Medical Freedom Quotes

Hide yourself in God, so when a man wants to find you he will have to go there first.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.

Researching this book has been a voyage of discovery and it is a privilege to present an unexpurgated medical biography of the most consequential American of the twentieth century.

When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we in essence accept that the state owns our bodies.

FDR Unmasked chronicles Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s life from a physician’s perspective. It tells a harrowing story of heroic achievement by a great leader determined to impart his vision of freedom and democracy to the world while under constant siege by serious medical problems.

Conventional belief holds that after triumphing over a mid-career bout with polio, FDR went on to serve two vigorous terms as gov- ernor of New York and three-plus more as president of the United States, succumbing unexpectedly to a stroke on April 12, 1945. In truth, Franklin spent those eventful twenty-four years battling swarms of maladies including polio’s ongoing crippling effects, life-threatening gastrointestinal bleeding, two incurable cancers, severe cardiovascular disease, and epilepsy.

doctors were policing women who stepped outside society’s strictly defined gender spheres—work and intellect for men, home and children for women—in what could be described as a “medicalization of female behavior.

It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered, that damage done to oneself and others cannot always be put right again, and that freedom from the control imposed by medication loses its meaning when the only alternatives are death and insanity.

The accounts of rape, wife beating, forced childbearing, medical butchering, sex-motivated murder, forced prostitution, physical mutilation, sadistic psychological abuse, and other commonplaces of female experi ence that are excavated from the past or given by contemporary survivors should leave the heart seared, the mind in anguish, the conscience in upheaval. But they do not. No matter how often these stories are told, with whatever clarity or eloquence, bitterness or sorrow, they might as well have been whispered in wind or written in sand: they disappear, as if they were nothing. The tellers and the stories are ignored or ridiculed, threatened back into silence or destroyed, and the experience of female suffering is buried in cultural invisibility and contempt… the very reality of abuse sustained by women, despite its overwhelming pervasiveness and constancy, is negated. It is negated in the transactions of everyday life, and it is negated in the history books, left out, and it is negated by those who claim to care about suffering but are blind to this suffering. The problem, simply stated, is that one must believe in the existence of the person in order to recognize the authenticity of her suffering. Neither men nor women believe in the existence of women as significant beings. It is impossible to remember as real the suffering of someone who by definition has no legitimate claim to dignity or freedom, someone who is in fact viewed as some thing, an object or an absence. And if a woman, an individual woman multiplied by billions, does not believe in her own discrete existence and therefore cannot credit the authenticity of her own suffering, she is erased, canceled out, and the meaning of her life, whatever it is, whatever it might have been, is lost. This loss cannot be calculated or comprehended. It is vast and awful, and nothing will ever make up for it.

If your Doctor cannot prove they are the Creator, what right do they have to give you an expiration date? None fight for your right to live. Been on hospice almost 16 years now. No 'man' has any right to say you have less then 6 months to live, no matter what the pages on the wall say. Fight its your right.

People who live at subsistence level want first things to be put first. They are not particularly interested in freedom of religion, freedom of the press, free enterprise as we understand it, or the secret ballot. Their needs are more basic: land, tools, fertilizers, something better than rags for their children, houses to replace their shacks, freedom from police oppression, medical attention, primary schools.

A creator used to create' You got me young... You told what to want; you showed me in your movies and your shows. And I faithfully did your work. I created... I willingly clipped my wings and built myself a golden cage and you smiled and said, "well done." I let your fear tactics rule my actions until I could no longer hear my heart song. I took your medication and I ate your poison until my body was too sick to fight back. Ah, but I'm onto your game. I see it now and my only regret is that I didn't see it sooner. I made a life for myself only to realize it's never really what I wanted. My soul didn't want this hectic, materialistic life- your greed and your thirst for power wanted this. I don't belong here, but you've always known that, haven't you? You figured if you kept me caged long enough, kept me sick enough, kept me scared enough that I would eventually forget what I am. You slipped up with this one. So, hear me now. You had your fun with me, but I've had about enough of your bullshit for one lifetime. Watch me fly.

Today we are less likely to speak of humanitarianism, with its overtones of paternalistic generosity, and more likely to speak of human rights. The basic freedoms in life are not seen as gifts to be doled out by benevolent well-wishers, but as Casement said at his trial, as those rights to which all human beings are entitled from birth. It is this spirit which underlies organizations like Amnesty International, with its belief that putting someone in prison solely for his or her opinion is a crime, whether it happens in China or Turkey or Argentina and Medecins Sans Frontieres, with its belief that a sick child is entitled to medical care, whether in Rwanda or Honduras or the South Bronx.

If you demand the collective to pay for your medical expenses, then be prepared for the collective to demand to make your medical decisions for you.

freedom from the control imposed by medication loses its meaning when the only alternatives are death and insanity.

When a disease insinuates itself so potently into the imagination of an era, it is often because it impinges on an anxiety latent within that imagination. AIDS loomed so large on the 1980s in part because this was a generation inherently haunted by its sexuality and freedom; SARS set off a panic about global spread and contagion at a time when globalism and social contagion were issues simmering nervously in the West. Every era casts illness in its own image. Society, like the ultimate psychosomatic patient, matches its medical afflictions to its psychological crises; when a disease touches such a visceral chord, it is often because that chord is already resonating.

The freedom of patient speech is necessary if the doctor is to get clues about the medical enigma before him. If the patient is inhibited, or cut off prematurely, or constrained into one path of discussion, then the doctor may not be told something vital. Observers have noted that, on average, physicians interrupt patients within eighteen seconds of when they begin telling their story.

Even though we were supposed to have free medical care, the doctors expected us to pay them for the surgery. It sounds harsh, but the government gave them almost nothing, and bribery was the only way for them to survive. Somehow my parents persuaded the doctors to perform the operation if we supplied them with the anesthetic and antibiotics they needed.

For the past twenty-five years, the psychiatric establishment has told us a false story. It told us that schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar illness are known to be brain diseases, even though—as the MindFreedom hunger strike revealed—it can’t direct us to any scientific studies that document this claim. It told us that psychiatric medications fix chemical imbalances in the brain, even though decades of research failed to find this to be so. It told us that Prozac and the other second-generation psychotropics were much better and safer than the first-generation drugs, even though the clinical studies had shown no such thing. Most important of all, the psychiatric establishment failed to tell us that the drugs worsen long-term outcomes.

the political left, would argue that the “right to life” means that everyone has a fundamental right to the necessities of life: food, clothing, shelter, medical care, maybe even an eight-hour day and two weeks of vacation. But if the right to life means that, then it means that one person has a right to force other people to give him things, violating their equal rights.

Our politicians tell us we are free, even though most governments take over 50% of what we earn. They claim we get services that we need for our hard-earned money, even though we could buy the same services at half the price from the private sector. Today, we ridicule the slave-owners' claim that they "gave back" to their slaves by housing, clothing, feeding them, and bestowing upon them the "benefits" of civilization instead of leaving them in their native state. We see this as a self-serving justification for exploitation. In the future, we will view being forcibly taxed to pay for things we don't want, such as bombs for the Middle East, subsidies for tobacco, other people's abortions, regulations that put small businesses out of business, prisons for people trying to feel good, keeping life-saving medications out of the hands of dying people, etc., as taking away our freedom. When even a small portion of our lives is spent enslaved, that part tends to dominate the rest of our time. If we don't put our servitude first as we structure the remainder of our lives, our masters will make sure we regret it. How much freedom do we need to survive and how much do we need to thrive?

In the same way, the establishment US media painted America as a decaying, racist, predatory capitalist realm unable to provide medical care for the poor, rebuild her “crumbling schools,” or replace the “shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race,”5 and promised all this could be changed by redistributing the country’s wealth. That also was a disinformation campaign.

