Behind the Ad: A very good ad from a GOP Senate candidate in Oregon

By Richard K. Barry

Who: The Monica Wehby campaign for U.S. Senate

Where: Oregon

What's going on: Dr. Wehby is a paediatric neurosurgeon who will face three other candidates in the GOP primary on May 20th. The winner will run again Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley (D).  Polling has Merkley with a decent lead over all comers at this point though Republicans are saying that Merkley could be vulnerable over local frustrations with Obamacare and the state exchange in Oregon.

Whatever the politics, the ad is quite stunning.

As The Hill describes it:

[T]titled "Trust," [it] runs a minute long and highlights the story of Lexi Liebelt from Gresham, Ore., whose daughter needed reconstructive surgery on her spinal cord shortly after she was born. In the ad, Liebelt tells the story of how Wehby helped her daughter that day.

Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post calls it one of the best political ads of 2014. It's worth noting in detail his reasons, which are that it:

a) Shows rather than tells how Wehby's background -- she's the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Randall Children's Hospital in Portland -- is decidedly different than most people running for office.

b) Conveys a story -- of a newborn with spinal problems -- that sticks with you.

c) Looks different. The image of Lexi Liebelt, the mom, crying as she recounts the story of how Wehby reassured her that her daughter would be ok is powerful. The shots of the now 12-year old Gabby Liebelt are equally moving.

Grade: For the moment,  I won't get into the curiosity of doctors taking issue with expanded health care coverage. As for the ad, a solid A. 

Republicans vs. children with cancer: The human cost of the shutdown

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's bad enough that the EPA and other agencies are almost entirely closed, that the Social Security Administration has been stripped down to a bare minimum, that NASA has put most of its research on hold, that some programs that support those in need have been halted, that veterans may soon not get disability and pension payments, that the national parks and museums are closed, and of course that hundreds of thousands of federal employees have been furloughed, sent home without pay.

The shutdown isn't just some abstraction. It's directly impacting millions and millions of Americans, not to mention some pretty important things the government does (you know, like environmental protection).

And it's worse than you think:

At the National Institutes of Health, nearly three-quarters of the staff was furloughed. One result: director Francis Collins said about 200 patients who otherwise would be admitted to the NIH Clinical Center into clinical trials each week will be turned away. This includes about 30 children, most of them cancer patients, he said.

That's right: children with cancer.

And all because the Republicans, controlled by the far-right extremists who make up their new core and who dominate their base, are batshit insane.

Is there a vaccination against Jenny McCarthy's anti-scientific bullshit?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Normally I wouldn't care what goes on at The View. I don't watch it, I don't want to watch it, and on the whole it just adds to the cultural pollution that envelops America. (Yes, it's generally liberal, but really it's just a squawk-fest of superficiality. It's good to see women in positions of influence, sure, but this is generally more embarrassing than enlightening.)

But it's hard not to care when it hires as new co-host a complete fucking idiot like Jenny McCarthy, giving her a significant platform from which to spew her bullshit.

And I say that with all due respect. She may well be, for the most part, a lovely person. But her one issue, the one thing she seems truly passionate about, the one thing other than her personality she's bringing to the show, is a completely unscientific view of vaccination. As Slate's Phil Plait writes:

McCarthy's views constitute, in my opinion, a threat to public health. She is loudly against vaccines, claiming they cause autism, claiming they are loaded with toxins, and claiming her own son became autistic after a vaccination and that she subsequently cured him with a gluten-free diet.

To phrase it delicately, none of her claims has any medical merit at all. Vaccines have an incredibly small risk compared to their extremely large benefit. Polio, measles, pertussis... these diseases and many more have infected, sickened, and killed far fewer people than they used to due to the development of vaccinations against them. Smallpox alone killed hundreds of millions of people, and it's gone because of vaccines. 

Vaccines have been tested exhaustively to see if they cause autism, and it's become overwhelmingly clear: There is no good evidence that they do.

Yet despite these facts McCarthy has gone everywhere and anywhere protesting vaccinations.

And now she's going to a very popular daytime show where there isn't exactly rigorous debate. You do the math.

Guns and children and the gun crazies with their heads up their asses

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Read this very powerful piece at Slate:

What does the body of a 6-year-old girl look like after a Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle's high-velocity bullets rip through her? The average 6-year-old girl weighs about 44 pounds and stands around 3 feet 9 inches tall. The size of her organs and the diameters of her arteries and veins, bowel, and bones are much smaller than an adult's. But a 6-year-old girl is not a miniature adult; her organs are more vulnerable and less protected by bones. So when a high-velocity projectile like a .223-caliber bullet, traveling at approximately 2,000 miles per hour, from an assault weapon like a Bushmaster AR-15, enters her body, all hell breaks loose. If that bullet pierces her chest wall into her heart, it will cause her heart to explode, and if it passes within 3 inches of her aorta, the shockwaves will tear it open. If it slices into her arm, it will shatter her humerus into so many fragments that it will no longer be recognizable as a bone. If it spirals into her brain, the cavity and damage the bullet causes will be so extensive that her head will break apart.

