Category: Non-Health

A Speech For The Ages – 83 Years Ago This Christmas

Dec 22, 2023

By MIKE MAGEE

On the evening of December 29, 1940, with election to his 3rd term as President secured, FDR delivered these words as part of his sixteenth “Fireside Chat”: “There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness…No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it.”

Millions of Americans, and millions of Britains were tuned in that evening, as President Roosevelt made clear where he stood while carefully avoiding over-stepping his authority in a nation still in the grips of a combative and isolationist opposition party.

That very evening, the Germans Luftwaffe, launched their largest yet raid on the financial district of London. Their “fire starter” group, KGr 100, initiated the attack with incendiary bombs that triggered fifteen hundred fires that began a conflagration ending in what some labeled the The Second Great Fire of London. Less than a year later, on the eve of another Christmas, we would be drawn into the war with the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Now, 83 Christmases later, with warnings of “poisoning the blood of our people,” we find ourselves contending with our own Hitler here at home. Trump is busy igniting white supremacist fires utilizing the same vocabulary and challenging the boundaries of decency, safety and civility. What has the rest of the civilized world learned in the meantime?

First, appeasement does not work. It expands the vulnerability of a majority suffering the “tyranny of the minority.”

Second, the radicalized minority will utilize any weapon available, without constraint, to maintain and expand their power.

Third, the battle to save and preserve democracy in these modern times is never fully won. We remain in the early years of this deadly serious conflict, awakened from a self-induced slumber on January 6, 2020.

Hitler was no more an “evil genius” than is Trump. But both advantaged historic and cultural biases and grievances, leveraging them and magnifying them with deliberate lies and media manipulation. Cultures made sick by racism, systemic inequality, hopelessness, patriarchy, and violence, clearly can be harnessed for great harm. But it doesn’t take a “genius.” Churchill never called Hitler a “genius.” Most often he only referred to him as “that bad man.”

The spectacle and emergence of Kevin McCarthy, followed by Mike Johnson, as Speaker of the House, and the contrasting address by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as he handed over the gavel, represent just one more skirmish in this “War for Democracy.”

If our goal is a “healthier” America – one marked by compassion, understanding and partnership; one where fear and worry are counter-acted by touch and comfort; one where linkages between individuals, families, communities and societies are constructed to last – all signals confirm that the time is now to fight with vigor.

“PictureWhat” ??? Super-Human Poison Ivy. What’s Going On?

Sep 20, 2023

By MIKE MAGEE

Connecticut loves its’ trees. And no town in Connecticut loves its’ trees more than West Hartford, CT. The town borders include an elaborate interconnected reservoir system that does double duty as a focal point for a wide range of nature paths for walkers, runners and cyclists.

While walking one path yesterday, I came a tree with the healthiest upward advancing vine I had ever seen. My “PictureThis” app took no time to identify the plant. To my surprise, it was Toxicodendron radicans, known commonly as Poison Ivy.

The description didn’t pull punches. It read, “In pop culture, poison ivy is a symbol of an obnoxious weed because, despite its unthreatening looks, it gives a highly unpleasant contact rash to the unfortunate person who touches it.” And even that doesn’t quite capture the plants negative notoriety.

Its’ pain and itch inducing chemical oil covers every inch of the plant, and is toxic to 80% of humans. It was discovered by Japanese chemist Rikō Majima in the lacquer tree and named urushiol (Japanese for lacquer) in 1922. It is a derivative of catechol, an organic compound with the molecular formula C₆H₆O₂.

But the giant vine this week was nothing like the creeping little three leaf plant most children have be taught to avoid. This was a giant – a very different aggressor worth investigating. Its leaves were impossibly large and its vine straight and thick, and its vitality unhampered by a need to support elaborate roots or bark.

Others have noticed it too including “Pesky Pete” who has made a good living removing the invader from properties in Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. And recently business has been booming. This is because the plant, which up to this year has never appeared in the region before May 10th, suddenly appeared this year on April 23rd.

