Senator Tim Johnson Update

Via Raw Story, a South Dakota TV station reports doctors predict a long recovery for Mr. Johnson, who has been sedated since December 13th. I know from my dad's case that being sedated for even a week leads to loss of the abilities to speak and swallow, and those are hard to relearn. All those muscles must be rebuilt and reconnected.

Football Round-Up

BBC: Liverpool 3-0 Bolton: The hosts take the lead on the hour when Jermaine Pennant's cross is turned in by Peter Crouch
A report in London's Evening Standard says that Fulham, who have already tendered an offer to American Clint Dempsey, are also going to sign Oguchi Onyewu from Standard Liege for a transfer fee of 1 million pounds. The best thing that can come from those signings is the chance for those two great young Americans to learn from the workhorse of the US National Team, Brian McBride. McBride is never the fastest or the most skilled player on the field, but he works the hardest. If Dempsey and Gooch can learn to Be Like Brian, this will be a match made in footie heaven. (via DuNord, football365 readers have ranked BMB the '4th most underrated player' in English football. Some good end-of-year soccer lists are linked on DuNord, too. It's the best football site out there.)

Stevie G. an MBE. Soon enough we'll be calling him 'sir'. About time -- he should have gotten it after the Champions League win in 2005, but we'll take it for the FA Cup heroics.

Crouchie (pictured above) had another bicycle goal on Sunday against Bolton. How can Rafa sell him? Plus, it would break Coach Mom's heart. Even before we met him in the elevator in Chicago, she's been a big fan.

I guess Britain has its own version of "Punked", with Rio Ferdinand as Aston Kutcher. Who Ate All The Pies has a segment where he messes with Shaun Wright-Phillips (aided and abetted by John Terry).

Operation Save-The-Planet News

Logo of Stopglobalwarming.org (underneath it says, All 10 of the hottest years on record, globally, have occurred in the last fifteen years.)

Residents of the EU can now have their cars scrapped, for free; carmakers are responsible, and the goal is to have 80% of the vehicle reused. I'm shooting off an email to my congressman, Jim McGovern, to advocate that the US adopt a similar law.

In the US, Walmart, of all companies, is pushing energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs and hopes to sell 100 million by the end of 2008.

On Grist, an interview with Ed Begley, Jr., green-living celebrity.

My personal green news is a 6-month update on my Toyota Prius. My mileage has dropped to between 44 and 45 miles per gallon (44.6 exactly, today) due to the temperature drop and, according to my mechanic friend Mark, the reformulation of winter gasoline. I was getting 49 to 52 MPG during the summer. I can't tell you how the car drives in the snow, because we haven't had any. Today it was 46 degrees as I returned a few errant Christmas gifts, and I heard on the radio that it is supposed to be in the 50s on Thursday. I saw on Suburban Guerrilla that it was 57 degrees in Vienna, Austria today, their warmest temperature ever recorded on this date in over 150 years.

Here's what the National Weather Service is reporting about our freakily warm winter:

RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TAUNTON MA
600 AM EST MON JAN 01 2007

...WARMEST FINISH OF ANY YEAR IN BOSTON...

...WARMEST DECEMBER AND WARMEST NOVEMBER-DECEMBER COMBINATION
RECORDED AT BOSTON/S LOGAN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT...

THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE FOR DECEMBER 2006 WAS 41.1 DEGREES IN
BOSTON. THIS BEATS THE PREVIOUS RECORD OF 40.7 DEGREES SET IN 1990.
THE NORMAL DECEMBER MONTHLY AVERAGE TEMPERATURE IS 34.8 DEGREES
WITH A DECEMBER 2006 DEPARTURE OF +6.3 DEGREES.

IN ADDITION...THE COMBINED AVERAGE TEMPERATURE FOR NOVEMBER AND
DECEMBER 2006 WAS APPROXIMATELY 45.1 DEGREES. THIS BEATS THE
PREVIOUS RECORD OF 44.6 DEGREES SET DURING THE COMBINED MONTHS
OF NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER 1990.

THERE WERE 19 CONSECUTIVE DAYS WITH ABOVE NORMAL AVERAGE
TEMPERATURES FROM DECEMBER 10TH THROUGH DECEMBER 28TH AND
24 DAYS ABOVE NORMAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURES IN DECEMBER 2006.

