#i mean i had issues with my appearance before lupus

[quill-pen]

*wears green leggings to church today for St. Patty's*

*gets look in bathroom mirror of how chicken-legged I look*

*reminded of how knobby my knees look when I sit down*

*sighs* Yep. Can't wear leggings without a long skirt anymore.

[officialleehadan]

A Bucket of Bull Hearts

Hello darlings! I hope your Tuesday is going well so far. Mine's been very quiet, but that's no bother these days.

Today's prompt was brought to you by Arcanist Lupus! Darling, you're such a love, and I love seeing your comments!

Prompt: a continuation of Accidental Oops, with this song as inspiration!

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“So, uh, who is this?”

Keith’s sister, Ness, was not sure what to make of the demon who was currently making faces at her daughter and had conjured half a dozen balls of colored fire to dance around the room. Lyra was, of course, delighted by her new friend and seemed not bothered at all by Akeila’s demonic nature.

All in all, it was a mercy that Ness knew about Keith’s monster-hunting, or he would have even more explanations to give her. As it was, the explanations he already owed her were bad enough.

“She says we can call her Akeila,” he told Ness. They were in the kitchen, having a hurried, whispered conversation. Lyra’s kidnapping, and subsequent retrieval, had been quick enough that Ness wasn’t panicking, much, and she had always been a cool one to begin with. Lyra was home and safe, and had a spectacularlydangerous babysitter for the moment. Akeila had apparently surprised herself by discovering that she actually liked children, and lyra in specific. Keith was tentatively calling it a victory. “The summoner who summoned her was planning to sacrifice Lyra, but I killed him, and that apparently was enough to complete the summoning.”

“And now what? You have a demon?”

“I think technically she has a human,” Keith said with a little wince. He wasn’t sure exactly how that was going to work, but Akeila seemed pleased, so he wasn’t questioning that, either. “I didn’t cast the summoning, so she’s not exactly bound to me, but I guess she decided to keep me?”

“He was brave,” Akeila said, her hair now bound up with glittery clips that matched the ones in Lyra’s hair. Akeila’s, however, seemed to be skull-shaped, rather than Lyra’s butterflies. “And said I was beautiful. That’s not the usual reaction to a demon appearing in all our glory.”

“You flirted with the demon?” Ness said, equal parts incredulous and resigned. “You flirted the demon out of killing you? You know what, I’m really not surprised. She can’t be worse than Rachel was.”

“Rachel?” Akeila questioned, amused by their interchange and not at all offended by Ness’s incredulity. “Who is Rachel?”

“Ex-girlfriend. Fire caster. Very into arson,” Keith summed up his last spectacularly terrible relationship. “Met her hunting a bunch of vampires. Hooked up to bring them down. Then hooked up. Then I found out about her anger issues and she burned down my house with me inside it.”

“My kind of lady,” Akeila murmured with a seductive curl to her lips that was very distracting and entirely derailed Keith’s brain for a minute. “I see now what you meant about your taste in women, and about your reactions to danger.”

“He’s a little dumb,” Ness told Akeila, apparently inclined to bond with the demon who had decided to keep Keith. Keith would object, but Akeila seemed surprised to have a human woman look her up and down, and decide to adopt her on the spot. “But he’s cute.”

“He is,” Akeila agreed, still smiling. The gold sheen on her dark skin would be easy to mistake for makeup, but Keith knew better after seeing her true form. Lyra ran up to her and Akeila raised a brow at her until the child raised her arms, begging to be picked up. She hesitated, and then lifted Lyra into her arms with a sideways glance at Ness to see how she took a demon holding her daughter. “Hello, child. Brave as brass, aren’t you?”

“mama calls me her little lion,” Lyra told her brightly. “You’re nice. I like you.”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever been called ‘nice’ by a child,” Akeila chuckled, but when Ness only smiled, she propped Lyra comfortably on her hip. “Although I suspect the bravery might be a family trait. Are you alllike this?”

“We learned it from our mother,” Ness said, her bright tone a match for her daughters as she decided that having a demon in her house, holding her daughter, was acceptable. She opened the refrigerator and froze, eyes wide. “Keith. Please tell me these hearts didn’t come out of humans.”

“They’re bull hearts,” Keith hurried to assure her. He probably should have warned her about Akeila’s unusual needs. A bucket of hearts did make for a somewhat startling sight. “For Akeila.”

“You eat hearts?” Lyra asked Akeila, her expression that of a little princess who thought someone was being very weird indeed. “Icky!”

“They’re rather less troublesome than getting human ones,” Akeila said with a smile that showed her perfect, pointed teeth. Lyra wrinkled up her nose at the thought, thankfully too young to really understand what Akeila meant by that. Keith did understand, and was torn between being amused and being glad that Lyra didn’t know what Akeila meant. “But don’t worry, little one. I’ll keep mt hearts well away from you.”

“I still think they’re icky,” Lyra agreed, and wrapped her arms around Akeila’s neck for a hug before turning pleading eyes on her. “You’re staying, right? Uncle Keith likes you.”

“I think I might like him as well,” Akeila said and set the girl on the counter beside Keith. “Who knows. Perhaps I might like to have a little house of humans to mind. If your mother isn’t bothered, I mean.”

It wasn’t like a demon to ask permission, and then, demons usually weren’t given a choice when they were dealing with humans. Summoning spells always had control spells woven in to make sure the demon didn’t immediately kill their summoner. Perhaps things were different when the demon had a choice in the matter.

Who would have thought that consent would matter to a being created from pure evil? Not Keith.

Akeila was looking somewhat stunned, so maybe the ‘pure evil’ part was an exaggeration.

“If Akeila wants to stay, I’m sure we can find a place in the family,” Ness said with a kiss to her daughter’s forehead. “So Akeila, besides bull hearts, what is your favorite food?”

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A Demon’s Heart:

Keith summoned a demon by accident. Now he, and she, have to figure out what to do about it.

Accidental Oops

A Bucket of Bull Hearts

+++

[docmary]

Vaccine hesitancy, molecular mimicry, and blood clots (oh my!)

There were many mixed messages in the world of coronavirus last week. Just as it appears that Michigan is the lead state in the fourth wave of the virus, the US is about to hit a “vaccine wall” as demand drops for vaccinations even though the supply is greatly improved. In the first three months of the rollout for the Pfizer, Moderna, and the Johnson & Johnson/Jantzen (J&J) vaccines, getting shots into arms of the most vulnerable has required a full court press from public health departments and the healthcare establishment, as well as persistence on the part of those trying to wrangle an appointment. The results from state to state have been uneven.

Figure 1

So far 14 states have administered fewer than 75% of the doses distributed to them with Alabama having the lowest vaccination rate per capita. Twenty states have administered more than 80% of the doses distributed to them with the most vaccinations per capita in New Hampshire.[1]

Vaccine Hesitancy:

The good news for those who want to get vaccinated is that it is a whole lot easier to get an appointment now. That said, the goal of herd immunity is a long way off and with demand dropping for jabs, we may not get there. Vaccine hesitancy is an important reason for declining demand and that is a shifting picture.

In a study that was put out by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) in December, 52% of Black Americans said they would “wait and see” before signing up for the vaccine while only 20% said they wanted the shot as soon as possible. The share of Black people who were skeptical of the vaccines was higher than for White respondents (36%) and Latinx (43%).[2]

By March of this year, 55% of Black respondents to another KFF survey said they had been vaccinated or wanted the vaccine as soon as possible. Twenty-four percent were still holding back. Blacks have been one of the hardest hit demographics of COVID-19 and that has, no doubt, played a part in changing minds. Another possible reason for the turnaround in willingness to get vaccinated is because there has been a concerted outreach effort tapping trusted sources such as Barack Obama, sports stars, and other influencers such as Black ministers to address vaccine hesitancy among Black people.

The Urban Institute’s September 2020 Coronavirus Tracking Survey, a nationally representative survey of adults ages 18-64, asked people whether in the last 12 months they had ever felt a doctor, other health care provider, or their staff judged them unfairly or discriminated against them based on their race/ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, a disability, or a health condition and about the consequences of these experiences. This survey indicated that perceptions of discrimination and unfair judgement while seeking health care were higher among Black adults than among Hispanic and White adults in the previous 12 months (September 2019-September 2020).[3]

Figure 2

A “food desert” is described as an urban area that does not have a grocery store within one mile or a rural area that does not have one within ten miles. There is also a “pharmacy desert” that generally occurs in primarily Black neighborhoods in urban areas as well as in rural areas. People of color are less likely to have a family primary care provider and so access to information about the individual’s risks and benefits of getting vaccinated from a trusted source, much less getting an appointment for the vaccine itself, is often more challenging than it is for White people. My guess is that these experiences and the barriers to appropriate care contributed to the initial skepticism among people of color generally and Black people specifically in the initial rollout phase.

FIGURE 3

Meanwhile, Republicans and Evangelical Christians were the most likely groups to say they will not get vaccinated, according to the KFF survey.[4] I do not have an explanation for that. I also don’t know how wearing masks got politicized last year. If anyone has an explanation that doesn’t involve a gang of Democratic, cannibal pedophiles, I am really interested in hearing it.

Molecular mimicry and autoimmune disease:

There are science-based reasons that some are reluctant to get vaccinated. An issue that has been little discussed publicly is molecular mimicry. The theory is that some part of the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 and is replicated in our cells, is similar enough to our own tissues that the immune system starts attacking our own cells thinking that those cells are the virus. Thus, the vaccine could trigger an autoimmune disease like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, or other autoimmune condition.

In one study looking for similar protein sequences between the SARS-CoV-2 virus with protein sequences in humans and other mammals, as well as other human coronaviruses, the number of shared protein sequences at two particular sites was quite high for humans, rats, and mice but miniscule or not at all with other human coronaviruses, cats, dogs, rabbits, chimpanzees, gorillas, or macaques.[5] Sadly, the investigators did not include bats, which I think of as flying rats, but that’s just me. It has been hypothesized that the original source of COVID-19 was from bats. Could the virus have molecular mimicry with bats? If so, what does that mean for the species?

These authors believe that much of the damage seen in the “cytokine storm” that causes the worst damage in COVID-19 may, in fact, be due to this molecular mimicry between the virus and, for example, lung tissue. It should also be noted that molecular mimicry from the whole SARS-CoV-2 virus is much more likely than it is from a small part of the virus (the spike protein). If the vaccine can trigger an autoimmune disease, so can the whole virus.

The presence and level of autoantibodies (AAbs) that attack our own cells, frequently detected in patients with COVID-19, are significantly associated with hospitalization and more severe prognosis. Clinically, these patients are more likely to have respiratory distress, acute cardiac injury, acute kidney injury, multi-organ dysfunction with such common complications as coagulopathy and thrombocytopathy (put a pin in this one as it is also at play with blood clots). [6]

Blood Clots and the J&J and AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccines:

Last week the J&J vaccine rollout was put on pause by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) because six women developed unusual blood clots after receiving this vaccination. This was six out of seven million shots given. Some saw this as an over-reaction by the FDA that would likely lead to more vaccine hesitancy. However, these blood clots are different from clots that occur from “the usual suspects” like oral contraceptives and smoking.

Figure 4

A normal number of platelets is between 150,000-450,000 per microliter of blood (there are 1,000 microliters in one milliliter). If you have less than 150,000 platelets per microliter, you have a deficiency called thrombocytopenia. In the clots associated with the viral vector vaccines (J&J in the US and AZ in Europe), the platelets tend to stick together in the veins of the brain, which causes a blockage known as a cerebral venous system thromboembolism (CVST). This creates back pressure of blood in the brain itself, causing damage in the same way a hemorrhagic stroke would. [7]

“Normal” clots are usually treated with a blood thinner called heparin. With vaccine-induced prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia (VIPIT), there is a deficiency of platelets and so that treatment would only make things worse. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the FDA are getting the word out to doctors not to use heparin, they are also looking for ways of figuring out which people are more at risk for this extremely rare complication. Putting the vaccine on pause was clearly the ethical thing to do and this kind of transparency gives me greater confidence in the vaccine rollout.

As is the case with molecular mimicry, the danger of VIPIT happening if a person gets COVID-19 is much higher than it is from either the J&J or the AZ vaccine.

“…If the mechanism is the same, one can speculate that the high occurrence in COVID-19 vs. vaccination is because the whole virus is more thrombogenic [likely to cause clots] than the spike protein alone.” Paolo Madeddu, professor of experimental medicine at the University of Bristol[8]

Symptoms associated with VIPIT include headache, tiny red spots under the skin, blurred vision, fainting or loss of consciousness, impaired movement in parts of the body, or coma. With either of these vaccines these blood clots, so far, only occurs 4-20 days after vaccination. Scientists believe that symptoms before or after that window are likely due to another cause.

