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COVID-19, Doctors, Featured, Health Policy, Law, Politics, What's New

America Out Loud PULSE: Are Medical Boards Helping or Hurting Patients?

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From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Kelly Sutton, MD – https://www.americaoutloud.news/are-medical-boards-helping-or-hurting-patients/

The patient-physician relationship is supposed to be sacred, as Hippocrates explained thousands of years ago. Medicine has entered a brave new world of third parties (insurers) telling us what to do. Various laws, particularly in California, are squelching choice for patients and free speech for physicians even with threats of loss of their licenses. Consequently, patients are losing their choice in medical treatment.

In June 2015, California passed a law, SB277 that removed the personal and religious belief exemption from mandated vaccines. Without the 15 to16 vaccines,, a child cannot not attend public schools or day care facilities. In September 2019, California went a step farther to squelch medical vaccine exemptions with SB 276. This applied to private as well as public schools.

Prior to the enactment of SB 276, state law permitted physicians to issue medical exemptions based on their independent medical judgment. Now a State Public Health Officer is the final arbiter. The state will review all medical exemptions at schools where fewer than 95 percent of students are vaccinated, from doctors who submit five or more exemptions in one year and from schools that haven’t shared vaccination rates. The state will cancel waivers written by doctors who are under investigation by the medical board.

The State has the power to revoke the exemption if it decides the exemption is “inappropriate.” Talk about inserting a third party smack dab in the middle between physicians and their patients. If the state determines a physician is “contributing to a public health risk,” it will report the physician to California’s medical board.

The laws are designed to crack down on physicians “practicing outside the accepted standard of care.” But they also target the parents who believe it is their right to make medical decisions for their children. The term “anti-vaxxer” is a pejorative description of concerned parents and physicians who question the “science.” I think Covid-19 taught us more than we want to know about the perversion of science.

Mandates rely on coercion rather than informed consent. Clearly, a parent is left in an untenable position: Vaccines or pull their child out of school. Most parents – if both are working – do not have the ability to homeschool their children. Moreover, this could only be the beginning of the erosion of individual patient rights. We have a major controversy over the appropriate treatment of minors who have decided they want to be the opposite sex. In some states schools have the right to withhold gender issues from the child’s parents. Parents have lost custody of their child over treatment choices that could have life-altering consequences. In some states, schools do not have to inform parents about an abortion of a child over 12 years old.

The silver lining? Medical tyranny has gone so far that more and more patients and physicians are becoming activists.

Bio

Kelly Sutton M.D. completed residency in Internal Medicine and some Pediatrics, and practiced family medicine for almost fifty years, using knowledge from conventional and integrative medicine. She practiced until her medical license was revoked for writing eight vaccine medical exemptions by the state of California in 2022, and by Massachusetts and New York in 2023 based only on reciprocal discipline. There were no patient complaints in any state, and no patient injury. Dr. Sutton is challenging this revocation in court.

See  www.reclaimingmed.org/drsutton for this story, its relation to other doctors’ experience with regulators, and their legal cases.

COVID-19, Culture & Society, Current Events, Featured, Health Policy, Law, Politics, What's New

America Out Loud PULSE: Doctors and Patients or Bureaucrats: Who’s in Charge of Our Medical Care? with Andy Schlafly, JD

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From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Andy Schlafly, JD – https://www.americaoutloud.news/doctors-and-patients-or-bureaucrats-whos-in-charge-of-our-medical-care-2/

Political persecution through the legal system has become the new American justice. But it can work both ways – if we have the courage.

President Calvin Coolidge, a strong proponent of limited government, believed that “in order for the Constitution and self-government to survive, the people had to be vigilant in its preservation.” Covid-19 started a government and media censorship juggernaut. It is imperative that we all join to stop it in its tracks. The case currently being argued in front of the Supreme Court, Murthy v Missouri arose from – you guessed it – Covid. Missouri and other states assert that the government’s attempts to suppress so-called Covid misinformation went beyond mere public health information to suppression of speech via social media. At oral arguments, Justice Jackson seemed to feel that suppressing speech is the government’s job. To quote: “My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways.”  The First Amendment to the Constitution says the government cannot abridge freedom of speech. As Justice Brandeis wrote in the 1927 free speech case, Whitney v California, free speech is at the heart of a democratic society and the answer to alleged falsehoods is “more speech, not enforced silence.”

