There's no sanewashing RFK Jr.

The Senate voted to confirm a lunatic to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, happily with no Democratic votes but no Republican defections either. Now, while he's arbitrarily cut the HHS workforce from 82,000 to 62,000, he's added at least one new position, a fraudster named David Geier, who was sanctioned for practicing medicine without a license, alongside his father who did have a medical license at the time but had it revoked. (Read the licensing board's finding if you want a grim laugh.) According to MedPage Today:

 

David Geier never held a license to practice any health occupation, according to the Maryland state board. He has a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Maryland and was "on staff" at his father's clinical practice, known as the Genetic Centers of America. Mark Geier lost his medical license in Marylandopens in a new tab or window and other states.

So why was David Geier chosen to lead a new HHS study?

"It seems the goal of this administration is to prove that vaccines cause autism even though they don't," noted Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation, a nonprofit group that funds autism research. "They are starting with the conclusion and looking to validate it. That's not how science is done," Singer wrote in an email to MedPage Today.

 

We know that there is no link between vaccination and autism.  This has been proved beyond any shadow of a doubt. 

Wakefield's article linking MMR vaccine and autism was fraudulent. 

 Measles, Mumps, Rubella Vaccination and Autism: A Nationwide Cohort Study.   

Vaccines are not associated with autism: an evidence-based meta-analysis of case-control and cohort studies.

Autism and measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine: no epidemiological evidence for a causal association.

A population-based study of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and autism.

I could go on listing more studies but these are plenty of high quality, irrefutable results. (Actually the risk of autism in vaccinated children tends to be lower, although the confidence interval crosses zero.) As the NYT reports (even they can't sanewash these wackjobs, hard as they might try):

 

On a podcast in 2022, Mr. Kennedy credited the Geiers’ research for showing that vaccines “had nothing to do with” a decline in infectious diseases over decades. “It was all an illusion,” Mr. Kennedy said, attributing the decrease to improving sanitation and nutrition.

The Geiers’ work has been repeatedly discredited by other scientists and federal court decisions. An extensive review of the purported link between vaccines and autism in 2004 by the Institute of Medicine, an elite group of doctors and researchers, panned the Geiers’ studies. The review found their work to be marred by flaws “making their results uninterpretable.” . . .

Judges have rejected the Geiers’ efforts to serve as experts on vaccine safety in court. Records show that judges challenged the father-son team’s billings for hundreds of thousands of dollars related to services they provided as experts for a specialized vaccine injury court. . . 

Judge George L. Hastings Jr. said in 2016 that David Geier was not qualified to render an expert opinion in a National Vaccine Injury Compensation court case. Judge Hastings said his report “is neither useful nor relevant, because he is not qualified as an expert concerning the matters he discusses.” . . .

To [Edward] Hunter, formerly of the C.D.C., the decision to spend federal funds on a new study of a debunked theory would come at the cost of a meaningful discovery.

Since he became health secretary, Mr. Kennedy has presided over cutbacks involving research into nearly every aspect of health care and diseases. On Thursday, he announced a massive reorganization and reduction in the work force from 82,000 to 62,000.

“To me, the big shame is that with budget cuts, we are not ramping up research into what is actually causing autism,” Mr. Hunter said. “And if you are worried about vaccine-preventable disease, this is such a clear setback.”

 

Let me be absolutely clear. As far as I can tell this is a scam, the motive for which is money. That was the motive for Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent study in Britain, which started the whole insanity, that's RFK Jr's motive for promoting it, and that's Geier's motive for defrauding patients and the courts. They want to kill your children to make themselves rich. These people are depraved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday Bible Study: New dietary fad

Chapter 2 of Ezekiel is fairly short, whereas chapter 3 is tediously long. I'm going to post them both because they only make sense together. Strike that, they make no sense whatever, but you need them both to appreciate the nonsense. 

 

First, I draw your attention to the footnote to chapter 2. The translators are flat out admitting that the Christian project to somehow connect these prophecies to Jesus is fraudulent. They deliberately mistranslate, and say so. Anyway, God gives Zeke a scroll: "On both sides of it were written words of lament and mourning and woe." Then, in chapter 2, God makes Zeke eat the scroll, which he finds tastes good. For the next bit, starting at verse 18, I'll give you the Skeptics Annotated Bible summary:

 

God's killing rules:

If Ezekiel doesn't warn the wicked that God's going to kill them for being wicked, God will kill the wicked people and blame Ezekiel for their deaths.

If Ezekiel warns the wicked, then God will kill the wicked people (if they don't change their wicked ways), but not Ezekiel.

If a good person does something wrong after God "lays a stumbling block before him," then God will kill him. "He shall die in his sin" and whatever good he has done will be forgotten. And Ezekiel will be to blame for their killing.

(Or something like that.)

 Then God renders Ezekiel unable to speak and relegates him to house arrest, for no apparent reason. Yeah, this all makes sense.

2 He said to me, “Son of man,^[a] stand up on your feet and I will speak to you.” ² As he spoke, the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet, and I heard him speaking to me.

