A little d'oh!

Matthew Rothschild of the Progressive points out that the Pat Robertson fiasco poses a couple of problems for Bush et al.

"Robertson's assassination call not only created a PR headache for Bush, but a policy one: it's now all the more difficult for the administration to take Chavez out."

Don'tchya hate it when your friends spill the beans too early?

And a few more d'ohs are going on in Iraq right now as even the remarkably irrelevant Arab League is coming out as critical of the new constitutional charter. Blathering on about how it fails to maintain the "Arab" character of the country. Which it does have a point. The new constitution gives a lot more power to the Kurds in the north and the Shia in the south who have some ties with Iran. Which has prompted what I think is probably the most amusing case of strange political bedfellows.

In one of the main Sunni protest marches, in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's home town, demonstrators carried pictures of the imprisoned deposed dictator as well as Muqtada Sadr and chanted slogans against the "Zionist, American, Iranian constitution".

Bear in mind first, that al-Sadr's father was killed by Saddam Hussein and is hardly an ally of the former dictator. And, well, the Zionist, American, Iranian tripartite is amusing as hell. Though if you're an Arab from the region that does represent the three major hegemones, so not quite as bizarre as it sounds.

But Bush has got to be (or should be) a bit concerned by this conundrum:

President Jalal Talabani, Iraq's President, a Kurd, appeared to concede that a rejection at the referendum may well take place. "If they [Sunni voters] do participate, then the constitution will probably fail and new elections will have to take place to create a new drafting committee to come up with a new constitution," he said.

So, if they support democracy and voting and all that, the constitution goes down the tube and they've got nothing. And if they don't, well, then, you know, not much democracy.

But then, have we really expected that at all anyway?

Not to brag or anything...

I was just a little excited today to get a big envelope in the mail from the University of Edinburgh containing last November's issue of Holy Land Studies as it contains a review essay I wrote, as well as a book review.

It's so cool when you see your name in print.

The power of estrogen

Wonderful report from ISM today about how 450 women, many from the Women in Black conference (which a friend of mine is attending and may have even been a part of this!) turned up in the Palestinian town of Bil'in to help them with their longstanding peaceful protest against the Apartheid Wall. Here is Greta B.'s report:

More than 450 international women arrived in Bil'in on Monday, August 16 to participate in an action against the Apartheid wall being built on the land of the village. Many of us came from the International Women in Black conference that was being held in Jerusalem, many came from other organizations in support of the demonstration.

But the most remarkable aspect of the event was to see over 100 Palestinian women join us. We walked down the dusty path to the heavily-armed soldiers standing behind their plastic shields, their riot gear and guns in stark contrast to our black shirts with the big purple flower on the front, the symbol for the conference.

The shocked look on their faces as 450 of us came up and over the last hill was recorded by dozens of video and still cameras. They simply didn't know what to do with that much estrogen facing them. The soldiers tried to spread out to cover all the angles in front of a destroyed home, but they couldn't stretch far enough, and more than a dozen Palestinian women got behind them, dancing and singing and clapping.

Many of us yelled at the soldiers, telling them we were ashamed of their behavior. One Jewish woman kept shouting, I'm ashamed of you. I'm ashamed of what you are doing, and you're not doing this in my name. As we moved closer to them, trying to push back the barbed wire, the soldiers all got on their cell phones and pulled out a video camera. And there we were, many of us, photographing the soldiers photographing us.

Suddenly, the Palestinian women began to sing, as we clapped. Then we began to sing "We Shall Overcome" as they clapped. Back and forth in Arabic, English and Italian came the songs. Even if we didn't know the words, we sang anyhow. For almost an hour, the demonstration was magic.

Then the Palestinian women pushed back through the soldiers and onto our side of them, one young woman shoving the soldier aside, then brushing herself off in disgust. The Palestinian organizers told us it was time to leave, and we began to straggle back up the hot, dusty road to the buses. Sure enough, just as the last of the women rounded the corner, the Israeli army began shooting tear gas at the Palestinian boys who had tagged along with us. But for that day, we peaceful women won that battle, looking into the faces of soldiers that were young enough to
be our sons and grandsons.

They will never forget the force that came up over the hill at them.

Reading of late

Well, I'm still not feeling all that great and spending a good portion of my day in bed or the recliner (a bacterial infection in my right index finger, of all places, hasn't helped). But, my brain is at least working a bit more and my boyfriend is busy using my computer these days for his website so I thought I'd try reading a bit.

