2014年12月31日 星期三

柯p談北市衛生政策:提供健康重於醫療






談北市衛生政策 柯p:提供健康重於醫療
劉明堂/台北報導 2014-06-22
柯文哲今天(22日)指出,台灣醫療存在許多觀念、資源運用效率的問題,台灣健保制度太注重醫療,而忽略健康,醫療系統應該提供康重於提供醫療。他說,很多問題大家都知道,卻沒有人去處理,這也是他為什麼選台北市長。

柯文哲上午參加「2014台灣國際醫療展覽會」,並以「台北市衛生政策藍圖」為題發表40分鐘的演講。柯文哲在演講中點出台灣醫療現況健保問題很大,他直言,目前的健保給付制度並不鼓勵促進健康,也不鼓勵預防醫學,因為有人生病,醫院才有錢賺;不鼓勵醫術好,因為醫術越爛、賺得越多,太簡單就治好,賺不到錢。

柯文哲也表示,台灣的醫療還有很多觀念,以及資源運用效率方面的問題,像是醫院有人力錯置的情形,「為什麼把有經驗的醫師拿去看門診、病情較輕的病人,比較沒經驗的,看住院、病情嚴重的病人?」他指出,還有像是安寧照護時的無效醫療浪費太多錢,以及國內使用洗腎、呼吸器的現象氾濫等等,有些是牽涉到生命議題,大家不敢去面對。

柯文哲說,曾被衛生署健保局(現為衛福部健保署)請去演講,官員告訴他,「柯教授,你講得很有道理,都對。但是、可是……」,然後就沒有下文了,他笑說,「所以這就是為什麼我要來選台北市長,沒有『但是、可是』,我自己來改!」

柯文哲說,當醫生的目的,是解決人類的痛苦,不管是身體或心理的。他並講了一個真實故事說,黃勝堅醫師外調到雲林台大分院當外科主任時,交代醫生不可以因為病人簽了DNR(放棄急救同意書)就拒收。

有一天一個肝癌末期病人,因為腹水、很喘送到台大雲林分院急診處,家屬不要插管,醫生打電話到內科病房、加護病房,都不收,最後把病人推到外科病房。外科病房住院醫生一直罵,內科不收為何要外科收。

結果病人進到病房後,沒有做什麼,把頭搖高30度,掛個氧氣,包個紙反布,打嗎啡2ml讓他不會那麼痛。結果不到4個小時病人死了,住院醫生還罵說,住院病歷才寫完就要寫出病歷。

太平間來收屍時,經過護理站的時候,病人女兒跪下來,向醫療站醫護人員磕頭致謝,說「謝謝你們,沒有讓我爸爸死在急診的走廊上面!」那些住院醫生半天都沒有講話。

柯文哲說,台灣醫界太注重身體,忘記一件事,不是所有病都需要打針吃藥。舉修女德雷莎為例說,羅馬教廷每天給德雷莎兩塊美金,她什麼事都不能做,只能每天推著板車,到街上看到快死的乞丐就把撿回來,幫他洗澡、換乾淨的衣服,放到床上,然後就死掉了。

以世俗眼光來看,德雷莎做的事情「本益比」是零。如果沒有德雷莎,這些乞丐在死的時候,會怨恨這個人生,詛咒這個世界,因為有德雷莎,這些乞丐在死的時候,或許會以為是上帝派天使來接他們回去。

柯文哲說,這是他的基本信念,不管在什麼樣的資本社會,有兩樣要社會主義,就是「醫療」和「教育」,因為要給窮人留下最後翻身的機會。醫學結合社會正義、人道關懷和科學管理,可以最有效率,做到人性的關懷,實現社會正義。

柯文哲說,他的台北市願景有一項叫健康安全,醫療體系的存在,是提供健康,不是提供醫療,這是目前健保制度的荒謬,台灣健保制度太注重醫療,而忽略健康,醫療系統應該提供康重於提供醫療。

倫敦新年煙火秀 限10萬人到場 London New Year’s Eve fireworks made ticket-only for first time

The Guardian 分享了 1 條連結
Metropolitan police urge everyone not among 100,000 who paid for...
THEGUARDIAN.COM|由 ESTHER ADDLEY 上傳

