Comment of the Day
Fr. Bill
Cambridge, Massachusetts 9 hours ago
I served a parish in Hawai’i for 10 years. Hawai’i is and always has been a multi-cultural, multi-racial society that welcomes outsiders and melds them into the community. We eat each others’ foods, celebrate each others’ traditions and marry each others’ children. What we consider normative is, I think, viewed with suspicion if not downright hostility by many in the United States who (in the words of Sarah Palin) consider themselves to be “real Americans”. Having been born in Hawai’i (way out there somewhere) is alone reason enough to make President Obama suspicious in the eyes of many. Trump just jumped on an opportunity to get face time on TV and in the news.
Having had Roy Cohn as a legal advisor and Roger T. Stone as a political advisor are reasons enough to question his judgment.
Here is a quote from an opinion piece in the New York Times that just says it all:
Wendell Potter, a former Cigna executive turned whistle-blower and a co-author of the recent book “Nation on the Take,” says that “insurance companies profit by introducing hurdles in the coverage and claims process.” These hurdles lead some patients to simply give up and pay or forego treatment altogether. He calls this the companies’ business model.
In other words, companies that make their pitch to the public and the government as being in the business of providing “coverage” for health care to consumers are in reality deliberately making it difficult or impossible for consumers to obtain payment for their medical care in order to make a profit. If these companies were not trying so hard to deny coverage, then maybe their coverage wouldn’t be so expensive. In other words, the insurance companies are paying a large number of employees to put up barriers to obtaining care; if they didn’t employ so many people denying care, maybe they wouldn’t have such high overhead expenses and maybe “insurance” wouldn’t cost so much.
I call for a completely different model for the payment of medical costs: all costs are paid by the government, which levies a progressive income tax for this cost. No one is denied care and there is no one looking to see who is eligible for what care. Estimates of insurance company overhead for the determination of eligibility run about 30% of total costs, all of which expense is unnecessary if all citizens and resident aliens are covered. Limitation of costs would be further enhanced by empowering the government to negotiate with drug companies for discounts on covered medications.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) has taken out a $2 million TV ad buy for Donald and against Hillary, using the Benghazi episode as a club. In the ad, a man portraying a veteran walks through a graveyard which appears to be a veteran’s cemetery, and complains that he served in Benghazi and some of his friends who served there won’t be coming back.
The Veteran’s Administration released a statement indicating that it was against VA policy to film advertisements in its cemeteries. The VA stated that the dignity of a cemetery was not compatible with any political or commercial advertisements. It also stated that the NRA had not asked permission to film in a VA cemetery.
Oddly, the NRA’s own policy and Florida state law do not agree with the concept of carrying concealed firearms into an establishment that serves alcohol. This conflicts with Donald’s repeated suggestions that the people who were shot in the Orlando nightclub massacre would have survived if they had been armed and had shot back at their assassin.
Here is a quote from the New York Daily News opinion page:
The group’s Institute for Legislative Action executive director, Chris Cox, answered Trump’s juvenile dream by saying: “No one thinks that people should go into a nightclub drinking and carrying firearms. That defies common sense. It also defies the law.”
The Daily News opinion piece goes on to mention that a security guard did try to engage the shooter but he was “overpowered” by the shooter’s assault rifle.
Yellow Flower
From an article in the New York Times (NYT):
“It’s a critical time for two important but still controversial areas of psychiatry: the search for a blood test or other biological sign of post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD], which has so far come up empty, and the use of recreational drugs like ecstasy and marijuana to treat it.”
A study supported by Pfizer had one of its centers at New York University (NYU), where 14 of the 50 subjects were recruited. The study’s lead investigator was Dr. Alexander Neumeister, who has resigned from his post following the confirmation of allegations that claimed irregularities in the study. The university insisted that no patients were harmed in the study, but Dr. Neumeister had clearly violated study protocols and some patients felt whipsawed. One complained that he had been forced to discontinue his regular medications several times in the course of repeated false starts of his study participation.
The basic facts of the case:
“Dr. Charles Marmar, the chairman of the psychiatry department at N.Y.U., said that people working with Dr. Neumeister had reported concerns about the lab’s compliance with research standards. Once some of those issues were confirmed, Dr. Marmar said, the university placed Dr. Neumeister on leave, “and suspended all activity, suspended access to all accounts. I took control of those studies.” Dr. Neumeister later submitted his resignation.”
The drugs used in these studies had similarities to marijuana; others resembled “ecstasy”, a synthetic recreational drug (“drug of abuse”). Some drugs are “fatty acid amine hydroxylase” (FAAH) inhibitors which are compounds that prevent the body from breaking down anandamide, the body’s internal version of the active ingredient in marijuana. Anandamide has effects in the body similar to those of marijuana, that is, delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and related compounds. It is believed that the body’s internal self-regulation is mediated by compounds like anandamide; THC mimics the effects of anandamide. The body responds to anandamide through the cannabinoid receptors.
Numerous experimental compounds have been developed that are inhibitors of FAAH, and some of these have gone through clinical trials. One of these trials in Europe was stopped after six patients developed severe side effects and one died. Other trials were suspended as a precautionary measure after this disastrous trial. Other compounds are still being actively investigated, but none has reached clinical use.
