Category: Health

Environment/Family and Friends/Health/Politics & Causes/World Affairs
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Bold Hope for the World’s Poor

by Fran Johns

Map_of_the_world_1998

A Solution to Poverty?

If governments can’t solve world poverty, and nonprofits can’t make serious dents in it… can the private sector be the answer? With the help of you and me and major investors?

Mal Warwick thinks so. Warwick, co-author, with Paul Polak, of The Business Solution to Poverty, spoke recently at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco about their conviction that the long-term solution to the ongoing tragedy of global poverty lies in coming up with answers that will pay off. Not just to suffering individuals, by helping lift them out of poverty, but to investors by turning a profit.

Warwick’s audience included a variety of interested individuals familiar with much of the work already being doing by nonprofits whose funders tend to seek reward through humanitarian success rather than financial return. But major infusions of capital, Warwick maintains, will be needed to continue building the ladders people everywhere will need to climb out of poverty’s depths, and that will require – business solutions.

As a shining example, Warwick cited the treadle pump. It is a human-powered device, inexpensive to manufacture and simple to use, which enables farmers to multiply the yield of their land and thus, in many cases, raise themselves and their families out of poverty. It works as a business solution on a number of levels. Factories needed to manufacture the pump were set up in villages, providing employment for people there, village shops distributed them, workers were employed to drill the wells and financial institutions made loans for purchases.

The problem, Warwick says, was with marketing – radio, TV, newspapers and traditional advertising methods weren’t available. The solution? Roaming troubadors and a Bollywood movie.

Among the facts Warwick brought to light were: One billion people lack access to electricity. One billion people lack access to safe water. One billion farms are without irrigation. The 20 million people lifted out of poverty between 1981 and 2006 by international aid programs, Warwick says, are only a drop in the bucket to the numbers who continue to suffer.

“It’s possible,” Warwick says, “to create brave new companies” with the lure of “reaching at least 100 million $2/day customers.” Some of those companies already at work include Australia’s SunWater which is developing a variety of safe-water solutions, several businesses working toward turning organic waste into affordable charcoal briquettes, and SpringHealth, which is addressing the problem of contaminated drinking water.

If governments and nonprofits can’t solve global poverty, can businesses? It might take all of the above – plus you and me, ordinary citizens.

caregiving/compassion and choices/Death and Dying/End-of-Life/Healthcare/Women
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Thanks, Brittany

by Fran Johns

clouds

Brittany Maynard, 1984-2014

No one was surprised by the news of Brittany Maynard’s death on November 1, as she had planned. The news arrived in my Inbox late Sunday night, November 2, in an email from Compassion & Choices, an organization I have supported — as a volunteer, Northern California board chair and in all other ways — for well over 15 years,

What Brittany did for Compassion & Choices, and for you and me, though, far exceeds what any one person might ordinarily have done. Hers was an extraordinary demonstration of how to live, and die.

More of how she lived will continue to be in the news. But it’s how she died, with generosity and grace, that is worth noticing right now. Just to touch on a few things:

Brittany, in making her own choice, showed us how to make our own choices. Demand the right to control your destiny, she was saying. Fight for legalized aid in dying. Complete your own advance directives and make sure EVERYONE in your family and circle of friends knows what your own wishes are. Death with dignity was Brittany’s choice, and she wanted it to be yours — if you choose.

“The freedom is in the choice,” Brittany said.  “If the option of Death With Dignity is unappealing to anyone for any reason, they can simply choose not to avail themselves of it.”

Brittany was irate over insinuations that she had been “manipulated” by anyone. She was a strong, educated, independent, intelligent woman who led a joy-filled life and confronted its abbreviated end with remarkable courage. The reality was simply that she took control of her own final months, weeks, days, by moving to Oregon where aid in dying is legal. The reality is that she wanted her life — and death — to have meaning for all of us. She hoped that by sharing her story all of us might benefit.

It’s about freedom. Brittany, thankfully, is now free of the terrible pain her illness was bringing, a pain that was certain only to increase. Her family will mourn for a long time, but they are free of the pain and anguish that comes from watching someone you love suffer.

You and I are free to choose. We can continue to let those who hold differing views deprive us of our right to control our final weeks and days. Or we can fight to legalize our right to choose a compassionate death. Eventually, that right will prevail.

