For a long time now, men have been on the spot light on their sexual dysfunction. It is actually very easy to forget that women can also have a sexual dysfunction too and just like men they are looking for a solution to these dysfunction. A lot of things can cause a dysfunction in a woman. Studies have shown that the sexual dysfunction affect about 30 to 50 percent of couples. This is a very big number of people who are affected. This dysfunction occurs because a woman is tired or can not get an orgasm or they do not get aroused at all. Female Viagra used for treatment women sexual dysfunction.
There are some women who can barely get aroused at all and no matter how hard a man tries to get their body stimulated they fail miserably. This could be because the woman is anxious about something or they are thinking too hard. Studies have indicated that failure of some women to feel aroused occurs in about 15 percent of the women population. The man might be left thinking that the woman does not love him and his better off leaving her than hanging on to someone he can barely turn on. Leaving is not necessary though. What you need to do is for both of you to seek some sort of professional help. This is because what she has is a sexual dysfunction that can be taken care of and with time maybe corrected. Dont loose a great love by thinking she simply doesnt love you.
There are some women who do not get an orgasm during sexual intercourse. It has actually been observed that about 40 percent of the women cannot get an orgasm during sex but could get one if they stimulated themselves or the man did it for them after the act. So if you have never had an orgasm during sex do not be scared and think you are abnormal, there are other women just like you who have never had an orgasm during sex and its just a sexual dysfunction that can be fixed. There could be several things that the man could not have done that is making you not to have an organism. This includes not providing you with the right amount of stimulation or not having enough foreplay.
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There are some women who can barely get aroused at all and no matter how hard a man tries to get their body stimulated they fail miserably. This could be because the woman is anxious about something or they are thinking too hard. Studies have indicated that failure of some women to feel aroused occurs in about 15 percent of the women population. The man might be left thinking that the woman does not love him and his better off leaving her than hanging on to someone he can barely turn on. Leaving is not necessary though. What you need to do is for both of you to seek some sort of professional help. This is because what she has is a sexual dysfunction that can be taken care of and with time maybe corrected. Dont loose a great love by thinking she simply doesnt love you.
There are some women who do not get an orgasm during sexual intercourse. It has actually been observed that about 40 percent of the women cannot get an orgasm during sex but could get one if they stimulated themselves or the man did it for them after the act. So if you have never had an orgasm during sex do not be scared and think you are abnormal, there are other women just like you who have never had an orgasm during sex and its just a sexual dysfunction that can be fixed. There could be several things that the man could not have done that is making you not to have an organism. This includes not providing you with the right amount of stimulation or not having enough foreplay.
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You do not have to live near a Mayo Hospital or Health Care facility to reap the benefits of all their services. Online at mayoclinic.com you will find the best women's health clinic around. Log on to get their tools and advice for a healthier and happier life and answers to important women's health concerns.
At their online clinic women can find out everything concerning birth control, menopause, heart, mental health, breast concerns, menstruation, sexual questions and reproductive issues. There is a safe sex blog discussing everything from herpes, adolescent girls and STD's, do's and don'ts for reducing risks of STD's and more. Another feature at this site is a genetics blog that will let you know how your medical history can be an important tool for you to use. There is plenty of information here with resources you can count on.
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At their online clinic women can find out everything concerning birth control, menopause, heart, mental health, breast concerns, menstruation, sexual questions and reproductive issues. There is a safe sex blog discussing everything from herpes, adolescent girls and STD's, do's and don'ts for reducing risks of STD's and more. Another feature at this site is a genetics blog that will let you know how your medical history can be an important tool for you to use. There is plenty of information here with resources you can count on.
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Sam said: "Getting an erection and after an embarrassing situation decided to talk to women. Store it at room temperature and away from excess heat and moisture. My previous treatment was based on penile injections it was so hard for me. Your treatment options with you. Do not take a double dose to make up for a missed one. Successful treatment restores sexual function to a satisfactory level for the man and his partner."
Looking for the better costs in discount meds? 2737 amerimedrx aq cialis nasacort nexium.
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Alopecia Alopecia - is the absence or poredenie hair on the skin in their normal growth (more on Hair Loss skin of the head). 50% of men by age 50 years are clear signs of hair loss in male type. 37% of women in the same age indicate any signs of alopecia. The predominant age of the development of alopecia: alopecia androgen frequency increases in proportion to age; dermatomikoz Hair Loss head and traumatic alopecia often occur in children.
The reasons for alopecia :
1. Documents mature hair - are scattered hair loss, resulting in lower density ovoloseniya, but not to complete baldness. The reasons for the fallout of mature hair:
After childbirth as a result of physiological changes in body pregnant
Medicinal Products (hormonal contraceptives, drugs, slowing blood, retinoidy, beta-adrenoblokatory, anticancer drugs, interferon)
Stress (physical or mental)
Endocrine disorders (hypo-or hyperthyroidism, gipopituitarizm)
Dietary factors (eating disorders, iron deficiency, zinc)
. Documents growing hair - are scattered hair loss, including growing, with a possible complete baldness.
The reasons for the fallout of growing hair include:
Gribovidny mycosis
Radiation Therapy
Medicinal Products (anticancer drugs, allopurinol, bromokriptin)
Poisoning (bismuth, arsenic, gold, boric acid, thallium)
3. Scar alopecia - is the presence of the brilliant smooth areas on the Hair Loss skin of the head, not containing hair bulbs. The reasons for cicatricial alopecia:
Anomalies development and congenital malformations of hair bulbs
Infections (leprosy, syphilis, gerpeticheskaya disease, cutaneous leishmaniasis)
Bazalnokletochny cancer
pigment spots
The impact of physical factors (acid and alkali, extreme temperatures [burns, frostbitten], irradiation)
Rubtsuyuschayasya pemphigus
Polikistoz ovaries
hyperplasia of ovaries
Kartsinoid
Pituitary hyperplasia
Medicinal Products (testosterone, danazol, adrenocorticotropic hormone, anabolic steroids, progesterone)
5. Gnezdnaya alopecia - hair loss is acquired in the form of rounded pockets of various sizes on some sections of the skin of the head, eyebrows, beard area, not by scarring. When gnezdnoy alopecia sudden appears on the skin, head, face more rounded pockets full of hair without any other changes, the hair on the side pockets easily pull; pockets can grow, merge and lead to complete baldness. Causal factors gnezdnoy alopecia exactly unknown.
6. Traumatic alopecia - hair loss on some sections of the skin due to chronic trauma, in the early stages is not accompanied by scarring. The reasons:
Trihotillomaniya (exuberant appetite pull their hair)
Damage due zapletaniya braid or tugogo zavyazyvaniya bow
7. Dermatomikoz Hair Loss heads - limited pockets with the lack of hair on Hair Loss skin of the head, possibly a combination of inflammatory response, due to fungus. When dermatomikoze Hair Loss head there itching, peeling, inflammation.
The reasons:
Mushrooms kind mikrosporum
Mushrooms kind trihofiton
8. Genetic aspects. We know of at least 90 inherited diseases and syndromes involving alopetsiey:
congenital alopecia with keratosis of palms and soles
congenital total alopecia: combined with giant pigmented spots, seizures, mental retardation Gnezdnaya alopecia
Family alopecia
Total alopecia Diagnosis of alopecia Diagnosis of alopecia includes a number of studies:
Study of thyroid functions
Complete blood count (to detect possible violations of the functions of the immune system) The level of male sex hormones in the blood serum
The concentration of ferritin of blood plasma
Reaction von Wasserman for the exclusion of syphilis
The number of T-and B-lymphocytes (sometimes reduced in patients with gnezdnoy alopetsiey).
A sample of hair pandiculation: cautious pandiculation (no load) for the rod of hair in order to remove it; positive (hair easily removed) when gnezdnoy alopecia
microscopic examination of hair shaft
Study centers peeling using potassium hydroxide, is positive with dermatomikoze Hair Loss skin of the head. The use of antifungal drugs can lead to false positive results
Investigation of the existence of pockets of peeling fungi
Biopsy Hair Loss skin of the head with conventional microscopy and direct immunoflyuorestsentnadm studies to diagnose dermatomikoz Hair Loss skin of the head, diffuse gnezdnuyu cicatricial alopecia and alopecia, developed against the backdrop of hard currency, leaving the flat and sarcoidosis. Treatment of alopecia
Treatment of alopecia at vypadenii mature hair. Hair loss maximum
3 months after the causal effects (drugs, stress, dietary factors), after eliminating the causes ovolosenie quickly recovers
Treatment of alopecia at vypadenii growing hair. Hair loss begins in a few days or weeks after the causal effects ovolosenie recovering from the removal of the causes
Treatment of cicatricial alopecia. Effective treatment cicatricial alopecia - surgical (transplant skin graft or excision sites scarring)
Treatment of androgen alopecia. After 12 months, the local application of 2% solution of minoxidil 40% of the increase in hair various expressions. An alternative method of treatment - surgical
Treatment gnezdnoy alopecia. Usually the disease runs its own within 3 years without treatment, but frequent relapses. Apply sedatives, annoying rubbing alcohol (tincture peppers), hormone drugs for local use, drugs that increase sensitivity to light (beroksan) area in combination with ultraviolet irradiation
Treatment of traumatic alopecia. Healing can come only after the cessation of pulling out hair. You may need to intervene psychologist or psychiatrist. Successful treatment includes drug therapy, behavior and hypnosis
Hair Loss Treatment dermatomikoza head. Treatment of conduct during the 6-8 weeks ketokonazolom or other anti means. There is a need for thorough hand washing and laundry hats and towels. The course and prognosis, with alopecia
Documents mature and growing hair: permanent alopecia develops rarely
scar alopecia: hair bulbs are constantly exposed to damage
androgen alopecia: prognosis and treatment depend on over
Gnezdnaya alopecia: perhaps self-healing, but frequent relapses, with a total of gnezdnoy alopecia hair is usually not restored
traumatic alopecia: prognosis and during the correction depends on the successful conduct of patient
Dermatomikoz Hair Loss skin of the head: usually full recovery.
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HI MOn
Quick Action Plan for Diabetes
1. Nutrition is the key to getting rid of the cravings. Once you learn about nutrition (#6) and also cleansing out the toxins in the body by doing a colon, liver, and kidney cleanse. Youll be on your way to a healthy life.
2. Keep in mind that the goal of diabetic treatment and self-care is to restore blood sugar levels close to normal and to correct related metabolic disorders. One of the best ways to accomplish this is by eating small, frequent meals throughout the day that emphasize fresh, organic foods that are low on the glycemic scale, such as raw and lightly steamed vegetables, low sugar whole fruits, nuts, seeds, whole grains and legumes, yams, wild fish, poultry, lean cuts of beef, bison meal lamb or veal.
3. Minimize or eliminate your intake of simple carbohydrates and all sugars, as well as tobacco and processed junk foods. In addition, reduce your intake of alcohol and caffeine. Both alcohol and caffeine could be enjoyed on special occasions, rather than daily or even weekly habits.
4. Remain hydrated; drinking adequate quantities of pure water is essential for all aspects of your health. Must drink a gallon of water a day to maintain health. Your body is craving this much more than caffeine and sugar.
5. Engage in regular light exercise and stress reduction because they are keys to maintaining lower levels of blood sugar.
6. Consider supplementing with nutrients such as B-complex vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E, chromium, magnesium, potassium, essential fatty acids, CoQ10, alpha lipoic acid, and vanadium. Stabilized rice bran supplements can also be helpful.
7. Herbs such as astragalus, bitter melon, fenugreek, raw garlic (one of the best for blood pressure), ginseng, Gymnema sylvestre, and huerque can also provide significant benefits.
8. If you have already developed Type I or Type II diabetes, combine the above self-care natural cures with professional care from a holistically oriented physician or other alternative health care practitioner. Particularly useful professional care therapies for treating and preventing diabetes include chelation therapy, food allergy testing, parasite testing and if necessary, cleansing, oxygen therapy, and professional dietary and nutritional counseling. Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine can also be helpful.
9. Prevention, if you are pre-disposed and managing a diabetic condition, is a life-long commitment. By committing to the guidelines above, you can significantly improve your symptoms, and, if you suffer from Type II diabetes, quite possibly reverse them altogether. Implementing diet and lifestyle changes can help improve your energy levels, and your confidence in your ability to experience greater health.
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I do not even know if i can coherently explain what is going on.
diana pilas took unitl a week or so ago to schedule Jailynns surgery.
I have been waiting since September for her to do so. It went from
Jan 15th to Jan 22nd because Dr K was going to be away. Now yesterday
i talked to the surgeons office and set up all of jailynns final
appointments. Today the surgeons office called to say they needed to
move Jailynns surgery to Jan 15th because the surgeon had to leave
early on jan 22nd to be in philadelphia The surgeon said if Dr k.
would agree to have a different neurologist fill in for him that we
could do the surgery without Dr K. Well after talking to Diana and
Dr K. he absolutely will not allow anyone else to fill in for him
because jailynn is HIS patient! saying it like she belongs to him,
with no sympathy for our situation. If jailynn cannot have a january
surgery we have to wait til may/june. I really do not like how
arrogant he was and how he showed no sympathy at all. Dr jallos
secreary (surgeon) was so nice and sympathetic. and come to find out
the surgeon and dr K are in town the begining of January, but the
surgeons schedule is full, Maybe if diana had tried to schedule teh
surgery in septmeber like she was suppossed to Jailynn could maybe
have gotten in the beginning of january. I am so angry, upset,
pissed whatever. I have been bawling. I really dislike Dr K because
of his arrogance now to the point i kinda want a different neuro. I
feel in my heart that this surgery is SUPPOSSED to happen in january
and when i get these intense gut feelings i am normally right, like
when he wanted to cancel her VEEG. jailynn has been having seizures
lately and i really wanted the surgery soon to prevent us increasing
her depakote, cause it has some nasty risks.
All information >>> Read more...
diana pilas took unitl a week or so ago to schedule Jailynns surgery.
I have been waiting since September for her to do so. It went from
Jan 15th to Jan 22nd because Dr K was going to be away. Now yesterday
i talked to the surgeons office and set up all of jailynns final
appointments. Today the surgeons office called to say they needed to
move Jailynns surgery to Jan 15th because the surgeon had to leave
early on jan 22nd to be in philadelphia The surgeon said if Dr k.
would agree to have a different neurologist fill in for him that we
could do the surgery without Dr K. Well after talking to Diana and
Dr K. he absolutely will not allow anyone else to fill in for him
because jailynn is HIS patient! saying it like she belongs to him,
with no sympathy for our situation. If jailynn cannot have a january
surgery we have to wait til may/june. I really do not like how
arrogant he was and how he showed no sympathy at all. Dr jallos
secreary (surgeon) was so nice and sympathetic. and come to find out
the surgeon and dr K are in town the begining of January, but the
surgeons schedule is full, Maybe if diana had tried to schedule teh
surgery in septmeber like she was suppossed to Jailynn could maybe
have gotten in the beginning of january. I am so angry, upset,
pissed whatever. I have been bawling. I really dislike Dr K because
of his arrogance now to the point i kinda want a different neuro. I
feel in my heart that this surgery is SUPPOSSED to happen in january
and when i get these intense gut feelings i am normally right, like
when he wanted to cancel her VEEG. jailynn has been having seizures
lately and i really wanted the surgery soon to prevent us increasing
her depakote, cause it has some nasty risks.
All information >>> Read more...
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To gain approval for treating children, all a drug company has to do is submit two positive studies to the FDA to prove a medication is safe and effective for kids. However, after 20 years of feeding the new generation of antidepressants to tens of thousands of kids in clinical trials, the only one ever approved is Prozac.
Collectively, these antidepressants are referred to as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) and include Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa and Lexapro. When the term SSRIs is used, it often refers to their chemical cousins Effexor, Wellbutrin and Cymbalta as well.
The drug companies, by their sheer economic clout, have become the single most dominant influence in our healthcare system, and the ambiguities of childrens mental health and illness make child psychiatry the most vulnerable branch of medicine open to such influence, says Dr Lawrence Diller, a behavioral-developmental pediatrician and author of, The Last Normal Child, in the July 13, 2008, San Francisco Chronicle.
