MOST INTERESTING ESSAYS 12/4/25: THEORY & TRUTH, MEMORY & INTELLIGENCE, PSYCHIATRY, WRITING, EGYPT IN 2019, LIVE OR DIE, GARDEN OF EDEN, SOCIAL DYSFUNCTION, DEATH ROW, RIGHT & WRONG, FRANTZ FANON, TRUTHINESS, CONSPIRACY, LIBERALITY, LIFE IS LIQUID, BECOMING god-LIKE, TIPPING POINT, VANISHING WORLD
Human nature is universal, but it is also particular. In that particularity, “Ikigai” may or may not work for you or me. That is not to say the philosophy of “Ikigai” cannot lead one to a better life but only you can decide.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Ikigai (Japan’s Secrets to a Long and Happy Life)
Author: Hector Garcia, Fransec Miralles
NarratedBy: Oscar López Avila
Hector Garcia (Spanish born author and philosopher, lives in Tokyo.)Fransec Miralles (Spanish Editor, world traveler.)
In planning a trip to Japan in September 2025, “Ikigai” is a recommended book by our Japanese guide. Surprisingly, the authors are born in Spain.
“Ikigai” is a Japanese philosophy about life and its value.
As understood by Garcia and Miralles, “Ikigai” is a guide to a meaningful and fulfilling life. As a philosophy, “Ikigai” is not about life’s destination. “Ikigai” is a compass to give one direction for a meaningful and fulfilling life. The principles of “Ikigai” revolve around a healthy diet, high quality health care, community ties that limit one’s isolation, physical routines, mindfulness, and stress reduction. Those who practice the philosophy of “Ikigai” in Garcia’s and Miralles’s opinion will live happier, healthier, and more fulfilling lives.
Life’s value.
Garcia and Miralles suggest the demographics of Japan are proof of the value of “Ikigai”. The highest number of citizens over 100 years of age live in Japan. The average life span of men and women in Japan is 85; for Americans, the average is 79.61. The authors suggest longer lives of Japanese is because of their practice of following the principles of “Ikigai”. Of course, the length of one’s life is not the point, but the quality of one’s life is everything.
Diet, healthcare, sociability, and daily routines reduce stress. These are guidelines for an “Ikigai” way of life.
There are no surprises in these guidelines. Diet is to consume fruits, vegetables, fish, limited red meat, with few sweets containing processed sugars like white, brown, powdered, or high-fructose corn syrups. Healthcare should be provided through universal coverage. Sociability is encouraged to avoid isolation. Daily walking, stretching, moving around, and being mindful of one’s activity should be a part of a person’s lifestyle. Find what reduces your stress and practice those activities. These are familiar guidelines but not often practiced because of the stresses of the culture in which people live. Many try to escape the stress of their cultures with bad eating habits, poor physical routines, and social isolation. Some fail to follow these guidelines because they are too poor to care.
Human frailties like hearing loss, vision loss, or physical deterioration.
There are a number of difficulties with the guidelines noted by Garcia and Miralles. Finding a way of life that fulfills the ideals of “Ikigai” discounts the nature of human beings. It is impossible to ignore the personal instincts, drives, physical maladies, and cognitive abilities of different human beings. One size does not fit all because of these differences. Human nature may be universal, but it is not the same because human history, physical limitation, culture, and individual experiences are different. If the cultures in which you live do not offer universal health care, one is on their own. A capitalist culture operates in a different way than a socialist culture. Poverty, levels of education, and government influence exist in every culture and by nature distort what use can be made of “Ikigai” guidelines.
Human nature is universal, but it is also particular. In that particularity, “Ikigai” may or may not work for you or me. That is not to say the philosophy of “Ikigai” cannot lead one to a better life but only you can decide.
Katherine Eban believes generic drugs are important for global health because of affordability and accessibility. One wonders if anyone who reads or listens to “Bottle of Lies” will take generic drugs if they can afford the original FDA approved product.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Bottle of Lies (The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom)
Author: Katherine Eban
NarratedBy: Katherine Eban
Katherine Eban (Author, American Rhodes scholar with a MPhil from University of Oxford.)
“Bottle of Lies” is a history of duplicity and dishonesty in the generic drug industry. It is a damning dissection of the lure of money at the expense of human life. On the one hand, affordability, healthcare savings, global health, and the value of regulation are made clear in “Bottle of Lies”. On the other, Katherine Eban shows how the lure of capitalism and greed creates an incentive to evade regulation and kill innocent people seeking drug treatment for their illnesses.
Katherine Eban reveals the history of an India drug company named Ranbaxy that was founded by two brothers, Ranbir Singh and Gurbax Singh.
