In a single payer system, the cost of healthcare drops dramatically.  Yes it's true taxes go up, but at this point?  They're going up anyway.  The economic stimulus our country needs is going to have to be paid for, and we are all going to pay for it.  Combine this with the 30 years this country has frittered away when it should have been building a new energy grid, green technologies, maintaining infrastructure, and so on, and it's clear, the party is over.

And by "the party is over" I'm referring to those artificially low taxes that our conservative friends still think are too high.

I am sick and tired of listening to gloom-and-doom naysayers fiddling about long lines, delays, and taxes while Rome burns.  I have friends who are suffering right now simply because they cannot get the help they need due to lack of coverage.

Single-payer health care works in many countries around the world, some better than others.  I have enough faith in American ingenuity that we can make it work here.  But it does mean (AFAIC) the end (or serious curtailing) of health insurance companies that have risen to wealth on their two core tenets--1. collect premiums, and 2. don't pay benefits.

For those who quake in fear at the notion?  We tried it your way for decades and it sucks.  I'm ready for something new.

Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy has a penetrating and thoughtful article about proposition 48 in Colorado. This proposition would declare a fertilized human egg "a human", thus elevating nonpersons such as zygotes and blastocysts to full human status. This is an obvious ploy to outlaw abortion and embryonic stem cell research without challenging them directly. Read the article, and if you are a Colorado voter, please, come down on the side of reason, not religion:

When is a human human? (Bad Astronomy):
…There are other vital issues, like how granting civil rights to a collection of cells takes away many civil rights of women, and the huge increase in governmental involvement this would mean in people’s lives. These are important to be sure, but not the point I want to make here. Also, these are age-old arguments, and in fact I can see where intelligent people can come down on opposite sides of them.

The real point is, Prop 48 isn’t about science, and it’s not even about legal issues. It’s about religion. This proposition is obviously based solely on religious beliefs; there is little reason outside of that to even bring the argument up that a fertilized egg is entitled to rights as a human being. It is only the belief that the human soul enters the cell at that moment that this is an issue at all.

Proposition 48 is religion trying to create legislation, pure and simple.…

Today I went in for my "final impressions" which is what you see in this image (crappy quality because I used a cellphone to shoot it.)

• The blue thing at lower left is the final upper impression.  It will be used to mold the fit of the upper denture.
   
• The blue thing at lower right is the final lower impression that will be used to mold the fit of the lower denture. Eventually I will probably need one more lower impression to reline the lower denture once my gums have healed and receded.
   
• The white thing in the center is an amalgum impression of my temporary upper denture. This will be used to shape the teeth in the new denture so they will look and feel consistent with what I have right now.
   
• That pink and yellow monstrosity at the top is a wax model.  The pink part is wax, I don't know what the yellow part is made from.  The whole wax part of this model had to be in my mouth at once!  Not pleasant.  The dentist has carved out some teeth on the upper part for reference.  He will use this to make sure the bite of the new dentures matches my current bite, and to make sure everything fits.

The dentures will be ready in about 4 weeks, and then I will have the surgery to remove the teeth.

And then I will be officially toothless.

As you know I had extensive oral surgery last year to remove all but seven of my teeth for health reasons.  Over the intervening year I have watched those remaining teeth degrade over time.  Before long they were staining, losing chips, and otherwise falling apart... as I had feared they might.

The other day my lower partial denture broke in half so I visited my dentist this morning and asked him to look at the teeth.  He was surprised at their state.  He could tell I have been taking care of them, but nonetheless they are deteriorating rapidly.  There was nothing else for it really, except to remove these teeth as well.

So he took an impression today for a new (full) lower plate and an updated impression for the upper denture, plus x-rays for the oral surgeon.  In two weeks time I go to see him again for some final impressions and then they will set up my surgery.  After that I'll be back for adjustments and then the long sorry tale of my teeth will finally be over.

 I'm blue about it of course, but I am trying to take it in stride.  These things happen.  Better it be handled now before these teeth start making me sick again.

It turned out that the temporary lower partial was indeed not made to last, the final lower partial would have had a metal or otherwise far more permanent construction.  At least I got a year+ wear out of it.  No sense in repairing it now since the rest of the teeth have to go.

I was listening to NPR Science Friday on podcast a few nights ago and caught an interesting segment detailing a recent discovery regarding bacteria found in soil.  It has been demonstrated (for example, by the discovery of the nylon bug) that bacteria in the presence of an abundance of one substance or another may evolve to be able to metabolize that substance... even if the substance is synthetic.  It's also been shown that bacteria in the constant presence of antibiotics will evolve immunity.

