Organ Harvesting: Dissected Alive for Profit?

Most of us sign up to become organ donors, literally, out of the goodness of our hearts, but I've always been a little skeptical (fear of my death being hastened by an eagerness to procure my organs) even before I knew the truth: that our vital organs, in order to be viable for transplant, must be harvested from human beings with a pulse, in other words, alive.

You say, how can that be? What part of after-I'm-dead don't they understand?  Well, you must ask yourself: "What is the legal definition of death?" "What was the legal definition of death?" "Why did the legal definition of death change?" "If a determination of death must be made in accordance with "accepted medical standards", how are "accepted medical standards" created and what are they based on?" "What happened to the great principle, both medical and moral, that governs the medical profession: Primum, non nocere (First, do no harm)?"

In a nutshell, in order for organ transplantation to occur, the need for "dead patients with live organs" became paramount.Below, is an attempt to answer some of those questions, while exposing the truth about organ donation; however, I implore you to do your own research.

The common law standard of death used to be total cessation of cardiac and respiratory function; that is, observable signs that life has ended.  Unfortunately, that  clear definition of death renders organ transplantation, impossible. Yet, human organ transplantation is a multi-billion dollar industry. What gives?  What gives is the legal definition of death. The medical industrial complex, specifically the 1968 Ad Hoc Harvard Committee on Irreversible Coma, created in response to the development of organ transplantation redefined the end of life in such a way that made the transplantation of organs possible.  So, the legal definition of death became subjective, a matter of opinion.

From the book, Death Investigation in America: Coroners, Medical Examiners, and the Pursuit of Medical Certainty By Jeffrey M Jentzen

“The proponents of organ donation--transplant surgeons and bioethicists--represented two powerful new specialties. A decades long conflict began between these specialists and medical examiners, coroners, and prosecutors over the major basis of the latter's professional status--the possession of the body. Now, a lucrative business of organ procurement and a sentimental public relations campaign pressing for organ transplantation began to criticize medical examiners. Created in part in response to the development of organ transplantation, the 1968 Ad Hoc Harvard Committee on Irreversible Coma established that an individual could be legally pronounced dead by the physician based on the constellation of clinical findings that did not include the heart ceasing to beat.  Against aggressive organ procurement agencies, for profit, tissue recovery teams, and transplant surgeons entered the fight for desperate patients in a battle over possession of the body. Coe and his colleagues faced new challenges in having to wrestle with the sometimes conflicting goals of their obligation to investigate death and their responsibility to supply the public's increasing demand for organs and tissues to support life.

The definition of what constituted death changed from the absence of observable sign of breathing, movement and heartbeat to more subtle definitions based on lack of blood flow to the brain."

Now that the legal determination of death, since the advent of "cadaver" organ transplantation, has eliminated the total cessation of cardiac and respiratory function, death is now defined as the cessation of brain function--brain death--but, what is brain death? How can you be completely dead if your heart is still pumping, if your lungs are still working? Keep in mind, ventilators do not breathe for the patient, they only force air into the lungs; the patient must breathe out on his or her own.  And the diagnosis of Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) is incorrect almost half the time.  In other words, there is no true standard, and the diagnosis of brain death is completely subjective, a matter of opinion based on hospital  policy that is often influenced by profit margin.

But how do they determine "brain death"? Well, there is no legal or even statewide standard State law varies greatly and hospitals dictate what tests (if any) are used for the diagnosis. Many states allow nurses or nurse practitioners to declare brain death. However, there is one test that stands out above the rest and that is the Apnea Test.

Doctors and hospitals proclaim that an Apnea test can be used to confirm brain death. It does no such thing. In fact, it only makes things worse for the patient, your loved one. During the Apnea test, they take the ventilator away for up to ten minutes, at a time when the patient needs oxygen the most, to see how the patient responds. Without that crucial oxygen, the carbon dioxide level goes up which makes the brain swell, making it much more likely the patient will experience true brain death. Once again, keep in mind that a ventilator will not work on a dead person. The only thing a ventilator does is push air in. It does not push air out. Despite what they tell you, the ventilator only works when the lungs, heart, kidneys, liver are functioning. In other words, the patient is not dead!

