Detroit Today, Illinois Tomorrow

Alison Acosta Fraser and Corrine Williams

July 31, 2013 at 9:00 am

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Credit: Jeremiah Robinson/ZUMA Press/Newscom

Detroit’s bankruptcy petition last week was far from a surprise, but what should be noted is that it is the first of what will likely be a major wave of municipalities and states that will follow behind. Specifically, President Obama’s home state of Illinois.
Many wonder why Detroit waited so long to declare bankruptcy. It has been years in the making. Detroit’s $18 billion of debt is just the latest in a downward spiral of bad news coming from a deeply troubled city. Fully half of its debt stems from unaffordable pensions, health care and retirement benefits. By now everyone has read about the awful condition of the city: unemployment double the nation and the highest violent crime rate of any large U.S. city, not to mention 4 out of every 10 street lights out of commission. Detroit literally can’t afford to keep the lights on or pay its bills.
Plagued by a history of bad decisions, Detroit’s city leaders perpetuated some of the mistakes the automakers made instead of learning from them. Government growth was fueled not by new tax revenues, but by future promises to its copious amount of municipal workers. At the same time, the city pursued an anti-growth agenda through tax increases, expanded regulation and abysmal services. No wonder families and businesses fled, taking their tax dollars and payrolls with them.
This is tragic for the Motor City, but this kind of financial trouble won’t end here. Detroit is just one of many local and state governments that are broke. Next in line: Illinois.

Unlike Detroit, changes in the manufacturing industry will not contribute to the demise of the Land of Lincoln.  Rather, the profligacy and complacency of its leaders may.
It is no secret that Illinois is in debt; the state’s Comptroller estimates it to be approximately $160 billion.  Nearly $100 billion of this stems, like Detroit, from unfunded pension costs.
Recently, Taxpayers United President Jim Tobin explained that without pension reforms Illinois will be pushed to the brink.  According to Tobin, it is likely to happen in less than two years. So why won’t the State Legislators do something to reverse this downward spiral?
Governor Quinn and state lawmakers present and past have promised more benefits to retired teachers, state employees, and other government workers over the years. Rather than tackling reforming the pension programs, Governor Quinn and the legislature pushed for a 67 percent income tax hike on the people of Illinois and a 46 percent increase on businesses – Illinois’ job creators. This drove many companies, such as sandwich king Jimmy Johns, to leave the state entirely.  So, less revenue and fewer taxpayers will be around to fund the state’s pension program. Sounds like Detroit.
While pensions inflict grave fiscal troubles on many state and local governments, it is not Illinois’ only problem. According to The American Legislative Executive Counsel’s (ALEC) 2013 Rich States Poor States, Illinois just became the second state to settle charges of securities fraud with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for misleading bond investors by only making partial payments to its pension funds.  For nearly 20 years!  Further, Fitch Rating services downgraded Illinois’ credit rating in June, noting “failure to achieve reform measures exacerbates concerns about management’s willingness to address the state’s fiscal challenges.”
The writing is on the wall for President Obama’s home state.  “If we follow along the current path, we know we will confront two stark choices: Either the city’s pension payments will squeeze its ability to offer the essential services that you provide, or each of our pension funds will go bankrupt, leaving you and your families without retirement security.” No, not Mayor of Detroit, this was Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel addressing Chicago’s city workers.
Lawmakers from Detroit to Chicago to Springfield should heed these words.
Originally appeared in Illinois Review

 

 

 

 


 


 

 

If the Pelosi-Obama-Reid Trillion Dollar Debt Plan Were a Country…

Conn Carroll

February 3, 2009 at 9:49 am

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… which country would it be? Just so we can all wrap our heads around how big President Obama’s Trillion-Dollar Debt Plan is, this graphic compares the pre-Senate debt plan costs with the GDPs of major nations:

Just think of it: The deficit-spending package passed by House Democrats already is bigger than 168 of the 180 national economies measured by the World Bank. Now, in the Senate,  it threatens to break into the Top 10 by catching up with Russia (No. 11) and then Brazil (No. 10).

Chart of the Week: Taxing the Wealthy to Cover Future Deficits Won’t Work

Rob Bluey

October 30, 2011 at 11:46 am

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Democrats on the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction last week floated a proposal that includes massive tax increases on wealthy Americans. While their plan would also include some cuts to entitlement programs, the tax-code changes make up a significant portion, according to press reports.
The Los Angeles Times reported: “Revenue would be raised mostly by bumping up the high-end tax bracket and limiting deductions for upper-income earners, those familiar with the talks said.”
This isn’t exactly a surprise. President Obama and his liberal allies in Congress are waging a war against successful Americans. House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) spoke at Heritage last week about the divisive nature of Obama’s scheme.
The so-called Super Committee, of course, could be an opportunity for Congress to reform the tax code. Writing in the Washington Times last week, Heritage’s J.D. Foster observed:

But if tax reform is part of a deficit-reduction exercise because the language of tax reform has been co-opted to disguise a tax hike, then both the hike and the reform should and likely will fail. Be very clear — tax reform is revenue neutral as traditionally scored. If a tax proposal is shown to raise revenue, then it’s not tax reform, it’s just another big-government tax hike.

As for that proposal floated by Democrats this week, it’s simply not a viable solution. This chart from Heritage’s 2001 Budget Chart Book reveals that Congress would need to increase tax rates on wealthy Americans to mathematically impossible levels to close future deficits.

