The pain from his affliction left him desperate for a medical solution.
Randy Richmond is writing a three part series, Patients losing patience,which is taking a look at the hundreds of thousands of seriously ill Canadians who have been left without satisfactory care by the Canadian heath system. Richmond is focusing on the folk who are going outside the country seeking medical help.
Randy is a writer I really liked when I worked at the paper. He's an excellent reporter. I'm sure this series will be part of his WONA (Western Ontario Newspaper Awards) portfolio next year. Still, this first story, as interesting as it was, left me with some serious questions, such as: "What is the Laser Spine Institute?"
You see this question was important to me as I also have a bad back. I have come to believe, based on what I've been told by a number of doctors, that when it comes to bad backs often less treatment may be the best treatment. I read in a Harvard Medical School health newsletter that "doctors are beginning to question whether too many surgeries are performed to treat degenerative disease. As for herniated disks, a recent study found that surgical and nonsurgical treatments worked equally well." The newsletter editorial told me "the decision whether to have surgery is a matter of patient preference more than anything else."
On LiveStrong.com I read that the Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo Clinic both advise trying other less intrusive therapies, like massage, physical therapy and anti-inflammation drugs before back surgery. Laser surgery has been touted as the latest, least invasive, most successful technique with the least amount of recovery time but these hospitals warn that there are several disadvantages to laser spine surgery.
Without a cane, I would not get to my computer.
Unsuccessful back surgeries have become so common in the States that there is now an acronym: FBSS (Failed Back Surgery Syndrome.)
My back can be so bad that it drops me to my knees but my family doctor has poo-pooed my complaints. High tech laser surgery has never been an option. It has never been offered to me by my present doctor nor by my former.
I've been advised to apply cold to alleviate pain and to prevent or reduce the swelling. After 48 hours I've been told to apply warmth to increase blood flow and promote healing. I should limit bed rest to a couple of days, at most, and then add limited exercise therapy. The theory is that strong, flexible muscles are less prone to injury and will help to strengthen the back and support the spine.
All my family doctors over the years have given me sheets detailing back exercises. I have never been given so much as a prescription for the pain. For me, this has been the extent of the Canadian solution to serious back pain. And so far, it's working. Hold the knife and hold the laser, thank-you. (I wrote this in 2011. I'm adding this in 2018. My back pain situation may have improved a little. I'm glad that I have not had back surgery.)
In Randy's first installment, a fellow from Windsor suffering from a spinal problem was unable to get the medical help he perceived he needed. In desperation, he turned to Kelly Meloche, the head of Windsor's International Health Care Providers.
The man told Randy. "Before I knew it, I was in Tampa, Florida, at the Laser Spine Institute. There, doctors did a laser procedure not available in Canada. The fellow said, "I walked off the operation table. I felt great. It was crazy. It was almost surreal."
As it turned out, the 2007 operation worked only for a time. Things looked great for a year and a half, then the Windsor fellow's headaches returned. I wondered if his experience was common. I googled "Laser Spine Institute Tampa complaints" and I read:
My husband had surgery in May 2008. A decent experience, and he was mostly pain free after...for a few months. Now he is just as he was before surgery. Why? I can't explain it, but this certainly makes the out of pocket payment not worth it for us. Apart from the medical, they dropped us like a hot potato after the cash was in hand. Multiple phone calls were not returned. A 3 month and 6 month follow up came in the same envelope. When we managed to reach someone, and complain about calls not being returned, we were directed to call others on the staff. Apparently they were too busy to call us. Insurance forms were not submitted as promised upon our departure - took 4 months to get them to make the claims. BTW, our next door neighbor also went there with unsuccessful results, and the same dismissal. They don't like it when you do not become a new testimonial!
I looked down the comment list. Some were positive and then I spotted one from a Canadian out of Lachine, Quebec.
Don't go there!! Please I beg of you not to waste your money or your health. I had a discectomy done at LSI in 2008 and they ruined my back for life. Not only did they damage my nerve endings, they permanently destabilized my spine. My current neurosurgeon is not sure if my S1 nerve will ever fully recover. I had to be rushed to the emergency ward the evening after the LSI surgery. LSI did not take any steps to rectify the issue. The hospital informed me that I was not the first patient from LSI to be rushed to the ER after surgery.
I read more comments:
. . . all I can say about LSI is DO NOT GO THERE!!!
. . . everything was fine for six weeks and then the pain came back. now it's as bad as ever.
. . . bad experience with LSI. I am in much more pain than before I walked in.
. . . Do NOT go to LSI. I had surgery there on Sept. 26, 2007. I cannot describe the hell I have been through, physically and financially, with these people . . . filing suit for medical malpractice, fraud, and malfeasance.
