The Evils Of Drinking Cola

We already know it’s bad for us, but can cola kill?

Cola is a beverage many of us have been familiar with since we were young. Cola manufacturers have been quenching our thirsts and filling our minds with there catchy advertising slogans for decades. Billions of cans of cola are sold around the globe each year, with cola flowing like water in many industrialized countries. To that end, it’s not a real wonder that cola can effectively kill you if drunk in excessively large amounts, especially since a new medical study has laid out just how bad cola can be, for people who can’t get enough of it. One assumes at this point that the prudent thing to do would be to simply drink less cola, at least until the next time one is bombarded by cola advertising.

Quenching Details

Published in the June issue of the International Journal of Clinical Practice is a new study out of the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Ioannina, Greece. Dr. Moses Elisaf and his fellow researchers reviewed the types of symptoms that could occur in people who drank anywhere from two litres to nine litres of cola per day, going over the case studies of patients who qualified. In one such study, a 44-year-old ostrich farmer was afflicted by lung paralysis as well as muscle weakness to the point of having trouble standing up.
This was due to the four litres of cola he had been drinking every day for the past three years, up to 10 litres sometimes just to quench his thirst while out hunting.

Another case study highlighted a 51-year-old man with chronic pulmonary disease, hypertension, muscle weakness and loose bowel issues several times a day. Doctors couldn’t figure out why he was experiencing his symptoms until they found out the man continuously sipped up to four litres of cola every day.

Stomach Churning Issues

Regardless of its branding, cola drinks have always been taken for granted as one of the most abundant sources of sugary, teeth-rotting beverages found on earth. Now the University of Ioannina study suggests that excessive over consumption of cola drinks can cause not only tooth decay, but also diabetes, cardiovascular disease, bone demineralization and hypokalemia, which is low blood potassium levels caused by extreme cola over consumption. Hypokalemia is the main cause behind the muscle problems experienced by people who drink too much cola. Muscle weakness can be anywhere from mild to paralysis.

More To Avoid

This study into the dangers of cola over consumption singled out the three most common ingredients responsible for most of the health issues related to drinking cola, which, unsurprisingly, were glucose, fructose and caffeine. Seeing as how health professionals are always advising people to reduce their intake of those three anyhow, lowering cola intake could be beneficial in the long run, but how does one avoid the stormy seas of cola?

Moderation, Moderation, Moderation!

Even though the University of Ioannina study focused on extreme cases of cola over consumption, the issue is largely ignored everywhere else. Restaurants and stores continue to sell cola beyond the average 355 ml can in different forms of packaging that encourage ove rconsumption. The well-known plastic 2 litre cola bottles, as well as 7-11’s Big Gulp cup size are just two examples that can easily lure the average person into drinking too much cola.

Just Say No!

The majority of convenience stores, restaurants and fast food joints all serve cola in one incarnation or another, and one should be wary. In restaurants, it’s simple to just order a different drink. In fast food chains cola is the standard they expect you to drink unless you specifically order something else. Don’t forget that used to be a medium-sized drink container is now the small-sized container in Wendy’s chain restaurants. In stores, it’s simple to walk past the rows of aluminum cans in favour of a healthier drink, provided you can avoid any other processed beverage that doesn’t contain glucose, fructose or caffeine.

Cutting Back

Committing to reducing your intake of cola, imitation colas and zero-calorie colas can be challenging, especially if you’re used to drinking more than one per day. Drinking less cola would certainly go a ways towards improving your overall health, but if and when you do toss back that coke, make sure you enjoy it!

German states ban Red Bull after discovery of cocaine in the energy drink

From a Time Magazine article:

About a year ago, the makers of Red Bull, the famous caffeine-loaded energy drink, decided to come out with a soda, unsurprisingly named Red Bull Cola. The shared name implied the same big kick. But could the cola's boost - supposedly "100% natural" - come from something else? Officials in Germany worry that they've found the answer - cocaine. And now they have prohibited the soda's sale in six states across the country and may recommend a nation-wide ban.

