[via]


Song in my head:

To everything..spin..spin..spin..
There is a season..spin..spin...spin

Lambert

Can you handle anymore crappy news coming out of the Bush administration? I am on the brink of being fed up but I wanted to bring attention to these two stories which are important in the public health arena. I have a degree in public health from Oregon State University and find the subject of environmental health fascinating. That is one of the reasons I blog about mad cow disease. I wanted to write more about food safety regularly on this blog but dealing with a couple chronic painful conditions takes its toll on my energy. Besides, it is truly nauseating subject as a lot of public health has to do with poop and as we say in the food biz "extraneous material" in your food and water. As an ex health inspector going out to eat is not one of my favorite pastimes and one day I need to share some of the gross things I have seen. For example: have you ever seen a waitress ring up a customer's check and handle money and then without washing her hands grab water glasses at the top of the glass without washing her hands first? Urp.

I do like to read a few public health blogs regularly that do a better job than I can of staying on top of the latest public health issues...Stayin Alive and Effect Measure are two of my favorites. While reading them tonite I came across two alarming articles regarding the health and safety priorities of this countries administration.....

Via Staying Alive:

The budget was actually released one month ago, Feb. 5. Does anybody remember that? The Decider wants to knock $162 million bucks out of CDC. That's a lot of dough -- enough to keep the Iraq war going for 12 hours. The purpose of invading Iraq, as I understand it, was to keep us safe from those Weapons of Mass Destruction™. Well, while the CDC budget does include an increase for pandemic flu preparedness, it completely eliminates the Preventive Health Services Block Grants to the states, which the states use to meet their most pressing needs. The budget also knocks out anti-obesity programs, cuts preparedness grants to the states, and takes $143 million from childhood immunization programs.

And via Effect Measure:

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) is the only one of the NIH institutes whose mission clearly has public health at its core. At least it was the only one. Now there are none, thanks to the narrow vision and autocratic management of its Bush appointed Director, Dr. David Schwartz. In the two years he has been at the helm we have seen morale plummet, emphasis change from public health and toward clinical medicine and a variety of scandals plague what was once the proudest and most public spirited member of the NIH family.

p.s. Have you sanitized your keyboard lately?