I got this from another article.
"It's like the knight back in the Middle Ages. He was returning to the castle one evening after a long, hard day of skirmishes. His armor was dented; his helmet was askew, and his plume was broken off. Even his horse was limping.
The lord of the manor saw him coming and went out to greet him. "What happened? What hath befallen you, Sir Albert?" he asked.
The knight straightened himself up and said, "Oh, Sire, I have been striving in your behalf all day, robbing and pillaging and burning the towns of your enemies to the west. "
"You've been doing what?" asked the astonished nobleman. The knight repeated his statement louder and slower in case his old master couldn't hear well.
"But I haven't any enemies to the west," cried the nobleman.
"Oh?" asked the knight. Then after a pause he said, "Well you do now. "
There's a moral to the story. Motivation is not enough. The knight was motivated, but that wasn't enough. You've also got to know what you should be doing. That's where the learning comes in.
"Learning is increasing one's ability to take effective action. "
But I feel that is where impatience sets in, especially if one sees that effectiveness is being hindered by someone else. Then what happens?
Looking back, most of us have been thru much training and education just to find out that log in another brother's eye?
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Cancer Risk from unnecessary CT Scans
CT Scans: A Radioactive Risk
Terry J. Allen argues that CT scans, while effective diagnostic tools, can be dangerous because of the high levels of radiation to which they expose patients.
By Terry J. Allen
Tags medical health technology
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My dentist and I have been bickering for decades. Steve advocates diagnostic X-rays; I argue that ionizing radiation, an established cancer risk, is not worth the benefit of catching a cavity early. Every couple of years, he threatens to dump me as a patient and I agree to a few X-rays after factoring in the benefits of his skill and his generous hand with the nitrous oxide.
Our negotiations rest on conjoined principles of Western medicine: risk-benefit analysis and informed consent.
But when it comes to the far greater risk of a “procedure performed more than 150,000 times a day in the United States…most consent forms are silent,” notes Georgetown University’s Adrian Fugh-Berman, in a report for the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institute.
Computed tomography (CT) scans take multiple X-ray images from different angles and link them into cross-sections of body tissues and organs. Researchers at Yale found that only a minority of U.S. academic medical centers inform patients about alternatives to diagnostic CT—including sonograms and MRIs—or about the radiation.
One abdominal CT, says the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), exposes a patient to 500 times more radiation than a conventional chest X-ray. Exposure from a single full-body CT scan is within the same range as doses that increased the cancer risk of Japan’s A-bomb survivors. Full-body scans can cause a one in 1,250 increased chance of dying from cancer, Radiology reports. That risk more than doubles for the 2-3 million children scanned, and leaps again for the third of those kids given at least three scans, according to the National Academy of Sciences.
Of course, many CT scans are well worth the risk. They can be superb diagnostic tools that result in more effective treatments and, possibly, cures.
But early diagnosis does not always mean longer survival. “If I pick up a tumor that is one centimeter today and you live five years, or I pick it up four years later and you live one year, it’s the same thing,” Dr. Elliott Fishman, a professor of radiology and oncology at Johns Hopkins Hospital, told the New York Times.
The risk-benefit equation skews further at facilities touting CT scan screening for apparently healthy people.
“Are you at risk?,” ask the big red letters of a Web pop-up ad. “Find out for only $99” for a heart scan at Pulse Medical Imaging, “located in the White Plains [NY] business district.”
Or “Come to Florida, for a scan and a tan,” flashes a Web ad for HealthTest Scan Center, where a pelvic, abdomen and chest scan will set you back $895, with a heart scan thrown in.
When Tania answered the phone at Boca Raton, Fla., office, I said I wanted information but thought I was healthy. She chuckled, “Everyone thinks that, but it’s just to make sure. Prevention is better than a cure.” What can a scan prevent? “Death,” she replied. And if my doctor refuses to prescribe it? “See our doctor [either Dr. Marc Kaprow or Rohtem Amir]. He’ll give you the OK.”
I asked Tania about radiation danger. “It’s minimal…with this machine,” she reassured. How often should I get one? “Talk to the doctor, but some people have them four to five times in a six-month period.” Why? “Some people are hypochondriacs,” she confided.
Downplaying or ignoring the radiation risks extends to major studies and journals. Researchers at Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center assessed annual CT scans for smokers and former smokers without symptoms and concluded CTs save lives by detecting lung cancer early. The study, published in the October New England Journal of Medicine, never mentions radiation risk. The Center would not release its consent form. David Behrman, head of the Institutional Review Board, could not confirm how, or if, it described the radiation risks, but did say, “I can’t imagine subjects were not informed.”
A New York Times article and editorial pointed out design flaws in the study including the lack of a control group, and noted that CT scans carried risks such as false positives, unnecessary biopsies and “needless surgery to remove tumors that might never have become a problem.” It, too, omitted radiation concerns.
The number of CT scans in the United States is at 60 million a year and rising. The journal of American Society of Radiologic Technologists estimates that “20 percent of radiologic imaging exams are not clinically useful … [and] lapses in safety protocols also are common, unnecessarily increasing radiation exposures.”
Overuse of CT scans “points out a larger problem,” says Fugh-Berman. Relying on information from the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, “physicians are more informed about the benefits of therapy than the risks of drugs and procedures; risks related to diagnostics are off the radar screen.” And once hospitals and medical practices invest in expensive equipment such as CT scanners, the more they use them the more they make. “They are a very high profit item,” says Fugh-Berman.
And profitability is one benefit that commercial medicine always factors in.
