To say I was wowed by this intimate glimpse into David Brook’s inner workings on this personal level is frankly, an awkward understatement.  I have noticed minute changes in David Brooks over time as he appears as a respected political pundit on many of the television shows I am prone to watch.     While I have always admired his intelligence, thoughtfulness and manner of speaking,  I nevertheless have been impressed with a deepening – growing breadth and a certain sensitiveness.    We are all humans, capable of growth, change and limitless capacity,  but I must admit I never expected to find another from this field  with  those rarefied  qualities I so missed with the untimely loss of  Tim Russert last year. (see 7-01-08 post,   Dr. McDougall and Tim Russert)   So, in case you missed David’s latest . . . .

Emotional Education Comes Through   “the BOSS”

David Brooks writes for the New York Times

Like many of you, I went to elementary school, high school and college. I took such and such classes, earned such and such grades, and amassed such and such degrees.

But on the night of Feb. 2, 1975, I turned on WMMR in Philadelphia and became mesmerized by a concert the radio station was broadcasting. The concert was by a group I’d never heard of —Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Thus began a part of my second education.

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We don’t usually think of this second education. For reasons having to do with the peculiarities of our civilization, we pay a great deal of attention to our scholastic educations, which are formal and supervised, and we devote much less public thought to our emotional educations, which are unsupervised and haphazard. This is odd, since our emotional educations are much more important to our long-term happiness and the quality of our lives.   In any case, over the next few decades Springsteen would become one of the professors in my second education. In album after album he assigned a new course in my emotional curriculum.

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In a normal schoolroom, information walks through the front door and announces itself by light of day. It’s direct. The teacher describes the material to be covered, and then everybody works through it.   The knowledge transmitted in an emotional education, on the other hand, comes indirectly, seeping through the cracks of the windowpanes, from under the floorboards and through the vents. It’s generally a byproduct of the search for pleasure, and the learning is indirect and unconscious.

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From that first night in the winter of 1975, I wanted the thrill that Springsteen was offering. His manager, Jon Landau, says that each style of music elicits its own set of responses. Rock, when done right, is jolting and exhilarating.   I followed Springsteen into his world. Once again, it wasn’t the explicit characters that mattered most. Springsteen sings about teenage couples out on a desperate lark, workers struggling as the mills close, and drifters on the wrong side of the law. These stories don’t directly touch my life, and as far as I know he’s never written a song about a middle-age pundit who interviews politicians by day and makes school lunches at night.

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What mattered most, as with any artist, were the assumptions behind the stories. His tales take place in a distinct universe, a distinct map of reality. In Springsteen’s universe, life’s “losers” always retain their dignity. Their choices have immense moral consequences, and are seen on an epic and anthemic scale.    There are certain prominent neighborhoods on his map — one called defeat, another called exaltation, another called nostalgia. Certain emotional chords — stoicism, for one — are common, while others are absent. “There is no sarcasm in his writing,” Landau says, “and not a lot of irony.”

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I find I can’t really describe what this landscape feels like, especially in newspaper prose. But I do believe his narrative tone, the mental map, has worked its way into my head, influencing the way I organize the buzzing confusion of reality, shaping the unconscious categories through which I perceive events. Just as being from New York or rural Georgia gives you a perspective from which to see the world, so spending time in Springsteen’s universe inculcates its own preconscious viewpoint.

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Then there is the man himself. Like other parts of the emotional education, it is hard to bring the knowledge to consciousness, but I think important lessons are communicated by that embarrassed half-giggle he falls into when talking about himself. I think a message is conveyed in the way he continually situates himself within a tradition — de-emphasizing his own individual contributions, stressing instead the R&B groups, the gospel and folk singers whose work comes out through him.

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I’m not claiming my second education has been exemplary or advanced. I’m describing it because I have only become aware of it retrospectively, and society pays too much attention to the first education and not enough to the second. In fact, we all gather our own emotional faculty — artists, friends, family and teams. Each refines and develops the inner instrument with a million strings.

