Age of Consent

Age of consent laws around the world. Clearly we are a sexually mixed up lot. Ages vary from 9 to 21, and depend on your sexual preference. WTF. At home we have technology generating further problems for our legal definitions of what is sexually permitted.

A teenager who was charged with possession of child pornography after taking nude photos of herself and sharing them with another teen will not face sanctions under a deal worked out last week with the Marquette County District Attorney's office.

Obesity: Who Pays?

In the latest issue of JEP:

Who Pays for Obesity? Jay Bhattacharya and Neeraj Sood

Adult obesity is a growing problem. From 1962 to 2006, obesity prevalence nearly tripled to 35.1 percent of adults. The rising prevalence of obesity is not limited to a particular socioeconomic group and is not unique to the United States. Should this widespread obesity epidemic be a cause for alarm? From a personal health perspective, the answer is an emphatic "yes." But when it comes to justifications of public policy for reducing obesity, the analysis becomes more complex. A common starting point is the assertion that those who are obese impose higher health costs on the rest of the population—a statement which is then taken to justify public policy interventions. But the question of who pays for obesity is an empirical one, and it involves analysis of how obese people fare in labor markets and health insurance markets. We will argue that the existing literature on these topics suggests that obese people on average do bear the costs and benefits of their eating and exercise habits. We begin by estimating the lifetime costs of obesity. We then discuss the extent to which private health insurance pools together obese and thin, whether health insurance causes obesity, and whether being fat might actually cause positive externalities for those who are not obese. If public policy to reduce obesity is not justified on the grounds of external costs imposed on others, then the remaining potential justification would need to be on the basis of helping people to address problems of ignorance or self-control that lead to obesity. In the conclusion, we offer a few thoughts about some complexities of such a justification.

Do What You Are Told

That is the lesson I take from this.

WTF

Greg Mankiw echoes my thoughts on Obama's SOTU speech.

Food

Here is a tortured but interesting discussion of the USDA's new nutrition guidelines. In particular he paints a good picture of the conflicting goals of the USDA. Promote agriculture, but reduce obesity. Eat more, Weigh less? Sounds like the book Run less, Run faster. However, Eat more, Weigh less is only possible if eat more is not measured in calories, but volume. That would require a movement towards lower calorie higher volume fruits and vegetables and away from the more dense higher calories lower volume, meat, poultry and dairy.

Leave the Lymph Nodes

New research in breast cancer suggests, just leave the lymph nodes and hit them with chemo.

Now, researchers report that for women who meet certain criteria — about 20 percent of patients, or 40,000 women a year in the United States — taking out cancerous nodes has no advantage. It does not change the treatment plan, improve survival or make the cancer less likely to recur. And it can cause complications like infection and lymphedema, a chronic swelling in the arm that ranges from mild to disabling.

Removing the cancerous lymph nodes proved unnecessary because the women in the study had chemotherapy and radiation, which probably wiped out any disease in the nodes, the researchers said. Those treatments are now standard for women with breast cancer in the lymph nodes, based on the realization that once the disease reaches the nodes, it has the potential to spread to vital organs and cannot be eliminated by surgery alone.

So fewer surgical interventions is better medicine. Is it a surprise that docs are slow to embrace?

But Dr. Carlson said that some of his colleagues, even after hearing the new study results, still thought the nodes should be removed.

“The dogma is strong,” he said. “It’s a little frustrating.”

And for the research methods students who just discussed Tuskegee there is this:

The complications — and the fact that there was no proof that removing the nodes prolonged survival — inspired Dr. Giuliano to compare women with and without axillary dissection. Some doctors objected. They were so sure cancerous nodes had to come out that they said the study was unethical and would endanger women.

Malaria and IQ

Another reason to improve public health.

Further evidence on causality is given by Atheendar Venkataramani in Early Life Exposure to Malaria and Cognition and Skills in Adulthood. Venkataramani finds that men born after widespread malaria eradication began in Mexico in the late 1950s have higher IQs (Raven scores) and are more likely to work in white collar jobs than men born shortly before eradication efforts began. Importantly, the effect is larger for men born in those states that began with high exposure to malaria.