We’ve been told Obama’s “got this” because he can shoot hoops in the WH basement with skill, and grab flies out of the air like a Kung Fu master. We’ve been told Obama’s playing “multidimensional chess” with his opponents by continuing every single one of the illegal and anti-democratic policies of his Neocon predecessor. And now, with the health insurance reform debate gone all Town Hall during recess, we are told we don’t really need health insurance reform, single payer health care, or even a public option to facilitate the expected mandate we’ll be handed that forces us to pay more money than we’ve got to the murder-by-spreadsheed for-profit industry.

We still have “state secrets” privilege on who’s lobbying in the Oval Office. We still have DADT in the military. We still have two illegal wars going, a new third front opened in Columbia, off-the-books deficits accumulated by the fact that there’s twice as many paid mercenaries in those war zones than U.S. soldiers, we’re still rendering and torturing “detainees” who haven’t been charged with any crimes and haven’t been afforded the status of POWs, and we’re still bailing out Wall Street gamblers to the tune of multiple trillions while not even beginning to address reinstating necessary regulations.

A plethora of Democratic/Progressive activist groups have sprung up to pressure Congress and the White House on these issues as well as health insurance reform, letter-writing campaigns, calls and emails to representatives and senators, mass demonstrations… You name it, it’s being done. And what we get from the WH is insults and dismissals as those of us anywhere to the left of center are repeatedly told to STFU.

Meanwhile, I am receiving between 6 and a dozen pleas for money every single day from various Democratic entities. DCCC, DLC, etc., etc., each one of them extolling me to give more to ensure that “my” interests are represented and protected by people who have amply demonstrated they don’t represent my interests or care about protecting me or my family from the corporatist policies of the Neocons who Won’t Go Away. So I have decided to take a clue from my grandson, who turned 18 last year and registered to vote for the first time. For Obama, of course.

We were originally a little piqued that he chose to register Independent instead of Democratic, but he was adamant and is perfectly happy with his choice. In our state he could still vote in the primary – one merely has to request either the Dem or Rep ballot to vote in one of them, it doesn’t matter what your own registration is. And I notice that he never gets any political mail asking for money he hasn’t got or telling him outrageous lies about what ‘his’ party’s doiing in the state or in D.C.

If the end product of this health insurance charade turns out just as it looks very strongly to be turning out, I am changing my voter registration from Democrat to Independent. Figure that the party hacks who don’t care about what I think or want can do what they do without my support or my money. They can just cross me off their list, and my email will be much more manageable. In writing this, there’s a small chance that others might consider the idea to be pretty good, and perhaps a few of them will change their registration too. If the idea catches on, a lot of people might decide to change their registration to reflect something real that nobody in D.C. seems to have noticed.

The Republicans are now marginalized to a regional sub-party status, claiming less than 20% of all voters and dominant in only 5 states. Libertarians are stronger than that. They’ve a few leftover power brokers in D.C. stonewalling all things necessary to save the country, but Democrats dominate. Dems now calll themselves the “Center-Right” party, telling us that the 79% of Americans who are center-left to progressive are insignificant. We don’t deserve representation. If they were to actually LOSE that 79% – or any considerable fraction of it – they just might have to start doing the jobs they were elected (by us) to do. And if not, we can go ahead and field candidates of our own and have a real chance of winning.

We are all the way to a single-party system in this country, all possible challengers relegated to 20% of the electorate or less. Except for the left-leaners in the dominant party, who have been told to STFU. Well, okay. We can split that coconut rather dramatically, and end up with a larger portion than they’ve got left.

Or not. I won’t be holding my breath for other progressives to catch a clue. I’m changing my registration and getting my name off their fundraising list. After more than a week of battling swine flu, it’ll make me feel much better, I’m sure. Wish me luck!

Iatrogenic, adjective
a medical disorder caused by the diagnosis, manner or treatment of a physician.

Iatros is the Greek word for physician. -genic means induced by. Iatrogenic disease is a disease caused by a physician. Given the sheer complexity and technological wonders of modern Western [allopathic] medicine have led to some stretching of the strict meaning of the term, which is now applied to ANY adverse effect associated with ANY medical practitioner or treatment. Thus it can be used to describe the cancers caused (years down the line) by radiation and radioactive isotopes used to treat initial problems, prescription errors, hospital-contracted infections, problems caused when a surgeon leaves an instrument or two in the patient, a chiropractor who breaks the patient’s neck, etc., etc.

When I was busy educating myself as much as possible when my daughter determined to have her baby at home, I discovered that the nations that have the best statistical outcomes – fewest maternal and infant deaths or injuries – actually encourage home births because hospitals are dangerous places to both mothers and infants. They’re dangerous places for anyone these days, it seems. According to statistics compiled by OurCivilization.com, there are 8.9 million “unnecessary” hospitalizations every year in this country, which lead directly to 1.78 million “Iatrogenic Events.” Of 7.5 million “unnecessary” procedures ordered annually by physicians, another 1.3 million patients suffer direct harm. That adds up to 16.4 million people channeled into a harmful situation by their medical providers every year, and 3.8 million cases of direct harm to those people that they otherwise would not have suffered.

The same source estimates annual deaths caused by various leading iatrogenic factors, reaching a total of 783,936 deaths at a cost of $282 billion. Every year, and that’s not the highest estimate available. A simple extrapolation on the statistics gives us a projected 10-year death rate of 7,841,360 people, more people than have been killed in all the wars the United States ever fought over its entire history.

Medical insurance reform – which is the most we’ll ever get from Congress, and that’s likely to be a simple mandate to buy junk insurance – does not even begin to address what’s wrong with the health care system in this country. All it will do is put more people in harm’s way, given that medical care is now the third leading cause of death in the U.S. The American iatrogenic Association [AiA] is working to make the truth known to the general public, and to promote policies that will begin to address the serious issues. I encourage everyone concerned about the health care situation in this country – both access and quality of care – to check out their website and the collection of articles, essays, studies and book excerpts they offer.

