Saturday, April 30, 2011

Soul Surfer

As the movie ended and we got up from our seats, my thoughts were, "I've got to get out to the parking lot, into our car, and have a good cry." I want everyone to know that I got hold of myself before then.

But it was a really fine movie.

What's Dale Bruner Up To?

According to a Facebook post of his last September 10:

The final manuscript for the Commentary on John was submitted to the publisher on June 30. The next project is Romans!

(Thanks, Marlene!)

He does keep busy.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Already a Cumuppence for King & Spalding

Wow, you have to love this! (Thanks, again, to Instapundit.)

(I posted earlier on K&S.)

Nest Egg Report

We received our quarterly report from Investors Solutions yesterday. We started with this firm on November 4, 2007. The volatile way that the markets had performed that year eroded my confidence in my ability to do my own investing, although at that point the market had not hurt me. Furthermore, during the summer of 2007, our stockbroker had telephoned me with assurances that his firm had not been involved in any of the financial shenanigans that were beginning to shake the big financial institutions. I learned in the fall that his own firm had been lying to him. (His firm by the end of the year was taken over by one of the big banks.) To make a long story short, the Investor Solutions approach - wide diversification, disciplined allocation strategies, and the use of low cost index funds and ETFs - seemed the right thing to do. And one of my friends, Rob Gordon, had just begun with that firm as an adviser, and so we started and gratefully continue with him.

Our net internal rate of return (on an annual basis) from November 4,2007 through March 31, 2011, after everything that has happened during that period, is 3.72%. The actual net, internal rate of return since inception is 13.22%. I am well satisfied with that.

Our allocation to stocks is significant, and of course the portfolio was hit hard during the stock market bust. But when my friends in a panic were selling their stocks at the bottom of the market, we began to buy stocks, so that we would maintain our allocation to that sector. Who knows what the future will bring? But that discipline worked well, I see no reason to abandon it and every reason to continue to embrace it.

Here's our "target" asset allocation plan:

Small Cap 4.8%
Small Cap Value 7.2%
Large Cap 4.8%
Large Cap Value 7.2%
Int'l Small Cap 4.5%
Int'l Small Cap Value 5.4%
Int'l Large Cap Value 5.4%
Emerging Markets 4.2%

Domestic Real Estate 4.5%
Int'l Real Estate: 4.5%

Commodities 3.0%

Bonds 40%
Cash & Equivalents 0

Because of the way that the markets have moved, we are overweighted right now in every sector but bonds. (For example, in Small Cap Value, the present position is 10.2% and, interestingly, Domestic Real Estate is at 6.1%. On the other hand, Bonds are at 28.1%) At some point, Investors Solutions will "rebalance," to bring the portfolio back to target. Rebalancing is a crucial part of the discipline. However, there are transaction costs when one rebalances, so there is also a discipline regarding just when we rebalance.

Time to Stop Driving All Over Town?

Wal-Mart thinks so, and I think they have a point.

Now, with its strategy of low prices all the time back in place, Duke [the CEO] said making Wal-Mart a "one-stop shopping stop" is a critical response to dealing with the rising price of fuel.

What other trips are not necessary? Not taking unnecessary trips strikes back at our Middle Eastern and South American energy lords. Why should we put a cent in a despot's pocket, when we can avoid it? Let's put it in our own.

I also like the typical Wal-Mart customer's strategy, as described in the CNN article to which I've linked (by the way, thanks Instapundit): Shop at the beginning of the month and stock up until next month.

And, of course (of course!), there's the internet shopping option.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Wrong House Raid in Broward. Disturbing.

This is crazy. (Via Instapundit) The judge is very fortunate she didn't get shot. And, if this account is correct, she acted really stupidly. (Let's not even think about what would have happened had she been shot.) The police may have made the initial mistake, but the judge's conduct strikes me as enormously reckless.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Update on Sokol

The WSJ today reports that the audit committee of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet's company, undertook and completed an investigation of the Sokol matter. The committee's report, as described in pertinent part in the WSJ article, is as follows:

Mr. Sokol's "purchases of Lubrizol shares while serving as a representative of Berkshire Hathaway in connection with a possible business combination with Lubrizol violated company policies, including Berkshire Hathaway's Code of Business Conduct and Ethics and its Insider Trading Policies and Procedures," the audit committee wrote in its report. "His misleadingly incomplete disclosures to Berkshire Hathaway senior management concerning those purchases violated the duty of candor he owed the Company," the committee added.

