3104709    การใช้ยาในสัตว์เลี้ยงชนิดพิเศษ    Drug Therapy in Exotic Pets

ลักษณะทางกายวิภาคและสรีรวิทยาของสัตว์เลี้ยงชนิดพิเศษที่มีผลต่อการออกฟทธิ์ของยา ได้แก่ สัตว์เลี้ยงพกกา สัตว์เลี้ยงเลื้อยคลาน สัตว์สะเทินน้ำสะเทินบก นกและปลา ชนิดของยาที่นิยมใช้ การออกฤทธิ์และพิษของยา ข้อควรระวังของการให้ยาในสัตว์เหล่านี้

(Anatomical and physiological characteristics affecting drug action in various species of special companion animals: pocket pets, captive reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish; classes, action and toxicity of common drugs used; precautions of drug administration in those species.)

(3104709 จุฬาลงกรณ์มหาวิทยาลัย)

Norway and Britain may have some troubling news regarding the Swine Flu.

A National Emergency of the Swine flu may be improving, at least for now.

Obviously, the Swine flu is far from over. A peak may be seen in America and in Western Europe. The wave of infections seems to be increasing in Eastern Europe and Asia.

Over 6,700 deaths worldwide have been recorded as a direct result of the Swine Flu.

Though, it has been argued, cases may increase in January and several peaks could be seen in the typical single flu season whether human flu or H1N1.

There are “early signs of a peak in disease activity in some areas of the northern hemisphere,” the WHO said in a statement.

Drug-Resistant Swine Flu

The real concern or next phase of concern may be moving to a possible drug resistance by the swine flu virus in certain countries.  The spread of this strain may be occurring in Great Britain.

Importantly, this does not mean a resistance to the vaccine!!

5 individuals in Wales were found to be resistant to the antiviral drug “Tami-flu” from companies Roche AG and Gilead Sciences Inc

These patients did have success with a different antiviral from other companies GlaxoSmithKline and Biota Inc’s “Relenza”.

Each of these patients also had serious immune problems that may have given the strain an opportunity to develop resistance.

Another outbreak is being investigated in Norway where a strain of H1N1 may have mutated causing symptoms that were worse than expected and rather severe.

Recently the Norwegian Institute of Public Health reported that the virus may be able to go deeper into the respiratory system as a result, the symptoms were more serious.

The virus mutation was found on autopsy of two individuals that had died from the Swine flu.

Norway has seen a larger number of deaths per population when compared to other European countries.

Swine Flu Available Vaccines

World production continues to move forward when it comes to the  H1N1 vaccinations.   But truthfully, the world population and the number of vaccines available is quite large.  It is unlikely that a bridge will be able to connect the two sides any time soon.

The United States and several other countries are far behind where they would like to be.  Some countries report a shortage in the vaccine production.   Currently 44 million doses have been shipped so far.    This is only 30% of the anticipated amount.

Plateau

Several countries including the Untied States and Western Europe have experienced a decrease in number of new cases of the Swine flu within the past few weeks.

The question is whether this is a shift or a plateau.  Eastern European countries and Asia have seen an increase in cases.

The next few weeks will be telling for the projection of Swine Flu cases in the New year.

By Dr. Brent Lipke DC

If you are pregnant one of the best healthiest things you can do is see a doctor of Chiropractic. 

Another great reason for Chiropractic care during pregnancy is that it is drugless and has no side effects, unlike drugs which can cross the placenta and harm the growing baby. 

Research has shown Chiropractic to help maintain pregnancy, control vomiting, reduce back pain and back labour, reduce premature contractions, shorten labor time by 60% , and reduce drug use by 50%.

To learn more about how a safe, gentle and scientific, Chiropractic adjustment could TRANSFORM your health contact your chiropractor.  If you are interested in a complimentary consultation, CALL  The Family Chiropractic Centre, 519-837-1234. 

I’m Dr. Brent Lipke, educating you to help you educate others !

3143510    ยาที่ใช้รักษาโรคผิวหนังในสัตว์เลี้ยง    Drug Used in Skin Diseases of Pets

หลักการและการเลือกใช้ยาอย่างสมเหตุสมผลในการรักษาโรคผิวหนังสัตว์เลี้ยง ได้แก่ ยาต้านจุลชีพ ยาต้านปรสิต ยาต้านฮีสตามีน สเตียรอยด์ ฮอร์โมน กรดไขมัน จำเป็น วิตามิน แร่ธาตุ และยาเบ็ดเตล็ด

(Principles and rational use of drugs in skin diseases of pets including antimicrobial drugs; antiparasitic drugs; antihistamines; steroids; hormones; essential fatty acids; vitamins; minerals, and miscellaneous drugs.)

(3143510 จุฬาลงกรณ์มหาวิทยาลัย)

A New Day’s Mission is to provide the highest quality and most cost effective drug treatment, and alcohol treatment to those suffering from drug addiction, alcoholism, and mental illness. Our program maintains an excellence in dignity and standard of living for all our clients. We place great emphasis on the individual healing of all our clients and their loved ones

http://www.anewdayrehab.com

The following feature by writer Tina Rosenberg appeared in the Sunday New York Times magazine (about AIDS, and good luck finding many stories on that vitally important topic, by the way)…

We know that abstinence, sexual fidelity and consistent condom use all prevent the spread of H.I.V. But we do not yet know how to persuade people to act accordingly.

