Oscillator

Not yet

 

I am not upset. But it is clear you have no ability
to support what you have said with facts, so you
engage in diversion.

Ed

 

From http://www.blochcancer.org/guide/guidesupp.htm

"Be totally honest with any discussions. Never lie or state anything that is
not a fact. For example, never say, "I know you are going to get well." You
can't possibly know that."

and

"Don't give advice on new treatments and certainly don't recommend
alternative therapies such as laetrile, macrobiotic diets, etc. No two cases
of cancer are the same. No two people are the same. Treatments, side effects
or results for one patient can be completely different for another."

Not that I need pages on Internet to know what is right/wrong, thank god I
have a
brain myself.

 

He doesn't have lung or liver cancer, he has colon cancer, with
matastasies to liver and lungs. It's an important distinction, because
the cancer's behavior is determined by the cells that originally gave
rise to it. Those are the cells that have travelled and taken root,
causing new tumors elsewhere.

My g.f.'s granny had colon cancer with matastasies to her liver,
years ago, and was given 6 months to live, assuming treatment. She
preferred not to be treated, lasted three years nonetheless, and was in
decent shape for most of that.

My g.f. says her granny was a tough old bird who simply wasn't ready
to go. She was annoyed at the doctor's death sentence, and determined
to prove him wrong. She was old though--mid 80's--wearied, and passed
later, when she was darn good and ready.

Right. The fact is Jim's kid is in a hellua fix, however, it is also
a fact that well-supported non-stressed people recover from
standardized wounds 9 days faster than age-matched Alzheimer's
care-givers. Fearful patients going into surgery have much higher
infection rates (don't have the figures handy). Attitude makes a huge
difference.

My mom's seen it all -- she's been treating cancer patients nearly as
long as Jim's been designing electronics. She often reports that
patients who are involved in and participate in their care fare *much*
better. Often, she spots them, and knows who'll do well and who won't.
Patients who merely show up to be worked on, passively, like bringing
their car to a mechanic, don't do as well. Patients who are distraught
don't fare as well.

Why? Poorly understood, of course. Scads of hard science shows fear
and distress measureably and dramatically suppress immune function,
while prayer, meditation, and visualization improve it. Maybe that's
why. Or maybe not. But it's real.

The upshot is that Jim's kid *can* improve his chances a lot simply
by choosing to.

Heartfelt best wishes to Jim and family,

James Arthur

 

On 3 Apr 2006 14:34:09 -0700, wrote:

[snip]

Thanks!

...Jim Thompson

 

That's just a correlation.

As I said before, maybe the fearful patients can sense that they are
sicker than the more confident ones.

I don't see any basis for this conclusion in the above correlation.
What's your basis for claiming causation?

What's your basis for favoring this over the alternative explanation that
suppressed immune function causes fear and distress? (Or that some as-yet
unidentified factor causes both.)

Is there really a way to do a double blind study where random patients are
distressed or reassured to see how they survive surgery?

 

Forget the damned oscillator. This is the book I was thinking about, a
learned cell biological theoretical basis for the power of self-healing:

The Biology Of Belief: Unleashing The Power Of Consciousness, Matter And
Miracles- Bruce Lipton

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/09...f=pd_bbs_1/103-8353632-7809404?_encoding=UTF8

 

Cool, but entirely unsupported by peer review, or any other scientific
process.

-Chuck

 

Check the references section, and look up the meaning of "synthesis"- it
is understood to be hypothetical but plausible scientific conjecture in
some things and strong observation of experimental results in others.
The subject matter is mainstream science. Unconvinced? Go take a leap.

 

Personally I'm a non-believer, but who's to say... half the prayer
groups in Phoenix have been activated by our many friends.

Duane went home yesterday, started chemo today.

Now asking my wife/his mother to make all the home-cooked things...
real beef burritos, etc ;-)

...Jim Thompson

 

OK. I don't like railing U5, because it may do funny things to the
delay around the loop, and waste power... some opamps get weird when
you do this. And the diode hard clipping creates more distortion than
you'd get if you soft-clipped the tops of the feedback but left it
sorta sinusoidal.

I'd expect that you might get more distortion, especially 2nd
harmonic, in real life, as compared to the sim.

You did ask.

I should post my 1-transistor, low-distortion, super-amplitude-stable
oscillator, which I did as a kid, for the Boresight Alignment System
on the C-5A.

John

 

On Wed, 05 Apr 2006 19:02:09 -0700, John Larkin

[snip]

Please do ;-)

...Jim Thompson

 

Yes, of course. One supposes that competent clinicians are competent
enough to anticipate this objection and compare outcomes between
patients in similar condition, eliminating your concern.

The section you quoted below was the basis, as well as the data from
my mom. I don't expect *you* to believe her reports -- you don't know
her. I do. She's sharp, and she's treated god knows how many cancer
patients these past 30 years. That's what she does.

That's certainly an appealing explanation. With any illness, of
course distress and anxiety are natural; people who overcome these are
the exception. They have better outcomes.

Standardized questionaires could easily be used to assess anxiety.
One study compared patients' wound-healing with and without relaxation
training prior to surgery.

Here's some info on effect of stress on wound-healing:
http://www.google.com/search?q=wound healing days

Exercise helps too:
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/exereld.htm

Stress affects lizards too:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/..._uids=16188256&query_hl=7&itool=pubmed_docsum
which hypothesizes: when psychologically stressed, energy is diverted
from the immune system (fact), presumably to make it available for a
hasty escape (hypothesis).

Being presumptuous, we presume that lizards do not predict, rejoice,
or lament their impending fates.

Also, note that wound-healing, like recovering from cancer, is an
immune response.

I recall a year or so ago it was reported that exercising breast
cancer survivors had stunningly lower recurrance rates. I'm personally
curious to know whether that'll turn out to be due either to the
exercise iitself, or vitamin D obtained thereby. (A credible guy on
National Public Radio mused not long ago that vitamin D deficiency is
more common than thought, and believes this contributes to a large
number of cancers.)


Sorry for the late reply ... I missed your post.

Best,
James Arthur

 

Oh ****, Jim, I just read this thread, and wept.

I cannot offer my prayers as I do not believe in deities, but please
know that my thoughts are with you and your family.

I am impressed with many of the comments though; on the whole, engineers
are a smart bunch of people.

Regards,
Terry