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Climate Change. Why Greta is Right. And HOW we can convey her message even better!

So I’m in hospital, about to get open heart surgery. That sucks. It is scary, and it could potentially kill me – hopefully not because like… doctors are really good at this stuff. 

 

I actually started getting short of breath for the first time right as the Sydney marches were occurring. I would have gone if I could have, but unfortunately, it probably wasn’t too safe. 


But just in case something goes wrong, and just to get this out there… I thought I’d talk about climate change 1 time, and the huge climate marches that have gone one behind a young lady named Greta Thunberg. 

 

So Greta Thunberg is… Ok scratch that. I mean who hasn’t heard of her. But yeah… her climate strikes have created a worldwide movement, and they’re still going. It’s bloody inspiring stuff. 

 

But Greta, who has aspergers has been the target of most of the criticism for this. When you can’t attack the message, attack the messenger. 

But though I do think those marches are great, people also attack the protests because it doesn’t do enough. And though I disagree, I think the message and the messaging could be improved upon to create the most change. 

 

But the fact is climate change is real. It IS a huge threat. And today I’m gonna talk about 1) how the fears that addressing climate change has to come at the expense of growth are not necessarily true. I looked into the numbers, and being green is actually already chaeper than fossil fuels and we need to talk more about that. 

(2) How we scientists and people who understand the danger can actually get our message across, according to science. 

3) How climate change affects our health. It is real and it’s already killing people and ecosystems now 

And a few other things. 

 

Now the biggest thing to talk about, I feel, is this myth, that’s pervaded by protesters too, that green energy is cheaper. Right now, government subsidies for dying industries that pollute is propping up fossil fuels. Australia spends 29billion subsidizing coal every year – that’s nearly $1200 per person  . It will only $2.8billion in 2030 (significantly more than we spend today) subsidizing renewable energies despite renewables accounting for 23.5% of energy subsidies! Unfortunately, that number is going to lower as several programs subsidizing greener, cheaper tech ends in the coming years.

But globally, we spent $5.2 TRILLION on subsidizing fossil fuels internationally, and $88bn in 2011 subsidizing greener, better, and now CHEAPER tech!

The US spends 10x more on oil and coal subsidies than it does education. Without these, half the industry wouldn’t be sustainable. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/15/united-states-spend-ten-times-more-on-fossil-fuel-subsidies-than-education/?fbclid=IwAR1RvfndpIaUcLyyg6DNl4zLVJ_7U_Ob0rvqylRhkJCD9vpHESr_hfDEtcM#3e266ba44735

 

 Renewables generate more than 23% of Australia’s energy generation ), yet get 10% of the subsidies fossil fuels do. 

Hell, 82% of Aussie subsidies for green energy is somehow given to coal companies somehow. 

 

 

And we’re at a point now where coal and oil is actually more expensive than renewable technology 74% of the time when setting up a new plant. By 2030 that number will hit 96%.  

 

Coal and oil doesn’t create and sustain more jobs than renewables. In the case of the Adani mine, for that much investment, renewables would have created 4.7x more jobs , The Adani mine not only will employ just 800 people, it threatens the jobs of people who rely on the $30billion a year great barrier reef tourism industry. 

 

 

This isn’t just true in one case study. Industry wide, renewables create similar, or more jobs than fossil fuels. 

 

And another place we’re seeing progress is in green cars. Battery prices are going down so much every big manufacturer is investing in electric cars. It’s isn’t us Greenies that are causing this by increasing demand. Soon, and we’re talking 5 year soon, green cars are gonna be cheaper than current cars, to make and run. 

 

Green energy is cheaper. It’s better. And THIS is what we need to talk about to the public. 

 

What we SHOULD be fighting against is fossil fuel subsidies. They don’t create more jobs, they don’t produce more energy, and they’re not cheaper. 

 

But though I think adding this message to the science could help sway more people. I also think HOW we go about messaging climate change needs to change. 

 

I agree, right now politicians aren’t stepping up and are backing wasteful, polluting tech, probably because these big industries have powerful lobbies. 

 

These marches are definitely helping bring awareness for this issue. I mean, like I said, Greta is keeping this up globally. People are growing more passionate about this and getting avenues to take action. Some political parties are trying to capture the young vote through this and that’s great.

 

But if we could marry that to showing people that green tech is cheaper AND better, and show them we’re paying to keep older, crappy tech and billionaires afloat, rather than saying we need to swallow some sort of bitter pill, we may get more change. That could be more effective than trying to get people to declare a climate emergency. 

 

This is what we need to show people. This is how we need to market this issue. And there are several ways we could do that.

This Ted talk based on research on climate change communication shows that doomsday prophecies aren’t the best way to appeal to people. How we talk about science, avoiding things like “error, theory, likely or consensus” just doesn’t stick with ordinary people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXOu-dezdKo

 

 Doesn’t mean they’re dumb… we’re dumb if we don’t talk about it.

 

There was another TED talk I can’t find right now (I am going in for surgery soon haha) where a lady talks about how she convinced republicans about the reality of global warming through semantics. Talking about energy freedom, something Americans love, rather than carbon pricing – or taxes – which everyone hates… makes a HUGE impact. 

 

Infographics and memes of this stuff could help too. If it could reach the top and trickle down through society, they can create change. 

