Icelandic Minister, Johanna Sigurdardottir, Would Be World's First Gay PM

It is probably true that Johanna Sigurdardottir's homosexuality would be more noted and more controversial in the US than it is now in Iceland, but it would be incorrect to suppose that this is the only characteristic that would feature in news coverage of any similar figure in the US.



While former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey attracted nationwide attention almost entirely based on his sexual behavior, his scandal plagued administration was notable for little else. His sexual orientation played a crucial role in a sexual harassment AND corruption scandal,



Sigurdardottir by contrast has distinguished herself as unique in 'standing up for the little guy' and with so long and distinguished a record, of course Icelanders will focus on these characteristics that actually affect them.



We are not confined to idle speculation regarding American tolerance, because the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee is Barney Frank, an openly gay congressman. Frank has been reelected several times and holds a coveted chairmanship despite being caught hiring a male prostitute and misusing the power of his office to benefit them. Frank has recently attracted nationwide news coverage because of his role in overseeing the banking system, and the attention has been focused on his job, not his sexual orientation. Sigurdardottir's ascent to Prime Minister is still historic, but a close look would suggest that this ascent has more to do with her hard work and humanitarian efforts than disproportionate tolerance in Icelanders.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Completely mad reasons to support Apple and Mac

So the new online only PC magazine decides to celebrate 25 years of the Mac. This makes a fair amount of sense because the Mac did after all, introduce the GUI to general personal computing, and also because PC Magazine needs all the corporate support that they can get (why do the cynical reasons always come to mind whenever Apple comes up). To make an Apple product look good in PC Magazine, the writers and editorial board write articles describing their wonderful experiences with the Mac. The crazy thing is, the Mac is praised as ACTUALLY WORKING with iTunes!

But here's a great argument for Macs: If you have an iPod or iPhone, you need one. iTunes won't make your Mac run slow or conflict with your database software.

In a seperate article, he details further.

Then in 2002 , my wife got me my first iPod. It "worked" with my homebuilt PCs with FireWire cards, but there was something…lacking. I had to reformat the iPod way too often, and iTunes was a resource hog on the PC. I had to get a Mac so that I could have some stability in my music player. I was back to an Aluminum PowerBook G4, first a 12-inch then a 15-inch. The Intel transition of Macs happened in 2005, and now I carry both operating systems everywhere I go: a MacBook Pro that runs both Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard.

And this is written by no less than the Lead Analyst for the Desktops team at PC Magazine Labs! Even a technical expert, and indeed a technical expert cultivated by tech companies, has to put the term 'worked' in quotation marks when describing iTunes.

Should I mention at this point, that I HATE, HATE, HATE, Quicktime media player and its hellspawn iTunes?

Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0

Quicktime, and what appears to be about a quarter of an operating system that comes with it, is the most invasive program that I have EVER run across, with the PARTIAL exception of pure malware.

People have been wondering lately why Steve Jobs is so emaciated looking. His problem is simple. The poor man simply installed iTunes/Quicktime on a PC while touching the back of the computer, or otherwise making a connection. The body of Steve Jobs is not Apple proprietary, and who would imagine that being made according to God's standards was good enough?

Now all this might be taken to imply that I disparage Apple and the Mac. To the contrary, I think that any system that can inspire loyalty against the prevailing Wintel quasi-monopoly AND inspire loyalty DESPITE functioning so poorly with Wintel products of any sort (I assume that Quicktime and iTunes will work properly on a Mac) , must have something going for it! I must admit to a certain amount of puzzlement as to what exactly this IS, but there must be something.

Any time that I have used a Mac, I have been annoyed by the unique path required to make any adjustment. This is actually praised in the PC Mag Widows vs. Mac point-counterpoint article. To quote "Windows has too many ways to do things". This strikes me as very odd, since virtually everyone has misplaced something at home, and then been forced to spend a disproportionate amount of time hunting for it. I fail to see how replicating the "lost it and I need it NOW" experience is desirable. Perhaps a Mac person out there can tell me what the special ingredient is. Oh, and yeah, I know about Vista.
Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0

Vista SUCKS!

Anyway, having complained about Quicktime/Itunes, I should list a couple of programs that might help if they don't work for you. First item is a substitute for Quicktime; the QuickTime Alternative. This program is supposed to be a replacement for Apple's compu-cancer, and it is updated on a regular basis. In the past at least, it did not necessarily work as well as a person would like, but it doesn't have to. It isn't as invasive as the real thing.

The second program that I would recommend, if you want to remove Quicktime from your system would be Revo Uninstaller. QuickTime likes to leave chunks of itself on your system when you remove it, and if you run Revo on a more thorough setting, it helps to strip the invasive, interferes-with-other-programs monster from your system. Running the thorough clean takes time, but it is worth it!

Unfortunately, by the time you detect that you really have a problem, there is a good chance that you will already have tried to uninstall Quicktime, and have discovered that the removal was ineffective. For this problem, you might try CCleaner. This useful utillity will remove garbage of all sorts, not just that left by QuickTime/iTunes, and though I have yet to come across a program that completely undoes the damage of 'Apple's revenge', this will often solve the problem.

