Even more on male and female circumcision: balancing conflicting human rights

June 17, 2010 — xanthippa

A few days ago, I posted my thought on ‘The trouble with ‘circumcision’.  A friend replied – in a private email, so as to save me the embarrasement of lambasting me in public – pointing out to me the medical benefits of male circumcision.  His heart is definitely in the right place!

He even supplied me with a couple of links:  here and here.  I had thought that I had successfully debunked both of these types of claims.  Obviously, I had not.

Still, this is a very important debate – which is why I thought I ought to post my reply to him.  It was a bit long – I do go on a lot – so I split it up into two parts:  the ‘physical issues’, and the ‘rights issues’, below.

What makes all the medical arguments for or against male circumcision irrelevant is that this is a question of rights.

Human rights.

Because removing a healthy body part – no matter how beneficial one may think this to be – is not something one person has the right to decide on behalf of another person.

Parents must do their best to look after their children. They must make decisions on their behalf regarding medical treatment when their children are ill or injured. But nobody – not even a parent – has the right to subject a healthy child to non-reversible medical procedures, amputations of healthy tissue or any other violation of that child’s bodily integrity.

Yes, parents have the right to raise their child as they believe best.

No, that does not give parents the right to subject a healthy child to invasive medical procedures or random amputations!

I am aware that many parents have ‘snipped’ their sons, truly believing they were doing the best thing for their children. Families that perform circumcision on their female children also truly believe that they are acting in the best interest of their child.

That is something we must acknowledge: these parents are not monsters who want to punish their daughters for being female! Or to hurt or damage them. But, their beliefs lead them to actions which DO harm and damage their children.

THAT is what we must address!

And it is not easy to admit that one was duped into harming one’s own child!

But it is important that we face the truth and stop tolerating this violation of children’s bodies and rights. Each and every individual can choose to become circumcised as an adult – and nobody else has the right to interfere with this choice.

Bodily integrity is one of the core human rights.

We must not tolerate its violations.

Even by well meaning parents!

I am sorry to have hit another point of disagreement with you – please, do not take this as an attack upon you, personally. Just that this is one of those instances where I think many of us, in ‘The West’, have ‘blinders’ on: we see the horror and just how wrong this is when we see a variation of this practice by a different culture – but we seem unable to recognize that we are guilty of exactly the same thing, in a slightly different form.

Perhaps I did not express my central thought as explicitly in my original post as I should have: until we recognize just how wrong male circumcision is, until we begin to respect the human right to bodily integrity of ALL our children, we cannot possibly criticize (much less stop) the practice of female circumcision.

I agree with your sentiment: until popular tide turns, boys will suffer and get ill – and, in some cases, loose their lives: but I lament this same outcome as the result of an unnecessary, traumatic amputation of a healthy body part!

We are both going to the same place: we just differ about which route is medically better.

Still, there is no counterargument for the human right to bodily integrity…. because there is no valid argument for ‘male-only’ circumcision on the basis of whose rights are supreme: the right of an infant to bodily integrity or the right of a parent to amputate healthy body parts on the grounds of their ‘beliefs’ – sorry, getting long winded here…

What I mean is that there is no argument that, on the basis of ‘balancing rights’, would permit ‘male circumcision’ while forbidding ‘female circumcision’.

If the parents’ right to amputate a child’s healthy body part on the grounds of their beliefs (religious, cultural, scientific or otherwise) are supreme – all forms of genital mutilation will be ‘in’.

If the child’s right to bodily integrity is tops, then NO form of circumcision can be permitted!

We must face up to that in our fight against female circumcision….

Thoughts?

Posted in freedoms, politics, religion, society. Tags: , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

More on male and female circumcision…

June 17, 2010 — xanthippa

A few days ago, I posted my thought on ‘The trouble with ‘circumcision’.  A friend replied – in a private email, so as to save me the embarrasement of lambasting me in public – pointing out to me the medical benefits of male circumcision.  His heart is definitely in the right place!

He even supplied me with a couple of links:  here and here.  I had thought that I had successfully debunked both of these types of claims.  Obviously, I had not.

Still, this is a very important debate – which is why I thought I ought to post my reply to him.  It was a bit long – I do go on a lot – so I split it up into two parts:  the ‘physical issues’, below, and the ‘rights issues’.

Thanks for the sensitivity of a private reply.

Still, I do stand behind what I wrote.

The studies, so often touted and cited to justify male circumcision have long been debunked. As a matter of fact, when it comes to urinary tract infections – circumcised males have a higher incidence of them than uncircumcised men.

Plus – I didn’t put this in the post because I thought it would bring a wrong focus to any ensuing debate – circumcised men have a much, much higher incidence of impotence than uncircumcised men. This is the direct result of cutting off all them pleasure-sensing nerve endings AND of desensitizing the glans by exposing it.

One has to balance the benefits and dangers of circumcising versus the benefits and dangers of not circumcising!

