Paul is my son. Three years ago today he was a healthy college senior. My main worry was that he spent way too much time socializing. I was worried about his studies. But it was hard for me to push the point as he only rarely got a grade of less than an A in any course. He had already finished three years of calculus and I had not made it through one in my time in college. He was athletic. He loved basketball, laser tag and dancing. He had a wonderful laugh and a great singing voice. He loved playing the keyboard. In September of his sophomore year, he met a girl. She was a reporter on the college newspaper. She talked him into joining the newspaper staff. Four months later he was editor of the paper. His college has a huge campus. So big that there are shuttles to ferry students between classes. Paul hated the shuttles. They were too slow. He preferred to run. My genes, I had been a high school and college (scholarship) cross country and track athlete. I was so proud of him.
Because of all the running he was doing on the hard surfaces of concrete sidewalks and stairs, I was not surprised to learn he had a sore knee. I thought it might be a sprain. I recommended he get a knee support and ride the shuttles for a while until it got better. Icing the knee wouldn’t be a bad idea either. I gave him my best runner advice. Stay off the hard surfaces (especially concrete) as much as possible. Find ways to run between classes where there was mostly grass and dirt. I had had enough running injuries to be confident that my advice would get him back to normal again in a couple of weeks.
It didn’t. After several weeks of limited walking and no running, of lots of ice and wearing the knee support every where, he was not better. His knee was worse. It hurt more than before. It was becoming swollen and felt hot to the touch. His other knee hurt, too. Even his shoulders were sore. I asked him what the heck he was doing to injur so many joints. I think I was a bit annoyed. Now we would have to send him to an orthopedic doctor. He must have torn a tendon or two with all his dancing and wild goings on.
I made an appointment with the best orthopedic surgeon in the area near Paul’s college. He was the one who treated all the athletic injuries on the sports teams on the campus. The first available appointment was after Christmas vacation in early January.
Paul came back home for Christmas and was acting all wimpy about his knees. But like a good father I did not say much. After all what could I say to my son except when you live the wild life injuries happen. He would learn to be more careful in the future.
Paul went back to school in early January and a week or so later, he saw the orthopedic surgeon. I remember he called after the appointment to tell his mother and I what the doctor said. I fully expected he would need knee surgery. I waited for Paul to tell me that. I wondered where the surgery would be. The cost. Would it be that new arthroscopic type where he would just have band aids on the entrance wounds afterwards?
“Dad the doctor thinks I have inflammatory arthritis”
“What? What did you say? What the heck is inflammatory arthritis? I have never heard of that before.”
“It’s like RA. You know rheumatoid arthritis.”
“No way. There is no one in our family with that. The doctor must be wrong.”
“He took fluid from my knee to have it tested. The test results will come back in a few days. It was a huge needle. He kept poking it in different places. It really hurt.” Turned out that my son’s type of inflammatory arthritis was psoriatic not rheumatoid. His first symptoms were the swollen knees only later did he get the skin lesions.
The nightmare had begun.
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Why dear God can’t I wake up? Please, please make these last two and a half years go away. Take me in my sleep. Don’t let me see any more. If you are the compassionate caring God, I learned about in my youth, end this. End it now. I worshipped you every Sunday and many Wednesday nights as well. I spent years as a Sunday School, Bible School teacher and as director of large Christian scouting program. I served on church boards as a church leader. I participated in semi-annual work projects and special projects at church. My son was an active member of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship at college. Our family attended Bible believing and Bible preaching churches in every town we lived in. For nine years in Porterville, California we attended the church pastored by James Dobson’s college tennis partner (Rev.Wil Spaite). James Dobson himself came to our church and preached and taught. Surely our family has done enough to earn some heavenly credit, right? Then let me die first. Please dear God, let me die first. I do not want to see my son suffer any more. I do not want to see him die.
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Here is a partial list of why science and cures now comes last in America. Below are rules regulations and the people who are responsible for them that would rather my son suffer and die then be cured.
(1) Stupid time consuming FDA rules and procedures
(2) Costly clinical testing of each and every named autoimmune disease one at a time instead of all at once. Almost all autoimmune diseases are caused by similar immune dysfunctions. It is likely that if one or two underlying factors were reversed virtually all forms of autoimmune disease could be cured. Yet the FDA insists one autoimmune disease at a time in clinical trials.
(3) Modern medicine held hostage to ninteenth century nomenclature based solely on location of the affected part rather than twenty first century immune cell and genetic dysfunctions. Let's quit naming diseases by what they affect instead name them by what is the root cause—genetics, lack of effective Tregs, over aggressive T effectors, B memory cell dysfunctions, etc.
(4) The "elephant man" reaction to new autoimmune drug in England last year has slowed the tortise like progress of the FDA to slower and more frustrating than a snail race.
(5) Jesse Gelsinger. He was a hero not a victim. Would he want his death to have slowed cures causing the deaths of thousands.
(6) Vast gulf between researchers and practitioners and between researchers and clinicians. This is called the bench and bedside divide. Translational medicine is term used by the FDA for bringing research results (bench) to patients (bedside). FDA wants to speed up the process so they have put in place a program to do that but the program actually adds paperwork and slows down the process.
(7) Researchers charging ahead to make discoveries, to claim credit and patents but no follow up to bring discoveries to patients. The US invents the VCR but want to charge tens of thousands of dollars for each so the Japanese simplify and rework VCR and translated the technology into something costing $40. Suddenly everyone had a VCR. The problem in translational medicine today is that there is no Japan to take the animals cures and turn them into humand cures.
(8) Translational problems—translating discoveries into medicines
(9) Do no harm today means take no chances. Protect your ass first and foremost.
(10) Physician “career investment” must be protected to hell with sick patients
Today’s physicians refusing to write off label prescriptions which were routine thirty years ago.
(11) A regulatory mess, a truly impassable morass to qualify a patient for compassionate use
(12) Bush administration money spent for death not for life—billions a month to kill in Iraq. Any one month of the Bush off budget spending in Iraq could fund a cure for most autoimmune disease in less than a year.
(13) Six years lost in stem cell research that could lead to human cellular models of disease thanks to Bush and his little god version of intolerant christianity.
(14) No embryonic research.
(15) No fetal research.
(16) James Dobson, Jerry Falwell--What they say is so is more important than what is actually so according to them and their followers. End of science and science investigation. The end of rational debate based on best evidence. The end of evidence. Next we won’t need detectives. Just decide who did it ahead of time and convict them regardless. That is the Neocon way. It is the old Soviet style. The way the Cardasians (Star Trek---Deep Space Nine) decide ahead of time who is guilty and what the punishment is before the trial and evidence is looked at. Bush, the Neocons and the little god Christians favorite form of decision making. Decide what the conclusion is before looking at any evidence. Then fit the evidence to the decision throwing out any contrary ideas.
(17) Frank Luntz chief propagandist for the Cons. They pay him to cloth their lies in respectability. He can turn any horror into a catchy slogan.
(18) Grover Norquist and The Club for Growth,
(19) Paul Gigot the editor of the Wall Street Journal.
(20) Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdock and all those who work for them and swallow their integrity to write propaganda pieces rather than news stories and segments.
(21) RepubliCON members of Congress who are Cons first Americans last. They end their vacations and all rush to Washington on a weekend to prolong the torture of a woman who had a water balloon for a brain but cannot find time to fund cures for her or any one else in America.
(22) The budget of the FDA did not increase this year (2006). Same as last year HUGE amounts of basic and translational research will not be done for another year. Another year of suffering and death for ordinary Americans. Cures kept from us again.
(23) Lack of funds to bring the latest technologies to pre-eminent college research facilities.
(24) Bush administration federal rules and regulations that force research centers to build whole new laboratories with parallel facilities and equipment to do stem cell research. If even one test tube crosses over all forms of federal funding including student loans can be shut off to the university. These are regulations put in place to hamper if not to down right shut down all embryonic stem cell research. Cons do not have the stones to do it directly so as usual they take the sneaky back door way while claiming to actually want stem cell cures.
UPDATE: Paul survived to near death episodes in July of 2007. His autoimmune condition froze his ribcage so that he could not expand it and he nearly suffocated twice. My wife and I sat with him through the night, wondering which would be his last breath. We got a new doctor "out of our plan" so my wife's insurance only covers 70% of all Paul's bills. The FOR PROFIT health care company decides what are usual and customary charges then pays only 70% of those costs which amounts to less than 50% of the phyician's charges.
The new doctor however is competent unlike the three we went to that were "in" our plan. He knew ALL the medicines. He put Paul on a new DMARD and a biologic. Paul is moving more now. He is still alive more than two years after my wife and I thought we were watching him die. he no longer feels like he is suffocating.
But Only a trip to emergency and many shots of cortisone kept him breathing until we got him to a good "out of plan" doctor.
Now the only problem are the bills. Our last month's bill from our physician was over $10,000. This is AFTER we have met the deductible. This is after the insurance has covered part of the cost. The 10K is the uncovered part--the patient's responsibility. I can't wait until Paul hits his life time limit of care. Then they will pay nothing.
Thank you cons for stopping health care reform. Let's add that to your score of successes like the one you achieved when you stopped stem cell cures for ten years. Now you con cult members are stopping any chance ordianry hardworking Americans have to ever pay their insurance bills.
Monday, May 28, 2007
The Money behind the Right Wing Conspiracy
New York Times
May 29, 2005
Goals Reached, Donor on Right Closes Up Shop
By JASON DePARLE
WASHINGTON, May 28 - Without it, the Federalist Society might not exist, nor its network of 35,000 conservative lawyers. Economic analysis might hold less sway in American courts. The premier idea factories of the right, from the Hoover Institution to the Heritage Foundation, would have lost millions of dollars in core support. And some classics of the conservative canon would have lost their financier, including Allan Bloom's lament of academic decline and Charles Murray's attacks on welfare.
Part Medici, part venture capitalist, the John M. Olin Foundation has spent three decades financing the intellectual rise of the right and exciting the envy of the left. Now the foundation is closing its doors. In telling the organization to spend his money within a generation, John M. Olin, a Midwestern ammunition and chemical magnate, sought to maximize his fortune's influence and keep it from falling into hostile - that is, liberal - hands.
In the budget offices of the right, the loss of Olin, though long anticipated, is bringing a stab of anxiety, as total annual giving of up to $20 million disappears from think tanks, journals and academic aeries. Yet it is a measure of the foundation's success that the anxiety has not been greater. While a generation ago just three or four major foundations operated on the right, today's conservatism has no shortage of institutions, donors or brio.
At a recent farewell dinner in New York that drew a crowd of prominent thinkers and doers, James Piereson, the longtime director of Olin, recounted the 1970's threats that the foundation set out to address: economic decline, urban disorder and Soviet expansionism. By contrast, Mr. Piereson said, critics now say "the United States is too powerful" and its people "too proud."
"This," Mr. Piereson added wryly, "is an exchange that John Olin would have gladly accepted."
Feeling outmatched in the war of ideas, liberal groups have spent years studying conservative foundations the way Pepsi studies Coke, searching for trade secrets. They say that Olin and its allies have pushed an agenda that spread wealth at the top and insecurity below, and that left market excesses unchecked - and that they have done so with estimable skill.
"The right has done a marvelous job," said Rob Stein, a former official in the Clinton administration who has formed an organization, the Democracy Alliance, to develop rival machinery on the left. "They are strategic, coordinated, disciplined and well financed. And they're well within their rights in a democracy to have done what they've done."
Mr. Piereson says that one Olin secret is plain to see: its interest in abstract ideas, removed from day-to-day politics. With conservatives in power, he worries that foundations and donors will focus too heavily on "public policy sorts of things," like school choice or anti-tax campaigns; by contrast, Mr. Piereson spent millions on the Olin Center for Inquiry Into the Theory and Practice of Democracy at the University of Chicago, where a typical conference examined the legacy of Rousseau.
As a result, Mr. Piereson is spending his last months in office promoting a route to political influence - intellectual armament - as unlikely as it has been effective. "The ideas have to be tended to," Mr. Piereson said. "Only after that can you tend to the policies."
John M. Olin knew the value of ammunition. In 1892, the year he was born, his father started a mining explosives company in East Alton, Ill., that soon began making bullets. Together, they built a manufacturing behemoth that sold 15 billion rounds during World War II and went on to make cellophane, metals, rocket fuel, paper, pharmaceuticals and sporting goods. An avid sportsman, Mr. Olin bred horses, hunted and fished; according to a biography to be published by Encounter this fall, "A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America" by John J. Miller, he sent boxes of salmon to a favorite politician, Richard M. Nixon.
In 1969 when armed students took over a building at his alma mater, Cornell University, Mr. Olin was shaken. Four years later, past his 80th birthday, he began pouring time and money into the small foundation he created 20 years earlier, saying he wanted to preserve the free enterprise system that had made his own wealth possible.
Mr. Olin and his wife, Evelyn, gave the foundation about $145 million; riding two bull markets since his death in 1982, it has given out about $380 million. About $6 million is left and will be awarded before the doors of its office in New York close in November.
With William E. Simon, a former Treasury secretary, as its first president, the foundation quickly focused on intellectual elites. "The basic instincts of the American people were conservative, but the intellectuals are moving in an opposite direction," said Mr. Piereson, who joined the foundation in 1981 and became its director four years later. "Our job was to show the American people why they were right."
Over time, Olin gave more than $9 million each to the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, Washington institutions that fight for causes like lower taxes and less government regulation. Yet it also financed more esoteric pursuits like The New Criterion, a literary journal where typical fare is a long attack on the Modern Language Association, a society of English professors.
"We weren't just trying to defend capitalism," Mr. Piereson said, but to defend a broader free society "along lines that included religion, history, literature and the arts."
Mr. Piereson said he had few specific expectations when he helped a little-known political theorist, Allan Bloom, create the democracy center in Chicago. But after a few years of high-brow seminars, Mr. Bloom wrote "The Closing of the American Mind," which topped best-seller lists in 1987 and inspired the continuing assault on campus liberalism.
The foundation's staff was similarly surprised when a $25,000 grant to an obscure social scientist, Charles Murray, helped revolutionize the welfare debate. Conservatives had long attacked poor people as abusing welfare programs. Mr. Murray's 1984 book, "Losing Ground," attacked the programs as abusing the poor by diverting them from work and marriage. By equating cutting with caring, Mr. Murray helped conservatives lay claim to the mantle of compassion as they pushed tough new welfare laws.
Much of Olin's giving has centered on law schools, reflecting Mr. Piereson's belief that they disproportionately shape public life. A $20,000 grant in 1982 helped law students organize a conference, and one of the most influential legal groups of the 20th century emerged, the Federalist Society.
The society now has chapters at almost every law school, and a swarm of alumni in the Bush administration dedicated to what the group calls limited government and judicial restraint. "It's not clear whether we would have existed without Olin's support," said Eugene Meyer, the society's president.
Even more influential has been Olin's support of the law and economics movement, which has transformed legal thinking. Its supporters say that economic tools, like cost-benefit analysis, bring rationality to the law, while critics warn that the focus on economics can cheat notions like fairness that defy quantification.
Olin has spent $68 million on law and economics programs, including those at Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of Chicago. "I saw it as a way into the law schools - I probably shouldn't confess that," Mr. Piereson said. "Economic analysis tends to have conservatizing effects."
The foundation has had its disappointments. Olin spent more than $500,000 each at Duke and the University of Pennsylvania for programs in law and economics that it discontinued, saying they had failed to have a sufficient impact. And not every donation has gone toward erudition.
A $5,000 grant helped the journalist David Brock write his 1993 book, "The Real Anita Hill," in which he elaborated on his incendiary charges that impugned the character of Ms. Hill, the critic of Justice Clarence Thomas. Breaking with the right, Mr. Brock later apologized.
Yet even Olin's ideological critics envy the foundation's record. "Their grant-making strategy has been much more intelligent and effective than what we typically see on the left," said Jeff Krehely of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a liberal group that monitors charitable spending.
One of Olin's distinctive qualities is its steadfastness; it has financed favored groups like the Federalist Society for more than 20 years. "They don't follow fads," Mr. Krehely said. "It shows they have clear goals."
Other major conservative donors include the Sarah Scaife Foundation in Pittsburgh, the Smith Richardson Foundation in Westport, Conn., and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee. Comparing them with an equal number of liberal foundations, including Ford and MacArthur, Mr. Piereson found that the right spent $100 million a year to the left's $1.2 billion. "You don't have to have a lot of money to drive the intellectual debate," Mr. Piereson said.
Although Olin is bowing out, the conservative movement is growing. There are conservative think tanks operating in 42 states; grass-roots organizers working on issues like tort reform and tax relief; and groups monitoring liberal journalists, professors, politicians and clerics.
"The great achievements of conservative philanthropy are just beginning," said Adam Meyerson, president of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a Washington group (and Olin grant recipient) that advises conservative donors.
Yet no group is poised to fill Olin's niche as a benefactor of big ideas. Hoping to encourage one, Mr. Meyerson organized the dinner in New York to celebrate Olin's achievements, prompting coverage in National Review, The New York Sun and The New York Observer. In the last year, Mr. Piereson has published essays in The Wall Street Journal and Commentary magazine, summoning donors to the "battle of ideas."
