Government Admits VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM

David Kirby writes on Huffington Post about a court decision last fall that concedes that vaccines aggravated a condition that led to autism. Part of the decision:

Medical personnel at the Division of Vaccine Injury Compensation,
Department of Health and Human Services (DVIC) have reviewed the facts of this case, as presented by the petition, medical records, and affidavits. After a thorough review, DVIC has concluded that compensation is appropriate in this case.

In sum, DVIC has concluded that the facts of this case meet the statutory criteria for demonstrating that the vaccinations CHILD received on July 19, 2000, significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder, which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of autism spectrum disorder. Therefore, respondent recommends that compensation be awarded to petitioners in accordance with 42 U.S.C. § 300aa-11(c)(1)(C)(ii).

David Kirby wrote Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy.

You may find out a lot of facts and become informed about choices by clicking on the needle:


3/6/08:
FOLLOW-UP:
Tonight on Larry King Live: Do childhood vaccinations cause or contribute to autism? That's the question at the center of a case involving an Atlanta girl.

Seizures are Good for You

Merck has a combination vaccine (one of many) that is causing more seizures and convulsions in children than the components would cause if given separately. ProQuod is a combination of the mmr (mumps, measles, rubella) shot and the chicken pox vaccine.

Physicians and the government like to give kids multiple-ingredient shots in order to avoid so many separate needle-sticks. At 36 dosages required prior to starting school, I can see why a kid would prefer this as well.

The mmr vaccine has been sited as the chief culprit among parents whose children developed autism following that shot at around the age of one. Chicken pox, which is a form of the herpes virus--a menacing and exotic germ that can inhabit a nervous system and stay there until the host dies--is less a problem symptomatically than it is as a vaccine. Humans who acquire chicken pox as children generally suffer itching and mild sickness for a week, and then have a lifelong immunity against ever getting chicken pox again. Those children who get the vaccine may or may not develop a temporary immunity, definitely not lifelong, and who knows what that little herpes menace does when injected directly into the bloodstream--attacking nervous cells including the brain without any prior antibody build-up in the primary immune system--the gut.

Aside from the whole vaccine business being just that--a business as opposed to a public health boost--the remark in the AP story about the results of a study showing the deleterious effects of seizures and convulsions from ProQuod says it all with regards to any concern of Merck and our government for you, me, or our children:

"The study focused on children who develop fevers and then go into convulsions - an occurrence that frightens parents but usually has no lingering consequences."

Yeah those convulsions definitely scare the crap out of me--good thing they're not bad for you!

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26,000 Nuclear Bombs for Us!

McCain has edge over Democrats reads this morning's Los Angeles Times poll report. And this could happen how?--Oh yeah, because McCain's more experienced than Obama and Clinton. It's like one of Jay Leno's questions to the man on the street, who invariably knows nothing:

"I just think he's older, he's more experienced, and he's got the betterment of the country in mind," said Robert Fear, 79, a registered Democrat from Newton, Ill., who said he planned to support McCain in November.

In case you're a reader who wants real information beyond the dullard remarks of an average (read idiot-sorry, I'm losing patience) American citizen, there is my friend Christopher Dickey's trenchant take in Newsweek online today on McCain and the Iraq "thing," as a Republican relative of his puts it:

But when I heard Sen. John McCain talking this morning about the "success" of the war in Iraq, I was the one cringing. Admittedly, I live across the Atlantic, but I had to wonder: has the whole country gone as crazy as my contentious relation, Mr. Republican?

Let's hope not. And I think not. But one senses in the GOP a hint of furor and fantasy akin to 2003, when authoritative and experienced men like Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, the walrus and the carpenter of American policy, persuaded the president, the public and Congress that embracing war was the best way to bring peace to the Middle East. Supine as oysters, the vast majority gave their assent.

Now McCain would have us believe that more war, and then still more war—"bomb, bomb Iran" to the Beach Boys' melody—remains the best course to follow. "We will never surrender," he likes to say, "and they[meaning Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama] will." A more realistic appraisal: McCain will never come to his senses.

Nicely written, entertaining and ironic--a terrifying notion in its simplicity. McCain represents probably half of our fellow citizens who "will never come to [their] senses." Not a happy prospect considering the totality of issues facing us folks on the earth--inadequate medical care, nuclear weaponry, intransigent racial and ethnic hatred. And here we are focusing on Iraq stay or leave, as if there were an intelligent argument to be made in favor of ever going there at all.

Michael Kinsley, Los Angeles Times former editorial page editor, former editor of the New Republic, Slate and Harper's, said this in an op-ed piece on Sunday:

Imagine that you had been told in 2003 that when George W. Bush finished his second term, dozens of American soldiers and hundreds of Iraqis would be dying violently every month; that a major American goal would be getting the Iraqi government to temper its "de-Baathification" campaign so that Saddam Hussein's former henchmen could start running things again (because they know how); and "only" 100,000 American troops would be needed to sustain this equilibrium.