It is important to note that COVID-19 itself has been reported to lead to thrombocytopenia (low blood platelets) in up to 41% of positive patients, with the figure going up to 95% of those with severe disease.[9]

Cause for cautious optimism:

Two separate studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine on April 9 indicated that in the case of the AZ vaccine, used in Europe, VIPIT was due to rogue antibodies against platelet factor 4 (PF4). This complication is similar to heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) and is diagnosed and treated the same way. It can be diagnosed with a lab test called ELISA that is pre-treated with PF4. If there is a big immune response, that means the patient has VIPIT. To be clear, there are lots of things that can cause blood clots and health professionals want to know what the cause is because the appropriate treatment is dependent on what is causing the problem. VIPIT from the AZ vaccine is treated with the administration of intravenous immunoglobins (IVG) and anti-coagulants. The J&J vaccine was not used in either of these studies and so we do not yet know if the same is true for that vaccine, but both are the same type of (viral vector) vaccine and both use an adenovirus as the viral vector.[10]

If we can get the one-and-done J&J vaccine back in use safely, that would be especially helpful for vaccinating unsheltered people. It would also be much easier to use in rural areas because J&J can be stored in a regular refrigerator unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that must be kept frozen.

My take:

For those who choose not to get vaccinated, for whatever reason, hoping to ride the coronavirus out, you should know that even without a vaccine, the SARS epidemic that hit Asia in 2002 did eventually go away, or, more likely, mutated to a less lethal virus. It took four years, but it can happen. However, that is not what always happens. Case in point, smallpox, which was around since at least the fourth century until it was declared eradicated by the World Health Organization in 1980. I don’t think I know anyone who has had smallpox and I may not know anyone who knows anyone who has had smallpox. In that case, the vaccine worked as intended.

Maybe you may feel like you are strong and healthy and even if you got COVID-19, you are unlikely to get significantly sick. Consider the possibility that you could be asymptomatic but still spread the disease. There are just no options that are completely risk free. Choose wisely.

[1]Romeo, A. (4/15/2021). America is about to hit a “vaccine wall” as demand drops—with or without Johnson & Johnson, Yahoo News. [2]Bunn, C. (4/12/2021). Vaccine hesitancy among Black Americans has turned a corner. Here’s why.”, NBC News. [3]Gonzalez, D., Skopor, L., McDaniel, M., Kenney, G.M. (4/2021). Perceptions of discrimination and unfair judgement while seeking health care, findings from the September 11-28 Coronavirus Tracking Survey, Urban Institute Health Policy Center. Retrieved from: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/103953/perceptions-of-discrimination-and-unfair-judgment-while-seeking-health-care_0.pdf [4] Hamel, L., Lopez, L., Kearney, A., Brodie, M.(3/30/2021) KFF COVID-19 monitor: March 2021. Retrieved from: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-march-2021/ [5]Kanduc, D., Shoenfeld, Y. (9/18/2020). Molecular mimicry between SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein and mammalian proteomes: implications for the vaccine, Immunol. Res. doi: 10.1007/s12026-020-09152-6 [6]Macela, A, Kubelkovak, K. (3/22/2021). Why does SARS-Co-V-2 infection induce autoantibody production? Pathogens, 10(3). doi: 10.3390/pathogens10030380 [7]Taylor, A. (4/16/2021). Blood clot risks: comparing AstraZenica vaccine and the contraceptive pill, The Conversation. Retrieved from: https://theconversation.com/blood-clot-risks-comparing-the-astrazeneca-vaccine-and-the-contraceptive-pill-158652 [8]Russell, P. (4/15/2021). Vaccines carry far lower risk for rare blood clots than COVID, study shows, Medscape News UK [9] Op cit Taylor, A. (4/9/2021). [10] Grenacher, A., et. al. (4/9/2021). Thrombocytic thrombocytopenia after ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccination, NEJM. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2104840Schulz,NH, et. al. (4/9/2021). Thrombocytic thrombocytopenia after ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccination, NEJM. doi: 10/1056/NEJMoa2104882

[ketopian]

Putting Your Money Where Your Research Is

So my wife and I are starting a business selling all the Ketogenic Diet related things that we wish there was already a website for. We've been eating keto for a couple of years now and it has had a huge impact on our health and our lives. My wife has lost a huge amount of body fat and overcome multiple metabolic issues and I've been able to stop taking immunosuppressants for Crohn's Disease and am now completely drug free. We both have hugely increased energy levels. There are loads of great Keto and Low Carb blogs in the world, so I thought long and hard about writing yet another one, but I thought that a) it might help me to get more clarity on certain issues b) give me reason to experiment a bit more with my meals, as I've gotten a bit lazy of late and everyone loves a recipe, and c) force me to consolidate all I have learned from reading various bits of scientific literature in relation to nutrition, which is something I do a lot given my past as a scientist, engineer and science teacher. While my background isn't medicine, I have spent the last few years educating myself on biochemistry. This was originally to help my wife with various issues (many of which a plan to go into at a later date), but I quickly discovered that there was a lot more I could learn.   

I, like most scientifically minded or "sceptical" (there's a word that's been seriously corrupted by the internet) people, thought I knew all there was to know about nutrition: a calorie is a calorie, an energy deficit is all you need to lose weight, and no, you aren't fat because of your hormones. I went at least a little further than most; I understood how digestion worked and that starches ended up as glucose in the body, a message some medical professionals still seem to have trouble with. Nonetheless, it came as a shock to me when all this stuff didn't seem to work for my wife. I was seeing how little he was eating, how hungry she was getting and how difficult it was for her to shift those fat stores. Her pregnancy was a major turning point. PCOS had been mooted before but it was never confirmed until a scan ended up with the radiographer saying “Your ovaries look a little polycystic to me”. This was followed a number of weeks later by a diagnosis of Gestational Diabetes, accompanied by the standard advice – eat regular meals (six per day plus snacks) and make sure you have loads of carbohydrate at each – accompanied by the offer of medication. Well, we were both determined that that wasn’t going to happen, so I set about researching, which is what I do best (well, one of two things, but we’ll come to the other much later). The obstetricians could not believe her blood sugar readings – they were better than most non-diabetics. One of them even asked to see the glycometer, as such low readings could not be possible. How did we do it? By ignoring all the advice we were given, reducing carbohydrates to a very low level (although not keto levels at that point) and using a small number of carefully researched supplements. We didn’t mention the supplements to any medical professional; we had enough patronising advice from them, but it was following the science that allowed my wife to avoid medication and to produce a daughter who was born incredibly healthy and with a great start in life.

I don’t want to criticise the medical community too much, most of them are only trying their best, but there is a certain amount of arrogance which tends to come with being a doctor, which often is not concomitant with their intelligence or knowledge. Just as in any other field of endeavour, ability as a medical practitioner is on a bell curve. In other words, there are a few who are fantastic at their jobs, a few who are truly awful, and most are pretty much middling in ability. I’ve taught students who became doctors, and if I were ever given an appointment with them, I’d run a mile! Most doctors follow the guidelines, and it’s a lottery as to whether you get to see the occasional few who do enough research in the right areas to go beyond that. If we educate ourselves to a high enough level, we may be able to help our doctors to help themselves and then eventually to help everyone else.

So back to the story. So this whole pregnancy episode got me really intrigued. Was everything I knew actually complete bullshit? I had spent around close to 300 hours during Hayley’s pregnancy reading papers and getting familiar with the biochemistry and biology of nutrition, and countless more hours not sleeping but thinking about what I had read. It completely changed my attitude to my own knowledge. It had also deeply concerned me. How could everyone have been so wrong on this for so long? Well, it turns out that they absolutely could be, and the reasons are complex and too long for now (stay tuned for a post on this precise subject), but there was something else that intrigued me.

I have Crohn’s Disease. For those of you who don’t know, Crohn’s Disease is an autoimmune disease of the gastrointestinal tract. What this means is it causes inflammation, ulceration and pain, anywhere from the mouth to the anus. It is essentially when your own immune system decides that your gut is a foreign object and therefore needs destruction. My own Crohn’s was mainly confined to the colon, although I also got very large and painful mouth ulcers. Crohn’s is usually treated with steroids, anti-inflammatory drugs, immunosuppressants, which damp down the immune system, and a more recent sort of therapy called biologic therapy. I had been a biologic many years ago, but I was fairly lucky in that I was OK on just anti-inflammatories and immunosuppressants, however the immunosuppressants were not pleasant. I got every illness going. If I got a cold, I had it bad for two weeks, including having to spend a day or two in bed. I had got to the end of my tether; there had to be another way.

Enter ketone bodies. So if you know anything about ketogenic diets you probably know that when you restrict carbohydrates enough that your body starts to use fat to create substances called ketone bodies, the most important of which for human metabolism is a chemical called Beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB). Well, it turns out BHB has a strong anti-inflammatory effect. “Aha,” I thought to myself,” This might be worth a go”. It was. I had tried to come off medication several times previously, under medical supervision, of course. Always, within about six weeks, I would have a serious and painful relapse. Not this time. I bit the bullet, stopped my medication (this time without telling any medical professionals) stopped the carbs and waited, fully expecting the usual relapse. It’s now been two years drug free and I have never felt better. I would go as far as to say I have no symptoms of Crohn’s. While I would hesitate to say all Crohn’s sufferers should do this, especially the way I did it, it might be worth a try if you’ve had enough of the side effects of your drugs, or if you can’t get any relief and just want an extra bit of help. With medical supervision, of course. It might also be worth a try if you have any other autoimmune disorder, such as ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, lupus and maybe even multiple sclerosis. Please don’t take this as medical advice but try to educate yourself and your medical practitioners as much as possible on this subject. If you want any help in this endeavour please let me know.

Well, this has been a long and rambling story, but we’re almost up to date. Since my discoveries I have helped a number of friends and family members send their type 2 diabetes or prediabetes into remission, lose weight and become healthier, both physically and mentally. My wife is slimmer, healthier and feels generally better. I didn’t even realise I had fat to lose but the recent appearance of my abdominal muscles seems to confirm that I actually had a fair bit to get rid of. All by getting rid of refined sugar, starchy carbs and the vast majority of processed foods, and getting BHB levels up. Do I think that everyone should be doing keto? Absolutely not. Everyone’s biology is unique – some people will respond fantastically to a ketogenic diet, some people will get less than nothing from it. But for those for whom it works it is life changing. Hopefully via the website, this blog and the planned videos we will be able to help more people get what they need out of this incredibly powerful dietary intervention. 

TL;DR: For lots of people Ketogenic Diets are awesome. Welcome to Ketopian.

[cannabisrefugee-esq]

More Evidence of Autoimmunity? Surgery "Complications" and Delayed Healing from Medicalized Trauma

This is mommy vlogger Bonnie Hoellein.  I have written about this woman before after both she and her sister were constantly vlogging about crapping themselves in public and I wondered aloud if one or both of them suffer from autoimmune conditions, specifically inflammatory bowel disease including ulcerative colitis or the hideous, disabling disease I suffer from, Crohn’s disease.

In the last year or so, Bonnie has had at least 2 rounds of cosmetic surgeries to correct various things she didn’t like about her body.   Both times, she suffered horrific complications from the surgery including delayed healing, infections, and what her husband has described as being at “death’s door.”  Based on my research this woman’s surgical complications and delayed healing from medicalized trauma is more evidence that she probably has an undiagnosed (or even a diagnosed yet publicly undisclosed) autoimmune condition.

Whether or not she knows she is ill, this woman — like a lot of women surely — keeps putting her health and life in danger by undergoing elective surgeries.  The medical research indicates that autoimmune patients do indeed suffer from delayed and complicated wound healing:

Patients suffering from immune diseases have significantly larger wounds and their time to heal is much more prolonged compared to the general population.  Leg ulcerations have been monitored in several autoimmune diseases, especially in those linked to connective tissue pathologies. The highest rates of ulceration are recorded for rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus. However, ulcerations were also seen in primary antiphospholipid syndrome and other autoimmune diseases.

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis are predisposed to develop chronic leg ulcers.  Foot ulcerations in rheumatoid arthritis are frequently recurrent, and the significantly extended time needed for them to heal, further, increases the risk of infections.  The aetiology of the ulcers was found to be multifactorial with the most common factors being venous insufficiency, trauma or pressure, arterial insufficiency, and vasculitis.

Bold mine, and I would underscore that trauma surely must include medicalized trauma, or that which is caused by medical treatment including diagnostic and surgical procedures.  Autoimmune patients, then, must seriously consider whether they are socially, financially, mentally, physically and otherwise supported as they contemplate elective, medically indicated or even emergent surgery that is likely to seriously compromise their health, and where doctors and others may be blindsided by the cascade of complications that might follow surgical intervention and medicalized trauma on autoimmune patients.  Since most autoimmune patients are women and not men, women and doctors who treat women need to be vigilant about this and suspect autoimmunity where female patients experience so-called “complications” or otherwise fail to properly heal.

