December 30, 2005
IT DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU MEAN BY 'HEALTH'....There are plenty of great museums in Washington, but Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) has an idea for one more: a national health museum near the Smithsonian. To hear Gingrey's pitch, it sounds like a pretty straightforward and non-controversial concept: there would be one museum near the national mall devoted exclusively to medicine and health. "My vision of it is the history of medicine," Gingrey said. "What we have done, how far we have come, just basically like, similar to what you have in the space museum."
Gingrey introduced a bill (H.R. 3630), it picked up some bi-partisan support, and it seemed like the kind of effort that wouldn't generate a whole lot of controversy. After all, who's against the study of medicine and health?
Take a wild guess.
[S]ome conservatives fear the museum could be a back door for promoting a liberal agenda. Jim Backlin, a lobbyist for the Christian Coalition, told [Focus on the Family's news website] he could envision displays covering issues such as abortion, embryonic stem cell research, sex education and more.
"This is just yet another dumb, expensive idea," he said. "I noticed that one of the original board members an executive of Planned Parenthood, one of the most dangerous and destructive organizations in America."
Worried about the political implications, Gingrey added a disclaimer to his legislation, explaining that the health museum will avoid discussion of health-related issues that may be controversial, including "abortion, physician assisted suicide, human embryonic stem cell research, human cloning and even in vitro fertilization."
In other words, we can have a health museum, as long as far-right activists are satisfied that people only learn about certain kinds of health.
—Steve Benen 2:23 PM
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Maybe they can get the Christian Coalition on board by devoting a wing of the museum to the therapeutic effects of fire in cases of demonic possession.
Posted by: sglover on December 30, 2005 at 2:29 PM | PERMALINK
Sglover -
Replace "demonic possession" with "stupidity" and I'm in.
Posted by: viserys on December 30, 2005 at 2:30 PM | PERMALINK
I'm with Mr. Backlin on this. Why, people might learn about their hoo-hahs and wee-wees, and we just can't have that.
Posted by: kc on December 30, 2005 at 2:33 PM | PERMALINK
I'm guessing Mr. Backlin would favor a museum displaying the medical techniques he is most familiar with, such as leeches, blood-letting and animal sacrifices...
Posted by: Stephen Kriz on December 30, 2005 at 2:34 PM | PERMALINK
You must realize that if you get a disease it's because you (or someone related to you)has sinned. And if you get better,it's because god healed you. No need for a museum to display that.
Posted by: TJM on December 30, 2005 at 2:35 PM | PERMALINK
One more thing to placate the wing-nuts - no talk about mental health.
Posted by: CurtisE on December 30, 2005 at 2:37 PM | PERMALINK
Public health (especially sexually-transmitted disease, contraception, and abortion) has always been viewed with suspicion by social conservatives in this country. It's sort of surprising that most southern states have schools schools of public health at state universities.
Posted by: Dave on December 30, 2005 at 2:43 PM | PERMALINK
the idea of a national health museum in washington goes at least back to the mid-'90s, perhaps earlier (i have some professional awareness of the museum field), and frankly, it's a bad idea.
not for the right-wingers reasons, of course, but because building a new museum in washington, d.c. is an incredibly expensive undertaking that will be far out of scale with the likely interest of tourists in washington.
Posted by: howard on December 30, 2005 at 2:49 PM | PERMALINK
imagine how jampacked the mental health wing of that museum would be if it honestly assessed the last five years.
the comfort grift is shredding. http://cardcarryingmember.blogspot.com/2005/12/downloading-dollars.html
Posted by: chb on December 30, 2005 at 2:51 PM | PERMALINK
I was so looking forward to the HMO Wing funded by HCA.
Posted by: thethirdPaul on December 30, 2005 at 2:54 PM | PERMALINK
Yet one more example of the well-known fact:
republicans have a vested interest in squashing the truth. Any truth.
Posted by: cdj on December 30, 2005 at 2:56 PM | PERMALINK
Of course, we won't rule out a wing on Natural Family Planning and Life Begins at Conception. No controversy there, eh?
Posted by: tomeck on December 30, 2005 at 2:57 PM | PERMALINK
The Terry Schivo museum.They can have a wing dedicated to Video Diagnostics with Mr Frist as Narrator.