Finally, there is an old program that might or might not work; QuickTime Killer. This 2005 era program was designed to stop QuickTime from placing itself in the system tray as an autorun program. As of this writing, you can still download the program, but I have never used it, and for obvious reasons, I do not wish to infect my system to test whether or not it will work with the latest versions of QuickTime. If you are trying to tame QuickTime, but can't remove it, you might try the program.

Since so many people have had problems with Apple's media-invader, I would be very happy to hear any other suggestions, or means of removal. You can of course, put your experiences in the comments, but I also would be happy to publish a guest post if someone wants to write one.

Film Review

A characteristically personal scene from a movie that is supposed to be depicting the story of a globe-spanning conqueror .

Mongol: A Film With Limited Appeal

If for no other reason than that people around the globe tend to like certain categories of story, there are several straightforward and standard ways of making a movie about a great conqueror.

The first would be as a full spectrum historical biopic, spinning together any and all of the dramatic elements of so notable a figure's life. The second would be to make a historical romance, using real or imaginary events and characters to make a conventional romantic story, with the conqueror's adventurous life adding spice and extra drama. The third would be to make a story of trial and triumph, with the protagonist overcoming incredible odds. Fourth, and finally, one could make a story of villainy, tragedy and moral decay, with a driven protagonist falling due to his moral flaws, or inflicting misery and suffering on the world. Any one of these narratives would have broad appeal to people around the globe.

'Mongol' however, is not so straightforward. While I do not know enough about Genghis Khan's life to definitively rule out most specific incidents or subplots in the movie, Mongol is clearly not a full biopic, covering only the early portion of Temudjin's life, having a distinctly personal focus (the protagonist goes from family and retainers, to an army of thousands with almost no exposition), and emphasizing monogamous and faithful love in a man who (albeit he might well have been loyal to his family), it is well established, entertained a wide variety of relationships with more than one woman. The one thing that Mongol takes away from the historical biopic is a somewhat grim and serious tone.

Mongol does have the man-woman relationship emphasis of the historical romance, but the story is not built into a smooth and sleek narrative around this. Rather than being a historical romance, the romantic element seems to have been added to establish the humanity of the conqueror, and to anchor the personal emphasis of the film. The romantic narrative of 'Mongol' is too choppy, and the tone of the film too dour to be a successful historical romance on the genre's own terms.

'Mongol' does contain many ingredients of the trial and triumph story, but likewise, would not be a very good movie by the standards of this genre because the adventurous tension, action, and triumph are all very incompletely developed if these elements are what the film entirely rests upon.

Finally, so far as a narrative of tragedy and moral decay are concerned, there is little of this in the film*,and this absence points to the motivations and understandings behind its creation. Mongol is a film that attempts to present the character of Genghis Khan in a reasonably sympathetic, but not quite celebratory light. The conqueror Temudjin is something of a hero, or at least is respected in the steppes where the film is set, but is likely to be seen in a grim light by many Russians (a disproportionate number of whom are involved in the production) and much of the world at large. In its selective coverage of Genghis Khan's life, the film can avoid confronting the beliefs of people who have widely varying opinions of him. Any film that deals with so notable a character is going to have a certain amount of appeal to people living in lands directly impacted by him, but the peculiar mix of plot ingredients is likely to limit its appeal elsewhere.

This is not to say that the film is specifically bad, and certain elements; much of the acting for example (particularly Honglei Sun as Jamukha), are very good. The costumes, photography and soundtrack are all well done and give the film an authentic appearance (while liberties appear to have been taken with some historical events and the battle tactics, absolute accuracy does not necessarily define good and bad in film). The natural environment in which the film is set is quite beautiful, and is likely to be even more striking to those people who are less accustomed to such an environment (the climate and terrain are actually very similar to parts of Western Nebraska).

Good acting, cinematography, and some interesting costumes however, are not enough to make the film one I would recommend to everyone. These elements of craft combine to put flesh on the disparate themes I mentioned earlier, and you would be justified if you liked this movie, but you would not be wrong or unsophisticated if its thematic mix did not leave you impressed.

*

'Mongol' is apparently, the first installment of a planned trilogy, and it is very possible that such themes will show up in sequels, possibly providing a more balanced, albeit six hour long trilogy experience.


Film Also Known As (AKA)

Монгол	Russia
Cengiz Han	Turkey
Czyngis-Chan	Poland
Der Mongole	Germany
Mongol: The Rise to Power of Genghis Khan	UK
Mongol: The Untold Story of Genghis Khan	Netherlands

MOUSE TERRORISM HORROR IN TORONTO!!!

*Suicide Gnawers Kill More Than100 Cats.
*A 911 Event For The Cat Community.
*Many Deaths Constitute "Signature" of Al Qaeda In Rodentia.


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In a shocking development, suicide-gnawing mice launched a deadly attack on the

Durham Humane Society in Oshawa, a suburb of Toronto, killing over a hundred cats, two dogs and a puppy, and 60 hamsters, guinea pigs and other small pets.

“It’s like losing your own family pet, times 200,” said Kay Anderson, a kennel worker who spent most of her time preparing adult cats for adoption. “It’s shock, it’s devastation, it’s complete heartache. It’s a second home to all of us. We all have animals of our own that came from there.”

Animal shelter workers who arrived on scene were held back by flames until better equipped police and firemen arrived.

