Medical Health

The media keeps saying that today’s kids are obese and that today’s parents may be the first generation in history to outlive their children. Yet, in the United States and Canada, smoking and lung cancer are on the decline, which makes me wonder whether cigarettes would keep our teenagers and twenty-somethings slim, allowing them to outlive their parents (rather than the other way around), even though they eventually die of smoking-related illnesses.

I’m being sarcastic, of course. You really do not want to take up smoking in order to fit into one or more 2008 prom dresses. At www.talkpromdresses.com you can join in on the discussions and window shop for almost any type of wedding dress, from formal to gothic.

Here is the statement I gave to the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy and then e-mailed to President Bush:

One of my present concerns is that science (both in government and academia) attracts (and subsequently recruits) sinister political hacks and abject academic lackeys. I recently expressed my concern to the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy:

[originally addressed to the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy]

In your U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy Preliminary Report you state,

“The education of the 21st century ocean-related workforce will require not only a strong understanding of oceanography and other disciplines, but an ability to integrate science concepts, engineering methods, and sociopolitical considerations. Resolving complex ocean issues related to economic stability, environmental health, and national security will require a workforce with diverse skills and backgrounds. Developing and maintaining such a workforce will rely, in turn, on programs of higher education that prepare future ocean professionals at a variety of levels and in a variety of marine-related fields.”

Obviously, your educational and institutional environments and curricula must include rigorous methods for assessing codes of conduct and ethics. Mistreatment of employees, students, and constituents WILL RENDER YOUR SCIENCE SUSPECT.

So your grandparents passed down one or two genetic vulnerabilities and you have become ill with a genetic disease (maybe arthritis, psoriasis, inflammatory bowel disease, or breast cancer). And you know that you did not bring on your condition, you know that it is not your fault, and your doctors and friends know that much, too. Yet all the neurotic busybodies are saying, “It serves you right.”

Well, think of the bright side: the mean-spirited gossips (particularly those living in rainy climates) have once again shown off their ignorance. They live in the dark, like rodents. Because what they have really said is that you are the blame for your grandparents’ genes, that you got what you deserved the day you were born.

What a bunch of arrogant, greedy, thoughtless fools.

Back during the 1980s, when I was busy fulfilling the requirements of a Ph.D. degree, I performed quite a bit of dangerous field work. In my line of study, field workers and their associates suffered severe injuries, including decapitation, and died in small-plane crashes. Some of them drowned.

The university gave me a temporary position as a graduate research assistant, and the rest of my funding was drawn from research grants and sholarships. But years later I discovered that neither my graduate research assistantship nor my grants provided disability insurance and/or health insurance (never mind life insurance).

Therefore, I am advising all students to refrain from risking their lives and limbs during their course of studies, and I am saying that you must insist that the university provide you with disability and/or health benefits or allow you to use part of your grant money to buy the necessary insurance.

Universities think of themselves as absolutely benevolent, but when all is said and done, you can not trust them, and you must force them to keep up their end of the deal.

Obviously, there are many, many rather excellent psychiatrists practicing in Europe, Canada, and the United States. But having witnessed a good friend’s experiences with the mental-health establishment, I am certain that there are great numbers of sloppy, mean-spirited psychiatrists, mental-health nurses, and social workers making good livings while subtly abusing their power and their patients.

Therefore, it is imperative that you, the patient, obtain access to your medical records so that you can make written additions that both refute and correct the doctors’ mistakes and their slanderous attempts to justify the fact that they incarcerated you. Sometimes they even get mixed up about their patients’ identities and then report one patient’s problems (and crimes?) as another’s. Suddenly, and without your knowledge, you are accused of purposely getting crazed, of drinking pints of mouthwash on Christmas day.

And don’t kid yourself, except for top top-secret government intelligence, no written or electronic record is really confidential.

Mental-health professionals are constantly making assumptions (their’s is most often not a hard science), and medical assumptions are very often proved wrong. For example, here is a quote from Proteomics Weekly via NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net regarding inflammation (and brain disease). The italics are mine:

“In previous studies, the researchers found that the IL-27 cytokine limits the duration and intensity of white blood activation, an “off switch” to the cascade of messenger proteins that serve to further activate the immune system. Prior to their research, the general assumption among scientists was that IL-27 promoted inflammation.”

In other words, they thought IL-27 was a “bad guy,” but now, after quite some time, they are saying that IL-27 is a “good guy.”