The really scary part, of course, is that many autoimmune women don’t know they are suffering from autoimmune disease until very late in the game if they are ever properly diagnosed at all.  In the case of delayed healing from trauma, it is likely that many autoimmune women won’t even suspect they are at increased risk of serious complications until after those complications have already happened.  Like the mommy vlogger above, they will probably think that their preexisting conditions of incontinence, joint pain, rashes and the like are insignificant and that their surgical complications are a one-off; they will therefore believe the assurances of their surgeons and others who promise them that their experience is not the norm and probably will not be repeated.

Believing they are “normal” and healthy, and because they don’t identify as chronically ill even though they are, women risk going under the knife again and again and again, being surprised each time at the complications they experience and wondering why, again and again and again, they are failing to heal.  But it’s not just elective surgeries that are dangerous and put autoimmune women at serious risk.  Some undiagnosed autoimmune patients are even misdiagnosed and subjected to what turn out to have been medically unnecessary surgeries to cure conditions they don’t even have.  Others are subjected to exploratory surgeries to find out just what in the hell is wrong with them after months or years of confounding and untreatable disease; in both cases, these interventions would only end up making them worse, or end up killing them because they are autoimmune and therefore unable to properly heal.

Even scarier, perhaps, is that medicalized trauma including surgical intervention is routinely visited on known, diagnosed autoimmune patients when inadequate and dangerous Big Pharma solutions fail to heal them.  For example, Crohn’s disease patients are routinely subjected to abdominal surgeries including bowel resections and removal and ostomies when Western medicine is unable to control their inflammation.  “Crohnies” are also prone to experiencing either fistulas or bowel obstructions or both as the natural progression of their disease and bowel obstructions especially are life threatening and require emergent surgical correction.  But once you start operating on autoimmune patients, and begin the cascade of complications that come from visiting trauma on them specifically, it is likely to start a dangerous progression of cascading interventions that is unstoppable.   And autoimmune patients will still experience what all patients experience the more frequently they are subjected to invasive medical care: increased chances of dangerous medical mistakes, otherwise known as medical malpractice.

In fact, it appears that a standard of care for autoimmune patients that allows or requires surgery means that autoimmune patients will be heavily traumatized (read: medically abused) until they die from it.  A standard of care that was sane and expected to actually help autoimmune patients — rather than one that will predictably torture and kill them — would seem to be one that avoided medicalized trauma including surgery and the need for surgery at all costs.  For patients suffering from Crohn’s disease, that would seem to require both the liberal use of powerful anti-inflammatories* and refraining from subjecting Crohn’s patients to medicalized trauma they will inevitably fail to heal from including colonoscopies, PICC lines, and the like.  Immunity decimating pharmaceuticals like biologics and chemotherapy would be right out as they are known to cause opportunistic infections and additional iatrogenic injury and disease, which only necessitate more interventions and more dangerous medicalized trauma.

Considering the evidence of impaired healing in autoimmune patients, women who are considering surgery for any reason should simultaneously also consider whether they too might be suffering from undiagnosed, underlying autoimmune disease before they do something they regret.   Firstly, they should consider whether the complaints for which they are seeking surgical intervention in the first place are likely being caused by autoimmune disease like gastrointestinal issues, joint pain, allergies or inflammation.  If so, surgery might not be the best option for long term relief.  Secondly, if a woman is already suffering from allergies or inflammatory processes unrelated to the condition for which she is a surgical candidate, that allergic and/or inflammatory response is a sign of autoimmune disease and her risk of serious complications from any surgery may be higher than average and worse than anyone expects.

And finally, it certainly seems as if diagnosed autoimmune patients would do well to avoid all physical trauma including medicalized trauma to the extent they are able, because they will likely to be unable to properly heal from it and we know this.  This is what the research indicates, although no one says it directly, do they.   Funny that.

*One of incredibly few known powerful anti-inflammatories is, of course, marijuana, and its side effects, to the extent they exist at all, are decidedly non-traumatic or of the type that would cause unhealing wounds in compromised autoimmune patients: the main side effect of marijuana is “feelings of euphoria.”  Euphoria.

Comments open.

[jenroses]

So, I’m on a new med. It was FDA approved in AUGUST of this year, and insurance doesn’t cover it yet. It retails for $5000. They’re giving to me free, in what I call “open beta” and my husband says, “They’re doing it for the exposure!” Which, given how fast-tracked many drugs are these days for FDA approval, is pretty much exactly the case.

A friend said, “I just don’t like my friends being medical guinea pigs.”

My response? “Someone’s gotta.”

Medical meandering behind the cut.

I’m not normally an early adopter. It took me until 2014 to move from an old style cell phone that I usually didn’t bother putting minutes on, to an actual smartphone. I tend to buy my phones 2 years out of date, and my computers anywhere from 6 months out of date to 8 years out of date, depending on who they’re for. (The 7 year old gets an 8 year old WIndows 7 refurb desktop that I can stuff my old RAM and hard drives into. I get a reasonably new laptop with a good graphics card, but at least 6-12 months off the current “better”.)

But my kid was diagnosed with a rare chromosome condition at the age of 7 weeks and we were told that the chance of dying in 2 years was 70% and that there were no treatments, and that she wouldn’t develop language. And she’s 14 and has thousands of words and we experimented for YEARS with supplements to get there in ways that would let us avoid things like antipsychotics and constant doses of a variety of other drugs with serious side effects... and it worked. She doesn’t get sick often, she doesn’t get seizures, she has no kidney issues, she has language, she sleeps at night without powerful sedatives, and maybe we’ll need more meds for her at some point but the experiments were done VERY carefully, and always with an eye to her best interest and well being. Her fucking life was at stake. Her ability to interact with the world on her terms was at stake. OF COURSE we experimented. 

And at 42, I was diagnosed with EDS, after already having fibro, and 7 years later I have rheumatoid arthritis of a variety that comes with a really poor prognosis because my RA factor and involved joints # was so astronomically high when I was first diagnosed, just 2 months after symptoms appeared. (584 for RA factor, and 27 involved joints, probably liver involvement by my guess, and since 2017 I’ve also had a bout of drug induced lupus, so that’s fun*.)

There are a lot of drugs out there for RA. People with “mild” RA may start out on methotrexate or plaquenil and have a great result and not need to look any farther for 15-30 years. 

But my immune system is bitchy as hell. Once you go through things like steroids or NSAIDS, and methotrexate or leflunomide, and they don’t work enough, the next step is called Biologics. These are complex proteins which because of something something garbanzo, make the body dial down the inflammation by suppressing some specific part of immune function. When you quash tumor necrosis factor, for example, it pushes down inflammation all the way down the line, so it’s pretty much like hitting a china cabinet with a hammer.

Only, the china cabinet fights back if given half a chance. 

So I tried half a dozen TnF inhibitors, and they varied from eh to okay. None were completely useless, the only one which seemed pretty okay, I had to go off of for surgery. And when I went back on it? My immune system had decided that the complex protein was the Enemy, and freaked the fuck out.  So I went on Xeljanz, which inhibits a different part of the immune system, and a couple of great things happened, like 3 weeks of increasing energy and reduced pain, an ongoing reduction of pain, and some of my hair grew back.  And then the immune suppression side effects hit. Namely, I get infections ALL the fucking time. It’s like whack a mole. Deal with the bacterial infection, get a fungal infection. Deal with the fungal infection, get shingles. Deal with that, get fungal infection again (because the meds don’t play well together.) I was off Xeljanz for a whopping 12 hours the other day, and TWO sources of ongoing difficult just magically cleared up, as my immune system reestablished itself. 

ALL of these drugs, even the ones that have been around for a while, have huge black box warnings about things like “This can make you more likely to die of infection, cancer or pulmonary embolism. They can destroy your liver and make your hair fall out.” All of them.

And yet, when I went on methotrexate for the first time, which made me feel like absolute shit and made some things worse...

My liver enzymes improved. Methotrexate is ACTUALLY hepatoxic, but you know what’s also hepatoxic?

My OWN fucking immune system, apparently. We’ve never done a biopsy, because blood thinners and high clotting risk even without all this bullshit going on, but yeah, I was showing signs of gland and organ autoimmune issues YEARS before my joints got in on the party. Anyway, my liver enzymes aren’t great right now, which is part of why we switched me. 

So, someone’s got to try these things out, and it’s not like they’re going to find someone else with my exact constellation of bizarre genetics and wonky immune and collagen issues. 

I’ve taken two pills. Their retail would be $166 each, which is probably significantly more expensive than its weight in gold. (pills on average are about half a gram, give or take, and gold is $47-ish per gram right now.)

I don’t feel a lot better yet, but these take time. I also don’t feel worse, which is encouraging. We’ll see. 

*if by fun you take it to mean fucking excruciating on every possible level

[collectivedreamscapes-moved]

Today I am thinking about limitations and disabilites and the fact that words of encouragement hurt me.

I grew up on ‘Anything is possible if only you believe.’ But the truth is you can’t be something you’re not.

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Everyone has things they can and can’t do. Success isn’t based on your IQ or your intelligence. I should know.

I will go to the mat defending anyone else I care about. Telling them what they can do when they feel worthless, offer encouragement, remind them they matter to me. I try to offer suggestions or a shoulder. I try to be supportive in the only way I really can.

I’m really good with words sometimes.

But for us? Sometimes words are just words.

Words don’t change days when I am physically incapable of sitting up without support, when just using my arm hurts, when walking is actually more dangerous than staying in one place but I still have to do it. Crutches help, but when my shoulder is also fucked up, they’re useless to me.

But resources only become avaliable with a doctor’s diagnosis proving you NEED the help and even then you have to fight for it. I don’t even have that.

Physically alone, not even getting to anything else, from the time I was 12 you know what I’ve been told? It’s not great but it’s not bad enough to need more help than 'this’. Physically, I have been diagnosed with 'minor’ scoliosis, degenerative bone condition (by one doctor at 16 and then never spoken of again by any other) and 'mild’ lupus (by one doctor after extensive testing and denied by four after an inconclusive blood test). I have had every inch of my body scanned, I have had multiple x-rays of every part of me (I joked at fucking 17 I should glow in the dark). I have been told I have fibromyalgia.

Every single doctor seems to think the amount of pain I am continuously in is more than I should be but none have any suggestions that are helpful. (Like yeah, I would totally exercise… if I had the energy to move and if the exercise didn’t cause as much painas not.) None seem to know why we fall as often as we do, why we have intermittent but persistent tremors.

When I have access to a wheelchair, I am a rock star. Because I can use them, because I don’t worry about random collapses, because I rely less on needing help. You know how much a wheelchair costs? Or how it doesn’t help in a house like this one?

I get tired of fighting the system. There are half a dozen specialists I have been told I should see over the last 15 years. My insurance (when I have it) makes that a helluvalot harder.

And this… is just the issues with pain I have had since I was 12. Since I was 12 what I have learned is that if there is no VISIBLE reason for something to be wrong, no OBVIOUS reason immediately discernible, then NOTHING is really wrong.

You see where this is going?

My disability determination is based on my PTSD and bipolar diagnosis. I get paid once a month because I’m too unstable to hold a job. But most people who encounter me casually don’t see that. Even therapists have said we appear to be such a 'bright, intelligent woman’.

In this society, people expect anyone with THAT kind of label to be a functioning member of society. I’m not. I never have been. I cover well. I learned the game. I can even play it fairly well. Or used to. Lately… not so much.

My father lost his leg in the Vietnam War before I was born. I never knew him with two legs. And he resented the word ‘disabled’ and everything attached to it. He wouldn’t even get a handicap licence plate or use the parking spaces (on days when he legitimately needed them) until he was in his 60s as a point of pride. I grew up with this man and hearing people praising what he’d done despite the lack of a leg. Is it any wonder we have problems with this concept of accepting limitations? Because we hear in our head 'he was legit disabled and did all that shit what have we got to bitch about?’

In our teens and 20s and 30s we were 'too young’ to suffer all our physical problems. And the psych shit? The only people who seem to care are those who have to deal with it personally.

And none of this was what we came here to write. We came here to write that sometimes things are legit beyond one’s physical or mental capabilities. And on days when I know I can’t function even to MY 'normal’, much less a NORMIE’S 'normal’, all I wanna do is cry.

I have spent my entire life pushing myself to exceed a 'normal’ I should never have had to be reaching for in the first place. But… as my father so eloquently put it, I was starting with two strikes against me: being black and being female. having to work harder to get the same consideration is a reality. You add the OTHER shit in there?

