Apocalypse Now: Horrors of a Heart of Darkness

Paul Fischer

1.24.2015

Felicia Kornbluh

Apocalypse Now: Horrors of a Heart of Darkness

Apocalypse Now opens to destruction in the jungle of Vietnam, as Jim Morrison’s smooth definitive psychedelic rock song The End plays, a Captain Willard’s smoking head and torso are superimposed, letters are strewn on the nightstand, but sleeping now the soldier has disappeared into a haze of smoke and Cordon Bleu. The soft beating of a helicopter transitions to the fan in a squalid apartment with cheap blinds..

“Saigon. Shit.” This soldier dreams of the jungle, of returning to the pain he left behind. Director Francis Coppola is put in a dirty place between anti-war sentiment that can guarantee this film popularity, and the squelching  necessity to portray the US Army in a positive light. He does neither. But this is done brilliantly. The story is based on Heart of Darkness, and the struggle to find God in war is one that resonates with the violence and prejudice of that novel. Yet the mission is not to carry out this violence, but to stem the violence. In a special operations assignment a bloodthirsty American colonel must be terminated. The captain is accustomed to death, “but this time, it was an American, and an officer.”

The target, Kurtz, represents an American dream, and this is used to bring the film home to every American. Regardless of whether they are accomplished or flunky hippies, everyone has had a moment of desire to be this man. Watching the betrayal of the American dream is as captivating as it is intriguing.  The absurdity of an expensive flame-throwing tank being utilized against a village is emblematic of the entire war for American viewers. A bombed church shows the destruction of values too many Americans identify with themselves.

The war was presented as finished, won. Yet the soldiers cannot leave their boat. The countryside crawls with Vietcong. Even on the patrol boat, riverside attacks occur, and the soldiers are helpless, inadequate or improper firearms and little shielding give them virtually no choice but to simply speed onwards, deeper, losing a crew member in the process. Suspicion is a dominant theme in this film, a paranoia looms large. Deeper in the jungle, the remnants of a post-apocalyptic war machine lie in ruin. Yet apocalypse in a temporal or legitimate sense cannot come quickly enough for the soldiers.

By showing a soldier burning alive, as chopper machine guns mow down villagers, the film depicts the horror of war. It is hard to believe that these are the same that were just shortly before seventeen year old surfers. Captain Willard cannot imagine how Colonel Kurtz can be fighting a worse war than that already sanctioned by the US Military. Soldiers and officers alike consider the Vietnamese to be natives, with only nominal respect shown for the dead and wounded. Then the Captain executes an innocent civilian. The viewer is in shock. Good and bad are wrenched in the same way the American at home was betrayed with the announcement of My Lai and illegal incursions into Cambodia.

As the war had been a sick carnival, the soundtrack and cinematography collide corrosively. Soldiers smoke marijuana, officers drink. tripping on acid, they are welcomed to the “asshole of the world.” As they arrive to the colonel, the barbarity of the actions of the soldiers he defends with the barbarity of the land he has come to. Seeing the heart of Cambodia, corrupted like this golden child of America, who now sees violence as a genius, the viewer is brought into the heart of darkness. The apocalypse now written on Kurtz’s temple is a call to arms, but one that the viewer will never answer. The jungle and quiet crickets isolate the evil completely. We can only look on with horror.

The end of the river comes as the end of the war. Awaiting an airstrike, the Captain confronts this mad, evil genius. “It smelled like slow death” and in the center, was this man’s lair. Without a timeline the entire film, urgency suddenly becomes paramount. Complete the mission and return to the boat by 2200 hours, or everyone will become engulfed in the flames of napalm. The Colonel’s slow words betray this urgency, his psychopathic nature, already aware of the Captain’s intent to terminate his command.

