Consumer Reports Tackles Cancer Screening Tests - ABC News

You trust Consumer Reports when it comes to buying your next car or fridge. But now, for the first time ever, consumers can get ratings of cancer screening tests the same way they do for their toaster.<br /><br><br /><br>Of the 11 common screenings evaluated by the consumer watchdog group, only three were recommended -- and even then, only for certain age groups. Specifically, Consumer Reports gave their most positive ratings for cervical cancer screening in women age 21 to 65 and colon cancer screening in people age 50 to 75. They gave a slightly less enthusiastic endorsement of breast cancer screening for women 50 to 74.<br /><br><br /><br>As for screenings for bladder, lung, skin, oral, prostate, ovarian, pancreatic and testicular cancers, none garnered the group's recommendation.<br /><br><br /><br>The ratings come at a time of mammogram parties, mobile prostate screening vans, and services offered directly to consumers by screening test companies. Many medical experts, however, urge that patients make cancer screening decisions in close consultation with their physician. This way, they maintain, patients are able to ask their doctors which tests are and aren't right for them -- keeping in mind more isn't always better.<br /><br><br /><br>The Consumer Reports recommendations are based on evidence-based reviews from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). USPSTF is an independent panel of prevention and evidence-based medicine experts appointed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The agency makes the evidence-based recommendations physicians look to when treating and advising patients. However, these messages have not traditionally targeted patients. That, said Dr. John Santa, is the point of the Consumer Reports rating guide.<br /><br><br /><br>"The USPSTF has great evidence-based data, the contents of which was not being translated to patients," said Santa, who runs Consumer Reports' Health Ratings Center. "We saw there was a need to get this information to consumers, so we did."<br /><br><br /><br>The way they opted to convey this information was by using their traditional rating system, applying it to screening tests. In this case, the guide rated tests on whether the benefits of having the screening outweigh the harms.<br /><br><br /><br>ABC News Chief Health and Medical Editor Dr. Richard Besser said the straightforward and understandable rating system is useful for consumers.<br /><br><br /><br>"I like the way Consumer Reports uses their typical rating system -- the same symbols you'd see applied to a car or a vacuum cleaner," he said. "This is a system consumers know and are comfortable with. It is so much more user friendly than the materials that doctors usually provide."<br /><br><br /><br>In addition to relying on the USPSTF guidelines, the Consumer Reports group analyzed research from leading journals and organizations, consulted with patients and medical experts, and surveyed thousands of their own readers. They found that too many people were getting unneeded tests, while too few were getting appropriate screening.<br /><br><br /><br>While the dangers of not being screened are obvious, the dangers of unnecessary screening are often not recognized -- a product, some doctors say, of a nothing-to-lose, everything-to-gain message. Some screening tests, such as ovarian and pancreatic cancer, often don't have the ability to detect the disease at a curable stage. Unnecessary use of other tests, meanwhile, can lead to excess treatments and biopsies that are not without their own risk for complications.<br /><br><br /><br>"Many doctors and patients are attached to testing," Besser said. "There has been so much marketing around cancer screening in particular."<br /><br><br /><br>Besser added that he feels the consumer-level ratings guide may add some balance to the picture.<br /><br><br /><br>"Only get a test when the results are more likely to improve your health than to produce harm," Besser said. "Sometimes, it's not as straightforward as you might think. Just because a doctor orders a lot of tests doesn't mean that doctor is practicing smart medicine."<br /><br><br /><br><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Health/consumer-reports-tackles-cancer-screening-tests/story?id=18359910">http://abcnews.go.com/Health/consumer-reports-tackles-cancer-screening-tests/story?id=18359910</a>

Consumer Reports Tackles Cancer Screening Tests - ABC News

You trust Consumer Reports when it comes to buying your next car or fridge. But now, for the first time ever, consumers can get ratings of c...

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The Boy With a Thorn in His Joints - NYTimes.com

