Bipolar and ADHD: Boys and Breasts

It has always been the worst nightmare for any Child Psychiatrist to be faced with a schizophrenic boy. It is such a serious condition that there is no choice but to treat with an antipsychotic. However, the risk of breast enlargement (gynaecomastia) is extremely high and for boys, this is particularly unpleasant.

Fortunately incidence of true schizophrenia in early adolescent boys is rare and it is this group that are most vulnerable to this particular side effect: gynaecomastia secondary to raised prolactin (a hormone for milk production) level.

As newer antipsychotics came on to the market, claims were made that traditional side effects such as Parkinsonic symptoms and breast enlargement were rarer or non existent. Unfortunately they were only claims.

Then the situation became more serious when antipsychotics began to be liberally used for other fashionable child psychiatric conditions.

First came ADHD. The use of stimulants benefits mainly teachers during school hours. Parents and doctors soon find a quick fix in antipsychotics, and for good measure the newer ones, believing that they have fewer side effects.

This was soon followed by Bipolar Disorder. Many believe that Dr Biederman, Child Psychiatrist from Harvard, single-handedly led the movement to diagnose Bipolar Disorder in children, many as young as 2 or 3 years old. This recent trend meant that suddenly there is justification for the use of antipsychotics in very young children.

Biederman, as I reported in a previous blog, is being paid by pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the very same antipsychotics that are now causing concern, major concern.

New York Times headline:

Use of Antipsychotics in Children Is Criticized
New York Times: November 18, 2008
“Powerful antipsychotic medicines are being used far too cavalierly in children, and federal drug regulators must do more to warn doctors of their substantial risks, a panel of federal drug experts said Tuesday.

"The meeting on Tuesday was scheduled to be a routine review of the pediatric safety of Risperdal and Zyprexa(Olanzapine), popular antipsychotic medicines made, respectively, by Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly & Company. Food and Drug Administration officials proposed that the committee endorse the agency’s routine monitoring of the safety of the medicines in children and support its previous efforts to highlight the drugs’ risks.

“More than 389,000 children and teenagers were treated last year with Risperdal (Risperidone), one of five popular medicines known as atypical antipsychotics. Of those patients, 240,000 were 12 or younger, according to data presented to the committee. In many cases, the drug was prescribed to treat attention deficit disorders.

“But Risperdal is not approved for attention deficit problems, and its risks — which include substantial weight gain, metabolic disorders and muscular tics that can be permanent — are too profound to justify its use in treating such disorders, panel members said.”

“Prescription rates for the drugs have increased more than fivefold for children in the past decade and a half, and doctors now use the drugs to settle outbursts and aggression in children with a wide variety of diagnoses, even though children are especially susceptible to their side effects.” The New York Times article continued and surprise surprise, the panel in the end rejected the FDA’s proposal.
The panel members spoke at length about Risperdal, but their concerns applied to the other medicines in its class, including Zyprexa, Seroquel, Abilify and Geodon.

The Problems:
In the United States:
“From 1993 through the first three months of 2008, 1,207 children given Risperdal suffered serious problems, including 31 who died. Among the deaths was a 9-year-old with attention deficit problems who suffered a fatal stroke 12 days after starting therapy with Risperdal.”

Boys and Breasts: The WSJ detailed concerns by doctors on breast enlargements in children especially boys at the same FDA meeting and reported that six teenage boys are seeking compensation from Johnson and Johnson. Two of the boys required mastectomies (surgical removal of the enlarged breasts).

Many great poets, musicians, writers and artists are believed to have suffered from Bipolar Disorder but were unrecognised. Imagine them being diagnosed as such in their formative years and treated with antipsychotics. Would they still have become great poets, musicians, writers and artists?
The question to ponder is: do children diagnosed with ADHD and Bipolar fare better with antipsychotics? What if the diagnosis is suspect in the first place?

