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March 26, 2004
Pauline Hansen Is Science Fiction by Ian Woolf
Ego blogging again! I put my name into Feedster to check how my RSS feed looks from the other side. Honest. One of the feeds
that came up was a Search Poem by Ivy Alvarez called Pauline Hansen
In May 1997, the Sydney Futurian Science Fiction Society met, and
as a tiny part of the meeting we discussed One Nation party “leader”
Pauline Hansen’s book. I wrote up the meeting,
Ivy’s search engine found it, and thus I had the honour of being included in her poem.
The meeting included discusssions of stories in which the themes of
“Orientals in science fiction”, “Confucian societies in science fiction”,
“North America invaded by the Yellow Hoardes”, and “Australia invaded
by the Yellow Peril” were explored.
Pauline Hanson is Science Fiction
by Ian Woolf
Ms “Fingers” Smith opened the locked room of the May 1997 meeting after a
lightning lock picking lesson from
practice on the room next door. Fingers now seeks tools of her own.
Brian Walls opened the May 1997 meeting with news that the “One Nation”
party’s The Truth by Pauline Hanson and ghostwriter has tracts about
lesbian asiatic cyborgs, and therefore qualifies as science fiction. Brian
further informed us that Disneyland has been invaded by Vietnamese
dwarves.
Graham Stone proceeded to tell us to “shut up!”, and then inform us that
Sam Moskowitz had died. Graham handed around an article that listed Sam
Moskowitz’s achievements in introducing the first ever university course
in science fiction, and his many books about the subject.
Peter Eisler announced that the Sydney Hoyts 8th Anniversary of audience
participation Rocky Horror Picture Show, Special Edition would be
performed the following Friday, all in one breath. Someone complained that
Sydney would undergo an invasion of Goths due to the RHPS scene. This
conjured, in the fevered imagination of Garry Dalrymple, an Invasion of
Goughs, all shouting Gough Whitlam’s immortal “maintain the rage!”. Garry
greets Men In Black with the query “Are you a Goth, or are you colour
blind?”
Susan showed us the new UFO magazine, which reported on the types of
aliens observed all over the world. Apparently Australians get US style
extraterrestrials, miss out on the European-style aliens, and are missing
our own distinctive style of aliens.
Garry reported that there had been a protest against a line of dolls of
Nuns by feminists. Garry then gave us instructions on how to view the
comet Hale-Bopp from Sydney. Find the three stars in a line of Orion’s
belt, then look up to the red star Betelgeuse, then look straight down and
north at around 5:15am to 6:20am close to the horizon. Naturally, in
Sydney itself, you are unlikely to see the horizon due to buildings and
trees. Thus you may have to travel a little, or just watch the view on TV
from the northern hemisphere, which is far more spectacular. Garry then
recommended a trip to the Sydney Central Railway Bar for a surreal Star
Wars kind of experience, due to the extremely strange types who pass
through the place.
Garry also reported that SCOT, the Secret Council Of Timelords, had indeed
aborbed all the other Doctor Who clubs as had been prophesized in previous
Futurian meetings.
Brian reported that author Jack Dann was the first Australian to win a
Nebula award, and that Jack Dann would be speaking at the Leonardo Da
Vinci exhibition at UTS on 28th May (missed it). The Esoteric Bookshop
will be opening a Science Fiction section, to help bring its customers
back down to Earth. Brian handed around a page for us to write the names
of suggested authors we would like to buy titles from if the bookshop
carried them. All members were more than happy to influence the buying
decisions of the Esoteric Bookshop, and a fine list of authors was
presented to Brian by the end of the meeting. Brian further informed us
that the movie The Fifth Element was heavily inspired by the comic strip artist Moebius
The Australian science magazine 21C has an article on author John
Shirley. Brian also announced that Martin Caiden had died.
Inscrutable!
The topic of Orientals in science fiction was started by mention of “The
Radiation of the Chinese vegetable” by C Stirling and Gleeson. In this
story, the villain is called Yetunhung, and the heroine is Wunlook.
The original TV series of Star Trek was very advanced for its day in
having non-caucasian bridge crew, including the asian Mr Sulu.
Godzilla , about the destruction of Tokyo by a giant fire-breathing
lizard, has been made in Japanese, Korean, and soon an American film
version. There were dozens of spinoffs with Tokyo being destroyed by
several different monsters, from Space Turtles, to the giant carnivorous
plant Biolante.
The film The Bride and the Beast by Ed Wood featured a newspaper
headline “110 000 Chinese living in trees.”