Then there is another way that H.I.V. infects: by injection with a hypodermic needle previously used by an infected person. Outside Africa, a huge part of the AIDS epidemic involves people who were infected this way. In Russia, 83 percent of infections in which the origin is known come from needle sharing. In Ukraine, the figure is 64 percent; Kazakhstan, 74 percent; Malaysia, 72 percent; Vietnam, 52 percent; China, 44 percent. Shared needles are also the primary transmission route for H.I.V. in parts of Asia. In the United States, needle-sharing directly accounts for more than 25 percent of AIDS cases.

Drug injectors don’t pass infection only among themselves. Through their sex partners, H.I.V. is spread into the general population. In many countries, the H.I.V. epidemic began among drug injectors. In Russia in 2000, for example, needle-sharing was directly responsible for more than 95 percent of all cases of H.I.V. infection. So virtually all those with H.I.V. in Russia can trace their infection to a shared needle not many generations back. Though it has been scorned as special treatment for a despised population, AIDS prevention for drug users is in fact crucial to preventing a wider epidemic.

Unlike with sexual transmission, there is a proven solution here: needle-exchange programs, which provide drug injectors with clean needles, usually in return for their used ones. Needle exchange is the cornerstone of an approach known as harm reduction: making drug use less deadly. Clean needles are both tool and lure, a way to introduce drug users to counseling, H.I.V. tests, AIDS treatment and rehabilitation, including access to opioid-substitution therapies like methadone.

As Rosenberg tells us, “needle exchange is AIDS prevention that works.”

However, as the Times also tells us here…

A bill working its way through Congress would lift a ban of more than 20 years on using federal money for needle exchange programs. But the bill would also ban federally financed exchanges from being within 1,000 feet of a school, park, library, college, video arcade or any place children might gather — a provision that would apply to a majority of the country’s approximately 200 exchanges.

“This 1,000-foot rule is simply instituting the ban in a different form,” said Rebecca Haag, executive director of the AIDS Action Council, an advocacy group based in Washington. “Clearly the intent of this rule is to nullify the lifting of the ban.”

Under a separate bill, all exchanges in Washington within the 1,000-foot perimeter would be barred from receiving city money as well as federal money.

And guess which utterly clueless Republican is behind this idea…

“Let’s protect these kids,” said Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia, who introduced the Washington bill. “They don’t need to be playing kickball in the playground and seeing people lined up for needle exchange.”

OWWWW!!! TEH STUPID!!!! IT BURNS US!!!!!!!

And of course, in Kingston’s Ward and June Cleaver World, the girls wear hoop skirts, the guys are all rebuilding the engine blocks on their ’57 Chevys, and they both surreptitiously rendezvous at Lookout Point at midnight to watch the submarine races.

Ugh (somehow I think that, if individuals were to come to a needle-exchange center, not necessarily each one would be highlighted by, say, ground-up glass on the blacktop of basketball courts surrounded by chain-link fences in typically urban settings, on a route traveled by school kids of course).

As noted here, President Obama proposed an increase in spending to combat AIDS (as has just about every other president in my memory, including Dubya, believe it or not, though with at least one “string” you’ll read about shortly), and Obama has also lifted the idiotic ban his predecessor placed on people with AIDS traveling to this country. However (as noted here), his FY2010 budget proposal retained the decades-old ban on federal funding for syringe exchange (though Congress passed legislation to lift the ban shortly after Obama’s budget was announced, as noted here – that body instituted the original ban in 1988, hence Kingston’s antics in trying to get it passed once more).

And as the Times Sunday article tells us…

The administration of George W. Bush made the policy more aggressive, pressuring United Nations agencies to retract their support for needle exchange and excise statements about its efficacy from their literature. (Today, U.N. agencies again recommend that needle exchange be part of H.I.V.-prevention services for drug users.)

Figures.

Rosenberg’s article also highlights the effectiveness of needle-exchange programs in Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, among other regions. The biggest enemy to such programs, though, is the stigmatizing of needle users so manifestly on display in Kingston’s grotesquely stupid measure (as Rosenberg states, internationally financed groups can implement effective programs, but only governments can protect the rights of those populations who would stand to benefit, which, ultimately, includes all of us).

My blogging abilities lack in stewardship. Though I have decided to start a blog and design a page that says a little about myself, I have neglected perhaps the most important part and that is the act of actually blogging. 

In recent weeks life has had it’s share of ups and downs. On the upside of life there has been my girlfriend finishing her Masters degree. On the downside we have been trying desperately to get our schedules in sync and that has not always been the easiest of tasks.  

Often times my work schedule can be rather heavy and that can take it’s toll on any relationship but we are working through it all. What it all boils down to is us trying to make more time for each other, not out of obligation but rather out of desire and we should all be so lucky to have such “problems”.

Another aspect that can take it’s toll on a relationship … or any relationship that I have been in is when a singer/songwriter hits a creative stride.

A few weeks ago I attended a fantastic show. It was the Ten out of Tenn tour. In the few weeks following I felt inspired. Music was exciting again and I didn’t realize how exciting it was. 

At first I started working on one new song and then a second, a third, a fourth until I realized that the number of new songs was nine. It is one thing to start a song but then I started finishing them. One even got a rough draft recording while I worked out the lyrics for a few others. 

