Not sure I want a blending of cultures any time toooo soon... by Wishimay

Beir bua agus beannacht

We all know the Chinese government is a creepfest and America falls foolishly for their traps.

But that's different than Chinese culture, which is interesting. And its different from the people themselves, who are just folk like us all.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Sunday, January 22, 2012 8:37 PM

No surprises at all. It has been well known that the Chinese harvest organs from executed criminals, and so the true horror unfolds, that they keep them alive to harvest the organs. Ugggh awful stuff.

The minority Uigars are Muslims, btw and very persecuted in China.

We do not want this country becoming the only power in the world. It just cannot happen.

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Monday, January 23, 2012 3:50 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
No surprises at all. It has been well known that the Chinese harvest organs from executed criminals, and so the true horror unfolds, that they keep them alive to harvest the organs. Ugggh awful stuff.

The minority Uigars are Muslims, btw and very persecuted in China.

We do not want this country becoming the only power in the world. It just cannot happen.

Sounds ominous the way you say it - do a lot Aussies feel this way? Can you define what you mean by "power?" - they have a substantial amount of power already. As one of the bricks in BRIC, they're suppose to be one of the next super powers. I heard Mr. O'Neil just update his prediction to, "in three years..." in terms of combined GDP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Monday, January 23, 2012 4:21 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
I sure hope this isn't as common as implied. But if it's true and western governments are turning a blind eye, there's only one reason: money. Money, money, money.

So what would you like the western governments to do? Regime change? Send in the Predators? Use sanctions that'd have no impact on the Party folks in power and the higher-ups in the state-sanctioned economic structure, but put the poorer folks out of work?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Monday, January 23, 2012 4:58 AM

Culture itself is fine, oppressive genocidal government not so much. Not surprised by the genocide or human rights violations as China's known for that. But I don't buy too much into the other anti-China fears, because at the rate they're going they're going to have a working class revolt in ten to twenty years.

China might be buying our debt, but most of the work nowadays is going to India. I think there's a good chance India might end up changing the global economy, they're writing all the algorithms for the markets.

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Monday, January 23, 2012 5:08 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

I keep coming back to Tom Friedman (who sadly has become something of a self-parody) and his book and idea of the flat earth. There's a great leveling going on, and much of it can be attributed to the Digital Revolution imho, that's been a great big level upper.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Wednesday, February 8, 2012 3:14 PM

I'll say it again. This kinda hits home with me seeing as it would kill my daughter..

Send this ass with delusions of monk-dom back to where ever the HELL he came from.
Why is it soo hard to treat kids with a little decency?? I really, really, really hope child services re-homes this poor kid, before his father kills him...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2098187/Ho-Yide-Father-forces-
son-4-strip-underwear-New-York-snow.html

God.

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Wednesday, February 8, 2012 5:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:
Why is it soo hard to treat kids with a little decency??

Because, socially, legally, they're not considered human beings - in fact you can get away with more abuse to your child in many states than you could your housepet, that is how far down the law and society regards them - essentially, chattel, property.

Might I remind folk it wasn't THAT long ago that women were treated much the same, and before that certain minorities - and heres the rub, the same lameass, stupid, BULLSHIT excuses for it, which have since been not only wholly poleaxed, but upon review from the modern mindset come across as downright insane...

Are the EXACT SAME ONES that our current law and society uses to explain away this behavior towards children.
Doesn't make sense, does it now ?

Sure, some care must be taken to acknowledge the role of parenting and guidance, but first and foremost we need to force the recognition of them as HUMAN BEINGS into society and the law, and if religion, as it often does, gets in the way of that, then I am all for putting a boot up their arse about it.

