Peter Christian Hall2013-05-23T09:24:35-04:00Peter Christian Hallhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=peter-christian-hallCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Peter Christian HallGood old fashioned elbow grease.Contagion Grips 'Flublogia'tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9964202011-10-06T15:24:23-04:002011-12-06T05:12:02-05:00Peter Christian Hallhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-christian-hall/the first warning about a remarkable bit of news he'd spotted in a routine weekly report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. With what he labeled "an element of luck," the CDC had discovered a novel swine flu virus in two San Diego-area children.
Within 33 hours, CDC officials were telling excited reporters that human transmission had been detected in California and Texas. It wasn't the H5N1 bird flu whose gory onset had been anticipated for years by Internet health activists, but swine flu was scary.
To have played such a key role in detecting the emergence of a deadly global virus thrilled the worldwide virtual community known as "Flublogia," whose members use social media to track influenza and other infectious agents that range from KPC bacteria to Chikungunya.
The excitement didn't last. When swine flu turned into something of a nonevent (except for the mostly young victims whose lungs turned to pulp), fatigue inexorably gripped Flublogia. Less than 11 months after he had broken the news of the outbreak, Revere (who turned out to be a pseudonymous group of public health professionals led by a Boston epidemiologist) became the first of many flu bloggers to sign off.
"The Reveres' retirement left a gaping hole in Flublogia," recalls Mike Coston, a former paramedic and emergency preparedness firebrand who has blogged at Avian Flu Diary since early 2006. Like many surviving bloggers, Coston was drawn to the subject of infectious diseases by H5N1, the avian flu virus that most experts still consider the world No. 1 infectious-disease threat.
Coston rises at 4 a.m. daily to conduct research and write until midday, resuming work in the evening. He posts news, analysis, and historical context backed with links about a world of microbial menaces, drawing on the work of "dozens of news hounds" who crowdsource disease surveillance at a bustling bulletin board called FluTrackers. Posting in thousands of the site's forums and sub-forums, they track down, translate, and post alarming health developments drawn from local newspapers and obscure scientific journals.
Few outbreaks, anywhere, go undetected in Flublogia.
The community's reward has been Contagion -- a hit movie about a killer virus that exalts science and public health professionals, in part by pitting them against an evil blogger who looks like Julian Assange with bad teeth. Contagion's young villain pitches bogus antivirals on his vast Internet platform and even provokes a crusty scientist to dismiss blogging as "graffiti with punctuation."
As someone who's about to issue a novel about a do-it-yourself flu blogger's struggle to survive an avian flu pandemic in New York's East Village, I was modestly affronted when I saw the movie. My architect-blogger in American Fever: A Tale of Romance & Pestilence is fictitious, but he and his knowledge base emerged from years of serious research, much of which I've conducted on flu blogs.
What, I've been wondering, do the real flu bloggers -- who don't even accept advertising on their well-traveled sites, lest an ad for Tamiflu sap their credibility by popping up next to a story on antivirals -- think of Contagion's greedy Alan Krumwiede?
"I thought he was a caricature," says Crawford Killian, a retired business-writing teacher and novelist in Vancouver who serves as Flublogia's unofficial dean and longest-running contributor via his popular site, H5N1. "I know there are a lot of very strange people out there, blogging their brains out. But for a guy making $4 million, [Krumwiede] seemed to be operating solo -- 12 million hits per day and he's sticking posters under windshield wipers?"
"Part of me was slightly insulted," says Coston, who likes the movie. "But there are a number of conspiratorial antivaccine bloggers out there that are in some ways close to that." Indeed, a popular antivaccine site called NaturalNews.com greeted Contagion by warning visitors: "Hollywood begins mass brainwashing campaign to get people ready for the next bioengineered virus release."
"These nuts exist and the Internet gives them an audience and microphone," says Scott McPherson, chief information officer at the Florida House of Representatives and host of Scott McPherson's Web Presence, an IT-and-infrastructure-oriented flu blog. Calling the Krumwiede character "a 21st century snake-oil salesman," he hails Contagion as "an intelligently written movie. I particularly liked the fact that the feds decided to shut him down."
"The majority of us didn't like the movie, didn't find it hard-hitting enough," says Cottontop, an upstate New York mother of two who posts on the Flu Wiki bulletin board and blogs at her Flu News Network. As for Contagion's Krumwiede, she says: "We are not like that. Flu forums and flu blogs are 24-hour public health services -- first responders to getting the news out."
Bestselling author Laurie Garrett (The Coming Plague, I Heard the Sirens Scream), who as a paid consultant contributed a lot of ideas to more than 30 drafts for Contagion's screenplay, says that Krumwiede's character was inspired by her shock at seeing how many people posted false information about "life and death matters" during the swine flu pandemic.
Still, says Garrett, "there's a whole bunch of very good blog sites. You can't believe people have the time to do all this." As she and Contagion screenwriter Scott Z. Burns worked hard to whip up the movie's MEV-1 bat virus, she was tracking Flublogia. "Revere was way ahead of the curve. You'd think: 'How did he find this out?' You have to admire the tenacity and the digging."
On the plus side, the flu bloggers -- who universally complain that gas, electricity, and food never runs out in Contagion -- agree that the movie has spurred interest in their work. McPherson, who until recently hadn't blogged much about flu for more than a year, says he's "fired back up again," with five posts in various stages of development.
"My blog has picked up a lot of new people since Contagion," says Cottontop. "And the number of Indonesians reading it and going to Flu Wiki has really picked up, too. Something's going on over there with H5N1."
