Review of studies: Except for bone health, low Vitamin D doesn't cause disease

The National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE PLUS news line summarizes a large study reviewing the evidence on the link between Vitamin D status and disease.  The reviewers' conclusions:  the association between low vitamin D and all diseases EXCEPT BONE HEALTH means that low Vitamin D is a marker, not the cause of diseases.

Bone health is not nothing, as I found in my own experience.  The question I would ask is this:  If a disease (such as MS) lowers Vitamin D in some fashion (rather than the other way around), does the resulting low level of Vitamin D make for weak bones?  That is, shouldn't we be tested for our vitamin D status and treated for low D on the basis of bone health alone?  

One thing is clear:  all the Vitamin D hype in the past 10 years has brought forth a good deal of research on its value.  Because D supplements are not profitable to drug companies, such research must be sponsored by government or non-profit entities.  There is nothing like controversy to stimulate such research.

All the sins of Larry Summers that justified his comeuppance

Since yesterday, when Larry Summers announced that he is taking his name out of consideration for the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, I have received two emails from old friends.  Hey, Judy, what do you think of that?  (As if they didn't know!)
Let us not cry for Larry and his lost dream.  He will have to satisfy himself in his comfy office at Harvard, and at whatever hedge fund he's hanging out at these days.  The man will not starve, though a little bit of fasting might not hurt him.
Still, it is time for me to lay out ALL of his sins, and to wonder why President Obama would ever have thought he would be acceptable to his (Obama's) base.  Most of these you will know about.  One, however, was embedded deep in one of Summers' op-ed pieces in the Washington Post over the past year.  It's the most cardinal sin of all.

Recap:  The frequently mentioned sins:  

1.  Responsible for the Financial Crisis:  He and his mentor (Bob Rubin) disparaged Brooksley Born, of CPSC, back in the 1990's, when she tried to get the Clinton Administration to do something about  the danger of unregulated derivative markets.  Those two, along with Alan Greenspan, snickered at little Brooksley who, as female, could not possibly understand the workings of big finance.  Eventually, to ensure their point of view, the four horsemen (Rubin, Greenspan, Summers and Gramm)  shepherded the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 through Congress near Christmas 2000.  Did Clinton even know what he had signed?  Well, not his greatest hour, but he listened to his advisors.  His advisor, our boy Summers, was not only wrong on the issue, he was arrogant about opposing views.   Unlike Alan Greenspan, he has never apologized for his role in the fiasco.

2.  Harvard Remarks on Women:  After alienating the faculty (let's forgive that), he made some remarks about women and math, which were probably inadvertent but which reflected an unscientific mindset and a clear bias against women.  He was pointing out the achievement gap in higher math between men and women. That's simple fact.  He argued for more research on the causes of same.  That's good.  But, then, he couldn't stop.  He said his "hunch" was that the cause of the gender gap is genetic and not environmental.  Ah, Larry. There it is.  No evidence, but your null hypothesis (needing to be disproven) was genetic male superiority!  Done as President of Harvard.  Yea!

3.  Performance in the White House during the Obama years.  Divisive, dithering, turf-conscious.  Ron Susskind's book, "Confidence Men" laid it all out.  I needn't say more.  Here is the New York Times article that describes Summers and what everyone (except the President, apparently) thought about him.  I will say no more as this item makes me wonder about my own crush on President Obama.  I don't want to go there.

The Mortal Sin:  (not mentioned in any of the news articles)

1.   The man supports the building of the Keystone Pipeline.  Why, he's such a genius that he knows about energy policy and global warming even better than the vast majority of climate scientists,   When I read his Washington Post Column (on economic growth) in which he put forth his argument, I felt obliged to write an angry letter to the Post editor asking why they print this man's drivel after his performance in numbers 1, 2, and 3 above. (I thought I was being clever, but my screed was not published.)  I have just spent a half hour looking for that opinion piece in the Post and could not find it.  But here it is, reprinted in a Reuters-India paper.

RIP, Public Servant Summers!  Enjoy retirement advising the hedge fund managers.

Charts on Long-Term Trends in Foreign-Born US Population

CBO has some great charts from the US Census that show how the immigrant population has changed over the last 100 years and, even better, how the educational attainment of said foreign-born individuals compares to native-born US citizens.  The big surprise to me is how well people from South America and the Caribbean do education-wise compared with those born here.  Why is that?  Haven't a clue.   But, perhaps it has something to do with another CBO chart that shows the comparatively high number of people from Mexico and Central America who are in the USA in an "unauthorized" status.

Vitamin D3 supplements alter gene expression in white blood cells - in a good way?

Here is a report of a paper in the public domain, on NIH website, which showed what Vitamin D3 supplementation did to the genes that govern immune response (and other responses).  This gives underlying scientific rationale for the importance of Vitamin D in auto-immune diseases.  PLOS Paper on Vitamin D.

Great Charts on the Sequester Cuts

Here is a great set of graphics on how much will come out of which programs and states, put out by ProPublica