In this climate, he explains, drug company research money, professional medical education and direct advertisements to parents tilt families and doctors to biologically brain-based solutions, rather than non-drug (e.g., parenting and education) approaches.
That is why we are seeing famous (or infamous) Newsweek cover boys - like a 10-year-old who has taken 38 psychiatric medications in his short, unhappy life, he says.
Dr Joseph Glenmullen, author of Prozac Backlash, testified at a hearing before the US House Energy and Commerce Committee on February 10, 2005, and explained how important lawsuits have been in unearthing the internal company documents, which reveal the antidepressant-induced suicidality risk. Both the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry knew about this side effect over a decade ago, he said.
Dr Glenmullen noted that the FDA failed to adequately educate doctors and the public and called it a most dangerous scenario when neither the doctor nor the patient knows how to recognize antidepressant-induced suicidality.
He pointed out that only Prozac was FDA approved for depressed children, and all other antidepressants studied had failed to demonstrate they were more effective than placebo. He faulted the FDA for failing to require drug manufacturers to tell doctors in the labels that the drugs had been studied and failed to show efficacy.
He noted that one million American children were on antidepressants for everything from shyness to school anxiety to headaches to attention deficit disorder. How can the FDA allow this to happen when it has acknowledged that the drugs can make children suicidal? he asked.
Family doctors write 70% of prescriptions for antidepressants and know little about how to diagnose and treat antidepressant-induced suicidality, he pointed out.
Once the FDA approves a drug, doctors can prescribe it for any purpose, a practice called off-label prescribing. Many doctors prescribe many medications off label for children, but none do it as frequently as child psychiatrists, says Dr Diller.
He advises that none of the psychiatric drugs have been studied for more than two or three months regarding long-term safety or effectiveness with children, with the exception of stimulants used for ADHD. Drug companies oppose this kind of thorough follow-up on drugs not only because it is expensive, but because they dont really want to find out whether their drugs continue to work over time or if long-term side effects develop, he states in the paper, A Prescription for Disaster, published by Salon.com on May 23, 2002.
Currently, that kind of research is a job for the countrys trial lawyers, he writes.
But this de facto system of monitoring the effects of drugs requires many casualties before an adverse outcome is discovered or established in the medical and popular literature, Dr Diller points out.
Highly Paid Hustlers in motion
The failure of clinical trials to provide safety information about the effects of long-term use is at the heart of the debate about the legitimacy of prescribing psychotropic drugs for children, according to Vera Hassner Sharav, President of the Alliance for Human Research Protection in the 2003 paper, Children in Clinical Research: A Conflict of Moral Values, published in the American Journal of Bioethics.
No SSRI was approved for children before 2003. However, by the early 1990s, it didnt matter that they were not officially approved for use in children: they were commonly given to children as young as 6 years old, says Professor Jonathan Leo in the 2006 paper, The SSRI Trials in Children: Disturbing Implications for Academic Medicine.
He points out that the child psychiatry profession fully endorsed the use of these drugs well before the FDA approved them, and, in an even odder twist, he says, the profession endorsed the use of them well before any of the major studies in children were even published.It appears that one reason for doing the studies in the first place was to justify already well-accepted prescribing patterns, according to Professor Leo.
If a trend is created because everyone else is doing it then it appears that the child psychiatry professions use of these drugs in the late 1990s more closely resembled a trend instead of a logical scientific undertaking, he explains.
The first major studies claiming SSRIs were safe and effective for children began to appear in the late 1990s. In all the published studies, papers and poster presentations used at medical seminars, conferences and other events to expand the well-accepted prescribing patterns, to doctors in every field of medicine, there are the names of the same Highly-Paid Hustlers, also known as key opinion leaders, because they are supposedly so highly respected by their peers.
They include, but are not limited to, Drs Joseph Biederman, David Dunner, Graham Emslie, Daniel Geller, Robert Gibbons, Frederick Goodwin, Martin Keller, Andrew Leon, John Mann, John March, Charles Nemeroff, John Rush, Neal Ryan, David Shaffer and Karen Wagner.
Dr Biederman and the gang at Harvard almost single-handedly instigated the epidemic in the off-label prescribing of drug cocktails to children, of 2, 3 or even 4 drugs at a time, in combinations that have never been tested on animals much less humans. The mental illness always known as was now bipolar disorder, and in the mid-90s, Dr Biederman, and a few more opinion leaders started claiming that a great number of children were afflicted, possibly even as early as in the womb, some said.
Most parents have never heard of him, but Joseph Biederman of Harvard may be the United States most influential doctor when it comes to determining whether their children are normal or mentally ill, says Dr Diller, in an article entitled, Are Our Leading Pediatricians Drug Industry Shills? in the July 13, 2008, San Francisco Chronicle.
Biederman and his team, Dr Diller writes, are more responsible than anyone for a child bipolar epidemic sweeping America (and no other country) that has 2-year-olds on three or four psychiatric drugs.The science of childrens psychiatric medications is so primitive and Biedermans influence so great, he says, that when he merely mentions a drug during a presentation, tens of thousands of children within a year or two will end up taking that drug, or combination of drugs.This happens in the absence of a drug trial of any kind - instead, Dr Diller notes, the decision is based upon word of mouth among the 7,000 child psychiatrists in America.s why Iowa Sen. Charles Grassleys recent revelation that Biederman did not declare $1.6 million in drug company consulting fees is so important, scary and tragic, he says.
If true, Dr Diller notes, this scandal is yet one more stake in the heart of American academic medicines credibility with frontline doctors like him, and more importantly, with the parents of the children he deals with every day.
Until the profiteering scheme was set in place by publishing a couple bogus studies and then passing them around to doctors all over the country at medical seminars and conventions, manic-depression was unheard of in children. It still is in other counties.
Most parents are not aware of the life-long consequences of a childhood mental-illness diagnosis. Children with medical records showing treatment become ineligible for a wide range of occupations. An early diagnosis can also make it difficult to obtain health insurance for life.
In the age of computerized recordkeeping, there can be no deleting of this damning information. Just as there is no scientific way to prove that anyone has a mental disorder, there is no way to disprove it either. Once diagnosed, a child will never escape the label.
Dr Emslie was busy pumping out new marketing tools last year, this time in the form of a treatment guideline to promote the off-label use of psychiatric drugs to toddlers. However, the medical journals continue to publish this kind of trash.
He is the first author on a December 2007 paper in the Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry that reviewed the developmental considerations related to preschool psycho-pharmacological treatment, presenting current evidence bases for specific disorders in early childhood and described the recommended algorithms for medication use in 3- to 6-year-olds.
This Preschool Psychopharmacology Working Group claims it was developed to review existing literature and to develop recommendations to guide clinicians considering psycho-pharmacological treatment in very young children. The purpose of this effort, the authors note, is to promote responsible treatment of young children, recognizing that this will sometimes involve the use of medications.
Not one single psychiatric drug is approved for children under 6; not alone and not together with any other. Yet the Group says it has established algorithms for the treatment of ADHD, disruptive behavior disorders, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, pervasive developmental disorders (such as autism) and primary sleep disorders.
On May 5, 2006, United Press International reported on a Duke University study where investigators studied 307 children between the ages of 2 and 5 and claimed they detected signs of depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses. The rate was about the same as with older children and not much lower than within adults, they said. UPI made sure to mention that the research was funded in part by the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
Judging by the results of this the recruited another 30 toddlers as potential customers for daily drug cocktails in one sweep. Notably missing from all the above lists of is a condition that could account for half of the stigmatizing labels in one age group, commonly known throughout time as the Terrible Twos.
Sad aftermath
Of all the harmful actions of modern psychiatry, the mass diagnosing and drugging of children is the most appalling with the most serious consequences for the future of individual lives and for society, says Dr Peter Breggin, author of the new book, Medication Madness.
Many children who end up seeking help from Dr Breggin are already on four or five drugs at one time. He says millions of children are growing up with drug-intoxicated brains.
Not only do these medications suppress spontaneity and volition, he warns, but the psychiatric approach teaches children that they cannot, without medication, learn to manage their own behavior. In effect, the children are taught that they cannot exercise and develop self-determination, autonomy or free will, he explains.
Pennsylvania psychiatrist Dr Stefan Kruszewski also warns that young children who are medicated do not learn to adapt and develop coping strategies as they move through the developmental stages of childhood.They rely on a false belief that drugs can solve problems, he says, rather than relying on their own innate creative potential or the help of family, friends, and schooling.Psychiatry was once plagued by ‘boundary violations, where physicians exploited the dependence of their patients, Dr David Healy explains in the 2006 paper, The Latest Mania: Selling Bipolar Disorder. But he says:
All the indications are that we are now in a new era of drug-related boundary violations. There is perhaps nowhere in medicine where this is more obvious than in the case of bipolar disorders, with adults treated with bizarre cocktails and children put on some of the most lethal drugs in medicine.The extensive prescription of these medications for children, Dr Diller warns, without adequate testing for safety and effectiveness in children constitutes a hidden time bomb that could explode with still more casualties.Catastrophic side effects may be rare, he says, but they become predictable when we treat so many children with so many drugs.There is nothing more despicable than a doctor knowingly telling normal children they are mentally ill for profit, says Dr Fred Baughman, author of, ADHD Fraud - How Psychiatry Makes Patients of Normal Children.Because the children made into are normal to begin with, Dr Baughman contends, those who treat them with psychiatric drugs are guilty not of an iatrogenic medical mistake, but a willful for-profit poisoning.What should we call it when children die pursuant to a fraudulent diagnosis, he asks. First degree murder? Second degree murder? Justifiable homicide? Manslaughter?
In an expert report recently submitted in litigation involving a Paxil-induced suicide by a 13-year-old boy, Dr Glenmullen discusses a case where that question begs to be answered when he tells the court: It is my opinion to a reasonable degree of medical probability that if GlaxoSmithKline had provided a warning all these years, Benjamin Bratt would still be alive today.
There are many families suffering all over the country as a result of the drugging-children-for-profit schemes set in place by the Highly-Paid Hustlers. For us it has been four and a half years without resolution or closure, says Mathy Milling Downing, whose daughter Candace hung herself in January 2004 after being prescribed Zoloft at age 12 because she was nervous when taking tests at school.
Every day hurts, Mathy says. One never gets over the loss. Prior to her death, the Downings saw no signs of Candace being depressed or suicidal.
They were not told to watch for signs of suicide. The doctor did not inform them that Zoloft was not approved for children, and they were assured that Zoloft was safe.
The Downings would later learn that their daughters physician was on Pfizers payroll. Although we realize that Candaces doctor only made about $12,000 acting as a Pfizer consultant, its not the amount that bothers us, Mathy says.
s the medical compromise. Its the lack of informed consent. Its placing economical gain above the well-being of an innocent child and a trusting family, she states.
I just want to know when Greed before Need will diminish and doctors will once again place a patients well-being first, she says, before financial gain.What has happened to the Hippocratic Oath that doctors are supposed to take? Mathy wants to know.
Rough estimates
In Let Them Eat Prozac, Dr Healy discusses how he reached his estimates for the high number of suicides and suicide attempts that could be attributed to Prozac alone. An April 2000 paper in the Archives of Psychiatry looked at the rates for suicide attempts on newer antidepressants compared to placebo and reported SSRI rates higher than placebo.
These figures made it possible for him to estimate how many people had made suicide attempts. If ten per thousand make an attempt on Prozac and five per thousand or less do so on placebo or other antidepressants, and if (as is conventionally estimated) 40 million people worldwide have had Prozac, he writes, then there will have been 200,000 more suicide attempts on Prozac than had Prozac not been used.Conventional wisdom is that there is one suicide for every ten attempts, he explains. These would give 20,000 suicides over and above the number who would have committed suicide if they had been left untreated or been treated with older agents.
Dr Healy then accessed the FDAs Adverse Event Database to look at suicides reported and found there were over 2,000 as of October 1999. The FDA estimated their database picked up only between one and ten per cent of serious adverse events, he writes.
This gives a spread between 20,000 and 200,000 suicides on Prozac, he concludes.
There is no way to know how many people have suffered needlessly because the drugmakers lied about the suicide risk for so many years. According to Dr Healy, aside from the need to save lives, if emergent suicide linked to a drug is not correctly attributed to treatment, patients suffer a long-lasting injury to their self-esteem and self-confidence as a consequence.
If patients have engaged in actual suicidal acts as a result of treatment and the connection to treatment is not made, given that prior suicide attempts appear to increase the risk of future successful suicides, it appears possible that the risk of a future successful suicide has been increased accordingly, he warns in a June 2003 briefing paper on Antidepressants and Suicide.
Evelyn Pringle
epringle05@yahoo.com
(Written as part of the Paxil Litigation Round-Up, Sponsored by Baum, Hedlund, Aristei Goldmans Pharmaceutical Litigation Department www.baumhedlundlaw.
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Collectively, these antidepressants are referred to as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) and include Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa and Lexapro. When the term SSRIs is used, it often refers to their chemical cousins Effexor, Wellbutrin and Cymbalta as well.
The drug companies, by their sheer economic clout, have become the single most dominant influence in our healthcare system, and the ambiguities of childrens mental health and illness make child psychiatry the most vulnerable branch of medicine open to such influence, says Dr Lawrence Diller, a behavioral-developmental pediatrician and author of, The Last Normal Child, in the July 13, 2008, San Francisco Chronicle.
In this climate, he explains, drug company research money, professional medical education and direct advertisements to parents tilt families and doctors to biologically brain-based solutions, rather than non-drug (e.g., parenting and education) approaches.
That is why we are seeing famous (or infamous) Newsweek cover boys - like a 10-year-old who has taken 38 psychiatric medications in his short, unhappy life, he says.
Dr Joseph Glenmullen, author of Prozac Backlash, testified at a hearing before the US House Energy and Commerce Committee on February 10, 2005, and explained how important lawsuits have been in unearthing the internal company documents, which reveal the antidepressant-induced suicidality risk. Both the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry knew about this side effect over a decade ago, he said.
Dr Glenmullen noted that the FDA failed to adequately educate doctors and the public and called it a most dangerous scenario when neither the doctor nor the patient knows how to recognize antidepressant-induced suicidality.
He pointed out that only Prozac was FDA approved for depressed children, and all other antidepressants studied had failed to demonstrate they were more effective than placebo. He faulted the FDA for failing to require drug manufacturers to tell doctors in the labels that the drugs had been studied and failed to show efficacy.
He noted that one million American children were on antidepressants for everything from shyness to school anxiety to headaches to attention deficit disorder. How can the FDA allow this to happen when it has acknowledged that the drugs can make children suicidal? he asked.
Family doctors write 70% of prescriptions for antidepressants and know little about how to diagnose and treat antidepressant-induced suicidality, he pointed out.
Once the FDA approves a drug, doctors can prescribe it for any purpose, a practice called off-label prescribing. Many doctors prescribe many medications off label for children, but none do it as frequently as child psychiatrists, says Dr Diller.
He advises that none of the psychiatric drugs have been studied for more than two or three months regarding long-term safety or effectiveness with children, with the exception of stimulants used for ADHD. Drug companies oppose this kind of thorough follow-up on drugs not only because it is expensive, but because they dont really want to find out whether their drugs continue to work over time or if long-term side effects develop, he states in the paper, A Prescription for Disaster, published by Salon.com on May 23, 2002.
Currently, that kind of research is a job for the countrys trial lawyers, he writes.
But this de facto system of monitoring the effects of drugs requires many casualties before an adverse outcome is discovered or established in the medical and popular literature, Dr Diller points out.
Highly Paid Hustlers in motion
The failure of clinical trials to provide safety information about the effects of long-term use is at the heart of the debate about the legitimacy of prescribing psychotropic drugs for children, according to Vera Hassner Sharav, President of the Alliance for Human Research Protection in the 2003 paper, Children in Clinical Research: A Conflict of Moral Values, published in the American Journal of Bioethics.
