fULly vApoRiZed: Obama, Euthanasia, and Jack Johnson

“Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he’ll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.

-- David Broder 1929-- : in “Washington Post” 18 July 1973

If he were alive, W. E. B. Dubois would say the idea of “getting beyond race” is a kind of cultural conceit meant to distract us from the root cause of social inequality: economic injustice. He had it right in seeing wealth as the marker of power. So it should come as no surprise that the new administration signals business as usual in Washington. Case in point: as it becomes more and more clear that Obama’s policy decisions have less to do with implementing real change (his buzzword) than getting re-elected, the specter of yet another pedestrian politician, ambitious for power, is inexorably shaping itself out of the public illusion. The same domestic and foreign policies that have ensured the position we’re in have simply been handed over to a new station manager. Dubois would say issues surrounding Obama’s shade and diction have much less to do with his agenda than the class and economic interests that maintain the status quo. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss; but we have been fooled again.

“Admirers of the president now embrace actions they once denounced as criminal, or rationalize and evade such questions, or attempt to explain away what cannot be excused….Let us grant that Barack Obama is as intelligent as his admirers insist. What evidence do we possess that he is also a moral virtuoso? What evidence do we possess that he is a good, wise, or even a decent man? Yes, he can be eloquent, yet eloquence is no guarantee of wisdom or of virtue. Yes, he has a nice family, but that evinces a private morality. Public morality requires public action, and all available public evidence points to a man with the character of a common politician, whose singular ambition in life was to attain power; nothing in Barack Obama’s political career suggests that he would ever willingly commit to a course of action that would cost him an election….Having embraced and professionalized the powers of force and fraud previously associated with the likes of John Yoo and Dick Cheney, Obama has embarked on a course of war that will certainly invite further abuses of power. His political survival now depends on martial success in a land that has defeated some of history’s most brutal strategies of conquest. Obama has set a trap for himself, but because he is such a clever politician, the spring is just as likely to fall on us instead. Such insidious governance demands serious, sustained opposition, not respectful disagreement or fanciful historical apologies or mournful lamentations about the tragedy of his presidency. Principles can be sacrificed to hopes as well as to fears.”

-- Roger D. Hodge, Harper’s Magazine, February 2010

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January 26, 2010

Cases

An Ill Father, a Life-or-Death Decision

By ALICIA von

STAMWITZ

…One nurse grunts and rolls her eyes dramatically. The other mutters, “Oh, brother — here we go again,” and shoves a stainless steel instrument cart closer to the gurney. The doctor, more professional, remains impassive as he suggests I leave the room. “It is difficult to watch this procedure. Most patients struggle and flail, so we will have to use restraints.”

Yes, I know. I kiss my father on the cheek, tell him I will be back soon and head to the waiting room.

What the doctor and nurses do not know, what I hesitate to admit even to myself, is that I almost gave them the answer they wanted: the reasonable one. But I would have been terribly wrong.

My father never really recovered. He could never again breathe without a respirator, he never left the hospital bed, and he eventually needed dialysis and a feeding tube. Six months later he died of heart failure.

I suppose my father’s decision was a mistake. But it was his mistake to make, not mine. My role was to support my father, no matter what, and to tell the truth, no matter how hard.”

Given my interest in the Euthanasia issue, I thought I might comment on this excerpt from a piece in the NYT Science Times. Ms. Von Stamwitz writes, “…it was his mistake to make, not mine.” My advice for her would have been this: a mistake is a mistake, whether you make it, or he. Why not assume that acting on your better judgment -- which would, of course, include the emotional component of your deep love and respect for your father -- would have been the right call. Further, I suppose there will always be instances where reasonable answers are terribly wrong, but these cases are invariably the exception rather than the rule. Given von Stamwitz’s description of what came after her decision, I would argue this case would not qualify as one of these exceptions.

On Ice Hockey: Kings' Lombardi should rethink comments against Michigan

By Tim Rohan
Daily Sports Writer On January 24th, 2010

“This guy has never had any coaching (at the University of Michigan). Jack just did what he wanted.”

Michigan is the worst. For hockey people, if you’ve got a choice between a kid — all things being equal — one’s going to Michigan and one’s going to Boston University, you all want your player (going to Boston University). Michigan’s players — (head coach) Red (Berenson) doesn’t coach. It’s ‘do what you want.’ He gets the best players in the country.”

— Los Angeles Kings President and General Manager Dean Lombardi to blogger Gann Matsuda at Hockeytalk.biz, on Kings defenseman Jack Johnson and what Lombardi considers a lack of coaching at Michigan under Red Berenson.

