The doc who thinks outside the box

Fisher-Price is recalling almost one million toys because their paint contains excessive amounts of lead. What's particularly troubling about this is that Fisher-Price has had a long-standing relationship with the Chinese vendor that applied the paint. Fisher-Price is practically synonymous with “quality toys,” so they must have imposed various quality standards on their vendors, including a prohibition against using leaded paint. Yet it happened. Again.

In June, the toy maker RC2 Corp. recalled 1.5 million wooden railroad toys and set parts from its Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway product line (source). Before that, there were so many reports of other contaminated products, foods, drugs, supplements, and herbs that you would need a team of researchers working full-time to keep track of all of them. A few months ago, The New York Times reported that Chinese producers routinely and intentionally add melamine to rice protein and wheat gluten in animal feed products to falsely inflate their protein levels.

The New York Times also detailed (F.D.A. Tracked Tainted Drugs, but Trail Went Cold in China, June 17, 2007) how a state-owned company in China exported diethylene glycol, a syrupy poison used in some antifreeze, as safe, pharmaceutical-grade glycerin. Instead of cooperating, the Chinese blocked an investigation by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). On Oct. 27, 1997, Mary K. Pendergast, then deputy FDA commissioner, wrote “The U.S. imports a lot of Chinese glycerin and it is used in ingested products such as toothpaste.” She stressed the need to learn how that poison was introduced, which might “prevent this tragedy from happening again.”

A decade later, Chinese-made diethylene glycol was mixed into medicine that killed at least 100 people in Panama. Chinese toothpaste containing that toxin was found in the United States and seven other countries.

In Fascinating Health Secrets and The Science of Sex, I cautioned against consuming food or herbs from China, given their indifference about food safety and their rampant pollution that ensures that many of their food and herbal products are inevitably contaminated. Here is a relevant quote from The Science of Sex:

There have recently been reports indicating that many herbs (especially Chinese or Asian herbs) possess unacceptable levels of toxins and thus cannot be recommended unless a particular product has been tested and proven to be safe (even then, I'd be wary of batch-to-batch variation in purity). For example, ConsumerLab (www.consumerlab.com) tested 21 brands of ginseng, 17 of which were Asian and one of which was a mixture of Asian, American, and Siberian ginseng. Twelve of these products failed the test (eight products were contaminated with both quintozene and hexachlorobenzene, and two products contained unacceptable levels of lead). Other tests performed by the California Department of Health Services found contamination with drugs and potentially toxic heavy metals in 83 of 260 imported Chinese remedies. If they can’t nuke us, perhaps they are instead trying to poison us (by the way, I’m only half joking). Another study of approximately 2600 Chinese herbal preparations found that 25% of them contained synthetic drugs, including Viagra. Unless you are fond of playing Russian roulette with your health, I think you should—at a minimum—avoid a product unless it has passed testing by ConsumerLab or another independent lab. Given the abysmal track record of Asian herbs, I think it would be prudent to avoid all of them.

Based on the recent news reports, I am no longer half joking about them trying to poison us because they can’t nuke us. They are poisoning us, and it is intentional, not an accident. I don’t fault the FDA for not detecting this problem sooner because the FDA does not have the resources to inspect every food shipment into the United States. However, it is sheer lunacy for the FDA to give the Chinese the ability to poison us as they did with feloniously contaminated food because we don’t need any food from China; our farmers can grow enough to feed us and still export to other countries. Our Congress is evidently unconcerned about American farmers producing enough food, because it has paid billions of dollars as subsidies to farmers to encourage them not to grow food. Then we turn around and buy food from the Chinese—utterly idiotic! The FDA wants to prohibit Americans from buying prescription drugs from Canada**, yet it permits food and herbal imports from a country—China—that intentionally poisoned us. Does anyone in Washington have any brains? Why not ban all food and herbal imports from China? Add toys to the list, and the next generation of American kids will be smarter, because lead is a known neurotoxin.

