Anesthesia Reform

THE ONLY PAGE ON THE INTERNET DEVOTED TO ANESTHESIA REFORM!  All content involving anesthesia issues formerly on the Home Page and the Articles page can now be found here.  However, the PowerPoint The Autobiography of an Anesthetized Patient will remain on the Powerful PowerPoints page due to its size and downloading instructions, but a link is provided here for easy access.  Be sure to check out the anesthetic humor towards the bottom of the Comic Relief page.  I hope to have additional content, including information on the Paul Patrick Serdula trial as it becomes available.  I desperately want to be there when it happens, as he is accused of molesting hundreds of anesthetized patients.  I strongly believe that he is just the tip of the iceberg, as he was stupid enough to videograph his atrocious sexual behavior.  Just imagine how many are molesting anesthetized patients right now who don't videograph it.  Click here to read the wire report of his arrest and click here to read the heartbreaking blog posts of a victim on an eating disorder site.  Her bulimia was badly exacerbated by her having been groped and fondled while anesthetized (unnecessarily in my opinion).  This poor soul is having nightmares and needs hypnotherapy to set all this pain free.  Be sure to read the whole thread of 11 posts.  Click here to go to the Antisexuality page for the case of Marilyn Monroe, who was certainly gang raped under anesthesia.  Question isn't whether this occurred, but how many were there and how many double-digit millions did they pay for this "privilege."

A BILL OF RIGHTS FOR ALL OPERATIVE PATIENTS:

1. The right to evidence-based practice which is free from pro-business bias
2. The right to be free from all unnecessary procedures that are not in the patient's best interest and exist only to generate wealth for the "provider" and/or corporations
3. The right to consciousness-preserving reforms, even when administration of such requires significant creativity and effort on the part of the provider
4. The right to appropriate therapeutic intravenous nutritional support (envisioned by Derrick Lonsdale)
5. The right to be free from amnesiacs with little or no analgesic properties
6. The right to be talked to and included in the procedure
7. Whenever consciousness-preserving procedures are absolutely impossible, the right to supplemental nerve blocks as an anesthetic-sparing technique
8. The right to be kept warm, unless hypothermia is necessary because of a threat of hypoxia/anoxia
9. The right to a uniform body temperature
10. The right to full disclosure of everything that happened, video documentation, and full transparency whenever preservation of consciousness is not possible
11. The right to a comprehensive individualized rehabilitation plan and implementation of such a plan whenever preservation of consciousness is not possible
12. The right to an isolated forearm for communication whenever neuromuscular blockade is used
13. Protection from sexual abuse and harassment
14. Protection from abuse of third parties in front of the patient
15. The right to continuous supervision by a relative, close friend, lover, or pastor
16. The right to regulatory supervision
17. The right to an anesthetic advance directive
18. The right to appropriate patient-chosen music over a private listening system, including having such a playlist in an advance directive
19. The right to be sufficiently padded and repositioned to prevent compression injuries and damage from poor circulation
20. Protection from misogyny, racism, classism, ageism, ableism, eugenics, homophobia, and appearance-ism
21. The right to establish a visitors list, including in an advance directive, for ICU visitation

Click here to read an acknowledgement of the benefits of a consciousness-preserving nerve block. 
Click here to read about a specific case with video.

Slide 25 of Autobiography asserts that the nerve block is the true conquest of pain.  This article admits that general anesthesia actually worsens postoperative pain rather than reducing it as nerve blocks do.  What a bitter irony!  Click here to read.

WHERE IS THE ACLU?  WHERE IS THE NOW?  MORE UNRECOGNIZED, DE FACTO RAPE:  Here is a document from the Univ. of Maryland law school that dramatically illustrates why I love trial lawyers and oppose all tort "reform":  unauthorized and medically unnecessary "educational" pelvic exams on anesthetized patients.  This is still rampant and widespread, and inexorably represents a very short and slippery slope to sexual assault.  Indeed, it is the states' rape laws that are inadequate and not enforced, as many of them don't even acknowledge marital rape or homosexual rape.  I wholeheartedly agree with the conclusion that nothing less than major damages will ever affect any reform.  I go a step further in seeking large-scale criminal charges against the leches, so that the homies already in prison can do with the necrophiles as they see fit, as was done in the Old Testament.  Click here to read (PDF).  Click here for a victim's perspective.  The shameless misogynist she quotes who claims that we "don't care about the minutiae" should be dragged out into the alley and castrated with a rusty pocketknife.  I'd like to read her book.  Click here for a feminist perspective.