But ideas can be a tough sell. "It can take 20 years to have a serious impact," Mr. Meyerson said, and many donors want quicker success.
As for ideas, Mr. Piereson has a new one. He is hoping to start an initiative to counter liberal influence in academia. Liberal academics "don't like American capitalism, American culture, and they don't like American history - they see it as a history of oppression," he said. "There are some people who are prepared to spend large sums of money to address this problem."
May 29, 2005
Goals Reached, Donor on Right Closes Up Shop
By JASON DePARLE
WASHINGTON, May 28 - Without it, the Federalist Society might not exist, nor its network of 35,000 conservative lawyers. Economic analysis might hold less sway in American courts. The premier idea factories of the right, from the Hoover Institution to the Heritage Foundation, would have lost millions of dollars in core support. And some classics of the conservative canon would have lost their financier, including Allan Bloom's lament of academic decline and Charles Murray's attacks on welfare.
Part Medici, part venture capitalist, the John M. Olin Foundation has spent three decades financing the intellectual rise of the right and exciting the envy of the left. Now the foundation is closing its doors. In telling the organization to spend his money within a generation, John M. Olin, a Midwestern ammunition and chemical magnate, sought to maximize his fortune's influence and keep it from falling into hostile - that is, liberal - hands.
In the budget offices of the right, the loss of Olin, though long anticipated, is bringing a stab of anxiety, as total annual giving of up to $20 million disappears from think tanks, journals and academic aeries. Yet it is a measure of the foundation's success that the anxiety has not been greater. While a generation ago just three or four major foundations operated on the right, today's conservatism has no shortage of institutions, donors or brio.
At a recent farewell dinner in New York that drew a crowd of prominent thinkers and doers, James Piereson, the longtime director of Olin, recounted the 1970's threats that the foundation set out to address: economic decline, urban disorder and Soviet expansionism. By contrast, Mr. Piereson said, critics now say "the United States is too powerful" and its people "too proud."
"This," Mr. Piereson added wryly, "is an exchange that John Olin would have gladly accepted."
Feeling outmatched in the war of ideas, liberal groups have spent years studying conservative foundations the way Pepsi studies Coke, searching for trade secrets. They say that Olin and its allies have pushed an agenda that spread wealth at the top and insecurity below, and that left market excesses unchecked - and that they have done so with estimable skill.
"The right has done a marvelous job," said Rob Stein, a former official in the Clinton administration who has formed an organization, the Democracy Alliance, to develop rival machinery on the left. "They are strategic, coordinated, disciplined and well financed. And they're well within their rights in a democracy to have done what they've done."
Mr. Piereson says that one Olin secret is plain to see: its interest in abstract ideas, removed from day-to-day politics. With conservatives in power, he worries that foundations and donors will focus too heavily on "public policy sorts of things," like school choice or anti-tax campaigns; by contrast, Mr. Piereson spent millions on the Olin Center for Inquiry Into the Theory and Practice of Democracy at the University of Chicago, where a typical conference examined the legacy of Rousseau.
As a result, Mr. Piereson is spending his last months in office promoting a route to political influence - intellectual armament - as unlikely as it has been effective. "The ideas have to be tended to," Mr. Piereson said. "Only after that can you tend to the policies."
John M. Olin knew the value of ammunition. In 1892, the year he was born, his father started a mining explosives company in East Alton, Ill., that soon began making bullets. Together, they built a manufacturing behemoth that sold 15 billion rounds during World War II and went on to make cellophane, metals, rocket fuel, paper, pharmaceuticals and sporting goods. An avid sportsman, Mr. Olin bred horses, hunted and fished; according to a biography to be published by Encounter this fall, "A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America" by John J. Miller, he sent boxes of salmon to a favorite politician, Richard M. Nixon.
In 1969 when armed students took over a building at his alma mater, Cornell University, Mr. Olin was shaken. Four years later, past his 80th birthday, he began pouring time and money into the small foundation he created 20 years earlier, saying he wanted to preserve the free enterprise system that had made his own wealth possible.
Mr. Olin and his wife, Evelyn, gave the foundation about $145 million; riding two bull markets since his death in 1982, it has given out about $380 million. About $6 million is left and will be awarded before the doors of its office in New York close in November.
With William E. Simon, a former Treasury secretary, as its first president, the foundation quickly focused on intellectual elites. "The basic instincts of the American people were conservative, but the intellectuals are moving in an opposite direction," said Mr. Piereson, who joined the foundation in 1981 and became its director four years later. "Our job was to show the American people why they were right."
Over time, Olin gave more than $9 million each to the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, Washington institutions that fight for causes like lower taxes and less government regulation. Yet it also financed more esoteric pursuits like The New Criterion, a literary journal where typical fare is a long attack on the Modern Language Association, a society of English professors.
"We weren't just trying to defend capitalism," Mr. Piereson said, but to defend a broader free society "along lines that included religion, history, literature and the arts."
Mr. Piereson said he had few specific expectations when he helped a little-known political theorist, Allan Bloom, create the democracy center in Chicago. But after a few years of high-brow seminars, Mr. Bloom wrote "The Closing of the American Mind," which topped best-seller lists in 1987 and inspired the continuing assault on campus liberalism.
The foundation's staff was similarly surprised when a $25,000 grant to an obscure social scientist, Charles Murray, helped revolutionize the welfare debate. Conservatives had long attacked poor people as abusing welfare programs. Mr. Murray's 1984 book, "Losing Ground," attacked the programs as abusing the poor by diverting them from work and marriage. By equating cutting with caring, Mr. Murray helped conservatives lay claim to the mantle of compassion as they pushed tough new welfare laws.
Much of Olin's giving has centered on law schools, reflecting Mr. Piereson's belief that they disproportionately shape public life. A $20,000 grant in 1982 helped law students organize a conference, and one of the most influential legal groups of the 20th century emerged, the Federalist Society.
The society now has chapters at almost every law school, and a swarm of alumni in the Bush administration dedicated to what the group calls limited government and judicial restraint. "It's not clear whether we would have existed without Olin's support," said Eugene Meyer, the society's president.
Even more influential has been Olin's support of the law and economics movement, which has transformed legal thinking. Its supporters say that economic tools, like cost-benefit analysis, bring rationality to the law, while critics warn that the focus on economics can cheat notions like fairness that defy quantification.
Olin has spent $68 million on law and economics programs, including those at Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of Chicago. "I saw it as a way into the law schools - I probably shouldn't confess that," Mr. Piereson said. "Economic analysis tends to have conservatizing effects."
The foundation has had its disappointments. Olin spent more than $500,000 each at Duke and the University of Pennsylvania for programs in law and economics that it discontinued, saying they had failed to have a sufficient impact. And not every donation has gone toward erudition.
A $5,000 grant helped the journalist David Brock write his 1993 book, "The Real Anita Hill," in which he elaborated on his incendiary charges that impugned the character of Ms. Hill, the critic of Justice Clarence Thomas. Breaking with the right, Mr. Brock later apologized.
Yet even Olin's ideological critics envy the foundation's record. "Their grant-making strategy has been much more intelligent and effective than what we typically see on the left," said Jeff Krehely of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a liberal group that monitors charitable spending.
One of Olin's distinctive qualities is its steadfastness; it has financed favored groups like the Federalist Society for more than 20 years. "They don't follow fads," Mr. Krehely said. "It shows they have clear goals."
Other major conservative donors include the Sarah Scaife Foundation in Pittsburgh, the Smith Richardson Foundation in Westport, Conn., and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee. Comparing them with an equal number of liberal foundations, including Ford and MacArthur, Mr. Piereson found that the right spent $100 million a year to the left's $1.2 billion. "You don't have to have a lot of money to drive the intellectual debate," Mr. Piereson said.
Although Olin is bowing out, the conservative movement is growing. There are conservative think tanks operating in 42 states; grass-roots organizers working on issues like tort reform and tax relief; and groups monitoring liberal journalists, professors, politicians and clerics.
"The great achievements of conservative philanthropy are just beginning," said Adam Meyerson, president of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a Washington group (and Olin grant recipient) that advises conservative donors.
Yet no group is poised to fill Olin's niche as a benefactor of big ideas. Hoping to encourage one, Mr. Meyerson organized the dinner in New York to celebrate Olin's achievements, prompting coverage in National Review, The New York Sun and The New York Observer. In the last year, Mr. Piereson has published essays in The Wall Street Journal and Commentary magazine, summoning donors to the "battle of ideas."
But ideas can be a tough sell. "It can take 20 years to have a serious impact," Mr. Meyerson said, and many donors want quicker success.
As for ideas, Mr. Piereson has a new one. He is hoping to start an initiative to counter liberal influence in academia. Liberal academics "don't like American capitalism, American culture, and they don't like American history - they see it as a history of oppression," he said. "There are some people who are prepared to spend large sums of money to address this problem."
Shame on Robert Goldberg
This letter was written regarding the problems with getting cures to patients. (Please support the Abagail Alliance. Robert Goldberg published an article about he problem on a biotecnology website. Allowing a right wing hit man to publish propaganda pieces cheapens and discredits people who are trying to change the FDA approval rules in ways to benefit patients.
Dear Biotechnology I. O.
I enjoy your site. Most article links are very informative. I enjoy reading unbiased current information in the biotech field.
However, you do a disservice to your readers and your site when you reference propaganda articles written by hired guns whose only agenda is the deception of the American public for the benefit of their masters who pay them so well.
Robert Goldberg is one such amoral, hired gun who you linked to in the article, “Streamlining drug approval” from Washington Times. He writes for virtually every propaganda organ in the deception quiver of the wealthy. His articles serve only to try to make more money for his masters by persuading Americans to believe something which is neither true nor in the best interest of ordinary Americans.
I agree with the premise of his article. There are huge problems with the FDA drug approval system. My youngest son is crippled and completely disabled from a rapidly progressing autoimmune disease that he had no sign of three years ago. His chances of living for five more years are very remote.
This horror has been compounded by the many different cures for autoimmune disease in laboratory animals that have been discovered in the last three years including a "vaccine" recently announced by The Weizmann Institute in Israel. Other cures have been announced by the Salk institute in San Diego, Jeffrey Bluestone at UCSF, the La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology and the Burnham Institute. But none of the revolutionary treatments or cures ever gets tried on humans. When I have contacted these institutions their answers are inevitably the same. They say a variation of the following, "We are a research institute. We do not do translational work. We do not do clinical trials. That work is up to someone else." I ask, “who is that someone else?” They have never have an answer for that question--just some vague someone, some place else will do it, they are sure.
Meanwhile my son suffers in pain and worsens daily. He can no longer walk unaided. He cannot pick up a fork. He cannot even talk as the joint holding his vocal cords is frozen.
There is a need for “Phase Zero” Clinical Trials of novel therapies and medications, using fully informed volunteers, without Institutional Review Board paperwork and hold up. Some patients would be hurt. Some will undoubtedly die. But the techniques and medications would get to millions of others years earlier. Those who were hurt and died would be heroes instead of anonymous victims of the relentless diseases they now suffer from. My son will die without a new therapy. His death will be pointless and without value. At least with “Phase Zero” clinical trials, if worst came to worst, he would have contributed to cures for others. I, too, have an autoimmune disease. I would happily take join any Phase Zero trial that might help my son.
If Robert Goldberg actually cared about real patients rather than his sponsors paycheck these are the kind of issues he would address.
He would rail against the intentionally difficult system of reporting adverse reactions put in place at the behest of big pharma using their financial might to bribe Congress to write the laws and regulations on reporting the way Big Pharma wants.
There absolutely are stupid bureaucratic delays for crucial medications. I absolutely agree on that point with Goldberg. But I come at it as a father of a patient not as paid writer. Below is an example of a ridiculous FDA delay:
Rituxan, an obvious autoimmune candidate medication, has taken a decade from initial FDA approval for Type B leukemias to approval for use against Rheumatoid Arthritis. A decade is an unconscionable delay!
Even now with its proven efficacy for RA, it has not been approved for the whole host of other autoimmune diseases with similar pathology to RA.
Obviously if it helps RA by killing off the rogue B cells that produce the maladapted antibodies that are attacking the joints, it would also work to kill the rogue B cells in psoriatic arthritis that attack tendons, the rogue B cells in MS that attack myelin sheaths around nerve cells. Virtually every one of the eighty or more autoimmune disease start with rogue B cells producing maladapted antibodies. Eliminate the rogue B cells and you eliminate the maladapted antibodies. Disease progression stops.
Yet the FDA requires each autoimmune disease to be tested separately. Approval for a new autoimmune disease comes only after hundreds of millions of dollars and years of waiting for each of these diseases. Why should we have to wait? Why doesn’t Goldberg care about this issue?
Insurance companies do not pay for off label uses, so millions are effectively denied Rituxan’s benefits. Does Goldberg bring up the issue of no coverage for effective uses of medications that are off label therefore not reimbursed? No, no one paid him to say it.
Rituxan is also “old technology”—a monoclonal that is part mouse instead of being a fully human antibody. New monoclonals are fully human.
Had Rituxan been approved a decade ago for autoimmune disease; a market for new technology, anti-B cell medications would have rapidly developed. Those new technology anti-B cell medications with far fewer side effects would be on the market now. Instead we will have to wait another five years for the newer monoclonals. Does Goldberg bring up this issue either? No, who’s paying him to say that? No one.
He writes for the Washington Times, the American Spectator and other completely biased propaganda papers whose sole purpose is deception and disinformation to confuse the American public. Please do not link to his articles any more. For goodness sake, he is a senior fellow at the fascist Manhattan Institute! Why not link to flat earth articles, moon landing deniers, and anti-evolution articles, too?
Your site is either scientific site or it isn’t. If you are going to reference propaganda pieces at least label them as such. Yes I saw the word ‘editorial.” And no that word is not sufficient. An editorial in JAMA or some other reputable medical journal is for the purpose of advancing science for the general good. That kind of editorial is a very different kind of writing from the propaganda pieces of Goldberg meant to deceive and hurt the common good for the benefit of those who pay him to write the propaganda. His was not an editorial, it was a paid for propaganda piece and should have been labeled as such.
darwindad@cox.net
Dear Biotechnology I. O.
I enjoy your site. Most article links are very informative. I enjoy reading unbiased current information in the biotech field.
However, you do a disservice to your readers and your site when you reference propaganda articles written by hired guns whose only agenda is the deception of the American public for the benefit of their masters who pay them so well.
Robert Goldberg is one such amoral, hired gun who you linked to in the article, “Streamlining drug approval” from Washington Times. He writes for virtually every propaganda organ in the deception quiver of the wealthy. His articles serve only to try to make more money for his masters by persuading Americans to believe something which is neither true nor in the best interest of ordinary Americans.
I agree with the premise of his article. There are huge problems with the FDA drug approval system. My youngest son is crippled and completely disabled from a rapidly progressing autoimmune disease that he had no sign of three years ago. His chances of living for five more years are very remote.
This horror has been compounded by the many different cures for autoimmune disease in laboratory animals that have been discovered in the last three years including a "vaccine" recently announced by The Weizmann Institute in Israel. Other cures have been announced by the Salk institute in San Diego, Jeffrey Bluestone at UCSF, the La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology and the Burnham Institute. But none of the revolutionary treatments or cures ever gets tried on humans. When I have contacted these institutions their answers are inevitably the same. They say a variation of the following, "We are a research institute. We do not do translational work. We do not do clinical trials. That work is up to someone else." I ask, “who is that someone else?” They have never have an answer for that question--just some vague someone, some place else will do it, they are sure.
Meanwhile my son suffers in pain and worsens daily. He can no longer walk unaided. He cannot pick up a fork. He cannot even talk as the joint holding his vocal cords is frozen.
There is a need for “Phase Zero” Clinical Trials of novel therapies and medications, using fully informed volunteers, without Institutional Review Board paperwork and hold up. Some patients would be hurt. Some will undoubtedly die. But the techniques and medications would get to millions of others years earlier. Those who were hurt and died would be heroes instead of anonymous victims of the relentless diseases they now suffer from. My son will die without a new therapy. His death will be pointless and without value. At least with “Phase Zero” clinical trials, if worst came to worst, he would have contributed to cures for others. I, too, have an autoimmune disease. I would happily take join any Phase Zero trial that might help my son.
If Robert Goldberg actually cared about real patients rather than his sponsors paycheck these are the kind of issues he would address.
He would rail against the intentionally difficult system of reporting adverse reactions put in place at the behest of big pharma using their financial might to bribe Congress to write the laws and regulations on reporting the way Big Pharma wants.
There absolutely are stupid bureaucratic delays for crucial medications. I absolutely agree on that point with Goldberg. But I come at it as a father of a patient not as paid writer. Below is an example of a ridiculous FDA delay:
Rituxan, an obvious autoimmune candidate medication, has taken a decade from initial FDA approval for Type B leukemias to approval for use against Rheumatoid Arthritis. A decade is an unconscionable delay!
Even now with its proven efficacy for RA, it has not been approved for the whole host of other autoimmune diseases with similar pathology to RA.
Obviously if it helps RA by killing off the rogue B cells that produce the maladapted antibodies that are attacking the joints, it would also work to kill the rogue B cells in psoriatic arthritis that attack tendons, the rogue B cells in MS that attack myelin sheaths around nerve cells. Virtually every one of the eighty or more autoimmune disease start with rogue B cells producing maladapted antibodies. Eliminate the rogue B cells and you eliminate the maladapted antibodies. Disease progression stops.
Yet the FDA requires each autoimmune disease to be tested separately. Approval for a new autoimmune disease comes only after hundreds of millions of dollars and years of waiting for each of these diseases. Why should we have to wait? Why doesn’t Goldberg care about this issue?
Insurance companies do not pay for off label uses, so millions are effectively denied Rituxan’s benefits. Does Goldberg bring up the issue of no coverage for effective uses of medications that are off label therefore not reimbursed? No, no one paid him to say it.
Rituxan is also “old technology”—a monoclonal that is part mouse instead of being a fully human antibody. New monoclonals are fully human.
Had Rituxan been approved a decade ago for autoimmune disease; a market for new technology, anti-B cell medications would have rapidly developed. Those new technology anti-B cell medications with far fewer side effects would be on the market now. Instead we will have to wait another five years for the newer monoclonals. Does Goldberg bring up this issue either? No, who’s paying him to say that? No one.
He writes for the Washington Times, the American Spectator and other completely biased propaganda papers whose sole purpose is deception and disinformation to confuse the American public. Please do not link to his articles any more. For goodness sake, he is a senior fellow at the fascist Manhattan Institute! Why not link to flat earth articles, moon landing deniers, and anti-evolution articles, too?
Your site is either scientific site or it isn’t. If you are going to reference propaganda pieces at least label them as such. Yes I saw the word ‘editorial.” And no that word is not sufficient. An editorial in JAMA or some other reputable medical journal is for the purpose of advancing science for the general good. That kind of editorial is a very different kind of writing from the propaganda pieces of Goldberg meant to deceive and hurt the common good for the benefit of those who pay him to write the propaganda. His was not an editorial, it was a paid for propaganda piece and should have been labeled as such.
darwindad@cox.net
Farmworkers abuse by "patriotic" Americans
Sarah Villicana is a reporter for the Porterville Recorder. After a virulently rascist letter to the editor was published in the paper she wrote a courageous response wondering if perhaps there should be limits to free speech.
I can assure you from first hand observation that the treatment of field workers in California's San Joaquin valley is akin to the treatment of serfs during the Middle Ages. It makes me ashamed that such acts of meanness are done by people who call themselves Americans.
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Reporter's Notebook: Is there such a thing as too much free speech?
By Sarah Villicana, The Porterville Recorder
svillicana@portervillerecorder.com.
In regards to your column entry, “Is there such a thing as too much free speech?” I say, Bravo! Good Job, Sarah! I am amazed by your temperate response. Had I seen the letter mine response would have been much more heated. Obviously the Porterville Recorder needs much better regulation of its standards for letters to the editor. No ethnic group should be singled out for slurs in any letter published by the Porterville Recorder. It degrades the reputation of the Recorder.
While I lived in Porterville I saw great abuses of farmworkers and great prejudice. I remember a very cold day in January when I was driving on the freeway. A huge shiny white new pickup passed me. In the cab was a white man dressed in a very warm leather coat with what looks like a lamb’s fur collar. The rest of the cab was empty. The windows were closed. Obviously the heat was cranked up high. In the back, uncovered pick up bed was a farmworker huddled in a tiny ball wearing only a thin blue denim jacket. The wind was roaring over him. The temperature was mid forties if that. The farmworker looked so incredibly cold.
I would not have put a dog in an open pickup bed at those temperatures. Yet the farmer driving at perhaps eighty miles an hour did not give one thought to inviting the worker inside the heated cab. That mental picture sums up what the kind of treatment of farmworkers I saw when I worked in the farming communities of Woodville and Saucelito--too many really heartless land owners. Farmworkers are people too.
Now that immigration reform will likely be passed and even fewer workers will make it to the Valley, I wonder how the rich landowners will treat farmworkers now. I can only imagine their desperation when there will not be enough farmworkers to get in all the crops. Maybe then they will value farmworkers as essential to the Valley economy.
The Porterville Recorder’s policies are too lenient.
I can assure you from first hand observation that the treatment of field workers in California's San Joaquin valley is akin to the treatment of serfs during the Middle Ages. It makes me ashamed that such acts of meanness are done by people who call themselves Americans.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Reporter's Notebook: Is there such a thing as too much free speech?
By Sarah Villicana, The Porterville Recorder
svillicana@portervillerecorder.com.
In regards to your column entry, “Is there such a thing as too much free speech?” I say, Bravo! Good Job, Sarah! I am amazed by your temperate response. Had I seen the letter mine response would have been much more heated. Obviously the Porterville Recorder needs much better regulation of its standards for letters to the editor. No ethnic group should be singled out for slurs in any letter published by the Porterville Recorder. It degrades the reputation of the Recorder.
While I lived in Porterville I saw great abuses of farmworkers and great prejudice. I remember a very cold day in January when I was driving on the freeway. A huge shiny white new pickup passed me. In the cab was a white man dressed in a very warm leather coat with what looks like a lamb’s fur collar. The rest of the cab was empty. The windows were closed. Obviously the heat was cranked up high. In the back, uncovered pick up bed was a farmworker huddled in a tiny ball wearing only a thin blue denim jacket. The wind was roaring over him. The temperature was mid forties if that. The farmworker looked so incredibly cold.
I would not have put a dog in an open pickup bed at those temperatures. Yet the farmer driving at perhaps eighty miles an hour did not give one thought to inviting the worker inside the heated cab. That mental picture sums up what the kind of treatment of farmworkers I saw when I worked in the farming communities of Woodville and Saucelito--too many really heartless land owners. Farmworkers are people too.
Now that immigration reform will likely be passed and even fewer workers will make it to the Valley, I wonder how the rich landowners will treat farmworkers now. I can only imagine their desperation when there will not be enough farmworkers to get in all the crops. Maybe then they will value farmworkers as essential to the Valley economy.
The Porterville Recorder’s policies are too lenient.
Pat Robetson, Listen up!
I wrote this letter to Pat Robertson about three years ago. I have heard nothing in reply.
___________________________________
When my wife and I were a young married couple in the late seventies, we contributed to your "ministry." We thought you were advancing the gospel message. After a couple of months of getting political messages in the literature you sent to our home, we stopped contributing. We were deeply disturbed about a religious leader, who received tax exempt status from our government, but instead of using that status for religious purposes used it to support political positions and particular politicians. You violated the spirit of the tax exemption that you were given.
After reading your autobiography that you sent to our home, we became even more concerned for your priorities. You said in that book that without consulting your wife you gave ALL your money and personal possessions away. You saved nothing back for your family. Hardly something Christ would advocate. Nor should you have written about any gifts you gave to God in a book. Christians give their gifts in secret. As Christ said, “You have had your reward before men. Do not expect one before God.”
Yes, it all worked out well for you. Today you are a billionaire. But giving away all means of support for your family without their knowledge, putting their lives in jeopardy is nothing Christ would ask of anyone. After reading that passage in your autobiography, my wife and I became concerned about the basis for your ministry. Is it Bible based or Robertson based? Who really is being glorified, Jesus or you? Do you care what happens to anyone else except yourself?
In the last week, you have called for the assassination of a twice democratically elected leader (Hugo Chavez). You run a "network" whose sole purpose seems to be to glorify the Robertson Family particularly you personally. You take tax exemptions from the government as a religious organization and then act as a political organ of the most extreme and anti-democratic right wing. For these three reasons, my wife and I demand our donated money back from your "ministry." We thought we gave to the Lord. But you took that money and made an empire of sycophants. You owe us $350 plus interest. My wife wants to send you a bill. Consider this email our bill.
I suggest you get on your knees and get right with God. Put your ego behind and take up the cause of Christ and his Great Commission. Christ’s message was one of compassion, not the Robertson one of retribution and ego gratification. You still have time to ask forgiveness and get right with God. I urge you to do that. Remember it is easier for a camel to crawl through the eye of the needle (gate) than it is for a rich egotistical man to get into heaven.
___________________________________
When my wife and I were a young married couple in the late seventies, we contributed to your "ministry." We thought you were advancing the gospel message. After a couple of months of getting political messages in the literature you sent to our home, we stopped contributing. We were deeply disturbed about a religious leader, who received tax exempt status from our government, but instead of using that status for religious purposes used it to support political positions and particular politicians. You violated the spirit of the tax exemption that you were given.
After reading your autobiography that you sent to our home, we became even more concerned for your priorities. You said in that book that without consulting your wife you gave ALL your money and personal possessions away. You saved nothing back for your family. Hardly something Christ would advocate. Nor should you have written about any gifts you gave to God in a book. Christians give their gifts in secret. As Christ said, “You have had your reward before men. Do not expect one before God.”
Yes, it all worked out well for you. Today you are a billionaire. But giving away all means of support for your family without their knowledge, putting their lives in jeopardy is nothing Christ would ask of anyone. After reading that passage in your autobiography, my wife and I became concerned about the basis for your ministry. Is it Bible based or Robertson based? Who really is being glorified, Jesus or you? Do you care what happens to anyone else except yourself?
In the last week, you have called for the assassination of a twice democratically elected leader (Hugo Chavez). You run a "network" whose sole purpose seems to be to glorify the Robertson Family particularly you personally. You take tax exemptions from the government as a religious organization and then act as a political organ of the most extreme and anti-democratic right wing. For these three reasons, my wife and I demand our donated money back from your "ministry." We thought we gave to the Lord. But you took that money and made an empire of sycophants. You owe us $350 plus interest. My wife wants to send you a bill. Consider this email our bill.
I suggest you get on your knees and get right with God. Put your ego behind and take up the cause of Christ and his Great Commission. Christ’s message was one of compassion, not the Robertson one of retribution and ego gratification. You still have time to ask forgiveness and get right with God. I urge you to do that. Remember it is easier for a camel to crawl through the eye of the needle (gate) than it is for a rich egotistical man to get into heaven.
Stem Cell Cures now!
The following is a letter I wrote to Congress in 2005. It had been less than two years since The Horror (psoriatic arthritis) first started in my son. In the letter I refer to a Korean researcher who has now been discredited. But others here in California are currently in the process of creating stem cell lines with the original genes replaced with genes from people with genetic conditions like my son. These cells will allow for the testing of new drugs OUTSIDE the body. It will be much safer. Thousands of drugs can be tested every week. Current techniques for testing drugs can take decades or centuries. We need embryonic stem cell reearch NOW!!!
I have a personal reason to support stem cell research—my son.
Less than two years ago he was an athletic college senior on track to graduate cum laude from UCSD when a sore knee turned out to be the first symptom of psoriatic arthritis. Today he is withered and crippled. His muscles are gone. His walking is gone. He cannot write, type or even use a computer mouse to play games. He can barely whisper a few words as his vocal cords are also affected.
The disbelief of the diagnosis of what we knew would be a sprained knee was followed by months of horror. We kept trying to make accommodations. We would go to his apartment help him clean wash clothes etc. Then we had to bring him home. He had to apply to a nearby college he could commute to and live with us. We put up hand rails in the shower. Chair by the door so he could sit to put his shoes on. My son, the champion laser tag player, could not stand to slide on his shoes.
Then we had to get the handicapped placard. Just applying is almost an admission of defeat. Then we got him a new car he could slide into better. Then expensive adjustments to the car seat to try to get him comfortable as his spine and neck became involved. Canes everywhere in our house. Weird to have canes. Weird to see him using canes. My son who could dance run jump. Now he was constantly exhausted. But it kept getting worse no matter what we tried to do to help him the inevitable and rapid progression kept continuing.
I did not know such a horror existed. Last December he was trying to type papers for his masters program when his fingers suddenly got swollen like sausages—terribly painful sausages. My wife and I finished typing his papers. We got an extension from his professors to finish. We bought Dragon naturally speaking and added RAM to his computer so he could talk to the computer instead of typing. Within two weeks the disease hit his vocal cords. He could not use his voice to activate the dragon program. Now he can do nothing but watch TV. Even then he must constantly shift chairs and put on ice pack after ice pack because he aches so much. He can no longer go to college. His very survival is at risk.
There is nothing more we can do. Just watch him suffer and then likely die. The next lovely aspect of this horror is destruction of internal organs. Soon his lungs, heart coronary arteries will be involved and then he will suffocate to death or die of a heart attack. Given the rapid progression of the disease so far I doubt he will be alive at this time five years from now.
This horror is happening to my son who was going to be the doctor, my son who should be bringing home the girl he will marry, my son who loved life, my wonderful child who had no enemies and hundreds of friends. He was always the one who saw problems and solved them. He did not ask what chore needed to be done. He saw. He helped.
He always had quick reactions. About ten years ago he saw his three year old cousin start to climb a heavy set of drawers by pulling them out. There were others adults in the room. But my son, then 14 years old leapt from his chair and grabbed the toppling chest of drawers saving his cousin. My beautiful son who saved his cousin is now in constant horrible, unrelenting pain. He has done nothing to deserve it.
But I did. I voted the straight Republican ticket in my youth. I twice voted for Bush the elder. I used to be a Sunday School teacher (15 years). I used to tithe. I ran a Christian scouting program (3 years). I supported James Dobson, a fellow Nazarene. In those times Republicans and Christianity stood for something good. Today those, who most loudly proclaim to be holy, to be acting as God wants them to, are guilty of great evil. God gave us the knowledge of how to find cures for diseases like my son has. Yet these evil monsters will not allow it.
I never could have imagined such a horror as my son has could possible exist let alone strike him down. As you sit reading this, you do not know when a similar horror could strike you or much worse someone you love. None of my son’s grandparents had autoimmune disease. One of my them died at 88. The others are living and 86, 87 and 89 years old. We had no clue this could hit us. No one is safe from genetic time bombs.
A few years ago scientist predicted that it would take a decade or more before cell lines created using the nucleus of disease causing cells would be developed. The Koreans did it in eighteen months. So much for predictions that embryonic stem cell research would not pay off for decades.
What the Koreans have done means a nucleus from one of my son’s cells could be developed into a cell line. Medicines to stop the disease could be developed using these cells OUTSIDE a human body, outside his body. No more experiments on imperfect animal disease models that only approximate human disease. No more experimenting on humans. With this technique hundreds perhaps thousands of possible disease modifying compounds could be tested at once using lab automation and “cell chips.”
This breakthrough is a quantum leap forward. If Gore had won the election this technique would have been developed in the USA and not in the year 2005 but probably in 2001 or 2002. After all, back then, the best stem cell scientists in the world were here in the United States. Cures would already be pouring out. Ill people from throughout the world would be coming here. My son might never have had to go through twenty months of hell.
My wife and I lost a baby. She had a miscarriage between the births of our two sons. That was twenty five years ago and it still saddens me today. But if there had been a way to donate some of that child’s cells to research, we would have done it. Suppose some of that child’s cells were alive and growing in labs or growing in people and providing cures. How wonderful! Knowing some part of our lost child was alive would provide me with great comfort. Surely those IVF parents must feel the same way about their embryos in storage. How much more wonderful if some part of their frozen embryos could help someone rather than just being tossed in a trash can! (And do not give me that “embryo adoption” deception! There are not nearly enough potential parents by a million fold to ever make a dent in the number of embryos stored; besides even the most careful implantations result in the death of some twenty or thirty “adopted” embryos for each successful implantation.)
I pray that you in Congress will make the right decision. Allow federal funding to go forward. Make the decision veto proof. Bush just does not understand. He has no empathy for other people’s suffering. He is wrong. He is horribly wrong. His position is simply evil. Come see my son. Send me your email address I will forward you before and after pictures of my son. See how truly evil the results of the Bush ban really are.
Sincerely darwindad
I have a personal reason to support stem cell research—my son.
Less than two years ago he was an athletic college senior on track to graduate cum laude from UCSD when a sore knee turned out to be the first symptom of psoriatic arthritis. Today he is withered and crippled. His muscles are gone. His walking is gone. He cannot write, type or even use a computer mouse to play games. He can barely whisper a few words as his vocal cords are also affected.
The disbelief of the diagnosis of what we knew would be a sprained knee was followed by months of horror. We kept trying to make accommodations. We would go to his apartment help him clean wash clothes etc. Then we had to bring him home. He had to apply to a nearby college he could commute to and live with us. We put up hand rails in the shower. Chair by the door so he could sit to put his shoes on. My son, the champion laser tag player, could not stand to slide on his shoes.
Then we had to get the handicapped placard. Just applying is almost an admission of defeat. Then we got him a new car he could slide into better. Then expensive adjustments to the car seat to try to get him comfortable as his spine and neck became involved. Canes everywhere in our house. Weird to have canes. Weird to see him using canes. My son who could dance run jump. Now he was constantly exhausted. But it kept getting worse no matter what we tried to do to help him the inevitable and rapid progression kept continuing.
I did not know such a horror existed. Last December he was trying to type papers for his masters program when his fingers suddenly got swollen like sausages—terribly painful sausages. My wife and I finished typing his papers. We got an extension from his professors to finish. We bought Dragon naturally speaking and added RAM to his computer so he could talk to the computer instead of typing. Within two weeks the disease hit his vocal cords. He could not use his voice to activate the dragon program. Now he can do nothing but watch TV. Even then he must constantly shift chairs and put on ice pack after ice pack because he aches so much. He can no longer go to college. His very survival is at risk.
