You will note that BCG is safe, effective and widely available for a variety of purposes. Thanks to the federal government et al, it is not widely available in the US. Perhaps one of your suffers from an autoimmune disease and like myself has a personal interest in good science and art. See also faustmanlab.org and pubmed.org faustman dl, and pubmed.org ristori + BCG.
My dead friend, author of the The Lancet p.106 Jan. 14, 1978 treated a wide variety of "veterans" at Fort Hamilton and was offered employment at St Vincents Hospital in Manhattan which his moronic wife told him to decline.
The article in the NY Times offers an errand boy's perspective on the use of old age and drugs, but the University of Rome Neurology Dep't et al shows you another avenue of approach.
Sethi NK, Ristori G, Romano S, Coarelli G, Buscarinu MC, Salvetti M.
Neurology. 2014 Jul 15;83(3):293. doi: 10.1212/01.wnl.0000452303.37990.ff. No abstract available.
- PMID:
- 25024446
- [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
4.
Ristori
G, Romano S, Cannoni S, Visconti A, Tinelli E, Mendozzi L, Cecconi P,
Lanzillo R, Quarantelli M, Buttinelli C, Gasperini C, Frontoni M,
Coarelli G, Caputo D, Bresciamorra V, Vanacore N, Pozzilli C, Salvetti
M.
Neurology. 2014 Jan 7;82(1):41-8. doi: 10.1212/01.wnl.0000438216.93319.ab. Epub 2013 Dec 4.
- PMID:
- 24306002
- [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
5.
Paolillo A, Buzzi MG, Giugni E, Sabatini U, Bastianello S, Pozzilli C, Salvetti M, Ristori G.
J Neurol. 2003 Feb;250(2):247-8. No abstract available.
- PMID:
- 12622098
- [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Not
long ago, Thomas DiFiore cut an intimidating figure. For a time, he was
the highest-ranking member of the Bonanno organized crime family not
behind bars, despite a long record of arrests on charges of kidnapping,
assault, promoting gambling and extortion. Even at 70, Mr. DiFiore did
not seem to falter when challenging another aging Bonanno leader in 2013
for more than his share of a loan payment, according to prosecutors’
account of a government wiretap.
“ ‘Without
me,’ ” the other leader, Vincent Asaro, recalled Mr. DiFiore telling
him, “ ‘you wouldn’t a got nothing.’ ” Mr. Asaro, whose words were being
recorded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said Mr. DiFiore made a
former Bonanno boss “look like St. Anthony.”
Yet
now, as he faces sentencing for federal unlawful debt-collection
conspiracy, Mr. DiFiore’s swagger has given way to a shuffle, and he is
talking about insulin and statins rather than payback.
He
is one of the “oldfellas,” Mafiosi whose lives of crime seem to have
succumbed as much to the ravages of age as to the relentlessness of
federal prosecutors. In courtrooms, they can be found displaying
catheter bags or discussing the state of their kidneys in hopes that a
judge will agree to a short sentence.
Many
of these geriatric gangsters have been sentenced in Federal District
Court in Brooklyn, which covers the key territory of Brooklyn, Queens,
Staten Island and Long Island inhabited by New York’s five major
organized crime families.
Mr.
DiFiore, 71, who is to be sentenced in Brooklyn on Tuesday, has
outlined his drug regimen for the court: Lantus insulin shots every 12
hours; atorvastatin for cholesterol in the morning; amlodipine and
lisinopril for blood pressure; and one 325-milligram aspirin a day.
As
members of the Mafia seek to avoid lengthy prison terms, informers are
becoming more common, said Belle Chen, assistant special agent in charge
of organized crime for the F.B.I.’s New York field office.
The
prospect that these turncoats will face violent retaliation has
dwindled, experts say, because of both the protection afforded by the
witness-protection program and the increasing likelihood that a
participant in any such retaliation could wind up helping the
authorities himself. “There are too many potential cooperators these
days,” Ms. Chen said.
This
dynamic has allowed investigators to target decades-old crimes and
aging Mafia leaders, as has the federal racketeering act, under which
old offenses can yield fresh indictments.
As
a result, the federal courthouse in Brooklyn has been filled in recent
years with tales from an era when the Mafia loomed larger than it does
today, when it was linked to conspicuous acts of criminality like the 1978 Lufthansa heist at Kennedy International Airport — a $6 million armed robbery in which Mr. Asaro, 80, is scheduled to go on trial this fall.