There have been mornings where I feel that I can’t leave the house until I play through a certain song a few times and there have been nights where I get out of bed at 2am or 3am and feel the need to work on something new. The inspiration is there and I am trying to let it take me wherever it will. Believe it or not, there is a downside.

Cat ( my girlfriend ) would most likely tell you that I start to act a bit differently in times like these. I am a bit more withdrawn. My mind is all over the place and she knows something is on my mind but it is hard for her to know what it is. Unknowingly I am sending out the wrong signals.

So, I have realized  that it is best to inform when I have started writing again. This way she knows that my mind has entered that creative space. I have also realized that it is best to schedule days to work on music and writing and recording. And perhaps the most important lesson is to inform her when a song is not about her.

If you venture over to my American Songspace page, you could hear a new rough draft recording. Excited about the song, I let her listen to it. She got upset and thought I was breaking up with her. NOT GOOD AT ALL!

Let’s just say that the song is not nice. LOL But after some kissing, hugging and cuddling all was well. If you want to listen to the song, it is called ‘What Do You Want From Me?’ It is on American Songspace and you can listen to it by clicking HERE !

It is nice to be writing again. It feels great to be creating something again. It feels wonderful to be inspired again. Just need to figure how to keep my feet on the ground while my head is in the clouds.

Creativity is a drug like no other and I am trying to avoid an intervention.

November 19, 2009 A MAN used the Internet to lure six college students into having a sex party with his friends at a resort in Bentong, Pahang.

According to Harian Metro, police found that the man had also been organising sex parties with students in Kuala Lumpur, Malacca, Negri Sembilan and Selangor for the past year.

The man was detained along with five others aged between 20 and 22 after authorities conducted a 3am raid on the apartment he had rented.

It is believed that the man, together with his friends — two of whom were civil servants — had persuaded the students to have sex while under the influence of alcohol.

The students, all aged 19, were willing participants in the party.

Three couples held at the scene were tested positive for the drug ketamine and had 2.3g of the same substance with them.

EXPERTS have sent out a warning to Brits buying DIY botox kits online and injecting themselves with the drug.

Injecting the wrinkle smoothing jab can cause paralysis and blindness.

Figures show a rising number of Brits in the recession are using cheaper homekits, costing around £100 rather than spending £250-£300 for surgery treatment.

Buyers learn how to inject themselves using crude injection sheets or by following videos posted online.

Gwen Davies of the Clinic group Transform, based in Manchester said: “Buying botox off the internet is very dangerous, bypassing the procedures which are in place to protect the public.”

In the UK, Botox is a prescription-only drug but can be bought from internet sites, mainly in Russia and the Far East.

Online Pharmacy Escrow is a Canada based drug store also selling Botox online.

Sometimes people take it too far,and botox goes wrong

Posted by Audiegrl

Resistant strain discovered in Cardiff hospital, prompting concern among health officials

guardian.co.uk/Owen Bowcott—Doctors in Wales have discovered a Tamiflu-resistant strain of swine flu that has been spreading from patient to patient in a Cardiff hospital.

The emergence of an easily transmissible, resistant strain is a worrying development for health officials and appears to be the first documented case in Europe.

Five patients at University Hospital Wales, in Cardiff, were infected and isolated for treatment. All had severe underlying conditions that left them with weakened immune systems. At least three had acquired the infection in hospital.

There have been a handful of reported cases from around the world of Tamiflu-resistant strains of the H1N1 virus. Only one previous case, at a US summer camp, however, involved person-to-person transmission.

The Cardiff patients have been treated with an alternative anti-viral drug. Two have recovered and been discharged and three others remain in hospital, one in intensive care.

Dr Roland Salmon, the director of the communicable disease surveillance center in Wales, said: “The emergence of [H1N1] viruses that are resistant to Tamiflu is not unexpected in patients with serious underlying conditions and suppressed immune systems, who still test positive for the virus despite treatment.“

“In this case, the resistant strain of swine flu does not appear to be any more severe than the swine flu virus that has been circulating since April.“

“For the vast majority of people, Tamiflu has proved effective in reducing the severity of illness. Vaccination remains the most effective tool we have in preventing swine flu so I urge people identified as being at risk to look out for their invitation to be vaccinated by their GP surgery.“

Any spread of a Tamiflu-resistant strain of the virus into the community would constitute a serious public health concern. The government recently reminded those who caught swine flu to take Tamiflu as a first line of medical defense.

More @

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, drug lord with a $5 million bounty on his head is on Forbes most powerful list 41, that’s a list worth getting on huh?

by Philip Caputo

In the almost three years since President Felipe Calderón launched a war on drug cartels, border towns in Mexico have turned into halls of mirrors where no one knows who is on which side or what chance remark could get you murdered. Some 14,000 people have been killed in that time—the worst carnage since the Mexican Revolution—and part of the country is effectively under martial law. Is this evidence of a creeping coup by the military? A war between drug cartels? Between the president and his opposition? Or just collateral damage from the (U.S.-supported) war on drugs? Nobody knows: Mexico is where facts, like people, simply disappear. The stakes for the U.S. are high, especially as the prospect of a failed state on our southern border begins to seem all too real.

Poor Mexico. So far from God and so close to the United States.
—Porfirio Díaz, dictator of Mexico from 1876 to 1880 and 1884 to 1911

Those famous words came to mind when another man named Díaz offered me an equally concise observation about the realities of life in the country today: “In Mexico it is dangerous to speak the truth. It is even dangerous to know the truth.”

