Atlas Shrugged

I am a member of the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow party and I like Ayn Rand.

I feel like I should join a support group.  I found out just yesterday that a movie had been made based on her novel, Atlas Shrugged, and 10 minutes later was out the door and on my way to the theater.

I thought that Francisco was too fat and Dagny was too vulnerable, the overly-dramatic background music grated on my nerves and some of my favorite moments or lines were distorted from the novel.  The movie also cut the book into two parts but the first part was only 90 minutes long.  Other than that it was alright.

Ironically, I read Atlas Shrugged while I was volunteering in India.  I had read The Fountain and We the Living previously.  Although Ayn Rand is known as a champion for the Red (I'm much more of a rainbow), I don't think that her ideals go against mine and in fact, I perceive her ideals as being critical of the current state of the Republican party.

Although the author would disagree, the philosophy Atlas Shrugged is not anti-altruism but rather seeks to expose the irony of persons using a shield of selfless-ness to further their career or to profit from the hard work of others.  You can call is altruism.  You can call it selfless-ness.  You can call it utopia.  But selfish destructive acts can easily be perpetrated under the guise of morality.  The looters of Atlas Shrugged construct a morality that will keep them in power and keep wealth within their circle of cronies and call it in the best interest of society.  Those with the intelligence to see through the bullshit and the audacity to succeed in spite of open distain for the administration are black-listed.

Ayn Rand also questions motives in her novels.  I don't like suffering.  I like sleeping in a bed.  I like having heat in my house.  I like being able to take hot showers.  I do like volunteering and reading Ayn Rand did not take any of the enjoyment out of that for me.  In volunteering, I am given a unique experience to expose myself to different work environments for a short period of time.  In international volunteering, I came to a new place, a new culture, and was able to make friends in a new place and to gain exposure to different systems.  I like meeting people and being able to teach them things about my culture and ways to better improve their health.  It is fulfilling to come to a new place for a short time and leave knowing that you will be remembered.

I do not volunteer because I feel that forcing my opinions and ideals on other people will save their lives.  I have gone away from my volunteer experiences with so much more knowledge than I could have ever hoped to give to anyone else.  I would not expect that everyone would want to spend their money on the same things that I have spent my money on.  Ultimately, it makes me happy and my selfish motives do not change anything objectively that I have done.

Someone who truly suffers for the sake of others without hope of anything in return is bound to burn themselves out.  I strongly believe that no one is truly able to help others or contribute to society unless they put themselves first, for obvious reasons: a sick or mentally unwell person would be incapable of delivering a high quality of work and eventually would become a burden on the people around them and on their society.

Rather than putting it in terms of selflessness and altruism, it is human nature to trade.  In Howard Bloom's The Global Brain, he shows that human civilizations through all ages have relied on trade for survival.  Even babies will trade with each other.  A person will be more likely to share or give to a stranger in whom they can identify qualities that they associate with themself, unconsciously in hopes that a stranger would give to them if they were in a similar situation.  I don't give money to homeless people but I gave money to a pregnant middle class girl at South Station who was trying to get home to New Jersey, and I have met much more pleasant homeless people.  Altruism is not selfless, it is human to expect something in return.

Although Atlas Shrugged depicts "the looters" profiting from the hard work of others, ultimately, it is the workers who profit in the end.  Although Ayn Rand starkly defends wealthy businessmen who have profited from a lifetime of competence and hard work, her Atlantis is also filled with everyone who is hard working and good at the jobs that they do, no matter what the job.  The workers, in the end, take over the bourgeoisie policy makers.  Atlas Shrugged stands against the lazy and inactive who profit off the hard work of others.

www.toothpastefordinner.com

In that, the ideals behind Atlas Shrugged are shockingly similar to Marx in that, as society tumbles and falls, it is the workers who will prevail.  Any idea can be distorted.  Communist societies have more parallels to dictatorships than to the ideals of the Democratic party.  It all comes down to semantics in my opinion.

Biking through the history of Plymouth

I'm finally done with school!  It really seems unreal.  I was getting so anxious about what I would do with all this time off- I haven't been able to pick up very many shifts at work and I am lacking funds for extravagant vacations.  I suppose this is Vishnu's way of telling me to go on amazing biking adventures.