** I have never seen any evidence that prescription drugs from Canada are any less safe than drugs obtained from American pharmacies. In fact, Canadian drugs may actually be safer. The safety of American drugs is compromised by an idiotic system that gives crooks an open door to, for example, sell counterfeit drugs that have killed and injured many people.

My brother and I previously sold some Chinese-made storage accessories through our GarageScapes company, but we discontinued them after tiring of their stunningly pathetic lack of quality control. Not only was their quality control horrendous, but it did not improve even after exhortations that “you'd better improve, or else.” Sheer apathy.

That was no aberration. After purchasing countless other Chinese products, I am convinced that they don't give a hoot abut quality or ethics. Whether it is a badly chipped storage rack or a tainted medicine that kills humans, the Chinese don't care. Period. So why do we buy from them?

Anyone who answers “price” is penny-wise and pound-foolish. I won't paint with a broad brush and assert that all Chinese products are junk, but a surprising number are.

I think the American perception of value is distorted by what I call the Wal-Mart effect. You know—you buy something that seems to be a bargain, but you are myopically focused on price, not quality. I will be the first to admit that I, too, was once this stupid. Then it hit me: many of the seemingly great bargains were anything but. For example, one fall in which I did very little baking I had three mixers fail that I purchased from Wal-Mart. When I was young, I bought a relatively inexpensive made-in-America mixer for my Mom as a Christmas present. That mixer was still going strong over three decades later—and my Mom baked more than Martha Stewart and Better Crocker combined! (Several thousand cookies later, I am fortunate that I discovered an easy way to lose weight.) Thus, you and I could save money by purchasing better-quality items that might cost more but last a long time. Furthermore, our landfills wouldn't be filled with so much junk that dies prematurely. Recycling is good, but what's even better is obviating the need for recycling, or delaying it for many years.

Were it not for our involvement in World War II, the Chinese would have been permanently enslaved by the Japanese—at least the Chinese who weren't exterminated, as many were. I think it is natural to express gratitude to someone who saves your life, but I have never seen any evidence that the Chinese feel the least bit grateful for what we did for them. To my knowledge, they never even sent so much as a Hallmark card after the war. Instead, they became bellicose. Their truculence and “to heck with you” attitude even extends to friendly corporations such as Fisher-Price and others who give them work.

Imagine if you'd saved the life of someone's father and then given that person a job, yet he repeatedly and intentionally poisoned your products and killed your customers for decades. Aside from being aghast at the lack of gratitude, wouldn't it be reasonable to fire that person? Of course. Ergo, it's time to fire the Chinese and give jobs back to Americans. We've given the ungrateful Chinese too many chances to amend their behavior, and they continue to spit in our faces.

The American patience for Chinese intransigence is growing thin. I think that a candidate in the upcoming Presidential election could guarantee his election by seizing this issue and illustrating how inexpensive made-in-China goods often cost more in the end in addition to imperiling our health. We could put millions of Americans back to work and have higher-quality products that are safer and more durable by banning imports from China.

Incidentally, the primary reason why we prevailed in World War II was because of our industrial capacity. In the past few decades, the American economy has shifted to one based on services and information, not industrial production capacity. Industrial production capacity is a national strategic asset, yet it is one that our leaders seem to have forgotten.

We don't need to wait for our leaders to wake up, however. We could achieve immediate effects by boycotting corporations that incorporate Chinese products into their goods, especially ones intended for human or animal consumption. Remember the old ad jingle: “East meets West, La Choy makes Chinese food, swing American”? It's time to amend that. “East meets West, China poisons our products, die, Americans!”

