Fake Food

The Washington Post advises us that various food products are being marketed as something other than what they really are. post fda story And they point out that trade groups and concerned individuals want the FDA to do something about it. According to it's Wikipedia entry, "The FDA regulates more than $1 trillion worth of consumer goods, about 25% of consumer expenditures in the United States. This includes $466 billion in food sales, $275 billion in drugs, $60 billion in cosmetics and $18 billion in vitamin supplements. Much of the expenditures is for goods imported into the United States; the FDA is responsible for monitoring a third of all imports.[4]

The FDA's federal budget request for fiscal year (FY) 2008 (October 2007 through September 2008) totaled $2.1 billion, a $105.8 million increase from what it received for fiscal year 2007.[5] In February 2008, the FDA announced that the Bush Administration's FY 2009 budget request for the agency was just under $2.4 billion: $1.77 billion in budget authority (federal funding) and $628 million in user fees. The requested budget authority was an increase of $50.7 million more than the FY 2008 funding - about a three percent increase. In June 2008, Congress gave the agency an emergency appropriation of $150 million for FY 2008 and another $150 million for FY 2009."

A recent article in the New Yorker, slippery business, tells the sordid story of bogus olive oil, a subject of critical importance to Mediterranean foodies everywhere. Catfish being marketed as the more valuable grouper, cow's milk cheese masquerading as it's ovine cousin, cheap fish eggs pretending to be caviar, these frauds can't be very bad for the ultimate consumer because THEY CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE. It requires DNA analysis and isotope absorption testing to determine if a salmon actually spent it's life dodging seals off the coast of Siberia or was raised on a watery farm in Scotland. The point is that though the chef and his customer have been defrauded, they are unaware of the fact. The entity being damaged is, of course, the one that markets the genuine article. And what is the extent of that damage? Perhaps if there is an excess of purportedly wild salmon, for instance, the faux salmon will drive down the price of the real fish. Or maybe the domestic salmon will just economically piggy-back on its wild counterpart, bringing a higher price than it would ordinarily warrant.

But is the traffic in fraudulent olive oil, fish and wine a matter that requires the intervention of the FDA and the federal government? Isn't it possible for the olive oil industry, who, after all, has the most concern in this area, to establish their own testing and sanctioning program to guarantee that the ingredients of the salad dressing we make come from where they say they do? Couldn't they slap a little sticker on each bottle or tin authenticating the contents? Do we really need to spend dump trucks full of public funds to investigate the origins of our olive oil? And even if the FDA jumps all over bogus foods, that certainly doesn't mean that the business will become strictly legitimate. It just means that it will be more regulated (and the products more expensive) and enforcement activity will occur after the fact. You'll still be eating low-rent olive oil. And Swedes that don't use it will be paying for its regulation.

It's natural that anyone perturbed by the presence of these bogus foods in the marketplace would seek government intervention. That's the way people think today. But wouldn't it make more sense for those with the most to lose, the manufacturers and purveyors of the real article, to guarantee their own products? And shouldn't consumers be aware enough of their purchasing to take a pass on things that they have no reason to believe are for real?

More Medical History

"Complaints about the high cost of medical attention were many, Earle wrote about 'A Mere Dull Physician' who always pronounced a 'disease incurable but by an abundant phlebotomy of the purse.' A versifier made public the fat income of Rogers, a Kentish apothecary:

So that he did receive two hundred pound
By each yeeres practice, as it cleere was found.

The doctors, for their part, had a very high social position to maintain and accordingly charged well for attendance, which is the reason why more than half of the population had to confine their medication to home physic or to risk advice from unlicensed practitioners or illiterate quacks.

Bridenbaugh, Carl. Vexed and Troubled Englishmen 1590-1642, Oxford University Press, 1968. pg.106.

Capital Punishment?

"On Wednesday, a female trainer at SeaWorld was killed when a 12,000-pound orca named Tilikum ("Tilly") grabbed her by the ponytail, dragged her under water, and thrashed her about in his jaws. Twenty audience members, lingering after a production of "Dine With Shamu," witnessed the act. It was the third human death Tilly has been involved in, and yet the park has no intention of euthanizing him, partly because his motives were unclear. Was his intent to kill, or was it an accident, the result of roughhousing with a mammal 1/100th his own size?"
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What in the hell is this guy talking about? (You can read the rest of the article here) Can human beings extend their own morality to the animal world? At least, in the sphere of human-animal relations? Should an animal that kills a human be placed in the same punitive process as a gunman that kills a C-store clerk?

