Danny DeVito used to smoke marijuana with Michael Douglas.
The 67-year-old actor became great friends with the ‘Wall Street’ star in 1966 after bonding over their mutual love of the drug while they were both trying to make it big in Hollywood.
He said: ‘We met at a playwrights’ conference in Connecticut in 1966. Michael was out there for the summer and was had a really big connection.
‘(We bonded over) pot! I was a hippy and so was he, and we were the only ones. so we’d just hang out together and get ripped.’
Danny – who voices Dr Seuss’ loveable furry title character in animated adaptation ‘The Lorax’ – has come a long way since his hippy days and is now an active environmentalist, which he states as a major reason for accepting the title role.
He explained to The Times newspaper: ‘It’s a message of sustainability that’s very strong. And while the rainforests are still being decimated, it’s a good dialogue to open up with your kids.
‘It’s like the Lorax says, put something back into the Earth. And make somebody smile!’
‘The Lorax’ also features Zac Efron and Taylor Swift and is released at the end of July.
“I’m so glad trouble don’t last always!” Shortly before 3:30 p.m. Sunday, a resonant female voice began singing the lyrics of the spiritual, and a few other voices joined in. The singer, Dianne Jackson, hadn’t planned on leading a hymn at the Legacy Museum, but when a curator asked, she obliged.
“I knew the tune. I just didn’t know the words,” Jackson laughed. But she made it through easily with the help of a smartphone, to the appreciation of those who were gathered to see the museum’s new exhibit. The exhibit, titled “trouble Don’t Las’ always,” outlines the lives of African-Americans in Central Virginia from the time of the Civil War toward the turn of the century. Exhibit curator Dianne Swann-Wright said the project was in the works for just about a year before it opened to the public. “I think we have a very good snapshot,” she said, of what life would have been like at the time. The exhibit features artifacts from books to farming implements to Swann-Wright’s favorite part of the exhibit — a hand-stitched doll with a clay head. outside of the seams on the doll, she said, each stitch represents something. The doll’s back is crisscrossed with dozens of stitches, denoting scars. “She really embodied the African- American experience that she knew,” Swann-Wright said. Richard Fowler, of Lynchburg, said he was pleased with the exhibit, partly because he recognized some of the artifacts, down to ice tongs and a corn shovel, from his own childhood. “A lot of it brings back memories to people,” he said, adding he appreciated the history it teaches from a perspective some don’t understand. “It makes you think,” he said. Matt Godsoe, 17, who serves on Lynchburg’s Mayor’s Youth Council, is training to be a volunteer docent at the museum. He said the exhibit is important because it gives a personal view of the time period that’s not just focused on the battlefield. “They’re really just talking about their lives,” he said. “It really gives you a different view.” The exhibit was set to open at the end of June, before the derecho took out power to the museum, along with much of the city. The museum plans to keep this display up for two years.
25 June 2012 Last updated at 00:52 Share this page By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter, TEDGlobal, Edinburgh mr Little wants to create a database of voices to help diagnose Parkinson's
Parkinson's is a devastating disease for those living with the condition and currently there is no cure.
Diagnosis can also be slow as there are no blood tests to detect it.
But now mathematician Max Little has come up with a non-invasive, cheap test which he hopes will offer a quick new way to identify the disease.
He will be kicking off the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh calling for volunteers to contribute to a huge voice database.
Mr Little has discovered that Parkinson's symptoms can be detected by computer algorithms that analyse voice recordings.
In a blind test of voices, the system was able to spot those with Parkinson's with an accuracy of 86%.
Mr Little was recently made a TED Fellow.
The non-profit organisation behind the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference creates 40 such fellowships each year. the programme aims to target innovators under the age of 40 and offers them free entry to conferences and other events.
Intel founder
Mr Little became interested in understanding voice from a mathematical perspective while he was studying for a PhD at Oxford University in 2003.
"I was looking for a practical application and I found it in analysing voice disorders, for example when someone's voice has broken down from over-use or after surgery on vocal cords," he told the BBC.