When you look closer, many children present with behaviour problems. Parents find it easier to accept the diagnosis shared with famous people: Bipolar Disorder. Instead of using a mood stabiliser, an antipsychotic is used as a behaviour controlling drug. For good measure the drug is recommended by a famous Child Psychiatrist. That he is paid by the drug company is really neither here nor there.

So perhaps there really is no epidemic in Bipolar Disorder in children, nor indeed ADHD.

Related Posts:

Lithium Bipolar and Nanking
Bipolar Disorder in Children
Bipolar and ADHD: Boys and Breasts
Statins-Harvard-Roosevelt
Bipolar Disorder: Biederman Einstein God.
Antipsychotics: Really?
Grand Round: Medicine and War
Bipolar Disorder: Lithium-The Aspirin of Psychiatry?

Statins-Harvard-Roosevelt

News Updates: Time Magazine

The New York Times Headline:Harvard Medical School in Ethics Quandary
By DUFF WILSON, March 2, 2009
“In a first-year pharmacology class at Harvard Medical School, Matt Zerden grew wary as the professor promoted the benefits of cholesterol drugs and seemed to belittle a student who asked about side effects.”

Very brave student indeed. And it did not stop him from finding out more:

“Mr. Zerden later discovered something by searching online that he began sharing with his classmates. The professor was not only a full-time member of the Harvard Medical faculty, but a paid consultant to 10 drug companies, including five makers of cholesterol treatments.”

Did he have anything to do with our Statin Police as featured in NHS Blog Doctor?

“I felt really violated,” Mr. Zerden, now a fourth-year student, recently recalled. “Here we have 160 open minds trying to learn the basics in a protected space, and the information he was giving wasn’t as pure as I think it should be.”

He is lucky he is still there!

“Mr. Zerden’s minor stir four years ago has lately grown into a full-blown movement by more than 200 Harvard Medical School students and sympathetic faculty, intent on exposing and curtailing the industry influence in their classrooms and laboratories, as well as in Harvard’s 17 affiliated teaching hospitals and institutes.
They say they are concerned that the same money that helped build the school’s world-class status may in fact be hurting its reputation and affecting its teaching.”

The NY Times article continues:

“Among them: Some 1,600 of 8,900 professors and lecturers have disclosed financial ties under the school’s disclosure rules.”
“There were 149 with ties to Pfizer and 130 with ties to Merck. The school’s dean, Jeffrey Flier, previously received a $500,000 research grant from Bristol-Myers Squibb and consulted for three Cambridge, Mass., biotech companies, though he told NYT those relationships were over. The prior dean sat on the board of Baxter International for half of the decade he led the school, earning up to $197,000 a year from the company.”

There is more:

“Harvard should be embarrassed by the F grade it recently received from the American Medical Student Association, a national group that rates how well medical schools monitor and control drug industry money.

Harvard Medical School’s peers received much higher grades, ranging from the A for the University of Pennsylvania, to B’s received by Stanford, Columbia and New York University, to the C for Yale.”

“To educate a man in mind, and not in morals,

is to educate a menace to society.”

Theodore Roosevelt 26th President, United States

Food Labels: Mislabel or Mislead

Faked Caviar?

Not quite, just like faked Kona Coffee, it is still caviar but a cheaper species.

Looks like the big boys are moving in as the pickings are better with the rich and famous who can’t tell their burgundies, coffees or now caviar.

I think I like to get those cheap stuff that could pass as fakes.

The Guardian:

Is fine dining having its Apollo 13 moment? I know it's not on the same scale as "Houston, we have a problem," but when Laura King had to call Fortnum & Mason and Harrods to say, "There might be a problem with the sevruga," it can't have been her easiest day at the office.

King is the founder and co-owner of the eponymous King's Fine Foods, the UK's largest supplier of caviar with a client list that includes Buckingham Palace, the Groucho Club and Claridge's, as well as the nation's poshest grocers.