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This month, my kids attended their first Springsteen concert in Baltimore. At one point, I looked over at my 15-year-old daughter. She had a look of slack-jawed, joyous astonishment on her face. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing — 10,000 people in a state of utter abandon, with Springsteen surrendering himself to them in the center of the arena.

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It begins again.

I watched and loved the “Dog Whisperer” even when I didn’t have a dog. . .this makes sense to me!

PARENTING

CHRIS PIZZELLO ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cesar Millan, “the Dog Whisperer”

 

‘Whispering’ might make kids heel, too

By Alex Williams
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

As far back as Father Knows Best, television has been an unintentional teaching aid for parents.

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It’s little wonder, then, that some parents, and even a few child therapists, have found themselves taking mental notes from a TV personality known for inspiring discipline, order and devotion: Cesar Millan, otherwise known as the Dog Whisperer.

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The suggestion that the Dog Whisperer is also a Child Whisperer of sorts has popped up in parents’ forums such as blogs and online discussion boards.  “When we started watching his shows, we had intended to apply his advice toward our dogs,” said Amy Twomey, a blogger on parenthood for The Dallas Morning News who is raising three children younger than 10 with her husband, Matt. “But we realized that a lot of ideas can be used on our kids.”

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Credentialed experts on human parenthood long ago stumbled on Millan’s philosophical holy trinity: Exercise, discipline and affection equal happiness. Millan doesn’t hold himself up as a new Dr. Spock — he has never opined on how one should raise a creature with two legs — but some parents say they find inspiration, and even practical advice, in his trademark “calm-assertive energy” approach.

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Jenny Hope, a TV producer in Los Angeles, applies Dog Whisperer lessons not just to the family dog, Heidi, but also to her son, Rowan, 3.    “Children love structure, the same as animals love structure,” Hope said.

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Millan says parents question him all the time.    “I’m going to give them my point of view — I’m a father myself,” he said.

Vitamin D deficiency linked directly to heart disease

By Guy Montague-Jones, 20-Nov-2009

Related topics: Research, Vitamins & premixes, Cardiovascular health

Researchers from Utah presented fresh evidence this week linking vitamin D deficiency to heart disease at the American Heart Association’s (AHA) Scientific Conference in Orlando, Florida.

There appears to be no end to this dichotomy of scaring our people to death with all this hype of how dangerous the H1N1 Flu is, while a great many of our intelligent, trained, credentialed medical people not only here, but around the world are saying just the opposite. What is one to believe?  I side with all those medically educated  individuals who know enough about this problem and the products and testing or lack thereof, to have arrived at choices which prevent them from any personal participation for themselves or their families.

Science is science.  Tests have results which lead to evidence.  I try to avoid “hype” – heaven knows we are given far too much of it!  Tho I have posted on this subject very much, it is in the interest of informing people in order to make more informed choices which “protect” their families.  This is after all, what we are all after.   Where does this confusion come from?     More importantly   – WHY?  Whose interests are driving this – dare I say   (?) – - coverup?  What is going on?

CDC: Data show that H1N1 vaccine is safe

By Mike Stobbe
ASSOCIATED PRESS

ATLANTA — There’s no evidence that the H1N1 vaccine is causing serious side effects, U.S. health officials said yesterday, in their first report on the safety of the new vaccine.
Since vaccinations began in early October, the government has been tracking the safety of the swine-flu vaccine. By mid-November, about 22 million Americans had gotten the vaccine, and there were about 3,200 reports of possible side effects, mostly for minor problems such as soreness or swelling from the shot.
Health officials didn’t expect to see serious problems: The H1N1 vaccine is basically the same as the regular winter-flu vaccine. And there were no signs of trouble in the tests conducted in the thousands to find the right dose.
Still, it is “very reassuring” to see that confirmed in the first report, said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The vaccine data so far really suggests this is a safe vaccine.”
The information comes from a voluntary reporting system that patients and doctors can use if they think something went wrong after a vaccination. Of the H1N1 reports, 177 were considered serious, including 11 deaths.
There’s no evidence that those deaths were because of the vaccine, and there was no common underlying medical condition seen in those fatalities, CDC officials said.
Since it was first identified in April, swine flu has sickened an estimated 22 million Americans, hospitalized about 98,000 and killed 4,000. It has proved to be similar to seasonal flu but a bigger threat to children and young adults.
Health officials are increasingly worried about severe cases of bacterial pneumonia seen in nonelderly adults this fall. H1N1 and bacteria can act as a dangerous one-two punch.