If you live in the middle of a desert, where you often substitute sand for water when cleansing, one could make a case for circumcision being beneficial. It is true that it requires a person to maintain a certain level of hygiene to clean an uncircumcised penis, which is not possible in a desert. Under those circumstances, the long-term damage from circumcision is less harmful that the damage from lack of hygiene to an uncircumcised penis. That, I agree with.

That is why circumcision arose among desert cultures in the first place.

But, we do not live in a desert. Our kids have the ability to maintain basic hygiene. As such, the danger of damage from poor hygiene and not circumcising our sons is very, very low – while the dangers of circumcising are in no way diminished.

While cleaning an uncircumcised penis, boys will learn that it is pleasurable to touch their penis. This naturally leads to healthy masturbation: something many religions forbid. It was precisely in order to prevent young men from masturbating that circumcision was popularized in our society!

As for the STDs….. let me just note that masturbation is a much safer sexual release for young single men than using condoms and a much more realistic option than trying to get them to abstain from all sexual activity altogether!

Which brings us to the claims that circumcised men are in less of a danger of an STD. The danger of infection because of a ‘tear in the foreskin’ only comes into play if people engage in high-risk, rough sex (rape, anal sex, multiple partners etc.) and do not use a condom.

If a man decides that he wants to engage in this form of ‘entertainment, he can choose to get circumcised as an adult. It will give him all the ‘protection’ he seeks (though, as I explained in the post, there is not a convincing case that this reduction in infection rates is the result of the circumcision itself rather than the safer-sex education that accompanied the circumcision in the adult male populations on which these studies were carried out).

Not circumcising him as an infant does not prevent a man from seeking this ‘protection from STDs’ as an adult – should he CHOOSE it!!!

Let me recap: Several decades ago, doctors claimed circumcision was ‘cleaner and healthier’ than leaving the penis intact.

You know, like about the same time these ‘same’ doctors prescribed thalidamide for morning sickness…

About the same time as menopausal women were pressured into routine hysterectomies – no longer need for the womb, so take it out, just to make sure. Right? Except we now know just how very important a role the uterus plays in the immune systems of post-menopausal women….

Let’s face it: many things that doctors in the past never even considered have since turned out to play an important role in our body. Randomly removing bits that are not diseased may have effects we have not even considered, much less measured their impact.

Current medical body of evidence – even considering the old studies – falls squarely on the side of ‘circumcision has no measurable health benefits – but it does have measurable harm to one’s health’. The push to continue circumcision is political, cultural and religious – and financial…. Remember, those who claim circumcision prevents AIDS get tons of international aid money to perform these circumcisions, so they are hardly an impartial source of information.

Let me put it a different way: have you ever examined what is under our fingernails?

TONS of germs!

Even the cleanest-looking nails harbor germs under them…. And kids’ nails? A hotbed of infections!

And – infants often scratch their faces with their little nails: you can see the danger there!

And – many kids stick their hands, fingernails and all, in their mouth! Or even – do I dare say it – pick their noses!  Then they rub their eyes…

The potential for spreading these germs under their nails are, well, big!

And then there is the danger of blood poisoning from an infected hang-nail….

Just how much ‘cleaner’ would it be, how much more protected from infection would our children be, if we just removed their nail-beds while they were in their infancy?

After all – when they are little, the nail-beds are tiny. The scarring will be minimal. And if you do it early enough in infancy, they won’t really understand the pain, or remember it.

So, all parents who want their kids to be clean and healthy should have their infants’ nail-beds surgically removed!

Let’s face it – it is the same argument….

Posted in politics, religion, society. Tags: , , , , , . 5 Comments »

The trouble with ‘circumcision’…

June 11, 2010 — xanthippa

This is one of those ‘charged issues’:  moral and religious issues get muddled up with cultural prejudices and pseudo-scientific propaganda.  So, I’m really not sure where and how to begin…

The easy one first…

‘Female Circumcision’

So much has been written about this, I will not go into details of the various ‘levels’ of female genital mutilation (recently re-named ‘female genital cutting’ in order to escape the deservedly bad PR).   I’ll just note that it is a horrible thing which I condemn.

Rather, I would like to concentrate on the 3 reasons ‘why’ ‘female circumcision’ is practiced.

1.  Religious

Many Muslims believe that Islam mandates both female and male circumcision because in the Islamic texts, the sex act is, at times, referred to as ‘when the circumcised parts meet’.  This makes many Muslims believe that in order to emulate the prophet Muhammad, as their religion commands, both men and women ought to be circumcised – despite the fact that Muhmmad himself urged that ‘cutting less is better than cutting more’ because this ‘increases pleasure for both the man and the woman’ (I am paraphrasing).

2.  Cultural

Some cultures have such contempt for women that they believe that without removing the clitoris, a woman would not be able to control her sexual urges and would copulate with anyone, anytime.  Therefore, removing a source of sexual pleasure will help protect her honour and the honour of her family.

But contempt for women is not the only cultural reason for this practice.

