Monday, November 3, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Death with dignity advocate Brittany Maynard ends her life
CBS/AP November 2, 2014, 10:22 PM

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old with incurable brain cancer who became an advocate for death with dignity laws in the last weeks of her life, died Saturday, according to a spokesperson.

Maynard was surrounded by family when she took lethal medication prescribed by a doctor, as she had planned, said Sean Crowley of the group Compassion & Choices. She teamed with the group after being diagnosed with a lethal form of cancer earlier this year.

Despite surgery and other treatment, doctors said she had only months to live. Maynard and her husband moved from California to Oregon so that she would be able to use that state's Death With Dignity Act.

"Brittany suffered increasingly frequent and longer seizures, severe head and neck pain, and stroke-like symptoms," Crowley said in a statement. "She died as she intended -- peacefully in her bedroom, in the arms of her loved ones."

"I don't want to die," Maynard told CBS News correspondent Jan Crawford in mid-October. "If anyone wants to hand me, like, a magical cure and save my life so that I can have children with my husband, you know, I will take them up on it."

Maynard also explained why she chose to take her own life.

"I think until anyone has walked a mile in my shoes and knows what they're facing and has felt the -- like, just bone-splitting headaches that I get sometimes, or the seizures, or the inability to speak, or the moments where I'm looking at my husband's face and I can't think of his name."

Just last Wednesday, Maynard said she was considering whether to postpone her death, and that she had crossed an item off her "bucket list": a visit to the Grand Canyon.

"Brittany has died, but her love of life and nature, her passion and spirit endure," said Compassion & Choices President Barbara Coombs Lee said in a statement Sunday. "In Brittany's memory, do what matters most. And tell those you love how much they matter to you. We will work to carry on her legacy of bringing end-of-life choice to all Americans."

Oregon was the first U.S. state to make it legal for a doctor to prescribe a life-ending drug to a terminally ill patient of sound mind who makes the request. The patient must swallow the drug without help; it is illegal for a doctor to administer it.

More than 750 people in Oregon used the law to die as of Dec. 31, 2013. The median age of the deceased is 71. Only six were younger than 35, like Maynard.

The state does not track how many terminally ill people move to Oregon to die. A patient must prove to a doctor that they are living in Oregon. Some examples of documentation include a rental agreement, a voter registration card or a driver's license.

Oregon voters approved the Death with Dignity Act in 1994, then reaffirmed it -- 60 percent to 40 percent -- in 1997.



https://www.compassionandchoices.org/

Who We Are

Compassion & Choices is the leading nonprofit organization committed to helping everyone have the best death possible. We offer free counseling, planning resources, referrals and guidance, and across the nation we work to protect and expand options at the end of life.

For over thirty years we have reduced people’s suffering and given them some control in their final days – even when injury or illness takes their voice. We are experts in what it takes to die well.


Politics of Oregon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Like many other U.S. states, the politics of Oregon is centered mostly around regional concerns.[1] Oregon leans Democratic as a state, with both U.S Senators from the Democratic party,[2] as well as four out of Oregon's five U.S. Representatives.[3] The state has voted Democratic, by relatively small margins, since 1988 in presidential elections.[4]Both houses of Oregon's legislative assembly have been under Democratic control since the 2012 elections.[5]

The state is broken up into two main geographically separate political areas: the liberal cities of the Willamette Valleyand the rest of the state, whose voters are moving from conservative to libertarian.[1][6] While about 47% of the population of Oregon lives in the Portland metropolitan area as of 2013,[7][8] the state has a rural population with generally conservative views on same-sex marriage and state taxes. On most other issues, however, the state leans considerably left, including on public health care,[9][10] medical marijuana,[11] euthanasia[12] and environmental protections.[13]

Similar to the West Coast states of California and Washington, Oregon has a high percentage of people who identify as liberals. A 2013 Gallup poll that surveyed the political ideology of residents in every state found that people in Oregon identified as:[20]

34.8% moderate
33.6% conservative (the 10th least conservative state)
27.9% liberal (the 5th most liberal state)

Another study on the state's political ideology noted that the state's conservatives were the most conservative of any state (more so than Utah or Tennessee) and that the state's liberals were more liberal than any state (more so than Vermont or D.C.).[21]




There is a very good timeline at this Compassion and Choices website on the legal advances concerning the right-to-die movement in the US. It is too long to include here, but for anyone who either has a personal need for help on this issue or who is simply curious about the much debated lawsuits and state laws, it is recommended reading.

