Perspective from the Past

Last Friday as one of my students was leaving yoga practice, she commented on how much better her back felt and that it had been only about a week since she could barely move due to an minor injury from overexertion in the garden.  She mentioned how we often don’t appreciate being able to move around without feeling pain.  The same could be said for days when we don't feel sick and a host of other situations that we constantly take for granted.  This is one aspect of perspective, feeling gratitude for what you have instead of unsatisfied or grasping for more and then feeling anxious about not being able to afford it or disappointed about not getting it immediately.

All the advertising and other hype we are exposed to daily preys not only on our insecurities but also on this yearning for more fueled by a shortage of perspective as neighbors and friends try to outdo each other with personal possessions and special experiences.

A book I just finished again brought this home to me.  It was a study of the changes in the standard of living in the US over the past 150 years.  The book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, showed graphically that the advances in technology that led to an improved standard of living for everyone came at a rate unheard of prior to 1870, but still not at a steady pace.  Most of the life changing inventions came about in the first half of the 20^th century, despite the Great Depression and two world wars.  Advances leading to real improvement in how we live have been scarce since 1970 with the exception of a one-time surge in information technology in the 1990s.

The details are not important.  What this 660 pages of fairly dry reading brought home to me was an appreciation for what we have today, conveniences that were unavailable to those living just a few generations ago. 

Begin with not waking up with dead horses in the street.  Before automobiles, the stench of horse manure, urine and carcasses in the streets of most major cities was constant.  They had no sewer system to deal with that and all the other waste.  There was no electricity and conveniences like indoor plumbing and central heating were rare.  Work was hard and dangerous.  Life expectancy was low and those who lived beyond a “retirement age” continued to work, often losing their regular job because they were no longer physically able.

People in rural areas had other problems.  Farm work, which employed over 45% of the working population, was very dangerous, with working conditions as unpleasant as nature could make them.  In addition, they were isolated for long periods with no phone and no radio.  If they needed a doctor or supplies, they rode to town, and arriving there, were at the mercy of the single retail outlet with no way to tell how fair a deal they were getting.  (Competition was limited or non-existent until Sears and Montgomery Ward began to send catalogs.)

Since then our houses have been networked with electricity and water supply (including sewage) along with all the appliances that they enabled:  telephones, radios and televisions, washers and dryers, stoves, refrigerators, microwaves, dishwashers, central heating and air conditioning.  No more walking to the pump to fill a bucket and haul it in to scrub the laundry or wash the dishes or take an infrequent bath.  No more eating only what is in season and worrying about spoilage.  No more freezing in the morning waiting for the stove to heat up, where the first one up had to haul in the wood or coal to start the fire.

Cars and trucks, along with the roads themselves slowly improved to the point where a daylong trip in the past became an easy drive today.  And travel by car has also become progressively safer – and would be safer still, if drivers could put the phone down. 

There are so many other advances and inventions that we take for granted.  Progress in fighting communicable diseases like polio and diphtheria has been enormous.  Medicine offers treatment and cures unheard of even a couple of decades ago.

In the first ten minutes of the day we enjoy so many of these conveniences from the time we curse the alarm, turn on the light switch and stumble into the shower.  Then we get to the drive thru in our heated or air-conditioned cars to pick up a coffee on the way to work in a temperature controlled office, where we can stand around and complain about the most trivial discomforts or inconveniences.

Things can always be better and there is no need to become static with appreciation, but it doesn’t hurt to reflect on what we have, even if only as a barometer to gauge how inconsequential some of our daily problems really are.  That’s how perspective helps keep our lives in balance.

Believing in Onions!

Here’s one that’s been going around the Internet for a number of years and has recently been resurrected on Facebook, the one place you can rely on for completely accurate scientific and medical advice.  (Not!)

The medical guidance is that putting an onion in the room of a sick person will absorb the illness leading to a complete cure in an unbelievably short time.  The truth in this statement is totally contained in the one word “unbelievably.”  Onions are said to so easily absorb bacteria that it’s not safe to store a partially cut up onion in your refrigerator for fear it will later infect you and your family with the gobs of germs it has collected from the air.

