We have all heard of lobbyists, both from “good” and “bad” organizations, companies and trade associations roaming through the halls of Congress and pretty much everywhere, trying to further their myriad economic, social and political agendas.

Those who still watch TV network news are very familiar with all kinds of erectile dysfunction drugs, arthritis, asthma, mental disorder, prostate, stomach, bladder, toe nail and other kinds of remedies offered by large pharmaceutical companies.

A lot of these drugs are found later to be downright deadly and pulled from the shelves, but until that time, they are perfectly able to bring billions to their manufacturers. After all, in most cases a huge part of the research leading to the development of many drugs is funded directly by government research grants and not really by the manufacturers, who have the gall of offering pills, costing them pennies for an often-exorbitant price. The Big Pharma excuses usually refer to “development costs”, indeed, those same costs, which you the taxpayer have already borne by paying for the research grants.

But lets not forget those expensive drug commercials during the network news, or multi-page ads in newspapers and magazines – those supremely annoying page-after-page ads, which contain warnings and disclaimers in fine print. Don’t be fooled for a minute that this information is meant as a “public service”. What it really amounts to is: “we warned you ahead of time, so if the drug damages your body, or kills you, you have been forewarned and shouldn’t sue us”.

This is not to say that all drugs are dangerous, or bad for you. There are some that actually help people, or cure them of all kinds of diseases. The lowly, inexpensive aspirin comes to mind, along with some antibiotics and some of the statin drugs (which should be used with care, in our opinion).

There is also no doubt that most drugs – at least those sold and pushed in the U.S. are way overpriced, others are way overused and others – at least according to Big Pharma-are actually underused.

That’s why you see so many of those drug ads and commercials and that is why that the big and even small pharmaceutical companies employ legions of sales representatives – not necessarily in the halls of Congress, but in physician’s offices, medical schools, publishing houses and everywhere their presence is deemed to be necessary for the financial well being of their companies.

How many of you have noticed the usually attractive, well-dressed women and men, towing roller cases through buildings housing “doctors’” offices? They seem to be ever-present. How about the reps bringing in catered lunches to the physician’s offices on a regular basis? Leaving tons of samples of their products, so the physicians can use them themselves, give them free of charge to their family members, or friends and to their patients?

Lets not be gullible and think that the samples and the lunches are given out of the goodness of the Big Pharma’s “hearts”. How about the exotic trips, golf vacations, dinners and gifts of all sorts?

Its is a nice, comfortable arrangement for many “doctors”, who in return for all of these favors often prescribe the drugs pushed by the reps, instead of treating their patients with the best (and often cheaper) of the available medicines.

At the same time, several university medical centers such as Yale have barred drug company sales reps from bringing free lunches to staff physicians. Yale might have been motivated to do so by the ‘C’ grade it received from the American Medical Student Association, a national group that rates how well medical schools monitor and control drug industry money.

We wonder if this trend will flourish and eventually bring about a ban throughout the medical industry. Frankly, we doubt it, as the whole shtick is much too comfy and profitable for all of the beneficiaries of such practices. This is corruption on a grand scale.

In the meantime, expect for the medical and drug expenses to continue climbing out of sight and to continue paying through the nose for health care, whether the Democrats manage to push the health care reform through, or not.

Technorati Tags: ads, Big Pharma, commercials, dinners, Drugs, free lunches, gifts, golf vacations, sales reps, Unethical Game

There is no doubt that Thanksgiving is a very nice, family holiday and that it holds a special place in people’s calendars and hearts.

There’s nothing wrong with of at all… except that the pervading myth about the whole feast and its de rigueur menu, which supposedly originated with the Pilgrims in the first half of the 17^th century isn’t strictly true at all.

In addition, the Pilgrims were really a very unsavory bunch of Puritans, who had the leave England,  where they have overstayed their welcome by a long, long shot.

So, fortunately, the so-called Pilgrims had very little to do with the whole thing. As it happened, it was a creation of 19^th century Americans, particularly New Englanders, who wanted to have another national holiday. At the time, we had only two of those: Washington’s Birthday and the Fourth of July. There was also Christmas of course, which wasn’t really counted as a National Holiday.

Abraham Lincoln's presidential order establishing the Thanksgiving Holiday

From the beginning Thanksgiving was a holiday very directly related to food. Something along the lines of a harvest feast, which by that time was celebrated in practically every country of the world in some form.

What really and truly started the whole thing was Sarah Josepha Hale, probably the first female American novelist of note, who has written books, such as Northwood: A Tale of New England and Mary had a Little Lamb. Ms. Hale has written a whole chapter in which she described Thanksgiving in minute detail, with the turkey and the dressing and the gravy and all the other things and ingredients that we now think of as an integral part of the holiday.

Her novel turned out to be extremely popular and Sarah Josepha Hale became the editor a popular woman’s magazine, creating in the process a lot of the mid-19^th century fashion trends, one of which was, as you might have guessed, the Thanksgiving dinner.

Thanksgiving officially became a National Holiday in 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln after some important Union victories during the Civil War issued a presidential order, making it official.

We hope that these tidbits of historical information do not disappoint those who believe in the traditional Pilgrim/Indian-related lore. It still remains a very nice holiday. Probably even nicer, without the nasty Pilgrim/Puritan connotations.

If only the artificially-fattened turkeys tasted better…and if the NFL football games were not a part of it all…

We get the feeling that if Sarah Josepha Hale was faced with both of the above, she would have given up on Thanksgiving altogether.

In any case, a Very Happy Thanksgiving to all! Just don’t overeat, please.

Technorati Tags: football, Indians, nfl, Origins, Pilgrims, puritans, Real, Sarah Josepha Hale, Thanksgiving, Turkey

The livestock industry as a result of its reliance on corn and soy-based feed accounts for over half the synthetic fertilizer used in the United States, contributing more than any other sector to marine dead zones. It consumes about 70 percent of the water in the American West – water so heavily subsidized that if irrigation supports were removed, ground beef would cost $35 a pound.

In addition, livestock accounts for at least 21 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions globally – more than all forms of transportation combined. Domestic animals – most of them healthy – consume (not by their choice, mind you) about 70 percent of all the antibiotics produced. Undigested antibiotics leach from manure into freshwater systems, impairing the sex organs of fish. The antibiotic use in animals has also contributed to the growing antibiotic resistance in bacteria, which infect humans.

It takes a gallon of gasoline to produce a pound of conventional beef. If all the grain fed to animals fed people instead, you could feed China and India.

Meat that’s produced according to “alternative” standards (accounting for about one percent of meat in the United States) might be a better choice but not nearly so much better as some would have us believe. “Free-range chickens” would theoretically have access to the outdoors. But many of the so-called “free-range” chickens never see the light of day because they cannot make it through the crowded shed to the opening, which leads usually to a patch of concrete, anyway.

“Grass-fed” cows produce four times the methane – a greenhouse gas 21 times as powerful as carbon dioxide – and many grass-fed cows are raised on heavily fertilized and irrigated grass. Pastured pigs are still typically mutilated, fed commercial feed and prevented from rooting – their most basic instinct besides sex.

Deforestation is the single largest contributor to climate change – far larger that all the transportation-related pollution, power generation and livestock flatulence. As it stands, huge tracts of forests are cut down for a variety of reasons – for wood, farming, industry, human habitation and yes: the factory farming of livestock.

Issues of animal welfare are also related to all forms of meat production. Domestic animals suffer immensely, feel pain and may even realize the fate that awaits them. In an egg factory, male chicks (economically worthless) are summarily run through a grinder. Pigs are castrated without anesthesia, crated, tail-docked and nose-ringed. Milk cows are repeatedly impregnated through artificial insemination, confined to milking stalls and milked to yield 15 times the amount of milk they would produce under normal circumstances. When calves are removed from their mothers at birth, the mothers mourn their loss with heart-rending moans.

Then comes the slaughterhouse, an operation that’s left with millions of pounds of carcasses – called deadstock – that are incinerated or dumped in landfills.

If someone told you that a particular corporation was trashing the air, water and soil, causing more global warming than the transportation industry, consuming massive amounts of fossil fuels; unleashing the cruelest sort of suffering on innocent and defenseless beings; failing to recycle its waste, and clogging our arteries in the process, how would you react?

We are looking forward to hearing from all of you out there. This isn’t an attempt to turn everybody into vegetarians, or vegans, but for a variety of reasons we believe that meat consumption and large-scale livestock farming should be reduced by a noticeable margin.

There are horror stories and horrific videos being leaked out of factory farms everywhere. This PETA video is just one example, featuring a factory pig farm in North Carolina. It is patently obvious the the “people” involved in this sadistic acts are the real animals. To put it politely – scum of the earth. And to think that our jails are full of people sentenced for writing a bad check, or for possessing a small amount of marijuana…

Technorati Tags: climate change, cruelty, Environment, factory, farming, global warming, Health, Livestock, meat, pollution, production

Republican Representative Michelle Bachmann from Minnesota has called upon Americans to once again converge on Washington in a last minute protest to stop the House from passing the health care reform bill. Bachmann asked tea party protesters and all concerned citizens to not just protest outside the Capitol, but actually go to congressional offices and visit their representatives.

