If caught in a thunderstorm, don't lie down on the ground. Try running crouched down. Lightning
rarely strikes moving objects, even more so if they are lower than
other exposed and stationary objects, such as trees (under which you
should also never stand).
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ASHES AND DIAMONDS
When our life is turned t0 ash, will it be
Ashes through and through?
Or will at the bottom remain the eternal
Victory's dawn, a starry diamond
~ Cyprian Norwid
at the half-price palm reading.
A Jesus with a light bulb heart
the Gypsy pressed. I stammered.
three handsome young men.
How could I reach the heights
unless I sublimated my libido?
Life in Art? I was drowning
in a maelstrom of erotic
dreams. In the end,
Vietnam veteran,
his blond ponytail
starlike scatter of the poisonous
blossoms. I could smell the iodine ocean.
You don’t even know
what love is,
the fake Gypsy wailed.
But perhaps I did.
My star the color of ash.
But underneath that death,
immortal diamond.
~ Oriana
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ON ANDRZEJ WAJDA, MOVIE DIRECTOR
This year marks the centennial of the birth of Andrzej Wajda, who has been called cinema’s great historian of Poland. Born on March 6, 1926, the director received almost every award imaginable, including an honorary Oscar in 2000. Four of his films were nominated for Academy Awards: The Promised Land (1975), The Maids of Wilko (1979), Man of Iron (1981), and Katyń (2007). The American Film Institute is currently screening several of Wajda’s films. This follows a tribute earlier this year at the British Film Institute.
What makes Wajda unique is that he did what so many Western filmmakers would not: he mocked, satirized, and criticized Communism. Wajda was born in Suwałki, near the Lithuanian border. In 1940, when he was fourteen, his father was executed along with almost 22,000 other Polish civilians and prisoners of war in the Katyń massacre, a mass killing carried out by the Soviet secret police under orders from Joseph Stalin. (The Soviet Union denied responsibility for this atrocity for fifty years.) Wajda dramatized these events in Katyń, which earned him his final Oscar nomination.
During World War II, Wajda joined Poland’s resistance movement when he was sixteen. After the war he enrolled in the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts to study painting and then moved on to the Łódź Film School. After graduating, he made A Generation (1955), Kanal (1957), and Ashes and Diamonds (1958). Known as the “war trilogy,” these films focuses on the trauma and resistance of the Polish people first to the Nazis, then to the Soviets. Wajda was twenty-seven when he shot A Generation, set in 1942 and starring Tadeusz Łomnicki as Stach, a young man struggling against the Nazi occupation in Warsaw. The film critic Michal Oleszczyk wrote that A Generation “embodies Wajda’s struggle to get his films approved by state authorities while also maintaining their subversive potential.”
Kanal won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, but it is Ashes and Diamonds that is considered Wajda’s masterpiece. The film opens on V-E Day, May 8, 1945. World War II is over. In Poland, however, another battle looms, as the Soviet Union installs a puppet regime to rule the country. Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski), Andrzej (Adam Pawlikowski), and Drewnowski (Bogumił Kobiela) are three resistance fighters who are opposed to Communists as much as to Nazis. They botch an assassination of the Communist Party apparatchik Szczuka (Wacław Zastrzeżyński). Maciek is ordered by his superiors to try again.
Agonized by his mistake and tired of fighting, Maciek falls in love with Krystyna (Ewa Krzyżewska), a barmaid [Oriana: before the war, she was a member of minor nobility]. He decides that the war is over for him. “I can’t kill or hide anymore!” he cries to his commanding officer. Throughout most of the film Maciek wears sunglasses, a symbol of his trauma and need to hide from the totalitarian systems oppressing him, as well as a nod to the American actor James Dean. When Krystyna asks why he keeps them on, Maciek replies: “A souvenir of my unrequited love for my homeland.” Eventually, letting his guard down with Krystyna, he takes them off. The Communists, of course, don’t care that Maciek is in love. He’s only supposed to be married to the state.
The title of Ashes and Diamonds is taken from lines by the Polish Romantic poet Cyprian Norwid: “Will there remain among the ashes a starlike diamond, the dawn of eternal victory?” As the film historian Annette Insdorf notes in her excellent commentary that comes with the Criterion Collection DVD of Ashes and Diamonds, the Communist authorities made Wajda include a scene in which the new commissar is giving a speech to veterans, promising them a new order that will usher in a beautiful socialist Poland. Wajda contemplated shooting the scene out of focus as a protest.
Despite this propaganda, however, the message of the film is clear: the Soviet takeover of Poland and Eastern Europe after World War II was one of the great catastrophes of the twentieth century. Peter Bradshaw asked, “Are the diamonds of future law-abiding peacetime prosperity under communist rule—that is, effective rule by those who started the war invading Poland in league with the Nazis—preferable to the ashes of wartime suffering which at least offered certainty and purpose?” As the characters discover, both systems of oppression are evil.
Wajda’s two other great anti-Communist films are Man of Marble (1977) and Man of Iron (1981). Man of Marble shows how a supposed Communist folk hero is largely imaginary, and Man of Iron dramatizes the struggle for freedom by the Polish Solidarity movement in the 1980s; the latter film won him the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The film critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky argued that Man of Marble is Wajda’s greatest film, calling it “an inventive and wide-ranging deconstruction of Communist mythmaking that riffs on Wajda’s beloved Citizen Kane.”
“Wajda’s transformations over the decades were numerous,” wrote Michal Oleszczyk a few months after the director died in 2016. He continued:
In the 1950s, he was instrumental in defining the Polish Film School as a movement that tackled wartime experience in the face of the historical lies perpetuated by the regime. The sixties found him exploring a fresh interest in nouvelle vague experimentation, and the seventies marked a ripening of both his poetic, strongly visual streak (The Wedding) and his politically charged, investigative side (Man of Marble). From the eighties onward, Wajda erred as often as he struck gold, and while the nineties brought many a failure, they by no means sapped his creative energy.
https://newcriterion.com/dispatch/the-andrzej-wajda-centennial/
Oriana:My favorite scene in Ashes and Diamonds is the young lovers, Maciek and Krystyna, spontaneously reciting in unison Cyprian Norwid’s wonderful lines (I’ve spent hours trying to translate these lines so that they retain the magic of the original — to no avail.)
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SLANG WORDS AND PHRASES THAT ARE MUCH OLDER THAN YOU’D THINK
Our language is full of surprises, like when finding out the true age of a word that feels a lot more modern than it actually is.
We might associate it with computers, but the original antivirus, for instance, was a medical term coined way back in 1914. That’s the same year that time travel was coined (although HG Wells had been talking about time travelers since the 1890s). The first spaceship was dreamed up in 1880, which was the same year as the first astronaut.
But this group of words also includes some surprisingly slangy-sounding words, phrases, and even acronyms, whose use historically extends a lot further back than we might ever have expected.
BIZ
This shortening of business is now more than a century and a half old. The American humorist Charles Farrar Browne (a favorite of Abraham Lincoln, no less) wrote “I must forth to my Biz” way back in 1862, in one of the many works he wrote under the pen name Artemus Ward.
CELEB
As a word for fame or renown, celebrity itself is perhaps older than you think, and was first recorded in the writings of Canterbury Tales author Geoffrey Chaucer. It first came to be used of a famous person in 1831, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and was then shortened to celeb way back in 1907.
COOL
Cool has meant slightly cold since the days of Old English, and over the past thousand years or so has been used metaphorically in various contexts to refer, often somewhat negatively, to people’s lack of interest, enthusiasm, or passion.
The more positive use of cool to variously mean fashionable, sophisticated, or inspired is a more modern invention, but when it first appeared is debatable. The Oxford English Dictionary has found a single use of the phrase “Dat’s cool!” dating back to 1884, but notes that the context in which it was used makes it impossible to tell whether it’s positive or negative. The first unquestionably positive use of the word, though, dates back to 1918.
DUDE
No one is entirely sure where the word dude came from, but given that it first emerged in America as far back as 1883—and originally referred to a dandyish fop—it’s not unconvincingly been suggested that it might be a shortening of Yankee Doodle. Another theory, though, claims it might be clipped from attitude, or else extended from duds, meaning clothing, which dates back to the 16th century.
EXTRA
Meaning additional or additionally, extra was borrowed into English from Latin in the 16th century. The slangier use of extra to describe something particularly good or impressive, however, first emerged back in 1917—although likely not as an extension of the older word, but as a shortening of extraordinary.
HANG OUT
As modern as this might sound, even the Victorians would have been fairly familiar with the concept of hanging out. As a verb, meaning to pass time together, to hang out dates back as far as 1846, while as a noun, meaning somewhere you like to hang out, it dates to 1852.
HIGH
High has been used to mean elevated since the Old English period. But in relation to being intoxicated, high has been used to describe the effects of drugs since 1935, while people have been getting high on alcohol since 1607.
HOT
Just like high, hot has been used to mean excessively warm since the days of Old English. But its more figurative use in relation to someone’s attractiveness is nonetheless well established: in the 14th century it was used personally, to refer to someone feeling a flustered state of desire, and by 1886 had come to be used to describe someone who is sexually attractive.
HYPER
As a description of someone who appears highly-strung or full of energy, the word hyperactive was first cut down to “hyper” in 1942. The word hyperactive itself, though, is likely a little older than you might think: it was first used in 1867, while hyperactivity dates from 1888.
LEGIT
Legitimate was first cut down to just “legit” in 19th-century theatrical parlance, and was originally used in reference to legitimate drama (as opposed to less meritable farces and variety comedies).
LOL
LOL was first used to mean “laugh out loud” in Usenet groups back in the mid 1990s (and has seemingly been pronounced as a word, “lol” rhyming with “knoll,” since the early 2010s). Its very earliest meaning, however, was somewhat different: in the first known written record of the acronym LOL, it was used to mean “little old lady” in a 1960 newspaper article in San Francisco.
NATCH
The adverb naturally was first clipped down to “natch” in the jazzy slang of the early 1940s.
NOT!
It might have become a popular ‘90s fad thanks to the Wayne’s World movies, but there is a written reference to tagging “not!” onto the end of sentences to suddenly imply the complete opposite, since as far back as the mid 19th century—in none other than the novels of George Eliot.
Writing in 1860, Eliot’s Mill on the Floss contains the line, “She would make a sweet, strange, troublesome, adorable wife to some man or other, but he would never have chosen her himself. Did she feel as he did? He hoped she did—not.”
OMG
Previously only known from the ‘90s jargon of internet chatrooms, in the early 2000s, the earliest known use of the acronym OMG was discovered in a letter written in 1917 to future prime minister Winston Churchill by John Fisher, who had served as the British Royal Navy’s First Sea Lord during the early years of World War I.
SMASH
Etymologically, smash was probably originally onomatopoeic, and in relation to a noisy crashing together likely dates back to the late 1600s. In the more figurative sense of a resounding success, though, the first “smash hits” were two Broadway productions, The Fool and The Rise of Rosie O’Reilly, that were so labelled by Variety magazine back in 1923.
Oddly, before then, a cultural smash was the complete opposite: the Oxford English Dictionary has unearthed a handful of evidence of the word being used in relation to a crushing commercial failure (more akin to a market crash, rather than a breakout smash) from as early as 1839.
SO-SO
If things aren’t quite bad, but they’re not quite good either, you might be tempted to call them so-so. As colloquial as that might sound, though, people have been describing intermediate or middling circumstances this way since the days of Henry VIII. Lesclarcissement de la Langue Françoyse [sic.] was one of the very first major bilingual dictionaries of French and English, written by the English priest and scholar John Palsgrave (who worked as a tutor to the royal household under King Henry himself) way back in 1530.
In it, Palsgrave gave “so so” as a fitting English translation of the similarly idiomatic French expression tellement quellement.
SPILL
Oddly, to spill first meant to kill or destroy, and it has been suggested that this somewhat bloody original meaning might relate to other similar words for bloodied animal fur or even flayed skin; it was in the sense of putting something to waste that it later came to be used of messily dropping the contents of something.
The more contemporary sense of “spilling” gossip or a secret, though, is still over 200 years old: in early 19th-century slang, to spill meant to betray a fellow criminal or confidante to the authorities, and then by the turn of the 20th century, the word had likewise come to mean to reveal or disclose something secret or personal.
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ISRAEL — WHAT WENT WRONG? OMER BARTOV (critique follows)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mEJGXL9Yfc
The state of Israel, which arose from the ashes of the Holocaust 77 years ago, has received an unprecedented degree of international sympathy and support ever since. This support was partly due to western guilt and partly due to the perception of the Jewish state as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. The country’s Declaration of Independence promised to uphold “the full social and political equality of all its citizens without distinction of race, creed or sex”. In the early years of statehood, Israel was seen in the west as an icon of liberal, progressive and egalitarian society.
Today, it is widely regarded as an immoral, violent, cruel and oppressive apartheid state. The Israeli response to the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 was a major milestone in the gradual slide to its status as an international pariah. Israel claimed the right to self-defense, but proceeded to act in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.
The international court of justice in The Hague found that the right of Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide was at risk and ordered Israel to take measures to prevent them. Israel, as is its wont, ignored the ruling. A UN commission concluded that Israel was, in fact, guilty of genocide. The international criminal court issued a warrant for the arrest of the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes. The Israeli state thus stands credibly accused of war crimes, of crimes against humanity, and even of the crime of crimes – genocide.
The moral and political degradation of Israel is the subject of this remarkable book. The author, Omer Bartov, has impeccable credentials for writing it: he was born on a kibbutz, he served as an officer in the IDF, and is currently professor of holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University in the US. It is dedicated to his father, Hanoch Bartov, “the last Zionist”, a reference to the liberal brand of Zionism to which the whole family were evidently dedicated. Yet this book is written more in sorrow than in anger. Its goal is not to condemn Zionism but to explain its evolution from a dream to a nightmare.
