Year: 2014

Government Retaliates Against Priest Who Sued over Shutdown of Mass

~ Pharmer

Navy Chaplain Fr. Ray Leonard had begun service to the U.S. military after 10 years of ministering in Tibet, under conditions of religious suppression.  He was surprised to find religious freedom deteriorating in the U.S. upon his return.

During the government shutdown this past fall, chaplains were banned from celebrating Mass at the Georgia Naval base.  Rev. Leonard was threatened with arrest for administering any of the sacraments during the shut down.  He then filed suit against the Department of Defense for forbidding him to perform the duties of a Catholic priest.  A day later, he received a letter reinstating his right to perform his duties.  One week later, he was informed that his DOD contract was no longer valid, and offered a new contract which required him to agree not to receive payment for services already rendered. He was the only chaplain to undergo such a contractual change.  Fr. Leonard had been scraping together money for his food and rent during the months of November and December, in lieu of his salary.  (We expect the IRS to be going after him for that, later on, if he can’t account for every penny and every free meal. )

Thomas More Law Center has amended the original lawsuit, adding a complaint that Fr. Leonard has suffered unlawful  retaliatory damage from the government in response to the first lawsuit. A court has ordered the government to respond to the amended complaint by March 3, 2014.

This Should Be an Out of Pocket Medical Expense

~ Pharmer

From the compendium of oddities  which fill the emergency departments of hospitals comes the story of a porno addict from Guandong Province in southeastern China.  His tale  tops that of Officer Melia of New Jersey, who apparently had a thing for cows, and Kenneth Pinyan of Washington state, who, uuhhh …… played the wrong game of catch with a stallion.

In fact, this 39 year old man is apparently facing charges of animal cruelty in China for putting a 20 inch, live, Asian swamp eel in the same anatomical location that  Kenneth Pinyan utilized for his sport.  The eel desperately tried to chew his way to freedom, causing a good deal of intestinal injury to his “host”.

“It was still alive when we got it out, but it died soon afterwards, which was probably a mercy,” said a member of the medical team that performed an all night surgical repair on the porn addict.

Apparently the Huffington Post has more on this story, but your friendly Pharmer does not want to go there.

Treatment for this kind of thing should be an out-of pocket-medical expense, but it’s likely covered with no deductible on the platinum plan of Obamacare.

Asian swamp eel (now also "available" in the U.S.)
Asian swamp eel (now also “available” in the U.S.)

What Your Pharmacist Doesn’t Know about Plan B

~ Pharmer

The folks at a major healthcare professional  education provider were scooped by Mother Jones and, prior to that, by yours truly, regarding the ineffectiveness of Plan B ONE-STEP for the bigger girls.

They had to update their not so good analysis of the morning after pills and …. it’s still not so good. If they were offering compensation, yours truly would tell them more, but this example is blogged to illustrate a single point. The public should know that their busy health care professionals are treated like mushrooms: kept in the dark and fed B.S. concerning birth control in general.

 Pharmacists have to think about a concept of steady state when asked by physicians to dose antibiotics and other drugs, or if they work in the field of drug development. Steady state is the condition during which the intake of a drug is in a sort of equilibrium with the output or the elimination of the drug. This assumes regular dosing of the drug. Steady state generally occurs after several doses and after about 5 times the half life of the drug. Ideally drug levels at steady state are high enough to be effective, and low enough to be ‘non-toxic’.

Casting about for the reason why Plan B ONE STEP doesn’t work in American women of average size or greater, the team at this Professional Education Provider, led by N B O’ Pharm.D., BCPS,wrote the following:

“The exact mechanism for the reduced efficacy seen in overweight and obese women using levonorgestrel is not known. One proposed mechanism is that in women with an increased BMI, there is a delay in time to steady state and a prolonged half-life as seen in studies with combined oral contraceptives.21″

This nonsensically applied  idea was blamed on the article below, which covered birth control hormones in general, and addressed the drugs that females take orally every day, or those which continuously supply hormone(s) to the body,  such as patches and depot injections.

Edelman AB, Cherala G, Stanczyk FZ. Metabolism and pharmacokinetics of contraceptive steroids in obese women: a review. Contraception 2010;82:314-23.

Some poor PharmD educator is talking about STEADY STATE with respect to a drug which is taken in a single dose : Plan B ONE STEP!! 

Steady State Never Happens with a single such dose!

This is just a single example but it illustrates the point.

 1) Most of your health care professionals are generally lost in the weeds regarding birth control, and don’t know what they’re talking about. That includes the ones who really SHOULD know what they’re talking about.

 Bonus) Be assured that birth control generally does not work as well in real life as the studies claim, and many factors contribute to this.

Please consider adjusting life style and reproductive planning with at least these two facts in mind.

 

Call a Waaaaaaaaaaambulance: Congressional Staffers Fret About Obamacare

~ Pharmer ~ 3 Comments
Call a WAAAAAMBULANCE!
Call a WAAAAAMBULANCE!

A Congressional Management Foundation survey reveals that Congressional aides in Washington DC, who make between $95,000 and $170,000 yearly are fretting over the cost and coverage of Obamacare. One staffer commented:  “Everyone felt as if we were pawns in this political argument,” says The Politico.

