Flesh and Stone

The truth comes out about Gulf War Illness

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:24:00 -0600

After an agonizing 17 years, the U.S. government will finally have to admit what veterans and their families have long known -- Gulf War Illness is a very real and debilitating condition that has affected one-quarter of soldiers who served in the 1990-91 war.

The Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses (RAC-GWVI) -- a committee of scientists and veterans appointed by Congress in 2002 to investigate the illnesses experienced by veterans of Operation Desert Storm -- presented its 450-page report to Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake on November 17.

The new report, which chronicles the ailments suffered by some 175,000 Gulf War veterans--including memory and concentration problems, persistent headaches, unexplained fatigue, widespread pain, respiratory symptoms, digestive problems and skin rashes -- contradicts previous reports, which denied that Gulf War Illness even existed.

Among those previous reports, a 2006 National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine, claimed that the soldiers were simply suffering from stress disorders typical to any combat zone.

The Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses report is available on the Boston University School of Public Health web site.

As the RAC-GWVI report plainly states:

Gulf War illness fundamentally differs from trauma and stress-related syndromes described after other wars. Studies consistently indicate that Gulf War illness is not the result of combat or other stressors and that Gulf War veterans have lower rates of posttraumatic stress disorder than veterans of other wars.

According to the committee's scientific director Roberta White, veterans "have been plagued by ill health since their return 17 years ago. Although evidence for this health phenomenon is overwhelming, veterans repeatedly find that their complaints are met with cynicism and a 'blame the victim' mentality that attributes their health problems to mental illness or non-physical factors."

Lea Steele, who served as RAC-GWVI scientific director, told the Washington Post, "VA docs often know nothing about it and aren't able to help them. Sometimes, they treat them as if they are head cases or malingering."

As Anthony Hardie, national secretary for Veterans of Modern Warfare, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "It really closes one of the darker chapters of the legacy of the Gulf War, and that is Gulf War illness."

Hardie, a 23-year-old sergeant during the war, now suffers from respiratory problems, fatigue and chronic pain. "The report clearly lays out that Gulf War illness was caused by unique exposures; it lays out clearly that Gulf war illness is not a stress-related or trauma condition, that it is not the same as in wars before or since. It is unique," he said.

The report cites two main causes of Gulf War Illness -- exposure to toxic chemicals, including pesticides that were used against sand flies and other pests, and pyridostigmine bromide, or PB, a drug administered to troops that was supposed to protect them from nerve gas.

At least half of all troops in the 1991 war took PB, a drug that was not approved by the Federal Drug Administration, but for which the FDA gave the Defense Department a waiver for informed consent. In other words, soldiers were being used as guinea pigs, and they had no way of knowing.

The committee also did not rule out some other causes of Gulf War Illness, including exposure to nerve agents and smoke from oil well fires, and receiving a large numbers of vaccines. Department of Defense reports show that about 100,000 U.S. troops may have been exposed to low-level nerve agents after the demolition of Iraqi munitions near Khamisiyah, Iraq, in 1991. Even being exposed to low levels of nerve gas can have lasting brain deficits.

The report cites a veteran who said:

I arrived in Theater on January 6, 1991...During official visits to strategic military cities, there were frequent SCUD attacks during which I heard chemical alarms sound. When I asked if these alarms meant chemicals had been detected, I was told that the chemical alarms had malfunctioned.
I became ill and was treated for nausea, headaches, vomiting, diarrhea and high temperature. Rashes I had over my body I thought were normal and expected since I spent most days in the sand, wind and sun, with all the attendant fleas, flies and desert parasites. Headaches I attributed to fatigue and lack of sleep. The symptoms...continued after I returned home and got progressively worse.

British Gulf War veterans are also seeing the effects. "Recognition of the full extent of the illnesses suffered by these veterans of the conflict and the obligation owed to them is long overdue," said David Craig, Marshal of the Royal Air Force and chief of the defense staff during the Gulf War. "They are victims of the war, as much as any one struck by a bullet or shell."

While the report did not link depleted uranium (DU) to the Gulf War Illness, the widespread effects of soldiers' exposure to DU are also a part of the report. Said one veteran:

I knew we were shooting DU rounds, but we were never told to stay away from vehicles that were hit by DU rounds. Now I know that we probably got DU dust all over us. But we didn't know any better, and we were dipping, smoking and eating without having washed our hands.
Right after the war, we saw lots of guys from other units climbing on the vehicles we had shot with DU rounds...In April 1991, while we were in Kuwait, I started getting diarrhea, nausea, stomach cramps, headaches, and tightness in my chest. My problems have gotten worse since then.

According to the RAC-GWVI report, Gulf War veterans developed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease) at twice the rate of nondeployed veterans. It also found that personnel stationed downwind from the Khamisiyah munitions demolitions have died from brain cancer at twice the rate of other Gulf War veterans.