 

But we also shouldn’t be calling people on the other side idiots. Though green energy creates more jobs, coal miners are losing jobs and that sucks. They’re fighting to keep something. We’ve gotta understand that. A big reason why the left leaning political party lost the last Australian election was some thoughtless, tasteless protesting of coal mines by hippies who took a holiday up the coast. 

I mean if you go to someone’s hometown and block roads, telling people they’re horrible people for killing the planet and supporting coal, who do you think is gonna convince who? You, rolling your eyes at people, or Adani who, cleverly, went to locals and convinced them they were here for them, even though they’re creating 1/6th of the jobs they claimed they would.   

 

But yeah, though I think these marches are gonna have an impact, if we don’t get this message across and start calling for energy freedom in a smarter way, we could just keep getting ignored. 

But yeah, another thing that concerned me about what’s happening is people, particularly mental health professionals, questioning Greta’s mental health. 

 

Now first off, bagging someone out for having Aspergers, or any form of autism for that matter, when many of the world’s brightest minds likely had it, real classy move. 

 

But as Greta explains herself in this post which I’ll link in the description and on my blog, she actually started her activism against her parents advice, on her own, and to this day, writes her own speeches and is compelled to do more. Some people disbelieve her or criticize her because she writes like an adult.

 She’s 16. Not 6. I was writing decently eloquent essays and speeches at her age, as do many… She’d won essay competitions. She’s passionate about a cause and wants to stand up for it. 

But this is an emergency and this is real and happening now. 

I mean I somehow won this international essay competition and went to an agriculture conference a few years ago, and met people already trying to combat the effects of climate change right now. Right now, today, SubSaharan African farmers are getting education from organisations as they suddenly find their farming methods which they’ve used for generations don’t work with altered climates. Bangladeshi floods are decimating crops and displacing even more people in conflicts… climate change is already here.  

 

Overall, the health argument for climate change action is huge and very compelling too. The WHO is predicting even worsening outcomes that will result from climate change in the way of furthered spreading of diseases, more migrant crises, and even extreme heat.

Not to mention that millions, and this isn’t an exaggeration, are already dying earlier directly because of air pollution [overlay image cc14]. I’ve seen the lungs of elderly people who’ve lived in cities and those who smoked a pack a day for decades in kedavas. Often, they show similar changes.

The health argument is HUGE for climate change too. 

 

Now some also criticize her and the strikes as ‘time wasting’ ‘symbolic gestures’ saying that instead kids should be picking up trash, or staying in school, or learning about this and doing something about it in universities. 

 

I mean I’d agree, working in this space can create huge change – but fiirst off, why can’t you do both, and secondly, activism and showing political will and firepower against issues may be one of the best ways to affect change. As I explained earlier though, I do think it could be done better. 

 

But yeah, direct action, things like funding small tree planting, and light bulb changing programs (these do help but often aren’t as effective as larger investments and policy change) is something our government spent $1.7billion in funding which is resulting in essentially projects that were gonna happen anyways getting subsidized. It created minimal environmental change, while having us pay billions to help businesses upgrade stuff. 

Plus, getting people to change habits isn’t easy. I mean maybe getting people out onto streets, and standing up for a cause is one of the most effective ways of convincing them to be greener individuals, to be honest. 

But the best example of why trying to convince people to start planting trees is less effective than people pressure is Australia’s largest supermarkets. After years of getting a few people to change to reusable green bags, they simply started charging users 15c per bag and made it so people had to pretty much stare checkout chicks in the eye and shamefully say “I wanna kill the planet” and that resulted in an 80% drop in plastic bag use. 

Companies respond to public pressure even more than governments. Let’s make them also take meaningful action. There are superannuation, or retirement funds, around the world that don’t invest in environmentally unfriendly companies.  Lack of investment = lower value = less money they can raise for ventures in the future. 

 

But yeah, finally, people claim that we aren’t the problem and that we should focus on investing in India and China, the biggest polluters. Well first off, America is actually the second biggest polluter in the world. We in Australia are second, per capita. But though I agree, investing in cleaner energies there are likely good ROI in terms of ways to promote change, the same people who say this wanna cut our aid budget, something which not only benefits nations we give to, but also our farmers, as I pointed out in that award winning essay. 

 

By investing in green tech, we also create more jobs, and startups that can scale, and progress as humanity in general. 

 

Anyways that was my take on climate change on this episode of MedicalFactz where we seem to be commenting on less medical things day by day. Haha there’s a long playlist of those you can watch too I guess. 

 

 

 

I’m getting surgery, probably as you’re reading this… and there’s a chance I may not be here, and a definite chance I’ll be like… in a LOT of pain regardless. Don’t worry, I’m okay with it and I’ll be fine. If you wanna learn more about me… NikhilAutar.com/books – I did get to finish my book before I go into surgery. 

But yeah.. I’m a tumor vaccine researcher, medical student, and I talk Factz. MedicalFactz. 

 

But yeah. I’ll be talking about Vaping soon, Cannabis and the science behind that, and my thoughts on the Big Pharma conspiracy. They actually do suck… but they also save lives… It’s a tough one. My startup is also one that’s (a) creating cool products that may help you get better sleep, and, in the future, keep vulnerable people alive and (b) one that powers medical research through machine learning. Sign up for my email list if you wanna check that out too –> 


 

And yeah guys. Cheers.   

 

Climate change is caused by humans source ;

https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/human-contribution-to-gw-faq.html

 

Blog, Medicine and Science

Facebook is PROFITING off of ILLEGAL Medical Ads.

