Why We Are So Clueless About Alzhiemer's

My mother has Alzhiemer's.  As I and my sibling's struggle to find some way for her to live out her life as comfortably as possible and die as peacefully as possible, it has become apparent to me the medical profession is pretty clueless about why Alzhiemer's progresses differently in each person, and that the drug companies solutions, as to any particular person, are unguided missles, as likely to cause harm as good.

In the middle of this ongoing struggle I ran across an article in Science News (August 24, 2013, p. 15) that rekindled frustrations that I have felt for decades.   The article discussed a July 25 article in "Current Biology" reporting on recent research that found that people do not sleep as well on nights when the moon is a full, even if they are in a windowless room where they have no idea it is a full moon.   Other sleep researchers reported being surprised by the findings, although they have praised the study as well conceived and executed.   What struck me as particularly significant was the leader of the research team reported he was at first reluctant to publish the study because "If you publish lunar stuff, your going to be put in the "lunatic' corner and not be considered a serious sleep researcher anymore."

It is disheartening that the sleep research scientists found the studies results surprising.  There is so much data from other disciplines that has existed for decades - data about more crime during a full moon, more conceptions during a full moon, the stock market falling during a full moon.  How can any field of scientific enterprise still be surprised in 2013 that the full moon influences behavior?

The answer, sadly, can be found in the researchers comment about being afraid of being put in the "lunatic" corner.  In our western culture Astrology has been viewed as heresy - incompatible and competing with religion - for centuries because it challenged the ability of church leaders to use the Bible to claim they were the final source of knowledge on everything.  The bias is so ingrained that any idea that could be interpreted as suggesting that what is happening with the moon, sun or planets might have predictive value for human behavior was career suicide for a scientist.

The hard sciences, physics, astronomy, chemistry, have managed to largely put the bias behind them. Even large parts of biology are no longer encumbered by this bias.  But those areas of science that most directly affect human behavior, medicine and the social sciences, are still wearing blinders.   

Science has known for 100+ years that many of the chemicals in our body are not constant, the ratio's of different chemical's rise and fall predictibly over the course of a day, a lunar month or a year.  Over the years research findings have documented that the time of the day, or the time of year a person is born can predict things like when a women begins menopause, or who is a good driver or a bad driver.  

Yet little or no research funding goes to look at how those predictable fluctuations in our body chemistry affect us.  As a result we as a culture still have no real idea how to develop truly personalized medicine.  It is pretty apparent to all of us we are all different.  Yet medicine, psychiatry, and the drug industry, still treat us all as identical chemical clones.  

Think of the feel good commercials on which drug companies spend billions to fill our airwaves.  Each one is followed by some person talking as fast as they possibly can about all the possible bad things that can happen from taking the drug.  Yet neither the drug companies nor the medical profession generally have a clue why some drugs help some people and harm others.  More disheartening, they don't seem particularly interested in finding out.

Someday we will put aside the prejudice against investigating how those predictible changes in our body chemistry make us different from those whose chemical processes started at a different stage in the fluctuating chemical reaction.  Until then we have to learn to live with the fact science has been most impaired by ancient prejudices in those areas that have the most direct impact on our ability to understand in what ways we are all slightly different chemical beings. 


For related discussions:
http://motrvoter.blogspot.com/2012/05/big-surprise-genetics-is-of-little-use.html
http://motrvoter.blogspot.com/2011/09/nature-v-nurture.html
http://motrvoter.blogspot.com/2013/04/obamas-mapping-brain-project.html
http://motrvoter.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-western-medicine-is-good-at-and.html

The Tiresome Argument about Mlinimum Wage Laws

During the half century of my life that I have been old enough to pay attention to the news there has been nothing in politics more predictable than periodic fights about increasing the minimum wage.

It will start with Democrats pointing to poverty statistics and saying the minimum wage is so low it allows business to exploit workers.  Republicans will respond that increasing the minimum wage will force lots of business closures and hurt the economy.  Democrats respond that putting more money in consumers pockets will give the economy a boost.