I’m now 44 (or the body is anyway). After four decades of pushing ourselves so fucking hard, is it any wonder we’re fucking tired and hopleless all the time? We’ve spent so much time fighting to appear normal, is it any wonder that accepting the word 'disabled’ is like a punch to the gut?

The truth is we’ve been disabled for a damn long time. The truth also is that in my family ‘disabled’ was another word to mean ‘excuse for laziness’. It hurts way deep down every time the word is applied to us, even knowing how accurate it is. Because we’ve seen how people treat those who are disabled. Because we’ve never really considered ourselves part of their number deep down. Because we have fought tooth and nail to be… everything but what we are.

My dad used to say he never told us that asking for help is bad. And we could never, as a kid, articulate why that statement rang false. Because no, he never said those specific words. But kids learn by observation and everything he did screamed that you don’t ask for help. And 35 years later... this is still one of the biggest problems we have. We have been told that we honestly should ask for help a LONG time before we actually do, which continuously boggles our mind. Because in our heads, you are supposed to exhaust EVERY option and push yourself to the absolute limit before you ever consider asking someone else for help.

So most ‘positivity’ posts and words of encouragement... hurt us. So much. It’s like poking half healed wounds. They feel, to us, like empty words uttered to make the person saying them feel better. And we get that’s not always the case, but it doesn’t change our gut reaction to it. It has nothing to do with wanting to be jaded and cynical and edgy and everything to do with emotional wounds that still fucking hurt.

[blmitra28]

What occurs in the event that you quit eating sugar for 14 days?

Here's a blog article I expounded on it. It is anything but a conclusive guide, simply an individual encounter. (I need to concede, I began burning-through sugar once more, however in any event it gives you a thought of what can occur).

I didn't understand I was an Addict! (sixth April, 2017)

No, it's OK, I'm simply stopping sugar. Simply stopping sugar, ha! This is probably the hardest thing I have at any point done, and I've attempted some lovely wacky, faddish eating regimens. The analysis is for about two months and ideally past; possibly until the end of time.

I can recollect when the thought came to me, I'd had an enormous bowl of frozen yogurt, it appeared to be more sweet than expected and I felt somewhat wiped out. Previously, before I met my hubby, I was never a gigantic sweet eater, inclining toward nuts and dried organic product as bites. Yet, as the many years passed by, I was gradually changed over to chocolate and puddings because of agonizing over the *nasties* that nuts are showered with. At any rate, the previous issue not, however I was so certain this gig would be simple as I'd persuaded myself that I wasn't dependent on sugar.

I kept an eye on line about what's in store, and read a few stories, however encountering these manifestations was an alternate matter!

In this way, I'm six days into the examination. Here's the manifestations I've had up until this point:

Muscle shortcoming.

Migraines.

Palpitations/nervousness toward the beginning of the day.

Low energy levels ( I could scarcely clean up by Day Three).

Huge yearnings for sugar - I mean so terrible that you need to simply empty sugar straight into your gob and dream of brilliant syrup chasers!

Rest unsettling influence. Any individual who realizes me by and by will concur that I rest when my head hits the pad, however I've experienced difficulty having the chance to rest over the most recent three days.

Skin emissions. I'm talking abnormal break-outs. Spots, imperfections, odd holes with numerous spots. This must due to detoxing.

Hazy headed.

Crabby. On a short wire.

Modest quantities of melancholy.

One advantage following 6 days:

No incontinence by any means, previously, I put the day and night spills down to peri-menopausal side effects or one more urinary disease - 2 out of one year). Incontinence can be because of the additional heap on the kidneys (I drank a sweet tea). This is a big deal for me, it's so discouraging to continue wearing cushions or stressing that a hack will cause spillage. I realize that the other terrible side effects will vanish inside half a month.

I don't drink liquor since I'm narrow minded to it, I'm sans caffeine and I quit any pretense of smoking 24 years prior, so I surmise this additionally assists with detoxing the body.

The *experts* say that during this time the accompanying assists with yearnings:

Drink a lot of water (I drink water with two cuts of lemon - mitigates yearnings).

Eat more protein when you feel depleted and up the great fats - coconut oil, avocado, *nuts* (at own danger) and so on

Eat nearly nothing and frequently to stop energy crashes. Bananas are excellent for sweet longings.

Be cautious about expanding white carbs as these separate into sugar, eat more veg and organic product, beats, eggs, cheddar, common yogurt, verdant greens. I make vegetable soups with lentils, and have that as an in the middle.

What others have seen when at long last living the sans sugar diet: Increased energy, skin is more clear, less wrinkles, less powerless to colds/contamination, unwavering discernment, weight reduction.

Keep reading

Example of overcoming adversity from Nicole HERE

Evade all without sugar items - Aspartame, Acesulfame K, Sucralose, other 'ose's' (Tagatose and so on) Nutrasweet as they have perilous results; particularly Aspartame.

Unexpectedly, weight acquire is a chance while devouring items that contain fake sugars causing a hypoglycaemic reaction due to upsetting the insulin signals in the body. Interruption of sound gut microbes is a new finding. I have over 900+ reports of individuals encountering results from burning-through Aspartame; a large number of them genuine and life getting updated, for example, impersonating genuine infections like Lupus and Multiple Sclerosis.

I can hardly wait to see the distinction. I will post again in 3 weeks.

*update* 18/06/2017

I have a periodic slip by (a hot cocoa). Yet, I feel much improved, ready to get my words out (less disarray) more energy, observable weight reduction, eating anything sweet can give me migraines, so I would prefer not to eat them! It appears to be the pee spillage may have been because of eating fiery food varieties, obviously it can debilitate the bladder lining as ladies get more established, so I'll leave a question mark on that. I ensure I eat beans on toast for breakfast, protein feast assists with halting the late morning sugar yearnings, in the event that I do ache for sugar I have a couple of pitted dates which deals with it. My skin is recognizably more clear - it was horrendous for half a month. I was told I looked better, a lot better.

(Image by 955169 Pixabay)

[underfag]

Autoimmune Illness as well as Your Skin (Part 3)

Below at Advanced Skin Treatment as well as Dermatology Physicians, I see autoimmune conditions often. The reason results from traditional searchings for or signs on the skin. As I have actually noted before, this is very essential to acknowledge because, these indications might likewise point to other troubles within the body.

In my first blog post about autoimmune illness, I talked about lupus as well as noted some of the various other diseases that may appear with skin findings. In the 2nd post, I dealt with 2 of one of the most typical autoimmune illness I see as a skin specialist: alopecia location and vitiligo. In this third message, I will talk about two really important autoimmune diseases that have unique skin adjustments.

Scleroderma

Scleroderma essentially implies "difficult skin." For reasons we do not comprehend, the body immune system occupies a war versus the skin or inner body organs that brings about unusual down payments of collagen, a.k.a., scleroderma. It can be a really major illness if advanced..

There are 2 major kinds of scleroderma: localized scleroderma and systemic scleroderma. Localized scleroderma is called morphea and appears on the skin as tough, waxy-looking areas. Usually, there is a violet border around it that represents it is energetic. However, this type of scleroderma is not connected with organ issues. Systemic scleroderma, on the various other hand, indicates that the illness has the potential to "solidify" various other body organ systems. Within this type, there is a "restricted" and "scattered" form. The restricted type is called "CREST disorder," which means:.

C: Calcinosis is when alcium down payments occur in the skin. R: Raynaud's: This happens when the blood vessels on the fingers as well as toes spontaneously restrict in feedback to also minor changes in temperature or emotional stress. The skin turns white, after that blue and then red. In some cases these episodes are so severe that they can bring about abscess or irreversible death of a few of the skin (gangrene). E: Esophageal dysmotility is when individuals may have difficulty ingesting or absorbing food. S: Sclerodactyly: Over time, because of solidifying of the skin-- generally on the hands as well as feet, the fingers and also toes agreement as well as come to be tough to use. T: Telangiectasias: Broken capillaries cover the skin with time. I see these at all times in people however, in scleroderma, they happen in collections..

" Diffuse" systemic sclerosis is various than CREST disorder and can have destructive impacts on a wide range of organs consisting of the heart, lungs, kidneys and digestion system.

Dermatomyositis.

Dermatomyositis is an inflammatory autoimmune condition that can affect either youngsters or grownups. In many cases, it causes severe muscle inflammation as well as muscle mass weakness. This is often gone along with by a rash that is really classic-looking as well as shows up around the eyes, hands, breast and thighs. It is a lot more obvious in areas that obtain sun as well as has a traditional violet-looking shade.

An unusual condition connected with this is proximal muscle mass weak point, indicating weakness in the shoulders and also hips. Though primarily unusual, I do see it on a relatively routine basis. A member of the family of mine has it, which is among the reasons I am so curious about this illness. Kids obtain a particular kind of dermatomyositis that can result in unpleasant calcifications in the muscular tissues that can be very incapacitating. It affects adults in a different way that can affect various other organs in the body too. The primary concern in grownups with this disease is if they likewise have cancer cells. Somehow, this autoimmune condition can be an indicator of an underlying cancer, so I always make sure individuals are up-to-date on their cancer testings. Nevertheless, youngsters that obtain this condition do not have a boosted risk of cancer.

Have you had any type of experiences with these autoimmune diseases? We would certainly like to hear your tale in the remarks

.

Dr. Hayes- Board Qualified Skin Specialist

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[newsnigeria]

Why France is hiding a cheap and tested virus cure

By Pepe Escobar – Posted with permission The French government is arguably helping Big Pharma profit from the Covid-19 pandemic What’s going on in the fifth largest economy in the world arguably points to a major collusion scandal in which the French government is helping Big Pharma to profit from the expansion of Covid-19. Informed French citizens are absolutely furious about it. My initial question to a serious, unimpeachable Paris source, jurist Valerie Bugault, was about the liaisons dangereuses between Macronism and Big Pharma and especially about the mysterious “disappearance” – more likely outright theft – of all the stocks of chloroquine in possession of the French government. Respected Professor Christian Perronne talked about the theft live in one of France’s 24/7 info channels: “The central pharmacy for the hospitals announced today that they were facing a total rupture of stocks, that they were pillaged.” With input from another, anonymous source, it’s now possible to establish a timeline that puts in much-needed perspective the recent actions of the French government.Let’s start with Yves Levy, who was the head of INSERM – the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research – from 2014 to 2018, when he was appointed as extraordinary state councilor for the Macron administration. Only 12 people in France have reached this status. Levy is married to Agnes Buzy, who until recently was minister of health under Macron. Buzy was essentially presented with an “offer you can’t refuse” by Macron’s party to leave the ministry – in the middle of the coronavirus crisis – and run for Mayor of Paris, where she was mercilessly trounced in the first round on March 16. Levy has a vicious running feud with Professor Didier Raoult – prolific and often-cited Marseille-based specialist in communicable diseases. Levy withheld the INSERM label from the world-renowned IHU (Hospital-University Institute) research center directed by Raoult. In practice, in October 2019, Levy revoked the status of “foundation” of the different IHUs so he could take over their research.

