Comments on Morning News

And Governor Gregoire hires the spokesman for Prop. 1 as her press secretary and transportation advisor. No doubt to help put together a rails only tax package for next year.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=15051594&ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVAbstractPlus

it's just a link to the abstract of a paper. Nevertheless, as it points out:

"Hepatic metabolism of fructose favors de novo lipogenesis."

In other words, HFCS makes people FAT.

There's also an interesting HIV story here, including this:

"...there has been a recent, troubling spike in new infections among gay men, young and old alike. According to the CDC, the rate of new cases of HIV infection linked to male-male sex held steady at around 16,000 cases between 2001-2004, then suddenly jumped to 18,296 in 2005.

[Rowena] Johnston [of amfAR] and [Martha] Chono-Helsley [of REACH LA] both point to advertisements for HIV-suppressing medicines as one possible contributing factor.

'In gay magazines, you now see [ads with] buff, handsome men climbing mountains, with some kind of quote about how 'I'm not letting HIV get in my way,'" Johnston said. "It sends the message that you, too, can be hot, buff and handsome, even with HIV.'"

Am I wrong in thinking that the Stranger discussed the possible effects of these HIV ads YEARS ago?

There's a bit more one can glean from the HIV testing story. Since the change is from testing the subset of those testing positive for the first time with long-established HIV infections to those testing positive for the first time with recent sero-conversion, the dramatic increase would seem in to indicate that we are seeing roughly double the rate of seroconversion now as opposed to five to ten years ago.

@2 - one of the links next to that study you cited was to this study from this year, which pretty much contradicts that claim. Increased consumption of HFCS could cause more obesity, but there's not yet persuasive evidence it causes obesity more as compared to increased consumption of any other sweetener.