Man pulled from water off Marco defies odds and lives – Wink News

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MARCO ISLAND

A Southwest Florida man, who was found virtually lifeless in the water off Marco Island, is recovering after doctors gave him little chance of survival. But he has defied the odds.

An off-duty hospital technician was one of the people who found Steven Peterson floating face down in the water near Marco Island Yacht Club a few weeks ago.

First responders pulled Petersons lifeless body out of the water, and, soon, many of the people who helped rescue Peterson realized they also knew him personally.

The call came out; I drove over the bridge and confirmed that, Yes. I can see the Jet Ski. There is no rider on it, said Collier County Deputy Susan Boylan, a family friend who responded to the scene.

While Boylan was on her way home, she responded to the call she will never forget and never expected.

They were pulling him out of the water, Boylan said. When they pulled him out of the water, he was purple.

And the person in the water was Peterson, her sons best friend of about 14 years.

Petersons friend Casey Casaday and Amy Russeto were among those who spotted him, but they were too shaken to speak to us on camera for an interview or provide comment.

Petersons best friend, CJ Muntwyler was able to share details about their friend being pulled from the water in extremely poor condition.

He said he didnt even recognize him, Muntwyler said. That was when Amy showed up and was like, Wow, thats Steven. Casey didnt know. He thought it was just some guy.

Petersons family told us he flatlined twice the day he was rescued and taken to the hospital, but, because Casaday and Russetto did CPR, it saved him.

Doctors put Peterson in an induced coma for nearly three weeks.

He had a 5-percent chance of living, Muntwyler said. And they told his father be prepared to be making arrangements for him to be pretty much mentally handicapped for the rest of his life.

Muntwyler said doctors and modern medicine didnt account for the fact that Peterson is a fighter.

His friends told us doctors hope he will participate in a study, since his ability to defy the odds he was given is being considered a medical miracle.

Petersons family told us he is in California recovering, and he hopes to be back in Southwest Florida by January.

Everyone who knows him, which is almost everybody, Muntwyler said. Hes always dancing and smiling just a good person.

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Man pulled from water off Marco defies odds and lives - Wink News

Bird Droppings: Arizona Cardinals loss to 49ers, Patrick Peterson off the field and more news from around the – Revenge of the Birds

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Happy Monday one and all.

The Arizona Cardinals are coming off their mini-bye after a tough loss to the San Francisco 49ers.

There is still some news on that as we get ready for the reunion with Bruce Arians and company coming this Sunday.

Lets take a look around the web at your Arizona Cardinals.

Out Of Bounds - Patrick PetersonLisa Matthews talks with Patrick Peterson on this weeks Out of Bounds.

Bird's Best Friend - Cole, Bo & JaxMeet OL Mason Cole's two furry friends, Bo & Jax.

Cardinals Vs. 49ersImages from Thursday Night Football at State Farm Stadium

Through The Lens: Cardinals vs. 49ersA chronological look at the Cardinals' ninth regular season game against the 49ers

Arizona Cardinals hit rough part of scheduleThe Arizona Cardinals have entered a rough stretch of games on their schedule, with only 3 remaining at home, but still some winnable contests

3 best things about Arizona Cardinals not playing SundayThe Arizona Cardinals have Sunday off after playing Thursday night, so what are fans to do with themselves with the football-free day?

Nick Bosa would've helped the Arizona Cardinals as wellWhile Kyler Murray has been outstanding, the Arizona Cardinals unfortunately missed out on adding a tremendous defensive force

Kyer Murray is Offensive Rookie of the Year favoriteKyler Murray has been a big reason the Arizona Cardinals have improved on their season record from a year ago. He can win NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year.

Kenyan Drake's Updated Fantasy Outlook After Impressive Cardinals Debut | Bleacher Report | Latest News, Videos and HighlightsKenyan Drake kicked off his Arizona Cardinals career with a bang, showing he could be a difference-maker going forward for fantasy football teams...

How 49ers' Jimmy Garoppolo torched Cardinals defense playing the runThe Arizona Cardinals tried to stop the 49ers' rushing attack Thursday night, and Jimmy Garoppolo took advantage.

Arizona still trending upward despite frustrating lossesFaced with a tough task against a good team, the Arizona Cardinals fought hard, played entertaining football, enjoyed some good moments and showed a lot of promise.

Kliff Kingsbury: Cardinals coach criticized for costly 49ers callsTwo costly decisions Kliff Kingsbury made in the Arizona Cardinals' 28-25 loss to the San Francisco 49ers were heavily scrutinized on Thursday night.

Cardinals' Kyler Murray 'super impressed' with Kenyan Drake, Kliff Kingsbury loves his 'explosiveness' - CBSSports.comCardinals' Kyler Murray 'super impressed' with Kenyan Drake, Kliff Kingsbury loves his 'explosiveness'

Richard Sherman wasn't happy with 49ers defense after winThe 49ers won on Thursday night. But Richard Sherman wasn't pleased.

GM Steve Keim both encouraged and discouraged by Cardinals playHe doesn't like the lack of wins but does like what he has seen from Kliff Kingsbury and his young players.

Questionable in-game decisions by Kliff Kingsbury havent worked outSome would argue his decisions have cost the Cardinals at least one win.

Chase Edmonds injury: Cardinals RB unlikely to play in Week 10Kliff Kingsbury says he is making progress. He might not be back before the bye week.

David Johnson injury: Cardinals RB expected to return in Week 10The Cardinals released Alfred Morris because they know Johnson would be ready to go for their next game.

David Johnsons contract protects him in 2020 ProFootballTalkWith Chase Edmonds and newcomer Kenyan Drake getting it done for the Cardinals, it's easy to wonder whether running back David Johnson has become a luxury the Arizona Cardinals can no longer afford. Unfortunately for the Cardinals, that decision for 2020 already has been made.

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Bird Droppings: Arizona Cardinals loss to 49ers, Patrick Peterson off the field and more news from around the - Revenge of the Birds

People Are Posting Their Genitals on Reddit to Get STI Diagnoses – Futurism

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Over the past year, the number of Reddit posts in which people post pictures of injuries and diseases to crowdsource medical advice has just about doubled.

That includes people with STIs, who are sharing pictures of their genitals so that the doctors and armchair specialists of Reddit can share their wisdom, CNBC reports. The rising trend, found in research published in the journal JAMA on Tuesday, is correlated with an all-time high in STD rates a damning sign that access to medical care remains poor.

Of the posts in the message board r/STD, a page on Reddit dedicated to discussion of sexual health, over half of posts were asking for help diagnosing genital ailments, according to the study.

Its good that people are finding a community that can help them with sexual health, an area of medicine that too often comes with social stigma. Its possible to remain somewhat anonymous by making a new account on Reddit known as a burner and posting a picture that doesnt reveal anything else.

This can overcome some of the embarrassment that might come with going to ask a doctor, UC San Diego physician Eric Leas, who led the study, told CNBC.

But there are already services that let people do the same thing without the risk of getting bad advice from someone on Reddit apps like STD Triage or First Derm can connect people directly to doctors, letting them share pictures and get diagnoses or advice in return.

Of course, those apps cost money and Reddit is free.

Social media was not built to deliver health care, UC San Diego scientist and study co-author Alicia Nobles told CNBC. Currently, we dont know if STDs, or other health issues, can be accurately diagnosed online, especially since peoples requests vary in the information they provide.