I had the misfortune of riding the Metro train into Washington Thursday, along with a sizable group of these protesters, where I was able to look at a goodly number of them up close and to listen to some of the conversations.

That experience seemed to perfectly mesh with a story I was at that moment reading in the Washington Post, which said that about 75 percent of the country’s 17 to 24-year-olds are ineligible for military service, largely because they are poorly educated, overweight and have physical ailments that make them unfit for the armed forces.

Glancing from the paper up to the people surrounding me on the train, it was quite obvious that the story was basically correct. Listening to the conversations only confirmed that feeling.

Will this be the caliber of citizenry, which might be influencing how you or I will live in the next few years, or the way, in which our children and grandchildren will be forced to live?

President Obama’s Wednesday trip to Wisconsin, to emphasize the need for an improved education seemed more necessary than ever before…

Technorati Tags: Bachmann, Caongress, conservatives, Education, Health Care reform, military, obesity, protest, tea baggers

This is partly based on a recent AP story

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While we discuss health-care reform, healthy food and environmental conditions, as it turns out, there’s still another issue to be addressed – extremely heavy patients. Although morbidly obese people can probably be found in almost every country and on almost every continent, this could most likely be filed under the ‘Only in America” category.

A panicked Kansas ambulance crew had a critically ill patient, but the man weighed more than 1,000 pounds and could not fit inside the vehicle. And the stretcher wasn’t sturdy enough to hold him.

Finally somebody had an idea. They could use a forklift to load the man – bed and all – onto a flatbed truck. There was no other choice.

As the nation battles the obesity crisis, ambulance crews are trying to improve how they transport extremely heavy patients, who become significantly more difficult to move as they surpass 350 pounds. And caring for such patients is expensive, requiring costly equipment and extra workers, so some ambulance companies have started charging higher fees for especially overweight people.

The move to modify ambulances is just the latest effort to accommodate plus-sized patients. Some hospitals already offer specially designed beds, wheelchairs, walkers and even commodes.

Ambulance companies say it’s time for insurance providers, Medicaid and Medicare, or patients themselves to begin paying the added costs, which are cutting into their razor-thin profit margins.

In the past, ambulance companies often absorbed the extra expense of serving the obese. Now they are adding charges similar to those already imposed on intensive-care patients, people requiring multiple medications and patients on ventilators.

Transporting extremely heavy people costs about 2.5 times as much as normal-weight patients. It takes more time to move them and requires three to four times more crewmembers, who often must use expensive specialty equipment.

Shawnee County Commission last summer raised ambulance fees from $629 to $1,172 for critical-care patients and people who are 500 pounds or heavier.

In Colorado Springs, Colo., and the Nebraska cities of Omaha and Lincoln, the fees are $1,421 for an extremely obese patient, compared with $758 for a typical patient.

Before those ambulances had heavy-duty equipment, crews just had to make do, often calling in burly firefighters to help lift patients.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has long said that nearly a third of Americans are obese. About 5 percent of the population is morbidly obese, meaning they are more than 100 pounds heavier than their ideal weight.

Some critics say the higher fees are a form of discrimination.

Higher payments for heavy patients are commonplace in Oregon and Washington because the insurance industry there acknowledges the additional costs.

Ambulance companies say the insurance industry is their best hope for closing the financial gap.

As with any medical service, ambulance companies bill private insurers or government health care programs. Medicare and Medicaid do not pay extra for transporting the extremely obese, although that’s something the ambulance industry wants to change. The uninsured are charged directly, but many of them cannot pay.

Proponents of the extra fees say obese patients are grateful for equipment that eliminates the need for flatbed trucks and forklifts.

Like many ambulance companies, a unit in Topeka recently spent about $10,000 to retrofit an ambulance with equipment that accommodates patients weighing up to 1,600 pounds. Ambulance services with helicopters also are creating larger patient compartments and adding stronger gurneys.

Sales of specialized lift systems nationwide are expected to reach $193 million by 2012, up from $75 million in 2004, according to EMS Insider, an industry newsletter. The sale of specialized stretchers is expected to nearly double to $50 million in 2012.

Technorati Tags: ambulances, forklifts, heavy, obesity, patients