Economic Growth Remains Too Slow Because of Policy Uncertainty

Curtis Dubay

July 31, 2013 at 2:35 pm

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Today’s report on gross domestic product (GDP) shows that not much changed in the economy during the second quarter. The Bureau of Economic Analysis’s initial estimate shows that economic growth was just 1.7 percent from April 1 through June 30—well below the rate the economy should be growing this far into a recovery from a recession.
Although growth came in higher than many expected, the economy continues growing at a slow rate that is too low to translate into the robust job growth needed to significantly lower the unemployment rate below 7.6 percent. Sluggish growth has become the new normal.
Consumption was the biggest contributor to growth in the second quarter. Investment, both by businesses and in housing, exhibited strong gains. The increase in investment bodes well for future growth and shows that the housing market continues to recover. Inventories also increased sharply, which could mean either that businesses anticipate stronger sales in the near future or that they overestimated demand in the current quarter. Time will tell.
This is the first full quarter that sequestration was in full effect. Despite the protestations of some in Washington that it would bring economic ruin, it had little effect outside its harmful impact on national defense. The small and mechanical negative economic impact it did have will disappear in future reports as the private sector spends or invests the money the government didn’t take out of the economy to spend.
As the economy stumbles along at sub-par growth, President Obama continues his economic speaking tour touting previously failed policies that won’t work to ramp up growth. Yet one of the biggest anchors holding the economy back is uncertainty among businesses caused by the President’s own policies: Obamacare, the Dodd–Frank financial law, environmental regulations, and lack of government action to head off a debt crisis that runaway entitlement spending will cause in the near future.
Until Washington alleviates the uncertainty caused by these policies, growth will remain below where it should be. Sub-par growth caused by policy uncertainty will continue to prevent an improvement in the labor market, which we should have seen by now.

The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation 

Scientists implant false memories in mice so the movies Inception and Total Recall should have more accurately starred Mickey Mouse

July 31, 2013

A group of neuroscientists say that they’ve identified a potential mechanism of false memory creation and have planted such a memory in the brain of a mouse.

Like us, mice develop memories based on context. When a mouse returns to an environment where it felt pain in the past, it recalls that experience and freezes with fear. Tonegawa’s team knew that the hippocampus, a part of the brain responsible for establishing memory, plays a role in encoding context-based experiences, and that stimulating cells in a part of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus can make a mouse recall and react to a mild electric shock that it received in the past. The new goal was to connect that same painful shock memory to a context where the mouse had not actually received a shock.

First, the team introduced a mouse to a chamber that it had never seen before and allowed it to explore the sights and smells: a black floor, dim red light, and the scent of acetic acid. In this genetically modified variety of mouse, neurons in the hippocampus will produce a light-sensitive protein when they become active. Because only the neurons involved in the mouse’s experience of this chamber became sensitive to light, these cells were essentially labeled for later reactivation.

There was a reddit question and answer with the MIT neuroscientist Steve Ramirez who did the work of implanting memories into mice



The next day, the mouse found itself in a decidedly more unpleasant chamber: The lights, colors, and smells were all different, and it received a series of mild electric shocks to its feet. While the mouse was getting shocked, the scientists used optical fibers implanted in its brain to shine pulses of blue light on its dentate gyrus, reactivating specific cells that had been labeled the day before as the mouse explored the first, less painful chamber. The hope was that the mouse would form a new (and totally false) association between the first room and the painful shocks.

Even though the mouse never got shocked in the red-and-black, acid-scented room, it froze in fear when it returned there, confirming that it had formed a false, context-specific memory, the team reports online today in Science. Tonegawa says that it’s impossible to know just what the mouse experienced as the scientists stimulated its brain with light—whether it felt some or all of those earlier sensations, or even perceived that it was back in the first chamber during the shocks. But it is clear that the rodent recalled a painful experience when it returned to that first environment. It showed no signs of fear when placed in a third, unfamiliar chamber, demonstrating that the fear response was indeed triggered by the first room.

Tonegawa suggests that these results could help explain some of the cases in which humans form false memories. We are constantly imagining, daydreaming, and remembering, and these activities might alter our experience of the events around us, he says. He offers the extreme example of a woman who was watching a TV show at home when someone broke in and assaulted her. She later insisted that the host of the show had been her attacker, apparently transplanting the object of her attention into a memory of the physical experience.

The Movie Inception did not have Mickey Mouse but Scrooge McDuck Comic had the same story

There was a Scrooge McDuck comic where Donald Duck entered the dreams of Scrooge McDuck.

'Obamacare' mandate delay will cost $12 billion, affect 1 million workers

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON | Tue Jul 30, 2013 6:38pm EDT

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama's decision to delay implementation of part of his healthcare reform law will cost $12 billion and leave a million fewer Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance in 2014, congressional researchers said Tuesday.
The report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office is the first authoritative estimate of the human and fiscal cost from the administration's unexpected one-year delay announced July 2 of the employer mandate - a requirement for larger businesses to provide health coverage for their workers or pay a penalty.
The analysts said the delay will add to the cost of "Obamacare's" insurance-coverage provisions over the next 10 years. Penalties paid by employers would be lower and more individuals who otherwise might have had employer coverage will need federal insurance subsidies.
"Of those who would otherwise have obtained employment-based coverage, roughly half will be uninsured (in 2014)," CBO said in a July 30 letter to Representative Paul Ryan, Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Budget Committee.
Under Obama's healthcare reform law, employers with 50 or more full-time workers were supposed to provide healthcare coverage or incur penalties beginning January 1. But the requirement will now begin in 2015.
The delay intensified doubts about the administration's ability to implement Obama's signature domestic policy achievement and stirred Republican calls for a similar delay in another Obamacare mandate that requires most individuals to have health insurance in 2014.
The Republican-controlled House followed up the administration's decision by voting on July 17 for its own measures to delay the employer and individual mandates. Neither piece of legislation is expected to succeed in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
State and federal officials are racing to set up new online health insurance exchanges, where lower-to-moderate income families that lack health insurance will be able to sign up for federally subsidized coverage beginning on October 1. The poor will also be able to sign up for Medicaid coverage in 23 states that have opted to expand the program.
Most large employers already offer health insurance and CBO said few are expected to drop coverage because of the delay.
But the change will still result in a $10 billion reduction in penalty payments that some employers would have made in 2015 for failing to provide coverage next year, CBO said.
The change also means another $3 billion in added costs for exchange subsidies. That is because about half of the 1 million workers who would have gained employer-sponsored coverage next year will now obtain insurance through the exchanges or via public programs including Medicaid, CBO said.
Other changes, including an increase in taxable compensation resulting from fewer people enrolling in employment-based coverage, will offset those factors by about $1 billion.
CBO now puts the net cost of Obamacare's insurance coverage provisions at around $1.38 trillion over the next 10 years, vs. its May baseline projection of $1.36 trillion.
(Reporting by David Morgan. Editing by Fred Barbash)

Mutilated Cows Found at Missouri Farm, Police Not Ruling Out the Possibility of Aliens

July 30, 2013 6:05 PM

(Photo Credit: The Mutual UFO Network)