No SSRI was approved for children before 2003. However, by the early 1990s, it didnt matter that they were not officially approved for use in children: they were commonly given to children as young as 6 years old, says Professor Jonathan Leo in the 2006 paper, The SSRI Trials in Children: Disturbing Implications for Academic Medicine.
He points out that the child psychiatry profession fully endorsed the use of these drugs well before the FDA approved them, and, in an even odder twist, he says, the profession endorsed the use of them well before any of the major studies in children were even published.It appears that one reason for doing the studies in the first place was to justify already well-accepted prescribing patterns, according to Professor Leo.
If a trend is created because everyone else is doing it then it appears that the child psychiatry professions use of these drugs in the late 1990s more closely resembled a trend instead of a logical scientific undertaking, he explains.
The first major studies claiming SSRIs were safe and effective for children began to appear in the late 1990s. In all the published studies, papers and poster presentations used at medical seminars, conferences and other events to expand the well-accepted prescribing patterns, to doctors in every field of medicine, there are the names of the same Highly-Paid Hustlers, also known as key opinion leaders, because they are supposedly so highly respected by their peers.
They include, but are not limited to, Drs Joseph Biederman, David Dunner, Graham Emslie, Daniel Geller, Robert Gibbons, Frederick Goodwin, Martin Keller, Andrew Leon, John Mann, John March, Charles Nemeroff, John Rush, Neal Ryan, David Shaffer and Karen Wagner.
Dr Biederman and the gang at Harvard almost single-handedly instigated the epidemic in the off-label prescribing of drug cocktails to children, of 2, 3 or even 4 drugs at a time, in combinations that have never been tested on animals much less humans. The mental illness always known as was now bipolar disorder, and in the mid-90s, Dr Biederman, and a few more opinion leaders started claiming that a great number of children were afflicted, possibly even as early as in the womb, some said.
Most parents have never heard of him, but Joseph Biederman of Harvard may be the United States most influential doctor when it comes to determining whether their children are normal or mentally ill, says Dr Diller, in an article entitled, Are Our Leading Pediatricians Drug Industry Shills? in the July 13, 2008, San Francisco Chronicle.
Biederman and his team, Dr Diller writes, are more responsible than anyone for a child bipolar epidemic sweeping America (and no other country) that has 2-year-olds on three or four psychiatric drugs.The science of childrens psychiatric medications is so primitive and Biedermans influence so great, he says, that when he merely mentions a drug during a presentation, tens of thousands of children within a year or two will end up taking that drug, or combination of drugs.This happens in the absence of a drug trial of any kind - instead, Dr Diller notes, the decision is based upon word of mouth among the 7,000 child psychiatrists in America.s why Iowa Sen. Charles Grassleys recent revelation that Biederman did not declare $1.6 million in drug company consulting fees is so important, scary and tragic, he says.
If true, Dr Diller notes, this scandal is yet one more stake in the heart of American academic medicines credibility with frontline doctors like him, and more importantly, with the parents of the children he deals with every day.
Until the profiteering scheme was set in place by publishing a couple bogus studies and then passing them around to doctors all over the country at medical seminars and conventions, manic-depression was unheard of in children. It still is in other counties.
Most parents are not aware of the life-long consequences of a childhood mental-illness diagnosis. Children with medical records showing treatment become ineligible for a wide range of occupations. An early diagnosis can also make it difficult to obtain health insurance for life.
In the age of computerized recordkeeping, there can be no deleting of this damning information. Just as there is no scientific way to prove that anyone has a mental disorder, there is no way to disprove it either. Once diagnosed, a child will never escape the label.
Dr Emslie was busy pumping out new marketing tools last year, this time in the form of a treatment guideline to promote the off-label use of psychiatric drugs to toddlers. However, the medical journals continue to publish this kind of trash.
He is the first author on a December 2007 paper in the Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry that reviewed the developmental considerations related to preschool psycho-pharmacological treatment, presenting current evidence bases for specific disorders in early childhood and described the recommended algorithms for medication use in 3- to 6-year-olds.
This Preschool Psychopharmacology Working Group claims it was developed to review existing literature and to develop recommendations to guide clinicians considering psycho-pharmacological treatment in very young children. The purpose of this effort, the authors note, is to promote responsible treatment of young children, recognizing that this will sometimes involve the use of medications.
Not one single psychiatric drug is approved for children under 6; not alone and not together with any other. Yet the Group says it has established algorithms for the treatment of ADHD, disruptive behavior disorders, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, pervasive developmental disorders (such as autism) and primary sleep disorders.
On May 5, 2006, United Press International reported on a Duke University study where investigators studied 307 children between the ages of 2 and 5 and claimed they detected signs of depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses. The rate was about the same as with older children and not much lower than within adults, they said. UPI made sure to mention that the research was funded in part by the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
Judging by the results of this the recruited another 30 toddlers as potential customers for daily drug cocktails in one sweep. Notably missing from all the above lists of is a condition that could account for half of the stigmatizing labels in one age group, commonly known throughout time as the Terrible Twos.
Sad aftermath
Of all the harmful actions of modern psychiatry, the mass diagnosing and drugging of children is the most appalling with the most serious consequences for the future of individual lives and for society, says Dr Peter Breggin, author of the new book, Medication Madness.
Many children who end up seeking help from Dr Breggin are already on four or five drugs at one time. He says millions of children are growing up with drug-intoxicated brains.
Not only do these medications suppress spontaneity and volition, he warns, but the psychiatric approach teaches children that they cannot, without medication, learn to manage their own behavior. In effect, the children are taught that they cannot exercise and develop self-determination, autonomy or free will, he explains.
Pennsylvania psychiatrist Dr Stefan Kruszewski also warns that young children who are medicated do not learn to adapt and develop coping strategies as they move through the developmental stages of childhood.They rely on a false belief that drugs can solve problems, he says, rather than relying on their own innate creative potential or the help of family, friends, and schooling.Psychiatry was once plagued by ‘boundary violations, where physicians exploited the dependence of their patients, Dr David Healy explains in the 2006 paper, The Latest Mania: Selling Bipolar Disorder. But he says:
All the indications are that we are now in a new era of drug-related boundary violations. There is perhaps nowhere in medicine where this is more obvious than in the case of bipolar disorders, with adults treated with bizarre cocktails and children put on some of the most lethal drugs in medicine.The extensive prescription of these medications for children, Dr Diller warns, without adequate testing for safety and effectiveness in children constitutes a hidden time bomb that could explode with still more casualties.Catastrophic side effects may be rare, he says, but they become predictable when we treat so many children with so many drugs.There is nothing more despicable than a doctor knowingly telling normal children they are mentally ill for profit, says Dr Fred Baughman, author of, ADHD Fraud - How Psychiatry Makes Patients of Normal Children.Because the children made into are normal to begin with, Dr Baughman contends, those who treat them with psychiatric drugs are guilty not of an iatrogenic medical mistake, but a willful for-profit poisoning.What should we call it when children die pursuant to a fraudulent diagnosis, he asks. First degree murder? Second degree murder? Justifiable homicide? Manslaughter?
In an expert report recently submitted in litigation involving a Paxil-induced suicide by a 13-year-old boy, Dr Glenmullen discusses a case where that question begs to be answered when he tells the court: It is my opinion to a reasonable degree of medical probability that if GlaxoSmithKline had provided a warning all these years, Benjamin Bratt would still be alive today.
There are many families suffering all over the country as a result of the drugging-children-for-profit schemes set in place by the Highly-Paid Hustlers. For us it has been four and a half years without resolution or closure, says Mathy Milling Downing, whose daughter Candace hung herself in January 2004 after being prescribed Zoloft at age 12 because she was nervous when taking tests at school.
Every day hurts, Mathy says. One never gets over the loss. Prior to her death, the Downings saw no signs of Candace being depressed or suicidal.
They were not told to watch for signs of suicide. The doctor did not inform them that Zoloft was not approved for children, and they were assured that Zoloft was safe.
The Downings would later learn that their daughters physician was on Pfizers payroll. Although we realize that Candaces doctor only made about $12,000 acting as a Pfizer consultant, its not the amount that bothers us, Mathy says.
s the medical compromise. Its the lack of informed consent. Its placing economical gain above the well-being of an innocent child and a trusting family, she states.
I just want to know when Greed before Need will diminish and doctors will once again place a patients well-being first, she says, before financial gain.What has happened to the Hippocratic Oath that doctors are supposed to take? Mathy wants to know.
Rough estimates
In Let Them Eat Prozac, Dr Healy discusses how he reached his estimates for the high number of suicides and suicide attempts that could be attributed to Prozac alone. An April 2000 paper in the Archives of Psychiatry looked at the rates for suicide attempts on newer antidepressants compared to placebo and reported SSRI rates higher than placebo.
These figures made it possible for him to estimate how many people had made suicide attempts. If ten per thousand make an attempt on Prozac and five per thousand or less do so on placebo or other antidepressants, and if (as is conventionally estimated) 40 million people worldwide have had Prozac, he writes, then there will have been 200,000 more suicide attempts on Prozac than had Prozac not been used.Conventional wisdom is that there is one suicide for every ten attempts, he explains. These would give 20,000 suicides over and above the number who would have committed suicide if they had been left untreated or been treated with older agents.
Dr Healy then accessed the FDAs Adverse Event Database to look at suicides reported and found there were over 2,000 as of October 1999. The FDA estimated their database picked up only between one and ten per cent of serious adverse events, he writes.
This gives a spread between 20,000 and 200,000 suicides on Prozac, he concludes.
There is no way to know how many people have suffered needlessly because the drugmakers lied about the suicide risk for so many years. According to Dr Healy, aside from the need to save lives, if emergent suicide linked to a drug is not correctly attributed to treatment, patients suffer a long-lasting injury to their self-esteem and self-confidence as a consequence.
If patients have engaged in actual suicidal acts as a result of treatment and the connection to treatment is not made, given that prior suicide attempts appear to increase the risk of future successful suicides, it appears possible that the risk of a future successful suicide has been increased accordingly, he warns in a June 2003 briefing paper on Antidepressants and Suicide.
Evelyn Pringle
epringle05@yahoo.com
(Written as part of the Paxil Litigation Round-Up, Sponsored by Baum, Hedlund, Aristei Goldmans Pharmaceutical Litigation Department www.baumhedlundlaw.
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EdHardyShopper.com - is an information site that provides information on deals online for clothing. EdHardyShopper.com is not endorsed by Ed Hardy Inc. All trademarks are owned by their respective owners. Redistribution in any form is prohibited. We are not affiliated at all with Ed Hardy. We appreciate fun style and want to help consumers locate a good deal online. ED HARDY, DON ED HARDY, ED HARDY TATTOO, HARDY, HARDY LIFE, LOVE KILLS SLOWLY, AND THE ED HARDY LOGO are trademarks or registered trademarks of Hardy Life, LLC., in the United States and other countries. Copyright © 2003-2008 Hardy Life, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Ed Hardy, Don Ed Hardy, Ed Hardy Tattoo, Hardy, Hardy Life, and the Ed Hardy logo are registered trademarks of Hardy Life, LLC.
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Wage increases for the IA Basic Agreement consist of 3% effective 8/2/09; another 3% effective 8/1/10, and another 3% effective 7/31/11. For Locals 52 and 161 (NY), it's 3%/3%/3% increases on the effective dates of those agreements.
Concerning Pension and Health:
The AMPTP believes the cost of its deal with IATSE amounts to an increase of about 3.8% a year for the next three years. But that doesn't include a $233 million savings to employers in Health Plan "modifications" agreed to by the union.
Both sides agreed that, effective 7/31/11, the Health Plan will change the standards for continuing eligibility from a requirement of working 300 hours to 400 hours.
As for other pension and health terms, the AMPTP believes the employers agreed to increase hourly contribution rates in the agreegate by 35 cents per hour as of 8/2/08; an additional 35 cents an hour effective 8/1/10, and an additional 35 cents per hour effective on 8/1/11.
Additionally, the employers committed to pay an additional 15 cents an hour if consultants' projections show that active reserves drop below 10 months but not earlier than 8/1/10. If that happens, then the employers will be obligated to contribute an additional 15 cents effective 7/31/11 which can go into effect earlier if the reserves dip below 6 months for active reserves and 8 months for retirees.
The employers say that, as an additional funding mechanism after those options, IATSE will "reallocate" an additional 1% from wages or their IAP.
Pension retirees will receive 13th and 14th checks for all three years.
Concerning TV Made For Basic Cable Productions:
Employers say that the union agreed to continue to grant waivers providing that for pilots and one-hour series made for basic cable, the employers can use the terms and discounts of the MOW sideletter for the first season of a series, and then start using the terms and conditions of the one-hour series sideletter.
Concerning Original Programs Made For New Media:
Employers agreed to exclusive recognition for IATSE for the geographic scope of their current agreements for entertainment programs of the type traditionally covered by their deals.
Employers agreed that derivative programs are all covered except for those produced under the IA Videotape Agreement which will be treated the same as original programs made for New Media.
Employers believe that, as for as covered programs, rates and terms are generally freely negotiable. Union security, no-strike/lockout, and grievance and arbitration provisions will apply. No mandatory staffing. Full interchange of job functions. If a person is required to work on a derivative project on the same day as a source production, they must be paid as a continuation of their regular rates and work conditions.
Unions think that covered employees may be assigned to the derivative prodution as part of the regular workday on the source production. Extended workday or overtime payments, asapplicable, would be triggered if the work extends past the contractual workday. Otherwise, terms and conditions of employment are freely negotiable.
Union thinks that in all cases pension and health contributions will be due in the normal amounts.
Union agrees that IATSE shall administer the grievance and arbitration of the New Media provisions and to remove the Step 2 provisions of the basic agreement grievance and arbitration procedure.
The union understands that original productions will be covered if the cost of production is over either $15,000 per minute as exhibite, or $300,000 per single production, or $500,000 for a series order.
The employers claim there's no coverage for experimental programs the same as under the DGA/WGA/and AFTRA agreements unless they have 4 or more employees on the West Coast Industry Experience Roster. Unions say that, in the case of local unions with no Roster, or where the Roster does not apply, original productions will be covered if said employees who've worked 30 or more days under any motion picture agreement. (Companies say employees for 30 days over 3 years under terms of those agreements.) Union thinks that, for those productions that don't otherwise trigger the agreement, the employer may utilize the agreement for experimental productions upon written notification at least two weeks prior to commencing the given production.
Employers think there are certain limited coverage exclusions for persons who are not specifically charged to overhead who work on the projects, and union believes the following classifications are excluded for purpoises of triggering the application of the agreement: (story analysts, projectionists, in-house publicists [not unit publicists], post-production with the exception of the Editor and Assistant Editor).
On the issue of union security, union believes that an employee employed on a New Media production shall become and remain in good standing of IATSE and the appropriate Local on and after the 30th day of covered work following thefirst day of employment or the effective date of such respectie agreements between companies and the several Unions, which is later. The forgoing requirements of Union membership as a condition of employment shall be subject to the obligations of the parties under the law. All other provisions of Union Security Provisions of applicable agreements shall be extende to New Media. Qualified status on the CSATF Industry Experience Roster wshall not be a condition of employmnt. Covered employees shall receive credit for Roster placement for days worked on New Media production.
Employers think they reached an understanding with IATSE on contracting out of programs.
Concerning Re-use of Programs Transmitted In New Media:
Employers agreed to pay residuals at 5.4% for derivative and original New Media programs when released originally on a consumer free ad-supported platform and then subsequently on a consumer pay platform for Electronic Sell-Through or download to rent (ITunes, Movie-Link, etc) after a 26-week period.
Employers agreed to pay if New Media programs are released on traditional media platforms (basic cable, pay TV, home video) under the normal rules for making Supplemental Markets payments.
Employers agreed that for Electronic Sell-Through and download to own, companies will pay 8.1% of 20% of producers gross for first 50,000 units sold, and 14.625% on sales thereafter, if a theaterical program is released after 8/1/09. If it's a TV program released after 8/1/09 for sale, companies will pay 8.1% of 100,000 units sold and then 15.75% for all sales thereafter. It's unclear if the unions have agreed to these terms or not.