2061 by Arthur C. Clarke describes how the Chinese land on Europa where
a tree eats them.
Black Steel by Steve Perry, describes martial arts, asian swordplay,
asian master craftsman and spriritual warriors in a galactic civilisation.
Neuromancer by William Gibson shows a future world dominated by the
Japanese corporate structure.
Tiger Tiger by Alfred Bester features a scene in which the Chinese
detective exchanges information about his Family House with a Chinese
executive and they discover that they are traditional enemies, and enjoy a
friendly exhange of ritual insults.
Confucius Rules, Ok?
Chung Kao: The Middle Kingdom by David Wingrove describes a future society based on
Confucian social rules.
Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart, a fantasy set in 7th century Confucian
China, about a peasant seeking a cure for a strange illness in his village
who enlists the help of Master Li Kao, a self-described scholar with a
slight flaw in his character.
In Diamond Age : Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson,
much of the action takes place in a future Confucian Chinese state,
who kidnap a nanotechnology designer and press him into work for
ten years as punishment for a crime committed in another nation.
North America invaded!
In Buck Rogers, the Han Chinese take over all of North America. Graham
informed us that in Flash Gordon , the planet Mongo is inhabited by
Mongolians with asian features who turned pink.
Robert Heinlein’s Sixth Column also known as “The Day After Tomorrow” is
about a future where the Han Chinese invade North America, and some
scientists with some breakthrough technology start a fake religion to
resist the asian opressors, complete with fake halos. They eventually
invent a ray gun that only kills non-caucasians, and a gallant black
American and American Chinese give their lives for freedom.
Patrick Tilley’s Amtrack Wars portray a post holocaust North America
colonized by Japan.
The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick is about an alternative
history where Germany and Japan own North America after winning World War
II.
Not to be left out in the Real Estate grabs, Australia is also colonized!
Cordwainer Smith’s Nortrilia is set in the far future after a Chinese
Empire have taken over Australia and the Australian culture survives only
on a planet around a distant star, where the Queen is STILL the head of
government, “‘cause she might bloody well come back”.
In Greg Egan’s Quarantine , New Hong Kong has been established in the
Australian Nothern Territory after the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to
Chinese rule. As a result, the Australian economy booms.
Robert Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky portrays a future in which all of
Australia is Chinese.
Lastly, The Truth by Pauline Hanson (and ghostwriters) has tracts about
lesbian asiatic cyborgs, which is the most attractive thing about the
OneNation party I’ve ever heard
March 23, 2004
Illuminatus! trilogy
This is a kill or cure for paranoiacs, with an embarrassment of riches of conspiracies - complete with detailed evidence which is easily referenced. The mout outrageous and silly conspiracies are true (the Principia Discordia quotes are real), and some of the more believeable stuff is false. Wilson and Shea call it “guerilla ontology”. Some people may find the viewpoint character changing so often to be distracting, but I enjoyed it as part of the trip. Its very seventies hippy culture, and very funny and perceptive. Its mindblowing to realize it was written before Watergate and the Nixon insanities were publically known.
Principia Discordia
This is the book that started the Discordian movement. Its the Discordian “bible” God is a crazy woman, called Eris by the ancient Greeks, and called Discordia by the ancient Romans. This is a very subversive anti-dogmatic satiriacal look at religion and mysticism and a lot of fun. My original copy came from Loompanics and was borrowed by Tristan Gutsche, along with my Ren and Stimpy video tapes, and my escapologist’s thumbcuffs . I never saw him again. . I eventually bought my new copy from Amazon.
Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson
Using a modified version of Timorthy Leary’s Six circuit model of the brain, this book illustrates how each circuit is imprinted and work, and has exercises at the end of every chapter for you to play with how your own brain is wired, and to show you how to rewire it for more fun and flexibility. AS life changing as “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. I used to lend this book out on a regulat basis in my undergraduate years to friends I deemed intelligent enough to benefit from the experience. Eventually I loaned this one with “Real Magic” to David Eggleton in 1994, and I never heard from jim again, so I no longer own a copy of what was one of my all time favourite books.
The brain is a wonderfully flexible toy, and Wilson shows you how to discover how yours has been programmed by your life experiences, and how to take over for a more satifying life.
Real Magic by Isaac Bonewitz
Every science fiction and fanstasy writer should read this book. Bonewitz has the first “Bachelor in Thaumaturgy” from a Californian University. He takes the assumption that psychic powers exist, and then runs with that through a very logical and rational process to how they must work in a universe where such things are true, drawing on anthropology and psychology and the occult. A facsinating read for believers and skeptics alike. Invaluable for writers. If psychic powers are real, this is how they would work.
