You know, Florence Nightingale was not the only nurse who achieved some sort of place in history. And some nurses, who feel that Nightingale did her best to destroy nursing as a profession (even though she is credited as being the founder of modern nursing), would prefer to see other role models.

Enter Virginia Henderson. Definitely not a household name, and not likely to be one, unless you’re either a nursing history buff or a librarian, or a combination of the two. But Henderson was a modern nurse, who tried to free herself and nurses from the “Nightingalesque” model, or at least, what was assumed to be the Nightingale mode of nursing.

Her famous definition of nursing was one of the first statements clearly delineating nursing from medicine. In 1966 she wrote:

“The unique function of the nurse is to assist the individual, sick or well, in the performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery (or to peaceful death) that he would perform unaided if he had the necessary strength, will or knowledge. And to do this in such a way as to help him gain independence as rapidly as possible.” She was one of the first nurses to point out that nursing does not consist of merely following physician’s orders.

She was a pioneer nurse educator, a prolific writer, and a staunch advocate of libraries, and Henderson believed that her most important contribution was compiling the Nursing Studies Index, which listed all documented writings on nursing produced between 1900 and 1959.

Virginia Henderson was born on this date in 1897, and died in 1996. What a lifespan. Imagine being around for the historic Wright Brothers first flight, and then being around for the first visit into space…to say nothing of the changes in healthcare that she witnessed, both good and bad.

Another fantastic story, as good as my post about the girl with rabies who recovered. A 37 year old woman in South Korea, who has been unable to walk or stand for 19 years is now–you guessed it–walking! A true miracle has been performed by doctors in Koreas who have allowed this woman hope of the life she led before an accident paralyzed her lower back and hips.

Now, the very words “stem cells” are likely to get some people worked up into a frenzy, even though there is nothing controversial about this story. Due to all of the media coverage, and hot passions on all sides, stem cells are becoming increasingly associated with embryos and aborted fetuses. However, in this case, doctors scientists isolated stem cells from umbilical cord blood and then injected them into the damaged part of the spinal cord.

Umbilical cord blood is about as benign as it gets. The baby has no use for it once born, and the blood simply gets trashed. So the stem cells were harvested in a completely non-conroversial fashion, and they seemingly worked a miracle on this woman. And this is very good news, as far as stem cell research. It indicates that umbilical cord stem cells are quite potent, and in fact, may be safer than embryonic ones.

“There have been many controversial debates on embryonic stem cells and also such stem cells are not practical due to their property of possibly causing teratoma (cancer of cells),’’ Dr. Kang Kyung-sun was quoted as saying in the Korea Times. He co-headed the team which performed the procedure.

Kang added that since cord blood stem cells are later than embryonic stem cells, they have little chance of causing the fatal teratoma.

I wish this woman many years of running, jumping, walking, dancing, and may she go as far as her legs will take her.

Again, I can’t take credit for that catchy title. It is the name of an upcoming seminar about, well, you guessed, how wheat can be detrimental to your brain.

Wheat? How can that be? Bread is the staff of life, they ate in the bible, it is the staple food in a chunk of the world, so how can it be causing havoc in my neurons?

Well, everything has a shadow component. Just because we think it’s good for us, doesn’t mean it is. Or, while some foods may in fact be very healthy, if you are allergic to them, or have an intolerance to them, they can be very deadly. People with celiac disease cannot digest wheat, along with a number of related grains. It may take years for the symptoms to show up, but when they do, the outcome is very painful and often it may take months or even years to get a diagnosis.

In this particular lecture, it is pointed out that over the years, both the average American’s consumption of wheat and the occurrence of neurological, learning and behavioral problems have been on the rise. And there is a link–many people with Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s, Multiple Sclerosis, migraine headaches, and childhood developmental conditions, such as autism and ADHD — also have sensitivities to wheat.

I’m not a big bread eater, and yet I’ve done things like go to the market, and buy a cornucopia of products, but not the item that I originally went there for. So what’s my problem? Hard to blame the wheat!

This is really an amazing story, but 15-year-old Jeanna Giese from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, may be the first person (that we have records of, anyway) who has survived rabies.

FYI, rabies is preventable, and it isn’t. There is a rabies vaccine which is available to people who will be working with wild animals, or in nations where rabies in rampant in local communities (like among stray dogs). There is another vaccine, which if administered soon after being bitten by an infected animal, can ward off the disease. Once symptoms develop, however, the chances of survival are really poor. According to reports, only about five people have actually survived after showing very very early symptoms of the disease, and all received the vaccine. But rabies is invariably fatal, about 100% of the time, if no treatment is given or it is given late.

Back in the mid-80s, when I was working in the pediatric intensive care unit at Miami Children’s Hospital, I had a patient with an unknown neurological problem. He was in a coma, on a ventilator, and not doing well. It was only after about two hours into the shift that one of the docs was nice enough to let me know that they suspected rabies. This was at the height of the AIDS hysteria, but you know, a patient with rabies was far more frightening to me than one with AIDS. I was wearing gloves when I went near him, but still, I would have been extra-extra-cautious had I been aware that they suspected rabies. Once I knew, I put on three pairs of gloves before suctioning his endotracheal tube, lest any of his saliva (rabies is spread though spit) touch my skin. Fortunately, he did not have rabies and eventually recovered.