You might have several words to describe this situation, but success would not be one of them.

By the way--in case it crosses one's mind that terrorists pose any threat because they might get hold of a nuclear bomb and use it, how many bombs would it take to cause a stink on our planet? 1 in New York could kill a million people. 110,000 died in the Hiroshima nightmare. 10 nuclear bombs would wreak untold havoc if placed in heavily-populated areas. Would it make sense that several dozen nuclear bombs held by any country would be a major deterrent to another country not to press anyone's buttons-literally?

Then it should shake one's inner core of reason to read the following which is part of a review of several books in the New York Review of Books on the development of nuclear capabilities and it's consequences since the invention of the atom bomb seven decades ago:

US went from the atomic discoveries of the 1930s to the irrational situation in the 1980s in which a total of 65,000 nuclear weapons were held by the United States and the Soviet Union. Although the global arsenals have since been reduced to some 26,000 bombs, the United States and Russia continue to possess most of the world's nuclear warheads, with the other seven nuclear nations together holding the remaining one thousand.

Seems like a LOT of bombs, no?

We the People not Oscars R US

I'm reading about the Clinton campaign being upset about Obama campaign mailings. Hillary described the pronouncements as " she described as false and shameful attacks on her record."

I saw a movie with my wife and daughter called 27 Dresses. It's a corny romantic comedy with some performances that are worth examining because of the charisma and charm involved. Interesting human relationships surpass most issues of the day in importance.

I have been reading about the amazing book and movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly in the New York Review of Books, about the former editor of Elle who had a totally-debilitating stroke and of the Painter/artist-turned filmmaker Julian Schnabel who brings this story to film. See the hopeful human spirit which is perfect and complete.

My point is this--Hillary and Bill and Obama have to come to some sort of arrangement to end this squabble over nothing. The presidency, the country, are not at stake--either one wins next November and the winds of change will be huge and cleansing--we the people are needing some relief--from the wasteful and expensive Iraqi incursion, from the lack of proper health-care coverage in our great land, from the poverty-stricken masses who can't live the dream of which we all share, because our government of the people is not just that.

Get a grip, Clintons and Obamas, and get together now--solve the problems, and forget who gets to sleep in the front cabin of the big plane--It's time to deal with issues, and not who is most popular on the red carpet--leave that to the Oscars, not to US.

Flu Shot No Good

The year of the big flu shot shortage there were fewer cases of flu than in most years. This tends to make one think that the correlation between the flu vaccine and getting the flu is not there.

Now MSNBC reports that this year's flu shot is not effective because of the varieties of the virus itself.

Haven't we the people been hoodwinked enough by these money-grubbing drug companies to realize that we're better off washing our hands a lot, staying home if we catch the flu, and taking care of ourselves, than getting this waste-of-time-and-money flu shot that everyone's been brainwashed into believing it's a good thing?

What a Rape in Africa Means to Me

We have a President who takes a month off for vacation every summer. What could be done during that month is concentrating on an area of the world that needs more help than most, and more understanding in order to provide that help. Africa has gotten some attention from celebrities like George Clooney and Don Cheadle, who take a real interest and spend major time and money of their own to bring the modern holocaust that is happening to media forefront.

But this attention doesn't last. In case you've been sleeping the last few months, you must notice that the headlines are consumed with the US presidential election, which is still 9 months off. Once in a while a natural disaster or world political event usurp the election coverage--not to mention the obnoxious and journalistically immoral targeting of an obviously clinically-sick Britney Spears--but the events of Africa easily seep onto the back-burner due to the distance, and complexity, of the issues.

Darfur, in the Sudan, has reached a level of public interest due to Clooney, Mia Farrow and others drawing the public eye to the debacle of misplaced thousands of people from their homes, murders, and atrocities committed on women and children. The Chinese conveniently don't want to ruffle international feathers, so by standing by their allies who run Sudan, who are believed to be the cause of the strife, today's news was that Steven Spielberg was backing out of being artistic adviser to the Beijing Olympics. That ought to send an intense message to the Chinese that we mean business here--and therefore, to the whole world, that us Yankees won't cotton to mistreatment of our fellow human beings anywhere, anyhow.

I don't aim to detract from Spielberg's act and motives, only that the rest of us "yankees" really don't measure up to any kind of sentiment over the realities of what's happening on this planet. The biggest news today was Roger Clemens testifying in congress about using or not using human growth hormone while pitching his way to utter greatness in major league baseball. While 150,000 US troops are sweating it out in Iraq, and millions of Africans are being killed and raped, and in our great country millions of people have no health insurance, thousands live in homeless shelters, and everything isn't quite right everywhere--whether or not a big league pitcher used exotic and bizarre drugs to increase his performance levels shouldn't be the most important issue on our collective minds. At least not all the time.