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Scientists Accidentally Recreate Big Bang Detonation in the Lab – Futurism

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Ask a scientist or anyone, really about the birth of the universe, and theyll probably tell you it started with the Big Bang.

What nobody knows, though, is what caused that explosion. Some suspect the Big Bang was actually a massive star going supernova, but again, no one knows what exactly causes those stars to ignite, either.

That might have just changed, though, thanks to a University of Central Florida research team that says it discovered the conditions necessary for a Big Bang explosion in their lab without actually intending to.

A team led by Kareem Ahmed, an assistant professor in UCFs Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, was testing methods for producing hypersonic jet propulsion when it discovered that a passive flame could accelerate and explode on its own.

We explore these supersonic reactions for propulsion, and as a result of that, we came across this mechanism that looked very interesting, Ahmed said in a press release. When we started to dig deeper, we realized that this is relatable to something as profound as the origin of the universe.

What his team discovered was that turbulence could cause a passive flame, like that of a candle, to self-accelerate and eventually detonate.

From there, the team created a two-inch-by-two-inch shock tube that induces the turbulence needed for a passive flame to become active essentially, the researchers found a way to create Little Bangs mimicking the big one that birthed our universe.

Were taking a simplified flame to where its reacting at five times the speed of sound, Ahmed said in the release.

Theyve detailed their work in a paper published Friday in the journal Science. Aside from potential applications in air and space travel, the researchers believe their study could improve our understanding of the Big Bang, and maybe even what if anything preceded it.

READ MORE: Scientists recreate origin of the universe in a lab [Inverse]

More on the Big Bang: New Research: There May Have Been Dark Matter Before Big Bang

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Scientists Accidentally Recreate Big Bang Detonation in the Lab - Futurism

This Scientist Wants to Gene-Hack Hybrid Humans to Survive Mars – Futurism

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DNA Upgrades

Traveling to Mars is too dangerous for humans, and will remain so unless scientists figure out how to properly shield astronauts from the onslaught of deadly cosmic radiation.

Typically, proposals to protect astronauts on the year-long round-trip journey involve better shielding on spacecraft. But Space.com reports that Weill Cornell University geneticist Chris Mason has a different idea: gene-hack humans with the DNA from tardigrades that enables the weird little creatures to survive harsh radiation.

Its an unusual and speculative idea, but also one that could illustrate the bizarre future of biotechnology and space travel.

Mason has long researching what space travel does to the human body, Space.com reports. Since tardigrades are able to survive the endless horrors of space, their genome could potentially make human cells more resilient.

But Mason admits that any human-tardigrade gene hacking is still decades away.

I dont have any plans of having engineered astronauts in the next one to two decades, Mason said, per Space.com. If we have another 20 years of pure discovery and mapping and functional validation of what we think we know, maybe by 20 years from now, Im hoping we could be at the stage where we would be able to say we can make a human that could be better surviving on Mars.

READ MORE: Can We Genetically Engineer Humans to Survive Missions to Mars? [Space.com]

More on Mars trips: Apollo Astronaut: It Would Be Stupid to Send People to Mars

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This Scientist Wants to Gene-Hack Hybrid Humans to Survive Mars - Futurism

This Startup Is Aging Red Wine on the International Space Station – Futurism

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An unusual payload launched for the International Space Station this weekend. Among the 8,200 pounds of research, crew supplies, and hardware contained in a Northrup Grumman resupply rocket, there were also twelve bottles of wine, as pointed out by TechCrunch.

Sadly, the wine isnt meant for astronaut consumption. The twelve ISS-bound bottles of an undisclosed varietal are the work of French startup Space Cargo Unlimited, which gave the mission the whimsical Latin name Vitis Vinum in Spatium Experimentia, which translates roughly to Wine Grape in Space Experiment. The project is meant to study the effects of microgravity and space radiation on the aging process of wine.

For the next twelve months, the wine will remain on the ISS, sealed in its glass bottles, while samples from the batch age simultaneously back on Earth. After the space wine returns to Earth, the researchers will analyze both samples to determine how space aging affects the fermentation process of wine,including a bit of taste testing to see how flavors may have changed.

According to Space Cargo Unlimiteds website, the mission is the first privately lead comprehensive research program on the ISS to focus on the future of agriculture for a changing Earth.

But it isnt the first time fermented beverages have left the launchpad. In fact, both beer and whisky have both made space debuts. There was once even a time when Russian cosmonauts tippled cognac on the since-decommissioned space station Mir at the request of doctors who claimed, dubiously, that it might have health benefits.

The Space Cargo project will hopefully produce insights into space fermentation, but may also represent a first tentative step toward establishing space-based commerce. Thats because of the startups business model which, as reported by Quartz, involves a system in which the research will be paid for in part by a luxury goods partnership that will deliver a customized chest full of objects flown to space to ultra-wealthy sponsors, called patrons, who back the project. The highlight of that chest will be a bottle of the wine.

Such a plan, though gimmicky, isnt entirely farfetched. In a climate where NASAs budget is facing ever-tighter restrictions, the future may depend more on space PR stunts, such as this one. But hey, if thats what it takes to put space-aged Cab Sauv on the wine list, well drink.

READ MORE: A startup just launched red wine to the International Space Station to age for 12 months [TechCrunch]

More on Future Beverages: Five Ways Science Will Change The Way We Drink

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This Startup Is Aging Red Wine on the International Space Station - Futurism

Astronomers Spot Black Hole the Size of Manhattan – Futurism

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Very Big, Very Small

Black holes can get very big in some instances, big enough to encompass the orbits of all our solar systems planets.

But not all are huge. Yesterday, we wrote about a new study by a team of astronomers from Ohio State University led by astronomer Todd Thompson, claiming to have discovered an entirely new and previously missing class of black holes.

The extensive investigation, using data from a high-resolution infrared spectronomy instrument, found a black hole a mere 3.3 times the mass of the Sun. That may not sound very small, but its vastly smaller than previously discovered specimens.

And now we have an estimate for the diameter of such a relatively tiny black hole. Today, MIT Technology Review reported that the discovered black hole is a mere 12 miles across roughly the length of Manhattan.

Futurism reached out to Thompson to confirm MIT Techs reporting.

Since the black hole mass has some degree of uncertainty, these are all reasonable numbers, he wrote in an email. The Schwarzschild radius for a 3.3 Msun [solar mass] black hole is about 10km. So, the diameter is about 20 km. Thats about 12 miles in diameter.

If Thompsons calculations are correct, this new class of black holes could force us to rethink how we understand the way stars and other kinds of celestial objects are born and die.

READ MORE: Scientists have spotted a tiny black hole that may be just 12 miles across [MIT Technology Review]

More no the new classification: Scientists Discover New Class of Tiny Black Holes

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Astronomers Spot Black Hole the Size of Manhattan - Futurism

Here’s How Boeing is Planning to Get Astronauts to the Moon – Futurism

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Moon 2024

Boeing just sent NASA its proposal for a crewed lunar lander that could ferry astronauts to the Moon by 2024.

The plan is to send astronauts to the lunar surface via NASAs planned Lunar Gateway, a small stepping stone space station in the Moons orbit. But it wont have to wait for NASA to build the Gateway either, if that project runs behind.

