Back in the 1970s, when I was an undergrad student at the University of Missouri, I took a psychology course that required me to interview someone who worked in the mental health field.  A nurse working at the Missouri State Mental Hospital (on Arsenal Street in the City of St. Louis) graciously agreed to talk with me.

The woman (her name now escapes me) told me that she previously worked as a nurse at a mental hospital in Canada, back in the 1950s.  Many people don’t realize that in the 1950s there were very few drugs available for doctors to prescribe for people with serious mental illness.  Therefore, the hospitals often served as places where people with “mental illness” stayed for their own protection or to protect society from them.  Protecting these patients was often a big challenge for the mental hospital staffs.

The nurse I interviewed told me about two categories of patients that were especially challenging.  The “catatonics” were severely depressed, to such an extent that they literally stopped getting out of bed.  In fact, they lay in bed in the same position for such long periods that they were at risk for developing dangerous infectious bedsores.  Another category of challenging patients were the manics, people who “raced up and down the halls” knocking things over and running into other people.

The nurse told me about the imaginative “solution” to dealing with these two types of patients at her hospital.  The professional staff took one catatonic patient and one manic patient and paired them up, connecting them with handcuffs.  The nurse was dead serious as she told me this story.  She explained that the manic patient kept the catatonic patient on the move, thereby lessening the risk of bedsores.  On the other hand, the catatonic patient slowed down the manic patient, thereby lessening the risk of collisions in the hallways.  She told me that this handcuff technique was used on a regular basis at her hospital and that it was a “successful” technique.

I can’t imagine how frustrating this situation must have been for the patients.  I can only hope that none of the patients injured each other (or killed each other) out of frustration.  On the other hand, it must of been incredibly challenging for the hospital staff to deal with these serious types of mental illnesses without any of the psychoactive prescription drugs now available. 

I haven’t discussed in this interview with anyone else who worked in a mental hospital in the 1950s, but I would be interested in knowing whether the “handcuff technique” was a widespread practice, or whether it was simply a technique used by the Canadian hospital where the nurse I interviewed worked.

What’s the preferred treatment for Major Depressive Disorder?  According to this study by a large team of researchers, anti-depressant medication and exercise led to comparable results.  The exercise consisted of 10 minutes of warming up, then 30 minutes of jogging or brisk walking, enough to get to 70% of maximum heart rate reserve.

Richard Dawkins is famous for his criticisms of organized religion. 

In this new two-part video (see here and here), he moves on to examine spiritualists, faith healers, dowsers, homeopaths, astrologers and others who shun evidence in order to practice their unsubstantiated trades.

Much of this video is straightforward and succinctly edited. Dawkins restrains himself in his many conversations that appear in the video.  He lets the quacks speak their own words and he allows them to put their best foot forward.   Not that he doesn’t sometimes get in his digs, for instance with Deepak Chopra, who exhibits absolutely no understanding of quantum physics despite making millions on books in which he allegedly invokes principles of quantum physics.

The general themes are well stated in the video.  We are disparaging real science and medicine yet giving unsubstantiated alternative medicine a free ride.  Why?  Because we are a society that is, more than ever, willing to value private feelings over evidence.  Unfortunately, this makes us vulnerable to those who obscure the truth (e.g., charlatans like Chopra).

There’s this odd thing about alternative therapies:  the more we look at them, the weaker they look.  At least this is true for those who aren’t striving to believe in them.  Why do we do this?  Dawkins suggests that it is perhaps an evolutionary adaptation.  We have evolved to see patterns even when they don’t exist.  To be that other kind of animal, one that tends not to see patterns, would be too dangerous.  That might actually be a predator behind that bush!  For many of us, this over-tendency to see patterns has apparently generalized into a form of naiveté when it comes to alternative therapies. 

To see Dawkins’ encounter with Chopra, go to Part II, about 19:00.  To see the section on homeopathic medicine, see Part II at 23:00.  

In the meantime, spiritualist book titles outnumber real science books 3-to-1.   And one-fourth of the public believes in astrology, which serves as a sort of poster-boy for all of these shoddy disciplines:  What makes them “work” is that they allow us to keep thinking that humans are the true center of the universe.  All of the stars revolve around us.  Therapies work because we want them to work.  Ergo, no need for evidence.  Just keep believing . . . 

I know that numerous chiropractors swear by homeopathy. I even know of a couple MD’s who push homeopathic “remedies.”  It makes me shake my head because A) homeopathic theory (e.g., “the law of infinitesimals” and “the law of similars”) makes no sense and 2) homeopathic remedies and double-blind studies don’t mix.

Homeopathy is a painfully well-known placebo that millions of well-educated people just can’t bear to give up.  They know that it can’t really work according to the theory of its promoters, but they just can’t part from that juicy hit of placebo.

I recently ran across a science website with good energy, lots of engaging stories and commentors chomping at the bit.  It’s called Bad Science.   The post that most recently caught my interest is on homeopathy, more specifically a highly suspicious article in the “British Journal of Homeopathy” that claims that water “has a memory.”  Check out the comments for a rousing tour of the many failings of homeopathy.   One fellow apologizes for peeing in the ocean when he was young, because he didn’t realize the effect that it was going to have on everyone in the future.

For more information on the bad science of homeopathy, including a stab at one of my favorite psuedo scientists, Deepak Chopra, consider this article from the Skeptical Inquirer.  Here’s an excerpt:

Quite apart from the matter of how the water/alcohol mixture remembers, there are obvious questions that cry out to be asked: 1) Why does the water/alcohol mixture remember the healing powers of an active substance, but forget the side effects? 2) What happens when the drop of solution evaporates, as it must, from the lactose tablet? Is the memory transferred to the lactose? 3) Does the water remember other substances as well? Depending on its history, the water might have been in contact with a staggering number of different substances.