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LOVING EACH DAY
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Everything that exists is part of God. Everything has life and movement. In some parts of God there is more realization of that Godself than in other parts. A cat has more awareness than a rock; a man, more than a cat. But when perceived through advanced scientific instruments, even those things that appear to be inanimate are seen to be made up of particles in motion.

Sometimes a “sense” that you cannot readily perceive with the physical senses, you label as “no sense” or nonsense. And you dismiss it as not worth paying attention to. Much of your responsibility on this physical planet is to listen to what is being said to you, pay attention to who says it, and then work the information you have been given. If it works for you, use it. Make it part of your approach to life. If it doesn’t work for you, let it go, or put it aside until later when it might be more useable to you. When you hear something that appears to you to be nonsense, you don’t have to label it nonsense or bad or evil or anything like that. You simply see that it isn’t relevant to your position at this time. And you keep yourself open to the possibility that the person who gave you that information might be seeing life from a perspective very different from yours. It doesn’t have to be categorized as normal or abnormal, average or strange or anything else.

- John-Roger
(From: The Way Out Book, p. 125-126)

Received this lovely video today and wanted to share with those of you who don’t already subscribe to Donna Gates Body Ecology’s newsletter.

Introduction to Body Ecology – New Video
Curious about the Body Ecology system of health and healing? Find out the 18 reasons Body Ecology is the best diet for your health goals, including how to get started. This is a must-see for anyone curious about the benefits of healthy eating. Give the gift of good health — share this video with your loved ones who want to learn how to create their best health.

Global Research, October 29, 2009

Obama Administration Launches Deceptive Swine Flu Propaganda Blitz

To Counter Growing Criticism from Scientific and Medical Community

President Obama and his top health officials are engaging in a major public relations effort to divert attention away from whether its swine flu vaccine is effective and safe – to whether there is enough of it to go around. And the media, as always, is cooperating fully. This echoes the way media debate was manipulated during the Vietnam and Iraq Wars. Instead of debating whether we should even be fighting those wars, the media debated only whether we were using the correct military strategy.

Increasing numbers of scientists and doctors are issuing harsh criticisms of the Government’s plan to vaccinate (forcibly if necessary) virtually the entire U.S. population with what they claim is a poorly tested vaccine that is not only ineffective against swine flu, but could cripple and even kill many more people than it helps.

The CDC’s public relations campaign has been running “scare” ads that portray swine flu as a full-blown “pandemic” responsible for snuffing out countless lives, and which, unless stopped by universal vaccination, could kill millions of American citizens. But scientists and health officials throughout the world have called the governments claims unjustified and deliberately misleading.

For example, Dr. Anthony Morris, a distinguished virologist and former Chief Vaccine Office at the U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA), states that “There is no evidence that any influenza vaccine thus far developed is effective in preventing or mitigating any attack of influenza” and that “The producers of these vaccines know they are worthless, but they go on selling them anyway.”

And in November 2007, the UK newspaper The Scotsman, made public warnings by the inventor of the “flu jab,” Dr. Graeme Laver. Dr. Laver was a major Australian scientist involved in the invention of a flu vaccine, in addition to playing a leading scientific role in the discovery of anti-flu drugs. He went on record as saying the vaccine he helped to create was ineffective and [that] natural infection with the flu was safer. “I have never been impressed with its efficacy,” said Dr. Laver.

