Friday, June 17, 2016

Medical Stories behind the headlines plus rants

CDC: Yes, men attend federal family planning clinics, for free condoms and STD checks. About ten percent of their clients are now men.

The dirty little secret is that without these clinics, there are often no docs in the area, or to see a doc takes forever to get an appointment, you have to wait a long time in many clincs, and private docs costs a lot of money.

Something to remember the next time you hear about "Defunding planned parenthood".

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a book review about  a new book on the Battle for Nanking.

A particularly damning conclusion could be drawn from the realization that Japan at that time was actually unprepared for war, which further condemns the international community’s failure to resist aggression effectively, not the least of which were the multiple times that naïve Westerners convinced Chinese troops to surrender, only for the prisoners to be brutally slaughtered. 

 many of the Japanese troops were only semi trained National Guard types, not professional soldiers, and probably overreacted to those dang Chinese who didn't want Japan's loving takeover.

 similar atrocities against civilians occurred during the Samurai war, when those dang Koreans stopped the Japanese army who merely wanted to invade China via Korea.

 Often when the Dawkinite trolls post anti Christian comments about the atrocities of "religion", I ask them if they ever read Asian history?

More civilians were killed in the Samurai wars than in the 30 year war ( that the trolls is often cited to prove Christianity is a killer religion.)

 as for WWII: usually the Asian atrocities are overlooked.

Rape of Nanking is now known but how about the "rape of Manila?

 and those 20 million Chinese killed in WWII is a statistic often overlooked...

 no, not "medicine" as such: but violence is a public health matter, and often civilian casualties are due to disease from the collapse of the infrastructure in wars.

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 There is also a new book out that interview those foreigners who fought for the communists in Spain's terrible civil war.

One reviewer elsewhere even said the book was needed to counteract the communist's bad reputation from Orwell's book Homage to Catalonia. Must rewrite history to conform to the meme. (there were atrocities on all sides so lots of blame to spread around.)

Father Z notes the Catholic church instead remembers the martyrs:

A thousand years from now, they will be remembered...

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a crazy loner paranoid schizophrenic South African white power guy killed an MP in England: the press is blaming Brexit.

However the BBC reports, this was not an isolated incident:

Of the 239 who responded to a survey, 43 had been subjected to an attack or attempted attack and 101 had received threats to harm them. Comments included "pulled a knife on me in the surgery", "repeatedly punched me in the face", "came at me with a hammer" and "shot with air rifle"...
A report out earlier this year by psychiatrists working with the Home Office,reported in the Guardian, suggested four out of five MPs had suffered intrusive or aggressive behaviour and some feared going out in public.
Does the US have such a high rate of attacks?

I know that attacks of medical personnel are common: I have been hit once (and almost hit a few times)  by patients, and once had my window shot out with a high powered rifle. My joke is that I lived through two revolutions in Africa, but only got shot at by an angry Sioux in South Dakota.

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China is fixing the environment! hear the Cheers from scientists.and since much of the information comes from satellites, it might even be true.

And it's the hottest summer on record!  the article does note it is a result of the ElNino we had this year (dry and no cloud cover, so it gets hotter here in the tropics) but of course, it ignores we are coming out of the little ice age and that there was little data until 100 years ago.

it is one thing to clean up the earth and get rid of pollution of all sorts: It is another thing to use the problem to insist on a one world order dictatorship that will push everyone back to the good old days of walking, not cars, and and using waterbuffalo to plow fields  (and the good old days of drought related famines)...

. On the other hand, see earlier post on the Bronze age collapse.... globalization makes one richer, but systems collapse is a real danger when things get complicated.

I mean, what would happen if the millions of Pinoys, Indians etc working in the Middle East suddenly are left without jobs?


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June 19th is world Sickle cell anemia day.

the hope is stem cells could reverse this terrible disease.

Present day treatment HERE. Not much has changed since when I was in medical school 50 years ago except for using more hydroxyurea...and having a decent Pneumococcal vaccine. 


I don't have a lot of expertise in the disease (which was rare in Zimbabwe and also among the rural poor white/Hispanics and Amerindicans who were my patients in the US).

the dirty little secret of the "high death rate" among Afro American children is partly due to this disease.


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The taboo no one wants to discuss: What does GLT etc mean in reality? 

The press usually equate this to an inborn attribute, and who can help it if they are born that way? If you hint at any negative thinking about any part of the agenda being pushed on the world to accept non traditional sexuality as normal and good, you are a homophobe and a bigot... (uh, actually it is behavior not the perpson that is disapproved of, but never mind).

(Catholics agree homosexuality, like other things, is an inborn weakness and serious sins in this area are partially mitigated because of this inborn weakness: hence being gay is less serious than something like arranging a contract killing on your political rival so you can divert city funding into your own pockets...which is one reason that the gay/church wars here are not as rabid as in the Protestant/puritanical USA... or even the Bible, where Jews were aware that homosexuality was equated to the sexual abuse of slaves and boys in Greek culture).

But what is not discussed in the press is something that many Catholic bishops and even the Pope has pointed out as a danger: The gender agenda that wants to destroy the difference between men and women and destroy the patriarchal family. And how the Obama administration is imposing this on the USA (and on other countries if they want US foreign aid).

in a previous post, I noted that people actually think differently in other cultures, and unless you acknowledge this and define what you are talking about, you cannot have a decent discussion....... and this FT article points out:


To be clear, everyone who identifies with any of the labels that go into “LGBTQ...” is worthy of our love, our sympathy, and our solidarity in their quest (with all Christians) for the truth, for justice, and for eternal happiness. But what we share with our brethren on account of our common humanity does not nullify what divides us in terms of our choices and beliefs about happiness, justice, and the truth.
And so, here's the rub: The Catholic Church and the LGBT Community have divergent understandings of human nature, personal identity, the proper use of bodies, and the requirements for happiness.
... the beliefs, practices, politics, and morals proposed by the LGBT Community as an ideological bloc are fundamentally inimical to the primary end of man.
No one backs mass murder (yes, I know: Inquisition. except of course, what you think happened was not the truth).

Sheesh. I f you read some of the left wing sites or the two minute hate in Facebook, you'd think THE enemy was all Christians who don't support the entire gender agenda and/ or Obama's agenda on bathrooms and abortion, e.g. the Little Sisters of the Poor are possible terrorists.

another question no one wants to discuss: Was this "gay nightclub" merely a cool place for locals, not just gays, to dance and have a good time? (which it was, according to one poster on FR)

....or was it a place for buying drugs, cruising and sex in the bathrooms?,

in the good old days, public health docs often recommended that such places (certain bars, brothers, and bathhouses) be shut down as health hazards: remember in 1984 when Diane Feinstein shut down the bathhouses of SanFrancisco? 

she ended up being punished by a recall election and changed her mind. But science is science: Reality ignores political correctness:. The result was an HIV epidemic, but never mind.

But if you dare say that sometimes non healthy activity was going on will get you blamed for encouraging a paranoid gay terrorist who decided to kill people because the gay nightclub was safer to attack than Disneyland...

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oh FYI: The chance of catching HIV from a blood transfusion is one out of 1.5 million. This is a CDC article...and analyzes the data in detail. So letting MSM donate blood is not a risk,

The reason is that tests pick up the virus early now...

and assuming that the lab tests are done correctly.

If you want to get hysterical about blood transfusions causing disease, Wait til Zika hits the blood banks...

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update: If you are following Outlander, you know how Claire stopped a merchant for importing smallpox into France.

TeaAtTrianon has a podcast about Smallpox, TB etc in the times of Louis XVI (a few years later than Outlander)

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