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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 11 months

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By: Riittakerttu Kaltiala

Published: Oct 30, 2023

Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, 58, is a Finnish-born and trained adolescent psychiatrist, the chief psychiatrist in the department of adolescent psychiatry at Finland’s Tampere University Hospital. She treats patients, teaches medical students, and conducts research in her field—publishing more than 230 scientific articles.

In 2011, Dr. Kaltiala was assigned a new responsibility. She was to oversee the establishment of a gender identity service for minors, making her among the first physicians in the world to head a clinic devoted to the treatment of gender-distressed young people. Since then, she has personally participated in the assessments of more than 500 such adolescents.

Earlier this year, The Free Press ran a whistleblower account by Jamie Reed, a former case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. She recounted her growing alarm at the effects of treatments that sought to transition minors to the opposite sex, and her escalating conviction that patients were being harmed by their treatment.

Although a recent New York Times investigation largely corroborated Reed’s account, many activists and members of the media continue to dismiss Reed’s claims because she is not a physician.

Dr. Kaltiala is. And her concerns are likely to get more attention in the U.S. now that a young woman who medically transitioned as a teenager has just sued the doctors who supervised her treatment, along with the American Academy of Pediatrics. According to the suit, the AAP, in advocating for youth transition, has made “outright fraudulent statements” about evidence for “the radical new treatment model, and the known dangers and potential side effects of the medical interventions it advocates.”

Here, Dr. Kaltiala tells her own story, describing her increasing worries about the treatment she approved for vulnerable patients, and her decision to speak out.

Early in my medical studies, I knew I wanted to be a psychiatrist. I decided to specialize in treating adolescents because I was fascinated by the process of young people actively exploring who they are and seeking their role in the world. My patients’ adult lives are still ahead of them, so it can make a huge difference to someone’s future to help a young person who is on a destructive track to find a more favorable course. And there are great rewards in doing individual therapeutic work.

Over the past dozen or so years there has been a dramatic development in my field. A new protocol was announced that called for the social and medical gender transition of children and teenagers who experienced gender dysphoria—that is, a discordance between one’s biological sex and an internal feeling of being a different gender.

This condition has been described for decades, and the 1950s is seen as the beginning of the modern era of transgender medicine. During the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first, small numbers of mostly adult men with lifelong gender distress have been treated with estrogen and surgery to help them live as women. Then in recent years came new research on whether medical transition—primarily hormonal—could be done successfully on minors.

One motivation of the medical professionals overseeing these treatments was to prevent young people from facing the difficulties adult men had experienced in trying to convincingly appear as women. The most prominent advocates of youth transition were a group of Dutch clinicians. They published a breakthrough paper in 2011 establishing that if young people with gender dysphoria were able to avoid their natural puberty by blocking it with pharmaceuticals, followed by receiving opposite-sex hormones, they could start living their transgender lives earlier and more credibly.

It became known as the “Dutch protocol.” The patient population the Dutch doctors described was a small number of young people—almost all male—who, from their earliest years, insisted they were girls. The carefully selected patients, apart from their gender distress, were mentally healthy and high-functioning. The Dutch clinicians reported that following early intervention, these young people thrived as members of the opposite sex. The protocol was quickly adopted internationally as the gold standard treatment in this new field of pediatric gender medicine.

Concurrently, there arose an activist movement that declared gender transition was not just a medical procedure, but a human right. This movement became increasingly high profile, and the activists’ agenda dominated the media coverage of this field. Advocates for transition also understood the power of the emerging technology of social media. In response to all this, in Finland the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health wanted to create a national pediatric gender program. The task was given to the two hospitals that already housed gender identity services for adults. In 2011, my department was tasked with opening this new service, and I as the chief psychiatrist became the head of it.

Even so, I had some serious questions about all this. We were being told to intervene in healthy, functioning bodies simply on the basis of a young person’s shifting feelings about gender. Adolescence is a complex period in which young people are consolidating their personalities, exploring sexual feelings, and becoming independent of their parents. Identity achievement is the outcome of successful adolescent development, not its starting point.

At our hospital, we had a big round of discussions with bioethicists. I expressed my concern that gender transition would interrupt and disrupt this crucial psychological and physical developmental stage. Finally, we obtained a statement from a national board on health ethics cautiously suggesting we undertake this new intervention.

We are a country of 5.5 million with a nationalized healthcare system, and because we required a second opinion to change identity documents and proceed to gender surgery, I have personally met and evaluated the majority of young patients at both clinics considering transition: to date, more than 500 young people. Approval for transition was not automatic. In early years, our psychiatric department agreed to transition for about half of those referred. In recent years, this has dropped to about twenty percent.

As the service got underway starting in 2011, there were many surprises. Not only did the patients come, they came in droves. Around the Western world the numbers of gender-dysphoric children were skyrocketing.

But the ones who came were nothing like what was described by the Dutch. We expected a small number of boys who had persistently declared they were girls. Instead, 90 percent of our patients were girls, mainly 15 to 17 years old, and instead of being high-functioning, the vast majority presented with severe psychiatric conditions.

Some came from families with multiple psychosocial problems. Most of them had challenging early childhoods marked by developmental difficulties, such as extreme temper tantrums and social isolation. Many had academic troubles. It was common for them to have been bullied—but generally not regarding their gender presentation. In adolescence they were lonely and withdrawn. Some were no longer in school, instead spending all their time alone in their room. They had depression and anxiety, some had eating disorders, many engaged in self-harm, a few had experienced psychotic episodes. Many—many—were on the autism spectrum.

Remarkably, few had expressed any gender dysphoria until their sudden announcement of it in adolescence. Now they were coming to us because their parents, usually just mothers, had been told by someone in an LGBT organization that gender identity was their child’s real problem, or the child had seen something online about the benefits of transition.

Even during the first few years of the clinic, gender medicine was becoming rapidly politicized. Few were raising questions about what the activists—who included medical professionals—were saying. And they were saying remarkable things. They asserted that not only would the feelings of gender distress immediately disappear if young people start to medically transition, but also that all their mental health problems would be alleviated by these interventions. Of course, there is no mechanism by which high doses of hormones resolve autism or any other underlying mental health condition.

Because what the Dutch had described differed so dramatically from what I was seeing in our clinic, I thought maybe there was something unusual about our patient population. So I started talking about our observations with a network of professionals in Europe. I found out that everybody was dealing with a similar caseload of girls with multiple psychiatric problems. Colleagues from different countries were confused by this, too. Many said it was a relief to hear their experience was not unique.

But no one was saying anything publicly. There was a feeling of pressure to provide what was supposed to be a wonderful new treatment. I felt in myself, and saw in others, a crisis of confidence. People stopped trusting their own observations about what was happening. We were having doubts about our education, clinical experience, and ability to read and produce scientific evidence.

Soon after our hospital began offering hormonal interventions for these patients, we began to see that the miracle we had been promised was not happening. What we were seeing was just the opposite.

The young people we were treating were not thriving. Instead, their lives were deteriorating. We thought, what is this? Because there wasn’t a hint in studies that this could happen. Sometimes the young people insisted their lives had improved and they were happier. But as a medical doctor, I could see that they were doing worse. They were withdrawing from all social activities. They were not making friends. They were not going to school. We continued to network with colleagues in different countries who said they were seeing the same things.

I became so concerned that I embarked on a study with my Finnish colleagues to describe our patients. We methodically went through the records of those who had been treated at the clinic its first two years, and we characterized how troubled they were—one of them was mute—and how much they differed from the Dutch patients. For example, more than a quarter of our patients were on the autism spectrum. Our study was published in 2015, and I believe it was the first journal publication from a gender clinician raising serious questions about this new treatment.

I knew others were making the same observations at their clinics, and I hoped my paper would spark discussion about their concerns—that’s how medicine corrects itself. But our field, instead of acknowledging the problems we described, became more committed to expanding these treatments.

In the U.S., your first pediatric gender clinic opened in Boston in 2007. Fifteen years later there were more than 100 such clinics. As the U.S. protocols developed, fewer limitations were put on transition. A Reuters investigation found that some U.S. clinics approved hormone treatments at a minor’s first visit. The U.S. pioneered a new treatment standard, called “gender-affirming care,” which urged clinicians simply to accept a child’s assertion of a trans identity, and to stop being “gatekeepers” who raised concerns about transition.

Around 2015, in addition to the very psychiatrically ill patients, a new set of patients started arriving at our clinic. We began to see groups of teenage girls, also usually from 15 to 17 years of age from the same small towns, or even the same schools, telling the same life stories and the same anecdotes about their childhoods, including their sudden realization that they were transgender—despite no prior history of dysphoria. We realized they were networking and exchanging information about how to talk to us. And so, we got our first experience of social contagion–linked gender dysphoria. This, too, was happening in pediatric gender clinics around the world, and again health providers were failing to speak up.

I understood this silence. Anyone, including physicians, researchers, academics, and writers, who raised concerns about the growing power of gender activists, and about the effects of medically transitioning young people, were subjected to organized campaigns of vilification and threats to their careers.

In 2016, because of several years of growing concern about the harms of transition on vulnerable young patients, Finland’s two pediatric gender services changed their protocols. Now, if young people had other, more urgent problems than gender dysphoria that needed to be addressed, we promptly referred those patients for more appropriate treatment, such as psychiatric counseling, rather than continuing their gender identity assessment.

There was a lot of pressure against this approach from activists, politicians, and the media. The Finnish press published stories of young people dissatisfied with our decision, portraying them as victims of gender clinics that were forcing them to put their lives on hold. A Finnish medical journal ran a piece that took the perspective of dissatisfied activists titled, “Why do trans adolescents not get their blockers?”

But I was trained that medical treatment has to be based on medical evidence, and that medicine has to constantly correct itself. When you are a physician who sees something is not working, it is your duty to organize, research, inform your colleagues, inform a big audience, and stop doing that treatment.

Finland’s national healthcare system gives us the ability to investigate current medical practices and set new guidelines. In 2015 I personally asked a national body, called the Council for Choices in Health Care (COHERE), to create national guidelines for treatment of gender dysphoria in minors. In 2018 I renewed this request with colleagues, and it was accepted. COHERE commissioned a systematic evidence review to assess the reliability of the current medical literature on youth transition.

Around this same time, eight years into the opening of the pediatric gender clinic, some previous patients started coming back to tell us they now regretted their transition. Some—called “detransitioners”—wished to return to their birth sex. These were another kind of patient who wasn’t supposed to exist. The authors of the Dutch protocol asserted that rates of regret were miniscule.

But the foundation on which the Dutch protocol was based is crumbling. Researchers have shown that their data had some serious problems, and that in their follow-up, they failed to include many of the very people who may have regretted transition or changed their minds. One of the patients had died due to complications from genital transition surgery.

There is an oft-repeated statistic in the world of pediatric gender medicine that only one percent or less of young people who transition subsequently detransition. The studies asserting this, too, rest on biased questions, inadequate samples, and short timelines. I believe regret is far more widespread. For example, one new study shows that nearly 30 percent of patients in the sample ceased filling their hormone prescription within four years.

Usually, it takes several years for the full impact of transition to settle in. This is when young people who have entered adulthood confront what it means to possibly be sterile, to have damaged sexual function, to have great difficulty in finding romantic partners.

It is devastating to speak to patients who say they were naive and misguided about what transition would mean for them, and who now feel it was a terrible mistake. Mainly these patients tell me they were so convinced they needed to transition that they concealed information or lied in the assessment process.

