Here's Why

Outback Jack

Twelve beautiful American princesses compete for the love of one Aussie larrikan in this new reality TV show that airs in the US on June 22 2004. The twist is that the bloke is claiming to be a triathlete, trail bike racer, whitewater rafter and skydiver who has earned awards in swimming, judo, karate, grappling, football and horseback riding . Oh and he climbs mountains, too. No mention of fighting crocodiles, but I’m sure it just hasn’t come up yet.

The women will have to endure adventures in Outback Australia to win his heart.

Steve Irwin, the real “Crocodile Dundee” is already married, so they had to get this “Vadim Dale” character . Some of his mountain climbing is reported at Millenium Expedition
Here’s a picture of him from :

Cigatera update

I wanted to find out about the risk of Ciguatera poisoning from skipjack tuna oil used to supplement Omega-3 DHA bread and other flour products, so I contacted George Weston Foods.

George Weston Foods are one of Australia’s largest food manufacturers, responsible for popular brands in bread and baked goods, dairy, meat, cereals and animal feed. They are wholly owned by Associated British Foods, who operate in New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Thailand.

I was assured “Fish effected by Ciguatera Poisoning are usually fish that feed in warm ocean
waters such as a reef. The tuna used in our product is caught using large fishing trawlers in the deep ocean and therefore poses a minimal risk of carrying the toxin.” However, their tuna suppliers test for Ciguatera every three months. I figure this is to account for the fact that fish swim. Predatory fish swim over large distances.

Testing once every three months obviously isn’t safe enough, or I wouldn’t have been poisoned. Ciguatera is very under-reported, in fact it took 18 months for me to be diagnosed. Many other people may be affected and not know what hit them.

What are the regulations for testing? I’m waiting on a reply from Food Standards Australia to find out whether there are any regulations for Ciguatera toxin testing in place.

Centrelink Mathematics

In late 1998, I was accepted for the Disability Support Pension by Centrelink because of Epstein-Barr Virus on top of Myalgic Encephalomyalitis on top of a permanent back injury.

In July 1999, due to a massive Centrelink mistake, my pension payments were cut off altogether.

In December 2002, Centrelink admitted the mistake and restored my payments.

In October 2003, I was paid arrears for the four years of no payments. Due to a massive Centrelink mistake, the calculations were made with the wrong assumption that I pay zero rent. The insulting consequence of this was to zero out the previous four years entitlements of rent assistance:

assuming rent assistance > $10 per fortnight on average,
1999 to 2002 = 4 x 26 fortnights x rent assistance
= 104 x rent assistance
= some multiple of $1000,

The injury was that zero rent assistance also meant I had to PAY BACK the rent assistance I had already been paid in 2003 and would be paid until the end of that year. I was forced to pay a debt of $2350 to Centrelink.

one year of rent assistance = 26 fortnights x $90 = $2350

I contacted them in writing, by phone, in person, and with the assistance of the offices of Welfare Rights Australia, The Minister for Family and Community Services, and the Federal Ombudsman.

A re-calculation was requested, and I was told the numbers came out the same way when they corrected for my rent assistance to be above zero.

rent assistance > 0
5 x 26 fortnights x rent assistance = 0 !!????

I explained to Centrelink that this was arithmetically impossible unless the rent was still counted as zero. They laughed at me. I appealed, did the rounds of assistance from the Offices of Welfare Rights Australia, Centrelink Customer Relations, and the Federal Ombudsman, and nothing happened for six months. I appealed to the Social Security Appeals Tribunal, who passed it back to Centrelink, who passed it back to the same data entry guy who was repsonsible for the previous mistakes.

I received a phone call in April 2004, that the new recalculations of the mistaken rent assistance are in, and now that they are taking into consideration that I have been entitled to maximum rent assistance from 1999 up to the present day, the repayment to me is calculated to be almost $1700.

I can’t wait to see how they managed to work this one out, and tell me what happened to the rest of 2003’s rent assistance, and all of the previous four years of non-payments!

Ciguatera Zombie Poison

In Haiti, Voudon sorcerers mix up Zombie making powder that works largely because of two nerve poisons found in the puffer fish used in the recipie. Ciguatoxin, which blocks the calcium electrochemical channels in nerve cells, and tetradotoxin which blocks the sodium channels.

