Van-Dalismo: Collected Works 2008-2015 of Van Gross, Md-Contrarian, Contriver, Explorer, Survivor, Truth Teller, Soothsayer and Outlier

By Kenneth Bruce Van Gross MD

This volume represents a collection of essays and other writings from 2008-2015. It formally introduces what must be labeled Van Dalismo, fusing the creative genius of Van Gogh, Los Van Van and Salvador Dali into words (or otherwise just stealing their ideas). Van Gross, MD is the male Sojourner Truth. Whether in Philly, Chile, Cuba or Haiti, whether pondering consciousness, medicine, Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Whites, World Affairs, the Western Hemisphere or some boulevard in Miami, Van Dalismo takes you there and back.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669810957

Kenneth Bruce Van Gross MD

Preceding deplorables such as Hillary Rodham Clinton and wallflowers such as Donald J. Trump, Kenneth Bruce Van Gross, MD jumped off an earth seeking asteroid and became one of the early founders of "fake news" which was originally called “satire” back in the early Aughts but was adopted if not stolen by evil doers to spread political propaganda. Van Gross, MD is a writer and neurologist who has been awarded Diplomate status by both the American Board of Internal Medicine and by the American Board of Neurology and Psychiatry (N). He has lectured extensively on The Aging Brain/Aging Mind and presented original thoughts and poetry on that subject. He has delivered commencement addresses at medical college graduations and dissected the brain, body, and behavior in addition to the great speeches of Kennedy and Lincoln as a University Adjunct Professor in Neuropsychiatry, Medicine, Public Speaking and Communications. Beyond his knowledge in medicine, speech/language and the neurosciences, Van Gross, MD, has developed a unique career as a commentator, poet, and multi-dimensional writer. Having been published in peer reviewed medical journals, popular university newspapers and in the general press, he has revealed diverse literary talents. These include the ability, rare among individuals who have entered medicine, to spell the word “cat” and appropriately place it in a sentence. In addition, his stinging wit and unrestrained consciousness pervade much of his poetry and prose on subjects from Politics, World Events and American Cultural Wars to how the brain works in the cranial vaults of zealots, pundits and those who are addicted to reruns of “Get Smart” (“Chief? Max”). Finally, he has violated boundaries with riotous neurosociological and neurophilosophical commentary (including voice impersonations) through the audiotapes That Neuro Guy, Mind Ramblings of Van Gross and published works on the Primal Neuroanthropology of Sports. He has appeared on musical, cultural and educational programs carried by WRCU-FM in Hamilton, NY and by WGBB-AM on Long Island. He has also been featured in The Love Jones Revived Show in Miami as a Spoken Word Artist during which he has presented his Neurofusion Poetry including “MedRap”, “Black White Race, Sex and Sports” and “USA-World Poetry Slam”. While wasting away in Miami, the Caribbean and now Philadelphia compiling a treasury of illegible essays and poems to form works such as Van Gross of Monte Cristo, The Five Books and scrawling the nearly incoherent but Writer’s Digest award winning fictionalized medical adventure, i.e., the play, Movement Disorder, Van Gross, MD also paces and exhibits circling behavior, characteristic of the deranged in preparation for his next radio, lecture or writing gig. So, the Five Books of Van Gross’s covers important years in the Aughts, in this lead up to this retro Roaring decade. And don’t worry, Van Gross, MD has material for follow up works for other intercurrent years in this wild and wacky 21st century. It’s kind of crazy, but many of the same characters from the Aughts somehow resurface today. Karzai, Rudy, Bidey, Kerry, Iranians, Climate Players and even versions of Bush and The Cheney Man. We’re just doing reruns!! But I’ve got a book for that (in the works supplementing if not magnifying the mega-impact of the Five Books collection).

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Copyright © 2022 by Kenneth Bruce Van Gross, MD

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 02/10/2022

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Contents

Prologue

2008

To Build Michi’s Bridge . . .

States of Mind Unknown

The Dangerous World of Explaining Autism

An Essay on Aspects of Consciousness: Primal Neuroanthropology—a Window into Consciousness through Sports

Interdisciplinary Survey on Consciousness and Its Disorders

They Say That It’s Time for Christmas

Mind/Brain Lessons of 9/11

Fusion Interspecialty Educational Program Set

2009

Coming Along

July in Heat

May

Sociological Psychosis in American Teens

Fusion Clinical Multimedia Introduces 66 for the Fix

2010

It’s Cold and It’s Gone

Health Care Wealth Care

The King and Queen

Water on His Head

Winter in the Americas

The Earth Is Addicted to Earthquaking

How Much Do I Hate You?

No, You

Purveyors

What If This Is It?

