Scientific Breakthroughs in Medical Research

"Less than one percent of published biomedical research is both scientifically valid and clinically useful."
Dr. Brian Haynes, clinical epidemiology professor, McMaster University

"Much of what biomedical researchers conclude in published studies is misleading, exaggerated, and often flat-out wrong."
"There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false."
"The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance."
"Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias." 
John Ioannidis, expert on credibility of medical research, Stanford University

Universal Biomedical Research Laboratory

Doesn't the public get all worked up with excited anticipation on reading newspaper accounts of radical new health research that has succeeded in finding that elusive cure for whatever ails the anxious reader. That anxious reader will hope against hope that he will live long enough to take advantage of this breakthrough finding in new techniques, medicines, protocols that will surely benefit his/her condition, knowing that from laboratory finding to animal modelling to human clinical trials a decade may pass before government health bodies give regulatory assent for use.

The trouble is there are so many of these research projects and papers that come out of studies that are published to great acclaim. Whose conclusions have a qualifier such as "may", "might", "can", or "could" possibly have an impact on any given health condition. Despite which the research and its conclusion swiftly gets reported in headline news with added emphasis here and there to garner public interest and sell papers. And though people are at first thrilled at the prospect of a cure around the corner, some researchers in the field may think differently.

A seasoned researcher who would never dream of accelerating output on the basis of a fragile thread in research supposition might ask himself what selective science methods might have been used to conclude that their specific research points to a cure? Was the research contrived with a bias beforehand, a prior determined outcome? Was this a rigorous, double- or triple-blind study, one whose conclusion could be trusted?

Deceptive methods are often used by researchers anxious to publish and receive professional credit for producing yet another influential paper cited  by other researchers, to advance their careers. This has become a motivating factor for many in the field of health science seeking to impress those who may then regard them as promising experts in a particular field of study for whom an attractive position in academia may be forthcoming.

Selective study designs make use selectively of data, taking care to use the analyses or reporting of results that most closely match the outcome they have determined to aim toward. The results are heavily biased studies, a common failing in research, but one that experiences little difficulty in finding a place within science publications of good reputation. As an example with health impacts reported out of air-pollution-epidemiology studies, researchers can select outcomes from previous studies that suit their purposes.

Ignoring studies that fail to demonstrate the impacts the researcher is looking for, heavily biases his or her own conclusions, making them worthless. In the same token, scientists who are informed that their study appears to be one based on bias will be affronted, and go into vigorous denial. But it is not the 'evidence' unearthed that reflects the nature of science, but the methods used; flawed methodology results in flawed outcomes. Bias nullifies any evidence that results from such studies.

When a study undergoes triple- or double-blinding, its purpose is specific to the reduction of scientific bias on the part of scientists undertaking the study. Peer reviewers for journals prior to publication, are meant to carefully read the papers to ask probing questions, and recommend changes that clarify issues, and if well done by knowledgeable reviewers, preclude bias, assuring the publishers that the paper they will then publish is scientifically rigorously defensible.

On the other hand, journal publishers and their editors look for novel research that will pique the interest of their readers. If a study fails to demonstrate health impacts, they may be rejected for publication, and when this occurs the bias shown is on the part of the publisher. As for the media, methods are irrelevant, they look for results and the more spectacular they can make those results appear in print by their own use of superlatives and excesses, the more saleable their product is to the public.

This is an issue that doesn't start in the laboratory, but in the classroom. Where professors in academic settings now all too often train their students what they must think, and not how they should think to reach reliable conclusions, muddying science with prevalent social attitudes. Often hopes of procuring more research funding motivates academics to rush their work to publication to impress funding agencies.

Academic education has a purpose, to teach students how to think analytically. Failing that purpose, degrees are mere papers signifying little. Supporting the view of the cynical that the experience of life aligned with plain good old common sense rate as a practical equal to the value of a doctorate.

That Elusive Moment of Fame

"The burns penetrate the skin and soft tissue and then involve the muscle. As they penetrate you lose fluid, causing dehydration and it causes all these inflammatory markers that drop your blood pressure and can put you into shock." 
"[Recovery from the consequences can take years]."
Dr. Robert Glatter, emergency room physician,  Lennox Hill Hospital, New York

Shutterstock

Is it that people are just too idiotically dense to understand the consequences of actions they take? Or is it that young people cannot imagine that anything adverse will occur to them, because they are young and destined to live a long and fruitful life, irrespective of the choices they make? Or am I just expressing in different words the very same question?

Young people do want to be noticed, they do take challenges, they want to be accepted, to be admired, to be part of a clique, to be considered special enough that others will be eager to befriend them. But in the process do they and must they take total leave of their reasonableness, their common sense?

The allure of posting a stupid trick like this on YouTube is evidently too great a draw.

How else explain a 12-year-old attempting to perform a stunt that has become popular among young people? Are they trying to prove they're imbeciles by making the effort, or hoping to prove that they're invincible?

A boy in New York city spread flammable liquids on himself then lit a match and proceeded to set himself on fire. That was only part of the stunt. The rest of it was to leap into a bathtub filled with water, or a shower and that expeditiously planned solution to ensuring that the rubbing alcohol or nail polish remover he'd poured on himself was put out immediately for the "fire challenge" stunt to succeed.

This juvenile immaturity appears to have morphed into a craze across the United States involving both teens and pre-teens making the news at local news stations in their attempts to master the timing required, but lacking the cool split-second response to succeed.

Firefighters, in this instance, responded to a home in the Queens neighbourhood to discover the boy suffering serious burns over 40 percent of his body. Neighbours, alerted to the boy's situation when he ran out of his house, attempted to extinguish the fire with the water he had himself been unable to enlist in his aid.

It was all too late, unfortunately, to save him from serious burns, and he was taken to hospital in wretched condition.

Confusing Right-Left Directionally

"[In medicine], laterality errors have the potential to lead to devastating consequences. Some of the most infamous errors in medicine have been wrong-sided surgery -- the wrong kidney taken out, or the wrong side of the brain operated on."
"I want to reassure you, it doesn't happen that often. But this [right-to-left confusion] is seen to be one of the many potential contributing issues for these pretty catastrophic events happening."
Dr. Gerard Gormley, academic, Queen's University, Belfast

Dr Gerard Gormley, of Queen's University Belfast, says almost a fifth of college professors and more than a quarter of college students have difficulty quickly identifying right from left

"The [driving] instructor says, 'Make a right turn here', and they immediately get confused."
"Difficulties in telling right from left can impact how children learn and pick up different skills."
"When you look at a chest X-ray, you still have to mentally rotate it from one side to the other. The fluid can be on the left side of the X-ray, but it's actually on the patient's right side."
"We don't have all the answers. But it's a ripe research area."
Neuroscientist Eric Chudler, University of Washington

Previous research found when medical students were distracted by the noise of a ward and clinical questions, their ability to make right-left judgments was thrown off

Dr. Gormley, considered a leading figure in the research into right-left confusion, is often cited by researchers studying a phenomenon affecting up to twenty percent of people who are normal neurologically in all other respects. From his research he has ascertained that left-handed people seem more prone than those who are right-handed, to right-left confusion, as are women, from the frequency of their reporting the problem affecting them.