His full name is Fernando Díaz Santana. He hosts two AM-radio news-and-commentary shows in the small Chihuahuan city of Nuevo Casas Grandes. A stocky, broad-faced man in late middle age, he projects an air of warmth, openness, and intelligence. As he tells me that it’s dangerous to speak or know the truth, the half-rueful, half-apologetic expression in his eyes makes it plain that he’d rather not keep his mouth shut and his mind closed.

He’s received text messages from listeners cautioning him to be careful of what he says on the air. He takes these friendly warnings seriously; failure to heed them could bring a death sentence like the one meted out to Armando Rodríguez, a crime reporter murdered by an unidentified gunman in November 2008 in Juárez, the violent border city across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. The fear of suffering a similar fate is a powerful incentive for self-censorship, for training a naturally inquisitive mind to acquire ignorance.

“So now we give just the objective facts,” Díaz says as he sits facing me in a stuffy, windowless rear room of the radio station, in Nuevo Casas Grandes’s central business district. He and the co-host of his afternoon show, David Andrew (pronounced Da-veed An-dray-oo), explain that the “objective facts” are those reported by the police or city hall or some other official source. Though the accuracy of such facts is often questionable, no questions dare be asked. “We say nothing more,” Díaz adds. “As long as we don’t get too deeply into a story, we are safe.”

I am reminded of Winnie Verloc, the character in Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent who “felt profoundly that things do not stand much looking into.”

More than 14,000 people have been killed in the almost three years since President Felipe Calderón mobilized the army to fight Mexico’s half-dozen major drug cartels. Virtually none of those homicides has been solved, partly because witnesses suffer short-term memory loss when questioned, and partly because the police, for various reasons, also feel profoundly that things do not stand much looking into.

Rodríguez’s death is illustrative. His colleagues believe he was killed for an article he wrote linking relatives of Patricia González, the Chihuahuan state attorney general, to narcotics trafficking.

That is not idle theorizing. Jorge Luis Aguirre, a writer for LaPolaka.com, an online Juárez news service, had written extensively about corruption in the Chihuahuan state government, and did not spare González either. On the night of November 13, 2008, as he was driving to Rodríguez’s wake, he got a call on his cell phone. The male caller said, “You’re next, son of a bitch!” and hung up.

Aguirre immediately packed up his wife and sons and fled to El Paso, where he sought asylum. In March, testifying at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, he stated that he’d identified the source of the threats:

“Victor Valencia, a representative of the governor of the state of Chihuahua, had sent people to warn me to ‘tone down’ my criticisms of the prosecutor, Patricia González, because if I didn’t, he was going to kill me, using the Juárez cartel’s preferred method of kidnapping followed by execution.”

The aftermath reveals a lot about today’s Mexico. Patricia González remains in her post. Victor Valencia has been promoted to chief of public security in Juárez. The federal deputy attorney general handling the Rodríguez murder case, Jesús Martín Huerta Yedra, was shot to death in his car, along with his secretary. The investigation has since gone nowhere, to no one’s surprise. As the newspaper El Diario editorialized,

Friends of the journalist, who preferred not to give their names for security reasons, mentioned that they do not feel frustrated by the lack of advances in the case since from the beginning, they felt that the authorities had no intention of doing anything to clarify the crime.

To clarify the crime. Of the many things Mexico lacks these days, clarity is near the top of the list. It is dangerous to know the truth. Finding it is frustrating. Statements by U.S. and Mexican government officials, repeated by a news media that prefers simple story lines, have fostered the impression in the United States that the conflict in Mexico is between Calderón’s white hats and the crime syndicates’ black hats. The reality is far more complicated, as suggested by this statistic: out of those 14,000 dead, fewer than 100 have been soldiers. Presumably, army casualties would be far higher if the war were as straightforward as it’s often made out to be.

——————————————————————————–

Slideshow: Photographer Juliàan Cardona narrates a slideshow of images from the Juárez drug wars

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What, then, accounts for the carnage, the worst Mexico has suffered since the revolution, a century ago? To be sure, many of the dead have been cartel criminals. Some were killed in firefights with the army, others in battles between the cartels for control of smuggling routes, and still others in power struggles within the cartels. The toll includes more than 1,000 police officers, some of whom, according to Mexican press reports, were executed by soldiers for suspected links to drug traffickers. Conversely, a number of the fallen soldiers may have been killed by policemen moonlighting as cartel hit men, though that cannot be proved. Meanwhile, human-rights groups have accused the military of unleashing a reign of terror—carrying out forced disappearances, illegal detentions, acts of torture, and assassinations—not only to fight organized crime but also to suppress dissidents and other political troublemakers. What began as a war on drug trafficking has evolved into a low-intensity civil war with more than two sides and no white hats, only shades of black. The ordinary Mexican citizen—never sure who is on what side, or who is fighting whom and for what reason—retreats into a private world where he becomes willfully blind, deaf, and above all, dumb.

Which brings us back to Fernando Díaz and his avoidance of truth.

I have come to see him at the suggestion of Emilio Gutiérrez, who fled to the U.S. because army officers threatened him with death. During an interview at his hiding place north of the border, Gutiérrez told me about a mysterious event that occurred on February 12, 2008. Teams of gunmen, riding in SUVs and pickup trucks and described by witnesses as “dressed like soldiers,” swept through Nuevo Casas Grandes and six neighboring communities between midnight and dawn, kidnapping and executing people.

