From the Dean in collaboration with Rx
Dear fellow healers:
On behalf of Dean Bungler, I am honoured by your proposal for collaboration with our world-renowned institution. I have contacted our admissions department, the chief of our world-renowned Doctorship program (at the BUGGER Institute) and the Research Coordinator of our world-renowned Interroga-limbic pathway investigation team (the BULLSHIT study). I am looking forward to the spotlight offered to our world-renowned institution by your publication.
Sincerely,
Dr. Howard Bumbler
Associate Dean of Compassion and Hand-Holding
Faculty of Healing (formerly Medicine)
University of Berkinghamshire
City of Berkinghamshireton
Berkinghamshire, UK
In collaboration with:
Berkinghamshire General Hospital (world-renowned[1])
The Doctorship Centre at the Berkinghamshire University General and Geriatric Education and Rehabilitation (BUGGER) Institute.
BULLSHIT (Berkinghamshire University Limbo-Limbic Synaptic Histiocytosis Investigation Team)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Bumbler, H. et al. The Global Impact of Berkinghamshire General
Hospital, Berkinghamshire Medical Journal 2010. 1(1): 1.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
About our institution:
Located in the rolling hills of Berkinghamshire County, Berkinghamshire University is home to the world-renowned Berkinghamshire General Hospital. Patients come from miles around to experience our warm hospitality and our delicious crumpets. The home of both the world-renowned BUGGER Institute and the ongoing BULLSHIT study, Berkinghamshire University Faculty of Healing (formerly Medicine) is breaking new ground in advancing Doctorship, the flagship (and only) program at our beloved university. Our admissions department recently pioneered the world-renowned open access policy, the first of its kind in the UK. Our Healers (formerly Doctors) are world-renowned for their healing (formerly medical) skills. Only a three-hour drive from the bustling metropolis of Jerkinghamshireton we offer everything that an aspiring healer could hope for, in our variety and depth of Doctorship training centred at the world-renowned Berkinghamshire General Hospital.
A Constellation of Neuroanatomical Findings Correlate with Question-Asking Behaviour in Students
For a free PDF fulltext copy of this brilliant research article, click here
Authors: Bindler, F.1,2,3, Bundler, G. 1,2,3, Bumbler, H. 1,2,3, Bungler, G. 1,2,3 and Boundler, H. 1,2,3
1 Berkinghamshire University Limbo-Limbic Synaptic Histiocytosis Investigation Team
2 Berkinghamshire General Hospital
3 Doctorship Centre at the Berkinghamshire University General and Geriatric Education and Rehabilitation Institute
All authors contributed equally to this work. Except the second one, who did all the work.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract
Background – The limbo-limbic pathways have been implicated in the mechanism of question-asking for many years. The Berkinghamshire University Limbo-Limbic Synaptic Histiocytosis Investigation Team (BULLSHIT) Study aims at elucidating the various mechanisms directing the process of asking questions and how specific neuronal pathways can be linked to more “interesting” questions. This research area has implications in fighting terrorism, stem-cell cancer genetics, the H1N1 pandemic and the entire future of medicine.
Methods – The BULLSHIT Study was conducted in two phases. First, an observational study was carried out on the Healing (formerly medical) classes of 2011-2013 to identify particularly gifted questioners. Then, those exceptional individuals were studied in greater detail using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and their brains were dissected to isolate the specific mechanisms leading to the generation of such interesting questions.
Results – Over 80 questioners were surveyed during a 6-month period; four were identified as exceptionally gifted questioners. fMRI analysis of all four subject showed increased activity of the nuclei of Bungler and Bundler. Immunohistological studies showed a decreased expression of glutamine in Wernicke’s area. This decrease was accompanied by an increase in synaptic histiocytosis and a formerly unreported form of Dementia with Lewy Bodies.
Discussion and Conclusions – There is a distinct pathway leading to the formulation of long, rambling irrelevant and / or already answered questions. This involves a form of dementia of the language centres accompanied by re-activation of primitive limbic pathways.
