Stupid Australian steel manufacturer puts its faith in fad psychology

It sounds as if the company put its employees through a severe variation of the old "encounter groups" therapy. At the time it did that, such therapy had already been largely abandoned because it often did more harm than good. But 13 years later the company is still denying that the procedure damaged one of their empoyees. They have amazing faith in quacks -- to the point where it has cost them lots more in legal bills that it would have cost them to settle the damages claim in the first place! There was even an advance warning that the "course" could harm the employee concerned!

THE FAMILY of a man who has endured a 13-year legal battle with Bluescope Steel over a debilitating pyschiatric injury has begged the company to do what is right and end their "living hell". The case relates to an eight-day leadership retreat that former BlueScope employee Angus Mackinnon attended in August, 1996. The "Steel Leadership Course" featured drum-beating, interrogations and "psychodrama'', The Australian reports.

Dr Mackinnon, a doctor at BlueScope's occupational health and safety department in Wollongong at the time, suffered hallucinations, was found lying unresponsive on the floor at and ended up in a mental hospital within days of the course concluding. He later had to have electro-convulsive therapy and has been hospitalised a number of times. Ever since, Dr Mackinnon has been locked in litigation with the company in a negligence case that has cost $15 million and is likely to cost millions more.

It is probably the longest and most expensive personal injury litigation case that has take place in New South Wales, The Sydney Morning Herald reports. The paper also reports that the costs of the case have run to $15 million. The case could have been settled for $1.3m but Bluescope has held out, spending far more than that on legal fees and recently lodging a bid with the High Court to overturn a judgment where three judges unanimously found in Dr Mackinnon's favour.

"It's just the brutality of it ... the way they went for me in court without any compassion,'' Dr Mackinnon told The Australian of the effect the ongoing litigation was having on him and his family. "They knew the severity of my illness and the impact it was having on me but they didn't stop.''

The Mackinnons have sold their home unit to fund the court case against BlueScope, as well as pay for ongoing medical treatment, and have been forced to live with his wife's parents, sleeping in the same room as their two young children.

The original case took 94 days and Dr Mackinnon lost the trial. But a subsequent appeal saw three NSW Court of Appeal judges unanimously decide in Dr Mackinnon's favour. The judgment was scathing of the trial judge. The treatment of a crucial issue in the case was "so inadequate" that "the matter would have to go back to retrial in any event", the judges said.

Dr Mackinnon's wife, Nandy, has writen to each Bluescope board member individually, telling them of the "living hell'' she and her husband have endured for 13 years after reading the company's claim that its values reflected its motto that "our strength is in choosing what to do is right''. She says she is "perplexed" as to how the company, and its shareholders, could justify the ongoing litigation. The company has never responded.

BlueScope declined to comment but has denied in the courts that it has been negligent or that there was any breach of duty owed to Dr Mackinnon.

The Sydney couple say they are "not asking for the world" - they just want to be able to pay the medical bills and live in their own home.

SOURCE




Benefits of breastfeeding being oversold

NHS claims about benefits of breastfeeding are false and oversold, as there is little evidence that mother’s milk protects babies against illness or allergies, says a leading experts. Michael Kramer, a professor of paediatrics who has advised the World Health Organisation and Unicef, said that much of the evidence used to persuade mothers to breastfeed was either wrong or out of date.

However, mothers who breastfed had a different outlook from those who did not and were more likely to follow advice on all health issues. That meant their families were likely to have a healthier lifestyle and that could in turn explain better outcomes for their children.

The most recent NHS leaflets given to all pregnant women and new mothers said that breastfeeding protects a baby against obesity, allergies, asthma and diabetes. This is repeated by most other public health bodies such as the Royal College of Midwives and the National Childbirth Trust.

Professor Kramer, based at McGill University, Montreal, has studied evidence on breastfeeding since 1978, and has advised the World Health Organisation, Unicef, and the Cochrane Library on breastfeeding research. Evidence that breastfeeding protects against obesity was flawed, he said. “The evidence it protects against allergies and asthma is also weak. And there is very little evidence that it reduces the risk of leukaemia, lymphoma, bowel disease, type 1 diabetes, heart disease and blood pressure. “I don’t favour overselling the evidence, we should not be conveying false information. I think some of the advice promulgated on obesity or allergies is false information.”

Mothers who were more likely to follow medical advice on breastfeeding were also more likely to be part of a family that acted healthily in other ways. So although breastfed babies may have better outcomes, this could easily be because of other factors.

However, he said that some claims were well founded, such as the protective effect on ear infections and gastrointestinal illnesses. “The formula milk industry jump on every piece of equivocal evidence. But the breastfeeding lobby have a way of ignoring the evidence. Both sides are not being very scientific,” he said.

Joan Wolf, an academic who has spent five years researching the medical literature on breastfeeding, said that only the benefits on gastrointestinal illnesses had been conclusively proven. “The evidence we have now is not compelling. It certainly does not justify the rhetoric,” said Ms Wolf, an assistant professor from Texas A&M University. “I’m not sure there should be a public health campaign on infant feeding in the West. “

A Department of Health spokesman defended the advice, saying that it was based on an expert review of the studies. Jacque Gerrard, the Royal College of Midwives’s director for England, said that its advice was based on “the evidence that is out there, endorsed by the Department of Health”. “Breastfeeding is the right way to produce healthy babies,” she said.

SOURCE






NEANDERTHALS WERE LESS DIVERSE THAN WE ARE

That seems a large conclusion to draw from just 5 genomes but for what it is worth, the journal abstract is below

Targeted Retrieval and Analysis of Five Neandertal mtDNA Genomes

By Adrian W. Briggs et. al.

Analysis of Neandertal DNA holds great potential for investigating the population history of this group of hominins, but progress has been limited due to the rarity of samples and damaged state of the DNA. We present a method of targeted ancient DNA sequence retrieval that greatly reduces sample destruction and sequencing demands and use this method to reconstruct the complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genomes of five Neandertals from across their geographic range. We find that mtDNA genetic diversity in Neandertals that lived 38,000 to 70,000 years ago was approximately one-third of that in contemporary modern humans. Together with analyses of mtDNA protein evolution, these data suggest that the long-term effective population size of Neandertals was smaller than that of modern humans and extant great apes.

SOURCE