Human health perspectives, case study, analogy

There is one really crucial point that I want to convey in this particular blog post. Humans have barely begun to scratch the surface of understanding the complexity of their own physical, mental and emotional biology and part of the problem is that they do not sufficiently understand that they evolved to be a certain way that is not at all reflective in the modern life style.

In other words, the human organism, both body and mind, is structured and functions the way it is because it lived a more natural life for millions of years. Technology and enforced social structure at first provided an evolutionary and survival advantage to humans, but now the balance has tipped so that much of the routine activities one takes for granted each day are actually contrary to how the human body and mind evolved.

Let's use an analogy, one that is a bit of a stretch, but everyone can relate to it. Thing of the human body, mind and emotions as an automobile. Roads existed before automobiles did, since they were the result of footpaths, by both humans and animals, and eventually were widened and paved to support horses and wagons. Thus when the internal combustion engine was discovered (first for trains that ran along their own roads, called tracks) and cars were developed, they used the same roads and were even called horseless wagons. Cars were developed to automate a function that already existed, which was to move along a pathway and transport people on land.

Suppose that over the past hundred years that the waters of the ocean rose so much that just about all land was under at least a few inches of water all the time. Humans have a huge investment in cars and they'd still work, so obviously everyone would have to get used to driving cars around through water all the time. A new set of problems would arise, so people would tinker with cars, perhaps making bigger tires so the chassis would be farther up and more out of the water, for example. But people being stuck with cars would continue to use devices that were designed to run on dry roads in the new theoretical water covered world.

Problems would spring up (no pun intended) because cars were not originally designed to be in continually wet surfaces. What happens when the exhaust pipe is under water? Will the engine quit when hit by a wave? Cars can float away and capsize in just about a half a foot of rapidly moving water. Would traffic reports now report local tidal action on the roads rather than traffic jams?

OK, so now let's assume that several generations of mechanics were born and raised knowing only the water covered world, not the dry land masses that cars were originally developed for. When they sit around and talk about cars, how much would they understand about why cars are developed the way they were? They would not understand it much at all.

For example, they might look at windshield wipers and say, "Why did they put them 'up there?'" They should have put a propeller under the car so that it can move better through the water. They would not understand that there was no 'water to move through' except from puddles of rain and that visibility, not boat type of safety, was the only need for wipers or "propellers."

So much of how cars were developed would seem baffling or like egregious oversights to these young mechanics who never knew the dry world where cars traveled at most through rain. The most incredibly obvious thing to those of us who drive cars in the normal world would seem weird, mysterious, or stupid to the young mechanics who modify and fix dry world cars that operate in the wet world that is constantly covered with several inches of water, day in and day out.

Likewise the humans of the past hundred years understand very little about the millions of years of life that the human body and mind evolved for and lived within, and wonder why the body "breaks down" or "works the way it does" as it tries to make do in a world that is not structured now the way it was evolved for.

The most obvious example is the daytime biological clock. Humans were evolved to wake with the sunrise, perform all of their work, child rearing and recreation activities before sunset, and then have quiet evenings with low or no lighting and then sleep. Huge chunks of the human DNA and chemical balance evolved in that simple formula of concentrated physical and mental effort during day light hours, and long periods of sleep at night time, with low light and reduced activity in the evening, since only natural star and moon light or some candle, oil lamp or fireplace light was available.

Now, think of all the ways that the natural body is now forced to be unnatural in the modern world. List them for yourself so that you can use this as a comparative exercise: if human bodies were evolved to be active from sunrise to sunset, with diminished visual and mental activity in the evening, and a long period of overnight sleep, how many ways do we break that formula today?

Working shifts comes to mind, but do not focus on that too much since there have always been those who were "night watchmen" and others who had to adjust to different work schedules.

Instead, think about how desk jobs and school enforce physical laxity during the day while only moderately stimulating the mind. Instead, people are forced to be mentally stimulated more in the evening (homework, bill paying and electronic media usage), just when they are supposed to "wind down" in low light and stimulation conditions. What is elevated during the day? Corrosive stress hormones and other chemicals. When humans farmed and hunted they were not in a continual state of arousal. There would be the need to react quickly to prey or to a sudden weather condition or mishap, but in general people only got the occasional as needed "adrenaline shot." Now we have seething people everywhere in a constant state of stress arousal but having to contain it, whether it is due to economic crisis, child care crisis, oppressive and stressful workplace, and physically sedentary jobs or classrooms where kids are even drugged into being "non hyperactive" and thus "compliant."

