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Lilies, the Devil, and Rainbow Colors

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  Lilies, the Devil, and Rainbow Colors A Brief History of Our Sacred Symbols Vuk Bačanović Sarajevo’s first Pride march in which took place on 8 September 2019. Participants are marching under the slogan “Ponosno zajedno” (Proudly Together). Photo credit: Antonio Balic This year’s Sarajevo Pride produced exactly what contemporary politics increasingly specializes in: a symbolic scandal. A participant dressed as the Devil marched at the front of the parade, another wrapped Bosnia’s medieval lily emblem in rainbow symbolism, and within hours social media was flooded with warnings about sacrilege, national humiliation, and moral catastrophe. In a country that has survived war, ethnic cleansing, state capture, mass corruption, deindustrialization, and the systematic looting of public wealth, it was apparently a young man with a rainbow flag who finally crossed the red line. Let us set aside, for a moment, the fact that the struggle against discrimination based on whom people share the...
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The Infectious Disease Frenzy

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  The Infectious Disease Frenzy By  David Bell In our enlightened age the public seems tirelessly bombarded with warnings of existential threat from infectious disease. Another distant outbreak is spreading, this time it could be Disease X ! “…and there is no vaccine …!” How, one might ask, is our species still extant? A few decades ago, life was less torn by impending doom. Public health officials were investigating diarrhoea outbreaks linked to the local café. The Woodstock festival happened during the last large influenza pandemic, and no one really noticed, let alone wore a mask. They just listened to the music, lived as their ancestors had, and somehow managed to expand the species. Medical technology and biotech innovation have blossomed since Woodstock. If you had a heart attack in the 1960s, you got some morphine for pain and a firm mattress, a bit of nitroglycerin under the tongue or some basic drugs to steady an erratic heartbeat. Now you will be rushed into a maze ...
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Alpha-Gal Syndrome: Beyond the Tick

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  Alpha-Gal Syndrome: Beyond the Tick Dr. Robert W. Malone The accepted story of alpha-gal syndrome (AGS) is simple. A tick bites a person. During feeding, the tick introduces alpha-gal, a carbohydrate found in most mammals but not humans, along with a complex mixture of salivary proteins that alter the immune response. The immune system becomes sensitized. Months or years later, the patient develops allergic reactions to beef, pork, lamb, dairy products, gelatin, medications, or other mammalian-derived substances. The story is elegant. It is also incomplete and best treated as one of many alternative hypotheses for the cause of the clinical syndrome known as alpha-gal syndrome. The first question is obvious. If ticks cause alpha-gal syndrome, why did the disease only appear or be recognized in the late 2000s? The lone star tick did not suddenly appear in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, or the southeastern United States. It has occupied those regions for centuries. Millions of...
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