1. More circumcision needed to control AIDS in Africa. One, the evidence that circumcision decreases aids is circumstantial at best (is that a pun?) No one has once considered that the reduction in AIDS might be due to the increased education in safe sex and the ongoing (every six months) HIV counseling. CIRCUMSTANTIAL I say, because it makes little sense that removing a protective layer of skin, opening up mucousal membrane to viral exposure could actually increase protection. It's gotta be the condoms. Secondly, how can we possibly be pressuring them to decrease female circumcision while at the same time encourage male circumcision? Does that not sound like a double standard?
2. Autistic children make less eye contact. How much did our tax dollars pay for this??? Holy CRAP...we've known that, it was part of the diagnostic standards more than sixty years ago. Anyhoo, they've now PROVEN that they make less eye contact, which I guess is ironic in terms of the circumstantial evidence in study number one listed above. In fact, the study has proven that they look at the mouth twice as often as neurotypical kids. I'd argue that eye contact is a overrated concept anyway. I've had my experience with this, in school we were told that we were to force eye contact as much as possible. We were to reward and increase eye contact, in fact, her IEP stated that "Breanna will make and sustain eye contact at least eight times each hour, on eight out of ten trials". In hindsight....it seems obvious that she has an auditory processing disorder, and like any child who CANNOT HEAR WHAT IS BEING SAID TO THEM....she was looking at our mouths to process. It's one of those Hot Damn moments. You wouldn't force a deaf child to look away from the mouth of someone who was communicating with them. sheesh.
3. Nurturing parents reduce aggression in kids. Um....duh. I can't even touch this.
4. Video games help cancer patients. Yay! I'm glad that this has been done, because what a wonderful resource for kids who are already feeling limited in their choices. But I was wondering why the title wasn't "Video games BAD...unless you have cancer", after all, no less than seven articles in the past week have linked obesity with video games and junk food. Ironic since I have seven kids who play unlimited video games and are far from obese. Or even overweight.
5. Participation in a childcare program appears to increase the likelihood that a child will be obese when he or she shows up for the first day of kindergarten. A personal story about this, I know that studies tend to be a lot more careful about weighing and measuring. However, in Emily's kindergarden year at school, we received a notice that her BMI showed her to be obese. i was shocked, as you can count her ribs and backbones...at home measuring showed that they not only made her two inches shorter than she was, they put an extra seven pounds on her. When I pointed it out to the hospital who comes into the school for the 'healthy kids' program (although I argue how it could possible be a healthy kids program when they just come in and say what's wrong rather than teach the kids how to live healthy), they just shrugged it off and said that they don't change the numbers after the fact.
So not only do these studies have a potential for mis-measuring these kids, they are not taking into account normal growth patterns....how kids chunk up before they gain inches in height.
And that....is my take on the news.
1 comment:
My oldest daughter is very thin and I put a good deal of effort into "fattening" her up. But every time I start to see a little meat on her arms, up she goes again, and I have to start all over.
Fortunately, she hasn't sprouted in quite a few months now. Her pants from last winter still fit (gasp!) and her arms are starting to round out a little. :-)
Post a Comment