The report showed that very few veterans have recovered from Gulf War Illness, and the researchers had no recommendations for treatment. This is hardly surprising, since the government has done everything it could to refuse to recognize that the condition even existed.

And even though millions of federal dollars have gone to supposed Gulf War research, little has changed for sick veterans of the war. "In recent years, both the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs have reported a lot of studies that weren't Gulf War illness as Gulf War research," said the RAC-GWVI's Steele. "Some of the money was misused."

The Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs claim they have spent nearly $440 million since 1994 on Gulf War research. But the RAC-GWVI found that the money was largely used to fund research that had nothing to do with Gulf War Illness.

A lot of the DOD money actually went to projects for soldiers currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the report, the department has cut funding for the Gulf War research from about $30 million a year in 2003 to less than $5 million in 2006.

This is hardly unique for the soldiers sent to fight U.S. wars. It took 20 years for the soldiers suffering from the effects of Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant used during the Vietnam War, to force the government to acknowledge their illness.

Now that the facts are finally exposed on the impact of Gulf War Illness, we have to press the federal government to spend the money necessary to find a treatment for the tens of thousand of veterans who are paying for the U.S.'s wars with their health.

Elizabeth Schulte is a correspondent for Socialist Worker, where this article first appeared.

DST: Falling back, springing forward is good and bad for our health

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 20:25:00 -0500

Being a devout hater of Daylight Savings Time, I always knew it’s bad for one’s health and psyche, and a study by Swedish researchers proves it.

Daylight Savings Time turns our body clocks inside out and backwards.

According to the Associated Press, the findings, which are reported in the October 30 New England Journal of Medicine, Swedish scientists discovered the following after reviewing health records for the last 20 years: In the week after "spring forward," there was a 5 percent increase in heart attacks, with a 6 percent bump Monday and Wednesday and a 10 percent increase Tuesday.

In the week after "fall back," the number of heart attacks was about the same as in the previous and subsequent weeks, except for a 5 percent decrease Monday.

In my opinion, contrary to popular belief that DST is an energy saver verges on worldwide urban legend; Daylight Savings is NOT an energy saver.

If anything, it’s an energy waster.

Because the sun sets an hour later, it means we keep our energy-guzzling air-conditioners running an hour longer. Keeping the A/C on longer is certainly more energy-consuming that flipping on a few light switches.

Not only that, but the last two weeks of DST are depressing as hell. It’s dark for so long in the morning it puts a drag on the entire day while draining our own personal energy.

When I look at the clock and it says 7 a.m. and the sun is barely peeking over the horizon, it feels like something is terribly wrong.

Blame the charcoal industry for extending DST hours; it was their lobbying efforts that done this to us, because they wanted a little more daylight so they could sell more charcoal.

Who uses charcoal bar-b-ques anymore anyway? As for me, I find it a pain in the butt to make all those trips out back to cook what I can whip up just as well and far more easily in my kitchen.

Even with gas bar-b-ques, I rarely smell the tempting aroma of sizzling steaks wafting into my back yard, so I’m not sure how many people are still throwing shrimp or anything else on the barbie.

Sandy Sand is currently a guest columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News, and community correspondent and op-ed writer for ronkayela.com. More on this author.

The Journalist and the Buddha

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 12:50:00 -0500

Perhaps unfairly, I tend to fault the mainstream media in America for contributing to the many problems facing not only my nation, but nations far away -- in the Middle East, Africa, and Central and South America. When journalists "parrot" the sitting government and promote its agendas without question, they are not living up to their highest potential as public advocates, as watch dogs, purveyors of truth and noble public servants.

Still, there are some journalists that continue to reach for high journalistic standards, including the elusive objectivity and compassion. Doug McGill, a former New York Times and Bloomberg reporter who returned to his native Minnesota after a successful career at the top of mainstream journalism to practice "glocal" journalism, meaning local journalism that ties the local community to global affairs, is one of them. A proud citizen journalist, McGill has trained novices as well as experienced journalists to be "glocal" in their writing.

Last fall McGill wrote:

The stranger who has made the deepest impact on me as a journalist and as a person – from whom I’ve learned the most – is both among the most exotic people I've ever met, and the most dead.

He is Siddhartha Guatama, a prince-turned-monk who lived in northern India in the 6th century B.C. He is known to history as the Buddha, the formal name he took after experiencing a tranquility of the soul so deep he felt compelled to spend his life teaching it to others.

This particular stranger has struck me as so wise -- his life experiences and his teaching so profound and so relevant to our times -- that I’ve decided to spend a little more time as a journalist with him. I want to learn more, and to share more of what I am learning from this stranger.

Starting today, alternating with my regular Global Minnesota columns, I’ll begin publishing a series of reports of my encounters with the Buddha at The Journalist and the Buddha.

McGill lived up to his word and publishes frequently on the topic of Buddhism and journalism. He has been joined by others. He encourages journalists to meditate to gain transformative insight and clarity. Being fully in the present helps journalists give readers "accurate and useful reports on the present conditions of public life," says McGill.

