Well, Folks, I don't think that Georgia is going to just let this death go un-reviewed in the world court....

The Wall Street Journal

In its strongest condemnation yet of the horrific accident that killed 21-year-old Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili hours before the opening of the Winter Olympics, the Georgian Olympic Committee on Thursday blamed the track, not the athlete.

"I exclude the possibility that Nodar was not experienced enough," committee chief Giorgi Natsvlishlili said in televised comments. "From my point of view the track was at fault."

Mr. Kumaritashvili died in a training accident when he lost control of his luge on the final turn of the track at the Whistler Sliding Center, the world's fastest, and hit a steel support at 145 kilometers per hour.

http://online.wsj.com/home-page?mod=djemalertEuropenews

With a simple Google Search, we find that GE spent $7 million lobbying Congress in just three months....

Medical device industry's Q4
lobbying spend tops $20 million

January 29, 2010 by MassDevice staffMedical device makers, health information technology providers and AdvaMed together spent more than $20 million lobbying Congress, the White House and the Food & Drug Administration during the fourth quarter.


The medical device industry spent a lot of money making sure its voice was heard in Washington during the healthcare reform kerfluffle at the end of last year, dropping more than $20 million on lobbying efforts for health issues at the U.S. House and Senate, the White House and the Food & Drug Administration.

According to filings made to the Lobbying Disclosure Act Database, during the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31 companies spanning the industry's largest players and smallest fry spent amounts ranging from nearly $7 million (General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE) and all of its subsidiaries, including GE Healthcare) to $9,000 (health information technology provider ZirMed Inc.).

Predictably, the biggest spenders were also the sector's biggest players, according to the database. The next-largest lobbying spend after GE's was made by Abbott (NYSE:ABT), which spent nearly $2.2 million during the quarter. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) spent nearly $2 million, Baxter International $1.2 million, and Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) and Covidien (NYSE:COV) each spent about $1 million. Boston Scientific Corp. (NYSE:BSX) spent a paltry amount in comparison with its peers, a mere $590,000.

GE - Introduces an innovative hand-held ultra-sound device, designed in Norway, made in China...Maybe we need to incentivize USa manufacturing...

Vscan, GE Healthcare's Newest Pocket-Sized Visualization Tool for Point-of-care Imaging, to Support Physicians Providing Medical Care for Athletes, Visitors and Trainers at Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games Competitions

Pocket-sized, easy-to-use device enables physicians to provide more rapid diagnoses by enhancing the physical exam


VANCOUVER, Feb 18, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- GE Healthcare announced today that the company's latest ultrasound innovation, Vscan, will be utilized at the Mobile Medical Unit, the medical emergency unit extension of the Whistler Polyclinic in support of athletes, trainers and visitors attending the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games competitions.

Roughly the size of a smartphone, Vscan houses powerful, ultra-smart ultrasound technology that provides clinicians with an immediate, non-invasive method to help secure visual information about what is happening inside the body. Vscan is portable and can easily be taken from room to room to be used in many clinical, hospital or primary care settings.

"GE's goal is to improve the quality of care by increasing access to important healthcare technologies, and this pocket-sized visualization tool will help do that with its portability and high image quality," said Peter Robertson, General Manager of GE Healthcare Canada. "Vscan is a non-invasive tool that can help physician's perform more focused physical exams and provide additional information with immediate visual validation, which may help speed diagnoses, reduce patient wait-times and improve physician workflow."

The ability to take a quick look inside the body using Vscan may help clinicians detect disease earlier. This may prove invaluable in today's busy practice environment including primary care physicians and those specializing in cardiology, critical and emergency care and women's health, as well as hospitalists.

Vscan offers the image quality that until recently was only available with a console ultrasound. Vscan leverages GE's high-quality black and white image technology and color-coded blood flow imaging in a device that fits into a pocket and weighs less than one pound at 3 inches wide and 5.3 inches long. Other features include:

-- An online portal provides Vscan users with training tools for the product and basic clinical applications with sections about imaging technique, anatomy and trouble shooting

-- Intuitive user interface that can be controlled using the thumb

-- Battery charger station and battery life of one hour scanning -- good for up to 30 patients based on average of 2 minutes per scan

-- Voice annotation

-- USB docking station

-- Link to a PC for organization and export of data

-- Gateway software with services tools and remote diagnostics

"Vscan may help change frontline healthcare practice -- improving patient management during the physical exam by providing immediate, non-invasive, visual information inside the body," said Dr. Ross Brown, manager of the Whistler Polyclinic. "We are thrilled to have access to this new ultrasound innovation at the Whistler Polyclinic to help deliver outstanding health care support to the range of individuals visiting the Olympic competitions."

