Blue Crab Boulevard

ABC News reports on another old childhood scourge that is rising again in the United States. A disease that should have been eliminated is back, just in time for summer camp season. Measles is back with a vengeance.

After someone with measles coughs or sneezes, the virus lingers for up to two hours after that person walks away.

"The thing about measles is that it's extremely contagious," said Anne Schuchat, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. "Somebody could get measles without ever having been in the office at the same time as the first child."

The CDC Thursday announced a series of measles outbreaks between January and April 25 that resulted in 64 measles cases in the United States — the highest number reported in the same time period since 2001. Officials blame a spike in the number of travelers bringing measles in from Israel and Europe. Once in the United States, measles has been able to take hold because more and more people are choosing not to get vaccinated, Schuchat said.

Eleven of the U.S. residents who contracted measles were between the ages of 5 and 19 years old.

"My suggestion would be that summer camps oblige all foreign students to be immunized," said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University's School of Medicine in Tennessee.

Several outbreaks of mumps have occurred in the past few years as well. This is a direct result of people refusing to have their children immunized. Measles is not a trivial disease. It is estimated that some 200 million people have died in the past 150 years as a result of complications from the disease. (It should be pointed out that the death rate in developed countries is low, however.) But complications are most common - and much worse - among adults who catch the disease.

By failing to vaccinate your children or yourself, you are endangering other people.

A young man severely injured in an all terrain vehicle accident was declared brain dead and was being prepped for the removal of his organs. His family gathered at his bedside to pay their last respects. Then Zach Dunlap moved one of his feet and a hand.

Dunlap was pronounced dead Nov. 19 at United Regional Healthcare System in Wichita Falls, Texas, after he was injured in an all-terrain vehicle accident. His family approved having his organs harvested.

As family members were paying their last respects, he moved his foot and hand. He reacted to a pocketknife scraped across his foot and to pressure applied under a fingernail. After 48 days in the hospital, he was allowed to return home, where he continues to work on his recovery.

On Monday, he and his family were in New York, appearing on NBC's "Today."

"I feel pretty good. but it's just hard … just ain't got the patience," Dunlap told NBC.

Frighteningly, Dunlap says he remembers the doctors pronouncing him dead. Dunlap's father says he was shown the brain scan and there was no sign of activity. Obviously, something is wrong with the medical models of what constitutes brain death. As is usually the case, we actually know a good deal less than the experts declare about a very complex subject.

There's road rage, there are people who talk loudly on their cell phones, there the people who scream at airline ticket agents because their flight is delayed by bad weather. All signs of a serious and growing problem . Narcissism is on the rise - and it is making people miserable.

Broad pronouncement of the week: We are entitled brats.

For immediate proof, turn on the television. Locate a reality show on Bravo or MTV. The "Real Housewives of Orange County" and their real children are halfway through a marathon of placating and whining. "The Hills" and "Newport Harbor" are stocked with people who expect to be treated with a disproportionate amount of respect, lest they erupt in a raging meltdown.

We watch these shows in horror, with a judgmental eye on their cast members, but how different are we from them? In real life, we want what we want and we want it now. No delay. No aggravation. No hassle, pain-free, our way, right away. We're a highly technical society in a land of plenty. We place a premium on efficiency and convenience. Tiny annoyances and inconveniences foul our moods and affect our behaviors. Why? And how can we get past these trivialities?

Consider this paradox: Things are becoming more instantaneous in an era when delays are rampant and increasing. There are faster flights and cars but more people in airplanes and on the roads.

What has happened, even though companies are improving service, is that "customer expectations are continuing to rise," says Roger Nunley, managing director of the Customer Care Institute in Atlanta. This can be attributed to "consumers doing business online, where they get instant gratification and quick turnarounds. That's quickly becoming the standard expectation." 

