Aphrodisiac? For What?

The key to more and better sex for men is more and better sex for women. I am still amazed at the absolute ignorance of many men about their partner’s needs. No wonder so many women “submit” to their partners just to get it over with. (Literotica stories aside) One of my clients used to plan the next day’s grocery list while her husband “plowed my field.”

Proposition 46

If you’ve been tempted to skip this election cycle, do so at your own great peril. Regressive forces like the Koch brothers have been throwing wheel-barrows of money into elections all over the US–Over $700,000,000 so far. Buying this election is a top priority.

In California Prop 45, the insurance industry has spent $38,000,000 to defeat this measure. Most of this has come from Kaiser, Wellpoint and Blue Shield.

The opposition to Proposition 46 has spent $53.5 million almost all of it from the physician organizations and the insurance industry.

Both of these propositions are strongly pro-consumer and fair.

Medical providers do not want to be forced to compensate the victims when they gratuitously make gross errors. (Clearly, not every medical problem that ends poorly is the fault of the physicians.) That is why we have courts. If there is a suspicion, modern society has decided that the court system is the best place to discover the truth. Unfortunately bringing a lawsuit is expensive and with the present limit or cap on awards, few attorneys can afford to take malpractice lawsuits.

The opposition to both these ballot measures is almost entirely from those who would be regulated. Doctors who don’t want to be drug tested (It is well-documented that there are many errors made by doctors under the influence of alcohol, cocaine and other illegal drugs.)

Physician say that they need protection from malpractice suits. Otherwise they are forced to practice “defensive medicine” but the following article from Science Daily shows that this is not the case.

Please use this link to sign up for your own email feed. They summarize each story and provide a link to the full article. One of the best news sources I read.

 

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Giving physicians immunity from malpractice claims does not reduce ‘defensive medicine’

Date:

October 15, 2014

 

Source:

RAND Corporation

 

Summary:

Conventional wisdom says that a lot of medical care in the United States is ‘defensive medicine’ prescribed because doctors want to protect themselves from the risk of malpractice lawsuits. But a new study that examines three states where emergency room doctors were given immunity from malpractice claims finds that such protections do little to reduce the cost of medical care.

 

Changing laws to make it more difficult to sue physicians for medical malpractice may not reduce the amount of “defensive medicine” practiced by physicians, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Studying the behavior of emergency physicians in three states that raised the standard for malpractice in the emergency room to gross negligence, researchers found that strong new legal protections did not translate into less-expensive care.

The findings are published in the Oct. 16 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

“Our findings suggest that malpractice reform may have less effect on costs than has been projected by conventional wisdom,” said Dr. Daniel A. Waxman, the study’s lead author and a researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “Physicians say they order unnecessary tests strictly out of fear of being sued, but our results suggest the story is more complicated.”

It is widely said that defensive medicine accounts for a substantial part of the hundreds of billions of dollars of unnecessary health care spending that is estimated to occur annually in the United States. Malpractice reform has been advocated by many experts as a key to reining in health care costs.

RAND researchers looked at three states — Georgia, Texas and South Carolina — that about a decade ago changed the legal malpractice standard for emergency care to gross negligence. Other states use the more common ordinary negligence standard, or a failure to exercise reasonable care.

The higher standard means that for physicians accused of malpractice in the three states examined, plaintiffs must prove that doctors consciously disregarded the need to use reasonable care, knowing full well that their actions were likely to cause serious injury.

“These malpractice reforms have been said to provide virtual immunity against lawsuits,” said Waxman, who also is an emergency medicine physician at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Researchers examined 3.8 million Medicare patient records from 1,166 hospital emergency departments from 1997 to 2011. They compared care in the three reform states, before and after the statutes took effect, to care in neighboring states that did not pass malpractice reform.

The study examined whether physicians ordered an advanced imaging study (CT or MRI scan), whether the patient was hospitalized after the emergency visit and total charges for the visit. Advanced imaging and hospitalization are among the most costly consequences of an emergency room visit, and physicians themselves have identified them as common defensive medicine practices.