Update: A few weeks later, there was yet another massive recall because of made-in-China toys being contaminated with lead. This latest recall involves 800,000 Mattel toys, including 675,000 Barbie accessories. According to an AP report, this is the third major recall of Chinese-made toys in the past few weeks necessitated by lead contamination. One needn't be a psychiatrist to know that there is something seriously wrong with China and the mindset of its people. We saved them in World War II, and soon thereafter they and the Russians—another one of our WW II allies—were out to get us any way they could. The Chinese attack has been relentless and multipronged. Do you think this chronic lead contamination problem is just a mistake? Perhaps not. If they want to beat us—and they do—they could get an edge by poisoning our kids with lead so the next generation of Americans is less intelligent. Unfortunately, the lead contamination problem is just the tip of the iceberg. China is our enemy, and they have more up their sleeve than just lead. We now know about some of the other hazards, but some won't be discovered for years, AFTER untold damage has been done. Then the Chinks will apologize to us, just like they always do, while they are secretly giving each other the high-five for a job well done as they celebrate the stupidity of Americans for being so blind to the war they're waging. Wake up, Americans. Stop buying made-in-China products, and tell Wal-Mart, the #1 supporter of made-in-China junk, to find suppliers in other countries. If you analyze Wal-Mart's success, it boils down to one primary economic fact: We rewarded them and made them multi-billionaires because they gave us low-cost goods. However, when these low-cost goods have a short life span, or when they are contaminated with lead or other risks to our health, it's clear that the value of what Wal-Mart is giving us is highly suspect.

Update #2: A smart student sent the following complaint to me:

Dear Dr. Pezzi,
I was entranced by the ER stories you posted online. They were quirky, funny, insightful, and enjoyable to read. You seem to be a man of high intelligence and ingenuity. However, I do have a complaint to make. Your most recent blog post alluding to your belief that China is conspiring to poison American consumers unnerved me, not because of the current lack of high product quality controls in China, but because you used the word "Chinks" to describe the Chinese.   If you know anything about the Asian-American community, you would know that "Chinks" is a highly offensive, racist term used predominantly by non-Asian Americans to describe the Chinese or any other Asian ethnicity in a demeaning, derogatory, condescending manner. It is akin to calling a Caucasian a "stupid honkie" or "white trash". Perhaps you don't see anything wrong with using offensive, racist terms to describe people of different ethnic backgrounds but I do. I was very disappointed to come across that word in your blog. When I first started reading it, I was surprised at your opinion that China is conspiring to poison the American market with low-grade, cheap, and toxic products. I disagree with you that there is an actual conspiratorial policy in place although I agree that many Chinese-made products are of inferior quality at the moment. I was hoping that your intelligence and education would have made you less narrow-minded and prejudiced. Your use of the word, "Chinks", only confirms the stereotype that white people from your state are narrow-minded and believe themselves superior, to the point of considering members of other ethnic (be it American or otherwise) backgrounds or cultures to be subpar.

My response to her:
You seem to be a highly intelligent person yourself, so I am a bit surprised by how offended you were. Let me try to make a distinction:

From your message: ""Chinks" is a highly offensive, racist term used predominantly by non-Asian Americans to describe the Chinese . . . in a demeaning, derogatory, condescending manner."

I think highly of many Chinese — probably you, too! :-) — so I never intended that as a global denunciation of all Chinese people. I DID intend it as a way to verbally lambaste the Chinese who commit the atrocities I mentioned. Anyone who intentionally poisons millions of people over a period of decades deserves to be called something far harsher than "Chink," but I usually don't use profanity.

So, there's a distinction here. I was clearly referring to the "bad Chinese," not ALL Chinese. If you've written much, you know that authors often relax their standards of proper English usage in an attempt to spice up their writings and to more effectively communicate their feelings. A few weeks ago, the publisher of Forbes magazine used the word "ain't" in an editorial . . . amazing! I've heard others use more contentious language, such as the famous "N-word." Since I am probably one of the few people who truly loathes racial discrimination AND has a viable plan to help eliminate it, I do not want to contribute to the problem by using epithets that stereotype people — but, in fairness to myself, I don't believe I did that. As I mentioned above, I think it was obvious that I had my finger pointed directly at one subset of Chinese: the ones who evidently don't give a hoot about their fellow human beings.

>  "I disagree with you that there is an actual conspiratorial policy in place . . . "

An actual conspiratorial policy in place? Nah, of course not. That would suggest a Machiavellian scheme motivated by "the usual suspects": greed and power. Not very appealing, but perhaps understandable. The reality is probably even more grim: a decades-long pattern of execrable behavior that evinces their utter apathy and contempt for people in the United States and others around the world who have been repeatedly victimized — even killed — by the callous disregard shown by the Chinese who think nothing of poisoning others.

