Did your weekend feel kind of empty, devoid of excessive freakouts over the latest hyperbolic news reports from the worlds of science, health, safety, and parenting? Sorry, my bad. Here we go:
- Is ICE really trying to take the US-born baby of a Mexican mom in Pascagoula, Mississippii because the mom, a Oaxaca Indian whose native language is Chatino, doesn't speak English or Puerto Rican? You don't have to speak government bullshit to figure it out. [time.com]
- Speaking of government bullshit, the CPSC just provided the official translation of "independent, third-party labs for detecting lead and phthalates in toys": it is "Mattel's own in-house labs." Here, I'll use it in a sentence: "After millions of Mattel toys were recalled in 2007 because they contained deadly lead contamination, Congress strengthened the CPSC's regulatory powers for the first time in decades and mandated that toys now be tested for lead in Mattel's own in-house labs." [ap/yahoo, thanks dt reader sh]
- Mums-to-be are taking the home fetal heart monitor thing way too seriously, say British paediatricians, and are missing crucial diagnoses and delaying calling their doctors when they feel reduced fetal movement. Not bloody likely! [eurekalert]
- Parenting Magazines: The Deadly Threat?! The AAP journal Pediatrics has published a study which found that over one third of the images of sleeping infants published in 28 womens and parenting magazines [sic] depict "a safe sleep environment as recommended by the AAP. Unfortunately, the study has no pictures, only boring words. [aap publications]
Doctors and engineers in India have developed an innovative and inexpensive home fetal heart rate monitor that uses MP3 files to save lives. Is this the kind of health care system we want in the US? Not in this lifetime! [eurekalert]
- In a related study, 100% of images of sleeping infants in little costumes published in Baby-A-Day Desk Calendars by Anne Geddes were found to show dangerous sleeping positions and to give off deadly levels of snuggly adorableness. [annegeddes.com]
- The FDA has upgraded its recall for nine models of Stabilet Infant Warmers manufactured by Draeger to "Class-1," so unless you want another NICU to catch fire, I suggest you stop using them immediately. [fda.gov via dt reader sudha]
- Somehow missed this from July: by habituating them to repeated stimulus, Dutch researchers found that at 30 weeks, fetuses had short-term memory spans of up to four weeks. Also, all these children slept through the night from birth, began talking at six months, and composed symphonies by age 2. And now they're all now at Harvard. HAHA, just kidding, BabyPlus quacks! [eurekalert]
WTF [Whoa, Tuesday Freakout] E. coli Headline Update, from the Washington Post: "Cookie Dough May Kill This Woman [wash post]
I guess you don't eat uncooked food that should be cooked. The comment in the Times that you see the commercial and then go to the store and buy the product and think it is safe. Well, I'm sure the package states not to eat uncooked dough and you must bake the product. The cookie dough in ice cream is pasturized to make it safe. The regular dough is not. It may have been a language barrier to the product.
Raw Cookie dough just sounds like an icky snack to me.
"Language barrier?" seriously? The very existence of cookie dough ice cream kind of blows the "icky snack for illiterates and immigrants" argument out of the water.
That said, I'll grant you that people don't read the label and foollishly expected to not die from eating cookie dough--because they grew up licking spoons and eating uncooked cookie dough at home.