I am going in for open heart surgery in the next few days…

Before I did, I figured, I better bring this to people’s attention. As a medical device founder, and ex cancer/chronic illness patient, I figured I was one of the best people to do so.

 

As I explain in this video, right now, Facebook is MANUALLY APPROVING ADs that are illegal by several jurisdictions. One example, a page and facility named VeritaLife, sells cancer patients false, unproven remedies and markets them as cures, targeting cancer patients in the process. They not only make medical claims without medical device/drug approval (yet alone a shred of clinical evidence) – they also do other illegal things, like using testimonials to market medical interventions.

As I explain here, in this article on how these people nearly convinced me to forgo therapy for alternatives – people who even try alternative treatments have a 2 – 5.7x higher chance of death. They’re more likely to avoid surgery, radiation or chemotherapy (7%, 54% and 34% more likely respectively), which leads to these higher rates of death. These people are even more likely, as they will almost ALWAYS avoid proper, proven therapies. There are NUMEROUS examples of GoFundMes sending people to Mexican/Thai/other clinics, that require tens to hundreds of thousands (which is direct profit to these clinics’ bottom lines) – as seen in the video and below.

This could be occurring because they’re located in different jurisdictions. But when advertising to Australia or the United States, I know you need to abide by local ones.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are several similar ads that also toe, or step over the line, when it comes to medical device and wellness marketing that Facebook is getting wrong too (I provide some examples below).

If you see a dodgy ad, you can report it to your local medical regulator, or advertising commission. Here’s a link to the TGA’s one for Australians, the FDA has a complaint process too which can be found here. Feel free to send anything dodgy you see to my Facebook page, or directly to my email info at nikhilautar.com or at www.nikhilautar.com/contact . I’ll compile a list of this. Hopefully together, we can stop this crap.


 

The fact that Facebook is profiting off this COULD make them liable. Their advertising policies do ban some things (though, as you’ll see below, things do fall through the cracks) such as MLMs, which often lead to dubious health claims, as well as financially drain vulnerable populations. But there are several . So be sure to sign this petition and share it too – hopefully we can make an impact. http://chng.it/n8qQjtVyZb

Here are a few more examples of this nonsense with proof. In that video, I show you how to report and ad to Facebook – which is also a useful way of making change.

Blacklisted sites can still advertise on Facebook.

 

You can’t find The Truth About Cancer on Google, because it’s either blacklisted, or had traffic diverted due to its promotion of non proven therapies. Yet Facebook approves ads for them.

Toeing the line. Dubious, perhaps illegal marketing making health claims at the very least scam, at the most, target vulnerable populations.

This company sells weighted blankets. They usually comply by laws, but as seen in the final ad, their claim that weighted blankets “reduce stress, anxiety and improve sleep” could be in violation of laws. They don’t have proof to back this up, and aren’t a registered medical device, but give the impression that they are by doing so.

Faceobok pages are VERY effective marketing tools. “Lookalike” audiences target people most likely to want your product. A weighted blanket company uses another page’s profile to sell their weighted blankets. This practice isn’t illegal. But this ad, like the last panel/ad highlighted in red above, did also make the claim, WITHOUT “MAY” or DISCLAIMERS that weighted blankets reduce stress and anxiety.

This isn’t as severe as companies like The Truth About Cancer or Verita Life, as it isn’t targeting people at immediate risk of death. But making false claims can make people with depression and anxiety suffer more. Not to mention, ‘scamming’ these populations and putting them  under financial stress is NOT an ethical move.

MLMs

Forever Living is an MLM – a “multi level marketing” scheme, which are designed to emulate pyramid schemes, but technically they aren’t as they skirt the law (many are pyramid schemes, legally, but are simply not being prosecuted). Facebook’s advertising policy prohibits them for advertising them on the site. Yet here I show one that’s either slipped through their cracks, or going on WITH their knowledge.

As seen here, they also often target stay at home mums, a HUGE demographic of people who are vulnerable to their sensationalist claims of being able to make money from home, and who fall for their cultlike practices.

Send me any dodgy ads you see or join my email list and keep up to date with what I’m doing!


And now… Verita Life

They make false medical claims without any disclaimers, and without medical device approval.

Seen a dubious page on Facebook making dodgy health claims?

Here’s how you go about reporting them.

You can find out more about a Facebook page’s ads by clicking this button.

Click this next – and you’ll start seeing the next screens – the ads that a page is currently running. As seen – you can find out WHERE they’re targeting. The previous page shows where they’re located – as does them obviously mentioning it in the post, as seen below.

. 

An excerpt from their website. They regularly make unverified health claims, but look really professional. It’s understandable how anyone can fall into their trap. They immediately try and enter you into their sales funnel, which mainly comprises representatives contacting you. As I get out of surgery, I’ll investigate this further for sure.

Examples of advertising that’s OK

Top/left – Dubious ‘coaching’ clinics promoting alternative therapies, though it’s doubtful if they work, aren’t illega.

Bottom/Right – Swisse, one of Australia’s largest vitamin manufacturers DOES comply by advertising and regulatory guidelines and almost always adds disclaimers to promoted content.

 

Thanks. I should be alright during this surgery. But in case I’m not, keep up the good fight!

Medicine and Science

Now’s not the time to talk about climate change, says party that’s never talked about climate change.

Why are you even here? We all know that 90% of these articles exist solely for a catchy headline. Now that you are, let me lure you into subscribing to my monthly newsletter that you’ll never open anyways!