Stepping out in public (he’s given lectures at prominent institutions on the benefits of meditating and publishes widely on how Buddhism has affected his writing and worldview) has gained McGill a reputation. Not everyone admires his work. Some have even taken to attacking him for his views, denigrating him as a "lackey," a "preacher" and accusing him of holding journalists to "unreasonable standards."

Such is the life of a trail blazer.

Whether or not you are a journalist, some of McGill's suggestions may apply to your own profession, or speak to your own search for meaning and purpose. McGill is a wise and entertaining writer and teacher and gives much to his profession and the communities in which he lives.

The Buddha, the Dharma and the Media February 20, 2008

Why Journalists Should Meditate October 02, 2007

The Monks of Burma September 26, 2007

For more articles, visit The Journalist and the Buddha.

What's so wasteful about funding discovery?

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:45:00 -0500

Image: 17th-century artwork of the atomistic universe proposed by the Ancient Greek philosopher Democritus (c.460-370 BC). The artwork was published in 1675. It shows three concentric regions: the Earth and the planets are at centre, surrounded by the heavens which contain the stars; the outer region is an "infinite chaos" that is composed of atoms. Democritus considered atoms to be indivisible units that combined to make up all matter. Modern atomic theory was developed by John Dalton from around 1800, more than 2000 years after Democritus. Cordelia Molloy/Science Photo Library

I wanted to be an astrophysicist when I was 7. I kept borrowing and re-borrowing a book on stellar evolution from the public library in my hometown of Brockport, N.Y. I still remember the black-and-white picture spanning the book's front and back covers: a luminescent spiral galaxy. Beautiful.

Of course, I didn't understand it all: I wondered how they got cameras out there to photograph the Milky Way. My friend Chris was even more confused: When I told him about "white holes," he laughed hysterically at what he thought was a dirty joke.

I was haunted by Carl Sagan's exploration of the cosmos, by Vangelis' mystical music. I remember reading the science fiction novels of Isaac Asimov and seeing, albeit only with my mind's eye, suns too far to see from Earth, "stars like dust."

One of my favorite places to go was the Strasenburgh Planetarium in nearby Rochester. I was amazed, breathless with anticipation, whenever the lights dimmed and the stars arose: the story of the big bang, of quasars and exploded suns and bending light.

All of recorded history was a blink of an eye in the lifetime of the universe, but that universe was unfolding before my eyes. There are no words for the sense of wonder and awe it gave me, except one: Wow.

So I am somewhat nonplussed by the recent back-and-forth between the presidential candidates concerning "earmarks," money that congressmen give to their states. Sen. John McCain for years has lambasted a $5 million-plus program designed to help estimate the size of the endangered grizzly bear population in northwest Montana by studying the DNA from their shed hair.

Supporters of McCain's rival, Barack Obama, have shot back that Cheney-in-waiting Sarah Palin asked for $3.2 million to study the "genetics of harbor seals to understand the declines in population" in Alaska. (For the record, she's against testing lipstick on pigs.) McCain's riposte was that Obama should lay off of Palin, since the Democrat supports "planetariums and other foolishness," referring to the fact that Obama had Congress give $3 million to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

Wow.

Matt Damon, who is not a scientist but once played one on TV, recently said that he wants to know what Palin thinks about dinosaurs. I'd like to know what Obama and McCain think about science. It seems the message both campaigns are sending is: "Science is stoopid," not worth paying for.

Forget about the fact that spherical geometry was used by the ancients to navigate the seas, with the heavens as their guide, and that a Navy aviator like McCain ought to have a healthy respect for that. Forget about the fact that much of the mathematics behind modern cryptography, the science of secrets, grew in part from the work of a French duellist who simply wanted to solve equations. Forget about the fact that the discoveries that lay behind microwave ovens and penicillin came about by accident.

Not all science needs to have a purpose. The nature of humans is that, sometimes, they simply want to know. Everything else is just a bonus.

Srinivasa Ramanujan and Albert Einstein, the two scientific geniuses of the 20th century, made their earliest discoveries while working as clerks, not as professors working on taxpayer-funded projects; but why risk, in the 21st century, that some diamond might remain forever unearthed for want of a government grant?

If we land a man on Mars 40 years from now, it won't be the result of some Navy pilot in 2048 having the right stuff. It will be because some 10-year-old kid in Chicago or the Czech Republic looked up at a circular dome one day in 2018 and saw an image of God touching the hand of Adam: the stars, like dust.

Jonathan David Farley is a professor in the department of mathematics at the California Institute of Technology.

This article originally appeared in the Sacramento Bee. It is republished with the author's permission.

Nebraska safe haven law reveals societal hypocrisy

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 10:00:00 -0500

Image: obo-bobolina

Last week news outlets around the country reported on ‘deadbeat’ parents who seemingly took advantage of a new safe haven law in Nebraska that allows parents to leave a child, regardless of age, at a licensed hospital without explaining why.