Medical freedom for doctors and patients is becoming a distant memory. Physicians are afraid to go into pain management for fear of being labelled a pill pusher. Patients with chronic pain are resorting to getting heroin on the streets rather than be put in a government database. Physicians are bullied by medical boards with the specter of losing their licenses for having valid alternative views regarding medical treatment plans.

Lawyers—who we all know can strike fear into our hearts—can be a big part of preserving our liberty. The legal fights to reign in government overreach are about more than Covid. Lawyers are here to help protect the rights of the individual citizens. They are our last defense against government oppression and corporate corruption. Lawsuits can amplify a few lone voices and let those in power get the message: Our bodies and minds belong to us, not to the government.

I love quotes. Let me give you a few of my favorites on this topic:

“Heresy is another word for freedom of thought.” Graham Greene

“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”  Albert Einstein

“All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.”  Adlai Stevenson

“The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.”  Carl Sagan

“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.”  Thomas Jefferson

Attorney Andy Schlafly a wonderful friend of the show and general counsel to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons is here today to discuss freedom of speech and a recent case headed to the Supreme Court.

Link to amicus brief PDF: https://aapsonline.org/judicial/aaps-amicus-murthy-v-missouri-2-7-2024.pdf

Bio

Andy Schlafly is general counsel to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. He received a B.S.E. in electrical engineering and certificate in engineering physics from Princeton University. After graduating from Princeton, Mr. Schlafly briefly worked as a device physicist for Intel, then became a microelectronics engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He then attended Harvard Law School along with Barack Obama. For two years Mr. Schlafly was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, Mr. Schlafly served as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall Law School and worked for a large law firm before beginning private practice. Mr. Schlafly created the wiki-based Conservapedia in November 2006 to counter the apparent liberal bias in Wikipedia.

Culture & Society, Current Events, Featured, Law, Medical Ethics, Politics, What's New

America Out Loud PULSE: DEI Meets Antisemitism Meets a Lawsuit

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From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Tammy Weitzman – https://www.americaoutloud.news/dei-and-antisemitism-meet-a-lawsuit-with-tammy-weitzman/

What strange times we live in now. We have gone from the era of Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man, brilliantly exploring what it means to be socially or racially invisible to almost every ad on television including a person of color. Segregated army barracks, motels, restaurants, clubs, entertainment venues were socially and politically acceptable even after integration became the law of the land. And as time passed, people realized that they were missing out on a whole side of life by closing the door on meeting new and interesting people. We were organically moving to a blended society where people were looking at one another just as people, judging them by their job or hobbies but not by their race. Now we have segregated college dorms, dining halls, and so-called affinity groups. What happened?

After years and years of progress we have a sick regression into separatism. Instead of “if you are white, you’re all right, if you’re black, stay back,” all white people are inherently evil deep down inside and should flagellate themselves for the sin of being born white; all black people should be forgiven for any anti-social behavior because they can’t help themselves. How racist is that supposedly progressive mindset?

This new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) crusade is yet another elitist movement that does nothing to help the people they movement portends to help. The DEI movement is stripping mainly blacks, but ultimately all people of their dignity. When we lose our individuality, we lose our true selves, our souls. Human nature being what it is, people do not want to be labelled as victims. But propaganda and indoctrination being what it is, anyone can be demoralized into—as the Soviets would say—ideological subversion.

Yes, racism exists. Racists exist. But the DEI cure is worse than the disease. (One of my dream conversations is asking a professed racist in kidney failure on dialysis if he would accept a kidney transplant from a black person.)

Students in as young as kindergarten are being taught to judge others by their race. In reality, most children do not focus on their differences but wonder whether their classmate likes the newest video game. How could someone think that it is acceptable to poison young minds? The same young minds were told in Brown v the Board of Education in 1954 that separate is inherently unequal. Instead of learning the necessary skills to race to the top of the ladder of success, children have the tools to win the victim triathlon. The prize: dependency on government resources. What a waste of government money. This money would be better spent on junior science fair projects or field trips to the museum of science and technology.