I continued to research the issue and in 2018, with colleagues, I published another paper, one that investigated the origin of the surging numbers of gender-dysphoric young people. But we didn’t find answers as to why this was happening, or what to do about it. We noted in our study a point that is generally ignored by gender activists. That is, for the overwhelming majority of gender dysphoric children—around 80 percent—their dysphoria resolves itself if they are left to go through natural puberty. Often these children come to realize they are gay.

In June of 2020 a major event happened in my field. Finland’s national medical body, COHERE, released its findings and recommendations regarding youth gender transition. It concluded that the studies touting the success of the “gender-affirming” model were biased and unreliable—systematically so in some cases.

The authors wrote: “In light of available evidence, gender reassignment of minors is an experimental practice.” The report stated that young patients seeking gender transition should be instructed about “the reality of a lifelong commitment to medical therapy, the permanence of the effects, and the possible physical and mental adverse effects of the treatments.” The report warned that young people, whose brains were still maturing, lacked the ability to properly “assess the consequences” of making decisions they would have to live with for the “rest of their lives.”

COHERE also recognized the dangers of giving hormone treatments to young people with serious mental illness. The authors concluded that for all these reasons, gender transition should be postponed “until adulthood.”

It had taken quite a while, but I felt vindicated.

Fortunately, Finland is not alone. After similar reviews, the UK and Sweden have come to similar conclusions. And many other countries with national healthcare systems are re-evaluating their “gender-affirming” stance.

I felt an increasing obligation to patients, to medicine, and to the truth, to speak outside of Finland against the widespread transitioning of gender-distressed minors. I have been particularly concerned about American medical societies, who as a group continue to assert that children know their “authentic” selves, and a child who declares a transgender identity should be affirmed and started on treatment. (In recent years, the “trans” identity has evolved to include more young people who say they are “nonbinary”—that is, they feel they don’t belong to either sex—and other gender variations.)

Medical organizations are supposed to transcend politics in favor of upholding standards that protect patients. However, in the U.S. these groups—including the American Academy of Pediatrics—have been actively hostile to the message my colleagues and I are urging.

I attempted to address the rising international concerns about pediatric gender transition at this year’s annual conference of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. But the two proposed panels were rejected by the academy. This is highly disturbing. Science does not progress through silencing. Doctors who refuse to consider evidence presented by critics are putting patient safety at risk.

I am also disturbed by how gender clinicians routinely warn American parents that there is an enormously elevated risk of suicide if they stand in the way of their child’s transition. Any young person’s death is a tragedy, but careful research shows that suicide is very rare. It is dishonest and extremely unethical to pressure parents into approving gender medicalization by exaggerating the risk of suicide.

This year the Endocrine Society of the U.S. reiterated its endorsement of hormonal gender transition for young people. The president of the society wrote in a letter to The Wall Street Journal that such care was “lifesaving” and “reduces the risk of suicide.” I was a co-author of a letter in response, signed by 20 clinicians from nine countries, refuting his assertion. We wrote that, “Every systematic review of evidence to date, including one published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, has found the evidence for mental health benefits of hormonal interventions for minors to be of low or very low certainty.”

Medicine, unfortunately, is not immune to dangerous groupthink that results in patient harm. What is happening to dysphoric children reminds me of the recovered memory craze of the 1980s and ’90s. During that period, many troubled women came to believe false memories, often suggested to them by their therapists, of nonexistent sexual abuse by their fathers or other family members. This abuse, the therapists said, explained everything that was wrong with the lives of their patients. Families were torn apart, and some people were prosecuted based on made-up assertions. It ended when therapists, journalists, and lawyers investigated and exposed what was happening.

We need to learn from such scandals. Because, like recovered memory, gender transition has gotten out of hand. When medical professionals start saying they have one answer that applies everywhere, or that they have a cure for all of life’s pains, that should be a warning to us all that something has gone very wrong.

Medicine has become infected by ideology.

#Riittakerttu Kaltiala #gender ideology #queer theory #genderwang #medical transition #medical scandal #gender affirming care #gender affirmation #gender affirming healthcare #medical malpractice #affirm or suicide #gender transition #pediatric gender transition #medical experimentation #religion is a mental illness

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foundationhq · 8 months

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EMPLOYEE ID 6456-8217-8; 𝐶𝑂𝑊𝐵𝑂𝑌 𝐺𝑅𝐸𝐸𝑇𝐼𝑁𝐺.

𝐍𝐚𝐦𝐞 Seth Hiroshi Masters 𝐀𝐠𝐞 38 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫/𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐬 cis man, he/him 𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦 Will Sharpe 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐬 retired

PROFILE.

Unassuming and reserved, [𝐶𝑂𝑊𝐵𝑂𝑌 𝐺𝑅𝐸𝐸𝑇𝐼𝑁𝐺]’s record of service can, at best, be described as consistent. However, the origins of this operative’s connection to the Foundation are strikingly non-standard. As a child they survived not only direct exposure to an apocalyptic Apollyon-Class SCP that manifested at their hometown [DATA EXPUNGED], but also the contingency plan enacted to avoid a K-Class Scenario. Despite administration of Class B Amnestics to target [𝐶𝑂𝑊𝐵𝑂𝑌 𝐺𝑅𝐸𝐸𝑇𝐼𝑁𝐺]’s memories regarding the real reason that half the population of [DATA EXPUNGED] disappeared overnight, medical reports indicate the operative has persistent dreams involving the incident. So it was quite serendipitous that [𝐶𝑂𝑊𝐵𝑂𝑌 𝐺𝑅𝐸𝐸𝑇𝐼𝑁𝐺] ended up working for the Foundation in adulthood. Whether this result can be chalked up to coincidence or this operative’s connection to researcher [𝑇𝑅𝐸𝐸 𝐻𝑈𝐺𝐺𝐸𝑅] is yet to be seen. In any case, the Ethics Committee is certain that their participation in MTF Chi-00 will lead to a future breakthrough on synthetic amnestics, and will be supervising their growth within the team. — Internal Memo from the Ethics Committee.

LAST ASSIGNMENT.

JR. RESEARCHER; Site-169, Anomalous Entity Engagement Division, studying behavioral interventions in improving anomaly cooperation. Former site evaluator, worked with Rho-7, Nu-3, Delta-4, and Lambda-12.

INTERRELATIONS OF NOTE.

𝑂𝐿𝐷 𝑆𝑃𝑂𝑅𝑇. In contrast to you, they seem able to remain calm under any sort of pressure. It’s admirable and comforting. But only kind of, because it’s hard not to compare yourself to them. Insecurities about whether or not you should be here are starting to spill over and taint the work you’re doing. Thankfully, it seems that 𝑂𝐿𝐷 𝑆𝑃𝑂𝑅𝑇 has noticed and has decided to watch over you. Or are they merely just watching?

𝑇𝑅𝐸𝐸 𝐻𝑈𝐺𝐺𝐸𝑅. You’d follow them to hell and back, but… you’re starting to think this latest venture might have been a mistake — for both of you. You’re hoping you’re wrong and it’s just stress over the new position. Plus, you can tell how excited 𝑇𝑅𝐸𝐸 𝐻𝑈𝐺𝐺𝐸𝑅 is by all this. But like with everything else, doubts have started to creep in and you’ve have always wondered if they really understand what the purpose of the Foundation is. Still, you’d never leave their side if you have any say about it.

𝐸𝐿𝐸𝑉𝐴𝑇𝑂𝑅 𝑀𝑈𝑆𝐼𝐶. You find yourself in their office on the regular lately. You’re not even sure why, half the time; maybe you just need somebody to talk to. Somebody who doesn’t know you like the back of their hand…. Y’know, maybe it’s time that you moved out of your comfort zone and made new friends. 𝐸𝐿𝐸𝑉𝐴𝑇𝑂𝑅 𝑀𝑈𝑆𝐼𝐶 seems like a good choice in that regard.

#new rp #skeleton rp #oc rp #literate rp #dark rp #fhq.cg #fhq.all #fhq.retired

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evolutionsvoid · 2 years

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Honestly, never thought we would have made it this far. Figured we were all doomed, that our deaths would have come weeks ago. Somehow, though, the days ticked by without any diseased buzzards dropping on our heads or a cancerous mass devouring the whole base. The world is in shambles, that is still very much true. What communications we got over the miserable days have been lonely cries in the dark and desperate pleas for help. Both were equally depressing, as there was just nothing to be done. There are countless people out there seeking refuge, as their homes have been trampled by the titans, but where could they go? The great abominations go where they please, and it is only a matter of time before some super-heated worm decides to burrow through your new home. For those calling for aid, who will come for them? No military force even really exists anymore, as everything we have has been burned and destroyed in our attempts to slay even one of these titans. What medical supplies and food still remains is hoarded by those who have them, seeing no point in sharing when there is no guarantee of getting more. We once had the power to do something about this, but those days are long gone. After all, it was our might and genius that caused this whole mess. All we ever did was kill one giant leviathan and unleash its mutagenic blood upon the world. The plague of A.N.A is all our fault, and it seemed we would never get the chance to redeem ourselves. All we could do was sit in our crumbling base and wait for the end. Fate is truly an odd thing, no one knows how the die will roll. We all thought our time was up, that hope was a thing of the past. The people who stayed here only did so because they had nowhere else to go, the researchers kept working because that was the only thing left to do besides die. Our useless band of folk were more like squatters then heroes, preferring some place warm and lit before a giant spike ball crushed us in its migration. Some time ago, there was the foolish belief that A.N.A. had a secret for us to discover. Some kind of weakness we could exploit and finally put her children to rest. Our research gave us nothing, and in some cases it just made more monstrosities. The few scientists who stuck around toyed with our last samples to keep themselves distracted, and to satiate their own curiosities before death claimed them. No one expected any breakthroughs or miracles. What would we do with one even if we got it? Even if we discovered a weapon that could be used against the titans, who would wield it? Every country had pretty much sealed their borders and now pray for the titans to walk the other way. There is no squadron of jet fighters to blast the monsters to smithereens with our new miracle weapon. No platoon of brave soldiers to carry the super bomb that will evaporate our nightmares for good. All our weapons our gone, all our warriors have fled to home. Calls to action have grown silent, while we now just get messages of desperation and loss. We offered what comforting words we could, but little else. Our own supplies were dwindling, and it was only a matter of time before one of the titans finally walked our way. We had nothing. That became even more apparent when one of our labs exploded on accident. One of the researchers broke down during their futile studies and pretty much trashed the lab. Their frenzy set something off and the place went up. We extinguished the flames and boarded up the holes the best we could, and pretty much left it at that. No one really even blamed the guy, as we all had one of those days where our minds just gave up. The samples of A.N.A. we had in there as well as the poor lab animals were lost in the incident, but we didn't think much of it. The days of playing hero were long gone, it was best to just seal it away and face reality. The disaster zone was ignored for quite some time, until someone started hearing noises coming from the sealed off area. With everyone's nerves frayed, we chalked it up to paranoia, especially since we got word that a giant obscene beetle was stomping in our direction. Reports from all around were saying Minceskro was headed our way, bringing their swarm of horrid bugs along. Once we heard that, panic set in. Everyone was just running around, either pretending we could survive this arrival or foolishly believing we could escape it in time. Neither option would really work. Our buildings were in shambles, it would never be able to keep out the ravenous swarms. Our vehicles were few and the remaining gas was meager. Some people could flee, but to where? Even if they outran the living hive, they would just be joining the sea of lost refugees, forever searching for safety. There were arguments, fights, breakdowns, all the horrid emotions that come from such a revelation. People were at each others throats, while others just sealed themselves into various corners and cried. It was getting to the point where it was looking like we wouldn't even live long enough to see the wretched bug when the lab exploded again.