To be fair, the Windsor fellow still credits the laser surgery in Florida for relieving much of his pain, although he was left with a $17,000 medical fee. But the laser operation didn't stop him from seeking more medical help. He is now crossing the border at Windsor to travel into Michigan to get $1200 botox injections.
As I said, not all the comments on the Internet about LSI are negative. One person wrote: "I had surgery on July 16, 2008 and have considered it a great success."
So, what does one believe? I leave the final word to Mark McLaughlin, MD, FACS, FAANS, from Princeton who wrote an article titled: The Laser Myth in Spine Surgery
Laser Spine Surgery: It has almost zero usefulness in your spine surgery and in fact may be harmful - R. McLaughlin MD
No laser surgery for me, thank you. Now, where did I put those sheets of doctor-recommended back strengthening exercises?
__________________________________________________________________________
The following is here simply because it was in the original post. It has been removed as of March 2018.
On the other hand there are the newspaper articles, such as the ones from the St. Petersburg Times, about a questionable Florida surgeon who gained fame for his laser approach to curing spinal problems: Back doctor sues and Is surgeon innovative, or unfit? or this article titled Treat the Leg or Pull it?
A couple of months after Randy Richmond did his article, Bloomberg did a story on the Florida laser spine surgery clinics: Laser Spine Surgery More Profitable Than Google Sees Complaints. Follow the link if you're interested.
I don't know what to believe but I have decided not to go to Florida. No laser surgery for me, thank you. Now, where did I put those sheets of doctor-recommended back strengthening exercises?
_______________________________________________
Owsley Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago the '60s icon of acid escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he could not escape his past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a hard man to forget. He left searing flashbacks in his wake. (But only of the healthiest kind.)
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold standard against which all other acid was measured. One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun "Owsley" as "an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD."
The King of Acid counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
About a year ago, I posted my obit on Digital Journal. The last time I checked, it was still there and with a bit more art and a linked YouTube video. Follow the DJ link and see if the obit is still online. Worried that at some point it might be taken down, I've reclaimed most of my little piece and reposted it below.
Cheers.
Rockinon!
Oh, two more things. I found a great piece on Owsley in Rolling Stone. Or go here, http://concen.org/forum/thread-47267.html, and do a page search for Owsley Stanley. You will find a picture of Owsley, possibly in his later years.
Obit
Owsley
Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago the '60s' icon of acid
escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he could not escape his
past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a hard man to forget.
He left searing flashbacks in his wake.
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by
any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were
White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold
standard against which all other acid was measured.
One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “Owsley”
as “an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD.” The King of Acid
counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather
was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I
was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I
dropped them off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the
drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles,
and one day this fellow popped the school pusher's entire stash of acid.
He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed
from school by ambulance. He'll be just fine everyone said with quiet
confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid."
Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
The New York Times
quotes a rare interview Owsley gave the San Francisco Chronicle in
which he said he had set out only to make a product he knew he could
take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to
know what they were taking, too.”
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to
include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It
is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his
famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a dozen hours or so he came
down, tuckered but no worse for wear, as they say. No one was surprised
except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near death drug
induced experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell
bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a
frat boy when he returned to school.
There was a reason his friends had not been concerned. They believed
Owsley acid was pure, unadulterated. It was the good stuff, the real
deal, it made for good trips. Pure acid was thought to be harmless among
its devotees. It was impossible to O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was
the safe way to open one's mind, to expand one's consciousness.
A few years later the Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs backed them up, saying on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been
recorded." Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their
counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety
of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise.
Only recently has it became possible for medical researchers to renew
their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian
in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential
treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for
depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and
not just closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for.
What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was
punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a
criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the
one making the laws are different."Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote:
"The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die."
______________________________________________________________
Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the
famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without
knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more
folk through his influence on music than through his production of
illicit acid.
In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy
bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose
psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his
book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead.
According to The New York Times,
at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer,
pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for
pioneering the practice of taping their shows -- a practice that has
preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog.
It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible.
Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area
acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson
Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others.
Music history from the '60s era and the psychedelic sound owe much to the genius of Augustus Owsley Stanley III.
- See more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304721#sthash.jAKxeqwA.dpuf
Owsley
Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago the '60s' icon of acid
escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he could not escape his
past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a hard man to forget.
He left searing flashbacks in his wake.
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by
any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were
White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold
standard against which all other acid was measured.
One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “Owsley”
as “an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD.” The King of Acid
counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather
was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I
was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I
dropped them off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the
drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles,
and one day this fellow popped the school pusher's entire stash of acid.
He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed
from school by ambulance. He'll be just fine everyone said with quiet
confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid."
Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
The New York Times
quotes a rare interview Owsley gave the San Francisco Chronicle in
which he said he had set out only to make a product he knew he could
take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to
know what they were taking, too.”