To do so, Bartov goes back to the formation of Israel in 1948. In a chapter entitled The Missing Constitution, he bemoans the failure of the founding fathers to resolve the question of how a multi-ethnic state can remain both Jewish and democratic; in other words, their failure to square the circle of ethno-nationalism and pluralism.
Had a written constitution in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence been adopted, he argues, and had generations of Israelis been raised with respect for the constitution and pride in a bill of rights for all human beings, “the creeping racism of Israeli society might have been tempered, and the astonishing indifference to the genocide being perpetrated in Gaza and the daily crimes and pogroms on the West Bank might have elicited a greater sense of scandal”. Maybe. History does not disclose its alternatives.
Arguably, however, Bartov does not go back far enough in history to explore the roots of Israeli racism. Zionism is a self-avowed settler-colonial movement and its principal political progeny – the state of Israel – is a settler-colonial state. The logic of settler-colonialism is the elimination of the natives in order to take over the land and its resources. Ethnic cleansing is the means by which this goal is achieved.
In 1948, the newly born state of Israel carried out the ethnic cleansing of Palestine: 750,000 Palestinians became refugees and the name Palestine was wiped off the map. This is what Palestinians call the Nakba, meaning “catastrophe”. From the point of view of the victims, the viciousness of Zionism is nothing new; they have known it all along.
Moreover, the Nakba was not a one-off event; it is an ongoing process. This process reached its climax in Gaza in the aftermath of the Hamas attack. Israel’s original aim was to depopulate the whole of the Gaza Strip, with its 2.3 million inhabitants, by pushing them across the international border into northern Sinai.
When this plan was resisted by Egypt, Israel resorted to the wholesale destruction of Gaza to make it uninhabitable. As Bartov notes, ethnic cleansing can escalate into genocide, and genocide in Gaza was accompanied by the intensified ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.
As a historian, Bartov believes that the first step in building a better future is understanding the hopes and aspirations of the other, as well as the errors and sins of the past.
One hopeful conclusion that he draws from Israel’s campaign in Gaza is that, in the long term, it will liberate Israel itself from its status as a unique state rooted in the Holocaust. This will hardly help the 73,000 Palestinian victims, but it does give rise to a faint hope that the license that Israel has enjoyed throughout its history may be expiring.
Anyone seeking an explanation of Israel’s “fall from grace” will find no better guide than this perceptive, sophisticated, erudite, elegantly written and strikingly fair-minded book. Even traditional supporters of Israel, who are feeling discomfort, perhaps even disgust, at its recent atrocities, may find in Omer Bartov, to borrow the title of Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon’s famous 12th-century book, A Guide for the Perplexed.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/09/israel-what-went-wrong-by-omer-bartov-review-the-long-view
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A VOICE CRITICIZING OMER BARTOV
Genocide studies presents itself as one of the most morally serious fields in academia, with a focus on prevention. Because of the gravity of the subject, international courts and legal scholars have insisted on exceptionally high standards of evidence. The legal definition of genocide reflects this, requiring proof of a special intent (dolus specialis) to physically destroy a protected group as such.
The International Court of Justice has held that genocidal intent must be supported by "fully conclusive" evidence and, in cases relying on inference, must be the "only reasonable inference" that can be drawn from the facts. Accusing a state of genocide was therefore understood to require overwhelming and unambiguous evidence of both intent and action. The war in Gaza has revealed how far the field has drifted from those standards.
In many corners of the discipline, the conclusion that Israel is committing genocide appears to have been reached first, with the evidence assembled afterward. The standard of proof for intent has been diluted to the point that vague and cherry-picked statements taken out of context are treated as meeting an extraordinarily high legal bar.
The definition of genocide itself is stretched until it becomes indistinguishable from accusations of excessive force in war. The context of the conflict is stripped away, with Hamas treated as an irrelevant factor, as if Israel were not fighting a large, organized militant force that employs a human shield strategy.
The result is a body of commentary that resembles advocacy rather than scholarship, leading to a collapse of standards among some of the field’s most prominent voices. Few examples illustrate this shift more clearly than the work of Omer Bartov. A professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, Bartov has leveraged his accusation that Israel is committing genocide into prominent platforms, including a widely read New York Times essay.
That claim now anchors a broader argument. In his new book, Israel: What Went Wrong?, he contends that Zionism itself has evolved into an extremist ideology responsible for what he describes as genocide in Gaza, extending a disputed legal claim into a broader indictment of Israel’s founding principles. He now effectively advocates for the end of Israel as a Jewish state, the end of “Zionism.” That broader argument rests on a threshold claim: that Israel acted with genocidal intent.
Failure to Prove Genocidal Intent
Bartov’s most prominent articulation of the genocide charge appears in his New York Times essay, where he begins by presenting five statements by Israeli leaders as evidence of genocidal intent. He opens this way because establishing intent is an absolute requirement of the claim; without it, the charge of genocide collapses regardless of the scale or character of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. It is on this requirement that Bartov’s argument rests, and it is precisely where it falls apart. All five statements fail basic scrutiny.
He begins with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement on the morning of October 7 that Israel’s enemy would pay a “huge [immense] price” for the massacre carried out by Hamas. Made on the day of the attack, the statement plainly refers to Hamas as the enemy. No reasonable reading supports the claim that it reflects an intent to destroy the Palestinian people as such. Bartov nevertheless presents it as fully conclusive evidence of genocidal intent. That misrepresentation is not a minor flaw; it undermines his argument at the outset, since this is the first piece of evidence on which his case relies.
Netanyahu’s stated objectives are clear: remove Hamas from Israeli territory and attack them in "the Gaza strip as well." Nothing about destroying the Palestinian people as such.
His second piece of evidence of genocidal intent is Netanyahu’s remark that areas where Hamas operates would be turned into rubble. No credible reading supports an intent to destroy the Palestinian people, especially in the context of the entire statement which plainly identifies Hamas as the target.
Bartov then points to the next line of the same statement as his third example of genocidal intent: “leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere.” In his reading, he treats a call for civilians to evacuate areas of impending military operations as evidence of genocide. There is nothing in the statement that suggests an intent to destroy the Palestinian population as such. This was said while Hamas terrorists were still inside Israel, in the immediate aftermath of a mass-casualty attack.
Bartov’s reading leaves no room for even a forceful wartime response directed at the perpetrators. Under Bartov’s reading, every word must be explicitly articulated as referring to Hamas and not Palestinians; anything less is taken as proof of genocidal intent against the population, while prior statements, even those made moments earlier, are effectively disregarded unless the distinction is restated each time.
For his fourth example, Bartov turns to Netanyahu’s invocation of the biblical phrase “Remember what Amalek did to you” (Deuteronomy 25:17), asserting that “many interpreted” it as genocidal. But what “many” believe is not a legal standard, nor does it establish fully conclusive evidence of genocidal intent. He also omits that the phrase appears prominently in Jewish memorial culture, including at Yad Vashem and other Holocaust memorials, where it serves as a reference to historical persecution rather than a literal call to destroy a people.
More problematic, Bartov isolates this line from a broader statement in which Netanyahu explicitly said, “The IDF does everything to avoid harming non-combatants. I again call on the civilian population to evacuate to a safe area in the southern Gaza Strip.” Presenting the earlier phrase as proof of genocidal intent while omitting an explicit call to protect civilians deliberately distorts the meaning of the statement.
Finally, as his fifth example of genocidal intent, Bartov cites Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s statement that “we are fighting human animals,” made in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacre while militants were still operating inside Israel. There is no evidence that this remark was directed at Palestinians rather than Hamas. Once again, every Israeli leader was seemingly required to specifically define each word spoken in real time according to the standard set by Bartov.
More importantly, he ignores Gallant’s repeated statements, both before and after, clarifying that the enemy was Hamas, not the Palestinian population. For example, Gallant stated explicitly, “We are not fighting the Palestinian multitude and the Palestinian people in Gaza.” Bartov nevertheless isolates a single line, strips it of context, and elevates it to meet a legal standard that requires clear and unambiguous evidence of intent, while treating all surrounding statements as irrelevant.
Taken together, these examples fall well short of the high legal threshold required to establish genocidal intent. As the strongest evidence Bartov presents, their failure is decisive; without proof of intent, the claim itself cannot be sustained.
According to Bartov's Criteria, Israel Did Not Commit Genocide
In a revealing conversation with Noam Dworman, Bartov offers a framework that ultimately undermines his own argument. Asked why the Allied destruction of Germany did not constitute genocide, Bartov replies that when the Allies came to occupy Germany “they rebuilt it with the Marshall Plan.”
He adds, “so if Israel were to say, what by the way Churchill and Roosevelt always said, we are fighting the Nazis not the German people, the German people are not our enemy. Can you think of Netanyahu saying...” and responds “No, no” when Dworman says that Netanyahu has said exactly that.
Dworman then provides the clip of Netanyahu's statement: “Israel is fighting terrorists, not the Palestinian population. Our goal is to rid Gaza of Hamas terrorists and free our hostages. Once this is achieved, Gaza can be demilitarized and deradicalized, thereby creating the possibility for a better future for Israel and Palestinians alike.”
This was not an isolated remark. Netanyahu repeatedly stated that Palestinians are not the enemy, directly meeting the distinction Bartov himself identifies as central to why the Allied war against Germany was not genocide even as he acknowledges that hundreds of thousands of German civilians were killed.
What is striking is Bartov’s apparent unfamiliarity with these statements. Confronted with the claim that Netanyahu had drawn this distinction as Churchill and Roosevelt had, he responded, “No, no." For a scholar advancing a charge as serious as genocide, which turns on proof of intent, this is revealing. The exchange makes clear that Bartov did not seriously examine the full record of statements on intent to arrive at his conclusion. When pressed further on his thinking, Bartov abruptly ended his conversation with Dworman, not accustomed to being challenged so directly.
The Dworman conversation took place before the October 2025 ceasefire. Since then, Israel has agreed to a framework that reinforces the point. The 20-point plan includes provisions such as: “Gaza will be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza, who have suffered more than enough.”
It further commits to “the rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage), rehabilitation of hospitals and bakeries, and entry of necessary equipment to remove rubble and open roads.” Other clauses describe “building a prosperous economy” in Gaza. Ongoing discussions similarly center on reconstruction.
By Bartov’s own standard, these elements are decisive. He argues that the Allied campaign was not genocidal because it distinguished between regime and population and was followed by reconstruction. Israel now meets both criteria: clear and repeated statements that Hamas, not Palestinians, is the enemy, and an articulated plan to rebuild Gaza after the war. Bartov’s own reasoning leads to a conclusion he refuses to accept.
Earlier Writings Tell a Different Story
Bartov’s current position is difficult to reconcile with his own earlier work. More than two decades ago, writing in The New Republic, Bartov recognized Hamas as the modern successor to the Nazis and their genocidal antisemitism. He described their ideology as rooted in conspiratorial antisemitic myths and eliminationist goals that echoed the language and intent of Nazi propaganda.
In that article, Bartov warned that movements like Hamas must be taken at their word. He criticized the tendency of observers to reinterpret or soften openly declared intentions, arguing that doing so leads to dangerous self-deception. As he put it: “If a self-proclaimed liberation organization calls for the extermination of the Jewish state, do not pretend that it is calling for anything else. The absence of clarity is the beginning of complicity.” The point was unambiguous: when actors articulate genocidal aims, those statements should be understood literally. The events of October 7 bore out that warning.
Bartov’s earlier work also grappled directly with the realities of defeating ideologically driven regimes. Writing in The Washington Post, he argued that Nazi Germany could not be defeated while leaving its underlying structure intact, because the regime had mobilized society so completely behind its objectives. As he wrote: “It was because Hitler’s soldiers fought to the bitter end that their country had to be destroyed. Only then could the reconstruction begin.” The destruction of Germany, in this account, was not evidence of genocide but a consequence of confronting a regime committed to total war.
Today, Bartov portrays Hamas, which he once acknowledged as a genocidal movement committed to destroying Israel, as an adversary whose presence does not justify the destruction of its governing stronghold. This stands in contrast to his earlier view that Germany’s destruction was necessary to fully defeat the Nazis, who fought to the bitter end.
A Narrative Built on Distortion
The contradictions in Bartov’s arguments are not isolated errors. They reflect a broader effort to construct a narrative of genocide around the Gaza war regardless of the available evidence. Statements referring to Hamas are reinterpreted as threats against Palestinians. Warnings to evacuate combat zones are recast as evidence of extermination. The deliberate embedding of militants among civilians is treated by Bartov as irrelevant to civilian casualties, and historical comparisons are applied selectively.
The shift becomes especially clear when comparing Bartov’s current writing to his earlier work. Two decades ago, he warned about the dangers posed by ideologically driven movements such as Hamas and argued that societies committed to such projects sometimes had to be defeated and rebuilt.
Today, he portrays Israel’s war against that same organization as a campaign of extermination.
What changed was not the underlying facts about Hamas or the nature of warfare against militant regimes. What changed was the framework through which the conflict is interpreted. The accusation of genocide has become a central pillar of the anti-Israel narrative, and sustaining it requires stretching legal definitions, distorting evidence, and disregarding historical comparisons that would undermine the claim.
In that context, Bartov’s latest turn is not surprising. Having embraced that framework, his argument expands beyond the conduct of the war to the conclusion that Zionism itself is the problem, culminating in his latest call for the end of Israel as a Jewish state. The case of Omer Bartov shows how far some scholars are willing to go in that effort.
https://x.com/Aizenberg55/status/2045850504886899162
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"I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large, there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad.” ~ Alexis de Tocqueville
MOOD IN RUSSIA TURNING AGAINST PUTIN
Vladimir Putin pulled up to a hotel in central Moscow early in May in a Russian-made SUV, dressed casually in jeans and a light jacket. Carrying a bouquet of flowers, he walked unhurriedly into the lobby and embraced his former schoolteacher Vera Gurevich, who kissed him on both cheeks.
