Category: DDP Newsletter

Doctors for Disaster Preparedness Newsletter | Vol. XXXVI, No. 5

No, Doctors for Disaster Preparedness does not recommend do-it-yourself medicine.

You should have a physician who knows you and is available to advise you—confidentially. Fewer and fewer people are so fortunate. Most are enrolled in a “health plan” and have an assigned “healthcare provider.” Even if the provider has an M.D., evaluation and management may be determined by the drop-down menus in the electronic health record. The EHR will follow you everywhere, tracking your history and compliance—some even have electronic “sticky notes” to flag potentially disruptive patients who have a politically incorrect attitude.

Corporate medicine has been adamantly opposed to early home treatment of COVID-19, and employed physicians deviate from that policy at their peril. Hospitals, clinics, and most of “organized medicine,” including the AMA and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), will cite “the science” as determined by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Continue reading “D.I.Y. COVID MEDICINE”

Doctors for Disaster Preparedness Newsletter | Vol. XXXVI, No. 4

Between the date on the masthead and the time of this writing (January 2021), events have moved at a breathtaking speed. With a foot-high pile of selected articles on COVID-19 waiting to be read, I’d like to pause for historical perspective.

DDP was founded in the early 1980s, when medical journals were full of articles on the “bomb run,” the effects of a nuclear attack on one or more American cities: death and destruction, the few remaining medical facilities overwhelmed, environmental contamination, panic, and despair (hope to be at Ground Zero, kiss yourself good-by, etc.).

At that time, during the Cold War, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) still had an Office of Civil Defense and remnants of a civilian nuclear defense program. DDP and The American Civil Defense Association (TACDA) promoted these programs, and FEMA officials spoke at our meetings. There were home shelter displays.

Continue reading “Expedient Medicine”

DDP Newsletter – Vol. XXXVI, No. 2

The “silver bullet” of antibiotics seemed to herald the conquest of infectious diseases, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shifted its focus to noninfectious “epidemics” such as cancer and heart diseases. But with the rise of multiply resistant bacteria as well as the ever-present threat of viral diseases, we might soon be living in the post-antibiotic era. We need to review methods from the pre-antibiotic era, which rapidly lost favor after the discovery of penicillin.

In 1892, William Osler wrote that lobar pneumonia “is a self-limited disease and runs its course uninfluenced in any way by medicine. It can be neither aborted, nor cut short by any known means at our disposal.” By 1913, leaders at the Rockefeller Institute initiated equine serum therapy for the treatment of pneumonia. Two decades later, mortality from lobar pneumonia was 25%–40% in patients not receiving serum, but 10%–20% in those who received this therapy. While the treatment was a major advance, it was expensive, time-consuming, needed to be matched to the serotype of the bacteria, and limited by allergic reactions to horse or other serum. Serum therapy was soon eliminated after the introduction of sulfonamides in 1939.

X-irradiation began to emerge as an alternative to the therapeutic monopoly of serum treatments in the 1930s. Edward Calabrese and Gaurav Dhawan (Yale J Biol Med 2013;86:555-570, tinyurl.com/s7ua856) trace its history, beginning with the first report in 1905. Radiotherapy (RT) was broadly accepted early in the 20^th century, with notable successes in the treatment of many inflammatory and infectious diseases such as gas gangrene, carbuncles, sinusitis, arthritis, and inner ear infections.

Continue reading “Radiation Treatment for COVID”

DDP News – Vol. XXXVI, No. 1

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, face masks for the public have been advocated or required in various places in the world, but the demands to force everybody, even children, to comply in the U.S. have become frenzied as this is being written in early July.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) floated the thought that the epidemic might be over, as all-cause mortality had peaked and returned to normal. But then surges of “cases” were reported in Florida and the border states of California, Arizona, and Texas—along with a surge in testing. A “case” is a person with a positive test, even if apparently well. Governors were criticized for re-opening too soon, and began forcing still-surviving businesses such as gyms to close. And various jurisdictions began to impose mask requirements.

Continue reading “Masking”

DDP Newsletter – May, 2020, Vol. XXXVI, No. 3

Many people’s lives are dominated these days by concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. Many refuse to go anywhere if not absolutely necessary. Some “quarantine” or disinfect their groceries, and shower and wash their clothing after doing an errand. Are the masks, “social distancing,” and obsessive-compulsive behaviors necessary—or protective?   Evidence for benefit from the drastic measures is nonexistent to thin. There are many unknowns, but some observations can be made:

If there is coronavirus in the vicinity, you have some on you. In an unpublished experiment, a harmless chemical compound resembling material found in viral coats was radioactively tagged and applied near the mouth or on the palm of two “spreaders.” They carried on normal social interactions with several test subjects who were doing library research—talking, looking at papers, etc. The subjects washed their hands frequently. At the end of several hours, all had radioactively tagged material on face, hands, and clothing.