We hear the assumption being made by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that the number of deaths from the H1N1 virus is at pandemic levels and now a “national emergency.” One would assume that with all of its resources, the New York Times’ October 26 front page story on the CDC’s statistics would be accurate: 20,000 hospitalizations and 1,000 deaths due to the swine flu. However, this is all fiction. And it is a fiction solely based upon the CDC’s own contradictory statements and actions.

Our independent investigations into the clinical trials and statistical studies of influenza vaccines reveal glaring discrepancies. Let us not forget that it is this same New York Times, with its “star” reporter Judith Miller, who led America into believing that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, tried to purchase yellow cake uranium from Niger, and had dealings with al-Qaeda. And let us also remember that it is the same CDC and health officials in Washington, including President Ford and his top health advisor F. David Matthews, who pushed through and propagandized an untested vaccine during the 1976 swine flu scare, which resulted in thousands of severely neurologically damaged Americans and about 500 reported deaths. Aside from permanent paralysis, many of these vaccine victims also underwent torturous processes for many years to get the government to recognize their illnesses and help cover their costs. Not only was the CDC’s prediction and vaccination campaign for the 1976 flu season a total disaster, it also turned into a deadly scandal, witnessed across the United States on 60 Minutes when Dr. David Sencer, then head of the CDC, confirmed that the vaccine was never field tested, that there were only several reported incidents of H1N1 infection and none of these had been officially confirmed, and then lied about the CDC having no prior evidence that the swine flu vaccine could cause severe and permanent neurological damage. The end result from the 1976 debacle cost the government $3.5 billion in damages, two-thirds were for severe neurological injury and death directly due to the CDC’s vaccination campaign.

Therefore, being anti-vaccine or pro-vaccine is not the most urgent issue. What is critical is whether or not there is legitimate, sound science to support either position; in this regard, the vaccine manufacturers and our federal health agencies have failed in the past, and continue to fail today. And they fail dismally. There is absolutely no evidence for sound-scientific protocol or anything resembling a gold-standard behind the swine flu infection statistics and vaccine efficacy and safety clinical trials to support Obama’s and his health advisors’ claims. Instead, the reports on hospitalizations and deaths due to the H1N1 virus are grossly distorted. What we are really witnessing is “official” science and statistics that are little more than propaganda.

One unfortunate development over the years is the notion that there is such a thing as a “flu season.” The truth is that we move annually into periods where there are dramatic increases in flu-like causing pathogens, however, the majority of these are unrelated to any strain of influenza virus. There can between 150 and 200 different infectious pathogens—adenovirus, rhinovirus, parainfluenza, the very common coronavirus and, of course, pneumonia—that produce flu-like symptoms, and worse, during a “flu season.” For example, how many people have heard of bocavirus, which is responsible for bronchitis and pneumonia in young children, or metapneumovirus, responsible for more than 5 percent of all flu-related illnesses? This is true during every flu season and this year is no different. Furthermore, all flu vaccinations, including the swine flu, are useless for protecting people from these many prevalent infectious organisms.

If we take the combined figure of flu and pneumonia deaths for the period of 2001, and add a bit of spin to the figures, we are left believing that 62,034 people died from influenza. The actual figures determined by Peter Doshi, then at Harvard University, are 61,777 died from pneumonia and only 257 from flu. Even more amazing, among those 257 cases only 18 were confirmed positive for influenza. A separate study conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics for the flu periods between 1979 through 2002 revealed the true range of flu deaths were between 257 and 3006, for an average of 1,348 per year.

The recent CBS Investigative Report, published on October 21, is one example. After the CDC refused to honor CBS’s Freedom of Information request to receive flu infection data for each individual state, the network performed independent outreach to all fifty states to get their statistics. Their report contradicts dramatically the CDC’s public relations blitz. For example, in California, among the approximate 13,000 flu-like cases, 86 percent tested negative for any flu strain. In Florida, out of 8,853 cases, 83 percent were negative. In Georgia and Alaska, only 2.4 percent and 1 percent respectively tested positive for flu virus among all reported flu-like cases. If the infectious-rate ratios obtained by CBS are accurate, the CDC’s figures are significantly reduced and agree with earlier predictions that the H1N1 virus will be simply an unwelcomed annoyance. So we are in the midst of an enormous medical hoax, a design and purpose that has yet to unfold completely, that will nevertheless reap huge revenues for the vaccine industrial complex.