The malpractice reform laws had no effect on the use of imaging or on the rate of hospitalization following emergency visits. For two of the states, Texas and South Carolina, the law did not appear to cause any reduction in charges. Relative to neighboring states, Georgia saw a small drop of 3.6 percent in average emergency room charges following its 2005 reform.

“This study suggests that even when the risk of being sued for malpractice decreases, the path of least resistance still may favor resource-intensive care, at least in hospital emergency departments,” Waxman said.

 

Physician Prescribed Alzheimer’s

My appreciation for medical science is very great. Without all the wonderful advances, I would either not be here or I would be hobbling around on knees that don’t work.  Still, there are advances and then there are dollars. One of the most lucrative products, for the big pharmaceutical manufacturers, has been the various psychotropic drugs like Zoloft, Risperdal, Wellbutin and the other “anti-depressants” and anxiolytics. But another group is prescribed about as often, the Benzodiazepines like Xanax, Ativan, Klonopin.

In fact the first two are often the goto drug in hospitals to help calm a patient’s anxieties in the face of painful procedures. And that’s a good thing. I’m not against all medications. But there are dangers in all of them. I have often found anti-depressant induced depression (I know that sounds wierd, but check out the I’net and you will find that it is a frequent occurance–sometimes leading to suicide. That’s why they were forced to put it on the label.) in my clients and when they induced their physician to either lower the dose, change drugs and wean off of their anti-depressant, the depression lessened and became amenable to REBT, CT or some other form of psychotherapy.

This article comes from Science Daily, an excellent news source for the latest discoveries.

 

Benzodiazepines & Alzheimer’s Disease

By John M. Grohol, Psy.D.

If you’re taking an anti-anxiety medication referred to as a benzodiazepine — such as Xanax, Valium, Ativan or Klonopin — there’s a new eye-opening study out that should get your attention.

When used PRN — on as needed basis — sparingly for times of increased anxiety, these drugs can be life-savers.

But some people use them more frequently. And for those kinds of users, new research suggests an important link to the risk of eventually developing Alzheimer’s.

 

Benzodiazepines are a common class of medications prescribed for anxiety disorders, as well as for insomnia. Drugs such as Xanax and Ativan regularly top our list of the most commonly prescribed psychiatric medications. They usually have few side effects in most people who take them, and are generally well-tolerated. However, their popularity may have a darker side.

In the new study, Canadian and French researchers wanted to better understand the association of various medical conditions and benzodiazepine use. They looked at the medical records of nearly 1,800 older (most over the age of 80) patients with Alzheimer’s and compared their medical records to those of over 7,000 control subjects.

While both groups had large numbers of benzodiazepine users, the Alzheimer’s group had 51 percent more such users than the control group.

But those who took the drugs longer were more likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. In older patients who took daily doses for 91 to 180 days, the risk rose 32 percent, compared to those who took none. In those who took daily doses for more than 180 days, the risk was 84 percent higher.

The association persisted whether users took 180 doses over six months or over five years, Dr. Pariente said. It also held when the researchers controlled for health and demographic factors, including conditions like anxiety, depression and insomnia.

The link was stronger to longer-acting forms of the drug, like Valium, than to formulations that leave the body more quickly, like Ativan and Xanax.

To combat the chicken-and-the-egg problem (maybe people with Alzheimer’s disease are simply more likely to take benzodiazepines after developing some of the early symptoms of the disease, but before its actual diagnosis), the researchers were also careful to look at Alzheimer’s patients who had not taken benzodiazepines for five years before their diagnoses.¹

If you take benzodiazepines, the key apparently is to not build up a tolerance for them. It also appears important to limit your dose of them over time. In the study, 180 daily doses — whether daily or over the course of 5 years — put someone at this greater risk for Alzheimer’s.