Folks talk about how the Puritans came here fleeing religious persecution, but I wonder if it ever occurs to anyone but me just how rightful, how justified, how well-deserved that persecution was...
Admittedly I have some bias, but the puritannical idea that suffering is good for you has infected the medical establishment and the law in regards to pain relief and it's damn hard to be sympathetic when you're curled into a quivering ball of misery on the floor.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Wednesday, February 8, 2012 7:35 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Admittedly I have some bias, but the puritannical idea that suffering is good for you has infected the medical establishment and the law in regards to pain relief and it's damn hard to be sympathetic when you're curled into a quivering ball of misery on the floor.

I sympathize, bud... I don't think it's just that they think it's good for you, but that
1. You have to be almost dead before they can guess at a diagnosis, the symptoms usually have to be severe.
2.They see so many people in pain that the only thing that motivates them even emotionally is screaming, and even that after years has a dulled response because they'd go nuts dealing with it all...
3. Treating a pain that is a symptom of something else might actually mask the real problem, prolonging the suffering by default.
I think they'd love it if nobody whined about something hurting, unless they're just psychotic, which there is plenty of those out there...

I really really think our diagnostic abilities in this country are CRAP. I think the lack of information and a way to pass on the pertinent stuff is what kills...They don't want people to research on the internets because people have no idea how to be objective and not fill in symptoms where they don't fit, but docs don't have time to dissect info and disseminate either...There needs to be a medation between the two, but who could or would pay for those services?? I dunno....

On a completely unrelated matter, I may have an idea about how to go about managing my health problems for once after 10 years of standing in the dark. I hope. Keep yer fingers crossed

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Wednesday, February 8, 2012 7:40 PM

Beir bua agus beannacht

I hope your new idea works Wish, I didn't know you'd been struggling that long.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Wednesday, February 8, 2012 9:03 PM

Don't forget the mortal dread of the friggin DEA, too...

I'm still really bitter about what happened to Siobhan Reynolds and the Pain Relief Network, and frankly I am still unconvinced the extremely convenient death of her and her lawyer was accidental.

-F

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Thursday, February 9, 2012 4:36 AM

Quote:
They don't want people to research on the internets because people have no idea how to be objective and not fill in symptoms where they don't fit, but docs don't have time to dissect info and disseminate either...

It's actually not difficult, but a lot of people don't pick it up the first time around, so to try to relearn it would take training they can't afford.

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Thursday, February 9, 2012 10:31 AM

Well, when the "Official" Diagnosis is; we have no idea what causes it, no idea how to fix it, and the only treatment is guesswork based on trying random things till we sorta found something that kind of maybe worked, and have no intention to bother with it any further, sucks to be you...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Febrile_neutrophilic_dermatosis

That don't leave me a whole lotta choice, as it comes with wracking, whole body waves of pain, on TOP of the grinding, chronic pain from a legacy of dliberate, intentional medical neglect intended to shuffle me off this mortal coil - and the only real mitigation of it came from collaborating with off-the-grid or wackjob mad-science kind of docs.

I mean, they dress it up in medical jargon to pretend like they know what they're talkin about, but the root of idiopathic is, IMHO.. IDIOT.

As you can imagine, this makes me pretty grouchy, especially given how just horrible the actual experience of having them fumble around playing confirmation bias with a blatantly wrong diagnosis, not listening to the patient, ignoring the medical records and generally halfassing the whole thing was - which I detailed here at the time.

Imagine having to stop, randomly, for short periods of the day, every day, as every muscle in your body locks up in agony to the point where you can't even scream - and you know no relief outside the booze bottle is gonna be coming cause your doctors ethnicity and heritage makes him such a target in todays Amerika that he flat cannot offer pain relief no matter how desperately he thinks it's needed...

Radley Balko is workin on a three part series discussing this kinda problem, and it's well worth reading....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radley-balko/prescription-painkillers_b_
1240722.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radley-balko/us-painkillers-abuse_b_1263
565.html

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Thursday, February 9, 2012 11:56 AM

Hmm. Being entirely unqualified to comment and not knowing anything about it, sounds like the bad episodes are something to do with not necessarily the body nerves, but a sudden shock to your pain processing neurons. Controlled by some kind of chemical cycle and/or possibly triggered by another source of pain, like from the amputation.