HENRY COUNTY, Mo. (KMOX) – Who would cut the tongues and take the reproductive organs from several cows? That’s the mystery police in a small town 90 miles away from Kansas City are dealing with.
Robert Hills, Henry County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy, says the first cow was discovered in December of 2011, the second and third this summer. All were female cows and were owned by rancher Lyn Mitchell.
“We couldn’t see any signs of trauma, and it doesn’t appear that there was any type of wild animal, such coyotes, that were involved,” Hills told KMOX.
The first cow discovered on Mitchell’s ranch had her tongue and ear removed. Mitchell told KSHB-TV she assumed the mutilation was part of a sacrificial ritual or just teenagers, so she didn’t report it.
The next two discovered on July 9th and 19th of this year had their tongues removed along with their udders, anus, reproductive organs, and ears. A veterinarian wasn’t called to examine the first two cows.
But one did examine the third one.
Mitchell said the veterinarian told her the cuts to the cow were precise and surgical. Also what seems to be the common denominator of all these incidents is the lack of blood and other bodily fluids surrounding the area and inside the animal.
Mitchell told the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) that the third cow’s heart was removed and exposed, but was not taken. She believes that maybe whoever did this was interrupted and she does not rule out the possibility of aliens.
Watch MUFON’s interview with Lyn Mitchell below:

Deputy Hills says decomposition of animals in the summer can cause a certain type of bloating.
“In some cases its apparent that theses are tears, and in other cases they may look like an incision and that’s what their described as.”
A veterinarian’s report on the third cow is not yet complete. Until then, Hills says this remains an open investigation.
“We’re having to look at this from two sides,” says Hills. “Some people believe that there are aliens that are involved in this or the possibility of the occult going to the other end of the spectrum, we’ve talked to other people that say that just when cows die that’s what happens to their bodies.”
“We know that there have been quite a few deaths of cattle this year in Missouri due to the ergot fungus that may have lead to these animals deaths. We’re just not able to determine what the cause of death is at this point,” Hills says.

E-mails Suggest Collusion Between FEC, IRS to Target Conservative Groups

By  Eliana Johnson

July 31, 2013 6:00 AM

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Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner and an attorney in the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office appear to have twice colluded to influence the record before the FEC’s vote in the case of a conservative non-profit organization, according to e-mails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee and obtained exclusively by National Review Online. The correspondence suggests the discrimination of conservative groups extended beyond the IRS and into the FEC, where an attorney from the agency’s enforcement division in at least one case sought and received tax information about the status of a conservative group, the American Future Fund, before recommending that the commission prosecute it for violations of campaign-finance law. Lerner, the former head of the IRS’s exempt-organizations division, worked at the FEC from 1986 to 1995, and was known for aggressive investigation of conservative groups during her tenure there, too.

“Several months ago . . . I spoke with you about the American Future Fund, a 501(c)(4) organization that had submitted an exemption application the IRS [sic],” the FEC attorney wrote Lerner in February 2009. The FEC, which polices violations of campaign-finance laws, is not exempted under Rule 6103, which prohibits the IRS from sharing confidential taxpayer information, but the e-mail indicates Lerner may have provided that information nonetheless: “When we spoke last July, you had told us that the American Future Fund had not received an exemption letter from the IRS,” the FEC attorney wrote.
The timing of the correspondence between Lerner and the FEC suggests the FEC attorney sought information from the IRS in order to influence an upcoming vote by the six FEC commissioners. The FEC received a complaint in March 2008 from the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party alleging that the American Future Fund had violated campaign-finance law by engaging in political advocacy without registering as a political-action committee. The American Future Fund responded to that complaint in June 2008, telling the commission that it had applied for tax exemption in March of that year and was a “501(c)(4) social-welfare organization that was organized to provide Americans with a conservative and free-market viewpoint and mechanism to communicate and advocate on the issues that most interest and concern them.” According to the e-mail correspondence, a month after receiving the American Future Fund’s response, the FEC general counsel’s office — which is prohibited under law from conducting an investigation into an organization before the FEC’s six commissioners have voted to do so — contacted Lerner to investigate the agency’s tax-exempt status.
The FEC general counsel’s office, in its recommendation on the case, apparently didn’t tell the agency’s commissioners about how it had obtained the information about the group’s tax-exempt status. Recommending that the commissioners prosecute the American Future Fund, the general counsel’s office wrote, “According to its response, AFF submitted an application for tax-exempt status to the Internal Revenue Service . . . on March 18, 2008.” The footnote to that sentence reads, “The IRS has not yet issued a determination letter regarding AFF’s application for exempt status. Based on the information from the response and the IRS website, it is likely that the application is still under review.” In fact, an FEC lawyer knew that the organization had yet to obtain tax-exempt status because Lerner provided the confidential information. 
The general counsel’s report was issued in September 2008, but it was over five months before the six FEC commissioners voted, in late-February 2009, on whether to prosecute the American Future Fund for violations of campaign-finance laws. (The typical lag time between the submission of a general counsel’s recommendation and a commission vote is about a month, according to a source familiar with the workings of the commission.) As the vote approached, on February 3, 2009, the FEC lawyer went back to Lerner for an update on the status of the American Future Fund’s application. “Could you please tell me whether the IRS has since issued an exemption letter to the American Future Fund? Also if the IRS has granted American Future Fund’s exemption, would it be possible for you to send me the publicly available information and documents related to American Future Fund?”
Despite the recommendations of the general counsel’s office, the six FEC commissioners split on whether to pursue the American Future Fund’s case and voted six-to-zero to close the case.
House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp and oversight-subcommittee chairman Charles Boustany are calling on the IRS, in the wake of these revelations, to provide all communications between the agency and the FEC between 2008 and 2012. “The American public is entitled to know whether the IRS is inappropriately sharing their confidential tax information with other agencies,” Camp and Boustany write in a letter they will send to acting IRS administrator Danny Werfel on Wednesday.
The FEC enforcement attorney also inquired about the tax-exempt status of another conservative organization, the American Issues Project. “I was also wondering if you could tell me whether the IRS had issued an exemption letter to a group called the American Issues Project? The group also appears to be the successor of two other organizations, Citizens for the Republic and Avenger, Inc.” Also sought were “any information and documents that would be publicly available in relation to the American Issues Project, Citizens for the Republic, or Avenger, Inc.”
Lerner was placed on paid administrative leave in late May after she revealed the IRS had inappropriately targeted conservative groups. The IRS has yet to respond to requests from lawmakers about her current employment status with the agency.
UPDATE: This piece has been amended since its initial posting.