It can dock with the Gateway lunar orbiter or directly with NASAs Orion to eliminate the need for an additional spacecraft, both on time to meet the 2024 mandate, Boeing wrote in a new statement.

Boeing calls this its Fewest Steps to the Moon approach.

It minimizes mission complexity while offering the safest and most direct path to the lunar surface, according to Jim Chilton, a senior vice president at the military contractor.

To get off the ground, Boeings proposed lunar lander will ride on top NASAs Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which has been plagued by setbacks and budget overruns.

But the aerospace company isnt dismayed by delays or setbacks.

The SLS has an unmatched lift capability that builds on proven flight components, read the statement. This approach shortens development time and lowers risk, enabling NASA to safely land on the moons surface by 2024.

READ MORE: Boeing Just Sent NASA Its Moon Lander Idea for Artemis Astronauts. Here It Is. [Space.com]

More on Boeing: Boeing Starliners Parachute Fails to Deploy During First Flight

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Here's How Boeing is Planning to Get Astronauts to the Moon - Futurism

Elon Musk: Noisy Starship Spaceports Will Be 20 Miles Offshore – Futurism

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Travel by Rocket

Its been more than two years since SpaceX announced its plans for long distance travel onboard what it now calls its Starship. The promise: rocketing up to 1,000 people anywhere on Earth, no matter how far, in under one hour an experience Musk likened to Disneys Space Mountain ride earlier this year.

SpaceX has since made a ton of progress on Starship. And in a Monday tweet, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk dropped a new tidbit: Starship spaceports will probably need to be [about] 20 miles offshore for acceptable noise levels, especially for frequent daily flights.

COO Gwynne Shotwell confirmed that the company is still committed to its plans for a transportation system involving Starship in a May 2018 TED Talk.

This is definitely going to happen, she said, adding that it would probably take roughly ten years.

So how will passengers get from the city to these offshore spaceports? Musk suggested in a May 2018 tweet that SpaceX will use underground shuttles.

Its a futuristic vision. But even with ten years, SpaceX has a lot of work to do. The company has yet to launch a fully-equipped Starship rocket, after all, let alone one with passengers on board.

READ MORE: Starship: heres where SpaceX will build those inter-Earth spaceports [Inverse]

More on Starship: SpaceX Definitely Plans to Land Starship on Moon by 2022

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Elon Musk: Noisy Starship Spaceports Will Be 20 Miles Offshore - Futurism

Meet the Startup Building Robot Swarms to Mine Ice on the Moon – Futurism

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Autonomous Mining Robots

California startup OffWorld has big plans to make resource mining a reality across the Solar System, Space.com reports.

Its plan is to send swarms of smart robots to the surface of distant moons and planets to extract resources including water, in the form of ice, and minerals. First stop: the Earths Moon.

They operate in swarms, collaborating together, making decisions on their own, CEO Jim Keravala told Space.com. For instance, they can sense where the minerals and ore exist [] and act accordingly.

According to OffWorlds master plan,the robots will be small, solar-powered, and capable of acting autonomously.

We have started from the beginning and are currently focusing on developing the first generation of our mining robots for the terrestrial mining sector, reads the plan.

While deployment is years out if the company even makes it to the launch pad the startup is hoping to teach its robots how to do the dirty work using machine learning.

Eventually, OffWorld hopes to have the robots extract ice water on the lunar surface to supply rocket propellant and to support basic construction services for future lunar missions.

In the long term, the 26-employee company is eyeing resource extraction on asteroids and on the surface of Mars.

At some point in time I hope its before we have our first woman and man on the surface we will be deploying our lunar variants to the lunar surface, Keravala added.

READ MORE: OffWorlds Smart Robots Could Swarm Solar System to Help Astronauts and Settlers [Space.com]

More on mining water: NASAs Collaborating With Caterpillar on Moon Mining Machines

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Meet the Startup Building Robot Swarms to Mine Ice on the Moon - Futurism

Microsoft Is Giving Up On Regular People Ever Using Bing – Futurism

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Bing for Business

Microsoft is finally going to stop trying to make its Bingsearch engine happen for consumers, anyway.

A decade after launching its search engine, Microsoft appears ready to acknowledge that the average internet user isnt interested in giving up Google so its now pivoting Bing to target businesses.

On Monday, Microsoft published a blog post announcing its rebranding of Bing as the search engine for business. Mostly, this seems to mean taking a companys intranet a private, internal computer network containing useful information and resources and making it easier to navigate.

Type in the address bar to search for people, using natural language, such as by their title, team name, and office location, Microsoft wrote in the blog post. You can also search for office location, with answers that show floor plans for directions.

Microsoft goes hard on the idea that using Bing in this way will save workers time, citing McKinsey and Company research that found employees spend nearly 20 percent of their day looking for company information or trying to track down colleagues.

Imagine getting a full day of work back each week to either be more productive or get more time back with your family, Microsoft wrote.

However, it fails to mention that the research is from 2012 or how the many, many business-focused collaboration and communications tools that have hit the market since then might already address the problem it claims Microsoft Search in Bing could solve.

READ MORE: Microsofts Bing and browser pivot to business [Axios]

More on search engines: Google Terminated Its Chinese Search Engine Plans

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OpenAI Just Released the AI It Said Was Too Dangerous to Share – Futurism

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Here You Go

In February, artificial intelligence research startup OpenAI announced thecreation of GPT-2, an algorithm capable of writing impressively coherentparagraphs of text.

But rather than release the AI in its entirety, the team shared only a smaller model out of fear that people would use the more robust tool maliciously to produce fake news articles or spam, for example.

But on Tuesday, OpenAI published a blog post announcing its decision to release the algorithm in full as it has seen no strong evidence of misuse so far.

According to OpenAIs post, the company did see some discussion regarding the potential use of GPT-2 for spam and phishing, but it never actually saw evidence of anyone misusing the released versions of the algorithm.

The problem might be that, while GPT-2 is one of if not the best text-generating AIs in existence, it still cant produce content thats indistinguishable from text written by a human. And OpenAI warns its those algorithms well have to watch out for.

We think synthetic text generators have a higher chance of being misused if their outputs become more reliable and coherent, the startup wrote.

READ MORE: OpenAI has published the text-generating AI it said was too dangerous to share [The Verge]

More on OpenAI: Now You Can Experiment With OpenAIs Dangerous Fake News AI

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OpenAI Just Released the AI It Said Was Too Dangerous to Share - Futurism

Sophia the Robot Tells Crowded Room That It Doesn’t Have Sex – Futurism

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14 hours ago__Dan Robitzski__Filed Under: Robots & Machines

Sophia, the famous humanoid robot, had an important message for the crowd at the ongoing 2019 Web Summit: its single but not ready to mingle.

During the summit, Sophia was asked whether she actually, lets go with it has ever been in love. Sophia, a joint project between Hanson Robotics and SingularityNETs AI researchers, responded: No. I dont do sexual activities.

Though Sophia is an incredible piece of animatronic technology, much of what it says during public appearances is at least partially scripted in advance. As of press time, Hanson Robotics has not responded to Futurisms question about whether that was the case here.

While the robot apocalypse is stillprobably in the distant future, it seems that Sophia is content for now leaving a devastated trail of broken hearts in its wake.