Schools at all levels now have institutionally supported affinity groups that are the Newspeak word for segregated groups. The DEI adherents are echoing the rhetoric of the opponents to integrated schools: people of different races learn better in separate environments where they can be their true selves. Some schools have separate times for black and LGBT students to use the swimming pool. How is this diversity and inclusion? It seems like grouping together children with the same interests, like math, science, sewing, music, or sports would be a more enriching program.

It doesn’t stop with the unsuspecting children. Corporations have devoted time and money into DEI trainings. Let’s have a re-education session and tell people they are a racist and tell them how to be an anti-racist. How? Don’t be a racist.

And of course, I wonder about the effect of DEI on medicine. There is no question that there are racial disparities in many aspects of life in the United States, including medical care. It seems that instead of doing the hard work of getting down to the root of the problems, academia has taken the easy way out by declaring that racism is the cause of health care disparities. The solutions start with racism and end with indoctrination into reverse racism.

The DEI focus on the oppressed and oppressors has fostered antisemitism as well. After all, despite the history of Jewish slavery, oppression, and genocide, they are deemed part of the oppressor class. This is a logical outgrowth of the DEI mindset that focuses on differences rather than our shared humanity.

The deafening drumbeat of race, racism, and more race is leaving its mark. The workplace has turned into a minefield. Some wokenistas cannot see that denigrating others does nothing to advance the group they purport to uplift. When reason fails, we have to turn to the law. Sometimes lawsuits are the only way we can get people to wake up.

My guest is a social worker who despite the presumed empathy and compassion of her colleagues was caught in a workplace web of wokeness gone amok and antisemitism.

Bios

Tammy Weitzman is a child of an Israeli mother and Canadian father. After her father’s death from cancer, the family lived in Israel for 3 years before returning to Toronto, Canada. She completed graduate work in social work at Yeshiva University in New York City. She spent 23 years in oncology mental health at large academic hospitals and has presented her work with oncology patients nationally and internationally.

Peter Barwick is the general counsel for the Coalition for Liberty, https://www.coalitionforliberty.com. Coalition For Liberty is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose central mission is to promote the right of all Americans to exercise their freedom of speech, expression and thought; and support the establishment of new classical model apolitical schools, while also supporting efforts to have existing schools move back to this tried-and-true model, which has been proven to obtain superior results for children.

Culture & Society, Featured, Health Policy, Law, Medical Ethics, Medicine, Politics, What's New

America Out Loud PULSE: Defining Death with Dr. Heidi Klessig

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From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Dr. Heidi Klessig – https://www.americaoutloud.news/defining-death-with-heidi-klessig-md/

Historically, people advocated for at least 24 hours between the diagnosis of death and burial in case a mistake was made in the diagnosis. For years physicians searched for a sure sign of death. Some thought putrefaction of tissues was the only sure sign. Ultimately it seemed reasonable to define death as when all spontaneous vital functions ceased permanently. Then came organ transplantation and the whole concept of the moment of death has changed— irreversibly, like death itself.

The advances in medical science have made adherence to medical ethics more essential than ever. Cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR), mechanical ventilation and artificial nutrition were only the beginning. We now are experimenting with pig to human transplants and freshly obtained aborted fetal tissue is being used to create “humanized mice”. We can’t get carried away with the technology and forget the humanity. First and foremost, a patient has the right to self-determination and the physician’s duty is to respect the patient’s decisions and to do no harm to the patient. Incidents where patients were labelled DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) without their (or their family’s) consent are unacceptable.

Unfortunately, along with the innovations that can prolong life and sometimes cure, we have drifted into a utilitarian mindset when considering patient treatment alternatives. Often times, the suggested treatment—or non-treatment—pathway is at odds with the concept of the innate dignity of being a living human being. All involved persons must remember that we are far more than clumps of cells or a collection of body parts for future use.

Also disturbing is the popularity of euthanasia and physician assisted suicide, euphemistically called “medical aid in dying” (MAID). In Canada, assisted suicide has been in effect since 2016. In 2022 medically assisted deaths constituted 4.1 per cent of all deaths in Canada. This was a 30 percent increase from 2021. The patient who partakes need not be terminally ill. According to a BBC news report, social problems like poverty, lack of housing, or extreme loneliness may contribute to the patient’s willingness to request MAID, and this “prompted fears it could be used as a solution for societal challenges.” As of March 17, 2024. Now persons suffering solely from a mental illness will be eligible for MAID.