He then helped Gurevich into his car and drove her to dinner at the Kremlin.
It came just a day after several western media outlets, citing a European intelligence report, claimed Putin had spent weeks hiding in an underground bunker, gripped by fears of assassination or even a coup.
The televised meeting was carefully crafted to reinforce a very different image of the Russian leader, one which he has refined over 25 years in power: the approachable, confident president, a man of the people casually dropping in on an old teacher.
But while fears of an imminent coup are exaggerated, there is little doubt that Putin is entering the most challenging period of his long rule. Interviews with several people in the orbit of the Russian leader, as well as sources in the Russian business world and western intelligence officials, paint a picture of an isolated leader surrounded by an elite that is becoming rapidly disillusioned, both with the faltering war in Ukraine and the economic downturn at home.
“There’s definitely been a shift in mood among the elites this year … there is profound disappointment in Putin,” said a well-connected business leader, adding that there was “a growing sense that some kind of catastrophe is looming”.
“No one believes everything will suddenly collapse tomorrow,” the source said. “But there is a growing realization that utterly senseless, self-destructive decisions keep being made. People who once defended Putin no longer do. Any sense of a future has disappeared.”
Putin’s approval ratings are slipping, the economy is under mounting pressure, and even pro-Kremlin bloggers who have rarely criticized the president are beginning to speak out.
Despite the cracks emerging at home, Putin’s calculus on the war in Ukraine has not changed, and he remains determined to press on, according to interviews with multiple people familiar with his thinking, as well as European and Ukrainian intelligence officials.
Putin has made clear to his inner circle that he believes Moscow can capture the entirety of the Donbas region by the end of the year, two sources with access to the president said. “Putin is fixated on Donbas and he will not stop before that,” one of them said.
Speaking after the 9 May Victory Day parade – scaled back amid fears of Ukrainian drone attacks – Putin surprised many by suggesting the war was “coming to a close”. The remark made headlines, but those familiar with his thinking caution that it should not be interpreted as a sign he is prepared to compromise. Instead, it suggests Putin believes a military breakthrough is imminent.
A Ukrainian intelligence official said Russian generals had convinced the Russian leader that the Donbas would be taken by the end of the year. “Fabricated reports [are] being fed up the chain of command, claiming victory is imminent,” the official said.
That bravado is not currently reflected on the battlefield. Military analysts say that, at the current pace of advance, it could take Russia years to fully capture the Donbas.
It remains unclear to what extent Russia’s military and security services are presenting Putin with an overly optimistic picture. “Even if many around him understand the reality of the situation, we still don’t know what Putin himself understands. That’s the most difficult part,” one senior European intelligence official said.
“Of course, officials and the military paint a rosy picture for the president,” a person familiar with discussions in the Kremlin said. “They lie to him. That’s how the system Putin has built works.”
Another factor in Putin’s decision to fight on is that the Russian leader has lost faith in Donald Trump’s ability to pressure Kyiv into surrendering territory as part of a deal, according to one source close to Putin and another involved in backchannel talks.
“There was this widespread optimism in Moscow that Trump could deliver the Donbas after his election. It has largely evaporated,” one source in contact with Putin said.
Though Trump has recently repeatedly touted that the war in Ukraine is coming to an end – with US help – the Russian leadership increasingly sees little value in continuing negotiations with Washington. Ukraine has acknowledged that Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, repeatedly pressed it in a series of meetings to withdraw Ukrainian troops from territory it still controls.
But Kyiv also has dramatically reduced its dependence on Washington, while stepping up its own military production. The unblocking of a €90bn EU loan and deepening military and intelligence sharing ties with European allies have further diminished US leverage over Ukraine, and Kyiv is not minded to make concessions on territory in the absence of ironclad US security guarantees.
For now, Moscow’s goal is the capture of the Donbas, and Russian negotiators have made clear that Moscow would be ready to sue for peace once this happens. Yet those close to Putin say his ambitions may increase again if he senses Ukraine beginning to collapse. Then, two people familiar with his thinking said, he could push further, crossing the Dnipro River, in an attempt to seize all four Ukrainian regions that Russia claimed to annex in 2022 but still does not fully control.
“He is not a long-term strategist,” one of them said. “His appetite grows as he eats.”
Discontent at home
Ripples of dissent in society began surfacing earlier in 2026, when the Kremlin banned or restricted most messaging apps while preserving access only to a state-backed alternative.
Mobile internet across central Moscow and other regions has been intermittently disrupted or shut down entirely, causing Russian businesses to complain of billions of rubles in losses.
Authorities have justified the unprecedented crackdown as a security measure against Ukrainian drone attacks and sabotage operations.
The shutdowns prompted dark humor among Moscow’s elite. “At the dinner table, everyone talks about the internet. We are now somewhere closer to North Korea,” one Kremlin insider said. China’s internet controls, once routinely mocked in Russia as a symbol of censorship, are now discussed with a degree of envy.
The internet shutdowns are being overseen by the powerful second service of the FSB, a feared department within the security services responsible for the poisoning of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
At the same time, figures within Russia’s political elite – including the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, and the first deputy chief of staff, Sergei Kiriyenko – have privately tried to steer Putin away from some of the harsher restrictions, but with no success, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
“As long as the war continues, Putin will favor the security services,” said another figure close to the Kremlin.
“The issue with the internet is a very sensitive one for Russian society. And it has sparked a huge wave of outrage,” said Ksenia Sobchak, a well-connected Russian journalist and daughter of Putin’s former political mentor, in a telephone interview.
Police detain an activist during a demonstration against internet limitations, in front of the Russian parliament in 2025.
Sobchak said it was only a matter of time before Russian authorities went even further and moved to block all western social media platforms, forcing people on to domestic alternatives. She predicted the move could come as early as next year. “I think a decision has definitely been made to do that,” she said.
For many Russians, the year has also brought higher taxes and rising inflation, with a sputtering economy forcing businesses to close and sending the cost of groceries and household bills soaring
Taken together, Putin appears to have broken one of the unwritten social contracts underpinning his rule since the invasion began: that ordinary Russians could largely ignore the war so long as daily life remained stable.
Across Russian social media, frustration with the authorities has become increasingly visible. Videos showing small business owners railing against higher taxes, residents complaining about repeated internet shutdowns, and farmers in Siberia furious over mass livestock culls ordered by officials have gone viral.
Russia’s general happiness index fell to a 15-year low in April, a state pollster reported, and several polls have shown Putin’s approval rating falling to its lowest point since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Putin follows his approval closely. He has monitored the polls obsessively since 1999,” said Alexei Venediktov, a former editor of the radio station Echo of Moscow, which was forced to shut down after the war began.
Venediktov recalled how Putin once waved polling figures showing overwhelming public support in front of him shortly after the annexation of Crimea – a move the journalist opposed — telling him: “You are not with the people. I am with the people.”
Coup?
While it is clear that discontent is rising among the elite and the population, most analysts believe that if a real threat to Putin’s regime does emerge, it will come from his inner circle, not from the street.
One of the more striking claims reported earlier this month, sourced to an intelligence report produced by an unnamed European country, was the suggestion that the former defense minister Sergei Shoigu could emerge as a threat to Putin. However, an imminent Kremlin coup is regarded by many supporters and critics alike as far-fetched.
Russia’s security services, with Putin’s approval, have arrested several of Shoigu’s closest associates and friends, further isolating the once-powerful former minister amid speculation he himself could eventually be purged.
“Shoigu has no popularity in the army and no support base,” said a former senior official who knows him personally. “He will never move against Putin.”
Dissent is also unlikely to come from Russia’s oligarchs. Many are privately horrified by the war but remain silent, fearful of speaking out, said the leading Russian businessman. Recent months have brought fresh purges and a new wave of state seizures targeting private businesses, most notably the arrest of Vadim Moshkovich, the billionaire founder of a major agricultural firm.
“The business elite are playing Russian roulette. They hope their neighbor gets hit while they are spared,” said Oleg Tinkov, one of the few Russian business leaders who spoke out against the invasion and fled the country.
“Who is going to move against him? Everyone is simply waiting for his demise,” Tinkov added.
The Russian president has meanwhile increased his travel schedule in recent weeks, in what appears to be a deliberate attempt to counter narratives over his security and alleged paranoia. “Putin has always been obsessed with his security, but it is wrong to suggest he is hiding,” said one person close to the Kremlin who recently met the president.
“Yes, there is nervousness among the elites. Yes, there is uncertainty. But talk of an existential threat to Putin’s rule is premature. He remains in control.”
The senior European intelligence official said many at the top were “currently in the acknowledgment phase”, recognizing the mounting problems both on the battlefield and in the economy, but without plans to counter them.
“They understand it’s a trend downwards. But I haven’t heard of them asking ... ‘What should we do about it then?’”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/may/24/there-is-profound-disappointment-in-him-mood-in-russia-turns-against-putin
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GENDER DISAPPOINTMENT IS REAL, BUT IT NEED NOT LAST
“I was devastated to learn I was having a baby boy. I am far from alone.”
“What do you think it is?” my doctor asked me on the phone. He was calling to reveal the sex of my baby, which expectant parents can find out these days via a blood test about 10 weeks into pregnancy.
Call it a mother’s intuition or a penchant for pessimism, but I already knew.
“A boy,” I replied stoically, resigned to my fate. I could feel it in my bones, or, more aptly, in my uterus.
And now science had confirmed it: The thing I had long feared was coming true.
As someone who was ambivalent about having kids, I never connected with the All I want is for them to be healthy sentiment. I wanted more than that if I was going to upend my life and devote it to another being. When I was a teenager, I would joke that if I had a boy, I would give him away, which is the kind of bit that really lands with the right crowd and is incredibly off-putting to everyone else.
After my older sister started having kids, I watched as everything worked out perfectly for her. She had two beautiful daughters, replicating the makeup of our family growing up, in which my father was outnumbered and all our vacations included a good amount of shopping. I was from a girl family. I wanted to keep that streak alive.
Historically, my preference would have been out of step: A 1978 survey by the Population Reference Bureau found that women were far more likely to prefer having a boy “to carry on the family name and to provide a companion for the husband.” It’s only in recent years that there seems to be a flip in gender preference. Now fertility clinics see an influx of parents-to-be making sure they are guaranteed a girl through in vitro fertilization.
Last year, the Economist ran a cover story illustrated with a pink balloon that read, “Phew, It’s a Girl!” The story explains that Americans will pay more to adopt a girl than a boy, and are likelier to keep trying for additional kids if their first is a boy (a signal that some would really, really like a daughter). The anti-male bias conservatives are always shouting about might be a figment of their imagination in the workforce, but it does seem to exist in utero.
When I initially shared my gender disappointment on my YouTube channel last year, I was hit with a barrage of criticism for assuming I knew what gender my child would ultimately identify with. Many viewers were also angry that I was assigning so much meaning to gender, when it is a social construct. Didn’t I see that it was a betrayal of my progressive values to imply that his nursery couldn’t be pink? Colors have nothing to do with sex assigned at birth, you idiot!
As I read the comments, I felt a rush of shame and even debated taking the video down. I didn’t want to contribute to the problem of male alienation or further cement harmful gender stereotypes. After years of sharing my emotions on the internet, including the ones that don’t paint me in a positive light, I wondered if I had finally gone too far. Maybe this was something so ugly I needed to keep it to myself.
But instead, I kept reading and saw how many other parents related to what I was going through. “I had it in my head I wanted a girl,” one wrote. “I felt the same when we had a little baby boy in the family for the first time,” another shared—and on and on. For this piece, I talked to even more parents who had experienced gender disappointment. Laura Kinson-Evans, who is 36, sobbed when she found out she was going to have a son. So did 42-year-old Sarah Quinn.
I still had months of pregnancy left after getting the results of that blood test, which allowed me a lot of time to stew. Whenever a well-meaning acquaintance or stranger asked whether I was having a boy or a girl, I didn’t even try to hide my displeasure: “A boy. Ugh.”
Then I gave birth, and mercifully, those feelings got pushed to the side to make room for unconditional love and an insatiable need to kiss his little head. It turns out that my gender disappointment didn’t have anything to do with the baby in question. My baby is wonderful. All babies are wonderful. It’s us parents who have shit to work through.
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If you are not a parent who has experienced the peculiar, nagging ache of gender disappointment, you might be confused by my seemingly overblown reaction to having a son. What’s the big deal? Shouldn’t expectant parents be happy with whatever child they are lucky enough to raise? Some of you might even be wondering if I’m fit to be a mother with a bias this strong.
Thankfully, I am not here to convince you of my capabilities as a mom. That is something only my son gets to weigh in on—once he’s old enough to evaluate me. (As of this writing, he is still just 5 months old.) But I do want to offer a window into why so many of us have had to confront these uncomfortable feelings.
Although everyone I interviewed for this article had their own journey with gender disappointment, there were certain themes that kept popping up. Multiple moms lamented that boy clothes are not as fun, and neither are boy names—two opinions I very much agree with. I feel annoyed that button-down shirts rather than adorable dresses will mark special occasions, and I would have preferred for his nursery to be filled with pinks and purples.
But these superficial concerns are easier to work through. For example, I now buy a lot of gender-neutral animal prints.
What is more complicated to carry is the fear I heard echoed in almost every conversation: I don’t know what to do with a boy.