 

The Chilling History of How Hollywood Helped Hitler

In devastating detail, an excerpt from a controversial new book reveals how the big studios, desperate to protect German business, let Nazis censor scripts, remove credits from Jews, get movies stopped and even force one MGM executive to divorce his Jewish wife.

This story first appeared in the Aug. 9 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

The 1930s are celebrated as one of Hollywood's golden ages, but in an exclusive excerpt from his controversial new book, The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact with Hitler (Harvard University Press, on sale Sept. 9), Harvard post-doctoral fellow Ben Urwand uncovers a darker side to Hollywood's past.
Drawing on a wealth of archival documents in the U.S. and Germany, he reveals the shocking extent to which Hollywood cooperated and collaborated with the Nazis during the decade leading up to World War II to protect its business.
Indeed, "collaboration" (and its German translation, Zusammenarbeit) is a word that appears regularly in the correspondence between studio officials and the Nazis. Although the word is fraught with meaning to modern ears, its everyday use at the time underscored the eagerness of both sides to smooth away their differences to preserve commerce.

The Nazis threatened to exclude American movies -- more than 250 played in Germany after Hitler took power in 1933 -- unless the studios cooperated. Before World War I, the German market had been the world's second largest, and even though it had shrunk during the Great Depression, the studios believed it would bounce back and worried that if they left, they would never be able to return.
Beginning with wholesale changes made to Universal's 1930 release All Quiet on the Western Front, Hollywood regularly ran scripts and finished movies by German officials for approval. When they objected to scenes or dialogue they thought made Germany look bad, criticized the Nazis or dwelled on the mistreatment of Jews, the studios would accommodate them -- and make cuts in the American versions as well as those shown elsewhere in the world.
It was not only scenes: Nazi pressure managed to kill whole projects critical of the rise of Adolf Hitler. Indeed, Hollywood would not make an important anti-Nazi film until 1940. Hitler was obsessed with the propaganda power of film, and the Nazis actively promoted American movies like 1937's Captains Courageous that they thought showcased Aryan values.
Historians have long known about American companies such as IBM and General Motors that did business in Germany into the late 1930s, but the cultural power of movies -- their ability to shape what people think -- makes Hollywood's cooperation with the Nazis a particularly important and chilling moment in history. -- Andy Lewis
'Victory Is Ours'

On Friday, Dec. 5, 1930, a crowd of Nazis in Berlin seized on an unusual target: the Hollywood movie All Quiet on the Western Front. Recognized in most countries as a document of the horrors of the First World War, in Germany it was seen as a painful and offensive reenactment of the German defeat.
The Nazis, who had recently increased their representation in the Reichstag from 12 to 107 seats, took advantage of the national indignation toward All Quiet on the Western Front. They purchased about 300 tickets for the first public screening, and as they watched the German troops retreat from the French, they shouted: "German soldiers had courage. It's a disgrace that such an insulting film was made in America!" Because of the disruptions, the projectionist was forced to switch off the film. Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels gave a speech from the front row of the balcony in which he claimed that the film was an attempt to destroy Germany's image. His comrades threw stink bombs and released mice into the crowd. Everyone rushed for the exits, and the theater was placed under guard.

The Nazis' actions met with significant popular approval. The situation came to a climax Dec. 11, when the highest censorship board in Germany convened to determine the fate of the film. After a long discussion, the chairman of the board issued a ban: Whereas the French soldiers went to their deaths quietly and bravely, the German soldiers howled and shrieked with fear. The film was not an honest representation of German defeat -- of course the public had reacted disapprovingly. Regardless of one's political affiliation, the picture offended a whole generation of Germans who had suffered through the War.
And so, six days after the protests in Berlin, All Quiet on the Western Front was removed from screens in Germany. "Victory is ours!" Goebbels' newspaper proclaimed. "We have forced them to their knees!"
In Hollywood, the president of Universal Pictures, Carl Laemmle, was troubled by the controversy surrounding his picture. He was born in Germany, and he wanted All Quiet on the Western Front to be shown there. According to one representative, his company had "lost a fine potential business, for the film would have been a tremendous financial success in Germany if it could have run undisturbed."
In August 1931, Laemmle came up with a heavily edited version of the movie that he was convinced would not offend the German Foreign Office. He made a trip to Europe to promote the new version. The Foreign Office soon agreed to support All Quiet on the Western Front for general screening in Germany, under one condition: Laemmle would have to tell Universal's branches in the rest of the world to make the same cuts to all copies of the film. Late in the summer, Laemmle agreed to cooperate with the request.
As months passed, however, Laemmle, who was Jewish, grew worried about something much more important than the fate of his film. "I am almost certain," he wrote in early 1932, "that [Adolf] Hitler's rise to power … would be the signal for a general physical onslaught on many thousands of defenseless Jewish men, women and children." He convinced American officials that he could provide for individual Jews, and by the time of his death in 1939, he had helped get at least 300 people out of Germany.
And yet at precisely the moment he was embarking on this crusade, his employees at Universal were following the orders of the German government. In the first few months of 1932, the Foreign Office discovered unedited versions of All Quiet on the Western Front playing in El Salvador and Spain. The company apologized. Afterward, there were no more complaints; Universal had made the requested cuts all around the world.
The following year, Laemmle made another concession to the Foreign Office: He postponed The Road Back, the sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front. His son, Carl Laemmle Jr., also agreed to change many pictures in Germany's favor. "Naturally," the Foreign Office noted, "Universal's interest in collaboration [Zusammenarbeit] is not platonic but is motivated by the company's concern for the well-being of its Berlin branch and for the German market."

