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Some Facts and Personal History About the Polio Vaccine

  On April 26, 1954 the Salk polio vaccine field trials began.   It was the first time a “double blind” trial was used for a drug.   The now standard double blind study (where neither the patient nor the doctor know who is getting the real medicine as opposed to a placebo) involved almost 2 million children.   It began at Franklin Sherman Elementary School, an integrated school in McLean, Virginia.   The expanded study involved children from the United States, Canada and Finland.             I think the trials conducted in an integrated school reflect the largesse and truly humanitarian thinking of Dr. Jonas Salk himself.   The son of immigrant-Russian Ashkenazi Jews, Salk knew what mindless prejudice and institutionalized bias looked and felt like.   Salk was a risk taker.   He used a dead virus when common thinking assumed a live but weakened virus was better.   He tried the vacc...
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Witches in Georgia, Nuts in Texas

Some time ago a woman in Georgia won a restraining order against a man who had been stalking her for months.   She had met him when he answered her advertisement in a singles column.   In the ad she described herself as a, “wiccan” priestess—a witch!   She was then shocked that she didn’t attract an intelligent, emotionally mature male.   Instead she got a weird, obsessive stalker.   Whom did she think she was going to get? I realize that I am probably not being as tolerant as the times require, but it seems to me that any adult who calls herself a witch should not be expected to be taken seriously.   Do adults have to be told that there are no such things as witches?   Didn’t we learn that sometime between the Salem Witch Trials and the dawning of the nuclear age?   What seems to be going on here is that the mantra of tolerance which rightly began as a way to combat institutionalized prejudice has been carried to an extreme that says we can n...
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Trump Plans to Gut the Gold Reserves to Create a Cryptocurrency

   Trump and Musk plan to use the gold in Fort Knox to leverage crypto, a move that enriches, three groups: Musk (of course), Venezuela (and it drug lords) and Trump’s sons. This will bring some glee to the crypto-crazies and among the ever-hopeful, but intellectually challenged devotees, thereof.    Here are some things that all of you need to know.   Crypto is nothing more than the 21st Century’s version of Amway.   They just substituted block chains for circles.   Other than that, it’s the same old schtick.   It is a curiosity to me that people who have never taken a class in economics are sure they have a good bead on how to beat the system.   They think that people who play by the rules are suckers.   The smart people (like them—right?) use the odd hustle that plays the system and earns them easy money.   These are the same people who loudly sing the blues when the “con” turns out to be on them. There is a saying amo...
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