Here's my reality: Darfur is now the tip of the iceberg--it seems that the African continent houses strife beyond what is imagineable in our cozy American minds. Unicef claims rape is a weapon of conflict across Africa, and this is about our fellow human beings from age 2 to 82. Now look at Hillary and Obama criticizing each other and think about what's important to you. And according to Newsweek, Somalia's situation is worse than Darfur.

Cabinet member and friend Henry Morgenthau reluctantly went to President Roosevelt about the killing of Jews in Europe during WWII, and asked Roosevelt do something. We look back in horror today at what was not done and the immense injury and death that might have been avoided had something been done. And we don't want to repeat those mistakes. But part of the new problem is more than forgetting the past and repeating it, as George Santayana said. It is that we are being so distracted and "numbed up" by a ratings and profit-motivated media bombardment of non-reality news issues, that we miss the point of our common existence.

And we really need to know that our brothers and sisters, homeless and under-compensated in our own country, and beaten, raped and murdered across the world, are as close as our real neighbors next door, and in fact as our own true family.

Pimp my Ass--Modern Journalism as Oxymoron

I would say the death of intelligent mass media journalism came with the exit of Edward R. Murrow from CBS and his acceptance of a position with the US Information Agency, US's propaganda arm for radio broadcasts overseas

It was at the beginning of the 1960's. There was a glimmer of hope insome columnists who were termed as muckrakers--Jack Anderson was what would today be the tabloid king, and I. F. Stone, who would be today's Slate.com only on a much less PR-minded level and much more objective journalism.

Walter Cronkite, pretty much accepted as the queen of great television journalism, was depicted in a documentary film about I. F. Stone, aptly named after Stone's own published newspaper, "I. F. Stone's Weekly," as an aloof establishment TV news reader who was not interested in the vagueries of digging into the realities behind a story. That depiction tainted my view of Cronkite since then--30 years ago--even though the revisionists now would haveus believe it was Cronkite's reporting from Vietnam that turned the tide of American public opinion against the Vietnam War and Johnson's actions.
I don't think so. The real great 20th century American journalists, names like Schirer, Lippmann, Reston, and many more--they're likes and ilk are gone. In the 1970's I read the Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, andthe New York Times every day--if I didn't read James Reston's regular collumn I felt like I was out of touch.

No major entity can finance the nuances of such true journalistic objectivity any more. It's really not the fault of the publishers and owners--as Murrow said when he quoted Shakespeare in a famous broadcast, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

The great journalist I. F. Stone--Izzy Stone as his comrades would have known him--would have been aghast at what has happened in modern American journalism. My good friend, Christopher Dickey, who writes for Newsweek about terrorism and just about any other relevant subject germane to us modern folks--he is not well known outside of literary and journalistic circles, within which he is highly respected if not utterly admired for his research and writing skills, and talent. But this is not popular media--this is what's left of objective journalism in the new age. Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times is another example of research--muckraking if you will--and entertaining enlightening writing. But this discussion is not about how to find the great writing--it's about how hard it is for the avaerage "cool" reader or viewer to find.

The number 1 rated evening news show anchor, Brian Williams, gets advertising plus from his appearances on Saturday Night Live and the Tonight Show. This isn't a bad thing, except that Williams himself represents the denoument of the evening news TV show credibility. His over-the-top sincerity delivery belies the ratings cache to which his network is pandering. Telling us there is a presidential contest is not the same as examining the truth behind John McCain, who is less the "maverick" as depicted in the mass media than a Bush clone crony who just wants that big job.

Now we come to the disgusting affair of a news reporter using inflammatory language like "pimp" to refer to the Clintons' daughter, Chelsea, campaigning for her mother, Hillary's, presidential candidacy.

No matter how a news reporter may feel about the motivations or issues at hand, where does the editorial inflective become appropo? That's how far the fourth estate has dropped in thenew millenia.

Hey, I don't have a problem getting at the truth--I can dig on line to find the reporting I trust,and I know which journalists to go to--I can read the New York Review of Books and get a point of view unavailable to the average TV viewer. I know where to go, and I have the time and interest.

But what about John Q. Public who just wants his news delivered while he's choking down his breakfast toast and coffee, or reads his newspaper on the toilet because that's whenhe has the time to sit and think? Mr. Public will have to deal with today's mass-media provisions which are ratings-driven, not necessarily the truth, and definitely pandering to the least common denominator which may be moved more by how Britney's day went than whether or not our government is really serving us, the people.

Murrow's speech before the Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) for being "fat, comfortable, and complacent" and television for "being used to detract, delude, amuse and insulate us," hasn't changed things in 50 years.

