Baffling neurological illness affects growing number of young adults(theguardian.com) |
Baffling neurological illness affects growing number of young adults(theguardian.com) |
We should all be terrified of BMAA and it’s here because of climate change.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190124110834.h...
Climate change is making the oceans and fresh water toxic and very deadly. We’ve seriously fucked the earth.
Have you ever heard weasel words more reminiscent of a cover up:
“ But experts nonetheless warn that testing itself is also more difficult than the public realizes.
While some medical tests can provide quick and definite results other types of investigation require far more work.
“What people are talking about really amounts to a full research investigation, because then we know what we’re looking for precisely,” said the federal scientist who was familiar with both the cluster and the testing process. “Right now we don’t have a way to interpret simple data that you might get when testing a person’s brain tissue for a particular toxin. For example, how much are ‘elevated’ levels of a neurotoxin compared to the rest of the public? And when does that become a cause for concern?”
The scientist said teams are ready to begin the research, but “New Brunswick has specifically told us not to go forward with that work”.”
Not sure why you're assuming this has anything to do with climate change. What could be the link there?
The ways we've "effed" the planet are so numerous and interconnected that it makes sense, at least to me, to lump them together into an umbrella term everyone is familiar with. There is no clean separation between our mining practices and what has happened to the water and what has happened to the atmosphere - they are intimately related.
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651/10/2/83/htm
Seems to accumulate in bivalves and crustaceans but not fish.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3295368/
This has been known for quite a while.
"Such blooms are a regular feature of Australian inland waterways and are increasing due to nutrient run-off, reduced river flows and climate change."
So while climate change (i.e., warming in targeted areas) doesn't help, it's more of the final nail in a series of nails we've been driving into Mother Nature's heart.
The idea we could be so negligent and abusive of our own home without repercussions is a great narrative for profits, but not so good for our home.
The leading cause of nutrient runoff is over-fertilization of industrialized farmland.
I've never heard of climate change associated with these until now, but I've only worked tangentially with these phenomenon, and am not an expert.
Pollution from Soviet collective farms isn't any better.
The linked article is about how NB went out of their way to shut out federal investigators. If it’s environmental, it’s possible the NB government is trying to cover it up.
This is also briefly touched on in this article:
> The scientist said teams are ready to begin the research, but “New Brunswick has specifically told us not to go forward with that work”.
The federal government should step in and force the province's hand on investigating this.
'Forever Chemicals' are known to get concentrated in shellfish - I wonder if that is an issue?
I'd love to see the comparative numbers of similar cases in other environments - this seems very high but I have no idea what the baseline for this sort of thing is.
As someone that grew up with the spector of 'mad cow disease' (bse/cjd) in the UK, it is horrible to think about the affects in these people and their families. The fact that care givers are also falling ill is very interesting and concerning.
Safety, processes, practices and quality vary wildly by region and farm.
https://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/departments/ocmoh/cdc/neu...
So it does not seem to be prions, despite the similarities.
https://www.cp24.com/news/ask-questions-but-don-t-panic-abou...
If they want to say that, I think they are obligated to also provide the correct diagnosis.
I hate when people say "we know it's not X" without proof and without a specific alternative.
Environmental pollution is everywhere industrial capitalism is. All the major scandals about waste disposal in Europe (including nuclear waste disposal!) should make us think twice before we as a society find it acceptable to allow anyone to produce that kind of dangerous substances.
Also where industrial communism was? Where industrial democratic socialism is?
Wouldn't it be more accurate to just say: where industrial humans are or have been?
Doctors working for everyone also means they work for the highest bidder. Remember the tabaco industry in the US and the doctors literally advertising it?
How about doctors near areas of chemical spills getting $£€¥ from the companies to keep quiet about them?
How about the opioid crisis that has killed thousands of Americans?
Yeah. So, if you want to bring up a misleading example, at least think of the entire cycle of the "other side" of this.
At the end of the day the thing is "interesting what happens when doctors are incentivized with capital and success is measured by how rich you are"
The joke is that it's gotten so progressive that no one gets better, we all have to equally suffer. You can see clearly how this situation was mishandled.
Until relatively recently they were considered some kind of ‘wake up sweating and dismiss the nightmare as just fantasy’ type cause that should be dismissed by rational people, though there were a number of serious known diseases that no virus or bacteria could be shown identified as causing.
Not actually knowing what causes a disease is a lot more common than people think though, including for a number of relatively common diseases.
The ones we’ve shown a prior cause for had a big question mark next to them despite concerted effort. They were also generally in either remote populations that were practicing some taboo things (human cannibalism), a few families, or in animals (scrapie), and clearly fatal.
