Baby boomers and the ‘live now, pay later’ consequences | Letters

As a baby boomer I am ashamed of many of my generation (My generation fought to be free. What happened to us?, 4 April). We are the luckiest generation of the 20th century. Born after the war into the NHS/welfare state, too young for national service, and the first teenage generation to have disposable income. We were witness/participants of the revolution of the 1960s. If we went to university, we had a grant. When we left school, there was almost full employment. Money has followed us as we got older. Yet many of my generation must have voted for Thatcher, Cameron and Brexit. The Tories should not have survived the 19th century, let alone the 20th, and now once again seem the dominant party.

I have voted in all three referendums involving England and found myself on the losing side each time. I voted out in 1975 but subsequently changed my mind when I found out that the only protection for workers during the Thatcher years was Europe. I voted for a change to the electoral system, and finally remain last year. When I was young we were proud of the welfare state. When did welfare get replaced by benefits and become such a dirty word to many of my generation? When will my generation wake up and remember their radical past and recognise that, as Harold Macmillan said, they “have never had it so good”?
Richard Ascough
Thames Ditton, Surrey

• Polly Toynbee wonders what happened to us. Being of a similar age, I also remember a 1950s childhood followed by the optimistic 1960s. The greater equality and better living standards that many enjoyed then may have obscured far more significant changes abroad. After the independence and partition of India in 1947, most of Britain’s vast empire disappeared between 1957 and 1968, while from 1961 to 1973 the UK was actively attempting to join the European common market.

The subsequent arrival of people from former colonies, of refugees from post-imperial conflicts, and then Europeans entitled to join them, all profoundly changed the daily experience of many urban citizens. Because we have not had to face our chequered history the way others (such as Germany) were obliged to, there is little collective consciousness of the close connection between revolutionary political events half a century ago and current cynical despair. That is what did not happen to us.
Dr Sebastian Kraemer
London

• Polly Toynbee asks why a generation that fought hard for equality and the liberalisation of attitudes is responsible for denying the same opportunities to those coming behind. I am a member of that generation and one who, along with everyone else I know, voted remain. I feel now that as well as a T-shirt announcing I am one of the 48%, I should have another to say I am one of those who have no wish to bring back the rope, cane or pre-decimal currency. Could it be that those who want to turn the clock back to the 1950s are simply grieving for their lost youth and hoping that by “taking back control” they can have the benefits of being young combined with the knowledge and experience of old age? Wave your blue passport in the air and jingle the pennies and florins in your pocket as much as you like, you will never be 16 again. We’re old, it’s not our time any more. To coin a phrase, get over it.
Lynne Copley
Huddersfield

• Polly Toynbee reminds me that I was born in the era of the ration book. I grew up in the era of live now, pay later. As we liquidated the empire and repaid the American lend/lease debt in its entirety, the “never had it so good” generation was funded by accumulating debt. Deregulation of the banking system allowed us to pretend debt could expand indefinitely. Politicians never found the courage to tell their constituents to live within their incomes. Austerity is the pay later era of live now.

Older people who want to bring back hanging, flogging and the rest of the 1950s nostalgia want to go through the last 70 years all over again because they cannot see any workable alternative. How we might pay for it all, with the debt already accumulated, is another matter. May and the Brexiteers are getting spiteful because they have seen the figures and know they don’t add up for everyone.
Martin London
Henllan, Denbighshire

• As I walked along Park Lane, as part of the march for Europe, I remembered that 49 years ago I had been a few streets away in Grosvenor Square, protesting about the Vietnam war. I was amused to notice that half of the EU supporters were old enough to have been there as well. We were vocal then and now, but never a majority. Perhaps what Polly forgets is that our generation was not one entirely made up of hippies and beatniks; there were also the mods, rockers, skinheads and diligent conventionalists. I suspect that baby boomers’ attitudes have not become significantly more or less selfish.
Martin Cooper
Bromley, Kent

• Polly Toynbee is right to feel ashamed of our generation opting for self-interest in voting out of the EU. I try to cast the smallest pebble into the biggest pond by wearing an EU badge on my coat on all occasions.
Val Mainwood
Colchester, Essex

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Baby boomers and the ‘live now, pay later’ consequences | Letters

Antibiotics Before Age 2 May Be Linked to Allergies Later

TUESDAY, Sept. 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Taking antibiotics at a very young age could increase the risk of certain allergies later in life, new research suggests.

