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What made record producer Jamal Rashid think that 19-year-old pop superstar Justin Bieber was emotionally ready to care for a monkey? Rashid, answering the perennial question, “What the heck do you give Justin Bieber?” was inspired in March to surprise the singer on his 19th birthday with a young capuchin, a breed of monkey known to be more loyal than Selena Gomez.
The card apparently did not include papers that would allow the pet to legally accompany Bieber to Germany, where authorities confiscated the creature, expressing alarm that the juvenile capuchin, like many of Bieber’s fans, had been removed from its mother far too early. The monkey, named Mally, is now preparing to join the only colony of white-headed capuchins in Germany, at the Serengeti-Park in Hodenhagen. Sources close to Bieber report that for his 20th birthday, he would prefer a pet rock.
A very useful engine
How do we know we’re really good for anything? I mean around the house I can tell, because it appears that if I weren’t there, my kids would leave every single dish in the sink and then start eating off the floor. But what about all those well-child exams we do in our offices? Based on their budget proposals, it appears my state legislators don’t think poor children need access to a medical home. Could they be right? I knew I should have gone into accounting!
Thankfully, Dr. Jeffrey O. Tom of the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Honolulu just published a study evaluating whether well-child exams are worth at least as much as the Puffs consumed while toddlers wait for the pediatrician. The team reviewed the health records of 20,065 children between the ages of 2 months and 3.5 years to see if attending wellness exams actually contributes to children’s health or whether the sole purpose is to distribute cheap foreign treasure-box toys evenly among the population.
He asked a question so simple that even a state legislator could understand it: Do kids who go to their well-child exams get hospitalized less often for preventable causes? Admit it: Right now you’re at least a teeny bit worried the answer is “no.” But we can all breathe a sigh of relief, because the answer is “yes,” with a positive dose-response curve, even! Now that we know pediatricians actually do keep children from winding up in the hospital, the next pressing research question is, “Can we demonstrate a dose-response curve between the strength of medical evidence and the decisions of state government bodies?” About that one, I’m more than a teeny bit worried.
Rocky Mountain low
I have to admit I have mixed feelings about the legalization of medical marijuana. I mean, it has legitimate uses for the relief of suffering, but at the same time, marijuana is not a benign substance, causing impaired judgment and concentration, poor driving, and the Harold and Kumar movies. Even worse, since Colorado legalized the drug, kids can no longer look forward to nibbling Grandma’s special cookies.
In a widely publicized study, Dr. George Sam Wang of the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver profiled the remarkable increase in children’s emergency department visits for cannabis poisoning that followed Colorado’s legalization of marijuana on Sept. 30, 2009. Since decriminalization, 14 children were treated for marijuana toxicity at a single Colorado hospital, with 2 being admitted to the intensive care unit. The youngest was 8 months old, presumably because 7-month-olds can’t finger feed.
The marijuana frequently came from grandparents’ stashes, usually in the form of cannabis-laced cookies, brownies, sodas, or candies. Now I’ve heard of unforeseen consequences, but, really, did no one see this coming? Were they on drugs? Oh, yeah, right. Medical marijuana providers, chastened by the study, have sworn to address the problem by switching to cannabis-infused brussels sprouts.
The brand played on
Do you ever go out of your way when drinking a beverage to turn it in just such a way that the brand logo is perfectly visible to someone watching you? Yeah, me neither, but in movies, it seems to happen all the time: “This time, they messed with the wrong guy, a maverick cop with nothing to lose, and hey, what brand of cola is that? Suddenly, I feel thirsty.” This phenomenon is not a coincidence, but a result of paid product placement, and since the master tobacco settlement in 1998, you’ll notice the brand of cigarettes is always hidden, usually behind a really big gun.
No such legal restrictions apply to alcohol, however, and according a new study in JAMA Pediatrics, the incidence of alcohol brand placement in movies has increased steadily between 1996 and 2009, including in movies intended for kids as young as 13. What floors me is that the researchers actually watched the top 100 movies in each of those years, carefully monitoring for alcohol and cigarette brand placements. Fortunately for them, Harold and Kumar lost out in 2004 to such gems as Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid. They also missed 2011’s Justin Bieber documentary, Never Say Never, but hopefully they’ll catch the 2013 sequel, Dude, Where’s My Monkey?
David L. Hill, M.D., FAAP is the author of Dad to Dad: Parenting Like a Pro (AAP Publishing, 2012). He is also vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, N.C., and adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He serves as Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and as an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. He has recorded commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered and provided content for various print, television and Internet outlets.