Remember, these are the people who write the regulations emanating from the multi-thousand page “Affordable” Care Act.  They’re feeling put upon by the cost of Obamacare, even though the Feds are subsidizing 75% of their cost. 

The bureaucrats and legislators of the federal government are living in a dream world.   How can they complain about any aspect of the bill which they are inflicting on Americans, whose median family income dropped to  $51,017 as of Sept 2013?

The federal subsidy for these Washington bureaucrats is funded by the very families who are only  making half or a third of their salary.  How do the idiots in government think Obamacare, or the subsequently planned  single payer plan, is going to work????

Extensive Probings- the Lawsuit

~ Pharmer

 

The hose that goes there
Extensive probings

The story of  David Eckert, the New Mexico victim of a colonoscopic drug search continues with a settlement of a portion of his lawsuit.   This is an extremely fast offer from the cops of the city of Deming, and Hildago County, where the probe was conducted.  So far, Mr. Eckert stands to collect 1.6 million dollars.  Suits against GILA REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER and doctors Robert Wilcox, M.D. and Okay Odocha M.D. continue.

Recalling from the initial story of a huge violation of 4th amendment rights, and a massive breach of medical ethics, the above mentioned docs ran a hose from Mr. Eckert’s anus through his large bowel, all the way to his cecum, looking for drugs.  In doing so, they risked the possibility of breaking the bags, if there were any, and killing Mr. Eckert. That was only part of the story of a harrowing night spent in police custody, but not under arrest.

Mr. Eckert deserves to be compensated for this assault upon his person, but there is a  major problem with the settlement thus far.   The taxpayers, who had no part in this crime are the ones who are paying for it.  Perhaps the public will need to be more attentive to the stupidity of its government, law enforcement officials, and ancillary personnel to stop this kind of behavior.

Minimum Wage Increase Associated with increased Unemployment

~ Pharmer

Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007  Signed on 5/25//2007

from $5.15 per hr                                           unemployment = 4.4%

to $5.85 per hour on 7/24/07                          unemployment = 4.7%

to $6.55 per hour on 7/24/08                          unemployment = 6.1%

to $7.25 per hour on 7/24/09                          unemployment = 9.5%

As of 2008, 13 states already had minimum wage rates at or above $7.25 per hour.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have not noticed this correlation of minimum wage increases with increased unemployment, as they claim that increasing the minimum wage does not affect employment rate.  They have persistently lobbied for minimum wage increases, as well as amnesty for illegal immigrants. Their argument in this area actually shifts the question to the state of the economy and so-called job creation, without mentioning job losses and outsourcing.

Three Dem Congressmen Announce Retirement

~ Pharmer

Representative George Miller D-California, who pushed for more federal involvement (destruction)  in education has announced his retirement after 40 years.

Representative Bill Owens D-New York (once endorsed by the RINO Dede Scozzafava to beat a TeaParty conservative) has announced that he’s not up to a contest for his third term, and is retiring.

Representative Jim Moran D-Virginia,  who has help fund and preserve the bubble of Washington DC, has announced that he will retire after 12 terms.

Sperm Bank Surprise

~ Pharmer

The now defunct Reproductive Medical Technologies Inc., which had been owned by a University of Utah faculty member, has produced a number of surprises for families which used their services.

It seems that Thomas R. Lippert, who operated the facility, did more than his share to help women get pregnant.

One couple got their surprise employing the services of 24andMe, which does DNA tests for those who have curiosity about their ancestral origins.  Their daughter was found not to have DNA in common with her putative father, because semen samples at Reproductive Medical Technologies Inc. had been switched.  It was found, through testing that the now-deceased Thomas R. Lippert was her father.  He apparently fathered others in a similar manner.  The University of Utah is now offering genetic testing for RTMI clients who received services between 1988 and 1994. Those affected can contact the University of Utah Andrology Lab at 801-581-5852.

It seems that Thomas R. Lippert had a very checkered past, and had served prison time for kidnapping and attempted kidnapping of women in Indiana for Kinsey-like “love experiments”.   Click on the image below or HERE to read more from a 1976 Florence Times newspaper clipping.

CLICK to enlarge 1976 Florence Times article
CLICK image  to enlarge 1976 Florence Times article

 

Party Drug Mephedrone Unsells Itself in the UK

~ Pharmer

Mephedrone is one name for 4-Methylmethcathinone, which is related to the class of synthetic cathinone analogs known as bath salts.  These were discussed elsewhere on the Pharm, in relation to serious behavioral disturbance.

Another such story has popped up in the news. This case illustrates the propensity of mephedrone to  to lower the natural inhibitions with respect to self surgery, (in this case as chopadicktomy), and unauthorized surgery on others (stabbing).

A 19 year old student, From Haywards Heath, West Sussex,  while high on mephedrone, stabbed his 46 year old mother, giving her life threatening injuries, then cut off his own penis. An individual close to the family told the Daily Mirror that the 19 year old “is normally a lovely lad, and very bright.  But unfortunately, he had started dabbling in drugs”

Don’t do Mephedrone.