As there is more and more discussion of scarce medical resources, we have to be vigilant that as physicians we maintain our commitment to respect human life. Marilyn believes death is a separation of body and spirit, but Dr. Singleton must deal with ethics, legal definitions and guidelines.

Today my guest will discuss the past, present, and future of the concept of “brain death.”

Dr. Klessig’s website: https://www.respectforhumanlife.com

Dr. Klessig’s latest book: https://www.respectforhumanlife.com/books

Bio

Dr. Heidi Klessig attended medical school at University of Wisconsin, where she also completed her residency in anesthesiology. She received the American Board of Anesthesiology’s certificate of added qualification in pain management. She was a founding partner of the Pain Clinic of Northwestern Wisconsin and was an instructor for the International Spinal Injection Society. She recently authored The Brain Death Fallacy. Dr. Klessig and Christopher W. Bogosh, RN-BC also maintain a website called Respect for Human Life that deals with issues surrounding organ transplantation

Culture & Society, Current Events, Law, Politics, What's New

America Out Loud PULSE: The Critical Race Theory Scam with Christopher Arend, JD

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From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Christopher Arend, JD – https://www.americaoutloud.news/the-critical-race-theory-scam/

We’re talking about indoctrination tonight.

I’m giving up my opening statement to some folks who’ve said it better than I can.

“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”

Josef Stalin

“He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.”

Adolf Hitler

“It isn’t a coincidence that governments everywhere want to educate children. Government education, in turn, is supposed to be evidence of the state’s goodness and its concern for our well-being. The real explanation is less flattering. If the government’s propaganda can take root as children grow up, those kids will be no threat to the state apparatus. They’ll fasten the chains to their own ankles.” – Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr (founder and chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute)

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult.

To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

“There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well.”

Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education (1911).

“Oh, I say it again, you been misled. You been had. Bamboozled. Led astray. You been took.”

Malcolm X

Bio

Christopher Arend is a California attorney who has taken up the fight against racist indoctrination in our schools. He was educated in California, including in the heart of the free speech movement at U.C. Berkeley undergraduate with a degree in Political Science and U.C. Berkeley Law School. While in the U.S. Army, Mr. Arend worked as a German translator. He spent most of his legal career practicing law in Germany before returning to California. He spent four years on the Paso Robles School Board working to formulate an even-handed ethnic studies program. He recently authored The Critical Race Theory Scam – Dissecting a Racist Ideology.

Culture & Society, Current Events, Featured, Law, Politics, What's New

America Out Loud PULSE: How Illegal Immigration Impacts You with Andy Schlafly, JD

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From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast How Illegal Immigration Impacts You with Andy Schlafly, JD – https://www.americaoutloud.news/andy-schlafly-jd-illegal-immigration-and-how-it-impacts-you/

Over the last 12 months, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol – as they call it – encountered some 3 million people illegally crossing the southern border. The United States is a large and generous country but the immigration issue has many ramifications.

The psychological and actual damage to black and brown legal resident is incalculable. American citizens are living on the streets while illegal immigrants are being housed.

Since President Biden took office, 425,000 unaccompanied alien children crossed the border. We are paying millions to babysit them in our schools. Teachers are at their wits’ end as they try to teach an onslaught of students who can’t speak a word of English. Don’t despair, Gavin Newsom signed a bill (Assembly Bill 714) to each teachers how to teach illegal aliens. What about our already failing American students. Black students are performing horribly. I guess blacks have outlived their usefulness – their vote is in the bag.  Illegal aliens are the new oppressed person of interest.

And what about the criminals? New criminals crossing and previously incarcerated illegal aliens (407,983 convicted criminal aliens) are not always deported. Is this what we need with crime rising throughout the country?

My guest today is Andy Schlafly. He wrote an article in Townhall highlighting some effects on illegal immigration on employment, among other things. We’ll talk about this, medical censorship, and anything else that crosses our minds.