“He dies when it dies,” the words of the Colonel’s brainwashed civilian photojournalist indicate the paralysis and uselessness of the situation. A prisoner now, the Captain wakes up with the head of a soldier in his lap. He breaks down into tears. The Colonel lullabies him with read poetry. With the behavioural instincts and natural barbarity of a cat, Colonel Kurtz eats raw garlic as he quotes Heart of Darkness, “I’ve seen horrors, horrors you have never seen… you have no right to judge me.” He has been gripped by the barbarity of the villagers and war alike. As the film begins, it ends, Jim Morrison sings, and the Captain mows Kurtz down with savage justice, in war paint his machete against the red of fire like the sword of Gabriel. The Colonel’s last words: “The horror. The horror.”

Lung Cancer and Smoking in the UK

Britain has half the man-made and natural radiation combined as the US has just man-made.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/4709394.stm

Females and males stopped smoking in the same rates, from 41% and 52% to 23% and 25% (respectively).

http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/prod_consump/groups/cr_common/@nre/@sta/documents/image/mort_asr_uk_lung_png.png

Lung cancer mortality rates have remained the same (55 to 45 per 100,000), and actually increased for women (17 to 30 per 100,000). 

Confounding research on Chronic Inhalation Exposure to Mainstream Cigarette Smoke Increases Lung and Nasal Tumor Incidence in Rats - Human consumption of tobacco lowers lung lesions, tumours, and other malignancies

There are a number of procedural errors in this study which will be addressed as follows. Firstly the bias or affiliation of the study, published by Oxford University, is listed as pfizer, a corporation that makes smoking substitution products, and was caught bribing academics (in unlisted affiliations) with the intent of maintaining marijuana prohibition. Furthermore, the study was conducted in New Mexico, a part of the USA with high atmospheric radiation at this time, the non-smoking control received filtered air, while smoking groups were exposed to non-filtered air. The study asserts that in mice testing, supporting data was gathered that cigarettes cause pulmonary damage. 
The mice are divided into a control group, a "low-smoking" and a "high-smoking" group. The low-smoking group was exposed to the equivalent of between 20-30 cigarettes smoked continuously for six hours without stopping. The high-smoking group was exposed to the equivalent of 60-80 cigarettes per day continuously over a period of six hours and should have been disregarded as non-evident of human consumption patterns at any time in history. For the purposes of reality, the low-smokers (which in humans is at levels classified as heavy cigarette use), will be used in this evaluation. In addition, in this study the high smoking rats were starved (food consumption 60% of non-smokers), which also indicates this data is not reliable.
Despite the conclusion and abstract's assertion, the data is actually quite positive for regular smokers. Incidence rates of neoplasia in the nasal cavity was lower for smokers than non-smokers.  The survival rate for smoking rats is higher by a significant amount, from 752 days to 779 days. Lung weight of smoking rats was the same as non-smoking rats (an increase was seen by 60 cigarettes per day). Ciliated cuboidal cell metaplasia (mucus in the lungs, a deformity frequently observed with aging that has not been definitively connected to cancer, except in epidermal cases, and then only correlatively) was noted in a small amount in smoking rats. Squamous metaplasia was not observed in smoking rats, but were noted in the 60 cigarette per day group. Keratinizing squamous cysts were not observed in smoking rats, but were noted rarely at 60 cigarettes per day. There were no consistent trends in lung lesions, with sometimes lowest levels in the group smoking 60 cigarettes per day (eg. hyperplasia), sometimes lower in smoking rats (eg. malignant neoplasia) and other times in non-smoking (eg. benign neoplasia), though it should be noted this occurred in non-significant levels in all rats. There is no increase in nasal neoplasia for smoking rats. 
After all this, the study asserts that cigarettes are the cause of problems, but admits, "The reason this study produced significant increases in lung tumors in rats while previous studies did not cannot be determined with certainty." It is fairly clear that while, previous studies have linked regular human consumption to health benefits, the concept of gassing rats with 60 cigarettes per day had simply not occurred. See previous articles for data on cancer mortality rates in the USA and the probability that tobacco use in humans has numerous health benefits. While there is not data here on radiation exposure necessary to lower white blood cells in a rat, it is safe to assume these fall along similar lines with humans, and exposure to an unmeasured number of mrems of radiation was a significant factor in the development of malignancies in the rats. It is possible that filtered air might make a difference in mucous accumulation in rats as well as humans, though this is not definitively connected with cancer or malignant symptoms.