I can't remember what prompted me to pick this book off the shelf in the first place, but I started out with Huston Smith's Why Religion Matters. Smith is a well-known academic in the field of comparative religion, though he takes pains to say that in this book he is trying to write on a more popular level. Actually, it's more of an emotional rant by someone who is clearly annoyed by materialism. Not the Madonna "Material Girl" type (well, okay, sorta), but those who find no need for the belief in a spiritual world. While an evangelical belief in materialism can be dangerous, Smith feels the need to refute their belief system with this book. Why oh why? While I may not be someone who shares the material world view, and at times do feel annoyed with those who are zealous to dismiss my spiritual beliefs or insist that science is all there in a way that marginalizes my experience, I do not at all feel threatened by atheists or scientists. I probably should have given him a longer listen but by page 69 when he said "There is no institution today that has the power to say to science, Stand back; that's my turf you're poaching on" (Italics his) I couldn't take anymore of his illogical and unfair diatribe.

Huh? Doesn't religion do that every freekin' single day?

So, that's when I closed the book and put it back on the shelf. A few days before I had been reading an Alternet article about the debate over how much religion should play a role in the Democratic Party and was puzzled by the extremely negative response from those who were non-religious. They were people who had clearly been attacked by those religious in the past but in our enlightened society I found it hard to imagine who would. Smith's book made me understand.

Reading the New York Times articles about being the patient made me feel frisky enough to pull out Michel Foucault's The Birth of the Clinic. But, I only got a chapter or so in before I felt, um, less frisky. That one is going to take some time and some notecards.

What about a novel? I did read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets a month or so ago (yes, I'm hopelessly behind the times) but after giant snakes and spiders, I needed something a little less...um...creepy. So, I picked up Barbara Kingslover's brilliant book, The Poisonwood Bible off my shelf. I can't say it's any less creepy, but it's in a different way. The story is about a family of Baptist missionaries from Georgia who go to bring the Word of God (whatever that is) to the Congo in 1960 as told through the wife and four daughters of the misogynist, racist, clueless minister. I'm about half-way into it so far and omg, it's just so amazing! Great, great writing. Great characters. Great plot (I wake up each morning thinking about how I can't wait to read more!). And just like Harry Potter, it's giving me nightmares.

There are a few little quibbles of her portrayal of Baptists that I sorta have. Like when she has Leah mention "purgatory" (Baptists do NOT believe in purgatory and wouldn't even be thinking it). There are a couple of other actions that kind of sound a bit Catholic also and make me wonder if she's just borrowed things she's heard from Catholics for her Baptist characters. But, I'm being pedantic.

Favorite lines at the moment:

"My father wears his faith like the bronze breastplate of God's foot soldiers, while our mother's is more like a good cloth coat with a secondhand fit." (p. 68)

"If it catches you in the wrong frame of mind, the King James Bible can make you want to drink poison in no uncertain terms." (p. 192)

Beacon of democracy?

If Dick Cheney dressing like a terrorist isn't enough, now we've got Pat Robertson saying we should assassinate duly elected heads of state.

All part of making the world safe for democracy and stuff.

How to tell if a politician is a terrorist

So, I posted an annoyed post at SRS about an AP/Yahoo News headline that screamed "Terrorists may pose as homeless" and pointed out that it was incredibly irresponsible. One of our contributors, Ed Deluzian, posted a link to Chris Moss' blog where he had a link to this picture. Notice that Dick Cheney is wearing a heavy jacket in freekin' hot 100 degree Crawford, TX. Now, one of the (false) reasons given for shooting Brazilian-national Jean Charles de Menzeses in the Tube last month was that he was wearing an unseasonably warm jacket in the middle of summer and they thought he might be a suicide bomber hiding explosives.

Right. So, if he dresses like a terrorist, and acts like a terrorists, should we assume that Dick Cheney is a terrorist? You know, ducks and quacking and all that.

Waiting

Another interesting article on "Being the patient" in the New York Times today.

I love how the doctor who's mother broke her hip had his epiphany about how infuriating doctors can be came from his experience with an orthopedic surgeon. That one made me laugh as it would have to be an orthopedist. Now, I'm sure there are probably some very nice orthopedic surgeons. But, well, I have never met them. Indeed, a friend of mine says that if you like cutting people off in traffic with your Lexus SUV while talking on your cell phone and flipping people off, you too can have a profitable career as an orthopedist.