This was no surprise to Bill Schlesinger, resident of Maine and Durham, NC. Officially, he is “William H. Schlesinger … one of the nation’s leading ecologists and earth scientists …a member of the National Academy of Sciences, …has served as dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke…”

Turns out Bill was in the lead on a six year project termed the “DukeUniversity Free-Air CO2 Enrichment Experiment” between 2000 and 2006 when the results were published. They had been following tree declines in the Duke Forest where predatory vines had played a major role. They decided to encircle and isolate six giant forest plots and pump them full of CO2, and then catalogue the effects.

Their 2006 publication revealed that:

CO2 enrichment increased T. radicans photosynthesis by 77%
Increased the efficiency of plant water usage by 51%
Stimulated the growth of poison ivy during the five growing seasons ambient plants
Annual growth increase of 149% in elevated CO2 compared to ambient plants.
Notably larger than the 31% average increase in biomass observed for woody plants

Poison Ivy was the fastest grower of them all in the experimental CO2 forests. Bill’s collaborator, Jacqueline E. Mohan, carried the work further as head of the Harvard Forest project in Massachusetts. They reported out results, not on CO2 soil, but warmed soil. They heated the upper layer of soil by 9 degrees. Her response to the findings was surprisingly down-to-earth. She said, “My heavens to Betsy, it’s taking off. Poison ivy takes off more than any tree species, more than any shrub species.”

Mohan and coworkers made it clear at the time that this was not great news for 8 out of 10 Americans who are sensitive to poison ivy. Not only did global warming and carbon footprints accelerate growth in the plant by 70% in its leaf size and biomass, but additional experiments revealed that these environmental enablers increased the amount of urushiol in the plant

As Duke was building those first towers to isolate their experimental forests in 2000, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program was holding its annual meeting in Mexico. A Working Group subsequently focused on defining planetary boundaries (PB) that would assure both planetary and human health.

Nine years later, the group published “A Safe Operating Space For Humanity” in Nature. In it they proposed nine “planetary boundaries” to gauge “the continued development of human societies and the maintenance of the Earth system(ES) in a resilient and accommodating state.” In their view, measuring and ongoing monitoring of these boundaries would provide “a science-based analysis of the risk of human perturbations” that might “destabilize the Earth’s Systems (ES) on a planetary scale.” The work was updated in 2015.

The first Planetary Boundary listed was Global Warming with two measures, atmospheric CO2 and air and water temperature. As for human perturbation, as the picture above well illustrates, you can add super-human poison ivy to the list of unintended consequences.

Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and regular THCB contributor. He is the author of CODE BLUE: Inside the Medical-Industrial Complex (Grove/2020)

“The Greatest Scientist of All Time” says Scientific American. Who is it?

Sep 11, 2023

BY MIKE MAGEE

When it comes to our earthly survival as a human species, words are often under-powered and off-the-mark. Clearer concepts, definitions and terms are required for clarity. Here are five terms that are useful and worth remembering:

Planetary Boundaries
Earth Systems
Human Perturbations
Planetary Scale Destabilization
Holocene Epoch vs. Anthropogenic Epoch

These terms all tie back to a single source – a child of World War II, only seven when his home in Amsterdam was overrun by Nazis. His father was a waiter, his mother a cook in a local hospital. He’d later recall with a shudder the Fall of 1944, the beginning of “hongerwinter” (winter of famine) which he blamed for stunting his growth and contributing to his short stature. The event also exposed him to death for the first time, losing several classmates to starvation and frozen temperatures that winter.

There were no early signs of brilliance. He attended a technical school and prepared for a life in construction. He met a Finnish girl, Terttu when he was 25, and they settled in a small town 200 km north of Stockholm. It was his wife who recognized his potential first, pointing him toward a newspaper ad for a job as a programmer at the Stockholm University’s Meterorologic Institute (MISU). No matter that he had no experience in computer programming. They moved to Stockholm. He worked and they both took college courses. By age 30, with sponsorship from the world’s expert on acid rain and first chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Bert Bolin), he received a master’s degree in meteorology. Five years later, after focusing on stratospheric chemistry, he earned his doctorate.

The One Question FOX News Moderators Should Ask Tonight

Aug 30, 2023

Editor Note: This article was published a week after the Republican Party Primary debate

BY MIKE MAGEE

This evening, the Republican Party will sponsor their first Primary Debate. It will be historic in featuring the absence of their lead contender for the 2024 Presidential campaign, a candidate who appears committed to the destruction of their own political party

Events over the past year clearly have confirmed that we are a “work in progress” even as we stubbornly affirm our good intentions to create a society committed to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

With the Dobbs’ decision, our Supreme Court has unleashed long-abandoned regressive state laws designed to reinforce selective patriarchy and undermine the stability and confidence of America’s women and families. As a result, our nation’s health professionals, and the patients they care for, potentially find themselves “on the wrong side of the law.”

Three months ago, our former President decided to deliver a message to North Carolina Republican supporters claiming that he was engaged in the “final battle” with “corrupt” forces, most especially the “Deep State” that was “out to get him.” This is the same state that politically birthed Mark Meadows, former Congressman from the 11th District of North Carolina, a position he resigned to become Trump’s Chief of Staff on March 21, 2020. That ultimately landed him a position on the roster of 19 individuals indicted by District Attorney Fani Willis on RICO charges for conspiracy and racketeering.

Lash of St. Francis

Aug 21, 2023

BY MIKE MAGEE

On September 25, 1939, Southern California woke with fear of The Lash of St. Francis or El Cordonazo on the horizon. The term refers to northwestern tracking, cyclone-laden storms that can hit the western shores of Mexico and California most commonly around the Feast of Saint Francis, on October 4th. This one made landfall at San Pedro, California.

The calamity that day in Southern California was a rare event, the only one of its kind in the 20th century. The last one to hit, prior to this was in San Diego on October 2,1858. The Earth’s rotation normally assures that such cyclones in this region move from east to west, and out to sea. But the 1939 storm was the exception, and the big problem was the rain, some 5 1/2 inches over a 24-hour period (though the town of Indio, in the Coachella Valley of Southern California’s Colorado Desert region experienced 7 inches and buried the valley in 4 feet of water. Forty-five died on land, and 48 perished at sea. One positive – the storm marked the end of a 1-week heat wave where Los Angeles reached 107 F degrees and claimed 100 lives.

History repeated itself 84 years later this weekend, with a memorable “Lash” on the backend of a summer heat wave. The human, economic, and ecological tolls remain to be calculated. But one thing is for certain, global warming has arrived, and with it the production of both heat and water and a new, all too familiar meteorological phenomenon, the “atmospheric river.”

NOAA defines “atmospheric river” this way: “Atmospheric rivers are relatively long, narrow regions in the atmosphere – like rivers in the sky – that transport most of the water vapor outside of the tropics. While atmospheric rivers can vary greatly in size and strength, the average atmospheric river carries an amount of water vapor roughly equivalent to the average flow of water at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Exceptionally strong atmospheric rivers can transport up to 15 times that amount. When the atmospheric rivers make landfall, they often release this water vapor in the form of rain or snow.”

To be clear, these drenching above-ground collections of water are generally a blessing because they provide most of the much-needed precipitation to California’s dry areas and replenish the water cycles in the region. But as the Earth has warmed, they more frequently represent “too much of a good thing”, and are now responsible for 90% of California’s flood damage.

Air, Air, Everywhere, and Not a Breath Safe to Take

Jun 14, 2023

BY KIM BELLARD

If you live, as I do, anywhere in the Eastern half of the country, for the past week you’ve probably been thinking about something you’re not used to: wildfires. Sure, we’ve all been aware of how wildfires routinely plague the West Coast, particularly Oregon and Washington, but it’s novel for the East. So when the smoke from Canadian wildfires deluged cities through the East and Midwest, it came as kind of a shock.

For a day last week, New York City supposedly had the worst air quality in the world. The next day Philadelphia had that dubious distinction. The air quality index in those cities, and many others, got into the “Maroon” level, which means it was hazardous for everyone. Not just for the elderly and other “sensitive” groups, and not just some risk for some people, but hazardous for everyone.

If you didn’t know about AirNow.gov before, you should now.

