Hot MedFax

We all know them.  You know, those blowhards who tell you their kids clean their rooms, or eat anything you put in front of them.  Or wash the car after they use it (I'm still waiting for that).  Or the politician (we won't name him) who won't have a meal with a female not his wife. But now new research, according to newswise.com, finds that this  "holier than thou" or self-righteous behavior really isn't -- big duh! -- the mark of truly "good" people. Studies in the past discovered that  people "tend to believe that they are more likely than others to donate blood, give to charity, treat another person fairly, and give up one’s own seat in a crowded bus for a pregnant woman." And usually, if you followed them onto that bus, they won't. Even more astonishing, a widely cited U.S. News and World Report survey asked 1,000 Americans to indicate the likelihood that they and a long list of celebrities would go to heaven. The vast ma...

Big duh. But did you know that employers who promote ethics should reward those who display them? We've all been there.  A co-worker jiggles some numbers to make the budget come out right.  Another steals paper clips and staples from the supply room (okay, so that was me).  A boss tattles negative details from an employee's personnel files to others in the same department (me, too). But according to newswise.com, companies that "walk the walk" they advocate may help reduce turnover and even improve performance. We've all also probably known stand-out execs who truly showed integrity, taking the fall for a department's mistake or being up-front about her own company concerns and worries. Building a business reputation from the inside out — with employees giving a company high marks as an ethical place to work — is increasingly being hailed as a way to get a leg up on the competition, right alongside customer service and quality products. Public ...

Admit it.  You feel a little superior to the people who give shares of Heifer International to to their kids at Christmas (that's where you buy an animal -- or part of it -- to give to a needy family around the world to end poverty). You laugh at your sister who reuses her silver foil. And you think buying fair trade coffee is well, for jerks.  At least, I do. Now a new study says that, while we're certainly against child labor, or anything that harms the environment, we also don’t want to work too hard to find out whether our favorite products were made ethically. And we really don’t like those good people who make the effort to seek out ethically made goods when we choose not to. In fact, we denigrate consumers who act more ethically than we do, seeing them as less fashionable and more boring. Worst of all, seeing others act ethically when we don’t undermines our commitment to pro-social values. “It is this vicious cycle,” says Rebecca Walker Reczek, co-aut...

I've wondered this for a very long time.  Can your genes make you kill? Scientists are actually mapping Adam Lanza's genes to find out, according to smartplanet.com.  Remember him?  He's hard to forget.  He's the mass murderer of 20 Connecticut first-graders and six of their teachers and administrators two years ago.   The Web site notes that no one has ever sequenced a mass murderer’s genes. "And the plan to do so, by University of Connecticut geneticists, is being conducted quietly and far from the media spotlight. The University won't comment on its research, other than to admit that they indeed undertook it. It's not clear whether they have concluded their research, but the scientists most likely looked for mutations linked to mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, autism or Asperger’s—a diagnosis psychiatrists had given Lanza years before his rampage. Neither the researchers nor the medical examiner’s office have said what they plan to do with t...