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| Scientists are trying to figure out why Thalidomide causes limb problems in developing fetuses.
Thalidomide caused an epidemic of children born without arms or legs fifty plus years ago, because it was used as an anti emetic (for morning sickness).
Dr Vargesson and his team were the first to demonstrate how the drug causes limb defects by targeting immature blood vessels and now this latest article attempts to link all previous models of thalidomide action together to create one central model. This model proposes that all thalidomide associated defects could be caused by the same 'common mechanism', primarily an effect on angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels.
But you might not know it is also used for the painful nodules (erythema nodosum leprosum )in Hanson's disease (Leprosy).
The problem? Mild Hansens' disease is now treated as an outpatient, and some of these patients are young women in Africa, Asia or South America, and they can get pregnant while taking the medicine.
Medscape article HERE...(Reg required) notes:
Studies of thalidomide in chronic graft-versus-host disease showed benefit in children and adults as treatment, but not as prophylaxis. The agent has been administered successfully for treatment of cachexia related to cancer, tuberculosis, and human immunodeficiency virus infection, although evidence of efficacy is inconclusive. Thalidomide monotherapy effectively induced objective response in trials in patients with both newly diagnosed and advanced or refractory multiple myeloma. Combination therapy with thalidomide and corticosteroids was also effective in these patients, as well as in treatment of aphthous and genital ulcers. Limited evidence supports the drug's benefit in treatment of Kaposi's sarcoma. Other thalidomide applications include Crohn's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis.
What is new is that they now are using it to treat some cancers. I had a gentleman with multiple Myeloma and we had to special order it for him at our clinic...he had to sign all these papers promising not to get pregnant before we could give it to him.
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| Yup. The CDC announced an increase in STD's and it's all Bush's fault because some schools preach abstinence, and those puritanical Yanks won't talk enough about sex.
The problem is that the statistics don't agree with the statement: indeed, they point out that there are high risk populations that need to be addressed, not to lecture the average American that they don't talk about sex enough.
Let's look at a few things:
* 1.2 million cases of chlamydia were reported in 2008, up from 1.1 million in 2007.
* Nearly 337,000 cases of gonorrhea were reported.
* Adolescent girls 15 to 19 years had the most chlamydia and gonorrhea cases of any age group at 409,531. So adults who are old enough to know better have the majority of cases, even though teenagers are supposed to be the most ignorant.
But then you come into a statistic that is truly shocking:
* Blacks, who represent 12 percent of the U.S. population, accounted for about 71 percent of reported gonorrhea cases and almost half of all chlamydia and syphilis cases in 2008.
Why is this? Why blacks, and not Hispanics for example?
But even this number doesn't tell us which black community has the STD epidemic: Is it higher among immigrants from Africa or from the West Indies? Among Blacks in the South or North? In only the inner city or among those in suburban towns?
Another missing statistic: How many are "repeat offenders"?
Is a gay man treated three times in a year for syphillis counted as one person, or as three cases of the disease.
Then we have to ask: Why is the black community not using condoms?
Could it be the breakdown of the black family?
Wouldn't it make a bit more sense to promote condom use among the black population? Or to promote the importance of marriage and responsibility in all one's life, not just in sex?
Where is the black church in all of this?
Then we have another dirty little secret:
* 63 percent of syphilis cases were among men who have sex with men. This is especially alarming, since the chancre of syphillis is a sore that would increase the amount of HIV to enter the body (usually the receptive partner gets the highest risk; this would lead to the insertive partner's risk too.) So again, does this mean that the gay community doesn't know about condoms? Or that they refuse to use them because it decreases sensitivity? Or that condoms break? Or is it that they have sex even knowing they have syphillis (Men, unlike women, can see the chancre...ordinary men stop having sex and get immediate treatment. This suggests that infected men don't tell their partners). But another troubling fact: * Syphilis rates among women increased 36 percent from 2007 to 2008. So it's not just gay men who don't tell their partner they can give them an STD... The denial however seems to be by the experts: By lowering the "taboos" on promiscuity, they won't dare talk about self control or responsibility.
"We are not honestly and openly dealing with this issue and it's the larger issue of sexual health," he said.
Douglas said children and teens need to know about condom use, and should limit their number of sex partners and avoid sex with people who do have many other sex partners. Why don't they just say: promiscuous sex, like drunken driving, is dangerous.