Now, if you choose to opt out, it's not simply a matter of unchecking the little box on your driver's license or informing family members that should something happen to you, you do not want to donate your organs. Thanks to the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, adopted in 48 states, you must have a document of refusal to opt out.

“donor cards are legally binding in 48 states and health professionals who act on them are immune from liability in every state."

“The revised UAGA (2006) reaffirms that if a donor has a document of gift, there is no reason to seek consent from the donor family as they have no right to give it legally.  If an individual has not made a document of gift during life, the Revised UAGA (2006) presumes the intent to donate organs, therefore has expanded the list of person (in section 9a  who can consent on behalf of the individual...Finally, if an individual prefers not to donate, this must be documented in a signed, explicit refusal."

It's a good idea to do your homework and research the evolution of major laws that make organ transplantation possible. The major ones are Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) created in 1981, and the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (UAGA), not to mention the Dead Donor Rule, which isn't exactly a law, but a general ethical assumption, enshrined in the UDDA.

The 1998 DHHS Referral and Request Regulation.

“In light of the current problems regarding the lack of supply of suitable cadaveric organs, on December 15, 1997, Vice President Al Gore along with the DHHS launched a national initiatives to increase organ donation by 20%.

One element of the national initiative was to propose a rule ensuring that next-of-kin are asked to consent to the procurement of their loved ones organs. As a result, the DHHS passed a Referral and Request Regulation in August of 1998. 

The new regulation provides that hospitals wishing to receive Medicare payments must refer their patients who died along with their patient whose deaths are imminent to a local Organ Procurement Organization (OPO). Consequently, the OPO would provide personnel trained and experienced in obtaining consent to consult with the patient's next of kin and request consent to procure their loved ones organs.

At the same time that an increasing amount of research is finding the brain can heal itself, the use of aggressive tactics by organ procurement teams towards families to accept a diagnosis of "brain death" is increasing.  The result is that the diagnosis of "brain death" has been rapidly increasing over the past several years.  There is no doubt that lucrative financial outcomes factor in when determining brain death. 

To put it simply, the organ donor card gives doctors your permission (under contract law) to remove your organs from your warm, breathing and UN-anesthetized, doctor-declared “brain-dead” body. Keep in mind that young people with healthy organs  are the best candidates for organ harvesting.

As, Dr. Robert Truog, Professor of Medical Ethics, Anesthesiology and Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School asked,

“Is our understanding of the facts driving our conclusion or is our desire for certain conclusions driving our interpretation of the facts? Are we gerrymandering the lines between life and death solely to meet social goals? In the long run, is this more likely to bolster or erode the confidence and trust of the people in the organ donation enterprise? "

P.S. I'm only advocating for fully informed organ donors--informed consent--not the end of organ transplantation. I'm only trying to encourage due diligence and the education of oneself and others on the organ donation program. The bottom line is: Challenge the "brain death" diagnosis. Don't sign off on the hospital's advanced directives.   And above all, do not consent to an Apnea test for loved ones!

Think about it, why do they administer paralyzing drugs and sometimes even anti anxiety drugs--however, no anesthesia-- to the organ donor while operating on them?  Because they're not brain dead! Or any kind of dead!    I woke up in the middle of an operation...all I can tell you is that I've never experienced so much pain.  Thank God I could move and scream to alert the doctors.  My worst nightmare is being operated on, feeling every little move of the surgeon, without the ability to move, scream, alert anyone that I'm being tortured. I imagine I'm not the only one.










Links:

Controversies in the Determination of Death: A White Paper by the President's Council on Bioethics

How to revoke organ donation consent by state.

Horror as patient wakes up in NY hospital with doctors trying to harvest her organs for transplant profits

An 8-year-old was taken off life support, his organs donated. Now, police are investigating

Full Court Document filed regarding lawsuit regarding coroner's office and 8-year old taken off life support to get his organs

Surgeon Accused of Speeding a Death to Get Organs

Ruben Navarro Civil Case Filing:

Doctor Cleared of Harming Man to Obtain Organs

Can Brain Dead Patients Respond?

"Brain Dead" Patient Begins Breathing During Surgery After Liver Removed and Other Horrific Accounts:

“There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Now, mostly dead … is slightly alive."