The solution lies in the responsibility of the owners of mass media to require old-fashioned objective jouralism from their employees. The unfolding of events in the world should provide enough sensation that the reporting of an event will garner high ratings based on the ability of the journalist toget the story as soon as possible.

Just get me the facts--when I need a thrill, I'll go to the movies.

Presidents and Politicians

... Here's a pic I took of a presidential candidate last weekend.

When Nixon ran against McGovern, the liberal midwest democrat, I went to a campaign rally at the university I was attending to hear the man himself who we all hoped would defeat the notorious red-baiting Vietnam Warmonger from California. Shirley Maclaine, the great actress, was there to offer support as well.

When McGovern was finished I remember moving in close to say hello to him if I could, but especially to the actress, since I was a budding film student in the making. I also was a young, jaded, cynical skeptic of anyone and anything political, as we were taught in the mighty ground-shaking 1960's to question everythingm and accept nothing at face value, specifically if it was from anything remotely connected with the "establishment," which of course, politicians were.

I got right next to Shirley, looked into her magnificent blue eyes, and said, "How do you know this guy's telling the truth?" To which she replied, "You just have to look into his eyes to see he is an honest man."

Give me a break! "Honest politician" is the number-one oxymoron right up there with military intelligence and gentler capitalism. I respected and admired George McGovern, but there's no way anyone gets into a higher-up political position without a lot of selling out, and then spinning it that you didn't really sell out.

I was very upset about Bobby Kennedy taking on the anti-Vietnam War mantle late, after the months and sweat and effort of Eugene McCarthy, a kindly school-teacher then U. S. senator who always saw the problem with commiting US troops, money, and blood to a far-off war in Southeast Asia. Bobby had great intentions and values even as a johnny-come-lately, and I was young a quick to judge--but how much have things changed these days?

Obama and Hillary are going to knock their respective brains out trying to become the nominee for that amazing office with the big plane and all the power--and we're going to continue to follow the circus which has become this year's American Idol show to watch. They've already made their compromises and sold what of their souls they had to to get this far. Except unlike American Idol, this really is for keeps!

'Twould be nice if they kept what's left intact for the sake of the voters they're courting, just because there are so many people in the world in dire conditions that could use real help, beyond good intentions, and politically-correct debate points.

In case you want to know what a hero looks like--here's the pic.

As I've said here before, George Clooney can choose any activity on this planet that would suit his pleasure. One of the choices he makes is to try to bring attention to the attrcities in Africa, specifically the Darfur region of Sudan. How are his actions received?

The actor recently visited Darfur with U.N. peacekeeping officials and said he saw that a lack of helicopters and other equipment was hindering the force's efforts to protect civilians and itself.

But representatives of Russia and other countries at the meeting objected to an actor telling them how to handle the crisis -- and he was asked not to speak after all.

Too bad--there aren't many humans on the planet who are willing to expend this amount of energy in the face of constant criticism. Maybe it TAKES an actor to do this job!!

ABC Network Tonight Vaccine-Autism Connection

Tonight's airing on ABC of it's new show Eli includes reference to a lawsuit claiming that vaccines caused a child's autism. The awareness of this issue in the last two decades has increased almost as exponentially as the incidence of childhood autism and the additiobal doages added onto the childhood vaccination schedule! Of course, the ongoing threats to the vaccine cash cow are enough to cause a huge uproar when the mass media gets involved.

Here's what Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center had to say in the start of her latest email newsletter:

I sighed with recognition when I learned that the leadership of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) had written a letter and issued a press release on Jan. 25 calling on ABC-TV to cancel tomorrow's premiere episode of a fictional drama about a family whose child regresses into autism after vaccination. On the same day, the American Medical Association (AMA) called on ABC to "mitigate the harm this episode may do" such as re-writing the script. The CDC-funded Immunization Action Coalition (IAC) also piled on ABC-TV, urging doctors to put pressure on the network to cancel the broadcast while seven former directors of the CDC maintained in a Jan. 29 March of Dimes press release that "The implication that vaccinations cause autism is irresponsible and counter productive."

Now click on the banner below to get the emmes:

Negative Drug Trials Unreported

That headline covered a story under "Briefly" in Monday's Los Angeles Times Health section. I thought it was a joke to see if I was paying attention to what I was reading. Days after the debacle over Zetia and Vytorin study results not being reported by Merck and Schering-Plough, it seemed too coincidental that more drug studies were either kept secret, or worse yet, fudged to cover up the deleterious effects of the drugs:

Nearly one-third of antidepressant drug studies are never published in the medical literature, and nearly all happen to show that the drug being tested did not work, researchers reported Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

And in some of the studies that are published, unfavorable results have been recast to make the medicine appear more effective than it really is, said the research team led by Erick Turner of the Oregon Health & Science University.