Anyway, the doctors in Jeanna’s case knew it was too late to give the vaccine, so they tried something new. Nothing to lose, since the girl was doomed otherwise. They put her in a drug-induced coma and then gave her a mix of anti-viral drugs. The physicians are being coy about what the drug mix consisted of, and the combination will be revealed when this story appears in a medical journal.

Come on, guys, I can’t stand the suspense. What did you give her????

PS: Her family is convinced that the power of prayer certainly helped. The girl was bitten by a bat while at church, strangely enough. But a lot of people were praying for her, so who’s to say? And at this point, while optimistic, it is too early to tell if Jeanna has suffered any permanent neurological damage.

Like anyone who has ever worked as a nurse doesn’t know this? Even the martyr-angel types know this deep down, although they try their best to hide it. The San Francisco Examiner has given us some “breaking news” about the nursing shortage and how to fix it.

But while hospital administrators are calling for more nurses to be trained, the California Nurses Association, or CNA, has emphasized improving work conditions as the best way to attract more nurses.

Stress-related burnout and wages that lagged during the 1990s are two of the factors blamed for nurses’ dissatisfaction and, in many cases, departure from hospital wards altogether, according to CNA. The state Board of Registered Nursing reports that 15 percent of the 311,000 nurses who have earned licenses no longer keep them active.

Now isn’t that breaking news. Imagine that for a notion. Improving working conditions might keep people at their jobs as well as attracting new ones. But if you look around at all of the endless media babble, day in and day out, about the nursing shortage, all it keeps screaming for is TRAIN MORE NURSES! Train ‘em and then throw as many as possible into a broken system.

And then what? Do we just pray that they’ll stay and put up? Put up and shut up? Tie them into place? Of course, bringing in foreign nurses does offer that sort of guarantee, that you have your indentured servant for three years.

Anyway, I just thought that this article was interesting, however short it is, because it is one of the first that actually dares mention the unmentionable–that there’s more to this so-called nursing shortage than just hunting down warm bodies. That is, if anyone really wants to solve it.

I meant to post this yesterday, but got involved in my article about the true meaning of Thanksgiving, and the sugar spun fantansy which has evolved over the years.

Just a tidbit of medical history–yesterday, November 24, 1884 marks the first time that an operation was performed to remove a brain tumor. Just the thing you want to read about, as you’re still trying to digest the turkey and stuffing. But it is a landmark in the history of neurosurgery. Rickman Godlee, coincidentally the nephew of the famous 19th century British surgeon Joseph Lister (think Listerine, antisepesis), removed a 2-inch tumor from a patient’s brain. The the patient ultimately died of meningitis about a month after surgery, but the procedure itself was successful. And unfortunately, even though we’ve come a long way since Godlee’s landmark surgery, neurosurgery is still very risky business and carries a high degree of complications and even mortality.

We all have something to be thankful for, no matter where we are in life. And so, Thanksgiving Day. It’s nice to set aside a day to be thankful, and it is also so nice how Thanksgiving has managed to escape the blatant commercialism which has eroded Christmas and other holidays.

But I have to be politically correct. Sorry, but I think it is a tremendous disservice to the study of American history to believe in the sugar-pie sweet myth of the first Thanksgiving. How Pilgrim and naked savage sat down together to share the bounty of the earth, sort of giving the impression that the Pilgrims were running some sort of interfaith and tolerant society in the new world. Perhaps now, I would hope, school children are given a more realistic version of what actually happened during that first Thanksgiving.

For starters, how on earth did we pick the date of the last Thursday in November? The Pilgrims certainly wouldn’t have been sitting around celebrating their newly picked bounty at that time of year. The New England harvest was long since over, the potatoes stored in the cellars, the corn dried, meat cured–and if anything, they were busy stocking up on firewood and winterizing their flimsy little homes. There may have even been snow on the ground, which is not that unusual for New England, such as last year, when a blizzard hit Boston the very beginning of December. Harvest indeed! Dream on.

For those of us who attended school during the great era of political incorrectness, we learned that the Pilgrims left England for religious freedom. They were hard working righteous souls who struggled hard to make a life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and if not for the grace of the Indians living in the area, they would have perished. The kindly Indians taught them how to plant crops native to the area, as well as survival skills. In gratitude, the Pilgrims celebrated with a big Thanksgiving feast, and invited the Indians to come and break bread with them. And then they all lived happily ever after…

The Story of Squanto

This is one excellent website which gives an account of the history behind our first Thanksgiving. For instance, did anyone ever wonder how the Indian Squanto knew how to speak English? He is mentioned in all the elementary school texts as being such a good friend to the Pilgrims, but very noticably, he spoke the English language. Strange how he would know English, don’t you think? In reality, it was probably because he had been enslaved by the British, and had managed to escape back home.