]]>The International Street Cannibals' Spicy Chamber Musictag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7667862010-10-18T14:03:26-04:002011-05-25T18:05:23-04:00Peter Christian Hallhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-christian-hall/International Street Cannibals mix it up with some young boxers. I'd been invited to a show in a series called "STRIKE" (see video and review) by Cannibals co-founder Dan Wotan "Lefty" Barrett, a brilliant and driven cellist, composer, and conductor who would be performing under a garish red fez, grinning in wild plastic glasses.
The opening act gave this unrepentant rock aficionado chills.
I arrived to find a slender woman holding an eight-foot Alpine horn in a boxing ring. As lights dimmed, Ann Ellsworth embarked on a haunting debut performance of something called Still Unvanquished: Her wooden horn followed a score by composer (and ISC co-founder) Gene Pritsker to contend with a composition of electronically charged samples of a track she had previously recorded for him.
The result wasn't as complicated as it sounds. Meticulously planned and executed, the piece was as fresh and exalted as Alpine air. It turns out to have been merely 1 of 386 original compositions the Russian-born Pritsker has written since 1990. His work has been performed all over the world by organization such as the Berlin Philharmonic and Adelaide Symphony. (Pritsker has also orchestrated Hollywood movies, including Perfume.)
I've since watched almost a dozen performances by the Cannibals, a bold gang of seasoned chamber musicians, dancers, singers, and composers who will inaugurate their 2010-11 season on Wednesday, Oct. 20, at St. Mark's in-the-Bowery. "Telemarketing Telemann" will explore the works of Georg Philipp Telemann, a self-taught baroque composer who once outshone Bach and Handel.
"He was a cuckold who could never be what Bach was, but who was chosen first for the big gig Bach wanted," explains Barrett, who co-directs the Cannibals, playing a central role in designing each show. "We always start from a kind of impulse, a phrase that can set us off -- it's a ritual of trying to locate something, define a phenomenon."
"Telemarketing Telemann" will offer a stronger-than-usual narrative thread embodied in Anya Migdal's performance as a "hapless' telemarketer trying to sell Telemann's baroque works to hyperactive New Yorkers.
As always, the show will present original compositions, too. Making its debut will be Trio for two violins and viola, composed by co-director Pritsker - an avowed "genre-bender" who plays a fierce guitar that ranges from ethereal jazz warbling to strokes of metal. (See him rap and play in this performance of Luck from his renowned Sound Liberation ensemble [review here], which includes a number of Cannibals.) Co-director Dan Cooper, a leading 7-string bass player who has performed much with Ute Lemper, will offer his Plural of Blue, delivered (as in this video) by pianists Taka Kigawa and Dimiti Dover.
Telemann will be honored with bold ensemble interpretations and in quieter solos from Kigawa and violinist Lynn Bechtold. There will be plenty of dancing, too: accents in various pieces from Megan Sipe and her Dancing Fish Productions ensemble; belly dancing with superb discipline and focus by Amanda Mottur; and creative break dancing from Franklin Chen, as in Kigawa's splendid performance of Stravinsky's Petrushka for "Desperately Seeking Igor" last May (video here).
It regularly adds up to a brisk series of performances that are creatively designed and rigorously executed in a flow that respects a contemporary audience's limited attention span. Stately orchestrations can be spiced with novel instrumentation and/or ancillary performances that seek to unearth what Barrett calls the composer's "essential text."
"They give me a wider perspective in terms of music repertoire and in terms of being a performer," says Kigawa, who consistently awes critics with his mastery of the most difficult texts. (But watch for the amusing exchange with the rock musician at the end of this rave review of Kigawa's recent packed show at Le Poissson Rouge.) "I get a wider point of view, with unique, original, and creative things. These concerts are events. It seems like a lot of fun, but these guys are very serious. And Dan Barrett allows me to do anything I want."
Pritsker concurs. "Cannibal concerts are great because we can do whatever we want and I can premier old things I wrote." He reckons that one-fourth of his compositions have yet to be performed publicly. "Classical music should be more eclectic, mixed up with genres and styles," says Pritsker. "The genre doesn't matter to us, as long as it's good. "
He and Barrett met 20 years ago at Manhattan School of Music and went on to stage a performance series called "Bohemia Unlimited" at a tiny Iraqi restaurant uptown. "We'd get about 70 people with just three tables, for speeches and medieval Arabic instruments, puppet shows, pretty nutty-ass stuff," recalls Barrett. "Gene would cook up chicken roti and for $8 you'd get a glass of wine, dinner, and the show."
The Cannibals, it happens, are much about eating. (Sunday afternoon shows at St. Mark's used to end with bring-your-own chow.) At the high end, the group's name was inspired by Barrett's reading of Montaigne's 1850 essay, Of Cannibals. On the other hand, says Barrett: "I always felt there's got to be food. You've got to have food in ritual," he says. "It's about commonality of intake, a nurturing thing. Our first "STRIKE" had Middle Eastern food, like the Navaho roundhouse."
Indeed, an occasional series of lively collaborative gigs with the likes of longtime Defunkt trumpeter John Mulkerin at the Parkside Lounge still feature a bin of hot chicken legs at the break. "We do all this as a meal," Barrett concludes. "I always say: 'Make the flyer a little edible.']]>'The Crisis Caravan': Charity's Road to Hell?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7582662010-10-11T13:37:52-04:002011-05-25T18:00:30-04:00Peter Christian Hallhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-christian-hall/The Republic of Biafra was swiftly surrounded.
Images of starving toddlers with gaping eyes and distended bellies filled the world's media when the BBC's Frederick Forsyth and a horde of reporters came to cover what they called genocide. International nongovernmental aid organizations (INGOs) hastened to collect money for emergency food shipments. Celebrities pitched in. (Here, Jimi Hendrix and Joan Baez chat at a 1968 benefit for Biafran refugees.) Ojukwu was forced to flee in 1970 after a million deaths. He lives in Nigeria, comforted by a worshipful wiki page and Forsyth's first book, The Biafra Story: The Making of an African Legend.