In 1937, these two entrepreneurs recognized the economic opportunity of creating a drug manufacturing operation with lower labor costs in India to capture the market in drugs nearing their patent expiration dates. They were focused more on organizational cost cutting and the money that could be made than the efficacy of the drugs they could produce. The company was sold in 1952 to their cousin Bhai Mohan Singh. This cousin transformed Ranbaxy to a pharmaceutical giant, but his experience was in construction and finance, not pharmaceuticals. However, his son Parvinder Singh joined the company in 1967 and was a graduate from Washington State University and the University of Michigan with a master’s degree and PhD in pharmacy.
Parvinder Singh (1944-1999, became the leader of Ranbaxy in 1967.)
Eban argues Parvinder Singh looked at his father’s business as a scientist with a pharmaceutical understanding and a desire to produce lower cost drugs for the world for more than a source of wealth. Parvinder appeared to value quality, transparency, drug efficacy, and long-term credibility for Ranbaxy. Parvinder recruited talent who believed in lowering costs and maintaining the efficacy of drugs the company manufactured. However, Parvinder dies in 1999 and the executives who took over the company focused on maximizing profit rather than the efficacy of the drugs being produced. Parvinder’s leadership is succeeded by Brian Tempest who expands the company by navigating the regulatory restrictions on generic drug manufacture. Tempest tries to balance profitability with global health efficacy of generic drugs. Parvinder’s son, Malvinder Singh eventually becomes the CEO of the company. He returned control to the Singh family. The corporate culture changed to what its original founders created, i.e., a drug producer driven by profit. Malvinder was not a scientist.
Malvinder Singh (Born in 1973, Grandson of Bhai Mohan Singh and son of Dr. Parvinder Singh.)
Under Malvinder, Eban shows the company turns from science to economic strategy to increase revenues of Ranbaxy. Internal checks on the efficacy and testing of their drugs is eroded. Criticism from regulators and whistleblowers are either ignored or sidelined by company management. Peter Baker Tucker’s role in exposing Ranbaxy is detailed in Eban’s history. With the help of Dinesh Thakur, an employee of Ranbaxy, Tucker bravely exposed the company’s fraud. (Thakur received $48 million compensation as a whistleblower award.) Tucker is an FDA investigator who reviewed Ranbaxy’s internal documents that revealed their fabricated data about their drug manufacturing process.
Peter Baker Tucker (aka Peter Baker, former FDA investigator.)
Ranbaxy is sold to a Japanese company called Daiichi Sankyo in 2008. Eban explains that Malvinder concealed critical information about FDA investigations and data fraud in the company’s sale. Malvinder and his brother, Shivinder Singh, are arrested in 2019 and remain in custody in 2021, facing multiple fraud accusations.
Sun Pharma acquires the remnants of the Ranbaxy-Sankyo’ sale.
Though Eban does not focus on what happens after the sale to the Japanese company, it is sold at a loss to Sun Pharmaceutical Industries and Singh family’s ownership is sued by Sankyo for hiding regulatory issues of the company. Daiichi received a $500 million settlement but effectively lost money on their investment. Eban, in “Bottle of Lies” offers a nuanced indictment of generic drug manufacturer and sale.
Eban believes generic drugs are important for global health because of affordability and accessibility.
Quality and drug efficacy must be insured through international regulation. Eban endorses unannounced inspections, routine testing of the drugs, and strict legal enforcement against poor manufacturing systems. Without transparency and oversight of all drug manufacturing, human lives are put at risk.
This is quite an expose, but it ends with criticism of inspections of China’s drug manufacturing capabilities.
The inspections of foreign companies that manufacture generic drugs, like those she refers to in her book, are conducted by similar inspectors who do not know the culture or language of the countries in which generic drugs are being produced. The FDA was paying their inspector in India $40,000 per year at the time of Ranbaxy’s investigation. It is by instinct, not interrogation, that malfeasance is detected. Too much is missed when one cannot talk to and clearly understand employees of manufacturing companies.
It seems America has two choices: one is to increase the salaries of FDA inspectors and require that they know the language of the countries in which they are working and two, set up a system of random reverse engineering of generic drugs allowed in the United States. This not to suggest all other FDA regulations would not be enforced when a generic drug is proposed but that site reviews would be more professionally conducted. One wonders if anyone who reads or listens to “Bottle of Lies” will take generic drugs if they can afford the original FDA approved product.
Viskontas believes technology is a boon, not bane, of human intelligence. Information recall is food for brains that advances civilization. She argues information recall, with the use of the internet of things, broadens recall to complement human intelligence and improve creativity.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Brain Myths Exploded (Lessons from Neuroscience)
Lecturer: Indre Viskontas
By: The Great Courses
Indre Viskontas (Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from UCLA, performed at Cafe Royal Opera in San Francisco, studies neural basis of memory and creativity, Lecturer at USF.)
There is a great deal to unpack in Indre Viskontas lectures about the brain and intelligence. This review is an extension of a previous look at her “…Great Courses” lectures on “Brain Myths…”.
