Reduced bond denied in heroin death

A man accused of selling the heroin that killed another man will be allowed to try and keep the dead man's cell phone and a hypodermic needle from being used against him as evidence during his trial.

Meanwhile, David Givhan will remain in custody on $100,000 cash bond.

Givhan, 24, of Beloit is charged with felony first-degree reckless homicide. He is accused of selling heroin to Luc A. Marsh, 29, of Milton on March 31, 2009, in Beloit. Marsh later was found dead from an overdose in a bathroom at Edgerton Hospital, where he worked.

Givhan, who is defending himself, requested an evidentiary hearing as he tries to suppress evidence in the trial scheduled for December. Rock County Judge Richard Forbeck granted the motion. The hearing is scheduled Oct. 7.

Givhan said prosecutors should not be allowed to use Marsh's cell phone and the needle as evidence in trial.

Givhan said the phone could have been tampered with because police released it to Marsh's mother before taking it back into custody. He also has concerns about the chain of custody records kept for the needle, he said.

Assistant District Attorney Richard Sullivan said Marsh's mother gained ownership of the phone but did not have physical contact with it. Chain of custody arguments do not support suppression of evidence, Sullivan said.

Forbeck on Tuesday denied Givhan's request for a reduced bond. Givhan said he does not have a history of fleeing and could better prepare his defense if he were released on a signature bond.

Sullivan said Givhan's past police record makes it likely he would face a substantial sentence if found guilty of reckless homicide.

The 1970's Vortex Of Sexual Addiction

Assessing modern gay culture, consider that two important components from Stonewall forward were the result of external factors.

The first was the explosion of the "sex, drugs and rock and roll" 1960s counterculture in America that shifted - like a gigantic earthquake shifting a tetonic plate of the planet's crust - the national ethos, among other things plunging the emerging gay liberation movement into a toxic sea of unbridled and counterculture-mandated sexual excess. This did not arise from within gay culture, but overwhelmed it from without.

The second was what happened as a result: in major urban centers indulgence in relentless, impersonal and casual sex, often multiple times daily, quickly led not only to a loss of sensibility for genuine romance and love, but to a loss of control. I submit it was due to a ferocious clinical addiction to the potent narcotic of sex, itself.
It explains the compulsive behavior of that decade, and its persistence to this day, if on a more limited scale. But addiction, a medical condition, is not inherent to being gay, so to the degree it impacts our culture, it comes from without.

Beyond my own experience and references to addictive casual sex in Andrew Holleran's "Dancer From the Dance" (1978) in my previous installment, gay writer Edmund White made multiple references to addiction in his autobiographical works. In his "My Lives" (2006), he wrote about being caught "in the grip of a compulsion that didn't have much to do with pleasure."

He wrote, "I was too addicted to its sexual rewards to renounce this system," referencing the 1970s gay scene's "new esthetic, which I dubbed the Pleasure Machine (that was) frank, hedonistic and devoid of irony," in his "States of Desire: Travels in Gay America" (1980).

(Christopher Isherwood felt that book was "deeply disturbing" as a literary tour because it "used the predicament of the homosexual minority to demonstrate what is very wrong with the social health of the country.")

In his "City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s" (2009), White wrote about an addictive force compelling him in the dark holds of long-haul trucks parked under the piers on the Lower West Side beside the Hudson River, and in the dark abandoned piers, themselves.

In the backs of trucks or in the piers, he wrote, "I simply couldn't make myself go home. Even after a satisfying encounter with one man or ten I still wanted to hang around to see what the next ten minutes would bring. What it brought was the morning light." He then confessed, "Not that there was much happiness in a life of pleasure."

Tennessee Williams, the most famous openly-homosexual American of all, also wrote about the addictive nature of frequent, impersonal sex. In his "Small Craft Warnings" (1972), the first openly homosexual character in one of his major plays, Quentin, says, "There's a coarseness, a deadening coarseness, in the experience of most homosexuals. The experiences are quick, and hard, and brutal, and the pattern of them is practically unchanging. Their act of love is like the jabbing of a hypodermic needle to which they're addicted but which is more and more empty of real interest and surprise. This lack of variation and surprise in their 'love life' spreads into other areas of sensibility..."

Thus, Williams, the compassionate truth-teller, the often promiscuous homosexual, was no fan of casual gay sex because of its addictive nature.

The combined external factors of the counterculture and addiction led to AIDS through the formation what public health experts call "core groups," environments in which human immune capacities are compromised, as Gabriel Rotello documented in "Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men" (1998) and Ronald Bayer in "Private Acts, Social Consequences: AIDS and the Politics of Public Health" (1989).

The explosion of sexually-transmitted diseases in such "core groups" and their damage to the immune systems of their hosts almost guaranteed that a dormant, inactive virus like HIV would awaken and flourish. And so it did.

Although imposed from without, homosexuals caved in to the pressures of counterculture excess and its addictive, fatal consequence, such that undoing the persisting influence of those factors in homosexual culture today will require enormous effort. It may take generations. So, while my contributions are addressed to readers today, so they are also to homosexuals yet unborn, and it is theirs whose judgments I value most.