倫敦新年煙火秀 限10萬人到場
美東時間: 2014-12-29 10:55:02 AM 標籤: 新年煙火秀, 倫敦,

【大紀元12月29日報導】(中央社記者黃貞貞倫敦29日專電)高人氣的倫敦新年煙火秀將在泰晤士河畔舉行,為確保前往觀看煙火秀的民眾安全,倫敦市政府今年首次推出事先申請入場票機制,10萬名幸運者可以親身體驗燦爛煙火的魅力。


倫敦市政府自2003年開始舉行新年煙火秀,去年吸引50萬人到現場,人潮眾多對公共安全造成困擾,同時不少人也因為現場水洩不通而無法觀看到煙火,市府與警方、急難救助服務人員、倫敦交通局等單位協商後,今年開始管控人數。

倫敦市政府表示,每張10英鎊的煙火秀入場票已全部發售完畢,收費所得主要是支付相關的行政支出,包括印製與寄送入場票、現場服務人員加班費、臨時洗手間等設施費用。

2015年倫敦煙火秀安排1萬2000顆煙火,5萬個雷射燈光,在泰晤士河岸旁的倫敦眼摩天輪(London Eye)及知名地標大笨鐘前施放煙火,英國廣播公司(BBC)將現場轉播,要以精彩的煙火秀,陪伴民眾迎接新的1年到來。

倫敦市政府提醒,沒有入場票的民眾宜避免前往觀看煙火區,附近街道從下午2時起開始關閉,為服務民眾,12月31日晚上11時45分到明年元旦4時30分,搭乘大眾運輸全部免費。

2014年12月30日 星期二

烤肉時,應加啤酒


To reduce the health risk of barbecuing meat, just add beer.
ECON.ST





The Economist

Grilling meat gives it great flavour. This taste, though, comes at a price, since the process creates molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which damage DNA and thus increase the eater's chances of developing colon cancer. But a group of researchers think they have found a way around the problem. When barbecuing meat, they suggest, you should add beer http://econ.st/1hoDK7K

2014年12月29日 星期一

Sugar Season. It’s Everywhere, and Addictive.



