Wednesday, August 27, 2003

When Lose/Win becomes Lose/Lose Barry Carter writes: If we go into an Information Age and develop no more emotional intelligence and spiritual awareness than we have today, then we'll simply destroy ourselves out of the fear derived from our lose/win paradigm. Today we are like a group of five year olds who are having our Play Dough replaced with plastic explosives. We are in fact a civilization of children with enormous potential to destroy or create. False neural associations are why we can see the irrationality behind someone else's actions when they cannot see it. Others can see our irrational behavior and we cannot see it. To the person performing the irrational behavior, it is perfectly rational. His or her brain is simply calculating from its false neural associations and therefore the action appears logical. The person viewing the irrational behavior does not have the same false neural associations. He is able to see the irrational behavior clearly. It is not uncommon to hear someone in this position ask, "Why in the world would he behave this way?" Paradigms tell us that there are different realities depending upon one's perspective. Our false neural associations create paradigms and our different realities. As we watch a gang member on news programs and listen to their rationality, we easily see where it is warped. We also see the gang member's logic. We can see from his conviction that there is clear logic and reasonableness from his paradigm. We can see this in the Mid-East conflict. We saw it with Hitler, as well as slavery, South Africa, and the holocaust of the Indians. Though there are many extreme cases, the vast majority of our problems stem from our small daily conflicts and mis-perceptions. This is because all people have false neural associations. They effect us, and hold us back in many ways. Though they helped us survive in a lose/win era, today they have become destructive, self-destructive and self-defeating. Our false neural associations are, therefore, today threatening society with death by a thousand cuts. (08/27/03) Indentity Crisis Gish Jen writes: On my family's first visit to China in 1979, my sister got sick in Nanjing and had to be hospitalized. This was a special worry as, being Chinese-American, we were not able to get her into the best hospital in town. That hospital was for white foreigners—for "real" foreigners, including "real" Americans. We were, according to local officials, Overseas Chinese, who had to use the Overseas Chinese hospital. Argue as we might, there was no convincing anyone that such minor details as being born in America and carrying an American passport made you a true American. Blood, it seemed, was blood. We found ourselves, therefore, in a hospital unlike any other we had ever experienced. There was no elevator; a doctor carried my sister upstairs on his back. The halls were full of watermelon rinds. The IV needles were rusty. When my mother pulled a Band-Aid from her purse, a group of nurses gathered to ooh and ah. My sister, thankfully, recovered. But to this day I recall our helpless fury. I also recall discovering, when I returned to China in 1981 to teach in Shandong province, that most people I met had ideas about identity similar to those of the Nanjing officials. So though eager to return once more this past spring to witness the new China of cell phones and Frappuccinos, I was interested to learn, too, whether people's ideas about identity had kept up with their environment. (08/27/03) Depression is Deadly BBC Health -- Depression doubles the risk of dying after a heart bypass, researchers have found. The scientists from Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina, say treating depression in this group of patients could cut deaths. They suggest patients should be screened before surgery to assess their chances of developing depression. But they call for more research into how depression increases the risk of dying. Researchers examined 817 patients who were having bypass surgery between 1989 and 2001. They were assessed for depression just before surgery, six months after surgery and then monitored regularly for an average of five years, though some were followed for as long as 12 years.There were 122 deaths over five years. Around 40% of patients were assessed as suffering depression. Those found to have moderate to severe depression at the time of surgery or mild depression then and at the six-month assessment were more than twice as likely to die than patients who were not depressed. Dr James Blumenthal, from the department of psychiatry at Duke University who led the study, said: "We believe that psychological assessment before and after surgery could be a low-cost and relatively easy way of potentially saving lives." He added: "Despite advances in the medical management of patients after CABG, the prognostic importance of clinical depression provides a further opportunity to reduce adverse outcomes associated with the procedure by treating depressed patients after surgery. "We observed that, after adjustment for other risk factors, depression was associated with a two-to-three-fold increase in risk. (08/27/03) Dental Care Protects Pregnancy BBC Health -- A simple dental treatment may reduce a woman's risk of giving birth prematurely, research suggests. A study published in the Journal of Periodontology showed treating severe gum disease with scaling and root care cut premature births by 84%. It was known that having a dental disease increased the risk of giving birth early. The said all women who are pregnant, or thinking of having a baby, should have a dental check-up. Around 40,000 babies are born prematurely, before 37 weeks gestation, in the UK each year, putting them at increased risk of conditions such as cerebral palsy, lung and gastrointestinal problems, vision and hearing loss and even death. Doctors have already established that severe gum infections cause an increase in the production of prostaglandin and tumour necrosis factor, chemicals which induce labour, to be produced. In this study, researchers assessed 366 pregnant women who had periodontitis, a serious gum infection. They were either given the scaling and root planing dental treatment alone, an antibiotic, both the treatment and the drug or the treatment and a dummy pill. In scaling and root planing, both the tooth and root surfaces are cleaned to remove plaque and tartar and bacteria. Those who received the dental treatment before the 35th week of pregnancy had a reduced risk of giving birth prematurely. ... Professor Marjorie Jeffcoat, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham school of dentistry, who led the research, said: "What this tells us is that scaling and root planing may significantly reduce a mother's chance of having a preterm birth. "We found no evidence that the addition of an antibiotic to scaling and root planing was of benefit in this study. In light of these findings, I recommend that all women who are thinking of becoming pregnant or who are pregnant receive a full periodontal exam and diagnosis. Women who are already pregnant when periodontal disease is detected are ideally treated with scaling and root planing in the second trimester."  (08/27/03) Protecting the Body from Cancer BBC Science -- A drug derived from vitamin A could help prevent former smokers from developing lung cancer, it has been claimed. It may help restore the production of a protein which is believed to protect against the disease. Researchers from the University of Texas say their findings are not conclusive, but could point the way to the development of "chemoprevention" drugs. Stopping smoking reduces the risk of someone developing lung cancer, but the genetic damage it causes takes time to disappear - and half of all newly-diagnosed lung cancers occur in former smokers. ... The Texas research focuses on retinoids, which are natural and synthetic compounds related to vitamin A (retinol). Retinoic acid (RA) is needed for the epithelial cells that line the lung to function normally. It activates retinoic acid receptors (RARs) which regulate cell growth and death. Heavy smoking is known to reduce levels of a key receptor, RAR beta. Loss of that receptor has already been linked to the development of precancerous lesions in the lung. The Texas University team decided to look at whether genetic therapy could restore its production. ... Those given a vitamin A derivative called 9-cis retinoic acid (9-cis-RA), saw a 7% increase in expression of the gene, compared to a fall in patients taking a dummy pill. (08/27/03) 8:13:40 AM

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