New Admissions Policy at the BUGGER Institute, World Renowned
Press Release
For immediate release
The world-renowned Berkinghamshire University General and Geriatric Education and Rehabilitation (BUGGER) Institute is ecstatic to announce the revamped and revolutionary, enlightened and empowering, new admission policies for new Doctorship (formerly medical) applicants of 2010! These brilliant policies resulted from our triumphant rise to Grace last year, when we finally shed ourselves of every last accreditation by any bureaucracy on Earth. The last incumbents so lost were the medical accreditation board of Somalia and Nepal, but following several ignored requests for the removal of said licenses, a panel of our legal experts convened and decided that, without functional governments, the accreditations of these countries are a priori, de jure, de facto, and in fact ab initio annulled, a capite ad calcem, since even the original licenses were granted ab absurdo. The loss of these artificial dead-weights gave us the freedom of flight, like angels. Henceforth we proudly declare our utter and complete independence from every lobby, interest group, government, religion, and gender, making us the first Open Admissions University on Earth.
In recognition of the fact that the right to pursue one’s happiness is one of the fundamental human rights, enshrined and chartered in the American Declaration of Independence (we are not American, but we would like to be), after high revelation and deep contemplation we decided that any selective process into our prestigious, world-renowned, interdisciplinary, thoroughly applied, stimulatingly theoretical, technologically modern, traditionally ancient, BUGGER Institute – as we just declared, any selective process into our prestigious… [Intervention of Rx Editors] …Institute, is not only immoral, destructive, apocalyptic and blasphemous, but by being abusive of that fundamental human right, is also unconstitutional (in the United States), and therefore in fact illegal.
Having achieved that state of Nirvana, we, Dr. Bumbler (Associate Dean of Compassion and Hand-Holding, Faculty of Healing (formerly Medicine)) and Dr. Bungler (Dean of said illustrious Faculty), have declared that we seek a medical class that has average intelligence, average compassion, average height, average sex, average looks, average age, and average numbers of children (males are exempt from this requirement, so long as the females in the class rectify the issue. We understand that the subtlety of our foresight has left nothing to chance, and we forgive you if you are humbled in our presence). Have you ever wanted your newborn to be enrolled in a Doctorship program right at birth? Here is your chance! Do you want to be enrolled with your newborn, as his or her classmate, so you can grow with your children? Do you think that fortune telling is a wonderful complement to healing, and that you possess telekinetic or other paranormal powers with which you can aid humanity enormously, but you lack the training and proper paperwork to do it? Well here is your chance! Not to get the paperwork, unfortunately. But what is paperwork but temporary safety? What is the right to pursue happiness but an essential liberty? As said by a Founding Father, those who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
It is to be noticed that already there is a movement of Open-Source software, Open-Access Journals, and other idealistic harmonies of infinite Openness, so we view ourselves as the crescendo of that Openness, its final incarnation, Openness in its complete and perfect form. The normal is to heal the normal, the masses are to treat the masses. While our cousin “medical” institutions from around the world recruit Obsessive Compulsives, Manic-Depressives and Narcissists by the truckload, overlaying a substratum of Anxiety and other Personality, Mood and Food Disorders, we proudly declare that our future students will be the most normal of any healing curriculum, and, in fact, the only healing curriculum known. We will be imitated, never surpassed! If your desire is to be normal and to associate with other normal people, the BUGGER institute is for you.
What can we offer such a distinguished and normal future students? Why, nothing less than the greatest (and only) healing curriculum in the world (see article on Doctorship), as well as guaranteed participation in the astonishingly scientific BULLSHIT Study (see article on BULLSHIT). If that does not convince you of our merit, one merely needs to gaze at the bustling, bold and mirageoulously beautiful city of Jerkinghamshireton only three hours drive away.
We await your presence, and we will relish teaching you our unfathomably ingenious techniques of healing (props and crystals balls to be bought at the students’ expense, but tuition is free).
Doctorship
By Dr. C. Babbler
Doctorship. Where can I begin to do justice to this ground-breaking and world-renowned program? The brainchild of Dr. B. Babbler at the BUGGER Institute (Berkinghamshire University General and Geriatric Education and Rehabilitation), Doctorship quickly eclipsed the Stasis of Medicine curriculum as the foremost program at Berkinghamshire University School of Healing (formerly Medicine) [1]. Here we transcend disease and enter the realm of healing and well-being. We call it hole-in-the-person care – we are here to fill that hole, not with crass antibiotics but with caring attention. Just the other day I had a wonderful opportunity to sit with a patient at the Berkinghamshire General Hospital – he was an elderly gentleman with a staph infection, and I held his hand while one of our healers-in-training (formerly medical student) stood at a distance, crying. Now I have a staph infection too, but at least I know that that poor old fellow died with our full knowledge and awareness.
