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Posts Tagged ‘economics’

Visualizing big money rivers flowing into the politics of healthcare

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 18, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Over at Open Secrets, there are some great tools to “… investigate the cash flowing from well-heeled special interests within the health industries to your representatives, the committee members with the most power to shape the legislation …” A big money political circus with $500 million spent on lobbying in 2010 alone!  Can a wave [...]

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Ask your genome how much longer you will live

Posted in Telomere, tagged , , on May 18, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

… from The Big Picture

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Is a gene that “explains less than one percent of the variation in life satisfaction” a secret to happiness?

Posted in 5HTT, tagged , on May 9, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Nope. … from the debunking analysis: The key comparison here comes from the two extremes: 2 alleles vs. 0. People with 2 alleles are 4 percentage points (more precisely, 3.6 percentage points) more likely to report themselves as very satisfied with their lives. The standard error of this difference in proportions is sqrt(.41*(1-.41)/862+.37*(1-.37)/509) = 0.027, [...]

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Economic externalities and genome sharing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on February 28, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

If I pay to have my house fire-proofed, it creates a free economic benefit for my next-door neighbors.  If I smoke and barbecue all day long, the smoke creates an economic risk or cost for those same folks.  These are examples of what economists call “externalities … a cost or benefit, not transmitted through prices, [...]

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Feeling good about feeling bad

Posted in 5HTT, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Just a pointer to a great book – The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder by Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield.  Its an in-depth treatment on the many reasons and contexts in which we – quite naturally – feel sad and depressed and the way in which diagnostic [...]

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Semaphorins integrate the sweetness and development of our cortical 6-layer cake

Posted in RLN, SEMA(1-7), tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Image via Wikipedia For a great many reasons, research on mental illness is focused on the frontal cortex.  Its just a small part of the brain, and certainly, many things can go wrong in other places during brain/cognitive development, but, it remains a robust finding, that when the frontal cortex is not working well, individuals [...]

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rs4680 helps me tonically ponder the Burger King menu and phasically choose the least healthy items

Posted in Cingulate cortex, COMT, Frontal cortex, Hippocampus, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on January 20, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

One of the complexities in beginning to understand how genetic variation relates to cognitive function and behavior is that – unfortunately – there is no gene for “personality”, “anxiety”, “memory” or any other type of “this” or “that” trait.  Most genes are expressed rather broadly across the entire brain’s cortical layers and subcortical systems.  So, [...]

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SLC1A1 SNPs as tiny deliveries on payment of big promise

Posted in SLC1A1, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Image via Wikipedia In their forecast “The World in 2010” special issue, the Economist points to “The looming crisis in human genetics” wherein scientists will reluctantly acknowledge that, even with super-cheap genome sequencing tools, we may not soon understand how genetic variation contributes to complex illness.  The argument is a valid one to be sure, [...]

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echoblog: MAOA alleles and credit card debt?!

Posted in MAOA, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 9, 2009 | 1 Comment »

Image via Wikipedia pointer to: The Neurocritic’s coverage on the association of low-efficiency alleles of MAOA and credit card debt.  Will there be a genotype box to check on future credit card applications? More posts on MAOA here.

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book blog: Methland by Nick Reding

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 23, 2009 | 1 Comment »

“Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town” by Nick Reding is a closer look at the rise of illicit methamphetamine use that grew along socio-economic fault-lines propagated by the rise of financial capitalism and deregulation beginning in the late 1970′s.  Now 30 years later, there is no end in sight for the [...]

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Minds on the Edge

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 10, 2009 | 1 Comment »

pointer to: amazing project on the complexities of managing mental illness in America today.  Scientific progress makes for policy dilemma in an era of economic decline.  Heartbreaking. From the website: MINDS ON THE EDGE: Facing Mental Illness is a multi-platform media project that explores severe mental illness in America. The centerpiece of the project is [...]

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podcast: Rett Syndrome Research Trust

Posted in MECP2, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 1, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

It was a delight today to chat with Monica Coenraads, Executive Director of the Rett Syndrome Research Trust.  The RSRT has teamed up with a deeply focused world-class team of research scientists to translate the fruits of basic research on Rett syndrome into viable cures.   Whether you are a scientist, student or concerned family member, [...]

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Healthcare debate: Al Franken at his grass roots best

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on September 6, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Al Franken ably handles a “taxed enough already” crowd on healthcare debate topics … democratic process at its best … the frontrow presence of a 90 y.o. lady draws some focus on how young folks resent being saddled with future debt to pay for current payouts – no one seems to take note or care [...]

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echoblog: Top healthcare economists frame long-term debate(s) now and to come

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Image by wstera2 via Flickr pointer to: Bloomberg Economics Radio – two top healthcare economics experts amicably discuss (.mp3) the current reform efforts – both agree the mendacity and outright lies are deeply poisoning the debate. The first main issue is the so-called “uninsured issue” which most other countries have resolved (simply, everyone deserves to [...]

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Interview with Professor Michael Frank: Computational Neuroscience (and Genetics) of Decision Making

Posted in COMT, DARPP32, DRD2, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

If you’re interested in the neurobiology of learning and decision making, then you might be interested in this brief interview with Professor Michael Frank who runs the Laboratory of Neural Computation and Cognition at Brown University. From his lab’s website: “Our research combines computational modeling and experimental work to understand the neural mechanisms underlying reinforcement [...]

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Yeah, healthcare 1.0 reform is a clusterf**k

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on August 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Image by arbyreed via Flickr Was sort of holding my breath with fingers and toes crossed these past few weeks, but now am given up.  Much like team Obama’s efforts to regulate the financial services industry (only slightly less of a clusterf**k than healthcare), its a slow motion trainwreck where the average taxpayer just ends [...]

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‘Rational’ homo economicus now extinct – killed off by the current macroeconomic crisis

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on August 6, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Image via Wikipedia pointer to: Professor Paul De Grauwe‘s interview (mp3) and recent article in the Financial Times declaring the flawed debate on macroeconomic policy (to stimulate or not) based on present models that do not account for the emotional and cognitive biases of homo sapiens.  He calls for new behavioral economic models based on [...]

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Dopaminergic genes capture Keynes’ animal spirits in an uncertain world

Posted in COMT, DARPP32, DLPFC, Dopamine, DRD2, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

In 1802, in a letter to then Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, Thomas Jefferson warned that, “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the [...]

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“Consumer choice is nonsense when it comes to health care” says Krugman via Arrow

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on July 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Image by Getty Images via Daylife pointer to: Paul Krugman’s summary of basic factors that prevent healthcare from ever functioning in an efficient Adam Smith, Burton Malkiel kind of free market.  His comments based on Kenneth Arrow‘s 1963 paper “Uncertainty and the welfare economics of health care“.

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homebrew comics 11

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on July 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

… caught this related video on the same topic on July 24th. The core issues of government transparency and consumer protection seem to apply to healthcare reform as well.  How best can the government protect consumers ? paternalistic behavior or transparency ?

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