If your spouse gets sick, who would you visit - your non-doctor neighbor or an actual doctor! Any sane person would visit a doctor over a non-doctor neighbor, even if that neighbor happens to be a celebrity, because it is common knowledge that fame or charisma is not equivalent to medical expertise, yet when it comes to choosing a doctor to treat the sickness of a nation, the masses most proudly elect any charismatic chimpanzee over a humble, wise and conscientious leader.

The nineteenth-century medical notes of supposed madwomen place particular emphasis on their appearance. An unbuttoned blouse, an undone bun, or even simple carelessness of dress was considered damning evidence a woman’s mind roamed free from its moorings.

the nineteenth century was an era of great personal freedom with respect to psychoactive substances. There were no laws against using hashish in Europe and North America, where any respectable person could walk into a pharmacy and choose from a range of cannabis tinctures and pastes. After the U.S. Civil War, Gunjah Wallah Hasheesh Candy (“a most pleasurable and harmless stimulant”) was available via mail order from Sears-Roebuck. The average American pretty much was at liberty to use any drug that he or she desired.

It is hard to understand how a compassionate world order can include so many people afflicted by acute misery, persistent hunger and deprived and desperate lives, and why millions of innocent children have to die each year from lack of food or medical attention or social care. This issue, of course, is not new, and it has been a subject of some discussion among theologians. The argument that God has reasons to want us to deal with these matters ourselves has had considerable intellectual support. As a nonreligious person, I am not in a position to assess the theological merits of this argument. But I can appreciate the force of the claim that people themselves must have responsibility for the development and change of the world in which they live. One does not have to be either devout or non devout to accept this basic connection. As people who live-in a broad sense-together, we cannot escape the thought that the terrible occurrences that we see around us are quintessentially our problems. They are our responsibility-whether or not they are also anyone else's. As competent human beings, we cannot shirk the task of judging how things are and what needs to be done. As reflective creatures, we have the ability to contemplate the lives of others. Our sense of behavior may have caused (though that can be very important as well), but can also relate more generally to the miseries that we see around us and that lie within our power to help remedy. That responsibility is not, of course, the only consideration that can claim our attention, but to deny the relevance of that general claim would be to miss something central about our social existence. It is not so much a matter of having the exact rules about how precisely we ought to behave, as of recognizing the relevance of our shared humanity in making the choices we face.

Arianna Huffington cites studies in her brilliant book Thrive that show how the act of giving actually improves your physical and mental health. One example I love in particular is the 2013 study from Britain’s University of Exeter Medical School that reveals how volunteering is associated with lower rates of depression, higher reports of well-being, and a 22% reduction in death rates! She also writes, “Volunteering at least once a week yields improvements to well-being tantamount to your salary increasing from $20,000 to $75,000!

or creed.” These rights included: The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation; The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad; The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good education. Roosevelt

As part of this menu of services, the clinic also did abortions. Bruce Kessel had been trained in abortion care as a matter of course when he was a medical resident in the early eighties. The way Bruce told it, the years after Roe were an exuberant time, and physicians who cared, as he did, about public health and family planning rejoiced over the freedoms and possibilities that legal abortion promised women.

[ Dr. Lois Jolyon West was cleared at Top Secret for his work on MKULTRA. ] Dr. Michael Persinger [235], another FSMF Board Member, is the author of a paper entitled “Elicitation of 'Childhood Memories' in Hypnosis-Like Settings Is Associated With Complex Partial Epileptic-Like Signs For Women But Not for Men: the False Memory Syndrome.” In the paper Perceptual and Motor Skills,In the paper, Dr. Persinger writes: On the day of the experiment each subject (not more than two were tested per day) was asked to sit quietly in an acoustic chamber and was told that the procedure was an experiment in relaxation. The subject wore goggles and a modified motorcycle helmet through which 10-milligauss (1 microTesla) magnetic fields were applied through the temporal plane. Except for a weak red (photographic developing) light, the room was dark. Dr. Persinger's research on the ability of magnetic fields to facilitate the creation of false memories and altered states of consciousness is apparently funded by the Defense Intelligence Agency through the project cryptonym SLEEPING BEAUTY. Freedom of Information Act requests concerning SLEEPING BEAUTY with a number of different intelligence agencies including the CIA and DEA has yielded denial that such a program exists. Certainly, such work would be of direct interest to BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA and other non-lethal weapons programs. Schnabel [280] lists Dr. Persinger as an Interview Source in his book on remote viewing operations conducted under Stargate, Grill Flame and other cryptonyms at Fort Meade and on contract to the Stanford Research Institute. Schnabel states (p. 220) that, “As one of the Pentagon's top scientists, Vorona was privy to some of the strangest, most secret research projects ever conceived. Grill Flame was just one. Another was code-named Sleeping Beauty; it was a Defense Department study of remote microwave mind-influencing techniques ... [...] It appears from Schnabel's well-documented investigations that Sleeping Beauty is a real, but still classified mind control program. Schnabel [280] lists Dr. West as an Interview Source and says that West was a, “Member of medical oversight board for Science Applications International Corp. remote-viewing research in early 1990s.

One of the outstanding features of Vanni society was the degree of integration of disabled people into the mainstream. They could be seen actively participating in many spheres, carrying out work with grit and amazing agility. People with one arm would ride motorbikes with heavy loads behind them on their motorbikes. You would hardly have known that some people you worked with were missing a leg from below the knee. Disability had been normalized. Serving these people was the only prosthetic-fitting service in Vanni, Venpuraa. This also expanded its service with the introduction of new technology. A common phrase one heard even prior to the Mullivaikaal genocide was about so and so having a piece of shrapnel in some part of their body. Many people lived with such pieces in their body and suffered varying degrees of pain as a result. Visiting medical experts did their best to remove the ones causing the most severe pain.

Despite the odium and widespread condemnation of Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America, he passed with all the fanfare of a fart in a mesh sack. Medical examiners said it was a thrombotic stroke, likely exacerbated by obesity and high blood pressure. Some said cocaine and opioids had been found in his system, but these reports were never confirmed. Trump was dead, and now it was time to start glossing over his dismal legacy and perpetuating his vision, posthumously, for Making America Great Again...

Ours is the age of atomic power but also of nuclear proliferation, of globalized trade but also worldwide terrorism, of instant communication but also fragmented communities, of free association but also marital failure, of limitless mobility but also homogenized destinations, of open borders but also confused identities, of astounding medical advances but also greater worries about health, of longer and more vigorous lives but also protracted and more miserable deaths, of unprecedented freedom and prosperity but also remarkable anxiety about our future, both personal and national. In our age of heightened expectations

Only date people who respect your standards and make you a better person when you’re with them. Consider the message of the movie A Walk to Remember. Landon Carter is the reckless leader who is skating through high school on his good looks and bravado. He and his popular friends at Beaufort High publicly ridicule everyone who doesn’t fit in, including the unfashionable Jamie Sullivan, who wears the same sweater day after day and gives free tutoring lessons to struggling students. By accident, events thrust Landon into Jamie’s world and he can’t help but notice that Jamie’s different. She doesn’t care about conforming and fitting in with the popular kids. Landon’s amazed at how sure of herself she seems and asks, “Don’t you care what people think about you?” As he spends more time with her, he realizes she has more freedom than he does because she isn’t controlled by the opinions of others, as he is. Soon, despite their intentions not to, they have fallen in love and Landon has to choose between his status at Beaufort...and Jamie. “This girl’s changed you,” his best friend yells, “and you don’t even know it.” Landon admits, “She has faith in me. She wants me to be better.” He chooses her. After high school graduation, Jamie reveals to Landon that she’s dying of leukemia. During her final months, Landon does all he can to make her dreams come true, including marrying her in the same church her mother and father were married in. They spend a wonderful summer together, truly in love. Despite Jamie’s dream for a miracle, she dies. Heartbroken, but inspired by Jamie’s belief in him, Landon works hard to go to medical school. But he laments to her father that he couldn’t fulfill her last desire, to see a miracle. Jamie’s father assures him that Jamie did see a miracle before she died, for someone’s heart had truly changed. And it was his. Now that’s a movie to remember! Never apologize for having high standards and don’t ever lower your standards to please someone else.