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to
include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It
is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his
famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a dozen hours or so he came
down, tuckered but no worse for wear, as they say. No one was surprised
except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near death drug
induced experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell
bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a
frat boy when he returned to school.
There was a reason his friends had not been concerned. They believed
Owsley acid was pure, unadulterated. It was the good stuff, the real
deal, it made for good trips. Pure acid was thought to be harmless among
its devotees. It was impossible to O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was
the safe way to open one's mind, to expand one's consciousness.
A few years later the Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs backed them up, saying on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been
recorded." Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their
counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety
of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise.
Only recently has it became possible for medical researchers to renew
their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian
in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential
treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for
depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and
not just closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for.
What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was
punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a
criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the
one making the laws are different."Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote:
"The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die."
______________________________________________________________
Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the
famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without
knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more
folk through his influence on music than through his production of
illicit acid.
In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy
bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose
psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his
book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead.
According to The New York Times,
at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer,
pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for
pioneering the practice of taping their shows -- a practice that has
preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog.
It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible.
Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area
acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson
Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others.
- See more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304721#sthash.jAKxeqwA.dpuf
Owsley
Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago the '60s' icon of acid
escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he could not escape his
past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a hard man to forget.
He left searing flashbacks in his wake.
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by
any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were
White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold
standard against which all other acid was measured.
One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “Owsley”
as “an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD.” The King of Acid
counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather
was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I
was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I
dropped them off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the
drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles,
and one day this fellow popped the school pusher's entire stash of acid.
He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed
from school by ambulance. He'll be just fine everyone said with quiet
confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid."
Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
The New York Times
quotes a rare interview Owsley gave the San Francisco Chronicle in
which he said he had set out only to make a product he knew he could
take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to
know what they were taking, too.”
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to
include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It
is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his
famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a dozen hours or so he came
down, tuckered but no worse for wear, as they say. No one was surprised
except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near death drug
induced experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell
bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a
frat boy when he returned to school.
There was a reason his friends had not been concerned. They believed
Owsley acid was pure, unadulterated. It was the good stuff, the real
deal, it made for good trips. Pure acid was thought to be harmless among
its devotees. It was impossible to O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was
the safe way to open one's mind, to expand one's consciousness.
A few years later the Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs backed them up, saying on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been
recorded." Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their
counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety
of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise.
Only recently has it became possible for medical researchers to renew
their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian
in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential
treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for
depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and
not just closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for.
What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was
punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a
criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the
one making the laws are different."Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote:
"The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die."
______________________________________________________________
Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the
famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without
knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more
folk through his influence on music than through his production of
illicit acid.
In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy
bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose
psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his
book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead.
According to The New York Times,
at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer,
pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for
pioneering the practice of taping their shows -- a practice that has
preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog.
It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible.
Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area
acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson
Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others.
- See more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304721#sthash.jAKxeqwA.dpuf
Owsley
Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago the '60s' icon of acid
escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he could not escape his
past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a hard man to forget.
He left searing flashbacks in his wake.
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by
any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were
White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold
standard against which all other acid was measured.
One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “Owsley”
as “an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD.” The King of Acid
counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather
was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I
was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I
dropped them off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the
drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles,
and one day this fellow popped the school pusher's entire stash of acid.
He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed
from school by ambulance. He'll be just fine everyone said with quiet
confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid."
Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
The New York Times
quotes a rare interview Owsley gave the San Francisco Chronicle in
which he said he had set out only to make a product he knew he could
take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to
know what they were taking, too.”
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to
include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It
is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his
famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a dozen hours or so he came
down, tuckered but no worse for wear, as they say. No one was surprised
except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near death drug
induced experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell
bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a
frat boy when he returned to school.
There was a reason his friends had not been concerned. They believed
Owsley acid was pure, unadulterated. It was the good stuff, the real
deal, it made for good trips. Pure acid was thought to be harmless among
its devotees. It was impossible to O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was
the safe way to open one's mind, to expand one's consciousness.
A few years later the Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs backed them up, saying on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been
recorded." Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their
counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety
of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise.
Only recently has it became possible for medical researchers to renew
their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian
in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential
treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for
depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and
not just closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for.
What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was
punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a
criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the
one making the laws are different."Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote:
"The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die."
______________________________________________________________
Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the
famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without
knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more
folk through his influence on music than through his production of
illicit acid.
In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy
bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose
psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his
book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead.
According to The New York Times,
at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer,
pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for
pioneering the practice of taping their shows -- a practice that has
preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog.
It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible.
Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area
acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson
Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others.
- See more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304721#sthash.jAKxeqwA.dpuf
Owsley
Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago the '60s' icon of acid
escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he could not escape his
past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a hard man to forget.
He left searing flashbacks in his wake.
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by
any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were
White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold
standard against which all other acid was measured.
One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “Owsley”
as “an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD.” The King of Acid
counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather
was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I
was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I
dropped them off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the
drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles,
and one day this fellow popped the school pusher's entire stash of acid.
He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed
from school by ambulance. He'll be just fine everyone said with quiet
confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid."
Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
The New York Times
quotes a rare interview Owsley gave the San Francisco Chronicle in
which he said he had set out only to make a product he knew he could
take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to
know what they were taking, too.”
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to
include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It
is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his
famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a dozen hours or so he came
down, tuckered but no worse for wear, as they say. No one was surprised
except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near death drug
induced experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell
bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a
frat boy when he returned to school.
There was a reason his friends had not been concerned. They believed
Owsley acid was pure, unadulterated. It was the good stuff, the real
deal, it made for good trips. Pure acid was thought to be harmless among
its devotees. It was impossible to O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was
the safe way to open one's mind, to expand one's consciousness.
A few years later the Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs backed them up, saying on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been
recorded." Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their
counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety
of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise.
Only recently has it became possible for medical researchers to renew
their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian
in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential
treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for
depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and
not just closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for.
What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was
punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a
criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the
one making the laws are different."Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote:
"The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die."
______________________________________________________________
Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the
famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without
knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more
folk through his influence on music than through his production of
illicit acid.
In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy
bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose
psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his
book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead.
According to The New York Times,
at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer,
pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for
pioneering the practice of taping their shows -- a practice that has
preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog.
It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible.
Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area
acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson
Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others.
- See more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304721#sthash.jAKxeqwA.dpuf
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I dropped my friends off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles, who popped the school pusher's entire acid inventory. He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed from school by ambulance. "He'll be just fine," everyone said with quiet confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid." Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
His friends were right not voicing concern. If it actually was Owsley
acid dropped by the freaky art student, it was pure and unadulterated
LSD. It was the good stuff, the real deal, it made for good trips. Pure
acid was thought to be harmless among its devotees. It was impossible to
O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was the safe way to open one's mind, to
expand one's consciousness.
Owsley arraigned for making 1.25 million plus hits of acid.
The New York Times quotes a rare interview Owsley gave the San Francisco Chronicle in which the famed chemist said he had set out only to make a product he knew he could take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to know what they were taking, too.”
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a little more than a dozen hours, he came down. He was tuckered but no worse for wear. No one was surprised except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near drug death experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a frat boy on returning to school.
The Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs confirmed that the faith acid takers had in the safety of LSD was not misguided. The report said this on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been recorded."
Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise. Because of all the scare stories associated with acid, it is only recently that it has become possible for medical researchers to renew their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and not just as treatment for closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for. What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the one making the laws are different."
Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote: "The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die."
(The image of Owsley is from the San Francisco Chronicle and was posted on Wikipedia. I thank them for the image as Wikipedia claimed: "it is believed that the use of this work (is acceptable) to illustrate the subject in question."
_____________________________________________
Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more folk through his influence on music than through his production of illicit acid.
In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead.
According to The New York Times, at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer, pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for pioneering the practice of taping their shows — a practice that has preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog.
It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible.
Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others.
Music history from the '60s era and the psychedelic sound owe much to the genius of Augustus Owsley Stanley III.
Owsley
Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago the '60s' icon of acid
escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he could not escape his
past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a hard man to forget.
He left searing flashbacks in his wake.
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by
any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were
White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold
standard against which all other acid was measured.
One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “Owsley”
as “an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD.” The King of Acid
counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather
was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I
was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I
dropped them off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the
drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles,
and one day this fellow popped the school pusher's entire stash of acid.
He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed
from school by ambulance. He'll be just fine everyone said with quiet
confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid."
Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
The New York Times
quotes a rare interview Owsley gave the San Francisco Chronicle in
which he said he had set out only to make a product he knew he could
take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to
know what they were taking, too.”
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to
include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It
is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his
famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a dozen hours or so he came
down, tuckered but no worse for wear, as they say. No one was surprised
except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near death drug
induced experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell
bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a
frat boy when he returned to school.
There was a reason his friends had not been concerned. They believed
Owsley acid was pure, unadulterated. It was the good stuff, the real
deal, it made for good trips. Pure acid was thought to be harmless among
its devotees. It was impossible to O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was
the safe way to open one's mind, to expand one's consciousness.
A few years later the Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs backed them up, saying on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been
recorded." Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their
counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety
of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise.