A severe spike of breakthrough pain that plays over the background pain, basically.

You know, oddly, doing a wikiwalk from the link you posted, apparently one of the prescriptions that can be used to alleviate some of the symptoms you have is also something that moderates the production of certain kinds of stress hormone. And some of the effected hormones have some influence over the circadian rhythm, the sleep-waking cycle. Indirectly, anyway.

My suspicion is that you've actually developed kind of an allergy to all the chronic low level pain you've got going on so there's like a constant inflammation your body is having to deal with. It also makes me wonder what your dopamine levels do when you're having an attack, because like I said, something's going on with how you're processing pain.

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Thursday, February 9, 2012 6:16 PM

So according to your docs, you are not supposed to be feeling what you are feeling, or you are and their excuse for not giving you meds is ??what?? Addiction? Expense? I don't understand...

I mean, I will say I understand chronic pain, and waaaaay more than I ever wanted to. My doc has asked me several times if I want pain pills AND I WILL NEVER DO IT. I actually think they make things worse. Just three months of occaisional use and your intestines start to die.
But then again, I am very fortunate not to have to work on anyone else's schedule. If I need to take three naps a day to deal-which I sometimes do- I can do that...
I tried the booze, it don't help much, and I got my kid ta think about.

You ever think about holding a hospital hostage? I've done that... Think about it, I mean...Not actual. I'm sure I'd blabbed about it by now if I had...

Do you need a new doc? Do you need to explain it more thoroughly? What do you need??

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Thursday, February 9, 2012 8:59 PM

Oh they know, this is a common thing with whateverthehellitis - it's just that most of the docs I can afford don't dare for fear of the DEA coming down on them with the accusation sledgehammer, seriously, it's the same kind of midnight-knock FEAR that existed in various tyrannical regimes and is all the more apalling for it - plus some of the docs I deal with ain't exactly all official, yanno.

And I hate most heavy pain meds mind you, I value clarity of mind enough to suffer pretty badly to keep it, but comes a point where you can't even get up off the floor, there's something really, really wrong.
Mostly the whole issue revolves around me being too poor for them to care, and the Gov holding a grudge about being made responsible for my health care since their actions, or rather, deliberate, malicious, intentional inaction, was the primary cause of my poor health - so they take every chance they can get away with to be pricks about it.

Ironic in a way that me having this condition may help other people with it, since my immune system developed in response-reaction to long periods of severe malnutrition, poor health and neglect, and as such can swamp it under - but only so long as I am not stressed out, and the worst way to do that is to get me away from my "Lair" too far or too long, which makes me a virtual prisoner here.
Still, they THINK they might be able to figure out something from my immune systems ability to hold it at bay, which'll maybe help others with it - ain't holding my breath on it though.

And no, not a hospital, buuuut...
Okay, that one needs to be told in all it's awful glory so you understand my attitude.

Now at the time the state and insurance providers were playing finger point and yo-yo with my care, changing the rules all but daily and it was patch and patch and catch as can and stupid gamesmanship with crap like appointments on opposite ends of town scheduled 10min apart and crap like that, I was very frustrated and cause the coverage of any given thing was not assured beyond the next 24hrs most of the docs were doing slam-bang patchwork, often of a really dubious variety....

Thus my mangled right leg was held together by a small plate, screws and wire through the fibula, and a crapload of braces and straps so that I could kinda-sorta shuffle forward real slow, hissing in agony all the way - which my employer (FIRMLY on my side at the time) parlayed with a bit of a stretch (more than a bit) into physically-able-to-work so they could stuff me behind a desk watching a gate and pay me, thus ensuring I had some food - given the hoop jumping and gamesmanship goin on, I didn't really have any other options and the fact that I looked like a concentration camp refugee at the time had much to do with that.

