HealthCommentary

Exploring Human Potential

“Everybody’s Job Will Be Different Going Forward.”

Posted on | July 14, 2025 | 1 Comment

Mike Magee

In a speech to the American Philosophical Society in January, 1946, J. Robert Oppenheimer said, “We have made a thing …that has altered abruptly and profoundly the nature of the world…We have raised again the question of whether science is good for man, of whether it is good to learn about the world, to try to understand it, to try to control it, to help give to the world of men increased insight, increased power.”

Eight decades later, those words reverberate, and we once again are at a seminal crossroads. This past week, Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, was everywhere, a remarkably skilled communicator celebrating the fact that his company was now the first publicly traded company to exceed a $4 trillion valuation.

As he explained, “We’ve essentially created a new industry for the first time in three hundred years. the last time there was an industry like this, it was a power generation industry…Now we have a new industry that generates intelligence…you can use it to discover new drugs, to accelerate diagnosis of disease…everybody’s jobs will be different going forward.”

Jensen, as I observed him perform on that morning show, seemed just a bit overwhelmed, awed, and perhaps even slightly frightened by the pace of recent change. “We reinvented computing for the first time since the 60’s, since IBM introduced the modern computer architecture… its able to accelerate applications from computer graphics to physics simulations for science to digital biology to artificial intelligence. . . . in the last year, the technology has advanced incredibly fast. . . AI is now able to reason, it’s able to think… Before it was able to understand, it was able to generate content, but now it can reason, it can do research, it can learn about the latest information before it answers a question.”

Of course, this is hardly the first time technology has triggered flashing ethical warning lights. I recently summarized the case of Facial Recognition Technology (FRT). The U.S. has the largest number of closed circuit cameras at 15.28 per capita, in the world. On average, every American is caught on a closed circuit camera 238 times a week, but experts say that’s nothing compared to where our “surveillance” society will be in a few years. 

The field of mFRT is on fire. Emergen Research projects a USD annual investment of nearly $14 billion by 2028 with a Compound Annual Growth Rate of almost 16%. Detection, analysis and recognition are all potential winners. There are now 277 unique organizational investor groups offering “breakthroughs” in FRT with an average decade of experience at their backs.

But FRT, as amazing and disturbing as it is, took a back seat last week to David Ignatius‘s Washington Post article titled “How the spy game will work when there’s no place to hide.” In the opening sentence  he shares the 2018 warning of a CIA case officer who states with confidence, that “computer algorithms would soon be able to identify people not just by their faces, or fingerprints, or DNA — but by the unique ways they walked.”

Wild eyed speculation? Apparently not. In a Cornell scientific publication on May 7, 2025, researchers using a model called FarSight were able to confirm human identity from 1,000 meters through gait assessment (among other measures) with 83% accuracy. For spies that operate in secret and hide their movement and communications at all costs, there is literally now “no place to hide.”

A moment of reflection is all it should take to appreciate that the distance between a spy’s cover and tradecraft and our own day to day privacy and secrecy (including health related information) is narrow indeed. Consider former CIA director, Gen. David H. Petraeus words in 2012, “We have to rethink our notions of identity and secrecy. … Every byte left behind reveals information about location, habits, and, by extrapolation, intent and probable behavior.”

Thirteen years later, Ignatius asked last week, “We’ve entered a new era where AI models are smarter than human beings. Can they also be better spies? That’s the conundrum that creative AI companies are exploring.”

But as no one knows better than Nvidia’s chairman, the bleed over of AI into human sectors is now near complete. Even before gait recognition, AI powered FRT technology was pervasive. They are everywhere – security, e-commerce, automobile licensing, banking, immigration, airport security, media, entertainment, traffic cameras – and now health care with diagnostic, therapeutic, and logistical applications leading the way.

Machine learning and AI have allowed FRT to displace voice recognition, iris scanning, and fingerprinting. And now “gait recognition” (plus data tracking) can theoretically uncover the identity of even masked face ICE agents during one of their LA children’s park raids.