But the focus of this article was on waiting. You know, all that time you spend reading old issues of Good Housekeeping or Newsweek while waiting for the doctor.

In one study, Dr. Steven M. Asch, a health care researcher at the RAND Corporation and the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System and his colleagues observed that 40 percent of emergency room patients waited longer than an hour to see a doctor.

You mean 60 percent do see them within an hour?

As you might imagine I have my own horror stories about waiting in the ER or doctor's office. And as you might also imagine, my orthopedist had less than stellar bedside manners. However, I actually felt that the article was being a bit unfair to doctors. While they did mention that insurance companies are reimbursing doctors less so they are under a lot of pressure to see more patients, I find that most of my doctors run late because they want to spend the time with each patient that they need to. Frankly, I always feel badly for them. Very long days spent trying to figure out complex problems. Interacting with people who may or may not be cooperative. And loads and loads of paperwork. A never ending stream of reports and charts and insurance forms. And this article really didn't give any idea about how to fix the problem. Well, unless you were the woman from Beverly Hills who could pay an extra $1800 a year on top of her insurance to see a doctor who limits her practice.

My clinic is part of the Multnomah County Health Department. County health departments are notorious for poor care, yet I find my clinic to have some of the most caring staff possible. My wait in the waiting room was only about 5 minutes. My wait in the examining room was a bit longer -- about 45 minutes. The doctor still had two or three more patients before me, despite the fact that it was time for my appointment. While my appointment yesterday was pretty straightforward, it's not uncommon for him to spend a half an hour with me even though the appointment is only suppose to last 15 minutes.

I think the issue is that both patients and doctors are struggling in this mess we call health care in America.

Funny thing I heard on the way to the doctor's office

A 20-something guy with a sheepish grin on his face, talking into his cell phone saying, "I, uh, bought another hearse today."

Being Orientalized

No, I'm not talking about the Middle East here, but rather what it's like to be a patient. A few years back as I talked to my godfather about what it's been like to be a patient at various points throughout my life, he suddenly exclaimed to me, "it's like you've been Orientalized!" As Middle East specialists, we were both familiar with Edward Said's argument that the Orient (aka the Middle East) was a concept that Europeans created and shaped in such a way so that those indigenious to the Orient were not able to define themselves. Being a patient can be a lot like that. You are a concept. An object to be defined in a such a way that you often have little say in defining who you are.

The New York Times is doing a series on "Being the patient" right now. Today's piece talked about the assualt to one's identity that takes place when you become the patient.

Entering the medical system, whether a hospital, a nursing home or a clinic, is often degrading...The small courtesies that help lubricate and dignify civil society are neglected precisely when they are needed most, when people are feeling acutely cut off from others and betrayed by their own bodies.

Oh yeah. Except we don't think about it. We don't ever talk about how profoundly objectified we become as patients. The loss of the Self that occurs as you become a chart. A person who becomes defined by their illness or condition. Another problem to figure out in 8 minutes before you move to the next.

"...The deeper psychological transformation from citizen to patient that occurs in almost any medical setting can be more jarring, and anthropologists say it begins immediately at admission.

A clerk, often distracted, often sitting behind glass, hands out confusing forms that demand detailed personal information. The newly designated "patient" then strips to underwear and puts on a flimsy hospital gown, open at the back, a humiliating uniform that often bears the name of the institution.

The psychological dynamics of this identity change have evolved little since the 1950's, when the sociologist Erving Goffman detailed the depredations of life inside a mental institution in his classic book, "Asylums."

After a patient's admission, Dr. Goffman observed, a kind of psychological contamination occurs. In normal life, people can keep intimate things like ailments, thoughts and their bodies to themselves. In an institution like a hospital, "these territories of the self are violated," he wrote. "The boundary that the individual places between his being and the environment is invaded and the embodiments of the self profaned."

Frankly, that last line made me burst into tears from a lifetime of feeling that my Self has been profoundly profaned in the health care system.