Benzodiazepines are a valuable medication — especially for those who need occasional anxiety relief. But they should not generally be used for long-term sleep or anxiety problems. Studies such as this one point out risks that are only becoming more clear now.

And of course, as with all medications, do not stop taking them without first consulting with your doctor. This Canadian brochure has helped many taper off of benzodiazepines, and it may help you as well.

 

Hamas Admits They Did As Israel Said

Israel took steps to protect the civilians even while bombing purportedly civilian targets. They gave notice by telephone, leaflets and broadcasts. Israel claimed that they had to bomb homes and hospitals, schools, etc. because Hamas was using them to store weapons and as offices for the war.

It saddens me that I won’t hear retractions or corrections from my favorite “progressive” sources–but they are no better than the Tea-party at admitting their mistakes.  In fact KPFA has become wall-to-wall anti-Israel. I doubt I’ll hear any corrections or change of opinion.

While Hamas now admits the truth, they have more excuses than my little brother used to.

This is from Huffington Post. Please go there to read the longer version.

Hamas Admits ‘Mistakes’ During Gaza Battle

 | By HAMZA HENDAWI and JOSEF FEDERMAN

Posted: 09/12/2014 2:45 am EDT Updated: 09/12/2014 8:59 am EDT

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Two weeks after the end of the Gaza war, there is growing evidence that Hamas militants used residential areas as cover for launching rockets at Israel, at least at times. Even Hamas now admits “mistakes” were made.

But Hamas says it had little choice in Gaza’s crowded urban landscape, took safeguards to keep people away from the fighting, and that a heavy-handed Israeli response is to blame for the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians.

“Gaza, from Beit Hanoun in the north to Rafah in the south, is one uninterrupted urban chain that Israel has turned into a war zone,” said Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official in Gaza.

 

Increasingly, the discussion is not about whether the Hamas rockets were fired from civilian areas, but exactly how close they were to the actual buildings.

“The Israelis kept saying rockets were fired from schools or hospitals when in fact they were fired 200 or 300 meters (yards) away. Still, there were some mistakes made and they were quickly dealt with,” Hamad told The Associated Press, offering the first acknowledgment by a Hamas official that, in some cases, militants fired rockets from or near residential areas or civilian facilities.

The questions lie at the heart of a brewing international legal confrontation: Did Hamas deliberately and systematically fire rockets at Israel from homes, hospitals and schools in the hope that Israel would be deterred from retaliating, as Israel claims? Or did Israel use force excessively, resulting in deaths among people not involved in combat operations?

The answers could help determine whether Israel — or Hamas — or both are ultimately accused of violating the international laws of war in a conflict that caused tremendous damage.

According to Palestinian figures, nearly 2,200 Palestinians were killed — roughly three quarters of them civilians and including more than 500 children — and 11,000 were wounded. The war also left some 100,000 homeless. Seventy-two people were killed on the Israeli side, including six civilians.

Ahead of a U.N. investigation, the Israeli military has released reams of evidence, including satellite photos and aerial footage, to support its claims that it acted responsibly and attempted to minimize Palestinian casualties. It asserts that Hamas made no effort to disguise its attempt to maximize Israeli civilian casualties.

Throughout the war, the Israeli air force compiled dozens of video clips showing alleged wrongdoing by Hamas, an Islamic militant group sworn to Israel’s destruction.

These videos, many of them posted on YouTube, appear to show rockets flying out of residential neighborhoods, cemeteries, schoolyards and mosque courtyards. There are also images of weapons caches purportedly uncovered inside mosques, and tunnels allegedly used by militants to scurry between homes, mosques and buildings.

“Hamas’ excuses are outrageous, misleading and contrary to the evidence supplied by the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) and the reality documented by international journalists on the ground in Gaza,” said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman.

But a black-and-white satellite image released by the Israeli military illustrates the difficulties in proving the point. The army says the image, taken of the Gaza City neighborhood of Sheikh Radwan, shows four rocket launch sites sitting next to a cluster of schools and a nearby residential neighborhood.