<base href="data:">When my son, Shepherd, was 3 years old, he and his twin brother, Beau, took soccer lessons for the first time. They were so excited that they slept in their uniforms — a purple T-shirt with a yellow star kicking the ball with one of its points — the night before their first practice. But when we got to the field the next day, Shepherd's enthusiasm evaporated. While Beau and the other kids ran zigzags around the cones, Shepherd stood still and looked bewildered. When it was his turn to kick the ball, he seemed lost. After 15 minutes, he walked off the field and sat down in my lap, saying he was too tired to play. We watched the other kids, and I pointed out to him the drills I thought he might enjoy, the ones that Beau was charging through. But he refused to go back to the field. His passivity didn't concern me much — he was 3, after all, and I already thought of him, in the way that parents tend to categorize their children even as we tell ourselves we shouldn't, as a little clingy and not especially athletic. My husband, Darin, and I had recently noticed that Shepherd occasionally walked with a limp, but it was faint enough that sometimes when you looked for it, it was gone. Faint enough — though it seems incredible now — that we didn't connect it to his reluctance on the field.<br><br>I assumed that Shepherd would warm to his soccer lessons the next time around. He and Beau still donned their jerseys at bedtime and talked each night about "soccer school" at the dinner table. But the following Saturday, Shepherd burst into tears the moment he started to run.<br><br>That week we saw our pediatrician, who referred us to an orthopedist. When no injury showed up on the X-ray, the doctor said that arthritis was most likely the issue. Arthritis in a 3-year-old? It sounded more odd than alarming at first, but over the next few weeks, we watched Shepherd spend more and more time on the couch. His stiff-legged walk became more pronounced, though he claimed that he was just walking like a penguin. Then he started having trouble getting out of bed.<br><br>A month after our first appointment, we went to see Philip Kahn, a pediatric rheumatologist at NYU Langone Medical Center, who gave Shepherd a diagnosis of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (J.I.A.), an autoimmune disease that causes painful swelling in the joints. J.I.A. can lead to stunted growth, disability and, rarely, blindness.<br><br>When Dr. Kahn tested his joints, Shepherd denied that it hurt even as he teared up in pain. Our son was stoic, Dr. Kahn said, as the kids he treated often were. Shepherd turned out to have arthritis in both knees and both wrists, as well as in his left shoulder and elbow. It was only when I started working on this article that a particular memory came back to me, its attendant guilt still intact: we'd bribed him to go to that last practice with the promise of ice cream.<br><br>Before driving home, all four of us stopped for lunch at a hummus place that Dr. Kahn recommended. We sat outside on the sidewalk, and Darin and I pretended that we were celebrating. This is great news, we told Shepherd. Now that we know what's wrong, you can take medicine that will make you feel better. Darin remembers thinking that we were lying to him, but he was trying to be more optimistic than he felt, for Shepherd's sake and for mine. Shepherd barely ate his lunch.<br><br>When we got home, I called my sister, Rae. She knew that overwhelmed feeling of getting a child's diagnosis all too well; she'd been through it with her daughter, also 3, who had severe asthma and 14 food allergies. Rae talked about how that moment when you receive the diagnosis eclipses everything, but she tried to reassure me that if an illness isn't life-threatening, the fear eventually dies down, and coping with it becomes routine.<br><br>Before we hung up, she mentioned that her sister-in-law had a friend who sent her own son's arthritis into remission with alternative medicine. Her name was Char Walker, short for Charlotte. Did I want to talk to her? I told her that I didn't, that we liked Dr. Kahn and wanted to follow his advice for now. We were starting Shepherd on a course of naproxen, a relative of the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory ibuprofen. We didn't want to mess around with something that might not work, when conventional treatments were known to be effective. What I thought that day but didn't say to Rae was, We don't want to waste time talking to a kook.<br><br>While he was taking the naproxen, Shepherd's arthritis spread. Joints in his fingers and thumbs ballooned, and he developed nodules on his knuckles, suggestive of serious rheumatic disease. He started wetting his pants more frequently because, we realized, his fingers hurt too much for him to pull his pants down. We went back to Dr. Kahn, who said it was time to try methotrexate, an immune suppressant that is the most commonly used treatment for juvenile idiopathic arthritis. In significantly higher doses, it is used as chemotherapy. At the dose Shepherd would be getting, a minuscule fraction of that, methotrexate can still cause nausea, dizziness and drowsiness. The list of more serious possible side effects was terrifying — including liver damage and increased risk of lymphoma — even though Dr. Kahn told us that those risks were practically nonexistent. Kids like Shepherd, with polyarticular J.I.A. — meaning five or more joints affected — are unlikely ever to outgrow it; he would probably be on medication for life. What were the long-term effects on 3-year-olds taking this drug? It was a question I tended to visit in the middle of the night, when Dr. Kahn's reassurances that methotrexate was completely safe gave the least amount of comfort.<br><br>When I first gave Shepherd his methotrexate pills, he was enthusiastic about taking them. The pills were orange, his favorite color. The real coup: Beau didn't get to take them. But watching my son gulp them down defeated me. It reinforced an image of Shepherd as sick, forever dependent on a drug I felt afraid of, however unreasonable a doctor might tell me that fear was.<br><br>One morning, while the boys were at preschool and Darin was out of the house, I decided to call Char Walker. She answered the phone, and within minutes I was crying to this woman I had never met. Walker told me that when her son Shane was a month old, he started waking up seven or eight times a night screaming and crying, which he continued to do for a year and a half. He didn't have any symptoms that she could see. What was wrong? Soon she was crying every night, too. And then at around 18 months, he learned to talk and told her what hurt: his leg, his hip and his wrist. Once they had the diagnosis, Walker realized he'd probably been in pain every night of his life.<br><br>Walker is a social worker and massage therapist who works with cancer patients at NorthShore University HealthSystem outside Chicago. When Shane's rheumatologist presented methotrexate or steroid injections as the only choices, she was horrified. Because she worked in the integrative medicine department — a combination of alternative and conventional treatments — she knew there were other things to try. She dug into medical-literature databases. She learned about a centuries-old, anti-inflammatory Chinese concoction called four-marvels powder from a visiting naturopath. And she sought guidance from her colleague, Dr. Leslie Mendoza Temple, the head of the hospital's integrative medicine program, who, while wary of the risks, had been comfortable giving Walker's program a three-month trial. "I tried everything that I knew was safe to see what would work," Walker told me.<br><br>I grabbed my pen and paper and started taking notes. No gluten. No dairy. No refined sugar. No nightshades, a group of plants that includes potatoes and tomatoes, which are thought by some to be potentially inflammatory, as is sugar. Every day, Shane took a probiotic. Plus two tablespoons of sour Montmorency cherry juice and at least 2,000 milligrams of omega-3's from fish oil, known for their anti-inflammatory properties. Instead of naproxen, Shane took a combination of ibuprofen and Tylenol to lower his overall intake of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories, which can be hard on the gut. And a quarter teaspoon, daily, of the four-marvels powder.<br><br>Walker said she believed that her son's arthritis was caused by something I had never heard of before — leaky-gut syndrome, a concept that has been accepted in alternative circles for years despite a name that asks you not to take it seriously. The idea is that inflammation in the gut causes the tight junctions between the cells that make up the intestinal lining to loosen. Then, like a lax bouncer, the barrier starts letting through undesirables, various proteins or bacteria that would normally be rebuffed; they then leak into surrounding tissues. The uninvited guests, the hypothesis goes, then trigger an offensive by the body, which uses inflammation to try to get rid of them. That sustained inflammatory response characterizes autoimmune disease.<br><br>What could have caused the inflammation in Shane's gut in the first place? Walker suspected an allergy or sensitivity to gluten and dairy (common perpetrators). She also implicated antibiotics, since they can decimate protective, good bacteria along with the bad. A week before he started waking up so frequently, Shane was given antibiotics for a 104-degree fever. By the time he was 1, he would have at least five more courses for urinary tract infections. After Walker told me this, I noted that Shepherd had started limping not long after taking amoxicillin for pneumonia. There's no proof of causation, of course, and lots of children take antibiotics and don't get arthritis, but it was an intriguing detail.<br><br>Six weeks into the alternative therapy, Shane started feeling better. After three months, his arthritis pain was gone. He'd been in remission for almost two years, Walker told me, much better than anything we were told to expect.<br><br>A week later, we told Dr. Kahn about Shane's story and floated the possibility of following the same course. He wasn't familiar with leaky gut but agreed that it wouldn't be harmful to try Walker's regimen. He was adamant, though, that we not quit the medication. In fact, he wanted to up the dose of methotrexate from 10 milligrams to 15 milligrams, because we were seeing the full effects of the initial dosage and Shepherd was still in pain. He now sobbed in the middle of the night, saying his ankle hurt. Arthritis had now leached into his toes. He hadn't grown in at least four months, and so Dr. Kahn was opposed to cutting two major categories of food out of Shepherd's diet. But he was O.K. with the rest of Walker's regimen as long as it was complementary to the methotrexate, not used in place of it. He jotted down "four-marvels powder" in Shepherd's chart with a good-natured smile. He once told us about a patient of his whose Chinese grandmother was giving him a tea along with his medication that appeared to be helping. He was a believer, he said, in anything that worked.<br><br>I was nervous about keeping Shepherd on methotrexate, but Darin didn't share my squeamishness. He has always been more comfortable with pharmaceuticals, more trusting in general. As we talked it over on the way back from Dr. Kahn's, Darin agreed that if Walker's treatment worked for her son, there was certainly a chance it could work for Shepherd. But we both had to admit it was iffy. I was desperate to find a way to solve Shepherd's problems without the drugs; maybe my hope was misplaced. What if Darin was right and methotrexate was the only effective course? Darin worried that I might start insisting on no medication at all, and that I'd win. We compromised by trying Walker's regimen while we continued with the drug. Walker said it took six weeks for Shane to start feeling better. Dr. Kahn and Darin agreed to hold off on increasing the methotrexate until we gave the experiment that much time.<br><br>But after five weeks on Walker's regimen and the initial dose of methotrexate, Shepherd seemed to be getting worse. He was already nauseated and could barely eat for two days after taking his weekly pills. He now spent entire afternoons on my lap. He started using a stroller again, and we went to physical therapy, occupational therapy or a doctor's appointment almost daily. Conversations with Darin became pain diaries. I would report on everything that hurt Shepherd that day, whether he could walk home from the playground or not. We no longer slept, and we moved through our days in a fog of depression. Beau started pointing out that he was stronger than his brother, who'd always been his almost literal equal.