Last week, in front of a crowd of journalists in Vyborg, Russia, Vladimir Putin sat at a desk and inaugurated a major new gas pipeline to Germany with a banal, 21st-century gesture: He clicked something on a computer screen. The Nord Stream pipeline is Russia's first direct gas link to Europe, and, by next year, it should bring enough gas to the EU to generate the energy "of 11 nuclear power plants," Putin boasted. It was a reference to German energy policy, but Angela Merkel wouldn't have smiled. When the Fukushima disaster pushed her to make the quick decision this summer to shutter ... Read More
Last Charge of the (Incandescent) Light Brigade
September 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Over the weekend, like a lot of people in Europe, I stocked up on light bulbs. The European Union has been phasing out old-fashioned incandescent bulbs for a couple of years, and on Sept. 1 a ban on 60-watt bulbs — the most popular kind — came into effect. Now, no nation in the EU manufactures the filament style of bulb, the kind Edison patented in 1878, at least not at 60-watt strength. (Weaker incandescents will be produced until next year.) It's legal to sell off stock, but the plan is to cut carbon emissions by compelling Europeans to buy more durable, less wasteful, but initially ... Read More
German Conservatives Discover Populism In Euro Crisis
August 31, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
A visceral disgust for handing out cash to "save the euro" has seized German leaders like a gag reflex in the declining weeks of summer. The idea of paying for the mounting debts of euro-zone countries like Spain and Greece has suddenly struck a number of people in Chancellor Angela Merkel's circle as insane, if not criminal. Christian Wulff, the normally quiet and uncontroversial German president, wondered out loud during a keynote speech last week whether the European Central Bank really should be starting a second round of massive debt purchase in the form of Greek and other European ... Read More
Germany Crafts Its Nuclear Power Exit Strategy
August 24, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
One surprising development this summer is the international vogue for shutting down nuclear plants. Germany led the way in the spring — startling even its own industry leaders — after the disaster at Fukushima. Since then Switzerland, Italy, Taiwan, and Japan have either started serious debates or actively resolved to forego nuclear power in the next decade or two. In Italy the decision was passive, in favor of a status quo: Voters turned out in June to reject Silvio Berlusconi's plan to revive an old nuclear program. But the sentiment, in every case, was driven by the Fukushima crisis, ... Read More
Class of Antipsychotics Ineffective in PTSD Treatment
August 10, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
A new era of psychopharmacology combined with two wars in Asia has created its own surge in treating combat stress with prescription drugs. For tough cases doctors have even prescribed antipsychotics. But all drugs are not created equal, and a new study claims that one class of antipsychotic is no better than a placebo for treating post-traumatic stress. The study underlines that there is no drug for PTSD symptoms. The researchers concentrated on one medication, Risperdal, but the results may apply to a whole class of antipsychotics that work on neurotransmission in the brain. "It ... Read More
PTSD Therapy: Restoring Honor to the Enemy
August 3, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
One side of post-traumatic stress that not many people talk about — maybe because it's so hard to separate from waging a modern war — is the way a nation and its military tend to dehumanize the opposing side. Erich Maria Remarque's novel about World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front, took dehumanization as its theme, and it still has a lot to say about war trauma even if Americans have cornered the market on clinical descriptions of PTSD. All Quiet follows a young, German soldier named Paul Bäumer through the trenches of the war in France. He's a tough-skinned narrator with no ... Read More
A Brief History of Combat Trauma
July 27, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
One side effect of NATO's 10-year war in Afghanistan is a steady rise in post-traumatic stress in Western Europe — especially Germany and Britain — for the first time since World War II. The statistics are small compared to America's, but German experts were startled by a spike in the number of registered PTSD victims in the Bundeswehr, or German military. The Germans unexpectedly found themselves not in a peaceful reconstruction project but in a war. Car bombings and other attacks against German troops flared in provinces like Kunduz between 2006 and 2009, and the number of PTSD cases ... Read More
Addressing PTSD With Surf Therapy
July 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
For the last handful of years, Britain and the United States have done quiet experiments with a new form of therapy for veterans suffering from combat stress, using a resource neither nation lacks along their coasts: surf. "Ocean therapy," or surf therapy, will surprise longtime surfers mainly because of the official-sounding name; the idea that an ocean and a surfboard can be good for the body and mind is otherwise not very new. But recent studies have tried to quantify just what happens in the water. The United Kingdom's National Health Service is still conducting trials in Cornwall, ... Read More
Can PTSD Become Hereditary?
July 13, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Last week, I wrote that extreme stress can shrink certain parts of the brain, namely the hippocampus, and that the shrinkage helps to explain flashbacks and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. But post-traumatic stress is a strange, mutable disorder with a confusing variety of symptoms and almost as many physical seats. Not everyone suffers from it. In fact, most people can survive serious trauma without crippling aftereffects. But the aftereffects in the others are real, and they may be inherited. The hippocampus is one seat of the problem, but scientists have also noticed ... Read More
PTSD Brain Studies Look at Hippocampus
July 6, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
“Hippocampal shrinkage,” of all the terrible-sounding human ailments, is a common condition among post-traumatic stress disorder patients. It means a vital part of the brain is too small. The shrinkage helps to explain flashbacks, but what hasn’t been clear until recently is whether a smaller hippocampus leaves a person predisposed to PTSD or whether shrinkage results from the stress (of, say, combat, or a rape, or a natural disaster). “The hippocampus plays a big role in storing memories, but it’s also important in recalling them,” says Ulrike Schmidt, a senior psychiatrist and ... Read More