Such images, it says, are evidence that Hamas used built-up areas for cover — and carelessly exposed civilians to danger in Israeli retaliatory strikes. However, the image itself is grainy and shows no clear signs of rocket activity, though rocket launchers are often hidden underground. The army refused to say how it had made its conclusions.

A visit to the area this week found three separate military sites — possibly training grounds — slightly larger than football fields located close to the state schools.

The sites are mostly concealed from street view by barriers made of corrugated iron, but one bore the sign of Hamas’ military wing, al-Qassam Brigades, while another bore the sign of the Islamic Jihad, a militant group allied with Hamas. The bases were deserted. Visible from the outside were human cutout figures and what appeared to be exercise hurdles.

There were no overt signs of rocket launchers or craters in the ground outside, though dirt appeared to have been disturbed either by some sort of blast or the work of heavy military-type trucks. There were pieces of mangled concrete scattered on the ground. The school buildings appeared untouched.

Hamas tightly restricts access to such facilities, and it was impossible for photographers to enter the sites. Israel confirmed the area was targeted in airstrikes.

Another location identified by the Israeli military as a rocket-launching site is in northern Gaza around the newly built Indonesian hospital. Immediately to the north of the two-story hospital and across the road to the west are two Hamas military facilities. Both stand in close proximity to residential homes. The hospital stands intact, while nothing is visible from inside the bases.

Hamad, the Hamas official, argued that many of the buildings shown in Israeli videos were either a safe distance from the rocket launchers or that the buildings had been kept vacant during the fighting.

The ground in Sheikh Radwan, for instance, lies some 150 meters (yards) away from the neighborhood, and the schools were empty for summer vacation.

During 50 days of fighting, many observers witnessed rocket launches from what appeared to be urban areas. One piece of video footage distributed by the AP, for instance, captured a launch in downtown Gaza City that took place in a lot next to a mosque and an office of the Hamas prime minister. Both buildings were badly damaged in subsequent Israeli airstrikes.

There was other evidence of Hamas having used civilian facilities: Early in the conflict, the U.N. agency that cares for Palestinian refugees announced that it discovered weapons stored in its schools as they stood empty during the summer.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt urban areas were used to launch rockets from in the Gaza Strip,” said Bill Van Esveld, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “What needs to be determined is how close to a populated building or a civilian area were those rocket launches.”

The issue may never be conclusively settled as both sides voice competing narratives over their conduct in the deadliest and most ruinous of the three wars since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007.

“Yes, Hamas and others may have used civilians as human shields, but was that consistent and widespread?” said Sami Abdel-Shafi, a Palestinian-American who represents the Carter Center in Gaza. “The question is whether Israel’s response was proportionate.”

The war erupted on July 8 when Israel launched a massive aerial bombardment of Gaza in response to weeks of heavy rocket fire by Hamas and other Gaza-based militant groups — part of an escalation that began with the killing by a Hamas cell of three Israeli teens in the West Bank.

The Israeli army says Hamas fired almost 4,000 rockets at Israel, including 600 from close to schools, mosques and other civilian facilities, and scores of mortar shells. Israel carried out some 5,000 airstrikes, in addition to using powerful artillery and gunship fire.

Frequently, Israeli arms struck hospitals, schools, homes, mosques, factories and office towers. Israel said the buildings had been used for cover by militant fighters, and that whenever possible, it provided warning to civilians that strikes on their buildings were coming.

Israel disputes the makeup of the Palestinian casualty figures, saying that nearly half the dead were militants.

Nevertheless, the death toll and number of civilian deaths have led to harsh condemnations of Israel and raised questions on the proportionality of Israel’s response. In an apparent attempt to head off international investigations, the Israeli military said Wednesday it has opened criminal investigations into two high-profile cases involving Palestinian civilian casualties.

Hamas also has been sharply criticized for launching rockets aimed at Israeli cities and towns. Israel says its own civilian death toll would have been much higher had it not been for its rocket defenses.