No but seriously, this is a tactic used by gun right advocates in the US. And it works. News cycles on dramatic events obviously ramp up clicks on a topic when something occurs. Stalling at these times leads to less talk about an issue.

But in this case, that won’t really work. And you know, what. In this case, I may actually agree with people yammering on about this not being the right time to talk about these things.

Climate change is LIKELY to be behind why our bushfire seasons are getting worse. For those nerds out there, like me, who paid attention in high school geography class, yes, El Nino effects – mass changes which occur in Ocean Currents that lead to seasons of terrible drought and increased fire-risks – can affect the Eastern Coast of Australia. They occur periodically, in cycles. But right now, we’re not in an El Nino cycle. Climate change is very likely a reason why we’re currently in one of the worst fire season, despite us being in November (that’s STILL SPRING in Australia!), in decades.

But right now, we’re getting people talking about climate change constantly. Protests are helping do that, for sure. But this, in an emergency, where news is rightly focusing on updating people on fires, and how to stay safe, and in an issue which isn’t as obviously caused by an issue to most reasonable people’s eyes, may not be the best time to talk about it.

But also right now, politicians are racing to see who can grab the most attention out of this. People have been blaming the Greens (a left leaning environmentalist party) for not supporting backburning, a practice where you deprive potential future fires of fuel by controlled burning of bush brush. That’s not true. And though I’d say it’s a stretch for a Greens senator to retaliate by calling coalition politicians “arsonists,” what ex power-broker of the right-leaning coalition party, Barnaby Joyce said next went WAY too far. 

2 people died in fires yesterday. And this person, who was once in the running to be our PM, insinuated that their political affiliation led to their death.

HOW THE HELL IS THIS EVER OKAY TO SAY?

Why is THIS not something that should ever be said?

 

What are your thoughts on the matter? I’d love to know. Check out my other satirical posts/stories of funny things that kept me smiling during hospital. And yeah, if you’d actually like to join that email list to get word of my next post – you can do so here.


 

Blog

How Juul Made $38bn While Addicting 27% of HighSchoolers to Nicotine.

You’d think marketing or promoting nicotine would be against the law. You’d think it’d be impossible to make claims against that. But Juul has created a vaping epidemic. It’s causing as many as 27% of high schoolers to be addicted to Nicotine. And it may lead to the next cigarette epidemic too – as 47% people who used Juul products would go on to start smoking within 18 month’s time.

 

 

Sources (there will be more);

 

Standford study concluding Juul marketed to teens.

http://tobacco.stanford.edu/tobacco_main/publications/JUUL_Marketing_Stanford.pdf

 

Teens 16x more likely to juul. 

https://truthinitiative.org/press/press-release/new-study-reveals-teens-16-times-more-likely-use-juul-older-age-groups

 

How Juul is being punished. 

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-09/juul-e-cigarette-smoking-fda

 

Juul knew about and emulated school program that big tobacco used in internal emails; 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2019/07/25/juul-high-schools-influencers-reach-youth-house-investigation/#285c0d833e29

 

How Juul targeted teens.

https://nypost.com/2019/07/26/juul-targeted-teens-by-spending-over-200k-on-influencers/

 

47% of young adults, 4x more than usual, end up smoking within 18 months of using Juul. 

https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(17)31185-3/fulltext

Blog

Facebook is Fact Checking Posts… And Anti-Vaxers Are Mad! Is this a good thing though?

Facebook Fact Checking is a thing now. It has been for a while. Indeed, I show you the process of reporting posts/articles as false news below.

 

Subscribe to my YouTube channel while you’re here!

Have a read of the full press release from Facebook here – but basically, you can report an article, or a picture, or an ad, for “false news”. From here, it is categorised into one of 9 categories –

  1. False
  2. Mixture
  3. True
  4. False Headline
  5. Not Eligible
  6. Satire
  7. Opinion
  8. Prank Generator
  9. Not Rated.

If news is deemed to be fake, which is something Fact Checkers assess, it could be restricted in its viewership, and pushed further down newsfeeds. Pages or people who share this will be seen less. Facebook expects an 80% drop in viewership to occur from this.

While it’s good that Facebook is going after anti-vaxers and other people spreading misinformation online, this could be bad for many reasons too, as I explain in the video above.  Plus, it could also be not too effective. Shareable content gets seen most and often, people steal memes and reupload it too – something that helps no-one.

I wonder what your thoughts are.

Blog, Humour In Hospital, Medicine and Science

Inner City Hipster Struggles to Find New Alternative Medicine Trend As All The Ludicrous Ones Are “Already Taken”.

Click to ReTweet this article – https://ctt.ac/TK5nQ

True struggles were finally outed for embattled Inner-western suburbs university student and influencer, Ketchup Sharmautar, as he opened up to his month long struggle to find anything ridiculous, yet natural, to post about trying to his 13,222 followers.

“It’s not easy being me.” confessed Ketchup, “And it’s not like you can just make these up. Getting the correct balance between something left-field enough to capture attention, while still being natural enough and marketable to make a decent margin through my online store.”

“The gold rush is over. The Good Old days of Urine Smoothies and Coffee Enemas are gone. You just can’t be original without risking organ failure these days.” He sighs.

When asked why he didn’t just promote good, healthy advice, Keshav had this to say. “You try selling people evidence-based advice. It’s boring. Like and follower suicide.”