OFFICIAL RECORDS HAVE BEEN KEPT SINCE 1872.

We Love Lists

Especially end-of-the-year lists.

Via Digby, (who lauds Brilliant At Breakfast's Brilliant 20 of 2006), Crooks & Liars collected several lists from left blogtopia*. (Look at the end of the post where it says "END-OF-YEAR STUFF"

And remember to write 2007 for the year tomorrow. You know, like James Bond.


*yes, skippy coined that phrase!

Happy Sweaty New Year

Independent (uk): World faces hottest year ever, as El Niño combines with global warming

Independent (uk): 'If we fail to act, we will end up with a different planet'



The cover picture captions, from above:

2
MELTDOWN RELEASING DEADLY METHANE...

0
WEATHER PATTERNS GROWING UNSTABLE...

0
DROUGHTS THREATENING AGRICULTURE...

7
MOUNTAIN GLACIERS RETREATING...

RIP Donald M. Murray

He was my favorite writer. Clear, honest, and deeply personal. I was always moved by his writing about his cold, emotionally barren childhood, and his deep and abiding pain over the loss of his 20-year-old daughter Lee:

The morning our 20-year-old daughter Lee took sick with her last illness, I was trying to write a letter of sympathy wondering what I could say, asking myself if it would make any difference.

Five days later I knew. It made a difference.

I discovered it was better to reach out than turn away, to say the wrong thing than say nothing.

But in living through Lee's loss and others I also discovered I had something to say to others who suffered the loss of someone they loved.

Pain is better than forgetting.

It is almost eighteen years but Lee is still with us. The pain is not so much lessened as it has become familiar, like the pain that continues in the leg that has been amputated. Her death is part of us.

I steel myself pretty well for the expected moments of pain. Her birthday in March, her deathday in August, Thanksgiving, Christmas, even, these days, listening to an Albinoni oboe concerto knowing it is not her practicing in the next room.

But there is no protection from the blindside hit. Lee waves from a passing car. She appears ahead of me on a street in Sienna, wearing a backpack, I rush to catch up with her but she turns a corner and is gone.

She stands in the shadows, just outside the living room. I hear her counsel when I have a problem and pay attention. At the concert I sit beside her in the center of the orchestra as she invited me to sit beside her during an orchestral rehearsal at the University of Massachusetts and we are again surrounded by music.

It is not all tears. We laugh at the same old jokes - and some new ones. Every submarine sandwich I eat, I share it with Lee. It was her favorite.

When I was dying in a heart attack, Lee stood - in the blue jumper she had made - waiting at the end of a brightly lit tunnel, smiling.

But, I often say in a letter of sympathy, people will want you to get over it, snap out of it, buck up, forget.

Of course we have to get on with life, to find salvation in routine that suddenly seems trivial, to fulfill our responsibilities to the living. But not to forget.

It would be the most terrible sadness if the memory of that person who has died were erased.

It is far better to remember, to mourn, to weep, to rage, than to allow the one who is gone to disappear.

In a way I welcome the pain. I hurt; I remember.

So, I say in my sympathy letter, they should learn to accept the pain, even in a way welcome it, by comparing it to the terror of forgetting.

And as an elder of the tribe who has experienced loss, I write for them to remember in their own way, to mourn in their own way, to do what would be appropriate for the person who has gone, and, more important, to do what needs to be done for the living.

I could sleep on the floor of the waiting room as I slept in battle. Minnie Mae could not sleep. No right, no wrong.

The night Lee died we went to a musical in which her sister was appearing in the chorus. Lee would have wanted that, no matter if others approved.

We - her immediate family - chose cremation because it was what we thought she would have wanted and it was, we discovered what each of us wanted for ourselves. We paid no attention to the relative who said, "I don't know how you could burn her up."

We did what we had to do.

We could not handle a formal funeral, bringing the family from afar, after her quick dying, so we had a private service at the grave side.

I wept - frequently - and Minnie Mae did not. No guilt, no public measuring of pain. I dream of Lee and Minnie Mae does not. That does not mean that one of us mourns more deeply than the other. No guilt. No keeping score.