It is not a war, it is a lesson of life (the second part) ......... We believed, in our ignorance and arrogance, that we can be invincible, that we are superior to any other living being on the face of the earth. Is it nature? I broke it down and raped her, in the name of the god of money, convinced that Mother Earth did not suffer the blow, to exploit it forever. I took, stole, with outstretched hands, torn, cut, shattered, breaking down everything that appeared in our path. We have sickened the Earth and now its screams of pain are resounding in the global reach of a pandemic that, for us, people have the taste of catastrophe. And now we find ourselves stopped, beaten by a life lesson that we did not expect, we consider ourselves unjust, we consider ourselves at war. Existence is like this, first it launches small signals like bells, signals that we have always ignored and then finds a way to be heard with its increasingly loud sirens. She tells us that, at any price, she will be able to convince you that good and evil are not the case, that the time has come to realize that, as a living species, we are close to self-destruction. The time has come to realize that the countdown has begun, the safety is almost completely consumed, and this is the last call. For you, for me, for all the creatures that populate the Earth. And for this tormented planet, whose very life depends on our survival. .. New forms of subjectivity must be promoted if we are to aspire to social and epochal changes. It must be understood that freedom is not the choice of car color, that a hug is never ensured, (a doctor told me a phrase that "stuck" in my mind during the senior specialization in a certain medical field. He told me, "You see, there are people coming to us and they wouldn't need three pills a day, but three hugs a day." and distances are not measured in kilometers. We are removed even when we are close in this society where we talk without listening, we eat without tasting, we make love without feeling, we walk without seeing, a society in which we breathe sniffing, darkened by our blind beliefs. Nature has its rules and follows an unknown and sometimes violent design. The world continues and we, the ordinary mortals, have only the power to try to understand, to change our approach, our beliefs, our system. Although it is difficult, very difficult, but we have no other option. The truth, dear gentlemen, is that nothing will be the same as before unless we learn the lesson, otherwise everything will return exactly as before, with our bad ancestral practices and with the awareness that, again, humanity will miss an opportunity to to improve.

I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow I did not breed or perfect the seeds. I do not make any of my own clothing. I speak a language I did not invent or refine. I did not discover the mathematics I use. I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate. I am moved by music I did not create myself. When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive. I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with. I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being.

There were good men in Afghanistan, men like those who made up our Afghan force, but most were mired in ancient traditions and their deep-seated ambivalence toward women troubled me. If they didn't have the strength to stand up against the persecution of their own flesh and blood, then how could we expect them to have the strength to support a centralized government? We had already done the heavy lifting by freeing them from the oppression of the Taliban; it was their responsibility to move their country ahead and take advantage of the freedom. I could accept dying trying to free the oppressed of the world, but not one American life was worth sacrificing for people willing to accept tyranny.

THE NINE PLANTS OF DESIRE ~ Gloxinia--The mythical plant of love at first sight. ~ Mexican cycad--The plant of immortality. A living dinosaur straight from the Jurassic period. ~ Cacao--The chocolate tree of food and fortune. ~ Moonflower--Bringer of fertility and procreation. ~ Cannabis sativa in the form of sinsemilla--The plant of female sexuality. ~ Lily of the valley--Delivers life force. In a pinch, this beautiful plant can replace digitalis as medication for an ailing heart. ~ Mandrake--According to both William Shakespeare and the Holy Bible, this is the plant of magic. ~ Chicory--The plant of freedom. Offering invisibility to those who dare to ingest its bitter, milky juice. ~ Datura--The plant of mind travel and high adventure. Bringer of visions and dreams of the future.

Self-organizing Systems Biologists have long given up the idea that living organisms are just like machines. Medical practitioners today recognize the ineffectiveness of treating the human body as a separate mechanism. They speak about holistic healing, treating the whole person, and including the person’s social and physical environment. Today living organisms are described as self-regulating systems. They organize themselves, nourish themselves, heal themselves, propagate themselves, protect themselves, and interact creatively with other systems. We used to call this instinct—in animals if not in plants. Today we talk about genes that have coded messages or instructions that connect with one another in a DNA spiral in the nucleus of every living cell. If we were to write out the instructions contained in any one tiny DNA spiral we would fill about a thousand books of six hundred pages each.

Yet, it was precisely our failure to differentiate between work and politics, between reality and illusion; it was precisely our mistake of conceiving of politics as a rational human activity comparable to the sowing of seeds or the construction of buildings that was responsible for the fact that a painter who failed to make the grade was able to plunge the whole world into misery. And I have stressed again and again that the main purpose of this book—which, after all, was not written merely for the fun of it—was to demonstrate these catastrophic errors in human thinking and to eliminate irrationalism from politics. It is an essential part of our social tragedy that the farmer, the industrial worker, the physician, etc., do not influence social existence solely through their social activities, but also and even predominantly through their political ideologies. For political activity hinders objective and professional activity; it splits every profession into inimical ideologic groups; creates a dichotomy in the body of industrial workers; limits the activity of the medical profession and harms the patients. In short, it is precisely political activity that prevents the realization of that which it pretends to fight for: peace, work, security, international cooperation, free objective speech, freedom of religion, etc.

To the infra-human specimens of this benighted scientific age the ritual and worship connected with the art of healing as practiced at Epidaurus seems like sheer buncombe. In our world the blind lead the blind and the sick go to the sick to be cured. We are making constant progress, but it is a progress which leads to the operating table, to the poor house, to the insane asylum, to the trenches. We have no healers – we have only butchers whose knowledge of anatomy entitles them to a diploma, which in turn entitles them to carve out or amputate our illnesses so that we may carry on in cripple fashion until such time as we are fit for the slaughterhouse. We announce the discovery of this cure and that but make no mention of the new diseases which we have created en route. The medical cult operates very much like the war office – the triumphs which they broadcast are sops thrown out to conceal death and disaster. The medicos, like the military authorities, are helpless; they are waging a hopeless fight from the start. What man wants is peace in order that he may live. Defeating our neighbor doesn’t give peace any more than curing cancer brings health. Man doesn’t begin to live through triumphing over his enemy nor does he begin to acquire health through endless cures. The joy of life comes through peace, which is not static but dynamic. No man can really say that he knows what joy is until he has experienced peace. And without joy there is no life, even if you have a dozen cars, six butlers, a castle, a private chapel and a bomb-proof vault. Our diseases are our attachments, be they habits, ideologies, ideals, principles, possessions, phobias, gods, cults, religions, what you please. Good wages can be a disease just as much as bad wages. Leisure can be just as great a disease as work. Whatever we cling to, even if it be hope or faith, can be the disease which carries us off. Surrender is absolute: if you cling to even the tiniest crumb you nourish the germ which will devour you. As for clinging to God, God long ago abandoned us in order that we might realize the joy of attaining godhood through our own efforts. All this whimpering that is going on in the dark, this insistent, piteous plea for peace which will grow bigger as the pain and the misery increase, where is it to be found? Peace, do people imagine that it is something to cornered, like corn or wheat? Is it something which can be pounded upon and devoured, as with wolves fighting over a carcass? I hear people talking about peace and their faces are clouded with anger or with hatred or with scorn and disdain, with pride and arrogance. There are people who want to fight to bring about peace- the most deluded souls of all. There will be no peace until murder is eliminated from the heart and mind. Murder is the apex of the broad pyramid whose base is the self. That which stands will have to fall. Everything which man has fought for will have to be relinquished before he can begin to live as man. Up till now he has been a sick beast and even his divinity stinks. He is master of many worlds and in his own he is a slave. What rules the world is the heart, not the brain, in every realm our conquests bring only death. We have turned our backs on the one realm wherein freedom lies. At Epidaurus, in the stillness, in the great peace that came over me, I heard the heart of the world beat. I know what the cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world.