Even if not deliberate, they wrote in their report, "Selective publication can lead doctors to make inappropriate prescribing decisions that may not be in the best interest of their patients."

Yesterday and today Merck and Schering-Plough took out two-page ads in the Los Angeles Times touting the wonders of Zetia and Vytorin and recommending following the advice of physicians with the assumption that the almighty result of lowering ldl cholesterol was a sufficient end in itself, regardless of the unhappy build-up of the killer plaque in arteries was also caused by these drugs.

High cholesterol levels in the blood have been blamed through the years on higher cases of arterial disease based largely on statistical correlation. The exact mechanism of plaque build-up in arteries is still not completely understood. Systemic "inflammation" may be a culprit, as well as high cholesterol levels, and the statin drugs may also have an effect on this inflammation which is helpful along with the lowering of serum cholesterol levels. And just which element of the cholesterol picture--low density lipoproteins (ldl) or high-density lipoproteins (hdl) or very low density lipoproteins (vldl)--is the "good" or "bad" cholesterol is all based on educated theory, some empirical and some statistical.

The Zetia/Vytorin ads state unequivocally that the ldl cholesterol is "bad" cholesterol. While this is probably true, it would be beneficial to the consumer in order to be well-informed, to know of the theoretical essence of such a statement.

I have received some antagonistic emails in the past in response to my commentary on pharmaceutical companies' deceitful practices. They were not published because of their inflammatory nature and uninformed opinions. However, when media reports continue to grow about the greed and illegal activities of drug manufacturers, it seems specious to argue about how wonderful these products really are. The one thing that is for sure, is that the bottom line for big pharma is the big buck, not public health.

Everyone's Wrong, Right?

Did you ever have one of those days where nobody is doing anything right? Or at least, not the way you want them to do things? It started right away this morning when the local TV channel announced that a woman living in a house in Van Nuys, which is very nearby my house, was hosting a get-together in her backyard for Barack Obama this afternoon. I immediately wondered how close I could get to this event with my children in order for them possibly to see a candidate for president in person.

That was the beginning of everyone doing everything wrong. The anchor on TV said to check out the channel’s web site for more information on the Obama-in-Van Nuys story. There was nothing remotely oriented toward any news about any presidential candidate in California on that web site, even though with the state primary only weeks away, the candidates are swarming into several CA localities in the next few days.

I called the news desk of that channel to ask about any further info about this event, and they politely declined to tell me anything except that it was by invitation only, and for nebulous security reasons they were not giving the location or address beyond the fact that it was going to be in Van Nuys, as mentioned on the TV show. I figured I would just listen for the familiar choppers overhead and follow them—it works for honing in on the instant whereabouts of Britney Spears, who lives very nearby, at least as the helicopter flies…when she’s picking out produce at our market at the end of the block, the “Apocalypse-Now” sounding downdraft is deafening.

I called Obama’s headquarters and the press relations people answered. They had no idea about any individual events since that was not their responsibility—they transferred me to the field office, at which there was only a voice mail recording available and I needed to leave a message, which I didn’t.
So much for seeing Obama—here is the blurb from LAObserved, a blog about happenings in the area:

Democratic contender Barack Obama has scheduled a "roundtable on economic opportunity" at a private home in Van Nuys tomorrow afternoon. He's also got a fundraiser Wednesday night at the Pacific Palisades home of Marianna and David Fisher, with co-hosts including Tom Unterman, Zeb Rice, Ted Field and others. It's the usual $2,300 requested per person and $25,000 for the co-hosts.

What is interesting about the “roundtable” is that on the news show this morning with the interview of the woman hosting in Van Nuys, the back yard looked real grungy with spotty areas of grass, and she said she had to move the trash barrels at the request of the organizers in order to make room for some tables and a tent. Maybe I didn’t miss much after all.

The Palisades to-do is a little beyond my budgetary reach, although in reality anything beyond a $5 contribution to a politician seems to me to be taking good money out of the hands of real needy charities, like curing cancer, or vaccine awareness etc…

Speaking of politicians, the arguably-democratically-elected leader of the free world was smooching with the dictator Saudi Sheiks in an effort to bolster good will with Bush’s favorite kingdom in the Middle-East. One of my favorite columnists, formerly Los Angeles Times op-ed writer fired last year I think because he was too smart for the corporate-owned Tribune’s graces, Robert Scheer, has written a punch-by-punch piece about Bush and his mayhem-making actions in foreign policy—it seems our president can’t give enough arms to them or money to Israel to make anyone happy:

What more can this president do to curry favor with the Saudis? He forgave them for nurturing the Wahhabism that spawned al-Qaida, and he never embarrasses them with the fact that bin Laden and 15 of the19 hijackers who attacked America on 9/11 were born and raised in the kingdom. Nor did Bush let the inconvenient fact that the Saudi government had backed the Taliban until 9/11 intrude on his cozy relations with the royal family. That warmth, displayed at ranching cookouts in both countries, has now been reinforced by $20
billion in U.S. arms sales to the Saudis and their Persian Gulf allies,
officially announced by Bush on Monday.