Mr. Sokol's remarks "did not satisfy the duty of full disclosure inherent in the Berkshire Hathaway policies and mandated by state law," the report concluded.


"His remark to Mr. Buffett in January, revealing only that he owned some Lubrizol stock, did not tell Mr. Buffett what he needed to know. … [I]ts effect was to mislead: it implied that Mr. Sokol owned the stock before he began considering Lubrizol as an acquisition candidate, when the truth was the reverse."

See my earlier posts on this matter, first here and then here.

I am interested in the significance of the phrase "mandated by state law" that the audit committee used to describe the standards that Mr. Sokol breached. I am also interested in the penalties under that law that would follow a breach of its standards.

Pertinent to all this is the following from an April 2 report on the Bloomberg Business Week website:

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is probing whether Sokol bought Lubrizol shares on inside information, said a person with knowledge of the matter who declined to be identified because the investigation is secret. The SEC is seeking records from Sokol’s brokerage and examining trading data from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the person said.

Hostage to One's Clients or to One's Firm

Law firm clients can be too large. King and Spalding's refusal to go forward with the DOMA defence is a large case in point.

According to the WSJ, the "likely story here is that King and Spalding began to fear a political backlash after activists at the Human Rights Campaign launched a campaign to 'educate' (read: intimidate) the firm's clients about 'King and Spalding's decision to promote discrimination.' Clients include Coca-Cola and other Fortune 500 giants that prefer to avoid hot-button social issues."

In running our little firm, we are threatened economically on both sides of the client-scale spectrum. We worry about taking clients that are too small, even though the circumstances of their cases may be compelling. These kinds of clients simply cannot afford to pay us what we need to be paid reasonably to deliver legal services of the quality we seek to deliver. We will take small cases now and then, but too many of them will run us into the ground.

At the other end of the spectrum are clients with the big cases that could shower us with money. But they threaten to soak up too much of us. If we ramp up for them, what do we do when the case is over? We turn to our other clients, clients whom we may have neglected to deal with the large case, and find that they have left us. There is, then, a sweet spot for our practice. It is dynamic and changing all the time. But the cases in our sweet spot keep us healthy and growing and still able to do good work. Turning down cases that are too large or too small for us is a key to success.

What also keeps us healthy is having the economic ability to fire a client or to let one go when that client is not heeding our advice or is using us for ends that simply are not compatible with the way we see things. It is, of course, much easier to see such a client walk out the front door when we have plenty of other clients who provide us good and satisfying work.

So now we see that the venerable King and Spalding has large, think-alike clients, clients who depend on being all things to all the people in the market place, clients who can't stand the heat of the anti-DOMA lobby. Client selection and retention for K&S is no different than it is for any of us, large or small. K&S finds itself in the position of being too dependent on these sort of clients. The firm therefore bends.

Individual lawyers in such firms don't have to bend. If they are prepared to walk out the front door, then they can do that if firm policy is not compatible with their own values. And lawyers in firms should always be prepared to take that walk. In the K&S case, the attorney in question in fact has done that. Good for him. But not all attorneys in big firms are prepared to walk out: they have not developed a client base of any sort; they are so in debt and otherwise over committed that they must have the steady paycheck; or their skills have become so specialized with regard to the "big clients" that they are not useful on the outside or those skills are simply obsolete.

More on the K&S case here at Instapundit.

He-gans, Vegans, and Vegetarians

Lo! The Miami Herald discovers low-to-no animal protein diets and their health advantages.

What's next? The free market maybe?

Friday, April 22, 2011

"Sachkritik?"

N.T. Wright uses the word Sachkritik to describe a form of literary criticism. (He is not high on the form.) This is a word I had not seen before.

Here is one definition. And another from a Crandall University course description on Pauline studies. (Crandall is a Canadian Christian institution.)

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Romans Report

We are coming to the end of Chapter 11, the last of three chapters that form a section the theme of which was largely unfamiliar to me. Now that I am at the end of it, I see why Paul breaks into Doxology in 11:33-36, and I want to lift it up with him (especially this week).