“This baby is going to have a penis,” said 32-year-old Anna, who was in her second trimester when we talked. “That feels so—even though I’m married and have a husband, it just feels so, like, alien, almost.” (I’m identifying some of the parents and parents-to-be by first name only to protect their privacy.)
The anxiety that your child will be confoundingly different from you extends far beyond physical attributes (although the concept of male puberty was another source of anatomical concern).
As 34-year-old Rana Othman, the mother of a 13-month-old boy, put it: “I know how to navigate the world as a woman, and my mom taught me that. I don’t know what it’s like to navigate the world as a man. I have no idea. I truly have no idea.” Sarah identified with this conundrum: “I know how to raise, like, a confident woman who’s not going to take any shit, but I don’t really know how to raise an empathetic man.” Her son is 4, and “on a day-to-day basis, I just see him as the individual,” she said. “But once in a while, something will, like, trigger me, where I’m like, Oh, shit. Like, yes, it’s, like, this giant responsibility that’s, like, sitting on me to cure the problem of, you know, white men.”
Talking to these women about their valid concerns made me feel embarrassed about where my worry had fixated. So much of my gender disappointment revolved around the chaotic scenes I’d witnessed involving young boys, more specifically those in the 2-to-10-year age range.
My hormonal brain flashed to visions of a raucous toddler who wouldn’t stop climbing the walls while my best friend’s daughter calmly played with dolls, painfully highlighting our different realities and planting a seed of noxious jealousy.
My dread about the frenzied nature of boyhood was only stoked by the people around me. One friend came over when I was pregnant and enumerated the various ways his young son was more difficult to manage than his angelic daughter. He said this all so casually, as though he didn’t realize he was confirming my worst fears.
But my concern that little boys are terrors is less of an alarming potential problem than what Sarah and others were alluding to. I was so busy worrying that my rambunctious son would never want to read quietly in a corner that I hadn’t fully faced the possibility of him getting sucked into the manosphere.
The stakes of raising your son wrong in this world are intimidatingly high. I doubt that the importance of consent would have come up as much if I were researching an article about parents who wanted a son but had a daughter. If you don’t successfully teach your son to respect women, your child runs the risk of being not just a disappointment to his family but a danger to society.
In the age of Andrew Tate and endless scrolling, you can’t prevent exposure to harmful ideas. Unless we lock our sons in a room without an internet connection, they are sure to encounter misogynistic, racist messaging disguised as male empowerment on a daily basis. As their parents, we must figure out how to counter this perspective with an even more compelling narrative—one in which feminism and empathy aren’t dirty words but a way of life.
When I put out a call on my social media for parents to share their experiences with gender disappointment, I got an influx of DMs from mothers. It took more work to find fathers who were disappointed, at least initially, to be having a son, but they do exist, and I talked to two of them for this piece. Cameron, who is 30, told me that although he had initially wanted a daughter, he wasn’t particularly worried about raising a boy. He acknowledged the possibility that his son might do “something really bad” but doesn’t feel he can control whether that happens.
What he can do is love his son and make sure he has “positive people around.” Cameron’s insistence on not being personally responsible for his son’s hypothetical future actions was a stark contrast to how some of the mothers felt. Many of them are plagued, I’d argue unfairly, by a strong sense of accountability over their sons’ future behavior. Cassie Wood-Triplett, who is 34 and the mother of a 6-year-old boy, told me that she often wonders, “How do I make it so that he has empathy and grows up to not be a terrible man, because there are so many terrible men?”
I don’t think Cameron is naive or detached from his role as a father. (Although I do believe that on a societal level, men aren’t held anywhere near as responsible for the outcome of their children as mothers are, so it is a less obvious thing for them to fixate on.) My theory is that his ability to more easily differentiate is a product of his lived experience as a man.
He knows it’s possible for boys to grow up to respect women and care about other people, because he has done it. Shaping his son’s character doesn’t feel like a ticking bomb that needs to be dismantled before it explodes, because he has a user manual. He knows how to shut it off—or at least has a pretty good idea of the wiring. Mothers don’t have that lived experience. What we are more likely to have is a collection of harmful experiences with horrible men.
That said, wariness of unchecked masculinity isn’t limited to women.
Kamran Eshtehardi, a California-based therapist who works primarily with teens and young adults, told me animatedly over Zoom that growing up, he rebelled against his father’s patriarchal worldview. As a teen, he leaned into his feminine side and felt a kinship with his mother and sister. As a parent, he wanted to wear matching tutus with a girl, not try to teach a boy to be a man, all while avoiding channeling his authoritarian dad or trying to push his own sense of self too aggressively.
“I knew I was going to do a little bit of projecting onto my son, like I was going to sort of, like, see him as a little mini-me,” he explained. Kamran initially felt ill-equipped to shape his son’s idea of masculinity. And if a professional like Kamran feels that way, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Maybe the kind of hope I’m seeking requires a perspective shift—a shift that I saw already happening in some of the more experienced boy moms I interviewed. For all her worry about terrible men, Cassie didn’t feel the same gender disappointment when she found out she was having another boy. She shared, “I actually had this thought of Maybe I’m a good person to be raising these boys.” In other words, moms who are actively worried about raising kind, empathic boys are also likely to be mindful about how they raise them.
Although there is no foolproof method of rendering your son immune to the manosphere, modeling certain behaviors can act as a preventive measure—like making sure they routinely see men perform domestic labor, and always talking about others with respect. More than one mom I spoke with even mentioned the importance of teaching their sons about periods so they understand what women have to go through and don’t view menstrual blood as icky. Yet another element of raising a boy I hadn’t thought of, because I was too busy worrying about monster trucks. Though, to be honest, some of my fears about having a son were darker than what anyone else mentioned.
One of my biggest concerns when I was pregnant was that, unlike a daughter, my son wouldn’t be able to carry me naked to the shower after I inevitably lost control of my body in old age, because moms can’t be naked in front of their adult sons. If this feels like a bizarre and strangely specific fear—it sure was. But it came from my recent experience of repeatedly carrying my own mom naked into the shower before she died of a rare prion disease in September 2024.
The terminal disease came on rapidly. One month she was fine other than a rogue, uncontrollable arm; the next, she couldn’t walk or talk. For the six weeks before she passed, I was her primary caregiver, which involved a level of bodily intimacy I couldn’t fathom having with a parent of the opposite sex. Would I have been able to physically show up for my father in the same way if the proteins in his body had decided to sporadically fold the way my mother’s had? Perhaps, but it seems less likely. We had long been a home of closed doors and embarrassed apologies when someone was getting dressed, after all.
Maybe some people would have stopped trying to conceive in the wake of their mother’s sudden death. But I was already in my mid-30s and aware that I was creeping closer to maybe not the end of my fertility, but the end of a more certain, less complicated window in which to try to conceive. I also don’t need a Freudian analyst to tell me that part of my desire to become a mother was fueled by an unhealthy ache to re-create the maternal bond I had just lost. I was aware of this during the six months it took to get pregnant. If I had wanted a girl before, I needed a girl now. I didn’t know how to exist without being one part of a mother-daughter relationship. I was willing to switch roles so long as I could keep the dynamic alive.
My husband, John, and I had decided to start trying for a baby less than a week before my mom was admitted to the hospital for the first time that summer. At that point, we had no idea what was going on with her, which was how I found myself on a Zoom conference call from the hospital’s waiting room with John and my psychiatrist because she refused to reschedule without charging me the full fee. While my mom lay down the hall, we discussed changing my medication to something more pregnancy-safe to get my body ready to conceive.
A few weeks later, I had a call with my OB-GYN’s office while my mother, who was now in a wheelchair and struggling to talk, met with her own psychiatrist to process her impending death. As I paced the halls, the nurse explained what the facility offered in terms of prenatal care and that I would have to pay extra if I wanted my doctor’s direct cellphone number.
I’d say something here about the poetic, circular nature of life, but I would be forcing it. Those moments that work so well in bittersweet movies are horrible to experience in real life.
It would be hard to overstate how close I was to my mom. My obsession with her was so strong it became a part of my brand as a YouTuber turned podcaster turned author. If anything significant, funny, or even mildly interesting happened, I was known to declare to John, “Let’s call my mommy.” She was my favorite person.
I had been a kid with severe OCD and negligible social skills, so my parents played a larger-than-average role in my life. They were the ones who were always there, laughing at my jokes and making sure I went to therapy when my peers rejected me and my own mind became terrifying. I’ve often suspected that without their specific, supercharged form of support, I wouldn’t still be alive.
Providing this type of support to my own daughter one day was something I always imagined that parenting would entail. It gave me a sense of purpose. If I had a daughter, what would start as a straightforward maternal love could blossom into a deep friendship, richer than any other relationship because of its many layers and shared history. Having experienced that unique transition with my own mom after I became an adult, I knew how rewarding it could be for your mother to become your best friend. I was greedy for it to happen again.
So much of the appeal of motherhood was being able to serve the same role for my child that my mother had for me. To carry on her legacy of love and kindness. But is that type of connection even possible between an adult man and his mother? It’s this concern that’s been harder to shake than all my other (mostly irrational) ones.
*
My fear that there is a limitation to the level of relationship a mom can have with her grown son makes sense given our current culture. While moms who have close relationships with their adult daughters are seen as successful, moms who have close relationships with their adult sons are often seen as overbearing or the worst type of mother-in-law. Sarah got straight to the point when she said, “If you’re super close to your son as a mother, it’s, like, weirdly sexualized.”
Think about the difference in public perception between Buster Bluth and Rory Gilmore, two fictional characters well known for loving their mommies. This misconception isn’t helped by all the “boy mom” content on social media, in which women with toddlers are already voicing disgust toward their sons’ future partners, viewing them as some sort of threat. There is an unstated but agreed-upon belief in Western society that an adult man who calls their mom as much as I called mine didn’t properly differentiate, that their continued connection to their mother is a weakness—not a source of strength.
Of course, there is no real reason men can’t be close to their moms. But when you see few examples of this in your personal life, it can be hard to imagine it for yourself. Even if you and your little one are currently joined at the hip, you can envision a future when they call only because their dutiful wife reminds them to. No one dreams of being relegated to the nagging, dreaded mother-in-law.
It became clear to me during my research that our tendency to fantasize about the future is a huge contributor to gender disappointment. So much of the grief expecting parents feel isn’t tied to having to love and raise a son. It is attached to the loss of a future with a daughter. When you are pregnant, it can feel as if two paths have opened up before you; once you find out your baby’s sex, one of those paths is permanently closed off.
As someone who has decided to have only one child, I will never get to walk down the path of having a daughter. All my daughter-specific fantasies will have to remain just that. I have no choice but to put them away, along with all the other versions of my life that haven’t come to pass.
But I’ve come to realize that having a daughter isn’t a guarantee that I would live out those fantasies. My hypothetical daughter might have hated getting her hair French braided, even though it is one of my few fine motor skills. Our children are not playthings we get to customize to our preferences. They are individuals. As psychologist Robin Gibbs pointed out to me, there are plenty of ways to experience gender disappointment even if your child is the sex you had hoped for.
The daughter you always wanted might be “too girly or not girly enough.” And of course, if you have a boy, your child still might end up being girly, or even not identifying with their sex assigned at birth at all. Even so, the result of a blood test can, as it did in my case, topple over a whole host of expectations and dreams—and any variation from them can be a source of pain. That is the uncomfortable reality of trying to parent as flawed human beings.
Your child not turning out to be who you envisioned might start with learning their sex, because it is a baby’s first defining feature, but it certainly doesn’t end there. It is a lifelong experience to give up the idea you had in your head for the reality of the person in front of you. “It’s not about the kid—like, the kid is great,” said Gibbs. “It’s about us, right? It’s our work in working through whatever is getting stirred up in us.”
Experiencing such strong gender disappointment wasn’t a shock for me. I had known what was coming if that blood test came back male. But for quite a few of the mothers I talked to, their tests took them by surprise. Before getting pregnant, they viewed gender as a construct and therefore not something worth caring about. Jessica Davidson, who is 34, confessed, “I thought I would be immune to gender disappointment. And wow, that is not true at all.”
After trying for five years to conceive and going through a traumatic miscarriage, Jessica Bryant was “fully convinced” she would care only about the health of her baby. When she found out she was having a boy, she was too “shocked to feel disappointed” and “had to kind of sit with that and think about where that was coming from and why.”
Having an emotional response that is unaligned with your values or experience adds another layer of discomfort to an already loaded situation. I didn’t need judgmental YouTube comments to make me feel guilty about experiencing gender disappointment. I can promise you that no one wants to feel disappointed by their baby. It is not a good feeling.
But acknowledging this shameful feeling, rather than shoving it down, allowed others to offer me useful perspectives. Amid the dissenters, there were heaps of encouragement and advice on my YouTube video, including: “I find it’s helpful to think about different men I admire and how I would love to have known them as a little kid.”
This touched on one of my most effective strategies for living with my gender disappointment: remembering that the closest relationship in my life is with my husband, who happens to be male. Other commenters took the time to normalize my unease, writing things like: “There is no correct way to enter motherhood … and whatever you are feeling is normal. And it hopefully eases once you get to know your little guy.”
It’s true that for all the parents I interviewed, their gender disappointment alleviated once their sons were born. You can’t struggle to imagine something that is already happening. But certain fears, like what kind of man your boy will grow into, remain. I suspect, though, that gender-specific worries start to get folded into the litany of other concerns that come with parenthood.
If our partners are a mirror reflecting ourselves back at us, our children are like advanced brain imaging, revealing not just our current self but all our hopes and hurts. It can be too much to look at if we don’t pay it the right kind of attention. As such, you are never done with the work of managing child-prompted disappointment or envy-inducing comparison. But we can, and probably should, get better at living alongside it.
