Friday, September 20, 2024

DORIS LOH: Clinical evidence for high-dose melatonin at 50 mg/kg in one single dose is safe for patients undergoing liver resection. Melatonin treatment resulted in shorter ICU stay and total hospital stay

From General Surgery UCSF,

Most hepatectomies are performed for the treatment of hepatic neoplasms, both benign or malignant. Benign neoplasms include hepatocellular adenoma, hepatic hemangioma and focal nodular hyperplasia.The most common malignant neoplasms (cancers) of the liver are metastases; those arising from colorectal cancer are among the most common, and the most amenable to surgical resection. The most common primary malignant tumour of the liver is the hepatocellular carcinoma. Hepatectomy may also be the procedure of choice to treat intrahepatic gallstones or parasitic cysts of the liver.

Liver surgery is safe when performed by experienced surgeons with appropriate technological and institutional support. As with most major surgical procedures, there is a marked tendency towards optimal results at the hands of surgeons with high caseloads in selected centres (typically cancer academic medical centers and transplantation centers).

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Dave Rubin Interviews Owen Benjamin, Nov 3, 2017

Fun and funny interview.
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DR. RUSSEL REITER: Melatonin and methylene blue belong in every emergency medical kit.

from Dr. Frank Yap, MD's "Melatonin 101: What You Need to Know, an Interview with Dr. Russel Reiter," September 15, 2024. 

THE HIGHLIGHTS

1)  the most important antioxidant molecules and certainly the most ancient, as it has been part of biological life for over 3 billion years.  It's present in plants and bacteria. 

2)  In the human body — aside from having direct antioxidant effects — it also stimulates the synthesis of glutathione and other important antioxidants like superoxide dismutase and catalase 
3)  the antioxidant activity of melatonin is extremely diverse.

4)  It, in fact, is a very good radical scavenger. There are other radical scavengers — vitamin C, vitamin E, and so forth — but melatonin is superior to those 

5)  it stimulates antioxidative enzymes, especially in mitochondria. Mitochondria are small organelles in the cell that generate the bulk of the free radicals. 
6)  It also removes free radicals and prevents the degeneration of the mitochondria, and why this is so important is because mitochondria are really the center of the action within a cell. 
7)  95% of the melatonin in your body is concentrated within the mitochondria inside the cells.
8)  it appears that under stress, all cells may upregulate their ability to produce melatonin because it's so highly productive 
9)  Anytime your skin is exposed to natural sunlight, however, you can be sure you’re receiving the necessary wavelengths of near-infrared to generate melatonin in your mitochondria. 
10)  there are two types of melatonin in your body: The melatonin produced in your pineal gland, which traverses into your blood, and subcellular melatonin produced inside your mitochondria. 
11)  bright sun exposure around solar noon will indirectly help your pineal gland to produce melatonin during the night. 
12)  If you supplement with melatonin, it will get into your mitochondria and, in fact, do what melatonin does — neutralize free radicals and protect the mitochondria's function.”  
13)  we infused melatonin directly into the heart after the vessel was opened. That reduced cardiac damage by roughly 40%. 
14)  people who are potentially suffering with heart failure because of a damaged heart, they survive better and longer if they are given melatonin on a regular basis. 
15)  Reiter stresses that melatonin has no known toxic threshold, so even though we don’t know what the ideal dose is, we do know it’s safe even at high doses.  
16)  melatonin dosing should follow circadian biology, so around 10 a.m., 4 p.m., and before bed. 
17)  an emergency medical technician goes out and picks up a patient who has clearly a heart attack. I think on-site, immediately, melatonin should be given intravenously rather than orally.  
18)  Methylene blue is well-documented to be highly beneficial for reperfusion injuries. 
19) Melatonin and methylene blue belong in every emergency medical kit. 
20)  excess seed oils are the primary reason why most people are metabolically inflexible.

MELATONIN 101

Melatonin is one of the most important antioxidant molecules and certainly the most ancient, as it has been part of biological life for over 3 billion years. It's present in prokaryotes, which are bacteria, and even in plants. In the human body — aside from having direct antioxidant effects — it also stimulates the synthesis of glutathione and other important antioxidants like superoxide dismutase and catalase. 