It's actually worth reading the entire piece. There has been a fair amount of research into this sort of thing - and it really is getting worse. People are becoming absolutely miserable as a result. There are actually a few tips given toward the end of the article that are rather interesting. This one should make you think:

It comes down to perspective and expectations. Do you want empty highways, no lines, a promotion and limousine conveyance to your birthday party? Fine. But don't expect them. Focus on your reliable car, your good health, your job stability or the fact that you're in a position to celebrate a birthday at all.

"When you're feeling this sense of deprivation or entitlement, try to take the longer view," McCullough urges. "Ask yourself, 'Is it really true — empirically true — that you are entitled to something?' In most cases, people say no."

Try to stop feeding your inner brat for a while. You'll find yourself happier.  

I first caught wind of this story in the British press. Now it has hit ABC News. A California doctor faces charges of hastening the death of a disabled man in order to take the man's organs for transplant. Medical experts are frantic, worried that this will make even more people reluctant to become organ donors.

A court case in which a doctor has been charged with hastening a disabled patient's death, in order to harvest his kidneys and liver, has sparked concern among ethicists and organ transplant experts alike.

According to a report in the New York Times, preliminary hearings began Wednesday for Dr. Hootan C. Roozrokh. The California doctor faces three felony counts, including the charge that he prescribed excessive and improper doses of drugs to 25-year-old Ruben Navarro in 2006. Navarro suffered from a rare metabolic disorder that had left him disabled and brain damaged.

Prosecutors allege that Roozrokh prescribed additional doses of sedative drugs in order to hasten Navarro's death and harvest his organs sooner. However, when Navarro died on Feb. 4 at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center, about 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles, his organs had already deteriorated to the point that they could not be used.

Roozrokh has pleaded not guilty to the charges. If he is convicted on all counts, he could face up to eight years in prison. 

Here's a report from the Telegraph that describes the doctor's alleged actions:

Roozrokh arrived at the hospital as part of a transplant team. He stayed in the room while Mr Navarro's respirator was removed and ordered the drugs, according to a nurse who was present.

The nurse also told police that Roozrokh asked another nurse to find and administer more "candy" - drugs - when Navarro did not die immediately. According to protocol, transplant teams are not allowed into a prospective donor's room before they are declared dead.

The case comes amid debate in Britain over allowing a system of presumed consent, where patients would be required to opt out of organ donation. Civil liberty groups have expressed concerns that presumed consent might rob individuals of the right to decide the fate of their body.

The case will make some people more reluctant to be donors, of course. The experts are worried for good reason. There should have been better controls in place - obviously, Roozrokh should never have been in that room, much less issuing orders to nurses.

This is flat out amazing. An Irishman blinded in an accident in 2005 has had a portion of his sight restored when doctors installed - believe it or not - part of his son's tooth into one damaged eye. No, I am not making this up.

Bob McNichol, 57, from County Mayo in the west of the country, lost his sight in a freak accident when red-hot liquid aluminium exploded at a re-cycling business in November 2005.

"I thought that I was going to be blind for the rest of my life," McNichol told RTE state radio.

After doctors in Ireland said there was nothing more they could do, McNichol heard about a miracle operation called Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis (OOKP) being performed by Dr Christopher Liu at the Sussex Eye Hospital in Brighton in England.

The technique, pioneered in Italy in the 1960s, involves creating a support for an artificial cornea from the patient's own tooth and the surrounding bone.

The procedure used on McNichol involved his son Robert, 23, donating a tooth, its root and part of the jaw.

McNichol's right eye socket was rebuilt, part of the tooth inserted and a lens inserted in a hole drilled in the tooth.

The treatment has restored enough of McNichol's vision for him to be able to get around and to watch television. There have not been very many of these operations and the treatment is considered experimental. I had never even heard of this before reading this article.

It will be interesting if the study is replicated and the same result shows up, but this is almost to funny for words. Doctors have been warning about high cholesterol levels for years now and recommending ever more stringent treatments to get that serum level down. Right? Sounds all healthy, except for one teeny thing:

Low cholesterol levels appear to be linked to a much higher risk of stomach cancer.