Here at Berkinghamshire we have adopted the Way of the Two Arrows from the Ancient Text in the Far East [2]. One Arrow points from the healer to the patient, one points from the patient to the healer. To quote our Dean, Dr. Bungler, “each arrow is a sort of nirvana on the higher path to introspective and all-encompassing togetherness as togetherness, that derives from a sincere and subjectively relative communicated greatness in the other as other” [3]. Need I say more? Our students learn from the very best – experts in hypnosis, experts in listening, experts in talking and experts in Two Arrowology. Our healers-in-training learn to never be judgmental – I saw a wonderful illustration of this lesson last week, when one healer-in-training informed me that, rather than assuming a patient was mute, instead sat with him for three months waiting for him to reveal his condition. Truly, deeply inspiring.
All of our trainees must pass the world-renowned Match-Feet-To-Face (MFTF(c)) test, known simply as “the Match”, which we evaluate with a series of challenging OSCE exams and standardized multiple-choice evaluations [4]. Any student unable to match a severed pair of feet with their owner’s face is deemed unworthy to continue in our program. Why? The reason is simple enough – some years ago, when our very own Berkinghamshire General Hospital had a mere 20 beds for 60 patients, a foolish student placed an IV line into the foot of the wrong patient because there were three patients sharing the same bed. While IV lines are now a thing of the past at our beloved institute of higher healing, we continue to administer the Match as the gold standard for healing abilities.
Our healers know that the idea of a “cure” is an outdated mediaeval leech that consumes the precious resources of our healthcare system. No, we at the BUGGER Institute embrace the modern concept of healing, bringing our patients to terms with their illness. We don’t want to see the disease without the person but nor do we wish to see the person with the disease – no, we want to see the person-who-has-subsumed-the-disease-under-the-perceptual-manifold-of-space-and-time. Broken leg? No, the leg is not broken, it is only less whole – come to terms with the leg and you will be whole in a whole new way. Aiding this process is the Patient-Doctor Contract and Narrative Medicine. This involves narrating 100 pages of Contract. End-stage sedation is often achieved through this revolutionary innovation, and I’m pleased to report that the BUGGER Institute has begun offering other institutions access to its unique Contract with a new limited-use agreement [5].
And so we invite you – friends, healers, countrymen – to become, in the words of the great Sir Osler, our “great imitator”, our syphilis.
Sincerely,
Dr. C. Babbler, Bh.D. (Berkinghamshire healing doctor)
Associate Director, the BUGGER Institute
[1] Bumbler, H., Bundler, G., Bantler, A and Dumbler, H. The global impact of Berkinghamshire General Hospital, Berk. Med. J. 2010, 1(1): 1.
[2] Dracula, C. Nanotechnology unearths what might have formed a part of an important document. J of Small Importance. 2001, 16(4):23-24.
[3] Bungler, G. Contemporary caring. J of Combobulation. 2004, 3(2):4-5.
[4] Bird, B. 10 Reasons why the Match is for you! J of Desperation. 2009, 6(7):8-9.
[5] Monster, C. New uses for useless things. J of Academic Recycling. 2010, 1(2):3-4.
Students Taking Action against Medical Protests
Musings from a disenchanted chanter
A recent series of unfortunate events have placed activists precisely where they long to be, front and centre: anti-Olympics, anti-climate change, anti-uranium, Aunty Em. But while editors of the DSM-V scramble to explain why people prance in polar bear costumes, there lies under the noses of the headline-hungry public a veritable hotbed of activism, a greenhouse for gaseous griping – medical school. Any casual observer volunteering to sit in on medical classes (I am not suggesting for a moment that anyone in their right mind would volunteer for such a masochistic experience) would soon note the rather prolific nature of activist announcements that precede most classes. Money collected for World [insert illness here] Day. Protest at the Roddick gates for [insert theme of next Roland Emmerich movie here]. Club meetings, postering, emailing, volunteering, fundraising…the list is endless, creative and confusing, dutifully summarized for your reading pleasure by your friendly neighborhood Placebo. I move that we should turn a wary eye, or at least a wary levator palpebrae superioris, and ask ourselves what moves these movers and shakers? What are the rewards and risks of their regimental radicalism?
