[Follow Me!]

"I am the world crier, & this is my dangerous career... I am the one to call your bluff, & this is my climate."

—Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972)

Saturday, September 7

ACLU Action Alert:  

Oppose Culture War Against Raves!:
In a misguided spin-off of the "War on Drugs," the Senate is considering legislation that targets raves and would have the effect of classifying common rave items like glow sticks and massage oils as drug paraphernalia. The Reducing Americans Vulnerability to Ecstasy (RAVE) Act, S. 2633, introduced by Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE), would also impose huge fines and even prison time on the owners of venues into which customers bring controlled substances. No matter how much security is put in place, they could be held responsible for the actions of just one customer.



Holding club owners and promoters of raves criminally liable for what some people may do at these events is no different from arresting the stadium owners and promoters of a Rolling Stones concert or a rap show because some concertgoers may be smoking or selling marijuana. Unless a loud and powerful objection to this legislation is voiced, an already misunderstood community and culture could be criminalized.


Urge your Senators to oppose attacks
on youth culture!

American Civil Liberties Union Freedom Network

  •  

Mental illness 'at the root of jazz' 

"The mental health problems of one musician could have led to the creation of jazz.

Without his schizophrenia, Charles "Buddy" Bolden - the man credited by some with starting off the jazz movement - might never have started improvisation, psychiatrists have heard." BBC [thanks, Michael]

  •  

A Wheel within a Wheel 


[Hoag's Object]
"A nearly perfect ring of hot, blue stars pinwheels about the yellow nucleus of an unusual galaxy known as Hoag's Object. This image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures a face-on view of the galaxy's ring of stars, revealing more detail than any existing photo of this object. The entire galaxy is about 120,000 light-years wide, which is slightly larger than our Milky Way Galaxy. The blue ring, which is dominated by clusters of young, massive stars, contrasts sharply with the yellow nucleus of mostly older stars. What appears to be a "gap" separating the two stellar populations may actually contain some star clusters that are almost too faint to see. Curiously, an object that bears an uncanny resemblance to Hoag's Object can be seen in the gap at the one o'clock position. The object is probably a background ring galaxy." STScI

  •  

Making a date 

"There's one way to take 11 September away from
terrorists and politicians: remove it from the
calendar... For as long as it exists, 11 September will be a popular attack date for radical Islamists or those who want to pass off their own nefarious deeds as the work of radical Islamists. Get rid of it, and the world will be a safer place." sp!ked

  •  

No-Brainer Dept (cont'd): 

Brendan O'Neill finds that the first casualty is clarity: "Commentators are reading meaning into Bush's
stance on Iraq where none exists." sp!ked

  •  


[Irma]

  •  

A Little Traffic Problem: 

Police investigate road racing rodent: "Detectives are investigating the mystery of a hamster found driving a toy racing car along a promenade at a northern seaside resort, newspapers say." Yahoo! News

  •  

Laughing Squid  

Underground art and culture from San Francisco and beyond: "Laughing Squid is an online resource for independent art and culture of San Francisco and beyond. It also is home to the Squid List: a daily event announcements list, The Tentacle List: a list to find artists & perfomers and the Tentacle Sessions: a monthly series that features many of the artists featured on the Laughing Squid website and The Squid List. "

  •  

Today in the Bush-Iraq Debacle: 

When contemplating war, beware of babies in incubators: "The babies in the incubator story is a classic example of how easy it is for the public and legislators to be misled during moments of high tension. It's also a vivid example of how the media can be manipulated if we do not keep our guards up." On the CS Monitor [via Walker]




Iraq Said Likely to Have Bioweapons

"Despite its denials, Iraq probably possesses large stockpiles of nerve agents, mustard gas and anthrax, former U.N. inspectors say."

On AP World News





Iraqi Hospital Prepares for War

"Dr. Luay Qasha is preparing for a U.S. attack on Iraq by turning the basement of his Baghdad children's cancer hospital into a bomb shelter - stocking enough food, medicine and water for 500 people."

On AP World News





Inspectors Step Up Iraq Preparation

"U.N. weapons inspectors are stepping up preparations for a possible return to Iraq, seeking new sources for satellite photos, scouting laboratories to test samples, and pressing friendly governments for more intelligence reports."

On AP World News





U.S. Steps Up War of Nerves in Skies over Iraq

"The United States is intensifying air operations over Iraq in a war of nerves which military experts said on Saturday appears designed to show resolve and confuse Baghdad over a strike date."

On Yahoo! News - Most-emailed Content





Disarm Iraq Quickly, Bush to Urge U.N.

"President Bush plans to tell world leaders at the United Nations next week that unless they take quick, unequivocally strong action to disarm Iraq, the United States will be forced to act on its own, senior administration officials said yesterday."

On Washington Post: Front Page



Lauren Bush Falls Ill at Arab-Look Fashion Show

"A stomach bug rather than diplomatic jitters kept President Bush's niece Lauren from modeling an Arabic-inspired collection at a fashion show in Barcelona, fashion house Toypes said on Friday."

On Yahoo! News - Most-emailed Content





Plans for Iraq Attack Began on 9/11
On CBS News [via Red Rock Eaters]




Jets Bomb Key Iraqi Air Base
In The Scotsman [via Red Rock Eaters]




History of deceptive claims about Iraq
In CS Monitor [via Red Rock Eaters]


  •  

"Horrendous...lack of dissenting voices..." 

