Are we experimenting on our young girls?

The cervical jab, a vaccination that saves lives, or just another chemical cocktail with adverse side-effects? That is the question.

There is no doubt, dying of cervical cancer seems like a horrible way to go.  And if there was a way to prevent it from happening, I’d be the first one to clap and cheer. But, is the Gardasil vaccine (cervarix in England) safe enough to administer to every adolescent girl? How much do we really know about the vaccine itself? Sure, those snappy ads chanting “One Less” filled with sporty, fresh-looking teenage girls and their dewey-eyed moms look very compelling, but do we really know enough about the side-effects this vaccine causes?

Today, in the Daily Mail of the UK, there is an article about a handful of girls and the reactions they’ve suffered since having the vaccine. One is in a wheelchair, another suffers almost daily epileptic attacks, yet another suffers from chronic fatigue. And these are just a selection of girls in that one country who have suffered side-effects from a sore arm, to paralysis. A number of deaths have been reported here in the USA. And yet, the medical professionals do whatever they can, except turning themselves inside out, to reject any claims that the sudden onset of illnesses following – sometimes within minutes, other times within days, of the vaccination – could have anything to do with the jab. It is just “coincidental” according to the professionals. But is it, really?

And, how true are the figures we are being presented, about the vaccines? 1300 adverse reactions out of 700,000 vaccinations. If, however, a lot of the adverse reactions being reported back to each medical professional who administered the drug, are being rejected as “coincidences”, how many are ACTUALLY reported as adverse reactions? Could it be that the number is actually double, triple or even quadruple that which the manufacturers of these drugs would like to have you believe? Maybe even more?

It was considered wrong to experiment on jews during the holocaust, or black soldiers in the Tuskeegee regiment, and it was, but why is it okay to experiment on our young girls? Is it because these shots supposedly save 700 lives a year? What if it destroys more than double that? A side-effect doesn’t have to be as severe as death, for it to destroy someone’s life, after all. How about we just lower the age when girls are given pap smears to screen for cervical cancer instead?

Or does that just not fill the wallets of those drug company executives?

Fritzl sentenced to die in prison!

In a stroke of brilliance, the jury today found Fritzl guilty of ALL charges and sentenced him to spend the rest of his days in a secure psychiatric facility.

The jury first convicted Fritzl of the murder of his newborn son – a child borne to him by his daughter Elisabeth in the dank cellar beneath his Austrian home.

The jury then convicted Fritzl of all charges relating to the imprisonment and rape of his daughter.

Fritzl had thrown himself on the mercy of the court this morning as he awaited the verdicts.

His voice weak and shaky, Fritzl told the court this morning: ‘I regret it with all my heart. … I can’t make it right anymore.’

Fritzl’s resistance finally broke yesterday after he came face to face at his trial with the daughter who suffered 24 years of rape and depravity in his secret dungeon.

Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, spent an hour watching her tormentor as her video-tape evidence was played in court on Tuesday, it emerged.

That night Fritzl called a prison psychiatrist and his lawyer to tell them: ‘I will change my plea. I am guilty of everything they say.’

Lawyer Rudolf Mayer said: ‘It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. My client was so changed, his mind, his behaviour, everything.’

Elisabeth’s arrival was completely unexpected given that she had said she never wanted to see her father again after being freed from her cellar prison in April last year.

Well done to the Jury, and the Judge, but most of all….Elisabeth.. you are an AMAZING woman. Your father couldn’t get a teaspoon half full of your strength of character or humanitarian spirit if he lived to be a million years.

Today, JUSTICE was done.

Fritzl House of Horrors Trial- Day 3 – SHOCKER!

Elisabeth Fritzl has made a shock appearance in court to confront the father who imprisoned her for 24 years.

Josef Fritzl’s daughter was present to watch video of herself telling the jury that her monster father raped her every day and murdered his own son.

She also witnessed her father’s reaction to her horrifying story.

Her presence in court on Monday and Tuesday was revealed by sources familiar with the trial today as her father dramatically pleaded guilty to all charges against him – including murder.

His change of heart was prompted by his daughter’s harrowing evidence – delivered by video as Elisabeth had originally begged to never see her father in person again.

The 73-year-old told a stunned court in St Poelten, Austria, this morning that he now admitted all the charges, including murder and slavery.

Asked why he had changed his plea, Fritzl told the panel of judges: ‘When I saw the video tapes I realised for the first time how cruel I was to Elisabeth.’

He added: ‘I’m sorry.’

Elisabeth’s presence may have helped spur his guilty plea.

This morning he branded his own behaviour ’sick’ as he admitted everything, although he insisted the death of his son Michael had been an accident.

The newborn twin died three days after his birth in the dungeon at Fritzl’s home in Amstetten in 1996 after developing breathing problems.