Here is a lawsuit involving a surgeon applying a temporary tattoo without consent to an anesthetized patient perilously close to the private parts.  If the surgeon really wanted to "boost patient morale," he would've let the patient choose a playlist to listen to using the headphones shown below or earphones.  Not to even mention the fact that back surgery is entirely unnecessary, and Republicans promptly shut down the federal agency that made this discovery.  Click here to read.

MUSIC FOR THE ANESTHETIZED PATIENT:  this document from the U.S. Patent Office is for the design and the usage of headphones for anesthetized patients.  Note that the design of the final product shown above, which is worn behind the neck, is different from what was originally proposed in the document.  This is an inexpensive, effective, and humane alternative to shooting up the patient with amnesiacs, which exacerbate rape of the mind rather than mitigating it (not to mention risk of alzheimer and other neurodegeneration).  Earphones can also be used to deliver the ideally patient-chosen music, but have the disadvantage of falling out, which means they must be taped to the ears.  The poor patient already has tape all over his/her face as it is!  The headphones can also be used by nerve block patients.  Unlike that of anesthetized patients, which must be instrumental, their music can have lyrics, and should be more varied and through-composed to fend off boredom from sometimes having to lie on the operating table for hours.  Click here to read (PDF).

A PROTECTIVE HELMET FOR ANESTHETIZED PATIENTS when they have to lie face down (prone).  This helmet, shown in the official document from the U.S. Patent Office, cushions the eyes and face of the patient from potentially serious compression injuries, and also aids in turning and repositioning the fragile patient, as it's almost impossible to intubate in the face down (prone) position.  Note that the description acknowledges the freezing conditions in the OR railed about on slides 13 and 30 of Autobiography and suggests that the well-insulated helmet can help keep the patient's face and head warm.  Unless there's an imminent threat of hypoxia or anoxia, in which hypothermia slows down the beleagured brain's metabolism, reducing its need for scarce oxygen and sugar, the rest of the patient needs to be kept warm, too.  Click here to read (PDF).

TALK TO ME:  as noted in the laundry list of good things from the 19th century on the Articles page, in that era, anesthetized patients could talk!  Here is an online article that demonstrates that they should be directly talked to, one of the reforms recommended on slide 53 of Autobiography.  I was especially impressed with the anesthetized patient who restricted blood flow to the surgical site when asked to, cutting blood loss in half!  I add that the patient should also be loved, reassured, and told how it's going.  Who should do the talking?  The surgeon?  The anesthesiologist?  The CRNA?  A loved one at the patient's side?  ALL OF THE ABOVE!  Of course, the patient should work with a hypnotherapist as soon as possible afterward to find and understand their implicit (subconscious) state-specific memories.  Click here to read.  Sadly, this webpage won't download.  Click here to read a related story from W. Virginia, albeit the patient in this case should've had a consciousness-preserving nerve block for knee surgery.