Linda Polman has some things to add to Ojukwu's legend in The Crisis Caravan: What's Wrong With Humanitarian Aid? The veteran Dutch journalist says Ojukwu charged the relief agencies loads of money to let them send food and supplies via his little air force - shipments that fed his troops. Indeed, she says, the fact that they were accompanied by arms and munitions is what caused the Nigerians to ban the aid missions. "He fled," Polman says, "with his wife, children, 6,600 pounds of luggage, and his white Mercedes-Benz ... [to live] happily ever after."
In many ways, the Nigerian Civil War was a template for subsequent relief efforts. Oxford-educated Ojukwu hired a publicist. Medecin sans Frontieres (MSF a.k.a Doctors Without Borders) was born in 1971 when it broke from the International Committee of the Red Cross because the ICRC had balked at aid that might benefit the rebels. In lieu of Red Cross participation, dozens of INGOs charged into Biafra. Ever since, aid agencies - including the ICRC - have raced to run up their banners in crisis zones.
The Crisis Caravan is a hard-boiled portrait of how good intentions can make things worse in distant, scary places we hope aid money will make nicer. The book begins with the revelation that humanitarian heroine Florence Nightingale opposed the Red Cross' creation on grounds that volunteers should not make war cheaper or easier for governments to wage. She lost the argument: The ICRC's Geneva Convention is now accepted by every nation in the world.
That doesn't mean it's honored. According to analysts at Development Initiatives, the humanitarian sector is a big business that in 2008 amounted to $18 billion, with almost 300,000 employees. They must reach victims quickly and prominently, then generate reports, results, news, and images for fundraising. Financially strapped media organizations try to embed journalist with NGOs that can provide food, transport, and exposure to compelling news. Reporters, Polman says, "become the disciples of aid workers."
Aid agencies face terrible ethical choices. In 1997, the ICRC apologized for having said nothing about the Holocaust during World War II because speaking out would likely have prevented it from helping prisoners of war and refugees -- work that solved huge logistical problems for both Nazis and Allies.
Polman presents lots of detail. Sections that offer accounts from her work as a war correspondent stand out, starting with what she personally witnessed following the genocide in 1994 of 800,00 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda. Some 250 INGOs raced to help 750,000 Rwandan refugees - some with cholera - streaming into the Congolese town of Goma. As the world watched, four giant camps were built, with restaurants, bars, tailor shops, hair salons, movie theaters, and hotels.
The problem? Residents were mainly Hutus governed and policed by mass-murdering extremists who demanded jobs and collected fees and shares of all aid. Having started the crisis at home, they slaughtered residents they didn't like and continued raiding Rwanda. Polman quotes Fiona Terry, then project leader of MSF France, describing Goma as "a total ethical disaster." After six months, MSF France quit Goma. Two years later, Rwanda's Tutsi army swept in to shoot up and shut down the camps.
A vivid chapter called "Donor Darlings" describes a camp for Sierra Leone's amputees, victims of a civil war in which both rebels and government soldiers cut off civilians' limbs. The residents are such a hot draw for journalists that victims who were merely maimed in explosions or accidents are driven out by those who were intentionally chopped. Then come waves of MONGOs (as Polman calls private NGOs, for "My Own NGO"). Now kids whose huts are full of limbs they don't wear because they wreck photo ops are flown to the U.S. or Germany for state-of-the-art prosthetics that can't be maintained in Sierra Leone. Many never return; they are adopted, notwithstanding that they have parents.
The coup de grace comes when Polman interviews rebel leader Mike Lamin, who explains that the world's acceptance of a state of permanent civil war had inspired the amputations. "Without the amputee factor you wouldn't have come," he says, bitter that his side's surgical innovation hasn't brought its fair share of donor money and food.
The book's charges include that Sir Bob Geldhof's 1984 Band Aid helped fund and provide cover for the Ethiopian government's effort to forcibly resettle hundreds of thousands of dissident northern peasants on southern plantations. Africa, currently being hailed as "a dealmaker's paradise" for its high level of international corporate takeovers, is an aid zone that keeps on giving to ever-more competitive INGOs. And to the public and private sectors: Good Fortune -- an excellent, affecting documentary about how global development aid enabled Kenyan officials and international companies to snatch up urban and rural property already in productive use -- can be streamed free through Oct. 12 at PBS POV (trailer here).
More recent crises get shorter shrift in The Crisis Caravan. A chapter entitled "Afghaniscam" explains that working as a humanitarian aid worker ranks 5th on the list of most-dangerous occupations; they are perceived by both sides as "force magnifiers" for the West, even as they insist they are independent. Does this make them legitimate targets for the Taliban?
Polman says most of the money they bring goes to maintain Western lifestyles or is dispersed among contractors and subcontractors. She cites a house-building project whose $150 million left 20% with the originating aid agency, a further 20% at a Washington-based contractor, and an additional 20% with a third organization, which then hired a subcontractor. The payoff: Wood beams imported from Iran turned out to be too heavy for Afghani homes, so the villagers used them as firewood.
Polman's complaints about agencies in Darfur seem limited to the Sudanese government's insistence that agencies hire its partisans and cough up millions in fees and taxes.
The suspense builds as Polman's jeremiad approaches its lively closing glossary, "Aidspeak," complete with an entry on "Bono and Bob." (Watch them join in Ricky Gervais' very funny satirical video about their efforts.)
Don't all such books have to offer solutions?