The media and so-called child protection reaction has been painful, clearly siding with Nebraska officials that want to change the law to limit care to abandoned newborns one and younger, in line with other states.

What is wrong with people?

It’s been reported that 16 children, half of them teens, have been dropped off at Nebraska hospitals by a parent since the law took effect in July. If a parent, such as the father of nine whose wife died from cancer last year, can't manage to take care of his children, the youngest age one, and has no place else to go, isn't the new law meeting its purpose to care for unwanted children and get them out of an unhealthy situation?

"This was never the intent of the bill," co-author Republican state Sen. Arnie Stuthman told USA Today, adding that the bill was intended to protect newborns but in order to be passed it was revised to include all children. Stuthman said the new law is “a mess” and needs to be fixed.

One suspects that these "unintended results" are adding to the strain on diminishing state resources but it also reveals a hidden problem: children -- from babies to teens -- are living in situations where their parents can't or are incapable of caring for them properly.

What kind of society so eagerly wants to put these children back behind the curtain and ignore the issue? Yes, some of the parents may be selfish or lazy or addicts. Or they might be mentally or physically ill, or plagued by mortgage foreclosures, staggering health bills, or job lay-offs.

The primary focus should be on helping the children whose parents don’t want them or can’t care for them, not on “fixing” the system to prevent parents from dumping their kids.

The safe haven law performed beyond expectations. It reveals a need for our society to provide more resources for children whose parents would abandon them for whatever reason.

Shame on the legislators, public health officials and the wider media for wanting to sweep under the rug this truth that emerged from Nebraska's new law.

Superconducting magnets and the LHC for armchair nerds

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:20:00 -0500

The Large Hadron Conductor (LHC) experiment requires propagating very high energy charged particles in circular patterns, and magnets with very high magnetic-field strength. The presence of a magnetic field is what makes the charged particle stream move in a circular path to begin with. A higher-strength magnetic field is required in cases whenever (1) the "circle" you want to steer these particles inside of is smaller, (2) the particles are heavier, or (3) the particles are faster. For the LHC particles, condition (3) is definitely the case, so the folks at CERN are almost certainly using superconducting-magnet technology. Of course, the newer the technology, the more difficult it can be to get it working at the outset.

For these types of magnets, the high-strength magnetic fields are generated by electrical currents that propagate in a loop, with the direction of the resulting magnetic field being perpendicular to the electric-current loop; this is an effect referred to as Ampere's Law. To get a stronger magnetic field, you can make the electric current travel multiple times around the same loop. At normal ambient temperatures, a problem arises in that, as electricity flows through the wires carrying it in the loop, that electric current starts to dissipate; to counteract this, you'd need to keep pumping more electric current into the loop in order to get the magnetic field strength that you'd need. For the magnetic fields required by the LHC, producing this amount of current would be very expensive, if it was even possible.

Fortunately, there's a way around this electric-current dissipation. It turns out that, at very low temperatures, certain materials can pass electric current through them without that current dissipating. This effect is referred to as superconductivity, and this is what enables the creation of these very high strength magnetic fields using relatively little electric current in the loop (and thus cutting operating costs way down). MRI machines use superconducting loops; that's part of what's made MRI so readily available in smaller hospitals all over the world.

The challenge with superconducting current loops is that these current loops must be maintained at these very low temperatures throughout operation of the magnet. To achieve this, dewars of highly-condensed (and thus very low temperature) helium gas are used. There are some serious safety issues involved when working with this low-temperature helium, not the least of which being the severe damage to the skin or other tissues if it comes in contact with them. That may be a large part of the reason why the LHC needs to devote up to two months to safely repair the problem.

One reason why otherwise grandiose experiments such as the LHC are worthwhile is because such cutting-edge technology is used for the very first time in these experiments. Indeed, a lot of the technologies that we take for granted today, including the more-stable superconducting magnets used in MRI, but also such things as faster and more-efficient data storage and transfer techniques, have emerged from experiments such as these.

Dr. Kristofer Kainz is a medical oncology physicist and assistant professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Alternative healers, spiritual gurus weigh in on VP nominee Palin and the presidential race

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:05:00 -0500

In “Obama and the Palin Effect,” Deepak Chopra, MD, inspirational speaker, best-selling author and a leader in forming a bridge between Western medicine and natural healing traditions, writes:

“Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche even when nobody intended to do that…. She [Palin] is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and turning negativity into a cause for pride. In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of “the other.” For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don’t want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind... I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually not welcome by the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here to understand Palin’s message. In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision.”