Contact Terry J. Allen at
tallen@igc.org.More information about Terry J. Allen
Terry J. Allen argues that CT scans, while effective diagnostic tools, can be dangerous because of the high levels of radiation to which they expose patients.
By Terry J. Allen
Tags medical health technology
Share Digg del.icio.us Reddit Newsvine
My dentist and I have been bickering for decades. Steve advocates diagnostic X-rays; I argue that ionizing radiation, an established cancer risk, is not worth the benefit of catching a cavity early. Every couple of years, he threatens to dump me as a patient and I agree to a few X-rays after factoring in the benefits of his skill and his generous hand with the nitrous oxide.
Our negotiations rest on conjoined principles of Western medicine: risk-benefit analysis and informed consent.
But when it comes to the far greater risk of a “procedure performed more than 150,000 times a day in the United States…most consent forms are silent,” notes Georgetown University’s Adrian Fugh-Berman, in a report for the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institute.
Computed tomography (CT) scans take multiple X-ray images from different angles and link them into cross-sections of body tissues and organs. Researchers at Yale found that only a minority of U.S. academic medical centers inform patients about alternatives to diagnostic CT—including sonograms and MRIs—or about the radiation.
One abdominal CT, says the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), exposes a patient to 500 times more radiation than a conventional chest X-ray. Exposure from a single full-body CT scan is within the same range as doses that increased the cancer risk of Japan’s A-bomb survivors. Full-body scans can cause a one in 1,250 increased chance of dying from cancer, Radiology reports. That risk more than doubles for the 2-3 million children scanned, and leaps again for the third of those kids given at least three scans, according to the National Academy of Sciences.
Of course, many CT scans are well worth the risk. They can be superb diagnostic tools that result in more effective treatments and, possibly, cures.
But early diagnosis does not always mean longer survival. “If I pick up a tumor that is one centimeter today and you live five years, or I pick it up four years later and you live one year, it’s the same thing,” Dr. Elliott Fishman, a professor of radiology and oncology at Johns Hopkins Hospital, told the New York Times.
The risk-benefit equation skews further at facilities touting CT scan screening for apparently healthy people.
“Are you at risk?,” ask the big red letters of a Web pop-up ad. “Find out for only $99” for a heart scan at Pulse Medical Imaging, “located in the White Plains [NY] business district.”
Or “Come to Florida, for a scan and a tan,” flashes a Web ad for HealthTest Scan Center, where a pelvic, abdomen and chest scan will set you back $895, with a heart scan thrown in.
When Tania answered the phone at Boca Raton, Fla., office, I said I wanted information but thought I was healthy. She chuckled, “Everyone thinks that, but it’s just to make sure. Prevention is better than a cure.” What can a scan prevent? “Death,” she replied. And if my doctor refuses to prescribe it? “See our doctor [either Dr. Marc Kaprow or Rohtem Amir]. He’ll give you the OK.”
I asked Tania about radiation danger. “It’s minimal…with this machine,” she reassured. How often should I get one? “Talk to the doctor, but some people have them four to five times in a six-month period.” Why? “Some people are hypochondriacs,” she confided.
Downplaying or ignoring the radiation risks extends to major studies and journals. Researchers at Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center assessed annual CT scans for smokers and former smokers without symptoms and concluded CTs save lives by detecting lung cancer early. The study, published in the October New England Journal of Medicine, never mentions radiation risk. The Center would not release its consent form. David Behrman, head of the Institutional Review Board, could not confirm how, or if, it described the radiation risks, but did say, “I can’t imagine subjects were not informed.”
A New York Times article and editorial pointed out design flaws in the study including the lack of a control group, and noted that CT scans carried risks such as false positives, unnecessary biopsies and “needless surgery to remove tumors that might never have become a problem.” It, too, omitted radiation concerns.
The number of CT scans in the United States is at 60 million a year and rising. The journal of American Society of Radiologic Technologists estimates that “20 percent of radiologic imaging exams are not clinically useful … [and] lapses in safety protocols also are common, unnecessarily increasing radiation exposures.”
Overuse of CT scans “points out a larger problem,” says Fugh-Berman. Relying on information from the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, “physicians are more informed about the benefits of therapy than the risks of drugs and procedures; risks related to diagnostics are off the radar screen.” And once hospitals and medical practices invest in expensive equipment such as CT scanners, the more they use them the more they make. “They are a very high profit item,” says Fugh-Berman.
And profitability is one benefit that commercial medicine always factors in.
Contact Terry J. Allen at
tallen@igc.org.More information about Terry J. Allen
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Parent Adult Child .....
Got this shot at a Pattaya show of Han with one of the ladies. Gota pay for taking the shot for her and Han, ok?
The lady happened to be a man actually, who really looks better being a lady.
.......................................................................................
Anyway, I remember that someone once shared that there is a "family" inside each of us: possibly 2 adults and a child.
The man of Action, the Intuitive lady and the Dreamer child. Sometimes, the man tends to be impulsive and careless, while the lady tends to be guided by her heart and by her impulses - all those subtle signals streaming onto her internal radars. To her, our body gestures and nounces speak louder than actual words being used for explaining a concept. The child is totally helpless with regards to self-control. Interesting sounds, colours and movement will tend to attract its attention, tho for a short while only, most of the time. But this external stimuli are enough to trigger involuntary movements from the limbs and body of the child. I don't know if I am right.... but I suppose this should correspond with TA which refers to PAC during any encounter, whatever the age or mental frame of either party.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
March 2007
Taken in Bangkok, Thailand - The Land of a Thousand Smiles.
People learnt to devote their lives towards selflessness and the virtues of Buddhism from a very young age.
That's one corner in a temple (forgot the name).
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