Publisher’s Note:During the 20th century, all GOP presidents were progressives with the exception of the fluke of Calvin Coolidge getting in office. From 1952 until 2008 there was always a left-wing Nixon or Bushevik on successful GOP tickets. In 2008 and 2012, the Manchurian McCandidate and Comrade Mitt were the flag-bearers respectively.
And Daniel Greenfield does a bang-up job covering the Enemedia merry-go-round on covering up for Stalin’s many crimes against humanity.
J. Arch Getty, a history professor at UCLA, told Politifact that, “I am not aware of any original source for this, and in my extensive archival research in Stalin’s personal archive, I found nothing like this.”
As Jacob Heilbrunn at the Weekly Standard had previously noted, “Getty exemplifies the new revisionism that has taken hold in Soviet studies; rather than deny outright Stalin’s crimes, it seeks to justify them. This kind of revisionism would be condemned… if its subject were Nazism, but it continues to be rewarded and acclaimed in the field of Soviet studies.”
The sort of person who writes that the “social goals that are commonplace today, including women’s rights and racial integration, were planks of the Communist party platform long before mainstream American parties took them seriously”, might not be the best person to ask to verify a damning quote about a Communist dictator. Unless you’re a Politifact fact checker.
I remember being an intern under the great Robert Conquest in the 1980s and wondering at the incredible naivete and just banal evil of the apologists who called themselves Kremlinologists.
The Grand Old Politburo has always been a party of the left.
A fine compilation of reasons why the Human Mollusk did not win the selection in 2020.
And the authoritarian vermin on the left have now reversed course and labelled resistance sedition. Nothing new under the sun.
News on the Chinese Communist Corona Pox Front: Donald Henderson, who led the war against smallpox, wrote in 2006 that “there are no historical observations or scientific studies that support the confinement by quarantine of groups of possibly infected people for extended periods to slow the spread of influenza…. The negative consequences of large-scale quarantine are so extreme (forced confinement of sick people with the well; restriction of movement of populations) that this mitigation measure should be eliminated from serious consideration.”
The government zookeepers continue to have hunting privileges on the proles that pay their inflated salaries at the American Stasi.
Timeline for the Biden crime family scandal overseas.
Thanks to my friend Wyotona for the scintillating essay on the medical cartel. Place comments and questions below.
And hearty congratulations to the birth of his son this month.
Get to the range. Danger, Will Robinson… -BB
If it looks like a quack, if it it talks like a quack, if it writes like a quack, it’s a doctor. Don’t misunderstand me. This type is indispensable if an appendage is pointing some non-ergonomic direction, if something is leaking where it shouldn’t be or isn’t leaking where it ought to be. If your appendix is about to go supernova or your spleen has gone Firestone, if something is stuck where it shouldn’t be or something else is not stuck where it used to be, call the doctor. If your ticker has stopped or your sticker has dropped, Doc is the The Man. The trouble is the rest of the time. What will he do then? Something, probably. This is not good.
According to some studies, including one published in the British Medical Journal, medical errors may be the third leading cause of death in the US, accounting for over 250,000 deaths annually. It’s likely deadlier than batflu, loose car seats, and black guns combined! Shouldn’t the Ad Council be buying some billboards and radio spots for bad medicine? These numbers are a matter of contention. The problem may be greater or lesser. Personally, I think this is massively understating the actual crisis if the chronic unwellness caused by prescription opiates, statins, prescription interactions, vaccines, and bad nutritional advice were properly accounted. Regardless, only the extremely ignorant could possibly entertain any notion that there is no such problem. Most of the public and much of the medical community is supremely well-qualified not to notice.
Iatrogenesis as a concept has been around as long as doctors, if not longer. It seems remarkable that as the Medical Monster consumes first the entire disposable income of the modern world, then devours the economy itself as hors d’oeuvre to civil liberty, that the very idea of medically induced harm has been forgotten. Discarded. Dropped down the ol’ memory hole. Anyone who questions the medical totalitarian is now a science-denying granny-killer who can’t be trusted with his own care and feeding. Let alone can he be allowed any bandwidth in the public spectrum. He must be unpersoned. Deplatformed. Confined. He may require reeducation. Anything half so much as a passing reference to medically induced harm has become heresy, the province of crackpots and cranks. “Take your pills, serf!”
There is no possible intervention, medical or otherwise, that does not entail both risks and real harm. The present medical and societal fixation with averting all possible risk will prove to be the riskiest proposition of all. We are living in an iatrogenic society. And anyone who does not applaud this is anathema.