“'She died as she intended -- peacefully in her bedroom, in the arms of her loved ones.'... More than 750 people in Oregon used the law to die as of Dec. 31, 2013. The median age of the deceased is 71. Only six were younger than 35, like Maynard.... Oregon voters approved the Death with Dignity Act in 1994, then reaffirmed it -- 60 percent to 40 percent -- in 1997.” Though Right-to-die physician assisted suicide is not legal in most states, the Living Will in which a citizen may describe his or her own preferences as to how long a hospital will leave him on a life-support system, are commonplace. In that document we may describe how aggressively our physicians will pursue treatments that are in themselves sometimes very difficult to bear, such as chemotherapy for cancer, and whether we should remain for an extended period in a coma after a catastrophic brain injury.

The simple fact is, unless we believe that we will go to a fiery hell for voluntarily ending our live, a quick and fairly painless death is not as bad as months to years of bedridden pain and inability to function independently. A peaceful death would be the choice of many people in that kind of situation. Personally, if the rest of my life were doomed to be spent tied to a bedpan, I would rather go to a hospice and get off all medications except those for pain. I would read books if I could see and listen to my favorite music tapes. My friends could come to see me and we could talk together. I don't think I would be swamped with regret at such a death, as the key for me is to live a fulfilling and mainly happy life until its end.






No-fly zone near Ferguson protests were meant "to keep media out" – CBS
AP November 2, 2014, 9:05 PM

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government agreed to a police request to restrict more than 37 square miles of airspace surrounding Ferguson, Missouri, for 12 days in August for safety, but audio recordings show that local authorities privately acknowledged the purpose was to keep away news helicopters during violent street protests over the shooting of an unarmed black teen by a white police officer.

On Aug. 12, the morning after the Federal Aviation Administration imposed the first flight restriction, FAA air traffic managers struggled to redefine the flight ban to let commercial flights operate at nearby Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and police helicopters fly through the area -- but ban others.

"They finally admitted it really was to keep the media out," said one FAA manager about the St. Louis County Police in a series of recorded telephone conversations obtained by The Associated Press. "But they were a little concerned of, obviously, anything else that could be going on.

At another point, a manager at the FAA's Kansas City center said police "did not care if you ran commercial traffic through this TFR (temporary flight restriction) all day long. They didn't want media in there."

FAA procedures for defining a no-fly area did not have an option that would accommodate that.

"There is really... no option for a TFR that says, you know, 'OK, everybody but the media is OK,'" he said. The managers then worked out wording they felt would keep news helicopters out of the controlled zone but not impede other air traffic.

The conversations contradict claims by the St. Louis County Police Department, which responded to demonstrations following the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, that the restriction was solely for safety and had nothing to do with preventing media from witnessing the violence or the police response.

Police said at the time, and again as recently as late Friday to the AP, that they requested the flight restriction in response to shots fired at a police helicopter.

But police officials confirmed there was no damage to their helicopter and were unable to provide an incident report on the shooting. On the tapes, an FAA manager described the helicopter shooting as unconfirmed "rumors."

The AP obtained the recordings under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. They raise serious questions about whether police were trying to suppress aerial images of the demonstrations and the police response by violating the constitutional rights of journalists with tacit assistance by federal officials.

Such images would have offered an unvarnished view of one of the most serious episodes of civil violence in recent memory.

"Any evidence that a no-fly zone was put in place as a pretext to exclude the media from covering events in Ferguson is extraordinarily troubling and a blatant violation of the press's First Amendment rights," said Lee Rowland, an American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney specializing in First Amendment issues.

FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said in a statement Sunday his agency will always err on the side of safety. "FAA cannot and will never exclusively ban media from covering an event of national significance, and media was never banned from covering the ongoing events in Ferguson in this case."

Huerta also said that, to the best of the FAA's knowledge, "no media outlets objected to any of the restrictions" during the time they were in effect.

In the recordings, an FAA manager urged modifying the flight restriction so that planes landing at Lambert still could enter the airspace around Ferguson.

The less-restrictive change practically served the authorities' intended goal, an FAA official said: "A lot of the time the (lesser restriction) just keeps the press out, anyways. They don't understand the difference."

The Kansas City FAA manager then asked a St. Louis County police official if the restrictions could be lessened so nearby commercial flights wouldn't be affected. The new order allows "aircraft on final (approach) there at St. Louis. It will still keep news people out.... The only way people will get in there is if they give them permission in there anyway so they, with the (lesser restriction), it still keeps all of them out."

"Yeah," replied the police official. "I have no problem with that whatsoever."

KMOV-TV News Director Brian Thouvenot told the AP that his station was prepared at first to legally challenge the flight restrictions, but was later advised that its pilot could fly over the area as long as the helicopter stayed above 3,000 feet. That kept the helicopter and its mounted camera outside the restricted zone, although filming from such a distance, he said, was "less than ideal."