We love in our own way; we grieve in our own way.

And in this terrible loss we have found strength. When we are tested by other events, we have a measure of our ability to survive.

And we were also reminded that life is fragile.

In my letters reaching out I tell others what Lee's passing taught us: to listen to each other and to ourselves, to live the gift of life with caring and celebration. Today. Right now.

Obituary, Boston Globe: Columnist Donald Murray dies at 82
Pulitzer winner penned Globe's 'Now and Then'

This Can't Be Good

BBC: Huge Arctic ice break discovered
Scientists have discovered that an enormous ice shelf broke off an island in the Canadian Arctic last year, in what could be sign of global warming.

It is said to be the largest break in 25 years, casting an ice floe with an area of 66 sq km (25 square miles).

It occurred in August 2005 but was only recently detected on satellite images.

The chunk of ice bigger than Manhattan could wreak havoc if it moves into oil drilling regions and shipping lanes next summer, scientists warned.

Chicago Sun-Times (AP): Huge arctic ice shelf breaks loose

Medicare Part (D)isaster: Insurance Companies Cashing In

Insurance companies got millions of seniors to sign up for Medicare Part (D)isaster coverage last year by making it cheap. Now that they've got 'em, they're going to fleece 'em. Democrats must reform this terrible, terrible bill.

Boston Globe: Insurer hits millions of seniors with drug cost hike
Premium will rise by 130% for Mass. plan

The more than two million senior citizens nationwide who signed up last year for Humana Inc.'s least expensive Medicare prescription drug plan face average premium increases of 60 percent -- and in seven states, increases of 466 percent -- starting tomorrow . The higher prices will affect about 50,000 seniors in Massachusetts, where premiums are going up by 130 percent, from $7.32 to $16.90 a month.

Medicare added the prescription drug benefit in 2006, and in most states dozens of drug plans with varying coverage are available through insurance companies. Healthcare advocates say Humana kept its prices low in 2006 to gain market share. The strategy may prove lucrative, they say, because many seniors spent considerable time researching and selecting their drug insurance and were unlikely to switch plans for 2007, despite increased premiums.

[]

Under Part D, seniors who go without drug coverage will pay higher prices if they eventually decide to buy it. As a result, many seniors who did not need prescription drugs in 2006 signed up with Humana's low-cost plan simply to avoid having to pay more if they needed coverage in the future.

"Some of them took the plan even though they were only taking aspirin," said Nancy Roper , a volunteer for Action for Boston Community Development who counsels low-income seniors on drug plan choices. "Now, this jumps to $16.90 for 2007, and they're calling and asking is it worth it. It's a hardship."

Making Progress

What President Clusterfuck has wrought in Iraq.

Reporter Hannah Allam of McClatchy:

Even Mr. Milk is dead. The grocer we called by the name of his landmark shop in the upscale Mansour district was kidnapped and killed, along with his son, my colleagues said. The owner of a DVD shop where I once purchased a copy of "Napoleon Dynamite" also had been executed.

So many blindfolded, tortured corpses turn up that an Iraqi co-worker recently told me it was "a slow day" when 17 bodies were found. Typically, the figure is 40 or more. When the overflowing morgue at Yarmouk Hospital was bombed last month, one of our drivers wearily muttered, "How many times can they kill us?"

Even the toughest of my Iraqi colleagues hit their breaking points after experiencing the indignity of being forced from their homes, the trauma of a bomb outside a doorstep, the grief for a cousin killed by a mortar, the shame of staying silent while a neighbor's house was torched.

Update on Senator Tim Johnson

Not good, according to Bob Geiger. Two weeks is a long time to be on a ventilator.

We Got Our Man

Donald Rumsfield meeting with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, 1983.
Veteran CIA asset Saddam Hussein was hung yesterday in Iraq. The murderer of hundreds of thousands was supported by the US throughout his career until the first Iraq War. Watch this excellent Flash movie by Eric Blumrich for a tour of the lowlights of US support of Hussein and the bloody results. (Link from Informed Comment.)

The trial of Saddam Hussein was a shameful kangaroo court from start to finish. His lawyers were muzzled or murdered; the result was pre-ordained, and announced to coincide with the US elections; he was convicted by an Iraqi court, but hung inside the US-controlled Green Zone in secret. As Steve Gilliard notes: "Weak governments kill their enemies."