In the mid 60’s it was becoming apparent these diseases were not likely caused by the most common theory of a ‘slow virus’ or any known bacteria, as even biological sterilizing agents, viral killing agents, hard UV, and high levels of ionizing radiation didn’t stop samples from being infectious, and searches to find the actual cause started looking for more novel sources, despite a lot of skepticism.
The term prion, after decades of research, was only coined in ‘82, and only generally accepted as the actual source of the disease (instead of a red herring for a disease caused by a not-yet-isolate virus) in the late 90’s to early 2000’s. One of the most prolific researchers on the topic got a Nobel prize for his work proving they exist - but only in 2017.
A brief history [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4626585/]
So not likely, but until another cause can be isolated, best to not fully rule it out either, even if it is negative for all known prions.
With how good many of our tests actually are, it’s easy to overweight their accuracy in categorizing unknown phenomenon. Somewhat of a CSI type effect.
I don't think that's the reason. Public health systems in Canada/France/Belgium have (had?) a very good reputation because they were in fact really good until the neoliberal turn on the 80s/90s. When you have health workers running the show with a fair budget, wait times are low and results are good, and everyone is happy. Now introduce some managerial feudalism (see David Greaber's talk at CCC last year) and micro-management/benchmarking and things start to degrade.
Add to this mix that big corporations don't pay their dues and the government keeps reducing budgets and pretending they don't know why there's no more money flowing in and suddenly you've got health crisis on a wide scale and most people you know working in hospitals are depressive, either quitting or on the verge of suicide due to contradicting objectives: they want to help people but they're not given the means to do so. Social dues fraud is dozens of billions of euros every year in France, it's well-known and well-flagged and no government wants to do something about it.
If you're working in IT, think about it this way: management is benchmarking how many functions you write per day and does not care about the state of things as a whole. You are incentivized not to produce tests (which would indicate failure from your team specifically) but rather to ship away at once. Are you gonna produce good code?
EDIT: I should make it clear when i talk about social dues fraud, i don't mean individuals gaming the system to gain funds they're not owed (which is < 1% of fraud), and i'm not talking about small companies not paying their dues (the State is really good at harassing those until money flows in), i'm talking about CAC40 corporations who make billions of profit every year. They are the ones responsible for the social security hole ("trou de la sécu") and that's public knowledge.
On the other hand, every day I see small businesses with significant undeclared revenue and obvious money laundering schemes going on. France makes it very easy to anonymously report all sorts of crimes, from domestic violence and child neglect to terrorism, but only a selected few can report to TRACFIN.
Personally I can't wait for France to adopt a fiscal data module like the Belgian HoReCa black-box [0], and given the overreaching arms of the French fisc I'm surprised it hasn't already.
[0] http://www.salesdatacontroller.com/belgium-prices-are-10-hig...
I'd love to see the list of people you surveyed to draw this conclusion. In my metropolitan area availability is abysmal and (in my experience recently) quality is not great. I am contrasting this to my recent experiences in the US system.
If any of us are it's because of the pervasive anti-American propaganda spewn about.
My GF is from the Czech Republic (where we currently are) and since we got here she's been getting all her standard check ups done. Here she can make an appointment only a day in advance (as opposed to weeks or months out in Canada), there's no wait time (in Canada you usually wait even with an appointment) and dental/drugs are included in Czech Republic (in Canada only the most basic care is included, everything else is extra and quite expensive).
Czech Republic is seen as a second-rate EU country (at least what I've heard of it) but health care here is so far ahead of Canada we might as well be a third world country.
Edit - I should add, even before observing European health care, I knew a shocking amount of people who've gone to the US and even Mexico specifically for medical treatment. Canada's health care is abysmal, our politicians just convince everyone that everything is OK because it's "free" (never mind that we pay European-level taxes for far worse care).
Also, I come from the richest (per capita) Canadian province with the best health-care funding, which in my experience is the best in Canada, but still lacking...
The government is clueless, but also the healthcare isn't very good beyond common issues.
It's not like in the US where you have multibillion dollar facilities dedicated to a disease.
Unfortunately the same doctor treating you for cancer is the same doctor putting stitches in some kids finger at the local hospital and not a specialized medical team at the Johns Hopkins Center.
Everything here is treated with Amoxicillin, Tylenol, and if they trust you enough with the hard drugs, maybe some diclofenac.
This case clearly has basically nothing to do with public 'health care' this is clearly political and health research related.
Our health outcomes have plateaued, wait times increased and costs rocketed.
The inevitable nature of uncompetitive systems.
Healthcare is messy. That plateau might be the best we can accomplish given our current technology, science, healthcare, politics, and culture. It's not necessarily a measurement that always has to go up (like USA stocks).
If you want to put this on non-competitive systems, the USA has a competitive system and it is probably worse than Canada. If not completely worse, then certainly worse on major dimensions like cost and accessibility.