Dissenters fault reactions to attacks:
Over the course of the year, the few audible voices that publicly questioned the quasi-official narrative of Sept. 11 have been ridiculed and criticized, often harshly.

But now, a year after the attacks, a handful of scholars is once again suggesting that there are other ways of looking at what happened last year, that perhaps the attacks weren't so shocking and the response not so justifiable.



''We academics are paid to sit on our butts and think, and yet we mainly underwrite the sentimentalities that the culture desires when we're supposed to be telling the truth,'' said Stanley M. Hauerwas, a prominent professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School. ''I find the lack of dissenting voices to the current outrage of Americans about September the 11th, and the resulting attack on Afghanistan, to be absolutely horrendous.''



Hauerwas and Frank Lentricchia, a professor of literature and theater studies at Duke, have edited a new collection of writings, Dissent from the Homeland: Essays After September 11, that is being published on Wednesday, Sept. 11, in a special edition of The South Atlantic Quarterly. In the journal, 18 theologians, philosophers, and literary critics speak out against the war on terrorism, led by the two Duke professors, who complain in an introductory note that ''this war has ... seen the capitulation of church and synagogue to the resurgence of American patriotism and nationalism.'' Boston Globe


  •  

Big Muddy Dept (cont'd): 

Richard Reeves thinks President Bush is Losing It:
Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, writing in The Washington Post last Thursday under the headline "On Invading Iraq: Less Talk, More Unity," warned the Bush administration that too many official voices are saying too many contradictory things about Iraq. "Loose lips sink ships," he said, and they could sink the administration's war plans, too.



That advice may be too late for Mr. Bush. In exactly one year, the president and his men have managed to divide a nation unified by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The administration's obsession with deposing Saddam Hussein looks to be one of the stupidest efforts to manipulate public opinion in the country's democratic history.



Over the past year, when I have criticized the president, my mail has shifted from about 20-to-1 calling me a traitor to about 10-to-1 complimenting me for my obvious common sense. I realize that those numbers indicate I may be preaching to a liberal choir, but the change is striking. And I see the same thing happening on the letters page of journals with a far greater reach than my voice.

Stopping the inanity of a strike against Iraq, of course, cannot be achieved in the letters columns unless the tide of shifting public opinion it reflects has an impact. Do you really believe that Bush's offer to confer with the Congress before starting a war will make his zealots any less emboldened to do whatever they want regardless of what anyone else thinks? The war probably won't be stopped without a massive civil disobedience effort on the scale of anti-Vietnam War protests, and I see no signs that anyone is doing that preemptively. Maybe several years into the quagmire... 

Waist Deep in the Big Muddy



It was back in nineteen forty-two,

I was a member of a good platoon.

We were on maneuvers in-a Loozianna,

One night by the light of the moon.

The captain told us to ford a river,

That's how it all begun.

We were -- knee deep in the Big Muddy,

But the big fool said to push on.



The Sergeant said, "Sir, are you sure,

This is the best way back to the base?"

"Sergeant, go on! I forded this river

'Bout a mile above this place.

It'll be a little soggy but just keep slogging.

We'll soon be on dry ground."

We were -- waist deep in the Big Muddy

And the big fool said to push on.



The Sergeant said, "Sir, with all this equipment

No man will be able to swim."

"Sergeant, don't be a Nervous Nellie,"

The Captain said to him.

"All we need is a little determination;

Men, follow me, I'll lead on."

We were -- neck deep in the Big Muddy

And the big fool said to push on.



All at once, the moon clouded over,

We heard a gurgling cry.

A few seconds later, the captain's helmet

Was all that floated by.

The Sergeant said, "Turn around men!

I'm in charge from now on."

And we just made it out of the Big Muddy

With the captain dead and gone.



We stripped and dived and found his body

Stuck in the old quicksand.

I guess he didn't know that the water was deeper

Than the place he'd once before been.

Another stream had joined the Big Muddy

'Bout a half mile from where we'd gone.

We were lucky to escape from the Big Muddy

When the big fool said to push on.



Well, I'm not going to point any moral;

I'll leave that for yourself

Maybe you're still walking, you're still talking

You'd like to keep your health.

But every time I read the papers

That old feeling comes on;

We're -- waist deep in the Big Muddy

And the big fool says to push on.



Waist deep in the Big Muddy

And the big fool says to push on.

Waist deep in the Big Muddy

And the big fool says to push on.

Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a

Tall man'll be over his head, we're

Waist deep in the Big Muddy!

And the big fool says to push on!



Words and music by Pete Seeger (1967)

TRO (c) 1967 Melody Trails, Inc. New York, NY

  •  

Some Seek Attention by Making Pets Sick 

"Some people have a rare disorder — Munchausen's — in which they deliberately cause illness in others, and then use the illness to get sympathy and medical attention. Most cases involve mothers who hurt their own children, but a new report shows that people with this illness may also hurt their pets." Reuters Health

[Addendum: Hal is of course completely correct to note that Munchausen's Syndrome is the name of the condition where you induce illness in yourself for the gratification the medical attention provides. It is "Munchausen's by proxy" when you do it via your child or your pet.]


  •  

Friday, September 6

Mission Statement of BLTC Research 

BLTC Research was founded in 1995 to promote paradise-engineering. We are dedicated to an ambitious global technology project. BLTC seek to abolish the biological substrates of suffering. Not just in humans, but in all sentient life.



