There's been a lot said about Sarah Palin and I don't want to get into rehashing it, but I do want to share a few of my thoughts on this woman. As a jumping off point I'd like to point you towards this article that appeared in The Daily Beast. A democrat and former editor of Ms. Magazine says she knows Palin to be a smart and thoughtful feminist. If she's right I think we have a much scarier situation on our hands. Clearly the main thesis of those on the left has been quite the opposite. Recent ridiculing of fruit fly research has been shown as an example of her disturbing lack of scientific literacy and we are encouraged to conclude from this that her literacy on other important aspects of government and society is equally lacking. If Ms. Lafferty is correct and Palin thinks these things through then I fear we must conclude that this statement was made with deliberate calculation. This would suggest that she is not merely ideologically (or religiously) so skeptical of science that she sees it as an expendable part of the federal budget, but that she might be actively exploiting the ignorance of the American public to promote her agenda of destroying our scientific infrastructure. True this may have been an innocent mistake or the mistake of a speech writer, but there are just too many examples of lying ("I was vindicated!") or vast hyperbole ("Obama palls around with terrorists!") in her rhetoric that a mistake seems much less likely. If she is thoughtful, if she is intellectually curious, if she "asks questions, and probes linkages and logic" as Ms. Lafferty insists then she deserves much more condemnation and outrage then she has hitherto been subject to. I think that thus far she has been able to hide behind the persona of an innocent when she works her crowds into frenzies of racist fear and anger over this dangerous terrorist she claims to be running against. If John McCain did this sort of thing (instead of his meek statements that Obama is a family man) the outrage would be ferocious. But Palin has been getting away with it. If she really was a ditz you'd hope McCain knows that and until he croaks it'd be safe to trust that her capacity for damage-by-ignorance would be curtailed. If she's a brainiac we risk another more radical Cheney.
As far as her feminism goes I find it gross that any democratic woman or Hillary supporter would abandon their party for McCain. Why? Because issues matter. Issues matter so much more than symbols. Geraldine Ferraro was on NBC after the Biden-Palin debate saying that she was rooting for Biden because she's a democrat, but rooting for Palin because she is a feminist. She was happy to see her hold her own because it set an example for her grandchildren that women can do this. I see such perversion in her thinking. Palin should be able to fail on her own, without it telling us that women aren't capable. This idea that any woman in the public eye makes or breaks the image of all women is in of itself a sexist and offensive idea. We are a diverse gender and this seems totally lost on everyone, feminists especially. Palin doesn't represent me. She and I share nothing politically. Unlike Hillary who worked her way to the ballot, Palin was selected. John McCain decided who would represent women in this election on the national stage. Who gave him that right? Doesn't it belittle us to have our 'representative' chosen by a man? Hillary fought for political change, she fought for the middle class, she fought the progressive fight and that fight is the substance that makes Hillary worth admiration. Sure she deserves an extra dose of adulation for getting so far as a woman, but to distill her down to the single dimension of her gender is to insult and patronize her. To phrase Palin merely because of her gender is to insult and patronize her and every other woman whose broken any glass ceiling anywhere.
Occasionally Palin claims to be in support of various women's issues: support for parents of special needs children, or equal pay, or title IX etc. But you don't have to look very far to see the truth that this is mere pandering. Indeed you can look no farther than the above mentioned fruit fly comment. Those very same fruit flies have lead to the discovery of key proteins involved in autism. Remember McCain's enthusiasm for that cause in the last debate? How are you going to help if you cut funding? This is hypocrisy pure and simple.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
McCain Style
This campaign is the worst of history repeating itself. This campaign is turning into "guilty by association", "if you're not with us your against us", intolerant, hate inciting, bullshit. When has this happened before? It's called McCarthyism stupid. That disgraceful period of our history is when people were accused of being traitors (that's 50's speak for "terrorist" or "anti-American") merely for being acquainted with people who were thought to be traitors. That's when anyone who dissented from the left was equated with the most extreme left. Dissent is the point of democracy. Dissent is the most American thing we've got.