It is not just people of average intelligence who are affected by this dysfunction, but Mensa members known for their elevated intelligence quotients as well also report "right-left directional sense" to be poor, or below average. The events alluding to medical mishaps of grave dimensions mentioned by Dr. Gormley occur frequently enough that hospitals routinely have surgeons go through "checklists" before an incision.

Anyone who has been on an operating gurney lately may be familiar with the routine; the doctor accompanied by a nurse asks questions of the patient while consulting the patient's chart and his own notes in a patient-folder, to ensure that they know which eye or  which shoulder is to be operated on. And then they take the further precaution of marking the correct side directly with marker on the correct hip, leg or other body part.

Children, pointed out Dr. Chudler, who have the problem will experience difficulty in picking up rules of games, as well as how to follow directions, or learning how to tie their shoelaces. A new study by Dr. Gormley was reported involving medical students with reference made to an online right/left confusion test which Dr. Chudler had created. The site experienced so many hits it crashed; 38,483 people took the test.

The disorder is described as a "complex, neuropsychological process" which involves memory and the capacity to process visual information. Spatial awareness and mental rotation; the ability to rotate three-dimensional objects in space mentally is part of the higher brain function involved. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association focused on a procedure to drain fluid from around the lungs; viewed by a specialist it requires a mental right-left reversal.

It is similar to facing someone and identifying the fact that your right is their left and vice versa.

Some of the studies in the field lead to brain symmetry; where most people have a level of asymmetry, one brain hemisphere being slightly larger than the other. The greater the symmetry, however, the greater the likelihood of right-left confusion, suggests some brain imaging studies. And though there is yet to be a consensus on whether women are more susceptible than men, women do tend to have more symmetrical brains than men.

A study published by Dr. Gormley with 290 first-year medical students concluded that male students were superior at distinguishing right from left than female students, while other studies found no significant connection between gender and directional confusion "We still haven't got to the bottom of it", admits Dr. Gormley whose latest research indicates that when people are distracted, the opportunity of making a right-left error is enhanced.

Some people resort to wearing their watch on their left wrist to remind themselves which wrist is left, which is right; little tricks of this nature can be useful to people who need constant reminding.

Large Vehicles: Killing Machines

"The thing just rolled right up and into the cab and crushed her. On the positive side, it was instant death for my wife."
"From the dad's perspective, it was the smartest thing he could have done [parental equipping of a son with a 'monster truck']. 'I have an irresponsible young lad who wants to drive, I'm going to give him the biggest possible thing on the road so he doesn't get hurt', and sure enough, he never got hurt."
James Taylor, Toronto

"For every pickup truck driver killed in a side impact, 25 were killed in a car. I thought, what if we turned this on its head and found the most lethal vehicles out there?"
"I'm no sociologist, but people look after themselves and their family. It's a very human thing to do, I think."
Clay Gabler, "crash compatibility" specialist, Virginia Tech

Mischa Lopiano/Muskegon Chronicle via AP    Emergency personnel respond to a fatal traffic accident at the intersection of Evanston and Maple Island Road on Wednesday, July 22, 2015, in Egelston Township, Mich.

Auto safety researchers had conventionally focused on which vehicles were best selected to keep their occupants safe in traffic accidents. Dr. Gabler through his studies reached the conclusion that U.S. highways were full of cars "not designed to play nicely with each other." One study year, 1997, revealed that 5,373 Americans involved in crashes between a van or truck were killed. Of that total, 81 percent who died had been passengers in cars.

The result of his research first saw publication during the trending toward SUVs. His research zeroed in on the fact that trucks and vans were quite a lot weightier than passenger cars, their profile giving them a higher "ride height" resulting in their tearing through the passenger compartments of cars, the car bumpers or door sills presenting as no protection whatever in competition with the higher-riding, heavier vehicles.

Medical researchers at the University of Buffalo discovered that when an SUV impacts a car, even if the car has a better crash test rating, the driver of the car was four times likelier to end up dead. "In frontal crashes, SUVs tend to ride over shorter passenger vehicles ... crushing the occupant of the passenger car", according to Dietrich Jehle, an author and professor of emergency medicine.

So here's the dissonance in short; cars like the Honda Civic and the Nissan Cube which pass the crash tests with impeccable results, in reality represent the deadliest vehicles on the road; light-weight, low profile, sitting-driver targets. Scientists in Montreal studied data on three million Canadian crashes to discover that driving an SUV (rather than a car) ensures the driver has a 224% greater chance to cause a fatal crash.

Every life saved in a large vehicle resulted at the expense of 4.3 dead pedestrians, motorcyclists and car drivers, according to a study from the University of California, San Diego. Selecting an unnecessarily large vehicle is the choice of drivers likelier to lead to the maiming or killing of someone driving a smaller, lighter car.

"What does this idiot think he's doing?", were the last words that Michelle Taylor of Toronto ever uttered, speaking to her 83-year-old mother in the passenger seat, while driving Highway 9 in Ontario in her Buick Regal, in response to a truck drifting over from the opposite lane. This wasn't just any truck, but a customized pickup with off-road tires and a "lift kit", driven by a drowsy teenager whom sleep had overtaken while driving.

Ms. Taylor, 53, slowed her vehicle to a virtual stop, pulling as far as she could manage off the shoulder. The driver of the truck sustained no injuries. He was charged with careless driving, and lachrymosely lamented "miss you" to his truck, on Facebook. A year later he began posting photographs of his latest rig: a GMC Denali complete with custom front bumper, off-road tires and a lift kit.

Large vehicles are killers; their bumpers fail to line up with sedans and station wagons; they have stiff frames, they're heavier. Every 450 kilograms in added vehicle weight transforms a vehicle into a 40 percent more likely cause of a fatal collision, from that of a potentially survivable crash. Low gas prices have ramped up the sale of big cars. Pickup trucks claimed the first, second and fourth spots for bestselling vehicles in Canada in the first half of 2015.

(AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File) - In this July 14, 2015, file photo, employee Efren Martin II inspects a Cadillac Escalade as it nears the final process of assembly at the General Motors plant in Arlington, Texas.

"I care most about the people in MY vehicle", a forum post of a SUV driver of  a stated, claiming their intention is to protect their family from "moronic drivers Facebooking their way to oblivion." Another telling comment on yet another forum had another driver stating: "My SUV protects me from the actions of IDIOTS."

A 1981 study found that 93 percent of American drivers self-rated themselves better than the average driver. It's human nature to be sensitive to the errors made by others, while contrarily rationalizing driving errors they make themselves. "Safest vehicle" lists come complete with SUVs topping the choices. The authors of the University of Buffalo study emphasized the "increased safety of SUVs", even while critically assessing the propensity of SUVs to roll over passenger cars.

"The other guy has a big car, so you're going to feel unsafe unless you have a big one too", explained Michael Anderson, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley; someone who examined the social cost of driving increasingly larger vehicles. The world is a dangerous place; all the more so when Escalades are smashing into Civics.



Staff Sgt.Jamie Johnston, traffic services co-ordinator for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said, "There really isn't an enforceable legislation that restricts you from adding suspension modifications -- and we don't track any other modifications." He can't recall crashes where a lifted truck caused otherwise preventable fatalities, but in his 20-year career in crash reconstruction he's familiar with the sight of small cars crushed by larger vehicles.

"The smaller car is always going to feel the bigger bump. Mass is always the deciding issue."

Self-Motivated Monumental Self-Harm

"I fell asleep for 14-plus hours…luckily I got woken up because otherwise they would have had to amputate my leg if it went on any longer."
"At first I had to slowly graduate from the bed, to holding onto things, to a wheelchair, to a walker, to a cane, to holding my friend, and eventually I was able to walk again."
"I’m terrified for my friends that I used to use with. I tag them on Facebook stories, begging them to stop, and they don’t. They don’t care. They just keep going."
"It doesn’t matter how you use, where you get it, where you are, what your intentions are, your status, your bank account."
"I thought I was untouchable, and I learned a huge lesson. I want the people watching [video] to learn from my mistake. I’m here alive today to give them that."
Lynn, Vancouver musician

"Even though the Downtown Eastside experiences the most overdoses, that’s not where we’re seeing deaths in the Vancouver area."
Dr. Mark Lysyshyn, Medical Health Officer for Vancouver Coastal Health

"The reality is these drugs are being used, they’re being used a lot, they’re being used recreationally and socially by parts of society that we would never dream would [use them], but it’s also developing into a serious problem."
Michael Pond, Vancouver psychotherapist, working with drug addicts

"Fentanyl is not being made here. It's being made elsewhere ... then coming here and then it gets into the hands of the people who mix it in their bathtub and put in some blue dye or green dye and get a pill press and make it into fake Oxy[Contin]."
Sgt.Lindsey Houghton, Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, British Columbia

Fentanyl, a powerful opioid, has been linked of late to overdose deaths in Western Canada. It enters Canada through a drug trafficking route of long duration and it is steadily killing some of its users just as tainted ecstasy before it did. The painkiller, it is assumed by provincial authorities, is imported from Asia to the West Coast, moved along to the B.C. black market and to Alberta through organized crime groups, because there's a lot of money to be made.

Back in 2012 a similar occurrence had investigators probing batches of ecstasy mixed with a lethal, but unknown substance. The source then was not identified, but presumed to have emanated from Asia, and it didn't take long for overdose deaths to begin accumulating. "I think there is something of a trade route, and it's one we saw in place at the time of ecstasy lacing", affirmed criminologist Rob Gordon of Simon Fraser University.

The musician quoted above, Lynn, had been puffing heroin last month.. She began suffering symptoms of overdose. By the time her roommate arrived she was found convulsing, suffering a severe seizure. Her roommate managed to bring her to consciousness, and call emergency. At the hospital Lynn was in a coma for two days and then spent another eight days in the ICU. Since that event she has only now managed to begin walking again on her own.

In a two-week period in the Metro Vancouver area, police have linked four overdose deaths to fentanyl, with authorities and health officials stating that people using the drug have no idea what it is they're taking into their bodies. All they're aware of is that euphoric high and relief from pain. Overdosing can cause a huge drop in blood pressure, leading to slowed breathing, followed by deep sleep, coma or death.

Jack Bodie, 17, died after taking fake Oxycontin laced with fentanyl, police said. (Facebook)

Which is what it is assumed killed a couple in their early 30s who died in their North Vancouver home on July 20. A 17-year-old boy and a 31-year-old man died in separate, similar incidents in the past week. That's the tip of the iceberg of fentanyl-caused mortalities. Over 500 people have died across British Columbia and Alberta since 2013 under similar circumstances; the victims imagining they're taking OxyContin or using heroin, without knowing it's spiked with fentanyl.

There's always the mystery why people gravitate to using illegal drugs. Why some people succumb while others don't. When drug manufacturers altered the OxyContin formula to no longer make it useful to be crushed and snorted or smoked, fentanyl made its entry to the illicit drug market. It was soon obvious to crime syndicates that selling fentanyl as OxyContin or heroin would represent good business.

The problem is that fentanyl is up to one hundred times more toxic than morphine; its very potency is a killer. Turkey and China are considered to be the places of origin. When it ends up in Canada coming in as a cheap raw powder, criminal gangs press it into pills to market it as something it is not. Distribution channels are not yet transparent to investigators, but police do know that many gangs are involved.

The low production overheads are attractive to the criminal element, where pills can sell in the range of $50 to $100 on the street. How people who use them fare is of little interest to the profit-oriented and conscienceless criminal mind. That's no mystery, however; there will always been psychopaths in any society. The mystery lies in what it is that propels people to place their health in such compromised situations, and risk life for an instant of ecstasy rather than face the realities of life head on.

Taking His Chances

"I didn't know if he'd live, walk or talk again. We didn't know from one minute to the next if he was going to be there for us or whether he was going to be paralyzed."
Diane Matheson, Perth, Ontario

"I think the only thing that would make it worse is if I got a bill to repair the dent in his truck. He's walking away but I'm getting a bill from the courts. It just seems so wrong."
Arthur Matheson, Perth cattle/sheep farmer

"It has to be harsh in some cases or more people will take chances on insurance. It's kind of done what it's supposed to do, it's just unfortunate people get caught up in it for the wrong reasons."
Daniel Strigberger, Waterloo lawyer specializing in insurance law

Arthur and Diane Matheson had their world turned upside down when Arthur was injured six years ago. The latest court ruling against them means they won't be able to sue the hit-and-run driver responsible.   James Park / Ottawa Citizen

This is a court case that would seem on the surface to be a no-brainer; a man driving an ATV used solely for farm chores, to briefly cross 100 yards between his driveway and a gate into the field where his sheep graze, in the process crossing a rural dirt road. In the spare gulp of time it took for Arthur Matheson to steer his ATV from the driveway to the gate -- 30 seconds or less -- on that concession road, he was hit by a speeding vehicle whose driver made no effort to stop; a hit-and-run.