Employers say IATSE (but not the Motion Picture Industry Pensions and Health Plans also which unions initially wanted) will have the same inspection rights on the contract's New Media license agreements that was given to the other unions. Union believes it's all un-redacted copies of all license, distribution, and other agreements pertaining to New Media exploitation on a quarterly basis. Union also believes the payments will be accompanied by detailed information as to the medium and source generating the receipts, as well as unredacted copies of all corollary distributor-, sub-distributor-, and exhibitor statements. Union believes in addition that each employer upon request will provide IATSE with data in its possession or the possession of its related and affiliated entites regarding the New Media exploitation of covered pictures, such as number of downloads or streams by source and ad rates.
Union refers to "Sideletter to Interim Agreement Regarding Re-Use In New Media".
Employers say there's a "Sunset" Clause for all of the New Media deal. The union says this about the "Sunset" clause: that both particies recognize that these provisions are being negotiated at a time when the business models and patterns of usage of motion pictures and other productions in New Media ae in the process of exploration, experimentation and innovation. Therefore, all the provisions relating to New Media expire on the termination date of the Basic Agreement and will be of no force and effect thereafter. No later than 60 days before that expiration date, the parties will meet to negotiate new terms and conditions in New Media.
The union also believes the parties' negotiation for the successor agreements will be based on the conditions that exist and reasonably can be forecast at that time. For example, with respect to the formula for the electronic sell-through of motion pictures and television programs, the growth of electronic sell-through could adversely impact traditional home video sales. In future negotiations, the parties agree that the criteria to be considered in good faith in determining whether the electronic sell-through residual should be increased or deceased include patterns of cannibalization of the home video market and changes in the wholesale price.
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Concerning Pension and Health:
The AMPTP believes the cost of its deal with IATSE amounts to an increase of about 3.8% a year for the next three years. But that doesn't include a $233 million savings to employers in Health Plan "modifications" agreed to by the union.
Both sides agreed that, effective 7/31/11, the Health Plan will change the standards for continuing eligibility from a requirement of working 300 hours to 400 hours.
As for other pension and health terms, the AMPTP believes the employers agreed to increase hourly contribution rates in the agreegate by 35 cents per hour as of 8/2/08; an additional 35 cents an hour effective 8/1/10, and an additional 35 cents per hour effective on 8/1/11.
Additionally, the employers committed to pay an additional 15 cents an hour if consultants' projections show that active reserves drop below 10 months but not earlier than 8/1/10. If that happens, then the employers will be obligated to contribute an additional 15 cents effective 7/31/11 which can go into effect earlier if the reserves dip below 6 months for active reserves and 8 months for retirees.
The employers say that, as an additional funding mechanism after those options, IATSE will "reallocate" an additional 1% from wages or their IAP.
Pension retirees will receive 13th and 14th checks for all three years.
Concerning TV Made For Basic Cable Productions:
Employers say that the union agreed to continue to grant waivers providing that for pilots and one-hour series made for basic cable, the employers can use the terms and discounts of the MOW sideletter for the first season of a series, and then start using the terms and conditions of the one-hour series sideletter.
Concerning Original Programs Made For New Media:
Employers agreed to exclusive recognition for IATSE for the geographic scope of their current agreements for entertainment programs of the type traditionally covered by their deals.
Employers agreed that derivative programs are all covered except for those produced under the IA Videotape Agreement which will be treated the same as original programs made for New Media.
Employers believe that, as for as covered programs, rates and terms are generally freely negotiable. Union security, no-strike/lockout, and grievance and arbitration provisions will apply. No mandatory staffing. Full interchange of job functions. If a person is required to work on a derivative project on the same day as a source production, they must be paid as a continuation of their regular rates and work conditions.
Unions think that covered employees may be assigned to the derivative prodution as part of the regular workday on the source production. Extended workday or overtime payments, asapplicable, would be triggered if the work extends past the contractual workday. Otherwise, terms and conditions of employment are freely negotiable.
Union thinks that in all cases pension and health contributions will be due in the normal amounts.
Union agrees that IATSE shall administer the grievance and arbitration of the New Media provisions and to remove the Step 2 provisions of the basic agreement grievance and arbitration procedure.
The union understands that original productions will be covered if the cost of production is over either $15,000 per minute as exhibite, or $300,000 per single production, or $500,000 for a series order.
The employers claim there's no coverage for experimental programs the same as under the DGA/WGA/and AFTRA agreements unless they have 4 or more employees on the West Coast Industry Experience Roster. Unions say that, in the case of local unions with no Roster, or where the Roster does not apply, original productions will be covered if said employees who've worked 30 or more days under any motion picture agreement. (Companies say employees for 30 days over 3 years under terms of those agreements.) Union thinks that, for those productions that don't otherwise trigger the agreement, the employer may utilize the agreement for experimental productions upon written notification at least two weeks prior to commencing the given production.
Employers think there are certain limited coverage exclusions for persons who are not specifically charged to overhead who work on the projects, and union believes the following classifications are excluded for purpoises of triggering the application of the agreement: (story analysts, projectionists, in-house publicists [not unit publicists], post-production with the exception of the Editor and Assistant Editor).
On the issue of union security, union believes that an employee employed on a New Media production shall become and remain in good standing of IATSE and the appropriate Local on and after the 30th day of covered work following thefirst day of employment or the effective date of such respectie agreements between companies and the several Unions, which is later. The forgoing requirements of Union membership as a condition of employment shall be subject to the obligations of the parties under the law. All other provisions of Union Security Provisions of applicable agreements shall be extende to New Media. Qualified status on the CSATF Industry Experience Roster wshall not be a condition of employmnt. Covered employees shall receive credit for Roster placement for days worked on New Media production.
Employers think they reached an understanding with IATSE on contracting out of programs.
Concerning Re-use of Programs Transmitted In New Media:
Employers agreed to pay residuals at 5.4% for derivative and original New Media programs when released originally on a consumer free ad-supported platform and then subsequently on a consumer pay platform for Electronic Sell-Through or download to rent (ITunes, Movie-Link, etc) after a 26-week period.
Employers agreed to pay if New Media programs are released on traditional media platforms (basic cable, pay TV, home video) under the normal rules for making Supplemental Markets payments.
Employers agreed that for Electronic Sell-Through and download to own, companies will pay 8.1% of 20% of producers gross for first 50,000 units sold, and 14.625% on sales thereafter, if a theaterical program is released after 8/1/09. If it's a TV program released after 8/1/09 for sale, companies will pay 8.1% of 100,000 units sold and then 15.75% for all sales thereafter. It's unclear if the unions have agreed to these terms or not.
Employers say IATSE (but not the Motion Picture Industry Pensions and Health Plans also which unions initially wanted) will have the same inspection rights on the contract's New Media license agreements that was given to the other unions. Union believes it's all un-redacted copies of all license, distribution, and other agreements pertaining to New Media exploitation on a quarterly basis. Union also believes the payments will be accompanied by detailed information as to the medium and source generating the receipts, as well as unredacted copies of all corollary distributor-, sub-distributor-, and exhibitor statements. Union believes in addition that each employer upon request will provide IATSE with data in its possession or the possession of its related and affiliated entites regarding the New Media exploitation of covered pictures, such as number of downloads or streams by source and ad rates.
Union refers to "Sideletter to Interim Agreement Regarding Re-Use In New Media".
Employers say there's a "Sunset" Clause for all of the New Media deal. The union says this about the "Sunset" clause: that both particies recognize that these provisions are being negotiated at a time when the business models and patterns of usage of motion pictures and other productions in New Media ae in the process of exploration, experimentation and innovation. Therefore, all the provisions relating to New Media expire on the termination date of the Basic Agreement and will be of no force and effect thereafter. No later than 60 days before that expiration date, the parties will meet to negotiate new terms and conditions in New Media.
The union also believes the parties' negotiation for the successor agreements will be based on the conditions that exist and reasonably can be forecast at that time. For example, with respect to the formula for the electronic sell-through of motion pictures and television programs, the growth of electronic sell-through could adversely impact traditional home video sales. In future negotiations, the parties agree that the criteria to be considered in good faith in determining whether the electronic sell-through residual should be increased or deceased include patterns of cannibalization of the home video market and changes in the wholesale price.
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A couple of weeks or so ago, in celebration of something weird like World Philosopher Day or something, a BBC journalist wrote down a series of philosophical dilemnas. I think there were 5 in total, but only one has remained behind to bug me constantly.
5 people are dying and in need of organ donations. Bob is a healthy person, with no friends or family whatsoever.Why don't we kill Bob and give his organs to the dying people?
To make you think about it, take this situation as well: you and 6 other people are taken hostage.The killer tells you that if you kill one of the other people, he'll let all the others go, else he will just kill everyone.
And if you're still having trouble: You're on a runaway train. There are two tracks up ahead. One has five people tied to it, the other has 1. Which do you take?
(Note, these are not my ideas - they're the ideas of the Beeb's philosopher dude, but I can't remember his name!)
This has been bugging me soo much! On the face it, all three are very similar: kill 1 to save 5. I think number 1 is wrong, but it's so hard to form a logical argument against it when the other two seem right to me. (although number two is very similar to the dilemna in the Dark Knight where they didn't kill anyone at all, so...)
And when I think about my reason, it makes it sound even worse. Organ donations are needed due to an illness, most usually.An act of nature. The other two are acts of men - it's not something that would naturally arise, it has been forced upon us. In the past there was no such thing as organ donors: people just died. Shouldn't we just be grateful for what we have? It's not like the fiver terminal patients will die completely immediately. Technology has made such amazing discoveries and inventions now a days. I was reading the other day about a girl who survived for a month (or maybe it was 3) without a heart, waiting for a donor.
That's what I mean. It's a long, cruel wait for organs, but they come eventually. In a runaway train, people are going to die no matter what you do, so you try and limit the casualties.But death doesn't necessarily come for those who're waiting for organs.
I'm still stuck on the hostage one. I'm not sure I could ever actually kill someone, even if it did save lives.I'd still have killed someone else to save my own life - taking someone's mother/father/child/sibling/partner etc away from them. How do you choose who to shoot? If he gave me a gun, maybe I'd shoot our hostage taker! That seems like a far more sensible choice. Would you kill yourself, maybe? Maybe someone would volunteer. Maybe someone else would do it, but I really don't think I could. Unlike our unrealistic Bob, all these people would have people who cared about them, would cry and grieve and hate me when they're gone.
No one should be aimed to be killed to save another.The world should never work like that. That involves planning this persons murder - and that's basically what it would be.And so you killed one person to save 5. Worked out pretty well. Why not kill another then?And another? But what if you can't find someone who meets the specific requirements who is totally alone - what if you find someone, but they have a family, friends, a life... You're still saving 5 though - that's a 4 life balance. Good enough!Then you think, well a balance of 3 - even 2 - isn't so bad either. Then maybe you get far enough down the line where it's one for one: one unimportant cashier or driver for one very important person: a president, a top government scientist, even a famous actress? There will always be people in need of organs.If we start seeing people as just incubators for organs then no life is sacred, and we spiral down into a well of righteous murder and discrimination.
Hmm... well, the philosopher exercise seems to have worked: I've gone all philosophical about it.
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5 people are dying and in need of organ donations. Bob is a healthy person, with no friends or family whatsoever.Why don't we kill Bob and give his organs to the dying people?
To make you think about it, take this situation as well: you and 6 other people are taken hostage.The killer tells you that if you kill one of the other people, he'll let all the others go, else he will just kill everyone.
And if you're still having trouble: You're on a runaway train. There are two tracks up ahead. One has five people tied to it, the other has 1. Which do you take?
(Note, these are not my ideas - they're the ideas of the Beeb's philosopher dude, but I can't remember his name!)
This has been bugging me soo much! On the face it, all three are very similar: kill 1 to save 5. I think number 1 is wrong, but it's so hard to form a logical argument against it when the other two seem right to me. (although number two is very similar to the dilemna in the Dark Knight where they didn't kill anyone at all, so...)
And when I think about my reason, it makes it sound even worse. Organ donations are needed due to an illness, most usually.An act of nature. The other two are acts of men - it's not something that would naturally arise, it has been forced upon us. In the past there was no such thing as organ donors: people just died. Shouldn't we just be grateful for what we have? It's not like the fiver terminal patients will die completely immediately. Technology has made such amazing discoveries and inventions now a days. I was reading the other day about a girl who survived for a month (or maybe it was 3) without a heart, waiting for a donor.
That's what I mean. It's a long, cruel wait for organs, but they come eventually. In a runaway train, people are going to die no matter what you do, so you try and limit the casualties.But death doesn't necessarily come for those who're waiting for organs.
I'm still stuck on the hostage one. I'm not sure I could ever actually kill someone, even if it did save lives.I'd still have killed someone else to save my own life - taking someone's mother/father/child/sibling/partner etc away from them. How do you choose who to shoot? If he gave me a gun, maybe I'd shoot our hostage taker! That seems like a far more sensible choice. Would you kill yourself, maybe? Maybe someone would volunteer. Maybe someone else would do it, but I really don't think I could. Unlike our unrealistic Bob, all these people would have people who cared about them, would cry and grieve and hate me when they're gone.
No one should be aimed to be killed to save another.The world should never work like that. That involves planning this persons murder - and that's basically what it would be.And so you killed one person to save 5. Worked out pretty well. Why not kill another then?And another? But what if you can't find someone who meets the specific requirements who is totally alone - what if you find someone, but they have a family, friends, a life... You're still saving 5 though - that's a 4 life balance. Good enough!Then you think, well a balance of 3 - even 2 - isn't so bad either. Then maybe you get far enough down the line where it's one for one: one unimportant cashier or driver for one very important person: a president, a top government scientist, even a famous actress? There will always be people in need of organs.If we start seeing people as just incubators for organs then no life is sacred, and we spiral down into a well of righteous murder and discrimination.
Hmm... well, the philosopher exercise seems to have worked: I've gone all philosophical about it.
Americano news >>> Read more...
- Mood:earnest
- Music:Outkast
- Mood:life
- Music:Langhorne Slim
Once again following Chance here, who commented on the Grammy Records of the Year. It looked like fun, so I'm joining in.
2008
Winner: Rehab, Amy Winehouse. I didn't join in the showering of praise for it. Meh.
My Favorite Nominee: Umbrella, Rihanna featuring Jay-Z.
My Favorite Single That Year: Shut Up and Drive, Rihanna. It's sexier and more playful than "Umbrella."
2007
Winner: Not Ready to Make Nice, Dixie Chicks. It's not a terrible song, really, but it's such an obvious choice. It Makes a Statement. It's about the only Dixie Chicks song I can listen to, but it's not something I put on intentionally.
My Favorite Nominee: Crazy, Gnarls Barkley. It's perfection.
My Favorite Single That Year: Crazy, Gnarls Barkley. See previous comment.
2006
Winner: Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Green Day. As I've said before on this blog, I'm not a big fan of what Green Day has on offer. I mean, they're kind of okay, this is one of the better songs, but I don't find them as astounding as other people seem to.
My Favorite Nominee: Gold Digger, Kanye West. The only Kanye single I've ever liked or will like.
My Favorite Single That Year: All These Things That I've Done, the Killers.
2005
Winner: Here We Go Again, Ray Charles Norah Jones. You know, I'm not even sure I've ever heard this.
My Favorite Nominee: American Idiot, Green Day. Not much of a crop this year in the nominee pool, but I actually do really like this song.
My Favorite Single That Year: American Idiot, Green Day.
2004
Winner: Clocks, Coldplay. One of the few songs I give them credit for in their endless quest to become the Divine Comedy without anyone noticing. Overrated, but a decent adult contemporary song.
My Favorite Nominee: Hey Ya, OutKast. A perfect pop single. It was overplayed (as was "Clocks"), but it's just so damn good.
My Favorite Single That Year: Hey Ya, OutKast.
2003
Winner: Don't Know Why, Norah Jones. Pretty, but it got old fast. Very adult contemporary, which is still the sound that wins the Grammys. The only Norah Jones song I love is "Sunrise."