And while we've mentioned it, I hate this word "terrorist". And before you accuse me of being soft let me say I absolutely detest the killing of innocent people and consider it the highest of crimes. But the word terrorist is brandied about to mean some sort of super evil criminal who is beyond human and beyond rights. Some murderers are criminals because they are heartless sociopaths, some murderers are criminals because they are desperate. Neither one's crime is more forgivable but how you stop them is very very different. I don't know which kind of murderers bombed the world trade center. But I do believe most people are good. I am not so cynical as to think most people fighting us were not at some point in their lives as complicated and human as I am. I believe this is the more moral and optimistic way to see the world, to search for the humanity in our enemy. And even as we seek to punish them and defend and protect ourselves, I really believe that it is this human connection that is our best defense. The word "terrorist" strips people of their humanity. Once someone is labeled a "terrorist" it doesn't matter if they are even guilty let alone why they committed their crime. But if we can't understand their crime how can we fight it, and prevent more? Our hubris has made us forget our own capacity for fallibility, which is why suspects have rights in the first place. If our hubris makes us so short sighted as to strip our enemies of their humanity, we miss and opportunity to learn, we miss an opportunity to understand, and we miss an opportunity to make a case in our defense. This is in no way about appeasing our enemy, this is about thwarting their power to build their movement. If we had put our best, most compassionate, most enlightened, most liberated foot forward seven years ago, our case would have been made. Instead we went to war in a country totally irrelevant to 9/11 and we committed some of the worst human rights abuses in our history interrogating suspects. We embarrassed ourselves. We should be embarrassed to use the word terrorist so flippantly as Sarah Palin does. Recent history has shown we are not very good at figuring out who those people actually are. Especially when we lack intellegence.
And while we've mentioned it, I hate this word "terrorist". And before you accuse me of being soft let me say I absolutely detest the killing of innocent people and consider it the highest of crimes. But the word terrorist is brandied about to mean some sort of super evil criminal who is beyond human and beyond rights. Some murderers are criminals because they are heartless sociopaths, some murderers are criminals because they are desperate. Neither one's crime is more forgivable but how you stop them is very very different. I don't know which kind of murderers bombed the world trade center. But I do believe most people are good. I am not so cynical as to think most people fighting us were not at some point in their lives as complicated and human as I am. I believe this is the more moral and optimistic way to see the world, to search for the humanity in our enemy. And even as we seek to punish them and defend and protect ourselves, I really believe that it is this human connection that is our best defense. The word "terrorist" strips people of their humanity. Once someone is labeled a "terrorist" it doesn't matter if they are even guilty let alone why they committed their crime. But if we can't understand their crime how can we fight it, and prevent more? Our hubris has made us forget our own capacity for fallibility, which is why suspects have rights in the first place. If our hubris makes us so short sighted as to strip our enemies of their humanity, we miss and opportunity to learn, we miss an opportunity to understand, and we miss an opportunity to make a case in our defense. This is in no way about appeasing our enemy, this is about thwarting their power to build their movement. If we had put our best, most compassionate, most enlightened, most liberated foot forward seven years ago, our case would have been made. Instead we went to war in a country totally irrelevant to 9/11 and we committed some of the worst human rights abuses in our history interrogating suspects. We embarrassed ourselves. We should be embarrassed to use the word terrorist so flippantly as Sarah Palin does. Recent history has shown we are not very good at figuring out who those people actually are. Especially when we lack intellegence.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Divisive Politics
This post is going to tackle Keith Olbermann.
The link is via onegoodmove.org, a blog that often posts great stuff.
Keith Olbermann. He speaks with such energy and such anger. I am so glad his perspective has found a home on cable news. But often I watch and wish he'd gone further, or see obvious connections I wish he'd make. This leaves me so frustrated. With this comment he describes many of the grievances I've had with McCain. But I wish he'd point out what only John Stewart has noted: that 911 happened in New York City. New York City is the America that Osama bin Laden chose to attack, so when Sarah Palin and the rest of McCain's friends say that small town rural America is "pro-America" and by implication that the rest of America is "anti-America" they come dangerously close to aligning themselves with the enemy. Osama bin Laden is a religious fundamentalist, extremist. I do not believe for a second that he didn't pick his target carefully. He chose to attack a city in America that stands for all of the things that Islamic fundamentalists oppose: liberalism, freedom of expression, freedom of association, hedonism, feminism, multiculturalism, sexuality, intellectualism, and capitalism. New York City stands for all these things, both here in America and to the rest of the world. The World Trade Center in particular. These are all things that threaten the power of Islam and the power of Osama bin Laden to exert their tyrannical control over the lives of their followers and to regulate the personal, professional, and intellectual aspects of their lives. The only difference is that the rest of the world sees New York City as the essence and the nexus of American culture. Clearly Sarah Palin and friends see it differently.