Posted by: scott on December 30, 2005 at 2:58 PM | PERMALINK
The Left is getting hysterectomal over nothing, again. The real issue is the hijacking of the national discourse by a fringe left who would like to enshrine its crazy belief system on the rest of the country.
Next thing you know, they'll want federal inspections of the food supply.
Posted by: tbrosz on December 30, 2005 at 2:59 PM | PERMALINK
Fake TB,
You are getting better - Like your touch of providing a link to nowhere ala the Master linker.
Posted by: thethirdPaul on December 30, 2005 at 3:06 PM | PERMALINK
Why do people listen to these idiots? I've been "privy" to their rants for a long time, since I used to date a woman whose mother got all kinds of publications from christian conservatives, and they are just this side of insane. Really, to them, Lucifer is behind everything they don't like, so how on earth can you deal with them?
Posted by: Mike B. on December 30, 2005 at 3:09 PM | PERMALINK
Having a health museum without mentioning reproductive health is like having a museum of natural history that doesn't mention evolution. Better to just not do it at all than do it with such an asterisk beside its name:
"Museum of Health*"
* - except health that has anything to do with sex.
Posted by: David W. on December 30, 2005 at 3:10 PM | PERMALINK
There's already sort of a Smithsonian museum of health isn't there? The one at Walter Reed? I've been there and taken a gander at General Sickle's leg floating in formaldehyde (he donated it after having it shot off in the Civil War).
Since Walter Reed is getting brac-ed, it will need to move somewhere. Doesn't have to be the mall.
Posted by: Red State Mike on December 30, 2005 at 3:14 PM | PERMALINK
Um. There is a National Museum of Health and Medicine in DC. It's out at Walter Reed Hospital. Be warned, folks. Unless they've redone it, it's got all sorts of cool stuff - the bullet that killed Lincoln, a giant hairball from the stomach of a girl that was a complusive haireater (that gave me nightmares as a kid), lots of weird and/or infamous body parts in jars.
No birth control, as I recall.
I must say that I don't like these drives to replace perfectly good museums/monuments. Prime example, the new FDR memorial. He said what kind of memorial he wanted and they built it after he died. Decades later, a sort of tarted up thing he hated was built. Sad.
Posted by: NotThatMo on December 30, 2005 at 3:17 PM | PERMALINK
Folks, I hate to say it, but we are at WAR.
No, I'm not talking about the Bush war on 'Terraism' [sic] but the 'other' one that is coming down the track like a freight train.
It may be hard to see right now, but we are really in the early stages of what may soon become the second (US) civil war. Just squint your eyes a bit and read some US history books.
The bottom line here is that many of the folks in the red states have never really given up on the ideals of the Confederacy. This is the root, soul and and heart of their ideology.
Though they are currently a minority, just like the Nazis and Italian Fascists were in the early 30's, they are emboldened, organized, well funded and utterly dedicated to their cause.
If the centrist majority of the country doesn't find a real leader real soon, it will be too late for any political solution.
A Bush regime martial law declaration, followed by 'temporary' suspension of the constitution over some sort of 'terror crisis' and it's all over.
Posted by: Buford on December 30, 2005 at 3:25 PM | PERMALINK
So, in the unlikely event that such a museum was created under Smithsonian auspices, it would be free to the public, no? So, you folks south of the 49th (sorry Alaska) could use public funding to learn about people being healthy, but not actually to help you be healthy?
There's a Borges novel in there somewhere... ;)
Posted by: Canuck on December 30, 2005 at 3:28 PM | PERMALINK
I suppose that a TRUE christian would be deeply, deeply offended by any sort of health museum. Such a museum would, of necessity, involve science, and that would in turn be a continuous challenge to faith.
For example, the museum would have to get into germ theory. The germs have demonstrably evolved over the years (i.e., drug-resistant streptococcus, drug-resistant TB, etc.). So we can't have any discussion of germ theory.
Without germ theory, of course, we're stuck with 18th-century medicine. And you can't make a whole museum when all you have are poor humours, bleeding, poultices, and cupping as prescriptive treaments.
