Making Bookcases....

I've been busy making bookcases. I've got all the tools. I've got the Battery-powered DeWalt drill Dad got me for a birthday or Christmas sometime (I love that thing); I've got the Delta chop saw David got me for my last birthday, on a Delta table no less; I've got my circular saw that I'm ripping boards with; I've got the pneumatic nailer I bought at Jerry's last weekend. I've got eye, ear and hand protection. I've got it all.

Except for one thing: I'm not much of a carpenter. I mean, I try. And eventually I'll finish this project, but it takes me forever to get stuff square and level. So, for now, as I go along, I'll try to remember to get David to take pictures of me sweating, chopping, drilling and nailing stuff together. And hopefully we like the results and I can finally unpack books and display them in my music/office/library room in our tiny house. But for now, things are a mess around here.

Carolyn's Mom, Update

I've been requested to update Marianne's condition: She is doing as well as can be expected. She is out of the ICU and in a ward bed. She is taking short walks. She is finding it difficult to eat, though, and today she's pretty tired. But if she does start eating and things go well, she could be home as early as Friday! Wow!

Alberto and the kids are going home to Italy tomorrow (Thursday). Carolyn will stay until August 7.

Gesture Research

My friend Susan does gesture research and works at the McNeill Lab at the University of Chicago. Recently the Chicago Tribune wrote a story about gesture research after an international conference held at Northwestern in Evanston.

"What came first: words or gestures? Researchers aren't 100 percent sure, but they've been asking the question a long time. Gesture studies didn't really emerge, though, until 1941, when Daniel Efron published "Gesture and Environment," a study of how gestures differed among first- and second-generation Italians and Jews in New York City. More recently, work by two University of Chicago professors is carrying the field forward. Professor emeritus David McNeill and professor Susan Goldin-Meadow each lead research labs that bear their names at the university in Hyde Park. Because of their work, Chicago is considered the world's center for gesture studies.

McNeill and Goldin-Meadow were among 200 or so conference presenters and hundreds more attendees catching up on and comparing notes about the latest research."

Susan, although she lives in Hammond, does fascinating research. More later....

Ethical Dilemmas in Health Care: the special case of psychiatrists

The health care business in this country is full of conflicts of interest and insider dealing. It's rife with ethical dilemmas, however most healthcare professionals act as if they couldn't find an ethical dilemma if their lives depended on it.

Consider today's press release by the American Psychiatric Association. They have formed a national committee of experts to go through the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V). This manual is used by everyone in the mental health profession to diagnose a mental disorder and encourages best practices for treating diagnoses. Certain diagnoses encourage prescribing of certain very expensive medications. So there's lots of incentives for drug companies to influence psychiatrists and their diagnoses. So who would you want inventing the diagnoses? Somebody who isn't conflicted, correct?

According to their press release: "Of the 27 task force members, eight had no relationship with industry and 19 disclosed relationships with industry during any of the 36 months leading up to their nominations. The APA made all task force members' disclosures available during the announcement of the task force. Several otherwise highly qualified indivduals were ruled ineligible fortask force appointments due to their competing interests."The press release goes on to say "The APA Board of Trustees established limits on relationship with industry that are more stringent than federal agency limits," said APA President Carolyn Robinowitz, M.D."What makes the DSM powerful is its value in clinical practice. Patients deserve a diagnostic manual based upon the latest science and free of conflicts of interest."

So I took a look at the disclosures made by the committee members to see what they must attest to before becoming a committee member. They must disclose the last 36 months of connections to the pharmaceutical industry, and they must limit their income from the industry (excluding unrestricted grants) to $10,000 per year for the next year.

70% of these committee members are ONLY taking $10,000 a year from industry while they work on reworking the DSM-V. When I look at what they're getting from industry, it's really astounding to me. It includes things like: consulting fees, speakers bureau, honoraria, stock options, royalties and much much more. It makes me ask: who did they NOT accept on their committee?

One of the grantees for the AG program, Elissa Ladd (who signed a conflict of interest form which says that she has not taken - in the last two years - and will not accept for the duration of the grant any of this kind of funding from industry) has put together curricula in a movie format that you can watch to tell you why these kinds of conflicts are not good for consumers. Watch it, and weep for the psychiatrists. They evidently have no clue what a conflict of interest is and why people shouldn't trust them. For any reason, let alone medical reasons.

My Pal Susan, Part III

And what does Susan do to keep sane in this little town of Hammond?

She drives back towards Illinois, Calumet City, and visits the closest Starbucks. Everyday.

The Saga of Susan, Part II

The attraction to Hammond for Susan (and her husband David Klein) was the price of the house and the proximity to David's employment. And her house, believe me, though I have no pictorial evidence thereof, is nice as well as the neighborhood she lives in.

About two blocks away from her house is the Great Wall of Hammond, which I happen to have no picture of, either. This is the story: more than a year ago, the cash-strapped community of Hammond, formerly a proud Midwestern industry port that has fallen now into hard times, was coping with a problem. The problem? Black kids from Calumet City Illinois were riding their bikes into Hammond and stealing stuff from people's homes. What were the righteous citizens of Hammond to do?

Well, build a wall, of course.

So, the outraged citizens of Hammond spent their precious resources building this curb down the middle of State Line Road to deter this traffic. The people living on either side of State Line Road (one side is Calumet City, the other Hammond) now could not cross is or make left-hand turns which deterred traffic alright. But the funny thing was: I stood on State Line Road and watched black kids from Calumet City ride their bikes right over the curb, in fact do wheelies right over the curb and ride right into Hammond, completely undeterred. The only thing the curb has done is keep the Hammond police force from being able to chase the kids on bikes back to Calumet City.

Don't build walls, people. This is silly.

Let's Not Forget My Pal Susan, Part I

Part of my spring vacation this year was spent in the charming hamlet known as Hammond Indiana, a hop-skip-and-jump from Chicago down a litter-strewn toll road, a mecca for....

SMOKERS!

Well, the price of the house was right. And it's not all that bad, but unfortunately I did not take pictures of anything good about Hammond. In fact, while I was downloading pictures from the camera I kept thinking, oh here's one of Sue in the nice part of Hammond, only to discover on closer inspection that it was a picture of a woman in Italy (who sort of looked like Sue) out in a field. Sorry, Sue.