WHAT DO KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY AND 'OCTOPUS'S GARDEN' HAVE IN COMMON?

First Aid sign at train station, Tokyo 2011

There are very few news stories that make it across the ocean. According to my research, these often include very specific types of stories: mass killings of teens stranded on islands in some kind of hell dimension, Sarkozy's latest mid-life crisis, riots in another EU country about to go bankrupt, and/or penguins that have escaped the zoo one too many times.
Even fewer stories from upstate NY reach Europe, which is why this one caught my father’s attention. Rochester was being featured on Polish news and for something truly astounding…stupefying…staggering?! I guess shock value can be something to be proud of. 

Also, published in the New England Journal of Medicine. hah!

REWIND (or FAST FORWARD). YOU'RE 18. 
It is that special day. That day when you turn 18 and you think, I can die for my country today, I can vote, I can buy spray paint, I can donate blood, I can give (or get) a lap dance, I can drink almost everywhere on earth except Puritan riddled America, I can start a 401K and… I can get a tattoo. Let's be real. We have all had those thoughts on that day and many have even followed through.

So, now the question of symbolism. Say you go with wolf. This is a pretty safe one as it represents an inherent oxymoron. How many other animals are regularly described as both 'lone' and in a 'pack'? The beauty is regardless of your personality type: intro or extrovert, you are set.

You find a picture of this famed hunter, go in to the parlor, talk to the artist creating your wolf, lay still for a few hours and BOOM, you get tuberculosis. 

As my very eloquent staff members from the summer would say, sucks to suck. And for what? What is that tattoo of? My initial thought was: mosquitos, but upon further reflection, I realized you would have to be a whole new level of crazy to get the culprit behind rising West Nile deaths in the US branded upon yourself (40% increase in cases & 61% increase in deaths = 66 deaths this year. HUH? This is NOT the TROPICS.). Dandelion spores dancing in a summer breeze? Congratulations sir, you are now taking androgyny to a whole new level. If I was going to get TB from a tattoo, I would really hope it would be for something that screams BAD ASS not BAD TASTE.

This brings us to our feature presentation: tuberculosis.

Based on a 2011 CDC report on TB, infections with this sneaky nondescript (its neither gram+ or gram-) bacterium have been declining overall in the US (10,521 new cases in 2011 representing an incidence of 3.4 new cases per 100,000 = 6.4% lower rate overall) with discrepancies based on the origin of the 'human' vector. New cases in US born citizens saw a 10% decline in 2011, while foreign born declined only about 3% with most new cases coming from Mexico, Philippines, Vietnam, India and China. Over 50% of new TB cases in the US are in FL, TX, CA, and the focus of this article, NY. If you live in these states beware of those with productive coughs and fevers, but all in all, this disease is not a cause for too much concern in the US (where it really rears its ugly head is in the form of MDR-TB and in those co-infected with HIV, but that's just way off topic). 

whew. Those statistics just got me a bit sidetracked from the point of this story, which is... how did a tattoo parlor with seemingly perfect hygiene standards infect 19 people with M. chelonae? In the end, it has nothing to do with the parlor, it all had to do with the ink. Apparently the distilled water used to create the sterile sealed ink bottles was likely the source of the tuberculosis i.e. the contamination existed before the ink was EVEN OPENED, which is scary stuff- especially when you consider the fact that the FDA does supposedly regulate that. 

The moral here is unclear. As for the title, that I can answer: Immanuel Kant and Ringo Starr both suffered from tuberculosis. One revolutionized Enlightenment thinking while the other was a member of the 'best selling band in history'. Maybe the moral is to keep those MOM tattoos coming because even with tuberculosis, you will be in good company.

WARNING: NOT FOR HYPOCHONDRIACS

Tokyo 2011, Tsukiji shopper in face mask

After a very long MCAT induced hiatus- just about the length of the larval loa loa stage in human hosts, I have returned with something that is bound to excite/disgust/nauseate/appall most of you. However, to fully understand my inspiration for this piece, one must first understand my pre-pubescent life. 


As a young tyke believed to have ADHD, it was rather difficult to get me into bed... the running, the dancing, the singing, the scuba diving in the bathtub. That was until my dad figured out my favorite bed-time story. Every night when my lights went out, I would lay rapt with attention as he would have to rack his brains to find some repulsive diseases he could describe to his warped 6-year old child, while calculating how much the ensuing therapy would likely cost. True to form, upon seeing this news story on CNN, my father told me I would probably find it rather, ehm, intriguing (see fowleri description below). 


p.s. if you are new to my blog, read this, this, OR this. So you don't start off thinking I'm a superfreak.


TOP 3 EXCITING PARASITIC INFECTIONS - in the simplest, least biochemical fashion


- EBOLA
This is the quintessential terrifying parasitic infection and also the topic of one of my favorite documentaries. At only 288 amino acids, contact with this minuscule filovirus is usually a death sentence...for an entire African village. 


