reno and i wanted to tell you a moment about white rose the title of the show is in honor of sophie shaw she was in the underground german resistance during war old war two and died advocating for free speech and now our show hello americans we are in a time of urgent need we are also in a time with a unique capacity to research and evaluate the situations for the most vulnerable elderly we also seem to be in a time in the space of  being and emotionally blind to what has been happening to the people in our country have we been dumbed down or dumbfounded by what has happened to our country while we were trying to pay the bills and take care of our children and our daily lives we bought a dream that now needs to be redefined do we need to remember and consciously practice that everyone has the right to civil liberties and free access to those rights have we been coconspirators to the very abuse that goes on with our children and our elderly i don't want to believe that but how it that some corporations have so much power that they can doing get away with so much that an individual could not do or get away with is that also a truth as to what has happened in the last one hundred fifty years with the medical experiments that have happened on minority groups in our society and even maybe now with children we need societal definitions and at the very least discussions on what we value in our country and i'm talking about people not material goods we have been so busy worrying about the gross national product and consumerism have we forgotten home and family have we forgotten what is truly sacred that has no money value do we really value life for all people or just a good fight over pro life versus pro choice maybe that is a discussion to have about old age will we sacrifice our elderly and their care for a better gross national bottom line i think we already are sacrificing life for a corporate bottom line and i don't think we have to shouldn't the medical and the research groups be evaluated more closely and drug companies also evaluated more closely for the perks or pay that goes out for the use of new drugs on children as reported last year when children were given drugs that resulted in their death and were never meant for children what about the drugs used on the elderly anti psychotics are given to the elderly and relatives are told they are anti depressants drugs that destroy memory are given to those with anxiety because they are losing their memory and thereby making their reason for anxiety more and their memory even worse which leads to more anxiety where is the reason what are our values and our perspectives of what is tolerable for old age do we disallow people there are agents process so that some all our staffs can care for them displaying given to the elderly or to older folks under testing situations for conditions like macular degeneration and conditions like brain tumors it destroyed the formation of the information in fetuses that told that fetus to make arms and legs it destroyed the nervous tissue that carries the messages and maybe the hormonal signals as well so in the elderly that already have deteriorating conditions like deteriorating nervous and vascular systems why would something that is so destructive be given to them and why would something like that be given to the very people who need protection of their nervous systems and their vascular systems the vulnerable elderly need more protection from those whom they have to trust because body and brain no longer work well enough to be strong and self reliant it is a travesty towards the elderly a travesty of trust a travesty a travesty of medicine and care and a travesty of our country protecting its citizens and their civil rights and a travesty of justice for the future and for fused future generations it is especially a travesty if the future generations think that they elderly are used up and are throwaway we people of the united states of america seem to support agencies that use the weak the  and those who are considered by our politicians as expendable because it is a group of people that even though they fought for their country paid their representative leaders their salaries through their taxes these same people are no longer paying taxes because they are on partial or home medicaid they are no longer consumers because because they are on limited income or are on medicaid and may be in a nursing home these people lose many of their rights when they go into nursing homes depending on the state they're in and no one believes what they say anymore they've lost their voices it can always be said they are senile and now it is called dementia i have to wonder how much dementia has been caused by the little mind and drugs that are used for anxiety and can only increase anxiety because they destroy memory i used to work in public school systems and prosecutors often would not take the word of a child against an adult and for sure they would never take the word of a handicapped child against an adult quote it would never hold up in court unquote it is the same with the elderly they are not consumers  from the economic point of view they are not producers they do not vote and they do not make donations to political parties they somehow become  entities in our political system not into t's and our country on the whole don't get their rights not their civil rights nor their human rights we have been asleep and we must wake up laws between various states are different marketing at end of nursing homes needs to be addressed legislatively they can say almost anything they want and they can say it in their marketing and they can get away with it even if it's not correct there is no f d a that evaluates what is done with marketing for nursing homes and hospitals you believe your loved one will be cared for there is very little chance that that will happen because most nursing homes just don't have the staff to meet the needs of their people it's a condition that exists because the paradigm doesn't work there