By the time fire crews arrived, they were only able to save 10 dogs, two cats and a rat. One of the surviving cats needed oxygen, three of the dogs were treated for chest congestion, while the rat was sent to be cared for in a foster home.

The rescued animals, according to police, were frightened and freezing.

"We got those animals that were able to be saved and put them in police cruisers, and kept them warm, and comforted them until the experts showed up from animal services," said Const. Dave Selby of Durham Regional Police.

A 911 Event For The Cat Community.

Initial work by (human) fire investigators failed to reveal a purposeful human cause for the lethal fire, but evidence of rodentine terrorism soon emerged. The suicide attackers chewed on electrical wires in the shelter's ceiling until they could cause an electrical short, sparking a lethal fire.

"It's unfortunate and ironic that mice caused the fire that killed the cats," Toronto Humane Society spokesman Ian McConachie told the BBC News website.

"Unfortunately, the mice probably perished in the fire as well," he added.

The US State Department quickly released a statement on the horrific events. "This attack showed clear indications of malice. Malice, and large numbers of casualties are the signature signs of Al Qaeda involvement in a disaster. Clearly in continuing our war on a tactic, we must now launch an invasion of territories controlled by terriers and ferrets."

Questions about the sensibility of attacking animals well known to dislike rodents were quickly dismissed. "Both rodent-terrorists and small carnivores have four limbs, hair, and nurse their young", said a spokesman. "Besides, biting is bad. When we see one animal biting another, we should clearly drop a 500 lb. bomb on the biter. This will clearly stop the negative behavior."

Spreading extremism

While this attack represents a dramatic spread of rodent militancy to Canada, rodentine extremism has been well documented in the past few years. Farfour the mouse, for example, was, before his untimely (or timely, depending on your perspective) demise, a propagandist for Hamas, and as such, aroused much alarm throughout the internet.

Farfour, Hamas agent

While the late Farfour was a rather feckless and dimwitted individual, experts warn that disillusioned mice inspired by his example and displaced by recent historical events could pose a greater threat. Many rodents with military, espionage and security training have been laid off, and might be pushed into the underworld by the recent economic crisis, selling their skills to the highest bidder.

Danger Mouse: laid off in post-Cold War downsizing

Joseph Mkhedrioni Mouse: Removed from security services following triumph of Rose Revolution.

The political chaos and decline in living standards following the death of Mickey Mouse the Great and the collapse of the Cheddar Wall have also brought new weapons and expertise to the black market. A recent suicide bombing, seen in the video below, demonstrates the dimensions of the new threat.

Chemical analysis of the explosives used in the bombing indicates a military-grade explosive taken from Disney stores, and the terrorist rodent is clearly a more determined and decisive threat than the notorious Farfour.

Further evidence of the Jihadist threat can be seen in the spread of propaganda that attempts to entice young male mice into terrorist organizations with the implied promise that this will impress female mice.

pic and info: Black Rainbow

This image for example, seen on a T-shirt sold on the Internet, is clearly designed to incite support for terrorism in young male mice.

Rodentofascism?

Some academics say that this is not a new threat however. "Rodentofascism is just a new manifestation of an old ideology" said Christopher Kittens, sipping whiskey and staggering slightly. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. We can't afford to adopt a Neville Chamberlain strategy the second time around. For too long we have accepted the idea that government intrusion into private life is simply bad. Keep that attitude, and the next thing you know, a mouse in a swimsuit smoking a cigar will be buzzing round your head" he said, referring to the axe wielding rodent who accompanied the Nazi regime's chief fighter pilot.

Adolph Galland and rodent companion (on side of plane)

The evil rodent

Other analysts disputed this characterization however. "It is true that Mickey Galland and Farfour are extremists" said Bianca Gabor of the Rescue Aid Society, "but they are seperated by both decades and geography, and neither is representative of the larger mouse community. People should be alarmed at any axe wielding maniac, not just one with round black ears on the top of his head. Mickey Mouse is just one prominent example of a rodent who fought FOR the Allies.

Economists of the Chicago School also responded to critics who point out that Henry Ford and some of the other men who were important to the Allied cause in WW2 also showed an excessive symapthy towards fascists before the war, and later in the Cold War that followed. "The Western world celebrates ambition and entrepreneurship" said a spokesman. "Only anti-globalisation extremists and plot-theorists are going to be alarmed just because he wants to own the globe. Naturally Mickey is going to aim high."

More info:

Donate to help humane society of Durham (yes the rodent arson was real)

Fighting Rodentofascism?

Mickey Mouse: A Real Terrorist! Mike Cane's Blog

Copyright Term Extension Act

THE MOUSE THAT ATE THE PUBLIC DOMAIN:
Disney, The Copyright Term Extension Act, And eldred V. Ashcroft

A Mickey Mouse Copyright Law?