Viskontas argues sociability plays an important role in the development of intelligence. As a less social person one wonders what potential may be lost by introversion. Every human being is a mixture of extroversion and introversion. History suggests Benjamin Franklin, Margaret Thatcher, and John F. Kennedy were outgoing extroverts. In contrast, Abrahma Lincoln, Albert Einstein, and Rosa Parks were characterized as less outgoing and more introverted. All were insightful, intelligent leaders that had great impact on the history of the world. Sociability seems of little consequence for one’s intelligence or predictable role in history.
Viskontas explains how important sleep is for mental health.
The effect of sleep deprivation is a form of torture.
During sleep, Viskontas notes the brain is quite active, characterized by different brain wave patterns. Based on periods of sleep, our dreams are like house cleaners clearing the debris accumulated from days past. Some remember their dreams, others do not. That we all dream can be seen with REM, rapid eye movements, that can be seen as eyelid movements when one is sleeping. Viskontas suggests these dreams have hidden meanings that reflect emotions that the brain is actively processing while we sleep. Memories are reconstructed, often distorted, and can cause one to awaken because of their bizarre content. Our brains reconstruct stories in sleep, just as they do when we are awake in that they complete stories of our life whether the facts are true or false. The REM stories are a clearing house for adherent behaviors that may be good or bad.
Viscontas notes low activity in the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) causes one to not remember their dreams.
Viskontas explains some do not remember their dreams because of lower activity in a part of the brain that is normally active when dreams are being recalled. She suggests those who wish to remember their dreams can keep a journal of what they do remember when they wake up. This journal can help one understand a little more about why they are dreaming and what their dream may mean by consulting a psychologist or psychiatrist.
A concern that Viskontas raises is that those who do not get enough sleep impair their memory and learning capabilities.
With a lack of sleep the prefrontal cortex functions poorly with poor judgment and impulsive behavior. Further, Viskontas notes the immune system is weakened by not getting enough sleep–with increased risk of anxiety, depression, and mood instability. When deprived of sleep, people become less social and are more driven by emotions than intellect. Viskontas recommends 7-9 hours sleep per night for optimal brain function. A continuous sleep cycle is important for deep sleep and REM that have distinct roles in information processing and a mind’s creativity for healthy living. Though Viskontas does not say anything about napping during the day, some research shows 20-to-30-minute naps can improve memory, alertness, and mood.
Viskontas explains intelligence is not a fixed characteristic but can be shaped by neuroplasticity, environment, genetic inheritance and social interaction.
Humans can rewire their brain through learning and experience. Intelligence rests within every person’s grasp but its improvement is based on genetic inheritance, experience, and effort. Science, with reproducible experiment, has proven intelligence exists throughout the Animal Kingdom.
“Quants” created collateralized mortgages in 2008.
Viskontas believes, on balance, technology is a boon, not bane, of human intelligence.
Information recall is food for brains that advances civilization. She argues information recall, with the use of the internet of things, broadens recall to complement human intelligence and improve creativity. Of course, that food can be poisoned just as the Quants who created collateralized mortgages that nearly collapsed the world economy.
Like Climate Change, AI seems an inevitable change that will collate, spindle, and mutilate life whether we want it to or not. The best humans can do is adopt and adapt to the change AI will make in human life. It is not a choice but an inevitability.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Deep Medicine (How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again)
Author: Eric Topol
Narrated By: Graham Winton
Eric Topol (Author, American cardiologist, scientist, founder of Scripps Research Translational Institute.)
Eric Topol is what most patients want to see in a Doctor of Medicine. “Deep Medicine” should be required reading for students wishing to become physicians. One suspects Topol’s view of medicine is as empathetic as it is because of his personal chronic illness. His personal experience as a patient and physician give him an insightful understanding of medical diagnosis, patient care, and treatment.
Topol explains how increasingly valuable and important Artificial Intelligence is in the diagnosis and treatment of illness and health for human beings.
AI opens the door for improved diagnosis and treatment of patients. A monumental caveat to A.I.s potential is its exposure of personal history not only to physicians but to governments and businesses. Governments and businesses preternaturally have agendas that may be in conflict with one’s personal health and welfare.
Topol notes China is ahead of America in cataloging citizens’ health because of their data collection and AI’s capabilities.
Theoretically, every visit to a doctor can be precisely documented with an AI system. The good of that system would improve continuity of medical diagnosis and treatment of patients. The risk of that system is that it can be exploited by governments and businesses wishing to control or influence a person’s life. One is left with a concern about being able to protect oneself from a government or business that may have access to citizen information. In the case of government, it is the power exercised over freedom. Both government and businesses can use AI information to influence human choice. With detailed information about what one wants, needs, or is undecided upon can be manipulated with personal knowledge accumulated by AI.
Putting loss of privacy and “Brave New World” negatives aside, Topol explains the potential of AI to immensely improve human health and wellness.