Thanks, Brittany.

Feminist Collection/Health/Lifestyle/seniors/Women
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WHI: Strengthening Women’s Health

by Fran Johns

WHICould the health and wellbeing of a few million women be improved, and a few billion dollars saved in the process? A very big dream.

When the Women’s Health Initiative was established more than 20 years ago, no one was talking in grandiose terms and few would have anticipated the wide-ranging health benefits (and huge cost savings) that would result in the decades ahead. Many of us were simply saying, “Imagine this. At last we’re studying women to find answers about women’s health issues.”

This writer was proud and happy to enlist in the first WHI study. I joined more than 100,000 other postmenopausal women volunteering to fill out forms, have blood drawn and answer questions over the next 15 years. That initial focus was on tracking the effects of hormone therapy, dietary patterns and/or calcium/vitamin D supplements on prevention of heart disease, cancer and osteoporotic fractures. I had not yet had breast cancer – that would come about 10 years into the study; a family history of osteoporosis added to my personal interest in WHI. Over the years I volunteered to participate in some of the wide-ranging ancillary studies looking at other health-related things like physical activities, lifestyle, tobacco and dozens of peripheral issues. (My personal favorite question appeared on one of the multi-page annual update forms. It read – Yes or No – “When you enter a room full of other people, do you have the feeling they are talking about you?” There may someday be a report on women and paranoia.)

Mysterious questions aside, WHI is serious business. Here, excerpted from the latest Extension Study newsletter are a few facts about what has been learned from the historic initiative, and a little of what is still ahead.

Those hormones millions of postmenopausal women were taking, widely thought to be miracle answers? Studies showed the risks far outweighed the benefits, and millions stopped taking them. Hormones in different combinations had been commonly taken to minimize chances of cardiovascular disease, cancers, fractures, diabetes, gall bladder disease and a variety of quality-of-life measures; quitting the hormones proved a better choice. Health benefits can’t be precisely measured, but the reduction in hormone use has led to a decrease in rates of breast cancer and cardiovascular disease.

And in dollars and cents? Some $37.1 billion, (in 2012 when all costs and quality-adjusted years of life are considered, has been the total economic return of the WHI trial.

By June, 2014, over 1000 papers based on WHI data had been published in scientific journals. What’s ahead? Researchers are looking at pet ownership and risk of cardiovascular disease; physical activity during childhood and risk of Alzheimer’s disease; breast cancer distribution by rural/urban areas and geographic differences in cognitive decline/dementia.

Every year on their birthday, WHI study participants receive a card – some of us call it the “Hooray, you’re still alive” card. For women everywhere, it represents something worth more than gold.

California/compassion and choices/Death and Dying/End-of-Life/Health
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Peaceful dying vs Doctor Knows Best

by Fran Johns

credit acpinternist.org

Barbara Coombs Lee, the sharp and articulate president of Compassion & Choices, spoke to the issue of death with dignity on PBS NewsHour tonight, with opposing views presented by Ira Byock, noted physician, author and advocate for palliative care. Neither really won; the time was too short and the issue is too complex. The Death With Dignity movement though, is not going away, and we the people will only win when the movement wins.

Lee spent 25 years as a nurse and physician’s assistant before becoming an attorney and devoting her life to personal choice and autonomy at life’s end. She believes a terminally ill, mentally competent adult should have the right to end his or her life when and how he or she chooses. Byock, chief medical officer of the Providence Institute for Human Caring, believes that if doctors were properly trained in pain management and end-of-life care – which he readily admits is far from the case – no one would ever want, or choose, to hasten one’s end. Lee appreciates the grace with which Brittany Maynard is facing her own very premature death; Byock says the active, well-educated 29-year-old is “being exploited” by Compassion and Choices.

A few caveats:

Barbara Coombs Lee is a good friend whom I admire and respect. I have worked with Compassion & Choices for well over a decade as a volunteer, Northern CA member and board chair, and now member of the Leadership Council. I strongly support physician aid-in-dying and individual autonomy.