I'd be interested in what these health outcomes measured if you have a link handy.
Our health outcomes are actually dropping, wait times are bad, and costs are the highest in the world.
This is highly misinformed. The problem is precisely the introduction of competitiveness in a system which previously worked well. This is for example explained in Adam Curtis' documentary The Trap Part 2 [0] which you may find online in many places.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(British_TV_series)
We could also mention tax evasion and other schemes, which affect the ability of the national budget to compensate frauds. Despite arguments about the exact number, most agree big corporations pay less taxes than the small on average [2]. It's interesting to note the evolution over time of subsidiaries of CAC40 companies in fiscal paradises. [3]
Overall, there's plenty of fraud and "legal" exemptions on all levels. Quite enough to close the social security deficit.
> Personally I can't wait for France to adopt a fiscal data module like the Belgian HoReCa black-box
I think that's happening. The law is clear that accounting software has to be certified since a few years (which has been a major hurdle for FLOSS projects). Personally, i'm not so much interested in such measures as most of the fraud is committed by the very wealthy and such measures could affect smaller businesses and common people in some ways: need to invest in more expensive accounting equipment/software, more difficulty for undocumented people to find honest jobs (though they'll still be able to work for big industrial groups who are famous for exploiting them).
[0] https://www.ccomptes.fr/system/files/2019-11/20191202-synthe...
[1] https://www.cairn.info/revue-de-l-ires-2015-4-page-3.htm
[2] https://www.liberation.fr/politiques/2017/02/24/les-entrepri...
[3] https://www.capital.fr/entreprises-marches/les-entreprises-d...
> For example, obtaining an MRI scan in a hospital could require a waiting period of months, whereas it could be obtained much faster in a private clinic.
The parent used the term profits to distinguish free-market and state-controlled activities, and to assert that state-controlled food production has historically been just as environmentally damaging.
At any rate, there are a bunch in Montreal. Here's one: https://www.rocklandmd.com/en/medical-clinic.html Here's another: https://cliniquesmedicaleslacroix.com/en/ You can certainly find more by searching for "[Canadian Place Name] private clinic"
Heck, here's a news article about the Quebec government outsourcing some work to private clinics to clear COVID-related backlogs. For there to be $100M worth of contracts, there must be a decent number of clinics.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/private-clinics-queb...
Doctors are not able to work in both the public and private systems, they have to choose.
There are a few clinics that provide care entirely outside the public system but since the demand is low they are rare beyond MRI clinics in a few provinces.
But please, send me links to the dozen of private clinics (dont work in the public system) that are 30 mins of where you live.
I'll also swerve fish (such as salmon) from Chile, as standards are relatively low there - for example, they permit a much higher sea lice count than anywhere in Europe.
For shellfish, I prefer wild Scottish sources, but Scottish farmed is OK too. I'd swerve shellfish (typically prawns) from Bangladesh, as despite farming often being done in a small scale, standards can be low.
Solving the immediate problem is nice but knowing about the root cause is absolutely important.
Personally I feel that splitting up interests that are inherently to do with climate change and ecology into individual issues is detrimental. However, you're probably right that capitalism is inefficient and utterly ineffective at large scale projects, and that splitting everything into isolated issues that cannot be seen to lead to anything bigger is a more "efficient" way to solve the general problem under capitalism, sure.
Mines contamination has no relation at all with climate change. Birds death due to impact with windmills have nothing to do with climate change.
It's lumping those things up that is artificial. And if you add noise to your goal, don't be surprised when people start to question if your actions actually lead to your stated goals or if you have a hidden agenda... because you do have a hidden agenda. It's hidden because of bad communication, but people can't tell the difference.
If you are one of the lucky 10% at the top of the heap US healthcare will outperform.
Edit: what, am I out of touch? Is health insurance only provided to employees in the top 10%?
I think you're being down voted for the 'generally affordable' and 'bankrupting illnesses' parts. "Middle class" doesn't usually equate to tech level salaries or benefits. Family health insurance can be very expensive for middle class families. The extremely high family out-of-pocket max plans can turn even non-catastrophic illnesses into a financial crisis.
And I'd say that the leading cause of that is the increase of world population which necessitates the "industrialized farmland". In other words there's always a balance between more people on this planet vs more wild-life.
Targeted fertilization or erosion control can both mitigate it by reducing waste, saving money and reducing occurance of side effects at the expense of a reduction fertilizer sales worldwide.
Tech can help here. See precision agriculture and other related topics
There's nothing about PA that guarantees more food from less land. It may. The goal I've seen is same food with less waste.
Like insulating your coffee machine. it doesn't produce more coffee, but it uses less electricity.