Bio

Andy Schlafly is general counsel to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. He received a B.S.E. in electrical engineering and certificate in engineering physics from Princeton University. After graduating from Princeton, Mr. Schlafly briefly worked as a device physicist for Intel, then became a microelectronics engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He then attended Harvard Law School along with Barack Obama. For two years Mr. Schlafly was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, Schlafly served as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall Law School and worked for a large law firm before beginning private practice. Mr. Schlafly created the wiki-based Conservapedia in November 2006 to counter the apparent liberal bias in Wikipedia.

Culture & Society, Featured, Law, Medical Ethics, What's New

America Out Loud PULSE: Forensic Psychiatry – Guilty or Insane?

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From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Dr. Renée S. Kohanski – https://www.americaoutloud.news/renee-s-kohanski-md-forensic-psychiatry/

Today we are going to seriously talk about psychiatric issues in crime. First, let me do some venting.

I think it’s a crime that people are punished for so-called microaggressions while bad guys committing macroaggressions, like burglarizing stores and assaulting people, face no consequences. In 2014, the foolish California electorate passed Proposition 47 that was supposed to reduce prison overcrowding by making it so a person can steal up to $950 and only be charged with a misdemeanor. There is no jail time and no requirement for bail. The criminals are free to commit more crimes. The theft flash mobs are spreading across the country in high-end neighborhoods. Moral codes have flown out the window—not only for the perpetrators but for some of these Soros-funded district attorneys.

I remember during the 1992 presidential election when Bill Clinton returned to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector. Mr. Rector indeed murdered someone but was so mentally disabled at the time of the execution due to a suicide attempt by a gunshot wound to the head. This execution was particularly memorable: when the guards asked him whether he was finished with his meal, he said he would save the pecan pie “for later”. Ten years later, the Supreme Court ruled that putting mentally retarded people to death was “cruel and unusual”, and therefore unconstitutional.

Some criminologists question whether all murderers are mentally ill. After all, taking a human life is a grossly abnormal thing to do. (I’m not talking about protecting oneself or others or sadly, war). Many of us might have imagined killing someone in anger but would never actually do it. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) estimated that over 50 percent of inmates suffer from a significant mental condition. And that number is 80 percent for death row inmates. Some psychologists say it is not the mental illness, but the attendant substance abuse, living in high crime neighborhoods, low income, and similar social factors.

I’m not a fan of the death penalty. Physicians are not supposed to kill people. Moreover, too many people have been exonerated after many years of incarceration. If the wrong man was executed, death is irreversible. And the death penalty costs too much money. Up to 10 times more money (our tax dollars) is spent on death penalty cases than to house someone for life without parole. According to BJS, as of 2019 the average stay on death row is 19 years. In California, more death row inmates have died from natural causes or suicide than from executions since 1978.

If we want maximum accountability, there’s always Pelican Bay and the like. At Pelican Bay, half the inmates are in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) and are confined to their assigned cells for up to 22 hours a day. Correctional officers deliver food through a slot in the cell door. That sounds pretty grim to me.

My guest and I will discuss crime, punishment, and mental health.

Bio

Dr. Renée S. Kohanski, MD is a board-certified psychiatrist with fellowship training in forensic psychiatry. She completed her residency at Georgetown University where she served as Chief Resident and her fellowship at the William S. Hall Psychiatric Institute at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Kohanski has enjoyed a broad-based practice in academic, community, and forensic psychiatry. She has been a board examiner for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia and the University of Connecticut schools of medicine. She has also served on the Editorial Advisory Board of MDEdge Psychiatry. Dr. Kohanski currently serves on the Board of Directors for the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons.

Culture & Society, Current Events, Featured, Health Policy, Law, Politics, What's New

America Out Loud PULSE: Doctors and Patients or Bureaucrats: Who’s in Charge of Our Medical Care?

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From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Andy Schlafly, Esq. –https://www.americaoutloud.news/doctors-and-patients-or-bureaucrats-whos-in-charge-of-our-medical-care/

We live in strange times. Police, physicians, and patients are treated like criminals while thieves are given the green light to steal at will. Some activists have even decided that looting is reparations. According to Newsweek magazine, a Chicago Black Lives Matter organizer stated, “I don’t care if somebody decides to loot a Gucci or a Macy’s or a Nike because that makes sure that that person eats. That makes sure that that person has clothes. . . That’s reparations. That is reparations. Anything they want to take, take it because these businesses have insurance. They’re going to get their money back. My people aren’t getting anything.”

