Category: DDP Newsletter

DDP Newsletter March 2015 Vol. XXXIII, No. 2

While Ferguson or Paris or Baltimore or some other city burns, most Americans continue to live in a virtual world of “reality” television. They assume that ATMs will continue to work, that obesity will remain our most pressing public health problem, and that emergency rooms will remain open. DDP seems to be crying wolf.

Some, however, seem to know that trouble is imminent—such as those who built a new emergency room in Moline, Illinois. In the blog of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (ASCRS), Eileen Wayne, M.D., reports on a tour of a new addition: The 22-room Emergency Department (for a town of only 50,000) “was built in anticipation of the ‘decreased use’ of the ED as purported by the ACA [Affordable Care Act].” It is “accessible” only by electronic card reader, and the codes can be changed to lock people in. There is a huge garage capable of decontaminating military vehicles and controlling mobs of contaminated people through forced showers. “Shoes & clothes can be vaporized in the incinerator area.” Patients have cell phones confiscated; they can make [recorded] calls, only with permission, from a phone booth with one-inch-thick glass walls. Staff members are given “deployment” schedules. Surveillance cameras in every room, bulletproof glass everywhere, special plumbing—all must have cost a fortune. Continue reading “Is It An Emergency Yet?”

DDP Newsletter January 2015 Vol. XXXIII, No. 1

The linear no-threshold (LNT) hypothesis, which declares that there is no safe dose of ionizing radiation, is being applied to other things regulators would like to control, such as chemicals and small particulates (dust). With radiation and chemicals, a 50% lethal dose (LD₅₀) can generally be determined. Harm can accumulate at lower doses, especially cancer with a latency period of years to decades. By extrapolating the dose-response graph linearly to zero, a harm proportional to dose can be calculated. Continue reading “Lethal At Any Dose?”

DDP Newsletter November 2014 Vol. XXXII, No. 6

There is a whole medical specialty of travel medicine for Americans who wish to visit exotic lands with exotic diseases. Travelers have additional vaccines and take malaria prophylaxis if appropriate. They may soak their clothing in permethrin if they expect to encounter mosquito-borne diseases. They learn about food and water precautions.

Because diseases follow human migration, immigrants have historically been required to undergo public health screening and periods of quarantine. Now, however, the Obama Administration and its supporters consider this to be a xenophobic policy. Instead, the plan seems to be to reduce “health disparities” by letting disease travel to the U.S. Continue reading “Importing Disease”

DDP Newsletter September 2014 Vol. XXXII, No. 5
[Published November 2014]

Americans may think that World War II started with the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec 7, 1941. But others would give a different date, writes Andrei Navrozov (Chronicles, August 2014). For example, Mikhail Meltyukhov, in Stalin’s Missed Chance, concludes that the war in Europe became a world war in October 1939, when the general staff of the Soviet Army began developing the plan for a lightning strike against Germany. Had Hitler not preempted Stalin on Jun 22, 1941, the war might have ended, with Western Europe Sovietized, before it ever became a world war. Continue reading “Has World War III Started?”

DDP Newsletter, July 2014 Vol. XXXII, No. 4

Release of the National Climate Assessment was supposed to kick-start Barack Obama’s push on a “key component of his legacy” (WSJ 5/6/14): destruction of the coal industry and coal-fired electrical generating plants. This attack on “polluters” and their “carbon emissions” is supposed to forestall “climate change” and death. Continue reading “Carbon and Death”

DDP Newsletter, May 2014 Vol. XXXII, No. 3

In The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, an alien superpower, possessing an energy shield that made the invaders invulnerable to Earthmen’s weapons, seemed to be on the verge of success. But suddenly the enemy collapsed, defeated by earth’s humble microorganisms, to which the aliens had no immunity.

Introducing a biological agent to a nonimmune population of human beings could be just as devastating. This could happen inadvertently, as when Europeans brought smallpox into the New World, largely wiping out some native populations. Or it could be a deliberate act of war. In 1346, the Mongols, afflicted with bubonic plague during their siege of Caffa in Crimea, reportedly used trebuchets to hurl their dead into the city. The Genoese defenders then took the Black Death with them when they fled to Italy. (Actually, plague-carrying rats and fleas likely entered the city without the need for the trebuchets.) Continue reading “Invasion”

DDP Newsletter, January 2014 Vol. XXXII, No. 1
[published April 2014]

Although the Obama Administration and its loyal press organs speak of the “economic recovery,” it is the weakest since World War II.

In 2013, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) revised the manner of calculating the gross domestic product (GDP). The adjustments make the Obama recession look milder, and the recovery stronger (WSJ, 7/31/13, http://tinyurl.com/l7cp65m). Continue reading “Peak Debt”

DDP Newsletter, July 2013, Vol. XXXI, No. 4
[published April 2014]

The current regime and its media acolytes use the term “denialists” to refer to serious scientists who deny the trumped-up apocalyptic man-made “climate change” scenario after examining it and refuting it. Meanwhile, real and profound denial of existential threats pervades our society—and those who sense the coming crisis but are not sure enough of themselves to take action are easily squashed by the professional deniers, writes Stephen Jones. “Those guardians of the gate of public safety and national defense have been bought off and paid to assure us that all is well while the enemy is climbing our walls and nearly upon us.”

“I no longer wonder what it was like to live before the buildup of WWI and WWII, or in Hitler’s Germany in the 1920s and ’30s. I understand Cassandra of Troy and am aware that no great or small catastrophe has occurred without ample and specific warnings that were ignored,” Jones writes. Speaking of rats leaving a sinking ship, “J.P. Morgan may be moving its headquarters to Salt Lake City.” Continue reading “Denialism”

DDP Newsletter, March 2014, Vol. XXXII, No. 2

At the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Americans started digging in their back yard, and all attention was focused on the world situation.

The situation in the Ukraine is said by some to be more dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis, but most people are preoccupied with personal affairs (many, with loss of their health insurance). They are not depleting the thin inventories of radiation monitoring instruments, mobbing grocery stores, or stockpiling needed medications. Continue reading “Cuban Missile Crisis Without the Public Awareness”

DDP Newsletter, November 2013, Vol. XXXI, No. 6

When he visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki recently, Stephen Jones found his motivation to work for civil defense rekindled, despite decades of rejection by Americans.

In the Hiroshima Museum, he saw a poster on display that says that no policemen died in Nagasaki. The reason is that a policeman who survived Hiroshima (one of some 165 “double survivors”) carried a message to his fellow police in Nagasaki, which was hit 3 days later. Although the Japanese knew nothing about the atomic bomb, the policeman told them that a bright light would be followed within seconds by a deadly shock wave. Tsutomo Yamaguchi,a surviving ship designer for Mitsubishi, also brought this message from Hiroshima to his company in Nagasaki, and many in his section were saved from serious injury from flying glass (http://tinyurl.com/m4qx5n4). He died at age 93. Continue reading “No Policemen Died in Nagasaki”