Posted on | February 6, 2025 | 1 Comment
In 2018, during Trump’s first assault on Medicine’s compassion, understanding and partnership, The House of Medicine stood tall. Will they this time around?
Virginia Commonwealth University’s’s Steven H. Woolf MD, MPH asks that question today in JAMA. It deserves a careful read HERE.
Here is a taste of his insightful commentary (“How should Health Care and Public Health respond to the new US Administration”) directed at the House of Medicine.
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“During the transition period following the November 2024 presidential election, a lingering question was whether the controversial proposals floated during the campaign were merely rhetoric or serious policy intentions. The first week of the new administration erased any doubts that the candidates meant what they said. A flurry of executive actions sent shock waves through the scientific, medical, and public health communities….
“The profession—scientific, medical, and public health societies, journals, academic institutions, and advocacy organizations—must quickly decide how to respond or whether to respond. The profession is diverse. Some in the profession voted for Trump and undoubtedly support at least parts of this agenda, and their response to recent developments may be a thumbs-up….
“However, is there a bridge too far, a point where it is no longer appropriate for medicine and public health to accede? Under what conditions must the profession stand its ground and vocally oppose problematic policies or disinformation? The scientific community is expected to respect diverse viewpoints, but in the final analysis, all share a professional responsibility to oppose policies that threaten the health of patients or the population. To condone policies that the profession knows will compromise health—or to remain silent and look away—is to be complicit in putting population health at risk….
“In the end, politicians and the public are free to ignore medical advice and pursue policies that compromise health and safety, and they likely will, but this does not relieve the profession of its responsibility to make the dangers clear. At the bedside, respect for the freedom of patients to make their own decisions does not excuse physicians from the obligation to present adequate information to make informed choices and to advise against options that the physician believes will do more harm than good. The duty to the population is no different. Regardless of the popularity or powerful interests behind a policy, the responsibility of the profession is to speak out when the science is clear that it will threaten health or safety. Silence is not an option.”
Posted on | February 6, 2025 | 4 Comments
“On September 9, 1966, around 200 people gathered in the White House Rose Garden as President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Motor Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act and the Highway Safety Act. President Johnson told them that nearly three times as many Americans had died in traffic accidents in the 20th century as died “in all our wars.” U.S. Department of Transportation
Mike Magee
Trump and Elon Musk’s attempts to blow up the federal government have a “Ready, Fire, Aim” feel to them. But in actuality, their efforts are quite focused and highly calculated. Take for example the efforts to harass and eliminate the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Musk’s interest in this regulatory agency within the Department of Transportation clearly has nothing to do with cost savings or efficiency. With 565 federal employees and a budget of $35 million, it is a minor blip on the federal budget. Its’ mission is “to save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes through education, research, safety standards, and enforcement activity.”
The NHTSA owes its existence to the 1966 Highway Safety Act signed in 1966 by President Lyndon Johnson. Congress took action after a disturbing 5-year run of escalating auto fatalities, amplified by national press coverage. At the center of that controversy was a young lawyer and professor at the University of Hartford named Ralph Nader who’s 1965 book, Unsafe at Any Speed, argued that American cars were “generally unsafe to operate.”
Nader’s book especially focused on General Motors Chevrolet Corsair, with an in depth analysis of 100 lawsuits. GM CEO James Roche (channeling Elon Musk some 60 years later) set out to destroy Nader. His investigators taped Nader’s phone, hired prostitutes to compromise him, and followed him. Nader turned to his Connecticut state senator, Abe Ribicoff, for aid. Ribicoff’s under-oath Congressional inquiry resulted in Roche’s confession and ultimately a $425,000 settlement to Nader for invasion of privacy.
More importantly, it led Congress to support the creation of the National Traffic and Motor Safety Act, with Speaker of the House John William McCormack crediting the “crusading spirit of one individual who believed he could do something: Ralph Nader.”