Posted by: Derelict on December 30, 2005 at 3:31 PM | PERMALINK
The saddest part of this affair is how we yet again witness the iron grip of the zealots on the Republican party. Note how the museum is actually being pitched by a Republican, yet a word from the Christian Coalition - one of the most dangerous and destructive organizations in America - and he and his party kneel down to lick the boots of their religious reactionary masters.
I despise their cowardice more than I pity them, but I do pity them. Perhaps one day not all Republicans will fall in line.
Posted by: S Ra on December 30, 2005 at 3:32 PM | PERMALINK
the idea of a national health museum in washington goes at least back to the mid-'90s, perhaps earlier (i have some professional awareness of the museum field), and frankly, it's a bad idea.
not for the right-wingers reasons, of course, but because building a new museum in washington, d.c. is an incredibly expensive undertaking that will be far out of scale with the likely interest of tourists in washington.
I'm inclined to agree. I dunno how it'll affect the tourists, but several of the existing museums (Natural History, American History, the Building Museum) could easily accomodate extensive health-related exhibits. Bethesda -- just up the Red Line from DC -- hosts the National Library of Medicine, and it's open to the public as well. And as several posts mention, Walter Reed already has a museum of military medicine. Since the army's going to close the hospital, and the grounds will (presumably) no longer be secured, there's no reason why this facility couldn't be expanded a bit, if necessary.
Posted by: sglover on December 30, 2005 at 3:34 PM | PERMALINK
P.S. Also sad is the fact that somehow zealots like the Christian Coalition - one of the most dangerous and destructive organizations in America - put themselves forward as the face of Christianity, when in fact they are far from it.
Anyone who actually follows the teachings of Christ can only be a liberal. "Turn the other cheek", anyone?
Posted by: S Ra on December 30, 2005 at 3:35 PM | PERMALINK
Here's a pointer to the National Museum of Health and Medicine. In short, we already have a museum of health and medicine. Why another?
The National Museum of Health and Medicine, a division of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, was founded as the Army Medical Museum in 1862 to study and improve medical conditions during the American Civil War. The Museum houses a collection of over 24 million items including archival materials, anatomical and pathological specimens, medical instruments and artifacts, and microscope slide-based medical research collections. The collections focus particularly on the history and practice of American medicine, military medicine, and current medical research issues. Today the Museum floor features exhibits on Civil War medicine including artifacts documenting the death of Abraham Lincoln; evolution of the microscope and medical instruments; a hologram of the human body and a computer interactive station of the anatomy allowing visitors to view the human body from a 3-D perspective.
Posted by: Red State Mike on December 30, 2005 at 3:49 PM | PERMALINK
buford, most red state are far too reliant on the federal trough to ever secede regardless of philosophy/politics. why, just count the military bases in texas, florida, georgia, n. and S. carolina et al.
Posted by: mudwall jackson on December 30, 2005 at 4:02 PM | PERMALINK
I'm surprised the right-wing punks haven't tried to push for a "National Family Museum," given their fondness for the word "family" and all it implies. (Of course, with all the legislation Congress passes to hurt the poor economically, one wonders just how pro-family it actually is.)
Posted by: Vincent on December 30, 2005 at 4:10 PM | PERMALINK
Other controversial medical procedures:
-blood transfusion (forbidden to Jehovah's Witnesses)
-everything else (forbidden to Christian Scientists)
Posted by: Grumpy on December 30, 2005 at 4:22 PM | PERMALINK
Today's reichwingnazi repukes are simply not able to comprehend the advances in technology, science and all such areas. That's the real reason that most academics are democrats and liberals: Today, membership in the Repukelicking Party and adherence to the Conservative Wacky Ideology requires almost unbelievable stupidity.
Posted by: POed Liberal on December 30, 2005 at 4:48 PM | PERMALINK
How odd, in a recent highly publicized trial, the right-wing conservatives wanted courts to allow a school district to teach "both sides" of a controversy. Yet in this case, let's not do that, the right wing conservatives want to do the exact opposite. Not a surprise, really, that there is no consistency in their positions, whatever advances their agenda is the way they go.
Of course, we know what the conservatives want in both this case, and in that recent trail ... they want to control the information flow so that only their positions presented.
Posted by: Paige on December 30, 2005 at 5:31 PM | PERMALINK
In the end all legislation is influenced by special interests. This doesn't sound like anything different. A National Health Museum. Is that something anyone really wants? If so, and the Government is expected to pick up the tab then the democratic proccess will dictate the other particulars. The money could be better spent on roads, bridges or some worthy entitlement program.