Absurdly fanciful? No. The blueprint for a Post-Darwinian Transition is conceptually simple, technically feasible and morally urgent.



At present, life on earth is controlled by self-replicating DNA. Selfish genes ensure that cruelty, pain, malaise are endemic to the living world.



Yet all traditional religions, all social and economic ideologies, and all political parties, are alike in one respect. They ignore the biochemical roots of our ill-being. So the noisy trivia of party-politics distract us from what needs to be done.



Fortunately, the old Darwinian order, driven by blind natural selection acting on random genetic mutations, is destined to pass into evolutionary history.



For third-millennium bioscience allows us to:



  • rewrite the vertebrate genome
  • redesign the global ecosystem
  • deliver genetically pre-programmed well-being


Biotechnology can make us smarter, happier - and nicer. Post-Darwinian superminds can abolish "physical" and "mental" pain altogether.

  •  

'Working Stiffs Lambasting Everything...' 

Get Your War on by David Rees, scheduled for November 2002 release as a book! Powell's Books

  •  

Krazy & Ignatz: 1927-1928:  


[With love from Ignatz]
Love Letters in Ancient Brick by George Herrimam:
The greatest comic strip of all-time. In a 1999 special issue, The Comics Journal named George Herriman's Krazy Kat as "the greatest comic strip of the 20th Century." In 2002, Fantagraphics embarked on a publishing plan to reintroduce the strip to a public that has largely never seen it: this volume is the second of a long-term plan to chronologically reprint strips from the prime of Herriman's career, most of which have not seen print since originally running in newspapers 75 years ago. Each volume is edited by the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum's Bill Blackbeard, the world's foremost authority on early 20th Century American comic strips, and designed by Jimmy Corrigan author Chris Ware. In addition to the 104 full-page black-and-white Sunday strips from 1927 and 1928 (Herriman did not use color until 1935), the book includes an introduction by Blackbeard and reproductions of rare Herriman ephemera from Ware's own extensive collection, as well as annotations and other notes by Ware and Blackbeard. Krazy Kat is a love story, focusing on the relationships of its three main characters. Krazy Kat adored Ignatz Mouse. Ignatz Mouse just tolerated Krazy Kat, except for recurrent onsets of targeting tumescence, which found expression in the fast delivery of bricks to Krazy's cranium. Offisa Pup loved Krazy and sought to protect "her" (Herriman always maintained that Krazy was genderless) by throwing Ignatz in jail. Each of the characters was ignorant of the others' true motivations, and this simple structure allowed Herriman to build entire worlds of meaning into the actions, building thematic depth and sweeping his readers up by the looping verbal rhythms of Krazy & Co.'s unique dialogue. As Lingua Franca once wrote, "Herriman was a rare artist who bridges the gap between high and low culture. His surrealistic strip was admired by popular entertainers like Walt Disney and Frank Capra yet also had a highbrow fan club that included E. E. Cummings, Willem de Kooning, and Umberto Eco"...
[...and me. — FmH] Powell's Books

  •  

What's the fall fashion in Washington? 

Declan McCullagh: "The danger of Congress being unusually profligate in discarding both money and Americans' privacy is especially real right now. First, it's an election year. Second, the war on terror has eliminated most of the usual obstacles to fiscal extravagance. Third, the Bush administration seems determined to reduce Americans' protections against government snooping--all in the name of protecting America from terrorists." C/Net

  •  

Wednesday, September 4

Shocking Consequences: 

With Towers Gone, Area May Be Vulnerable to Lightning: "The issue received little attention after Sept. 11, in part because New York had so few storms this year. But on Aug. 2, when an unusually powerful thunderstorm struck, a 25-year-old Manhattan man was struck and killed by a bolt of lightning on the roof of a six-story apartment building on Broome Street, on the edge of Chinatown." NY Times

  •  

Who's Your Daddy? 

Maureen Dowd: 'As crazy Al Haig said Sunday on Fox, Bush 43 "has to be careful of the old gang. These are the people that created the problems in the first place by not handling Saddam Hussein correctly. . . . I'm talking about the previous administration and their spokesmen, Jim Baker, Scowcroft, and a very wise daddy who's not talking at all and he shouldn't."

The pathologically blunt General Haig simply spit out what other conservatives imply: Daddy wimped out in Iraq and Junior has to fix it.' NY Times op-ed

  •  

Outa'Sync: 

Russia Scraps Space Plans of Pop Star: "The Russian Aviation and Space Agency has scrubbed Lance Bass, of the pop group 'N Sync, from its passenger list for an October flight to the International Space Station." NY Times

  •  

Chefs cook up gourmet 'fakes' 

"Call it gourmet cuisine’s dirty little secret: A lot of it is fake." MSNBC [via Walker]

  •  

A Day in the Life of Fat 

Fat tissue has a daily life of its own with previously unknown neural connections to the brain's biological clock. The discovery adds to a new view that the biological clock regulates not only behavior, but also the body's main organs and that, in turn, those organs can "talk back" to the brain. BioMedNet [requires free registration]

  •  

Speaking of big fat lies... 

