Category: DDP Newsletter

DDP Newsletter – May, 2020, Vol. XXXVI, No. 3

Many people’s lives are dominated these days by concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. Many refuse to go anywhere if not absolutely necessary. Some “quarantine” or disinfect their groceries, and shower and wash their clothing after doing an errand. Are the masks, “social distancing,” and obsessive-compulsive behaviors necessary—or protective?   Evidence for benefit from the drastic measures is nonexistent to thin. There are many unknowns, but some observations can be made:

If there is coronavirus in the vicinity, you have some on you. In an unpublished experiment, a harmless chemical compound resembling material found in viral coats was radioactively tagged and applied near the mouth or on the palm of two “spreaders.” They carried on normal social interactions with several test subjects who were doing library research—talking, looking at papers, etc. The subjects washed their hands frequently. At the end of several hours, all had radioactively tagged material on face, hands, and clothing.

Continue reading “COVID-19 Protection”

DDP Newsletter November 2019, Vol. XXXV, No. 6

China: Military and Economic Dominance

Celebrating the 70th anniversary of Communist Party rule, advanced Chinese weaponry paraded through Tiananmen Square in October 2019. The message to the world is that Beijing has no intention of ceding military leadership to America or any other country.

High-tech innovations, many stolen from the U.S., include stealth combat aerial drones, unmanned underwater vehicles, hypersonic missiles, and the road-mobile DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), with a 7,500-mile range. The Pentagon has identified hypersonic missiles and systems to defend against them as among its highest priorities, writes Larry Bell. Lockheed Martin expects to test flight its first prototype missiles in 2020. China has reportedly completed seven successful tests (tinyurl.com/rjg5a9o). These “unstoppable” missiles  are “igniting a new global arms race,” writes R. Jeffrey Smith (New York Times 6/23/19, https://tinyurl.com/y2nberq2).

The Chinese seek to dominate by other means as well. Under the Obama Administration, China’s state-owned Cosco Shipping Holdings signed a 40-year lease with the City of Long Beach in 2012 for control of America’s second largest and most automated container-handling operation. In 2017, the Trump Administration put a national security hold on Cosco’s acquisition of a former U.S. Navy port facility. As of May 2019, the Communists are no longer in control of the Port of Long Beach (https://tinyurl.com/tpqap9z). Still, China operates six of the world’s ten busiest container ports, and the Chinese government has also funded the construction and operations of 43 ports in 35 countries under its “One Belt and One Road” (OBOR) strategy (https://tinyurl.com/yy7akrb5).

The State of California under Governor Jerry Brown and now Gov. Gavin Newsom is partnering with China on “climate change” research, such as battery storage, despite concerns about intellectual property theft (https://tinyurl.com/r82mzlc).

Continue reading “Threats for the 2020s”

DDP Newsletter, September 2019, Vol. XXXV, No. 5

Of all the potential mass casualty events that could affect the United States, the most devastating cause is biologic. Biologic agents, unlike radioactive fallout, have a  doubling time, not a half-life. Whether the agent comes from a deliberate biologic warfare attack, or the natural emergence of a novel virus, the results could be devastating.

In 1918, more people died in the first 11 months of the influenza pandemic than in 4 years of the Black Death in the 1300s. Yet despite spending $80 billion on a National Biologic Defense, the U.S. is arguably no better prepared than it was in 1918, state Steven Hatfill, M.D., Robert J. Coullahan, and John J. Walsh, Jr., Ph.D., in their new book Three Seconds until Midnight, available on amazon.com.

Because of air travel, more people packed into dense urban areas, and greater dependence on technological infrastructure and just-in-time inventories, the population may be even more vulnerable now. There could be mass casualties even among uninfected people because of lack of essential services.

Continue reading “Pandemic Preparedness”

DDP Newsletter July 2019 Vol. XXXV, No. 4

As the number of  parents who decline to follow the CDC’s “recommended” schedule of mandatory vaccines creeps upward, the pressure to remove exemptions is growing. More than 100 bills are being pushed in 30 states that would strip out religious, philosophical, and medical exemptions.

California leads the nation in removing all except rare medical exemptions. Until this year, physicians could write medical exemptions at their discretion. However, because a few “rogue” physicians were allegedly writing too many or “illegitimate” exemptions, it is becoming virtually impossible to obtain one, so that parents of children with risk factors will now have the choice of risking a serious adverse reaction or removing their child from public or private school. The full impact of the law will not be seen until it is implemented in 2020, but parents are already receiving messages like this one:

Continue reading “Vaccine Nation”

DDP Newsletter May 2019 Vol. XXXV, No. 3

Drug addiction is devastating. Drug dependence may be unavoidable—as with insulin-dependent diabetics. Modern medicine depends on the availability of life-saving drugs. And the U.S. now depends on China for most drugs. The U.S. even lacks the capacity to produce penicillin, as Rosemary Gibson reveals in her book China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Drugs.

In 1988, Oak Ridge National Laboratory published Expedient Antibiotic Production: A Final Report. This includes a how-to guide to build/rebuild antibiotic production facilities if they were damaged or destroyed. It has a map of the location of such production facilities in relation to a possible nuclear attack on industrial or military facilities.