White, in a 1991 third edition afterward to "States of Desire," conceded that all the 1970s "self-centered pleasure seeking...was a betrayal of an earlier philosophy that had linked homosexual rights with feminism and socialism," a passing, partially adequate reference to what I and my "Effeminist" gay activist colleagues were fighting for at that time.

Wis. clinic warns of possible disease exposures

A Madison-based clinic is trying to track down hundreds of patients after a nurse apparently spent years improperly using diabetic injection devices on them, potentially exposing them to blood-borne diseases such as HIV.

Dean Clinic officials on Monday began trying to contact by phone and letter 2,345 patients who saw the nurse between 2006 and when she left her job two weeks ago. They want the patients to come in for testing for HIV as well as hepatitis B and C. State and local health officials said they're monitoring the situation, but no one had detected any diseases connected to the nurse as of late Monday afternoon.

The clinic's chief medical officer, Dr. Mark Kaufman, said the nurse is a certified diabetic educator. Her job called for her to train newly-diagnosed diabetics on how to inject insulin and test their blood sugar levels.

Clinic officials declined to identify the nurse.

Earlier this month, another clinic employee reported that the nurse was improperly using a device known as an insulin demonstration pen, which resembles a large hypodermic needle and injects insulin into the bloodstream, as well as a more widely-known finger prick device for blood tests, Kaufman said.

The nurse was supposed to demonstrate how to use the pen on pillows and oranges, not on the patients themselves, Kaufman said. But an internal investigation showed she was using the same pen on people. She used clean needles each time, but using the pen on a person could allow a microscopic backwash of blood to flow back into the pen's reservoir, potentially contaminating it and putting the next patient at risk, Kaufman said.

The finger prick device is supposed to be used on people, but the entire device should be used only once per patient, Kaufman said. The nurse changed needles but used the same handle from patient to patient, creating a risk that blood could get onto it, dry and infect the next fresh needle and patient.

The nurse left her job on Aug. 10, the same week the other clinic employee came forward about her practices, said Dr. Craig Samitt, the clinic's chief executive officer. He declined to say whether she resigned or was terminated.

Samitt and Kaufman said the nurse was experienced, noting her certification as a diabetic educator, but it's unclear why she didn't follow the devices' guidelines or clinic protocols. Clinic officials have interviewed her, but Samitt declined to elaborate.

"This is an ongoing investigation," he said.

Kaufman said the nurse's actions probably pose little danger to the patients. The HIV virus degrades in a matter of days, and the hepatitis strains can't survive for more than a month, he noted.

It's unclear just how many of the nurse's patients underwent an insulin pen or finger prick demonstration or even if anyone who did was infected with a blood disease and could have passed it on.

"The risk is minimal, but remains a theoretical risk," Kaufman said.

Dean Clinic includes about 720 health care providers located throughout southern Wisconsin. Samitt declined to say where the nurse worked.

Stephanie Smiley, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health Services, said agency officials learned of the potential exposures Monday morning and have been in contact with the clinic. They also have notified the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she said.

"This is a very serious situation and it appears that Dean Clinic is taking the appropriate steps to notify patients of possible exposure and performing follow-up testing as necessary," she said in an email.

Man held on theft, burglary charges

A man suspected in the theft of a $6,000 engagement ring and other items in Woodbridge is facing multiple criminal charges after police caught him leaving the scene of a burglary in Plainfield three days later, authorities said this week.

Thomas Deschaine, 23, of the Avenel section of Woodbridge is facing charges of burglary, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a hypodermic needle in connection with the drug incident, said Plainfield Police Detective Leslie Hudson, who is investigating the case. Bail for Deschaine was set at $25,000; he was lodged in Union County Jail earlier this week, but on Wednesday was awaiting transfer back to Plainfield to be booked on an additional charge of credit-card theft filed in connection with the earlier incident, authorities said.

A Woodbridge police officer last Thursday was dispatched to the Verizon Wireless store at Woodbridge Center Mall on a report of theft. The officer met a 27-year-old Piscataway woman, an employee of the store, who said someone had taken several items from her purse the day before, according to a police report.

The woman said she had placed her purse in her unlocked employee locker at the start of her shift, but after work noticed that her BlackBerry cellphone had been moved from one pocket to another, the report indicated. The victim initially didn’t think anything of it, but the next day she found that her debit card, her engagement ring, a white gold necklace and her Verizon employee Android Incredible cell phone all were missing from the purse, according to the report.

An investigation revealed that a four-person construction crew was working in the store’s locker area at the time of the alleged theft, but all four workers — Deschaine being among them — denied involvement, authorities said. Deschaine and another worker also claimed to have seen a Verizon cleaning employee in the area sometime that night, the report indicated.

No charges were filed then, but Plainfield police responding to an alarm on the 1200 block of Thornton Avenue a little after 7:30 p.m. on Saturday found that a home had been broken into and a television taken, authorities said.

Man held on theft, burglary charges

A man suspected in the theft of a $6,000 engagement ring and other items in Woodbridge is facing multiple criminal charges after police caught him leaving the scene of a burglary in Plainfield three days later, authorities said this week.

Thomas Deschaine, 23, of the Avenel section of Woodbridge is facing charges of burglary, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a hypodermic needle in connection with the drug incident, said Plainfield Police Detective Leslie Hudson, who is investigating the case. Bail for Deschaine was set at $25,000; he was lodged in Union County Jail earlier this week, but on Wednesday was awaiting transfer back to Plainfield to be booked on an additional charge of credit-card theft filed in connection with the earlier incident, authorities said.