And so the state, in the fashion they do these things, sends me a letter suggesting my enrollment in this really scummy HMO already laboring under a laundry list of criminal charges(1) - and as always, ALWAYS with such "voluntary" measures, it progressed - in fact I saved the letters as an example of this exact progression and how it happens...
Cause a month later it was "reccommended" and three months later it was "mandatory", and they shuffled me onto the rolls of these crooks right about the time that whole patchwork job came apart with a nasty, painful CRUNCH, leaving me with my right leg all crumpled up in a really grotesque way and held together by some ratty ace bandages.

The crummy little punk of a doctor they sent me to, one of them gatekeeper/goalie types(2) wasn't really sympathetic to my cause, and apparently thinking I was too weak and beaten down (I had internal infections as well as the damage by then) to really make an issue of it - flat out told me that yes, they were well aware of what the problem was, and had no intention of doing anything about it cause it would cost too much, and mind you he said this to me in an exam room with the door closed and no witnesses...

What he didn't realize is that your arms get REAL strong when they do the work of legs, and I could tap the berserkerang besides - I came off that table like a bolt of lightning, grabbed a fistfull of his collar, jacked him about a foot in the air and slammed him into the wall hard enough to knock charts off, then told him in very extremely explicit medical detail what was about to HAPPEN to him, cause if I was gonna be left to die, I wanted a little company for the ride, yanno ?
Needless to say yon chump had a sudden change of heart, helped along by the fact that I wouldn't let GO of him till I had a referral to an Ortho specialist in my other hand.

Said Othro specialist, Covera, was a bit of a nutter, and we got along real well once he realized I was A-OK with mad science, he knew damn well the leg was beyond saving but he went the full distance for the "impossible" task of saving the knee, up to and including such wackiness as using sea coral to bulk up the end, something met with much derision at the time but is in fact a common practice now.

Of course, then came the stupidity with the prosthetics and the flaky, fragile crap they foisted off on me which I wrecked up on a regular basis, and it was about this point the Judge who made the original decision against the state got personally involved and so they sent me to an engineering firm, to whom I doped out the specs and they built one for me - but couldn't never get it to fit right cause they were non-medical engineers and it wasn't till I got up here and hooked up with another mad-doc by the monniker of "Ozzy" that we got a functional, workable unit that had enough duration (before crippling pain sets in) to allow me to do any damn thing... wouldn't even have that if I didn't trade design work to offset costs cause with the ludicrous price inflation of the simplest damn thing in the medical industry these units cost about as much as a damn BMW.

And now, mind you, not long ago said Judge passed away, and they've been up to their old games ever since, first trying to retroactively revoke my medical all the way back to early 2008, then accusing me of FAKING a near-terminal illness, and now playing the "we have to wait for an official determination" game they played back when it took a major security company, a congressman and some pressure from other political sources to force them into a courtroom way back when - which effectively puts me in limbo with ZERO medical coverage unless it's 100% out of pocket since by being in that process no insurance company will touch it neither cause they know the state won't reimburse...
And this has BEEN going on since like last October.

Believe me, down in this end of the waters the medical care system is exploitive, brutal, vicious and wholly unreliable.

(1) This is a thing with medicare, the state goes and offers leniency to these crooks in exchange for servicing the medicare system at a cut rate, then looks the other way when they screw people over as acceptable losses for having that many more treated on the cheap, a vile and reprehensible practice if there ever was one, and one they have just amplified by putting those Torchmark bastards in charge of all medicare drug coverage - here's a hint, don't expect to GET any...

(2) They were paying these creeps COMMISSION based on how many patients they could roadblock from specialist referral WITHOUT REGARD TO MEDICAL NECESSITY, which is about as offensive a thing as I have ever seen in this biz, but by far and wide, not even close to the worst.

-Frem
PS. My temperment is well known enough by now among medical professionals that they stand out of range when speaking to me, alas.