Doctors have been reaping where they did not sow for a hundred years now. They’ve taken credit for the good work that plumbers, civil engineers, farmers, and garbage men have actually achieved. If you doubt me, try living in an urban environment for three days if the toilets won’t flush. Most people could easily go three years, maybe three decades without any medical intervention whatever. Probably, 80% would be better off. Three weeks without clean water would sicken or kill most of us. If the world were just and reasonable, your water bill might run $1.500 per month and your medical bills $50. Your plumber would drive a Beemer and your doctor might ride a Schwinn. Your would borrow money from the local farmer.
The white coats are coming! The whitecoats are coming! Fascism has come to America. But nobody noticed. It didn’t come “wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.” That might have been predictable. It didn’t even show up sporting a funny mustache. Rather, it arrived dressed in scrubs and packing a stethoscope. It’s a high- IQ, well educated humanitarian with nice teeth, impeccable credentials, popular Tic Toc videos, and unbeatable PR.
This is no exaggeration. What has come about is totalitarian. It is increasingly totalitarian by the day. What could represent a more perfect case of total control of the populace than a single person or class of persons dictating what you can buy, when you can buy it, what you must wear, where and how you may assemble, where and if you may worship, where or if you can travel, or whom you may entertain in your home? The Lab Coat Maffia has usurped everyone from your priest to your bartender. Bloodlessly, thus far. I can almost hear Stalin posing the question; “How many divisions has the public health officer?” Enough, it seems, at any rate. What is the goal of all this? Is it less that despotism? Is it not to de-personify anyone who is less than perfectly compliant?
The public display of virtue has mutated into an all-encompassing civic religion. It does not matter whether or not the virtue being displayed actually helps anyone. It doesn’t even matter if the virtue being displayed actually does demonstrable harm. The point is not to be effective. The only single thing is to be seen “doing something”. No one must ever question the person who is doing the something. He is doing the best he can, we are told. He is above reproach. He could be actually and truly killing people with gross negligence or careless malpractice. Still, the pious displayer of virtues public is sacrosanct. This leads to all sorts of wildly bizarre new rules. Kids who wrestle can close and grapple and roll all over the mat, but they can’t shake hands. Basketball players can play, sometimes, but they can’t have a tipoff. You must wear a mask to be seated at your table, but not while dining. This, of course, is only if applicable if you are allowed to dine at all. Bars, in my home state, may only open until ten. Covid, I gather, is a nocturnal predator. There is no end to the all sorts of odd rules pertaining to what behavior is deigned to be “allowed” by our mental and moral superiors. This is by design.
The first real problem for any religion or philosophy to “solve” is that of the terrible twins, suffering and death. For who needs religion or philosophy to be fat and happy? You could sooner sell job applications at an Antifa rally than you could sell Job at a five star resort. What, I wonder, would happen if a whole society were to be bent around avoiding- at any cost- suffering and death, as opposed to actually contemplating and accepting the inevitable? What sorts of topsy-turvy trends, bizarre fashions, and absurd fantasies would result? No need to wonder any longer. The scientific Nirvana has been sold as a replacement for personal virtue, physical moderation, religious piety, moral clarity, and all philosophy. It is, in itself, a new, all-encompassing religion. The Revolution is practically complete and final. And no one noticed.
Look closely at what medicine as an industry now does, as opposed to what it promises. Up close and personal, blinders removed, and notions cast aside…. What you will find is a system that has maximized and extended, at the most ruinous expense possible, the most miserable and lamentable years of life. All in the name of compassion. After all, something must be done. Or must it not?
How does one account for the fact that more or less the entire earth has been subjugated to perfect and increasing international despotism through fear of a pestilence that hasn’t increased the rate of mortality??? I’ll say it again- the death rate this year is the same as last year. And the year before. And a lot of years before that. You. Have. Been. Lied. To. They think you are stupid. As of now, in the case of the majority, it appears they are all but certainly correct. I keep looking around, and the question rings in my mind; have people gotten too stupid to live?
This is life on our knees. This is global. This is absolute. Is life on their terms necessarily more appealing than death on our own?
The fear of death is bondage. (Heb 2:15) Reject slavery. Embrace freedom. Your birth and existence was always proof that suffering and death awaited. By all means, hire the leecher on whatever basis you find needful or helpful. But please beware of making him king, priest, father, and chief economist. Even if you are a hammer, not everything is properly a nail.
I want to be clear. I do not so much as dislike doctors or nurses, let alone hate them. I’m actually closer to the problem than you might think if you read this. The problem is not mostly the people. The problem is the system they work within. To those with eyes that can see, and ears that can hear, you may notice that this rhymes with a lot of problems in the world today.