Derelict,
Not that you care but The Catholic Church has no problem with science or evolution. It's the soul that matters.
Pope Pius XII declared that "the teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions . . . take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter[but] the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God" (Pius XII, Humani Generis 36).
As for germs and the like I believe the church believes that the impetus and guidance of God was present in their evolution.
Posted by: berlins on December 30, 2005 at 5:43 PM | PERMALINK
That's the real reason that most academics are democrats and liberals:
Ah, ha, ha ,haaaaa, they're academics so they don't have to work for a living.
On the flip side, you have small business owners, the meat and potatoes of our country. And how do they lean???
The survey results show that 85% of small-business owners consider themselves "conservative" to "moderate to conservative" while 66% said they are registered Republicans. Ninety-six percent of respondents said they would vote in the upcoming election in November while 68% of the respondents agreed that the business community should combine resources to help elect business-friendly candidates.
Posted by: Red State Mike on December 30, 2005 at 5:44 PM | PERMALINK
A National Health Museum. Is that something anyone really wants?
I guess they don't like the one we already have, so they have to create a whole new one.
Posted by: Red State Mike on December 30, 2005 at 5:45 PM | PERMALINK
Well, it doesn't surprise me that most small business owners are conservative.
However, there are many oxymorons in America. Of course, there's Rush Limbaugh, the most important oxymoron in the world today.
However, other oxymorons are "military intelligence" "business intelligence" "business leadership" and "innovative businessmen"
Posted by: POed Liberal on December 30, 2005 at 6:01 PM | PERMALINK
On another note, Red State Moron, it's clear that you, like most anti-intellectuals who run down teaching and teachers, have never taught.
You are clearly also not an academic. As a 100 % fully-soft-money funded academic, you can bet that I work every day, and continuously, for my modest compensation.
Posted by: POed Liberal on December 30, 2005 at 6:03 PM | PERMALINK
If the closing weeks of 2005 are any indication, 2006 is rapidly shaping up as the year of the health care coverage crisis in the United States.
For the full story, see:
"Unhealthy Trends for 2006."
Posted by: AvengingAngel on December 30, 2005 at 6:08 PM | PERMALINK
So when will the meme-meisters figure out that the best way to paint biblezombies into a corner will be by questioning their patriotism?
Example 1:
"Fundamentalists consider the Bible to be more important than the Constitution of the United States!"
Example 2:
"Real Americans believe that the Constitution of the United States is more important than the Bible."
Example 3:
"Real Americans put their Constitution and Bill of Rights first - and their religious beliefs last."
Example 4:
"To a Real American, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are sacred documents.
Further, "To a Real American, the Constitution and Bill of Rights are the ONLY sacred documents they need."
Throw a couple of these into the "debate", then sit back and watch the fun. Just a thought...
Posted by: fingerfood on December 30, 2005 at 6:30 PM | PERMALINK
Ok, why are we even considering spending federal funds for a "Health care" museum in DC?
If DC wants to, that's their business, but it should have nothing to do with the federal government.
Posted by: bago on December 30, 2005 at 6:37 PM | PERMALINK
fingerfood,
I sure am glad you cleared that up about being a Real American. I am no Fundamentalist Christian but I think they may answer you by saying "give to Caesar what is Caesars and give to God what is God's". Patriotism only goes so far until you impinge on their religous freedoms which happens to be protected in the Constitution. It's somewhere in there around the first amendment in what is known as the Bill of Rights.
Posted by: berlins on December 30, 2005 at 6:58 PM | PERMALINK
Did Rush Limbaugh have a prescription for all that oxymoron?
Posted by: Pat on December 30, 2005 at 7:01 PM | PERMALINK
On another note, Red State Moron, it's clear that you, like most anti-intellectuals who run down teaching and teachers, have never taught.
Guess what uber-moron? I teach at the undergrad and grad level.
You are clearly also not an academic.
You clearly are full of #$%.
As a 100 % fully-soft-money funded academic, you can bet that I work every day, and continuously, for my modest compensation.
Soft money? Not sure what that is. I'm all externally funded research except when I get coverage to teach.