Debbie Ford, a transformational life coach and author of five books, including NYT bestsellers, developed the ‘Shadow Process’ to explore how our shadows -- the disowned parts of ourselves -- affect our relationships, health and ultimately, our success in life, explores the shadows of Palin in her “Shadow Blog:”

“As I've watched the Sarah Palin phenomenon unleash itself on our national airwaves, I've been thinking a lot about her, searching to find what parts of my light and what parts of my darkness she holds. The questions I always ask myself in that search are, "What are the qualities that I am seeing in this person?", "Where am I that?" and "How can I take responsibility for the parts of me that I am seeing in her?" With Sarah Palin, I find myself drawn to her -- her ability to command attention, her sheer determination to get to the top, and her sexy womanish facade that shows us we don't have to give up our sexiness to be powerful and strong in the world. On the other hand, I also find myself sickened by the thought that this woman might have the right to represent me and influence my, my family's, my community's and my country's choices. And most of all, I am appalled that that today, on September 11th, a day when we should all be in mourning and have our attention on those who died in the most horrific terrorist act in American history, our attention instead is turned to the governor of Alaska who until now has kept herself sequestered from the press and chooses to use this most opportune day for her own self-interest. I thought about what kind of person would do that -- smart or manipulative. Either way, I thought I'd give her the attention she is seeking.

… In this critical time, I invite us all to look not just at Sarah Palin but all our political figures, to find the light that we might have projected, to find our own darkness, and to use what we see not to beat them up but to find a bigger voice, a voice for true change, a voice for moving forward instead of backward, a voice that respects women, all women, and all their choices.”

Neale Donald Walsh, a “spiritual messenger” and author of the immensely popular “Conversations with God,” a book which led to a series of books and videos translated into 34 languages and a foundation, has written many articles about religion and politics. While many of his readers have implored him to get back on track and focus on spirituality, Walsh continues to explore the topic of God and politics on his BeliefNet blog, explaining:

“But let me ask you this...If God should have nothing to do with politics, would it be conversely true that politics should have nothing to do with God? If so, then why all this talk of how Sarah Palin's candidacy has awakened, aroused, and excited the Religious Right?”

Walsh said Palin’s statement that the United States sent troops to fight in the Iraq war on a "task that is from God" – is ‘scary.’

Inspiring "Last Lecture" Professor Dies

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 09:10:00 -0500

Carnegie-Mellon computer science professor Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” given last September to several hundred students and faculty members at the university, was posted to YouTube primarily for the students and teachers who could not attend.

It immediately went viral and has been viewed over 6 million times. At the time, Pausch’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer a month earlier had offered him about 2-5 more months to live. Whether it was because of his remarkable attitude, or his medical care (which he characterized as “spectacular”), or both, he outlived his diagnosis by several months when he died on Friday, July 25.

On March 13, 2008, Pausch provided a poignant testimony to Congress on behalf of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, saying that pancreatic cancer is the “4th leading killer amongst cancers,” and “it is one of the only cancers that you can point to and say—in the last 30 years we have made no progress.” He encouraged substantial government grants and funding for pancreatic cancer research saying “the smart people work on what there is money to work on. If the money’s there, I bet anything that by the time my kids are my age, we’ll have it licked.”

Pancreatic cancer has been linked to heredity.

Pausch was a devoted Star Trek fan, and has a cameo role in the upcoming Star Trek movie as a result of a personal invitation from the director, J.J. Abrams.

Pausch's book, “The Last Lecture,” was a runaway bestseller shortly after publication. Rob Kall, publisher of OpEdNews, reviewed it on April 21.

Pausch posted an online diary in which he kept well-wishers up to date with his progress. His last entry was on June 26th. A friend posted for him on July 24, “because we know that many folks are watching this space for updates.” That post revealed that the professor was in hospice. He is survived by his wife, Jai, his three children, his mother and sister, and millions of people around the world who were inspired by his continuing attitude of finding the joy in each day.

During his remarkable journey he spoke several times of crafting a “safety net” for his family and he received many “fan” letters from people whose hearts had been touched (including mine, which is below).

April 13, 2008

Dear Jai and Randy,

I was one of the lucky ones to see Randy's "Last Lecture" video just days after it was posted, and I have been following your remarkable journey since. I thank you for sharing so much of your adventure with the world.

My husband died in a plane crash when our daughter was five. We had no financial safety net. In fact, I lost the house and five businesses. Nevertheless, I discovered that the most important safety net is the human spirit, and my daughter and I danced through our rock-strewn path to find our way, turning stumbling blocks into stepping-stones. She is now 30, she put herself through med school, survived the trauma of last year at Virginia Tech, and will be a doctor in a year.

I woke up this morning with a pressing desire to share a couple of thoughts with you, learned from my own journey. I have read your website, I know from my personal experience that you have plenty on your plates besides reading this, I don't expect nor want you to spend precious time crafting a response. Still, I felt compelled to share these thoughts.