While it is true that the best weight loss solutions involve a bit of work and conscious control of some dietary habits, the explosion of Instagram Stars online has fueled more and more misinformation. Cancer Researcher Nikhil Autar points out that cancer patients who took alternative medicines have a 2 – 5.7x higher rate according to numerous studies, with various factors to blame. But you don’t care about those peer-reviewed sources! Read on!

 

“This used to work wonders, until every single combination literally ran out. How am I supposed to get validation from my friends on Facebook now? To share the official Complimentary Medicine Organisation generator, or to comment your own natural therapy – click here.

“I tried everything. From picking through compost mounds and pulling out random combinations of fruits and veg, to using Alternative Medicine Generators, nothing worked!” exclaims embattled 24 year old star, Ketchup. “Since my amazing vitamin company that I’m-not-allowed-to-say-the-name-of-in-public-but-am-allowed-to-if-you-DM-me went belly up, I’ve actually considered selling pharmaceutical products on Instagram.”

“I don’t have an obvious disability or anything. Apparently pharmaceuticals have enough ethics to insist on that.” scoffed the little prick, while examining his hairline on his phone’s front-lens camera. “But I’m sure I could pull a Gibson on people and call it a prank.” he laughed.

 

Instafamous Entrepreneur, Ketchup, Pictured here, understandably disappointed by an eggless sugarless cake he was forced to plug during birthday celebrations.
“You know how hard it is to get alternative cake that’s Vegan, Gluten and GMO free AND Organic these days??? Of course it tasted shit.”

Pharmaceuticals are actually selling real medicines via Instagram in a desperate bid to reduce sales budgets, which now are greater than 3x R&D spend. “We saw the amazing successes of completely made up things… We figured our actually proven stuff would sell like hotcakes.

Influencers are conflicted, however. “I’m not sure if something shown to work can be alternative enough to match our audiences.” pouts 80% of all Instagram models selling you a juice cleanse. “I mean I LOVE the fact that they cost followers thousands, as that generates large profits from me. But the whole ‘proven to be safe and effective through numerous clinical trial things’ doesn’t really sell as much as you think it does.”

This has not been Nikhil Autar (not the Nikhil Autar who was interviewed before, or who’s in the URL of this article), I swear, and you should definitely NOT subscribe to his infrequent email list if you approve of alternative medicines being able to make whatever claims they want. PS – next time, I talk to another legit Instagram Influencer who insists his pyramid scheme shaped business is actually just a triangle on this episode of #MedicalFactz

If you wanna learn about that time that I was almost killed by misinformation spread by a guy trying to sell me supervitamins from his “Not a pyramid scheme because pyramid schemes are illegal and we’re still being prosecuted right now” multi-level marketing company – click here.

To lend your voice against social media stars/alternative medicine practitioners who DON’T MAKE DISCLAIMERS THAT WHAT THEY SAY OR DO IS NOT MEDICALLY PROVEN OR SHOWN – something they legally should be doing – click here. If you wanna tweet about the change.org campaign – click here. 

Click here if you wanna tweet this article to your followers!

I wanna make it sure this is absolutely clear, this is NOT Nikhil Autar who wrote this and you should NOT check out his Instagram or social media accounts – @nikhilautar .

And you should DEFINITELY NOT listen to what he says just because he’s a researcher and is pictured in a lab coat in a certified lab. Because even he’d say to fact check EVERYTHING you see via credible sources!

Humour In Hospital

MEMES

It’s 2019. Memes are love. Memes are life.

Lol after my Dad Jokes page (which is literally just a compilation of dad jokes my dad made to keep me smiling during hospital) got a bit of traction and made a few people smile… I figured I may as well keep my memes in one place on the internet and let you enjoy. Updated regularly. There’s also a lot on my Facebook page! Enjoy!

I cri evrytime =[

MLMs – Doing a piece on these soon… In the meantime – watch John Oliver’s amazing piece on this. 

Something to share with anyone who says “tHe gOvErNmEnT iS hiDiNg tHa CuRe” lol.

It really feel like that sometimes… How alternative arseholes like this nearly killed me.

Lol memeworthy af.

This was actually something that was done LOL. I hope my startup (which uses machine learning/artificial intelligence) is this epic.

Here you go Neil! I fixed it for ya (my reaction on his really dumb tweets, that misrepresent facts, can be found here). The meme below isn’t a meme but is true nonetheless.

I’ve played poker with this legend. She’s clearly a great sport hahaha!

Pharmacist reading level: Expert.

THIS needs to be pointed out to so many people.

❤️
❤️
❤️

=O

Health Challenges and their Fixes

I found the Reddit post that Neil Tyson and conservatives use to detract from gun violence. Here’s why it’s wrong.

We saw, over the weekend, another pair of mass murders occur, yet again, in America. Namely,El Paso and Dayton.

The usual process that seems to occur after every mass shooting occurred again. And the usual shitty arguments came up again too.

 

As a future doctor, I feel so much for these unnecessary deaths. As a realist, I despair but wonder what the purpose of getting angry would be when the above keeps happening. But as a scientist, I was outraged when Neil DeGrasse Tyson, one of the most prominent science educators in the world, put out this tweet:

 

Here was my response to this.