I am glad that you are offended by racism, because I am, too. I hope that you are equally intolerant of the racism that some Chinese have manifested by sending us foods and other products laced with myriad toxins so many times for so many years that it can no longer be excused as simple incompetence and by using lame alibis like, "Sorry, I didn't know that lead is toxic." The Chinese people aren't bumbling idiots; they know better, but a distressing minority of them act like wanton criminals. Incidentally, that is wanton (lacking in morality), not won ton (the soup). If their apathy isn't rooted in racism (a xenophobic devaluation of others), how do you explain their actions? We've already ruled out stupidity. What's your guess?

It's either blatant racism, or something equally abhorrent: their utter apathy and contempt for their customers around the world — which, if you think about it, certainly does smack of racism. Caucasian Americans have no monopoly on racism. In my opinion, by poisoning us for many years, the Chinese have manifested a racist inclination to view us as expendable rubbish that's less important than their profits. Again, Chinese with that attitude deserve a term far more derogatory than "Chink."

I am particularly offended by how Americans have repeatedly extended a hand a friendship, and a helping hand in time of need, to countless people around the world, only to later have them figuratively (and often literally) thrust a fist in our faces in return. If you are of Chinese heritage, you can thank your lucky stars that you weren't alive and living in China during World War 2. As I mentioned before, Japanese soldiers raped and murdered innumerable Chinese women — even young girls! The Japs (or Nipponese, if you object to "Japs") had such a commanding lead over other nations in that region that they never could have recovered without being rescued by Allied Forces (90+% of which was American might).

What might have stopped the Japs from behaving like savages? Do you think they'd wake up one day and suddenly realize that their prior actions were an unconscionable moral abomination that revealed a deep character flaw in their culture? I doubt it. Had the Japs won WW2, you — being a hot young female — wouldn't have had the luxury of spending your day reading my web site and then writing to me to nitpick about whether it is politically correct to use the word "Chink" to bash Chinese people who do evil things and evidently don't give a shit about it. Instead, you probably would have been raped a dozen times or more by Japs whose culture taught them that they are so superior to others that non-Japanese people are less valuable than dogs. Don't believe me? Do some research, learn more history, and listen to the words of people who witnessed and experienced the many Japanese brutalities that gave us a transparent view into their souls. Yes, the Japanese people have changed for the better in the interim, but only because the United States forced them to change. Go ahead and denounce American rectitude as people around the world love to do in finding fault with "the Great Satan," the United States, but our virtue is a light-year ahead of anything you could get from others who inexplicably have no conception of their own shortcomings. Get a mirror, for heaven's sake!

From what I've read in various journals, some professors think that, deep down, we're all racist. We all think we're superior to folks on the other side of the ocean, and even on the other side of the bleachers. If you receive a good education in college, you will learn WHY people think the way they do, and WHY that innate xenophobia once served us so well in earlier times during our evolution. Racism is often viewed by highbrow intellectuals as being something of an atavistic trait that doesn't befit us modern, cultured folk, but hey, we're all racist to some degree because it's in our genes. Although Caucasians in the United States have long been denigrated as being the worst racists in the world, I think that what you're seeing is a classic case of psychological projection. Are white Americans racist? Yes, of course we are, but much less so than many others who would wipe us off the face of the Earth if they could. There is perhaps no more clear-cut manifestation of racism than the desire to subjugate and kill others who aren't "us." Criminally negligent and intentional poisonings (yes, intentional: do your own research to verify this), as the Chinese have done, can also be construed as a vicious manifestation of racism.

Professor Pezzi has a pop quiz for you:

Q: What is more racist?

(a) Intentionally (if not conspiratorially) poisoning others for decades.

(b) Being so exasperated by repeated poisonings and empty promises to cease those actions that I chose the word "Chink" because I wanted others to know how much I loathe the Chinese businessmen/criminals who, try as they may, just can't seem to stop themselves from their ingrained patterns of misconduct.

