One reader responded to my previous post about Israel with this comment: “The overarching U.S. rule of war is the principle of proportionality. It’s difficult to make a case that the Israeli response to the October 7th Hamas attack is proportionate. By all accounts, it’s anything but. If the U.S. is to continue to provide military aid to Israel, it would be reasonable to expect that the conduct of the IDF would be consistent with American values regarding war, and that Israel would acknowledge that their enemy is Hamas, not Palestinian mothers and their children, and behave accordingly.”

This notion of “proportionality” represents an abominable injustice.

If an innocent party (Israel) is the victim of an aggressor (Hamas), the principle of self-defense calls for a response that eliminates the aggressor—and all that makes the aggression possible.

When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, killing 2400 Americans, the proper response was, not to kill 2400 Japanese, or to limit our targets to the pilots who dropped the bombs. The proper response was to destroy Japan and its ability to wage war against us. Which we did.

Likewise, the purpose of Israel’s response to the savagery of Hamas should be to prevent it from ever attacking Israel again. If that requires mass destruction in Gaza, then doing so is not simply acceptable, but morally mandatory.

Leave aside the fact that Hamas is supported by vast numbers of “civilian” Palestinians. Even if there are some genuinely innocent people there—and certainly, at the very least, infants would qualify—the responsibility for their deaths does not fall on Israel. The responsibility—the entire responsibility—is borne by Hamas. Israel has an absolute right to defend itself by removing the threat against it. And it is Hamas, the aggressor, that has made it necessary for Israel to kill innocents in order to implement that right.

(This accusation that Israel is cruelly harming innocent civilians is doubly offensive in light of the well-known fact that Hamas regularly uses civilians as shields. Hamas deliberately situates itself in and near hospitals and schools, perversely counting on the world’s showing compassion for the people it callously places in danger. Like the person who kills his parents and then asks for mercy since he is an orphan, Hamas is making the killing of civilians necessary—and then demanding that it be spared in order to avoid the killing of civilians.)

Israel should not hesitate for one second to take all the military measure needed to permanently remove the scourge of Hamas. The “proportionality” alternative would keep Hamas in existence, allowing it to launch future aggressions against Israel (and the U.S.). To those concerned about the Palestinian “mothers and children” harmed by Israel—what about the Israeli mothers and children who will become future victims of Hamas? Or the Israeli soldiers, who are equally innocent? The principle of justice is absolute, and it forbids placing even one additional Israeli life in jeopardy by failing to wipe Hamas out of existence.

A drug designed to remove aging, damaged cells may help older skin recover from wounds more quickly, according to research published in Aging (Aging-US).

. . . applying ABT-263 directly to aging skin [of mice] reduced the number of damaged cells associated with aging and significantly improved subsequent healing.

The researchers applied ABT-263 to the skin of aged mice for five days. After treatment, the skin showed fewer signs of cellular senescence.

The scientists then created small wounds and monitored how quickly they healed.

The difference became substantial. By day 24, 80% of the mice treated with ABT-263 had completely healed wounds. Among untreated aged mice, only 56% had fully healed by the same point.

Sounds great, right? The first really effective wrinkle cream, and maybe more than that. Continuing:

The findings raise the possibility that similar treatments could one day help address slow-healing wounds in older adults, including wounds associated with surgery or chronic health problems. However, the approach has so far been tested in mice, and additional research will be needed before its safety or effectiveness in people is known.

Sounds like a let-down, but a completely realistic one. Yeah, let’s not get carried away with preliminary results. And in mice.

That’s where we’ve all become sheepified.

The findings do not “raise the possibility”–they call for immediate (I mean tonight!) testing on people, beginning with the researchers themselves, assuming they are willing.

How many of you think that a skin cream that was rubbed on mice for 5 days without a problem is going to cause your fingers to fall off if you rub it on the back of your hands?

I’m ready to try it, right now. Okay, I do want to ask the researchers a few questions (such as “Did the mice flee the application of this?”).

And it raises the possibility that similar treatments “could one day . . .” So it’s a possibility of a possibility, because “could” itself is a possibility. And “one day”–you know, when there are many people living in colonies on Mars.

And here’s the giveaway as to why it’s “one day,” not now:

additional research will be needed before its safety or effectiveness in people is known.

Baaa! Baaa! Hear the bleat.

The researchers doing this work, let alone impulsive people on the bleeding edge like me, cannot be trusted to know what’s safe and effective to rub on their own hands, so our FDA forbids them from trying it out.

That’s all the “research” that’s needed: let people try it out. But no, those in charge of us force companies to spend 10 years and about $2 billion to establish “safety and effectiveness.”

God help the poor souls who would rub it on their hands and then find that the skin cream is <cue scary music> NOT EFFECTIVE!

The bottom line is that our shepherds, our masters, in the FDA know better than we what’s in our self-interest. And since we belong to the state, we cannot object when the government turns something that millions could be trying next week or next month into something that “possibly could” be available “one day.”

Someone once said that sarcasm comes from feelings of impotence. I confess I do feel impotent to change minds on the urgent, life-and-death importance of abolishing the FDA.

Our sheepification is that no one reads reports like that and pauses on the implications of our having to wait until “one day.”

P.S. This highly suspect, bomb-squad-worthy cream is the same chemical that is being taken orally as a cancer treatment.

I’m not in the business of second-guessing movie-studio executives. But after the bombshell announcement that James Gunn and Peter Safran would be stepping down as the CEOs and chairman of DC Studios, I flashed back to the moment when I first questioned what these two were up to in their new executive roles. It was […]