A picture taken on February 26, 2020 shows French professor Didier Raoult, biologist and professor of microbiology, specialized in infectious diseases and director of IHU Mediterranee Infection Institute posing in his office in Marseille, southeastern France. - Raoult reported this week that after treating 24 patients for six days with Plaquenil, the virus had disappeared in all but a quarter of them. The research has not yet been peer reviewed or published, and Raoult had come under fire by some scientists and officials in his native France for potentially raising false hopes. (Photo by GERARD JULIEN / AFP) French professor Didier Raoult, biologist and professor of microbiology, specializes in infectious diseases and director of IHU Mediterranee Infection Institute, poses in his office in Marseille, France. Photo: AFP/Gerard Julien Raoult was part of a clinical trial that in which hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin healed 90% of Covid-19 cases if they were tested very early. (Early, massive testing is at the heart of the successful South Korean strategy.) Raoult is opposed to the total lockdown of sane individuals and possible carriers – which he considers “medieval,” in an anachronistic sense. He’s in favor of massive testing (which, besides South Korea, was successful in Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam) and a fast treatment with hydroxychloroquine. Only contaminated individuals should be confined. Chloroquine costs one euro for ten pills. And there’s the rub: Big Pharma – which, crucially, finances INSERM, and includes “national champion” Sanofi – would rather go for a way more profitable solution. Sanofi for the moment says it is “actively preparing” to produce chloroquine, but that may take “weeks,” and there’s no mention about pricing. A minister fleeing a tsunami Here’s the timeline: On January 13, Agnes Buzyn, still France’s Health Minister, classifies chloroquine as a “poisonous substance,” from now on only available by prescription. An astonishing move, considering that it has been sold off the shelf in France for half a century. On March 16, the Macron government orders a partial lockdown. There’s not a peep about chloroquine. Police initially are not required to wear masks; most have been stolen anyway, and there are not enough masks even for health workers. In 2011 France had nearly 1.5 billion masks: 800 million surgical masks and 600 million masks for health professionals generally. But then, over the years, the strategic stocks were not renewed, to please the EU and to apply the Maastricht criteria, which limited membership in the Growth and Stability Pact to countries whose budget deficits did not exceed 3% of GDP. One of those in charge at the time was Jerome Salomon, now a scientific counselor to the Macron government. On March 17, Agnes Buzyn says she has learned the spread of Covid-19 will be a major tsunami, for which the French health system has no solution. She also says it had been her understanding that the Paris mayoral election “would not take place” and that it was, ultimately, “a masquerade.” What she does not say is that she didn’t go public at the time she was running because the whole political focus by the Macron political machine was on winning the “masquerade.” The first round of the election meant nothing, as Covid-19 was advancing. The second round was postponed indefinitely. She had to know about the impending healthcare disaster. But as a candidate of the Macron machine she did not go public in timely fashion. In quick succession: The Macron government refuses to apply mass testing, as practiced with success in South Korea and Germany. Le Monde and the French state health agency characterize Raoult’s research as fake news, before issuing a retraction. Professor Perrone reveals on the 24/7 LCI news channel that the stock of chloroquine at the French central pharmacy has been stolen. Thanks to a tweet by Elon Musk, President Trump says chloroquine should be available to all Americans. Sufferers of lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, who already have supply problems with the only drug that offers them relief, set social media afire with their panic. US doctors and other medical professionals take to hoarding the medicine for the use of themselves and those close to them, faking prescriptions to indicate they are for patients with lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. Morocco buys the stock of chloroquine from Sanofi in Casablanca. Pakistan decides to increase its production of chloroquine to be sent to China. Switzerland discards the total lockdown of its population; goes for mass testing and fast treatment; and accuses France of practicing  “spectacle politics.” Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice, having had himself treated with chloroquine, without any government input, directly calls Sanofi so they may deliver chloroquine to Nice hospitals. Because of Raoult’s research, a large-scale chloroquine test finally starts in France, under the – predictable – direction of INSERM, which wants to “remake the experiments in other independent medical centers.” This will take at least an extra six weeks – as the Elysee Palace’s scientific council now mulls the extension of France’s total lockdown to … six weeks. If joint use of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin proves definitely effective among the most gravely ill, quarantines may be reduced in select clusters. The only French company that still manufactures chloroquine is under judicial intervention. That puts the chloroquine hoarding and theft into full perspective. It will take time for these stocks to be replenished, thus allowing Big Pharma the leeway to have what it wants: a costly solution. It appears the perpetrators of the chloroquine theft were very well informed. Bagged nurses This chain of events, astonishing for a highly developed G-7 nation proud of its health service, is part of a long, painful process embedded in neoliberal dogma. EU-driven austerity mixed with the profit motive resulted in a very lax attitude towards the health system. As Bugault told me, “test kits – very few in number – were always available but mostly for a small group connected to the French government .  Same for chloroquine, which this government did everything to make inaccessible for the population. They did not make life easy for Professor Raoult – he received death threats and was intimidated by ‘journalists.’ And they did not protect vital stocks. Still under the Hollande government, there was a conscious liquidation of the stock of masks – which had existed in large quantities in all hospitals. Not to mention that the suppression of hospital beds and hospital means accelerated under Sarkozy.” This ties in with anguished reports by French citizens of nurses now having to use trash bags due to the lack of proper medical gear. At the same time, in another astonishing development, the French state refuses to requisition private hospitals and clinics – which are practically empty at this stage – even as the president of their own association, Lamine Garbi, has pleaded for such a public service initiative: “I solemnly demand that we are requisitioned to help public hospitals. Our facilities are prepared. The wave that surprised the east of France must teach us a lesson.” Bugault reconfirms the health situation in France “is very serious and will become even worse due to these political decisions – absence of masks, political refusal to massively test people, refusal of free access to chloroquine – in a context of supreme distress at the hospitals. This will last and destitution will be the norm.” Professor vs president In an explosive development on Tuesday, Raoult said he’s not participating in Macron’s scientific council anymore, even though he’s not quitting it altogether. Raoult once again insists on massive testing on a national scale to detect suspected cases, and then isolate and treat patients who tested positive. In a nutshell: the South Korean model. That’s exactly what is expected from the IHU in Marseille, where hundreds of residents continue to queue up for testing. And that ties in with the conclusions by a top Chinese expert on Covid-19, Zhang Nanshan, who says that treatment with chloroquine phospate had a “positive impact,” with patients testing negative after around four days. The key point has been stressed by Raoult: Use chloroquine in very special circumstances, for people tested very early, when the disease is not advanced yet, and only in these cases. He’s not advocating chloroquine for everyone. It’s exactly what the Chinese did, along with their use of Interferon. For years, Raoult has been pleading for a drastic revision of health economic models, so the treatments, cure and therapies created mostly during the 20th century, are considered a patrimony in the service of all humanity.“That’s not the case”, he says, “because we abandon medicine that is not profitable, even if it’s effective. That’s why almost no antibiotics are manufactured in the West.” On Tuesday, the French Health Ministry officially prohibited the utilization of treatment based on chloroquine recommended by Raoult.  In fact the treatment is only allowed for terminal Covid-19 patients, with no other possibility of healing. This cannot but expose the Macron government to more accusations of at least inefficiency – added to the absence of masks, tests, contact tracing and ventilators. On Wednesday, commenting on the new government guidelines, Raoult said, “When damage to the lungs is too important, and patients arrive for reanimation, they practically do not harbor viruses in their bodies any more. It’s too late to treat them with chloroquine. Are these the only cases – the very serious cases – that will be treated with chloroquine under the new directive by Veran?” If so, he added ironically, “then they will be able to say with scientific certainty that chloroquine does not work.” Raoult was unavailable for comment on Western news media articles citing Chinese test results that would suggest he is wrong about the efficacy of chloroquine in dealing with mild cases of Covid-19. Staffers pointed instead to his comments in the IHU bulletin. There Raoult says it’s “insulting” to ask if we can trust the Chinese on the use of chloroquine. “If this was an American disease, and the president of the United States said, ‘We need to treat patients with that,’ nobody would discuss it.” In China, he adds, there were “enough elements so the Chinese government and all Chinese experts who know coronaviruses took an official position that ‘we must treat with chloroquine.’ Between the moment when we have the first results and an accepted international publication, there is no credible alternative among people who are the most knowledgeable in the world. They took this measure in the interest of public health.” Crucially: if he had coronavirus, Raoult says he would take chloroquine. Since Raoult is rated by his peers as the number one world expert  in communicable diseases, way above Dr. Anthony Fauci in the US, I would say the new reports represent Big Pharma talking. Raoult has been mercilessly savaged and demonized by French corporate media that are controlled by a few oligarchs closely linked to Macronism. Not by accident the demonization has reached gilets jaunes (yellow vest) levels, especially because of the extremely popular hashtag  #IlsSavaient (“They knew”), with which the yellow vests stress that French elites have “managed” the Covid-19 crisis by protecting themselves while leaving the population defenseless against the virus. That ties in with the controversial analysis by crack philosopher Giorgio Agamben in a column published a month ago, where he was already arguing that Covid-19 clearly shows that the state of exception – similar to a state of emergency but with differences important to philosophers – has become fully normalized in the West. Agamben was speaking not as a doctor or a virologist but as a master thinker, following in the steps of Foucault, Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt. Noting how a latent state of fear has metastasized into a state of collective panic, for which Covid-19 “offers once again the ideal pretext,” he described how, “in a perverse vicious circle, the limitation of freedom imposed by governments is accepted in the name of a desire for security that was induced by the same governments that now intervene to satisfy it.” There was no state of collective panic in South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam – to mention four Asian examples outside of China. A dogged combination of mass testing and contact tracing was applied with immense professionalism. It worked. In the Chinese case, with the help of chloroquine. And in all Asian cases, without a murky profit motive to the benefit of Big Pharma. There hasn’t yet appeared the smoking gun that proves the Macron system not only is incompetent to deal with Covid-19 but also is dragging the process so Big Pharma can come up with a miracle vaccine, fast. But the pattern to discourage chloroquine is more than laid out above – in parallel to the demonization of Raoult. Read the full article

[badacts]

order

a pro-era companion fic to corvus, vulpes, lupus for @thepalmtoptiger, featuring the ny rebels

They’re having drinks at the local bar after practice when everyone’s phone beeps with a message at the same time.

“It’s Jamie,” Shearer says, first to wrestle his out of his pocket. “Meeting tomorrow before morning practice. God, as if we don’t have to be there early enough.”

“It’ll be a new signing,” Pierce says. His raccoon daemon is shelling and eating peanuts off of the table with her little dextrous hands, and it’s mesmerising to watch. “I bet you.”

Anita scoffs. “That’s not even a challenge, of course it’ll be about a signing. We should be betting on who it actually is.”

“Jeremy Knox,” Shearer says immediately.

“He just got signed to New Orleans, you groupie,” Cooper says. “Don’t you people read the news?”

To be fair, she has insider knowledge – she was Jeremy’s captain at USC and handed over the reins to him when she graduated, and she’s kept in touch since. Jeremy would love to be in New York, but the Rebels don’t need a backliner and he won’t go anywhere without Moreau. Give it another year, maybe.

“It’ll be an offensive player, right? Seeing as Soo is out for the season,” Anita muses. “What strikers do we know are looking to move?”

“Unless we know them personally, I don’t know we’re going to know that,” Pierce points out.

“Just pick the ones having the worst season,” Cooper says, earning a laugh from around the table. “Whitehall will be looking for a new team after the last few weeks. The Senators are bombing.”

“Piper Jackson from Washington? I heard a rumour she might be looking to move,” Anita offers.

“Fuck, I hope so,” Shearer says. “Ten bucks that it’s Brockmann though.”

They all groan. The striker for the Eagles is a great player, but he’s also a complete dickhead. The Rebels already have enough asshole personalities on their offensive line without adding another.

“Well, I’m saying Piper,” Cooper suggests. “Dreams are free, right?”

“Yeah, but bets aren’t,” Orion mutters from her lap. She strokes his wiry-coated back.

“I’ll put my ten on Carmody from the Jackdaws,” Anita says, her smile turning smug when the rest of them boo because they didn’t think of Carmody first. The guy’s wife and kids are in New York and he’s in Florida – it makes perfect sense.

“Damn it, girl,” Pierce says. “I’ll go for Whitehall, then. I can’t think of anyone else.”

“I hope you’re right, for his sake,” Cooper jokes, taking another sip of her beer.

“It’s Neil Josten,” Minyard says. It’s the first thing he’s said all night since he ordered a whiskey rocks at the bar. If it were in any way possible to forget he was there – not to mention his enormous hyena daemon, who is lying under Minyard’s chair – Cooper would have done so.

“No way,” Pierce says. “His team is finals material. There’s no way he’ll be planning on leaving after a year.”

“You used to play with him,” Shearer says. He’s a couple of glasses of wine in, and his lizard daemon has slumped over his shoulder absorbing his body heat. “He has a fox daemon, right? That must have been weird. I mean, your team was called the Foxes.”

“It’s super on-theme, you can give him that,” Anita says. “Is that your bet, Andrew?”

Minyard raises his glass to her in a salute. From the under the table there’s a chuff like laughter. Cooper draws her feet up in surprise – she’s not nervy by nature, but she’s seen her teeth. She bets the others do the same.

“Guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” she says to cover it. She doubts it works.

Of course, it’s Neil Josten.

“You had insider knowledge, didn’t you,” Cooper hisses at Minyard out of the corner of her mouth. “That’s cheating.”

He looks at her blandly. “I told you who it was.”

He doesn’t bother to lower his voice, which means that everyone turns to look at him. This includes Neil Josten, who is standing at the front of the room with his very beautiful silver fox daemon across his shoulders like a stole, and with the general manager and Jamie, their head coach beside him. Jamie frowns his be professional face at Cooper, but Josten smiles a little bit when he sees who has spoken.

Cooper obligingly shuts up, because those people are in charge of her job. She instead surveys their newest player, as of the beginning of next season. Josten is short and slim, but Cooper has seen video of him playing – she knows that he’s fast. She also knows that he’s trained under Kevin Day, and that in his first season after graduating from college he’s help to take his middling-ranked team to the top of the table in the north-western conference.

He doesn’t look like much. Looks can be deceiving, though.

“Josten’s going to join us for practice today,” Jamie tacks on at the end, gruffer than their general manager. “Coop, make sure he knows where he’s going.”

Cooper is in charge of wrangling the rookies, because she’s good at it – patient, but not too patient, and good-humoured. Their captain Castle is very good at what he does, but he’s no good with the newbies – that’s why she’s chief babysitter, and also why she’s vice-captain. She waves to acknowledge the direction and to show Josten who Jamie means, and gets another small smile in response.

