, I also witnessed the pilots throwing fits over these things, along with the feel-my-crotch pat-down back-up. So what to do?

Although I opted for the scan, I wondered, as I stood there getting zapped, if I need to up my daily dose of Vitamin D, to give my body some extra cancer fighting moxie, in response. Well, the answer I came up with in my uninformed mind was wrong – after reading the article I have attached (here). I now think these machines could be very dangerous and they should be avoided.

Frankly, I would prefer stripping down to my underwear for a visual inspection, rather than getting irradiated or molested. I think some intrepid fashionista should come up with security underwear that is comfortable to fly in, not too revealing in a same sex security area, but also security-friendly. Until then, I will opt for the grope and avoid those questionable, allegedly safe, surface radiation gizmos. I suggest y’all do the same. Happy Thanksgiving!

P.S. I chose this particular scanner image because the other images I found were so so unappetizing, equally pornographic, and we should know what those TSA guys are seeing, or not.

7/20/2011 UPDATE: TSA has begun implementing a software update that shows agents a generic picture of subject passengers, including any suspicious anomalies. Note that this change does not mitigate the health and safety concerns of the scanners.

1/26/2013 UPDATE: TSA announced (here) that it will eliminate use of the at-issue Rapiscan machines, replacing them, by June, with machines using ATR (Automated Target Recognition) software.

H/T Mangans

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: TSA Body Scan Safety OR Grope My Wife, Please!t, X-Ray, Radiation, Cancer, Acting Black, Acting White

The Great Cancer Myth: War on Cancer

In 1961, John F. Kennedy boldly declared that the United States would put a man on the moon in the next decade. The US poured $170 billion (in 2005 dollars) into a project that delivered success in the NASA moon landing and safe return in 1969. In contrast, Richard Nixon declared ‘war’ on cancer with the National Cancer Act in 1971 with the goal of a cure by 1976, but after some 40 years and $200 billion spent, we can safely say that cancer has kicked our collective butts a distance equal to that traveled by Apollo 11– nearly one-half million miles.

This year, cancer is slated to surpass cardiovascular disease as the country’s leading killer. In fact, since Nixon’s pronouncement, cardiovascular related mortality has fallen 70% against a drop of just over 7% for cancer deaths. To be sure, people are living better with cancer than earlier times, but they ultimately die of it in disappointing numbers, nonetheless. Even the reported progress, in terms of a cure, is a bit misleading, as much of the advancement comes in the form of additional longevity measured in months, after a diagnosis. A new drug that prolongs a cancer patient’s life by a few months is deemed a success, by profit-hungry drug companies who pay doctors to prescribe particular drugs.

There are recurring areas of cancer research that are often cited as contributing to the dismal results. The first is that scientists are not recognized and rewarded for saving lives, per their research efforts. The rate of useful therapies per research discovery is very poor compared to other diseases. Cancer research has also stuck for too long with animal models that many people say are irrelevant to humans with cancer. The National Cancer Institute, a major research funder, is known for preferring ‘safe’ research, study that is more status quo and less innovative. The leading complaint is that private funders of research are focused on ‘home run’ solutions that can be patented and will deliver boatloads of money, rather than training their focus on something much more doable, but less profitable - preventing cancer from the outset.

The real tragedy of the war on cancer is that it effectively could have been won, if the objective of those involved was to simply save lives, rather than to profit from saving lives. The human immune system is evolved to keep cancer in check, if only it is kept healthy and strong to do the job. The problem with this approach is that no one gets rich from true prevention – people just go on with their lives. The cancer industry has substituted profit-making early detection and life-extending therapies, in exchange for a focus on nutrition and behaviors that would prevent up to 77% of all internal cancers (here). However, if the current industry took this better approach, ironically, we would have to start calling them the anti-cancer industry.

James C. Collier

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The Great Cancer Myth: Cancer 101

If you believe noted scientist and science-fiction writer Issac Asimov, our bodies contain an estimated 50 trillion cells – 50 thousand billion! They live, duplicate themselves, and die in a very balanced process, covering the time from our birth to death. Inside each cell is a strand of DNA, our unique three-quarter gigabyte instruction set for how we are put together. Cell replication, the ultimate, is the process that gets the instructions from the old cells to the new, again and again, as we age, everyday.

