Tsunami of Sense
I've written before about things like clean water and basic sanitation as keys to preventing the spread of disease. This seems like an obvious thing, but you'd be surprised how often it is overlooked - even in places where cleanliness is paramount, like hospitals. And right now, there's a place I know of where these kinds of measures are not just important, but vital to preventing one disaster from becoming another: South Asia. In the wake of the cataclysmic tsunami that slammed into Indonesia, killing as many as 150,000 people, one key to making sure that the death toll doesn't double from disease in the weeks to come will be strict adherence to basic sanitation and hygiene. Sources of clean water, toilets and sewage system have been largely wiped out in the affected area.
And with over 5 million hapless souls now homeless because of the monster wave, rivers, reservoirs, and other supplies of drinking water in the surrounding countryside are in imminent danger of becoming contaminated from large-scale human bathing, and more severely from raw sewage. People in search of badly-needed water will likely fill buckets from these sources.
The possible result? Outbreaks of life-threatening diseases like cholera, typhoid, dysentery, even hepatitis. In this type of environment, it is absolutely critical to boil and disinfect (ordinary hydrogen peroxide helps with this) all water before drinking or cooking with it, and to make sure all utensils are clean. In addition to this, it will be crucial for surviving Indonesians to handle food in sanitary ways, and to wash and disinfect their hands to avoid the spread of disease. It's crucial for all of us, in fact.
Also, there's another water-borne danger that stems from stagnant or contaminated water that contributes to the spread of disease in a major way: Mosquitoes. Beyond the more immediate threats of dysentery, Cholera and the like, a wave of mosquito-borne killer illnesses like malaria and dengue fever could be lurking a few weeks away at the end of the next breeding cycle.
What's the solution to this? Harmless DDT and other pesticides, of course. They should be spraying aggressively with these life-savers right now. Thousands of lives may depend on it. But I wonder what the enviro-Nazis would do if they started draining "wetlands" and spraying DDT over the remaining wet patches…
They'd probably launch a "Save the Skeeters" march on Washington.
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he Army's new "War on Divorce"
I've written before about certain ass-backward policies of the U.S. military - including the offering of breast jobs and other cosmetic surgery procedures as an enticement to enlist (Daily Dose, 10/04/04) - but here's an unconventional new program the Army is rolling out that's aimed at a goal I can get behind whole-heartedly…
Helping soldiers save their war-torn marriages. With the decline in values and the "mainstreaming" of separation and divorce prevalent in society nowadays, it's hard enough to keep a marriage together. But when you throw into the mix extended time away from home, a near poverty-level standard of living, the risks and uncertainty of combat, and illnesses like post-traumatic stress, maintaining a happy marriage is doubly hard for our brave servicemen and women.
But in a surprising move, the Army recently devoted $2 million to the institution of a variety of programs to help soldiers and their spouses reconnect and stay together, according to a recent Associated Press article. Offered to returning soldiers are things like "marriage enrichment" seminars, substance abuse counseling, and the best one of all, vouchers for all-expense-paid romantic getaways to a variety of destinations.
This may sound like a bunch of pop-psychology gobbledygook to me, but I can tell you first-hand how stressful military life can be - especially to married couples and their children. In my opinion, everything we can do to help these self-sacrificing folks avoid divorce, addiction, domestic abuse, and dysfunction is tax money well spent - maybe. The problem is, government always breaks what it tries to fix and marital relations tinkering will be about as successful as their nutritional advice has been over the last 50 years.
But it's probably worlds better than about a million other things I can think of that the government wastes our money on, anyway.
Fighting infection and supporting affection,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
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25 WAYS TO SURVIVE A TERRORIST ATTACK (AND DUCT TAPE ISN'T ONE OF THEM)
In post-9/11 America, we must always be prepared for sudden, hostile attacks at the hands of those who hate the Stars and Stripes. The question is: Are you?
Do you know the 3 conditions that make a nerve gas attack most effective-and most likely? Can you name the 2 most likely biological agents terrorist would love to let loose on us? And do you know how to fight them? Would you know what to do to maximize your chances of surviving a nuclear attack?
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