Since going public about my experience, I’ve learned, for the umpteenth time in my career, that sharing my individual story helps build the stories we tell as a community. I want to live in a community where it is OK to have conflicted emotions, where those emotions mean not that you will be a bad parent but that you’re a person being confronted with a life you never envisioned and aren’t sure how to navigate.
The one person I do not need to share this story with, though, is my son. My gender disappointment is mine to continue to work through, not his burden to bear.
I spent my entire pregnancy sitting with my grief about the gender of my child. I didn’t push it away. Instead, I waited it out. I waited to see how it would feel once the baby in my belly was no longer a concept but a person. I told myself that if I were still unable to connect with him, I would simply fake it. I would be the mom he needed me to be, regardless of how I felt. And I will continue with that approach no matter what his childhood brings up for me, because I am sure there are more disappointments—or, really, just deviations from my expectations—to come.
I hope my son will grow up knowing that his job isn’t to fulfill my idea of who my child should be. His job is to be himself while I loudly cheer him on. And thankfully, now that he is here, he is not some alien boy I have to pretend to care about. He is my little baby, whom I love very much.
Oriana:
I caught my first glimpse of gender disappointment when I was eighteen, at the UCLA swimming pool. I met a colleague of my mother’s who brought along his three young sons. “Is this your daughter?” he asked my mother. After she confirmed it, he said, with sadness, “God has not blessed us with a daughter.”
Does gender disappointment always pass automatically as soon as the actual baby is born? I used to know a therapist who told me about a woman patient of hers whose distress was based on having two boys when all she wanted was a girl. The mother was inconsolable: “What did I do to deserve this?” Is the fantasy of a pink nursery really that potent? Is this the new equivalent of a fantasy of marrying a Prince?
No, not really. To nobody’s surprise, mothers, even those who cried for days after they learned it was going to be a boy, manage to love their little boys completely once the baby is born. They still don’t care about trucks and sports, but once they start caring for the child, they are happy he is exactly the way he is. And it’s never simple. Here is one woman therapist’s opinion:
~ In my experience, mothers sometimes dote on sons. They want to do special things for them, they do special preparations when grown sons come back to visit. There is delight attached to sons and any attention that they give to their mothers. They treat sons like big puppies who can do no wrong.
Daughters see a different side of their mothers. The daughters mothers are closest to get to see all of the little quirks and all of the likes and dislikes, pet peeves and irrational twerks that make their mother who she is. They also learn the source of her strengths as they work by her side. They may learn family secrets that sons will never know, and they have a much more intimate relationship than sons have. Since there is so much feeling and truth in these relationships, there is more opportunity for conflict, as well. Mother/daughter relationships are sometimes love/hate relationships. ~ Nancy Barbour, Quora
As an outside observer, I agree that mothers tend to love their daughters but they worship their sons. Culture plays a role, but we need to get away from stereotypes, and see each child for what he or she is. There is no perfect parent nor a perfect child. As Kurt Vonnegut said, “You learn to love whoever is available to be loved.”
By the way, IVF is the only way to reliably choose the baby's gender. The cost? $20,000 to 25,000, and that may not include all the charges. And it may take more than one attempt for the pregnancy to take hold.
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RAPE RESULTS IN MORE PREGNANCIES THAN CONSENSUAL SEX
As you’ve probably heard by now, in an interview Sunday, Missouri Representative and Republican Senate nominee Todd Akin said he believed that rape-related pregnancy was “really rare.” He continued by saying that, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
So, now for the facts. Pregnancy resulting from rape is not rare. In fact, a woman is more than twice as likely to get pregnant during a rape than during consensual sex.
That said, there may actually be something to the idea that the human female body has evolved an ability to resist rape-related pregnancies, although the potential mechanism is pregnancy termination, not prevention, so it’s almost certainly not what Akin was talking about.
Akin now admits he “misspoke” in the interview, although it’s not entirely clear which part he’s referring to.Akin’s intentions aside, he’s just plain wrong when he says rape-related pregnancies are rare (a fact that’s even more frightening considering that he is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology). Melisa Holmes, an ob-gyn in South Carolina, led a study on pregnancies from rape through the National Crime Victims Center.
Holmes’s study, which was published in 1996, found that 5 percent of rapes in females of reproductive age resulted in pregnancy, amounting to an estimated 32,101 rape-related pregnancies per year in the U.S.
Even that astounding number was a “significant underestimation,” she says, because so many rapes go unreported.
More recently, in 2003, husband-and-wife team Jonathan and Tiffani Gottschall, then at St. Lawrence University, identified even higher rape-related pregnancy rates. Analyzing survey results from 8,000 women around the country, they determined that 6.4 percent of rapes in women of childbearing age resulted in pregnancy. In cases where no birth control was used, the rate increased to 8 percent.
Meanwhile, a CDC report released last November concluded that 1 in 5 women have been raped, with 1.3 million women age 18 and up raped in 2010 alone. Doing the math, allowing for the use of birth control, and only including adults, the most recent data suggests that more than 83,000 women became pregnant by a man who raped them in 2010.
Jonathan Gottschall recognizes that there’s some “squishiness” in all of these numbers because they’re based on self-reported data. Still, he says, “the available data give us no reason to think that conception from rape is rare, or even that it is less rare than conception from consensual intercourse. If anything, the data suggest that things go the other way around.” Indeed, a 2001 study out of Princeton and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences found the rate of pregnancy from consensual, unprotected sex to be just 3.1 percent.
Rapists subsconsciously target victims based on their likelihood of conception.
No one is sure why forced sex is statistically a more successful reproductive strategy than consensual sex. “We think it might be because rapists tend to target young women at peak fertility,” Gottschall says.
Holmes confirms that most rapes occur in women under 25, and pre-pubescent girls, post-menopausal women and visibly pregnant women are statistically underrepresented among female rape victims, according to Gordon Gallup, an evolutionary psychologist at SUNY-Albany who wrote about rape-related pregnancy in The Oxford Handbook of Sexual Conflict in Humans.
“Rapists don’t pick victims at random,” Gallup says. “Unbeknownst to them, rapists clearly target victims based on their likelihood of conception. They tend to preferentially target young, post-pubescent females that are in their reproductive prime.”
Age alone doesn’t it explain it, though, because per-incident rape-pregnancy rates are higher than consensual pregnancy rates even among young women. Seeking out youth and attractiveness — a fertility cue, according to a growing body of evidence — gives rapists the reproductive edge, the Gottschalls proposed in their paper. They cited evidence from the 2000 book A Natural History of Rape by University of New Mexico biologist Randy Thornhill and University of Missouri anthropologist Craig Palmer, indicating that rapists seek out young, attractive women.
The Gottschalls wrote: “We propose…that all men — rapists and non-rapists — have the capacity to ‘read’ fecundity cues and pursue the most attractive/fecund women that they can. However, since rapists circumvent the problem of female choice, while non-rapists must confront it, it is plausible that the average instance of rape occurs with a more attractive/fecund woman than the average instance of consensual intercourse. Thus we propose that rapists target victims not only on the basis of age but based on a whole complement of physical and behavioral signals indicating the victim’s capacity to become pregnant and successfully carry a child to term.”
I called Gordon Gallup for his perspective on rape-related pregnancy. Last year, during a conversation about the antidepressant effects of semen, he mentioned a theory that the nature of a rapist’s ejaculate has something to do with his reproductive success. When I asked him to elaborate on that, he told me that semen contains follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH), which trigger ovulation during the female menstrual cycle. FSH is needed for sperm production, but the presence of LH in high levels is more mysterious because it’s not important for male fertility. It’s possible, Gallup says, that seminal fluid released during forced sex contains higher-than-normal levels of these hormones — LH in particular — which may trigger ovulation in the victim.
There’s no direct evidence yet of sex-induced ovulation in humans, although there’s some very new research hinting at the possibility. The LH in semen has been shown to trigger ovulation in camels, alpacas and llamas. Semen also makes female koalas ovulate, although LH hasn’t been identified as the active ingredient in that species’ semen yet. A 1973 study found that 70 percent of conceptions from rape occurred outside a woman’s most fertile time. And a 1949 study cited seven women who reported becoming pregnant due to rape, despite having not had a period for up to two years leading up to the assault.
The idea that semen produced during rape is especially primed to promote pregnancy seems less far-fetched considering the well-established evidence that what a man is doing when he ejaculates affects the chemical makeup of his semen. Studies on artificial insemination show that semen collected from a man who used his imagination to become aroused and ejaculate is much less likely to result in conception than a sample collected from a man watching porn, Gallup says. Even more potent is semen collected after coitus interruptus, i.e. pulling out during actual sex. The conditions under which a man becomes aroused and ejaculates has been shown to affect factors like sperm count, shape and mobility.
SEX-INDUCED OVULATION?
There’s no direct evidence yet of sex-induced ovulation in humans, although there’s some very new research hinting at the possibility. The LH in semen has been shown to trigger ovulation in camels, alpacas and llamas. Semen also makes female koalas ovulate, although LH hasn’t been identified as the active ingredient in that species’ semen yet. A 1973 study found that 70 percent of conceptions from rape occurred outside a woman’s most fertile time. And a 1949 study cited seven women who reported becoming pregnant due to rape, despite having not had a period for up to two years leading up to the assault.
The idea that semen produced during rape is especially primed to promote pregnancy seems less far-fetched considering the well-established evidence that what a man is doing when he ejaculates affects the chemical makeup of his semen. Studies on artificial insemination show that semen collected from a man who used his imagination to become aroused and ejaculate is much less likely to result in conception than a sample collected from a man watching porn, Gallup says. Even more potent is semen collected after coitus interruptus, i.e. pulling out during actual sex. The conditions under which a man becomes aroused and ejaculates has been shown to affect factors like sperm count, shape and mobility.
In saying that women “shut down” pregnancy after rape, Rep. Akin unwittingly stumbled upon the concept that women’s bodies reject unfamiliar sperm. In 2006, Gallup and his co-author Jennifer Davis published their theory that preeclampsia, a common pregnancy complication that can result in spontaneous abortion, evolved as an adaptive response to unfamiliar semen. (I say unwittingly because Akin was more likely referring to a theory that the fear and trauma of rape causes a woman’s fallopian tubes to tighten, thus preventing pregnancy. This idea, proposed by John C. Willke, a physician and a former president of the National Right to Life Committee, has been lambasted by other doctors.)
Psychologist and writer Jesse Bering explained the preeclampsia idea in his excellent post, which I highly recommend you read in its entirety: “By the early 1980s, scientists had started to notice that preeclampsia was more likely to occur in pregnancies resulting from ‘one-night stands,’ artificial insemination and rape than in pregnancies that were the product of long-term sexual cohabitation.
That it was the woman’s prior exposure to the male’s semen that was responsible for this pattern was evident by the fact that couples who’d been using barrier contraceptives (such as condoms), or who practiced coitus interruptus (in which the man withdraws prior to ejaculation) before they began trying to conceive also had higher rates of preeclampsia than those who’d been engaging in unprotected sex for some time.”
Bering continued, “It may be useful to think about preeclampsia not simply as a medical anomaly,” reason the authors, “but as an adaptation that may have evolved to terminate pregnancies where future paternal investment was questionable or unlikely.”
Now, none of this means that rape-related pregnancies are rare, or that biology should be trusted to ward off these pregnancies. The sheer numbers of pregnancies from rape tell us that it’s happening — a lot. And, obviously, preeclampsia is not the solution. Having the right to choose what to do about it is.
https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-08/rape-results-more-pregnancies-not-less/
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WHY HUMANS ARE SCARY TO ANIMALS
Even without claws, venom, or thick hides, a naked, empty-handed human triggers almost every deep-seated predatory alarm bell in nature.
Bipedalism: Standing upright on two legs makes us appear deceptively massive. In the animal kingdom, height generally indicates strength. Worse, a bipedal stance exposes the vulnerable organs of the torso—a posture animals typically adopt only when they are overwhelmingly confident or about to strike. Bears and great apes stand on two legs to display dominance; humans walk this way constantly.
Predatory Eyesight: We possess forward-facing eyes, the classic anatomical trait of a predator. Prey animals have eyes on the sides of their heads for a wide field of view. Forward-facing eyes provide the binocular vision and depth perception necessary to track, calculate distance, and ambush targets.
Aggressive Facial Cues: Smiling or laughing translates poorly across species. To almost any other mammal, pulling back the lips to bare teeth is a severe threat display indicating an imminent attack.
Ranged Lethality: Humans are the only creatures capable of accurately launching heavy projectiles with lethal force. A wild animal expects a predator to close the distance and engage in physical contact to inflict harm. A human can strike rapidly from dozens of feet away with rocks or simple wooden spears, breaking the fundamental rules of engagement that wildlife evolved to survive.
Relentless Pursuit: We are among the sweatiest mammals on the planet. This highly efficient cooling system allows for continuous exertion in the midday heat, enabling early humans to persistence-hunt. Rather than relying on a short, exhausting sprint, humans would track an animal at a steady pace for hours until the prey collapsed from heatstroke. To a wild animal, a human simply never stops following.
We do not look, move, or hunt like anything else in the natural world. That strangeness, combined with the clear anatomical markers of a predator, causes most animals to instinctively choose flight over fight.
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THE CASE OF “TYPHOID MARY”
First, a brief summary:
Mary Mallon, infamously known as Typhoid Mary, was the first asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen Salmonella Typhi in the US. She had infected 53 people, 3 of whom died. Despite infecting almost everyone she worked for, she never believed she had the disease. She died after nearly 30 years in quarantine. (Reddit)
Mary Mallon (September 23, 1869 – November 11, 1938), commonly known as Typhoid Mary, was an Irish-born cook who lived in the United States from a young age and is believed to have infected up to fifty-seven people with the bacteria that cause typhoid fever. The infections caused three confirmed deaths.
