Disqus - Latest Comments for marat1

Re: Washington Monthly | The Dialysis Machine

marat1 — Mon, 07 May 2018 07:43:48 -0000

It is extremely difficult for anyone who has not treated kidney patients or has not been on dialysis truly to understand the experience. Here, for example, the author keeps repeating the mistake of assuming that peritoneal dialysis is necessarily better than hemodialysis, when in fact it is not, especially given the multiple exchanges peritoneal dialysis patients have to do every day, as opposed to the every other day schedule of in-center dialysis patients. Also, there is such a high risk of peritonitis with peritoneal dialysis, that most patients will quickly lose access to this method because of repeated infections.

Also, the wait for a transplant in the U.S. is now around 7 years, and since most patients become too sick for a transplant after 5 years of dialysis, it is for reasons of health, not race, that people don't get transplants. It is also not the case, as this author so glibly assumes to drive her discrimination arguments, that kidney disease is necessarily preventable with proper care. While the progression can sometimes be slowed, it typically cannot be prevented if the patient lives long enough.

The proper solution to the living death of dialysis is to allow patients to pay for kidney donors, which would allow the richer patients to exit the horror and permit the poorer patients to move up the transplant waiting list faster. Even better, the government should pay people to be kidney donors. Well organized systems of paid donations, such as they have in Iran, have saved countless lives, but the ignorant moralizing of people who have no idea what dialysis is all about prevents this.

Re: Egyptian Parliament considers outlawing atheism

marat1 — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 09:16:56 -0000

Since it is impossible for people to compel themselves to believe in something, it seems grossly unfair, and contrary to the ordinary criminal law requirement of mens rea, to punish people for doing something they can't prevent themselves from doing. It is an inherent part of human autonomy to want to express the ideas we have, so to censor atheists disrespects their humanity in a way that the Abrahamic religions should never endorse.

Re: US facility aims to cure type 1 diabetes within six years

marat1 — Sat, 22 Apr 2017 12:03:25 -0000

This article is worse than idiotic. If a way is found to reverse the autoimmune attack on the pancreatic beta cells, that will only prevent new cases from developing, if we could only know which patients will develop diabetes in time to prevent it, but it will do nothing to cure established cases. Beta cell transplants have been tried without much success ever since the Edmonton Protocol in the early 1980s, so I don't see the point of flogging this dead horse. In any case, the severe limit of organs available for transplant will restrict beta cell transplant to the point of uselessness. And finally, since genetic engineering is an entirely new field which has already proved lethally dangerous in liver disease treatment, pursuing genetic research to find a way to block the development of complications in diabetes couldn't produce significant results for 50 to 100 years, if ever.

I would like to turn this cheap, tawdry, two-bit medical propaganda on its head and bet the researchers here a million dollars that they WON'T find a cure for type 1 diabetes in 6 years. Watch them run away and hide when confronted with that challenge.

Re: Feds back bereaved parents | Local | News | Sarnia Observer

marat1 — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 09:53:53 -0000

Each is a tragedy but how many missing and murdered children does Canada have in a year? 1,000 seems high. Most murders occur within family units. If the parent is believed to be a party to the offence, does he or she still get the financial support?

Re: "13 Things I Hate about Nephrology" (by Nephrogirl)

marat1 — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:23:29 -0000

As a physician who suffered the horror of nine years on dialysis prior to a living donor transplant, I am profoundly relieved to find in Nephrogirl a nephrologist who appreciates the reality of dialysis consistent with the patient's perspective. During my dialysis years, I 'lived' as one of the Living Dead, having sufficient energy only to get to in-center hemodialysis sessions and back, but for nothing else, despite being perfectly compliant with the entire medical regimen, having a pump speed of 450 rpm, a treatment time of 4.5 hours three times a week, and a Kt/v between 1.8 and 2.0. My entire life consisted of nausea, vomiting, desperate thirst, perpetual exhaustion, and constant itching despite a 'perfect' PTH value. At dialysis, I sat helplessly slumped in the chair measuring the gradual decline of the other patients, seeing this one lose a leg, that one an arm, another become demented, some new patients screaming their lungs out from the pain of access needling, and patients much younger than me suddenly dying. If I recorded all the medical stupidity displayed by the nephrologists on staff, despite my dialysis center being part of a teaching hospital, it would fill an encyclopedia. In short, the entire experience was just Hell on earth, a scene from a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, and if I had not received the transplant when I did, I certainly would have committed suicide rather than endure any more of that 'medical miracle,' the dialysis machine.

Re: Political Affairs Magazine - Socialism has failed. Now capitalism is bankrupt. So what comes next?

marat1 — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:18:53 -0000

Hobsbaum's analysis unfortunately neglects the enormous benefits to human psychological and spiritual health that would arise from conversion to an economic system whose fundamental premise was not personal greed but public cooperation, and whose population was not mired in the thing-like identity demanded by the preoccupation with personal income and its attendant consumerism and obsessive-compulsive relation to work.

Re: Political Affairs Magazine - Capitalism and Diabetes

marat1 — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:05:55 -0000

Keep in mind that the whole emphasis on prevention of disease is part of the right-wing movement to blame patients for their illnesses as an excuse to avoid having to provide a public health care system. If it is all the patients' fault, what right do they have to free healthcare at taxpayer expense? If it is all the patients' fault, all that is required is some self-discipline on the part of patients and then the need for public healthcare will evaporate.

But of course this is a right-wing lie, since the major diseases which really impose expenses on society are one and all unpreventable: type 1 diabetes, cystic fibrosis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, polycystic disease, and about half of all cases of heart disease, cancer, and renal failure. Even the type of diabetes discussed here, type 2, has a huge genetic component, and many perfectly thin, active people are found among those diagnosed as adults with type 2 diabetes. Let's not do anything to promote the myth of prevention here.