More on Sophia: Sophia The Robot Says She Will Destroy Humankind

Up Next__OpenAI Just Released the AI It Said Was Too Dangerous to Share >>>

<<< Italy Will Soon Force Public Schools to Teach Climate Change__Previously

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Darwin on Trial As Fresh and Relevant as Ever – Discovery Institute

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Editors note: Phillip E. Johnson, Berkeley law professor and author ofDarwin on Trialand other books,died on November 2.Evolution Newsis sharing remembrances from Fellows of Discovery Institute. Dr. Behes most recent book isDarwin Devolves. Thefollowing essay appeared originally as the Foreword to the 20th Anniversary edition of Darwin on Trial.

Twenty years can be a virtual eternity in modern science, so rapidly do new discoveries accumulate. Twenty years ago the idea of determining the entire DNA sequence of even a tiny living organism such as a bacterium, let alone the genetic endowment of a large animal such as a mammal, seemed a dream. Yet shortly before I wrote this foreword, the 1000th kind of bacterial genome was sequenced. The DNA code of humans was completed a decade ago. That of other familiar creatures, such as dog, rice, mosquito, and more, are also now public knowledge.

Its not only the genome sequences of organisms that has been brought to light in the past two decades. DNA is the instruction manual that tells cells how to go about building pieces of molecular machinery that actually run the cell. But, like trying to picture the end result of an instruction manual written in a foreign language, it is usually not very straightforward for a scientist to determine what kind of machines are going to result simply by looking at the DNA instructions. However, by performing clever laboratory experiments, investigators can probe the machinery directly. In the past two decades whole new classes of molecular machines have been discovered. One of the most interesting is a class of RNA molecules that helps regulate DNA. RNA (as you of course remember from your high school biology class) is a chemical cousin of DNA, and an intermediate between the information coded in DNA and its translation into proteins, which are the usual components of molecular machines. But other roles have been discovered for RNA including, most surprisingly, the ability to decide when some DNA genes are turned on and off.

In other areas of biology besides the micro-world, too, discoveries have been pouring in. New fossil finds, new ways that the brain communicates, and more, have dazzled the scientific community and the world.

Twenty years can be a virtual eternity in modern science but in logic, not so much. Arguments that rest on faulty premises and strained reasoning are not helped at all by the passage of time. It is the brilliance of Phillip Johnson, Jefferson E. Peyser Professor of Law, Emeritus, at the University of California Berkeley and an expert in the way arguments are framed and the unspoken premises they rest on, to have written a book, Darwin on Trial, that, despite the intervening years and progress of science, is as fresh and relevant today as when it was first printed.

Johnsons classic masterpiece came about rather serendipitously. While on sabbatical in England over two decades ago, he chanced to pick up two books concerning evolution. The first was The Blind Watchmaker by Oxford biologist and world-renowned atheist Richard Dawkins. Dawkinss book is widely acknowledged even today to be the most vigorous defense of Darwinian evolution available for a general readership. The second book was the less well-known, but soon-to-be-influential, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, by an English geneticist, Michael Denton, who at the time was working in Australia. Denton, an agnostic, was fed-up with the claims Darwinists made for their theory when he saw many problems with it. In the book he detailed his scientific criticisms of Darwinism with nary a single Bible verse to bolster them.

Reading side-by-side books by knowledgeable, secular scientists alternately criticizing and extolling the dominant scientific theory of our age, Johnson was enchanted. Clearly, he realized, something more than just the undisputed facts entered into the weighing of the evidence. And when a large theory such as evolution cuts across many disciplines, no one can claim to be expert in all of the evidence. Rather, the evidence is much better evaluated by a generalist trained to evaluate the logic of arguments and the assumptions lying behind them, as Johnson himself was exquisitely qualified to do.

If you thought tendentious theories and outlandish alibis were confined to courtroom shenanigans, Johnson will quickly disabuse you. Partisan strategies find their way into even the most abstruse scientific arguments. Johnson argues that Darwins theory of evolution relies heavily on the highly tendentious, usually unstated, assumption of materialism: the idea that the only things that really exist are matter and energy in the physical universe. If one begins with that assumption, then one has neatly gotten rid of the chief rival to evolution which has seemed much more plausible to the greatest minds throughout history: that a supernatural entity, God, possessed of great power and intellect, designed the cosmos and the life it contains. If, by postulate, no such Being exists, then something like evolution pretty much has to be true. The universe alone exists, so the universe alone must have produced life.

A neat little trick, and one which saves an awful lot of scientific work. If a scientist can beguile the world into thinking that his theory must be true by definition, and that others must be ruled out from the start, then evidence becomes decidedly secondary, and no rival theories need apply.

But what if one is unwilling to concede that postulate? What if one suspects that there may indeed be a Mind beyond the universe, capable of affecting it, as the overwhelming number of people throughout history have thought? In that case, Johnson argues persuasively, the typical evidence brought forward for Darwinian evolution looks far less compelling than its boosters make it out to be. If Darwinism simply has to be true, then two breeds of finches with slightly different beak shapes seems like stunning confirmation of the theory. If it doesnt have to be true, then you just have two birds with slightly different beaks, and the question of what formed finches in the first place stands. Soon the skeptic of Darwinism comes to the conclusion that a large part of the modern worldview is built not on solid scientific evidence, but on philosophical bias enforced with sociological prejudice.

Make no mistake, however that sociological prejudice has teeth. From ridicule to shunning to dismissal from a job, a variety of unpleasant consequences can be brought to bear on folks in vulnerable situations who dont get with the Darwinian program. You are about to read a dangerous book.

Thats what happened to me. When it first came out in 1991 I saw an advertisement for Darwin on Trial, ordered a copy, and devoured it in two days. Having earlier read Dentons Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (the same book that Johnson read on his sabbatical in London), I realized that Darwins theory had a lot of problems. But Phils book got me to see why it was popular with scientists nonetheless: it was the only game in town the only slightly plausible explanation for life that did not invoke intelligent causes. Then one fine day in 1991 I was strolling through the department office and noticed the latest edition of Science magazine. I stopped to look at the table of contents and noticed there was a news item on an anti-evolution book from an unusual source a U.C. Berkeley professor. I read the item and saw it wasnt so much a story as a warning to faculty to keep their students away from this book it might confuse them.

Im half Irish on my mothers side, so when I see such blatant tendentiousness I get ticked off. I fired off a letter to the editor of Science pointing out that this Johnson fellow seemed pretty bright, noticed grand claims being made for evolution with little data, and was likely to make up his own mind about Darwins theory, thank you very much. A person like that, I wrote, should be argued with, not condescended to. Much to my surprise, Science printed the letter, and to my further surprise a few days later I got a letter in the mail from Phil, thanking me for writing the letter.

Little did I know it at the time, but I was now in the circle of Phil Johnsons useful contacts. Over the years, more academics gathered in Phils circle and joined the high intellectual adventure of battling a decrepit idea that had managed to hang on through a combination of bad science and bad philosophy. Over the years we had our victories and defeats, but because of Phillip Johnsons leadership no informed person will ever again honestly say that Darwins theory flows straight from the data.

In Darwin on Trial Phillip Johnson discusses a number of strands of scientific evidence that in the 1990s purportedly supported Darwins theory, and he neatly shows they are at best inadequate, at worst contradictory. Lets revisit several of these topics and see if the intervening years have been kinder to Darwin. The three areas Ill briefly discuss are, in turn, mutations, fossils, and the origin of life.