Polman tries. She says we should ask more questions about where public and private contributions are going. She wants donor governments and agencies to better coordinate dealings with war parties so aid isn't used to help one side oppress and kill more victims. Jon Stewart was left blinking sympathetically when Polman visited The Daily Show. "Good luck with this," he concluded politely.]]>Toxic or Not, Commercial Whaling Is Back on the Tabletag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.5180752010-03-30T12:48:34-04:002011-05-25T16:00:23-04:00Peter Christian Hallhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-christian-hall/International Whaling Commission, says a U.S. official, "might just fall apart" at its June meeting in Morocco if delegates fail to reach consensus on overhauling the 63-year-old voluntary organization.
An IWC collapse would dissolve what's left of a legally unenforceable 24-year moratorium on commercial whaling, leaving Japan and fellow whalers to hunt freely.
The whales' edibility is a prime issue. Even if they could accept limited coastal commercial whaling, environmentalists are unwilling to let Japan continue whaling in the so-called Antarctic sanctuary, where whale meat is less tainted by mercury and other industrial wastes. The fact that it's risky to devour meat from northern whales and dolphins offers an incentive for Japan to give up the hunt--so long as the Antarctic is off-limits.
"We're trying to prove we've made the environment so toxic they can't eat them," explained Louie Psihoyos to an audience at New York's Asia Society weeks ago, after screening The Cove, his Academy Award-winning expose of how Japanese villagers trick, trap, and slay dolphins. Hunting in the South Atlantic provides Japan with whale flesh that at least meets national health standards for mercury intake.
Since there seems to be no way to stop Japan from killing cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises), the Obama Administration is poised to compromise on commercial whaling in order to secure broader, more effective regulation by the IWC. If Japan chooses to cooperate, that is. Its recent success at thwarting protection for depleted, sashimi-bound Atlantic bluefin tuna during a UN wildlife session does not augur well.
IWC meetings are rancorous affairs at which neither side wins the three-quarters majority needed to change anything. Founded by whaling nations, the IWC was taken over by whaling opponents in the 1980s, since which time Japan has used foreign aid to recruit support from Caribbean and Asian countries. (Dominica dramatically reversed its pro-whaling position last year.)
A three-year effort to reorder the IWC (read the talking points from a recent working session) would create a South Atlantic Sanctuary and beef up conservation efforts to help the world's biggest mammals cope with oceanic pollution, ship strikes, climate change, and sonic disruption. In an historic compromise, countries that hunt whales could do so along their coasts--and Japan could continue to exploit Antarctic waters--but only under an enforceable legal agreement that the U.S. official said must unquestionably cap whaling "at a significant decrease" below the current fatality rate. "Numbers are key."
The IWC estimates that 1,700 to 1,900 whales have been slaughtered in each of the last five years, about six times the 1990 toll. Japan hunts whales for "scientific research," then sells the meat. Constraints are flatly rejected by Norway and Iceland, whose whaling is authorized by Minister of Fisheries--and Green Party leader--Steingrímur J. Sigfússon.
Japanese fleets kill some 1,200 whales a year, mostly in the Antarctic. Research in Japanese shops has found that packaged meat from whales--particularly those with teeth--has high levels of mercury contamination. (It is claimed that baleen whales such as the minke targeted by most of today's whalers have low levels of mercury because they consume smaller fish, but research has shown that northern minkes can carry plenty of mercury.)
Continuous high-level mercury exposure can snuff out brain cells and destroy human senses. It can render people deaf, numb, and blind. Exposure by hatmakers to it gave rise to the expression "mad as a hatter."
Japanese consumers aren't told much about the risks in their seafood. They're still trying to forget decades of mercury poisoning wrought by greed, duplicity, and bureaucratic obstruction. In 1956 residents and pets in Minimata City developed problems talking and walking. Some suffered convulsions. Three years later it was determined that they'd developed neurological problems from consuming fish and shellfish exposed to methyl mercury. A chemical plant continued dumping the heavy metal in local waters until 1968, by which time thousands had developed Minimata Disease.
Americans don't know much about mercury, either. Anti-vaccine activists attribute a host of medical problems to thimerosol--a preservative in flu shots that contains mercury--but they don't care much about the burning of coal, which has infused mercury in the earth's waters.
Last August, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that a 1998-2005 study of fish in 291 U.S. freshwater streams found every sample contaminated with mercury. "More than two-thirds of the fish exceeded the U.S. EPA level of concern for fish-eating mammals," with some of the highest levels recorded in relatively untouched Southern watersheds. (Read this USGS fact sheet.)
Still, reports Bloomberg, Wall Street analysts are recommending shares in Peabody Coal and dismissing stock in solar vendors, whose projects are losing government support worldwide. "Coal is burned to make about 41% of power worldwide and will increase its share to 44% by 2030," the International Energy Agency forecasts.
That means fish and cetaceans at the top of the food chain will accumulate ever-greater volumes of mercury. A New York Times probe in 2008 found that most tuna sushi in New York restaurants contained extremely high levels, much of it derived from Atlantic bluefin tuna, one of the world's greatest predators. Bluefin are being "annihilated" by overfishing,
There are less direct ways for mercury to enter our food chain. With few eager to consume the fruits of whaling, Iceland may be trying to turn its catch into industrial feed kibbles. The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society noted recently that Iceland had been caught smuggling whale meat to Estonia and said government reports showed that tons of minced, processed whale meat might have reached Denmark's pork, salmon, and fur farms. Iceland's government swiftly said that it had merely mislabeled exports of fishmeal.
If the IWC reform should pan out, one innovation would create a DNA register so that meat from whales--such as that seized in a recent Malibu restaurant bust--could be traced to the ship that processed it.
