The curse of Uri Geller | The Sun |News

The curse of Uri Geller

PSYCHIC Uri Geller was last night accused of putting a curse on sporting heroes ? when he wills them to WIN.

Sports fan John Atkinson made the charge after he studied the spoon-bender’s predictions and his “positive energy urges”.

John found Uri more often than not scuppered the chances of sportsmen and teams he was trying to help.

The 58-year-old fan said: “I think he is a bit of a conjurer. I don’t believe he really has these special powers.”

John researched 59-year-old Uri’s forecasts over the last 30 years.

The most recent came last month, when Uri called on listeners of a Welsh radio station to lay their hands on a newspaper picture to send winning energy to the nation’s rugby team.

Wales promptly LOST their Six Nations clash against England 47-13.

John claimed Uri also put the mockers on soccer side Falkirk, Scotland’s national footie team, Formula 1’s David Coulthard and tennis ace Tim Henman. And he blew England’s chances at Euro ’96.

Last night Uri THANKED John for his research. He said: “These sceptics are my unpaid publicists.”

ENGLAND v WALES

IN February Uri told Welsh radio listeners to send winning energy to the nation’s rugby squad via a newspaper photo.

RESULT: England beat Wales 47-13.

LIGHT-WEIGHT BOXING

PROOF Uri CAN sometimes get it right as he boosted boxer Peter McDonagh in January.

RESULT: McDonagh beat Michael Gomez for the Irish lightweight crown.

EURO '96

URI asked the nation to touch an orange spot on TV screens to help England win Euro ’96.

RESULT: Germany KO’d England after Gareth Southgate’s penalty miss.

The curse of Uri Geller | The Sun |News

Uri Geller: My Friend Michael Jackson (May 2001)