Some studies have linked low cholesterol levels to higher death rates from cancer in general, Dr. Kouichi Asano, of Kyushu University, Fukuoka, and colleagues explain in the International Journal of Cancer. "With respect to gastric cancer, a limited number of studies suggest this inverse association, while others do not."

The researcher looked into this in a study involving some 2,600 residents of Hisayama, Japan, who were followed for 14 years.

Gastric cancers developed in 97 subjects. After accounting for age and gender, stomach cancer rates rose significantly with descending cholesterol level. For example, among subjects with the highest cholesterol levels, the gastric cancer rate was the equivalent of 2.1 cases per 1000 persons per year; among those with the lowest cholesterol, the rate was 3.9 per 1000 person-years.

Yes, I know that, in general, the other diseases caused by or exacerbated by high cholesterol are likely more statistically dangerous. But results like this show that things are always more complicated than the popular, "consensus" opinions would have you believe. Remember, doctors prescribed milk for ulcers for years - probably one of the worst things you can give an ulcer patient.

Canadians are waiting from six to twelve months to get an MRI in Saskatchewan, so a local Indian tribe wants to open a clinic with an MRI machine. This will give a much needed boost to local medical access and provide high-paying technical jobs to tribal members. Obviously a win-win, right? Not for the dedicated Canadian statists, it isn't. They want the state to have exclusive control of the health care monopoly at all costs - even if it costs people's lives.

This week, the Kawacatoose First Nation, which has an urban reserve on Regina's eastern outskirts, announced it wanted to build a health centre there with its own money. Among other things, the band wants to buy a state-of-the-art MRI machine and perform diagnostic tests on Saskatchewanians — aboriginal and non-aboriginal– who currently face some of the longest waits for scans in the country.

This should be a win-win: Aboriginals show entrepreneurial initiative, without any financial obligation on the part of the federal or provincial government, and create well-paying high-tech jobs for natives who desperately need them, while at the same time easing the wait for MRI tests in Saskatchewan that can now run to six or even 12 months.

Each year, hundreds or even thousands of Saskatchewan residents — mostly middle-class — drive across the border into North Dakota and pay their own money for scans rather than wait for one at home. The Kawacatoose proposal would give them a much closer alternative.

So what was the reaction of the opposition NDP in Saskatchewan? Restrained contempt and veiled fear-mongering.

The restraint was a result only of the fact that this proposal was coming from aboriginals. Had a private, non-native company suggested the same thing, Saskatchewan's opposition socialists would have been screaming from the rooftops that greedy insurance companies and health profiteers are lurking under every hospital bed ready to prey on unsuspecting patients the moment they get the green light.

Still, despite their untypical decorum, it was easy to see the NDP's disdain.

Health critic Judy Junor said such private facilities threaten the public system, even if they do not offer fee-for-service scans, because they poach staff from public hospitals. "You can buy the machine," she sniffed, "that's the easy part. It's who's going to work it on a day-to-day basis."

There is a shortage of doctors, nurses, hospital beds and diagnostic equipment. All in the name of preserving the system. Canadians endure severe rationing of health care in order for the system to stay in place. And this is where  the American left want health care to go in this country.

The state above all. Still think socialized medicine is a great idea? 

Britain's National Health Service has a safe, effective treatment to save the vision of a person afflicted with macular degeneration. And, as one World War Two veteran found out, they will be happy to treat the condition.

After the victim loses the sight in one eye completely.

Doctors have launched an internet campaign to shame Gordon Brown over a war hero who has been told he will have to go blind in one eye before he will get NHS treatment.

More than 100 GPs have sent £5 cheques to Downing Street, made out to the Prime Minister, which they want to be put towards the cost of a cure for Second World War pilot Jack Tagg.

Mr Tagg, 88, suffers from "wet" macular degeneration, the main cause of sight loss in Britain, affecting a quarter of a million people. It can lead to blindness in as little as three months - but with prompt treatment it can be reversed.