Just this month, federal agents arrested
reputed Mafia members and associates in their 60s and 70s connected to
the New Jersey-based crime family long thought to have inspired “The
Sopranos,” the HBO drama that featured its share of aging mobsters.
Given
the age of the some of these defendants, court can occasionally sound
less like a legal forum and more like a hospital admissions ward.
Consider Bartolomeo Vernace, who was 65 when he was sentenced last year
in the 1981 killings of two owners of a Queens bar in a dispute over a
spilled drink. Like Mr. DiFiore, Mr. Vernace had detailed his
prescriptions for the judge: diltiazem, Accupril, Norvasc, Crestor,
Zetia, Actos, Plavix and Amaryl.
Prosecutors
have grown familiar with such litanies, and have contended that some
defendants appear to be exaggerating their medical problems in bids for
leniency.
Nicky
Rizzo, a Colombo family soldier who was 86 when he was sentenced for
racketeering conspiracy in 2013, said his health conditions included bad
hearing, prostate cancer, bladder cancer, poor blood circulation in one
leg, 20 medications a day and a need to use a pump with a catheter for
urination.
“He
stands in the bathroom for five-, ten-, 15-minute time period, he
attempts to urinate,” said his lawyer, Joseph Mure Jr. Mr. Rizzo lifted
his pant leg to show the catheter and urinary drainage bag to the judge.
Prosecutor
Allon Lifshitz responded that Mr. Rizzo’s “behavior in court today,
shuffling in from the back and the purported inability to hear, and the
groaning, should get zero weight.” He added, “It’s a joke.”
Judge
Kiyo A. Matsumoto, citing Mr. Rizzo’s health and age, sentenced him to
six months in prison, compared to the year and a half to two years
sought by prosecutors.
Some
judges have questioned the aging defendants’ conditions. Judge
Matsumoto, for instance, sentenced Colombo family member Richard Fusco
to just four months in prison for extortion conspiracy after he listed
ailments that included kidney failure, hearing loss and early-onset
Alzheimer’s disease, though reporters observed that his condition seemed to improve dramatically after he left court.
“If Mr. Fusco made a fool out of me, then shame on me,” Judge Matsumoto said at a later sentencing.
Thomas
Gioeli, a Colombo family member convicted of racketeering conspiracy
charges, detailed his health woes at his sentencing last year: back
problems, a cardiac episode, diabetes and arthritis. The formerly
fearsome mobster was also, literally, toothless.
“I
have no teeth,” Mr. Gioeli told the court during his case. “I can’t
chew my food. I’m choking more frequently. My back is out, my hips are
out, my knee pops out.”
Just 61 when he was sentenced, Mr. Gioeli was “a very old 61 years,” his lawyer, Adam D. Perlmutter, argued.
“These
medical conditions are not feigned, they are real,” Judge Brian M.
Cogan said. Nonetheless, he sentenced Mr. Gioeli to almost 19 years in
prison, saying that the federal prisons system offered decent medical
care.
Whether prisons can in fact adequately handle aged and sick inmates is a question that many lawyers and defendants have raised.
Mr.
Perlmutter, Mr. Gioeli’s lawyer, complained that the staff at
Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where Mr. Gioeli was held,
had not refilled his prescriptions.
The
lawyer representing Dennis DeLucia, a Colombo family captain sentenced
in 2013 to 34 months in prison for racketeering crimes at age 70,
pointed out that a year had passed since a dentist at the Metropolitan
Detention Center had recommended that Mr. DeLucia have a tooth removed.
As
Mr. DiFiore said while pleading guilty in October, “My health has
spiraled downhill, but I’m happy to say I am alive in spite of the
stellar medical treatment that I have received at M.D.C.”
Prosecutors
have said that the federal prisons do have good medical facilities.
Though they concede that Mr. DiFiore’s health is relevant to the
sentence he will receive on Tuesday, they are asking for a prison term
of roughly two years, as recommended by federal sentencing guidelines.
And
while Mr. DiFiore’s age may have contributed to his health problems,
prosecutors suggest it worked to his advantage as well, with his many
years in crime earning him “formidable” power and profits.
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