And so it goes

Trump Basically Just Admitted He’s Ditching His Promise to Renegotiate Prescription Drug Prices

I'm guessing it went something more like this:
45 screamed at them and told them to bring down prices.
They pulled out a paper copy of Patents for Dummies and handed it to one of his aides.
Then they laughed, gave him the finger, and walked out of the room.

Scotland Gets It

Hahahahahahahaha!

Just Thinking

I think a really huge dose of beta-lactam antibiotics might completely incapacitate those saggy sick geezers.
Some doctor should merely recommend the standard protocol.

The World's Most Dangerous Infections

Are in Steve Bannon's Head.

This is what a suicidal person looks like.
 #StopPresidentBannon

Dear NLM Librarians

Please make a mirror of PubMed somewhere safe.

To My "Relations"

IF you voted for 45 thinking you would actually get Pence instead-
Then YOU don't care who you hurt to get what you want.

THAT is the definition of a Sociopath.

Keep Up the Good Fight

Believe your Eyes

Bannon is much sicker than the Predator in Chief.  His glucose metabolism is clearly shot from a lifetime of alcohol abuse.   His nerves are so dead his face is practically falling off his skull,  You can see the damage to his nose from across a very large room.  And that bright red cheekbone is a septic upper tooth infection.  There is no portion of his nervous system that isn't toxic.

And he's a nazi collaborator.
And admires Satan.
And wants to burn the whole thing down.

In case you missed it-  He wrote most of  the Executive Orders Donny signed this week.

Update Two Days Later:
Steve Bannon is now on the National Security Council Principals Committee, equal status to the Secretaries of State and Defense.

The Double Edged Sword

If you are infected and don't get much sleep, you will become manic and hypoglycemic and PRODUCE MORE BETA-AMYLOID IN YOUR BRAIN.

Hyperactive Cognitive Impairment.
It's the first stage of Alzheimer's.

All of his facial sinuses are inflamed now.   He needs a good cry.

Wecome to the Matrix

Donald Trump wants to poison you without your knowledge.   Let the food and drug companies operate without regulations or transparency.

“Starting immediately and until further notice” (the FDA’s) main research division “will not release any public-facing documents,” according to an internal memo.

And the Republicans want to make sure you can't afford health care.

At the same time.

We are all officially livestock now.

Thank You World

Seeing all your beautiful faces and hats in Australia and Europe this morning gave me strength.
And the actual desire to leave the house and join my neighbors in the cold and rain.

Women's March in Tucson draws 15,000

So proud of all of you.

Now, I'm too old to be doing too much of that, but I do plan to spend the next four years discrediting the notion of white male superiority.  With medical studies.

Peace.  Love.  Obsession.

One For The Ages

A naturally preserved Inca mummy (c.1500 A.D.) discovered on a remote cliff in Northern Peru. Lindsey Fitzharris

Thank You John Lewis

Resistance is Crucial

"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhuman."
--Martin Luther King Jr.

Number One

This is now my Very Favorite Article.

Vikings, Worms, and Emphysema

The woeful state of Viking bathrooms could be a factor behind smokers’ coughs in Scandinavia. Sometimes in human evolution, populations adapt in ways that aren’t always beneficial in the long run. For example, the sickle-cell trait evolved in humans because it provides some protection against malaria, but people who inherit the trait from both parents develop sickle-cell disease, a serious blood disorder. In this new case, molecular biologists have connected intestinal parasites in the Viking Age to modern lung disease.
Last year, Danish scientists studying the remains of a Viking privy found that the ancient Norse and their domestic animals were infested with a variety of intestinal parasites. These parasites release enzymes called proteases that cause disease. The immune system also creates proteases that can cause inflammation and damage, but the body has natural defenses against those, including a molecule called alpha-1-antitrypsin (A1AT). Because they were more or less constantly infected, Vikings evolved to produce “deviant” forms of A1AT that were specifically useful against worm-related proteases instead of the body’s own. In the absence of normal A1AT, the immune system’s own proteases are free to damage tissue, including in the lungs and liver. At the time, the benefits of this genetic mutation outweighed the risks. Not so today.
Today, this deficiency of normal A1AT is the only known genetic risk factor for lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and emphysema. People also live longer and smoke tobacco, which allows the damage caused by the deficiency to accumulate. “It is only in the last century that modern medicine has allowed human populations to be treated for disease-causing worms,” says Richard J. Pleass of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. “Consequently, these deviant forms of A1AT that once protected people from parasites are now at liberty to cause emphysema and COPD.”