Not that I haven't had health care professionals who have also made me feel profoundly human. A nurse who understood my keen desire to have my hair washed after a week of being in and out of the hospital and not only washed it, but lent me her comb. My D.O. who refuses to become part of many HMO networks because that would mean having to see more patients, who he would then have less time to see. My physical therapist who offered to give me money for gas to make sure I had enough to get home.

It is not that doctors are monsters or intend to be assholes (at least not most of them). It's just that while our system of medicine has produced amazing results in healing broken and sick bodies, it has come at an almost Faustian cost to the Self.

Let them eat white, irridated bread

I remember a few years back I was at a New Year's Eve party where a woman was talking about her trip to India. She talked about how it made her appreciate just what an affluent society we live in. "I mean, even our poor people are fat," she exclaimed. What I thought at the time but didn't say was that it is our poor people who are fat. Poor people don't have the money to spend on healthy food. And they are often working far too much to cook.

What was then just a feeling I had as a fat girl who grew up on food stamps (and lives on them again, along with disability) is now the findings of a study from the University of California at Davis.

Our results show that most people had access to healthier foods, though there was sporadic availability of some healthier items in lower-income neighborhoods. The healthier market basket was more expensive by about $32 to $41 due to higher costs of whole grains, lean ground beef, and skinless poultry. This higher cost is equal to about 35 percent to 40 percent of low-income consumers’ food budgets. (Italics mine)

The study goes on to point out what I know all too well: good bread with real fiber costs two to three times as much as the cheap-ass stuff. Chicken or beef without the fat is also more expensive. A variety of vegetables are often not available. And don't even get me started about organic produce. (Apparently it's okay for the poor to die of toxic overload.)

I can't say that I know the solution to this. I often wonder about putting taxes on unhealthy foods to subsidize healthier ones, though that is also unfair to the poor. But I do think that Americans need to the look long and hard about our relationship with food. And that includes how much we work, keeping us from being able to cook healthy meals.

Whatever happened to Golden Tickets?

The other day my sister and I took my nieces to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. While watching Charlie find the Golden Ticket in a Willy Wonka chocolate bar, we munched on a box of Red Vines. Amidst the raspberry twists was a laminated game piece screaming, "Win a trip for 4 to anywhere in the USA!" To see if I was an instant winner, I was instructed to visit their website.

So this afternoon, I wandered on over to see if the jumble of letters and numbers on my game piece would be sending me and three others across the country. The first thing they wanted from me was my email address and birthday. I gave them my email address, but a fake birthday that still had me over 18 years of age and therefore eligible for the prize. Then I clicked to the next page and they wanted me to fill in my name, address, phone number -- all of which was mandatory.

Er...I don't think so.

If you go to the website of the makers of Red Vines, the American Licorice Company, you can't find out their address. Or email. Or even who started the company in 1914 (isn't the passive voice great?). In fact, I found in the F.A.Q section that you can't even take a tour of their candy factory.

No Golden Ticket. No tours. But they'll take a lot of your personal information.

Music meme

My dear friend Annie has tagged me for a music meme in which you're supposed to list the ten songs that you're listening to currently or most into at the moment. I remember as I read her post I was thinking, "oh gosh, I have no idea what I'd put if I was tagged for this meme." But then, lo and behold, she had tagged me. :)

The problem is this: I have not yet entered the twenty-first century and gotten myself an iPod, so I don't really listen to songs so much as CDs. I did have several play lists on my laptop. But, alas, the screen on my sweet little laptop was broken in June when the lady who comes to help me with laundry and stuff once a week tripped over the ethernet and power cords dangling from it while it sat on the table next to my recliner (I like to be able to move it to the bed, the recliner, and the desk). I'm using my dad's laptop as he's not been using it and for some reason the cross-over cable isn't working to transfer all my music from my laptop to the new one.

So, anyway, I'm going to list the last ten CDs I've played.

Presidents of the United States of America We were eating peaches the other day, so I had to play the Peaches song for A, as well as the Kitty song.

Best of the Beatles 1967-1970 Lots of favorites on here.

Lammas Ladymass by Anonymous 4. This is a 13th and 14th century English chant and polyphony in honor of the Holy Mother. As it's the fast of her Dormition, this seemed like a nice CD to play. Plus it has that cold, stone monastery feel to it that is nice on a hot day.

Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church by the choir at St. Vladimir Seminary in New York. I was too tired/weak to make it to Divine Liturgy on Sunday and though the CD is sooooo not a replacement, at least it was something familiar to listen to. Though one interesting thing I noted was that they chant the Beatitudes on the CD, and I don't ever remember hearing that during Divine Liturgy, both at the Orthodox Church or at my Byzantine Catholic parish.

Paraklesis chanted by Eikona. This service is traditionally chanted during the fast and feast of the Dormition, as well as during times of illness and distress. I've talked about it in a couple of posts before, particularly here.

New Beginning by Tracy Chapman. Sometimes you just get into a Tracy Chapman sort of mood.

A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band by Rich Mullins. Growing up Evangelical I went through my various CCM phases -- Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Petra, etc. I grew out of just about all CCM except Rich Mullins. While I often cringe at the cheesy ways the songs have been produced, the lyrics are amazing. Indeed as I listened to this CD on Sunday, I cried when I listened to "Hold Me, Jesus" -- "surrender don't come natural to me/I'd rather fight you for something I don't really want/than to take what you give and I need." That's been me lately. I've also been thinking of a line from his song "What Susan Said" from World as Best as I Remember It Vol.II "...and their skin's so sweaty they both get stuck to the old black vinyl seat..." Cause, you know, it's summer and hot.

The Queen is Dead by the Smiths. A., being a good Manc, is a huge City fan, as well as a big Smiths fan. One of the fun things about getting to know each other has been being exposed to each other's music. And, well, Morrisey is starting to really grow on me.

Best of Kirsty MacCall. Another musician to whom A. brought my attention. She has a really cute song on this CD called "There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis."

Night and Day: Cole Porter Songbook. You know, a good CD to put on when you're having a nice dinner.

And while it was more than 10 CDs back since I last listened to it, I've had a couple of songs from the Indigo Girls' CD, Shaming the Sun, in my head lately. Like, "Shame on You" and "Take out the Map." You can listen to a really cool interview with Emily Saliers and her dad who's a pastor, over at Sojourners.

I'll have to think about who to tag for this one. I'll update you in a bit. ;)

Update: Tagging Tammy (who I already told that I was tagging her and responded before I had a chance to post it here), Nathan, and Susan. :)

A plague o' both your houses

One of the things that has always bothered me about the debate regarding Iraq for the last 15 years has been the bipolar fashion in which it has existed. It's either you support the U.S. or you support Saddam Hussein.

A story in today's Times (London) reminds me of why I always rejected this binary approach. "A British cow that died in an Oxfordshire field in 1937 has emerged as the source of Saddam Hussain's 'weapons of mass destruction' programme that led to the Iraq war." The ear of this cow was sent to an English lab and then a culture of the anthrax that killed the cow was sent to the United States where it was then sold to Saddam Hussein in the late 1980s while he was still our ally fighting a war with Iran. Indeed, a congressional investigation even found the invoices of the sale.

Saddam Hussein was an evil guy in the 1980s when we sold him the anthrax. When Donald Rumsfeld was shaking hands with him. When we expected him him to be moral in the 1990s while he and us starved his people and withheld the medication doctors needed to treat the cancers caused by our depleted uranium bombs.

Both of us are to blame for the disaster that is Iraq today. Not one or the other. Both.

Lord have mercy.

(Cross-posted at Sollicitudo Rei Socialis)

There's still hope...

Just got back from the doctor's office, and what I thought was going to be an exercise in futility was actually a bit productive. He gave me a prescription for Tegretol, another anti-convulsant, and said that he had another one he might add to that if it's not effective enough. And the best part is -- it's covered by the Oregon Health Plan so I won't be paying a couple of hundred bucks a month to buy drugs illegally from some online Canadian pharmacy!

So, I guess it's a good thing the Neurontin stopped working. :)

Granted, I've still gotta see if the Tegretol works, but I have a bit more hope than I did two hours ago.

And it was nice to have some good news today after finding out this morning when I met with my caseworker at Ageing and Disability Services that when I move into subsidized housing I'm going to lose $40-$60 in Food Stamps. Arrggghh! How do those guys in Washington expect ya to live on so little??

Not Christ's way

War is now, always has been, and always will be bad, bad news. I was there. I saw real war. Those who have seen real war will bear me out. I assure you, it is not of Christ. It is not Christ’s way. There is no way to conduct real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus. There is no way to train people for real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus.