毒品一樣的糖

Paul Windle

同事帶來了布朗尼,女兒為假期的聚會做了曲奇餅,八杆子打不着的親戚也送來了糖果。到處都是糖。糖代表了慶祝,代表了節日,也代表了愛。
但糖也是一種危險。在最近的一項研究中,我們證明了糖分對心血管疾病的發展有推動作用,而且其影響或許比鹽分更大。也有越來越多的證據表明,吃太多糖會引發脂肪肝、高血壓、二型糖尿病、肥胖症和腎病。
然而人們無法抗拒。原因也相當簡單,糖分是有成癮性的。我們所說的「成癮」並不是人們談論美味時的那種意思,而是實實在在的,像毒品一樣的成癮性。而且食品工業正在竭盡所能,試圖把我們勾住。
直到幾百年前,濃縮糖實際上在人類的飲食中還不存在,除非偶然間找到少量野生蜂蜜。糖分在環境中是一種罕見的能量來源,對其產生強烈的渴望,對於人類的生存是有利的。對糖分的渴求會促使我們尋找甜味的食物,也就是幫助我們堆積脂肪、積蓄能量,以備匱乏時期的那種食物。
今天,添加的糖分隨處可見,在美國買到的包裝食品中,有大約75%含有添加糖分。普通的美國人平均每天消耗的糖分在四分之一磅到半磅(約合110克至220克)之間。如果我們思考一下,今天一聽碳酸飲料里含有的添加糖分,可能高於幾百年前多數人一整年消耗的糖分,就能明白我們周圍的環境發生了多麼巨大的改變。渴求糖分曾經是我們的生存優勢,但現在卻對我們不利。
天然的糖分來源,如完整的水果和蔬菜,糖分濃度通常並不高,因為其中的甜味有水分、纖維和其他成分來緩衝。然而現代工業生產的糖分來源,卻濃重得不自然,很快就能提供巨大的衝擊。就說甜菜這樣的天然完整食品,其水分、纖維、維生素、礦物質,乃至其他所有有益成分都被剝離,用來生產純化的糖。剩下的就只有白色的、純粹的糖晶體。
在這裡與毒品相提並論並不過分。將其他植物,如罌粟和古柯轉變為海洛因和可卡因的提純過程,與上述程序是相似的。純化的糖分也會影響人的身體和大腦。
按照《精神障礙診斷與統計手冊》(Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)的定義,列明的11項癥狀中存在至少兩到三種,就構成了物質使用障礙。在動物模型中,糖分至少產生了三種與物質濫用和依賴相吻合的癥狀:渴求感、耐受性、戒斷癥狀。糖分其他與毒品相似的特性還包括(但不限於)交叉敏化、交叉耐受性、交叉依賴性、獎賞效應、阿片效應,以及大腦中的其他神經化學變化。在動物實驗中,動物對糖的感受就像一種毒品,而且可能會對糖產生依賴。一項研究顯示,如果提供了選擇,大鼠在實驗室的環境中會選擇糖而不是可卡因,因為前者的獎賞效應更強,即糖帶來的「興奮感」有着更高的愉悅度。
對於人類,這些情況可能也並沒有多大不同。就像鴉片類物質一樣,糖分也會刺激大腦迴路,而研究發現,糖分會影響人類習慣的形成。糖分產生的渴求感與可卡因和尼古丁等成癮性物質所產生的渴求感可以相提並論。而儘管其他的食品成分也會讓人愉悅,但是在食品當中,糖分可能具有獨一無二的成癮性。例如,對飲用奶昔的人進行的功能性磁共振成像(fMRI)檢測顯示,讓人產生渴望的是糖分,而不是脂肪。食品企業在食品中加入糖分,目的是調整產品成分,使其儘可能地難以抗拒、成癮性儘可能地強。我們怎麼才能戒除這個習慣?一種途徑是通過提高稅收,讓含有添加糖分的食品或飲料更昂貴。另一種途徑則是要求學校、醫院等地,停止提供加糖增甜飲品,或者像監管煙酒一樣監管添加糖分的產品,例如對廣告加以限制,或者加註警示提醒。
但就像我們在兩篇論文——一篇發表在《開放心臟病學》(Open Heart)上,主題是鹽和糖,另一篇發表在《公共健康營養學》(Public Health Nutrition)上,主題是糖分和卡路里——里提出的,只是狹隘地關注添加糖分可能會產生始料未及的後果。這樣做可能會促使企業在加工食品中,加入同樣有害,甚至危害更大的其他物質作為替代。
擺脫糖分的更好途徑是,推廣食用未經加工的天然食品。用完整的天然食品替代工業生產的甜食,或許很難讓人接受,然而面對這樣一個利用我們的生物天性讓我們成癮的產業,這對那些渴求糖分攝入的人,或許是最好的方法。
詹姆斯·J·迪尼古拉安東尼奧(James J. DiNicolantonio)是聖路加中美心臟學院(Saint Luke』s Mid America Heart Institute)心血管研究專家。肖恩·C·盧坎(Sean C. Lucan)是愛因斯坦醫學院(Albert Einstein College of Medicine)助理教授。
翻譯:王童鶴



OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS

Sugar Season. It’s Everywhere, and Addictive.

It’s also dangerous. In a recent study, we showed that sugar, perhaps more than salt, contributes to the development of cardiovascular disease. Evidence is growing, too, that eating too much sugar can lead to fatty liver diseasehypertensionType 2 diabetes,obesity and kidney disease.