Mauderly, J. L., Gigliotti, A. P., Barr, E. B., Bechtold, W. E., Belinsky, S. A., Hahn, F. F., Hobbs, C. A., March, T. H., Seilkop, S. K., and Finch, G. L. (2004). Chronic inhalation exposure to mainstream cigarette smoke increases lung and nasal tumor incidence in rats. Toxicol. Sci. 81, 280–292. 

Increasing cancer mortality rates despite technological advances and drastically lower tobacco use in the USA: 1950-2015, 65 years of cancer theory down the drain?

There is no explanation for why cancer mortality rates have not gone down (and have gone up) despite medical advances as the entire nation has stopped smoking. Investment in screening and treatment can ensure near 100% recovery, yet all budgeting goes to cheaper "prevention" which does not work. Since the US cracked down on tobacco use, with success in white males, the overall cancer mortality rate has increased from 184 per 100,000 in 1950-69 to 209 per 100,000 from 1970-1994. Today that rate holds steady at 203 per 100,000. In white females and in other demographics cancer mortality rates have been steady or changed in negligible amounts, but these demographics have had increasing tobacco use rates. Cancer is a painful and unnatural death that can often involve long battles with the disease and should be combatted with all resources available, in treatment and in prevention. While lung cancer rates have fallen, technological advances have allowed earlier detection of lung cancer, which at stages 0 and 1 is among the least deadly forms of cancer, but at later stages is among the most deadly. Without adjustments for technological advances in medical care, no positive statement can be made in regards to success or negative results from anti-smoking campaigns. Meta-data from overall cancer mortality does show that the resources in the war on cancer have been squandered and had an overall detrimental effect on the national health of the country, and some policy change is necessitated, although it must be noted there is no current biological explanation for the lower cancer rates in countries and places with higher tobacco use, these have been correlative not causal links. Atmospheric nuclear weapons testing does match up with the population data, it was ended by the 1970's with the Limited Test Ban, and in the continental USA in 1962, and there is solid science that shows inhaled radioactive particles cause lung and other cancer for 30-60 years after detonation.


See cancer rates in USA: http://ratecalc.cancer.gov/ratecalc/archivedatlas/pdfs/maps/acc-maps.pdf

It can also be noted that the demographic distribution provided in the atlas is vitally important as the female population increased smoking rates slightly and saw a slight decrease in cancer mortality as well as an increase in life expectancy commensurate with the increases seen before anti-smoking campaigns.



Please note that the modern terminology for measuring radiation exposure is the gray which measures radioactive exposure per kilogram of tissue, as opposed to the rad which was formerly used and is an absolute amount of radioactive exposure. In humans, one gray is equal to about 100 rads.

Study Estimating Thyroid Doses of I-131 Received by Americans From Nevada Atmospheric Nuclear Bomb Test, National Cancer Institute (1997)
Annual dose in rads

It can be seen above that the white and light blue areas of dangerous levels of radiation (previously believed that 2 rads annually were safe, now it is known that virtually no level of radioactive exposure is safe) matches smoking data exactly (as shown below, and later in the article). Cancer mortality on the other hand, has changed drastically as far as geographic distribution over the years. According to research done on rats, lung cancer can be induced in significant amounts with any amount of radiation, and differences between groups exposed to 1 gray of radiation (100 rads) can be seen to be at least 13 times greater than in control groups (LaFuma et al.).

