Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. – Matthew 15:11
More articles which expand on concepts covered in past columns.
Harm Reduction (January 13th)
Yesterday we looked at how Portugal applied a harm-reduction approach to drugs which are still illegal in less-enlightened countries; here’s an article from the April 21st Guardian which examines a harm-reduction approach to dealing with those addicted to a drug which is legal nearly everywhere:
…the provision of a safe place for those drinkers who do not want to be “saved” or “cured”, would be a welcome development – and, at the St. Anthony Residence, in St Paul, Minnesota, this is exactly what drinkers are offered, free of charge. For years, this “wet house” (one of four in the state) has provided shelter to its hopelessly alcoholic residents, at a cost of $18,000 per person per year. Nobody has to attend therapy sessions; there is no 12-step programme and no homilies about hope or the future. Similar facilities are available elsewhere in the US, and in Canada, where a study based around Ottawa’s “wet shelter” found that emergency room visits and arrests were reduced by around 50%, saving the individual drinker untold humiliation and pain and significantly reducing the bills of local taxpayers, while freeing up medical staff and police officers for other jobs. Can it be doubted, then, that such programmes provide a win-win situation? The drinker is taken off the street and out of the emergency room, the local community benefits and, though this is not altogether a solution to their problem, friends and family are eased of at least some of the pain that goes with loving a chronic drunk. Meanwhile, within the limits of their condition, drinkers attending facilities like St. Anthony’s are surprisingly happy.
And that, perhaps, is the problem. Hopeless drunks aren’t supposed to be happy: they’re supposed to suffer until they see the error of their ways and submit to a cure. Critics of the wet houses never say this, of course; they talk about wet houses “giving up” on people, about “writing people off” – and yet, though they may well be sincere, their opposition to harm reduction programmes raises serious questions about liberty and civil rights. When a grown man who, whether drunk or sober, maintains, often with real cogency and persuasiveness, that he does not wish to be treated for what other people may think of as a “condition” but which he sees as an essential part of his identity, what right does anyone have to oblige him to seek therapy? It may not be desirable (or rather, we may not see it as desirable) to be a chronic drinker, but it is not so long since it was seen as equally undesirable to be gay…
And while we’re on the subject of addiction…
Not An Addiction (February 11th)
CNN, that bastion of responsible journalism, published on March 28th a story in which irresponsible scientists (or perhaps irresponsible reporters misquoting scientists) claim that dietary fats affect the brain “in much the same way as cocaine and heroin” and that this means they are addictive. It of course means nothing of the kind; for one things fats are needed by the human body while drugs are not, and for another thing “withdrawal” from fats does not produce physical symptoms. Habituating, yes; addictive, no.
Scientists have finally confirmed what the rest of us have suspected for years: Bacon, cheesecake, and other delicious yet fattening foods may be addictive. A new study in rats suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin. When rats consume these foods in great enough quantities, it leads to compulsive eating habits that resemble drug addiction, the study found. Doing drugs such as cocaine and eating too much junk food both gradually overload the…pleasure centers in the brain…eventually the pleasure centers “crash,” and achieving the same pleasure–or even just feeling normal–requires increasing amounts of the drug or food…
The fact that junk food could provoke this response isn’t entirely surprising, says Dr. Gene-Jack Wang, M.D., the chair of the medical department at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Upton, New York. “We make our food very similar to cocaine now,” he says. Coca leaves have been used since ancient times, he points out, but people learned to purify or alter cocaine to deliver it more efficiently to their brains (by injecting or smoking it, for instance). This made the drug more addictive. According to Wang, food has evolved in a similar way. “We purify our food,” he says. “Our ancestors ate whole grains, but we’re eating white bread. American Indians ate corn; we eat corn syrup”…
One last nitpick: while I don’t expect journalists to be experts in everything they write about, a little basic research would be nice. The reporter’s appalling ignorance of food biology is readily apparent from ignorant phrases like “delicious yet fattening foods”; high-fat foods are delicious to us BECAUSE they’re fattening, not in spite of it as she implies. We evolved to survive harsh conditions, not to live a sedentary existence in the midst of plenty, so the foods our bodies crave most are those which enable us to consume the highest number of calories in the shortest possible time – namely fats. The problem isn’t in so-called “junk foods”, it’s in our overindulgence in them. Water has absolutely no nutrients and consuming too much of it is unhealthy, but I don’t see ignoramuses referring to it as a “junk beverage”.