Cradle to grave information on human health would aid in research and treatment of illnesses and cures for present and future patients. Topol gives the example of collection of information on biometric health of human beings that can reveal secrets of perfect diets that would aid better health during one’s life. Topol explains how every person has a unique biometric system that processes food in different ways. Some foods may be harmful to some and not others because of the way their body metabolizes what they choose to eat. Topol explains, every person has their own biometric system that processes foods in different ways. It is possible to design diets to meet the specifications of one’s unique digestive system to improve health and avoid foods that are not healthily metabolized by one’s body. An AI could be devised to analyze individual biometrics and recommend more healthful diets and more effective medicines for users of an AI system.
In addition to improvements in medical imaging and diagnosis with AI, Topal explains how medicine and treatments can be personalized to patients based on biometric analysis that shows how medications can be optimized to treat specific patients in a customized way. Every patient is unique in the way they metabolize food and drugs. AI offers the potential for customization to maximize recovery from illness, infection, or disease.
Another growing AI metric is measurement of an individual’s physical well-being. Monitoring one’s vital signs is becoming common with Apple watches and information accumulation that can be monitored and controlled for healthful living. One can begin to improve one’s health and life with more information about a user’s pulse and blood pressure measurements. Instantaneous reports may warn people of risks with an accumulated record of healthful levels of exercise and an exerciser’s recovery times.
Marie Curie (Scientist, chemist, and physicist who played a crucial role in developing x-ray technology, received 2 Nobel Prizes, died at the age of 66.)
Topol offers a number of circumstances where AI has improved medical diagnosis and treatment. He notes how AI analysis of radiological imaging improves diagnosis of body’ abnormality because of its relentless process of reviewing past imaging that is beyond the knowledge or memory of experienced radiologists. Topol notes a number of studies that show AI reads radiological images better than experienced radiologists.
One wonders if AI is a Hobson’s choice or a societal revolution.
One wonders if AI is a Hobson’s choice or a societal revolution greater than the discovery of agriculture (10000 BCE), the rise of civilization (3000 BCE), the Scientific Revolution (16th to 17th century), the Industrial Revolution (18th to 19th century), the Digital Revolution (20th to 21st century), or Climate Change in the 21st century. Like Climate Change, AI seems an inevitable change that will collate, spindle, and mutilate life whether we want it to or not. The best humans can do is adopt and adapt to the change AI will make in human life. It is not a choice but an inevitability.
What we see today is not reality, but our minds’ interpretation of the material world. It seems that everything in the world is process, e.g., gravity, or time relativity, or quantum unpredictability.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Brain Myths Exploded (Lessons from Neuroscience)
Lecturer: Indre Viskontas
By: The Great Courses
Indre Viskontas (Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from UCLA, performed at Cafe Royal Opera in San Francisco, studies neural basis of memory and creativity, Lecturer at USF.)
Dr. Indre Viskontas offers interesting facts and theories about the brain in her Great Courses lectures. Her educational and musical accomplishments are remarkable examples of brain’ flexibility, human intelligence, and life-long potential. Her lectures show cognitive improvement may occur throughout one’s life while recalling incidents of brain damage and discoveries of science experiments that reveal how the brain works.
Viskontas suggests the belief that humans use only 10% of their brain is a myth.
The brain is made of eight distinctive structures which are interconnected and work together for our thoughts, feelings, and movements. A network of neurons sends electrical and chemical signals between parts of the brain that generate human thought and action; some of which are automatic and others cognitively reasoned. Viskontas explains how interconnections allow continued mental and physical functioning even when a part of the brain is damaged. Experiment and human accident have proven that the brain can adapt to loss of normal thought and action by retraining healthy parts of the brain. Retraining the brain can improve lost function. This may not return the perfect function of an undamaged brain, but it will improve function.
Viskontas explains human memory is a reconstructive process with varying degrees of accuracy.
There are people who have nearly perfect recall of their past. However, experiment has shown that even those few who can recall their personal history in detail are affected by emotion that distorts its accuracy. Furthermore, Viskontas explains personal history’ memory is limited to personal experience rather than any measurement of IQ. Of course, there are a few people who are said to have eidetic memories that can recall images with precision. They have so-called “photographic memories”, but IQ is based on problem-solving abilities that, at best, would be enhanced by a photographic memory. It is the application of recalled information to problem solving abilities that make one a genius like John von Neumann and Nikol Tesla who were alleged to have eidetic memories.
The risk is that “eyewitness” accounts can be influenced and totally wrong.
Scientific experiment has proven memory is a reconstructive process. With DNA analysis, a number of convicted murderers have been found innocent despite many eyewitnesses that identified them at scenes of crime. One is reminded of the gorilla experiment where eyewitnesses are distracted when a gorilla is sitting in a chair just as a human action scene is created in the same room. They do not see the gorilla and are surprised when it is pointed out to them later.
In the era of quantum computing, the concept of reality is evolving at a rate that boggles the mind.