Virtually everything about modern life, both the infrastructure and the mindset, are in opposition to how the human body, mentality and emotions have evolved and are naturally programmed and sustained. Life was difficult and often brutal for much of human history, but humans thrived and increased. Why? Because life was still structured to leverage human strengths and evolutionary "talent." But now modern society is infested with "secret weapons" that work against the human body, mind and emotional well being. All humans are consistently overstimulated while having at the same time to suppress much of the over stimulation in order to conform to the expectations of the job or activity AND at the same time they have less physical activity during the times in the day when they are supposed to, according to their own genetic evolution and profiles.

This is the heart of the physical and mental health crisis in the world today.

Here's an example. Can you believe there is a mental disorder called "SAD," "Seasonal Affective Disorder?" This is when people get depressed due to low light levels and so forth during the winter. In other words, people who still respond to the world naturally are diagnosed with an illness, while those who seem on the surface to not mind or respond to seasonal changes are viewed as the "healthy" ones.

Think about it. People who experience SAD are the ones whose bodies are correctly saying, "Hey! The seasons have changed and the body and activities should change accordingly." Yet we no longer have intensive work summers followed by harvest and then reclusive winters as did our ancestors. We are supposed to be jolly and carry on with our "work" or studies or other activities no matter what the season, what the daylight or how our bodies try to recapture their survival skill rhythms. People used to be thrilled at the short days and dark wintry season because they weren't busting their backs working in the fields. The crops were in and they were tucked and hunkered down for a low activity season. They didn't get "depressed" or the 'winter blues!'

Much of the global epidemic of depression is from the feeling of inadequacy-no matter how much one 'achieves'-because so much of modern activity is forced into slots that down in the soul feel unnatural. People are forced to live less in sync with reality and more and more in an artificial and enforced timetable of activities and expectations that are contrary to the body's natural evolved survival traits. Look at the war against "fat." I mean, no one used to be "fat" in the way that it is meant today. Fat is the body trying to do the right thing in circumstances that have become miscued regarding the daily activities that humans were evolved to partake in. I cannot believe how much people are now warring against their bodies even as they try to do the best that they can.

Think back to the dry land cars that are now forced to operate in wet land. What if the modern mechanics who only know of wet land but have to maintain the dry land cars got "angry" at the parts of the dry land cars that don't seem to work "optimally" in wet land? Rather than being grateful that dry land cars worked at all in the wet land environmental crisis, they were enraged at the dry land car parts that weren't totally "perfect" for wet land? That is what humans are like with each other and with their children, and now our children have learned to be enraged at themselves because they don't "measure up" to the insane expectations of modern life. Rather than being grateful that the dry land cars kept on working in the wet land crisis of change and their complexity and ruggedness praised and understood, people are made to feel "at war" with the dry land cars and their original makers. They learn to hate themselves even as they successfully drive their dry land car. They put their dry land cars in situations where they must break down (like drive them into a lake) and then gloat with anger and self loathing.

It's a real mess; I'm not going to lie to you. I see one moronic health research study after the other and wonder if people are ever going to understand themselves before they have completely come undone. Defiance of natural body rhythms, day and seasonal activity, lack of sleep, over electronic stimulation and the corrosive effects of social stress have damaged the human race far more than any, and I mean any, of you realize. And whenever people have warning signs you view it as something to warp even more in the "cure" rather than understand what is really going on. The refusal to work together to make congenial, honest and natural work, school and social activity settings that are mutually supportive is one of the most destructive of the changes in society.

This is another reason why so many have become less than tuned in with reality. The human mind is able to look at an object that is partially hidden by another object and infer what it looks like in total. For example, if one dry land car is parked partially blocking another dry land car, even though you cannot see the entire dry land car in the background you know that it is complete and looks the color and size, blah blah blah based on what you can observe. Human brains are evolutionarily designed to constantly "fill in the gap." Thus when you flood it with partial over stimulated images of unreality (TV, Internet, video games) the brain works to make real and false connections. So, for example, you see accurately the porn, but you then create an inaccurate mental linkage regarding reality of day to day priorities. Where once a man would feel pride and pleasure centers at having a good wife and happy healthy children, the man feels pride and pleasure center at seeing hot women lesbian kiss.