Up until just a few hundred years ago, concentrated sugars were essentially absent from the human diet — besides, perhaps, the fortuitous find of small quantities of wild honey. Sugar would have been a rare source of energy in the environment, and strong cravings for it would have benefited human survival. Sugar cravings would have prompted
searches for sweet foods, the kind that help us layer on fat and store energy for times of scarcity.Yet people can’t resist. And the reason for that is pretty simple. Sugar is addictive. And we don’t mean addictive in that way that people talk about delicious foods. We mean addictive, literally, in the same way as drugs. And the food industry is doing everything it can to keep us hooked.
Today added sugar is everywhere, used in approximately 75 percent of packaged foods purchased in the United States. The average American consumes anywhere from a quarter to a half pound of sugar a day. If you consider that the added sugar in a single can of soda might be more than most people would have consumed in an entire year, just a few hundred years ago, you get a sense of how dramatically our environment has changed. The sweet craving that once offered a survival advantage now works against us.
Whereas natural sugar sources like whole fruits and vegetables are generally not very concentrated because the sweetness is buffered by water, fiber and other constituents, modern industrial sugar sources are unnaturally potent and quickly provide a big hit. Natural whole foods like beets are stripped of their water, fiber, vitamins, minerals and all other beneficial components to produce purified sweetness. All that’s left are pure, white, sugary crystals.
A comparison to drugs would not be misplaced here. Similar refinement processes transform other plants like poppies and coca into heroin and cocaine. Refined sugars also affect people’s bodies and brains.
Substance use disorders, defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, exist when at least two to three symptoms from a list of 11 are present. In animal models, sugar produces at least three symptoms consistent with substance abuseand dependence: cravings, tolerance and withdrawal. Other druglike properties of sugar include (but are not limited to) cross-sensitization, cross-tolerance, cross-dependence, reward, opioid effects and other neurochemical changes in the brain. In animal studies, animals experience sugar like a drug and can become sugar-addicted. One study has shown that if given the choice, rats will choose sugar over cocaine in lab settings because the reward is greater; the “high” is more pleasurable.
In humans, the situation may not be very different. Sugar stimulates brain pathways just as an opioid would, and sugar has been found to be habit-forming in people. Cravings induced by sugar are comparable to those induced by addictive drugs like cocaine andnicotine. And although other food components may also be pleasurable, sugar may be uniquely addictive in the food world. For instance, functional M.R.I. tests involving milkshakes demonstrate that it’s the sugar, not the fat, that people crave. Sugar is added to foods by an industry whose goal is to engineer products to be as irresistible and addictive as possible. How can we kick this habit? One route is to make foods and drinks with added sugar more expensive, through higher taxes. Another would be to remove sugar-sweetened beverages from places like schools and hospitals or to regulate sugar-added products just as we do alcohol and tobacco, for instance, by putting restrictions on advertising and by slapping on warning labels.
But as we suggested in two academic papers, one on salt and sugar in the journal Open Heart and the other on sugar and calories in Public Health Nutrition, focusing narrowly on added sugar could have unintended consequences. It could prompt the food industry to inject something equally or more harmful into processed foods, as an alternative.
A better approach to sugar rehab is to promote the consumption of whole, natural foods. Substituting whole foods for sweet industrial concoctions may be a hard sell, but in the face of an industry that is exploiting our biological nature to keep us addicted, it may be the best solution for those who need that sugar fix.
James J. DiNicolantonio is a cardiovascular research scientist at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute. Sean C. Lucan is an assistant professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

