August 15th, 2010
Remembering the Principles
(Part 1, ‘Forgetting the Principles’ is here and Part 3, ‘Enforcing the Principles’ is here)
By now, you’ve gotten your cup of hot, McDonald’s coffee as suggested at the end of my last post on litigation. Our court system was designed to compensate victims and rectify social injustices in America. These principles have been immortalized in songs like Neil Young’s “Southern Man”. However, the latest views of litigants has been concisely expressed in a country song written by West and Pahanish, (and sung by Toby Keith). This proclaims that America is so quirky, one can ‘Spill a cup of coffee and make a million dollars‘. Has litigation come to this? Instead of resolving society’s ills, it represents nothing more than greed? Since my specialized diet doesn’t permit me to eat in restaurants, I just made a call to a local branch of the McDonald’s restaurant chain. This company, sued when a woman suffered burns from spilling a cup of their coffee, does have warnings on their coffee cups. The employee answering the call humored me and read it out over the phone. It says, “Caution: Handle with Care – I’m Hot”. Here it is, captured in glorious technicolor.
Well, “D’uh”, as the kids say, appears to be the only appropriate response to that statement.
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Categories: Letters
Tags: environmental justice, Free Market, litigation, politics, undue corporate influence
August 7th, 2010
Forgetting the Principles
The United States of America is not a democracy. Hopefully, this statement won’t shock the average reader in this age of information. Our country operates as a ‘Republic’, meaning that we elect people to make decisions for us instead of voting directly to create the laws by which we live. We use an electoral college and complex legislative procedures instead of a ‘one man, one vote and majority rules’ methodology. Our elected representatives don’t have free reign however; insofar as we hold them to that major outline of American legal principles referred to as the Constitution. This was written by the founding fathers to ensure we wouldn’t move too far from their original vision during the centuries of legal evolution expected to follow their initiatives. This made the courts an invaluable part of our system of government. Leaders might come and go but the principles of government to which they must adhere would endure.
Unfortunately, the founding fathers didn’t quite foresee the extent to which money would be used to overturn the basic principles of our constitutional republic.
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Categories: Articles
Tags: constitution, law, politics, undue corporate influence
July 24th, 2010
It used to be that the ‘litmus tests’ in confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justices were about whether candidates were prone to narrow versus broad interpretations of constitutional doctrines. How closely do the original words of the framers of that document approach current issues and customs which might fall under court scrutiny?
These days, the litmus test appears to be more along the lines of whether a justice will abide by existing constitutional law or be willing to dispense with it altogether. That isn’t limited to their views of Roe V Wade, which made abortion legal, but now involves decisions about whether businesses–already considered to be citizens–can be considered beyond the realm of US law-makers. This was the subject of this New York Times editorial, “The Republicans and the Constitution”. The clause referred to is the one granting Congress the right to make laws affecting commerce. The concepts of ‘capitalism’ and the ‘free-market economy’ may infer a hands-off approach to business, but Congress does retain legislative powers over commercial enterprise. Before you take umbrage with such interference, consider your teen-aged sons and daughters who are looking for summer jobs. Now how do you feel about child labor laws and minimum wage guarantees? It isn’t just about the privilege to tax businesses but also safeguarding consumers through passage of product safety laws which is at stake in this debate.
Here was my posted commentary:
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Categories: NY Times, Newspaper Commentary, Published
Tags: politics, undue corporate influence
July 21st, 2010
This is the second of three recent Op-Ed columns from the New York Times which are being examined for their common view that the history of men, plural or singular, can somehow be ‘re-written’ by women.
Far from the image of an objective reporter, Nicholas Kristoff is a journalist immersed in documenting the moral failures of men which drive them to unspeakably destructive acts. He doesn’t only report but also intervenes, comprehending that some things cannot be encountered with the professional passivity of a paid observer. The violence he describes around the globe is directed both externally and inwardly, as is the usual case with aggression. External battles between nations are most easily documented, such as that between Israel and it’s neighbors. Much of Kristoff’s reporting is devoted to civil divisions in which men seek to subjugate or exterminate portions of their own societies, as seen in his visits to African nations. Unlike most reporters, his attention is drawn to the inevitable targeting of women who constitute the lowest rung of all societies. He chronicles these atrocities, and the occasional modest victory, very well.