The body of research by economists over the years tends to favor the Democratic argument somewhat based on what has actually happened but that might partly be a function of the fact the Democrats demands were always moderated by Republican opposition.  If the Democrats always got what they wanted we might well have ended up with a more stagnant economy.

So they are both right and they are both wrong.  Big box retailers, fast food chains and other big businesses that rely on very low wages to generate big profits are exploiting workers to some extent, and, equally important, are undermining consumer buying power, and thereby our economy, by using very low wages to pump up their profitability.    

On the other hand the small businesses or start-ups that are the backbone of our economy may not be making enough profit to pay more than minimum wage - in individual cases they may indeed go out of business, or decide to not start a business, if the minimum wage goes up.

From my position outside the argument it seems like a simple long term solution would be to link the minimum wage a business can pay to the profitability of the business.   

Thus a new business that isn't making any money could pay people a lower wage, but as the business grows in profitability, the minimum wage the business pays workers would rise.  

That approach would probably hurt Wall-Street a little bit, big businesses that rely on cheap labor would be less profitable.  But the added money in the pockets of people who actually spend all their money instead using the excess cash to swap assets back and forth with other well off folk would be a big boost to our economy.  It would increase demand that business could satisfy, and alleviate the asset bubbles that have plagued us the last couple decades.

Falling business start up rate

Research by a fellow at the Harvard Business School finds that beginning in 1978 the rate of business start ups has consistently fallen, other than a brief rise in 1983-88 and 2003 to 2008.  In 1978 business start up rates stood at about 15%, by 2011 the start up rate was about 8%.  Since 2008 the start up rate has been below the business failure rate - more businesses have died than have been started.

A fellow at the Harvard Business School suggests the cause may in part be the rise of big box and on line retailers that have killed local retailing.

What does it mean for our future that our business diversity is shrinking?  That more and more of our life is controlled by fewer and fewer Corporate CEO's?  Is this related to the increasing gap between most of us the the very wealthy?   Is this related to the overarching monetary muscle that now controls our politics?

Economist May 10, 2014, page 27 - Citing research by the Brookings Institute

Things that could make one a Republican

I had an employee who left my employ some time ago.  She got pregnant and, according to my other employee's, announced around the office for some period of time she was going to take the pregnancy as an opportunity to not work for awhile.  (We are a tiny business so exempt from the family leave act - she had no right to family leave).

At some point as her due date got closer (paraphrasing her sworn testimony) she started investigating all the ways she could get money from the government.  At one point before she left her supervisor reported to me she was soliciting another employee to pretend they were me so they could lie for her so she could qualify for some state benefit for expectant mothers that she was not in fact qualified for.  The supervisor and other employee reported to me that when they refused to help her commit fraud, she got irritated and said she would get a google voice account, give the agency that number and when they called to verify the facts she needed to qualify for the benefit she would pretend to be me herself.

As she got closer to her due date she stopped talking about what she was going to do after the baby was born.  Her supervisor repeatedly asked her if she planned on coming back to work, she would never answer, telling the supervisor "I will let you know."

Then a couple weeks before the baby was due she reported her doctor has said she had some problems with her pregnancy, so she was going out on disability leave.  We never heard a word from her about her job after she left until over a year later we got a notice she had filed for unemployment and listed us as her last employer.  She never contacted us to say she was ready or wanted to come back, the only contact with her was when she showed up one day at the office to show the new baby to other employees (I did not work out of that office)

Since both her immediate supervisor and I believed, and still believe, she never intended to come back to work, I appealed the decision, since I understand the law to be one is not entitled to unemployment benefits when you voluntarily leave the work force.  Her benefits are charged against my business reserve account - not a huge deal, but I believe in unemployment insurance as a protection against events beyond your control, and it irritated me to have someone - evidently - using it to fund a vacation from work.  The fact that we had to go through the trouble of sending a part of her paycheck every month to the government under a garnishment order almost the entire time she worked for us, because she been doing her best to avoid paying her student loans, didn't help her credibility with us.