New Yorkers are used to smog and air quality that is less than idyllic, but smoke from wildfires, containing fine particulates that easily get into the lungs, weren’t something anyone was prepared for. “Wildfires were not really a scenario, in all honesty, that I recall us specifically contemplating,” Daniel Kass, New York City’s deputy commissioner for environmental health from 2009 to 2016, admitted to NBC News.

“People on the East Coast aren’t used to seeing these types of situations. There was a much slower response,” Peter DeCarlo, an associate professor of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins University, also told NBC News. “We can probably learn a thing or two from our West Coast friends.”

Trump Earns a Failing Grade in Civics (K-12) in North Carolina.

Jun 13, 2023

BY Mike Magee MD

It calls to mind the well-worn phrase of mothers everywhere to their bossy children, “Who died and left you boss?”

Since our former President, on the eve of his latest indictment, decided to deliver a message to North Carolina Republican supporters this past weekend, claiming that he was engaged in the “final battle” with “corrupt” forces, most especially the “Deep State” that was “out to get him,” I decided to fact check his claims with the kids of North Carolina.

North Carolina’s K-12 lesson plan, titled “The Rule of Law,” begins with the Teddy Roosevelt quote, “No man is above the law, and no man is below it” from his 1903 State of the Union address.

I Have No Mouth, Yet Still I Scream

Apr 4, 2023• 1

BY KIM BELLARD

In light of the recent open letter from AI leaders for a moratorium on AI development, I’m declaring a temporary moratorium on writing about it too, although I doubt either one will last long (and this week’s title is, if you hadn’t noticed, an homage to Harlan Ellison’s classic dystopian AI short story). Instead, this week I want to write about plants. Specifically, the new research that suggests that plants can, in their own way, scream.

Bear with me.

To be fair, the researchers don’t use the word “scream;” they talk about “ultrasonic airborne sounds,” but just about every account of the research I saw used the more provocative term. It has long been known that plants are far from passive, responding to stimuli in their environment with changes in color, smell, and shape, but these researchers “show that stressed plants emit airborne sounds that can be recorded from a distance and classified.” Moreover, they posit: “These informative sounds may also be detectable by other organisms.”

It should make you wonder what your houseplant is saying about you when you forget to water it or get a cat.

They basically tortured – what else would you call it? – plants with a variety of stresses, then used machine learning (damn – I guess I am writing about AI after all) to classify, with up to 70% accuracy, different categories of responses, such as too much water versus too little. Even plants that have been cut, and thus are dying, can still produce the sounds, at least for short periods. They speculate that other plants, as well as insects, may be able to “hear” and respond to the sounds.

There Is Something About Trains, Indeed

Feb 21, 2023

BY KIM BELLARD

Like many of you, when I heard about the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine (OH) on February 3, my heart went out to the people in that community. The train was carrying some hazardous materials, and no one was quite sure what was vented, especially when officials did a “controlled burn.” Still, though, I didn’t think much about it; although I live in Ohio, I’m about as far away as one can be within the state.

Yesterday my local water company shut off access to water from the Ohio River. “We are taking this preventative step to ensure the health, safety, and confidence of residents,” said Cincinnati Mayor Aftab. (Note: it reopened access today).

East Palestine isn’t all that close to the Ohio River, but whatever chemicals got into the local streams eventually started reaching it, and a “plume” of them slowly meandered the 400 miles downstream to here. Initially, the water company noted how small the particulate levels were – well below any danger – and that normal filtering processes would take care of them. Then they announced that they’d add a second filtering step, just in case. I guess people weren’t reassured, because they still closed the intakes, if only for a day.

I can only imagine how worried the people in East Palestine must be.

The scary thing is that this derailment was not a freak occurrence. There are about 1,000 derailments every year. Fortunately, most don’t involve either hazardous materials or result in deaths. If it’s any consolation – and it shouldn’t be – most hazardous material spills come from trucks, not trains (but, then again, trucks carry the most freight). The odds are against bad things happening. But, with 1.7 trillion ton-miles of freight carried by train every year, the odds eventually result in an East Palestine (and there were train derailments with hazardous materials in both Houston and Detroit since East Palestine’s).