You may recall that some years ago I editorialized on Jack Johnson’s commitment to finishing his education. Within the last two weeks of my class, he had to fly to L.A. for five days to negotiate a multi-million dollar contract with the Kings. Rather than simply withdraw from school, he investigated the end of semester work his professors expected of him, completed the assignments, and returned all course work on the last day. I was impressed. But not as impressed as I was when he showed up a year and a half later to take a spring class (Essay Writing 325.002) toward obtaining his degree. Over the time I had Jack in class, I can say this for sure, he’s not about money. And this is more than I can say about guys like Mr. Lombardi, who couldn’t give a whit about the academic component of an athlete’s character. Note that his advice on choosing a college sees a player’s university experience as being analogous to being on a farm team. I would ask Mr. Lombardi if the “best players in the country” that attend Michigan got there by, “doing what they wanted.” It also seems odd that all of the past and present players I’ve talked to, of which there are many, seem to agree on one thing: Berenson is himself disciplined, and expects the same out of his players. In fact, in my discussions with Lucas Glendening, Chris Brown, Kevin Porter, and Johnson, there was a common thread in their admiration for Red: This 71 year old dude skates so hard with them as to role model the idea of challenging themselves to work harder. More than one has said he stands in front of the goal (no mask) and goads them to try and get the puck past him; while all the while blocking any and every shot that comes his way. "Jack did what he wanted"? Yeah, right! The truth is L.A. wants Jack out, which will be their loss, and a huge gain for the team that gets him. Jack’s response to all this: “I’m a Michigan man.”

Best - Randy Tessier

Randy's News & Commentary

“Naturally, such reasoning does not apply to everyone. There are people who feel no craving for immortality, and who shudder at the thought of sitting on a cloud and playing the harp for ten thousand years! There are also quite a few who have been so buffeted by life, or who feel such disgust for their own existence, that they far prefer absolute cessation to continuance”(301)

-- C. G. Jung “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” (1961)

In Jung’s estimation, those who hold to a belief in the afterlife “live more sensibly, feel better, and are more at peace” than those who doubt the mythic life. He describes those of us with little trust or faith in some atemporal beyond as living in a “senseless mad rush.” But isn’t it also a fact that the confidence and security true believers draw upon in assuming an “Indefinite continuity beyond their present existence” is what compels them to slaughter Indians and fly into skyscrapers in the name of some “He” who stewards their particular belief system? Jung sees modern man as too preoccupied with the physical and psychic present, but in valorizing the mythic over the “shortsightedness of super-intellectuals,” he loses sight of the fact that the “daemonization of the world” has always been perpetuated by racially and ethnically based religious myths that reject the authority of science and logic.

January 22, 2010

Editorial (New York Times

The Court’s Blow to Democracy

With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century. Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.

Congress must act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy.

As a result of Thursday’s ruling, corporations have been unleashed from the longstanding ban against their spending directly on political campaigns and will be free to spend as much money as they want to elect and defeat candidates. If a member of Congress tries to stand up to a wealthy special interest, its lobbyists can credibly threaten: We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.

I like that word, “disingenuously.” Fancy way of saying insincerely, but I like it. The dictionary says “Not straightforward or candid; crafty,” that also works. I mean, hey, it seems pretty straightforward to me, the court is upholding that most sacred freedom of all: the freedom to spend. Now spending is fine, but have you ever been or felt spent? That’s the feeling when you’re out of the game. That’s what happens when you’ve lost the ability to spend – when you’re broke. Funny word, broke, like you need to be fixed, something broken, obsolete, expendable. The high-fallutin academic word for this is commodified. I suppose the judges realized the maintenance of their inflated value as social commodities is a higher priority than the well being of the United States’ citizens.

“Report: 'U,' other universities failing in their public mission

By Joseph Lichterman
Daily Staff Reporter On January 18th, 2010

A new study found that top public universities, including the University of Michigan, are giving less financial aid to students from lower income families and are increasing their aid to students who come from more affluent families.”

January 20, 2010

We always knew there was an invisible affirmative action at work long before any of these socially misguided attempts were launched to upset the good old boy merit system. I mean, whether you attended Birmingham Seaholm in the northern suburbs, or Denby High School on Detroit’s east side, should have little to do with your academic skill set. Right? That the relationship between social strata and academic achievement is well documented is the reason Affirmative Action was struck down. The same conservative mindset that recently legitimized an heretofore illegal manifestation of corporate greed – the use of unlimited cash to directly influence the outcome of elections – is at work in the present push to give to the rich and take from the poor on the educational front. The aim is always the same: to vigilantly patrol and control the rigidly maintained boundary between

the fatted rich and the desperate poor and working middle class. The old saw, “money goes where money is,” seems appropriate here. I guess it’s another sign of these tough economic times we're in that it’s so bad even rich people need financial aid. I mean if paying the costs of your child’s tuition threatens to reduce the average percentage of yearly gain you’ve enjoyed for the previous decade, you deserve to have little Johnny’s tuition subsidized. Which institution is better served to do this than the University of Michigan. With a 7 billion plus endowment at hand, let’s make sure the money serves to ensure the status quo: an educational system that maintains a fundamental inequality based on racial and socio-economic factors.

January 20, 2010

Teacher With Bible Divides Ohio Town

By IAN URBINA

MOUNT VERNON, Ohio — Most people in this quiet all-American town describe themselves as devoutly Christian, but even here they are deeply divided over what should happen to John Freshwater.