A Woodbridge police officer last Thursday was dispatched to the Verizon Wireless store at Woodbridge Center Mall on a report of theft. The officer met a 27-year-old Piscataway woman, an employee of the store, who said someone had taken several items from her purse the day before, according to a police report.

The woman said she had placed her purse in her unlocked employee locker at the start of her shift, but after work noticed that her BlackBerry cellphone had been moved from one pocket to another, the report indicated. The victim initially didn’t think anything of it, but the next day she found that her debit card, her engagement ring, a white gold necklace and her Verizon employee Android Incredible cell phone all were missing from the purse, according to the report.

An investigation revealed that a four-person construction crew was working in the store’s locker area at the time of the alleged theft, but all four workers — Deschaine being among them — denied involvement, authorities said. Deschaine and another worker also claimed to have seen a Verizon cleaning employee in the area sometime that night, the report indicated.

Man held on theft, burglary charges

A man suspected in the theft of a $6,000 engagement ring and other items in Woodbridge is facing multiple criminal charges after police caught him leaving the scene of a burglary in Plainfield three days later, authorities said this week.

Thomas Deschaine, 23, of the Avenel section of Woodbridge is facing charges of burglary, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a hypodermic needle cannula in connection with the drug incident, said Plainfield Police Detective Leslie Hudson, who is investigating the case. Bail for Deschaine was set at $25,000; he was lodged in Union County Jail earlier this week, but on Wednesday was awaiting transfer back to Plainfield to be booked on an additional charge of credit-card theft filed in connection with the earlier incident, authorities said.
A Woodbridge police officer last Thursday was dispatched to the Verizon Wireless store at Woodbridge Center Mall on a report of theft. The officer met a 27-year-old Piscataway woman, an employee of the store, who said someone had taken several items from her purse the day before, according to a police report.


The woman said she had placed her purse in her unlocked employee locker at the start of her shift, but after work noticed that her BlackBerry cellphone had been moved from one pocket to another, the report indicated. The victim initially didn’t think anything of it, but the next day she found that her debit card, her engagement ring, a white gold necklace and her Verizon employee Android Incredible cell phone all were missing from the purse, according to the report.


An investigation revealed that a four-person construction crew was working in the store’s locker area at the time of the alleged theft, but all four workers — Deschaine being among them — denied involvement, authorities said. Deschaine and another worker also claimed to have seen a Verizon cleaning employee in the area sometime that night, the report indicated.


No charges were filed then, but Plainfield police responding to an alarm on the 1200 block of Thornton Avenue a little after 7:30 p.m. on Saturday found that a home had been broken into and a television taken, authorities said.

Now That’s a Multiplier Effect

Long-term economic growth can only stem from a culture of cutting edge innovation, not from a culture of debt-driven consumption. That’s why I think the taxpayers’ dollars are put to far better use over the long run when the government funds basic research that can potentially create exciting technologies. It’s still a better bet than Wall Street bailouts because you are not incentivizing risk and creating a moral hazard. Of course, proponents of the bailouts will argue about the vast contagion effects of a bank failure – but that’s a different column.

While the government really has no business to be in business, it has the power to fuel the kind of technology companies that will help create jobs and economic growth. The danger of course is turning the system into some kind of corporate welfare, but with strict accountability in place, the grants could well help create the kind of multiplier effect that is needed for sustained growth.

The SBIR and STTR programs provide more than $2 billion in federal R&D grants each year to small, high-tech, and innovative businesses throughout the U.S.

I spoke to the heads of three such companies in north central Connecticut, recipients of grants awarded in 2010.

One of them, John Hanson, CEO of Aquatic Sensor Network Technology LLC (AquaSeNT) in Storrs, said early-stage companies succeed when they have the optimum innovation environment, which, in AquaSeNT’s case, is being a part of the UConn incubator program, and receiving support from Connecticut Innovations.

“It’s a good model to get technology out of the universities and into the market and thereby help create jobs,” Hanson said.

The firm, originally founded by three UConn researchers, received $500,000 in a federal SBIR Phase II grant last year to build and demonstrate a working prototype of its underwater acoustic wireless communication and networking solutions.

In its nascent stage when the founders were involved in academic research, the technology was awarded academic grants by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Office of Naval Research.

“We’ve sold two prototypes to the U.S. Navy for testing and hope to promote our product more broadly in six to nine months,” Hanson said.

He claimed the technology developed at UConn allows the firm to transmit more information from sensors on the ocean floors for climate science and marine biology research.

In some cases, it can also reduce communication time, Hanson said.  He offered an example: suppose a tsunami wave has started far out in the ocean, the firm’s system can transmit the data onshore more quickly.

Biorasis Inc., another Storrs-based company, received a $150,000 NSF grant last year to further develop an auto-calibration system for glucose and metabolic monitoring.

CEO Ioannis Tomazos, Ph.D., claimed that from the information available in public domain, his sensor was unique because of its miniature size – a wee 0.5 mm by 0.5 mm – which is also body friendly and cost-effective.

