Fighting Big Pharma’s greed-based distortion of medical science The Annals of Internal Medicine published two articles on 28 June 2010 that cast serious doubt on routine use of statins (HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors) in primary care for patients who do not have a clinical history of coronary heart disease. Both articles take aim at the Rosuvastatin-JUPITER study, which [...]
Categories: Medicine,Public Health,Science
Tagged: Annals of Internal Medicine, Cholesterol Lowering Cardiovascular Diseases and the Rosuvastatin-JUPITER Controversy, JUPITER, Kausik K. Ray, Michel D. Lorgeril, rosuvastatin, Statins and All-Cause Mortality in High Risk Primary-Prevention
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- 30 June 2010 – 18:08
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
Sometimes a simple vignette synopsizes a culture The plight of a couple in their eighties that my wife witnessed two days ago serves to synopsize the lack of shared community that characterizes American society. (I write about the same issue, in a different context, here.) A heart-breaking vignette My wife, an Air Force flight commander, was at the commissary. [...]
Categories: Culture,Public Health
Tagged: ataxia, bleed, Christian, dementia, elderly, help, humane, inhumane, Jesus, saint
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- 30 June 2010 – 08:47
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
Two recent columns by Ross Douthat (One Way Out) and Bob Herbert (Worse Than a Nightmare) illustrate the options in pursuing or discontinuing the war in Afghanistan. Douthat has done a better job of presenting the reasons for staying than the President or his generals have. Herbert concisely makes the case for getting out. My more [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Bob Herbert, One Way Out, Ross Douthat, Worse Than a Nightmare
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- 28 June 2010 – 17:52
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
Dateline (NBC) aired A Father’s Mission last night, which exposes the military incompetence that got our people killed in the Battle of Wanat in Afghanistan (13 July 2008). The contrast between the courage of the soldiers on the ground and that of the Army’s ass-covering battalion level brass is stark. Most poignant in the story is the fact that [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Battle of Wanat, Wanat
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- 28 June 2010 – 06:54
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
I recommend the 2009 movie, The Messenger, which is about an Army casualty notification team. It’s safely apolitical and gives excellently acted insight into the emotional pain such duty involves. The film never goes over the top. A few scenes are so quietly exquisite that they are like memories of seamless perfections lost. Unlike The Messenger’s depiction of the U.S. Army’s [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Air Force, Army, casualty notification, film, movie, The Messenger
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- 27 June 2010 – 07:32
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
Bob Herbert’s 21 June 2010 column, When Greatness Slips Away, eloquently sums our slide from national greatness. We have become a people unwilling to pay the price that creative problem-solving demands. China’s state-sponsored authoritarian capitalism is beginning to run circles around our allegedly freer, more desirable system. In contrast, the American public’s quarrel-prone unrealism regularly elects governments [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
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- 25 June 2010 – 14:19
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
Media attention devoted to President Obama’s firing of General Stanley McCrystal for apparent insubordination overlooks the inanity of the United States’ counterinsurgency strategy (COIN). (Michael Hastings’ Rolling Stone article, The Runaway General, is the source material for McCrystal’s firing. Hasting also exposes the vacuity of the COIN strategy.) The President’s foolishness (or political cynicism) in thinking (or implying) that COIN is [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Afghanistan, COIN, counterinsurgency, general, McCrystal, Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone, The Runaway General
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- 25 June 2010 – 07:40
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
Premonitions may have implications for physics, as well as neuroscience and psychology In addition to being disturbing in itself, premonition has implications in regard to the apparent forward-flow of time. Example of the two amorphous premonitions this blog entry is based on I have had only two premonitions in at least the last thirty years. Both turned out to forecast [...]
Categories: Neuroscience,Science
Tagged: consciousness, deja vu, premonition, Second Law of Thermodynamics, time, time's arrow
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- 18 June 2010 – 10:15
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
Sensationalism in presenting scientific advances is a bad idea The perennial search for scientific funding and profit distorts the accuracy of scientific claims, leading to what is usually science-harming and truth-destroying sensationalism. Sensationalism is not helpful in a profoundly anti-scientific nation like the United States. For example, good science, but much inflated rhetoric For example, J. Craig Venter and his colleagues claim to have [...]
Categories: Ethics,Medicine,Science
Tagged: bacterial, bacterium, cell, synthetic life, Venter, Venter Institute
- Published:
- 18 June 2010 – 08:37
- Author:
- By BrainiYak