There is nothing more we can do. Just watch him suffer and then likely die. The next lovely aspect of this horror is destruction of internal organs. Soon his lungs, heart coronary arteries will be involved and then he will suffocate to death or die of a heart attack. Given the rapid progression of the disease so far I doubt he will be alive at this time five years from now.
This horror is happening to my son who was going to be the doctor, my son who should be bringing home the girl he will marry, my son who loved life, my wonderful child who had no enemies and hundreds of friends. He was always the one who saw problems and solved them. He did not ask what chore needed to be done. He saw. He helped.
He always had quick reactions. About ten years ago he saw his three year old cousin start to climb a heavy set of drawers by pulling them out. There were others adults in the room. But my son, then 14 years old leapt from his chair and grabbed the toppling chest of drawers saving his cousin. My beautiful son who saved his cousin is now in constant horrible, unrelenting pain. He has done nothing to deserve it.
But I did. I voted the straight Republican ticket in my youth. I twice voted for Bush the elder. I used to be a Sunday School teacher (15 years). I used to tithe. I ran a Christian scouting program (3 years). I supported James Dobson, a fellow Nazarene. In those times Republicans and Christianity stood for something good. Today those, who most loudly proclaim to be holy, to be acting as God wants them to, are guilty of great evil. God gave us the knowledge of how to find cures for diseases like my son has. Yet these evil monsters will not allow it.
I never could have imagined such a horror as my son has could possible exist let alone strike him down. As you sit reading this, you do not know when a similar horror could strike you or much worse someone you love. None of my son’s grandparents had autoimmune disease. One of my them died at 88. The others are living and 86, 87 and 89 years old. We had no clue this could hit us. No one is safe from genetic time bombs.
A few years ago scientist predicted that it would take a decade or more before cell lines created using the nucleus of disease causing cells would be developed. The Koreans did it in eighteen months. So much for predictions that embryonic stem cell research would not pay off for decades.
What the Koreans have done means a nucleus from one of my son’s cells could be developed into a cell line. Medicines to stop the disease could be developed using these cells OUTSIDE a human body, outside his body. No more experiments on imperfect animal disease models that only approximate human disease. No more experimenting on humans. With this technique hundreds perhaps thousands of possible disease modifying compounds could be tested at once using lab automation and “cell chips.”
This breakthrough is a quantum leap forward. If Gore had won the election this technique would have been developed in the USA and not in the year 2005 but probably in 2001 or 2002. After all, back then, the best stem cell scientists in the world were here in the United States. Cures would already be pouring out. Ill people from throughout the world would be coming here. My son might never have had to go through twenty months of hell.
My wife and I lost a baby. She had a miscarriage between the births of our two sons. That was twenty five years ago and it still saddens me today. But if there had been a way to donate some of that child’s cells to research, we would have done it. Suppose some of that child’s cells were alive and growing in labs or growing in people and providing cures. How wonderful! Knowing some part of our lost child was alive would provide me with great comfort. Surely those IVF parents must feel the same way about their embryos in storage. How much more wonderful if some part of their frozen embryos could help someone rather than just being tossed in a trash can! (And do not give me that “embryo adoption” deception! There are not nearly enough potential parents by a million fold to ever make a dent in the number of embryos stored; besides even the most careful implantations result in the death of some twenty or thirty “adopted” embryos for each successful implantation.)
I pray that you in Congress will make the right decision. Allow federal funding to go forward. Make the decision veto proof. Bush just does not understand. He has no empathy for other people’s suffering. He is wrong. He is horribly wrong. His position is simply evil. Come see my son. Send me your email address I will forward you before and after pictures of my son. See how truly evil the results of the Bush ban really are.
Sincerely darwindad
Debating Duane Gish from the Institute of Creation Research
The following is a letter I wrote to the Christian Allance for Progress who ad a representative who spoke on a morning talk show in San Diego. The letter includs a description of my "debate" with Duane Gish of the Institute of Creation Research in Santee just east of San Diego.
I heard your representatives this morning on the Stacey Taylor show on AM 1360, KLSD. It was like a breath of fresh air. My wife and I grew up as committed and dedicated Christians. We served the Lord as Sunday School teachers, vacation Bible school, church board, and Christian scouting leaders. But we no longer attend church. We now cringe when someone says they are Christian.
In 1994 a Christian stealth group took over our local school district board here in Vista California. As Christians and teachers, we were torn by conflicting loyalties.
As the "Christians" on the school board became more and more outrageous. We joined with a group of community activitists, the teacher's association, the PTA and others to recall this group.
The divisions in our community are still raw. Each time a new school board election comes around we have another holy war in the community. The “little god” Christians keep coming back. Their campaigns know no limits on decency, truth, or good taste. They put out horrible and nasty untruthful hit pieces in the day or two before the election, the political signs of those who oppose the "Christian" candidates are taken down within hours of being put up. These people are a terrible witness.
They have not gotten a board majority in the five elections since. But they always manage to hang onto one or two seats. Because of their actions and rhetoric, there are a great number of people in our town who will never be interested in the church again.
I was a science teacher. I visited the Institute of Creation Research in Santee which is a fifty minutes drive away from Vista. I found a “museum” without a focus. Fossils on display with no provenance about where they were found or what they meant. They were mere props, not tools for learning.
I have also read many evolution and creation books. What I noticed was the scientists who wrote were universally more polite, more humble, more concerned with being honest than the creationist authors which were full of sarcasm and misrepresentations. Why are these self identified Christians not more Christ-like in their actions and words?
I became convinced that the 'little god" creationists were worshipping a different god than the big god of the Bible. The God of the Bible is the primary force behind the formation of an impossibly gigantic 15 billion year old universe. ICR's tiny god is only in charge of a tiny 6 thousand year old universe. Because time is size in space (speed of light being a constant) the god they worship rules a universe about the size of a beebee if the true size of the universe is represented by the size of the earth. Their tiny god is so puny compared to real true big god of the real universe.
I once debated Duane Gish the ICR's main 'debater' on National Public Radio. He started with facts or observations contradicting evolution or the age of the universe but with an attack on my faith. He claimed no one could be a genuine Christian and “believe” in evolution. I was so taken aback and momentarily silenced. Being a Christian was the core of my identity. How could I not be a Christian just because I knew that the Grand Canyon did not form in Noah's flood? (for one thing tracks of animals walk back into layers--hard to do if sediment was laid down in a few days). I was so startled by Gish's attack that it took a few minutes to respond. When I tried to answer him all he did was talk and talk and talk without leaving any time for a response from me. I could only respond by interrupting him. He would not stop even for a breath of air. I later learned that tactic was called the Gish gallop. The other side is never allowed to say anything so they cannot make any good points. It was kind of like what Fox "news" does with anyone who does agree with Bush.
How was it Christian not to want to find out the truth, not to discuss fairly? Only afterwards did I realize Gish was not after the truth or accuracy of how god created he was only after a win at any cost. No rules. Hardly a Christian way to win.
I would love to help out with science questions if you need help. I am a member of National Center for Science Education and was once a speaker for them. They are a group that defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools. I was a science teacher and have never found any contradictions with a belief in Christ or his saving grace. So he used evolution to get us here great. So what? Who are we to attack his creative plan? Evolution is our explanation of his creative force--obvious. what is the problem?
Sincerely darwindad
I heard your representatives this morning on the Stacey Taylor show on AM 1360, KLSD. It was like a breath of fresh air. My wife and I grew up as committed and dedicated Christians. We served the Lord as Sunday School teachers, vacation Bible school, church board, and Christian scouting leaders. But we no longer attend church. We now cringe when someone says they are Christian.
In 1994 a Christian stealth group took over our local school district board here in Vista California. As Christians and teachers, we were torn by conflicting loyalties.
As the "Christians" on the school board became more and more outrageous. We joined with a group of community activitists, the teacher's association, the PTA and others to recall this group.
The divisions in our community are still raw. Each time a new school board election comes around we have another holy war in the community. The “little god” Christians keep coming back. Their campaigns know no limits on decency, truth, or good taste. They put out horrible and nasty untruthful hit pieces in the day or two before the election, the political signs of those who oppose the "Christian" candidates are taken down within hours of being put up. These people are a terrible witness.
They have not gotten a board majority in the five elections since. But they always manage to hang onto one or two seats. Because of their actions and rhetoric, there are a great number of people in our town who will never be interested in the church again.
I was a science teacher. I visited the Institute of Creation Research in Santee which is a fifty minutes drive away from Vista. I found a “museum” without a focus. Fossils on display with no provenance about where they were found or what they meant. They were mere props, not tools for learning.
I have also read many evolution and creation books. What I noticed was the scientists who wrote were universally more polite, more humble, more concerned with being honest than the creationist authors which were full of sarcasm and misrepresentations. Why are these self identified Christians not more Christ-like in their actions and words?
I became convinced that the 'little god" creationists were worshipping a different god than the big god of the Bible. The God of the Bible is the primary force behind the formation of an impossibly gigantic 15 billion year old universe. ICR's tiny god is only in charge of a tiny 6 thousand year old universe. Because time is size in space (speed of light being a constant) the god they worship rules a universe about the size of a beebee if the true size of the universe is represented by the size of the earth. Their tiny god is so puny compared to real true big god of the real universe.
I once debated Duane Gish the ICR's main 'debater' on National Public Radio. He started with facts or observations contradicting evolution or the age of the universe but with an attack on my faith. He claimed no one could be a genuine Christian and “believe” in evolution. I was so taken aback and momentarily silenced. Being a Christian was the core of my identity. How could I not be a Christian just because I knew that the Grand Canyon did not form in Noah's flood? (for one thing tracks of animals walk back into layers--hard to do if sediment was laid down in a few days). I was so startled by Gish's attack that it took a few minutes to respond. When I tried to answer him all he did was talk and talk and talk without leaving any time for a response from me. I could only respond by interrupting him. He would not stop even for a breath of air. I later learned that tactic was called the Gish gallop. The other side is never allowed to say anything so they cannot make any good points. It was kind of like what Fox "news" does with anyone who does agree with Bush.
How was it Christian not to want to find out the truth, not to discuss fairly? Only afterwards did I realize Gish was not after the truth or accuracy of how god created he was only after a win at any cost. No rules. Hardly a Christian way to win.
I would love to help out with science questions if you need help. I am a member of National Center for Science Education and was once a speaker for them. They are a group that defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools. I was a science teacher and have never found any contradictions with a belief in Christ or his saving grace. So he used evolution to get us here great. So what? Who are we to attack his creative plan? Evolution is our explanation of his creative force--obvious. what is the problem?
Sincerely darwindad
Dissent in Porterville
Michael Carley of Porterville is director of institutional research at Porterville College. He wrote an editorial complaining about the Iraq War. I was amazed to see it published in the online version of the Porterville Recorder.
If Porterville is a representative example then small town America is fed a steady diet of the most extreme right wing propaganda in its local newspapers. Dissenting voices are not usually allowed. In Porterville the local newspaper is the Porterville Recorder. It is owned by something called the Freedom Newspapers which advocates for anything but freedom of thought and freedom of action.
Patrick Greene was a local resident who wanted the Protestant cross removed from the main city park where it had been erected in the 1960's. He no longer lives in Porterville.
Dear Dr. Carley:
You are a man of great courage. I can only imagine how unpopular you will become now that you have written an editorial something other than the typical right wing propaganda of Kathleen Parker, et. al., so popular in the Recorder. How a “freedom” newspaper would allow your opinion to be published puzzles me. Was the regular editor out of town?
I applaud and agree with everything you wrote. I would add an item about the “Saddam in his underwear” photos published by the London Sun and the New York Post. Both “newspapers” are owned by Rupert Murdoch who also owns FOX “news.”
Do you suppose there will be days of outrage on cable news and radio talk about the riots and deaths caused by the underwear photos? Will Rupert Murdoch be condemned by any of the hypocrites on the right? Will we hear from Parker, Limbaugh, Lars or the screaming quartet of chicken hawk patriots on Fox--O’Reilly, Hannity, Cavuto and the San Joaquin’s own, Jim Gibson? I think not.
Anything the right wing propaganda machine does is fine even when they lie about potential presidents of our country like Al Gore and John Kerry. The Machine destroyed any and all of the people who revealed inner secrets of the Bush administrations, such as the administration’s lack of diligence in protecting our country from the 9/11 disaster and the pre-war WMD lies told with intent to deceive the American public. Imagine if a Democratic president told lies to take us into a war. He would be destroyed. (Oh yeah he was—Lyndon Baines Johnson).
It seems that lies which further the right wing agenda aren’t lies at all. In fact they are even better than truth. They make such good sound bites.
Good luck with the angry phone calls. You are the true patriot. Real Americans speak up and speak out when our country is on the wrong track. True Americans fought slavery. True Americans defended Indians from genocide. True Americans rallied for a woman’s right to vote. True Americans spoke up against the internment Japanese Americans.
The Kathleen Parkers and Rupert Murdochs, and Rush Limbaughs in our early history did their best to work for the wrong and immoral side on each of those issues. Lucky for America their hate, cons and lies were limited to one newspaper at a time. Today we are not so fortunate.
If infiltration of our homes with right wing radio and Fox News had been around since 1776 instead of just the last 15 or twenty years, we would still have slaves, all the Indians would be dead, all women would be barefoot and pregnant including Kathleen Parker, and the Japanese ancestry Americans would still be in camps if not dead or deported.
The Germans thought they had a great civilization before WWII, but it turned out that the good people of Germany could be killed or beaten into submission by “patriotic” German crowd. More than twenty million people died because not enough Dietrich Bonhoeffers spoke up. I pray the same disaster does not happen to us in America.
I wish you the very best of luck. You and Patrick Greene are the real Patriots in Porterville.
Sincerely,
Peter Welch—darwindad@cox.net
Former resident and subscriber to what we then fondly called the Porterville Distorter.
PS—I came to Porterville as a brand new starry-eyed middle school teacher proud of what I was doing. One of the first editorials in the Recorder that I read sticks with me still. It informed me and all public school teachers in the city that we were pigs eating at the public trough and we should be eternally grateful for any scrap of pay or benefit we were tossed. We should remember that all of our salaries came out of the pockets of those who “really” worked for a living.
I remember being shocked, hurt, and depressed that anyone could feel that way about such a noble giving profession that I had worked hard to join, let alone print such nastiness in our local paper. It was even worse that the person who wrote the vitriol was the editor of the paper no less.
Today with your editorial “the world has turned upside down” and momentarily a different viewpoint was on the pages of the Porterville Recorder. May today’s King Georges and their Cornwallish henchman always be defeated by words and actions of brave patriots like you.
If Porterville is a representative example then small town America is fed a steady diet of the most extreme right wing propaganda in its local newspapers. Dissenting voices are not usually allowed. In Porterville the local newspaper is the Porterville Recorder. It is owned by something called the Freedom Newspapers which advocates for anything but freedom of thought and freedom of action.
Patrick Greene was a local resident who wanted the Protestant cross removed from the main city park where it had been erected in the 1960's. He no longer lives in Porterville.
Dear Dr. Carley:
You are a man of great courage. I can only imagine how unpopular you will become now that you have written an editorial something other than the typical right wing propaganda of Kathleen Parker, et. al., so popular in the Recorder. How a “freedom” newspaper would allow your opinion to be published puzzles me. Was the regular editor out of town?
I applaud and agree with everything you wrote. I would add an item about the “Saddam in his underwear” photos published by the London Sun and the New York Post. Both “newspapers” are owned by Rupert Murdoch who also owns FOX “news.”
Do you suppose there will be days of outrage on cable news and radio talk about the riots and deaths caused by the underwear photos? Will Rupert Murdoch be condemned by any of the hypocrites on the right? Will we hear from Parker, Limbaugh, Lars or the screaming quartet of chicken hawk patriots on Fox--O’Reilly, Hannity, Cavuto and the San Joaquin’s own, Jim Gibson? I think not.
Anything the right wing propaganda machine does is fine even when they lie about potential presidents of our country like Al Gore and John Kerry. The Machine destroyed any and all of the people who revealed inner secrets of the Bush administrations, such as the administration’s lack of diligence in protecting our country from the 9/11 disaster and the pre-war WMD lies told with intent to deceive the American public. Imagine if a Democratic president told lies to take us into a war. He would be destroyed. (Oh yeah he was—Lyndon Baines Johnson).
It seems that lies which further the right wing agenda aren’t lies at all. In fact they are even better than truth. They make such good sound bites.
Good luck with the angry phone calls. You are the true patriot. Real Americans speak up and speak out when our country is on the wrong track. True Americans fought slavery. True Americans defended Indians from genocide. True Americans rallied for a woman’s right to vote. True Americans spoke up against the internment Japanese Americans.
The Kathleen Parkers and Rupert Murdochs, and Rush Limbaughs in our early history did their best to work for the wrong and immoral side on each of those issues. Lucky for America their hate, cons and lies were limited to one newspaper at a time. Today we are not so fortunate.