³ He said: “Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have been in revolt against me to this very day. ⁴ The people to whom I am sending you are obstinate and stubborn. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says.’ ⁵ And whether they listen or fail to listen—for they are a rebellious people—they will know that a prophet has been among them. ⁶ And you, son of man, do not be afraid of them or their words. Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns are all around you and you live among scorpions. Do not be afraid of what they say or be terrified by them, though they are a rebellious people. ⁷ You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen, for they are rebellious. ⁸ But you, son of man, listen to what I say to you. Do not rebel like that rebellious people; open your mouth and eat what I give you.”

⁹ Then I looked, and I saw a hand stretched out to me. In it was a scroll, ¹⁰ which he unrolled before me. On both sides of it were written words of lament and mourning and woe.

Footnotes

1. Ezekiel 2:1 The Hebrew phrase ben adam means human being. The phrase son of man is retained as a form of address here and throughout Ezekiel because of its possible association with “Son of Man” in the New Testament.

3 And he said to me, “Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll; then go and speak to the people of Israel.” ² So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat.

³ Then he said to me, “Son of man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it.” So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.

⁴ He then said to me: “Son of man, go now to the people of Israel and speak my words to them. ⁵ You are not being sent to a people of obscure speech and strange language, but to the people of Israel— ⁶ not to many peoples of obscure speech and strange language, whose words you cannot understand. Surely if I had sent you to them, they would have listened to you. ⁷ But the people of Israel are not willing to listen to you because they are not willing to listen to me, for all the Israelites are hardened and obstinate. ⁸ But I will make you as unyielding and hardened as they are. ⁹ I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint. Do not be afraid of them or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious people.”

¹⁰ And he said to me, “Son of man, listen carefully and take to heart all the words I speak to you. ¹¹ Go now to your people in exile and speak to them. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says,’ whether they listen or fail to listen.”

¹² Then the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard behind me a loud rumbling sound as the glory of the Lord rose from the place where it was standing.^{[a] 13} It was the sound of the wings of the living creatures brushing against each other and the sound of the wheels beside them, a loud rumbling sound. ¹⁴ The Spirit then lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness and in the anger of my spirit, with the strong hand of the Lord on me. ¹⁵ I came to the exiles who lived at Tel Aviv near the Kebar River. And there, where they were living, I sat among them for seven days—deeply distressed.

Ezekiel’s Task as Watchman

¹⁶ At the end of seven days the word of the Lord came to me: ¹⁷ “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the people of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. ¹⁸ When I say to a wicked person, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn them or speak out to dissuade them from their evil ways in order to save their life, that wicked person will die for^[b] their sin, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. ¹⁹ But if you do warn the wicked person and they do not turn from their wickedness or from their evil ways, they will die for their sin; but you will have saved yourself.

²⁰ “Again, when a righteous person turns from their righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before them, they will die. Since you did not warn them, they will die for their sin. The righteous things that person did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. ²¹ But if you do warn the righteous person not to sin and they do not sin, they will surely live because they took warning, and you will have saved yourself.”

²² The hand of the Lord was on me there, and he said to me, “Get up and go out to the plain, and there I will speak to you.” ²³ So I got up and went out to the plain. And the glory of the Lord was standing there, like the glory I had seen by the Kebar River, and I fell facedown.

²⁴ Then the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet. He spoke to me and said: “Go, shut yourself inside your house. ²⁵ And you, son of man, they will tie with ropes; you will be bound so that you cannot go out among the people. ²⁶ I will make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth so that you will be silent and unable to rebuke them, for they are a rebellious people. ²⁷ But when I speak to you, I will open your mouth and you shall say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says.’ Whoever will listen let them listen, and whoever will refuse let them refuse; for they are a rebellious people.

Footnotes

1. Ezekiel 3:12 Probable reading of the original Hebrew text; Masoretic Text sound—may the glory of the Lord be praised from his place
2. Ezekiel 3:18 Or in; also in verses 19 and 20

 

 

As usual, the corporate media miss the point . . .

 . . . but Josh Marshall sees it clearly. The reason the national security clown car communicated about the attack on the Houthis using Signal is precisely because they did not want to use a secure communication facility of the federal government. Official communications are archived. Even if they are classified, which means you and I can't see them, authorized government officials can, and that includes the succeeding administration, and usually the leaders of the relevant congressional committees. Furthermore they may be declassified at some future time. Signal communications are deleted after 48 hours.

 

That's why it was in fact, objectively illegal for them to conduct business in this way. But that's why they did it. And, obviously, this wasn't the first and only time. It has to be routine. Which also means we have no idea of the level and amount of corruption and malfeasance that's going on, because the administration is operating outside of official channels. That's just fine with the Republicans in congress, while the Democrats remain utterly feckless, for reasons I cannot comprehend.

Sunday Sermonette: Stay away from those mushrooms

Like most of the prophets, it's likely that the Book of Ezekiel is based on writings by the purported author during the time in which he places himself, but it was considerably edited and amended later. Indeed, according to Jewish tradition, the Men of the Great Assembly -- a council of scribes in the Second Temple period, actually wrote the book based on the prophet's words. That means that, again as usual, the prophecies of the future in the book were likely created after the events they predict had already happened.