That effort was a long time in coming. And a great deal has changed. In the 20th century, the number of cars and trucks on our roads grew 11-fold to 215 million. The number of drivers increased 6-fold. And yet, the annual death rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled declined over 90% from 18 per 100 million VMT to 1.7 per 100 million VMT.
Over the last half century, this small federal agency has more than proven its worth. Their efforts delivered “new safety features, including head rests, energy-absorbing steering wheels, shatter-resistant windshields, and safety belts.” Roads were redesigned including “better delineation of curves, edge and center line stripes and reflectors, use of breakaway sign and utility poles.” Public education and better licensing and laws curtailed drinking while driving, and enforced usage of safety belts, child-safety seats, motorcycle helmets, and penalties for texting while driving.”
On December 13, 2024, Trump and Musk signaled their intent to disable the NHSTB with a frontal attack on auto reporting requirements. As Forbes reported that day, “President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team wants to scrap a regulatory order requiring automakers to report crashes involving vehicles with automated driving systems, Reuters reported Friday, aligning with opposition to the rule by Elon Musk’s Tesla, which accounts for most crashes reported under the requirement so far.”
How many Tesla crashes? 1,500 by that time. And crash reports were only the leading edge. “The recommendations ask the incoming Trump administration to ‘liberalize’ regulations on autonomous vehicles and enact ‘basic regulations’ that would enable development in the industry, the document said.”
Musk’s enemy number one in 2023 was the Acting Director of the NHSTB, Ann Carlson, who had the temerity to accelerate a probe into Tesla’s autopilot technology. Reuters reported that the agency was investigating whether Tesla vehicles “adequately ensure drivers are paying attention.” A month earlier, Musk had directly challenged the authority throwing down the gauntlet on “X”. As Reuters explained, “A Dec. 31 tweet suggested drivers with more than 10,000 miles using Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ (FSD) software system should be able to disable the ‘steering wheel nag,’ an alert that instructs drivers to hold the wheel to confirm they are paying attention. Musk responded: ‘Agreed, update coming in Jan.’ “
Nine months later, Acting Director Carlson, was gone. Senate Republicans, led by Ted Cruz, strongly opposed her appointment, not only because Elon Musk was after her, but also because of her expertise in environmental law and interest in global warming.
Cruz’s statement is rich, considering the recent unlawful actions of the executive branch, rubber stamped by the congressional controlled Republican Party. He wrote, “In circumvention of the Senate’s constitutional responsibility to provide advice and consent on presidential nominations, you appointed Ms. Carlson to lead the agency after her nomination to be NHTSA administrator failed in the face of significant Senate opposition due to her extreme policy views, radical environmentalist record, and lack of vehicle safety experience.”
Signaling a desire to destroy the entire organization and not just its director, Team Musk also enlisted the help of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. CEI, a conservative advocacy partner that “has spent the past 40 years fighting to reform America’s unaccountable regulatory state; to unleash innovation and allow mankind to flourish” tipped its’ hand. They stated, “The senators are right to be concerned with Carlson still leading NHTSA. There could be serious implications, including the possibility that many recent NHTSA rules could be invalid.”
As for the recent performance of the 565 employees of the NHTSA, the latest traffic fatality statistics for 2024 show a 4.4% decline compared to the prior year. Their most recent actions include requirements for automatic emergence breaking systems, new pedestrian protections, and advanced driver assistance technologies – all part of former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s National Roadway Strategy launched in January 2022.
These employees, along with all other federal employees, face Elon Musk’s “Fork” resignation deadline this evening. As NPR (also a target) reported today, “With just hours remaining for federal workers to decide whether to take the Trump administration’s offer to resign from their jobs now while keeping their pay and benefits through Sept. 30, a federal judge in Massachusetts issued a temporary restraining order and stayed today’s deadline.”
Posted on | January 31, 2025 | Comments Off on Hanging Up The Stethoscope. AI “Teammates” Enter Medicine.