“Early life exposure to antibiotics is related to an increased risk of both eczema and hay fever later in life,” said Fariba Ahmadizar of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and colleagues.

The researchers analyzed dozens of studies published between 1996 and 2015 that included hundreds of thousands of people.

Treatment with antibiotics within the first two years of life was associated with a 15 percent to 41 percent increased risk of the skin condition eczema and a 15 percent to 56 percent increased risk of hay fever later in life, the study review found.

Risk for both conditions was higher among those who received two courses of antibiotics than among those who received one course of antibiotics, according to the study.

While the study doesn’t prove a cause-and-effect relationship, it’s possible that antibiotics disrupt microorganisms in the gut, leading to reduced immune response, the researchers said.

The findings were to be presented Tuesday at a meeting of the European Respiratory Society in London. Research presented at meetings is usually considered preliminary until peer-reviewed in a medical journal.

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about antibiotics.

Antibiotics Before Age 2 May Be Linked to Allergies Later

9/11 health crisis continues: New York cleaner fights cancer 15 years later

On September 11 2001, Merita Zejnuni began her shift at 7am, cleaning offices at Goldman Sachs on Maiden Lane in lower Manhattan. At 8.46am, she was in an internal stairwell. She didn’t hear a hijacked passenger jet slamming into the nearby north tower of the World Trade Center.

At 9.03am, though, she was on the 31st floor of her building. She saw a large plane speed past the window. It was the second hijacked jet, and it crashed into the south tower. Soon after, with sickening roars, the twin towers came down. Outside the Goldman Sachs office, the sky went dark.

“I was screaming,” she said, “screaming ‘We are going to die,’ the stuff was crashing on the window, probably it was pieces of bodies and planes and building, and so many papers, papers …”

Terrified office workers came pouring into the building, many covered in ash and soot. Zejnuni, who is now 52, handed out small towels and paper face masks and helped people clean themselves up. Then all the bankers began trying to make their way home.

“In one hour, the building was empty,” she said.

The boss of her cleaning company asked her and a few others to stay, to clean up. She did not sleep or go home for two and a half days, after which she was reunited with her 12-year-old son at their apartment in Queens.

In the days and nights she cleaned, she said, she had no masks left to use herself and no access to a shower or clean clothes. Soldiers stationed on the street outside gave her food. She was covered in dust; it filled her mouth and throat.

“It was disgusting,” she said. “I looked like a ghost. I was gray from head to foot.”

She took a day off, then came back to work.

Two months ago, despite an excellent health history and no record of cancer in her family, Zejnuni was found to have breast cancer. She has never smoked, but the doctors told her she also had a spot on her lung.

Two weeks before she sat down in Central Park to talk to the Guardian on Thursday night, she had a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction using flesh from her abdomen. She was already back at work.

‘I would cough so violently, like an old lady’

Smoke and ash engulf lower Manhattan on September 11 2001. Photograph: Greg Semendinger/AP

Zejnuni is one of many ordinary workers who dealt with the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks but who have never been publicly hailed as heroes like the firefighters, cops and workers who cleared the wreckage itself.

Certified as sick by the federal World Trade Center Health Program, created by the federal government in 2011, she sometimes still wheezes.

“In 2003, I got a painful cough,” she said. “I would cough so violently, like an old lady.”

Thousands are suffering in a post-9/11 health crisis. Many have died or are dying, despite government officials insisting in 2001 that the air in lower Manhattan was safe.

After the towers fell, Zejnuni managed to get a call through to her sister. “I told her, if anything happened to me, to look after my son,” she said.

Some time after 9/11, her company put her on night shifts, working virtually alone. Zejnuni said she asked her union if they could arrange for her to work days, as she was traumatized by her experiences after the attacks.

“A guy there told me, ‘Oh, that 9/11 bullshit – you’re lucky to have a job,’” she said. “I had to carry on working nights.”