"The [Health Institute in the state of North Rhine Westphalia] examined Red Bull Cola in an elaborate chemical process and found traces of cocaine," Bernhard Kuehnle, head of the food safety department at Germany's federal ministry for consumer protection, told the German press on Sunday. According to this analysis, the 0.13 micrograms of cocaine per can of the drink does not pose a serious health threat - you'd have to drink 12,000 liters of Red Bull Cola for negative affects to be felt - but it was enough to cause concern. Kuehnle's agency is due to give its final verdict on Wednesday when experts publish their report. (See pictures of America's cannabis culture.)

Red Bull has always been upfront about the recipe for its new cola. Its website boasts colorful pictures of coca, cardamom and Kola nuts, along with other key "natural" ingredients. The company insists, however, that coca leaves are used as a flavoring agent only after removing the illegal cocaine alkaloid. "De-cocainized" extract of coca leaf is used worldwide in foods as a natural flavoring," said a Red Bull spokesman in response to the German government's announcement. Though the cocaine alkaloid is one of 10 alkaloids in coca leaves and represents only 0.8% of the chemical make-up of the plant, it's removal is mandated by international anti-narcotics agencies when used outside the Andean region. (Check out this story on how Bolivia is preaching the virtues of coca culture.)

Meanwhile, in Bolivia, halfway around the world and smack in the middle of the Andes, the controversy is causing chuckles. Coca is a fundamental part of Andean culture and for years, Bolivians have tried to get the world to understand that the leaf is not a drug if it's not put through the extensive chemical process that yields cocaine. Left-wing President Evo Morales, a coca-grower himself, has made coca validation a personal quest, chewing leaves in front of world leaders and press cameras during his travels. "Let's say [Red Bull Cola] doesn't take out the cocaine alkaloid. Have any of those millions of people across the world who have drunk that soda ever gotten sick or felt drugged?," asks Dionicio Nunez, a coca-growers' leader from the Yungas region. "We've always known that coca isn't harmful. Now maybe others will realize it too."

In Germany, the Red Bull spokesman insisted that his company's product, along with others containing the coca leaf extract are considered safe in Europe and the U.S. And already, some experts have come to Red Bull's defense. "There is no scientific basis for this ban on Red Bull Cola because the levels of cocaine found are so small," Fritz Soergel, the head of the Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research in the city of Nuremberg. "And it's not even cocaine itself. According to the tests we carried out, it's a non-active degradation product with no effect on the body. If you start examining lots of other drinks and food so carefully, you'd find a lot of surprising things," he says. (Read about the ANTI-Red Bull: a drink that can calm you down.)

Coca leaves, of course, have a long record in modern soda pop history. Most prominently, there was Coca-Cola whose original 19th century formula used unaltered coca leaves. In the early 1900s the company said it would only use "spent," or de-cocainized leaves though the company refuses to confirm whether leaves in any form are still used.

But the problem is when it comes to coca and cocaine, it's not just a health concern, but a legal one. Since 1961, trade of coca outside the Andean region - where people have chewed or brewed coca in tea to stave off hunger and exhaustion for centuries - has been prohibited unless, the cocaine alkaloid is removed. Few companies in the world have authorization to trade in the leaf and most are pharmaceutical companies that perform this de-cocainizing process. The most prominent is New Jersey-based Stepan Chemical Company which has been reported to supply Coca-Cola with its narcotic-free derivative.

But no one knows where Red Bull Cola's coca leaves come from or where they are processed. Red Bull did not respond to immediate requests for comment and Rauch Trading AG, the Austria-based food company that actually manufactures Red Bull Cola was quick to say that they are not allowed to speak about the product.Meanwhile, Bolivia, which has lots of coca leaves to sell, is getting a kick out of the fact Red Bull Cola admits to using coca in any form (since Coca-Cola evades the question). Ironically, the drink is not actually available yet in Bolivia. But, the locals say, this is a great opportunity to show that coca isn't harmful - with or without the cocaine alkaloid.