I'm not being droll and I'm not exaggerating. I'm explaining that just as too many killings in the TV and movie entertainment media have enforced unrealistic based brain circuitry, so too has overstimulated "reward" fragments of input, such as porn, overcoming the survival traits and the self esteem regulatory mechanisms that evolved in the human animal over millions of years. It then becomes lose-lose. Humans lose the joy that they used to obtain from natural cycle activities, including marital love, and they never gain what they are now programmed to crave in the new addiction. They lose what they had, or could have had, and never gain the theoretical "new world" continual gratification. That is why all addictions are called "progressive," not because they are liberal (LOL), but because they are the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that does not really exist and is only further and further out of reach, and so more and more addiction activity results in less gratification and/or more destruction of the norm.

I'm not just ranting and in fact, just yesterday it was on the news about how something like twenty-five percent of people view porn on the Internet at work. Again, this has nothing to do with being a prude. I'm saying that such activity is depression and stress increasing because it is contrary to the biological and genetic evolutionary structure of human biology, mentality and emotional health. Humans are not evolved to be continually self stimulating during all hours of the day and rather than a "release" or a "diversion" or an "enhancement" of one's "sex life" (or a substitute for not having one) it becomes a barrier to both having a real life in that regard and also becomes a biological and emotional/mental hindrance to health and ultimately satisfaction. Simply put it is making artificial and corrosively stressful what should be a naturally flowing goodness for every human being.

So as the population is seething and overly stimulated and stressed (often at their own choice), you wonder why there are sudden heart ailments even among the young, cancer, bipolar, depression, autism and all sorts of woes and ailments at levels they have not been seen before? Remember that as I blogged just yesterday humans are also consuming in their food, water and through their environment untold numbers of chemicals that have detrimental effects. Again, the human body is a marvelous thing and can withstand a lot of cleansing (that is what the liver is for, no "detoxing" regimes please!) But it is not evolved to withstand constant dosing of strong chemical cleansers, other people's medications in the drinking water, preservatives and food additives and the emitting of fumes from so much plastic and other artificial building material surfaces.

It's like the angry wet land car mechanics so resent the success of the "badly designed" dry land cars that they now throw acid on top of the car since "that's the modern way to live." It's a mess and I wonder when people are going to wake up and be more generous and kind about their own bodies and minds and each others'. I hope that the car analogy helps because like I said, it is a bit of a stretch but one that everyone can easily grasp and understand. Sigh.

Case Study: How to solve USA healthcare system

Case Study: How to reform and solve the problems of the USA’s healthcare system.

Today we’ll use the problem of healthcare in the USA as a case study to observe and study the only way to successfully solve the problems and provide a “universal” and high quality service. Without following this methodology the healthcare problem just will not get fixed. To explain the methodology, I have to use an analogy. The reason I am using an analogy is to teach how to problem solve and use a specific methodology that is needed for this category and type of problem. Here it is.

Suppose that you are the head of a large family, and you have quite a range of people that you are responsible for: adults, children, and the elderly, working people, a homemaker, a person with disabilities and a veteran, students, etc, all living with you and looking to you to provide for them. You don’t have a place to live until one day you find that your great uncle, who is very wealthy, has died and left to you his house, which is widely known to be “the best” house in the region. Excited to finally have a roof over the head of your large family, and having no options but to live in the house, you move in and this is what you find. While obviously much money has been spent, and parts of the house are very magnificent, it has been designed in an incredibly strange way that makes it almost unlivable. It is a three story house and on the first floor are the bedrooms, just the bedrooms. You go to the second story of the house and find that it is designed to be an “attic,” that is unheated, no plumbing and only used for storage, and there are elaborate storage structures built throughout the floor. Amazed, puzzled and disconcerted, you go to the third floor, which is tucked into the roof, and there you find the one and only bathroom, and the kitchen. They are marvelously tiled and decorated, and have great appliances, but they are in the most unusable and inaccessible part of the house! Further, when you look at the blueprints, you find that all the plumbing and electrical wiring, gas service and so forth were all installed with only this configuration in mind. What in the world do you do? By the way, you found the blueprints in the “home office,” which is in the garage, while the car is parked on the front lawn. I won’t even tell you what you found in the basement.