Mr. Freshwater, an eighth-grade public school science teacher, is accused of burning a cross onto the arms of at least two students and teaching creationism.

…Mr. Freshwater, who declined to be interviewed, has said he did not mean to burn a cross on any student’s arm. Instead, he said he intended to leave a temporary X on the skin using a device called a Tesla coil during a science demonstration. He says he had done that, with no complaints, hundreds of times in his 21 years as a teacher at Mount Vernon Middle School.

One high school teacher said she consistently had to reteach evolution to Mr. Freshwater’s students because they did not master the basics. Another testified that Mr. Freshwater told his students they should not always take science as fact, citing as an example a study that posited the possibility of a gene for homosexuality.

“Science is wrong,” Mr. Freshwater was reported as saying, “because the Bible states that homosexuality is a sin, and so anyone who is gay chooses to be gay and is therefore a sinner.”

For this one I thought my interview mode might work best. With that in mind, let’s hear what Uncle Hackaloogie had to say.

Me: Uncle Hackaloogie, having convinced us of the benefits of smoking tobacco, might you not render an opinion on Mr. Freshwater’s actions?

UH: I don’t know what the hell yer tryin to say, but he coulda been named Mr. Breathafreshaira. Your queer-lovin readers probably think it’s bad burning crosses on little 8^th grade heathens, but these little pagans are only beginning to fill up with God’s loving nectar. Godamn right science is wrong. Fact is, most scientists are homos.

Me: Wait a minute, are you saying evolution is wrong, that the fossil record is a myth?

UH: I do own some records, but I never heard of the fossils. As for evolution, I think it’s a good thing, specially when yer revoltin against some terrorist dictator, like Obama.

Me: I didn’t mean revolution, I meant the idea that human life has evolved, starting with lower animal forms and stretching upward to man.

UH: You suck, with all your evil ideas about apes becoming men, and dead things meaning something. Fuck You!

Me: Any final thoughts about Mr. Freshwater?

UH: No!

Thank you Uncle Hackaloogie. And that concludes today’s hillbilly interview.

Best - Randy

A Medical Marijuana Essay

“The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for and deserted by everybody.”

-- Mother Teresa 1910-97: in The Observer 3 October 1971

Compassion is commonly defined as having three components: a deep awareness of and sympathy for the suffering of others coupled with the wish to relieve it. And indeed, it seems our society is quite comfortable with the first two, having to do with recognition and understanding; but when it gets to the third, the issue of relief – let’s call it the “doing something about it” -- divisions arise. And this makes some sense given that the first two are passive states of mind, while the third, which could be described as passive if we focus on the “wish” (noun) rather than “relieve” (verb) requires no other action. On the one hand, reams have been written on the benefit of contemplation, and there is no denying it’s the wise thing to do much of the time; on the other hand, doing nothing under the guise of pretending careful consideration has a long history of justifying discrimination, prejudice, and inequality. And so it is that disease and disability are political issues as much as health concerns.

Consider the medical marijuana issue. Does a person’s determination that marijuana relieves their pain and suffering give them the right to have it? What we are really talking about here is the right to one’s own body. Pain and suffering are physical and psychological manifestations that only the agent experiencing them can sense. In a word, what pain, or suffering, exactly is, is particular to the individual. And this very specifically relates to the politics of the body.

In his book on the relationship between illness and the goals of medicine, “The Nature of Suffering” (1991), Eric J. Cassell writes: “Sick persons must be empowered in relation to the body – freed from fear and from bondage to the body to the degree possible. To accomplish this they must be provided with knowledge, medications, and other tools to control the manifestations of disease and the support needed to behave normally despite them”(243).

Key here, are the concepts of empowerment, freedom, and knowledge. Given the subjective nature of pain and suffering it seems not only right to allow a sick person’s access to marijuana, but unethical and immoral to do otherwise. As Martin Luther King Jr. might say if he were alive on his name’s day, whether we help those in need of succor is not a choice but a duty: “injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”

It is our obligation to empower and enable the suffering and disabled, release them from the fear of seeking relief; and provide them the knowledge to access those tools necessary to a functional life. So, too, is it our duty to use the Constitution as a force for good. A cornerstone of the American political covenant is the right to the “pursuit of happiness,” and that striving would include the freedom to seek palliation from a life of pain and suffering.

And so Michael Oliveri, who has Muscular Dystrophy, and Diane Rivera-Riportella, who has Lou Gehrig’s disease, were two of the many who gathered to applaud the New Jersey legislature’s courage in making that state one of 14 that have legalized the use of marijuana to help patients with debilitating illnesses. “It’s nice to finally see a day when democracy helps heal people,” said Charles Kwiatkowski, 38, one of the many who assembled in Trenton before the vote and celebrated the measure’s approval. Mr. Kwiatkowski, of Hazlet, N.J., who has multiple sclerosis, said his doctors have recommended marijuana to treat neuralgia, which has resulted in his losing all sensation in his lower and upper right arm. “The M.S. Society has shown that this drug will help slow the progression of my disease. Why would I want to use anything else?”

