These are my links for November 4th.

• Stroke Damage to Insular Cortex Boosts Smoking Cessation– Smokers who suffer a stroke that causes a lesion at the insular cortex are more than 5 times more likely to stop their nicotine habit than those whose stroke did not result in such a lesion, according to a new study.In addition, the researchers found that preparedness to change also influenced successful smoking cessation poststroke.

  The study results were not surprising, given that research has already shown that biological and psychological factors help explain smoking cessation in patients with stroke, said the study’s lead author, Rosa Su?er Soler, PhD, from the Neurology Department, Josep Trueta Hospital, Girona, Spain.

  Biologically, the insular cortex may play an important role in emotional decision-making, and in terms of psychology, smoking behavior may be explained by stages, processes, and levels of change, Dr. Su?er told Medscape Medical News. “Before you stop smoking, you must be aware that you have a problem and take the decision to stop smoking.”

  The study was published online November 3 in Stroke.

• Vaccination Exemptions Rise in California Amid Concerns– Increasing rates of unvaccinated young children with “personal belief exemptions” from vaccination requirements are becoming worrisome, according to research presented here at the American Public Health Association (APHA) 139th Annual Meeting.Recent concern about vaccine safety appears to be gaining strength, and state regulations requiring parents to vaccinate their children before they can attend public schools vary. In California, obtaining a personal belief exemption could not be easier — parents are only required to sign their name to a 2-sentence standard exemption statement on the back of the vaccination requirement form.

  In evaluating data on the rates of exemptions from the California Department of Public Health, the state’s Department of Education and the US Census, researchers found that in 2010, the state had about 11,500 kindergartners with personal belief exemptions, representing a 25% increase over the previous 2 years.

  The increasing rate indicates that, for kindergartners who have adhered to vaccination schedules, exposure to children with personal belief exemptions is about 2.3 per 100 children.

  Because children with the exemptions tend to be found in clusters, the rate of children with exemptions who are exposed to other children who also have exemptions — a higher-risk combination — was 15.6 per 100 in 2010, said lead author Alison Buttenheim, PhD, MBA, from the University of Pennsylvania’s Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholars Program in Philadelphia.

  “The average kindergartner with a personal belief exemption attends a school where the exemption rate is 15 per 100, and we see that figure increasing all the time,” she reported.

  Previous data from the fall of 2008 showed that 10% of the nearly half-million kindergartners in California attended schools where personal belief exemption rates exceeded 5%, and as many as 61% of kindergartners with 1 or more personal belief exemptions (n = 9196) attended schools where the personal exemption rate exceeded 5%. Among those, a third attended schools where the personal belief exemption rate exceeded 20%.

  In a separate study conducted by the same team, the researchers investigated the concerns that parents have about vaccines by evaluating data on the specific vaccines received by 168 patients at a pediatric practice in Philadelphia where the practitioner, though pro-vaccine, is known to accommodate parents who seek alternative vaccination options.

• Sales Taxes and the Internet– Online commerce is a big, big business, accounting for nearly one-tenth of retail sales in the United States. It is a lively and growing sector, a bright spot in our troubled economy — thus the gloomy shadow of the taxman inevitably falls upon it, in the form of a bill proposed by Republican senators Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. A similar bill was proposed by Democratic senator Dick Durbin of Illinois earlier in the year, and a separate effort is afoot to have the so-called supercommittee institute new Internet-tax measures as part of its deficit-reduction plan.But it’s not all about big business: The Enzi-Alexander bill would affect entrepreneurs with as little as $500,000 a year in sales.

  Contrary to most accounts, there is no sales-tax loophole for online retailers. Customers who buy goods online are in most cases required to pay a “use tax” equivalent to the sales tax they would have paid in a conventional transaction. The problem, from the tax-consumers’ point of view, is that most taxpayers do not comply with the law. The state and local governments that depend upon sales-tax revenue protest that they are strapped for cash. That isn’t entirely true, either: Those jurisdictions are spending more money than ever, most of it on salaries and benefits for the legion of bureaucrats and commissars they maintain.