This, I promise, is how you will react when you meet Michael Jackson: you'll stare, you'll start, you'll step up and you'll freeze. Everyone does the same thing - fans, celebrities, journalists, children, parents, shoppers, waitresses, prime ministers, prime ministers' bodyguards ... First you look. Michael has the most arresting appearance of any man I ever saw. It isn't only the face, and the clothes. It's the aura. But before you have taken that in, you'll start to move towards him. Instinctively. You take a step or two, and freeze. It's like being hit by a wave of awareness, first of all pushing you forwards and then stopping you cold in the backwash. "Oh my God it's Michael Jackson" and then "Oh! My God. It's Michael Jackson ..." I've been in the massive lobby of an international five-star hotel when Michael walked in, and I've seen the wave sweep over 70 people - not only the super-rich and the professionally cool, but the porters and receptionists and bell-boys.The people nearest him moved, and then froze. Further away, people turned, and moved, and froze, while some of those nearest began to move again. It was like a century-old fragment of celluloid, the lobby suddenly silent and the air flickering, crackling, as people moved in jerks and lurches. Michael simply smiled and pressed his hands together in greeting. Last month we drove out of his Knightsbridge hotel in a people-mover with midnight-tinted windows, and there were 2,000 people crowded across the pavement. Around 60 of the younger ones broke from the press and sprinted alongside us. I was concerned that someone could slip and fall under a wheel, but they were all so exuberantly happy. They were shouting out, "Michael, we love you!" Michael gestured for the car to slow down, and he edged his door open, leaning out of the car to touch the hands of his fans. "We love you, Michael!" "I love you more," he said. I heard him say it again and again during the next few days. "I love you more." When Michael walks over to a group of fans who have waited hours for a glimpse, you see some of them lock solid. They have messages for him, they want to say how much he has meant to them all through their lives, how his music has been their soundtrack, but all they can do is stare. Many bring handmade gifts. Embroidered cushions, framed paintings, poems, boxes, candles, national flags. He takes every one and holds it to his chest for a moment. He says, "Thank you. I love you," again and again. He does not refuse any request for an autograph or a photograph. I walked with him for 200 yards through the pouring rain across an Oxford road and past barriers after his address to the privileged Union audience last month, to a huddle of drenched and shivering fans. They had not been able to get tickets, and they had turned up on a bitter night without any real hope of being close to Michael for more than a moment, but they (and not the curiosity-hunters in the Union building) were the real fans. Michael truly loves his fans. When he tells them, he does not do it in the superficial way that most pop stars intend when they shout it from the stage. He means it this way - when Michael walked through the rain that night, he was on crutches, with two broken bones in a foot that was swaddled in bandages. By the time we got back to the limousine he was squeezing filthy, icy rainwater out of the bandages onto newspapers on the floor. I laid my hands on the aching flesh and let energy flow through me, to activate Michael's own healing powers. He sat back with a calm expression on his face and his eyes closed, perfectly accepting of the possibility that healing can begin with positive thinking. The fan's gifts are displayed in Michael's hotel suites. Wherever he's staying - and he moves around a lot, even between places in the same city - his favourite presents are on display. And he has a lot of favourites. He uses objects almost as pledges, reminders of affection from people who can't be with him, the way you might fill your wallet with photos of your children and folded postcards from old friends. On Michael's walls there are pictures of his own children, of course, and photos of him with his family and friends, but the reverence with which the admirers' gifts are arranged seems to say that his fans are his family too. I saw how sincerely he felt this when two ingenious German über-fans broke into my home on my wedding day. Michael was to be best man, though by the time the ceremony was due to start neither he nor the rabbi, Shmuley Boteach, had turned up. My manager, Shipi, who is also my brother-in-law, had posted security guards all round the perimeter of the grounds. We were tolerating half a dozen paparazzi who were pointing lenses like cannon barrels over the privet hedge which screens the house from the Thames, and there were a few girls perched in the riverbank trees too, with nothing to see but the marquee and a helicopter. Once or twice the magician David Blaine floated outside for interviews - I do mean floated, and if you haven't yet seen David Blaine levitate then you have a real shock in store. Many guests commented that I seemed nervous, and I was -but not about getting married. Hanna and I had been together 30 years, and I felt I was probably ready for the commitment. What concerned me was a call from an Israeli source, warning there might be a terrorist attack on the wedding. I took the warning very seriously and I engaged all precautions, Scotland Yard referred me to the local police who in turn sent two policemen to discuss the day. Some internationally famous people were there, aside from Michael - the Formula One racing champion Nigel Mansell, Sir David Frost, Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, the horror writer James Herbert, Dido's producer Youth, not to mention an Israeli consul and the Japanese Ambassador... any terrorist wanting to make a name for himself need only open fire on the canvas walls of the marquee with an automatic weapon. My helicopter pilot was under orders to fly anyone wounded by gunfire to the nearby Royal Berkshire hospital. A medical doctor was on standby, unseen by the guests inside the main house, and Michael's own doctor would accompany him. Most of the fans, with no thoughts of terrorists, were outside the main gates. A steady stream of guests drove up and announced their names to the guards. The Germans, a boy and a girl, were clever and brazen - they hung around to hear a couple announce themselves, walked away for 20 minutes, then came back and presented themselves under the same names. Shipi saw them walking down our long driveway: "Who's that?" he demanded nervously, but by then the Germans were inside, and we didn't want a scene. Not in front of the paparazzi. Not on my wedding day. If these guys were willing to behave themselves ... and they were, but they pleaded to be allowed close enough to say hi to Michael when the ceremony had been concluded. Michael did more than say hi. He beckoned them to him, embraced each of them gently, accepted their gifts graciously and posed for their cameras. He told them he truly valued their friendship, thanked them for taking such risks to bring him presents, and smiled a blessing upon each of them. Now, you may be cynical about Michael Jackson. You may be influenced by the