I say walk away. If it won’t let you walk away, burn it down. To let things go on as they are is surely not a possibility for anyone who values his conscience over his wallet. The Medical Cartel must die if people are to live.
“Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn’t organized to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals.”
- Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis (1976)
After a lifetime working in medicine… you are spot on. The numbers I heard the 250,000 deaths was “There you go John, that shot should get you going again. “What do you mean, your name is Bill.” kind of mistake.
There is another 200,000 that are just the general mistakes that people make like missing a dose, or giving you an infection because of poor hygiene.
And don’t forget that 600,000 die of cancer and 400,000 of heart disease.
Goodness gracious, all these dying people. We better get to the hospital quick.
I am a cancer surgeon, and as a young man for the longest time felt that the incidence of medical malfeasance was overblown. Now 60, I think it’s underestimated, especially with the changes we have seen in the last three decades. Incredible technical advances have been made; it’s just that a swelling majority of those applying them are technically, intellectually or morally and ethically inadequate. As a medical student rotating with Michael DeBakey (if anyone remembers who he was, pat yourself on the back) at Baylor College of Medicine, I saw an uncompromising approach to errors, mistakes and inadequacy: “Are you stupid or do you just not care?”.
It used to seem to be one or the other….now, it’s both. I’ve made mistakes, had complications, working like hell to avoid and rectify both. It’s unavoidable in high-risk surgery, like batting in baseball: sooner or later, a ball hits you. Paranoia is a GOOD quality in your surgeon, you know, just like you don’t want one with a great golf game.
Everything is about the dollar now; quality is in the ditch, happenstance at best. Managing and delivering complex, quality care now takes effort that is near-Herculean; advocating for your patient can get you labeled “disruptive” and shuffled off to camp. Hospitals consolidating into systems, concentration of power and control of facilities and the care delivered there into the hands of non-medical management automatons, and relegating all inpatient care to teams of faceless, shift-working hospitalists and mid-level “providers” who admit all patients while all other specialists serve as “consultants” has so depersonalized care that I now feel the most dangerous place to be in America today is admitted to an inpatient bed at any hospital. Primary care doctors never leave the office now so no one at your hospital really knows you. I had hoped to operate until my eyes and/or hands failed me but now I’m not so sure.
Maybe the wild-eyed plaintiff attorney Democratic Congressman from Florida was correct when he said the alternative to Obamacare was “Don’t get sick!”, except that really was the only viable alternative, wasn’t it?
God help us all.
After working as an EMT on the streets of Boston, 35 years ago I went to Northeastern and was certified as a PA in Surgery and Primary Care. Worked in Neurosurg and Critical Care EM as well as other gigs along the way. Many different hospitals and clinics. Retired 6 years ago as the abomination of Obamacare was being implemented. Saw the writing on the wall.
Minimalmed is too kind in his assessment of where we are now in the medical world. Practice used to be all about the Art and Science of Medicine. Academic inquiry was encouraged. Autopsies were commonplace when cause of death was uncertain. We strived to learn, to improve, and to not repeat our mistakes. The price of failure was very high. God I loved it.
My highest regard and respect goes to the surgeons, for the suffering they went through in their residencies, and the nightmares of being put on the spot at 4am, while the rest of the world slept snug and warm in their beds, when the mangled half-corpse arrived at the ED, or the aneurysm ruptured, or one of a Thousand Terrible Things happened, and the families screamed that they did have to DO SOMETHING.
HMOs in the 70s and 80s were the beginning of the end. Then DRGs in Medicare. The demise of academic medicine began then. No more inquiry or autopsies. Too expensive. Too much liability. No time. Who cares!
Now… its all about patient “throughput”, moving the meat, get em in and get em out. Make sure you check all the boxes on your writeup in the EMR so that the Billing Department can justify the highest possible reimbursement. Allowed roughly 6 minutes per patient. Questioned by Admin why you took so long or why you ordered all those CT or MRI scans. Make sure you are JCAHO compliant! Make sure you are HIPPA compliant! Make sure you are EMTALA compliant!
It is all about the bottom line.
Make the accountants happy. Make the admins happy. Make the lawyers happy.
Oh and by the way NOW if you diagnose COVID-19, thats a few extra grand to the hospital or the group. And if you intubate the poor sucker (and kill them a bit faster, thereby reducing the all important Length of Stay in the hospital)? Hee hee hee, we are in the money!