Vscan is a prescription device for ultrasound imaging, measurement and analysis in the clinical applications of abdominal; cardiac (adult and pediatric); urological, fetal/OB; pediatric; and thoracic/pleural motion and fluid detection, as well as for patient examination in primary care and in special care areas.

The Vscan imaging device received 510(k) clearance in the U.S. by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the CE Mark by the European Union, as well as the Medical Device License from Health Canada and is now commercially available in the U.S., Europe, India and Canada.

About GE Healthcare:

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems.

Our "healthymagination" vision for the future invites the world to join us on our journey as we continuously develop innovations focused on reducing costs, increasing access and improving quality and efficiency around the world. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company /quotes/comstock/13*!ge/quotes/nls/ge (GE 16.14, -0.01, -0.06%) . Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com.

For our latest news, please visit http://newsroom.gehealthcare.com

SOURCE: GE Healthcare
=======================

AS REPORTED IN THE WSJ:

NEW DELHI—India's tax regime often favors importing finished products rather than components and raw materials, and the Indian government needs to offer new incentives to stimulate homegrown manufacturing, a senior Indian official at General Electric Co. said Monday.

V. Raja, president and chief executive of GE Healthcare South Asia, said in an interview that the import tariff on finished goods that GE brings into India typically runs at about 10%. Because of the way the tariff structure works, the duty on the import of components or raw materials necessary for local manufacturing often amount to more than 10%.

"The country is not incentivizing local manufacturing," Mr. Raja said. "There aren't really any incentives for me to do this."

GE is making a big push in the Indian health-care market and has established India as one of its major research and development centers for products that will be sold both in the developed and developing worlds.

A GE Healthcare Vscan portable visualization machine is displayed following a news conference in New York, Oct. 21, 2009. As part of that push, the company unveiled a small new ultrasound machine called the Vscan Monday that it says will bring the advantages of ultrasound diagnosis to many more doctors and clinics in India.

The Vscan is portable, battery-operated and will sell in India for about $12,000 (550,000 to 600,000 rupees), which the company hopes will make it popular in a health-care market that is in its infancy and where patients, especially in rural areas, often lack access to sophisticated medical equipment.

"We believe Vscan can reduce the need for more tests and referrals during physical examinations and could make health care more accessible to people in India," Mr. Raja said.

The Vscan was designed in Norway and is being manufactured in China. Mr. Raja said the company evaluated the relative advantages of manufacturing in other places, including India, but decided that China offered the best combination of cost and closeness to a major market. He said he hoped eventually to manufacture the product in India.

The wider availability of ultrasounds in India is a controversial topic since there is a traditional preference for boys over girls. In 1994, the government outlawed sex selection. Still, the country's ratio of boys to girls tilts sharply in favor of boys. Some government officials have linked the skewed ratio to the wider availability of ultrasounds, as the determination of sex can prompt the abortion of a female fetus.

Mr. Raja said sales of the Vscan would be governed by the same rules as for other ultrasound machines. The government requires doctors to undergo training and receive a license before purchase. GE also does an internal audit to ensure that every ultrasound sale is to a licensed purchaser. He added that the Vscan is not primarily targeted at the traditional pre-natal medical market but at emergency rooms and general physicians.

GE Healthcare's Indian revenue grew at an annual average rate of 16% to 17% in the past five years. The company declined to disclose specific revenue numbers for sales in India. But Mr. Raja said he expects the revenue growth rate to increase to 30% a year over the next five years as the company focuses on expanding accessibility to its products, lowering the cost, and working with the government to improve health-care quality. The goal, Mr. Raja said, "is how we can try to drive health care, which could be made affordable and available to the masses."