Thoughts? Hello? Still Here? or are you off to the store to get your Red Bull??

Want a smart baby? turn off that TV

Watching television does not make babies smarter, according to a study released this week in the journal Pediatrics, adding to existing research that challenges the usefulness of baby educational videos and DVDs.



Researchers from Children's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and Harvard Medical School reached this conclusion after monitoring more than 800 children from birth to 3 years of age.

"Contrary to parents' perceptions that TV viewing is beneficial to their children's brain development, we found no evidence of cognitive benefit from watching TV during the first two years of life," the authors wrote.

Educational DVD and videos geared towards enriching babies and toddlers, such as "BabyGenius," "Brainy Baby" or "Baby Einstein," which proclaim to "encourage discovery and inspire," have no benefits, researchers said.

This echoes a similar finding published in the August issue of Pediatrics. Researchers from the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute found no evidence of benefit from baby DVDs and videos and suggested that it in fact may be harmful. Infants who watched the videos understood fewer words than those who did not watch them.

Pediatrician Dr. Michael Rich, a co-author of the latest study from Boston, calls baby educational DVDs and videos "just wasted time."

"At the very best, they steal time from much more productive cognitive developmental activities," he said. "Ultimately, what it's about is to make parents not feel guilty about an electronic baby sitter."

The parents of the 872 children in the Boston study estimated the number of hours their toddlers spent in front of the television, including TV programs and DVDs. Researchers did not have data on what kinds of programs the toddlers were watching.

On average, babies at 6 months watched approximately 0.9 hours of TV per day. That number increased as the child aged: 1.2 hours at 1 year and 1.4 hours at 2 years.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen media for children under the age of 2 years. Educational DVDs are tailored for babies as young as 3 months.

In the Harvard study, two I.Q.-related tests were administered to the children: the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test III, which indicates how many words the child understands and uses, and the Wide-Range Assessment of Visual Motor Ability test, which presents puzzles and peg boards to test cognitive abilities.

Babies who spent more time watching TV had lower language and visual motor skills at age 3. But when results were adjusted for household income and education levels, the association did not appear.

Lead author Marie Evans Schmidt and her colleagues "did not find evidence of harm or benefit of TV viewing."

Based on the existing body of research, Schmidt, a developmental psychologist instructor at Harvard Medical School, said, "there's still more evidence of harm than benefit as far as TV viewing in infancy is concerned."

Studies exploring the relationship between TV viewing and the effects on children are just beginning, she said.

"My hope is that when this information is made available to the general public, that it won't be perceived as study that means there are no harmful effects of TV viewing on infants, because other studies have shown TV viewing at high levels can put kids at risk for some things like obesity, sleep disturbances and possibly attention problems," Schmidt said.

Rich, a pediatrician who directs the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital Boston, said TV watching during infancy instills habits that promote obesity.

"You're teaching 4- or 5- or 6-month-olds how to watch TV," he said. "They're learning to watch TV. The more they watch as they get older, they're snacking in front of TV, they're exposed to snack-food commercials, which inspire them to eat even more and sit even more. It is a cumulative effect of many, many factors."

But Karen Hill Scott, a senior fellow at UCLA who works in the field of child development, said the criticism ignores real life. "To me, as a scientist and parent, we can't hold on to completely demonizing screen time when parents are really very determined to use it."

Modern parents "want kids to be literate on computers. They don't see the screen media as evil," said Scott, a consultant for Baby Einstein."The net effect that it's not harmful is a relief to many families who have been made to feel guilty or awful that they use screen time."

Scott said the material in educational baby DVDs is similar to what is in books.

Baby Einstein products were designed by Julie Clark, a teacher and mother, and were not devised through scientific research. Susan McLain, general manager of Baby Einstein, said the company receives thousands of letters from satisfied parents.

"We've basically stayed true to the philosophy to what [Clark] created. That was exposure to real-world imagery," she said. "The core themes are art, music and nature; that's the core essence of what we've created."

She said the Harvard study indicated that "screen time is not harmful for baby and infants."

