A4
Opinion
wallowa.com
August 1, 2018
Wallowa County Chieftain
Chief Joseph
Days No. 73
in the books
A
nother Chief Joseph Days celebration is in the books,
and what a week it was.
If you like hot weather, you were no doubt in hog
heaven as temperatures peaked in the 90s all week long.
The one saving grace for the evening performances was
the breeze that comes up. And once the sun sets behind the
mountains, things cool off quickly.
We made it out for all four rodeo performances this year
and had a blast. It was a bit disheartening when we invited
folks to go with us, and they said they would be out of town
–– far out of town and for the entire week.
Yeah, it gets a bit more crowded than we’re accustomed
to, but it’s also a tremendous boost for Joseph and the entire
county. It’s an adventure.
This was my
first year to be
involved with
the Rotary Club
of Wallowa
County’s food
Paul Wahl
booth. It was an
eye-opener.
Wednesday
and Thursday
nights were steady, but not unmanageable. Friday night was
busy, and Saturday night was totally insane.
The crew opened the doors Saturday night and their next
break came more than three hours later. Kudos to everyone in
the club who had a part in this fundraising adventure.
About the only complaint we heard was from folks want-
ing to use a credit card to pay for their dinner or at very least,
use an ATM to get cash.
I’m guessing we turned down in excess of $400 in busi-
ness over the four days the stand was open.
The most disheartening was a young father with two small
children who came to the booth to get them dinner, and all he
had was a credit card. I offered to buy dinner for him and his
family out of my own pocket, but he declined.
I believe we’re getting to be just enough of a credit card
society that having an ATM at the rodeo grounds makes
sense. The logistics may be a bit tricky, but with today’s tech-
nology, I believe it can be done.
When we lived in western Colorado, one of the local
banks had an ATM built into a trailer. They hauled that puppy
to every event big and small across several counties.
All they needed was electricity and an Internet connection.
The withdrawal fees were kinda chunky, but it was a great
convenience.
Perhaps one of our banks here could look into this type of
unit.
The talk around the rodeo grounds was the newly installed
toilets. They received extremely high marks, particularly
from the ladies who visited.
One lady remarked, “Those are nicer than my toilet at
home.”
Quite a compliment, indeed.
Congrats to all the 200 or so volunteers who make Chief
Joseph Days happen each year. You are a stalwart group with
lots to be proud of.
Finally, a fix-it from last week’s column in which we iden-
tified Mildred Hayes as the “first” Chief Joseph Days Queen.
She actually was the third –– in 1948 –– and rode in Satur-
day’s parade. Icel Edgeman was the first queen.
What I had meant to say was Mildred was “among the
first” queens, but it didn’t come out that way. My apologies
to anyone who thought I was rewriting Chief Joseph Days
history.
In our business, the only way not to make mistakes is to
never write anything, which readers don’t generally see as a
good thing.
WAHL TO WALL
LETTERS to the EDITOR
It’s healthy to examine
your belief system
On July 23, I posted to my Facebook page for everyone to
see, “I respect, and will defend to my death, your right to live
by your religious beliefs.”
So imagine my surprise two days later, when I opened
up the Chieftain and a letter to the editor declared me prej-
udiced against all Christians and intolerant of all white reli-
gious leaders.
My printed religious-related criticisms (July 11 edition)
were clearly restricted to those who disobey Christ’s teachings
by wanting to greet the strangers with walls instead of wel-
comes, and by hating all Muslims because 0.005 percent of
Muslims are jihadists. The letter signer placed great emphasis
upon distinguishing between legal and illegal immigrants. But
she uniformly supports our president’s proposed violations of
our highest law, our Constitution, when those treated unconsti-
tutionally would just happen to be brown or black.
Good Christians seriously question their own beliefs when
confronted by inconsistencies of their beliefs with the teach-
ings of Jesus. Those only claiming to be good Christians, like
the letter- signer, cling to such beliefs unthinkingly.
After all, why bother considering those pesky inconvenient
facts in my column that show you may be wrong, when you
know you’re always right?