After infection, this virus takes over protein synthesis in the body and creates a trimeric glycoprotein complex that attaches to endothelial cells lining your blood vessels causing a faulty immune response that helps to carry the virus around your body. This immune response reduces your vascular integrity and inhibits coagulation of blood i.e. you start bleeding from all your mucus membranes in/out of your body and have no way to stop it.


What's scary? The virus has MANY natural reservoirs: monkeys, reptiles, birds... etc. and it is spread by any body fluid contact, even saliva. Most outbreaks are believed to be from humans handling dead animals that were infected. Epidemics, however, are localized to hospital with poor sterilization processes or remote villages.


What's scarier? There is no way to treat it, but 2010 findings from Boston University on small interfering RNA SEEM promising.

- NAEGLERIA FOWLERI
Ah yes the topic of that fateful CNN article... the Naegleria fowleri amoeba, which is 98% fatal! Infection occurs when children swim in stagnant water especially during droughts and hot spells (like this summer in the Southern US). 


The amoeba swims up your nose, follows your nerve fibers to your brain, and literally EATS YOUR NEURONS with its tiny sucking apparatus. holy shit.


What's scary? Initial symptoms include vague things like... headaches, nausea, fever, changes in taste and smell. Basically things that would happen with a minor flu. Later on you get the intense neurological symptoms of ataxia, hallucinations, seizures etc. but by that time, it's definitely too late.


Actually, this isn't technically considered a parasite because the amoeba "accidentally" swims up your nose.

- LOA LOA FILARIASIS 
Finally we have a macroparasite joining our ranks of scary infections. The most common vector of this parasite are the mango/mangrove/deerfly of Africa. Without going into the specific lifecycle, the microfilariae are transferred between fly blood meals. The eye worm matures while chilling in the subcutaneous tissue of its human host. 


Symptoms usually include calabar swellings i.e. swollen bulbs on extremities where the worm is reproducing- not too scary. However, in certain cases the worm migrates to the subconjunctival tissue where it can easily be seen. Please observe.

Luckily cutting the parasite out of the eye has proven very effective. Scalpels at the ready!


- Unfortunately NECROTIZING FASCIITIS is not considered parasitic. Otherwise, this "flesh eating" bacterial infection would definitely make the list.








And on that note... goodnight, sleep tight, don't let those parasites bite.

DARWIN ON "COMMODITY FETISHISM"

One warm summer evening while enjoying wine on balcony in downtown Montreal, I found myself in an intense discussion of Marx's commodity fetishism with my significant other ... this article from BBC today could not be more on point.


Originally coined by Marx to describe (and mock) the western economic system, "commodity fetishism" is essential to the dominant ideology of capitalist societies, as it quantifies the value of each human's time and thus, each human. 


To begin: because commodities are not valued based on their usefulness, but on their potential for exchange, people's labor itself becomes a "commodity" as it creates the "material commodity" for exchange [think of $$, the paper itself is not valuable, however, collective intentionality of people in the US has set the federal minimum wage for 1 hour of work at McDonald's = $7.25]. This means that our social relations are reduced to relations between different types of commodities leaving us in a society where "production has mastery over people" (Marx).




In the words of Karl from Das Kapital,
"A commodity is... a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour."


Marx's commentary in 1867 when he wrote Vol. 1 of Das Kapital used the example of 1 tonne iron = 2 ounces of gold in value. As always, evolution has moved us further in this realm... I just wonder what would dear Marx would say if he knew that 1 kidney of 17-year old male in Beijing = $3,392 or $2,509 + 1 new 64 gig iPad (prices for iPad in China taken from The Wall Street Journal).


Let's play:


# kidneys/ Chinese male = 2 (probably)
life expectancy of males in China = 75.5 years = 661,819 hours 
Zheng's remaining life = 58.5 years = 512,800 hours


job requirements of average kidney: excretion of waste, secretion of hormones such as: erythropoietin, renin & calcitrol, and homeostasis of the human body including pH, osmoregulation & blood pressure.


residents of Beijing with kidney disease = 1.5 million
population of Beijing = 19,612,368
% population with kidney disease = 7.65% (bad statistic I realize, just roll with me)




and so... $3,392/512,800 hrs =  $0.006615/hr
Little Zheng has approximately a 7.65% chance of developing renal disease and he sold his kidney into indentured servitude at a minimum wage of $0.00615/hr. This is assuming that he does not have high blood pressure or diabetes (among other things) because his chances of needing that kidney would increase drastically. On the other hand, it would take that dear kidney 15.2 years to make the money to buy an iPad.


Don't get me wrong- I'm all for donating organs. Clearly with 1.5 million people suffering from renal diseases in Beijing, the population needs all the kidneys they can get. However, I think most of you can agree there is something so wrong about exchanging an organ for apple's latest invention. 


This leaves me to think: maybe Darwin got it all wrong?


Natural selection is in order... against human stupidity.

I could be studying renal for the biological section of my MCAT or I could be writing inane blog posts.

