Outweigh

The Indianapolis Colts, Denver Broncos and New Orleans Saints are all 6-0, marking the first time in the modern-era NFL there have been this many undefeated teams through the first seven weeks. So it's clear the league has some very good teams this season. But it has many more bad ones. At the opposite end of the spectrum are the egregious eight, the eight teams that each could be considered the NFL's worst. Here they are, in alphabetical order: Cleveland (1-6) Things are getting better: Linebacker Kamerion Wimbley has four sacks and, if he gets to Jay Cutler at Chicago, will have one in three consecutive road games.

Psst: Want to know a way to reduce our national debt by a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next decade, and remove an often abused and possibly unconstitutional section of the tax code? Are you sure you do? You may want to sit down. Get rid of the federal charitable-giving tax deduction. I know that statement will create a firestorm. I ran the California Community Foundation for 25 years, and the foundation — not to mention your alma mater, the Girl Scouts, the AARP and many other charities — think pretty highly of the tax deduction.

"Key to France, Russia Position on Iraq: Cash" (James Flanigan, March 9) claims that the opposition of Russia and France to a U.S. war on Iraq is based primarily on money, and that these two countries are shortsighted for not recognizing the economic benefits in which they would share during the rebuilding of Iraq. Perhaps despite recognizing that these benefits might outweigh the existing debt (in the case of Russia) and the business ties (in the case of France), they feel that geopolitical concerns are in fact paramount.

President Obama can be excused for accentuating the positive in an address this week to a military audience at Ft. Bragg, N.C., marking the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Referring to Saddam Hussein, Obama said: "We remember the early days — the American units that streaked across the sands and skies of Iraq. In battles from Nasiriya to Karbala to Baghdad, American troops broke the back of a brutal dictator in less than a month. " That's fine as far as it goes. But almost nine years after President George W. Bush invaded Iraq, it is an earlier, less lyrical comment by Obama that is more to the point.

Re "Fat Deductions From the IRS," editorial, April 5: This is really good. We have tens of millions of poorly nourished families on subsistence diets and without medical services, but our duly elected politicians, evidently representing the will of the people, are thinking of giving tax breaks to those who simply eat too much. Should the will--or lack of willpower--of the 54 million obese people outweigh that of the other 230 million? A great country, or what! M.E. Gedgaudas Newhall

Spence Carlsen's letter (Feb. 14) likening frost-resistant bacteria on strawberries to DES hormone or the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant overlooks the fact that advancement may involve some risk. Such reasoning used to say that if God had meant for man to fly he would have given him wings. The real issue is whether or not the benefits outweigh the risks. I will "seriously contend" that the possibility of increased agricultural productivity is more than an "economic motive," and I am sure that people starving to death in Africa would agree.

So about 100,000 people die each year from properly prescribed drugs, and another 2.2 million suffer reactions serious enough to require medical attention (April 15)? I can't see a single reason why Americans need anything more powerful than aspirin to protect themselves in a society where microorganisms are running wild. No possible benefit from medicines can outweigh this sort of drain on our hospital emergency rooms. Oh, wait a second. This letter was supposed to be about guns.

The only "movement" Kid Rock is advancing toward is self-destruction, and there's absolutely no reason why we should read about it ("Don't Let Him Kid You," by Natalie Nichols, July 11). Not only are his sexual habits and drug use completely revolting, but they are incredibly expected from a rock star who has way too much money, and not a lot of talent. A month ago, Jay Leno, on his weekly tour of the streets to find stupidity and ignorance, bumped into Kid Rock, who unsurprisingly managed to miss every simple question that Leno asked.

Older women who take statin medications to ward off heart attacks are more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than those who do not take the widely used cholesterol-lowering drugs, a study has found. The report, published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, showed that, in a large group of post-menopausal women, those who took a statin of any type were, on average, 48% likelier to develop Type 2 diabetes than those who didn't. The heightened risk for diabetes was most pronounced in statin-taking women of Asian origin or those with a body mass index, or BMI, in the healthy range.

A panel of cancer experts voted against a new use for Amgen Inc.'s Xgeva in prostate cancer on Wednesday, saying the drug's ability to slow the spread of the disease did not translate into meaningful benefits for patients. The Food and Drug Administration's cancer drug panel voted 12 to 1 that the benefits of the drug did not outweigh its risks, which included bone disease in about 6% of patients. The FDA is not required to follow the group's advice, although it often does. Xgeva is already approved to prevent fractures in cancerous bones, and for osteoporosis, in a different formulation called Prolia.