Continue reading “Drug Dependence”

DDP Newsletter March 2019 Vol. XXXV, No. 2

In November 2018, Michigan became the 10^th state to legalize recreational cannabis use. More than 200 million Americans live in states that have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use, writes Alex Berenson (WSJ 1/4/19). One powerful push is the desire for tax revenue that might otherwise go to neighboring states. The New York City Comptroller’s Office estimated that legalizing marijuana for persons over age 21 could yield $1.3 billion annually at State and local levels. The Comptroller also touted reduced costs of law enforcement and the societal benefit of having fewer people, especially young black males, damaged by the impact of a criminal conviction (tinyurl.com/y68cjevf). E-mailed tips on the best cannabis stocks to buy anticipate more widespread legalization.

Continue reading “Health Effects of Marijuana”

DDP Newsletter January 2019 Vol. XXXV, No. 1

What most people have seen of Antifa is an occasional street demonstration, or a “woke” group of college students hanging out in coffee shops. In North Carolina, Antifa helped in the attack on memorials such as Silent Sam, a statue of a Confederate soldier. But beneath the theater of “protests” and occasional violent outbursts is a fairly high level of organization and funding by outside groups that are skilled at directing the masses, with the goal of sedition, not reforms.

Continue reading “Street Wars in the U.S.”

DDP Newsletter November 2018 Vol. XXXIV, No. 6

For decades, the American homeland has, by deliberate policy, been left virtually defenseless. The civil defense of the 1950s has been dismantled—only government elites are protected. We have only limited strategic anti-missile defenses. We have been relying on our status as the “world’s only superpower” to deter aggression by the threat of certain retaliatory annihilation. But what if American military supremacy is past, as Dr. Donald Miller argued at the 2018 meeting of DDP (https://tinyurl.com/y96dg8wd)?

In all the frequent reminders of the “911” disaster, two observations that are seldom discussed are: (1) The U.S. was apparently incapable of protecting Manhattan and the Pentagon from four hijacked airliners. Where was NORAD? Why no scrambled fighter jets? (2) Then our retaliatory strike against the alleged perpetrator (Afghanistan, which was purportedly harboring Osama bin Laden, who turned out to be in Pakistan) has us mired in a 17-year stalemate in the “graveyard of empires.”

During our 2017 tour of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, I asked the docent about the vaunted “strategic triad.” He agreed that it certainly isn’t a triad now. At least the bomber aircraft are missing. The Strategic Air Command used to have nuclear-armed bombers on constant alert, and, as I recall, at least one airborne at all times.

Continue reading “A Defenseless ‘Superpower’?”

DDP Newsletter September 2018 Vol. XXXIV, No. 5

To climate warriors, carbon is black, even when green in plants or invisible as CO₂, and wind turbines and solar panels are green. These supposed ecophiles are generally against the reliable renewables, which require building dams or incinerators. “Green,” UNreliable energy sources get an undeserved pass on environmental impact.

The U.S. has so far managed to export the environmental degradation and human costs of mining rare earths and other necessary components of photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, and battery storage, but end-of-life costs are mounting.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimated that solar panel waste, about 250,000 metric tonnes in the world at the end of 2016,  could reach 78 million metric tonnes by 2050 (Forbes 5/13/18, https://tinyurl.com/y8z5m7ar). A veteran solar developer said: “Contrary to previous assumptions, pollutants such as lead or carcinogenic cadmium can be almost completely washed out of the fragments of solar modules over a period of several months, for example by rainwater.” Toxic metals can be leached from broken panels because of natural events. In 2015, a tornado broke 200,000 solar modules at the Desert Sunlight solar farm in southern California. In Puerto Rico, Hurricane Maria broke the majority of the panels in the nation’s second largest solar farm.

Continue reading “Green Health Hazards”

DDP Newsletter July 2018 Vol. XXXIV, No. 4

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), infections caused by microbes resistant to antibiotics are increasingly prevalent and can spread like wildfire. Many of these are bred in hospitals, which give bacteria selected by heavy use of antibiotics the opportunity to share genes conferring resistance.

“Nightmare bacteria” (carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE) were isolated more than 200 times in 2017 (https://tinyurl.com/yb2n9qzq). Half the patients infected with this organism die. It is resistant to all antibiotics available in the U.S. The most common medical care-associated  infection is probably  Clostridium difficile (“C diff”), which affects about 500,000 patients each year and is the direct cause of about 15,000 deaths (https://tinyurl.com/ycfbrcpd).  Other threats include resistant Staphylococcus aureus, streptococci, and Pseudomonas. Now a hypervirulent form of Klebsiella pneumoniae (“Klebsi”), widespread in Chinese hospitals, has apparently combined with CRE. Highly contagious, it can kill healthy young adults. NPR calls it the triple threat new pneumonia (https://tinyurl.com/y8nh72us).

