"The U.S. government lobotomized roughly 2,000 mentally ill veterans—and likely hundreds more—during and after World War II..."

"... according to a cache of forgotten memos, letters and government reports unearthed by The Wall Street Journal."

The U.S. government lobotomized roughly 2,000 mentally ill veterans—and likely hundreds more—during and after World War II, according to a cache of forgotten memos, letters and government reports unearthed by The Wall Street Journal. Besieged by psychologically damaged troops returning from the battlefields of North Africa, Europe and the Pacific, the Veterans Administration performed the brain-altering operation on former servicemen it diagnosed as depressives, psychotics and schizophrenics, and occasionally on people identified as homosexuals....

“Realistically looking back, the diagnosis didn’t really matter—it was the behaviors,” says psychiatrist Max Fink, 90, who ran a ward in a Kentucky Army hospital in the mid-1940s. He says veterans who couldn’t be controlled through any other technique would sometimes be referred for a lobotomy. I didn’t think we knew enough to pick people for lobotomies or not.... It’s just that we didn’t have anything else to do for them.”

In a standard lobotomy, the surgeon opens the skull and severs the prefrontal part of the brain from the rest of the brain.

Much more at the link. It seems that the government was looking mostly at men with what today we would call PTSD and taking advantage of a way to control intractable people. I'd like to see more details on how this related to homosexuals. Presumably, as Fink said "it was the behaviors." This was back in the days before Thorazine, so it's hard for us today to picture what these doctors were seeing.

During eight years as a patient in the VA hospital in Tomah, Wis., [Roman] Tritz underwent 28 rounds of electroshock therapy, a common treatment that sometimes caused convulsions so jarring they broke patients’ bones. Medical records show that Mr. Tritz received another routine VA treatment: insulin-induced temporary comas, which were thought to relieve symptoms

To stimulate patients’ nerves, hospital staff also commonly sprayed veterans with powerful jets of alternating hot and cold water, the archives show. Mr. Tritz received 66 treatments of high-pressure water sprays called the Scotch Douche and Needle Shower, his medical records say....

“You couldn’t help but have the feeling that the medical community was impotent at that point,” says Elliot Valenstein, 89, a World War II veteran and psychiatrist who worked at the Topeka, Kan., VA hospital in the early 1950s. He recalls wards full of soldiers haunted by nightmares and flashbacks. The doctors, he says, “were prone to try anything.”

My mother, who is no longer alive, was a WAC who worked in wards like this in the 1940s, but I never heard her say anything about the treatments, only very general things about how the men suffered.

"This is where the obesity-as-disease concept leads us – to a situation in which people demand that medicine shoulder the responsibility."

Karen Hitchcock, an Australian doctor who works in a bariatric surgery clinic, writes about the medicalization of the obesity problem.

I ask a young 200-kilo [440-pound] patient what he snacks on. “Nothing,” he says. I look him in the eye. Nothing? He nods. I ask him about his chronic skin infections, his diabetes. He tears up: “I eat hot chips and fried dim sims and drink three bottles of Coke every afternoon. The truth is I’m addicted to eating. I’m addicted.” He punches his thigh.


Addicted. The word is useless in my clinic, a mere barrier to any hope of self-determined change. My patient is not addicted; he’s a very lonely, unemployed young man who has gradually become socially isolated to the extent that the only thing available to him for comfort and entertainment is food. He has no friends, no money to buy other consumables, little education, no partner, no job. Some days he doesn’t leave his bed. The choice for him is to eat this food or experience no pleasure. The surgeon and I discuss his situation, concerned that he may overeat after the band has been fitted. We tell him that surgery may not be appropriate for him, given his situation. The patient is perturbed. “Well, what are you going to do for me if you won’t do the operation? Don’t you have some kind of ethical responsibility to help me lose weight?”...

For whatever reason, the majority of human beings respond to advertisements inviting them to enter a pleasure state by eating a day’s worth of calories in one sitting, again and again. In the face of this, we are stuffed. We could say, “You are free agents, totally free, so pay for your own consequences.” We could make people pay at the point of choice, via a food tax, or we could limit choice. The other option, always unspoken, is: let us have our cake. Let’s just eat and eat, get fatter and fatter, and work out how best to live with it. This is where we are heading now: fatness, outside of morality, as an accepted consequence of the world as we have made it.

Much more to consume at the link. 

"We use transgender as an umbrella term that includes people who are transsexual, cross-dressers or otherwise gender non-conforming."

A definition in the sidebar of an article titled "The Heart Wants What It Wants" — supertitled "We Are as We Are" and "Dating Trans?," which is teased on the front page of this new website Ozy under the heading "Tricky Topic: Dating a Transgender Person/Have attitudes about the fluidity of gender migrated much on the T in LGBT?"