Random DNA tests taken back in October at King's premises in Richmond have revealed that what was labelled as top-grade sevruga, the eggs from Acipenser stellatus sturgeon, was actually the roe of Acipenser ruthenus, considered considerably less fine by those who know and care about these things.

 

The Cockroach Catcher has always been amazed that in a short time under pressure form consumer groups and the government, food manufacturers and supermarkets managed to produce detail analysis of the product they sell so that consumers can be clear what they are “consuming”!

What he was amazed was how healthy most foods were: sugar free, trans-fat free, cholesterol free. Even when the product has cheese.

Wow! Modern food processing technology! Or was it modern labelling technology!

Then he remembered Ribena. You can read about it here>>>>>

 Vancouver ©2012 Am Ang Zhang

I happened to be in one of the world’s most livable city and imagine my surprise when I read this in:

Global News:  https://globalnews.ca/news/236395/canadian-nutrition-label-claims-often-wildly-misleading-tests-show/

Tests unveil misleading food labels

Bad nutrients understated, good ones overstated

By Sarah Schmidt, Postmedia News April 20, 2012

Some of the world's biggest food brands and leading organic labels have understated the amount of bad nutrients — such as fat, sugar and sodium — in their products, or overstated the good ones, internal government tests show.

Kraft, Frito Lay, Unilever and Heinz are among the big names with a product that flunked Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) testing, conducted to see if nutrition claims on labels live up to their billing.

Loblaw's popular President's Choice brand had multiple "unsatisfactory" tests on products ranging from cereal to spaghetti.

Premium brands like Amy's Kitchen, Eden Organic, Natur-a, Kashi and Yves Veggie Cuisine also fell short on composition claims, as did Canadian food-makers like B.C.-based Sun-Rype Products Ltd. and Quebec-based Aliments Fontaine Sante.

No Sugar:

Among the breads and baked goods tested, Fenwicks "no sugar added" cookies (too much sugar)

Iron:

In the snacks category, Krispy Kernels Inc.'s Island mixed nuts claimed to contain 90 per cent of the recommended daily intake of iron per serving. Samples tested by CFIA found contained a fraction of that: 10.5 per cent.

A sampling of other findings shows the huge discrepancies that can exist between labels and ingredients.

Cholesterol:

Some snacks boasting a "No cholesterol" message on their label showed levels ranging from 4.3 milligrams (Lays Smart Selections chips) to 10.5 mg (Barbara's Cheesepuff Bakes) per portion, according to CFIA tests.

(PepsiCo says its own tests on Lays chips, conducted after CFIA informed the company of the agency's eight unsatisfactory tests involving samples of three Smart Selections chip products, showed the claim was accurate.)

Kraft made the same no-cholesterol claim for its Ritz "Real Cheddar Cheese" crackers, but CFIA testing showed the crackers contained 3.2 mg per portion. Dare's cinnamon snap biscuits contained 4.9 mg, CFIA testing showed.

These discrepancies pale in comparison to the findings of two canned snail products picked up from Dollarama stores in Regina. The products of Indonesia, branded as "Beaver" and "Pacific Pride," contained 147 mg and 131 mg of cholesterol per serving respectively, not zero as claimed.

Vitamins:

Canned foods from Unico (pizza sauce), Primo (vegetable soup), Stokely (pumpkin) and Amy's (refried beans, butternut soup) all fell short of their vitamin claims. So did Eden Organic's vegetable spirals, President's Choice organic pasta sauce, Fontaine Sante spinach dip and Island Farms yogurt.

Of the 40 products found to be overstating the amount of vitamins in their products, Yves Veggie Cuisine Ground Round (Mexican flavour) and a prepared pasta dinner by Olivieri Creations stood out for being wildly inaccurate.

The label on Yves Veggie Cuisine Ground Round, a product of the Hain Celestial Group, said each serving contained 80 per cent of the daily value of vitamin A, but CFIA testing showed 3 per cent. And a pre-packaged tortelloni and chicken dinner by Olivieri Creations claimed to contain 110 per cent of the daily value of vitamin C per serving, but CFIA found a serving contained only 1.1 per cent.