Time to get out the red pen.

Did you pick (a)? Good!

Pick (b)? God help you.

You said one thing that mystifies me: "Your use of the word, "Chinks", only confirms the stereotype that white people from your state are narrow-minded and believe themselves superior, to the point of considering members of other ethnic (be it American or otherwise) backgrounds or cultures to be subpar."

I've met many people who were incensed by what some Chinese have done, but have you ever met or heard of anyone who thinks that Chinese people are subpar? You must be kidding! The "white people from [my] state," as you phrased it, have a stereotype of Chinese people that is, if anything, complimentary. Mention "college student," and what's the first thing that pops into the minds of many people? Young, irresponsible party animals. Booze, drugs, iPod-like priorities.

Now mention "Chinese student," and what's the first thing that pops into the minds of many people, including me and lots of us other hicks here in Michigan? Bright, ambitious, studious, dedicated, hard-working, quiet, responsible. Lots of books. No boozing it up.

Now if that's a stereotype, it's certainly not a negative one. So, when the hicks I hang around with aren't busy making moonshine or keeping up with world events by reading The National Enquirer in our outhouses, we don't bash Chinese people by calling them "Chinks" — except when they poison us . . . again, and again, and again. It's called righteous indignation.

I realize that you have probably been indoctrinated by the thought police in college who take a simplistic view of how racial perceptions are formed and expressed. First, while the word "stereotype" has a negative connotation, some stereotypes are rooted in reality. For instance, my stereotype about Chinese students being smart and industrious is buttressed by facts showing that they have higher IQs and better grades.

Finally, calling me "narrow-minded and prejudiced" is categorically wrong. Unlike the racial "leaders" in our country who perpetuate interracial tensions by mindless truculence and inflammatory rhetoric that fuels divisiveness, I could do more to end discrimination in 15 minutes than those leaders have done since the inception of the United States.

One of my grandfathers was murdered by his co-workers because he was an immigrant from Italy — or an Italian-American, to use today's PC way of appending one's ethnic heritage onto his citizenship. At that time, Italians were viewed as being subhuman. In the minds of the lily-white (they thought) "real" Americans who murdered my great-grandfather, a dirty Dago like that didn't deserve to take a job away from a "real" American.

By the way, that is just one of the many reasons why I loathe racial or ethnic discrimination. If you want to learn more, organize a lecture at your college in which I'd explain how to give racism a long-overdue KO punch. Professors and other members of the thought police are great at stomping their feet and pouting about discrimination, but they don't have any viable plan for truly changing how people think. At best, they just make people so fearful of being labeled bigoted, biased, or a racist that they keep their thoughts to themselves. Does this really solve the problem? No, it simply sweeps it under the rug.

My plan is better: it doesn't hide the dirt, it gets rid of it.

After hearing about the disastrous bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Minnesota, I recalled something a relative (I'll call him Don) told me several years ago. At that time, Don worked as a sales rep for Hilti, a company that sells fasteners and adhesives. Don said he'd sold umpteen containers of adhesive to the contractor building a huge bridge in Michigan. Without going into all of the engineering details of that botched project, Don said the bridge was literally held together with Hilti adhesive. Perhaps that adhesive lasts indefinitely, but don't count on it. Every similar adhesive that I've seen becomes brittle and markedly weaker in time. So if a major bridge in Michigan collapses without warning, well, you've been warned.

Most people wouldn't let a store overcharge them for a pack of gum, yet most people live their entire lives without realizing how the government steals thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars per year from them. In an earlier posting, I mentioned some of the taxes people pay but often don't consider in assessing their tax burden. That burden can easily exceed 50% of your income. Think of everything you purchase with your after-tax income: your mortgage or rent, food, auto payment, gasoline, medical insurance, house and personal property insurance, auto insurance, clothes, drugs, electricity, propane or natural gas, phone service, cell phone service, computers, Internet service, televisions, stereo systems, entertainment, and thousands of other things.

Now consider what the government provides to you in return for taking half or more of your money. Is it worth just as much to you as the dollars you spend? Probably not. In fact, it is probably not even close. The government does a good job of protecting our local and national security, so I won't complain too much about that money, even though much of the military expenditures are wasted. The government also plows the road in front of my house in wintertime, although not nearly as often as it should. The government also helped to educate me, but I paid for most of my education. Therefore, when I compare the value of what I buy with half my income and what the government provides for me with the half it takes as taxes, I don't think that the government is spending my money very efficiently. Every year, billions of dollars seem to vanish in Washington, with no bureaucrat or politician held accountable for it. Money doesn't vanish, of course. The excuse about “we don't know where that five billion dollars went” is just that: an excuse, and a rather shaky one, I might add. Someone knows where that money goes, but when it goes into someone's pocket illegally, the government seems to forget where it went. Ironically, the government would not tolerate this degree of sloppiness from us, the taxpayers. If you as a taxpayer made even 1% of the errors in recordkeeping that the government does, it could fine you and put you in prison. Isn't this a perversion of justice?

While watching TV yesterday, a public service commercial featuring a de rigueur Hollywood celebrity caused me to stop in my tracks:

“Provide your child with a healthy and safe home. Remember, this is your family we're talking about.”

Add in the obligatory tone of condescension, and you get the message.

What a monumental waste of airwave time! Most parents don't need such patronizing lectures, and anyone who does is either too dumb or too apathetic to be receptive to it.

A decade ago, a bevy of supercilious Hollywood celebrities in ubiquitous public service commercials somberly instructed us on the importance of condoms in reducing the risk of HIV transmission. This message is almost bound to fall on deaf ears for a multitude of reasons. What people need is a message like this:

“Prevent HIV transmission without decimating your pleasure. Find out more at www.not-another-useless-message.org.”

(Of course, too many people don't know what “decimating” means, so we'd need to substitute “markedly reducing.”)

The problem with condoms is, of course, that they do decimate pleasure (more for men than women, as I explain in The Science of Sex). The current epidemic of obesity is living proof that most people will let nothing stand in the way in their pursuit of pleasure (it's a pity that more people haven't read my weight loss book, in which I explain painless ways to lose weight). Cognizant that people are governed more by pleasure than logic, I invented a simple way for people to have "safe sex" without decimating pleasure. (Not that this is relevant to the current discussion, but I also developed various ways to amplify the pleasure of sex, which I explain in The Science of Sex.)

OK, you movers and shakers in Hollywood. I know you're listening, because several of you have written to me about other topics. Here's your chance to make a real difference instead of squandering your public service commercial time. Find out what I am talking about, and then spread the word.

To contact me, click the following link:

www.MySpamSponge.com/send.php?handle=doctor

MySpamSponge is a site I developed that anyone can use to block all of their spam, but never any legitimate messages. With MySpamSponge, you communicate using handles instead of e-mail addresses. A handle is essentially a contact code that gives people a way to contact you via e-mail without you having to reveal your e-mail address. Similarly, you can send a message by using the recipient's handle as the address (mine is doctor).

Update February 17, 2008: On August 1, 2007, I contacted Patty Stonesifer, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (read the letter here). My letter began, "I am a physician who devised two new methods to block HIV transmission. I would like the opportunity to present them to you because they dovetail with your efforts to curb HIV/AIDS."

One might think that the Gates Foundation would welcome an effective new way to block HIV transmission (and one that can be implemented now, not after years of research), yet I never heard from her. Why not? Although I know why, yesterday I read about a study which concluded that "when people feel powerful, they ignore new opinions." There's another way to say the same thing: When people feel powerful, their intellectual arrogance leads them to conclude that they have all the great ideas.

Ms. Stonesifer probably thought, "What could a doctor in Michigan know about preventing HIV transmission that we don't already know? Gee whiz, I'm a bright person, and Bill has exhaustively researched this. We've collaborated with the preeminent researchers in this field, so we've left no stone unturned."