None of the St. Louis stations was advised that media helicopters could enter the airspace even under the lesser restrictions, which under federal rules should not have applied to aircraft "carrying properly accredited news representatives." The FAA's no-fly notice indicated the area was closed to all aircraft except police and planes coming to and from the airport.

"Only relief aircraft operations under direction of St. Louis County Police Department are authorized in the airspace," it said. "Aircraft landing and departing St. Louis Lambert Airport are exempt."

The same day that notice was issued, a county police spokesman publicly denied the no-fly zone was to prevent news helicopters from covering the events. "We understand that that's the perception that's out there, but it truly is for the safety of pilots," Sgt. Brian Schellman told NBC News.

Ferguson police were widely criticized for their response following the death of Brown, who was shot by a city police officer, Darren Wilson, on Aug. 9.

Later, under county police command, several reporters were arrested, a TV news crew was tear gassed and some demonstrators were told they weren't allowed to film officers. In early October, a federal judge said the police violated demonstrators' and news crews' constitutional rights.

"Here in the United States of America, police should not be bullying and arresting reporters who are just doing their jobs," President Barack Obama said Aug. 14, two days after police confided to federal officials the flight ban was secretly intended to keep media helicopters out of the area. "The local authorities, including police, have a responsibility to be transparent and open."

The restricted flight zone initially encompassed airspace in a 3.4-mile radius around Ferguson and up to 5,000 feet in altitude, but police agreed to reduce it to 3,000 feet after the FAA's command center in Warrenton, Virginia, complained to managers in Kansas City that it was impeding traffic into St. Louis.

The flight restrictions remained in place until Aug. 22, FAA records show. A police captain wanted it extended when officials were set to identify Wilson by name as the officer who shot Brown and because Brown's funeral would "bring out the emotions," the recordings show.

"We just don't know what to expect," he told the FAA. "We're monitoring that. So, last night we shot a lot of tear gas, we had a lot of shots fired into the air again. It did quiet down after midnight, but with that ... we don't know when that's going to erupt."

The recordings do not capture early conversations about the initial flight restriction imposed a day earlier, but they nonetheless show the FAA still approved and modified the flight restriction after the FAA was aware that its main intent was to keep the media away.

One FAA official at the agency's command center asked the Kansas City manager in charge whether the restrictions were really about safety. "So are (the police) protecting aircraft from small-arms fire or something?" he asked. "Or do they think they're just going to keep the press out of there, which they can't do."




“The U.S. government agreed to a police request to restrict more than 37 square miles of airspace surrounding Ferguson, Missouri, for 12 days in August for safety, but audio recordings show that local authorities privately acknowledged the purpose was to keep away news helicopters during violent street protests over the shooting of an unarmed black teen by a white police officer.... The conversations contradict claims by the St. Louis County Police Department, which responded to demonstrations following the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, that the restriction was solely for safety and had nothing to do with preventing media from witnessing the violence or the police response.... But police officials confirmed there was no damage to their helicopter and were unable to provide an incident report on the shooting. On the tapes, an FAA manager described the helicopter shooting as unconfirmed 'rumors.' The AP obtained the recordings under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. They raise serious questions about whether police were trying to suppress aerial images of the demonstrations and the police response by violating the constitutional rights of journalists with tacit assistance by federal officials.... 'Any evidence that a no-fly zone was put in place as a pretext to exclude the media from covering events in Ferguson is extraordinarily troubling and a blatant violation of the press's First Amendment rights,' said Lee Rowland, an American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney specializing in First Amendment issues.... Later, under county police command, several reporters were arrested, a TV news crew was tear gassed and some demonstrators were told they weren't allowed to film officers. In early October, a federal judge said the police violated demonstrators' and news crews' constitutional rights. 'Here in the United States of America, police should not be bullying and arresting reporters who are just doing their jobs,' President Barack Obama said Aug. 14..."

“...they nonetheless show the FAA still approved and modified the flight restriction after the FAA was aware that its main intent was to keep the media away.” Well, the police presence in full military regalia still made its way onto the national news, and the reports of reporters enduring arrest proved the police attempt to stifle their First Amendment rights. The President of the US spoke out clearly against the police attempt at a coverup, but the FAA still allowed them the flight restrictions. Does the FAA answer to the executive branch, or to Congress? Who should have intervened in this case and didn't? If the following information from Wikipedia is correct, the FAA answers to the USDOT whose head answers to the President and to Congress. The President and an FAA official both said the action to limit press access at Ferguson was directly illegal, so hopefully the ACLU will bring a lawsuit against the FAA official who knew the true purpose of the flight ban and allowed it anyway. Somebody should definitely be fired.