Sun-Rype, Oasis and Bolthouse Farms were among the juice brands that overstated — by about double — the amount of a vitamin.

Two juices from Dewlands fared worse; each boasted 35 per cent of the daily value of vitamin A, butnone was detected in either.

Omega acids:

Big-brand products that failed to live up to their omega-3 or omega-6 fatty acid claims included President's Choice Angus burgers, Kraft House Italian dressing and Country Harvest tortillas. Hellmann's mayonnaise under-delivered on the amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids, as did Kashi's honey almond flax cereal.

Specialty products that overstated one these so-called "good fats" include Natur-a soy beverages, So Good fortified soy beverage, Ruth's cereal, and Mom's Healthy Secrets cereal.

GoldSeal canned salmon, Ocean's canned salmon, Our Compliments salmon burgers and High Liner salmon were among the fish products that overstated the amount of omega-3 or omega-6 fatty acids.

Salt:

Some products pitched as reduced in sodium didn't live up to their billing, including Heinz "25 per cent less sodium" Dora the Explorer vegetable and pasta soup, Eden Organic "low salt" canned green lentils, rice and beans, R.W. Knudsen Family "low sodium" vegetable cocktail, "50 per cent less sodium" President Choice crackers, and "low sodium" President's Choice tomato and roasted red pepper soup.

There were also "unsatisfactory" discrepancies in three different Bread Works Bakery "low in sodium" cracker products, with one containing 277.8 mg of sodium, not 70 mg, according to CFIA tests.

Two different cans of Unico artichokes, picked up four months apart, were found to be saltier than claimed on the Nutrition Facts Table.

Calories:

"Light tasting" Nutriwhip testing showed 68 calories per portion, not 20 as claimed on the label. A green tea beverage from Tempest Tea claimed to contain just 5 calories, but testing showed 106 calories per portion.

If it could happen in Canada, do you think it could happen here?

Twitter:

Canadian Food Inspection Agency cuts cause Vancouver food inspectors unit to disband http://www.straight.com/food/630636/canadian-food-inspection-agency-cuts-cause-vancouver-food-inspectors-unit-disband … via @georgiastraight

First Posted as 

Food Labels: Real or Really? April 21, 2012.

Conditioned Overeating: Fat, Sugar & Salt

Overeating: The Science

Regulators: MONITOR, DEFRA & FSA

French Wines & Breasts: NHS Rescue?

Trans Fat: When Zero is Not Zero

Nuremberg & Thalidomide: The Good The Bad & The Ugly.

It is not really the first time we visited a place that has a rather haunting history. St. Petersburg is one such place especially when one re-visited the whole sordid saga of the murder of the small children of the Russian Tsar family.

Now we are starting our high school reunion on our river cruise. The journey starts at Nuremberg. All of us of course remember the Judgment at Nuremberg. I decided to watch it again. The principle that just because your boss told you to do things in a certain way did not absolve you from the greater humanitarian aspect of what you do. This is most important for doctors and if you think we have shied away from the Nuremberg era, think again. In one way or another, those that dare speak out against what management in our beloved NHS does were met with some of the worst fates unimaginable in any democratic society.

Nuremberg of course was the famous setting for one of Wagner’s well known Operas, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg which was in 2011 performed at Glydnebourne for the first time ever to much international acclaim. 

But Nuremberg was sadly linked to one of the worst drugs disaster of our time. This was uncovered by none other than Newsweek.

As they opened a new Waitrose across from my clinic, I find myself shopping there most days after work. It was one of those de-roling activity that is important after a whole day being involved in the mad of sad world of child psychiatry. John Barnes in Swiss Cottage was the first local store that was very close to the Tavistock Clinic where I trained. It was there that I saw the wooden escalator that my father reminisce about of the ones in Shanghai in the 40s. John Lewis and Waitrose remained my favourite haunt for all these years.

