A new type of pain medication?

The New Neo Posted on by

And a supposedly non-addictive one.

Of course, many painkillers that ended up being addictive were originally touted as non-addictive, so I would be cautious. On the other hand, this drug works through a different mechanism:

The pill, known for now as VX-548, targets a particular sodium channel that is active only in the body’s peripheral sensory nerves, where it helps transmit pain signals to the brain. The idea is that inhibiting the channel might ease pain without serious systemic side effects — including the risk of addiction and abuse associated with opioids.

In an early trial, researchers found some promising evidence that the drug can take the edge off of post-surgery pain.

That would be great, but what would be even greater would be a new drug for chronic pain, in particular neuropathic pain. I have quite a bit of personal experience with neuropathic pain – unfortunately. I’ve written about it on this blog. One of those posts is this one from 2014, which also touts a possible new drug for pain, in that case neuropathic pain. I’m not sure whatever happened to that drug …

At any rate, this latest medication might also be used some day for neuropathic pain, its developers are saying:

A Vertex spokesperson said the company has started an early trial of VX-548 for neuropathic pain. That’s pain caused by nerve damage, such as diabetic neuropathy.

Waxman said the need for new neuropathic pain therapies is “great,” and peripheral sodium channels should be studied as targets for treatment. But any such therapy would be down the road.

The rest of this post is an excerpt from what I’d previously written about neuropathic pain:

We all know what pain from an injury feels like. But if you’re fortunate, you don’t know – and will never have to learn from personal experience – what neuropathic pain is like.

Nerves ordinarily conduct pain impulses when tissues are damaged, but that sort of pain corresponds to the degree of injury and is time-limited. Once healing occurs, the pain (or almost all of it) goes away. Neuropathic pain is different; it arises from injury to the nerves themselves. They become disordered in a host of ways, and the quality of the pain impulses is quite different from that of the more familiar types of pain, and has a marked tendency to become chronic…

Not that much is known about nerve pain today, and it remains exceedingly difficult to treat. But about twenty years ago, when I began to deal with it myself, it was the relative Dark Ages of pain control.

When I hurt my arms it was terrifying; the pain felt like nothing I’d ever had before, and it was with me 24/7. The best I can do to describe it is to say that among its many horrific qualities was the feeling of having sustained a severe sunburn on the entire surface of both arms. But with a real sunburn, there are salves and ointments to apply, you know why you’re hurting, and you know that in a few days the pain will go away.

This pain was different. It waxed and waned in odd and erratic fashion, although it tended to be at its worst at night, which made sleep nearly impossible and the nights a long drawn-out torment. It wasn’t just the burning, either. There was also tingling and stabbing pain and severe achiness and exquisite sensitivity and weakness and pressure and all sorts of odd sensations that gave me the feeling that my body had become a sadistic trickster bent on driving me mad …

What’s more, although most pain is a warning sign that something is being damaged (stove, hot, get away!), neuropathic pain appears to have no reasonable purpose at all. No tissue is being harmed, and yet the pain goes on and on and on. You can see why a successful treatment for neuropathic pain would be a boon to humankind.

Is this Jack Smith’s endgame?

The New Neo Posted on by

I was planning to write a piece advancing a certain thesis about one of Jack Smith’s goals in the Trump J6 case, but this person beat me to it.

So I’ll just quote the gist of it:

…[W]hat jumps out to me is that Smith is pushing for an early trial date not to provide a quick resolution and to “do justice”; rather, Smith wants a partisan DC jury to quickly convict Trump, thus setting up Smith’s next level of political gamesmanship. Smith wants Trump’s conviction to be heard and decided by the Supreme Court, knowing full well that a Trump conviction has no chance of affirmation at SCOTUS. Smith is counting on it. Smith wants the Supreme Court to vacate his almost certain conviction in order to enflame the Democratic base. He wants to hand Joe Biden another “the Supreme Court is illegitimate” gift …

Smith isn’t dumb. He expects his conviction to be vacated. In fact, he’s counting on it.

I would add that it’s win/win for Smith. In other words, if SCOTUS happens to uphold a Trump conviction, that’s good too. But if it doesn’t, that’s fodder for the “Illegitimate Court” shrieks.

NOTE: And by the way, although I write as though Smith is acting alone, he most definitely is not. This is a group effort, and I mean the Democrat Party and its leaders, and of course Garland. Smith wouldn’t be acting without their help and approval.

Trump case glitch?