Ciguatoxin is a water and fat soluble protein that isn’t restricted to puffer fish, its also made by dinoflagellate protozoa - micro-organisms that attach themselves to algae that grow on dead, damaged or dying pacfic coral reefs. Small fish eat the toxin-salted algae, and are eaten by larger and larger predator fish. The poison is concentrated in each step up the food chain. By the time you get to big fish like the skipjack tuna used in fish oil supplements, or barramundi, coral trout, sea perch, mullet, cod, red snapper, and mackeral, (to name a few) that you may choose for your dinner table; there’s enough poison not to make you a zombie, but to make you suddenly and dramatically ill.

I should know, it happened to me just over a year ago.

I ate some omega3-enhanced food supplemented with fish oil or some contaminated fish, I don’t remember. Cooking and freezing have no effect on the poison, and kits to detect the poison in fish have only become available in the last two years. The first symptoms last only a few days , with damage to the nervous system lasting from months to decades. A study released by Professor Hoegh-Guldberg at the Queensland University’s Centre for Marine Studies reports that the frequency and severity of outbreaks of ciguatera fish poisoning in Australia are increasing as the coral reefs are dying.

Traditionally zombie slaves can be spotted by their strange lurching walk, their glazed eyes, and their odd voices. The changed voice is attributed to the voodoo god Baron Samedi, Lord of the burial grounds. These are all among the symptoms of ciguatera fish poisoning, and are caused by subtle brain malfunctioning. The changed voice is from damage to the speech centres such as happens in aphasia and aphragia, the glazed eyes are from being zonked out and mentally exhausted, and the lurching walk comes from dizziness, muscle weakness and nervous system overload.

Your body recognizes the poison and tries to eliminate it, but because its fat and water soluble, it just gets absorbed again, and again.

Ciguatoxin causes nervous impulses to trigger more quickly, but it slows the transfer of information, and then slows the cells readiness to be triggered again. You can also be exposed to the toxin and have a small reaction the first time, which sensitises you. If you eat poisoned fish again, your next time may be a much more severe reaction.

The key diagnostic flag for this poison is body temperature problems. Hot things seem hotter, cold things seem colder, and sometimes they get reversed. This can be a very strange sensation in the shower!

The CSIRO invented a technique by which tuna oil can be made into a tasteless and odourless powder that can be added to foods such as bread, baby formula, and breakfast cereal to give consumers the healthy omega-three fatty acids that they want in their food. Omega-3 oils in food have been shown to be good for the brain and the heart, and the products have become very successful in the marketplace. I’m still waiting for an answer to my query about whether there is any testing in place to reduce the risk of ciguatera contaminated oil reaching the supermarket. Even chicken fed with fishmeal has been reported to have caused ciguatera poisoning.

In the USA there is a hundred-dollar-US monoclonal-antibody blood test available, and fish testing kits are available in Australia for around $2 per fish. In the Carribean Islands, the locals test their fish by leaving a small chunk near an anthill. If the ants eat the fish, so do the people. Dr. Hokama who invented the blood test, believes that ciguatoxin is the agent that causes Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and in clinical trials, ninety-six percent of suffers had ciguatoxins in their bloodstream. Dr Hokama suspects that his American patients haven’t all had trips to the Pacific, instead they may have their own mico-organisms zombiefying them - from the inside.

A few years ago, a study of fish sold at the Sydney Fish Markets showed that some had never even been described by scientists, let alone named. There is no information on how these animals live, how long they take to breed, or how many might be left, yet they are being caught and sold with no knowledge of their biology. - Abbie Thomas

I lost seventeen kilograms, my voice changed from baritone to tenor, and often fades completely. My eyes saccade when I focus on near objects, I have clumsy attacks, and I get dizzy, weak and exhausted if I’m upright for more than a few minutes. I sometimes have to use a walking stick or lean on furniture. My hands shake, and without medication, I have small seizures that shake the bed while I sleep. I have a kind of hiccup-belch that starts being occasional in the afternoon, but becomes more frequent as it gets later at night, sometimes keeping me awake. I suffer from episodes of mild aphasia where I have trouble speaking clearly, and trouble understanding spoken or written words. I have trouble doing simple arithmetic, and get a bad headache if I force myself to work on calculations or speech or reading. Medication can help with a few symptoms.

It isn’t certain whether I’ve been affected by a one-off poisoning in November 2002, or whether I’m infected with some organism that produces the same toxin continuously. Its possible that eating bad fish just triggered a prior sensitivity. This may be the mechanism of CFS laid bare because it became severe after fish poisoning, or it may be a poisoning that made my existing CFS harder to deal with. So I’m now on a regime of seven drugs to counteract some of the symptoms.

Neurological symptoms Paraesthesias in extremities and around mouth including numbness, tingling, burning, and pain. Temperature reversal where hot feels cold and vice versa. Temperature sensitivity Vertigo Dental pain Blurred vision Tremor Psychiatric Pain on urination	Gastrointestinal symptoms Nausea Vomiting Diarrhea Abdominal pain Dyspepsia Abdominal cramping	Cardiovascular symptoms Bradycardia Tachycardia Hypotension Arrhythmia Sudden blood pressure spikes
Other symptoms Dermatitis, itch, rash, aches and pains, arthralgia, myalgia, general weakness, salivation, breathing problems, dyspnea, neck stiffness, headache, ataxia, exhaustion, fatigue, sweating, depression, and metallic taste in the mouth.

This table was taken from Graham Williamson’s Ciguatera Fish Poisoning page

Resources:
Ciguatoxins and Ciguatera
FDA Foodborne Pathogenic Microorganisms and Natural Toxins Handbook
CSIRO; Fishes n’ Loaves
Neurotoxin Discovered in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Holistic Health Topics - Ciguatera Fish Poisoning
CIGUATERA: Fish Poisoning - MIAMI MEDICINE / AUGUST 1992
Ciguatera Fish Poisoning , NIEHS Marine and Freshwater Biomedical Sciences Center
emedicine Ciguatera Toxicity
SEA SICKNESS July 11, 1999 The New York Times Magazine p. 18 by ANDY NEWMAN
FISH SICKNESS
Barrier Reef just 50 years from death
Successful Treatment of Ciguatera Fish Poisoning With Intravenous Mannitol
The Ciguatera Epitope: So What Do We Really Know Thus Far?
Ciguatera - Chronic Debility: One cause of the CFS
REAL ZOMBIES by Ian Woolf
Witch doctoring
Ciguatera management
neurotoxins: Diagnosis and Treatment Information for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia and other Mystery Illnesses
Ciguatera Fish Poisoning - a review in a risk-assessment framework
Neurology of ciguatera
Fish Poison Problems
The Science Show - Ciguatera
Ciguatera blood testing
Tip-Top Bread UP Omega 3 DHA
Ciguatera fish tests
Thanks for all the fish

Nobody returns from Narrabri

I graduated from my Applied Physics degree with Computing Science sub-major, and applied for a job as a scientific programmer with the Ionospheric Prediction Service in Chatswood.

I knew about the 11 year sunspot cyle, so they hired me as a solar astronomer instead, as a replacement for the incumbent astronomer who was tired of the simple life in the outback. I gave up on my patent office job interview, and accepted the post. I had two weeks to move there from Sydney.

They observe the sun from the Culgoora Observatory outside of Narrabri, and make predictions about what the sunspots will do, and how they will effect the ionosphere and its ability to reflect radio waves back to Earth, and hard radiation that will be experienced by satellites and astronauts during solar storms.

In
exile at the Culgoora Solar Observatory in driest Outback Australia
during my short sojourn as an astronomer.

Narrabri is an interesting town to move to for a city boy. One main street, with seven pubs and two drive through bottle shops, and one RSL club. Two video hire libraries, no theatres or other eentertainment. No public transport, just a plane trip to Sydney or Tamworth. I couldn’t afford a car.

I worked in Narrabri for nine months in 1992. I was diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) by Professor Denis Wakefield there, and then months later, my back was permanently injured while following instructions from the supervisor at the IPS Culgoora Solar Observatory. Heavy lifting isn’t usually in the job description of an astronomer.

I made this observation of a solar storm on the new Spectrograph in 1992:

Lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), Ross River Fever virus, and Q-fever virus are all common diseases in Narrabri in far north-western New South Wales, Australia. They can all cause ME. They also spray the cotton fields with pesticides that attack the cholinergic systems that underpin the gastrointestinal and neurological chemistry in the human body.

The fact that I was diagnosed with ME and suffered a life-changing injury within months, while working at the same dangerous remote locale may be more than coincidence.

I’m now doomed to deal with the bureacrats at Comcare whenever I need ongoing physiotherapy or ergonomic furniture to support my back injury. No suggestion of resonsibility for the ME, as it was a controversial diagnosis in 1992, even if its accepted now. I have enough trouble justifying the purchase of a lumbar back cushion for a lumbar back injury, and no hope of ergonomic furniture.

My mistake was to be disabled by an injury while the IPS observatory was in the hands of The Department of Administrative Services (run by Jim Hacker in Yes Minister). The DAS had incestuous relations with Comcare, so took it as their duty to stop any and all payments being approved. I was never able to work as an astronomer again. My career as a physicist ended barely a year after I graduated.

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