Between 1897 and 1907, Mallon worked at the houses of several New York-based families; members of four of the households contracted typhoid. An investigation by George Soper, an epidemiologist at the New York Department of Health, identified Mallon as the potential disease vector. In 1907, she was forcibly quarantined at the Riverside Hospital, an institution for those with quarantinable diseases, on North Brother Island in New York City's East River. She was released in 1910 after she swore to report to the health department every quarter and not return to cooking as a career.
A further typhoid outbreak at the Sloane Maternity Hospital in early 1915 resulted in twenty-five cases and two deaths. Mallon was identified as the responsible party and was returned to North Brother Island. She remained there until her death in 1938. Her nickname, coined by officials at the health department, became a colloquial term for anyone who spreads disease.
Mallon's case raises ethical questions about the balance between protection of individual liberty and the requirements of public health. She was treated differently from the four hundred other asymptomatic typhoid carriers identified during her confinement. Others who worked in the food industry were given jobs and had their rents paid for by the state, and none were confined for the same length of time as she was. Her story has been reexamined and reevaluated, particularly during outbreaks of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and COVID-19.
A longer bio:
Mary Mallon was born on September 23, 1869, in Cookstown, County Tyrone, in the north of the island of Ireland, to John Mallon and Catherine Igo. The level of Mary's education is not known, although she had some schooling. In 1883, when she was about fifteen, she emigrated to the United States aboard the steamship Ethiopia. In New York City, she first lived with an aunt. Mallon was soon employed as a private cook with a series of wealthy New York families; she gained a favorable reputation for her work and earned good wages. Some of her positions were as live-in staff; for others she lived with friends, including a Mr. A. Briehof. Her biographer, Judith Walzer Leavitt, observed that Mallon's career pattern reflected the restricted range of employment opportunities available to unmarried women of her ethnic background and socioeconomic status.
Between 1897 and 1906, Mallon worked as a cook for several families, members of four of which contracted typhoid fever. From 1897 to 1900, she cooked for a family in Mamaroneck, New York; no one in the family or among the staff contracted typhoid during that time. A guest became ill with typhoid in September 1900, ten days after he arrived to stay with the family. He had previously been in East Hampton, where there had been an outbreak. From 1901 to 1902, Mallon worked for a family in New York for eleven months. The family's laundress checked in to the hospital on December 9, 1901, with typhoid.
Mallon worked for lawyer and socialite J. Coleman Drayton in 1902, while he and his family spent the summer in Dark Harbor, Maine. Four family members and five staff members became ill; only Drayton and Mallon were unaffected. She stayed with the family to help nurse the sick, for which Drayton paid her a bonus of $50. Two doctors, Edwin Daniels of Boston and Louis Starr of Philadelphia, investigated the matter and came to the conclusion that the footman—a household servant who served meals—was the person who carried the typhoid.
In mid-1904, Mallon was cooking for Henry Gilsey and his family at their summer house in Sands Point. Four members of the staff—who lived separately from the family—became ill with typhoid, but none of the family did. Robert Wilson, the superintendent of hospitals for communicable diseases for the New York City Department of Health, investigated. He believed the laundress was the source of the outbreak but could not prove it.
Mallon worked as a cook for Charles Henry Warren, a New York banker in 1906. He and his family spent the summer that year at Oyster Bay on the North Shore of Long Island, where they had rented a house from George Thompson. On August 27, one of Warren's daughters was incapacitated with typhoid, and five other family members out of eleven also became sick. All recovered.
Identified as a typhoid carrier, 1906–1909
Thompson was concerned that he would not be able to rent out his property again, and he hired George Soper, a sanitation engineer and epidemiologist for the New York Department of Health, to investigate the source of the problem. Soper was a renowned investigator and was referred to as an "epidemic fighter", according to microbiologist Richard Adler and epidemiologist Elise Mara.
In the first phase of his investigation, Soper eliminated the standard causes of typhoid: contact with infected people and contamination of the food, water, and milk supplies. Questioning the household, he found that Mallon joined the staff on August 4 and left three weeks after the outbreak. At first, he was unsure whether a cook could be the source, since cooking would kill the bacteria; he became more convinced, however, when he learned that Mallon prepared an ice cream dessert with fresh peaches. According to Leavitt, this dish "would have been an excellent medium for typhoid infection”.
Mrs. Warren told Soper that Mallon had been hired from Mrs. Stricker's employment agency.The agency described Mallon as "an Irish woman about 40 years of age, tall, heavy, single. She seemed to be in perfect health." They provided Soper with a copy of Mallon's employment history and he mapped this to known typhoid cases. He saw she had worked for eight families, seven of whom had suffered typhoid outbreaks. He identified twenty-six cases of typhoid that were connected to Mallon.
Leavitt writes: "This number is actually quite small and indicates that many of the people for whom Mallon cooked during these years may have been already immune to typhoid". Soper was aware of the existence of asymptomatic carriers—carriers that are infected with a pathogen, but show no signs or symptoms—as he was well versed in much of the European literature on the subject. He developed the hypothesis that Mallon was a healthy carrier of typhoid and wished to gain samples from her to test his idea.
While Soper was conducting his investigation, Mallon continued working. In September and October 1906, she cooked for the family of George Kessler in their Tuxedo Park home. Two weeks after her arrival, the laundress contracted typhoid. There had been no cases of the disease in Tuxedo Park around that time and all the other staff had worked for the family for a long period. In November or December 1906, Mallon started cooking at the Park Avenue residence of Walter Bowen. On January 23, 1907, a chambermaid contracted typhoid. Bowen's daughter also fell ill with the disease and died; she was the first person connected to Mallon who was known to have died.
Soper visited Mallon in March 1907 at the Kessler house. He explained the situation to her and told her that he needed samples of her blood, urine, and feces. According to Soper:
It did not take Mary long to react to this suggestion. She seized a carving fork and advanced in my direction. I passed rapidly down the long narrow hall, through the tall iron gate, out through the area and so to the sidewalk. I felt rather lucky to escape,
Soper—with his colleague B. Raymond Hoobler—then visited Mallon at her rooming house on Third Avenue that she shared with Briehof. Soper recalled, "Mary was angry at the unexpected sight of me" He tried again to explain the situation but he had no success in persuading her.
When the two men left, they were "followed by a volley of imprecations from the head of the stairs.” Mallon's refusal was based on her belief that she was not infected.
Soper reported to his superiors and recommended that Mallon be arrested to facilitate sampling of her stool for testing. A female doctor and an inspector from the health department, Sara Josephine Baker, were sent to try to persuade Mallon. This also ended in failure, so Baker returned the following day, March 20, 1907, accompanied by the police. Mallon answered the door with a long serving fork in her hand; she lunged towards the visitors then ran out of the back of the house, hiding in a garden shed. Baker described the attempt: "Mary was on the lookout and peered out, a long kitchen fork in her hand like a rapier.”
She was found in the shed and again resisted: Baker reported that "She came out fighting and swearing, both of which she could do with appalling efficiency and vigor. She was placed in an ambulance and taken to Willard Parker Hospital. To stop her struggles, Baker had to sit on her chest for the journey,
Mallon was kept at Willard Parker for several months. Her stools were tested three times a week and showed the presence of Bacillus typhosus. The condition proved resistant to different drug treatments and Mallon refused to consider allowing the removal of her gallbladder, the primary organ where the typhoid bacillus is held in the body. It was enough proof for the Health Department to transfer her to the Riverside Hospital, an institution for those with quarantinable diseases, on North Brother Island. She remained there for three years, living on her own in a small cottage next to the hospital; she was allowed to walk around the island and had access to many of the facilities including the chapel.
Release from North Brother Island, 1909–1915
In 1909, Mallon challenged in court her extended captivity. Leavitt believes that William Randolph Hearst's newspaper, the New York American, provided the funds to pay for her lawyer, George Francis O'Neill. He filed a writ of habeas corpus in an attempt to free her.
Mallon came to public notice because of the case and the exposure she received in the New York American. The newspaper published a story about her on June 20, 1909, in which they called her "'Typhoid Mary', most harmless and yet the most dangerous woman in America"; her nickname had been given to her by officials at the health department and was then used by journalists. In an article published on June 30, in the New York American, they called for "pity for the lone woman who has not a relative or friend to whom she can turn".
Mallon's case was heard in late June and early July 1909 in front of judges Mitchell Erlanger and Leonard Giegerich. The decision was handed down in mid-July: Mallon continued to be confined to the hospital. Their decision was based on the 1905 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, in which the court supported the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws to protect the public.
In 1910, Ernst J. Lederle was appointed as the new commissioner for health for New York. On February 19, he released her from her enforced stay on North Brother Island. She signed an agreement to report to the health department every quarter and that she would not return to cooking as a career, which the department felt was sufficient to ensure she would not spread typhoid to others. Lederle explained:
She has been released because she has been shut up long enough to learn the precautions that she ought to take. As long she observes them I have little fear that she will be a danger to her neighbors. The chief points that she must observe are personal cleanliness and the keeping away from the preparation of other persons' food. ... She has promised to report to me regularly and not to take another position as a cook.
Lederle found Mallon a job in a laundry once she left. According to Leavitt, Mallon avoided cooking as a career until at least December 1911 and possibly to September 1912. By November 1914, the Department of Health had lost track of her whereabouts. The health department thought she had cooked at a New Jersey inn in 1913 and 1914; Soper claimed she had been cooking for families, including one in Newfoundland, New Jersey, over the same years, and that six more typhoid cases were connected to this, but he provided no evidence.
Historian Alan M. Kraut writes she was "definitely linked" to an outbreak in New Jersey and that there is a possibility she was connected to more cases in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Leavitt states the earliest confirmed instance of Mallon being employed as a cook after her release from North Brother Island was in October 1914, when she was hired under the name Mary Brown by the Sloane Maternity Hospital. In January and February 1915, the hospital was the center of a typhoid outbreak with twenty-five cases; two people died.
Return to North Brother Island, 1915–1938
Soper was called in to investigate the hospital's outbreak and, by comparing the handwriting of "Mary Brown" with that of Mallon, realized she was responsible. She had left the hospital's employment by that time and it was not until March 1915 that she was apprehended and returned to North Brother Island.
On her return to the island, Mallon spent her time baking cakes and making jewelry from beads, both of which she would sell to other patients and staff. In 1918, she got a job in the hospital, and by 1925 she was assisting in the hospital laboratory. In 1925, physician Alexandra Plavska came to the island for an internship and hired Mallon as an assistant. Mallon's duties included general cleaning, washing bottles, recording results, and assisting with the analysis.
The two became friends, according to Plavska's daughter; after Mallon was allowed to leave the island on day passes, she visited the Plavskas' home. Plavska left the hospital in 1927 and was replaced in 1929 by Emma Rose Goldberg. Goldberg set up a laboratory on an upper story of an unused chapel and Mallon continued there with her duties; Goldberg described her as a dependable worker who was always on time.
In later life, Mallon had several small strokes. On December 4, 1932, she suffered a major one. She was transferred to a ward at the hospital and remained there paralyzed and bedridden; Plavska and her daughter were among her visitors. Mallon died on November 11, 1938. Her funeral was held at St. Luke's Church, and she was buried at Saint Raymond's Cemetery on November 13.
Medical historians Filio Marineli et al. report that an autopsy was conducted on Mallon, which showed she had Salmonella typhi bacteria in her gallstones. They also observe that other writers state no such procedure took place and that this was "another urban legend, whispered by the Health Center of Oyster Bay, in order to calm ethical reactions".
Legacy and analysis
Mallon was the first asymptomatic carrier of typhoid identified in the US.
Up to fifty-seven cases of typhoid and three deaths from the disease were connected to her.
Mallon was treated differently from the other carriers who evaded their restrictions. She was described as a "menace to public health"; her gender, class and Irish background were all factors that weighed against her. Soper wrote that she lacked femininity, a characterization that was repeated in the press. He wrote:
Nothing was so distinctive about her as her walk, unless it was her mind. The two had a peculiarity in common. Those who knew her best in the long years of her custody said Mary walked more like a man than a woman and that her mind had a distinctly masculine character, also.
Although she was not the only asymptomatic carrier identified in early twentieth century New York, she was the only one confined indefinitely. One other carrier, Frederick Moersch, a German immigrant who worked as a confectioner, was sent to North Brother Island in 1915, but he was allowed to leave in 1944 and was given a job at a Brooklyn hospital. He lived in Brooklyn, and his rent was paid for by the state.
A second case involved Alphonse Cotils, a Belgian immigrant who owned a bakery in New York; his typhoid led to a ban from working in his bakery. In 1924, he was given a suspended sentence for breaching the ban; the judge stated that Cotils could not legally be imprisoned "on account of his health”.
Another asymptomatic carrier, Tony Labella, was responsible for eighty-seven cases of typhoid and two deaths; after he evaded the Department of Health's restrictions on his activities he caused an additional thirty-five cases and three deaths. Officials helped him find work unconnected with the food industry. By the time of Mallon's death, there were over four hundred recorded cases of asymptomatic typhoid carriers; none of them were detained or quarantined for as long as she was.
Much of the medical literature about Mallon contained value judgments about her. According to Leavitt, Mallon's status as a working-class immigrant appears to have shaped both public and scientific perceptions of her. Mallon's confinement on Brother Island was affected by the recent campaign against tuberculosis, which was aimed at low-wage immigrants; Foss hypothesizes that had Mallon been born twenty years earlier or later, she would not have been imprisoned.
In 1908, William Park, a bacteriologist with the New York City Department of Health, published a paper in JAMA which described Mallon's case. He stated: "The case of this woman brings up many interesting problems. Has the city a right to deprive her of her liberty for perhaps her whole life?"