Here is what the typical politician or “planner” does. He or she views the existing configuration of the house as “constraints” that they must work within, while doing some “remodeling” over a long period of time. For example, they know that a bathroom has to be installed on the first floor, so that they can be accessed, so they start thinking about how to reroute plumbing there, etc. Stop! What is the problem with that approach? You are de facto buying into the assumption that you need to leave the bedrooms on the first floor. Maybe you should and maybe you shouldn’t. You scratch your head and look at the disabled family member, the elderly, and the children and know they can’t climb the stairs to get to the one and only bathroom. So now you argue with the other decision makers in the family whether you should install an elevator or chair lift on the stairs while you study how to build or move the bathroom to the first floor. Whenever someone has a new idea what to do, you run to the garage where your home office is located. Every time you come up with an idea to fix one problem, either short term or long term, a bunch of other related problems and implications spring up. What do you do?

The proper thing to do is to ignore everything about the current configuration, except of course the lot size that the house and outbuildings occupy, and with a blank sheet of paper design within the skin of that lot acreage and the main structure of house roof and supporting walls “the perfect configuration.” Do not try to “solve each problem” one at a time, even though that is the continual call of being “practical” and “working within the existing constraints.” Taking the needs of each member of your family into consideration, you sit down and design the “perfect” interior configuration for your house.

How do you do this? You do it by listing a set of principles first. These principles state the core basic needs of each member of the family. You do not jump ahead to list the “how to” or the “answers” yet. See, if you do that, you do things like “move the bathroom downstairs where it belongs,” without realizing that you actually need a bathroom on every floor. So first you list, using that example, the number of people who need bathroom facilities, their ability to access them, and implications of the various potential locations. For example, you might want one near the front door if you have frequent visitors and also for the children to quickly go into when they come home from school to wash up, or after playing. So you list the principles based on 1) how you and your family live as a whole and 2) what specific needs must be met. An example of a principle would be:

1) Because we have several elderly, disabled and otherwise high sanitation need individuals, we need to have enough bathrooms so that one is always available even in heavy use times of the day.

See? You have not yet determined the number or placement of bathrooms; you have stated a principle that is a criterion for all subsequent tactics of planning and configuration.

This is how the new “Health Care mavens,” whoever they may be, need to address the healthcare system of the USA from the start. Absolutely start with a clean and fresh piece of paper and list the principles first, and ignore all the voices who shout suggestions and demands. Especially ignore those who say that “we have to take into account this or that existing situation.” Take nothing for granted, because if you do, you will without knowing it eliminate a slew of potential proactive opportunities for real change, instead of ad hoc bandages. Even those who suggest radical changes are much more self constrained than they realize, since they are both consciously and unconsciously working within the dictates of the existing system, just as if the new homeowner in our example thought that a bathroom can only go where the plumbing leads, or where, accepting the bedroom configuration, those who need the bathroom sleep and keep their clothing. So to address the Health Care system problems in the USA, you must first write the basic principles by which needs are identified correctly and with true vision from the start.

To get those of you involved or interested in this process, I’ll provide what I would make as the first principle for the USA Health Care system.

1) Every child under the age of eighteen should have access to complete and free comprehensive healthcare that emphasizes preventive care and includes the entire profile of healthcare services.

So if I was presenting this principle to a roomful of shocked individuals, I would then go on to sketch, like an interior decorator, my vision for that principle. Every child would receive free prenatal care, free pediatric services, inoculations, doctor visits when ill, assistance to the parents about child raising, nutrition counseling (think of the obesity and diabetes epidemics), and mental health services (not to drug them into submission, but to address early behavior, depression, alienation and other issues, especially of adolescence.)

The reason that this must be and should be the first principle is that a people and their society live or die by their children. It is unconscionable that here in 2008 at this stage in human “progress” and prosperity that the USA does not have comprehensive and free prenatal to eighteen years old healthcare and preventive medicine. There really is absolutely no excuse and is simply a reflection in a dirty mirror of where the misplaced priorities of this society have been for far too long.

If I was presenting this principle in a meeting room, and I heard protests about “the cost,” I would say, “I don’t want to hear that crap from you about ‘the cost,’ before you have even developed all of the principles. Whenever you do a wise and comprehensive plan, you find new revenue as you cancel out unjust and wasteful costs. So you just keep your pants on and don’t worry about ‘the cost’ of each component of the new system until you have actually determined what the principles are, and what the costs and offsets truly will be, in all likelihood. That’s what sophisticated computers and financial modeling systems are for, not for running expensive presidential campaigns, looting on Wall Street, and for video games.” That is what I would say!