For a website with a 3-letter name, that's an awful lot of titles, dragging us this way and that. What caught my eye — among the many things clamoring to catch eyes — was that side-bar definition that I used for the post title. That made me think: Who's not under that umbrella? Only people who are gender-conforming, which in my book — who wants to be a conformist, a gender stereotype? — is an insult.
The erstwhile minority could become the majority by repositioning the line.

But the article doesn't get us any further than telling us about some new Jared Leto-Matthew McConaughey ("Oscar buzz"), the price of some "sex reassignment" surgeries ("creating a penis is difficult and costly"), the fact that the Social Security Administration will now record your change of sex without proof of surgery (why not?), and finally — as we reach the last paragraph, still searching for the multiple teased topics — 3 questions, essentially only repeating the question raised in all those titles/supertitles/teasers.

So that's my first encounter with Ozy. Here's a Business Insider article about it: "Former MSNBC Anchor Launches Ozy, A Fresh News Site With Money From Laurene Powell Jobs."

Watson is the kind of person who is so charismatic, an interview about Ozy required a follow-up phone call. 

What? Is the reporter — Alyson Shontell — saying she was so dazzled by the in-person presence of this man who "wore a gray fitted T-shirt and a bright smile" to their in-person meeting that she needed another interview at some distance from this man's powerful force-field?

[Carlos Watson] is a great schmoozer and I admittedly fell for it during our first meeting. He escaped tough business questions the first time around.

Ha ha. I wonder how Laurene Powell Jobs is doing. Does it matter? She has Steve's billions to throw around however she wants, at whatever cute guys remain amongst the living, now that poor Steve has oh-wowed.

"I think most people would say, 'No, we don't need another news site,'" Watson says. "But if you asked them, 'Has there been a change, such that people are hungrier now to see more, be more and do more than before?' I think they'd tell you there has been. That's why Kickstarter exists. That's why Airbnb has such a robust business. There's a reason why there are things called 500 startups, and a reason startup accelerators are in every city. There's a reason why American Idol is still strong 15 years later. There's a hunger people have for both for themselves and in the world for what's next and what's new."

Are you still hungry? Or does this put you off your feed?

"At first she wanted to faint as she stared at the new face, smooth and freckled, stitched to her daughter’s pale scalp."

"But when [Carmen] Tarleton started talking in her old familiar voice — 'Can’t you just get in here?' — [her mother] relaxed."

“I said, ‘This is who Carmen is now,’ and it really looked beautiful,” she recalled. “Although it didn’t look anything like her, it was her face.”

"ObamaCare 2016: Happy Yet?/The website problems were finally solved. But the doctor shortage is a nightmare."

An interesting WSJ column by Bradley Allen, a pediatric heart surgeon, painting a nightmare scenario that's very heavy on predictions of doctors serving their own self-interest:

With the best and most successful doctors disappearing into concierge medicine or refusing new Medicare and Medicaid patients, replacing these experienced physicians with bright young doctors to work with the "general public" has become difficult. Why? Because such doctors are hard to find — going into medicine doesn't have the professional allure it once did.

This is the perspective of a doctor, who believes his profession is highly elite and deserves to be treated that way, but I think he's a little blind about the continuing ability of doctors to opt out of the system. Won't they be compelled to participate? I don't think they can be compelled to work if they choose to retire from the practice of medicine, but why wouldn't the government's system evolve into something that subsumes all medical practice? If there are shortages that frighten and distress the people, the doctors' options will, I predict, shrink.

Must the "professional allure" be preserved? Apparently, it's already gone. Who will want to be a doctor now? As the nightmare unfolds, we will find out. Old doctors are always checking out and the system is always producing new doctors (and other medical professionals). Who will they be and what will happen? Maybe in the future we will dispense with pediatric heart surgeons. We got by without pediatric heart surgery before 1956. I'm picturing lots of nurses and lots of palliative care.

With a "faulty" gene and an 87% risk of breast cancer, Angelina Jolie opts for a double mastectomy.

Explained and described in a NYT oped:

My own process began on Feb. 2 with a procedure known as a “nipple delay,” which rules out disease in the breast ducts behind the nipple and draws extra blood flow to the area. This causes some pain and a lot of bruising, but it increases the chance of saving the nipple.

Two weeks later I had the major surgery, where the breast tissue is removed and temporary fillers are put in place. The operation can take eight hours. You wake up with drain tubes and expanders in your breasts. It does feel like a scene out of a science-fiction film. But days after surgery you can be back to a normal life.

Nine weeks later, the final surgery is completed with the reconstruction of the breasts with an implant. There have been many advances in this procedure in the last few years, and the results can be beautiful.

This is a nicely written piece conveying the woman's courage and sensitivity. She has many children and her own mother died of cancer.

The piece is, however, marred by one sentence (and I would like to know the details of what lies behind this intrusion):

I acknowledge that there are many wonderful holistic doctors working on alternatives to surgery.

