Dental Horror Stories

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Biting The Dentist

On Skin Cell Forum I have a thread called Biting The Dentist. Sort of an indictment of a dentist. I don't do links much but if you want the backstory go to
http://www.skincell.org/community/index.php/topic,21164.0.html

I have a lot of curiosity about what is happenning with the front post tooth. The major sharp stabbing pain that I had for some days every once in a while has not returned, but I still get a small indicator of it, maybe 1/20 of the pain might happen every couple of days if I'm gnawing on something hard.

It also occurred to me that the occasional indicator might be occurring because the bridge is solidly bonded to that tooth and has no give to it, no shock absorbtion as it were. Another factor here is that the dentist said the bridge could not be removed without destroying it. He was quite clear and unequivocal in this assessment. The bridge could not be reused. So if I take it off intact, what does that say about Dr. Kh-----?

Well, I guess I'll go remove some teeth. Always fun to do some real research. I'm hoping to get the bridge off without pulling or weakening the post teeth too much.

Uh, I think I should say something here about maybe you shouldn't try this sort of thing without a pretty good grounding in anatomy. I anticipate a certain amount of... unpleasantness.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Well, I removed the bridge last night. Pretty nice bridge. I don't know how long I have had it, but I doubt it cost me more than $500 for the three units. Otherwise I would have remembered. So maybe forty years or so. But whoever or where ever that dentist was, I guess he was one of the good guys, or he had a good toothmaking subcontractor working for him.

I took my time and had a few timeouts so that I wouldn't get impatient and overly aggressive. I guess it took about an hour. The bridge itself was absolutely pristine. As pretty as when it was new.

I can't say the same for the posts though. I don't think they will be doing a lot more gnawing before one or the other gives up the ghost. Anyway, I did a deep sterilization (H2O2 3% soak followed by virtually pure C2H5OH).

Next, I inserted about a 2mm ball of the better of the two temporary filling materials I was talking about over on the thread Broken Fang. Then I pressed it back into position after I scrubbed the posts in the same way.

If I were to bet on it, I would be betting that one or the other of those posts will give out in a matter of days, even with the give of the filling material, since I chew as aggressively as I do.

So I guess all I got out of this little exercise is that the bridge COULD be removed intact, contrary to what the dentist told me. That and the ability to carefully examine the underlying anchor teeth. At least, for now, I will be able to remove the bridge with virtually no trouble if I feel the need to.

An Imperfect End

This is a post of an Emergency Room Doctor
An imperfect end
Posted by GruntDoc on August 4th, 2007
Frankly, this is a bit gross. I’ll put the post below the fold, and read at your own risk. You’ve been warned.

Removal of a rectal foreign body is simple, really: Locate it, grasp it firmly, break the ’suction’, and pull. Seems simple, and like most seemingly simple tasks it’s harder to accomplish in real life.

The patient of a colleague had just such a complaint, and I willingly agreed to help remove the object, which we had an x-ray of, a common vibrator. On delegation of tasks my colleague would be in charge of the patients’ sedation, and I was on removal duty.
I had all I needed, a plastic and lit vaginal speculum, ring forceps, some nice plastic tubing (for suction relief), and lube.
The patient was suitably sedated, and it was time to proceed. The speculum was inserted, and no foreign body was visible until the anterior abdomen was compressed, and !viola!, it appeared. I saw a small area of man made black color, and the unmistakable edge of a condom on its edge. I carefully grabbed the rim of the condom (at the near-limit of the reach of the ring forceps, probably 8 inches in) and began to hopefully tug.

Hope may well float but condoms just break, and when they do they recoil in both directions with fervor and throw-off anything attached. In this case I protected the team by taking the hit squarely in the face. (This has become something of a topic of conversation in my ED).
No, I wasn’t wearing protection beyond beyond my usual spectacles. I did try another two times to grasp the end of the vibrator with the ring forceps, but could never get enough of a hold to even attempt to break the suction (due to the tapered design of the end of the vibrator) (which design I learned from reading the Internet).

In retrospect, a tenaculum might have allowed a better grip on the vibrator, but given our thorough attempts the surgeon on call took the patient in and the object out.
I washed my face at the sink for a nice, long time, and have thought about getting a tenaculum prior to the next time. Oh, and one of those face mask-shield things.

My comment:
Was the patient in some sort of serious pain? Was there some sort of impaction of feces, immovable obstruction, or other circumstance that posed some dangers? If not, I'm wondering if perhaps giving her instructions to try eating three or four bananas with a few bowls of all bran or oatmeal might be worth a try. From your description of the rambling device, there was no real impediment to it making a normal exit on its' own, particularly if you could apply some lubrication and perhaps even turn the device on.

And I ended it there. Did I play nice or what? Know what happened? My comment got stuck in a spam filter. Is that strange?

Anybody have any notion what the costs might have been? Must be a few grand anyway. Ooops. No, a lot more. They brought in the surgeon. It would have been a few grand if she had expelled it while the ER doctor watched and grabbed it at the end. Sure wish I knew what sort of surgery was performed. I do hope the poor lady is all right. With any luck at all it's just an unobtrusive scar, like an epesiotomy. Who knows? Maybe the surgeon did a tiny tune up while he was at it. What's the tab on that? Let's say in round numbers, $5000. I really don't have any idea. Leave that aside. A trifle.

What about the risk of post-operative infection? There must be some logical reason, some piece of essential information I have missed, that absolutely forced these doctors to cut her open right away in the area with the highest number of potentially pathogenic organisms in the body, instead of allowing nature to take its' course. Here is another question. That Xray. Is it possible that this young lady was unaware that it was a vibrator up there? Was she somehow incapable of describing it? And if so, why on Earth was the Xray needed? Ah, medicine is such a mystery.

Broken Fang

This post is about the upper right canine tooth. The thread "Biting the Dentist" is about a bridge on the lower jaw on the same side. The front tooth on the bridge which recently gave me some trouble that I have included in that thread is the lower canine, right below the tooth which is the subject of this thread.

About three weeks ago, about half of the posterior face of this tooth broke off, a ^ shaped segment which extended up to the gum line. No pain whatsoever attended this incident.

My sole concern was that this tooth takes a lot of ripping and chewing action, and that the structural integrity, the strength of the tooth, was probably sharply reduced, increasing the likelyhood of further breakage.

Perhaps a simple mercury amalgam filling could restore much of the strength of the tooth. I suppose that would cost 1 or 2 hundred dollars in total. Or even a plastic filling which would be more aesthetically pleasing, might also provide some additional structural support. Such a plastic filling would be a two component material, the plastic ingredients and a catalyst.