Welcome To Our World (January 20th)
The latest people to be forced to endure government busybodies in their private affairs: nursing mothers, in this article from the Washington Post of February 21st:
Women have been nursing other women’s babies for hundreds of years; it used to be called wet-nursing. Now, technology is giving new life to this practice. On the Internet, especially on Facebook, lactating women are forming “milk-sharing” communities where they post if they have a surplus or a deficiency of breast milk. They then meet up in person to give or receive bottles of frozen breast milk…The prevalence of online sharing of breast milk is impossible to quantify, but it has caught the attention of the Food and Drug Administration. Last fall, the FDA released a statement that recommended “against feeding your baby breast milk acquired directly from individuals or through the Internet” because unscreened donor milk could allow the transmission of HIV, chemical contaminants, some illegal drugs and some prescription drugs…The FDA’s statement encouraged women to consider milk banks instead of turning to the Internet. Milk banks may charge as much as $6 an ounce; at that price, it could cost about $150 a day to feed the average 3-month-old baby. The FDA does not regulate milk banks or milk-sharing, but it posted facts about these options after realizing that people were turning to the agency for information…the Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBANA) operates nine nonprofit milk banks in the United States…The banks are designed to serve babies in neonatal intensive care units, says the group’s president, Jean Drulis, though they provide milk to healthy babies “when possible.” HMBANA recently announced that all of its milk banks have a critical shortage…Plus, the milk is available only with a doctor’s prescription, and only some health insurance plans cover the cost…
As you might imagine, the idea of women thumbing their noses at busybody government “recommendations” and relying on their own judgment in an underground economy based on their natural, biological abilities pleases me to no end.
Everyone else knows better than your mother. Don’t you know?
We haven’t been breeding and raising children for thousands of years. No.
Nanny States.
This is what leftism and patriarchy both lead.
Gorbachev,
As a leftist, I get tired of being the whipping-boy for everyone’s problems.
There are very few if any leftists in any federal, state, and local governments. They are deliberately barred from elected office due to corporate interference. What are usually called “leftists” by right-wing or libertarian blogs are actually *centrists*, that is, they are generally submissive to corporate influence, yet still favor certain social programs for convenience sake.
Genuine leftists are civil-libertarians, which means they fight for free expression by individuals–the ACLU being a good example.
Thank you. As the other liberal, I’m getting pretty sick and damn tired of it too.
“Leftists” is a convenient enough label. It applies to most of the people I need it to apply to.
Public sector unionists, who don’t get it; People who don’t get how devastating uncontrolled immigration is; those obsessed with, say, female disadvantage, but blind and deaf to male disadvantage (ie, young men, men in schools, etc.)- as if they’re really after “equality”, which is rarely true; collectivists who don’t believe in individual rights, when you test their philosophies; etc.
It’s the left that undermines civil rights most aggressively. It’s been this way since the 1960’s.
University campuses are strongholds of tyrranical One-Thought-Only statism. Go spend some time in one. It’s shocking.
And the right had nothing to do with it.
It wasn’t the left that came up with “free speech zones” in the 2000s. I thought the whole country was supposed to be a free speech zone.
We could go back and forth, and eventually one of us would say (and it may well be gospel truth when any of us do) “that guy isn’t on the right” or “that guy isn’t on the left.” Then we’d be in the territory of the True Scotsmen.
So maybe we should cut it out. You are for free speech. Susan is for free speech. I am for free speech. And we know that Maggie is for free speech. So let’s talk about prostitution instead.
This is exactly why I never use terms like “left”, “right”, “liberal” or “conservative” except to mock them (and even then always in pairs). The terms have been so distorted from their original meanings as to be semantically null. That’s why I prefer the term “collectivist” to describe ALL groups who want individuals to be controlled by a big government; ultimately, what difference does it make to me if those in power call themselves “Republicans”, “Socialists”, “Whigs”, “Christians”, “feminists”or even “Nazis”? If they’re trying to rob me, suppress my freedom of association, control what I can read and who and why I fuck or what I put into my body, they are the enemies of humanity no matter what label they self-apply or what excuse they give for their tyranny.
The most useful thing about the term “collectivist” may be that, AFAIK, nobody is self-identifying as such. So you don’t get somebody saying “as a collectivist I can tell you that you’re all wrong about us.”
Good point! 🙂
*Sigh*
At least the Christian busybodies have a printed holy book that you can read and argue with them over. The modern health-fascist busybodies always seem to me to be making it up as they go along.
We REALLY need to stop talking about ‘addiction’. Since the definition of ‘addiction’ got changed (which I feel but cannot prove was done to ‘gotcha’ the cigarette companies), EVERYTHING is a goddamned addiction (except minding other peoples’ business, THAT’s a virtue).