Throughout the 1930s, the term "collaboration" was used repeatedly to describe dealings that took place in Hollywood. Even studio heads adopted the term. An executive at RKO promised that whenever he made a film involving Germany, he would work "in close collaboration" with the local consul general. A Fox executive said the same. Even United Artists offered "the closest collaboration" if the German government did not punish the studio for the controversial 1930 air combat movie Hell's Angels. According to the Foreign Office, "Every time that this collaboration was achieved, the parties involved found it to be both helpful and pleasant."
All this was a result of the Nazis' actions against All Quiet on the Western Front. Soon every studio started making deep concessions to the German government, and when Hitler came to power in January 1933, they dealt with his representatives directly.
The most important German representative in the whole arrangement was a diplomat named Georg Gyssling, who had been a Nazi since 1931. He became the German consul in Los Angeles in 1933, and he consciously set out to police the American film industry. His main strategy was to threaten the American studios with a section of the German film regulations known as "Article 15." According to this law, if a company distributed an anti-German picture anywhere in the world, then all its movies could be banned in Germany. Article 15 proved to be a very effective way of regulating the American film industry as the Foreign Office, with its vast network of consulates and embassies, could easily detect whether an offensive picture was in circulation anywhere around the world.

Woolly mammoth DNA may lead to a resurrection of the ancient beast

Technical and ethical challenges abound after first hurdle of taking cells from millennia-old bodies is cleared

Even a well-preserved carcass like this baby woolly mammoth is unlikely to provide viable cells for cloning, as used to create Dolly. Photograph: Aaron Tam/Getty

The pioneering scientist who created Dolly the sheep has outlined how cells plucked from frozen woolly mammoth carcasses might one day help resurrect the ancient beasts.
The notional procedure – bringing with it echoes of the Jurassic Park films – was spelled out by Sir Ian Wilmut, the Edinburgh-based stem-cell scientist, whose team unveiled Dolly as the world's first cloned mammal in 1996.
Though it is unlikely that a mammoth could be cloned in the same way as Dolly, more modern techniques that convert tissue cells into stem cells could potentially achieve the feat, Wilmut says in an article today for the academic journalism website, The Conversation.
"I've always been very sceptical about the whole idea, but it dawned on me that if you could clear the first hurdle of getting viable cells from mammoths, you might be able to do something useful and interesting," Wilmut told the Guardian.
"I think it should be done as long as we can provide great care for the animal. If there are reasonable prospects of them being healthy, we should do it. We can learn a lot about them," he added.
Woolly mammoths roamed the Earth tens of thousands of years ago in a period called the late Pleistocene. Their numbers began to fall in North America and on mainland Eurasia about 10,000 years ago. Some lived on for a further 6,000 years. Their demise was likely the result of hunting and environmental change.
The prospect of raising woolly mammoths from the dead has gathered pace in recent years as the number of frozen bodies recovered from the Siberian permafrost has soared. The rise comes because the ice is melting, but also because of awareness in the region that there is money in the ancient remains.
Earlier this month, the most complete woolly mammoth carcass ever recovered from Russia was unveiled at an exhibition in Yokohama, Japan. The baby female, nicknamed Yuka, lived about 39,000 years ago, and is remarkable for the preservation of her fur and soft tissues, such as muscle.
Samples from Yuka have been sent to the laboratory of Hwang Woo-suk, the disgraced South Korean stem cell scientist, who, with Russian researchers, hopes to clone the mammoth.
Though Wilmut does not doubt the sincerity of the scientists hoping to clone woolly mammoths with the Dolly technique, he said the idea was "wildly optimistic" because the technical challenges were so tough.
In his article for The Conversation, Wilmut explains the formidable hurdles that stand in the way of scientists who want to clone the beasts. The technique requires scores of healthy mammoth cells and hundreds or thousands of eggs from a closely related species, such as the Asian elephant.
The most immediate problem is that mammoth cells must survive with their DNA intact. In practice, they degenerate quickly at the temperature of melting snow and ice, when most remains are found.
"By the time you've got a bone sticking up in the sunshine, it's effectively too late. You need to get it straight out of the deep freeze, as it were," Wilmut said.
Another problem is that cloning needs a female of a closely related species to provide eggs and to carry the pregnancy achieved with any cloned embryo. The closest living relatives to mammoths are elephants, but these are not plentiful enough to collect eggs from.
"Because there is a danger of elephants becoming extinct, it is clearly not appropriate to try to obtain 500 eggs from elephants," Wilmut writes.
There is an alternative, though. If good-quality cells can be extracted from mammoth remains – and that is a big if – they could be reprogrammed into stem cells using modern procedures. These could then be turned into other kinds of cell, including sperm and eggs. Mice have already been born from sperm and eggs made from stem cells.
"If the cells were from a female, this might provide an alternative source of eggs for use in research, and perhaps in breeding, including the cloning of mammoths.
"From a male they would be sperm, and they might be able to fertilise eggs to produce a new mammoth embryo," Wilmut writes.
But the scientist, who in many peers' eyes should have shared the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine with Sir John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka last year, said it could be 50 years before the techniques for resurrecting the woolly mammoth were perfected. There will be no Pleistocene Park soon.
That gives time for scientists to work out some of other problems that would arise if a mammoth were ever born again.
One concern is that the mammoth would be adapted to frigid conditions while its mother would be used to a hot, dry climate.
Another problem is that one will not be enough. "Ideally, and before too long, you need to provide them with friends and neighbours to interact with," Wilmut said. "The whole issue is what are the effects on the animal's welfare."
None of it will happen unless scientists can pluck good-quality cells from carcasses that have lain in the ice for thousands of years. Will it ever happen? "I would say it's fairly unlikely, but the world is full of surprises," Wilmut said.

Race to $100 genome sequencing

July 30, 2013

 Sequencing is a way of "reading" DNA molecules -- two strands twisted together to form that famous double helix. The entire human genome contains roughly 3 billion molecular base pairs, which researchers study to find variations that might play a role in the development of diseases. Right now it typically costs $1,000 to $4,000 to map out an individual's genome. (Specialized sequencing -- for, say, a cancer patient -- often costs more.)

Since 2007, the cost of genome sequencing has been in free-fall, dropping by as much as 90% several years in a row.

Dozens of startups are trying to carve off their chunk of a genetic testing market that UnitedHealthcare estimates could reach $25 billion annually by 2021.

Innovations like "ion torrent" sequencing, created by a startup acquired in 2010 by Life Technologies, aim to slash costs. Sequencing has traditionally been done optically, by flooding DNA snippets with chemicals called reagents that contain one of DNA's four bases. Every base has only one match; when a base finds a match, a light flashes. The sequencer sees it and records the base.