aren't enough people who are trained in the spectrum of needs for the multiple conditions present in nursing homes today some of the various needs that weren't as complicated nor as varied in the past years are there are many more people who before president reagan's time would have been in mental health hospitals some of these people are nursing homes and they require more monitoring and oversight especially in their movement about the facility than what nursing home staffs can give there will soon be more veterans in nursing homes because of those that have and haven't gotten the amount of rehabilitation they need these men and women will probably live for a number of years if they are fed and their basic medical and dental needs are met there are just not enough facilities for them and for the aging baby boomers there are not enough facilities now to take care of the  baby boomers who will probably need at least some length of time in a nursing home and there are the increasing number of people who just have multiple conditions who are more fragile and brittle in their conditions diabetes contributes to this in a large way because many other conditions happen or can occur when one gets diabetes diabetes can cause blindness especially if it goes and diagnosed or untreated for a period of time macular degeneration is another blind causing disease that is on the rise even though nursing homes say they will meet the person's needs they do not when they when the needs are unusual or complicated or when these needs require time and effort a sustained way to obtain an appropriate outcome for the individual blindness is such an example it requires a sensitivity and attention that is rarely shown to people due to the lack of adequate staffing time to spend with individuals throughout the course of the day i spent some time calling a few different states and asking how much time is spent with a who are the direct caregivers for our nursing home elderly in their training to understand the psycho social needs of the blind  and basic good manners in considering the blind the person with the line at sneeze i could find no state so far who spends any time explaining to the aides during their initial training that the blind need and require more time and consideration they cannot see what you are doing or go what is going on so maybe a shock or surprise for them to be touched because they thought you were speaking to the other person in the room when you failed to address them by name whatever training is given on sight for the blind won't matter much if the aids are completely different the next week and then again in two weeks it is rare that a nursing home is able to may maintain consistent aids for their residence there is also a problem in some nursing homes about using visuals to remind the aides or cue the aides as to the visual needs of the residents or other conditions that may need special attention and where it would be helpful for the aides to be cued if they are new to the area or because of staff that is missing because of illness that is usually there there are floaters or temporary aids in that area some nursing homes feel that this breaks hipaa to have visual cues up and won't do it some nursing homes are more resident centered in their philosophies and they do it we should have a national standard for some of these types of situations so that hipaa is made clearer as to whether they are there to block services for our elderly or to provide better service for our elderly nursing homes will promise things like consistency and aides consistency in monitoring food that give the person bad reactions consist consistency in dental repair or cleaning general dental attention and other such things these things are rarely consistently done because there is rarely a consistency of qualified staff or staff who know the individual clients well enough to make sure that this consistency exists i have experience with my loved one in nursing homes in ohio and in ohio there is a law that says that nursing homes can make anything that anyone they want a social worker and call that person their social worker their marketing then says that they have a social worker on staff then the nursing home tells the people that have us social worker on staff they have a social worker on staff and makes the public think they have a real social worker a qualified trained social worker someone who advocate for the resident in the realm of a social worker this is not the case more often than not it is a license practical nurse who is pushing paper however by law they could even put a seventeen year old a aide in that position i called to washington state and asked them about social workers i was told that by law for every so many residents they have in the facility they are to have a social worker on staff  and a part time social worker if the resident number is below a specific number i i believe it was ninety eight it was around one hundred the state agency person then specifically stated but it never hurts to check to see if they are a real licensed social worker there needs to be legislation that consequences for marketing that is provided and then marketing that doesn't prove to happen if those things don't really happen there should be consequences for that there needs to be rigid and stiff consequences for saying things that cannot be consistently provided or given there needs to a qualifier or disclaimer made by nursing homes that lets residents and their families know that some things cannot be consistently done even if the nursing home wants to do it aides are the direct caregivers in some cases they are untrained and many are trained while they are on the job or they are switched between sector sections or shifts where they are needed or new ones are continually coming in with new duties and don't have the most recent training for the specific residence needs of the section that they are assigned to it is impossible in this situation for consistency and training care to be given in four out