I should confess that I too was once a placard-waver (literally, once); I stood bravely in the shoes of an activist, and they just didn’t fit. Placard-laden folk laud activism as a preeminent way to ‘dialogue’, but ironically what we’ve got here is precisely a failure to communicate. On the one hand there may be a regime (e.g., Iran) or an oppressed minority (e.g., the American civil rights movement) in which people resort to public demonstrations in the face of a government that refuses to see reason. This is a truly worthwhile endeavor, and my criticism is leveled at the more vogue faux fanaticism in which privileged, educated persons willfully embrace the limelight in the face of appropriate democratic channels for change. While protesters in Tehran seek the recognition of their basic human freedoms, protestors at Copenhagen seek the imposition of their unsubstantiated ideology (c.f. “Dopenhagen” in this issue of Rx) upon governments that somehow find it difficult to take polar bear-attired people seriously.
In September, STAMP (Students Taking Action for Medicine and Peace) encouraged us to join them in a climate change flash-mob organized by Avaaz.org, whose website states that “The aim of Avaaz.org is to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people shape global decisions”. Avaaz.org envisions itself as a sort of benign grandfather, an oasis for the last vestige of those kindly and noble souls who actually care for all that is good in this world. Well, a newsflash for the flashmobsters – there’s a little innovation called democracy (“the power to the people”), which means that sites such as Avaaz.org are either a redundant waste of time or don’t actually represent “the world’s people”. Go ahead and laugh at this naïve plug for democracies, but remember that opponents of democracy such as Mugabe and Chavez were also pretty gung-ho about the whole Copenhagen thing.
All this to say that there is a certain paternalism in much of our class activism, that pats us knowingly on our unburdened shoulders with a virtuous smile as it seems to say “It’s OK, you can take a break from saving the world, we’ve got it covered. We’re doing what you would do if you only knew better”. One of STAMP’s more trying slogans is “we are peace”. We are peace, you are – what? Violence? Ignorance? Apathy? It’s all very well to “think global, act local”, but if acting locally means buying calendars and giving motorists at Sherbrooke and McGill College something to laugh about, then hell, I guess I’ll just take my one-way ticket to the ninth circle of Oxfam’s inferno. Even those who don’t buy STAMP calendars might still want to save the world, we just differ greatly in our perception of the ways and means; and we who no longer, or never did, wave hokey hand-drawn posters might, just might, feel that we are being guilted and goaded by our noble activist classmates to subscribe to their brand of salvation (and it’s all about the brand, the show). Which would be fine and admirable if these majestic champions of social upheaval were achieving anything…but this activism has only a mental placebo effect, a warm, fuzzy feeling (polar bear suit aside) that somehow I, Activist have done what no one else dares to do – and the local paper has acknowledged my existence! Though there may be rare moments of actual achievement, post-modern activists are especially prone to the useless brand of self-righteousness best-illustrated by the wanton proliferation of banal Facebook activism, where the public but effortless and correspondingly meaningless act of ‘attending’ a virtual protest fuels the questionable delusion of political engagement. Buy the STAMP calendars if you must, but don’t buy into the narcotizing illusion of public debate, the sense that somehow this will safely take the world’s troubles out of your hands.
Perhaps just a word about what I call “awareness activism”, seen in STAMP’s Zimbabwe/Cholera rally (maybe the current green-STAMP campaign will reverse this premature travesty of Copenhagen’s climate change crusader, the mighty Mugabe?) and in the multifarious World [insert illness here] Days. The Onion had a great spoof on this social trend, in a video suggesting that activists travel to Darfur to raise awareness of how much awareness they had raised. As much as our medical curriculum may be out of touch with the modern world, most of us are more or less flying along at breakneck speed on the information super-highway, and it can grow annoying to be constantly “made aware” of things one is perfectly well aware of – and I would say that repetition for the sake of repetition only breeds indifference.
So – for such slim rewards, at what cost is activism foisted upon its victims? How about activism-fueled frustration – the frustration of debt-laden students being asked to donate to World [insert illness here] Day, the frustration of busy students listening to daily messages of sugary hope, the frustration of being cowed into a grudging silence by the over-vocal minority…Such are the risk factors for the insidious onset of apathy, the creeping sense of “OK, fine, you deal with the world’s problems since you have all the answers”. In short, non-activists (who are certainly not apathetic) are in danger of absorbing the implicit message, “To change the world I must wave cheesy banners”, and in defiance of the banners they end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater, casting aside all concern for issues of justice, peace, health and the environment because they are so distastefully packaged with a harem of banners, klaxons and Facebook petitions. The irony of in-your-face “we are the solution” activism is its propensity to repel others such that it becomes the only remaining solution, playing out its strategy with fewer supporters than a Canadian university football team at an away game.