It gets to the point where I want to look up the headquarters of organizations like The Center For Science In The Public Interest (more like The Center For Pseudo-Scientific Bushwa In The Interest Of Making Us Feel Morally Superior), and take a tire iron to the heads of everybody inside. No jury of my peers would convict.
Wet Houses
I’ve never been through a 12-step program myself, but I know people who have. The first thing they will all tell you is that it won’t help somebody who doesn’t want to quit drinking. Even the people who did research with LSD for treating alcoholism (it was very effective and helped Bill W, one of the founders of AA) said that it wouldn’t help with people who don’t want to quit drinking. So there should be something for the people who don’t want to quit, and who aren’t going to quit.
Junk Food Junkies
Well duh. But it’s good see it stated.
Milk Sharing
This isn’t so bad. The FDA isn’t telling anybody that they aren’t allowed to share milk, or trying to fine or put anybody in jail over it. And it seems that the only reason they’re saying anything at all is because they were asked.
Yet.
Yes, yet. Hopefully not ever, but then I guess we’ll find out.
Great breastfeeding photo!
Great. The Titty Police are on the job.
I’m not too worried about this in Canada. In the province of Ontario, it is now legal for women to be topless wherever men are topless. Any chick who does this is insane, of course, but the spirit of the law is absolutely correct. My tits. My decision.
I can’t imagine Health Canada would have a lot of luck interfering with mamas who swap milk or donate extra. What a stupid idea. Yeah, let’s dump milk down the drain and give babies formula instead.
Government. Not just wrong. Fucking stupid.
My favorite part is that they’re trying to convince women that it’s “better” to pay $150 a day to a middleman for milk from a stranger than to get it for free from a woman you can meet, befriend and look in the eye. That’s like arguing that it’s “better” for men to hire pimped whores about whom they know nothing from a ludicrously-overpriced brothel than to make arrangements with a well-reviewed and reasonably-priced independent.
Heh – didn’t expect to see the debate over milk sharing on here! I’ve read a lot about it on the parenting blogs that are my main Internet fodder.
Firstly, one of the huge reasons why we have such a high rate of sexually transmitted diseases is that so many people make the mistake of thinking that being able to meet someone, befriend them, and look them in the eye somehow magically eliminates the possibility that that person could be a carrier of an undesirable microbe. IT DOESN’T. Let’s please, please, play our parts in laying that myth to rest forever instead of perpetuating it. The reason why it’s better to get milk via that middle(wo)man where possible is that they happen to have the laboratory facilities that, unlike befriending people and looking them in the eye, can actually detect harmful microbes that it might be undesirable to pass on to a baby.
Secondly, I think that advice as to what health risks might be posed by a particular behaviour is a totally different kettle of fish from trying to *legislate* against particular behaviours. Telling adults that they shouldn’t engage in prostitution is one thing, but telling them that unprotected sex carries health risks is another thing entirely. The milk sharing business is more analogous to the latter.
I had more to say on the complex pros and cons of milk sharing, but I’m already late getting the kiddo up from her nap – will have to get to it later.
We’re on EXACTLY the same wavelength, Dr. Sarah. Though I myself would never have nor advise having sex with a stranger without condoms, I don’t think the government should be allowed to FORCE porn actors to make the informed decision not to use them.
As someone who has recently had to radically change his diet, I can tell you that while I may crave sweets, and fats, and salt, and all manner of tasty yet unhealthy thigs, I am by no means an addict.
Not everything is an illness. It’s also not necessarily a weakness of will or a lack of character…but this obsession with addiction is pathetic.
Real addicts need the support and resources that are wasted on this type of psuedoscience.
Pseudoscience is right; it’s a well-known fact that literally EVERYTHING (even water) is toxic in sufficient quantities, but they still pretend it “proves” something when rats are fed excessive quantities of a certain substance and (predictably) suffer serious physical consequences. You might as well argue that the existence of carotenosis proves that carrots and other vegetables high in beta carotene are “junk food”. Incidentally, carotenosis was until recently a rare condition but the number of cases has tripled of late due to the vegetarianism fad.
Is the FDA going to outlaw wet nursing, too???
No, they are not.
That was rhetorical. 🙂
OK. I guess I’m just kind of edgy about… certain things right now.
While I tend to be against government regulation, I am not at all sure that I want to be giving my (hypothetical) baby milk from a stranger I met over the internet.
What’s the best way to ensure that I, as a consumer, could ensure that such milk is in fact safe?
(For the purpose of this reply I’m assuming you’re female; if I’m wrong please correct me).