2014年12月27日 星期六

Empire of the pig








PIG number 5422 saunters into the pen, circles its few square metres and mounts a plastic stand. The farmer cleans the animal’s underside, feels around and draws out what appears to be a thin pink tube around 30cm long. He begins to massage. Pigs elsewhere snort, grunt or squeal, but the alpha pig is unmoved. Soon he has filled a thermal cup with more than 60 billion sperm. Around 150 pigs will owe their short, brutish lives to this emission.
A malty smell hangs in the air at the Fuxin Breeding Farm in Jiangxi province in central China, 10 hectares of low concrete barns and fields beside a small reservoir, which is home to around 2,000 pigs. The business was started four years ago by 31-year-old Ouyang Kuanxue. Mr Ouyang’s friends say he was destined to be a pig farmer—he was born in the Chinese zodiacal year of the pig—but his own explanation is more prosaic: when he came back to Pingxiang, his hometown, in 2003 after studying management at university in Beijing, he could not think what else to do. His grandfather was a coalminer who kept a few pigs. His father already had 100. He decided to expand.
Now the whole family is involved: together they have three farms with a total of around 5,000 swine. Mr Ouyang’s younger brother is in charge of production; his sister-in-law runs the office. The past year has been hard for them and other pig farmers, Mr Ouyang says, because pork prices have been low and feed expensive. But this lean year followed many fat ones. Mr Ouyang drives a Volkswagen SUV; his wife has a new Audi, wears a Cartier bracelet and runs two nail bars; they own an apartment in a new block in the local town. Mr Ouyang has a panoply of pig-related news feeds on his phone. Still, when he goes out for dinner with friends, he tends to avoid pork.
A brief history of Chinese pork
The family’s good fortune is emblematic of China’s flying pig market over the past 35 years. Since the late 1970s, when the government liberalised agriculture, pork consumption has increased nearly sevenfold in China. It now produces and consumes almost 500m swine a year, half of all the pigs in the world. The tale of Chinese pigs is thus a parable of the country’s breakneck economic rise. But it is more than symbolic: China’s lust for pork has serious consequences for the country’s economy and environment—and for the world.
Pigs have been at the centre of Chinese culture, cuisine and family life for thousands of years. Pork is the country’s essential meat. In Mandarin the word for “meat” and “pork” are the same. The character for “family” is a pig under a roof. The pig is one of the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac: those born in that year are said to be diligent, sympathetic and generous. Pigs signify prosperity, fertility and virility. Poems, stories and songs celebrate them. Miniature clay pigs have been found in graves from the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD). Historians think people in southern China were the first in the world to domesticate wild boars, 10,000 years ago.
For centuries sacrificial pigs—and the eating of pork—featured prominently in all forms of commemoration and festivity. At the autumnal Double Ninth Festival (on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month), male elders gathered at their ancestors’ tombs and slaughtered a pig as a symbol of that forebear’s ongoing provision for his descendants. When an estate was in financial trouble, pigs were the last expense to go, says James Watson, an anthropologist at Harvard University, because if the autumn rites were neglected, the ancestor would die a second, terrible death, a final expiration of his spirit.
Every household needs one
Almost every rural home once had a pig, not least because, well into the Communist era, the animals were part of the household recycling system. They consumed otherwise inedible waste and were valued for their manure (even Mao Zedong was a fan of the “fertiliser factory on four legs”). And their meat has always been central to Chinese cooking: it has “the perfect flavour for Chinese cuisine,” reckons Fuchsia Dunlop, a food writer and cook. Nothing is wasted. Pigs’ faces are served whole as a gourmet treat; their brains, says Ms Dunlop, are “soft as custard, and dangerously rich”. The appeal is medicinal as well as culinary: the innards are ascribed therapeutic benefits.
From trotter to tail, the Chinese eat the whole hog. Still, for much of China’s history, pigs were a luxury consumed only rarely, sometimes extremely rarely. That has changed dramatically.
Everything but the squeal