Another example is a recent alarmist report issuing from Georgetown University, also usurped by federal health officials and their multimedia comrades to fuel a campaign of fear and panic. The report announced that over 250 students were infected by swine flu when in fact none of these students were tested for H1N1 infection. The university’s figure was based solely on a count of student visits to the health clinic and calls into an H1N1 hotline.

This is not the first time the CDC’s predictions for influenza strains have been overstated and miscalculated. In an interview on Swedish television, Dr. Tom Jefferson, head of vaccine studies at the prestigious international Cochrane Database Collaboration, after reviewing hundreds of influenza studies and statistical analyses, has said the WHO’s and CDC’s “performance is not very good.” And in an ITN News interview last month, Jefferson called the swine flu pandemic a “juggernaut they [the WHO, government agencies and vaccine makers] created.” For the 1992-1993 season, the prediction was off by 84 percent. For the 1994-1995 season, it was off 43 percent for the primary strain and off 87 percent and 76 percent for two other strains. The Laboratory Center for Disease Control’s study comparing vaccine strains with the strains appearing during the 1997-1998 season found the match was off by 84 percent. Again Dr. Jefferson in a Der Spiegel interview remarked,

“there are some people who make predictions year after year, and they get worse and worse. None of them so far have come about, and these people are still there making these predictions. For example, what happened with the bird flu, which was supposed to kill us all?… Swine flu could have even stayed unnoticed if it had been caused by some unknown virus rather than an influenza virus… An influenza vaccine is not working for the majority of influenza-like illnesses because it is only designed to combat influenza viruses. For that reason, the vaccine changes nothing when it comes to the heightened mortality rate during the winter months.”

Our review of all clinical trial studies conducted by the H1N1 vaccine makers for pre-licensing in the American market—CSL, Novartis, Sanofi-Pasteur, Medimmune and now GlaxoSmithKline—reveals they were poorly designed and feebly executed. Any professor in molecular biology or virology would fail a graduate student who presented a paper relying on research conducted in the manner of the studies the vaccine corporations submit to the FDA. Nevertheless, it is this lack of sound randomized, double-blind controlled placebo studies, particularly for inactivated virus vaccines, that our government is declaring definitive and is using to justify mass vaccination of our population.

Last week, Switzerland’s health authorities rejected Novartis’ new swine flu vaccine, Celtura, being targeted for women and children, because the company’s studies were insufficient to guarantee its safety. In addition, the new Novartis vaccine, which uses a cell base from dogs, was found to be contaminated with canine-specific bacteria. The Swiss newspaper, Tagesanzeiger, also noted there remains some suspicion that Novartis’ new vaccine may be a repackaging of an earlier 2008 vaccine responsible for killing almost two dozen homeless people during an illegal clinical trial in Poland. This is the same Novartis whose Fluvirin H1N1 vaccine being distributed in the US relied only on a hasty clinical efficacy and safety trial enrolling only a small number of healthy adults. Novartis likely remains unperturbed. The Swiss pharmaceutical giant has reported a $6.1 billion profit so far this year and expects to boost sales for the final quarter with its swine flu vaccine.

In July, the CDC announced it would cease testing and counting H1N1 virus infections. Their public reason was simply that they are convinced there is a pandemic and, therefore, accurate monitoring was unnecessary. On August 30, the CDC declared the states should report influenza and pneumonia-associated hospitalizations and deaths together, not singling out actual cases of H1N1 infection if there happen to be any actually confirmed from a laboratory. This has always been the CDC’s policy, and the 36,000 figure of annual flu deaths repeated ad nausea on their website and spewed from the media’s health pulpits for several years straight, does not distinguish between pneumonia, influenza and other flu-like pathogenic deaths. Perhaps it would make very little difference because the current rapid diagnostic tests for the H1N1 virus can range in only 10-50 percent accuracy.