Why indeed! How ironic it is that in an age obsessed with a pharmaceutical fix for everything, an organic remedy as old as recorded history turns out to be the best medicine. The day will come when marijuana will reign as the most effective treatment for depression. But that coronation will most certainly come in the face of a strong and well-heeled opposition from the drug makers who peddle snake oil remedies that have become more and more suspect in their effectiveness, and increasingly perilous in the insidious side-effects they cause. Can you imagine their worry and outrage at the thought of a threat to their insatiable greed. Or even worse, the plaguing nightmares they might suffer at the thought of patients producing their own medicines and managing their own treatment plans.

Which brings us to Cassel’s third component in empowering the sick -- the provision of knowledge. There’s no gainsaying the modern idea that knowledge is power. But knowledge, like medicines themselves, is prescribed and dispensed. It’s no accident then, that in terms of the spiritual and physical liberation marijuana offers; and its potential to affect transformation and healing; and its resistance to appropriation and control, cannabis has been seen as a threat. After all, given that power produces knowledge to serve its own ends, what we know and have been told about marijuana manifests itself in cultural productions, like the film Reefer Madness, for example, which reinforces the wholly fallacious Gateway Drug theory, and other such nonsensical propaganda that has been generated and perpetrated by categorizing marijuana as a narcotic -- as if smoking a joint were the same as shooting heroin. In his later work, Michel Foucault, the 20^th century French philosopher, re-conceptualized his power-knowledge dyad, renaming it Governmentality, meaning that knowledge is controlled and dispensed in such a way as to ensure that governments produce those citizens that are best suited to fulfill their policies. Our government’s long history of demonizing marijuana is a case in point.

It is a tragic fact that the drug lobby in Washington -- which is so powerful in and inextricable from the government itself as to be complicit in the big lie that marijuana is an empty panacea and worthless placebo -- epitomizes the kind of avaricious quackery that reaps huge profits by proliferating false promises and pyrrhic promises.

Sadly, it’s not the suffering “hip” that need to be educated on the medicinal virtues of pot; it is rather our sick and debilitated brethren who deny themselves relief out of a governmental induced ignorance -- fellow citizens that desperately need the enlightenment of truth.

It’s time for the truth about marijuana, and it’s time for a grassroots movement to restore the use of cannabis to its rightful place as a healing sacrament as old as humankind itself.

Best - Randy Tessier (January, 2010)

Dr. Randy's Eczema Relief Plan

“Illness is not something a person has; it’s another way of being.”

-- Jonathan Miller 1934-- : “The Body in Question” (1978)

Dear Friends:

My purpose today is to offer advice to you who suffer the torments of eczema and other such skin afflictions.

Almost a year ago, in April, I developed eczema. Subsequent to that, I visited the dermatology department at the University of Michigan three times. A steroid cream (Clobetasol) was prescribed (I rarely used it, since it compromises the skin’s strength and elasticity), along with the standard advice that I treat my skin with a moisturizer (they suggested Eucerin), and take a daily dose of an antihistamine (Zirtec).

Since then the condition has waxed and waned, with no dramatic change, that is, until recently. I hesitate to say it’s gone, but my skin (particularly the elbows and upper arms, lower legs, and haunches) has improved so dramatically that it almost seems to have totally cleared up.

Perhaps being almost 3 years out from the chemo has had something to do with it. The speculation being (mine) that my immune system had recovered to the point that it can assist my skin in healing itself. Whatever the case, here is my advice on what I’ve been doing, quite religiously, to address this sometimes maddening malady.

Aside from the daily regimen I’m about to prescribe, my companion Brigitte has outfitted her living room and bedroom with a humidifier and vaporizer, which has to be taken into account along with the routine below.

FIRST THING IN THE MORNING

Upon rising, take 1 tablespoon cod liver oil, or, 3 capsules of same with vitamin A&D added. You should also drink plenty of water through the day and night (keep water on your nightstand). The idea with the fish oil, as with water, is to hydrate the skin from the inside out.

Take the Zirtec (the CVS generic, (Cetirizine Hydrochloride) which I take, works fine, and it’s cheap).

As you take your morning constitutional (on the toilet, or not), liberally apply a heavy salve (NOT CREAM) to the legs, arms, wrists, haunches, and where needed. If you’ve suffered enough, the greasy aspect won’t bother you. If you have some privacy, remain naked for a while, while the salve is absorbed. When I’m going to be home for a while, I use A&D ointment, which stinks a bit, but provides great relief. Vaseline and Eucerin (there are generic equivalents, look in the baby section of the drugstore) work well if you’re going out in public and want a scent-free ointment.

THROUGH THE DAY

Drink water, and carry a tube of petroleum jelly (keep it in your car) and use it if you feel a twinge of itch.

At noon take one cod liver oil capsule (at bedtime as well).

After the gym, or late day shower, liberally re-slather ointments, just as you did in the morning.

NIGHT

Before bed, plenty of water, and a light (depending on your feeling about greasy sheets) or heavy pre-sleep application of the ointments.