In some  places, like Ethiopia, female circumcision is a cultural custom, practiced both  by Muslims and Christians.  It is part of the cultural fabric:  the mom was ‘circumcised’, the grandma was ‘circumcised’, so the possibility that the daughter might not be ‘circumcised’ does not even occur to anyone.  It’s just what is done!

I have commented on this phenomenon before:  people cannot possibly stop a harmful practice if it never actually occurs to them that there is something they could – and should – question….  It is only after people figure out that that something could be questioned that the actual battle for change can begin.

3.  Medical

As bizarre as it seems to us, there are people (women) who honestly believe that complete clitorectemy is medically necessary.  I saw a video (long ago) of an old woman who was renown as an expert practitioner of clitorectemy explaining (through an interpreter) that unless the clitoris is removed before puberty, it will grow and suffocate the child during childbirth.  She even cited ‘real evidence’, where women had ‘bad, partial’ ones and the baby suffocated in the womb…

Of course, most of us would recognize this as a symptom of the ‘operation’ itself:  the severe scaring which results in less flexible tissues which do not stretch properly, which causes the child to suffocate in the birth canal.  But, they ‘have their observations’ and truly and honestly believe that full clitorectemies are a medical necessity.

To recap:

‘Female circumcision’ is practiced for religious and cultural reasons as well as because trusted members of their society who preform the clitorectomies honestly believe that it is medically beneficial to do so and are believed by the members of their society.

Here, in The West, this vile and inhumane and – well, horrible, sadistic torture – is not tolerated.

YET!!!

Unfortunately, recent voices – from among the people who would be the ones who wish to perform (and benefit financially from doing so) this procedure – have began a propaganda to normalize this practice ‘for the good of the little girls’!  Their argument goes something like this:

The choice we are facing (they convincingly explain) is between horrible, painful, ‘back-shack-clitorectomies’ with no anaesthesia or even clean surgical instruments on one hand, and permitting a ‘ritual nick’ or ‘ritual pin-prick’ here, in the safety of a sanitary medical facility.

It’s the only safe option!

Don’t you care about these girls safety?

Please, consider, really consider, why is it that our political and cultural leaders are having such a hard time rejecting this flimsy excuse and ripping it to shreds for the ‘soft-racism’ and financial self-interest it so thinly veils?

I think that most of us would arrive at ‘the other circumcision’….

We tolerate it.

Many of us practice it.

If we permit bits of male infants’ genetalia to be chopped off (without anaesthetics to boot), how can we effectively combat a similar practice on female infants?  Equality of the sexes and all….

Which brings me to:

Male Circumcision

Again, most of us are familiar with the ‘mechanics’ of what the term refers to.  And, many of us, in The West, accept it as unquestioningly as that Ethiopian clitorectemist accepts ‘female circumcision’!

Some of us have, however, began to question this extremely painful practice which can lead to permanent re-wiring of a newborn’s brain.  Many studies demonstrate that male infants who underwent circumcision display symptoms of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) months or even years later and that the neurological damage the infant suffers may cause life-long damage.  And, most doctors now know that perfectly well.

And, there is always the issue of where do the rights of the parent end and the rights of the child begin….

Let me quote from the policy manual on non-therapeutic male circumcision by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia:

“Under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an infant has rights that include security of person, life, freedom and bodily integrity. Routine infant male circumcision is an unnecessary and irreversible procedure. Therefore, many consider it to be “unwarranted mutilating surgery”.

So, why are we still tolerating this practice?

There are 3 reasons:

1.  Religious

The first thing most of us (at least, those of us born in Europe) think of when we hear ‘male circumcision’ is the practice of Judaism.  So, for those of the Jewish faith, this has sort of been ‘grandfathered in’ and is never really questioned.  Even though it goes on and on about how Jews must also circumcise their slaves…

If nothing else, that ought to give us a moment of pause:  Jews are mandated by God to circumcise all their slaves?!?!?

Well, the Bible says so.

So, how did this practice enter the North American society?

Victorian ‘religious puritans’ (for lack of a better term) brought in the practice in order to decrease young men’s sexual pleasure so they would stop masturbating and spent more time thinking about God.

Really.

By removing the skin that protects the glans of the penis, the very sensitive nerve endings are constantly rubbed by ‘stuff’ – from undies on.  This ‘constant stimulation’ is too much – so the brain decreases the sensitivity of these nerves.  (Sort of like once you’ve been in cold water for a while, the nerve impulses screaming the  message ‘this water is cold’ become weakened and you are ‘used to the temperature’.)

That is the reasoning behind removing the foreskin.  By constant mild stimulation, the strength of the pleasure signals decreases and the mutilated man can better keep his mind on God!

To  sum it up:  just like ‘female circumcision’, the religious goal of ‘male circumcision’ is the reduction of sexual pleasure.

2.  Cultural

In North America, this practice became so deeply culturally entrenched that, for generations, nobody questioned the practice.  It was ‘simply done’.  Promoted on the grounds of hygiene, the religious origins of this practice became forgotten by much of the population and became ‘the norm’.

Now, some parents circumcise their male infants ‘so they would not feel different from dad and/or other boys’…  I know – I have seen it.

