Tami Flu

The North Korean news service has been featured here before, but it appears that the North Korean state are beyond parody now. It would be funny, if it wasn’t indicative of the most repressive and heartless regime that currently exists on earth.

The invincibility of Songun Korea ushering in the most brilliant era of prosperity in the nation’s history spanning 5,000 years, standing all tests of history under the guidance of Kim Jong Il is based on the strong mental power of its people, says Rodong Sinmun Monday in a signed article.

The Korean people are proud to have the strong mental power peculiar to them.

It is the important characteristics of the mental power of the Korean people that it has a tremendous potential and persevering might as it is given fuller play in face of manifold difficulties and trials and that it has been steadily displayed and carried forward generation after generation in the whole course of the revolution.

The Korean people’s strong mental power is based on the great revolutionary idea.

The Juche idea serves as ideological pabulum as it makes the people strongest in faith and will in the world.

The Korean people’s mental power is inexhaustible as it was created and proved in the arduous yet worthwhile revolutionary practices.

It is thanks to the peculiar nature of the Korean revolution that a great number of people with strong mental power have been produced in the revolutionary practice.

The Korean revolution is a Songun revolutionary cause that has advanced with the philosophy on army as guidelines since its start. The Songun revolution is a gigantic one unprecedented in its fierce and arduous nature and a great one as it helps train people into revolutionaries who prize arms with do-or-die spirit and indomitable fighting spirit.

The revolutionary soldier spirit created under the great banner of Songun is the most vivid expression of the Korean people’s strong mental power.

The Korean people have carried on the revolution, forming a harmonious whole with the illustrious leaders. This has been a decisive factor that enabled them to emerge a people with the strongest mental power, concludes the article.

R U N2 TMing?

If not, you are probably having trouble deciphering the previous line, which in English means, "Are you into text messaging?"

Text messaging is something often identified with teenagers incessantly punching gibberish into their cell phones. But many doctors have found texting to be an EZ (easy) way to SIT (stay in touch) with family and friends throughout the day when they are too busy to call or send an e-mail. More than that, those doctors are using it as a way to communicate with colleagues on the fly, or to communicate with patients.

And as more medical students -- who are as familiar with texting as they are with using the telephone (assuming they haven't given up the old land-line phone already) -- enter the field, text messaging is expected to become increasingly common among doctors.

With the cell phone's popularity, text messaging services can provide a convenient way for you to remind patients of appointments or send them a birthday wish. Automated systems exist, so that you don't have to remember every patients' birthday -- you can impress them not only by your apparent memory but also by your tech savviness.

But some suggest that texting has its limits for doctors because of an acronym EVRY1 (everyone) is familiar with: HIPAA. While advocates of texting say it's more private than actually talking into a cell phone, others say the tool is best used to facilitate the quick scheduling of a meeting or phone call, rather than for detailed, substantive patient issues. A quick phone consult, for example, could be arranged as fast as you can type PCM (please call me) on your keypad and hit send.

[...]

At a January meeting between Aetna representatives and one of Atlanta's largest gastroenterology groups, about 50 doctors handed over letters of resignation, threatening to pull out of the insurers' network.

They were protesting a change in Aetna's policy regarding anesthetizing patients undergoing colonoscopies, said Steven J. Morris, MD, managing partner of Atlanta Gastroenterology Associates.

As of April 1, Aetna is ending coverage of anesthesiologist-supervised sedation in endoscopy procedures.

Physicians, including Dr. Morris, are appealing to Aetna to rethink their decision. Opponents say the move will discourage people afraid of the procedures from being screened for colon cancer. And for some, the very idea of Aetna declaring anything medically unnecessary is an affront.

"We have an insurance company telling us to change the standard of care," Dr. Morris said. "This is a ridiculous situation."

Aetna is not alone in changing policy. Humana made a similar change last year. WellPoint did the same in June 2006, though spokesman Jim Gavin said, "Our clinical guidelines can be implemented across the country at the option of our health plans," so the rule isn't enforced everywhere.

For decades, physicians have used a combination of a narcotic and a benzodiazepine, which can put a patient in a conscious sedation. Doctors differ in their opinions of that method.

"These drugs have inconsistent and unpredictable effects," said Steven J. Stryker, MD, a surgical oncologist and professor of clinical surgery at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

[...]

Michael Fitzpatrick puts forward the case that the medical establishment failed to create a conspiracy over MMR vaccine, when one should perhaps have existed:

Dr Wakefield and his supporters have often claimed that he is a victim of a conspiracy uniting the medical establishment, Big Pharma (the vaccine manufacturers) and the government. An irony that emerges from Dr Boyce’s study is that if there was any conspiracy over MMR, it was on the side of the anti-MMR campaign. Dr Wakefield collaborated with lawyers and parent campaigners, cultivated contacts with compliant (and scientifically naive) journalists and was advised by a leading PR firm. Meanwhile supporters of MMR, fragmented and lacking any coherent media strategy, were always in the position of reacting to the latest initiative from the Wakefield campaign. Medical authorities were inclined to leave matters to the Department of Health, but, put on the defensive in face of mounting public distrust and wary of further encouraging parental anxieties over MMR, government officials were inclined to keep a low profile.

The Royal College of General Practitioners had one official spokesman on immunisation matters, but also offered to put journalists in touch with the handful of anti-MMR GPs who were profitably engaged in selling single vaccines. It also advised journalists to contact their own GPs for information about MMR. This desultory response to a major threat to the child immunisation programme – one of the great achievements of public health and primary care in postwar Britain – was typical of the medical establishment.

The BBC’s iplayer will have Primo, a film about Primo Levi, online for the next six days.

Click here to watch it.

You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud
Who does not know peace
Who fights for a scrap of bread
Who dies because of a yes or no.
Consider if this is a woman,
Without hair and without name
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter.
Meditate that this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts
At home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children,
Or may your house fall apart,
May illness impede you,
May your children turn their faces from you.

Primo Levi, If this is a man.

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day.