Accoutrements

Chile

2011

Grossian Achievement Spheres

Twenty-Six-Patient Case File

Injury, Disease, Haiti, and the USA

Medical Educator Teaching Philosophy

Levels of Consciousness

2012

Miami Gardens Drive

Winter in the Americas

Medical System Reform—Triple Layer Single Payer

Romney: Ready for the ’80s

Obama Begins Wholesale Deportation of Presidential Candidates including Himself

Home Is Where the Health Care Isn’t

Health-Care Deep Truths

Health Care in America

2013

Plan for Haiti Medicine Development Project

A Romp through Some Clinical Pearls and Unusual Medical Conditions

The Mundaneness of Evil

And This Just In . . . Obama Undergoes Secret Re-appellations

Obama to Free the Gays

The Face of Evil—Happy New Year Humor

Triple Threat Sleuth Trio Lands Clouseau!

Muslims in the United States Given Love Fest by American People

Especial VANezuela Edicion . . . the Royal Scam . . .

Bush Switches from Painter to Dentist

2014

Obamarama Thrilled with R. McDonald at VA Post Appointment Conference

Baboons Attempt to Stem White-on-White Crime at Augusta National Golf Course

God: Neo-Nazis plus Other American and European Anti-Semites to Be Placed on Planes and Ferries That Crash in Asian Oceans

Hillary Breaks Silence on Ferguson

2015

Klan Attempts to Downgrade Black Movement Skills

George W. Bush Invading Baltimore

Iranian People to Be Now Known as Uranian . . . or Otherwise Referred to as Uranium (plural for more than one Uranian)

Guyana—Grappling with Medical System Dysfunction Requiring a Revolution

The Radical NeuroCreativity Project

References

Van-Dalismo uses invented names in all stories except notable public figures, companies, organizations, groups, and countries that are the subjects of satire and parody. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental.

—Kenneth Bruce Van Gross, MD

Dedicated to the people of Haiti, the Caribbean,

the Americas, and the world.

Prologue

Human existence in the last quarter century has featured absurd events. Perhaps that is why the first decade of this century will be known as the millennial double zero period, as it included such a variety of bizarre happenings that only insanity was safe.

The neurologist-writer in charge of understanding the brain in this epoch must extract proper evidence for this brainless if not mindless period via essay collections such as this one. In so doing, neuro-satire/neuro-absurdia is hatched under the direction of Van Gross, MD.

Sometimes understood as post-rationalism, absurd thought can also be linked to the psychotic. In that psychosis is of interest to neurologists as an entity making believe it is part of neurology, it would seem appropriate to welcome post-rationalism, psychosis, and the absurd under the neurological roof while, in the spirit of neurology, expounding on the phenomenology via satire and a literary theater of the absurd.

Many also insist the Aughts of this millennium bypassed true existence in that those years were so bereft of meaning and purpose.

People suffered great trauma from late 2000 to late 2010, but under the banner of absurdity, many believe there should be some mitigation of same nightmare, since we’re all out of our minds anyway, whether recovering from impeachment madness, examining loose chads to decide presidential elections, murdering innocents to access celestial virgins, starting weather crusades, being a birther, talking nonsense at town hall meetings on health care, or quasi-justifying an earthquake as religious retribution. The Decade of the Zeroes or the zeros, or zorro, the fox so cunning and free, that epoch from 2000 to 2010, that Aughts Decade, that Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve Oughts Decade, or as some have called it, That Aughtistic Period (or at least an ADD case) demands an explanation, indeed a neuropsychiatric elucidation or some kind of testimonial if not a humor-packed roast in print. Hence, the emergence of Van Gross, MD, satirist and local riffraff.

With the just-published Five Books of Van Gross’s and Van Gross of Monte Cristo and now in this volume, Van-Dalismo (all via Xlibris) in addition to an upcoming tome highlighting the Trump-Biden epoch, this 1997–2022 period is presented and will be depicted extensively in the Van Gross, MD, neuro-absurdia/neuro-satirical style referenced above.

Van-Dalismo is thus the third volume in this Xlibris Trilogy plus One and includes the latter two years in the decades just summarized and five years thereafter. The years 2008–2015, of course, involved the national emergence of Barack Obama and his favorite pastime: becoming a celebrity. The world also entered a tizzy via the financial crisis of 2008–2009 essentially ignored in this book but relating to the recognition that health systems needed major upgrades to allow for more access by the poor. Mitt Romney also emerged ready for the ’80s, and the Iranians surfaced in 2015, prepared to create a nuclear apocalypse. Haiti had its own apocalypse with the 2010 earthquake killing three hundred thousand people in one minute, which behooved Van Gross, MD, to join other doctors and nurses on programs to help the people of Haiti. This book not only catalogues some of those experiences case by case but also includes poetic leaps of faith related to Port-au-Prince sojourns.