Much of the medical community, along with the larger “healthcare community,” has abdicated responsibility for thinking, even in the most general sense. Never mind critical analysis, the scientific method, and a healthy dose of skepticism. This crew has thrown a thousand years (go back further, if you like) of accumulated knowledge and wisdom about human disease, public hygiene and common sense out the window. Healthcare is now an arm of FedGov, StateGov and LocalGov, with the enthusiastic and profitable compliance and complicity of the insurance industry, the legal profession, corporate enablers and countless smaller commercial interests.
Minimal med is spot on. As a doc who recalls DeBakey and rounded with the drunken Dr Bell (of the Bell Commission in NYC), ‘modern’ medicine now scares me. I have done more to improve my patients’ lives advocating ‘no sugar, no carbs’ in the last 5 years than the previous 20. I have been able to get Type 2 Diabetics off of insulin, off hypoglycemics (sugar-lowering meds), off of statins, and shockingly they fell better after dropping 40+ pounds at age 75. Medicine is now metric-centered. Measuring the wrong metrics leads to wrong planning. Efficient is not the same as effective but it’s much easier to measure metrics indicating ‘efficiency’ some twit dreams up rather than the hard work to measure effectiveness. I think I have a few more years before giving it up in disgust.
And no, I’m not getting a vaccine for an illness that usually comes then goes.
As a physician practicing for decades, my observation has been that the downfall of medicine has been the takeover by corporations. Docs have abdicated responsibility and so we started seeing nurses taking “leadership” roles in hospitals, and even worse, ‘Invasion of the Bean Counters.’ The almighty dollar reigns, and so between the huge physician management groups (that staff many ERs, for example) and Big Pharma, we have lost our way. Although I am glad to hear that my colleague above has learned a little about wellness in the past 5 yrs, it saddens me that it took him so long! Almost 30 yrs ago I was writing a wellness column for a hospital, my thoughts freely shared to improve lives. But most people along the way really DON’T want to change themselves, and that is what is so frustrating. Yeah, the docs have gotten tangled up in practicing “cookbook medicine” but the patients take ZERO responsibility for themselves.
Smoking cessation, healthy diet, a good workout routine, and good sleep hygiene will resolve the vast majority of healthcare costs in this nation. But PEOPLE WON’T CHANGE! I don’t mean everybody, I still practice and am in the “changin’ people business,” but so few really are willing to give their own effort. The point also made above accurately describes the impersonal nature of most medical care. I’m a dinosaur and the relationships with long-term patients are the reason I keep working, not the $$.
Let’s see, nobody has really ever come up with a successful vaccine for coronaviruses, most everybody survives this especially if promptly treated w/ Plaquenil & Zn, and so why should I listen to anybody about taking their brand new shot? I don’t think so!
Wow, some great comments from medical personnel. I have always preferred a doc older than myself. Nothing beats experience for troubleshooting a problem. Though now at 67 it is getting harder to find one.
My previous doc, retired military flight surgeon, 76 years old ,when I asked about my aching knees said “yeah, you got knee problems, we all do. I can set you up with a surgeon, or you can loose 40lbs”.
I ask him the last visit before I moved from the area for his general advice “don’t eat too much, don’t drink too much, omit sugar and carbs, avoid doctors as much as possible and unless you are close to death stay away from the hospital…“
Since we have a pool of medicals here, what’s the consensus on ivermectin for the chi com flu . It’s cheap, readily available at the farm store, lots of evidence of its efficacy, some, but not all, anecdotal. I can’t see a reason not to use it as a prophylactic , only .gov says do not use it. Thoughts?
Keith, it sounds like you found a good one!
ApoloDoc,
I agree with you on the problem of people not wanting to change. I think the blame for this lies somewhat on both sides. Don’t I hear and see ads every day, multiple times per day, about how some little pill is going to make my life wonderful? And don’t most doctors play into this as well? I tend to suspect that part of the problem lies in the underlying assumptions of the doctor-patient relationship. It might be a very different thing for me to turn my car over to a qualified mechanic than it is to turn my person over to a qualified doctor. I don’t think the practice of medicine generally recognizes this. It’s generally a simple thing to fix what’s wrong with a car. But most mechanics have some grasp of their own limitations. Thus most mechanics would not take it upon themselves to fix the car and the driver. Fixing the person and fixing the body are two quite different things. And fixing the behavior and fixing the person are still other separate things. I think that the person who can manage to maintain a few comparatively harmless vices is likely doing about as well as one can hope.
Good health is the most genuine physical treasure on earth. And then we die anyway.
Keep up the good work.
Very much agreed!