The idea of a probabilistic rather than concrete reality reminds one of the differences between the science of Newton and Einstein. Newton thought of things as concrete reality. Einstein takes steps toward relativity with less emphasis on the concreteness of reality. What we see today is not reality, but our minds’ interpretation of the material world. It seems that everything in the world is process, e.g., gravity, or time relativity, or quantum unpredictability. Life and human beings may only be a pile of atoms in an atomic process of birth, life, death, and whatever comes after death.
As human beings grow older, new things take longer to learn but Viskontas explains it is commitment that makes a difference in learning something new.
Taking piano lessons as an older adult, deciding to become an opera singer after graduating from college as a neuroscientist, or reading/listening to books about science when you are not educated as a scientist takes more time as you get older, slower, and less inquisitive. Dr. Viskcontas’ lectures infer it is never too late to learn something new. It just takes longer for it to become a part of who you are.
After two or three chapters of Huston’s book, reader/listeners will likely complete it. The difficulty, as with all good advice, is following it.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
SHARP (Simple Ways to Improve Your Life with Brain Science)
By: Therese Huston PhD
Narrated By: Theresa Bakken
Therese Huston (Author, earned an MS and PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University.)
Therese Huston is a well-known public speaker who has written a book that has appeal for those who wish to know what they can do to improve their memory and cognitive abilities. This is not a book some will be interested in either listening to or reading. Many presume they have a proscribed intelligence and memory largely determined by genetic inheritance. Huston infers there is some science-based truth in that opinion but that one’s memory, cognitive ability, and psychological health can be treated, if not improved, at any age.
Huston’s prescription for improved memory and cognitive ability requires effort.
Undoubtedly, we inherit much of our innate cognitive ability but whatever one’s genetic inheritance and age may be Huston argues cognition and memory can be improved. Huston discusses areas of the brain that are the base from which cognition and memory originate, are stored, and then called upon.
Huston notes the hippocampus, amygdala, prefrontal cortex, neocortex, cerebellum, and basal ganglia are key brain areas involved in cognition and memory.
The hippocampus is the primary location of memories, but the other five areas interact with one’s personal experiences in ways ranging from emotion, individual understanding, decision-making, reasoning, skill development, and formed habits. As we age, the way we process, store, and retrieve information deteriorates. We lose some memories, process information more slowly, and find it more difficult to process new information in the context of past experience.
What Huston explains is that exercise, visual, and tactical experience can improve memory and cognition at every age.
Staying active, experiencing the world in ways that stimulate the production of dopamine, and exercising effort to learn and do new things improves cognitive ability and memory. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the human body that regulates mood, focus and behavior. It is released by the body when it is stimulated by exercise, engaging experience, and learning new things. Huston offers advice on how one at any age can improve their mental health and care for themselves and others when they are troubled by various common and extraordinary events in life. Life’s events stimulate the release of dopamine which can illicit rage and bad behavior but also provide focus and beneficial behavior.
Huston suggests 14 generally simple ways of helping oneself and others cope with the stresses of life.
Many of her solutions are commonly understood, others less so. Not surprisingly, she notes exercise, proper nutrition, quality sleep, and deep breathing are important for maintenance and improvement of brain function and memory. Some more difficult and less understood aids to brain health and memory are 1) importance of social engagement, 2) learning new things from personal and other’s recorded experience, and 3) practicing ways of reducing the stresses of life in yourself and others you care about.
One who reads or listens to “Sharp” will recognize the value of Huston’s advice for improving memory and cognitive ability.
After two or three chapters, reader/listeners will likely complete her book. The difficulty, as with all good advice, is following it.
A government designed to use public funds to pick winners and losers in the drug industry threatens human health. Only with the truth of science discoveries and honest reporting of drug efficacy can a physician offer hope for human recovery from curable diseases.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Rethinking Medications (Truth, Power, and the Drugs You Take)
By: Jerry Avorn
Narrated By: Jerry Avorn MD
Jerry Avorn (Author, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School where he received his MD, Chief Emeritus of the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics)
Doctor Avorn enlightens listener/readers about drug industry’ costs, profits, and regulation. Avorn explains how money corrupts the industry and the FDA while encouraging discovery of effective drug treatments. The cost, profits, and benefits of the industry revolve around research, discovery, medical efficacy, human health, ethics, and regulation.
Drug manufacture is big business.
Treatments for human maladies began in the dark ages when little was known about the causes of disease and mental dysfunction. Cures ranged from spirit dances to herbal concoctions that allegedly expelled evil, cured or killed its followers and users. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) did not come into existence until 1930, but its beginnings harken back to the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act signed into law by Theodore Roosevelt. The FDA took on the role of reviewing scientific drug studies for drug treatments that could aid health recovery for the public. The importance of review was proven critical by incidents like that in 1937, when 107 people died from a Sulfanilamide drug which was found to be poisonous. From that 1937 event forward, the FDA required drug manufacturers to prove safety of a drug before selling it to the public. The FDA began inspecting drug factories while demanding drug ingredient labeling. However, Avorn illustrates how the FDA was seduced by Big Pharma’ to offer drug approvals based on flawed or undisclosed research reports.