To what extent did Jolie pursue these alternatives? Does she credit the work of these "wonderful holistic doctors" or is that expression crafted to acknowledge the wonderfulness of the individuals — who might be well-meaning and socially pleasant — without saying that their treatments are any help at all? I note that she says these wonderful folk are "working on alternatives," not that they have any.

Did someone push Jolie to go at least that far, to smile in the direction of alternative medicine? Maybe she thought that her wan acknowledgement — alongside her own dramatic choice of the surgery — is saying (in so many words) to any sensible reader that the "holistic doctors" are a dangerous distraction. But I don't think people are that good at picking up inferences. Those who want to believe in alternative medicine are already weak on science and strong on wishfulness. I suspect that they will read that sentence and think Angelina Jolie thinks holistic doctors are wonderful. That sentence is a shiny light of hope amidst the scary — scene out of a science-fiction film — images of surgery.

Jolie deserves admiration for her bravery and her smart choice, both in getting the surgery and telling us about it. Perhaps as time goes on, she'll say more about the meaning and value of science and its alternatives. She is giving a beautiful performance in the theater of public education, and she has a fabulous opportunity to deliver a profound message that will reach the very people who most need to hear it.

"I wanted people to see the issues that can happen to your body, to your skin, when you put an extreme amount of weight on..."

"A lot of people think that's just going to shrink back, but it doesn't. If people find it shocking, perhaps they will think twice that they mustn't get themselves in that state."

[Paul Mason] said about eight stone [112 pounds] would be lost if he could have the three operations he needs to remove loose skin around his midriff, legs and under his arms.

"Around my middle and on my legs the skin keeps splitting because of the weight of it..."

Under Obamacare, if stomach surgery for weight loss is covered by insurance — and I assume political pressure will make that happen — will the skin surgery this man needs also be covered? There will be great sympathy for individuals who find themselves in this horrible predicament, but at the same time, there will be strife over having to pay for this.

Since the days of TV, have we ever had a fat President?

And will the Chris Christie surgical approach to defattifying play politically? What does this approach to problem-solving say about presidential qualifications?



Also: How Newt Gingrich could have been President, how Obamacare is going to have to cover weight-loss surgery, and why Obamacare should lead to the legalization of marijuana.

"Should a five-year-old have a gun?/Why Ann doesn't like to take positions on policy questions/Gun deaths are declining, but what about spree killings?..."

"Chris Christie: Can a fat man win the presidency?/Howard Kurtz, Jason Collins, Tina Brown, and honesty/Benghazi: scandal or hype?" — those are the basic topics, as framed by the Bloggingheads enterprise, as I talk for 70+ minutes with Bob Wright.

Here's the whole thing:



I'll pull out some choice bits in a little while.

"A gastric band is not the answer to curing an overweight child."

"I just wish it was out of me... I’ve been through hell because of it. I think every doctor should refuse to do them on anyone under 18."

"This means he’s running for president. He’s showing people he can get his weight in control. It was the one thing holding him back."

Chris Christie got stomach surgery to lose weight. This happened last February, and he went to some effort to keep it secret up until now.

If Christie runs, will a big weight loss after surgery help him be successful?
	Yes, because people will empathize with his struggle and admire his accomplishment.
	Yes, because being fat would have been held against him.
	No, because he's denying others the comfort of thinking it's okay to be fat.
	No, because the use of surgery instead of willpower fails to demonstrate character.
pollcode.com free polls

IN THE COMMENTS: CEO-MMP said:

I only skimmed the article (cuz I detest Christie), but it sounded like he did it directly after he went on Letterman and did donut shots and said his weight was fine.

Which suggests he might be less than honest. Of course, his conduct in the last year or so also suggests that.

He also did an interview with Barbara Walters in December which engaged with the issue whether a very fat person can be President. I think those 2 performances were done to test public opinion and the surgery is evidence of the results of that test. There was the idea that perhaps people would think that being fat was endearing, humanizing, and part of his overall delightful personality. He went on 2 prominent shows, reaching different demographics, and — in so many words — made the argument for fat acceptance.

I assume internal polling was done, and he was forced to see that the "fat man" image wasn't going to work. He took action. Note that in March, the month after the surgery, he rolled out the saying "Fix it!" At the time, I made fun of him for using that slogan when he's the walking embodiment of the inability to fix something. In fact, when he was emoting for the Barbara Walters demographic, she asked him why he's fat, and he said: "If I could figure it out, I'd fix it."

About those robot surgeons.

"There also have been a few disturbing, freak incidents: a robotic hand that wouldn't let go of tissue grasped during surgery and a robotic arm hitting a patient in the face as she lay on the operating table...."

"I ended up in paediatric neurosurgery because children make better recoveries from brain trauma than adults."