And so I cast down my placard in defiance – but join me as I pick it up again next week at the Roddick Gates, for a protest against medical student protests…
Tigger
Fear and Loathing in the Seven Islands
Disclaimer: no, I’ve never had to drive through Bat Country. But recently something came to my attention. A project for the assessment of a potential site for a uranium mine near Sept-Îles in the Côte-Nord area of Quebec had just been abandoned, citing depressed market values. However, in the small town there was a widespread belief that the killing blow came not from the market but from local physicians.
We can now look back and attempt to autopsy this train wreck. Since the 1970’s, there were plans for the exploitation of the Lake Kachiwiss site, 20 km from Sept-Îles. Recently, a BC-based company (Terra Ventures) moved forward on preliminary studies, which could have led to the opening of a new mine within – maybe – ten years. The site is located relatively close to the town of 25,000. Therefore, it was natural for the population to be worried about the impact – after all, we’re talking about uranium, the stuff we make nuclear weapons from. Stoking this fear were anti-nuclear ecologist groups with their radical agenda opposed to pretty much any form of development (1). Of course, there are real risks with any mining operation – not radiation, since the concentration of radioactive material is very low, but water contamination from runoffs and air pollution from dust can be serious issues. On the other hand, a new mine has a tremendous impact on the vitality of a small, isolated town. But it’s uranium…
All in all, things seemed to be following the normal course in these types of projects: a few vocal protesters surfaced - ecologists and native rights advocates - while most politicians kept a low profile, and Terra Ventures, touting the merits of the project, moved forward with a geological assessment. Of course, there is a very important debate about exploiting resources on land claimed by natives and the compensation they deserve. There is also another, equally important debate about nuclear power and the handling of nuclear waste. But the local population was mostly concerned about the local health and environment impacts. It didn’t really help that the communication strategy of the proponents was virtually non-existent – it was only a preliminary assessment after all.
Then, divine intervention came from the medical Mt Olympus, as a group of local physicians took a stand against the project, citing health concerns for their patients, themselves, and their children. The fact that these are completely unfounded claims could hardly escape them, but they decided to substitute their personal values for reality and bend the truth (read: abuse their station and lie blatantly on issues they have no expertise on) in the name of an environmental agenda. This culminated on December 3rd, when a group of 20 physicians sent a letter of resignation to the Minister of Health, threatening to leave the area (the group would eventually grow to 24). Now ask yourself: if your family doctor, a person you trust and on whom you rely to keep you healthy, told you something was hazardous for your health, wouldn’t that carry much more weight than any scientific study? And if that same doctor told you he/she was leaving your remote area over this project, leaving you with a greatly diminished access to care, wouldn’t you worry? Obviously, there was a huge public backlash and politicians did what they always do in such cases – killed the project (3).
Now, we can take a hard look at the rationale behind this opposition. What triggered the confrontation was the deliverance of a permit to Terra Ventures on September 15th to build a road. This road would have allowed the corporation to access the mining site and perform studies to try to precisely quantify the size, concentration and localization (including depth) of the uranium deposit. This kind of information is the bedrock on which such projects are constructed. Those opposing the project claim that it was a health hazard – but there could not be any impact study before the size, localization and type of mine could even be envisioned, assuming that the site does have potential! Undoubtedly, any actual project would be subject to public hearings (an automatic process in Quebec) and the impact would have to be appropriately mitigated. Another claim is that this type of project is hazardous for the local environment since other provinces have imposed a moratorium on uranium mining. However, this has nothing to do with hypothetical local health hazards – especially with newer, cleaner technologies; it is an energy policy decision that relates to the whole province. In fact, despite their claims environmental activists understand this very well (1) and seem to have chosen to wage a battle to kill any specific project at the local level instead of trying to make a reasonable case with policy makers.