3.  Medical

Many medical practitioners who perform infant circumcisions claim all kinds of wonderful medical benefits as a result of the procedure.  Sort of like that Ethiopian clitorectomist does….

And there are tons of claims that circumcision reduces AIDS and other infections….  Yet, for each one of these studies, there are others that prove this is not so.  And if one reads these ‘circumcision reduces AIDS’ studies, you will find that ‘circumcision’ in these studies is accompanied by a comprehensive education on AIDS and other STDs….  Yet, the studies do not make any difference between reduction in AIDS through education or circumcision.  That is kind of like saying that learning the alphabet will make you good at math without mentioning that to learn the alphabet, you go to school where you are taught both the alphabet and the math….

So, what do the ‘Western’ MDs say about the medical benefits of male circumcision? Let’s see what the CPSCB has to say about the ‘Medical Perspecives’ (my emphasis):

Circumcision removes the prepuce that covers and protects the head or the glans of the penis. The prepuce is composed of an outer skin and an inner mucosa that is rich in specialized sensory nerve endings and erogenous tissue. Circumcision is painful, and puts the patient at risk for complications ranging from minor, as in mild local infections, to more serious such as injury to the penis, meatal stenosis, urinary retention, urinary tract infection and, rarely, even haemorrhage leading to death. The benefits of infant male circumcision that have been promoted over time include the prevention of urinary tract infections and sexually transmitted diseases, and the reduction in risk of penile and cervical cancer. Current consensus of medical opinion, including that of the Canadian and American Paediatric Societies and the American Urological Society, is that there is insufficient evidence that these benefits outweigh the potential risks. That is, routine infant male circumcision, i.e. routine removal of normal tissue in a healthy infant, is not recommended.

In other words, any claims of medical benefits of male circumcision are about as well grounded in fact as the Ethopian woman’s belief that not cutting out the clitoris will cause it to grow so bit, it will suffocate the infant during childbirth!

Yet – we tolerate it….

Why?

Both male and female circumcision is done for the same reasons:  religious and cultural pressures to decrease the ability of the individual to experience sexual pleasure, medical misinformation and cultural momentum.

Until we recognize the parallels between the two and criminalize the practice of parents imposing this choice onto their children, we cannot pretend we are a civilized people who respect basic human rights!

Posted in freedoms, immigrants, opression, religion, science, society. Tags: , , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Medicare as means of coercion: as long as I pay your bills, you will obey my rules!

September 8, 2009 — xanthippa

How many people’s parents used to say something equivalent to this:

“As long as you live under my roof, you will obey my rules!”

For those whose parents supported them while they studied in another city, this might be a more familiar version of the expression:

“As long as I pay your bills, you will do as I say!”

It is a rather reasonable expression of the parents’ role: as long as their son or daughter lives under the parents’ roof or as long as the parents are financially responsible (even partially) for the offspring, that offspring (whether chronologically an adult or not) is not truly emancipated.   As long as one is a dependent, one cannot expect to have their independence!

OK – so what if the adult child’s medical costs (say a University or College student) are covered by the parent: would that parent would be within their rights to insist that their son or daughter (adult or not) not indulge in, say, ultimate fighting?

After all, we know that some activities are,  statistically speaking, much more likely to result in higher medical bills than others. So, if someone else is paying a person’s medical bill, that someone else would be justified in putting in some limits on dangerous behaviour.

Right?

So, what about a situation where a group of friends get together to purchase a medical insurance in order to get a ‘group rate’? It is inevitable that not every member of the group will necessarily have a slightly different ‘benefit’ at any given point in time – and most will accept that going into the deal. But…

What if one of these people – let’s call him ‘Bill’ (pun intended) – takes up the hobby of getting a little tipsy and, on a dare, nailing his hand to ‘stuff’. Whenever he does it, Bill gets rushed to a hospital, his hand has to be surgically separated from whatever he had nailed it to this time, Bill then has to get shots… You get the picture. Bill incurs a sizeable bill.

And he does it again.  And again.  And everyone’s group-insurance costs go up!

In this situation, do Bill’s friends have the right to tell him to stop nailing his hand to stuff?

Do they have the right to force him to stop?

The next time he does it, do they have the right to tell him that he is not allowed to use their group insurance to cover the cost of the medical treatment?

Perhaps we can agree that this particular Bill is an idiot. But – where exactly does his right to be an idiot stop and the rights of his friends not to have Bill’s idiocy ruin them financially begin?

Obviously, I picked an extreme example. So, let’s pick another one…

What if, instead of nailing his hand to stuff, Bill chose to get piercings?  It’s sort of similar – just a bit more socially acceptable.  And, what if Bill’s piercings got infected, he needed to be hospitalized, and all that.

And then he got another piercing.

And another.

And they kept on getting infected or having other complications, and Bill’s friend’s medical insurance rates kept rising and rising… Would they have the right to tell him to stop getting any more piercings? Or do they have the right to tell him that any future piercing-related costs will not be covered by the common insurance plan?