Read more...

The Science of Killing a Human Being.

In the documentary below, former Conservative MP, Michael Portillo pushes his body to the brink of death in an investigation into the science of execution. At the very beginning he states, "If the state's going to kill people, you want to do it as humanely as possible, I think most people agree on that." I'm not so sure. From my very limited perspective, I think the man who invented the lethal injection protocol, Dr. Jay Chapman's response,  "My basic attitude is so they suffer a little pain, who cares?" might just be the attitude shared by most.

Of course, as I've stated repeatedly, I do not believe in the death penalty under any circumstances, but if the state insists upon executing people, the least they could do is spare the doomed individual as much pain as possible. As I have also stated many times before, I think the lethal injection protocol is, as they say in the film "torture disguised as a medical procedure." And that's whether they carry it with two or three drugs. I mean, just imagine not getting enough of the drug that is supposed to cause unconsciousness, before getting the paralyzing drug (most likely used for aesthetic reasons) that renders you unable to signal your distress, followed by a heart-stopping drug, which "feels like a fire traveling through the vein to the heart.” The chance of this occurring is extremely high because it is administered by ill-trained staff.  After all, doctors and nurses are supposedly bound by the "Hippocratic Oath" or take a pledge to do no harm.

It's not just a lack of expertise that contribute to the controversy over lethal injection; it's the second drug in the cocktail: pancuronium bromide, the paralyzing agent  Carol Weihrer, who has testified in 15 court cases against lethal injection, knows all too well the pain this drug can cause. During a routine eye operation, in which she was given anesthesia and then pancuronium bromide, the anesthesia failed to work, leaving her fully aware of the excruciating pain as the pancuronium bromide coursed through her veins, but unable to tell anyone or move. She said if felt like "ignited jet fuel going through your body feeling like you're absolutely on fire." Carol believes that most executed inmates go through the same experience as she did.  She states that the anesthetic used in the lethal injection protocol is  "short-acting, five minute version" and that that lethal injection "takes between 10-12 minutes on a good day."  In other words, the inmate is put out for a couple of minutes, and then conscious, thus feels the pancuronium bromide painfully charge through their veins without being able to alert anyone and dies from suffocation before their heart is stopped.

One example:

Angel Diaz

On December 13, 2006,  Angel Diaz took more than a half-hour to die and required a second dose of the chemicals. After the first injection, he continued to move and was squinting and grimacing as he tried to mouth words.  The medical examiner stated that the needle had gone through Mr. Diaz's vein and out the other side, so the deadly chemicals were injected into soft tissue rather than the vein.

Read more...

Harvesting Organs Before Death.

I don't think it gets any creepier than this: ripping out body parts before the patient dies.

That's right. The New York Organ Donor Network is accused of pressuring doctors to declare patients dead before they die in order to harvest their organs.

"New York hospitals are routinely "harvesting" body parts from patients before they're even dead, a lawsuit is claiming.

The suit claims that transplant non-profit, The New York Organ Donor Network, of bullying hospital staffers to declare patients brain dead when they are still alive so to take their organs. New York hospitals are routinely "harvesting" body parts from patients before they're even dead, a lawsuit is claiming. The suit claims that transplant non-profit, The New York Organ Donor Network, of bullying hospital staffers to declare patients brain dead when they are still alive so to take their organs. The suit accuses the transplant non-profit, The New York Organ Donor Network, of bullying hospital staffers to declare patients brain dead when they are still alive in order to take their organs.

Plaintiff Patrick McMahon, 50, an Air Force combat veteran, is a former transplant coordinator who claims he was fired just four months into the job for protesting about the practice and estimates that one in five patients is still showing signs of brain activity when surgeons declare them dead and start ripping out their body parts.

"They're playing God," McMahon told New York Post. The lawsuits, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court Tuesday, cited four examples of improper organ harvesting.

One of the examples cited details of a 19-year-old man injured in a car crash who was still struggling to breath and showed signs of brain activity when doctors at Nassau University Medical Center declared him brain dead under pressure from the donor-network officials, including Director Michael Goldstein, who allegedly said during a conference call: "This kid is dead, you got that?" the suit claims.

McMahon said that the teenager could have easily recovered.