Cinema trends ebb and flow, but one facet of Hollywood moviemaking proving remarkably consistent is gender inequality, according to a study being released Monday by USC's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. In a survey of the top 100-grossing movies of 2009 — including "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" — researchers found that 32.8% of the 4,342 speaking characters were female and 67.2% were male, a percentage identical to that of the top-grossing movies of 2008.

Prohibition — America's notoriously "failed social experiment" to rid the country of alcohol — took center stage this week as PBS broadcast Ken Burns' highly acclaimed series on the subject. And already, it has been seized on by drug legalization advocates, who say it proves that drug prohibition should be abandoned. But a closer look at what resulted from alcohol prohibition and its relevance to today's anti-drug effort reveals a far more nuanced picture than the legalization lobby might like to admit.

Students in the Santa Monica-Malibu school district have grown accustomed to whole wheat pasta and lunchtime salad bars, with vegetables delivered fresh every day from a farmers market. But to the chagrin of some healthful food advocates and parents, chocolate milk will continue to be served too. The school board debated late into the night Wednesday before deciding to keep it on the menu. But parents can request that their children not receive chocolate milk. Like many districts across the country, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District had joined the debate about whether the calcium that is valuable for growing children is worth the trade-off of sugar and calories that come with the flavored milk.

The Los Angeles City Council has spent months batting around a proposal for a $1.2-billion football stadium to be built downtown. Skeptics have questioned the project's impact on the surrounding neighborhoods, its ability to revive the city's struggling Convention Center and its power to generate significant new tax revenue. The process has not always been pretty — and the city's public officials have not always inspired confidence — but the most important questions now have been asked and answered as well as they can be in such an early stage of such a complex project.

A U.S. appeals court rejected a constitutional challenge to the government's use of body-imaging scanners at the nation's airports, ruling that the need to detect hidden explosives outweighs the privacy rights of travelers. The 3-0 decision announced Friday noted that passengers may avoid the scans by opting to undergo a pat-down by a screening agent. But since the body scanners became standard last year, more than 98% of air travelers have chosen to step into a machine, raise their arms and pose for "advanced imaging," the Transportation Security Administration said.

Osteoporosis drugs can definitely strengthen bones. However, studies and patient reports over the last four years have uncovered a surprising danger: In some cases, these drugs seem to be breaking bones instead of protecting them. Now a new study from Sweden has helped put that risk of drug-induced breaks into perspective. The study concluded that the drugs, such as Fosamax, Boniva, Actonel, Atelvia and Reclast, caused one broken femur for every 2,000 people who used them for a year.

Researchers have for the first time performed a successful bone marrow transplant to cure sickle cell disease in adults, a feat that could expand the procedure to more of the 70,000 Americans with the disease -- and possibly some other diseases as well. About 200 children have been cured of sickle cell with transplants, but the procedure was considered too harsh for adults with severe sickle cell disease. Now a team from the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins University is reporting today in the New England Journal of Medicine that it has developed a much-less-toxic transplant procedure and used it to cure nine of the first 10 patients studied.

Osteoporosis drugs can definitely strengthen bones. However, studies and patient reports over the last four years have uncovered a surprising danger: In some cases, these drugs seem to be breaking bones instead of protecting them. Now a new study from Sweden has helped put that risk of drug-induced breaks into perspective. The study concluded that the drugs, such as Fosamax, Boniva, Actonel, Atelvia and Reclast, caused one broken femur for every 2,000 people who used them for a year.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday canceled construction of a $356-million death row at San Quentin prison, saying it would be "unconscionable" to spend so much on condemned inmates as the state is slashing budgets for education and other social services. "At a time when children, the disabled and seniors face painful cuts to essential programs, the state of California cannot justify a massive expenditure of public dollars for the worst criminals," Brown said in a statement. The cancellation will save the state's general fund $28.5 million a year for 25 years, the cost of financing the construction loan, said Brown spokesman Gil Duran.

Two drugs used against kidney cancer won the endorsement of a federal advisory panel Tuesday to treat a form of pancreatic cancer that strikes several hundred Americans each year. The panel found that the benefits of Novartis Pharmaceuticals' Afinitor and Pfizer's Sutent outweighed their toxic side effects, increasing the likelihood that the Food and Drug Administration would approve their use for pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors. The drugs provide significant new treatment options with the potential to extend the lives of patients diagnosed with the tumors.