May he rest in peace. A solid Conservative columnist has succombed to cystic fibrosis.
He was a good guy, often on the Hugh Hewitt Radio Show. We'll miss him greatly.
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7 comments:
Thanks for that. I had read about him not too long ago.
A damned disease that we need to cure. It took a good one!
may he rest in peace.............
He is running through the fields of Heaven, unshackled by the pain and lack of control this terrible disease burdened him with here on Earth.
God bless him and his family. Posted this at FA, written by Barnett a year ago:
As I mentioned yesterday and long-time readers know, I have Cystic Fibrosis. CF is a genetic disease, the number one genetic killer in the country. The average age of death is 36. I’m now 39; when I was born in 1967, the life expectancy for a newborn with CF was 8 years.
CF is a strange disease inasmuch as there are 1500 genetic variations of it. That means in an American patient population of 40,000, most “Cystics” are battling essentially different diseases. With the advances in genetic understanding made over the past two decades, it has become clear that some CF patients draw a much better lot than others.
Until I was a teenager, I was mostly asymptomatic. Even after I was a teenager, I enjoyed what is considered good health in the CF community. I’ve certainly been luckier than most CF patients.
About five years ago, my condition deteriorated suddenly and rapidly. One thing about a lung disease that I’m not sure many people know is that because of the scarring of the lungs that occurs during exacerbations, ground once lost is often impossible to reclaim. In other words, a serious exacerbation causes a new lower baseline. My initial deterioration five years ago reset my baseline, and many of the activities that I had once loved like running and racquetball became memories.
Over the next few years, I continued to get sicker. That’s one of the reasons I decided to remake myself as a pundit. I needed to find an activity that I’d find satisfying but didn’t require 50 hours a week of work or travel or any of the other demanding accoutrements that my business life had featured.
A couple of years ago, I went on the lung transplant list. A lung transplant is what’s known as a treatment of last resort. The survival expectations are rather grim. 30% of recipients don’t make it one year; 50% don’t make it three years. Obviously you don’t go on the list unless your time is winding down.
IN THE SUMMER OF 2005 I made the top of the list. That meant that the next set of lungs that came available in New England and matched my relatively rare blood type belonged to me. I got a new cell phone whose number only the hospital had and waited for a call that could come in a week or might take years.
Shortly thereafter, something that I consider a miracle occurred. Some clever CF doctors in Australia noted that several of their patients who were avid surfers enjoyed much better pulmonary health than their non-surfing compadres. Although the CF gene was discovered almost two decades ago, the way the disease functions is not well understood. Still, the medical community has reached a consensus that CF’s problems originate with sodium transfer issues at the cellular level.
Those of you who remember your high school chemistry no doubt recall that sodium is a key component of salt. The Australian CF doctors figured that maybe the time their surfing patients spent inhaling the salt water was having a salubrious effect on their pulmonary systems.
The doctors wanted to run a study seeing how patients fared inhaling a hypertonic saline solution. (“Hypertonic saline solution” is basically a scientific way of saying sea-water without mud.) They sought funding, they got funding and the results were amazing. The patients in the program showed a remarkable level of increased lung function and a remarkably decreased frequency of exacerbations.
When I heard about the results of this study, I wanted to try the hypertonic saline even though the study’s sample size was tiny. From my past experiences inhaling other drugs, I sensed the treatment would be successful and was at the very least unlikely to be harmful. About nine months ago, I became the first patient at the Massachusetts General Hospital CF clinic to go on the hypertonic saline solution.
As was the case with the Aussie surfer dudes, my results were amazing. My lung function improved to the best it had been in five years. I dropped off the transplant list. I had a shot at a future. Who says miracles don’t happen?
I KNOW THE preceding is a familiar story to some of you, and for that I apologize. But I had to bring everyone up to speed so what follows will make sense.
A couple of months ago, I bumped into an old friend of mine who I’ve known for decades, since I was a small child. His son Joey had CF, and was seven years younger than me. Remember what I said about their being a range of CF cases? These run from the relatively benign like mine to the truly vicious. Joey had a vicious case; he was an incredible fighter, and it was amazing that he made it as long as he did. Joey succumbed when he was 12 years old.
Joey’s father is Joe O’Donnell. For those of you in the Boston area, “Joe O’Donnell” is probably an instantly recognizable name. Joe’s an extremely prominent businessman, a member of Harvard’s board of overseers, an almost-purchaser of both the Patriots and the Red Sox, and was recently coronated by Boston Magazine as Boston’s most powerful citizen.