"I have been in Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan in combat," he told New York Post. "I worked on massive brain injuries, trauma, gunshot wounds, IEDs. I have seen worse cases than this and the victims recover."

The three other examples of patients who were still clinging to life when doctors declared them brain dead included a female patient admitted to St. Barnabas Hospital, a man admitted to Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn and a woman admitted to Staten Island University Hospital after a drug overdose who was given "a paralyzing anesthetic" because her body was still jerking, according to the Post.

McMahon said when he flagged up the injection, another network employee told hospital personnel McMahon was "an untrained troublemaker with a history of raising frivolous issues and questions," the suit charged. "I had a reputation for raising a red flag," he said.

McMahon accuses the federally-funded network of having a "quota" system and hiring "coaches" to teach staff how to be more persuasive in getting family members to give consent to organ donation. McMahon claims that on November 4, he told the network's CEO and president, Helen Irving, that "one in five patients declared brain dead show signs of brain activity at the time the Note is issued."

However, according to the suit, Irving replied: "This is how things are done.

There’s a lot of money at stake here.  To be sure, when quota systems are in place, and they are, the pressure is on medical professionals to either look the other way, or declare death prematurely.  

Links:

Parents' Hospital Lawsuit Says Teen Was 'Killed' For Organs

Read more...

North Koreans Forced to Grieve Over Loss of "Beloved" Leader.

Is this what we have to look forward to? Forced public grieving? 

Nah, that could never happen in America.

But, supposedly, this is exactly what occurred in North Korea. It actually makes sense. After all, you have to admit it was a little hard to believe that the North Koreans were genuinely upset by the death of that sawed-off little dictator.

It appears like father, like son, as the regime is handing out sentences of at least six-months in labor camps for anyone who did not cry, or cry hard enough, anyone who didn't go to organized mourning events, and/or for anyone who dared to criticize dictator Kim Jong-il.

Those who tried to leave the country, or even made a mobile phone call out, were also being disciplined, it has been claimed.

Even the bears cry over the loss of this little "man".

Read more...

Do the "Enlightened" Ones Have a Global Plan?

All the wars are bankster wars. Don't sacrifice your children on the altar of evil.

Read more...

Is Poverty a Death Sentence in the US?

According to Senator Bernie Sanders, there is no question that "thousands more Americans will die earlier than they should...that they are being sentenced to death without having committed any crime other than being poor". On the other hand, Rand Paul, in so many words, says the poor are getting richer.

Rand Paul is an idiot. Census data recently released show that while the poverty rate increased, median household income declined, and the percentage without health insurance coverage was not statistically different from the previous year.

Garrett Adams, a medical doctor in the southeastern U.S., backed up Senator Sanders when he said,  "financial constraints are preventing people from getting the life-saving health treatments they need." He went on to say, "there is a cycle in which poverty can be a death sentence and illness can be a poverty sentence"

Read more...

9/11 Heroes Must Pass Terrorist Test Before Receiving Benefits.

As we approach the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, and as the death toll of first responders nears 1,000 (916 first responders to be exact), the political elite believe it's a fitting memorial to force thousands of people who risked their lives and sacrificed on that day to prove they are not terrorists before they can benefit from The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Law.

• Over 400 tons of asbestos, which once inhaled in any quantity cannot be expelled by the lungs.
• 90,000 liters of jet fuel containing benzene, a carcinogen that suppresses the immune system and causes leukemia.
• Mercury from over 500,000 fluorescent lights that is toxic to the nervous system, and damaging especially to the kidneys.
• 200,000 pounds of lead and cadmium from personal computers, toxic to the respiratory track, especially damaging to kidneys.
• Polycystic aromatic hydrocarbons that cause lung, laryngeal and throat cancers.
• 130,000 gallons of transformer oil with PCBs, causing serious skin rashes and liver damage.
• Crystalline Silica from 420,000 tons of concrete, sheetrock and glass (tiny particulates that lodge in the heart, causing ischemic heart disease).

You can add to that list: thermite, thermate and nanothermite.

Dust to Dust: the health effects of 9/11, as Jerry Mazza put it, "911’s second round of slaughter."
 

Read more...

