I’m stepping away today. Not feeling well, ear infections (due to wearing two hearing aids) are a chronic problem for me and I have a raging one today, so I’ll just be cranky. Off to the clinic then.
[update: Please guys, no more unsolicited suggestions for cures and treatments for Anthony. He keeps himself well-informed. I’m just asking nicely. ~ ctm]
Anything science, technology, weather and climate related within the policy limits of WUWT can be discussed below.
Don’t make me come back here.
So say that hypothetically the world is warming primarily due to human CO2 emissions and we are on track for a five degree Celsius rise, maybe ten degrees past this century. Also, hypothetically we have ample evidence to show that a mass extinction would occur (bad stuff). What would be the best policy or actions to reduce CO2 emissions in that case?
Like my mother, the problem with ear infections has to do with the tight occluding ear mold required with high power amplification. If amplified sound leaks out around the ear mold, it creates feedback squeal. However, with a tight fitting occluding ear mold, the canal and middle ear space (if there are holes in the ear drum or the ear drum itself is missing) become a chronic breeding ground for bacteria. And bacteria in this space is VERY hard to erradicate. There are many crevices for tough little bacterium colonies to survive the onslaught of washes and antibiotics.
With implants (which are much better than the old conductive hearing aids that transfered sound via vibrations on the bony prominence behind the ear), there are no occluding ear molds and resulting chronic ear infections to contend with. That does not mean a person will never get another ear infection. Compromised ear canal and middle ear space can still become infected even if occluding ear molds are not used. It just won’t happen as often.
I think implants are the way to go. Ear infections can become life threatening so reducing them is key. One way to do that is to use amplification that does not require occluding ear molds (and yes I know Anthony knows all this – I am not speaking to him but to others who are posting treatment suggestions).
Too bad duct tape wouldn’t work. Much cheaper than implants.
Stephen Richards. Here is an excellent interview with Australian Dr. Barry Marshall.
Q. With so much physical evidence of a real condition, why were ulcers routinely classified as psychosomatic?
A. Eventually doctors realized they could see the ulcers with X-ray machines, but, of course, those machines were in big cites like New York and London—so doctors in those cities started identifying ulcers in urban businessmen who probably smoked a lot of cigarettes and had a high-pressure lifestyle. Later, scientists induced ulcers in rats by putting them in straitjackets and dropping them in ice water. Then they found they could protect the rats from these stress-based ulcers by giving them antacids. They made the connection between ulcers, stress, and acid without any proper double-blind studies, but it fit in with what everybody thought.
Q. How did you come to challenge this prevailing theory?
Q. I was in the third year of my internal medicine training, in 1981, and I had to take on a project. Robin Warren, the hospital pathologist, said he had been seeing these bacteria on biopsies of ulcer and stomach cancer patients for two years, and they were all identical.
Complete interview here: http://discovermagazine.com/2010/mar/07-dr-drank-broth-gave-ulcer-solved-medical-mystery
Wouldn’t want to be a rat in the 1950s.
More on Dr. Barry Marshall…
Q. How did you get the word out about your discovery?
A. I presented that work at the annual meeting of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in Perth. That was my first experience of people being totally skeptical. To gastroenterologists, the concept of a germ causing ulcers was like saying that the Earth is flat. After that I realized my paper was going to have difficulty being accepted. You think, “It’s science; it’s got to be accepted.” But it’s not an absolute given. The idea was too weird.
Q. Then you and Robin Warren wrote letters to The Lancet.
A. Robin’s letter described the bacteria and the fact that they were quite common in people. My letter described the history of these bacteria over the past 100 years. We both knew that we were standing at the edge of a fantastic discovery. At the bottom of my letter I said the bacteria were candidates for the cause of ulcers and stomach cancer.
Q. That letter must have provoked an uproar.
A. It didn’t. In fact, our letters were so weird that they almost didn’t get published. By then I was working at a hospital in Fremantle, biopsying every patient who came through the door. I was getting all these patients and couldn’t keep tabs on them, so I tapped all the drug companies to request research funding for a computer. They all wrote back saying how difficult times were and they didn’t have any research money. But they were making a billion dollars a year for the antacid drug Zantac and another billion for Tagamet. You could make a patient feel better by removing the acid. Treated, most patients didn’t die from their ulcer and didn’t need surgery, so it was worth $100 a month per patient, a hell of a lot of money in those days. In America in the 1980s, 2 to 4 percent of the population had Tagamet tablets in their pocket. There was no incentive to find a cure.
A final Dr. Barry Marshall comment…
Q. Even now, though, isn’t it hard for new ideas to be heard when medical journals are gatekeepers of the status quo?
A. It’s true, but they have their ears pricked up now because every time a paper comes to them, they say: “Hang on a minute, I had better make sure that this is not a Barry Marshall paper. I don’t want to have my name on that rejection letter he shows in his lectures.” Now they might say, “It’s so off-the-wall….Is it true?”
The time is approaching for the AGW gatekeepers to prick up their ears…
Kelvin Vaughan says:
September 18, 2011 at 9:02 am
“Surely if CO2 reradiated the waves then then the spectum would not show the CO2 absoption bands?”