highly inventive controversies which have dogged his career. You may be prejudiced by his appearance - though you'd better ask yourself why you feel free to comment on his colour and his looks when you profess that you never judge anyone by their skin or their face. You may feel that I'm painting him as some kind of saint, when some supermarket tabloids are eager for you to believe the opposite. I won't bother to argue with you. Michael has maintained the dignity throughout his career to ignore the mudslingers. I know what it is to be falsely accused and reviled, to be laughed at by people who don't have the first idea of what they're saying - but I thank God that the mud aimed at me over the decades has been nothing like the rancid filth hurled at Michael. I have nothing but contempt for some of the people who made such claims, nothing but pity for the people credulous enough to believe them. All I will say is this: how many other people, now or at any time in history, have possessed the charismatic power to change lives with a smile? To offer a blessing and make a person feel deeply, fully blessed? And how many of those people kept their gift uncorrupted and used it with generosity? There are a few names in your mind perhaps, but I won't make the comparison with Michael. I will leave you to do that for yourself. Let it be a test of how open-minded you can be. Most people who achieve great fame taste this power, this unexpected gift from God to bestow inspiration on people. Michael has it to an exceptional degree, and this is partly because it has been his to wield for so long. Most sports stars and rock gods lose it after a year or two, as their fame fades. Or they push it away from them without understanding it. Or they foolishly imagine it will protect them from the ravages of their drinking and drug habits. Michael treats the gift with awe, as if it were a healing power ... which it is. A smile from Michael can heal the spirit. He has an angelic talent for choosing words which will touch the heart. I treasure the inscription on a photograph he gave to me, because he wrote without holding back: "To Uri, you are truly a Godsend. The world needs you - I need you. Michael" When I perform, particularly when I have to bend spoons again and again, I feel drained afterwards. It's not the tiredness that comes from hard labour or long study or too much partying - it's an enervation, as if I've been sweating raw energy and all my nerve endings are swollen and raw. I often sleep in the back of the car. When he is exhausted, Michael meditates. After the wedding was over and the celebrity photos were all done, he asked me for a room in my home where he could be alone for 20 minutes. Michael is not a frail man, despite what you may have read - he is tall, lithe and his hands are large and strong, like a tennis player's. But at this moment he looked like the finalist after five sets on Wimbledon's centre court. He needed peace of mind. I showed him into our family room, with its tables of crystal globes and pyramids and its lifesize wooden effigy of Elvis in his rhinestone phase, and left him to meditate. Maybe the spirit of Elvis came to him - the Pop Prince was once the King's son-in-law, after all. When he emerged, he seemed still tired, but more centred. Michael's family was famously religious - they were Jehovah's Witnesses and Michael occasionally disguised himself to join his fellow believers as they went from house to house, inviting people to think about God. As a grown man, he has moved beyond denominations of faith - his concern is not with religion but with spirituality. This gives him strength, but I think it is the joy he takes in life which keeps renewing his vitality - that, and a second factor which I shall describe in a moment. He has a lot of fun, childish fun. Not just child-like, but downright fun. He giggles a lot. He has a great sense of mischief. Michael first became aware of me through reading his school textbooks when he was a teenager. We were introduced by Mohamed Al Fayed, a man whose grasp of English is often variable but whose fluency in swearing is unmatched in any language. Even Hungarians don't swear as enthusiastically as Mo. I think he is spurred on by the presence of people who might be easily offended, like little old ladies or royalty. Or pop royalty - when Mo starts cursing in front of Michael, the tirade is punctuated by delighted giggles and, "Oh, Mohamed! Ohhhh, Mohamed!" He loves gadgets. Show him a watch that's calibrated via a satellite link to the atomic clock, or a digital writing pad with a built-in camera, or a mobile phone with a scanner, and he's like a boy - "That's cool, I love it, can I have it? I mean, just play with it?" He surrounds himself with boyish paraphernalia -pictures of dolphins and sunsets, huge teddies and model cars. He's not into sport much, though he's very fit, like any professional dancer, and he supports newly-promoted Fulham - in the casual way that a lot of teenagers say they support Manchester United, not really understanding the rules or remembering the results, but happy to relate to the team that always wins. Plus, of course, Fulham are owned by a friend of his - MO took him to a game and they sat there in Fulham scarves and caps. Michael has infinite respect towards Princess Diana who tragically died with Mo's son Dodi whom Michael adored; they were working on a movie together. Michael's hotel rooms are always decorated with movie posters and eight-foot cardboard cut-outs, Anakin Skywalker peeping out from the folds of Darth Maul's cape, E.T. bicycling over the full moon. The first time I visited him in New York we hired Sony's cinema and took in The Matrix, because there's a sequence inspired by me where children teach Keanu Reeves to bend spoons with the power of the mind. Michael brought popcorn and candy, and his little boy Prince rocketed around between the seats, stopping every few moments to fix me with his luminously intelligent eyes and ask a question. After about half the movie, Michael slipped out of his seat. I didn't say anything and I thought that maybe this was his way of avoiding a 'goodbye' moment. But after four or five minutes I twisted round and saw him, silhouetted under the projectionist's beam. Dancing. Moonwalking to the soundtrack, spaced out in a complex routine of twists and jerks. Anyone could have seen that it was Michael Jackson. No one else on Earth moves that way. He took me to his studio, the Hit Factory - it isn't his own, he merely hires it, but when Michael walks into the recording area it becomes his. He dominates the studio, a different kind of domination to the way he overwhelms a crowd. This is business, and this is the second factor which restores his youth. Michael is utterly committed to his music. He works passionately at it, with a dedication that surprised me when I first saw it. I had deliberately ditched all my preconceptions about this man, because I'd known about his music and his life since I was a young paratrooper and later a paranormalist doing shows for Israeli troops, three decades ago. All that second-hand clutter wasn't going to help me understand the real human being. But in our few meetings and a series of increasingly deep telephone conversations, I had not divined an artist who could be