<br><br>Three months after Shepherd first saw Dr. Kahn, we sought a second opinion from Lisa Imundo, director of pediatric rheumatology at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Imundo wanted to more than double the dose of methotrexate. She had treated thousands of kids with arthritis, she said, and diet changes did not work. I tried to explain leaky gut, but I'm sure I was stammering and blushing. She handed me a piece of paper with a list of hospital resources that included a name next to the words "complementary medicine."<br><br>After the drubbing Walker's regimen took from Dr. Imundo, Darin was in a froth. A top doctor in New York had just said Walker's regimen wouldn't work, so it must be true. In general, Darin is almost pathologically easygoing. Now he was cornering me in the kitchen to press his case. Shepherd is in bad shape, you are in bad shape, I am in bad shape, he said. What the hell are we doing? I promised that I would agree to up the dose immediately after the six-week deadline, if he would give it until then. Darin says now that I was steely and shut down, and he remembers worrying that this was the kind of thing that breaks up marriages, that if Shepherd didn't get better, he didn't know what would happen to us. That month, I lost my purse, then my suitcase, and then I got into a car accident. Though it wasn't serious, the boys were in the back seat, and I was shaken. I called Darin and cried. "I can't handle it. I can't handle it. I can't handle it." He brought home a pink orchid that night. I made an appointment with a therapist.<br><br>A couple of days shy of six weeks, with Shepherd still struggling, I heard back from Elena Ladas, the complementary-medicine researcher Dr. Imundo passed me off to. Her message was simple and direct. Yes, she said of Walker's regimen, if it seems to be helping, keep going. We weren't fools after all, I thought. That short phone call was the thing that got us all to the finish line.<br><br>At six weeks — to the day — Shepherd woke up and, for the first time in months, got out of bed himself. I'd gone into his room to help, as I did every morning, and found him standing in his pajamas. "Mommy," he said, "my knees don't hurt anymore." He was probably wearing the pajamas with the skateboarding monkeys. Beau was probably groggy, still in bed. Honestly, I really don't know. When I think of it, there's only Shepherd, standing there, not crying. I was too stunned to say anything back before he scampered out to the kitchen for breakfast. Within several months his arthritis pain was gone.<br><br>Shepherd has now been weaned off the methotrexate entirely. The guy we think of as "the old Shepherd" is back, the goofball with the high-beam smile. He initiates running races — and isn't always the most gracious when he wins. He improvises what he thinks is karate. He pirouettes. While his brother was sick, Beau shot past him in height. Now Shepherd is taller, and he's closing the gap in weight. On medication, he got sick twice as often as Beau. That side effect is gone now.<br><br>He has had five flare-ups since going into remission a year ago. Two of them followed courses of antibiotics. The other three came on the heels of his accidentally eating gluten. He had a chocolate-chip cookie, a couple of bites of toast, less than a quarter of a sandwich on sourdough. Each time, he felt pain within 24 hours, and it lasted as long as two weeks.<br><br>To be clear: There is no proof that it was Walker's regimen that drove away Shane's and Shepherd's arthritis. Shane's case makes a stronger argument, since he didn't take methotrexate. Still, his arthritis may have gone into spontaneous remission, and a study of one is not much of a study at all.<br><br>Methotrexate works for many kids, and its effects can kick in later than the expected four-to-six-week window. We tried so many things at once for Shepherd that there's no way to know for sure what worked, or what combination of things had an effect. Dr. Imundo remains unmoved. But Dr. Kahn says he believes the dietary regimen may have contributed to his recovery. "I'm mystified by children on a daily basis," he told me. "I've seen kids paralyzed, unbelievably critically ill. I don't know why they get better. The main thing is, if a kid's better, run with the football, you know? I'm thrilled."<br><br>One thing we do know is that there is a link between the gut and inflammation, and we've known it for some time. During visits over the last year, amid his serious talks with Shepherd about Batman — If he can't fly, why does he have a cape? — Dr. Kahn told us about a colleague who was researching how the gut and inflammation worked together. When I called José Scher, the director of the Arthritis Clinic at the N.Y.U. Hospital for Joint Diseases, he rattled off four different kinds of arthritis that are connected to inflammatory responses in the gut, including one linked to celiac, a gluten intolerance. He told me he'd also seen some of his autoimmune arthritis patients improve by removing gluten from their diet.<br><br>Early on, a celiac blood test came back negative for Shepherd. But could he still have a sensitivity, something short of full-on celiac, that triggers a similar inflammatory response? A small, 2006 study published in the journal Gut (you probably subscribe) points to a possible yes. The researchers found significantly elevated antibodies to various foods in the digestive tracts of rheumatoid-arthritis sufferers but not in their blood. So not only were many of the arthritis patients found to have some level of intolerance to certain foods, but it wouldn't necessarily have been detected by a blood test.<br><br>Leaky gut, meanwhile turns out not to be conjecture after all. "A lot of doctors and people may think that leaky gut itself is sort of a froufrou alternative concept," says Sanford Newmark, a clinical professor at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. "The real name is 'increased intestinal permeability,' and it is a definitive, scientific fact." It's not known if increased intestinal permeability causes autoimmune arthritis, but some scientists in the field say it's possible.<br><br>Many autoimmune arthritis researchers are less focused on the stealthy bacteria of a leaky gut than on the community of gut microbes as a whole. Their work is an outgrowth of the Human Microbiome Project, a National Institutes of Health initiative to catalog all the microbes in our system. What's already clear is that changes in our bacterial populations are associated with changes in our health. In a still-unpublished study, Dr. Scher and his team identified a particular microbe that was common in a large cohort of rheumatoid-arthritis patients but was much less prevalent in the healthy group. In two related studies, researchers discovered a microbe that can activate an immune response; in germ-free mice that were genetically predisposed to autoimmune arthritis, it was enough to cause the disease.<br><br>"Traditionally we've thought about disease as being caused by a specific bacteria," says Dr. Julie Segre, a senior investigator at the N.I.H.'s National Human Genome Research Institute. But now some scientists think it is more about the balance of a bacterial community. "It may be that if you have a disease-associated bacteria within a healthy population, then the other members of the community may keep that 'bad' bacteria in check."<br><br>And if you throw off the delicate ratios in that community, the bad actors might get too much leeway. An example of how this works is Clostridium difficile, or C. diff., a bacterial infection that causes severe diarrhea. People don't get sick from acquiring the bacteria — it's already in the gut of some healthy individuals, kept in line by other bacteria. It's only when something like a course of antibiotics wipes out the peacekeepers that C.diff. can turn pathogenic.<br><br>The same balancing act could be at play with inflammation. If some bacteria in the gut activate immune cells, and others get them to settle down, an imbalance of these microbes could contribute to the sustained inflammation that characterizes autoimmune arthritis. "So probably the ratio, the combination of bacteria in the gut will determine whether you will get disease or not," says Ivaylo Ivanov, an assistant professor in microbiology and immunology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York.<br><br>Some researchers are optimistic that probiotics, which contain various strains of bacteria, could one day help restore a balanced population. A couple of different ones have been shown to reduce joint inflammation in mice, says Fergus Shanahan, the chairman of the department of medicine at University College, Cork, in Ireland, and a leading probiotics researcher.<br><br>Probiotics may also help to tighten up a hyperpermeable gut barrier, says Robert J. Shulman, a professor of pediatrics with a specialty in pediatric gastroenterology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He has an N.I.H. grant to study the effects of a probiotic called VSL No. 3 (which is the kind we gave Shepherd) on gut bacteria and gut-barrier function in children with irritable bowel syndrome, a disorder in which changes in the gut bacterial population are associated with inflammation in the colon.<br><br>Another potential method of recolonizing the gut, which is gaining ground, is the fecal transplant. It is exactly what it sounds like. People infected with C. diff. have responded well when they've been given stool from healthy individuals (usually via colonoscopy). There's enough excitement about the therapeutic potential of stool that when I spoke to Martin J. Blaser, a professor of medicine and microbiology and the director of the Human Microbiome Program at NYU Langone Medical Center, he suggested I stash some of Beau's and Shepherd's in our freezer, which I will do, right next to the peas.<br><br>Data on diet and supplements are lacking, at least partly because they are hard to get. It's hard to design a great study around something with so many variables, like the food we eat. Pharmaceuticals, on the other hand, lend themselves easily to randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials. Plus, anti-arthritic drugs are great for business. Together, the top two sellers, Humira and Enbrel, took in more than $8 billion in 2012, not including December, according to IMS Health, a health care technology and information company. At the N.I.H., the complementary-and-alternative center's budget is 0.4 percent of the entire N.I.H. pie.<br><br>And yet, if you look hard enough, evidence that diet and supplements can work does exist. In a study published in The Lancet more than 20 years ago, a group of rheumatoid-arthritis sufferers was isolated on a "health farm" and, after a week of fasting, were fed a gluten-free, vegan diet. After four weeks, they showed "significant improvement," compared with the control. In 2001, a study in the journal Rheumatology echoed the positive effect of a similar diet. A 2011 case study in The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine closely tracks Shepherd's story. The evidence for omega-3's also looks strong. Even if we can't know what helped Shepherd for sure, at home, we believe Walker's regimen is what did the trick.<br><br>Sunday night has always been pizza night in our family, but now it's dairy-free-mozzarella-and-sausage-on-corn-tortilla-night. And these days, everyone also takes fish oil and probiotics. Shortly after Shepherd started his regimen, Darin went off gluten and dairy in solidarity. Now 5, Shepherd often has more energy than Beau. Even so, I don't think I ever look at Shepherd without scrutinizing how he's moving. This will most likely be true for a long time, I realize, but for now, every time I look, I never see anything but a gleeful little boy.<br><br>It was almost a year ago that Dr. Kahn examined Shepherd and found that he had no active arthritis. That night when I kissed Shepherd good night, I told him to give me five. "For the no arthritis?" he asked. I nodded, holding out my hand. He slapped my palm again and again, over and over. It sounded like clapping.<br><br><i>Susannah Meadows writes the Newly Released column for The Times.</i><br><br><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/magazine/the-boy-with-a-thorn-in-his-joints.html?src=me&ref=general&pagewanted=all">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/magazine/the-boy-with-a-thorn-in-his-joints.html?src=me&ref=general&pagewanted=all</a><br><br>