Rich, the study co-author, recommended relying on what has been proved to benefit children.

"The best thing for our kids is to provide them with stimulus that we know is positive for their brain development," Rich said. He suggesting activities like reading, singing, interacting and stacking blocks to help children.

Pucker up: Scientists study kissing

When your lips gently brush against the mouth of your beloved this Valentine's Day, it may feel magically romantic, or sloppily slobbery, or blissfully gentle, or perhaps too rough and toothy.

Regardless, the practice of kissing is nearly universal. It is practiced in at least 90 percent of cultures among sexual or romantic partners, experts say. Now, scientists are investigating the biological factors underlying that ubiquitous expression of love.

The science of kissing even has a name: philematology. Research on the subject was presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science in Chicago on Friday.

"Kissing is not just kissing. It is a major escalation or de-escalation point in a powerful process of mate choice," said Helen Fisher, professor at Rutgers University and author of the book "Why Him, Why Her: Finding Real Love by Understanding Your Personality Type."

A study by Gordon Gallup Jr., professor of psychology at the University of Albany, showed that 59 percent of men and 66 percent of women reported that after feeling attracted to another person initially, the attraction ended after the first kiss, Fisher said.

Looking at a sample of more than 1,000 college students, Gallup and colleagues found that women also tend to emphasize kissing more than men, and are much more likely to insist on kissing before a sexual encounter.

A person receives information about the person he or she is smooching by locking lips, Fisher said. A kiss transmits smells, tastes, sound and tactile signals that all affect how the individuals perceive each other and, ultimately, whether they will want to kiss again.

Women tend to be attracted to male partners with a different immune system makeup from their own, Fisher said. They subconsciously detect information about a partner's immune system through smell during kissing, she said.

Research led by Wendy Hill, professor of neuroscience at Lafayette College, looked at how kissing affects the hormones oxytocin, sometimes called the "love hormone," which is associated with social bonding, and cortisol, a measure of stress.

The first experiment, which took place in a student health center, looked at college students age 18 to 22, and examined hormone levels in 15 heterosexual couples. In the control group, participants held hands and talked with their partner while music played. In the experimental group, participants were told to open-mouth kiss their partner for the length of the music -- 16 minutes.

The results showed that oxytocin levels in the women decreased after the session, but increased in the men. Researchers had expected those levels to go up in both genders; the decrease for women may have resulted from the artificial setting of the student health center, researchers theorize.

A second experiment in a more romantic setting -- a secluded room with jazz music, flowers and electric candles -- looked at nine heterosexual couples and three lesbian couples.

Researchers found that the longer the relationship of a couple, the more the cortisol levels declined in both partners. The heterosexual women, moreover, said they felt greater intimacy with their partners than the heterosexual men or the homosexual women did, while all groups expressed equal satisfaction in kissing their partners. The researchers are in the process of analyzing oxytocin levels in this experiment.

On the basis of brain imaging, Fisher proposes that there are three distinct brain systems involved in mating and reproduction: sex drive, romantic love, and attachment. Sex drive compels us to seek partners, romantic love tells us to commit to one, and attachment helps us "tolerate this person at least long enough" to have a child, she said. Kissing evolved to stimulate all three of these systems, she said.

Kissing "can really either escalate a relationship or really kill it," Fisher said.

We feel such sensitivity to kissing partially because of the way our brain is structured, Fisher said. The somatosensory cortex, which extends from one side of the brain to the other, has a large portion devoted to picking up signals from the lips, tongue, nose and cheek areas around the mouth.

You can really get poked in the back and not feel it very much, but just a feather around your lips and you really do feel it," she said. As for the origins of kissing, one theory is that kissing evolved as an extension of the way mothers used to feed their children. Early humans, who lacked jars of manufactured baby food, probably chewed up food and directly transferred it from their mouths to the babies', Gallup wrote.

Study suggests Vitamin D protects against MS

An abundance of vitamin D seems to help prevent multiple sclerosis, according to a study in more than seven million people that offers some of the strongest evidence yet of the power of the "sunshine vitamin" against MS.

