On the OSU medical clinic article

Dear Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman:

I read with interest your article titled: "Ohio State's medical industrial complex under fire for unnecessary surgeries".

As a woman retired MD who specialized in Gynecology and Anatomic Pathology, and who has worked at OSUMC, I have special insight into the situation.

According to the NOW letter to Dr. Gee published in the Dec issue of The Other Paper:

"In view of the fact that best practices calls for pathological analysis by an expert (experienced in gynecologic pathology) to properly determine Pap smear and cervical biopsy diagnosis and OSUMC is capable of providing that expertise in the person of Dr. Gerard Nuovo, there is no good reason for giving Ohio women second class medical treatment and care. And there is no good reason for dismissing an expert who brings shortcomings to the attention of authorities."

Dr Gabbe, the CEO of OSUMC, replies to this letter from NOW with the following statement:

"In order to ensure that excellent medical care is provided by our Department of Pathology, we have assembled a highly respected and

Repeal, replace, ... ridiculous

Welcome to 2011. A new year, and a new Republican led United States House of Representatives. And what it all means is that one body of Congress will now attempt to overturn every single measure enacted during the last two years by President Obama and Democrats. Health-care reform is the first pig on the legislative rotisserie for the new House Speaker John Boehner and his merry band of rapacious repealers.

Republicans have been on the warpath over Obama's historic health care bill, and campaigned in the recent midterm elections on both repealing and replacing it. They're out there spinning their disingenuous rhetoric, trying to convince Americans that guaranteed insurance, no caps, no exclusions for pre-existing conditions, donut-hole coverage for seniors, extended care for children to age 26 are bad for them. And they're promising to replace it with something "better."

A glimpse of the future

Ohio State's medical industrial complex under fire for unnecessary surgeries


The Ohio State Medical Center (OSUMC) is performing unnecessary surgeries on women and the world-renowned doctor who blew the whistle on the practice is about to be fired. 


Well-respected gynecological pathologist Dr. Gerard Nuovo has provided public records showing that the decision to give women unnecessary surgery on their cervix or endometrium depends upon the diagnosis of an inexperienced pathologist. It has been suggested by the National Organization for Women (NOW) Education and Legal Fund that this is done to maximize profit.

Nuovo has been a tenured professor in the College of Medicine at the Department of Pathology in the OSUMC since 1999. Dr. Nuovo has written a textbook on gynecologic pathology and co-wrote a textbook entitled "Human Papillomavirus and the Relationship to Genital Tract Neoplasms." He has published over 260 peer-reviewed articles and has written 37 chapters in various medical books. 


Hope in 2011: peoples, civil society stand tall

When the Iraqi army fell before invading US and British troops in 2003, the latter's mission seemed to be accomplished. But nearly eight years after the start of a war intended to shock and awe a whole population into submission, the Iraqi people continue to stand tall. They have confronted and rejected foreign occupations, held their own against sectarianism, and challenged random militancy and senseless acts of terrorism.

For most of us, the Iraqi people's resolve cannot be witnessed, but rather deduced. Eight years of military strikes, raids, imprisonments, torture, humiliation and unimaginable suffering were still not enough to force the Iraqis into accepting injustice as a status quo.

In August 2010, the United States declared the end of its combat mission in Iraq, promising complete withdrawal by the end of 2011. However, US military action has continued, only under different designations. The occupation of Iraq carries on, despite the tactical shifts of commands and the rebranding effort.

A Year of fall and decline

The fall and decline of an empire can take many years, but certain "benchmarks" (as imperial courts have been known to call them) can measure the progress in one year alone. Take, for example, the year 2010.

This year opened with the United States Supreme Court claiming further power to rewrite the U.S. Constitution, specifically by further opening up elections to the highest bidder. The year closed with congressional elections that cost more than before and in which money spent by third parties to influence the elections was more decisive than before. Election advertisements, in the view of myself and many others, also became uglier, baser, and more hateful than before, while the positions advertised moved a big step rightward. These were all trends that could be measured in previous years as well, and which we will probably see advance further in years to come, barring a change of course.

Mr. Corruption: George V. Voinovich's dedication to cronyism and the profits of his family business motivated his 43-year tenure as a public official

The giant headline proclaimed "Mr. Ohio." On Sunday, December 12, the Columbus Dispatch spun a fawning Orwellian tale of George V. Voinovich as he retires from the Senate. One of the many incidents they missed was the part about the then-Governor Voinovich fleeing town after nearly being indicted by a grand jury for money laundering into his campaign.

The fact that Central Ohio’s daily monopoly remains silent to this day on one of the most corrupt administrations in the history of the Buckeye State should come as no surprise. Even when Gov. Voinovich’s Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud was charged with three felony counts and three misdemeanors, their reporting was apologetic and meager. The Dispatch’s Joe Hallett, Jack Torry, and Jonathan Riskind lionize the childhood of Voinovich and speak glowingly of his roots in the Collinwood neighborhood in Cleveland.

Support Wikileaks

Just under two weeks ago the WikiLeaksIsDemocracy statement was sent to several leading intellectuals, community organizers, activists, and people from varying political perspectives by Linda Schade. The hope was to begin building a serious, contemplative, engaged community—both nationally and internationally—who are not only concerned about preserving the U.S. Constitution, but understand the consequences of its unraveling as well as the importance of the information being published by WikiLeaks.

Nowhere is this unraveling more apparent than in the WikiLeaks case. Constitutional protections of Freedom of Speech, the Press, and the right of people to peaceably assemble are now in the cross hairs of a United States executive branch run amok with its de facto monitoring of innocent civilians, wars of aggression and other overreaches too numerous to cite here.

Be the peace you want to see on Earth

"And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar's word worth
And what happened to peace on earth"
--Willie Nelson

When President Barack Obama joined the ranks of Henry Kissinger and the other gentle souls who have received Nobel Peace Prizes, he did something that I don't think anyone else had previously done in a Peace Prize acceptance speech. He argued for war:

Believe in violence and be saved

A dozen years ago, before 9/11, before Bush Jr. or the war on terror, Bill Clinton, then in the midst of impeachment hearings, bombed Iraq over a four-day period. Shortly before this act of national distraction, I read an article in the Chicago Tribune discussing, with the knowing, amoral inanity of the mainstream media, the international implications of the pending action.

For me, the article was immortalized by the following pull-quote from an anonymous Jordanian official, which crystallized the cynicism of geopolitics and the way nation-states function: “Look, nobody here likes Saddam, but people will not be happy when they see Iraqi babies dying on TV.”

The article was in no way critical of the quote, which seemed to be delivered up merely for our sophisticated consumption. The idea, or so it struck me, was to coyly bring readers into the know so they could pretend to weigh, as important officials do, the troublesome public relations components of an act of war before committing murder in the name of national security.

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