When you have developed on your new clean sheet of paper the “ideal configuration,” how do you implement it? You overlay it on the existing system and start to behave as if the new plan were in action. The analogy that I use is that you put the new faucet that you want to have in front of the aged and insufficient plumbing system that you must modify behind the scenes. Sure, maybe the new faucet does not have enough pressure behind it to use all the features from day one. I’m not a plumber but I’ll make up an example. Suppose that your new faucet, or shower head, can provide high pressure stream of water, but your plumbing does not provide enough pressure that you can use that feature, you get only a trickle. Fine, you get only a trickle until you change the plumbing behind the faucet, but in the meantime you get all of the ordinary good functions of the faucet, and partial service for some the special features, such as the high pressure stream. Thus the new homeowner of the freaky house should immediately configure the rooms the way they should be, even if they do not yet have the complete set of services from day one. I’m joking a little, but here’s what I mean. If the homeowner realizes he needs three bathrooms, one on each floor, the very next day buy two of those “portable bathrooms” that are used in construction etc and put one on each floor that does not have a bathroom yet, ha! I’m not saying to literally to do that, but I’m saying that you immediately move all the things that you can move, and provide stop gap until you construct the complete supporting system. You do NOT live in a “work around” mode until you have done a string of unrelated “remodeling” projects. You start living DAY ONE according to the “perfect plan,” even if day one means that the occupants of floor one and floor two do not have a shower and hot water running in their “portable-potties.” You move whatever appliances you can from the third floor to the first floor bedroom that will be the site of the new kitchen, even if you only have half functionality there for a while. Your brave and most able family members make their bedrooms in the second floor “attic,” as brave pioneers homesteading, ha, until you can actually implement the fullness of your plans comprehensively and evenly throughout.

Likewise, suppose that everyone agrees with me about principle one for free comprehensive health care for children, and it becomes part of the overall plan, with all of the other thought through principles of the complete new healthcare system, and then they look at me and say, “So, smarty pants, how are you going to do it, provide free health care to children, when the system is now structured this way, that way and so forth.” It’s simple. I implement it right away wherever I can implement it. It does not have to have one and only one way to be provided on day one. Here’s an example.

Suppose you have some idealistic medical students graduating from medical school with huge student loan bills. You could offer such a student an opportunity to, let’s say, set up their practice in a small town that lacks a general physician and you will cancel part or all of their loan if he or she commits that half of their practice provides the free and comprehensive health care to children of that town. Thus the physician has his or her own free market practice, yet because he or she dedicates half of his or her practice to the free and comprehensive care to children, he or she has part of their loan canceled out with each year of service to the community. That community, voila, now has the first implementation of the “new health care.” Genuine change starts immediately, even if one can only be spotty in the first “roll out.” And that is a good thing anyway, since that’s how you identify further opportunities or problems in the implementation of a given principle.

Medical schools might realize that they should re-emphasize pediatrics combined with general practice programs. The local medical schools might now identify and partner with sectors of communities in their states to provide doctors willing to have a half free market/half child based free comprehensive practice. Communities might offer free housing to the doctors, as extra incentive. You find that the free market rolls out in a wonderful way if it is responding to a firm ethical principle of the providing of an essential “subsistence” service (see my previous posts about capitalism and the financial crisis to see what I mean by subsistence.) I argue that free and comprehensive health care with a preventative medicine emphasis is a basic human right and a subsistence service in a true, modern and prosperous capitalist system. Children’s health care should never, ever be viewed, as it has been, as part of the “surplus” and “competitive” capitalist “free” market. And yes, those of you who would whine, “It’s unfair that some communities get this service before others,” well, bite your dumb tongues. How can you refuse services to a portion of children on day one because everyone can’t get theirs “all at once?” It is exactly that selfish mindset that has gotten this country in the mess that it is in. You should be happy and proud with every step forward for every individual and group, not wait for some mythological time when everyone has it all, all at once. You don’t hear members of our analogy family whining that the disabled person has the best room to start with, for example, while the others have to wait or rough it out for a bit until the renovation rollout reaches them.

See? It’s not really that hard. I hope that you have found this helpful.