The Reddit Post and how or why it’s wrong

The Reddit post that Neil and millions of conservatives used is linked here – and it goes like this;

There are roughly 30,000 gun related deaths per year by firearms, and this number is not disputed. U.S. population 324,059,091 as of Wednesday, June 22, 2016. Do the math: 0.0092575708669133% of the population dies from gun related actions each year. Statistically speaking, this is insignificant! What is never told, however, is a breakdown of those 30,000 deaths, to put them in perspective as compared to other causes of death:
• 65% of those deaths are by suicide which would never be prevented by gun laws
• 15% are by law enforcement in the line of duty and justified
• 17% are through criminal activity, gang and drug related or mentally ill persons – gun violence
• 3% are accidental discharge deaths
So technically, “gun violence” is not 30,000 annually, but drops to 5,100. Still too many? Well, first, how are those deaths spanned across the nation?
• 480 homicides (9.4%) were in Chicago
• 344 homicides (6.7%) were in Baltimore
• 333 homicides (6.5%) were in Detroit
• 119 homicides (2.3%) were in Washington D.C. (a 54% increase over prior years)
So basically, 25% of all gun crime happens in just 4 cities. All 4 of those cities have strict gun laws, so it is not the lack of law that is the root cause.
This basically leaves 3,825 for the entire rest of the nation, or about 75 deaths per state. That is an average because some States have much higher rates than others. For example, California had 1,169 and Alabama had 1.
Now, who has the strictest gun laws by far? California, of course, but understand, so it is not guns causing this. It is a crime rate spawned by the number of criminal persons residing in those cities and states. So if all cities and states are not created equally, then there must be something other than the tool causing the gun deaths.
Are 5,100 deaths per year horrific? How about in comparison to other deaths? All death is sad and especially so when it is in the commission of a crime but that is the nature of crime. Robbery, death, rape, assault all is done by criminals and thinking that criminals will obey laws is ludicrous. That’s why they are criminals.
But what about other deaths each year?
• 40,000+ die from a drug overdose–THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THAT!
• 36,000 people die per year from the flu, far exceeding the criminal gun deaths
• 34,000 people die per year in traffic fatalities(exceeding gun deaths even if you include suicide)
Now it gets good:
• 200,000+ people die each year (and growing) from preventable medical errors. You are safer in Chicago than when you are in a hospital!
• 710,000 people die per year from heart disease. It’s time to stop the double cheeseburgers! So what is the point? If the anti-gun movement focused their attention on heart disease, even a 10% decrease in cardiac deaths would save twice the number of lives annually of all gun-related deaths (including suicide, law enforcement, etc.). A 10% reduction in medical errors would be 66% of the total gun deaths or 4 times the number of criminal homicides……Simple, easily preventable 10% reductions!
So you have to ask yourself, in the grand scheme of things, why the focus on guns? It’s pretty simple.:
Taking away guns gives control to governments.

The response:

Well, ignoring suicides as if guns don’t cause them is ludicrous. Numerous studies show higher rates of suicide, not just in America compared to other Western, developed countries (where the US is the highest) but also in states with higher rates of gun ownership. Suicides, in 2016, due to guns resulted in 23,854 suicides. There were 44995 suicides in total. That’s over half of all suicides.

This isn’t just conjecture. Numerous studies from numerous bodies all show the same thing – none shows the opposite. Guns in homes, gun ownership and higher proportions of gun ownerships is correlated to, and cause more death.

States in the US which have more guns have higher suicide rates. In homes with firearms, 86 percent of people who used a had a firearm in their home used the gun to commit suicide. In homes without firearms, only 6 percent of suicides used a firearm. It’s pretty obvious… if you have a gun, you’re more likely to kill yourself with a gun. Gun purchasers had a 4.3x higher chance of suicide, and gun suicide (7.2x higher). For every 10% likelihood to have a gun in the household, rates of suicide went up 26.9%

The suicide rate in Australia in 2016 was 5.7/100000 people. The suicide rate in America in 2016 was 13.9/100000. 

They have similar rates of mental illness. 1/5 Australians experience a mental illness in any given year. Similarly, 1/5 americans in any given year.

States with more gun control – like Massachusetts – which, like Australia, requires licences before purchasing (Australia has PLENTY of gun ownership – as someone who’s hunted, I actually wanted to get a gun, and only had to do 1 day of training to get a licence to do so, similar to the Massachusetts process), suicide rates are some of the lowest in America. The only 2 states that top it also have comparitively restricitve gun laws, which don’t stop people from getting guns!

In terms of homicide… Gun violence PER CAPITA  (per person) is highest in 3 states with some of the loosest gun laws – 21 – compared to 3.6 in Massachusetts. Yes – we absolutely should be doing more to curb gun violence in urban centres stated above too. But you’re more likely to be shot in Alaska than you are Chicago (18.02/100,000 in Chicago vs 19.8 in Alaska. Lousiana, and other states with no permit to buy a gun are higher too) DESPITE Chicago being declared a ‘warzone’ by many. Of the top 20 states in terms of gun violence per capita – 19 had ABSOLUTELY NO permits to own a gun (the only one that did, only required them for handguns!).

Just a bit of common sense to reduce rates of suicide which ARE INCREASED BY GUN OWNERSHIP. Ignoring them is completely wrong.

14995 people died to gun homicides. Add that to 23854 suicides, and you have closer to 40,000 than 30,000 deaths due to guns that this redditor claims is true. That’s equal or more than all the other examples cited WHICH ALREADY HAVE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS PUMPED INTO THEM TO COMBAT but medical error. Reducing rates of medical error is VERY TOUGH. We’re taught about systems thinking in medicine. I’m the founder of a startup creating lifesaving alert systems for elderly people. Things are already being done in this space. I know this.