 

Anyway, taking Ezekiel at his word, he was a priest who was among the literate elite who Nebuchadnezzar took into captivity along with King Jehoiachin, in BC 597. Neb appointed Jehoiachin's uncle as Viceroy, but allowed most of the population of Judah to remain until 586 BC, when in response to a rebellion Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the city of Jerusalem and the temple and took the remaining religious and political leadership into captivity. So the book begins in about 594 BC, shortly after Zeke was exiled. 

 

The first chapter seems to show that either he had eaten some toadstools he should have left alone, or he could have benefited from Thorazine, had it been invented. Some people believe he was actually visited by extraterrestrials, but I find that improbable. If they're going to show themselves, why pick this guy? Anyway you'll have to decide that for yourselves.

 

1 In my thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.

² On the fifth of the month—it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin— ³ the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, by the Kebar River in the land of the Babylonians.^[a] There the hand of the Lord was on him.

⁴ I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, ⁵ and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was human, ⁶ but each of them had four faces and four wings. ⁷ Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. ⁸ Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. All four of them had faces and wings, ⁹ and the wings of one touched the wings of another. Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved.

¹⁰ Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. ¹¹ Such were their faces. They each had two wings spreading out upward, each wing touching that of the creature on either side; and each had two other wings covering its body. ¹² Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went. ¹³ The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it. ¹⁴ The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning.

¹⁵ As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. ¹⁶ This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like topaz, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. ¹⁷ As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not change direction as the creatures went. ¹⁸ Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.

¹⁹ When the living creatures moved, the wheels beside them moved; and when the living creatures rose from the ground, the wheels also rose. ²⁰ Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, and the wheels would rise along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. ²¹ When the creatures moved, they also moved; when the creatures stood still, they also stood still; and when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.

²² Spread out above the heads of the living creatures was what looked something like a vault, sparkling like crystal, and awesome. ²³ Under the vault their wings were stretched out one toward the other, and each had two wings covering its body. ²⁴ When the creatures moved, I heard the sound of their wings, like the roar of rushing waters, like the voice of the Almighty,^[b] like the tumult of an army. When they stood still, they lowered their wings.

²⁵ Then there came a voice from above the vault over their heads as they stood with lowered wings. ²⁶ Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. ²⁷ I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. ²⁸ Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.

This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking.

Footnotes

1. Ezekiel 1:3 Or Chaldeans
2. Ezekiel 1:24 Hebrew Shaddai

 

NIH -- continued

Okay, I've summarized what a congressional committee has recommended for NIH reform. I endorse some of it and won't bother to argue against the rest. However, there is much they have overlooked. I'm taking the numbers I'm about to present from Rochelle and Loren Walensky, "U.S. Science in Peril," published in JAMA on February 14. It's subscription only, and there's no abstract, so you'll just have to trust me on this unless you have a subscription.

 

NIH uses various so-called "funding mechanisms," with designations such as R03, R21, R01, U24 and so on. Most are grants for single studies -- those are the R grants -- and the numbers basically distinguish how large they are and whether they're for preliminary and exploratory work, or a substantial hypothesis based study. U and P grants are for programs of research incorporating multiple studies, typically with "core" resources such as analytical or laboratory support. K awards are for post-doctoral research and mentorship. All of these are essential components of the scientific infrastructure.

 

The R01 is the substantial grant for a study for which preliminary work may already have been done using an R21 or the like. In 2023, NIH reviewed 48,660 R01 applications and funded 9,632 of them, i.e. less than 20%. These applications are extremely complex and laborious to prepare -- it typically takes months of work by investigators and administrators to put together the application package, which is hundreds of pages long. And the only way to pay for this is through the indirect costs the institution is receiving for projects that are already funded, and what are essentially unpaid hours for investigators. Oh, and BTW full-time tenured and tenure track professors are paid less now than they were in 1970, on average, and it isn't a whole lot for somebody who has 20 years or more of education -- about $100,000/year. 

The maximum budget for an R01 is $500,000/year, unless you get special approval, which is rare. That amount hasn't changed since 1993, meaning that adjusted for inflation it's worth 57% less. On average, scientists don't get their first R01 until they're in their 40s. Even if your R01 application is approved on the first submission, which is quite rate, it's ten months before the money comes. If you have to resubmit, which is almost always the case, it's another year and a half before you have a chance of seeing the money.

 

The Walensky's also aren't totally happy with peer review:

As for peer-review systems in general, gaps in reviewer expertise can lead to scientific misunderstanding, while conflicting feedback hinders the capacity to respond effectively; limited reviewer accountability allows inconsistent or unjustified critiques to undermine worthy grant applications. These systemic issues can slow scientific progress, discourage young investigators, and limit innovation.

In my experience, this is certainly true. There are three written reviews for each submission. The reviewers often contradict each other, and lack expertise to properly understand the proposal. They may also see a proposal as competition for their own program of research and downgrade it to protect their domain, or perhaps a junior faculty mentee; or they may belong to an opposing theoretical school. 