Homeopathy is only one of many forms of medical quackery being hawked to a scientifically naive public by researchers and public spokespeople who refuse to allow facts get in the way of their favorite version of snake oil:

The public is spending billions of dollars annually on sugar pills to cure their sniffles, hand waving to speed recovery from operations, and good thoughts to ward off illness, all with assurances that it’s based on science. Society has been set up for this fleecing in part by the media’s sensationalized coverage of modern science. Popular discussions of relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos often leave people with the impression that common sense cannot be relied on — anything is possible. Scientists themselves often feed the public’s appetite for the “weirdness” of modern science in an effort to stimulate interest — or simply because scientists, too, can be beguiled by the mysterious.

I wish there were more of a placebo effect associated with the reading of science done carefully.  Maybe then we wouldn’t waste so much money and energy on all of those other placebo-effect inducers, including homeopathy.

In an article from the Washington Post we learn that the United States has slipped in the ranking for life expectancy in the world to number 42. Douglas Adams aside, this is not a good thing.

The article lists a good many factors contributing to this fact, which seems paradoxical since, as stated, we spend more on health care than any other nation. I’m not surprised. Americas in general live as though built like Abrams tanks. We work hard, we party hard, and we loaf hard. We eat badly, pay no attention to our personal health, assuming that if anything really goes wrong “the doctor can fix it.” We believe, innately, that we’re indestructible and can do anything. This leads to careless habits. One factor cited is that 45 million of us lack health insurance. Which brings me to the peeve of this post.

There is a talk show mouth named Mark Christopher.  His show is out of Nashville, but you can hear him (in St. Louis) on KTRS 550. This guy is a Rush Limbaugh wannabe. And one of his horses to ride hobbyistically is an ongoing rant against national health care. He’s phobic about this. Every other day he has some little tidbit about how bad health care is in other countries that have a state health care system. He commented yesterday on this report in the Washington Post. Now, aside from the fact that he cherry picked the article, which cited factors he then went on to name as if the Washington Post had not, he displayed a profound case of Innumeracy.

He said (I paraphrase) that in a country of 300 million, 45 million people is a “drop in the bucket.” Meaning that we ought not overturn our wonderful private health care system (which is going to bankrupt us eventually) for so few who just fall out of the system. 45 million out of 300 million is 15%. That is hardly a drop in the bucket. To put that in perspective, that would be one and half out of ten, or three out of twenty. Fifteen of every hundred people. Which means that on an average city block (which I determined by standing on my street and counting) of roughly 35 houses with an average of four people per house, there are around 21 people with no reliable health care. On one block.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that among those 21 we have 2 or 3 cases of tuberculosis (which is a rising problem in this country). Tuberculosis is highly infectious. How fast might that spread among the various blocks around us? Another way to look at it. The worst battlefield casualties the United States ever experienced were in the Civil War, which sometimes reached 30%. They averaged between 12 and 18%. A modern army–-ours—regards 5% heavy and anything approaching 10% unacceptable. And fighting a war is by far more expensive than average health care costs. The unbelievable inability—or, more likely, carelessness—of someone with a national talk show to understand the most basic arithmetic in this way verges on criminal.

If 15% of our population dropped dead tomorrow, I assure you we would notice. It would not be “a drop in the bucket.” We are nationally anxious about 6 coal miners in Utah who may be dead and if they are, we will demand an investigation. We can’t 6 people dying in a mining accident. But in the sphere of health care, 45 million people become a drop in the bucket. The phobia that has taken root over this issue has become one of those insurmountable arguments that has run headlong into panic.

We Americans—I think all of us, it just depends on what aspect of our lives is under discussion—our suspicious of government. If it’s not national health care, then it’s Big Brother. Liberals, conservatives, and combination thereof, Americans can find something we don’t want the government to run. We have always been like this, it’s nothing new. And we are often stupid about it. But the world is shrinking and in so doing making it less and less possible for us to escape the consequences of ill-considered, knee-jerk prejudice. I don’t care how this issue gets resolved. Even if we do end up with some kind of federalized health care system, we will abuse it, it will cost too much, and it will still be bent to the service of a nation of people who act like they can do anything they want—play, eat, party, work, or loaf—too much and think nothing bad will come of it.

Which means that the most cost-effective health care system—prophylaxis—will not be the one that gets the priority. Insurance companies must be made to offer things like well baby care and prenatal coverage now. Taking care of a problem before it becomes something that lands us in the emergency room costs far less, but we don’t, for the most part, do that now. And we have a absurd and irrational devotion to extending Life far past any possibility of meaningful living, which is still where the bulk of our expense here falls (though obesity related health issues are rapidly catching up).

Whatever we do, the basic tenets of good health care will probably still be ignored by a people who think they don’t have to pay attention personally to their own health care. Which is reflected in the Washington Post article as well. But I am profoundly tired of the misinformation spread by both sides of the debate, and the incredible lack of grasp people who ought to know better have on the most basic aspects of problem-solving.

End of rant. You may now return to your regularly scheduled panic.

Once in a while, I tune into KJSL, a St. Louis Christian talk radio station.  I do this as part of a conscious effort to make myself listen to people with views that are dramatically different from my own.  Perhaps I will understand those views better if I take the time to listen more.

While I was driving last week, the station featured a show called “News and Views,” hosted by a man named “Dr. Larry Bates.”  The host repeatedly painted the future of the US as bleak, thanks to irresponsible financial policies by the federal government.  Because I have some sympathy with that general conclusion, I continued to listen.  It turned out that Bates was predicting the imminent financial collapse of the United States.  Although I doubted that conclusion, I continued to listen.

