Observations On Medicine

When Dr. Benjamin Rush was practicing back in the time of George Washington, he was an extremely well known physician. He was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He was one of three noted physicians who attended our first President before his demise.

They all bled him. This "accepted medical practice" was not entirely without controversy. Rush was one of the strongest supporters. Perhaps with a few more pints of his own blood left in him, Washington might have survived... Of course that was a couple centuries ago, but even then people still had a slavish devotion to the "experts" who could speak and write Latin phrases and write in secret code to the pharmacists.

But certainly doctors of today are more enlightened. So much new knowledge has accumulated; new devices, new nostrums, new surgical procedures, new protocols. Clearly progress has been made. But there has not been much improvement in the actual practice of medicine.

From what I hear, a typical patient gets perhaps five minutes with a doctor who generally seems from the patients perspective to be quite full of himself and the prevailing medical viewpoints (dogma).

Fifty years ago, there was a widespread medical "fad" called prefrontal lobotomy, done to many thousands of people with irreversible and tragic results. It went on for many years, making vegetables out of otherwise abrasive and annoying human beings.

"Shock treatment" is another procedure which was abusively used as "standard medical practice" on many, many hundreds of thousands of patients on several continents. In many countries, Psychiatric Medicine was, and still is, used as a means of control of dissidents by the all-powerful state.

But enough of this. Pretty unpleasant stuff. Today's enlightened doctors were not involved. And anyway, they are too busy, what with prescribing "paradoxical" stimulants for youngsters with ADD and ADHD, engaging in liposuction, stomach stapling, and installing silicone prostheses (or even giving SILICONE INJECTIONS) for purely cosmetic purposes.

Does anyone seriously believe that the eminent plastic surgeons who hacked Michael Jackson to pieces over several decades were practicing ethically? What they did was "standard medical practice." The foxes are guarding the henhouse.

Back in the early years of the twentieth century a new medical device became available to physicians. They were able, with this device, to treat female hysteria and depression. And my, how well this device worked. It was MANually manipulated with vibrations provided by that newfangled electricity.

These treatments produced the most marvelous and immediate effects on these troubled patients. And for the longest time, the husbands and family of the patients were in the dark as to the details of the treatment. The doctors were held to be miracle workers. Many of these patients went to the doctor several times a month for their hysteria. Nice work if you can get it. Of course these women or their husbands paid for each of these visits. What did that make the doctor? A wh wh wh what?

Previous Skin Disorder & Stroke Are Over For Now

My skin is currently treating me pretty well, so I have turned my attention to a variety of other aspects of good health. My interests include: the prevention of viral infections; alternative health processes; fermentation of various beverages; making cheese; baking breads; and the use of microorganisms in human nutrition; teaching chess as a martial art; helping people become more self-reliant; idea development.

I am now a year and a half into rebuilding after a stroke. I have made some substantial gains in recovery. Fortunately my motor skills were not affected. Just the thinking process and memory. Most people haven't noticed these deficits but they are pretty clear to me.

Recently my blood pressure has had some extreme spikes, the worst being 191/110 mm Hg. I am searching for non-allopathic means of control. Aside from these sporadic spikes, I am generally in the normal range.

I have been having some difficulty finding an ophthalmological surgeon to remove and replace the lens of my right eye. Very annoying that they all seem to require that I see an optometrist first. I want no loss in communication between a subcontractor and the surgeon. I see no reason why the surgeon should not do his own workup.

These institutional requirements imposed on patients without regard for the specifics of the situation are counterproductive and, quite simply, wrong. I think my next move will be to find a General Practitioner for my quarter-century checkup. He may be able to get my foot in the door with a referral to a surgical ophthalmologist with a good track record. So time is of the essence in getting my blood pressure under control by means other than pharmaceuticals.

Medication, in my view, should be a last resort, not the first. I really hate firing doctors after a first meeting. But neither can I have my blood pressure bouncing like a ping-pong ball.

As to my idea addiction, there is no cure. If you are an idea addict as well, this is the place to pick up an idea or two, or even add a thought or two of your own.

Obscene Entertainment

In a distant place I may not return to
people laughing together with smiley faces
posted words they could not understand
lightly as if they were only lyrics to a song

I won't repeat them though I have more right
than some
but not enough to speak those words

Now away from there I rage still
I am glad I was not silent-

Little children!