Public comment on the proposed IWC reform closes April 1. So far conservation organizations have opposed any compromise. A Pew Environment Group statement at last June's IWC session indicated that Japanese coastal whaling might be accepted "only if it agrees to end scientific whaling and commits to respect internationally agreed whale sanctuaries."
As it happens, the U.S. commissioner for the IWC used to be a senior officer in Pew Environment Group. Monica Medina, U.S. Commissioner for the IWC since February, emphasizes that the U.S. hasn't yet taken a position. A formal proposal is due to be put forth as of April 22, either by a member nation or by working group Chairman Christian Maquieira of Chile, whose "mantra" has been the following: "Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed."
"The point of the compromise is to close gaping loopholes that have let whaling increase tremendously in the last 10 years and bring it under international control," says Medina, an environmental lawyer who serves as the Commerce Dept.'s principal deputy undersecretary for oceans and atmosphere. "If there's to be a compromise, we need to say with confidence that we're not doing any harm to species or stocks."
That leaves the U.S. potentially tolerating Antarctic whaling. "It would be best if there were no whaling in the sanctuary but unfortunately whales are hunted there now--and it could possibly be many fewer under the compromise," says Medina. "I'd like to see a significant reduction in whaling everywhere. We want to make it more of a sanctuary."
In June, Medina will lead the U.S. delegation to a potentially climactic IWC session in Agadir, Morocco. She knows what she's up against: Medina was at the meeting in Qatar when Japan scuttled proposals to preserve bluefin tuna. If she cuts a deal with the whalers, environmentalists will be outraged. If she doesn't--and the IWC falls apart--more countries might opt to hunt in the Antarctic.
In any event, the seas seem certain to become more toxic. Whales will continue to be poisoned, then slaughtered, by their cousins at the top of the food chain: people.]]>Curious about 'The Whale?' Read the Booktag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.4793212010-02-27T11:51:18-05:002011-05-25T15:40:24-04:00Peter Christian Hallhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-christian-hall/Seaworld in Orlando and delightedly watched killer whales perform. She became a top trainer at Seaworld and was publicly drowned last week by its top draw, a killer whale named Tilikum.
As a youth in England, Philip Hoare watched an orca named Ramu follow his trainer's demands "like a lap dog...beaten by his captivity." Ramu, Hoare tells us, outgrew his "oversized swimming pool" and died of heart failure at San Diego's Seaworld after siring four offspring.
During his long career as a writer and author, Hoare nurtured a fascination that grew into obsession; he went off to watch and study whales so frequently in Provincetown that his friend John Waters suggested Hoare write a book about them.
I wonder what Dawn Brancheau would have made of Hoare's just-released text, The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea. Her lurid death in front of a big crowd must be boosting sales of this thoughtful, sensitive survey of man's interactions with whales, from centuries of slaughtering them for oil to light homes and cities (and making exquisite perfumes from their dung) to forcing them to entertain us.
Hoare pays eloquent tribute to the beauty, power, and history of the sea's mightiest creatures, particularly the sperm whale, which happens to be the world's biggest mammal -- essentially our cousin, with bigger brains and a noble sense of family and loyalty that might be superior. (While orcas belong to the mammalian porpoise family, they are the sperm whale's sole natural predator and play a role in the book.) Science is only beginning to figure whales out. Can readers who have discovered their elegance and mystery ever again enjoy a seaquarium?
This personal tour through the nature, history, and literature of whales and whaling is generously illustrated with photographs, art, and charts. Throughout are choice quotes from Herman Melville's Moby Dick, a presence that Hoare uses to examine not only the practice of whaling (dominated by Quakers, as it happened), but its sexual and racial tones (men at sea, many of them African, like Queequeg).
Hoare presents whaler-turned-adventure-writer Melville, nearly finished writing a book that he expects to prove popular with the masses ("blubber is blubber," he dismissively tells a friend), meeting Nathaniel Hawthorne at a picnic that I was surprised to learn an ancestor of mine had held in the Berkshires. The two became passionate friends. Hawthorne's gloomy concerns soon prompted the younger writer to read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Shakespeare's collected works. These helped provoke a radical rewrite that produced a Moby Dick dedicated to Hawthorne. Melville never recovered from its commercial failure.
No longer hunted by most nations for oil and protein, whales are still in danger. They eat a lot of food: The world's sperm whales, says Hoare, eat as much fish per year as people do. (That's one of the rationales the Japanese put forth to defend their gory obsession with killing whales -- and even common dolphins.) The toxins we dump in the sea have filled its larger species with mercury and PCBs. The gorgeous, ghostly beluga's Arctic habitat is melting; freighters will soon exploit the once-blocked Northwest Passage, fouling waters that are no longer icy enough to sustain it.
Meanwhile we chase whales around in sonar-equipped cruisers jammed with tourists. We confine them in glass boxes, marveling at their scale and cleverness. We click on tales of their empathy (whale saves drowning diver!) and of tasteless human hubris (Shoppers flee as shark aquarium in Dubai mall cracks!). I prefer Hoare's account of swimming close to a female sperm whale that clicks over him until she decides he's unfit to eat.
Mostly we wonder at the untimely conclusion of Dawn Brancheau's life. What made that orca drown her? I read absurd distinctions between Tilly, as the killer whale is known, and other animals that have offed their trainers. Because Tilly is "wild," it might not be executed, as happens to chimpanzees, alligators, and pythons that bite their trainers, explainsThe New York Times. Is an alligator really less wild than an orca?
Six-ton Tilly happens to be the world's biggest captive killer whale. He's participated in the deaths of three trainers in his 30-year lifespan. I'm not saying Tilly should be punished. There's no chance of that anyway.