While awaiting the appeal hearing I got to wondering about the other state benefits my employees said she tried to get them to help her fraudulently procure so called the agency.   I went through the usual lengthy period of going from one phone menu to another, finally got someone on the phone who then referred me to the "program integrity" unit (or some such politically correct name for fraud).  At the "program integrity" unit I got voice mail instead of a person.  I left a brief message along with my contact information and that I had information about possible fraud.  Never heard a word back.  Evidently they are to busy giving out money to worry about possible fraud.

In the end the administrative law judge decided in her favor.  She (the employee) did have complications from her pregnancy, so it sounds like her disability benefits were legitimate - she did leave work earlier than she had planned.  But in the end her testimony made it apparent she had made a deliberate effort in her last months at work, even though she had no intention of coming back to work, to avoid saying she would not come back, despite regularly being asked.  After she left she never contacted us about coming back to work then filed for unemployment a year later.  

The administrative law judge's decision made it sound like we had talked about whether she would come back but no decision had been made.  It was pretty clear to me his findings were aimed more at justifying awarding unemployment.  My testimony, which she did not dispute, was that we asked regularly about her intentions, she refused to answer, and she never contacted us after we left prior to filing the unemployment claim a year later.  I suspect she had learned that by not saying anything she could claim unemployment, and it seems pretty clear if you are the employee you have to do something pretty stupid or pretty outrageous to not get unemployment.

I could have filed an appeal with a real court, but it's not worth my time.  I was probably tilting at windmills to pursue it as far as I did.  But the integrity of the unemployment insurance program is important to me and this just seems wrong.  

This women worked for me for three years.  She was very bright, but was never a particularly good employee.  I learned things when I started making inquiries that made me realize she seems to have found the challenge of manipulating to minimize the amount of work she did much more interesting than her job.  If she spent as much time and energy on doing her job as she spent on figuring out how to be a freeloader she could be very successful (and could make a lot more than I was paying her).  

It aggravates me people like her provide so much ammunition for those who dislike the idea of safety nets.

Yin and Yang in Economics

Selfishness or selflessness.  People who are to selfish sometimes create great things, but more often create misery and conflict.  People who are selfless can create harmony and cooperative action, but usually in the end get trampled by the selfish.

The dichotomy is a function, probably, of the chemistry of our brain.  We have a selflessness brain neurotransmitter (Oxytocin) and we have a bunch of neurotransmitters that focus on our own well-being, so we can survive in a the natural world where it is often literally kill or be killed.  Some people have lots of Oxytocin, the selflessness neurotransmitter, some people don't have very much of it.

There is no question what nuerotransmitter Jesus sought to emphasize, but Jesus wasn't talking economics.

Economic theories tend to be very bad at harmonizing this dichotomy in our own brain chemistry.  The result is the theories tend to focus on one way of thinking as bad, and the other as good.  Capitalism v. Socialism.  Competition is the natural order, cooperation is unnatural v.cooperation is the natural order, competion is unnatural.

In politics, unfortunately, the loudest voices come from the folks at the two ends of the spectrum.  The people whose nuerotransmitter mix is most unbalanced tend to be adament that only one way can be right.  They are the ones who most directly threaten the careers of politicians, so they cultivate disproportionate influence for their point of view.  Unfortunately for the cooperative folk, the competitors tend to have more money.

If those who recognize the value of both influences in shaping our government policies stop paying attention government becomes a tug of war between to two extremes, where the best possible solution to a problem is not even on the table.  

In theory, in a Democracy, the Yin balances the Yang.  It does work, sort of.  But if the folks in the middle ground became more conciously aware of the advantages and disadvantages of these two capabilities in our thought we could have an economy, and a society, that was a lot more stable, productive and harmonious.