Additionally, he rescinded the statements he previously made about his daughter agreeing to the sex acts. He admits to drugging her, and tieing her up to have his wicked way with her. I wonder where this will end. Now that he has agreed to murder.. surely it’s life in prison for this man, right?

Fritzl House of Horrors Trial – Day 2

Elisabeth Fritzl was today telling jurors in excruciating detail how she endured 24 years as the ’sex toy’ of her sex-obsessed father in the Austrian incest case. On day two of Josef Fritzl’s trial, she was to reveal by video link how he would come to the cellar armed with boxes of pornographic videotapes and make her re-enact the scenes in them.

Her father appeared in court today, at first hiding his face with a blue binder – but then dropping the shield as the court session got under way.

It was also revealed that Fritzl has access to psychological support throughout the trial to help him cope with the ordeal – and ensure he does not commit suicide.

Elisabeth is expected to tell the jurors how she stopped struggling against her father  because she knew her life depended on being co-operative with her jailer.

And she will reveal the horror of rape sessions that lasted for hours on end. She will also tell how she suffered grave internal injuries from the oversized sex toys he used upon her.

In the excruciating testimony, she will detail the most crucial aspect of the case – the death of baby Michael in the darkness in 1996.

Fritzl denies murder, and also denies enslaving his daughter. He admits incest and to depriving her and his children of their liberty. And yesterday he pleaded ‘partially guilty’ to rape and to ‘massive coercion’ – a charge relating to the threats he levelled against those in the cellar to kill them if they ever attempted to escape.

Oh, and he showed his face today. Perhaps he no longer feels shame. If he ever did.

Fritzl House of Horrors Trial – Day 1

The suffering and sexual depravity of the ‘concrete kingdom’ Josef Fritzl created in an underground dungeon for his daughter were described to a court today. Jurors listened in horror as the state prosecutor, Mrs. Burkheiser, described in sickening detail the level of abuse that Elisabeth was forced to endure for more than 20 years.

The court listened in silence as they heard how when the children were born Elisabeth was left alone with nothing but an old book on childbirth, dirty scissors and a dirty mattress.

‘Josef Fritzl used his daughter like his property,’ said Mrs Burkheiser.

The 73-year-old raped his daughter without saying a word to her for the first nine years of her 24-year imprisonment, it was revealed.

Mrs Burkheiser used a laser pen to outline how low the cellar’s ceiling was, about five feet, and to detail the dimensions of the last door leading into it,  which could only be accessed by crawling through on the hands and knees.

‘I have been to the cellar twice,’ she told jurors as Fritzl stared ahead at Judge Andrea Humer, his back to the press and public. ‘It  smells, it is incredibly damp. It has a morbid atmosphere that hits you as you crawl through the 83 square centimetre entrance hole. The damp creeps in within minutes. .’

Fritzl showed little emotion throughout the proceedings, seeming to squirm only once when Mrs. Burkheiser leaned in close to him and said: ‘Mr. Fritzl, how could you do this to your own flesh and blood?’

Mrs Burkheiser said that in the first three years of Elisabeth’s incarceration there was no hot water, shower or heating.She alleged that Fritzl once punished the young woman by shutting off electricity to the dungeon, and forced her to spend the first part of her captivity in a tiny space that didn’t even have a shower.

She added that among the worst aspects of Elisabeth’s ordeal was ‘the uncertainty as to when he would come down again, and rape before the eyes of the children.

Fritzl arrived in court this morning amid bizarre scenes as he shielded his face with a blue ring binder.TV cameras were allowed in for the first few minutes of the trial, but he kept his face buried in the folder as journalists asked questions which he refused to answer.

Shame? I don’t think so. This man does, after all, feel that he was the victim in all this. His mommy didn’t love him. Pathetic loser.

Fritzl’s House of Horror – More Timeline Items

1984 Elisabeth is forced to write a letter to her parents asking them to stop looking for her

1986 In November Elisabeth suffers a miscarriage, 10 weeks into the pregnancy

1989 Elisabeth gives birth to her first daughter, Kerstin.

1990 Stefan is born.

1992 Elisabeth has a third child, Lisa.

1993 In May Lisa is left in a cardboard box outside Rosemarie and Josef’s house. A letter in the box says the child is Elisabeth’s, and she’s asking her parents to look after it.

1994 Monika is born. In December she is left outside the Fritzl’s front door. The phone rings and Rosemarie hears Elisabeth’s recorded voice. She reports this to the police, saying how strange she thinks it is that Elisabeth knows the new, secret, phone number the family has acquired.

1996 In April Eisabeth gives birth to twins. One of them, Michael, dies and is burned in a furnce by Josef. The other twin, Alexander, survives.

1997 After 15 months in the bunker Alexander, too, is left outside Rosemarie’s door.

2002 Felix is born. Josef Fritzl lets him stay in the bunker, as he considers Rosemarie too old to take care of yet another child.