The research found that white members of the U.S. military with the highest blood levels of vitamin D were 62 per cent less likely to develop multiple sclerosis than people with low levels.

There was no such connection in blacks or hispanics, possibly because there were so few in the group studied. Also, the body makes vitamin D from sunlight, and the pigmented skin of blacks and other dark-skinned ethnic groups doesn't absorb sunlight as easily as pale skin.

The new research echoes findings in smaller studies that examined why the nerve-damaging disease historically has been more common in people who live in regions farther from the equator where there is less intense year-round sunlight.

"This is the first large prospective study where blood levels are measured in young adults and compared to their future risk. It's definitely different and much stronger evidence," said Dr. Alberto Ascherio, the senior author and an associate professor of nutrition at Harvard's School of Public Health.

The study appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

"If confirmed, this finding suggests that many cases of MS could be prevented by increasing vitamin D levels," Ascherio said.

Still, he said the findings don't prove that a lack of vitamin D can cause MS, so it's too preliminary to recommend that people take vitamin D pills to avoid the disease.

Vitamin D is also found in fortified milk and oily fish, but it's hard to get enough just from diet. Sunlight is the biggest source of vitamin D, which is needed for strong bones.

Other studies have linked high levels of vitamin D in the blood to lower risks of a variety of cancers.

The MS researchers worked with the U.S. army and navy in analyzing blood samples of military personnel stored by the Department of Defence.

Vitamin deficiency in young people

Military databases showed that 257 service men and women were diagnosed with MS between 1992 and 2004. The increased MS risk was especially strong in people who were younger than 20 when they entered the study. The researchers said that finding suggests that vitamin D exposure before adulthood could be particularly important.

Using blood samples to measure vitamin D levels "tends to nail it down in a much more reliable way" than studies that have relied on people's memories of vitamin D exposure, said Dr. Nicholas LaRocca of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

MS is among the most common nerve disorders affecting young adults, mostly women. Canada has the highest incidence in the world at 240 cases among every 100,000 people, according to a study by a University of Calgary team published in the journal Multiple Sclerosis in 2005.

Around two million people worldwide have MS, a chronic autoimmune disease in which the body attacks the fatty insulation that surrounds nerve fibres.

Ascherio said there's some evidence that its incidence is increasing in sunny regions including the South and West, possibly because people are avoiding the sun or using sunscreen to protect against skin cancer.

Some doctors think those practices also have contributed to vitamin D deficiencies in adolescents and young adults.

"There's no question that vitamin D deficiency is an epidemic in the United States," said Dr. William Finn, a vitamin D expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The MS study "is just one more reason to pay attention to it."

MS symptoms vary but can be disabling and can include tingling pain in the arms and legs, fatigue and vision problems.

Doctors believe it is genetic and perhaps triggered in susceptible people by environmental causes, including possibly some viruses. Vitamin D deficiency could be another trigger.

It's unclear how lack of vitamin D might contribute. In mouse experiments, the vitamin stimulated production of chemicals that fight an MS-like disease.

Multitasking destroys your ability to focus

"Multitasking messes with the brain in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires — the constant switching and pivoting — energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously
appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. We concentrate on the act of concentration at the expense of whatever it is that we’re supposed to be concentrating on… studies find that multitasking boosts the level of stress-related hormones such
as cortisol and adrenaline and wears down our systems through biochemical friction, prematurely aging us. In the short term, the confusion, fatigue, and chaos merely hamper our ability to focus and
analyze, but in the long term, they may cause it to atrophy."

Even 'smart TV' harms baby brains, doctor says

Programs for infants overstimulate and raise risk of Attention Deficit Disorder
It took just a few hours of watching CNN while cradling his colicky son to make Dr. Dimitri Christakis suspect parents should severely limit the time infants watch TV.

Now he hopes 25 years worth of research will finally prove it.