Independent (uk): Robert Fisk: A dictator created then destroyed by America

Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.

Prof. Juan Cole, Informed Comment: For Whom the Bell Tolls:
Top Ten Ways the US Enabled Saddam Hussein

Riverbend, Baghdad Burning: End of Another Year...

You know your country is in trouble when:

1. The UN has to open a special branch just to keep track of the chaos and bloodshed, UNAMI.
2. Abovementioned branch cannot be run from your country.
3. The politicians who worked to put your country in this sorry state can no longer be found inside of, or anywhere near, its borders.
4. The only thing the US and Iran can agree about is the deteriorating state of your nation.
5. An 8-year war and 13-year blockade are looking like the country's 'Golden Years'.
6. Your country is purportedly 'selling' 2 million barrels of oil a day, but you are standing in line for 4 hours for black market gasoline for the generator.
7. For every 5 hours of no electricity, you get one hour of public electricity and then the government announces it's going to cut back on providing that hour.
8. Politicians who supported the war spend tv time debating whether it is 'sectarian bloodshed' or 'civil war'.
9. People consider themselves lucky if they can actually identify the corpse of the relative that's been missing for two weeks.

A day in the life of the average Iraqi has been reduced to identifying corpses, avoiding car bombs and attempting to keep track of which family members have been detained, which ones have been exiled and which ones have been abducted.

Blogtopia* Roundup, Tuesday December 19th, 2006

We all need to know the difference between Shi'a and Sunni now. TRex at firedoglake gives the history of the two sects.

Many voices weighing in on the insanity of Bush's latest 'surge' proposal: ThinkProgress says he's trying to copy the 'success' of Vietnam; Digby digs up some of those 'we let the military make the decisions, not the politicians' lies from Commander Codpiece; Steve Gilliard sez, for the Joint Chiefs this is the Clark Clifford moment: will they go along with this catastrophic idea, or will they say no?

Confined Space on today in Workplace Safety History.

And a horrible story from the Sunday Times (uk) about the rise of militant Islam in Banda Aceh and other tsunami-ravaged parts of Indonesia: Tsunami survivors given the lash: Banda Aceh disaster donations help Islamic vigilante force impose punishments on women


*YSCTP!

Image from bush-whacking.com

Why Is Genarlow Wilson In Prison?

I saw this post on Seeing the Forest:

Ten Years In Prison For Oral Sex

The Georgia Supreme Court just upheld a sentence of Ten Years in Prison for 17-Year-Old Who Had Consensual Oral Sex with 15-Year-Old -- even though Georgia later changed the law to a misdemeanor. That's ten years with no possibility of parole, by the way.

And I thought, the kid is black. He's not white. No way would a white kid get 10 years for that. The judge (probably white) would look at the kid and see himself. Mandatory sentence? Throw out the verdict. Black kid, throw the book at him. So I googled his image. Oh yeah, he's black. Surprise, surprise.



The website where I found the picture asks: Why Is Genarlow Wilson In Prison?? And I say, it's out and out racism. I watched this happen all the time in my rare forays into the criminal justice system. Black kids always got harsher sentences than white kids. Sexism prevailed, too. White male judges hectored women seeking restraining orders. We've got a long way to go before justice is color and sex blind.

Guess the Political Party

Guess the political party of this hypocrite:

Carlisle (PA) Sentinal: Opposed gambling, but not for himself
Former Pa. lawmaker who opposed slots won big at casinos

First two guesses don't count.

Blogtopia* Roundup, Monday December 18th, 2006

Tagged shearwaters are tracked as the birds criss-cross the Pacific. (Tagging of Pacific Palagics)
Professor Juan Cole says Elliot Abrams, war-loving felon, must go.

Atrios points out another instance of mindless journamalism. Note to corporate media: Both sides of every story are not equal and do not deserve equal billing!

Americablog links to a New York Times article on the imprisonment of an American in Iraq and the depravity of our Iraq policy.

Digby on Guantanamo and the psychopath in charge of the innocents held there.

