CUBA?

Carolyn, Linda with cousin Elsie

Heron Island, Maine

From my scouting team of J & R Ingwall comes this interesting NYTimes article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/health/cancer-vaccine-cuba-medical-tourism.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&_r=0

 I have never had any desire to visit Cuba.  I visualize it as something like Puerto Rico, but with older cars.  I spent five days in Puerto Rico once, and came back with foot fungus and a queasy belly.  My rule of thumb is, never visit a place with broad-leaf plants and high humidity.  Iceland, yes.  Indonesia, no.

However, it appears that good can emanate from such a sticky paradise as Cuba must be.   Apparently Cuba has a healthy biotech industry.  They have developed and currently market a vaccine called Cimavax which arrests the progress of one kind of lung cancer.  Many Americans currently journey to Havana to get treatment, and to stock up on the stuff to smuggle home.  In the meantime our FDA is effectively sitting on its hands; it will authorize testing sometime soon.  As you know, I don’t like the FDA very much.

Cuba is an anomaly, at least to me.  In most respects it is very poor – but it has an excellent medical system.  Apparently medical doctors there are everywhere, on every street corner, a dime a dozen.  There are so many of them that they are exported to Venezuela, in exchange for oil.  I wish a few thousand of them would come here.  That way maybe I wouldn’t  have to wait a week to see my primary care physician.