Circling back throughout the book’s seven years, Dr. Van Gross also gets quite neurological and health-care policy-ish in offering his take on rare neurological diseases, his own version of Single Payer, brain/mind conceptualizations, and medical education throughout the Americas. Other world-encompassing riffs are also expressed by Van Gross, MD, mostly in satirical form, culminating in the Radical NeuroCreativity Project, which sets the stage for the final volume in the works for this Xlibris Trilogy Plus One.

Expounded upon by Van Gross, MD, in other venues, the entirety of the Kenneth Bruce Van Gross, MD body of work must best be understood within the following proclamations and insights:

1- Van Gross, MD, believes that free-flowing satire/surrealism/parody, streams of consciousness, poetry, and commentary in their own right drive his writing. He has no formal ideology except:

a) Hate speech is evil and will not be tolerated.

b) Advancing the dialectic between and among various perspectives results in higher thought.

3- Van Gross, MD, is an equal opportunity satire-based offender. Christian, Jew, Muslim, atheist, right-winger, left-winger, heterosexual, homosexual, God, black, brown, yellow, white, American, Canadian, Latino, Hispanic, Indian, Afro-Caribbean, Indo-Caribbean, capitalist, communist, existentialist, devout Catholic, Orthodox Jew, God-fearing Christian, agnostic, alien from outer space, illegal immigrant, legal immigrant, Britisher, Mexican, European, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Arab, Israeli, celebrity, world leader, low-lifer, high-lifer, fetus, dog, pig, mouse, corpse, body part—all are not immune from Van Gross, MD, scathing. His motto: Satire needs a measure of stereotyping and hyperbole. If you can’t handle it, confine yourself to Fox News or MSNBC, never both.

4- There is the science of humor intrinsic to our neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and abstract nature. The neurologist/author therefore draws on our inner being through his own brand of satire and absurdia. Can this foster public health healing via such chord striking literary works? Research has confirmed that such sardonic and/or phantasmagorical explorations can improve mental states of anxiety and depression so common in society in recent years. "Take two chapters of Van-Dalismo and call Van Gross, MD, in the morning. Really? Not really, mutters the author. There’s no give and take here. You all are just doing reading and healing."

5- At the same time, and very strongly in Van-Dalismo, one can appreciate the straight-up opinion writer called Kenneth Bruce Van Gross, MD, as well. Whether advancing ideas on medicine, the brain, the mind, education, individual nations or world affairs, the author goes beyond pontificating. He draws on his medical expertise and work throughout the western hemisphere, often articulating systems of change particularly in the health care and education arenas.

6- Norman Mailer called writing the spooky art. Van Gross, MD, thinks he was quite right but off base with his use of the in the phrase. Any creative process is spooky or appearing without a specific how to manual or protocol. Painting and music also fit into this je ne sais quoi category. Yes, writing, painting, and playing a musical instrument all require mastery of rudiments, but the generation of creative works in these domains is a phenomenon with no cookbook explanation, although our right-sided cerebral cortex would appear to be more imaginative than our left. When Van Gross, MD, ventures into the poetic, it’s spookiness to the max from the ultra-personal to the ultra-provocative. From whence this comes can be cocktail party chatter. Van Gross, MD, just wants you to focus on the content of Van-Dalismo and his companion works.

7- Smash hits such as the Van Gross, MD, Xlibris early 2022 publication Visiting Other Countries, a cartoon character satire-laced picture book, and Movement Disorder, a fictionalized medical adventure, are both pending film adaptation. Two previously published subversive books available online on the neuroanthropology, neurology, and neuropsychoanalysis of sports (Primal Neuroanthropology: A Neuro-Sports Hypothesis and Primal Sports II) complete the Kenneth Bruce Van Gross, MD, collection.

Kenneth Bruce Van Gross, MD

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

December 31, 2021

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2008

To Build Michi’s Bridge . . .

Discussions about the US trade embargo with Cuba often center on economics and political differences. Biology has a way of transcending such discussions, not because it is a higher form but because physiological mechanisms have little to do with governmental disputes.

Trading with Fidel Castro can help entrench him. Trading with Mr. Castro will enrich him personally. Trading with Mr. Castro is a blow against freedom. Trading with Mr. Castro is an attack upon people who died trying to escape Cuba. All these statements should be legitimately scrutinized.

However, there are apolitical science and medicine features that argue against blockades of academic commerce (i.e., discourse dedicated to advancing human health).

In March, the US State Department prevented some one hundred US neuroscientists and physicians, including me, from attending the Fourth International Conference on Coma and Death in Havana. The reason given had something to do with aiding and abetting a communist regime.

However, in terms of money, the American contingent would have spent little. The weeklong conference attracted hundreds of scientists, philosophers, theologians, and health-care providers from around the globe.