But there appears the minutiae of a legal interpretation, whether the ATV met the standard definition of a "self-propelled implement of husbandry". A unit considered to be specifically one meant as a piece of farm equipment such as a combine or tractor is exempt from Ontario's Compulsory Automobile Insurance Act. But if this was classified as an off-road vehicle, subject to insurance requirements levied on a car or truck using a  highway his legal case against the driver was null.

The 1986 model Honda TRX 200 was not manufactured specifically as a vehicle meant for farm-related activities. Mr. Matheson had never used his ATV for anything else but that purpose, however. And since he used it solely for that purpose he was under the impression he did not require additional insurance beyond what his farm policy normally covered. In April 2013 Ontario Superior Court Justice Kenneth Pedlar came to the same conclusion.

He ruled that ATVs met the definition of a "self propelled implement of husbandry" as long as used for farm purposes, meaning their drivers would be protected from the "very harsh" civil penalty preventing those without specific ATV insurance from seeking damages in a court of law. Judge Pedlar concluded that the Compulsory Automobile Insurance Act's purpose was to protect innocent victims from some else's negligence.

Six years on, the Court of Appeals has ruled otherwise; ruling that Mr. Matheson would not, after all, be permitted to sue the careless driver who was sent to prison for hitting him and then departing the scene of the accident because it held that farmer Matheson's ATV hadn't been properly insured. His long legal battle for compensation has come to a thudding halt. Not only is he now unable to seek damages for lost income and other benefits, but he must pay the $55,000 legal costs of the other driver, since he has lost his case.

The accident had caused Mr. Matheson to suffer a horrendous brain injury. Doctors thought they might have to amputate a leg that had been badly broken. He suffered fractures to his arm, a rib and vertebrae. Airlifted to the Ottawa Hospital's Civic campus, he is back on his five-generation-family farm trying, at age 56 and still physically handicapped, to manage farm routine. His short-term memory has been permanently impaired.

His shattered leg required a metal plate and pins to bring it to a state where it can still be used; his arm continues to ache, and he must take medication daily for his brain injury. But the Court of Appeal had ruled that Mr. Pedlar had "lost sight of the goal of determining the intent of the legislature" in interpreting what the Compulsory Automobile Insurance Act was enacted to accomplish.

"The legislative means of insurance universal insurance would be rendered nugatory if they were made applicable only to those who cause accidents. The clear legislative intent is that the prospect of not being able to recover damages or statutory accident benefits gives vehicle owners good reason to purchase insurance before any accident has taken place", ruled the Court of Appeal. "The provisions, even if considered 'very harsh', must be enforced."

The ATV, they concluded, though used widely by farmers for work on their farms, was not manufactured, designed, redesigned, converted or reconstructed for a specific farming activity. Mr. Matheson's insurance agent had given his client due warning of the need to insure the ATV should he plan to take it off the farm in its use. At the time, Mr. Matheson had responded that he planned to "take his chances".

Unintended consequences of such a nature when people in all honesty feel they are well prepared to face contingencies and discover otherwise through tragic events, do not, in the event, inspire confidence in the reading of the law.

Driving Under The Influence

"All of this verdict will never change anything that happened. My loved ones will not come back."
"It's hard because all the pictures that are in my head are coming back."
"It's not me that's bringing her to court. I have no expectations concerning this trial."
"Future and present drivers should know that we don't stop on highways, and it's very dangerous. Even if it's a small animal that we like or that we want to preserve we should not stop on the highways. It's not a place to stop."
Pauline Volikakis, Montreal, bereaved wife and mother

"I just wanted to pick all those ducklings up and put them in my car. I know it was a mistake."
Emma Czornobaj, 25, Laval, Quebec

Emma Czornobaj, left, leaves the Montreal Court room with a supporter Monday, June 2, 2014. Czornobaj has been charged with criminal negligence and dangerous driving causing two deaths when she stopped her car on a highway to avoid hitting a family of ducks.   Photograph by: Peter McCabe , The Gazette

Most people, women in particular, but not necessarily just women, would catch their breath and hope for the best, seeing a wild animal, small or large run out on a highway where cars are passing. Snakes, turtles, skunks, raccoons, squirrels, ducks -- any number of unaware, frightened animals seeking to pass from one wooded area to another, instinctively aware that to do so is dangerous, but risking the passage because of some irresistible natural draw -- all come to grief on highways.

When the animals that are crossing represent larger wildlife like deer or moose or bears, then the risk to the driver who cannot evade their presence, is multiplied, as well. Drivers, for the most part, make an effort to swerve slightly if it can help them to avoid hitting an animal or a bird, though it is also a fact that there are some who deliberately go out of their way to strike such targets, taking some kind of morbid pleasure in meting out death.

Emma Czornobaj wasn't one of the latter. On June 27, 2010, she was driving on Highway 30 on the South Shore of Montreal when she noticed seven ducks in a row, waddling in the left lane. It really is surprising how often that kind of thing happens, and when it does, there are occasions when people are alerted, perhaps not on a highway but on a rural lane, and the ducks are able to pass in safety. Emma Czornobaj parked her Honda Civic, started her flashers and walked on the highway back to where she had seen the birds.

At trial in Montreal, where Ms. Czornobaj is charged with criminal negligence causing death, carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment on conviction, along with two charges of dangerous driving causing death, with a maximum sentence of 14 years, Martine Tessier informed the court she had narrowly avoided smashing into Ms. Czornobaj's car, seconds before a fatal crash occurred with others on the road nor managing to avoid a collision with the parked car.

Then it was the turn of witness Pauline Volikakis, driving her orange Yamaha motorcycle which she managed to skid to a stop, sustaining slight injuries. She had seen her husband gesture at a woman who had been walking on the narrow shoulder of the highway. "I wondered what she was doing there. It was not the place to be", she commented. She watched as her husband's Harley Davidson smashed into the parked car. And as her 16-year-old daughter Jessie, riding pillion, was thrown onto the car's back window, over the car, onto the hood and then the road.

