Breathing deeply

Don't ask me why, but I was seduced by a recent episode of one of those law and order shows...I don't know which one, and it doesn't really matter. The plot was a regular roller coaster: I missed the first part of the show, but when I began watching, a young woman, whose mother was in jail for dealing pot and other sundry drugs, was raped. The young woman did not see the man’s face, but she knows that it is a guard from the prison where her mother is incarcerated. The guard had been raping the mother (as well as other women), and I believe she had somehow been supplying him with drugs (or he was supplying her--the plot was quite convoluted). When the mother cut off his drug supply, he took his revenge by tracking down the daughter and raping her. Like a true Nancy Drew mystery, he lets the young woman in on this information.

So the show continues to loop the loop--one of the cops tries to ferret out the unidentified rapist by going undercover as a prison inmate. But the climax of the show depends on this medical detail: the young woman comes down with a case of multi-drug resistant TB. The police know that MDR TB is endemic to the prison (and, like, a lot of prisons--one point for Law and Order) and they suspect that she got it from the rapist. The prison goes on lock down because of the health threat, and all the officers are given tests to see who might test positive. This puts our undercover heroine at a grave risk: another cop has gone undercover as a prison guard, but he looses track of her during the lock down, and the rapist takes advantage of this isolation and attempts to rape her. (Of course, she isn't raped, although the show took plenty of time to act out our nation's penal sex fantasies, billy club and all. Don't ask). But the story isn’t over yet. It turns out that the rapist doesn’t have TB—there is no evidence linking him to the young woman. She contracted it from a group home a few months earlier (oh, those filthy, infectious group homes. Accessible health care, anyone?)

You don’t really need to know the rest of the plot, but I’ll humor you—the rapist makes the mistake of revealing certain body parts, parts which sport a noticeable mole. The young woman remembers this, and is able to provide enough evidence to book the prison guard. (Perhaps this is a lesson on the corrupting influence of our overeager and ineffective penal system?)

So why my tirade? (Despite the chance to slip in those annoying, left leaning critiques)? Ahem. Physiology, my dear sirs and madams. Thanks to contagious lawyers who honeymoon in Greece, and fly on multiple airplanes, MDR TB is indeed slipping into the American consciousness (thanks to antibiotics, Americans stopped being so worried about TB in the 20th century. It is curable--if treated). TB is a very frightening disease, and over a million die from it every year. Over a quarter of the world's population harbors TB bacilli in their lungs. But. The immune system is a lovely thing, and one does not generally contract TB from a single encounter, especially a swift one that occurs out of doors. It makes sense, then, that the unfortunate young woman (did I mention her mother gets murdered?) would contract it at the group home, and not during a rape.

Perhaps we should applaud the nation’s networks for bulking up their plot lines with medicine and science (since ER and Grey’s Anatomy are primarily interested in only reproduction). But bad science is just silly. We pride ourselves on our scientific advances, and giggle at the silliness of those old-fashioned quacks who entertained the bumpkins of the 19th century. Shows like Law and Order, or Eli Stone, a wretched waste of an hour which began its season by inflaming the debate over the dubious link between childhood vaccines and autism, demonstrate that while we have more knowledge, we choose to ignore it for the sake of a narrative. But narratives require a deep commitment to fact, or at least to consistency—if your characters fly, I’ll believe you, but if half your characters can’t fly, and you don’t give me a reason why, I won’t trust you. It’s dishonest and fraudulent. One hundred years ago, we may have listened too often to the quacks, but now it is the hacks who have our ears.

to wit

Simile of the week (if not all of April):

“You are a sky-high highbrow,” he wrote. “Me, I suspect highbrows (and low- and middle-) as I do all specialists, suspect them of making things too easy for themselves; and like women with a good figure who can afford to go bra-less, I go about brow-less.”

...the words of Jacques Barzun

...and the chapter title in a book I would like to read (circa 1875, full title: The Intellectual Life):

To a Young Man of Intellectual Tastes, Who, Without Having as Yet Any Particular Lady In View, Had Expressed, In a General Way, His Determination To Get Married

Big Apple

After almost seventy two hours in the city, my brother and his friends have managed to do more than I in six months. Guggenheim, Central Park, Coney Island, aquarium, Times Square, off-Broadway show, Chinatown, Strand Bookstore...don't think I'm entirely derelict: I've made it to at least a slice of those things. But I remain in my pajamas, my brain muddled by working ineffectively and sllllooooowwlllly. This is not how I intend to spend my days, but this is what happens to me when trying to decide exactly what to say about education, or farmers markets, or whatever the writing topic may be. My body grows restless, but at least my mind runs all about.