"So it's more rewarding in terms of outcome and I find children's resilience really inspiring. From the age of six you have an inkling of your own mortality, and most have a good understanding of what's going on. It's taken me a decade to become comfortable discussing an operation with a child, but they have to be able to ask questions. You have to show them respect. Sometimes their perspective is funny; most teenage girls just want to know how much hair you'll shave off. I don't get upset by my job. I didn't put the tumour there, I'm dealing with what's gone wrong. These children are dying when they come in and I do whatever I can to make them better."

From "Jobs confidential: 15 people reveal the truth about their work," via Metafilter, where there's this:

As long as you're pretending you're actually talking to the dead or can see into the future, and it's more than "just a bit of fun", then that's exactly what you're doing.

Was that the priest, the call centre worker or the financial advisor?

"Self-surgery is the act of performing a surgical procedure on oneself."

"It can be a rare manifestation of a psychological disorder, an attempt to avoid embarrassment or legal action, or an act taken in extreme circumstances out of necessity."

1 Genitals
2 Abdominal
3 Medically supervised
4 Self-trepanation
5 Amputation of trapped limbs
6 In fiction
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links

"I'd never met or heard anyone who'd had a laryngectomy."

"I thought, 'Omigod, I make my living on the telephone and now I'm going to sound like Elmer Fudd on Thorazine for the rest of my life.'"

"The world’s most experienced penis reattachment surgeons can be found in Thailand..."

"... where, during the 1970s, an estimated one hundred vengeful Thai wives, spurred by media coverage of a prominent 1973 case, sliced off the penises of their adulterous husbands as they slept. When a suitably equipped microsurgeon was on hand to reattach the errant appendage, the men were able to resume philandering within a matter of months. Though probably with reduced success: The penises, though operative, were shorter, numb, and often only partway erectable. The most serious complication, in the Thai attacks, was infection. Two of the wives flushed the penises down the toilet, forcing their husbands to grope for their lost manhood inside the septic tank. (Incredibly, both were found, cleaned, cleaned some more, and reattached.) More commonly, the women would hurl the penis out the window. In the cases described in 'Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam,' all the recovered penises were 'grossly contaminated.' Better that than eaten by livestock. Many rural Thai homes are elevated on pilings, with the family’s pigs, chickens, and ducks tending to mill about seeking shade in the space underneath. It is not, oddly, the pigs, but rather the ducks, that the castrated Thai must worry about. The paper does not provide the exact number of penises eaten by ducks, but the author says there have been enough over the years to prompt the coining of a popular saying: 'I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat.'"

I'm reading "Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex," by Mary Roach.

Arms transplanted.

To an Iraq War veteran who lost both arms and both legs.

Brendan Marrocco is the first Iraq War veteran to survive losing all four limbs in a bombing

His chief surgeon, Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, said Marrocco’s operation was “the most expensive and complicated arm transplant surgery ever performed."

"To begin Aspiration Therapy, a specially designed tube, known as the A-Tube™, is placed in the stomach."

"The A-Tube is a thin silicone rubber tube that connects the inside of the stomach directly to a discreet, poker-chip sized Skin-Port on the outside of the abdomen. The Skin-Port has a valve that can be opened or closed to control the flow of stomach contents. The patient empties a portion of stomach contents into the toilet after each meal through this tube by connecting a small, handheld device to the Skin-Port. The emptying process is called 'aspiration.'"

If bulimia is somehow wrong, how can this be a legitimate medical treatment?

Via Metafilter, where somebody penned the slogan: "When one anus isn't enough."

Al Roker: "I pooped my pants" at the White House.

Something to think about before you spring for that gastric bypass surgery.

In discussing what makes a job the "least stressful"...

... consider that, in this context, the opposite of stress is control.

Is that true? For some, I would think, too much control would lead to stress. Let's say much was expected of you. You were supposed to be brilliant, high-achieving, and productive. But it was your responsibility to define your tasks, to figure out how to accomplish them, to set your own standards about what constitutes excellence, and to put time — any time, whenever you want, night or day, weekdays or weekends — into doing what you've decided is appropriate to do.

There is some reason to think that people feel best when they are in the psychological state called "flow," which is defined as having 8 components:

First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it.

Can you get there within the "least stressful" job, university professor? Of course. But you'd better be good at defining realistic tasks that will look accomplished when they are accomplished. You'd better be able to get into the zone where you feel a sense of effortless expertise.

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly's book "Flow" identifies surgery and rock climbing as 2 activities that produce flow for the people who have the appropriate expertise. There, the tasks are specific, and the feedback about whether you are doing them right is clear. Compare a scholarly book project, which might take years, where you might wonder whether what you are writing is too dull or too controversial or unsupported by the data you're trying to use or who knows what your colleagues — your rivals? — will say about it at some unknown point in the future if you ever get this damned thing done?