Saving the children of India (video)

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; Rocky Braat "Blood Brother"

(BBD) Rocky Braat met a group of Indian children diagnosed with HIV while drifting through India. He wanted to save them all, but in reality he couldn't cure even one of them. They teach him, daily, that love is the only thing that makes life worth living. The truth is, he needs them as much if not more than they need him. (BloodBrotherFilm.com/Facebook/twitter) 

Reaction: "Let's get them low cost drugs!"?

[Not covered in the film: Why do they really have this diagnosis? Poverty and poor nutrition from processed foods like white rice and Monsanto's chemcial-laden agricultural products. And why will they die? Capitalism and the commodification of Big Pharma "health care" that wants more and more such diagnoses -- that will show up if anyone taking an "AIDS test" has a flu, malnutrition, is generally sickly or normally fending off an infection AND is interpreted as being in an at-risk group by test result interpreters -- whether in gay and poor neighborhoods in the USA or in the developing world, all to boost sales of their products with the help of government and NGO funds for more misguided R&D.]

Anti-aging hormone could make us SMARTER

CC Liu, Crystal Quintero, Kat Fabi, Wisdom Quarterly; Jon Hamilton (NPR/SCPR, 5-8-14)

"Free Your Mind" and the seat of your will follow. Meditate for calm and insight.

Anti-aging HORMONE could make us smarter (istockphoto/scpr.org)

 

A hormone associated with longevity also appears to make people's brains work better.
 
The finding in Cell Reports could someday lead to [high priced, synthetic, patented, moderately toxic pharmaceutical] drugs that improve memory and learning, researchers say.
 

Drugs are cool, take more pharmaceuticals!

[Why bother talking about the natural hormone itself, or using it, or getting our own bodies to produce more of it? Why? Nobody's going to make money that way! Oh, capitalism, we take thee for granted and wonder why we must always be pathologized and on drug "treatments." Big Pharma does not sell "cures" for anything; it just wouldn't be profitable.]
 
"We've discovered a way to potentially boost cognition," says Dena Dubal, one of the study's authors who does research on aging and the brain at the University of California, San Francisco.

And that could mean "a very new way to treat diseases," ranging from Alzheimer's to schizophrenia, she says.
 

Three Fates, Clotho on right

The hormone is named Klotho, after the Fate [Buddhist deva] Clotho from Greek mythology who spins the thread of life. Scientists have known for more than a decade that people and animals tend to live longer if they have high levels of Klotho in their bodies.
 
And that led Dubal and researchers at the Gladstone Institutes to wonder whether a hormone that protects the body against aging might also protect the brain. So the team set out to see whether Klotho offered... More

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Moliere's Tartuffe and Misanthrope Bike Trip

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The "Fifth Beatle" was gay and Jewish

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One day a UFO will crash in Los Angeles. Until then we have to settle for LAX accidents

One day NPR fans will gain a better sense of humor. Till then, SUP?

Buddhism for drug, alcohol recovery (BLVD)

Seth Auberon and CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; BLVDcenters.com; AgainstTheStream.org

"I'm not an alcoholic. I'm a DRUNK. Alcoholics go to meetings."

New Refuge Recovery book

BLVD Treatment Centers now offers a "Refuge Recovery" Treatment Program at its outpatient centers in Los Angeles, California.

It was designed by Buddhist author Noah Levine (Dharma Punx Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Center), son of Stephen Levine and student of renowned Theravada teacher Jack Kornfield.

 

BLVD will be offering an insurance-reimbursed program in San Francisco and New York next, dedicated to mindfulness and the "Refuge Recovery" path.

Ongoing meetings are open to anyone interested in Recovery and Buddhism. Now termed "Refuge Recovery" (an unfortunate name based on the common mistranslation of sarana, which means guidance, as "refuge"), this approach to recovery from pharmaceuticals, illegal drugs, and alcohol is a community (sangha) of people using Buddhist practices like

• mindfulness (sati, MBSR, MBCT)
• clear comprehension (sampajañña)
• compassion (karuṇā)
• forgiveness (khanti)
• generosity (unselfishness, dāna)

to heal the pain and suffering that addiction has caused in our lives and the lives of our loved ones.

 

Noah Levine, punk, author, Buddhist teacher

The path of practice Against the Stream follows is termed by Noah Levine the "Four Truths of Refuge Recovery."
 
It is a Buddhist-oriented path to recovery from addictions. It has proven successful with addicts (to legal and illegal substances) and alcoholics who have committed to the Buddhist path of meditation, generosity, kindness (metta), and renunciation (inner letting go).

This is an approach to recovery that understands: “All beings have the power and potential to free themselves from suffering.” Practitioners feel confident in the power of the Buddha’s teachings -- if applied in daily life -- to relieve suffering and disappointment of all kinds, including the suffering of addiction.

Meetings are appropriate for anyone in or interested in recovery. No meditation experience is necessary. By voluntary donation only. No preregistration. Just drop in.