Still Jensen Huang sees this revolution as both manageable and progressive. He said last week, “A lot of work will be automated (but) it’s going to create new work, new jobs…AI is the ‘great equalizer’…because we use AI for research…as a tutor…so that I may be  better informed in a lot of different fields that I otherwise am relatively new at…its a booster for young people and puts pressure on people like myself….every programmer just became better because they have the benefit of AI, every researcher just became better…every doctor just became better because they had AI to help them do diagnosis. It could be a doctor in a small town, or a developing country…they all have access to the world’s best AI…its actually a great equalizer.”

Does anything keep him up at night? How about the fact that 80% of undergraduates in China go on for a Masters degree? And this while we’re handcuffed in recruiting the best overseas minds by the Trump Tariff and Visa Wars and the senseless attacks on our premier universities.

Speaking to the Hill & Valley Forum in Washington, D.C. on May 1, 2025, Huang  stressed the importance of maintaining an innovation lead in controlling the risk/benefit endpoints of this technologic revolution.

His concerns? 1) Already more than 50% of the world’s AI researchers are Chinese. 2) Their AI algorithms and codes are Open Source while our’s are non-transparent and escape regulatory public/private scrutiny. 3) Our President and Project 2025 appear fully committed to dialing our nation backwards when it comes to scientific and technologic innovation.

The Texas Flood Disaster – Not “An Act of God.”

Posted on | July 8, 2025 | 3 Comments

Mike Magee

In the wake of last week’s human tragedy in Texas, it would be easy (and appropriate) to focus on the role played by Trump’s reckless recent dismantling of FEMA and related federal agencies. But to do so would be to accept that the event was an anomaly, or as Trump labeled it on Sunday on his way to a round of golf at Bedminster, “a hundred year catastrophe.” In reality, tragedies like this are the direct result of global warming, and last week’s suffering and loss are destined to be followed by who knows how many others here and in communities around the world.

In 2009 President Obama joined global leaders in New York City for the Opening Session of the UN. One of the transboundary issues discussed was Global Warming.

All agreed that the Kyoto Protocol had failed. It failed because the target to decrease emissions by some 5% was too low. It failed because large transitional nations like India and China were excluded. And it failed because US leadership opted out.

The global community today has a deeper hole out of which they must dig. In doing so they would do well to focus on health and safety as outcome measures, and define strategies to manage the obvious consequences of this ongoing crisis. 

Two decades ago, the warnings were clear. Left unattended, we would soon not only need to plan mitigation, but also need to prepare and resource intervention to deal with inevitable human injury and disease fall-out.

Of course, back then, we could not have predicted that wise disease interventions in climate ravaged hot spots around the globe, like expansion of USAID funding in the Bush and Obama administrations, would be X’d out under Trump/Musk. Who could have imagined such reckless and ultimately self-destructive moves?

And yet, here we are:

1. Natural disasters from storms, floods, drought, wildfires and excessive heat, as predicted are now the norm, not the exception. These realities in turn cause direct injuries, mass migrations, and diversion of resources which might normally go to societal infrastructure.

2. Rising temperatures are expanding the range of various disease vectors. including mosquitos, ticks and rodents. Malaria will occur in higher altitudes than before, and dengue fever will appear farther north. Ticks are now second only to mosquitoes as carries of human disease. But a far more dangerous human vector, one capable of literally turning back a century of progress in combating infectious diseases at home and abroad has landed on our shores. His name is RFK Jr.

3. Food and water borne illnesses are becoming more prevalent due to the higher temperatures which encourage their occurrence and spread.  FDA deregulation and hobbling of the EPA now magnify this downside risk.

4. Air quality has declined as ozone, particulate matter, and allergens combined with heat create a deadly brew. Seniors as a result suffer more cardiac and respiratory disease, and youngsters more asthma.

5. Water scarce areas are expanding faster creating famine, hygienic failure, migration and violence. Lack of availability of clean safe water expands the already serious burden of water borne diseases.

6. Decline in water quantity and quality negatively compromises production of crops, livestock and fisheries, expanding the number of global citizens who suffer hunger and famine.