Reiter continues: 

“Melatonin has been here forever . . . and its functions have evolved. It has learned to work successfully with other molecules during this three-billion-year evolution. One of the molecules with which it collaborates is glutathione.  But the antioxidant activity of melatonin is extremely diverse.

It, in fact, is a very good radical scavenger. There are other radical scavengers — vitamin C, vitamin E, and so forth — but melatonin is superior to those. But beyond that, it stimulates antioxidative enzymes, especially in mitochondria. Mitochondria are small organelles in the cell that generate the bulk of the free radicals. 
So, it's very important to have a good antioxidant at the level of the mitochondria and melatonin happens to be located and is, in fact, synthesized in the mitochondria. Melatonin scavenges radicals that are generated, but it also stimulates something called sirtuin-3, which activates or deacetylates superoxide dismutase (SOD), which is a very important antioxidative enzyme. 
It also removes free radicals and prevents the degeneration of the mitochondria, and why this is so important is because mitochondria are really the center of the action within a cell. In other words, there's strong evidence that aging, frailty of aging, senescence of cells as we age, relate to molecular damage at the level of the mitochondria, and melatonin seems to be very efficient at protecting mitochondria from that damage.”
Melatonin increases glutathione through a genomic effect on the enzyme that regulates the synthesis of gamma glutamylcysteine synthase, the rate-limiting enzyme in glutathione synthesis. Melatonin activates that enzyme.

Glutathione tends to be found in high concentrations in cells, although some is also found, to a lesser degree, in the extracellular space and the mitochondria. Meanwhile, 95% of the melatonin in your body is concentrated within the mitochondria inside the cells.

Its antioxidant effects are quite diverse, but include preventing free radical generation by enhancing the efficiency of the electron transport chain so fewer electrons leach onto oxygen molecules to generate superoxide antiradical. 

Related: Best Melatonin Gummies for Adults

HOW MITOCHONDRIAL MELATONIN IS GENERATED
Mitochondrial melatonin production is one of the reasons why regular sun exposure is so crucial. Most people understand that sun exposure on bare skin generates vitamin D, courtesy of UVB (ultraviolet B radiation). Few, however, understand that the near-infrared spectrum, when hitting your skin, triggers the generation of melatonin in your mitochondria. 

Reiter explains: 
“Near-infrared radiation penetrates relatively easily the skin and subcutaneous tissues. Every one of those cells contains mitochondria and it appears that near-infrared radiation that is detected, in fact, induces melatonin production. That is important because we now think that melatonin within mitochondria is inducible under a lot of stressful conditions. 
That is not definitively proven, but it appears that under stress, all cells may upregulate their ability to produce melatonin because it's so highly productive. And typically, under stress, free radicals are generated. That is emphasized by the [fact] that in plants ... that happens. 
In other words, if you expose plants to drought, heat, cold, to metal toxicity, the first thing they do is upregulate their melatonin, because all of those situations generate free radicals. And we suspect, although that has not yet been definitely proven, in animal cells as well, including human [cells].”
Identifying the specific wavelengths that trigger melatonin production can be tricky, but generally speaking, it’s likely to be the range between 800 to 1,000 nanometers (nm). This range of near-infrared is invisible and has the ability to penetrate tissue. Visible wavelengths generally do not penetrate the skin, and therefore cannot stimulate your mitochondria.

Anytime your skin is exposed to natural sunlight, however, you can be sure you’re receiving the necessary wavelengths of near-infrared to generate melatonin in your mitochondria. Conversely, when indoors under artificial lighting, you can be certain you’re not getting any. This is because most window glass is low-e and filters out a good portion of the near-infrared, so even sitting near a window is not going to provide you with this benefit.

To compensate for time spent indoors, I use a 250-watt Photo Beam near-infrared bulb from SaunaSpace in my office. I keep it lit when I'm in my office and have my shirt off.  Considering most people spend most of their days indoors, mitochondrial melatonin deficiency is likely rampant. And, since many also do not get enough sleep, they also have a deficiency in the melatonin synthesized in the pineal gland in response to darkness. 