("People have often imagined that chapters 9-11 are a kind of bracket, an appendix, tackling a different subject to the rest of the letter. But that only shows how badly Romans as a whole has been misread . . . " Wright in Paul for Everyone - Romans: Part Two, p. 4.)

I have been aided immeasurably by N.T. Wright and John Stott, who sometimes differ but often seem as if they are collaborating with each other. (Macon and Walter, I will get to Barth later. Sorry.) Indeed, Stott cites Wright several times in his text, particularly Wright's The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology, a collection of essays on the subject. I acquired that book especially for its chapter 13, "Christ, the Law and the People of God: the Problem of Romans 9-11." But now I am going back and reading the book from the beginning.

The book is simply a pleasure to read because Wright is so unaffectedly and attractively literate. The way he writes is sheer entertainment. Here is an example from chapter 1, where Wright deals generally with the matter of "Contradictions, Tensions, Inconsistencies, Antinomies and Other Worrying Things" that are ascribed to Paul:

To call someone inconsistent seems today a somewhat two-edged compliment. Schecter's dictum is often quoted to the effect that, whatever faults the Rabbis may have had, consistency was not one of them . . .

Wright does not concede that Paul is inconsistent and that's not the point of my quoting this passage from Wright's book. The point is that I find it entertaining to see the problem of inconsistency (or not) introduced that way. I wonder if Wright is as good in the classroom. (And who is Schecter anyway? Don't you simply want to put Wright's book down and go off and find out who that clever man was and what else he wrote? It's a great teacher who points you to other great minds and makes you want to go and make their acquaintance.)

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Now Where Was I?


Your's truly is Exhibit A to this study.

(I think I would be OK if I just didn't find everything in God's creation so interesting.)

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Friday, April 15, 2011

But the weather is sure nice here.

Headlines and synopses from the front page of today's local section of the Miami Herald:

Medicare Fraud
Couple: We stole millions from Medicare
A Miami couple charged with running the nation's largest mental health scam pleaded guilty to billing the federal program for bogus therapy.
(The article said the Miami couple stole $200 million. This approaches 2/3 of this fiscal year's savings resulting from last week's budget deal in Washington.)

Miami-Dade Transit Agency
Transit funding cutoff continues
Miami-Dade Transit's woes with federal regulators are dragging on amid questions about the county's "serious mismanagement" of grant dollars.

(The mismanagement includes not only how federal grant money was being spent, it also includes "improperly accounted for bus fare boxes" which has a sort of nostalgic feel about it. The cut-off is of "some $185 million in grant money the county relies on to fund daily operations" and "will continue indefinitely." I think not only "daily operations" were being funded with this money, but also "daily defalcations.")

One idea that Congress might consider is just cutting away both Broward and Miami-Dade Counties and letting them float away into the distance. That could go far in dealing with the deficit. (Carol and I will arrange to be in Austin or Rochester at the time.)

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Aborting Little Girls in India



A very good NPR report.

Congress is Seriously Not Serious About the Deficit

The WSJ reports today that a

new analysis by the Congressional Budget Office suggests that the 2011 spending deal struck by Republicans and Democrats late Friday would save only about $352 million this year, a small fraction of the $38.5 billion touted by negotiators on both sides.

The nonpartisan budget office for Congress reports that the two sides succeeded in cutting the government's spending authority for this year by the larger amount. But because some of the cuts would be slow to take effect, and because some of the money was unlikely to be spent in any case, the reduction in actual "outlays" would come to a small percentage of the announced amount.


Not to mention, of course, the President himself.

Mojito Alert!

Rum is flowing at Miami International Airport, where the new Bacardi Mojito Bar celebrated a grand opening Wednesday. The bar, in the new north terminal, also includes food from Lorena Garcia Cocina.

The restaurant menu was designed especially for the airport and includes Caribbean and Latin American flavors.


-from today's Miami Herald.

(Adjacent to gates D52 and D53 in Terminal D)

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

The Allen Brain Atlas



ALLEN Human Brain Atlas

The ALLEN Human Brain Atlas is a unique, multi-modal digital atlas that integrates extensive gene expression data with anatomic information. The atlas currently features MRI, DTI, histology, microarray, and in situ hybridization data.