One day, at one of the specially designed check outs, sat a girl on a special raised mechanical chair was a girl with arms a quarter the size of ours and a few minute fingers. Yes, a Thalidomide victim doing a proper check out job.

Yes, we tried our best not to notice and our best not to treat her any differently as we well know that that is what she would want. I raised my hat to Waitrose for treating her like any of their partners. That is how the world should be.

But I never knew that there was any link between Thalidomide and Nuremberg. O.K. I knew Thalidomide was developed by a German Company, Grünenthal.

Nuremberg©2015 Am Ang Zhang

The Nazis and Thalidomide: The Worst Drug Scandal of All Time

Newsweek

Adding to the dark shadow over the company, it is increasingly clear that, in the immediate postwar years, a rogues’ gallery of wanted and convicted Nazis, mass murderers who had practiced their science in notorious death camps, ended up working at Grünenthal, some of them directly involved in the development of thalidomide.

 What they had to offer was knowledge and skills developed in experiments that no civilized society would ever condone. It was in this company of men, indifferent to suffering and believers in a wretched philosophy that life is cheap, that thalidomide was developed and produced.

Perhaps the best known of Grünenthal’s murderous employees was Otto Ambros. He had been one of the four inventors of the nerve gas sarin. Clearly a brilliant chemist, described as charismatic, even charming, he was Hitler’s adviser on chemical warfare and had direct access to the führer—and committed crimes on a grand scale. As a senior figure in IG Farben, the giant cartel of chemical and pharmaceutical companies involved in numerous war crimes, he set up a forced labor camp at Dyhernfurth to produce nerve gases before creating the monolithic Auschwitz-Monowitz chemical factory to make synthetic rubber and oil.

In 1948 Ambros was found guilty at Nuremberg of mass murder and enslavement and sentenced to eight years in prison. But four years later, he was set free to aid the Cold War research effort, which he did, working for J. Peter Grace, Dow Chemical, and theU.S. Army Chemical Corps. Ambros was the chairman of Grünenthal’s advisory committee at the time of the development of thalidomide and was on the board of the company when Contergan was being sold. Having covered up so much of his own past, he could bring his skills to bear in attempts to cover up the trail that led from the production of thalidomide back through its hasty trials to any origins it may have had in the death camps.

Dr. Kelsey, FDA scientist who kept thalidomide off U.S. market, dies at 101.

Dr. Kelsey is honored by President John F. Kennedy in 1962. (Courtesy of FDA)

The tragedy was largely averted in the United States, with much credit due to Frances Oldham Kelsey, a medical officer at the Food and Drug Administration in Washington, who raised concerns about thalidomide before its effects were conclusively known. For a critical 19-month period, she fastidiously blocked its approval while drug company officials maligned her as a bureaucratic nitpicker.

Freedom of Speech: Truth & Thalidomide!

Case 5 – The Truth about Thalidomide Given the lack of a constitution enshrining free speech, we do need some protection against frivolous libel actions and injunctions which try to prevent the truth from being revealed. Otherwise the truth about thalidomide would never have been told.

“Thirty-eight years ago,” he wrote, “I sat through days of hearings by the Law Lords deliberating on whether I and the paper I edited were guilty of contempt in 1972-3 in campaigning for justice for the thalidomide families. All five Law Lords voted to ban publication of our report. Only a 13-11 victory in the European Court of Human Rights removed the gag order” – and thus, I add, enabled The Sunday Times to expose one of the great scandals of that time, and subsequently win compensation for the families with young children born damaged or deformed, often without legs or arms, because their mothers had taken the drug, thalidomide, which was marketed as a mild sedative that would relieve morning sickness in pregnancy.                                                                                             Telegraph

Luckily, the European Court eventually ruled for The Sunday Times:

“The newspaper then decided to fight the injunction on its investigation into the origins and testing of the drug. The case went right through the British legal system and up to the European Court of Human Rights, which decided that the injunction violated the right of ‘freedom of expression’. The full story of thalidomide could eventually be told in 1976, revealing that both Grünenthal (the maker) and Distillers had not met the basic testing requirements of the time.”