TWO TYPES OF MELATONIN
As hinted at above, there are two types of melatonin in your body: The melatonin produced in your pineal gland, which traverses into your blood, and subcellular melatonin produced inside your mitochondria.

Importantly, the melatonin that your mitochondria produce does not escape your mitochondria. It doesn't go into your blood. So, you're not going to directly increase your blood or serum level of melatonin by sun exposure. But, bright sun exposure around solar noon will indirectly help your pineal gland to produce melatonin during the night.

It is important to understand that your blood level of melatonin is indicative of the melatonin produced in your pineal gland, and/or oral supplementation. Conversely, the melatonin produced by your pineal gland cannot enter into the mitochondria, which is why it is so important to get regular sun exposure. Reiter explains:

“In other words, if you surgically remove the pineal gland from an animal or human, blood levels of melatonin are essentially zero. Not totally zero — I think what happens is that the mitochondria in other cells continue to produce melatonin and some of that leaks out into the blood and gives you a residual — but you have no circadian rhythm.

Melatonin production in the pineal gland is highly rhythmic, depending on the light-dark cycle. This is not true for melatonin in mitochondria. It's not cyclic. It's not impacted by the light-dark environment. It may be affected by certain wavelengths of energy, but it's not affected by the light-dark environment.

So, blood levels are derived from the pineal gland, and this rhythm is very important for setting circadian rhythms. In other words, the function of that melatonin is quite different from the function of the mitochondrial-produced melatonin. It sets the rhythm. Of course, there's always some scavenging by that melatonin as well, but the real scavenging is involved with mitochondrial-produced melatonin.”

ORAL SUPPLEMENTATION NEUTRALIZES FREE RADICALS
Oral supplementation, however, can enter your cells and mitochondria. This is a detail I was wrong about before, and which Reiter clarifies in this interview:
“If you supplement with melatonin, it can also enter cells and get into the mitochondria as well. And that is also very important ... As you age, mitochondrial melatonin diminishes. If you supplement with melatonin, it will get into your mitochondria and, in fact, do what melatonin does — neutralize free radicals and protect the mitochondria's function.” 

MELATONIN IS VITAL TO HEART ATTACK AND STROKE RECOVERY

Considering melatonin’s function within your mitochondria, and the fact that mitochondrial dysfunction is a hallmark of most chronic diseases, it makes sense that melatonin would be helpful against a number of different diseases, including the two most common — heart disease and cancer.

As explained by Reiter, one of the situations that is most devastating for the heart and brain is temporary interruption of the blood supply as a result of a cardiac arrest or stroke. This deprives the tissues of oxygen, and without oxygen, they rapidly deteriorate.

When the blood vessel reopens, which is called reperfusion, and oxygen flows back into those oxygen-deprived cells, this tends to be the time of maximum damage, as loads of free radicals are generated once the blood starts flowing again. 
“There's a large host of studies, including some in humans, where if you give melatonin to induce a heart attack in animals or an accidental heart attack in humans, you can preserve or reduce the amount of cardiac infarct, the amount of damage that occurs in the heart,” Reiter says. 
“There's a very famous cardiologist in the Canary Islands, professor Dominguez-Rodriguez, whom I worked with. And we, about three years ago, published a paper where we infused melatonin directly into the heart after the vessel was opened. That reduced cardiac damage by roughly 40%. 
The other thing that happens in a heart attack is that cardiac cells do not regenerate. Once you lose a cardiac cell, they're done ... and are replaced by fibrous tissue. Of course, fibrous tissue is not contractile, so you get heart failure. 
We just published a paper, again with this same cardiologist, showing that if people who are potentially suffering with heart failure because of a damaged heart, they survive better and longer if they are given melatonin on a regular basis. It's a small study ... but I think that would be a worthwhile field to exploit.” 