That drive faces a number of challenges. There is very little regulation of health-care equipment in India, which leaves the market vulnerable to sales of shoddy machinery, Mr. Raja said.

The vast majority of Indians still pay for health care out of their own pocket because health insurance is in its infancy so "the propensity to pay is still a huge challenge given the per capita income," Mr. Raja said.

Nor does the government treat health care as a priority worthy of special treatment such as power generation or road construction, he said. As a result, it does not received favorable financing terms as these other sectors do.

Write to Paul Beckett at paul.beckett@wsj.com

My problem is that I assume that we will have to move out into Space, off this Earth, and these resources are the economic reason for exploration....

Humans are no strangers to ravaging the land, but the stars have proven a good deal more elusive. So far, our ethical concerns have remained limited to the contamination of extraterrestrial environments, but what will the future bring?

Last night I attended a lecture by Jesuit Brother Guy J. Consolmagno, a U.S. research astronomer and planetary scientist at the Vatican Observatory. He gave a very engaging talk about the ethics of exploration and planetary astronomy, touching on two particularly noteworthy items:

Asteroid Mining
Can you put a price tag on an asteroid? Sure you can. We know of roughly 750 S-class asteroids with a diameter of at least 1 kilometer. Many of these pass as near to the Earth as our own moon -- close enough to reach via spacecraft. As a typical asteroid is 10 percent metal, Brother Consolmango estimates that such an asteroid would contain 1 billion metric tons of iron. That's as much as we mine out of the globe every year, a supply worth trillions and trillions of dollars. Subtract the tens of billions it would cost to exploit such a rock, and you still have a serious profit on your hands.

But is this ethical? Brother Consolmango asked us to ponder whether such an asteroid harvest would drastically disrupt the economies of resource-exporting nations. What would happen to most of Africa? What would it do to the cost of iron ore? And what about refining and manufacturing? If we spend the money to harvest iron in space, why not outsource the other related processes as well? Imagine a future in which solar-powered robots toil in lunar or orbital factories.

"On the one hand, it's great," Brother Consolmango said. "You've now taken all of this dirty industry off the surface of the Earth. On the other hand, you've put a whole lot of people out of work. If you've got a robot doing the mining, why not another robot doing the manufacturing? And now you've just put all of China out of work. What are the ethical implications of this kind of major shift?"

Brother Consolmango also stressed that we have the technology to begin such a shift today; we'd just need the economic and political will to do it. Will our priorities change as Earth-bound resources become more and more scarce?

Terraforming
Most of our planetary colonization dreams revolve around changing the environments of other worlds to cater to our own astronomically particular needs. Seriously, imagine if the Smoking Gun posted humanity's tour rider for visiting other worlds. What utter divas we are! As the alternative of changing ourselves to inhabit other worlds is largely unexplored, we have to ponder the far-future ethics of terraforming another planet.

Specifically, Brother Consolmango mentioned the idea of taking material from a c-class asteroid or a Martian moon and spreading it over Mars' pole caps. In theory, this feat would create the sort of drastic global warming we're hoping to avoid on Earth. Coated with dust, the poles would then absorb even more solar radiation than before, causing them to heat up and release carbon dioxide. Atmospheric pressure would increase. The resulting greenhouse effect could possibly raise temperatures to facilitate stabilized liquid water. This could lead to lakes, oxygen and a successful seeding of plant life. Eventually, Arnold Schwarzenegger would be able to take his space helmet off without his eyeballs exploding.

But what are the ethics of this (the terraforming, not the eyeball thing)? What if Mars already contains hidden life? Might the origins of life on Earth trail back to the red planet as well? Thoroughly contaminate everything and we might erase all trace of what was. And the past isn't the only thing potentially at stake.

"Here's a deeper question," Brother Consolmango said. "What if there is no life on Mars or Titan or some other place we're going to go to, but all the ingredients are there, such that at some future time life could exist. The potentiality of life is there and, by terraforming it, we're aborting that possibility. Under what circumstances is that an ethical thing to do?"

What do you think?

In addition to covering these topics, Brother Consolmango also touched base on the issues of light pollution, meteorite collecting and the coexistence of science and religion. On the meteorite issue, I was pleased to hear him hit all the points I made in my recent post on the matter.