Except, of course, for a couple of ones that are glaringly obvious to me (being an outside-the-box thinker), but something that would seem like hieroglyphics to people who think inside the box. Incidentally, studies have shown that most scientists tend to follow a pack "follow the leader" mentality. Those people do valuable work by conducting the nuts-and-bolts research that needs to be done, but they aren't the mavericks who generate new ideas.

According to a press release by UNAIDS (a joint venture of the United Nations and the World Health Organization), in 2007 2.5 million [range: 1.8 – 4.1 million] people became newly infected with HIV. Let's do the math: It's now been over six months since I wrote to the Gates Foundation. In that time, over a million people were infected with HIV. Thus, by blowing me off as she did, Ms. Stonesifer blew an opportunity to save many lives.

But let's be realistic: why should royalty like the Gates Foundation listen to me? Cognizant that they're too important to give five minutes to someone they view as a peon who couldn't possibly have anything worthwhile to say, I set my sites a bit lower and sent a message to a man who appeared as a guest on The Big Idea Show. He was the head of an AIDS organization that I'd never before heard of, and he seemed to be down-to-earth and genuinely interested in combating this problem — or so he seemed on TV. I asked for nothing in return; just the opportunity to present my ideas to him.

He never responded.

Update May 11, 2008: Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the University of California, Berkeley, released a new policy analysis (1) which concluded that the most common HIV prevention strategies are doing a poor job of controlling the primarily heterosexual epidemics in Africa. What isn't working?

• Condom promotion
• Encouraging sexual abstinence
• HIV testing
• Treatment of other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)
• Vaccine and microbicide research

According to Daniel Halperin, lecturer on international health in the HSPH Department of Population and International Health and one of the paper's lead authors, "We need a fairly dramatic shift in priorities, not just a minor tweaking."

I agree. However, the Gates Foundation and others are seemingly more content to burn money in an attempt to manifest their good intentions than to achieve good results.

Journal reference:

1. Reassessing HIV Prevention. Malcolm Potts, Daniel T. Halperin, Douglas Kirby, Ann Swidler, Elliot Marseille, Jeffrey Klausner, Norman Hearst, Richard G. Wamai, James G. Kahn, Julia Walsh, Science, May 9, 2008, vol. 320.

The Oprah Winfrey Show recently teamed up with QVC to search for the "Next Big Idea." From a field of 6000 applicants, eight finalists were selected to appear on Oprah's May 3, 2007 show. I was dumbfounded by what I saw. All eight finalists were women (perhaps not too surprising, considering Oprah's thinly-veiled misandry), whose ideas included a fold-down baking pan, a vegetable peeler, a food item (a stuffed biscuit), a clip for hanging Christmas cards on wreaths, a plastic ball to assist in floral arrangements, decorative drapes for shutters (can you say, "just another craft project"?), a radio-controlled doodling toy, and an eye shadow applicator.

Ahem. Calling most of these things "inventions" isn't just a stretch, it is the "Next Big Stretch." Several of the ideas have been around for years (almost a century in one case), and the remainder are anything but the kind of great ideas you might expect from a pool supposedly representing the best ideas from 6000 entrants. Stick a knife into a biscuit and stuff some food inside—is that really an invention? I did that when I was a hungry kid looking for a snack at a time when I was "slow," according to my sixth-grade teacher. (This page explains how I went from dunce to doctor and later graduated in the top 1% of my class in medical school.)

The winning idea was the fold-down baking pan, invented by a woman supposedly desperate to find a better way to remove food from a pan. Sheesh, hasn't she heard of a frigging spatula, for heaven's sake? Instead, she concocted a maze of sheet metal that looked like it was designed by the same person who styled World War II-era ammunition containers. Her pan looked to be impossible to thoroughly clean without scrubbing for hours with various brushes to reach into its nooks and crannies. I love baking, and I love most baking gadgets if they serve a purpose and aren't more of a nuisance than they are worth, but I wouldn't use her fold-down baking pan if someone gave it to me. And that, my friends, was judged the best of the 6000 ideas. The "Next Big Idea"? No, the "Next Big Disappointment."