If I was guessing, I would say that the catalyst might be very similar to that used for an ordinary polyester resin; methyl ethyl ketone peroxide (MEKP) in some reduced strength form.

The trouble is, this dental material is entirely unavailable to me. I not only can't find it, it may be illegal for me to purchase it or use it myself. If I were able to acquire it, I could very likely make a filling that might last six months to ten years, or even for life.

What IS available to me are "temporary" fillings, specifically designed to self-destruct in a very short period of time. They are a one-component product. By comparison to a dentist, they are quite economical. Almost 2g for about three dollars. And if I am not too wasteful, this is enough for four or five fillings. Now, less than $1 per filling is not bad, unless you factor in that these fillings are DESIGNED with deliberately "planned obsolescence" in mind. They WILL begin eroding on the very first day applied.

Let us look at the ingredients of the first one I tried. Zinc Oxide Powder, Calcium Sulfate, Petroleum Jelly, Potassium Alum, Paraffin,Aluminum Sulphate, Aluminum Phosphate, Menthol Crystals, Eugenol, Yellow Iron Oxide.

By weight, the third and fifth most abundant ingredient, PETROLEUM JELLY and PARAFFIN are an oil and a wax. Given several hours to set, this material gives the impression that it is a solid, but in no sense does it confer any structural integrity or strength to the tooth. The engineers of this tooth repair material WANT IT TO BREAK DOWN in less than a week in a typical cavity. In my particular case, the broken portion of the tooth is a load-bearing surface. I can expect to get a day or two out of it, or three if I don't chew. I am fond of chewing.

Even the eugenol is from Oil of Clove, but at least it has an anesthetic purpose.

Now let's look at the other product I found. This one costs an extra thirty cents and is perhaps a smidgen better.
Ingredients: Zinc Oxide B.P., Calcium Sulphate, Synthetic Plasticizer, Potassium Sulphate, Glass Ionomer.

You might get an extra day or two of use out of this one, but it too is DESIGNED TO BREAK DOWN VERY QUICKLY. (This package reads "10x Longer Lasting." Perhaps they mean compared to using chewing gum.)

Now here is the punchline. Both of these products are have the same Brand Name on them. The first one is made in Italy. The second one is made in the USA and packaged in Vietnam. Both carry the same Information phone number. I am not even going to go into the absolute silliness in their directions for use (both products).

Both fillings are complete crap. I will have to make my own, but I will wait until I use these up. (Probably less than a month, even though I will tinker with them a bit to try to extend the product life a bit.)

Lurkers, Whores and Dunces

A few observations. Down through history writing has been a solitary activity. Occasionally you will see a book with two authors. Probably, for every one of these that makes it to print, a dozen fail to make it as far as chapter three.

I have done a certain amount of ghost writing and editing of the works of others over the decades. I have never allowed my name to be coupled to the originator of the work; not on the book jacket, not in the preface, introduction or the acknowledgement. The credit or blame for the work belong to the author. I have done nothing more than landscape the intellectual garden.

I don’t often pair up with the author and help hammer out the lines as they form. It is not because I don’t like the idea of writing cooperatively. I like it very much. It just doesn’t usually turn out to be a painless experience.

When I first started looking at the internet forums I had considerable hope that some dialogues and multi-logues would develop in which the various participants would contribute meaningfully to further understanding. I had not anticipated so much jibber and jabber, so little real structure and meaning.

That is not to say that on a health related forum for example, you can not get useful and practical information. You are just going to have to search through a great deal of material of no value whatsoever. Social chat. Illogic of substantial proportions. And things that are just patently irrefutably wrong.

Of the forums I visited, only one prompted me to stick around for more than a few weeks. Skin Cell Forum. In the past 600 days, I have posted on a wide variety of different subjects in some depth. Close to 1300 posts so far, mostly on general health , treatment and nutrition. Few of my posts were just chat.

Then early this year I thought that maybe if I put up Eureka Ideas Unlimited as a blog, I would increase the scope of the previously local think-tank of collegiate level intellectuals and innovators discussing pressing problems and potential solutions. Almost a year has gone by. Not a single meaningful extended dialogue has developed.

My early notion that forums and blogs might to some extent remedy the solitary element of writing did not pan out. That is probably in part due to my lack of internet skills with tags, meta-tags, attracting search engine spiders, and so on.

Another thing may contribute to the lack of participation, and this is my fault for sure. Although I deal with ideas, problems needing solution, invention or innovation and creativity, and other notions for which the facts are still not entirely known, my opinions are sometimes strongly held, and rather sharply expressed.

I am not always successful in toning this down. For me, a certain amount of debate sharpens the wits and keeps us on our toes. I will sometimes even defend a working hypothesis almost as if it were an entirely self-evident proven fact. My opponent/colleague should go for the throat anytime I do this.

On the good side, the blog is a good place for me to further polish some of the ideas I am currently working on , and is also a convenient place for me to expose the ideas and discoveries that no longer seem speculative, in which the potential for harm is nil. One such solution is the prevention of airborne viral infections like colds and flu, and the reduction of allergic symptoms of exposure to airborne allergens. I could just put the link to it right here. It has a thread on Skin Cell and an essay here as well. But if you are not motivated to look through my archives here, or find the thread in the General Health section on Skin Cell Forum, you would not actually engage in the two minutes or less per day that it would take to protect yourself.

My most active work these days is in less well developed and long standing form. My ideas on alternatives to surgical intervention for cataracts, and in the alternative treatment of periodontal disease and other issues such as immunology and ageing are still in development.

In cataracts, my ideas show early indicators of success. My enthusiasm has grown with these subtle improvements, but not to the point that I am ready to shout from the rooftops that I have the answer. I am simply very encouraged about how things are going.

In immunology and ageing, my ideas also seem to be working well, but my activities in this field have only accelerated recently. The results I have already experienced seem quite favorable. But it is easy to jump to conclusions. I might conceivably have been just as robustly healthy at the age of 66 without the variety of interventions I have been employing. No way to know. Could be just placebo effect or the power of positive thinking. I have deep suspicion and caution about the medical/pharmaceutical/governmental structures which damage our health as often as they enhance it. These things all muddy up the water.

I will only talk about these working solutions to problems when I am confident that their value is unambiguous, and have considered the unexpected social consequences of their use on a large scale.