DOSE SUGGESTION FOR ACUTE HEART ATTACK

In terms of dosage, it’s difficult to translate doses used in animal studies onto human subjects. In animals, doses between 5 to 10 milligrams per kilogram of body weight are used. In humans, however, the dose is calculated on the basis of surface area rather than on body size, and that significantly reduces the amount of melatonin that you have to give.

That said, Reiter stresses that melatonin has no known toxic threshold, so even though we don’t know what the ideal dose is, we do know it’s safe even at high doses. Additionally, the timing of the dose will be important. The first dose should be taken immediately, but subsequent melatonin dosing should follow circadian biology, so around 10 a.m., 4 p.m., and before bed.
“If I had a heart attack and I had melatonin on my person, I would take melatonin,” Reiter says. “The question is how much? ... This is not a recommendation to any of your patients, but I would not be hesitant about taking 50 milligrams at the time, and some subsequently for the next 24 hours, even during the day. Because you don't want to lose any more heart cells than is absolutely necessary ...

I have suggested this a number of times. In other words, an emergency medical technician goes out, picks up a patient who has clearly a heart attack. I think on site, immediately, melatonin should be given intravenously rather than orally. It'd be difficult to give it orally. That would be my recommendation.”

EMERGENCY MEDICAL KIT FOR ACUTE HEART ATTACK OR STROKE

In cases of an acute heart attack or stroke (which have virtually identical tissue damage mechanisms: one affects the heart and the other your brain), I would also add methylene blue. Methylene blue is well-documented to be highly beneficial for reperfusion injuries, (2) especially if you do it right at the beginning of the event, because it augments cytochromes to allow the continued production of ATP even without the use of oxygen. 

Melatonin and methylene blue belong in every emergency medical kit. In cases of an acute heart attack or stroke, melatonin can help limit the damage, while methylene blue augments cytochromes to allow the continued production of ATP even without the use of oxygen, which also helps minimize cell death and tissue damage.

So, together, methylene blue and melatonin could act as a one-two punch if you've got a stroke or heart attack. They really should be part of every emergency kit.

As an interesting side note, melatonin can also be useful in people with Type 2 diabetes. Reiter notes he has diabetic colleagues who take 1 gram of melatonin daily to counteract the free radical damage caused by hyperglycemia. Keep in mind that melatonin does not treat the cause of the diabetes. It only helps to counteract the damage being caused.

HALF-LIFE AND BIOAVAILABILITY OF MELATONIN  

The half-life of melatonin in the blood is only about 40 minutes. Within cells, the half-life varies according to the level of oxidative stress present. If oxidative stress is high, the melatonin is destroyed much faster; if oxidative stress is low, it remains within the cell much longer.

Reiter also notes that in addition to being a free radical scavenger, all of melatonin’s metabolic kin — its active metabolites, such as N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine — are also excellent scavengers. While quickly used up in the presence of high oxidative stress, melatonin is also rapidly taken up when used orally, hence the suggestion to take multiple doses spread out.

Ideally, you’d want to use sublingual or intravenous melatonin, because it’ll enter your bloodstream much faster. Another option is to make your own rectal suppositories. If you swallow it, it needs to pass through and be metabolized by your liver.

MELATONIN IS ALSO A POTENT ANTIVIRAL 

In addition to its antioxidant potency, melatonin also has antiviral capacity. These two features combined is thought to be why it’s been so useful against COVID-19. 

“I'm going to give you a very specific example,” Reiter says. “Here's a local physician, Dr. Richard Neil, whom I have known for a number of years. When COVID-19 became common, he called me, we discussed it, he started giving 1 mg per kilogram of body weight (once a day) for about 5 days, at the time of diagnosis. He has now treated more than 2,000 patients, very successfully, with melatonin.

The importance of melatonin in reference to COVID is that it is not specifically for [the original Wuhan strain]. The variants, Delta, Omicron, they're viruses we think will respond. We currently have a paper in press where we showed that in animals, Zika virus toxicity is also prevented by melatonin, and we've checked four different coronaviruses in pigs.