All right – what if Bill did stop getting piercings… but one of his existing rings gets caught on something, tears the skin, and Bill has to go to the hospital again. It’s the piercings which are causing the cost to go up – again! Should the group insurance cover it?

And what about if Bill were not an idiot – but his friends were. What if they thought that regular exercise and a good diet was bad for you, because they heard about a lot of athletes getting arthritis? What if these friends believed (truly and honestly) that regular exercise was an unreasonably high-risk behaviour, much like nailing one’s hand to stuff would be. And, what if Bill liked to do yoga – and he pulled something that required medical help…a few times?

Who gets to decide who is ‘the idiot’ and who is ‘reasonable’?

Or what if Bill were a Billie – and she had 16 kids, while nobody else in the group had more than 2: should her choices in fertility affect her friends’ medical rates?

Should only her first 2 births be covered by the group’s insurance?

Or should the whole group be responsible for paying for Billie’s hospital bills if she got into an accident because she was speeding? What about the bills of her 16 kids, who were in the vehicle, too?

Who gets to decide?

Before, or after the treatment?

Would any of your answers change if, instead of choosing to enter into this group insurance arrangement, all the friends were forced into it by law, with no means of opting out? You know, like all Canadians are?

These are not easy answers: I certainly don’t know where the balance lies. All I am trying to do is to make sure that people understand that the ‘benefits’ of being ‘one of a group’ come with the cost of allowing the group some control over one’s behaviour. There is no such thing as a ‘free lunch’ – or a free ‘medical care’!

Someone always has to bear the costs: and the one who bears the costs will want to have a say in how you behave (and incur the cost)!

In the UK, this is the reality: people ARE being denied medical treatment because they are deemed to have too high a body-mass-index (which actually penalizes muscular people, as muscle is heavier than fat), as are smokers or dare to get old. Their treatment them just does not seem cost-effective or fair to the rest of society that has to pay for it….

And, with my own eyes, the last time I went to renew one of my kids’ health cards at the Ontario Ministry of Health office (it is downtown – nearest public parking is about a 10-minute walk from the office), I actually saw a guy there, with a broken leg….trying to get some problem with his health-card straightened out, because the people at the hospital’s emergency room refused to treat him until the problem was straightened out. He offered to pay – but the law forbids the hospital to let him pay first and get reimbursed later…as it forbids the hospital to set one’s broken leg (or provide any treatment – even a triage assessment) until one has a working health card.

Think about it.

Posted in debate, freedoms, politics, society. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »

‘Death by Committee’: British socialized medicare hits a new low

September 4, 2009 — xanthippa

Leave it to the Brits, with their wonderful sense of ‘understatement’, to give the expression ‘death by committee’ a very real and unpleasant meaning!

As slowly but surely becomes true of every ‘nationalized’ or ‘universal, government-run’ medical system, there is not enough ‘medicine’ (space, equipment, staff, meds…) to go serve everyone in Britain (once known as ‘Great Britain’ – now, they are too ‘politically correct’ to call themselves ‘Great’).

It would appear that British National Health Service has found a nifty new way to ration their medical care:  kill the ‘old people’!

Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, was among a group of medical experts who wrote to the Telegraph warning that patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives.

Another article on the same topics says:

Under NHS guidance introduced in a number of hospitals to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warned in their letter.

So, if a patient is judged to be ‘ready’, all their medical care is taken away and they are euthanized.  Simple – and it might just free up enough beds to get rid of those pesky statistics about babies being born in hospital hallways, or even toilets…even turning those horny women away seems to cause bad press.

Yeah….

In my never-humble-opinion, people in the UK are being denied medical care, universally, from ‘cradle to grave’!

So, how does this ‘death by committee’ work?

Well, there is this agency, NICE (National Institute of Coordinated Experiments…or was that National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence…or is there a difference?)   which nicely approved this ‘ticker box’ form (you know, there are questions, boxes to ‘tick off’ and the number of ‘ticks’ and the spots they are in will ‘objectively’ determine next course of action).  The ‘medical care team’ – and this team apparently MUST include A doctor…so, the rest are, presumably, administrators and bureaucrats – will ‘tick off’ the boxes.

Notice that this ‘medical care team’ does not include the patient, or any representatives, friends or family of the patient.  This is purely to ensure the ‘ticks’ are made in an objective manner and no mushy sentimentality would come in the way of ‘efficiency’ and ‘excellence’.  In other words, these ‘death committees’ (or ‘death boards, as they have also been called) only produce ‘professional ticks’!

If the ‘ticks’ add up a certain way, the patient gets taken off medicine, denied food and water (apparently, this happens even if the patient is able to feed him/her self), and given a ‘parting shot’ of drugs that kill him/her over the next 24 hours.

Attention is paid to every detail!  For example, these drugs also conveniently sedate the patient as part of the killing process:  so no protest is possible and any signs that the patient is getting better are masked.  It’s ‘neater’ this way.  Dead patients hardly ever complain, you know…

Now, now, there is no point getting all ticked off about it!