I mentioned thalidomide also because in 2002 Gordon Brown, the then chancellor, attempted to tax the benefits payable through the Thalidomide Trust.

Norway & Hong Kong: Drunk Or Art Nouveau!

Democracy Or Alcohol?

Ålesund ©2012 Am Ang Zhang

In 1904 fire destroyed most of Ålesund.

It was rebuilt in Art Nouveau style and is arguably the most beautiful city in Norway without the City Hall.

Democracy: Voted against joining EU in 1972 and 1994.

Telegraph:

Norway is one of the richest and most contented nations on earth, with a GDP per capita of £40,000 – compared to £23,000 in the UK, and an EU average of £21,150.

Unemployment is at 3.25 per cent, while GDP is growing at 2.75 per cent per year – as it has on average over the last 40 years.

It also regularly tops the UN's survey of quality of life, with a generous welfare system – women receive 46 weeks maternity leave at full salary, compared to Britain's six weeks on 90 per cent – and free education (incl. universities) is provided for all.

The country funds this through its huge reserves of oil, timber and fish which it manages prudently, stashing away large percentages of its oil revenues to fund the future healthcare needs of an ageing population.

Alcohol:

Do we ever learn that prohibition never did anything to alcohol consumption nor would price control? 

With the millions spent on Cocaine in Wall Street and The City, when will we wake up to the fact that these are Tax Free perks?

©2013 Am Ang Zhang

Hong Kong Scraps Wine, Beer Duties on Record Surplus

By Wendy Leung - February 27, 2008 05:37 EST

In a place without democracy!

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong's government abolished taxes on wine and beer after posting a record surplus, boosting efforts to turn the city into a wine-trading hub.

The tariffs will be abolished immediately, costing the city government HK$560 million ($72 million) in annual tax revenue.

Tax was 80% before 2007 then 40%

The rest of Hong Kong Tax:

No sales tax

No capital gains tax

No VAT

Maximum salary tax of 20%

Profit tax maximum of 16%

Inheritance tax or estate duty has been abolished since             11February 2006. 

Yet, my doctor friends told me that there is no binge drinking problem like they have in Norway where there is high taxation and much difficulty in buying alcohol.

Strange: A drink too many!

Ålesund Norway©2012 Am Ang Zhang

Drunk and disorderly

Solveig Torvik 

December 16, 2010 

Weekend binge drinking is a perplexing feature of Norwegian cultural life to many visitors.

The role of alcohol in Norway often appears to be to consume it until you’re senseless, and alcohol commonly is accepted as an excuse for indulging in antisocial behavior. Binge drinking seemingly isn’t regarded as aberrant behavior in Norway, even by sober citizens who, generally speaking, uncomplainingly tolerate the ensuing brawls and other unpleasant results.

But why do so many people who do live in the “world’s best place” drink until they’re comatose? And why are many of them prone to violence and aggression when drunk? No one knows.

Dr Ole Johan Hoyberg, formerly a hospital-based psychiatrist in Ålesund, told newspaper Sunnmørsposten: “There’s a great deal more drunkenness in the communities that I got an insight about as a hospital doctor. Alcohol abuse is on the point of becoming a national sickness.”

Which seems an odd state of affairs indeed for a nation that’s billed as the world’s best place to live.

Perhaps no tax on alcohol beats democracy!

Norway: Hello Summer!

Aug 16, 2012

Norway: Democracy & Disaster!

Health Care Class Struggle: NHS & Hong Kong!

 Amazon Kindle US; 

Amazon Kindle UK ;

Lulu.com

Vacation: Bird Photography

Fun with Photoshop

House M.D. : Canon 5D Mk II

WPPI Las Vegas: Digital Photography & Art

Photography: Old & New
Photography: Best lens for portrait & landscape!