 

What my company is doing to combat this.

 

Investment into gun violence and gun control is NOT proportional to the amount we spend on these other big issues. Gun violence RESEARCH is severely hampered. We could find out if things like video games or universal background checks or licences (which, as I’ve demonstrated above – DON’T RESTRICT YOUR RIGHT TO OWN A GUN) if we had more information on them. The reason why the CDC doesn’t conduct more research in this space is due to the Dickey Ammendment which hamstrings government funding to it. Why does the NRA stop research into guns? If they were not causing increased death and violence, and weren’t related to suicides and increased death as many people would have you believe, why NOT just spend $2.6million (which is 0.05% of the amount the American Heart Association has invested into heart research, despite gun violence causing 5% of its total number of deaths, according to this Reddit post’s own figures) – the amount which used to be spent on gun research to get to the bottom of it? Wouldn’t that shut the gun control people up?

Or is it more likely that 12000 business owners who make $11billion a year off guns, want business to continue on as usual? Guns cost us $17.4billion in indirect costs (wages lost, productivity), and $2.8 in direct healthcare expenditure to treat. Many people are injured, and suffer permanent life damage because of a gun too. Isn’t that a much more likely conspiracy? I explain how Australia does it below. We have pretty high gun ownership. If you want a gun, and you aren’t a suspected terrorist, mentally ill, or an ex convict, you’ll get it. We haven’t had anyone try and stop people from getting guns with a licence. Absolutely noone wants to take our guns. Why can’t common sense prevail? If you’re a responsible gun owner, it will not restrict you in any way.

Back to Neil’s Tweet

As for Neil’s tweet. Not only was it extremely tasteless, it was plain wrong too. First off, according to the CDC, 14995 people were killed by guns in homicides in the US in 2016. That’s not 40, but rather 79, or 80, per 48 hours. It appears that Neil made a math error to begin with, or deliberately chose only handguns (for some odd reason) instead. PS – I just destroyed the reddit thread where Neil got his numbers and argument from.

And he IGNORES the problem of suicide, which, as I showed above, can be reduced by reducing easy access to guns. As I mentioned in the video – higher prevalence of guns is related to more suicides too. 90% of people who got past acute episodes of distress of panic who didn’t have easy access to a gun wouldn’t go on to commit suicide.

Guns aren’t even that big an industry in the US. 12,000 businesses only generate $11billion in revenue per year, which seems like a lot, but the startup I’m working on is in the mattress industry, which generates over $14billion in sales. On the other hand, gun violence directly costs the US over $2.8billion in healthcare expenditure. That’s just the cost to treat people who turn up to hospital with injury. $17.4 billion is the actual pricetag if you include indirect losses in income and productivity as well.

The most abhorrent thing here though is that Neil’s tweets are going to be used, for decades, to justify gun violence, and oppose gun control. If ‘a prominent scientist’ said this, it means it must be true, to many. I understand his points. Hell, my startup, Australia’s Student Startup of the Year, is working to fix some preventable problems.

The Dickey Amendment, Again

 

Right now further detail and research into gun violence and attempts to mitigate its impacts aren’t being done. It’s pure politics. The Dickey Amendment , where gun lobbiest hamstrung the CDC, a body that’s supposed to be indepent’s, ability to conduct research which is the only reason why we don’t have more conclusive data on interventions that exist to reduce gun violence.

Do video games cause more violence? Do background checks, which are supported by 79% of republicans, and 91% of democrats, lead to lower rates of gun acquisition and violence? WE may never now.

I don’t hate guns.

I’m not against guns. I’ve had long chats about people very proud about their guns and their connection to it while traveling through Tennessee a few years ago. I’ve hunted before. As a fisherman, I know the impact good recreational policy and advocacy – led mainly by fishermen – has on fish stocks and resetoration of waterways. Fishermen and hunters alike are invested, personally in conservation. Hunting funds 55% of the US’s department of fisheries and wildlife directly. Policies guide and aid in conservation. Fines are imposed if these are exceeded. Even Australia, which is famously used as an example of the success of gun control policy (after a mass buyback of guns, following a mass shooting, Australia has had 0 mass shootings in almost 2 decades), has a thriving hunting industry which brings in $460-1300million in revenue to Australia. Comparable to numbers seen in the US. Massachusetts, which has similar policies to us – requiring a licence, which takes about a day, before you can get access to a gun (with similarly high approval rates of over 97%, and freedom to do what you will) had 3.6 gun homicides/100,000, compared to 21+ in Alaska. That’s the lowest in mainland America. Gun control WORKS.

Funding for the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife breakdown.

 

The only people unrestricted gun availability is benefiting is 12000 gun business owners, a few gun convention businesses, a bunch of politicians, while costing America billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives. Neil’s tweet is only encouraging inaction. And that’s something I stand against.

Health Challenges and their Fixes

Researcher corrects Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Lying Tweet. Guns Kill WAY More People Than 40 every 48 hours…

We saw, over the weekend, another pair of mass murders occur, yet again, in America. Namely,El Paso and Dayton.

The usual process that seems to occur after every mass shooting occurred again.

 

As a future doctor, I feel so much for these unnecessary deaths. As a realist, I despair but wonder what the purpose of getting angry would be when the above keeps happening. But as a scientist, I was outraged when Neil DeGrasse Tyson, one of the most prominent science educators in the world, put out this tweet:

 

Here was my response to this.

