What's all the blather about Botox?

Well, the hot news last week was that the eight-year-old girl, whose Mom illegally injected her with Botox, was taken away by child protective services.

Here's a site called "Botox Information" that claims to know which stars got Botox injections.

My views: A mom who illegally injects her child with Botox forfeits her right ot raise that child. On the other hand, for big stars, looking good could be worth millions of dollars. My old man had to breath coal dust to make a living during the Great Depression. A little Botox doesn't sound so bad by comparison.

On the OTHER hand, some of these folks have turned out pretty weird. ANybody who saw "Burlesque" should agree with me that Cher looked as if she couldn't move her mouth at all.


These Botox babes --- and guys --- may die, like the rest of us. But unlike us, they'll surely never rot!

So, is Botox safe, Here's one take on that question:

Botox is derived from the poison manufactured by the bacteria, Clostridium, a bacteria so deadly that infected people usually die from the toxins. One form of Clostridium infection is called Botulism.,,,

The big question I had was wouldn't Botox go systemic? Well, yes, it can, says Allergan and any muscles it touches can be damaged (it kills the nerve in the muscle effectually killing the muscle). Like small muscles in the heart, like muscles in the lungs. And yes, there have been cases of respiratory arrest associated with Botox.

Is Botox safe for pregnant women? No, according to Allergan. In pregnant rats and rabbits, it caused small fetal size, deformity and death. So it evidentally goes systemic enough to get down to the baby.

A smaller side effect of botox is that it can paralyze your swallowing muscles. In some cases, states Allergan, this paralysis was serious enough to require the insertion of a feeding tube!

More: http://suewidemark.com/botox_not.htm


Recently, I dug an old tome out of my personal library:

E. A. Wallis Budge, THE MUMMY


Budge (what a great name, eh?) writes, "The civilization of ancient Egypt lasted for four thousand years; so did the cult of mummification.... The Egyptians provided secure and resplendent resting places for the mummified bodies of their dead (aka, RICH dead), knowing that fitting surroundings, as well as proper and expensive preservation techniques for the body, would ensure reincarnation in the body upon return of the pure soul...."

As the rich get richer and technology advances, we ordinary folk --- who will age and die as always --- may watch in wonderment as the super-rich seek immortality.
In THE WATERORKS, novelist E.L. Doctorow envisioned a 19th century attempt to keep the filthy rich of the Guilded Age alive --- if only as waltzing zombies. Futurist William Gibson placed his ultra-wealthy on a spacecraft, orbitting the earth in low gravity life extension mode.

Neither makes the extension of life long past "normal" seem very appealing. Fact is, folks, we are a species evolved to live about 45 years. Then stuff --- knees and hips for instance --- start wearing out. A Biologist colleague of mine, herself a woman of "a certain age," remarked to me recently that humans are the only species in which the female lives long after menopause.

Kurt Vonnegut posited a post-apocoolypse world in which humans had evolved into a happy, but short-lived, species of aquatic creatures.


Whose to say this wouldn't be the first time in which Jeremy Bentham's "greatest good for the greatest number" actually was the human condition?

"I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death." Shakespeare, HENRY IV

Death has always seemed the great leveler: no matter how rich the person, s/he too must die, just like the poorest among us. And then, of course, justice was done in heaven. It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven, Jesus comforted his rag-tag followers.

Now, many of us no longer believe in heaven. And if the rich --- the really rich --- don't have to die at all... well, where's the justice in that?

And yet... and yet... if mummification before demise, ala Cher, is what the medical profession has in store for the rich... well, then, just maybe I am content to shrivel up and die, just like my old dad and his dad before him.