My Favorite Nominee: Without Me, Eminem. I hate the guy, but his music is very well-produced. This is pretty much the one song of his I like.
My Favorite Single That Year: Beautiful, Christina Aguilera.
2002
Winner: Walk On, U2. I couldn't pick this song out of a line-up. I like about enough U2 songs to fill a single CD.
My Favorite Nominee: Ms. Jackson, OutKast. I notice "Fallin'" by Alicia Keys was nominated, too. That's a song I'll be thrilled to never hear again.
My Favorite Single That Year: Lady Marmelade, Christina Aguilera, Pink, Mya Li'l Kim. The only thing I liked to come out of Moulin Rouge.
2001
Winner: Beautiful Day, U2. Now that's a U2 song that I like very much. And it makes me feel pretty good.
My Favorite Nominee: Beautiful Day, U2.
My Favorite Single That Year: Beautiful Day, U2.
2000
Winner: Smooth, Santana featuring Rob Thomas. I got so sick of this song playing every minute on every radio station and commercial. I think Santana's pretty overrated, to be honest.
My Favorite Nominee: I don't like any of the songs nominated this year.
My Favorite Single That Year: ...Baby One More Time, Britney Spears. Dopey, sure, but everything that makes a pop single great.
1999
Winner: My Heart Will Go On, Celine Dion. This was very easy to get sick of as well; cloying and over-the-top and insisting on its own epic greatness. Blurg. The music's pretty; I have a string quartet version that didn't make it onto the soundtrack (from a promo CD) that's lovely. It doesn't need Celine Dion or lyrics to work. It sounds better without them.
My Favorite Nominee: Ray of Light, Madonna. I don't have much to say about it, but it works.
My Favorite Single That Year: Flagpole Sitta, Harvey Danger. That song just makes me feel awesome. I love it.
1998
Winner: Sunny Came Home, Shawn Colvin. Music from the nineties has an overwhelming percentage of suck, more than any decade. It's like America went through menopause and could only listen to this kind of sappy pap. I hate this thing, and thanks to the Crap and Crap Lite stations being played where I worked constantly, I heard it way too many fucking times.
My Favorite Nominee: MMMBop, Hanson. It's a default choice; it's the one I think is okay whereas I despise all the others (especially "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone" by Paul Cole, which should be classified a form of abuse).
My Favorite Single That Year: The End Is the Beginning Is the End, Smashing Pumpkins. I love that they used it in the Watchmen trailer.
1997
Winner: Change the World, Eric Clapton. I'm not much of a Clapton fan, really. I did like this song, although it's association with the awful Scientology-promoting John Travolta film Phenomenon counts against it a tad. It's not earth-shaking, but it's a solid, not-unpleasant song.
My Favorite Nominee: 1979, Smashing Pumpkins. Haunting, beautiful, and bittersweet.
My Favorite Single That Year: 1979, Smashing Pumpkins.
1996
Winner: Kiss from a Rose, Seal. I think it's a beautiful song. I used to hear it a lot on the radio as I was driving to work in the winter at a very dark 5 in the morning. That's the perfect time to hear it. It'll take you on a trip.
My Favorite Nominee: Kiss from a Rose, Seal.
My Favorite Single That Year: Kiss from a Rose, Seal.
1995
Winner: All I Wanna Do, Sheryl Crow. Blurg. Not a song I like.
My Favorite Nominee: Streets of Philadelphia, Bruce Springsteen. Beautiful, sad, and seething with quiet ange, disappointment, and acceptance of fear.
My Favorite Single That Year: Streets of Philadelphia, Bruce Springsteen.
1994
Winner: I Will Always Love You, Whitney Houston. Piece of overplayed shit. Especially in comparison to the original Dolly Parton song, which is perfect.
My Favorite Nominee: The River of Dreams, Billy Joel.
My Favorite Single That Year: Fields of Gold, Sting. Kind of a cheesy choice, perhaps, but I can always hear it and always love it. It's simple and pretty.
1993
Winner: Tears in Heaven, Eric Clapton. It doesn't quite hold up for me, honestly, but it's miles better than fellow nominee "Achy Breaky Heart." It's a very pretty song, but not my favorite of Clapton's.
My Favorite Nominee: Constant Craving, k.d. lang. I like the passion.
My Favorite Single That Year: One, U2. One of the most achingly beautiful songs I've ever heard.
1992
Winner: Unforgettable, Natalie Cole. The fact that the Grammys honored that hacky, schlocky, sympathy-begging, cloying bit of grave-robbing Natalie Cole did to cash in on honor her father is as sad as it is unsurprising.
My Favorite Nominee: Losing My Religion, R.E.M. It was overplayed, but if you listen to it now, it sounds almost fresh again. It really is just a good song.
My Favorite Single That Year: Crazy, Seal.
1991
Winner: Another Day in Paradise, Phil Collins. Preachy, annoying, and not even the best song from that Phil Collins album. (Actually, I just checked and sadly, it is. I despise "Something Happened on the Way to Heaven," and "I Wish It Would Rain" just sounds like a rip-off of "Wish You Were Here" with Clapton on guitar.)
My Favorite Nominee: Nothing Compares 2 U, Sinead O'Connor. Of the sappy, preachy, sad sack songs that were nominated this year, this is the one that's actually a good song. (Also, "U Can't Touch This" was nominated this year, but come on, man.)
My Favorite Single This Year: Enjoy the Silence, Depeche Mode. Now there's a love song.
1990
Winner: Wind Beneath My Wings, Bette Midler. I hate this song, and my dad pissed me off by playing it at his wedding reception for his mother, which I specifically told him not to do because it was such a fucking cliche. He said he wouldn't; he did. Wow, my grandma must have been one of 10 million special woman so uniquely honored that year. It's the equivalent of buying your dad a tie on Father's Day.
My Favorite Nominee: The End of the Innocence, Don Henley. Chance is right on when he calls it deceptively angry. It adds some world-weariness on top of that, too. Beautiful song.
My Favorite Single That Year: A Little Respect, Erasure. I usually come out on the side of pop, I guess. Although besides the catchiness, I think the lyrics are beautiful. One of my all time favorite lyrics comes from this song: "What religion or reason could drive a man to forsake his lover?"
1989
Winner: Don't Worry, Be Happy, Bobby McFerrin. I always liked this song, but it sure wasn't the best of the year. I think part of it was the novelty of McFerrin doing the whole thing a cappella. Which is admittedly neat.
My Favorite Nominee: Don't Worry, Be Happy, Bobby McFerrin.
My Favorite Single That Year: Sweet Child O' Mine, Guns 'n' Roses. The most perfect song they ever recorded.
1988
Winner: Graceland, Paul Simon. I'm not a big fan of this song for whatever reason. It's nice, but it's okay. I wouldn't turn it off if it came on the radio station. Really, I just don't dig Paul Simon's solo work that much.
My Favorite Nominee: Back in the High Life Again, Steve Winwood. Admittedly, mostly because it reminds me of better times. But it's pretty.
My Favorite Single That Year: With or Without You, U2. Grammy nominated the more ubiquitous and much less beautiful "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," a song I don't like. "With or Without You" is real passion.
1987
Winner: Higher Love, Steve Winwood. Meh. It's okay.
My Favorite Nominee: Sledgehammer, Peter Gabriel. It's a lot of sucky nominees this year, but this is a great song.
My Favorite Single That Year: True Colors, Cyndi Lauper. A beautiful love song, especially for people who don't feel so great about themselves. I guess I like genuine songs about understanding, I would say.
1986
Winner: We Are the World, USA for Africa. Of course. Nothing else was going to win this year. As a song, it's okay. The real fun is trying to pick out all the singers. I mean, you know, it's Really Important, but it's just okay.
My Favorite Nominee: Money for Nothing, Dire Straits. One of their couple of songs I like. One of my favorite guitar solos.
My Favorite Single That Year: Take on Me, a-Ha. Pop perfection in all of its catchy, bubblegum glory.
1985
Winner: What's Love Got to Do with It, Tina Turner. There's genuine force behind it (although I think "Private Dancer" is her best song), real heartbreak.
My Favorite Nominee: Dancing in the Dark, Bruce Springsteen. At his most pop. I love this song.
My Favorite Song That Year: Time After Time, Cyndi Lauper. Gorgeous and simple.
1984
Winner: Beat It, Michael Jackson. Not much of a surprise, I guess. And it's a good song. Eddie Van Halen's guitar solo alone...
My Favorite Nominee: Flashdance... What a Feeling, Irene Cara. All of the nominees this year are pretty good but nothing I feel especially attached to. This is one of those cheesy pop songs I like.
My Favorite Single That Year: Our House, Madness. One of the most perfect songs I've ever loved.
1983
Winner: Rosanna, Toto. It's okay.
My Favorite Nominee: Steppin' Out, Joe Jackson. That one always got me and carried me off.
My Favorite Single That Year: Under Pressure, Queen David Bowie. Everything that's shitty about society in four and a half minutes. "And love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night."
1982
Winner: Bette Davis Eyes, Kim Carnes. Meh. I don't feel strongly either way.
My Favorite Nominee: (Just Like) Starting Over, John Lennon. What a great song. I can't believe it lost to Kim Carnes... greatness versus... well, nothing worth commenting on. As usual, John Lennon just nails life and relationships with this song.
My Favorite Single This Year: In the Air Tonight, Phil Collins. Collins used to be a man who just knew darkness and how it felt to be depressed and angry.
1981
Winner: Sailing, Christopher Cross. Put me to sleep, why don't ya?
My Favorite Nominee: Theme from New York, New York, Frank Sinatra.
My Favorite Single That Year: Let My Love Open the Door, Pete Townshend. As great a song as he ever wrote for the Who, his best solo work, and one of his most genuinely passionate songs.
1980
Winner: What a Fool Believes, the Doobie Brothers. I'm not a fan of theirs. This is probably the one song of theirs I'd say I liked. Still, Record of the Year? Feh.
My Favorite Nominee: I Will Survive, Gloria Gaynor. I like the sweep of it.
My Favorite Single That Year: Video Killed the Radio Star, the Buggles. Another perfect pop record.
1979
Winner: Just the Way You Are, Billy Joel. It is a pretty song, however much Joel claims now that he wrote it accidentally. Is he ever going to stop apologizing for having good commercial instincts? One of his less angry songs, too. I've always liked it.
My Favorite Nominee: Baker Street, Gerry Rafferty. Or as I always used to call it, "That One with the Great Saxophone Part."
My Favorite Single That Year: Who Are You, the Who. My favorite song of theirs, for reasons I can't quite define. But it's a great damn song.
1978
Winner: Hotel California, the Eagles. I hate the Eagles, but I'll give them this one song. This is a damn good song.
My Favorite Nominee: Hotel California, the Eagles.
My Favorite Single That Year: Hotel California, the Eagles.
1977
Winner: This Masquerade, George Benson. I couldn't tell you how this goes.
My Favorite Nominee: Afternoon Delight, Starland Vocal Band. It's delightful.
My Favorite Single That Year: Somebody to Love, Queen. A beautiful epic of emotion. One of my favorite songs ever.
1976
Winner: Love Will Keep Us Together, the Captain Tennille. It's okay.
My Favorite Nominee: At Seventeen, Janis Ian.
My Favorite Single That Year: Young Americans, David Bowie. That one packs a wallop and makes "Love Will Keep Us Together" sound pretty frivolous.
1975
Winner: I Honestly Love You, Olivia Newton-John. I honestly detest this cloying, overwrought song.
My Favorite Nominee: Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me, Elton John. You want passion? There you go. Skip the other song entirely.
My Favorite Single That Year: Cat's in the Cradle, Harry Chapin. Hey, hey, it's a cliched choice for a reason.
1974
Winner: Killing Me Softly with His Song, Roberta Flack. It's pretty. It's also soporific.
My Favorite Nominee: You're So Vain, Carly Simon. A nice kiss-off song.
My Favorite Single That Year: Mind Games, John Lennon. Gorgeous.
1973
Winner: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, Roberta Flack. I've always found this song kind of overwrought.
My Favorite Nominee: American Pie, Don McLean. Come on, how could you pick a different one? (Although I've always loved Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again (Naturally)," a deceptively bleak and saddening song.)
My Favorite Single That Year: Let's Stay Together, Al Green. You want to get laid? You need some Al Green music.
1972
Winner: It's Too Late, Carole King. I can't place it off the top of my head, but I've never liked Carole King's as a singer.
My Favorite Nominee: My Sweet Lord, George Harrison. It's not much of a song, really, but I didn't like any of the other nominees much.
My Favorite Single That Year: Imagine, John Lennon. I can't believe this was never nominated for Record of the Year. What the hell?
1971
Winner: Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel. An undeniably beautiful song.
My Favorite Nominee: Let It Be, the Beatles. Still Paul McCartney's most beautiful effort.
My Favorite Single That Year: Let It Be, the Beatles. Seriously, they didn't pick this?
1970
Winner: Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, the Fifth Dimension. Definitely a good song.
My Favorite Nominee: A Boy Named Sue, Johnny Cash. It's funny and Cash delivers it well. I'll always pull for Shel Silverstein.
My Favorite Single That Year: Suspicious Minds, Elvis Presley. His final masterpiece, one of his best songs (in my top five).
1969
Winner: Mrs. Robinson, Simon and Garfunkel. Good but not really special.
My Favorite Nominee: Hey Jude, the Beatles. A masterpiece.
My Favorite Single That Year: (Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay, Otis Redding. One of the most quietly perfect songs I've ever heard.
1968
Winner: Up, Up and Away, the Fifth Dimension. What a lame choice. I mean, it's a cute song, but what a lame choice at this point in music history.
My Favorite Nominee: My Cup Runneth Over, Ed Ames.
My Favorite Single That Year: Can't Take My Eyes Off You, Frankie Valli. But that's the tip of the iceberg; this year produced, off the top of my head, "Heroes and Villains," "All You Need Is Love," "I Was Made to Love Her," "Light My Fire," "A Whiter Shade of Pale," and "(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman," and Grammy nominates "Ode to Billie Joe"? Lame, lame, lame.
1967
Winner: Strangers in the Night, Frank Sinatra. A good song, one I always liked.
My Favorite Nominee: Strangers in the Night, Frank Sinatra.
My Favorite Single That Year: Good Vibrations, the Beach Boys. Another incredible year for rock, and the Grammys can only acknowledge "Monday, Monday." What a foolish institution to pass over the greatness they did.
1966
Winner: A Taste of Honey, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. The best of the several thousand versions that seem to be out there.
My Favorite Nominee: Yesterday, the Beatles. As beautiful a song as was ever written.
My Favorite Single That Year: Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan. Transcendent.
1965
Winner: The Girl from Ipanema, Stan Getz João Gilberto. A lovely little song that I've always liked as background music.
My Favorite Nominee: Downtown, Petula Clark. I forget just how beautiful this one is.
My Favorite Single That Year: Don't Worry, Baby, the Beach Boys. Perfect.
1964
Winner: Days of Wine and Roses, Henry Mancini. Nothing song from a rather turgid movie.
My Favorite Nominee: Dominique, the Singing Nun. That's painful to say, but the nominees this year are just that bad. Again, zero acknowledgement of rock and roll or even the great folk music from this time.
My Favorite Single That Year: Surfer Girl, the Beach Boys. Hey, Brian Wilson just knows how to hit me where it counts. Teenage love deified.
1963
Winner: I Left My Heart in San Francisco, Tony Bennett. A beautiful song.
My Favorite Nominee: I Left My Heart in San Francisco, Tony Bennett.
My Favorite Single That Year: Telstar, the Tornados. That one always takes me right off and makes me love being alive.
1962
Winner: Moon River, Henry Mancini. I'm never sorry to have heard this song. It's always beautiful, and always necessary.
My Favorite Nominee: Moon River, Henry Mancini. Infinitesimal second: "Take Five" by Dave Brubeck.
My Favorite Single That Year: Stand by Me, Ben E. King. The best time to hear this song is in the still of the deep night.
1961
Winner: Theme from A Summer Place, Percy Faith. The music is pretty.