Sometimes Partridge imagines that this isn't real, that, instead, it's just some elaborate reenactment of destruction, not the actual destruction itself. He remembers once being in a museum on a class trip. There were miniature displays with live actors in various wings, talking about what things were like before the Return of Civility. Each display was dedicated to a theme: before the impressive prison system was built, before difficult children were properly medicated, when feminism didn't encourage femininity, when the media was hostile to government instead of working toward a greater good, before people with dangerous ideas were properly identified, back when government had to ask permission to protect its good citizens from the evils of the world and from the evils among us, before the gates had gone up around neighborhoods with buzzer systems and friendly men at gatehouses who knew everyone by name. In the heat of the day, there were battle reenactments on the museum's wide lawn that showed the uprisings waged in certain cities against the Return of Civility and its legislation. With the military behind the government, the uprisings - usually political demonstrations that became violent - were easily tamped down. The government's domestic militia, the Righteous Red Wave, came to save the day. The recorded sounds were deafening, Uzis and attack sirens pouring from speakers. The kids in his class bought bullhorns, very realistic hand grenades, and Righteous Red Wave iron-on emblems in the gift shop. He wanted a sticker that read THE RETURN OF CIVILITY - THE BEST KIND OF FREEDOM written over a rippling American flag, with the words REMAIN VIGILANT written beneath it. But his mother hadn't given him money for the gift shop, no wonder. Of coarse, he knew now that the museum was propaganda.

The bourgeois democracy which the imperialists and reactionaries try to force upon other people is anti-popular “democracy” which allows a handful of exploiting class members to exercise the full scope of democracy and dictatorship over the working masses. Bourgeois democracy, which harshly suppresses the struggle of the broad working masses for democratic freedom and the right to survive, can never be true democracy. The imperialists and reactionaries are advertising the bourgeois parliamentary system and the bourgeois multi-party system as “democracy”. However, in such systems big monopolists are the real behind-the-scenes manipulators of politics. When they find even the formal parliamentary system or the multi-party system to be an obstacle to their reactionary rule, the imperialists and reactionaries immediately overthrow it and resort to overt fascist rule. There is clear historical evidence of this. The popular character of socialist democracy and the anti-popular character of bourgeois democracy are manifest with regard to human rights. In our socialist society, which regards man as most precious, human rights are fully guaranteed by law; not the slightest practice infringing upon them is tolerated. In our country full rights for the people, ranging from the rights to employment, food, clothing and housing to the rights to education and medical care, are guaranteed. No other such country can be found in the world. The imperialists and reactionaries, posing as the “champions of human rights”, are now vilifying socialism, but it is they alone who are violating human rights. The imperialists and reactionaries who commit political terrorism against innocent people and social figures demanding freedom and democracy, and who deprive the working people of their elementary democratic freedom and right to exist, have no entitlement to talk about human rights.

Until recently, three unspoken principles have guided the arena of genetic diagnosis and intervention. First, diagnostic tests have largely been restricted to gene variants that are singularly powerful determinants of illness—i.e., highly penetrant mutations, where the likelihood of developing the disease is close to 100 percent (Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs disease). Second, the diseases caused by these mutations have generally involved extraordinary suffering or fundamental incompatibilities with “normal” life. Third, justifiable interventions—the decision to abort a child with Down syndrome, say, or intervene surgically on a woman with a BRCA1 mutation—have been defined through social and medical consensus, and all interventions have been governed by complete freedom of choice. The three sides of the triangle can be envisioned as moral lines that most cultures have been unwilling to transgress. The abortion of an embryo carrying a gene with, say, only a ten percent chance of developing cancer in the future violates the injunction against intervening on low-penetrance mutations. Similarly, a state-mandated medical procedure on a genetically ill person without the subject’s consent (or parental consent in the case of a fetus) crosses the boundaries of freedom and noncoercion. Yet it can hardly escape our attention that these parameters are inherently susceptible to the logic of self-reinforcement. We determine the definition of “extraordinary suffering.” We demarcate the boundaries of “normalcy” versus “abnormalcy.” We make the medical choices to intervene. We determine the nature of “justifiable interventions.” Humans endowed with certain genomes are responsible for defining the criteria to define, intervene on, or even eliminate other humans endowed with other genomes. “Choice,” in short, seems like an illusion devised by genes to propagate the selection of similar genes.

Adium is an open source project led by Evan Schoenberg. There wasn’t much information about him on the website, so I called him up. It turned out he was an ophthalmologist finishing his fourth year of medical residency.

For anyone born after 1945, the welfare state and its institutions were not a solution to earlier dilemmas: they were simply the normal conditions of life - and more than a little dull. The baby boomers, entering university in the mid-'60s, had only ever known a world of improving life chances, generous medical and educated services, optimistic prospects of upward social mobility and - perhaps above all - an indefinable but ubiquitous sense of security. The goals of an earlier generation of reformers were no longer of interest to their successors. On the contrary, they were increasingly perceived as restrictions upon the self-expression and freedom of the individual.

Sometimes we pray for things, but when we get a negative report or a denial, we back off of what we were believing God for and we settle. Instead of believing you will receive your own business, you settle for a corner office. Or instead of believing you received debt freedom, you settle for living paycheck to paycheck. Instead of believing you received your healing when you prayed, you settle for being on medication or sitting in a wheel chair for the rest of your life. Stop settling for weeds!

And that's all, my young friends. The legend spread on the winds of Mexico City and the winds of '68, fusing with the stories of the dead and the survivors and now everybody knows that a woman stayed at the university when its freedom was violated in that beautiful, tragic year. And I've heard others tell the story many times, and in their telling, the woman who spent fifteen days shut in a bathroom without eating is a medical student or a secretary at the Torre de Rectoría, not a Uruguayan with no papers or work or place to lay her head. And sometimes it isn't even a woman but a man, a Maoist student or a professor with gastrointestinal troubles. And when I hear these stories, these versions of my story, I don't usually say anything (especially if I'm not drunk). And if I am drunk, I try to play it down. That's nothing, I say, that's university folk-lore, that's urban legend, and then they look at me and say: Auxilio, you're the mother of Mexican poetry. And I say (or if I'm drunk, I shout): no, I'm not anybody's mother, but I do know them all, all the young poets of Mexico City, those who were born here and those who came from the provinces, and those who were swept here on the current from other places in Latin America, and I love them all.

As medicine operates a pseudo neutral ‘scientific’ language which is not explicitly related to the power of the State, it seems to be objective and politically neutral. Moreover, medicine presents itself as acting for people’s good and thus masks the real—political—dimension of its interventions. And it has managed to succeed: most people do not see it as a form of dominance, surveillance and as a threat to their freedom. They do not see the coercive and hazardous dimension of medical practices. On the contrary, as they are performed in the name of health, they are perceived as something natural and sought after

Sabbath is therefore a declaration of our freedom. It means you are not a slave—not to your culture’s expectations, your family’s hopes, your medical school’s demands, not even to your own insecurities. It is important that you learn to speak this truth to yourself with a note of triumph—otherwise you will feel guilty for taking time off, or you will be unable to truly unplug.