so forceful, so powerful, in the studio. His attitude shines out of him like an aura. Writing, performing, mixing, arranging - he is in command. Always a confident person who will say what he means even though he says it quietly, in the studio his confidence reaches an entirely different level. He is dominant. And nothing pleases him more than honest praise from another musician. Michael's face was radiant when I told him that Justin Hayward, guru of the Moody Blues, had called me from his home in France especially to tell me to pass a message to Michael: you have never made a record that was less than excellent, he said, and this is almost unique among artists of your longevity. I think he took pride because he knew it to be true. There is not one poor disc. Perhaps not even one poor track. Simply a catalogue of stone classics. I am proud of myself that Michael liked my own paintings enough to commission a piece of art for the sleeve of his forthcoming CD. And I was totally flattered when he asked me to energize the tapes which were in the studio's safe. It wasn't the first time I have worked in this way with super performers. I visited the Spice Girls in a studio in London around five years ago, they were planning to go to America and I bent a spoon for them and told them to take it with them to the US to bring them positive energy. It was a similar experience with N'Sync, they were playing small shows in Germany and here (the UK) and wanted to break in America I went to see them, talked to them motivated the group bent a spoon for them and said keep this with you as a talisman as a tool for your mind when you go back to America. Both bands have been catapulted to success. John Lennon and I become close in the seventies, I lived a block away from him in New York and we would meet up about once a month in secret to talk about UFO's. When John wanted Yoko to come back to him he asked for my help. I had a meeting with Elvis too, he requested that we meet about 20 miles outside Las Vegas, he wanted the meeting to be private and told me where to meet him in the desert in a trailer - he was amazing. I introduced Michael to my friend Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who was writing a book of letters, The Psychic And The Rabbi, with me, and together we took Michael to the Carlebach Shul in New York for his first visit to a synagogue. We chose this setting because Rabbi Carlebach was famous for his music and his singing. Jewish worship is filled with song, and Michael's face was a picture as he swayed and clapped with the music. I saw the same expression in his eyes when I glanced down at him under the chupa, the traditional Jewish wedding canopy, as our guests lifted Hanna and me onto their shoulders. It was during the synagogue service that I began to understand how Michael's gift for bestowing blessings might be most generously spread. Shmuley had the same idea and, as he was moving to New York from Oxford, England, with his wife and six children (it's seven now), the rabbi was able to put his particular gift for practical energy to good use - together, they founded the charity Heal The Kids. My concept was more abstract. Tormented by the disintegration of the peace process in the Holy Land, I wanted to hold up the almost supernatural aura which emanates from Michael when he is giving hope and happiness to his fans, and shine that like a beacon over Israel. I had no idea how this could possibly be done - I just could not fathom a world where soldiers shot at children who threw stones at cars, and snipers who took aim at babies, while millions of people of all races, creed and colour on other continents loved a man who reflected their affection back so dazzlingly. That contradiction just floors me. Everyone in Israel has heard of Michael - his concert a few years ago was a massive sell-out. Everyone would have recognised, at a single glance, his dancing image at the back of that cinema. So what's to prevent his gift of peace from working in Israel? I remembered a stone I had picked up in the Sinai desert, close to the monastery of St Katerina, when my father and I drove out there one day after the Six Day War. I was recovering from my wounds that I suffered in Ramallah and I believe my dad was proud of me at that time as he never was before or since - my father was a professional soldier. We tried to imagine the place where God had spoken to Moses from the centre of a blazing bush. When I sensed I had found the place -and I can still feel the electric tingle in my palms and fingers, the dowser's sensation that decades later told me when I had discovered gold or oil - my father helped me dislodge a stone. Moses' foot may have trodden on this triangular piece of rock. We prised it out of the ground and brushed the sand off it, and carried it to the jeep. We drove back to Jerusalem, and close to the Western Wall I placed the stone on the ground. Whenever I returned to the city I went to look at it. But after the Carlebach Shul, I went back to do more than look. Shipi persuaded a guard to look the other way while I prised the slab out of the earth for a second time and loaded it into a suitcase. I won't tell you all the difficulties I had getting that suitcase through El Al's security cordon and past US customs, but at one stage I seriously feared the stone would be smashed to shards. Finally, I put it beside me in a yellow cab and called Michael to tell him I was bringing a present. I called it the Stone of Peace. More than a year later, as Shmuley and I posed for photographs with Michael and the Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, I realised how we might make the Stone of Peace the cornerstone for our own peace mission. The meeting with Arik was utterly unexpected -I was staying in New York with a Swiss friend at his Manhattan apartment, and the place was suddenly crawling with security ... the kind of security that only Middle Eastern leaders can generate. My friend joked with a bodyguard, "Who do we have upstairs? Arafat and Sharon?" "Just Sharon," came the answer. Too good a chance to miss. Too good a synchronicity. I believe these strange coincidences are planned for us, perhaps millions of years in advance, by an intelligence we cannot begin to comprehend. And I saw Michael's magic working again. Even the bodyguards moved in stop-start motion. Even the prime minister looked up and reached forward and froze and moved again. I saw the thought written on his face: "Michael Jackson! That's Michael Jackson!" I knew then that Michael's blessing could work on the warring factions of the Holy Land. We are planning a visit, for June or July of this year, to meet the Israeli president and the Kings of Jordan and Morocco. I have hopes that Arafat too and the leaders of Hizbollah might be willing to sit down with us. We won't expect anyone to negotiate -we are not negotiators or politicians, nor miracle workers. All we can do is hope that music and rhythm and the power of pop can indeed work a miracle where politics and religious schism fail tragically every day. It is not only we who need this mirage of peace to become real, after all - it is our children, and their unborn children, and all the songs that they will sing. - Copyright Uri Geller, 2001 - No duplication without prior permission -