The device is implanted subcutaneously by a hypodermic needle cannula and transmits blood glucose readings to another device called the Proximity Communicator, which is placed outside the body close to the sensor. The communicator can then send the data to either a smart phone or the PC. 

“We’ve developed a methodology to mask the device from the immune system (so the body does not fight and reject the foreign object),” Tomazos said.

The product is aimed to enable constant monitoring of blood glucose levels to detect hypo or hyper glycemia.

 “We are ready for the non-human market next year and have begun investigating the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approval process for human use,” he said.

Manchester-headquartered Fuss & O’Neill, an engineering firm, received a $150,000 NSF SBIR Phase I grant early last year to develop a cathode that can recapture energy from treated wastewater via microbial fuel cell technology. It again received a Phase II SBIR grant of $500,000 to further develop different aspects of the technology.

MILLVILLE AFTERNOON POLICE BEAT Includes Safe stolen

A woman reported Saturday morning she awoke to find a safe missing from a residence where she was staying on Coventry Way. Before she fell asleep, some friends had come over to drink. A friend the woman contacted after finding the safe missing told her someone who was at the house had taken it. The woman responded that she would not contact police if the safe was returned. She then exited the house and found the safe in front of the house with its door missing and sides crushed. She told police it appeared none of the contents were missing, although she could not be sure.

Responding to a report of a woman entering a residence on North 4th Street Saturday, police say they discovered Nina Willis, 25, of the 300 block of East Broad Street in possession of a hypodermic needle. She also was in possession of 14 empty wax papers commonly used to store heroin (three were stamped “Fuego,” and one, “Soulja Boy”); steel/copper wool commonly used as a filter to smoke crack; and a broke glass pipe. She was charged with possession of a hypodermic needle, possession of a controlled dangerous substance, and criminal trespass.
Jessica Maldonado, 32, of the 1700 block of West Main Street was charged Saturday with attempting to shoplift $90 worth of items from Walmart.

A lawn mower valued at $106 was stolen from a shed on Buck Street.
A manager at City Liquor Store on Saturday showed police video of a suspect placing a bottle of Hennessey Cognac in his pocket.
A resident of Cooper Street reported Saturday a thief entered by pushing in a window-unit air conditioner. Several pieces of jewelry as well as silver half dollars were missing.

An employee of Walmart confronted a suspect who placed a controller for a Cabela’s Big Game Hunter for the World War II video game in his pants and tried to leave. The suspect handed the employee a CD for the game, but not the controller and left in a sedan.

Robert A. Rehmann, 30, of the 100 block of South 2nd Street was arrested Friday on warrants dated Aug. 4 for simple assault, robbery and theft of movable property.

Open Season: Local bears better left alone

With fall fishing on the horizon and bear and goose hunting seasons coming up in early September, more outdoorsmen will be taking to the woods and fields, many of which are infested with disease carrying ticks. Lyme disease is one of the most prevalent diseases carried by ticks, along with babesiosis.

It's widely known that Lyme disease is carried by deer ticks, but it's also carried by black legged ticks and western black-legged ticks. The ticks transmit the bacteria through the bite when feeding on warm-blooded hosts like deer, mice, dogs and humans. In most cases, but not all, the first symptom is a rash that occurs at or near the site of a tick bite and has a round, "bulls-eye" appearance. It can be 2-6 inches in diameter and lasts up to five weeks. Other symptoms occur from several days to weeks, months, and even years after a bite. They include "flu-like" symptoms, such as aches and pains in muscles and joints, chills and fever, headache, sore throat, stiff neck, swollen glands, dizziness, and fatigue. Even if these symptoms fade away, untreated Lyme disease may lead to arthritis, nervous system abnormalities, and an irregular heart rhythm.

Babesiosis is another infection transmitted by ticks and is caused by a parasite that destroys red blood cells and results in a malaria-like illness. Symptoms begin anywhere from five days after a bite or longer, and may include fever, chills, headache, muscle pain, nausea, tiredness, and a rash. Babesiosis has been known to be fatal. Therefore diagnosis and treatment should begin as soon as possible after it is contracted.

A single tick bite can transmit more than one tick-borne illness — besides Lyme and Babesiosis — such as anaplasmosis, bartonella and tularemia. These co-infections further complicate diagnosis and treatment. Avoiding contact with ticks and disease prevention are the first and best lines of defense against tickborne infections. Here are some tips to help keep you and your family safe from these tiny threats.

There is a number of plants you can cultivate around your yard that repel ticks, including lavender, garlic, pennyroyal, pyrethrum (a type of chrysanthemum), sage, American beautyberry, and eucalyptus. If your lifestyle permits, raising chickens, ducks and guinea hens will help keep the tick population down as these feathered friends have a voracious appetite for them. Keep in mind that ticks attach easily to bare flesh. When outdoors, protect yourself and your children by wearing long sleeves and long pants, preferably in light colors so you can spot a tick more easily. Wear shoes and socks that you tuck pant legs into or a pair of tall boots.

Pets may pick up ticks so be sure to inspect them after they've been outside as they may deliver a tick to you, and they can also become sick with Lyme disease. After being outdoors, remove clothing and wash and dry at a high temperature as ticks may be lurking inside the folds and creases. Washing alone will not kill ticks — even with bleach — it's the heat of the dryer that does the trick.