2008 On April  19, Kerstin, then 19, is taken to hospital. The police calls for Elisabeth to return to help her daughter.

2008 On April 25,  Elisabeth, 42, Stefan, 18, and Felix, 5, are released. Josef Fritzl tells his wife that their daughter has chosen to come home. While visiting Kerstin in the hospital the next day, Elisabeth is collected by the police, and she ends up telling them about the past 24 years.

2008 Josef Fritzl is arrested on April 27 . All the children are taken into care and Elisabeth receives psychological support.

2009 The trial will start on March 16. Josef Fritzl is accused of murder, over 3000 rapes, incest, slavery, unlawful threat and kidnap.

And yet, there is talk that he might be out of prison after only 7 years.

Fritzl is blaming Elisabeth for it all

“Elisabeth asked me to kidnap another girl for her to have company.”

This is what Josef Fritzl, 74, is going to claim during trial in the coming weeks, according to the newspapers in Europe.

In the sound-isolated bunker on Ybbstrasse 40, Josef’’s word was law. His daugher Elisabeth, 43, was his posession and her life consisted only of submitting to his will. But when the trial starts this coming Monday, the 74 year old man is expected to do nothing but blame his daughter while trying to drag her name through the mud.

Josef Fritzl’s lawyer, Rudolph Mayer has also revealed that his client denies having committed rape. During questioning he is alleged to have confessed to having sexual desires on his daughter from her early teens.

“Finally I couldn’t restrain myself anymore.” he is alleged  to have said.

But he does not think he abused her against her will. His understanding was that she participated willingly. Elisabeth, on the other hand, does not agree. 11 hours of taped interviews with her will be played during the trial

She has told investigators about how her dad raped her around 3000 times, that he tied her up, drugged her, and threatened her to get her to do what he wanted.

“My client will deny rape and enslavement, but will admit to incest,” Fritzl’s lawyer said.

I have no doubt he will. But there is no way he’ll get away with it.

Fritzl’s House of Horror – A Timeline

1935. Josef Fritzl was born in Amstetten, Austria

1955. Josef Fritzl graduates as an electrical engineer

1957. At the age of 22, he marries Rosemarie, 17. Their first daughter Ulrike is born the same year. Daughter Rosemarie is born in 1960, and their son Harald, 1963.

1966. The couple’s fourth child, Elisabeth, is born.

1967. Josef Fritzl is sentenced to 18 months of prison for the rape of a nurse while threatening her with a knife. Rosemarie told the children he had gone away for work.

1969. Having done his prison time, Fritzl finds a job with a construction firm in Amstetten.

1970. Josef Fritzl starts visiting the brothel Villa Ostende.  He very quickly acquires a reputation for being violent and is most unpopular amongst the prostitutes.

1971. Rosemarie gives birth to twins; Gabriele och Josef.

1972. Rosemarie and Josef’s last child together, Doris,  is born. Josef Fritzl abuses Elisabeth for the first time. She is 11 years old.

1978. Building permission for a bunker on Ybbsstrasse 40, is granted.

1984. On August 28 Josef Fritzl sedates his daughter using ether and imprisons her in the bunker.

24 years of hell begin.

Menopause – Women vs. Men

You know, it’s been said that all the bad things that happen to us women start with three letters: “men”. Menstruation, mental disease and menopause are three of them. We women seem to bear the brunt of all the things that can go wrong with the human body. While menstruation is certainly like a rope around one’s neck, with period pains, messiness and the anxiety that comes with missing one of them, there is, in my opinion something even worse than menstruation and that is menopause. Virtually every woman will at some point in her life have to deal with the issues that result from her sexual hormones dwindling to a halt. Did you know, though, that there are many men who suffer from andropause, or as I like to call it, the Male Manopause?

Is it the same, though? Do men suffer even remotely like we do at that point in our lives? I’d like to argue that they don’t, I kind of like having the monopoly on suffering in our house, at least in the sense that it provides for many good excuses to avoid having to help out around the house, but when you look at it more closely there are indeed many similarities.

Many of us apparently deal with men who are either in full-blown, or entering, andropause. One of the signs can be one that they share with us: mood swings.

I had a boss once who was definitely entering andropause and his mood swings were tremendous. This was before I had joined the distinguished club myself, so I wasn’t personally familiar with the signs, but I figured out fairly early on that the mood swings were not natural. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of spending time with a woman in the icy grips of mood swings, you know what I mean. He would snap at me for the smallest of things, all of a sudden, but later on in the day he would return to his normal jovial self. The problem was that you could never predict which persona would meet you in the morning when you arrived to work.