Copyright and the Mouse: How Disney’s Mickey Mouse Changed the World

Mickey Mouse threatens to block all ideas in future

Mickey Mouse vs. The People

Mickey Mouse Clubbed

Putting The Cart Before the Horse: The Child Obesity And Thyroid Study

A new study on childhood obesity has hit the headlines. Doctors at the Regional Hospital of Bolzano in Italy measured serum free T3, free T4 (two types of thyroid hormones, TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone, thyrotropin), performed a thyroid ultrasound, and measured antithyroid antibodies in a group of overweight and obese children. There are some rather questionable conclusions from this study which are drawing most of the attention, and which we will get to in a minute, but some of the other correlations deserve a bit of attention first. To quote:

Results: A total of 23 children (12.4%) showed antithyroid antibodies and an ultrasound pattern suggestive of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (group A). Of them, 20 (10.8%) showed antithyroid antibodies and normal ultrasound (group B). A total of 70 subjects (37.6%) showed absent antithyroid antibodies and an ultrasound pattern suggestive of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (group C), and 73 children (39.2%) showed no thyroid antibodies with normal ultrasound (group D). TSH was higher in groups A and C compared with groups B and C, and controls

Notice that out of the overweight children only 39% (group D) had both normal thyroid structure, antibodies, and hormones! More than half of the kids have thyroid abnormalities.

It is very well established that underactive thyroid causes weight gain, and overactive thyroid causes weight loss and wasting. A study that came out just this March found that even small increases in TSH (levels of TSH have an inverse relationship to the thyroid hormones you need to function, and which are replaced in the deficient) WITHIN what has historically been considered normal, are associated with weight gain. Now imagine if the thyroid changes are the CAUSE of the weight gain, as any experiment with altering thyroid hormone levels would support. Then the "mystery" of increasing childhood obesity would be much less of a puzzle, or at least, an avenue towards treating it would be clear.

The Claim

The doctors behind the childhood obesity study however, do not believe that thyroid problems are the cause of the obesity however, but rather, reverse the proposition, and suggest that obesity is the cause of the thyroid problems (seen here on the BBC and Reuters for example).


Why the cause, rather than the result? Well Hashimoto's thyroiditis, the most common cause of thyroid insufficiency in the US, and a major cause throughout the world, is an autoimmune disorder. Continual attack by the immune system causes the thyroid to swell and interferes with thyroid function. Hashimoto's disease is generally diagnosed in no small part through the detection of antibodies and while the study found that no less than 12.4% of the children in the study had the classic signs of Hashimoto's disease (a rather large number by the way, if the sample is representative) many of the children had a swollen thyroid like Hashimoto's disease, but lacked the antibodies.

There was reason to think that the thyroid was indeed swollen and abnormal (and not just naturally bulky) because one of the thyroid hormones was out of balance, and TSH levels [which when high, indicate insufficient thyroid (T3 and T4) hormones], were elevated over controls, and moreover, correlated with the degree of obesity.

In other words, a full 37.6% of the overweight and obese children looked as if they might have a hypothyroid problem, and tests were pointing to the appropriate associated hormone levels, BUT the doctors could not detect an autoimmune attack on the thyroid. Because they cannot detect an attack on the thyroid the doctors behind this study suppose that a "low-grade inflammation state" CAUSED by being overweight is making the thyroid malfunction.

Other Explanations Perhaps?

Doubtless, you can see how this novel theory might be incorrect, but the problem is worse than this. Your adaptive immune system, the portion of your immune system that can learn from past attacks and which vaccines are designed to train, is divided into two sections, the cell-mediated, or Th1-type immune response, and the humoral or Th2-type response. Both portions of your immune system work together to defeat viruses, bacteria, fungi, and other immune threats, but each is better at attacking certain types of threat. The Th2 system for example, produces antibodies, and is better at attacking bacteria, while the Th2 system includes T-cells that recognize and destroy a cell when it has been "hijacked" by a virus. Because each of the two 'wings' of the immune system are better at fighting separate threats, your body will tend to 'turn up' either Th1 or Th2 when it is under attack, and will 'turn down' the less effective half of the immune system.

The thing is, while Hashimoto's disease is recognized by antibodies, part of the Th2 system, the better portion of the cellular damage is caused by "a cell mediated autoimmunity induced by Th1 cytokines". The test for Hashimoto's disease thus is able to detect that there is a problem, when the Th1 portion of the immune system is able to recruit the Th2 to attack one's own body. Even when it recruits the Th2 system however, the Th1 remains dominant in Hashimoto's disease. To quote:

The above findings suggest that a Th1 pattern of immune response characteristic of cellular immunity is dominant in HT (Hashimoto's thyroiditis), whereas the predominance of Th2 cytokines in GD (Graves' Disease) indicates a humoral pattern of immune reaction.

This study that I just quoted also helps to highlight the importance of thyroid disease as a cause, rather than as an effect of obesity. Both Hashimoto's thyroiditis and Graves' disease are autoimmune disorders where the immune system attacks the thyroid gland.

Hashimoto's disease, where the Th1 portion of the immune system is dominant, causes hypothyroid, with the body not getting enough of the T3 and T4 thyroid hormones. A shortage of T3 and T4 thyroid hormones will turn down a person's metabolism, and just as one would expect, Hashimoto's disease tends to make those who suffer from it become overweight.

Graves' disease on the other hand, features a dominant Th2 immune attack on the thyroid gland, and instead of causing an underactive thyroid, producing too little T3 and T4 hormones, Graves' disease induces an OVERACTIVE thyroid, that produces TOO MUCH T4 and T4 thyroid hormone. Because of the excess of thyroid hormone, Graves' disease causes people to LOSE WEIGHT.