Bates then indicated that he is also a big proponent of religious “End Times.”  In short, he believes that Jesus will soon be returning to Earth in order to sort things out.  I have no sympathy for this religious view.  In fact, I find End Times beliefs to be irresponsible and destructive for the numerous reasons.  For example, I do not hold the Bible to be inerrant. Based on my study of the Bible, although it offers some good stories and some reasonable moral instruction, it is also rife with bad advice, contradictions and senseless violence.

“Dr. Larry Bates” wears many hats.  He claims to be an economist, publisher, editor, former member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, former bank CEO and a “nationally recognized expert on political systems and the Federal Reserve.”  Bates is also the President of First American Monetary Consultants, Inc. (FAMC), an organization that allegedly does “economic and market forecasting, in addition to offering a wide variety of other End Times services.  “News and Views” is a syndicated radio show, available dozens of radio stations across the U.S.  Larry Bates is thus well known in some circles.

After listening to Bates for only a few minutes, I learned that the United States needs to immediately and mercilessly bomb Iran because of what “those people” have done to “support terrorism.”  I also learned that we need to support Israel without question, based upon what the Bible says.  I persevered to the end of the show, saddened by and frustrated with the flimsy manner in which Bates attempted to support his conclusions. 

At the end of the show, it was announced that Bates was going to be featured at a half-day conference in St. Louis, I took the bait.  I thought it would be interesting to better understand the basis for the views of End Times (both economic End Times and religious End Times) proponents. The conference was called “Perilous Times: Significant End Time Events.”  I paid $20 and showed up at the Crystal Ballroom of the Renaissance St. Louis Grand and Suites Hotel in downtown St. Louis.  Here’s my ticket:

                              
At the registration desk, I received a folder full of information.   One of the pamphlets advised me that legalized gay marriage is a major obstacle to democracy:

When the US Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas last year that sodomy is a constitutional ‘right,’ the director of the lambda legal fund-a radical homosexual-agenda of pressure group-gleefully explained that this marks the beginning of the end to traditional marriage.

Another pamphlet advised that the United States is officially a Judeo-Christian nation.  It quoted William Penn: “Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.”  This pamphlet, printed by FAMC, “proves” that the United States is a Christian nation based upon the fact that the Constitutions of many of the states mention “God,” or “the Creator.”  As though non-Christian religions don’t believe in a “God” or a “Creator.”

There were numerous products displayed and advertised at the conference.  These products are the sorts of things you’ll need to have if you are going to be prepared for the economic and religious End Times.  If you want to prevent cancer, you need to load up on Glutathione.  The pamphlet says “your life depends on Glutathione.”  To buy it, contact FAMC, according to the pamphlet. 

What if you just want to make sure that you have access to “the most universal antibiotic” known to man, colloidal silver?  It’s a “tasteless, odorless, non-toxic, purer, natural substance consisting of submicroscopic clusters of silver particles suspended by a tiny electric charge placed on each particle.” According to the pamphlet, you drink it.  It kills all those pesky pathogens and protects all your good cells.  According to the pamphlet, it is useful for treating allergies, boils, herpes, stomach flu, lime disease, gonorrhea, bladder irritations and chickenpox.  The list goes on and on.   Colloidal silver can be used vaginally, anally or dropped into the eyes.”  You can even make your own colloidal silver out of silver wire, using the $189 generator you can buy from FAMC. 

Another pamphlet advised me of my right to participate in jury nullification whenever anyone is being prosecuted for a gun crime. That is because “corrupted, anti-gun prosecutors and judges are common.”  This information is distributed by the Fully Informed Jury Association.

After the economic collapse, you’ll need to make better use of all that expensive gasoline that all of us are going to need.  Therefore, make sure you buy the “Power Plus Mpg” additive.  Using this Power Plus, you can save 25 to $.50 per gallon.  During his talk (which I’ll discuss in detail further down), Larry Bates bragged that his 5 mpg SUV improved its mileage 50% (to 7.5 mpg) after he started using this Power Plus.  Those attending the conference were even invited to sign up as Power Plus distributors. 

Additional Pamphlets were available advising how to support efforts to find those “30,000 POWs [who] were known to be behind alive after WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf and War on Terror.”  There was also a table full of conservative-message bumper stickers.    

The nice old fellow minding that table offered me a chance to take any one of those bumper stickers for free.  (more…)

Last Friday, Governor Blunt signed a bill that mandates that sex ed teachers provide political affiliations and charitable contribution disclosures to the state in order to prevent any teachers possibly affiliated with any reproductive rights centers or groups from teaching about reproduction. It also prohibits schools from obtaining materials from organizations that normally provide family planning materials.

The White House approved Abstinence Only policy is now the official Missouri directive. This program is well discredited. Yes, it does cause the average age of first sex to increase, by about 3 months. But the incidence of pregnancy and disease from graduates of Abstinence Only is significantly higher within the same age group as survivors of real sex education.

This sex anti-education clause was attached to a bill that requires any office that provides abortions to comply with regulations pertaining to full Emergency Room facilities.

Blunt ceremoniously signed the bill on a cross-shaped podium in a church lobby in front of an audience of church leaders. Talk about keeping church and state separate!

Here’s the Google News round-up on this issue

Long before political Bush-bashing became popular, or even widely accepted, critics still jabbed him repeatedly for his speech. Books of “Bushisms”, videos of Bush’s misspeakings spliced together, and comedic reproductions of the man’s halting, confused language have always dominated the pop culture reception of the President.

I use the word President specifically because Bush didn’t always speak this way. As Governor, he had at least a modicum of eloquence, and certainly much more speech-giving poise. How could a skilled and well-prepared speaker become the awkward cannon-fodder mess of a President we have today?

Back in 2004, James Fallows, a former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, weighed in on the Kerry/Bush debates. Fallows ended up ruminating, however, on the great disparity between Bush’s past speaking ability as Governor, and his blundering debating skills of the present. The initial, layperson’s diagnosis held that perhaps Bush had developed some kind of dyslexia.

But dyslexia doesn’t just pop up, out of nowhere, to plague a middle-aged man. Upon viewing the in-depth comparison of young Bush’s and old Bush’s speaking skills, some physicians saw the clear signs of presenile dementia. The connection broke when one such physician sent a letter to The Atlantic, saying:

“Bush’s problems have been developing slowly, and that just a decade ago he was an articulate debater, ‘artful indeed in steering questions and challenges to his desired subjects,’ who ‘did not pause before forcing out big words, as he so often does now, or invent mangled new ones.’

Consider in contrast, the present: ‘the informal Q&As he has tried to avoid,’ ‘Bush’s recent faltering performances,’…’his stalling, defensive pose when put on the spot,’ ’speaking more slowly and less gracefully.’

Slowly developing cognitive deficits, as demonstrated so clearly by the President, can represent only one diagnosis, and that is ‘presenile demential’!”

This informal diagosis shook up the blogosphere, and inspired a few other doctors to give an opinion on Bush’s degenerating language ability. These distant, unofficial conclusions can tell us nothing for certain, of course, but they nonetheless pose an interesting matter to consider. To witness the “evidence” of presenile dementia yourself, check out this video, which compares speeches given by Governor Bush with President Bush.

If so, check out this post by Ebonmuse. It’s part of his Popular Delusions series.  Placebos (homeopathic drugs are one form of many) show up in many places . . .

What is it to be “sick”?   According to Merriam-Webster, there are two definitions:

1 : affected with disease or ill health
2 : spiritually or morally unsound or corrupt

This afternoon I viewed “Sicko.”  I was one of the many audience members at the theater who applauded at the film’s conclusion.  Sicko will serve provoke much-needed discussion regarding the American health care system.  Sicko invokes the second definition of “sick” as well.  My hope is that Sicko will also provoke desperately needed conversation, as well as substantive changes, to the American political system, where money acts as a virus and where the equivalent of white blood cells–the Media–has long gone into hibernation. 

I am not optimistic about any self-instigated change in the American political system, but perhaps Sicko will provoke the media to start digging into the millions of health care injustices in America.  These compelling stories are there for the taking.  Perhaps these many cases where health care is being unfairly denied to Americans will at least occasionally start showing up on the front pages of America’s newspapers.  Before Sicko was released, the undeniable fact that America is having a health care crisis was not considered newsworthy by the corporate media.  Nor has any real healthcare conversation occurred in this country since Hillary Clinton was bludgeoned into silence on the issue thanks to more than $100 million spent by healthcare corporations more than 10 years ago.

Our political system is wretchedly sick.  Moore makes this clear when he shows us a large room full of members of Congress, complete with little green tags superimposed to show how much money each of them has taken from big healthcare corporations.  

Sicko is not just about the uninsured.  It is also about those who have insurance.  For that reason, this film should be of interest to both the 50 million Americans who don’t have health insurance (18,000 of them die each year because they are uninsured) as well as the quarter of a billion Americans who do have insurance.

Our health care insurance system is horribly sick (again, in the sense that it is spiritually or morally unsound or corrupt).  American health care insurance is based upon the idea that you become highly profitable by denying claims to people who deserve reimbursement and who often happen to be dying.  They can always go to court, of course.  Then, when the jury renders a large judgment against the insurance company, the relatives of the now-dead insured person can enjoy the money.  How do those numerous healthcare claims get denied?  It’s easy.  Doctors hired by the insurance companies stamp their names onto denial letters that are cranked out en masse by insurance company computers. 

Keep in mind, that no insurance company executive needs to go around with horns or a pitchfork telling doctors to deny claims that they shouldn’t deny.  No one has to tell anyone else to screw the sick people.  All the insurance companies need to do is to put the right incentives in place.  In Sicko, Moore makes it clear that the insurance companies have implemented carefully crafted schemes along those lines.

As you might expect in a Michael Moore film, you will find some imaginative and effective ways of portraying complicated issues.  I don’t want to spoil the film by detailing any of these here.  Suffice it to say that you will get your money’s worth if you go to see the movie. (more…)

For those of you who waded through my post of last week about my day trekking through the federal bureaucracy on a quest for documents, I have two things to add. First, thanks for taking the time to wade. Second, I got an update from my friend. Remember those records that everyone told him were in “the Archives” in Kansas City? Two different archives, even, if I understood correctly, one in KC and one in Lee’s Summit.

Well, he found those very records, and didn’t have to travel further than the local library. OK, the main library, the headquarters for St. Louis County Public Libraries, in the genealogy room. He found the microfiche with all of it, and got through several years without finding the naturalization papers, which he knew he wouldn’t. So now he can call the helpful woman whose name he was given and tell her that he searched and didn’t find.
No one mentioned the library. Not one employee with whom he spoke, state or federal, knew about this. Hmmm. Secret files? Good thing they hid them so carefully.

On a semi-related note, another friend is wading not through governmental bureaucracy, but insurance bureaucracy. My guess is that every single person who reads this knows someone who has had to fight over health insurance. My friend’s son was scheduled for major surgery this week, the (hopefully) final step in the correction of a cleft palate and lip. As most of you know, clefts of this sort are birth defects. Rarely does a palate or lip spontaneously split . This boy is now a teenager, and has been through all of his corrective surgeries at a large, well-known and well-funded teaching hospital here in St. Louis. Their insurance is through the same university, as his father works there. Every surgery he’s had has led up to this one, the alignment of his jaws. They started when he was a baby, and this one had to wait til his skull reached full size. He’s 17 now, and the entire family scheduled the summer around this surgery, months in advance. He held off getting a job, because the recuperation for this one is tough. Annual trips typically taken in June were delayed, and they prepared to finally get this done so that he can finish high school and put this all behind him.