Only recently has it became possible for medical researchers to renew
their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian
in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential
treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for
depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and
not just closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for.
What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was
punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a
criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the
one making the laws are different."Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote:
"The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die."
______________________________________________________________
Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the
famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without
knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more
folk through his influence on music than through his production of
illicit acid.
In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy
bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose
psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his
book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead.
According to The New York Times,
at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer,
pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for
pioneering the practice of taping their shows -- a practice that has
preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog.
It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible.
Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area
acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson
Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others.
Music history from the '60s era and the psychedelic sound owe much to the genius of Augustus Owsley Stanley III.
- See more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304721#sthash.jAKxeqwA.dpuf
Owsley
Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago the '60s' icon of acid
escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he could not escape his
past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a hard man to forget.
He left searing flashbacks in his wake.
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by
any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were
White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold
standard against which all other acid was measured.
One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “Owsley”
as “an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD.” The King of Acid
counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather
was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I
was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I
dropped them off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the
drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles,
and one day this fellow popped the school pusher's entire stash of acid.
He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed
from school by ambulance. He'll be just fine everyone said with quiet
confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid."
Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
The New York Times
quotes a rare interview Owsley gave the San Francisco Chronicle in
which he said he had set out only to make a product he knew he could
take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to
know what they were taking, too.”
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to
include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It
is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his
famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a dozen hours or so he came
down, tuckered but no worse for wear, as they say. No one was surprised
except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near death drug
induced experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell
bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a
frat boy when he returned to school.
There was a reason his friends had not been concerned. They believed
Owsley acid was pure, unadulterated. It was the good stuff, the real
deal, it made for good trips. Pure acid was thought to be harmless among
its devotees. It was impossible to O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was
the safe way to open one's mind, to expand one's consciousness.
A few years later the Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs backed them up, saying on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been
recorded." Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their
counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety
of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise.
Only recently has it became possible for medical researchers to renew
their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian
in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential
treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for
depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and
not just closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for.
What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was
punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a
criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the
one making the laws are different."Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote:
"The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die."
______________________________________________________________
Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the
famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without
knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more
folk through his influence on music than through his production of
illicit acid.
In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy
bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose
psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his
book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead.
According to The New York Times,
at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer,
pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for
pioneering the practice of taping their shows -- a practice that has
preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog.
It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible.
Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area
acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson
Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others.
Music history from the '60s era and the psychedelic sound owe much to the genius of Augustus Owsley Stanley III.
- See more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304721#sthash.jAKxeqwA.dpuf
Owsley Stanley is dead. He was 76. Many years ago
the '60s' icon of acid escaped to the distant Australian outback, but he
could not escape his past. Owsley was never forgotten but then he was a
hard man to forget. He left searing flashbacks in his wake.
You see, Owsley, I never heard him referred to by
any other name, was the man behind Owsley acid. Among his creations were
White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer. His LSD was the gold
standard against which all other acid was measured.
One edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “Owsley”
as “an extremely potent, high-quality type of LSD.” The King of Acid
counted among his satisfied customers the Grateful Dead, the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and others from the psychedelic ’60s.
I first encountered Owsley acid in art school in Detroit. My grandfather
was a pharmacist and so I grew up with a healthy respect for drugs. I
was very suspicious of street chemicals. My friends dropped acid and I
dropped them off at home. I was a '60s designated driver — unless the
drug being abused was alcohol.
I recall a fellow in art school, he looked like Flo from the Turtles,
and one day this fellow popped the school pusher's entire stash of acid.
He dropped more than a dozen hits and in less than an hour was removed
from school by ambulance. He'll be just fine everyone said with quiet
confidence, "He dropped Owsley acid."
Owsley's product was said to be pure, like the original stuff produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical company.
The New York Times
quotes a rare interview Owsley gave the San Francisco Chronicle in
which he said he had set out only to make a product he knew he could
take, because its ingredients were known. “And my friends all wanted to
know what they were taking, too.”
In a short time the California-based chemist's friends expanded to
include folk like the drug-taking students at the Detroit art school. It
is reported that Owsley may have produced up to 5 million hits of his
famous acid before being arrested and eventually jailed.
My friend survived his adventure. After a dozen hours or so he came
down, tuckered but no worse for wear, as they say. No one was surprised
except for his parents. They were sure he had survived a near death drug
induced experience. They forced him to cut his hair, dump his bell
bottoms and throw out all his tie-dyed attire. He looked every inch a
frat boy when he returned to school.
There was a reason his friends had not been concerned. They believed
Owsley acid was pure, unadulterated. It was the good stuff, the real
deal, it made for good trips. Pure acid was thought to be harmless among
its devotees. It was impossible to O.D. on Owsley, they said. It was
the safe way to open one's mind, to expand one's consciousness.