Almost half a century ago President Eisenhower gave a dire warning about the “military-industrial complex.” (This speech is in my archives here.) It was a notably prescient warning And considering his political party, even though Eisenhower was leaving the Presidency and seemingly had nothing more to lose, considering those volatile political times, the speech was a very courageous one, and deserves another look, particularly in view of present events.

But I would like to paraphrase that one term, military-industrial complex, broadening it to encompass the real scope of the enemy. It should be called the Regulatory-Industrial Complex. The evils go well beyond the military.

The tentacles of this cancer are strangling us just as effectively in the fields of medicine, the pharmaceutical industry, and the insurance business as well. Our legislators pay “lip service” to these industries and are paid for their efforts far better than our ladies of the evening get for oral ministrations to their clients.

Dissection Notes - Eye #2

This eye, stored a day and a half longer than the first eye, had lost some interior pressure. Puzzling because it had been immersed in cool coconut oil and there was no sign of leakage into the oil that I could find.

This time I made an incision at the limb of the iris. Here too, I couldn't detect the capsular membrane of the lens. The lens was clear and had held it's shape. I suspended it in cool water for a couple of days.

After a day, it developed some filamentous appearing debris at the equator. Other than that, it was still clear. By the next day, it had clouded and developed a spontaneous fracture. I had expected it to swell during this time. It did not swell much but the opacity indicated two things. There had been water absorbed, and paradoxically this had apparently clouded the lens. This implied that the aqueous humour was buffered in some way or that the capsular membrane or some other mechanism prevented excess absorption of moisture while the eye was living.

I had something lined up for the aqueous and vitreous humours, but unexpected guests showed up. What is the opposite of serendipity?

Dissection notes - Eye #1

Upon dissection this eye had been immersed in coconut oil and brought to about 50F for a day. My objective was to examine the eye from the rear after quartering the retina into four quadrants and laying the flaps back to expose the interior. I used a standard scalpel with a #21 blade.

Prior to the incisions, the eyeball was still quite firm. There was no cloudiness in any portion of the interior. I laid back the flaps exposing the vitreous humour. I was holding the eyeball in a cutaway ping pong ball so that it would hold its' shape when the cuts were made. This worked very nicely.

The vitreous humour, the lens, and the aqueous humour were still quite crystal clear. However, there was a bit of leakage of black pigment smearing into the vitreous humour from the interior surface of the eyeball adjacent to the cuts I had made. I had not noticed this pigment in the eyes of other animals. Interesting, but not enough so that I was going to be distracted for long from the lens, my central interest.

I swabbed these darkenings away with some cotton swabs, trying not to disturb the integrity of the rest of the vitreous humour. It was about of the consistency of the stiffer portion of the white of a very fresh chicken egg. I lifted the eye out of the ping pong ball and examined the image that came through. It was not appreciably out of focus and would have probably cleared up entirely if I had smoothed the surface of the exposed vitreous humour with a microscope slide cover and then laid it on the surface, but I didn't have one handy.

Most of the structures of the eye are tougher and more durable than you would guess. Eventually I removed a large portion of the vitreous humor with a plastic spoon. It really held its' form pretty well, but probing and prodding caused some liquefaction due to the mechanical breakdown of some of the invisible microfibers within. I had expected the capsular membrane to be tougher than it was.

I was particularly interested in observing the interface between the zonules and the membrane of the lens capsule. No such luck. The membrane had apparently spontaneously ruptured. I did not think that I had done anything severe enough to cause that during the dissection. I can only guess that it must have occurred during the time that I was removing the eye from the skull, or at the rather traumatic moment of the death of the buck.

I was a bit disappointed about the membrane, but my central interest was the lens. In its' totally relaxed state, it was quite globular, slightly flatter on the posterior face, much thicker in cross section than one would imagine. It was closer to marble shaped than lens shaped. Clearly, without the influence of the zonules and capsular membrane, the lens was not really what we usually think of as lens shaped. I put it aside, immersed in some tepid coconut oil. I wanted to play with the iris, which was quite durable and resilient.

I should mention that the pupil opening is very round, but the periphery of the iris is oval. This is why you see no white of the eye even when the deer's eye is wide open.

The next thing I wanted to do was to try to drill a hole in the lens using a conventional drillbit (1/16") by hand. It went through the lens nicely but when I removed the drill, the hole filled in. Mechanically drilling a hole in a gel was a long-shot, but I still needed to give it a try. I then did some other destructive testing of the lens until there was little left to play with.

That's about it. I decided to think a while before doing the other eye. No sense in repeating the same procedures. Not much learning in that. More later.

Brief Notes On Eyeball Dissections

These are some notes on the dissection of a pair of fresh eyeballs removed under field conditions from a yearling buck which died in my front yard early yesterday morning.

The first step of course, was to remove the eyeballs from the skull. The objective was to get the eyeballs out of the orbits of the skull without doing damage to the integrity of the entire eyeball. I wanted the vitreous humour, the aquous humour and the lens, capsule, iris and zonules to remain intact and undisturbed.

It was quite dark so I was working with a headlamp and a flashlight. I wanted to work quite quickly because I live within the city limits technically and cars were going by now and then. I was in no mood for the local police to come out amid flashing blue lights and so on. I figured I had about a half hour to finish the task and move the deer to a more discreet location. I was working alone, my wife and my manservant Ichabod being sound asleep and pretty well useless for this kind of thing anyway. Ichabod particularly, has for several years had an extreme aversion to blood. Otherwise he could have been quite useful and I could have hung the deer over a branch by his hindquarters, gutted the animal and slit it's throat.

But that was lower priority than the eyes. I would salvage the rest of the deer after the sun came up. I also was not partial to the notion of having a big pile of organs and guts and puddles of thickening blood in the front yard anyway. My tool were few; My hunting knife, some spoons, some small paper cups of coconut oil, and a pair of pliers. I would let the local meat packer do the rest with the buck when they opened up later in the morning.

I poured some eyewash on the first eye, followed by a bit of coconut oil. I oiled up one of the spoons, slid it under the top lid of one of the eyes, forcing the conjunctiva back with the leading edge of the spoon until I could feel it hit the optic nerve bundle. If I had had some time, I would have simply sharpened the spoon edge with a file or a sharpening stone. I could then have simply slid the sharpened edge back and forth against the nerve bundle until it was severed. Then it would be a simple matter of slicing away the various rectus and oblique muscles to release the eyes from the sockets.