Need Help?

Need Help?

In this time of great sadness you don't have anyone to talk & feel alone? Talk to one of the MJF.

Uri is on to a loser | The Sun |Home Scotland|Scottish News|Columnists|Donald MacLeod

Published: 27 Dec 2008

GOOD news everyone - Michael Jackson and Uri Geller have come up with, quite frankly, a genius way to solve the world's financial crisis.

Basically, they're going to hide subliminal messages in songs, which will make us all think happy thoughts and chase away that nasty recession.

One wee problem though. Who is going to buy the songs? Everyone knows they'll be total and utter garbage.

Meanwhile, rumours that Michael is suffering from a severe lung condition and may need a transplant continue to appear in the Hollywood gossip columns.

I wouldn't be surprised if the rumours were in part true, especially given that he's no stranger to going under the knife and has all his outside bits sliced and diced.

It would be a perfectly logical step for him to move on to his insides.

Uri is on to a loser | The Sun |Home Scotland|Scottish News|Columnists|Donald MacLeod

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Jackson Case Highlights Medical Ethics

Jackson Case Highlights Medical Ethics

Two prominent doctors in the field of pain management reflect on the malign influence of celebrity.

From 2001 to 2005, unintentional overdose deaths due to prescription drugs increased 114 percent.Ieva Geneviciene

The King of Pop and the World's Greatest Womanizer have more in common than you might think.

Michael Jackson's death last month, like that of Howard Hughes in 1976, revealed the hidden side of a famously reclusive figure, one that involved elaborate schemes to obtain prescription drugs. Both men began a regiment of painkillers after an accident: Hughes' plane crash in 1946 and Jackson's burn on the set of a Pepsi commercial in 1984. Over time, each developed a tolerance for narcotics that enabled them to consume otherwise lethal doses.

What followed the death of Hughes, like many others each year, may very well follow Jackson's death: a criminal trial against one or more of the pop singer's doctors. Hughes' case wasn't the first and Jackson's certainly won't be the last. Such cases invariably shine a spotlight on medical ethics and the influence of celebrity.

The investigation in the Jackson case has so far focused on the star's personal cardiologist, Dr. Conrad Murray, who was present when Jackson died.

Dr. Forest Tennant served as an expert witness in the 1978 case against Dr. Wilbur Thain, who was accused of illegally prescribing Hughes, and the case in 1981 against Dr. George Nichopoulos, who was charged with over-prescribing Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and seven others. Both doctors were acquitted of criminal charges and kept their medical licenses. A medical board later sanctioned Nichopoulos, dubbed "Dr. Nick" by the press, for ethical violations.

"Famous people like Jackson, Howard Hughes or Elvis Presley had enough money, enough privacy and severe enough medical problems that they had the need to have physicians at their beck and call," said Tennant, who treated his own share of famous people over the years as a Los Angeles physician and former medical director for the National Football League. "The willingness of physicians to take on this role, in my experience, is tantamount always to having to violate ethical standards."

For a physician to be convicted of criminal wrongdoing, the prosecution must prove that the doctor willfully over-prescribed drugs or knew that prescriptions were falsified. For instance, California authorities earlier this year charged two doctors who cared for actress and model Anna Nicole Smith, who died of a drug overdose in 2007, in part because the doctors allegedly wrote prescriptions for Smith under pseudonyms.

"When physicians get put in these positions, corners are going to be cut," Tennant said. "It's pretty obvious right now these things happened in the Jackson case."

How else to explain at Jackson's bedside bottles of the anesthesia drug Diprivan (brand name Propofol), which under normal circumstances doesn't leave the hospital?

"It's absolutely out of this universe," said Dr. Lynn Webster, who publishes a guide for practitioners called Avoiding Opioid Abuse While Managing Pain and is on the board of Zero Unintentional Deaths, which works "to eliminate the harm and unintended deaths associated with prescription pain relievers." Webster said for a patient to reasonably require Diprivan as a painkiller, he would have to be terminally ill and paraplegic.

"If what I hear out of the news is remotely correct, this is an individual who has become really addicted to multiple medications and cannot escape this without continued feeding of near lethal levels of medications," Webster said. "The window between what Michael wanted or felt like he needed and death was probably very narrow."

Unlike the Hughes case, the legal and regulatory machinery in the aftermath of Jackson's death has yet to complete its mission. Still, some clues can be divined from various media reports. According to TMZ.com, a former Jackson bodyguard told investigators that Jackson was taking 10 Xanax pills per night. The same bodyguard said at one time Jackson might have taken 30 to 40 pills per night of the anti-anxiety medication.

"There is no one who should ever have 10 Xanax a night even if that's the only thing he's taking," Webster said. Press reports following a search of Jackson's home also indicated he was taking a host of other painkillers including Demerol and Oxycontin, some in his name, others without labels or under different names. Assistants were said to obtain drugs from multiple pharmacies.

In 1978, the trial against Thain revealed similar plots by Howard Hughes. The subject line of a 1958 "operating memorandum" submitted as evidence in the trial and obtained courtesy of Tennant says, "Instructions from HRH regarding securing and processing prescriptions."

"When the call comes in to the office following the doctor's call to Mrs. Hughes and it is something that can be telephoned in, then OK," the memo reads. "Try to prevail on the doctor not to require a confirmation of the prescription. It would be well to put the prescription in Mrs. Melba Doss' name, as Mrs. Hughes would like that better than using another name she doesn't know."

Webster sympathized with doctors who get lured into the world of celebrity. "It's unfortunate because physicians can sometimes get pulled into situations like this that seem to be very exciting because of the people they are working with, and they forget the principles they are supposed to follow," he said.

Based on media reports, Jackson saw more than a dozen doctors since 1993. The Los Angeles Times quotes a longtime Jackson associate as saying the pop singer had little trouble finding a doctor who would prescribe drugs.

"They rotate in and out," the article quoted the source, who requested anonymity. "There were a lot of doctors over the years. ... They liked to be known as Michael Jackson's doctor."