That paper also shows that melatonin prevents the damage — the consequence — of those viruses.  I think [melatonin] is generally a quite good antiviral agent and should be considered useful. When President Trump was hospitalized with COVID-19, one of the molecules he was given was melatonin. Obviously, the physicians treating him knew this literature.”

So, to summarize, if you have symptoms of COVID-19, you could consider taking oral or sublingual melatonin 30 to 45 minutes before bedtime, first thing in the morning, at 10 a.m., and again at 4 p.m. You clearly want to avoid it a few hours before and after solar noon, as taking supplementation during that time will likely impair pineal nighttime melatonin secretion.

Reiter points out that slow-release melatonin has not been widely studied, and he generally doesn’t recommend it for that reason. 


MELATONIN FOR CANCER

Melatonin can also be useful in the prevention and treatment of cancer.  Reiter explains: 
“Cancer cells are clever. They do everything they can to permit their continued survival.  It seems counterintuitive, but what they do is prevent pyruvate from entering the mitochondria, and that reduces ATP production. But as a consequence of doing that, they accelerate something called glycolysis and that's very inefficient in producing ATP, but it does it very rapidly. So, then they have sufficient energy.

The importance of preventing pyruvate from entering the mitochondria, we now think is the fact that pyruvate is a precursor to something called acetyl coenzyme A. Acetyl coenzyme A is a cofactor for the enzyme that regulates melatonin production in the mitochondria.

So, by eliminating or preventing pyruvate from getting into the mitochondria, [the cancer cells] prevent or reduce melatonin production, because they don't allow the necessary cofactor to be produced. In other words, we predicted about four years ago that, in fact, the mitochondria of cancer cells would produce less melatonin.

We have subsequently shown that in two studies, both uterine cancers. Clearly, melatonin levels and the activity of the enzymes in the mitochondria of these types of cancer cells are at least about half what they would normally be. The prevention of pyruvate into the mitochondria, that's Warburg-type metabolism.

The other thing is the pyruvate is metabolized into lactic acid. It escapes the cell and produces an acidic environment for the cancer cell, and cancer cells like that acidic environment. So, if you can reduce the Warburg-type metabolism, you may be able to limit the growth of cancer cells and perhaps also the metastasis
 . . . 
Some cancer cells may only be part-time cancerous because [during nighttime] when they have high melatonin, then they avoid Warburg-type metabolism. The interesting thing about Warburg-type metabolism [is that] . . . many pathological cells, inflammatory cells, cells that are affected by amyloid beta in the brain, exhibit this specific type metabolism . . .

And we know that inflammatory cells — M2 and M1 inflammatory cells — can be converted back and forth by melatonin. The inflammatory cells can be prevented by giving them melatonin [because of] its effect on Warburg-type metabolism. So, Warburg type metabolism is common in many, many pathological cells.”

THE LINK BETWEEN METABOLIC FLEXIBILITY, MELATONIN, AND CANCER

One of the reasons why cancer is so prevalent likely has to do with the fact that 93% of Americans are metabolically inflexible (JACC 2022) and cannot seamlessly transition between burning carbs and fats for fuel. Glucose (sugar) is one of the primary fuels that most people have. Glucose has six carbons and is metabolized into pyruvate, which is a three-carbon molecule. Pyruvate, in turn, is metabolized in the mitochondria to acetyl-CoA.

The reason the Warburg-Effect works is that pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase (PDK) inhibits the inflow of pyruvate into the mitochondria, so it cannot be converted into acetyl-CoA, and acetyl-CoA is not only needed in the production of melatonin but is also used to efficiently produce ATP in the mitochondria and is how glucose is used in the mitochondria.

Another source of acetyl-CoA is beta oxidation of fats, which breaks down the fat to the two-carbon molecule acetyl-CoA, which enters the mitochondria as an active transport molecule, courtesy of MCT (mono carboxylase transporter). My point here is that when you are metabolically inflexible, the Warburg Effect becomes massive. But if you're cardiometabolically healthy and can burn fat, you can effectively bypass that defect.