  But in spite of their swollen payrolls and work forces, state and local governments apparently cannot be bothered to hire tax agents in sufficient numbers, thus the now universal practice of their requiring businesses to do their sales-tax collecting for them. The Internet-tax measures under consideration would not expand governments’ power to tax, but its power to conscript businesses into acting as tax collectors.

  The original sin here is government’s delegating its tax-collecting duties to private businesses. If government wishes to levy a tax, let it do the work of collecting it. It is true that this would prove burdensome to cities and states. It is also burdensome to the conscripted businesses. The difference is that collecting taxes is government’s duty, not Amazon’s.

• Stu’s Dangerous Dozen: Unsafe House Incumbents – Dan Lungren (R-Calif.). Another election means another problem for Lungren, who somehow wins despite his reluctance to raise money. He will be running in a 46 percent McCain district this time, compared with the 48 percent McCain district he ran in last time, but he also will draw the same opponent, Ami Bera. Bera, a doctor who raises money nationally from Indian-Americans, ran a competitive race in a terrible year for a Democrat, so he hopes the better environment will help him close the 7-point gap he had in 2010.
• GOP Candidate Beats Obama in Swing States on Jobs, Deficit – Voters in 12 key swing states are substantially more likely to feel that a generic “Republican candidate” for president would do a better job than President Obama of handling the federal deficit and debt, and are slightly more likely to prefer the Republican on the issue of unemployment. Swing-state voters are split on the question of whether Obama or the Republican candidate would do a better job of handing healthcare as well as terrorism and international threats.
• Colgate recalls mouthwash over contamination fears– Colgate-Palmolive is removing up to 50,000 bottles of Periogard mouthwash from store shelves in the U.K. due to possible bacterial contamination.The micro-organisms may be harmful to some people with weakened immune systems or some lung conditions, according to the company.

  Up to 11 other countries, including some where the product has a different brand name, are also involved in the recall of 300-mL containers containing chlorhexidine.

  “The presence of micro-organisms has been detected in some retained production samples of Periogard,” Colgate-Palmolive said in a statement. “Under certain circumstances, these micro-organisms may be harmful to individuals with compromised health. Accordingly, in order to ensure the safety of our consumers, in cooperation with the Medicine and Health Regulatory Authority, Colgate-Palmolive UK is recalling all Periogard.”

• ADA updates guidelines for managing ONJ risk patients– A patient receiving antiresorptive therapy for the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis has a low risk of developing osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ), and benefits of the medication outweigh the risk of ONJ, according to an advisory statement from the ADA.The statement, “Managing the Care of Patients Receiving Antiresorptive Therapy for Prevention and Treatment of Osteoporosis,” is based on a literature review by an advisory committee of the ADA Council on Scientific Affairs and updates ADA’s 2008 advisory statement (Journal of the American Dental Association, November 2011, Vol. 142:11, pp. 1243-1251).

  ONJ associated with antiresorptive agents has mostly been referred to as bisphosphonate-associated ONJ, but nonbisphosphonate antiresorptive agents are now available that also could be associated with ONJ, the panel noted. That is why they refer to the condition as antiresorptive agent-induced ONJ (ARONJ).

  A relatively new condition, bisphosphonate-associated ONJ, has received tremendous media attention because of a flurry of lawsuits against the makers of Fosamax and Zometa alleging that the medications led to ONJ.

  These lawsuits have been a factor in raising patients’ and dentists’ awareness of the condition, according to Helen Ristic, PhD, director of scientific information for the ADA’s Division of Science and one of the panelists who contributed to the report.

• Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Targets California GOP Representatives With Ad Campaign » Flap’s California Blog – Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Targets California GOP Representatives With Ad Campaign
• Flap’s Dentistry Blog: Do Those Wisdom Teeth REALLY Need to Come Out? – Do Those Wisdom Teeth REALLY Need to Come Out?
• The Afternoon Flap: November 4, 2011 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – The Afternoon Flap: November 4, 2011 #tcot #catcot
• Cain accuser stands by sexual harassment complaint – CNN.com – Cain accuser stands by sexual harassment complaint