The U.N. Human Rights Council has appointed a commission to look into the latest fighting. Its report is expected no sooner than March.

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Rotten Apple

I do not dislike Apple because their products are closed and locked down to block other people’s innovation, unless they pay exorbitant royalties. I do not dislike Apple because they are too expensive. I do not dislike Apple because many of their innovations were invented by others and appropriated by Apple (Mouse and graphic interface from Xerox PARC, tablet from 2001 Space Odyssey, multi-processors from Intel, etc.) I do not dislike Apple because they are twice to three times the price of equivalent power in a newer Windows or Linux computer.

This graphic, from the US Uncut page on Facebook, explains why I dislike Apple

 

(Republished under copyright, “Fair Use” doctrine.)

Immigration and Its Sources

In 1968 I went to Brazil to teach counseling at the University of Brasilia, to be a chaplain to Protestant students and to help the city administration of Brasilia create a new and more humane city. I was a newly ordained minister, but studied urban administration at the U. of Chicago and also made counseling the focus of my masters program at seminary. Almost as soon as I arrived, the Brazilian military invaded the parliament and the university, arresting, torturing and killing students, teachers and political leaders who were opposed to the elite, right-wing and to the intervention of the US and exploitation of Brazil’s resources.

The troops came equipped with military gear clearly stamped “US Army”. Tanks, artillery, jeeps, and even pistol holsters with a big white star. Over the next two years, I found that a US CIA presence was behind the scenes, CIA and US military people were teaching torture methods, and US IBM computer equipment was being used to “track rebels.”  I lost three friends, two Dominican priests killed and one young woman literacy teacher unspeakably tortured, even beyond simple rape.

I found similar things happening in Uruguay, Argentina and elsewhere.

In more recent years I have spent a great deal of time in Mexico, studying Spanish and just living. I began to get in touch with a different side of the US-Mexico relationship. One key was reading the amazing book by Richard Grabman, “Gods Gachupines and Gringos: A People’s History of Mexico” A history book written for guys like me who fell asleep in history class. One portion of the book explains the history of the US-Mexican relationship.

I grew up in Texas. We took one semester of World History, one semester of US History and one full-year, two semesters of Texas History. I learned that Texas, which was a part of Mexico, declared it’s independence from Mexico in 1835 because of the poor treatment the people of Texas were getting from the Mexican government and with the support of the large, wealthy landowners from the United States. One major, but unstated, reason–which we never learned in Texas History class–was the Guerrero Decree which in 1829 abolished slavery in all of Mexico. The Texas landowners mostly from the United States, many absentee, were fearful that Mexico would imposed this Decree on Texas–and why would it not.  However, these landowners were growing cotton and other crops and wanted to continue using black slaves to work the fields.

This was the real impetus for the revolution and independence of Texas. It was demonstrated when, after the Mexican surrender, the plight of black slaves deepened. By 1845, the United States annexed The Republic of Texas by treaty and the number of slaves jumped by over 500%.

It was also the start of the US-Mexico war; a war intended to grab Mexico’s land from the Texas border all the way to the Pacific.

So it has been throughout the history of the US and Mexico. As the Mexican’ say, “Pobre Mexico, tan lejos de dios, y tan cerca de los estados unidas.” (Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the US.)

Even right now, we subsidize the giant corn industry so it can undercut the Mexican corn farmers. When the farmers can’t sell their corn and make a living, we blame them for their own poverty or for trying to come across the border into the US. I’m not saying that all of Mexico’s ills are made in the US. They have enough corrupt politicians and corrupt rich elites of their own, but we have made it possible for a large portion of the Mexican economic problem.