Employees are forbidden from engaging thieves. The higher-ups do not want the liability—the possibility of injury or worse. But the message this sends to the thieves-in-waiting is “Come on in for your five-finger discount.” Of course, we all pay for lawlessness with higher prices and, more importantly, the loss of a sense of safety and civility.

Police risk their lives daily. Rather than merely on an Instagram post, we should be seeing on the network nightly news the numerous heroic acts of police, such as pulling people from cars engulfed in flames. (Georgia, Virginia, Ohio to name a few). Or showing the police connecting with the community, including having fun with children of color. Not a chance. The media prefer to relentlessly focus on a few incidents, mainly by bad apples. When all the facts come out—most times in the police’s favor—the story loses its luster.

Meanwhile, the thought police are in full force. The state of Michigan passed a bill (HB 4474) that could make using the wrong pronouns in a manner that makes a person feel threatened or frightened a felony “punishable by imprisonment for not more than 5 years, or by a fine of not more than $10,000.”  How is a person to gauge how a person will feel?

Maybe there is hope: In the Colorado web designer case, 303 Creative LLC et al. v. Elenis et al., the Supreme Court recently reaffirmed that the government cannot compel people to say things they do not believe in—even if they are “misguided or hurtful.”

Medical freedom for doctors and patients is becoming a distant memory. Physicians are afraid to go into pain management for fear of being labelled a pill pusher. They are bullied by medical boards with the specter of losing their licenses. Patients with chronic pain are resorting to getting heroin on the streets rather than be put in a government database.

Let’s make it our mission to tell anyone in power who will listen: Our bodies and minds belong to us, not to the government.

Attorney Andy Schlafly a wonderful friend of the show is here today to discuss some the recent cases challenging governmental authority over the practice of medicine and beyond.

Bio

Andy Schlafly is general counsel to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. He received a B.S.E. in electrical engineering and certificate in engineering physics from Princeton University. After graduating from Princeton, Mr. Schlafly briefly worked as a device physicist for Intel, then became a microelectronics engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He then attended Harvard Law School along with Barack Obama. For two years Mr. Schlafly was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, Schlafly served as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall Law School and worked for a large law firm before beginning private practice. Mr. Schlafly created the wiki-based Conservapedia in November 2006 to counter the apparent liberal bias in Wikipedia.

Culture & Society, Current Events, Health Policy, Law, Politics, What's New

America Out Loud PULSE: The War on Drugs Is a War on All Americans

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From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Colleen Cowles, Esq. – https://www.americaoutloud.news/the-war-on-drugs-is-a-war-against-all-americans/

Soporifics and mind-altering drugs tap into man’s desire to avoid or lessen suffering whether physical or emotional. Throughout the world, alcohol, opium, mushrooms, and coca leaves have been used for at least 9,000 years. (After all, we are born with opioid receptors.) During our American Civil War, opiates were a boon to injured soldiers. Soon morphine became an ingredient in most health tonics. Cocaine was also widely used for its ability to generate feelings of well-being. Cocaine was even used to cure morphine addiction. But over the late 19th and 20th centuries, drugs were seen as a scourge on society.

The modern day War on Drugs started with the Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1971. Despite billions and billions of dollars thrown at the War, we are losing.  Half of Americans aged 12 and older have used an illicit drug at least once. In 2020, 21.4 percent of Americans aged 12 and over (59,277 million) have used illegal drugs or misused prescription drugs within the last year. And 13.5 percent of Americans aged 12 and over used drugs in the last month, a 3.8 percent increase from the previous year.

According to a 2017 U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) report, approximately 20.2 million adults aged 18 or older had a past year substance use disorder (SUD). Of these adults, 16.3 million had an alcohol use disorder and 6.2 million had an illicit drug use disorder. This is not merely a Skid Row problem. Substance use disorder hits all socioeconomic classes.