Angel of death
is not a song
to party to

words of such atrocities
must be heard
so we don't forget

but never should they pass
the lips of dilettantes
who have not been tortured
beyond all sanity

never by those
who scream for fun
sing and strum
play and jump

these words are
for the broken ones
and those who wouldn't die

don't sing them scream them
say them think them

don't celebrate your innocence
in such a way
with smiley faces

and ignorant laughter
thinking you know
bless fate that you know not

for none can tell
to what red hell
his sightless soul can stray

Hear me!

Freedoms

Hello Sal and Rachelle,
I think your concerns are important ones and I share them. It has been said that all politics are local. I think that is true, but it also presents a problem. Those in other areas just aren’t going to get too interested in who gets tracked on toll roads in Texas, nor do they make the connection between this particular abridgement of your rights and the eventual abridgement of theirs.

It is not just the application of a tag tracking device to our vehicles that we need to be concerned about. The truth is, we can all be quite easily tracked to a fairly precise geographic position because we carry cell-phones which emit an identifiable signal even when we are not using them actively. And it won’t be long before all vehicles will have satellite geopositional location devices.

Our trust in the government not to use these powers abusively is not well founded. In recent events we have lost habeas corpus, a very important protection indeed.

It IS important to find the terrorists who threaten our liberty and our lives. But now, the Executive branch can declare literally anyone they wish to be a terrorist suspect and detain them for an unlimited time. Of course the current Executive insists that this power will not be abused, even though no court oversight is currently required.

Abuses of such state powers are not new. Social Security numbers were originally promised to be kept entirely private. That evolved to the extent that they became a universal personal identity number to be used by banks, insurance companies, doctors, dentists, hospitals, schools, and employers as well as local, state and federal enforcement forces. A great many of us have these identity numbers prominently displayed on our checks and on our driver's licenses. Of course it is practical, but it is also a substantial abridgement of our rights to privacy and to be free of unreasonable government surveillance, searches and seizures.

Instances of abuse of such police powers are not few, they are many. And there is no end in sight, because the typical citizen is quite ignorant and apathetic about the loss of these rights, as long as it is happening to “those others.” (the terrorists, the illegal aliens, the pedophiles, the smut peddlers, the atheists, the communists, the fascists, the war resisters, the union organizers, the abortionists and anyone who could be accused of being in sympathy with them.

The very fact that I say these things puts me at potential risk, as soon as the government has time for me. As soon as the wrong bureaucrat notices me. Not because I am an enemy combatant. I am not. Not even because I am a partisan of the subversive philosophies of a hostile foriegn power.

Can or will the Supreme Court protect me? Perhaps. But should I be betting my life and liberty on it? Not at the moment. I don’t really have much choice though. Nor do any of us.

An Idea About Taxes

It seems to me that it might possible to have an entirely voluntary system of taxation but that it would be likely to be under-funded for even the most minimal set of services to be supplied by government. People in general simply wish to pay as few taxes as they can. But involuntary taxation opens the way to an unlimitedly rapacious government squandering resources until an inevitable economic collapse. History is replete with examples.

Even in representative forms of government in which elected officials allocate and redistribute the wealth and determine who gets taxed how much, and for what, the problem remains. The representatives only seem to represent their electorate. Once they attain power, in large numbers, they become predators of the very flock they swore to represent.

Yet, it is easy to see that the average citizen is either too incompetent or unwilling to engage in the effort to determine the direction of the resources he contributes to the functioning of the body politic.

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that a small part of the population, like a tenth, have both the desire and the intelligence to make reasonable decisions as to the allocation of their particular resources, which have been drafted for the good of the system. This would constitute an additional substantial buffer against the abuses currently taking place in the typical representative democracy. In prior times, the practical logistics would have made it impossible. In the age of the computer it is not.

These individuals would contribute to resources to the same extent as their fellow citizens, but would take on the additional responsibility of directing those funds to the particular branches of government and services that they believe are worthiest of funding, and excluding those areas they believe are over funded or destructive to the general good.

We would not now have a utopia, but certainly that extra substantial block of decision makers would be an additional buffer against the abuses which now seem so rampant in national governmental structures.