Continue reading “COVID-19 Protection”

DDP Newsletter November 2019, Vol. XXXV, No. 6

China: Military and Economic Dominance

Celebrating the 70th anniversary of Communist Party rule, advanced Chinese weaponry paraded through Tiananmen Square in October 2019. The message to the world is that Beijing has no intention of ceding military leadership to America or any other country.

High-tech innovations, many stolen from the U.S., include stealth combat aerial drones, unmanned underwater vehicles, hypersonic missiles, and the road-mobile DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), with a 7,500-mile range. The Pentagon has identified hypersonic missiles and systems to defend against them as among its highest priorities, writes Larry Bell. Lockheed Martin expects to test flight its first prototype missiles in 2020. China has reportedly completed seven successful tests (tinyurl.com/rjg5a9o). These “unstoppable” missiles  are “igniting a new global arms race,” writes R. Jeffrey Smith (New York Times 6/23/19, https://tinyurl.com/y2nberq2).

The Chinese seek to dominate by other means as well. Under the Obama Administration, China’s state-owned Cosco Shipping Holdings signed a 40-year lease with the City of Long Beach in 2012 for control of America’s second largest and most automated container-handling operation. In 2017, the Trump Administration put a national security hold on Cosco’s acquisition of a former U.S. Navy port facility. As of May 2019, the Communists are no longer in control of the Port of Long Beach (https://tinyurl.com/tpqap9z). Still, China operates six of the world’s ten busiest container ports, and the Chinese government has also funded the construction and operations of 43 ports in 35 countries under its “One Belt and One Road” (OBOR) strategy (https://tinyurl.com/yy7akrb5).

The State of California under Governor Jerry Brown and now Gov. Gavin Newsom is partnering with China on “climate change” research, such as battery storage, despite concerns about intellectual property theft (https://tinyurl.com/r82mzlc).

Continue reading “Threats for the 2020s”

DDP Newsletter, September 2019, Vol. XXXV, No. 5

Of all the potential mass casualty events that could affect the United States, the most devastating cause is biologic. Biologic agents, unlike radioactive fallout, have a  doubling time, not a half-life. Whether the agent comes from a deliberate biologic warfare attack, or the natural emergence of a novel virus, the results could be devastating.

In 1918, more people died in the first 11 months of the influenza pandemic than in 4 years of the Black Death in the 1300s. Yet despite spending $80 billion on a National Biologic Defense, the U.S. is arguably no better prepared than it was in 1918, state Steven Hatfill, M.D., Robert J. Coullahan, and John J. Walsh, Jr., Ph.D., in their new book Three Seconds until Midnight, available on amazon.com.

Because of air travel, more people packed into dense urban areas, and greater dependence on technological infrastructure and just-in-time inventories, the population may be even more vulnerable now. There could be mass casualties even among uninfected people because of lack of essential services.

Continue reading “Pandemic Preparedness”

DDP Newsletter July 2019 Vol. XXXV, No. 4

As the number of  parents who decline to follow the CDC’s “recommended” schedule of mandatory vaccines creeps upward, the pressure to remove exemptions is growing. More than 100 bills are being pushed in 30 states that would strip out religious, philosophical, and medical exemptions.

California leads the nation in removing all except rare medical exemptions. Until this year, physicians could write medical exemptions at their discretion. However, because a few “rogue” physicians were allegedly writing too many or “illegitimate” exemptions, it is becoming virtually impossible to obtain one, so that parents of children with risk factors will now have the choice of risking a serious adverse reaction or removing their child from public or private school. The full impact of the law will not be seen until it is implemented in 2020, but parents are already receiving messages like this one:

Continue reading “Vaccine Nation”

DDP Newsletter May 2019 Vol. XXXV, No. 3

Drug addiction is devastating. Drug dependence may be unavoidable—as with insulin-dependent diabetics. Modern medicine depends on the availability of life-saving drugs. And the U.S. now depends on China for most drugs. The U.S. even lacks the capacity to produce penicillin, as Rosemary Gibson reveals in her book China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Drugs.

In 1988, Oak Ridge National Laboratory published Expedient Antibiotic Production: A Final Report. This includes a how-to guide to build/rebuild antibiotic production facilities if they were damaged or destroyed. It has a map of the location of such production facilities in relation to a possible nuclear attack on industrial or military facilities.

Continue reading “Drug Dependence”

DDP Newsletter March 2019 Vol. XXXV, No. 2

In November 2018, Michigan became the 10^th state to legalize recreational cannabis use. More than 200 million Americans live in states that have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use, writes Alex Berenson (WSJ 1/4/19). One powerful push is the desire for tax revenue that might otherwise go to neighboring states. The New York City Comptroller’s Office estimated that legalizing marijuana for persons over age 21 could yield $1.3 billion annually at State and local levels. The Comptroller also touted reduced costs of law enforcement and the societal benefit of having fewer people, especially young black males, damaged by the impact of a criminal conviction (tinyurl.com/y68cjevf). E-mailed tips on the best cannabis stocks to buy anticipate more widespread legalization.

Continue reading “Health Effects of Marijuana”