Mike Magee
“As machines become more intelligent and can perform more sophisticated functions, a new relationship between human and automation is dawning. This relationship is moving from master-servant to teammates…” NASA Langley Research Center/2019
“DeepSeek’s Breakthrough Sparks National Pride in China,” screamed the Wall Street Journal headline last week. In the age of Trump’s promise that crippling tariffs would “put China in its place,” the shot across the bow of Silicon Valley’s AI energized bro’s. It sent Nvidia and its allies (and even the reemerging Nuclear power industry) into the red this past week.
For Nvidia, it was a tough way to start the week. As Forbes reported last Monday, “Nvidia lost $589 billion in market capitalization Monday, which is by far the single greatest one-day value wipeout of any company in history…” Of course, it rebounded 8.8% the following day, and by week’s end was near record highs.
As the industry struggles to define just how much of a threat China’s Open-Source cut-rate AI effort is, there is no disagreement on the coming impact of AI on nearly every sector of society, not the least of which is health care. As the NASA report from 2019 suggested, human “master” control of machines is increasingly tenuous, and to succeed we must embrace AI technologic applications as fully enfranchised “teammates.”
Medicine has historically embraced, and even championed their machines, as superhuman extensions of themselves, and essential to “doctoring.” Consider the ubiquitous image of doctor with stethoscope hanging from the neck. It arrived on the scene roughly two centuries ago, in France in 1816. Its creation is attributed to Rene’ Laennec, and was little more than a wooden tube he incorporated as a hearing device after experimenting with rolled paper tubes. He likely got the idea after observing the effectiveness of “ear trumpets”, the hearing aid of its day. But it was modesty, according to some historians, that pushed the French doctor to action. He was apparently uncomfortable putting his ear on a woman’s heaving bosom to listen to her heart sounds. The device, an assist, offered better auscultation and at a safe distance.
Of course, we’ve come a long way since then. But if anything, health care professionals are more reliant than ever on machines. Consider AI-assisted Surgery. Technology, tools, machines and equipment have long been a presence in modern day operating suites. Computers, Metaverse imaging, headlamps, laparoscopes, and operative microscopes are commonplace. But today’s AI-assisted surgical technology has moved aggressively into “decision-support.”
Surgeon Christopher Tignanelli from the University of Minnesota says, “AI will analyze surgeries as they’re being done and potentially provide decision support to surgeons as they are operating.”
The American College of Surgeons concurs: “By highlighting tools, monitoring operations, and sending alerts, AI-based surgical systems can map out an approach to each patient’s surgical needs and guide and streamline surgical procedures. AI is particularly effective in laparoscopic and robotic surgery, where a video screen can display information or guidance from AI during the operation.” Mass General’s Jennifer Eckoff goes a step further, “Based on its review of millions of surgical videos, AI has the ability to anticipate the next 15 to 30 seconds of an operation and provide additional oversight during the surgery.”
Surgical educators see enormous promise in AI-assisted education. One commented, “Most AI and robotic surgery experts seem to agree that the prospects of an AI-controlled surgical robot completely replacing human surgeons is improbable…but it will revolutionize nearly every area of the surgical profession.”
Johnson and Johnson, a major manufacturer of AI surgical tools, had this to say, “Surgeons are a lot like high-performance athletes. New and learning surgeons want to see how they performed and learn from their performances and how others performed… Now, surgeons can look at what happened during procedures practically in real time and share the video with residents and peers, offering valuable post-case analysis and learning opportunities.
Teaming up with AI in Medicine will likely transform well beyond the operating suite. Its population wide recommendations might guide us toward interventions that are more selective and effective, less biased overall, and less expensive. We might see fewer doctors, fewer drug ads, and fewer bills. But at the same time, that system might demand greater patience, greater personal responsibility and compliance with behavioral changes that ensure health.
Can we trust A.I.? That’s a question that AI master strategist Mark Minevich was recently asked regarding our new teammate status. His response was, “There are no shortcuts to developing systems that earn enduring trust…transparency, accountability, and justice (must) govern exploration…as we forge tools to serve all people.”
