Thursday, January 27, 2005

Dumb Over

A couple of things have occupied my mind in the last day or so. Dumbness has sort of featured in both and now I feel righteously filled with the urge to campaign ... well, enough so, at least, to sound the clarion.

Yesterday afternoon I was wracking my brain for something to write about. I have been far too slack in keeping this blog up to date and part of the reason is my unbounded capacity for laziness and procrastination. It would help if I could only lighten up a bit and wax lyrical about the mundane things of life. But, for the time being, that is a step too daring for me to contemplate.

However if the determination to find a thing is strong enough then finding is pretty much a matter of course. I reached the last day of a course of antibiotics yesterday. I had been prescribed them for an infection around a wisdom tooth that should've been a distant memory but wasn't, mainly for reasons that have more to do with a healthy suspicion of dentistry skills than with cowardice. The drug came as massive dispersible tablets in foil blister-packs of three. At three times per day I had seven days supply. I kept them in the fridge; I cannot think of a good reason why. I just did.

When I removed the final day's supply from the carton I noticed the manufacturer's blurb leaflet laying around sulkily at the base of the box. It seemed as though it was reproaching me for my cavalier disregard of its edifying contents. Useful stuff, no doubt. Golden nuggest of wisdom like: not to be inserted anally and may cause drowsiness, do not fly commercial jet-liners if affected.

Knowing that such printed matter offers rich grounds for one with a sardonic sense of humour, I carefully peeled it open while I waited for my horse pill to disperse into the water. (I had previously marvelled at this dispersing. It definitely did not dissolve. Without a hint of effervescence the things just sort of boiled away into the liquid until the had formed and impenetrable fog around themselves at which point some agitation is required to encourage further dispersing to occur. Being an inveterate worrier of the trivially inane I wondered whether the active ingredients were the finely divided material that formed the main suspension or if -- as I suspected -- the drugs were mostly to be found in the heavier particles that remained stuck to the sides of the glass after all the liquid had been consumed. One fact seems indisputable. There is no anti-paranoia medication in those pills.

With such an involuted degree of concern for materials science -- rather than with the more wordly concerns of a patient who might wish to find out what to do in the event of breaking out all over in hives and itchy rashes -- I was nevertheless ill-prepared for advice at the level of those to be found, allegedly, on the toothpicks supplied by some restaurants.

As most of us know, antibiotics can upset the normal composure of one's bowels. Not to put to fine a point on it, antibiotics can give one the shits. But as the leaflet spelled out the potential disorders of bowel behaviour I noticed, with a savage kind of glee, that the anonymous writer had lapsed into dumbed-down langauage. (It is more likely that the leaflet was co-written by a committee that met dozens of times and had numerous interim consultations with governmental and non-government organisations before arriving at its final draft.)

In the UK the correct medical term for shit has for decades been that old stalwart: stool. But now, it seems, in a farcical attempt to sieze the intellectual high ground while tossing a casual nod towards the ill-educated plebs, that shit is now to be known as: faeces (otherwise known as poo)

I couldn't make it up!

It also doesn't really make much of a blog entry.

And then I got to thinking about dumbing down again later on when I was reading a blog I like a lot. Sharon's Blog has been a must read for me for the last several months. Over those months I have grown to know her and her family; some of her posts have made me weep, sometimes in sadness, others with joy.

Yesterday evening, after my frivolous musings over the naming of poo, I read Sharon's latest entry about her youngest son who has a number of challenging differences ranging from a form of autism to hearing loss. Sharon is having trouble getting her local education system to meet her son's needs. And this isn't right. She lives in the USA, and it seems cruel and senseless that the richest nation on earth can't manage to run an education system with equality and fairness as its byword.

More to the point I find I am now wondering about the whole MMR vaccine debate that has been boiling up a storm here in the UK for several years. The furore has been flaring up here from time to time since it first hit the tabloid's front pages in 1997. Though proof that MMR causes autism remains elusive the taint has led a high percentage of parents to shun the triple vaccine, there being no compulsion to have it.

Thus far, as a parent who submitted all of mine to MMR in the early 1980's, I have tended to come down squarely on the side of the medical and government arguments for MMR. The anti-brigade, to my way of thinking, were simply foolish Luddites who risk the health of their children from the unnecessary dangers of measles as well as the health of the unborn children of their relatives, friends and neighbors through rubella and mumps.

It's a no-brainer. At least ... I thought it was. I am no longer nearly so confident that MMR is safe. I mean it is adminstered to little kids whose moms still sterilise bottles and teats. Huh? I mean seriously ... huh?

At least one search result I found indicates medical researchh in to hearing loss and MMR has been conducted. Below is brief list of the kind of advice to be found on the internet.

So, while I continue to moulder, (and I have no illusions as to how many come here actually to read this erratic conceit that passes for witty journalism) please take a moment to visit with Sharon and maybe leave her a message of support.

Trillian's own words. 5:01 PM