Colorado Right

Yesterday’s (Sunday) DP has a big front-page screed about the urgent need to teach children how to have sex. Mark Thrun is identified as a physician at Denver Public Health and the co-parent (tipoff - if you don’t want to be known as “father” you probably are more than a little bit of a pussy-whipped Alan Alda caring and weeping proto-male) of two spirited little boys. He’s also an Assistant Professor of Medicine at CU focusing on AIDS research.

So what’s the big issue for the Post? The schools are not teaching kids enough about how to use condoms. In fact, 30 percent of the public schools are teaching abstinence (the horror! - teaching the one absolutely assured method of not getting pregnant or a sexually transmitted disease).

Of course, its all the fault of “a few vocal opponents of comprehensive sex ed” - which we all know is code for the sexually repressed white Christians who hate all people who aren’t white and Christian like them - the filthy Christians!

So why is it so important that public schools teach sex?

Occasionally, the brave among us might begin the conversations at home. Awkward and stinted, we try to muddle through “The Talk” as best we can.

Some of us, however, never even get that far. Instead, we assume that the educational system will step in. Or, at least, that is what we hope.

So I’m such a pussy I can’t talk to my children about sex - I want some stranger to tell them about it. I completely abdicate my responsibilities as a parent to the all-knowing, perfect government education system who will fill my kids brain with some information about sex - just so long as I don’t have to do it.

But then in steps the filthy idiots who don’t want to teach my children some things that I want them to know about - condoms, birth control, homosexuality, bestiality, polygamy, whatever. It would seem that logically this would be the point where I would step in as a parent and start providing whatever sexual information I wanted my children to know. If you are a parent and you want your kids to know this information - tell them. They are, after all, your children.

But this is apparently far too logical a choice for Dr. Thurn. His choice - pitch a hissy fit to force the schools to tell the kids what YOU want them to know regardless of what anyone else believes.

We abdicate our parental and societal obligations to our youth by choosing not to prepare them to be responsible when they do become sexually active.

This is where we as parents need to step in. It is imperative that we take on the task of encouraging and collaborating with schools to develop appropriate sex ed courses.

So you are willing to stand up to your right as a parent to scream and yell about what is being taught to everyone, but take absolutely no responsibility as a parent to teach your children what you want them to know?

Typical gutless liberalism.  Force everybody to believe as I do, just don’t make me actually do anything myself.

u-BOT 5 is a robot designed by researchers at the University of Massachusetts. It was made to help old people should something happen to them. Its capabilities include “picking up small objects, dialing 911 and even using a stethoscope to check vitals.” It packs a webcam, microphone, LCD touchscreen, WiFi, and could potentially be used to make virtual housecalls . As you can see from the picture, if you ever fall and can’t get up there’s nothing to fear when uBOT-5 is near. He’ll just wheel himself over and, uh, kidney punch you with his little ball-hands.

Here’s an interesting proposition mooted from the UK:

Last week, an intriguing proposition was mooted by Government minister Dawn Primarolo.

Teenage girls, she said, could be steered towards what is described as “long-term contraception”.

This is now possible thanks to the development of contraceptive jabs and implants which can last up to five years.

In other words, there is a way of effectively sterilising girls for a lengthy period of time.

At what age? Well, doesn’t 12 until 17 sound rather sensible?

Its the underlying assumption that I find most despicable. Do you own your body? Or does the government? After all, the UK government “gives” you absolutely 100% free health care. (Just don’t look too closely at what you actually get). So if the government is responsible for your health care, does that mean it should be able to control your actions and bodily functions?

This is just an extension of the thought process that treatment for smokers and fat people and sick old people costs too much and should be curtailed. Why not keep these young sluts from having babies? Just look at the positive outcomes:

• fewer abortions - theoretically
• no welfare payments for those illegitimate rug rats
• lots of time for these teenagers to practice sex without getting pregnant so they will be experienced, available, and willing
• less maternity health costs paid for by the all-knowing and kind government

While this might be considered some sort of hypothetical trial balloon to demonstrate absurdity - do you really think that there aren’t some government planners who are actually planning for this action? Of course, no one would actually try and implement mass sterilization, would they?

But remember that doctors organizations and government bureaucrats now consider it safe to say that some people should not be treated because of the choices they have made in their life.  20 years ago, would the average citizen believe that this would be considered mainstream thought?  Its funny that all the liberal hysteria about loss of freedoms completely misses the fact that the biggest loss will be coming as the “gift” of government.

Remember that this free Obambi-care or Hillarycare will change the basic standing between government and citizens. Once you give responsibility for your health care to government, government will own you and your actions.

So should governments encourage people to eat twinkies and smoke?

Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn’t save money, researchers reported Monday.

It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

”It was a small surprise,” said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. ”But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more.”