If infiltration of our homes with right wing radio and Fox News had been around since 1776 instead of just the last 15 or twenty years, we would still have slaves, all the Indians would be dead, all women would be barefoot and pregnant including Kathleen Parker, and the Japanese ancestry Americans would still be in camps if not dead or deported.
The Germans thought they had a great civilization before WWII, but it turned out that the good people of Germany could be killed or beaten into submission by “patriotic” German crowd. More than twenty million people died because not enough Dietrich Bonhoeffers spoke up. I pray the same disaster does not happen to us in America.
I wish you the very best of luck. You and Patrick Greene are the real Patriots in Porterville.
Sincerely,
Peter Welch—darwindad@cox.net
Former resident and subscriber to what we then fondly called the Porterville Distorter.
PS—I came to Porterville as a brand new starry-eyed middle school teacher proud of what I was doing. One of the first editorials in the Recorder that I read sticks with me still. It informed me and all public school teachers in the city that we were pigs eating at the public trough and we should be eternally grateful for any scrap of pay or benefit we were tossed. We should remember that all of our salaries came out of the pockets of those who “really” worked for a living.
I remember being shocked, hurt, and depressed that anyone could feel that way about such a noble giving profession that I had worked hard to join, let alone print such nastiness in our local paper. It was even worse that the person who wrote the vitriol was the editor of the paper no less.
Today with your editorial “the world has turned upside down” and momentarily a different viewpoint was on the pages of the Porterville Recorder. May today’s King Georges and their Cornwallish henchman always be defeated by words and actions of brave patriots like you.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Stem Cell research, Insurance problems
An email I wrote to Stacy and Scooter who are the weekday morning hosts of KLSD AM 1360.
----------------------------
Dear Stacy and Scooter,
Thanks you for discussing stem cell research on the radio today.
And thank you Scooter for talking with me off air. You asked what you could do for us. You even offered money. Thank you for the offer. Your offer was very compassionate, but unless I had enough money to fund the research that is needed, money will not help.
You two have a megaphone that those of us who are sick do not have. Use that megaphone to:
(1) promote all forms stem cell research,
(2) answer all the right wing talking points on stem cell research
(3) losen up the tight regulations that the FDA has in place that are slowing revolutionary new cures for people.
(4) advocate for universal health care.
Promote all forms of stem cell research—embryonic, fetal and adult. No matter the stem cell source, cures could be found. The fewer restrictions on research the sooner Star Trek like cures would be available to all.
A word on fetal cell research, my wife miscarried between our two sons. If some of the cells from that child (fetus) could have been used for a cure, we would have donated them. It is compassionate to donate organs, right? Why not fetal cells?
Up to six weeks or so a mammal fetus has no immune system. For some unknown reason this allows fetal cells to be transplanted to any other member of a species with no rejection whatsoever. In fact early mammal fetal cells can be transplanted into virtually any other different mammal species with no rejection.
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis took primordial kidney tissue from pig fetuses and transferred it into rat abdomens. In the rat abdomen, the tissue developed into tiny rat sized kidneys (made of pig tissue) that filtered the rat’s blood and put out urine. This experiment was done over three years ago! Other similar experiments have been done with other mammal fetal cells as well and even earlier. http://www.childrenshospital.org/newsroom/Site1339/mainpageS1339P1sublevel70.html
Think how many dialysis patients have died in the last three years. How many could have been saved if my middle child’s primordial kidney fetal cells could have been transplanted into those patients! My wife and I would have felt better as well somehow part of our child was still alive. Of course her miscarriage was twenty six years ago, those fetal cells are long gone. But why not use fetal cells from others today who miscarry.
(2) Answer all right wing talking points. Embryonic stem cell research must be done because currently only ESC’s can divide indefinitely. A researcher can grow as many as he/she needs, for as long as he/she needs.
Adult stem cell are genetically limited to as few as seven division and then they are done and they die.
Eventually research on ESCs will yield information on how to get adult stem cells to continue to divide but until the research is done adult stem cell lab work is limited by numbers and by the amount of time a line of adult stem cells can be kept alive.
Another point on adult stem cell research, one of the CON talking points is that there are seventy cures for adult stem cells none for embryonic. The adult stem cell cures they are talking about are mostly bone marrow transplants that happen to have a few blood and immune forming stem cells in and among the bone marrow.
Bone marrow transplants have been done for more than thirty years, only five or six years ago researchers discover that there were a few blood and immune forming stem cells (hematopoietic) in among the rest of the bone marrow. The CONS immediately started mis-labeling bone marrow transplants as adult stem cell cures. The seventy adult stem cures are not new. It is old technology given a new name by the CONS.
The second CON talking point is that ESCs treatments cause cancer. True there have been problems with early experiments with undifferentiated ESC’s but now that researchers have discovered some of the cues for differentiating the ESC’s, the problem is closed to being solved. Besides the idea was never to use ESC directly to cure patients, it was to understand them and their differentiation process. Once the process is well understood, cures using any kind of cell would come.
[The differentiation process takes one fertilized egg cell and makes every tissue and organ in an adult human. Researchers are now at the very beginning of learning how that process works. ESC’s are crucial for understanding it. Star Trek type cures will happen when researchers fully understand it.]
(3) Advocate for the loosening up of FDA regulations
Right now there are forty revolutionary therapies, virtual cures and full blown complete cures for autoimmune disease in mice. Only a couple are currently in human trials.
Each set of human clinical trials is estimated to cost one billion dollars under current FDA guidelines. Due to the cost risk exposure, Big Pharma sets draconian exclusion criteria for clinical trials to try to eliminate the sickest patients.
If they allow all patients to try new therapies, some of the sickest will have adverse reactions or die. Their deaths or reactions must be reported to FDA. The deaths or reactions are counted against the company when they apply for FDA approval to sell the new medicine or therapy. A billion dollars in clinical trials could be lost if too many of the sickest patients die. (Not that they weren’t going to die of their diseases anyway.)
We need Blind Compassionate Use FDA regulations. Negative results for any Compassionate Use patient who failed to qualify for the trial due to exclusion criteria should be blinded. The results should have no bearing on FDA approval process.
(4) Advocate for transferable universal health insurance. When my autoimmune disease worsened, I had to quit work. No work, no medical insurance. There are no private insurance companies that would now insure me with a pre-existing condition. My son was a brilliant student. He worked hard at school. He had scholarships and jobs which fully paid for his first two years in college. He never got in any trouble (not one bad report in his entire scholastic career). Suddenly he is hit with a genetic time bomb. He cannot work. He cannot get health insurance. Medications costs thousands of dollars a month.
If my wife could not work, we would have no insurance whatsoever. How would we pay the $3000 a month for his medications? As it is now, because he is only covered by one parent, we have to pay between $3-5,000 a year more than if I still had health insurance. On top of the forty thousand dollar a year hit we take in the difference between my disability pay and what my working salary would be.
Every year in October when health insurance is renewed we have to worry will he still be covered as a disabled dependent? How much more will “our contribution” to his health care be this year? Every year the rules change unilaterally and we have to “contribute” more.
----------------------------
Dear Stacy and Scooter,
Thanks you for discussing stem cell research on the radio today.
And thank you Scooter for talking with me off air. You asked what you could do for us. You even offered money. Thank you for the offer. Your offer was very compassionate, but unless I had enough money to fund the research that is needed, money will not help.
You two have a megaphone that those of us who are sick do not have. Use that megaphone to:
(1) promote all forms stem cell research,
(2) answer all the right wing talking points on stem cell research
(3) losen up the tight regulations that the FDA has in place that are slowing revolutionary new cures for people.
(4) advocate for universal health care.
Promote all forms of stem cell research—embryonic, fetal and adult. No matter the stem cell source, cures could be found. The fewer restrictions on research the sooner Star Trek like cures would be available to all.
A word on fetal cell research, my wife miscarried between our two sons. If some of the cells from that child (fetus) could have been used for a cure, we would have donated them. It is compassionate to donate organs, right? Why not fetal cells?
Up to six weeks or so a mammal fetus has no immune system. For some unknown reason this allows fetal cells to be transplanted to any other member of a species with no rejection whatsoever. In fact early mammal fetal cells can be transplanted into virtually any other different mammal species with no rejection.
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis took primordial kidney tissue from pig fetuses and transferred it into rat abdomens. In the rat abdomen, the tissue developed into tiny rat sized kidneys (made of pig tissue) that filtered the rat’s blood and put out urine. This experiment was done over three years ago! Other similar experiments have been done with other mammal fetal cells as well and even earlier. http://www.childrenshospital.org/newsroom/Site1339/mainpageS1339P1sublevel70.html
Think how many dialysis patients have died in the last three years. How many could have been saved if my middle child’s primordial kidney fetal cells could have been transplanted into those patients! My wife and I would have felt better as well somehow part of our child was still alive. Of course her miscarriage was twenty six years ago, those fetal cells are long gone. But why not use fetal cells from others today who miscarry.
(2) Answer all right wing talking points. Embryonic stem cell research must be done because currently only ESC’s can divide indefinitely. A researcher can grow as many as he/she needs, for as long as he/she needs.
Adult stem cell are genetically limited to as few as seven division and then they are done and they die.
Eventually research on ESCs will yield information on how to get adult stem cells to continue to divide but until the research is done adult stem cell lab work is limited by numbers and by the amount of time a line of adult stem cells can be kept alive.
Another point on adult stem cell research, one of the CON talking points is that there are seventy cures for adult stem cells none for embryonic. The adult stem cell cures they are talking about are mostly bone marrow transplants that happen to have a few blood and immune forming stem cells in and among the bone marrow.
Bone marrow transplants have been done for more than thirty years, only five or six years ago researchers discover that there were a few blood and immune forming stem cells (hematopoietic) in among the rest of the bone marrow. The CONS immediately started mis-labeling bone marrow transplants as adult stem cell cures. The seventy adult stem cures are not new. It is old technology given a new name by the CONS.
The second CON talking point is that ESCs treatments cause cancer. True there have been problems with early experiments with undifferentiated ESC’s but now that researchers have discovered some of the cues for differentiating the ESC’s, the problem is closed to being solved. Besides the idea was never to use ESC directly to cure patients, it was to understand them and their differentiation process. Once the process is well understood, cures using any kind of cell would come.
[The differentiation process takes one fertilized egg cell and makes every tissue and organ in an adult human. Researchers are now at the very beginning of learning how that process works. ESC’s are crucial for understanding it. Star Trek type cures will happen when researchers fully understand it.]
(3) Advocate for the loosening up of FDA regulations
Right now there are forty revolutionary therapies, virtual cures and full blown complete cures for autoimmune disease in mice. Only a couple are currently in human trials.
Each set of human clinical trials is estimated to cost one billion dollars under current FDA guidelines. Due to the cost risk exposure, Big Pharma sets draconian exclusion criteria for clinical trials to try to eliminate the sickest patients.
If they allow all patients to try new therapies, some of the sickest will have adverse reactions or die. Their deaths or reactions must be reported to FDA. The deaths or reactions are counted against the company when they apply for FDA approval to sell the new medicine or therapy. A billion dollars in clinical trials could be lost if too many of the sickest patients die. (Not that they weren’t going to die of their diseases anyway.)
We need Blind Compassionate Use FDA regulations. Negative results for any Compassionate Use patient who failed to qualify for the trial due to exclusion criteria should be blinded. The results should have no bearing on FDA approval process.
(4) Advocate for transferable universal health insurance. When my autoimmune disease worsened, I had to quit work. No work, no medical insurance. There are no private insurance companies that would now insure me with a pre-existing condition. My son was a brilliant student. He worked hard at school. He had scholarships and jobs which fully paid for his first two years in college. He never got in any trouble (not one bad report in his entire scholastic career). Suddenly he is hit with a genetic time bomb. He cannot work. He cannot get health insurance. Medications costs thousands of dollars a month.
If my wife could not work, we would have no insurance whatsoever. How would we pay the $3000 a month for his medications? As it is now, because he is only covered by one parent, we have to pay between $3-5,000 a year more than if I still had health insurance. On top of the forty thousand dollar a year hit we take in the difference between my disability pay and what my working salary would be.
Every year in October when health insurance is renewed we have to worry will he still be covered as a disabled dependent? How much more will “our contribution” to his health care be this year? Every year the rules change unilaterally and we have to “contribute” more.
Intelligent Design is neither
What follows is an email to a local radio host on KLSD 1360 AM San Diego. He is the host for a two hour Saturday show. He calls himself Scooter. His show is entitled, The Rant.
--------------------------
Dear Scooter,
I called you shortly before your show on Saturday. I wanted to talk about Intelligent Design but you got started on such a great rant about Cindy Sheehan and the George Bush boot lickers that I decided not to interrupt. I was enjoying your rant way too much.
I thought I would email you instead.
ID and creation scientist and their attack on the way science represent a huge health threat to you and all your listeners. There is a contagious condition spreading rapidly across our country today that can kill a matter of days, sometimes in hours, by devouring a person's body. It is like a super fast cancer. And it is totally out of control. Thousands of Americans are dying each year from this horror and the numbers are growing by the day. This horror is upon us as a direct result of the dual attack of Intelligent Design and its cousin Creation Science on the ability of the public to understand evolution. Virtually no evolutionary theory is taught in middle school or high schools any where in America today. Biology teachers are too afraid to mention the “E-word.”
The condition is multi-drug resistant bacterial infections. In the 1930's the son of an American president died from an infected blister. There was no treatment for infections. People were far more terrified of infections than cancer. Sinus infections ate away people's faces before those poor victims died in agony.
We are again at a time when there is no way to stop many infections. We are at the end of the era of antibiotics due to the complete inability of the American public to understand the basics of evolution. I have a nephew in law whose career as a deputy sheriff was ended by a resistant bacterial infection he acquired during surgery for an on the job injury. He has had two additional surgeries—losing 2/3 of one lung and then his spleen in the next operation to try to remove infected tissues. Even on IV antibiotics the best that can be done for him is to halt the spread of the infection not to kill it. He faces a third operation in the fall if he survives. It has been two years of hell for him, my niece and their two small children.
We use more antibiotics as daily growth promoters for chickens, pigs and cows than we do for all human and animal disease combined. Low levels of antibiotics are in the feed every single day for every single farm animal in America. If an evolutionary scientist was paid to come up with a method of developing antibiotic resistance, no better method than feeding low constant levels to farm animals could be conceived of. Today MRSA and other resistant bacteria are always found on the clothes and skin of workers in factory meat farms and routinely found on the clothes of their family members and friends and surfaces in their homes and cars.
Until 15 or twenty years ago these kinds of bacteria infections were incredibly rare. MRSA and other resistant bacteria might appear occasionally in hospitals. Huge expensive sterilization procedures (equipment replaced, all surfaces sterilized and painted over, bed linens burned, etc.) were put in place to eliminate them. In the nineties whole wings of hospitals were permanently shut down. But today no hospital even tries to stop the infections. The infections are completely out of control and ubiquitous in hospitals. All hospitals in the United States have MRSA and other resistant bacterial strains at all times in all parts of the hospitals. The only reason deaths have not yet been higher is most of these bacteria need a break in the skin to get started. And there is one dangerous IV antibiotic that usually kills the bacteria. But even this antibiotic is becoming useless. When it does work, side effects from the antibiotic are frequent and terrible.
In Europe the routine feeding of antibiotics to farm animals simply to promote growth is outlawed because Europeans teach and accept the principles of evolution. They as a public and their government agencies understand the dangers of soliciting drug resistance evolutionary adaptations to antibiotics.
If you haven’t been personally affected yet by antibiotic resistance, you will. At the current rate of spread, in less than five years every Americans will either personally have been a victim or someone close to them will be.
Do not think that new antibiotics will come on the seen. There have been no new antibiotics discovered since 1985. All the hundreds of “kinds” of antibiotics on the market are really slight variations of only five basic kinds (penicillin, cephalosporin, tetracycline, erythromycin, and quinolones). The differences among the hundreds of variations of these five kinds are tiny inert chemical side groups that allow big pharma to patent “new” antibiotics and increase profits. The new antibiotics are identical in efficacy to the old ones. The FDA which gets ¾ of its operating funds from big pharma continues to license these “me too” antibiotics as if they were “new” and more effective then the nearly identical ones they imitate.
Three of the existing five kinds of antibiotics are made from just one species of microbe (Streptomycetes). The search for new antibiotics has been known to be an almost hopeless search since the seventies. Antibiotics are kill bacteria but not mammals (like people) are exceedingly rare in nature. And resistance genes evolved by natural selection for one antibiotic usually gives resistance to other antibiotics.
Neither the CDC site or the NIH site (since W’s men took control of CDC and NIH) any longer mention antibiotics fed daily to farm animals as a problem (talk about censorship!), the following is an independent site (medscape) that is used by health care professionals in the United States for continuing education (CME) purposes:
www.medscape.com/viewarticle/410617 - 37k (posted in 2000, pre W)
Increasing prevalence of resistance to antibiotics has been recognized in microbial pathogens causing community-acquired and hospital-acquired infections. The most important factor responsible for the appearance and spread of antibiotic resistance has been increasing antibiotic use. Antibiotic supplementation of animal feed has contributed to the rise of some antibiotic resistance in community-acquired infections.
The site <> posted the following two days ago on August 11, 2005:
…the situation has now become alarming, with the emergence of pathogenic strains that show multiple resistance to a broad range of antibiotics. One of the most important examples concerns multiple-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus in hospitals (MRSA). Some of these strains cause serious nosocomial (hospital-acquired) infections and are resistant to virtually all the useful antibiotics, including methicillin, cephalosporins and other beta-lactams that target peptidoglycan synthesis, the macrolide antibiotics such as erythromycin and the aminoglycoside antibiotics such as streptomycin and neomycin, all of which target the bacterial ribosome. The only compound that can be used effectively against these staphylococci is an older antibiotic, vancomycin, which has some undesirable effects on humans. Recently, some clinical strains of S. aureus have developed resistance to even this compound.
As bad as the above sounds the situation is worse in America. In the UK, antibiotic resistance is much better handled and more under control than here.
The thousands perhaps millions of deaths that will begin to take place routinely in the United States in the next few years can all be laid at the feet of ID and Creation Scientists. These anti-science charlatans have confused the public over this growing danger. We in the United States have not even begun to take steps to slow down the tremendous natural selection pressure towards resistance that feeding low levels of antibiotics to farm animals causes. The science charlatans have gotten rich and famous and have enormous power in the short term, but the long term consequences for them and the rest of us are extremely dire. The trends guarantee that in less than five years every individual American or his/her loved one will be tragically impacted by antibiotic resistant bacteria.
The majority of Americans have been successfully deceived by ID and Creation Science purveyors. Religious Americans have been told that accepting evolution means a rejection of their faith, of God himself. This is the first and greatest lie of the Anti-evolutionists. Once there target audience accepts this lie, the audience starts to accept all the other deceptions of ID and creation science as well.
--------------------------
Dear Scooter,
I called you shortly before your show on Saturday. I wanted to talk about Intelligent Design but you got started on such a great rant about Cindy Sheehan and the George Bush boot lickers that I decided not to interrupt. I was enjoying your rant way too much.
I thought I would email you instead.
ID and creation scientist and their attack on the way science represent a huge health threat to you and all your listeners. There is a contagious condition spreading rapidly across our country today that can kill a matter of days, sometimes in hours, by devouring a person's body. It is like a super fast cancer. And it is totally out of control. Thousands of Americans are dying each year from this horror and the numbers are growing by the day. This horror is upon us as a direct result of the dual attack of Intelligent Design and its cousin Creation Science on the ability of the public to understand evolution. Virtually no evolutionary theory is taught in middle school or high schools any where in America today. Biology teachers are too afraid to mention the “E-word.”
The condition is multi-drug resistant bacterial infections. In the 1930's the son of an American president died from an infected blister. There was no treatment for infections. People were far more terrified of infections than cancer. Sinus infections ate away people's faces before those poor victims died in agony.
We are again at a time when there is no way to stop many infections. We are at the end of the era of antibiotics due to the complete inability of the American public to understand the basics of evolution. I have a nephew in law whose career as a deputy sheriff was ended by a resistant bacterial infection he acquired during surgery for an on the job injury. He has had two additional surgeries—losing 2/3 of one lung and then his spleen in the next operation to try to remove infected tissues. Even on IV antibiotics the best that can be done for him is to halt the spread of the infection not to kill it. He faces a third operation in the fall if he survives. It has been two years of hell for him, my niece and their two small children.
We use more antibiotics as daily growth promoters for chickens, pigs and cows than we do for all human and animal disease combined. Low levels of antibiotics are in the feed every single day for every single farm animal in America. If an evolutionary scientist was paid to come up with a method of developing antibiotic resistance, no better method than feeding low constant levels to farm animals could be conceived of. Today MRSA and other resistant bacteria are always found on the clothes and skin of workers in factory meat farms and routinely found on the clothes of their family members and friends and surfaces in their homes and cars.
Until 15 or twenty years ago these kinds of bacteria infections were incredibly rare. MRSA and other resistant bacteria might appear occasionally in hospitals. Huge expensive sterilization procedures (equipment replaced, all surfaces sterilized and painted over, bed linens burned, etc.) were put in place to eliminate them. In the nineties whole wings of hospitals were permanently shut down. But today no hospital even tries to stop the infections. The infections are completely out of control and ubiquitous in hospitals. All hospitals in the United States have MRSA and other resistant bacterial strains at all times in all parts of the hospitals. The only reason deaths have not yet been higher is most of these bacteria need a break in the skin to get started. And there is one dangerous IV antibiotic that usually kills the bacteria. But even this antibiotic is becoming useless. When it does work, side effects from the antibiotic are frequent and terrible.
In Europe the routine feeding of antibiotics to farm animals simply to promote growth is outlawed because Europeans teach and accept the principles of evolution. They as a public and their government agencies understand the dangers of soliciting drug resistance evolutionary adaptations to antibiotics.
If you haven’t been personally affected yet by antibiotic resistance, you will. At the current rate of spread, in less than five years every Americans will either personally have been a victim or someone close to them will be.
Do not think that new antibiotics will come on the seen. There have been no new antibiotics discovered since 1985. All the hundreds of “kinds” of antibiotics on the market are really slight variations of only five basic kinds (penicillin, cephalosporin, tetracycline, erythromycin, and quinolones). The differences among the hundreds of variations of these five kinds are tiny inert chemical side groups that allow big pharma to patent “new” antibiotics and increase profits. The new antibiotics are identical in efficacy to the old ones. The FDA which gets ¾ of its operating funds from big pharma continues to license these “me too” antibiotics as if they were “new” and more effective then the nearly identical ones they imitate.
Three of the existing five kinds of antibiotics are made from just one species of microbe (Streptomycetes). The search for new antibiotics has been known to be an almost hopeless search since the seventies. Antibiotics are kill bacteria but not mammals (like people) are exceedingly rare in nature. And resistance genes evolved by natural selection for one antibiotic usually gives resistance to other antibiotics.
Neither the CDC site or the NIH site (since W’s men took control of CDC and NIH) any longer mention antibiotics fed daily to farm animals as a problem (talk about censorship!), the following is an independent site (medscape) that is used by health care professionals in the United States for continuing education (CME) purposes:
www.medscape.com/viewarticle/410617 - 37k (posted in 2000, pre W)
Increasing prevalence of resistance to antibiotics has been recognized in microbial pathogens causing community-acquired and hospital-acquired infections. The most important factor responsible for the appearance and spread of antibiotic resistance has been increasing antibiotic use. Antibiotic supplementation of animal feed has contributed to the rise of some antibiotic resistance in community-acquired infections.
The site <
…the situation has now become alarming, with the emergence of pathogenic strains that show multiple resistance to a broad range of antibiotics. One of the most important examples concerns multiple-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus in hospitals (MRSA). Some of these strains cause serious nosocomial (hospital-acquired) infections and are resistant to virtually all the useful antibiotics, including methicillin, cephalosporins and other beta-lactams that target peptidoglycan synthesis, the macrolide antibiotics such as erythromycin and the aminoglycoside antibiotics such as streptomycin and neomycin, all of which target the bacterial ribosome. The only compound that can be used effectively against these staphylococci is an older antibiotic, vancomycin, which has some undesirable effects on humans. Recently, some clinical strains of S. aureus have developed resistance to even this compound.
As bad as the above sounds the situation is worse in America. In the UK, antibiotic resistance is much better handled and more under control than here.
The thousands perhaps millions of deaths that will begin to take place routinely in the United States in the next few years can all be laid at the feet of ID and Creation Scientists. These anti-science charlatans have confused the public over this growing danger. We in the United States have not even begun to take steps to slow down the tremendous natural selection pressure towards resistance that feeding low levels of antibiotics to farm animals causes. The science charlatans have gotten rich and famous and have enormous power in the short term, but the long term consequences for them and the rest of us are extremely dire. The trends guarantee that in less than five years every individual American or his/her loved one will be tragically impacted by antibiotic resistant bacteria.
The majority of Americans have been successfully deceived by ID and Creation Science purveyors. Religious Americans have been told that accepting evolution means a rejection of their faith, of God himself. This is the first and greatest lie of the Anti-evolutionists. Once there target audience accepts this lie, the audience starts to accept all the other deceptions of ID and creation science as well.
Timelines for Iraq
I wrote the following to the Porterville Recorder newspaper in response to an editorial that Republican Representative Devin Nunes wrote in early May of 2007. I read the paper on line. My children were born in Porterville and we still have many friends there.
---------------------------------------------------
So Devin Nunes (Member of Congress-San Joaquin Valley, California) wants to bring the troops home, but the Democrats are 'emboldening' the enemy by putting suggested timelines in a bill that gives more money to the military than the president asked for. The timelines are not mandates. There are no de-funding or automatic withdrawal provisions in the bill. Yet President Bush vetoed it and Representative Nunes supports that veto—of a massive funding bill with toothless timelines.
Suggesting to the Iraqi government that perhaps they should police their own country “is helping terrorists to win.” Over 90% of the Iraqis polled want us out of their country. Do we have to kill all of them before we leave?
The war will cost one trillion dollars. None of that money has been paid. It is all on our children's tab. How much more debt will we pass on to our children?
One of my former students died in Iraq. He was quiet and respectful in class and a good student. Now at age twenty, he lies dead. For what? Did he die to protect us from weapons of mass destruction? Oh yeah? Where are they? Except for a few unusable, rusty, twenty-some year, buried in the sand artillery shells with deteriorated mustard gas; there were no WMD. None. Not one usable WMD and certainly no WMDs capable of making a mushroom cloud. But Jeff is still dead.
Was it because of 9/11? Those terrible Iraqis in the planes that flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we had to fight them. Oh wait! No! They were mostly Saudi citizens from a country south of Iraq. They were Sunni Muslims. They were religious fanatics. Iraq is a majority Shiite Muslim country. Shiites hate Sunnis. Shiites do not cooperate with Sunnis. Saddam Hussein was a secularist. The Bath Party was a secular party. Saddam hated Al Qaeda. He suppressed them in Iraq every where he had control. The only Al Qaeda in Iraq before the war were in the north protected by our no-fly zone. So if the Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11, why did Jeff die?
Did he die to keep the terrorists "over there?" Ridiculous! If they wanted to come here they could hop on any commercial jet and be here in hours. They have not done it so far. What makes Rep. Nunes think they will be more likely to do that if we leave them alone? All the Iraqis want is their country back. Let’s give it to them. I want no more dead former students.
Let’s call Representative Nunes and tell him. I am one life-long Republican who will not be voting Republican for Congress in the next election, unless elected representatives of my party start to wake up.
Former resident of Porterville
---------------------------------------------------
So Devin Nunes (Member of Congress-San Joaquin Valley, California) wants to bring the troops home, but the Democrats are 'emboldening' the enemy by putting suggested timelines in a bill that gives more money to the military than the president asked for. The timelines are not mandates. There are no de-funding or automatic withdrawal provisions in the bill. Yet President Bush vetoed it and Representative Nunes supports that veto—of a massive funding bill with toothless timelines.
Suggesting to the Iraqi government that perhaps they should police their own country “is helping terrorists to win.” Over 90% of the Iraqis polled want us out of their country. Do we have to kill all of them before we leave?
The war will cost one trillion dollars. None of that money has been paid. It is all on our children's tab. How much more debt will we pass on to our children?
One of my former students died in Iraq. He was quiet and respectful in class and a good student. Now at age twenty, he lies dead. For what? Did he die to protect us from weapons of mass destruction? Oh yeah? Where are they? Except for a few unusable, rusty, twenty-some year, buried in the sand artillery shells with deteriorated mustard gas; there were no WMD. None. Not one usable WMD and certainly no WMDs capable of making a mushroom cloud. But Jeff is still dead.
Was it because of 9/11? Those terrible Iraqis in the planes that flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we had to fight them. Oh wait! No! They were mostly Saudi citizens from a country south of Iraq. They were Sunni Muslims. They were religious fanatics. Iraq is a majority Shiite Muslim country. Shiites hate Sunnis. Shiites do not cooperate with Sunnis. Saddam Hussein was a secularist. The Bath Party was a secular party. Saddam hated Al Qaeda. He suppressed them in Iraq every where he had control. The only Al Qaeda in Iraq before the war were in the north protected by our no-fly zone. So if the Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11, why did Jeff die?
Did he die to keep the terrorists "over there?" Ridiculous! If they wanted to come here they could hop on any commercial jet and be here in hours. They have not done it so far. What makes Rep. Nunes think they will be more likely to do that if we leave them alone? All the Iraqis want is their country back. Let’s give it to them. I want no more dead former students.
Let’s call Representative Nunes and tell him. I am one life-long Republican who will not be voting Republican for Congress in the next election, unless elected representatives of my party start to wake up.
Former resident of Porterville
The making of Arrogance--Dr. James Dobson
I sent this letter from the Focus on the family web site on January 25, 2005. On the web site they had a link to inudate five hand picked Dobson scapegoats who did not show him enough respect about his Sponge Bob square pants comments. Maureen Dowd, Matt Lauer, Keith Oberman, James Carville, and Michael Ventre were the five that a mass mailing was being sent to. I wrote the following to let those five know that many Christians supported them and not James Dobson. Here is my email:
Thank you for your courage in standing up to the arrogant ego of James Dobson. He does not speak for all Christians and he does not speak for me. His ridiculous attack on Sponge Bob has degenerated into hate filled missives about the homosexual life style and its supposed threat to our children.
I once supported him. But his ego and arrogance and nastiness have led me to oppose him. I have even met him in person when he came to speak at the Nazarene Church in Porterville where his former tennis partner at Pasadena Nazarene College, Wil Spaite, was our pastor. That was in 1980 or 81.
Since that time Dobson has seen Pistol Pete Maravich die of a heart attack in front of him, suffered his own heart attack, been on the Presidential Commission on Pornography (where he viewed hundreds of hours of porn), moved his base of operations from Southern California to Colorado Springs. Each of those events has changed him for the worse.
He was once a voice of moderation and tolerance in the Nazarene Church, but no more. He is surrounded by “yes men” in Colorado Springs who treat him like a deity. He hears only one viewpoint over and over. That repetition has reinforced the nastiest, increasingly strident and mean version of Christianity that he now advocates with the same charming voice he was blessed with by God. He used that voice for good in the seventies and eighties.
The death of Pistol Pete scared him witless especially when he suffered his own heart attack shortly after. The fear he felt seemed to drive him to become ever more extreme in his religious views.
The porn he viewed he apparently found both appealing and repugnant. I think it is safe to assume he felt deep revulsion at his interest in the materials he viewed. After his time on the Commission he became much more intolerant, mean, nasty and full of his own self righteousness.
Please accept my apologies for the hundreds or thousands of emails that his faithful are sending you. Those Christians just want to feel like they are part of a cause. That they are making a difference by attacking a scape goat (you) that he has identified. He is using them and their Love of the Lord for revenge because he feels you made fun of him. His actions in using good people to do evil on his behalf is something he will have to answer for at the Throne of Christ.
Continue exposing Dr. Dobson for the ridiculous, mean and arrogant things he keeps saying. How can he continue to call himself a Christian when he misuses those who trust him? How can his organization be tax exempt when he threatens senators? If he is going to run a political organization shouldn't he as a Christian obey the rules or start paying taxes? What would Jesus do?
Thank you for your courage in standing up to the arrogant ego of James Dobson. He does not speak for all Christians and he does not speak for me. His ridiculous attack on Sponge Bob has degenerated into hate filled missives about the homosexual life style and its supposed threat to our children.
I once supported him. But his ego and arrogance and nastiness have led me to oppose him. I have even met him in person when he came to speak at the Nazarene Church in Porterville where his former tennis partner at Pasadena Nazarene College, Wil Spaite, was our pastor. That was in 1980 or 81.
Since that time Dobson has seen Pistol Pete Maravich die of a heart attack in front of him, suffered his own heart attack, been on the Presidential Commission on Pornography (where he viewed hundreds of hours of porn), moved his base of operations from Southern California to Colorado Springs. Each of those events has changed him for the worse.
He was once a voice of moderation and tolerance in the Nazarene Church, but no more. He is surrounded by “yes men” in Colorado Springs who treat him like a deity. He hears only one viewpoint over and over. That repetition has reinforced the nastiest, increasingly strident and mean version of Christianity that he now advocates with the same charming voice he was blessed with by God. He used that voice for good in the seventies and eighties.
The death of Pistol Pete scared him witless especially when he suffered his own heart attack shortly after. The fear he felt seemed to drive him to become ever more extreme in his religious views.
The porn he viewed he apparently found both appealing and repugnant. I think it is safe to assume he felt deep revulsion at his interest in the materials he viewed. After his time on the Commission he became much more intolerant, mean, nasty and full of his own self righteousness.
Please accept my apologies for the hundreds or thousands of emails that his faithful are sending you. Those Christians just want to feel like they are part of a cause. That they are making a difference by attacking a scape goat (you) that he has identified. He is using them and their Love of the Lord for revenge because he feels you made fun of him. His actions in using good people to do evil on his behalf is something he will have to answer for at the Throne of Christ.