Days, literally, before the surgery, she received a phone call from the coordinator of the cleft palate team, telling her that the insurance had declined the surgery. They don’t cover orthognathic surgery, or the realigning of jawbones. My friend was utterly stunned - this has been in the offing for years, same insurance they’ve had since they brought their son home. After some tears, followed by the wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth, she took a deep breath and headed to the insurance carrier’s website, where she waded through all the pages she could find, but not anything about this exclusion. She took another, deeper breath and contacted the company by phone. Through extremely nice manners and by withholding all of the rage she was feeling, she managed to find someone to pull up her file and find the applicable section: They don’t cover orthognathic surgery, EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF BIRTH DEFECTS. Oh, really? So how exactly did that little tidbit slip by? Don’t insurance companies actually examine the cases they review? This child’s entire medical history revolves around his cleft and its effect on his sinuses, his face, his skull and his jaw. How did they miss that? I guess they find it easy to just stamp DENIED across the page when they see the single word, “orthognatic,” without examining it any further. Do they not know that clefts are a common cause of this? Are the case reviewers not trained in any level of actual medical terminology? Or was this an honest mistake, an accident caused by the random human error?
I really felt for my friend - she loves this child so much, she’s advocated for him for years, and now to have this last layer of intervention denied . . . I was simply furious on her behalf. The hospital has filed an appeal, and the insurance company has 72 hours to respond.

Hopefully, in a few short days the surgery can be rescheduled in a timely fashion - but no one involved is holding their breath, because this isn’t about what is best for this child - with insurance, it rarely is. This is all about how to save the insurance company $80,000.

And the thing is, I’m sure this is nothing compared to what many have gone through. At least they weren’t denied after the fact, after they’d unwittingly dived deeply into debt. At least they didn’t open him up and then learn, at the 11th hour as he lay in surgery, that they better not proceed. At least his life is not in danger. No, he’s just a kid, a straight-A student, a normal suburban kid, a child dreading a surgery he knows is coming. And they are just normal parents, trying to help him, by paying their premiums on time and doing their best by their child.
I’ll post again when she calls with an update.

Marty Kaplan describes the symptoms and gives a name to “the very real nausea that culture (to use a kind word for it) can cause”:  Attention Sickness. 

First the BIG THING was ANNA NICOLE. Then it was WAR FUNDING. Then it was SANJAYA, and vote-for-the-worst sadism. Then it was CANCER, and our national debate about parental responsibility. Then it was GONZALES, and US ATTORNEY FIRINGS, and MISSING EMAILS. Then it was IMUS, and our national debate about race. Now it’s VIRGINIA TECH . . .

Confronted by these attempts to get our attention, we are pigeons, B.F. Skinner’s pigeons, our nervous and limbic systems automatically responding to the stimuli. Short of retreating to Walden, it’s virtually impossible to escape the onslaught. . . . I can’t believe that the DSM - the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - doesn’t already list a category like “attention sickness,” a box on insurance forms that shrinks can check off.

This red-alert hype of continuous intentional distraction - OMG! LOOK AT THIS! NO, THIS! NO, THIS! - makes everything seem the same. It’s next to impossible to think proportionately, to give commensurate, differential, appropriate attention to the various info-storms assaulting us.  [I]n the great Skinner box of modern media culture, our higher minds are no match for the sparklies that stimulate us, and which — not incidentally — raise the profits of business and serve the agendas of politics . . .

I just don’t know whether there’s room in my noggin, or in our collective consciousness, for all this stuff, this indiscriminate mix of crap and content. But I do know that it’s really hard to build a progressive political movement, and to keep our eyes on what’s truly important, in an attention economy in the midst of hyperinflation — in a bread-and-circuses culture that is (in Neil Postman’s prophetic phrase) amusing itself to death.

This documentary by Penn and Teller characterizes the “War on Drugs” as “The new prohibition.”   The documentary is a no-holds-barred presentation that includes some coarse language.   Here is Part II and here is Part III.

The statistics are compelling.  Alcohol causes 50,000 deaths per year.  Tobacco causes 440,000 deaths per year.  Marijuana has yet to cause a single death.  It is simply not toxic.  Yet marijuana is the one drug of these three that the government condemns, while the others, both dangerous and highy taxed, are freely available.   Why?   Not clear, not consistent and not sensible, according to this documentary.

In the meantime, the government acknowledges that people should be free to consider whether or not they will use alcohol and tobacco, based upon an assumption that each individual can weigh information regarding the substantial risks of such drugs. When it comes to street drugs, though, the government thinks that people can’t be trusted to decide for themselves.  Further, the government continues to conduct a campaign of violence against individual users of drugs, throwing hundreds of thousands of them into expensive prisons, at a cost exceeding $20,000 per prisoner per year.  Actually, this reminds me of an important issue: why do so many people reach for street drugs (and legal drugs) rather than dealing with life’s challenges in more productive ways?  I suspect that it’s because we don’t seriously invest in our children while they are young.

Penn and Teller are not advocating the recreational use of drugs.  Much to the contrary.   Penn indicates several times that the recreational use of street drugs is “stupid” in almost all cases (I generally agree).  An exception is the medical use of marijuana, covered in Parts II and III.  Check out the compelling interviews, undeniable cases where the use of marijuana substantially relieved severe suffering.  To take a contrary position in the face of this evidence of constant suffering is nothing less than sadistic.

The conclusion of this documentary is that the “War on Drugs” is an senseless and expensive war that creates violence, gangs and black markets, as well as ruining neighborhoods and lives.  And it does all of this without creating any measurable benefit, contrary to the grandiose claims of those who support the “War on Drugs.”