The Walenskys also complain about the shifting priorities that come with each new administration, and various other problems. The benefits to society of NIH-funded research are extraordinary. HIV used to be a sentence to a horrible death, now it just means taking a pill every morning and getting on with a normal life. The same was once true for pediatric leukemia, which now has a 90% cure rate. These are just two examples plucked from what could be a 100 page catalog. The solutions to these problems do not include reducing indirect cost rates or terminating programs of research that conflict with Robert Kennedy Junior's delusions. 

 

Actually they require more money, not less, but changes to the peer review process and simplification of applications are also needed. However, the people currently in charge have no understanding of how NIH and the institutions it funds work, the importance of what they do, or anything having to do with biomedical science. They are incompetent ideologues. So call your representatives in congress and tell them that they must protect NIH, AHRQ, the National Science Foundation, and all of the federal support for science.

Real NIH reform

A reader asks if NIH funds are really spent as efficiently as they could be. A short answer might be that nothing is perfect, but in fact people (including YT) have thought about this quite a lot lately. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce—chaired by former US Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) — released a report in June 2024 entitled Reforming the National Institutes of Health: Framework for Discussion. The report recommended closer oversight of high risk research, including international collaborations, no doubt at least in part resulting from concerns about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and genetic research in general. I can't argue with that, it's a legitimate public concern even if arguably a bit overblown. However, that would obviously cost money rather than saving any.

 

Other recommendations include limited leadership tenure, which is a somewhat complicated argument but I won't argue with it; and more congressional control over funding decisions, which I'm not crazy about but a congressional committee would say that. Not that congress would actually do it. They already do outline broad priorities for research and allocate funds among the various institutes and centers. 

 

Which brings us to the more consequential recommendation, which I do support. That is to consolidate the 27 institutes and centers into 15. It is a legitimate problem that the missions of the institutes and centers are siloed. For example, alcohol misuse, misuse of other drugs, and mental illness,  not including the previous two problems, are all addressed by separate institutes. Several institutes are concerned with specific body parts -- heart, kidneys -- or systems, e.g. the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease can more or less be thought of as focusing on the immune system, while the National Cancer Institute focuses on innumerable diseases of abnormal cellular replication. 

 

If you know anything about physiology or public health, you can immediately see a problem, or maybe several. Humans don't consist of all these unrelated parts or sub-systems. We're all of them at once and they all go together. Hypertension damages the circulatory system and the kidneys. Among the causal factors are emotional distress and alcohol misuse, and those are all related to social determinants, some but not all of which are separately the concern of the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities (uh oh, that's presumably going away entirely very soon). If I have a proposal to study primary care, or integrated behavioral health and medicine, or medical and psychiatric comorbidity, among a million other ideas I could suggest, I don't know where to send it. 

There are many additional ways in which the functioning of NIH could be improved, which I'll get to next. But the point is, people have been thinking about this and there are well informed, thoughtful and plausible proposals out there. None of them includes a chainsaw.

Wednesday Bible Study: Let's get this over with

 We'll just skip to the last chapter of Lamentations, since it's all pretty much the same -- death, doubt and doom loom, bazz fazz, as Pogo said. The first four chapters are all acrostics, with each verse beginning with a consecutive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Why? Who knows. This is not. Again, we don't know when this was written, or by whom, but probably not just one author. Maybe it was some sort of a poetry contest. Anyway, next we're on to Ezekiel, who was definitely eating ethereal cereal.

 

5 Remember, Lord, what has happened to us;
    look, and see our disgrace.
² Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,
    our homes to foreigners.
³ We have become fatherless,
    our mothers are widows.
⁴ We must buy the water we drink;
    our wood can be had only at a price.
⁵ Those who pursue us are at our heels;
    we are weary and find no rest.
⁶ We submitted to Egypt and Assyria
    to get enough bread.
⁷ Our ancestors sinned and are no more,
    and we bear their punishment.
⁸ Slaves rule over us,
    and there is no one to free us from their hands.
⁹ We get our bread at the risk of our lives
    because of the sword in the desert.
¹⁰ Our skin is hot as an oven,
    feverish from hunger.
¹¹ Women have been violated in Zion,
    and virgins in the towns of Judah.
¹² Princes have been hung up by their hands;
    elders are shown no respect.
¹³ Young men toil at the millstones;
    boys stagger under loads of wood.
¹⁴ The elders are gone from the city gate;
    the young men have stopped their music.
¹⁵ Joy is gone from our hearts;
    our dancing has turned to mourning.
¹⁶ The crown has fallen from our head.
    Woe to us, for we have sinned!
¹⁷ Because of this our hearts are faint,
    because of these things our eyes grow dim
¹⁸ for Mount Zion, which lies desolate,
    with jackals prowling over it.

¹⁹ You, Lord, reign forever;
    your throne endures from generation to generation.
²⁰ Why do you always forget us?
    Why do you forsake us so long?
²¹ Restore us to yourself, Lord, that we may return;
    renew our days as of old
²² unless you have utterly rejected us
    and are angry with us beyond measure.