At first, the Bush administration feared that some pro-Israel members of Congress might be able to derail the arms sale deal, but they solved that one by offering Israel $30 billion in new weapons. That’s a good deal for the Israelis and for U.S. arms manufacturers, although not for U.S. taxpayers stuck with the tab. No problem—neither the media nor Congress notices the cost to taxpayers of anything carrying the label of “national security.” Heck, Iraq’s defense minister was just in Washington with his shopping list for new weapons and didn’t cause much of a stir when he said the United States will have to defend Iraq for at least a decade more. So much for the impact of the $1 trillion already wasted on the Iraq debacle.

I never expected Bush to do anything “right” anyway.

Then came lunch, and a discussion with my wife’s cousin Rachel about grade school teaching, homework, and math. In this case no one in public school education administration does anything right. As belabored many times in this blog, the issue of homework being deleterious for the institution of the family, and unhelpful as a teaching prop; teaching math to students who may not want to be rocket scientists, and the curriculum in general stressing that all children be equally competent in all subjects—all are completely mishandled and improperly prioritized by state control of public education.

The subject arose in the first place because Rachel is visiting the Valley from Orange County (only relatives travel to visit relatives between these locales—no one does it on purpose otherwise—it’s too big a divide culturally) because she was “tapped” by a producer of a new game show about Bingo while she was playing black jack at an Indian Casino somewhere in the bowels of San Diego County several months ago. There is a potential to win a million bucks on this show, not to mention the fun of appearing on television. Who could resist? Anyone…anyone?

The caveat: it would be helpful to have a good acumen for trivia. For instance, Rachel was asked how many stomachs a cow has. I know a cow has four stomachs. Once I ever heard such an absurdly weird fact, I would be inclined never to forget it.

Rachel’s answer was, “How the f*** would I know how many stomachs a cow has and who cares? Why don’t they ask me where Britney Spears was born and raised?” about which fact Rachel knew nuanced details. I wondered silently why Britney Spears was becoming so much a part of my life.

My wife says I have a mind full of trivia. Actually, her description was that I know everything. That is clearly impossible; as much as I know, it is all important to me -- not trivial at all.

As for rocket scientists, the folks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory got a vote of confidence from another of my favorite writers, newly moved to the Los Angeles Times op-ed page from its entertainment section, Tim Rutten, who is truly gifted in catching the phrase that adds just the right tone and meaning to his position. So he saved the day for me from everyone doing everything wrong—his article, Inquisition at JPL, was just right:

Tim is put out by how a clearly misguided directive to attempt to assure safer government employees by increasing back ground checks got out of hand in one case:

…the government demanded that the scientists, in order to get the badges, fill out questionnaires on their personal lives and waive the privacy of their financial, medical and psychiatric records. The government also wanted permission to gather information about them by interviewing third parties.

In other words, as the price of keeping their jobs, many of America's finest space scientists were being asked to give the feds virtually blanket permission to snoop and spy and collect even malicious gossip about them from God knows who.

Investigators wanted license to seek information as to whether "there is any reason to question [applicants'] honesty or trustworthiness." At one point, JPL's internal website posted an "issue characterization chart" -- since taken down -- that indicated the snoops would be looking for "patterns of irresponsible behavior as reflected in credit history ... sodomy ... incest ... abusive language ... unlawful assembly ... homosexuality." (We'll leave it to others to explain a standard that links incest with unlawful assembly.)

It doesn’t get any sillier. Until you read that the Food and Drug Administration says that food from cloned animals is safe. The FDA is the government agency that allows, among others, the ubiquitous seasoning MSG (monosodium glutamate), known to cause physical and nerve issues in millions of people, to continue to be approved. This is not even to mention the reams of cases of FDA conflict of interest in drug and vaccine approvals due to the immense force of big pharma lobby money. When people actually start to eat cloned animals, “silly” may become a major understatement of the situation.

Finally, my favorite quote of the “doing things wrong” issue of today comes from the article about the cholesterol-lowering drug Vytorin. That drug, and one of its components sold separately as well, Zetia, accounted for 5 billion dollars in sales last year. The other component of Vytorin, symvastatin, sold alone as a generic, costs a few dollars for a month’s supply. Zetia and Vytorin can cost over $100 for a month’s worth of pills.

The latest news is that a study shows that while simvastatin lowers cholesterol in the blood and has a concomitant effect on reducing the killer plaque in arterial walls, Zetia, which lowers blood levels of cholesterol, may actually account for a slight increase in plaque build-up. Confusing, no?

