Monthly Archives: July 2009

Draft of House Health Insurance Bill

If you are addicted to punishment you might want to page through the draft of the House’s health insurance bill. Not only have most congressmen not read it, they would have to understand bureaucratease – the language in which the bill is written. This is the June 19th version and comes in at a concise…


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Trans Fats, Big Brother, and Sloppy Science

Be afraid. There’s a plot to poison you with fat, trans fats to be precise or trans fatty acids to be even more exact. There are two articles in the Annals of Internal Medicine (here and here) which give a pretty good idea where medicine is heading. You’ve likely heard about trans fats. Their chemical…


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Opening Night at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival

Sunday, July 19, marked the beginning of the season for the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. The first half of the program was devoted to French music. The second half consisted solely of Brahms’ Piano Trio No.1 in B major. First up was Faure’s lovely Elegy in C minor. This short piece was beautifully played…


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Don Giovanni Returns to Santa Fe

Last performed by the Santa Fe Opera in 2004, Director Chas Rader-Shieber production of Don Giovanni returned to the company’s stage last night (July 18, 2009).  Designer David Zinn clothed even the trees in red and hot pink. His movable sets adjusted the changing scenes with great dramatic effect. The opera’s famous penultimate scene was…


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L’Elisir d’Amore in Santa Fe

The Santa Opera presented its new production of Donizetti’s comic ruby last night (July 15, 2009). Stephen Lawless set the action in an Italian village just at the conclusion of World War II. Why? Who knows. But the show works despite a few contradictions induced by the change in setting. Sergent Belcore is in the…


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Which Leg Bone Did She Break?

Last Saturday American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato fell during a performance of Rossini’s Barber of Seville and broke her leg. The singer described the event on her blog and posted a picture of herself with her new cast. In the grand tradition of the stage she finished the performance and is singing subsequent shows from a…


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More on Angiotensin Blockade and Diabetic Nephropathy

I recently reviewed a paper that indicated that angiotensin blockade with an angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) did not protect against the development of diabetic nephropathy in diabetic patients with normal renal function. Despite what that paper concluded angiotensin blockade with and an angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor offered protection. Two papers in the July 7…


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New Recommendations for Tylenol Dose

An FDA panel in the guise of protecting the public has made a recommendation that on reflection they’ll wish they hadn’t. They issued numerous advisories concerning acetaminophen (the most familiar form of this drug is Tylenol) alone and in combination with other drugs. I’ll just concentrate on their recommendation concerning acetaminophen used by itself. Their…


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