She witnessed her daughter, pinned underneath the car as the force of the crash shoved the car forward. Her husband had been driving his motorcycle at an estimated 113 to 129 kmh. She suffered the agony of seeing her husband and her daughter, whom they had just picked up from her workplace, with the family heading out for home but with the intention of stopping on the way for ice cream, involved in a cataclysmic collision. That was at 7:20 p.m., daylight on a lovely summer's day.

Ms. Czornobaj's lawyer's argument was that the deaths were the result of "an unfortunate accident", not to be confused with a deliberate criminal act. She had stopped close to the barrier separating the highway, and put on her hazard lights, unaware she could be the cause of a dangerous life-threat to other motorists. The Crown attorney stated that Ms. Czornobaj had stopped on the road and emerged "for the purpose of catching ducks", her actions indicating "wanton and reckless disregard for the safety of others".

Superior Court Justice Eliane Perrault informed jurors they could find the accused guilty of simple dangerous driving, with a maximum sentence of five years. And she patiently responded to a number of queries posed by the jury, explaining that "Criminal negligence requires more than carelessness on Emma Czornobaj's part. It must be a marked and substantial difference from what a reasonable and prudent person would do in the same circumstances."

The Crown, pointed out Judge Perrault, must prove this; either by proving the accused was aware of the danger or the risk of safety to others and acted nonetheless; or to prove that the accused "gave no thought to the possibility that any such risk existed." As for charges of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death, the Judge remarked: "The Crown must satisfy, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Emma Czornobaj acted in a way that is a marked departure from what a reasonable and prudent driver would do in the same circumstances."

"You must be satisfied that a reasonable person in similar circumstances should have been aware of the risk and the danger involved in Emma Czornobaj's conduct."  Pauline Volikakis hadn't looked to charge the young woman whose oblivion to the danger her action in driving under the influence of kindness might impose on the travelling public. And the jury is now left with the perplexing and troubling judgement they must pronounce upon; requiring the Solomonic judgement.

Flouting Safety - Darwinian Selection

"He was literally using it just to fly himself to the cottage, fly himself to his friends' houses. My main concern is that, if you lose your driver's license, you can still fly around in a personal aircraft."
"I live on a lake; I don't know how many people are flying up to the cottage on the weekend, landing their helicopter, landing their plane. ...I don't know how many commercial pilots there are who have lost their driver's license."
Brad Harris, York Region concerned citizen

Handout   On April 23 of this year, an R44 II helicopter registered to a numbered company owned by Bruce Lakie was involved in a serious crash near Queensville, Ont.

Mr. Harris is concerned. He is familiar with the man in question, Bruce Lakie, a man who lost his driver's license because of an impaired driving conviction, but still went on to pilot his personal private helicopter. Mr. Lakie was in fact, not afoul of the law in this matter. His driving license taken away, he no longer drove his truck. But evidently there is nothing in Canadian law that would interfere with piloting a personal aircraft; nothing to link his flying license with his driving license.

Who knew? You can be arrested for the criminal act of drunk driving, but nothing will associate that act with piloting a plane? Would a mature adult, cognizant of his obligations to society as well as to himself and his family, restrain himself from flying an aircraft while under the influence, but not while driving a motor vehicle? The mind boggles.

"Currently there are no formal mechanisms in place linking a provincial/territorial driver's license to the pilot license as a driver's license is not a prerequisite for a Canadian pilot license", according to Transport Canada spokesperson Brooke Williams. The issue simply appears to be one that hasn't previously been of any concern and thus, it hasn't been addressed, as it might have been, and most certainly should have been.

If a substance abuse problem compromises a motorist's ability to be aware and drive competently, it most certainly would do the same to a pilot's competency in manoeuvring and flying an aircraft. He would constitute a potential threat in many ways. Unless there arises a suspicion that a pilot would not pass a medical fitness assessment and an airport security clearance would be denied him, it's doubtful the matter would even come up, unless an accident occurred directly linking the pilot to alcohol abuse.

It's a different story in the United States, where pilots convicted of "alcohol-related or administrative action" are required by law to contact the Federal Aviation Administration within 60 days, to inform them of the situation. Mr. Lakie's conviction of impaired driving and dangerous driving should have served to restrict him from driving any vehicle, including aircraft and for very obvious reasons. "Mr. Lakie's manner of driving was a significant departure from the standard of a reasonably prudent person", wrote the trial judge who convicted him.

During the period of time when this man's driving license was suspended he continued to pilot his Robinson R44 II helicopter. On April 23 of this year an R44 II helicopter registered to a numbered company owned by Mr. Lakie happened to be involved in a serious crash near Queensville, Ontario. The Transport Canada incident report indicated that the aircraft had taken off from a private residence in Queensville, and "during a landing in a marshy area ... a skid cut in the soft earth and the helicopter dynamically rolled over."

Fortunately there were no injuries. This time around. What if the helicopter had landed on a highway where it 'dynamically rolled over' a few cars innocently driving their occupants to a destination other than a cemetery?

Bewitched

"Something happened between me and the child. It was like a mirror."
"I was both its guardian and its hostage."
"I had a smile on my face like I never had before. When I got home, there was a moment of euphoria. I let out a big shout. I took photos. I felt like a superman."
"I may sound like a fool, but I would speak to it."
Patrick Vialaneix, Paris, France

"When he walked into my office he had a suitcase with him, ready to be sent to jail.
"I had to say to him, 'Hold on, the statute of limitations may have come into play'. He hadn't even heard of that concept."
Franck Dupouy, lawyer for Patrick Vialaneix

It's not all that difficult to understand a connection made by an impressionable child with a painting whose subject entrances him, making a lasting memory for him of a young boy in period costume, holding a bubble in his hand, transcendentally haunting him into his adult years, to recall the painting of the boy, a boy with a physical resemblance to his own image in a mirror. He might have imagined himself having lived before, and having been painted by a master.

That young boy that could have been himself in an earlier incarnation hundreds of years ago, could have been the son of one of the most famous artists of all time. Rembrandt van Rijn's painting The Night Watch is considered to be one of the most famous artworks of all time. Painted in 1641-41, hanging in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Rembrandt's country of origin, it is beyond price, unique and treasured. If it were to disappear, it would represent a calamity of immense proportions.

On the other hand, the master's paintings, if and when any come on the market, go for tremendous sums. They are costly acquisitions for any museum, public art gallery or private collector. The young boy who grew into an adult remained fascinated with his memory of having seen Child with a Soap Bubble when he saw it first at age 13 at the time that his mother took him to the museum where it was being exhibited.