Replacing trillions of cells each month, over decades, where each cell contains 3 billion base pairs, is a daunting task carried out with amazing efficiency and accuracy. Even so, cell replication produces predictable errors that would doom us all, with certainty, if it were not for built-in safeguards. When we die of cancer, it is not because we got it – it was always there - rather our internal evolutionary safeguards have failed, too often (but not always) due to some form of neglect or abuse, conveniently obscured from our view.

So the issue with cancer is not about getting it, but about accepting that it is already there and that we should pursue keeping it under control everyday of our lives. Each cell is pre-programmed to copy itself a certain number of times and then die. When a cell errantly exceeds its copy limit the body deems it cancerous, and a healthy immune system steps in to manually tell the cell to die. But what happens when our immunity is compromised by some deficiency? Cell replication spins out of control and cancer gains the upper-hand. Chemotherapy and radiation, crude man-made mimics of what a healthy immune system does with pin point accuracy, await us ready to spring into swash-buckling action, for profit.

Keeping our evolved internal safeguards working in original condition is not profitable. Letting our bodies fall into disrepair, so that this or that product/procedure can snatch us from the jaws of death (maybe) - now that is a way to make a butt-load of money! So let cancer be the bogeyman in the closet that everyone is too frightened to open and too distracted to thoughtfully consider. Let’s promise people a cure to get their pledges, their donations, and investments. Let’s wrap our quests for branded, proprietary, profit-laminated Nobel-prize winning solutions in pink ribbons, sappy optimism, and compromised scientific mumbo-jumbo. And let's do this while people die needlessly, expensively, and profitably. Cancer industry, indeed.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: The Great Cancer Myth: Cancer 101, DNA, Cancer Industry, Immune, Acting Black, Acting White

The Great Cancer Myth: Introduction

I do not worry about getting cancer. I have it. I have cancer in my colon. I have cancer in my prostate. I have cancer in my lungs. I have cancer in my bones. I have cancer in my entire body, from the day I was born, till now, and until the day I die. It is not a monster hiding in my closet, waiting to jump out and get me. It is a part of me that I no longer fear. I have it, yes, but it does not have me, by design or my action, and I live each day to keep it that way.

The idea that cancer is something I may get, and if it is detected in sufficient time (by some expensive gizmo) I might be saved, is nothing more than one of the greatest medical miscarriages ever perpetrated on modern humankind. The truth of this is magnified for Blacks, as the group suffers disproportionately from the disease. In this series I will talk about cancer and how we have been taught to view it to our health detriment, and for others to financially exploit.

This miscarriage, which has blossomed into the ‘cancer business’, was introduced to us with good intention wrapped in medical ignorance, but those intentions and ignorance have long since been replaced by greed. What drives this business is the lust for money, return on investment, or whatever the investor community wants to call it. The desire to profit from that thing which scares us the most, dying, is at the base of this trillion dollar economic engine. It is high time that we started calling it what it is, an industry. When I see pink buckets of KFC being sold in the alleged fight against cancer, I say enough already.

And I hate that word cured too. The public has been sold that cancer can be cured - it cannot - it can only be crudely stalled in particular situations, via crude procedures. Truly curing cancer, that is, ‘fixing’ cell replication processes to eliminate errors, is infinitely more difficult than curing the common cold, or malaria. The last time I checked, both of these ‘simpler’ maladies were still going strong, even while their cures would be worth zillions.

Just know, as I start down this road, I challenge the producers of the fight, not the actors. I have tremendous sympathy for those battling cancer, and also for those who are tools of this pretense of a good fight. However, I refuse to let people, who should know better, off the hook, just because some are clever enough to wrap their charade in a pink ribbon, colored wristband, or non-clever bucket of fried chicken. Stay tuned…

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: The Great Cancer Myth: Introduction, Chemotherapy, Cancer Industry, Malignant, Acting Black, Acting White