Unless you live on a farm and consume only foods you grow yourself without chemicals, you can’t be sure ANY milk is “safe”. And unless you’re prepared to live out in the country, your baby is inhaling a host of toxins in urban air anyhow. Then there are the estrogen-like compounds resulting from the breakdown of common plastics, including the one used to make baby bottles.
If you don’t produce enough milk and aren’t wealthy enough to hire a wet nurse who will submit to whatever intrusive testing your paranoia demands, you have two choices: 1) feed him on factory-produced formula, or 2) meet another mother who has excess milk, get to know her and trust your intuition (the “milk bank” is a non-option for at least three reasons detailed in the story). I know which one I’d choose.
But frankly, the idea that people who gave absolutely zero thought to what went into their baby’s chromosomal structure should obsess about trace contaminants in his milk seems a bit like closing the barn door after the proverbial equine egress.
*applause*
Thank you Maggie!
I just love those fucking bitches who throw looks of death of at the tired mother having her cigarette at the edge of the park while her kids play, who DROVE TO THE FUCKING PARK IN AN SUV.
Fuck you, you stupid bitch.
Yeah, human milk is so goddamn dangerous. Let’s trust NESTLE instead.
Jesus. Seriously. When the government controls every aspect of life, from birth to death, what is left?
“When the government controls every aspect of life, from birth to death, what is left?”
At the rate we’re going we’ll find out soon enough. My educated guess? Somewhere between “very little” and “absolutely nothing” 🙁
I had a woman breastfeed me once…I must have been 25 or so…I still remember it…quite erotic. I think she liked it more than me, she wouldn’t let me stop. What I remember most of all was that it was sweet and delicious.
Funny talking about breasts and whatnot. Today there was a march on the leg here in Victoria for midwives. I wonder if its a coincidence this discussion of fertility and milk and here we are in the springtime!!!
Sucking cock (if you swallow) will make you happy and content. Breastfeeding at 25 is sweet and delicious.
Jeez. The shit I learn on the internet.
😀
The first time I tasted mother’s milk as an adult I was struck by how sweet it is compared to cow’s milk. 🙂
The milk bank thing is the ultimate in government dim-bulb thinking. There’s no more screening of bank milk than internet milk. But since it’s “organized” it *must* be better, right?
Right?!
Plus as an archeofeminist, I find the idea of a doctor having to approve my choice of how to feed my own baby to be highly insulting.
Now now. It’s not “your baby”. It’s a future taxpayer!
Which, I suspect, is also the reason opposition to abortion rights is so widespread among politicians…
I’m not sure what you mean by needing a doctor’s approval. Could you clarify? Thanks.
In other words, the FDA wants women who lack sufficient milk to either use formula or get a doctor to give them permission to get proper milk. 🙁
Thought that’s what you meant.
I was a NICU mum. It was ten weeks before we were able to go home. Let me see if I can shine some light on this.
Those banks only service neonatal units. Yes, in theory, they would offer to a baby who was not hospitalized. In practice, there isn’t enough to go around the fragile preemies, let alone give extra to a healthy infant.
The doctor’s prescription is a formality. You don’t have to sit there and patiently explain the benefits in hopes some squeamish intellectual will support something that doesn’t benefit a pharmaceutical company. NICU docs will actually be your primary cheerleader, and if you hadn’t considered breastfeeding previously then they’ll do their darndest to encourage you to choose it. Despite enormous medical advances in neonatal care, there currently is only one substance which has any effect on intestinal necrosis, a huge problem for preemies, and that’s breast milk.
Ergo, the doctor will write a prescription for breast milk so the insurance will pay the ridiculous prices. The doctor will also write a prescription for a breast pump – the expensive hospital-grade double electrics. He’ll give you a free soft-sided cooler, those freezable gel bags, containers and labels for the expressed milk. The doctor will ask anxious questions about your water intake and hand out nifty little sports bottles to help you increase your water intake. He’ll practically grill you on whether you’re experiencing any pain and trip over himself to prescribe Tylenol-3 and lanolin. A NICU doc has three lactation consultants on speed dial.
I’ve never seen such a pro-breastfeeding bunch of people as the NICU staff. The other mums and I used to mock the doctors. “Good morning, Baby gained ten grams and is up to 19 ccs per feeding, how are your boobs?”
Doctors hate losing patients, and breast milk is difficult to obtain even from the banks. They’ll do anything to make sure the baby gets it, and one of those things is to write prescriptions so you don’t have to pay for it yourself.
Thanks for the explanation, Emily! I was more thinking about it from the viewpoint of a mother whose baby wasn’t in NICU, but whom the FDA expects to use a milk bank anyhow.
The FDA can expect in one hand and piss in the other and see which fills up the fastest.