With widespread bans on capturing killer whales, breeding has become the most acceptable way to acquire one for display. Calves are worth $10 million apiece. Seaworld, a chain bought last year by the Blackstone Group -- one of the world's biggest private equity firms -- owns 25 of the world's 42 captive orcas. Tilly sired 14 of these salable commodities. He's a killer stud, too valuable to sacrifice to public opinion.
In fact, his Shamu Show will go on, a bigger draw than ever. Performances are already resuming, though trainers won't be allowed to get in the water with Tilly until Seaworld can announce some sort of conclusion that allows it to risk another worker. Given how little we understand about the great oceanic mammals, that piece of fiction will be a lot less informative than Hoare's wonderful book.
]]>Martin Luther King Jr.: Remembering With a New Cointelprotag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.4268412010-01-19T09:50:42-05:002011-05-25T15:15:20-04:00Peter Christian Hallhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-christian-hall/Cointelpro, the notorious program through which FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover vigorously disrupted the activities of American political dissidents.
From 1956 until 1971, the FBI stalked and sabotaged a wide range of groups - from the Communist Party to Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Cointelpro labeled King's nonviolent SCLC a Black nationalist "Hate Group," and hounded the Nobel Peace Prize winner until he was assassinated. (Explore Dr. King's FBI file.)
I raise this ugly historical issue because an Obama Administration official was just caught contending that our government should secretly disrupt and undermine public discourse in "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups" in a recently published academic paper. In this capacity, Teabaggers would be an obvious target, as would antiwar activists. How about people who organize against mandatory health insurance? Or Americans who regard swine flu as a dangerous hoax?
Cass Sunstein heads up the Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs, the website of which asserts it "oversee[s] policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs." Sunstein co-wrote a paper in the Journal of Political Philosophy, urging that the U.S. government actively fight "conspiracy theories." His prescription? Assign state agents and paid advocates who seem independent to participate in online discussion groups and "undermine" them.
Sunstein calls this activity "cognitive infiltration of extremist groups" and targets 9/11 activists in particular. Entitled "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures," Sunstein's paper was published on January 17, 2008, when the presidential campaign of his Harvard Law School friend Barack Obama was pledging to bring a new era of transparency to Washington.
Novelist Marc Estrin exposed Sunstein's article a few days ago on the Rag Blog and the story was then quickly picked up by Daniel Tencer at the Raw Story. More recently, Salon's Glenn Greenwald and some conservative and right-wing websites have now also delved into it.
In one passage, Sunstein presents five ways the government might respond to "extremist" conspiracy theories, three of which include formal, informal, and covertly funded responses to said discussions.
Sunstein echoes two tactics suggested by Cointelpro that "will have a place under imaginable conditions:"
(1) "Government might ban conspiracy theorizing
(2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories." Otherwise? What's a nonfinancial tax? My dictionary says it might be a "strain or heavy demand."
In 1956, Cointelpro was established to evade court decisions barring the government from interfering with activities that weren't unlawful. In 1975, Frank Church led a Senate committee's probe of Cointelpro after antiwar activists stole and exposed incriminating FBI files. The Committee reported:
Nonviolent organizations and individuals were targeted because the Bureau believed they represented a 'potential' for violence--and nonviolent citizens who were against the war in Vietnam were targeted because they gave 'aid and comfort' to violent demonstrators by lending respectability to their cause.
The report revealed that the FBI:
Broke into homes and mailboxes
Created bogus documents to frame targets as government informers
Tried to break up marriages with anonymous letters, and jobs with secret tips to employers
Sent letters encouraging violence between street gangs and the Black Panther Party
Sought to stir up tax audits
Dispatched agents provocateurs to discredit antiwar groups with unpopular and unsuitable activities
The FBI played a key role in what turned out to be the murder of Panther Fred Hampton, who was shot while in bed by Chicago police.
This brings us to Martin Luther King Jr.. From his early civil rights activities, until he was assassinated, the FBI dogged him. King's immortal "I have a Dream" speech infuriated the Bureau, which labeled him "the most dangerous Negro of the future." The FBI went on to track every move King made, taping personal moments he shared with friends and women and then sending edited versions of these engagements to King's wife.
Greenwald quotes Sunstein: "Throughout... "We assume a well-motivated government that aims to eliminate conspiracy theories, or draw their poison, only if social welfare is improved by doing so."
No problem, then, so long as government officials sincerely feel that the country would be best served by personally destroying a troublesome global icon. But what if people like Sunstein and Obama thought the official was wrong? What if they said things to other people -- perhaps held a meeting about it? The government might think they were conspiracy theorists. Good thing they're running the show.
]]>Thimerosol in Flu Vaccines? America's Mercury Habit is Nothing Newtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.3427362009-11-06T14:01:43-05:002011-11-17T09:02:45-05:00Peter Christian Hallhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-christian-hall/thimerosal that serves to keep bacteria and fungus out of the vaccine.
Mercury is a neurotoxic element that was once known as quicksilver and ranks next to gold at No. 80 on the periodic table. Isaac Newton, the first physicist and creator of the theory of gravity, experimented with quicksilver, even drank it. Some scholars view Newton's workaholism, raging competitiveness, religious fanaticism, and terminal virginity--he died without ever apparently having had sex--as indicators that he suffered from mercury poisoning.
Today the blood of one in three American woman contains detectable levels of mercury.
Mercury floods the atmosphere every time we fire up a coal plant. The neurotoxin rains down on our lakes, rivers, and oceans, tainting the fish we eat and particularly threatening the nerve cells of pregnant women, their fetuses, and young children.
