Ouch! Hey, Honey?!?

Ever heard of manuka honey from New Zealand? Probably not. If that’s the case, you can blame the drug companies.

Manuka honey, when prepared and used properly, is one of the most potent and effective wound care options known to man. I just heard a story of a woman who had broken her foot, and though the surgery to remove the bone fragments and set the bone was successful, the surface wound would not heal. The situation dragged on for months, and progressed to the point where the woman and her doctor were discussing amputation.

Amputation. Amputation!

Three days after the application of the manuka honey, the wound had healed more than it had in the past six months. The woman got to keep her foot. I’d call that a good outcome, wouldn’t you? Some kiwi bees got it all over SmithKlineBeacham, apparently.

But unless you’re heavy into holistic medicine, you have never heard of manuka honey, and if you ask your doctor about it you’ll probably get a dismissive shrug and short speech about snake oil and witch doctors. This is something that could potentially help to improve, and maybe even save lives all over the world. But it’s relegated to the little-traversed and much-maligned corners of the medical community.

The private, for-profit health care system is to blame.

Drug companies are out for the big payoff. Find a drug that works, patent it (pay attention, this is key), and then sell it in massive quantities for the huge payoff. So they spend the bulk of their time on research, trying to find the chemical recipe for a lottery ticket.

Why so much time in the lab? Because the recipe they come up with has to be man-made. You can’t patent something that occurs naturally (!!!) so what they come up with has to be something nobody has tried before. They can’t get the big payoff from tree sap or fish oil or ear wax — they can’t patent it, so if they do spend all the time and money on human trials, once it hits market they have to compete with every other manufacturer that wants to produce it. If they patent a drug, they can (and do) sell it for $1000 a pill if they want to. Drug patents last seventeen years. Drugs like Viagra sell a million pills a day. Do the math: and if you’re looking for a lock-solid investment for your retirement account, buy drug company stock.

But if the drug the company develops can’t be patented, the market sets the price. Research and development, animal trials, human trials, years of coaxing the government into approving it for sale, and then no payoff. Their product has to be priced at what the market will bear, up against all competitors who choose to sell the same product. And heaven forbid these free-market medicine advocates should have to actually *participate* in the free market. But I digress.

The manuka honey situation is a prime example. Drug companies can’t make a buck off of it, so they ignore it. Instead they come up with their own product, put the force of their marketing juggernaut behind it, and when a dozen other companies do the exact same thing, products like manuka honey get lost in the noise. It’s really a miracle we know about it at all, and quite frankly it raises the possibility that there are thousands of other products we *don’t* know about that are similarly effective.

The end result: we get lower-quality medications and treatments than we could potentially get; people’s quality of life goes down, or worse yet, they lose their lives entirely; and the drug companies continue to get richer.

What’s the solution? Remove the profit motive. Drug researchers aren’t in their field because of the money. People who choose careers based exclusively on income potential are all lawyers or investment bankers. Researchers love doing research, and they don’t care whether they ever get the bazillion-dollar payoff: the satisfaction for them is to find the drug or treatment that helps the most people. So taking the lottery winnings away from the research community won’t affect their zeal or their effectiveness one bit.

What we need to do is make sure they have the resources they need to investigate *everything* they think might do the best job. 110% funding, the freedom to pursue any direction they want to go, the best facilities and equipment money can buy, essentially a bottomless well of resources so that they can identify and develop the best possible medical treatments and procedures.

How do you do that? Consolidate all research under one umbrella and fund it with public money. The infrastructure already exists, mostly at colleges and universities all over the country. Shift the priorities of the research community away from patents and on to effective treatments, because that’s what we’re ultimately trying to produce anyhow!