The Boy With a Thorn in His Joints - NYTimes.com

When my son, Shepherd, was 3 years old, he and his twin brother, Beau, took soccer lessons for the first time. They were so excited that the...

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Health Care’s Trick Coin - NYTimes.com

<base href="data:"><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; color: black; text-align: left; "><nyt_text style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div id="articleBody"><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">THIS month, Johnson & Johnson is facing <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/business/during-trial-new-details-emerge-on-dupuy-hip.html" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; ">more than 10,000 lawsuits</a> over an artificial hip that has been recalled because of a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/business/jj-study-suggested-hip-device-could-fail-in-thousands-more.html?src=me&ref=general&_r=0" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; ">40 percent failure rate</a> within five years. Mistakes happen in medicine, but internal documents showed that executives had known of flaws with the device for some time, but had failed to make them public.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">It would be nice to imagine that this kind of behavior is exceptional, but in reality, the entire evidence base for medicine has been undermined by a casual lack of transparency. Sometimes this is through a failure to report concerns raised by doctors and internal analyses, as was the case with Johnson & Johnson. More commonly, it involves the suppression of clinical trial results, especially when they show a drug is no good. These problems would be bad enough on their own, but they are compounded by a generation of "fake fixes" that have delivered false reassurance, and so prevent realistic public discussion.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">The best evidence shows that half of all the clinical trials ever conducted and completed on the treatments in use today have never been published in academic journals. Trials with positive or flattering results, unsurprisingly, are about twice as likely to be published — and this is true for both academic research and industry studies.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">If I toss a coin, but hide the result every time it comes up tails, it looks as if I always throw heads. You wouldn't tolerate that if we were choosing who should go first in a game of pocket billiards, but in medicine, it's accepted as the norm. In the worst case, we can be misled into believing that ineffective treatments are worth using; more commonly we are misled about the relative merits of competing treatments, exposing patients to inferior ones.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">This problem has been documented for three decades, and many in the industry now claim it has been fixed. But every intervention has been full of loopholes, none has been competently implemented and, lastly, with no routine public audit, flaws have taken years to emerge.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">The <a href="http://www.fda.gov/RegulatoryInformation/Legislation/FederalFoodDrugandCosmeticActFDCAct/SignificantAmendmentstotheFDCAct/FoodandDrugAdministrationAmendmentsActof2007/ucm095442.htm" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; ">Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007</a> is the most widely cited fix. It required that new clinical trials conducted in the United States post summaries of their results at<a target="_" href="http://clinicaltrials.gov/" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; ">clinicaltrials.gov</a> <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.d7373" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; ">within a year of completion</a>, or face a fine of <a href="http://prsinfo.clinicaltrials.gov/trainTrainer/Overview-FDAAA-Other-Regist-Policies.pdf" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; ">$10,000 a day</a>. But in 2012, the <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.d7373" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; ">British Medical Journal</a> published the <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.d7373" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; ">first open audit of the process</a>, which found that four out of five trials covered by the legislation had ignored the reporting requirements. Amazingly, no fine has yet been levied.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">An earlier fake fix dates from 2005, when the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors <a href="http://www.icmje.org/clin_trial.pdf" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; ">made an announcement</a>: their members would never again publish any clinical trial unless its existence had been declared on a publicly accessible registry before the trial began. The reasoning was simple: if everyone registered their trials at the beginning, we could easily spot which results were withheld; and since everyone wants to publish in prominent academic journals, these editors had the perfect carrot. Once again, everyone assumed the problem had been fixed.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">But four years later we discovered, in <a href="http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=184503" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; ">a paper from The Journal of the American Medical Association</a>, that the editors had broken their promise: more than half of all trials published in leading journals still weren't properly registered, and a quarter weren't registered at all.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">Even if these fixes had been successful, we would still be decades away from knowing the full truth about our medical treatments, because today's decisions are informed by the trials of the past, on drugs that were first researched and approved in 2007, 2002, 1998 and earlier. None of the reforms has even tried to ensure public access for these results, and so they remain buried in dry storage archives, deep underground.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">All of these problems are perhaps best illustrated by the case of Tamiflu, which governments have spent billions of dollars stockpiling, in the belief that the drug will reduce the rate of complications from influenza. But roughly half the trial results have never been published, and researchers trying to obtain the full Clinical Study Reports have been <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/opinion/drug-data-shouldnt-be-secret.html" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; ">stonewalled</a> by the manufacturer, Roche.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">This cannot be acceptable. Withholding data not only misleads doctors and patients; it's an insult to the patients who have participated in clinical trials, believing that they were helping to improve medical knowledge.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">Medicine routinely overcomes enormous technical challenges, and there is nothing complicated about the changes needed to prevent Johnson & Johnson, or Roche — or anybody — from withholding information. The F.D.A. has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/business/fda-to-tighten-regulation-of-all-metal-hip-implants.html" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; ">proposed reforms</a> to its systems for assessing artificial hips. And a campaign, supported by the National Physicians Alliance, has begun at <a href="http://www.alltrials.net/supporters/" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; ">alltrials.net</a> demanding that results be publicly reported for all trials, dating back to at least the 1990s, on all treatments currently in use. We need competent legislation, enforcement and leadership from medical academic bodies, all clearly stating that nonpublication of trial results is nothing less than research misconduct.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; ">This will take place against a clamor from industry stakeholders. They have worked hard to silence discussion on these problems, by pretending that the flaws have already been fixed. Why? Because this strategy is their only hope. There is no defense for withholding information on treatments used by patients around the world.</p><nyt_author_id><div class="authorIdentification" style="margin-bottom: 2.8em; "><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 15px !important; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 24px; font-style: italic; "><a href="http://www.badscience.net/" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; font-size: 15px !important; line-height: 22px; ">Ben Goldacre</a>, a doctor, is the author of "Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients."</div></div></nyt_author_id><nyt_correction_bottom><div class="articleCorrection" style="margin-bottom: 2.8em; "></div></nyt_correction_bottom><nyt_update_bottom></nyt_update_bottom></div></nyt_text><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important; float: none; "></span></div><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/opinion/health-cares-trick-coin.html?nl=todaysheadlines&&pagewanted=print">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/opinion/health-cares-trick-coin.html?nl=todaysheadlines&&pagewanted=print</a><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; color: black; text-align: left; "><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div>

