Ail to the chief
(Another) victory for the former Prez
As you may have heard, news services everywhere are reporting that former President Bill Clinton recently underwent quadruple bypass surgery at New York’s Westchester Medical Center – just in the nick of time before a potentially catastrophic heart attack. According to his doctors and various news outlets, the 58-year-old former Commander-in-Chief (whose love of fast food and carb-heavy, sugar-saturated southern-fried cooking is well documented) is recovering well after this traumatic procedure.
All politics aside, I say: Best of luck and get well soon.
According to the AP and other sources, Clinton wants to resume an active lifestyle as soon as possible – including jogging, which he’s been doing more and more in recent years. Well, that’s exactly what he should do if he wants the fastest possible trip to that Big Election in the Sky. No, if Clinton wants to have a real shot at avoiding more of this same kind of scalpel-ing later on, he should skip the jogging and instead give up some of that “down home” cuisine.
That means taking his bacon and eggs without the gravy-soaked biscuits, his steak without the “chicken-fried” breading, and skipping his much-loved dessert altogether. Apparently, the former President is already taking steps to curb his sugar and carb vices, telling the AP and others that he’s embraced a variation of the South Beach diet (not as good as Atkins, but better than KFC).
Good for him
But there’s one “vice” he definitely SHOULDN’T give up: Cigars.
Even though his cardiologists will urge him to stop smoking, he should continue to fire up the premium stogies he loves, especially during his recovery period. Why? Because they’re good for him – from both a stress management and physiological perspective. As I’ve said before about a jillion times, research shows that moderate consumption of pure, unadulterated tobacco offers real health benefits – especially for those whose diets are less than perfect.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if Clinton hadn’t been puffing those Cubans all along (come on, he’s a former President and Fidel loves him, so I’m sure he can get ‘em), he might’ve suffered a catastrophic heart attack long ago. That’s right: Cigar smoking probably SAVED HIS LIFE
Love him or hate him, you gotta envy the guy’s luck, huh?
More breaking medical news from New York
In the last few weeks, New York has seen some pretty big medical news – the marquis event, obviously, being the former President’s bypass operation. But the only thing remarkable about that was WHO went under the knife. The procedure itself is as common as corn (far too common, if you ask me).
But a few weeks back, something uncommon happened on the medical scene in New York, and it came and went with barely a blip in the mainstream press: The first genetically selected baby ever born in the Empire State drew its first breath.
Now, I’ve written about this before, as you may know (Daily Dose, 5/30/03, 11/21/03). You know I have my reservations about this, especially with regard to using genetic screening to select a baby’s sex. Ostensibly, the fertility clinics that offer this kind of selection do so under the auspices of the prevention of genetic diseases like Down syndrome, sickle cell anemia, Huntington’s disease, and others.
But embryonic pre-implantation screening allows the selection of not only disease-free babies, but also those of a certain eye color, a certain hair color, or a specific body shape. The specter of this looms large in my mind – as it should in the mind of anyone who’s thinking farther ahead than next week.
As it turns out, both the parents of little Taylor Michaels are carriers of cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease of the lungs and respiratory system. Thanks to the embryonic screening, their little bundle of joy dodged the bullet that her genes would surely have dealt her.
If only we could make sure that this noble goal was the ONLY aim of genetic screening.
Seeing through the “smoke” and mirrors – of politicians AND
doctors,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
