2-26-06 Dead of Winter

Here in New England, there's a hidden sense of masochism attached to any decision to remain in this part of the country through the winter months. I see it all around me in the people I talk to each day. They complain about the weather.

Even though the first day of spring is only three and a half weeks away, this is the point in the winter season where everyone in this part of the country has just about had enough of winter.

I get a sense of impending descent into these cold winter months around the end of November each year, but I'm still riding along that wave of nice weather that preceded it. Then I have the holiday season to distract me all the way through to the beginning of January. That first month of the new year is also distracting to some degree because there's that "new year" feeling.

By the beginning of February, though, nothing is left to distract me from the fact that it's cold outside, everybody around me has been affected by sniffles, at the very least, and the only thing to look forward to is the fact that this is the shortest month of the year. When I get down to the last couple days of February, it's simply the deadest part of the winter. There's no ignoring it.

It's a Sunday morning as I write this, and it's nine a.m. The feeling of not wanting to get out of my pajamas is practically overwhelming. I just want to stay inside all day and lay around.

Why do I suffer through this annual migration through the dead of winter?

Well, I've said it before, and I'll say it again... I like the change of seasons. It isn't so much that I like the winter, the snow, or the cold. It's more along the lines of banging my head against a wall because it feels so good when I stop. It's that sense of crypto-masochism attached to the whole thing.

I lived in Los Angeles for a year. I really enjoyed having weather that I didn't need a coat to go out in all year round. Of course, when the temperature was down in the 50's I would see people in heavy winter clothing outside, while I was ambling around in short sleeved shirts. It was clear to me that if I stayed there for a few years, I'd become accustomed to the warmer weather, and end up like them.

I swam in the pacific ocean on New Year's day 1983. It was beach weather (for me, anyway). It was quite a novelty to me. A couple months later, though, I made the journey back here to New England.

There were various reasons that I came back. Mostly, it wasn't related to a preference for any particular climate. But it helped in the decision that I really did miss the change of seasons.

This morning as I looked out the window I saw a new blanket of snow covering everything. It's very cold outside, only about 20 degrees. But the landscape all around has that fresh white covering of newly fallen snow. It's breathtakingly beautiful.

We had a foot and a half of snow come down from the sky here, only a couple of weeks ago. I had to get out the snowblower and clean it all off from my driveway, brush off the cars, and tidy up the sidewalk. It took a couple of hours. Within a week, though, all that snow had melted away. This morning's new snow is only about a quarter inch. Hardly of any consequence, whatsoever. It'll vanish from the driveway and sidewalk within a couple days, so there's no point in shoveling it or using a broom to sweep it anywhere.

It's the dead of winter, today is Sunday, and I don't have to do anything but lay around all day.

2-21-06 Bowling for Medicine

Somehow, I just can't imagine a stranger culture than the one we now live in. I mean, people are willing to risk their lives and those around them in order to be in front of, rather than behind, some guy on the highway. And they're willing to get so pissed off about it that the projectile they're driving, however many thousands of dollars they might have paid for it, is of no consequence during the battle frenzy on the highway. Meanwhile, they have no slightest problem with the way the government is behaving...

Very strange, to say the least.

I suppose it may just boil down to the medication they're taking. Or maybe the as yet unadjusted mix of medications.

Personally, I can hardly imagine a situation where the prescribing of medications for a person who is, otherwise, appearing to lead a normal life, being a matter of "adjusting the mix". People have faith in their medications, though. They really believe that taking their medications is going to extend their lifespan. This faith based social reality, that medical science has somehow extended the lifespan for human beings is, quite frankly, a myth. All science has succeeded in extending is the tonnage of chemicals being fed into the gene pool, along with a decrease in infant mortality rates by convincing every pregnant woman that childbirth outside of a hospital is crazy.

In other words, this idea of science and medicine having increased the lifespan in humans is a statistical trick. If you start your series of data with a period containing high infant mortality rates, and end it with a period wherein infant mortality has been lowered substantially, then the overall average "lifespan" jumps up by amazingly large numbers. This is all that "faith in medicine" is really based on, that the "science" involved has somehow extended the lifespan by a considerable number of years.