Investigators in recent weeks subpoenaed medical records from multiple doctors who treated the singer, including Dr. Arnold Klein, Jackson's dermatologist for nearly 25 years.

Webster advises doctors who prescribe controlled substances to maintain detailed medical records and visit personally with patients to closely monitor their condition. "All of us get fooled, but the good physicians are always on guard for individuals who are out there to try and deceive them. For somebody to be deceived for 10 years would be extraordinary."

And of course, such abuse is not solely the province of celebrities. More than 8,500 Americans died from prescription drug overdoses in 2005, the latest year figures were available, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. From 2001 to 2005, unintentional overdose deaths due to prescription drugs increased 114 percent.

Public policy and drug enforcement actions over the past decade to combat abuse of painkillers have led to prescription drug monitoring programs in 33 states, including California. The programs work by tracking prescriptions of controlled substances through pharmacies.

To avoid detection, doctors might stockpile drugs in their office. Using aliases and diverting drugs from other patients are difficult to detect. And doctors might choose to skimp on the note taking in the name of privacy, especially when it comes to extremely reclusive figures such as Jackson and Hughes.

Their deaths took place in far different eras more than 30 years apart, but the issues remain the same when doctors succumb to the influence of celebrity. Early autopsy results said track marks scarred Jackson's arms. The autopsy of Hughes revealed a much more shocking detail: Five glass syringes, used to inject codeine, were found embedded in his upper and lower arm.

Warren Zevon's The Wind "sardonic wit and blazing intelligence"

Warren Zevon's The Wind

Warren Zevon was an American singer-songwriter known for his "sardonic wit and blazing intelligence" which he incorporated into his music. Some of his well known songs include "Werewolves of London", "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner", and "Lawyers, Guns and Money". In 2002, Zevon was diagnosed with mesothelioma. He refused any treatment and started on his final album The Wind.

The Wind features guest appearances from several of Zevon's close friends (Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley to name a few). The making of the album was made into a documentary for VH1 entitled, Warren Zevon: Keep Me In Your Heart.

When I first heard The Wind, I knew it was Zevon's final album, made while he was dying, and so I listened to it differently than I would other albums. It seems to frequently refer to Zevon's illness (but maybe that's just me). Some songs seemed to contain a lot of regret.

Included on the album is a cover of the Bob Dylan song "Knockin' on Heaven's Door". (Not hard to see how this one relates to dyint.) Another song, "Disorder in the House" (recorded with Bruce Springsteen and winner of a Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocal), is about a house coming apart and falling down. It starts with the lines:
Disorder in the house
The tub runneth over
Plaster's falling down in pieces by the couch of pain

It ends:
Disorder in the house
All bets are off
I'm sprawled across the davenport of despair
Disorder in the house
I'll live with the losses
And watch the sundown through the portiere

Below is "Keep Me in Your Heart" also from The Wind.

Shortly after his diagnosis, in 2002, Zevon appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman as the only guest for an entire hour (most of the appearance can be seen on You Tube). Zevon was a frequent guest on The Late Show. When discussing his cancer, Zevon says,"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years. It was one of those phobias that really didn't pay off." Later on, Letterman asks Zevon if he knows something about life and death that Letterman doesn't know. Zevon responds, "Not unless I know how much you're supposed to enjoy every sandwich." (The line "enjoy every sandwich" then became one of Zevon's more famous lines.)

Warren Zevon died September 7, 2003, less than two weeks after the release of The Wind on August 26th.

New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets - Conversation Starter - HarvardBusiness.org

New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets

Twitter has attracted tremendous attention from the media and celebrities, but there is much uncertainty about Twitter's purpose. Is Twitter a communications service for friends and groups, a means of expressing yourself freely, or simply a marketing tool?

We examined the activity of a random sample of 300,000 Twitter users in May 2009 to find out how people are using the service. We then compared our findings to activity on other social networks and online content production venues. Our findings are very surprising.

Of our sample (300,542 users, collected in May 2009), 80% are followed by or follow at least one user. By comparison, only 60 to 65% of other online social networks' members had at least one friend (when these networks were at a similar level of development). This suggests that actual users (as opposed to the media at large) understand how Twitter works.

Although men and women follow a similar number of Twitter users, men have 15% more followers than women. Men also have more reciprocated relationships, in which two users follow each other. This "follower split" suggests that women are driven less by followers than men, or have more stringent thresholds for reciprocating relationships. This is intriguing, especially given that females hold a slight majority on Twitter: we found that men comprise 45% of Twitter users, while women represent 55%. To get this figure, we cross-referenced users' "real names" against a database of 40,000 strongly gendered names.

Even more interesting is who follows whom. We found that an average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman. Similarly, an average woman is 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman. Finally, an average man is 40% more likely to be followed by another man than by a woman. These results cannot be explained by different tweeting activity - both men and women tweet at the same rate.

These results are stunning given what previous research has found in the context of online social networks. On a typical online social network, most of the activity is focused around women - men follow content produced by women they do and do not know, and women follow content produced by women they knowⁱ. Generally, men receive comparatively little attention from other men or from women. We wonder to what extent this pattern of results arises because men and women find the content produced by other men on Twitter more compelling than on a typical social network, and men find the content produced by women less compelling (because of a lack of photo sharing, detailed biographies, etc.).

