Today’s blog is for football fans. Over the weekend, there was a game involving Trinity College of San Antonio. They won the game on a last second play that involved fifteen laterals. I was at the 1982 Cal vs Stanford Big Game that was won by Cal on the last play, which involved five laterals. So fifteen is impressive.

The video is on ESPN website among other places. Link is below:
TrinityFootball

There was an interesting article in the paper this month about a computer game for psychiatric paitents called Fearfighter. The program was developed in part by a professor at a London psychiatric college. Las year it was one of two programs that were approved in Britain for people with panic attacks, mild depression, or phobias. One of the developers, Dr. Isaac Marks, says the computer is effective because it can be programmed to teach patients new ways of thinking and reacting, which are the key ingredients in treatment of phobias and mild depression.

While it is not a replacement for treatment of serious conditions like suicidal tendencies, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia, it has shown to be just as effective as face to face sessions with psychiatrists for panic and depression problems. Considering the costs of psychiatrist sessions and also the reluctance of some people to go to something like that, this program sounds like it’s a big benefit to people. In Britain, patients registered with the National Health Service have to wait up to six months to see a psychiatrist, and 90% of people with mild depression never see a therapist.

In the panic program, the computer trains the people to identify things that set off the panic attacks, makes them keep a diary of things they avoid, and gives them homework - has them seek out uncomfortable situations to practice their skills on. In the anti-depression program, they watch scenes acted out and decide how the characters will respond, to try and practice new thinking skills.

The computer programs take roughly 10 weeks of one hour sessions, including scheduled calls from health workers checking on their progress.
Link to fearfighter website is below:
[[LINK,Fearfighter,http://www.fearfighter.com/index.htm]]

It appears that a team of Stanford University researchers may have developed a test to identify patients with Alzheimer’s disease, as well as predict whether patients will develop the disease in the future. If the results hold up and this test does prove to be valid, it will be a major development.

The researchers initially looked at 120 proteins that circulate in the blood, and which cells use to communicate with each other. They settled on 18 that showed the Alzheimer’s signature. When they reviewed the blood of 42 patients who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, their test came up with 38 of the 42 as positive. In another test, they looked at a group of 22 people that did not have the disease, and accurately predicted that 20 out of the group would develop the disease. Two to five years later, the 22 did develop Alzheimer’s. So they are running at about a 90% success rate.

In addition, 8 patients who later developed other forms of dementia were correctly diagnosed as non-Alzheimer’s. So their level of false positives seems to be low as well.

The test will initially be used in research labs. It may take two years or longer for the test to reach clinics and the general public.

From what our family went through with my Dad, having tests like this would be a real help. Ten years or so ago we first noticed something was not quite right. He had a little more difficulty concentrating, couldn’t do complicated things at work that he used to be able to do, sometimes seemed to lean slightly to the side, etc. At first you really don’t know the exact cause, and even tests over the next few years veered from minor heart attack to minor stroke to possibly some kind of seizure, to later other diseases or maybe a touch of Parkinson’s and Alzheimers.

The problem you face when tests don’t give you a defining disease and matching symptoms, and some of the diseases overlap, is that families and patients are a little in the dark as to what is wrong, what to do now, what medicines or treatments to do or not to do, and what will happen in the future. The various diseases end up taking a whole lot of time, money, and emotional energy from everyone in the family. Given that so many people are living longer, it’s a problem faced by millions of families around the world.

Although I think most people nowadays are at least somewhat aware of Alzheimer’s, I thought I’d put some general info below, most of which is from wikipedia:

Stages and symptoms
Mild — In the early stage of the disease, patients have a tendency to become less energetic or spontaneous, though changes in their behavior often go unnoticed even by the patients' immediate family.
Moderate — As the disease progresses to the middle stage, patients might still be able to perform tasks independently (such as using the bathroom), but may need assistance with more complicated activities (such as paying bills).
Severe — As the disease progresses from the middle to the late stage, patients will not be able to perform even simple tasks independently and will require constant supervision. They become incontinent of bladder and then incontinent of bowel. They will eventually lose the ability to walk and eat without assistance. Language becomes severely disorganized, and then is lost altogether. They may eventually lose the ability to swallow food and fluid, and this can ultimately lead to death.