Take a shower or bath within two hours of coming back inside, then perform a total body tick check (woo hoo!). In the case of Lyme disease, infection from a tick to a human typically takes 30-40 hours, so spotting and removing them quickly is an important first defense. (It is uncertain how long it takes for Babesiosis to spread).

If you discover a tick attached to you, carefully remove it. Using fine tweezers, grasp it close to the skin and pull straight back without twisting or yanking. There are also devices on the market today, such as the ProTick Remedy that are made for effectively and efficiently removing ticks. Avoid pressing or squeezing the tick's belly as it can push bacteria into your body like a hypodermic needle. Similarly, do not use the heat of a match that you light and blow out, or petroleum jelly. After you've removed the tick, disinfect the bite area. Save the tick for possible identification by a doctor or the local health department if symptoms appear.

If you've been infected there are some new medicines that aid in treatment and relief. "With tick-borne diseases, the body needs to detoxify, especially joint, muscle and nerve tissue," says Lou Paradise, president and chief of research of Topical BioMedics, Inc., in Rhinebeck, N.Y. "Topricin gives the body the support for its basic function of maintaining healthy cells and repairing damaged ones through enhanced healing. Its combination of natural biomedicines in a clean water-based cream base that's free of chemicals and other irritants helps restore vitality to joint, nerve, and muscle tissues while providing safe, effective pain relief."

'An Anatomy of Addiction' by Howard Markel

Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine

Howard Markel

Pantheon: 352 pp., $28.95

Sigmund Freud sniffed it. William Halsted injected it with a hypodermic needle. Both men, as ambitious and driven young doctors in the 1880s, became addicted to cocaine. History suggests that Freud kicked his habit; Halsted never did. Halsted pioneered a host of surgical methods, the use of anesthesia, and antiseptic procedures in surgery rooms. Freud gave us a lantern with which to illuminate the dark labyrinth of the subconscious. Both men played their part in the invention of our modern world, and their stories, as well as that of cocaine itself, are braided together by Howard Markel in "An Anatomy of Addiction."

When Freud and Halsted first became acquainted with their chemical bête noire, they "fully expected cocaine to be the wonder drug of modern medicine," Markel writes. Neither had any idea about cocaine's dangers. Addiction as a medical diagnosis had not yet entered the textbooks. Freud was treating a friend, a surgeon who had lost a hand and was reliant on morphine to quell the pain. Freud hoped that cocaine would help his friend break free from morphine.

"The initial results were nothing short of miraculous," Markel writes, but then the friend's condition "soon plummeted." Meanwhile Freud, unwilling to experiment with a drug without personal scientific knowledge of its effects, started taking cocaine himself, and discovered that he liked it, not least because it gave him a sexual thrill.

"In my last severe depression, I took coca again, and a small dose lifted me to the heights in a wonderful fashion. I am just now busy collecting the literature for a song of praise to this magic substance," Freud wrote to his fiancé, Martha, on June 2, 1884.

That "song of praise" became "On Coca," a scientific paper that Freud published in 1885 and hoped would make his name. Freud analyzed his responses to cocaine in that paper, and this new system of autobiographical self-probing would prove crucial to his career, but he completely missed something else — cocaine's effect as a local anesthetic. That potential use was discovered by Carl Koller, one of Freud's rivals at the Vienna General Hospital, and it was Koller's paper, much to Freud's chagrin, that flew around an admiring world.

"The development of an agent that could be safely injected under the skin, leaving a patient completely awake yet insensate to the surgeon's pointedly sharp manipulations, was earthshaking," Markel writes, and news of Koller's cocaine breakthrough was seized upon by Halsted, a young physician working simultaneously at Bellevue and various other New York City hospitals. Halsted came from a wealthy New York family. At Yale he'd been captain of the football team. Against the grain, almost, he'd become a doctor, a disciplined and daring surgeon of "incandescent curiosity." Halsted started experimenting with cocaine as soon as he heard about it. Like Freud, he used himself as a guinea pig and soon became an accidental addict.

A professor of medical history and a doctor who has treated addicts, Markel attempts to apply a novelist's touch to his tale that can be heavy-handed. "The atmosphere was thick with the exhaust of cigarettes, cigars, and inspired minds," he writes, evoking the atmosphere at the Café Landtmann, a "pungently academic restaurant," and suddenly plunging us into Freud's Vienna as Robert Ludlum or Tom Clancy might conceive it.

Markel is terrific, though, when writing about the greasy pole of medical ambition, and when detailing the scientific stuff. Here the prose feels more energized and more solidly grounded, and he offers excellent sidebar portraits, including one of Angelo Mariani, who marketed "Vin Mariani," a French tonic drink laced with cocaine. "His great eureka moment arrived when he mixed ground coca leaves with a far more traditional French intoxicant, Bordeaux wine. Through careful experimentation and measurement, the chemist realized that the alcohol in the red wine acted to unleash the power of the coca leaves. In the decades that followed, scientists discovered that when alcohol and cocaine are combined a new, even more intoxicating compound, called cocaethylene, is formed in the liver."

Small wonder, then, that Vin Mariani was a huge success, endorsed by Ulysses S. Grant, Queen Victoria, the shah of Persia, Thomas Edison, Arthur Conan Doyle and a host of others. Cocaethylene populated the Victorian world with unknowing cokeheads. "If nature set out to design an addictive drug, it could hardly do better than cocaine," Markel writes. "This is because the drug brilliantly fools the neurons ending in the nucleus accumbens into sensing a virtual abundance of enjoyable feelings and emotions."

Cocaine freed up Freud's writing and a cocaine-induced dream opens his first masterwork, "The Interpretation of Dreams." Ideas of pleasure, pain, suppressed guilt and subsequent liberation, all of which Freud came to associate with the drug, lie behind his development of psychoanalysis, the talking cure. The analytic process, for those who've experienced it, is itself almost like a narcotic, inviting the subject to wander, trance-like, through the ruins of dream and memory.

Are nasal cannulas the best way to deliver oxygen to patients with COPD?

The use of nasal cannulas is common for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This is often patient choice, as cannulas allow them to eat, drink and speak, and are often more comfortable than masks when they are receiving oxygen for long periods of time. Cannulas can also feel less claustrophobic, which is an important consideration for a patient experiencing breathlessness.

A note of caution however. Nasal cannulas may not be suitable in acute exacerbations of COPD. Oxygen administration is described as controlled or uncontrolled. Nasal hypodermic needle cannula, simple face masks and non-rebreathe masks are uncontrolled, while fixed high-flow concentration masks such as Venturi deliver controlled oxygen.

The amount of oxygen a patient receives from an uncontrolled device depends on variables including depth and rate of breathing, which can alter during acute episodes and produce unexpectedly high concentrations of inspired oxygen. This issue is important, especially for patients with chronic hypercapnia, and can lead to serious or even fatal consequences. These patients require controlled oxygen therapy during an acute phase. This allows oxygen of a known concentration to be delivered and titrated according to the patient’s oxygen saturation (target saturation 88-92%) irrespective of breathing pattern, without the risk of hyperoxia and worsening hypercapnia (BTS, 2008). Nasal cannulas can be substituted once the patient has stabilised.

Hollywood's New Plastic Surgery Alternative: The Quick-Fix Lasers

New York, Milan and Paris may be the world's fashion capitals, but Los Angeles has always been the undisputed fount from which beauty trends spring: hair extentions, fuller lips, even fuller breasts, eyelash extensions, dermabrasion, Botox, and of course, the whole size 2 craze, all sprang from Hollywood necessity, the mother of appearance inventions and innovation. Where actresses and actors lead, the rest of us follow. Youth and beauty may be their stock in trade, but when those in the forefront are dipping into the fountain of youth, everyone else can look like yesterday's news.

Plastic surgery may no longer be a luxury, but it does demand the luxury of time. When you've got a shoot date looming, a premiere, a red carpet or a magazine cover shoot, that's just out of the question. Not to mention a pitch meeting, the network retreat or the Oscars. The newest beauty fixes won't take a bite out of your schedule, but that doesn't mean they aren't real fixes. The options between a facial and a facelift have multiplied many-fold, like 3D movies. The botoxed-frozen-forehead landscape is now a thing of the past. That, and good old shots of Juvederm or Fraxel laser treatments -- applied over several months -- have been made nearly obsolete by new techniques for applying fillers and a multitude of lasers that do a multitude of things on any body part you can think of.

Prominent Beverly Hills dermatologist Peter Kopelson, whose father Arnold Kopelson produced Platoon, grew up in show business and understands the needs of its players. According to him, the best problem solver these days is a combo of laser treatments with fillers, but the fillers are applied in a whole new way.

"We don't inject to the dermis anymore," Kopelson explains. "Now we're injecting fillers at a deeper level, right above the bone -- that is where facial structure lies. We even do this under the eyes. And now Restylane and Juvederm come with lidocaine in them -- a painkiller -- so it's not nearly as painful as it sounds. When you inject on this level, fillers last six months to a year and create a better base for the structure of the skin. Sculptra, a new filler and volume enhancer, lasts about two years.

"We're also injecting in new areas like the temples. A female studio executive recently came in, thinking she might need a facelift for her jowls. All she needed was the right filler. She walked out in a half-hour with no bruises."

Kopelson's North Camden Drive office, which caters to actresses young and older, actors and execs, has a variety of new lasers. But his favorite is Smart Pulse ($500 to $1,900, depending on area treated), which no one else in the country has. It's non-ablative (doesn't vaporize the surface of the skin, like the mighty CO2 laser), takes three minutes and works well in a series of treatments to produce more collagen in the top layer of the skin. This is one of the new "lunchtime lasers," which include the Nd:Yag, the Pearl and Titan -- they all tighten the skin and make it less blotchy. And you can apply a little makeup and hit the streets right after application. "They're perfect for before awards shows," says Kopelson. "These treatments are now as prominent as stylists."

Randal Haworth, a popular Beverly Hills plastic surgeon on North Bedford Drive, performs plenty of facelifts but has come to learn that "actors and entertainment executives are very busy people. We treat one of the top choreographers in the business; she works from 7 a.m. to midnight, goes on tour with pop stars, is on the set of videos. She barely has a day to recover, let alone weeks. Everything now is designed to have minimum recovery and a precise result. "Too much filler looks freaky," says Haworth. "The new permanent gel filler Aquamid is actually removable. If a patient doesn't like the look of her poofed-up cheek or under-eye, we can stick a needle in and pull it out." The new injection techniques also have a dramatic reduction in bruising because of micro hypodermic needle cannula -- super skinny -- that just give little tiny nicks.