What are those AI tools? He highlighted four: Risk Assessment; Regulatory Safeguards; Pragmatic Governance; and Public/Private Partnerships.
Like it or not, AI has arrived, and its’ impact on individual health and that of our health systems in the U.S. will be substantial, disruptive, painful for some, but hopeful for many others. Tools like the stethoscope have served us well, and it is not surprising that they have earned our affection and loyalty over these many years. But AI generated tools have grown up and demand inclusion and respect if we wish to avoid becoming their servants.
Posted on | January 24, 2025 | Comments Off on Confronting American Apartheid – A Tale of Two Women.
Mike Magee
This past week, Bishop Mariann E. Budde drew the Episcopal Church into the national spotlight through a single act of courage. She is not the first, nor likely the last from this denomination to do so. There is a history. More on that in a moment.
The Episcopal Church is an offshoot of the Anglican Church of England which dates back to 1534 when King Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Pope who opposed his marriage to Anne Boleyn. Two-hundred and fifty four years later, in 1789, Anglican Church leaders who had helped settle colonies in North America gathered to form a united Episcopal Church, revising their Book of Common Prayer to exclude its blessing to the English monarch.
Though declining in modern times, missionary minded Anglicans spread throughout the British empire, and remain connected to the mother Church as members of the Anglican Communion. For example, British Anglican military chaplains were part of the force that occupied Cape Colony in South Africa in 1795. By 1821, they had established a formal religious foothold. Today, they claim 3.5 million members. In 2012, they elected their first female bishop, Ellinah Wamukoya of Swaziland. And yet, the most influential female Anglican from South Africa is arguably an immigrant to America, an emotional ally of Bishop Budde, and a retired Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court.
Her name is Margaret Marshall, and her place in American history dates back to June 6, 1966. That was the date this then 20 year old student, who was vice-president of the National Union of South African Students, was asked to stand in for the organization’s president, Ian Robertson (who was under house arrest for speaking out about Apartheid). She met and transported Bobby Kennedy to speak to over 1000 university students packed into the college auditorium at their “Day of Affirmation.”
Much like Mariann Budde last week in Washington, Bobby Kennedy caught his hushed audience by surprise that evening with these opening remarks:
“I come here this evening because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which was once the importer of slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.”
Margaret Marshall, some six decades later, recalled that moment in a conversation with Doris Kearns Goodwin. She said, “There was great tension in the room. People were on edge…As soon as the audience realized what he said, there was laughter and a sense of total relief. It was simply fabulous.”
After becoming president of the student organization the next year, the Anglican woman raised in a religious home in Newcastle, South Africa, emigrated to the U.S., and earned a masters in education at Harvard, and a law degree from Yale in 1976. Two years later, she was awarded U.S. citizenship.
She carried with her to her new country a prior interest in the law, and specifically American Law. In an interview in 2020, around the time of her prestigious Sandra Day O’Connor Award for “extraordinary service and commitment to justice,” she recalled her favorite American law case as a South African student:
“The Massachusetts case, decided in 1783, was a case decided under the new, then very new, Massachusetts constitution, which predates the federal constitution. The Massachusetts constitution opens, or started at the time, with the words, ‘All men are created equal…’ The case was brought by a slave in Massachusetts who challenged his servitude under that provision. . . In 1783, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that slavery was inconsistent with the words of the new Massachusetts Constitution. That was the second case of which I knew while I was in South Africa. A court had outlawed slavery. For that reason, the Supreme Judicial Court had always been a revered institution for me.”
It is fitting, therefore, that 20 years after becoming a lawyer, Massachusetts Gov. William Weld appointed her an Associate Justice of that very same Massachusetts Supreme Court. Over the next fourteen years, she wrote more than 300 opinions, most notably Goodridge v. Department of Public Health. The decision affirmed that the Massachusetts Constitution prohibits the state from denying same-sex marriage. In an unspoken link to her childhood beginnings, she wrote, “Massachusetts Constitution affirms the dignity and equality of all individuals. It forbids the creation of second-class citizens.”