So, just to restate and lay everything out, when the immune system malfunctions and attacks the thyroid, it produces different results depending on whether the Th1 orTh2 portion of the system is dominant in the malfunction. When the Th1 is dominant, amongst other symptoms, the person is likely to become overweight, with their metabolism depressed. When the Th2 portion of the immune system is dominant, the victim's metabolism is revved up, and the person loses weight (along with other symptoms).

In both of these cases, there is a serious malfunction, but the Th1 attack and underactive thyroid is detected when a test picks up that the OTHER, non-dominant side of the immune system is attacking the body. Diagnosis of a Th1 autoimmune attack thus depends on the detection of a secondary attack by the other half of the immune system.

Now your body is not supposed to attack itself. Might it be, that even if one portion of your immune system decides to attack your own body, that the other half of the immune system would, in some cases hold off? As everyone knows, immune reactions such as allergies can vary widely in severity. What if a person's immune system launched a more mild autoimmune attack? Might it be that only half of the immune system would go rogue?

In the Italian study, 12.4% of the overweight children had a full blown Hashimoto's type problem but 37.6% showed the signs that one might expect if half, rather than ALL of the immune system went haywire.

Yet another thing that might trigger a thyroid problem and accompanying obesity.

An AUTOIMMUNE reaction to one's own body is not the only thing that can cause thyroid swelling and dysfunction. A simple immune reaction will do the trick just fine. An immune reaction, with the victim suffering from an underactive thyroid would logically be triggered by a persistent virus, rather than a bacteria, because the Th1 portion of the immune system, which is stronger in attacking viruses, would be the portion of the immune system that would trigger thyroid suppressing damage. While my limited knowledge, and I suspect, modern medicine's limited knowledge prevent me from putting here a long list of appropriate viruses, there is one that can serve to make the point. Chronic hepatitis C, the third major type, for which there is now no vaccine is well known to cause thyroid problems, indeed including both autoimmune thyroid disease, and thyroid cancer. Hepatitis C also is a good example of how a virus could be a significant problem, and yet escape detection. Blood borne hepatitis is a major threat that can often be lethal, and both hepatitis A and B were known and identified by the 1970s, but by the middle of the decade, it had been established that neither hepatitis A or B was responsible for most blood-transfusion induced hepatitis. Despite this, nobody identified the causative virus until 1987. Hepatitis caused liver failure, a rather dramatic and distinctive outcome, and yet escaped detection for many years. The symptoms of an epidemic that tended to induce slight thyroid dysfunction or chronic thyroid infection by contrast, could be rather easily attributed to the lifestyle of those affected. There is no doubt that there is an epidemic of obesity around the globe, and while this cannot be said to constitute proof positive of an infectious cause, it is also difficult to imagine how such an illness, if it existed, would manifest itself differently.

Infectious Obesity

In fact, contagion induced thyroid illness would be only one of several mechanisms that have come to light over the past few years by which germs are able to cause weight gain.

Some viruses for example, force stem cells that COULD become fat cells to DO so, and moreover, they cause the new fat cells to take up more fat, becoming bigger.

cranial nerves VII and VIII and selected structures of the inner and middle ear. 1 Nervus vestibularis, 2 Nervus cochlearis, 3 Nervus intermediofacialis, 4 Ganglion geniculi, 5 Chorda tympani, 6 Cochlea, 7 Ductus semicirculares, 8 Malleus, 9 Membrana tympani, 10 Tuba auditiva Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5

Damage to the chorda tympani nerve seems to make people like sweet, salty, and fatty foods more than they would otherwise, and ear infections as a small child seem to cause just this sort of nerve damage.

Another virus can double total body fat, and triple visceral fat in experimental animals, even when the infected and the control animals consume the same amount of food.

Compared to these problems, damaging and infecting a gland, preventing its proper function, is quite prosaic, even if the effects on the infected are dramatic. No fewer than 10 types of infectious agent, from viruses, to prions, to bacteria, have been found to cause obesity in experimental animals, or have been associated with obesity in humans.
Summing Up

The doctors of Bolzano may have found a new, and common type of autoimmune disease, or they may have found a mechanism by which infectious diseases induce obesity, and provided that their sample is representative, they have certainly established that many obese children have thyroid dysfunction of some sort, but to simply claim that being overweight causes the thyroid dysfunction, rather than the other way around, is remarkable........and not in a good way.

Whether the cause of this dubious conclusion is a lack of imagination, a lack of courage, or a desire to jump on the bandwagon of lifestyle modification advocacy is not clear, but the resulting failure and faulty logic is not difficult to detect.

There is a story here, and a big one likely to affect adults as much as children. History is replete with examples where science and medicine set aside, for a time, the facts and evidence in favor of moralizing and to avoid crossing past assumptions (and the distinguished people behind those false assumptions). Hopefully someone, perhaps even someone reading this, will see through the smoke of convention and punch through the sticky web of existing assumption to lead science and medicine forward against the dramatic advances of infectious illness and the ancient claws of the autoimmune.

Could declines in smoking be behind the autism epidemic?

No good deed goes unpunished

An Autism Epidemic?