And you can read Robert Lamb's HowStuffWorks.com blog post
Can science and religion coexist?
for more on the religion/science issue.

Either way, feel free to spill your thoughts on the ethics of planetary exploration
and colonization.
Learn to exploit some space at HowStuffWorks.com:
How Asteroid Mining Will Work
How Iron and Steel Work
How Mars Works
How Terraforming Mars Will Work
How Light Pollution Works

Jammed Printer Mouse....

Well, Folks, We might get bipardisan participation when we get a 50/50 split of the votes in Congress....

Senator Bayh's Domino Effect
Democrats could wind up with only 52 Senate seats.
By JOHN FUND

Political handicappers Larry Sabato and Nate Silver both projected recently that if the November election were held today, Democrats would wind up with only 52 Senate seats, a net loss of seven. Evan Bayh's sudden retirement yesterday is prompting most observers to give Republicans an edge to capture his vacant seat, which would mean a net loss of eight Democratic seats.

Such a setback isn't unprecedented. In "wave" elections, one party tends to win all of the close races -- in 2008 Democrats captured eight seats from Republicans by running the table on competitive Senate seats.

The political picture for Democrats could improve between now and November -- or it could deteriorate. What if former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, who leads incumbent Senator Russ Feingold in at least some polls, decides to run? Similarly, former New York Governor George Pataki could enter the Senate race, hoping to take advantage of a divisive Democratic primary between appointed Senator Kristen Gillibrand and former Congressman Harold Ford. Finally, Democratic Senator Patty Murray could face a last-minute challenge from Dino Rossi, the well-known Republican who came within an eyelash of being sworn in as governor a few years ago.

Should Democrats fall to only 50 or 51 seats in the Senate, they would be at the mercy of Connecticut's Joe Lieberman on many key procedural votes. Mr. Lieberman has already signaled his willingness to consider running as a Republican in 2012. He could always threaten to jump the political fence early if it meant giving the GOP Senate control.

Even without further deterioration in their political prospects, Democrats could end up holding only a slim majority or exercising control only by virtue of Vice President Joe Biden's tie-breaking vote. You could forget about much of the Obama legislative program unless input from moderate and even conservative Republicans is incorporated into legislation. This may not be the "change" that President Obama believes in, but it would be the only kind that could happen.

The new political landscape also has big implications for the Supreme Court. The odds of one or even two vacancies occurring this summer before the current oversized Democratic Senate majority shrinks have just gone up in the wake of Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts and Mr. Bayh's retirement. Justice John Paul Stevens turns 90 this April, and has already signaled his retirement by hiring only one law clerk for the Supreme Court term that begins next October. A retired justice is allowed a single clerk; a sitting Justice normally has four clerks.

Mr. Stevens may not be the only retirement. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 76 years old and has struggled with poor health. She may calculate that the odds of being replaced by a like-minded liberal -- perhaps Solicitor General Elena Kagan or 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Diane Wood -- would be significantly better if she timed her departure to take advantage of the Democrat-dominated Senate that gave Sonia Sotomayor easy confirmation last year. If she waits, the prospect of a bitter confirmation battle in a closely divided Senate might sway President Obama to make a more pragmatic appointment.

To read more stories like this one, please subscribe to Political Diary.

Why don't we/USA turn Haiti into an Economic and Ecological Experiment in Developing Technology Innovation to Solve Haiti's Fundamental Problems...

And our own problems of reviving our Technology Leadership and Manufacturing Jobs?

We found many of the same problems in Iraq: infrastructure failure and lack of innovative economic and evironmental solutions.

We were not able to rebuild their power system, their water systems, their agriculture, or even their oil production.

We don't own or manufacture that technology and related products here anymore... it is time to turn it around for USa and the rest of the world. We could develop, manufacture, and export these basic economic and environmental solutions as products and services.
We could be come system intregators: drill the water wells, lay the piping, provide the sanitation and agriculture tie-ins, and provide the recycling of waste materials. Build the factories and hire the labor... then sell it off and move on to the next lesser developed country.
We could make this our foreign policy. We could make this our domestic policy. We could invest here and go back to manufacturing what the world wants to buy. We can stop out the out-sourcing policy that has bankrupted our nation.