Elsewhere in the world, particularly in Europe, civilians are increasingly rejecting the H1N1 vaccine. Recent polls in Germany and Austria show only 13 and 18 percent respectively willing to take the shot. In Sweden, four vaccine related deaths have been announced and almost 200 healthcare workers have reported becoming more seriously ill from the vaccination than they might have from a flu infection. In the US, anywhere from 90-99 percent of adverse events go unreported.

If people would simply shut off the CDC’s supported propaganda noise being blasted across the airwaves and newspapers— the spectacle of newscasters being inoculated, interviews with government health officials or private doctors and academics receiving consultation fees from drug makers, and the drivel of the New York Times—and simply do their homework, Americans would wake up and realize the hoax behind the swine flu pandemic. All of the information is before us. Nothing is hidden. All the contradictions and hypocrisies are contained within the massive vaccine industrial complex—including the government health agencies and professional medical associations. The lie is too large for them to not expose themselves if we simply look.

Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on nutrition and natural health and a multi-award-winning director of progressive documentary films, including Vaccine Nation and Autism: Made in the USA. Dr. Null is also the plaintiff on a law suit against the FDA to prevent the launch of the swine flu vaccine until safety studies have been thoroughly conducted.

TOUGH BILL TO SWALLOW

ER charges $29,000 for 5 minutes; patient dies

By Bobby Caina Calvan | MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — For five desperate minutes, emergency-room doctors at the University of California Davis Medical Center frantically tried to revive Scott Hawkins, victim of a heinous beating.  In those five minutes, the 23-year-old California State University, Sacramento, student was hooked up to life-support monitors, air pumped into his weakened lungs as he bled on a gurney.  Hospital officials said Hawkins was given the highest level of emergency care, with a phalanx of surgeons, specialists and nurses at the ready. His parents called the effort “heroic.”  Five minutes later, doctors pronounced him dead. Few question the extent to which doctors tried to save the student’s life on Oct. 21, but the amount billed for his emergency care has provoked outrage — a further example, critics said, of what is wrong in a health-care system that is roundly maligned for its escalating costs. The charge for those five minutes: $29,186.50 — including a single-ticket item for $18,900.50, described on the itemized bill as “Trauma Rescue Service.”

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What’s more, the Hawkins case might be a dramatic and brutal example of the wide disparities in the sticker price for medical care provided to those with insurance and those without it. With millions of Americans unemployed and increasingly uninsured, emergency rooms have become part of the focus of the high cost of medicine in this country.  “Part of the outrage is that those with the least are charged the most,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a consumer advocacy group.

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One of Hawkins’ college roommates, Quran Mahammed Jones, 20, has been charged with murder in the baseball-bat attack, as well as with assault for allegedly lunging at campus police with a knife. The police repeatedly shot Jones, who is recovering.
The bill sent to Hawkins’ family was an undiscounted “rack rate” that hospitals charge the uninsured — patients who do not benefit from the deep discounts negotiated by an insurance company.   Hawkins was mistakenly classified by the hospital as medically indigent. Had the hospital realized that he was insured, the bill would have been sent to his insurer, Kaiser Permanente, which would undoubtedly have paid thousands of dollars less.   A Kaiser spokeswoman said she could not discuss the Hawkins case because of privacy reasons.   However, an agreement is in place between Kaiser and UC Davis, including provisions for compensation for care.