LONG TERM

Stay With It and Don’t Give Up! If you think about it, no health problem is ever cured overnight, so don’t be discouraged if it takes a minute.

I hope this is helpful.

Best – Randy Tessier

The Lowest Animal (Part II)

“A robin red breast in a cage

Puts all heaven in a rage.”

-- William Blake 1757-1827: “Auguries of Innocence” (c.1803)

Funny how something like terrorism slips under the radar when something really bad happens, like the earthquake in Haiti. Irony is that the terrorists are probably feeling like Gary Condit after 9/11. Well, not really, since Mr. Condit (he’s since been exonerated for the murder of Chandra Levy) had to be relieved that the klieg light moved on, while the terrorists are bristling that Mother Nature dare steal their thunder. Make no mistake about it, these miserable thugs definitely see Mother Nature as a puppet of Allah. But that’s not unusual, since we Christians see amoral events and cruel coincidences as something dictated by a Supreme Being. So let’s assume the earthquake is God’s rod. What might we do to stay his hand? But Randy, you say, “That would be questioning his motives.” Hmmm…duh…isn’t that what we do when we pray for someone’s health, good fortune, and happiness. I mean, Gods will be done! It’s not a joke folks, what possibly could we puny sinners in the hands of an angry God do? Anyway, he’s got bigger fish to fry. Like providing a pretext for executing queers in Africa.

(The painting above is taken from the wall of a gas chamber at Auschwitz)

It’s hard to comment on the behavior of the American media concerning Haiti. Until recently, it seemed that there was an ever so slight restraint left, in terms of the media’s insatiable need to pander to our most base interests. Over my time of getting old, the media that presented disgusting non-fictional images were typically documentary films concerned with the Holocaust and other genocidal atrocities that took place the twentieth century, the age of cinematic reportage. In military footage and obscure documentaries -- the best of which is Alain Resnais’, “Night and Fog”(1956) – we saw bodies, tangled, emaciated, anonymous, being bulldozed into mass graves.

Now comes 2010, and a 7 magnitude earthquake in a country so desperate, ignored, and corrupt as to be less a nation than population in chaos -- despairing, angry, and barbaric. “The Comedians” (1966), Graham Green’s fictional treatment of Haitian politics in the 1950s is set under the rule of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his ruthless secret police, the “Tonton Macoute.” Suffice it to say the leaders following since have led gangster regimes swollen by plundered wealth and natural resources while the destitute populace has deforested the island in senseless desperation.

It’s no accident then, that without a government presence to ensure a modicum of decency, the media has zoomed in with close ups of front end loaders scooping up piles of bodies, loading them into dump trucks, and depositing them in heaps outside the city, where pits await their being bulldozed into their final resting place. R.I.P. & PRAISE GOD!

(Click on this)

Speaking of gross, grotesque, and disgusting stuff, we watched a new HBO documentary on PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), “I Am An Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA” (2007, Dir. Matthew Galkin). Too much. The image that sticks in my head over and above the cat, dog, and monkey experiments, is the machine that de-beaks the chickens. Wow!

I guess I’m just your typical left wing hypocrite. I wear leather and love rib-eyes; but if I had to kill the animals myself; and I had access to a local people’s co-op that could provide me a vegetarian complete protein diet; and a convenient sushi bar that only served wild caught fish certified to have been caught on barbless hooks in pollution free waters; and there was a nearby fowl sanctuary where I could buy cage-free goose, duck, chicken and Ostrich eggs; then I might consider not eating meat. Shadow agrees, she was sad, however, in seeing the mistreatment of her Pit Bull brethren.

Speaking of Shadow (nice transition, eh?), she loves nothing better than chasing the waves and acting bad around the Bystrom compound. So I wasn’t surprised when she asked me when we were going north this year. Fact is, we're heading up for an entire month this year. Which reminds me, I’ve gotta call Beamer and set up a gig at the Lumberjack.

See ya later -- Randy

Playing God

“The worst part of being gay in the twentieth century is all that damn disco music to which one has to listen”

-- Quentin Crisp 1908-99: “Manners From Heaven” (1984)

Never fear, Mcgee! You’re not the only one who thinks misfortune might be some form of divine retribution; although the term “might” is a word absent from the vocabulary of self-righteous hypocrites like Pat Robertson. Who needs some stinking seismologist to explain the devastation in Haiti when we all know the cause was simply a display of almighty God’s wrath. I’d like to ask Pat why God chose an earthquake rather than a Tsunami to wash away their sins. The photo above should leave no doubt about the kinds of sinners deserving of punishment.

For Robertson, the Haitians might be compared to those fucking queers who were visited with the A.I.D.S. virus because of their sick and perverted sins. PRAISE GOD!

Kampala, Uganda - Proposed legislation would impose the death penalty for some gay Ugandans, and their family and friends could face up to seven years in jail if they fail to report them to authorities. Even landlords could be imprisoned for renting to homosexuals.