Lei Xiaoping, the manager of Mr Ouyang’s farm, eats pork for every lunch and dinner these days—swine from the farm that have died in a fight or are too small to sell. He is not squeamish about guzzling pigs he has reared himself. After all, as a child Mr Lei (now aged 51) ate pork only three times a year.
Even before the revolution of 1949, most people in China got only 3% of their annual calorific intake from meat. Pork soon became scarcer still. Tens of millions died in the famine that followed Mao’s Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early 1960s. For decades after that peasants would rub pork fat around their woks to give their vegetables a meaty hint, says Ms Dunlop, before putting the fat away to use on another occasion. As recently as the early 1990s many Chinese mostly subsisted on a diet of vegetables bought at street markets.
For Mr Lei, as for many of his countrymen, the years of deprivation are well within living memory. Not surprising, then, that eating meat has become a symbol of triumph over hardship, as much a part of China’s transformation as the towering skyscrapers and glistening cities. Grandparents who once went hungry stuff their grandchildren with the treats they lacked—and top of the list is pork. The average Chinese now eats 39kg of pork a year (roughly a third of a pig), more even than Americans (who typically prefer beef), and five times more per person than they ate in 1979.
Four legs good
The most obvious impact has been on the pigs themselves. Until the 1980s farms as large as Mr Ouyang’s were unknown: 95% of Chinese pigs came from smallholdings with fewer than five animals. Today just 20% come from these backyard farms, says Mindi Schneider of the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. Some industrial facilities, often owned by the state or by multinationals, produce as many as 100,000 swine a year. These are born and live for ever on slatted metal beds; most never see direct sunlight; very few ever get to breed. The pigs themselves have changed physically, too. Three foreign breeds now account for 95% of them; to preserve its own kinds, China has a national gene bank (basically a giant freezer of pig semen) and a network of indigenous-pig menageries. Nevertheless, scores of ancient variants may soon die out.
But China’s pigs are far from the only victims of their popularity. Demand for them worries the Communist Party, underpins what will soon be the world’s biggest economy and threatens Amazon rainforests.
This little piggy stayed home
The Chinese eat so much pork that when its price goes up, the cost of other things rises, too. For the Communist Party, therefore, keeping affordable meat on the table is vital, not least for the stability of the economy. In 2007, for example, an estimated 45m pigs died in China from “blue ear pig disease”. Pork prices rocketed; the annual rate of increase of the consumer price index (sometimes known as the “consumer pig index” because of the creature’s prominent role in it) hit a ten-year high. Panic buying ensued. There were reports of customers being injured in a crush on a supermarket escalator when rushing to buy cheap chilled pork in Guangzhou, and a general pork-buying frenzy across China. Imports doubled.
In response the party established the world’s first pork reserve, some of it in frozen form and some the live, snorting variety. This aims to keep pork affordable and reasonably priced: when pigs become too expensive, the government releases some of its stock onto the market; if they become too cheap, the reserve buys more porkers to keep farmers in profit. Other pro-pork policies include grants, tax incentives, cheap loans for farms and free animal immunisation—all intended to boost intensive pig farming and to keep plates loaded high with Chinese pork. According to Chatham House, a London-based think-tank, the Chinese government subsidised pork production by $22 billion in 2012. That is roughly $47 per pig.
Yet even the Communist Party can no longer control every aspect of this vast industry. That is partly because the appetite for pork is now so great—and growing so fast—that sating it depends on places far beyond China’s borders. Chinese pigs, in turn, are reshaping the environments of faraway countries.
The Communist Party prizes self-sufficiency in food. Most of the pigs China eats are indeed home-grown. But each kilogram of pork requires 6kg of feed, usually processed soy or corn. Given the scarcity of water and land in China, it cannot feed its pigs as well as its people. The upshot is that Chinese swine, which previously ate household scraps, increasingly rely on imported feed.