3) Third, is the ability to discontinue medications. Most of you will be able to reduce or eliminate your medications for high blood pressure, type II diabetes, arthritis, indigestion, reflux, and constipation, among other things. Imagine the freedom that will come with being healthy without having to depend on pills, without having to worry about paying for them, without being limited by their schedule, and without having to endure their side effects. (Please note you should NOT alter your medication regimens without physician supervision.) 4) Next, is improvement in vigor, vitality, and overall well-being within DAYS of starting the program. You will shed those feelings of fatigue, heaviness, and mental cloudiness and they will be replaced by energy, agility, and clarity. In addition, rather than crashing after a meal, feeling sluggish at best, you will be invigorated. 5) Finally, you can save thousands of dollars per year in food and health care costs. Sound too good to be true? Let’s take a closer look, beginning with research that has shown that adopting healthier eating habits can save you as much as $2000 to $4500 a year.30 Add to that the thousands of dollars per year you can save just by stopping five of the most commonly used medications (for cholesterol, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, reflux, and arthritis). Moreover, many of you have bought into the need for taking supplements to enhance your diets. Unfortunately, not all of these supplements are necessary

The medicalization of American life from birth to death is killing our souls.

Numerous Tamils have had to embrace pitiful deaths due to the lack of even basic medical aids. From minor girls to women approaching menopause, numerous women were gang-raped, sexually assaulted and abused. The temples of Tamil Hindus and the churches of Tamil Christians were all razed to the ground, with innumerable Tamil priests being burned to death and many Christian priests being brutally tortured before being imprisoned and killed.

Wherever medical, trade, business, media, and political interests of mafia prevail, there is certainly neither a cure and freedom possible nor justice and peace.

… the root of our gun problem isn’t the weapon itself but the human beings behind them. After all, it’s a person who pulls the trigger. If you think this isn’t relevant, it may be worth noting that one of the Columbine, Colorado, shooters, Eric Harris, had Luvox (a Prozac-like, psychotropic medicine) in his bloodstream. Likewise, Stephen Paddock, the man who slaughtered fifty-eight people in the Las Vegas shooting—the worst in modern American history—had antianxiety medication in his system and had previously been prescribed diazepam. Meanwhile, Parkland, Florida, shooter, Nikolas Cruz, had been on psychotropic drugs before he embarked on his killing spree as well. These are facts. Yet we still allow mind-altering medication to be advertised on television, even though their side effects produce all sorts of problems, such as suicidal tendencies, anxiety, and insomnia. I’m no expert on prescription medicine or mental health, but perhaps focusing on these elements could be a sane place for the debate to go. After all, it maintains our Second Amendment freedoms without ignoring some pivotal factors.

Why is owning equity in a business important to becoming rich? It’s ownership versus wage work. If you are paid for renting out your time, even lawyers and doctors, you can make some money, but you’re not going to make the money that gives you financial freedom. You’re not going to have passive income where a business is earning for you while you are on vacation. [10] This is probably one of the most important points. People seem to think you can create wealth—make money through work. It’s probably not going to work. There are many reasons for that. Without ownership, your inputs are very closely tied to your outputs. In almost any salaried job, even one paying a lot per hour like a lawyer or a doctor, you’re still putting in the hours, and every hour you get paid. Without ownership, when you’re sleeping, you’re not earning. When you’re retired, you’re not earning. When you’re on vacation, you’re not earning. And you can’t earn nonlinearly. If you look at even doctors who get rich (like really rich), it’s because they open a business. They open a private practice. The private practice builds a brand, and the brand attracts people. Or they build some kind of a medical device, a procedure, or a process with an intellectual property. Essentially, you’re working for somebody else, and that person is taking on the risk and has the accountability, the intellectual property, and the brand. They’re not going to pay you enough. They’re going to pay you the bare minimum they have to, to get you to do their job. That can be a high bare minimum, but it’s still not going to be true wealth where you’re retired but still earning. [78] Owning equity in a company basically means you own the upside. When you own debt, you own guaranteed revenue streams and you own the downside. You want to own equity. If you don’t own equity in a business, your odds of making money are very slim. You have to work up to the point where you can own equity in a business. You could own equity as a small shareholder where you bought stock. You could also own it as an owner where you started the company. Ownership is really important. [10]

First, lucky people notice and act on chance opportunities in their life, creating strong social networks and holding themselves open to new experiences: I was lucky; I went to a grad school that was very open to risk taking and very open to freedom. That was at McGill back in the 1960s. I think they almost had a culture of risk taking, and my supervisor used to tell me, “Just have a go. It doesn’t matter if they reject it.” (Michael Corballis, Psychology, University of Auckland) Second, they trust their intuition: I’m a big fan of following serendipitous encounters: you leave no stone unturned and follow all kinds of paths even if you don’t really expect much there. Some of them of course don’t pan out well, but occasionally, you really get rewarded. (Ann Blair, History, Harvard University) Third, they persevere in the face of criticism and rejection: When I first started getting published in medicine, I was accused of being fluffy, Mickey Mouse. All kinds of awful criticisms were made of my work and my writing—“This isn’t medical,” “You can’t publish this kind of thing as medical research.” The more I received that criticism, the more absolutely determined I became to overcome it. (Gillie Bolton, freelance writer in literature and medicine, United Kingdom) And fourth, they transform bad luck into good by seeing the positive side of unlucky events: I absolutely subscribe to the notion that any feedback is a blessing. I don’t actually care how negative the feedback is; I just keep thinking, “Gosh, this could only strengthen my paper for the next place I’m going to send it to.” (Shanthi Ameratunga, Population Health, University of Auckland)

I'm increasingly convinced that nearly all recovery symptoms are the result of self-induced fears and anxieties, correctable blood sugar issues, caffeine overdose, or the need for a medication adjustment or treatment of a hidden condition that appears after ending use of one or more of the thousands of chemicals present in tobacco.

Every American should be able to expect certain standards, freedoms, benefits, and opportunities form a twenty-first-century health system. If they are willing to participate and be responsible, they will gain: •Improved health; •Longer lives with a much better quality of life; •A more convenient, understandable and personalized experience -- all at a lower cost; •Access to the best course of treatment for their particular illness and their unique characteristics; •A system that fosters and encourages innovation, competition, and better outcomes for patients; •A system that truly values the impact that medical innovation has on patients and their caregivers as well as on society as a whole; •A government that facilitates and accelerates extraordinary opportunities to improve health and health care; •Continuous but unobtrusive 24/7 monitoring of their general health, chronic conditions, and acute health problems; •Access to the most modern medical knowledge and breakthroughs, including the most advanced technologies, therapies and drugs, unimpeded by government-imposed price controls or rationing; •The chance to increase their personal knowledge by learning from a transparent system of information about their diagnosis, costs and alternative solutions; •A continuously improving, competitive, patient-focused medical world in which new therapies, new technologies, and new drugs are introduced as rapidly and safely as possible -- and not a day later; •Greater price and market competition, innovation and smarter health care spending; •A system of financing that includes insurance, government, charities, and self-funding that ensures access to health and health care for every American at the lowest possible cost without allowing financing and short-term budgetary considerations to distort and weaken the delivery of care; •Genuine insurance to facilitate access to dramatically better care, rather than the current system, which is myopically focused on monthly or annual payments; •A health system in which third parties and government bureaucrats do not impede the best course of treatment that doctors and their patients decide on; •A health system in which seniors, veterans, or others under government health programs receive the same quality of care as their children in private markt systems. Big reforms are required to transform today’s expensive, obsolete health bureaucracy into a system that conforms to these principles.