"I didn't occur to me at the time that people with Parkinson's and other movement disorders could also be detected by the system."
But a chance meeting with someone from Intel changed that.
Andy Grove, one of Intel's founders and ex-chief executive, was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2000 and has since pledged millions of his personal fortune to fund research into the disease.
This includes funds for the chipmaker to develop its own projects to monitor the symptoms.
"They were using devices that detect breakdown in dexterity and accelerometers but they had also recorded the voices of around 50 patients with Parkinson's," explained mr Little.
The recordings were detailed as the team had recorded the patients once a week over a six-month period.
"They had an enormous amount of data but they didn't know what to do with it. So we wondered whether my technique would work," said mr Little.
"They set me a blind test to see if I can tell them which ones had Parkinson's. I had 86% accuracy using the techniques I'd developed."
Voice tremors the technology works partly by tracking the motion of vocal cords
The system "learns" to detect differences in voice patterns.
"this is machine learning. we are collecting a large amount of data when we know if someone has the disease or not and we train the database to learn how to separate out the true symptoms of the disease from other factors."
Voice patterns can change for a number of reasons, including throat surgery, heavy smoking and even just having a common cold.
But mr Little believes the system will be smart enough to tell the difference.
"it is not as simple as listening for a tremor in the voice. That tremor has to be in context of other measures and the system has to take in other factors such as if someone has a cold."
Now he is looking for volunteers to contribute to a vast voice bank to help the database to learn even more.
He is aiming to record up to 10,000 voices and has set up local numbers in 10 countries around the world. in the UK the number is 01865 521168.
Anyone can call and they need to state whether or not they have been diagnosed with the disease.
There is also a website where people can find out more about the project.
"the more people that call in, the better," he said.
"If we get 10,000 recordings we'd be very happy but even a tenth of that would be great,"
Clinical trials
He hopes that the technology will be available to doctors within the next two years.
"We're not intending this to be a replacement for clinical experts, rather, it can very cheaply help identify people who might be at high risk of having the disease and for those with the disease, it can augment treatment decisions by providing data about how symptoms are changing in-between check-ups with the neurologist," he said.
There could also be a role for the technology in clinical trials.
"the technology makes it easy for people to report their progress whilst on a new drug, for example," he added.
"If you can catch the disease early it will make a huge difference to care costs. it could become a key technology in reducing the burden of care on the NHS."
JACKI LYDEN, host: this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I’m Jacki Lyden. Michel Martin is away. Coming up, we remember Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan activist. her efforts to link poverty and environmental degradation made one of Africa’s made her one of Africa’s most important reformed voices.
But first, we go behind closed doors, as we often do on Mondays, where we discuss issues people usually keep private and plastic surgery is something that many patients don’t want to talk about, especially if that surgery is illegal, dangerous or invites fatality.
Today, we’ll hear about a troubling trend called pumping, a procedure sought out by people who sometimes want a gender change, other times those who want more curves, but who can’t afford to visit a licensed, board certified plastic surgeon.
Pumpers often use industrial grade silicone or loose silicone or other substances for the effect, only the damage they cause is permanent.
Joining us now is Laura Rena Murray, who reported this story for the New York Times, and we also have with us Dr. Malcolm Roth. Starting today, he’s the new president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. And today, that organization launches a new public safety campaign about the danger of unsafe cosmetic procedures.
Welcome to you both. thanks for being with us.
LAURA RENA MURRAY: thank you for having me.
MALCOLM ROTH: thank you for having us.
LYDEN: Dr. Roth, let’s start with you. I know that you’re concerned and that the professional society, the ASPS, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, is concerned about illegal procedures. Tell me what’s going on and why you issued the warning.
ROTH: well, Jacki, as you’ve already pointed out, this deadly trend is increasing in popularity. Pumping, in particular, which is the trendy word for illegally injecting silicone into the body to alter somebody’s appearance, we’re hearing more and more about complications, in some case, as minor as an infection, but unfortunately, we’re also hearing about deaths. two extreme and serious examples come to mind. there was a woman last year who died following a buttock injection done in a Philadelphia hotel room and not long after that, another woman died from a similar procedure in a Las Vegas warehouse.