This is one account:

Squanto was originally from the village of Patuxet and a member of the Pokanokit Wampanoag nation. Patuxet once stood on the exact site where the Pilgrims built Plymouth. In 1605, fifteen years before the Pilgrims came, Squanto went to England with a friendly English explorer named John Weymouth, and then returned with him to New England. Later Squanto was captured by a British slaver who raided the village and sold Squanto to the Spanish in the Caribbean Islands. A Spanish Franciscan priest befriended Squanto and helped him to get to Spain and later on a ship to England. Squanto then found Captain Weymouth, who paid his way back to his homeland. In England Squanto met Samoset of the Wabanake (Wab NAH key) Tribe, who had also left his native home with an English explorer. They both returned together to Patuxet in 1620. When they arrived, the village was deserted and there were skeletons everywhere. Everyone in the village had died from an illness the English slavers had left behind. Squanto and Samoset went to stay with a neighboring village of Wampanoags.

Who Were the Pilgrims?

The Pilgrims were indeed, victims of religious intolerance in England, but they, themselves, were just as bigoted. Strange how often that still happens, isn’t it. The Pilgrims, who were later joined by the Puritans, saw them themselves as the “Chosen Elect” mentioned in the book of Revelation, and strove to “purify” first themselves and then everyone else, like it or not. They were game for anything; lying, treachery, torture, war, genocide–all in the name of holiness, of course. The natives who lived in the area were not part of their grand plan, and only a few years after the great celebration of Thanksgiving, the Wampanoag was nearly wiped out by the Puritans–butchered, tortured, or sold into slavery. Oh, and we mustn’t forget the first crude attempts at biowarfare, when the English left blankets embedded with smallpox around the tribal areas. Take your pick, it was the Pilgrims’ way of saying “thank you.”

Perhaps their attitude can best be expressed by the Thanksgiving sermon delivered at Plymouth in 1623 by Mather the Elder. In it, Mather the Elder gave special thanks to God for the devastating plague of smallpox which wiped out the majority of the Wampanoag Indians who had been their benefactors. He praised God for destroying “chiefly young men and children, the very seeds of increase, thus clearing the forests to make way for a better growth”, i.e., the Pilgrims.”

A Total Hoax?

Another good website points out some other possibilities that certainly crack the myth of the friendly Indians sitting down with the grateful Pilgrims. I quote from it:

Thanksgiving’ did not begin as a great loving relationship between the pilgrims and the Wampanoag, Pequot and Narragansett people. In fact, in October of 1621 when the pilgrim survivors of their first winter in Turtle Island sat down to share the first unofficial ‘Thanksgiving’ meal, the Indians who were there were not even invited! There was no turkey, squash, cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie. A few days before this alleged feast took place, a company of ‘pilgrims’ led by Miles Standish actively sought the head of a local Indian chief, and an 11 foot high wall was erected around the entire Plymouth settlement for the very purpose of keeping Indians out!”

It is much more likely that Chief Massasoit either crashed the party, or brought enough men to ensure that he was not kidnapped or harmed by the Pilgrims, points out this article.

At any rate, what is known is that the Indians who inhabited the area were very nearly wiped from the face of the earth, and it was done at the hand of the English colonists. The Pilgrims and Puritans, who fled to practice their way of life in peace, could not allow the same for anyone else. Later on, anyone who did not adhere to the Puritan way of life was either banished from the colony or killed.

The real blessing is that these tribes managed to survive, however small their numbers, despite the efforts of the English settlers to wipe them out. And God does work in mysterious ways. Today the Pequot Indians, one of the tribes destined for destruction by the settlers, own the Foxwood Casino and Hotel, in Ledyard, Connecticut. It grossed over $9 billion in gaming revenues in the year 2000.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Miles Standish.

In case you were interested in the growing menace of nurse poaching, take a look at the article that I just wrote for the Lancet. It is available online, even if you don’t subscribe. Free registration is required, though, to access any of the articles.

Nurse poaching? Strange combination of words, you may think.

Most people would never equate the word “poaching” with nurses. But yet, it is a very real problem. At first glance, it really does appear that the world is suffering from an unprecedented shortage of trained nurses. Some 69 nations, reporting in from every geographic region, state that they are experiencing a diminishing supply of nursing staff. Even more insidious is the fact that 44 nurses’ associations and unions in 33 countries, primarily in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, all report that the outflow of their nurses to more affluent countries was a serious to extremely serious problem.

But truth be known, the shortage is really that of tolerable places to work. There are enough nurses living on our planet, but growing numbers are refusing to put up with poor working conditions and wages. In the U.S., a recent study found that 50% of employed RNs had considered leaving patient care within the last two years for reasons other than retirement, and 21% of them said they expect to quit within five years. Similar statistics can be found in other industrialized nations. But rather than improve working conditions, raise salaries, and treat nurses as something more than the hired help, industrialized nations are instead, aggressively recruiting replacements from the developing world. Welcome to nurse poaching.

And of course, one cannot blame nurses from impoverished lands for wanting a better life. They’re not treated any better than nurses are in industrialized countries, so why not go where the grass is extremely greener? Why work 14 hour days caring for 30 or more patients at a time, risk exposure to HIV, and be paid a paltry $70 a month, when your skills are needed in a safer and far more lucrative environment? But since neither the wealthy nor the poor care enough about their nurses to introduce real changes and creative strategies, they will continue to flee—out of the country or out of profession completely.