What made record producer Jamal Rashid think that 19-year-old pop superstar Justin Bieber was emotionally ready to care for a monkey? Rashid, answering the perennial question, “What the heck do you give Justin Bieber?” was inspired in March to surprise the singer on his 19th birthday with a young capuchin, a breed of monkey known to be more loyal than Selena Gomez.
The card apparently did not include papers that would allow the pet to legally accompany Bieber to Germany, where authorities confiscated the creature, expressing alarm that the juvenile capuchin, like many of Bieber’s fans, had been removed from its mother far too early. The monkey, named Mally, is now preparing to join the only colony of white-headed capuchins in Germany, at the Serengeti-Park in Hodenhagen. Sources close to Bieber report that for his 20th birthday, he would prefer a pet rock.
A very useful engine
How do we know we’re really good for anything? I mean around the house I can tell, because it appears that if I weren’t there, my kids would leave every single dish in the sink and then start eating off the floor. But what about all those well-child exams we do in our offices? Based on their budget proposals, it appears my state legislators don’t think poor children need access to a medical home. Could they be right? I knew I should have gone into accounting!
Thankfully, Dr. Jeffrey O. Tom of the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Honolulu just published a study evaluating whether well-child exams are worth at least as much as the Puffs consumed while toddlers wait for the pediatrician. The team reviewed the health records of 20,065 children between the ages of 2 months and 3.5 years to see if attending wellness exams actually contributes to children’s health or whether the sole purpose is to distribute cheap foreign treasure-box toys evenly among the population.
He asked a question so simple that even a state legislator could understand it: Do kids who go to their well-child exams get hospitalized less often for preventable causes? Admit it: Right now you’re at least a teeny bit worried the answer is “no.” But we can all breathe a sigh of relief, because the answer is “yes,” with a positive dose-response curve, even! Now that we know pediatricians actually do keep children from winding up in the hospital, the next pressing research question is, “Can we demonstrate a dose-response curve between the strength of medical evidence and the decisions of state government bodies?” About that one, I’m more than a teeny bit worried.
Rocky Mountain low
I have to admit I have mixed feelings about the legalization of medical marijuana. I mean, it has legitimate uses for the relief of suffering, but at the same time, marijuana is not a benign substance, causing impaired judgment and concentration, poor driving, and the Harold and Kumar movies. Even worse, since Colorado legalized the drug, kids can no longer look forward to nibbling Grandma’s special cookies.
In a widely publicized study, Dr. George Sam Wang of the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver profiled the remarkable increase in children’s emergency department visits for cannabis poisoning that followed Colorado’s legalization of marijuana on Sept. 30, 2009. Since decriminalization, 14 children were treated for marijuana toxicity at a single Colorado hospital, with 2 being admitted to the intensive care unit. The youngest was 8 months old, presumably because 7-month-olds can’t finger feed.
The marijuana frequently came from grandparents’ stashes, usually in the form of cannabis-laced cookies, brownies, sodas, or candies. Now I’ve heard of unforeseen consequences, but, really, did no one see this coming? Were they on drugs? Oh, yeah, right. Medical marijuana providers, chastened by the study, have sworn to address the problem by switching to cannabis-infused brussels sprouts.
The brand played on
Do you ever go out of your way when drinking a beverage to turn it in just such a way that the brand logo is perfectly visible to someone watching you? Yeah, me neither, but in movies, it seems to happen all the time: “This time, they messed with the wrong guy, a maverick cop with nothing to lose, and hey, what brand of cola is that? Suddenly, I feel thirsty.” This phenomenon is not a coincidence, but a result of paid product placement, and since the master tobacco settlement in 1998, you’ll notice the brand of cigarettes is always hidden, usually behind a really big gun.
No such legal restrictions apply to alcohol, however, and according a new study in JAMA Pediatrics, the incidence of alcohol brand placement in movies has increased steadily between 1996 and 2009, including in movies intended for kids as young as 13. What floors me is that the researchers actually watched the top 100 movies in each of those years, carefully monitoring for alcohol and cigarette brand placements. Fortunately for them, Harold and Kumar lost out in 2004 to such gems as Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid. They also missed 2011’s Justin Bieber documentary, Never Say Never, but hopefully they’ll catch the 2013 sequel, Dude, Where’s My Monkey?
David L. Hill, M.D., FAAP is the author of Dad to Dad: Parenting Like a Pro (AAP Publishing, 2012). He is also vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, N.C., and adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He serves as Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and as an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. He has recorded commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered and provided content for various print, television and Internet outlets.