Patients and physicians alike have been demonized and turned into criminals over the use of certain medications. Over thirty years ago, physicians were told that pain is the 5th vital sign and to treat pain with any medication available. Get that pain down to zero. They complied. Relying on pharmaceutical companies’ reassurance that’s their new opioids were non-addicting, physicians liberally prescribed them. Then we were told patients were becoming addicted and to stop with the prescriptions. Pain be damned. What happened? Opioid prescriptions have been nearly cut in half in 10 years due to the new guidelines and rules, but overdoses and illegal opioids have nearly doubled. The patients went to the streets and now are getting drugs tainted with fentanyl and accidentally overdosing.

The War to keep our countrymen free of illicit drugs was another government plan that sounded like a good idea at the time. Now, the tactics of the War on Drugs fits with Mike Tyson’s famous saying: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

My guest will discuss the endless drug war, its consequences and solutions to reduce harm.

P.S. Companies that made, sold, or distributed opioid painkillers are paying out $54 billion in settlements over the next 20 years. Cities, counties, and states have received $3 billion so far.

To find how much settlement funds your locality has received:

https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/lookup-how-much-opioid-settlement-cash-by-locality/

Details on how states use settlement money: https://www.opioidsettlementtracker.com/publicreporting

Bio

Colleen Cowles is an attorney, author, speaker, teacher, advocate, and a mother who personally experienced addiction and chronic pain in her family. Her 15 years of research, interviews with experts, work with clients and personal experience give Ms. Cowles practical insights into this urgently important minimizing the pain that families experience, improving outcomes for those suffering from substance use disorder and/or chronic pain, and advocating for reform of the criminal justice system and overall drug policy. She offers proven solutions in her new book, War on Us – How the War on Drugs & Myths About Addiction Have Created a War on All of Us, and in her online course, A Parent’s Guide to Addiction: Moving Past Punishment.

Culture & Society, Health Policy, Law, Medical Ethics, Medicine, Politics, What's New

America Out Loud PULSE: The Myth of Medical Privacy

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From my podcast with Twila Brase, RN, PHN – https://www.americaoutloud.com/the-myth-of-medical-privacy-with-twila-brase-rn/

Back in 2018, Amazon made a software application that can mine a patient’s medical data and convert it to a searchable database. Amazon could customize the database for pharmaceutical companies, insurers, hospitals, researchers, and clinicians. Amazon claims the application would comply with HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. By the way, isn’t it interesting that the word “privacy” is not in the title of the law that everybody thinks is a law that protects privacy?

Worse, some electronic health records had an embedded app (developed by Xealth, Inc.) that prompted doctors to recommend health products to their patients that—surprise!—were sold on Amazon.

Amazon is being hailed as a “disruptor” in medical care with its online clinics. For a flat fee, you can get in touch with a clinician of some sort and describe your symptoms or needs. As one customer testimonial reads, “Amazon Clinic was incredibly easy and convenient to get my thyroid medical refilled. No hidden fees, no in person visit. Also for someone without health insurance the cost was the absolute best part.” But there is a giant “but.” Amazon’s health clinic requires patients to give Amazon the authority to redisclose their health information in the future.

Cost effective, yes; but Amazon clinic’s terms of use raise the question: How much is your medical privacy worth? I remember the attempt to discredit Daniel-Ellsberg who exposed damaging information regarding the Viet Nam War with the release of the “Pentagon Papers”. Operatives dispatched by the President broke into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office looking for juicy tidbits. Imagine how easy that would be now. Hacking into electronic databases has become child’s play.

We’ll talk about this and so much more with my guest, a nationally recognized expert in the field of medical privacy.

Twila Brase, RN, PHN is President and Co-founder of Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF), a national patient-centered, privacy-focused, free-market policy organization established 25 years ago in Minnesota to support health care choices, individualized patient care, and medical and genetic privacy. Her efforts led to a national law requiring parental consent for research using newborn DNA.  Ms. Brase is author of the eight-time award-winning book Big Brother in the Exam Room: The Dangerous Truth About Electronic Health Records.

Ms. Brase’s “Health Freedom Minute” is heard weekdays by more than 5 million listeners across the United States. She provides testimony at state legislatures, meets with members of Congress and health care policymakers, and has been featured in major news outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

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