The New Neo Posted on by

Hmmm:

Special counsel Jack Smith’s office may not have fully reviewed thousands of pages of records turned over by former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik before seeking an indictment of former President Donald Trump Tuesday, says Kerik’s attorney, Tim Parlatore …

The documents were submitted to Smith on July 23, according to emails reviewed by CBS News. A source close to Kerik’s legal team said at the time that they believed the records, which include sworn affidavits from people raising concerns about the integrity of the 2020 presidential contest, show there was a genuine effort to investigate claims of voter fraud in the last election …

Parlatore said he was “stunned” when, after the indictment came down, the prosecutor contacted him asking for the records he said he had already provided. Parlatore said the “records are absolutely exculpatory.”

Probably won’t matter, considering the venue and the judge.

One of the many ridiculous things about this case is that it treats the idea that fraud may have occurred in the 2020 election as so preposterous that of course Trump didn’t believe it. However, it’s something half of America believes. And not only that; it’s something that has never been proved or disproved and what’s more, the way that voting occurred and was documented assures us that it cannot be proved or disproved. But the left wants to label the half of America who thinks fraud probably occurred as being stupidheads brainwashed by Trump and the right and their terrible cynical disinformation about it.

ADDENDUM: Additional possible prosecutorial misconduct is described here. I don’t think it will matter, unless the case ends up in the Supreme Court. And I doubt that would happen prior to the 2024 election, although I suppose it’s possible. Then again, the Democrats have covered themselves by having multiple prosecutions of Trump.

On the thinking of liberal Democrats

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Yawrate” writes:

I think it’s important to make a distinction between Dem leftists and Dem liberals. The leftists are destructive and driven by a need for power and they gin up support from many aggrieved leftist useful idiots that are perfectly willing to burn, loot and murder. We are not going to be changing their minds.

But the Dem liberals are the key and the mystery. They are reasonable people. I know many of them. But they can’t vote any other way but Democrat. They just won’t change their minds even after seeing the destruction of modern society and the havoc wrought by the leftists. That is the mystery. What value do they see in the modern Democrat party? And many of them are fairly conservative. But we can’t give up on them because they are the key to conservative electoral success.

Maybe they’re all like Garrison Keillor. They support Dems because they want to perceived as “nice”.

Actually, I think it’s necessary to make a distinction between Democrat leftist activists, less-committed leftists, and Democrat liberals. The leftist activists tend to be as Yawrate described. But even some of them are driven, as are many of the less-committed leftists, by idealism as well as the conviction that this time leftism will be done correctly. Or, even if it won’t be perfect and lead to Utopia, it will lead to something better than what we have now – and, even more importantly, something better than what the evil, bigoted, religiously fanatic, woman-hating, science-hating right would have in store if the right ever got into power again.

You may think it preposterous that anyone could still believe all of that, but I can assure you that a significant number do. If you’ve been marinated in this thinking from birth or from your college years, and you are surrounded by those who think more or less that way as well, and the papers and websites you read and visit say the same and stir up more and more fear, and you don’t know too many people on the right, and you see Donald Trump and think he’s icky – why, then, it’s not hard to think that way. It’s much much harder to abandon that sort of thinking.

As for what for want of a better word I’ll call “liberals,” most of the ones I know – and I know plenty – don’t like the details of politics very much. That wouldn’t be such a pernicious thing if in fact the press, even the liberal press, was interested in presenting fairly objective news. But it’s not. So if you’re the sort of person who just reads the headlines, or listens to a cable news station now and then while double-tasking, you can easily go for your entire life without learning the details that would make a difference.

To a certain extent, for much of my life I used to fit that description in the previous paragraph. Politics and politicians were so distasteful to me, and I was so busy with other things, that a lot of fairly big stories were simply a couple of sentences floating around somewhere in my consciousness. Now and then if something particularly moved me I’d pay special attention, but most things were more at the periphery of my awareness. Also, of course, for the most part the nation was going along pretty well compared to now. So I could afford – at least I thought I could afford – the luxury of not paying such close attention.

All that changed over twenty years ago, but that’s a story I’ve already told. For me, though, once I paid close attention, I got a lot of surprises. Some of those surprises were even about the past, about things I thought I knew but really didn’t know all that well. But the biggest surprise was that I didn’t so much become a conservative as discover that I had always been a conservative without really understanding what that word “conservative” meant. I had understand only what non-conservatives said it meant.

As “Yawrate” writes, some modern-day Democrat liberals who always vote Democrat – as I had, until the year 2004 – are actually pretty conservative. I find that is true among many of my Democrat friends, as well. However, they don’t see it that way, and what I think is even more important is that their vision of what “conservative” is and what it means is shaped by the leftist MSM. Or perhaps they once knew a person on the right who really was a bigoted, loudmouthed SOB. And in their minds this person then came to stand for most or all conservatives.

I agree with “Yawrate” that “we can’t give up on them because they are the key.” But although I’ve tried, I don’t know how to reach them – partly because most of them refuse to talk about politics anyway, so the opportunity isn’t even there.