...people don't need the illusory freedom of free-market choice (aka, the freedom to die when your medical bill exceeds your paycheck), nor the farcical freedom of an authoritarian police state; they need the ability to meaningfully choose between a lot of different routes of happiness. If this isn't what's happening, then you're not creating a socialist state, you're building an abominable perversion of socialism's ideals.

Most folks are doing the very best they can, and all they desire is to be cared for—especially at home. But many people don’t realize what they’re seeking, so they falsely perceive that more wealth, control of others, or the transient pleasures of addictive behaviors will make them feel happy and fulfilled. And often, money, fame, and career success—or the use of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, or prescription medications— do bring the illusion of acceptance, freedom, and affection. Only when these individuals peel away the motivations that leave them participating in destructive behaviors do they identify their real needs.

Eggs and Nightshades You may improve your results by restricting eggs and nightshades, too. Egg whites contain proteins that can indirectly increase immune activity—a contributing factor in immune-mediated diseases. Nightshades are a group of plants that contain compounds that promote gut irritability, inflammation, joint pain and/or stiffness in sensitive individuals. Nightshades include potatoes (all varieties except sweet potatoes or yams), tomatoes, all sweet and hot peppers, eggplant, tomatillos, tamarios, pepinos, and spices like cayenne, chili powder, curry powder, paprika, pimento, and red pepper flakes. These two groups are the most commonly problematic in those with autoimmune conditions, chronic pain, and other immune-mediated medical conditions, so consider leaving these off your Whole30 if this is your context.

Chekhov’s devotion to his work, be it his writing or medical practice, and his ability to cultivate the habits needed to excel, was ultimately what gave him the freedom to rise above his social situation. Spending more time creating and producing, as Chekhov did, will greatly strengthen our sense of self and diminish the feelings of helplessness that keep people locked in bad situations. Furthermore, focusing on some form of intrinsically rewarding work, and becoming good at it, will open up new opportunities that may bring us into contact with people who better share our values.

The answer to the problem must not lie in sleeping pills and suicides that look like accidents, or in jail sentences, but rather in life and the freedom to live it. Yes, in considering the possibilities of removing and transplanting, perhaps science is reaching beyond the acceptance of current medical practice, but does that justify refusing to do it? Where would the world be without the Pasteurs and Ehrlichs to reach out and do the impossible?

People who live at subsistence level want first things to be put first. They are not particularly interested in freedom of religion, freedom of the press, free enterprise as we understand it, or the secret ballot. Their needs are more basic: land, tools, fertilizers, something better than rags for their children, houses to replace their shacks, freedom from police oppression, medical attention, primary schools. Those who have known only poverty have begun to wonder why they should continue to wait passively for improvements. They see–and not always through Red-tinted glasses–examples of peoples who have changed the structure of their societies, and they ask, “What have we to lose?” When a great many people begin to ask themselves this question, a revolutionary guerrilla situation is incipient.

And isn’t this really what it’s all about? Control. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, many of us persist in believing that more choice equals more freedom. Making choices gives us the illusion that we are in control. For instance, some Americans keep guns “for protection” despite the fact that it makes death by a firearm in one’s residence more rather than less likely. Gun ownership gives us the (false) sense that we are in control over our safety. Or consider football. National Football League head coaches (before it was made illegal) often called timeout right before an opposing team lined up for a game-winning try — despite the fact that doing so made the second field goal attempt more rather than less likely to succeed. It also gave them a (false) sense of control. And even in the face of clear evidence that a medical intervention would make a particular sickness worse rather than better, we often go ahead with the treatment nonetheless, rather than do nothing and let the body heal itself. “Doing something” helps convince us that we have some control in a vulnerable and difficult situation. This

10. What realities are captured in the story of Lou Sanders and his daughter, Shelley, regarding home care for an aging and increasingly frail parent? What conflicts did Shelley face between her intentions and the practical needs of the family and herself? What does the book illustrate about the universal nature of this struggle in families around the globe? 11. A key concept that emerges from the author’s interviews is “home.” Much more than just the place where you go to bed at night, home evokes a set of values and freedoms for many as they face old age. As you consider the life you want lead in old age, what does home mean to you? 12. Reading about Bill Thomas’s Eden Alternative in Chapter 5, what came to mind when he outlined the Three Plagues of nursing home existence: boredom, loneliness, and helplessness? What do you think matters most when you envision eldercare? 13. What can be learned from the medical treatment choices that were made in the final days of Sara Monopoli’s life? 14. What are your feelings about hospice care? When is the appropriate time to introduce hospice in the treatment of those with life-threatening illness?

It was official, this learning disability, because of a particularly brilliant plan that was hatched at the beginning of the year, when her new plump roommate, who was on several medications for her truly severe ADHD problems, let slip how many legally mandated accommodations she was entitled to, including someone to take notes for her, extra time for quizzes and tests, extended deadlines, excused absences, and so on. In other words, complete freedom from the scrutiny of her professors that—even better!—was legally binding under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

For instance, in 1990, the FDA raided the offices of Dr. Jonathan Wright, a fully qualified physician with an M.D. from the University of Michigan Medical School, terrorized the staff with drawn guns, and seized all the vitamins and herbs they could find. They never did file criminal charges against Dr. Wright for the heresy of giving his patients cheap medicines instead of expensive ones*, but this raid was only one of hundreds of similar Gestapo-style operations, creating what libertarians call “a chilling effect” on scientific freedom.

Abolitionist knowledge reconceptualizes notions like “crime” or “innocence” (what gets to be defined as crime, and who gets defined as criminal); disability or madness (as an identity and politics, not only a medical diagnosis) and rehabilitation (which is seen as a form of assimilation and normalization, not just as benign “treatment”); ideas of punishment (transformative justice vs. revenge or retribution); notions of freedom and equality (whether we can feel free and safe without locking others away); and, on the other hand, concepts of danger and protection (Whom do we protect by segregating people behind bars in psychiatric hospitals and prisons? Is it for “their own good”?).

What American Healthcare Can Learn from Italy: Three Lessons It’s easy. First, learn to live like Italians. Eat their famous Mediterranean diet, drink alcohol regularly but in moderation, use feet instead of cars, stop packing pistols and dropping drugs. Second, flatten out the class structure. Shrink the gap between high and low incomes, raise pensions and minimum wages to subsistence level, fix the tax structure to favor the ninety-nine percent. And why not redistribute lifestyle too? Give working stiffs the same freedom to have kids (maternity leave), convalesce (sick leave), and relax (proper vacations) as the rich. Finally, give everybody access to health care. Not just insurance, but actual doctors, medications, and hospitals. As I write, the future of the Affordable Care Act is uncertain, but surely the country will not fall into the abyss that came before. Once they’ve had a taste of what it’s like not to be one heart attack away from bankruptcy, Americans won’t turn back the clock. Even what is lately being called Medicare for All, considered to be on the fringe left a decade ago and slammed as “socialized medicine,” is now supported by a majority of Americans, according to some polls. In practice, there’s little hope for Italian lessons one and two—the United States is making only baby steps toward improving its lifestyle, and its income inequality is worse every year. But the third lesson is more feasible. Like Italy, we can provide universal access to treatment and medications with minimal point-of-service payments and with prices kept down by government negotiation. Financial arrangements could be single-payer like Medicare or use private insurance companies as intermediaries like Switzerland, without copying the full Italian model of doctors on government salaries. Despite the death by a thousand cuts currently being inflicted on the Affordable Care Act, I am convinced that Americans will no longer stand for leaving vast numbers of the population uninsured, or denying medical coverage to people whose only sin is to be sick. The health care genie can’t be put back in the bottle.