The whole building shook like there was the greatest earthquake of all time happening. The sound of crumbling brick and screeching metal filled the air. For a moment, we all thought that another titan had beaten Minceskro to their prize. The current bet was Melalo making another crash landing atop a community of unfortunate souls. But when the dust settled and we all emerged from our hiding places, we found something else standing amongst the rubble. When we first gazed upon it, we found no hope or comfort. It wasn't one of the titans we knew, but that only meant a new monstrosity had been born. It looked like that laboratory freakout must have caused various A.N.A. samples to infect one of the test animals. With the mutagen in their body, they would have easily survived the disaster and had been growing ever since we boarded the place up. This destruction was just the result of a massive growth spurt, the violent emergence into their true form. Fate was kind to us, as this creature was easily the smallest of all the titans. If it had been as large as the others, our whole base would have been flattened. Despite our miraculous survival, things were not looking good. Sooner or later the thing would wake up from its slumber and unveil the newest way for A.N.A. to ravage the planet. The new beast looked like one of the toads that was kept in the lab, so the bet was that we would all drown in poison or something. All we had to do was wait. Some folk took a vehicle and peeled out that very night, but the rest stayed and simply stared at the great beast. It was probably because we all accepted our fate and decided to stop running and hiding. Let us die together in the place that we once called home. But we waited and waited, and no death came for us. This newborn didn't awaken, it hardly even moved. Its eyes did not open, and it almost looked like they couldn't even do that if it wanted. It breathed, it snored, but it did little else. Further investigation showed that its limbs weren't even capable of movement, as their feet was just a sprawling web of flesh that coated the earth. If this beast wouldn't move, then perhaps its lethality would come from deadly gas or clouds of A.N.A. filling the air. None of that happened either. Days went by, and the creature still slumbered. We all began to think that this newborn was simply a dud, a failed creation of A.N.A. Funny how we considered the fact that it didn't horribly kill us a "failure," but our minds weren't in the right place. Everyone was just bewildered by this development, finally seeing one of these titans up close and in the flesh. We were so wrapped up in it all that we didn't even notice that the time table for Mincerskro's arrival came and went without an appearance. It was only long after the fact when someone realized the horrid beetle never showed up. We all scrambled to our dusty stations and tried to get a read on where it was now. From what few reports we could get, it seemed the massive bug had suddenly changed its mind and veered its path far away from us. This was a brief moment of relief for us, as that meant we wouldn't be eaten alive by mutated insects. This meant that we had more time to poke and prod this new creation until another titan showed up to finish the job. We spent quite some time musing over this great toad, wondering what it could do and why it had been born. What researchers remained did their best to study it, with a slightly renewed hope of unlocking the secrets of A.N.A. Perhaps this sleeping amphibian could give us some answers, or even clues on how to deal with the titans. With dwindling supplies and time, we wondered if we would live long enough to solve this mystery. It turns out, our starved broken selves had already been given an answer, but we were too absorbed in the new beast's presence to notice it. The realization came when someone made a comment on the toad's slumbering state versus the other rampaging titans. Talk of how the other beasts would rip this little thing to shreds, and how it probably wouldn't even wake up then. When someone mentioned that the titans don't invade each other's territories, it finally hit us. Minceskro didn't just change its direction at random, it avoided us because this new being had been born. The abominations don't fight each other, they don't even get close. Something keeps them apart, for what reason, we don't know. It could be that they are territorial, or they don't see a point in fighting. Plenty of earth to ravage, no need to bicker over who gets to stomp what city. The toad's presence might be giving off that same cue, some kind of signal to keep the others away. There was no real way for us to test it, but we clung to that hope for as long as we could. As time rolled by and our studies continued, we started getting the inkling that this was true. The other children were not coming close to this region, always forging a path that steered around rather than through. Was it really because of this sleeping toad, or was it pure luck? Didn't matter, we were alive. Eventually, we started to spread word of this miracle, that we now had a safe haven from the titans. With the slumbering toad keeping the whole area free of destruction, there was now somewhere for people to find shelter. At first, no one really believed us. Some called us traitors for harboring this thing, and others called for its death. In time, though, enough desperate people heard of this slim hope and started to make their way here. We opened our doors and offered what little we had left to those who came, happy that we could at least give some comfort to others. In the beginning, things were tight and tough, as supplies ran low and more mouths arrived. It started to seem like a bad idea to bring all these people here, until more started to arrive with their own offerings. As word spread further, and our survival continued, more folk started to believe this was truly a safe haven. They brought everything they could and shared it with the others. Our base started to grow into a village, than a town, as more refugees came in and brought their own gifts with them. Days went to weeks then to months, all without a titan coming to spoil the fun. It seemed our froggy friend was actually serving as our guardian. We soon found out that they could do more then just that. During initial studies of the immobile toad, we found that its many warts wept with a golden fluid. We assumed it to be poison and stayed far away. The researchers found it to be filled with A.N.A. though it was in a form they never seen before. It was not the same as the mutagen, but it was A.N.A. no doubt. We didn't think too much of it, just avoided making contact with it. With refugees showing up and shelters needed, we busied ourselves with that instead of worrying about this golden ichor. The discovery of its properties only came when one of the refugees made an insane decision. They had come with a group who had fled from Tcaridyi, the great worm having drilled its way through their tent city and bathed itself in the nearby lake. The poor soul had been inflicted by the beast's irritating hairs, the crimson shards stabbed into half of his body. His whole right arm was swollen to disgusting levels, and the fever he held was dangerously high. Amputation was on the table, but his burning body gave the impression that his days were quite short, regardless of what we did. He spent most of his time in the medical area of the camp, with everyone pretty much waiting for him to pass. One night, though, his fever and burning flesh drove him to madness, and he fled from his cot. Desperate and dying, he wandered to the sleeping toad and started yelling for its help. No one really knows what he was thinking, perhaps the delirium making him believe that the savior that gave him shelter could cure his sickness. Whatever madness struck him, it caused him to drive an arm into one of the warts and spray himself with the golden fluid. Man drenched himself head to toe with the stuff, much to the horror of everyone around. We busted out the hazmat suits and dragged him away to quarantine, terrified of what he just unleashed. It would be just our luck that one crazed person would ruin it all for everyone. However, the toad never woke and the coating of A.N.A. led to something far greater. Everyone expected him to die, to melt into some puddle of goo. But when one of the helping hands went in to check on them, they came stumbling back out in utter disbelief. We figured it was a scene of wretched gore that caused this reaction, as they just kept saying "Ana, Ana" as they pointed at the quarantine wing. When someone else dared peek in on our crazed patient, they too were just as shocked at what they saw. The man was getting better, the swelling having died down drastically and his skin returning to a healthy hue. Temperature checks revealed that his fever was fading, and that his vitals were reaching normal levels. The burning hairs of Tcaridyi were plaguing him no more, and the golden A.N.A. fluid brought no other damage with it. We wanted to believe that it was the ichor that cured him, but we didn't want to say it. There was no real way to prove it just yet, and we didn't want to give the sick refugees a false hope. Even more, we didn't know what side effects would occur. Perhaps he would survive this fever just to die to something even more horrible hidden with the fluid. We had to do more tests, but we weren't sure how to proceed. We couldn't just do human testing, that was immoral. However, that decision was torn from us once word leaked out of this miraculous liquid.

People with dying friends and families nearly trampled each other to get hold of some of this juice, and didn't think twice before smearing it on wounds and infected sites. We had to seal off access to our beloved toad and keep constant guard to ward off desperate families. We didn't like the idea of people bathing in this unknown ichor, and also we didn't want our one guardian to be torn apart by frantic believers. In short time, though, we couldn't deny its effects. People exposed to this fluid were getting better, the death sentences granted to them by the other diseased titans were now being lifted. When we saw what was happening, we couldn't keep it back any longer. This was another great hope, another chance for survival. Even if something horrible happened in the long run, we couldn't afford to deny this hope for others. A new procedure was set in place, with trained folks safely harvesting the fluid from the toad and giving it out to the patients in the medical ward. There was healing, there was hope. With word of this lifesaving ichor, even more people poured in, and even communication lines opened up with other places begging for samples. Our sleeping toad friend started to gain quite the following, and eventually the people gave her a name. "Queen Ana" was quite the choice, but it was fitting with her (assuming she is female) appearance and what was in the fluid that saved so many lives. The demand was so high, there was worry we would drain our beloved guardian dry. She certainly needed to replenish the nutrients we took from her, but we didn't know how. The other titans didn't really need to eat, but she was obviously different from them. Her mouth didn't look like it could open, and we weren't even sure what to feed her. She wound up solving that problem herself. One day, the skin on her chest began to slough off, revealing a nest of unsettling holes. We feared she was sick or dying, until things started to emerge from these cavities. They looked like tadpoles, but their fins fluttered like wings in the breeze. They crawled out of her in droves and took to the skies, dancing away like fairies.

We were baffled by all this, but some stuck around and revealed their purpose to us all. These offspring glided their way to those who were sickened by the other titans and landed upon their bodies. Tendrils latched onto skin and they started to feed. No one even thought of stopping them, never considering a malicious intent. The tadpoles just drained some blood and then flew on to the next patient. Days later, those touched by these creatures were regaining their health, the disease seemingly sucked out of their bodies. As for the young, once they were filled up with blood, they fluttered back home to Queen Ana and crawled back inside. Soon after, they would emerge empty and take to the skies again. It seemed that they were feeding the Queen, pulling the sickness in with blood and giving it to her instead. The many that were carried away on the winds would eventually return, drop off their cache and head back out. The healing touch was now spreading, and soon other places found relief in their presence. Even now, Queen Ana still sleeps, despite the city growing around here. With the titans kept at bay, we now can actually build something that will stand. So many people and resources continue to pour into this sprawling community, turning this rundown tent town into the last bastion for humanity. The study of Queen Ana and her fairy-like tadpoles have continued with greater purpose. There is the hope that this cure can be used to further ward off the titans and their pestilence, and that maybe its regenerative properties can be used to heal the broken land. Some think that we could replicate Ana, and create more guardians and thus more havens. Of course, we are all hesitant on that last part, lest we repeat past mistakes. But the thing that matters most is that there is hope, there is safety, and there is home. With Queen Ana with us, maybe, just maybe, we might make it after all.... ------------------------------------

“Queen Ana”

A while back I did the kaiju versions of the Children of Ana, and originally I was done there. But then @iamthekaijuking pointed out that Queen Ana herself has a form of a golden toad, and thought that would work as a kaiju as well. I liked the idea and decided to go for it, so we got one last entry here! I will note that the demon father probably won't get a form, since I have not seen any mention of what he looks like and technically his role was filled by the dead leviathan. And this new entry at least gives some hope to the poor world I created to suffer at the hands of these diseased titans.

#frog #toad #monster #creature #kaiju #children of ana #queen ana #art #drawing #trypophobia #body horror

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sleepydross · 9 months

Text

Chapter One, Route_B: A Hard Left Turn

A Chapter of the 'SEER' or 'Spontaneous Edifice Emergence / Reification' Storyline. This is Route_B. For Route_A, see the link included.

https://www.tumblr.com/sleepydross/736565213088858112/chapter-one-routea-clerks-too-a-chapter-of?source=share

CW: Gore, body horror, extreme death and dismemberment, surreal concepts, disgusting imagery, a lot of really quite rude words (I said fuck folks Im sorry), implications of loss, plainly stated memory alteration and manipulation, horror in general.