Federal Aviation Administration
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the national aviation authority of the United States. An agency of the United States Department of Transportation, it has authority to regulate and oversee all aspects of American civil aviation. 

The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT or DOT) is a federal Cabinet department of the U.S. government concerned with transportation. It was established by an act of Congress on October 15, 1966, and began operation on April 1, 1967. It is governed by the United States Secretary of Transportation.

The United States Secretary of Transportation is the head of theUnited States Department of Transportation, a member of thePresident's Cabinet, and thirteenth in the Presidential Line of Succession.[1]  Anthony Foxx, the Mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina was nominated by President Barack Obama on April 29, 2013, to succeed Ray LaHood. On June 27, 2013 the Senate confirmed his appointment by a vote of 100-0.[7]





Arizona school district may edit biology textbook over abortion law – CBS
AP November 3, 2014, 9:18 AM

PHOENIX - A Phoenix suburb's school district may revise a high school honors biology textbook to add or remove content because of a 2-year-old state law on abortion-related instructional material.

The Gilbert Unified School District board voted 3-2 Tuesday night to have district officials consider how to change the textbook and report back to the board, the Arizona Republic reported.

At issue is a chapter in the textbook, "Campbell Biology: Concepts & Connections," that discusses abstinence, birth-control methods, tubal ligations and vasectomies, and drugs that can induce abortion.

The 2012 Arizona law says the state has a strong interest in "promoting childbirth and adoption over elective abortion." It prohibits instructional programs and material that don't give preference to childbirth and adoption over elective abortion.

No organization tracks Arizona school districts' selection or usage of textbooks, but Staci Burk, the president of the Gilbert board, said the district is likely the first to enforce the relatively new law.

Chris Kotterman, a state Department of Education official, told the board in an email that the textbook didn't appear to violate the law.

"In general, the mere mention of a means of medically inducing abortion does not automatically signal a lack of preference for childbirth and adoption ... the responsibility lies with the teacher to provide context for the student," said Kotterman, a deputy associate superintendent.

A lawyer for a Scottsdale-based conservative advocacy group's representative said the law's requirement applies whenever abortion is mentioned.

"The law is not limited to books in sex-education classes," Alliance for Defending Freedom attorney Natalie Decker said. "It applies any time a mention of abortion is included in instruction. This is not an ambiguous law."

Decker said the book could be redacted or have additional information pasted in.

"The cheapest, least disruptive way to solve the problem is to remove the page," said board member Daryl Colvin.

The execution director of the ACLU of Arizona urged the board in a letter to not change the book. Doing that would violate students' First Amendment rights, said Alessandra Soler.

"Suppressing facts that some people or organizations find disagreeable sets a terrible precedent," Soler said.

State Sen. Nancy Barto, a Phoenix Republican who sponsored the bill that became the 2012 law, attended the board's meeting and urged the board to follow the law to the letter.




The Gilbert Unified School District board voted 3-2 Tuesday night to have district officials consider how to change the textbook and report back to the board, the Arizona Republic reported. At issue is a chapter in the textbook, 'Campbell Biology: Concepts & Connections,' that discusses abstinence, birth-control methods, tubal ligations and vasectomies, and drugs that can induce abortion. The 2012 Arizona law says the state has a strong interest in 'promoting childbirth and adoption over elective abortion.' It prohibits instructional programs and material that don't give preference to childbirth and adoption over elective abortion.... Chris Kotterman, a state Department of Education official, told the board in an email that the textbook didn't appear to violate the law. 'In general, the mere mention of a means of medically inducing abortion does not automatically signal a lack of preference for childbirth and adoption ... the responsibility lies with the teacher to provide context for the student,' said Kotterman, a deputy associate superintendent.... 'The law is not limited to books in sex-education classes,' Alliance for Defending Freedom attorney Natalie Decker said. 'It applies any time a mention of abortion is included in instruction. This is not an ambiguous law.' Decker said the book could be redacted or have additional information pasted in. 'The cheapest, least disruptive way to solve the problem is to remove the page,' said board member Daryl Colvin.... The execution director of the ACLU of Arizona urged the board in a letter to not change the book. Doing that would violate students' First Amendment rights, said Alessandra Soler.”