In one of the most extensive reviews of its kind, the Seattle pediatrician says infant-aimed DVDs such as Baby Einstein, and even award-winning kids' shows like Sesame Street, can do more harm than good to children under the age of 2.

In fact, the sensory overload of all those colours, sounds and sights – be it Big Bird or Baby Mozart – may be at least partly to blame for the tenfold increase in cases of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the past 20 years. It now affects between 5 and 20 per cent of American children.

He even accepts some of the blame. He believes scientists such as him have helped create the trend.

"There is now an obsession with having smart kids," Christakis said in a telephone interview yesterday.

"I think we scientists have managed to convince people, rightly, that these early years are really important. But the problem is we've created a neurosis around optimizing them and that's spawned industries that essentially now prey on people's obsession and fear."

Nine out of 10 children under the age of two watch TV regularly – some spend up to 40 per cent of the daytime in front of the tube – "despite ongoing warnings" from the American Academy of Pediatrics that they shouldn't, he says in his review of 78 studies done over 25 years – including his own survey of 1,000 U.S. families – in the January issue of Acta Paediatrica, a monthly pediatrics journal. In his survey, published in 2007, he found 29 per cent of families let infants watch TV because "it's good for their brain," while 24 per cent use it as a "babysitter."

In 1971, the average age that children started watching TV was 4 years old. Today, it's four to five months, he says. Now that there's so much scientific evidence that too much, too early, is "rewiring" infants' tiny brains he's calling for tough regulation. France, for instance, recently moved to curtail the broadcasting of shows aimed at children under 3, which has affected 24-hour channels such as Baby TV.

The sale of "baby DVDs" in the U.S. alone is now a $500 million industry. Millions of dollars in marketing by such giants as Disney-owned Baby Einstein and Georgia-based Brainy Baby, whose officials couldn't be reached for comment, have helped persuade too many parents – with no proof – that they're doing a good thing for their children, says Christakis. Studies have shown the opposite is true, that baby programs can actually delay language development (infants learn better from "live presentations") and harm attention spans.

The "flashing lights, scene changes, quick edits and auditory cuts" may be "overstimulating to developing brains," says Christakis, who suspected this 11 years ago when he was homebound with his colicky son and looked to CNN for relief. He noticed the baby was mesmerized by the light and sound show, and wondered why, since "he obviously didn't understand what was being conveyed."

"The truth is that we're in the midst of a large, uncontrolled experiment on the next generation of children. We're not going to know for years what the effects of all this exposure to TV will mean, in a scientific sense. But I'm concerned that we're not going to be pleased with the results."

This is, of course, an endless debate amongst parents, such as Toronto mother Naomi Lieberman, whose now two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Julie, tried the Baby Einstein DVDs and wasn't wowed, and Whitby mother Lesley Kelz, a graphic designer who works at home with two young children and considers TV "my friend."

"If there were deadlines, I've had to say, `Go watch TV.' I was in the same (family) room. But there's such guilt. That drove me crazy for so long," Kelz says.

Lieberman and her husband, on the other hand, try to stick to books, games and puzzles and are grateful for a toddler and a four-month-old baby who don't seem to care about the big screen.

"But I know they're going to watch TV eventually. It's just a question of time."

Are you racist?

Reactions to racism not as strong as we think, study finds
While most people believe they would not tolerate a racist act, a new study from Canadian and U.S. researchers found test subjects in an experiment reacted with indifference when exposed to one.

Researchers in Toronto recruited 120 non-black York University students for what they said was a psychology study.

Half of the students were each put in a room with two actors - one white and one black - posing as other participants of the study.

The black actor then left the room to retrieve a cellphone, lightly bumping the other actor on the way out.
The white actor then responded in one of three ways:

- saying nothing
- saying the phrase "I hate when black people do that" or
- uttering an offensive racial slur.

When the black actor returned, study participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire rating their emotional mood and then were asked to choose a partner for what they thought was the actual test.

The researchers found that in cases where the white actor made a racist comment, participants did not speak out, did not report any emotional distress and actually chose the white actor as a partner more often than they did the black actor.