Dr. Martin Makary (Dr. Makary was confirmed as the new head of the FDA on March 25, 2025. He is the 27th head of the Department. He is a British-American surgeon and professor.)
What Dr. Avorn reveals is how the FDA has either failed the public or been seduced by drug manufacturers to approve drugs that have not cured patients but have, in some cases, harmed or killed patients. It will be interesting to see what Dr. Marin Makary can do to improve FDA’s regulation of drugs. Avorn touches on court cases that have resulted in huge financial settlements by drug manufacturing companies and their stockholders. However, he notes the actual compensation received by individually harmed patients or families is miniscule in respect to the size of the fines; not to mention many billions of dollars the drug companies received before unethical practices were exposed. Avorn notes many FDA’ research and regulation incompetencies allowed drug companies to hoodwink the public about drug companies’ discovered but unrevealed drug side-effects.
A few examples can be easily found in an internet search:
1) Vioxx (Rofecoxib), a pain killer, had to be withdrawn from use in 2004 because it was linked to increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. It was removed from the market in 2004.
2) Fen-Phen (Fenfluramine/Phentermine), a weight-loss drug had to be taken off the market in 1997 because of severe heart and lung complications.
3) Accutane was used to cure acne but was found to be linked to birth defects and had to be withdrawn in 2009.
4) Thalidomide was found to cause birth defects to become repurposed for treatment of certain cancers.
5) A more recent failure of the FDA is their failure to regulate opioids like OxyContin that resulted in huge fines to manufacturers and distributors of the drug.
Lobbyists are hired by drug companies to influence politicians to gain support of drug companies. In aggregate, this chart shows the highest-spending lobbyists in the 3rd Qtr. of 2020 were in the medical industry.
Dr. Avorn argues Big Pharma’s lobbying power has unduly influenced FDA to approve drugs that are not effective in treating patients for their diagnosed conditions. Avorn infers Big Pharma is more focused on increasing revenue than effectively reviewing drug manufacturer’ supplied studies. Avorn argues the FDA has become too dependent on industry fees that are paid by drug manufacturers asking for expedited drug approvals. Avorn infers the FDA fails to demand more documentation from drug manufacturers on their drug’ research. The author suggests many approved opioids, cancer treatment drugs, and psychedelics have questionable effectiveness or have safety concerns. Misleading or incomplete information is provided by drug companies that makes applications an approval process, not a fully relevant or studied action on the efficacy of new drugs.
Avorn is disappointed in the Trump administrations’ selection of Robert Kennedy as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services because of his lack of qualification.
The unscientific bias of Kennedy and Trump in regard to vaccine effectiveness reinforces the likelihood of increased drug manufacturers’ fees that are just a revenue source for the FDA. Trump will likely reward Kennedy for decreasing the Departments’ overhead by firing research scientists and increasing the revenues they collect from drug manufacturers seeking drug approvals.
Trump sees and uses money as the only measure of value in the world.
It is interesting to note that Avorn is a Harvard professor, a member of one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Harvard is being denied government grants by the Trump administration, allegedly because of Harvard’s DEI policy. One is inclined to believe diversity, equity, and inclusion are ignored by Trump because he is part of the white ruling class in America. Trump chooses to stop American aid to the world to reduce the cost of government. American government’s decisions to starve the world and discriminate against non-whites is a return to the past that will have future consequences for America.
Next, Avorn writes about the high cost of drugs, particularly in the United States. Discoveries are patented in the United States to incentivize innovation, but drug companies are gaming that Constitutional right by slightly modifying drug manufacture when their patent rights are nearing expiration. They renew their patent and control the price of the slightly modified drug that has the same curative qualities. As publicly held corporations, they are obligated to keep prices as high as the market allows. The consequence leaves many families at the mercy of their treatable diseases because they cannot afford the drugs that can help them.
Martin Shkreli, American investor who rose to fame and infamy for using hedge funds to buy drug patents and artificially raise their prices to only increase revenues.
The free market system in America allows an investor to buy a drug patent and arbitrarily raise its price. Avorn suggests this is a correctable problem with fair regulation and a balance between government sponsored funding for drug research in return for public funding. Of course, there are some scientists like Jonas Salk in 1953 who refused to privately patent the polio vaccine because it had such great benefit to the health of the world.
Avorn notes the 1990’s drug costs in the U.S. are out of control.
Only the rich are able to pay for newer drugs that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Americans spend over $13,000 per year per person while Europe is around $5,000 and low-income countries under $500 per year. These expenditures are to extend life which one would think make Americans live longest. Interestingly, America is not even in the top 10. Hong Kong’s average life expectancy is 85.77 years, Japan 85. South Korea 84.53. The U.S. average life expectancy is 79.4. To a cynic like me, one might say what’s 5 or 6 more years of life really worth? On the other hand, billionaires and millionaires like Peter Thiel and Bryan Johnson have invested millions into anti-aging research.