When doctors go bad they leave money trail

This is an essential article for everyone to read. Congratulations to Senator Grassley for his fine work, diligence and ethics. This is not just a matter of many, MANY doctors across the USA taking money on the sly from drug companies to peddle their goods. That's bad enough, but at the point that these bloated doctors get accustomed to million dollar lifestyles, they stop prescribing the correct remedies to people who suffer from mental disorders and other illnesses or diseases.

No wonder it seems that every doctor has become a mindless drug pusher, even plying children with dangerous drugs. I've wondered why this is, and in part I blamed the insurance companies who prefer to reimburse for a drug, let's say, rather than a treatment, such as AA or other "talking cure." Also, valid, cheap traditional drugs, who were once marvelous discoveries have been pushed aside and no longer prescribed so that the more expensive and extreme new drugs can be pushed. So now the picture has become, sad to see but necessary, clearer.

I realized, painfully, years ago that the doctor is not the patient's friend, or even the benevolent provider of what is best for the patient. Now it's time for the rest of the country to realize this. Hopefully even the idiots who have enabled greed to replace ethics and good diagnosis will realize that they and their own families are also suffering from the stinking decay of medical practice and ethics. What goes around comes around, and these same creeps are misdiagnosing your own families and loved ones.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/health/22radio.html?hp

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The psychiatrist and radio host, Dr. Frederick K. Goodwin, is the latest in a series of doctors and researchers whose ties to drug makers have been uncovered by Senator Charles E. Grassley, a Republican from Iowa.

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In a program broadcast on Sept. 20, 2005, Dr. Goodwin warned that children with bipolar disorder who are left untreated could suffer brain damage, a controversial view. “But as we’ll be hearing today,” Dr. Goodwin reassured his audience, “modern treatments — mood stabilizers in particular — have been proven both safe and effective in bipolar children.”

That very day, GlaxoSmithKline paid Dr. Goodwin $2,500 to give a promotional lecture for its mood stabilizer drug, Lamictal, at the Ritz Carlton Golf Resort in Naples, Fla. Indeed, Glaxo paid Dr. Goodwin more than $329,000 that year for promoting Lamictal, records given Congressional investigators show.

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Mr. Grassley is systematically asking some of the nation’s leading researchers and doctors to provide their conflict-of-interest disclosures, and Mr. Grassley is comparing those documents with records of actual payments from drug companies. The records often conflict, sometimes starkly.

In October, Mr. Grassley revealed that Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff of Emory University, one of the nation’s most influential psychiatric researchers, earned more than $2.8 million in consulting arrangements with drug makers from 2000 to 2007, failed to report at least $1.2 million of that income to his university and violated federal research rules. As a result, the National Institutes of Health suspended a $9.3 million research grant to Emory and placed restrictions on other grants, and Dr. Nemeroff relinquished his chairmanship of Emory’s psychiatry department.

In June, the senator revealed that Harvard University’s Dr. Joseph Biederman, whose work has fueled an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children, had earned at least $1.6 million from drug makers between 2000 and 2007, failed to report most of this income to his university, and may have violated federal and university research rules.

HUGE step forward in understanding cancer causes

Read this article, it sounds to me like a very big step forward, although the complexity of cancer remains daunting. This is the right approach to better understanding cancer. There has been alot of guessing and thrashing in the past, but in fairness, the technology has really improved to do this kind of analysis.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/06/healthscience/06cancer.php?page=1

It's hard to imagine a more positive lady than she

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/28/iron.lung.death.ap/index.html

(excerpt)

Woman dies after life spent in iron lung

MEMPHIS, Tennessee (AP) -- For almost 60 years, Dianne Odell lived inside a 7-foot-long metal tube, unable to breathe outside it but determined not to let it destroy her spirit.

From her 750-pound iron lung, she got a high school diploma, took college courses and wrote a children's book about a "wishing star" named Blinky.

"I've had a very good life, filled with love and family and faith," she said in 1994. "You can make life good, or you can make it bad."

Odell, 61, died Wednesday when a power failure shut off electricity to the tube and stopped the pump drawing air into her lungs.

Family members were unable to get an emergency generator working after a power failure knocked out electricity to the Odell family's residence near Jackson, about 80 miles northeast of Memphis, brother-in-law Will Beyer said.

"We did everything we could do, but we couldn't keep her breathing," Beyer said. "Dianne had gotten a lot weaker over the past several months, and she just didn't have the strength to keep going."