Three years after the decision, Chief Justice Marshall had an opportunity to reflect on the broader law and order implications of her ruling as Trump prepared to overthrow the 2020 election.
She stated on the Judgement Calls Podcast, “Judges are part of our the government. If the United States Supreme Court issues a decision, you can criticize it. Everybody can criticize it. The Massachusetts Governor criticized Goodridge. But the Governor never suggested that he would not obey the order…Think about Bush against Gore, which was one of the closest, most bitterly fought cases. The day after the court decided, was the court’s decision criticized? Of course, it was criticized. But…there were no troops out on the street. That is a privilege that we have in the United States. It is because I come from another country that I feel so passionately about what we have to protect here, what is so important here. But for me, an immigrant, for waves of immigrants, we know. We know.”
It is fair to say that this Anglican daughter of South Africa, who ushered Bobby Kennedy that evening in 1966 to a tense auditorium, exactly two years to the date before he would be assassinated in Los Angeles, has paved the way for another member of the Anglican Communion, Episcopalian Bishop Mariann E. Budde to exhibit her act of moral courage.
With intelligence and conviction, seven feet above and 40 feet across from a figure reminiscent of South Africa’s P.W. Botha, she locked eyes with President Trump. She stood tall and erect, buoyed by the Washington National Cathedral’s limestone Canterbury Pulpit, whose central carvings portray the signing of the eight century old Magna Carta, and addressed the man who would later charge that “She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.”
But her words in our nation’s Capitol were as powerful that evening as Robert Kennedy’s in Capetown. With Margaret Marshall at his side,RFK said, “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
Six decades later, these words of Bishop Budde created a flood of debate across America:
“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President: Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God.”
“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”
“And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they — they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”
“I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here, Mr. President.”
Moral courage chooses its own time and place. But when it presents itself, it is recognizable by all – including those in agreement and those who stubbornly descent. The final words from RFK enjoin each of us and all of us, across the ages:
“With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth and lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
Posted on | January 22, 2025 | 2 Comments
Mike Magee
This is the 52nd anniversary of the death of Lyndon Baines Johnson from his 5th Heart Attack. And two days ago was the 39th anniversary of the first celebration of a new federal holiday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In signing that original proclamation in 1983, President Ronald Reagan said, “The majesty of his message, the dignity of his bearing, and the righteousness of his cause are a lasting legacy. In a few short years he changed America for all time.”
The MLK federal holiday was not so “Kum ba yah” (“Come by here”) this year. President Trump was in no mood to be tutored on this 60’s phrase derived from an African American spiritual made famous by Pete Seeger. Rather, he took advantage of the convergence of MLK’s day and his own coronation to trash all things DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion).
Of those supporting the 2nd term President, from here and beyond, few could have had a broader smile on his face than dearly departed (July 4, 2008) former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms. Helms led the opposition to the MLK bill, submitting a 300-page report that labelled King an “action-oriented Marxist” and a communist. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (NY) was so enraged at the time that he declared the report a “packet of filth”, threw it on the Senate floor, and then unceremoniously repeatedly stomped on it.
So, as a nation, we have been down this road before. As history.com reports: “On the day of Nixon’s second inaugural celebration, Johnson watched sullenly as Nixon announced the dismantling of many of Johnson’s Great Society social programs… The following day, while Lady Bird and their daughters were in Austin, Johnson suffered a fatal heart attack at his ranch in Johnson City.”
In yesterday’s Washington Post, George Will provided us all with a much needed reality check by quoting Stanford professor of government, Stephen Kotkin, who in the lead up to the election said, “Who’s the ‘we’? Trump is not an alien who landed from some other planet.”