According to mapping of fallout from nuclear weapon's testing the majority of the southern states in the USA are exposed annually to an average of over 1 rad of radiation, from fallout alone, exposure to this level of radiation (lifetime of around 100 rads) radiation results in a, "decrease in the circulating white cells and platelets." This results in a statistically significant increase in cancer in keeping with the findings shown on this atlas as, "The Biologic Effects of Ionizing Radiation report (BEIR V) states that if 100,000 people are exposed to 10 rads of radiation, then there will be 800 additional cancers in that population above the normally occurring amount."   Source: http://cancernews.com/data/Article/264.asp#sthash.qEIXcULD.dpuf

We can expect cancer rates to drop significantly as the average radiation exposure in the USA has dropped since this map was made in 1997, the current average annual exposure is still .6 rads per year, enough that there are a significant number of people with lifetime exposure exceeding 100 rads.
Source: http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/understand/calculate.html

Finally, a primary concern of smoking (though the claim asserted by anti-smoking campaigns is that it increases all forms of cancer), has been lung cancer. This disease takes on average 20-30 years to develop (Howlander et al.), and while cigarette consumption had reached 80% and 90% of its peak by 1945 and 1950, respectively, lung cancer peaked in 1991 and 80% and 90% were reached in 1973 and 1980, respectively. Most importantly there are no spikes and dips as with tobacco use rates and consumption, but lung cancer is a smooth increase and decline, in direct communication with radioactive exposure and pursuant half-lives. Lung cancer mortality has not decreased in kind with decreasing smoking rates however, and in fact only plateaus with the ban of nuclear weapon's testing and nuclear power plant construction. While cigarette smoking has dropped by over half since 1975, lung cancer mortality has gone from 75 to 65 per 100,000, an insignificant change which after adjusting for atmospheric radiation actually indicates that smoking cessation has cost many lives.  See image below for lung cancer mortality in the USA.

A doctor I interviewed on this matter mentioned to me that it was a possibility that infectious diseases were accountable for the increase in cancer mortality, but that they did not know for certain, not having looked these statistics up. I have acquired the infectious disease mortality rate, and it has not changed since anti-smoking campaigns went into effect and in fact increased which means that the potential positive effects of tobacco may be even greater than suggested by simply looking at other raw data, possibly due to lost funding diverted to misguided anti-smoking campaigns. In any case the veracity of the failure of anti-smoking campaigns cannot be questioned in the war on cancer, and is a monumental public policy choice that must be reverted immediately.

Works and Sources Cited:

Centers For Disease Control

Howlader N, Noone AM, Krapcho M, Garshell J, Miller D, Altekruse SF, Kosary CL, Yu M, Ruhl J, Tatalovich Z, Mariotto A, Lewis DR, Chen HS, Feuer EJ, Cronin KA (eds). SEER Cancer Statistics Review, 1975–2011, National Cancer Institute. Bethesda, MD, http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2011/browse_csr.php?sectionSEL=15&pageSEL=sect_15_table.19.html, based on November 2013 SEER data submission, posted to the SEER Web site, April 2014.

LAFUMA, J., CHMELEVSKY, D., CHAMEAUD, J., MORIN, M., MASSE, R., AND KELLERER, A. M. Lung Carcinomas in Sprague-Dawley Rats after Exposure to Low Doses of y Rays. Radiat. Res. 118, 230-245 (1989).

National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health

Letter to Patrick Kennedy regarding conversation at Smart Approaches to Marijuana

