healthcare rant

listening to intelligence squared u.s. debate on 'should obamacare be repealed?' and had to respond…my take on the healthcare debate is that they are all missing the point. People shouldn’t go to the doctor so much, shouldn’t be screened for so much that generates rx’s that are expensive and cause side effects for which more rx’s are given…this occurs in kids some, but big time in adults, and adults with the most access to healthcare easily get…more healthcare. Not better, just more. And more tests and more meds and more to talk about how bad they feel on fb and at coffee club or work and it’s a status symbol to be on the ‘you need to be wound up like a friggin doll’ medicine or the ed drug that could make your penis fall off…

Sorry, it’s just that more healthcare isn’t better healthcare. But if someone shows up in the office with anything as an adult they get everything screened increasing the stress level and therefore the blood pressure, etc., etc., and  instead of saying, ‘hey, fatso, lose some weight’ they say ‘here’s your medicine for your type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol, hope you don’t die of the side effects’ and when the government gets involved if the adult docs DON’T do that they will get in trouble.

just like the financial crisis (for which intelligence squared u.s. - npr - has an excellent debate from a couple of months ago) we want something we don't want to pay for. so we dump it off on the government. then we don't want our taxes raised and we don't want to go into debt with china any further but we...want our cake and we want to eat it too. we just can't have it like that. but the debate is about those people who can't afford healthcare or have preexisting conditions and whether they deserve better treatment by insurance companies. yes, they do. we all do. insurance companies are making the lives of doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, and patients miserable while they cash in because 'gasp' what if they didn't? 

Ok, I’m through. Thanks for listening.

sorry, i must have RDS

RDS, it sounds more official and takes less time to say than 'reward deficiency syndrome'. never mind that it also means 'respiratory distress syndrome', not to be confused with RSD, which is 'reflex sympathetic dystrophy'. it's also 'radio data system' or 'relational database system'. these acronyms DMC! (drive me crazy).
but i guess i'm addicted to blogging right this moment, i can't stop! i've been mindful of the fact that i sometimes feel the need to share my thoughts with other people, and for some reason, i think they should care. i guess that's a typical blogger mentality (TBM?). but then God shows me that the thing i thought was so important that had occurred to me or that i heard that i thought others should hear was just important to me and just for that one moment and that other people probably didn't really need that information filed away in their brains under 'things that somebody thought would be interesting' because that storage unit is already full and taking up space that could be used for things like, remembering directions (oh, wait, there's GPS) or phone numbers (oh wait, they're stored in my phone) or friend's names (oh wait, they're on facebook if they're really my friends) or important passwords to secure websites (now that one calls to mind a quandary -  can you store them safely in one place and if so, what if you forget that password?). so, i'm going to quit blogging now. someday, maybe i'll look back to all the blogs i've done, all the crap i've committed to the blogosphere and other digital media, and write a book. not that anyone would want to read a compilation of the stuff i thought was important any more than they would want it handed to them a piece at a time.

placebos revisited

can you get addicted to a placebo? i was searching for a definition of reward with google (easier than finding and thumbing through the dictionary) and one of the reasons i love and hate the internet popped up. when i put 'reward' in the google search box, 'reward deficiency syndrome' came up as an option. now i've seen it all. it's supposed to explain addiction by showing how people need positive strokes or rewards and when they don't get them they look to temporary 'cures' like alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, etc., to help assuage the deficiency.
there's a diagnosis for everything.
and do you know why a diagnosis is important? other than that it gives people the ability to say 'i have reward deficiency syndrome' instead of 'i can't control myself'? it allows doctors to put its number in a box beside which said doctor can put an order for a medicine or a treatment for that diagnosis and then the insurance company is supposed to pay for it. no diagnosis, no payment.

put mercury back in vaccines

10 years ago thimerosal, the mercury-containing preservative used in many multiple dose vials of vaccines, was removed due to the thought (not proof, just idea of possibility) that it contributed to the rising incidence of autism. since then, thankfully, autism is now nonexistent....no, it's not, autism diagnoses are rising even faster. makes me wonder if we should put the mercury back into the vaccines?

beware of false studies

the temptation to jump on the bandwagon against andrew wakefield and his study about MMR and autism being false (pretty much proven already) and even (collective gasp) motivated by monetary gain is strong. but if that same critical eye is aimed at many pharmaceutical studies sponsored by the company who stands to profit, we find that it's easy to point fingers when the villain is our enemy but not so easy when they are feeding us lunch every day. ouch.

placebos

a new study shows that placebos work...duh...that's what they're supposed to do. but they work even when we know they are placebos. we always, at least i always, assumed that they worked as a tactic to fool people into thinking they were getting something that they really weren't getting, and that it proved that it was not the medicine that worked but that the person thought they were getting better so they did. and that may be true, but now it seems that we don't even have to be fooled to believe stuff works even without any reason to believe it will. this makes me think at several different levels.
first, it explains why babies get better with pretty much any kind of drop you put in their mouths when they are fussy. after a dose or two, just the touch of the dropper to their lips makes them calm down. sometimes. truly sick babies believe less in the placebo effect than others.
it explains why babies seem to get sleepy when given tylenol by their parents. seems that the placebo effect is transferable. if the parents believe it, the kid gets sleepy.
it explains why antibiotics work. and it explains why colloidal silver works. and ear drops with vinegar. and pretty much anything else you do with the belief that it's going to help. because usually the ear infection will go away in a couple of weeks regardless of what you do.
but it doesn't explain why people continue to take medicines whose list of side effects is longer than the list of good effects. why not just take a placebo? it's got about as good a chance as any to work, without the side effects.
so this study both explains why pharmaceutical companies are making so much money, and asks why? at the same time. maybe it's the side effects that make you know it isn't a placebo.

prairie voles and songbirds

just got a newsletter/fundraising letter from OSU dept. of zoology (my alma mater, my major). two professors each got grants of over $300K to study songbirds and prairie voles. the songbird study will see if growing up in a good environment affects adult zebra finches vs. those growing up in bad environments (not sure what that would be, maybe lots of cats around), and the prairie vole study is what really caught my eye. these little creatures are 'monogamous animals that form long-term pairbonds and exhibit behaviors that appear very similar to those that we humans might call 'love' for both a mate and for offspring'. the guy is going to look at their brains and see what hormones make them 'love' and especially look at the males and their attachment to their offspring 'to provide a better understanding of what controls monogamy and offspring care by fathers'.
hey, save your money and quit looking at tiny animal brains and read the bible, numbnuts! 'Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.', and 'That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.'
we get angry when people waste their money on frivolous stuff but welcome it, almost worship it, when it's in the name of science. especially in the name of 'developmental origins of adult disease' and 'understanding the causes of dysfunction in social attachment, such as.........autism'. 
words of wisdom from my lovely bride: 'you find what you're looking for in the last place that you look'. and it seems that scientists have the bible buried pretty deep in their piles while looking elsewhere for answers to life's questions. but i guess you don't get much grant money for studying 'why people don't pay attention to what God says despite continually suffering the consequences of such behavior'. oh, well.