Odell, who contracted polio when she was 3 years old, lived with her parents, Freeman and Geneva Odell, and their house was equipped with an emergency generator designed to fire up immediately in a power failure.

"But for some reason, it didn't come on," Beyer said.

Family members even tried an emergency hand pump attached to the iron lung. "Everyone knew what we were supposed to be doing," Beyer said. "It just wasn't working."

Capt. Jerry Elston of the Madison County Sheriff's Department said emergency crews could do little to help. The local power company reported spotty power outages in the area because of storms.

Odell was afflicted with "bulbo-spinal" polio three years before a polio vaccine was discovered and largely stopped the spread of the crippling childhood disease.

Her care was provided by her parents, other family members and aides provided by a nonprofit foundation.

"Dianne was one of the kindest and most considerate people you could meet. She was always concerned about others and their well-being," said Frank McMeen, president of the West Tennessee Health Care Foundation, which helped raise money for equipment and nursing assistance for Odell.

Odell accepted her life with grace, McMeen said.

"Everyone she encountered came to her because they cared about her," he said, "so she grew up in her 61 years thinking every person is good."

***
To those of you of the younger generation remember that this is one reason that people fought to have immunization innoculations against illness. Those of my age grew up seeing black and white films of thousands of people who were stricken as toddlers with polio and forced to spend their entire lives in a lung machine lying on their back. In the article you can see a picture and read some of the history. So those of you who think that innoculations are some sort of insane conspiracy or the "cause" of illnesses, take a look at this lady and remember that this was common not so long ago before an immunization was developed.

Missouri town has cluster of brain tumor cases

This is an interesting and scary article.

http://www.kmbc.com/health/16330197/detail.html

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Town Sees Cluster Of Brain Tumor Cases
More Than 12 Brain Tumor Cases Diagnosed In 7 Months

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Doctors are only required to report cancerous brain tumors to the Health Department. Most of the tumors in Cameron are large, but benign. So there is no official agency collecting the data.
Drinking water is one thing all of those diagnosed have in common. That is why a local reservoir, a source of the drinking water, will likely be one focus of the investigation.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it will look at any possible runoff near the reservoir and any possibility of contamination from a nearby hog farm. The CDC asked about manufacturing in the area past and present. Insulation used to be produced at a plant on the outskirts of town. Investigators will also look at pesticide use and the combination of chemicals that might be present, and anything those diagnosed with brain tumors have in common.

Cameron's city manager said the city is not jumping to any conclusions, saying maybe it is just an anomaly or an unexplained cluster. But he said the city is fully aware of what he called the recent "flurry" of brain-tumor cases. He said the city clerk is one of those diagnosed.

In the last few days, the Department of Natural Resources had a crew out collecting air, water and soil samples.

Eckerman said that she has been in contact with the majority of people who have come forward with a brain tumor in Cameron or their loved ones. Some are still recovering from brain surgery. Some have had setbacks. Two residents who wanted to tell their stories on camera are back in the hospital and were not able to talk.

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OK, I have a few reactions to this incident and suggestions to make or things to highlight. The first is that you should notice that it is citizens themselves who tend to notice these things. Public health and government or medical officials tend to do squat about noticing odd and concerning clusters of illness. For example, notice the state Health Department does not track benign tumors, only the cancerous ones, even though a benign tumor is obviously a serious condition too. People who get benign tumors are ill, need surgery etc just as much as those whose tumors end up being cancerous, yet their numbers are not reported or tracked at all. The point I want to make is that US citizens have grown up with some sort of assumption that officials are looking out for the public health and welfare while in fact they are not since they don't even collect many of the basic statistics.

It reminds me of the huge controversy about thirty years ago when the first statistics for cancer were really collected and discussed and clusters of breast cancer were discovered in parts of Long Island, New York. It seems to me that as a country we have not really progressed much from those days when citizens themselves are the ones to notice clusters of concern and then it gets in the media, but there are few answers and many questions. I think that if anything public health is less a priority these days than it was several decades ago in this country. People need to start asking questions and become self empowered and informed on a grassroots level. (I feel so old typing this. "Grassroots" level advocacy was so much the catch word thirty to forty years ago.) However, it seems that we really need to once again have a grassroots movement toward self and community monitoring of health issues.