My Favorite Nominee: Georgia on My Mind, Ray Charles. It's insane that this didn't win. This is the very definition of a beautiful song.
My Favorite Single That Year: Georgia on My Mind, Ray Charles.
1960
Winner: Mack the Knife, Bobby Darin. I like this song; it's fun as hell to sing along to.
My Favorite Nominee: Mack the Knife, Bobby Darin.
My Favorite Single That Year: Sleepwalk, Santo Johnny. Another great late night song.
1959
Winner: Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (Volare), Domenico Modugno. Okay. I can't believe anyone does this song better than Dean Martin, personally. I don't believe I've heard this version.
My Favorite Nominee: The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late), David Seville. I know, I know, but I love this song. It's a Christmas staple to me. It reminds me of being a kid and spending the lead-up to Christmas at my grandmother's house. It's a cozy song for me.
My Favorite Single That Year: Summertime Blues, Eddie Cochran. As vital a song as there is, considering how much rock continues to borrow from it. And more than that, just a catchy tune.
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2008
Winner: Rehab, Amy Winehouse. I didn't join in the showering of praise for it. Meh.
My Favorite Nominee: Umbrella, Rihanna featuring Jay-Z.
My Favorite Single That Year: Shut Up and Drive, Rihanna. It's sexier and more playful than "Umbrella."
2007
Winner: Not Ready to Make Nice, Dixie Chicks. It's not a terrible song, really, but it's such an obvious choice. It Makes a Statement. It's about the only Dixie Chicks song I can listen to, but it's not something I put on intentionally.
My Favorite Nominee: Crazy, Gnarls Barkley. It's perfection.
My Favorite Single That Year: Crazy, Gnarls Barkley. See previous comment.
2006
Winner: Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Green Day. As I've said before on this blog, I'm not a big fan of what Green Day has on offer. I mean, they're kind of okay, this is one of the better songs, but I don't find them as astounding as other people seem to.
My Favorite Nominee: Gold Digger, Kanye West. The only Kanye single I've ever liked or will like.
My Favorite Single That Year: All These Things That I've Done, the Killers.
2005
Winner: Here We Go Again, Ray Charles Norah Jones. You know, I'm not even sure I've ever heard this.
My Favorite Nominee: American Idiot, Green Day. Not much of a crop this year in the nominee pool, but I actually do really like this song.
My Favorite Single That Year: American Idiot, Green Day.
2004
Winner: Clocks, Coldplay. One of the few songs I give them credit for in their endless quest to become the Divine Comedy without anyone noticing. Overrated, but a decent adult contemporary song.
My Favorite Nominee: Hey Ya, OutKast. A perfect pop single. It was overplayed (as was "Clocks"), but it's just so damn good.
My Favorite Single That Year: Hey Ya, OutKast.
2003
Winner: Don't Know Why, Norah Jones. Pretty, but it got old fast. Very adult contemporary, which is still the sound that wins the Grammys. The only Norah Jones song I love is "Sunrise."
My Favorite Nominee: Without Me, Eminem. I hate the guy, but his music is very well-produced. This is pretty much the one song of his I like.
My Favorite Single That Year: Beautiful, Christina Aguilera.
2002
Winner: Walk On, U2. I couldn't pick this song out of a line-up. I like about enough U2 songs to fill a single CD.
My Favorite Nominee: Ms. Jackson, OutKast. I notice "Fallin'" by Alicia Keys was nominated, too. That's a song I'll be thrilled to never hear again.
My Favorite Single That Year: Lady Marmelade, Christina Aguilera, Pink, Mya Li'l Kim. The only thing I liked to come out of Moulin Rouge.
2001
Winner: Beautiful Day, U2. Now that's a U2 song that I like very much. And it makes me feel pretty good.
My Favorite Nominee: Beautiful Day, U2.
My Favorite Single That Year: Beautiful Day, U2.
2000
Winner: Smooth, Santana featuring Rob Thomas. I got so sick of this song playing every minute on every radio station and commercial. I think Santana's pretty overrated, to be honest.
My Favorite Nominee: I don't like any of the songs nominated this year.
My Favorite Single That Year: ...Baby One More Time, Britney Spears. Dopey, sure, but everything that makes a pop single great.
1999
Winner: My Heart Will Go On, Celine Dion. This was very easy to get sick of as well; cloying and over-the-top and insisting on its own epic greatness. Blurg. The music's pretty; I have a string quartet version that didn't make it onto the soundtrack (from a promo CD) that's lovely. It doesn't need Celine Dion or lyrics to work. It sounds better without them.
My Favorite Nominee: Ray of Light, Madonna. I don't have much to say about it, but it works.
My Favorite Single That Year: Flagpole Sitta, Harvey Danger. That song just makes me feel awesome. I love it.
1998
Winner: Sunny Came Home, Shawn Colvin. Music from the nineties has an overwhelming percentage of suck, more than any decade. It's like America went through menopause and could only listen to this kind of sappy pap. I hate this thing, and thanks to the Crap and Crap Lite stations being played where I worked constantly, I heard it way too many fucking times.
My Favorite Nominee: MMMBop, Hanson. It's a default choice; it's the one I think is okay whereas I despise all the others (especially "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone" by Paul Cole, which should be classified a form of abuse).
My Favorite Single That Year: The End Is the Beginning Is the End, Smashing Pumpkins. I love that they used it in the Watchmen trailer.
1997
Winner: Change the World, Eric Clapton. I'm not much of a Clapton fan, really. I did like this song, although it's association with the awful Scientology-promoting John Travolta film Phenomenon counts against it a tad. It's not earth-shaking, but it's a solid, not-unpleasant song.
My Favorite Nominee: 1979, Smashing Pumpkins. Haunting, beautiful, and bittersweet.
My Favorite Single That Year: 1979, Smashing Pumpkins.
1996
Winner: Kiss from a Rose, Seal. I think it's a beautiful song. I used to hear it a lot on the radio as I was driving to work in the winter at a very dark 5 in the morning. That's the perfect time to hear it. It'll take you on a trip.
My Favorite Nominee: Kiss from a Rose, Seal.
My Favorite Single That Year: Kiss from a Rose, Seal.
1995
Winner: All I Wanna Do, Sheryl Crow. Blurg. Not a song I like.
My Favorite Nominee: Streets of Philadelphia, Bruce Springsteen. Beautiful, sad, and seething with quiet ange, disappointment, and acceptance of fear.
My Favorite Single That Year: Streets of Philadelphia, Bruce Springsteen.
1994
Winner: I Will Always Love You, Whitney Houston. Piece of overplayed shit. Especially in comparison to the original Dolly Parton song, which is perfect.
My Favorite Nominee: The River of Dreams, Billy Joel.
My Favorite Single That Year: Fields of Gold, Sting. Kind of a cheesy choice, perhaps, but I can always hear it and always love it. It's simple and pretty.
1993
Winner: Tears in Heaven, Eric Clapton. It doesn't quite hold up for me, honestly, but it's miles better than fellow nominee "Achy Breaky Heart." It's a very pretty song, but not my favorite of Clapton's.
My Favorite Nominee: Constant Craving, k.d. lang. I like the passion.
My Favorite Single That Year: One, U2. One of the most achingly beautiful songs I've ever heard.
1992
Winner: Unforgettable, Natalie Cole. The fact that the Grammys honored that hacky, schlocky, sympathy-begging, cloying bit of grave-robbing Natalie Cole did to cash in on honor her father is as sad as it is unsurprising.
My Favorite Nominee: Losing My Religion, R.E.M. It was overplayed, but if you listen to it now, it sounds almost fresh again. It really is just a good song.
My Favorite Single That Year: Crazy, Seal.
1991
Winner: Another Day in Paradise, Phil Collins. Preachy, annoying, and not even the best song from that Phil Collins album. (Actually, I just checked and sadly, it is. I despise "Something Happened on the Way to Heaven," and "I Wish It Would Rain" just sounds like a rip-off of "Wish You Were Here" with Clapton on guitar.)
My Favorite Nominee: Nothing Compares 2 U, Sinead O'Connor. Of the sappy, preachy, sad sack songs that were nominated this year, this is the one that's actually a good song. (Also, "U Can't Touch This" was nominated this year, but come on, man.)
My Favorite Single This Year: Enjoy the Silence, Depeche Mode. Now there's a love song.
1990
Winner: Wind Beneath My Wings, Bette Midler. I hate this song, and my dad pissed me off by playing it at his wedding reception for his mother, which I specifically told him not to do because it was such a fucking cliche. He said he wouldn't; he did. Wow, my grandma must have been one of 10 million special woman so uniquely honored that year. It's the equivalent of buying your dad a tie on Father's Day.
My Favorite Nominee: The End of the Innocence, Don Henley. Chance is right on when he calls it deceptively angry. It adds some world-weariness on top of that, too. Beautiful song.
My Favorite Single That Year: A Little Respect, Erasure. I usually come out on the side of pop, I guess. Although besides the catchiness, I think the lyrics are beautiful. One of my all time favorite lyrics comes from this song: "What religion or reason could drive a man to forsake his lover?"
1989
Winner: Don't Worry, Be Happy, Bobby McFerrin. I always liked this song, but it sure wasn't the best of the year. I think part of it was the novelty of McFerrin doing the whole thing a cappella. Which is admittedly neat.
My Favorite Nominee: Don't Worry, Be Happy, Bobby McFerrin.
My Favorite Single That Year: Sweet Child O' Mine, Guns 'n' Roses. The most perfect song they ever recorded.
1988
Winner: Graceland, Paul Simon. I'm not a big fan of this song for whatever reason. It's nice, but it's okay. I wouldn't turn it off if it came on the radio station. Really, I just don't dig Paul Simon's solo work that much.
My Favorite Nominee: Back in the High Life Again, Steve Winwood. Admittedly, mostly because it reminds me of better times. But it's pretty.
My Favorite Single That Year: With or Without You, U2. Grammy nominated the more ubiquitous and much less beautiful "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," a song I don't like. "With or Without You" is real passion.
1987
Winner: Higher Love, Steve Winwood. Meh. It's okay.
My Favorite Nominee: Sledgehammer, Peter Gabriel. It's a lot of sucky nominees this year, but this is a great song.
My Favorite Single That Year: True Colors, Cyndi Lauper. A beautiful love song, especially for people who don't feel so great about themselves. I guess I like genuine songs about understanding, I would say.
1986
Winner: We Are the World, USA for Africa. Of course. Nothing else was going to win this year. As a song, it's okay. The real fun is trying to pick out all the singers. I mean, you know, it's Really Important, but it's just okay.
My Favorite Nominee: Money for Nothing, Dire Straits. One of their couple of songs I like. One of my favorite guitar solos.
My Favorite Single That Year: Take on Me, a-Ha. Pop perfection in all of its catchy, bubblegum glory.
1985
Winner: What's Love Got to Do with It, Tina Turner. There's genuine force behind it (although I think "Private Dancer" is her best song), real heartbreak.
My Favorite Nominee: Dancing in the Dark, Bruce Springsteen. At his most pop. I love this song.
My Favorite Song That Year: Time After Time, Cyndi Lauper. Gorgeous and simple.
1984
Winner: Beat It, Michael Jackson. Not much of a surprise, I guess. And it's a good song. Eddie Van Halen's guitar solo alone...
My Favorite Nominee: Flashdance... What a Feeling, Irene Cara. All of the nominees this year are pretty good but nothing I feel especially attached to. This is one of those cheesy pop songs I like.
My Favorite Single That Year: Our House, Madness. One of the most perfect songs I've ever loved.
1983
Winner: Rosanna, Toto. It's okay.
My Favorite Nominee: Steppin' Out, Joe Jackson. That one always got me and carried me off.
My Favorite Single That Year: Under Pressure, Queen David Bowie. Everything that's shitty about society in four and a half minutes. "And love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night."
1982
Winner: Bette Davis Eyes, Kim Carnes. Meh. I don't feel strongly either way.
My Favorite Nominee: (Just Like) Starting Over, John Lennon. What a great song. I can't believe it lost to Kim Carnes... greatness versus... well, nothing worth commenting on. As usual, John Lennon just nails life and relationships with this song.
My Favorite Single This Year: In the Air Tonight, Phil Collins. Collins used to be a man who just knew darkness and how it felt to be depressed and angry.
1981
Winner: Sailing, Christopher Cross. Put me to sleep, why don't ya?
My Favorite Nominee: Theme from New York, New York, Frank Sinatra.
My Favorite Single That Year: Let My Love Open the Door, Pete Townshend. As great a song as he ever wrote for the Who, his best solo work, and one of his most genuinely passionate songs.
1980
Winner: What a Fool Believes, the Doobie Brothers. I'm not a fan of theirs. This is probably the one song of theirs I'd say I liked. Still, Record of the Year? Feh.
My Favorite Nominee: I Will Survive, Gloria Gaynor. I like the sweep of it.
My Favorite Single That Year: Video Killed the Radio Star, the Buggles. Another perfect pop record.
1979
Winner: Just the Way You Are, Billy Joel. It is a pretty song, however much Joel claims now that he wrote it accidentally. Is he ever going to stop apologizing for having good commercial instincts? One of his less angry songs, too. I've always liked it.
My Favorite Nominee: Baker Street, Gerry Rafferty. Or as I always used to call it, "That One with the Great Saxophone Part."
My Favorite Single That Year: Who Are You, the Who. My favorite song of theirs, for reasons I can't quite define. But it's a great damn song.
1978
Winner: Hotel California, the Eagles. I hate the Eagles, but I'll give them this one song. This is a damn good song.
My Favorite Nominee: Hotel California, the Eagles.
My Favorite Single That Year: Hotel California, the Eagles.
1977
Winner: This Masquerade, George Benson. I couldn't tell you how this goes.
My Favorite Nominee: Afternoon Delight, Starland Vocal Band. It's delightful.
My Favorite Single That Year: Somebody to Love, Queen. A beautiful epic of emotion. One of my favorite songs ever.
1976
Winner: Love Will Keep Us Together, the Captain Tennille. It's okay.
My Favorite Nominee: At Seventeen, Janis Ian.
My Favorite Single That Year: Young Americans, David Bowie. That one packs a wallop and makes "Love Will Keep Us Together" sound pretty frivolous.
1975
Winner: I Honestly Love You, Olivia Newton-John. I honestly detest this cloying, overwrought song.
My Favorite Nominee: Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me, Elton John. You want passion? There you go. Skip the other song entirely.
My Favorite Single That Year: Cat's in the Cradle, Harry Chapin. Hey, hey, it's a cliched choice for a reason.
1974
Winner: Killing Me Softly with His Song, Roberta Flack. It's pretty. It's also soporific.
My Favorite Nominee: You're So Vain, Carly Simon. A nice kiss-off song.
My Favorite Single That Year: Mind Games, John Lennon. Gorgeous.
1973
Winner: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, Roberta Flack. I've always found this song kind of overwrought.
My Favorite Nominee: American Pie, Don McLean. Come on, how could you pick a different one? (Although I've always loved Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again (Naturally)," a deceptively bleak and saddening song.)
My Favorite Single That Year: Let's Stay Together, Al Green. You want to get laid? You need some Al Green music.
1972
Winner: It's Too Late, Carole King. I can't place it off the top of my head, but I've never liked Carole King's as a singer.
My Favorite Nominee: My Sweet Lord, George Harrison. It's not much of a song, really, but I didn't like any of the other nominees much.
My Favorite Single That Year: Imagine, John Lennon. I can't believe this was never nominated for Record of the Year. What the hell?
1971
Winner: Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel. An undeniably beautiful song.
My Favorite Nominee: Let It Be, the Beatles. Still Paul McCartney's most beautiful effort.
My Favorite Single That Year: Let It Be, the Beatles. Seriously, they didn't pick this?
1970
Winner: Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, the Fifth Dimension. Definitely a good song.
My Favorite Nominee: A Boy Named Sue, Johnny Cash. It's funny and Cash delivers it well. I'll always pull for Shel Silverstein.
My Favorite Single That Year: Suspicious Minds, Elvis Presley. His final masterpiece, one of his best songs (in my top five).