So when was the last time you saw a kid or a woman of childbearing age turn down tuna fish?
Then there are compact fluorescent light bulbs. These contain enough mercury to be labeled dangerous, yet authorities haven't seen fit to come up with safe ways for Americans to turn in their burnouts. Most toss them in the trash, where they inevitably break--bad news for neighbors, passersby, custodians, garbage collectors, and refuse recyclers. (The good news? As long as you personally avoid the toxic fumes, you can relish the notion that less mercury will reach the environment because the bulbs reduce coal consumption.)
For people over 30, mercury is the perhaps-surprising identity of the stuff Moms used to smear on children's skinned and bloody knees. For much of the 20th Century, American wounds were treated with a selection of ever-more painful tinctures. Mercurochrome was the mild reddish stuff made from a compound of mercury and bromine. It stung the least, but plenty of children cried the first few times they experienced it.
As they grew, kids could look forward to an reddish-orange antiseptic that burned a lot more: Merthiolate made them bawl the first few times they experienced it, but the stuff sure killed bacteria and fungus. That's why pharmaceutical companies put it in the vaccines that contain deactivated flu. Yes, Merthiolate happens to be the trade name for...thimerosal.
Few worried about mercury back then. When thermometers broke, kids loved to roll the amazing silvery blobs around in boxes--or in their bare hands. Quicksilver was awesome to behold. Thrilling to touch. And incredibly toxic.
In the 1970s scientists finally began to research potential harm. By the 1990s, it was acknowledged that the mercurial antiseptics were extremely dangerous and should be withdrawn from the market. In response to the same research and a rising tide of complaints that thimerosal in infant and toddler vaccines might be making kids autistic, the Food & Drug Administration swept all but trace elements of himerosal from common vaccines--except for influenza.
The army of autism activists has since mushroomed as diagnoses of the neurological development disorder climbed to number more than 1% of all American kids and teens. The scientific establishment forcefully rejects any association with thimerosal; a simple argument is that if vaccines that contain mercury cause autism, the number of fresh cases ought to have dropped dramatically since 2002.
Is there another explanation? Dr. John J. Cannell of the Vitamin D Council has helped unearth, inspire, and conduct a lot of research into the benefits of Vitamin D--and the risks of not having enough of the powerful natural hormone. (I cite many of them in this entry from American Fever, my online novel about an H5N1 flu pandemic.)
In a paper published online in 2007, Cannell cited numerous examples of the benefits of Vitamin D exposure for pregnant women, including consumption of fish rich in it. And he details the breadth and cost of declining levels of Vitamin D in expectant mothers and other Americans since fear of skin cancer gripped the land.
It's just as possible that sunscreen--and sun avoidance--is causing far more harm than mercury ever did. Not to mention that Cannell thinks healthy Vitamin D levels might help protect against influenza.
]]>Will We Suffer Two Flu Seasons This Year?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.3267512009-10-20T10:15:04-04:002011-05-25T14:25:20-04:00Peter Christian Hallhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-christian-hall/
To start with, the medical world has been vexed by "the Canada Problem," a Canadian study that concluded that people under the age of 50 vaccinated for seasonal flu will then be twice as likely to catch swine flu. The study, which assessed results obtained by 2,000 Canadians in three big provinces, has not been published.
Its authors say it is undergoing prepublication peer review at a scientific journal -- but most Canadian provinces have revised their plans and will inject only the elderly and residents of long-term care facilities with seasonal shots until after the country's swine flu vaccines have been rolled out in November.
Perhaps worse, there's a chance that we will experience two flu seasons this year. Swine flu could be followed by the North American debut of a new strain of H3N2, the nastier of the two seasonal flu A strains -- to which few would have immunity. The World Health Organization recently reported that H3N2 accounts for almost half of new flu cases in China, where the virus is endemic in pigs. The new strain that is spreading seems not to be the H3N2 targeted by this year's seasonal flu.
In theory then, the seasonal shot could make people more likely to catch swine flu while not protecting against a later wave of H3N2.
The Canadian study was recently the subject of a high-level global teleconference. As detailed in a report by Helen Branswell--the world's top flu reporter--authorities have decided to proceed with seasonal flu vaccinations everywhere but in Canada on the assumption that the study is somehow flawed.
A prime problem is that no other health body or researcher has found a link between seasonal flu vaccine exposure and a greater likelihood of catching swine flu. (A study in the British Medical Journal found the opposite effect, but tracked only 60 Mexican patients.)
Count the U.S. Centers for Disease Control unimpressed. "We have not seen such evidence in cases here in the U.S. and we recommend seasonal and H1N1 vaccination in those groups recommended to receive them," said a spokesman. (The CDC lists recommended recipients for seasonal and swine flu.)
What's disturbing is that no one has been able to find any inconsistencies in the Canadian study's methodology. As Branswell reported after speaking with David Wood, coordinator of the quality, safety, and standards team of WHO's department of immunization, vaccines, and biologicals: "But if the Canadian results are due to some statistical flaws or selection biases, no one on the 4 ½ hour teleconference was able to put a finger on what exactly the problem is, Wood acknowledged."
Wood, said Branswell, "admitted there may not be a satisfactory answer to that puzzle in the foreseeable future."
So how might a flu vaccine backfire in a season involving rival strains that require separate shots to thwart them? Robert Roos, news editor at the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, wrote a detailed explanation in August of a longstanding phenomenon known as original antigenic sin.
Like an army using the tactics from its last war against a new foe, the human immune system seems to respond to a new flu strain by cooking up the same antibodies it used against the first one. Researchers at Emory University, Roos said, came up with some evidence that among closely related flu strains, the second one can thrive, presumably because it doesn't perceive a new threat.