They have this form here, which proves that you were supposed to have died already, and you are just taking too long mucking about!  So, it’s not like anyone can blame them, is it?  They are just helping you do the right thing…

In conclusion, I’d like to leave you with this short documentary film:

Posted in opression, politics, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Socialized medicare: a true story

August 27, 2009 — xanthippa

BlazingCatfur has been the advocate for his Mom, as he tries to stop our dismal, ironically called ‘health-care’ system, from killing her:

The attentive care of the paramedics was replaced by – nothing.

We waited nearly an hour for a resident to finally stop by and enquire what the matter was. Appallingly, she had no prior knowledge of why my Mother had been admitted. My shock increased after she asked, in all seriousness, if the angioplasty had been a success. I can only assume that the look on my face caused her to retreat and summon the physician on duty. Exhibiting Solomon like wisdom, the attending doctor suggested that a physical examination was in order. She then disappeared with the resident in tow. A nurse was dispatched who informed us that my Mother would have to be undressed for the examination. Since this Angel of Mercy made no offer to assist, I took it upon myself to undress my bedridden mother in a public corridor, in full view of the passing parade of visitors, patients and staff.

Aside:  his mom was bleeding from an incision in her femoral artery, which was not properly closed following an earlier surgery…you know, the very same femoral artery one can bleed to death from within minutes…


Words just fail me!

It is difficult to understand how so many people just don’t ‘get it’:  life-and-death situations cannot be handed over to bureaucrats, who perform a cost-analysis to decide which medical treatment they will approve – and from whose dictum the medical personnel cannot deviate!

This set of procedures is the basis of ‘socialized medicare’ – and it puts bureaucrats and their ‘due process’ above the well-being of any patient and gives the bureaucrats the right to approve – or not – any and every treatment a medical professional (nurse or doctor) deems best for the patient.  It is this ‘submission’ to the ‘process’ (with its inherent delays in treatment) dictated by the bureaucrats which grinds medical professionals down and turns them from motivated people into automatons who just want to punch in, punch out and not get noticed by the bureaucrats for ‘special assessment’ in between…

The bigger an organization is, the more ‘rules’ and procedures’ have to be put into place to ensure that people do not make ‘biased’ decisions which might, potentially, not be in the best long-term interest of the organization.

Unfortunately, this also becomes true when the medical system is ‘bureaucratorized’. And, health-care becomes bureaucratorized when it is run by an organization so large, the patients become statistics instead of individuals:  that is when ‘charts’ become more influential in a person’s medical treatment than the doctor’s opinion does.   It really does not matter if this is a huge private insurance company (with no fear of competition) or some level of government ….except that, it is much, much harder to sue a government if its actions cause the death or crippling of a loved one!

This is the point when bureaucrats have the final word on what resources a doctor may or may not use to treat a patient….and when the patient becomes nothing more than a liability which costs money!

It is no longer the doctors who are allowed to conduct a procedure they think will help their patient, prescribe treatment – however costly – which will save her/his life – now, it is the bureaucrats whom the doctors have to ask permission before initiating a treatment (and who take their time assessing the risk vs. benefit to their careers if they deny treatment).

Instead of the best interest of the patient, it is now the best interest of the medicare system (or individual bureaucrats who control portions of it) which is the priority.  Even if they are willing to pay (oh, that is just wrong!), a patient will be denied ‘unjustifiable treatment’ – you know, when the cost to the system is so great, saving one life is just not justifiable to the taxpayers…

The result when treatment is deemed ‘financially unjustifiable’ is, of course, the death of the patient.  You have GOT to ask yourself just what factors are considered in THAT assessment!

In Britain today, their ‘socialized medicare system’ is more and more costly, and currently contains more bureaucrats who oversee the medical personnel (to ensure they adhere to government-decreed rules of what medical procedures are ‘warranted’ under specific conditions) than they have doctors and nurses combined!

Hat-tip on the video:  Walker

Best wishes to Blazing Catfur and his mom!  Our thoughts are with you!

Posted in about, freedoms, opression, philosophy, politics, society. Tags: , , . 2 Comments »

How vaccination works

April 30, 2009 — xanthippa

One of the ways our society relies on to combat viral diseases is through vaccination.  But, how does that work?

First, let’s look at viruses:

http://medicineworld.org/images/blogs/11-2006/influenza-flu-virus-230.jpg

Diagram of an influenza virus from MedicineWorld.org

There are several important things to notice:

  • The coiled things on the inside, which look like springs or slinkies, are the genetic material of the virus.  Viruses only contain half the genetic material that a ‘normal’ living cell needs, so they cannot make more (reproduce) unless they invade another cell and hijack its reproductive system.
  • The wall of the virus (lipid envelope) is made up of two layers of lipid molecules.  This wall is an incredibly good barrier, preventing material from going through it.
  • The  yellow spikes and other bits that stick outside the wall are actually proteins which are embedded in the wall of the virus.  Because the double lipid wall is such a good barrier, these proteins are the ‘channels’ through which things can move across the wall.  All cells (not just viruses) have them:  they can move water and nutrients (and waste materials) through the bi-lipid cell wall, allowing a cell to ‘eat’, ‘breathe’ and communicate.