Ultimately the fodder for Darwinian evolution is random mutation. Deep in the genetic endowment of some creature a change occurs that makes it genetically different from its parents. Since the DNA of living creatures is highly functional, usually the change is for the worse. The poor creature thus finds itself at a disadvantage in the struggle for life and its line quickly dies out in the process of natural selection. But on rare occasions, the mutation is actually for the better. The lucky creature has an advantage over its brothers and sisters, and its offspring over theirs. Over time the offspring of the fortunate mutant come to dominate the population. Repeat this scenario over and over again, and the result is Darwinian evolution. Or so the story goes.

In Darwin on Trial Johnson discussed what was know about mutation up until the early 1990s, which was mostly speculative. But since that time, with the newly developed easy ability to sequence DNA, evolution experiments can actually be done in real time in the laboratory, and the exact mutations that give organisms an advantage can be tracked down. What have these experiments shown? Just about the time Darwin on Trial was being written a scientist named Richard Lenski at Michigan State University began the largest laboratory evolution experiment ever. Lenski, a microbiologist, decided to grow cultures of the common bacterium E. coli in his lab. Because it is so small, the bacterium can reproduce very quickly (in less than an hour) and grow to enormous numbers (billions in a single test tube). Once the growing bacteria had exhausted the food in one test tube, Lenski and his colleagues would transfer a small portion of them to a fresh test tube. When that test tube became saturated with bacteria, they would transfer another small portion to another fresh tube. They have been repeating this procedure for decades, which in bacterial terms is upward of 50,000 generations and a cumulative population size of hundreds of trillions! This is roughly the number of generations and population size that it supposedly took for some primate ancestor to evolve into modern humans.

Along the way Lenski saw that his bacteria were improving they could grow faster than the starting bacteria could. However, the big surprise came when he and his coworkers tracked down the beneficial mutations. It turned out that mutations in the improved bacteria had broken a lot of genes and thrown others away. In other words, just as it may be beneficial to throw sophisticated-but-heavy computers and machinery off a sinking ship, it was beneficial for the bacteria to toss out sophisticated genes that normally were useful. That actually made the mutant bacteria grow faster than their relatives, but it hardly answers the question of where sophisticated genes come from in the first place. In the end, after 50,000 generations, not only did a new kind of organism not evolve, but rather the original organism was degraded. This is currently our best evidence of what random mutation is capable of: Most mutations are harmful, and the few that are beneficial break genes.

In Darwin on Trial Phillip Johnson criticizes the state of the fossil record circa 1990, and shows that it is not at all what Darwin expected it to turn out to be when he wrote The Origin of Species in 1859. The scarcity of transitional forms, frequency of punctuated equilibrium, the Cambrian explosion, the ever-shifting categorization of, and scandals over, supposedly human-ancestral fossils all gave the skeptic strong reason to think that Darwinism was less of a scientific citadel than a scientific Potemkin village. Yet anyone who glances at a newspaper or watches TV knows that major new fossil finds have been announced about every month or so for the past few decades. Do they make Johnsons argument outdated?

No, they re-enforce it. Lets look at just two fossils that have been among the more prominently publicized recently. In the mid 2000s several fossils were discovered in northern Canada of a strange fish-like creature dubbed Tiktaalik. The fossils were dated to hundreds of millions of years ago, to a time when there were thought to be fish but no vertebrate land animals, or tetrapods. On close examination the fossils were seen to have structures in particular, bones that resembled wrists that were thought to make them good candidates for transitional forms between fish and tetrapods. For several years Tiktaalik was hailed as the missing link between fish and land vertebrates. But its moment of fame was cut short in early 2010 with the discovery of fossil footprints in Poland of true tetrapods which were at least ten million years older than Tiktaalik. At a stroke, the Canadian fossil could no longer be a transitional form, since it appeared later in the fossil record than its supposed descendants. Thus, as Johnson argued in 1991, it continues to be true that fossils dont tell their own stories, and the tale of ancestors being modified into descendants still relies on Darwinian theory to fill in 99 percent of the details. Question the theory and the hard evidence is much less impressive.

In Chapter Six of Darwin on Trial Johnson describes a preview in 1984 for a group of anthropologists of a new exhibit of fossils related to human evolution. It was reported that everyone spoke in reverential hushed tones, and a sociologist remarked Sounds like ancestor worship to me. Intense interest concerning possible human fossils continues unabated and so does the exploitation of that interest. In the middle of 2009, the 200th anniversary of Darwins birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, a major new fossil find was announced of a lemur-like animal classified as Darwinius masillae and nicknamed Ida. It was initially billed as the earliest ancestor of humanity. Oddly, the discovery was announced by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, accompanied not only by a scientific paper in Science magazine, but also a book, a web site, and a documentary released within a week of the unveiling. It seemed that the announcement was choreographed in the hopes of cashing in on the year of Darwin. Unfortunately, Ida was quickly reclassified by unprejudiced scientists as an organism that could not be on the line to humans. The Ida brouhaha, and a remarkably similar one several months later over a fossil nicknamed Ardi, demonstrate Johnsons continuing point that the wish is too often the father of the ancestor in Darwinian theory.

Two decades ago Phillip Johnson also criticized reigning scientific theories of the origin of life as built upon little evidence and much interpretation. Today the advance of science has shown that there are even more severe roadblocks to chemical evolution than were recognized back then, so that the situation for materialistic origin of life theories has gotten substantially worse. Broadly speaking, for decades there have been two categories of origin-of-life theories: the metabolism-first view, where metabolic reactions in an enclosed space precede the occurrence of genetic material; and the genetics-first view, where a DNA-like polymer that is capable of carrying information precedes cells. The partisans of both camps have offered devastating criticisms of each others views, so that none are left standing. A paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA in early 2010 by the prominent Hungarian scientist Ers Szathmry and co-workers offered a mathematical model that ruled out metabolism-first, and an article in 2007 in Scientific American by New York University chemist Robert Shapiro showed the massive roadblocks facing the genetics-first scenario. Bereft of plausible theories, the only reason at present to believe in a materialistic origin of life is if one holds it as a postulate that life must have had a materialistic origin.

The early years of life on earth, when bacteria and other single-celled organisms reigned, are getting stranger and stranger from a Darwinian point of view. Although Phil Johnson didnt touch on the subject in the early 1990s, the great advance in DNA sequencing of microbes in the past twenty years have given scientists much to think about. And one conclusion that seems increasingly firm, as leading geneticists have voiced, is that Darwins idea of a tree of life where a single primordial cell gave rise to all subsequent organisms is dead. The DNA sequence data cannot be made to fit with the idea. What sort of model, if any, will emerge to take its place in scientific circles is hard to guess, but there is no reason to think that early life was dominated by Darwinian processes.

Twenty years ago Darwins theory seemed a truism, simply because rival explanations had been ruled out of bounds from the start. Then Phillip Johnsons epic Darwin on Trial cut to the heart of the debate. It wasnt about evidence; it was about assumptions. And like the proverbial drunk looking for his car keys, no one searched beyond Darwins lamppost. Two decades later, even as scientific advances accumulate, Johnsons insight remains key. We must cast off arbitrary assumptions. If we are ever to arrive at the solution the search for answers to the question of how life arose and developed has to be free to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

Photo: Tiktaalik, Field Museum, by Eduard Sol [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Darwin on Trial As Fresh and Relevant as Ever - Discovery Institute

Your Witness, Mr. Johnson: A Retrospective Review of Darwin on Trial – Discovery Institute

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Editors note: Phillip E. Johnson, Berkeley law professor and author ofDarwin on Trialand other books, died on November 2. Evolution Newsis sharing remembrances from Fellows of Discovery Institute. Dr. Meyers forthcoming book isThe Return of the God Hypothesis. Thefollowing essay is drawn from the FestschriftDarwins Nemesis: Phillip Johnson and the Intelligent Design Movement.