 

Whistling past the graveyard

So, I got an email today from our dean of finance and administration, which went to all faculty, staff and doctoral students. There's already a university-wide hiring freeze, but now they're trying to find ways of saving some more bucks. If you're old enough to remember the WorldCom debacle, that was a company in dire financial straits (which they misrepresented to stockholders who got wiped out, and the president went to jail, but that's beside the point). So the president issued an order to save money by stopping maintenance of office plants.

 

At our school, the new directive is to cut back on food served at events (we normally get lunch at faculty meetings), if we have an invited speaker we can only take them out to dinner with three guests instead of six, and trying to cut back on office supplies. Sorry, but this is evidence of denial, not a serious response to mortal peril.  At Boston Children's Hospital, they get it: 

According to [Governor Maura] Healey’s administration, the hospital receives over $200 million in NIH funding annually, including $230 million last year. The proposed cuts by the Trump administration would cut that funding in half. 

“That means halting research into the diseases that harm children,” Healey said. “Ripping away hope from families … who are facing a devastating diagnosis. These cuts are going to cost jobs. They’re going to cost lives, young, vulnerable lives.” It’s not rhetoric,” she continued. “It’s not hyperbole. It’s a fact.”

“Everyone needs to understand how very serious this threat is,” said Healey.  “And everyone needs to understand the cuts that are being proposed in order to fund huge tax breaks for some of the richest people in the world are going to come on the backs of these patients and their families.”

Healey said the cuts have already had an effect in Massachusetts. Despite a federal judge’s temporary restraining order against the NIH for barring funding for medical research, Healey said the funding is still not coming through. Healey said that colleges and universities in the state are already reducing their budgets because of these cuts, which are stopping research and clinical trials in their tracks. 

Now, Healey said that a presence from China, Europe, and the Middle East is looking to poach these researchers to move overseas. “That is against America First,” she said. “We are giving away assets to other countries instead of retaining them and supporting them here.”

 

In my previous post, I tried to understand why they are doing this. Yes, as Gov. Healey says, Peter Thiel doesn't want to pay taxes. But believe me, wiping out the NIH entirely wouldn't make a dent. The entire NIH budget is about $50 billion. The federal budget is $1.7 trillion. A trillion, in case you didn't know, is 1,000 billion. In other words the NIH is less than 3% of the federal budget. So no, that can't really be the reason.

 

Too much to deal with

My blogging has been scarce lately, largely because I don't know what I have to contribute to the discourse any more. Here I was writing coherently about public health and health policy, and writing a book about it in which I lay for for the benefit of humanity what expertise I have gathered over the years -- and now I have to go back revise the whole book, and reconsider what use my expertise may be after all when the policy apparatus of the federal government has gone insane. 

I get the basic idea that a small cadre of plutocrats, fronted by a megalomaniacal lunatic, are conspiring to install a fascist oligarchy in the United States. I get that. But I don't get much of the specifics of why they are doing what they are doing with the powers they have arrogated, except for the general idea that they want to create maximum disruption and consternation, and divide and overwhelm any possible opposition. But destroying the scientific enterprise in the United States seems counterproductive for plutocracy. If we fail to create a next generation of scientists, while those who can go oversees, that's not good for the techbros. But maybe they don't believe that. Maybe they think they can take over the scientific enterprise as a proprietary project, that they can own it, and that federally funded research in universities is just competition they don't want.

 

But applied science -- technology and patents, what makes rich assholes rich -- depends for its raw material on basic science, knowledge about the world that nobody can own and that you can't invest in because there is just no telling what's going to become the basis of technology some day and what that technology might look like. It was 100 years before Einstein's relativity theory became of any actual use, but now it's very important because the Global Positioning System depends on it. The same goes for quantum theory which only became useful with the emergence of microelectronics.

 

In the area of biology, it took more than 50 years before the fundamental understanding of the biological mechanisms of genetics and the functioning of the eukaryotic cell turned into effective treatments for disease, and now mRNA vaccines, monoclonal antibodies -- and on and on. They can't own science -- though it goes without saying that wanting to is an abomination. 

 

The tariff thing is equally inexplicable, as is the repudiation of alliances, mass deportation (especially given that plutocrats depend on exploitable workers), and most of what they're doing. It just seems delusional to me, utterly insane. But I must be missing something.

Wednesday Bible Study: Bitching and Moaning

The Book of Lamentations is mercifully short, just five chapters. All of them are just what the title says, lamentations, specifically about the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in 586 BCE, which has been the main focus of most of what we've been reading lately. Although it was ascribed to Jeremiah, the consensus now is that it has nothing to do with him (like most of the Book of Jeremiah, actually). In fact, it is not known when it was written. It seems reasonable to suppose that it was during the exile, shortly after 586, but there is textual evidence that some of the material was written much later. 

God never speaks in Lamentations. He brought about the disaster, but he was right to do so, it was all the fault of the Jews for sinning against God. Unlike Isaiah and to a lesser extent Jeremiah, there is very little in the way of predicting redemption or restoration. The tone is despairing. That would seem odd if some or all of it was written during the Maccabean period, since the restoration had of course happened by then, but I'm not a biblical scholar so I'll presume there's a case for that. Anyway, as with Jeremiah there's no good reason to read the whole thing, but here's the first chapter. 