Experts Declare Story Low on Saturated Facts: "Last month, a provocative article argued that a low- fat diet may be responsible for America's obesity epidemic -- and that high-fat may be healthier. The problem: a lot of good science suggests otherwise." Washington Post [via Plastic [via Walker]]

  •  

Thinking Outside the (Black) Box: 

Diverse psychiatric/neurobiological speculations from Medical Hypotheses:
  • Did schizophrenia change the course of English history? The mental illness of Henry VI:
    Henry VI, King of England, at age 19 founded Eton College and King's College, Cambridge. At 31 he had a sudden, dramatic mental illness in which he was mute and unresponsive. Before, he had been paranoid, grandiose, and indecisive. Henry's story illustrates how schizophrenia can devastate individuals and families and change the course of history and yet it raises questions about how achievement and illness are related... Medical Hypotheses


  • Mind from genes and neurons: a neurobiological model of Freudian psychology     :

    A hypothetical neurobiological model of Freud's architecture of the mind is presented in an attempt to unify concepts and data derived from molecular biology (e.g., genomic imprinting), systems neuroscience (e.g., neuroanatomochemical circuitries), evolutionary psychology (e.g., human mating strategies), and Freudian psychology... Medical Hypotheses


  • Pneumoobstruction of the tracheobronchial tree as a hypothetical cause of balbuties :

    The occurrence of balbuties is a common phenomenon. Balbuties is defined as frequent repetition and lengthening of syllables and words, alternatively frequent halting with pauses impairing the rhythmic flow of speech. Balbuties may have a negative influence upon the psychic as well as social development of an individual ... Medical Hypotheses


  • Thinking outside the synapse:

    Bridging the gap between the parallel, distributed processing of groups of neurons and the serial, integrated processing of higher cognitive functions is a difficult hallenge. One possible mechanism originates in the shared space of the extracellular compartment. The opening and closing of ion channels in this space produce mechanical waves, presumably in the ultrasonic range. If the broadcast signals are selectively received by target neurons, then several cognitive abilities readily emerge, including learning, memory, pattern recognition, and problem solving... Medical Hypotheses


  •  

Not in Our Names 

This is a statement of conscience against the War on Terrorism® and the domestic repression that have followed 9-11. It is quite abit broader than the simple statement I invited you to join in below
, declining to be a part of any consensus the Administration might think it has to attack Iraq:


[Not in my name!]



'Not in Our Name' "... will be published in the New York Times in September. The New York Times ad will feature those names with the greatest potential to have an impact on public opinion, but we will make every effort to list everyone who contributed to the ad. In addition, the ad will also refer people to the web site where the name of every signer
will be available." Here is the original Guardian UK story on the statement
. Here is the text of the statement
, which begins:

Let it not be said that people in the United States did nothing when their government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression.





The signers of this statement call on the people of the U.S. to resist the policies and overall political direction that have emerged since September 11, 2001, and which pose grave dangers to the people of the world.





We believe that peoples and nations have the right to determine their own destiny, free from military coercion by great powers. We believe that all persons detained or prosecuted by the United States government should have the same rights of due process. We believe that questioning, criticism, and dissent must be valued and protected. We understand that such rights and values are always contested and must be fought for.





We believe that people of conscience must take responsibility for what their own governments do -- we must first of all oppose the injustice that is done in our own name. Thus we call on all Americans to RESIST the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration. It is unjust, immoral, and illegitimate. We choose to make common cause with the people of the world...



Click here to add your name
to the endorsers. This conscientious stand, for me, is one of the most pertinent and urgent ways to celebrate the year's anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Consider using the yellow graphic above on your webpage as an anchor pointing to the NION project, as I have.

  •  

Tuesday, September 3

The Lilly Suicides 

I already blinked to this AdBusters project, prozacspotlight.org but Richard DeGrandpre's "Lilly Suicides" essay has just been reprinted on AlterNet. Rebecca Blood pointed me to the article, soliciting my comments. Here goes:
There are three distinct problems here. The first is what Prozac and the other SSRIs actually do in the way of worsening people's agitation, and what that might lead to in behaviors. The second is the corporate response. And the third is the societal attitude toward the issue. [To get what I'm saying here fully, you should have read the 'Lilly Suicides' article already...]

Clinicians have never been unclear about the adverse effects of the SSRIs and the care required to manage them properly. It is pretty certain that they can cause akathisic restlessness and agitation. At its worst it is pretty much excruciating torture, although that degree of akathisia is very very rare - perhaps just enough to account for the handful of well-publicized cases the article and others like it refer to? I've treated literally thousands of patients with SSRIs, was part of the pre-marketing clinical trials for Prozac before its approval and release, etc. i.e., I've been using these meds since the mid-80's, and I've never seen a patient agitated enough to want to jump from heights or compelled to jump in front of traffic. It is usually more like a bad case of the jitters from, e.g., too much caffeine. It certainly is true, as the Healy study whose description starts out the AlterNet article indicates, that this effect is a physiological reaction to the drug even when given to a healthy nondepressed subject, but it is not clear to me what the "dangerously agitated and suicidal" impact he describes Zoloft as having on two of his volunteers actually means in clinical rather than histrionic terms. I'm dubious without more detail.