• Buddhist addiction recovery center opens
• Noah Levine's dad is a Buddhist teacher

Why I love METH (cartoon)

Pat Macpherson, CC Liu, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Seth Macfarlane, "Family Guy"

Crystal meth (methamphetamine, "speed") is a synthetic chemical developed by Nazi scientists (as Pervitin) to get soldiers to kill more. There is perhaps no faster way to contact and be overtaken by inner demons than meth, exceeding even the speed of rum consumption. It might not be so bad if it were sustainable. But most of the obviously bad effects of meth stem not from the stimulation and exhaustion of one's life force reservoir so much as the toxic excipients (extra ingredients). One may as well swim in a large corporation's sludge pond. Dioxin, petroleum byproducts, Drano, match heads... Is it any wonder teeth fall out, pock marks form on the skin, insane itching begins as the skin -- the body's largest organ of elimination -- tries to detoxify? 

Peter Griffin shares a baggie of crystal meth with his son

 

Actual toxic waste goes into meth!

 

Warning: Do not swim in sludge ponds!

The Nazis were onto something. Imagine a cheap pharmaceutical that could take the place of cocaine. It is rumored that Adolf Hitler was an addict. To be sure other inner party Nazis were. Why would the CIA continue to promote expensive and risky crack addiction in American ghettos when methamphetamines are so much easier to produce without the trouble of cross-border transporting?

Yum, it's sugarcoated "Toxic Waste" candy

And why leave the middle class out of the fun? Now meth is available in a variety of dance-quality colors, flavors, and grades, not the least of which is old MDMA sold as the "new and improved" Molly. Those who would never dream of drinking Drano things in dad's garage would, somehow, consider taking hits of Ecstasy. Even America's own father, scoot over Homer Simpson, is not immune to the lure of toxic sludge. Of course, he's only joking.

• Buddhism and Recovery: Against the Stream
• No Speed Limit: The Rise of Nazi Dope (book)
• VIDEO: AMC's "Breaking Bad" in 2-hour recap
• Drugs, Inc. - San Francisco's Meth Zombies (NatGeoTV)

Meth first, then prostitution?
Cartoons make it cute, but addiction of any kind is ugly ugly ugly

Crystal Meth: The Hardest Drug
(BBC) 2013 documentary on the effects of methamphetamine use. No comment necessary.

(Late Night with Jimmy Fallon)  "Breaking Bad" parodied in "Joking Bad"

featuring cameos by Bryan Cranston, Bob Odenkirk, and Aaron Paul.

The harm DRUGS do

Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; The Economist "Scoring Drugs" (The Lancet*)

In a scientific ranking that appeared in The Economist, based on research profiled in the medical journal The Lancet, mushrooms came in as the LEAST harmful (Wiki).

 

Iatrogenesis (death by MD) is the major killer

Researchers asked drug-harm experts to rank the listed legal and illegal drugs on various measures of harm both to the user and to others in society.

These measures included damage to health, drug dependency, economic costs, and crime. The researchers claim that the rankings are stable because they are based on so many different measures and would require significant discoveries about these drugs to affect the rankings.

Note that alcohol, despite being legal, is by far the most harmful, far more harmful than any other intoxicant listed. Not only is it the most damaging to societies, it is also the fourth most dangerous to users. Most of the drugs were rated significantly less harmful than alcohol, with most of the harm falling on the user.

The authors explain that one of the limitations of this study is that drug harms are functions of their availability and legal status in the UK. So other cultures' control systems could yield different rankings.

 

*SOURCE: "Scoring Drugs," The Economist (Nov. 5, 2011), data from "Drug Harms in the UK: a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis" by David Nutt, Leslie King, and Lawrence Phillips on behalf of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs. The Lancet, Nov. 6, 2010 [376(9752):1558-65. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(10)61462-6, PMID:21036393].
 

Modern Medical Sickness

Big Pharma's big money makes it okay.

Iatrogenesis ("originating from a physician") is the criminally careless or innocent and inadvertent adverse effect or complication resulting from medical treatment or advice. This includes drug dispensing, surgery, and invasive treatments by physicians, pharmacists (Greek "sorcery, poisoning"), surgeons, psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, nurses, or dentists. It is not restricted to conventional medicine, but that is where the extraordinarily high numbers and irony are. Consumer beware. It may even result from complementary medicine and alternative treatments. In the United States an estimated 225,000 deaths per year have iatrogenic causes [B. Starfield, July, 2000) "Is US health really the best in the world?" (PDF). JAMA 284 (4), PMID 10904513)]. But Dr. Gary Null, who focuses on public health and nutrition, asserts that the figure is 750,000 a year or higher, making it the biggest killer in America. This means that drugs and invasive treatments kill more patients when used as directed and even when used under direct medical supervision by a doctor! Some iatrogenic artifacts are clearly defined and easily recognized, such as a complication following surgery. Some less obvious ones can require significant investigation to identify, such as complex pharmaceutical drug interactions. Other conditions have been described but are as yet unproven, such as the detrimental effects of vaccines (which can cause death, Downs Syndrome, autism, and spectrum disorders such as Asperger syndrome.