The re-radiation happens in all directions.
DirkH says:
September 18, 2011 at 10:53 am
The re-radiation happens in all directions.
So carbon dioxide dosen’t heat the atmosphere . It just converts unidirectional IR waves to omnidirectional. Therefor only a fraction of the original IR reaches the ground. The ground would be colder than it would be without CO2?
Sorry for the silly questions Dirk but it’s how I learn.
Anthony:
If you had NORMAL hearing. Normal ear function, and did not have and ‘invasive irritant’ in the ear canal, standard “cures” for earaches, mild infections, etc. might work. Either “standard science”, and even some of the homeopathic methods. (I used to be subject to ear infections as a child, and hot (120 F) oil was the best thing..)
HOWEVER, this is a completely NON-natural situation. And in many ways can be unique to YOU. Thus the best person to figure things out, IS you! (Along with all the medical help you can get.)
You have my thoughts and prayers for keeping things “under control”. And the knowledge that in the long run, that’s probably the best thing to work for.
Max
Allan J. Short:
WUWT appreciates your desire to comment, but I’d like to advise you that using your full e-mail address fir a screen name is NOT a good idea. Where it asks for a name, you can enter your real name or a “handle” like “shorty” or “AJS” – here at WUWT we tend to appreciate those who use their real names in commenting but recognize that some people have good and valid reasons to remain anonymous. We hold those people to a fairly high standard of civility and integrity. WUWT will not give out your e-mail address and we do not recommend that you post it for all the world to see and respond to.
Repost your comment.
REP -mod
Trying to figure out if this is the correct was to post. Do you think the ethical oil item would be of interest.
Polar01
{REPLY: Somewhat better. Now, you need to paste the link into your comment so that we know what you are referring to. -REP, mod]
I think that this link to an item in the Toronto Sunday Sun, it seems that the Saudis are a little upset about an ad for ethical oil (it is not their oil).
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/2011/09/18/18704136.html
thanks to the mod for all the help
DR (September 17, 2011 at 3:58 pm) wrote:
Rosemary Jacobs did not get argyria from colloidal silver, it was caused from silver salts; two totally different forms of silver solution. …
This is a fascinating statement, because it directly contradicts Rosemary’s own words (see the first entry under the title FAQS; citations can be found on the CITATIONS page; bold in the original):
What exactly was in the nose drops that you took? What was the brand name? Did they contain silver salts, nitrates, protein binders or were they small particles of silver suspended in water? How much did you take?
As I explain on my webpage, I do not know the answers to these questions. All I know is that they contained silver. However, my case is just one of many. There are over 300 cases of argyria reported in the medical literature and thousands more are likely to have gone unreported.(1) That lit. contains a whole body of material on argyria and silver drugs showing that every form of silver used, including metallic, has caused argyria. (2,3,4)
To understand the pharmacology of silver you have to read all the relevant literature. If you don’t find the answers that you are looking for there, then you have to do controlled studies to produce new data to answer your questions. Looking at any one case alone will give clues but not definitive answers.
So Rosemary doesn’t know whether her argyria was caused by colloidal silver or not — and neither does DR. She does, however, make the very firm statement that, “every form of silver used, including metallic, has caused argyria“, backed up (dare I say it?) by citations to the peer-reviewed literature — in this case, the Archives of Dermatology, the Archives of Otolaryngology, and the Journal of the American Medical Association.
There are additional articles in the peer-reviewed literature that are also quite blunt about what was causing argyria (tenth through twelfth paragraphs on the page titled Rosemary’s Story; citations can be found on the CITATIONS page; bold text was italicized in the original):
In 1935 Gaul & Staud wrote about colloidal silver in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), “The alarming increase of argyrosis leaves little doubt as to our purpose in this report. There has been an accumulation of indubitable clinical evidence which makes it imperative to present before those who prescribe, dispense or use these drugs the danger entailed therein…The obvious responsibility for this injudicious medication rests with the circularized advertisements by the various manufacturers to the physicians;” (4)
In 1940 Bryant added, “Conscientious observers in the field of otolaryngology can no longer doubt the occurrence of generalized argyria caused by intranasal silver medications,” and “A persistent indifferent attitude to this on the part of otolaryngologist might be condoned if it were possible through the use of such medication to achieve beneficial results for the patient which could not be achieved other wise, but quite the contrary is the case.”
He goes on to state that these silver preparations should be supplanted by a weak ephedrine or neosynephrin in an isotonic solution. (5) He continues, “The use of silver-containing nasal medication over even a few weeks is dangerous and accomplishes nothing that cannot be accomplished safely and more efficiently by other means.” (6)
Note that Gaul & Staud’s paper was about “argyrosis caused by colloidal silver,” which supports Rosemary’s contention that “every form of silver used, including metallic, has caused argyria.” And Bryant wrote about “generalized argyria caused by intranasal silver medications,” foreshadowing Rosemary’s fate.