Excerpt, 'Dreams, And Their Implications,' Dr. Alex Sing, 2023

'…The understanding of dreams has come a long way, in recent years. We've seen sleep studies, and brain scans, and complicated medical procedures involving the implantation of probes in the brain and the use of radiological dyes. We have seen brilliant doctors, brilliant scientists, translate the language of the brain into perceptible images, things we can look at to see what people see when they sleep.

What most of you haven't seen is the secret, concealed studies that have been done into dreams and their… atypical side effects on local reality. In a number of cases, highly active psionics (Humans with the natural capability towards psychic phenomenon) have outright distorted reality around them during particularly intense dreams. This is, in fact, a detectable distortion due to the common presence of exotic particles and low level radiation.

In fact, the fabric of reality is what we are here to discuss. Some time ago, scientists working for the Department of Unnatural / Supernatural Knowledge, DUSK, discovered that this fabric could be willfully manipulated - and unwillfully. The very concept of luck is a manipulation of randomness in a local area, not a change in reality itself, but a wrinkling of probability…

And with this discovery came the first breakthrough in direct measure of the fabric of reality.

With THAT discovery, the scientists of DUSK discovered that the latent alterations made by dreams were growing more widespread, even in those not terribly active, those lacking psionic capability. Concurrently, a rise in psionic capability was recorded, and has been recorded every single year since.

But the reason why eluded them, has eluded them. Their experimentation began in 1971.

We have questions.

Did their experiment cause this? Or did they merely expand human consciousness into uncharted waters?

We don't know what could lie in those terrible, black depths, in the ocean outside of our collective thought based tidepool…

However, we are smart enough to fear it, unlike our predecessors.'

"I want to know what the FUCK is going on!" Haller shouted, standing in the action room. The site was deep black, so far off the grid and so unregistered that no one present even had so much as a dress shoe on - the FBI and CIA had erected it for counter terrorism reasons, erected being a strong word for appropriating an abandoned warehouse near a defunct rail line about six hours outside of New York City.

Outside of the blacked out windows, only forest and darkness waited. It was the middle of the damned night, and Haller had just arrived. The helicopter on the roof was already working up to beating gravity into submission, the soundproofing turning the thump-swah of its blades into weak vibrations one could only detect if they knew there was a helo taking off in the first place.

On the main screen, in place on the north wall, she stared at satellite photographs of an area approximately as far from NYC as the black site itself, which was little comfort considering that the area was apparently, very suddenly, taller than the empire state building and approximately a half mile in diameter.

"Ma'am, I assure you, we're trying to figure it out," Agent Muskwe said, quietly. Haller watched him sip his coffee and gesture at the screen. "Ground images."

An image replaced the satellite photos, digitally signed as being taken by field team November, one of Haller's favorite teams. Their names were classified, but she knew-

"What the hell?" she whispered. The image description said that the picture was taken five hundred and seventy yards from the 'border,' which had not been defined in any meaningful sense. All she could assume was that it meant the border of the gray, formless, bizarre zone they had looked at from above - a cacophony of squares and rectangles, impossible rooftop geometries laid in and around and over one another.

The 'border' looked like a wall of roiling, nearly oily fog. The next image was zoomed in, and appeared to show trees near to the border withering, branches blackened and dark and odd - wrong, stripped of leaves, coated in some shiny, slick, dark grease. On this image, the description said that even five hundred yards and change away, it stank like the parking lot of an abandoned fast food restaurant. Colorful descriptions were included, of disgusting rot stink and french fry smell and the hellish scattering of other disgusting odors…

Spoiled beef, rotting chicken, soggy and deeply moldy bread…

These descriptions were wholly unnecessary, but greatly appreciated. Haller needed every detail she could possibly get.

"Skip the pictures. November would've sent video," she said, already irritated when the next image was just a further zoom into the fog. Through it, she could see light, the pictures having clearly been taken in the dark. "Show me that, make sure everyone who needs them gets the images."

"Yes, ma'am," Muskwe replied, and the screen went dark. Moments later, a video frame opened, and then played. Compares to the hardware of the past, it was the highest quality video she'd ever seen, especially on a screen so large - save perhaps in a movie theater. Their video, however, had all sixty frames per second, crisp and clear.

"Check for the recording," November One said. "November one. Steadfast. Check."

"November two. Iron. Check."

"November three. Resolute. Check."

"November four. Eternal. Check."

"Alright, gang's all here," Steadfast, November One, said.

"Christ, this fucking STINK," Iron muttered. "We ought get goddamn hazard pay for this shit. It smells like a rotting corpse tossed in a dumpster near a particularly fucking shit drivethrough."

"Oil and diesel, too… gasoline, maybe propane. Smells like chemicals, under and around it all," Eternal added.

"Button up, whiners. Iron, light rig, take point. Etty, back him up with the shotgun, and don't fuck it up and shoot HIM. Reso, pull up the rear."

"Sir, yes sir!" they said in unison. Haller smiled. She liked November for a reason, a lot of reasons. November One's insistance they call her 'sir' was one of them. Out there, doing the work they did, they had some latitude to be weird. It was better than sitting in a goddamn field office all the time, poring over the most irrelevant shit on Earth.

The feed swapped then, to Iron's lightrig camera, and then… the rig flared on, bathing the fog in shockingly bright light. They marched across the field, orderly and in a line, a weapon in frame now and then as they walked. The closer they got the fog, the stranger it got, less white than before, and then swirling in a shiny, chemical-sick rainbow like a dribbling of oil floating on a puddle.

"Can't do it, sir," Reso said, finally. The line stopped. "I'm gonna pop, man, just fucking howl and puke."

"Professional," Steadfast muttered. "Mask up, though. Making me dizzy, too. Ought to call for hazzies. Reso, get out that vial of peppermint oil."

"It's like White River all over again," Rso muttered - but he complied, dabbing some of that oil on the filters of their gas masks. They sealed the high tech things with faint hisses, lenses shining. The peppermint oil was an old trick, from back in the before times, when Resolute was a nurse. Designated medic suited him better, with a gun in hand. "Feed's a mess, sir. We need to drop the rig. It's too foggy, ought to use mask optics."

"Make it so," she replied. In moments, after shuffling, annoyance, grunting and bad static, the light rig went dark, and then hit the ground. Pale, ugly green flooded the frame, and suddenly… they could see, the footage digitally enhanced and highly processed in near real time. "Better?"

"Clear as day," Reso replied. They returned to their march, approaching that ugly, roiling oil fog again. Through it now, a huge glowing sign could be seen, standing on a thick red pole, like-

"Huh… Megaburger," Haller murmured, baffled by that. She knew the colors, knew the ghostly specter of its shape. Silently, before the fog wall, Iron removed his camera and pointed it upwards without slowing their approach. It continued upwards apparently indefinitely, obscuring everything inside. Weather patterns in the area had gone to shit, it was what first alerted them - something was wrong when they were getting hit by sheets of rain in the middle of a New York winter.

"Rain's warm, what the fuck," Iron spat. "Feels slick, too. Droplets are milky white, contaminated with something… and I can just detect what seems to be a whiff of urine, through the damned mask. We gonna die, sir?"

"Composition from the rapid sample kit said it's just some kind of detergent, gasoline, a bit of oil… also piss, yeah, piss… yeah… it doesn't make sense, but it isn't toxic, mostly," Steadfast replied, evenly.

"Mostly! Wonderful," Eternal replied, sounding exhausted already - but they marched on, into the fog, as Iron reattached his camera. What followed was an engrossing twenty minutes of them walking in a white out, cable-clipped together so they didn't lose one another in the thickness of it. Three times, they stopped to dab new filters with peppermint and stagger their swapouts.

Whatever the fog was, it was clogging them, fast.

That made it all the more surprising when they emerged into the parking lot of…

A Megaburger franchise.

"Stop it," Haller said, and the video paused. "We have record of a Megaburger there? Lavar?"

"No, we don't. Look in the background, though, and around it… No roads. Nothing. The walls just extend outward, and then…" he trailed off, and gestured for the video to be played, and then he said, "pause. See? Suddenly, kitty corner, the bricks change to cement blocks, like… smoothly, and it becomes a Fast Jimmy's, complete with gas pumps."

"What the Hell?" Haller asked. No one had answers.

"Command, do you read?" Steadfast asked. After a long pause, she said, "no signal at all. Local comms working."

"Pull out? Something's fuckin' wrong. This shit wasn't here when we got here, before the fucking fog moved closer," Eternal muttered. "Did anyone transmit the recording, from when the fog moved?"

"Did, yeah," Iron spat. "What's the word, Steady?"

"Sir, to you, dipshit… and no. We don't pull back. No signs of life, no hostiles… we're going into that damn burger joint. I want material samples, though. Etty, split off with Reso. See where those bricks go all… blurry? Get samples there," she ordered. "Something is wrong, so we're going to find out what the fuck is going on. As soon as you have the samples, get inside."

A chorus of 'yes, sir!' met her, and she and Iron marched on, the footage continuing to follow them.

"Do we have footage from the Eternal or Resolute?" Haller asked, and got a displeasing 'nope, no transmit from them, their feeds cut out the moment they split off,' which made her want to put a hole in something. "Fucking why, precisely?"

"Interference, of some kind. That fog, maybe, something about it makes signal transmission inconsistent? We only got all of Iron's footage because… well…" he trailed off, and Haller blanched, falling silent and watching. Like every other Megaburger in existence, the restaurant that Iron and Steadfast were approaching was a squat sort of building with an overly decorative roof of red metal, atop which was perched an offensively oversized, bizarrely cartoonish cheeseburger, and a huge cup beside it. Both were lit up, casting an array of yellows and reds out into the parking lot. This was all largely washed out on the white lines of the parking spots out front by the bright fluourescent light coming through the windows that dominated every wall on the front and sides of the store, stopping right at the line where the kitchen began.

Despite that no one was visible inside, the doors were unlocked, and they pushed through them, weapons at the ready.

"It uh, appears to be a burger store," Iron said, quietly, turning slowly to film the majority of the restaurant in the sweep. Chairs were pushed out, food was piled up on tables, cups were stacked halfway to the ceiling and puddles of dark, bubbling brown liquid coated portions of the floor. None of this, critically, had been visible from the exterior. "Stead, sir, something… this place is a fucking mess. It was not, in fact, a fucking mess looking in from outside."

"I'd noticed, trust me," she muttered. "It stinks in here, like it was just jam packed and they all took a shit before leaving."

Rapidly, the camera approached one of the tables and was brought closer to the food - what was left of it. Huge bites, larger than any human mouth could make, were taken out of massive burgers, each one the size of a dinner plate. Thick beef patties steamed, red on the inside and ruddy brown on the out, too fatty, the 'ground' beef used to make them more akin to strange, mashed together chunks of flesh, a melange of unmistakably…

Meaty, fleshy colors. Biological, awful.

They were burgers in the loosest sense, the buns bizarre and over-dense and mealy looking but with an incongruous shiny brown exterior that looked like it was applied after the fact just to try and make it look good. In place of lettuce, there was some unidentifiable, vaguely leaf-patterned green gel mess, a few squirts of too dark, too bloody ketchup… mustard that was more white than yellow - or maybe it was mayo…

"Sir, this food is fucked up."

"This whole place is fucked up," Steady muttered, tiredly. "Weapon at the ready."

"Sir," he replied, and the shotgun came into frame. He squared up, following her to the counter. For a few long moments, they just peered into the half-shrouded kitchen through a cutout on the wall behind the register, and then Steady shouted.