This relieves the drug companies of 99% of their risk and cost. No more research, no more trials, no more FDA approval quagmires, all of that disappears. The government-funded research now handles all of that. Additionally, with research being coordinated by one central entity, there is no expensive duplication of effort. We’d need probably two independent teams researching anything that showed promise past a certain point, but not a dozen drug companies all chasing the same drug with the same characteristics and cutting corners in their efforts to get to market first. The best products, the safest products, the most cost-effective products will be the ones that end up on pharmacists’ shelves.

And what about cost? How do these products get to market? We will still hold the patents on the medications that are developed, but the government will take bids on production every year. The company that submits the lowest per-unit bid gets the contract, and for that period obtains the right to sell that product at that price directly to doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies. This also totally eliminates marketing costs: the government will assume the responsibility of notifying the medical community about new and existing drugs, meaning doctors will no longer be deluged with dozens of drug company reps badgering them during office hours to hawk their wares and drop off logo-laden ball point pens, calendars, and Post-It™ notes.

Who wins? We do, researchers do, and to a large extent the doctors/hospitals/pharmacies do too. In the attempt to “recoup research costs” — pronounce that “pad our bank accounts” — the brand-name medications we buy are marked up over 99%. In simple terms, each dollar we spend on drugs consists of 99 cents profit for the drug companies. Switching to a system of this nature will slice hundreds of billions of dollars off the amount we spend on health care every year.

Who loses? The money-grubbing hypercapitalist mercenaries: drug company executives, insurance companies, HMO’s. As illustrated above, most of what they add to the equation is pure profit for them and their shareholders, and it comes straight out of our pockets. And I’m sorry, I have a serious issue with fat cats getting richer when my kid gets an ear infection. It’s morally reprehensible: the only thing that separates it from extortion is the middle-man at the pharmacy counter.

Will the U.S. medical community survive? Alas, no, it will not survive: it will blossom and thrive as never before. Life expectancy will top industrialized nations (we are currently in the bottom half of that ranking), primary care will be more effective in reducing visits to specialists and emergency rooms, hospital stays and recovery periods will shorten, costs will plummet. Health care will see a resurgence the likes of which not seen since the Salk vaccine.

Will the money men survive? Oh yes, they will. Some of them will adapt to the new order, but most others will find a new way to rake in the big bucks and pack up shop. So much the better. Let them make widgets, or sell ice to Eskimos, or lease out land parcels on Mars. Whatever they do, it will be less of a harm to humanity than what they are doing now.

Anybody in this presidential campaign listening to this? Hmm?

Legislative Dilemma

One of our government’s bizarre intricacies has come to light in the past several days, one that has been going on for years, one that has the potential to create a Constitutional showdown that will shake the nation to its very core, but one that to date has somehow escaped the public eye. It is sure to be a highly-scrutinized topic for the foreseeable future.

Everybody who watched their “Schoolhouse Rock” episodes knows how legislation comes into existence. Bills are written and submitted to the legislative bodies, debated in committee, amended, voted upon, and those that survive are sent to the President for his signature or veto. In recent years, the process of the President affixing his signature to a piece of legislation has been given a new twist. The President has been adding something called a “signing statement” to the law. This, in a purely legal sense, is meaningless. But to the President, whose responsibility it is to enforce the law he is signing, it represents the perceived authorization to dictate the terms of the legislation. Instead of a line-item veto, it is essentially a line-item amendment — without Congress (and by extension, the citizens of the United States whom they represent) getting a chance to vote on it.

But after doing some investigation on the subject, I uncovered some details that make the situation far worse than expected. I have researched the signing statements by President George W. Bush, reportedly the most prolific signing statement practitioner, and compiled them below. I have listed them for your consideration: you may judge for yourselves.

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March 9, 2003: Justice Department officials must give reports to Congress by certain dates on how the FBI is using the USA Patriot Act to search homes and secretly seize papers.

Bush’s signing statement: “The president can order Justice Department officials to withhold any information from Congress if he decides it could impair national security or executive branch operations.”

Dec. 30, 2003: US interrogators cannot torture prisoners or otherwise subject them to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

Bush’s signing statement: “The president, as commander in chief, can waive the torture ban if he decides that harsh interrogation techniques will assist in preventing terrorist attacks.”

Dec. 30, 2003: When requested, scientific information ”prepared by government researchers and scientists shall be transmitted [to Congress] uncensored and without delay.”

Bush’s signing statement: “The president can tell researchers to withhold any information from Congress if he decides its disclosure could, like, make it harder for me to lie to people, and stuff.”

Jun. 23, 2004: Forbids US troops in Colombia from participating in any combat against rebels, except in cases of self-defense. Caps the number of US troops allowed in Colombia at 800.

Bush’s signing statement: “Only the president, as commander in chief, can place restrictions on the use of guns and bombs and grenades and big zappy things. I flew some cool planes when I was in the Navy, you know. I can make things blow up.”

Aug. 8,  2004: The Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and its contractors may not fire or otherwise punish an employee whistle-blower who tells Congress about possible wrongdoing.

Bush’s signing statement: “The president or his appointees will determine whether the word is actually pronounced ‘NUKE-lee-err’ or ‘NUKE-ya-ler’. And those guys work for me. So from now on it’s ‘NUKE-ya-ler’. And we’re gonna spell it like that too.”

Aug. 17, 2005: The new national intelligence director shall recruit and train women and minorities to be spies, analysts, and translators in order to ensure diversity in the intelligence community.

Bush’s signing statement: “Maybe now they’ll get some more hot chicks down at Langley. Girls with big hooters make great spies: dumb foreigners get hypnotized by their rack and just start blurtin’ stuff out. In fact, by affixing my signature hereto I officially authorize the creation of the D-Cup Special Intelligence Task Force. We’ll fund it with money I was going to give to those crippled kids in that country where they can’t grow nothin’.

Nov. 6, 2005: US officials in Iraq cannot prevent an inspector general for the Coalition Provisional Authority from carrying out any investigation. The inspector general must tell Congress if officials refuse to cooperate with his inquiries.

Bush’s signing statement: “The inspector general shall refrain from investigating anything involving me or anybody I hired, or Dick, or any of his buddies, ‘cuz if those guys keep poking around they’re gonna find out about the stuff we did over there, and that just ain’t cool. Besides, whatever they find out it don’t matter, I’m just gonna pardon the guy anyway.”

Aug. 5, 2007: The military cannot add to its files any illegally gathered intelligence, including information obtained about Americans in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches.

Bush’s signing statement: “Why do I gotta sign all this crap anyhow? I’m just going to tell Dick to have those guys save it all up and put it into one big stack, and at the end of the year I’ll just put a big ‘X’ on it with some spray paint and be done with it.”

Oct. 29, 2007: Defense Department personnel are prohibited from interfering with the ability of military lawyers to give independent legal advice to their commanders.

Bush’s signing statement: “You guys see the new all-you-can-eat chimichanga deal they got down at Chili’s? I can’t just show up there and pig out, ‘cuzuh all those dudes with knives and whatever. So I had the Secret Service guys go down there and bring me about six hundred of those bad boys. My burps made three Cabinet members pass out this morning. That was so cool.”

Nov. 5, 2007: Creates an Institute of Education Sciences whose director may conduct and publish research ”without the approval of the secretary [of education] or any other office of the department.”

Bush’s signing statement: “Let’s get this over with, Scooby Doo is on in like five minutes. Why the hell do you guys schedule this crap when my shows are on? I’m gonna write a Presidential Order saying that you guys can’t come in here when I’m watching Scooby Doo, Family Guy, or Elmo’s World, or else you’ll spend ten thousand years of breaking rocks at Fort Knox. I’m not foolin’ around, neither. Now get lost. And gimme that remote back.”

Future Commute

I commuted from my quite-distant-suburban home to a major downtown area for more than five years, and as it turns out, am about to start another stint doing exactly the same thing. My commute routine is a four mile drive from home to train, an hour-long (forty-mile as the crow flies) train ride, and (luckily) a fifty foot walk from train station to the front door of my office building.

With the exception of the fifty-foot walk, I would call this commute relatively typical. My fellow commuters’ drive from home to the train station is either shorter or longer than mine, and when they get downtown almost all of them go farther to get to their place of work. For some of them that means a walk of a few blocks, some of them catch a bus, others take taxis.

All of this saves us the brutal, daily task of fighting aneurism-inducing traffic jams at both the beginning and end of our day. Additionally there is some measure of environmental benefit, with about one hundred soot-spewing locomotives taking the place of thirty or forty thousand CO2-belching automobiles.

And I have to tell you, despite my cushy circumstances, there has to be a better way. Let’s walk through the down-side to this.

I get out of my house and drive to the train station, where the problem becomes parking. At my station there is a two-year waiting list for a quarterly parking pass, and pay-by-day parking (last I checked) was full by 6:10am — nearly two hours before my train pulls out. So I’m reduced to parking in a time-restricted spot and having my wife move my car to a local/free/no-time-limit lot after 9am. Not exactly optimum, and a problem shared by more than a few other commuters.

Next is the train itself. For some reason the train schedule gets me downtown either much earlier than I need to be, or just after I need to be. So I either have to drag my butt out of bed earlier than necessary, or be late. Then there’s the train being thirty seconds early and missing it, or 90 minutes late and having to either work from home or call the boss with the barely-believable train-was-late-again excuse.

Now, I am not the most pleasant human being to be around. I tend to be touchy and opinionated, and rather intolerant of my fellow man. That being said, I’m sure I’m not the only one that would prefer my *own* seat in whatever vehicle is transporting me, well, anywhere. My disdain for my fellow man notwithstanding, I’m somewhat of a big guy, and I tend to feel cramped when forced to share a bench with even normal sized people, and I’m pretty sure they do too.

Finally, the biggee: what to do when you get to your destination. Trains stop at train stations. Very few, if any, people who commute downtown actually *work* at train stations. That means pretty much everybody is faced with some kind of dilemma in getting to their ultimate destination. The public transit system is designed to try to help the most people in the best way, but it can’t be all things to all people. Many thousands of people are stuck with extending their commute by bus or by cab once they get off the train. Still thousands more are on foot, a breezy, sun-drenched delight for three months of the year here in Chicago, but either a sweat-bathed mess or a rain/sleet/snow-covered trudge during the remaining nine months.

And that’s just the ride in: the whole process is reversed at the end of the day.

I think there is a better way to do this. More efficient, more energy-wise, and alleviating most of the problems that plague this process. Of course it will require some serious changes.

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Here’s the upside. No gas expense driving to or from the train. No more missing the train. No parking at the train station. A full-featured and comfortable environment to take you all the way from your house to your destination. No bus or cab or walking on the destination side. Zero emissions and partial use of renewable resources for the entire commute end-to-end. And most of this uses existing technology.

The down-side? Retro-fitting our existing infrastructure and equipment production/acquisition are going to be expensive.

Here’s the vision. You start out at your house by unplugging your electric vehicle and climbing aboard. This is a four-wheeled vehicle much like a car, in fact for your purposes it *is* a car, with all the amenities and even a couple more that cars today don’t have.

Now, this car isn’t big. Probably two seats at most. Not a lot of storage either. It’s a commuter vehicle, made for short trips, range of probably fifty miles on a full charge. It’s road-ready, meets all the safety regulations for government approval, including seat belts and air bags and all that. Like I say, when you pull out of your driveway, this is a car. It just does some tricks.

So you drive from your house to where you catch the train. Here’s where things get funky. Your “car” doubles as your personal coach on a magnetic monorail system that uses the same technology as the Japanese bullet-trains. It can drive right up to an on-ramp, link in to the system, and be carried along that monorail to your intended destination. When it travels on that system it uses the energy from the monorail to power itself, and in fact its batteries are re-charged while it runs along. Plus, no parking, no running to the train, no missing the train, no train being late, or any of that mess.

Additionally, since you’re now taking your personal vehicle on the trip downtown, all of the amenities you have built into your vehicle stay with you for the trip. Your chair, your stereo, your personal space to enjoy for the journey. No obnoxious cell phone guy with too much cologne cramming himself and his oversized leather portfolio in next to you. Just you traveling in temperature-controlled comfort right from your garage to your destination. Plus, I know I like to work on my laptop during the commute. We could build in high-speed internet connectivity to the monorail system with ease, as well as high-reliability cell phone network availability, essentially turning your vehicle into a full-featured office for the trip.

Also, with the monorail system we can add some new elements to this commute process. Fifty thousand single vehicles traveling on the same system tends to get messy, consolidation is a better idea. For that reason, these cars link together to form a train of sorts. The more cars in the train, the more electrically efficient it is to whisk that train to its destination. So we could build a feature into the system that speed and track availability were determined by the number of cars in your train. Get 20 of your friends who all go downtown at roughly the same time, and you blast past almost everybody. Go it alone, and you get stuck in the “slow lane.” But you could pull into stations along the way to pick up singles from those stops and try to get moving faster. Transportational Darwinism, if you will.

Power source? Well, there’s little question that this puppy will soak up a mammoth amount of electricity. But I also envision this monorail system existing, for the most part, above the existing train tracks. That means lots of large support towers holding the monorails in place. All of those towers can be put to use as either solar-gathering pillars or wind-turbine mounts, feeding clean, renewable energy into the system at all points of the monorail and reducing the overall amount of grid electricity that the system would need.

So now you’ve blasted your way downtown listening to Barbra Streisand, updating your MySpace page, and assuring your boss that you sent that budget projection to him yesterday: now what? Well, you’re in your car with a full electric charge. Drive to work! The small and modular nature of the vehicle you are in makes parking a new and a little futuristic experience. Pull up to the parking garage, hook into the system, get out and grab your stuff, put in your money and get your ID card. The system grabs your vehicle and lifts it up to wherever there is space available. “Stacks” it, if you will. When you are ready for your car, go back to the kiosk and stick in your ID card, your car is lifted down to you, you get in and drive back to the train station. And don’t worry, there will be dozens of pick-up/drop-off points at each garage with perhaps hundreds of independent and redundant delivery and retrieval systems built in, so there is no danger of getting your car stuck 9 stories up where you can’t get to it.

From there, it’s back to the monorail, hook up with fellow commuters who are going to your destination, and whoosh! You’re back where you started from. But wait, what if you have to go somewhere else today? Or you have to leave unexpectedly? Or you have to go to a business lunch? Or a business dinner? Or drive to the airport? You have your car: drive! One annoying thing about commuting is that if you ever deviate from your daily pattern, you’re fighting traffic in your car all the way downtown and taking out a sub-prime mortgage to pay for parking. With this concept, literally anyone can use public transportation. It becomes so much more usable, convenient, and efficient.

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That’s it in a nutshell. Like I said, not easy to implement. Our cities have a huge investment in the existing infrastructure, changing that would be difficult. However, the beginning of this concept is already on the drawing board. The ever-studious boys and girls at MIT have drawn up plans for a commuter car that can be stacked with other similar vehicles.

And while it is absurd to think that this could be implemented here in the U.S., a strange thing is happening in China. The population growth coupled with the economic boom in that country is causing the government to build cities. I don’t mean building up an existing town, I mean picking a spot on the map with nothing and saying, “Okay, build it here,” and breaking ground. An entire city, aimed at housing and employing a quarter million people or more, built up from scratch. My concept would be a perfect addition to such a project.

Who knows, maybe they’re already Naughty disciples…