I have heard Randy say on a couple of interviews that he believes that your daughter may be too young to remember much of her dad. Granted, my five-year old was much older when her dad died, but I want to share with you that not all the memories are the result of remembering actual events. Much more of the memories are from the re-telling of the stories, which become the family mythology. I made a little book of photos of my daughter and her dad, and often story time was a rich recounting of fun times with her dad: the day they bundled up to play in the once-in-a-lifetime snowfall in Louisiana, the two of them on his motorbike, riding ponies, or singing at the organ together. She even knows every detail about her amazing birth—when I went into labor, and the trip to the hospital, and the magic of her delivery—because of the photos and the stories that I have told her through the years. She certainly wouldn't have remembered that, otherwise!

And we celebrate her dad's birthday every year - with a cake and a party when she was younger, and a lunch date when she got older. But always with the stories.

So your daughter's memories will not diminish, but grow, as time goes on, inspired by the photos and the stories of other family members. I believe that this is how the fabric of a rich family heritage is woven, whatever the length of the lifetimes of its members.

The one thing I would have liked to have, and which brings me to the reason I am writing, is a recording of my husband reading aloud one of my daughter's favorite books. I would have liked to sit with her on my lap at story time, turning the pages, as we both listened to her father speak the words. Even for grandkids, it would be lovely to have the voice of the grandfather they never knew, as part of their experience. And for the choice of a book, I would have picked something like "The Velveteen Rabbit." And if I could have chosen more, they would have included another favorite, "Goodnight, Moon," and all seven of C.S. Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia," a timeless read for any age.

I wouldn't have thought of this idea except that as my daughter got older, and I hired a babysitter when I had classes or meetings in the evenings, she wouldn't go to sleep until I came home to read her a story. So, as a problem-solving measure, I recorded her favorite stories. Then the babysitter played the recording and turned the pages of the book, as my daughter drifted off to sleep, hearing my voice. (As a busy single mom, in order to save time, I made the recordings as I was actually reading the stories to her. The unexpected bonus was that her comments and our interactions are also on the tape.)

On a similar note, when her grandmother died, I made my daughter a simple quilt from mom's clothing. It was healing for me to make it and healing for my daughter to have it. (They don't call quilts "comforters" for nothing!)

You two are shining examples of how we are not our circumstances and that we always have the choice of the attitude that we hold in any situation, perfectly illuminating my motto, which is a quote from Martha Washington:

"I've learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances."

Thanks for the legacy that you have given to your children and to the world—the importance of focusing on the fun in every moment. I believe your remarkable examples of how you both choose to face the "hand you have been dealt," is serving to raise the consciousness of society, away from the perception of victimhood, and toward self-empowerment and joy. And the richness of that legacy cannot but have an extraordinary and beneficial effect on your children. Thank you.

Meryl Ann Butler

Meryl Ann Butler is an artist, author, educator, and mom. A native of NYC, her response to 9-11 was to pen an invitation to healing through creativity, entitled, 90-Minute Quilts: 15+ Projects You Can Stitch in an Afternoon. This article was originally published on OpEdNews where Butler is a frequent contributor.

Are birds coming home to roost for top torture advocate?

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:10:00 -0500

William Haynes II, who from 2001 until February of this year served as the top legal expert for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), was called before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month to testify on the various interrogation techniques he advocated to coerce information from suspected terrorists.

But like other Bush Administration cabinet members, Haynes, now an executive at Chevron, has fallen victim to selective amnesia and was unable to recall memos approving torture techniques that came out of his office or discussions he had on the topic of torture. But where memory fails, paper trails exist and Haynes retains credit for creating rules for the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Naval Base and drafting the military tribunal rules for trials of terror suspects.

Members of Birders United and other protectors of wildlife will never forget that Haynes, as DoD general counsel, argued that the bombing of an island in the Northern Marianas, home to several species of rare birds protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, was necessary for military training exercises and that the practice of killing endangered birds actually benefited bird watchers. "Bird watchers get more enjoyment spotting a rare bird than they do spotting a common one," asserted Haynes's DoD legal team.

According to BirdLife International's Surfbirds News, "The Center for Biological Diversity, an Arizona-based environmental organization, had sued the Defense Department because the Navy conducts bombing exercises on Farallon de Medinilla, a 200-acre island in the middle of the Pacific that is part of the Northern Mariana Islands. Many birds are killed during those exercises, including some protected by the act, such as the Micronesian megapode, which is on the endangered species list; great frigatebirds; and three types of boobys -- masked, red-footed and brown.

The judge ordered the Defense Department to stop the bombing until it came into compliance with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act."

Haynes didn't win a lot of admiration from enlisted men and women, either. He opposed giving members of the U.S. Armed Forces access to the Supreme Court if they were facing court martial and in 2005 wrote letters to Congress opposing the Equal Justice for Our Military Act.

In November, 2006, the German government received a complaint seeking the prosecution of Haynes for alleged war crimes. The complaint states that during his tenure, Haynes was legally responsible for the U.S. torture programs. The charges have been withdrawn (perhaps only temporarily), due to inability to access evidence.