Your problem is you've probably always been an academic. I've been in industry and in the military, and I'm still in the reserves. I know exactly what the differences are.
Posted by: Red State Mike on December 30, 2005 at 7:05 PM | PERMALINK
kc wrote:
"Why, people might learn about their hoo-hahs and wee-wees, and we just can't have that."
Posted by: kc on December 30, 2005 at 2:33 PM | PERMALINK
C'mon now, how am I supposed to top that?
Maybe they could put in a wax dummy of George W. Bush as an example of a small brain syndrome or waaayy too much use of alcohol, coke and flying military airplanes or something?
someone:
"A National Health Museum. Is that something anyone really wants?"
Red State Mike wrote:
"I guess they don't like the one we already have, so they have to create a whole new one."
Posted by: Red State Mike on December 30, 2005 at 5:45 PM | PERMALINK
OMG, that's hilarious. You don't think they'd waste money on something they already have, do you?
Remember, it IS a Republican controlled government and we are at war with a country which didn't attack us.
Posted by: MarkH on December 30, 2005 at 7:30 PM | PERMALINK
Re the current National Museum of Health and Medicine:
Currently an exhibit on women's health, looks like mostly on breast cancer, and one on development of fetus from conception to birth. Lot's of past exhibits, online versions of all can be accessed, except the ones on history of syphilis and gonorrhea, and one on AIDS.
But they have a virtual exhibit called "Walt Whitman and his Soldiers" with the tagline "every cot had its history." Hmmm.... OK, Walt Whiman was a nurse during the Civil War. Male nurse, huh? Looks fishy.
Then there was one on Linus Pauling (a known radical!).... one on endoscopy (sticking, um...., long tubes up, uh, various human orifices...
Stuff is leaking through the censor. Lotta subtext there, if you ask me.
Posted by: the current one is bad enough! on December 30, 2005 at 7:53 PM | PERMALINK
sorry: National Museum of Medicine and Health
http://nmhm.washingtondc.museum/
Posted by: the current one is bad enough! on December 30, 2005 at 7:55 PM | PERMALINK
I'd love to see a museum display on how the media got scammed by the South Korean stem-cell cloning hoax.
Posted by: Steve Sailer on December 30, 2005 at 9:40 PM | PERMALINK
It is interesting that the far right of the Christian Coalition is fighting an idea put forward by a Pro-Life OB-GYN Catholic Doctor. In his biography, Rep Gingrey states that he is Pro-Life, solidly for the right to bear arms, lower taxes and defence.
However, he still does not make the cut with the fundies.
Posted by: thethirdPaul on December 30, 2005 at 10:33 PM | PERMALINK
OK. I love museums. They are fun and educational.
But.
But what is the national benefit of another Washington D.C. museum paid for out of my tax money? What makes this idea worth adding to the already amazing Republican deficits? Those turkeys are cutting medicaid and food stamps to save money, but somehow a new museum is so valuable that it is worth diverting some of the money saved from the foodstamps and medicaid budgets? Hell. How many flak vests or armored humvees would that money buy?
Where the hell are their priorities?
Oh, wait. Priorities. These are Republicans. The real question is how will they line their pockets from this?
If this is such a good idea, let the health insurance industry pay for it. That will be at least one good thing they do with their money. All they have to do is arbitrarily deny a few more health insurance claims and use that money to pay for the museum. At least, that part they don't use to overpay their CEOs.
Posted by: Rick B on December 30, 2005 at 10:34 PM | PERMALINK
S. Ra [reference See message]
You are quite correct. The so-called fundamentalists are not Christians. They are heretics of Christianity who base their ideas on a strange form of Biblical Inerrancy that does not know what the real bible is. Instead of God they worship the Bible.
There are no original documents from the Bible, only copies of copies of copies, all handwritten for 14 centuries. The changes that occurred are motivated by both political and theological ideas, based on what was popular at the time the relevant scribe was doing his copying. See Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman (once a fundamentalist Biblical Inerrantist himself until he researched the Bible.)
Posted by: Rick B on December 30, 2005 at 10:54 PM | PERMALINK
Re the existing museum, I must be showing my age, but what we used to call the "medical museum" as kids was right next door to the quonset hut housing of the air and space museum. We never went down there without a visit to squirm over the elephantitis leg in the big jar. In hindsight, I guess that was a strange reflection of the big elephant in the lobby of the natural history museum.
Posted by: steve on December 30, 2005 at 11:08 PM | PERMALINK
Four legs = good.
Science = bad.
Posted by: BroD on December 30, 2005 at 11:10 PM | PERMALINK
Rick asks, "what is the national benefit of another Washington D.C. museum paid for out of my tax money? "
I'll concede the location argument--there's no reason this couldn't be in Chicago (or how about on high ground in New Orleans?)
Location aside, I think a case could be made for such a museum. We should be proud of American contributions to the advance ment of medicine and such museums do serve a broad educational purpose as valuable in their way as universities
Posted by: BroD on December 30, 2005 at 11:20 PM | PERMALINK
There is at least one health area where left and right wing attitudes combine (for different reasons) to confound what should be objective scientific analysis of a problem.
I am speaking of the question "Do females ever infect anyone with AIDS other than their own infants?"
The standard left winger and the MSM just take it as a matter that doesn't even need proof--of course they do! The standard right wing Christian has been happy to accept that thesis as well, because, well, because of several reasons. Firstly, they don't want their young men ever to have sex with prostitutes and not be scared out of their minds. Secondly, the idea that women virtually never pass AIDS sexually to anyone seems to encourage lesbianism.
Indeed, AIDS has so not been a part of lesbianism that members of the community sometimes seem almost to be embarassed about it.
Public health policy becomes involved because the MSM have caught on very strongly to the notion that there is one area of the world where women very frequently pass AIDS to men. We even get elaborate "just so" stories about how a main transmission path involves prostitutes sexually infecting truck drivers with HIV.
Conservative news organizations approach this story two ways. Firstly, they suggest that a great deal of fraud and misinformation surrounds the AIDS in Africa story. The claim is increasingly and more loudly being put forth that AIDS in Africa may not be so epidemic as is the fact that the diagnosis of AIDS has been twisted politically in such a skewed fashion as to make deaths from all the traditonal African killers like malaria, dysentery, pneumonia, and malnutrition be counted as AIDS deaths. The picture is further clouded by the fact that people dying of AIDS succomb to anything that their weakened immune systems let in. But what the conservatives are saying is that HIV really has not been proven to exist in many of these unfortunate patients. The great African AIDS epidemic, many now say, is basically a hoax chiefly perpetrated by The New York Times and international health bureaucracies.
If it is true that many who are perishing in Africa really did not have full-blown AIDS or anything close to it, we may conclude that the AIDS epidemic scare story may be a useful fund raising tactic in the short run, but in the long run you end up shipping a lot of very expensive drug-cocktail medicines to people who are very sick with a lot of things, but HIV positive just doesn't appear on their chart.
Lastly, we have to rationally look at the question of whether females ever readily pass the HIV virus. The fact is, HIV is a weakly transmitted disease. If it weren't, you would never shake hands with anyone and it would be common knowledge that condoms are only effective if you also wear them on your tongue. HIV doesn't usually get passed by either sweat or saliva, or by sperm or vaginal fluids contacting unbroken skin. Given this view, it is clear why lesbians may be infected by needle sharing or the occasional boyfriend, but never by each other.
So, how is this great African AIDS thing suppose to work? Is there some type of racial thing? Two theories have been put forth. One says that when men have a lot of open sores on their genitals from other STD's, then HIV has a pathway over from an infected woman. Well, maybe, but that makes AIDS a basically poverty issue, otherwise males would receive prompter treatment for open sores.
The other grand explanation is the alleged "dry sex" proclivity of male Africans. According to this story, African men do not want a well- lubricated lover, at least at first. They want the vaginal canal to be dry and even abrasive and women reportedly accomodate this wish by using a variety of dessicants. But during dry sex the female will frequently start bleeding, which does provide lubrication and a possible HIV pathway.
It seems to be extraordinarily hard to find any good research on women passing AIDS sexually not driven by someone's agenda.
Posted by: Michael L. Cook on December 30, 2005 at 11:23 PM | PERMALINK
Well, I think you are vaguely correct as to why the fact that oral sex among superficially healthy people is far less likely to transmit aids (and some other std's) than the archtypical sex act is de-emphasized so heavily, basically because no one wants to talk about the implications, but other than that you are raving just like a creationist.