Not very well, according to this article from Salon.com.  Here’s an excerpt:

Perhaps most troubling, the Army seems bent on denying that the stress of war has caused the soldiers’ mental trauma in the first place. (There is an economic reason for doing so: Mental problems from combat stress can require the Army to pay disability for years.) Soto-Ramirez’s medical records reveal the economical mindset of an Army doctor who evaluated him. “Adequate care and treatment may prevent a claim against the government for PTSD,” wrote a psychologist in Puerto Rico before sending him to Walter Reed . . .

The high level of satisfaction among inpatients as reported by Walter Reed is completely opposite what I saw and heard while tracking soldiers there over the last year. The soldiers I interviewed invited me to their bedsides in the lockdown ward. They handed over their private medical records. They allowed me to call their buddies, their girlfriends, their mothers. All professed to loving the Army, though some said their trust in the institution had been irrevocably shattered. All said their symptoms either stayed the same or worsened while at Walter Reed; two said they made suicide attempts. While it’s true that patients’ self-reports about treatment are not always objectively based, the repeated, bitter complaints I heard over the course of more than a year, in combination with conversations with civilian experts, cast serious doubts on Walter Reed’s approach to treating PTSD sufferers. It all convinced me that something is seriously amiss at the Army’s top hospital.

Today is the first anniversary of my dad’s death. Yesterday I came home from the crematorium “with me dad took’d under me arm,” to badly paraphrase the children’s song about Ann Boleyn. Death doesn’t frighten me in an abstract way. I grew up with Tom Lehrer music, Charles Addams cartoons, Hitchcock short story books, and other foils to the timid mortal. This package of charred and calcined particles I carry in the crook of my arm is merely a transient monument to the man in whom they once dwelled.

Although my father died a year ago, his ashes just now returned from the medical school circuit. He was first and foremost an educator, and this seems a fitting final use for his corporeal remains. It was also was his expressed wish.

“Ashes to ashes” is a lame phrase to someone whose head was usually far beyond the clouds. I grew up perfectly aware that my body was made up of ashes from the remains of a supernova, as is the rest of our solar system. The even my cell nuclei are literally composed of decayed nuclear waste!

Not all of the mass of these coarse ashes was actually part of his body during his life. Cremation binds oxygen to any atom that will have it, increasing the total mass from the proteins being torn apart and vaporized by the process. Sort of like how 6 lbs (a gallon) of gasoline produces 30 lbs of greenhouse C0₂

It doesn’t bother me that some of the mass of the ash wasn’t him. Atoms come and go from almost every part of your body for as long as you live. They’ve recently found that even some proteins in nerves are busily exchanging ions while maintaining their balanced chemical and molecular properties. I single out nerve cells because it was once thought that grown nerves remain unchanged until you die. Most other cell types are continuously being renewed or replaced. Odds are that if you can read this, the only molecules now in you that were there when you were born are in your nerves. Also a few minority organs like the technically-dead, transparent cells in your eyes.

On that note, statistically speaking the box of ashes (that the paper trail proclaims are indeed the remains of my father’s body) has atoms in it that were once part of pretty much any historical figure you’d care to name.

• Hitler? Maybe, they were both breathing in Berlin at the same time, with my father’s house downwind from downtown. But that was a very narrow window of opportunity for once-in-Hitler atoms to disperse and migrate to my father. Then a much longer time for him to shed those and gain others. By now, Hitler atoms have spread around the world.
• Julius Caesar? Much more likely because it went farther back in time, so Caesar’s volatile atoms are certainly spread all over the world.
• Moses? I’m about as sure of the corporeal reality of Moses as I am of Gilgamesh. Let’s compromise on the much more completely documented Pharaoh Thutmose III, who lived a couple of centuries before the biblical Moses. My dad-box probably contains a bit of him.

(more…)

The following remarks were delivered by Bernie Sanders to the National Conference for Media Reform. Sanders is the junior United States Senator from Vermont.  He is an independent, but caucuses with the Democrats.  Amy Goodman describes Sanders’ speech as an “alternative State of the Union.”

The full text to Sanders’ speech can be found here.  Video of his presentation can be found here.  Here are excerpts of Sanders’ speech to the NCMR in Memphis:

[W]e will not succeed unless you are there, unless there is a strong grassroots media, which demands fundamental changes in media today and the end of corporate control over our media. We’ve got to work together on that.

Now, you are going to hear from a lot of folks who know more about the details of the media than I do, but what I do know a lot about is how media impacts the political process, what media means for those of us who day after day struggle with the major issues facing our country and a goal of trying to improve the quality of life for all of our people.

And I want to spend just a minute in telling you what I suspect most of you already know. If you are concerned, as been said, about healthcare, if you are concerned about foreign policy and Iraq, if you are concerned about the economy, if you are concerned about global warming, you are kidding yourselves if you are not concerned about corporate control over the media, because every one of these issues is directly controlled and directly relevant to the media.

In terms of the war in Iraq, the American media failed, and failed grotesquely, in exposing the dishonest and misleading assertions of the Bush administration in the lead-up to that war, and they are as responsible as is President Bush for the disaster that now befalls us . . .

. . . If you were to ask me what the most significant untold story of our time is, in terms of domestic politics, I would tell you very simply that that story happens to be the collapse of the American middle class.   . . . [D]espite an explosion of technology, huge increase in worker productivity, tens of millions of our fellow Americans have seen a decline in their real wages and are working longer hours for lower wages. In fact, what you probably don’t know is that the working people in our country work longer hours than do the working people in any other industrialized nation on earth.

How did that happen? How did it happen today that a two-income family has less disposal income than a one-income family did thirty years ago? . . .  Now, one might think that this is an interesting story. One might think that globalization and disastrous trade policies, which have lowered the standard of living of millions of American workers, might be a story that should be covered. . . .