Provincetown 2007

Yesterday I convinced my good friend, Dunk, to bike with me from Boston to Plymouth on Marathon Monday.  I've lived in Boston for six years and have gone out of my way not to see Plymouth rock; it was finally time.  I was secretly making extravagant plans to try to bike all the way out to Provincetown, or P-town which is 125 miles away.  I didn't quite make it.

Dunk was a little more realistic.  He agreed only to accompany me if we would take the T to Braintree then take the commuter rail back.  I grudgingly accepted.

JFK, Hyannis

Besides living in Hyannis for four months, I hadn't really seen the south shore.  It was beautiful.  We tossed the route that I had mapped out and Dunk took me through back roads and along the ocean.  There's something about seeing the ocean that is just so freeing, the smell always brings over a wave of nostalgia whether I am on the west coast, east coast, or watching hundreds of crabs scuttle along the shore of the Indian ocean, making the sand appear as a moving living entity.

After biking though Hingham, or (not so) fondly known as Chi-ching-em, we cut through Jerusalem street in Cohasset and as I came over the final hill, the ocean lay sprawling in front of me as blue as tanzanite and crashing against yellow rocks.  I'm so sad I have no pictures.  We biked on through Marshfield and Duxbury, or "Deluxe-bury", finally reached Plymouth, and collapsed on the ground.

Plymouth actually wasn't the first place that the pilgrims landed.  They first landed in P-town, decided it was too gay for their taste, and moved onto Plymouth.

They tried to escape the king and all they found was queens, Dunk told me.

Plymouth Harbor 2011

When the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth in 1620 they first met the Wampanoags.  The Wampanoags had been trading with Europeans since the 1500s.  In the early 1600s, they had been depopulated by a series of epidemics.  Massasoit, Squanto, and Hobomah extended a welcoming hand to the Pilgrims, who would not have survived the first year without aid.  Soon more settlers came.  In only five years, the Pilgrims requested more land from the Pemaquid tribe, whose leader signed a treaty to humor them.  In 1630, Boston was founded.  By the time Massasoit died in 1662, the Wampanoags were being pushed further back.

Peace pipe, Hyannis

Metacom, son of Massasoit and dubbed "King Philip" by the settlers, began to form alliances with neighboring tribes in anticipation of more settlers to arrive.  In 1675, Metacom with the Wampanoags and Narragansetts launched a war on the settlers.  The settlers responded to the violence with violence, and as their battle technology far surpassed that of the Narragansett and Wampanoag, the American Indians suffered a great defeat.  Metacom was killed and his head was displayed on a pike in Plymouth for twenty years.

Mayflower II

I found out after I already got back to my home in mission hill that there were wigwams on display at the Plymouth Plantation as well as some information about the local native tribes.

the rock

I got to see the Mayflower II and caught a glimpse of Plymouth rock.  Dunk informed me that the real rock is out in the bay and the rock on display is just symbolic of the Pilgrims landing.

In the end, I was thankful to be taking the commuter rail back.  My legs felt like butter.  We gazed out the window, counting cranberry bogs until we fell asleep.

Cranberry bog in Hyannis

References:

Brown D.  Bury my heart at wounded knee: an Indian history of the American west.  Henry Holt and Company, NY.  copyright 1970.

Statins and Diabetes

Baby I'm afraid of a lot of things but I ain't scared of loving you.
- Karen O

Diabetes scares me probably more than any other disease state.  Diabetes puts patients at risk of slow healing wounds, peripheral neuropathy, increased infections, kidney failure, cardiovascular events, and is the number one cause of blindness.

My roommate has the best definition of diabetes that I've ever heard:

If you eat too much candy, your foot is going to fall off.

She has a point.

There is no way to prevent type 1 diabetes, but research into preventing type 2 diabetes is endless.  Most recently there has been evidence showing that statins increase the risk of developing diabetes.  An inquisitive NP at my rotation was asking me about a Huffington Post article in regards to the topic, so in the past few days I have attempted to dissect the evidence and assess the risk.

Attention was first called to incident diabetes with statin use when the JUPITER trial was published in NEJM in 2008.  Despite screening for cardiovascular risk factors, an estimated half of all myocardial infarctions occur in patients that are at their target LDL goal.  C-reactive protein, a marker of vascular inflammation, has been shown to be a risk factor for CV events independent of cholesterol levels.  Statins have been shown to reduce C-reactive protein levels in addition to reducing LDL.

