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« January 2005 | Main | March 2005 »

Mass Murder of British Women Admitted By Authorities

Red Ribbons For Britain

Red_ribbon The nationalized British Health Service has been murdering tens of thousands of women for over twenty five years. They now admit it. Not only that, but they are BRAGGING about their pogrom.

Here is Health Secretary John Reid commenting on the British mammography system:

We know that detecting cancer early helps save lives...Last year, over 11,000 women had breast cancer detected and treated more quickly than they otherwise would have thanks to the NHS breast screening programme

And how are the British suddenly doing such a stellar job in breast cancer detection nowadays? By catching up to what we've been doing in America for the past 30 years or so. According to the same article (italics mine):

The increase in the number of cancers being detected by screening is largely due to the introduction of two-view mammography

Investing £11.5 million to extending the breast screening programme to women aged 65-70, coupled with an extra £11.4 million for equipment, has also helped to significantly improve the number of cancers picked up.

You see, until 2001, the NHS breast screening program insisted that women undergoing screening mammography needed only one view of each breast every two years.

The British have been insisting for years that the American mammography screening program with it's assiduous application, two view technique, and yearly mammography protocol is overkill and wasteful.

Now overkill has a different meaning for them.

Because what they were really saying was that they did not want to pay for two views, yearly screening, updated machinery, and employment of professional mammographers... eh what??

What say you now, after you see how many women have died from YOUR program?

Here's what Julietta Patnick, Director of the NHS Cancer Screening Program has to say:

"Following the implementation of two-view mammography, we are seeing an improvement in the rate of cancer detection."

Oh...how insightful...it only took twenty-five years for you to catch on. For years, breast cancer experts in the United States have looked silently upon the SHAME of the British breast cancer screening program.

Two Views Or No Views

Mammo2 A tenet of radiology is that, because plain X-rays are one dimensional and the human being is three dimensional, one MUST take at least two views of any object one is imaging.

This is especially important in mammography where the clumped breast tissue can look mass-like in one view and completely different in a second view; likewise, one can easily miss an obscured cancer in one view while it is completely evident on the second view.

The nationalized British health care system which is under the control of bureaucrats and subjected to the pressures of a budget tied into the government, decided that it was too expensive to do two views of the breast for every woman.  So they did one view only -- every two years. This despite American and certain international experts decrying this decision as anti-scientific and a disaster for women.

The British countered that there was no good proof that our screening mammography program saved lives -- but the data against our system was based on criminally inadequate screening programs derived from national systems like -- and including -- Britain and Canada!  Many of the conflicting reports we have read in the past concerning the efficacy of mammography have had their origins in systems that employ inadequate imaging on older machines being interpreted by under trained personnel -- like those in Britain and Canada.

Because of this murderous decision, thousands and thousands of British women have had their breast cancer diagnosis delayed. These women are now mostly dead. In addition, British medical authorities have, for years, looked superciliously on the American system of two views every year as paradigmatic of American medical paranoia, fear of death, and tendency to overspend with little clinical benefit.

Worse yet, the British stance on mammography has lead to suspicion and doubt about the procedure which has created a climate of distrust -- MORE damage we can blame on the nationalized British health care system.

Take Home Lesson

It must become clear to all that if we tie health care into the government budget any more than it already is (and we have already gone to far) we will suffer the same genocide, sooner or later, in some other way, because politicians and bureaucrats do not have jobs that are linked to your survival and medical well being. Their jobs are linked to the budget, and health costs become  a part of the budget in a silent way.

In addition, because dependence on the government lead to the breeding of health care morons in the populace -- no one questions the status quo. I have personally sat at the dinner table with sophisticated, intelligent  British citizens and explained to them that their women were being denied proper breast screening leading to their unnecessary deaths. These individuals thought me quaint and unbalanced. But the real problem was that their health care IQ was below 70 -- moron level according to the Supreme Court...and their reliance on the government to take care of them was anachronistic and ignorant, as these revelations show conclusively.

Our only hope, in the United States, is to push for more freedom in health care choices. More information. More education.

Handing over your health to the government increases the likelihood that you will become part of the next great silent medical pogrom.

Welcome Back Vioxx

Welcome Back Vioxx

Welcomeback Grazing through Google's health news I clicked on a Vioxx newspaper citation expecting the usual uninformed gibberish and I found this alarmingly insightful editorial concerning the arthritis medication.

Of course, it is the only intelligent way to approach the risk/benefit analysis of using Vioxx, and that analysis is no different than what one performs before using chemotherapy or aspirin.