Now that the spoon tip was up against the nerve bundle, quite a tough rope-like nerve cluster of about 1/8 inch diameter, I needed to slide my knife behind the spoon to get the point to the nerve cluster. It is quite resistant to being cut, even though I keep my hunting knife pretty sharp. The cluster was pierced by the knife point perhaps eight times before I could get the pliers on the bundle and tear it loose. The eye now came out of the socket very nicely. I repeated the same procedure with the second eye. One interesting feature I noticed was that, unlike the human eye, these irises were not round. They were quite oval shaped.

I immersed each eye in its' own oil bath. I then dragged the buck onto my truck and parked it back by the barn and went to bed. Which is what I am going to do now. If anyone is interested, I will include notes on the further dissection of the eyes themselves tomorrow or the next day.

War & Conflict

This was something I said on Modern War and Conflict, a blog that I randomly fell into.

I am in substantial agreement with your comments. I am concerned that we look too hard for cyclic patterns in history though. It is of course very useful to examine patterns, in science, and in life and human affairs. But we should not lose sight of the fact that patterns stop.
The old popular notion of the dialectic nature of history led us in some very self-deluding directions. There was no protection back in 1962 in having a bomb shelter in the back yard, or a six month supply of water and dehydrated food.

We still came within a hair's breadth of destroying the planet and 99+% of all terrestrial life on it.

When that was avoided, we all heaved a sigh of relief. Or at least it seemed so. In truth though, the world stayed just as dangerous. And erroneous propaganda on all sides made matters much worse.

Otherwise intelligent people generated such notions as "duck and cover" to give our school children the feeling that they could defend themselves in some fashion against the nuclear war that seemed quite inevitable.

Nuclear war may indeed be inevitable, but it is unlikely to be of the same sort as we envisioned then. For example, we comfort ourselves that we have not had active use of nuclear weapons since Japan. Not exactly so. I am going to leave this one up in the air... What am I talking about? Any ideas?

We now concern ourselves with the emergency represented by global warming, the rather paradoxical possibilities of the North Atlantic Climate switch affecting the ocean currents, which are central to driving the global climate.

A variety of other systems are very much out of whack as well, causing an unparalleled global runaway extinction. These various influences are NOT cyclic in the sense we think we can see.

It is useful to see patterns when they are there. But it is very dangerous to imagine patterns to be there which are not. I will expand on this further if engaged.

Although I have some interest in tactics and strategy, my focus is on problem recognition and solution accross a wide spectrum of systems in the ecostructure.

The enemy is not opposing geopolitical views and interests. The enemy is ignorance masquerading as intelligence, dogma and fanaticism masquerading as truth.

My blog deals with ideas as diverse as influenza, cataracts, longevity, but more importantly, looking at the inter-relationships between problems which may not even seem to be related.

You are welcome to come over and see what you think. We can even talk about war or politics by other means if you want, but let's do our best not to get too carried away.

I have research and development going on a variety of different fronts, but I do look forward to looking through your archives as time permits. Perhaps you are a chess player?

Lamentations

Innovation does not run smoothly. It is a jumpy, lurching kind of activity. What is more, success, continuously sought, is often the enemy. Let me see if I can demonstrate what I am saying.

Over the past couple of decades, great changes have occurred in surgical cataract correction. These changes have resulted in considerable improvement in outcomes. As a result, other options are not considered. If there are other reasonable means of stabilizing or reversing cataracts, they are not means that are attractive to eye surgeons.

An eye surgeon is not going to get wealthier by telling us that we should pay more attention to what we eat and drink, that more of what we drink should be water and less should be alcohol.

I am told that most of us are seriously sleep deprived, often getting hours less than we need. Sleep “medications” are ubiquitous, both over the counter and by prescription. Then, when we awaken, we use stimulants like coffee, tea, and energizing chemicals to get us through the day.

Even our children are in the same sort of mess. They are very often drugged for attention deficit and hyperactivity, or labeled autistic and put into special education programs. What are some of the results? We now have a whole class of new “patients.” The children who were given Ritalin (a cocaine-like stimulant) to help them behaviorally in school, have become ADHD adults, and the “medication” continues.

But let us return to the subject of eyes. About four decades ago, I invented a useful device to discover monocular visual behavior in young children in groups. In other words, you could screen a lot of children all at the same time. This seemed to me to be the most useful feature of the device.

Yet, when I presented it to a variety of optometrists, it was this element which was most troubling to them. They were set up in business to deal with one patient at a time. Of the several optometrists that I demonstrated the device to, none was enthusiastic about changing their niche of dealing with only one patient at a time.

As an inventor, I was mystified by this negative reaction, and eventually disgusted by the optometrists, at least by those I talked to. Of course, one can’t judge an entire profession by the responses of a random handful. Even so, they were exhibiting a very self-serving perspective.

The point is, the device worked very well. No one denied that. The problem was that no one was interested in screening groups of children. And of course other existing equipment was already on hand in the doctor’s office which could identify monocular traits one on one. And that is how the business of medicine has always been set up.

Problems with the outrageous costs of medical care, or services simply being unavailable for vast numbers of people, is not just confined to the United States. And it is not just the fault of the doctors. They just benefit much more visibly than the other complicit components in the system; hospitals, insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry.

Maybe you are one of the many who feel that the health industry is honest and above-board. Perhaps you missed the story in the news just this past week , in which Bristol-Myers Squibb (a Fortune 500 company) was fined five hundred and fifteen million dollars for their misdeeds. More than a half BILLION dollars. As far as I can tell, none of this money is going back to any of the consumers who were damaged by the practices of the company. It is very hard to track what state and federal authorities are going to get this money and in what amounts, but the total amount that they have paid or agreed to pay in the past few years is actually more than 1.25 billion dollars. Surely some of that total amount has been restitution to stockholders and class action settlements. But a lot of this penalty had to do with unlawful marketing and pricing practices. Marketing practices in which large numbers of physicians played an active role, profiting substantially in a variety of ways.

It has been suggested that I have it in for doctors. Not true. But the conditioned reflexes that we have been programmed with; that we must go for a regular check-up every year, and that by the time we are fifty, we should have a doctor jam a camera up our rectum to see if everything is all right. Or that by the time women are fifty, they should already have had a couple of mammograms and several cervical smears. There is no argument. Lives are saved by these diagnostic procedures.

There is also no argument that lives are lost because these procedures are, one way or another, far more expensive than they need to be, making them financially impossible for many people who could benefit.

I went to a Health Fair a number of years ago. One of the services they provided was a comprehensive blood analysis for $10. Since I had not been to the doctor for two decades, I thought that was a good idea. I got the blood work. And although nothing was wrong, I was glad that I did it. But if I had gone to a private physician and been tested in the same fashion, the bill would have exceeded ten times that figure. What made the difference? Economies of scale and mass production techniques, and the fact that the Health Fair was designed to reach people who could not afford or were otherwise resistant to the extreme expense of conventional medical services.