The morality of the balance of terrorism is a morality that Christ never taught. The ethics of mass butchery cannot be found in the teachings of Jesus. In Just War ethics, Jesus Christ, who is supposed to be all in the Christian life, is irrelevant. He might as well never have existed. In Just War ethics, no appeal is made to him or his teaching, because no appeal can be made to him or his teaching, for neither he nor his teaching gives standards for Christians to follow in order to determine what level of slaughter is acceptable.

So the world is watching today. Ethical hairsplitting over the morality of various types of instruments and structures of mass slaughter is not what the world needs from the church, although it is what the world has come to expect from the followers of Christ. What the world needs is a grouping of Christians that will stand up and pay up with Jesus Christ. What the world needs is Christians who, in language that the simplest soul could understand, will proclaim: the follower of Christ cannot participate in mass slaughter. He or she must love as Christ loved, live as Christ lived and, if necessary, die as Christ died, loving ones enemies.

From a speech given on the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima by Geoge Zabelka, the priest and Air Force chaplain who blessed the pilots who dropped the bomb. He later repented and embraced non-violence as the true Christian response to war. You can read his full speech here.

White blood cells and chimp medicine

CFIDS has been in the news a bit lately because of a new discovery regarding gene patterns and white blood cells in CFIDS patients. First Reuters reported the findings of Jonathan Kerr at St. George's Hospital in London that there were abnormalities in the gene expression in white blood cells of CFIDS (CFS) patients. That report was followed the next day by a piece in New Scientist which clarified a bit more about Kerr's findings. Though I was annoyed by the fact that they said CFIDS was a lot like a bad hangover (it's worse than that), they did explain that,

One of these gene products, EIF4G1, is involved in protein production in mitochondria. It is hijacked by some viruses, so cells may compensate by ramping up gene expression. "I am excited by the paper," says Basant Puri, a CFS expert at Hammersmith Hospital in London. "The group's finding of upregulation of EIF4G1 is consistent with subclinical persistent viral infection."

This fits in with the idea that CFS is sometimes triggered by viruses such as Epstein-Barr, Q fever, enteroviruses and parvovirus B19. "CFS often begins with a flu-like illness which never goes away," Kerr says.

Of the other genes whose expression varies in CFS patients, some are involved in regulating the activity of the immune system. Others play important roles in nerve cells, including a gene called NTE, which codes for an enzyme affected by organophosphates and nerve gases.

Then on Tuesday the New York Times, a mere week and a half late, had their own story about Kerr's findings, which concurred with the quote above.

The findings are consistent with previous work showing that patients with chronic fatigue syndrome have activated immune systems, showing increased numbers of T-cells and other germ-fighting bodies.

The genes appear to induce blood changes symptomatic of a wide variety of disorders, which may help explain why the symptoms of the syndrome are so varied.

This is all well and good and interesting, of course. Unfortunately it's not very helpful at the moment. Tomorrow I meet with the M.D. at my clinic in charge of my pain medication to explain that the Neurontin is no longer working. That my neuropathic pain appears to be related to some sort of immune system response as it's when I'm feverish or battling some viral infection that the pain increases. I'm hoping that he'll be able to offer me something more than the methadone he tried last Fall. But, as pessimistic as it sounds, I'm half expecting the blank stare and sigh that end most of my appointments.

Can I also just say that if I see one more news article about CFIDS that starts out with something like "now science is showing the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome isn't just 'all in your head'" I'm going to frickin' scream. Science has shown that for the last 15-20 years now for cryin' out loud! Do a freekin' MEDLINE search already!

At least chimps seem to know how to heal themselves. According to a story in the Independent yesterday, primatologists have observed chimps eating certain plants when they are sick which they realized were plants used by the locals to treat malaria and certain stomach disorders. It's led some to believe that by observing how animals self-medicate, humans may be able to discover new drugs. Others think it might not be quite that simple. One biologist, Cindy Engel, believes that animals rely far more on avoidance and prevention.

"Animals don't use drugs the way we do," she says. "They are constantly monitoring how they feel and adapting their behaviour, so they're only going to resort to strong, potentially toxic drugs when all else has failed."

Which is a lot like what they tell you to do when you have CFIDS. Though, it's because they don't know what drug may help you that adapting behavior, i.e. pacing, becomes the primary way of managing the disease.

Hmm...maybe I should be seeing a chimp instead of a doctor. ;)