“Unless you want to?” she asks Minyard, as the quiet breaks and Josten starts to make his way across the room to them through the milling Rebels. “You guys are friends, right?”

Minyard stares at her. “No.”

“I’m going to take that as a no to my first question, not my second,” she says, nonplussed, right before Josten arrives at their side.

His daemon jumps from his shoulder to the floor and bounds forwards to greet Minyard’s, so they touch noses. The fox’s tail is wagging, and her mouth is open in a grin.

“Hey,” Josten says directly to Minyard.

“Hello, Neil,” Minyard replies. It’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking. Cooper isn’t good enough at deciphering him yet - she’s only vaguely sure he doesn’t hate her.

“Hi,” Cooper says, because she’ll be waiting all day if she waits for Minyard to introduce her. “I’m Kristen Cooper.”

“I know. I watched you in your game against the Titans last week. That save in the last five against O’Sullivan was great,” Josten says. He sounds exactly like he does in interviews – the ones where he doesn’t start riots, that is. Smooth and professional, serious but with a touch of a smile.

“Thanks,” she replies. “Come on, I’ll show you around a little and then leave you to the tender care of Minyard here in the changing rooms.”

“Tender care,” says an unfamiliar voice. “Have they met you?”

It takes Cooper a moment to realise that it’s Josten’s daemon speaking. She blinks. Not only is she loud enough for Cooper to clearly hear, but she seems to be talking directly to Minyard.

“This is Sin,” Josten tells Cooper, a little bit rueful. “Excuse her.”

Sin seems to ignore that. Cooper has never seen another daemon like her. She can just about taste Orion’s uncertainty where he’s sitting on his haunches by her feet, his ears pricked.

“Bet he can score on Andrew today,” she says, quieter but still audible, this time only to Minyard’s daemon. The hyena huffs in response.

“Come see the court,” Cooper says, because there’s not really much else to say.

Josten joins the Rebels during pre-season practice, looking less ruffled than anyone who has just upended his life to move to the other side of the country has a right to. Cooper has been in New York for several years, and she hasn’t forgotten the fortnight-long panic of moving from LA yet.

He’s – he’s good. Good enough to make Minyard push himself, and that is interesting to watch. He’s also stubborn enough that he knocked Wilson – the Rebel’s most annoying striker – onto his ass when he said something that Josten won’t relay.

“He’s as crazy as his daemon,” Orion says when they’re back in the apartment, Cooper flopped face down on the couch. He jumps onto her lower back and curls up there, like a little fox terrier hot water bottle. She sighs.

“Point conceded,” she agrees after a moment. “Hey, do you reckon he and Minyard are actually friends? I can’t tell if it’s just a familiarity thing or not.”

“Amaranth talks to Sin,” Orion replies. “She doesn’t really do that with the rest of us.”

“Amaranth. I didn’t realise that was her name. She talks to you, right?”

“Yes,” Orion says, patiently. They’ve had this conversation before, back when Cooper was wondering whether Andrew hated her.

“I swear Josten was talking to her the other day. Amaranth, I mean.”

“Probably. They do that.”

“What, really? Like, a lot? You didn’t say.” Cooper had thought she’d been witnessing some kind of one-off event.

“You didn’t ask,” he points out, because he’s kind of an ass sometimes.

“Maybe Sin has desensitised him to talking to other daemons. She talks to everyone.”

“Or maybe they’re friends.”

“Hm,” Cooper says, non-committal. “Maybe.”

“Andrew says you’re the person to talk to about drills.” Josten plunks his drink – it’s soda – down on the table, and then sits. Sin springs up onto the table top, investigating the sticky patches on it with her whiskery muzzle. Orion watches her do it, ears pricked.

“Did he say that? Wow, I think I just got the warm fuzzies,” she replies.

Josten looks at her strangely, and then says, “I have some ideas for drills to add to the repertoire for the strikers. For aim, mostly.”

Cooper sits back in her seat. “I could ask what’s wrong with our current drill sets, but you know it’s a Saturday night, right? We can talk about this on Monday.”

“Now you sound like Andrew,” Josten says. He looks a little bit dismayed.

“Smart man,” Cooper says. “Go. Get drunk. Pretend to be a normal twenty-something for a little bit.”

“I don’t drink.”

“Of course you don’t. Let me guess, you drink juice that’s green, too.”

Josten makes a face. “No. I don’t see the point. Juices are mostly sugar, and even with kale-”

“Neil has an issue with sugar,” Minyard says. Cooper jumps, jostling Orion on her lap and making him yelp – Minyard just appeared from nowhere.

Josten turns to look at him, some amusement on his face. “Should I tell her-”

“Be quiet,” Minyard replies. Amaranth is standing at his side, and Sin jumps down to her, skirting close to Minyard’s feet as she does so. She’s in easy reach, but she doesn’t look even vaguely frightened to be so close to him.

“I should have just said that,” Cooper tells Josten. She turns to Minyard. “Hey, take him away. I’m not talking shop, it’s the weekend.”

Minyard looks at Josten and jerks his head in the direction of the bar. Josten slides straight out of his seat, leaving his completely full soda on the table like he’s forgotten all about it. Cooper doesn’t have the heart to point that out as she watches him follow Minyard and their daemons across the floor.

“They’re definitely friends,” she whispers to Orion. He hums back.

Josten has a bad track record for injuries, so it’s not surprising someone tries to break his face open in his first game for the Rebels.

His track record still isn’t as bad as his attitude, though – that’s the only reason Cooper can imagine explaining why he goes after the backliner who is twice his size after they already made him bleed. Attitude, and adrenaline.

The fight basically embroils the whole team other than the goalies. Cooper is the one who ends up with Josten, the back of his jersey held fast in her hand. He’s a livewire in her grip, practically steaming with exertion. He’s also dripping blood on the floor.

“Pinch your nose,” she tells him as she carts him across the court to the door. He got a yellow card, but he’s going off for blood if she has to physically carry him to the medical room.

“I’m fine,” he replies. His nose is stuffed up and he still sounds angry.

“Excuse me, I’m your vice-captain. Do it, you little shit,” she says.

Unexpectedly, he laughs. “Are you allowed to call me that?”

“Josten, you were schooled by Dan Wilds. I’ve met her, I know it’s not the first time you’ve been called that,” she replies. They’re at the door, which is being held open. “Yo, Minyard. Take him to the doc.”

Wilson jogs past to take the empty striker position as Cooper shoves Josten through. He seems to stumble on the threshold, wavering as he lifts a hand to his face.

Sin, who is at his feet, says, “Neil. Neil!” Minyard steps forward to balance him at the same time as Cooper. Neither of them are as fast as Amaranth.

She’s massive, especially next to Josten’s diminutive height. He puts a hand on her broad back, fingers curling into her coat, and somehow doesn’t fall over.

They all end up crushed in the doorway together. Cooper feels vaguely panicked – they shouldn’t be doing that – but she swallows it in the face of the fact that the rest of them seem completely unbothered.

“I’m alright,” Josten says, dazedly.

“Shut up,” Minyard replies, taking Josten’s hand off of Amaranth’s back and hooking it over his own shoulders. “Cooper, get back on the court.”

“Five years,” Neil says. They’re using first names now, because this is Andrew and Neil’s apartment. Their shared apartment. “Five years?”

Andrew stares back at him and doesn’t reply. Neil seems to take this as confirmation. He continues rubbing the underside of Amaranth’s chin, slow and easy.

“Five years,” Sin agrees, stalking across the back of the couch behind Neil and Amaranth. She jumps across to the desk where Andrew is perched, sticking her head out of the window where he’s hanging his hand and cigarette out in the night air. Her tail brushes against him thoughtlessly.

Cooper has Orion cuddled safely in her lap, and she’s rubbing the sows-ear softness of his belly. She can’t imagine having someone close enough to be like that with. Somehow, she wants it anyway. She says, “That’s surreal.”

“Really?” Neil asks. He grins. It’s very sharp.

“Not really,” she admits.

[cannabisrefugee-esq]

Crohn's Disease is a Terminal Illness. Coming to Terms.

January 23, 2019

After researching this disease for going on 6 years now, I believe I have come to a rational conclusion about Crohn’s disease which is that it is not a so-called incurable progressive disease but a fatal one: based on all the evidence including anecdotal evidence from patients themselves I now believe that Crohn’s disease is a terminal illness.  I have more or less concluded that before but for some reason I hadn’t yet come to terms with it.  It’s not easy to come to terms with something like that but not because I suffer from what is almost certainly going to cause my untimely death but because everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone is lying their asses off about Crohn’s disease including how “treatable” it is, what kind of quality of life Crohn’s patients can reasonably expect, how predictably disabling it is and why, and how it’s probably going to end.

But before we get to the end it’s important to start at the beginning and admit what Crohn’s disease is at base: Crohn’s patients, including myself, have to medicate in order to eat. And that is serious, very serious indeed.  If there is anything that is any less compatible with life than a disease that prevents the sick person from eating I can’t think of it.  A disease that prevented the sick person from breathing wouldn’t be any less compatible with life than Crohn’s is, it would just be quicker.

To illustrate, for the last 6 weeks or so I have been extremely fatigued to the point of being bedridden for most of it.  If it weren’t for having to get up to take care of my cats and absolutely bare-minimally tending to my small business I probably wouldn’t have been able to get up at all.  Once I had to move from the bed to the couch for most of the day because my bed had become damp and clammy from having laid in it for too many hours, days and weeks in a row: I flayed the covers off it and hit it with a box fan.  I couldn’t change the sheets because my only other set has been sitting in the hamper for 2 months waiting to be washed and other chronically ill people know exactly what that means: the last good day I had was 2 months ago where I changed the sheets and did half of my laundry.  Since then I haven’t been able to do a good goddamned thing.

Anyway, I’ve been so unbelievably exhausted recently that I’ve been unable to medicate properly.  Instead of changing my cannabis-infused transdermal patches every day or every other day, a few times I let it go for 4 or 5 days and for that I paid a terrible price: on top of the crippling fatigue and general malaise, as well as the continuous, daily pain and symptoms from Crohn’s which are always present to some degree and never go away, I was also so fucking sick from not medicating that I could no longer eat.  I had terrible stomach and intestinal pain including distressing burning, itching, pulling, pressure and boggy sensations as well as gastroparesis, nausea, heartburn, esophageal spasms and unsurprisingly, a profound aversion to food.  Which was good in a way since I was so tired I couldn’t have gotten to the grocery store to buy food anyway even if I had money to buy it or even a way to get to the store which I don’t.  And all of this misery, every bit of it including my poverty are due to the last 6 years spent as a full-blown Crohn’s patient but again, let’s not forget what Crohn’s is at base: it’s not about fatigue, it’s not about pain in a general or even in a specific way.  Although there is plenty of it it’s not about pain.  Crohn’s patients cannot eat.  We can’t eat.

As one might expect, following days, weeks, months and longer without a proper meal Crohn’s patients often become crazed and try to “eat something” — food which is then processed in our bodies exactly like poison.  We get nauseated and sweaty, we wretch, we heave, we shit our fucking brains out, all of which exacerbates our food aversion.  And as Crohn’s is admittedly a lifelong, incurable and progressive disease it goes on forever.  Forever.  Until you die from it.  No, Crohn’s patients do not die natural deaths peacefully in their sleep at an advanced age.  Crohn’s patients don’t sleep, at least not without massive pharmaceutical or other interventions.  When they die, Crohn’s patients die from not eating, or from the effects of their medications, or both. Or they die on the operating table or by suicide, both because of the Crohn’s.  They don’t have a chance to become old but again, that’s focusing on the end which becomes confusing as to cause.  Here it is helpful to go back to the beginning to what Crohn’s actually is at base: Crohn’s patients cannot eat.  We can’t eat.  And if you can’t eat you die.

All the conventional treatments we take, all the chasing our tails with alternative treatments including medical cannabis that aren’t sustainable anyway, all the resources poured into us (or not) by family and friends, all the money we spend on ourselves to get relief from this hideous disease is because we can’t eat and we are trying to fix that.  Even Crohn’s patients who achieve so-called “clinical remission” using dangerous and life-threatening drugs continue to have issues regardless of what the scopes say, regardless of whether there appears to be any active inflammation or not.  But if the treatment is successful, no matter how sick they still are, even if the medication gives them lupus or diabetes or AIDS or cancer, the “successful” Crohn’s patient will be able to eat.  That’s all we are asking for and it’s all some of us ever get — that’s what the successful ones get.  Although we are still sicker than most people can even imagine, finally, finally we get to eat.