When Joey was born, my father was head of the local Cystic Fibrosis chapter. He called Joe and said, “I understand your son has CF.” Joe said, “What of it?” My father said that Joe had to get involved. I’m not sure how much (if any) convincing Joe needed, but regardless my father doesn’t take no for an answer. Joe almost instantly became a pillar of the CF community.
When Joey O’Donnell died, it would have been completely understandable if Joe and his family turned away from CF and never looked back. Indeed, that perhaps would have been the normal thing to do. There is no agony like losing a child, and every time the O’Donnells are reminded of Cystic Fibrosis, there must be a measure of a pain involved.
But the O’Donnells didn’t go that way. In their son’s memory, Joe and his wife Kathy formed The Joey Fund to raise funds for research, treatment and support for the Cystic Fibrosis community. As Joe’s business and public profiles have grown over the past decades, so too has his commitment to the Cystic Fibrosis community.
When I bumped into him a couple of months ago, he asked me how I was doing. I told him I was doing amazingly, much better than the recent past and that I felt like I had a new lease on life. He said that was great. He then asked if I was on the hypertonic saline inhalant. I told him I was, and that’s what had made all the difference. He made a little fist-pump, and told me that it had been the Joey Fund that had financially supported the doctors in Australia and that had then made the product available to the CF community. My eyes welled up a bit as did my wife’s and I told my old friend, “You saved my life.”
THE SIGNATURE annual event of the Joey Fund is a Boston area film premiere held in Joey’s honor. Unlike most charity events, this one is a blast. The food is great, the movie is usually good, and since it’s a premiere you get to see it before anyone else on your block. But the most impressive thing about the event is the list of attendees. Politicians, athletes, business tycoons – they’re all there.
Last week, I got a call from the local CF chapter asking if I would participate in the making of a little film that would run before the movie. Of course I agreed, and yesterday I went down to Joe’s office to talk with a camera crew about my experiences with CF and with the hypertonic saline. The point of the film is to tell the audience at the film premiere that their generosity has made a difference. While the search for a cure for CF remains a frustrating one, the Joey Fund and the CF Foundation have produced treatments that have made a difference. I’m living proof of that.
At one point during my interview, the questioner asked me if I expected to see a cure to CF in my lifetime. I answered no, but that it doesn’t really matter. When you see death up close, a couple of things become clear. One is that we all die, and that death is just part of the deal. The other is that life is such a blessing, that’s it just so great, even though you know the inevitable might be near you still want as many bites of the apple as possible.
None of us know what the future of the salt water treatment might be. My health will maintain its current state indefinitely in the truest sense of the term. The good times could continue for years, or it could all crash tomorrow.
But regardless, this treatment has given me time - time to spend with my wife and family and friends. Time to hit golf balls (usually sideways, but even that’s alright). Time to chase my dogs around the house. Time that frankly I didn’t expect to have. There could be no greater gift, and it’s a miracle in so many ways.
The miracle has its roots in my persistent father who got Joe O’Donnell involved in the fight against CF. It continues through the incredible courage shown by Joey O’Donnell, who fought CF with such bravery that he inspired his family to fight the disease long after Joey succumbed. And it finishes with Joe O’Donnell and the rest of the amazing O’Donnell family who have given so much of themselves in so many ways and to such great effect.
There are indeed heroes out there. And miracles, too.
I saw the video that pissed Biden off and the interviewer asked him hard questions, but was very fair and didnt cross talk or follow up any question too aggressively. Even when Biden gave weak answers that left you with more questions than actual answers.
If this is how he acts now, how would a VP Joe Biden act when he is attacked by a vengeful Republican opposition? The Republicans are going to be fighting mad if they lose and I am sure we will be seeing the same kind of aggressive attacks that we saw during the Clinton Administration. I dont approve of those attacks, but I am just saying that he is going to get slammed. Our country would be terribly divided under such an extremist leftwing administration, which wont even be able to control its own base. Let alone a regrouped Republican Party united on a mission to take back Congress and the White House.
The best thing that can happen to Obama is that he loses so he can build up more experience and spend more time pretending to be a moderate. In his pursuit of power he has given up Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright and the Trinity Church. But it takes more time to shake such a leftwing past. Community Organizer is shorthand for leftwing radical. For his own good, Obama needs to lose this election. He could barely survive a first term at this rate. The media wouldn’t be able to save him one more time.