The Albatross That Binds Us Together

Whether blinking, blaring, or ticking, time machines constantly remind us of the irreversible, rapid, one-way, stream of change, ultimately, carrying all of us along, without regard to race, religion, sexuality, status, or gender. Within this continuous flow of split seconds that is us, the ever moving present becomes our past (decay), as it transforms into our future (bloom), and illuminates the inherent contradiction of human living: that we are born to die.

That's life, when experienced through the uni-directional, linear concept of time.
How cruel is that? Is it any wonder that we will do anything to cover up and distract ourselves from this only inevitable certainty in life? Our tendency to be untrue and evasive about ourselves and our lives is understandable considering none of us are getting out alive. However, is hiding and running from the truth fully living. Could we live more fulfilling lives if we confront the "awful" truth that death is as much a part of ourselves as life?

Just as every millisecond stands between decay and bloom, all of humanity exists in complexity and paradox. We cannot have life without death, love without hate, clarity without confusion, or faith without doubt. Nevertheless, most individuals skim the surface of life, afraid to confront this reality. They do whatever it takes to distract themselves from the way things are.

“If you ask a member of this generation two simple questions: 'How do you want the world to be in fifty years?' and 'What do you want your life to be like five years from now?' the answers are quite often preceded by 'Provided there is still a world' and 'Provided I am still alive.' To the often-heard question, Who are they, this new generation? one is tempted to answer, Those who hear the ticking. And to the other question, Who are they who utterly deny them? the answer may well be, Those who do not know, or refuse to face, things as they really are.” -- Hannah Arendt

Maybe, it doesn't have to be this way as time is a human construct. None of the basic equations in any type of physics include an arrow of time that points in one direction only. In other words, our concept of time does not exist in the universe, however, it's the only way we can make sense of and order our world considering our perceptual limitations.

We think of the past as what no longer exists, and the future as what does not yet exist, meaning the only thing we have is the present. But if that's true, that leaves us with nothing but a fleeting microsecond of time. Moreover, recalling our past, and anticipating and imagining the future, greatly influences how we define our present. Our one-dimensional sense of time is greatly flawed.

Time to travel back in time.
Consider this. We cannot see ourselves moving through time as we live only in the here and now -- that nanosecond of time. Rewind our life backwards and every minute we go back in time, we erase that much of our memory. However, we will remember our lives ONLY up until that point that we moved backward...not a nanosecond after. So, who is to say we are not moving backward and forward in time? Or in any other direction, for that matter.

Nevertheless, no matter what time is or isn't, until we come up with a better way, this is all we have right now. In order to preserve our humanity, we must confront our existence as it is, in order to make it bearable, not just for ourselves, but for life in its entirety.

"[W]e have cultivated a mass mind and have moved from the extreme of rugged individualism to the even greater extreme of rugged collectivism. We are not makers of history; we are made by history. Longfellow said, ‘In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer,’ meaning that he is either a molder of society or is molded by society. Who doubts that today most men are anvils and are shaped by the patterns of the majority? Or to change the figure, most people, and Christians in particular, are thermometers that record or register the temperature of majority opinion, not thermostats that transform and regulate the temperature of society." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Read more...

Texas, the New Model for the American Dream?

William Windham once said in 1812, during a Speech he gave in Parliament, "The strength of a chain, according to an old observation, was the strength of the weakest link." Keeping that statement in mind, Texas would not rank amongst the strongest of states, nor should it serve as a model for the American Dream, as Texas has proved, repeatedly, its utter disregard for humanity.

Texas, the grim reaper state, executes the most people; claims the highest number of construction worker (fatalities) due to an egregious lack of inspectors; has the third highest poverty rate; has the nation's highest rate of uninsured (health care) people; second highest imprisonment rate; highest teen birth rate; lowest voter turnout, etc. etc....
If Texas, as it stands, becomes the new model, it would mean we truly are in a race to the bottom.

Having said that, one can't ignore the more than impressive way Texas has avoided many of the problems generated by the current financial meltdown. With an unemployment rate two points below the national average, one of the lowest foreclosure rates in the nation, and responsible for 71% of all new job created in the country, Texas is on the rise according to the article, California v. Texas America's Future in this month's edition of The Economist.