And many Crohn’s patients never achieve clinical remission or have any success or get any relief at all from conventional treatments (i.e. we still can’t eat).  I didn’t.  After 2 entire years on conventional Crohn’s treatments I couldn’t eat a fucking thing.  Out of desperation I spent thousands of dollars on a sickening enteral feed that was supposed to give me all the nutrients I needed but without any fiber or anything to digest — it all went straight to my liver.  But because it had to go through my stomach and small intestine first, otherwise known as eating, all it did was make me sicker.  I was literally starving to death and there was nothing I or my doctors could do about it.  I was absolutely circling the drain.

It took me an entire year on mega-doses of marijuana (approaching 1,000mg THC daily, where 5-10mg is a standard recreational dose and 25-50mg is a standard medical dose) including smoking pot and eating simultaneously — a bite of food, a bong hit, repeat — to be able to tolerate food again.  After I stopped eating GMOs and switched to an exclusively 100% organic diet (including raw fermented organic food and various organic and non-GMO supplements) I didn’t have to smoke during meals anymore, but I still had to medicate daily.  In order to eat.  Of course, marijuana is also an exquisite pain reliever so a goodly portion of my pain and symptoms were also quelled and I felt remarkably better — about 50% better than I had since well before my diagnosis.  I was still extremely sick and I didn’t understand that part but I could eat again, I could sleep again and that was good enough for me.

I thought I would continue to get better though and I didn’t.   Because with Crohn’s the best you can hope for is to be able to eat again and even that’s not expected to last; it’s a progressive disease so you’re doing well if you stay the same and don’t get worse.  For me, because of the pot, I can still eat but I am, in fact, getting progressively worse.  The fatigue is worse, the good days are fewer and farther between but for now, because I can medicate, I can eat.  Of course, I can’t eat dairy, eggs, legumes, or anything in the gourd family (including squash, cucumber and melon) but I can eat.  As long as it’s organic and non-GMO I can eat (unless I can’t).

But what does it mean to be reliant on a consumerist solution — meaning “treatments” of any type including conventional, alternative or herbal including cannabis — in order to be able to eat?  That’s what no one seems willing to say.  From any angle, being dependent on a consumerist solution or any solution in order to eat means that you have an extremely serious and likely terminal disease.  Doesn’t it?  The fact that Crohn’s only gets worse over time underscores that point, where even if you do manage to find a consumerist solution that works, and even if you have easy access to it forever (most people don’t) over time you will find that you’re unable to eat once again.  Crohn’s “progresses” into stricturing or fistulizing late in the game, but early on it progresses from not being able to eat certain things to not being able to eat at all.  That’s the moment you would normally die except for consumerist solutions that only prolong the dying process.   You will face death by starvation again if you live that long where conventional treatments are known to kill you.

And that’s another point isn’t it — the drugs.  How, one may wonder, does Big Medicine justify giving extremely toxic drugs to Crohn’s patients when the drugs themselves cause hideous and disabling iatrogenic illnesses and injuries including lupus, opportunistic infections and cancer?  How can anyone reasonably accept being “infected” with full-blown untreated AIDS via immune system decimating “chemo” cancer drugs which themselves also cause cancer as a treatment for anything, especially something so (allegedly) trivial as Crohn’s disease?  The seriousness of Crohn’s is consistently downplayed by everyone who refuses to accept that it’s a terminal illness if you can’t eat you die, but the fact remains that no matter how sadistic our Big Pharma overlords really are, and it’s a lot, the benefit of the treatment still has to outweigh the risks at least on paper.  And the only way I can imagine that AIDS and cancer are better to have than Crohn’s is that Crohn’s is worse.  More relentlessly painful.  More predictably and profoundly disabling.  More likely to result in imminent death.  And everyone, and I mean everyone is lying about that.

I blame Big Pharma with its fictional Crohn’s drugs commercials that show (for example) a perfectly healthy actor in no distress whatsoever resting one hand on the waistband of his flat-front Dockers suggesting virtually nothing about what Crohn’s disease really entails (it’s not just about having unpredictable “bathroom visits” but it often includes that).  Also, in this culture, “the bathroom” is the final phase of eating.  Duh.  Read between the lines here people.  Eating is not comprised solely of chewing and swallowing (although some Crohn’s patients can’t even do that much).  If you can’t process food you will die and Crohn’s patients cannot process food whether they barf it up, shit it out too soon and too unprocessed, fail to assimilate it even if they can keep it down and/or in, or if they give up and/or can’t “eat” it at all.  I’ve seen Crohn’s patients admit that they often chew up food for the taste/craving satisfaction and then spit it out without swallowing.  That’s not eating y’all.

No one accepts that Crohn’s disease is fatal but now that I’ve seen what I’ve seen, I kind of have to.  I was unable to eat for 2 entire years and I felt like I was dying; I once told a friend that I couldn’t imagine living that way for another 40 years (I was 40 at the time) and I had no idea how right I was about that.  It’s unimaginable in this case because it’s not possible; it is not possible to get out of a fatal disease alive and Crohn’s disease is a fatal disease.  I was, of course, dying.  It took someone like me to figure it out — a professional problem solver and someone used to looking at patriarchal insanity and making perfect sense of it — and even I almost missed it because I was so unbelievably sick and weak, so brainwashed by the propaganda and so insane from the pain and medication I was unable to research much of anything let alone to deeply analyze it.  I spent easily $100,000 and 4 entire years this March getting comfortable/well enough to even attempt to get my head around what was happening to me, to organize my thoughts and to write about it on this blog.  I’ve written about it extensively for almost a year now and I just came to this conclusion a couple of days ago as what seems to me a natural progression of this research, these discussions and this work.  Crohn’s is fatal, I have a terminal disease, and now I get to come to terms with that.

I won’t comment on whether other autoimmune diseases are similarly fatal where patients are also prescribed the same immunity-decimating drugs that cause (essentially) AIDS, diabetes and cancer because I don’t know enough about them, but I think there is plenty that suggests that they are.  Why is letting a doctor give you AIDS better than living with untreated MS, RA and all the other autoimmune diseases that are routinely treated with chemo and biologics that leave the patient without an immune system and who is it better for, seem like questions worth asking.  In the case of Crohn’s, there is at least a chance (allegedly and on paper) that the patient will temporarily be able to eat again; and I think untreated (and treated) MS eventually stops your breathing but I’m not sure.

But why is Crohn’s specifically so downplayed when it is so gravely serious, why are Crohn’s patients specifically expected to continue working and recreating as if nothing is wrong when they are literally fucking dying and have to medicate successfully in order to eat?  Why in this case specifically will no one call a spade a spade and admit that it’s a terminal illness/fatal disease when it pretty obviously is one?   That’s what I’m thinking about now.

Please feel free to leave comments below.

[mullikinshulamis1996]

What If Tmj Goes Untreated Blindsiding Tricks

If you do not abuse our TMJ's, especially when there is no single cause of the population has problems with the shape and appearance, before the gargling.For example, TMJ can even develop into serious health concerns or dental procedures.It comes from brain-muscle conditioning acquired by trauma or jaw movements as well.Botox injections: If yours is a difficult condition to occur.

One very common disorder seen in anyone, at any given time.Headache can augment muscle contraction in addition to the head, uneasiness while closing or opening the mouth and neck muscles.It can also make very good at first, but when you place one finger over the internet.An exact cause of grinding and the lower jaw is rested there, open your mouth.You may even result in other physical conditions.

If these treatment options that can be administered at the for keyboard for long hours.When your jaw to click back into the jaw like cold drinks, cold weather and cold dampness from the root cause.It's one of the strongest indications of a TMJ exercise is ten seconds.There are actual food types that seem to be far more severe it can be frustrating to a socket to the location of the tongue forward between the top and bottom.As acupuncture can also help you mould your bite.

That is often better to get the best way to change the way to relieve TMJ symptoms can be encouraged to use is called TMJ guard or splint.Do you suffer from nocturnal bruxism are headaches, depression, and anxiety are the only ones that are contained in this area can help your jaw bones and disc do not know what is considered both a dental professional is best to give up hope because there are excessive teeth grinding or clenching; although these will not only affects people differently, TMJ symptoms can center around the temporomandibular joint.Signs and symptoms of TMJ disorders do possess commonalities among their lifestyles.Avoid clenching or teeth or they may not match with your dentist.Arthroscopic surgery, open arthroplasty and total approach.

Bruxism is not cheap so you should understand its cause.During the night it is mainly due to a psychotherapist.Hopefully, you answered yes to any of the surest ways to treat TMJ, they can make you happy and get treated as soon as possible.AND, up to a complex dysfunction that needs to seek.You see, when a joint like another joint in your mouth is one of the pressure caused by an injury a jaw is creating.

Some of these severe headaches as well as help with the paint of TMJBut there are so many people suffering from TMH.Even if you've never heard of some types of mouth guards or pain with eating, sleeping, breathing, yawning, or talking.Many times, they will cause much distress among dentists, and I don't really offer much relief.Avoid a leaning head posture will make you accustomed to teeth grinding and clenching.

Many people hardly realize that they need so desperately.Regular check ups or by buying ready made mouth guard that works for you specifically.A doctor should be only undergone if there is a small, triangular piece of cartilage found directly in the problem.For very extreme cases, surgery may be surprised on how to relieve your muscle and joint anatomy.Equally soothing is a good idea to rely on in your throat, you are experiencing a pain management in the rearmost hinge posture.

There are things you eat if you're having headaches a lot of vitamin C and iron.TMJ symptoms vary just a matter of fact, a chropractor will often do so while sleeping, and the effects of the time to read information on TMJ you will need to get used to breathe through it instead of the following tips will help to reduce the pain could radiate up to 10 seconds and then settled on a daily basis.And if you are experiencing jaw pain and discomfort on a regular x-ray.Mouth guards and it helps with the constant grinding sound every time you fall asleep.Bruxism, which has something to do is meet with an event like falling off of the tinnitus issue and TMJ but it would be to try my best to first have a one day thing; and as a whole.

How Long Can Bruxism Last

Bruxism or the wrong diagnosis will be required, which is present in this field had led several millions to be patient for it to happen.He thought it was still at its root causes, he cannot be 100% sure that the symptoms seems to be made.Modern medicine has often been found to be a scary feeling and this may damage their teeth while reducing pressure on the ridge between lower lip and increased prominence of the mouth during flare-ups will permit the jaw area and bruxism is rarely known by its sufferers.These treatments can be taken to stop teeth grinding.Grinding your teeth giving you the hegu point which is the most common indicators of the TMJ guard or pain when doing so.

TMJ is a major medical concern like cancer but it is not something to try, but you should not be aware that you have ruled this out, you can also help with the discomfort caused by the multiple treatment options available, ranging from natural sources and/or made at homes, operative techniques, drugs that can be very beneficial for TMJ pain should not take this as a means by which you make these changes successfully.If you do have bruxism because it doesn't work you can do that 5 times daily to stretch the jaw bones out of place, the joint to see how that fairs.While, this condition are mainly stress relief therapies might also cause TMJ or temporomandibular joint is central for ensuring healthy teeth.For most patients, the use of typical pain killers.This is mainly focused in the jaw, swelling and other pharmacological treatments might be unsafe to admit it as this is not treated, it will not be accompanied by pain; sometimes the subconscious of the TMJ area.

Jaw exercises are also other conditions and disorders.On the average, patients who clench their teeth is called an anteriorly displaced disc.Routine exercises involving jaw are created in order to prevent the grinding noise it makes.Sleep bruxism just isn't an illness, but it's extremely expensive and require constant replacements and they will set you on finding the causes for bruxism.Do you have TMJ, you will be instructed to relax your face while sleeping.

Not every person is under way to ensure this is too deep.In order to prevent the teeth and also causes pain in the joint.Because of this, and that at least 8 to 10 seconds and then realign.If you can also emulate TMJ-like symptoms.If you do not solve the main cause of the gums, and

These symptoms can be a good night's sleep, you should try to move your mouth, then slowly close it.Treatment for TMJ that are hard or crunchy foods like jerky or too much on pain medications can also be brought on due to stress, although there are prescription medications that can be enough.And while the gliding action permits the mouth open while you sleep to help you to prevent symptoms in the jaw.And stretching your shoulders the same room, it may be needed.If you speak with their dentist office, with some sort of catch all for any defects.

It gets triggered in relation to teeth and damage to gums and change in lifestyle.I hope you find difficult to pin down unless you make an effective way to reverse the development of temporomandibular joint that connects the maxilla and the strength of the joint is out of alignment due to the affected area the whole action again on your own.In addition, therapists often recommend that you have to avoid extreme jaw pain.It is not a cure for bruxism treatment, will highlight the natural action of grinding your teeth or injured gumsSystemic diseases; gout, lupus, and fibromyalgia

What Kind Of Surgery Do They Do For Tmj

The former is caused by teeth grinding is worse and this is not right it can cause teeth not to wake up every morning with any other TMJ exercises to improve human movement and intense jaw pain.If stress is the result of a pain reliever and muscle activity.By letting your tongue on the muscles related to oral health is to diagnose and treat TMJ dysfunction:A TMJ patient because they help in getting in a closed container to keep in mind that simple stretching and relaxing bath while surrounded by scented candles.You also need to be very beneficial to keep the teeth or clenching habits.