Another point I want to make is to have you notice the variety of things the officials will explore that are environmental factors. This shows that there are many things that may or may not be significant and it is very hard to find a "smoking gun" when one is studying cancer. I may have mentioned this before in my blogging but it is worth repeating. Around thirty years ago when people really turned their attention toward the proliferation of breast cancer (First Lady Betty Ford being such a ground breaker in this topic) there were studies that showed that Japanese women had very little breast cancer, while American women had high rates of breast cancer. Some studies showed, however, that as Japanese women moved to the United States their rate of breast cancer started to increase. This set off a lot of speculation about the impact of diet. Years later researchers in general look toward genetic influences too. It is very likely that cancer has a component that is genetic tendency and a component that is environmental trigger. So the people in this town of Cameron have a really complicated situation to analyze. Often the researchers never really reach a single factor or conclusion, to the pain and frustration of those who are suffering from an illness.

Larry King had an interesting show tonight about whether cell phones have an influence on the anecdotal increases in brain cancers that many are observing (for example this show had the widow of the attorney Johnny Cochran). I've been very uncomfortable for many years with the proliferation of cell phones and also wireless devices. I noticed that doctors on the Larry King show danced around saying "yes" or "no," but admitted to using earpieces and so forth to mitigate possible effects. Rural and small town people need to look at this too as they explore possible causes of clusters of brain tumors.

Another thing to keep in mind is that it is difficult for pollutants and organisms to get into the brain. This is why antibiotics usually do not work for infections above the neck region, since the body has a strenuous barrier against chemicals, organisms and pollutants from getting into the brain. If you think about this, it ought to make you cautious about engaging in behavior that can stimulate overcoming the brain and head area's natural defenses. For example, smokers and those who use marijuana or other substances are basically stamping down a pathway between your body and your brain via the substance abuse. Same with alcohol. When researchers look at the causes of brain tumors they need to keep that in mind. Something as harmless as having once been a cigarette smoker may have weakened the natural protective barriers that exist in the brain and head region since the smoke is basically forcing a way into the body and through the bloodstream to the brain. For lack of a better word, think of certain substances as being "abrasive." They roughen up and overcome a body's natural balance and defenses. These must be really soberly considered in any thorough research. So as everyone is, correctly, speaking more about brain tumors, especially in the light of the Ted Kennedy revelation of his condition, people need to also think back over diet and behavior patterns, not in a blaming way, but to have a complete picture of the dynamics that may have caused an individual case or more importantly what might be behind a clustering of cases.

I've offered a number of pointers about how to analyze a problem like this, and the article lists a number of environmental factors that will, correctly, be explored. So you can see there is no shortage of potential causes and triggers of cancers in general, and specifically brain tumors, both benign and cancerous. There is no need to bark up the wrong tree by thinking about "mystical" and "magical" or "karma" causes. It is sad to say that many research dollars toward cancer research have been wasted because there are often secret beliefs of even those who seem the most scholarly on the surface about ridiculous "causes" of cancer, including "astrology" and "past lives." It sounds insane and I agree, and I would never have guessed it until I overheard that I was actually accused of "causing" people to get cancer. People are so much more ignorant, primitive, deluded and sorcery obsessed than any time in their history, and that includes Colonial times. I can't really explain it except to say that it is true that "nature abhors a vacuum." When there is an empty space, such as the space that has been created by the rejection of organized religion and God's role in the public square, other things rush into the vacuum to fill the space. Superstition and sorcery return, sucked into the vacuum in the human spirit caused by their pushing away of God. Then the boundaries between delusion and fact break down. Religion and faith in God used to occupy a well understood component of human life. One could be, and often was, for example, a very faithful and believing man or woman and simultaneously a well educated doctor or researcher. But when one rejects God and organized religion, one soon contaminates the rational and scholarly part of your life with superstition and magical thinking. ("Magical thinking" is the belief that non factual influences cause real events. For example, children go through a magical thinking phase as part of their growing up until they learn how the world around them actually works. Like they will see something impossible in a cartoon and believe it until a certain age when they realize it can't be done but is simply there to be funny.) Many adults in this generation have fallen into magical thinking and it has infested even the scholarly circles that humans rely on for protection in public health matters. Don't waste your time, money and your lives or your loved ones' lives any further with supporting maniacs who think "cancer" can be "determined" to be in someone's astrology sign, for example. I wish I was joking or expressing hyperbole how common this magical thinking epidemic has become. But I'm not.

Hope you found this blogging posting helpful.