Take the following scenario: The U.S., which lies at the very top of the food chain, recruits nurses from Ireland and Canada. Ireland, once overflowing with excess homegrown nurses, is now recruiting from the Philippines. Canada is recruiting British nurses. Great Britain has turned its sights on South Africa and Jamaica. South Africa, close to the bottom of the barrel, holds out the carrot to nations such as Ghana, while Jamaica is recruiting from Nigeria and Guyana.

But the buck stops here, so to speak. Where does Ghana go for replacements? Or Malawi, one of Africa’s poorest nations, where 15% of the adult population is infected with the AIDS virus? During the past two years, 9% of Malawi’s nurses left the country, with nearly all of them heading to the UK. Nations like Ghana and Malawi see the writing on the wall. They cannot compete with overseas jobs, nor can they ever hope to attract foreign nurses to their respective nations.

Except for countries at either extreme of the spectrum, the majority function as both poacher and poached. Lose your own, entice them from elsewhere. Great Britain has become the most active recruiter of health professionals from developing nations, as its own nurses either quit the profession or go abroad. In 2002 alone, over 8,000 British nurses were lost to overseas employment—the highest number in ten years.

The practice of nurse poaching has raised the ire of the World Health Organization (WHO), countless national nursing organization, ethicists, and even world leaders—Nelson Mandela harshly reprimanded the UK for depleting South Africa of its much needed health care workers. And on a simplistic level, it does appear quite cut and dry. The rich should not be stealing from the poor. There is enough inequity on the planet. Poaching is wrong, it’s bad, it’s evil. But as with most things in this world, the real situation is far more complex and disturbing.

There are about 11 million nurses worldwide, with 2.7 million in the U.S. alone. Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Director General of the WHO, has publicly stated that nurses make up the backbone of health care systems. The salt of the earth, the selfless Florence Nightingale incarnates who care for the sick and dying and provide comfort to the infirm. I’ve been told many times over what a noble profession nursing is, and then I flinch and grind my teeth when I hear the words angel and nurse spoken in the same sentence.

Herein lies the basic problem. Nurses are not fluttering apparitions, but instead, human life forms who cannot survive by compassion alone. All health care systems, whether they be in Mozambique, Honduras, or the U.S., have one thing in common; the pathetic treatment of their nursing staff. Worldwide, nurses are underpaid, treated much like the hired help, and then discarded when they can no longer be of use.

Image: Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine

My previous post today was about a move to set back women’s reproductive rights to pre-Margaret Sanger (founder of the first birth control clinic in the US), let alone pre-Roe vs. Wade. However, I just came across a tidbit of news that brings a little good cheer to the otherwise dismal state of things. Today is the anniversay of the founding of the Female Medical Educational Society of Boston. In 1848, six women go together and decided to form their own medical society, since they were banned from the AMA.

However, this date is a little bit curious, considering the veritable dearth of female doctors in the US at the time. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until 1849–a year later–that the first woman actually graduated from an American medical school–Elizabeth Blackwell, who is generally credited as being the first American female physician. Blackwell began medical school in 1847, and so was in training when this society formed.

I tried to find more information about this, as to who the six women were that founded this organization, but to no avail. Since there were no American trained female physicians at the time, I would guess that they either weren’t doctors or had perhaps been trained in Europe.

Also in 1848, the first women’s medical school opened. The New England Female Medical College, the predecessor of the Boston University School of Medicine, was founded by Samuel Gregory. His reasons were not based on ideas of equality for women in the professions, but rather for more Victorian reasons of modesty. He heartily disapproved of male physicians attending childbirth, as in order to deliver a baby, the man had to, uh-hum, peer into a woman’s private parts. The early curriculum focused on midwifery, so while it was a start, it really wasn’t what you’d call a comprehensive medical education. Then again, early medical education in general was a far cry from modern training.

So, women are still moving forward, as least when it comes to medical education. Take the history of Stanford University’s Medical School. In 1877, Alice Higgins was the first woman to graduate from the Medical College of the Pacific, which was renamed Cooper Medical College in 1882, and acquired by Stanford in 1908. In 1995, 120 years later, 42% of Stanford’s medical students are women.

Catchy heading, don’t you think? Unfortunately, I can’t take credit for it, the eye-catcher that it is. It is a sentence from an editorial in today’s New York Times, which by the way, is titled with the more mundane “Rolling Back Women’s Rights.” It is interesting how at a time when women’s rights are advancing around the globe, the only nations that are going backwards are places like Afghanistan under the Taliban–and the United States. Is that who we align ourselves with, the Taliban? Are they our role model? One would think that we could do a lot better than that. Even in Saudi Arabia, a nation that most Americans equate with oppression towards the female gender, women are moving forward and not backwards.

Anyway, the editorial is focused on a nasty little addendum that was secretly tucked into the mammoth $388 billion budget measure just approved by the House and Senate. The legislation has absolutely nothing to do with the budget measure, but the neocon Republicans stuck it in there to assure its passage. How dishonest can you get? The rest of the House and Senate have to vote for the budget, and hiding unrelated provisions in larger bills is a tactic that should not be legal.