If you or someone in the family has the flu, place an onion sliced in half in a bowl in their room and not only will it cure the patient, it will also prevent the flu from spreading to others in the family.  Supposedly cutting it in half exposes more onion to the air.  But if that’s the case, why not dice it to expose so much more surface area?  Apparently no one asked that question, so the explanation stops at halves of an onion.

But it gets even better.  Sleeping with onions in your socks, or from another source, rubbing them on your feet and then wrapping plastic around them and your feet, and tying the whole package in place with white socks, helps alleviate the flu.  (I wonder why the socks have to be white – apparently another question no one has asked.)  There is probably some scientific reason for the color of the socks.  (I imagine a comedy routine about two people trying get intimate in bed feeling inhibited by the bags of onions each has tied to the feet.)

But people who get their medical advice from a site called healthybliss.net probably don’t get too worked up about real science.  They are satisfied with the fact that this cure has been used for thousands of years and that the ancient practice of Ayurveda has some good things to say about onions.

Speaking for real science, this article from McGill University Office of Science & Society, and subtitled Separating Sense from Nonsense, makes it clear that onions are not especially prone to bacterial contamination.  “Onions feature a variety of sulphur compounds that have antibacterial activity.  (Of course that doesn’t mean they can in any way protect against the flu which is a viral disease.)”  They don’t attract or absorb bacteria from the air, although they may absorb bacteria from a contaminated cutting board in the kitchen that was improperly cleaned.

There is some good news and some bad news here.  First, your leftover half onions should be perfectly safe in the refrigerator and better kept there than in the bedroom.

Second, there is hope for the problem of over-prescription of antibiotics that leads to antibiotic-resistant bacteria that leads to the emergence of super bugs and 23,000 deaths per year, which I referred to in the Epidemics posting of May 27, 2016.  Patients who insist on antibiotics to fight viral diseases like flu and the common cold can be prescribed an onion instead.  Their misunderstanding of medicine is obvious from the fact that they don’t distinguish between a bacterial and a viral infection and think antibiotics are the cure.  This sets them up perfectly to accept an onion as a valid cure for their cold and flu symptoms.  Problem solved!

The bad news, of course, is that these same people who apparently slept through science class and are so weak in critical thinking that they readily accept this kind of advice at face value from dubious Internet sources without doing any research on their own, also vote.  And their vote counts exactly the same as yours.

What Happens When We Don't Take Care of Ourselves

We all know what happens when we don’t take care of ourselves, when we act irresponsibly.  Someone else steps in and tries to force us to change behavior.  There are a number of ways to do this.  We would like to tell these busybodies to mind their own business; but as I pointed out earlier, when we are all forced into the same big insurance pool, how well you take care of yourself becomes everyone else’s business.

The least intrusive method that they try to modify our behavior is through labeling.  The FDA has recently passed a requirement that labels on grocery items stress the amount of added sugar in the product.  “Labels will have grams of added sugar and percent of daily value.”  They will also include calories and serving size, all in larger, easier-to-read print.  Total sugar has always been listed, but they assume the larger, bolder font and more specific description will make the problem more noticeable, causing people to maybe think twice before buying something less healthy.  The standard example always seems to be Coca Cola.

And speaking of Coke – the new mayor of Philadelphia wants to impose a special tax on non-diet soda and other sugary drinks.  The new tax is expected to “generate more than $400 million over the next five years” to help fund a plan for universal pre-K and community schools among other benefits.  Using a good cause will bring good will toward paying the tax, right?  This is a little more intrusive than labeling, but the new beverage tax will not only double the cost of soft drinks and juices, it will have some interesting, unintended  side effects.  Those who are better off financially can afford to drive outside the city limits to buy their cola.  The ones who will be hurt most are the city grocery stores, who lose business as the special tax drives grocery shopping out of the city for some, and the poorer folks whose options are more limited, ironically the same people who are the target of the universal pre-K programs.  When you consider human behavior, the $400 million looks like a pipe dream.

