Brian and John Jones are missing the point. One of the main reasons that people want "antibiotic free" meat is to avoid producing or coming into contact with so-called "superbugs"--bacteria that have become resistant to common antibiotic drugs like penicillin and tetracycline.

Ionophone supplements don't have this effect. They are never used as antibacterial drugs in humans. They don't cause the creation of so-called "superbugs."

Just calling anything that kills bacteria an "antibiotic" for the purpose of food labelling doesn't make sense. By that logic, if the butcher used alcohol to sterilize his cutting instruments then the meat wouldn't be antibiotic-free. Of course alcohol has antibiotic properties (that's why Purel works -- it's an alcohol-gel solution) but that doesn't mean that the meat should be labeled.

A professional blogger like Brian White should get to the bottom of these things instead of just posting without giving further thought. The blogger should be adding value through research and understanding rather than just summarizing the work of others and posting a single link.

Wouldn't this law prove your point that the law is doing a good job of creating that balance? It's not like there was some stampede toward RFID implants.

What are you talking about? The whole thing was publicity stunt by the California legislature. No California company has ever required employees to get chipped. By saying "corporations all want this" you are attacking a strawman, or being manipulated. Think it through. Nobody wanted it, that's why the California legislature was able to make such a big stink.

Can we please just go ahead and drop Brian White from this blog already? He adds nothing but uninformed speculation. Take this post, for example. How hard would it be to find out what percentage of Americans use a prescription drug? Taking the five minutes it would take to answer the question would replace his entirely idle speculation ("I would say..."). What does it add for a reader to know what Brian White would guess the number to be?

FYI -- he's also wrong. CDC says 44%, which is not "quite a bit higher" than 50%. See, for example, http://www.wesh.com/health/3965650/detail.html

Such pretty colors!

Sweet iPhone love!

THAT's a nice camera!

Everyone say it with me now: Correlation does not imply causation.

Is it more likely that some mysterious chemical in breast implants makes people unstable? Or that unstable people are more likely to get breast implants?

Please read slightly more carefully: it's not that an AIDS patient's _body_ grows resistant. It's that the _infection_ becomes resistant or even immune to the drug over time. It's a very important difference. In many drugs, such as opiates, the patient herself might develop a tolerance and require higher dosages. In antibiotics and antivirals, what usually happens is that the target microorganism mutates slightly and is no longer susceptible to that particular form of treatment. Other treatments, especially in combination, may still have an impact on the target.

If you are going to blog about health you have an obligation to readers to fully understand what you are blogging about. Otherwise you run the risk of spreading misinformation and making the situation far worse than if you had said nothing at all. Please be very careful about these sorts of things.

San Jose is in northern California. It's just south of San Francisco (by maybe 60 miles). San Francisco is the hub of NorCal.

The easy way to measure is by San Louis Obispo. Everything north of SLO is NorCal, everything south of SLO is SoCal.