Xunhui's Story: You Won't Believe What Can Be Achieved by the Blink of an Eye

by Nomad

Helen Keller, Steve Hawking and many others have demonstrated that the human spirit can often overcome what would seem to be impossible obstacles. From China comes one woman's story of determination, courage, and compassion.

Although she has been in a wheelchair since 2006, in almost complete paralysis, 62-year-old Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) patient, Gong Xunhui has actually managed to write a 150,000-word book on her life. She did this remarkable feat by blinking her eyes. 

Three years ago, Xunhui’s family bought her an eye-tracking assistive device that she could use to communicate and also control a computer.

After it was installed, the first line she typed was: “I am very happy today, and after I get better at typing with my eyes, I will probably write an autobiography.”

Her book recounts Xunhui’s 12-year journey with ALS. According to the article, Xunhui would like to publish an autobiography and use the earnings to help other ALS patients.  

when she learned that many patients couldn’t afford 20,000 yuan ($3,000) respirators, and would eventually die of suffocation, she decided to use all the proceeds from her book sales to donate respirators.

Across the US, there are more than 12,000 people who have a definite diagnosis of ALS. That's according to a report on data from the National ALS Registry. 

Called Lou Gehrig's disease, ALS is, in fact, one of the most common neuromuscular diseases worldwide. ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.

Although the disease affects all races, and ethnic backgrounds, ALS is more common among white males, non-Hispanics, and persons aged 60–69 years. Despite that, younger and older people also can develop the disease. Men tend to be affected more often than women.

Gong Xunhui beat the odds. Most people with the disease only survive three to five years. 

Pretty incredible story.

For the full story, follow the link below.

How Russian President Putin Uses "Foreign Agent" Laws and State-Owned Media to Intimidate Dissent

by Nomad

Russia's English-language daily newspaper, The Moscow Times, has this insight in how the Russian government, with state-owned media at its side, is using controversial legislation to intimidate NGOs and hush dissent.

Human rights activist Nadezhda Kutepova had spent decades fighting for the rights residents of Ozyorsk in the Chelyabinsk region, some 600 miles south of Moscow. Today, however, Kutepova is living in Paris. She fears retaliation by Russian authorities if she ever dares to return.

The Not-so- Brilliant Ben

by Nomad

How Conservative Religious Extremists Around the World have Declared War on Secularism

by Nomad

Evangelists and some politicians talk about a war on religion and religious liberties. The examples of victimhood they cite are generally somewhat vague. Yet the truth is, around the world, the victims are not the people of faith, but those holding secularist views.  

Death of a Bangladeshi Blogger

Niloy Chatterjee lived humbly in Goran neighborhood of the Bangladesh capital, Dhaka. In early August of this year, on a Friday night, (the Sabbath day in Islam,)  a  machete welding gang broke into Chatterjee's apartment, pushed aside his family members and hacked Niloy to death in his bed. All of the attackers were apparently members of the local chapter of al-Qaeda.

As the writer of a blog, the 40-year-old Chatterjee went by the pen name, Niloy Neel. He used his blog as a free speech platform to criticize religious extremism in the nation.  

Let's Compare Clinton's Phony Email "Scandal" and Dick Cheney's Fetish for Secrecy

by Nomad

After searching in vain since in March of last year, wasting time and spending millions, the Republican Party still expects to find something on about Hillary Clinton's emails. They've already admitted the investigation were politically-motivated.
Too bad these tireless and principled investigators were not around when Vice President Dick Cheney was fighting to keep his secrets classified.

Things have a dreadful habit of backfiring for the Republicans. The more they blustered about President Bill Clinton's adultery the higher his approval rating climbed. By and large, the public thought it was a case of too much about too too little. 

It seems like the party has learned absolutely nothing. Take the fruitless email investigation and the search for.. what are they searching for?. Does anybody remember?

We do know how it began.

Investigation Ad Nauseum

The Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee Investigation started out, as we all know, as a search for culpability in the deaths of State Department officials in the Benghazi attacks, which left four dead. 

After two agonizing years (filled with unsupported but damaging leaks to the press) the committee found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees.  (Presumably, that would include the appointed Secretary of State.)