Bush had twice nominated Haynes, a fellow Texan, for a lifetime seat on the Fourth District Court of Appeals. The nominations were thwarted first by the Abu Ghraib prison "scandal" followed by the growing constitutional crisis over torture.

Haynes left the DoD in February after it come to light that military trials at Guantanamo Bay were rigged and in April he started anew as chief corporate counsel for Chevron where it is expected he will while away his days leveraging government contacts to win lucrative contracts as he did as vice president and general counsel for General Dynamics Corp., or pulling in government grants as he did as a lobbyist for Edenspace Systems Corp.

But it isn't over yet. Not if the country decides to hold top officials accountable for law breaking and some very bad policies that flaunt power and insult intelligence.

S. Koreans are right to protest U.S. beef imports

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:45:00 -0500

S. Koreans are right to protest U.S. beef imports not only because of the very valid fears coming from the mad cow syndrome, but because of the nightmarish accumulation of pesticides, antibiotics, steroids, bovine growth hormones manufacturer by that corporate monster Monsanto, and other nasty and entirely avoidable chemicals, which in the mainstream American cattle industry are numerous, too many to even begin to mention here.

These biochemical problems are not going to go away, with or without any new trade agreement between the USA and S. Korea. It defies my comprehension to see that Americans are not out in the streets protesting these chemical horrors and such failed import policies, as so commendably are the S. Koreans, especially those protesting in Seoul. Americans have grown very fat and acquiescent, I regret to say.

Therefore, I strongly encourage S. Koreans not to "drop the ball" and give up in their concerns and demands to not import American beef, but also please not to assume that beef from other nations is going to be any better, particularly if it is from China, with its dreadful recent record in terms of shoddy consumer protection, deadly chemicals, and substandard food production, in which chemicals are substituted solely because they can pass inspection and might save the producer a few fractions of a yuan.

After World War II, U.S. farmers and food production rapidly devolved away from natural growing methods to entirely rely on chemicals to improve production yields. This was initially viewed as a positive move, but the long-range effects on the land and its fertility began to show up with accelerating alarm, including topsoil depletion, groundwater pollution, and the collapse of many family farms for reasons of lost fertility and failure to compete economically.

I am reminded strongly of how monosodium glutamate (MSG) entered the U.S. food supply. Japanese soldiers retreating from South Pacific islands left behind tins of rations, and American soldiers consumed them, not knowing that they had been heavily laced with MSG, a chemical found in particular seaweeds used to enhance the flavor in soup, which was isolated at Tokyo Imperial University by Dr. Kikunae Ikeda in 1908, then manufactured heavily over the next 30 years in Japan.

These American soldiers raved about how wonderful and tasty was this "military food," perhaps tasting better than anything they got through the U.S. Quartermaster, the official in charge of all American rations of military food, among other responsibilities. So after the war, the quartermaster in 1948 convened a meeting at the Stevens Hotel in Chicago with the top CEOs, chairmen, and presidents of the largest American food corporations, including Borden's Milk, Campbell's Soups, General Mills, General Foods, and Hershey's Chocolates.

The quartermaster extolled the virtues of tasty foods samples prepared with MSG, served to the corporate representatives, none of whom had ever tried or used MSG in their products. They adopted it whole hog and enthusiastically, with almost no research or testing on its neurotoxic and neurodegenerative effects, all of which became extremely clear over the next few decades, yet still remain in most U.S. manufactured food products, and still very present in most Japanese and Chinese food product exports.

The world's largest manufacturer of this neurotoxic and neurodegenerative food additive is Ajinomoto ('essence of taste') of Japan, which is also the world's largest manufacturer of another proven neurotoxin, the artificial sweetener, Aspartame. In order to deflect criticism and to further promote their products, this corporation and other related henchmen corporations using their additives, like Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola, have formed very powerful food lobbyist groups.

With clock-like predictability, these lobbyists fly into high gear when any consumer protection groups introduce legislation at the state level anywhere in the country. The most powerful is the Glutamate Association of the United States, and another is called "Calorie Control Council," a cute catchy name for some of the more malevolent corporate spin doctors in the United States, in my opinion and in my experience.

I know all of this from personal experience here in New Mexico. If things begin to look tough for them from an administrative or regulatory point of view, like when a health board or, as we have here in New Mexico, the Environmental Improvement Board, might begin to question or make rules prohibiting MSG or another proven carcinogen, Aspartame, they threaten the board with lawsuits, thus causing the mousy board members to roll over, play dead, and cancel the hearing permanently.

When the action in New Mexico then shifted to a legislative context and bills-to-ban were introduced, thanks to the most progressive member of the New Mexico Legislature, Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino, these corporations' lobbyists pulled out all of the stops, leaning on their legislative pals and cronies, making campaign contributions and giving them and their friends lavish parties, and at the same time, dumping on the opponents of their products by impugning what they called "Internet Junk Science."