So the American Society of Plastic Surgeons is launching this patient safety campaign to remind patients of the important of selecting the most qualified doctor they can, a board certified plastic surgeon.
LYDEN: Laura Rena Murray, you bring us a riveting and tragic story from the New York Times. You saw how someone in the transgender community who had this illegal pumping procedure done. Introduce us, if you would please, to Zaira Quispe and what happened to her.
MURRAY: when I met Zaira, it was right before she ended up going into the hospital for an extended period of time. she is currently 42 and started pumping when she was in her early 20s and pumped throughout her 20s.
Ten years after she began the procedures is when she started noticing that the silicone was turning hard and then eventually began to migrate down her legs. she had had her injections primarily in her buttocks and hips and she first started doing the injections because she wanted to fully transition, but did not have the money to afford a licensed surgeon.
LYDEN: So this was one way that she saw of making, basically – cosmetically, at least – what amounts to a sex change?
MURRAY: yes.
LYDEN: Dr. Roth, what is a pumping party? Could you describe that for us?
ROTH: What happens, typically, is a group of patients get together, they pool their money and often, for just a few hundred dollars, they meet with somebody in typically not a physician’s office, but something like a hotel room and they have injections of industrial grade silicone to enhance, perhaps, their breasts, their lips, their buttocks.
Aside from being illegal, it’s clearly unsafe and these practitioners are not licensed physicians and they’re certainly not board certified plastic surgeons.
LYDEN: Laura, take us back to the story of Zaira Quispe. we had invited her to be part of our discussion today, but she was too ill. Who supplied her with this substance and what was it?
MURRAY: well, the problem with pumping is that you never actually know what’s being injected and each pumper can promise you that they are injecting medical grade silicone, but in fact it is industrial grade silicone or worse. sometimes, what someone is injecting is industrial grade silicone mixed with baby oil or Crisco to try and loosen it up and make it stretch a little bit longer. Zaira was injected by three different people. And the last series of injections that she received, one of her surgeons told her, ended up being industrial grade silicone, and that was…
LYDEN: when you say surgeon, you mean someone she saw afterward.
MURRAY: yes. when she started having problems she ended up going to see a provider who then referred her to a plastic surgeon at Beth Israel and then she was told that (unintelligible) had been injected was not at all what she thought it was.
LYDEN: And when you met her what were her symptoms? And not to be ghoulish about it, but how did she look?
MURRAY: well, she appeared fine from – I mean you can’t really tell from an outward appearance, if somebody is sort of walking around with poison traveling through their body. But she had a lot of health problems as a result of it. she wasn’t able to sit for very long periods of time because it caused her too much pain. Likewise, she also had difficulty sleeping because she had to keep maneuvering. she couldn’t walk for very long stretches because she would get dizzy quickly. So those are some of the things that plague her on a daily basis. And she was just chronically in pain from the waist down.
LYDEN: Dr. Roth, surely this kind of injection of these substances, whether it’s industrial silicone or something else, what is happening? it must cause everything from disease to disfigurement.
ROTH: Sure. well, first off, I think it’s important to point out that plastic surgeons typically do not inject silicone, they inject other things. we have many safer, better options at our disposal. But silicone, we know, when it’s injected in such a way can cause patients who have these unfortunate results and complications, hardening of the tissue, chronic pain and tenderness, draining infections. They’re embarrassed. they often don’t have the money to seek out solutions. And often, if they do seek out the solutions and finally do go to a plastic surgeon, the plastic surgeon is often not able to give them a reasonable solution to their problems and they can never get back to normalcy.
LYDEN: If you’re just joining us, this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I’m Jacki Lyden. Today in our behind Close Doors conversation, we’re talking about illegal silicone injections, a process called pumping. And we’re speaking with Dr. Malcolm Roth, the new president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. And we also have with us, Laura Rena Murray, who recently covered this issue for The New York Times.
Laura, you actually interviewed someone who performed these procedures a pumper and she that she can make $10,000 a week doing this. Tell us a little bit more about her.