"HEY! IS THERE A MANAGER IN THE HOUSE?"

The silence that met her in response was almost deafening. Slowly, Iron turned in a half circle, looking around - and then there came a sound, a terrible sort of sound. It overwhelmed the microphone on both his camera and its twin on his helmet, this awful air-raid siren parody that sounded more and more like hundreds of human screams forming this rising and falling tide of sonic ugliness.

As the video feed glitched and static flooded the image intermittently, they saw the building shifting, bricks and glass crystalizing outward in wobbly, overly organic sheets from the front of the store. Rumbling appeared to shake the building, and Iron was forced to grab a pillar to retain his footing. When he hunched, they got to watch tiles splitting and sliding and growing, a wholly unnatural ceramic mitosis.

When all was said and done, the entire parking lot had been subsumed, and the restaurant was twice as large from kitchen to doors, with new pillars erected haphazardly, still sluggishly sliding across the floor tiles towards presumably their final positions. These structural icebergs clawed trenches in tile that rapidly 'healed' in their wake.

Iron rounded as if reacting to something, staring at the staggered Steadfast clutching onto the counter as the tile rippled in bizarre, shattering ceramic waves drifting out from the counter, which itself was pushing her backwards towards the entrance as the behind-counter area expanded. She howled, screaming in agony, arms wrapped entirely around a cash register at that point. Red and pink and dark blackish pooled around her feet, those waves of ceramic shredding her up to the like they were made for shredding. Flaying flesh away from bone was horrifying enough, but something worse was unfolding itself.

Behind the counter, a widening, grotesque door peeled open, the wood flexing apart into shiny tendonous strings and awful flesh as a rose made of meat bloomed forth from within.

That screaming siren continued, grew louder even, and the video distortion worsened until all that could be seen, in the center of the frame, was a figure resembling a human being, if that human being was lit harshly and unevenly from the front, and cast a shadow consisting entirely of flesh, of meat and blood and bubbly yellow fat. The mass the 'person' was stuck to the front of slopped against the wall behind the creature, with the flesh seeping through the access window to the kitchen.

Sounds of hissing and popping made it through as the scream-siren trailed off into silence told them that this creature had carpeted over the fryers in back with gore, not giving a singular microfuck about the consequences thereof.

"What can I do for you?" the terrible, blistered avatar asked, a few moments after the screaming siren stopped. This mocking, sick parody of a human torso was still clawing and pulling its way from the meat mass, and as the stunned operators watched, clothing 'grew' over it. Disgustingly, it appeared to be made of woven hair, a chaotic hellscape of interwoven white and black that formed a button down shirt and a tie that were all one piece. Thick pads of calloused skin came next that blackened into a kind of belt-like construction, whose buckle was dark, blackened fingernail approximating shiny plastic polymer.

This same black fingernail formed an approximation of a tie clip, and then a nametag - unreadable.

There was a face, if one could insult the concept of faces so grotesquely, with a lopsided slash of a mouth where the lips were simply just bloody, blistered, skinless facsimiles, dribbling red and this sickly yellow syrup that made its chin all pink and slick.

"F-Fuck, I was just-" Steadfast said, slurring, sounding half drunk with blood loss and pain, but midword… the building went still, and her voice simply ceased. After a long moment, she half turned to Iron. Her lips parted, and thick black and red flooded out - and then the nearly naked bone of her right tibia and fibia, clothed only in tatters and leaking veins below the knee, broke. She staggered, and the top of her head fell away.

For only a moment they were treated to an awful anatomical cross section of her lower brain before blood covered that up completely.

Iron screamed bloody murder, cracking, and in the last frames they could see a thick meaty tendril draped over the counter, forcing what looked a lot like french fries into the sticky black-oozing meat that kept all of Steadfast's thoughts for her, one by one. With each salty new stick of nightmares shoved into what remained of he brain she twitched, or gurgled wetly.

The last man standing legged it, out into the parking lot, and then into…

Another parking lot, leading towards another building.

Towards a Pizza Jam.

"No, no, NO FUCK NO!" he barked, frantic. The poor man rounded, camera directed towards the burger joint, which was rapidly filling up with what looked like squirming, barely human bodies, a pale pink slurry of meat and breading, and enormous waffle cut fries so big they could've been swimming pool rafts. "FUCK! FUCK FUCK!"

While he shouted fuck several more times, he dug in his equipment pack and drew out a gray plastic box, slamming it on the ground and opening it. In a flurry of movement, he tugged something out, pressed something that beeped, and then jerked the camera off of his vest and turned it to stare in the lens.

"Look, I don't know what you FUCKING SHITFUCKS sent us into, but if you don't find a way to EVAC ME, I am going to haunt you until the end of time! EVERYONE IS FUCKED!" he barked, before setting the camera on what was identified in a small block of text in the corner as a transmission relay meant to burst transmit large quantities of audio visual data. He stood up then, and pumped his shotgun. "I'm getting the fuck out of here. If I make it out… I'll get back, I'll call in, I don't know. I gotta move."

When he stepped aside, they could see that strange plant-like structures were growing rapidly from the pavement of the parking lot. In seconds, they formed into beetle coated monstrosities nearly metallic in apperance. Seconds after that, the crawling, bug-covered blobs resolved into passable (At a distance) imitations of cars.

They then promptly rotted, leaving thick black sludge on the ground, from which more bugs, more plants and more cars began to rise.

"Fuck this," Iron panted, and he booked it out of frame.

The video ran for two more four to six minute cycles of 'cars,' and then… abruptly ended in static, with a disquietingly wet crunch.

For a long, long time things were silent in the action room (which was still just the main, large, open area of the . No one spoke. No one so much as breathed, not in any meaningful or audible way.

Finally, Agent Haller said, quietly…

"Well, what the fuck was that shit?"

"Ma'am, that was the last transmission from Iron. It was digitally signed, with little corruption beyond the visual distortion caused by that… management… thing," Muskwe replied, softly. "I did not feel it prudent to warn anyone of the nature of the footage, as… I was… concerned."

"You were fucking concerned? Muskwe, I'm FUCKING CONCERNED! What were YOU concerned about?" she demanded, a cold, hard edge to her voice.

"I was concerned, to be honest, that I had gone gloriously insane, sir," he replied, evenly. "…and I did not have time to ask one of the others to watch it, to confirm or deny my own madness."

"Well, you're not fucking mad unless we all are," she muttered, tiredly. "Everyone saw all of that, yes? Confirm with a yes or no. We saw a team enter a construction hellscape through a wall of oily fog and then get lost or massacred near a fast food restaurant that appeared, to my highly… highly trained eye, to be a fucking LITERAL NIGHTMARE."

A chorus of 'yes' came, then, like a soft rainfall made out of agreement. Really, Haller had hoped for one to thirty answsers of 'no,' because having simply gone batty would have been much easier and much less terrifying. This, this reality, that they had all borne witness to, was truly quite awful.

It bordered on deeply shitty that it hadn't been, in fact, some manner of hallucination - though that alone might have convinced her to go visit a bureau shrink.

"…so what's our theory?" she asked, softly.

"Theory is so often inadequate in the face of actual answers," a soft, faintly accented voice said. This voice was cool, steady, like a small stream flowing in the coldest days of early spring - and it was faintly processed, oddly digital. "Quite a bummer, really, that all of you are now in the fold. I really do find it tiring to orient newcomers, but, perhaps I will assign that task to someone else."

Every firearm in the room was trained on the newcomer before they finished speaking. This… person, of sorts, stood there right next to Haller - or had been next to, but was then in front of, having Haller's gun pressed to their forehead. All of this was well and good, as they had the intruder isolated and contained under threat of-

Death?

Haller stared at the gleaming lenses, lenses staring back at her. The creature, whatever it was, was covered in metal plating, their head all polished glass that might've belonged to a helmet if it weren't for the exposted struts and odd pistons of the neck that emerged from under their chin and around the base of the jaw.

"What the sam fuck are you?" Haller demanded. They chuckled, a strange sound like chimes and rings layering over one another. It was a musical sound, understandable only as a laugh because this creature's head bobbled a bit with it in unmistakable mirth.

"That is a big question with a complicated answer, Agent Haller - but I am, to keep it brief, a robot of a kind - but not a robot, really. Think of me as a mistake made right, but in the weirdest way possible," they replied, a smirk touching their smooth but undeniably digital voice. "I am Doctor Alex Sing, or… that is the name I use now, to conceptually distance myself from who I used to be - security reasons, you see. I've come to tell you all what you just saw."

"And what, the fuck, is that?" Haller asked, losing her patience rapidly - and she didn't have much of it to begin with.

"A 'Spontaneous Edifice Emergence and Reification' event. We call them SEER events, for convenience," Dr. Sing replied, quite pleasantly, waving their hand vaguely at the screen. "We know precious little about them… but we are aware that this is a new, far worse form than we have yet seen. You will ask for credentials. Here, look at this."

Haller looked, the machine person having produced from seemingly nowhere a badge holder. The badge ensconced in said holder insisted that the good doctor was part of an organization called DUSK - the Department of Unnatural / Supernatural Knowledge. In place of a typical shield and eagle so popular in governmental insignias, this bore a strange kind of… seal, or sigil.

"I've seen this before," Haller said, dizzily. The sigil was a pentagram, but its outer circle appeared to be a serpent, devouring its own tail - and in the central pentagon, there was a familiar sign. Brimstone, sulfur, the Leviathan Cross, in all its distorted, time-twisted glory. "I've… I've seen this…"

"A brimstone symbol? Yes, the satanists are rather fond of it, but we were using it first, before even the founding of this nation and our adoption of the DUSK name," Sing replied, blandly, as if this was all very boring to her mechanical ass self. Haller tried not to stare at her hand, a thing plated and padded to function like a human hand, but with open gaps showing moving metal beneath, rods and pistons and tiny little gears. For a moment, there was silence, and then Sing lowered the badge and leaned in, her camera lenses whirring as apertures tightened. "But you don't mean… brimstone. You've seen the DUSK insignia before? Fascinating, and of course, perfectly understandable."

"How the fuck is it understandable? My head hurts," Haller said, her last as she stumbled back and sat down. Muskwe rushed up, and handed her a handkerchief.

"Your nose, ma'am," he intoned, and she pressed her fingers to it, finding they came away bloody.

"Am I going to die?" she asked, a bizarre dread settling in her gut.

"No! My goodness, now, silly, no. You've clearly been geist hexed, some time in the past. You'll be getting memories taken from you back, which is so exciting, isn't it?" Sing replied, brightly. Silence so profound it weighed down on the room like a flow of molten lead followed this, and the doctor tilted her robotic head. "…or perhaps… not, to normal… people. Well, I will enjoy it, anyway, for your sake."

"Goodie for you. Someone fucking shoot her," Haller muttered. No one moved, so she stood herself, bleeding profusely into Muskwe's hankie, and drew her sidearm. Sing did not so much as flinch at the weapon being pointed at her - instead, she leaned in, peering at it.

"Custom work? Very nice, Agent. That's a real stomper of a pistol, and not remotely enough to do me harm," she said, pressing her 'forehead' to it. "I understand. I've violated protocol, entered a black site unannounced, and freaked you right on out. Go ahead. Blow a hole in me, if it'll help. The faster we get you FBI nerds acclimated, the better."

Haller, in a moment of raw rage, confusion and vague nausea, pulled the trigger. Dr. Sing's head snapped back with a loud CLANK, and then… with several heavy ratcheting noises, it returned to its previous position.