The convoys covered 170 miles altogether, rolling through military checkpoints unimpeded. In Nuevo Casas Grandes, the “armed commandos,” as they were called by the Mexican media, set fire to the house of a police subcommander and shot him to death as he ran outside. Two other people, one of them the uncle of a midlevel narcotics trafficker, were also executed. The press reported that 14 more were abducted, but the actual number was believed to be much higher. All the victims, except two who were apparently snatched by mistake and later released, vanished without a trace.

Gutiérrez, a reporter in El Diario’s Ascensión bureau, covered the operation. From what he’d seen with his own eyes and from interviews with eyewitnesses, he concluded that the perpetrators were dressed like soldiers for the simple reason that they were soldiers. An operation on that scale, he reasoned, could not have been conducted by gangs of pistoleros hastily thrown together: it required thorough planning, accurate intelligence, discipline, and coordination. Nor could pistoleros have driven through army roadblocks without being stopped. If the raid wasn’t military, it must have been conducted with the army’s cooperation.

That wasn’t what Gutiérrez reported, however. He told me that his boss, José Martínez Valdéz, the editor of El Diario’s editions in northwest Chihuahua, instructed him to “not cause problems by writing that this was military.” Gutiérrez’s silence did not win him any points with the army. Five months later, he was warned that the military was going to kill him, and he was forced to leave the country.

But why, I asked, would soldiers maraud the countryside on a murder-and-kidnapping spree? He replied that the raid was not part of the Mexican government’s war on the drug cartels but a struggle between two powerful cartels: the Juárez organization, headed by Vicente Carillo, and the Sinaloa federation, whose boss, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, is the most-wanted man in Mexico. Gutiérrez said that in this instance the gunmen, whoever they were, had been after people they thought were working for the Juárez cartel.

“It’s an open secret in Mexico,” he said, “that the army is fighting the [Juárez] cartel to weaken them and pave the way for Guzmán.”

Open secret or no, an allegation that soldiers may have acted on behalf of a drug lord needs to be substantiated. After all, Calderón’s counter-narcotics strategy relies, with U.S. support, almost exclusively on the military.

With a short list of contacts provided by Gutiérrez, my interpreter, Molly Molloy, and I enter Mexico through the Palomas border crossing and head south into the Chihuahuan Desert. I have just been in Juárez and am relieved to not be going back to that industrialized border city—utterly charmless in the best of times, and these are far from the best of times. Juárez’s main product now is the corpse. Last year, drug-related violence there claimed more than 1,600 lives, and the toll for the first nine months of this year soared beyond 1,800, and mounts daily. That makes Juárez, population 1.5 million, the most violent city in the world. Two lines of graffiti summed up a place where not only law and order but civilization itself has broken down: Mi ciudad pide clemencia en su dementia (“My city asks for mercy in its madness”), and Mi ciudad es un negro lamento un aullido infinito (“My city is a black lament, an eternal howl”).

Nuevo Casas Grandes lies on a plateau near a fertile valley—cowboy-and-farmer country where cattle graze on the high desert ranges and apple and pecan orchards form tidy ranks on the city’s outskirts. The city itself, with some 51,000 people, is known to archaeologically minded tourists for its proximity to Paquimé, the site of ancient pueblo ruins. It looks prosperous by the standards of interior Mexico, with wide streets, a few decent hotels and restaurants, an airport, and several auto dealerships selling Fords and Jeeps and other familiar makes. If it weren’t for all the Mexican license plates, I could believe we were in a town in the southwestern United States.

Our first call is at the offices of El Diario, housed in a whitewashed villa on the main drag. Molloy and I are hoping to meet with José Martínez Valdéz, who is Gutiérrez’s former editor, and the news director, Victor Valdovinos. They can answer some of our questions and provide introductions to city officials. But repeated attempts to see Martínez are unsuccessful—he manages to dodge us all afternoon. We do get a very brief audience with Valdovinos. When we tell him what we are there for, he flinches and says, “You don’t want to talk to me,” then vanishes.

That leaves Fernando Díaz, whom we find at the radio station as he and David Andrew wrap up their afternoon show. They are willing to talk to us, and we go into the back room. Andrew, a heavyset, 30-ish man with dense carbon-black hair, shuts the door, either to muffle the noise from outside or to make sure no one overhears our conversation.

In the Mexico Mexicans have to live in, Díaz begins, life is “very hard, very bad,” a statement he underscores with a statistic: last year, 115 homicides were committed in Nuevo Casas Grandes and its surrounding communities. That works out to a murder rate more than 20 times as high as New York City’s.

It’s at this juncture that he makes his comment about the dangers of speaking or knowing the truth. I begin inquiring about the February 2008 incident, but Díaz and his younger colleague aren’t eager to discuss it.

I don’t get anywhere, though Díaz casts doubt on Gutiérrez’s assertion that the raid was a military operation. All of this talk about human-rights abuses by the army is “a myth,” Díaz insists. He is in fact cheered that an army battalion has been making rounds to bolster security in Nuevo Casas Grandes: “We are abandoned and unprotected here in northwest Chihuahua. It is a very big wish that the soldiers will bring peace. The army is the only group we can trust.” He adds by way of illustration that several sicarios, as professional assassins are called in Mexico, were arrested and confessed to killing 19 people in town.