Health Care’s Trick Coin - NYTimes.com

THIS month, Johnson & Johnson is facing  more than 10,000 lawsuits  over an artificial hip that has been recalled because of a  40 perce...

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28 in 28 #2: A Guide to Archigram 1961-74

<i>February is Book Month on A Daily Dose of Architecture. The "<a href="http://archidose.blogspot.com/search/label/28%20in%2028">28 in 28</a>" series features a different book every day of the month.</i><br /><br /><a href="http://www.papress.com/html/book.details.page.tpl?isbn=9781616890865"><b><i>A Guide to Archigram 1961-74 </i></b></a> by Dennis Crompton<br />Princeton Architectural Press, 2012<br />Paperback, 448 pages<br /><br /><img alt="28-28_archigram.jpg" src="http://www.archidose.org/Blog/28-28_archigram.jpg" title="Book cover" /><br /><br />On my first (and so far only) trip to San Francisco about 15 years ago, I found a book on Archigram at a small bookstore in the Haight Ashbury area. I'd always been curious about the Archigram Group but never delved much into their projects in school or the few years since graduation. So <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0953511901/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0953511901&linkCode=as2&tag=aweeklydoseof-20"><i>Concerning Archigram...</i></a>, a small book with a small price<i>,</i> was just right for somebody with a small bank account, a small apartment, and a big desire to know about them. The postcard-sized pages wouldn't seem to be ideal for getting a good look at their drawings and collages, but somehow it works really well; my best guess is that the small pages are more immediate, personal, letting readers comfortably hold the book and get intimate with its contents.<br /><br />The exact same page size—and the same page-edge pagination, and a similar graphic treatment throughout—is found in <i>A Guide to Archigram 1961-74</i>, edited by Archigram member Dennis Crompton, who also edited the earlier title. Little did I know when receiving the book from Princeton Architectural Press that the book is a second edition of a 1994 title. But chicken or egg, <i>Concerning Architecture</i> or <i>Guide to Archigram</i>, it doesn't really matter; what's important is how the page size and layouts work so well with Archigram's output. Flipping through the <i>Guide</i> nearly 40 years since Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron, and Michael Webb ceased the Archigram experiment, it's easy to see why their individual and group contributions have been so influential in recent years.<br /><br />A cluster of some of their most well-known projects happen in 1964, the year of <a href="http://archigram.westminster.ac.uk/project.php?id=99">Archigram Magazine Issue No.4</a>, Peter Cook's <a href="http://archigram.westminster.ac.uk/project.php?id=56">Plug-In City</a>, and Warren Herron's <a href="http://archigram.westminster.ac.uk/project.php?id=60">Walking City</a>. (These links are to the fantastic <a href="http://archigram.westminster.ac.uk/">Archigram Archival Project</a> by EXP at the University of Westminster, what can be seen as a digital counterpart to this book.) 1964 was also the year of the British Invasion, as the Beatles toured America, one of many pop culture (and social and political) references that are listed at the beginning of each of the years in this chronological survey of Archigram. These lists are short, but the familiar names and happenings help remind readers what happened each year, further situating the group's work within the larger <i>zeitgeist</i> of a time of intense revolutionary change. Archigram's projects may not have gone beyond "paper architecture" (oh, but what great drawings they are!), but their promotion of true freedom and embrace of technological change make their work hard to resist all these decades later.<br /><br /><b>US: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/161689086X/ref=as_li_tf_il?ie=UTF8&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=161689086X&link_code=as3&tag=aweeklydoseof-20" target="_blank"><img alt="Buy from Amazon.com" border="0" src="http://www.archidose.org/books/buy-from-tan.gif" /></a> CA: <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/161689086X/ref=as_li_tf_il?ie=UTF8&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=161689086X&link_code=as3&tag=aweeklydoseof-20" target="_blank"><img alt="Buy from Amazon.ca" border="0" height="28" src="http://www.archidose.org/books/buy-from-tan-ca.gif" width="90" /></a> UK: <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/161689086X/ref=as_li_tf_il?ie=UTF8&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=161689086X&link_code=as3&tag=aweeklydoseof-20" target="_blank"><img alt="Buy from Amazon.co.uk" border="0" height="28" src="http://www.archidose.org/books/buy-from-tan-uk.gif" width="90" /></a></b>

28 in 28 #2: A Guide to Archigram 1961-74

February is Book Month on A Daily Dose of Architecture. The " 28 in 28 " series features a different book every day of the month. ...