And this really brings into sharp relief an interesting point about turning the responsibility over health care to a government.  While the initial jabber about universal healthcare is how wonderful it will be that no one has to worry about getting sick because the all-knowing Big Brother will take care of everyone - once you screw up the system and get government running  it, the focus becomes COST!  As in - holy crap this free health care costs tons of money.  And if we only have 25% of the population carrying everybody else, the productive ones will finally balk.

So it becomes a cost-benefit analysis - as in just how much cost can we shave off these silly people who are going to die anyway in order to keep the productive ones happy.  And government bureaucrats are really good at a) screwing over people who aren’t government bureaucrats and b) responding to political pressure.  So whoever screams the loudest gets the health care and the peasants are sent off to watch TV and die quietly in the corner.

Which this interesting little snippet in the story illustrates:

”This throws a bucket of cold water onto the idea that obesity is going to cost trillions of dollars,” said Patrick Basham, a professor of health politics at Johns Hopkins University who was unconnected to the study. He said that government projections about obesity costs are frequently based on guesswork, political agendas, and changing science.

The system, which is FDA approved, is being used in all of Loyola’s operating rooms, its labor and delivery rooms, interventional cardiology laboratories in which surgical procedures are performed and its ambulatory surgery sites. As the technology grows, Loyola plans to use it to keep track of all medical equipment used during a procedure.

clipped from www.sciencedaily.com Every year, in the United States about 1,500 people have surgical objects accidentally left inside them after surgery, according to medical studies. This technology is very familiar to anyone who has ever used a grocery checkout system. Each sponge has a unique bar code affixed to it that is scanned by a high-tech device to obtain a count. Before a procedure begins, the identification number of the patient and the badge of the surgical team member maintaining the count are scanned into the counter. As an added safety feature, the bar code is heat sealed into the sponge to eliminate any danger of it becoming detached during a procedure. The counter has a color screen that keeps a running count of the sponges used. It provides visual and audio cues when a sponge is scanned in, scanned out and if one is missing or is being counted twice. Because each bar code is unique, the system will not allow a sponge to be accidentally counted twice.

Again, just how many of these new machines will Queen by Divine Right of Marriage and Its My Turn Hillary and her universal health care bureaucrats approve? It would only benefit the rich, after all.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk A new scanner has been unveiled which can produce 3D body images of unprecedented clarity while reducing radiation by as much as 80%. The new 256-slice CT machine takes large numbers of X-ray pictures, and combines them using computer technology to produce the final detailed images. It also generates images in a fraction of the time of other scanners: a full body scan takes less than a minute. Because the images are 3D they can be rotated and viewed from different directions - giving doctors the greatest possible help in looking for signs of abnormalities or disease. The scan is much quicker than current technology, as the machine’s X-ray emitting gantry - the giant ring-shaped part that surrounds the patient - can rotate four times in a single second - 22% faster than current systems. “It is so powerful it can capture an image of the entire heart in just two beats.”

Medical diagnosis gets less invasive and more complete. Its good to live with advanced technology isn’t it?P.S. Can’t you just wait till some government bureaucrat in Hillary’s Health Care Police must approve the use of these kinds of new devices? It might be decades before you will see advances like this once we get “free” health care.

clipped from technology.newscientist.com clipped from technology.newscientist.com An ultrasound probe about the size of a grain of rice that could offer panoramic views from inside the human body is being tested by US researchers. They say it could be threaded through blood vessels in the brain or swallowed like a pill. The new device – about 1 millimetre across, 1 millimetre long and shaped like a hexagonal cylinder – affords a panoramic picture, showing the view from each side of the device, and to the front. The team has completed tests of the device in tanks of water, and plans to test it in animals, attached to the end of a wire-like endoscope. If these tests prove successful, the hope is that it could offer doctors a much more complete picture of new locations inside the human body. “It could be used to measure blood flow deep inside the brain,” says Chen, “to identify the early stages of strokes or other disease.”

Lots of movement in lots of different areas with this chemical from hot peppers.

clipped from www.baltimoresun.com Bite a hot pepper, and after the burn your tongue goes numb. Doctors are dripping capsaicin, the chemical that gives chili peppers their fire, directly into open wounds during some highly painful operations. The hope is that bathing surgically exposed nerves in a high enough dose will numb them for weeks, so that patients suffer less pain and require fewer narcotic painkillers as they heal. “We wanted to exploit this numbness,” is how Dr. Eske Aasvang, a pain specialist in Denmark who is testing the substance, puts it. And at the National Institutes of Health, scientists hope early next year to begin testing in advanced cancer patients a capsaicin cousin that is 1,000 times more potent, to see whether it can overcome their intractable pain. Harvard University researchers are mixing capsaicin with another anesthetic in hopes of developing epidurals that wouldn’t confine women to bed during childbirth, or dental injections that don’t numb the whole mouth.