Promoting the idea that it is okay if you use a condom ignores the fact that this sends the message that promiscuity is okay, and so when things get hot and heavy the condom part of the message is lost.
As I told my teenaged patients: It's hard to put on a condom in the back of a car; better to go on the pill or shot...
Another comment: The "statistics" that show abstinence education doesn't work ignores the difference between courting behavior and promiscuity.
Even in colonial times, one third of children born after marriage were "premature"...one is reminded of the scene in the movie "The Patriot" where the courting couple went to bed together, but the boy was sewn up in a bag.
The father questioned his wife if this was a good idea, and was sweetly told: Don't worry. I am a better sewer than my mother.
But most of my teenaged patients knew the difference between sleeping with their regular boyfriend and the sluts who slept with the entire football team.
Often, these promiscuous girls came from unstable families where drugs were used by mothers, divorce or living together by mom was common, some had been the victims of sexual predators (including step dad or mom's boyfriends) or they were easily exploited by the sexual predators in the neighborhoods.
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| from Strategy:
when possible, combat troops sleep in air conditioned rooms, and have access to the Internet and video games, as well as good food and other amenities. The video games and Internet resulted in an unexpected positive effect. The surveys found that troops that spent 2-4 hours a day on the Internet or playing video games (even violent ones) had far fewer stress problems.
The article goes on about why there is so much PTSS (repeated combat tours) and how the Military is working to keep the incidence down.
This has information that could be used for civilian psychiatric treatment.
Violent games and film/tv are known to "give permission" to commit violence, but it has also been argued that games allow violence to be benignly dissipated in ordinary people.
This may be an example of that.
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| NPR has an interesting interview from someone who knows stuff about the shooter's time at Walter Reed:
ZWERDLING: I want to add something else about Hasan at Walter Reed. The psychiatrist I talked to today said that he was the kind of guy who the staff actually stood around in the hallway, saying: Do you think he's a terrorist, or is he just weird? And now, apparently, Walter Reed is in a lockdown mode where they've been instructed - all the staff has been instructed: Do not talk to anybody about this investigation, except military people. Do not talk to the FBI, because they're afraid, potentially, what if people decide investigating this that people missed potential warning signs about the guy?
and notice that when he gave a "lecture" on the Koran, it was another Muslim doc who told him he had things wrong...
Hasan apparently gave a long lecture on the Koran and talked about how if you don't believe, you are condemned to hell. Your head is cut off. You're set on fire. Burning oil is burned down your throat. And I said to the psychiatrist, but this cold be a very interesting informational session, right? Where he's educating everybody about the Koran. He said but what disturbed everybody was that Hasan seemed to believe these things. And actually, a Muslim in the audience, a psychiatrist, raised his hand and said, excuse me. But I'm a Muslim and I do not believe these things in the Koran, and then I don't believe what you say the Koran says. And then Hasan didn't say, well, I'm just giving you one point of view. He basically just stared the guy down.
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| One has some questions not being raised in the press about the psychiatrist who killed at fort Hood.
These questions won't be asked, because they are too sensitive in our"PC" world, so don't get excited when I say the unspeakable.
Indeed, that is why I'm posting it here instead of my BNN blog, at least for now: Because only a cop or a doc would wonder about these things, and even they might not be so un PC to say it out loud.
One: He was a second generation from a Palestinian family.
Most Palestinians who emigrate are Christians who fled persecution by both sides. Indeed, most Arabs in the US are Christians for this reason (although most of them are Lebanese).
Was he a convert, as first reports suggested?
This does not exclude "Jihad": after all, the first Jihadi killer in the US was a Christian: Sirhan Sirhan, who killed Bobby Kennedy.
Two: He had reports saying he didn't get along with patients. These reports go way back into medical school.
I've worked with religiously strict physicians who were so uptight they didn't get along with patients (usually I worked black or Native americans, and of course if you work in the emergency room most of those you saw were intoxicated.)
Now, most Muslim docs got along fine with our patients but I've seen a few who, if they were white Christian fundamentalists, would fit into the KKK because they would see a black or Native American face and treat them like dirt.
Yet from reports, this is a psychiatrist who chose to work with addiction. Strict Muslims don't drink, and are prejudiced against those who do....Something wrong here.
As for comments that he had been ridiculed for his religion: Yup. If you work with drunks and addicts, they will call you names. I even got a window shot out at one point. Nothing personal. They were projecting their rage at the nearest target.