Now, because my eyesight is going downhill, I have taken an interest in cataracts. Depending on whose figures you want to believe, the typical surgical intervention to deal with a cataract costs $3500 to $5000.

Now contrast this with the work of Dr. Sandik Ruit, an ophthalmologist from Nepal. A few years ago he went to North Korea and in the course of less than two weeks, performed in excess of a thousand cataract operations. He did it with a very small staff of helpers and trained some North Korean doctors while he was at it. The net cost for these operations even when the prorated cost of his portable medical equipment is taken into account, was well under $40 per eye. Now Dr. Ruit practices in the high countries like Nepal and Tibet and charges a sliding scale of $10 to $100 for the operation, depending on ability to pay. The point is, the actual cost for the operation and all materials needed is actually very, very low.

Okay, now compare: I went to an optometrist in Texas. He charged me and my insurance something in excess of two hundred dollars for his half hour of testing. Then I went to an ophthalmologist, whose staff did some additional testing. Her office workers took about forty minutes with me, screwing up a bit along the way. Then the ophthalmologist popped in and had a quick look, ignored some important details on my intake form, and scheduled me for cataract surgery.

The total cost for this one hour of services? Something over $400. And the operation itself? That will be another $3500+. Now I suspect that I would ultimately get a better lens, perhaps slightly better matched to my individual needs than those that the Korean patients got, but really, there is no way to check that. I will get the result that I get. I have about 19 chances out of 20 to have better eyesight without too many complications. But that means I have 1 chance in 20 of being blinder than I was, or even totally blind in that eye.

Meanwhile, the prevailing opinion among the ophthalmologists is that these odds are very good. I am inclined to agree, unless I am the one in twenty for whom things don’t work out.

It is claimed almost universally that only surgery can deal with cataracts. For me, the jury is still out on that. From my perspective, ophthalmologists have too much to gain and too little to lose, to consider the less invasive options. These would include changes in nutrition, changes in eye behavior (exercises), changes in hydration, changes in the amount of sleep we get, and other lifestyle considerations. From the physicians perspective, the patient can not really be trusted to do much to help himself. Otherwise he would have already done it.

We have only to look around us to find evidence that this is so. Obesity is of epidemic proportions. Alcohol and drug use is widespread. Tobacco addiction is not as universal as it once was, but it is still a very serious problem. Our food supply is far from healthful.

Just this week, an American meat packer recalled 22 million pounds of ground meat patties, then promptly went out of business. There were not enough assets to pay for the recall. So who pays? And what is the ultimate fate of over twenty million pounds of (possibly) tainted meat? It seems like only a month or so since there was a nationwide recall of American spinach greens.

Many of us have taken losses because of the Chinese adulteration of pet foods with a poisonous substance added to increase the protein content. Other Chinese products, like toothpaste adulterated with antifreeze, children’s toys painted with lead-based paint, cribs that have killed babies because of design and assembly defects, are probably the tip of the iceberg.

So what could possibly have caused this mess, in which we have somehow become so dependent on Chinese labor and products that we cannot do without them? In the course of my lifetime, we have gone from total isolationism, fear and hatred on both sides, to mutual economic exploitation in trade. But the fear and hatred are still right under the surface. At the moment, we are probably one of China’s biggest customers. This reverse in policy took only a few decades. Few of us even noticed it happening. All those years we were castigating the Chinese for rampant human rights abuses, we were consuming the cheap products that those abuses produced. With each passing year, we become more entangled in this international trade with partners we cannot trust, but can no longer do without.

We are really in the same situation with our medical-pharmaceutical-insurance industries as well, aren’t we? They are plundering us and have been for so long that most of us cannot even see that it is happenning. What is the solution? Perhaps there isn't a perfect solution. But perhaps it would be a start if we each took a whole lot more responsibility for understanding how our bodies work, and took a whole lot more responsibility for dealing with our own ailments, rather than putting ourselves so entirely in the hands of this group of self-proclaimed experts.

Cataract Correction Part Two

The goal is to rehabilitate the lens of the eye and recover visual acuity and the accommodative function of earlier years.Whatever the substances are that are producing the cloudy lens, there needs to be some sort of circulation going on within it, exchange of fluids in both directions across cellular membranes.

Those cells in the nucleus of the lens may be reacting to ionic transport pumping. I have a theory that a persons first and more advanced cataract is generally in the eye which was the weaker of the two even prior to the cataract. I have not seen any data on this. The idea may have no merit at all.

But back to fluid exchange. Can cataracts be forming due to a failure or diminution of the normal circulatory process? Due to a change in viscosity of the fluids? From dehydration due to failure to drink sufficient water? What other kinds of fluidic transfer could be playing a part? What about the flexure of the lens itself? Could there be a relationship between the reduction of the ability to flex the lens and a reduction of fluid exchange? Are the inclusions causing the reductions of clarity of vision within the cells of the lens or between them? The answers to these questions will bear on how to solve the problem.

Cataract Correction Part one.

We ought to take a look at the various things that contribute to the loss of vision in age-related nuclear cataracts. At the top of the list, and most obvious, is a reduction of the transparency of the lens. The prevailing medical opinion is that this is an inevitable consequence of ageing, that once the opacity has developed, little can be done except the eventual removal of the offending lens, and replacement with a prosthetic lens of one variety or another.

We commonly refer to these cataracts as "senile." The currently prevailing view is that only surgery is a reasonable course of action. I am not at all confident that this is the case. Opposition to this perspective is not strong and is also suspect because of the potential for profits generated by sales of nutritional products, vitamins and minerals. There are several large pharmaceutical companies selling vitamin-mineral products based on the results of the ARREDS study. The pills are high in price, and the claims made for them are vague and insubstantial, referring to general eye health rather than stabilization or reversal of cataracts.

One smaller company uses the audio presentation of a maverick ophthalmologist (now dead) who makes some plausible claims that give cataract sufferers enough hope to try a product with some additional ingredients to the ones indicated in the ARREDS study, but the owner of the company is not inclined to actually discuss his product in detail and deal with the actual mechanisms of action. It never impresses me when a CEO does not respond to specific questions about his product or services.