The JUPITER trial looked at patients at a LOW risk of CV events but high C-reactive protein levels: men over 50 and women over 60 who had no history of cardiovascular disease, and LDL less than 130mg/dL, and a C-reactive protein level greater than 2.0mg/L.  Patients with diabetes, blood pressure above 190/100, low renal function, or use of anti-lipid therapy were excluded.  17,802 patients randomized to 20mg rosuvastatin or placebo were followed for a median of 1.9 years to the occurrence of the first event: MI, nonfatal stroke, hospitalization for unstable angina, arterial revascularization, or cardiovascular death.

Patients taking rosuvastatin 20mg had a decreased risk of cardiovascular events; one event prevented for every 95 patients treated over two years or 31 patients treated over four years.  However, the study also showed a statistically significant increase in the onset of diabetes in patients taking rosuvastatin.

The Buttery

The PROSPER study published in 2002 also showed a significant increase in diabetes in patients taking pravastatin.

In response, Sattar et al. conducted a meta-analysis of trials containing over 1000 patients treated with a statin for at least a year.  The analysis included 13 trials and 91,140 patients.  The statins used were atorvastatin, lovastatin, rosuvastatin, simvastatin, and pravastatin; where six of 13 trials utilized pravastatin.

Sattar et al. found a 9% increase in new onset diabetes in patients taking a statin, or one more new case of diabetes in a patient on a statin for every 225 patients treated for four years.  Increase in diabetes was seen even without the inclusion of the JUPITER trial.  The only other correlation to the development of diabetes was increasing age.

The analysis by Sattar et al. only included one trial, ASCOT-LLA, that utilized atorvastatin.  The stir in the medical community lately has been over an analysis by Waters et al. published in 2011 looking at the incidence of diabetes in IDEAL, TNT, and SPARCL which all utilized atorvastatin.

New York

I am disappointed that Waters et al. did not conduct a meta-analysis, but they found a trend to new-onset diabetes in the TNT and IDEAL trials and an increase in new-onset diabetes in SPARCL.  Patients that developed diabetes were more likely at baseline to have higher fasting glucose, BMI, white blood cell count, blood pressure total cholesterol/HDL ratio, and triglycerides.  80mg of atorvastatin was more likely to worsen glycemic control than 10 or 20mg atorvastatin.  Age differences, sex, and smoking were not associated with incident diabetes.

The real question is how this will change the way we treat patients.  Despite a slight increase in diabetes, statins have been shown to decrease the risk of cardiovascular events and mortality.  Waters tells heartwire, "Compared with their risk of a cardiovascular event, their risk of developing diabetes is paltry" and advises patients not to stop taking their statins.  Dr. Blumenthal of John Hopkins Medical Institute also comments to theheart.org that this analysis will not change his use of statins.  ALLHAT similarly showed an increase in diabetes in patients taking chlorthalidone, but these patients had improved mortality outcomes.

The available evidence shows that the benefit that patients receive from statins outweighs the risk of diabetes.  To me, these analyses show that no medication comes without risk.  Its a reminder to those that believe or believed that statins should be in our drinking water that this is a prescription medication.  There is a risk of liver dysfunction, rhabdomyolysis, and now, a risk of diabetes associated with their use.   Patients should be monitored accordingly.

I would attempt to make lame parallels between the JUPITER trial and the planet, but I know that I cannot do the planet justice.  I think I have failed my parents.  My mother builds satellites and my dad builds video servers by day, and charts the sky by night.  Check out his amazing nebula photos at:
http://astrospotter.zenfolio.com/

Hyannis 2008

References:
Ridker PM et al.  Rosuvastatin to prevent vascular events in men and women with elevated C-reactive protein.  The New England Journal of Medicine 2008;359(21):2195-207.

Shepherd J et al. Pravastatin in elderly individuals at risk of vascular disease: a randomised controlled trial.  Lancet 2002;360:1623-30.

Sattar N et al.  Statins and risk of incident diabetes: a collaborative meta-analysis of randomised statin trials.  Lancet 2010;375:735-42.

Waters DD et al.  Predictors of new-onset diabetes in patients treated with atorvastatin.  Journal of the American College of Cardiology 2011;57(14):1535-45.

Hughes S.  More data on diabetes risk with statins.  March 30, 2011; http://www.theheart.org/article/1203383.do