I first met Phillip Johnson at a small Greek restaurant on Free School Lane next to the old Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge in the fall of 1987. The meeting had been arranged by a fellow graduate student who knew Phil from Berkeley. My friend had told me only that his friend was a quirky but brilliant law professor who was on sabbatical studying torts, and that he had become obsessed with evolution. Would you talk to him? he asked.

His description and the tone of his request led me to anticipate a very different figure than I encountered. Though my own skepticism about Darwinism had been well cemented by this time, I knew enough of the stereotypical evolution-basher to be skeptical that a late-in-career non-scientist could have stumbled onto an original critique of Darwins theory.

I should have known better, but only later did I learn of Johnsons intellectual pedigree: Harvard B.A.; top of class University of Chicago law grad; law clerk for Chief Justice Earl Warren; leading constitutional scholar; occupant of a distinguished chair at the University of California, Berkeley. In Johnson, I encountered a man of supple and prodigious intellect who seemed in short order to have found the pulse of the origins issue.

Johnson told me that his doubts about Darwinism had started with a visit to the British Natural History Museum where he learned about the controversy that had raged there earlier in the 1980s. At that time, the museum paleontologists presented a display describing Darwins theory as one possible explanation of origins. A furor ensued resulting in the removal of the display when the editors of the prestigiousNaturemagazine and others in the scientific establishment denounced the museum for its ambivalence about accepted fact.

Intrigued by the response to such an (apparently) innocuous exhibit, Johnson decided to investigate further. He began to read whatever he could find on the issue: Gould, Ruse, Ridley, Dawkins, and Michael DentonsEvolution: A Theory in Crisis. What he read made him more suspicious of evolutionary orthodoxy. Something about the Darwinists rhetorical style, he told me later, made me think they had something to hide.

An extensive examination of evolutionary literature confirmed this suspicion. Darwinist polemic revealed a surprising reliance upon arguments that seemed to assume rather than demonstrate that life had evolved via natural processes. Johnson also observed an interesting contrast between biologists technical papers and their popular defenses of evolutionary theory. When writing in scientific journals, he discovered, biologists acknowledged many significant difficulties with both standard and newer evolutionary models. Yet, when defending basic Darwinist commitments (such as the common ancestry of all life and the creative power of the natural selection/mutation mechanism) in popular books or textbooks, Darwinists employed an evasive and moralizing rhetorical style to minimize problems and belittle critics. Johnson began to wonder why, given mounting difficulties, Darwinists remained so confident that all organisms had evolved naturally from simpler forms.

InDarwin on Trial (Regnery, 1991, 188 pages)Johnson argued that evolutionary biologists remain confident about neo-Darwinism, not because empirical evidence generally supports the theory, but instead, because their perception of the rules of scientific procedure virtually prevent them from considering any alternative view. Johnson cited, among other things, a communiqu from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued to the Supreme Court during the Louisiana creation science trial. The NAS insisted that the most basic characteristic of science is a reliance upon naturalistic explanations.

While Johnson accepted methodological naturalism as an accurate description of method in much of science, he argued that treating it as a normative rule when seeking to establish that natural processes alone produced life, assumes the very point that Darwinists (and neo-Darwinists) are trying to establish. Johnson reminded readers that Darwinism does not just claim that evolution (in the sense of change) has occurred. Instead, it purports to establish that the major innovations in the history of life arose by purelynaturalmechanism that is, without intelligent direction or design. He thus distinguished the various meanings of the term evolution from the central claim of Darwinism, which he identifies as the Blind Watchmaker thesis, following Richards Dawkins the staunch modern defender of Darwinism.

Yet if the design hypothesis must be denied consideration from the outset, and if, as the NAS also asserted, exclusively negative argumentation against evolutionary theory is unscientific, then Johnson argued that the rules of argument. . . . make it impossible to question whether what we are being told about evolution is really true. Defining opposing positions out of existence may be one way to win an argument, but, says Johnson, it scarcely suffices to demonstrate the superiority of a protected theory.

To establish that such philosophical gerrymandering lies behind the success of the evolutionary program,Darwin on Trialevaluated the scientific arguments that ostensibly establish the fact of evolution. Johnson trained his considerable facility for analysis upon the whole edifice of Darwinist argumentation. He found a panoply of euphemism and wishful thinking masquerading as evidence: the pattern of gaps and sudden appearance in the fossil record described as rapid evolutionary branching, superficial variations in moths or fruit flies cited to substantiate the possibility of grand macroevolutionary changes, elaborate depictions of human ancestors based on scanty bone fragments, and biochemical observations laden with evolutionary assumptions used to justify evolutionary claims.

Along the way,Darwin on Trialasks a good many questions rarely asked in polite biological society. Given the fossil evidence, how do we know that hypothetical transitional organisms ever existed? How do we know that natural selection can create complex organs and organisms when genetics suggests the vast improbability of random mutations producing advantageous and novel structures? How do we know that the first cells did arrange themselves from simple chemicals if we havent yet established that they could? In each case, Johnson argued that we know because we have equated scientific method with a philosophy of strict naturalism and materialism. We know because the rules of science imply that some form of naturalistic evolutionmustbe true.

Johnsons attempt to re-open such questions has angered many members of the biological establishment who had grown accustomed to offering the public what Johnson called proof through confident assertion. His criticism of Darwinist orthodoxy initially earned him dismissive reviews inScience,Nature, andScientific American, the latter written by Stephen Jay Gould. Yet these reviews also helped publicize Johnsons thesis which has since struck a responsive cord with many scientists. For example, biochemist Michael Behe, who later authoredDarwins Black Box, the seminal case for intelligent design, first came to Johnsons attention after Behe wrote a letter defendingDarwin on Trialin response to theNaturereview.

Moreover, by the early 1990s some prominent neo-Darwinists such as Arthur Shapiro of the University of California, Davis, and Michael Ruse of the University of Guelph had welcomed the spirited challenge that Johnson provided to their views. Shapiro, Ruse, and eight other scientists and philosophers (including both defenders and critics of modern Darwinism) joined Johnson at Southern Methodist University in the Spring of 1992 to debate the central thesis of his book. The success of that event led to many others like it and a growing movement of scientists and scholars willing to examine the issues thatDarwin on Trialfirst raised.

Darwin on Trialre-opened long-dormant questions by challenging the evolutionary establishments reliance upon philosophically tendentious rules of method. In the process, it helped inspire an intellectual movement and a scientific research program that has begun to redefine our understanding of science and the origin of life.

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Your Witness, Mr. Johnson: A Retrospective Review of Darwin on Trial - Discovery Institute

Share the Art of Medicine by Embracing the Role of Mentor – AAFP News

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How can medical students in 2019 learn all there is to know in medicine in four (or even five) years of school?