It is an election year, so hold our politicians to the task of making USA the source of these types of solutions, technology, and products, once again.

FREDDALLAS

Experts: Aid Must Target Haiti's Underlying Issues : NPR:
"In the coming weeks, aid agencies will begin planning how to rebuild what the earthquake destroyed in Haiti.
Aid experts who have worked in the country say that money could be wasted if it isn't used to fix deep-seated problems that have reinforced poverty and even exacerbated the effects of last week's earthquake."


AND THE SAME THING HAS BEEN SAID ABOUT IRAQI FOR THE PAST NINE YEARS...

Some of the panel's more specific findings were:
http://www.casi.org.uk/guide/problem.html

Infant And Maternal Health: "Low birth weight babies (less than 2.5 kg) rose from 4% in 1990 to around a quarter of registered births in 1997, due mainly to maternal malnutrition. UNFPA and other sources such as the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies believe that as many as 70% of Iraqi women are suffering from anaemia." (§18)
Malnutrition: "The dietary energy supply had fallen from 3,120 to 1,093 kilo calories per capita/per day by 1994 - 95. The prevalence of malnutrition in Iraqi children under five almost doubled from 1991 to 1996 (from 12% to 23%). Acute malnutrition in Center/South rose from 3% to 11% for the same age bracket. Results of a nutritional status survey conducted on 15,000 children under 5 years of age in April 1997 indicated that almost the whole young child population was affected by a shift in their nutritional status towards malnutrition (Nutritional Status Survey of Infants in Iraq, UNICEF November 7 1998)." (§19)
Prices: The UN World Food Programme "indicates that according to estimates for July 1995, average shop prices of essential commodities stood at 850 times the July 1990 level." (§19)
Infrastructure: "In addition to the scarcity of resources, malnutrition problems also seem to stem from the massive deterioration in basic infrastructure, in particular in the water-supply and waste disposal systems. The most vulnerable groups have been the hardest hit, especially children under five years of age who are being exposed to unhygienic conditions, particularly in urban centers. The WFP estimates that access to potable water is currently 50% of the 1990 level in urban areas and only 33% in rural areas." (§20)
Health facilities: "Since 1991, hospitals and health centers have remained without repair and maintenance. The functional capacity of the health care system has degraded further by shortages of water and power supply, lack of transportation and the collapse of the telecommunications system. Communicable diseases, such as water borne diseases and malaria, which had been under control, came back as an epidemic in 1993 and have now become part of the endemic pattern of the precarious health situation, according to WHO." (§21)
Education: "School enrollment for all ages (6-23) has declined to 53%. According to a field survey conducted in 1993, as quoted by UNESCO, in Central and Southern governorates 83% of school buildings needed rehabilitation, with 8,613 out of 10,334 schools having suffered serious damages. The same source indicated that some schools with a planned capacity of 700 pupils actually have 4500 enrolled in them. Substantive progress in reducing adult and female illiteracy has ceased and regressed to mid-1980 levels, according to UNICEF. The rising number of street children and children who work can be explained, in part, as a result of increasing rates of school drop-outs and repetition, as more families are forced to rely on children to secure household incomes." (§22)
Society: On "the cumulative effects of sustained deprivation on the psycho-social cohesion of the Iraqi population [...] the following aspects were frequently mentioned: increase in juvenile delinquency, begging and prostitution, anxiety about the future and lack of motivation, a rising sense of isolation bred by absence of contact with the outside world, the development of a parallel economy replete with profiteering and criminality, cultural and scientific impoverishment, disruption of family life. [...] UNICEF spoke of a whole generation of Iraqis who are growing up disconnected from the rest of the world." (§25-26)
Mental health: The World Health Organization "points out that the number of mental health patients attending health facilities rose by 157% from 1990 to 1998 (from 197,000 to 507,000 persons)." (§25)
Economy: "The data provided to the panel point to a continuing degradation of the Iraqi economy with an acute deterioration in the living conditions of the Iraqi population and severe strains on its social fabric. As summarized by the UNDP field office, "the country has experienced a shift from relative affluence to massive poverty"." (§43)