Ms Schneider reckons that more than half of the world’s feed crops will soon be eaten by Chinese pigs. Already in 2010 China’s soy imports accounted for more than 50% of the total global soy market. From a low base, grain imports are rising fast as well: the US Grains Council, a trade body, predicts that by 2022 China will need to import 19m-32m tonnes of corn. That equates to between a fifth and a third of the world’s entire trade in corn today.
As demand for pork rises, China’s porcine empire is sure to expand
As a result, land use is changing drastically on the other side of the world. In Brazil, more than 25m hectares of land—parts of which were once Amazon rainforest—are being used to cultivate soy (Chinese companies have not signed up to the “soy roundtable”, a voluntary association, the members of which agree not to buy soyabeans from newly deforested land). Entire species of plants and trees are being sacrificed to fatten China’s pigs. Argentina has chopped down thousands of hectares of forest and shifted its traditional cattle-breeding to remote areas to make way for soyabeans. Since 1990 the Argentine acreage given over to that crop has quadrupled: the country exports almost all of its whole soyabeans—around 8m tonnes—to China. In some areas farmers harvest two or three crops a year, using herbicides that have been linked to birth defects and increased cancer rates.
All these imports have made China ever-more exposed to global commodity prices. China has responded by buying land in other countries, some of which is used to grow feed crops or to raise pigs that are sold onto the domestic market at preferential prices. China itself is secretive about these purchases, but the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a Canadian think-tank, calculates that it has bought 5m hectares in developing countries; others think the total is higher. When Shuanghui, China’s largest pork producer, bought Smithfield Foods, an American firm, in 2013, it acquired huge stretches of Missouri and Texas. As demand for pork rises, China’s porcine empire is sure to expand.
Pigging out
Feeding the pigs is not farmers’ only concern. Their greatest fear is disease: growth slows when a pig gets sick, and, even more worryingly, swine on modern Chinese farms tend to be genetically similar (many are half-siblings), so when one gets ill, much of the herd may succumb. Farmers routinely add small doses of antibiotics to their feed, and this, too, has daunting knock-on effects. In America and Europe such practices are associated with the emergence of “superbugs”, bacteria in animals and humans that are resistant to most antibiotics. In 2009 pigs exported from China to Hong Kong were found to harbour one such bug. The mainland government acknowledged the problem, yet the use of antibiotics, hormones and growth-promoters is barely regulated.
These drugs pass into the wider food chain partly via sizzling plates of pork, and partly through the 5kg of manure that the average pig produces a day. This once-desirable substance is now a critical problem for China. Though large swathes of land have been set aside to contain it, they are poorly managed. The billions of tonnes of waste China’s livestock produce each year are one of the biggest sources of water and soil pollution in the country, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. The 16,000 dead pigs that were dumped in the tributaries of the Huangpu river, a source of Shanghai’s tap-water, after a virus outbreak in 2013, were a lurid indicator of a seeping national problem.
Porcine waste also contributes to emissions of methane and nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Intensive swine-farming is much more polluting than smallholding. So, as well as depriving Earth of the natural cooling function of the rainforests they displace, Chinese pigs contribute to global warming more directly. Greenhouse-gas emissions from Chinese agriculture increased by 35% between 1994 and 2005. The global expansion of livestock production is one of the primary causes of climate change, says Tony Weis of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, responsible for almost a fifth of emissions produced by human activity.
So although its proliferating pigs are a resonant symbol of China’s prosperity, they are also a menace. A few in China—a very few—are beginning to question the benefits of eating more and more pork. Meat consumption is beginning to plateau among the very rich; health scares have boosted sales of organic food, though it still accounts for a tiny share of agricultural production. Vegetarianism is growing, but is generally thought eccentric. The ambition of most Chinese continues to be to devour as large a slice of the pork pie as possible. In much of the rich world meat consumption is stable or falling but in the Middle Kingdom it soars unrestrained. Forget the zodiac: in today’s China, every year is the year of the pig.