AWARENESS:  I downloaded this review article on awareness episodes from the end of the 20th century from an emergency medicine site late last year.  Even though it was written before the mechanism of action of most anesthetics was discovered in 2002, it is still relevant to the awareness topic (the mechanism of dissociative anesthetics like ketamine, disabling the NMDA receptor, was already known).  Because the page was removed from the site this year, I was forced to copy and paste what I had saved into a Word 97-2003 document.  While episodes of blinding pain such as that experienced by a friend of mine are extremely traumatic and can cause devastating posttraumatic stress, these doctors are wrong to equate such terrible suffering with lesser episodes without pain or pressure, including implicit (subconscious) memory that is only detectable by hypnotherapy.  The author admits that it is not known whether memory, especially implicit memory, can be completely obliterated.  I say that it should never, ever be obliterated, that such an objective is inhumane, brain-damaging, addictive, humiliating, degrading, soul-destroying, and personality-dulling.  Rather, the patient should be talked to, loved, reassured, told how it's going, and given music to listen to, preferably patient-chosen music, as recommended in the posts just above.  There must be a via media between the blinding pain that my friend suffered and being deprived of everything that makes one human.  At one point, the author concedes that the patient can benefit from being talked to, but his ideas of what to say are ridiculous.  Click here to read the review article.

NEW:  THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT IMMIGRATION AND OFFSHORING:  Amid all the whining and screaming on both sides of the aisle about immigration and offshoring, a crucial and fundamental truth is invariably overlooked.  American ≈ anesthetized patient; foreign national (immigrant or offshore worker) ≈ unanesthetized person.  Employers will never admit publicly that they prefer an unanesthetized workforce, especially as they will never get the customary targeted jobs tax shelter for hiring persons with a disability that is legally unrecognized.  It is a truism that mental disabilities are never manifested in the outward appearance.  The ugly truth about immigration and offshoring is that the unanesthetized post-Stalinist, post-Maoist, and tropical workers are showing up all the American anesthetized patients as the damaged goods that they really are.  The only way that these victims of an illegal, immoral war on human consciousness and memory can feign employability is to hide their iatrogenic mental disabilities behind the unearned privilege of being an American.  Sadly, all that most anesthetized patients are good for is playing games with hedge funds, derivatives, ponzi schemes, health insurance denials, denials of social services, office sexual escapades, office politics, and scams.  Only unanesthetized persons can turn a hand in the fields, in the garment factory, in the institutional kitchen, in the shoe factory, and on the construction site.  Other than the post-Stalinist world, the white race is already doomed and African Americans are not far behind.  The Chinese Communist Party is the unwitting, undeserving beneficiary of an unanesthetized population and is poised to win the world.  Making matters worse, it is also the unwitting, undeserving beneficiary of an ancient civilization virtually untouched by Roman Catholicism and of 7000 years of sustainable agriculture.  What a tale of woe will be told of how a once-mighty civilization that went to the moon was anesthetized into oblivion.
UPDATE:  Recently, another online activist noted that in his experience in the construction industry, American workers consistently outperformed their undocumented counterparts, unless substance usage impacted the build.  This contradicts my own observations in the classroom and at other types of job sites.  One possible explanation is that American construction workers have had superior training and safety procedures.  Another possible explanation is that construction workers typically come from proletarian backgrounds rather than bourgeois, and likely have had fewer anesthetizations than their bourgeois American counterparts.  Consequently, a higher proportion of these American construction workers may be themselves unanesthetized persons, cognitively putting them on an even playing field with their undocumented counterparts.  A third force at work in undocumented immigrants doing shoddy work on builds may be the language barrier itself.