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It's Groundhog Day!

Like last year, this Groundhog Day post is for all the Ned Ryerson fans out there.<br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/xkW_ZkMtmlQ?rel=0" width="640"></iframe><br /><br />(If you're not a fan of Ned click "7" on your keyboard to skip to the best part.)

It's Groundhog Day!

Like last year, this Groundhog Day post is for all the Ned Ryerson fans out there. (If you're not a fan of Ned click "7" on yo...

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Daily Education and Technology News for Schools 02/02/2013

<ul class="diigo-linkroll"> <li> <p class="diigo-link"> <a href="http://educationismylife.com/global-education-by-design/">Education Is My Life | Global Education By Design</a> </p> <p class="diigo-description">Over on Education is my life, they've just posted my guest post about how to design global education, big picture. If you're interesting in designing global projects, head over there and take a look.</p> <p class="diigo-tags"> <span>tags:</span> <a href="http://www.diigo.com/user/coolcatteacher/flatclass">flatclass</a> <a href="http://www.diigo.com/user/coolcatteacher/evernote">evernote</a> <a href="http://www.diigo.com/user/coolcatteacher/education">education</a> <a href="http://www.diigo.com/user/coolcatteacher/news">news</a> <a href="http://www.diigo.com/user/coolcatteacher/teaching">teaching</a> <a href="http://www.diigo.com/user/coolcatteacher/globaled">globaled</a> <a href="http://www.diigo.com/user/coolcatteacher/flatclassroom">flatclassroom</a></p> </li> </ul><p class="diigo-ps">Posted from <a href='http://www.diigo.com'>Diigo</a>. The rest of my favorite links are <a href='http://www.diigo.com/user/coolcatteacher'>here</a>.</p>

Daily Education and Technology News for Schools 02/02/2013

Education Is My Life | Global Education By Design Over on Education is my life, they've just pos...

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Matt Said...Jay Said...XLVII

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdkW3fasvaVY7cOqKRQgifcnelTRQ2UvKen7Jcz1j3H45e9g_wswdPaLc42oYdAyn1llvpUhBtZVsKTLxEdAU2dDcYHWBm7da1MtdNBWdajvi21cV_sGljcsJGC3ye04Kv6B9pV4rp5Nc/s1600/Sexy+Super+Bowl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdkW3fasvaVY7cOqKRQgifcnelTRQ2UvKen7Jcz1j3H45e9g_wswdPaLc42oYdAyn1llvpUhBtZVsKTLxEdAU2dDcYHWBm7da1MtdNBWdajvi21cV_sGljcsJGC3ye04Kv6B9pV4rp5Nc/s400/Sexy+Super+Bowl.jpg" width="286" /></a></div>Matt  dribbles…Jay dribbles…The refs wipe up the slobber…<br /><br />Jay:  Helloooooo?<br />Matt:  Hello?<br />Jay:  Helloooooo?<br />Matt:  Yeah, what do you want?<br /><br />Jay:  I was doing the British chick.<br />Matt:  Okay.<br />Jay:  You know the British chick…<br />Matt:  Uh-huh.<br /><br />Jay:  You know?  If you could play along, it would be nice.<br />Matt:  What?  I have my sister calling me four times a day to do her taxes and shit.  It’s busy here.<br />Jay:  Gee…I never knew a 10-4 A and an internet talk show could weigh on a guy so much.<br />Matt:  Ha-Haaaaaa, so funny.<br />Jay:  I am sensing that a certain somebody is touchy.<br /><br />Matt:  Well…what the hell.  It’s Super Bowl weekend and I wanna party!!<br />Jay:  Schmoop won’t let you go out?<br />Matt:  No, that’s not the problem.  Schmoop encourages me to leave the Bagwine digs.<br />Jay:  So WTF?  What’s the problem?<br />Matt:  Nobody seems to want me to come over to their Super Bowl Party.<br /><br />Jay:  Well, your old friend Nancy finally broke down and said you could come over.<br />Matt:  Yeah, but I…<br />Jay:  Kinda forced your way into her life?<br />Matt:  No, not at all, I said…<br />Jay:  Oh Gee my friends don’t want me to come over?<br />Matt:  Oh c’mon…what I said was I thi--<br /><br />Jay:  Oh I think what you were saying was, Schmoop will be asleep, could you cook for me?<br />Matt:  No,  I really wasn’t.<br />Jay:  …………….<br />Matt:  Okay…..I was.<br /><br />Jay:  See?  That’s all you had to say, and admit that you are one helluva uninvited guest!!<br /><br />Matt:  Is that so wrong?<br /><br />Jay:  Wrong?  Pfffffft.  You are the MAN!!  Of course, I hear her ex-husband will be there…It could get awkward.<br /><br />Matt:  Isn’t that awesome?<br />Jay:  Oh Hell Yeah!!<br /><br />So…Join Jay and Matt LIVE tonight as they talk Uninvited Super Bowl guests, and well, uninvited people in general on Blog Talk Radio.... LIVE at 11 PM ET TONIGHT…To listen LIVE and/or call-in, click<i><span style="color: blue;"> <a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/im-with-stupid/2013/02/03/uninvited-guests" target="_blank">HERE</a>.</span></i></div>

Matt Said...Jay Said...XLVII

Matt  dribbles…Jay dribbles…The refs wipe up the slobber… Jay:  Helloooooo? Matt:  Hello? Jay:  Helloooooo? Matt:  Yeah, what do you want? J...

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Principal systems Design Engineer ( subsystem architectures | Experiments | analysis) (#109015)

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="WordSection1"><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Job Title:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> Principal systems Design Engineer<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Location:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> Milpitas, CA<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Duration:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> Fulltime<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Job Description:<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Responsibilities:<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">This position will lead the hardware engineering team in the development and release of our next generation wafer inspection tool.  The selected engineer will have dotted line responsibility for 30-40 engineers.  Responsibilities include but are not limited to:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Ensure;<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">1.Product is delivered on time<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">2.Product meets its performance goals<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">3.Product meets its RPC target<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">4.Product meets our service organization's requirements<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">5.Product meets our manufacturing organization's requirements.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">The candidate is expected to lead the systems engineering team. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">As the principal systems design engineer, you will be actively engaged in system-level engineering of our next generation high-speed patterned wafer inspection tools.  Some of the activities include: <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">1.Model system operation and define subsystem performance specifications<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">2.Develop subsystem architectures and collaborate with mechanical, optical, electrical and software engineers to realize these subsystems.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">3.Integrate and test subsystems and validate system performance<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">4.Specify and test new or improved hardware components and software features. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">5.Identify and resolve problems and recommend improvements relating to system optics, electronics, software, and mechanics.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">6.Develop and improve diagnostic and calibration procedures. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">7.Investigate abnormal system behaviors by performing experiments and analyzing system data.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">8.Support manufacturing and field personnel with troubleshooting help in the form of plans of action or hands-on assistance.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">9.Conducts feasibility studies on engineering proposals and related technical data for new equipment or modification to existing equipment.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Preferred Experience:<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">1.The candidate should have a knowledge of optics, electronics, software, and/or mechanical systems.  Programming skills/experience are a definitely plus.  2.Ability to work effectively in a multidisciplinary team and to take on a leadership role when needed is desired.  <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">3.The candidate should have a quick grasp of challenging, complex technical information and be able to travel both domestically and internationally.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">4.He or she must have hands-on experience in designing, building, and/or troubleshooting complex instruments such as experimental research instruments, medical systems or semiconductor capital equipment.  <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">5.The candidate must have strong analytical skills as well as excellent oral and written communication skills<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Basic Qualification:<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">Candidate must have the following education Bachelor's Level Degree with at least 10 years of experience<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">OR<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">Master's Level Degree with at least 8 years of experience.  <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">OR<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: small;">Doctorate (Academic) with at least 7 years of experience in Physics, Electronics, Optics, or related technical field.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Please send in your resumes to vinod.sanker@kla-tencor.com<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div></div></div>