Chemist shut after notice period expired

Following the expiry of the notice period given to the chemist who sold a used cannula to a heart patient, the shop was locked down on Thursday.

It was in April this year when the chemist had sold off a used cannula to the family of Surjit Singh who was to undergo heart surgery at PGI’s advanced Cardiac Centre.

However a notice outside the shop put up by the chemist read that the shop would remain closed for a day on account of a family function. Sources in PGI revealed that a decision in this regard was taken last month, the chemist was served a notice to vacate the shop within 30 days. As the deadline ended on Thursday, the chemist shut the shop and approached the court against the decision of PGI.

On April 18, one of the doctors caught hold of the used cannula before the cardiac thoracic surgery of 69-year-old Surjit Singh. There was a bloodstain on the cannula indicating that it had been already used. The family members had purchased the cannula from Aditya Medicos, a chemist in PGI’s market complex and they also had the bill in their possession.

A three-member inquiry committee was then constituted which indicted the chemist for selling the used surgical item. The findings of the committee were put before PGI’s estate committee on June 22, which recommended cancellation of the shop and debarred him from participating in the tendering process of the institute for two years.

Lin is survived by her husband

Lin Janson-Will, 64, of Red Cliff, passed away Sunday at her residence of pancreatic cancer.

She was born Oct. 18, 1946 to George Janson and Marian (Maslak) Janson in New York. Lin was married to Bob Will. She had a career in retail and interior design and moved to the Vail Valley in 1990, discovering her passion for landscape oil painting and semi-precious stone jewelry making. She had a great love for wildlife and all creatures big and small. She was an avid supporter of many animal charities, in addition to other local organizations. She will be greatly missed by family and friends.

Lin is survived by her husband, Bob Will, of Red Cliff; son San Guyer, of Denver; daughter Leyla and husband Timur Erimhan of York, England; sister Caroline Kavetas of Westport, Conn.,; and grandson Evren Erimhan of York, England.

Services will be private. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that you make a donation in Lin's name to HomeCare & Hospice of the Valley, P.O. Box 1474, Edwards, CO 81632 or to Leadville/Lake County Animal Shelter, 800 Harrison Ave., Leadville, CO 80461. Bailey-Kent Funeral Home of Leadville is assisting the family with arrangements.

The Needle: Headgear Edition

Capital Helmetshare: The rides used by Capital Bikeshare are sturdy and slow as a tank, but that doesn't mean they can't crash—and if they do, your head's just as vulnerable as it would be if you crashed Adrian Fenty's Colnago. So DDOT is giving out helmets to go along with the bikes. Like the bicycles and the Circulator buses, they'll be bright red. Also like the bikes, chances are they'll be snatched up already when you go looking for them; officials are only ordering a batch of 500 to start.

Turn The Page: The population of vaguely clueless teenagers wandering around the vicinity of the Capitol South Metro station will soon be declining; the House of Representatives has decided to close down the page program, eliminating the fleet of blue blazer-clad kids who tote press releases and other piles of paper around the Capitol complex, on the theory that email does that just as well. The $5 million tab for the program probably doomed the program, which the occasional affairs various lawmakers have had with pages over the years never quite managed to do.

Cash Rules Everything Around D.C.: Sure, the economy is in the process of completely falling apart again. But before the last few weeks, we had it pretty good here; personal income in the Washington area was up 3.7 percent from 2009 to 2010, with people making $323.5 billion, the fourth-highest income in the nation. New York-area residents made $1 trillion last year, but if it's any schadenfreude consolation, they probably also lost about that much in Monday's stock market crash.

Skating USA: Since the Washington Redskins moved to Maryland, RFK Stadium's been sort of a lonely place; the Nationals moved to their own ballpark a few years after making their debut, leaving D.C. United as the only permanent tenant in the old facility. Now a skate park will be part of the mix, too. The Maloof Money Cup, a pro skateboarding tournament, will alight on East Capitol Street the first weekend in September, and afterwards the skate course will be open to the public. No word on whether crumbling pieces of the stadium that happen to fall during the tournament will be official parts of the course.

Once the concerns are heard

Michelle Stevens said she plans to attend the meeting and do whatever is necessary to help get this C.O.P. off the ground.

Stevens, who has lived in the neighborhood 10 years, said the area has seen a rash of car break-ins and more obvious signs of drug use.

At the end of July, she found a used hypodermic needle on the ground.

"I think the dynamics of the neighborhood change a lot, depending on renters and how the housing market is doing," said Stevens, 37. "We have trending problems. The drug activity, I didn't realize we had."

The neighborhood is a victim of geography.

The line that separates city from county runs through the neighborhood, often making it difficult for police to determine if an incident is within their jurisdiction, Christian said.

To make sure the communication channel is clear, Christian contacted Baltimore County and city police for next week's meeting, in addition to 1st District Councilman Tom Quirk, from the county; and 8th District Councilwoman Helen Holton, from the city.