A few years later the Consumers Union Report Licit & Illicit Drugs backed them up, saying on page 334:
"The lethal dose of LSD is not known; no human fatalities have been
recorded." Papers like the Berkeley Barb in California and their
counterculture health columnist Dr. HIPpocrates reported on the safety
of LSD but what is now called the Main Stream Media reported otherwise.
Only recently has it became possible for medical researchers to renew
their interest in the powerful hallucinogenic.
The Guardian
in the U.K. reported that psychedelic drugs are returning as potential
treatments for mental illness, holding promise as treatments for
depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia and
not just closed minds.
About his incarceration Owsley told the San Francisco Chronicle:
"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for.
What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was
punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a
criminal? No. I was a good member of society – only my society and the
one making the laws are different."Jeff Weiss of the Los Angeles Times put it best when he wrote:
"The world has lost another one who was too weird to live and too rare to die."
______________________________________________________________
Much of the world knows Owsley Stanley as simply the chemist behind the
famous acid bearing his name, but he had other pursuits. Without
knowing, and without taking any drugs, Owsley's genius has touched more
folk through his influence on music than through his production of
illicit acid.
In the mid '60s, Owsley — nicknamed Bear because of his furry, Teddy
bear body — linked up with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose
psychedelic adventures went on to be immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his
book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Reportedly it was Owsley acid powering the pranksters. Through Kesey, Owsley met the Grateful Dead.
According to The New York Times,
at various times, he served as the Grateful Dead’s financial backer,
pharmaceutical supplier and sound engineer. He was responsible for
pioneering the practice of taping their shows -- a practice that has
preserved practically the entire Grateful Dead catalog.
It was Owsley's high-fidelity sound system that made the Dead’s towering "wall of sound" possible.
Stanley taped early performances of many important San Francisco area
acts. He captured Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson
Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Santana among others.
Music history from the '60s era and the psychedelic sound owe much to the genius of Augustus Owsley Stanley III.
- See more at: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304721#sthash.jAKxeqwA.dpuf
Should Baby Joseph have been given a tracheotomy by the London Ontario hospital and returned to the care of his parents? Or would another medical approach all together have offered the infant life instead of the almost certain death of simply being taken off the ventilator?
These are not questions that I can easily answer. But now that the baby has been airlifted from London to St. Louis Missouri where he will receive alternative care, these questions will have an answer. Maybe.
But what was clear if you followed the Twitter tweets and Facebook posts was that many people distrusted the doctors at the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC). But if the reportedly terminally ill child has left London, the cloud of mistrust and controversy remains.
Priests for Life, based in Staten Island NY, posted a statement boasting "Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life Leads Covert Mission to Rescue Baby Joseph." The story says the mission was accomplished "under cover of darkness."
Covert? So how did the fathers disguise their operation so as to not alert hospital security and under the cover of darkness secretly spirit Baby Joseph away?
The short answer: They didn't.
The London hospital cared for Baby Joseph right up until the American medical team in an air ambulance took over. There was no covert operation. And it certainly was not conducted under the cover of darkness. The transfer may have been done at night but those Canadians are quite advanced; they have lights!
End-of-life decisions are difficult, especially ones involving infants. Such decisions are hard on everyone involved: mothers, fathers, other family members and on the doctors, nurses and other hospital staff providing medical treatment to the failing child.
When I read the claim by Father Pavone that Baby Joseph needed "a hospital that cherishes life over the bottom line," I shook my head. That is just what the dying child had in the LHCS. I know this for a fact from my own personal experience.
Also, as a former newspaper photographer I've spent a lot of time over the years taking pictures of children receiving treatment at the Children's Hospital at London Health Sciences Centre. The hospital, its doctors, nurses and staff do not deserve the nasty, uninformed attacks they have taken since this matter went viral on the Internet and in the American media. They certainly should not be subjected to phone and e-mail threats as has been happening.
Ian Gillespie, a columnist with The London Free Press, addressed this very issue in a recent column. He spoke with Lisa Cann, a mother with a 14-year-old son who must struggle to live. Her boy has help with his health struggles - the LHSC.
Cann told Gillespie:
During the past nine years she and her son have made 25 visits to the emergency room, more than 100 pediatric medical day unit visits, 55 radiology visits, more than 50 visits to a gastro-intestinal clinic, more than 450 weekly pediatric appointments, at least seven calls to 911 and close to 20 extended hospital stays. This week, they went back for yet another surgical procedure.
And through it all, Cann says she’s seen nothing but top-notch care and compassion.