Swine in China
Empire of the pig
China’s insatiable appetite for pork is a symbol of the country’s rise. It is also a danger to the world

世衛組織:“吸煙讓中國面臨健康危機”

世衛組織:“吸煙讓中國面臨健康危機”

每天,中國有大約3000人因吸煙患病死亡。世界衛生組織駐華代表施賀德(Bernhard Schwartländer)為德國之聲分析吸煙盛行可能會給中國社會帶來怎樣的重大影響。
德國之聲:中國的煙草消費會導致公共健康危機嗎?
施賀德: 煙草消費是中國公共健康領域的一大問題。中國是世界上最大的煙草產品製造方和消費方。這裡有超過3億煙民。目前,每十個成年人中,就有大約三人(28%)吸煙,其中包括超過一半的成年男子。估計,中國每年因吸煙患病死亡的人數為一百萬,也就是說每天有3000人左右死亡。此外,超過7億人經常接觸"二手煙",導致每年另外有大約10萬人死亡。
煙草消費的增加對中國社會產生了怎樣的影響?
煙草消費的流行將給中國的健康保障系統、經濟乃至社會帶來高額費用。如果吸煙的流行勢頭不減,到了2050年,中國每年因吸煙患病死亡的人數將上升至3百萬。
中國社會中的哪些人吸煙最多?為什麼?有哪些誘因呢?
在中國,男性吸煙的比例非常高(超過50%的男性吸煙)。與此相對照的是,只有大約2%的女性自己吸煙。女性被迫吸二手煙的比率非常高,尤其是在家里和工作場所。
從地理的概念上來說,中國經濟越不發達的地方,煙民的比例越高,包括農村地區。
Bernhard Schwartlaender WHO
世界衛生組織駐華代表施賀德(Bernhard Schwartländer)
中國像世界其他許多國家一樣,大多數煙民從年輕的時候就開始吸煙。所以,防止兒童和青年人受誘惑開始吸煙就顯得至關重要。比如說教育他們吸煙如何有害健康,並阻止煙草公司為自己的產品做市場推廣。保護年輕人不養成抽煙的習慣,就可能保護他們的生命。
與其它國家不同,吸煙在中國不是什麼具有傳統的事情。中國吸煙比率如此之高的原因在於人們缺少認知,以及煙草生產商為了增加收入和利潤, 大肆展開產品的市場推廣。
中國離推出煙草管制法規還有多遠呢?
近幾年來,中國在管製菸草方面取得了一定的進步。今年年底,國務院和中共聯合推出的一項擴大全國控煙範圍的條例草案,以及剛剛通過的 北京禁煙法就是其中的例子。這項法令是一個100%的無菸法,沒有漏洞和特免。隨著該法律2015年6月15日全面生效,北京在國家政策上強勢禁煙的舉措為中國以及世界其他城市都樹立了標準。
中國國家衛生和計劃生育委員會最近向國務院遞交了一份《公共場所控制吸煙條例》的草案。其中包括在公共場所禁煙的一系列規定。這些都與世界衛生組織《煙草控制框架公約》(WHO FCTC)中的要求一致。中國政府於2005年批准了這一全球性公約。如果《公共場所控制吸煙條例》切實得以採用,將意味著中國在貫徹執行世界衛生組織《煙草控制框架公約》的過程中實現前所未有的進步。
Symbolbild Zigarette Rauchverbot
北京已經推出了相當嚴格的禁煙法
當前的這份《公共場所控制吸煙條例》將對哪些方面進行管制?這能足以抑制中國的煙草消費,以及預防許多因吸煙患病致死的情況發生嗎?
這一條例草案包括一系列控製菸​​草的政策。草案中的政策能夠降低中國的吸煙率。如果這些政策能夠全面得以實施,就能夠為中國解決日益流行的非傳染性疾病(NCDs)以及降低它高額的健康、經濟和社會成本作出巨大的貢獻。
為了在中國更好的抑製菸草消費,預防與吸煙有關的死亡病例出現。中國需要充分履行在世界衛生組織《煙草控制框架公約》下所作出的承諾。除了《公共場所控制吸煙條例》草案所包含政策以外,還可以考慮包括提高煙草稅在內的附加舉措。目前,中國的煙草價格非常低。在小賣部裡買一包香煙的價格和買一瓶飲用水的價格差不多。
為了有效解決這一危機,您給中國政府的建議是?
世界衛生組織就相關草案給中國國務院提出的建議是明確的:如果能夠及時、徹底的執行這一法規,給中國公眾健康所帶來的好處是巨大的。必須抵制利益集團任何嘗試削弱或淡化法規草案主要條款力度的行為。如果能全面實施這一法律,將挽救數百萬人的生命,並為個人、家庭和國家整體經濟節省巨額費用。
施賀德博士(Dr. Bernhard Schwartlaender)是聯合國世界衛生組織駐中國代表。

DW.DE

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2014年12月25日 星期四

Loom bands are more dangerous than you think


Four children were treated at a hospital in just one week after accidentally inhaling them

Loom bands are on many children’s Christmas present list this year, but doctors have warned parents that they are more dangerous they think.
INDEPENDENT.CO.UK

2014年12月24日 星期三

Strong Safety Rules for Taxis and Uber ;Ebola Sample Is Mishandled at C.D.C. Lab

Strong Safety Rules for Taxis and Uber

The new companies cannot claim that they are safer than taxis when they have failed to meet basic safety standards for their drivers.

Ebola Sample Is Mishandled at C.D.C. Lab in Latest Error

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said one of its labs sent the wrong samples, possibly containing the live virus, to another lab. Word of the accident provoked disbelief from safety experts.

2014年12月23日 星期二

消保官稽查連鎖餐飲店,王品集團違規率最高;糖充斥的季節,少吃糖


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SapZNQAm0Mc
消保官稽查連鎖餐飲店,違規率最高的竟是王品集團......這?
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