WHY THE FOURTH DECADE IS AN IDOL:  a general overview of age discrimination reveals that industrial capitalist society has established the fourth decade, ages 30-39, as an idol, and anyone who deviates from this "norm" in either direction is subject to age discrimination.  The farther away a person deviates from the fourth decade in either direction, the greater the discrimination.  This is because the body, especially, the brain, is not completely developed until age 30, and because deleterious changes that lead to alzheimer and other neurodegenerative diseases do not begin until after age 40.  This is why thirtysomethings better tolerate being anesthetized than any other age group.  In a full article from the January 2008 issue of Anesthesiology cited below and on slide 20 of Consumerism, middle aged patients had the least postoperative cognitive dysfunction and the least anesthetic-induced depression.
    Among the very young, poorly-designed human studies have repeatedly excoriated daycare as causing aggression and cognitive deficits.  However, the main problem with daycare is middle ear infections which are rapidly transmitted from child to child.  The typical intervention is inserting tubes into the ears of the children, performed under general anesthesia of a duration of approx. 30 min.  This surgery is completely worthless because the infection is gelatinous rather than liquid, and cannot drain out as fraudulently claimed.  Furthermore, children's Eustachian canals curve as they grow and develop, so that the kids invariably outgrow the plague of middle ear infections.  Stay-at-home kids, however, don't have ear infections and never undergo this surgery, so a disproportionate number of them remain as unanesthetized children.  None of these daycare studies ever excluded anesthetized patients, and are therefore invalid.  I bet even money that if these studies are repeated excluding anesthetized patients, there will be no statistically significant difference between the daycare group and the stay-at-home group.  For the greater part of a century, all animal research has required a control group for the effects of general anesthesia if it is included in the protocol.  Without this control group, the study is invalid and unpublishable.  Therefore, every human study that does not exclude anesthetized patients is utterly invalid.  Thus, feminists and working mothers are being crucified for the sins of the medical profession.  Click here to read an admission involving children under 3.  Click here to read another admission involving hernia surgery.
UPDATE:  SURGICAL NARCOSIS IN BABIES AND TODDLERS CAUSE LD, AD/HD:  After years of "mommy wars" marked by lies, lies, and damn lies, there is no escape from the fact that anesthesia during early development < age 4 causes apoptosis and irreversible brain damage, proven in rodent and primate studies.  I spent 2 years of total hell substituting in Memphis City Schools and saw entire grades that were unteachable and uncontrollable.  At Hamilton Middle, where even the principal couldn't calm them down, the kids themselves insisted that the problem was because they all had tubes put in their ears as babies and "couldn't hear."  Actually, the tubes invariably fall out after a few months; it is the damage from general anesthesia that has produced these intractable behavior problems.  This was the kids' way of admitting to being damaged goods, "for real," as they put it.  Of all the people who have walked the face of the earth, I am just the right person for them to make this admission to.  Click here to read.  The FDA finally had a hearing in March 2011 on this subject.  Nothing short of a world revolutionary tribunal with authority for capital punishment is ever going to adequately address this or any other catastrophic issue.  Click here to read.
ANOTHER UPDATE:  Additional research has now admitted that more than one anesthetization in early childhood causes LD.  Testing for LD, AD/HD, and other labels is highly subjective and is worthless unless it is normed to 19th century people who were mostly unanesthetized and none of whom ever experienced maintenance, because it wasn't invented yet.  If such tests could be normed to 19th century people (none of whom are living anymore), likely entire generations would come back as LD and AD/HD.  These researchers also admitted that victims of multiple anesthetizations have memory and mathematics problems, the former of which ominously foreshadow the proven link to alzheimer later in life.  With great dismay and chagrin, I assume that all Americans are mathematically disabled unless demonstrated otherwise.  Click here to read.

THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT MICHAEL JACKSON:  In the early '80s, he was at the cutting edge of R&B (according to a music critic) and still had his ethnic nose.  The fateful nose job he underwent in the mid '80s, which was racist at the conceptual level, ruined his life.  A victim of severe childhood abuse, Jackson became addicted to the anesthetic and unlike most people, had the wealth to indulge directly rather than turning to substitutes such as caffeine, television, sports, shopping, compulsive overscheduling, etc. as most people must.  For the rest of the '80s, every time he wanted more anesthetic, he scheduled more cosmetic surgery.  When it got to the point that his nose didn't have any cartilage left, he hired a doctor to anesthetize him in his home, which is how he blew his fortune.  As they say, the rest is history.  Anyone who claims that he had insomnia is a fraud because the treatment for that is a high-priced sleeping pill, not propofol.  Likewise, anyone who claims that he was seeking pain relief for his hair burn in the mid '80s is also a fraud because the treatment for that is an opioid combined with an NSAID, not propofol.  Jackson had the same habit and the same fate as Horace Wells, the man who invented general anesthesia in the 1840s.  Just ask his widow, Elizabeth.