With the Ion Proton System -- a $100,000 machine that can sit on top of a table -- it's not light that's being recorded, but changes in pH balance. The DNA snippets being sequenced are attached to tiny beads sitting in as many as a billion tiny wells on a custom-designed semiconductor chip. The chip is flooded with DNA nucleotides, and when a base snaps into place, a hydrogen ion is released and recorded.



Right now the company can sequence the exome -- the 1 percent of the genome we know how to interpret -- for $500. "In three months, we'll be able to do one entire human genome for $1,000," predicts Rothberg, whose first company, 454 Life Sciences, was the one that sequenced James Watson's genome.

Eric Topol, a professor of genomics and director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in San Diego, says chip sequencing -- without expensive reagents -- has the potential to be "remarkably cheaper" than traditional optical sequencing.

The industry standard today for sequencing and "genotyping," which looks only at a select number of DNA variations, are arrays and sequencers from a company called Illumina (ILMN). Most labs using the San Diego firm's equipment can sequence an entire genome for $3,000 to $4,000. "Everyone likes lopping zeros off the price of the genome, but it's really not at $1,000 yet -- although it's starting to inch up on that," says company president and CEO Jay Flatley.

Illumina's arrays are quickly becoming cheaper and denser. Other advances are also driving down prices.

Topol cites innovations like nanopore sequencing, which passes DNA through a protein nanopore: "That's a very efficient way of getting millions and millions of bases read." That approach still has "significant problems with accuracy," he noted.

Another startup trying to slash costs is InVitae, a sequencing company in San Francisco that targets rare, inherited diseases. Individually, these diseases -- like cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs, Canavan disease and Lynch syndrome -- are rare, but in the aggregate millions of people have them or carry the gene for them. InVitae tests for 264 genetic conditions and charges $1,500. By 2014, it expects to test 1,000 inherited conditions for $1,000.

Going, going, still going: Detroit family home still for sale after 519 days despite being on the market for just $1

• House built in 1915 has been listed for sale since May 2011
• It was initially placed on the market for $900
• Is one of a number of run-down properties lying in suburbs of bankrupt city

By Anthony Bond
PUBLISHED: 06:50 EST, 30 July 2013 | UPDATED: 08:07 EST, 30 July 2013

It may not look particularly attractive, but as just $1 this family home is a complete bargain.
However, despite being on the market for the drop-down price since February last year, the Detroit property is astonishingly still for sale.
It is one of a number of run-down properties lying in the suburbs of Michigan's largest city, which earlier this month filed for bankruptcy, crippled by enormous debts.

Bargain: This 1915 home in Detroit has been on the market for just $1 for 519 days

Built in 1915, the property on Saint-Clair Street has been listed for sale since May 2011.
After initially being placed on the market for $900, its price was dramatically reduced to just $1 in February last year.
A description of the property on the Zillow website describes it as a 'Multi Family home featuring 2 units, hardwood floors, basement, and much more!'

The home is symbolic of the entire city, which earlier this month filed for bankruptcy. It is one of a number of homes across Detroit on the market for $1.
After standing empty for so long, the houses are often ransacked by thieves who strip them of everything, including water tanks and pipes.

Destroyed: Detroit is a city in ruins, with once thriving neighborhoods reduced to rubble

Lots of history: This three-bedroom one-bath home complete with a one car garage built in 1917 has previously been listed for $1

Estate agent Albert Hakim said the sale of these distressed properties comes with many other fees and expenses, which many buyers are naive to.
'They don't understand, when the house sits vacant, that [thieves are] going to bust in and steal the pipes, steal the water tank,' Mr Hakim told the Huffington Post .
In addition to the expected costs of fixing up homes or bulldozing and starting from the ground up, Detroit has the highest property taxes among big cities nationwide.
According to a new analysis by the Detroit News, half of Detroit property owners also don't pay taxes leaving many that do disgruntled about the underfunded city services expected by homeowners.

Corner lot: This three-bedroom, one bath on Muirland St has also previously been listed for $1

Worrying: Detroit owes $18.5 billion in long-term debt and its population fell 25 per cent in the past decade

'Why should I send them taxes when they aren't supplying services?’ homeowner Fred Phillips who owes more than $2,600 recently told the paper.
'Every time I see the tax bill come, I think about the times we called and nobody came.'
Detroit has seen a 25 per cent drop in the number of homes for sale in the last year.
In its heyday, it was the place where workers in a rising middle class flocked to factories to build the cars that changed America's way of life. It was a city of innovation, of pride, of grit.
Now, there are roughly 700,000 people left, less than half of the 1.8 million who called the city home when population peaked in the 1950s.
The city owes  $18.5 billion in long-term debt. Its police and fire departments are ill-equipped to battle crime and arson, and basic infrastructure and city services desperately need repair.

China’s Military Preparing for ‘People’s War’ in Cyberspace, Space

Translated report reveals high-tech plans for cyber attacks, anti-satellite strikes