Avorn reinforces the substance of Michael Pollan’s book “How to Change Your Mind” which reenvisions the value of hallucinogens in this century.
Avorn notes hallucinogens efficacy is reborn in the 21st century to a level of medical and social acceptance. Avorn is a trained physician as opposed to Pollan who is a graduate with an M.A. in English, not with degrees in science or medicine.
In reviewing Avorn’s informative history, it is apparent that patients should be asking their doctors more questions about the drugs they are taking.
Drugs have side effects that can conflict with other drugs being taken. In this age of modern medicine, there are many drugs that can be effective, but they can also be deadly. Drug manufacturers looking at drug creation as only revenue producers is a bad choice for society.
Avorn’s history of the drug industry shows failure in American medicines is more than the mistake of placing an incompetent in charge of the U.S.
Taking money away from research facilities diminishes American innovation in medicine and other important sciences. However, research is only as good as the accuracy of its proof of efficacy for the treatment of disease and the Hippocratic Oath of “First, do no harm”. A government designed to use public funds to pick winners and losers in the drug industry threatens human health. Only with the truth of science discoveries and honest reporting of drug efficacy can a physician offer hope for human recovery from curable diseases.
“This is Your Brain on Parasites” is a bad book title but McAuliffe has written an interesting book about physical and mental health, and the treatments being researched in the 21st century.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
This is Your Brain on Parasites (How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior) and Shape Society
By: Kathleen McAuliffe
Narrated By: Nicol Zanzarella
Kathleen McAuliffe (Author, science journalist who has published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Smithsonian. Received an M.A. in natural science from Trinty College Dublin.)
Kathleen McAuliffe apprises the public of the importance of personal health along with a somewhat bizarrely titled book “This is Your Brain on Parasites”. McAuliffe’s book is about the science of health and its maintenance. The idea of a parasite in one’s brain seems unworthy of a book because of the creepy implication of possession. However, McAuliffe refers to a physician and several research scientists that have found evidence of brain parasites that effect animal and human behavior.
Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist and professor at Stanford studied what is called a Toxoplasma gondii parasite. It forms cysts in brain tissue that are shown to affect human behavior. People who have developed the cysts have shown symptoms of risk-taking behavior, and mental dysfunction like schizophrenia.
Dr. Jaroslav Flegr is a parasitologist, evolutionary biologist and professor of biology at the Faculty of Science, and professor at Charles University in Prague.
McAuliffe meets with a Czech scientist, Dr. Jaroslav Flegr, who conducted research showing the Toxoplasma gondii parasite in cat feces can infect the brain of a human being. The author meets other American research scientists that show how parasites infect animal brains whose behavior is affected in ways that are not natural to their species. A parasite being the source of a diseased brain has implications for treating mentally dysfunctional patients that may have a parasitic infection.
What McAuliffe’s book implies is the importance of washing one’s hands when handling pets, or their fecal material.
“This is Your Brain…” reminds one of the importance of hygiene when replenishing a bird feeder or filling an animal feeding trough to avoid possible parasites.
As most know, Kennedy is not a believer in vaccination despite a growing measles epidemic and the proof that vaccination works. McAuliffe does believe there are circumstances where a child crawling across the floor of a clean house gathers some immunity naturally but that un-common pathogens require uncommon vaccination.
Two other subjects mentioned by McAuliffe is natural and science made vaccinations and the benefits they provide humanity. This is a particularly timely suggestion considering Trump’s appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (a confessed anti-vaxxer) as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
McAuliffe notes how research is showing how certain microbes can remove calories from food and how certain drugs can reduce hunger among overweight patients. She reflects on the intersection of microbiology and human health.
Another interesting examination by McAuliffe is the science research being done on gut microbiomes, a community of microorganisms in human digestive systems.
The research on microbiomes has resulted in effective weight loss drugs that have become popular medications for people struggling with weight gain.
“This is Your Brain on Parasites” is a bad book title but McAuliffe has written an interesting book about physical and mental health, and the treatments being researched in the 21st century.
What is the value of high IQ? If everyone was smarter, would they be happier? It seems the only real value of genetics is in the prevention of known diseases, not in improvement of IQs or creation of a perfect human being (whatever that is).
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
The Social Genome: The New Science of Nature and Nurture
By: Dalton Conley
Narrated By: Christopher Douyard
Dalton Clark Conley (Author, Princeton University professor, American sociologist.)
Dalton Conley offers a complex explanation of why one child intellectually and financially excels while others are left behind. The “Social Genome” is an attempt to explain the complexity and inadequacy of genetic research. Not too surprisingly, there seems a correlation between wealth and intellectual development, but its relationship includes familial and environmental nurturing in ways that are too complex for today’s science to measure.
FAMOUS WOMEN IN HISTORY (Many women are as intellectually strong and mentally tough as men, e.g. Cleopatra, Sojourner Truth, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Benazir Bhutto, Malala Yousafzai, and others.)