This list was logical and the impact predictable two decades ago. It came less that one year after Hurricane Katrina made land on August 23, 2005, in New Orleans costing $161 billion and 1,833 human lives. Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth,” was first released the following year on May 24, 2006. And his was not the only voice at the time.

Georgetown University’s Lawrence Gostin presented a policy laden argument in JAMA that ended with this prophetic statement:

“Global health, like global climate change, may soon become a matter so important to the world’s future that it demands international attention, and no state can escape the responsibility to act.”

For 105 souls (at latest count) from central Texas, time has run out. But if one is to believe the current administration and its enablers, this latest “Act of God”, waged on young Christian campers among others, has no human fingerprints on it. 

 

“The Devils in The Dark” – The Continuing Evolution of the Medical Tricoder

Posted on | June 30, 2025 | 1 Comment

Mike Magee

On March 9, 1967, the Star Trek classic episode, “The Devil in the Dark” first aired. The Enterprise had received an urgent distress call from miners on the planet Janus VI. They are literally melting after, Horta, a wounded inhabitant has targeted them with liquifying acid rays. 

A sympathetic Spock hears the call, and in an effort to disclose cause and motivation, “mind-melts” with the creature. Turns out, all she’s trying to do is protect her babies from a perceived threat. Kirk agrees, and with Spock, calls in Dr. McCoy to access the patient’s condition.

What McCoy encounters is a “rocky-skinned patient.” With the aid of his tricoder, a handheld diagnostic sensor, “Bones” (McCoy’s nickname referencing the historical 19th century American slang “Sawbones” referring to surgeons)  uncovers a serious and deep gaping wound that requires immediate attention.

Kirk manages to “beam down”  a hundred pounds of thermoconcrete, and McCoy expertly applies it to the wound. All of which is a set-up for his shipmates to wonder if this will work, which generates the iconic most-repeated line in the series storied history. McCoy (clearly irritated) utters in his “How do I know?” moment – “I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer.”

Similarly challenged modern day doctors have been voicing their own frustrations for more that a few decades. But the AMA has been scientifically tracking their discontent only since 2011. The levels of burnout are somewhat down in 2025 compared to peaked pique in 2021. But among the irritants, integration of new technology remain near the top of the list.

Nobody knew better than McCoy the mixed blessing of technology. His original “23rd century tricoder” was a marvel of diagnostic science, but also raised ethical dilemmas and patient expectations. The fictional tool originally was the size of a portable tape recorder and served as a general data sensor and analyzer. The medical version was a “hand-held high resolution scanner” which (in the 24th century version) had a flip out panel with expanded screen, said to have been inspired by the HP-41C scientific calculator.”

On May 10, 2011, Qualcomm partnered with tricoder entrepreneurs to create the Ticorder X Prize, a $10 million incentive for anyone who could actualize the Star Trek fictional model’s capabilities in a hand-held medical tricoder. Five years later, the contest was officially closed out, with $3.7 million awarded to multiple contestants, none of whom successfully reproduced all the capabilities.

This is not to say that dreamers in the Stare Trek mode ever gave up on being successors to McCoy. In 2013, 15-year-old Aspyn Palatnick took a summer internship at Long Island’s historic Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to learn the basics of genome analysis. Seven years later in 2020, after teaming up with his original professor, Michael Schatz, he revisited the Laboratory for its 125th anniversary celebration. By then, they had developed “the world’s first mobile genome sequence analyzer” as an iPhone app termed iGenomics.

Cold Spring Harbor trumpeted their success on December 7, 2020, stating “The iPhone app was developed to complement the tiny DNA sequencing devices being made by Oxford Nanopore.  Palatnick, now a software engineer at Facebook, was already experienced at building iPhone apps when joining the Schatz laboratory. He and Schatz realized that ‘As the sequencers continued to get even smaller, there were no technologies available to let you study that DNA on a mobile device. Most of the studying of DNA: aligning, analyzing, is done on large server clusters or high-end laptops…flying in suitcases full of Nanopores and laptops and other servers to do that analysis in the remote fields (was impractical).’” iGenomics helps by making genome studies more portable, accessible, and affordable.”