In essence, it tells health care companies, hospitals and insurance companies they are free to ignore Roe v. Wade and state and local laws and regulations currently on the books to make certain that women’s access to reproductive health services includes access to abortion.

It remains to be seen exactly how the measure will work in practice. But the intention, plainly, is to curtail further already dwindling access to abortion and even to counseling that mentions abortion as a legal option. It denies federal financing to government agencies that “discriminate” against health care providers who choose for any reason to disregard state mandates to offer abortion-related services. This represents a vast expansion of the “conscience protection” that federal law currently gives to individual doctors who do not want to undergo abortion training.

What is even more disturbing than this legislation is the way they went about it. Why not just present it as a bill in and of itself and allow it to be voted on? Hiding it under the mounds of thousands of pages of an unrelated document seems rather cowardly to me. If you’re so keen on this, then bring it to the forefront and defend your views. Surely if it’s such a good thing, then there shouldn’t be any problem getting it passed.

At any rate, Barbara Boxer (D-CA), God bless her, wrenched a promise from the Senate majority leader Bill Frist, that there will be a direct vote on this bill. Speaking of Frist, the man is a doctor and always says that he has the health interests of Americans at heart. Well, the passage of this sticky piece of law certainly says just the opposite.

When time is short, there’s always a beautiful little face to fill an empty space. I had great plans to post some interesting news which confirms my theory of the so-called nursing shortage, but I really need to get this article about preventing antibiotic resistance completed. I dawdled for a few days on it and now the deadline is looming.

So here, look at that little face. If I get done I may still post today. If not, manana por la manana.

I got this in an email, and found it very interesting. It sort of shows where priorities are these days:

As violence in Iraq spreads,
As the dollar plunges,
As money runs out for the National Park Service,
As global warming infects our environment,
As the Tongass National Park will soon be denuded of trees,
As the deficit deepens,
As more children are uninsured for health care,
the New Congress is passing legislation that will allow doctors and health providers to be excused from training in abortion procedures which could include miscarriages, etopic pregnancies, tubal ligations, and other reproductive problems. I wonder if these Senators have similar plans for vasectormies and prostrate problems.

Perhaps Congress feels that this war on women will so popular that we will be distracted from all our other problems.

Regardless how one feels about terminating a pregnancy, not training future doctors how to perform these procedures is certainly a dangerous precedent. For example, sometimes a D&C, one of the procedures used to terminate pregnancies, is used for a wide variety of other reproductive health problems, including incomplete miscarriages. Are we going to deskill physicians just because this is a procedure that can be used to terminate a pregnancy? If a woman is bleeding heavily from a fibroid, for example, and shows up at an ER., what will they tell her? Sorry, madam, but our doctor on call never learned how to take care of that.

Also, this obsession with abortion is mind boggling, considering the pressing problems facing our country. Especially, health problems. Why don’t they put this much passion, time, energy, effort and money into legislation that will help the children who are already here and living in this country? Child welfare services in most states and cities are pathetically underfunded, understaffed, have archaic equipment, and as a result, children slide through the cracks ever day. And not only do they slide through cracks, they hit rock bottom and many end up dead. Little corpses, dead for no apparent reason, except for the incompetence of child welfare services. And again, much of the incompetence lies within cuts in services, funding, poor salaries for caseworkers (which leads to an inability to attract competent people to the task) and so on.

This is just one example. We have children living on the street, children without health insurance, children who are hungry, but yet, Congress is concerned over whether or not doctors should be able to refuse training in certain procedures which are part of their professional training.

Where would we be without antibiotics? True, they’ve been overused, abused, misused, inappropriately used, not used often enough, the wrong kind used too often and the right one not often enough…and today we are experiencing a major health crisis stemming from our poor use of antibiotics. Sometimes called superinfections, they are caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria. Never did scientists and doctors dream that tiny microbes would outsmart us, but they have. As fast as we can develop new agents, they become resistant. And many of them are multidrug resistant, and reports have filtered in of pathogens who are resistant to everything.

Today is an anniversary of sorts in the history of antibiotics. Actually, we could say that it is the very beginning of the pharmaceutical class of drugs known as antimicrobial agents. Their birthday, so to speak. On his day in 1939, Howard Florey, an Australian pathologist, applied to the Rockefeller Foundation to study penicillin and other bacteria.

Penicllin had actually first been identified in the 19th century, and later by Alexander Fleming in 1928, but not much came of it until Florey began his tenure. He transformed penicillin from an interesting observation into a marketable drug that arrived just in time to treat thousands during WW II.

Florey shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in physiology with biochemist Ernst Chain, who worked with him on producing penicillin, and with Alexander Fleming, who had stumbled upon it years before.

Anyway, happy birthday penicillin. Ironic that at the moment, I am writing an article about preventing infections due to antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Okay, here’s one that’s not likely to make you breathe any easier–literally. This excerpt comes from the Asheville Global Report No. 278, May 13-19, 2004, and it was reported by Project Censored. For those of you unfamilar with Project Censored, their mission is to: Educate people about the role of independent journalism in a democratic society and to tell The News That Didn’t Make the News and why.