When Sarah Palin draws a line in America between what she sees as the excess, greed, and sin of the American metropolis and the "small town", "hard working", "religious" values of Main Street and calls that the real America she is committing an incredible trespass against us. Is she suggesting that we as a country abandon the principles that allow this melting pot to exist in favor of retreating to our churches? If so this is is the politics of surrender.
What scares me about the divisive politics of McCain and Palin is not merely the divisiveness but where they draw the line. I'm from a small town and I know that liberal values can be welcome there. I know that this line is artificial. After 911 we all had New York City in our hearts. You still see banners honoring the NYC fire department flying outside fire stations in places that couldn't be more different. The kinship we feel with New York City I believe is especially strong because in many ways we are all from there. So many of our ancestors came through there looking for the peace and liberalism and freedom and opportunity she offers. But the a fundamentalism also flourishes in America. A fundamentalism that is not far from that of our enemy. This fundamentalism exists in a Christian form here but it too seeks to control our thoughts, curtail our expression, and censor our sexuality. It too fears the foreign and the unknown. It fears education. And McCain and Palin are exploiting that fundamentalism.
I hope people are smart enough to know when their fears are being exploited. I hope people remember 911 happened in New York.
The link is via onegoodmove.org, a blog that often posts great stuff.
Keith Olbermann. He speaks with such energy and such anger. I am so glad his perspective has found a home on cable news. But often I watch and wish he'd gone further, or see obvious connections I wish he'd make. This leaves me so frustrated. With this comment he describes many of the grievances I've had with McCain. But I wish he'd point out what only John Stewart has noted: that 911 happened in New York City. New York City is the America that Osama bin Laden chose to attack, so when Sarah Palin and the rest of McCain's friends say that small town rural America is "pro-America" and by implication that the rest of America is "anti-America" they come dangerously close to aligning themselves with the enemy. Osama bin Laden is a religious fundamentalist, extremist. I do not believe for a second that he didn't pick his target carefully. He chose to attack a city in America that stands for all of the things that Islamic fundamentalists oppose: liberalism, freedom of expression, freedom of association, hedonism, feminism, multiculturalism, sexuality, intellectualism, and capitalism. New York City stands for all these things, both here in America and to the rest of the world. The World Trade Center in particular. These are all things that threaten the power of Islam and the power of Osama bin Laden to exert their tyrannical control over the lives of their followers and to regulate the personal, professional, and intellectual aspects of their lives. The only difference is that the rest of the world sees New York City as the essence and the nexus of American culture. Clearly Sarah Palin and friends see it differently.
When Sarah Palin draws a line in America between what she sees as the excess, greed, and sin of the American metropolis and the "small town", "hard working", "religious" values of Main Street and calls that the real America she is committing an incredible trespass against us. Is she suggesting that we as a country abandon the principles that allow this melting pot to exist in favor of retreating to our churches? If so this is is the politics of surrender.
What scares me about the divisive politics of McCain and Palin is not merely the divisiveness but where they draw the line. I'm from a small town and I know that liberal values can be welcome there. I know that this line is artificial. After 911 we all had New York City in our hearts. You still see banners honoring the NYC fire department flying outside fire stations in places that couldn't be more different. The kinship we feel with New York City I believe is especially strong because in many ways we are all from there. So many of our ancestors came through there looking for the peace and liberalism and freedom and opportunity she offers. But the a fundamentalism also flourishes in America. A fundamentalism that is not far from that of our enemy. This fundamentalism exists in a Christian form here but it too seeks to control our thoughts, curtail our expression, and censor our sexuality. It too fears the foreign and the unknown. It fears education. And McCain and Palin are exploiting that fundamentalism.
I hope people are smart enough to know when their fears are being exploited. I hope people remember 911 happened in New York.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Off-label drugs
This article from slate.com is the subject of my first response.