“Portable, accessible, and affordable!” That’s something Bones McCoy could get behind. In fact, he’d be amazed to see what he has spawned in 2025, and how new technology is augmenting rather than complicating the work of physicians, nurses and medical scientists. 

Consider, for example the publication that dropped on June 3, 2025 in Nature. In the reporting in Science magazine, you could feel the excitement: “During a single week in April 2023, the area around Florida’s Washington Oaks Gardens State Park was abuzz. A bobcat passed by, perhaps stalking the eastern gray squirrels. An eastern diamondback rattlesnake slithered through the undergrowth. The spaces among the grand oaks hummed with wildlife—a big brown bat, mosquitoes, and an osprey—and people with African, European, and Asian ancestors… Scientists didn’t directly see any of these creatures. But they used cutting-edge DNA technology to find evidence of them in tiny specks of organic material floating in the air. A similar analysis of air from the streets of Dublin revealed a far different, but equally rich, tableau of life.”

The new technique, “shotgun sequencing” can read, analyze, and reconstruct large DNA sequences from billions of short sequences. But what’s really startling is the usability of the device in the field. As reported, “At least one newer machine is smaller than a cigarette packet and can plug into a laptop, compared with previous machines the size of a small household refrigerator.”

David Duffy, a biologist at the University of Florida’s Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience and senior author of the new study, originally wanted to title the article, “Towards a tricorder,”  but was dissuaded stating,“We’re not claiming to be there,” Duffy says. “We’re saying we are a lot closer to this being a factual reality than we were a few years ago. And you can foresee it being a reality in the future.”

Ready or not, for doctors entering residency training July 1, 2025, some version of the “medical tricoder” is likely to be standard equipment when they enter practice in 2030.

Life Goes On – How, When, Why?

Posted on | June 29, 2025 | 1 Comment

Here are some notable views on managing life’s daily challenges. Do any especially resonate with you, and why?
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The crisis you have to worry about most is the one you don’t see coming.
Mike Mansfield

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; ‘tis dearness only that gives everything it’s value.
Thomas Paine

If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
Martin Luther King

Ah, but man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?
Robert Browning

Adversity is the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free from admirers then.
Samuel Johnson

The nature of the flower is to bloom.
Alice Walker

If you want a place in the sun, you’ve got to put up with a few blisters.
Abigail van Buren

If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn’t pass it around. Wouldn’t be doing anybody a favor. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don’t say I embrace trouble. That’s as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say, meet it as a friend, for you’ll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

When you can’t solve the problem, manage it.
Dr. Robert H. Schuller

Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.
Frederic Chopin

No man can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest. For it is part of education to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.
T. S. Eliot

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul, and yet no one ever comes to sit by it.
Vincent van Gogh

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles he has overcome trying to succeed.
Booker T. Washington

In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life. It goes on.
Robert Frost

Stand Tall Stanford. Lead Again – Divest TESLA!

Posted on | June 24, 2025 | Comments Off on Stand Tall Stanford. Lead Again – Divest TESLA!

 

Mike Magee

On the Stanford campus this Spring, in the middle of Silicon Valley, it was impossible not to hear echoes of Apartheid re-emerging with force 3/4 of a century after the original battle for social justice here and in far away lands was fully engaged. Stanford’s President, Jonathan Levin, said it best in his public support of Harvard, after Columbia capitulated to Trump.

Levin’s statement read:

“America’s universities are a source of great national strength, creating knowledge and driving innovation and economic growth. This strength has been built on government investment but not government control. The Supreme Court recognized this years ago when it articulated the essential freedoms of universities under the First Amendment as the ability to determine who gets to teach, what is taught, how it is taught, and who is admitted to study. . . Universities need to address legitimate criticisms with humility and openness. But the way to bring about constructive change is not by destroying the nation’s capacity for scientific research, or through the government taking command of a private institution. Harvard’s objections to the letter it received are rooted in the American tradition of liberty, a tradition essential to our country’s universities, and worth defending.”

As students prepared to head home for the summer, Stanford Trustees gathered quietly to advice their university president how best to handle Trump and Musk aided assaults on university autonomy, DEI, and challenges to F-1 visas for full-time international students pursuing academic studies.