in believing that anxiety disorders typically arise from failed efforts to resolve basic existential dilemmas, Dr. W. is, as we will see, running against the grain of modern psychopharmacology (which proffers the evidence of sixty years of drug studies to argue that anxiety and depression are based on “chemical imbalances”), neuroscience (whose emergence has demonstrated not only the brain activity associated with various emotional states but also, in some cases, the specific structural abnormalities associated with mental illness), and temperament studies and molecular genetics (which suggest, rather convincingly, a powerful role for heredity in the determination of one’s baseline level of anxiety and susceptibility to psychiatric illness). Dr. W. doesn’t dispute the findings from any of those modes of inquiry. He believes medication can be an effective treatment for the symptoms of anxiety. But his view, based on thirty years of clinical work with hundreds of anxious patients, is that at the root of almost all clinical anxiety is some kind of existential crisis about what he calls the “ontological givens”—that we will grow old, that we will die, that we will lose people we love, that we will likely endure identity-shaking professional failures and personal humiliations, that we must struggle to find meaning and purpose in our lives, and that we must make trade-offs between personal freedom and emotional security and between our desires and the constraints of our relationships and our communities. In this view, our phobias of rats or snakes or cheese or honey (yes, honey; the actor Richard Burton could not bear to be in a room with honey, even if it was sealed in a jar, even if the jar was closed in a drawer) are displacements of our deeper existential concerns projected onto outward things. Early

The historical record also shows that attitudes toward homosexuality have little to do with whether people believe it occurs in animals or not, and consequently, in its "naturalness". True, throughout much of recorded history, the charge of "unnaturalness" - including the claim that homosexuality did not occur in animals - was used to justify every imaginable form of sanction, control, and repression against homosexuality. But many other interpretations of "naturalness" were also prevalent at various times. Indeed, the very fact that homosexuality was thought to be "unnatural" - that is, not found in nature - was sometimes used to justify its *superiority* to heterosexuality. In ancient Greece, for example, same-sex love was thought to be purer than opposite-sex love because it did not involve procreation or "animal-like" passions. On the other hand, homosexuality was sometimes condemned precisely because it was considered *closer* to "nature", reflecting the base, uncontrolled sexual instincts of the animal world. The Nazis used this reasoning (in part) to target homosexuals and other "subhumans" for the concentration camps (where homosexual men subjected to medical experiments were referred to as test animals), while sexual relations between women were disparaginly characterized as "animal love" in late eighteenth-century New England . The irrationality of such beliefs is highlighted in cases where charges of "unnaturalness" were combined, paradoxically, with accusations of animalistic behavior. Some early Latin texts, for instance, simultaneously condemned homosexuals for exhibiting behavior unknown in animals while also denouncing them for imitating particular species (such as the hyena or hare) that were believed to indulge in homosexuality. In our own time, the fact that a given characteristic of a minority human population is biologically determined has little to do with whether that population should be - or is - discriminated against. Racial minorities, for example, can claim a biological basis for their difference, yet this has done little to eliminate racial prejudice. Religious groups, on the other hand, can claim no such biological prerogative, and yet this does not invalidate the entitlement of such groups to freedom from discrimination. It should be clear, then, that whether homosexuality is biologically determined or not - none of these things guarantee the acceptance or rejection of homosexuality or in itself renders homosexuality "valid" or "illegitimate".

The reality, when the sexy advertisements have been stripped away, is that the actual product is ethanol.122 It is a horrible-tasting, addictive poison. So we sweeten it with sugar and flavoring or process it to make it more palatable. The product’s product is inebriation, a gradual deadening of your senses until you become completely intoxicated. And the side effects that are never disclosed are many. Think about ads for new medications, like Viagra or blood pressure medication. They are legally required to disclose all the statistically relevant side effects. Alcohol has the same cancer-causing effects as asbestos,123 and just three drinks per week can increase a woman’s chance of developing breast cancer by 15%,124 yet there are no labeling requirements whatsoever. Yet compared to other drugs (illegal, legal, and prescription), alcohol bears the highest harm rating.125

I believe that for all its many flaws, the United States remains, in the phrase that is attributed to Ronald Reagan but actually dates back to John Wintrop four centuries ago, ‘a city upon a hill.’ I believe we will take back our freedoms from the would-be authoritarians who spent 2020 trying to cage us in our homes, 2021 chipping away at our medical autonomy, and both years censoring our freedom to speak and debate. All for our own good, of course. I believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the rule of law. I believe they, and we, are more powerful than this crummy little virus. I believe truth will prevail. I have to. We all have to The alternative is impossible to imagine.

Improving your sleep, energy levels, mood, attention span, body composition, motivation, self-confidence, self-efficacy, and quality of life starts by changing the food you put on your plate. Yes, the Whole30 eliminates cravings, corrects hormonal imbalances, fixes digestive issues, improves medical conditions, and strengthens the immune system.

The Bill of Rights is not, as de Tocqueville said, an endlessly expanding list of rights: the ‘right’ to education, the ‘right’ to medical care, the ‘right’ to food and housing. That’s not freedom; that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights; those are the rations of slavery

Freedom is not freedom if you work full time and live in poverty. Freedom is not freedom if a single medical crisis can drive you to bankruptcy. It is not freedom if child care is too expensive for you to hold a job, or if you are born poor and at every turn are blocked in your rise: by underfunded schools, overpriced colleges, and usurious college loans.

It is wholly justified to label vaccine passports as draconian, coercive, and one of the most dangerous government interventions in human history; an intervention that undermined voluntary consent to medical procedures and threatened the core principles of what it means to be an autonomous human being.

bullets being physically fired at one another, but more people have died from the COVID-19 jab than died in the Vietnam War. Make no mistake about it, this is, indeed, a war.

Early on in the pandemic, I asked a renowned medical-freedom activist how he stayed strong in his mission as his name was besmirched and he faced career attacks and social ostracism. He replied with Ephesians 6:12: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

The definition of art is problematic, but, simplistically, it is the application of skills to the creation of aesthetic values. Science can be defined as the methodical pursuit of knowledge about the phenomena of the physical world on the basis of unbiased observation and systematic experimentation. Roughly speaking, the objects of art and science are beauty and truth, respectively. Yoga is an art because it evidently does not have the mathematical exactitude of the natural sciences. The British-American mathematician-philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once remarked: “Art flourishes when there is a sense of adventure, a sense of nothing having been done before, of complete freedom to experiment; but when caution comes in you get repetition, and repetition is the death of art.”2 These comments apply to Yoga quite well. It is an incredible adventure of the spirit, which seeks to create an altogether new destiny. Each time the practitioner applies the wisdom of Yoga to life’s many situations, he or she must engage the process as if it were the first time. Thus Yoga is continuous self-application but not merely repetition. The Sanskrit term abhyāsa, which literally means “repetition,” has the primary meaning of “practice” in the context of Yoga, and practice calls for what the Zen masters call “beginner’s mind.” Any efforts to squeeze Yoga into the much-celebrated scientific method is doomed to failure, which is not to say that Yoga cannot or should not be studied rigorously from a scientific perspective. In fact, since the 1920s various research organizations and individual researchers have conducted such research, especially medical investigations, with varying degrees of success, and their findings have definitely been helpful in appraising Yoga’s effectiveness.3 Yet, Yoga is not completely subjective and inexact either. It proceeds according to careful rules established over a long period of (repeatable) personal experimentation.

He could sense a fierce tautness in the cheap air of the tunnel, almost like entering a medical ward where disease lingers in the corners and no one has ever opened a window to bring in fresh air.