Continue exposing Dr. Dobson for the ridiculous, mean and arrogant things he keeps saying. How can he continue to call himself a Christian when he misuses those who trust him? How can his organization be tax exempt when he threatens senators? If he is going to run a political organization shouldn't he as a Christian obey the rules or start paying taxes? What would Jesus do?
Global Warming-letter and Internet comments/responses
Published May 13, 2007 in North County Times
All CO2 is not the same
Conservative radio personalities and Fox News hosts tell us global warming is a hoax. They use the following false argument. "We all breathe out CO2. Since CO2 is the greenhouse gas problem that the environmental wackos whine about, then they must want us to all stop breathing." Keep breathing. The CO2 you exhale is part of the normal carbon cycle. You remember the carbon cycle from elementary school. Animals breathe out CO2; then plants, in the presence of sunlight, absorb and combine it with water to make carbohydrates (food). Animals then eat those plants, converting the carbohydrates back to CO2 to be breathed back into the atmosphere. ...
At least that was the case until about 150 years ago, when we started burning fossil sources of carbon. First coal was burned and then oil. Today fossil carbon is being released into the atmosphere in massive, unprecedented quantities. This fossil carbon from coal and oil has been sequestered in deposits in the Earth since the Carboniferous age that ended 280 million years ago. ...
The only CO2 to be worried about is the CO2 produced from this long-buried fossil carbon. It is adding huge new amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere. It is the culprit in the global warming problem.
Peter Welch
former science teacher
Vista
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Global warming skeptic wrote on May 13, 2007 6:00 PM:
" Peter Welsh (retired science teacher) says today that the CO2 we exhale is different from the CO2 coming from combustion engine exhaust and burning of fossil fuels. I don't believe it. Is Welsh talking about carbon monoxide (CO)? If this is true, what business does the U.S. Supreme Court have to claim that CO2 is a pollutant that must be regulated? How Orwellian. Snow is black, peace is war and CO2 is not CO2 because that only depends on "what is, is." "
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To global warming skeptic, of course all CO2 is chemically the same. The American Petroleum Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute have made lovely commercials to say this. But this is a fact meant to deceive. The source of CO2 is different. This difference has led to an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere that is at least 1/3 higher than at any time in the last 600,000 years during the warmest of warm interglacial periods.
Both the API and the CEI are well aware that we have actually physical samples of atmosphere trapped in Greenland and Antarctic ice going back over 600,000 years.
Air is trapped by snowflakes that then freeze permanently entombing the air sample. Another layer of snow falls, more air is trapped. There are changes in the deposits over a single year resulting in annual layers. Coring those deposits allows one to not only sample old air, but one can actually see the annual layers in the core just like one can see annual tree rings in a core from an ancient tree.
Using these samples we can demonstrate by direct physical testing of old atmosphere samples that there is a third more CO2 in the atmosphere now than at any time in the last 600,000 years. Those years encompass warm times and ice ages.
The point of my letter is that silly oil industry’s campaign about CO2 all being the same is misleading. CO2 from ordinary sources like breathing and plant decay and even volcanoes has been relatively stable until recently. The huge increase in CO2 in our present day atmosphere is as a direct result of burning FOSSIL CO2 that has not been in the atmosphere for more than 280,000,000 years since before the age of the dinosaurs. (It was taken from the atmosphere during the carboniferous age by plants now extinct and deposited in swamp sediments that have after much aging turned into coal and oil.)
It is the burning of this fossil carbon and releasing it as CO2 in our atmosphere which is changing the climate.
About your other question, Carbon Monoxide is a potent greenhouse gas but is not nearly as important as CO2 because it is chemically unstable and does not last in the atmosphere for anywhere near the length of time that CO2 does.
---------------------------
global warming skeptic wrote on May 16, 2007 7:16 AM:
" To former science teacher: Your article leads the reader (or student) to believe their are two kinds of CO2. You need to clarify because it is misleading. You argue that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere, not because of "ordinary sources" such as breathing, etc., but due to the burning of fossil fuel. Considering (as you say) all CO2 is chemically the same, you need to show how you can tell the difference and how you determine the source. It is my belief that "prehistoric" temperatures can not be extracted from tree rings or ice cores. Only estimates of wet-dry or warm-cold periods. Scientific analysis of ice cores can only be taken where ice exists which is only a small portion of the earth's surface, therefore I don't believe an accurate estimate can be obtained to make accurate conclusions about the cause and effects of global warming. "
-------------------------------------
to global warming skeptic
You understand that air is trapped between snowflakes? That should be easy to visualize. Big soft irregular flakes of snow plop down and bits of air are trapped. That air is from our atmosphere. Therefore bits of atmosphere are trapped. The snow freezes on the surface. More snow falls. It also traps more air giving more samples of atmosphere.
There is no need to have ice on every inch of the earth to get good ancient air samples. The atmosphere is made of many gases. Gases mix. They mix uniformly. It does not matter where an atmosphere sample is taken, the percentages of gases will be very similar.
However perhaps a local volcano spewing gases or forest fire could skew the results a little bit, so scientist compare the samples of air in the cores at the South Pole to samples of air found in Greenland cores near the North Pole. There are also glaciers at ever latitude including the equator if one climbs high enough.
Core samples from glaciers in the Andes (South America) have also been compared to those polar samples as have samples from many other latitudes, where the cores overlap they all agree. The farthest back in time one can go is in the oldest glaciers which are found in Antarctica (South Pole). The Greenland samples are nearly as old. Even the glaciers at the equator are tens of thousands of years old.
Because snow does not fall equally year around, annual layers are formed. During a part of the year more snow falls, during part of the year there is more dust. The temperature, at which the snow falls and freezes, changes during the year. Different temperatures alter the size and structure of the snow/ice particles. Coring through the snow and holding it up to strong light shows repeating annual layers of big and small ice particles and more snow compared to more dust. The layers are visible to the naked eye. They can be counted. They are annual layers. New annual layers can be seen to be formed on top at research stations where long term observations have been done. Counting the layers is one way to determine how old the air in the snow is.
Counting thousands of layers that get ever smaller (due to compression) the deeper one looks down the core is a bit tedious. Another way to determine the age of the air is by measuring a radioactive isotope of carbon called carbon 14. C14 is constantly being produced in the top of the atmosphere by solar radiation. But it disappears over time (radioactive decay). Because C14 is unstable, measuring the percentage of C14 left in the ancient air samples and comparing the amount in the current atmosphere, tells us the age of the ancient air. The less C14, the older the air sample.
Remember the air is made of many gases. Gases unrestrained by boundaries mix uniformly. The amount of C14 in the lowest layer of the atmosphere is virtually the same at every place on earth due to the uniform mixing.
The only source of C14 on earth is the production of C14 from solar radiation at the top of our atmosphere. (It takes massive amounts of radiation to produce C14, there is no other source of the kind of radiation needed to make C14 on the surface of the earth other than the sun.) The rate that C14 breaks down is steady. The rate of breakdown does not change with heat or cold or pressure. It provides a clock which goes back thousands of years. Measure the C14 and find out the age of the air.
I hope that answers your questions.
Former science teacher
All CO2 is not the same
Conservative radio personalities and Fox News hosts tell us global warming is a hoax. They use the following false argument. "We all breathe out CO2. Since CO2 is the greenhouse gas problem that the environmental wackos whine about, then they must want us to all stop breathing." Keep breathing. The CO2 you exhale is part of the normal carbon cycle. You remember the carbon cycle from elementary school. Animals breathe out CO2; then plants, in the presence of sunlight, absorb and combine it with water to make carbohydrates (food). Animals then eat those plants, converting the carbohydrates back to CO2 to be breathed back into the atmosphere. ...
At least that was the case until about 150 years ago, when we started burning fossil sources of carbon. First coal was burned and then oil. Today fossil carbon is being released into the atmosphere in massive, unprecedented quantities. This fossil carbon from coal and oil has been sequestered in deposits in the Earth since the Carboniferous age that ended 280 million years ago. ...
The only CO2 to be worried about is the CO2 produced from this long-buried fossil carbon. It is adding huge new amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere. It is the culprit in the global warming problem.
Peter Welch
former science teacher
Vista
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Global warming skeptic wrote on May 13, 2007 6:00 PM:
" Peter Welsh (retired science teacher) says today that the CO2 we exhale is different from the CO2 coming from combustion engine exhaust and burning of fossil fuels. I don't believe it. Is Welsh talking about carbon monoxide (CO)? If this is true, what business does the U.S. Supreme Court have to claim that CO2 is a pollutant that must be regulated? How Orwellian. Snow is black, peace is war and CO2 is not CO2 because that only depends on "what is, is." "
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To global warming skeptic, of course all CO2 is chemically the same. The American Petroleum Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute have made lovely commercials to say this. But this is a fact meant to deceive. The source of CO2 is different. This difference has led to an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere that is at least 1/3 higher than at any time in the last 600,000 years during the warmest of warm interglacial periods.
Both the API and the CEI are well aware that we have actually physical samples of atmosphere trapped in Greenland and Antarctic ice going back over 600,000 years.
Air is trapped by snowflakes that then freeze permanently entombing the air sample. Another layer of snow falls, more air is trapped. There are changes in the deposits over a single year resulting in annual layers. Coring those deposits allows one to not only sample old air, but one can actually see the annual layers in the core just like one can see annual tree rings in a core from an ancient tree.
Using these samples we can demonstrate by direct physical testing of old atmosphere samples that there is a third more CO2 in the atmosphere now than at any time in the last 600,000 years. Those years encompass warm times and ice ages.
The point of my letter is that silly oil industry’s campaign about CO2 all being the same is misleading. CO2 from ordinary sources like breathing and plant decay and even volcanoes has been relatively stable until recently. The huge increase in CO2 in our present day atmosphere is as a direct result of burning FOSSIL CO2 that has not been in the atmosphere for more than 280,000,000 years since before the age of the dinosaurs. (It was taken from the atmosphere during the carboniferous age by plants now extinct and deposited in swamp sediments that have after much aging turned into coal and oil.)
It is the burning of this fossil carbon and releasing it as CO2 in our atmosphere which is changing the climate.
About your other question, Carbon Monoxide is a potent greenhouse gas but is not nearly as important as CO2 because it is chemically unstable and does not last in the atmosphere for anywhere near the length of time that CO2 does.
---------------------------
global warming skeptic wrote on May 16, 2007 7:16 AM:
" To former science teacher: Your article leads the reader (or student) to believe their are two kinds of CO2. You need to clarify because it is misleading. You argue that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere, not because of "ordinary sources" such as breathing, etc., but due to the burning of fossil fuel. Considering (as you say) all CO2 is chemically the same, you need to show how you can tell the difference and how you determine the source. It is my belief that "prehistoric" temperatures can not be extracted from tree rings or ice cores. Only estimates of wet-dry or warm-cold periods. Scientific analysis of ice cores can only be taken where ice exists which is only a small portion of the earth's surface, therefore I don't believe an accurate estimate can be obtained to make accurate conclusions about the cause and effects of global warming. "
-------------------------------------
to global warming skeptic
You understand that air is trapped between snowflakes? That should be easy to visualize. Big soft irregular flakes of snow plop down and bits of air are trapped. That air is from our atmosphere. Therefore bits of atmosphere are trapped. The snow freezes on the surface. More snow falls. It also traps more air giving more samples of atmosphere.
There is no need to have ice on every inch of the earth to get good ancient air samples. The atmosphere is made of many gases. Gases mix. They mix uniformly. It does not matter where an atmosphere sample is taken, the percentages of gases will be very similar.
However perhaps a local volcano spewing gases or forest fire could skew the results a little bit, so scientist compare the samples of air in the cores at the South Pole to samples of air found in Greenland cores near the North Pole. There are also glaciers at ever latitude including the equator if one climbs high enough.
Core samples from glaciers in the Andes (South America) have also been compared to those polar samples as have samples from many other latitudes, where the cores overlap they all agree. The farthest back in time one can go is in the oldest glaciers which are found in Antarctica (South Pole). The Greenland samples are nearly as old. Even the glaciers at the equator are tens of thousands of years old.
Because snow does not fall equally year around, annual layers are formed. During a part of the year more snow falls, during part of the year there is more dust. The temperature, at which the snow falls and freezes, changes during the year. Different temperatures alter the size and structure of the snow/ice particles. Coring through the snow and holding it up to strong light shows repeating annual layers of big and small ice particles and more snow compared to more dust. The layers are visible to the naked eye. They can be counted. They are annual layers. New annual layers can be seen to be formed on top at research stations where long term observations have been done. Counting the layers is one way to determine how old the air in the snow is.
Counting thousands of layers that get ever smaller (due to compression) the deeper one looks down the core is a bit tedious. Another way to determine the age of the air is by measuring a radioactive isotope of carbon called carbon 14. C14 is constantly being produced in the top of the atmosphere by solar radiation. But it disappears over time (radioactive decay). Because C14 is unstable, measuring the percentage of C14 left in the ancient air samples and comparing the amount in the current atmosphere, tells us the age of the ancient air. The less C14, the older the air sample.
Remember the air is made of many gases. Gases unrestrained by boundaries mix uniformly. The amount of C14 in the lowest layer of the atmosphere is virtually the same at every place on earth due to the uniform mixing.
The only source of C14 on earth is the production of C14 from solar radiation at the top of our atmosphere. (It takes massive amounts of radiation to produce C14, there is no other source of the kind of radiation needed to make C14 on the surface of the earth other than the sun.) The rate that C14 breaks down is steady. The rate of breakdown does not change with heat or cold or pressure. It provides a clock which goes back thousands of years. Measure the C14 and find out the age of the air.
I hope that answers your questions.
Former science teacher
Hate filled "christians"
Dear Ms. Parker
I have read many of your "editorials" where you unquestioningly printed the lies and cons of those who call themselves conservative and Christian. In my view those people were neither.
Yesterday patriotic Americans who support the principles in our Constitution repudiated those who claim to love Christ but seem far more to be hate filled then Christ centered. Today you have decided to publish a column saying you have been uncomfortable with them all along.
Sure would have been nice if you decided to be an American patriot first and an obsequious republic-CON second, before the results of this election came in. Your conversion now seems a bit forced.
The hate filled “christians” demand, contrary to all physical evidence, that the earth and God is only six thousand years old and all public school teachers and politicians must accept their delusions.
If we do not, we are pillared in our communities. Our neighbors and friends are told we are perverts because we expose our students to evidence that the earth may be a bit older. (for instance six million annual layers of sediment, varves, found in one cliff in the Green River Valley of Utah, or a half million annual layers of snow deposited on Antarctica plains.
I was called a pervert not for any sexual impropriety with any dog, man, boy or whatever but simply because I knew why the scientific community thought the world was old and I told others what I knew.
So if God left six million layers of yearly sediments in a cliff that exactly match the same kind annual sediments laid down in lakes today, is he a trickster or a liar?
If a person can cut into a glacier in Greenland or the Antarctica and count back hundreds of thousands of annual snow layers starting with the one laid down last year and finishing with those laid down 500 thousand years ago, does claiming the earth is six thousand years old make the Bible wrong or your eyes wrong?
Could it be neither? Maybe it is just your interpretation of Genesis that is wrong? Ask that question to the new Christian mobs now running our churches and you are told you cannot be a real Christian if you bring up such information.
After twenty years as a Sunday School teacher and Christian Scouting director, I was driven from my church because of what I taught in my public school science classroom. In the Sunday School classroom, I taught only what was in the Sunday School literature and teacher’s manual. What I taught in Sunday School did not matter. All that mattered was what I taught in my public school classroom.
Because of that teaching, I was no longer a real Christian. I exposed my seventh and eighth grade public school students to the overwhelming physical evidence of the old age of the earth. How evil! I also exposed those students to the evidence that natural selection drives change in life on earth. My personal religious view (that I never shared with any student at public school or Sunday School) is that we are seeing God’s creative force when we see natural selection. This view made me even more evil. Beyond hope evil.
It used to be that we, Protestants, had an ethic called the "priesthood of the individual". Each person of good character was encouraged to read the Bible for themselves and come to their own conclusions especially about the beginning and ending of the Bible. Good people could come to differing views and still be good Christians.
But no more, the hate filled, the Christians who know everything even what cannot be known, these are the “christians” who now fill our churches and run the Republican party. They are the ones who are absolutely certain of what they believe even if what they believe is not written in the Bible. Their beliefs can be based on a popular novel series (Left Behind) without any basis in the historic beliefs of the church. These are the Christians who now control our churches the Republican party. They are not the Christians of my childhood. To paraphrase an ad for Oldmobile, they are not my Father’s Christians.
The first RINO hunts were done in the churches long before these hate filled, uncompassionate monsters took the Republican party and started conducting their hunts in the party as well.
As long as the Republican party is run by people who "know everything" before they ever look at facts we will continue to get the likes of Bush and his cronies who knew in their gut what was right for Iraq, but never did any book learning to see it their gut was correct.
The party deserves the defeat it was dealt yesterday.
I am the fifth generation Republican in my family. My great grandparents and their in laws ran the last house on the Underground Railroad in Ashtabula Ohio. John Brown was a house guest as was Ben Wade and Joshua Giddings. My family helped found the Republican Party in the mid west.