Zejnuni moved to the US from her native Albania in 1997 and earned US citizenship. On 9/11, when she was asked to stay in lower Manhattan and work while most fled, she agreed because, she said: “I saw the army outside and I thought, ‘Let’s clean up in this country that opened its doors for me and gave me opportunity. I would give my life for this country.’”

For six years, her chronic cough was barely treated. Her chest was so painful, and her post-9/11 anxiety so acute, that although she never stopped working, she became depressed, drank too much and even contemplated suicide, she said.

Finally, she saw a poster on the train about specialist healthcare for 9/11 survivors. In 2009, she began receiving treatment at Mount Sinai hospital, one of the main centers looking after those affected by the attacks of 15 years ago.

“The doctors and nurses treated me like a human being,” she said. She stopped drinking and her self-confidence began to return. In October, she will consult with her doctors again, to assess the state of her cancer.

“I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me,” she said. “I just want to work, but sometimes my body makes it difficult. I think back to those soldiers standing outside in the debris. They were so young and they would smile and say, ‘Hello, ladies.’ I wonder if they are even still alive.”

9/11 health crisis continues: New York cleaner fights cancer 15 years later

Substantial childhood IQ linked to bipolar disorder later in life

High childhood IQ ranges are linked to an increased threat of bipolar disorder later in existence, according to new research.

The research, carried out at the University of Glasgow, measured the IQ of a massive group of individuals aged eight, who had been then tested for manic traits aged 22 or 23.

The test incorporated queries from a checklist typically utilized to diagnose bipolar disorder.

The check subjects created statements which created a score for researchers to see how numerous manic traits they had knowledgeable in the past.

It was found that amid people tested, those who scored in the best 10% of manic traits also had a childhood IQ ten factors larger than those who scored in the bottom ten%.

Daniel Smith, who led the study, advised the Guardian: “There is something about the genetics underlying the disorder that are advantageous.

“1 possibility is that serious ailments of mood – such as bipolar disorder – are the price tag that human beings have had to pay for much more adaptive traits this kind of as intelligence, creativity and verbal proficiency.”

• Melanie de Blank: I’m so proud of Polly, my bipolar daughter
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A latest research also identified that imaginative folks are a lot more probably to suffer from a mental sickness such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

The mood disorder influences 1 in one hundred folks in the United kingdom, and isusually indicated by bouts of mania followed by spells of depression. It can also include episodes of psychosis.

The research examined on 1,881 men and women, and is being published in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Substantial childhood IQ linked to bipolar disorder later in life

Investor"s Diary: Intentionally Poor Elevator Pitches, Problem Very first, Remedy Later

I give my college students annoying homework assignments, the very first of which is to come into class with an elevator pitch for a proposed firm. I define the term “elevator pitch” for them as a 60 2nd description of the organization. Time period – no further explanation. I ask them not to go through up on elevator pitches, and not to observe pitch competitions on YouTube. I want them to wing it – make some thing up that they believe will be convincing.

The college students all do a excellent undesirable job – which is exactly what I want. The pitches are all flawed, but the “intelligent but wrong” encounter helps make it less complicated to do it correct a week later, soon after we have far more thoroughly defined successful ways to pitch their companies.

The most widespread blunder the college students make? Pitches that are all notion, without having context a great deal of “here it is” and no “here’s why it issues.”

The 2nd time close to, the students get it proper: they recognize difficulties that require to be solved and the folks that have the dilemma they define the market place, THEN give the notion and describe how the notion can turn into a business. All in 60 seconds.

Negative pitches leave a “who cares?” hanging on the air. Great pitches helps make us nod, cock our eyebrows and consider, “the world has been waiting for this – why did not someone feel of it just before?”

I invest in existence sciences and biotechnology, difficult problems with complex options. So it is refreshing to hear about a novel nevertheless straightforward reply to a real difficulty.

Case in point. The difficulty: autistic kids wander, and every as soon as in a even though they wander away, and they can’t discover their way back, and they cannot be found. You have witnessed the information stories.

The folks impacted: the families, support people and colleges that face the issues (along with the joys) of caring for these children.

Lauren Thierry has a answer. Lauren is the president of Independence Day, a firm that tends to make clothing specially created for autistic youngsters. Her answer to the wandering issue? Minor GPS trackers embedded in the clothing.

Why didn’t a person feel of that ahead of?