The Art Of Deception by Nicolas Capaldi
An Introduction to Critical Thinking: How to: Win an Argument, Defend a Case, Recognize a Fallacy, See Through a Deception
A witty and entertaining tutorial on the art of informal logic. The reader is taught to recognize when logic is being abused by being shown how to win arguments by abuising the rules of informal logic.
You are introduced to all of the logical fallacies you may have intuited but previously never had a name for, and how they can unfiarly be used to win arguments. In so doing you learn how to conduct fair arguments and to avoid the fallacies yourself. Every high school studentb and undergrad should be given a copy to study, certainly everyone who has ever been in an argument.
March 21, 2004
Longevity of Man - How long can we live?
Longevity ego blogged across the decades! In 1985 I wrote an essay on longevity and anti-ageing science for my first year biology course. In 1994 I updated it with new telomere information and posted it on my website and had it published in “The Sydney Futurian”, the newsletter of the Sydney Futurian Science Fiction Society
Today I did an RSS search on anti-ageing medicine and found Anti-Aging Medicine & Science Blog , and lo and behold, they have my article on longevity linked from the Futurian mirror site as one of their references!
“The Plausible Futures Newsletter focus on large scale social change and the implications of emerging technologies on the world system.” Their lens looks to the Futurian mirror of my article, too.
This is almost enough to persuade me that I should be paid to write.
The least I can do is blog this.
Longevity of Man - How long can we live?
by Ian Woolf
“Man will never be contented until he conquers death.”
- Dr Bernard Strehler, 1977
According to Dr Walton of the CSIRO, an organism’s life generally
falls into the three phases:
1 growth
2 maintenance, and
3 aging.
It has been the desire to remain or return to phase 2 that has kept
Humanity on our millenia-long qquest for immortality. Scientists now
have some understanding of aging and are actively seeking for ways to
prevent or even reverse the process; some of the quite successfully,
and all of them optimistically.
Life-expectancy in Will Shakespeare’s day was only about thirty years.
In England in the 1880’s, just over a century ago, it was less than
forty years of life for the working class majority. In Australia in
1900, it was fifty-one. In Australia now, it is seventy-five for men,
and eighty-one for women,; a rise of three years in the last decade. In
the 1970’s demographers realized that for older people life expectancy
is rising. In 1975 a sixty-five year old man could expect another 13.1
years, in 1983 a man of 65 averaged 14.2 more years, and in 1993 he can
expect 17.2 more years. Researchers think this is probably due to
better education, nutrition and attention to personal health, as well
as availability of medical treatment for fatal conditions. Yet
individuals now in their seventies and eighties were born early this
century and suffered poorer nutrition and living conditions than today.
This implies that given modern high living standards, children growing
mow should survive well into their nineties.
Free radicals are unstable molecules that cause aging according to Dr
Denham Harman. They disrupt cells by robbing electrons from passing
molecules and triggering destructive reactions. They are created by
oxygen processing in the body, or by contact with smoke and smog. Older
cells are packed with them. Anti-oxidants combat free radicals by
making them more stable, and thus preventing them causing damage.
Vitamins C and E, carotene, and lecithin are all anti-oxidants. Dr
Harman says that anti-oxidants increase life expectancy by twenty
percent or more.
Cross-linkage of vital proteins and nuclei acids in and around body
cells causes aging according to Dr Johann Bjorksten. Gradually, with
the assistance of lead, cadmium, aluminium and free radicals, the
proteins are bound into large aggregates which are irreversibly
immobilized, and clog the cells, ultimately destroying them. In 1970 Dr
Bjorksten isolated microenzymes from soil bacteria which penetrate and
breakdown the aggregates allowing them to be excreted safely. A
proposed “youth pill” would contain the microenzymes plus chelating
agents to remove the metals, and antioxidants to prevent further
cross-linkage. Dr Bjorksten predicts 800 year life spans, soon!
A “death-hormone” is triggered at a genetically programmed time says Dr
Denckla. The hormone is secreted by the pituitary gland after
adolescence. The output increases with age, and progressively blocks
the action of a thyroid hormone, vital to metabolism. Dr Denckla has
delayed aging in rats by removing the pituitary and dosing them with
other hormones. A death-hormone neutralizing drug says Dr Denckla,
could add 30 years to human life expectancy. Dr Denckla left research
in 1980 after his funding was cut.
The thymus gland shrinks with age says Dr Goldstein. Thus thymosin,
which it secretes, is reduced in supply, until at eighty years of age,
the gland has vanished altogether and its supply is zero. Thymosin
maintains the immunological system. As thymosin level falls,
susceptibility to disease and cancer mounts rapidly. Thymosin
injections would allow one to age gracefully, disease-free, although it
is uncertain how much life would be extended.
Metabolic toxins accumulate in our blood and slowly poison us according
to Alexis Carrel. Dr Klebanhoff at the Lackland Airforce Medical Centre
has a “total body washout” machine, which siphons off all blood and
replaces it with an oxygen-carrying solution, then drains this and
gives a complete transfusion. Replacement blood would preferably be
from healthy young donors, or have been cleaned of toxins and
infections.
Abusive living wears out organs. Heart and lungs age due to diets high
in fat and insufficient exercise. The same goes for other body organs.
Organs can be replaced either by transplants or by artificial organs.
There are rejection problems to be overcome with transplants, but heart
and cornea transplants are now commonplace. Prosthetic replacement for
organs have developed slowly, but should benefit from the advances in
the new biotechnology revolution.
The Hayflick limit, until recently, put an absolute upper bound on how
long we could live. Every living cell possesses a biological fuse that
“burns down” a little every time the cell divides; in normal cell, each
division brings death closer. The fuse runs out, and there is no more
cell replacement in the body. The average cell can divide 60 or 100
times before this happens. The fuse on cancer cells never runs down,
they are immortal. In 1993 Calvin Harley’s team at Geron, a Californian
biotechnology company have linked the biochemical changes that give
cancer cells immortality to one that regulates ageing. They have
already discovered a compund that makes cancer cells mortal in a test
tube. They have found that cancer cells manufacture an enzyme called
telomerase that rebuilds the cancer cell’s fuse, so that the cell never
gets the instruction to suicide. They have successfully made cancer
cells mortal by inhibiting telomerase. This will lead to control of
hayflick limit in healthy cells, allowing us to control their longevity
without killing the organism with runaway cancerous replication.
If, pessimistically, we can raise the human lifespan by only fifty
percent in this generation, then that still means that you will
probably live at least thirty years past the projected seventy-five
years the insurance companies expect.
With even a thirty year bonus, the leap into hundreds of years is
likely to occur. If you are now 20 years old, you expect to die around
2045 AD. Add thirty years to that, and you live to 2075 AD. How many
years will medical science be able to give you then? In 2075 AD, an
increase of one hundred years would be conservative. So you can live on
to 2175 AD. And where will life-extension sciences be by then? Likely
any population problems will also have been solved.
| Life extension technique | Maximum life-extension predicted | |
| Denckla death-hormone inhibitor | thirty years | 30 |
| Bjorksten cross-linkage dissolver | seven hundred years | 700 |
| Harman anti-oxidants | twenty years | 20 |
| Thymosin injection | uncertain | ? |
| “total body washout” | uncertain | ? |
| Prosthetics and transplants | uncertain | ? |
| Cell fuse extension | uncertain | ? |
| Grand total of extra years | 850+ |
Even if this table is over-optimistic, you will probably live a lot
longer than you expect. Possibly long enough for the next
life-extension breakthrough.
“Some people want to achieve immortality through their works or their
descendants. I prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.”
- Woody Allen, ‘Immortalist’ magazine
A good reason to be confident something will come of this research in a
maximum ten years, is that there are so many scientists researching
longevity from many different directions.
“People now living - the more determined ones - may never die at all”
- Robert Anton Wilson, ‘The Illuminati Papers’
References:
New Scientist 1993-1994
Discover (Dec 1984) “Aging, can we slow the inevitable?” by Gina Morris
Sydney Morning Herald (9/3/85) “The Age of Youth” by M. harris and A. Levinson
‘Future Facts’ by Stephen Rosen (pub Heinmann, 1976)
‘Science Fact’ by Frank George (pub Angus & Robertson, 1977)
‘Your next Fifty Years’ by Robert Prehoda (pub Ace, 1979)
‘Can you live to be 100?’ by Dr Woodruff (pun Chatham Square Press, 1977)
‘The Illuminati Papers’ by Robert Anton Wilson (pub Sphere, 1980)
‘A Step Farther Out’ By Dr Jerry Pournelle (Pub Ace, 1980)
March 16, 2004
George W Bush explained as fantasy
Which science fiction/fantasy hero/villain is George W Bush?