“This is somebody the American people voted for who reflects something deep and abiding about American culture. Think of all the worlds that he has inhabited and that lifted him up. Pro wrestling. Reality TV. Casinos and gambling, which are no longer just in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, but everywhere, embedded in daily life. Celebrity culture. Social media. All of that looks to me like America. And yes, so does fraud, and brazen lying, and the P.T. Barnum, carnival barker stuff. But there is an audience, and not a small one, for where Trump came from and who he is.”
LBJ was 64 when he died. He would be 117 today. The Civil Rights Act that he signed on July 2, 1964, “altered the legal, political, and social landscape of America as radically as any law of the twentieth century,” according to presidential historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin. And yet, LBJ defined himself more as a pragmatist than in heroic terms. He said, “I know a lot of people around those Georgetown parties are saying that I wasn’t much of crusader for civil rights when I was in the Senate. On balance, they’re right about me. I wasn’t a crusader. I represented a southern state, and if I got too far ahead of my voters they’d have sent me right back to Johnson City . . . Now I represent the whole country, and I can do what the whole country thinks is right.”
His remarks on that July 2nd evening signing were lofty:
We believe that all men are created equal. Yet many are denied equal treatment.
We believe all men have certain inalienable rights. Yet many Americans do not enjoy those rights.
We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings-not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their skin.
But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, forbids it…Morality forbids it. And the law I will sign tonight forbids it.
We have come now to a time of testing. We must not fail. Let us close the springs of racial poison.”
That very evening, LBJ speech writers, Bill Moyers and Dick Goodwin, encountered their boss in a pensive mood. This was the anniversary of his massive 1955 heart attack. Asked what was troubling him, he replied, “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.”
Many years later, Dick Goodwin’s recollections of that night’s events were captured by his historian wife, Doris Kearns Goodwin. He said, “Who would have thought that the testing time that lay ahead would still be with us more than a half century later, that the springs of racial poison have still not been closed?”
Trump clearly wants his own Kennedy, if only a junior. But on this 52nd anniversary of his death, I’m “All The Way With LBJ.”
Posted on | January 14, 2025 | 2 Comments
Mike Magee
For many Americans, the first image that pops in their heads when they hear the word “sleep” is that of 2020 election denier, and uber-Trump supporting/MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell.
With a different election result, Mike and his 40 million shredded foam pillows would be in the rear view mirror rather than generating headlines once again this week. But here we are. His lawyers in 2023 informed various judges that they were severing their relationship with their non-paying client. That left him riding solo to defend himself against $1 billion in damages from multiple claimants, including a court order this week to pay DHL shipping $777,000 in back payments.
Lindell (described in a 2022 New York Times article as “a 61-year-old recovering crack cocaine and gambling addict who previously managed a string of bars in suburban Minneapolis”) has been losing sleep since Walmart pulled his pillows off their shelves on June 17, 2022.
This couldn’t come at a worse time for his business since “sleep” is all the rage, and increasingly labeled “the brain’s rinse cycle.” The brain, protectively encased in an unyielding bony casing, lacks the delicate lymphatic system that transports used body metabolites to breakdown and extraction sites in all other parts of the body.
But in 2012, neuroscientist Maiken Nedergaard, identified a unique network of delicate channels (“tiny passages alongside blood vessels”) inside the brain that collect and discharge brain metabolites and waste materials including amyloid. This system, or “ultimate brainwasher” as some labeled it, was formally titled the “glymphatic system.”
That same study also suggested that flow through the glymphatic system is enhanced during portions of the sleep cycle. Now 12 years after the original research, the same team, in a study in mice published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA journal, found that regular contractions or oscillations of tiny blood vessels in the brain, stimulated by adrenaline cousin, norepinephrine, generated the brain scrubbing liquid flow through the channel system. The focal contractions, normally occurring ever 50 seconds, speed up the pump to every 10 seconds, in sync with peaks of norepinephrine release during sleep.