"Very nice," Sing said, one of her 'eyes' shattered, a curl of smoke drifting out of it. "High powered, effective, and you're strong enough to muscle down the recoil. Gorgeous weapon, truly."

"F-Fucking what?" Haller demanded. "You're fine?"

"Robot, nerd. Kind of," Sing replied, evenly, as if disappointed. With that, she clapped her odd mechanical hands together and turned to face the room at large. "Congratulations, everyone. You've been formally recruited into DUSK. Your lives as they were are officially over, bummer, but the pay is fantastic, our insurance is better than you'd even believe, and… you get to know all the things you haven't been told about. Vampires, psychics, magicians, nightmares and pretty little machines like me. Ghosts, demons, people who can alter their bodies, secret dimensions and dark dreams that don't die. Your families will be justly compensated after your mock funerals."

"Fucking WHAT!?" Agent Crenshaw demanded, stepping out of the crowd and stalking up to her. "Fuck you! I have a DAUGHTER! She was just BORN!"

"Then unrecruit yourself, dipstick," Sing told him, dismissively. "Divide yourselves into two groups! People who want to give up everything you have, go over there! People who want to keep your lives and forget this moment… over there!"

"F… Forget?" Crenshaw asked, his pale, watery blue eyes wide with a mixture of confusion and panic. "How?"

"Geist hexing will eradicate the memories, sever the pathways to them in an irrecoverable way, effectively removing it all from your mind. A cover story will be generated, and provided to you upon your waking," she explained, patiently, as if speaking to an infant. The doctor raised her arm, and pointed behind her, the limb at an unnatural angle so that an index finger could be directed right at Haller. "You, of course, have no connections, so you have nothing to lose, Agent Haller. I'd like you on this case."

"You can't just MARCH in here, you fucking ROBOT FREAK, and TAKE CONTROL of a literal FBI BLACK SITE. What I am GOING to do is detain your ridiculous metal ass and then call someone higher up the chain to tell me what the HELL is going on!" Haller all but shouted, thoroughly fed up with the utter helplessness she felt as that robot's head slowly tilted backwards like it had when shot, but slower, until it hung down her back and the camera lenses whirred, apertures tightening as they took her in.

"Agent, I am your superior, now," she said, simply, raising a hand. She snapped her fingers, and then… brought her head 'upright,' again, turning around. Haller ignored this, instead staring at her people, all of her people. They were frozen, creatures carved from dyed ice, flickering crystal effigies of themselves. They looked tesselated, rock candy, like models from some kind of videogame showing their triangles as each vertex undulated faintly outward and inward about its origin. "I really need you to stop freaking out, Haller. You're special, I can feel it, and I need your help with this. This is a problem, Haller, one that will kill people - a lot of people, if left unchecked."

"T-The… meat creatures? The manager, the… fast food place? That'll kill people" she asked, softly.

"There's worse about this than all that. Figments that fully instantiate are difficult to kill, for starters, and it will continue to spread… BUT, you have the ability to convince these people that what they do in my service will save the world. I can't convince them of that," Sing told her, quietly. "Get it together. You saw what you saw. That SEER event ATE your people. Working together, we can potentially reverse it, before it eats others."

"Doctor Sing, if you can just make us forget, why do you need to do this? Recruit us? Recruit me?" she asked, after a long pause in which she approached the frozen-mid-stride Agent Crenshaw. When she touched him, she touched what felt like softly undulating planes of glass, a few millimeters from his skin - but this glass was warm like flesh.

"Because you are necessary. When I have feelings, strong ones, I've learned to listen to them. If we are going to stop this, I… need YOU, Anna," the doctor said. Haller looked to the robot, and didn't bother to ask how Sing knew her first name - no one knew it, that was part of her position. She was an enigma, as fake as fake could be, because it kept her insulated from the threats they faced.

"What did you do to my men?" she asked. Sing approached, and drew from the pocket of her suit jacket a handkerchief. When she dabbed at Haller's cheeks, it came back damp, and the Agent didn't even know why she was crying.

"Nothing. There are six men in stupid robes outside, all of whom are affecting what DUSK calls a 'working,' using what we call a 'castgram.' Your men are unaffected, but in this place, time is having a bit of a problem moving forward, except for us. It's not something done… to them, but to the space they occupy, in a sense," she replied, quite forthrightly. Haller was deeply unsure how to deal with this information, but she was forced to accept it. Muskwe was in the middle of spilling a coffee, and it looked like a cascade of crystal that had made it only halfway to the floor. Touching the undulating crystalline surface just above that coffee, she hissed between her teeth and drew her hand back.

It had been scalding hot.

"Thermal energy makes it out," she said, softly. "They're going to freeze to death."

"Perhaps that's why I need you - you've only just seen what civilians call 'magic' for the first time, and you're already working out the flaws. It's true. In about six hours, they would reach a cold point so deep that unfreezing them would, ironically, flash freeze them - their arrested bodily functions no longer warming their insides and all," Sing told her. "So… return to your previous position. I will signal to the men outside to drop the working. Get your shit together, and ride the lightning into an exciting new career in saving the world."

"You're fucking insane," Haller said, shakily. "You know that, right?"

"I'm afraid sanity and insanity are far more complicated than you have been led to believe, Agent. Want to find out how?"

Haller stared at this machine, this woman, this doctor, this interloper and mystery and strangeness of a person. Her eyes, green and stippled with odd flecks of brown, were wide with a kind of feverish anxiety mixed with uncommon mania.

"Yes, I do. I do, god and fucking Jesus Himself Christ damn me."

"Your Christ has been dead a long time, and his so called father with him," Sing murmured, stepping close to touch the cross that Haller wore around her neck. "But, perhaps he was never your god. This was never your cross to bear."

"How could you possibly know that?" Haller rasped.

"I know what I have to know - and it's tarnished, and worn, and has not been well cared for," the doctor told her, in a soft, slightly processed whisper. "It is not something you love… it's someone you remember."

"I hate this," Haller said, in reply.

"You get used to it," Sing insisted, earnestly.

"Do you?"

"Not really. Are you with me?"

Haller stepped back, finding her feet had left softly glowing blue prints on the floor, showing her where to stand. The mechanical doctor sing reached up, and unscrewed what appeared to be the housing of the camera that Haller had shot out. As soon as it was removed, it started sparking and fizzling, molten metal running off of it. Sing threw it carelessly over her shoulder, and a metal plate slid into place beneath the hole, sealing it.

"I am, if that wasn't clear," the Agent murmured.

"Oh, yes, I had figured."

And the robot snapped her fingers, and time lurched back into motion with a sickening blurring of all lights and figures, and a heavy smattering of air shuddering around them like patches of broken, floating glass.

#fiction #writing #gore #surreal #supernatural #conceptual #story #SEER storyline #Fantasy #Horror #body horror

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nuadox · 11 months

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Horseshoe crab blood is vital for testing intravenous drugs, but new synthetic alternatives could mean pharma won’t bleed this unique species dry

- By Kristoffer Whitney , Jolie Crunelle , Rochester Institute of Technology , The Conversation -

If you have ever gotten a vaccine or received an intravenous drug and did not come down with a potentially life-threatening fever, you can thank a horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus).

How can animals that are often called living fossils, because they have barely changed over millions of years, be so important in modern medicine? Horseshoe crab blood is used to produce a substance called limulus amebocyte lysate, or LAL, which scientists use to test for toxic substances called endotoxins in intravenous drugs.

These toxins, produced by bacteria, are ubiquitous in the environment and can’t be removed simply through sterilization. They can cause a reaction historically referred to as “injection fever.” A strong concentration can lead to shock and even death.

Identifying LAL as a highly sensitive detector of endotoxins was a 20th-century medical safety breakthrough. Now, however, critics are raising questions about environmental impacts and the process for reviewing and approving synthetic alternatives to horseshoe crab blood.

We study science, technology and public policy, and recently published a white paper examining social, political and economic issues associated with using horseshoe crabs to produce LAL. We see this issue as a test case for complicated problems that cut across multiple agencies and require attention to both nature and human health.

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Protecting horseshoe crabs will require persuading the heavily regulated pharmaceutical industry to embrace change.

An ocean solution

Doctors began injecting patients with various solutions in the mid-1800s, but it was not until the 1920s that biochemist Florence Seibert discovered that febrile reactions were due to contaminated water in these solutions. She created a method for detecting and removing the substances that caused this reaction, and it became the medical standard in the 1940s.

Known as the rabbit pyrogen test, it required scientists to inject intravenous drugs into rabbits, then monitor the animals. A feverish rabbit meant that a batch of drugs was contaminated.

The LAL method was discovered by accident. Working with horseshoe crabs at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in the 1950s and ’60s, pathobiologist Frederik Bang and medical researcher Jack Levin noticed that the animals’ blue blood coagulated in a curious manner. Through a series of experiments, they isolated endotoxin as the coagulant and devised a method for extracting LAL from the blood. This compound would gel or clot nearly instantaneously in the presence of fever-inducing toxins.

Academic researchers, biomedical companies and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration refined LAL production and measured it against the rabbit test. By the 1990s, LAL was the FDA-approved method for testing medicines for endotoxin, largely replacing rabbits.

Producing LAL requires harvesting horseshoe crabs from oceans and beaches, draining up to 30% of their blood in a laboratory and returning the live crabs to the ocean. There’s dispute about how many crabs die in the process – estimates range from a few percent to 30% or more – and about possible harmful effects on survivors.

Today there are five FDA-licensed LAL producers along the U.S. East Coast. The amount of LAL they produce, and its sales value, are proprietary.

Bait versus biotech

As biomedical LAL production ramped up in the 1990s, so did harvesting horseshoe crabs to use as bait for other species, particularly eel and whelk for foreign seafood markets. Over the past 25 years, hundreds of thousands – and in the early years, millions – of horseshoe crabs have been harvested each year for these purposes. Combined, the two fisheries kill over half a million horseshoe crabs every year.

There’s no agreed total population estimate for Limulus, but the most recent federal assessment of horseshoe crab fisheries found the population was neither strongly growing nor declining.

Conservationists are worried, and not just about the crabs. Millions of shorebirds migrate along the Atlantic coast, and many stop in spring, when horseshoe crabs spawn on mid-Atlantic beaches, to feed on the crabs’ eggs. Particularly for red knots – a species that can migrate up to 9,000 miles between the tip of South America and the Canadian Arctic – gorging on horseshoe crab eggs provides a critical energy-rich boost on their grueling journey.

Red knots were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2015, largely because horseshoe crab fishing threatened this key food source. As biomedical crab harvests came to equal or surpass bait harvests, conservation groups began calling on the LAL industry to find new sources.

Biomedical alternatives

Many important medicines are derived from living organisms. Penicillin, the first important antibiotic, was originally produced from molds. Other medicines currently in use come from sources including cows, pigs, chickens and fish. The ocean is a promising source for such products.

When possible, synthesizing these substances in laboratories – especially widely used medications like insulin – offers many benefits. It’s typically cheaper and more efficient, and it avoids putting species at risk, as well as addressing concerns some patients have about using animal-derived medical products.

In the 1990s, researchers at the National University of Singapore invented and patented the first process for creating a synthetic, endotoxin-detecting compound using horseshoe crab DNA and recombinant DNA technology. The result, dubbed recombinant Factor C (rFC), mimicked the first step in the three-part cascade reaction that occurs when LAL is exposed to endotoxin.

Later, several biomedical firms produced their own versions of rFC and compounds called recombinant cascade reagents (rCRs), which reproduce the entire LAL reaction without using horseshoe crab blood. Yet, today, LAL remains the dominant technology for detecting endotoxins in medicine.