I remain a registered Republican because of family history but it will be a long time before I vote that way again.
darwindad
I have read many of your "editorials" where you unquestioningly printed the lies and cons of those who call themselves conservative and Christian. In my view those people were neither.
Yesterday patriotic Americans who support the principles in our Constitution repudiated those who claim to love Christ but seem far more to be hate filled then Christ centered. Today you have decided to publish a column saying you have been uncomfortable with them all along.
Sure would have been nice if you decided to be an American patriot first and an obsequious republic-CON second, before the results of this election came in. Your conversion now seems a bit forced.
The hate filled “christians” demand, contrary to all physical evidence, that the earth and God is only six thousand years old and all public school teachers and politicians must accept their delusions.
If we do not, we are pillared in our communities. Our neighbors and friends are told we are perverts because we expose our students to evidence that the earth may be a bit older. (for instance six million annual layers of sediment, varves, found in one cliff in the Green River Valley of Utah, or a half million annual layers of snow deposited on Antarctica plains.
I was called a pervert not for any sexual impropriety with any dog, man, boy or whatever but simply because I knew why the scientific community thought the world was old and I told others what I knew.
So if God left six million layers of yearly sediments in a cliff that exactly match the same kind annual sediments laid down in lakes today, is he a trickster or a liar?
If a person can cut into a glacier in Greenland or the Antarctica and count back hundreds of thousands of annual snow layers starting with the one laid down last year and finishing with those laid down 500 thousand years ago, does claiming the earth is six thousand years old make the Bible wrong or your eyes wrong?
Could it be neither? Maybe it is just your interpretation of Genesis that is wrong? Ask that question to the new Christian mobs now running our churches and you are told you cannot be a real Christian if you bring up such information.
After twenty years as a Sunday School teacher and Christian Scouting director, I was driven from my church because of what I taught in my public school science classroom. In the Sunday School classroom, I taught only what was in the Sunday School literature and teacher’s manual. What I taught in Sunday School did not matter. All that mattered was what I taught in my public school classroom.
Because of that teaching, I was no longer a real Christian. I exposed my seventh and eighth grade public school students to the overwhelming physical evidence of the old age of the earth. How evil! I also exposed those students to the evidence that natural selection drives change in life on earth. My personal religious view (that I never shared with any student at public school or Sunday School) is that we are seeing God’s creative force when we see natural selection. This view made me even more evil. Beyond hope evil.
It used to be that we, Protestants, had an ethic called the "priesthood of the individual". Each person of good character was encouraged to read the Bible for themselves and come to their own conclusions especially about the beginning and ending of the Bible. Good people could come to differing views and still be good Christians.
But no more, the hate filled, the Christians who know everything even what cannot be known, these are the “christians” who now fill our churches and run the Republican party. They are the ones who are absolutely certain of what they believe even if what they believe is not written in the Bible. Their beliefs can be based on a popular novel series (Left Behind) without any basis in the historic beliefs of the church. These are the Christians who now control our churches the Republican party. They are not the Christians of my childhood. To paraphrase an ad for Oldmobile, they are not my Father’s Christians.
The first RINO hunts were done in the churches long before these hate filled, uncompassionate monsters took the Republican party and started conducting their hunts in the party as well.
As long as the Republican party is run by people who "know everything" before they ever look at facts we will continue to get the likes of Bush and his cronies who knew in their gut what was right for Iraq, but never did any book learning to see it their gut was correct.
The party deserves the defeat it was dealt yesterday.
I am the fifth generation Republican in my family. My great grandparents and their in laws ran the last house on the Underground Railroad in Ashtabula Ohio. John Brown was a house guest as was Ben Wade and Joshua Giddings. My family helped found the Republican Party in the mid west.
I remain a registered Republican because of family history but it will be a long time before I vote that way again.
darwindad
NYTimes--new ancestor of four legged creatures
April 6, 2006
Fossil Called Missing Link From Sea to Land Animals
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Scientists have discovered fossils of a 375-million-year-old fish, a large scaly creature not seen before, that they say is a long-sought missing link in the evolution of some fishes from water to a life walking on four limbs on land.
In two reports today in the journal Nature, a team of scientists led by Neil H. Shubin of the University of Chicago say they have uncovered several well-preserved skeletons of the fossil fish in sediments of former streambeds in the Canadian Arctic, 600 miles from the North Pole.
The skeletons have the fins, scales and other attributes of a giant fish, four to nine feet long. But on closer examination, the scientists found telling anatomical traits of a transitional creature, a fish that is still a fish but has changes that anticipate the emergence of land animals — and is thus a predecessor of amphibians, reptiles and dinosaurs, mammals and eventually humans.
In the fishes' forward fins, the scientists found evidence of limbs in the making. There are the beginnings of digits, proto-wrists, elbows and shoulders. The fish also had a flat skull resembling a crocodile's, a neck, ribs and other parts that were similar to four-legged land animals known as tetrapods.
Other scientists said that in addition to confirming elements of a major transition in evolution, the fossils were a powerful rebuttal to religious creationists, who have long argued that the absence of such transitional creatures are a serious weakness in Darwin's theory.
The discovery team called the fossils the most compelling examples yet of an animal that was at the cusp of the fish-tetrapod transition. The fish has been named Tiktaalik roseae, at the suggestion of elders of Canada's Nunavut Territory. Tiktaalik (pronounced tic-TAH-lick) means "large shallow water fish."
"The origin of limbs," Dr. Shubin's team wrote, "probably involved the elaboration and proliferation of features already present in the fins of fish such as Tiktaalik."
In an interview, Dr. Shubin, an evolutionary biologist, let himself go. "It's a really amazing, remarkable intermediate fossil," he said. "It's like, holy cow."
Two other paleontologists, commenting on the find in a separate article in the journal, said that a few other transitional fish had been previously discovered from approximately the same Late Devonian time period, 385 million to 359 million years ago. But Tiktaalik is so clearly an intermediate "link between fishes and land vertebrates," they said, that it "might in time become as much an evolutionary icon as the proto-bird Archaeopteryx," which bridged the gap between reptiles (probably dinosaurs) and today's birds.
The writers, Erik Ahlberg of Uppsala University in Sweden and Jennifer A. Clack of the University of Cambridge in England, are often viewed as rivals to Dr. Shubin's team in the search for intermediate species in the evolution from fish to the first animals to colonize land.
H. Richard Lane, director of paleobiology at the National Science Foundation, said in a statement, "These exciting discoveries are providing fossil 'Rosetta Stones' for a deeper understanding of this evolutionary milestone — fish to land-roaming tetrapods."
The science foundation and the National Geographic Society were among the financial supporters of the research. Besides Dr. Shubin, the principal discoverers were Edward B. Daeschler of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and Farish A. Jenkins Jr., a Harvard evolutionary biologist. Casts of the fossils will be on view at the Science Museum of London.
Michael J. Novacek, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, who was not involved in the research, said: "Based on what we already know, we have a very strong reason to think tetrapods evolved from lineages of fishes. This may be a critical phase in that transition that we haven't had before. A good fossil cuts through a lot of scientific argument."
Dr. Shubin's team played down the fossil's significance in the raging debate over Darwinian theory, which is opposed mainly by some conservative Christians in this country, but other scientists were not so reticent. They said this should undercut the argument that there is no evidence in the fossil record of one kind of creature becoming another kind.
One creationist site on the Web (emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs /evid1.htm) declares that "there are no transitional forms," adding: "For example, not a single fossil with part fins, part feet has been found. And this is true between every major plant and animal kind."
Dr. Novacek responded: "We've got Archaeopteryx, an early whale that lived on land, and now this animal showing the transition from fish to tetrapod. What more do we need from the fossil record to show that the creationists are flatly wrong?"
Duane T. Gish, a retired official of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, said, "This alleged transitional fish will have to be evaluated carefully." But he added that he still found evolution "questionable because paleontologists have yet to discover any transitional fossils between complex invertebrates and fish, and this destroys the whole evolutionary story."
Dr. Shubin and Dr. Daeschler began their search on Ellesmere Island in 1999. They were attracted by a map in a geology textbook showing an abundance of Devonian rocks exposed and relatively easy to explore. At that time, the land had a warm climate: it was part of a supercontinent straddling the Equator.
It was not until July 2004, Dr. Shubin said, that "we hit the jackpot." They found several of the fishes in a quarry, their skeletons largely intact and in three dimensions. The large skull had the sharp teeth of a predator. It was attached to a neck, which allowed the fish the unfishlike ability to swivel its head.
If the animal spent any time out of water, said Dr. Jenkins, of Harvard, it needed a true neck that allowed the head to move independently on the body.
Embedded in the pectoral fins were bones that compare to the upper arm, forearm and primitive parts of the hand of land-living animals. The joints of the fins appeared to be capable of functioning for movement on land, a case of a fish improvising with its evolved anatomy. In all likelihood, the scientists said, Tiktaalik flexed its proto-limbs mainly on the floor of streams and might have pulled itself up on the shore for brief stretches.
In their report, the scientists concluded that Tiktaalik was an intermediate between the fishes Eusthenopteron and Panderichthys, which lived 385 million years ago, and early tetrapods. The known early tetrapods are Acanthostega and Ichthyostega, about 365 million years ago.
Tiktaalik, Dr. Shubin said, is "both fish and tetrapod, which we sometimes call a fishapod."
Fossil Called Missing Link From Sea to Land Animals
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Scientists have discovered fossils of a 375-million-year-old fish, a large scaly creature not seen before, that they say is a long-sought missing link in the evolution of some fishes from water to a life walking on four limbs on land.
In two reports today in the journal Nature, a team of scientists led by Neil H. Shubin of the University of Chicago say they have uncovered several well-preserved skeletons of the fossil fish in sediments of former streambeds in the Canadian Arctic, 600 miles from the North Pole.
The skeletons have the fins, scales and other attributes of a giant fish, four to nine feet long. But on closer examination, the scientists found telling anatomical traits of a transitional creature, a fish that is still a fish but has changes that anticipate the emergence of land animals — and is thus a predecessor of amphibians, reptiles and dinosaurs, mammals and eventually humans.
In the fishes' forward fins, the scientists found evidence of limbs in the making. There are the beginnings of digits, proto-wrists, elbows and shoulders. The fish also had a flat skull resembling a crocodile's, a neck, ribs and other parts that were similar to four-legged land animals known as tetrapods.
Other scientists said that in addition to confirming elements of a major transition in evolution, the fossils were a powerful rebuttal to religious creationists, who have long argued that the absence of such transitional creatures are a serious weakness in Darwin's theory.
The discovery team called the fossils the most compelling examples yet of an animal that was at the cusp of the fish-tetrapod transition. The fish has been named Tiktaalik roseae, at the suggestion of elders of Canada's Nunavut Territory. Tiktaalik (pronounced tic-TAH-lick) means "large shallow water fish."
"The origin of limbs," Dr. Shubin's team wrote, "probably involved the elaboration and proliferation of features already present in the fins of fish such as Tiktaalik."
In an interview, Dr. Shubin, an evolutionary biologist, let himself go. "It's a really amazing, remarkable intermediate fossil," he said. "It's like, holy cow."
Two other paleontologists, commenting on the find in a separate article in the journal, said that a few other transitional fish had been previously discovered from approximately the same Late Devonian time period, 385 million to 359 million years ago. But Tiktaalik is so clearly an intermediate "link between fishes and land vertebrates," they said, that it "might in time become as much an evolutionary icon as the proto-bird Archaeopteryx," which bridged the gap between reptiles (probably dinosaurs) and today's birds.
The writers, Erik Ahlberg of Uppsala University in Sweden and Jennifer A. Clack of the University of Cambridge in England, are often viewed as rivals to Dr. Shubin's team in the search for intermediate species in the evolution from fish to the first animals to colonize land.
H. Richard Lane, director of paleobiology at the National Science Foundation, said in a statement, "These exciting discoveries are providing fossil 'Rosetta Stones' for a deeper understanding of this evolutionary milestone — fish to land-roaming tetrapods."
The science foundation and the National Geographic Society were among the financial supporters of the research. Besides Dr. Shubin, the principal discoverers were Edward B. Daeschler of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and Farish A. Jenkins Jr., a Harvard evolutionary biologist. Casts of the fossils will be on view at the Science Museum of London.
Michael J. Novacek, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, who was not involved in the research, said: "Based on what we already know, we have a very strong reason to think tetrapods evolved from lineages of fishes. This may be a critical phase in that transition that we haven't had before. A good fossil cuts through a lot of scientific argument."
Dr. Shubin's team played down the fossil's significance in the raging debate over Darwinian theory, which is opposed mainly by some conservative Christians in this country, but other scientists were not so reticent. They said this should undercut the argument that there is no evidence in the fossil record of one kind of creature becoming another kind.
One creationist site on the Web (emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs /evid1.htm) declares that "there are no transitional forms," adding: "For example, not a single fossil with part fins, part feet has been found. And this is true between every major plant and animal kind."
Dr. Novacek responded: "We've got Archaeopteryx, an early whale that lived on land, and now this animal showing the transition from fish to tetrapod. What more do we need from the fossil record to show that the creationists are flatly wrong?"
Duane T. Gish, a retired official of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, said, "This alleged transitional fish will have to be evaluated carefully." But he added that he still found evolution "questionable because paleontologists have yet to discover any transitional fossils between complex invertebrates and fish, and this destroys the whole evolutionary story."
Dr. Shubin and Dr. Daeschler began their search on Ellesmere Island in 1999. They were attracted by a map in a geology textbook showing an abundance of Devonian rocks exposed and relatively easy to explore. At that time, the land had a warm climate: it was part of a supercontinent straddling the Equator.
It was not until July 2004, Dr. Shubin said, that "we hit the jackpot." They found several of the fishes in a quarry, their skeletons largely intact and in three dimensions. The large skull had the sharp teeth of a predator. It was attached to a neck, which allowed the fish the unfishlike ability to swivel its head.
If the animal spent any time out of water, said Dr. Jenkins, of Harvard, it needed a true neck that allowed the head to move independently on the body.
Embedded in the pectoral fins were bones that compare to the upper arm, forearm and primitive parts of the hand of land-living animals. The joints of the fins appeared to be capable of functioning for movement on land, a case of a fish improvising with its evolved anatomy. In all likelihood, the scientists said, Tiktaalik flexed its proto-limbs mainly on the floor of streams and might have pulled itself up on the shore for brief stretches.
In their report, the scientists concluded that Tiktaalik was an intermediate between the fishes Eusthenopteron and Panderichthys, which lived 385 million years ago, and early tetrapods. The known early tetrapods are Acanthostega and Ichthyostega, about 365 million years ago.
Tiktaalik, Dr. Shubin said, is "both fish and tetrapod, which we sometimes call a fishapod."
Evolution--No one believes in it
Words mean something. Using the word "believe" with evolution is a signal to the "little god"
Christians that science is just another belief system, no different than their own belief system.
Science is not a belief system. It is an evidence based system. No scientist believes in evolution. Evidence is gathered and allowed to lead to conclusions. Evidence for the old age of the earth and the changes in life over time has been gathered for more then two centuries. This overwhelming amount of evidence all leads to the conclusion that evolution happens.
Science based people accept evidence. We do not discard inconvenient facts like “belief system” people do. Scientific theory must accept and account for all evidence found.
Good scientists are no different than good detectives at the scene of a crime. They gather evidence and allow the evidence to lead them to a conclusion about who the probable culprit was. The more evidence the more certain the detective is. Scientists gather evidence about the earth and its history and allow the evidence to lead them to conclusions.
If a bloody glove is found at Nicole Brown Simpson's house and at OJs house, if OJs blood is found at her house and hers at his then logical people allowed the evidence to lead to a conclusion.
Little god Christians believe first and then "fix facts" around their belief. The facts may be unrelated to each other. The facts are always carefully selected so as to leave out the greater number of facts and evidence that lead in a different direction.
Whenever any person talks about "believing" in evolution they are falling into a logic trap set up by the little god Christians.
Try saying we understand the evidence and accept the conclusion that evolution happens.
Christians that science is just another belief system, no different than their own belief system.
Science is not a belief system. It is an evidence based system. No scientist believes in evolution. Evidence is gathered and allowed to lead to conclusions. Evidence for the old age of the earth and the changes in life over time has been gathered for more then two centuries. This overwhelming amount of evidence all leads to the conclusion that evolution happens.
Science based people accept evidence. We do not discard inconvenient facts like “belief system” people do. Scientific theory must accept and account for all evidence found.
Good scientists are no different than good detectives at the scene of a crime. They gather evidence and allow the evidence to lead them to a conclusion about who the probable culprit was. The more evidence the more certain the detective is. Scientists gather evidence about the earth and its history and allow the evidence to lead them to conclusions.
If a bloody glove is found at Nicole Brown Simpson's house and at OJs house, if OJs blood is found at her house and hers at his then logical people allowed the evidence to lead to a conclusion.
Little god Christians believe first and then "fix facts" around their belief. The facts may be unrelated to each other. The facts are always carefully selected so as to leave out the greater number of facts and evidence that lead in a different direction.
Whenever any person talks about "believing" in evolution they are falling into a logic trap set up by the little god Christians.
Try saying we understand the evidence and accept the conclusion that evolution happens.
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