The main question is: why didn't a psychiatrist recognize this? And why didn't he have insight into his own rage?
The military put him through school, and one wonders why he chose psychiatry and not Medicine or surgery.
In my medical school, half the guys who chose Psychiatry did so because they weren't very good at working with sick people, or were bad in science, or were active in politics.... and others chose it to help them get an insight into their own psyche (Psychiatrists have the highest suicide rate in medicine for example).
Yes, some chose psychiatry because they wanted to help the mentally ill, but it makes one wonder why a person who had trouble with patients chose psychiatry and then chose to work with addicts, the most frustrating aspect of medicine, and one where a strict Muslim might not have a lot of empathy for the patients.
Three: I was once suspended after a nurse accused me of making "terroristic threats". She was absent on her usual prolonged coffee break, leaving me with three patients who needed dressings etc. I mumbled I'd kill her when I found her, and the nurse, who we couldn't fire because she knew every trick in the book to stop complaints, reported me. Never mind that I was a woman, an ex missionary, and in the National Guard had a waiver not to carry a handgun and had only shot rifles a few times (I did "own" my husband's handgun: Because I bought it for him, I had to register it in my name).
I know it was done to "prove" they didn't profile "threats". The irony was that they didn't suspend me right away: They waited until the clinic was quiet and could afford to be minus one doctor. Everyone knew it was a crock of caca, but the regulations were followed, so it didn't matter (I would have quit right then, but was scheduled to retire in six months so stuck it out).
But here is a "muslim" who was defending jihadis and fighting with patients about the war, and known to the FBI, but no one intervened.
That suggests negative profiling.
Four: He was "quiet" and didn't show anger, according to one report. But then there were reports of his outbursts. This suggests passive agression, or that he "went amok" (something we see here in the easy going Philippines, when a quiet guy just goes nuts and machetes folks).
And no one saw it coming?
Five. He attended mosque every day. I suggest someone find out if they were preaching anti American pro jihadi propaganda at the mosque...and I suspect the mosque in Silver Springs MD not the one in Texas.
Most Muslims in the US are not radical, but the real danger is the Saudi extremist religion being pushed into mosques all over the world.
From Ralph Peters:
. Al Qaeda was merely the instrument of 9/11. Saudi bigotry, fanaticism and hate-mongering fostered it. Saudi funding made those attacks possible. And Saudi money continues to spread hatred wherever there's a Muslim community. Now we have a president who bows to the Saudi king. Peace be upon you . Six: He was unmarried.
Hmmm....ultra religious man... passive aggressive...in the Army Medical Corps...
All three of those things suggest he was a closeted gay. (Randy Shilts once described an Army hospital where the flirting resembled a gay bar...but in the "don't ask don't tell" days, no one wants to bring up all those gay male nurses any more than one wants to bring up lesbians with guns).
Gays who have conflicts often chose places with strict rules to help them hold in their "evil" impulses: Which is why so many fled to monasteries and the priesthood, and then came out of the closet when the sexual revolution occurred.
A closeted gay working in a hospital however would be like a gay in some monasteries: constant temptation, and a gay subculture.
It would be interesting to hit the gay bars in Silver Springs and find out who knew the guy, and if he was sending off signals either negative or positive to his gay collegues...but with "don't ask don't tell", I doubt anyone will talk to a reporter.
Another hint that he might be a closeted gay is that no woman would have him.
Well, he could just be a nerd...or highly dedicated to his profession...but even nerdy docs usually have nurses or secretaries who seduce them for their annual income.
But then we read this:
"He wanted a wife more religious than him," Faizul Khan told the Daily News. "She had to pray five times a day. She had to wear the hajib. He was a young, good looking guy and a physician but he couldn't find anybody." Hmm...wants a perfect "woman", not a real one...male chauvenist pig, or just one who wants a show wife, not a human being?
Even if he was not gay, he had some major sexual conflicts going on.
So maybe someone should talk to the female nurses and secretaries who worked with him, and see how he interacted with them, either negatively or positively....
So there you have it. A guy full of rage against the world, but whose rage might have been from family rejection or from self loathing because of his sexual conflicts.
Mix with a Saudi propaganda machine in the mosques, and propaganda machines from the radicals in the middle east that will stoke his paranoia, and voila, instant "amok".
notice I didn't say anything about the war? Well, it was because he never went to the war...
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