MDA has officially killed the Labor Day telethon.
As a young man, I realized the fraud while watching a show designed to convince me otherwise. David Hartman did a two hour special – my memory is it was an episode of Medical Center, but that may not be right.
Hartman became involved with the MDA telethon in 1970 – this special episode was after he joined Good Morning America in 1975, where he promoted the special show. The basic message was trying to give an accurate sense of what it is like for young boys to know they are going to die an awful death, eventually succumbing to lung problems when they lost the ability to cough. Catching a cold meant death.
But what it also explained – which I already suspected – is that MD is a generation skipping sex gene linked recessive defect. Mothers transmit the gene, male children get the disease. Since the children usually don’t survive to puberty, female victims are extremely rare.
That being the case, finding a “cure” for MD as Jerry Lewis implored was as preposterous as finding a cure for blue eyes. Over the years, the funds were being directed toward buying wheelchairs and sending the kids to one final summer camp before they died. The best you could hope for was to mitigate symptoms and maybe prolong death for a year or two. As the truth became more obvious, “other neuromuscular diseases” were added to the scope.
A few years later, I ventured to the MD telethon at the then brand new Eastland Mall in Charlotte. WBT-TV had set up a studio in the public area of the mall for the local cutaway portions where they wheeled out the local victims, many of whom were brothers or cousins I learned two important things that day and lost a lot of media virginity.
Despite there being a big supportive crowd on hand, especially near the end, the audience applause was prerecorded sound tracks being played over loud speakers directed toward the audience. The other thing was I watched the person who had the job of manually updating the tote board display (back before computer displays). That person was updating the numbers without any communication with anyone else keeping an actual total. He was just adding random amounts to make the number bigger. Much of the donated funds were collected ahead of time, and the number was no more than a way to induce people to call in to give money. Then again, people would give money to Gene Scott and PTL and homeless people that everyone knows are scamming them. We humans are an odd bunch.
Now we can get back to the original purpose of Labor Day – celebrating the great accomplishments of the International Socialist Workers movement.
MD as a genetic disorder. There is no cure. Okay, so if we created a way to identify the carriers of the gene and then were able to establish genetic “surgery” on the carrier prior to conception – would that eliminate it?
Isn’t that some scary stuff. Gene surgery – my biggest fear with regard to the human species destroying itself.
Nope.
My nephew’s wife is a carrier of a genetic disease transmitted the same way that causes blindness. She’s a doctor. After knowing she was a carrier when her first son was diagnosed, we talked about this subject shortly after I moved here – because my father had a similar genetic disease (a different one). She got pregnant again, and now has a second son who has already lost most of his vision. Even after having two male children with the disease (males have a 50% chance), she got pregnant again. The 4th child is a girl – girls have a 50/50 chance of being carriers.
When a girl is born, she already has all the eggs she will ever have in her uterus. They can’t be changed. Most genetic approaches involve trying to treat the disease in the child, but it doesn’t correct the error in the DNA. Finding a genetic treatment for the symptoms of MD would be the worst possible thing they could do. If the young boys live through puberty, the disease will explode. That’s good for charities and the biotech investors. It’s enough to get me rethinking eugenics
I’m with you. Testing of the embryo and deciding whether to give birth is something that many people would consider to be a reasonable option…. at least having the legal right to do that and deciding whether or not to go forward with that particular embryo.
I discussed with them (hypothetically at the time) if there was a definitive test using amniocentesis and she had a male fetus with the disease if she would terminate the pregnancy. The answer was “no!”, and the answer had nothing to do with religion. They’re flaming liberals (dad was an organizer for Barack Obama).
Shockingly, they moved out of Charlotte and didn’t tell me.
>Now we can get back to the original purpose of Labor Day – celebrating the great accomplishments of the International Socialist Workers movement.
I remember the good old days when socialists would hijack a plane to Cuba to live in paradise with no wall street and where doctors make $1 per day.
Security stopped the hijacking and now the socialists are trying to take over our White House.
I am hoping the new President will spend a little tax money and start a boat-lift for socialists to get a free one way ride to Fidel’s island paradise… leaving their US citizenship behind.
Amen, CC. I will contribute what I can afford for the boat lift.
Cuban paradise – yes – before Castro though.
Cuba may be our solution to Obamacare as well. Put all those Cuban doc “in network” with no patient copay and no deductibles. Need a few tests or any non-emergency surgery, fly the patient to Miami give him a two-way ticket on the flotilla, and a couple dollars for the medical services.
I love it – a reverse Mariel Boat lift. We got their criminals and mentally insane, and they get our Socialist, Marxists and Commies. I think we make out on the positive side of that deal!
The cruel joke that is socialism… when Bernie tells us we need to be MORE like Denmark and almost immediately their somewhat conservative president gets up and calls Bernie a joke since they are going in the OTHER direction (pretty rapidly, too) after experiencing the “Nirvana” that Karl brought them – Now they have lower corporate taxes than we do, school choice vouchers (Lookout Chicago Public Indoctrination Centers -we’re gunning for you), and they KNOW how bad it sucks. It is all about education. Every bad decision I see is made directly from a lack of education… God knows I have made more than my share (some, quite embarrassing and damaging – thankfully, mostly only to myself).
Privatize ALL SCHOOLS and give parents the choice on where to send their kids. Failing schools will disappear pretty quickly as will the massive government indoctrination that is now in place. DIE Common Core, DIE NOW.
Look how many brainwashed college students follow Bernie in their ignorant bliss provided by our failed, infected (and infested) education system. Infested with socialist morons… calling themselves “educators” and “professors.”
One foolish college professor comes up with yet ANOTHER stupid theory (excuse) for the lack of jobs, wealth and advancement in the black and other non-white communities, and they are running with it – White privilege my ass. There are only two things that provided privilege in our nation, and most of the world: 1) Education (knowledge), and 2) MONEY. And if you happen to get #2 before #1, you generally blow it, lose it, or it is stolen from you because you did not have #1 (the knowledge needed to protect and invest it, let alone EARN it).
Chicago Public Schools are nothing but an ATM machine to fund, and a union power structure for the reelection of the Democrat Mayor, and sadly, the kids are nothing but collateral damage… LA and NY – the same story… 75% of the kids that went to Chicago Public Schools are functionally illiterate as young adults (reported from their own study). Pretty sad, eh?
And don’t get me started on the Trans-humanist genetics funding we are all now providing with our tax dollars – I did not know until recently that Obama quietly lifted the ban on government funding for experimentation to improve the human condition through genetic manipulation – it was in place for many years, but is now gone. Margret Sanger must be throwing one hellava celebration in HELL right about now.
OK – I have to get back to my government provided safe zone before I trigger another micro-aggression against myself. Now, was it take 2 blue pills at 4, or 4 pink pills at 2 and 1 blue pill at 4? I sure am glad I have Obama care to pay for the 37 prescriptions I need to maintain my sanity in this Brave New World of ours. I can’t wait for my new “Auto-Dose” implant so I no longer have to remember when and what to take… one transdermal tube each year, and I am GOOD to GO!
Cheers,
Rich
P.S. All kidding aside – of all the places I check from time to time to get a pulse on what educated people think about current events – this place is a hidden gem – a treasure where I start to feel sane again from the sanity of the topics and comments all of you make. I don’t comment very often, but I always enjoy and appreciate the intelligent exchanges. I don’t know much about any of you (history, education, experiences) but your words and intellectual exchanges paint a pretty good picture of an intelligent group of sane, caring, educated people who see though the smoke screen thrown up by a bloated government, a one-sided tainted media machine, and their minions, all of who seem to be conspiring to take away our basic constitutional freedoms, if we let them.
Thanks!
The source of the problem is that virtually all children are educated by unionized government employees that for the most part have never had a job in the real economy and are not measured for their job performance.
We can choose our electric supplier, gas supplier, phone provider, cable provider, trash collector but when it comes to the education of our children, we can not.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue in the country investing in its future – children can not invest in themselves… and we will be depending on them to run the country when we get old. The issue is that the system does not invest in them at all, but invests in the unionized government employee monopoly.
North Carolina law prohibits teacher unions. Come on down!
WOW – Great laws!!! All of my relatives are from E-City and Camden county towards the northeastern part of the state. It’s a nice area. The Pasquotank river is always muddy (or seemed so as a visiting kid every summer), but lots of fun to swim in, anyway. I have a book titled “300 Year Along the Pasquotank” and it seems that I come from a very long line of horribly ugly farmers with weekend jobs as Baptist preachers , and they all had strange scraggly beards and when photographed, they all stood in strange poses holding large axes over huge piles of kindling wood — they chopped a lot of wood back then, (I guess) – or they were early adopters of the “Mass Murderer” motif. A scary looking bunch anyway you cut it (pun intended). But it was an awesome place to vacation each summer growing up, and the food was great (literally fresh from the farm), and the people were way too nice to us “city brats” from Miami. It makes perfect sense that they would never settle for a bunch of union teachers. Come to think of it, my father’s brother was the Superintendent of Schools in Camden country for about 30 years. He showed us a “paddle” once (used for “serious discipline problems,” he said – it was made from a boat oar – he was probably kidding with us) – But I do seem to remember that we behaved remarkably well while visiting with them.
Cheers,
Rich
I think you hit the nail on the head. I read somewhere that when you apply for a teaching job in NYC, your union credentials are checked FIRST, and are far more important than your teaching credentials. And I remember thinking, “That can’t be true, can it?” – I now suspect it really is, and very much so.
The problems with the V.A. seems to be the same thing – powerful unions that protect poorly educated, crooked, lying employees. Has ANYONE been fired from the V.A. since they discovered hundreds of deaths caused by these commies? JFK really F-ed up by allowing federal employees to organize for “collective bargaining.” – It was the beginning of the end. Now they are close to being doubly protected – They have most of the protections from the Civil Service laws AND Union protection as well. Even an act of congress can’t get one fired if they have been employed over 24 months, EXCEPT when they are whistleblowers (oh sure – find something wrong WITH the government and you’re screwed, but other than that, you are made of titanium). That reeks of USSR, Stalinist type tactics.
I’m beginning to think that only Article 5 can reverse this mess we find ourselves in. The founders gave us a tool so powerful, congress and the executive branch FEAR the very mention of it, but it is a high hurdle to get working. I finally read Levin’s Liberty Amendments – and I think he is correct. The 12 year TERM LIMITS would really cripple the good old boy network. And one man is stopping it form moving forward – the leader of the Arizona Senate. I have tried to give him a heart attack using all my mental powers, but no dice – he keeps right on breathing. Of course, it may be that since I’m in Florida my telekinetic powers are greatly reduced by the distances involved. I did stop the second hand on a clock once. Just as I concentrated, my kid’s idiot cat knocked it off the table. Hey… maybe I was controlling the cat? Or not.
Cheers,
Rich
In 9th grade, I took Spanish I in a brand new high school in Pennsylvania with a state of the art language lab.
For 10th grade, we moved to rural NC in the “backwards South”. When I opened the textbook for Spanish II, I literally couldn’t read a thing on the first page. It confirmed what I had suspected, that the Harcourt Brace & World textbook was deliberately dumbed down so as to not leave the slowest student behind. I immediately asked to repeat Spanish 1.