He would travel often as he grow up, from his home in nearby St-Raphael to see the painting, gazing at it, in the full melancholy of its presence. Why he had never sought a photograph of the painting, or even a reproduction is inexplicable; to do so might have satisfied his yearning to possess it. Instead when he was 28, working as an alarm systems technician he took advantage of studying the Draguignan museum's security system.

On a Bastille Day holiday he hid in a museum closet awaiting the museum's evacuation of staff. He was aware that the movement detector would give him a mere two seconds to cross the room where the painting hung. Leaping across the dark room, feeling his way along the walls, he reached the painting and the second he unhooked it from the wall the alarm went off. He ran out of the building, placed the Rembrandt in a garbage bag and drove home with the painting on the back seat of his car.

Handout   One of the "selfie" Polaroid pictures Patrick Vialaneix took with the stolen Rembrandt.

 

Then he exulted in his possession of the treasured 17th-Century Dutch masterpiece. He took a self-portrait of himself standing before the painting. Then he carefully wrapped the painting and hid it under his bed. Soon afterward he married. His possession of the legendary painting gave him great concern for its physical stability, worried about conserving it, even while he was troubled and in great turmoil over its possession.

He moved constantly hoping to find conditions not too dry not too damp, not susceptible to fire to protect and conserve the painting in optimum condition. That was, after all, incumbent upon him as the possessor of a unique and rare -- and for him, psychologically troubling - artwork of amazing provenance. He told no one, keeping the painting well hidden from scrutiny, taking it out to survey it only when he was alone in the house.

He convinced his wife the painting represented a portrait of his dead father as a child. A year ago, becoming seriously ill, he determined to rid himself of the painting. Not return it to the museum where he had taken it from, however, though a friend placed him in touch with an insurance agent who claimed he could aid him in returning he painting to the museum when he could share a possible reward.

Eventually Mr. Vialaneix accepted a cheque cut for $59,000, transferring Child with Soap Bubble to an intermediary, free at last from the responsibility of its presence. Soon afterward press reports wrote of two men arrested attempting to sell the painting. He finally told his wife the truth. Then he saw a lawyer. He took the uncashed cheque to a police station, spoke to the police for hours to convince them he was telling the truth.

He felt empty inside when he surrendered the painting: "I had lost something previous. I had also lost 15 years", he said of the length of time he had kept the painting. If convicted as a suspect who may have conspired to sell a stolen work of art, he will face a maximum jail sentence of ten years. It may help him that the painting is considered by art experts not to be a Rembrandt, after all.

Unabashed, Unmitigated Gall

"You were diagnosed with prominent traits of narcissistic personality disorder and some psychopathic traits."
"It was noted that narcissistic injury could again trigger dangerous actions."
"You have displayed a negative attitude toward the criminal justice system and have blamed the store, the court system and the media for your troubles."
"You have refused participation in school, psychology, intake assessment and some programming (considered imperative to address your risk factors)."
Parole Board of Canada

Tatyana Granada is angry, and she is offended and she is furious over the manner in which justice has erred in handling her case. She had originally been arrested, charged with tampering with food products after a Calgary grocery had barred her from entry to their store, because of her shoplifting habit. She had been sentenced to three years in prison. That people in Calgary had been terrified of the potential of coming across pins and sharp objects she had inserted in food items was not the issue, as far as she is concerned.

What is of great meaning is that her human rights have been tampered with. She has appealed for early release from prison. The Parole Board in reviewing her case, concluded that she is at low risk to re-offend, with the caveat that the risk is low just as long as she is not offended by the actions of others, causing her to strike out in reaction, as she did in endangering the health and safety of others through her malicious pins-insertion in food.

They concluded further that they would turn down her application for early prison release in February of 2014, following her 2012 conviction on four counts each of mischief and trespassing. She had been convicted by a provincial court judge of those charges in 2012, when she was found guilty of inserting pins, needles and nails in produce items at the Calgary Oakridge Co-op store in 2010.

Quite apart from the shopping public's panic at the discovery of those objects in their food, their subsequent avoidance of shopping at the Oakridge Co-op cost at least $600,000 in lost business and extensive investigation of the incidents, where employees left because of the stress they felt, and many had their hours of work cut back. Despite which, the psychiatrist assessing the woman made note that she "harboured resentment toward the justice system", feeling no guilt for her actions.

He also reported the scorn that Ms. Granada expressed for her husband, who committed suicide in 2011, before she was tried, found guilty and taken to prison in 2012. "You commented that the incident was no big tragedy, adding that your husband caused you trouble by leaving no insurance", wrote the Parole Board.

Her parents had moved temporarily from Latvia to take care of the couple's two children, while their mother remained incarcerated. But she is now at large, freed on statutory release, mandated by law for offenders having served two-thirds of their sentence. Tatyana Granada is now suing the Co-op, which no doubt hoped that their ordeal had passed and the future would look brighter for them.

She is suing them for $8-million, claiming them to have been responsible for the shame and loss of family honour incurred to her husband, leading to his suicide. Not her behaviour, but that of the grocery store in publicly naming, shaming, blaming and holding her to account in a criminal court of law for her descent into malicious pay-back for being banned from the store, endangering the lives of innocent consumers.

The company, she alleges, is fully responsible for the emotional distress she suffered when they defamed her. They are also responsible for her inability to secure employment.

The Parole Board of Canada has refused to grant Tatyana Granada’s (left) application for early release from prison, where she is serving a three-year sentence following her conviction for four counts each of mischief and trespassing. Photograph by: Daryl Slade , Calgary Herald

But ... Why?

"At Health Mart 2000 we believe that the road to optimal health may be achieved thru a natural approach, using Herbs and Natural products given to us by GOD, as our inheret (sic) right as his adopted children; and a continued daily effort to know our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the way to Salvation and ever Lasting Life."
Health Mart 2000, St. Paul, Alberta website

"We'll probably be grappling with this for a long time, because I don't know if anybody can make sense of what happened. To me [Mr. Quadros] was an ordinary person, a businessman, a father and a husband, and to have this happen, I can't explain it. It's just unexplainable. So there's something else that we are missing, whether it can be identified through autopsy, or some other stressor in his life that put him in this situation. I've never seen him like this, so I don't know what pushed him to this. Right now it makes no sense at all."
"All of the community should be thinking of everybody who is affected by this incident and trying to help them all out."
Glenn Anderson, mayor, St.Paul, Alberta

St. Paul Cathedral   The funeral for Gilbert Dasna was held at the St. Paul Cathedral, St. Paul, Alberta on Monday, May 19, 2014 .