Wherever regulators have not been carefully selected and sufficiently empowered.
> Wouldn't it be more accurate to just say: where industrial humans are or have been?
Indeed! Yet this formula ignores the ties between the two concepts. Industrialization and capitalism grew hand in hand with extractivism and colonization starting in the 16th century. Without the industry to build boats to exploit the overseas, capitalism could not exist: yet without massive accumulation of wealth, industry as we know it could not be created.
This is not to say pollution is impossible without capitalism. But capitalism as a social structure incentivizes not to care because there's no (immediate) profit involved in respecting your environment, and because there will always be more areas to exploit and pollute: our overlords are now openly talking of colonizing Mars once they're done fucking things up over here!
If you have intellectual curiosity for critiques of industrial capitalism, i strongly recommend the "End: Civ" documentary.
Ok. So what are the viable political/economic alternatives?
If anything, the COVID crisis has shown that health workers care and will go to great lengths of creativity to counteract the bureaucracy and lack of resources (remember the trashbag suits? the homesewn masks?). Now imagine if these people were in charge of organizing healthcare instead of managers? I can only imagine much better outcomes for everyone involved. And the same is true across most (all?) industries and areas of life.
This article shows a hundred-strong queue of patients waiting to register to a newly opened dentist office. Some of them waited overnight.
https://www.idnes.cz/ostrava/zpravy/lhotka-ostrava-fronta-zu...
Mind you, this is Ostrava, the third largest city in the country.
One thing I have noticed is that Czechs are very critical of their country, which to my eyes seems to function quite well, for what it's worth.
Canadians put up with far worse and yet will defend it. Also, our whole country has a doctor shortage. No sane doctor stays in Canada when the US pays multiples more...
I like to think I am pretty resistant to that. So, some earned praise: Czechia is a very safe country which was able to get some things work better than many others (we even have a functioning gun culture without too much machismo or regular bloodsheds - the compulsory safety and legal tests are a good filter against crazies). Our healthcare is fairly decent, though necessarily limited by the overall economic level, which is, by the standards of Western Europe, second tier.
What is really f_cked up is the real estate market. Our construction permit bureaucracy would make the Byzantine courts blush, a normal block of flats may spend a decade in permission limbo before the first shovel touches the ground. As a result, prices have gone absolutely mad in the last few years, especially in Prague.
(Meanwhile, similarly sized Polish capital Warsaw built 100 000 apartments in five years or so and housing is much more affordable there as a consequence.)
Please don’t claim to speak for me. Your view does not match the typical Canadian’s.
I have friends from Europe who (now) have dual citizenship and fly back to their country of origin for anything beyond a basic checkup.
In Asia I go to the hospital and I get all the results in a folder and can review them myself. There are no hidden mysteries like in Canada -- what are they hiding in Canada? I've asked for a copy of my medical file and they've looked me like I'm a lunatic!
In Canada:
"So when do I get my test results?"
"We'll call you if there is a problem."
No joke!
In Quebec I always have to pay $500 a year for medical -- I guarantee you I can get A+ coverage for that amount of money in any SEA country. So it's definitely not "free".
Canadian health care is most certainly a better financial deal than the US system if stories are to be believed. But it's most certainly not the best world wide.
It should have most of your testing, albeit with a 30-day delay that is supposed to let someone discuss potentially-scary test results with you.
But it's objectively bad when compared to every country at our level of income, and bad when compared to most first-world countries. We pay more and receive less. My girlfriend is pregnant (part of the reason for all her medical appointments) and legitimately doesn't want to move back to Canada (where we met) because of the state of health care (and education, and infrastructure, and housing costs, but healthcare is a big one with a child on the way).
Edit - in a comment to another person you're saying you're OK with things being postponed in Canada because it's a pandemic. Nothing is postponed or shut down here... We've been getting appointments just fine. Literally made my point.
Demand used to be low, it is increasing steadily due to mismanagement.
If you don't trust me, type "private clinic toronto" into Google Maps.
No hospitals or major research centers that would actually be anywhere near the issues happening in NS.
If all you saw was endoscopies and sports health, you weren't looking. There are tons of generalist clinics.
Cries in Canadian...
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/least-affordable-cities-to-...
https://www.interest.co.nz/property/house-price-income-multi...
Also the whistleblower isn't a member of the health authority. He's an employee of Vitalité Network which has a contact with the health authority but is also allowed to operate privately under some provisions.
Doctors of all stripes are allowed to open their own practice take on cases privately. There is simply no profit in opening a private practice to deal with difficult to diagnose cases affecting generally poor people requiring dozens of experts to investigating over multiple years. That's why no doctors decided to set up a private practice to deal with these patients - there is no profit motive. Too much work, and too little pay.