Odds and ends, 4/3/07

NEW YORK (AP) -- Justin Timberlake blames celebrity magazines for turning his personal life into juicy gossip fodder.

"I despise what they do," the 26-year-old singer tells Details magazine in an interview in its April issue.

And without them he'd be making as much money as a school teacher in West Virginia. I feel so sorry for the guy.

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This morning's paper carried an AP story on how Gov. Joe Manchin signed a bill increasing the number of diseases newborn babies will be tested for from nine to 29. The AP story did not list the diseases. I looked the bill up on the Legislature Web site and I learned why.

For those who want to know, these are the diseases listed by the bill:

sickle cell anemia, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, cystic fibrosis, biotinidase deficiency, isovaleric acidemia, glutaric acidemia type I, 3-Hydroxy-3-methylglutaric aciduria, multiple carboxylase deficiency, methylmalonic acidemia-mutase deficiency form, 3-methylcrotonyl-CoA carboxylase deficiency, methylmalonic acidemia, Cbl A and Cbl B forms, propionic acidemia, beta-ketothiolase deficiency, medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency, very long-chain acyl-CoA dehydronenase deficiency, long-chain acyl-CoA dehydronenase deficiency, trifunctional protein deficiency, carnitine uptake defeat, maple syrup urine disease, homocystinuria, citrullinemia type I, argininosuccinate acidemia, tyrosinemia type I, hemoglobin S/Beta-thalassemia, sickle C disease and hearing deficiency.

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There are probably newer numbers out there, but I came across these while looking up information for the previous item. The death rate for heart disease in Cabell County is about 20 percent higher than the national average.

That struck home with me because I'm in my early 50s. Both my parents died in their mid- to late 70s of heart disease. On my mother's side, an uncle died at 60 and a half-brother died at 62, both of heart problems. So I take numbers like this seriously.

It doesn't surprise me that our death rate from lung cancer is high, but it was interesting that our death rate from prostate cancer is lower than the national average.

Death from diabetes and strokes are high, while we're about 20 percent below average on homicide. That does not surprise me.

Anyway, those are some interesting numbers I'm going to have to think about.

(More to come later today)