Cognitive side effects like memory loss and fuzzy thinking aren't listed on the patient information sheet for Lipitor, the popular cholesterol-lowering drug. But some doctors are voicing concerns that in a small portion of patients, statins like Lipitor may be helping hearts but hurting minds.
"This drug makes women stupid," Orli Etingin, vice chairman of medicine at New York Presbyterian Hospital, declared at a recent luncheon discussion sponsored by Project A.L.S. to raise awareness of gender issues and the brain. Dr. Etingin, who is also founder and director of the Iris Cantor Women's Health Center in New York, told of a typical patient in her 40s, unable to concentrate or recall words. Tests found nothing amiss, but when the woman stopped taking Lipitor, the symptoms vanished. When she resumed taking Lipitor, they returned.
"I've seen this in maybe two dozen patients," Dr. Etingin said later, adding that they did better on other statins. "This is just observational, of course. We really need more studies, particularly on cognitive effects and women."
Pfizer Inc.'s Lipitor is the world's best-selling medicine, with revenues of $12.6 billion in 2007. The company says that its safety and efficacy have been demonstrated in more than 400 clinical trials and 145 million patient years of experience, and that the extensive data "do not establish a causal link between Lipitor and memory loss." Pfizer also says it draws conclusions about adverse events from a variety of sources "as opposed to anecdotal inferences by individual providers with a limited data pool."
Goodbye to the toxic viciousness . . .
Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary’s “thick ankles.” Nixon-trickster Roger Stone’s new Hillary-hating 527 group, “Citizens United Not Timid” (check the capital letters). John McCain answering “How do we beat the bitch?" with “Excellent question!” Would he have dared reply similarly to “How do we beat the black bastard?” For shame.
Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we would be righteously outraged—and they would not be selling it in airports. Shame.
Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election history, including one with the murderous slogan “If Only Hillary had married O.J. Instead!” Shame.
Goodbye to Comedy Central’s “Southpark” featuring a storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC’s vagina. I refuse to wrench my brain down into the gutter far enough to find a race-based comparison. For shame.
Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This is not “Clinton hating,” not “Hillary hating.” This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?
RALEIGH -- Reynolds Coliseum became a pink paradise Sunday in celebration of the third annual Hoops for Hope women's basketball game.
More than 8,000 men and women, young and old, wore ribbons and their favorite shade of pink as N.C. State defeated Boston College 60-41.
The Wolfpack (15-9, 3-6 ACC) wore specially designed pink uniforms and Kay Yow's last name on the back of each jersey to support the team's coach, who was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987 and learned in November that she has stage-four cancer.
"We got Yow on the back of our jerseys because we knew that this day was for her, and all we wanted to do was go out, play for her and play our hardest," said junior guard Shayla Fields.
The latest count of states won by popular vote, plus the margin of victory:
Clinton (10)
Arkansas +43
Oklahoma +24
New York +17
Massachusetts +15
Tennessee +13
California +10
New Jersey +10
Arizona +9
Nevada +6
New Hampshire +3
Obama (19)
Idaho +62
Alaska +50
Kansas +48
Washington +37
Georgia +36
Nebraska +36
Colorado +35
Minnesota +35
Illinois+32
South Carolina +32
North Dakota +24
Louisiana +21
Maine +18
Utah +18
Alabama +14
Delaware +10
Iowa +9
Connecticut +4
Missouri +1
February 7, 2008 -- A CLAWING cat fight over mistaken identity has broken out between New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and a writer for the Times of London.
At the core of the mystery: Did Dowd mistake journalist Michelle Henery, who is black, for Michelle Obama? Or did Henery mistake some other redhead for Dowd?
In a column in the London paper this week, Henery wrote that Dowd, "one of my journalistic heroes," came up to her in the press room after the last Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama debate in LA. ". . . She was in my face, smiling warmly, greeting me like a long-lost friend. My mind went into overdrive trying to figure out why the world-renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times uber-columnist . . . was speaking to me. The shock . . . left me momentarily speechless, but in those few seconds Maureen's sweet smile turned into embarrassed confusion and she scampered off."
Henery continued, "The next day I e-mailed a group of American friends, asking whose doppelganger I was. They all agreed: 'She must have thought you were Michelle Obama.'"
Henery, a 1998 Georgetown University grad, added sarcastically: "Of course! I mean, despite her having almost 15 years on me and more than 3 inches in height, not to mention that she should be immediately recognizable having had her face plastered across every newspaper in America for the past three months, we're like twins . . . I wondered how white America was going to elect a black man for president if they could not even tell us apart." She joked: "Maureen, no hard feelings. When you came up to me, I mistook you for Arianna Huffington."
A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.
The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.
Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or "trash vortex", believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said yesterday: "The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States."
Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and leading authority on flotsam, has tracked the build-up of plastics in the seas for more than 15 years and compares the trash vortex to a living entity: "It moves around like a big animal without a leash." When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. "The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic," he added.
Missouri is considered a bellwether state because its voters have come down on the side of the winner in every presidential election except one in the past 100 years.
And if I am your nominee, my opponent will not be able to say that I voted for the war in Iraq, because I didn’t, or that I gave George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran, because I haven’t, or that I support the Bush-Cheney doctrine of not talking to leaders we don’t like, because I profoundly disagree with that approach.
Iowa
Dems 227,000
Reps 120,000
Missouri
820,000 Dems
585,000 Reps
Georgia
1,041,000 Dems
953,000 Reps
Minnesota
202,000 Dems
59,000 Reps
Alabama
533,000 Dems
551,000 Reps
South Carolina
530,000 Dems
441,000 Reps
New Hampshire
282,000 Dems
232,000 Reps
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