These proteins that ‘stick outside the wall’ are very important for another reason:  each type of virus (or other infecting cell) has a slightly different types of proteins sticking out, and they are arranged in slightly different ways.  Therefore, the ‘pattern’ and ‘shape’ of these proteins has become the easiest way to identify the virus.  (Scientists can also analyze the genetic structure of a virus, but this is not something our immune system can do!  So, our bodies recognize viruses by the ‘fingerprint’ of the proteins on their surface.)

An actual electron-microscope view of a virus looks like this:

http://blog.silive.com/health/2008/10/avian-flu-virus.jpg

Image on an avian influenza virus from Health&Fitness

As you can see, the proteins stick out on the outside of the wall of the virus, and they form a very specific pattern.  This is very important, because it is precisely by the specific proteins and the pattern they form that our immune system recognizes viruses (and other ‘pathogens‘, which cause infection).

Looking at the human immune system quickly will not be so easy, because it is much more complex than a simple virus is.  Let me give it a try…

When our body is infected by an ‘antigen‘ ( a pathogen which will cause our immune system to react and generate antibodies – as opposed to a poison, etc.), our immune system springs into action.  It follows a very specific chain of steps:

  • ‘General defense’:  the ‘generic’ cells which kill all kinds of ‘invaders’ are released by the immune system in hope of containing the infection within hours, before it can spread too far thoroughout one’s body.
  • If this does not work, the next line of defense begins:  this is when the body begins to defend itself against a ‘specific antigen’.
    • the body attempts to identify the infection by looking at the ‘fingerprint’ pattern of proteins on its skin/surface/cell membrane by comparing the current infection against its ‘memory database’ of past infections the body has successfully defeated
      • if it has no record of past infection that looks ‘like’ this one, it begins to ‘figure out’ the best way to fight it
        • once it figures out the best ‘antibody’ to produce, which would be most effective in fighting this specific infection, it will begin to produce it…but, figuring it out is a process of trial-and-error, and can take quite a while
      • if it finds a ‘match’ in its ‘memory database’ between the ‘fingerprint’ of the surface proteins – types and pattern – of this infection, it begins to produce the same antibodies which worked against it the last time
    • the body produces the antibodies which fight against this specific infection:  that is, it produces the very antibodies that it produced the last time it saw this pattern, and got better as a result
    • if these antibodies are strong enough to kill the infection faster than it can reproduce AND if the infection has not reached a critical level before the body can produce this antibody in sufficient amounts to conquer it, the person will survive the illness which is the result of the infection

So, how does vaccination fit the picture?

Vaccines are made up of either weakened viruses (viruses and bacteria are the most common forms of infection, and we have antibiotics to fight bacteria (viruses are too small/primitive to be killed by antibiotics)) or viruses that are dead and ‘ground up’.

When the the body ‘receives’ the vaccine, it perceives it as any other infection.  The vaccines are engineered to provoke the body to start manufacturing antibodies and the cells which recognize the’fingerprint pattern’ of the ‘antigen’ (weakened virus, or bits of the virus wall with the ‘fingerprint pattern’ of proteins on it which the body uses to recognize an infection).  In other words, the weak virus or bits of the wall of that virus will be fought – and catalogued for future use.

The theory is that if a virus (or another antigen) enters the body in the future, and the body will recognize it and produce antibodies which ‘recognize’ it and fight it.

By ‘recognizing’ the invader, the body can begin to produce the antibodies very quickly.  While some infections take a long time to overwhelm the body, other ones – the ones called ‘virulent‘ – can make one ill very, very quickly… faster than the body can find an antibody that would work!  (During the more virulent outbreaks of ‘black death‘, it was said that people could go to sleep feeling perfectly healthy, but die of the disease before the morning…)  This speed in the body’s ability to defend itself against an invading infection can mean the difference between life and death…or, at least, between a speedy recovery and an unpleasant illness.

Therefore, the philosophy behind vaccination is to introduce a non-lethat (not dangerous) form of a really bad pathogen to a body in order to get its immune system to figure out (without the danger of being ovewhelmed by the infecting disease) how to fight that specific germ, so that the body can store this information in its ‘pathogen database’.  Then, if it ever encounters the ‘full-strength’ germ, it will be able to ‘remember’ how to fight quickly – not giving the invading infection the time to become strong by spending valuable time trying to figure out how to fight it!

This is a beautiful theory!

And, like all such theories, it does actually work in many, many cases!  Unless a person has an atypical, stressed or diseased immune system, vaccination will be very effective in providing them with protection against a potential future infection.

add to del.icio.usDigg itStumble It!Add to Blinkslistadd to furladd to ma.gnoliaadd to simpyseed the vineTailRank

Posted in education, politics, society, technology. Tags: , , , , . 1 Comment »

Swine flu: arm yourself with information

April 28, 2009 — xanthippa

The best way to combat things – in my never-humble-opinion – is to arm yourself with information.

So, without further ado, here is a YouTube video – just released – by Thunderf00t (I have found him to be an accurate and reliable source of information on scientific topics in the past):

add to del.icio.usDigg itStumble It!Add to Blinkslistadd to furladd to ma.gnoliaadd to simpyseed the vineTailRank

Posted in education, science, society. Tags: , , , . 1 Comment »

The problem with vaccines….

April 27, 2009 — xanthippa

As the reports about the ‘swine flu’ are spreading like wildfire, people are wondering how to protect themselves.  This brings up more and more talk about ‘vaccines’:  how large are our supplies, how easily we can create more, and so on.

Frankly, we have a problem with vaccines…

No, I don’t mean the ‘accidents’ that can happen in the manufacture and distribution of vaccines.  These are real problems, because ‘human error’ is, well, something we, humans do.  But, we do learn from our mistakes (I hope!) – plus, depriving oneself of a useful defense against disease just because someone might have made a mistake somewhere along the way is a little extreme…  We ‘ought to’ worry about this in the sense that we demand good oversight and testing and all that – but there comes a point when we must trust our government institutions to do their job!

Nor am I talking about the laughable ease with which terrorists could use ‘live vaccines’ to inject multiple live viruses into willing persons, in the hope that the viruses simultaneously attacking the same cells will produce a ‘super-virus’ in at least one of them (this is called ‘reassortment‘), then using our mass transport system to spread them.  That is just a little paranoid… and worries like this are best left to our law-enforcement agencies!

The real problem we all have with ‘vaccination’ is much deeper and much more serious.

The real problem lies in the unrealistic expectations we place in vaccination!

The fault  for this lies – to a great degree – with the medical community.  (To a lesser degree, the fault lies with the mainstream media (MSM) for accepting the medical community’s word without digging deep enough to get the facts, and with each and every one of us who lets the medical and journalistic communities get away with doing such a poor job.)

Please, don’t get me wrong:  I am not ‘anti-vaccine’.

It’s just that I cannot stand it when people are given ‘partial information’ when they are expecting ‘the whole truth’ and when people are generally misled about ‘stuff’ – especially about ‘stuff’ which involves science!

And, when it comes to vaccines, we are often told by our MDs and other ‘health workers’ only part of the truth:  only the information which will manipulate us into doing what they think  is best for us, instead of letting us make the choice ourselves.  They may mean ‘best’ for us – but, by not telling us all we need to know, they are depriving us of the ability to make an informed choice for ourselves.

I am not joking – or making this up.  Physicians are taught (according to an MD in Ontario) in their medical ethics class that their responsibility is to the ‘greater community’, not individual patients.  Therefore, it is their ethical responsibility to only give their patients positive information on vaccination so that they will build a ‘greater herd immunity’ (his words, not mine) – even if this will harm a percentage of their patients.  This ‘will lead to overall benefit to society’, so ‘the end justifies the means’…

So, please, take a moment to consider for yourselves whether or not we have a problem ‘with vaccinations’:

  1. Every medical procedure has risks associated with it – even vaccination. We need accurate information on the risk to each one of us – as an individual, so we will have the ability to make informed choices for ourselves. Yet, we are told no more than vaccinations are ‘safe’.
  2. No vaccine is 100% effective. Some people will have no protection against a virus, even though they have been vaccinated against it.  Yet, before we are given a vaccine, we are not shown any figures which show what the efficacy of this vaccine is, and how likely someone within our ‘demographic’ is to benefit form it! (Most doctors who administer the vaccines do not have these figures – I have asked, many times!)  Yes, there are various methods of measuring the efficacy of a vaccine, but some of the vaccines we are currently offered are known to have less than 50% (some less than 20%) in ‘field application’ (meaning in ‘trials outside the lab’ – like when administered to ‘general population’). Yet, we are told that vaccinations WILL protect us against infectious diseases!
  3. Believing that they have 100% protection because they’ve been vaccinated, people are not likely to take other precautions. Of course, this will raise the danger of exposure to the very danger they think they are safe from. And THIS is the REAL problem…

Nothing we do in life is without a risk associated with it!

This does not mean we ought to ‘stop living’….  But it does mean that as responsible people, we must make choices about what we do, and how we do it.  Therefore, we MUST be given accurate information about just how effective the various actions we take to protect ourselves from infectious diseases truly are!

Vaccinations are likely a key weapon which we can (and should) use to combat the spread of infectious diseases.  But to use any weapon effectively, we need to know its strengths as well as its weaknesses.

When it comes to vaccinations, we know we are not being told the whole truth. That is dangerous!

And THAT is the problem with vaccinations…

add to del.icio.usDigg itStumble It!Add to Blinkslistadd to furladd to ma.gnoliaadd to simpyseed the vineTailRank

Posted in debate, education, human nature, science, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , . Leave a Comment »
Newer posts »