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Thursday, February 9, 2012 9:05 PM

Have you ever thought you might suffer from fibromyalga, Frem? I have a couple of friends who have it. Damn difficult to diagnose and treat, and seems to be linked to stress and or/experience of physical trauma (ie loss of limb would probably count as such).

Both have had to look at ways of reducing lifestyle stresses, plus lots of vitamin supplements. One also uses lots of alternative therapies such as acupuncture, magnets, reflexolgy. I think she's tried the lot with various degrees of success

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Friday, February 10, 2012 4:38 AM

Somehow I don't think you are thinking about this fourth dimensionally...

If you are a pawn in a dirty system, you have to do what you have to do in order to get what you need. Play them like they have played you. I'm not a big fan of manipulation, but we all know how to do it.

For example, all you have to do to get pain pills is say "I don't know,doc, I'm really worried about becoming addicted- do you think you could help me figure out how I could take them just enough to take the edge off??"

They want you to want to be a better person. A perfect person. That's why they became docs anyhow. They want to help, but feel constrained. You have to make it ok for them to help you.

By the way, I read all that you wrote, and I still have no idea what you need, physically. I think taking down the system would help your soul, but keep in mind it's a system run by the soul-less, it's prolly not going to get better.

If the docs avoid you there, go somewhere else and try again, and yes I realize how frustrating that can be...

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Friday, February 10, 2012 4:45 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
I think she's tried the lot with various degrees of success

If it were a success, she would be all better, would she not?

All that stuff does is eat your money and give you a temporary diversion and a temporary feeling of being in control of something that is not. I've watched other women do it for decades.
Every six months there's something that's "sure to fix ya this time"
It's all crap.

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Friday, February 10, 2012 8:32 AM

Well, there's this little problem with me having ethics - mind you they're sometimes very very different from the conventional set most people follow, but they're there, and I do have em...
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMorality

And yeah verily, modern medicine seems all about the quick-fix, not just as get them out of your hair concept, but also dragging it on for profit, kind of like treating tuberculosis with nyquil, cause they can make way more money treating symptoms instead of fixing the root cause - it's gone so far many docs don't even bother LOOKING for a root cause no more, argh.

As an aside, a lotta mechanics are like that too - one reason my work in the small engine community was so prized was cause I did seek the root cause, fix it, and show the person how, when *I* fix it, it STAYS fixed, my idea of "success" wasn't makin a buck so much as fixing your problem permanently cause given my antisocial nature never seeing you again was a plus for me.

One thing we can exclude here is Fibromyalga, cause this is something wholly different, mostly related to what seems to be a nervous system stress failure, with a collective of potentive causes likely rooted in just how much physical damage I've soaked up over these many years, although my reaction to stress is a bit inverted in a weird sorta way - without a sufficient source and cause of rage and frustration I'd prolly just roll over and die, honestly...
It's hard to explain, but I *need* that spur to function, to keep going, or misery and apathy would take over, yanno ?

Of course, even halfass medical support beats zero medical support, and till I can break the blockade of the deliberate limbo they've hung me out to dry in, I am prettymuch on my own with this, which is sadly not an uncommon occurance - like the time I had to remove an impacted and abscessed molar all the way down to the roots by hand with naught more than a craft knife and a set of jewelry tools on no more anesthetic than a 40oz bottle of cheap malt liquor...
One thing I can tell ya though, past a certain point, your nervous system overloads and it CAN'T hurt no more than it already does, which is kinda useful if you're mean enough to take advantage.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Friday, February 10, 2012 9:40 AM

I wonder if taking l-dopa might help, if melanin dysregulation and and diminished dopamine pain inhibition are involved.

There's some herbs and naturalistic stuff out there. Like velvet beans and extracts. And l-dopa is not addictive like prescription DRIs, so you could stop taking them anytime.

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Friday, February 10, 2012 11:51 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:

If it were a success, she would be all better, would she not?