[NOTE: I also suggest you follow the links in this comment of mine if you want to read more of my thoughts on this subject.]

David Brooks gets half a clue, and then blows it all

The New Neo Posted on by

Brooks’ column is entitled, “What If We’re the Bad Guys Here?” To refresh your memory, Brooks is the resident guy on the right at the Times, but as tradition dictates he’s really a very strange kind of mushy-middle straddler. He also was famous as the guy who fell in love with the perfect crease in Obama’s pants and, as far as I know, has never fallen out of that love.

You may say “why read Brooks?”, and it’s a good question. My answer is that people like Brooks fascinate me. Intelligent but not wise, he often half gets it and half doesn’t, and seems to be attracted to the surface of things rather than their depth. In that, I think he’s not so very unusual, and as such it’s of interest to look at what he’s saying and the way he thinks.

His column contains a rather good description of how today’s “elites” – among whom he places himself, so there’s some insight there – have isolated themselves from many other Americans and incurred their wrath. But he seems to think that the worst thing about that is that it’s led to the rise of Donald Trump.

A sample of the column:

Trump’s poll numbers are stronger against Biden now than at any time in 2020.

What’s going on here? Why is this guy still politically viable, after all he’s done? …

… [We anti-Trumpers tell a story in which] we anti-Trumpers are the good guys, the forces of progress and enlightenment. The Trumpers are reactionary bigots and authoritarians. Many Republicans support Trump no matter what, according to this story, because at the end of the day he’s still the bigot in chief, the embodiment of their resentments, and that’s what matters to them most.

I partly agree with this story; but it’s also a monument to elite self-satisfaction.

So let me try another story on you. I ask you to try on a vantage point in which we anti-Trumpers are not the eternal good guys. In fact, we’re the bad guys.

Brooks then goes on to a fairly comprehensive description of the isolation, selfishness, and – yes, I’ll use the word – privilege that so-called elites have set up for themselves and perpetuated. Here’s just one small part of what he writes about that:

The ideal that “we’re all in this together” was replaced with the reality that the educated class lives in a world up here, and everybody else is forced into a world down there. Members of our class are always publicly speaking out for the marginalized, but somehow we always end up building systems that serve ourselves.

The most important of those systems is the modern meritocracy. We built an entire social order that sorts and excludes people on the basis of the quality that we possess most: academic achievement. Highly educated parents go to elite schools, marry each other, work at high-paying professional jobs and pour enormous resources into our children, who get into the same elite schools, marry each other and pass their exclusive class privileges down from generation to generation.

As I said, it’s rather long and covers a lot of ground. But there’s something curious about it, which is that he doesn’t seem to acknowledge that Trump is supported not just as a reaction by the underclass to elitism. There are plenty of educated people, and/or wealthy people, who support Trump as well, people who have a lot of achievements and a high IQ. Brooks doesn’t attempt to explain them; instead, he offers a reductionist “story” about Trump supporters as fleeing away from elites and towards Trump in reaction to those elites. That explanation seems to me to be true. But there’s a great deal more going on, and it has to do not just with elite privilege and exclusiveness and reaction against it, but with love of America, appreciation of history and the wisdom of the Constitution, and a host of other positive elements and policies that Trump offers.

But Brooks can’t afford to admit that, because he hates Trump.

Here’s where Brooks reveals his Trump-Derangement and self-serving blinders. These are the last two paragraphs of his piece [my emphasis]:

Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch hunt? Of course not. As a card-carrying member of my class, I still basically trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice. Trump is a monster in the way we’ve all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison.

But there’s a larger context here. As the sociologist E. Digby Baltzell wrote decades ago, “History is a graveyard of classes which have preferred caste privileges to leadership.” That is the destiny our class is now flirting with. We can condemn the Trumpian populists all day until the cows come home, but the real question is when will we stop behaving in ways that make Trumpism inevitable.

In answer to Brooks’ question in that last sentence: never, if Brooks’ column is any example. Because that next-to-last paragraph is a triumph of elitist stupidity, arrogance, and simple-minded justification. Brooks states that of course the charges against Trump are not just a political witch hunt – but Brooks feels no need to explain why that might be the case, but merely seems to claim it’s a self-evident truth that it is not politically motivated. The stretching of the legal elements of a crime to the breaking point, in order to charge Trump? No problem for Brooks. The fact that Trump, Biden’s main political rival, is indicted by the DOJ under Garland, in the venue and with a judge most likely to convict? No problem for Brooks. The unprecedented nature of such a charge? Brooks is fine with it. The fact that Hunter Biden was given a sweetheart deal by the same DOJ? Just peachy keen with Brooks, and no evidence of political bias.