Nevertheless it is notable to me that so many of the gruesome suicides, or murder-suicides, noted in the article occur just after  the patient has been put on the drug, and before its antidepressant benefits can accrue. It seems you have a situation of adding agitation on top of preexisting depression during this initial period of drug use. The depression itself might not have been severe enough to make the patient suicidal, but patients may interpret the new-onset painful agitation pessimistically -- as is the case in depression -- as a worsening of their illness and more evidence that their recovery is hopeless. This was a big problem when the SSRIs were first introduced in the late '80's. They were not yet considered "first-line" antidepressants and were often reserved for use with the most desperately ill depressed patients who had previously failed all the preexisting classes of antidepressant medication. All their hopes were riding on the new drugs, and the prescribing doctors were swept up in the 'hype', as is the case whenever a supposed breakthrough class of medication is introduced. (There's a joke in psychiatry, indeed throughout medicine, about how we should "use it or lose it", i.e. hurry up and prescribe new drugs before the bloom is off the rose and they lose the benefit of everyone's blind enthusiasm toward them... which really does, through the placebo effect, make them more effective at the outset...) So when such patients don't get better on SSRIs any more than they did on their previous antidepressants, they are more and more despondent. Their last, best hope has failed them... Now I know that's not the typical story in the AlterNet article, but it does illustrate the expectancy effect.

Moreover, the side effects of an SSRI are worst in the first few days of use, before the body acclimatizes to the medication. They are exacerbated by introducing the drug in too abrupt a fashion rather than easing the dosage up gradually. Finally, the "jolt" the patient gets from starting the antidepressant may provide the energy for them to act on a plan they were too listless to implement up to that point.

The agitation caused by starting SSRI treatment is not usually so severe, emergent and abrupt that it cannot be anticipated, prevented, and treated with careful attentive treatment. Such prudent care is lacking in the modern treatment environment for a number of reasons. First, 'managed care' pressures doctors to achieve results rapidly, which translates into starting the drugs at too high a dose and increasing the dosage too frequently. Seond, 'managed care' translates into pressure to spend too little time with patients, or to see them too infrequently. Finally, as I never hesitate to point out, a coalescence of pharmaceutical-marketing and 'managed-care' influences have caused prescribing to shift more and more to the primary care MDs, family practitioners, internists, etc., rather than the psychiatrists, IMHO creating even less adequate care than the psychiatrist would have given in the equivalent situation. This is not always the case; several of the AlterNet vignettes were of people treated by psychiatrists, but it contributes...

There are also several other adverse effects of SSRIs (and all other antidepressants) which are alluded to in the article but which are a different risk than akathisia. First, the SSRIs produce part of their beneficial effect, I and a subset of psychiatrists are convinced, by a sort of therapeutic numbing. If the medication works, things just don't get to you so much, your skin is thicker in a way. Now this is abit reductionistic I know, but, physiologically, this is probably a function of the drug's actions in damping down the function of parts of the frontal lobes. Because the frontal lobes also control inhibitions, it is possible that in some cases the "frontal lobe apathy" they create, particularly if exaggerated, could remove inhibitions against impulsive and even heinous acts; this would be especilly true for people who are motivated, and stopped from acting up, by concern about people's opinions or reactions. With the SSRIs, one could care less, so to speak. One does care less...

Another adverse effect of the SSRIs and all other antidepressants is the induction of mania. A depressed patient may always be an 'undeclared' manic depressive (bipolar), which is an accident waiting to happen if you give an antidepressant. It can't be avoided; you can only discover their bipolar tendencies when their first antidepressant treatment makes them manic — which is a different form of disinhibition, hyperactivity and agitation than akathisia, but can result in the similar dangerous behaviors. The Forsyth vignette in the article, in which one day he feels better than good and the next commits a "maniacal" act, may actually be a "manic", as in bipolar illness, act.

Finally, SSRIs, and other antidepressants, can also induce psychosis, or unmask it in a depression that was already headed in a "psychotic depression" direction. You get that feeling in murder-suicides -- that the reasoning it takes to decide to kill your family or spouse as well as yourself is often delusional rather than just depressed. As the author describes the Forsyth murder-suicide, these were "senseless acts that were simply unimaginable to those who knew (him)."

By the way, one added reason for a rate of suicide 5-6 times that of the tricyclics, the older class of antidepressants, was not only the contributions I've mentioned above to an attitude of laxity in prescribing the SSRIs, but that there had been an attitude of hypervigilance with the tricyclics. This is for one simple reason : overdose. While SSRI overdose is trivial from the point of view of medical complications, and nonlethal, tricyclic overdoses KILL, because they have direct effects on cardiac conduction. Prescribers of tricyclics were never lulled into the false sense of security they were to have with the SSRIs.

So much for the effects of the drugs. On to the manufacturers' stances. I believe the thrust of the article, that the corporations pursued a substantial coverup of the adverse effects and adverse outcomes from their medications. Lilly probably would have gone under if Prozac tanked, for example. It represented a third of the company's revenue for many of its years, and it has not come up with a really viable successor cash cow. So every day that it postponed any threat to Prozac's profitability was another good day for the company. Ironically, the evidence of the coverup — the appearance of guilt, etc. — is what is damning, not the data on the drugs' effects. The damage awards and culpability findings are all going to revolve around the contention that the companies should have known, did know, should have warned, did not warn, with due diligence. As I've stated above, I don't really think these companies are marketing truly dangerous drugs that inherently hurt just to enhance their coffers. Properly managed and prescribed, the SSRIs have been breakthroughs in depression treatment, with relatively minor prices to pay — the akathisia risk and, as I wrote last week, the discontinuation syndrome (esp. with Paxil) — if doctors are experienced, aware, and have the time to follow patients on these drugs with due care. If Lilly and other co's hadn't spent more than a decade fighting their rearguard action, lawsuits would probably not be able to reach the "deep pockets" of the pharmaceutical industry and would have stopped where they ought to — with the individual prescribing clinician, as malpractice actions. And the standard for malpractice is whether there was negligence and whether that negligence caused a forseeable and avoidable harm. Stupid greedy Lilly, Glaxo, etc. etc...