One spring day in 1999, a Los Angeles Times newspaper article brought a problem to the attention of the nation. A fiercely disabling, but previously rare childhood developmental disability, autism, was being seen in more and more children throughout California, with a 273% increase in incidence in the previous 10 years. Parents of autistic children, struggling to help them, wanted a cure, prospective parents worried about being in the same position, and this report soared to national attention. Soon many, perhaps even most, Americans had heard of autism.Bar chart of the number (per 1,000 U.S. resident children aged 6–17) of children aged 6–17 who were served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) with a diagnosis of autism, from 1996 through 2007.

GNU Free Documentation License

Vaccines To Blame?

An additional reason for alarm was a 1998 paper published in the prestigious medical journal, the Lancet, with the author, Andrew Wakefield suggesting that the MMR vaccine in some cases induced an adverse autoimmune reaction in the vaccinated children, causing autism and an associated bowel disorder.

Wakefield suggested that instead of the widely used triple vaccine, children should be immunized with separate vaccines for Measles, Mumps and Rubella (German measles) with each vaccine being spaced a year apart, to quote: "If you give three viruses together, three live viruses, then you potentially increase the risk of an adverse event occurring, particularly when one of those viruses influences the immune system in the way that measles does." Such vaccines were not generally available at the time however.

Both the medical establishment, and governments were displeased by this study. Neither trusted the public much, and they feared that parents would simply avoid the vaccinations. Moreover, three separate vaccines would increase costs.

Thus battle lines in Britain (where Wakefield worked) were drawn, and all parties performed as expected. Doctors fell over themselves to dismiss the possibility of vaccine harm, the government refused to provide separate vaccines, and the public kept their children away from the vaccinating needles.

Toxic Vaccines And Heavy Metal Poisoning.

Moreover, a new issue soon sprung to life, raising new concerns even for those who accepted studies and data analysis dismissing the possibility of autoimmune vaccine injury. As it happened, many vaccines were manufactured and dispensed with a mercury based preservative, thimerosal. Mercury is quite neurotoxic, and a handful of noted scientists in the US contended that the thimerosal contributed to the development of autism. The US government and medical establishment were generally dismissive (or at least officially dismissive) of this notion, but with several other nations demanding mercury free vaccines, it was decided that reducing mercury levels would help to ensure that the public would accept vaccination.

Mercury reduction was accordingly implemented, but as of yet, no great reduction in autism prevalence has been noted. Government and establishment sources have settled on this fact as proving the complete safety of the vaccines, but neither camp of vaccine critics is convinced. So far as the immune effects are concerned after all, nothing has much changed, with children still being injected with three weakened, but live and infectious sets of disease germs, although few Americans focus on this factor. So far as the mercury is concerned, any approval of the government's new rules is rather squelched by the fact that the officially permitted description "mercury free" does not mean that mercury is not an ingredient, but rather means simply that there is not enough thimerosal in the vaccine when it is diluted to dosage strength to provide reliable preservation. While the levels of mercury per vaccine have come down, the number of vaccines that children are now supposed to receive have gone up, and many people are thus convinced that the amount of mercury remaining is enough to cause autism.

Other Possible Causes.

Going beyond vaccines, while the geneticists are pressing the idea that the condition is almost completely inherited, people have looked to other environmental influences as well.

Studies have lately linked high rates of autism to high rainfall, suggesting a possible autism connection to vitamin D deficiency, indoor pollution exposure, or even increased juvenile television watching. The situation is further confused by questions about just how much of an epidemic there is in the first place. Autism would not be the first disease to have many of its sufferers misdiagnosed, and more widespread awareness might lead to a specific diagnosis where before a generic label like "retardation" might have been applied. Further, autism is now generally held to be a "spectrum" with several related conditions of varying severity but a common mechanism or cause. This understanding and concept might easily lead to children being diagnosed as autistic where before, despite their problems, the designation would not have been held to be appropriate.

Of course, whether or not there are more autism cases then previously, does not change the needs of the autistic kids one whit, but this question is very important if we are to catch any environmental or non-genetic provocation that will push a child towards autism.

The Latest.

Now a new study has emerged, which just might suggest an environmental cause of an entirely different sort.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Scientists have identified a relationship between two proteins in the brain that has links to both nicotine addiction and autism............

The discovery identified a defining role for a protein made by the neurexin-1 gene, which is located in brain cells and assists in connecting neurons as part of the brain’s chemical communication system. The neurexin-1 beta protein’s job is to lure another protein, a specific type of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, to the synapses, where the receptor then has a role in helping neurons communicate signals among themselves and to the rest of the body.

Rene Anand

This function is important in autism because previous research has shown that people with autism have a shortage of these nicotinic receptors in their brains. Meanwhile, scientists also know that people who are addicted to nicotine have too many of these receptors in their brains.

“If we were to use drugs that mimic the actions of nicotine at an early time in human brain development, would we begin to help those and other circuits develop properly and thus significantly mitigate the deficits in autism? This is a novel way of thinking about how we might be able to use drugs to approach autism treatment,” said Rene Anand, associate professor of pharmacology in Ohio State University’s College of Medicine and principal investigator of the research.

Now all this is very important on its own terms, as there is the possibility of a treatment, or even cure for autism. The study begs the question however, if drugs that "mimic the actions of nicotine" might cause a brain predisposed toward autism to develop properly, then would not nicotine itself do the same thing? It would be ridiculous of course to hand a small child a cigarette "for their health", but what if someone effectively did?