The photo, above, is taken from a Washington Post article on how technology is allowing science to learn even more about and understand the sea and its creatures: Technologies Changing Insight Into Seas


*yes, skippy coined that phrase!

'The months of September, October and November were the warmest in central England since 1659. '

The Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland's southern Alps, Europe's longest glacier, shrank by 66 metres (72 yards) last year because of global warming
Global warming's effects are being seen all over the planet. Despite our ignorant government's efforts to deny the reality, we are all experiencing it. It was 54 degrees here in Central Massachusetts today, our 8th straight day of warm temperatures. This is the kind of weather we'd have in Hilton Head at Christmas, after leaving the chill of New England winter. My sister played tennis in shirt sleeves in DC today. Coach Mom's star magnolia tree is covered with buds; she has a neighbor with forsythia in bloom, in the Catskills. Sounds like spring, but it's December. It's supposed to be cold. This is very, very bad news for the earth and for us, the inhabitants.

Independent (uk): Climate change: So where has all the snow gone?
With trees bursting into bud and ski runs looking like spring meadows, the Alpine winter appears to have been cancelled

Standing on the Promenade de la Treille in Geneva's old town, [] is neatly marked with a plaque declaring it to be the city's "official" chestnut tree.

Every spring since 1818, a special city official has watched the tree (and two of its predecessors) to spot when it puts out its first bud, and solemnly record the date on a special noticeboard in the town hall. It usually falls some time in March, though it has at times crept forward into February. But this year, for the first time ever, the tree burst into bloom in late October - and is still sporting flowers and leaves. Winter appears, officially, to have been cancelled.

[]

....the Alps abound with signs that climate change is already well under way. In the 15 years running up to the turn of the millennium, they lost nearly a quarter of the area taken up by glaciers. And more than another five per cent melted in the blistering summer of 2003 alone. Average snow levels are half what they were 40 years ago.

As the ice that glues them together has melted, huge masses of rock have started detaching themselves from mountains like the Eiger, and whole cliff faces have disintegrated. And the ever-canny Swiss banks have started refusing to lend to ski resorts less than 4,500ft up in the mountains.

But it is not just the Alps that are sweltering in this warmest of winters. Friday was the hottest winter day ever recorded in Moscow at 8.6 degrees centigrade [47.5 fahrenheit] - as opposed to the usual minus four degrees [24.8 fahrenheit] - and the temperature in the Russian capital is expected to climb even higher over the next few days.

Independent (uk): Do they know it's Christmas?
After the warmest summer on record, birds that should be in the tropics are still here, leaves are still on trees and insects that should be dead are feeding well. Is this proof of global warming?

It may be just over a week to go until Christmas but parts of the natural world are behaving as if it were still late summer. Many trees are hanging on stubbornly to their leaves, wild plants are in flower and dragonflies, bumblebees and even butterflies can still be seen in the garden. Swallows and house martins, which normally would be south of the Sahara by now, have been sighted all over Britain, from North-umberland to Norfolk.

Experts say the delayed winter of 2006, in what will be Britain's hottest recorded year, could be one of the starkest signals yet that global warming has potentially far-reaching impacts for the UK's wildlife.

This year, swaths of southern and central England have been virtually untroubled by frost even though winter is nearly a third of the way through and the solstice only days away.

The months of September, October and November were the warmest in central England since 1659. The provisional UK-wide mean temperature in autumn was 11.3C, beating the previous record set in 2001 of 10.5C, in a temperature series that began in 1914. The UK Met Office predicts a 40 per cent chance that winter temperatures will be above average with only a one in four possibility they will be colder than normal. This unprecedented warmth has altered the behaviour of many plants and creatures.

Macaca Honored

S.R. Sidarth was named Salon.com's Person of the Year.

Salon Person of the Year: S.R. Sidarth
The Virginia native and son of Indian immigrants changed history with a camcorder and introduced Sen. George Allen -- and the rest of us -- to the real America.

...[T]he real message of macaca may have been the kid behind the camera.