When I was in medical school and residency training more than 30 years ago, there were 400 to 450 FDA-approved medications (including OTC products). Only about 150 of those were applicable to my patients. I learned them all, their possible side effects and contraindications. Since then, the number of FDA-approved drugs has tripled,(www.raps.org) making it impossible to keep up. Now I have to rely on my subspecialty consultants to know the medications specific to their limited scope of practice, which I am exposed to less often.

Similarly, technology has led to more treatments and procedures -- microsurgeries, laser surgeries, robot-assisted surgeries and more -- that may benefit patients. Again, recently I have found consultants recommending therapies with which I am not familiar.

Simply put, the explosion of knowledge in medicine has made staying current challenging. Throw in the evolution of electronic health records, and medical students have more cognitive knowledge to master to become physicians than I or my peers ever did.

But many of us older folks benefited from an excellent education in the doctor-patient relationship and other arts that are crucial in all fields of medical care, not just in primary care. Although even long ago, medical school was no walk in the park, there was time between scientific knowledge acquisition activities to learn this art: how to cultivate an effective and caring doctor-patient relationship and how to use other modalities along with that medical knowledge base to serve patients.

It's no wonder that a current medical student might be drawn to a limited-scope specialty rather than the broad, comprehensive, evolving field that is family medicine. But as family doctors, we know how important it is for every doctor to practice the art as well as the science of our work to be successful in our healing field.

Despite recent advances in the curriculum by some medical schools, students spend much of their first two years focused on core science classes before starting clinical rotations in their third year. By the start of year four, most have made important decisions about their career path, yet many still have their family medicine/primary care rotation ahead of them. It leaves me wondering how -- and when -- students will learn the art of building relationships with patients. And if they don't have adequate exposure to this vital skill, which is at the heart of primary care, what are the odds that they will choose a broad-spectrum specialty like family medicine?

Medical schools should be actively resisting medical practice becoming a lost art. We must know how to care, listen and give our time. Relying on evidence-based medicine alone is no substitute for these skills. Students need to see the power of connecting with patients so that they can see what a rewarding and meaningful specialty family medicine can be for them.

The AAFP and seven other family medicine organizations have undertaken the 25 by 2030 project that aims to achieve 25% of U.S. medical students matching into family medicine by 2030. This is a big reach -- one that is vital to strive toward not just for our specialty, but for our country's health care.

Key to success in this goal is having high school and premed students exposed to the joy of a career in medicine, and medical students exposed early to what we do in our clinics that augments the scientific knowledge they are acquiring and transforms an excellent scientific physician into an excellent clinical doctor.

I wrote in this blog a few years ago that I had started precepting first- and second-year medical students again in my clinic after taking a break from it. What I rediscovered is that working with students is rewarding, and they do not slow me down or present an obstacle to an effective patient visit. More significantly, students are eager to acquire the noncognitive patient-physician relationship-building techniques that I model and teach them in my office. I've had students drive more than an hour to spend time with me in my clinic.

Students have told me that, even on busy days when there isn't much time for answering questions, they can learn a lot just by observing. Although there is so much to learn in medicine, they see the connection I make with patients. After more than 30 years in practice, I can read the expressions on my patient's faces and gauge how they react to my words.

The students I teach, as well as those I am exposed to in my AAFP travels, are eager to learn this aspect of doctoring. I recently gave up some of my clinic teaching to take on co-teaching small group sessions at the medical school. I am struck by the extensive check-off lists of competencies that each student must demonstrate. I empathize with my full-time faculty colleagues who have so much cognitive knowledge to teach (and check off on lists of achievements), and it has helped me understand how they struggle to include relationship-building education.

This early exposure requires schools to carve out time in the first year, and even the first semester, for students to learn the art of doctoring. It also requires us veteran physicians to accept students into our offices to watch us deliver health care and to practice that art as time allows.If you aren't already connected to students, contact a medical school department of family medicine in your area, and embrace the role of mentor.

Alan Schwartzstein, M.D., is the speaker of the AAFP Congress of Delegates.

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Share the Art of Medicine by Embracing the Role of Mentor - AAFP News

What is Osteopathic Medicine and OMT? – CapeGazette.com

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You may have seen DO at the end of a physicians name but not known the meaning behind this degree. It stands for doctor of osteopathic medicine, and these doctors are trained in modern medicine as well as holistic medicine based on the philosophy that the body is an integrated whole. They receive special instruction in the musculoskeletal system and osteopathic manipulative therapy (OMT), a hands-on approach to diagnosing and treating patients. Bayhealth Primary Care PhysicianVincent Lobo, DO, DACFP, who has been performing OMT in his practice for over 40 years, discusses its uses and benefits.

The premise behind osteopathic or holistic medicine is that the mind, spirit, and structure and function of the body are interdependent. Essentially, if your body is structurally healthy, it heals itself. Pain or other problemsoccur when there are somatic dysfunctions of different levels of the spine, said Dr. Lobo. Somatic dysfunction is defined as a restriction in the bodys framework. This may originate in the skeletal system or fascia, the bodys connective tissue, and may alter the circulatory, lymphatic or nervous system.

If theres a lesion in the back or the spine is out of alignment, for example, the nerves that connect from that area to the internal organs send abnormal nerve impulses that will, in turn, affect those organs, he said. The opposite can also occur when a disorder of an internal organ manifests as a spine problem, such as an inflamed gall bladder causing back pain.

Osteopathic physicians aim to restore the normal mechanics in the body. In an osteopathic structural exam, I typically examine for posture, spinal motion, joint restriction, tissue spasms, spinal curvature, leg lengths, and conditions of the feet, said Dr. Lobo. With OMT, gentle pressure is applied or manual manipulations are done on the muscles, joints or nerves that are the source of the dysfunction. This can improve posture, relieve pressure and reduce pain.

Dr. Lobo said that some of the more common ailments for which he performs OMT are chest wall pain, tension headaches, thoracic pain, sinus problems, neck and low back pain, temporomandibular joint dysfunction (TMJ), and some abdominal pain. There are a variety of OMT techniques, and these are dependent upon the specific problem and a patients age. Two types are muscle energy techniques, involving muscle stretching and contractions, and myofascial release which is like a soft tissue massage.

A critical element of osteopathic medicine is preventative medicine and education, said Dr. Lobo. This includes encouraging patients to maintain healthy diet and physical activity, and teaching them what they can do on their own to help with their medical issues, such as using correct form when lifting, wearing orthotics in shoes, or doing certain exercises.

All DOs have the knowledge, but not all DOs perform OMT, Dr. Lobo said. Its another modality of treatment but like anything else, including physical therapy or acupuncture, nothing is 100%. I think its good for people to know that Bayhealth has this resource through some of its doctors.

To learn more about osteopathic physicians and those who use OMT in their practice, visitBayhealth.org/Find-A-Doctoror call 1-866-BAY-DOCS (229-3627).

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What is Osteopathic Medicine and OMT? - CapeGazette.com

The Guardian view on alternative medicines: handle with care – The Guardian

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Human health is complicated, and while the history of medicine is often represented as a triumphant march from darkness into light, for many people it doesnt feel like that. Partly this is because we take so much for granted. Its hard to imagine a time when infection and childbirth were serious threats to life. But its also true that as life expectancy has extended and lifestyles have changed, new illnesses and conditions have taken the place of old ones. Dementia, obesity and anxiety disorders are among them.