All that stuff does is eat your money and give you a temporary diversion and a temporary feeling of being in control of something that is not. I've watched other women do it for decades.
Every six months there's something that's "sure to fix ya this time"
It's all crap.

Eh, I think if you live in the world of chronic pain, there are rarely any full solutions, only measures that sometimes give relief , sometime temporary, that outweigh the side effects.

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Friday, February 10, 2012 11:53 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

One thing we can exclude here is Fibromyalga, cause this is something wholly different, mostly related to what seems to be a nervous system stress failure, with a collective of potentive causes likely rooted in just how much physical damage I've soaked up over these many years, although my reaction to stress is a bit inverted in a weird sorta way - without a sufficient source and cause of rage and frustration I'd prolly just roll over and die, honestly...
It's hard to explain, but I *need* that spur to function, to keep going, or misery and apathy would take over, yanno ?

That was what my understanding of what fibromyalga was... In any event, what you describe reminds me of what one of my friend's experience, right down the debilitating physical pain that medical professionals can not find the cause of.

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Friday, February 10, 2012 12:15 PM

The leukocytes Frem mentioned are something of their own, a full blown immuno-response.

I don't disagree that there might be something underlying that main issue though. And considering his history... Sometimes corticol related stress hormones activate interleukin-6. The pain from the artificial limb and now this on-going pain, that would be a pretty major source of stress.

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Sunday, February 12, 2012 7:23 PM

Beir bua agus beannacht

Frem I'm glad you were able to get a unit that works for you, that apartment complex you guard would be way worse off without you there to protect the residents, and the animals like you around too. :) Its good that you've found a few doctors who can work with you and can help. I know you aren't the type to abuse pain medicine, I know you don't want to have to use it, but maybe a little would be good, though I know you're saying its hard to get a prescription for since its misuse is so common these days.

I define any relief of symptoms as success, in my line every little bit helps.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Sunday, February 12, 2012 9:49 PM

That's the thing, misuse ain't common - they just pretend it is in order to push that moneymaking drug war agenda, side order of puritanism, in much the same fashion the horror of prohibition came round...

Anyhows, despite me knowing certain specifics of the medical-neuro stuff related to certain topics, my knowledge bases on that kinda thing are very deep, but very narrow - y'all have already passed beyond my technical knowledge of the matter into places that just leave me blinking and going "huh"?

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Monday, February 13, 2012 12:27 PM

OONJERAH

Organs anyone?

Larry Niven Long arm of Gil Hamilton (1976)
"But Gil Hamilton had enemies. Many enemies. Some were organleggers - those murderous dealers of illicit transplants."

It wasn't just the organleggers, either. In the world Niven describes where fresh organs are as gold, it was here in the USA where condemned criminals were "parted out." But the demand for organs was so great, that more & more crimes became felonies; more & more felonies got capital punishment.

Therefore, I was appalled but not too surprised when I learned that China is actually doing this. I still wonder how much organlegging actually does go on here in the free world of human rights.

In Niven's future history of the earth, the transplants era did not last long. Genetic science found a way for us to grow our own organs anew. All we have to do now is convince our congressional representatives to vote more money for genetics & T-cell research than to support the transplant industry.

BTW, whenever I look for a copy of his book about it, I cannot find one, except on Amazon. Perhaps it's just too obscure ...

"All I suggest is a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest" ~Paul Simon

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Monday, February 13, 2012 1:39 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"I still wonder how much organlegging actually does go on here in the free world of human rights."

"Horrific accounts of torture, rape and >> organ theft << are continuing to emerge from Egypt’s Sinai desert, seven rights organizations said last week in a press statement.

Human trafficking networks operating in northern Sinai detain migrants and hold them in what the rights organizations describe as “torture camps” until relatives pay a ransom."