Twitter's usage patterns are also very different from a typical on-line social network. A typical Twitter user contributes very rarely. Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one. This translates into over half of Twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days.

At the same time there is a small contingent of users who are very active. Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. On a typical online social network, the top 10% of users account for 30% of all production. To put Twitter in perspective, consider an unlikely analogue - Wikipedia. There, the top 15% of the most prolific editors account for 90% of Wikipedia's edits ⁱⁱ. In other words, the pattern of contributions on Twitter is more concentrated among the few top users than is the case on Wikipedia, even though Wikipedia is clearly not a communications tool. This implies that Twitter's resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network.

Bill Heil is a graduating MBA student at Harvard Business School, and will start at Adobe Systems as a Product Manager in the fall. Mikolaj Jan Piskorski is an Assistant Professor of Strategy at HBS who teaches a Second Year elective entitled Competing with Social Networks. Bill undertook research for parts of this article in the context of that class.

i Piskorski, Mikolaj Jan. "Networks as covers: Evidence from an on-line social network." Working Paper, Harvard Business School.
ii Piskorski, Mikolaj Jan and Andreea Gorbatai, "Social structure of collaboration on Wikipedia." Working Paper, Harvard Business School.

New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets - Conversation Starter - HarvardBusiness.org

Eat It to Save It - Idea of the Day Blog - NYTimes.com

Eat It to Save It

Today’s idea: Farm biodiversity is disappearing, so we should eat endangered crops and livestock to boost demand for them and thereby save them from extinction, an article says.

Tamas Dezso for The New York Times With succulent pork back in demand, the Mangalitsa pig of Hungary made a comeback.

Food | You like heirloom tomatoes, right? The same sort of determined breeding that goes into those could preserve disappearing strains of pigs, turkeys, cows and all manner of crops, writes Emily Badger in Miller-McCune magazine — if there were sufficient consumer demand.

“But today, 99 percent of turkeys eaten in America come from a single breed, the Broad-Breasted White,” she writes. “More than 80 percent of dairy cows are Holsteins and 75 percent of pigs come from just three breeds.” Same holds for fruits and veggies, she says; while there used to be 15,000 varieties of apple, there now are 1,500.

“In an era when many problems — deforestation, climate change, water shortages — have been caused by human over-consumption, here is a problem of under-consumption,” Badger writes. “Biodiversity is disappearing precisely because people no longer consume it, and if we would just eat endangered crops and livestock now, restoring their role in the food supply, we could save them from extinction.”

And who knows? The preserved breeds might be better suited to whatever climate change has in store, before they become dinner. [Miller-McCune]

Eat It to Save It - Idea of the Day Blog - NYTimes.com

Avoiding Opioid Abuse While Managing Pain

Avoiding Opioid Abuse While Managing Pain

Reviewed by Frederick W. Burgess, MD, PhD, Clinical Associate Professor of Surgery (Anesthesiology)

Frederick W. Burgess, Warren Alpert School of Medicine, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island; Rhode Island Hospital, Providence, Rhode Island;

Disclosure: Frederick W. Burgess, MD, PhD, has disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

Avoiding Opioid Abuse While Managing Pain.
Lynn R. Webster, MD and Beth Dove. Sunrise River Press Copyright: 2007 Pages: 202 ISBN-13 978-0-9624814-8-2 Price: 24.95 US Dollars

Opioid analgesics represent one of our earliest and most effective therapeutic classes of medication. Despite their recognized efficacy, the opioids have historically been subjected to periods of widespread availability and abuse, followed by periods of excessive governmental restriction and legal oppression. Medical professionals have struggled, and still struggle, to determine the proper balance between the potential for opioid abuse and the need for compassionate analgesia.

Dr. Lynn Webster, a distinguished researcher and clinician specializing in pain medicine and psychiatry, and his associate, Beth Dove, a medical writer, have created a very useful compilation of information relating to the issues of pain treatment and the potential for opioid abuse and drug diversion in their text: Avoiding Opioid Abuse While Managing Pain. Dr. Webster is a recognized leader in the field of pain medicine and is noted for significant contributions to the pain medicine primary literature. Their text deals with a very timely topic, of considerable interest not only to pain medicine specialists but of great clinical relevance to primary care physicians engaged in the treatment of patients suffering from persistent pain conditions.

Avoiding Opioid Abuse While Managing Pain offers a concise overview of the overlapping issues of opioid abuse, the neurobiology of addiction, the assessment and monitoring for opioid abuse, and the legal ramifications of opioid prescribing. The text is concise, easy to read, and well organized. Numerous tables, figures, and graphic illustrations are included, emphasizing important points and pathways in addition to the reproduction of several diagnostic screening tools. Unfortunately, some of the graphics appear to have originally been designed as color slides and lose some of their clarity when reproduced in gray-scale for the text.