As many a public health warning has pointed out, cigarette smoking by a pregnant woman affects her unborn child, and a smoker's baby is born with a brain that developed in a nicotine tainted environment. Some of the milder manifestations of autism like Asperger syndrome seem to manifest themselves as almost a hyper-nerdiness. Is it possible that an autistic child born to a chain smoker would be born weak, sickly, and undersized due to the harmful effects of smoking, just as the public health announcements tell us, but also be a notable but functional nerd, rather than be a child completely disabled by autism?

Of course there is also the possibility that the brain changes causing autism manifest primarily postnatally, and I have never seen a two year old light up! However, children are exposed to secondhand smoke. Is secondhand smoke enough to provide a dose of nicotine? Well a number of studies claim so. Even allowing for exaggeration, (it is easy to become enthusiastic when fighting so dangerous a habit) it seems reasonable, or at least not impossible to suppose that there might be enough nicotine to "shake loose" malfunctioning neural cells. If secondhand smoke would "do the job" then this is very important as well because of the truly massive historical exposure. A great many women throughout the 20'th century who did not smoke, had a spouse who did. The smoking rate has been dropping steadily and consistently however (note that the above chart goes back only to 1965, when smoking had already been declining for many years), and the decline in prenatal and childhood exposure to nicotine has been much greater because habitually smoking parents have increasingly taken steps to avoid smoking around children, having been (correctly) told that secondhand smoke is a hazard to them. Such a precaution would have been quite alien 60 or 70 years ago.

Summing Up

Overall of course, eliminating tobacco use is of enormous benefit to everyone, and the harmful effects of secondhand smoke or prenatal exposure are very well established. Even if nicotine helped to prevent autism, smoking around children would make ill more children than it would cure.

This being said however, there are exceptions and caveats to most rules or truths in the world, and it is interesting to consider the possibility of HARMFUL side effects to the reduction of the generally harmful habit of smoking. This theory, or the research that prompted it, may turn out to be incorrect, and certainly I am going to keep an open mind on the subject, but at the same time it would be a mistake to simply dismiss the study as a fluke. Until recently, the actual mechanisms behind autism were almost entirely unknown, and the new study shines some light into this dark corner of medicine. It is generally harmful to inhale significant amounts of smoke, no matter what is burning, but nicotine has its addictive and stimulant qualities because it is a near analogue to a substance naturally found in the brain and nervous system. Native Americans used tobacco in medicine, and when tobacco was introduced to Europe, well before the development of a giant industry, it was used as a medicine as well. Both tobacco and cannabis are most commonly used for recreational purposes, but both contain chemicals that naturally regulate significant portions of the human nervous system. It has been unfortunate that disapproval of recreational use has prevented cannabis from being used fully in medicine, and we should not toss the medicine out with the cigarette butt.

[FULL DISCLOSURE: I do NOT smoke tobacco (or anything else for that matter), and NEVER DID. I did NOT grow up in a family of smokers, etc. etc. I do NOT work for a tobacco company, own tobacco company stock, benefit from cigarette advertisements, or even work for a shop that sells cigarettes. I have NO CONFLICT OF INTEREST here. My opinions stand on their own intellectual merits, not some hidden agenda, and of course, implicit in the use of a blog, I certainly understand and appreciate that you, the reader might disagree. If you have a point to make, I welcome comments. ]

Helping children, or hunting them?

Today, a bit of news in my state, with the governor signing a bill altering its recent, and notorious safe-haven law permitting parents to drop off children that they do not want/feel-able to care for, at a hospital without being prosecuted for child abandonment. Instead of the law covering all minors, from newborn to 18, the law will now only cover babies one month old, or less.

Why the change? Well apparently most of the children that have been dropped off over the last few months have been teenagers and pre-teens, rather than the archetypal "baby in the basket".

Some scheme permitting the safe drop-off of the "baby-in-a-basket" has a long history in the Western world, with Pope Innocent III

Pope Innocent III

instituting, in the year 1198 AD, a device, the "foundling wheel" in the appropriate Catholic charitable institutions. The foundling wheel was a revolving hollow cylinder with a gap in the side, which would be set in an outside wall. A mother who wished to discard her baby (this was commonly motivated by an out-of-wedlock birth in a moralistic era) would revolve the cylinder until the gap in the side was accessible, place the child inside, and then rotate the cylinder until the opening faced the interior of the building. Since nobody could see the person on the other side of the wall, this device permitted the mother to abandon her baby anonymously, and would discourage the infanticide of unwanted infants.

Foundling wheel at the "Ospedale Santo Spirito in Rome

***

Now everyone will acknowledge that parents, including of course, the parents of small babies should take care of them, and not abandon them, but even in the Middle Ages, it was acknowledged that sometimes parents are not willing or able to live up to these obligations and to some degree, the public must step in.

With the Nebraska safe-haven law adjusted to a degree that would suit 12'th century convictions (and to be quite fair, the Nebraska law is generally similar to those anywhere else in the nation) it occurs to me that though "progress" is an overused philosophical theme, social services might, and should be improved beyond medieval levels. Continuing in this vein, it was my assumption that child-protective-services, present in every state, and the very profession "social worker" were in no small part focussed on just that; the rescuing of children in completely dysfunctional families. Thus I have been astonished to see a vast amount of criticism directed at the original Nebraska law covering all minors.

