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FDA Whistleblower Site: Thoreau-FDA.com

“Welcome to Thoreau-FDA.com, a website launched and operated by current and former US Food and Drug Administration staff who believe public health is being put at unnecessary risk. These concerned civil servants and ex-civil servants have either experienced or are aware of wrongful directives by US FDA upper management – directives that put public health at avoidable risk. Thoreau-FDA stands for Thorough – High – Objectivity – Review – Ends – Are – Us – FDA. Here at Thoreau-FDA.com, you will find articles by its members that describe their efforts to protect all of us and our pets from harmful drugs and other medical products. And there are also reports of ordeals of other US FDCA staff, who are not involved in setting up this web site.

You can join others in discussion about the US FDA’s broken system by clicking on the link to FDA-blog.com. Or submit articles that will be considered for publication on our site by going to ‘Contact Us.’ Finally, we ask for your help. Read as much content on the site and related links as you need to convince yourself of the truth. Then, join an effort to effect real change at US FDA by sending a letter to the Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration. A sample letter is already prepared – but you can edit the letter to reflect your perspective. It prompts answers from the US FDA Commissioner about the effectiveness of the FDA’s ‘Values and Vision’ effort – a program that is supposed to correct many of US FDA’s problems that have persistently gotten worse over the last few years.”

(Thoreau-FDA.com. h/t: Pharma Law Blog)

Sex Therapy: The Return of Free Love

“Picture the scene: you are in a room with more than a hundred adults. Sitting at one end, with a microphone in his hand, is a man with long white hair who is encouraging everybody to introduce themselves to each other. ‘Go up to somebody,’ he says, ‘and say one honest, true thing about them that strikes you immediately. Then have them do the same back to you. But before you do that,’ he goes on, ‘please take off all your clothes.’

Welcome to the ‘most radical self-help workshop in the world’, as this hip new 10-day residential retreat is dubbed. Led by the Birmingham-born life coach guru Paul Lowe, it is not a place for the shy and retiring. As well as being encouraged to voice compliments to each other, such as ‘you make my vagina tingle’, discuss innermost feelings in intense, nude ‘sharing’ circles and take part in sensual massage sessions, participants will also be invited, during the course of the workshop, to explore their sexuality with multiple partners (yes, actually in the workshop). In Lowe’s eyes, you see, monogamy is one of those ‘ludicrous, unnatural social conventions that stand between you and spiritual enlightenment’.

(via The Times Online)

The Ethics of Hate Mail: Should Bloggers Post Email Correspondence Without Permission?

“Melanie Kroll probably doesn’t appreciate the irony of her situation. She was fired this week from her job at 1-800-Flowers.com, a floral delivery service, after a death threat was sent to popular science blogger PZ Myers from her work email address. The irony stems from the fact that she most likely heard about Myers only because the Catholic League had attempted to get him terminated from his job at the university where he teaches.

Myers, an associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, Morris, had published a controversial blog post on July 8 titled ‘IT’S A FRACKIN’ CRACKER!’ The cracker in this instance was referring to a Eucharist – a small wafer considered by Catholics to be the body of Christ – that had been smuggled uneaten out of a church by a Florida man. The incident caused public outrage from some Catholics and after the Catholic League condemned the action the man received multiple death threats. He finally succumbed to the pressure and returned the wafer to the church.

Myers is a vocal atheist and his blog post expressed incredulity and anger that a person would be harassed in such a way over what Myers considered a…well, cracker. At the end of the post he called his readers to action. ‘Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers?’ he wrote. ‘There’s no way I can personally get them – my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I’m sure – but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare.’

Eventually Myers’s writing reached Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, and in his typical fashion he went on the attack. The Catholic organization sent out a press release encouraging Catholics to email the president of the University of Minnesota and demand that action be taken. But Myers received a large number of emails as well, many of which were vitriolic and hateful. A few of those threatened the blogger with physical violence or even death. Citing a disclaimer on his blog that he has the right to reprint any emails that threatened violence, he posted two such messages on July 13, making sure to include the addresses and other identifying information of those who sent them.”

(via Bloggasm)

Lawsuit Against County and Sheriff Pat Hedges Claims Pot Shop Closure After Raid Violates Constitutional Rights

“An Atascadero woman has sued the county and Sheriff Pat Hedges, claiming a raid last year that led to the closure of a Morro Bay marijuana dispensary violated her constitutional right to medicinal cannabis. The case filed June 20 by Elaine McKellips, 56, illustrates an ongoing legal battle between conflicting state and federal laws surrounding medical marijuana use. In her lawsuit, McKellips alleges that Hedges: ?violated the state constitutional right of her and others to medical marijuana;

? illegally raided the Central Coast Compassionate Caregivers marijuana dispensary on March 29 using a federal search warrant instead of a state search warrant; ? violated confidentiality laws by seizing medical records; and ? inflicted emotional distress on her and other patients when denying them access to medical marijuana.