A sample of horseshoe crab blood. Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, CC BY-NC-ND

The main reason is that the U.S. Pharmacopeia, a quasi-regulatory organization that sets safety standards for medical products, considers rFC and rCR as “alternative” methods for detecting endotoxins, so they require case-by-case validation for use – a potentially lengthy and expensive process. The FDA generally defers to the U.S. Pharmacopeia.

A few large pharmaceutical companies with deep pockets have committed to switching from LAL to rFC. But most drug producers are sticking with the tried-and-true method.

Conservation groups want the U.S. Pharmacopeia to fully certify rFC for use in industry with no extra testing or validation. In their view, LAL producers are stalling rFC and rCR approval to protect their market in endotoxin detection. The U.S. Pharmacopeia and LAL producers counter that they are doing due diligence to protect public health.

Change in the offing

Change may be coming. All major LAL producers now have their own recombinant products – a tacit acknowledgment that markets and regulations are moving toward Limulus-free ways to test for endotoxins.

Atlantic fisheries regulators are currently considering new harvest limits for horseshoe crabs, and the U.S. Pharmacopeia is weighing guidance on recombinant alternatives to LAL. Public comments will be solicited over the winter of 2024, followed by U.S. Pharmacopeia and FDA review.

Even if rFC and rCR don’t win immediate approval, we believe that collecting more complete data on horseshoe crab populations and requiring more transparency from the LAL industry on how it handles the crabs would represent progress. So would directing medical companies to use recombinant products for testing during the manufacturing process, while saving LAL solely for final product testing.

Making policy on complex scientific issues across diverse agencies is never easy. But in our view, incremental actions that protect both human health and the environment could be important steps forward.

Kristoffer Whitney, Associate Professor of Science, Technology and Society, Rochester Institute of Technology and Jolie Crunelle, Master's Degree Student in Science, Technology, and Public Policy, Rochester Institute of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read Also

The FDA no longer mandates all drugs to be tested on animals before being tested on humans

#animals #animal welfare #biotech #pharma #clinical trials #medtech #health #blood #medicine #animal testing #horseshoe crab

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eliaskahtri · 1 year

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Another New Beginning || Elias Solo

TIMING: Late September

LOCATION: California

PARTIES: Elias

SUMMARY: A lot has happened since Elias left, including psychiatric care and a scientific breakthrough.

CONTENT WARNINGS: None

Having a mild case of fame became Elias’s second worst nightmare. His first worst nightmare was the fact that he had seen things he should have, which defied explanation and science. He had run away from his problems as quickly as he could, leaving everything and everyone he had met in the dust as his car drove out of the city limits of Wicked’s Rest.

He hadn’t talked to Regan before he left and hadn’t resigned formally. Hadn’t even said goodbye.

All he had done was leave a note for Gael that just said, “I’m not safe here anymore.” and left it at that.

He had packed up everything and vanished as if he hadn’t existed there in the first place. He had received messages from both of them, asking where he had gone. He never opened them.

Instead, he sought out a therapist for his delusions and hallucinations.

He had been put on three different medications and received extensive talk therapy to deal with his symptoms. It still felt wrong, as if something wasn’t quite right. He knew what he saw, and it had been real. It was real, and now he was being told he suffered hallucinations. His therapist had explained it away by saying he likely suffered a psychotic episode from his high stress with work and seeing someone get killed in front of him. “Some people aren’t equipped to handle these things,” she told him.

“But it felt so real,” he had responded, to which she simply shrugged her shoulders and responded with “hallucinations can feel very real. That’s why they’re so scary when we experience them.”

After that, He accepted this as an explanation and began to go back to work. He returned to his job at the local hospital, continuing to work on the prosthetic he had abandoned when he’d moved to Maine.

___

Lisa Peters had sustained nerve damage that had left her ability to flex and use her hand somewhat difficult. She had learned to live with it but would occasionally pursue studies looking for people that fit her description. When she had gotten the offer to be a test subject for a new unreleased prosthetic, she was curious. She was even more curious when they made her sign NDAs and go through extensive interviewing. That’s where she met Dr. Garcia, a middle-aged woman who was, together with the device's creator, hooking up the exoskeleton to her arm. They had explained how it worked, but much of the scientific and medical jargon had gone through one ear and out the other. All she knew was that if this worked, she would regain the ability to use her hand again. It was almost too good to be true.

He had done it. Elias Kahtri had successfully created a robotic exoskeleton for someone with nerve damage in their hand and arm. All the late-night hours, the mental breakdowns, and running away from responsibility for a time had finally paid off. He had just created a cybernetic prosthetic that would change not only his life but the lives of those who had sustained injuries that had left a limb immobile due to extensive nerve damage. Dr. Ericka Garcia clapped him on the back, and he heard cheering and excitement around him, but he was frozen in place, expressionless and in shock. “Snap out of it, Kahtri!” The doctor spoke to him, shaking his shoulders. “You did it!”

He did do it, didn’t he? Elias slowly nodded his head, a smile creeping over his face. He did it.

A few weeks later, the news had gone public. Suddenly, everyone and their mother was inundating his phone and email with inquiries about the device he made and when it would be available for the general public. It was overwhelming. All the attention he was getting was beginning to get to him. He had never wanted this. He stayed up late as his phone continued to go off in the darkness of his apartment, face buried in his hands. He was happy about what this meant for those who needed it but absolutely terrified about what it meant for him.

He hired an assistant to help him deal with the sudden influx that fame in the scientific community had brought him. Naya Rana was a twenty-six-year-old, bright-eyed woman who easily fielded questions and interview opportunities. She had been a life-saver. Suddenly, he was going on interviews and news channels to talk about what he had made. Everyone was excited about what this meant; he only wanted a nap.

Naya forwarded him an email one day that read;

“Mr. Elias Kahtri,

We would like to schedule an interview to review your research and offer you an opportunity to work with us out of Wicked’s Rest General Hospital. We look forward to hearing from you to discuss this opportunity further.

Dr. Olivia Patel, MD

Researcher at Wickeds Rest General Hospital”

Naya had bounded over to him that day after sending the email to him, a bright smile on her face. “My family is from Wicked’s Rest!” She explained, stumbling over her words as she explained that she missed her family and would love to be close to them again.

Elias had refused at first. He had lived there for a brief stint and abandoned it. What would the people he had met say when he suddenly returned? He couldn’t face them. Still, he kept thinking about it. After a week, he randomly blurted out, “Let’s go to Wicked’s Rest.” Naya had been shocked when he said it but slowly nodded her head. “Alright. I can reach out to them and get more information about it.”

Now, there he was. Standing in the middle of a pre-furnished apartment that reflected none of his personality. It was like a ghost lived there instead of the fun-loving individual he once was. He was empty and needed a chance to rediscover himself—one step at a time.

#Another New Beginning #threads #solo;

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champstorymedia · 5 days

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Innovations in Hospital Care: A Look at the Cutting-Edge Technologies Shaping the Industry

Introduction In today’s rapidly advancing healthcare landscape, hospitals are continuously seeking ways to improve patient care, increase efficiency, and enhance outcomes through the integration of cutting-edge technologies. From telemedicine solutions to artificial intelligence, the innovations in hospital care are revolutionizing the way healthcare is delivered. Let’s delve into some of the…

#advancements in medical technology #best practices for clinic management #case studies of medical breakthroughs #hospital accreditation standards #hospital patient care improvement strategies #how clinics are improving patient experiences #how hospitals handle emergency care.#impact of telemedicine in clinics #Innovations in hospital care #leading healthcare facilities #patient care success stories #profiles of top healthcare professionals #stories of hospital transformations #top hospitals in 2024 #trends in hospital administration

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alwaysmychoices · 2 years

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Do you think we have enough evidence in canon that Ethan is the best in his field? He has a relatively conservative (safe?) approach towards treating patients, especially compared to Tobias's. So what's your opinion?

This is such a good question because I agree that Ethan does not seem to be the best practitioner based on what we saw in Books 2-3, but I blame that on Open Heart not knowing how to incorporate his true skills in a drama-fueled narrative.

Through Book 1, I was under the impression that medical practice mattered to Ethan but that his primary genius lied in long-term study and research. We have to remember that, before he even turned 40, he’d produced a highly respected textbook. Now, it isn’t uncommon for professionals to publish research, even when they’re not top of their field, nor is it uncommon to draft a textbook (I’m currently doing research to help a professor write one, so if I can do it, anyone can). But Ethan was not a professor. And judging off the OH timeline, he wasn’t even a PHD-MD candidate who would be regularly publishing. Him writing a textbook at his young age and it being deemed reputable enough to be used by almost all the interns from Book 1 tells me: (a) that was good research and (b) he was considered high-ranking enough in the field to pull that off, especially when he wasn’t working at an academically-affiliated institution and had the pressure to produce scholarly work.

Now, we have to remember that MC and Landry are the primary sources we have for Ethan’s greatness, and they’re not the most reliable narrators. It’s possible that they’re just the kind of super-fans who are so dedicated to their field that they know everyone in it, even if they wouldn’t be considered the top of the field by other people.

But I think we have enough anecdotal evidence that Ethan is generally considered to be the best, given how other characters react to him and discuss his career.

I think Ethan was the top of the field but not as a clinician. He’s a good clinician, don’t get me wrong, but that’s not his strength. The best work we saw from Ethan was his work with Naveen. He was problem solving, doing independent research, performing controversial therapies, and bending conventions to find new solutions. I see Ethan as the kind of practitioner who dedicates himself to long-term studies and innovates by taking a slow approach and exercising restraint when necessary. He’s the kind to spend a year studying and unheard-of disease, solve it, and then produce the kind of scholarly article that becomes the foundation for other breakthroughs.

I think that’s why he’s generally considered to be better than Tobias. His patience gives him more time to do bigger work while Tobias is flashy and gets big results. Both have its place, and sadly, I think Tobias’s model better matched the story telling Open Heart pursued.

When Chocies decided that it wanted to pursue a weekly medical mystery, that meant cases had to get shorter, and Ethan’s strengths got obscured while Tobias shined. The structure of the narrative also had Ethan on the defensive — fighting for the team he knew, the routine he preferred, the ethics he championed, and the status he craved. By putting him against Bloom’s unethical demands and Tobias’s flashy and quick treatment style, the methodical Ethan got lost in his stubborn attempts to hold on.

Did it make for better story telling? Maybe, but it obscured the genius Ethan portrayed in earlier chapters. I don’t think Book 2 or 3 stayed true to the kind of career Ethan would have really had. I’m supposed to believe that Book 1 spent all that time praising his research but that Ethan doesn’t do any research and only works on short-term mystery cases? Or that he’s written top-level work and doesn’t get approached to continue his research career? Or that he’s not doing long-term studies when that was his whole thing with Naveen?

Maybe this is a cop out, but I blame the narrative choices of Open Heart and continue to tell myself that Ethan is an asshole but a genius asshole.

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thoughts-of-a-social-worker · 2 years

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Why Henrietta Lacks’ “Immortal Life” Matters

I don’t recall hearing the name “Henrietta Lacks” before college. I suspect that this is a common story among folks my age and those who graduated before Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was published in 2010. In fact, the reason Skloot wrote her book in the first place was because no one seemed to be able to answer her question – who was Henrietta Lacks? Skloot, who has dual degrees in biological science and creative nonfiction, set out to find the answers on her own. After more than a thousand hours of interviews, scientific and historical research, and deep dives into archival content (as well as the personal journals of Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah Lacks) she was able to show the world a holistic story not just of HeLa cells and Henrietta Lacks but of her family and their struggle to come to terms with her “immortality” – as well as how that immortality came about.

Skloot’s book stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for more than six years and, ultimately, I believe it raised awareness of an individual’s rights (or lack thereof) to control how their tissues are used, as well as illustrating the racial inequities embedded in the U.S. medical system. In Skloot’s afterword, she noted that it was not illegal for doctors to take Henrietta’s cells without her knowledge in 1951, nor would it have been illegal when the book was published in 2009. She discussed how, while hundreds of millions of tissue samples are being stored in the U.S., there is no case law that fully clarifies whether an individual has a right to control their own tissue once it is removed from their body. While it’s true that this absence of individual rights resulted in major medical breakthroughs, the Lacks family didn’t find out how Henrietta’s cells were used until decades later and never received any compensation from the entities who profited from the use of her cells. Skloot included a quote from Deborah Lacks which summed up the family’s frustration well, stating, “... I have always thought it was strange, if our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctors? Don’t make no sense. People got rich off my mother without us even knowin about them takin her cells, now we don’t get a dime.”

The Lacks family is certainly not the only family to have ever been taken advantage of by the U.S. medical system for research purposes. There is an extensive history of exploitation – particularly of people of color – which is justified by the need for continual advancements in medicine. From the 1840s experiments performed by Dr. Marion Sims (also known as the “Father of Gynecology”) on enslaved Black women to the 1932 Tuskegee experiments which purposefully denied syphilis treatment to Black men, subjecting BIPOC individuals to medical violence for the purposes of study is not a new phenomenon. It’s no surprise that marginalized communities, especially Black communities, have a deep mistrust of the U.S. medical system. I think about the vaccine skepticism among communities of color during the COVID-19 pandemic and, with these repeated acts of medical violence in mind, I find myself having much more empathy for those who may have been afraid to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Johns Hopkins, the medical establishment which first took and cultured Henrietta’s cells, initially tried to better understand how her cells worked by studying her children – and it’s important to note that this was done without the family’s awareness of the researchers’ intent. Today, Johns Hopkins hosts a symposium every year in honor of Henrietta Lacks and celebrates the advancements made possible with her cells. While members of the Lacks family have been present, and she has posthumously been thanked, no additional recompense has been provided to the Lacks. In fact, it ended up being the Henrietta Lacks Foundation created by Skloot which provided money to Henrietta’s immediate family members, in the form of grant funds. As of this spring – more than 70 years after Henrietta’s death – the attorneys representing Lacks’ estate shared that the family has received no financial compensation from either the pharmaceutical or biotechnology industries that have profited from the use of Henrietta’s cells. In August, there was still no update as to whether or not the lawsuit filed by the Lacks family will go to trial or be dismissed by the judge. For now, her family continues to wait, and hope, for justice.

#Henrietta Lacks #Racial Justice #Health Equity #Medical Violence #HeLa #Rebecca Skloot #Science #Social Work

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em0sket · 2 years

Text

big long horror post incoming

i worte a short horror story punctuation isnt great but whatever

insipered by tma

tw death body horror

Mr meechum:Well you got me here now what you want the full story from the top or just the incident?

documenter:Well we do what we can to try and provide a documented account of all sides of history and it gets recorded and filed in the records always best to hear everything first hand plus i'd hate for anything to slip through the cracks be twisted by the media that sort of thing of course i know its not completely 100% possible but i like to do what i can to preserve people's story from their perspective give me a second to make the official notation so tell me mr meechum what happened in the intendium labs in september 1969

Mr meechum: firstly i know people think “scientist” is an impressive title but we didnt have breakthroughs every day not in my department anyway i was an overseer in the categorising department that meant anything and everything that was handed over by the public to the labs was sorted through by us anything seemingly dangerous usually some cheap old crap glow in the dark vases and plates suspected to be radioactive which we would test and store appropriately had a couple of suspected evidence of communist invasion which was mainly scraps of paper in code or unusual bullets one time a copy of the communist manifesto never led to anything but it had to be processed just in case said the higher ups and i wasnt going to argue we used to get alot of weird looking stones people told us were moonrocks usually just hagstones or naturally occurring geodes but of course with the moon landing a couple months before, the paranoia of bored housewives and a couple of doped up drifters made for a drastic influx of “moonrocks” or apparent proof of alien life in my lab over the last couple of months. pretty much all of them were hoaxes or deluded fantasies but there was one that made me move to my desk job .

one of the guys brought it in scott was his name scott hawthorne but we all called him sniffer because on his first week he found three different radioactive objects without the geiger counter apparently to him they all had a distinct smell to them whatever that meant but he was right about 8/10 times so when he brought in this unassuming rock and made a big fuss over it we all joked that sniffer had gone nose blind, but he was captivated by this thing absolutely entranced he wouldn't let go of it and could tell when someone had touched it which he was right about but we could never figure out how he knew he had made it his personal project using his breaks to study it he weighed and measured and examined it was about the size of a football with a light sandy grey exterior but perfectly spherical like it had been specifically carved to look that way we all thought it was just a chisled rock he was obsessing over for some reason ,thought he would get bored of it myself included. Ive never regretted my ignorance more because after the first week everyone in the lab been… feeling itchy ,i guess, sort of uncomfortable. There was an underlying feeling of unrest people couldnt focus it was always something, the room was too quiet, too hot, too prickly something in the air just made the guys skin crawl a sort of squirming unease began to creep under my coworkers very flesh like something was undulating under their tissue poking around burrowing. This of course whilst mildly unnerving, was more of a health concern than anything if something in the lab was making people sick it was my duty as their manager to write to head office. Which sent me to the medical team so they came around and did their checks and everyone was fine ,physically the lab was monitored and swabbed everything was normal apart from scott, he was the worst out of everyone.

He had what seemed to be a rash on the back of his neck,they checked it and it seemed to be just that they passed it off as bad laundry detergent and went on with their day and i didnt want to be causing ruckus and being pedantic so i went about my work. scott however became more and more irritated kept scratching himself adjusting his tie and began to get agitated when any coworkers tried to chat with him instinctively reaching for this rock every time they did .i got sick of his attitude one day so i suggested he take the day off and honest to god he nearly swung at me before stopping himself and then he refused to leave eventually i had to get security in who then had to physically drag him out of the workspace along with the usual cursing he started literally spitting and hissing basically frothing at the mouth other than the paperwork this was going to require i clearly needed to have a look at that rock he was studying, test it for anything addictive or harmful something we missed. the guys in the lab obviously knew that now scott was gone someone was going to have to investigate the stone and if i didnt do it someone else would, probably with less caution, care and sense

so at lunch break i made it an event since everyone was so keen to know what was up with it. so i looked over scotts notes;his examinations of the mineral i- it didnt make any sense it was quite literally impossible it measured about 60cm across in all directions give or take a few mm and get this completely weightless completely! i checked myself first i covered it in a fire blanket with my coworkers watching because if this thing had powered meth that sniffer had been well sniffing on it or god knows what else i didnt want to risk touching it. Then i put it on a scale but it was right it was hardly a fraction of a gram but the weight of it felt like a bowling ball i checked on different scales multiple times it all came out the same it wasnt physically possible so i swabbed it and ran the tests with 20 eyes watching my every movement it came out to nothing. regular old granite. Im normally pretty level headed but for some reason this enraged me this stupid all encompassing pebble had for some reason turned a good drinking buddy into a neurotic mess and was eating away at his life and sanity slowly consuming his mind and the weeks of irritation and frustration at the unrest of my skin after this inane piece of granite entered my life and workspace I dont know what came over me exactly but i had to get rid of it. it just had to go. I struck it on the tiled floor and it cracked. one crack. down the centre. about a fingers width apart and everyone was waiting for my next move so i ducttaped my lab coat and two pairs of vinyl gloves closed around the wrist completely sealed just in case.

i looked over at the spot it fell when a keen and sure sense of dread awoke within me id never been so deeply instinctualy fearful like that before some primal part of my brain screaming bloody murder that i needed to get out now the same as how i imagine a fish feels when it sinks its jaw into the hook. But i mean what else was i going to do let it continue ruining lives? So i swallowed my fear and strode over all eyes on me the impossible hunk of earth at my fee.t i wedged one finger in between the ridges of its crack held the base of the infernal sphere and pried it open. the rock was spongy and sulphur yellow with a smell of utter decay a groan came from my audience of staff and my hands sank through the geode at first contact it had the look of a rotted mattress and the feel of raw sausages my hand shot back as i processed the texture in my mind and gazed at the honey combed innards that looked like something had buried through it like the remains of a parasite that had dug its way through the structure of the rock infinite amounts making little homes for itself repeatedly squirming and writhing its way through something stronger than itself im glad i moved my hand when i did because it started to pulse looking like it was ejecting something from itself sort of like a cat hacking up a furball

all those tiny divots and passage ways convusled and shuddered out long thin flailing tendrils it looked like it had coated itself with a blue mucus possibly a toxin im not sure but they didnt stop i never saw the end of them it just kept reeling out of its honeycomb shell endless worming tubes of muscle they flopped onto the white tiled floor leaving trails of foul smelling hot ooze behind it and started hunting for something to attatch itself to. moving at an alarming pace each tentacle flattening itself onto the ground as wide as it could possibly to feel what was in the area .what it could devour. i dont think it had any eyes just meteres and meteres of viscous curling feelers everyone took a step back apart from one of the lab guys poor harry poor dear sweet stupid harry had his shoelaces untied we used to laugh at him for it you know said it wouldnt hurt him to give it a go and tie the damn things once in a while but as he lurched backwards the vile things clamped onto them and wouldnt let go by the time he realised they had gotten over his socks and onto his bare legs. digging.

There was a moment of pure panic and stillness when we all watched. until he started screaming, then we burst into action ,we started looking for something to help maybe a fire extinguisher or another gas that would subdue it better yet kill it but the fool tried to crush it harry fell to his knees onto his shins in an effort to beat the thing into a pulp which in turn let the creature find his knees and climb its way up his torso onto his face where it promptly found the eye and started to burrow. chewing through the poor sod boring a new home in his skull and ill never forget the god awful sound , like meat ripping wet and visceral and it left a trail of purple on his face as the blood from his retinas mixed with the things mucus then when his screaming stopped we all watched the tentacles crawl out of his mouth having bored through most of the face hitting the ground with a meaty slap but no one moved most were just as far away as they could get from the carnivorous eels mostly climbing on cabinets in an effort to not touch the ground i when the things again started flattening themselves to search once again this time with a larger diameter than before presumably because of it last meal

god knows what i did was cowardly i was a person of interest for 10 years for christs sake i had to get out of it by to claiming “mental unrest” but i saw the broom cupboard and hid i had the key so i hid i didnt know what else to do i mean they dont train you for this it was just sheer panic fight or flight but i dont forget those screams i dont forget the ripping of flesh i dont forget the people i once knew and their hollowed out skull i dont forget the smell of blood and sulfur that plays back on my senses even now thats what people dont get ive been stuck on that day for the last 53 yearsit got on the sunday times front page after that i got spat at in the street and jeered at on the way to court then thats it shows over everyone goes home and i have to live with it i cant go to support groups because people have heard of me the broken families i caused the psych evals every year did you know henrys daughter at the age of three asked me at the funeral why i killed her daddy? it’s taken me years to be able to shift myself into a semi normal life but yeah i suppose thats it the whole bloody story

documenter: thank you that was... fufilling -exits

#short story #horror #sketspeaks

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