Now, what is all of this about? What happens? If the reality of working people’s lives are not reflected in the TV, in the newspapers, what happens? . . . (more…)

Here’s a site for scientists looking for help in presenting the need to vigorously teach evolution, when confronted by anti-science types. 

I keep falling into the trap that this should be easy to convince people to study evolution in light of the abundant evidence in support and the elegance of natural selection.  On the issue of whether the Earth is 6,000 years old, how about this:  If you believe in God, the universe would (it seems to me) to be God’s elaborate “clock.”  Dozens of physical and biological mechanisms are commensurate in suggesting that the Earth is far more than 6,000 years old.  Why deny these numerous testable clock mechanisms in order to pursue a narrow inquiry-ending view (one of many) of an ancient book of aprochraphal (un-testable) origins? 

But, alas, presenting well-established scientific facts don’t convince Creationists.   In fact, no evidence convinces them that the version of the Bible that they bought at Wal-Mart is the one true inerrant version, despite an avalanche of evidence to the contrary.  To me, it is a red flag when non-experts reject the experts when virtually all of the experts (those trained and practicing in a field) speak in unison.

Certainly, then, announcing broad-minded scientific principles is not enough to pry open most of those closed minds.  In fact, the terms “science,” “academic” and “intellectual” make many creationists bristle and turn away.  Turn on any 24-hour Christian AM radio show for confirmation.

This new site is sponsored by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Rockville, Maryland, an umbrella society of numerous other scientific organizations.  At the site, you’ll find many links relevant to evolution, of course. Noteworthy, though, are templates for op-ed letters, and rubber to the road strategies for discussing the issues with public officials and power point presentations.  These can be modified as needed, at the invitation of the Society.  This is not the only site a school board would need to fight the good fight, of course, but it’s a good start. (more…)

Dangerous idea, that.

If you were in charge–if you were King–what would do? What would fix? What would you ignore?

The Socratic ideal is the philosopher king, whose first act upon accession to the throne is to abdicate. The idea being that a truly ethical thinker would refuse to accept the responsibility to rule a nation.

Pity the world doesn’t work that way.

The problem with such systems–and there are many, including those proposed by certain self-proclaimed Libertarians–is that human nature refuses to cooperate. There’s a kind of Malthusian coefficient involved–population growth always outstrips the potential for ideal behavior. All such utopian systems are based on one fallacy that keeps gumming up all the works of any system anyone cares to name.

The fallacy is that We’re All Alike.

It’s a widely touted formula–the things that we have in common outnumber those that divide us; underneath we’re all the same; people are people. The Libertarians believe as an article of faith that if government got out of everybody’s way, we’d all be fine because people basically know what’s best for themselves and their immediate circle of intimates. Socialists believe (mostly) that without class structures, everyone would get along quite nicely. Communists like to assume avarice is an aberration that can somehow be bred out of the species.

If only.

It’s not so much that we’re so very different–but that we’re alike in such individualized ways.

The fact is, we come in all shapes, sizes, talents, capacities, points of view, prejudices, and predilections. We’re not the same in precisely those areas that make such blue sky hopes for the self-responsible, self-actualized, self-controlling individual a reality. Government ends up becoming a default necessity to keep us from each others’ throats as much as keeping the whole thing working in something resembling order.

Do governments go too far? Sure, often. Government is an imprecise tool, a blunt instrument. It’s reactive more than proactive. It makes huge blunders, overlooks details, stumbles along an ill-perceived path. In frustration–or under the same illusion that people are all basically the same (or should be)–many governments become autocratic, despotic, fascistic, tyrannical, brutal. They squeeze tighter on the reins in the futile attempt to force a population to conform to certain standards. Combined with a fervent belief that only They know what’s best for their country, you have all the ingredients for classic botched jobs.

Then there are those times and places where someone–a Hussein, a Khaddafy, a Stalin, a Hitler–does end up In Charge and sets about actually remaking the country according to their ideas. From the outside, occasionally, things look like they’re working quite well. There is Order.

Misery doesn’t have to be loud to be real.

But the hypothetical I put as the title applies to us all to some degree, because it is true that rulers rule by the consent of the ruled. Ultimately, when people–the euphemistic, legendary, all -but-mythical The People–have had enough, a ruler or ruling class just can’t keep them on the farm no more. France boasted one of the most autocratic, absolute despotism in modern history and look what happened to poor Louis XVI. Bad haircut day, one where the barber missed by several inches.

So. If I were in charge, what would I do differently?

First off, being an American, I would declare one day a year in which all classified documents would be declassified. (more…)

Michael Moore recently published this pledge in the Los Angeles Times.  I applaud each of these twelve points:

1) We will always respect you. We will never, ever, call you “unpatriotic” simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.

2) We will let you marry whomever you want (even though some among us consider your Republican behavior to be “different” or “immoral”). Who you marry is none of our business. Love, and be in love — it’s a wonderful gift.

3) We will not spend your grandchildren’s money on our personal whims or to enrich our friends. It’s your checkbook too, and we will balance it for you.

4) When we soon bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, we will bring your sons and daughters home too. We promise never to send your kids off to war based on some amateur Power Point presentation cooked up by men who have never been to war.

5) When we make America the last Western democracy to have universal health coverage, and all Americans are able to get help when they fall ill, we promise that you too will be able to see a doctor, regardless of your ability to pay. And when stem cell research delivers treatments and cures for diseases that afflict you and your loved ones, we’ll make sure those advances are available to you and your family too.

6) When we clean up our air and water, you too will be able to breathe the cleaner air and drink the purer water. When we put an end to global warming, you will no longer have to think about buying oceanfront property in Yuma.

7) Should a mass murderer ever kill 3,000 people on our soil, we will devote every single resource to tracking him down and bringing him to justice. Immediately. We will protect you.