Finally, societal attitudes. Look at the article; the author thirsts for a righteous story around the size of the Karen Silkwood or Erin Brockovich sagas ("a final conclusion seems unavoidable: that next to Big Tobacco and the marketing of cigarettes, the selling of the SSRIs is perhaps the deadliest marketing scandal of the 20th century. "). Glory calls! One example is calling akathisia "the most terrifying potential side effect" of these drugs. It simply is not that terrifying! The article also extrapolates from an estimate that only 1% of serious side effects are ever reported to the manufacturers' surveillance programs to conclude that the number of Prozac-related suicides must be 100x greater than the incidents on record. There are lies, damn lies, and statistics... Additionally, to make the Case of the Evil Corporations more dramatic, the crusaders lump together various physiological reactions to the medications and diverse adverse outcomes in a manner which is all too plausible to an uncritical and psychopharmacologically nonastute public, neatly fitting deep-seated biases against psychiatric drugs and the stigma of mental illness.

And by the way, the introduction of newer antidepressants which no longer work via a solely serotonergic mechanism has absolutely nothing to do with the liabilities of the SSRIs, unlike the author's contention in the final paragraph. Medications that work by a serotonin-based mechanism alone are just not suitable for everyone or everything... which is the market the pharmaceutical companies want to capture...


  •  

bin Laden is alive and well and living in Utah 

"As the anniversary of Sept. 11 approaches, terror-related urban legends are running rampant." Don't drink Coke after Labor Day
, by the way... Salon [thanks, Walker!]

  •  

A compendium of recent 'weird news' of various ilks:




  •  

Experts: Narrow down missile-defense options 

Advisory Panel Says Administration Should Decide Soon Between Just Two Plans: "The previously undisclosed recommendation, which came last month from a group of prominent defense experts under the auspices of the Defense Science Board, puts added pressure on the administration to begin defining an actual missile-defense architecture. It reinforces complaints among some in Congress, the defense industry and elsewhere about the lack of specificity in an administration plan that involves as many as eight different approaches for knocking down long-range missiles." San Jose Mercury News The NMD debacle was lost to public scrutiny (along with much else the Administration is quietly pursuing) after 9-11, but it remains on the agenda, to our peril.

  •  

Is ObL dead or alive? Yes... 

Commanders Want Elite Units Freed From Qaeda Hunt: " Some senior officers in the Joint Special Operations Command have concluded that Mr. bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, was probably killed in the American bombing raid at Tora Bora last December, officials said. They concluded that he died in a bombing raid on one of several caves that had been a target because American intelligence officials believed they housed Qaeda leaders. " NY Times

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Monday, September 2

Charles Olson:   


It is a nation of nothing but poetry . . .



It is a nation of nothing but poetry

The universities are sties   John Wieners

has suffered the most   Catholics

have a shame of the body   The soul

lives in the body until it escapes   Main Street High Street Court

where my auto

threw itself over

the crosswalk   The sign read



your body

is to drop

its load



                   Your body

is a holy

thing



                Your body

is a wave

of Ocean



                        Your eyelids

will reveal your soul, your mouth will

                                                                  your clothes will fall

as you do



November

1962
[info.chymes.org
]

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On seeing Ezra Pound, after 20 years 

Charles Olson: "It was very beautiful the way the fierceness of Pound has settled down into a voiceless thing which only responded twice to me..."

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No-Brainer? 

"Clemenceau famously declared that war is too important to be left to the generals. It's a no-brainer to see that war is too important to be left to the likes of Bush... " Robert Higgs, Senior Fellow in Political Economy at The Independent Institute and editor of The Independent Review, is concerned that
President George W. Bush has been reading a book. At least, he claims to have been reading one. I know what you're thinking, but the First Shrub swears that he has been reading more than just the funny papers lately. We'd all be better off, however, if he had stuck to the comics.



In an interview with an Associated Press reporter, Bush said that on his vacation he had been reading a recently published book by Eliot A. Cohen, The Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and Leadership in Wartime. Cohen is a well-known neocon war-hawk and all-around armchair warrior who professes "strategic studies" at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and, in his spare time, ponders mega-deaths (his own not included) with other lusty members of the Defense Policy Board. The quintessential civilian go-getter, he never met a war he didn't want to send somebody else to fight and die in.



The Supreme Command consists of case studies of how four "statesmen" -- Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion -- successfully managed to make their generals act more vigorously than those officers really wanted to act. By spurring their too-timid generals, these four micro-managing commanders-in-chief supposedly got superior results from their war-making efforts. The common soldiers who were fed into the consuming maw of war under these worthies might have given us a different opinion, but dead men don't make good critics.



