Editor's Note Regarding "Was There Physician Complicity in State-Sponsored Human Torture in Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan? An Invitation for Military Physicians to Speak Out". Today we publish 7 letters in response to the Webcast Video Editorial "Was There Physician Complicity in State-Sponsored Human Torture in Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan?"
Medscape General Medicine[dot accent] [Medscape Infectious Diseases Headlines]

Readers' Responses to the Webcast Video Editorial Entitled "Was There Physician Complicity in State-Sponsored Human Torture in Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan? An Invitation for Military Physicians to Speak Out". Readers respond to Dr. Lundberg's invitation for military physicians to speak out regarding the question in his recent editorial, "Was There Physician Complicity in State-Sponsored Human Torture?"
Medscape General Medicine[dot accent] [Medscape Infectious Diseases Headlines]

An interesting point brought up here from career medical people is that National Guard and Reserves are not as highly trained in the military ethos and culture for dealing with situations that can lead to torture. Most military doctors and personnel know just what should be done when reporting abuses. It does not seem a coincidence that the abuses we have heard about stem from Reserve units. Lack of proper training before putting these people in horrendous circumstances would seem to be a command failure.   comment []11:16:02 PM    

Objective jouralism and systematic lying. Mark Halperin encourages reporters to insist on the difference between truth and falsehood. Red Blogistan disapproves. [Mark A. R. Kleiman]

Some lies are bigger than others.  comment []11:02:43 PM    

Being Courageous.

[via Innovation Weblog] Dave Pollard has a review of 'The Medici Effect' by Frans Johansson. He summarises one of the key messages:

Being courageous means:

a willingness to break free from old-paradigm networks which reinforce old thinking

a willingness to give up the security (for what it's worth) of your present job

a willingness to fight knee-jerk defenders of the status quo, who will 'black-hat' anything new or threatening

a willingness to confront the possible social stigma of 'failure' and non-conformity

the ability to walk away from unsuccessful 'sunk' costs and not throw good money after bad

the ability to reframe alternatives from risk-averse to risk-accepting

the ability to acknowledge your fears and overcome them

a willingness to follow your heart

[E M E R G I C . o r g]

As mentioned below, Rumsfeld seems to have shown several of these traits, such as breaking free of old paradigms but he, and most in this Administration fail on other traits. They show no willingness to confront failure. It is something they can not conceive of. They are unable to walk away fron sunk costs or to reframe alternatives or to acknowledge fears. They just ignore them, make them not exist. This partial adoption of these traits is part of what is hampering this Administration from making a full transition from Cold War, Industrial Age thinking to INformtion Age traits.  comment []10:38:25 PM    

Kerry on Shinseki. Kerry got some details wrong, but the claim that Shinseki got clobbered by the WH for asking for more troops for Iraq was on target. [Mark A. R. Kleiman]

The Shinseki story is a great one, of a man who, it turns out, correctly viewed the post-war arena in Iraq, and how Rumsfeld cut him off at the knees for having those views. Continue on to the link about the Army's history of the war to find out some very interesting information about this area. Sounds like there will be some strong debates coming up about this.

Ironically, I tend to find Rumsfeld's 'white tower' ideas close to some of my own. The difrficulty is in the implementation and use. Sometimes a good idea should just not be used in a certain arean, or is too early, or just tactically wrong. It may be that that is exactly what happened here. I know a lot of scientists who come up with wonderful theories and models who will shoehorn in the facts to an amazing degree, instead of just admitting that their theory is wrong. The human ego often has a hard time reconciling reality with theory. This is why so often in the history of science you find it to hard to find people who will give up on a theory. Looks to me as if Rumsfeld, and most of this Administration, took up a wonderful theory that just did not translate well into the real world. And they find it just impossible to walk away from it.  comment []10:33:51 PM    

Another Eternal Lie from the Bush Administration....

Mark Kleiman watches the shameless ones:

Mark A. R. Kleiman: So much for tort reform: Kerry hits Bush on the vaccine shortage. Bush's spokesman responds with a falsehood: "Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt called Kerry's criticism 'baseless and hypocritical. So few companies make flu vaccines because of a broken medical liability system that Kerry falsely claims to want to fix but has voted 10 times against reforming.'"

But flu vaccines are already covered by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, incorporating the damage caps and other "tort reform" measures that are supposed to be a panacea for the U.S. health care system.

They really do lie about absolutely everything, don't they?

[Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog]

So, legislation that provides damage caps and tort reform has ot really done much to help companies create vaccines. It is a niche industry for most large pharmas, with high overheads and low profits. I believe this is because ost vaccines are still really based on 19th Century technology (i.e. influenza vaccines are still made using fertilized chicken eggs). Bringing this technology into the 21st Century has been difficult because there are few business models that can be used to get it to market. It has little to do with tort eform and a lot to do with being able to make money in a world where big pharmas can only develop multi-billion dollar drugs. Anything less and they lose money. There has to be a better development pathway.  comment []10:22:33 PM