LHSC kept Baby Joseph alive for months. He was under their care from October on and it was months before they recommended removing the boy's breathing tube. They ran every test and explored every option. This is not the conduct of a hospital more interested in saving money than saving lives.
Whether you agree with the Canadian hospital's decision or not, there is widespread support for their position in the medical community throughout the world. This is not just according to the hospital but according to the father of Baby Joseph. Moe Maraachli spoke to me of the frustration of trying to find a hospital to take his son. "I've talked to doctors throughout Canada, the United States and Europe . . . ," he said, then stopped and shook his head. He was unable to finish.
The parents of Baby Joseph sought the medical opinion of physicians at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit. Physician experts at the hospital wrote the LHSC:
"We do not feel that we have anything to offer Joseph that has not already been given to him under your care” and "there is nothing that the Children's Hospital of Michigan has to offer Joseph that has not already been done for him in Ontario".
When Priests for Life present themselves as major players in the success of finding a suitable hospital prepared to accept little Joseph, they are not lying. It is clear that they work with a rather unique hospital in SSM Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center of St. Louis.
What I find so disturbing is the angry and very nasty tone of much of the discourse, especially that coming from the Priests for Life. Many distrusted the Canadian hospital; I distrust the highly charged statements released by this religious group. I find their statements self serving and worse I find them dishonest.
It is time for the priests to stop the posturing. It is time for the Fathers to work at getting out the truth. Stoking fiery emotions of hate, anger and misunderstanding, emotions already glowing red hot when it come to this issue, is not the right response; It may not even be Christian.
______________________________________________________________________
Baby Joseph myths
Fox News in the States has done a good job of politicizing this story with fabricated facts. They put enough spin on the story to make any viewer dizzy. LHSC put together a page dispelling some of the false and misleading information being spread by groups such as the Priests for Life and Fox News.
I'm dying, but let's be honest, so are you. The difference is that I keep trying to die sooner than later. If my body were a car, I'd be recalled. No wait, I'd be repaired and restored and I guess that's just what's happening.
When I read stories about the awful health care in Canada, I shake my head. The stories are so simplistic and so wrong. Health care is a problem all around the world, not just in Canada. But there are also health care solutions and they too are appearing all over the world.
Health care is expensive and it's getting more and more expensive with each passing year. When I was born mitral valve heart repair didn't add a cent to health care costs. Why? The procedure hadn't yet been done. The first successful mitral valve repair wasn't performed until 1948. That lucky dude had his sternum cracked open and his rib cage spread in order to give surgeons access to his damaged heart. Trust me on this, I bet he considered himself very lucky.
da Vinci at work.
Eight years ago I had my badly leaking mitral valve repaired robotically right here in London, Ontario. I did not have to have my sternum split; I have no huge scar. All it took was a little incision hidden in a fold under my right nipple, some little surgical tools, a talented surgeon and one big robot: a million and a half dollar da Vinci surgical robot. I consider myself very lucky.
I came upon an article by Michelle Meadows on the SurgicalTechSuccess site that said: "complete robotic heart surgery, which is commonly done in Europe and Canada, is considered experimental in the United States."
It was an article from 2002, it was written almost a decade ago, and yet I was surprised. I had thought the U.S. had always led the world when it came to robotic surgery. But when I looked into the history of my robotic operation I learned that some of "the first minimally invasive mitral valve surgery using Aesop (was done) in Austria and South Korea and the first robotic mitral valve surgery using DaVinci (was done) in England, India, Italy, and Thailand."
I don't want to get into a "who-was-first" argument. My point is that medical advances are being made all around the world. Clearly, more is being done in India than just running call centres and more is being done in Thailand than shrimp farming.
Hospitalized in California
Last summer, seven years after I had my heart repaired, I suffered a V-tach event in California. My heart raced to 300 bpm and I was rushed to emerg where doctors hit me with 200 joules, jolting my heart back to reality. One could say they "rebooted" my pump.
Once you have a V-tach event there is a good chance that you will have another. These events can kill you in minutes. This does not leave much time to get help. A few weeks ago Dr. James White at the Robarts Research Institute at Western in London used a high-tech 3-Tesla MRI to discover why I suffered the runaway heart event. My pump is badly scarred, possibly because of a relatively rare type of heart disease, leaving it electrically unstable.
It was clear I needed an ICD — an implantable cardioverter defibrillator — and I needed one soon. Just weeks later I have one. I no longer need to go to emerg to have my heart rebooted. I carry a micro defibrillator in my chest. The battery is good for seven years and maybe longer.
My ICD not available in U.S.
An ICD isn't cheap. I gather from what I read on the Web that implanting one can easily cost from $65,000 to more than $100,000 in the States depending on the sophistication of the device. The high price may be part of the reason that less than 40% of U.S. patients in need of an ICD receive one according to Dr. Kenneth Stein, chief medical officer for Boston Scientific's cardiac rhythm management division.