I know a child with a severe illness for whom Vioxx was a Godsend. It relieved the child's symptoms BETTER than Naprosyn, Motrin, et al; and, it produced no GI pain or distress, as did the other NSAID's; AND its once-a-day dosing improved the child's compliance.

When Vioxx was removed from the market, this child lost an important, extremely useful, disease-ameliorating medication that could not be replaced. As a result, day-to-day functioning and quality of life for this child was significantly reduced in quality.

Welcome back, Vioxx. And a blow has been struck for the consumer.

I applaud The Orlando Sentinel.

CSI MEDBLOGS: What's Really Wrong With Tedy Bruschi And Why Are They Hiding It?

CSI MEDBLOGS:

WHAT'S REALLY WRONG WITH TEDY BRUSCHI AND WHY ARE THEY HIDING IT? 

Superbowl_teddybruschi

__________________________________________________
STAT
SUMMARY BOX: 

DID TEDY BRUSCHI HAVE A STROKE?
__________________________________________________

 

1. A stroke is defined by damage to the brain. If there is no damage, there is no stroke.

2. There has been NO objective evidence mentioned or described in the Tedy Bruschi case to indicate a stroke has occurred  -- although every single press report and Internet post states unequivocally that Bruschi had a stroke

3. Just evaluating the relatively abrupt onset and resolution of symptoms, the best guess is that he either had a migraine with stroke-like features; or, a TIA ( = same symptoms as stroke but without brain damage), for unknown reason

4. If Bruschi really did have a stroke there would be unequivocal evidence seen on the diffusion weighted MRI (always done in these cases); yet, no one mentions a positive MRI or CT scan

5. If Bruschi DID have a stroke then, listed roughly in the order of likeliness, Bruschi suffered from :

                                a. unusual migraine-associated infarct
                                b. cocaine-induced vasculitis/spasm
                                c. bleeding into a small vascular malformation
                                d. traumatic injury to carotid vessel
                                e. cannot be determined
                                f. extremely rare entities

6. Some reports (leaked from the Patriot organization, according to The Boston Globe) implicate a "broken blood vessel."  This would implicate bleeding into a small vascular malformation; or, an injury to the carotid artery.

7. The reason we have these questions and doubts is because those reporting on the situation are either uninformed, uninterested, unmotivated to learn, or covering up something.

8. Newspaper and Internet journalists daily propagate medical myths, misunderstandings, and  falsehoods because of  -- one can only assume -- lassitude, hubris, or ignorance. This behavior contributes to the MEDICAL INFANTALISM we see in the American health care consumer

9. Because of the above, journalists bears some of the blame for the current "health care crisis;" and, by logical extension they have the power to participate in the remediation of the crisis

TOMORROW: THE LONG VERSION

 

hat tip:   Kevin, M.D.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Asterisk Club: Kerouac and Friends Join Canseco and McGwire

Canseco's Cantos

Body The airwaves and broadband corridors are awash with commentary on Jose Canseco's recent  new book about the use of anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs in baseball and athletics. Commentors are outraged, indignant, hurt, cynical and contemplative over the obliteration of their fantasies about sports, athletes, and fair play.

The intellectual crowd sits back, nodding their heads with the "I told you so," smugness of those who would not strain through a single sit-up -- let alone grow hair on their backs -- to enhance their athletic prowess or success. It's SO middle class.

Yet the entire overblown controversy represents nothing more than is seen in the every day, mundane world, as well as in the highest echelons of art, science, and literature. Performance enhancement through drugs? Can I let you in on a dirty secret? It's done in every discipline, by the famous and not so famous, by the successful and not so successful. It is a practice without which many great accomplishments -- far afield from the baseball diamond -- would never have been achieved.

Hit the Road, Jack Flash

KerouacNPR broadcast a spot about Jack Kerouac's On The Road yesterday. Kerouac typed this vaunted and much admired novel continuously and furiously -- using single spacing -- on a 120 foot long scroll of tracing paper, "fueled by coffee and Benzedrine."

Benzedrine, or "Bennies", are amphetemines -- "uppers"-- made famous in the old Blues song:

Who Put The Benzedrine In Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?

In the record books of the literratti, Jack Kerouac is forever admired--enshrined in the literary equiavlent of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Yet he was a renowned drinker (etoh = alcohol = drug) and used amphetamines to power his imagination and stamina, in a behavior analogous to Mark McGwire chewing on Androstenedione in the locker room. Should On the Road be marked by an asterisk in the Pantheon of literature? How about a double dagger?

Here, There, and Everywhere

Coleridge_1 We'd be putting lots of asterisks in all our books if we tried to single out all those succcessful and well known people who were suspected (or admitted)  performance enhancer users.

Samuel Coleridge, for example, admitted that his famous work "Kubla Khan,"  recounted a dream he had while stoned on opium.