Two of the sicarios, Andrew interjects, were his neighbors: “One guy worked in a car wash, the other guy was an army deserter.” Two others turned out to be auto salesmen—“nice guys in the day, killers by night,” Díaz says, as if he’s voicing over a trailer for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. “You are talking to me, a radio announcer, but you can’t be sure that I’m not a sicario,” Díaz adds. “You say you’re an American reporter, but I don’t know that you’re not a sicario. You cannot trust anybody.” He doesn’t seem to notice that he’s contradicted his earlier remark that only the army can be trusted.

The question is, can the army be trusted, and if so, can it win this latest—and biggest—battle in the seemingly endless “war on drugs”? Calderón has deployed more than 45,000 troops (out of a total force of 230,000) throughout the country. Of that number, about 7,000, reinforced by 2,300 federal policemen, occupy Juárez as part of Operación Conjunta Chihuahua—the Joint Chihuahuan Operation. The army has taken over all the policing functions. The city is under undeclared martial law.

Although many ordinary Mexicans welcome the army’s intervention, certain that things would be far worse without it, approval has been far from universal. Claims of grievous abuses by the armed forces—unlawful detentions, disappearances, thefts, rapes, and murders—have increased sixfold in the past three years, according to Human Rights Watch. One hundred and seventy complaints have been filed in Chihuahua alone, says Gustavo de la Rosa, the former Chihuahua state ombudsman for Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission.

Leaving aside the question of whether militarizing the anti-narcotics campaign is the best way to go about things (a similar strategy in Colombia has been only partially successful), the fact is that, by destroying public trust in the armed forces, military misconduct undermines the entire effort, as I learned from a 50-year-old cleaning woman who now lives in Arizona and who asked to remain anonymous. She was visiting her aunt in Juárez last December when soldiers broke into a neighbor’s house, claiming that they were looking for a suspect.

“They didn’t say who,” the woman told me. “They tore her house apart, took her jewelry and her money, and said that if she complained about what they did they were going to come back and kill her. People are more afraid of the police and soldiers than they are of the narcos, because they’re very mean guys—not all, but many.”

The fear goes beyond undisciplined soldiers running amok. In an interview, de la Rosa told me that the president, elected in 2006 by a margin as thin as an ATM card, called out the army not merely to fight the cartels and eliminate a threat to national sovereignty but to consolidate his power and confer legitimacy on his presidency. “Calderón wants to show the Congress that the military is with him,” de la Rosa said. “And the military promised to support Calderón in exchange for being allowed out of the barracks, because the army wants to govern. Chihuahua is an experiment. What is happening here is in essence a military coup, a regional coup.” To support this contention, he cited a change he has had to make in his own work. Under normal circumstances, he would file complaints of abuse with the state governor, but now, he said, “the governor is ineffective, so I have to go to General Felipe de Jesús Espitia, the comandante of the 5th Military District.”

I was somewhat incredulous that the military was staging a creeping coup. To what end? I asked.

De la Rosa shrugged. “Actually, nobody really knows or understands what the military is up to,” he answered, hedging a bit. Then he asserted that the army intends not to stamp out drug trafficking but to “control” it. “So now if a drug cartel wants to move drugs into the U.S., who would they go to? To the governor? No, to the general.” (El Universal, Mexico’s largest newspaper, reported in September that de la Rosa had received death threats from the army, apparently because of his sharp criticisms; sources have told me he has taken temporary refuge in the U.S.)

Please read the rest at The Atlantic

A convicted drug dealer has lost his cabin cruiser boat and car bought with the proceeds of crime…. From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: boat charter. The blog is also related to: boat transom.

Dateline: Havana

Can product development partnerships (PDPs) deliver? This was the question tackled during a session at this week’s Global Forum for Health Research in Havana. The presentations actually spoke little to the topic—perhaps because PDPs are taking on some of the biggest scientific challenges of our time such as developing a HIV vaccine, a tuberculosis vaccine, and broad-spectrum anti-virals. But it is a question worth asking.

PDPs are a relatively new concept. The earliest were started just over 10 years ago and are either free standing nonprofit organizations or several different product programs housed together under one nonprofit. The basic concept when they began was that industry has expertise and capabilities that are needed to make new vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics for neglected diseases affecting poor countries but this expertise and capability is not being applied to diseases primarily affecting the developing world. PDPs were created to bridge the gap between global health need (public sector) and an innovation system that responds to market demand (private sector).

Given the timelines for developing novel drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics, it may be too early to say if PDPs have indeed delivered upon their promise. What is stunning is that no one has developed evaluation metrics to measure either effectiveness or efficiency, and no PDP has been evaluated by such metrics. Billions of dollars have been invested in these mechanisms by philanthropic organizations such as The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and bilateral donor governments such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.K. Department for International Development.

The companies who make products are evaluated daily by their shareholders or at least quarterly by their venture capitalists or investment bankers. Companies also use internal metrics to improve their business processes and improve profits. One company was able to reduce their time to peak sales in half in a short period of time, greatly improving their profits. Should we not be taking the same approach in the public sector—greatly improving the speed of development and uptake of new products so that more lives can be saved?

My guess is that most PDPs would come out well in an evaluation — the pipelines are filling up with new drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics targeted toward neglected diseases. But for some diseases, a single PDP is virtually the only mechanism for funding research on that specific disease intervention. We should assure ourselves as a global health community that these investments are operating efficiently and effectively.