I wonder if high school students will hear about this story on the news and become alert to the fact that the very textbooks from which they are being taught have been redacted to meet political demands. If they do, will they make up their minds to go around the darned textbook and look the subject up for themselves on Google? Will they join a politically liberal group when they get to college? Read the following news article on civil disobedience among Colorado high schoolers – http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/23/denver-school-protest/16126625/. It is very impressive. I do these young people continue to care about their civil rights, because otherwise the population in Arizona will be less and less well educated. It's not just about this issue of abortion, which is probably something most young women already know about from talking to their friends. Some Southern states have highly sanitized text books on race relations, the Civil War, and civil liberties under the Constitution also. As it was, very little of the things like the internment of Japanese US citizens were in my history textbooks rather than a glorified idea of America which is responsible for our aggressive stance against other nations in this century.

If those soon to be voting young citizens don't read on their own widely and freely, they will be ignorant of a great deal of basic information. They won't respond with disgust at the propagandizing of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” which, though mocked by Republicans, exists to this day with the goal of keeping the common people under their political, economic and philosophical thumbs. Their language is the language of religion and patriotism, but their goals are to destroy democracy in this country starting with the Middle Class and the poor, while keeping the structure of the government intact as long as it serves their purposes. There are those among today's Republicans who still want to make the public school system “die on the vine” by cutting off its funding and who would like to starve the Social Security system by allowing young workers to put their money into an individual retirement account instead of Social Security. They don't want a large part of the American population to be well educated, that way their factories and coal mines could pay people very low wages while making megabucks to stuff in the CEO's and owners' pockets. This is why I vote and speak as I do – the right wing needs to be fought to the end, or we can kiss our freedom of speech and religion and all the other rights, too, goodbye.







Brain Training May Help Calm The Storms Of Schizophrenia – NPR
By AMY STANDEN
November 03, 2014

Reality, if you think about it, is a kind of social contract. You and I might be strangers, but we agree, at least at a really basic level, on what is real.

So when you talk to someone who isn't signed onto that same contract, it's kind of unsettling.

"What do the gloves do?"

I'm asking a guy named George about the thin plastic hospital gloves he was wearing when we met. "It's so the cosmic dust doesn't get on my hands," is his reply.

I met George at the Citywide Mental Health Center in San Francisco's tenderloin district. It's the type of place where men wearing unseasonable winter parkas loiter around the entrance smoking cigarettes.

The clinic let me come in and talk to its clients on the condition that I won't use their last names. Staff there says that part of looking out for their patients' best interests is protecting their privacy – something that's also required under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act - HIPPA.

George was upstairs, in a computer room. He's in his 50s, with neatly combed hair and faded tattoos on his forearms.

And when I spoke to him, he told me he saw flashes of light coming from my mouth.

"It looks like yellow, with light pinkish color."

When I asked him if he's always seen colors when people speak, he told me he has, and that seeing the colors helps him understand life and makes him feel superior.

I'm not proud of it, but this conversation made me uncomfortable.

It was something about the particular way that George drifted back and forth between delusions and reality that was unsettling.

And that's partly why when antipsychotic drugs were invented in the 1960s, they seemed revolutionary.

Up until that point, the treatments for schizophrenia were pretty draconian, says Dr. Sophia Vinogradov, a psychiatrist and researcher at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.

"Wrapping them in wet towels, locking them in a padded cell, frontal lobotomies if the behavior was really out of control," she says.

"So when anti-psychotic medications did evolve and they did reduce psychotic symptoms, it was like the heavens had opened."

Antipsychotic drugs are good at tamping down the kinds of symptoms that scare people — those strange beliefs and visions. And to be clear, for a lot of people this is a lifesaver.

But for others, the drugs don't work that well. They can have bad side effects, make people gain weight, have tremors or get slow and sleepy. Some people with schizophrenia say they don't want to get rid of their hallucinations because they are a part of who they are.

And for Vinogradov and other researchers who study the disease, the antipsychotics aren't really getting at the disease itself. They are just treating one symptom of it.

"We haven't been addressing these underlying cognitive dysfunctions which are really at the heart of what impede people's ability to have a fulfilling and successful life," says Vinogradov.

This is important, but it's a little bit complicated. So let's back up.

Schizophrenia, the word, means literally "split mind." And that's how people usually think of schizophrenia, as a disease defined by weird ideas, like believing in cosmic dust. Or that the FBI is following you.

But this public perception of schizophrenia hasn't kept up with the science. When you talk to scientists today who study the disease, these weird beliefs are not what they emphasize.

If you want to really understand schizophrenia, look instead to how the disease begins, says Dr. Daniel Mathalon, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco.

"Kids seem to be growing up OK. But somewhere, typically in the teenage years, you start to see a decline in their functioning," he says. "They were doing better in school, now they're doing worse. They may have they had friends when they're younger, but they're starting to be more socially isolated."