But returning to cataracts, what are some of the elements of the formation of cataracts, and which of those contributing causative factors can be reduced or reversed? Current treatment of choice is surgical. Worldwide, there is probably no more commonly performed surgery. Odds of success are high. But there are risks as well, and some of them are substantial. This is reason enough to return to the subject of prevention and delay.

From my perspective, "senile" cataracts involve more than the developing cloudiness of the lens. The ability of the lens itself to be flexed into focus is also reduced with aging. The main contributor to this is probably the ongoing thickening of the lens. The actively replicating cells of the lens are in the cortex (outermost) layer. I have, as yet, been able to find little information about the metabolic activities of the nuclear (interior) layers of the lens. Certainly those deeper lens tissues are still metabolically supported in some ways. That implies that defects in the support process play a part in the development of the loss of clarity.

We also know that these deeper cells have no direct vascular support, and that they have no nuclei and no mitochondria. But certainly there is some sort of ongoing passive fluid exchange. These lenses are quite flexible and deformable. If some sort of fluid exchange were not going on, this sort of stasis would be unlikely to go on for decades.

So assuming a certain fluid exchange, understanding that mechanism might well provide a means of altering the fluid environment of the interior of the cell in such a way as to increase the transparency of those interior cells.

Going back to the flexibility of the lens, the musculature which accomplishes the focusing of the lens is attached to the outer edge. These strands of muscle are collectively known as "Zonules of Zinn." I would like to have a deeper understanding of the interface of these muscle cells and the cells of the lens cortex.

I'm feeling my way along with this, but at the moment my emphasis is on anti-oxidants and phytochemicals, as well as various means for increasing fluid transfer in the nuclear portion of the lens. Bear in mind that these lens cells are not vascularized and contain no mitochondria, so only passive and ionic circulation of fluids can be involved.

So to sum up, I believe that it is significant that in nuclear cataracts, these characteristics are most often present; there is a direct relationship with age, there is a thickening of the lens and a corresponding reduction of efficiency of accommodation (the ability to flex the lens to resolve images), there may also be some reduction of moisture content of the lens as well. This would certainly make the lens less pliable and make it far more likely that opaque substances accumulate in the tissues.
I suspect that there is also an age-related reduction in the strength of the zonule musculature. The efficient flexure of the lens is certainly an element affecting the passive movement of fluids through the lens.

So without regard to the exact nature of the opaque inclusions in the lens, it seems reasonable to pay close attention to the level of hydration (old people have a tendency to sometimes drink too little water), to increase the intake of anti-oxidants and phytochemicals, to review the nature of the lipids in the diet, and to do a variety of lens calisthenics (changing focal distance with increased frequency).

In my particular case, I suspect that my low intake of vegetables, particularly the dark leafy ones and the yellow and orange ones, has played a role in the cataract development. This is very difficult for me to correct. I buy enough vegetables, and have all kinds of good intentions, but then often forget to eat them before they spoil. I try to make up for it by eating more fresh fruits, but I do not know how effective this substitution is.

Trolling the Blogs

I have been trying to sort out why I randomly surf the blogs. Often I am looking for specific information about a given subject like cataracts or virology or nutrition or chemistry or physics. Surfing the blogs is of no help in that regard. So the question of why I spend a few hours a week looking over chance blogs still remains unanswered, when I could be using search engines in a more focused and directed way.

I guess it has to be the novelty and element of occasional surprise. You just really never know where you are going to wind up. Yesterday I came upon a blog about spanking. Having been spanked frequently and very hard as a young child, it is not a subject which I take to with great enthusiasm. My sons got very few spankings. Even fewer were hard. And each of those give me lasting regret.

So it was a surprise to see this particular blog, which was extolling a variety of benefits to adults spanking adults. There wer a considerable number of pictures. There are even professional spankers who perform for a fee. Apparently there is a significant subculture who engage in the practice. Contrary to what I would have guessed, I don't recall more than a picture or two of women being the recipient. Most were of women administering the spanking to their spouse or boyfriend.

But I think what surprised me the most is how many comments were made on the postings, how favorable virtually all the posts were about the practice, and how basically happy the people involved were with the activity.

A few years ago I saw a movie which rather disturbed and impressed me. It was called "The Secretary" with Maggie Gyllenthaal and James Spader. When I rented the movie, it was on the basis of the stars, not the plot blurb. So I had no idea of the content having elements of sado-masochism. The oddest thing of all is that it was such a happy movie. I went from my initial reaction that this was a disturbed and troubling relationship, to what a happy couple.

Anyway, I thought I would get away from my practice of dealing with things like cataracts, which according to the experts will affect virtually all of us if we survive long enough, but about which practically none of us have any real interest. The same with prevention of viral infections, which affect almost everyone almost every year. Yet these and other scientific subjects of importance to our comfort and survival, do not inspire much interest in the general public.

The other day, one of my chess opponents said that he had taken a look at my blog. He said I talked about too many subjects and used too many words. I had to chuckle over that.

There is some validity to the using too many words criticism. Hemingway believed in brevity, and achieved it in spades with "The Old Man and the Sea." But as his career went on, he found such perfect brevity very elusive. I have a feeling that this might have played some part in his ultimate demise. Writers perhaps take their craft too seriously.

But the other thing that came to mind was what a regent once said to Mozart when straining to find some intelligent critical comment to Mozart about a piece of his music that had just been performed.

"Too many notes." he said.

Posted on Another Blog, "After Gutenberg"

I stumbled upon "After Gutenberg" this afternoon. I have so far found the various entries informative and thought provoking. This is my reaction to less than 1% of the blogs I view.

Focus is as important as creativity and imagination in the generation of new concepts and techniques in dealing with problems. My central focus at the moment is supposed to be on reversal of cataracts by the application of better surgical procedures, or by the prevention/reversal of cataracts by nonsurgical means. Instead, I found myself taking the tour of some of the wealth of ideas I found here in other areas.

But I noticed that some of the very same impediments to progress in solving many problems that I have seen described here, have some of the same characteristics that I have encountered in trying to gain the interest and attention of the central players in the eye-care industry, ophthalmologists.

Only a few years ago, I was lamenting the short sighted perspectives of the associated industries (big oil and big auto) in downplaying the complex problems of global warming, population pressure and uncoordinated, unsustainable water policies.

But it is clear that the special interests involved in slowing the potential progress that could be made, have not really made an intrinsic change in course. They have made virtually no actual changes in policy or emphasis. Only cosmetic ones designed to maintain the profit status quo in the present, lulling us into a sense of complacency, no matter what the consequences in the future.