What made record producer Jamal Rashid think that 19-year-old pop superstar Justin Bieber was emotionally ready to care for a monkey? Rashid, answering the perennial question, “What the heck do you give Justin Bieber?” was inspired in March to surprise the singer on his 19th birthday with a young capuchin, a breed of monkey known to be more loyal than Selena Gomez.
The card apparently did not include papers that would allow the pet to legally accompany Bieber to Germany, where authorities confiscated the creature, expressing alarm that the juvenile capuchin, like many of Bieber’s fans, had been removed from its mother far too early. The monkey, named Mally, is now preparing to join the only colony of white-headed capuchins in Germany, at the Serengeti-Park in Hodenhagen. Sources close to Bieber report that for his 20th birthday, he would prefer a pet rock.
A very useful engine
How do we know we’re really good for anything? I mean around the house I can tell, because it appears that if I weren’t there, my kids would leave every single dish in the sink and then start eating off the floor. But what about all those well-child exams we do in our offices? Based on their budget proposals, it appears my state legislators don’t think poor children need access to a medical home. Could they be right? I knew I should have gone into accounting!
Thankfully, Dr. Jeffrey O. Tom of the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Honolulu just published a study evaluating whether well-child exams are worth at least as much as the Puffs consumed while toddlers wait for the pediatrician. The team reviewed the health records of 20,065 children between the ages of 2 months and 3.5 years to see if attending wellness exams actually contributes to children’s health or whether the sole purpose is to distribute cheap foreign treasure-box toys evenly among the population.
He asked a question so simple that even a state legislator could understand it: Do kids who go to their well-child exams get hospitalized less often for preventable causes? Admit it: Right now you’re at least a teeny bit worried the answer is “no.” But we can all breathe a sigh of relief, because the answer is “yes,” with a positive dose-response curve, even! Now that we know pediatricians actually do keep children from winding up in the hospital, the next pressing research question is, “Can we demonstrate a dose-response curve between the strength of medical evidence and the decisions of state government bodies?” About that one, I’m more than a teeny bit worried.
Rocky Mountain low
I have to admit I have mixed feelings about the legalization of medical marijuana. I mean, it has legitimate uses for the relief of suffering, but at the same time, marijuana is not a benign substance, causing impaired judgment and concentration, poor driving, and the Harold and Kumar movies. Even worse, since Colorado legalized the drug, kids can no longer look forward to nibbling Grandma’s special cookies.
In a widely publicized study, Dr. George Sam Wang of the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver profiled the remarkable increase in children’s emergency department visits for cannabis poisoning that followed Colorado’s legalization of marijuana on Sept. 30, 2009. Since decriminalization, 14 children were treated for marijuana toxicity at a single Colorado hospital, with 2 being admitted to the intensive care unit. The youngest was 8 months old, presumably because 7-month-olds can’t finger feed.
The marijuana frequently came from grandparents’ stashes, usually in the form of cannabis-laced cookies, brownies, sodas, or candies. Now I’ve heard of unforeseen consequences, but, really, did no one see this coming? Were they on drugs? Oh, yeah, right. Medical marijuana providers, chastened by the study, have sworn to address the problem by switching to cannabis-infused brussels sprouts.
The brand played on
Do you ever go out of your way when drinking a beverage to turn it in just such a way that the brand logo is perfectly visible to someone watching you? Yeah, me neither, but in movies, it seems to happen all the time: “This time, they messed with the wrong guy, a maverick cop with nothing to lose, and hey, what brand of cola is that? Suddenly, I feel thirsty.” This phenomenon is not a coincidence, but a result of paid product placement, and since the master tobacco settlement in 1998, you’ll notice the brand of cigarettes is always hidden, usually behind a really big gun.
No such legal restrictions apply to alcohol, however, and according a new study in JAMA Pediatrics, the incidence of alcohol brand placement in movies has increased steadily between 1996 and 2009, including in movies intended for kids as young as 13. What floors me is that the researchers actually watched the top 100 movies in each of those years, carefully monitoring for alcohol and cigarette brand placements. Fortunately for them, Harold and Kumar lost out in 2004 to such gems as Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid. They also missed 2011’s Justin Bieber documentary, Never Say Never, but hopefully they’ll catch the 2013 sequel, Dude, Where’s My Monkey?
David L. Hill, M.D., FAAP is the author of Dad to Dad: Parenting Like a Pro (AAP Publishing, 2012). He is also vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, N.C., and adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He serves as Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and as an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. He has recorded commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered and provided content for various print, television and Internet outlets.