Kristoff continued his series on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in a piece called, “Waiting for Ghandi”.
While a previous column discussed below advised men to forget the past and begin anew in an area where history–and mythology– reign supreme, this column expresses the hope that males immersed in violence might be shamed into negotiations. That shame would be instigated by the sight of women engaged in passive resistance and filmed for posterity as they are met with violence. Yes, it would put a powerful image before many cameras.
But what of the women?
Kristoff, like Ghandi, appears to regard women as if we hold the answer to all of society’s ills. As a matter of fact, we do. But, we aren’t going to share these most ‘un-secret’ of all strategies because we’re exhausted. Not only is the demand for these ‘secrets’ unceasing, but we are also expected to be impervious to the retribution exacted by men who fail to meet their own expectations of evolving to that sought-after, higher level of being. There is always a ‘reason’ for continuing their violent games.
And what of the women?
Women are indeed practiced at this because passive resistance (there is nothing ‘civil’ about flagrant disobedience) is a major strategy by which women stay alive in their own homes or retain their places in the work-force. However, passive resistance is not really a model of revolution. It is a protective shield to guard the spark of repressed humanity within oppressed humanity. It impresses others for only a very short time. Then the women will be left to pay the price of their demonstration.
Kristoff demonstrates the usual struggle of all men with the ‘Madonna/Whore’ division in which women are idealized. Nonetheless, that idealization of women still results in punishment for the assigned role of receptacles for male expression of sex and seed; of power and need. And sometimes of love, which is never returned as powerfully as required by the ‘thwarted’. Still, I had to question the very nature of the suggestion and read a bit about Ghandi’s view of women. It was very much the same. Women are necessary to save men from themselves.
Ghandi put women on pedestals to induce men to control themselves by example. By opening the door to females as voters, he assumed they would elect more reasonable individuals among the male half of the population. Females elected to any position of power would be expected to minimize the degree to which they visibly exercised it. Ghandi didn’t actually endorse social equality for women, fearing they would become equally violent and immoral with such freedom. This circular reasoning merely places men at the mercy of their atavistic impulses and makes women responsible for altering men’s goals. None of this requires the necessary and radical shifts in the gender hierarchy within society.
Hopefully, women will be permitted the garb required for their appointed task as peacemaker. A cape and tights, as provocative as the latter might appear, would seem necessary.
Wistful notions by men of peace making and describing huMan history. This reply was posted to Mr. Kristoff’s blog:
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Categories: NY Times, Newspaper Commentary, Published
Tags: feminism, Middle East, politics
July 20th, 2010
Readers are directed to this post introducing three NY Times columns about seemingly unrelated issues. However, there is certainly a common thread to be seen. If we connect the dots between Kristoff’s views and suggestions about the Middle East with the latest local ‘star’ scandal surrounding Mel Gibson, you see a pattern emerging of huMan reasoning gone awry.
Many Americans learn their history through movies and animated Disney films about our pasts. It has led us to celebrate victories. Violent acts become crime dramas and ‘movies-of-the-week’, to be replayed over and over again. People enjoyed the sight of (attractive) heroes and heroines triumphing over evil. They were often vanquished by evil warlords but animated people could be shot, stabbed and fall off cliffs and still be reconstituted with a dash of water. Those who weren’t animated, all had medical insurance and would eventually recover from their comas.
Unfortunately, humans are not that resilient and survivors of violence (or merely violent times) often pass on little more than their traumas to future generations. Triumphant and tragic events are both remembered and oral knowledge eventually becomes archived as history. However the repetitive facts and themes contained in the history of men are transformed into mythology. Belief replaces facts and cannot easily be fought with reason. As women have only been rarely accounted for in recorded history, at least outside of mythology, I refer to the subject as huMan history – which tells a story all its own.
Most of the triumphs in historical records of one group are actually tragedies in the records of another. For some reason, success is equated with victory, meaning one can only advance at some cost to another with violence usually in evidence somewhere along the way. The error is actually one of reasoning. We regard each circle of aggression and defense as a closed chapter in group or individual histories. The allies won a war in 1942. A man was executed for killing another man. A wife left an abusive husband . None of these circles have been completed because history has been mistaken as something which is part of the past. The allies have since met the same evil occur within and between countries and executions, oddly, did not appear to deter other murders. Women return to abusive men when they realize they have no other way to raise their children without neglecting vital aspects of their health and safety regarding food, housing, supervision and medical care. Sometimes it is the mythology about two parents always being preferable to one.