Does this explain 'the Canada Problem?" Not necessarily. The Emory team felt that our immune systems would meet the challenge of swine flu after a seasonal vaccination because Novel H1N1 is sufficiently different from either of the Influenza A seasonal flu strains in that vaccine that our bodies will detect the new viral enemy.
To make sure, the government is running trials at the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (NIAID) -- but they won't be completed until next May and June. For now, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Branswell that preliminary data from a U.S. study shows no lessening of effect when seasonal and swine flu vaccines are taken at the same time.
Further confusing the situation is the question of how much seasonal flu we can expect to encounter this year. With swine flu dominating the world for many months, there seemed to be little space for the old-timers.
But with the upstart version of H3N2 spreading around the world, it's anyone's guess whether it will break out here after swine flu runs out of steam. Some fear H3N2 might prey on senior citizens, who hold some immunity to swine flu but who would have none to the new strain.
It's enough, at least, to give us all a headache. And that's a real flu symptom.]]>'The Canada Problem': Could a Seasonal Flu Shot Help Spread Swine Flu?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.3201662009-10-17T13:13:26-04:002011-11-17T09:02:45-05:00Peter Christian Hallhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-christian-hall/A Canadian study has concluded that people under the age of 50 vaccinated for seasonal flu are twice as likely to catch swine flu.
The study, which assessed results obtained by 2,000 Canadians in three big provinces, has not been published. Its authors say it is undergoing pre-publication peer review at a scientific journal--an academic formality scorned by The Globe & Mail in an editorial demanding the paper be published.
The newspaper noted that most Canadian provinces have revised their seasonal vaccination plans to inject only the elderly and residents of long-term care facilities until after the country's swine flu vaccines have been rolled out in November. Then it thundered: "Momentous decision are being made, but the public is being denied access to the basis for those decisions."
The study was the subject of a high-level global teleconference held by the World Health Organization. As detailed in a report by Helen Branswell--the world's top flu reporter--authorities have decided to proceed with seasonal flu vaccinations everywhere but in Canada on the assumption that the study is somehow flawed.
A prime problem is that no other health body or researcher has found a link between seasonal flu vaccine exposure and greater likelihood of catching swine flu. (A study in the British Medical Journal found the opposite effect, but tracked only 60 Mexican patients.)
Count the U.S. Centers for Disease Control unimpressed. "We have not seen such evidence in cases here in the U.S. and we recommend seasonal and H1N1 vaccination in those groups recommended to receive them," said a spokesman.
]]>Is that Cough Swine Flu? Don't Ask the CDCtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.3049502009-09-30T15:12:35-04:002011-11-17T09:02:45-05:00Peter Christian Hallhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-christian-hall/CDC page for "Interim Guidance on Case Definitions to be Used For Investigations of Novel Influenza A (H1N1) Cases" and found it blank.
The celebrity journalists both fell ill in Afghanistan--CNN's chief medical correspondent came down with a classic array of fever, sinus congestion, nausea, and body aches while the 360 host got a very nasty sore throat. Gupta was treated for swine flu. Cooper wasn't.
Cooper's circumstances raise an important social question, at least for me and for thousands of other Americans: Do we have swine flu?
Incidentally I've done a lot of research on influenza for an online blog enovel I wrote about an H5N1 pandemic that hits New York City. I know the symptoms pretty well: fever, chills, ache, fatigue, vomiting, headache, diarrhea, and upper respiratory tract problems.
Using a neti pot helped, but I couldn't flush my sinuses while sleeping--or working in a busy office. I embraced antibiotics on the theory that I'd developed a secondary bacterial infection.
Then Gupta and Cooper shed light on my plight. Gupta had been sufficiently alarmed by "profound chills and shakes" that he got tested for swine flu and was given IV sustenance by the U.S. military.
Cooper caught what he described to Gupta on 360 as "the worst cough I'd ever had."
In the field, Gupta told Cooper he "probably" didn't have swine flu because he lacked the "very high fever" that typically heralds it. (Cooper was never tested.) On the air weeks later, Gupta told Cooper that he thought there was "a good chance" the host caught swine flu. What about that missing fever?
An important question. Since the novel H1N1 virus known as swine flu broke out of Mexico and into the media late in April, a lot of people have suffered respiratory symptoms without fever. Strep throat has been a common complaint. But few such cases have been dubbed swine flu. Does this leave countless flu victims spewing virions all over the subway, bus, train, home, or office--oblivious to the fact that they may be spreading the dreaded flu?
If so, someone should inform the school administrators who count only cases in which students present fever symptoms when deciding whether or not to close a given school.
Cooper further highlights the problem of presenteeism, a social condition whereby germs are circulated by sick workaholics and employees who can't afford to take a day off because they lack insurance or paid leave. Workers who don't know their cough is contagious can disable a workplace. "I also didn't take any days off," confesses Cooper.
I didn't miss a day either.
On learning from Gupta that he may well have contracted swine flu, Cooper turned rueful. "I love that I just learned that I may have had swine flu--from you, via satellite," he said. Cooper took two rounds of antibiotics for two weeks and still has ear trouble. Gupta assured him the antibiotics "probably" didn't help.
In my case, they seemed to help a lot, so long as the 10-day cycle lasted. Now my throat hurts and I've resumed coughing. The hacks of my co-workers drown mine out. They are sicker than I am.
Off to work!
So what does the CDC say? I called the agency to find out what it says about this coughing business--and why its swine flu symptoms guidelines page is down.
Ahem. Did Cooper and I have the flu, I ask?
"We have heard of cases that did not involve fever, but that is certainly not the norm," A CDC spokesperson replied. He promised to look into why the symptoms guidelines are missing.