"In December, the Council of Europe released a report alleging that Hashim Thaçi, the prime minister of Kosovo, is the leader of a criminal ring that smuggles contraband -- including human organs -- throughout Eastern Europe. While organ-trafficking stories are hardly new, Thaçi's has a bizarre twist: According to the COE, the prime minister used money generated from human organ sales to cement his political power in Kosovo, and he continues to profit from the traffic, along with many members of his Cabinet. ... Shaip Muja, a high-level Drenica official, set up a series of detention facilities that were designed to transport captives from the Serbian war front to Tirana, the capital of Albania. In addition to Serbian prisoners of war, the KLA also gathered alleged traitors, including "large numbers of ethnic Albanians, as well as Roma and other minorities. ... at least one was built for the specific purpose of organ trafficking. Located near Tirana, it included what the report describes as "A state-of-the-art reception centre. . . . (a detention facility) was styled as a makeshift operating clinic, and it was the site at which some of the captives held by the KLA members and affiliates had their kidneys removed against their will."

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Monday, February 13, 2012 3:59 PM

OONJERAH

from 2009, In Defense of Organ-legging => http://c4ss.org/content/826

from Wired Magazine: issue 15.04, 2007
A chart of the world organ markets => http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/start_page7.html

Clarification: I am not endorsing these businesses, nor do I get a kickback, and I am not planning to donate any organs there.

I can't quite recall when I read Niven's prophetic book ... it feels like it was longer ago than the publication date! But I have been in fear of the actual practice ever since.

As 1Kiki has shared information on it, I decided to look it up, too, eventho it's likely to keep me awake.

"All I suggest is a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest" ~Paul Simon

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Monday, February 13, 2012 4:05 PM

Oh I had a long argument with skeptic David Emory over this one a long while back...

See, in part due to following the mistreatment of children all the way to the bottom of the rabbit hole, I knew a bit more about this than joe sixpack, but the problem with it at the time ran into what I call bigfoot effect - when something is SO strange, SO awful, that folks look for any reason to reject it no matter what mental contortions they have to go through to do it.

The example used relates to the bastards who use "satanic" ritual trappings to both kick up the intensity and degrade any witness testimony, they're NOT really satanists, it's a game, cause even if you catch them red handed, even if you get all the evidence, all they have to do is put the victims on the stand and mock them and it's a clean walkaway...
So I posited that a clever freak could engage in his predation wearing a bigfoot suit, and even if they caught him, even if they found the suit, the minute you put the victims on the stand they'll be laughed off and humiliated because people do not WANT to believe it, you see ?

Ergo, Bigfoot effect.

This is present in a lesser degree in normal life, like how people will tell themselves an obvious car thief is just some unlucky guy who locked his keys in there, so they don't have to believe in the crime, so they don't have to DO anything, so they can continue their illusions and sleep at night.
Sometimes I envy them - but not often.

And yes, there are things in this world so mindbreakingly awful that the mere knowledge of them can cause psychological damage, often catastrophically so - which is why I can be so vague and cryptic about things, and at the time, back in the mid-80's, early 90's this issue WAS one of those things.

And at the time the worst offender for this was a certain so-called-ally of this country, who-shall-not-be-named, since all our politicians are wholesale fawningly subservient sycophants to them straight down the board regardless of party lines.
It was only slightly later that many third world countries jumped on this as an actually organized thing rather than the individual atrocities they'd been up till then.
The problem with knowing something like that is bringing it to anyones attention without sounding like a lunatic, and I had enough problems with trying to drag abuse within the church, the foster care system, and the problem of the hellcamps out into the public arena.

As for leftover parts, I made specific effort before they took what was left of my crumpled right leg off, to make SURE they'd salvage anything useful from it, which I hear benefitted some poor accident victim who needed an ankle tendon splice or something.

And yes, our catch as can halfassery about organ transplants is insultingly barbaric when we are on the verge of being able to clone the damn things, and as always it's the damn religious nutters and their fucked up puritan morality in the way of progress and the advancement of humanity, as usual.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Monday, February 13, 2012 5:12 PM