McKellips is asking for an unlimited amount in compensation and an investigation by the county to determine if the sheriff spent taxpayer dollars appropriately during the probe of the dispensary and whether the sheriff violated his duty to uphold state laws, according to the complaint.”

(via San Luis Obispo.com. h/t: The Drug Law Blog)

Secrets of The Occult

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“Secrets of the Occult explores the world of the occult from the ancient and modern magicians who practice it to the cutting edge scientists attempting to explain its mysterious claims.”

(via Dedroidify. See also: Pt 2:The Scientists, pt. 3: What is the Occult?)

The new Mozart: Blind girl, 5, Can Play Any Song on Piano ‘After Just One Listen’

“A blind five-year-old pianist from South Korea has stunned the music world after a video of her performance received more than 27million hits. Yoo Ye-eun, who was born blind and adopted in 2002, has never had a formal piano lesson but can play any song after just one listen.

And now her remarkable talent is set to propel her to stardom as clips of her amazing performance have attracted millions of viewers to Korean website Pandora TV. A similar clip on YouTube has so far received two million hits. Her display on ‘Star King’, a Korean talent show, earned the youngster ?500 in prize money and moved the studio audience to tears.”

(via The Daily Mail)

Racist Rejection Letter Stirs Controversy in SF Community

In the aftermath of the Violet Blue episode and in the midst of the PZ Myers controversy, racism reared it’s ugly head in the SF community. Aspiring SF writer Luke Jackson published a rejection letter written by an editor for Helix, William Sanders, in which was said :

“I’m impressed by your knowledge of the Q’uran and Islamic traditions. (Having spent a couple of years in the Middle East, I know something about these things.) You did a good job of exploring the worm-brained mentality of those people – at the end we still don’t really understand it, but then no one from the civilized world ever can – and I was pleased to see that you didn’t engage in the typical error of trying to make this evil bastard sympathetic, or give him human qualities. {…] the narrator seems to be saying that it was this incident which caused him to take up the jihad, but he’s being mendacious (like all his kind, he’s incapable of honesty). […] most of the SF magazines are very leery of publishing anything that might offend the sheet heads’

Unfortunately the letter was deleted in fear of a lawsuit threatened by Sanders. Putting the ethics about publicly posting a rejection letter aside, this is one that needed to be seen. Author Tobias Buckell has a great post on his blog summing it up. In an interesting development writer Yoon Ha Lee got a taste of Helix editor Sanders professionalism after asking to remove her story:

“Sanders flounced off in a huff, stating that the story ‘never did make any sense’ and that he only accepted it to ‘please those who admire your work’-what altruism!-‘and also because (notorious bigot that I am) I was trying to get more work by non-Caucasian writers.’ If I were a writer currently submitting to Helix, I would kind of worry about that bit-all things considered, if a story really does suck, I’d rather have it rejected so I can fix it.

He then played psychic and claimed that I only asked for the story to be withdrawn ‘because, let’s get real here, you feel the need to distance yourself from someone who is in disfavor with the kind of babbling PC waterheads whose good opinion is so important to you, and whom you seem to be trying to impress with this little grandstand play.’ He closed with: ‘There was a suggestion I was going to make, but it is probably not physically practicable.’

After that he pulled the story and replaced it with these professional words: “Story deleted at author’s pantiwadulous request.”

Sanders is now demanding anyone who wants their stories removed from Helix to pay forty bucks!

(See also: Tobias Buckell: “Asimov’s Forum Ickiness”, Buckell: “Keeps Digging”, K. Tempest Bradford: “William Sanders, Senior Bigot, Helix”)

Interview With Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee is a Sufi mystic and lineage successor in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi Order. He is an extensive lecturer and author of several books about Sufism, mysticism, dreamwork and Jungian spirituality. Vaughan-Lee was born in London in the year 1953. He began following the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi path since the age of 19, after meeting Irina Tweedie, author of Daughter of Fire: A Diary of a Spiritual Training with a Sufi master. He eventually become Tweedie’s successor and a Sheikh in the Naqshbandiyya Sufi Order. In 1991 He moved to Northern California and opened the Golden Sufi Center to help make available the teachings of his Sufi Lineage.”

(via Elephant Journal)

The Cassette Tape Skeleton

“Cassette tapes are near extinction, considering CDs, DVDs, Blue Ray and other innovative disk coming along. And the following skeleton is one wacky creation for this statement. The creation belongs to Brian Dettmer, I guy famous for altering common media such as old books, maps, record albums, and cassette tapes and transforming them into works of art. The following skeleton is currently on display at the International Museum of Surgical Science.”

(via Wacky Archives)

Musicology

“Over the last two months, Nature has published a series of essays about the latest scientific research into music, and now that the series is complete, it has been made available as a free PDF.

Among the authors of the essays are Aniruddh D. Patel, a theoretical neurobiologist at the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, who discusses the brain’s response to different varieties of music, and Laurel Trainor, director of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind, who explains the neural basis of music perception. Nature also has a special podcast featuring a discussion between science writer Philip Ball and music psychologist John Sloboda, both of whom contribute essays to the series.”

(via Neurophilosophy)

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