Hello,
Regarding our conversation at the SAM conference this summer: I was lucky to have qualified my statements with illegal and decriminalized marijuana in relation to my research. I did indicate that further results from fully legalized areas and places of further research were being waited on. Since the conversation, the confounding factor of the toxoplasmosis gondii being extant in many marijuana smokers in places with home grow operations has forced a reconsideration of the numbers and statistics available. This parasite is responsible for the perceived negative impact of marijuana in countries that fail to complete proper legal research in keeping with UN treaties in effect currently. In Canadian and other studies have conclusively shown with virtually no room for error that marijuana use is associated with a 5 point increase in IQ in current smokers and 3.5 points in former smokers. This translates to literally trillions of dollars in lost intellectual property as can be seen in Germany where marijuana use among 18-24 year olds has quadrupled to nearly 28% while the economy has ballooned to nearly the same size as the United States while alcohol use has dropped dramatically. In MRI and SPECT scans the positive effect of marijuana when disambiguated from those infected with the common parasite, along with pesticides or other factors including income, has been concretely shown in Dallas and other university academic studies. There is some research to indicate that a compound from marijuana may mitigate the effects of alcohol, but this research is still in its infancy, at this time in the 45% of America that drinks, it can be associated with a drop in IQ of several points in comparison to a non-user, and many points in comparison with marijuana users. For the time being, this is a national security crisis in which every year 150,000 people are needlessly dying from alcohol related deaths. To put this in perspective, this is more than all military deaths in all American wars since the Korean war combined, every year. Furthermore we are unable to compete on a global scale as other nations, including Germany, with smaller populations are able to perform on a higher level than the United States. An increase of 5 points in IQ translates to 100's of % more geniuses and double the number of highly gifted in the population. We have made significant progress with industrial hemp legalization, which increases CO2 consumption by 4X that of other plants and can potentially offset global warming while increasing our energy independence. It is time to take these gains to other fields as well.
Legally, prosecution of marijuana is unconstitutional and the way it is currently implemented it is in violation of multiple UN treaties. According to our constitution, the supremacy clause in article 6 section ii only takes effect under certain circumstances. The most significant example of this was in the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln was forced to issue an executive order freeing the slaves before legislation from the federal government could make slavery illegal. Unless it could be argued that marijuana prohibition is more important to national security than 600,000 legal racially defined slaves, this clause should not override pre-existing and later passed state laws in this matter. This has been defended and ratified in multiple state supreme courts in the case of marijuana. Furthermore, in the federal statutes there is a contradiction in the case of marijuana, making prosecution unfeasible and illegal by federal organizations until resolved by a Federal court in an appeal to repeal. The charter of the FDA in the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act of 1938 specifically addresses marijuana and retains classification from the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 which classifies marijuana and alcohol together as dangerous drugs with a high potential for poisoning and to be regulated by the FDA. This process was ironically pressed by conservatives in the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid long ago, and it is probable that with a federal court's review of such an appeal that the older law would be amended with the exception of marijuana, in any case until this happens government agencies would be very amiss to fail to follow medical advise.
Finally, marijuana has been proven to stop cancer. This is the leading cause of death in the United States and research has shown that molecules in marijuana directly harm cancerous human cells while avoiding healthy ones. My own grandfather passed away last summer after living what the AMA has recommended as a healthy lifestyle for most of his life. It is time for the United States to embrace marijuana and tell the alcohol industry to take some time on the back burner until that 200 billion dollar sore on the American economy has been developed into a beneficial product.
Sincerely,
Paul Andreas Fischer

Letter to Sven Andreasson on his longitudinal study of Swedish conscripts and confounding data