The latest release on March 17, 2011 adds an expanded data set and enhanced data visualization and navigation options that facilitate integration across data modalities. Updates include:

Whole Brain Microarray Survey:
Spatially mapped microarray data comprising approximately 2,000 samples covering two entire brains
Enhanced heat-map interactivity and user-defined viewing options
Enhanced differential and correlative search features


Brain Explorer® 3-D viewer:
Interactive, 3-D views for exploring the anatomy of both brains from the Whole Brain Microarray Survey
Gene expression overlay onto brain anatomy, with links back to the original microarray data
Inflated surface views to enhance visibility of expression profiles over the cortex
Side-by-side views for comparing brains


Enhanced integration across data modalities:
MRI view from gene expression heat map to conceptually localize regions of interest
Streamlined navigation between microarray, MRI and histology data
Side-by-side views of ISH data and nearest matching Nissl section for visual characterization of anatomical structures
Additional data, brains and tools will be available in subsequent releases.

Our next public release will be on June 16, 2011.


-Here.

Monday, April 11, 2011

"Common Sense Begins to Triumph Over Right-Wing Extremism"

This is a copy of an email I received Saturday from Florida US Senator Bill Nelson:

Dear Friend,

Let me bring you up to date on the government shutdown here in Washington. Thankfully, we've just seen common sense begin to triumph over right-wing extremism.

It took weeks of fighting, but we're beginning to get a spending deal that aims to be fair to everybody. The battle mainly has been against a group of right-wing extremists who tried to hold the federal government hostage in order to pass severe restrictions on women's health care.

But a last-minute compromise to avert a shutdown of the federal government occurred late Friday, because reasonable lawmakers were able to come together and trump the extremists.
As the chairman of a newly created Senate subcommittee charged with finding ways to reduce the deficit and create jobs, I will be in a position to work on a plan that's good for our country.

I believe workable solutions can be reached only when reasonable people work together. That now seems to be happening in the budget talks. We all agree the government has to live within its means. But to get compromise, we all also have to give up some things we may have wanted.

In the coming days and weeks, Congress still has a lot of work ahead to pass a long-term spending bill. But I believe the temporary agreement is a step in the right direction. At the end of the day, I'm confident that with your support we'll be able to adopt a plan for spending cuts that's fair - and keeps our economy moving in the right direction, too.

Sincerely,

Bill Nelson


As Glenn Reynolds would say, "The Government is in the best of hands."

Saturday, April 09, 2011

When is Abortion Racism?

John Piper answers.

Black Genocide; the Heartbeat of Miami Banquet

* Many people do not know, that since 1973 (year abortion was legalized in the U.S.) more African American babies have been killed by ABORTION than the total number of African American deaths from all other causes COMBINED. (US Center for Disease Control and the Alan Guttmacher Institute)

* Abortion services have been DELIBERATELY and SYSTEMATICALLY TARGETED towards African Americans. A disproportionate number of the nation’s abortion mills are located in minority neighborhoods. Learn more: ABORTION & GENOCIDE Life Issues Institute Black Genocide Study

* 35% of abortions in the United States are performed on African American women, while they represent only 13% of the female population of the country. (US Census Bureau)

* The abortion rate among married African American women is three times greater than it is among white women. (National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 48, No. 11)

* According to the 2000 Census, Hispanics have replaced African Americans as the largest minority group in the US. The loss of over 14 million black babies through abortion has played a significant part in this population decline. (Used by permission of Dayton Right to Life)


-From Protecting Black Life.

The Director of Protecting Black Life, Rev. Arnold M. Culbreath, spoke at the Heartbeat of Miami annual banquet this week. Carol and I attended that function. Rev. Culbreath had an electrifying message.

There were two very moving testimonies at the Heartbeat banquet, one from a pregnant young woman from Hialeah who, thanks to her visits to the Heartbeat office there, has chosen not to kill her baby; the other from a mother of two children who, with her husband, adopted the baby of a young woman who had visited the North Miami Heartbeat center for help. The adoptive mother told the story of the birth mother, and the two mothers are now close friends.

At the end of the program, mothers in the audience who had changed their minds about abortion at a Heartbeat center, came up on stage with their children. As Heartbeat has been at work in Miami for just 3 years, there were toddlers as well as babies. The Heartbeat director, Marta Avila, said that over 30,000 abortions have been avoided by Heartbeat during that period of time.