Basically, so much real news never gets reported or gets minimal coverage. And the same time, fluffy nonsense makes the front page. An example is the death of Laci Peterson. While her murder was tragic, as is all murder, did it really need to be front page news for weeks on end–especially in areas far removed from her hometown? Was it really relevant to people living in Seattle, for example, to be reading about Laci’s disappearance week after week, especially when there were local hometown murders and tragedies, as well as national news? At the same time Laci Peterson’s face was on the front page, news of a very tense situation with North Korea (ie, a nation run by an unstable fanatic and one that is equipped with nuclear weapons) was tucked away on page 16.

Anyway, Project Censored comes out with a book every year, listing the top stories which didn’t make the news, or make them in any sort of significant way. The real news which was snuffed out, in favor of the latest reports on Britney Spears marriage, or on who J. Lo was shacking up with.

This excerpt I found very interesting, especially for those of us suffering from asthma and other respiratory problems. That equals millions of Americans, all of whom can expect to breathe a little less easier during the next four years.

Corporations Granted Relief from Pollution Regulations

The thirty companies that own most of the dirtiest power plants in the country have raised 6.6 million for President Bush and the Republican National Committee since 1999, and were given relief from pollution regulations that would have cost them billions of dollars. This is because these companies hired at least sixteen lobbying firms, which met with Dick Cheney’s energy task force to help formulate the country’s energy and pollution policies. In addition, some plant industry executives were given key positions at the Environmental Protection Agency, which has attempted to exempt many of these corporations from the pollution control requirements by relaxing the rules. Some of the emissions that these companies release include sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide, which pose higher risks to Americans in terms of asthma attacks, lung ailments, and premature death.

Source: Asheville Global Report No. 278, May 13-19, 2004

Not five minues after I sat here writing about a dark and dreary Seattle day, and how I was Florida dreaming, the sun came out. True, it was chilly and windy, but sunny. It streamed through the window of my office and felt so good on my face.

But speaking of the sun, it is interesting how controversial sunlight has become. There is so much media hype about the dangers of the sun, that some people are literally afraid to spend any time at all outside. A few years ago, when I was working on a story about having a healthy pregnancy, my editor was horrified when I suggested getting out into natural daylight for about 15 minutes without sunscreen. This is so that the sun can penetrate through the skin, and generate the production of vitamin D. With sunscreen on, the process doesn’t happen.

People used to be outdoors far more than we are now, and the rates of skin cancer were lower than they are now. So there is a median somewhere, a truth which lies between sun worshippers and cave dwellers.

True, sunlight can trigger free radical activity and the amount of free radicals does increase with the intensity of the sunshine. Free radicals can cause skin to age prematurely, wrinkle, and sunburn, and can damage DNA and cause skin lesions. But spending one’s life under flourescent lighting isn’t a good idea either. Sunlight makes you feel good, it makes me feel good. It wasn’t all that long ago when some children’s hospitals were designed to allow as much natural light in as possible, because doctors and nurses noticed how it helped accelerate the healing process. Sunlight was used with adult patients as well. These days, patients are lucky if they even get a window in their room.

There’s been published data which shows a strong relationship between distance from the sun and death rates of colon and breast cancers. In those countries farther away from the equator, the higher the death rate; in those closer to the sun, the lower the rate. In European countries such as the UK, Netherlands, Germany and Austria, colon death rates, per 100,000 people, published in 1999, are about 16; in Spain, Greece, Chile, Florida, Mexico and Hawaii, they are between 5.5 and 8.5. Of course, there are other factors to be considered, but still, it is interesting. Is it because the climate is nicer, that these people spend more time out of doors? That their winters are not so dark and cold, and that they have more sunlight year round? And that sunlight really does aid in healing, and that it’s not just an old wives tale?

Anyway, I do love dark and rainy days. They keep me indoors, so I can get work done. But I’ve noticed now, after living in Seattle for four years, that long stretches of gray days do begin to get to me. I got tired of it being sunny so much when I lived in LA. Now I think I’m California dreaming again…

These past few days, actually, since I’ve been home from Florida, I wake up in the morning thinking, “Is it morning? Is it daylight? Then why hasn’t the sun come up?”

The sun has risen, although you’d almost never know it. Those dark and dreary winter days are here already. The kind of days when you’re sure the end is near, that the Apocalypse is here, and the earth will end within the next five minutes.

In Florida, I was up and wide awake about 6ish every morning, but here, back in Seattle, I can barely open my eyes before 8. I feel so groggy, so lethargic, like a sloth hanging upside down from a tree branch. It could be that it was already light in Florida and the air was warm, making it more conducive to getting up. Here, I just want to pull the comforter up over my face, and turn over.

Today is windy, chilly, with very black clouds hovering over my house. A bit of sun is trying to peak through, although it isn’t very successful. Seattle has a reputation for being rainy, but in reality, cities like New York and Boston get more rainful per annum that Seattle. While there is an occasional downpour, the rainfall in Seattle tends to be more of a drizzle, a mist, and gives the impression that a lot of it is coming down. The long gray winters give the illusion of a lot of rain, even if the ground is dry.

When I first moved up here, I looked around the city in disbelief. It was mid-September, and everything seemed rather dry and crunchy. Brown and parched, thirsty land begging for a drink of water. Where is the Emerald City that everyone talks about, I wondered. Where were the mountains? I know I had seen them from the air, circling the city. Even sinister Mt. Rainier was hidden from view. The air was still, hot, dry, and hazy.