On the Benghazi investigation, more than $3,500,000 was thrown away. That figure exceeds the budget of the entire House Intelligence Committee. and does not include "significant expenditures made by the State Department and Defense Department to find and declassify material requested by the committee or the expense of witness travel for those who work for the government."

A miserable flop of a smear. So, what to do now, they asked? Why not a start a new investigation into Democratic candidate's use of a private email server? With the help of the media, the new so-called scandal investigation dragged on and on.

It didn't go smoothly. 

In October, false accusations by Chairman Trey Gowdy forced the CIA to step in with a rebuttal. 

Gowdy’s accusation was that Secretary Clinton had sent an email containing "some of the most protected information in our intelligence community, the release of which could jeopardize not only national security but human lives.”

Totally untrue. No apology or clarification. The investigation pressed on as it does today. 

How much will be spent on this investigation is anybody's guess. It won't be cheap. As one source noted:

Rep. Gowdy now states the committee will continue its work into 2016 raising its cost to taxpayers to more than $6,000,000, casting his inaction as the result of the Obama administration’s slow pace at producing requested documents, a questionable premise.

Critics of the committee (and the numbers are growing) have called the investigation as nothing short of a taxpayer funded witch hunt of a leading presidential candidate. 

Supporters of the Republican-led investigations say Hillary must be guilty of something. However, many in the GOP seem to forget when it came to keeping secrets. nothing could surpass the overt duplicity of former vice-president Dick Cheney. 

How Three Asian Nations are Beating Outrageous Price-Gouging by American Pharmas

by Nomad

Some have started to question the exorbitant prices pharmaceutical companies charge the public. In Asia, we may be seeing a push back against what some see as price-gouging of the most desperate and vulnerable segment of the world's population: The sick and the poor.

In the recent past, Nomadic Politics examined, in two posts, alleged price-gouging for one company's drug for Hepatitis C. There are further developments to that story. First, let's re-cap.

The Breakthrough

The story begins with some very good news. It was reported last year that one orally-administered drug,  Sovaldi (sofosbuvir), has proved to be a breakthrough for the treatment of a silent killer virus, hepatitis C.  

From the clinical trial reports, researchers claimed that Sovaldi was not a life-long treatment but a genuine cure for the deadly disease itself. The therapy required a 12-week therapy but at the end, most of the patients would be free of the disease.  

Then came the bad news: Gilead Sciences, the patent-owner and developer of the drug, was definitely not a charity organization. It was a profit-making company which, according to Wikipedia, earned US $12.059 billion in 2014. 

It was immediately clear to everybody that the Hep C cure was not going to be given away free. Few, however, were expecting the price the company settled on. Sovaldi costs $1,000 a day, adding up to staggering $84,000 for a 12-week supply. 

The problem is obvious: at that price, a cure is out of reach of most patients in the world and even in rich countries.

Obamacare and Red State Rejections: How the Cost of Poor Decisions Continue to Mount

by Nomad

Many Republican governors who refused to accept Medicaid expansion in their states could be having second thoughts. The full consequences of their decision are slowly but surely becoming clear.

The Obamacare battle has taken a few interesting twists.

If you look at many of the conservative sites, you'd think it was a disaster and the worst thing that ever happened to America. The fog of partisanship is hard to peer through but grandually that mist seems to be lifting and that's bad news for red states.

With around 22 states now refusing to expand Medicaid under the national healthcare policy, analysts have been warning that Republican governors may end up paying a political price for their principled rejection. 

That's particularly true in Texas and Florida where the numbers of uninsured are high. According to some estimates, one quarter of the nation's low-income uninsured reside deep in the heart of Texas. 

But it is not just Texas or Florida. If any state could benefit from Obamacare it's Mississippi. The state tops the charts for poor-health indicators: highest in poverty, second-highest in obesity, highest in diabetes and highest in pre-term births. There, 20% Mississippi's nearly 3 million residents are on the Medicaid rolls. Twelve percent are on Medicare, and 20 percent are uninsured, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. 

And yet, despite the dire need, Republican Governor Phil Bryant decided to turn down an estimated $426 million in federal funds, citing administration costs and rather oddly, the possibility that Obamacare could in the future be repealed.