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“If you’re covered by an insurer, the contract is intensely negotiated between the insurer and the hospital,” said Maribeth Shannon, director of the California Health-Care Foundation’s market and policy monitor program.   Wright of Health Access said uninsured patients who use emergency rooms are often billed at “an inflated price — three or four times what insured people pay.”   UC Davis officials declined to discuss their billing practices, or how negotiations with insurance companies are conducted.   But Dr. Lynette Scherer, a general surgeon and chief of trauma at UC Davis Medical Center, said the public simply doesn’t understand how expensive it is to run a sophisticated emergency room and trauma center like the one at UC Davis.   “If he survived, we wouldn’t be even talking about the cost. We’d be saying: ‘That was money wellspent,’ ” Scherer said.    “The unfortunate thing, obviously, was that the outcome in this case was horrible,” she said.   “I think people are just uneducated about the cost. … If people actually knew what they were getting — yes, the cost is high, but it’s your only opportunity to save a life,” she said.

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Not only are emergency rooms available at all hours of the day, they are staffed by some of the most highly trained — and highly paid — personnel, including surgeons, trauma specialists, registered nurses and others trained specifically for emergency medicine.   “It’s an extraordinary amount of resources at the ready for this patient who we haven’t met yet,” Scherer said.    Emergency crews at the hospital did everything they could to save Hawkins, Scherer said. He was not dead on arrival.    “When he arrived here, he met our criteria that he might still have a chance of surviving,” she said. “We never want to stop short with a patient with a chance of surviving.”

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The federal Department of Health and Human Services estimates that the uninsured accounted for one in five emergency room visits in 2006.   Federal law prohibits hospitals from refusing emergency care to those who need it, regardless of their ability to pay.   “The expectation is that there should be an emergency department that’s open nearby, open 24 hours a day seven days a week,” said Elena Lopez-Gusman of the California chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
“We want it all; we want it now,” she said. “And we don’t want to pay for it.”

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A groundbreaking “fair pricing” law that California enacted three years ago limits how much hospitals can collect from low- and moderate-income consumers who are uninsured or underinsured.   Still, bills can pile up quickly.    “A person without insurance must be wealthy, or so poor as to be not worth pursuing by bill collectors,” said Patrick Johnson, chief executive officer of the California Association of Health Plans.

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The U.S. House of Representatives voted 220-215 last weekend to pass health-care legislation intended to bring relief to the 46 million Americans who lack health insurance. The measure must be reconciled with the Senate’s version.
There is little debate that the uninsured pose burdens to the country’s health-care system. The legislation being considered in Congress would require nearly all Americans to carry health insurance, with the poor getting government subsidies to pay for coverage.
The uninsured are at a disadvantage because they lack the bargaining power of insurance companies, Shannon said, but consumers should nevertheless try to negotiate their bills with doctors and hospitals. “Often hospitals are willing to negotiate the amount with families,” she said. “There’s always room for negotiation.”

DISPATCH PHOTO ILLUSTRATION; IMAGES FROM THE SACRAMENTO BEE, ISTOCKPHOTO.COM

Scott Hawkins

RENEE C. BYER SACRAMENTO BEE
Gerald Hawkins comforts his wife, Elizabeth, in t

Building a Better  Bee

The steps that Ohio beekeepers are using to create honey bees that are better suited to cold winters.

SHARI LEWIS DISPATCH PHOTOS
This queen bee will be used in producing more queens — if she survives the winter. Dana Stahlman of Blacklick is the beekeeper.

Queen bee| Apis mellifera actual size (up to 20mm long)

ROYAL RESEARCH

Beekeepers hope to create ‘Ohio queen’ that can withstand harsh winters

By Spencer Hunt | THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Every fall, Barry Conrad crosses his fingers and hopes that most of the bees in his 50 hives will survive the coming winter.
Cold weather is a huge threat to bees, which also are plagued by parasites, pesticides, hive-invading predators and a mysterious disease called colony collapse disorder.   Although they spend the summer and fall building stores of honey to last the winter, a cold snap will force them to huddle in one spot in a hive to stay warm. If temperatures stay well below freezing for days, they can starve, although inches away from food.

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“It used to be that you would expect a 10 percent loss,” said Conrad, of Canal Winchester. “Now it’s more like 30 percent, or more.” One reason might be that most of Ohio’s queen bees are imports that were raised in southern states, said Jim Tew, an Ohio State University beekeeping specialist.   “Bees in Georgia … are submitted to a totally different environmental stress,” Tew said. “Bees need to be better suited to our calendar.”

