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Kevin Pezzi, MD

I developed technology to instantly
stop school shooters and other criminals,
such as rapists, robbers, home invaders,
and shoplifters. I also created ways to block
airborne germ transmission. Read more >

Iconoclastic views on economics, politics, technology, science, and life.

Disagree with something I wrote? So do I! Read more

“To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”

— Elbert Hubbard, American editor, publisher, and writer (1856–1915)

Trivia: He and his wife, Alice Moore Hubbard, the noted feminist and writer, died aboard the RMS Lusitania, which was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine on May 7, 1915, when they were heading to Europe to cover the war and interview Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.

If you disagree with something I wrote, feel free to challenge it. Some of my viewpoints are the antithesis (exact opposite) of what they once were. That isn't flip-flopping; that is changing opinions with scant evidence to support them into convictions with a firmer foundation of facts.

My political philosophy is an amalgamation of libertarian, conservative, and liberal principles. My opinions have changed so significantly that my conservative friends might be horrified by how I strongly believe that liberals are correct on certain issues. I've previously written about some of them, but to make this more fun, I will present others as challenges in which I offer $100,000 to the first person who can refute the logic I used in forming that opinion. Please note that due to my limited time and difficulty using my hands after I broke my neck, I cannot quickly update my previously published opinions. However, now that I am balancing the promptings of head and heart, I strongly disagree with many opinions I expressed in my writings.

I like finding people who make me think, not necessarily those who agree with me. Genius Robert Heinlein said, “I never learned from a man who agreed with me.” If you can educate me, I'm all ears.

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”
— Albert Einstein

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
— Albert Einstein

“What I would like to see more often in this nation is an open and intelligent conversation, not people just casting aspersions at each other … it's unbelievable to me the way people act like third graders. And if somebody doesn't agree with them, they're this and they're that … it comes from both sides. And it's just so infantile.”
— Dr. Ben Carson, neurosurgeon

“The ultimate ignorance is the rejection of something you know nothing about and refuse to investigate.”
— Dr. Wayne Dyer

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”
— General George Patton

“Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes

“A lot of people risk their lives in a brief act of heroism, which is kind of cool, but Jill has what I call slow heroism. She is risking her professional life on something that her own calculations show may not work for a thousand years—may not ever. So I like to support people that are risking their lives.”
— ex-Microsoft billionaire brainiac Nathan Myhrvold speaking about Jill Tarter, who inspired the character played by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact. It takes a brilliant person to see that others who go against the grain of conventional wisdom may be sages although lesser minds often ridicule their ideas.

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
— Oscar Wilde

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
— Winston Churchill

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
— Euripides, Greek tragic dramatist (484 BC - 406 BC)

“It is socially unacceptable to be right too early.”
— Robert Heinlein

“I'd rather stand alone on the truth than with millions on a lie.”

“The most distinctive mark of a cultured mind is the ability to take another's point of view; to put one's self in another's place, and see life and its problems from a point of view different from one's own. To be willing to test a new idea; to be able to live on the edge of difference in all matters intellectually; to examine without heat the burning question of the day; to have imaginative sympathy, openness and flexibility of mind, steadiness and poise of feeling, cool calmness of judgment, is to have culture.”
— Arthur H. R. Fairchild

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
— Abraham Lincoln

This reminds me of something stressed by one of my psychology professors, who said that society imposes rigid boundaries for what behavior is acceptable, and applies tremendous pressure trying to force people to conform to the behavioral expectations. Some of the most brilliant and productive outside-the-box thinkers led unconventional lives. One of the side effects of forcing people to think inside the box is that by lopping off outside-the-box behavior, potentially great outside-the-box ideas are lost, too.

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”
— Edward R. Murrow, American journalist (1908-1965)

“You will not do incredible things without an incredible dream.”
— John Eliot

Varicoceles do decrease testosterone levels

Many years ago in The Science of Sex, I wrote that varicoceles reduce testosterone levels. At that time, physicians commonly believed that varicoceles lowered male fertility but not testosterone levels. A study (Varicocele as a risk factor for androgen deficiency and effect of repair) published in BJUI (British Journal of Urology International) substantiates my opinion. Researchers found that men with varicocele had significantly lower testosterone levels, which was significantly increased after surgical repair.

I was correct, again. In my books and websites, I made many statements that were subsequently proven to be true by scientific researchers. Another example: I wrote about brown fat (a.k.a., brown adipose tissue or BAT) in adults in Fascinating Health Secrets, published in 1996, at a time when experts thought it was not present in adults. In 2006, researchers began to recognize signs of BAT, and several subsequent studies bolstered my earlier contention that adults possess this type of fat that can be manipulated to burn more calories and hence combat obesity. How did I know? By analyzing the effect of certain drugs and other substances on metabolism.

For many years, when almost every doctor was frightening women away from hormone replacement therapy (HRT), I stuck to what I'd said for decades: that the net benefits of HRT outweigh its risks in most women. Now “a new consensus statement from several doctors' groups … says that while the therapy comes with risks, its benefits generally outweigh the harm … ”

I was also correct about how non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) can slow healing. On October 5, 2010, ScienceDaily posted an article entitled Surprise: Scientists discover that inflammation helps to heal wounds. That wasn't a surprise to me; I wrote about it in 1996 in Fascinating Health Secrets. On May 12, 2014, based on information from Rockefeller University Press, they published another article (Understanding Aspirin's effect on wound healing offers hope for treating chronic wounds) that said aspirin “inhibits wound healing.”