"Two theories have been put forth. One says that when men have a lot of open sores on their genitals from other STD's, then HIV has a pathway over from an infected woman. Well, maybe, but that makes AIDS a basically poverty issue, otherwise males would receive prompter treatment for open sores."
So how does this supposed revalation that AIDS is linked to poverty invalidate this theory of transmission enhancement by simultaneous infection with other STD's? I really can't imagine that anyone would disagree that epidemic AIDS is strongly linked to poverty. Who do you think you are showing up with this? Surely ending poverty is worth doing or not regardless of any effect on AIDS. You also provide no evidence that this theory is "driven by someones agenda". What agenda? The international anti-herpes conspiracy?
Posted by: jefff on December 31, 2005 at 12:29 AM | PERMALINK
The National Museum of Health and Medicine
I understand was where the Hirshhorn Museum now resides -- on the National Mall from 1887, two blocks from the Washington Memorial.
For some reason the Health Museum came in disfavor, its exhibits were nowhere near up-to-date, so its historic status was weirdly removed -- something like only its doorknobs were declared historic.
The result: the whole museum was moved to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where it has attrophied futher, and its permanent demise occasionally sought.
You can see some of this story at
http://nmhm.washingtondc.museum/about/faq/index.html#2.1
I like their plasticised human body parts (very ghoulish), the bullet that killed Lincoln, and the electron microsopes.
Posted by: Jameson Burt on December 31, 2005 at 12:57 AM | PERMALINK
I think a case could be made for such a museum. We should be proud of American contributions to the advance ment of medicine and such museums do serve a broad educational purpose as valuable in their way as universities.
from
BroD.
I will agree that a case can be made for such a museum - in isolation. However, can you justify such a museun when funding it both takes food out of the mouths of poor people (cutting foodstamps) and adds to the federal deficit?
Posted by: Rick B on December 31, 2005 at 1:06 AM | PERMALINK
Come on, Rick, let's not get into a "this or that" fight over fiscal crumbs. I'm not going to argue that this takes priority over feeding people. Can we agree that a Health Museum is more worthy than subsidizing tanning salons in Nevada?
Posted by: BroD on December 31, 2005 at 8:01 AM | PERMALINK
With the planned closing of Walter Reed, the NMHM is scheduled to move to Bethesda by 2011.
Posted by: Vlad on December 31, 2005 at 10:29 AM | PERMALINK
BroD, I'l give you that the museum is marginally higher priority than a tanning salon which creates medical expenises for skin cancer in later years. Then there are the bridges to nowhere for Alasks. None are worth cutting medicaid or food stamps for, and certainly should have been cut to pay for the tax cuts.
The Republican priorities are to pay to get elected and use my tax money (and yours) to fund the payments. The only things that get cut are payments to average non-wealthy-Republican Americans.
Even the government jobs, which should be filled by technically competent specialists, are being used to pay off Republican hacks. Ideology overrides competence and experience when they hire. I'll bet the average IQ of government managers has dropped 25 points since Bush took office.
Essentially the government has been taken over by a group of ignorant bandits who are treating taxpayers like feudal aristocracrats treated their serfs.
This is no longer the America we thought it was. Now it is a conquered country being raped by the conquerors. The "fiscal crumbs" you speak of are merely visible symptoms of a deadly disease in America, and the disease is conservative Republicans.
Posted by: Rick B on December 31, 2005 at 12:41 PM | PERMALINK
No no no...we don't need to spend money on a pointless health museum, when there are human beings who need money spent on protecting their actual health.
sheesh...do these lawmakers have an f-ing clue what life is like for most people???
dumb idea
please, Flying Spaghetti Monster, don't let them do this.
Posted by: lilybart on December 31, 2005 at 10:28 PM | PERMALINK
Did Rush Limbaugh have a prescription for all that oxymoron
Thanks Pat!!!! funny
Posted by: lilybart on December 31, 2005 at 10:31 PM | PERMALINK
A health museum? Gimme a break! WTF do we need a crappy museum like that for? I assume it will be a paeon to our overlords at BigPharma.
Posted by: jussumbody on January 1, 2006 at 12:05 AM | PERMALINK