The cure for infertility? Have sex. And not safe sex. The real thing.

I suppose that this is the dream of the ultra-neocons–not to just teach abstinence only education, but to completely omit that sex happens in the first place. Sort of like this couple in Germany, who after 8 years of marriage, could not seem to conceive the child they wanted. So off they went to a fertility clinic, which found that both of them were a veritable garden of sperm, eggs and hormones.

So why no baby?

A clinic spokesman said: “When we asked them how often they had had sex, they looked blank, and said: “What do you mean?”.

“We are not talking retarded people here, but a couple who were brought up in a religious environment who were simply unaware, after eight years of marriage, of the physical requirements necessary to procreate.”

The wife is 30, the husband 36. Rather amazing in this day and age how they can be that much in the dark, unless they never watch television, go to the movies, read the newspaper, read books, read magazines, look at the Internet, or talk to another human being who isn’t a Catholic priest. Do they have friends or siblings with children? Did they bother to ask how they managed to achieve those bundles of joy? Or were they just waiting for the stork to come flying through?

The Sun

Lester Crawford, better known as the ex-commissioner of the FDA, is being a bad boy. Santa’s not going to like that, and won’t bring him a bag of goodies. Plus, there seems to be a lot more than meets the eye, or the public as the case may be, regarding the approval of over the counter status for emergency contraceptive Plan B. The situation is getting as murky as it gets, even by FDA standards (and they have a pretty sleazy history.

The former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration declined to cooperate with an inquiry by the Government Accountability Office into the agency’s controversial decision to reject nonprescription sales of an emergency contraceptive.

According to congressional staffers who have read the draft GAO report but were not allowed to copy it, the document has several footnotes indicating Lester M. Crawford did not respond to requests for an interview.

Okay, so what’s up with Lester? There have already been calls into investigating his resignation and the reasons behind it–one does not just abruptly resign as FDA commissioner as if it was a job delivering pizzas. Quitting a post that he apparently wanted, only two months into his tenure, is not a sign that all is well and honest. We already know that he lied to the Senate, about making a decision on Plan B, just to get himself confirmed–so this is definitely not an honest man we’re dealing with.

But wait, the whole situation with Plan B is beginning to stink, even worse than Lester Crawford’s dirty underwear.

The draft report, which is being reviewed by the FDA and members of Congress, describes the agency’s decision-making process on Plan B as highly unusual because officials in the commissioner’s office were directly involved and the FDA office directors who normally rule on applications refused to sign the rejection letter. An FDA advisory panel earlier voted overwhelmingly in favor of the proposal.

In addition, the GAO report indicates that the decision to reject the application was made months before it was announced in May 2004 by Steven Galson, then acting director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. The report says the rejection was discussed at a January 2004 staff meeting when Mark B. McClellan, now head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was FDA commissioner. It was unclear yesterday whether McClellan spoke with the GAO.

The GAO can demand documents from federal agencies but can’t force anyone to actually talk. So unless they kidnap Lester Crawford, tie him up and beat the crap out of him, he can refuse to discuss the subject.

The FDA also declined to respond to the GAO report. The agency has until Oct. 26 to comment on the findings, which are scheduled to be released next month.

You know, not only does the FDA need a new commissioner, its entire hierarchy needs to be dismantled and rebuilt. The organization as it exists now needs to be scrapped, and a real regulatory agency needs to be established in its place.

Washington Post

You mean, that there are some nurses who actually don’t like their jobs? Oh no, that can’t be.

But it seems that the penal system is bleeding nurses. And their shortage–though politically incorrect–has nothing to do with the number of nurses graduating. Or the lack of student places in nursing programs. Or the shortage of teachers. Or any the lack of nursing scholarships. Or any of the “comfort” measures that the healthcare experts, at large, try to convince themselves lie at the heart of the nursing shortage.

MRSA didn’t drive them out of Lancaster County Prison, say five nurses who quit their jobs in June: Management did.

The nurses — about half of the staff at the prison — said they left within three to four weeks of each other after changes in their schedules and working conditions by a new nursing supervisor made their jobs intolerable.

Their service at the prison ranged from 10 years on the job to two years. All of them said they had loved their work and had no intention of leaving.

Imagine that, half the nurses left because the management sucked big time. I know that’s a shocker for the triple Phds holed up in academia, or the politicians looking for hand-outs from the healthcare industry. Nurses are not supposed to care about their jobs, they’re just supposed to fill vacant holes.

Six of 10 nurses quit. And they didn’t quit because of stressful working conditions, but because the new nursing supervisor was a dork, who seemed to believe that the nursing staff was composed of slave labor to be at her beck and command.

But it wasn’t stress created by the crowded cells and the growing prison population, the nurses said. Instead, they pointed to changes made by Amy Strausbaugh after her hiring as a nursing supervisor in late spring.

Cauler, a 5½-year prison employee, resigned after she was disciplined for sending an e-mail regarding a prisoner with MRSA to a correctional officer and for “harassing” an inmate who, she said, was hoarding his medications for sale on the cell block rather than taking them.

Elizabeth Haddox, with 2½ years’ service, said her hours were changed five times in about a month, impossible for a single mother to handle.

Janice Brotzman quit after two years for several reasons. Once, she said, she was ordered to be at work in 35 minutes after phoning to explain that her father was dying. Her schedule also was changed three times.

Donna Witmer, a 10-year veteran, said she couldn’t get clearance from superiors to return to work after a medical leave. When she finally got the OK, she was moved from day shift to 4 p.m. to midnight.

A fifth nurse, who asked not to be identified, had been working 32-hour weekends because of child-care reasons — she said she was the only nurse in the prison all weekend long — for two years. But Strausbaugh put her on 4-to-midnight, the nurse said, and told her, “It’s your job or your children.”

I tend to believe every word quoted from these nurses, because I have personally seen this type of thing happen myself. Supervisors and managers, cut from the same grain as Strausbaugh, seem to desperately cling to the old adage of self-sacrificing nurses, who have no life beyond the workplace, and who have been taught obedience above all else.

Strausbaugh’s explanation is as follows: “My mission there is to provide quality, cost-effective medical care for the countians who are the most needy,” she said.

Well she’s certainly doing a fine job of it, by mistreating her staff so that they all quit. Nice going, Amy. People like you are one of the prime reasons that a nursing shortage exists. Perhaps you too, can choose between your job and your children, or maybe when a loved one is dying, you can also have a jackass scream at you that you’ve got to come into work.

According to this article, all of the nurses who quit have new jobs, but the jobs in the prison are still vacant. The county pays new nurses without experience less than $14 an hour, so I imagine that those jobs are going to be sitting open for a long time to come. My 16 year old niece makes $12 an hour bagging groceries, so why on earth would a person with training and a highly marketable skill take the job? And they get to work with Amy Strausbaugh, no less.

What this article points out is that no matter how health care systems whine and bitch about the so-called nursing shortage, they, themselves, lie at the core of it. This is a prime example. They hire some crazed bitch as a supervisor, and then the county showed that they considered Ms. Strausbaugh more important than the nurses. So the nurses quit, and now they’re paying through the nose for temporary agency nurses, but hey, they still have Amy at the helm. And even if potential hirees don’t wince at the poor pay, they probably flee like the devil is after them, after being interviewed by Amy.

Now if the county were truly interested in finding and keeping nurses, they’d get rid of Amy–give her three minutes to pack her desk and get the hell out of town–and raise their salaries. Who knows, they might even be able to get some of the old nurses back.

LancasterOnline