Prior to my interview with Reiter, I certainly knew that limiting carbs and preventing the Warburg effect was important in cancer treatment, but I hadn’t realized that one of the metabolic byproducts of acetyl-CoA was needed to produce melatonin. So, being metabolically flexible not only impairs the Warburg effect but also supplies melatonin to combat the excessive oxidative stress in cancer.

This is why I would strongly encourage each and every one of you to regularly engage in two activities the rest of your life. First, expose as much of your skin as you can to an hour of sunshine a day around solar noon.

Second, you have to eliminate all seed oils from your diet, as excess seed oils are the primary reason why most people are metabolically inflexible. While the average person’s consumption of these oils is around 25% to 30% of total daily calories, it should only be about 1% to 2% (mine is 1.5%).


WORD OF CAUTION

Just be careful, though, as using high-dose melatonin long term could be a prescription for disaster. This is because doses of over 5 to 10 mg are likely to draw out heavy metals like mercury and unless you are on a good detoxification program and using a sauna regularly these heavy metals could cause biological damage.
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As Graeme MacQueen pointed out, at the time everyone thought the buildings were demolished. But later an intense propaganda effort steered the public toward false accounts.

Graeme MacQueen. 

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Thursday, September 19, 2024

TIM WALZ’s CONNECTIONS TO CHINA with Diana West and Dave Collum

Complete interview. 

 
3:26. There was a certain skill set that I took to the problem of the anti-Trump conspiracy but for example, it is also the case and I've done some further research since that some of these players did all seem to run through Moscow before the fall of the Soviet Union or its early days.  That would be Nellie Ohr. 

Bruce Ohr.  Not sure of Bruce Ohr, but Nellie was there.
Nellie was the Russian fusion, Russian expert, kind of Christopher Steele opposite . . . Christopher Steele was there. Fiona Hill was there.  She's in the Post Red Thread research.  David the McCain Aid [David Foster Wallace?] he was there.  

Nina Jankowicz was there. 

4:24. Recently I was very shocked by this I found that Victoria Nuland has a thin Red Thread I wrote a piece on Substack yeah darling girl but she literally went to work after college I believe she went to Brown she left Brown and this would have been in the mid 80s she went to work on a Soviet fish processing trawler as her first job.  And it's very strange because of that that's not a very safe thing to do; you're going to have a dossier opened up on you.  I mean this was the '80s.

Yeah, that should keep you out of top-secret security clearance, right?

One would wonder about that.  You know, and I was very shocked.  I did not expect to find that but I did.  

5:06. Yeah, Tim Waltz who has huge Chinese connections.  Holy moly!  How did that happen?  

But think about how, where we are in terms of the country, its institutions, including the Democratic Party, which is supposed to be an American political party, in terms of thinking that's okay.  Not that long ago someone with his credentials would have been just, you know, "I'm sorry, dude, you're not going to make it into the big time."  It's amazing to me that there's no longer the survival reflex.  It's the survival reflex along with everything else that's been beaten out of us . . . 

5:48. Or they have taken over, or they have won. 

5:51. Yes I would say that is, that is the other part of the sentence . . .  

5:57.  So it's not just oblivion.  They have won.  You know, the campuses are 98% left leaning [I would say Bolshevik] right? They won that.  I don't know how you undo that.  People say, "How do you fix that?  With 98% left wing?  There's no obvious mechanism.

6:11. But that even goes down to the lower education system, elementary, middle school . . .

6:15. Daycare.  Daycare.  We are getting the kids freshman year. People say oh you guys are really screwing up the kids I got no the kids are arriving freshman year damaged they are one nudge away from being a Marxist.

6:30. And they were selected by the admissions offices.

6:34. Oh, I can't imagine what essays are being written to get in to Cornell now.  I cannot fathom.