Friday, April 08, 2011

Just Love This

Are We Happy We Didn't Push the Kids to Go to Law School?


Well, yeah.

If any of them really wanted to go, that would have been OK. But none of them did. Anyway, we pretty much gave up "pushing" generally, as each reached about 12 years old. After that, we had to rely on out-smarting them.

Which we still do.

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Academics, Basketball, and Ancestry in the ACC


I talked to my friend and college roommate Doug Tanner this evening on the phone. He had this to say about Duke Basketball.

Saveral years ago, a sportswriter asked Coach K how much importance he assigned to academics for his basketball team at Duke.

Coach K said that he at least hoped his players would be able to spell his name by the time they graduated.

"Remarkable," the sportswriter said, "that's exactly what Coach Smith said over at Chapel Hill."

Doug also told this story:

A young Piedmont State man interviewed for admission to Wake Forest. Asked by the Admissions Director whether he was a Baptist, he said no. "Well, what about your father?" No to that as well. "Your grandfather a Baptist?" No, sir, to that. "Then I'm afraid there is no place for you here."

Over to Duke the young man went. Because Duke is a Methodist school, the same sorts of questions were asked about Methodist Church membership: first of the young man, then of the young man's father and mother both (the mother included, as Methodists are more liberal along gender lines than Baptists) and then of his grandmothers and grandfathers. Still negative answers and the same result: no admission.

Then it was over to Raleigh and an interview with the NC State admissions office. This time the questions were whether the young man was a farmer: no. Whether his parents were farmers: no. Whether his grandparents: no to that as well. Then, "We can't admit you here, sir."

"Well, I'll be a son of a bitch!" the young man exclaimed.

"Oh," said the admissions officer, "Have you tried Chapel Hill?"

(That photo is a recent one of Doug. He was the minister who married Carol and me, and he is pictured here at our wedding nearly 41 years ago. He hasn't changed much! How does a man carry-on being so good looking? [Walter? Macon? Steven H? Cody?])

A Spade being Called a Spade

Today the WSJ headlines the Sokol/Berkshire matter as a "scandal." It certainly is a scandal.

Compare this, also reported in today's WSJ, where the FBI arrested a lawyer for years of insider trading on information he gained from merger and acquisition cases in respect to which his law firm provided legal services. (See this for a parallel article that does not need a paid subscription.)

Maybe the reason Sokol has not yet been arrested is that you get one bite of the apple free. The lawyer in the other case took several bites. Today's WSJ article suggests, however, that the peculiar circumstances of the Sokol case may mean that Sokol slipped through a loophole. But we shall see.

Sunday, April 03, 2011

McDougall, SIDS, and Breast-Feeding

To follow up on Macon's comment on my post concerning McDougall's views on breastfeeding, I searched the newsletter archives at McDougall's website. That search lights up quite a few discussions, but this one, from the May 2004 newsletter, gives a reference:

Bottle-feeding Kills Babies

Breastfeeding and the risk of postneonatal death in the United States by Aimin Chen in the May 2004 issue of the journal Pediatrics found children who were breast-fed had a 21% reduced risk of death in the first year after birth compared to bottle-fed children. Longer breast-feeding was associated with lower risk of death. Even the risk of crib death (SIDS) was reduced by 16% with breast-feeding.

In underdeveloped countries where sanitation is lacking, bottle-feeding a child is equated to a “death sentence.” In modern societies with more cleanliness and modern medical facilities the adverse consequences of bottle-feeding are less dramatic, but still too real. The US is ranked 16th in infant deaths in the first few months following birth and the prevalence of breast-feeding is 22% at 6 months. Finland is ranked first, worldwide, with the fewest deaths for infants, with 60% of babies breast-fed at six months, and Sweden is second with 50% of babies breast-fed at this time.

Remember from previous newsletters, my first act when I become Surgeon General will be to make formula available by prescription only. See my January 2004 newsletter Favorite Five article, “Formula (Bottle) Feeding Causes Infant Brain Damage.”

Chen A, Rogan WJ. Breastfeeding and the risk of postneonatal death in the United States. Pediatrics. 2004 May;113(5):e435-9.


(As you can see, I have taken McDougall's reference and linked it to the publicly available article itself.)

McDougall is "take-no-prisoners" when it comes to breast-feeding.

"August: Osage County"

Carol and I saw this highly entertaining play Friday night at the Actors' Playhouse in Coral Gables. We would recommend it, if the acting company is competent, as it certainly was in the Actors' Playhouse production. This review by Christine Dolen of the Miami Herald is right on target. (I suggest that you not read the Wiki post on the play. Not only does the post give away the play's secrets ["spoiler alert"], it is simply a poor review.)

Saturday, April 02, 2011

Dr. McDougall and "the Best Baby Formula"

Differential growth patterns among healthy infants fed protein hydrolysate or cow-milk formulas by Julie A. Mennella, published in the journal Pediatrics found, “…that CMF-fed (cow milk formula-fed) infants' weight gain was accelerated, whereas PHF-fed (protein hydrolysate formula-fed) infants' weight gain was normative.”1 The authors noted that rapid rates of growth during the first year increase the risk for obesity, metabolic syndrome, and mortality from cardiovascular disease later on in life. Thus excessive weight gain for an infant is undesirable. Using breast-fed babies as the “gold standard of normal,” formula feeding has long been known to cause excessive weight gain. Growth differences were attributable to differences in gains in weight, not length. Soy-based formula was not tested.

Comment: As a practicing doctor, I find it very difficult to recommend any kind of artificial infant feeding. I can only recommend human breast milk (preferably from its original container, the breast). Bottle-feeding is known to cause an increase in the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (crib death), pneumococcal pneumonia (occurring 60 times more frequently during the first three months of life), hospitalization (occurring 10 times more frequently during the first year), reduced IQ, behavioral and speech difficulties, and an increase in ear infections. Much of the research states that feeding babies formula rather than breast milk contributes to type-1 diabetes. Furthermore, recent evidence suggests feeding PHF formula rather than cow’s milk-based formula will reduce the risk of children developing type-1 diabetes.2

Soy formulas promote estrogen-like activities due to their soy proteins. Lifetime exposure to estrogenic substances, especially during critical periods of development, has been associated with cancers and several deformities of the reproductive systems, including hypospadias in male babies.3 Research published in the February 2011 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found negative effects of bottle-feeding on the health of young children’s arteries.4

My strong recommendation is that at the first hint of a problem with breast-feeding, mothers need to connect with a lactation consultant (like La Leche League). The health and happiness of the entire family depends on successful breast-feeding.

What about those rare circumstances when breast-feeding by the real mother is impossible? The next choice is a surrogate mother (a wet nurse). Unfortunately, this option is no longer the social norm in our society. Milk from a breast-milk bank is the next best choice. If left with the choice between various chemical concoctions called formula, protein hydrolysate formula is the most reasonable one to make.

Protein hydrolysate formulas are also known as “hypoallergenic cow’s milk-based formulas.” They are commonly recommended for infants who cannot tolerate (are allergic to) intact proteins (usually cow’s-milk proteins). In preparing these formulas, the milk proteins are broken down by enzymes and then ultra-filtrated to remove large molecules. Brands of these formulas include Similac Alimentum, Advance Ross Pediatrics EleCare, and Nutramigen Lipil. Thus, when parents and grandparents ask me what the best formula alternative to breast milk is; under duress, I recommend hypoallergenic cow’s milk-based formula.

1) Mennella JA, Ventura AK, Beauchamp GK. Differential growth patterns among healthy infants fed protein hydrolysate or cow-milk formulas. Pediatrics. 2011 Jan;127(1):110-8.

2) Knip M, Virtanen SM, Seppä K, Ilonen J, Savilahti E, Vaarala O, Reunanen A, Teramo K, Hämäläinen AM, Paronen J, Dosch HM, Hakulinen T, Akerblom HK; Finnish TRIGR Study Group. Dietary intervention in infancy and later signs of beta-cell autoimmunity. N Engl J Med. 2010 Nov 11;363(20):1900-8.

3) Bar-El DS, Reifen R. Soy as an endocrine disruptor: cause for caution? J Pediatr Endocrinol Metab. 2010 Sep;23(9):855-61.

4) Evelein AM, Geerts CC, Visseren FL, Bots ML, van der Ent CK, Grobbee DE, Uiterwaal CS. The association between breastfeeding and the cardiovascular system in early childhood. Am J Clin Nutr. 2011 Apr;93(4):712-8.


-from Dr. McDougall's March Newsletter.