It’s no wonder that these twisted evangelicals who launched a campaign to plant their homophobic seeds in Africa have remained silent as Uganda stands on the verge of legislating the death penalty for homosexuals. Forget allowing them to marry, let’s kill ‘em!

Haven’t been blogging much due to a combination of work and sloth. One of the positives of Mr. Mcgee’s honesty and candor on his Carepages site has been the social networking it’s created in terms of rallying his friends around him, and stimulating an ongoing dialogue between those that leave comments on his blog.

Mr. Stadz from the city by the bay took some thoughtful exception to my comment concerning the idea that doctors sometimes become so focused on curing the disease that they lose sight of the suffering patient. He made the point that…

Let’s quote him: “Randy T sez, ‘Physicians are trained to focus more on the disease than the patient. It’s in their blood,’ but I think they have to focus that tightly to play the game. Think about it: how well would you play poker if all you could think of is how it would affect the other guy to not win the hand?”

The game analogy is wanting. You’re spot on Michael, in suggesting many docs see their work as “playing the game,” which is always a plus when they’re good at what they do. But I doubt people who suffer serious illness perceive themselves as participants in a game. Suppose we do imagine physician and patient as in a game. Who has the most to lose when the chips are down? Remember, too,there's a third party in this game -- Nature. And she ALWAYS wins..

Sherwin Nuland, who teaches surgery and the history of medicine at Yale, in his wonderful book, “How We Die” (1993), writes:

“There is an element [Nuland refers here to doctors’ obsession with solving ‘The Riddle of Disease] these days that often conspires to isolate the mortally ill. I can think of no better word for it than ‘futility.’ Pursuing treatment against great odds may seem like a heroic act to some, but commonly it is a form of unwilling disservice to patients; it blurs the borders of candor and reveals a fundamental schism between the best interests of patients and their families on the one hand and of physicians on the other.”

Nuland’s point is that, what William Bean of the University of Iowa calls “the busy paraphernalia of scientific medicine,” often distracts doctors -- and in a way offers a comfortable form of moral denial that fosters baseless hopes -- from the sobering fact that life is but a “brief candle,” as Macbeth puts it, “That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.” All of the machines, medications, and therapies that modern medicine can muster, only

serve to avert our eyes from nature’s clock.

Here’s a last passage from Nuland before I move on:

“Every medical specialist must admit that he has at times convinced patients to undergo diagnostic or therapeutic measures at a point in illness so far beyond reason that The Riddle might better have remained unsolved. Too often near the end, were the doctor able to see deeply within himself, he might recognize that his decisions and advice are motivated by his inability to give up The Riddle and admit defeat as long as there is any chance of solving it. Though he be kind and considerate of the patient he treats, he allows himself to push his kindness aside because the seduction of The Riddle is so strong and the failure to solve it renders him so weak.”

Hence my meaning when I say, “it’s in their blood.”

And so, I’m moving on!

Peace - Randy

Mercy!

January 12, 2010

New Jersey Lawmakers Pass Medical Marijuana Bill

By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

TRENTON — The New Jersey Legislature approved a measure on Monday that would make the state the 14th in the nation, but one of the few on the East Coast, to legalize the use of marijuana to help patients with chronic illnesses.

The measure — which would allow patients diagnosed with severe illnesses like cancer, AIDS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, muscular dystrophy and multiple sclerosis to have access to marijuana grown and distributed through state-monitored dispensaries — was passed by the General Assembly and State Senate on the final day of the legislative session.

Gov. Jon S. Corzine has said he would sign it into law before leaving office next Tuesday. Supporters said that within nine months, patients with a prescription for marijuana from their doctors should be able to obtain it at one of six locations.

“It’s nice to finally see a day when democracy helps heal people,” said Charles Kwiatkowski, 38, one of dozens of patients who rallied at the State House before the vote and broke into applause when the lawmakers approved the measure.

Mr. Kwiatkowski, of Hazlet, N.J., who has multiple sclerosis, said his doctors have recommended marijuana to treat neuralgia, which causes him to lose the feeling and the use of his right arm and shoulders. “The M.S. Society has shown that this drug will help slow the progression of my disease. Why would I want to use anything else?”

January 12, 2010

Second Opinion

Facing End-of-Life Talks, Doctors Choose to Wait

By DENISE GRADY

It’s a conversation that most people dread, doctors and patients alike. The cancer is terminal, time is short, and tough decisions loom — about accepting treatment or rejecting it, and choosing where and how to die.

When is the right time — if there is one — to bring up these painful issues with someone who is terminally ill?

Guidelines for doctors say the discussion should begin when a patient has a year or less to live. That way, patients and their families can plan whether they want to do everything possible to stay alive, or to avoid respirators, resuscitation, additional chemotherapy and the web of tubes, needles, pumps and other machines that often accompany death in the hospital.

But many doctors, e

specially older ones and specialists, say they would postpone those conversations, according to a study published onlineMonday in the journal Cancer.

It’s not entirely clear whether these doctors are remiss for not speaking up — or whether the guidelines are unrealistic. Advice that sounds good on paper may be no match for the emotions on both sides when it comes to facing patients and their families and admitting that it will soon be over, that all medicine can offer is a bit of comfort while the patient waits to die.