We as a community stand the strong chance of donor fatigue because the funding for PDPs often comes from agencies who measure outcomes in election cycles. It may take decades for new chemical entities, novel vaccines, and appropriate diagnostics to be developed because in addition to market barriers, many of the neglected diseases being tackled are scientifically very challenging. Adopting robust evaluation schemes now may help to show interim progress that points towards timelines for future products with health outcomes that can be counted in hundreds of millions of lives saved.

–Melinda Moree is the interim CEO of BVGH

Did you know that there are approximately seven of every one hundred people who suffer depression after the age of 18 at some point of their lives? And in order to have themselves treated, doctors usually prescribe Celexa.

Now let us find out more about Celexa. As defined, Celexa, whose generic name is Citalopram, is actually an antidepressant that is a member of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) drug family. The way these drugs work is that it makes more serotonin, which is a natural occurring substance found in the brain, available between nerve cells as it has been shown that it eases depression.

Again, it is best to know what are the things that you should consider before you take Celexa Drug.

First, according to Drugs.com, you should not use Celexa if you are making use of an MAO inhibitor such as tranylcypromine (Parnate), isocarboxazid (Marplan), rasagiline (Azilect), phenelzine (Nardil), or selegiline (Eldepryl, Emsam). This is so because it is possible that serious or even fatal reactions will occur when these medications are taken with Celexa. It has been said that before talking Citalopram, the patient must wait for at least 14 days following the day he has stopped an MAO inhibitor. The same holds true the other way around which means after one stops taking Celexa, 14 days should pass before the same person could start taking an MAOI.

Second, the following facts must be revealed to the doctor so that the necessary adjustments or special tests may be done before one could safely take Celexa:

• allergy to any drugs;
• seizures or epilepsy
• liver or kidney disease;
• bipolar disorder (manic depression);
• a history of drug abuse or suicidal thoughts.

Third, side effects are common to almost all medications. For Celexa, thoughts about suicide may be present to the patient when he first takes an antidepressant most especially to those who are younger than 24 years old. Thus, to be precautious, it would be best to inform you doctor once you experience worsening symptoms of depression or suicidal thought during our first several weeks of treatment or in case your dose is changed.

Fourth, give your doctor at regular visits for at least the first 12 weeks of treatment with Celexa Drug. Orient your family members or other caregivers that they should likewise be alert to changes in your symptoms or mood.

Fifth, for breastfeeding mothers, bear in mind that under FDA pregnancy category C, SSRI antidepressants may actually pose serious or life-threatening lung problems to newborn babies. Celexa can pass into breast milk, thus, may cause harm to a nursing baby. Thus, never attempt to take the medication if you have not yet informed your doctor. In turn, you may also suffer from relapse of depression if you stop your antidepressant medication. If, on the other hand, you are still planning a pregnancy or if you got pregnant while taking Celexa, consult your doctor first before you decide to stop taking the medication.

Last but not the least, never provide this medication to any person who is younger than 18 years old unless approved or advised by a doctor.

Celexa comes in the form of a tablet which is taken by mouth. Usual dose is once a day and the medication may be taken with or without food. Just like the other forms of medication, never go beyond what the doctor has directed you to do. Take this drug regularly for a few weeks until you feel its full effect. Also, even if you feel you are well, don’t stop with the medication without talking to your doctor.

Now, to the question on why let CelexaDrug.com provide the medication for you, the answer is actually simple. It is a trusted online pharmacy that works hand in hand with US Licensed Pharmacies and US Licensed Physicians plus it assures everyone no embarrassment, FedEx Overnight Shipping and does not require prior prescription. In short, Celexa Drug has all features that are you are looking for from an online pharmacy.

Researchers work on memory-erasing drugs

Researchers work on memory-erasing drugs
Thursday, November 19, 2009

AP– (11/19/09) — Taking a pill could wipe away all of your painful memories.

HealthFirst reporter Leslie Toldo tells us about research that sounds like a sci-fi movie plot.

There is proof it can be done. The real question is, would you really want to do it?

The answer isn’t as easy as you might think.

These pictures, medals and pins are reminders of a time war veteran Allen Megginson would rather forget. “I think that no matter how much time passes, it’s really not going to ease the pain any.”

Megginson fought in the Iraq War. What he saw and experienced are now memories that haunt him every day. “Sometimes the wounds that hurt the most are the ones you can’t see.”

What if Megginson could forget those horrible memories? After decades of research, neuroscientist Dr. Andre Fenton and colleagues have discovered what they call the memory molecule. “This is the first physical identification of a molecule that is definitively important for storing memory,” Fenton claimed.

In a lab experiment, Fenton manipulated that molecule in the brains of rats. The animals were put on a turntable. One area delivered a mild shock to the foot. But when researchers injected a drug called zip into their brains, watch how the rats go straight to the spot that shocked them. They forgot what they had learned.

“We could always see that the animals could no longer remember to avoid that particular place.”

While this research is in animals, investigators from Harvard are studying whether another drug called propranolol can weaken the emotional response to memories in humans. But medical ethicist Felicia Cohn, Ph.D. says there are real concerns about editing memory

“You start changing somebody’s memories, you can raise the question of whether or not you’re changing their identity in some fundamental way.”
Even Megginson says he wouldn’t want to take a drug to help him forget. “I may have these bad memories, but they make me the person I am today.”

Researchers are also studying the effects of certain painkillers, anti-nausea drugs and the abortion drug RU486 for memory blocking in animals.