Marcus Boon, in his book The Road of Excess: A History of Writers on Drugs lists a few of the many certified drug users in the great literary past of our collective cultures.

Keats, Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, and de Quincey, Boon tells us, used opium. Proust, Guy de Maupassant and William James abused anesthetics like either and nitrous oxide. Balzac, Coleridge, Rimbaud, Yeats and the Beats all smoked, ate and drank cannabis. Balzac's frenetic writing was fueled by vast quantities of caffeine;   Leary, de Kooning, Bowles, Thompson and, most famously, William S. Burroughs,  all consumed psychedelics not limited to peyote, mescaline, and acid. 

These artists used drugs to feed and maintain their hungry muses. As Hunter Thompson said:

A cap of good acid (LSD) costs five dollars and for that you can hear the Universal Symphony with God singing solo and the Holy Ghost on drums. 

In admitting that artistic inspiration and performance was enhanced by drug use,  Salon mused:

Can drugs help you tap into a "deeper understanding" that permanently enhances your perception of the world around you? That is the crucial question, and for that we have no research-driven answer. But many artists would say yes...Drugs create unusual perceptions, and artists frequently exploit drug experiences, as they do other parts of their lives, in creating art.

But in a disclaimer identical to those who try to make sense of drug use in athletics, Salon peddles the identical palaver:

Will hallucinogens or similar drugs make a normal person the next Ernest Hemingway? We think not.

In other words, Androgens won't make you a Barry Bonds, but they will make Barry Bonds a Babe Ruth!

Let Him Who is Without Sin Swallow the First Caplet

Let us not forget the famous and brilliant accused of enhancing their performances. Here are some photographs. Can you name each famous "achiever" and their drug of choice (left to right; answers at the end of the post)?

Eminem

Judy_garland

Sigmund_freud

Timothy_leary

Stephen_king

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Whatever Lola Wants

Truth is, many people are like Goethe's Faust and Joe Boyd in Damn Yankees -- willing to make a deal with an unquantifiable risk, to chance greatness. The difference, however, is between the devil and...the deep blue sea of drug regulation.Damnyankeesv

Our society does not want us to use drugs/ phatmaceuticals/ performance enhancers to do better and greater things. Drugs are reserved for...well, for getting better when you are NOT well. They are not for being well BETTER.

If the proper research is allowed, and free market systems are freed to act, then performance enhancing drugs will come under proper research, investigation and regulation.The risks will become quantifiabble, at which point we can make rational choices. Is it worth the possibility of infarcting a bone to grow six more inches? Is it worth developing cancer of the brain to have bigger frontal lobes?

Until we answer the question: what are the risks, we can never say what the deal is worth. But as attested to by the innumerable artists, scientists and athletes (and we have not even glimpsed the SURFACE of the iceberg of this pheomenon -- now and throughout history) it may be worth a lot, to individuals, to achievements in science and art, and to the recordbooks -- yeah, even in baseball.

I don't know about you, but if I could have endless energy and pricked up attention 22 hours a day -- and the risk were, say...heartburn...I'd take the drug in a second.

If pharmacological enhancement could make Jack Kerouac a writer of historical proportions -- praised and hailed as a great artist whose name will live on forever -- imagine what it could do for you?

Quiz Answers:

(Eminem - ectsasy; Judy Garland - amphetamines; Sigmund Freud - cocaine; Tinmothy Leary - LSD; Stephen King - cocaine)

CSI MEDBLOGS: DIABOLICAL MURDERS IN THE FORMER USSR GO ON...THE DEATH OF ZURAB ZHVANIA

KGB, With The Space Heater, In The Party House

Heater

Thanks to the MHM (Mad House Madman) I went back to a news article I had skipped over previously. You know, sometimes even the most skeptical of us let down our guard for a minute...

I'm referring to the recent deaths of Zurab Zhvania, the prime minister of Georgia, and a political friend, Raul Usupov. They reportedly died of carbon monoxide poisoning while having a little party together...and at first glance it's an easy story to buy into: Two drunken revelers fall asleep in a room with the windows shut...and a space heater burning. 

It's relatively common, so you need to blink a few times and read the news release over a couple of times until you say to yourself: no way.

First of all, the most unlikely demographic for poisoning by carbon monoxide from a space heater is a white male in his 40's. There are a couple of reasons for this.  First, although carbon monoxide is odorless, many people develop mild symptoms like headache and nausea before becoming completely poisoned. It is likely that the two Georgians would have needed a "breath of fresh air"  at sometime during their party to clear out the cobwebs and to dump out their ashtrays.