Now, I must admit that I have not used "meta tags" and other means of attracting attention to eurekaideasunlimited.blogspot.com
I think in the past half year it has only received about 2000 hits. And from those hits, there has been a miniscule handful of thoughtful and relevant responses. I really did want to see that good ideas would provide their own attraction and it would be self-sustaining. Clearly that is not the case.

This blog, After Gutenberg, seems to be suffering from the same sort of problem, although clearly, it is polished, and uses skills and techniques which I have not yet employed, and has been around for a number of years.

In cataracts, the vested interests are different. They are the Ophthalmologists, the industry that produces the equipment and IOL's, and the medical installations that profit by the operations. They have considerable incentive to maintain the status quo, and to provide even more expensive services. (To use an accomodating multifocal lens will cost more than $2000 on top of the basic surgical fees.) There is no incentive for any ophthalmologist to buck this trend, particularly if the new innovation(s) delay surgery for an appreciable time, or even eliminate it entirely in many cases. The doctors are making too much money to rock the boat.

Now our corn farmers are very much in favor of producing ethanol. It makes the crop more valuable. But is it a wise course to be thinking of using the central staple grain in our food chain? The corn farmer thinks it's a wonderful idea. He is a special interest, and one who has sometimes gotten a raw deal in the marketplace.

But step back and see the bigger picture. With massive amounts of corn diverted to ethanol production, pet food, livestock feed, and the chickens, turkeys and beef and pork for which corn is an essential feed component,not to mention the ubiquitous corn sweetener business will also increase in product cost.

What is the solution? The truth is that cellulosic production of ethanol will work just fine. In otherwords, we need not depend on corn or any other food crop for energy production. We can use sawdust, plant stalks, lawn clippings, weeds and brush. Why on earth would we use food to make alcohol? It just makes no sense at all if you are not one of the vested interests for whom it affects the bottom line.

Getting Better

One of my friends supplied me with somelinks that in essence said I was barking up a wrong tree. The links were useful in a variety of ways and I appreciated them, but still had some caveats. This was my response:

Hello Bunnie, These links are interesting and useful. I notice, though that the first link only devotes a paragraph to the lens. The other major components of the eye get much more attention.

I think this is a significant indicator of the mindset that prevails in the cataract removal industry. And it is not just this link that does this. You can get a lot more detail about every other significant eye part, with a lot less hunting.

Could this be because it is the only "routine" for cataracts, to just "amputate" the lens and insert a prosthetic lens? If it is going to just be chopped out and replaced, there is little to be gained by knowing a lot about it's structure.

And one of the other links calls it a "myth" that interventions such as eyedrops or nutritional supplements or dietary changes, or for that matter, any intervention at all, short of surgery will do any good at all.

To me the word myth is quite a strong one. I do not think it applies when it simply has not been established that the variety of other interventions are of incontrovertable value.

Without opening another can of worms in another branch of surgical intervention, cardiology, findings were recently published that perhaps half of one variety of procedure were next to useless or completely useless. This procedure has been done hundreds of thousands of times every year in the Unites States alone. I doubt that refunds will be offerred.

Getting back to cataracts, a number of months ago, I was attempting to use some nonsurgical interventions to at least stabilize or perhaps reverse the effects of a cataract on vision. After several weeks, I couldn't see any obvious improvement. I was doing several different things at the same time. When I didn't see evidence of improvement over a period of a month or so, I became less and less interested in continuing. But in retrospect, I do not really think I gave the things I was doing enough of a trial.

The cataract took years and years to develop, without my even noticing it until it was pretty well advanced. So the deterioration from month to month was exceedingly subtle. Not only that, I had not calibrated a measurement system, with which I could make a baseline measurement which would later help me to assess changes. I set about doing that.

Furthermore, I wanted to produce a device with which I could assess some of the glare affects of the cataract on night vision with some precision. So I set about doing that as well. That is pretty technical and hard to discuss, so I will leave the glare issue aside.

So let us look at both clarity of vision and the ability to percieve different colors. I additionally decided that it was better to have a measurement that used images produced by emitted light rather than reflected light. So a TV screen or a computer screen were the obvious choices. But of course, one can't easily control what is going to occur on the TV screen and repeatability, to be able to replicate with great precision, the image that was going to be used for the testing purposes was absolutely essential.

So I began casting about for an image on the computer screen which I could reliably replicate at will, which would be absolutely replicatible down to the finest detail every time I wanted it, which also included a variety of colors and sizes of print, highly contrasting from the background.
When I first turn on the computer, I get a blue screen. It is replaced by the Windows XP symbol and lettering on a black screen which is too large for my purposes and quickly spontaneously disappears as the computer finishes booting up.

But later on, if I get distracted by anything, and do nothing with the computer or touch the mouse, a much smaller version of this logo becomes a screensaver, with three very different sizes of white lettering on a black background "Windows" the largest, with an orange XP; underneath that, "Home Edition" in medium print, and the smallest, above windows, "Microsoft."
Now I needed to make a precise distance measurement. One which would allow me to see the large and the medium copy pretty well, but would only allow me to nearly resolve the smallest word. Measuring from my forhead to the screen with a seven inch spacer, I was able to easily read Windows XP and Home Edition, but Microsoft was just a blur in which I could resove none of the letters clearly. The M looked to me more like a V. The ft at the other end, I could make out that they were taller letters than those of the interior of the word, but couldn't see what they were, and the short interior letters were just a line of fog. Perfect.

I didn't note the date, but it was right after my computer crash. Now it has been several weeks. Not a long time, but not a short time either. Only now, I am quite prepared to be more patient. I now have a pretty clear baseline measurement. It has already been demonstrably important.

You see, now when I put my face a measured seven inches from the screen, I can resolve the M clearly and the ft only slightly less clearly. Sorry to say that the interior of the word is still not legible to me, but this is progress over a very short timespan.
Now it is true, I have also been working on my blood pressure and the aftermath of my stroke, so I have been doing a great variety of things for my health. And although some of those things were specifically designed to deal with the cataract, there is no way I can isolate them out and say "these are the things that helped my eyes." So, from a medical or scientific point of view, this is just anecdotal nonsense.

Just as nonsensical I suppose as only respecting the results of "double blind" studies in which neither the doctors nor the subjects know during the study who is actually getting the study drug and who is getting the placebo. This is of statistical value, but your chance of getting better is cut to 50% even before the use of the study drug. All in the name of the great god science.

I think I will just settle for getting better.
Anthro

None So Blind As Those Who Will Not See

Alright, since I am entirely alone, and this is in effect a diary, I might as well knuckle down and try to sort out the mumbo jumbo of current ophthalmologic theory.