This isn't the first time or the first species to be involved in a human death incident. Dairy bulls have routinely gored and trampled careless farmers and continue to do so. When such an event occurs there always seems to be speculation about killing the bull. And that happens: Cumberlink Dogs kill people. Bears on rare occasions kill people. Horses can seriously injure or even kill people. It may be justified to kill the animal that has killed a human if, for instance, a bull that has gored a farmer refuses to allow anyone near the victim. But that's not what I'm talking about. Tilly hasn't leaped out of his pool and slid down the boulevard looking for people to crunch. It's impossible for him to harm anyone that doesn't get into the pool with him. So would killing him prevent the death of another human? Not realistically. He's not a threat to terrestial humans. Killing him would be punishment or retribution, neither of which makes sense to inflict on an animal that cannot share human values. Furthermore, if an animal injures a human, should they be held morally responsible? Should a horse receive some kind of punishment for throwing his rider or careening through a fence? What's the correct response to a dog bite? Imprisonment or a fine?

Initialisms

Initialisms are akin to acronyms and, like them, a recent development in the English language. One current example would be LMAO, which represents the phrase "laugh my ass off", I guess. It's evidently used to express an emotion with the minimum of characters in the instant messaging or texting environment. OK, as someone with a background in linguistics, I recognize that language, like everything else, changes over time. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. But I don't know about initialisms.

From time to time, I bump into my twenty-something daughter on gmail and get into a chat with her. My entries are normally complete declarative sentences or interrogatives, with subjects, objects, modifiers and punctuation and capital letters where appropriate. Her responses are, LOL, ha ha, and so on. I envision an individual sitting on a couch before a television, perhaps with music playing on some nuevo electronic device, texting on a mobile phone while gazing at a laptop screen. Super multi-tasking.

Be that as it may, what's the relationship between initialisms and communication? For decades I've personally deplored what seems to me to be the degeneration of colloquial English. The spoken vocabulary has become smaller and smaller. The trend would inevitably lead to a language composed of grunts and mumbles similar to that of a troop of baboons. While most literate Americans probably have some idea what common English written words mean, at least in a general sense, they don't ordinarily use them in spoken conversation. And written conversations no longer resemble the missives of the past, committed as they are to the email format. So we have initialisms. But what is the meaning conveyed by four capital letters? How much nuance can we detect in LMAO? Further, it's obvious that an enormous amount of this retro-communication is taking place. What is its purpose? It can hardly be the transfer of meaningful information. And, in fact, even normal telephone voice communication has exploded in dimension. What kind of information is involved? Has it any signifcance at all? Are mobile phone addicts texting initialisms really communicating?

Whatever the answers to these questions might be, count me out. I don't intend to learn to speak Finnish or Esperanto or American Sign Language or Ebonics. And I'm not going to communicate in initialisms.

A death

From “The Dregs of Life”, Royal Charles, Antonia Fraser

" The responsibility for making the first decision about treatment fell upon Bruce, the senior gentleman present. By this time one of the doctors, Sir Edmund King, had arrived in the bed-chamber and had witnessed the incident. Bleeding was the obvious remedy of the time. And bleed the King this doctor now proceeded to do in style, while a panic-stricken message was sent off to the Duke of York and the rest of the Privy Council were summoned as hastily as possible. By the time a Privy Council of sorts had gathered together in the outer room at midday, Charles had had sixteen ounces of blood removed via a vein in his arm, a task for which the doctor was afterwards paid L1,000.

Soon other doctors came flocking in as the news of the King’s collapse reached them. A series of remedies were frantically applied. The King’s head was shorn. Cantharides (Spanish fly or blister beetle) was used as a blistering agent. A further eight ounces of blood was removed. And as a result of these steps-or despite them-the King did actually recover. Two hours later his speech had come back.

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In the general relief, the doctors at least did not let up on the application of their remedies. It was actually in the presence of his physicians - twelve of them by this time - that next morning, Tuesday, 3 February, the King was seized with another ‘fit’ or convulsion. Immediately and with renewed frenzy the remedies were stepped up and new ones were imported.

Lord Macaulay described Charles II on his death-bed as being tortured like an Indian at the stake. The comparison is apt, except that one doubts whether any tormentor of Indians ever had quite such a battery of instruments at his command as the seventeenth-century royal doctors. It has been estimated that a total of fifty-eight drugs were administered over five days, many of whose names are as exotic to us as their effects were painful to the King.