"Nobody knows if we're city or county," said Christian, who lives on Medwick Garth East. "Both parties need to be helpful here. It can't be just one or the other."

Christian admitted he is at the head of this project despite knowing that he and his wife, Michelle, may not be residents of the community much longer.

A student in the College of Notre Dame of Maryland's Leadership in Teaching master's degree program, Christian is unsure of where he will end up next.

Once the C.O.P. gets off the ground, Christian said he wants to hear the concerns of his neighbors.

"We know more or less what the problems are, but I know there are people in this community that want to say something," said Christian, a Spanish teacher at Our Lady of Good Counsel in Baltimore.

Once the concerns are heard, Christian said the group will begin assigning roles and assigning areas of responsibility.

"It's an immediate demand for the community," Christian said.

"We feel like our neighborhood is something worth defending."

Heroin user discovered sleeping in doorway

Police allegedly found a hypodermic needle, 10 empty baggies and a glass pipe in a woman’s purse after she was found sleeping in front of Ace Bail Bonds, 1317 Capouse Ave, Scranton, on Aug. 1.

Lauren Rae Yun, 18, listed as homeless, faces one charge of possession of a controlled substance and three counts of possession of drug paraphernalia for the alleged incident.

According to the affidavit:

A police officer arrived to the office Monday morning following a report of a woman sleeping in front of the doorway. After the officer woke her up and asked her why she was sleeping there, Yun allegedly told him that she was waiting for a ride.

The young woman told police she had no identification. When she was asked to look in her purse for something with her name on it, the officer spotted a hypodermic needle. Yun allegedly told the officer that the needle was for a heroin. She then confessed to having empty baggies of the drug. Officers also discovered a glass pipe in her purse.

Yun told the officer that she was trying to get help for her addictions, and she allegedly confessed to prostituting herself to support her drug habit.

Yun was arraigned on Aug. 1, and held for $1,000 bail. A preliminary hearing is set for Aug. 8.

Fishing for an Asian Carp Needle in a Haystack

The state and federal agencies who collectively participate in the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee have all gone fishin’ this week.  It may be August, but this isn’t a pleasure trip:  they are looking for live Asian carp in Lake Calumet after recent environmental DNA (“eDNA”) sampling has shown that some of the fish are likely present in the area.

Ramping up the conventional monitoring (fishing and netting) in Lake Calumet is a logical response to these positive eDNA results.  Short of poisoning every fish in Lake Calumet, there is not much else that the agencies could be doing at this point…  and I can understand the agencies’ not wanting to undertake (and spend money on) another fish poisoning operation at this stage.

The problem, though, is that the Regional Coordinating Committee once again talking about this fishing operation like it is somehow going to prove whether live Asian carp are present in the area.  As I’ve blogged about in the past, the Army Corps and other agencies have frequently downplayed, or written off entirely, the significance of positive eDNA results in an apparent effort to convince the public that they have the invasion under control.

These agencies should know better, though, because both Government experts (such as Duane Chapman of USGS) and outside experts (such as University of Notre Dame Professor David Lodge) have said that the conventional monitoring techniques are unlikely to succeed in catching Asian carp in the Chicago waterway system when they are present only in small numbers – and that eDNA is a better tool for determining whether carp are present.

As John Dettmers of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission recently pointed out in a live chat sponsored by the Detroit Free Press (I imagine John was typing fast, which explains the two typos):

    I think that the Asian carp that have been caught in Lake Erie were caught essentially by luck. We know that conventional fishing gear is very ineifficeint [sic] when trying to colelct [sic] Asian carp when only a few are present. Nevertheless, fishing gear does capture Asian carp now and then, as happen[ed] last July in Lake Calumet.

In other words, fishing for Asian carp in the Chicago waterway system is kind of like using a pitchfork to search for a needle in a haystack.

It’s true that the eDNA results, without more, cannot tell you exact number or location of carp that are being detected, but the only plausible explanation for explaining the positive eDNA hits is the presence of some live Asian carp in the Chicago waterway system.  Although a number of other possible explanations have been offered to explain the positive eDNA results, I agree with David Lodge’s view:  none of those alternative explanations seem plausible, much less likely, given the overall pattern of positive results that has been detected.

Red Bluff woman arrested on drug charges after traffic stop

A 51-year-old Red Bluff woman was arrested after deputies allegedly found drug paraphernalia in her pants and crystal methamphetamine in her bra, the Tehama County Sheriff’s Office reported today.

Connie Louise Damon was booked into the Tehama County Jail and charged with possession of a controlled substance, transportation of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of hypodermic syringes, and concealing evidence.

Her bail is $37,000.

Early Saturday, Damon was driving a gray Dodge pickup at Baker and Monocito roads when sheriff’s deputies stopped the truck.

Damon’s passenger, 48-year-old Andrew Jewel Fitzwater of Red Bluff, was wanted for a parole violation and arrested, the sheriff’s office reported.

Deputies then spoke to Damon before searching the truck. During the search, they allegedly located two glass methamphetamine pipes and several hypodermic syringes.

According to deputies who made the stop, Damon said she also had a glass methamphetamine pipe in her pants and methamphetamine in her bra.

The pipe and two baggies containing 0.8 grams of crystal meth also were found, deputies said.

Fitzwater is being held in jail without bail.