According to journalism historian Katherine A. Foss, Mallon's case "raise[s] legal questions about habeas corpus, civil liberties, and due process". Marineli et al argue that she was "a victim of the health laws, of the press and above all of the cynical physicians, who had plenty of time to test but never had time to talk with the patient". Mallon's case exemplifies the tension between the protection of individual liberty and the requirements of public health.
The reporting of Mallon's history has changed since her death. Between 1938 and the advent of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, stories about Mallon focused on a human interest angle and, according to Leavitt, aimed to show how advances in medical science had improved modern life. After AIDS became a problem, writers took a more practical viewpoint, examining the risks an individual can pose to others and how to balance the rights of the individual with protecting public health.
Marouf A. Hasian Jr., a professor of communications, observed: "the advent of HIV and the return of tuberculosis outbreaks has heralded a newfound respect for the trials and tribulations of Mary Mallon". When COVID-19 began spreading in 2019, several academics looked at Mallon's case in the light of the spread of social distancing laws.
The phrase Typhoid Mary is now a colloquial term for anyone who spreads disease. It can also mean "A person who or thing which spreads or is the source of undesirable opinions, emotions, etc." Foss states that the name was so used as early as 1909, when The Washington Times used the name to describe a milk dealer; use continued, and by mid-1910 the name was commonly applied to seemingly healthy individuals who passed disease to others.
Mallon has been fictionalized in several works, including Steve Beeferman's Typhoid Mary, Poz McBeefy, which is described by Foss as "a fictional story about HIV-positive heroes in the midst of a pandemic". There is also a one-woman play by Carolyn Gage about Mallon's life, Cookin' with Typhoid Mary, and Typhoid Mary: The Musical by Geoff Page. Mallon's nickname has also been used for a supervillain in Marvel Comics. She first appeared in issue 254, May 1988, as an enemy of Daredevil.
Several films and television series in twentieth and twenty-first century culture have used the name "Typhoid Mary" as a passing reference to illness or asymptomatic carriers. In these cases, "they further cement ... [Mallon's] place in popular culture as nothing more than a malicious distributor of disease", according to Foss. ~ Wikipedia, Mary Mallon
Oriana:
Note that Mary Mallon, being asymptomatic, never believed she carried the disease and was a threat to the health, and sometimes even life, of others. She remained contagious to the end of her life. The bacteria resided mainly in her gallbladder, but she refused to her gallbladder removed. She spent a total of 26 years confined on North Brother Island.
During Mallon’s lifetime, typhoid fever was fatal in ten percent of the cases.
“As a cook of Sloane Maternity in Manhattan, she contaminated, in three months, at least 25 people, doctors, nurses and staff. Two of them died. She had managed to be hired as “Mary Brown”. Altogether, Mary Mallon, the first known case of a healthy carrier in the United States, was proven responsible for the contamination of at least one hundred and twenty two people, including five dead. She died of stroke in 1938.
In 1907, about 3,000 New Yorkers had been infected by Salmonella typhi, and probably Mary was the main reason for the outbreak. Immunization against Salmonella typhi was not developed until 1911, and antibiotic treatment was not available until 1948.”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3959940/
Salmonella is a broad genus of bacteria. Some strains cause standard food poisoning (gastroenteritis), while the Typhi strain causes the much more severe systemic illness known as typhoid fever.
It spreads primarily through food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person. Unlike typical Salmonella food poisoning, which usually passes in a few days, Salmonella Typhi enters the bloodstream and causes a sustained high fever, severe fatigue, and internal complications.
~ Typhoid fever is rare in places where few people carry the bacteria. It's also rare in places that treat water to kill germs and manage human waste well. That's why typhoid fever is rare in the United States.
Most people in the U.S. who get typhoid fever get it during travel to other countries. Africa and South Asia have the highest rates of typhoid fever.
Antibiotics can treat typhoid fever, but some antibiotics no longer work against the typhoid fever bacteria (antibiotic resistance). Without treatment, there is a small chance of death from typhoid fever complications. Vaccines that protect against typhoid fever help lower the risk of getting the condition. ~
PREVENTION
Wash your hands often and well. Use hot, soapy water. Wash before eating or making food and after using the toilet or changing a diaper. Carry an alcohol-based hand sanitizer for when you don't have soap and water.
Don't use water that isn't safe. In places where typhoid fever is common, drinking water often has the bacteria that causes it. So drink only bottled water or canned or bottled carbonated drinks, wine or beer. Ask for drinks without ice. Use bottled water to brush your teeth and try not to swallow water in the shower.
Don't eat raw fruits and vegetables. Because raw produce may have been washed in tainted water, don't eat fruits and vegetables that you can't peel, especially lettuce. To be safe, don't eat any raw foods.
Choose hot foods. Don't eat food that's stored or served at room temperature. Cooked, steaming hot foods may be less risky than other foods. ~
~ https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/typhoid-fever/symptoms-causes/syc-20378661
Anthony Bourdain’s book about her is excellent, and provides a more sympathetic look to someone who history had made out to be a selfish villain. It's easy to say she just had to never work as a cook again, or have surgery to remove her gallbladder. She was a poor immigrant woman with a specific skill set, minimal education and limited access to much else. The offer would be equivalent to being told you can't work your $20 job that you're good at, but you can go be a dishwasher at a fast food place.
People TODAY don't believe that they can spread an invisible illness and refuse to take freely available precautions despite living in the information age and having access to all the news in the entire world. She didn't have that, and as an Irish immigrant had reason to be suspicious of these people telling her she was making people sick and would forever. ~ name deleted, reddit
~ Time was, people thought of "Typhoid Mary" as selfish, cruel and unusually evil. Now we see people (who live with vulnerable family members) refusing to get vaccinated, refusing to wear masks, even, in some instances, when some of their family have already died! And in some places, behavior like this is the norm! "Typhoid Mary" just lived in the wrong era: today, she would find hoards of people congratulating her on exercising her "freedom".
another source:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=12wh0lfHb2U
Oriana:
Even nowadays people can end up in Emergency due to food poisoning. It’s by no means rare. Simply eating out means taking a chance. And if this is so common now, imagine what it was like before people even knew about bacteria and the benefits of frequent hand-washing with soap, especially after using the bathroom. With lack of refrigeration and contaminated water (cholera!), you wonder how humanity even survived. (One factor was the habit of drinking wine with meals; alcohol kills many types of bacteria; we can only speculate how many cases of food poisoning were prevented.)
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“PRACTICAL OPTIMISM”
It feels like some people are just naturally optimistic ― glass half-full types who seem to breeze through hardship while the rest of us spiral. But optimism doesn’t have to be an innate quality that you either have or don’t. In fact, it might be something you can learn and practice.
That’s the premise behind “practical optimism,” a framework developed by psychiatrist Dr. Sue Varma that she believes can transform the way you approach everything from daily stress to major adversity. It’s realistic, actionable and the opposite of “toxic positivity.”
“Practical optimism is a proactive, deliberate, mindful approach to life,” she told HuffPost. “The reality is that only 25% of optimism is genetic. The rest of it is learned.”
Varma is the author of “Practical Optimism: The Art, Science, and Practice of Exceptional Well-Being” and an expert on all things resilience. She developed her framework over 20 years of clinical practice, beginning at the epicenter of one of the most devastating events in U.S. history.
“I started my career right after finishing residency as the medical director of the 9/11 mental health program at NYU,” she said.
As Varma treated first responders and civilians affected by the Sept. 11 attacks for PTSD, depression and anxiety, she was struck by a subset of survivors who came in for monitoring but never seemed to develop severe mental health symptoms.
“I remember asking one woman, ‘What’s your secret?’” Varma recalled. “And she said, ‘My purpose.’ She would come to the program even when she didn’t have to. She volunteered. A lot of patients had agoraphobia or panic disorder. She would go to their homes, pick them up, travel an hour and a half into the city. She was really an activist in meetings to get more funding.”
That notion of purpose became the foundation of what Varma calls the eight pillars of practical optimism ― a roadmap that anyone can follow.
“I thought to myself, how can we take it to not only treat my patients but use it as a preventative tool so that people don’t get mental health symptoms or just how to deal with the ‘little t’ traumas, the small everyday traumas of life ― the hassles, ups and downs, breakups, job losses,” Varma said. “The same type of thinking that helps people cope with ‘Big T’ traumas like 9/11 also helps them with little t’s.”
What Practical Optimism Is — And Isn’t
What’s important to understand about practical optimism is that it’s very different from toxic positivity. It is not telling yourself everything will be fine when it won’t. And it is not quite the same as resilience, though they’re related.
“Resilience is about bouncing back from adversity, but practical optimism is about thriving in the face of it,” Varma said. “Resilience assumes something bad happened to you and asks how well you recover. But I don’t want to just recover because recovery is about going back to a baseline. A lot of people had really shaky foundations and bad baselines to begin with.”
She’s equally clear about what distinguishes practical optimism from the relentlessly upbeat, Pollyanna vibe.
“Toxic positivity is like, ‘Rah rah, everything will work itself out,’” Varma said. “That can be very dismissive without really understanding what you’ve gone through. Sometimes we just want to vent and be heard, to have someone hold us emotionally and maybe even physically, but toxic positivity says, ‘Just get over it and look on the bright side!’”
But that’s not what optimism, and especially not what practical optimism, really means.
“Practical optimism is taking a very realistic approach, weighing the pros and the cons of decisions, and ultimately, it’s about action,” Varma explained. “Extreme optimists may act too quickly, while extreme pessimists deliberate and perseverate without making any decisions. So practical optimism marries the best of both worlds.”
She gave the example of getting a borderline cholesterol result from your bloodwork. An extreme optimist might bury their head in the sand, take no action and never follow up because they think everything will work itself out. Meanwhile, an extreme pessimist is too afraid to go to the doctor at all because they fear a bad test result.
In this way, both extremes are neglecting their health. But a practical optimist will process the news and take the concrete steps needed to address the issue.
“The problem with pessimism is twofold,” Varma explained. “You overestimate the risk of bad things happening, and you underestimate your ability to deal with it. Practical optimism helps you get more accurate in your assessment of risk ― and then beefs up your coping mechanisms.”
She pointed to a number of studies that back up the benefits of cultivating this kind of outlook.
Optimists have a 35% lower risk of heart attack, stroke and cardiovascular death, according to a meta-analysis of 229,000 people published in JAMA Network Open. A 2026 study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found that the most optimistic people had nearly a 40% lower risk of dementia than the most pessimistic — even after controlling for exercise, smoking, depression and chronic illness.
Other research suggests the most optimistic people live, on average, 11 to 15% longer and have significantly higher odds of reaching age 85. There are also benefits in terms of inflammation and immune function, wound healing, pregnancy, relationships, anxiety and depression, work and general health-promoting behaviors.
“There are head-to-toe benefits,” Varma said. “And since 75% of optimism is learned, these are skills that anyone can build.”
How To Practice Practical Optimism
Varma’s framework rests on eight pillars, which she sees as an eight-step action plan that starts with having a vision or intention and ends with making it a reality. The first pillar is purpose.
“Purpose could be big P in life, like, what do I want to achieve? Or it could be little P ― what do I want to do today, in this meeting or at this event?” she said. “It’s about being very concrete with your intentions. Even a brisk 10-minute walk has been shown to boost people’s purpose.
Part of purpose is also experiencing joy and pleasure. It’s not just drudgery and accomplishing big things.”
The second pillar is processing emotions, which Varma breaks down into a four-step framework: name it, claim it, tame it, reframe it.
“Name the antecedent ― what is bringing you down?” she said. “The more granular you can get, the better,” she said. “Then claim it ― where in the body are you manifesting these symptoms? Then tame it. For some people, it’s a one-minute meditation. For others, it’s journaling, deep breathing or a 15-minute walk. And then reframe it. Is there a positive spin you can put on the situation?”
But Varma is clear that sometimes there isn’t one. “When I was thinking about my mom getting diagnosed with cancer, what positive spin is there?” she said. “So one important thing I learned is when you are not able to find a positive spin, ask yourself, ‘Is this a problem to be solved or a truth to be accepted?’ That’s really freeing. It’s not giving up but accepting and acknowledging that I’m very limited in what I can do in this particular instance.”
The third pillar is problem-solving, which combines intuition, logic and emotional regulation in order to take action. And the fourth is pride, which is not about arrogance but self-compassion as a way to develop a stable sense of self-worth.
“Perfectionism is such a big part of why so many people are unhappy ― social comparisons, social media, ‘I should have been here by now,’” Varma said. “Studies show that kids who do a five-minute self-compassion exercise before a test end up doing better because they’re not getting paralyzed by shame and guilt.”
The fifth pillar is proficiency, which focuses on building confidence in your abilities, and the sixth is presence ― cutting out mental clutter and reclaiming your attention. Then, the seventh pillar is people ― cultivating relationships, connections and a sense of belonging.
Finally, the eighth pillar is practicing healthy habits, which Varma distills into what she calls the four M’s of mental health: mindfulness, meaningful engagement, mastery and movement.
“This is what’s really tangible as far as how to practice practical optimism,” Varma explained.
“I tell people, 10 minutes a day, these are nonnegotiable. I try to have a meaningful engagement, even if it’s just a text message to a friend, just being authentic with someone.
Consistent movement every day. Mindfulness might be a short meditation every day. And then mastery is just about investing in a hobby. Play mahjong, something to get into a flow state.”
Taken together, the eight pillars function as both a philosophy and a very practical toolkit ― one that Varma supplements with concrete exercises, including a “best possible scenario” visualization she recommends to patients.