“Hospice and palliative care,” Lee said on the NewsHour segment, “are the gold standard” for end-of-life care. But no amount of hospice care, or palliative care, can alter “the relentless, dehumanizing, unending” progression of a disease such as Maynard has and many of us will also face. For many of us, as for Maynard, there will be loss of every bodily function, one by one, quite likely accompanied by excruciating pain and possibly things like the seizures Maynard would like to minimize for her own sake as well as the sake of her loved ones who would be forced to watch.Stethoscope

Perhaps doctors will eventually all be adequately trained in pain management and palliative care. But even then – and “then” is a very long way off – must the doctor always know best? Why can’t I, the patient, the person facing my own dying, be the one in control?

Byock is dismissive of the pain involved with watching a loved one suffer agonies of prolonged dying. Maynard’s inevitably increasing seizures, for example, would be helped by palliative care, he suggested, so she wouldn’t suffer terribly. If I chose – as Maynard is choosing – to have my loved ones remember me as a woman at peace while holding their hands rather than a disintegrating person gripped with terrible spasms – why is that not an honorable choice?

Byock – who in this NewsHour fan’s humble opinion got the better time and treatment – slipped in words like “suicide” and “slippery slope” and “euthanasia,” and phrases like “euthanized in the Netherlands” too far along in the program for Lee to answer in the brief time given her. Byock ignores the fact that no one choosing to hasten death under the existing laws (four states now have the law, two others allow aid-in-dying) is committing suicide; they are being killed by their disease. No one has been, or will be, “euthanized.” The United States is not the Netherlands. He also ignores the fact that in the long years of Oregon’s successful law – it was first enacted in 1997 – there has been not one report of abuse. Not one.

There is no slippery slope. There is only compassion. Self-determination. Autonomy. Dignity. Grace. Peace. Why should they not be legal?

I respect the medical and literary achievements of Ira Byock. But I’m sorry: the doctor does not always know best.

California/geriatrics/Lifestyle/Money/seniors
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Smarter Scams, New Victims Every Day

by Fran Johns

frowny face

My “grandson” and I talked for a full several minutes before I determined he was no one I knew. Despite a few clues – my grandchildren don’t call me “Grandma,” his voice could have been the 21-year-old I hadn’t seen in nearly a year, but it wasn’t perfect – I found the caller convincing enough to trade three or four questions and answers before I hung up the phone.

“Grandson” never got around to the pitch. I want to believe I would never have fallen for a story that would separate me from several thousand dollars, but I surely could have. Today’s scammers – especially those preying on seniors or the socially isolated – are incredibly skilled.

One very smart senior in the San Francisco Bay Area was recently taken in by a call from a fake grandson – and had the courage to tell the story to the local newspaper. Retired physician/author Walter Bortz, who has a real and well-loved grandson, listened with shock and sorrow to an entirely plausible tale that wound up costing him $5,000. The “grandson” told of having had too much drink the night before, of drugs found in the cab he unfortunately took, going to jail, getting beaten up and having his nose broken. Then he gave the phone to a “police officer” who explained how bail could be arranged……..

Elements of the scam – eloquently told to local reporters by the victim – are widely used. The “relative” is often caught up in an arrest involving drugs and/or guns (through no fault of his or her own) and often in another state or country. The need is always urgent, to avoid some terrible consequence like jail time or to cover medical expenses. Transactions are made through prepaid cards available almost everywhere today. Once cashed, the money is impossible to trace.

It’s the meanness of these scams that is almost as bad as the financial loss. Rose, a young businesswoman, tells of her own grandmother getting a call from someone pretending to be Rose and spilling out a tale of disaster that had her grandmother frightened and sobbing. Long after the ruse was uncovered and explained – “I was calling my grandmother, saying, ‘Look! I’m here at my desk. I’m sending you a photo! ’” – the targeted victim was still in distress over the fears she had had for her beloved granddaughter.

JoAnn (a pseudonym,) a friend of this writer in Louisiana, fell victim – almost – to one of the oldest scams around. It began with an official-looking notice of her having won a Canadian lottery. JoAnn lives alone and has withdrawn from friends – but she plays the lottery; she thought one of her tickets had paid off. The notification included a “Certified check” for her seven-figure winnings. All she had to do was deposit the check, wire $1,279 to cover out-of-state taxes, and live in luxury. JoAnn was saved by an alert teller who had not seen her come into the local bank for a long time. The teller began asking questions about the sender, and JoAnn finally told her about winning the lottery. “If you don’t mind,” the teller said, “let me see if this check clears before you do anything further.”