(I am sure things just like this happen in S. Korea and in every single other nation. Kind of pathetic and nauseating, isn't it?)

They also did this in Hawaii in the 2008 legislative session for just a simple resolution to ask the FDA commissioner to rescind the approval for Aspartame, sponsored by the most consumer protection minded member of the Hawaii Legislature, Senator Suzanne Chun-Oakland and signed by 44 percent of the Hawaii senators. Fortunately, both New Mexico Senator Ortiz y Pino and Hawaii Senator Chun-Oakland will resume their efforts in 2009, rather than abandon them due to pressure from mere corporate lobbyists.

On the national and international scale, many Americans are beginning to comprehend that President Barack Obama will appoint the next commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to replace the corporate-serving lackey presently there (Dr. Andrew Von Eschenbach, an oncologist and cancer survivor himself, who should know better, or at least pretend to know better, who most certainly will be gone in less than four months). This FDA appointment will become one of the most important of Obama's appointments, excepting considerations of who will be appointed as the next secretary of state and the next attorney general, to hopefully begin to repair the damage done over the last eight years.

Concerning poisons found in American beef, in the mid 1960s, about the time Rachel Carson's influential book, “Silent Spring,” began to have a massive impact on the popular consciousness, a tiny minority of Americans began to recognize harmful effects from industrialized agriculture policy, and a very few of this tiny minority decided to return to a healthier growing of food.

Time will tell in all of this as the future of consumer protection efforts won't be revealed right away. It is a real shame that both many S. Koreans and what few Americans seems to be concerned have to spend so much energy, time, and money, in order to make what should be incontrovertibly clear points of logic and law about health, longevity, and foods which are not obviously harmful, instead of fighting with mega corporate interests that control the government officials and regulatory agencies which are supposed to be acting on our behalf.

Stephen Fox is managing editor of Santa Fe Sun News. He can be reached at stephen@santafefineart.com

Biopiracy: The practice of pirating molecules from nature

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 07:36:00 -0500

Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, Natural News.com

Did you know that drug companies are taking a significant interest in Chinese herbs? Not any interest in promoting their natural healing properties, of course. Instead, drug companies are researching Chinese herbs in order to discover and pirate molecules from nature that they can modify, patent and manufacture as prescription drugs.

The practice is called "biopiracy," and nobody does it better than Big Pharma. Drug companies have sent pharma soldiers all over the world, targeting medicines from China, the Amazon, the oceans and even the Australian outback to find more molecules they can steal from nature and call their own.

Drug companies do this very quietly, of course. They don't want anyone to know that nature gave them the original ideas for their drugs, and they certainly don't want people figuring out that they can just go straight to nature to find far superior medicine that's safer, more effective and less expensive than patented pharmacological medicines.

What's really interesting about this practice of biopiracy is that Western nations condemn China for copying DVDs, music albums and other intellectual property, yet those same nations routinely steal molecules from Chinese medicines. The message is very clear: We can steal your stuff, but you can't steal ours! (Or, when we steal it's legal, but when you steal, it's a crime.)

The U.S. pharmaceutical industry is engaged in massive global biopiracy, and it pays no royalties to nature or the nations where pharmaceutical candidate molecules are discovered. Instead, pharma-funded scientists just steal ideas from medicine women, shamans, herbalists and anyone gullible enough to share their secrets with drug company scientists. This is all openly tolerated by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which refuses to protect the natural intellectual property on anything created by nature. If man stole it from nature and filed the patent application, then man is considered the "inventor" and is given ownership and control over the molecule, lifeform or seed in question. Monsanto has actually patented pigs!

Essentially, Big Pharma is an industry that relies on stealing from nature, exploiting jilted intellectual property laws, then profiteering by selling synthetic chemical versions of such substances to consumers at monopoly prices. It's an incredible scam, and yet no one seems interested in prosecuting Big Pharma for such crimes.

People in China who copy Hollywood movies and music albums are considered criminals, but people in America who routinely steal from nature for their own personal gain are called "drug researchers." I think it's time we ended the double standard and got honest about drug company theft from nature. Specifically, I am wholly against the patenting of anything found in nature: seeds, genes, lifeforms and phytochemicals. All such items belong to nature and therefore should be shared by us all. No patents should be allowed on such items... ever!

The U.S. intellectual property system that exists today is designed to do one thing: Protect the profits of corporations. It promotes the continued exploitation of nature and the people by greedy corporations, and it forever traps the people of this world in an irreversible cycle of debt and poverty. Because in the end, the people will own nothing and the corporations will "own" everything: the medicine, the land, the patents, the businesses, the genes, the homes and all the seeds, crops and fertilizers. Right now, U.S. corporations have been granted "ownership" over 20% of the human genome, meaning that the DNA in your body is 1/5th corporate property. In time, that number will rise to approach 100%, and the people on this planet will wake up to find themselves in a world where they don't even own their own bodies.