Second,  most space heater poisonings occur while people are sleeping. This follows from the above issue of mild symptoms; but, it also pertains to the unabated use of the heater while sleeping. When awake, most people down-regulate space heaters at some point because they tend to overheat the premises -- so the size, power, age and make of the murderous space heater in this case would be quite important.

I Wanna Partay With You

Animal_house The  press release says that Zhvania, who is married and has children -- went to the home of the deputy governor of Georgia's Kvemo-Karti region for a "small party."

What is that? Well, a party is:

A social gathering especially for pleasure or amusement

...and I guess TWO people constitute a SMALL party.

Zhvania got to the party house just after midnight, locked all the doors, and sealed all the windows tightly before going out of touch for four hours at which time his brilliant and well-trained bodyguard -- after giving up trying to contact Zhvania by cellphone -- decided it was time to act, breaking through a window and finding the prime minister dead in an armchair and his friend dead in the kitchen.

So let's get this straight. The prime minister goes over to someone's house without his wife or children for a party of two people at midnight (*hehe*). The other person was also an important politician. I guess it was a small political party.

The prime minister leaves his bodyguards somewhere behind and goes into the house and locks the doors, then proceeds to sit down in an armchair next to a space heater that is burning gas.

The prime minister and his friend are so dumb they never heard about the dangers of using gas burning space heaters with all the windows shut, and they are so poor as to have an improperly functioning or poorly ventilated heater. Not to mention carbon monoxide detectors.

At some point the party host gets up and goes to the kitchen, where he dies (probably had the munchies right before the end) and Zhvania cooperated by dying simultaneously in the living room.

What do you think?

Murder Most Foul

Murder This is a straight forward murder. Period. It's not like we have to do radical twists and turns as in the Yushchenko confabulation in order to make this work, right? Someone wants Zhvania dead. They pay off his body guards, kidnap him, poison him with carbon monoxide and plant him in an armchair, fire up the gas heater and leave town.

With Yushchenko I made the case that no one would be SO stupid as to try to kill him with Dioxin. Well now WE would be stupid if we didn't recognize the opposite phenomenon: poisoning someone in a way that everyone can accept as probable.   Can't you just see all the KGB agents and affiliates meeting after the Yushchenko debacle and telling each other: we've got to make these murders more convincing!

And they did a good job, too. Because everyone just shook his head and said: too bad. Those heaters are dangerous.

Michael Corleone Had Fewer Enemies

Corleone Even more dangerous is being a controversial politician in a former Russian republic, I guess. Zhvania helped lead the 2003 Rose Revolution to overthrow his former buddy, Eduard Shevardnadze and replace him with a new buddy, Mikheil Saakashvili. Saakashvili promptly changed the constitution to make a new office for a prime minister, which Zhvania assumed in February 2004. But the new friendship was doomed to be short-lived.

Recently, Zhvania'a relationship with  Saakashvili has eroded. In fact recent squabbles in the government between proteges of the two politicians have been regarded as a "backstage power struggle" between Zhvania and Saakashvili.

Zhvania has also been under fire, lately, because of his support of the controversial, Russian-dominated privatization of several key Georgian economic enterprises.

Always on My Mind

So who would want Zhvania dead? How about the OLD regime, the NEW regime and THE RICH and POWERFUL of Georgia. Who else? Anyone and everyone affected by his plans to privatize lucrative government services.

Not to mention all the usual suspects that might kill hiom and his friend for any one of a number of mundane reasons.

Just being Georgian seems to be a risk factor nowadays...or even just being a former member of the USSR.

Stay Tuned

DO YOU CARNIVAL?

Carney The 124th Carnival of the Vanities is posted today at Ken Sain.

I'm sure you all MUST know, but The Carnival is a weekly compendium of interesting blogs and is a great way to get and be exposed. More than that, it enables you to find new and unusual and compelling blogs...

Watership It's the brainstorm of Bigwig at Silflay Hraka (hint: did you ever read Watership Down??) and Grand Rounds is a blog child of this clever idea. So go read Bigwig's blog, because he has lots of brainchilds that are worth reading every day.

Next week's Carnival is at Coyote Blog.  Medical bloggers should look into submitting posts; remember, we're trying to INFORM and EDUCATE, so we gotta get our messages out. I mean I love the Madman as much as any of you, but we need to get in touch with THE FORCE.

You've got until 3PM February 8th to submit.

The_force

USE THE FORCE

Grand Rounds Encapsulated

Beach_ball Visit Capsules for this week's installment of Grand Rounds where the burgeoning medical blogosphere continues to exhibit its...burgeoning.

Big Pharma continues to be the bouncing beach ball being volleyed around the stadium of medical web opinion...

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