All this is prelude to this slide show I found on Huffington Post. You will have to go there–to the bottom of the page– to see it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/04/white-house-republicans-border-crisis_n_5692564.html

 

More Ways the Right is Destroying Israel

I’m in a lot of pain. I’ve been a supporter of Israel for all my adult life. I think Israel’s claim to that area is just as legitimate as that of the Palestinians. The partition of Palestine and the establishment of Israel was followed almost immediately by the attacks of the Arab neighboring states. Palestinians left mostly–some were driven out by the kind of atrocities which happen in all wars, but most left, relying on the promises of the Arab countries. Moreover, Israelis were also driven out of through atrocity as well. In fact more Jews were displaced in Arab and Muslim countries than Palestinians in Palestine.

It also seems to me that the evidence is very clear. Hamas started the most recent Gaza conflict. Investigators have been regularly finding justification for Israel’s attacks on schools and other supposedly neutral facilities as they uncover caches of Hamas rockets and other weapons hidden in private residences, hospitals and schools. Hamas continues to pursue the goal of driving all Israelis into the Mediterranean and continues to state that ALL Jews are to be killed. Even some Arab countries are supporting Israel’s fight against both Hamas and Hezbolleh.

All of that is true and much more. But it is not a justification for the policies of Israel against West Bank Palestinians. Today, the latest land grab was declared. You can read the facts in this article from Reuters through Huffington Post. The “Settlements” are an abomination. The right-wing policies of Netanyahu are destroying Israeli credibility and fueling the delegitimacy movement.

The whole Settlement movement is the recipient of 100s of millions of dollars from US pseudo-Christians who call themselves Christian Zionists. There is no justification for this kind of exploitation. It is time to put an end to supporting the Israeli right. They are as bereft of moral standing as the right is in the US.

Sure it pains me to have to say all this. I have Israeli friends and colleagues whom I love. I continue to support their right to exist in that place, but not the continued theft of Palestinian lands nor the treatment Palestinians receive from the Conservative, Right-wing, UltraOrthodox Israeli government. I could not maintain my own integrity if I don’t speak out.

Israel Announces Massive West Bank Land Grab

Reuters

Posted: 08/31/2014 8:30 pm EDT Updated: 2 hours ago

 

 

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM, Aug 31 (Reuters) – Israel announced on Sunday a land appropriation in the occupied West Bank that an anti-settlement group termed the biggest in 30 years, drawing Palestinian condemnation and a U.S. rebuke.

Some 400 hectares (988 acres) in the Etzion Jewish settlement bloc near Bethlehem were declared “state land, on the instructions of the political echelon” by the military-run Civil Administration.

 

“We urge the government of Israel to reverse this decision,” a State Department official said in Washington, calling the move “counterproductive” to efforts to achieve a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israel Radio said the step was taken in response to the kidnapping and killing of three Jewish teens by Hamas militants in the area in June.

Tensions stoked by the incident quickly spread to Israel’s border with Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, and the two sides engaged in a seven-week war that ended on Tuesday with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire.

The notice published on Sunday by the Israeli military gave no reason for the land appropriation decision.

Peace Now, which opposes Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank, territory the Palestinians seek for a state, said the appropriation was meant to turn a site where 10 families now live adjacent to a Jewish seminary into a permanent settlement.

Construction of a major settlement at the location, known as “Gevaot”, has been mooted by Israel since 2000. Last year, the government invited bids for the building of 1,000 housing units at the site.

Peace Now said the land seizure was the largest announced by Israel in the West Bank since the 1980s and that anyone with ownership claims had 45 days to appeal. A local Palestinian mayor said Palestinians owned the tracts and harvested olive trees on them.

Israel has come under intense international criticism over its settlement activities, which most countries regard as illegal under international law and a major obstacle to the creation of a viable Palestinian state in any future peace deal.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, called on Israel to cancel the appropriation. “This decision will lead to more instability. This will only inflame the situation after the war in Gaza,” Abu Rdainah said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke off U.S.-brokered peace talks with Abbas in April after the Palestinian leader reached a reconciliation deal with Hamas, the Islamist movement that dominates the Gaza Strip.