WHY ANESTHESIA REFORM?  From its invention in 1846, there were warning signs of trouble.  Horace Wells, the New England dentist who got the idea while attending and participating in a nitrous oxide frolic, experimented on himself for a wisdom tooth extraction, which was successful.  However, his attempt at a public demonstration was pronounced a failure because the drug wasn't quite strong enough.  In Oct. of 1846, William Morton, a con artist turned dentist, assisted by the erudite scientist Charles T. Jackson, had a successful demonstration with the stronger drug diethyl ether.  Wells switched to the stronger drug chloroform, but quickly became addicted from self-experimentation, committing violent crime and suicide under its influence.  His widow, Elizabeth, characterized his invention as "an unspeakable evil."  And so began the modern age of addiction in the 1850s and NOT the much-maligned 1960s!  Both Morton and Jackson eventually died of bizarre neurological disorders from self-experimentation, with Jackson having been demented for 7 years prior to his death.  Jackson's brother-in-law was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was most likely also experimented on and is the first well-documented person to have died from alzheimer.

THE ISSUES:

• The causative roles of general anesthesia in alzheimer
• The causative role of general anesthesia in addiction, which killed Michael Jackson
• The causative role of general anesthesia in the epidemic of depression
• The causative role in the decline and bastardization of spirituality in the Western world
• A possible causative role in parkinson, as alcohol and street downers are known causes
• A possible causative role in ALS and other neurological disorders, such as those that killed Morton and Charles Jackson
• Postoperative cognitive dysfunction, particularly in the elderly
• Sexual abuse and sexual fetishes
• Unauthorized, undisclosed, and unnecessary "educational" pelvic exams on females
• Extrajudicial execution and malpractice
• Complete lack of transparency
• The need for anesthetic-sparing techniques, such as supplementary nerve blocks and soothing patient-chosen music over earphones or headphones
• Aggression and cognitive deficits in children, which have been falsely attributed to daycare
• Victimology that is INDISTINGUISHABLE from that of sexual assault
• Withholding of consciousness-preserving nerve blocks, such as spinal, epidural, and brachial blocks, from peoples of color, the poor, and tropical peasants, which I call anesthetic racism, anesthetic classism, and anesthetic colonialism
• Withholding of consciousness-preserving nerve blocks from patients in general
• Change in personality and diminution of creativity and imagination from low-grade brain damage
• The accumulation of personality change, addiction, aggression, and lost creativity and imagination in the population, a phenomenon similar to artificial climate change
• The need for an individualized rehabilitation plan, comparable to the IEP in special education

This list is likely not exhaustive.  Clearly, any progressive, libertarian, or tropical moralist vision that does not include anesthesia reform is incomplete and doomed to failure.  My vision literally is a lone voice in the wilderness on this orphan issue.

BALANCED ANESTHESIA is being touted as a reform already extant.  One anesthesiologist in the '90s even questioned, "Does it anesthetize?"  It does, but my question is, "Is it really reform?"  My answer is yes and no.  Pre-emptive analgesia is certainly a great idea for every patient, but shooting the patient up with amnesiacs, such as benzodiazepines, makes the problem worse, not better, especially when the patient can be calmed with soothing music instead, which is completely safe and does not directly attack the hippocampus, where memory is formed.  This short article is a succinct and to-the-point description of balanced anesthesia.  Note that ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic known on the street as "special k," is only used in the U.S. by veterinarians and animal researchers, while overseas anesthesiologists do use it in humans.  This is because of the U.S. baroque fixation on striving for a total blackout.  With a fixation like that, no wonder the U.S. is the undisputed alzheimer capitol of the world.  Click here to read.

NOTES ON PAPERS IN HIGH-PRICED JOURNALS:  copyright law permits an individual to make one photocopy of a particular research paper for "research or private study."  However, that photocopy may not be scanned and uploaded to a website.  This is why I can't upload such papers here, even though public funds paid for most of this research.  THIS IS PUBLIC FUNDS THEFT.  However, anyone can go to a library and make a photocopy of papers of interest.  Bring cash and be prepared to purchase a copy card for use with the photocopiers.  Copy cards are typically sold through vending machines and can be recharged using the same.  A few of these vending machines might be sophisticated enough to accept credit or debit cards, but don't count on it.  If two nearby libraries use the same brand of copy card, it can be used at both institutions.  Just use common courtesy with the library staff, who are not M.D.s.