HuMan history doesn’t repeat itself but merely continues. How we view history is key in many conflicts where mythology has replaced reason and is used to justify any amount of brutality. “Who did what to whom first?”, is a never ending question huMans ask one another. This first column by Kristoff, “Burrowing Through A Blockade”, attempts to remove huMan history from the equation entirely. He optimistically called for an end to memories of injustices on all sides, yet never addresses the nature of the participants involved. Change requires an alteration of more than circumstances. It calls for a huMan revolution of beliefs about the past and new ways of viewing progress as something other than winning which ensures a loser. Seeking a victory instead of a draw in which all coexist to the detriment of none is the temporary fix we are all condemned to replay. As long as only victories count, huMan history will continue as it is at present.
My posted comment was as follows:
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Categories: NY Times, Newspaper Commentary, Published
Tags: feminism, politics, Wishful Thinking
July 17th, 2010
Our national attachment to reality—often hanging by a thread– is illustrated in our newspaper columns. The culture is basically represented in the way in which newspapers choose their columnists who proceed to comment about our culture. Choices vary depending upon the stature of the publication; was its reputation earned for journalistic integrity or entertainment value? What is the orientation of the publisher and editor? Preferably, their columnists promote that view while those hired to offer opposing viewpoints aren’t challenging them too radically. Of course, the preferences of sponsors are always of importance. Publishers endorsing positions which are too unpopular tend to have empty spaces where advertisements used to appear.
Certain cultural premises cannot be hidden although they may be dressed in the finest of linen. Certain terrifying realities about how women in society are viewed have come shining through the writings of two nationally prominent columnists in the NY Times – Nicholas Kristoff and David Brooks. While this blog concentrates on issues affecting health, the fact remains that women are disproportionately harmed by the corporate domination of research which develops and promotes the sale of environmentally and biologically harmful products. The decline in women’s health is considered more of an inconvenience and expense than a national indicator of misogyny. It is all disguised as being a necessary evil if you wish to reap the rewards of a of free-market economy. However, it is hard to call such an economy ‘free’, when it takes so many prisoners among the most vulnerable of consumers. These next three posts discuss columns written about violence involving women. I was shocked at what these columnists said–and failed to say– about my culture.
I came late to feminism due to a combination of inherited and earned privilege, which can sharply skew perception (and acceptance) of reality. A happy, lower middle class childhood meant luxuries were limited, but life was sweet, as loving parents sheltered me from their day to day struggles. There was sufficient food, a roof over my head and an education sharply monitored and reinforced by them. A second generation American, I grew up among those who escaped terrible persecution to come to the US. The worked in factories and even sweat shops, while going to night school, so their children would have better lives. Next to my chair in synagogues would sit elderly women with tattooed wrists. They were treated well in their families so my realization of how women are actually regarded in society was delayed.
That background prepared me to be more accepting of the observations and information that later came my way about hardship and its relationship to class and race. I learned about gender-privilege when faced with it again and again on the job. Reading the writings of anguished women thriving, or barely surviving, in the face of such obstacles led me to begin examining my own privilege. It became easier to recognize just how the inclusion of women within a culture is a gift bestowed upon us by men. It is just as swiftly withdrawn by men for any real or perceived infraction of their codes. As these columns reveal, women are actually held responsible for rectifying the failures of men which perpetuate the oppression of women.
Sisyphus , that mythological King who was condemned to spend all eternity pushing a boulder uphill, must have been a woman.