I never asked him if he would wake up at night soaking the sheets in an avalanche of sweat, but if he really was enjoying andropause, chances are he did. Being in full-blown menopause myself right now, at way too early an age if you ask me, I can vouch for the night sweats. You’re fast asleep and suddenly you wake up having dreamt that you were thrown into a sauna. The bed cover is off, and your body is dripping wet. Next to you, still asleep, lies your husband shivering in the cold air. The cat, who started the night enjoying your toasty warm aura, has moved off in disgust, and when you reach out your hot hand to give a conciliatory stroke, she hisses at you, recoiling in horror. Instead, she gets up to lend her loving warmth to the poor man next to you who, let’s face it, is now in dire need of it (and whom she loves more anyway). If she could stick her tongue out at you, she would.

Imagine a husband and wife hitting menopause at the same time, but suffering alternating hot flushes and night sweats at night! The tug of war over the duvet would keep you awake most of the night! The bitchfest would be almost too delicious for words.

Around the same time that Mother Nature lovingly throws the mood swings and hot flashes at you, depression can set in. This is another wonderful aspect of menopause that men and women have in common. Of course, we handle the issue quite differently. For instance, men tend to tie their identity to being successful and powerful, which can be quite unhelpful as they then perceive themselves as being weak and pathetic if they are feeling overwhelmed and down.  Men don’t like to admit to feeling vulnerable so they do not seek help as much as women do, when they feel depressed. Therefore, a man under the influence of depression during his andropause, can be harder to deal with than a woman dealing with the same issue.

Now, what are the underlying factors for our similar, but unfairly different, menopausal symptoms? That’s an easy one to answer: the decline of sexual hormone levels. For us women, our estrogen levels decline dramatically until we no longer have any of the hormones at all in our bodies. Men also experience a decline in their sexual hormones, so, while we as women may choose to start Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), men can do the same. Only, it’s called Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT) when they take it. It’s probably a good thing; once you’ve got used to an ailing or disappearing libido, a dose of testosterone for a woman might be less than healthy. Perhaps she might end up wanting to ravish her husband, who has no interest in being ravished whatsoever. These things rarely coincide, right? That would just be too easy.

We have heard a lot about the comparisons between the female menopause and the male manopause, but are there differences? You can bet your tush there are. And they are – wait for it – in men’s favor. Surprised? Surely, you jest.

As I intimated earlier, the female hormone estrogen starts to decline in our 30’s or 40’s and by the time we are finished with our menopause, however long that ends up taking (for some of us, far too long), we are left with nothing. At this point, we can no longer bear children. For a man, however, their sexual hormone testosterone, while it dwindles, never really stops being produced. Men can still sire children well into their 80’s. Whether they would want to is another issue altogether, but they still produce the necessary components; sperm and testosterone to drive the wish to share that commodity with the opposite sex. And whether we want to share that is, also, a totally different kettle of fish.

Women and men deal with a lot of issues and problems throughout their lives. I have argued that women have more frustrating problems than men. I would also argue that their issues are more devastating to our bodies than men’s issues, but I may be wrong. It would appear, however, that we share most of the joys and tribulations that accompany that last hormonal stage of our lives: menopause. The experts do assure us, on the other hand, that women’s menopause is tougher than men’s andropause.

At least there’s that.

Elisabeth’s basement days were chronicled

By using very small pieces of paper that she hid in different places in her underground prison, Elisabeth Fritzl managed to keep a diary with dates and times of almost every attack by her father Josef Fritzl, on her or the kids.

In one emotional entry she describes how she rocked her dying son in her arms until he turned blue and died from respiratory distress. He was Elizabeth’s 7th child sired by her sick father.

Josef Fritzl later burned the infants body in a furnace and spread the ashes in his garden. It is this little boy’s death that forms the basis for the murder plea against Mr. Fritzl.

In other diary entries, Elisabeth describes how she’d catch rats with her bare hands, and how fascinated her children were by every day items like a mirror or bathroom scales.

The diary explains how Elisabeth at first struggled against her father’s attacks, but once her first child had been born, she stopped struggling for the sake of her children.

This diary, which describes Elisabeth’s 8,642 days underground reveals how fickle Josef Fritzl’s decisions on who would live with him and his wife above ground were. One of the children accompanied him above ground as he had managed to wind a length of thread around his toe and would not stop crying. Josef Fritzl, worried that his neighbors would hear the crying and become suspicious, brought the child up into the house, but by the time he had discovered the thread, his wife had already come home. He therefore made up a story that Elisabeth had left the child outside their door and gone back to the cult with which he claimed she was living.

The diary also bears witness to how Josef Fritzl would torture the children stuck underground with pictures of their siblings playing in the garden or in a swimming pool.

I’m not an advocate of the death penalty, but I think this case could change my mind. This man does not deserve to breathe the same air we do. However, I think locking him in solitary confinement underground without access to daylight, for the rest of his miserable life, would be the best punishment for him.