More info is available at wikipedia:
Alzheimer’s

Today I’m going to veer back towards politics again. The paper had an article today about Bush’s request yesterday for $46 billion more to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This brings the request for the year up to $196 billion. The war is currently costing $10 billion a month, and has killed 3830 military personnel and 73,000 Iraqi civilians.

I think Bin Laden has already won. The US has been heavily bled in terms of lives, prestige, good will, and most importantly money. It’s sad that while the Bushies shown themselves to be inept and corrupt, the Dems have shown themselves to be no better. Mouthing off to hit Bush in the polls while doing nothing to stop the madness seems to me to show their utter lack of character. It appears that most of them will do whatever they think will get them re-elected, rather than doing the right thing. I get a little tired of their “well we just don’t have the votes” excuse, as this is completely untrue.

In addition to the Iraq debacle, Bush continues to show a lack of leadership and a willingness to sacrifice the average American for the good of the corporation and government fat cats. Last week NASA ordered its contractor to purge all data from an air safety study because the data showed more serious and frequent problems than the FAA reported. The study was first shut down over a year ago and NASA has refused to divulge the data publicly. One NASA official said that revealing the findings would damage the public’s confidence in airlines and affect airlines’ profits.

So the official decision is to hide the data, protect company profits, and public safety be damned.

On another note, it appears the Blackwater (the security service currently under fire in Iraq - (pun intended)) is defrauding the government out of millions of dollars by claiming their employees are contractors rather than employees. This was brought to light by Henry Waxman (Democrat in House of Representatives). No one from the government has done much to bring Blackwater to justice.

The SF Chronicle reported a week or so ago that “more than half of all industrial and municipal facilities across the country dumped more sewage and other pollutants into the nation’s waterways than allowed under the Clean Water Act”.
Yet the EPA has only levied $8.8 million in fines in 2006.

In September, investigators from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report stating the Bush administration allowed private insurance companies to keep tens of millions of dollars that should have gone to consumers. Under federal law, Medicare is supposed to audit the records of one third of the insurance companies each year. However, only 14% were audited in 2006, declining from 24% in 2001.

In 2003, auditors found significant errors at 41 of the 49 companies audited, yet Medicare officials took no action, allowing insurers to keep $59 million that could have gone to beneficiaries.

If you’re wondering who the Bushies go after, well, it turns out Medicare IS going after beneficiaries to get them to pay money that should have gone to insurers. More than 135,000 people received letters saying they still owe premiums for prescription drug coverage provided in 2006. The premiums were supposed to be withheld from Social Security checks, but the government withheld the wrong amounts or nothing at all.

I applaud Medicare for going after money owed. However, I am disappointed that this seems to be a one way street, going after people and letting the insurers go free.

When the California State Dept of Managed Health Care investigated Blue Cross of California, they found that Blue Cross had a corporated department dedicated to finding ways to deny coverage and cancel policies for pregnant women and the chronically ill.
If only the Republicans truly fought and supported “family values”......

There was an interesting story about a week ago in the SF Chronicle, about how the police in San Jose used license plate scanners to capture a suspect in an abduction case. The technology was developed about 20 years ago to try and help Britain reduce Irish Republican Army attacks. The systems are surprisingly fast, as some of the current readers can scan up to 50 plates per second. While the authorities in the Bay Area are generally mounting the systems on patrol cars or meter maid units, in order to locate stolen cars or determine if people are exceeding parking time limits, it is also used elsewhere. Some casinos use them to alert them when cheaters or high rollers drive into their parking lots. In London, they use the systems to track motorists and charge them for using certain roads.

As the systems proliferate, there are emerging privacy concerns. Combined with electronic tolls, it is going to be possible for authorities to track where and when you travel. Very useful information to track down criminals, but not so great if the technology is mis-used. We’ll see what happens. I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up more like Britain, which tracks vehicles and monitors cities and highways to a much greater extent than we do.

The link to the full story is below:
LicenseScanner