Slides 16, 35, and 53 of The Autobiography of an Anesthetized Patient and slides 20 and 51 of Consumerism charge that general anesthesia is brain damaging.  Here are links to 2 medical news articles about research papers that corroborate this charge, including the 2008 study that was referenced on slide 20 of Consumerism.
Click here to read a Pennsylvania study from '07
Click here to read the 2008 study referenced on slide 20 of Consumerism
NOTE:  the second article contains a link at top right to the PDF of its original research paper.  Anyone may click on it to download it.  Some of the papers in its reference list are also of interest, and are worth looking up in the libraries of major universities or medical schools.  An in-depth reading of this original paper reveals that they found a statistically significant increase in depression in anesthetized patients, but they downplayed it by claiming it was insufficient for a clinical diagnosis.  Since when should a statistically significant finding be suppressed?  This result never made it into the medical news article.  In-depth reading also reveals an admission of a correlation between cumulative lifetime duration under anesthesia with postoperative cognitive dysfunction, supported by references, an admission which likewise was not included in the medical news article.  I have argued for that point for years.  With gasoline at $2.50 a gallon or more, the public should have access to this information without having to drive to an institutional library, especially if the taxpayer paid for the research.  This is especially urgent for inner city and rural dwellers.
Here are additional links to medical news articles about research papers linking general anesthesia to alzheimer:  These studies specifically looked at volatiles.
published in the FASEB journal in '09  conducted by Mass General (Harvard) in '08  published in Journal of Alzheimer's Disease in '09

ANESTHETICS IN THE ICU:  The OR isn't the only place where patients are anesthetized, even though they try to obfuscate the picture with differing terminology.  Here is a brand new medical news article of a study from Denmark demonstrating that ICU patients who are not drugged get off of ventilators sooner, go home sooner, and do not suffer from posttraumatic stress.  All of the patients who are drugged in the ICU are given injectable amnesiacs (benzodiazepines) rather than volatiles or nitrous, and none of them in any of the studies cited here ever had any surgery or went below reflex.  This dramatically demonstrates that injectables are worse than volatiles or nitrous, as I've argued for years.  Click here to read. 
In an earlier study presented in a poster session at a thoracic meeting, one patient, who formerly had an IQ of incipient genius (145) was reduced to a mediocre IQ (110) by injectable amnesiacs in the ICU and was no longer able to do her job.  This is a shattering tragedy!  Click here to read. 
This poster presentation at a critical care meeting specifically admits that patients who were able to remember their ICU stay did not suffer from depression or posttraumatic stress, and have no memory problems or cognitive deficits.  In other words, drugging a human being to intentionally deprive one of memory is a brutal form of rape.  Click here to read.
This earlier study from Vandy endorsed a daily "vacation" from drugging with benzodiazepine coupled with a trial to breathe on one's own.  Click here to read.

CONSIDER A NEWBORN INFANT just washed up and diapered for the first time.  All cultures consider the child to be helpless, but look at all the wonderful things the baby can already do:

• The baby can see.
• The baby can feel.
• The baby can move.
• The baby can cry.
• The baby can coo.
• The baby can suckle.
• The baby can swallow.
• The baby can digest.
• The baby can taste.
• The baby can smell.
• The baby can grasp.
• The baby can remember.
• The baby can breathe.

The anesthetized patient can do NONE of these things!  Now THAT is REAL helplessness!

Understandably, it is common for patients to not show up for surgery.  Here is an instance where the surgeon didn't show up, and the one that was available refused to perform it because he was unprepared and knew nothing about the case.  Why then was the patient anesthetized?  Of course, the patient sued and an investigation was launched.  The surgery was performed at a later date.  Click here to read.