Principal systems Design Engineer ( subsystem architectures | Experiments | analysis) (#109015)

Job Title: Principal systems Design Engineer Location: Milpitas, CA Duration: Fulltime Job Description: Responsibilities: This position w...

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Field Applications Engineer (Thin Film | Fab | installation) (# 108662)

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="WordSection1"><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Position:</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Field Applications Engineer<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Location:</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> Beaverton, OR<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Duration:</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> Full time</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Job Description: <o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The Customer Group (CG) team is our field based, customer facing organization consisting of Sales, Marketing, Applications, Finance, Human Resources, Facilities & IT. They partner closely with our customers to provide a comprehensive portfolio of products, services, software and expertise, to help them manage yield throughout their fabrication process—from research and development to final volume production.  Responsibilities of this group include maintaining strategic client relationships, dentifying and closing sales opportunities, ensuring our products meet performance capabilities & expectations, providing critical solutions for improved yield performance, and collecting requirements for future products by understanding customer processes and technology trends.  Partnering with our service organization and factory divisions, this diverse and dynamic team helps ensure alignment between customer needs and corporate offering to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Responsibilities:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Responsible for providing technical applications support for the development and implementation of KLA-Tencor products in customer fabrication facilities. Makes presentations on all aspects of products. Assists sales staff in assessing potential application of company products to meet customer needs and preparing detailed product specifications. Implements detailed customer installation plans. Provides follow-up support in disseminating technical information on specific applications.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Engr, Field Apps:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> Works on complex problems where analysis of situations or data requires and in depth evaluation of various factors. Exercises judgment within broadly defined practices and policies in selecting methods, techniques, and evaluation criterion for obtaining results. Work leadership may be provided by assigning work and resolving problems. Requires MS or PhD degree or equivalent experience and a strong technical knowledge of company products. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Preferred Qualifications:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">  <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Physics, Chemical or Electrical Engineering MS Degree, PhD Preferred.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Candidate should preferably have experience in the semiconductor fabrication industry, or equivalent experience and education.   Background in advanced optical systems is an asset.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Candidates must be well organized and professional exhibiting fast learning skills, strong project management skills, strong analytical problem solving skills and the ability to absorb and transfer knowledge to others.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Basic Qualifications:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Bachelor's Level Degree with at least 5 years of experience.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">OR<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Master's Level Degree with at least 4 years of experience. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">PhD is preferred.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Kindly send your resume to <a href="mailto:raju.balaji@kla-tencor.com">raju.balaji@kla-tencor.com</a></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div>

Field Applications Engineer (Thin Film | Fab | installation) (# 108662)

Position: Field Applications Engineer Location: Beaverton, OR Duration: Full time Job Description: The Customer Group (CG) team is our ...