So what are we to make of Bush's reading of this book, assuming that he really has been reading it? The short answer is that this is not good news for the world. Such reading seems calculated to bend the president's mind, never a mighty organ in any event, toward thinking of himself in Lincolnian or Churchillian terms. Indeed, those of us who have had the stomach to observe his public strutting and puffing since September 11 might have suspected that his juvenile sensibilities would be drawn all too readily toward such a grandiose self-conception. After all, does he but speak, and mighty armadas are launched on a global war against evil? AlterNet [thanks, Walker]


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Caffeine 'lotion' protects against skin cancer. The experiments were done with mice; human trials are pending. "Although caffeine itself filters out UV, (the researcher) thinks the main effect of the substance is biological, triggering cancerous but not healthy cells to wither and die through a process called apoptosis. But how caffeine selectively targets cancerous cells is not known. Despite the success of the tests in mice, (the author) warns people against smearing their bodies with coffee or tea potions.." New Scientist

Years ago, a medical resident friend of mine died of disseminated testicular cancer for which he had rejected medical treatment in favor of the Gerson Diet, which relied heavily on raw vegatable and fruit juices but also on coffee enemas. As usual, extraordinary claims were made by proponents, and maybe the claims will turn out not to have been so misguided if caffeine turns out to be a robust anti-carcinogen, if it works systemically as well as cutaneously, etc. etc. From my vantage point at the time, however, it was a tragic direction for a father of two young children to take at a time when his cancer would have been readily treatable and was not rethought by him until it was far too advanced to salvage anything with conventional treatment. During medical school, I'd been one of those who had constantly harried the professors with disciplined skepticism about the dominant paradigms in medicine and polemicized about 'complementary pathways'. But watching him die was one of the things that embittered me toward alternative medicine (especially when used in an alternative rather than a complementary fashion to conventional allopathic techniques) and emboldened me to start confronting the unsystematic, flaky thoughtlessness with which many evaluate their options when facing important medical decisions.


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Wooshful Thinking? 

Row erupts over danger of ecstasy:
Warnings that ecstasy causes long-term brain damage are premature because the supporting evidence is too weak, say three psychologists... (T)he claims echo a New Scientist report in April. They appear in a review of ecstasy research in The Psychologist, the journal of the British Psychological Society.



But their criticisms are robustly challenged in the same publication by mainstream ecstasy researchers. "It's insane to propose that ecstasy is not damaging" in the long term says Andy Parrott of the University of East London.
New Scientist



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Radio emerges from the electronic soup: "A self-organising electronic circuit has stunned engineers by turning itself into a radio receiver", says this highly-blogged article in New Scientist

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What Are You Trying to Prove? 

Thank heaven I didn't try to sumarize my life's hidden story in five words, as the newest weblog conceit goes, before leuschke skewered the idea... although I wouldn't've been able to, and I'm sorry for those who can.

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The ABC of Psychological Medicine:  

[Weary 1887 by Edward Radford (1831-1920)]
"Fatigue can refer to a subjective symptom of malaise and aversion to activity or to objectively impaired performance. It has both physical and mental aspects. The symptom of fatigue is a poorly defined feeling, and careful inquiry is needed to clarify complaints of "fatigue," "tiredness," or "exhaustion" and to distinguish lack of energy from loss of motivation or sleepiness, which may be pointers to specific diagnoses... " A review of the concept and medical implications, in the British Medical Journal Sharpe and Wilks 325 (7362): 480

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Win XP Service Pack 1 out 9-9-02 

...but can you avoid it? The Register

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Time to Call for His Resignation 

Nat Hentoff on General Ashcroft's Detention Camps:
Now more Americans are also going to be dispossessed of every fundamental legal right in our system of justice and put into camps. Jonathan Turley reports that Justice Department aides to General Ashcroft "have indicated that a 'high-level committee' will recommend which citizens are to be stripped of their constitutional rights and sent to Ashcroft's new camps."



It should be noted that Turley, who tries hard to respect due process, even in unpalatable situations, publicly defended Ashcroft during the latter's turbulent nomination battle, which is more than I did.



Again, in his Los Angeles Times column, Turley tries to be fair: "Of course Ashcroft is not considering camps on the order of the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese American citizens in World War II. But he can be credited only with thinking smaller; we have learned from painful experience that unchecked authority, once tasted, easily becomes insatiable."



Turley insists that "the proposed camp plan should trigger immediate Congressional hearings and reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for important office. Whereas Al Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, Ashcroft has become a clear and present threat to our liberties."

Hentoff concludes, aptly:

Meanwhile, as the camps are being prepared, the braying Terry McAuliffe and the pack of Democratic presidential aspirants are campaigning on corporate crime, with no reference to the constitutional crimes being committed by Bush and Ashcroft. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis prophesied: "The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people." And an inert Democratic leadership. See you in a month, if I'm not an Ashcroft camper. Village Voice

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First Scrimmage 

Spellbound: "Every September, the office of the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in Cincinnati issues a crisp new edition of Paideia, a comic-size booklet that lists thousands of obscure words that will appear in spelling bees across the country over the coming year -- words that any competitive speller in America should know cold. Most families wait for their Paideia to arrive at school; but serious devotees know when the advance audio version of Paideia will go up on the Scripps Howard Web site. On that day each year, the Goldsteins of West Hempstead, N.Y. -- Amy, Ari, J.J. and Amanda, along with their parents, Jonathan and Mona -- assemble like the Von Trapps in a thunderstorm. The whole family squeezes into Amy's bedroom and fires up the computer, and the familiar, baronial voice of the National Spelling Bee pronouncer, Alex J. Cameron, carefully enunciates each new addition to the list -- aition, campanile, kittel, giaour. Each Goldstein sits with pen and paper in hand, as still and focused as a game-show contestant, and spells the words, one by one. It takes hours." NY Times Magazine

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Win-Win: 

Why the President Can't Lose in November: "It sounds so Machiavellian, even treasonous, that no one at the White House would dare endorse such an outcome — at least not in public.