Thank goodness oh best beloved and spring break are arriving soon. I do vacation heartily. At least that is the consolation.

I have five jewels...

A poem my mother wrote about us years ago. She sends it for our Valentine wishes.

Jewels

The ocher sun spreads glitter everywhere.
The turquoise sea provides a priceless mine.
I have five jewels in a family chest.
They sparkle sapphire eyes and topaz hair.
So beautiful and valuable--I'm blest.
They form a precious crown for me to wear.
These children ornament a mother queen.
I watch them glisten, shimmer, shine. I know
This wealth grows richer, fuller though unseen.
True treasure lies in lives that give and grow.
Such gems come from a Jeweler above
Who cherishes and treasures stones with love.


--J.E.V.

one giant leap...

10:02 p.m. I do believe, thanks to the loud roar from someone's apartment down the street and the ringing churchbell, that the Giants have just won the Superbrawl. Oh thank you, thank you. My fellow New Yorkers will not be so grumpy tomorrow.

Landed gentry...

The only problem is we all want to be Miss Elizabeth Bennett.


The "head cook" operates under a ruse. Potato rolls and cookies are merely a cover; the brunette slaved hard for Christmas dinner while the blond sat pretty.

A Spoonful of Sugar...

Just finished reading The Truth About Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It, by Dr. Marcia Angell (2005). She is a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, and packs a stringent attack against the pharmaceutical industry. After reading this and How Doctors Think (Dr. Jerome Groopman), I've decided the best method is to stay as healthy as possible. If you can avoid going to doctors and hospitals, do so. (Coincidentally, I've remembered to take my vitamins again).

Readers may have various responses to the above books--the negative reviews I've found come from The Wall Street Journal and National Review, and are decidedly predictable in their judgement. How uncreative we become when we fall into our biases and political preferences (all of us, not just those with predilections to the right).

Politics sometimes seem to fall away when things hit us individually, and so despite our political leanings, here are some questions Dr. Angell encourages patients to ask their doctors when they recieve a new prescription:

"What is the evidence that this drug is better than an alternative or some other approach to treatment? Has the evidence been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal? Or are you relying on info from drug company reps? If needed, ask for a specific reference to a journal or textbook.

Is this drug better only because it is given at a higher dose? Would a cheaper drug be just as effective if it were given at an equivalent does?

Are the benefits worth the side effects, the expense, and the risk of interactions with other drugs I take?

Is this a free sample? If so, is there a generic drug or an equivalent drug I can use that is cheaper with the free samples run out?

Do you have financial ties with the company that makes this drug? For example, do you consult for the company? Other than free samples, do you receive gifts from drug companies? Are you being paid to put me on this drug and enroll me in a drug company study? Do you make time for visits from drug company reps?"

If the answer doesn't seem right, your doctor probably isn't right for you either.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall...

An interesting piece on the border wall by NPR. While the Rio is not the most beautiful river in the world (only a bit more than a brown trickle when it passes through Brownsville), it is more than a bit absurd to wall it up. Perhaps if we just keep poisoning it more illegal aliens will avoid this path. From what I can tell, its somewhat swift construction is due to the fact that the government can reach consensus on the matter, a somewhat frightening prospect when you realize the extent of the illogical decisions made by these same persons in the past. If they can ALL agree on this matter, the river isn't the only thing that smells fishy.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11118125

Road Trippin'

Dog Daze

Taking two dogs to the Grand Canyon is a bit like when my little sister visited Niagra Falls as a toddler. "Rachel, look at the waterfall," we urged, but her round blue eyes were fixated on the sky, fingers pointing upward towards the seagulls screeching above. "Ooh ooh!" she cried--christening our family name for those swacking nusiances.

Indie and Walter, the newest addition, are thusly distracted by the ooh ooh birds at the ocean. And at the Grand Canyon, they are all about people, scat, and shade. Walter, who at one year is enthusiastically all puppy, threatens once or twice to leap off the edge. Crisis is averted for the time being, but the summer has only just begun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DffcDoNabTM