Oh yes, this is exactly what I have been looking for.

Dreaming

Can't we let this guy run things for a while?
Manu Prakesh

He seems quite clever and sane. 

The More You Know

What's Medicaid Called in YOUR State?

Medicaid itself operate under more than 100 different names (some states have several separate or overlapping Medicaid programs), but that when you include CHIP and "other" state-funded healthcare programs the total number swells to over 200.

Going back to my main point: Of the 106 different Medicaid programs, only 15 of them (from just 12 states) have the word "Medicaid" in their actual publicly-branded name.

Verbal Vomit Remix

All talk and No action is the Republican plan for Health Care.

Sorry

I spent the first week of this year in a septic crisis and was suicidal for two days.

But the little bits of news I have gleaned lately makes me more and more glad I am not spending any time on the internet or TV.

The latter is much worse than the former.  It's unbearable insanity.  

I'm going back to my paint and plaster.  Peace.

My Generation

Carrie Fisher's Ashes Placed in Giant Prozac Pill Urn

And Eli Lilly Smiles.

Fun with Medical History

The medical history of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) has been pieced together from his letters and from anecdotes, but his dental health is one aspect which has been somewhat overlooked. It is known that, from an early age, he suffered from toothache and tooth abscesses, problems that may even have had other medical repercussions.

(A different) analysis is consistent with Mozart's last illness and death being due to a streptococcal infection leading to an acute nephritic syndrome caused by poststreptococcal glomerulonephritis. 

Correlation Games

Study reveals what happens when depression, anxiety coincide with minor injury

Their work, published in the International Journal of Nursing Studies, revealed that someone who arrives in the emergency department needing help for a minor injury and who also expresses symptoms of depression and anxiety at that time will likely experience poorer work performance and increased health-related time in bed 12 months out.

Risk of long-term disability in older adults who visit the ED

Older adults who go to the emergency department (ED) for an illness or injury are at increased risk for disability and decline in physical abilities up to six months later, according to a study by Yale researchers.

So, you think maybe Hospitals cause long term disability?


Maybe by addressing acute problems and never even acknowledging existing chronic illnesses?

Maybe?

Article Roundup

Another organ has been hiding in your belly all along

Higher Dementia Risk Linked to Living Near Heavy Traffic
Air pollutants may get into the blood stream and brain.   Yep.

Sex hormone-sensitive gene complex linked to premenstrual mood disorder
"This is a big moment for women's health, because it establishes that women with PMDD have an intrinsic difference in their molecular apparatus for response to sex hormones - not just emotional behaviors they should be able to voluntarily control," said Goldman.


Promising new drug stops spread of melanoma by 90 percent

Unpublished research calls into question efficacy of common morning sickness drug
Special thanks to this researcher.   Good work.

Lack of joy from music linked to brain disconnection
Yeah, I have had this since the Keflex.   Before that I listened to music in headphones constantly.   Then my ears shrieked so bad I couldn't.   That shit surely trashed my ears.
Which were obviously not so great in the first place...

Stuttering linked to reduced blood flow in area of brain associated with language
I am beginning to think this is caused by auditory nerve infiltration by microbes. That goes to Broca's area.  That would explain why I have never been able to speak under stress.
 

Maniacs Running the Asylum

An Adorable Swedish Tradition Has Its Roots in Human Experimentation

I am not exactly sure if Adorable is the right adjective.
Anyhow, this particular human experiment involved feeding mental patients caramel four times a day and determining if it gave them cavities.

Sugar and Cavities. Yep.
Together they lower immune response and create a bacterial tunnel to the Brain. An excellent way to cause insanity.

HeadDesk.  HeadDesk.  HeadDesk.  

Symptoms of Hypoglycemia

JUST IN: Jupiter woman with dagger threatens brother who ate dumplings

If you know you are going to eat soon, your pancreas starts producing insulin in anticipation.
If you do not eat at the expected time, you will become hypoglycemic and panicky.
And maybe homicidal.
Yeah, been there, done that.

Plausible Deniability is the Refuge of Sociopaths

House Republicans voted 119-74 Monday night in favor of a proposal that would gut Congress' outside ethics watchdog and remove its independence.

 If you aren't terrified, you're not paying attention.

Update:  well it seems quite a few people are paying attention.
Inside the House GOP ethics debacle
Good Work, America.

CHA CHING!!

Peripherally administered orexin improves survival of mice with endotoxin shock.

Sepsis is a systemic inflammatory response to infection, accounting for the most common cause of death in intensive care units. Here, we report that peripheral administration of the hypothalamic neuropeptide orexin improves the survival of mice with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) induced endotoxin shock, a well-studied septic shock model. The effect is accompanied by a suppression of excessive cytokine production and an increase of catecholamines and corticosterone. We found that peripherally administered orexin penetrates the blood-brain barrier under endotoxin shock, and that central administration of orexin also suppresses the cytokine production and improves the survival, indicating orexin's direct action in the central nervous system (CNS). Orexin helps restore body temperature and potentiates cardiovascular function in LPS-injected mice. Pleiotropic modulation of inflammatory response by orexin through the CNS may constitute a novel therapeutic approach for septic shock.

Required Reading

Inconvenient truths of mental illness: More people take medication, but progress has stalled The mental health of the nation may have even declined in the past 20 years 

MAY HAVE?????
All the statistics show drastic increases in depression and anxiety and suicide since 1980.

You people don't seem to know and certainly aren't addressing the fact that mental illness is sickness behavior. 
There is no evidence any of your drugs improve the immune response and very many of them that make it worse.

Fuck You Sideways.

This and That

Inactivity in obese mice linked to a decreased motivation to move
The investigators looked at six different components in the dopamine signaling pathway and found that the obese, inactive mice had deficits in the D2 dopamine receptor.
 
The Japanese Art of Inemuri- Sleeping in Public

Frequent sauna bathing may protect men against dementia, Finnish study suggests

Sunlight offers surprise benefit: It energizes infection fighting T cells

Using 'fire to fight fire' to combat disease could make it worse
Ground-breaking research has found that introducing 'friendlier' less-potent strains into a population of disease-causing microbes can lead to increased disease severity.

Treating cancer with drugs for diabetes and hypertension
The antihypertensive drug syrosingopine potentiates the anti-cancer efficacy of metformin. Apparently, this drug combination drives cancer cells to programmed "suicide."


Novel diet therapy helps children with crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis reach remission

In the small, prospective study, patients were put on a special diet called the specific carbohydrate diet (SCD) for 12 weeks as the sole intervention to treat their Crohn's or UC. SCD is a nutritionally balanced diet that removes grains, dairy, processed foods and sugars, except for honey. The diet promotes only natural, nutrient-rich foods, which includes vegetables, fruits, meats and nuts.
At the end of the 12 weeks, eight out of the 10 patients who finished the study showed significant improvement and achieved remission from the dietary treatment alone.

Thinking with our hands can help find new ways of solving problems, research reveals

Let's Start Off Here

The Buried Story of Male Hysteria

When men actually began to be diagnosed as “hysterics,” doctors searched for a cause. They found a chemical that may be on the rise again today.

Viruses may have evolved to hit men hard but go easy on women


Yeah, you guyz assumptions of superiority just has to go.   Buckle up, boyz.