I thought I was still in California.

Then the rains arrived. The haze cleared and the mountains returned, the earth turned green, but that heavy winter darkness was like nothing I had ever seen before. Even New York winters weren’t like this. It certainly wasn’t as cold as New York, but is sure was a lot darker.

Now I’m looking out the window, trying to get motivated to start working, get dressed, and maybe go outside. I’m Florida dreaming, of warm air and bright sun. Maybe it is time to move back to a warmer climate. Then again, I’ve been thinking a lot about moving to Montreal…

What Makes Kids Sick?

In case you weren’t already concerned about tax dollars disappearing down the unknown black hole, here’s another reason to try to cry; the U.S. government is launching a monstrous sized study to find out what makes children sick. They are going to track 100,000 children from birth to age 21, to find out the culprits behind their many illnesses. The National Children’s Study is going to give us answers, and will include children and families from different areas of the country, from varied backgrounds, and of different family types.

How much will this cost, I wonder. I looked at the website, but alas, that seems to be a secret. Of course, the question begs to be answered, why is this being done?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. We already know what many, if not most, of the problems are. A two year old child who is already guzzling Coke and cookies is not laying a foundation for good health. A three year old growing up beside a toxic dump, and breathing in fumes from a power plant (and thank you, George Bush, for pushing through legislation which relaxes restrictions on toxic air emissions) stands a good chance of doing some serious damage to that little body.

We already know what is ailing our children. There is overwhelming data that has; equated drinking pasteurized cow’s milk with allergies, ear infections and digestive problems; equated the standard American junk food diet with obesity, type 2 diabetes, atherosclerosis (yes, fatty plaque has been seen in tender young arteries), attention deficit disorder and other behavioral problems; equated hours of television watching and playing computer games with lack of exercise, fresh air–which helps lead to obesity and other health problems; equated overprescribing of antibiotics with resistant bacteria; equated exposure to air and household pollutants with increased rates of asthma and other lung problems (rates of asthma have been skyrocketing)….and so on.

Basically, kids are having all sorts of health problems and suffering from rare and strange illnesses that were virtually unknown a half century ago. For example, type 2 diabetes is overwhelmingly a disease of middle and older age. Not so anymore. The rates in children are rising at an astounding pace, and in turn, predisposes them to all of the complications of diabetes. You don’t need a zillion dollar study, or be a rocket scientist to realize that the primary culprits are diet and lack of exercise. And by diet, I mean not only fatty and poor quality foods, but also the cornucopia of additives which can be found in many processed offerings. Read the label on your favorite box of instant gratification. You will need an organic chemistry textbook to decipher what is in it.

I have to look at the conspiracy side of things, and say that this study is meant to be the definitive word on things, and that it will “clear” any misgivings about feeding our children the junk currently hiding in our food supply. Already the U.S. government got itself into a tizzy, when the World Health Organization issued a statement about sugar, and how detrimental it is to health. Protecting the sugar industry is more important than health, and so, I can’t see how this study is going to point a finger at the real culprits. Pesticides? No problem. Artificial coloring of dubious nature? It’s good for you. Sludge from raw sewage? Well that’s okay in small quanities. Irradiation? No problem. Hormones in meat? They’ll help you grow big and strong.

What is sad is that has been the government’s attitude towards all of the things I just mentioned. Additives which have been banned in other countries, such as the bovine growth hormone added to milk (banned in the European Union, Canada and Australia because data showed it to be unsafe) is available here.
And not only is some milk treated with it, the FDA waged a tragic war trying to keep dairy companies from even labeling their products as free of that hormone.

So I rest my case. I don’t believe that a study of children’s health, sponsored by our government, can be in any way objective, or tell us anything that we don’t already know. So instead of using that same money to actually do something constructive about children’s health problems, they are throwing it into some useless study that will drag on for two decades.

Well maybe he did win the election, but it doesn’t mean that all of America suddenly embraces his bizarre theories of life and world. Take stem cells. Not to get into an argument over the pros and cons, morals and pseudo-morals, and ifs and whats, but it does seem that preserving pre-life in a petri dish is not really the highest priority of most people. And now that Bush is going to be with us for another 4 years (although the same was said about Nixon), it seems to be having the opposite effect.

Renegades–California and Harvard

One anti-Bush outcome of the election was in California. Not only did Californians reject Bush himself, but they also approved a $3 billion ballot measure this week to fund stem-cell research. California voters’ approval of Prop 71 sends a clear message of what the most populous state thinks of Bush’s policy–okay to kill Iraqi children and okay to cut off family planning services which lead to an increase in the abortion rate, and okay to do nothing for the thousands of homeless children in this country–but not okay to use a leftover pre-embroyo which is slated for destruction anyway, in a scientific experiment that may have far reaching results.