Even when the Democrats seized Congress they were inept against a demoralized opponent. If the Republicans have nowhere to go but up, they are going to rally like the Democrats did after losing badly in 2004. In such a heated atmosphere as the Democrats have created with their divisive partisan politics, they didn’t think that the Republicans can play that game better. 2009-2012 will be hard years for the Democrats. Its easier to be the opposition than it is to be the leader.
LETTER to FENCESITTERS
There is a massive amount of largely uninvestigated allegations against Barack Obama. I pass them on uncritically everywhere I go, because I am eager to defeat this upstart, because I believe he will have a horrible effect on our country, and very frankly support any tactic short of murder that might help to spoil his chances for victory. I proceed in good faith on the belief that "Where there is smoke there must be fire."
Obama is an out-and-out Marxist. His career and voting record prove that. I do not believe he is a Christian. That's a canard. That church he belonged to for twenty years may have CALLED itself a Christian organization, but it was really a seditious, rebellious, politically-oriented hate group with profound anti-American, anti-Establishment sentiments where hatred for white people and disrespect for our system of governance was preached on a regular basis.
Obama was fathered by an African savage, a Muslim from Kenya --- a primitive country fraught with violence. That he was accepted at Harvard and received a PhD in Economics is of no moment. Obama's mother was raised to be a communist, atheist, immoral, anti-American bigot whose own Communist father positively instructed her to sleep only with black men and other men of color while avoiding men of her own type completely.
She conceived Obama illegitimately at the age of seventeen. His no-good father, who only used and never loved the mother, deserted them both very soon in the game. Obama's mother never raised her son properly. Instead she went off and married another Muslim, an Indonesian named Soetero, and had children by him. After that the mother had very little to do with Obama, and fobbed him off --- as many reckless, selfish, mentally unstable, irresponsible types do --- on her mother. Nevertheless, Obama spent several of his formative years in Indonesia where he was raised in the Muslim faith. If he is not still a Muslim strictly speaking, I believe he carries deep sympathy for Muslims, who are by their very nature and character anti-American, and anti-Christian, in his heart.
At any rate, I would remind you of these well-known adages.
1) "As the twig is bent, so grows the tree."
2) "The apple does not fall far from the tree."
3) "A man is know by the company he keeps."
4) "The leopard cannot change his spots."
A person's family background, cultural and educational influences are of vital importance in shaping his character. We do not need, should not want --- and ought not to accept --- a man whose sympathies are largely with our enemies, and whose moral and political convictions are diametrically opposed to the ideals of the Founding Fathers as set forth in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
And so, I would advise everyone I know to think of the following list when they think of Obama.
1. Loony, immoral, Communist Mother
2. African Savage, Muslim Father - Never mind that he went to Harvard; he came from a primitive country prone to violence.
3. Frank Marshall - Obama?'s dedicated Communist mentor in Hawaii
4. Ayers & Dohrn - Domestic Terrorists, anti-American seditionists
5. Jeremiah Wright - who preached "God DAMN, America!" A friend of Louis Farrakhan and of the Nation of Islam
6. Black Liberation Theology - a non-Christian subversive political movement inclined to incite violence and insurrection
7. Father Pfleger - a raving, Anti-American maniac of a priest who supports Obama, BLT, NOI and CPUSA
8. "Community Organizer"- A code word for Communist - Above all it means "professional troublemaker."
9. ACORN - known for fomenting Voter Fraud, and pressuring courts to force banks and lending institutions to give home mortgages and unsecured loans to unqualified buyers --- most of whom are "minorities," of course.
10. The mother's second dark, markedly-foreign husband, the Muslim Soetero
11. Muslim Childhood in Indonesia
12. Columbia & Harvard Universities (notorious Red Breeders both)
13. Hugo Chavez
14. Che Guevara
15. George Soros
16. BO said in a radio interview (recently rebroadcast on The Savage Nation and elsewhere, but never in the mainstream media) that he thought the Warren Court was not in the least radical, and that it should have included mandates for the redistribution of wealth to disadvantaged blacks back in 1954 the time the court desegregated (and frankly screwed up) our schools.
17. While the media rages on about Sarah Palin's wardrobe, they refuse to investigate any claims against Obama, but have instead worked steadily as cheerleaders for his campaign. Obama has been given a pass on everything. None of Obama's school transcripts have been released to date, nor have his medical records. And we no certain knowledge of how he quickly raised SIX-HUNDRED-MILLION DOLLARS to fund his campaign.
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
Our country is in grave danger. Please don't even think of voting for Obama just because the Republicans turned in such a disappointing performance while in power. Two wrongs have never made a right.
WIth heartfelt sincerity,
~ FreeThinke
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