AP

BY: Bill Gertz
July 30, 2013 5:00 am
China’s military is preparing for war in cyberspace involving space attacks on satellites and the use of both military and civilian personnel for a digital “people’s war,” according to an internal Chinese defense report.
“As cyber technology continues to develop, cyber warfare has quietly begun,” the report concludes, noting that the ability to wage cyber war in space is vital for China’s military modernization.
According to the report, strategic warfare in the past was built on nuclear weapons. “But strategic warfare in the information age is cyber warfare,” the report said.
“With the reliance of information warfare on space, cyberspace will surely become a hot spot in the struggle for cyberspace control,” the report said.
The new details of Chinese plans for cyber and space warfare were revealed in a report “Study on Space Cyber Warfare” by four engineers working at a Chinese defense research center in Shanghai.
The report presents a rare inside look of one of Beijing’s most secret military programs: Cyber warfare plans against the United States in a future conflict.
“Cyber warfare is not limited to military personnel. All personnel with special knowledge and skills on information system may participate in the execution of cyber warfare. Cyber warfare may truly be called a people’s warfare,” the report says.
People’s War was first developed by China’s Communist founder Mao Zedong as a Marxist-Leninist insurgency and guerrilla warfare concept. The article provides evidence that Chinese military theorists are adapting Mao’s peasant uprising stratagem for a future conflict with the United States.
A defense official said the report was recently circulated in military and intelligence circles. Its publication came as a surprise to many in the Pentagon because in the past, U.S. translations of Chinese military documents on similar warfighting capabilities were not translated under a directive from policy officials seeking to prevent disclosure of Chinese military writings the officials feared could upset U.S.-China relations.
A Chinese government spokesman could not be reached for comment. However, Chinese spokesmen in the past have denied reports that China engages in cyber attacks.
The study links China’s space warfare development programs with its extensive cyber warfare capabilities. Both programs are considered “trump card” weapons that would allow a weaker China to defeat a militarily stronger United States in a conflict.
“Cyber warfare is an act of war that utilizes space technology; it combines space technology and cyber technology and maintains and seizes the control of cyberspace,” the study says.
Because cyberspace relies on satellites, “space will surely be the main battlefield of cyber warfare,” the report said.
Satellites and space vehicles are considered the “outer nodes” of cyber space and “are clear targets for attack and may be approached directly,” the report said, adding that ground-based cyberspace nodes are more concealed and thus more difficult to attack.
Additionally, satellites have limited defenses and anti-jamming capabilities, leaving them very vulnerable to attack.
The report reveals that China’s military, which controls the country’s rapidly growing space program, is preparing to conduct space-based cyber warfare—“cyber reconnaissance, jamming, and attack”—from space vehicles.
Space-based cyber warfare will include three categories: space cyber attack, space cyber defense, and space cyber support. The space cyber support involves reconnaissance, targeting, and intelligence gathering.
“A space cyber-attack is carried out using space technology and methods of hard kill and soft kill,” the report said. “It ensures its own control at will while at the same time uses cyberspace to disable, weaken, disrupt, and destroy the enemy’s cyber actions or cyber installations.”
Soft-kill methods are designed to disrupt or damage cyberspace links using jamming, network cyber attacks, and “deceit” in the electromagnetic domain.
The cyber attacks include launching computer viruses, theft and tampering of data, denial of service attacks, and “detonation of [a] network bomb that can instantaneously paralyze or destroy enemy’s information network.”
“Soft kill measures are well concealed, fast in action, and the attack can be accomplished before the enemy even has time to discover it,” the report said. “Soft kill measures are deceptive and well hidden; they are difficult to detect and monitor.”
Hard-kill cyber attack weapons include missiles and other “kinetic” weapons along with directed energy, including lasers, radio frequency weapons, and particle beam weapons.
Chinese cyber warfare capabilities are one of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) most closely guarded secrets, along with its anti-satellite missile and jamming program.
The topic of military cyber warfare was recently discussed by U.S. and Chinese military and defense officials at a meeting earlier this month of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington.
The Washington Free Beacon obtained a copy of the recently translated report, dated December 2012 and published in the journal Aerospace Electronic Warfare.
The journal is a bimonthly publication of the Institute 8511, part of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp. (CASIC), a state-run missile manufacturer and high-technology aerospace research center.
Institute 8511 develops electronic warfare offense and defense weapons, countermeasure technologies, and command and control systems for aircraft and missiles.
The institute in the past also developed China’s DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile, a unique weapon that uses precision guidance to attack U.S. aircraft carriers at sea.
The defense official said Institute 8511 is located close to the PLA’s premier cyber warfare headquarters in Shanghai, known as Unit 61398. That unit was identified in a report last February by the security firm Mandiant as the main origin of widespread military cyber attacks on the West.
According to the report, China’s goal for cyber war calls for using high-technology weapons in cyberspace to achieve military objectives.
“Since cyberspace is boundless and transcends land, sea, air, and space, cyber warfare is not constrained by territorial land or territorial sea, and there is no difference between the front and the rear of the battlefield,” the report said. “The advantage of cyber warfare is its global nature; it has global alert, global resources, and global access.”
Additionally, war in cyberspace is not constrained by nighttime, weather, or geography and can be conducted at any time, key factors that have limited conventional warfighting in the past.
In line with Chinese military doctrine that calls for sudden attacks and the element of surprise, the report said cyberwarfare is ideal for rapid attacks that are difficult for an enemy to identify.
“This suddenness can often leave cyber warfare without a trace and without damaging the physical installation or personnel, and yet it can change the trend and outcome of war by affecting the operational effectiveness in an instance.”
A second recently translated military report by two PLA colonels calls for China to adopt a new military doctrine called “trump card and data link-centric warfare” that is based on the U.S. war fighting doctrine called “network-centric warfare.”
The two colonels, Sr. Col. Du Wenlong and Sr. Col. Xie Zhaohui, call for a new strategic concept designed to attack and defeat the United States using advanced command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, what the military calls C4ISR and the key to conducting combined arms warfare.
The colonels call for new weapons and other military capabilities “to penetrate and to strike as quickly as possible … and ensure that our military will win the warfare under the informatized conditions.”
“Should the United States military’s transformation model of ‘network-centric warfare’ become a success, it will undoubtedly and completely change the mode and means of warfare, making warfare even more sudden and its outcome even quicker to come, generating unmatched asymmetrical advantages,” the colonels said. “This will inevitably greatly strengthen its arrogance, enabling it to have its own way to an even bigger extent and to promote its politics of hegemony.”
Publication of the new cyber warfare report provides a more recent example of the contradiction between internal Chinese military writings and public statements. A 1999 book produced for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment and edited by China specialist Michael Pillsbury first reveals the contradiction.
The book, “Chinese Views of Future Warfare,” influenced many senior Pentagon and military leaders’ views of China by showing that internal Chinese military writings discussed plans for war with the United States, considered China’s main enemy. The writings contrasted sharply with frequent public statements by China that its arms buildup is purely defensive and not directed at any country.
Richard Fisher, a Chinese military affairs expert, said the Chinese report reveals China’s merger of cyber warfare and space warfare efforts.
Fisher said the Chinese military understands that U.S. satellites are critical to relaying computer data traffic and are vulnerable to direct attack.
“China has already demonstrated two anti-satellite weapons: ground based lasers in 2006 and then the SC-19 [anti-satellite] missile in 2007. A higher Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) capable ASAT called DN02 may have been tested recently,” Fisher said.
China also is pressing for a space arms agreement at the same time it is building up its space forces, Fisher said.
“The bottom line today is that China’s first priority is building the means to win wars in space while using space diplomacy to disarm its potential enemies,” he said.
U.S. cyber warfare strategy was recently disclosed in a top-secret Presidential Policy Directive-20 that was made public by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
The directive outlines the use of military cyber attacks that “can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance U.S. national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging.”
A third Chinese document from 2005 that was translated recently by the U.S. government reveals that Chinese military planners are preparing to destroy or disable up to eight Global Positioning System satellites. The satellites are critical for U.S. military precision guided missiles and bombs.
“Eliminating two groups of GPS satellites can prevent GPS satellites from providing navigation service around the clock,” the study stated. “The effect of dropping these GPS satellites on the navigation accuracy of GPS satellites is quite obvious,” the study, “Research on Voidness of GPS,” said.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), formerly known as electroshock