I’ve read through a whole lot about wearable engineering, but so several of the concepts are remedies in search of a dilemma. Google Google glass, smart watches, Bluetooth rings, and iPhone-linked jewelry are modern technologies, but to my primitive thoughts they do not effortlessly and simply answer the “so what” test.

“Keeping track of kids who wander away” does.

(disclosure: I have no organization connection to Independence Day Wearable Tech. I am acquainted with the company President.)

Investor"s Diary: Intentionally Poor Elevator Pitches, Problem Very first, Remedy Later

Weight Acquire Starting up In Adolescence Is Linked To Greater Mortality Later in Daily life

A new review helps to resolve a nasty controversy from one 12 months in the past.

By Geoffrey Kabat

Just a yr in the past researchers at the Nationwide Center for Overall health Statistics published the results of a major examination of the connection of body mass index to subsequent mortality in the journal JAMA. The group led by Katherine Flegal carried out a meta-examination of all offered prospective research around the world that contained data on body mass index (BMI — defined as excess weight in kilograms/(height in meters)2) and subsequent mortality. (A meta-evaluation is basically an averaging of the results of personal studies with the objective of getting a more precise estimate).

Their sample integrated 97 scientific studies, almost 3 million folks, and 270,000 deaths. The authors utilised normal categories of BMI: 18.five-&lt25 (regular excess weight), 25-&lt30 (obese), and &gt=30 (obese). The last class was even more subdivided into 30-&lt35 (class 1), 35-&lt40 (class 2), and &gt=forty (class 3).

What they found was that, in contrast to regular fat people, these in the overweight class had a Reduced chance of dying of any trigger, and people in the obese group had an elevated risk. Nevertheless, more than half of those in the obese class had been in class 1, and these individuals had NO Improved Threat of dying in contrast to typical bodyweight men and women. Class two and 3 individuals did have a substantially elevated danger of death.

In other words, this analysis correlating BMI with risk of dying discovered that getting obese in fact appeared beneficial and that the ill effects of obesity had been limited to the quite obese.

The paper sparked a blistering retort from Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Wellness, who denounced the paper on NPR’s Morning Edition, calling it a “pile of rubbish” and saying that “no one particular ought to waste their time reading it.” He emphasized that, “We have a enormous volume of other literature displaying that people who gain weight or are obese have increased danger of diabetes, heart illness, stroke, a lot of cancers and numerous other circumstances.”

Letters to the editor integrated a defense of their examination by Flegal et al., as effectively as other supportive and critical feedback.

Now, virtually precisely one particular year later, a new paper goes a lengthy way towards clarifying the obvious contradiction between Flegal’s final results and people of Willett and other people. The paper appearing in the current concern of the American Journal of Epidemiology uses information from the potential Nationwide Institutes of Overall health-AARP Diet program and Wellness Study. This examine enrolled more than half a million AARP members in the mid-1990s and has followed the cohort in buy to document triggers of death. At entry into the research, participants finished a questionnaire covering their wellness, smoking habits, and self-reported fat and height, as nicely as their fat at ages 18, 35, and 50.

Using this huge information set, the authors, led by Kenneth Adams of the Minnesota Division of Wellness, examined the association of excess weight at diverse periods with complete mortality and mortality from distinct leads to (cardiovascular condition, cancer). But, in order to remove a significant distorting issue, they restricted their analysis to the 110,000 cohort members who had by no means smoked and were much less than 70 many years previous. (Like smokers in the examination could play havoc with the outcomes because smoking has results on weight and also on a person’s chance of dying).

Adams and colleagues examined the association of BMI at 3 different ages, weight change across 3 grownup age intervals, and the impact of initial attaining an elevated BMI at 4 successive ages.

More than 12.five years of following the cohort 12,017 deaths occurred.

What they identified was that BMI at all ages was positively related to mortality. Excess weight obtain was also positively connected to mortality, with more powerful associations for achieve among the ages 18 and 35 and ages 35 and 50 than between ages 50 and 69 years. Mortality hazards were greater in persons who attained or exceeded a BMI of 25. at a younger age than in persons who reached that threshold later in adulthood, and hazards had been lowest in individuals who maintained a BMI under 25..