Categories: Letters
Tags: feminism, Newspaper Commentary, politics
July 14th, 2010
An article appearing in today’s NY Times by Gina Kolata (“Rules Seek to Expand Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s“) was naturally disturbing to me. This article didn’t read, “Rules Seek Earlier Detection of Central Nervous System Damage” but named a particular form of pre-senile dementia and, of course, only one way to combat the inevitable decline – drugs. Readers of this blog know that such drugs are not successful in half of cases. The following comment was hastily posted on that site (#138, with some hastily performed editing done here) amidst an impressive storm of doubt regarding yet another boon for that commodity known as medicine. Clamoring instead for the art and science of Medicine to increase the quality and length of our lives, other readers leaving comments appear to demonstrate that the health care debate has stimulated much scrutiny on the part of our citizenry. Mistakenly labeled as consumers of health care, we are establishing ourselves as Americans in search of our lost health.
This is another case of drug makers enlarging the pool of patients to treat without thought to the consequences of such actions. According to reports by Alan Roses of GlaxSmithKline earlier in the decade (referenced above), Alzheimers drugs—like many others– are ineffective for half of patients due to genetic diversity within the population. On the other hand, earlier identification of cognitive decline and brain cell death is extremely valuable if findings are not dropped into an overly broad overly broad category of of ‘ Disease’. The bulk of it may well be due to injury. Exposures of citizens,(not patients), to neurotoxic substances occupationally and residentially, will have to be identified and ruled out as sources contributing to declining cognitive functions. Dr. Kaye Kilburn, former professor of medicine at the Keck School and VA epidemiologist, saw that occupational asthmatics frequently displayed such signs of central nervous system decline with changes in memory, learning and motor skills. Unfortunately, he also found the majority of ‘normal control’ subjects were also showing signs of CNS degradation far earlier than age-related decline should appear. His paperback , “Endangered Brains” and a medical text on chemically induced brain damage (no financial interest) indicates that neurologists begin to look for signs of preventable, and not just premature, losses in function.
The only interventions mentioned in this news article – unless that is the fault of the reporter but I doubt it—are drugs which can actually damage the central nervous system (CNS) through hyperactivating it with anti-cholinergic pharmaceuticals. Earlier in the decade,. the EPA banned the most commonly used pesticide–Dursban–from residential use because it acted in such a manner. It killed insects through destruction of nerve cells firing themselves to death through suppression of the enzyme, acetylcholinesterase. Not only are those pesticides still in use in proximity to people but their replacement chemicals known as pyrethroids and pyrethrins also hyperactivate the nervous system by damaging neurons directly and amplified their toxicity with synergists. Those prevent the body from clearing such toxic substances from the body before they can do their killing work.
Alzheimer’s drugs would further damage the body’s ability to counter those substances. The CDC tells us our exposure to pesticides, primarily a class of neurotoxic substances, is ubiquitous. California is even now applying them aerially in the northern part of the state while many building owners have exterminators applying them 12 to 24 times per year to their buildings. Landscaping relies on numerous pesticides and herbicides with their multiplicity of actions.
It is time to stop counteracting chemical damage with more and earlier administrations of yet more chemicals. Occupational therapy to stimulate skills in decline, healthier diets and safer environments are what will halt the huge incidence of damage and disease. Technology has advanced. Exterminators have a wealth of profitable options in safer pest control now and drug makers are well aware of the hazards and limitations of various classes of drugs.
I was prematurely disabled by such substances and the cost to society of preventable illness is unsupportable.
Barbara Rubin
UPDATE:
http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/726/9/
Corrections to the article have made by the Times after input from experts.
Categories: NY Times, Newspaper Commentary, Published
Tags: drug efficacy, Health, independent research, neurotoxic substances
July 6th, 2010
A recent editorial in the New York Times tallied up statistics from more than 225,000 elderly diabetics taking Avandia or anther drug called Actos. These statistics were available to the public, courtesy of Medicare insurance being available to these patients. It appears to confirm the findings of another study that Avandia patients have a significantly increased incidence of cardiac events and strokes. Apparently, the makers of the drug under scrutiny are going to conduct further trials – which won’t be completed for another five years.
Meanwhile, Glaxo-Smith-Klein, maintains their earlier studies were conclusive in ruling out such adverse impacts for their product. However, if this item in the Triangle Business Journal is correct, legal settlements have already been made in more than 700 cases concerning this drug.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to go to court and prove the drug did not have these adverse effects if the evidence were compelling? Or, are the costs of legal settlements merely part of the cost of doing business today? After all, given the enormous amount of dollars flowing into the coffers of some multi/trans-national corporations, settlements may be easily absorbed compared with the costs of further research and possible removal or modification of a product already in the marketplace.