Babies live longer on the front end of the "lifespan" scale. No doubt about that. But nobody's living any longer on the back end of the scale. When you add six months to a couple of years on the back end for a few thousand people every year, it makes no statistical difference at all. It's the elimination of huge numbers of deaths at or just after birth, year after year for decades where you have statistics that are hugely affected.

But everybody believes that "healthcare" is extending lifespan on the back end. With such solid faith in the methodologies, people are more than willing to accept a doctor's prescription, even if it means taking the chemical compounds for the rest of their lives.

Then there are the "side" effects. To some degree or another, there is always a "side" effect with medications. It all goes back to the basis of modern medication, the "germ theory". The germ makes you sick. The "cure" is the chemical compound that kills the germ without killing the person. The main effect is that the germ is killed, and if there are any other unwanted phenomena that occur as a result of the person taking the medication, this is called a "side" effect.

This has branched out to many "non-germ" areas, as well, but the same 19th century thinking is still behind it. For instance, there's the cholesterol problem. Instead of fully attacking the cause of high cholesterol (diet), the focus is on which cholesterol lowering compound will be "right" for that particular person. It will be the one with the least undesired "side" effects, after much dabbling and adjusting of dosage has taken place. In other words, every single case is a big experiment to see "what works". Meanwhile, since the guy has medication to lower his cholesterol, he modifies his diet only slightly, continuing to consume more cholesterol than his body can effectively get rid of, and his body continues to manufacture more cholesterol than it can get rid of. And the doctor chides him for "cheating" on his diet, and the dosage goes up for the medication, and so on...

Meanwhile, through all this, the "side" effects are at work in his body and if he doesn't notice any of the ones that the doctor said to look for, then he just figures he's getting no "side" effects. If he has other things happenng, however, things that aren't on the offcial "side effects list" for that drug, then it's yet another complaint for the doctor to prescribe yet another medication for. For instance, a growing number of people have serious complaints concerning memory loss related to consumption of the cholesterol lowering drug "lipitor". But since this particular side effect isn't listed by the FDA, it isn't connected to the lipitor by either the doctor or the patient. Instead, they start looking for signs of Alzheimer's disease, and treat that with yet another prescription.

The problem here isn't that the unlisted "side" effect isn't a valid complaint, the problem is that the research done to validate any medication and get the FDA to approve its use in humans is an increasingly tainted and unreliable process. More and more, medications are approved, distributed widely for a number of years, and only after some group of complainants has mustered up the money to challenge the chemical company in court in a class action lawsuit, and only after the long years of legal wrangling has finally come to a conclusion, that we finally learn of the horrific damage that has been done with these unacknowledged "side" effects that they KNEW ABOUT AT THE OUTSET!

The whole economic monster that is the current healthcare industry is dispensing billions of tons of chemical compounds into millions of people's bodies every year. It's a hugely profitable activity. And it's all based upon this long standing false idea that medicine is extending our lifespan. It's a really easy sell, too. The doctor essentially gets you to agree that if you don't start taking this or that medication, then you're going to die. Since most people are already "true believers", there's not much more salemanship needed.

A salesman hardly has that kind of power when selling a car.

Car sales are down, but medication is huge and growing every year.

And medication is really so goddam expensive these days, too. It's really amazing how expensive some of this stuff is. Only the very rich can afford to pay for it themselves. Insurance companies do whatever is necessary to take in more money than they spend, so the dear cost of all this medication going up and up drives the cost of the healthcare insurance up and up.

Senior citizens with monthly medication costs high enough to rent a condo on Wakiki beach are doing so because they're convinced they'll die if they don't get that medication.

Heart (and related arterial) diseases, cancer, and diabetes all have alternate methodologies for treatment that insurance companies won't pay for. It's an interesting situation, because "curing" any of these and other chronic life-threatening conditions is, in fact, illegal in the United States. It's not "where the money is". Where the money is is in a lifetime prescription for an expensive medication.

So, it's a pretty strange culture that we live in at this time. I expect that at some point some bright network executive will be presented with an idea for a new game show called "Bowling for Medicine". I can just see those poor old ladies, never having been able figure out how to apply for the new Medicare coverage, eagerly rolling those bowling balls down the lane in the great hope of being able to win a year's worth of the drugs she's been brainwashed into believing she needs, in order to stay alive.