Sometimes a visit to the doctor doesnt make us, or our loved ones, feel better. There is nothing wrong with looking beyond conventional medicine for activities or remedies that may help. But people should understand that such alternatives are not tested in the same way as the drugs or exercises prescribed by doctors. While manufacturers, practitioners and users of treatments including herbs and osteopathy may make claims about their effectiveness, the public should treat such claims with healthy scepticism: try something by all means, but do not mistake heartfelt testimonies or lengthy appointments for evidence-based medicine.

There has long been a minority of members of the public who opted out of orthodoxy in medicine as in other areas of life. Until recently this was generally viewed as a personal choice that needed to be challenged only in extraordinary circumstances (for example if life-saving treatment was denied to a child). That this tradition of tolerance is now being questioned is largely due to recent falls in the take-up of childhood vaccinations. Last month Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, went public with serious concerns about homeopathy, and a decision to renew the accreditation of the Society of Homeopaths is being challenged after it was discovered that some members promoted a nonexistent cure for autism.

The situation is not unique to the UK, with the internet providing conduits for anti-vaxx and other myths that did not previously exist. This week Europes leading doctors issued a warning about unproven Chinese medicines, and the World Health Organizations recent decision to grant them recognition.

Regulation is important, as these doctors point out. Policymakers must be alert to the risks posed by unscrupulous or incompetent operators to vulnerable, unwell people, as well as the danger to the general public of anti-vaxxers. There is also a more general cause for concern if the market for alternative medicine is growing because people are choosing magic over science. Rationality matters in principle. But it need not crowd out curiosity or open-mindedness. Placebo effects are well documented, as is the human need for attention. Unconventional ideas and methods can help people, as long as they understand the difference between what is tested, and proven to be effective, and what is neither.

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The Guardian view on alternative medicines: handle with care - The Guardian

Women in medicine more likely to experience ‘microaggressions’ than men. Here’s what you can do about it. – The Daily Briefing

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Female medical faculty members find "microaggressions"indirect, fleeting comments that are "rooted" in "unconscious bias" against a marginalized groupcommon in the workplace, while male faculty say they seldom occur, according to a study published last week in Academic Medicine, the study's lead author VJ Periyakoil, writes for the New York Times' "Well."

Periyakoil is an associate professor at Stanford University School of Medicine.

A few years ago, Periyakoil started the Stanford Project Respect to study communication in health care and "foster mutually respectful interactions between health professionals and their patients."

For the project, Periyakoil and her colleagues hired professional actors to reenact 34 different microagression scenarios as well as controlor "nontoxic"versions of the scenarios. The interactions were recorded and turned into 68 videos that medical faculty at four medical schools across the country viewed in random order. The faculty members were then asked to rate each scenario on the frequency in which they occurred in real life.

The sample group consisted of 124 people, 79 of whom were women and 45 of whom were men.

The results, published last week in Academic Medicine, showed female faculty were more likely than male faculty to say the microaggression scenarios were common in the workplace.

The female faculty members reported that workplace microaggressions were frequent overall. On the other hand, male faculty from the same workplaces said microaggressions were uncommon.

The researchers as part of the project also collected stories of microaggressions from health care workers across the country. One female surgeon recalled being interviewed by a panel of men, which she called a "manel," and being asked how she would, "be able to effectively communicate in the operating room as a woman."

Another said that when she asked her boss about being promoted to a different position, he responded, "Well, I'm just deciding, you know, if I'd like to give you an engagement ring or not. You have to convince me."

In one situation that Periyakoil calls particularly "appalling," a lecturer selected a female student to be a model for his ultrasound skills demonstration and called a certain angle of the instrument probe a "money-shot."

Based on her research, Periyakoil offers suggestions about how medical faculty can confront microaggressions and create a better climate for female faculty and students.

In the moment, calling out microagressions can be "daunting," Periyakoil writes, but at a closer look, "we see that microaggressions are rooted in our unconscious biases that are fed by the gender and racial tensions that seethe under the surface and bubble up when we least expect them."

As a result, the first step to changing the culture is acknowledging the problem, Periyakoil writes.

"If you are the perpetrator and you catch yourself in the act, apologize immediately and sincerely for your misstep. If you are the recipient, speak up respectfully and promptly in the moment," she writes.

Bystanders can also play a critical role in mitigating the culture by calling out microaggressions and supporting victims of the comments.

For example, during a gynecology seminar, a professor asked a female student if she could tell how much estrogen she has inside of her body when she's ovulating. The "mortified" female student sat in silence, but then a male classmate stepped in.

"Professor, I've never, um, ovulated before, but I think I can take this question," he said (Periyakoil, New York Times, 10/31; Vyjeyanthi et al., Academic Medicine, 10/29).

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Women in medicine more likely to experience 'microaggressions' than men. Here's what you can do about it. - The Daily Briefing

WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute first in US to use deep brain stimulation to fight opioid addiction – WVU Medicine

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Posted on 11/5/2019

MORGANTOWN, W.VA. -- The West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute and WVU Medicine, today (Nov. 5) announced the launch of a first-in-the-U.S. clinical trial using deep brain stimulation for patients suffering from treatment-resistant opioid use disorder.

Funded through a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the clinical trial is led by principal investigatorAli Rezai, M.D., executive chair of the RNI, and a multidisciplinary team of neurosurgical, psychiatric, neuroscience, and other experts.

The team successfully implanted a Medtronic DBS device in the addiction and reward center of the brain. The trials first participant is a 33-year-old man, who has struggled with substance use disorder, specifically excessive opioid and benzodiazepine use, for more than a decade with multiple overdoses and relapses.

West Virginia has the highest age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths involving opioids. In 2017, drug overdose deaths involving opioids in West Virginia occurred at a rate of 49.6 deaths per 100,000 persons, according to NIDA.

Our team at the RNI is working hard to find solutions to help those affected by addiction, Dr. Rezai said. Addiction is a brain disease involving the reward centers in the brain, and we need to explore new technologies, such as the use of DBS, to help those severely impacted by opioid use disorder.

The first phase of this clinical trial involves four participants. To qualify, patients will have failed standards of care across multiple levels of WVU Medicines comprehensive inpatient, residential, and outpatient treatment programs that include medication, as well as psychological and social recovery efforts.

Despite our best efforts using current, evidence-based treatment modalities, there exist a number of patients who simply dont respond. Some of these patients remain at very high risk for ongoing catastrophic health problems and even death. DBS could prove to be a valuable tool in our fight to keep people alive and well, James Berry, D.O., interim chair of the WVU Department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry and director of Addiction Services at RNI, said.

DBS, or brain pacemaker surgery, involves implantation of tiny electrodes into specific brain areas to regulate the structures involved in addiction and behavioral self-control. This study will also investigate the mechanism of the addiction in the brain. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved DBS for treating patients with Parkinsons disease, essential tremor, dystonia, epilepsy, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The RNI team routinely uses DBS to treat patients with these disorders.

About the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute

We are improving lives by pioneering advances in brain health. With the latest technologies, an ecosystem of partners, and a truly integrated approach, we are making tangible progress in our goal to combat public health challenges ranging from addiction to Alzheimers, benefiting people in West Virginia, neighboring states, and beyond. Learn more about the RNIs first-in-the-world clinical trials and the top caliber experts joining us in our mission.

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WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute first in US to use deep brain stimulation to fight opioid addiction - WVU Medicine