California has poised itself to become a hot spot for stem cell research, which is going to take off, regardless of what Bush thinks of it. Stem cell research may do for California what computers did a decade earlier. And not to be one-upped by a primitive place such as California, Harvard University has made its own plans. Rebuking federal funding, which comes with all sorts of neocon rules and regulations, they have announced plans to launch the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and hoped to raise at least US$100 million in financing for the institute. If any place in capable of raising that kind of cash, it is Harvard University. So we will have hot centers of research on both coasts, and of course, overseas, where some nations such as Singapore are pouring bottomless funding into stem cell research. They see this as a golden opportunity for them, and are probably grateful for Bush’s backward and incomprehensible attitude.

Republican Rebellion

But perhaps Bush’s greatest concern may be the attitude of his own party. For those who haven’t been following this, Bush only permits federal funding for stem cell research on only 22 stem cell lines. However, all of the human embryonic stem cells available to federally funded scientists under the Bush manifesto share a previously unrecognized trait that fosters rejection by the immune systems, diminishing their potential as medical treatments. In addition, another new study has concluded that at least a quarter of the Bush-approved cell colonies are so difficult to keep alive they have little potential even as research tools.

A large number of Republicans support stem cell research, including quite a few conservatives, such as Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch. He is among 58 senators and 206 House of Representatives members who have signed letters urging Bush to lift the restrictions. But it’s not really all that difficult to understand. Virtually everyone knows someone suffering from some type of illness, or dealing with the aftermath of an injury. The staunch conservative sitting in the Senate may have a beloved father grappling with Alzheimer’s, and the pain of watching his Dad sink into the shadows of dementia may be unbearable. That other staunch neocon may be watching his little daughter’s life slowly ebb away from a neuro-degenerative illness. Mom is dealing with Parkinson’s, Sister can’t walk because of a spinal cord injury….somehow, the life of a pre-embryo which may never become a human (the rate of becoming pregnant through in-vitro is actually quite low) becomes increasingly vague, more theoretical and less urgent, than helping loved ones here on earth.

So it should be interesting over the next few years, at least as far as this goes. What is certain is that other nations will be aggressively pursuing this, and the US has the opportunity to join in or be left behind. Other countries don’t give a hoot about Bush’s pseudo-morality, and as a result, I can foresee the day when Americans travel overseas to get treatment that is unavailable here. We will be left far behind.

As I’ve mentioned in another post, I have to wonder how far these morals go. If Bush, for example, were injured and paralyzed, and an experimental treatment derived from embryonic stem cell research was allowing others with the same type of injury to walk again, would he go for it? Would he turn up his nose and call it “immoral?” Or would he sign himself up for it as soon as possible?

Also, I have found that many people who passionately defend the right of the pre-embryo, along with the fetus, care little about the lives of those already here on earth. I wonder how many of the women who want the pre-embryos “saved” are offering their own wombs, so that the pre-embryo has a chance at life. Are they also willing to pay the storage fees to keep these pre-embryos frozen and theoretically, alive? And if their own child was born with a deadly illness, will they still be so quick to condemn stem-cell research?

So many questions, so few answers.

Another small item in the great annals of medical history; today is the 338th anniversary of one of the earliest experiments in blood transfusion. If you’ve ever taken an English lit class, you undoubtedly read the diary of Samuel Pepys, who recorded his every day life in great detail. He wrote about love, sex, history, death, destruction–all of those tiny details of life in 17th century London, including the great fire of 1666 that nearly destroyed the entire city.

On November 14, 1666, Pepys wrote that Richard Lower of the Royal Society performed the first direct blood transfusion from the artery of one dog to the vein of another, using quills for the tubings. How’s that for sterile procedure?

The first succesful human transfusion was in 1818, when British obstetrician James Blundell transfused human blood into a woman suffering from postpartum hemorrhage. She survived both the transfusion and the hmorrhage, rather miraculously.

This came into my email, from the organization Organic Consumers Association It is a little bit shocking, to say the least. Anyway, read on:

EPA WILL USE POOR KIDS AS GUINEA PIGS IN NEW STUDY ON PESTICIDES

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), led by Bush appointees, plans to launch a new study in which participating low income families will have their children exposed to toxic pesticides over the course of two years. For taking part in these studies, each family will receive $970, a free video camera, a T-shirt, and a framed certificate of appreciation. In October, the EPA received $2 million to do the study from the American Chemistry Council, a chemical industry front group that includes members such as Dow, Exxon, and Monsanto. The EPA’s Linda Sheldon says the study is vital, because so little is known about how small children’s bodies absorb harmful chemicals. As of press time, none of the EPA’s employees are offering to have their own children take part in this research project. The Organic Consumers Association is calling on the nation’s citizens to demand the EPA forgo this project before its scheduled launch in early 2005.

So, what do you think? Several questions come to mind. One, how unbiased is this study going to be, being that it is being paid for by the companies who earn zillions in sales of pesticides? Two, what is it’s purpose? We already know that pesticides are harmful. Is this study going to “prove” that children are not effected by them? Why not go down to Central America, and take a look at the all the children born with cleft lips and palates, who are exposed in utero to high doses of pesticides. And finally, why aren’t any of the families of the EPA, Dow, Exxon, and Monsanto offering their children up to be experimented on? I mean, they obviously think that their products are safe. So why not have all of their children participate?

But I guess they figure that just in case anything does go wrong, the poor children are expendable. Sort of like throw-away items.