There was hellebore root (a sneezing powder to clear his nose) and plasters of combined spurge and Burgundy pitch (these were applied to his feet), as well as plasters of cantharides on his head. The ingredients of the enemas which were applied frequently were rock salt and syrup of buckthorn. As an emetic, an orange injfusion of metals, made in white wine, was employed. White vitriol was dissolved in paeony water; other remedies varied from the homely, such as the distillation of cowslip flowers to the more striking spirit of sal ammoniac. An anti-spasmodic julep of black cherry water, oriental bezoar stone from the stomach of an East goat and spirits of human skull were amongst other cures named.

The poor King’s body was purged and bled and cauterized and clystered and blistered. Red hot irons were put to his shaven skull and his naked feet. His urine became scalding through the lavish use of cantharides. Cupping-glasses and all the many weird resources of medicine at the time were applied. They all had one thing in common: they were extremely painful to the patient.

These prodigious efforts were much admired at the time. Colonel Thomas Fairfax, an Irish officer visiting London, hastened to write to Dublin of the employment of 'all the means that the art of man thought proper for the King’s distemper’. The doctor’s report afterwards spoke of 'every kind of treatment attempted by Physicians of the greatest loyalty and skill’. The doctors did not exaggerate the universality of their treatments; their loyalty was doubtless incomparable; but they did somewhat gloss over their own incompetence. The King’s mouth and tongue became 'much inflamed’ with scalding medicines and where his teeth had been forced apart during convulsions. Not all the doctors were as skilled at blooding as Edmund King. James Pearse, Charles’ Surgeon in Ordinary, and Surgeon General to the Navy and Land forces, could not find the jugular vein successfully, a desperate experience for the patient. Another doctor, Thomas Hobbs, who lived in nearby Fleet Street and Surgeon to the Household and the King’s troops of the Horse Guards, had to finish the job: for this efficiency he was later rewarded by inclusion in Dryden’s poem on the King’s death, 'Threnodia Augustalis’.

The need to keep up the patient’s strength through all this was however fully recognized: from time to time the King was given draughts of emulsion, light broth and liquid posset. At the same time the purges and emetics continued remorselessly to drain his resistance from him. Once again the comparison with torture arises, as when the tormentors are determined that their victim shall not finally elude them through death, and therefore fortify him."

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As terrifying and disgusting as this account is, as soon as one's revulsion abates one may be able to distinguish parallels between the medical expertise of the seventeenth century and the economists of the present. Just as blood letting was the automatic treatment for almost any ailment then, contemporary economists prescribe government spending for almost all economic ills. If human freedom survives in some stunted form into the future, our descendants may well be as appalled by the attempts to alleviate economic failures as we are by the measures used to treat hapless King Charles II.

What does the Haitian earthquake mean?

The natural disaster (for resident humans) that is the Haitian earthquake has the capacity of bringing out the human tendency we have to assist those whose lives have been immensely compromised through no fault of their own. People throughout the world will do what they can to alleviate the suffering there. Be that as it may, there are other disasters that cause human suffering on a similar scale involving not the impersonal forces of nature but the machinations of other humans. We have an extensive record of these in just recent history. The induced starvation of the Ukrainian peasants, the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, and China are just examples from the twentieth century of catastrophic events that were the culmination of political activity, rather than the ravages of nature. Are calamities like these outside the scope of assistance? Evidently, not entirely, as much of the world took part in the effort to eliminate the Serbian attacks on their Muslim neighbors. However, in other arenas the humanitarian response is either subdued or discouraged by government. Today knowledge has spread world-wide of the killings in the Darfur area of Sudan but we hear of liitle effort being made to halt them. And the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq had a long record of monstrous treatment of its own citizens and neighbors, yet the effort to lift that yoke from the neck of them has been condemned, not by other monsters and tyrants, but by people who consider themselves true humanitarians. Is there less of a need for help if a child's parents are imprisoned or executed by a despot than if they were drowned in a hurricane?

More Doctors?

One of the arguments for universal health care is that 25 or 30 million Americans don't have health insurance. One of the arguments against universal health care is that adding these Americans to the health care system will require additional hordes of doctors to administer to them. That's not even theoretically true. The uninsured have always had health care, just no insurance. They haven't stood outside the hospital, their noses pressed to the lobby picture windows, wishing they could go in and have an appendectomy. They just went to the emergency room, where treatment can't be refused, maybe got a bill for it, maybe paid it, maybe not. Chances are the treatment for whatever issue they may have had would have involved less expense than years of premiums for health insurance. No matter, the indigent will receive medical care and the rest will pay for it. Pictured above are the POTUS Obama and Nancy-Ann De Parle, Counselor to the President and Director of the White House Office of Health Reform. Ms. DeParle has been managing director of a private equity firm, CCMP Capital, and a board member of companies like Boston Scientific, Cerner and Medco Health Solutions.