BACKGROUND: According to the National Institute of Mental Health, posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is an anxiety disorder that some people get after seeing or living through a dangerous event. The intense fear triggers split-second changes in the body to defend against danger. In PTSD, this reaction is changed or damaged. People with PTSD may feel stressed or frightened even when they are no longer in danger. Anyone can develop PTSD at any age. War veterans and survivors of physical and sexual abuse are commonly diagnosed with the disorder. Not everyone with PTSD has been through a dangerous event. Some people develop PTSD after a friend or family member experiences danger or is harmed. The sudden, unexpected death of a loved one can also cause PTSD.

ERASING MEMORIES?
It sounds like science fiction, but some researchers are studying whether certain drugs can erase or dim bad memories. The possibility of memory blocking has some ethicists concerned. Felicia Cohn, Ph.D., director of medical ethics at the University of California, Irvine, says erasing memories may be erasing someone’s identity. “If you start changing somebody’s memories, you can raise the question of whether or not you’re changing their identity in some fundamental way,” Cohn told Ivanhoe. She says even bad memories teach us important lessons. “Whether it means we become more protective with our children or we lock our doors more often at night, or you know, even subtle behavior changes can really make a big difference in the way we live,” Cohn said.

ZIP: Researchers in Brooklyn are studying the drug known as “ZIP” in animals. They conducted an experiment where they put the animals on a turntable. One region of the table delivered a mild foot shock, so the animals learned to stay away from that area. After the researchers injected ZIP into their brains, the rats went straight to the spot that shocked them, meaning they forgot what they had learned.

PROPRANOLOL: Researchers from Harvard and elsewhere have been studying whether the drug propranolol can dim the emotional response to memories in people with PTSD. In one preliminary trial, investigators found the pill “significantly reduced physiological responses” in the patients. Researchers say the drug works by influencing the reconsolidation of memories, which is the shaping of already-formed — or consolidated — memories. In another recent study involving the drug, researchers trained 60 people to associate a picture of a spider with an electric shock. After the conditioning, students who were given propranolol before seeing the picture were not startled, while the other students were.

So yeah the video explains it all. Take a look.

Weed, grass, pot…let ‘em smoke it. Gay, homosexual, partners…let ‘em put a ring on it. Inconvenient, unintended, accident…let ‘em kill it. Decent, moral, compassionate…let ’em all just forget it.

When I read an article by Jacob Weisberg in a recent issue of Newsweek, that is exactly the message I took away from it. Weisberg seems to think if enough people want to do something, every one else should just get out of the way and let them do it. My problem with this short-sightedness is that when anything goes, everything goes.

“Our forms of prohibition are more sins of omission than commission,” Weisberg writes in the article, titled, “Gay Marriage & Marijuana: You can’t stop either. Why that’s good.”* “Rather than trying to take away long-standing rights, they’re instances of conservative laws failing to keep pace with a liberalizing society.”

While I do think too many in the media would love it if Americans could just lounge around all day massaging their same-sex spouses, inhaling cannabis, eating Doritos and shooting babies with BB guns, I do think a majority of Americans still disagree. Certain elements of society — namely, the media — are “liberalizing,” but many Americans such as myself feel like a lot of this is being shoved down our throats. We are starting to choke.

Weisberg quotes the president, Barack Obama, saying, “‘I inhaled — that was the point.’”*  That is just one more reason I am glad I did not vote for the man. Seriously, even when he admits he consumed illegal drugs, Obama does it in a condescending way.

Pointing out that the bastion of conservative ideology, The New York Times, (can you hear my sarcasm?) has recognized gay unions on its wedding pages for the past seven years, Weisberg says this reflects “evolving social norms.”* I say this is just another example of a media outlet foisting its views on us.

Weisberg writes, “What’s advancing the decriminalization of marijuana is not just the demand for pot as medicine but the number of adults — more than 23 million in the past year…who use it and don’t believe they should face legal jeopardy.”*

Wow, I am amazed the “but Mom, everybody else is doing it” excuse can be used at any age now. Weisberg calls this the “evolving definition of the pursuit of happiness.”* I call this another example of our declining civilization.

Rome crumbled once the societal elites turned to hedonism. Is that the path we wish to travel? Should we let just anything go?

Discussing the relaxing of marijuana laws, Weisberg reports, “In L.A., you need only tell an on-site doctor at a walk-in pot emporium that you feel anxious to walk out with a legal bag of Captain Kush.”* Well, I have to stay up late to get this article done. How long before I can step into a walk-in methamphetamine boutique to pick up some Captain Keep-Me-Awake?

This is exactly my point. Where do we draw the line? When does it stop? Who is going to stand up and yell, “Enough!”? When are we going to realize what I said before — when anything goes, everything goes?

I do not think the problem is that society is becoming more liberal. I think the problem is that we are becoming weak and spineless.

We are too afraid of appearing judgmental. We are too afraid of being deemed politically incorrect. We are too afraid of causing offense.

I say the whole thing about not judging others is a load of crap. We judge others all the time. It is in our nature to do so. If I hurt your feelings and you think I am politically incorrect, go cry to your mama. If I offend, maybe you should be offended. Perhaps that is exactly what you need.

* Quotes from the article, “Gay Marriage & Marijuana: You can’t stop either. Why that’s good.” Newsweek. Nov. 9, 2009. (24).