1969
Winner: Mrs. Robinson, Simon and Garfunkel. Good but not really special.
My Favorite Nominee: Hey Jude, the Beatles. A masterpiece.
My Favorite Single That Year: (Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay, Otis Redding. One of the most quietly perfect songs I've ever heard.
1968
Winner: Up, Up and Away, the Fifth Dimension. What a lame choice. I mean, it's a cute song, but what a lame choice at this point in music history.
My Favorite Nominee: My Cup Runneth Over, Ed Ames.
My Favorite Single That Year: Can't Take My Eyes Off You, Frankie Valli. But that's the tip of the iceberg; this year produced, off the top of my head, "Heroes and Villains," "All You Need Is Love," "I Was Made to Love Her," "Light My Fire," "A Whiter Shade of Pale," and "(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman," and Grammy nominates "Ode to Billie Joe"? Lame, lame, lame.
1967
Winner: Strangers in the Night, Frank Sinatra. A good song, one I always liked.
My Favorite Nominee: Strangers in the Night, Frank Sinatra.
My Favorite Single That Year: Good Vibrations, the Beach Boys. Another incredible year for rock, and the Grammys can only acknowledge "Monday, Monday." What a foolish institution to pass over the greatness they did.
1966
Winner: A Taste of Honey, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. The best of the several thousand versions that seem to be out there.
My Favorite Nominee: Yesterday, the Beatles. As beautiful a song as was ever written.
My Favorite Single That Year: Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan. Transcendent.
1965
Winner: The Girl from Ipanema, Stan Getz João Gilberto. A lovely little song that I've always liked as background music.
My Favorite Nominee: Downtown, Petula Clark. I forget just how beautiful this one is.
My Favorite Single That Year: Don't Worry, Baby, the Beach Boys. Perfect.
1964
Winner: Days of Wine and Roses, Henry Mancini. Nothing song from a rather turgid movie.
My Favorite Nominee: Dominique, the Singing Nun. That's painful to say, but the nominees this year are just that bad. Again, zero acknowledgement of rock and roll or even the great folk music from this time.
My Favorite Single That Year: Surfer Girl, the Beach Boys. Hey, Brian Wilson just knows how to hit me where it counts. Teenage love deified.
1963
Winner: I Left My Heart in San Francisco, Tony Bennett. A beautiful song.
My Favorite Nominee: I Left My Heart in San Francisco, Tony Bennett.
My Favorite Single That Year: Telstar, the Tornados. That one always takes me right off and makes me love being alive.
1962
Winner: Moon River, Henry Mancini. I'm never sorry to have heard this song. It's always beautiful, and always necessary.
My Favorite Nominee: Moon River, Henry Mancini. Infinitesimal second: "Take Five" by Dave Brubeck.
My Favorite Single That Year: Stand by Me, Ben E. King. The best time to hear this song is in the still of the deep night.
1961
Winner: Theme from A Summer Place, Percy Faith. The music is pretty.
My Favorite Nominee: Georgia on My Mind, Ray Charles. It's insane that this didn't win. This is the very definition of a beautiful song.
My Favorite Single That Year: Georgia on My Mind, Ray Charles.
1960
Winner: Mack the Knife, Bobby Darin. I like this song; it's fun as hell to sing along to.
My Favorite Nominee: Mack the Knife, Bobby Darin.
My Favorite Single That Year: Sleepwalk, Santo Johnny. Another great late night song.
1959
Winner: Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (Volare), Domenico Modugno. Okay. I can't believe anyone does this song better than Dean Martin, personally. I don't believe I've heard this version.
My Favorite Nominee: The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late), David Seville. I know, I know, but I love this song. It's a Christmas staple to me. It reminds me of being a kid and spending the lead-up to Christmas at my grandmother's house. It's a cozy song for me.
My Favorite Single That Year: Summertime Blues, Eddie Cochran. As vital a song as there is, considering how much rock continues to borrow from it. And more than that, just a catchy tune.
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- Mood:love
- Music:The Raveonettes
- Mood:Playing
- Music:Big Dipper
Traditional methods of obesity treatment may not give effective results for most obese people. It is mainly due to their high obesity levels, which can only be reduced with the help of an effective treatment drug such as Acomplia. This drug has helped many people get back to their original healthy body weight.
Acomplia is an oral prescription slimming pill, which is useful for obesity treatment. It is available in the UK and many other European countries on prescription. This anti-obesity drug targets factors which govern the body’s appetite.
Acomplia slimming pills are manufactured by French pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis and contain Rimonabant as the main ingredient. Rimonabant is a selective cannabinoid type I (CB1) receptor blocker.
How does it work?
Acomplia works by producing feelings of fullness among patients and they consequently end up eating less food. It works in the endocannabinoid system, which is largely responsible for affecting energy balance, body weight, glucose and lipid metabolism in the body. During the course of treatment, a patient loses considerable body weight.
Acomplia slimming pills are available in 20mg tablet form. You should take the dosage exactly as per your doctor’s recommendation. The standard dosage is one tablet once a day with a glass of water. The results of weight loss are better when this medication is complemented with regular regimen of physical activity and healthy food intake.
The regular dosages of Acomplia improve HDL levels and triglyceride levels in the body. So Acomplia is also useful for patients who are diabetic or have heart problems. However, it is necessary for such people to tell their doctors about these conditions while doing a consultation.
Side Effects
Like all prescription pills, Acomplia can cause some side effects among users. The most common side effects of Acomplia include nausea, dizziness, diarrhoea, vomiting, hot flushes, skin disorders, mood alterations, and respiratory tract infections.
Acomplia can also cause rare side effects such as night sweating, hiccups, anger and emotional disorder. In the eventuality of any discomfort or trouble due to intake of Acomplia, you should seek immediate medical help.
You should not take Acomplia if you are undergoing any treatment for depression or other psychological problems. Acomplia is not suitable for patients who have reported any suicidal tendencies in the past. However, they can take a medical consultation to check its suitability.
Acomplia has been approved by the European Union for use in many European nations, where doctors are authorised to issue a prescription to patients. With the UK and many countries in Europe fast become obese nations, Acomplia is proving to be a highly useful aid in the treatment of obesity.
Read more... <<< hot news
Acomplia is an oral prescription slimming pill, which is useful for obesity treatment. It is available in the UK and many other European countries on prescription. This anti-obesity drug targets factors which govern the body’s appetite.
Acomplia slimming pills are manufactured by French pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis and contain Rimonabant as the main ingredient. Rimonabant is a selective cannabinoid type I (CB1) receptor blocker.
How does it work?
Acomplia works by producing feelings of fullness among patients and they consequently end up eating less food. It works in the endocannabinoid system, which is largely responsible for affecting energy balance, body weight, glucose and lipid metabolism in the body. During the course of treatment, a patient loses considerable body weight.
Acomplia slimming pills are available in 20mg tablet form. You should take the dosage exactly as per your doctor’s recommendation. The standard dosage is one tablet once a day with a glass of water. The results of weight loss are better when this medication is complemented with regular regimen of physical activity and healthy food intake.
The regular dosages of Acomplia improve HDL levels and triglyceride levels in the body. So Acomplia is also useful for patients who are diabetic or have heart problems. However, it is necessary for such people to tell their doctors about these conditions while doing a consultation.
Side Effects
Like all prescription pills, Acomplia can cause some side effects among users. The most common side effects of Acomplia include nausea, dizziness, diarrhoea, vomiting, hot flushes, skin disorders, mood alterations, and respiratory tract infections.
Acomplia can also cause rare side effects such as night sweating, hiccups, anger and emotional disorder. In the eventuality of any discomfort or trouble due to intake of Acomplia, you should seek immediate medical help.
You should not take Acomplia if you are undergoing any treatment for depression or other psychological problems. Acomplia is not suitable for patients who have reported any suicidal tendencies in the past. However, they can take a medical consultation to check its suitability.
Acomplia has been approved by the European Union for use in many European nations, where doctors are authorised to issue a prescription to patients. With the UK and many countries in Europe fast become obese nations, Acomplia is proving to be a highly useful aid in the treatment of obesity.
Read more... <<< hot news
- Mood:innocent
- Music:Big Dipper
enjoyable vacation time at a lesser-known destination that requires travel.
If so, keep reading for a list of some of the best family-friendly destinations in the state of Michigan.
The Air Zoo
On your upcoming Michigan family vacation, make a stop at the Air Zoo - its a massive facility dedicated to flight and space travel. Your kids can explore a huge replica of the ISS (International Space Station), take a ride in a flight simulator or simply explore all the exhibits throughout the museum.
The Air Zoo is open every day of the year, except Thanksgiving and Christmas. The facility is sponsored and operated by the Smithsonian Institute. Its targeted toward both kids and adults, making it a popular stop for families who want an activity thats both fun and educational.
General admission to the Air Zoo is $19.50 for adults and $15.50 for children. Toddlers and infants under the age are allowed to enter for free. Alternatively, if you buy your tickets three days in advance and online, youll save 10% off the regular ticket price. If you plan to go multiple times in a year, you may want to purchase a family membership. Not a bad deal.
The Henry Ford Museum
The Henry Ford Museum isnt all about Henry Ford. Rather, its about the American experience and a long history of ingenuity and commerce. The target audience is children and young adults, but there are numerous activities and resources for adults too. The curators focus on interactive and fun exhibits that capture kids imagination and make learning fun.
Like the Air Zoo, you can visit the Henry Ford Museum every day, except Thanksgiving and Christmas. The admission cost is $14 for adults, $10 for kids, $13 for seniors and is without charge for kids under the age of 5. If youre interested in learning more or about upcoming exhibits or events, then visit their website at thehenryford.org.
Indoor Water Parks
Michigan is full of indoor water park resorts and hotels. You can hit the budget friendly Gold Rush or the family-focused Great Wolf Lodge along with numerous other water parks that are open all year-round.
Expect to pay more than you would at a standard hotel, but enjoy the benefits of relaxing by the pool while your kids are entertained with water sports and fun.
Corn Mazes
If youre traveling to Michigan in the autumn, you have to check out a corn maze. The state has some of the biggest in the country, and they add a great touch to a Michigan family vacation. For more information on some of the best mazes in the state, you can visit bestmaze.com and get all the details you need.
Read more... <<< hot news
If so, keep reading for a list of some of the best family-friendly destinations in the state of Michigan.
The Air Zoo
On your upcoming Michigan family vacation, make a stop at the Air Zoo - its a massive facility dedicated to flight and space travel. Your kids can explore a huge replica of the ISS (International Space Station), take a ride in a flight simulator or simply explore all the exhibits throughout the museum.
The Air Zoo is open every day of the year, except Thanksgiving and Christmas. The facility is sponsored and operated by the Smithsonian Institute. Its targeted toward both kids and adults, making it a popular stop for families who want an activity thats both fun and educational.
General admission to the Air Zoo is $19.50 for adults and $15.50 for children. Toddlers and infants under the age are allowed to enter for free. Alternatively, if you buy your tickets three days in advance and online, youll save 10% off the regular ticket price. If you plan to go multiple times in a year, you may want to purchase a family membership. Not a bad deal.
The Henry Ford Museum
The Henry Ford Museum isnt all about Henry Ford. Rather, its about the American experience and a long history of ingenuity and commerce. The target audience is children and young adults, but there are numerous activities and resources for adults too. The curators focus on interactive and fun exhibits that capture kids imagination and make learning fun.
Like the Air Zoo, you can visit the Henry Ford Museum every day, except Thanksgiving and Christmas. The admission cost is $14 for adults, $10 for kids, $13 for seniors and is without charge for kids under the age of 5. If youre interested in learning more or about upcoming exhibits or events, then visit their website at thehenryford.org.
Indoor Water Parks
Michigan is full of indoor water park resorts and hotels. You can hit the budget friendly Gold Rush or the family-focused Great Wolf Lodge along with numerous other water parks that are open all year-round.
Expect to pay more than you would at a standard hotel, but enjoy the benefits of relaxing by the pool while your kids are entertained with water sports and fun.
Corn Mazes
If youre traveling to Michigan in the autumn, you have to check out a corn maze. The state has some of the biggest in the country, and they add a great touch to a Michigan family vacation. For more information on some of the best mazes in the state, you can visit bestmaze.com and get all the details you need.
Read more... <<< hot news
- Mood:earnest
- Music:Les Savy Fav
How To Operate An Albuterol Inhaler Properly?
1. Remove the protective mouth cap from the end of the mouth piece. Shake your inhaler gently.
2. If it is the first time you use an inhaler or if you have not used it for a long time, you should it give a test spray by pressing the top of the canister to spray it into the air.
3. Breathe out as completely as possible through your mouth. Put the mouthpiece of the inhaler directly into your mouth. However, some health-care professionals now recommend to position the inhaler 1 to 2 inches away from the mouth. You should consult your health service provider which is the best method for you.
4. Breathe in slowly and spray the medication into the mouth while doing so. Do not spray into the back of the throat and swallow it. The spray should be inhaled directly into your lungs.
5. You should wait at least 1 minute before you go for the next spray. It is not always necessary to spray more than once. The dosage of your Albuterol Inhaler should depend on what your health service provider recommends.
6. To treat or prevent an asthma attack, it is recommended to give yourself 2 sprays or as needed, every 4 to 6 hours.
If you have never use an Albuterol Inhaler before, do read the written instructions that come with it. Ask your health service provider to show you how to use it. Practice using it while he or she watches.
Read more... <<< hot news
1. Remove the protective mouth cap from the end of the mouth piece. Shake your inhaler gently.
2. If it is the first time you use an inhaler or if you have not used it for a long time, you should it give a test spray by pressing the top of the canister to spray it into the air.
3. Breathe out as completely as possible through your mouth. Put the mouthpiece of the inhaler directly into your mouth. However, some health-care professionals now recommend to position the inhaler 1 to 2 inches away from the mouth. You should consult your health service provider which is the best method for you.
4. Breathe in slowly and spray the medication into the mouth while doing so. Do not spray into the back of the throat and swallow it. The spray should be inhaled directly into your lungs.
5. You should wait at least 1 minute before you go for the next spray. It is not always necessary to spray more than once. The dosage of your Albuterol Inhaler should depend on what your health service provider recommends.
6. To treat or prevent an asthma attack, it is recommended to give yourself 2 sprays or as needed, every 4 to 6 hours.
If you have never use an Albuterol Inhaler before, do read the written instructions that come with it. Ask your health service provider to show you how to use it. Practice using it while he or she watches.
Read more... <<< hot news
- Mood:rowdy
- Music:Sigur Ros
In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Ga. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session only private invitations to 52 attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva, and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agencys massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines thimerosal appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. I was actually stunned by what I saw, Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants in one case, within hours of birth the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. You can play with this all you want, Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results are statistically significant. Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meetings first day, was even more alarmed. My gut feeling? he said. Forgive this personal comment I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on.But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industrys bottom line.We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits, said Dr. Robert Brent, a pediatrician at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware. This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country. Dr. Bob Chen, head of vaccine safety for the CDC, expressed relief that given the sensitivity of the information, we have been able to keep it out of the hands of, lets say, less responsible hands. Dr. John Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization, declared flatly that the study should not have been done at all and warned that the results will be taken by others and will be used in ways beyond the control of this group. The research results have to be handled.In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the damage than at protecting childrens health. The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to rule out the chemicals link to autism. It withheld Verstraetens findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.Vaccine manufacturers had already begun to phase thimerosal out of injections given to American infants but they continued to sell off their mercury-based supplies of vaccines until last year. The CDC and FDA gave them a hand, buying up the tainted vaccines for export to developing countries and allowing drug companies to continue using the preservative in some American vaccines including several pediatric flu shots as well as tetanus boosters routinely given to 11-year-olds.