Texas's low tax, low regulation, low spend, business friendly model is chiefly responsible for their economic prosperity, but unfortunately, this good fortune comes at the expense of an emaciated public sector. As *Tom Ashbrook, host of On Point, said, "Texas is despoiling itself as it succeeds" when trying to sum up and clarify the point a caller was trying to make when he referred to Texas as the "new China".

The very thing that drove America's financial fiasco - lack of regulation and catering to corporate special interests at the expense of the public interest - is driving the Texan boom. Development without the tax base to support the cost of the growing infrastructure will not only increase the economic and ecological expense but ensure failure in the long run.

At the same time, California - at one time, the golden state where so many Americans projected their dreams and hopes of a more perfect life - by expanding the public sector beyond the political consensus, is facing a huge budget deficit and impasse largely as a result of political division, and serves as a timely warning that operating exclusively from either end of the spectrum - economic or social - will, more than likely, end in disaster, balance being the operative word.

Latest on Texas:

Texans losing health care coverage

According to National Center for Education Statistics's latest report, Achievement Gaps: How Black and White Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Texas leads the nation in narrowing the math achievement gap between the two races and overall shows a better relative narrowing of gaps.

Texas Gov. who refused stimulus asks for a loan

Texas' jobless rate rises to 7.5 percent in June

* I highly recommend listening to Tom Ashbrook. He is always very well prepared, intelligent, knowledgeable and insightful, but what sets him apart is his amazing ability to concisely sum up and clarify what either the guest or caller has said very eloquently.

Read more...

The Human Popsicle, Quest for Immortality I

Back in the dark ages, before the world became a nightmare for the average Libra (Libras don't like too many choices), an exam was my largest anxiety producing event. In order to calm myself, I would think , I’m going to be dead in a few decades anyway…it’s not like my tombstone will read, 'too stupid to pass calculus test ...’

I self- tranquilize, using this method, quite often; although, it can, and sometimes does backfire, because I end up thinking...why bother ...unless I can put it on my tombstone? Most of the time, however, this approach reduces my anxiety to the point I can focus.

Additionally, when going through periods of what I perceive to be “intense suffering”, for instance, adjusting to the invention of the cell phone, the knowledge of my own mortality can also provide solace. Other than that, death is at the very bottom of my to-do list.

Our own mortality can provide a certain degree of comfort with the knowledge that there is an end to what can sometimes seems like unending anguish, but most of us avoid our ephemeral condition like the plague, and sometimes to the point of insanity.

Take cryogenics for example. The wood frog is one of the only animals that is able to come back from a deep freeze. Unlike almost every other living creature, the wood frog thaws from the inside out. The frog's liver pumps out an extraordinary amount of glucose, which ends up concentrated inside its cells, producing an antifreeze like substance. This substance prevents the inside of the cell from freezing and reducing it to what would normally render the cell useless. In contrast, the water in our cells expands as it freezes, shredding the inside of our cells beyond repair.

However, even wood frogs cannot come back after being submerged in liquid nitrogen, the freezing process used in cryogenics. Scientists say the chance of "Mr. Freeze-Pop" thawing to life is a big fat zero at this point. And they cannot envision anything in the future that would make this a possibility. Unfortunately, for anyone reading this, my unscientific brain disagrees with the scientist. If humanity doesn't destroy itself in the next millennium, Mr. Freeze-Pop, will, indeed, come back to life, only to wish he were dead.

Can you imagine how you would feel after being frozen for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years? And even if you don't feel all that bad, what's next? It's not like you are going to live forever...you're just going to die again. In the meantime, everyone you knew died a long time ago and everything you knew no longer applies. In other words, why not just launch yourself into space with the hope of landing on an undiscovered planet, populated with the mutated progeny of *Michael Jackson?

It's a good thing, cryogenics is so expensive. It's an even better thing that only an infinitesimally small fraction of our population can afford to participate in the quest for immortality. It's no wonder health care is gradually becoming a privilege or luxury of the elite. "Immortalness" is very expensive, after all and not all it's cracked up to be.