American Exceptionalism

In reading Economic media one hears a lot about "American exceptionalism".  The context is usually some author bemoaning why the rest of the world should be like America.  It rankles me a bit.

It is not that we in the United States don't have much to be grateful for.  Despite the often crass dysfunction of our politics and hyper chattiness of our media, we have freedoms difficult to obtain in many parts of the world, we have many of the most dynamic businesses and our overall standard of living, although it has slipped a little bit, is still one of the worlds highest, and is certainly the highest for a country of our size and population.

What rankles me is that usually the people touting "American Exceptionalism" do so in support of their notion that if people work hard they will be successful, so all the poor folks of the world (and the US) need to do is just work hard and they will be successful.  Certainly success without hard work is difficult.  But who works harder than slaves? Who works harder than garment workers making pennies a day in Bangladesh?   Who works harder than the migrant farm workers traveling from low wage job to low wage job.

What separates us from the rest of the world is the extraordinary head start we gained when our ancestors populated a continent depopulated by the diseases they brought with us, and by our ability to push aside native populations with overwhelming technical superiority and use the oceans that insulate our continent from opposition or aggression from the old world that match our technical development. 

For 200 years we spread across the country, the government giving free land to any citizen willing to live on the land and improve it.  We have had it so easy.  We never experienced the situation where there is not enough land to feed our population.  We never experienced having most of the population dependant upon landlords who owned all the land and forced us to work for what they chose to pay us.  As a result we have never been seriously tempted by the desperation that drove revolution in France or Russia or China.  Then within the last 100 years virtually all of the Eastern Hemisphere suffered massive damage and dislocation from World Wars that, while they cost us some money and the lives of many young men, left our infrastructure and homeland largely untouched.

What I hear when someone start using the term "American exceptionalism" is usually a combination of arrogance and complacency.  The context always seems to suggest we are special people, smarter and more hard working, than all those less successful people than the world.  It is usually in the context of disdain for social safety nets - they are a nuisance at best and probably un-American.  That pundits and leaders of big Corporations that have scrambled to the top of their field must be wiser than the rest of us so we should do what they think is best. 

Its only a phrase, but to me, when someone starts talking about 'American Exceptionalism" I am immediately suspicious the persons view of the world is infected by the complacency of personal success, and their notions of what we need to do for a stable, free and prosperous society are probably more likely to lead us down the road toward a society that is just an updated version of feudalism.

Why do Organizations Become Bureacracy's

The most valuable organizations are begun to solve a problem.

Ideally governments organize agencies to solve perceived problems.

Ideally businesses are created because the organizer percieves a need in society and moves to fill that need.

In reality some organizations solve nothing other than the organizers desire to extract money from others to his benefit.

However, even the most valuable organizations, organized for all the right reasons, tend to gradually decay into inefficient bureacracy's.

Decaying government organizations take up space and suck up money while providing little benefit.

Decaying business entities either die or find new ways to extract money from customers, or government that provide no real benefit to society.

Here are some things I think are true:

The longer an organization exists the more resistant it becomes to new ideas.  This is a reflection of a fact nueroscience is validating that people become more resistant to change as they get older, unless they conciously work at rethinking their beliefs, or some event occurs that causes massive emotional trauma that relates directly to what they do in the organization.  The more successful an organization becomes, the more likely it is to allow that success to validate and harden ideas of what the organization should do.  

New people who are hired into existing organizations tend to be hired, not for their problem solving ability, but for their rote learning ability - their ability to adopt the existing procedures they learn as new hires.  New hires that are problem solvers will self select themselves out of the company after a time to go find a place that allows them to solve problems.  But the rote learners are comfortable with the company.  So over time the company roster fills from the bottom up with rote learners who may be uncomfortable with trying out new ideas, or who are more focused on their own position in the company than the success of the company.