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IRAN AND ARGENTINA

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</style><![endif]--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 1;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">WHY ARGENTINA IS REACHING OUT TO IRAN </span></b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 1;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">By Emily Schmall</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">TRADE CONSIDERATIONS UNDERLIE THE DEAL</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">ARGENTINA announced it would work with IRAN to resolve a deadly 1994 anti-Semitic attack in Buenos Aires. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">After years of impasse, ARGENTINA and IRAN this week announced an agreement to work together on solving one of the deadliest anti-Semitic attacks anywhere since World War II. The deal emerged in the midst of deepening trade ties and has generated skepticism from the US and ISRAEL. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6896989063397229776" name="nextParagraph"></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">In 1994, a suicide bomber drove a van full of explosives into the ARGENTINA Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) building, killing 85, wounding about 300, and tearing at the heart of Buenos Aries’ Jewish population, the 3^rdlargest in the world. An ARGENTINE special prosecutor in 2006 accused Hezbollah, the LEBANESE group with strong ties to IRAN and SYRIA, of executing the attacks with financing from IRANIAN government officials.</span></span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><u><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Food for thought by Geopolitical Analysis and Monitoring</span></u></b><b><i><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">: It should be noted that former ARGENTINE president Carlos Menem is of SYRIAN origin who converted from Islam to Catholicism in order to become president of ARGENTINA. His family comes from Yabrud, a small town located about 80 km north of Damascus, close to the border of LEBANON. Aside from ARGENTINE S  3^rdlargest worldwide Jewish community there is also an estimate of 1million Muslims,  </span></i></b><b><i><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b><i><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">mainly of  SYRIAN LEBANESE descent, </span></i></b>residing in Argentina and although being a Roman Catholic dominated country, the capital of Buenos Aires has no landmark cathedral as is the case in other catholic countries but instead the largest mosque in Latin AMERICA, the king Fahd mosque and Islamic center, (inaugurated by Menem) located in the heart of Buenos Aires. </span></i></b></span><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQFgF4MlI7X0iSSX1OYK3wmKv7JphzIxXrL_nX4OrwhWqtM_cSv9faS2EVo_BBglBfNw2sxxwSXKT0nxue0sczzdr4IU66kWwzCS2QCFYn6PjqktqkVg-PgNguNNNREKpfL_S_61UUsbaq/s1600/Argentina-1994-bombing-AP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQFgF4MlI7X0iSSX1OYK3wmKv7JphzIxXrL_nX4OrwhWqtM_cSv9faS2EVo_BBglBfNw2sxxwSXKT0nxue0sczzdr4IU66kWwzCS2QCFYn6PjqktqkVg-PgNguNNNREKpfL_S_61UUsbaq/s320/Argentina-1994-bombing-AP.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> 1994-AMIA bombing Buenos Aires</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">ARGENTINA and IRAN announced an agreement to create a joint commission of international legal experts to investigate the 1994 attack. As part of the agreement, prosecutors will be allowed for the first time to interrogate suspects – in Tehran.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">FLAGGING ECONOMIES THE REASON FOR REACH OUT? </span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">The announcement, signed by Foreign Minister Minister Héctor Timerman and his IRANIAN counterpart, Ali Albar Salehi, on the sidelines of an AFRICAN Union meeting in ETHIOPIA, symbolizes ARGENTINA’S warming ties with IRAN as both countries seek non-traditional trading partners to shore up their flagging economies.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">Banned from international credit markets because of outstanding debts with the Paris Club and World Bank, ARGENTINA has brokered bilateral agreements with autocratic regimes like IRAN. Pinioned by international sanctions, IRAN has also had to look for new partners, finding in South America a sympathetic group of populist governments, according to Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, an economist and professor at Virginia Tech  university.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">“It has to establish friendly relations with countries so that it can trust that its assets won’t be seized,” says Professor Salehi-Isfahani.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">Additionally, IRAN is attempting to keep its food prices down amid currency devaluation aggravated by sanctions on its oil, says Salehi-Isfahani.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">“ARGENTINA has quickly become one of IRAN’S principle food importers so this is becoming a relationship IRAN needs to nurture,” he says.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">ARGENTINA EXPORTS LARGE VOLUMES OF AGRICULTURAL GOODS, HELPING IRAN AVOID FOOD SHORTAGES THAT WOULD LIKELY TRIGGER SOCIAL UNREST</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">ARGENTINA has cut IRANIAN crude imports to comply with existing sanctions, but continues to export large volumes of agricultural goods, helping IRAN avoid food shortages that would likely trigger social unrest, Salehi-Isfahani says. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">Trade between IRAN and ARGENTINA, BRAZIL, ECUADOR, BOLIVIAN, and VENEZUELA rose to $3.6 billion in 2011, according to the Inter – American Development Bank. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;"><span style="color: blue;">See also related article:</span> <a href="http://news-these-days.blogspot.com.ar/2012/11/irans-untouchable-energy-exports.html">http://news-these-days.blogspot.com.ar/2012/11/irans-untouchable-energy-exports.html</a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;"> “We see ARGENTINA’S rapprochement with IRAN as dangerous for the entire region because IRAN is a sponsor of international terrorism with a regime that doesn’t respect human rights. ARGENTINA has nothing in common with IRAN and should have nothing to do with it,” says Sergio Widder, the representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization, in Buenos Aires.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">The US State Department says it is monitoring IRAN’S engagement with the Western Hemisphere closely.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">IRAN is among several oil-rich countries with a consumer class, including ANGOLA and AZERBAIJAN, that ARGENTINA has sought as trading partners to help plug its widening energy deficit and to buy its agricultural and domestic products.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">See: <span style="color: blue;"><b>ARGENTINA AND ANGOLA</b></span> <a href="http://news-these-days.blogspot.com.ar/2012/05/argentina-and-africa.html">http://news-these-days.blogspot.com.ar/2012/05/argentina-and-africa.html</a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">  </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">Though still accounting for a small portion of ARGENTINA’S overall trade, the partnerships could become more valuable thanks to recent joint chambers of commerce that opened last year in Buenos Aires.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6896989063397229776" name="eztoc14907371_1"></a><span style="color: red;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">LEGITIMATE FEAR THAT IRAN COULD GAIN ACCESS TO ARGENTINA’S ATOMIC ENERGY PROGRAM?</span></b></span></span><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyDMU1w5b3l5Rb8Ku856SAsLwvJ6_oUwNN1_sxszkvwhDS5rR1LFqzET_wrLtesCX_diW17AXVf1zDOhP2-GjTlrWhfU_YANVWOIc-ogaomEBLNYoocjMQ9nq77fpH5X8KSODeRP1aU1Vg/s1600/110748.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyDMU1w5b3l5Rb8Ku856SAsLwvJ6_oUwNN1_sxszkvwhDS5rR1LFqzET_wrLtesCX_diW17AXVf1zDOhP2-GjTlrWhfU_YANVWOIc-ogaomEBLNYoocjMQ9nq77fpH5X8KSODeRP1aU1Vg/s320/110748.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">ISRAEL and the US have expressed wariness about ARGENTINA’S increasingly normalized relations with IRAN.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">ISRAEL, which for years has attempted to isolate IRAN through international sanctions in a bid for the country to drop its nuclear program, condemned the joint “truth commission” announced earlier this week to investigate the AMIA case. ISRAEL'S foreign ministry said in a press release that it received news of the agreement "with astonishment...and deep disappointment."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">ISRAEL’S deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, told the ISRAELI newspaper Haaretz that holding a joint investigation with Iran was “like inviting the murderer to participate in the murder investigation.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">The US Embassy in Buenos Aires also expressed doubt about the ARGENTINE-IRANIAN accord. “We are skeptical that a just solution can be found in the arrangement announced,” says a press officer.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">Fears are periodically raised in the ARGENTINE press about the possibility of IRAN gaining access to ARGENTINA’S atomic energy program, though the US State Department dismissed the possibility in a press conference late last year, calling ARGENTINA a firm ally in the international campaign to keep IRAN from developing nuclear technology.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6896989063397229776" name="eztoc14907371_2"></a><span style="color: red;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">SOUTH AMERICAN TRADE WITH STRONGMEN </span></b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">ARGENTINA is leading LATIN AMERICA in forging new trade partnerships with fast-growing, oil-rich, autocratic regimes in AFRICA and the MIDDLE EAST. In 2012, huge delegations of diplomats and business people traveled to ANGOLA, ruled by the strongman Jose Eduardo dos Santos and AZERBAIJAN, whose president, has been criticized for a rise in religious persecution of non-Muslims.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><u><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Comment by Geopolitical Analysis and Monitoring</span></u></b><b><i><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">: </span></i></b><i><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">When it comes to securing energy resources no country seems to have scruples from whom and where to get its oil. SAUDI ARABIA can hardly be considered a democratic country and yet the USA imports vast amount oil from SAUDI ARABIA as well as VENEZUELA. ISRAEL has strong ties with AZERBAIJAN etc</span></i><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">. </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">See also: <a href="http://news-these-days.blogspot.com.ar/2012/12/usa-china-and-africa.html">http://news-these-days.blogspot.com.ar/2012/12/usa-china-and-africa.html</a>and </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><a href="http://news-these-days.blogspot.com.ar/2012/10/israel-azerbaijan-and-kazakhstan_6.html">http://news-these-days.blogspot.com.ar/2012/10/israel-azerbaijan-and-kazakhstan_6.html</a></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">  </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">The agreement with IRAN represents a turnabout for ARGENTINA. President Kirchner had previously appealed to the UNITED NATIONS to pressure the Iranians to comply with its earlier investigation into the 1994 AMIA bombing. However, at last year’s General Assembly meeting, Kirchner announced ARGENTINA would be seeking to resolve the case jointly with IRAN, initiating several rounds of secret negotiations that riled ARGENTINA’S Jewish community.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">To date IRAN has ignored international arrest warrants for nine people ARGENTINA suspects in the attacks, including a former IRANIAN president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani  , and IRAN’S current defense minister, Gen. Ahmad Vahidi.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: large;">Whether ARGENTINA can win IRAN’S cooperation through trade where international sanctions have failed remains to be seen. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>

IRAN AND ARGENTINA

WHY ARGENTINA IS REACHING OUT TO IRAN  By Emily Schmall TRADE CONSIDERATIONS UNDERLIE THE DEAL ARGENTINA announced it would work with IRAN ...

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