My focus is on cataracts. The reason for this is simple. A presumably “nuclear” cataract has seriously affected the vision of my right eye, and threatens to eventually do the same sort of thing with the left eye as well.
Having first gone to see an optometrist and shortly thereafter an ophthalmologic surgeon, I was left with considerably more questions than I was comfortable with, and the answers I did receive had to be extracted almost by force, and were simplistic and routinely condescending.

Throughout this whole time, I have sought real dialogue and counsel from people in the field. I have had no success in this regard at all. The closest I came was to finally have a ten minute follow-up conversation with the surgeon with whom I had scheduled the surgery. I achieved this small victory only by canceling the operation.

During that telephone conversation, the answers I got were vague, statistical, and dumbed-down to be suitably understood by someone of plebeian patient mentality. The doctor was clearly surprised that I did not just leave her to do what she does. There are protocols in place, presumably to assure that patients are given enough facts to be able to give “informed consent.”

You are told that more than 9 out of 10 cataract operations have a good result, meaning that there is some improvement or great improvement in the sight of the eye. In the remaining ten percent, there is a range of unfortunate outcomes from no appreciable improvement to various complications secondary to the surgery, to blindness.

What is glossed over with these simplistic statistics, and what you will not hear at all if you do not dig in and ask the doctor for some specifics about some of the complications by type, is that certain complications happen to the majority of those having cataract surgeries. There is a secondary cataract which develops, much more often than not in the capsular membrane, and which is corrected by subsequently burning a laser hole in the membrane. (This is an additional procedure, done at a later time and billed separately). There are also some post surgical problems of other sorts that relate to the kind of surgical procedure performed.

What I am saying is that much of what the doctor tells you to elicit your informed consent, amounts more to salesmanship in the guise of information. And the worst of it is, I do not believe the doctor even realizes it. It is simply an artifact of how the system has evolved. It is the “routine” way they have developed as an industry to sell to their customers.

Now I want to turn to another element of cataract treatment. From the perspective of the industry, the treatment of choice for the entire range of cataracts which interfere with vision is surgical. An extremely tiny segment of the medical community thinks that any other method of reversal or stabilization of a developing cataract is worth consideration.
Surgery is the gold standard, and it is worth many billions of dollars every year.

The consensus is, if you get old enough, you will get cataracts, and will require surgical intervention. The surgery is often less than an hour and can range in price from three to five thousand dollars.

Soon I will be talking about some of the elements of the evolution of cataract surgery over the past three or four decades, some things which may be serious blunder in the field, and some possibilities which have not yet been explored. I realize that my remarks are less and less diplomatic, and will find physicians even less receptive to a conversation on this subject.

But what about the rest of you? Are you really receptive to the notion that eventually you will have to make the same sorts of decisions with which I am faced now? One would think that some of you would be moved to comment or ask some hard questions.

Inner and Outer Space

The people who are capable of effectively navigating the bureaucratic red tape of writing grant requests and running the governmental gauntlet are not the ones who can best get to the bottom of the mysteries of discovery.

To even be able to conform to the pedestrian mentalities of the officials who make the ultimate decisions on the allocation of funds require skills that are the antithesis of those which best achieve true innovation and discovery.


Let us take our efforts in space. We accomplished great, even astonishing things in the space effort, which did not just propel us into space, but sharply changed our environment here on Earth. Many sciences were accelerated due to the space effort. But the disasters and blunders have also been great. Just to name a few, we put up a telescope which had a rudimentary mistake in its’ construction, wasting billions of dollars with a single measurement conversion error. Yet we went to fix it, at great additional cost, and Hubble went on to achieve many of the great things originally intended.

We even, against all odds, landed on the moon several times.
But after a few landings, we largely turned our backs on space. We dithered. Our great motivation and resolve dissolved.

Our leadership thought it was more important to stop the menace of monolithic communism taking over the world, by interfering in the civil war of a small agrarian culture, squandering our youth and treasure for a decade. This, and other misadventures in geopolitics became the obsession of our leadership. It was a disaster of great proportions. Today we are embarked on a path of folly that promises to go on longer and bring in its' wake even greater carnage and destruction

NASA, for whatever reasons, became less and less effective in setting appropriate goals. We should have found other solutions than using the Shuttle as long as we have, for example.

Our priorities still need quite a bit of fine tuning. The Mars Phoenix Program has a lot of merit, which is encouraging. We have had some serious setbacks in our efforts to advance on the Mars front. No sense casting blame or nitpicking. The likelihood of everything going smoothly in even the best designed program is not great. And our successes have been brilliant. So our Mars effort is not going to elicit any sour grapes from me. The mistakes and disasters which have happenned can help us if we learn from them. It is only when we stubbornly institutionalize them that they defeat us.

But let us turn to some of the more interesting features of our efforts with the moon, and make some comparisons to alternative goals we might pursue. But before I continue, I would like to open the floor to ideas and opinions from elsewhere. I have noticed that since this blog got started, not much dialogue has been generated on any subject. No curiosity. No opposition. No alternative possibilities presented. What an enigma to me.

There is room for a great diversity of ideas in the exploration of space. We should also be discussing our priorities with regard to how we divide our collective resources between this and our other critical opportunities like slowing the damage to our atmosphere and its weather systems and how to deal with our ocean resources without upsetting them to the point of total destruction.

These two areas are far too complex certainly to be left to our politicians, or for that matter, exclusively to our industrial interests either, given their unbroken record of rapacious profiteering. In truth, the problems cross all ideological divides. It matters little if we are looking at a capitalistic, communistic, socialistic, or other mixtures of systems. But I only digress to illustrate the scope of the problems we must address if we are to survive and thrive as a species, without taking the entire ecostructure to irrevocable ruin.

The central theme of this discussion, going to the moon and exploring the other space frontiers, should all be considered carefully before we consider our multibillion dollar moves.

Please, someone with talent, creativity, and fresh ideas, join in. Or, short of that, if you know someone who would be of value in such a roundtable discussion, let them know that we are here. Or, rather, at the moment, that I am here.

Have we collectively become such a species of spectators, that nothing can induce us to stop lurking, and rise out of our lethargy enough to do something? Surely, some of you know someone of remarkable and unspecialized talent. Please point that person in this direction. I sure get sick of talking to myself.

You need no credentials here except your carefully reasoned ideas, communicated with a certain amount of care.
The subject is Inner and Outer Space. Certainly, given the events of recent decades, it is interesting enough to gather a group of motivated people.