6:39. You could select a different class if your admissions office chose to. I often think of what goes on in the admissions officer choosing these classes they've been taken over for sure and this predates the Frankfurt School I mean we didn't have to wait for Marcus to have this happen and the rest this is something that the Communists communist teachers organizations unions and so on you may have heard of Bella Dodd she was a very famous official, a Communist Party, teacher's union official out of New York who defected, went back to the Catholic Church, became very instrumental witness in probably the 1950s late 40s, 50s, explaining how these things are done.  The schools were already riddled with communist teachers.  There's a really interesting little moment when the Soviet Union . . . Interesting little moment of alliance between the Soviet Union and Nancy Germany before Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union 1941 so 1939 to summer '40, '41.  New York legislature did an investigation into authoritarian impulses what not in the schools and ended up with a report on the Communist infiltration in New York's Public Schools and colleges that is mind-blowing.  And this is 1941, so you've already got CCNY and the different colleges and high schools.  You've already got massive communist teacher infiltration going on, so it was already quite dense.

8:47. Communist is a strong word.  Would Marxists be more accurate?

8:50.  I think what they were looking at were Communist party members if I'm not mistaken.  I think they literally were looking at something very defined and remember back in the day it wasn't as a big deal to have a card being part of a Communist party it hadn't gone through all the other decades yet.  They used to get cards that had numbers, and I think that actually stopped when the House on Un-American Activities Committee began identifying Communist party members by their membership cards, and so they stopped issuing them.  I think that was a result of that.  

9:31  I'm going to guess your brief mention of McCarthy through unbelievable fire.  So you talk about McCarthy early in your first book, . . . 

9:37 The late great McCarthy

9:45  and I thought it was going to go seriously into McCharthy, and it didn't hardly touch on him, didn't even mention Roy Cohn, any of these guys, right, so it was in passing that McCarthy had it right, right?

9:52  Yeah, yeah, definitely. 

9:56  I'll bet you that your detractors used that for headline attacks, is that correct? 

10:03  Well, it is correct, I, and I am quite proud of this, I was called "McCarthy on Steroids."

10:12  You probably had three sentences in the book on McCarthy.  I mean it was really not a big part of the book.

10:21  It's a grounding place.  This is what I meant about Stan Evans' book about McCarthy [Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies, M. Stanton Evans, 2007.], which I really recommend; it will, I mean that really flipped my, I didn't really know anything Joseph McCarthy except what you might pick up from the vapors and the noxious references but I'd never made any kind of study of McCarthy, and then I read, I don't know how, I picked up M. Stanton Evans' book which in some ways should never have been written or published at that point and time, I mean it was over and done.  McCarthy was the demon child of American history.  He writes this book and it's amazing.  It's an amazing piece of detective work.  I mean he was a shoe-leather journalist.  Fantastic.  Basically, I thought that if you can do that with McCarthy, what else has been completely misrepresented, lie upon lie upon lie.  The other thing that also drew me in was at the time I was writing, I was a syndicated columnist, appeared on shows, and so on and this was post-9/11 times, and if you brought up Islam, and if you brought up Islam and if you  were critical of Islam, you got slammed as an islamophobe I used to write about this all the time many many columns devoted to Islam and Jihad and Dhimmitude, Islamic Law, all these things Europe I did a lot of reporting in Europe on islamization I was just wondering why can't we have a grown up conversation about Islam in this country and that book took a bit of shape from that debate believe it or not I was on the old Lou Dobbs show on CNN and it was right before Barack Obama was elected president the first time and I had some fairly mild comment I'd written about Obama's socialist policies in my column but I hadn't gotten it out on CNN and there was like this weight it's very hard to get the s word out I said I'm going to say it I'm going to say it so I'm sitting there the sound booth in Washington and it rolls around to me and I just well Lou will just have to wait and see if Senator Obama his if his policies would take the United States in his into a socialist Direction and you get the round Robin's on the pundits in this Hillary person comes on and he says Diana red beating went out a long time ago and blah blah blah and I thought red baiting I did have a chance to rebut and I did have a much better presentation on why I would think he could be socialist but the point is I didn't quite I knew red baiting vaguely but I had to go look it up and I had to figure it out and I realized that there's this correlation between Islamophobe to cut off debate, and red-baiting to cut off debate.  And then I was reading Stan Evans book about that time and that's when I started going back and ask when did this happen that we can't talk about Islam can't talk about communism and then I figured out it's before McCarthy and that was kind of the Genesis of the investigation
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