This brings up important questions about plaintiffs’ attorneys. How moral it is to press for settlement after settlement in repetitive claims of harm for a product, rather than conduct a court-room trial on the matter? Trials set precedents and serve to limit future harm to those likely to repeat the experience of prior litigants and become the next generation of plaintiffs. Is litigation taken to the floor of a courtroom instead of a ‘back-room”, actually the most moral course of action?
Regardless, this may be indicative of how to best resolve discrepancies between a marketing firm’s data and the actual experiences of patients using a given product. The pool of available data about the incidence and nature of illnesses and injuries increases exponentially, when patients are enrolled in a public option for health care insurance. The potential savings alone from analysis of this data ought to pay for much of the costs for such coverage. This would certainly assist the FDA greatly in making tough decisions about approving drugs for sale, when to withdraw them or require further testing. As the public option would also be funding drug purchases, a great deal of attention would be paid to drug efficacy and the potential for adverse effects.
Here is the letter which went to the Times:
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Categories: Letters, NY Times
Tags: Health, independent research, politics
July 2nd, 2010
or Must We File A FOIA Request to Go Shopping?
This post began with an ad for perfume. For infants.
The fragrance industry has been under scrutiny by various consumer watch-dog groups given the fact that they are not subject to FDA regulatory oversight for product safety. Nonetheless, some fragrance chemicals have been identified as reducing lung function, disrupting hormonal levels, affecting the function of various organs and central nervous system activity etc. A summary of adverse effects upon users and secondary ‘consumers’ passively inhaling these chemicals can be found here:
http://www.ieconnections.com/archive/feb_08/feb_08.htm#article3
It is to be assumed – as with smoking – that consumers would take care in selecting the safest among such products for personal use and to minimize imposing unwanted contact with them upon co-workers, family and friends. Many workplaces now request employees not use ‘plug-in’ air fresheners emitting these chemicals into the air on a constant basis. Some landlords request that scented candles and incense not be burned inside their rental units as chemical absorption into sheet rock and carpets might discourage future potential occupants from renting those units.
Until such time as the industry chooses to offer full disclosure of each product’s ingredients, the wisdom of the selections made by consumers remain unconfirmed in fact. Of course, advertising continues to bombard the public with urgent messages that our health is in danger if we don’t spray fragranced disinfectants all around us. Our social standing is dependent upon the scents and colorants added to our personal care products from hair dyes to moisturizing lotions. Our mental health cannot be optimized unless chemicals imitating the odors of flowers, spices or ‘fresh air’ are floating about our homes, schools and offices.
When this ad came to my attention recently, I was simply amazed to see even the suggestion that the smell of fruit – when paired with the activities of caring for an infant or child – will lead to increasingly loving memories of that time once it is past. The scent is to be applied to the child instead of the nursery or care-giver. Interestingly, directions are given to apply the perfume to the clothing because application to the skin might ‘importune’ the child, even though efforts were made to ‘minimize’ potentially allergenic content.
The company marketing this product is based in Canada but markets extensively throughout the USA. I sent the following letter to Health Canada and the FDA with copies to pediatric physicians and the American Lung Association. Turning infants into consumers of perfume for parental enjoyment and the imprinting of memories is simply something that does the entire system of marketing in these two countries a great disservice. To all of you ‘consumers’ reading this blog, I encourage you to assist our corporations in making their best choices among the products they sell by speaking to them directly with your comments and indirectly (but most powerfully) with your consumer dollars. Patronize companies offering full disclosure of ingredients, particularly when buying products which will directly or indirectly affect children. We shouldn’t be playing Russian Roulette with our children given recent statistics on the incredible rates of chronic illness and learning disabilities among these most precious of our natural resources. Patents protect businesses from having their formulas hijacked by competitors. Trade ‘secrets’ merely keep consumers in the dark while competitors ferret out the information through laboratory analysis.
We should just ask for the information or consider buying from those willing to share it openly on labels or MSDS sheets. It makes no sense to buy a product that is supposed to enhance our life-styles but which interferes with life processes – our bodies – instead. Further consumer dollars merely make their way into the coffers of physicians and pharmaceutical companies while we combat the side effects of our adopted ‘life-styles’. It is the work of a moment to look at a package and see if it offers full disclosure of ingredients.