These results stood in stark contrast to a second group of respondents who were asked who they would choose as a partner after having the situation described to them.

These respondents overwhelmingly chose not to work with the white actor when a racist statement was uttered.

Lead researcher Kerry Kawakami, a psychology professor at York University, said the study raises awareness that even people who consciously condemn racism might harbour implicit biases. (CBC radio's Quirks and Quarks will have an interview with the study's lead author today, Jan. 10th)

"People should be aware that maybe they have this duality inside themselves," Kawakami told CBC News. "They think they're egalitarian, they think they're fair, they think they'll react in negative ways towards racism, but that might not actually be the case."

In an accompanying analysis in Science, psychologists Eliot R. Smith from Indiana University and Diane Mackie from the University of California, Santa Barbara, suggest another reason the participants may have reacted to the incident with indifference.

Since they were knowingly participating in a test, they behaved in manner previous research has suggested experiment participants often do: that is, constraining normal impulses in an effort to be helpful and focused on what they believe to be the task.

Smith said the study illustrates that in certain social contexts, it may be easy for people to dismiss a racist remark as an oddity. Those social contexts extend beyond the role of experiment participant.

I'd like to get the thoughts of my readers on this study...what are your opinions on the findings?

"The failure of people to confront or do anything about racist comments is pretty widespread in the real world," said Smith. "People may feel uncomfortable if someone makes a remark like this, but it's rare they will actually confront them."

Researchers from the University of British Columbia and Yale University also co-authored the study.

Can consumers own their internet connections?

What's the best way to ensure "net neutrality?"

Tim Wu, the Columbia Law School professor and Toronto native who first coined the term, has a simple suggestion: customer ownership of internet connections.

In a study released last Thursday, the same day that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission issued a verdict allowing Bell Canada Inc. to continue slowing certain internet uses, Professor Wu suggested an access model that would allow home owners to purchase high-speed connections rather than renting them from service providers.

Under the "homes with tails" model (might want to work on that name...but that's just me) , customers would purchase a fibre wire connection to their home that would provide speeds far in excess of what is generally available in North America today. The fibre would be connected to existing open exchange buildings where a large number of telecommunications pipeline providers have equipment that forms the backbone of the internet.

Customers could therefore bypass cable and telephone companies, who today provide the "last mile" of connection between the exchange and the home, to access the internet and thereby video, voice and other services.

The model would also result in significant monthly cost savings because customers would only have to pay service providers for the true price of their services and not for infrastructure investment, the report said. The bulk of the monthly internet bill your receive today are to help cable and phone companies recoup the costs of building their networks.

Derek Slater, a policy analyst at Google Inc. who co-authored the report with Professor Wu, says the most important effect of fibre ownership would be that customers could pick their internet connection from more than the two choices they currently have — typically a phone and a cable company.

That increased choice at the exchange level would guarantee net neutrality because if one provider started interfering with connections, customers could switch to one that did not, he says.

"Competition would ensure that consumers were in control of what they choose to use, access and share without any undue interference," Slater says. "Competition would be a bulwark against interference by network operators."

(Although Google has an interest in increased internet usage, it should be noted that the company did not fund the report. Slater says he helped Professor Wu co-author it out of his own interest.)

The idea could have specific relevance in Canada, where service providers are increasingly introducing network management measures that critics say are running afoul of net neutrality principles.

In Ontario alone, the two largest internet service providers — Bell and Rogers Communications Inc. — are both slowing peer-to-peer file-sharing applications such as BitTorrent, Bitcomet, Shareaza, Kazaa and so on. Last week's CRTC ruling ensured that many internet customers in the province will be unable to find unthrottled service at least until a net neutrality probe concludes a year from now.

Test project underway in Ottawa

As such, the fibre ownership idea is currently being tested in Ottawa under a pilot project headed by Bill St. Arnaud, the chief research officer for CANARIE, Canada's non-profit advanced internet research network. The Ottawa project is adding an additional incentive for consumers to buy their own fibre by tying its cost to energy usage.