 

Not only was it extremely tasteless, it was plain wrong too. First off, according to the CDC, 14995 people were killed by guns in homicides in the US in 2016. That’s not 40, but rather 79, or 80, per 48 hours. It appears that Neil made a math error to begin with, or deliberately chose only handguns (for some odd reason) instead. PS – I found the reddit thread where Neil got his numbers and argument from.

But even if this was the case, there’s still a huge population of gun deaths he doesn’t address. Suicides. In the same year, guns resulted in 23,854 suicides. That’s over half of all suicides.

This isn’t just conjecture. It’s a proven correlation.

States in the US which have more guns have higher suicide rates. In homes with firearms, 86 percent of people who used a had a firearm in their home used the gun to commit suicide. In homes without firearms, only 6 percent of suicides used a firearm. It’s pretty obvious… if you have a gun, you’re more likely to kill yourself with a gun. Gun purchasers had a 4.3x higher chance of suicide, and gun suicide (7.2x higher). For every 10% likelihood to have a gun in the household, rates of suicide went up 26.9%

The suicide rate in Australia in 2016 was 5.7/100000 people. The suicide rate in America in 2016 was 13.9/100000

1/5 Australians experience a mental illness in any given year. Similarly, 1/5 americans in any given year.

As I mentioned in the video – higher prevalence of guns is related to more suicides too. 90% of people who got past acute episodes of distress of panic who didn’t have easy access to a gun wouldn’t go on to commit suicide.

Guns aren’t even that big an industry in the US. 12,000 businesses only generate $11billion in revenue per year, which seems like a lot, but the startup I’m working on is in the mattress industry, which generates over $14billion in sales. On the other hand, gun violence directly costs the US over $2.8billion in healthcare expenditure. That’s just the cost to treat people who turn up to hospital with injury. $17.4 billion is the actual pricetag if you include indirect losses in income and productivity as well.

The most abhorrent thing here though is that Neil’s tweets are going to be used, for decades, to justify gun violence, and oppose gun control. If ‘a prominent scientist’ said this, it means it must be true, to many. I understand his points. Hell, my startup, Australia’s Student Startup of the Year, is working to fix some preventable problems.

 

 

Right now further detail and research into gun violence and attempts to mitigate its impacts aren’t being done. It’s pure politics. The Dickey Amendment , where gun lobbiest hamstrung the CDC, a body that’s supposed to be indepent’s, ability to conduct research which is the only reason why we don’t have more conclusive data on interventions that exist to reduce gun violence.

Do video games cause more violence? Do background checks, which are supported by 79% of republicans, and 91% of democrats, lead to lower rates of gun acquisition and violence? WE may never now.

I’m not against guns. I’ve had long chats about people very proud about their guns and their connection to it while traveling through Tennessee a few years ago. I’ve hunted before. As a fisherman, I know the impact good recreational policy and advocacy – led mainly by fishermen – has on fish stocks and resetoration of waterways. Fishermen and hunters alike are invested, personally in conservation. Hunting funds 55% of the US’s department of fisheries and wildlife directly. Policies guide and aid in conservation. Fines are imposed if these are exceeded. Even Australia, which is famously used as an example of the success of gun control policy (after a mass buyback of guns, following a mass shooting, Australia has had 0 mass shootings in almost 2 decades), has a thriving hunting industry which brings in $460-1300million in revenue to Australia. Comparable to numbers seen in the US. Massachusetts, which has similar policies to us – requiring a licence, which takes about a day, before you can get access to a gun (with similarly high approval rates of over 97%, and freedom to do what you will) had 3.6 gun homicides/100,000, compared to 21+ in Alaska. That’s the lowest in mainland America. Gun control WORKS.

Funding for the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife breakdown.

 

The only people unrestricted gun availability is benefiting is 12000 gun business owners, a few gun convention businesses, a bunch of politicians, while costing America billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives. Neil’s tweet is only encouraging inaction. And that’s something I stand against.

Humour In Hospital

The Biggest Mistake a Man Can Make…

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I have to get regular bone marrow biopsies every few months as a leukemia patient. 

 
As the name suggests, it’s a VERY painful procedure. But I only found out late last year that I could actually get sedation for it as an outpatient too with the aid of a wonderful drug called methoxyflurane.
 
Methoxyflurane, also known as the ‘green whistle’, is easy to dispense, has powerful analgesic effects well below full doses and has little toxicity to boot, making it an ideal substitute for anesthesia in small procedures or emergency situations. 
 
It also gets you high as hell. 
 
When I first used it, my doctor mimed out the best way for me to hold and inhale it. 
I was dubious at first, I wanted the full blown, heavy duty stuff if I was getting a needle through my hipbone… not some cheaper, less effective crap. 
 
For some reason, she refused to handle the actual whistle adamantly. I read the box, it said, “Do not inhale if you are, or may be pregnant.” That must have been why, I figured, as I began to take deep breaths and the world began to move ever… so…. slowly…
 
My parents told me that among other things, while I was going under I kept asking repatitively,
 
“When’s the baby due?”
“Is it a boy or a girl?” 
“Have you picked out names?”

Well. I found out recently that she’d never been pregnant…

 

It didn’t help that I kept insisting that “YOU MUST BE NOW!” next time either…
Maybe that’s why that biopsy hurt more than the others…
 
I guess I’ve learnt my lesson…