But many prominent Republicans, including some of President Bush's most faithful backers, are convinced that the most certain way for Mr. Bush to continue to rise politically, and ultimately win re-election in 2004, is for Republicans to, well, lose in November." NY Times That, and to have been the sitting President during an unprecedented terrorist attack...

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Accountable Predictions 

Long Bets: This offshoot of the Long Now Foundation — the clock people, Danny Hillis, Stewart Brand, etc. — is intended "to improve long-term thinking. Long Bets is a public arena for enjoyably competitive predictions, of interest to society, with philanthropic money at stake. The foundation furnishes the continuity to see even the longest bets through to public resolution. This website provides a forum for discussion about what may be learned from the bets and their eventual outcomes." Even odds, yes/no questions of societal or scientific importance are posed to thinkers who designate a charity to receive the proceeds of their bet if they win. "Set up as a form of giving, Long Bets engages long-term thinking and long-term responsibility in even more ways."

Bets start at $1000, so that some of the yield from investing the money can go to the cost of "maintaining institutional and technical continuity to keep track of Long Bets and manage the whole service over decades and centuries..." The project was launched prominently in the April 2002 Wired magazine issue with some interesting bet subjects posed by Wired editors to celebrity bettors.

Here
are the recorded bets to date; "you can read the arguments written by each bettor in favor of their position, participate in discussion and place parallel bets." Bets listed to date have terms ranging between 5 years and 148 years, although there's one about whether the universe will eventually stop expanding with a '?' listed for its duration. (Years have fto have ive digits to deal with the Y10K problem.)


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Sunday, September 1

  [RIP Lionel Hampton] Lionel Hampton, Who Put Swing in the Vibraphone, Is Dead at 94
Lionel Hampton, whose flamboyant mastery of the vibraphone made him one of the leading figures of the swing era, died yesterday morning at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan. He was 94.
  Although Hampton swung, I think the following is a reach:
Mr. Hampton... was an extremely important figure in American music, not only as an entertainer and an improvising musician in jazz, but also because his band helped usher in rock 'n' roll. In 1942, Mr. Hampton recorded one of the more influential recordings in the history of American music, "Flying Home," which featured a honking and shouting solo by the tenor saxophonist Illinois Jacquet that set the emotional atmosphere for rock. — Peter Watrous in the NY Times

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Prices Paid: 

What Charlie Haden may still love most: a pretty song: This Boston Globe
review of a recent performance by the beloved and lyrical 65-year old bassist catalogues his recent health misfortunes:
Despite his youthful appearance and impressive stamina, Haden has had a rough time lately, and the facial expressions might reflect or relieve his pain. A few years ago, he had back surgery, necessitated by decades of bending over his bass, at an almost perfectly perpendicular angle, to hear the notes more clearly. While in the hospital, he nearly died of pneumonia.


Shortly after, he and his wife, the singer Ruth Cameron, were attacked by a Rottweiler outside their home in Malibu. The dog bit Haden on his left hand, between the thumb and forefinger. He underwent extensive physical therapy and couldn't play for three months.


''It still hurts,'' Haden says, especially when he moves his hand up and down the neck of the bass, which he does most of the time.


Then there's his longtime bout with tinnitus, which causes ringing in his ears, and hyperacusis, which heightens the perceived volume of sounds. He's learned to ignore the ringing, and surrounds himself with plexiglass when he plays with horns or drums.


Doctors have told him he shouldn't play at all anymore. ''But I've got to pay the mortgage,'' Haden says in his soft, slightly high-pitched voice. ''And'' - he pauses - ''I've got to play.''


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Anger over shoe with Nazi gas name 

On the heels of the 'Target "BB" ' story below comes this:
Jewish groups have expressed outrage that a British company is selling sport shoes with the same name as the Nazi nerve gas used to kill millions of Jews in the Holocaust.

Umbro, the firm that outfits the English national soccer side, said it was an "unfortunate coincidence" that its Zyklon shoe, on sale since 1999, bore the name of the poison gas Zyklon B.

Crystals of Zyklon B were dissolved in gas chambers at the death camps to produce the poison the Nazis used to exterminate millions of Jews and members of other minorities during World War Two. Reuters
The company says the shoes will be renamed or withdrawn. The name appears on the box but not the shoe itself, so it looks likely they will allow already-shipped stocks to remain in stores without modification.

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'X' marks the spot 

[black holes meet]
When black holes meet: 'When two galaxies collide, massive black holes in their respective centers fuse in a dramatic flourish that creates a telltale "X" mark, according to astronomers. Jets from the core of radio galaxy NGC326 ...seem to have abruptly switched direction, a possible sign of a black hole merger.

The conclusion offers strong support to the theory that the gravitationally powerful black holes merge when galaxies crash into one another.' CNN

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