 

The slain and the slayer are both dead. Whatever was the motivation for the surprise attack and resulting suicide-by-police, both are beyond reach of enquiry. If there was a logical reason for what happened in this small town of six thousand souls located northeast of Edmonton, or even a remotely explicable one beyond the blank mystery that presents itself, it may have died with the two men. Unless somehow who has special knowledge decides to step forward and clear up the confounding mystery.

From the website quotation the owner of the town's local health food store was a religious man of great devout conviction. He had in his life the kind of stability that a self-owned business, a spouse, children and familiarity of his peers along with respect in the town provides. If there were mental health issues aside from what is generally known in a small town atmosphere where everyone seems to know everyone else's business, it presents as an issue no one seems to have been aware of.

The man whose life this health food store owner destroyed had been living in the town for the past three years. A young missionary priest from Cameroon whose sister, a nun, raised him. He had briefly returned to his native Africa when his sister was killed in a car crash. She had been his inspiration to the priesthood and his firm belief in the presence of an Almighty God; had taken her little brother under her protective and nurturing care on the death of their parents.

When Father Gilbert Dasna responded to a knock at the door of his rectory on May 9, he was confronted by John Carlos Quadros, 55, who owned the alternative health food store on the main street of the town, located a mere block distant from the St.Paul Cathedral and its rectory. It's doubtful that he was given much time to react, seeing himself standing in the doorway of the rectory, before him a familiar face holding in his hands a firearm. At that close range, Father Dasna was shot multiple times in the chest.

Police shot Mr. Quadros dead as he sat in his truck. First,  however, he had sped away from the rectory with three constables of the local RCMP detachment after him, and a high speed pursuit ensued, gunfire reverberating through the town's residential streets. The female RCMP officer at the wheel made a decision to stop the rampage, and back on the main street again, drove directly into the path of the speeding truck. Mr. Quadros's black Dodge truck rammed into the police truck, crushing it, crushing his own vehicle and with Mr. Quadros in the driver's seat, he was shot by police.

The RCMP officer at the wheel suffered badly crushed legs necessitating immediate surgery. She is expected to recover. While the two male officers in the confrontation received treatment for less serious wounds, one gunshot injury included. Inside Mr. Quadros's truck an investigative search revealed multiple weapons. "It could have been way worse, with the gunfire through residential areas and into the downtown core. People heard it across town", said Mayor Anderson.

Father Dasna's remains are scheduled to be returned to the cemetery operated by his religious order in Nigeria. Father Dasna is returning to the place of his birth. His work in Canada is over. He is known for having said at a funeral for a local 11-year-old girl: "We are the people of faith, we are the people of hope."

Defining Threshholds

"I would never want to be a state that can just sort of put people in institutions. But it's clear to me that anyone who's living this way, who's got tons of paper and junk ... and living outside on their front porch throughout a -20, -30-degree winter...[needs help]."
"I think it's fair to question whether or not that person really does have the ability to take care of themselves."
Josh Matlow, Toronto ward Councillor

"There's only so much that can be done. We all have the right to choose things that are risky for us and clearly that comes with a threshold and that's not easily defined."
Catherine Chater, occupational therapist, specialist on hoarding, VHA Home Healthcare

Who hasn't read about and tch-tched the unfortunate penchant for the elderly, the slightly unhinged, those with compassion for the helpless and the vulnerable slightly beyond reasonability, succumbing to the urge to help and in so doing burdening themselves beyond a point where they are capable of managing, to secure the needs of those to which they have committed themselves, and compromising their own health and well-being, in the process.

These are the sad souls who find themselves overwhelmed when faced with disturbing incidents, coming across abandoned animals, pledging themselves to taking them in, caring for them, until they reach the point of no return, no room, no energy, no funding, no patience, no hope. Often neighbours complain about the stench that seems to emanate from their home next door, or their apartment, and when authorities investigate they find these doddering old dears in a haze of confusion, their home overrun with the presence of cats or dogs whose needs are neglected, sometimes starving, often ill, and needing to be rescued from the rescuer.

And then, of course, there are others in society who submit to a compulsion to collect things around them, seeing items that have been discarded by others which seem to them perfectly useful, in good order, and surely there will come a time when whatever it is that they decide to pick up and take home with them, when the object will be needed? That time may never come, and their home may eventually become cramped with all manner of 'perfectly good' discards waiting to 'be used', with more coming in on a regular basis, until there is scant room left to move.

Or, the individual who discovers a pressing need to hoard newspapers and journals, who stacks them neatly in piles on the floor once shelves have been overwhelmed, and eventually those piles proliferate and reach to the ceiling, and narrow passages between them are all that is left for the home owner to negotiate the way to various rooms of the overcrowded house. These are people for whom life has become overwhelming and unmanageable. They may not recognize that they are in the throes of a pathology that has overtaken their reason, and may not understand that their passion to hoard is unnatural, making their living arrangements quite impossible. They take pride in their compulsion to commit to saving things from being discarded before their time; their thrift and public conscience.

From time to time the presence of these individuals and their inhabitable dwellings come to public light. Authorities step in to clean up the mess. Sometimes the situation is revealed on the death of the hoarder, sometimes when a neighbour makes a complaint. These remain relatively obscure and rare happenings, but they're notable when they come to public light for the psychological disorder from the normalcy of wishing to acquire objects to the urgency of acquiring things simply for the sake of doing it, entirely compromising the quality of the individual's practical life.

Chris So / Toronto Star 

The city boarded up Dennis Cibulka's home 18 months ago after deeming it a fire hazard. Cibulka, 63, has lived in the house for more than 50 years and says he isn’t a hoarder.

In Toronto's Davisville area the environs of the home that Dennis Cibulka lived in reeked of cat urine. The felines had become accustomed to wending their way in the interior through the piles of boxes stacked in the home. The home was packed with overflowing piles of paper, plastics, clothes, boxes. This was a man who collected just about everything from paper to homeless cats. Eventually the city boarded up the house, considering it a fire hazard. There was not even room for the man to live in the house; he took up residence on the porch. And then workers wearing hazmat (hazardous-material-handling outfits) suits came in along with fire officials to clear the home of its baggage.

  Crews in hazmat suits remove debris from a Beech Ave. home on May 12. Toronto Fire used a court order to remove flammable materials from the house that last year had also been overrun with cats. Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto Star

Neighbours are now concerned once again. They are witness to the fact that the whole scenario is being repeated; Mr. Cibulka is once again filling his home with boxes. His home may have been cleared of the detritus it contained back in November of last year, but his detritus-packed mind had never received any kind of psychological or professional assistance to clear it of the utterly pressing need to recommence hoarding.