Guns kill kids. In 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2,694 children and teens in the United States died because of a firearm. Another 15,578 children and teens were injured. Every 30 minutes, a child is killed or injured by a gun. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the largest organization of pediatricians, recommends that conversations about guns and gun safety start during a prenatal visit and be repeated every year as part of anticipatory guidance. Those conversations start with a question: "Do you own a gun?"

And yet the NRA, its Republican allies (like Florida's Rick Scott), and the various other gun nuts who believe in a deeply flawed interpretation of the Second Amendment and who have succumbed either to paranoia or to fetishism, and often to both, are trying to block even this, seeking to prevent doctors from engaging in any sort of discussion about guns with their patients -- this in a gun-crazy culture with a pandemic of gun violence. 

As I wrote last night, it's time for Americans, governing themselves, to put an end to this madness.

Why doesn't anyone really talk health care?

By Edward Copeland

What I'm about to say may strike some as heretical, but I believe it must be said and the moment for it being said is way overdue. First, I'll admit that it is outrageous that so many lack health insurance or are underinsured. I'll also recognize that there are many insurance horror stories to be found concerning pre-existing conditions and rising premiums. Now, here comes my sacrilege: A great deal of the time, for those lucky enough to have health insurance, the insurers are the good guys. The bad guys? Hospitals. Doctors. All other aspects of the health care industry.

My first-hand experience could be dismissed as anecdotal but I've heard so many nitwits speak out their ass about the subject that I feel I have to speak up. One morning on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough said that people are going to have to accept that they can't have a second CAT scan just because they want one. Ask yourself: Have you ever known anyone who wanted a second medical test, especially one they just had? Other than hypochondriacs that is. What a ridiculous comment. Last year, during three-and-a-half-months I had to spend in the hospital, I had to have an ultrasound on my right leg two days in a row. Was it because I loved the test so much I had to have it again? No. It was because a clerical error had them do it on my veins the first day when they were supposed to it on my arteries. It took months of fighting with the hospital and the separate billing unit that performed the test to get the cost of the incorrect test taken off. The insurance would have paid anyway, at no cost to us, if we hadn't fought, but we'd built up a good relationship with our insurance case manager.

I have primary progressive multiple sclerosis. Following bladder surgery last year, I ended up with a pressure wound that hospitalized me for three and a half months and continues to keep me bedridden. Because of careful recordkeeping by myself and my father, we discovered duplicate billing, overcharges, charges for things that didn't have, etc. by various health care sources that came to a whopping total of more than $24,000. In a local newspaper story here, the CEO of a hospital here, a not-for-profit, religious-affiliated hospital mind you, openly admitted that if he had three patients in adjacent rooms using the same equipment, he would charge them based on their insurance i.e., the better they had, the more they charged. For the same equipment.

If you have medication you take every day, you can't bring them from home. No, the hospital has to supply them so they can make sure they get no generics, at a higher rate that they can stick you for.

I spent 27 days in the first hospital where they did essentially nothing for the wound. There was talk of moving me to a speciality hospital for specialized care, but the hospital lied and said you couldn't do it until after a 27-day mark. Of course, the hospital was lying and could have transferred me within two weeks, but they wanted to squeeze more money out while my wound grew worse in the interim. Profit comes before patient care at most hospitals, where they purposely understaff nurses and support staff, blame the nursing shortage, but save money and let patient care suffer.

I've vented enough. Just remember. Having insurance doesn't solve the health care crisis. Someone needs to crack down on the health care industry, you know, the way they should have done on the banks and Wall Street.

Cannabis cure for Alzheimer's

By Libby Spencer

There are relatively only a handful of studies on the efficacy of medical marijuana because it's so difficult to get funding, much less authorization to conduct it, but here is one that shows great promise for marijuana based medicines that could cure Alzheimer's. Or at least mitigate some of its worst effects.

New research suggests that one of the active ingredients in marijuana—THC—and similar compounds could possibly prevent or even reverse one of the most devastating memory disorders of all: Alzheimer's disease.

In a paper published in the December 2008 issue of the journal Neurobiology of Aging, researchers found that a compound that affects the same brain receptors as THC reduced brain inflammation and improved memory in older rats. (The rodents were the human equivalent of age 65 to 70.) Although there's debate over the role played by inflammation in Alzheimer's, many researchers believe it's an important part of the process that causes dementia.