In a series of remarks after an open-ended ceasefire halted the Gaza war, Netanyahu repeated his position that Abbas would have to sever his alliance with Hamas for a peace process with Israel to resume.

The administration of President Barack Obama, who has been at odds with Netanyahu over settlements since taking office in 2009, pushed back against the land decision. It was the latest point of contention between Washington and its top Middle East ally Israel, which also differ over Iran nuclear talks.

“We have long made clear our opposition to continued settlement activity,” said the State Department official, who declined to be identified.

“This announcement, like every other settlement announcement Israel makes, planning step they approve and construction tender they issue, is counterproductive to Israel’s stated goal of a negotiated two-state solution with the Palestinians,” the official said.

After the collapse of the last round of U.S.-brokered peace talks, U.S. officials cited settlement construction as one of the main reasons for the breakdown, while also faulting the Palestinians for signing a series of international treaties and conventions.

Israel has said construction at Gevaot would not constitute the establishment of a new settlement because the site is officially designated a neighborhood of an existing one, Alon Shvut, several km (miles) down the road.

Some 500,000 Israelis live among 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territory that the Jewish state captured in the 1967 Middle East war. (Reporting by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, Matt Spetalnick in Washington and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Andrea Ricci)

Oh, Big Pharma, That Explains It

Really?  No surprise here. You wonder where all the phony anti Marijuana “data” comes from. It comes from the pocketbook of the pharmaceutical industry. This article is from Ring of Fire.

(Ring of Fire is one of the best commenting news sources on the Internet.

Painkiller Drug Companies Are Funding Anti-Marijuana Research

Posted on August 28, 2014 by Joshua De Leo

Painkiller-producing drug companies have been paying top, scientific researchers to compile and publish skewed findings that overemphasize the dangers of marijuana, Vice Reported. But should that come as any surprise? Drug companies are powerful and ridiculously rich entities that will stoop to any low level to protect profits.

According to Lee Fang, leading companies Purdue Pharma (Oxycontin), Reckitt Benckiser (Nurofen), and Alkermes (Zohydro) are among the main culprits. Dr. Herbert Kleber of Columbia University is a well-known and highly regarding medical researcher who has produced anti-marijuana opinions for many news outlets, and he is paid by these companies to do so.

As medical marijuana support gains traction in America, drug companies have become very concerned for their profits as a surge of research has shown that marijuana is a much safer alternative to addictive and deadly, synthetic painkillers. Fang reported that painkillers kill 16,000 people a year while there has yet to be a single reported, official or unofficial, marijuana overdose.

Dr. A. Eden Evins is an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, staunch critic of marijuana, and also paid by the drug companies. Her opinions on marijuana have been misguided by Big Pharma’s payouts. “When people can go to a ‘clinic’ or ‘cafe’ and buy pot, that creates the perception that it’s safe,” said Evins. However, she neglects to mention the hundreds, maybe thousands, of “pain clinics” spread across the country that give easy access to deadly painkillers.

Employing a handful of doctors, would-be patients could walk-in without an appointment and see a doctor with any supposed symptom or ailment; back pain, toothaches, depression, boredom, unemployment, and walk out with a prescription for synthetic, opioid painkillers.

As Fang noted, drug companies that produce these deadly medicines have remained as silent partners and financial contributors, Purdue and Alkermes being among the top funders for anti-marijuana initiatives. Recent studies have illustrated the impact that legalized, medical marijuana has had opioid use.

JAMA Internal Medicine published a study this week stating that states with legalized, medical marijuana have enjoyed a 25 percent decrease in opioid-related overdose deaths. Patients, who would otherwise be taking painkillers for their ailments, have turned to medical marijuana to alleviate their symptoms.

According to countless studies, medical marijuana relieves the same symptoms as painkillers with the same effectiveness without the harmful, and sometimes deadly, side effects.

Snowballing support and recent studies that are increasingly showing the benefits of medical marijuana are sure to be making the drug companies nervous. Marijuana has been proven numerous times to provide better, safer relief for ailments including: pain, depression, anxiety, nausea, loss of appetite, and many more. The drug companies seem to be fighting a losing battle, and in this case, public opinion has been beating about Big Pharma’s dollars.

