ArmyBlood

As if cyber-war and the threat of economic genocide isn’t enough, now we have the market in products like this to contend with. I’m not saying we shouldn’t cut off all our business with China, since they now have the ability to wipe us from the earth and increasingly own us. I’m just sayin…

U.S., China in row over tainted heparin
The FDA announced Monday that 11 countries have reported contamination of the blood thinner heparin, including supplies tainted with over-sulfated chondroitin sulfate that were traced to 12 firms in China. Chinese officials, however, said the chondroitin compound was not responsible for the problems and announced that they will visit a heparin manufacturing plant in New Jersey this week.  Forbes/HealthDay News (4/21), Wall Street Journal, The (4/22)

(From TFN) Full story

“We don’t teach alchemy along with chemistry. We don’t teach witchcraft along with medicine. We don’t teach astrology with astronomy.”

– Francisco J. Ayaladis, an evolutionary biologist and geneticist at the University of California, Irvine, dismissing the argument that it is only fair to teach both sides of the evolution/creationism controversy.

Where’s that picture of the mouse with the ear hanging off its side?

Medicine advances during war.  Reading about the history of blood banking is a slide down the timeline of war in the 20th century.  Maybe it has to do with the special affinity that military docs have for their patients.  Not to take anything away from good civilian healthcare workers slogging away everyday but I don’t know how many are committed to a paying customer in a waiting room the way that comrades in arms are.  Now that I’ve pissed off all the healthcare workers, my mission was to point out this story:

WASHINGTON, April 17 (Reuters) – Teams of university scientists backed by U.S. government funds hope to grow new skin, ears, muscles and other body tissue for troops injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Defense Department said on Thursday.
The $250 million effort aims to address the Pentagon’s unprecedented challenge of caring for troops returning from the war zones with multiple traumatic injuries, many of which would have been fatal years ago.
"We’ve had just over 900 people, men, some women with amputations of some kind or another since the start of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq," said Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. Many have also suffered burns, spinal cord injuries and vision loss.
"Getting these people up to where they are functioning and reintegrated, employed, able to help their families and be fully participating members of society, this is our task," he said.

Read the whole thing here:  U.S. teams aim to grow ears, skin for war wounded | Reuters

I should note that the VA remains one of the most expert institutions in the world for prosthetics and PTSD. Almost a thousand Veterans of the current wars already require these services and probably many more to come. To do these things, and efforts like those above, take funding and multi-year efforts.  If the VA didn’t have to fight for dollars each year, shifting funds around and making do until each appropriations bill was passed, imagine what better long-term efforts they could get to.

Looks like a nominee for the Darwin Awards:

Rev. Adelir Antonio de Carli lifted off from the port city of Paranagua on Sunday afternoon, wearing a helmet, thermal suit and a parachute.

He was reported missing about eight hours later after losing contact with port authority officials, according to the treasurer of his Sao Cristovao parish, Denise Gallas.

Priest carried aloft by balloons missing – Americas- msnbc.com

At the Army hospital Soldiers take a lot of administrative training.  I thought there was a pretty significant overhead of this stuff as a first sergeant what with EO, Drug abuse prevention, Domestic violence prevention, etc.  The medical personnel have all that plus lots more – HIPAA, CBRNE, Patient safety goals, and so on.  I’m not sure who puts all these together but this one really brought me up short:

See anything funny here?

How about loyalty to the medical department and the Army, without mention of the nation, family, any of that.  Worse – to TRICARE!

TRICARE is the Army’s HMO, a medical insurance systems outsourced to three big HMOs and not part of the command at all.

I am sure that whatever specialist was tasked with building this class did not intend to imply that Soldiers owed a higher allegiance to an HMO than the nation or their families, but it would be nice if someone checked that out BEFORE training thousands of Soldiers.  There are other suspect explanations here:  Integrity? I think personal courage might involve some things other than a corporate process, but the loyalty part just made me laugh. 

No wonder some troops are confused.

Jay Bookman puts it about as good as I’ve seen- Don’t Rewrite the Constitution

“Congress shall have Power To … make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.”— Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, as written by James Madison and the founding fathers, 1787

“Any effort by Congress to use its power to make rules for the armed forces would thus be … unconstitutional.”

— The U.S. Constitution as rewritten by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo and others, 2003

The traditional method of altering the U.S. Constitution is through a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate, followed by ratification by at least three-fourths of the states.

Sounds like a bad R-Rated movie at the Joy Drive-in during the 70s:

ARAPAHO, Okla. – Authorities have charged a western Oklahoma sheriff with coercing and bribing female inmates so he could use them in a sex-slave operation run out of his jail.

Custer County Sheriff Mike Burgess resigned Wednesday just as state prosecutors filed 35 felony charges against him, including 14 counts of second-degree rape, seven counts of forcible oral sodomy and five counts of bribery by a public official.
…

The lawsuit, filed by 12 former inmates, alleges the sheriff’s employees had them engage in wet T-shirt contests and offered cigarettes to those who would flash their breasts.

One prisoner alleged she became a jail trusty with more freedom after agreeing to perform a sex act on Burgess, but lost that status when she later refused.

Millennials are much less concerned or much more tolerant about gay people than adults.  The ARC and FDA can try to push their agenda on them but it will fall sooner or later. Might as well get used to it now and figure out the best way to do it with the least risk. 

Blood donation rules stir controversy at Kansas high school
A recent blood drive at a Kansas high school drew protests against the policy of not taking donations from men who have sex with men. The protest shed light on the common misunderstanding about who established that policy, said one official from the American Red Cross, who added, "The American Red Cross does not make the rule, the FDA does."  Winfield Daily Courier/Winfield High School Oracle (4/11)

Maybe he should have prayed about it.  Funny how the service always the busiest with the proselytizing  seems to have so many ethical dilemmas

IG Report Ties Moseley To Improper Contract – Defense News
“I know where those boundaries are and never crossed any of those ethical or contracting boundary lines,” Moseley said. “There was a definite boundary of not talking about that stuff. … It was never brought up.”

The 250-page report implicates five Air Force personnel for improperly steering the contract to Strategic Message Solutions because of Shipley’s long-standing personal connections with Thunderbirds personnel and leadership. The most senior of those implicated for wrongdoing – and the only one whose name is not redacted from the report – is Maj. Gen. Stephen Goldfein, then director of the Air Warfare Center at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., and currently vice director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon.

Go Here: See This:

GI Bill 2008 – Action Center