Webster and Dove open the book by defining many of the terms specific to addiction and drug dependence. The first chapter highlights the recent upsurge in prescription opioid abuse and accidental prescription drug overdose deaths, which appears to correlate with, but cannot be directly attributed to, the increased prescribing of opioid analgesics.

Based on current data, the greater availability of prescription opioids within the community may be providing increased opportunity for opioid diversion. One important point emphasized by the authors is that abuse and addiction are not synonymous; opioid abuse may be medically appropriate, in the sense that the patient may be using the medication to self-treat pain, but it qualifies as abuse if the medication was not prescribed to this individual.

For example, many teenage girls will use hydrocodone obtained from parents or friends to self-medicate a headache. They are not addicted or abusing it in the sense of “getting high,” but simply using it to relieve their headache pain. However, from a strictly legal standpoint, this type of use is regarded as drug abuse. Much of the data published on this topic has used this type of definition. It tends to inflate the numbers of college students “abusing” drugs, but it is the accepted definition.

In the next chapter, the authors provide a general review of the current research on the neurobiology of addiction. The information presented cites many of the current developments in our understanding of addiction, but it may leave the reader more confused than enlightened. The problem is not with Webster and Dove's presentation; rather, it reflects the current lack of a unifying theory of addiction. Considerable advancements have been made in the field, but the manifestation of addiction is a complex mix of various genetic elements, environment, and drug-specific effects.

Webster and Dove go on to examine patient-specific behaviors as indications of opioid abuse patterns. Medication use behavioral patterns must be assessed and charted, much as any sign or symptom, and used to evaluate treatment response. The concept of a “trio-diagnosis” is proposed to account for the interactions between pain, psychiatric disease, and substance abuse.

The authors note that no single medical or mental health condition can be addressed independently and have a reasonable expectation of success. Comorbid diagnoses of substance abuse and psychiatric disease and pain are frequently manifested among patients with low back pain and in many other pain conditions. The 3 are often interrelated and may require the involvement of other medical specialists to obtain the best response. Simply prescribing an opioid to relieve pain has the potential to aggravate the other coexisting conditions.

Chapters IV and V of Avoiding Opioid Abuse While Managing Pain are devoted to identifying and assessing the risk factors that may contribute to opioid abuse. There is no single risk factor or screening tool that will uniformly identify a patient as a poor risk for opioid therapy. The main value of assessing these risk factors and applying an assessment tool lies in identifying which patient will require the greatest amount of supervision and careful ongoing monitoring for substance abuse.

Webster and Dove also present the advantages and limitations of several screening tools. They note that many of the early screening tests employed were specifically designed to diagnose alcohol or substance abuse and were not intended to assess patients employing opioids for pain. However, several new opioid-specific screening tools, such as the Opioid Risk Tool, the Screening Instrument for Substance Abuse, and the Prescription Drug Use Questionnaire, are reasonably fast and easy to administer. These tests will be useful in aiding physicians in developing a risk assessment protocol for their practice situations, to stratify patients according to their potential liability for addiction and substance abuse. As the authors point out: “the goal is not to deny pain treatment to any patient, but to set and maintain a level of monitoring proportionate to the individual's risk.”

Chapter VI provides a number of specific methods for monitoring patients treated with opioid analgesics. Several factors are essential to avoid opioid abuse and diversion, some as simple as meticulous record keeping, a comprehensive history and physical assessment, continual re-evaluation and documentation of response, or lack thereof, and the use of an informed consent and treatment agreement signed by the patient. It is important to spell out the risks of chronic opioid therapy to the patient, provide standards of behavior relating to medication use, and delineate the patient's obligations to adhere to the agreed treatment protocol.

This chapter also delineates recommendations for monitoring and prescribing guidelines dependent on the perceived risk of opioid abuse/diversion risk for individual patients. It is essential that physicians prescribing opioids accept responsibility for both treating pain and avoiding harm that may be associated with their patients' abuse or diversion of opioid analgesics. Ethically and legally, the physician has a societal responsibility to evaluate and continually monitor for inappropriate opioid use.

The concept of a balanced approach to pain treatment and substance abuse is further elaborated in the next chapter. The perceived and real competing interests between appropriate pain treatment and the governmental focus on the war on drug abuse continue to inspire fear of prosecution among physicians.

The recent struggles between the pain medicine community and the Drug Enforcement Agency on how best to obtain balance have not provided a sense of confidence in the community. The authors have attempted to provide a guide to avoid legal scrutiny, but, realistically, there are no rigid criteria that can be uniformly applied to guard against it. Once again, the use of careful monitoring and documentation is the best approach. The book concludes with an overview of future directions targeting drug development and pharmaceutical delivery systems designed to minimize abuse potential.

Webster and Dove's Avoiding Opioid Abuse While Managing Pain will be a useful addition to the bookshelves of any physician or other healthcare provider engaged in the care of patients treated with opioids for persistent pain conditions. Increasingly, primary care physicians are responsible for treating patients with opioid addiction and persistent pain. This text will provide the necessary tools to develop treatment protocols for monitoring and documenting a careful program to assess the efficacy of chronic opioid therapy and minimize opioid abuse.