 

For unknown reasons, every verse begins with a consecutive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Few translators have attempted to represent this with the Latin alphabet. Since it seems pointless to begin with, I can understand that. Anyway, Yahweh is one mean SOB.

1 ^[a]How deserted lies the city,
    once so full of people!
How like a widow is she,
    who once was great among the nations!
She who was queen among the provinces
    has now become a slave.

² Bitterly she weeps at night,
    tears are on her cheeks.
Among all her lovers
    there is no one to comfort her.
All her friends have betrayed her;
    they have become her enemies.

³ After affliction and harsh labor,
    Judah has gone into exile.
She dwells among the nations;
    she finds no resting place.
All who pursue her have overtaken her
    in the midst of her distress.

⁴ The roads to Zion mourn,
    for no one comes to her appointed festivals.
All her gateways are desolate,
    her priests groan,
her young women grieve,
    and she is in bitter anguish.

⁵ Her foes have become her masters;
    her enemies are at ease.
The Lord has brought her grief
    because of her many sins.
Her children have gone into exile,
    captive before the foe.

⁶ All the splendor has departed
    from Daughter Zion.
Her princes are like deer
    that find no pasture;
in weakness they have fled
    before the pursuer.

⁷ In the days of her affliction and wandering
    Jerusalem remembers all the treasures
    that were hers in days of old.
When her people fell into enemy hands,
    there was no one to help her.
Her enemies looked at her
    and laughed at her destruction.

⁸ Jerusalem has sinned greatly
    and so has become unclean.
All who honored her despise her,
    for they have all seen her naked;
she herself groans
    and turns away.

⁹ Her filthiness clung to her skirts;
    she did not consider her future.
Her fall was astounding;
    there was none to comfort her.
“Look, Lord, on my affliction,
    for the enemy has triumphed.”

¹⁰ The enemy laid hands
    on all her treasures;
she saw pagan nations
    enter her sanctuary—
those you had forbidden
    to enter your assembly.

¹¹ All her people groan
    as they search for bread;
they barter their treasures for food
    to keep themselves alive.
“Look, Lord, and consider,
    for I am despised.”

¹² “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
    Look around and see.
Is any suffering like my suffering
    that was inflicted on me,
that the Lord brought on me
    in the day of his fierce anger?

¹³ “From on high he sent fire,
    sent it down into my bones.
He spread a net for my feet
    and turned me back.
He made me desolate,
    faint all the day long.

¹⁴ “My sins have been bound into a yoke^[b];
    by his hands they were woven together.
They have been hung on my neck,
    and the Lord has sapped my strength.
He has given me into the hands
    of those I cannot withstand.

¹⁵ “The Lord has rejected
    all the warriors in my midst;
he has summoned an army against me
    to^[c] crush my young men.
In his winepress the Lord has trampled
    Virgin Daughter Judah.

¹⁶ “This is why I weep
    and my eyes overflow with tears.
No one is near to comfort me,
    no one to restore my spirit.
My children are destitute
    because the enemy has prevailed.”

¹⁷ Zion stretches out her hands,
    but there is no one to comfort her.
The Lord has decreed for Jacob
    that his neighbors become his foes;
Jerusalem has become
    an unclean thing among them.

¹⁸ “The Lord is righteous,
    yet I rebelled against his command.
Listen, all you peoples;
    look on my suffering.
My young men and young women
    have gone into exile.

¹⁹ “I called to my allies
    but they betrayed me.
My priests and my elders
    perished in the city
while they searched for food
    to keep themselves alive.

²⁰ “See, Lord, how distressed I am!
    I am in torment within,
and in my heart I am disturbed,
    for I have been most rebellious.
Outside, the sword bereaves;
    inside, there is only death.

²¹ “People have heard my groaning,
    but there is no one to comfort me.
All my enemies have heard of my distress;
    they rejoice at what you have done.
May you bring the day you have announced
    so they may become like me.

²² “Let all their wickedness come before you;
    deal with them
as you have dealt with me
    because of all my sins.
My groans are many
    and my heart is faint.”

Footnotes

1. Lamentations 1:1 This chapter is an acrostic poem, the verses of which begin with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
2. Lamentations 1:14 Most Hebrew manuscripts; many Hebrew manuscripts and Septuagint He kept watch over my sins
3. Lamentations 1:15 Or has set a time for me / when he will

What is to be done?

As far as I'm concerned, protests and calling your congressional reps and letters to the editor and blog posts and all that are fine, and you should do all that if you can. But the only really meaningful action I can take is to organize at the local level. I got a message from Rep. Joe Courtney's aide Adam Richardson that's on the money: "November's municipal elections will be the first referendum on Trump's second term - and we want to send a clear message that eastern Connecticut rejects him and all the harm his administration had already caused."

 

So in our small town, our Democratic Town Committee is committed to running a full slate of candidates for every office, from First Selectman to the Library Board. The town votes Republican and went for the raging orange lunatic by a substantial margin, but I'm determined to hold candidate forums, knock on doors, mail to every address, and do whatever it takes to thump the Republicans in November. We don't have any federal or statewide offices on the ballot, so it's all going to be about turnout.