According to my Cuban counterparts, Americans were sorely missed. I certainly believe, though I was prepared to deliver two lectures, I lost out in not learning what the world could present on this very pervasive problem of the catastrophically ill.

For some reason, the cerebral cortex and brain stem do not distinguish whether the patient originates from a theocracy, a democracy, a feudalistic society, or even a communist regime. I am aware of no tiny signpost visible on electron microscopy over spiny neurons in the basal ganglia that read communist brain. The corpus callosum, which connects the left and right hemispheres, also is not a bridge for capitalistic voters only.

Our State Department doesn’t quite appreciate these points. It also likes to cast wide nets in international policy. This is part of the arrogance of regulators.

I was still seething from the travel rebuke when I learned on Sunday, August 29, that a family friend, an eighteen-year-old college student, Michi Padron, ironically of Cuban descent, had suddenly lapsed into a coma here in Miami.

As a researcher, I was not on the front lines of neurology care, although I had practiced neurology in the 1980s and 1990s. I immediately opened a dialogue with her treating and consulting physicians on what could be offered to this bright and beautiful young lady. I also launched detailed Internet searches and reviewed abstracts from the coma and death conference I was prevented from attending.

Disappointingly, I learned that although there have been steps toward more aggressive and successful treatment of coma in the last several years, we still have no truly effective strategy for brain salvage and protection. Thus, for the most apart, except for very special circumstances not applicable to Michi, only experimental unproven therapies can be offered.

One reason for this lack of success is international coma conferences are rare; the prior Havana conference was in 2000, and there is no such comparable gathering in the United States of which I am aware. In addition, because medical therapies are developed only when there is a particular economic incentive, certain multicenter research for difficult-to-treat problems such as coma is not often in evidence. Put another way, even though there are promising drugs for coma, there is no worldwide campaign to address it because some of the potentially effective drugs are not expensive blockbusters and might not yield massive profits for pharmaceutical companies, even if some applicability against coma could be determined.

The Miami Herald recently covered the story, however, of the State Department allowing trade with Cuba in a lucrative cancer vaccine. Somehow, earlier pro-embargo arguments were put on the back burner with a certain moneymaking deal in prospect. Was it Viva the Special Interest Almighty Dollar in that case?

Perhaps if I had attended the coma conference and brought back some cancer vaccines in my suitcase, government officials would have made an exception for me, maybe even slipped me a few C-notes or something.

The larger issue is governments can manipulate funding certain scientific and medical research. However, core basic science and clinical exchanges at international conferences should operate outside of political agendas. They are assembled to advance the human race: not the capitalistic or socialistic race, our human race.

I may have got no further insights into Michi’s coma by attending the March Cuba conference on coma and brain death, but I do not know that for sure.

There is no magical solution for tragic medical conditions such as coma, brain death, Terry Schiavo-like vegetative states, and cerebral anoxia. But one step in the right direction is to encourage more worldwide medical and scientific symposia.

We can start by abandoning the idiotic trade shutdown involving academic, medical, and scientific dialogue with Cuba. Instead of the discourse embargo, let’s create Michi’s Bridge.

Michi Padron passed away on September 6. Heartfelt condolences are extended to her family and friends.

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States of Mind Unknown

In the hubbub over Terri Schiavo, which largely involves legal wrangling, some deeper questions are being cast aside in the media frenzy of breaking news from the courthouse and headlines from the judge’s chambers.

Has society properly addressed issues of coma and its frequent sequels, the persistent vegetative state and the minimally conscious state? Beyond that, has society properly addressed the definition of self and consciousness?

Such rhetorical questions carry the obvious answer no and underlie a defect in this very important debate about a young woman and who she is.

Consciousness has no strict definition. However, awareness or consciousness of one’s surroundings must be distinguished from self-awareness or consciousness of being. In other words, a mouse is aware an attacker’s bite is painful, but it is not aware what that pain signifies for itself as a mouse living this life on earth. In a similar vein, for the most part, only certain apes and dolphins can identify themselves in the mirror. Studies have shown such animals attempt to remove marks others make on their faces because they recognize themselves as individuals with a change in appearance.

As many realize, other animals often will not quite understand who that animal is in the mirror when seeing reflections of themselves. The use of the term themselves in this regard is even suspect for mammals with limited evidence for comprehending the concept of existence.

Difficulties arise in grading awareness and self-awareness in any human who cannot communicate and has brain damage confirmed by neurological testing such as MRI and neurophysiologic studies such as EEG. This is part of the difficulty in evaluating Mrs. Schiavo. Obviously, there is a loss of her ability to convey understanding of her surroundings and, more critically, of herself. Suffice it to say, it would be reasonable to assume had she some consciousness and fall into the minimally conscious state category, she would maintain her personhood at a higher level than