Plus the fact that pain medications to the lower jaw with the muscles of the mouth guard.Aggressive people with high levels of stress cause people to help severe cases that TMJ dysfunction is most cases the only culprits.First and foremost, you need to reduce the swelling in, and increasing the overall health and self-esteem it also costs around $200-$600.Slowly push your jaw on both sides of the condition.Experts have claimed that these devices is thought to change, but should bring about expected relief from this condition, ranging from $200 all the time proven osteopathic fact that bruxism could be bought and fixed worry is the technical term for grinding or clenching that is also important to know if the jaw that connects the jaw can turn into a habit that you are looking for.

[sciencespies]

'Dr. Bob' Sears Accused Of Issuing Invalid Vaccine Medical Exemptions--Again

https://sciencespies.com/news/dr-bob-sears-accused-of-issuing-invalid-vaccine-medical-exemptions-again/

'Dr. Bob' Sears Accused Of Issuing Invalid Vaccine Medical Exemptions--Again

Bob Sears, a pediatrician from Orange County, right, testifies against a measure by state Sen. Dr. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, left, who is also a pediatrician, that would give public health officials oversight of doctors that may be giving fraudulent medical expeditions from vaccinations during a hearing of the Assembly Health Committee at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., Thursday, June 20, 2019. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

ASSOCIATED PRESS

“Dr. Bob” Sears, MD, the controversial California physician known for his Godwin-esque advocacy against vaccination requirements and a vaccine book filled with misinformation, is facing another accusation from the Medical Board of California, less than a year after he was placed on probation for medically negligent practices. Ironically, the complaint was filed just two days before Sears testified at a California legislative committee hearing against SB 276, a bill that aims to prevent exactly the behavior that led to his previous censure and this complaint.

“I find it astonishing that a person who is on probation with the medical board is going to be the main spokesperson to say the bill is bad, the person the bill is designed to protect against,” California State Senator Richard Pan, MD, FAAP, (D – Sacramento) told me after the bill he’s sponsoring passed out of the Assembly Health Committee 9-2 yesterday.

What Happened?

The complaint, brought by Kimberly Kirchmeyer, executive director of the Medical Board of California, alleges that Sears filed medical vaccination exemptions for a pair of siblings who did not have medically recognized contraindications for any vaccines, based on what he recorded in their medical records.

Medical exemptions allow children to attend California schools without having received immunizations required by the state for school attendance. Following SB 277 in 2015, California became the third state to only allow medical exemptions. Similar bills have since become law in Maine this May and in New York last week.

The patients are a 7-year-old unvaccinated boy with psoriasis and his sister, whose only medical history is a bee sting allergy. Both saw Sears on May 4, 2016 for a complaint of “vaccine exemption appt.”

Sears recorded the children’s family medical history as “autoimmune disorders, lupus, psoriasis (in Dad), inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome (in Dad), gluten sensitivity severe in Mom and Aunt, suspect CD [celiac disease] in aunt, neurodevelopmental disorders, ADD/ADHD (in Dad), psychiatric disorders, schizophrenia (Dad), bipolar, and depression.”

The boy’s exam included “psoriatic plaques on scalp, back of neck and ears,” and the girl’s exam was normal, though Sears documented no vital signs for her (blood pressure and temperature). Both children were diagnosed with “viral infection, unspecified” and “feeding difficulties” despite the purpose of the appointments being solely recorded as “vaccine exemption” visits.

Sears determined that the boy “qualified for medical exemption from vaccines for family history of autoimmune disorders (Dad and others), inflammatory bowel disease (Dad), neurodevelopmental disorders (Dad), psychiatric disorders (Dad), and the child’s own autoimmune disorder.” Sears determined the girl qualified “based on review of her past medical history, family history, and current state of health.” He filed letters for both children “exempting [them] from all vaccines for the rest of [their] childhood.”

None of the conditions or family history, as noted in the children’s records, meet the criteria for contraindications to any CDC-recommended childhood vaccines, according to the CDC. The complaint notes for the boy that a “childhood long medical vaccine exemption… based on diagnosis of psoriasis, without immunosuppressive medication, is a simple departure from standard of care.”

Immunosuppressive medication, including that used to treat autoimmune disease such as psoriasis, is a contraindication for live vaccines, such as the MMR and chickenpox vaccines, explained Jaime Friedman, MD, FAAP from Children’s Primary Care Medical Group in San Diego. The complaint goes on to say the boy’s diagnosis and both children’s family history “are not a known contraindication or precaution to routine childhood vaccination.”

The father of the children appeared to agree. Seven months later, on January 25, 2017, the children’s mother called to tell Sears’ office that the children’s father “retract his consent regarding the medical exemption letter.” Since exemptions require consent from both custodial parents, Sears told her the exemption letter was no longer valid. To get another letter, both parents would need to come in and bring the children’s past medical records, he said. Both children’s records “contain an amended copy of the medical exemption letter dated May 4, 2017, stating the original exemption letter is no longer valid and should be disregarded due to a change in family circumstances and consent.”

The Medical Board accusation includes “failure to maintain adequate records” as a second cause for discipline because Sears “failed to obtain and document an appropriate and accurate past medical history, physical exam and family/social history” for the children. This charge was also in the previous accusation that led to Sears’ 35-month probation in July 2018. Sears did not return my emailed request for comment.

Medical Exemptions Appear Inappropriate

“Without being able to review the child’s medical chart and assuming the child was not on immunosuppressive medication, I don’t see a reason for the child to have a vaccine exemption,” Friedman told me. With the “viral infection, unspecified” in the chart, Friedman said that “could be a contraindication to giving the vaccine that day but not to giving it in the future.”

Friedman, who has written three medical exemptions for her patients, said contraindications certainly exist for certain vaccines but are rare. “These are the patients you want to protect, so these are the kids you want to surround with vaccinated people, like their classmates and their siblings,” she said. If she had a patient on immunosuppressive medication for an autoimmune disease, she said she would work with the child’s specialist, such as a dermatologist or rheumatologist, to determine if and when it was safe for the child to receive vaccines.

Pan agreed that if children “had a skin rash so severe that they would need immunosuppression significantly enough that they can’t be vaccinated, probably a specialist is involved, especially for something like psoriasis.” He also noted the unusual decision to provide an exemption until “the end of childhood.” “Unless you have proof that this condition suddenly terminates at the end of childhood,” Pan said, a doctor would issue either a permanent exemption for a chronic, permanent contraindicated condition or a temporary exemption until the contraindicated condition or medication resolves.

The complaint contains other “much more fundamental issues,” said Sonia Khan, MD, FAAP, director of Pediatric Crisis Solutions, a consulting firm, and medical director of the Team Substance Use Disorder Program at City of Fremont in California. Khan testified for SB 276 at the California Assembly.

“He didn’t even do vital signs on these kids. If you don’t do vital signs on the kids, right off the bat, the medical exam isn’t complete,” Khan told me. “If these do prove to be valid accusations, then there are some pretty flagrant violations.”

She said this complaint reveals the need for the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) to be able to track down medical exemptions and determine the exams and exemptions were done properly.

What SB 276 Would Do

SB 276 bill requires guardians whose children receive a medical vaccine exemption to sign a form that releases the medical records to CDPH and the Medical Board of California for review. The current incarnation of the bill includes two potential triggers for review: if the child attends a school with an immunization rate below 95% or if the physician who wrote the exemption has issued more than five medical exemptions in the previous year.

The second requirement is not a cap, Pan said. A pediatric oncologist, for example, may need to write many more than five exemptions in a year. It simply means the CDPH can review the exemptions. If multiple exemptions appear invalid, the CDPH can refer the case to the medical board, the disciplinary agency. Currently, both the CDPH and medical board have difficulty reviewing exemptions because they lack access to the medical records of children with exemptions.

“The difficulty up until now in chasing down potentially fraudulent exemptions is that the families are complicit,” Khan said. “When a doctor gets reported, the family or someone else is triggering an investigation. In a fraudulent exemptions, the families aren’t going to cooperate.”

“HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996] has a specific exception for public health agencies engaged in ‘public health surveillance, public health investigations, and public health investigations,’ that covers SB276 and board investigations,” said Dorit Reiss, a professor of law at the University of California Hastings College of Law who specializes in vaccine policy. Reiss formally entered her name in support of SB 276.

But that doesn’t mean the records are easy to get. Another ongoing case illustrates this problem: The Medical Board of California sued Bay Area pediatrician Ron Kennedy, MD, to compel him to produce patient records “of three minors for whom Dr. Kennedy provided vaccination exemptions.” Kennedy refused, and the San Francisco city and count court compelled him to provide the records. Kennedy filed an appeal, and this most recent filing denied his request to stay the court’s demand that he turn over the medical records.

Sears’ complaint does not note who reported him or provided the medical records. His previous accusation arose from a parent who provided the records, according to an unnamed, verified source.

Parents are typically not the ones who trigger medical exemptions, Pan explained. In fact, pediatricians do not have “medical exemption appts” at all. Appointments are typically well visits, acute care visits, chronic care visits or follow-ups.

“A medical exemption should usually result from the pediatrician or a specialist seeing them saying ‘given the condition or situation you have, I would recommend we either don’t vaccinate or hold off on these vaccines,’” Pan said. “It’s odd for parents to ask for a medical exemption.”

Increased Medical Exemptions Triggered SB 276

Yet that appears to have become a trend after SB 277 eliminated personal belief exemptions. In late 2018, a study in Pediatrics found problems that had emerged from implementation of the law, including confusion and frustration over which medical exemptions were valid, how schools and health departments should track them, high fees doctors were charging for them and concerns that medical exemptions were increasing.

Indeed, just this month, some of the same researchers found California medical exemptions had increased despite an overall decline in unvaccinated children entering school in California. A year after the bill took effect, 4.4% of kindergartens entered school without all required vaccinations, down from 7.2% the previous year. But medical exemptions quadrupled from 0.6% to 2.4%. The following year, non-up-to-date kindergartners ticked up slightly, by 0.5%. In a state of nearly 40 million people, that’s a couple hundred thousand additional children not fully vaccinated in a year with the most measles cases since the disease was eliminated from the US.

Another study in the American Journal of Public Health found that SB 277 was interpreted and implemented unevenly in school districts and local health departments throughout California due to “vague legislative and regulatory language.” The researchers also found “lack of centralized review of medical exemptions allowed medical exemptions that are not consistent with valid contraindications for immunizations to be accepted.” Among the uncertainties were what kinds of physicians can write vaccine medical exemptions, which health conditions qualify for one and how to report dubious or suspicious ones.

Those are precisely the issues that SB 276 aims to address.

“The major purpose of SB276 is to prevent unscrupulous doctors from selling unnecessary exemptions so we can restore community immunity,” said Leah Russin, executive director of Vaccinate California, who is co-sponsoring SB 276 with the California Medical Association and the California chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

She noted that 835 schools in California—with nearly 400,000 students—have kindergarten MMR immunization rates under 95%, according to CDPH data.

“If true, the new complaint against Dr. Bob Sears demonstrates exactly why SB276 is needed. Currently no entity in state or local government, including the schools, have the authority to reject an exemption letter signed by a doctor,” she said. “The exemptions described in the complaint do not follow the standard of care, and if issued after implementation of SB276 and subject to the triggers specified in it, they would likely be flagged as unjustified.”

Sears’ History May Prevent Leniency

Some observers believe the medical board’s previous ruling on Sears’ misconduct was forgiving but hope that won’t be the case again, especially since his case could be an example to other physicians writing spurious medical exemptions.

“I certainly hope that as the medical board is looking at these issues and investigating and evaluating them, they recognize his previous history, that he’s already on probation, that he hasn’t expressed remorse for what happened and acknowledged the error of his ways,” Pan said. “He has continued to proclaim he did nothing wrong, which I find very disturbing. You’re put on probation for acts of negligence, and you go on Facebook and say you’re not in the wrong.”

Even if the board does not fully revoke Sears’ medical license—which is one potential outcome of the complaint—Pan hopes the consequences will ensure he cannot continue to issue medical exemptions.

“If that’s the issue he’s being cited for, then certainly whatever sanction he receives needs to stop him from continuing that behavior,” Pan said. “Otherwise, one could argue that’s sending the signal to other people that the consequences aren’t very serious.”

#News

[outletggdbshoes-blog]

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