Another example: In 2015, The Lancet published Hormonal contraceptive use and women's risk of HIV acquisition: a meta-analysis of observational studies indicating a link between injectable hormonal contraceptive and HIV risk. A decade or more before, I wrote in The Science of Sex: “Norplant and Depo-Provera can also increase the risk of a woman acquiring HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases through vaginal intercourse. These drugs reduce lubrication and thin the vaginal walls, making them more susceptible to viral penetration.”

“‘The scientific community has a way of remaining skeptical until every last arrow has been drawn, until the entire picture is colored in. Other scientists drew the pencil outlines, and Sarkis is filling in a lot of the color.”
— University of California microbiologist Michael Fischbach, speaking of microbiologist Sarkis Mazmanian, who gave a presentation at the Society for Neuroscience entitled “Gut Microbes and the Brain: Paradigm Shift in Neuroscience,” in Can the Bacteria in Your Gut Explain Your Mood?

In 2017, researchers found that giving ibuprofen and acetaminophen (Tylenol^®) relieved pain just as well as commonly prescribed opioids. I presented this tip two decades previously in Fascinating Health Secrets. The opioid crisis is one of the nails in the coffin of the United States. For many years, experts figuratively scratched their heads, pondering how to combat it. They should have listened to me long ago.

They should also tune into my various methods to address obesity, which has ballooned bodies and inflated healthcare costs so much they threaten to bankrupt the USA. Solving this crisis is a national imperative. Three decades ago, I was so fat I couldn't see my feet when I stood up; now I have a 30 – 31 inch waist and almost effortlessly keep weight off. I still crave tasty junk just as much as ever but found an easy, safe way to quickly switch off hunger.

Coupled with my various food inventions, people could be slim and healthy (physically and mentally: obesity affects the brain) AND have substantially more enjoyment eating. In fact, some of my food innovations boost the pleasure of eating and drinking so much I wonder if they might give another way to address the opioid crisis. Opioids can initially provide rewarding pleasure. That pleasure subsides with continued use but can be rekindled to some extent by increasing opioid dosage. In contrast, my methods to amplify eating pleasure never wane, and using them can give delight lasting much longer.

Years from now, when I finish documenting all of the instances in which I knew things before other experts did, some people may wonder why I was so far ahead of the curve, such as when I predicted in the mid-1990s that the United States—then seemingly destined to be the world's indomitable economic superpower—was headed for a severe economic crash.

I don't have a crystal ball, but I question everything: from my opinions to “facts” that everyone knows are true. By reassessing everything and putting 2 and 2 together and extrapolating from it, I had a long head start on seeing the truth. For that I can thank my high school biology teacher who taught me the importance of simple observation: seeing the world as it really is, not how it is commonly believed to be. History is replete with examples of how scientific and technical experts laughably clung to ideas that we now know are not true, but were once so obvious to virtually everyone that questioning them automatically made one a crackpot. For examples of this, see my article on Ridiculing good new ideas.

“A man with a new idea is a crank—until the idea succeeds.”
— Mark Twain

The experts admit: diet can affect acne!

Notes:

Risk of cardiac and stroke death increases after discontinuing hormone therapy
Graphic pictures on cigarette packs would significantly reduce smoking death rate
Comment: I suggested this decades ago.
Hypertension Researcher Encourages Colleagues to Expand Their Focus (Sep. 14, 2013)
Comment: I discussed endothelins (the subject of that article) years ago in The Science of Sex.
Total darkness at night key to success of breast cancer therapy, study shows
Excerpt: “Melatonin by itself delayed the formation of tumors and significantly slowed their growth but tamoxifen caused a dramatic regression of tumors in animals with either high nighttime levels of melatonin during complete darkness or those receiving melatonin supplementation during dim light at night exposure. These findings have potentially enormous implications for women being treated with tamoxifen and also regularly exposed to light at night due to sleep problems, working night shifts or exposed to light from computer and TV screens.”
Comment: For many years*, I've preached the importance of sleeping in a totally dark room, yet I've never before heard doctors advising patients about this. Architects seem oblivious, too, with master bedrooms of high-end homes often loaded with large windows—just try blocking all light from them! (* in Fascinating Health Secrets [written in the early 1990s] and The Science of Sex [primarily written 2000 – 2004])
Graphic Warnings On Cigarettes Effective Across Demographic Groups and Graphic Images Influence Intentions to Quit Smoking and Pictures Effective in Warning Against Cigarette Smoking and Graphic Anti-Smoking Ads Increase Attempts to Quit and Graphic Warnings Labels On Cigarette Packs Could Lead to 8.6 Million Fewer Smokers in US
Comment: I advocated that decades ago in the first edition of Fascinating Health Secrets.
Age-Related Cognitive Decline Linked to Energy Available to Synapses in Prefrontal Cortex
Excerpt: “ … synaptic health in the brain is closely linked to cognitive decline. … estrogen restores synaptic health and also improves working memory.”

The views expressed on this page may or may not reflect my current opinions, nor do they necessarily represent my past ones. After reading a slice of what I wrote in my various websites and books, you may conclude that I am a liberal Democrat or a conservative Republican. Wrong; there is a better alternative. Just as the primary benefit from debate classes results when students present and defend opinions contrary to their own, I use a similar strategy as a creative writing tool to expand my brainpower—and yours. Mystified? Stay tuned for an explanation. PS: The wheels in your head are already turning a bit faster, aren't they?

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Reference: Imagining dialogue can boost critical thinking: Excerpt: “Examining an issue as a debate or dialogue between two sides helps people apply deeper, more sophisticated reasoning …”

Kevin Pezzi, MD

Varicoceles do decrease testosterone levels

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