And then the bizarre statement that Trump is a monster. What does that even mean? What is a “monster” in the political sense? Just as Obama’s pants crease proved to Brooks that he was erudite and sophisticated both as man and thinker, and would make a great president, so something about Trump (his hair? his bragging?) makes him a monster. And not just a monster, but a monster “in the way we’ve all been saying for years? Who is this “we,” keemosabe? And what have you been saying that describes him as a monster? That he watched prostitutes pee on a bed? What preposterous and untrue things do you still believe? Or is your revulsion mostly esthetic?

And Brooks says that Trump is a monster who deserves to go to prison. Is that because he’s guilty of a crime? If so, what crime, and on what are you basing your idea of his guilt? Are you even thinking of trying to counter substantive arguments that he is not guilty? Or is his guilt merely assumed? And if it’s assumed, is it really because you basically trust the legal system and neutral arbiters of justice? I suspect that, if you do, it’s because in recent years you usually like the results.

It also seems to me as though, at the end there, Brooks got tired. He knew he had to put in some sort of “bad Trump” disclaimer, but he was too weary to do it effectively and just put in a sort of telegraphese for other “elites” who agree with him on Trump’s obvious guilt and obvious monstrosity. No need to argue it or prove it. It’s virtue-signaling par excellence.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

A roundup is practically required today, there’s so much news. And this just scratches the surface.

(1) The transcript of Devon Archer’s testimony can be found here. It’s quite long, of course; I have only read bits and pieces so far. Here’s some discussion of it:

He continued saying that having the “Biden brand” attached to the company made people “intimidated to mess with them” from a legal standpoint. He also testified that the “Biden brand” referred mostly to Joe Biden because he “brought the most value to the brand.”

The Archer testimony does not, however, appear to support the idea that Burisma wanted Shokin fired.

(2) DeSantis will be debating Gavin Newsom. Should be interesting. They both seem positively fetal in age compared to the usual politicians these days. It also solidifies the idea that Newsom may be the replacement for Joe, if the Democrats find it in their interests. I hope they debate sitting down, though, or that DeSantis stands on a box. Newsome is 6’3″ and DeSantis is supposedly 5″11″.

(3) It will probably surprise no one here that the White House pressured Facebook to adjust its algorithm in order to make it less likely that people would be directed to content by “polarizing” conservatives.

(4) In the Trump J6 indictment. Professor Jacobson asks, “Where is the crime?”

(5) This one’s worth watching again:

(6) The US credit rating downgrade.

They’ll be indicting Trump for it soon.

Is the current generation of boys becoming more conservative? And what of girls?

The New Neo Posted on by

Maybe. According to this article:

In annual surveys over the last three years, roughly one-quarter of high school seniors self-identified as conservative or “very conservative” on the Monitoring the Future survey, a scholarly endeavor that dates to the 1970s. Only 13 percent of boys identified as liberal or very liberal in those [last three] years.

The chart there is especially interesting. I tried to download it to put it here, but I had a lot of trouble and finally gave up. Follow that Hill link and go to the chart entitled “Political identities of 12th-grade boys,” and you’ll see that in the mid 1970s it was the reverse – significantly more liberal than conservative for the boys. Then the two numbers stayed closer – although conservatives predominated – for many decades, until in the last few years the gap widened again with conservatives much more strongly in the lead.

Other things of note: most boys of that age don’t identify as anything, politically. So this really just measures those with strong feelings. But if there is a higher percentage of conservative boys these days, it makes perfect sense. The left has warred on boys in general and white boys in particular. Why wouldn’t boys see them as the enemy? In addition, men tend to vote more conservatively than women. And lastly, if a boy wanted to be rebellious in earlier years, liberalism or leftism were the ways to go. Nowadays it’s a revolutionary act – especially when in school – to be conservative.

Not so for the girls. If you look at the chart labeled “Political identities of 12th-grade girls,” you’ll see that more girls have identified as liberal rather than conservative for the entire time the surveys have been done, and in the last few years the gap has only widened. The widening seems to have occurred from the fact that more girls identify as liberal (around 30% now) rather than any big change in the percentage who identify as conservative.

More:

But the leftward drift of young women alone has sufficed to move the needle on young adults as a whole …

The rightward drift of high school boys is comparatively subtle. Indeed, when it comes to politics, most boys seem reluctant to pick a side. In the 2022 Monitoring the Future survey, the largest group of senior boys, more than two-fifths, claimed no politics at all, answering the liberal-conservative question with “none of the above” or “I don’t know.”

Apathy? Ignorance? Annoyance at being asked questions by pollsters? Fear of negative repercussions if the answer is non-woke? Acknowledgment that they are growing and changing and that today’s answer might not be tomorrow’s?