Timothy Noah in Slate Magazine: “For 20 years, evangelicals have chided the mainstream media for treating Falwell’s ghastly pronouncements as news; Falwell, they often confide in private, ceased being a significant figure well before he left his signature political organization, the Moral Majority, in 1987. If so, someone forgot to tell Sen. John McCain, R.-Ariz., who as a presidential candidate in 2000 condemned Falwell’s intolerance (‘The political tactics of division and slander are not our values, they are corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country’) but last year, as a presidential candidate positioning for 2008, made peace with Falwell and gave a commencement address (‘We have nothing to fear from each other’) to the 2006 graduating class at Falwell’s Liberty University. On news of Falwell’s death, McCain said in a statement, ‘Dr. Falwell was a man of distinguished accomplishment who devoted his life to serving his faith and country.’ Nonsense. He was a bigot, a reactionary, a liar, and a fool. Herewith, a Falwell sampler…”

…to Heal the Profession: “Like the racket of dozens of birds on a clothesline, the sound of doctors is filling the air.” (New York Times )

“The hospital visit by Mr. Gonzales and Andrew H. Card Jr., who was then White House chief of staff, has been disclosed before, but never in such dramatic, personal detail. Mr. Comey’s account offered a rare and titillating glimpse of a Washington power struggle, complete with a late-night showdown in the White House after a dramatic encounter in a darkened hospital room — in short, elements of a potboiler paperback novel.” (New York Times )

Can You Feel My Pain? “Is shared experience really necessary for a physician to understand or treat a patient? I wonder. After all, who would argue that a cardiologist would be more competent if he had had his own heart attack, or an oncologist more effective if he had had a brush with cancer?” — Richard Friedman MD (New York Times )

“Harold McGee, also known as the New York Times’ “Curious Cook,” has an article about a new paper from a Clemson University research group led by Paul Dawson on the validity of the “five-second rule” — the old adage that if you drop food on the floor but pick it up within five seconds, it’s okay to eat it. According to a 2003 survey conducted by Jillian Clarke (a high-school intern at the University of Illinois who later won an Ig Nobel Prize for her research), more than 50% of adult men and 70% of adult women knew of the five-second rule, and many said they followed it. Now the Clemson researchers have gathered data to assess its validity once and for all. The results?” [read on] (Freakonomics Blog via walker)

A study of approx. 300,000 men revealed the correlation. “Heavy multivitamin users were almost twice as likely to get fatal prostate cancer as men who never took the pills, concludes the study in Wednesday’s Journal of the
National Cancer Institute. Overall, the researchers found no link between multivitamin use and early-stage prostate cancer. The researchers speculate that perhaps high-dose vitamins had little effect until a tumor appeared, and then could spur its growth.”