What about the 24 physicians previously mentioned? Well, they can claim a great victory as activists, but a blatant failure as healthcare providers. In fact, they abandoned the pretence of caring about local health impacts and are now calling for a total provincial ban on any development of nuclear or uranium-related facilities (3). This is a clear case of a God complex, whereby these professionals think that they somehow possess the expertise to dictate policy in a highly technical area they have absolutely no training in. A physician truly concerned about their patients and their local community would have taken a look at the whole project. Anyone who has had to shop for produce in this region knows two things: beer is cheap, and tomatoes aren’t. The cost of living is high, and the economy depends on a handful of industries. Any new major development is a boon, with workers streaming in, new houses going up and local shops increasing their business, thereby improving the single most important determinant of health – socioeconomic status. In fact, those of you seeing themselves in the shoes of these activists should be aware that they are currently under investigation by the Collège des Médecins du Québec. In misinforming the public and abusing their position by threatening to leave the area, those physicians crossed a line that should be enforced. Like Uncle Ben told Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility”. Clearly, the Sept-Îles physicians have chosen to ignore that wisdom and decided to become advocates for personal opinions rather than evidence-based medicine. They now serve a subjective, arbitrary ideal instead of science – they are a danger to the public and a shame to their profession. You may think they went One Toke over the Line, but in the immortal words of Hunter S. Thompson: “One toke? You poor fool! Wait ‘till you see those goddamn bats.”
Winnie
winnie-the-pooh@fifthfloorfreepress.org
(1) Pour un Québec libre du nucléaire, Le Soleil, June 3rd 2009
(2) Les mines d'uranium bientôt au Québec, La Presse, May 20th 2009
(3) Les médecins de Sept-Îles veulent toujours un moratoire sur l'uranium, Le Soleil December 15th 2009
Démissions en bloc à Sept-Îles: le Collège des médecins enquête, La Presse, December 7th 2009
Dopenhagen
Nothing infuriates me more than a group of climate change activists waving a sea of placards pretending to save the planet. Make no mistake, I like them individually. Take them out one by one and I can have a coffee with them, tell a couple of jokes together, maybe even have a conversation. Put them all together and such bitter bile rises in my stomach that I feel my puke should drown them all. They’re like lemmings. Each lemming is a sane little animal that eats, mates and avoids predators; put them in a migrating pack and they jump off cliffs into suicide swims.
But what? Would you like to tell me how Armageddon faces us unless we take drastic action to save the environment? Do you wish to slap me with the newest IPCC report? Perhaps I should be lectured on the thousand evils of consumerism, of we the unfilial children of Mother Earth. Maybe I need to read Avaaz’s newest email, People vs. Polluters, because Polluters, clearly, are not people. They’re centaurs, bastard children with rabies as a birth defect and need to be put down. Or perhaps you’d like to demonstrate to me the consensus of the scientists, the vast amounts of data, the tree rings, the ice cores, the models and their fingerprints.
And if I point you towards www.climateaudit.org, or Mark Steyn’s hilarious column in the Maclean’s, or the wonderful book by Bjorn Lomborg (Cool it – The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming), will I hear howls of “denier”? Or shall I be ignored as someone who cherry picks her data and builds grand stories on flimsy statistical quibbles? Ah yes. Scientists had, in earlier times, come to such consensus also; on racism, for example. The American Association of Physical Anthropology and the prestigious National Research Council organized, in 1926, the “Committee on the Negro”. Through the modern science of the day, they wrote massive reports proving that (a) African babies are comparable to young apes, (b) Negroes are evolutionarily closer to primitive people than white man, and (c) that consensus existed on these points among all who know best and spent their lives studying the phenomena: physical anthropologists, zoologists and biologists. The little chinks in their scientific armour? Minor statistical aberrations. Like how IQ correlates more strongly with the geographic area of residence than with race. How Europeans have more body hair than Africans, and chimps have the most body hair of all.
But with Al Gore now nearly a billionaire whose fame and fortune depend on doomspeak, with the green movement an international political and economic force, with so many people committing their souls and ideals and dreams into the cacophony for change, with our pent-up guilt and fear and fearmongering, pardon me if I see in this “scientific” consensus a sociological process rather than a, er, strictly scientific one. And goodness knows, the Climategate emails show how the peer-review process is thoroughly sociological. Heck, I’ve eavesdropped that at the McGill School of Environment, you cannot get tenure without being an activist. When activists take over the science, no wonder there is consensus.
Are we causing climate change? Perhaps. How? We don’t know. That is why the phrase du jour is “anthropogenic climate change” (ACC), not “global warming” – the idea that “we must be changing something; we’re just not sure what”. This is one of the scientifically troublesome cases where there is no control group. On the other hand, I’ve no problem with trying to rein in carbon emissions! But the manner in which we are doing it, the illusion of certainty, the demonizing of the opposition, the brainwashing and the mob thought, those things are all far more likely to destroy us than any climate change. Let’s consider two of the many consequences. The first:
Reuters Foundation: AFRICA: Food production to halve by 2020. “JOHANNESBURG, 25 September 2007 (IRIN) - Food security in Africa is likely to be "severely compromised" by climate change, with production expected to halve by 2020, according to climate change experts.