Here’s the quote I like:

Meanwhile, the results "raise some very interesting questions," said Dr. P.K. Shah, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center who was not involved in the study.

"Is the LDL hypothesis still alive and well after this?" he asked.
"Despite a 17-percentage-point reduction in LDL, [Vytorin] did not produce any changes better than the single drug alone. Many of us had not quite expected it to be that way."

I’ll bet! But even more telling than the pharmaceutical paradox of whether lowering LDL’s is good for you or not, is this blistering item:

Results of the two-year study had originally been scheduled to be released in 2006, but the companies delayed them, saying that the analysis was extremely complex. At one point, the firms said they were going to change the study's design to simplify analysis, but critics objected and the researchers returned to their original plans.

Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce launched an investigation into why the results
had not been released sooner.

Critics had charged that the delays were the result of negative findings.

Ya think? $5 bil is at stake!

Tomorrow I’m going to wake up and to counterbalance today, everyone will do everything right—to start things off, I plan to skip my regular dose of Zetia tonight.

HIB Vaccine is Putrid

Funny story: I'm 57 years old. When I was a kid I was vaccinated according to the "modern" protocol of polio shots, oral polio vaccines, and Diphtheria, Pertusis, and Tetanus, among others. Kids are still getting these shots when they visit the pediatrician--my question is does anyone ever hear of a kid getting any of these "plagues" these days? Diphtheria is non existent and the shot only uses an anti-toxin in case of its presence anyway--waste of time and money. Google up tetanus and see how many cases of THAT awful disease plagued the US population last year--and pertusis, or more colloquially-known as "Whooping Cough,"--comes and goes as it pleases vaccines or not. Antibiotics curb it's incursion while the vaccine (DPT) has caused untold maladies and misfortunes among its recipients.

I am one--I received all those fashionable new life-saving vaccines in the 1950's, when I was a developing baby-boomer. I even remember to this day--fifty years later--the pain in my left arm and my inability to move it due to the pain, and my parents and everyone elese saying, "That means the shot is "taking,"" --Ignorant-speak for the vaccine is working that's why you feel the pain.

Years go by, and with the knowledge and understanding of the dreadful adverse effects of injecting toxins into an immature bloodstream, my mom and I discuss these reactions I had to the shots wya back when--turns out mom knew better! She was young and in those days you went along with educated authoritative thinking of the day--but she told me she thought I seizured after my second "booster" shot--the happy nomen in those days for a follow-up of the DPT vaccination. Today in the event of an adverse reaction to a shot, children are advised not to receive any more--as if that is followed through...

I was tested as a young student in the late 1950's and I was put in a "special class" for gifted children. The tests belied my inability to "pay attention," which back then was punished for lack of discipline, but which today is considered Attention Deficit Disorder--and only so designated due to the HUGE numbers of children handicapped by this problem. Are we all just bad students, unable to attend? Or have our bodies been so thoroughly assaulted by vaccines invented by drug company conglomerates with nothing to gain but money and more money that we cannot recover to our original potential?

The "new" medicine is to give infants a vaccine to prevent Hepatitis B virus. This disease comes from contact within an environment that an infant will NEVER encounter! But the last laugh is on one of the big-pharma biggest assholes in the business today--Merck--they told us Vioxx was a good thing while they knew (internal memos exist in court as proof) that it had the potential to kill without a decent "risk-reward" ratio. Now Merck is recalling the HIB vaccine because it is contaminated. Really?

Polio vaccines are created in the dead infected tissue of a monkey kidney in a third-world country you wouldn't want to vacation in. Now the doctor wants to stick this shit in your child's vein. Don't toss your 60 year old photos in my face of kids in "iron lung" machines when you don't have your facts straight--just because we were told they had polio, doesn't mean these poor children weren't afflicted with meningitis, and other respiratory and paralytic viruses, but we were told they had polio because it made the Salk vaccine all the more phenomenal in the media. Notice Salk and Sabin (live virus) never got along. Seemed like a "slam dunk" back then didn't it?

Protect yourselves, and your children, from the onslaught of patent drugs. The drug companies have nothing to gain but money--and a LOT of that for sure!!

Nickelodeon, Sumner and Boston

I peddled high school yearbook portrait contracts in New England for 4 years in another lifetime. It was my grandfather's business in which I was lucky enough to cut my teeth on sales experience. My territory covered eastern Massachusetts, from New Hampshire to Providence. I remember calling on every school in the area, whether it was one we had under contract or not. Boston Latin High School was one of them.

Years prior to my endeavors in the greater Boston area, a guy graduated Boston Latin, went to Harvard, and would up in the military in WWII and then went on to work in his father's business--movie theater exhibiting. After years of success in expanding that enterprise, Sumner Redstone acquired several companies which he turned into world-class conglomerates, and he still heads two of them: CBS and Viacom.