Another way to influence our behavior is to punish the makers of products that are not healthy.  They already tax and restrict the use of tobacco, but why not also encourage citizens to act like victims and sue companies on the basis that we didn’t know better or were tricked into it.  Take the recent case of Hall of Fame baseball player Tony Gwynn.  He died at the age of 54 from salivary-gland cancer linked to many years of using smokeless tobacco. “Now, his family is suing the tobacco company they say manipulated him into addiction.”  They accuse the company of negligence, fraud and product liability, saying that Gwynn was the victim of a scheme to get him hooked into a lifelong habit, while the company all along understood the danger.  Yes, they surely did know the danger.  But Gwynn was in college in the 1980s, and who would believe that a college student at that time did not understand that tobacco was both habit-forming and a cause of cancer?  Are they arguing that he was stupid or living under a rock?  No, they only insist that the company was selling something they knew was dangerous - the same argument some want to now use against gun makers.  What’s next, mountain climbing equipment and parachutes?

When we act irresponsibly and the government wants to change our behavior (for our own good), there are more subtle ways to do it than just passing laws to ban the activity or product.  They can print bigger labels - in the UK they've even proposed printing on the labels the amount of exercise required to burn off the calories and to ban ads for junk food on both television programs and websites with content directed at children.  They also may impose higher taxes or encourage lawsuits (by the way the process is structured).  There is no end to the ways our freedom to choose or to act as we wish is restricted when someone else thinks we are acting irresponsibly.

None of the Above

The theme of these essays, as shown above, is that behavior has consequences.  Positive behaviors usually result in happy outcomes, unwise behaviors in disaster.  (“Hey, guys, watch this!”)  In Biblical terms, we reap what we sow.  Common behavioral choices of the many combine to set the current state of our society.

When behavior has good results, it is repeated.  When it has bad outcomes, lessons are learned.  But when behavior has no consequences, that behavior usually continues.  People follow the path of least resistance.  Status quo is easy and comfortable.

This applies to both business and personal life.  An employee who ignores safety rules must be dealt with.  A CEO who makes foolish strategic decisions is asked to leave.  A family dog that soils the carpet must be trained.  Few would dream of ignoring these behaviors, knowing that doing so merely invites more of the same.

Now we face an election where the two major political parties are close to picking their candidates for the White House.  As of this writing, the presumptive candidates, Hillary and Donald, have disapproval ratings of 56% and 65%, respectively.  More and more people with a wide range of political views are vocal in expressing their wish to be able to vote for “None of the Above” and force the parties to start over.  (The only objection to this approach is that election fatigue has already set in and most people are getting sick of the bickering.)

Why do we continue to go from one election to the next having our choices reduced to mediocre candidates, ones that the majority views with disapproval?  Considering that behavior ignored is behavior continued, isn’t it time to stop holding our noses and voting for the “lesser of two evils”?

In a few short months we will be hearing public service announcements urging everyone to exercise your right to vote.  Perhaps we should instead exercise our right not to vote, or at least not to vote for one of the major parties.  We have a right to free speech, but in the interest of civility we don’t exercise it all the time.  We have a right to own guns, but not everyone chooses to do so.  We have a right to observe the religion of our choice, but less than 40% report attending services regularly.  So what’s all this fuss about the right to vote?  How do we send a message to the major parties, when behavior ignored is behavior continued?

One way would be to vote on every question and every candidate on the ballot, but to skip the presidential race.  Leave it blank.  That’s allowed, and I’m sure some clever statistician in the media would report that only 50% of those going to the polls voted for either one.

Another would be to cast your vote for a third party.  What if the Green Party and the Libertarian Party each got more than 15% of the vote and another 10% voted on other races but cast no vote for president?  Would that send a message?  Would that satisfactorily represent our disappointment in the repeated behavior of the major parties?

No matter what we do, one of those two is going to win.  But if the winner can’t say, “I have a mandate,” if it’s clear to the “winner” that he or she got support of less than 30% of all those who did go to the polls, would that send a message?  Would it keep either one from becoming overly ambitious in office and convince the major parties that they must do better next time?  Would it also send a message to Congress that we are fed up and that the President doesn't have our support?