 

Wherever you live, small town or big city, there's a Democratic Party organization. Join it. If there isn't one, found it -- contact your state party to find out how. Make sure there's a Democratic candidate for every line on the ballot, and make sure people work to get every one of them elected. That's what will make a difference.

Wednesday Bible Study: Let's get this over with

There's no sense continuing to read the endless drivel that constitutes the Book of Jeremiah. It drones on at unbelievable length just repeating the same tropes -- the people have angered God by messing around with other deities, he's gonna destroy Judah, but then it will ultimately be restored. That's it, there is no additional substantive content. So we'll just cut to the final chapter, which describes the fall of Judah to Nebuchadnezzar and the beginning of the Babylonian captivity.  This story is also told at the end of the Book of Kings, but there are numerous discrepancies, mostly minor -- different numbers and dates. So now we'll move on to Lamentations.

52 Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eleven years. His mother’s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah; she was from Libnah. ² He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, just as Jehoiakim had done. ³ It was because of the Lord’s anger that all this happened to Jerusalem and Judah, and in the end he thrust them from his presence.

Now Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.

⁴ So in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army. They encamped outside the city and built siege works all around it. ⁵ The city was kept under siege until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.

⁶ By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat. ⁷ Then the city wall was broken through, and the whole army fled. They left the city at night through the gate between the two walls near the king’s garden, though the Babylonians^[a] were surrounding the city. They fled toward the Arabah,^{[b] 8} but the Babylonian^[c] army pursued King Zedekiah and overtook him in the plains of Jericho. All his soldiers were separated from him and scattered, ⁹ and he was captured.

He was taken to the king of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath, where he pronounced sentence on him. ¹⁰ There at Riblah the king of Babylon killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes; he also killed all the officials of Judah. ¹¹ Then he put out Zedekiah’s eyes, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon, where he put him in prison till the day of his death.

¹² On the tenth day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan commander of the imperial guard, who served the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. ¹³ He set fire to the temple of the Lord, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem. Every important building he burned down. ¹⁴ The whole Babylonian army, under the commander of the imperial guard, broke down all the walls around Jerusalem. ¹⁵ Nebuzaradan the commander of the guard carried into exile some of the poorest people and those who remained in the city, along with the rest of the craftsmen^[d] and those who had deserted to the king of Babylon. ¹⁶ But Nebuzaradan left behind the rest of the poorest people of the land to work the vineyards and fields.

¹⁷ The Babylonians broke up the bronze pillars, the movable stands and the bronze Sea that were at the temple of the Lord and they carried all the bronze to Babylon. ¹⁸ They also took away the pots, shovels, wick trimmers, sprinkling bowls, dishes and all the bronze articles used in the temple service. ¹⁹ The commander of the imperial guard took away the basins, censers, sprinkling bowls, pots, lampstands, dishes and bowls used for drink offerings—all that were made of pure gold or silver.

²⁰ The bronze from the two pillars, the Sea and the twelve bronze bulls under it, and the movable stands, which King Solomon had made for the temple of the Lord, was more than could be weighed. ²¹ Each pillar was eighteen cubits high and twelve cubits in circumference^[e]; each was four fingers thick, and hollow. ²² The bronze capital on top of one pillar was five cubits^[f] high and was decorated with a network and pomegranates of bronze all around. The other pillar, with its pomegranates, was similar. ²³ There were ninety-six pomegranates on the sides; the total number of pomegranates above the surrounding network was a hundred.

²⁴ The commander of the guard took as prisoners Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the priest next in rank and the three doorkeepers. ²⁵ Of those still in the city, he took the officer in charge of the fighting men, and seven royal advisers. He also took the secretary who was chief officer in charge of conscripting the people of the land, sixty of whom were found in the city. ²⁶ Nebuzaradan the commander took them all and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah. ²⁷ There at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, the king had them executed.

So Judah went into captivity, away from her land. ²⁸ This is the number of the people Nebuchadnezzar carried into exile:

in the seventh year, 3,023 Jews;

²⁹ in Nebuchadnezzar’s eighteenth year,

832 people from Jerusalem;

³⁰ in his twenty-third year,

745 Jews taken into exile by Nebuzaradan the commander of the imperial guard.

There were 4,600 people in all.

Jehoiachin Released

³¹ In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the year Awel-Marduk became king of Babylon, on the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month, he released Jehoiachin king of Judah and freed him from prison. ³² He spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat of honor higher than those of the other kings who were with him in Babylon. ³³ So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes and for the rest of his life ate regularly at the king’s table. ³⁴ Day by day the king of Babylon gave Jehoiachin a regular allowance as long as he lived, till the day of his death.