Take that moment and transform our economy into one of true capitalism in which informed consumers dictate which products deserve to be sold in our marketplaces and those needing to be changed or removed from our store shelves. That is a truly ‘free market’ philosophy. This is about a lot more than just perfume. For infants. However, there is no reason why we shouldn’t begin there. Here’s the letter:
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Categories: Letters
Tags: advertising, fragrances, Health, industry regulation
June 22nd, 2010
The current New England Journal of Medicine (June 17, 2010; No. 24V.362:2319-2325) has an important article offered as free full text to online readers entitled, “Regulation of Smoking in Public Housing” (Winnikoff, Gottlieb and Mello). The introduction summarizes how the regulation of smoking in public and workplaces has led to very significant improvements in public health while residences remain outside of the realm of regulation. A summary of their recommendation of banning tobacco in public housing appeared in the LA Times last week as well, here.
Given the fact that over seven million people live in public housing because they cannot afford to live elsewhere, these residents are basically required to become unwilling consumers of tobacco by-products. Of course, multi-unit housing is quite common in the private sector with a small but slowly increasing number of landlords mandating (but rarely enforcing) lease stipulations requiring smoking to be done outdoors. Property values come into play given the fact that smoke contaminates the environment with “… more than 250 poisonous gasses, metals and chemicals… .” Taking the extreme measures required to decontaminate these premises from residues (considered a tertiary form of passive tobacco consumption) also assumes landlords possess the knowledge of what needs to be done and the financial resources to expend on the astronomical costs of remediation.
A key concept described is that smoke cannot be prevented from drifting throughout an apartment nor can it be stopped from entering surrounding units. Residues from these poisonous substances are present in the urine of those exposed to smoke by both inhalation and contact with nicotine-contaminated materials.
Remember the discussions that followed the 9/11 attacks about the uselessness of employing duct tape and plastic sheeting to combat chemical warfare? Beliefs that gases coming from lit cigarettes can be contained within four walls, or absorbed by air purifiers, are part of a faulty public perception based in advertising.
Industry is happy to exploit the ever-present human desire for immediate gratification through fast acting chemicals to kill bugs and clean the furnace, regardless of the collateral damage done by those products. We want to cover the walls and floors with something cheap and decorative that will last forever.
We have a Disneyland-ish expectation that the poisons around us dissipate within hours, if not minutes. Affected people are expected to spring back to full health and vigor, like those animated characters in cartoons who have been flattened by bulldozers or dropped off of cliffs.
We measure residues by smell, never considering that most products today are marketed with perfumes or masking fragrances to hide the odors that normally signal chemical hazards. Carbon monoxide is odorless, yet we evacuate neighboring apartments when a stove leaks, and monitors are legally required in many states. Why aren’t we just
as concerned with cigarette smoke?
We now know that the dangers of tobacco are not limited to the delayed effects of exposure to its carcinogenic properties. Smoking bans have led to impressive reductions in cardiac and respiratory disorders in non-smokers, merely through restrictions in areas such as workplaces, occupied for only part of the day.
Imagine being freed of contact with such hazardous substances in smoke-free residences. Those choosing to smoke can always go to an outside designated location. Where will you go with your three-month-old infant or elderly parent suffering from COPD? Eventually, the costs of environmentally induced illnesses will lead to recognition of just how easily toxic fumes spread within buildings and permit a NIOSH or OSHA-like agency to assess indoor air quality within residential settings. That will lead to least toxic formulas being developed for pesticides, construction materials, cleaning products etc. Application methods will not just be determined by efficacy but also by residual amounts present in and around locations of product usage.
Please write a letter to the editor of this journal and thank them for offering important articles like this one for free access to all. Then ask them to solicit and publish research on other indoor air quality issues.
Be an armchair activist. Only through such articles can we remove the taint of industry claiming there is no ‘sound science’ to restrain their right to sell any product or service. However, without public awareness of that science, we can’t make informed decisions as consumers and voters.
My letter (unpublished) was as follows:
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Categories: Letters, New England Journal of Medicine
Tags: indoor air quality, industry regulation, smoking