This stage in life is supposed to be a time when the intellect flourishes. But for teenagers who go on to develop schizophrenia, the opposite can happen. They start to lose focus. Some say they used to be able to read books and now they can't. They used to be able to play the guitar well and now they can't.

At its core, schizophrenia is a decline in basic brain functioning, says Mathalon and others. Abilities like memory and basic motor skills start to falter. It's almost like a dementia that hits young people.

Then there's what scientists call "salience."

Someone without schizophrenia can hear a car alarm go off in the distance and barely register it. The brain instantly knows that the car alarm isn't salient. You can ignore it.

But for some people with schizophrenia, says Vinogradov, it's as if the filter is broken.

"They are walking down the street trying to have a conversation and their brain is being flooded with the sound of the door slamming, the airplane going overhead."

The brain of someone with schizophrenia tries to process all that information as though it has meaning, says Vinogradov. And maybe, though this is just a theory, this onslaught of extra stuff, extra data – that is what gives rise to hallucinations.

"It tries to make sense of it so that the person can go about with their life," says Vinogradov. "And there's some evidence to suggest that that's what gives rise to delusional ideas, to paranoia, to hallucinatory activity."

Considered this way, schizophrenia is a disease in which the stream of consciousness has swollen into a tsunami.

This seems to be the case with Paul, another guy I met at the clinic. Paul is an Asian man in his 50s whose conversation is hard to follow.

"Punjab, Punjab, Punjab," Paul keeps repeating. Then: "I've never been to India, but I saw pictures of it, books. You go places you never been like books." Pretty soon he's talking about his brother Kenny, Chuck Norris, Stanley tools, Battlestar Galactica, and on and on.

Everything I say to Paul, or he says to me, triggers a jumble of tangentially related ideas. It's like playing pinball with a machine where the ball never comes back down the chute. It just keeps bouncing around.

So what if you could teach someone like Paul to tune out the distractions in his head, to have a real conversation?

This is what researchers in schizophrenia want to achieve these days. They're less focused on making delusions go away. They want to help people with schizophrenia simply think more clearly.

One way to do this might be with a drug designed to improve memory and basic brain performance. Pharmaceutical companies have been working on this, but without much success, so clinicians are prescribing things that seem to be good for the brain like fish oil pills and exercise.

And at the mental health clinic where I met Paul and George, Vinogradov is conducting a study to see whether the brain can be, essentially, retaught. It uses computer games designed to train people with schizophrenia to tune out distractions and focus on simple instructions.

The idea isn't that video games would replace antipsychotic drugs, at least not for everyone. Vinogradov says there are many people whose voices or delusions are so destructive, so violent, that they need to be turned off. Medication is still the best way to do that.

But for another group of people, these kinds of approaches might let doctors focus on a different set of questions, says Vinogradov. "Is this person able to have the kind of life they want? Are they able to have friends, people they love who can love them back? Are they able to keep food and shelter?"

Voices and beliefs may not be what are getting in the way of that. Simpler problems like memory and focus may be the bigger obstacles to a good quality of life.

Addressing those questions may be a lot more important than whether someone hears voices or not.




“Abilities like memory and basic motor skills start to falter. It's almost like a dementia that hits young people.... Someone without schizophrenia can hear a car alarm go off in the distance and barely register it. The brain instantly knows that the car alarm isn't salient. You can ignore it. But for some people with schizophrenia, says Vinogradov, it's as if the filter is broken.... The brain of someone with schizophrenia tries to process all that information as though it has meaning, says Vinogradov. And maybe, though this is just a theory, this onslaught of extra stuff, extra data – that is what gives rise to hallucinations.... So what if you could teach someone like Paul to tune out the distractions in his head, to have a real conversation? This is what researchers in schizophrenia want to achieve these days. They're less focused on making delusions go away. They want to help people with schizophrenia simply think more clearly."

“... Vinogradov is conducting a study to see whether the brain can be, essentially, retaught. It uses computer games designed to train people with schizophrenia to tune out distractions and focus on simple instructions.... Simpler problems like memory and focus may be the bigger obstacles to a good quality of life. Addressing those questions may be a lot more important than whether someone hears voices or not.” The article states that some delusions and hallucinations are more violent and dangerous than others. Computer games of the right sort and “fish oil pills and exercise” to improve basic brain function are being used on some schizophrenics, rather than trying to get rid of the voices and hallucinations. Helping the schizophrenic to manage distractions may help them concentrate on the important things.

I don't see anything in this article about the basic mechanism by which hallucinations and erratic thinking occur. An article within the last few years stated there is brain degeneration involved. The Net has a number of such articles, though they are too technical to easily understand and explain without more medical knowledge than I have. I went again to my trusty old Wikipedia and found something of interest on similarities between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. I quote the following from that article.