of four nursing homes in another state i was promised that my loved one would not be given either potatoes nor to maida's during her her dinners her lunches that cetera these are two foods that were were determined by a medical doctor before she went into nursing homes to genetically not be tolerated by her body she did not have the digestive enzymes required to digest these foods they would give my relative diarrhea cramps and as she got older almost instant u t r e's u t i stands for year unary track infection which are very serious for the elderly these can give the elderly hallucinations hallucinations can also be a part of macular degeneration and also a part of the condition called dementia four out of four facilities could not make sure that no potato is nor to mate is were given to my my relative and within hours sometimes it would take thirty six hours she would have a u t i they could not guarantee and should not have said that they could have that she would not receive these fouth because aides do the feeding and aides are usually too young too inexperienced to him much or to make those quick observations and judgements about the food either they didn't know she couldn't have those truths they didn't think it was important they didn't know how to judge what was in the food to know that what was on the plate probably contained maida's or potatoes or they hadn't read her specific needs or didn't remember them these for nursing home should not be allowed to say they will control the food so when they can't and i don't personally believe that any present facility can guarantee this control families should know this and be monitoring accordingly in one for cell a day with the director of nurses blessing i made a chart so that my relative got toilet according to state regulations the aides could record and then know when the last shift did it and if it got done the good a disused the chart they had no problem with that the aides that didn't care about anything didn't care about using the chart but the place was understaffed and always on the verge of not having enough staff so nothing was done to ensure proper or sufficient toileting times or turning the person so that they were in one position all the time in the bad was another item that was often neglected skin checks were only done in one out of four nursing homes in a routine and thorough manner none of these neglected areas have any real consequences when not done there is nothing that makes the nursing home more carter to do better consistently what is the answer i can't give you a blue plate special here but i think we can figure it out and i think the baby boomers are the right ones to figure these things out and be evaluating it and presenting solutions where that generation don't forget that i think there are some possibilities like nursing homes or renting space to the bureau of vocational rehabilitation so that temporary residents who go home have an agency to help with transition and success the nursing home get some extra income because they're renting some space to space and another person who will automatically be checking on these people is in the arena and this person is that under the paycheck of the corporation i don't know if this will help the most vulnerable elderly but if the bureau of vocational rehabilitation is suggesting that the nutrition of the food being served be of higher quality for better recover a better recovery which is needed in many nursing homes then maybe the vulnerable elderly will also benefit having aides on duty who are there consistently with specific residence every day but also be an advantage that would require better pay and more training for those who get those kinds of consistent hours and hopefully with better benefits for them  handle opinion this is an entrepreneur alert the new bats word is jelly fish find ways to cook check the nutrition find out the freeze ability how do you make jelly fish chowder is it good in drought things and what else be an entrepreneur about four years ago while visiting at boston massachusetts i checked out a local marine life exhibition a large section was dedicated to jellyfish scientists believe the globe that global warming will extend the reproductive cycle of jellyfish last year and two thousand and eight the national wildlife reported that two thousand and eight will be remembered as the year of many news items regarding jellyfish this occurred around the globe in such articles that had big words such as outbreaks of blooms of jellyfish attacks of jellyfish on crippling power plants jellyfish were being sucked into the tubes that were needed for water cooling systems among other things jennifer purcell a marine scientist at western washington university has studied jellyfish for three decades she and the national science foundation both reported increase speculation that jellyfish are increasing because of human activity they are playing a critical role in the ocean's ecosystem and don't we already know that everything plays a critical role in all ecosystems they are efficient predators and eat everything from eggs to larva and the zoo oh plankton that adult fish eat in other words if they tie up with the fish  we have fewer fish to catch the warmer waters are increasing the link that the reproductive cycle of the jellyfish so they are breeding for a longer period of time and producing more baby jellyfish a main predator of jellyfish or sea turtles they have been on the decline because of human activity and the leatherback sea turtle whose main diet is jellyfish is on the endangered list so figure out how we can help the leatherback sea turtles and start working on new cookbooks get out your lab sets for nutrition studies suggest to your kids that they do a science fair project on jellyfish find other places to swim if you usually go to the beach and let's see i wonder what jellyfish ch tastes like i wonder if there could be such things as ten tico facelifts brainless finalists globs of jelly fish let me know how it goes thank you