* From what I've heard, the plan is to isolate what made Michael Jackson so "special", -- after he dies, of course -- in order to export it to the nearest black hole, faster than the speed of light...one of W's better ideas. Anyway, since W's knowledge of astronomy and rocket science is questionable, I'm sure the "special" export, will instead, serve to furnish some unearthed planet in our vast universe(s) with "moonwalking", noseless, gender non-specific inhabitants.

Read more...

Flight From Death: The Quest for Immortality.

Flight From Death: The Quest for Immortality is an excellent documentary introducing the work of cultural anthropologist, Ernest Becker, author of Pulitzer winning book, Denial of Death.

"The essence of normalcy is the refusal of reality." -- Ernest Becker

Read more...

One Death a Tragedy...One Million a Statistic...

I had an immediate visceral reaction to "little Mary" a 12-year-old Ugandan girl whose lips were cut off by rebel fighters, and no visceral reaction to the 4 million killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Of course, I know that killing 4 million people is so heinous, it's beyond words but apparently it's beyond feeling as well, at least in my case.

Psychological research, reported by Professor Paul Slovic in the March edition of Foreign Policy, suggests we respond most to just one example of suffering. Big numbers don't move us and in fact, the higher the number of people involved in a crisis, the less likely we are to "feel" for each additional death.

Read more...

Blog Death Threat Sparks Debate

It follows a series of death threats which have forced her to cancel a public appearance and suspend her blog.

Ms Sierra described on her blog how she had been subject to a campaign of threats, including a post that featured a picture of her next to a noose.

The police are investigating while the blogosphere has launched its own enquiry.

One of the issues raised is the question of how women bloggers are treated online.

Ms Sierra, author of popular blog Creating Passionate Users, began receiving death threats four weeks ago.

Since going public on the issue, she has been overwhelmed by the support she has received.

"I agonised about making this post but I hoped it would start a dialogue," she told the BBC News website.

"I never thought it would become so big or be this positive," she said.

While blogging feuds are common, she believes the campaign against her is more likely to be because she is a woman in the male-dominated technology world.

Not social commentary

If you want to do something about it--do not tolerate the kind of abuse that includes threats or even suggestions of violence
Kathy Sierra

Some supporters have temporarily suspended their blogs in a show of support while others are discussing the need for a bloggers' code of conduct.

It is unclear who the authors of the threats are but Ms Sierra said she was particularly disturbed that some of them were hosted on blogs that are authored by or owned by a group that includes some prominent bloggers.

She said the campaign of terror has changed her life forever. She abruptly withdrew from a keynote speech she was due to deliver at the ETech conference in San Diego on Monday.

"I have cancelled all speaking engagements. I am afraid to leave my yard, I will never feel the same. I will never be the same," she said on her blog.

Change the culture

She said she was questioning whether she would ever post again, saying she did not want to be a part of a blogosphere where such threats could be made.

Apologising to those expecting to hear her speak at the ETech conference, she called on them to enter the debate.

"If you want to do something about it, do not tolerate the kind of abuse that includes threats or even suggestions of violence (especially sexual violence). Do not put these people on a pedestal. Do not let them get away with calling this "social commentary", "protected speech", or simply "criticism"," she said on her blog.

Much of the blogosphere has rallied round in support of Ms Sierra.

Robert Scoble, author of popular technology blog Scobleizer, condemned the campaign against her.

"It's this culture of attacking women that has especially got to stop. I really don't care if you attack me. I take those attacks in my stride. But, whenever I post a video of a female technologist there invariably are snide remarks about body parts and other things that simply wouldn't happen if the interviewee were a man," he said

In response, he has decided to temporarily stop blogging and has turned off functionality that allows people to post anonymously.

Read more...

Child Dies From a Toothache...No Insurance.

In a wealthy country like ours no child should ever die from a toothache. Our government literally throws billions of dollars at Iraq without blinking an eye, and then cannot account for any of it, yet 45 million people in the United States do not have health insurance and cannot afford the most basic health care. I wonder how many people those billions of dollars unaccounted for, much of it in cash, could have covered?

Some poor children have no dental coverage at all. Others travel three hours to find a dentist willing to take Medicaid patients and accept the incumbent paperwork. And some, including Deamonte's brother, get in for a tooth cleaning but have trouble securing an oral surgeon to fix deeper problems.

Read more...