“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_bipolar_disorder_and_schizophrenia

Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are mental disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disordersfourth edition (DSM IV). Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder, and bipolar disorder is a mood disorder but can also involve psychosis (in Bipolar I, not Bipolar II). However, because of some similar symptoms, differentiating between the two can sometimes be difficult, and in fact there is an intermediate diagnosis schizoaffective disorder.

While reported and observed symptoms are a main way to diagnose either disorder, recent research studies are allowing psychiatrists to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to try to find better, definite markers. Through MRIs, the psychiatrists can see specific structural differences in the brain. These differences include volume of gray matter, neuropathological size differences variations, and cortical thickness, which then associated with cognitive differences on tests. These differences may sometimes be seen throughout the lifespan of the diseases, and often occur soon after the initial episode. Although the diseases are different, some of their treatments are similar, because of some shared symptoms.

Both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia appear to result from gene–environment interaction. Evidence from numerous family and twin studies indicates a shared genetic etiology between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.[1][2] Geoffroy, Etain, and Houenou note that the largest family study available found a combined heritability for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia of approximately 60%, with environmental factors accounting for the remainder.[2] Genetic contributions to schizoaffective disorder appear to be entirely shared with those contributing to schizophrenia and mania.[1]

Bipolar I disorder and schizophrenia each occur in approximately 1% of the population; schizoaffective disorder is estimated to occur in less than 1% of the population.[1]

When schizophrenic patients are compared to healthy participants, there is a decrease in gray matter volume in prefrontal and temporal regions.[9][non-primary source needed] The only region in which the volume increases for gray matter is within the rightcerebellum,[9] an area that contributes to the cognitive, affective, perceptual, and other deficits seen in schizophrenia.[10]

Unlike schizophrenia, bipolar disorder has very little differences for gray matter volume.[8][9] Overall, there is no difference between bipolar patients and healthy patients.[9]

Magnetic resonance imaging studies found that schizophrenia is associated with significantly smaller amygdala volume compared to both healthy controls and participants with bipolar disorder.[11

Besides the amygdala, there are other neuropathological areas of degeneration as well; the overall brain volume can also be measured. Research shows that the overall brain volume is not statistically significantly different between bipolar and schizophrenic patients, except when making comparisons in the intracranial volume.[14][non-primary source needed] A larger intracranial volume is present in the brains in bipolar disorder, but no variation occurs in the brains in schizophrenics.[14]





Women Increasingly Pick Brains Over Looks In Choosing Egg Donors – NPR
ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG
November 02, 2014

More women than ever are using donor eggs as they keep delaying childbearing until long past the age when their own eggs are healthy. This has helped fuel an increase first-time mothers over 40, whose numbers have quadrupled in the past 30 years.

But as the practice becomes more widespread, women are no longer trying to hide the fact that their babies come from donor eggs by working hard to find donors who are physically or genetically similar to them, a study finds. Instead, the researchers say, recipients tend to look for other qualities, such as intelligence and athletic ability, that they hope to pass on to their children.

The study — archly titled "Beauty, Brains, or Health" — was conducted by physicians at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and the fertility clinic Reproductive Medical Associates of New York. It found that women today are not as focused anymore on a donor's hair and eye color.

The editor-in-chief of the Journal of Women's Health, which published the study, sees this as an indication that using egg donors has become more socially acceptable. Recipients are no longer working hard to try to make a baby who looks like their own biological child, so they can keep the baby's origins something of a family secret.

The shift in what recipients are looking for in egg donors indicates that they've become "more sophisticated" in their choices, according to Dr. Susan Kornstein, the editor. But is it really more sophisticated, though, to go shopping for an egg donor as though shopping for shoes, hoping that traits like intelligence or athletic ability will actually be present in the egg cell's DNA?

The researchers, led by Homero Flores of Reproductive Medical Associates, looked at the choices made by 438 potential egg recipients, aged 24 to 53, over the past five years.

Between 2008 and 2012, the percentage of women who said they wanted an egg donor from a "similar gene pool" declined from 40 percent to 25 percent. At the same time, looking for a baby with a "similar appearance" was relatively rare and held roughly steady, with 15 percent of women in 2008 saying it was important to them, and 22 percent saying so in 2012.

The most important thing that recipients cared about was the same thing mothers have cared about since time immemorial — the baby's health. Nearly three-quarters of the women in the Mt. Sinai study said the health of the egg donor was a crucial factor in making their decision.

But other factors were also important, and became more so during the five years of the study.