Now he and his wife Gabrielle, 77, are selling their house to pay for an £11,000 course of injections.

Last week, Mr Tagg was told by a consultant at Torbay District General Hospital in Torquay that a course of injections of the Lucentis drug could save his sight.

But at £760 a shot, for a course of between three and 14 injections, he was told that under Government guidelines it was regarded as "too expensive" unless he was already blind in one eye.

Mr Tagg, who was a member of the RAF Balloon Command during the war and flew Wellington bombers, went for his first privately-funded injections on Friday.

He said: "I am selling up under protest. If I have to go for the full treatment it will end up costing me about &£11,000." 

An eye for a shot, so to speak. Tagg served Britain in her time of need but now must sacrifice an eye to the state as well in order to receive his "free" medical treatment. Still think socialized medicine is a good idea? What will you have to sacrifice for your "free" health care?

Here's a thought. Let the market decide on health care costs and value of services. Better yet - give consumers a way to compare prices and decide for themselves exactly what they need. Sound good? Meet Carol.

PLYMOUTH, Minn. - You can buy almost anything online these days, but try shopping the Internet for an MRI, strep throat test or even an annual physical exam and you'll run into roadblocks.
 
A new Twin Cities company called Carol is trying to change that with a Web site that gives consumers a "care marketplace" to search for medical services, compare quality and price and make appointments.

Carol joins an effort to transform the U.S. health care system by putting consumers in charge and letting the market do its work.

"We want to let consumers define value," said Tony Miller, Carol's founder and chief executive officer. "We don't have care competition in the marketplace today."

The free site, which went live in January, generates revenue from health care providers who become "tenants" on the site. When a consumer sets up an appointment with a clinic or doctor on Carol.com, the provider pays the site a fee.

While limited to about 30 providers in the Twin Cities area at its launch, the company is adding others and plans to serve a second U.S. market sometime this year, Miller said.

Now the usual statists are raising heck about this, complaining that this kind of market-driven approach shouldn't be allowed when they think the state should regulate.

But this exact, same approach is touted as good for consumers in auto insurance and just about any other product, commodity and service. See Amazon.com or Progressive Insurance for example.

Why would it not work for health care? Because the government isn't running it? Oh, please. Do you trust the government to make decisions for your health care? Really?

Here's Carol.com. Go see what they are doing. It's a good concept with real potential.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Arnold Schwarzenegger's California "Universal Health Care" initiative has died. They are not grieving over the corpse.

So much for that. The California legislature is probably the most liberal this side of Vermont, and even Democrats refused to become shock troops for this latest liberal experiment. Mr. Schwarzenegger and Democrats in the State Assembly did agree on a compromise plan in December. But on Monday, only a single member of the Senate Health Committee voted to report the bill to the full chamber — and thus it joined a graveyard full of state "universal" health-care failures.

Like collapses in Illinois, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, this one crumpled because of the costs, which are always much higher than anticipated. The truth teller was state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, who thought to ask about the price tag of a major new entitlement amid what's already a $14.5 billion budget shortfall.

An independent analysis confirmed the plan would be far more expensive than proponents admitted. Even under the most favorable assumptions, spending would outpace revenue by $354 million after two years, and likely $3.9 billion or more. "A situation that I thought was bad," Mr. Perata noted, "in fact was worse."

This reveals that liberal health-care politics is increasingly the art of the impossible: You can't make coverage "universal" while at the same time keeping costs in check — at least without prohibitive tax increases. Lowering cost and increasing access, in other words, are separate and irreconcilable issues.

That is the fact, of course. These schemes have always turned out to be vastly more expensive than originally planned. In the end, when the taxes cannot be raised any further, the inevitable result is rationing of the health care. That is precisely what is happening in Canada and Britain - and I'm quite sure in every other socialized medicine nation. The money has to come from somewhere or the services have to be limited.

The problem is that under socialized medicine, you don't get to choose. Someone else chooses for you.