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), formerly known as electroshock, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in anesthetized patients for therapeutic effect. Its mode of action is unknown.^[1] The use of electroconvulsive therapy evolved out of convulsive therapy. Long before electric shocks were being administered to induce seizures, doctors were using other drugs and methods to induce seizures as a means of treatment for severe depression and schizophrenia. Today, ECT is most often used as a treatment for clinical depression that has not responded to other treatment, and sometimes for mania and catatonia.^[2] It was first introduced in 1938 by Italian neuropsychiatrists Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, and gained widespread use as a form of treatment in the 1940s and 1950s.^[3][4]
Electroconvulsive therapy can differ in its application in three ways: electrode placement, frequency of treatments, and the electrical waveform of the stimulus. These three forms of application have significant differences in both adverse side effects and positive outcomes. After treatment, drug therapy is usually continued, and some patients receive continuation/maintenance ECT. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, drug therapy is continued during ECT.^[2]
About 70 percent of ECT patients are women, since they are at twice the risk of depression than are men.^[1][5][6] Although a large amount of research has been carried out, the exact mechanism of action of ECT remains elusive, and ECT on its own does not usually have a sustained benefit. There is a significant risk of memory loss with ECT.^[7] It is widely acknowledged internationally that obtaining the written, informed consent of the patient is important before ECT is administered.^[8] Experts disagree on when ECT should be used as a first-line treatment or if it should be reserved for patients who have not responded to other interventions such as medication and psychotherapy.^[9]

Adverse effects

Aside from effects in the brain, the general physical risks of ECT are similar to those of brief general anesthesia; the United States' Surgeon General's report says that there are "no absolute health contraindications" to its use.^[47]:259 Immediately following treatment, the most common adverse effects are confusion and memory loss. The state of confusion usually disappears after a few hours. It can be tolerated by pregnant women who are not suffering major complications. It can be used with diabetic or obese patients, and with caution in those whose cancers are in remission or under control. It can be used in some immunocompromised patients. It must be used very cautiously in people with epilepsy or other neurological disorders because by its nature it provokes small tonic-clonic seizures, and so would likely not be given to a person whose epilepsy is not well controlled.^[49][50] Some patients experience muscle soreness after ECT. This is due to the muscle relaxants given during the procedure and rarely due to muscle activity. ECT, especially if combined with deep sleep therapy, may lead to brain damage if administered in such a way as to lead to hypoxia or anoxia in the patient.^[51][52][53] The death rate due to ECT is around 4 per 100,000 procedures.^[54] There is evidence and rational to support giving low doses of benzodiazepines or else low doses of general anesthetics which induce sedation but not anesthesia to patients to reduce adverse effects of ECT.^[55]

Effects on memory

It is the purported effects of ECT on long-term memory that give rise to much of the concern surrounding its use.^[56] The acute effects of ECT can include amnesia, both retrograde (for events occurring before the treatment) and anterograde (for events occurring after the treatment).^[57] Memory loss and confusion are more pronounced with bilateral electrode placement rather than unilateral, and with outdated sine-wave rather than brief-pulse currents. The use of either constant or pulsing electrical impulses also varied the memory loss results in patients. Patients who received pulsing electrical impulses as opposed to a steady flow seemed to incur less memory loss. A 2007 study on the long term effects of ECT showed that global cognitive impairment followed all forms of ECT in varying extent.^[58] The vast majority of modern treatment uses brief pulse currents.^[57] Research by Harold Sackeim has shown that excessive current causes more risk for memory loss, and using right-sided electrode placement may reduce verbal memory disturbance.^[17] It was his '07 study that also showed global cognitive impairment in all forms of ECT, including the most benign^{[citation needed]}.
Retrograde amnesia is most marked for events occurring in the weeks or months before treatment, with one study showing that although some people lose memories from years prior to treatment, recovery of such memories was "virtually complete" by seven months post-treatment, with the only enduring loss being memories in the weeks and months prior to the treatment.^[59][60] Anterograde memory loss is usually limited to the time of treatment itself or shortly afterwards. In the weeks and months following ECT these memory problems gradually improve, but some people have persistent losses, especially with bilateral ECT.^[1][57] One published review summarizing the results of questionnaires about subjective memory loss found that between 29% and 55% of respondents believed they experienced long-lasting or permanent memory changes.^[61] In 2000, American psychiatrist Sarah Lisanby and colleagues found that bilateral ECT left patients with more persistently impaired memory of public events as compared to RUL ECT.^[56]
Some studies have found that patients are often unaware of cognitive deficits induced by ECT.^[62][63] For example, in June 2008, a Duke University study^[62] was published assessing the neuropsychological effects and attitudes in patients after ECT. Forty-six patients participated in the study, which involved neuropsychological and psychological testing before and after ECT. The study documented substantial cognitive impairment after ECT on a variety of memory tests, including "verbal memory for word lists and prose passages and visual memory of geometric designs." Based on their findings, the authors issued the following recommendation:

When ECT is provided to adolescents, the potential impact of such cognitive changes should be discussed with the patients and their parents or guardians in terms of implications for not only the patient's emotional functioning but cognitive functioning as well, particularly upon his or her academic performance. In summary, we argue that an individual cost-benefit analysis should be made in light of the implications of the potential benefits versus costs of ECT upon improving emotional functioning and the impact that potential memory changes may have on real-world functioning and quality of life.^[62]

Severe memory loss from ECT is described in an autobiographical book, Doctors of Deception: What They Don't Want You to Know about Shock Treatment.^[64]