From 2008 to 2012, the percent of women who cared about a donor's "intelligence" increased from 18 percent to 55 percent, and the percent who cared about "athletic ability" increased from 1 percent to 17 percent.

Flores and his co-authors saw this as a good thing, a sign that recipients became more focused on "practical traits that would serve their offspring's overall quality of life." This assumes, of course, that "practical traits" can be passed along quite this easily — that being good at math or at throwing a ball not only enhance one's quality of life but also are inherited.

The preference for egg donors who are not only healthy, but smart and skilled, has been a trend in looking for sperm donors, too, with sperm banks becoming almost as personality-oriented as online dating. Indeed, one online dating site called Beautiful People created its own service a few years ago to matching up gamete donors and would-be recipients.

Hidden in this paper is the fact that 78 percent of the potential egg recipients were over the age of 40. And at least one of them was 53 years old.

This means that there are a lot of women out there in their 40s and even 50s (50s!) who think they still have the option to become pregnant. An argument could be made — a topic for another day — that by the time you pass 45 or so, that perhaps you should be thinking about other ways to satisfy your maternal cravings.




“But as the practice becomes more widespread, women are no longer trying to hide the fact that their babies come from donor eggs by working hard to find donors who are physically or genetically similar to them, a study finds. Instead, the researchers say, recipients tend to look for other qualities, such as intelligence and athletic ability, that they hope to pass on to their children.... The most important thing that recipients cared about was the same thing mothers have cared about since time immemorial — the baby's health. Nearly three-quarters of the women in the Mt. Sinai study said the health of the egg donor was a crucial factor in making their decision. But other factors were also important, and became more so during the five years of the study.... This assumes, of course, that "practical traits" can be passed along quite this easily — that being good at math or at throwing a ball not only enhance one's quality of life but also are inherited.”

“From 2008 to 2012, the percent of women who cared about a donor's 'intelligence' increased from 18 percent to 55 percent, and the percent who cared about 'athletic ability' increased from 1 percent to 17 percent.” I'm surprised but pleased to see that so few of these women chose for athletic ability over intelligence – only 17%. I want to see earth's population become more and more intelligent so that we become as a result more “logical” and more able to retain and process information. Studying to be a lawyer or doctor requires a high intelligence. Unless there is a massive failure in society, the role of technology will continue to eliminate more and more jobs that people used to do with their hands, so they will need to learn the technicalities of computers or engineering. As the oncoming age of global warming produces more and more environmental challenges we will need scientists and citizens who understand science enough to help -- be “a part of the solution rather than the problem.”

Intelligence plays a part in how we get along with others, too. A good healthy family background is also crucial, of course, because a child who was sexually or psychologically abused will most likely have mental health problems. Some criminals are bright, but emotionally damaged, but if they are intelligent enough they may be able to think their way into a healthier personality, especially with therapy. Prisons usually administer psychotrophic drugs and antidepressants, but I don't know how many of them employ psychologists for talk therapy. For that reason I think prisons should should be required to include therapeutic and rehabilitative aspects rather than merely “keeping the prisoners off the streets” and punishing them for their wrongs. I think that is why so many young kids are delinquents, but when they grow up they mature enough to fit in without so much conflict and learn to love rather than hate. If a religion is practiced on its principles __ “Love thy neighbor as thyself” – rather than on its theology and dogma it can help these people to change for the better, teaching them empathy with others and to think deeply on issues such as ethics. Confucianism, for instance, has no deity but it teaches ethics and a philosophical way of life.

Finally, to have a fully free, inclusive and productive society, we all need to be able to think beyond our lowest instincts. The hatred of the “other” – those with slanted eyes and darker skin, or of the mentally deficient or emotionally disturbed people who will inevitably occur in any group of people. That was a good thing in prehistoric times in that it increased group unity and possibly tended to produce more genes without genetic disorders. It also, however, is the main cause of bullying and other evils, and of course war. If the urge to compete to the last drop of blood we have in us could be reduced in society, we would be so much better off. We need more philosophers among us who are benign – not like those who have spawned evil beliefs like Nazism – and more average citizens who think deeply and seek goodness.

We need such citizens to keep our democracy improving rather than going backward. My problem with “conservatism” is that it's always headed toward a fondly remembered past rather than a better and more just future – the good old days of white dominance in the South, for instance. Black people “knew their place” in those days. Phrases like “mud race” are appalling to me, and they crop up every now and then still in the news. Human beings need to think their way into a better way of interrelating or we won't have a democracy based on things like freedom and universal prosperity anymore. In fact, the very worst of the “conservatives” will take over and we will find ourselves with a new Hitler, in the White House and not in a foreign country.