“Envision a problem, envision your path to it and then imagine yourself arriving at the solution,” she said. “Get granular ― feel all the positive emotions associated with it. So many of us never allow ourselves to really get specific about what success looks like.”
She also encourages what she calls “borrowed mastery” — drawing on a sense of accomplishment in one area of life to shore up confidence in another.
“I had a patient going through a divorce who said, ‘I don’t feel like I’m good at anything,’” Varma recalled. “And I said, ‘You are a very good friend.’ She laughed and said, ‘That’s nothing.’ But I said, ‘That means integrity, it means showing up.’ You may be minimizing so many other successes in your life.”
Ultimately, Varma describes practical optimism as something she has to actively practice herself.
“I literally have to practice my optimism because my mind wants to jump toward the worst-case scenario,” she said. “It’s like a yoga practice. Some days it’s five minutes, some days it’s longer. It’s not easy. But it is worth learning.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/practical-optimism-sue-varma_l_6a0375c8e4b0cdaf88db4b08?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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PEPPERMINT OIL AGAINST HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE
In 2024, about 1.4 billion adults globally were living with high blood pressure.
Hypertension is currently treated through a combination of medications and healthy lifestyle factors. A new study has found that taking peppermint oil each day may also help with lowering high blood pressure.
Medically known as hypertension, this condition occurs when the heart has to use more force than normal to move blood through the arteries. Left untreated, high blood pressure can lead to several health issues, such as heart attack, stroke, heart failure, chronic kidney disease, vision loss and dementia.
High blood pressure is currently treated through a combination of medications and healthy lifestyle factors, such as eating a low sodium diet, being physically active, and maintaining a healthy weight.
Now, a study recently published in PLOS ONE Journal has found that taking peppermint oil each day may also help with lowering high blood pressure.
According to the American Heart Association (AHA), elevated blood pressure occurs when a person’s systolic blood pressure is between 120–129 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) and diastolic blood pressure under 80 mmHg, while stage 1 is defined by a systolic blood pressure between 130-139 mmHg and diastolic pressure between 80-89 mmHg.
Study participants were randomly selected to receive either 100 microliters (μL) per day of either peppermint oil or a peppermint-flavored placebo.
“We were interested in peppermint oil because peppermint contains biologically active compounds, particularly menthol and flavonoids, that have plausible relevance to blood pressure regulation,” Jonathan Sinclair, DSc, PhD, course leader MSc sport and exercise sciences at the University of Lancashire in the United Kingdom, and lead author of this study, told Medical News Today.
“Previous research has suggested that peppermint may have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, smooth muscle relaxant, and vasodilatory properties, all of which are potentially relevant to hypertension,” Sinclair added.
“Our group had also previously conducted a placebo-controlled trial in healthy individuals, where peppermint oil supplementation was associated with reductions in systolic blood pressure,” he continued.
“That provided a strong rationale to examine whether similar effects could be observed in a population where blood pressure reduction is more clinically relevant: individuals with pre-hypertension, also commonly referred to as ‘elevated blood pressure’ and stage 1 hypertension,” Sinclair detailed.
After 20 days, researchers found the study participants taking peppermint oil lowered their systolic blood pressure by an average of 8.5 mmHg.
“The reduction in systolic blood pressure was important because systolic blood pressure is a major predictor of cardiovascular risk, and even relatively modest reductions can be meaningful at a population level,” Sinclair explained.
Additionally, scientists discovered that study participants taking peppermint oil also experienced significantly lower resting heart rates after 20 days.
“Resting heart rate is an important cardiovascular marker because a higher resting heart rate has been associated in epidemiological research with increased cardiovascular and all-cause mortality risk,” Sinclair said.
“In our study, resting heart rate was significantly lower in the peppermint group compared with placebo after the 20-day intervention, which suggests that peppermint oil may have influenced not only vascular tone but also cardiovascular regulation more broadly,” he noted.
If peppermint oil is able to help lower a person’s blood pressure, how does it work?
Sinclair said the most plausible explanation relates to menthol, one of the main bioactive constituents of peppermint oil.
“Menthol can activate TRPM8 channels, which are found in vascular and sensory tissues, and this activation may contribute to vasodilation through calcium-dependent endothelial signaling, nitric oxide-related pathways, and relaxation of vascular smooth muscle,” he explained. “In simple terms, peppermint oil may help blood vessels relax, which could reduce the pressure against which the heart has to pump.”
“However, our trial was not designed to directly measure these mechanisms, so while the biological rationale is strong, future studies should include measures such as endothelial function, nitric oxide metabolites, vascular stiffness, and autonomic markers to establish how peppermint oil may be exerting these effects,” Sinclair added.
MNT had the opportunity to speak with Craig Basman, MD, FACC, FSCAI, associate director of the Structural and Congenital Heart Program at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, about this study, who commented his initial reaction was one of cautious optimism.
“The findings that a simple, inexpensive, and widely available substance like peppermint oil could potentially lower blood pressure are certainly intriguing,” Basman, who was not involved in this research, said
According to him: “It’s promising to see a study that is a randomized controlled trial, which is the gold standard for clinical research. However, it is a small study of only 40 patients, so while the results are encouraging, they are not definitive.”
“The best initial treatment for high blood pressure should be non-pharmacological approaches.
Medications are mostly safe and effective, but they come with cost, compliance issues, and side effects. Oftentimes we can avoid medications with lifestyle modifications such as diet and exercise, which are the cornerstones of blood pressure management. These nonmedicinal options can empower patients to take a more active role in their own health and can be more accessible and affordable for many people.” ~ Craig Basman, MD, FACC, FSCAI
For future research, Basman said the most important next step is to see this research replicated in a larger, more diverse population.
“A study with more participants would provide more robust data and help to confirm these initial findings,” he detailed. “It would also be beneficial to see longer-term studies to understand if the effects of peppermint oil on blood pressure are sustained over time and to identify any potential long-term side effects.”
“Additionally, research into the mechanism of action — how exactly peppermint oil is working to lower blood pressure — would be valuable,” Basman added. “This could lead to a better understanding of its effects and potentially to the development of more targeted therapies in the future.”
A daily serving guide for people using the DASH diet may include:
five servings of vegetables
five servings of fruit
seven servings of carbohydrates
two servings of low fat dairy products
up to two servings of lean meat
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LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF DRINKING COFFEE
When people consume caffeine infrequently, it may raise blood pressure by 5 to ten milliliters of mercury, but with regular consumption there appears to be no difference.
A 2019 study involving over 347,000 participants found no association between moderate coffee consumption and any type of cardiovascular disease (CVD).
However, heavy consumption of over 6 cups per day did have a modest association with CVD, as did drinking decaffeinated coffee or no coffee.
Other research has had mixed results, though. A 2019 review of past research notes that while some studies find a link between caffeine and blood pressure, others do not.
Should people with hypertension avoid coffee?
Whether people with high blood pressure should avoid coffee is an ongoing area of research. Due to the contradictory effects of caffeine on blood pressure, some may want to exercise caution.
However, a 2022 article says that while occasional coffee drinking does raise blood pressure, habitual coffee drinking does not appear to have the same effect.
There is even some evidence that drinking coffee regularly may have a beneficial effect on people with hypertension and reduce the risk of other types of CVD.
People with hypertension who want to drink coffee may wish to measure their blood pressure to determine if it has a positive or negative effect on them.
However, it is important to be aware that other factors, such as salt, stress, and medications, can also affect blood pressure measurements.
Does decaffeinated coffee raise blood pressure?
It is unclear if decaffeinated coffee affects blood pressure.
The 2019 study on long-term coffee consumption found an association between drinking decaffeinated coffee and an increased risk of CVD, which can include hypertension.
However, it is unclear why this association existed, and the study did not prove that one directly causes the other.
Additionally, a 2021 review of past research found no association between decaffeinated coffee and blood pressure increases. More research is necessary to confirm if there is a relationship.
It is worth noting that people who drink coffee very frequently may experience withdrawal symptoms.
Summary
Coffee contains caffeine, which can have variable effects on blood pressure. Regular coffee drinkers may build up a tolerance to the physiological effects of coffee, whereas those who drink it less often may experience an increase in their blood pressure.
Coffee may be suitable for people with high blood pressure and could even have beneficial effects. However, people should be mindful of their tolerance and how their body reacts to caffeine.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/does-coffee-raise-blood-pressure#summary
Oriana:
Great news for moderate habitual coffee drinkers. Coffee contains a wealth of beneficial compounds. Few people know that caffeine is actually an antioxidant, three times stronger than Vitamin C — and it’s not the only antioxidant in coffee.
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TYPE 2 DIABETES DRUGS COULD LOWER DEMENTIA, PARKINSON'S DISEASE RISK
The rate of neurodegenerative conditions is growing globally, meaning that a lot of research is into prevention of these problems.
There has been some research suggesting that a type of type 2 diabetes drugs called SGLT2 inhibitors could reduce the incidence of some neurodegenerative conditions including Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
Now, a large cohort study has shown use of these drugs is associated with a lower risk of developing these neurodegenerative conditions.
Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease risk are lowered in people who take a type of type 2 diabetes drug, a study from South Korea has shown.
Minyoung Lee, MD, PhD, of Yonsei University College of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea, and co-author of the paper explained to Medical News Today the premise of her and her colleagues’ study.
“Common pathophysiological links between type 2 diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases have been proposed, and individuals with type 2 diabetes are considered at high risk for neurodegenerative conditions,“ she told us. “Consequently, there has been research into whether diabetes medications might offer benefits for neurodegenerative diseases, but no drug has yet shown definitive evidence.“
“When I began my research, SGLT2 inhibitors had been introduced as a new treatment for diabetes. These drugs not only lower blood sugar but also increase urinary glucose excretion, which leads to reduced insulin levels and elevated ketone bodies in the body. Since ketones are known to be beneficial metabolites for the nervous system, I hypothesized that the unique pharmacological action of SGLT2 inhibitors might make them particularly beneficial in reducing the risk of neurodegenerative diseases,” explained Lee.
Steve Allder, MD, who is a consultant neurologist at Re:Cognition Health, and was not involved in this research, suggested to MNT that “The mechanism behind the neuroprotective effects of SGLT2 inhibitors is likely multifaceted, involving cardiovascular, metabolic and cellular effects.“
He explained that:
“SGLT2 inhibitors reduce common risk factors associated with dementia and Parkinson’s disease, such as hyperglycemia, insulin resistance, obesity, hypertension, and heart failure. These factors contribute to both vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. By improving cardiovascular health, SGLT2 inhibitors are likely to help prevent cerebrovascular damage and neurodegeneration.”
SGLT2 (sodium-glucose cotransporter 2) inhibitors are a class of oral medications originally developed to lower blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes by helping the kidneys remove excess glucose through urine. Beyond diabetes, they are widely prescribed for their organ-protecting benefits to treat heart failure and chronic kidney disease.
Empagliflozin (Jardiance) is an example of a SGLT2 inhibitor.
SGLT2 drugs can be taken in combination with metformin.
SGLT2 inhibitors are a class of medications that lower blood sugar by causing the kidneys to remove excess glucose through urine. They are also used to treat heart failure and chronic kidney disease.
SGLT2 inhibitors linked to 21% lower dementia risk
To investigate whether or not use of SGLT2 inhibitors impacted risk of neurodegenerative conditions, researchers analyzed data on a cohort of 358,862 participants with type 2 diabetes.
Participants who had started taking SGLT2 inhibitors between 2014–2019 were matched with participants who were on other oral antidiabetes medications. All participants were over 40 years old.
The analysis showed that over a follow-up period of an average of 2.06 years for people on SGLT2 inhibitors, and 3.70 years for people on different antidiabetes drugs, there was a reduction in the risk of developing all-cause dementia in the group who took SGLT2 inhibitors of 21%.
In addition to this, a decrease of 20% incidence of Parkinson’s disease, as well as a 19% decrease in incidence of Alzheimer’s disease was observed in the group. Risk of vascular dementia was 31% lower.
Another surprising finding is the larger benefit seen in younger populations (<65 or <70 years old) compared to older participants. This age-specific impact highlights the importance of early intervention in high-risk individuals with type 2 diabetes,
The study authors say that the results show there are potential benefits for patients with type 2 diabetes taking SGLT2 inhibitors, which is important as they are at increased risk of neurological disease. However, they point out the study is observational and requires further study to determine how long-term this reduced risk is.
Lee told us: “I consider that the effect of SGLT2 inhibitors on neurodegenerative disease could be closer to the concept of attenuating the degenerative process and delaying the onset of dementia, rather than the concept of preventing dementia so that it never occurs.“
“At the population level, reducing the population at risk of dementia and changing social condition could be translated into ‘prevention.’ However, the meaning of prevention from the perspective of a single individual may differ from the population view, as it may imply an expectation of no incidence in their lifetime,” she cautioned.
Further work was needed to elucidate the mechanism behind the observed reduction in risk, said Lee. “I am engaged in research using a mouse model of dementia associated with metabolic disorders to explore how SGLT2 inhibitors positively affect neurodegenerative diseases,“ she noted.
“Previous studies have assessed the drug’s potential using a nationwide database from a broader perspective; however, my current work is dedicated to mechanistic studies that aim to elucidate these effects,” Lee told MNT.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/type-2-drugs-could-lower-dementia-parkinsons-disease-risk#What-was-surprising-about-the-study-findings
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ending on beauty:
AUTUMN
The leaves are falling, falling from afar,
as if whole gardens withered in the sky.
Each leaf falls with the gestures saying “no.”
And in the night the heavy earth falls
away from the stars into solitude.
We are all falling. This hand falls.
And look at others. It is in all.
Yet there is Someone who all this falling
with infinite softness holds in his hands.
~ Rilke, trans. by Robert Bly, modified by Oriana
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