The question is: Why, in a time of unprecedented wealth, freedom, technological progress, and medical advancement, do we appear to be unhappier and in more pain than ever? The

The question is: Why, in a time of unprecedented wealth, freedom, technological progress, and medical advancement, do we appear to be unhappier and in more pain than ever? The reason we’re all so miserable may be because we’re working so hard to avoid being miserable.

You want to tell them that their bodies will die, but they won’t. That it is their bodies, not their spirits, that are finite, mortal. You want to tell them that you have had patients who have had near-death experiences, who have hovered above their bodies as medical teams performed CPR and experienced the purest joy and freedom they have ever known.

My contribution is that if the pharmaceutical companies with the help of our federal government, legislative and judicial branches has “locked up”, "bound", placed under martial law, our rights and freedoms to not be experimented on, to suffer treatment of unsafe medical practices and then also limit the freedom for independent thinkers and scientific research into examining the events around health disease, vaccines and medicine, then how are we going to become unbound, freed from the medically tyrant? Is it already too late?

My secret pet peeve is my frustration first for all those that fought for our freedom to come back and receive full health insurance but no actual health care and second that unlike the old days pre Obama care when I bought all of Savvy Turtle employees full medical, dental and eye care and handed it to them as a bonus each month to include paying for mine where I could go get what I need and skip the nothing burger red tape of government to post Obama care where all that is nonexistent

Should I consider extending my Whole30 to 45 or 60 days? We talk about this in the Reintroduction section, but if you’ve got a chronic medical condition, an autoimmune disease, or a long history of unhealthy food habits or addictions, you may want to plan on being on the program longer than 30 days. While the basic program is long enough to steer you in the right direction and bring you some of the results you’re hoping to see, you can’t expect to fully reverse years (or decades!) of medical symptoms or food-related habits in just a month. Autoimmune conditions are especially stubborn, often requiring six months or more of dietary and lifestyle intervention to bring significant healing and resolution of symptoms. If you feel like you can commit to a Whole45, 60, or 90 right out of the gate, go for it!

A “Paleo Autoimmune Protocol” (Paleo AIP) is somewhere between a Whole30 and a medical elimination plan. It asks that you eliminate some Whole30 foods, plus many others that are commonly problematic for those with autoimmune conditions.

Before having a baby, I’d relished the freedom of a non-office job. But now I longed to get dressed every day and be in the company of verbal grownups. It was during this perfect storm of isolation and plummeting estrogen that I started to wonder if I’d made a mistake by leaving medical school.

Let us now remind ourselves that the artist is also a man, and as a man responsible for all that his will consents to; "in order that a man may make right use of his art, he needs to have a virtue which will rectify his appetite." The man is responsible directly, as a murderer for example by intent if he intends to manufacture adulterated food, or drugs in excess of medical requirement; responsible as a promoter of loose living if he exhibits a pornographic picture, (by which we mean of course something essentially salacious, preserving the distinction of “obscene” from “erotic”); responsible spiritually if he is a sentimentalist or pseudo-mystic. It is a mistake to suppose that in former ages the artist’s “freedom” could have been arbitrarily denied by an external agency; it is much rather a plain and unalterable fact that the artist as such is not a free man. As artist he is morally irresponsible, indeed; but who can assert that he is an artist and not also a man? The artist can be separated from the man in logic and for purposes of understanding; but actually, the artist can only be divorced from his humanity by what is called a disintegration of personality. The doctrine of art for art's sake implies precisely such a sacrifice of humanity to art, of the whole to the part. It is significant that at the same time that individualistic tendencies are recognizable in the sphere of culture, in the other sphere of business and in the interest of profit most men are denied the opportunity of artistic operation altogether, or can function as responsible artists only in hours of leisure when they can pursue a “hobby” or play games. What shall it profit a man to be politically free if he must be either the slave of “art,” or slave of “business”?

ENTERED 2021 FEELING a general sense of disenchantment. I was in my second year at Birzeit University, studying law, but the Covid-19 pandemic meant all my classes were online. Even though I was already living at home with my family in Nabi Saleh, a ten-minute drive from Birzeit, I missed the daily buzz and excitement of campus life. I yearned to be learning in an actual classroom, instead of my bedroom. But there was no telling when things would return to normal. At the same time, Israel was receiving global praise for leading the world in vaccinating its population, including settlers like the ones living across the road from our village. But not us. Despite its international obligations as an occupying power, Israel did not initially provide vaccines to the millions of Palestinians living under its occupation, a grotesque display of medical apartheid, and something that only added to my mounting frustration.

The fact that we were imprisoned in Israel, rather than in the occupied territories in which we lived and had been arrested, was a blatant violation of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. That same article states that the occupying power is obligated to provide adequate medical care and special protection for women and child prisoners, which was not the case.

I base all my counseling on the premise that each of us has these two sides: the essential self and the social self. The essential self contains several sophisticated compasses that continuously point toward your North Star. The social self is the set of skills that actually carry you toward this goal. Your essential self wants passionately to become a doctor; the social self struggles through organic chemistry and applies to medical school. Your essential self yearns for the freedom of nature; your social self buys the right backpacking equipment. Your essential self falls in love; your social self watches to make sure the feeling is reciprocal before allowing you to stand underneath your beloved’s window singing serenades.

Israel’s response to these demonstrations was deadly. Each week, Israeli snipers opened fire on the protesters, ultimately killing hundreds and wounding thousands over the course of the year-long protests. The scenes of bloodied protesters, journalists, and medics were shocking and heart-wrenching. In our classes, we had learned that, according to the Fourth Geneva Convention, it was illegal for Israel to target unarmed civilians like this, and that, in so doing, it may have been committing a war crime.

Arguably, the current ascendancy of medical technology is just such a manifestation of social idealism. War is peace: ignorance is strength: freedom is slavery – and now we have the latest example Orwellian doublespeak… Health is disease.

If there is one thing you can give your children, give them the freedom to dream. If there is one thing that you can help your children with, help them love themselves. If there is one thing you can teach your children, teach them how to meditate.

Harry Truman proposed a national healthcare system twice, once in 1945 and again as part of his Fair Deal package in 1949, but his appeal for public support was no match for the well-financed PR efforts of the American Medical Association and other industry lobbyists. Opponents didn’t just kill Truman’s effort. They convinced a large swath of the public that “socialized medicine” would lead to rationing, the loss of your family doctor, and the freedoms Americans hold so dear.

Researchers interviewed nearly 150 thousand people in 26 countries to determine the prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder to find, had excessive and uncontrollable worry adversely affected their life. They found that richer countries had higher rates of anxiety than poor ones. The authors wrote, "The disorder is significantly more prevalent and impairing in high income countries than in low or middle income countries." The number of new cases of depression world-wide increased 50% between 1990 and 2017. The highest increases in new cases were seen in countries with the highest sociodemographic index income, especially North America. Physical pain too is increasing. Over the course of my career, I have seen more patients, including otherwise healthy young people presenting with full-bodied pain despite the absence of any identifiable disease or tissue injury. The numbers and types of unexplained physical pain syndromes have grown. Complex regional pain syndrome, fibromyalgia... [], and so on. When researchers ask the following question to people in 30 countries around the world. "During the past four weeks, how often have you had bodily aches or pains"...[]. They found that Americans reported more pain than any other country. 34% of Americans said they experienced pain often or very often, compared to 19% of people living in China, 18% of people living in Japan, 13% of people living in Switzerland, and 11% of people living in South Africa. The question is, "Why in an unprecedented time of wealth, freedom, technological progress, and medical advancement, do we appear to be unhappier and in more pain than ever?'. The reason we're all so miserable may be because we're working so hard to avoid being miserable.