Dr. Nancy L. Keating, the first author of the study and an associate professor of medicine and health care policy at Harvard, said not much was known about how, when or even if doctors were having these difficult talks with dying patients. But she said that her research team suspected that communication was falling short, because studies have shown that even though most people want to die at home, most wind up dying in the hospital.

The researchers surveyed 4,074 doctors who took care of cancer patients, instructing them to imagine one who had only four to six months left, but was still feeling well. Then the doctors were asked when they would discuss the prognosis, whether th

e patient wanted resuscitation or hospice care, and where he or she wanted to die.

The results came as a surprise: the doctors were even more reluctant to ask certain questions than the researchers had expected. Although 65 percent said they would talk about the prognosis “now,” far fewer would discuss the other issues at the same time: resuscitation, 44 percent; hospice, 26 percent; site of death, 21 percent. Instead, most of the doctors said they would rather wait until the patients felt worse or there were no more cancer treatments to offer.

They were not asked for their reasoning, but Dr. Keating offered several possibilities. One is that doctors may disagree with the guidelines, which are based on expert opinion rather than data.

“Or they may not be

comfortable discussing it,” she said. “These conversations are time-consuming and difficult. Some doctors may feel patients will lose hope. It’s easier to say, ‘Let’s try another round of chemotherapy,’ instead of having a heart-to-heart discussion.” Training may also be a factor, Dr. Keating said. Medical schools spend more time on end-of-life issues than they did in the past, and the greater willingness of younger doctors to broach the subject may reflect that change.

Dr. Daniel Laheru, an associate professor at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins and a specialist in pancreatic and colorectal cancers, said he was not surprised by the study.

“The natural tendency is not to provide more information about this than you have to,” he said. “It’s such an uncomfortable conversation and it takes such a long time to do it right.”

He added, “People come to us with hope, and if you kind of yank that away from them right away, it’s very

unsettling.”

A terminal diagnosis plus the grim details of “do not resuscitate” orders and hospice care may be too much for a patient to hear in one day. Dr. Laheru said he tried to prepare patients on their first visit for the idea that during later visits they would discuss different possible outcomes.

“They don’t always hear that part,” he said.

Dr. John Boockvar, a neurosurgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center who treats many patients with malignant brain tumors, said he favored postponing such discussions until the end was drawing close. During his own late father’s illness with leukemia, he said, his family was upset by an oncologist who brought up end-of-life issues early.

“As a patient and a family member, I don’t know if I would have wanted to hear a doctor say, ‘In 18 months we’ll be dealing with hospic

e or end-of-life discussions — do you want to have that discussion now?’ ” Dr. Boockvar said. “I don’t know what the emotional benefit is to the family. I don’t think it’s been studied.”

As a doctor treating patients who are terminally ill, he went on, he did not hesitate to discuss end-of-life issues. But he said, “As the time approaches, there’s usually ample time.”

But Dr. David R. Hilden, an internist at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota, is not so sure.

“I think many of us wait until there’s just a few weeks left and then you have no choice,” he said. “It’s going to happen in a week or two, and they’re in the hospital and they’re on their last legs. The time to talk is much earlier.”

Without planning, Dr. Hilden said, dying patients may wind up in exactly the situation they dreaded most, tethered

to machines in a hospital instead of being kept comfortable at home in their own beds.

“This last week, I had a patient with prostate cancer and end-stage heart disease, who probably has less than a year,” he said. “I talked to him and his wife. ‘How do you want your remaining days to be? How much do you want us to do?’ He and his wife were very receptive. Many patients appreciate it. We had a good conversation. It’s easier when the patient is older and it’s not entirely unexpected. He’s 86.”

The patient said he did not want tubes or machines, but just wanted to be comfortable for his last few months.

“They were at peace with it,” Dr. Hilden said, adding that many patients who get aggressive treatment for advanced cancer might in retrospect have made a different choice.

“They might say: ‘After that last three or four months of radiation and chemotherapy, I’m sick, I’m nauseated, my hair fell out and it didn’t extend my life. I might not have done it if I’d known, if I had had the chance.’ ”

Dr. Keating agreed, saying she thought that often when terminally ill patients choose to continue chemotherapy, they don’t understand its limits.

“They say, ‘I want to do e

verything,’ and they mean ‘everything to cure me,’ ” she said. “They don’t understand it’s not curative.”

Despite the difficulties, she went on, doctors should level with their patients.

“When you know someone’s going to die of their disease, it’s only fair to the patients to help them understand that,” Dr. Keating said. “But these conversations are very challenging. Figuring out how to do it well — it’s so tricky. It’s definitely not something everybody believes in.”

January 12, 2010

At

a Mighty 104, Gone While Still Going Strong

By MANNY FERNANDEZ and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

Joe Rollino once lifted 475 pounds. He used neither his arms nor his legs but, reportedly, his teeth. With just one finger he raised up 635 pounds; with his back he moved 3,200. He bit down on quarters to bend them with his thumb.