Josh is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire. Follow him on Twitter @dnJdeli.

Let’s Hear It For Ganja!

I’m becoming more and more unhappy about government curbs on many non-addictive drugs. We keep hearing about the use of psilocibin mushrooms in treating anxieties and depression. Studies at several university medical schools have shown that it is more effective than the psychotropic anti-depressants sold by Big Pharma with zero to few side-effects.

Now here is another study that shows the potential benefits of marijuana–even when not identified as “medical marijuana.”

This article is from the excellent source, Science Daily.

 

Featured Research

from universities, journals, and other organizations

 

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Study finds less domestic violence among married couples who smoke pot

Date:

August 26, 2014

 

Source:

University at Buffalo

 

Summary:

New research findings from a study of 634 couples found that the more often they smoked marijuana, the less likely they were to engage in domestic violence. “These findings suggest that marijuana use is predictive of lower levels of aggression towards one’s

New research findings from a study of 634 couples found that the more often they smoked marijuana, the less likely they were to engage in domestic violence.

 

The study, conducted by researchers in the University at Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions and Research Institute on Addictions (RIA), appeared in the online edition of Psychology of Addictive Behaviors in August.

The study attempted to clarify inconsistent findings about domestic violence among pot-smoking couples that primarily has been based on cross-sectional data (i.e., data from one point in time). Looking at couples over the first nine years of marriage, the study found:

• More frequent marijuana use by husbands and wives (two-to-three times per month or more often) predicted less frequent intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration by husbands.

• Husbands’ marijuana use also predicted less frequent IPV perpetration by wives.

• Couples in which both spouses used marijuana frequently reported the least frequent IPV perpetration.

• The relationship between marijuana use and reduced partner violence was most evident among women who did not have histories of prior antisocial behavior.

The study’s lead author is Philip H. Smith, PhD, a recent doctoral graduate of the UB School of Public Health and Health Professions and now associate research scientist in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University.

It is based on research data collected by lead investigator Kenneth Leonard, PhD, director of the UB Research Institute on Addictions. The study was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to Leonard and a grant to Smith from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

“These findings suggest that marijuana use is predictive of lower levels of aggression towards one’s partner in the following year.” Leonard says. “As in other survey studies of marijuana and partner violence, our study examines patterns of marijuana use and the occurrence of violence within a year period. It does not examine whether using marijuana on a given day reduces the likelihood of violence at that time.

“It is possible, for example, that — similar to a drinking partnership — couples who use marijuana together may share similar values and social circles, and it is this similarity that is responsible for reducing the likelihood of conflict.

“Although this study supports the perspective that marijuana does not increase, and may decrease, aggressive conflict,” he says, “we would like to see research replicating these findings, and research examining day-to-day marijuana and alcohol use and the likelihood to IPV on the same day before drawing stronger conclusions.”

 

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Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by University at Buffalo. The original article was written by Cathy Wilde. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Hamas Discovered by Media

The major news media have been AWOL during the Gaza conflict. They have not reported on Hamas tactics, strategies or Hamas’ war crimes. Moreover Hamas has fed them large amounts of rabid propaganda and the news media have duly reported it as news.

Only now, as the reporters and photographers pull out of the way of the Hamas terrorist reach and threats are some of them releasing accounts that contradict what they were shown. These include videos of Hamas setting up rockets near hospitals and in residential areas. Now they are beginning to report on the extent to which Hamas ran the same victims in front of the reporters several times in order to increase the count of the wounded children. It is reminiscent of the widely published photo, also published by Hamas some years ago, showing what purported to be six different bomb craters, but quickly demonstrated to be nothing but PhotoShop.

This article is well protected so that I am unable to copy it. That’s okay as the link is here:

The New Republic: What Took So Long?

Please use the link to read this report.