Ecstasy, on the other hand, is 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), a member of the substituted amphetamine class of drugs. Its only use is “recreational”, and it is said to have empathic and euphorogenic properties as well as heightening sensations. It also increases body temperature, blood pressure, and heart rate, and may cause dehydration as a result. Levels of serotonin, dopamine, and norephinephrine in the brain are increased.
Studies have been and are being done with low doses of MDMA to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. After its first discovery in the 1970’s, a number of psychotherapists used it “off-label” for various disorders, particularly PTSD. MDMA rapidly became a popular “recreational” drug among young people at dance parties. MDMA was first placed on Schedule I (“no accepted medical use and…”) in 1984 and has been actively attacked by the FDA since then. A number of adverse reactions and a few deaths were reported from “raves” (spontaneous dance parties.)
The controversial nature of the drugs (cannabis-like or cocaine-like in effect) makes research on human subjects difficult and dangerous. The case of the NYU study is an object lesson in the dangers of protocol violations. Dr. Neumeister was reported to have conducted “lax oversight”, falsified records (including forging signatures of researchers), and kept inaccurate case histories. One patient that NYT interviewed complained that there was no followup after the study was completed and he was “on my own” afterwards. NYU was said to have shut down eight clinical studies at its psychiatric research center and accepted Dr. Neumeister’s resignation.
There is a confused area between “recreational” drug use and therapeutic use to alleviate symptoms of anxiety, depression, and anomie in patients with known psychiatric disorders. In many cases, psychiatric patients will self-medicate with drugs, both prescribed and illegally obtained, for distressing symptoms. Drug use may relieve symptoms temporarily yet cause exacerbation due to withdrawal or overuse. Use of psychoactive drugs without close professional supervision can be dangerous; few clinicians and psychiatrists have the training to effectively supervise this type of treatment.
Custer’s Last Stand
140 years ago today, George Armstrong Custer and his batallion from the 7th Regiment of Cavalry were slaughtered by combined forces of the Lakota Sioux, Arapaho, and Northern Cheyenne at the Battle of the Little Bighorn (“Battle of the Greasy Grass” to the Sioux). Five of the twelve companies of the 7th Regiment were wiped out, including Custer, two of his brothers, a nephew, and a brother-in-law; the total casualties were 268 immediately killed and six who died later from wounds, with 55 severely wounded.
(A stone Buddha head in an antique shop)
The first major defeat for the prosecutor in Baltimore in the death of Freddie Gray has raised the specter of there being no policemen convicted in Mr. Gray’s murder.
The sad fact is that the prosecutor in Baltimore was attacking the wrong culprits based on a reasonable, but mistaken, theory as to the way in which he died. The video evidence immediately available, a cell camera view of him being dragged from the scene where he was tackled after a chase-down by a policeman on a bicycle, was on the news. This video shows that Mr. Gray was incapable of voluntary limb movement and could not support himself when he was first handcuffed and was being dragged to a police van.
What appears to have occurred (and it may take a medical point of view with emergency room experience to see Mr. Gray’s to us obvious paralysis) is that, in the process of being tackled after the policeman rode him down on a bicycle, Mr. Gray’s neck was broken. The failure of police personnel to realize this for a very long time was contributory negligence but the long ride in the police van wasn’t the cause of his injuries, only an aggravating factor.
The people of Baltimore will not be well served by the prolonged agony of these trials without justice as an end result. The policemen who were responsible for Freddie Gray’s death will go unpunished and the prosecutor’s office will be damaged. When will the people receive true justice?
The figures have been out for a couple of days, showing Trump only has a million or so in the bank, against Hillary’s 42 million; and the New York Times says that she has ten times the staff that he has. She has been putting out television ads all month and has $117 million in ads reserved (for from now until Election Day), as compared to Trump’s $700,000 in reservations. Either Trump is going to buy big in the future, at the last minute, or he’s not going to buy at all. Donald hasn’t aired a single television commercial since he became the last man standing in the Republican primary race. Hillary has aired at least $20 million in ads in the last month.
The problem is the lack of financing, apparently, leading to a lack of staff leading to a lack of financing. All sorts of problems have cropped up– for example, high level campaign managers have been refusing the offer to work for Trump, saying they’re afraid it would hurt their careers– and it doesn’t look as if Trump has anything on tap to work for him. Except that he has planned a series of speeches slamming Clinton, the first of which he delivered today.
Trump’s strategy is simple: he accuses Clinton of “theft” because she has run a large non-profit organization with her husband for many years and of being a “world-class liar” because she exaggerated the dangers facing her in a visit to Kosovo twenty years ago. The charges are inflammatory and not backed up with any reasoning or facts. No-one has been able to audit her non-profit and find “theft” however that is defined. Whether a non-profit that promotes political or humanitarian causes is inherently or indirectly responsible for theft of services or monies can be debated endlessly. What resonates is the charges by themselves, as if the evidence were obvious.
Trump is in the same position Romney was in before the Republican convention in 2012: burned out, out of money, and out of energy. History usually repeats itself, so Trump is very unlikely to win the race for president in November. We hope.
Cactus Flower
Here’s an article in Journal of the American Medical Association– Internal Medicine (JAMA IM) that shows a correlation between lunches provided to doctors and their prescribing habits… also reported in the New York Times (NYT)… I’d write more but my finger is really bugging me. Read the comments in NYT, many from doctors defending or castigating the practice.