MikeS: I have to say that that has not been my experience at all. I’ve donated milk to a milk bank, and before they’d take any I had to send a blood sample for them to test for a host of stuff, including viruses I’d barely heard of and never would have thought of testing for myself. A mother requesting milk from a woman she met on the Internet could ask for this detailed a screening – if she knew all the things to ask for, if the woman knew where and how to arrange testing, and if she was honest about what she’d been tested for. While these certainly aren’t insurmountable hurdles, they do all contribute to there being more potential risk of infection of a baby via milk obtained outside a milk bank.
Good luck, Dr. Sarah. A government agency had recommended (not mandated, recommended, but let’s not split hairs) milk banks, therefore they must be bad. And of course, it is those damnable leftists behind all this heavy-handed government… answering questions that were asked of them.
Actually, all of this peer-to-peer not-for-profit sharing of all-natural mother’s milk sounds like something straight out of some hippie commune, the only difference being the Internet. I’m surprised that there aren’t a bunch of right-wingers trying to shut it down because, since nobody’s making tons of money off of it, it’s obviously some lefty liberal commie plot. But that’s just my preconceptions talking.
Oh wait, there is somebody trying to tell the mothers that they shouldn’t be doing that! THE FDA IS FULL OF RIGHT-WINGERS!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Which is a perfect illustration of why the labels “left wing” and “right wing” are nonsense. The supposed “philosophy” behind busybody laws doesn’t matter; does it matter if the government bans prostitution because “it demeans women” or because “it’s immoral”? Of course not; interference in individual action is just that, regardless of its supposed rationale.
The food nuts wont be happy until everyone is forced into eating nothing but rice cakes and soy.
Food-nuttery is really just another flavor of puritanism, as I mention in my column of March 6th.
Soylent green
{spoiler alert}
S
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S
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Soylent Green is made of people!
{end of spoiler alert}
However…
{no spoiler alert needed}
In the book the movie was based on, Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison, soylent foods are not made of people. The whole cannibal thing was added to the movie for shock value.
{see? no spoiler alert needed}
One of these days (actually quite soon) I’m going to add a review of that movie. Those who remember it probably remember why.
I’m guessing it was the furniture and not Sols choice of suicide music
Full marks, Lujlp. Look for it a week from today. 😉
I watched the movie last nite.
Prostitution seems to be legalized in this run-down future, but whores work for room-and-board. Both housing and food is scarce in this world, so that’s quite understandable, but they can be thrown out of the house at any time. Very precarious existence for them. Definitely not happy hookers.
(I imagine, though, that there are women who work for just for soylent itself, and not housing, or host men in tiny one-room brothels, but this isn’t shown in the text.)
I’ll be looking forward to your post and responding to it.
I don’t think anybody was happy in that world; the rich were just less miserable than everyone else. 🙁
I’m still chuckling over “Gene-Jack Wang.”
Anyway, I was taught in treatment at the Mayo that docs are now thinking of “addiction” as the triggering of the pleasure centers of the brain, which is both a physiological and psychological thing, and different from strict physiological “dependence.” Thus, alcohol “flipped that pleasure switch” and when I quit I had to learn to live without it, while my body also had to deal with the physiological withdrawal. Recently, I quit Coke (red bottle, not white powder). I’m through the physiological caffeine withdrawal – no more headaches, etc. – but oh, boy, do I miss the 1200 calories of empty sugar carbs, and even just the idea of drinking a Coke. Makes my mouth water.
That’s my layperson’s understanding; don’t know if that helps in any way. I just got started reading your blog and I think it’s going to take me awhile to get through your backlist. I’m enjoying it immensely, though. 🙂
The problem with that “definition” is that everything from human touch to eating to sex to reading to hearing music can trigger the pleasure centers and form a psychological dependency. As a definition of pathology, it’s useless; as an excuse to pathologize anything the “authorities” want to control, it’s brilliant…which is exactly why so many of them now use it.
I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog, but if you get “addicted” remember you only get one “fix” a day! 😉
I do definitely “binge” on new bands or artists I like, musically; and I go on junk food “runs.” The model may be accurate, but like any other model, it can be misused. I suppose if there were ever a reason to control music, for example – oh, wait. 🙂
I’ve always thought that calling alcoholism (or any addiction, really) a “disease” was not entirely accurate, but I also think that I’ve found some effective ways of dealing with it. Those ways are effective because I really wanted to quit, and after years of observing drunks get on and off the wagon, I think that’s the key.
Couldn’t agree with you more about the control mechanism. But – until I get through the backlist, I can “shoot up” as often as I want, right? 😉