Perhaps we are just getting what we deserve.  The news media know our tastes and interests better than we do.  They keep ratings up by spending more time on Prince’s lack of a will than on Kim Jung Un’s continued nuclear threats and irrational behavior.  They spend more time on Target’s and North Carolina’s positions on the restroom controversy than reminding us of the 2.4 billion people in the world who don’t have access to a toilet.  Then they close the broadcast with a video of cute baby bears.  We play into the hands of the media and the politicians by going along with whatever they offer up and not demanding better.

Some will say, “No, no, I want to make my vote count, not to throw it away.”  But that’s just asking for more of the same.  Don’t think of it as wasting your vote.  Think of it as sending a message, a desperate attempt to answer poor behavior with lesson-laden consequences.  If enough have the guts to send the message, it might do some good: and we can't be any worse off.  It’s no different from dealing with an unsafe employee or an un-housebroken dog.  A vote for “None of the Above” or “Neither of the Above” is a vote for progress!

Epidemics

Two news stories came out in the past week to reinforce an earlier idea I presented under the title of “Don’t Ask Your Doctor.”  At that time I explained how drug companies want patients to put pressure on doctors to increase sales (not necessarily to apply the proper cure to whatever ails you).  The two recent issues are the overuse of antibiotics and the so-called opioid epidemic.

In the case of antibiotics, it’s fairly simple.  Antibiotics kill bacteria.  If bacteria cause an ailment, antibiotics may help.  Otherwise it’s worse than a waste; it’s a danger.  Over time bacteria can mutate into forms that are resistant to the latest antibiotics.  Then anyone who is sick due to the new, modified bacteria will not be helped.  Hence, the outbreak of the super-bugs like MERSA becomes a major and growing concern in the US. 

This is an aspect of what I call “virgin in the volcano” thinking.  According to lore, primitive island people would hold an annual ceremony to toss a virgin into the volcano to appease the gods.  If there was no eruption, they assumed it worked.  If there was an eruption they formulated some excuse to justify the discrepancy and the practice continued.  Viruses, not bacteria, cause the common cold.  It goes away in a couple of weeks.  Many people believe they need antibiotics and hound the doctor for them.  Either the doctor gives in, or they find another source.  They take the pills and the cold clears up, just as it would have had they not taken the pills.

This seems harmless enough except for that nasty ability of bacteria to adapt.  When doctors prescribe too many antibiotics, which they do 30% of the time, some bacteria become resistant.  The CBS News story takes it from there.  “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), antibiotic-resistant infections affect 2 million people and lead to about 23,000 deaths annually.”

Those 23,000 are not necessarily the same ones who caused the over-use.  They just happened to catch a very strong disease, one strengthened by its newly gained antibiotic resistance.

The second, related story also from CBS News tells us about another pill problem.  In the opinion of the former head of the FDA, opioid addiction in the US amounts to an epidemic.  Over 28,000 people die each year from an overdose of painkillers.  This is a major problem, but unlike the antibiotic problem, someone else overdosing will not put you in danger.

Similar to the antibiotic problem though, the focal point is the interaction between the patient and doctor and the understanding, sometimes on the part of both parties of what constitutes proper use.  Up to now, both have assumed that the pain is the problem and the answer was to keep popping pills until the pain went completely away.  This leads to the unrealistic expectation of a totally pain-free life and on from there to addiction.  The CDC now recommends that doctors first offer over-the-counter medications before turning to the addictive opioid drugs in more limited quantities.  This, again, becomes more difficult when patients are nagging for a particular drug they saw on TV, putting the advice of pharmaceutical ads over the advice of the doctor.

Both problems call for better education and more responsibility.  We can put the blame on government agencies for being lax and the proliferation of drug advertising with the “Ask Your Doctor” tag line, but then we become victims, giving up our very real ability to fix these problems. The doctors need to be more aware.  Their patients need to ask more questions instead of initiating the conversation with a request for medicine.