If the peer-reviewed literature is unsatisfying (and in this venue, it may well be), one could always dabble in a bit of chemistry. Silver is a univalent metal, willing to share a single electron with a suitor. If we think about colloidal silver, it’s small clumps of silver atoms. The surface atoms may be oxidized. Beneath the surface layer, it should primarily be pure silver.
If colloidal silver is ingested, it goes into the stomach, which contains hydrochloric acid (HCl). When a molecule of silver oxide (Ag2O) encounters two hydrochloric acid molecules (2 x HCl), the result will be 2 x AgCl + H2O. Well, whaddaya know!?! The colloidal silver has been turned into a silver salt. When the HCl reaches the pure silver, the reaction evolves hydrogen, but is otherwise the same: 2 x Ag + 2 x HCl –> 2 x AgCl + H2. Shazzam! Once again, we have colloidal silver turning into a silver salt.
Oh, you say you’re not ingesting it, you’re spraying it into your nose? Most of the colloidal silver particles will be trapped by the mucus in the nose. Nearly all of the mucus that your body generates winds up in the stomach, where it’s “processed” by the HCl to kill the bacteria it has immobilized. But the acid can’t kill the colloidal silver, which winds up being converted into silver salts, instead.
When it comes to attracting strong adherents, colloidal silver is clearly on a par with Anthropogenic Global Warming/Cooling/Whatevering (AGW/C/W). Fortunately, it’s not as dangerous as AGW/C/W, because there isn’t (at least at this point) anyone insisting it be put into the water supply so everyone can reap the alleged benefits.
DR also wrote:
This is not directed at you, but it is just too hilarious listening to all the drug pushers warning about the dangers of colloidal silver when there are documented hundreds of thousands of cases of deaths and injury caused directly from the use of FDA approved drugs.
This is an excellent example of the logical fallacy known as Changing the Subject. I can’t speak for others, but I haven’t said anything about the safety of silver (colloidal or otherwise). Nor are the “thousands of cases of deaths and injury caused directly from the use of FDA approved drugs” relevant to a discussion of whether ingestion of silver (colloidal or otherwise) has the potential to turn the user’s skin gray.
Understand that it’s no skin off my nose if someone ingests colloidal silver. What happens, happens to the one who ingests it. However, I’ve run across enough people who don’t understand that ingesting silver may turn them gray that I generally offer a word of caution. Similarly, when I encounter a smoker who’s ambivalent about smoking, I tell him about my father, who wound up chained to an oxygen tank for most of the last decade of his life.
I don’t want to be tied down by an oxygen cannula, nor do I want to turn gray. I’m not aware of many who do. If you’re on the path to either of those destinations, won’t you at least consider turning back, while there’s still time?
Richard M,
The following will probably answer your question for you …
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html
Are we going to have a party when the “Blog stats” view counter gets to 100 million?
REPLY: Well maybe, the question is which will occur first: My five year anniversary in November or 100 million views? I think we probably won’t make 100 million by November, but readers can always help by spreading the word with links at other websites. – Anthony
Steve from Rockwood says:
September 18, 2011 at 9:51 am
Many thanks Steve. I saw a program on him many years ago before I had internet. I remembered vividly his pain and anger and his fight with the ‘consensus’.
Made my point loud and clear. Sadly I think AGW may never be so clear cut as Barry Marshal’s work but what a brilliant guy. He showed massive tolerance during a very difficult period in his career.
Kelvin Vaughan says:
September 18, 2011 at 1:11 pm
“So carbon dioxide dosen’t heat the atmosphere .”
Correct.
” It just converts unidirectional IR waves to omnidirectional. Therefor only a fraction of the original IR reaches the ground.”
Correct; about 50% exits the atmosphere downwards, about 50% upwards.
” The ground would be colder than it would be without CO2?”
I don’t think so. First of all, 95% of the greenhouse effect would exist even without CO2, as it is caused by water vapor; second, without any greenhouse effect, all the IR radiation would leave unhindered. so, I don’t dispute the existence of the Greenhouse effect on Earth, but it exists in the absence of CO2 alreadyö.
“Sorry for the silly questions Dirk but it’s how I learn.”
You’re welcome.
WUWT had a great post about it:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/05/co2-heats-the-atmosphere-a-counter-view/
http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.1950
Real Gorilla in space (not just in the room)!
Sometimes I wonder If reality is just another episode of South Park.
“Sep 20, 7:46 PM EDT
Ex-President Clinton: Green movement needs money
…
Clinton’s talk of renewable energy financing comes as Republicans are criticizing the Obama administration for awarding billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for such projects, including a $528 million loan to a now-bankrupt California solar panel maker.
Fremont, Calif.-based Solyndra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this month and laid off its 1,100 employees. It was the first renewable energy company to receive a loan guarantee under a stimulus law program to encourage green energy and was frequently touted by the Obama administration as a model.
Rising seas are a matter of life and death for small island nations, Zuma said.
“Not theoretical, not in the future, now,” he said. “And they can’t understand why we’re failing to realize that.”
…”
I guess blowing 1/2 a billion isn’t enough, we have to blow billions more, because sea level rise of roughly 1/8″ per year is going to take a few thousand years to cover up some islands. (Assuming the ice age doesn’t come first.)