Thoughts of a retired physician

In the eight days since the election of 2024, Donald Trump (DJT hereinafter) has flexed his flabby brain and looks to be installing what will be both a kakistocracy and a plutocracy to replace our existing government. My phone pings almost hourly with a parade of incompetent clowns who DJT proposes to put in a cabinet of total Trump loyalists, sycophants to the core. How to write about this is dismayingly hard but I decided that it needed the same approach as eating en elephant (yeah, I know, horrible example). That is, one bite at a time. Because I am a retired Navy O-6 (who spent 4 years in the Army Reserve before going on active duty in the Navy), my first bite is the idea of Pete Hegseth as nominee for the Secretary of Defense. He has impressive education credentials, a BA from Princeton and an MPP from Harvard. He joined the Minnesota National Guard as an infantry officer and is a combat veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So far, in my book, nothing extraordinary. It i

  The 2024 elections are now less than four months away. I doubt that any of my Facebook or Twitter (I refuse to call it X) followers are unaware of my thoughts about what this election means or which candidates I support. I repost daily a number of political cartoons to call attention to the idea that at all levels, we elect people who support liberal ideas and policies: freedom of speech; freedom of religion (including all religions and protecting those who have no religious beliefs); freedom of the press; freedom of assembly; separation of church and state; and the right to due process and equality under law for all; ensuring the right to vote for all citizens. Government has evolved since 1789 and in the complicated world of today must be engaged with the economy, protecting private property while dealing with the inequality that has flowed from the underlying and continuing inequality we have lived with for centuries. I support Kamala Harris and whoever her running mate turns out

  I am preparing a Current Events session for our group at MonteCedro on the continuing war in Gaza. We discussed this in the fall of last year when it started but it has become obvious that an update is (sadly) necessary. The death toll in Gaza has passed 32,000 but as the New York Times notes, it is likely much higher than that.   “ Gaza has become a 140-square-mile graveyard, each destroyed building another jagged tomb for those still buried within.” I have read through numerous accounts from a wide variety of news sources. The Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 was unprecedented, barbaric, and horrible: 1143 dead, 250+ hostages taken, rapes and sexual assaults. Israel’s response was predictable but equally horrible in its consequences. Dead: 32,000 and counting. Wounded: many, many thousands more. Gaza became a major humanitarian crisis overnight with forced evacuations from Gaza City to the south followed by an air and land assault of immense size. Famine looms, especially threaten

  As an infectious diseases physician, I have read widely about the history of development of antibiotics in the 20th century. One of my favorite books is The Mold in Dr. Florey’s Coat: The Story of the Penicillin Miracle by Eric Lax. The stories in the history of medicine are fascinating and this one is no exception, as good as any novel you might pick up. Penicillin has been in clinical use since World War II; the emergence and prevalence of resistance to it has diminished its utility but it remains the premier drug to treat a long-standing human scourge – syphilis. The long story of syphilis itself is another engrossing tale. Treponema pallidum met its match with penicillin. Cures now number in the uncounted millions worldwide. Although there are reports of gene mutations in T. pallidum related to penicillin resistance no documented penicillin resistance has been reported .  After my Navy career I was the medical director for the sexually transmitted diseases clinics for the Chic