The Truth is that at least 12,000 people die every year of unnecessary surgeries. Another 7,000 die to medication errors in hospitals. 20,000 die due to other errors in hospitals. Hospital-acquired infections, many resistant to known antibiotics, kill another 80,000. 106,000 die of those nifty “bad effects” of drugs their doctor prescribed, often for no better reason than that some hypnotized medically-obsessed junkie saw it advertised on TV and just HAD to have it. Only heart disease and cancer beat the medical system in this country on number of victims every year. You can bet that many of those the medical system kills were there because they were diagnosed with one of those issues, but their doctor or hospital killed them before their disease could.

This unacceptable situation SHOULD inform us that more access to the system for more people is not going to cure what ails us. All that is just more money for the players in that nasty futures market in human suffering. I read about a woman the other day who had her baby taken away from her because she resisted a doctor’s insistence that she submit to C-section (dangerous major surgery), at a hospital with a C-section rate approaching 50% of all births. What the hell kind of quality control is going on there? C-section is medically indicated – to save the life of mother or child in an extreme situation – for fewer than 6% of all births. I for one do not consider a doctor’s tee-off date to be an extreme situation threatening the life of mother or child. I DO consider unnecessary surgery to be a direct threat to life and limb, and so should everyone else in the world!

So when your least-favorite WingNut starts ranting about “ObamaCare” and euthanasia for poor old Granny, respond with some REAL statistics about what’s way more likely to kill off Granny and everyone else in the family before their time – that which passes for “health care” in this, the supposedly richest country the world has ever known. If all our government can do is offer more citizens the ‘right’ to access the killing floor, we’re better off without it.

So. Just wanted to continue with a theme, because I think it’s extremely useful as a means of keeping our heads about us while dealing with clinically insane bizonker-birthers who can’t tell their asses from their outhouse in this so-called “Health Care Debate.” Nobody anywhere is really doing anything about what’s actually wrong with health care in this country, and they will continue to do nothing about it until we’re all dead of it (or maybe just old age). NONE of them are addressing the problems.

Getty

Time Magazine informs us that the Debate Monitors for the upcoming (and never too soon) Presidential debates have been announced. Now we can look forward to more one-on-one between Barack Obama and John McCain without having to roll our eyes on campaign surrogate gaffes enough to go blind.

For the first debate on Friday, September 26 at the University of Mississippi in Oxford the moderator will be Jim Lehrer, executive editor and anchor of the PBS NewsHour. Always a delightful presence, calming influence and rational analyst.

The second debate will be between Vice-Presidential candidates – whoever those turn out to be – on Thursday, October 2 at Washington University in St. Louis. Gwen Ifill, senior correspondent for the NewsHour and managing editor of PBS’s Washington Week will preside. Another excellent choice.

The second debate between Obama and McCain is a Town Meeting format on Tuesday, October 7 at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. Our fave Tom Brokaw of NBC News will officiate. Should be fun!

The third and last Presidential debate (and you thought McCain was serious when he offered to do Town Meetings every week back in the day, didn’t you?) will be held on Wednesday, October 15 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York with Bob Sheiffer presiding. Sheiffer, CBS News chief Washington correspondent and host of the weekly Face the Nation broadcast, is a bit more partisan than the others, but should turn in a good performance at that very late stage of the campaign.

Anybody want to offer odds on what the point spread will be by October 15th?

Luckily, the event was blocked out here in North Carolina, where early voting opened today and the crowds are already considerable. I checked my sites today on the state BoE website, where the banner now displays a running total of registrations. Democrats are running nearly 2 to 1 over Republicans, with a million and a quarter Independents.

Now, North Carolina likes to split its tickets. We consistently go for Democratic state government and my locality is solidly Dem. But for as long as I’ve lived here – yes, I’m ashamed to say I lived through the last throes of the Jesse Helms empire – NC has gong solidly Republican for President and Senate. Except when John Edwards finally took the pig farmer down, but he didn’t stay long and we ended up with Liz Dole. But from what I’ve seen, this year our millions of bitter small town and rural people just might go Dem well beyond the margin of error that allows elections to be stolen. And the Dem who will make that happen is Barack Obama. He’s going to sweep our primary, then he’s going to take the state.

Anyway, here’s a video of what Barack Obama said today in Raleigh, where he proved that Pennsylvania isn’t the only state that counts right now. Hillary and ABC have given him a significant talking point he can hammer from now ’til November – what’s wrong with American Political Discourse (and the mainstream media) in this country. Just more reasons for change!

Will the Candidates Show?

Government leaders, university presidents, leading scientists, engineering leaders, business executives, American innovators have been making the call loudly and with some help from NPR, MSNBC, the New York Times and Time Magazine as well as increasing numbers of other media outlets. Now that both the Democratic and Republican fields of potential Presidential candidates are down to two apiece, it’s time for Science Debate 2008 to happen.

The invitations to the candidates have been sent, the debate will be held at the Franklin Institute before the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. Thus far none of the candidates have responded that they will commit. While we all know that issues of science and technology are usually handled by advisors who have knowledge of the subjects, it would be nice to get a feel for whether the candidates for our country’s highest office have a basic grasp of those issues and a defensible position on policy. Or find out if all they’re good for is to mouth sound bites their handlers feed them.

If you’re interested in what you may be able to do to help convince them, visit the Science Debate 2008 website and sign on. And it wouldn’t hurt to write to the campaigns and request the candidates’ participation while you’re at it.

Link:
Science Debate 2008

[Cross-Posted to Science News Review]