Sleep deprivation appears to not only interrupt this cycle, and allow harmful wastes to accumulate, but also disrupts other mental health functions that scientists are just beginning to understand. For example, researchers in 2021 established that “sleep deprivation impairs people’s ability to suppress unwanted thoughts.” They were able to identify a special location on the brain cortex responsible for storing away memories, and suppressing and delaying their future retrieval. They further demonstrated enhanced activity at the site during REM sleep. As the lead investigator noted, “That’s interesting because many disorders associated with debilitating intrusive thoughts, such as depression and PTSD, are also associated with disturbances in REM.”
The new work may help explain Mike Lindell’s destructive recycling of the ill-advised claims and choices he has made over recent years. As the authors concisely reported in the December, 2024 publication, “The functional impairments arising from sleep deprivation are linked to a behavioral deficit in the ability to downregulate unwanted memories, and coincide with a deterioration of deliberate patterns of self-generated thought. We conclude that sleep deprivation gives rise to intrusive memories via the disruption of neural circuits governing mnemonic inhibitory control, which may rely on REM sleep.”
Posted on | January 9, 2025 | 3 Comments
Mike Magee
For those many, many millions of viewers who tuned in to the live coverage of former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral today, they were rewarded with two hours of intriguing video images, and moving words and song, including a recounting of the beginnings of environmental advocacy as Los Angeles burns, and John Lennon’s “Imagine” performed by Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood.
Five former Presidents and four Vice-Presidents were in attendance. And there were notable firsts, like the first greeting and handshake between incoming President Trump and former VP Pence since January 6, 2021.
But perhaps the most striking events of this carefully staged national funeral were the two especially haunting posthumous eulogies delivered by the sons of a former president and vice-president. Presented by Steven Ford, son of former President, Gerald Ford, and Ted Mondale, son of former Vice-President Walter “Fritz” Mondale, they appeared to be directed to America itself, and its’ soon-to-be 47th president.
As the speakers explained, Jimmy Carter, some years back, asked both Ford and Mondale if they would be willing to present eulogies at his funeral. Both agreed, and put pen to paper in anticipation. But as it became evident that Carter might very well outlive them, they each asked their sons, in that event, to read their remarks at his funeral. And today they did.
Both President Ford and Vice-President Mondale’s words (voiced by their sons) deserve a full viewing when time allows. But in the meantime, let me share the closing remarks of each, prescient and timely now, at American democracy’s hour of need.
Steven Ford, son of former President Gerald Ford (7/14/13 – 12/26/06), reciting the president’s written words posthumously:
“…Now is time to say goodbye, our grief comforted with the joy and the thanksgiving of knowing this man, this beloved man, this very special man. He was given the gift of years, and the American people and the people of the world will be forever blessed by his decades of good works. Jimmy Carter’s legacy of peace and compassion will remain unique as it is timeless…As for myself, Jimmy, I’m looking forward to our reunion. We have much to catch up on. Thank you, Mr. President. Welcome home, old friend.”
Ted Mondale, son of former Vice-President Walter “Fritz” Mondale (1/5/28 – 4/19/21) reciting the vice-president’s written words posthumously. Ted prefaced his reading with this sentence – “My father wrote this in 2019, and clearly he edited it a number of times since then, but here we go.”
“…Two decades ago, President Carter said he believed income inequality was the biggest global issue. More recently, in a 2018 Commencement Address at Liberty University, I think now the largest global issue is the discrimination against women and girls in this world. He concluded that, ‘Until stubborn attitudes that foster discrimination against women change, the world cannot advance, and poverty and poverty and income equality cannot be solved.’ Towards the end of our time in the White House, the President and I were talking about how we might describe what we tried to accomplish in office. We came up with a sentence which remains an important summary of our work. ‘We told the truth. We obeyed the law. And we kept the peace.’ That we did, Mr. President. I will always be proud and grateful to have had the chance to work with you towards noble ends. It was then, and will always be, the most rewarding experience of my public career. Thank you.”
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