Regarding her Nazi comment: For those who care about
facts and history, you will know (or want to know, if you truly
See LETTERS, Page A5
A little help from their friends
D
ramatic twist for two Imnaha
River Chinook salmon last week.
A real nail-biter of an episode in
their already exciting migration saga. First,
some quick backstory.
I go to work each morning by driv-
ing an empty 500 gallon water tank on a
dually truck down to the Imnaha River. We
gather the fish in the trap and sort, one by
one, recording if they’re a boy or a girl, if
they’re wild or from a hatchery.
Then measure to see how big and
check for tags or tracking devices that are
sometimes slipped under the skin.
Then it’s decision time. Some fish are
sent up the river to go about their business
of spawning. Kids, spawning is when two
fish love each other very, very much and
the mommy fish and daddy fish take out a
mortgage on a nice patch of gravel in the
water and make a family together.
I mean, it’s way more technical than
that but this is a family-oriented publica-
tion, so we’ll leave it there for now.
So some salmon go on up the river
while others go on a truck ride to the
hatchery where their spawning will
take place in somewhat more controlled
circumstances.
We got the catch that day loaded up, I
double-checked the oxygen tanks and aer-
ator, then my passengers and I set out over
the Wallowa Mountain Loop Road.
Negotiating the Loop Road is a whole
new element of danger these hatch-
ery-bound salmon now have to face in
their modern-day migration cycle. For
anybody not familiar with driving the
curvy Loop Road during tourist season, I
AND
FURTHERMORE
Jon Rombach
refer you to “Mad Max: Fury Road.”
It’s basically a documentary about driv-
ing the Loop Road. The popular thing this
year for many Loop Road drivers is to stop
along the shoulder and leave a door wide
open, hanging out in the lane. Right smack
in the path of oncoming vehicles on a road
that’s already plenty narrow.
I don’t know if these people just don’t
like having doors or want to test their
insurance coverage or what. I do not get it.
Here’s a happy traffic update: many
thanks to the asphalt angels who patched
all those Loop Road potholes. Very nicely
done.
Back to the migration, already in prog-
ress. So the fish and I negotiate all the
doors on the Loop Road, climb Sheep
Creek Hill, then my phone lights up as we
roll back into cell phone range.
I safely pull over, leave my door closed
and listen to a few messages from the
hatchery. I learn that I must turn around
and head right back to the river from
whence we just came. There’s been a
slight hiccup and two of the salmon I
have on board need to be returned to the
Imnaha.
Now. There are two ways to look at
this. Science will tell you that evolution
long ago discarded all human DNA that is
The Curious Case of
Curcumin: Part 2
“What science allows is an increas-
ing confidence in a hypothesis as the evi-
dence accumulates, not a claim to infal-
libility on the first try.”
–– Steven Pinker, Enlightenment
Now.
Using curcumin as an example, Part
1 of this column emphasized variability
in curcumin absorption (bioavailability)
and the resulting safety concerns. The
more important question is this: Is cur-
cumin likely effective and safe for the
condition you wish to treat? Only clini-
cal (human) trials can answer this.
Evidence Based Medicine provides a
framework to guide medical decisions at
the patient level, and for national guide-
lines like those from the U.S. Preventive
Services Task Force (uspreventiveser-
vicestaskforce.org). It emphasizes need
for a high level of evidence to justify
medical interventions.
The highest level of evidence comes
from randomized clinical trials pub-
lished in peer-reviewed journals. In
these trials, participants are randomly
assigned to receive a promising new
treatment (like curcumin) verses a con-
trol such as placebo.
Ideally both participants and inves-
tigators are blinded. This strategy for
evaluating efficacy and toxicity mini-
mizes confounding influences, such as
investigator and participant biases that
could inadvertently affect study results.
MOUNTAIN
MEDICINE
If done properly, we conclude the
study outcome was (probably) caused by
the treatment.