Hello,
I have done some research in nuclear medicine on this subject and there are a number of confounding factors that I believe you have left criminally unaccounted for in your research. To begin with, in states with legal marijuana, such as Canada, use of 5 grams and less per day is associated with an increase in IQ of 5 points. My own research in nuclear medicine looking at the blood flow of the brain supports this, after half a pack of marijuana cigarettes over 6 months most of my brain was normal, with one area with increased activity. According to MRI studies there has been little change in the brain observed, though conclusive evidence exists that the size of the amygdala increases and some indication that the part of the brain associated with addictive behaviour becomes less prominent, here a benefit, though this was not substantial enough to say for certain. Ultimately, biologically what is claimed about marijuana in this longitudinal study is in conflict with studies in Canada that had a high level of accuracy that followed users from 12-17 to 25 and later points in life as well as the most recent SPECT and MRI imaging studies.
The most important confounding piece of evidence does not rely on new technology, or different methodology, however, and it is quite sad that this was not accounted for in this expensive research costing the Swedish government severely. According to the CDC the majority (between 65% and 86%) of schizophrenia can be attributed to the parasite toxoplasmosis gondii. To suggest that something without a logical biological explanation is responsible when it is quite simple how the microbe targets brain and muscle tissue to lay its eggs and the body's protective cysts disrupt bloodflow is quite unethical. The explanation for how it goes in uneven amounts in marijuana users is quite simple, a cat defecating into a potted marijuana plant will contaminate the product for up to a year later.
I do not know the statistics in Sweden off the top of my head, but in the United States 22.5% of people are infected in their lifetime with t. gondii. Of these 25% (5-6% of the general population) get flu-like fatigue and fever, other psychotic symptoms for one week to as long as a month or three months. 6% will have latent symptoms, lasting longer than 6 months and will be diagnosed as schizophrenic. This is the majority of the 1.2% diagnosed with schizophrenia in the USA. It is dose dependant, and getting exposed to the parasite later in life or going thru a period of immunosuppression will cause a recurrence of behaviour.
Please provide an addendum to your research as I have done mine (this came up only as I was publishing, at first I thought to say there were some mild changes, nothing significant from marijuana, luckily I had prefaced my research by emphasizing that marijuana was decriminalized or illegal and the results may be different in a legal setting, as they indeed turned out to be) providing for these confounding factors.
Thank you,
Paul Fischer

Societal Impacts of Alcohol and Marijuana, Revisited: the German Model.

    In Germany, over the last 25 years the consumption of alcohol has fallen by a third. Legal marijuana use rates (in the Netherlands or abroad, or in decriminalized settings at home) have increased in 18-24 year olds from 7% to 28% during this time period. The economic growth has been enormous, suggesting a link between the two, in order to confirm it would be advantageous to compare the numbers with those outlined in the data from my previous paper on societal impacts of alcohol with a low to moderate impact on the national IQ. In this paper it was demonstrated that while the first 5-10 points of IQ decrease would remove 80% of the geniuses or highly gifted workers from a community, more than this had limited effects until the damage reaches 20 or 30 points. This is because the population begins to move along a straight line on the bell curve, where the initial damage from lead, or once the pollutants in the environment are removed, from illegal or decriminalized marijuana (it should be noted that in a legalized setting, marijuana has been associated with a societal increase of 5 points in IQ, while contaminants or parasites in illegal or decriminalized pot have been connected to a decrease) or alcohol, moves along a steep exponentially defined curve.
    Lead was removed around the same time as this trend in drinking occurred. According to the DAX, the Deutsch (German) stock market, the value has risen by over 4 or 5 times since then, as seen in this graph (1989-2014) from under 2000 points to over 9000 points. The GDP, which is predicted by the DAX, a list of around 30 of the heavyweights in the German economy, to a great extent, also has increased in this period from under 1500 to nearly 4000. These are both in keeping with the increase indicated by an increase in geniuses of 500% in an intellectual property dominant economy (such as Germany or America) as found in most of the modern world.
DAX index of German listed companies:

German GDP from 1970-2014

     While this can seen initially as true and true and unrelated, the fact that previous research in SPECT scan imaging has made the connection between responsible drinking and low cognitive functioning concrete in the last few years seems to indicate that this link is more causal than correlative. This can be seen in previous research into light and moderate alcohol or marijuana use this year. That the hypothetical model outlined in the research into societal impacts of these substances fits exactly to the statistics gathered in the real world is encouraging as well, and demonstrates that this is a legitimate and probably accurate method and application of the scientific information available.

http://platophilosphy.blogspot.com/2014/07/effects-of-regular-or-light-marijuana.html
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/germany-stock-market.png?s=dax&d1=19890101
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/germany-gdp.png?s=wgdpgerm&d1=19870101
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/140619/germany-non-alcoholic-beer
http://platophilosphy.blogspot.com/2014/09/societal-impact-of-currently-under.html