Marijuana, an anti-inflammatory and antioxidant, has been used medicinally for 10,000 years without one recorded overdose. It has already been proven to be useful in the treatment of a wide range of diseases. It's a shame that millions of terminally ill patients are denied its benefits because legitimate scientific inquiry is so often shut down by bureaucrats whose own interests are better served by continuing its total prohibition.

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)

Dark Ages Bush

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From the Times:

Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional committee [yesterday] that top officials in the Bush administration repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

Dr. Carmona, who served as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, said White House officials would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues because of political concerns. Top administration officials delayed for years and attempted to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand tobacco smoke, he said in sworn testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

He was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of every speech he gave, Dr. Carmona said. He was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings, at least one of which included Karl Rove, the president’s senior political adviser, he said.

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to the Kennedy family.

So, to summarize: Bush (and his White House, and his administration) is against stem-cell research, against contraception, against sex education, for second-hand smoke, and against the Special Olympics. Among other flat-earth policies and beliefs.

Fantastic. Finally a presidency in full anti-enlightenment mode. I'm surprised they haven't taken the logical next steps and come out against, say, gravity. An apple fell on Newton's head? No, we can't talk about that.

For more, see Steve Benen, who is as good at tracking Bush's theocratic and anti-science tendencies as anyone out there in the blogosphere, or anywhere: "I started drawing up an informal list of non-partisan offices and federal agencies that the Bush gang have politicized to an unprecedented extent, but quickly gave up — the list was too long and it became too depressing."

And see Think Progress, which has the video of Carmona's testimony.

And see also Digby, Universal Health (with a lot of video), and The Democratic Daily.

Fellatio can seriously damage your health

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Uh-oh:

The sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer also sharply increases the risk of certain types of throat cancer among people infected through oral sex, according to a study being published today.

The study, involving 100 people with throat cancer and 200 without it, found that those infected with the human papillomavirus were 32 times as likely to develop one form of oral cancer than those free of the virus. Although previous research had indicated HPV caused oral cancer, the new study is the first to definitively establish the link, researchers said.

"It makes it absolutely clear that oral HPV infection is a risk factor," said Maura L. Gillison, an assistant professor of oncology and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, who led the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The findings could help explain why rates of oral cancer have been increasing in recent years, particularly among younger people and those who are not smokers or heavy drinkers, which had long been the primary at-risk groups, experts said.

So, well, be careful out there. Seriously. Life sucks sometimes.

(And remember, masturbation isn't just sex with someone you love, as Woody Allen put it, it's sex with someone whose sexual and medical history you know, or are much more likely to know, depending on how well you know yourself.)

Sign of the Apocalypse #41: Over-the-counter hard-ons

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Once upon a time, and for thousands and thousands of years, men had erections. And did things with them. There was erectile dysfunction, no doubt, but humanity survived. Generations and generations of copulation, for procreation or for pleasure -- or for less admirable purposes.

Enter Pfizer. Enter Viagra. Enter Cialis and all the rest for all the others. The little blue pills were meant for a medical condition, or so it seemed, and that was a good thing. Why should men condemned to flaccidity, not to mention their partners, not enjoy the benefits of the erect penis? Modern medicine triumphed. Progress ruled.

But as with all other medication, it was not long before it was abused. After all, why should men not want to enjoy the benefits of the 72-hour erect penis? Or whatever. Think of the pleasure to be had. Think of the partners to be pleasured. Flaccidity -- be damned! The little blue pills could be taken by any and all, medical condition or not.

But where does it end?

For we have now arrived at this:

British pharmacy chain Boots will begin a trial program on Valentine's Day to offer men the anti-impotence drug Viagra without a prescription.

The initial pilot program is expected to last six months, and Boots will then consider whether to expand it to other pharmacies. The chain has about 1,500 stores across Britain.

The pilot will be offered in three of the chain's stores in the English city of Manchester, 300 kilometres northwest of London.

Would-be customers between the ages of 30-65 will be required to see a pharmacist, provide a medical history and have their blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose levels tested.

The cost? £50 for four little blue pills. Over here that means about $97 American, $115 Canadian. Pricey, no? Better make sure your partner's Viagra-worthy.

Think of the room for abuse here. Will the little blue pills end up with the dysfunctionally non-erectile? Or with the functionally erectile who just can't get enough? The pills were meant for a medical condition, but now, OTC, they may pose a health risk to a new generation of men who desire a pharmaceutical aid to fuel what normally comes naturally to them.

Behold the raging hard-on, a symbol of our pleasure-seeking time, surely a sign of impending civilizational apocalypse.