The drug companies are also getting help from powerful lawmakers in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by the parents of injured children. On five separate occasions, Frist has tried to seal all of the governments vaccine-related documents including the Simpsonwood transcripts and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of thimerosal, from subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist quietly slipped a rider known as the Eli Lilly Protection Act into a homeland security bill, the company contributed $10,000 to his campaign and bought 5,000 copies of his book on bioterrorism. Congress repealed the measure in 2003 but earlier this year, Frist slipped another provision into an anti-terrorism bill that would deny compensation to children suffering from vaccine-related brain disorders. The lawsuits are of such magnitude that they could put vaccine producers out of business and limit our capacity to deal with a biological attack by terrorists, says Andy Olsen, a legislative assistant to Frist.
Even many conservatives are shocked by the governments effort to cover up the dangers of thimerosal. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, oversaw a three-year investigation of thimerosal after his grandson was diagnosed with autism. Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is directly related to the autism epidemic, his House Government Reform Committee concluded in its final report. This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal, a known neurotoxin. The FDA and other public-health agencies failed to act, the committee added, out of institutional malfeasance for self protection and misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry.
The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide the risks of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of institutional arrogance, power and greed. I was drawn into the controversy only reluctantly. As an attorney and environmentalist who has spent years working on issues of mercury toxicity, I frequently met mothers of autistic children who were absolutely convinced that their kids had been injured by vaccines. Privately, I was skeptical. I doubted that autism could be blamed on a single source, and I certainly understood the governments need to reassure parents that vaccinations are safe; the eradication of deadly childhood diseases depends on it. I tended to agree with skeptics like Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, who criticized his colleagues on the House Government Reform Committee for leaping to conclusions about autism and vaccinations. Why should we scare people about immunization, Waxman pointed out at one hearing, until we know the facts?
It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts, studying the leading scientific research and talking with many of the nations preeminent authorities on mercury that I became convinced that the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real. Five of my own children are members of the Thimerosal Generation those born between 1989 and 2003 who received heavy doses of mercury from vaccines. The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have symptoms of neurological or immune-system damage, Patti White, a school nurse, told the House Government Reform Committee in 1999. Vaccines are supposed to be making us healthier; however, in 25 years of nursing I have never seen so many damaged, sick kids. Something very, very wrong is happening to our children. More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism, and pediatricians diagnose more than 40,000 new cases every year. The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among 11 children born in the months after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931.
Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is caused by thimerosal-tainted vaccinations. They argue that the increase is a result of better diagnosis a theory that seems questionable at best, given that most of the new cases of autism are clustered within a single generation of children. If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis, scoffs Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the worlds authorities on mercury toxicity, then where are all the 20-year-old autistics? Other researchers point out that Americans are exposed to a greater cumulative of mercury than ever before, from contaminated fish to dental fillings, and suggest that thimerosal in vaccines may be only part of a much larger problem. Its a concern that certainly deserves far more attention than it has received but it overlooks the fact that the mercury concentrations in vaccines dwarf other sources of exposure to our children.
What is most striking is the lengths to which many of the leading detectives have gone to ignore and cover up the evidence against thimerosal. From the very beginning, the scientific case against the mercury additive has been overwhelming. The preservative, which is used to stem fungi and bacterial growth in vaccines, contains ethylmercury, a potent neurotoxin. Truckloads of studies have shown that mercury tends to accumulate in the brains of primates and other animals after they are injected with vaccines and that the developing brains of infants are particularly susceptible. In 1977, a Russian study found that adults exposed to much lower concentrations of ethylmercury than those given to American children still suffered brain damage years later. Russia banned thimerosal from childrens vaccines 20 years ago, and Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have since followed suit.
You couldnt even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe, says Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. s just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it would be shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage.
Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal, knew from the start that its product could cause damage and even death in both animals and humans. In 1930, the company tested thimerosal by administering it to 22 patients with terminal meningitis, all of whom died within weeks of being injected a fact Lilly didnt bother to report in its study declaring thimerosal safe. In 1935, researchers at another vaccine manufacturer, Pittman-Moore, warned Lilly that its claims about thimerosals safety did not check with ours. Half the dogs Pittman injected with thimerosal-based vaccines became sick, leading researchers there to declare the preservative unsatisfactory as a serum intended for use on dogs.
In the decades that followed, the evidence against thimerosal continued to mount. During the Second World War, when the Department of Defense used the preservative in vaccines on soldiers, it required Lilly to label it In 1967, a study in Applied Microbiology found that thimerosal killed mice when added to injected vaccines. Four years later, Lillys own studies discerned that thimerosal was toxic to tissue cells in concentrations as low as one part per million 100 times weaker than the concentration in a typical vaccine. Even so, the company continued to promote thimerosal as and also incorporated it into topical disinfectants. In 1977, 10 babies at a Toronto hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with thimerosal was dabbed onto their umbilical cords.
In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter products that contained thimerosal, and in 1991 the agency considered banning it from animal vaccines. But tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended that infants be injected with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for hepatitis B within 24 hours of birth, and 2-month-old infants would be immunized for haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.
The drug industry knew the additional vaccines posed a danger. The same year that the CDC approved the new vaccines, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Mercks vaccine programs, warned the company that 6-month-olds who were administered the shots would suffer dangerous exposure to mercury. He recommended that thimerosal be discontinued, especially when used on infants and children, noting that the industry knew of nontoxic alternatives. The best way to go, he added, is to switch to dispensing the actual vaccines without adding preservatives.
For Merck and other drug companies, however, the obstacle was money. Thimerosal enables the pharmaceutical industry to package vaccines in vials that contain multiple doses, which require additional protection because they are more easily contaminated by multiple needle entries. The larger vials cost half as much to produce as smaller, single-dose vials, making it cheaper for international agencies to distribute them to impoverished regions at risk of epidemics. Faced with this cost consideration, Merck ignored Hillemans warnings, and government officials continued to push more and more thimerosal-based vaccines for children. Before 1989, American preschoolers received only three vaccinations for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of 22 immunizations by the time they reached first grade.
As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children exploded. During the 1990s, 40 million children were injected with thimerosal-based vaccines, receiving unprecedented levels of mercury during a period critical for brain development. Despite the well-documented dangers of thimerosal, it appears that no one bothered to add up the cumulative dose of mercury that children would receive from the mandated vaccines. What took the FDA so long to do the calculations? Peter Patriarca, director of viral products for the agency, asked in an e-mail to the CDC in 1999. Why didnt CDC and the advisory bodies do these calculations when they rapidly expanded the childhood immunization schedule?
But by that time, the damage was done. Infants who received all their vaccines, plus boosters, by the age of 6 months were being injected with levels of ethylmercury 187 times greater than the EPAs limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin. Although the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses little danger because it breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several studies including one published in April by the National Institutes of Health suggest that ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing brains and stays in the brain longer than methylmercury.
Officials responsible for childhood immunizations insist that the additional vaccines were necessary to protect infants from disease and that thimerosal is still essential in developing nations, which, they often claim, cannot afford the single-dose vials that dont require a preservative. Dr. Paul Offit, one of CDCs top vaccine advisors, told me, I think if we really have an influenza pandemic and certainly we will in the next 20 years, because we always do theres no way on Gods earth that we immunize 280 million people with single-dose vials. There has to be multidose vials.
But while public-health officials may have been well-intentioned, many of those on the CDC advisory committee who backed the additional vaccines had close ties to the industry. Dr. Sam Katz, the committees chair, was a paid consultant for most of the major vaccine makers and shares a patent on a measles vaccine with Merck, which also manufactures the hepatitis B vaccine. Dr. Neal Halsey, another committee member, worked as a researcher for the vaccine companies and received honoraria from Abbott Labs for his research on the hepatitis B vaccine.
Indeed, in the tight circle of scientists who work on vaccines, such conflicts of interest are common. Rep. Burton says that the CDC routinely allows scientists with blatant conflicts of interest to serve on intellectual advisory committees that make recommendations on new vaccines, even though they have interests in the products and companies for which they are supposed to be providing unbiased oversight. The House Government Reform Committee discovered that four of the eight CDC advisors who approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine laced with thimerosal had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine.
Offit, who shares a patent on the vaccine, acknowledged to me that he would make money if his vote to approve it eventually leads to a marketable product. But he dismissed my suggestion that a scientists direct financial stake in CDC approval might bias his judgment. It provides no conflict for me, he insists. I have simply been informed by the process, not corrupted by it. When I sat around that table, my sole intent was trying to make recommendations that best benefited the children in this country. Its offensive to say that physicians and public-health people are in the pocket of industry and thus are making decisions that they know are unsafe for children. Its just not the way it works.
Other vaccine scientists and regulators gave me similar assurances. Like Offit, they view themselves as enlightened guardians of childrens health, proud of their with pharmaceutical companies, immune to the seductions of personal profit, besieged by irrational activists whose anti-vaccine campaigns are endangering childrens health. They are often resentful of questioning. says Offit, is best left to scientists.
Still, some government officials were alarmed by the apparent conflicts of interest. In his e-mail to CDC administrators in 1999, Paul Patriarca of the FDA blasted federal regulators for failing to adequately scrutinize the danger posed by the added baby vaccines. m not sure there will be an easy way out of the potential perception that the FDA, CDC and immunization-policy bodies may have been asleep at the switch re: thimerosal until now, Patriarca wrote. The close ties between regulatory officials and the pharmaceutical industry, he added, will also raise questions about various advisory bodies regarding aggressive recommendations for use of thimerosal in child vaccines.
If federal regulators and government scientists failed to grasp the potential risks of thimerosal over the years, no one could claim ignorance after the secret meeting at Simpsonwood. But rather than conduct more studies to test the link to autism and other forms of brain damage, the CDC placed politics over science. The agency turned its database on childhood vaccines which had been developed largely at taxpayer expense over to a private agency, Americas Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it could not be used for additional research. It also instructed the Institute of Medicine, an advisory organization that is part of the National Academy of Sciences, to produce a study debunking the link between thimerosal and brain disorders. The CDC wants us to declare, well, that these things are pretty safe, Dr. Marie McCormick, who chaired the IOMs Immunization Safety Review Committee, told her fellow researchers when they first met in January 2001. We are not ever going to come down that [autism] is a true side effect of thimerosal exposure. According to transcripts of the meeting, the committees chief staffer, Kathleen Stratton, predicted that the IOM would conclude that the evidence was inadequate to accept or reject a causal relation between thimerosal and autism. That, she added, was the result Walt wants a reference to Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the National Immunization Program for the CDC.
For those who had devoted their lives to promoting vaccination, the revelations about thimerosal threatened to undermine everything they had worked for. ve got a dragon by the tail here, said Dr. Michael Kaback, another committee member. The more negative that [our] presentation is, the less likely people are to use vaccination, immunization and we know what the results of that will be. We are kind of caught in a trap. How we work our way out of the trap, I think is the charge.
Even in public, federal officials made it clear that their primary goal in studying thimerosal was to dispel doubts about vaccines. Four current studies are taking place to rule out the proposed link between autism and thimerosal, Dr. Gordon Douglas, then-director of strategic planning for vaccine research at the National Institutes of Health, assured a Princeton University gathering in May 2001. In order to undo the harmful effects of research claiming to link the [measles] vaccine to an elevated risk of autism, we need to conduct and publicize additional studies to assure parents of safety. Douglas formerly served as president of vaccinations for Merck, where he ignored warnings about thimerosals risks.
In May of last year, the Institute of Medicine issued its final report. Its conclusion: There is no proven link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines. Rather than reviewing the large body of literature describing the toxicity of thimerosal, the report relied on four disastrously flawed epidemiological studies examining European countries, where children received much smaller doses of thimerosal than American kids. It also cited a new version of the Verstraeten study, published in the journal Pediatrics, that had been reworked to reduce the link between thimerosal and autism. The new study included children too young to have been diagnosed with autism and overlooked others who showed signs of the disease. The IOM declared the case closed and in a startling position for a scientific body recommended that no further research be conducted.
The report may have satisfied the CDC, but it convinced no one. Rep. David Weldon, a Republican physician from Florida who serves on the House Government Reform Committee, attacked the Institute of Medicine, saying it relied on a handful of studies that were fatally flawed by poor design and failed to represent all the available scientific and medical research. CDC officials are not interested in an honest search for the truth, Weldon told me, because an association between vaccines and autism would force them to admit that their policies irreparably damaged thousands of children. Who would want to make that conclusion about themselves?
Under pressure from Congress, parents and a few of its own panel members, the Institute of Medicine reluctantly convened a second panel to review the findings of the first. In February, the new panel, composed of different scientists, criticized the earlier panel for its lack of transparency and urged the CDC to make its vaccine database available to the public.
So far, though, only two scientists have managed to gain access. Dr. Mark Geier, president of the Genetics Center of America, and his son, David, spent a year battling to obtain the medical records from the CDC. Since August 2002, when members of Congress pressured the agency to turn over the data, the Geiers have completed six studies that demonstrate a powerful correlation between thimerosal and neurological damage in children. One study, which compares the cumulative dose of mercury received by children born between 1981 and 1985 with those born between 1990 and 1996, found a very significant relationship between autism and vaccines. Another study of educational performance found that kids who received higher doses of thimerosal in vaccines were nearly three times as likely to be diagnosed with autism and more than three times as likely to suffer from speech disorders and mental retardation. Another soon-to-be-published study shows that autism rates are in decline following the recent elimination of thimerosal from most vaccines.
As the federal government worked to prevent scientists from studying vaccines, others have stepped in to study the link to autism. In April, reporter Dan Olmsted of UPI undertook one of the more interesting studies himself. Searching for children who had not been exposed to mercury in vaccines the kind of population that scientists typically use as a in experiments Olmsted scoured the Amish of Lancaster County, Penn., who refuse to immunize their infants. Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted calculated that there should be 130 autistics among the Amish. He found only four. One had been exposed to high levels of mercury from a power plant. The other three including one child adopted from outside the Amish community had received their vaccines.
At the state level, many officials have also conducted in-depth reviews of thimerosal. While the Institute of Medicine was busy whitewashing the risks, the Iowa Legislature was carefully combing through all of the available scientific and biological data. After three years of review, I became convinced there was sufficient credible research to show a link between mercury and the increased incidences in autism, says state Sen. Ken Veenstra, a Republican who oversaw the investigation. The fact that Iowas 700 percent increase in autism began in the 1990s, right after more and more vaccines were added to the childrens vaccine schedules, is solid evidence alone. Last year, Iowa became the first state to ban mercury in vaccines, followed by California. Similar bans are now under consideration in 32 other states.
But instead of following suit, the FDA continues to allow manufacturers to include thimerosal in scores of over-the-counter medications as well as steroids and injected collagen. Even more alarming, the government continues to ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries some of which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China, where the disease was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of thimerosal by U.S. drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that there are now more than 1.8 million autistics. Although reliable numbers are hard to come by, autistic disorders also appear to be soaring in India, Argentina, Nicaragua and other developing countries that are now using thimerosal-laced vaccines. The World Health Organization continues to insist thimerosal is safe, but it promises to keep the possibility that it is linked to neurological disorders under review.
I devoted time to study this issue because I believe that this is a moral crisis that must be addressed. If, as the evidence suggests, our public-health authorities knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire generation of American children, their actions arguably constitute one of the biggest scandals in the annals of American medicine. The CDC is guilty of incompetence and gross negligence, says Mark Blaxill, vice president of Safe Minds, a nonprofit organization concerned about the role of mercury in medicines. The damage caused by vaccine exposure is massive. Its bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything youve ever seen. Its hard to calculate the damage to our country and to the international efforts to eradicate epidemic diseases if Third World nations come to believe that Americas most heralded foreign-aid initiative is poisoning their children. Its not difficult to predict how this scenario will be interpreted by Americas enemies abroad. The scientists and researchers many of them sincere, even idealistic who are participating in efforts to hide the science on thimerosal claim that they are trying to advance the lofty goal of protecting children in developing nations from disease pandemics. They are badly misguided. Their failure to come clean on thimerosal will come back horribly to haunt our country and the worlds poorest populations.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper and president of Waterkeeper Alliance. He is the co-author of The Riverkeepers.
This article just goes to show you that Ortho-McNeil and Bayer will do everything they can to deny that quinolones cause extensive damage just like Merck did to conceal mercury poisoning from vaccines.
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