People called him the Great Joe Rollino, the Mighty Joe Rollino and even the World’s

Strongest Man, and what did it matter if at least one of those people was Mr. Rollino himself.

On Monday morning, Mr. Rollino went for a walk in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a daily routine. It was part of the Great Joe Rollino’s greatest feat, a display of physical dexterity and stamina so subtle that it revealed itself only if you happened to ask him his date of birth: March 19, 1905. He was 104 years old and counting.

A few minutes before 7 a.m., as Mr. Rollino was crossing Bay Ridge Parkway at 13th Avenue, a 1999 Ford Windstar minivan struck him. The police said he suffered fractures to his pelvis, chest, ribs and face, as well as head trauma. Unconscious, he was taken to Lutheran Medical Center, where he later died.

New York is a city of extraordinary lives and events, and here, indisputably, was one of them — one of the city’s strongest and oldest, struck down on a Monday morning by a minivan in Brooklyn.

“Pound for pound, in the feats that he practiced, he was one of the greatest performing strongmen we’ve ever had, if the lifts he’s credited with are accurate,” said Terry Todd, a co-director of the Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports at the University of Texas, who knew Mr. Rollino for more than four decades. “He certainly wasn’t one of the strongest all-time strongmen, because of his size. To ask a well-trained 130-pound man if he can lift what a well-trained 400-pound man can lift is asking an unreasonable question. But for his size, Joe was apparently one of the strongest men who ever lived.”

Mr. Rollino stayed away from meat. And cigarettes. And alcohol. He said he walked five miles every morning, rain or shine. At the height of his career, he weighed between 125 and 150 pounds and stood about 5-foot-5.

He was a teenager when he watched Jack Dempsey knock out Jess Willard in 1919. He later boxed under the name Kid Dundee, became a Coney Island performer, worked as a longshoreman, fought in World War II and had a bit part in “On the Waterfront” that never made the film, not necessarily in that order.

Among his many accomplishments, Mr. Rollino was proudest of one in particular. “My finger strength,” he told an interviewer for ESPN The Magazine. “Six hundred thirty-five pounds. See the size of it. At 150 pounds, nobody ever beat me in this world.”

He was a legend within that small Coney Island society in which few New Yorkers would want to become known as legends: the men and women who swim in the Atlantic when it is at its harshest and coldest. On a 6-degree day in January 1974, Mr. Rollino and six other members of the Iceberg Athletic Club swam into the waters off Coney Island. The freezing Atlantic was like steel: It didn’t intimidate him.

“People told me he holds the record for swimming every day for eight years,” said Louis Scarcella, 59, a former homicide detective and a member of the city’s oldest winter swimming club, the Coney Island Polar Bear Club. “He was known as the Great Joe Rollino, and he was great. You knew he was great just by standing next to him. He just had that humble confidence and strength. It shined.”

Mr. Scarcella, like many of those who knew Mr. Rollino, has a Joe Rollino story, or several Joe Rollino stories. And though some of them can be neither confirmed nor refuted, they get told and retold and told again, because they are too good not to. Mr. Scarcella heard that one winter in the 1950s, Mr. Rollino recovered the bodies of two people who drowned in Prospect Park, because the police did not have the necessary protective equipment and it was too cold for anyone else to jump in and bring them to the surface.

Mr. Rollino was a longtime member of the Association of Oldetime Barbell and Strongmen. Dennis Rogers, a fellow member and a professional strongman, remembered seeing him at the association’s annual dinner in June, at a hotel near the Newark airport. “He just came in to say hi to everybody and coached some of the guys that were performing,” said Mr. Rogers, who in 1995 prevented four motorcycles from moving at full throttle for 12 seconds, according to his Web site. “He would regularly work out in the gym. He was in pretty good shape. He walked a little slow but looked fine.”

Mr. Rollino had lately been living in Brooklyn with a niece, in a house on 14th Avenue, about a block from where the accident occurred. The driver of the minivan that struck Mr. Rollino, a 54-year-old woman who lives in the neighborhood and who remained at the scene, was not charged. She received a summons for having a defective horn, and the police said that neither speed nor alcohol was a factor. Mr. Rollino had been walking about 40 feet from the nearest crosswalk when the minivan hit him, according to the authorities.

Old photographs of Mr. Rollino are displayed in several neighborhood shops. People called him Puggy. “If he shook your hand, he’d break it,” said James Romeo, owner of Romeo Brothers Meats and Foods on 15th Avenue. “He wasn’t feeble.”

Charles Denson, a historian and the author of “Coney Island: Lost and Found,” first met Mr. Rollino at his 103rd birthday party at a neighborhood restaurant. “He was one of the last links to the old strongman days of Coney Island,” he said. “Coney Island was the training ground for strongmen. He was one of the best.”

Mr. Rollino wowed the crowd at the party, Mr. Denson recalled. He told stories about the old days, of course, but he was more than just talk, even at 103. Mr. Rollino put a quarter in his teeth. Then he bent it.