And on Beech Avenue another home was cleared out with workers in hazmat suits doing the work of unfilling it, that the home owner had painstakingly caused. At the same time over 50 cats were removed from the house. Along with "excess combustibles". Authorities can take the initiative to clear out a home and bring it into line with the fire code, removing clutter built to impossible proportions, but the individual whose collecting pathology is left with the suddenly-empty home sees an obvious gap and moves to remedy it, the opportunity to begin anew compelling.

Toronto City Council approved SPIDER (The Specialized Program for Interdivisional Enhance Response) in December of last year to enable various municipal departments to co-ordinate their work enabling a situation where hoarding issues are adequately addressed across the city. A City councillor wants it to go further, to review the Mental Health Act so that compulsive hoarding disorder can be medically addressed. Mr. Cibulka rebuffed a city offer of psychological counselling.

Hoarding, only recently labelled as a unique psychological disorder, affects between 2% and 6% of the population.

Biased to Bigotry

"World Judaism is ungraspable everywhere and doesn't need to get involved in military action while continuing to unfurl its influence, whereas we are left to sacrifice the best blood of the best of our people."
"World Judaism is one of the main drivers of Western modernity...[a people whose] "rootlessness" [is deplorable in their] "distance from the soil".
"Philosophy is the opposite of all comfort and assurance ... it constantly remains in the perilous neighbourhood of supreme uncertainty."
"The Fuhrer is your one and only present and future German reality and law."
Martin Heidegger, German philosopher

"Every student who really wants to deal with Heidegger will have to deal with the problem of the relation between philosophy and antisemitism".
Peter Trawny, director, Martin Heidegger Institute, University of Wuppertal

This is a man hugely respected within the philosophical community, an early 20th-Century philosopher of huge repute, a forerunner of the school of philosophy borrowing from Socrates' method of inquiry and response. Scholars of later repute took their inspiration from his thought process. One might think, logically enough, that philosophy requires a mind free from unreasoning and unreasonable bigotry, and if so, this man proved an exception.

The truth is, unfortunately, that however brilliant a mind may be in science and the humanities, it can also be corrupted and constricted by an inbred, habitual environment of deliberate discrimination against other humans on the basis of a societal affliction named antisemitism.  Martin Heidegger's thought processes producing highly regarded philosophical notes did not represent his only gift to posterity.

He indulged in furtive note-taking and opinion cogitation of the nastiest kind, blackening, in retrospect, his intellectual prowess and his philosophical legacy. He once taught Hannah Arendt, who as a young scholar of 18, under his tutelage, appears to have permitted him to become a sexual predator of her youth. One can only wonder how in retrospect she viewed that period of her young life when she later wrote her famous conclusion post-Holocaust on the "banality of evil".

She also wrote that "The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil." She was apparently pensively forgiving of her former mentor, or perhaps not, we'll never know, one supposes. Martin Heidegger was obviously exposed at an early age to antisemitism through the social and familial milieu that informed the most instructive and lasting part of his life.

For a well-educated intellectual he appears to have missed the part in history where European Jews were constrained by edict and law from owning land, let alone farming. Very few professions other than money lending remained available to them. They were hounded, harassed, persecuted, suffered ongoing pogroms, and yet managed to survive. That they did survive appears to have been a matter of great offence to the great philosopher.

He wrote the thoughts of antisemitism that flooded his awareness in books with black covers. They were named the Black Notebooks. He left instructions that they were not to be made public after his death until all his other writing had seen publication. Shortly after Adolf Hitler assumed power in Germany, Heidegger saw fit to join the Nazi party, to proudly wear the swastika emblem of fascism, and he became rector of Freiburg University.

At no time did he ever utter a public acknowledgement of the horrors that were unleashed on the world by the regime he had so proudly endorsed. Jacques Derrida, whom former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau loved to quote, based his career on insights gleaned from Heidegger's writing. His argument in defence of the man he so hugely respected was that the man's life and his philosophy should be viewed and acknowledged separately.

Much as we tend in these days of liberal understanding to forgive the trespasses on human rights and obligations of yesteryear with the forgiving comment that those represented the temper [tempest] of the times. After his death in 1976 it became possible to publish the contents of his Black Notebooks, and now they are in print with the revelation that central to his thinking was antisemitism. What credence can be placed in his rational intelligence, contaminated with that corrosive spirit?

He makes reference to the "talent for calculation" of the Jews, which the great William Shakespeare himself alluded to in more majestic prose while leaving doubt whether he was expressing his personal views or was merely reflecting the tenor of the times. He wrote of the "collusion of rootless Jews in both international capitalism and communism." They appear reflective in nature of the calumnies present in the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion; the fictional maunderings of a Jewish conspiracy for the attainment of world dominance.

He wrote, in early 1940, of the responsibility of the Jews for the outbreak of the Second World War. Perhaps influencing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the production of his doctoral thesis at a Soviet university (Patrice Lamumba) questioning the Holocaust, and suggesting that Zionists were in league with Hitler, taking a hand in planning the mass execution of European Jews. 

Capitalism and Industrialization he thought, caused the "oblivion of Being".

Faulting the Jews for all of that. Under the Nazis, he dreamed, Germany could achieve "inner truth and greatness" by challenging technology (a Luddite?). The first industrial/technological challenge presented to Germany and which it overcame was the methodology by which millions of innocent human beings could be penned up, worked to death, gassed in mass chambers, and their remains incinerated so the soot it generated might benefit agriculture in enriching its soil.

The breadth and extent of his contempt for an ethnic-religious mass of people with historical antecedents of great influence, whose people represented courage, intelligence and enterprise beyond the norm, and whose cerebral elite has been recognized by Nobel Prize awards far outstripping any other ethnic group, is mind-gripping in its focus and unrelenting hatred.

Higgledy-piggledy
Herr Rektor Heidegger
Said to his students
To Being be True
Lest you should fall into 
Inauthenticity
This I believe --
And the Fuhrer does too!
(anonymous)

Can it be possible that his deeply splenetic unreasoning hatred can still be set aside so that credence can still be recognized in his philosophy?

Can it be compared to the experiments that Nazi doctors conducted on concentration camp inmates leading to horrible suffering and death, but so carefully recorded for medical posterity; viewed with great scientific curiosity for the revelations that came out of those experiments using helpless humans as experimental living models whose pain and anguish could be ignored because of their purported sub-human status.

The published results of both immense scientific appeal and tremendous human disgust...