Stanford had found itself in a harsh spotlight two months earlier in a Feb. 10, 2025  Wall Street Journal report that read, “Steve Davis, who earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Stanford, led advanced projects at Musk’s rocket company SpaceX before taking over as president of Musk’s tunnel startup The Boring Company, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. He’s Musk’s key lieutenant in his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).”

That was quite a wake-up call on campus. After all, it was a sit-in, staged by Stanford students nearly a half century ago to protest South African Apartheid, that redefined that struggle by focusing on the use of university divestiture to deliver an “economic punch” to the ruling minority. Another South African, Elon Musk, had attempted to manage his illegal alien status by enrolling in Stanford as a graduate student in 1995, only to bale 2 days after enrollment to pursue his internet get-rich scheme.

Two decades earlier, a decision made by the Stanford Board to oppose a Ford Motor Company stockholder’s proposal to withdraw operations from South Africa had triggered a campus revolt. Stanford at the time held 93,950 shares of Ford Stock. In response to the inaction, the Stanford students launched a sit-in (captured by the Stanford Daily student newspaper below) inside the Old Student Union Building at 1 P.M. on Monday, May 9, 1977. When they wouldn’t leave five hours later, 294 students and faculty were arrested including the daughter of the U.S, Secretary of Labor, Jill Ann Marshall.

Six months later, after repeated demonstrations and disruptions on campus, the Board issued a statement that each of their trustees held a “deep aversion to the practice of apartheid”, and adopted a “South Africa-related ethical investment policy.” Still it took until 1985 for the university to “create formal investment policies that explicitly set out guidelines for investing in South Africa-related companies.”

Many of us today, in our 70s and 80s, once again feel the familiar strains of suppression and oppression in the behavior and actions of Trump and Musk, as he toggled emotionally between Texas, South Africa, the Silicon Valley, and Washington. The Musk-led and Trump enabled assault, disguised as “efficiency” is little more than stealing money from the poor to give to the rich, widening an already extraordinary income gap.

Violence at home and abroad is once again in the air, driven by intense greed, cruelty, subjugation, and the targeting of vulnerable peoples. Oligarchic and super-aggressive, sadly there is nothing new here. Musk’s child-like behavior obsesses on a “super-hero” world and visions of Mars as he ravages the inhabitants of Mother Earth.

Given his life origins and path, it is not surprising that he has left Washington in response to intensive economic isolation.  And this time it is not Ford, but Tesla divestiture, that has been front and center. But his foot soldiers remain, continuing the active dismantling of our government’s structural pillars.

Like Harvard, Stanford is an elite university with large numbers of foreign students, many engaged in basic scientific research, information technology, and engineering. 13% of Stanford undergraduates are international, and  36% of its graduates students are from outside the U.S.  Both universities also share large endowments and a history of active social engagement. 

Stanford’s 2024 financial returns on its’ “Merged Pool” (the principal investment vehicle for the university’s endowment) documented an endowment of some $43 billion with returns that year on investments of  8.4% (their 5 year return was 9.9%).

The University Trustees, in June, 2020, updated their “Ethical Investment Framework” whose origins date back to its’ epic battle with students and faculty last century over South African Apartheid. In the final paragraph of this statement, the Trustees proclaim, “In rare instances, the University’s Board of Trustees may elect to divest specific companies or categories of investment that are deemed abhorrent and ethically unjustifiable.” I would suggest that investment in Tesla is one of those “rare instances.”

Investing in Tesla is tantamount to investing in their founder and CEO, Elon Musk. His own shareholders took him to court  last year and were granted relief from his demand for a $56 billion annual salary. The case remains under appeal. This after he literally abandoned his struggling company for nearly a year as he labored, first to get Trump elected, and then to serve as lead henchmen in dismantling nearly every federal agency at the hands of a lethal band of “20 something year-old IT henchmen” with a Stanford grad and Trump employee in the lead.