This article is itself an explanation of an article that appeared in the journal Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health. Both articles totally missed a much more important point. It's true even the most experienced child psychiatrists experiment every day when they proscribe medications to children. Each study has a population of 1 and tells us nothing conclusive about what the likely efficacy or side effects of the drug might be on the next child. The solution is not to monitor children more closely. The problem is not that children aren't being closely monitored. The problem is that research is not being done on children. It is extremely hard to get IRB approval to study medications in children. Children are not able to consent to participation in research they can only give "informed assent". Parents must consent for them and ethically this is still viewed as an imperfect solution. Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), which oversee medical research, are concerned about this as well as the obvious potential for serious side effects. The demands that an IRB will tend to make on investigators wishing to do research in children tend to be extremely high. Many researchers are unable to meet those demands or find them too dissuading to attempt research. Unfortunately it is children that pay the price for this. As a result of not sponsoring clinical trials in children every child is instead the subject of research. You have a situation where doctors might as well be guessing, and do not always guess appropriately.
Let me give you an example. When we first started doing transplant surgery patients were given extremely high doses of immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection. These drugs carry many serious side effects including decreased bone density, increase vulnerability to infection, skin changes, metabolic changes, aggressivity and other mental status changes. It wasn't until many years later when clinical trials proved that giving as little as one tenth of the old standard dose was just as effective in staving off rejection of new organs, and substantially improve side effects. When doctors guess, even with the best intentions and information, they do not always guess correctly, and the patients pay the price.
Retrospective follow-up studies, which ask people to report how much of a drug or food they ate for a given period of time, instead of clinical trials are one approach that can help. However they come with their own set of experimental problems. They can not truly be said to prove causation (ie: drug X alleviates headaches), but rather can only show association (use of drug X is associated with decreased incidence of headaches). This is a start but many of these studies done in other populations have proved inaccurate. Investigators must anticipate all confounding variables and adjust for them in their analysis and there are often factors that contribute to a finding that are not considered. This approach to studying psychoactive drugs in children could still start to give doctors clearer guidelines in the use of medications.
But ultimately I'd like to stress the need for increased openness to studying medications in children. It's risky, its problematic, but the alternative is so much worse.
This article is itself an explanation of an article that appeared in the journal Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health. Both articles totally missed a much more important point. It's true even the most experienced child psychiatrists experiment every day when they proscribe medications to children. Each study has a population of 1 and tells us nothing conclusive about what the likely efficacy or side effects of the drug might be on the next child. The solution is not to monitor children more closely. The problem is not that children aren't being closely monitored. The problem is that research is not being done on children. It is extremely hard to get IRB approval to study medications in children. Children are not able to consent to participation in research they can only give "informed assent". Parents must consent for them and ethically this is still viewed as an imperfect solution. Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), which oversee medical research, are concerned about this as well as the obvious potential for serious side effects. The demands that an IRB will tend to make on investigators wishing to do research in children tend to be extremely high. Many researchers are unable to meet those demands or find them too dissuading to attempt research. Unfortunately it is children that pay the price for this. As a result of not sponsoring clinical trials in children every child is instead the subject of research. You have a situation where doctors might as well be guessing, and do not always guess appropriately.
Let me give you an example. When we first started doing transplant surgery patients were given extremely high doses of immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection. These drugs carry many serious side effects including decreased bone density, increase vulnerability to infection, skin changes, metabolic changes, aggressivity and other mental status changes. It wasn't until many years later when clinical trials proved that giving as little as one tenth of the old standard dose was just as effective in staving off rejection of new organs, and substantially improve side effects. When doctors guess, even with the best intentions and information, they do not always guess correctly, and the patients pay the price.
Retrospective follow-up studies, which ask people to report how much of a drug or food they ate for a given period of time, instead of clinical trials are one approach that can help. However they come with their own set of experimental problems. They can not truly be said to prove causation (ie: drug X alleviates headaches), but rather can only show association (use of drug X is associated with decreased incidence of headaches). This is a start but many of these studies done in other populations have proved inaccurate. Investigators must anticipate all confounding variables and adjust for them in their analysis and there are often factors that contribute to a finding that are not considered. This approach to studying psychoactive drugs in children could still start to give doctors clearer guidelines in the use of medications.
But ultimately I'd like to stress the need for increased openness to studying medications in children. It's risky, its problematic, but the alternative is so much worse.
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