A lot of information about Bush Jr packed into a very small and well-written piece.
Iain’s blog is An/Aesthetics
The Science of Semen part 1
In this era of empowered women, HIV, and cloning, it may seem as if women will soon have no use for men at all, perhaps even downgrade them to semen providers. Ian Woolf looks online to find out what semen is good for.
Listen to the full story
(right click and choose “save as” if it doesn’t start playing in your browser)
Resources:
http://www3.cosmiverse.com/news/science/science06200204.html
http://www.psc.uc.edu/HS/Semen%20Antidepressant.htm
http://www.biopsychiatry.com/semen.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/pheromones5/function.html
March 14, 2004
Emma shaved her head!
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Emma joined the World’s Greatest Shave to raise money for the Leukemia Foundation
March 08, 2004
CFS News condensate 8/3/04
There has been a few news reports about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome recently, most of them full of distracting noise and difficult to find content. So here is my condensation of the stories on the web this week:
Fatigued teens need early treatment
“Gill says her research reinforced that fatigue was really the chronic symptom of CFS. “
So the chonic symptom of “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” is actually fatigue? How insightful!
“Dr Anna Gill from Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick, and colleagues published their results in the latest issue of the journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. “
Naturally the Journal only allows subscribers to read the article online.
“Treatment is really exercise, keeping going with school, trying
not to let it overtake your life, and trying to keep going and work
through it.”
So the “treatment” is to ignore what your body is telling you and just grin and bear it. I’m so glad that Dr Anna Gill is on the case. How do I get paid to tell sick people to just shut up?
Diagnosing Chronic Fatigue? Check For Sinusitis
Alexander C. Chester, M.D., clinical professor of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center has finally noticed that most of us with CFS also have sinus problems, and 10% of all sinusitis sufferers also suffer pain and fatigue. He figures there may be a sinus cause to chronic exhaustion and pain symptoms.
His new plan is to run some trials to find out if sinus treatments can help alleviate pain and fatigue.
Every FMS/CFS patient should know both their NKC number and activity
Studies show that about half of CFS/Fibromyalgia suffers have low natural killer cell numbers. Low killer cell activity is associated with more infections and developing cancer. Dr Holtorf says the levels should be monitored in CFS/FMS patients and boosted with drugs if its found to be low. This would help fight infection and reduce the chance of developing cancers.
Study on Pyridostigmine
The drug pyridostigmine helps symptoms of weakness and fatigue in patients who are positive for Epstein-Barr Virus. This suggests that the symptoms are caused in part by problems with the nervous system chemical acetylcholine .
March 04, 2004
Cocktail that made CFS improve
My severe Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) symptoms improved dramatically this year and neither I, nor my doctor know why. Now they’re getting worse, and again I have hypotheses, but I don’t really know. So, as a scientist who may be soon gaining or losing quite a few abilities, I thought I should summarize what I took over the time my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome symptoms, particularly my energy, concentration, memory, arithmetic, and speech improved.
I’m not doing as well as I was. I don’t know if thats because I tried a holiday from Symbicort to see if Seritide or Ventolin alone would help me, or because I finished the antibiotic course, or if it would have happened anyway.
It all started with two puffs of Ventolin, which caused an immediate and dramatic cognitive improvement that night., particularly in my mild aphasia and confusion.
This was followed by a one week course of 400 mg antibiotic telethromycin, and one puff twice a day of Symbicort 200. Bigger improvements in concentration and talkativeness
Another week of just Symbicort 200 one puff twice per day. Brain fog clearing away, and I also felt a sense of well-being, as if some vague long-term pain had stopped.
Symbicort 200 increased to two puffs, twice per day - double the dose. Prescribed 500mg levofloxacin antibiotic for one week course. I feel energised and happy. My technical skills come back, and I am able to go for long walks with a delayed payment of exhasution and pain instead of an immediate one. My “Faustian bargain” of enjoy now and pay later, is available again. My minor acne clears up including some I’d forgotten about.
A week later, I fiinish the levofloxacin. I develop a painful yeast infection in my throat and mouth, and lose my voice. My doctor takes me off Symbicort, and asks me to try using just Ventolin alone, two puffs, twice per day. The infection goes away and my voice comes back better than its been for a year. I have some energy, but I start to lose all the other benefits. I spend a day doing radio interviews, editing them and packaging them for our community radio science show Discovery. I get the inevitable “crash” of exhaustion and pain from the activity.
I can’t stand the total regression to mild aphasia and pain and weakness, so I take Symbicort again. I feel better but develop the yeast infection and lose my voice again. My GP tells me to take yoghurt to fight the yeast. He takes me off the Symbicort again to try Seritide, which has Fluticasone and salmeterol, which are supposed to help asthma in the same way as the combination of budesonide and formoterol in Symbicort. I struggle through two weeks, and try adding ventolin to the mix, but Seritide does not help my cognitive symptoms the way Symbicort does.
I’ve been back on Symbicort for 4 days with a spacer and lots of drinking yoghurt. The yoghurt seems to help supress the yeast infection. The spacer I use with Symbicort was trapping lots of big particles of powder, which are apparently the footholds of the yeast infection. I exhausted the old inhaler and started a new one today, and the new one leaves no visible residue at all in the spacer. Perhaps I was victim of a bad clumpy batch of Symbicort powder that left me more open to yeast infection.
I thought if only I could take Symbicorts drug combination that help in a non-powder form, I would get my voice back. I searched google and found a 1998 patent for an “Aerosol Symbicort equivalent”, this sounded exactly what I needed. Unfortunately, when I contacted AstraZeneca, they informed me that “this presentation is not yet available in Australia and it is hard to say when exactly it will be available.” Google had nothing else for me, so I emailed one of the inventors, Professor Frank Blondino, and I’m still waiting on a reply. Surely in six years the patent has gone to manufacture? AstraZeneca’s Medical Affairs Associate emailed to tell me that she had “conducted a search of the medical literature as well as the AstraZeneca in-house database, but was unable to locate any reports of Symbicort being used for the treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.”
Of course, for all I know, I need to be back on the antobiotics as well, Symbicort on its own may not be enough. The acne came back this week.
Something unknown knocked me down and gave me strange neurological symptoms and constant gastroentrological bubbling. Some unknown effect of the medical cocktails I’ve been subjected to in the last two months has helped the neurological symptoms slowly improve after a dramatic improvement in clarity from the first Ventolin dose.
Unfortunately, with me as both scientist and my own guinea pig, its Mad Science, and I haven’t managed to isolate what works and get rid of all the side effects.
New book by Jay Goldstein released
Dr Jay Goldstein of the Chronic Fatigue Sydrome Institute has finally released his new book on how to treat the illness.
The online extract has a very bleak, but accurate view of CFS treatment available in Australia:
“My patients from Australia described the medical environment for
CFS as a “vast wasteland,” although some progress was being made in
educating individual physicians.”
“The situation in Australia is tragic. Many patients with CFS are derided
by their physicians, unlike in the United States, where they are treated by at
least a few establishment physicians with benign condescension. Because in
Australia fewtreatments are known, feware offered. Offices that provide vitamins,
colonics, and other holistic therapies are swamped as a result.”
His description of his model of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome treatment is tantalizingly fascinating, because it seems to be an accurate description of my experience of “immediate neural reintegration” with Ventolin in January 2004.
“In CFS and related disorders the brain does not handle information properly. As a result, a
patient experiences sensations and cognitions that are not appropriate to his
or her stimulus environment. If the input is incorrect, so is the output (“garbage
in, garbage out”), and physiology regulated above the level of the
brainstem may be dysfunctional.
The corollary to this theorem, which is not as self-evident, is that the brain can be tuned to enhance the signal (salient information) and eliminate the noise (irrelevant stimuli), much like tuning a radio to hear the music and not the static. This process can often occur immediately
—some researchers use the word instantaneously, but I have been advised not to (yet)—with the proper intervention. A few papers in scientific journals are beginning to address this common phenomenon, such as
Marder E (1997), Computational dynamics in rhythmic neural circuits.
The Neuroscientist 3(5):295-302.
Nicolelis MAL (1997), Dynamic and distributed somatosensory representations
as the substrate for cortical and subcortical plasticity.
Seminars in Neuroscience 9:24-33.
Glanz J (1997), Mastering the nonlinear brain. Science 277:1758-
1760.”
I’m very keen to review a copy, ASAP. My experiences with Ventolin and Symbicort lead me to believe that he’s the researcher thats on to the solutions I need. The web page for the Institute is dead, so they’re a little hard to contact. I’ve heard Dr Goldstein is no longer in clinical practice so I can’t go and get help from him directly. The one Canadian doctor we were able to find will not take new patients, but is happy to advise other doctors.
I just need to find a specialist that will help me follow the treatment protocols. Time to rejoin the CFS support comminity.