I can’t believe this. A Kansas beef producer, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, announced its plans to test all of its cows for mad cow disease - which sounds great to me. (The company does some other pretty cool stuff - its processing plant was designed by Dr. Temple Grandin, a specialist in animal welfare, for example.) The USDA, however, knew that

…if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, [larger meatpacking companies] might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.

Since the USDA regulates the mad cow test, it prevented Creekstone from testing its cows, using the blindingly lame argument that

…widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.

Naturally, they don’t care that widespread testing could lead to people not dying - it’s the big meatpacking companies that they’re around to protect.

On March 29th, Judge James Robertson of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that it was illegal for the USDA to prevent Creekstone from testing its own goddamn cows - but allowed the USDA to appeal until June 1st. On May 30th, they did. Creekstone’s CEO James Buhlke said that

We still hope to convince USDA to work with Creekstone on a voluntary BSE testing program. However, Creekstone Farms will continue to pursue our right to test even in the wake of this latest action by the USDA.

I don’t see how anybody who’s not a complete shill for Creekstone’s competitors could disagree. Creekstone owns the cows, Creekstone’s customers want safe beef, but the USDA thinks it owns all the cows in the country.

John Edwards said that there are two Americas and he is right.

There are Americans who have access to ob/gyns in their towns and there are those who don’t. From a November news release from The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists:

Increasing medical liability insurance premiums and the fear of lawsuits continue to force ob-gyns to change how they practice medicine, according to the latest medical liability survey conducted by The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). As a result, many women across the country are going without basic health care and treatment of serious health conditions, as more ob-gyns are providing fewer services, retiring from practice completely, or relocating to areas where there are less liability concerns.

According to the ACOG survey, 70% of ob-gyns have made changes to their practice because of the lack of available or affordable medical liability insurance, and 65% have made changes because of the risk or fear of liability claims or litigation. Between 7-8% have stopped practicing obstetrics altogether because of either insurance affordability or availability issues or the risk or fear of being sued.

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You may remember the ridiculous WA initiative that would require heterosexual couples to have children within three years of marriage or have their marriages anulled. The WA initiative was, in my opinion, a brilliant way for same sex couples to bring attention to their cause. It obviously has no chance of passing, but it seems to have inspired a TN representative to take the play for the pro-life camp. Recently proposed legislation in TN would require death certificates for aborted fetuses.

Rep. Stacey Campfield, a Republican, said his bill would provide a way to track how many abortions are performed. He predicted it would pass in the Republican-controlled Senate but would have a hard time making it through the Democratic House.

…

The number of abortions reported to the state Office of Vital Records is already publicly available. The office collects records _ but not death certificates _ on abortions and the deaths of fetuses after 22 weeks gestation or weighing about 1 pound.

The identities of the women who have abortions are not included in those records, but death certificates include identifying information such as Social Security numbers.

Campfield’s bill, introduced Monday, would give abortion providers 10 days following an “induced termination of a pregnancy” to file a death certificate.

Abortion is a subject matter that divides even libertarians but this should scare us enough to unite. I have always been decidedly pro-choice and believe this regulation, if passed, would do nothing to reduce abortion. It would be used to stigmatize the women who have had to make a painful decision. It would create a mountain of paperwork for the already few abortion providers and may prevent them from providing service. It would create another avenue for identity theft.

The WA initiative was obviously an attention grabber, but I worry that this abortion bill may actually have a chance to pass. We should watch very closely because if it does, TN women would be only the first to see their private medical decisions made public. Other states will follow quickly.

Being a libertarian environmentalist can be frustrating. Take the most obvious issue, global warming. Many of my favorite Libertarian personalities (like Ian Bernard of Free Talk Live) insist that global warming is either a myth, not anthropogenic, or not a problem. Many environmentalists scream about the need for more government intervention. In reality, they’re both being dogmatic. I believe that the market is the best solution to environmental problems, not government or ignorance.

It’s the statist environmentalists that are pissing me off now. A Sioux Falls, SD company has genetically engineered cattle that almost certainly cannot be infected with BSE, otherwise known as mad cow disease. Average beef-eaters would say “Awesome, now I can eat beef without worrying about slowly dying from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.”

But it’s easy to imagine what would happen if this company tried to bring the cows to market. People wearing funny costumes would protest, the FDA would be required to go through a multi-year process to ensure the safety of something that almost certainly carries zero risk. I have a better solution than regulation: let those of us who feel the risk of vCJD is worse than the risk of something going wrong with the cows eat them, and let those other people eat “natural” cows.

I posted this over at my site, but Stu seems to be better at getting the word out. Thank you Medical Economics for Dr. Geller’s thoughtful piece.

Anil gets several magazines that I trash without review. Medical Economics is not one of them. As a former slave to the medical workforce and wife of a practicing physician, I find this mag to be quite useful. This month’s News&Views has a very well written article on patient responsibility and healthcare.

My favorite part of the article has to be this:

At the heart of the debate lies a fundamental question: Is healthcare a right or a privilege? The Declaration of Independence refers to our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But, over time, Americans who’ve come to take for granted an expanding number of entitlement programs have added other “rights” to this list, including the right to healthcare.

The problem with that expectation is that, when everything is labeled a right, then the concept itself loses any meaning. It’s like the student who highlights the entire page of a book, thereby losing all distinction between what’s crucial and what’s incidental.

There’s another problem with calling healthcare a right. It imposes an obligation on the government to fulfill that right—something our government is neither economically nor functionally equipped to do. In contrast, the Bush administration reform plan would shift at least part of the healthcare burden from employers and government back to the consumer. By coupling a high-deductible policy with a tax-free health savings account, policy makers believe that Americans will become more efficient and discerning consumers of healthcare. Part and parcel of this cost-savings approach is price transparency, objective measures of quality, and tort reform.

I felt a warm sensation when I read that. (Where would be my business.) It seems that there are people who get it.