Musk quite literally is Tesla. 60% of his wealth exists as Tesla stock. He owns 13% of the company’s holdings. But it’s been a rocky road since his MAGA chainsaw appearances. In the past six months the stock has gone from $430 a share to $348, and that’s only with the help of a 8% bump up this week on the carefully staged launch of the Tesla Robotaxi in Austin, Texas. The NY Post covered it all, including a dangerous illegal turn and broken speed limits. But social media gave it 5 stars. Why? As the paper reported, “Despite the apparent hiccups, Tesla shares surged after a handpicked group of influencers who participated in the trial run uploaded positive reviews on X and other social media platforms.”

Musk leaves little to chance. And neither should Stanford Trustees. His profiteering with Trump is obvious, visible, and accelerating even as another SpaceX rocket spectacularly burst into flames last week.

A Tesla Divestiture allows citizens the ability to send a tangible message. Along with demonstrations, like the 5 million strong NO KINGS marches last week in response to Trump’s Birthday Military parade, concrete actions like these are the most likely way to “deliver us from evil” as they did with South African apartheid on April 27, 1994.

Musk=Trump=Vance=ICE Raids=Autocracy

Want to help? In addition to encouraging Stanford Trustees to stand tall, here are 3 easy steps and then one more.

1. Trade it in. If you own a Tesla, trade it in for another brand now.

2. Check – Do you or  your organization own Tesla stock in any form?

3. If yes, organize a teach-in, to explain Divestiture (as in SA Apartheid), its’ purpose and utility.

4. Circulate and post an online petition to ask your organization to divest of all Tesla holdings.

. . . and one more, Copy and Share this post with all your contacts.

Modern Advice From a 90 Year Old in 1988

Posted on | June 19, 2025 | Comments Off on Modern Advice From a 90 Year Old in 1988

(Pure Text Copy HERE)

Mike Magee

These days we’re all seeking good advice, how best to manage fear and worry, to focus on the goodness in others, and believe that caring and compassion are rationale responses to those in need. But surprisingly, advice – whether free or at a price – is mostly off the mark.

But not in the case of Elodie Armstrong. At the age of 50, she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Forty years later, she took the time out to share a bit of wisdom with her family and friends.

Her daughter, Marge Wisner of Longview, Washington, described her mother as “a special lady, full of fun, spirituality, and faith. She is an inspiration to all who know her.”

Olivena Elodie Smith was born in Greenwood, Wisconsin on Christmas Eve in 1897. She was one of five children. She married Arthur Armstrong on June 10, 1916, and they went on to have three children – William, Betty Mae, and Marjorie Jeanne.  Their mother died on November 9, 1994, at the age of 96.

Back in 1988, Marge decided to share the advice her mother had written down with her local paper which then printed it – twice. Encouraged by the response, she wrote a note to Ann Landers. It said, “I would like to share her personal commandments with you in the hope that you will print them.”

On September 3, 1988, Ann Landers did just that in her very popular, nationally syndicated column. That column is displayed above. And Elodie Armstrong’s advice has never been more relevant than it is today. I encourage you to read it carefully, and share it with family, friends and colleagues far and wide. Elodie may be gone, but you can help assure she is not forgotten.

 

Reflecting On Good and Evil.

Posted on | June 16, 2025 | 2 Comments

Mike Magee

There’s a lot of soul-searching going on. Take a moment to read out loud – to pause and consider. The topic: Good vs. Evil.
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That there is goodness in this world is undeniable. That there is evil, capable of taking root to branch and multiply with breathtaking speed and by surprise, is equally the case.

But little candles throw great beams, and light enlightens, while sins cast long shadows.

We and our world are both evil and good. By our deeds you shall know us.

All the learning, earning and yearning can’t replace a moment’s hesitation or justice withheld in the face of evil.

Tyranny, poverty, disease – there is more than enough to battle to prove our inner worth. Though it’s useful to remind that the knowledge and power that accrues can always be turned upon ourselves.

That we possess a conscience does not assure its use. But it can be stirred by the universe and the belief that we all have a right to be here among the trees and stars.

Amid the noisy confusion people do somehow find peace inside, and dreams of a beautiful world, and a confidence (sometimes shaken but never withdrawn).

Injustice is a double-edged sword and given time justice will prevail. (In God we pray.)

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