About 300 internet users rallied on Parliament Hill last May to protest companies such as Rogers and Bell. ( source: Peter Nowak/CBC)Under St. Arnaud's "green broadband" plan, the cost of the fibre connection is amortized over a five-year period and added to the owner's monthly energy bill.
The fibre costs the consumer two cents per kilowatt hour of electricity they use, or the equivalent amount per cubic metre of gas, whichever the case may be.

"Based on typical energy expenditures in Ottawa, a consumer would rack up a fibre cost of between $200 and $300 per year, or about $1,000 to $1,500 over the five-year lifetime," he says.

"The scheme would encourage lower energy consumption" St. Arnaud says, "because the fibre would effectively get cheaper as the consumer used less gas or electricity."

"Owning is not going to be sufficient incentive for the customer to make that investment," he says. "If we encourage them by this attraction of reducing their energy bill, saving them money and still giving them fibre, it's a bigger inducement."

"Monthly savings on internet bills would also be significant," St. Arnaud says. He estimates the true cost of service from Bell and Rogers to be between $2 and $15, with the remainder of the monthly $40-plus bill going to recouping infrastructure investment and profit.

Finally, fibre would count as an asset to a home owner. According to the Wu and Slater report, studies have found that homes with fibre connections are worth about $4,000 (U.S.) more than those without them.

Concept faces obstacles

The idea faces a number of obstacles, however, not the least of which is convincing consumers to change their mindset toward ownership rather than rental of their internet connection.

That's not an intractable barrier, the report said, since precedents have been set. Computers, for example, were rented out to businesses before companies such as Apple introduced the idea of an "owned" personal computer.

"It will be strange to people at first, but the line between consumer property and businesses has changed over time," Slater says. "What may seem strange or challenging today may become much easier tomorrow or a few years from now."

Industry analysts, however, say that's not such an easy obstacle to overcome because ownership also means unwanted hassles. "I can buy a water heater for a couple hundred bucks from Home Depot but I don't want the problem of it," says telecommunications industry consultant Mark Goldberg. "If I rent it, it's not my problem."

Maintenance of the fibre connections would also be an issue. Under the current system, cable and phone companies fix any problems that occur on their networks. With the consumer-ownership model, a "condominium" system where households pay monthly maintenance fees would likely be necessary, which would cut into costs savings earned through bypassing a cable or phone provider.

"It's not a free ride after you've paid for the fibre," Goldberg says. "You need to have a fibre manager, and they're not going to do it for charity."

Incumbents likely to resist

The concept's other major problem would be getting service providers to sign on. Cable and phone companies are likely to resist getting cut out of monthly internet access revenue while the backbone service providers at the exchanges may not be willing to go into competition with those firms.

"That's exactly what's happening in Ottawa," St. Arnaud says. "Despite already having strung fibre, mostly from streetside poles, to about 400 households, the project has been unable to find an exchange-based service provider willing to connect customers and go up against Bell and Rogers."

"The retail internet business in Canada has been destroyed. All you've got left in Ontario is Bell and Rogers," he says. "Nobody wants to make that kind of investment."

One possible solution lays in convincing a big internet service provider from one region to expand into another. Vancouver-based Telus Corp., for example, could get into the business of selling fibre connections in Ontario, where it has no residential internet customers. The problem there for Telus, however, would be the threat of repercussions from Bell or Rogers.

"Their concern is that they'll come back and invade them on their own territory," St. Arnaud says. "They like the idea in somebody else's territory, but not their own."

Still, both Slater and St. Arnaud believe the concept can fly if only one service provider can be convinced to give it a try. The point of the report, Slater says, was to get discussion of the concept moving and to encourage more experiments like the one in Ottawa.

"It's a chicken-or-the-egg problem. How do you get the service providers in on it if they're not used to this model, and how do you get people to want to buy the fibre if there aren't service providers there to begin with?" he says. "These kinds of attitudes can change over time. It's not an insurmountable obstacle."