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The winter of 2006-07 hit Ohio bees particularly hard; an estimated 72 percent of the state’s registered hives — about 1 billion bees — were lost.   Frustrated by this annual threat, the Ohio State Beekeepers Association set out in 2006 to breed a bee that can withstand the cold.   “Survivability is at the top of our list,” said Joe Latshaw, a New Albany beekeeper and geneticist who is leading the project.
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Bee breeders follow a strategy farmers have used for centuries to create better cows, chickens and horses. The approach is simple: Mate for specific traits. To build a better bee, keepers must improve upon a hive’s central and most important member, its queen. The queen carries the genetic code of her hive in the eggs she lays to create workers, drones and new queens. Her DNA also defines her bees’ ability to fend off diseases and parasites and determines how aggressive they are with their human handlers.

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Dana Stahlman, a Blacklick beekeeper and queen breeder, said the association wants a coldweather queen that will produce docile, disease-resistant bees that fill their hives with honey. And they also should be able to survive without the aid of chemicals.   More than just honey rides on this experiment. Bees pollinate more than 70 Ohio crops, including apples, peaches, strawberries and pumpkins.

Beekeepers and state officials are expecting heavy winter losses again this year. That’s because cool, wet conditions in July and August kept bees in their hives. That means many hives might not have enough food to survive the winter.
“A lot of the bees in Ohio stopped making honey from July on,” said Barbara Bloetscher, the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s apiary program director.

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Creating a better queen isn’t simple. In nature, a queen mates early in her life, and the deed occurs in flight and with as many as 40 drones. Beekeepers involved in the project are picking drones for specific traits, artificially inseminating the queens and then tricking the hives into raising new queens from the offspring.    The project draws on bees selected from hives across Ohio. Volunteer beekeepers ship them to Latshaw, who artificially inseminates the queens.    Once the queens are returned, the hives are monitored to see if they survive the winter. In the spring, beekeepers select the hives that performed best and raise a new generation of queens for further breeding.   It’s a process that will take a couple more years before the association declares it has a “certified” Ohio queen. Stahlman said about 300 queens have been created so far.

There are pitfalls.
Experts say breeding bees selected for cold-weather survival can create aggressive offspring or bees with weaker immune systems.   “It’s like a big balloon and you’re trying to keep it a certain shape,” said Susan Cobey, a bee breeder and geneticist who manages the honey bee research facility at the University of California at Davis.    “You put pressure on one end, and things pop out on the other.”    Once Latshaw and Stahlman find their queen, the Ohio Department of Agriculture will have to inspect the breed and certify it as healthy before it can be sold. Queen bees typically go for $20 to $25 apiece, Stahlman said.
Even then, genetic breeding will have to continue to keep a steady supply of Ohio queens.
“You can’t let your guard down, because it goes back to mediocrity really fast,” Cobey said.
shunt@dispatch.com

Stahlman is working on creating a breed of bee that is more likely to survive Ohio’s winters.

Building a better bee

1.Identify strong Hives.  Keepers select bees that survive the winter; keep hives healthy and free of parasites by quickly identifying and rejecting diseased bees and larvae;  are docile around human handlers;  and produce enough honey for the hives  and for sales.

 

2. Breed Multiple Queens.  Beekeepers take 4-day-old worker larvae from selected hives and put them in special cups that resemble queen bee larvae cells.                                                          As many as 30 artificial cells are inserted in a host hive.  The larger cells trick bees into feeding the larvae royal jelly,  the special food that turns a worker into a queen.  This process lasts 12 days.

3. Collect Drones.  Beekeepers identify and collect males from docile, clean and honey-production hives that survived an Ohio winter.

4. Artificial Insemination.  Newly emerged virgin queens and drones are shipped for artificial Insemination.  The queens are inseminated with semen taken from drones from different hives and then shipped back to bee keepers.