I found an interesting article How Much Will We Pay To Save A Life? by Douglas P. Zipes, MD. This American doctor warned: "In the final analysis, many medical decisions are based on how much money society is willing to spend to save a life." He wrote, "Some therapies are inexpensive and others are not, and society has to make difficult choices about how to use our limited resources."
If having an ICD implanted in the States can cost in the six figures, how much did mine cost to have implanted in Ontario? I don't know but I bet the Canadian approach saved money, coming in at the low end of the scale. My ICD was implanted in an outpatient setting. I entered the hospital at ten in the morning and left by mid-afternoon. The operation itself took a bit more than an hour. I was home for dinner.
My ICD, a Medtronic Protecta, is also used in Europe but it has not been approved in the States. I got something that, for the moment, is not available in the U.S.
If we, as a society, plan on offering everyone high quality health care, we've got to perfect methods of delivering such care at reduced cost. Whether it's European socialized medicine, the Canadian single-payer system or the very mixed approach in place in the United States, every health system must address the issue of climbing costs.
Methods of doing more with less must be developed. Cutting the time spent in the hospital cuts costs dramatically.
Encouraging manufacturers to develop sophisticated equipment that cuts costs by increasing efficiency. This is a balancing act, of course, the additional expense must be offset by greater efficiency. The 3T MRI unit used to diagnose my heart condition is one example. I ran up a $25,000 hospital bill in California and yet the cause of my V-tach event went undetected. One scan in a high-powered 3T MRI could have answered all the questions that were swirling about my heart.
We must take advantage of technological breakthroughs. Robots, controlled by experienced surgeons, may very well work better and quicker than surgeons on their own. Minimally invasive surgery performed robotically can cut hospital stays dramatically and speed patient recovery.
Careful patient selection is important, and we may have to make some tough, unpopular choices when it comes to medical treatments that are covered.With limited resources, only those with a good chance of benefiting from a medical procedure should be considered. And some procedures are very expensive and yet have very poor track records. I know a person who was so desperate to lose weight that they longed to have their stomach stapled. OHIP refused to cover the cost and no Canadian hospital was interested in performing the operation. This person was told that the procedure they sought would be very risky for them and that in the end they might well put back all weight they lost following the surgery. The person turned to a hospital in the States. The U.S. hospital performed the operation for a fee and today, four years later, this person has ballooned right back to their former obese size. They needed a new attitude toward food and not a new, smaller stomach.
And maybe all hospitals don't have to have the latest and greatest equipment to enjoy some benefits from advancing technology. There are indications that the original da Vinci robot may be getting a little long in the robotic tooth. Children's Hospital Boston demonstrated a tiny surgical robot at TEDMED that put the size of tools used by da Vinci to shame. Maybe smaller hospitals can pick up a used da Vinci robot on the cheap.
As I recuperate from my ICD operation, it'll be a month before I can lift my granddaughter again, as the wire lead screwed into my heart must heal firmly into the heart muscle. I wouldn't want to tug it free. I will follow all my doctors' orders faithfully.
I am going to use some of my free time to rewrite my will, add a codicil. I'm leaving something to LHSC and to the Robarts Research Institute. Our health system has earned my support.
Showing support for the family, dozens turned out Saturday to rally beside Moe Maraachli to protest LHSC's refusal to perform a tracheotomy on Maraachli's young son before releasing him into his family's care.
Baby Joseph is dying. On this both the Canadian hospital and Baby Joseph's parents agree. The dispute arises as to where the infant will die. Will it be in the hospital or at home?
Saturday dozens of supporters protested the hospital's refusal to perform a tracheotomy on the little boy before sending him home to face certain death.
Moe Maraachli is Baby Joseph's dad.
The 13-month-old son of Moe Maraachli and Sana Nader of Windsor Ontario, known to the world as Baby Joseph, was admitted to Victoria Hospital in London Ontario last October.
The family was on the way home from Toronto, not quite halfway to Windsor, when their infant son developed life-threatening breathing difficulties. They rushed the boy to emergency in Ingersoll and from there he was taken to the London Health Sciences Centre's pediatric critical care unit.
It is now March and the little boy is still being cared for in the Southwestern Ontario hospital. The doctors have determined he is dying of the same progressive neurodegenerative disease that claimed his sister, Zina, eight years ago.
The doctors would like to remove the breathing tube keeping the little boy alive. His parents want the doctors to perform a tracheotomy and let them take their son home to die, as was done with Joseph's sister. She lived six months with a tracheotomy before succumbing to the fatal genetic disease.
Protesters supporting the parents of Baby Joseph lined Commissioners Road and Wellington Road at the busy intersection near the large hospital complex.
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