My friend suffered not from financial loss but from the embarrassment factor. JoAnn was in tears by the time she got through telling the story over the phone. “How foolish did I look?” she said. “Suppose word gets around that I fell for such a thing. I have a PhD, for heaven’s sake.” The teller turned everything over to federal agents and it’s highly unlikely that word got around.

But word should get around. Bortz deserves high praise for going public, proving that no one is exempt from the possibility of being scammed. “I like to think that I am worldly wise,” he told The Almanac, “(and yet) I got snookered into this one. But I guess it shows that I’m a nice grandfather.”

Nice grandfathers, and grandmothers, and gentle people everywhere, are being targeted today. The Federal Trade Commission has a fairly complete list of current scams, and how to deal with them, on its Consumer Information page.

The schemes are old, the twists are new, the advice is age-old and two-fold: (a) Keep asking questions; and (b) If it seems too good (or even bad) to be true, it probably is.

Abortion/Feminist Collection/Health/Healthcare/Politics & Causes/Reproductive rights/Women
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Celebrating Women’s Equality

by Fran Johns
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi speaking to a Women's Equality Day crowd in San Francisco
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi speaking to a Women’s Equality Day crowd in San Francisco

This is for all those who missed the party:

Women’s Equality Day quietly came and went recently, not quite 100 years after passage of the Nineteenth Amendment – the law that said women were equally entitled, along with men, to the right to vote. Since ratification of that groundbreaking law – women should make choices just as men do?! – an assortment of other rights have been won. But equality? Not quite.

It was the indomitable U.S. Representative “Battling Bella” Abzug who figured that all those rights – won and yet to be won – should have their own day. The New York Democrat introduced legislation establishing Women’s Equality Day, to be observed annually on August 26th in commemoration of the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment. A lot of other indomitable women, notably Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her suffragette friends Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony, laid the groundwork for the women’s movement.

Fast forward to Women’s Equality Day, 2014. In his official proclamation, President Obama mentioned “all those decades spent organizing, protesting, and agitating,” and took the occasion to list (in the proclamation) a few of the things that his administration has indeed accomplished to advance women’s equality.

But in commemorative events such as the one this writer attended in San Francisco with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, there was a lot of talk about areas in which women are still not quite equal. Pelosi’s focus, she explains, is a three-pronged “Middle Class Jumpstart,” aimed at achieving equal pay for equal work, paid sick leave, and quality affordable healthcare – actions that would unquestionably boost equality for (and the lives of) women in the U.S.

What those ferocious ancestors of ours like Abzug and Anthony were fighting for was not just equality but justice. There’s not much justice if you’re a single mom having to send a sick child to school because you can’t afford to lose a day’s pay or manage a trip to the doctor. Nor is there much justice if that day’s pay is 10% less than men on the same job are getting.

There’s also not much justice for women in non-metropolitan areas who seek abortion services. Ninety-seven per cent of them have to travel long distances, navigate a maze of medically unnecessary restrictions and often also struggle through hostile protesters – assuming they can find the time and money to do this.

Are such issues – reproductive rights – equality issues? It’s hard to feel equal – to the men who don’t face these issues, or to people with more money and power than you — if you are a woman in any of the situations cited above. And given the strength of the conservatives who want to tip the scales ever farther downward, it’s hard to feel optimistic.

But Pelosi and her “Middle Class Jumpstart” plans, reproductive justice groups like NARAL, Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation (to name just a few) and women’s rights organizations of every sort are hard at work trying to keep the scales from tipping farther against U.S. women. Bella Abzug would be proud.

It’s not too early to start planning for Women’s Equality Day 2015.

Abortion/contraception/Feminist Collection/Health/Reproductive rights/Women
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Boot Camps for Talking about Abortion

by Fran Johns

Decision making 101

“Rape,” the instructors say, “is a four-letter word. Purge it from your lexicon.” And as to anything else abortion-related, “Keep it brief.”