Footnotes

1. Jeremiah 52:7 Or Chaldeans; also in verse 17
2. Jeremiah 52:7 Or the Jordan Valley
3. Jeremiah 52:8 Or Chaldean; also in verse 14
4. Jeremiah 52:15 Or the populace
5. Jeremiah 52:21 That is, about 27 feet high and 18 feet in circumference or about 8.1 meters high and 5.4 meters in circumference
6. Jeremiah 52:22 That is, about 7 1/2 feet or about 2.3 meters

Sunday Sermonette: Prophesying the past

As I have said, there's no point in reading all of Jeremiah, or even much of it -- it's just endless ranting against what the putative prophet sees as the Israelites worshiping the wrong Gods, and predictions of the horrific fate that awaits them. A lot of it is couched in metaphors of sexual infidelity, which can get pretty raunchy. 

 

Anyway, I'm going to skip to chapter 5, which purports to predict the Babylonian conquest and exile, without specifically naming Babylon. (Starting at verse 14.) But of course, this was written during the Babylonian exile, so it is a prediction of what has already happened, attributed to a character from the past. This is true of a lot of exilic material, that is editing or adding to existing material to make it consistent with what happened after it was first produced. That is how the Book of Kings, Isaiah, and Jeremiah took their present form.

 

5 “Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem,
    look around and consider,
    search through her squares.
If you can find but one person
    who deals honestly and seeks the truth,
    I will forgive this city.
² Although they say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives,’
    still they are swearing falsely.”

³ Lord, do not your eyes look for truth?
    You struck them, but they felt no pain;
    you crushed them, but they refused correction.
They made their faces harder than stone
    and refused to repent.
⁴ I thought, “These are only the poor;
    they are foolish,
for they do not know the way of the Lord,
    the requirements of their God.
⁵ So I will go to the leaders
    and speak to them;
surely they know the way of the Lord,
    the requirements of their God.”
But with one accord they too had broken off the yoke
    and torn off the bonds.
⁶ Therefore a lion from the forest will attack them,
    a wolf from the desert will ravage them,
a leopard will lie in wait near their towns
    to tear to pieces any who venture out,
for their rebellion is great
    and their backslidings many.

⁷ “Why should I forgive you?
    Your children have forsaken me
    and sworn by gods that are not gods.
I supplied all their needs,
    yet they committed adultery
    and thronged to the houses of prostitutes.
⁸ They are well-fed, lusty stallions,
    each neighing for another man’s wife.
⁹ Should I not punish them for this?”
    declares the Lord.
“Should I not avenge myself
    on such a nation as this?

¹⁰ “Go through her vineyards and ravage them,
    but do not destroy them completely.
Strip off her branches,
    for these people do not belong to the Lord.
¹¹ The people of Israel and the people of Judah
    have been utterly unfaithful to me,”
declares the Lord.

¹² They have lied about the Lord;
    they said, “He will do nothing!
No harm will come to us;
    we will never see sword or famine.
¹³ The prophets are but wind
    and the word is not in them;
    so let what they say be done to them.”

¹⁴ Therefore this is what the Lord God Almighty says:

“Because the people have spoken these words,
    I will make my words in your mouth a fire
    and these people the wood it consumes.
¹⁵ People of Israel,” declares the Lord,
    “I am bringing a distant nation against you—
an ancient and enduring nation,
    a people whose language you do not know,
    whose speech you do not understand.
¹⁶ Their quivers are like an open grave;
    all of them are mighty warriors.
¹⁷ They will devour your harvests and food,
    devour your sons and daughters;
they will devour your flocks and herds,
    devour your vines and fig trees.
With the sword they will destroy
    the fortified cities in which you trust.

¹⁸ “Yet even in those days,” declares the Lord, “I will not destroy you completely. ¹⁹ And when the people ask, ‘Why has the Lord our God done all this to us?’ you will tell them, ‘As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your own land, so now you will serve foreigners in a land not your own.’

²⁰ “Announce this to the descendants of Jacob
    and proclaim it in Judah:
²¹ Hear this, you foolish and senseless people,
    who have eyes but do not see,
    who have ears but do not hear:
²² Should you not fear me?” declares the Lord.
    “Should you not tremble in my presence?
I made the sand a boundary for the sea,
    an everlasting barrier it cannot cross.
The waves may roll, but they cannot prevail;
    they may roar, but they cannot cross it.
²³ But these people have stubborn and rebellious hearts;
    they have turned aside and gone away.
²⁴ They do not say to themselves,
    ‘Let us fear the Lord our God,
who gives autumn and spring rains in season,
    who assures us of the regular weeks of harvest.’
²⁵ Your wrongdoings have kept these away;
    your sins have deprived you of good.

²⁶ “Among my people are the wicked
    who lie in wait like men who snare birds
    and like those who set traps to catch people.
²⁷ Like cages full of birds,
    their houses are full of deceit;
they have become rich and powerful
²⁸     and have grown fat and sleek.
Their evil deeds have no limit;
    they do not seek justice.
They do not promote the case of the fatherless;
    they do not defend the just cause of the poor.
²⁹ Should I not punish them for this?”
    declares the Lord.
“Should I not avenge myself
    on such a nation as this?

³⁰ “A horrible and shocking thing
    has happened in the land:
³¹ The prophets prophesy lies,
    the priests rule by their own authority,
and my people love it this way.
    But what will you do in the end?