"THERAPY" WITH ECSTASY

"dance fever" on St. Denis

Perusing the internet usually takes on one of two forms for me:


If I am feeling particularly right brained, I usually stumble until I find intense inspiration and come up with at least 5 new art project ideas, at which point I am exhausted by my inadequacy as an artist and lack of time to approach such endeavors abruptly ending my right brained effort.


But on those days where I feel my left brain seeking stimulation, I end up reading articles on wikipedia which undoubtedly follow the path of ...serial killers, musicians, addictions, neuropathologies until I get so scared from reading about psychopaths, I make myself watch videos of raccoons in bathtubs or baby sloths.
[click] Charles Manson [click] Dennis Wilson [click] Beach boys [click] amphetamines [click] stimulant psychosis. 
it's just that easy.


I found this article, however, while skimming ELLE.


Apparently doctors are working to identify the therapeutic effects of certain illicit substances and put them on the market. One suggestion described in this article was about using MDMA to treat a range of maladies from PTSD to anxiety to autism to... marital issues?!


I'm trying to imagine how this would be marketed: 
Do you feel lost in your marriage? 
Are you and your spouse constantly fighting without actually resolving anything?
Have your children complained about how you can't seem to "have fun" anymore?
If so you may be one of 40-50% of marriages doomed for divorce. 
But there is hope... with MDMA! 
MDMA has proven to increase positive feelings in relationships, like compassion and forgiveness, while decreasing the negative feelings of aggression and anxiety making YOU happier in your marriage.  


Side effects may include, but are not limited to: an uncontrollable urge to dance, falling in love with your husbands cashmere sweater/coworker/pet, extolling about the glory of the human hand, and disclosing personal information to your children about your lesbian experimentation in college. Keep soft objects, dubstep, phone calls to family members, office staff parties and inexhaustible water supplies out of reach for the duration of your "treatment". 


On the other hand, the connection to autism is interesting as this neurodevelopmental disorder is well known to cause a lack of empathy. Infants with autism often fail to mirror their parents' smiles or do not like to be touched and as children, fail to socialize and communicate with their peers. The idea is that this drug would help autistic individuals become more aware of emotional signals sent by their fellow humans. As one patient stated after the experimental treatment, he hopes to "fake it until he makes it". The article even points to the idea that this could help treat extremely shy people. Wonderful! Now "shyness" ceases to be a personality trait and joins "hyperactivity" as a prodrome of a debilitating disease. 


Researchers are still unsure about the safety of using ecstasy as a therapeutic agent because one of the most persuasive studies on the dangers of the drug accidentally dosed monkeys with a recreational hit of crystal meth not MDMA creating Parkinsonian symptoms as their substantia nigra disintegrated and causing two to drop dead. After intense media attention, an interview on Oprah, and an inquiry by the journal of Science, Dr. Ricaurte stated his "supplier" mislabeled the bottles. hmm. 


Despite this, doctors should probably avoid giving suburbian desperate housewives yet another prescription drug to drop in their cocktail... I mean with ritalin, adderall, dexedrine, vicodin, xanax, demerol, oxycontin, percocet and miscellaneous SSRI's should we really be adding MDMA?


As for Doblin's research on MDMA treating PTSD patients, I say go ahead. Early trials have shown that de-repressing memories while feeling all warm and fuzzy inside is a highly effective treatment allowing patients to return to a more or less normal life. However, if legalized, clinicians should be wary of an increase in college students experiencing traumatic events.

COOLIDGE EFFECT

Named after a president, this biological phenomenon is particularly silly:

A male rat will mate with a receptive female until exhaustion at which point he will fail to respond to her flirtatious ear wiggling and genital nuzzling. Upon the introduction of a new female, the male will become active once more and continue copulating with the new female. This cycle will repeat with each new female rat.

Let's re-phrase: based on exhaustive research in several mammalian species, males are have proven to become stifled... bored... and emotionally uninvolved after a period of time with a clingy irritating female partner making their sexual performance sub-par and disappointing to both parties, however, if males start mating with a new female, their hedonistic instincts return making them pleasure gods. Needless to say, the implications of this research are astounding [but also leave me asking, why just males?]...

If your relationship continues to fail despite copious amounts of red wine, succulent oysters, creamy dark chocolate and everlasting walks on the beach, why not try the aphrodisiac proven to work on our most basic primal instincts: novelty. People seem to forget divorce rates are also on the rise because humans no longer die of TB at 30 and thus, must continue mating with one "rat" for 75 years. Is the animal kingdom attempting to demystify this issue for us? Should we simply abandon our spouses for a newer model and begin frolicking in the rat burrows again?

perhaps. just perhaps.

rat holding an oyster. not really sure how to draw an oyster. also, I keep typing oyester.

The story behind the name...

While the President and First Lady were touring a farm, a farmer introduced the Mrs. to a particular rooster that could mate all day every day. She provocatively suggested that the farmer tell her husband. 

Later on the Mr. was introduced to the same rooster...he stood lost in thought and asked "with the same hen?". 

"No sir" responded the farmer. 

"Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge".