What's going wrong with America?

I just picked this up on a Newsgroup.
Scary or what??
Responses to this said it is...

---

Chris Lyth (Clyth@)

The moustache was fake, but the banana was real enough.

On Wed, 1 Mar 2000 23:24:45 -0000 charset="iso-8859-1"
chris Lyth <clyth@> wrote:
I have heard this before and believe it is scary,
but true.

Emma
----------------------
Emma Sadler
E.Sadler@

Emma Sadler wrote:
I have been (semi) reliably informed that kids as young as
6 in the US are given behavioural correction drugs if they
exhibit antisocial behaviour at school. Such action need not
be as severe as you might imagine before they would
consider such measures.

If I find any corroboration I'll post it, unless anyone
out there already has some and would like to tell us
what it is.

Darren
(of Bob)

Like I've told everyone before, this is another step towards a
corporate-governed dystopian future.

On Thu, 2 Mar 2000, Darren Snee wrote:
Well you may or may not have heard about a 6 year old that shot a fellow
class mate with a gun? Well the father of the victim was surprised that a
6 year old could shoot a gun - I mean has this guy never been in a toy
store - they're full of toy guns. He was ranting on the news last night
about how this kid _must_ have been taught how to shoot a real gun, rather
than thinking the obvious that the kid had just played with toy guns.

Very disturbing...I think the father needs the drugs more than the kid at
this stage.

Chris

---

christ@ #include <stddisclaimer.h> http://www.instituteofcorrection.org.uk/

"So this is really me? A no-style gimbo with teeth druids could use as a
place of worship" - Duaine Dibley (Red Dwarf - "Back to Reality")

I mentioned them a while ago, but the slashdot.org article on antisocial
school behaviour, called "Voices from the Hellmouth" and two sequels are at:

http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/25/1438249.shtml
http://slashdot.org/features/99/04/27/0310247.shtml
http://slashdot.org/features/99/04/29/0124247.shtml

They are rather large, but do contain some fairly disturbing reports, in
amongst the waffle.

Dominic

"'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool,
than to speak and remove all doubt." [Abraham Lincoln ?]

Date sent: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 11:55:33 +0000
From: Darren Snee <darrens@>
To: chat@
Subject: Re: What's going wrong with America?
Send reply to: chat@
Good news for all then. It was in the paper earlier this week that
Fuhrer Blair was trying to make a change to the law enabling
psychiatrists to proscribe these sort of drugs to children over here
without the need to seek consent from either child or
parent/guardian.


Jon

I think you mean prEscribe, since prOscribe means very nearly the opposite.

I think they'll have trouble giving kids drugs if the parents are against
it. I can't see policemen touring housing estates at bedtime injecting
junior school kids with drugs. It'll be the parents that have to administer
them.

Dominic

"It is always the best policy to speak the truth--
unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar." [Jerome K.
Jerome]

"Thomas, Dominic" wrote:
In some countries TB is again on the increase. Strangely some
of the residents don't want to take treatments. In these cases Medicinal
Camps have been set up to make sure the entire
course of drugs is taken. People are detained there until
they've received there medication. The U.S. is one of these countries,
and the same could be applied to children, if necessary.

Maybe Hitler wasn't an unusually bad person,
maybe he was just first.

Darren
(of Bob)

is
THEIR MEDICATION - THEIR - THEIR - THEIR.

Anyway....

The near future:-

"George Hoskins, you stand accused of the manslaughter of Sydney Potter. The
prosecution allege that five years ago you did knowingly terminate a course
of antibiotics early. The computer data transmitted by the syringe-comp
clearly shows that the final four doses were expelled simultaneously a week
later, whilst the needle was not in contact with the bloodstream. They
allege that you did wilfully eject the drugs into the toilet bowl, before
returning the syringe-comp to the surgery for recycling. They shall
demonstrate that there exists a positive trail between you and the poor
victim who died after a mutated virus resisted a course of antibiotics,
causing his condition to worsen considerably overnight, and rendering him
unable to get out of bed and reach the phone to call for help.
How do you plead?"

Dominic

"The green belt was a Labour idea, and we are determined to build on it."
[John Prescott]

antibiotics only work on bacterial infections... that's how they get their
name.
They are useless, repeat useless, against viruses- so the above is a load of
old cobblers anyway.
Incidentally almost all viral infections (ie the common cold, AIDS) are
incurable, no effective treatments exist... all you can do is vaccinate
prior to infection, in most cases.

Unfortunately the idea has entered the popular imagination that antibiotics
cure everything- hence parents demanding antibiotics for their kids when
there is a case of meningitus, even though they are useless against that
viral disease.

Medicene is still pretty primative, despite popular misconceptions to the
contrary; people live longer now because of improvements in diet & hygene
(ie, sewers), not because doctors are significantly more skilled- 'cos they
arn't.
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

Argh. Of course they are. I did know that, I was just feeling stupid
yesterday.
I meant mutated bacteria.
Oh absolutely.
Being an SF mailing list though, I felt the urge to stick some SF on it.

You have to admit, that while perhaps not likely, the concept of someone
being sued or prosecuted for negligence that caused the death of someone
isn't exactly impossible, even if the negligence seemed slight at the time.

If it's important to finish your course of antibiotics, I can imaging a
tracking system being implemented, and I can imagine people failing to go
through with it, despite big dire warnings on the packets.

And Simon's entirely correct. Feeding pigs antibiotics so they grow slightly
bigger is a bad thing.

Dominic

"You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther
with a smile and a gun." [Al Capone]

In article <20000303122323.33103.qmail@>, "MCMK Ashleif" <ashleif@> wrote:
[...]
"Meningitis" means inflammation of the meninges, which is caused by a whole
load of things. The one that gets on the News is a thing called
"meningococcal meningitis", which is caused by a bacterium, "N.
meningitidis", and is lethal.

Viral meningitis, caused by things like 'flu getting into the
brain-lining, is merely bloody unpleasant, as I can testify having had it
last summer. You get blinding headaches, you hallucinate, and you can't
stop vomiting. If you're me, you also drive all the way to Rennes, in
central France, and mostly cope with the fact that the journey is on the
wrong side of the road, and the policemen don't speak English. But hey ho.


And medicine has so advanced - those vaccines are medical advances, you
know, and so are the antibiotics. And medicine now is at about the stage
that computing was in 1945, as the biologists among us will attest. It's
one of the reasons why saving for a pension might be a really bad idea.

Science fiction becomes science fact - as Jerry Pournelle would say,
"they're doing it to us again"...


Simon

---
"This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind" -Ecclesiastes 4:16

simon@ | Not affiliated to any religion
simon@ | Not affiliated to any politics
H (+44/0)1784 431998 | Not affiliated to any ideology
M (+44/0)7967 109779 (GMT/BST) | What does that make me?

I'm afraid I'd go even further, and say that he wasn't even particularly
first, but just particularly talented.

Accidentally watched a program on Myra Hindley the other day, and you have
to suspect that she's by no means unique. An awful lot (not all, not even
most, but more than is generally admitted) of other women would, I suspect,
when put into her position, have done much the same - allowing the man she
loved to commit horrible crimes, and not stopped him, not gone to the
police, but actually aided in various (increasingly direct) ways.

That Austrian chap (Joerg Haider???) who said that some SS veterans were
"men of good character" wasn't entirely wrong. They were loyal, patriotic
types who went along with the flow of the times, didn't stand out, did what
they were told, believed what they were told, and generally had most of the
characteristics that are considered virtues in society.

We only have to look over at the Balkans to see how easy it is for the
average man on the street to turn into a genocidal rapist when put into
certain circumstances.

Once the war was over, those SS veterans became solid, upstanding citizens,
who mowed their lawn on Sundays, were kind to animals, and saved children
from drowning whenever possible. They didn't change their nature overnight,
but their situation did.

People are, let's face it - scum.

Dominic

"Thomas, Dominic" wrote:
Argh the grammer police are on too I again.
Ih'd better running quicker.
Does that mean we always float to the top?

Darren
(of Bob)

Darren Snee said:
I'm not sure whether it was TB or not... Might have been... But I've heard
this proposed before for antibiotic treatments. People have been taking the
start of a course of antibiotics, and then stopping. This often DOESN'T kill
the virus/bacteria that's being targetted, just scares it enough into
mutating and producing an antibiotic-resistant strain. The virus/bacteria
then spreads, in it's antibiotic-resistent form, which of course is far less
treatable, so spreads faster than before. Doctors decide to throw another
antibiotic at it, some fool doesn't take the whole course, yet another new
strain evolves, resillient to both bacteria. There are now quite a few nasty
diseases that can be treated by an increasingly small number of antibiotics.
It's therefore fairly sensibly argued that it might be worth MAKING SURE
people take their full course by, yes, either keeping them in hospital the
whole time, or sending them off to special "antibiotic" camps. If you're a
doctor faced with a potential epidemic of something that can only be treated
by ONE REMAINING ANTIBIOTIC, you want to be pretty damned sure it doesn't
get a chance to produce the final deadly strain.

---

Nick Waterman. Senior Systems Administrator, Sony Interactive Services
mailto:nick-sig@ http://www.nilex.co.uk/~nick/
AX25:G7RZQ@#32.GBR.EU #include <stddisclaimer> Team *AMIGA*!
Some don't prefer the pursuit of happiness to the happiness of pursuit.

Nick Waterman wrote:
A sensible argument indeed, there is, however, a possibility
that the people using behavioural modifiers might use the
same techniques.

What's good for the goose....

Darren
(of Bob)

In article <E12QYv7-0004Fv-00@>, Nick Waterman <nick@> wrote:
[...]

The main reason for this is not people failing to finish the dose, it's
antibiotics used in animal husbandry as a substitute for cleanliness. The
way antibiotics are used in farming beggars belief.

You'd think that, somewhere along the line, someone would say "wait, that's
stupid". Like feeding cows on dead sheep...


Simon

---
"This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind" -Ecclesiastes 4:16

simon@ | Not affiliated to any religion
simon@ | Not affiliated to any politics
H (+44/0)1784 431998 | Not affiliated to any ideology
M (+44/0)7967 109779 (GMT/BST) | What does that make me?

libraries will have funding withheld unless they censor their web access.
Sadly, their censor software is a little overexcitable. See:
http://censorware.org/reports/utah/main.shtml for details of sites they
consider inappropriate.

The gist of the new laws are at:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cth467.htm where you'll note that
they're also banning material featuring nudity from their prison population.
Keep your eyes open for news of prison riots soon.

Dominic

"Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a
mistake
when you make it again." [F. P. Jones]