Daniel Lubetzky

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is investing in community-based solutions to childhood obesity.

[Read more →]

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has sent a report to the FDA charging several food and beverage manufacturers with mislabeling their products. CSPI also recommends reforming package labeling format, especially the nutrition information and ingredient lists.

[Read more →]

Afshin Ellian wrote an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal.  He concludes it with:

The emergence of a democratic Iran is therefore not only a moral imperative but should be the foreign policy priority of every cold-hearted realist as well as multicultural engager. That’s why it is so incomprehensible that the Obama Administration still prefers dialogue with the apocalyptic ayatollahs over uncompromising support for the people crying out for freedom.

If the protesters shake off the yoke of theocracy and savagery, their success could herald the failure of political Islam way beyond Iran. At this turning point in history the West has no logical alternative but to unequivocally support the Green Revolution. The fate of this movement far outweighs the useless nuclear talks that will only buy the regime time and undeserved international legitimacy. The demonstrators in Iran on Dec. 7 rightfully exclaimed: "Obama, are you with them [the regime] or with us?" History will not judge him lightly if he chooses the wrong side.

For years I have wondered how so many diplomats (including many who are esteemed friends that I admire) delude themselves into believing they can actually get the Iranian regime to drop their quest for nuclear weapons.  Never mind that the regime has invested its entire reputation into asserting that the nuclear option is its G’d-given right.  And never mind that their entire geo-strategic existence relies on nuclear hegemony, not to mention the scary messianic imperatives they seem to want to accelerate with nuclear holocaust, as Ahmadinejad himself explicitly avowed.  If history teaches us anything is that we should take people in power at their word when they proclaim threatening visions in the public fora.

Several years ago, pundits dismissed "regime change" as naive and advocated nuclear containment with Iran instead.  I remember thinking they all had it upside down.  Nuclear containment is unlikely with the present regime.  Admittedly it may also be difficult with a future Iranian leadership.  But at least we won’t have apocalyptic messianics holding on to the red button.  Now that a viable grassroots opposition has risen in Iran demanding freedom and democracy, it will be devastating if they are not given all forms of global support, moral AND otherwise.

[Read more →]

A study recently found that children on Medicaid are given antipsychotic drugs at a rate 4 times higher than those on private health insurance.

The implications for health and justice are deep. Antipsychotic drugs are severely overprescribed – and their long-term damage to society has not yet been registered.

The article posits this trend among the poor may be related to short- sighted measures to "efficiently" control problem children.

A more serious and systemic problem is the abuse by the pharmaceutical industry of government programs – and their undue influence over certain segments of the medical community.

These are scary developments that seem to get scarier with time. A serious and systemic response is necessary.

I was surfing through TIME Magazine’s Top 10 Everything of 2009 list. While many of their choices seem random and uninspired at best, some gems hidden among their finds included their choice of Adam Lambert’s "Mad World" among their top songs. I read the lyrics several times, pasted below, and listened also to the original Tears for Fears performance (also below). 

When I was a kid in San Antonio, Texas, newly arrived from a sheltered upbringing in Mexico City, I enjoyed the song but didn’t relate to it – or understand why it resonated so much among American kids who "had it all." 

In Mexico City, in every corner on popular streets there was an indigent kid begging for alms and struggling to survive, so kids that had a home and a family didn’t generally question their lot.  Why then, would kids who could eat American cereals for breakfast and go to Malibu Grand Prix feel deprived? 

In retrospect, this song hits such a chord with the alienation and loss of meaning that many feel in modern society, primarily in the developed world.  Serious challenges of course are faced every day by struggling kids. But much of it also has to do with the framing of those challenges.  "How bad do I have it relative to the 30,000 children who literally starve to death every day?" 

The search for depth and meaning, and reaffirmation of our special fortune amidst so much wealth and excess, and of our role and duty to find our own way to make this a better world for others, are critical to the health and happiness of future generations.

In very real ways, thinking of others and kinding others (ie, doing conscious acts of kindness for others) gives us meaning and fulfillment.

Mad World lyrics
Songwriters: Orzabal, Roland;

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Goin’ nowhere, goin’ nowhere
Their tears are fillin’ up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dyin’
Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you
‘Cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a very, very
Mad world, mad world
Mad world, mad world
Children waitin’ for the day they feel good
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sits and listen, sits and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what’s my lesson?
Look right through me, look right through me
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dyin’
Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you
‘Cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a very, very
Mad world, mad world
Mad world, mad world
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dyin’
Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you
‘Cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a very, very
Mad world, mad world
Mad world, mad world
A raunchy young world
Mad world
© ROLAND ORZABAL LIMITED;

Very much in OneVoice, and very much with a sentiment like that of the KIND Movement, Starbucks bested all videos I got this season with this awesome compilation (which I received from Jason Alexander): musicians and ordinary citizens across the world joined on the same day at the same time to sing the same song:

Among all of KIND’s retail partners, Starbucks certainly ranks among the classiest, most professional and most sincerely committed to truly make this a better world.  In this case the above is part of a partnership with Project RED to fight AIDS.

This fascinating article doesn’t directly address global governance. But the increasing uses of information and technology at the municipal level portend positively for models for global governance for the 21st century. And at all levels, this trend hints at the sweeping changes that will come in how we leverage data.

My wife is a Doctor and she often shares stories about how the medical “system” leads to unsavory paths, often including terminally-ill elderly & infirm patients who are dragged through the indecency of two extra weeks of herculean efforts to keep them alive when it is pretty clear they are victims of technology and bureaucracy gone awry.  They would have much rather died a dignified death than be dragged through it.  But their families would of course want to know they did everything in their power for them. 

I have also heard that the costs of health care in the last two weeks of one’s life tend to account for between 50% and 75% of one’s lifetime expenses.    This data point may exaggerate the problem because obviously before you pass on it makes sense that a lot will be invested in to saving you.  But it does point to the challenge we need to confront in modern society: just because technology now exists that could “prolong” our lives does not follow that every instance we should deploy every available technology.

This is why it struck me that the campaign to scare people with the government’s “death panels” was a red herring – a silly distraction from a serious issue that our society needs to confront.

US Congressman Earl Blumenauer recently wrote the inside account of the “Death Panel” miscommunication campaign here. It is recommended reading not just to health care legislation aficionados, but to all who need to know about the sobering way in which our legislative system works.

[Read more →]

Interesting article about a calorie-restriction study financed by NIH.

Industry spin nothwithstanding, the prevalence and consequences of BPA in our food are alarming, as noted in this article by Nick Kristof.