Photography: The Vatican

Fun with Photoshop

Photography: Point & Shoot!

Photography : Best & Free!

Photography: Bokeh & Multiple Night Shots!

Photography: Spring Tulips.

Photography: Pictures at an Exhibition

GSK & Banks: Free Wagner & Modern Rheingold

Looks like the modern Rheinmaidens are male and collected their gold from GSK & the banker is not so lucky:

                                                                 Intermezzo

Glaxo whistleblowers to share $250m windfall

Four former GlaxoSmithKline employees will share up to $250m (£159m) after their evidence helped US authorities secure a record settlement with the UK drug company for mispromoting drugs.

Greg Thorpe, Blair Hamrick, Thomas Gerahty and Matthew Burke are in line to receive the payout under the Federal False Claims Act, a US law dating back to the Civil War that allows whistleblowers to receive a portion of money the government recovers when prosecuting fraud.

The Banker on the other hand may have problem keeping his Rheingold. Wotan was not happy!

The Telegraph:

Sir Mervyn ordered Mr Agius to a meeting at the Threadneedle Street headquarters of the Bank at 6pm on Monday. At the meeting, he told Mr Agius that the chairman’s original offer to resign was not sufficient and that the chief executive was in the line of fire. 

It is believed that Sir Mervyn said that Mr Diamond continuing in his position could be damaging to London’s reputation.

Sir Mervyn also appeared to suggest that he was not only speaking on behalf of the Bank but also on behalf of the Financial Services Authority and the Treasury as well. The Chancellor, George Osborne, has always insisted he did not directly call for Mr Diamond to go.

By modern day standards we are still talking about a lot of money!

The Guardian: Looting

Thanks to Intermezzo we had a glimpse of the new Munich Ring Cycle:

July 05, 2012

Wagner, it would seem is as up to date as ever.

The dark side of the gods: (it is sometimes easier if one take GODS in the Ring to mean those in POWER. For the characters read here.) In fact, the gods need not work at all, the Nibelungs work almost all the time.

Disrespectful Wotan is hardly revered unanimously, and even he acknowledges higher authorities. Erda knows things he doesn't; his almost bureaucratic dominance derives solely from treaties engraved in runes on his spear, treaties to which he is subservient.

Born liarsCharacters lie as it suits them. Events are initiated by Wotan's spurious promise to the Giants to pay them by giving them Freia in exchange for building Valhalla, a promise he knows he cannot keep, as she is the indispensable symbol of love whose golden apples keep the gods alive. His shady ally, Loge, is defined as a double-dealing trickster. Brünnhilde breaks her promise to her father to allow Siegmund to be killed in combat. Mime makes dissembling a veritable life's work, ably carried forward by his nephew, Hagen, in Götterdämmerung. 

Contemptuous

Brünnhilde disobeys Wotan, and his grandson Siegfried destroys his power. Mime, who raises Siegfried from infancy and even makes him toys, is treated with disturbingly cruel contempt by the bumptious hero. Hagen, whom Alberich sired via gold-empowered lust as a tool to retrieve the Ring for him, mutters that if he succeeds he will keep it, not hand it over to his Nibelung father.

Thieving & Misappropriation 
……. misappropriation, of persons or of things, provides much of the plot machinery. First, Alberich plunders the Rhinegold, and afterward, theft of others' possessions, including the Ring, motivates action upon action. 

Incest and other illicit sexThe teasing of Alberich by the Rhinemaidens which leads to his abjuring love--love, not lust. The definitive heroine, Brünnhilde, and her Valkyrie sisters are the offspring of an adulterous liaison between Wotan and Erda; Wotan also illegitimately fathers the Wälsung twins by a mortal. Sieglinde's infidelity is excoriated by marriage-goddess Fricka, as is her violation with Siegmund of an even more basic taboo, incest. But Wotan defends the twins ("…those two are in love") and, like most audience members moved by the ardent love music, views both transgressions kindly. 