Jim Webb eked out a statewide victory on the basis of massive margins in the booming suburbs of northern Virginia. Macaca and all the missteps that followed helped convince voters in these affluent, well-educated and increasingly diverse zip codes outside Washington that they had grown tired of George Allen. But the same voters may also have recognized Sidarth, born and raised in northern Virginia, a straight-A student at a state college and a member of the local Hindu temple, as their neighbor. Allen was just a California transplant with dip and cowboy boots who had glommed on to the ancient racial quirks of his adopted home. Sidarth was the kid next door. He, not Allen, was the real Virginian. He was proof that every hour his native commonwealth drifts further from the orbit of the GOP's solid South and toward a day when Allen's act will be a tacky antique. Allen was the past, Sidarth is the wired, diverse future -- of Virginia, the political process and the country.

It's Hard to Laugh at These

Bob Geiger: The Saturday Cartoons

Gitmo: ‘A politically motivated farce’

Most of these prisoners are guilty of nothing.
An unconstitutional farce, as well.

AP, via MSNBC: Most Gitmo detainees freed after transfer
Four-fifths of ‘vicious killers’ released after return to home countries

The Pentagon called them "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth," sweeping them up after Sept. 11 and hauling them in chains to a U.S. military prison in southeastern Cuba.

Since then, hundreds of the men have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to other countries, many of them for "continued detention."

And then set free.

[]

our-fifths freed after transfer
But through interviews with justice and police officials, detainees and their families, and using reports from human rights groups and local media, The Associated Press was able to track 245 of those formerly held at Guantanamo. The investigation, which spanned 17 countries, found:

* Once the detainees arrived in other countries, 205 of the 245 were either freed without being charged or were cleared of charges related to their detention at Guantanamo. Forty either stand charged with crimes or continue to be detained.
* Only a tiny fraction of transferred detainees have been put on trial. The AP identified 14 trials, in which eight men were acquitted and six are awaiting verdicts. Two of the cases involving acquittals — one in Kuwait, one in Spain — initially resulted in convictions that were overturned on appeal.
* The Afghan government has freed every one of the more than 83 Afghans sent home. Lawmaker Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, the head of Afghanistan's reconciliation commission, said many were innocent and wound up at Guantanamo because of tribal or personal rivalries.
* At least 67 of 70 repatriated Pakistanis are free after spending a year in Adiala Jail. A senior Pakistani Interior Ministry official said investigators determined that most had been "sold" for bounties to U.S. forces by Afghan warlords who invented links between the men and al-Qaida. "We consider them innocent," said the official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
* All 29 detainees who were repatriated to Britain, Spain, Germany, Russia, Australia, Turkey, Denmark, Bahrain and the Maldives were freed, some within hours after being sent home for "continued detention."

Some former detainees say they never intended to harm the United States and are bitter.

"I can't wash the three long years of pain, trouble and humiliation from my memory," said Badarzaman Badar, an Afghan who was freed in Pakistan. "It is like a cancer in my mind that makes me disturbed every time I think of those terrible days."

Overall, about 165 Guantanamo detainees have been transferred from Guantanamo for "continued detention," while about 200 were designated for immediate release. Some 420 detainees remain at the U.S. base in Cuba.

‘A politically motivated farce’
Clive Stafford Smith, a British-American attorney representing several detainees, said the AP's findings indicate that innocent men were jailed and that the term "continued detention" is part of "a politically motivated farce."

"The Bush administration wants to be able to say that these are dangerous terrorists who are going to be confined upon their release ... although there is no evidence against many of them," he said.

Diabetes Breakthrough?

Interesting article in the National Post (Canada) today about a study conducted at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children where diabetic mice were cured of diabetes after painkillers were injected into the pancreas.

National Post (Canada): Diabetes breakthrough
Toronto scientists cure disease in mice

Their conclusions upset conventional wisdom that Type 1 diabetes, the most serious form of the illness that typically first appears in childhood, was solely caused by auto-immune responses -- the body's immune system turning on itself.

They also conclude that there are far more similarities than previously thought between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, and that nerves likely play a role in other chronic inflammatory conditions, such as asthma and Crohn's disease.

The "paradigm-changing" study opens "a novel, exciting door to address one of the diseases with large societal impact," said Dr. Christian Stohler, a leading U.S. pain specialist and dean of dentistry at the University of Maryland, who has reviewed the work.

"The treatment and diagnosis of neuropathic diseases is poised to take a dramatic leap forward because of the impressive research."

I saw this article on BlogsNow.