The projections are contained in a report launched last week in London by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was followed by an experts' panel discussion.”
Right. Because declining food production in Africa has nothing to do with war, AIDS, malaria, and mal-governance. Fix the climate and we fix everything. Every time a lake dries up today, it’s “climate change”, every famine, every drought, every hurricane. It relieves local responsibility onto the broad, fat, shoulders of global responsibility.
Consequence number two: open admiration for dictatorships, mixed with contempt for democratic processes which inherently promote debate and disagreement, individual liberty and balance of powers. Consider the story Diane Francis wrote in the Financial Post, entitled: The real inconvenient truth: The whole world needs to adopt China's one-child policy. Maybe she should also consider eugenics for these new children, say, anti-carbon genes. In no small coincidence, the man she quotes (Al Gore) has refused to debate any of the many prominent and respectable sceptics of ACC. The mob at Copenhagen was the same mob that James Madison called the “tyranny of the majority”, except they are not even the majority.
Some recent event puts things into focus. The great coalition between the Native People and the environmentalists is fracturing everywhere in North America; in Kw’alaams (BC), the Native People have welcomed logging companies, elsewhere, the Klahoose First Nation embraced Vancouver’s Plutonic Power Corporation. The bewildered environmentalists screamed betrayal, sorrowed over the evil of money, and lamented that the First Nations should know what’s good for them. But the Gaia religion provides no jobs, no food, no bliss, and no miracles. Only the environmentalists themselves, most of whom are well-educated and well-provided for, can fail to recognize this.
Truly, the spectre of environmental rape, the dead forests and the stripped land, the homeless eagles and the poisoned fish, are horrific. But unless we learn to conduct social change without invoking mass frenzy, that indiscriminate weapon of choice for zealots and dictators alike, the conformity of our minds will threaten us far more than the consumerism of our bodies. The masses of protestors at Copenhagen were drugged with an immaterial form of the hangover-free soma, our best conduit into a Brave New World.
Piglet
piglet@fifthfloorfreepress.org
(1) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/6491195/Al-Gore-could-become-worlds-first-carbon-billionaire.html
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_e-mail_hacking_incident
(3) http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/3883fde14bb3020c21fd8159ef50dd7c.htm
(4) http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=2314438
(5) http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/12/02/gold-in-them-hills/#more-94384
Rx – Manifesto
Dear Reader,
You’re a blob. I’m a blob too. We’ve been blobbified into oblivious and apathetic globules of fit-the-mould medical students. So why, dear blob, are you reading this strange publication? Because it is not the Placebo, not the MJM, not one more veneer of ersatz engagement with real life. Sincere discourse has died a lonely death at McGill Medical School. We content ourselves with our blobbiness, happily pretending that medicine is all that the Placebo describes it to be - until clerkship hits, at which point we gather to whisper our grievances among friends, afraid that our career will suffer if we speak out. What sort of career is derailed by a bit of sincerity? Medicine, it seems, in stark contrast to our admissions office’s insistence upon integrity and putting patients first...
Our self-censorship is incredible, but it’s real, too real. As G.K. Chesterton put it so well, “a dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it”. So, blob, consider Rx a sort of life-preserver in this stream, a chance to cast off those cement-filled goodie-two-shoes that weigh down your feet. Rx is your chance to read and write your way through the great adventure of medical school, a chance to ensure that “wherever the art of medicine is loved, there also is love of humanity” (Hippocrates). Our motto, “Dulcis animi motus!” translates in Aerosmith’s vernacular to “Sweet Emotion!” We want raw, unshackled insights, honest criticisms, sweeping reforms, and unrestrained humour, tumour, calour and rubour. The truth, then, as you see it and hear it and think it - write to us of the discordant, the mean, the humorous, the incorrect; the horrible staff, the callous resident, the incompetent student. Give us your art, your ethical troubles, your stories, your poetry, your imagination yearning to breath free. Escape.
In this special first edition of Rx, we are tackling that most golden of golden calves of medical school: Social Activism. Perhaps we can demonstrate to you that not all that glitters is gold, that sometimes a calf grows up to become - bull? [Warning: the Crusaders of Global Health might find their armour of virtue becoming a burning oven under the glaring sun of reason]
Christopher Robin