These newly discovered soil bacteria have done both.  That is, not are they only immune to a disturbingly long list of known antibiotics, they have evolved to the point where they can actually eat antibiotics.  The Royal Society of Chemisty has an article on this recent discovery:

[...] The soil samples were taken from many different places [in the USA] including public parks and farms, pristine forest, and land treated with wastewater.

'The increase of multiple-antibiotic resistance in human pathogens is continuingly weakening our ability to fight infectious disease, and any accessible reservoir of resistance mechanisms that could transfer to pathogens could exacerbate the problem,' say Dantas and Sommer.  

So far, the researchers haven't found any known human pathogens among their antibiotic-consuming organisms, but they say that some are closely related species. This might make it rather easy for pathogens to acquire antibiotic-resistance and antibiotic-metabolising genes from innocuous bacteria. [...]

Scary stuff!  But rather unsurprising since antibiotics get into the environment every day through their continued use.

The segment on the antibiotic-munching bacteria was followed by another segment on an alternative form of antibacterial treatment called phage therapy.  Phage therapy, instead of using chemical substances to combat bacteria, uses viruses, specifically bacteriophages--viruses that only infect bacteria.  This sort of therapy was predicted shortly after the discovery of bacteriophages in 1917.  Once antibiotics were discovered (in 1941) phage therapy wasn't pursued further in the west, but continued to be studied in Russia.

The advantage of phage therapy is that the anti-bacterial agent is also a living organism, so as bacteria evolve to become immune to it, the phage species also evolves to continue to prey on the bacteria.  Antibiotics, being chemical compounds, do not evolve, hence eventually bacterial evolution will defeat an antibiotic unless you can rapidly deplete the bacterial population to the point where your own immune system can fight off the infection successfully.  As bacteria with antibiotic resistance can be found in the environment, and people have been infected with resistant strains, there is apparently renewed interest in phage therapy.

No human phage treatments are presently approved in the USA, though the use of phages to prevent bacteria from growing in food have been approved here.  Phage therapy on humans is used in some states of the former USSR, especially Georgia.  In the NPR podcast linked above the scientists interviewed spoke of a patient with a resistant bone infection that was successfully treated using bacteriophages after being told here in the USA that amputation was his only recourse.  Interesting!

That's what I'm doing.  No I have no idea what that means either.  As I slide downslope having gotten over the peak of this gout attack (it was not pretty) I have been drinking 100% blueberry juice.  Blueberries and blueberry juice is apparently nature's #1 antioxidant.  I know this because it says on the bottle.  The back of the bottle helpfully explains that antioxidants are good for me because they neutralize free radicals. Ooookay.

Wikipedia to the rescue...

...a "free radical" is any molecule that has a single unpaired electron in an outer shell.

I guess free radicals readily combine with other compounds in your body and thereby oxidize them.  Apparently this can have some damaging effects, but an antioxidant combines with the free radicals so they can't oxidize other compounds in your body.  Okay.  If you say so.  I'm just drinking it because it is recommended for gout sufferers.

I have to tell you it's pretty acidic and has a sharp taste.  I don't think I could drink a lot of this stuff.  It's also a little thicker than other fruit juices... has a little more body to it.  Not like syrup but noticeably heavier.  Can't say I like it very much but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Crap!  My daughter was sick all last week, but thankfully she is feeling better now.  Unfortunately now it is my turn with her cold... which is bad enough in and of itself.  Except that I was stuck at home all weekend and there was a shortage of beverages in the house.  And generally when I have a choice of water or nothing, I choose nothing unless I am direly thirsty.  (I'm sure this will provoke a "typical man" comment from somebody.)

Anyway most of the food I ate was salty.  On Sunday I snacked on Ritz crackers with easy cheese spread, quite a few crackers actually.  Okay a LOT of crackers.  As you know those are quite salty as is the cheese spread.  I barely drank anything except one cup of tea.  It should have occurred to me that this would dehydrate me, but it didn't.

That is until late last nite when I woke up with a sharp pain in the knuckle where my big toe ends and my right foot begins.  Then it occurred to me that what I ate just before bed was a big bowl of salty lipton cup-a-soup.  Greeaat.  So I staggered downstairs and got a glass of filtered water and then hobbled back to bed.  It's probably too late now.  Once the gout starts it really needs to run its course.  I had managed to eat well enough to avoid it for a few years, but here it is again.

Ouch.