Dalton argues both genetics and environment shape human intellect and economic success. However, science’s current knowledge of genetic and environmental impact is not clearly understood in a way to aid human development. The current limitations of science make it impossible to determine the precise genetic and environmental factors that shape human development. Dalton offers many examples of how genetics and environment are relevant to human development, but neither are precisely measurable nor manageable.
The idea of clearly understanding the genetic and environmental causes of who humans become is a bit frightening.
Even if it were possible to achieve precise measurement of genetic and environmental influences, should that knowledge be used to create designer human beings?
Piketty argues that the income gap widens after World War II. He estimates 60% of 2010’s wealth is held by less than 1% of the population.
Dalton does believe there is a correlation between economic well-being and IQ, but the correlation is affected by genetic inheritance. Dalton concludes economic well-being is a positive factor in IQ improvement. That raises questions about how one can improve the economic well-being of a society to improve IQ. Dalton infers there is no one size fits all solution for IQ improvement. Nurture and nature are too intimately intertwined to know how IQ of a society can be improved. A conclusion one may draw is that environmental and societal factors like human nutrition, general education and improved equal opportunity can mitigate IQ diminishment. Whether one should modify human genomes is a step too far.
In many ways, this is a frustrating book to listen to or read.
If all people looked more alike than different would there be less conflict in the world? No, but being of one race or another makes a difference in one’s opportunities in the world. What is the value of high IQ? If everyone was smarter, would they be happier? It seems the only real value of genetics is in the prevention of known diseases, not in improvement of IQs or creation of a perfect human being (whatever that is).
The randomness of life and what we make of it is the most important theme of Weston’s insightful memoir about being “Alive”.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Alive (The Richness and Brevity of Existence)
By: Gabriel Weston
Narrated By: Gabriel Weston
Gabriel Weston (Author, English surgeon, television presenter.)
Gabriel Weston’s “Alive” is an intimate, blunt, and enlightening explanation of her experience as a woman, surgeon, mother, and member of the human race. For some, Weston’s story contains more information than one is prepared to take.
It begins with a self-effacing assessment of her early education in liberal arts where she achieved an MA in English. However, she decides to go to medical school in London where she qualifies as a physician in 2000. Her very personal memoir explains a great deal about being educated as a physician but more about being a woman.
Some reader/listeners will be put off by Weston’s blunt explanation of the human body. However, some will find much of what she writes as revelatory.
Weston explains what it means to be human and a woman who becomes a mother of twins at the age of forty, with two younger children.
It is hard to imagine a younger person who is uninterested in science, technology, engineering, or math, who receives an MA in English, would be interested in becoming a surgeon.
However, Weston chooses to become a doctor and graduates from a London medical school in 2000. She briefly explains her journey in “Alive” by reflecting on her classes in body dissection to explain the details of the human body and differences in sexual anatomy. Some will choose to leave her story, but others (if they stick with it) will be enlightened and surprised by her observations and opinions.
Weston notes the equivalent of the male penis is a woman’s clitoris. This is an interesting observation that most would be unlikely to publicly discuss or write about.
Presumably, Weston is making this point to show there is a great deal of similarity between men and women. However, she notes a significant difference. Menstruation is a sluffing process where the uterus sheds a layer of bedding material that exits the body through the vagina, i.e., something unique to women. The purpose of menstruation is to prepare the body for possible pregnancy by providing a thickening to the uterus that supports fertilization. That thickening is removed (sluffed off) approximately once per month. As is often noted, only women give birth, a singular difference between the sexes.
Weston goes on to explain her experience of birthing twins.
The two girls come late in her adult life. They are delivered in a caesarian operation. Children are born in amniotic sacs. This is likely a surprise to most men because birth of a baby is thought of as a delivery with a squirming body through the birth canal rather than a body within an amniotic sac. However, Weston notes the second twin is delivered within its amniotic sac which suggests she is a fraternal, rather than identical twin.
Syria’s use of nerve gas to murder their own citizens.
Weston’s story moderates in future chapters with notes about nerve gases used by governments to suffocate their own people as well as perceived foreign enemies. The point she makes is that oxygen deprivation in the 21st century and beyond is increasing with rising pollution on earth. She notes oxygen deprivation is the same suffocation caused when governments used lethal gases to kill their own citizens as perceived enemies. The obvious inference is today’s denial of earth’s environmental degradation risks the lives of all oxygen dependent lives.
Weston is an example of a working mother who succeeds in England despite the world’s history of misogyny.
Some women become a success despite the many obstacles they face. Weston symbolizes human grit and determination in the face of sexual inequality of opportunity but, as a human being, she is subject to the physical limitations of every life. She mentions during the course of her story a heart murmur that is caused by a defective heart valve. The last chapters of her book explain Weston is on a transplant list.
The randomness of life and what we make of it is the most important theme of Weston’s insightful memoir about being “Alive”.
REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE 