BMG'er, all-around blog guy and author Frederick Clarkson is apparently in the hospital:
Frederick Clarkson, who has been writing comments and diaries at Daily Kos for the past five years, is in the Cardiac ICU at Bay State Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts. He's recovering from a serious operation to remove a spray of blot clots from a lung and a clot in his right leg.
And, despite this, once again demonstrating why he is one of my favorite people, he's in good spirits (helped by a morphine drip) and joking with the nursing staff. He had an exclusive comment for all of us, delivered via his good friend and fellow Kossack, Jonathan Hutson:
“Fight on for a public option, Kossacks. Everybody should be able to receive the kind of expert, quality care that has saved my life.”
Right on. Get well, Fred.
Discuss
5 Comments . Comments are closed.get well soon Frederick Clarkson
from a fellow son of western mass ...out beyond the MBTA, west of Worcester, among the rolling hills, the Mt Holyoke Range, across the oxbow, a stone's throw from my first home town.
Thanks for letting us all know!
Fred is a pleasure to know and communicate with. I will keep him in my prayers. I can't "do" anything else, and even cold science demonstrates that prayers, even for those who don't know they are on the receiving end, help.
Prayer and More prayer research
Best wishes, Fred!
A true progressive voice, never afraid to cry out in the wilderness!
Cold science?
A.) Fred is an interesting guy and I wish him the best of health. Get well soon, Fred.
B.) Given the topics Fred writes on, I don't think he'd mind discussing the efficacy of prayer and healing.
The Harvard Prayer study of 2005 shows not only that prayer did not help cardiac patients, but patients that were told they were being prayed for experienced more complications.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s... http://freethoughtpedia.com/wi...
The first article that you link to is a blog post, not peer-reviewed science. The second study is very intertwined with touch therapy - It states that "The researchers found no significant differences among the treatment groups in the primary composite endpoint." Meaning that people who were not prayed for had about the same outcome of people who were prayed for. Also the second article notes that "the lowest absolute death rates observed in patients treated with both prayer and bedside MIT [touch therapy]". This could suggest that prayer is useless in healing of these patients when not combined with MIT touch therapy. But it probably doesn't since, again, there were no significant differences amongst the groups. The article goes on to admit:
So basically the article is saying that there is no significant difference in health between patients prayed for or not prayed for and that that people feel less pre-procedural stress with the use of music, imagery, and touch.
This makes me believe that "cold science demonstrates that prayers help" is not an accurate statement.
Thank you for letting us know!
Fred, you've got all my good wishes. I know you are far too smart and stubborn to let this keep you down!
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