Curcumin clinical studies are few and
usually of low quality. This is not sur-
prising. Clinical studies for dietary sup-
plements are not required by FDA. Tri-
als are expensive with low probability
for return on investment.
Nevertheless, three clinical trials of
curcumin for enhancement of cognition
have recently been published. You can
access these — and many clinical stud-
ies — via Google/Scholar/search term
(for example, curcumin and cognition).
The highest quality study was pub-
lished in the American Journal of Geri-
atric Psychiatry in March 2018. Inves-
tigators randomized 46 nondemented
healthy adults, aged 51-84 years, to a
bioavailable curcumin formulation (90
mg of Theracurmin, twice daily) or
placebo.
Investigators and subjects were
blinded. The primary measures of effec-
tiveness included baseline tests of verbal
memory (how many of 12 words can be
recalled from memory) and visual mem-
ory (how many geometric forms can be
redrawn).
Tests were repeated at 6, 12 and 18
months. Forty subjects completed the
M eMber O regOn n ewspaper p ublishers a ssOciatiOn
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Contents copyright © 2018. All rights reserved.
Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
Jon Rombach works for Nez Perce
Tribe Fisheries and writes a column for
the Chieftain.
Can curcumin improve your memory?
Wallowa County’s Newspaper Since 1884
VOLUME 134
tolerant of backtracking. Nobody likes to
turn around. That’s just a fact.
But. I’ve studied fish behavior both
for work reasons and also for fly fishing
on my own time reasons, and these mag-
nificent creatures drop back and push
upstream as it suits them. Might be a shift
in water temperature, flows dropping or
spiking, whatever. In this case it was a
spreadsheet.
I got excited, happily turned around
and pointed the F350 tanker back to the
Imnaha. These two salmon just got the
golden ticket. They swam all this way to
make babies and, sure, the hatchery is all
about baby-making.
But, you know. Newlyweds checking
into their honeymoon suite have certain
expectations. Being diverted to an artificial
insemination clinic is rarely on the list.
I felt like I was in a nature docu-
mentary, at a dramatic part where the
music swells as a bear gets a salmon in
its clutches and the British guy is like,
“Oh, crikey, looks like the end of the line
for this feesh ...” then, miraculously, the
salmon wiggles free.
Watching those big ol’ salmon get their
bearings again in the clear water of the
Imnaha, then point upstream and keep on
keepin’ on to where they were bound was
a joy and a pleasure to see.
I watched until I couldn’t see them any-
more, then turned around and saw I’d left
my door open.
Publisher
Editor
Reporter
Reporter
Newsroom assistant
Ad sales consultant
Office manager
Chris Rush, crush@eomediagroup.com
Paul Wahl, editor@wallowa.com
Stephen Tool, steve@wallowa.com
Kathleen Ellyn, kellyn@wallowa.com
editor@wallowa.com
Jennifer Powell, jpowell@wallowa.com
Cheryl Jenkins, cjenkins@wallowa.com
study; 21 received curcumin and 19
received placebo.
Curcumin recipients averaged 28 per-
cent improvement in verbal memory at
18 months compared with 2.6 percent
in placebo recipients. The difference in
memory response between curcumin and
placebo was statistically significant.
The authors concluded that “daily
oral Theracurmin may lead to improved
memory and attention in nondemented
adults.”
What do we make of this?
First, this study received widespread
attention because its design adheres to
guidelines for the highest level of evi-
dence and the findings have broad
implications.
The difference in response between
curcumin and placebo is unlikely due to
chance (this is the meaning of “statisti-
cally significant”).
Second, should thousands of people
begin taking curcumin based on results
from 21 patients? The authors correctly
state this was a pilot study and “not a
claim to infallibility on the first try.”
Third, improved recall of 12 words
on a memory test does not necessarily
mean that practical memory functions
of daily living will noticeably improve
(for example, being less forgetful about
where you put your car keys).
Fourth, only non-demented persons
were studied. Results cannot be extrap-
olated to persons with dementia, such as
Alzheimer’s disease.
See MEDICINE, Page A5
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