Such is the strategy reportedly being taught Republican candidates in “Boot Camps” on how to talk about abortion. This news came in a recent New York Times article by Jeremy Peters.

But in case the reports are not clear, or should anti-abortion strategists need help, this space herewith offers an outline for surefire future political Boot Camps:

Avoidance is #1. Just don’t talk.

If you actually start talking, and talk about women, it becomes problematic to take away their rights. Say as little as possible. Candidates who do try to say more than two sentences tend to trip up on “legitimate rape” blunders or “abortion causes cancer” misstatements. Therefore, it’s best to talk only about fetuses, call them “babies,” speak only in tiny sound bites, and then shut up.

These are the recommended sound bites:

We mustn’t kill babies. Abortion hurts women.

These are the messages that get votes. Unfortunately, they are untrue, and thus difficult to defend. But if you say no more than seven or eight words, say them over and over and avoid actual dialog, enough people will believe the words to get you or your candidate elected.

But please, definitely, avoid:

Discussion of the difference between ‘fetus’ and ‘baby.’ Some voters do not believe a fetus becomes a baby until it is born. There are also too many very smart scientists who do not believe that tiny fetuses feel pleasure or pain.

You must also avoid the stories.

Stories told by 12- and 13-year-olds who were raped by a favorite uncle or family friend and might then have to endure the further brutality of continuing the pregnancy he caused – these stories make people think that abortion decisions might not be so simple. Or that banning abortion might not make it go away.

Stick to the script. Those stories cannot be told in eight words.

Stories in general just cause trouble. Avoid stories of pregnant women without jobs and with more children than they can care for already, or stories of pregnant women too poor to travel 300 miles to a clinic, or women with physical or emotional problems whose lives are being wrecked by unintended pregnancies…or stories of mothers and fathers facing the wrenching prospect of bringing a baby into the world who will suffer terribly and quickly die. Voters with a compassion gene might question your intention to force all these women to give birth.

And above all, avoid talking about women.

Women, when told what they may or may not do with their bodies, can become unruly. Enough unruly women can derail your election plans.

Health
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Quick! Hug somebody!

by Fran Johns
Hugs
Huggable volunteer Liz Luna joins writer Johns for a demonstration of the grab-a-friend hug.

A thoughtful, huggable friend of mine recently sent a link to an excellent article posted some months ago on a website titled The Mind Unleashed. It’s a site that proclaims a ponderable truth: “We are all connected: To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically” – and wants you to uncover your true potential. It has fascinating articles on everything from the healing power of music to the realities of war in Gaza to Sixteen Reasons to Have Daily Sex; in short, you might want to quit reading this post and go straight to The Mind Unleashed.

But the issue in question here is the value of the hug. This writer has long promoted the hug as source of all things good. More than a few friends and acquaintances, in fact, now share the belief – I read this somewhere too – that one needs four hugs a day for survival, eight for maintenance and twelve for growth. So now, thanks to The Mind Unleashed, here is confirmation, and more:

In an article titled “Nine Reasons You Need to Be Giving and Receiving Hugs Every Day,” Josh Richardson presents the full story about the importance of hugs. Richardson is a “blogger, healer and (a) constant pursuer of the natural state of human consciousness,” which seems ample qualification for hug expertise.

For openers, he explains, a hug stimulates oxytocin. Skip all the scientific explanation, which Richardson includes, if you need it, but that hug – thanks to its oxytocin release – lowers blood pressure, staves off heart disease, reduces stress and incidentally makes human males more affectionate, better at forming relationships and “it dramatically increased the libido and sexual performance of test subjects.”

Is that not enough?

Well, okay then, hugging also cultivates patience, prevents disease and stimulates the thymus gland. The thymus gland, thanks to its regulation of white blood cell production, improves your general health and resistance to disease.

Makes you wonder about all that time and money wasted on Ativan and Tylenol.

Richardson throws in enough miscellany about communication: “hugging is an excellent method of expressing yourself nonverbally…” – self-esteem: “…our family’s touch shows us that we’re loved and special” – and general well-being: “Dopamine (stimulated by hugging) is responsible for giving us that feel-good feeling” – to send you out to start a campaign. But of course, somebody’s already done that

So just go hug somebody. Do yourself, and the planet, a favor.

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