How's my connection in Boston with Sumner's entrepreneurial ubber-success? As a graduate of Boston University with a Master's Degree in film production, I was invited to a "Conversation with Sumner Redstone" tonight at Paramount Studios in Hollywood--the oldest and most successful movie studio and owned, of course, by Viacom--Sumner Redstone.

So there I went to hear what this utter success of risky ventures has to say about how it's done. In a state-of-the-art theater that holds 580 people, most seats were empty. I felt real privileged in an intimate sort of way, to hear what this self-made guy thought of about how to become self-made. He had nothing to offer about that. His concern was about copyright violations and digital piracy--at his age of 84, I thought he'd be more concerned about how best to digest his next restaurant meal. No--Sumner is into his business and loves everything about it. If only his billions could buy back a few years so he could continue to have the fun he is obviously enjoying.

And that's when I realized why I went to this affair--I thought I might promote my blog or my wife's book--no, I was intended to be present to hear the one thing Sumner said that resonates and will resonate for my whole life: anyone can follow his or her dreams in this country, and see them fulfilled, regardless of ethnicity, back ground, or anything. That was the real message, although I think Mr. Redstone wanted us all to concentrate more on anti-piracy.

Oh--Nickelodeon along with MTV are huge world-wide entities--Mr. Redstone said when he bought Viacom he was told by "Wall Street" they were a flash in the pan. As was Viacom itself. MTV is watched by 1 billion people worldwide, and Nickelodeon is one of the top networks....

I am inspired to follow my dreams--how about you?

Writers Strike/Iraq War-Get Me the Numbers

Numbers are a funny thing. A headline recently indicated that the universe weighs less than was thought:

Revised calculations indicate the universe contains less normal and dark matter than previously thought, resulting in a "weight loss" of 10 to 20 percent.

I can't really comprehend what that means--I took my family on a whale-watch boat off Dana point, California last year, and we saw Blue Whales, the largest animal on the planet, which were over 100 feet long and weighed hundreds of tons--I couldn't tangibly grasp that concept, how am I going to do the whole universe?

As I try to get a grip on thse numbers, I read tonight that Jay Leno and David Letterman are giving up huge sums of income because they are not getting paid during the Writer's Guild Strike against the AMPTP:

The TV writers' strike is costing David Letterman and Jay Leno more than $100,000 a night each.
Because the late-night stars have stayed off the job since the walkout began last week, CBS and NBC have stopped paying them, according to TV-industry sources who asked not to be identified and are close to both hosts.

I made $100,000 over several years once, when I was younger and smarter. Most people don't make what these guys make in a year, in a lifetime. While the actions of Leno and Letterman are admirable in favor of the writers who, after all, provide the CONTENT of everything we watch on TV and at the movies, the "numbers" of dollars in actuality are hard on which to get a reality grip...

Forget about everything you have read so far--universe weight included--there are no human brains big enough to wrap around the numbers of Chris Dickey's latest foray into costs of the US incursion in Iraq:

As calculated by the Democratic side of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress and released Tuesday, the direct costs of the Iraq war from 2003 through 2008 will be $607 billion. If you add indirect costs ranging from interest payments and deferred investments, oil prices and medical care for thousands of veterans who've lost their health, limbs, faces, eyes and, in some cases, their minds, you're talking about roughly $1.3 trillion over the same six-year span.

In an effort to make those figures comprehensible, the committee tells us that for "the $432 million we spend in Iraq every day"—note, that is $432 million a day, per diem, seven days a three-billion-dollar week, or, looking at it another way, $18 million an hour, $300,000 a minute, $5,000 a second, and so on, ad nauseam—we could enroll 58,000 children in Head Start, hire 9,300 more teachers, or provide health insurance for 513,000 low-income kids. But … why would we want to do any of that? Sounds too much like "tax and spend" and "soft on security." Social responsibility doesn't sell at the polls or on the Hill.

OK. For the price of one day in the death of Iraq, according to the committee's calculations, we could hire 10,700 Border Patrol agents or 14,200 police officers in the United States. But would our Congress and our president ever pass such bills? Would the American people vote for such programs? Nah. Hard to imagine. The Bush administration has bet that most Americans feel pretty comfortable, and pretty safe, just the way they are, and so far it's been right.

The Joint Economic Committee and its Democratic chairman, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, tell us that the first half-decade of the Iraq war is costing each American family of four $16,500. If the politicians had really wanted to make an impression, they should have appealed to our selfishness. With that kind of money, Mr. and Ms. Average and their kids could put a flat-screen TV, or two, in every room of the house, or buy that third or fourth car they've been wanting. Maybe that would get a rise out of the American public. Clearly the loss of 4,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq hasn't had that much of an impact.

And you thought the universe was heavy!!