MURRAY: So the pumper that I interviewed for the piece was a member of the transgender community herself. she was a transgendered woman and she considered what she was doing to be a necessity for her community, which often didn’t have access to the money that it cost to do these surgical procedures.
LYDEN: when you talked to the pumper, did you talk to her about procedures that had gone awry and the health problems that people face later?
I asked her if she knew of any of her patients – for lack of a better word if anyone had had any problems after being injected by her, and she claimed that that was not the case. However, I interviewed dozens of transgendered women in New York for this article, and one of the first women that I interviewed, had been injected by this pumper and at that point, in her early 30s, was already experiencing some problems.
MURRAY: Typically, if there isn’t an adverse effect right away – unfortunately sometimes it can result in an immediate death – then the problem will come 10 years down the line and you just have to wait and see.
Dr. Roth, when you hear something like that, what are you thinking? And where do we see this the most in the country?
ROTH: well, I practiced in Brooklyn, until recently, for 23 years – so it’s clearly a trend, it’s been out there for many years and sometimes the complications don’t occur ’til later. But because it’s illegal, and the patients themselves don’t really want to blow the whistle, so it’s really difficult to track where it’s getting done and who’s doing it.
I think that we have to applaud patients like Zaira, who has the courage to stand out there and have her story told to other patients in order to try to help them avoid making that mistake and thinking that this is a reasonable way to get the aesthetic enhancement that they might like.
LYDEN: Mm-hmm. when something goes wrong in a medical procedure with a board-certified physician, there’s always, of course, recourse. But for these people, these pumpers, who operate secretly and then disappear, are there any consequences if they are caught and how many are?
ROTH: well, legally, those involved do face criminal charges if they are caught, because it is against the law. But finding out who they are and where they are has been, I think, extremely difficult.
LYDEN: Hmm. Laura, how many procedures, over the course of the last 10 or 15 years, did Zaira say that she’d had, and how much that she spent in total?
MURRAY: So she ended up spending close to $70,000 over the course of a decade, I think. usually spending a couple thousand each time to have a liter, or a cup or two, injected into her hips and buttocks.
LYDEN: You know, Dr. Roth, I can’t imagine for a second and I suppose I share that with a lot of people listening to this the thought that someone would inject something I wasn’t absolutely certain of into my body. And I don’t know that I’d be very happy with it even if I did think I knew what it was. why are there so many people out there willing to do this? What is it say about us as a society?
ROTH: well, I think that the public needs to be better informed. And that’s why we are launching this safety campaign. Our message is very clear and very easy to remember: do your homework. Consumers need to investigate their medical provider’s background. Beware of the white coat confusion. Anyone can wear a white coat and claim to be a plastic surgeon, but not everyone is a plastic surgeon and not everybody is qualified to perform cosmetic procedures.
I think the important thing to keep in mind when you’re looking for a plastic surgeon, is if you do go to a member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, in addition to having all of the training – six years of surgical training, passing written and oral examinations, continuing medical education requirements, operating in safe accredited facilities – all of our members also have to adhere to a strict code of ethics. And we joke, but it is no joke, we answer to a higher authority. And so when a patient comes in looking for an improvement in their appearance, the risk factors specific to that procedure in that particular patient need to be carefully considered.
And what are the options? it very well be that the patient has refused what they would like, maybe offered something else that might be safer, but having all of the tools in the toolbox and a safe environment in safe hands is the best formula for success.
LYDEN: well, Dr. Malcolm Roth, new president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, he begins his position today, thank you.
ROTH: thank you for doing this piece. I think it’s critical we get the word out.
LYDEN: Dr. Roth joined us from Denver, Colorado. And Laura Rena Murray, who recently covered this story for The New York Times, and joined us from San Francisco’s KQED, thank you very much, Laura.
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<a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/09/26/140807180/the-illicit-perilous-world-of-pumpingtag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.npr.org/2011/09/26/140807180/the-illicit-perilous-world-of-pumpingMon, 26 Sep 2011 16:09:25 GMT 00:00″>The Illicit, Perilous World Of ‘Pumping’