In conclusion, the authors wrote: “Heavier original BMI and weight obtain in early to middle adulthood strongly predicted mortality danger in persons aged 50-69 years.”

The paper is not presented as a rebuttal of Flegal et al. It simply and in a easy method addresses the question of the effects of the onset of obesity at diverse ages on mortality. In truth, it doesn’t even cite the Flegal paper. Nonetheless, it is followed by a commentary that does mention Flegal, pointing out that “the findings contrast sharply with individuals of a latest systematic overview and meta-analysis.” The author of the commentary argues that a variety of various variables could describe the contradiction, including differences in the “reference group” for “normal weight” utilised in the two scientific studies.

Weight Acquire Starting up In Adolescence Is Linked To Greater Mortality Later in Daily life

Abnormal cervix cells linked to threat of receiving cancer later in daily life

Abnormal cells displaying up in a cervical smear check, which aims to detect modifications. Photograph: Tony Stone

Women who have been discovered to carry abnormal cells in their cervix are at significantly better danger of later developing and dying from cervical or vaginal cancer, new analysis suggests.

A Swedish research of 150,883 women who had been treated for CIN3, cells that can be a precursor to cancer, located that they have been the most at chance from cancer when their reached their 60s or 70s.

A paper on the British Health-related Journal’s site reviews: “Ladies previously taken care of for CIN3 are at increased risk of building and dying from cervical or vaginal cancer, in contrast with the common female population.

“Females previously diagnosed with, and handled for, CIN3 had been at considerably elevated chance of developing cervical or vaginal cancer when they reached 60. The threat accelerated with further ageing.”

Among Swedish ladies the lifetime or background threat of developing either cancer is eight.9 cases per a hundred,000 females, and 10.two cases per one hundred,000 in ladies who are aged at least 70.

But amid the ladies in the examine who had CIN3 the fee was a lot more than 70 per 100,000 ladies aged 70 – 7 times that of the general population of that age.

The authors pressure that even though cervical cancer screening assists avert several cases of, and deaths from, the disease, individuals taken care of for CIN3 nevertheless face “a steep boost in threat of death with enhanced age after prior diagnosis of CIN3″. The risk far more than doubled thirty years soon after the treatment, they explained.

In the Uk about 2,851 women were diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2010, generating it the 12th most frequent female cancer, even though 972 females died from it for the duration of 2011. Although all females aged 25 to 64 are presented screening, just underneath four in five consider up the offer, and attendances have been falling because 2003, according to Public Wellness England. Although 4.24 million were invited to screening in 2012-13, just three.32 million (78.3%) produced the appointment. The most significant fall in attendance has been with girls aged 25 to 49.

In these 3.32m exams 6.5% gave abnormal final results and .six% of the women had CIN3. The NHS cancer screening programme could not say how several ladies a yr are treated for CIN3. Women handled for CIN3 have a colonoscopy plus one particular of five procedures, this kind of as a cone biopsy, cryotherapy or laser treatment.

Sarah Williams, Cancer Research UK’s wellness data officer, stated cervical screening saved 1000′s of lives. “This research highlights how important it is to keep an eye on girls who’ve had abnormal cells in their cervix. In the Uk, these females have follow-up screening tests and exams for the HPV infections that trigger cervical cancer, to lessen the chance of the abnormal cells coming back.”

Robert Music, chief executive of Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, said the review highlighted a want to look at the stick to-up therapy of females with CIN3.

Meanwhile, girls more than 50 are currently being urged to have normal smear tests right after separate study scientific studies by Cancer Research United kingdom indicated that these who did not attend have been six times more very likely to build cervical cancer than individuals whose check outcomes had been regular.

In England and Northern Ireland women aged 25 to 49 are provided screening each 3 many years, and each 5 many years amongst 50 and 64.

Julietta Patnick, director of the NHS Cancer Screening Programmes, said girls could control their threat of cervical cancer by way of normal screening.

“Any abnormalities that may well be discovered can then be taken care of in buy that they do not go on to produce into cancer. Where a cervical cancer is found by way of screening it is usually at a quite early stage in which treatment has a greater opportunity of good results. It is crucial that women are aware of this when determining whether or not or not to be screened.”

Abnormal cervix cells linked to threat of receiving cancer later in daily life