We will never stick our nose in your bedroom or your womb. What you do there as consenting adults is your business. We will continue to count your age from the moment you were born, not the moment you were conceived.

9) We will not take away your hunting guns. If you need an automatic weapon or a handgun to kill a bird or a deer, then you really aren’t much of a hunter and you should, perhaps, take up another sport. In the meantime, we will arm the deer to make it a fairer fight.

10) When we raise the minimum wage, we will raise it for your employees too. They will use that money to buy more things, which means you will get the money back! And when women are finally paid what men make, we will pay conservative women that wage too.

11) We will respect your religious beliefs, even when you don’t practice those beliefs. In fact, we will actively seek to promote your most radical religious beliefs (”Blessed are the peacemakers,” “Love your enemies,” “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” and “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me”). We will let people in other countries know that God doesn’t just bless America, he blesses everyone. We will discourage religious intolerance and fanaticism — starting here at home.

12) We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and break the law. And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side first. If we fail to do this, we need you to call us on it. Simply because we are in power does not give us the right to turn our heads the other way when our party goes astray. Please perform this important duty as the loyal opposition.

You didn’t think it could get any loonier at the White House, did you?  According to this article by the Washington Post, Bush’s new appointee in charge of family planning is opposed to all effective forms of family planning:

The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as “demeaning to women.”

Eric Keroack, medical director for A Woman’s Concern, a nonprofit group based in Dorchester, Mass., will become deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the next two weeks, department spokeswoman Christina Pearson said yesterday.

Keroack, an obstetrician-gynecologist, will advise Secretary Mike Leavitt on matters such as reproductive health and adolescent pregnancy. He will oversee $283 million in annual family-planning grants that, according to HHS, are “designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons.”

AWC (full name “A Woman’s Concern - Pregnancy Health Services”) is a pregnancy counseling service that forbids employees from referring patients to birth control providers.  Here’s their brochure.  Here’s a quote from the AWC brochure:  “AWC staff and volunteers will not distribute brochures, books or other materials that advocate and promote the use of contraception.”  Check out the website of AWC. As you can see, they refuse to even acknowledge the existence of birth control. The reason they don’t mention birth control is because they’re totally against it. 

If organizatins like this had their way, new laws would be passed prohibiting the sale of the pill, condoms, the diaphragm and every other effective means women have to control pregnancy.  Some conservatives out there are really advocating for these horribly intrusive and counter-productive laws.  To make things even worse, these fake clinics are getting lots of government money through the mechanism of tax credits.

I’ve previously investigated some of these so-called “pregnancy crises centers” or “pregnancy resource centers.”  They should all be shut down for the fraud they perpetrate on their unsuspecting customers and for their terrible medical advice that has the effect creating lots of repeat customers (lots of future unwanted pregnancies). See here and here. 

In Slate.com, William Saletan writes that the Democrats should blast the Republicans for the irresponsible policies they push in the area of family planning. 

The solution is simple: Democrats are for reducing abortion without banning it. The most effective way, short of abstinence, is through birth control. Birth control isn’t about doing what feels good. It’s about taking responsibility.

This is no gimmick. It’s a model for a new, more responsible definition of responsibility. Conservatives have often joked, astutely, that for many liberals, social irresponsibility is a euphemism for personal irresponsibility. But the reverse is also true: For many conservatives, personal responsibility is a euphemism for social irresponsibility. The solution is to require responsibility on all sides. Birth control is a perfect example. Its effectiveness depends on technology, access, and use. Better technology is industry’s responsibility. Better access is society’s responsibility. Better use is the individual’s responsibility. If everybody does his or her job, the abortion rate goes down. Way down.

In the meantime, the new head advisor of the $238,000,000 budget to provide for family planning grants believes that effective family planning is immoral and demeaning.  Maybe we can’t yet reverse this appointment.  But let’s at least we should be honest about what is going on.  Let’s start calling Keroack’s organization the U.S. Department of Accidental Pregnancies.

This, from the Associated Press:

In a triple setback for conservatives, South Dakota rejected a law that would have banned virtually all abortions, Arizona became the first state to defeat an amendment to ban gay marriage and Missouri approved a measure backing stem cell research.

Perhaps the voters are expressing that they don’t want politicians (and other people’s religions) telling them how to make personal decisions, especially wrenching personal decisions regarding life and death, medical treatment, and how and when to have children.  Perhaps the voters are deciding that the Constitution does not require us to have politicians as our moral nannies. 

Go ask one of those opponents of stem cell research why it’s OK to donate a kidney.  They’ll look at you like you’re nuts.  They’ll tell there’s a person who’s about to die and another person with an extra kidney, and it’s all that simple.

In 2006 you won’t hear any protest that kidney donation is something Frankenstein would do. Stem cell research opponents won’t assert that the extra kidney constitutes a “human life” even though it is alive and human.  They won’t tell you that kidney transplants are morally wrong.  They won’t claim that a kidney has an invisible soul.

Instead, they will reassure you that a spare kidney is not a unique human being.  They will tell you that kidney cells are only “potential” human beings (reproductive cloning, illegal in most countries, could accomplish this).  As icing on the cake, they will assert that kidneys don’t feel any pain. 

At that point you’ll need to jump in. For starters, you might remind the stem cell research opponents that blastocysts (from which stem cells are harvested) are clumps of about 150 cells small enough to fit inside Roosevelt’s eye on a U.S. dime. 

You might then add that blastocysts are only five days old when the stem cells are harvested.  At this point in time, the stem cells are pluripotent: they can develop into all the different cell types in the body (except the placenta), but they have not yet developed into any specialized type of cell.  Consequently, blastocysts do not contain any nerve cells.  “They” cannot feel any pain.

Functional human beings each have some sort of brain.  Without nerve cells, though, human animals are only as “aware” as department store manikins.  (more…)

Who does more damage, A) mean