These germs may lurk in the hospital bed itself. A study of all identified cases of nosocomial (hospital-acquired) infections in four New York hospitals from 2006-2012 found that the odds of cases having been exposed to a prior bed occupant with the same organism were 5.83 times that of controls (95% confidence interval [CI], 3.62–9.39), and the odds of cases having been exposed to a roommate with the same organism were 4.82 times that of controls (95% CI, 3.67–6.34) (Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol, May 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y7aa4utp). Patients can acquire C diff from the mattress even if the previous patient had been asymptomatic, despite standard “terminal cleaning” methods in use by hospitals. Use of a launderable mattress barrier cover can reduce the C diff infection rate by 50% (https://tinyurl.com/y7bo9ge2).

Hospitals ignore the risk because they’re rushed to turn over rooms, writes Betsy McCaughey. They need to adopt high-tech cleaning methods to rapidly disinfect the whole room, including mattresses (IBD 4/11/18, https://tinyurl.com/ycbrpyhm).

The advent of antibiotics in the 1930s stopped research on other antimicrobial methods; with the emergence of resistance, interest is reviving. Copper was recognized as the first metallic antimicrobial in 2008 by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But it has been used since ancient times. Egyptian and Babylonian soldiers would sharpen their bronze swords (bronze is an alloy of copper and tin) after a battle, and place the filings in their wounds to reduce infection and speed healing.

Copper alloys kill microbes on contact: bacteria, viruses, and fungi are all affected. With routine cleaning, when copper alloy is used on regularly touched surfaces in busy wards and intensive care units, there is up to a 90% reduction in the numbers of live bacteria on their surfaces. This includes bed rails, chair arms, call buttons, over-bed tables, IV poles, and door handles. Studies in three hospital intensive care units in the U.S. also showed a remarkable 58% reduction in infection rates. Copper alloy touch surfaces are now being deployed worldwide in airports, trains, train stations, busses, restaurant kitchens, and gyms. The payback time for installing copper fittings in hospitals is estimated to be only 2 months. Copper is no more expensive than stainless steel. The latter may look shiny and clean, but it has no antimicrobial properties and has tiny crevices where microbes can escape cleaning (https://tinyurl.com/y8lnwblv).

Copper can also be used in particle form, or as nanoparticles. For example, no infectious viral particles were recovered from copper oxide-impregnated face masks after 30 min, unlike with control masks. Bacteria have some survival mechanisms, but no complete resistance to prolonged exposure to copper has been found.

Copper has great public health potential, as against rapidly mutating influenza virus, or against norovirus, which is not killed by hand sanitizers.

Doctors frequently name silver as a metal with antimicrobial properties, but it does not work as a protective surface coating when dry (https://tinyurl.com/yalp98dt).

A MEASURE OF DESPERATION?

Having exhausted new, toxic, expensive antibiotics that have been approved after extensive randomized, double-blind controlled trials, might doctors try an old, nontoxic, cheap, but unapproved remedy, possibly risking medical staff privileges or their license? Vitamin C has been discussed here (July 2003, November 2005). After Dr. Paul Marik reported a case series of sepsis patients treated with a cocktail of intravenous vitamin C, hydrocortisone, and thiamine, more than 50 medical centers are said to be using his protocol. While some experts may call vitamin C “as effective as healing incantations,” nurses treating the patients do not share this  skepticism. Of the more than 150 patients he has treated with his cocktail, only one has died of sepsis. Previously, 19 of 47 sepsis patients had died. More than 1 million of Americans fall ill with sepsis each year, and between 28% and 50% die (Smithsonian.com 6/27/17, https://tinyurl.com/y9rgqdrt).

Cures of a wide variety of human conditions by high-dose vitamin C have been reported (Thomas Levy, Curing the Incurable: Vitamin C, Infectious Diseases, and Toxins). Harri Hemilä of the Department of Public Health, University of Helsinki, has reviewed human studies and 148 animal studies of vitamin C in diverse infections (Nutrients 2017 9:339, https://tinyurl.com/yct5swx9). Infectious agents included tuberculosis, other bacteria, viruses, Candida albicans, and protozoa. Vitamin C was also protective against tetanus toxin, diphtheria toxin, and endotoxin.

In children aged 1 to 12 years with tetanus in Bangladesh, there were no deaths in the group receiving 1 g/day of intravenous vitamin C, whereas there were 23 deaths in the control group (p = 10^-9). Five controlled trials showed significant benefit in pneumonia.

There is a paucity of data, but no large-scale controlled trials have shown  ineffectiveness. Hemilä attributes loss of interest and the low level of  acceptance in the medical community to the success of antibiotics and to misconceptions and prejudice. Vitamin C has been placed in the category of “alternative medicine” by the National Institutes of Health and the Cochrane collaboration. Goodwin and Goodwin described the “tomato effect” (JAMA 5/11/1984): “If the treatment bypasses the medical establishment and is sold directly to the public…the temptation in the medical community is to accept uncritically the first bad news that comes along.”

With antibiotic-resistant superbugs, why should an “alternative” treatment without known serious adverse effects be a last resort, instead of the first thing tried, along with meticulous isolation and control measures?