Homicidal

Fafner kills his brother Fasolt, the first victim of Alberich's curse, and we are off to the homicide races. Hunding slays Siegmund, only to be destroyed by Wotan's contempt. Siegfried kills Fafner, the Giant-turned-dragon, and then, after realizing that Mime is trying to poison him, kills him as well. By the time the gods' destiny climaxes, Hagen has murdered both Siegfried and Gunther and is himself drowned by the Rhinemaidens. Eventually Brünnhilde sets Valhalla ablaze as part of her self-immolation upon Siegfried's funeral pyre ("Thus do I hurl the torch into Valhalla's proud-standing stronghold") and all the gods die.
k

Greed, greed, greed!Finally, "coveting that which is your neighbor's" is pretty much the whole raison d'être for the Ring story, starting with Alberich's desire for the Rhinemaidens, then for the gold they guard. Thereafter everybody seems to want what doesn't belong to him or her: the Ring, a sword, a treasure, someone else's wife, sheer power. 

Yet in spite of Wagner's wholesale abandonment of the Decalogue, the bastion of Western morality, Der Ring des Nibelungen generates explosive ethical and metaphysical impact. He started with the absorption, fusion and reinvention of myriad legendary sources, and layered Schopenhauer's philosophy upon Feuerbach's. In Art and Climate Wagner wrote, "there is no true freedom except that which is common to all mankind... The redeemer is therefore love… starting with sexual love, [it] strides forward through love of children, brothers and friends, to universal love of humanity." The emphasis is his. Yet, some years later he wrote to Mathilde Wesendonck, "I can conceive of only one salvation. It is Rest! ...The stilling of every desire!" 

Wagner once wrote to Röckel, "I have come now to realize how much there is, owing to the whole weight of my poetic aim, that only becomes clear through the music." He later described the discontinuity between his "rationally formed ideas" and "the exquisite unconsciousness of artistic creation… guided by wholly different, infinitely more profound intuition."

Free Wagner:

The Bavarian State Opera are to stream Andreas Kriegenburg's new production of Götterdämmerung live on their website on 15 July. Free of course.

On July 15, the Bavarian State Opera will present another full opera performance live and free on the website www.staatsoper.de with the transmission ofGötterdämmerung, the fourth installment of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. For the sixth time (after live-streams of Fidelio, L’elisir d’amore, Don Carlo, Eugen Onegin and I Capuleti e i Montecchi) opera lovers can enjoy another outstanding production from the Bavarian State Opera in Munich free and in full length. 

The premiere of Götterdämmerung opened the Munich Opera Festival last weekend and is the conclusion of the new production of the Ring, which is being staged from February to June by Andreas Kriegenburg under the musical direction ofKent Nagano leading the Bavarian State Orchestra.

In Götterdämmerung the American tenor Stephen Gould as Siegfried, Wolfgang Koch as Alberich, Iain Paterson as Gunther and Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde will be appearing, amongst others, on the stage of the Bavarian State Opera. 

The live transmission of Götterdämmerung is part of a pilot project by General Manager Nikolaus Bachler in presenting opera online. The only requirement is a broadband internet connection such as DSL, the newest version of the flash player and speakers. There is no charge to the viewer for using the live stream.

Richard Wagner
Götterdämmerung
5 P.M. CET – 11 A.M. EST – 8 A.M. PST
www.staatsoper.de 

Intermezzo Update: Just one of those Rings

 The world of Götterdämmerung is the 21st century corporation, featuring an anonymous mass of business-suited Gibichungs in a flashy glass and steel edifice.

Production photos can be seen here, here, here and here.

 Germany: Bayreuth, The Ruling Class & Wagner

Ring Synopsis: Das Rheingold Die Walküre Siegfried
Götterdämmerung

Other Opera Posts:

The Dark Side: Il Trovatore
Illness and Morality

Doctor Atomic

Lunar Eclipse
Lohengrin: Speech Disability, Design & Hypertension