Clearly the concept of state care of older children is not foreign to either Nebraska or the rest of the US. There are more than 500,000, a full half-million children in foster care in the US! Are we supposed to assume that none of the parents of these children might recognize their lack of parenting skills? Sure, dumping your kids is irresponsible, but how many people do YOU know who would actually give away their children? I can see little to celebrate in the behavior of such a parent, but frankly, if there is a parent who does not want to take care of their kids, or who does not think that they are capable of doing so, well I am inclined to agree!

None of this is to say that being given up to the state is not going to be emotionally hurtful to the children involved, but I also do not see how being with a parent who WANTS to give you up is not going to be hurtful. Moreover, if not being with their parents is the worst thing that can happen to a child, bar none, then an entirely different set of reforms need to be implemented, and the better part of the half million young Americans in foster care need to be returned to their parents immediately.

There is in fact, something of a case in the latter concept as a great many children have been taken from their families due to "inadequate housing conditions", something which not uncommonly means that a family does not enough money to afford proper quarters. Kids are effectively being taken from their families because they are poor.

There is a lot of disagreement (in the US at least) about just how much help the state should provide to poor families, but I cannot see any moral means of avoiding the point that any level of poverty that the state does not alleviate and correct is by definition, a level of poverty, with all the conditions that accompany such a state, that cannot justify depriving a person of the custody of their children.

To continue further into the question of poverty alleviation, it is worth noting that a couple of the Nebraska families (profiles of the families are here ) have as their biggest problem, poverty. Nonetheless, ending or reducing poverty should not be a substitute (it is a worthy enough goal on its own!) for a safe haven law because wealth does not eliminate catastrophic parenting, and poverty does not ensure it.

Finally, it is worth noting exactly what motivated the safe-haven dropoffs of older children and teens in the first place. As it happens, almost all of these children were mentally ill, and if you look at their profiles, they were commonly violent. Now it would seem natural for me to have listed this information first, because it is probably easier to understand why a parent would give up their child if he is a knife-wielding psychotic, or is torturing the family pets.

I did not for two reasons. First, I think that it is a vital point that effective child protection demands that social service agencies acknowledge self acknowledged parental incompetence.

Second, I am quite sure that some people will NOT sympathize, and there are other reasons that everyone should agree that the law should be retained, or care outside the family need be provided. In fact, to think so, you would even need to be very concerned about the children. Take Skylar for example.

"Lavennia Coover is a kindergarten teacher and mother of three who says her main goal in life is to get help for her youngest son, Skyler, 11. She said she used the law because Skyler is dangerous. She was worried about the danger to herself but especially to her other son, 12-year-old Colby. She says Skyler often beat up his older brother and threatened him with knives and sharp sticks."

"I mean, he threatened to kill the next-door neighbor little boy, screaming to the top of his lungs," Cynthia said. "I've tried to explain to him by doing that -- if somebody else was to do that -- they would take you to jail. That was where he was going to end up if we didn't do something."

So Cynthia walked through the emergency room doors of Immanuel hospital and there, she said, she talked to a caseworker, but, says she never used the words Safe Haven. She said she told the nurses the boy needed to see his psychiatrist and be readmitted to residential treatment.

Never mind whether or not you suppose that SOME person would be capable of dealing with this. I am fairly certain that there are some people who will NOT, and I should not want to have this fellow, if he does NOT receive parenting that is adequate to his needs, by his own mother's description, roaming the streets of our collective future.

Then there was the 11 year old who;

"had threatened to kill his mother and siblings and had tortured the family cat several times" , was prescribed medication, but refused to take it, and had (mind this is an 11 year old) already been arrested for criminal mischief.

One need not rely on obscure psychological indicators to see that he might become a threat to the public, what with the death threats, but anyone interested might note the animal torture. There are quite a few famous people who liked torturing animals; serial killers Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz (the "Son Of Sam") , Jeffrey Dahmer, and Edmund Kemper for example, or school shooters Brenda Ann Spencer ,Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Luke Woodham ,Michael Carneal ,Andrew Golden and ,Kip Kinkel. I have little doubt that more such examples could be found, but the research is stomach turning, and I think that these examples should serve to make the point!

There is something very wrong with a system, not just in Nebraska, but also around the nation, which is happy to strip children from their homes against the will of their families by the thousands, but which cannot accept a child when the parents recognize that they cannot provide proper care. That so absurd a situation could arise strongly suggests that the social services and child protection agencies have become obsessed with capture and seizure, loosing track of the children in the process.

Most likely, many troubled children and teens require mental health treatment, including inpatient or residential treatment, and would not be, and would not need to be abandoned by their parents, but the rash of safe-haven cases certainly points to a system that is not adequately helping severely troubled children. Beyond the misery of the children themselves, we cannot ignore the fact that anything from a rock, to a knife, to a car or truck can be a lethal weapon in the hands of a violently mental ill individual. To stop headline-grabbing tragedies, we need to ensure that mentally ill minors get treatment and are raised by someone who can handle them.

Links for additional child protection information

National Coalition for Child Protection Reform

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog