Jack MacMillan dies from Shallow Water Blackout

Jack MacMillan

I've never heard of it before, kids drowning in their backyard pools because they held their breath too long.  Jack MacMillan 12, died earlier this year and his shattered parents are speaking out to warn other parents what can happen.  Because Jack liked to challenge himself to see how long he could hold his breath underwater, he drowned.

Basically, when a swimmer faints, carbon dioxide levels don't increase enough to trigger the urgent need to breathe and their lungs quickly fill with water and death follows, much quicker than the usual form of drowning.

They know more about it in America, where it affects competitive swimmers, Navy Seals, snorkelers, spear fishermen or anyone who free dives. And it happens without any warning and because of the hypoxia, the swimmer can feel eurphoric and empowered to keep going.

Unlike regular drowning where it take 6-8 minutes before brain damage and death occurs, with SWB, it only takes two and a half minutes. That's why it's vital that parents know what can happen and be on hand to pull the child out of the pool immediately.

Ms MacMillan said her son was doing what countless other children do every day, underwater laps, challenging himself to hold his breath for longer and longer periods.  "He thought it was great, it  was something he'd been doing over the Christmas holidays with friends and family in the pool.  I looked back and saw him at the bottom of the shallow end, his knees were bent up in the foetal position and I thought, is he playing?"

Every parent that Ms MacMillan spoke to after Jack's death had never heard of SWB.

Justin Scarr from Life Saving Australia says there have only been five reported cases of SWB in the past 10 years, but he suspects many go unreported.  If the drowning isn't witnessed by anyone, the Coroner may be reluctant to say that SWB was the cause.

So how to prevent it?

• Discourage your children from practicing underwater laps 

• Never let them swim alone 

• If they must, remember the golden rule ONE BREATH HOLD, ONE TIME, ONE LAP ONLY

•  Never hyperventilate 

Forgotten town wants asbestos dump gone

Terowie is a small town in the middle of nowhere, 220 kms north of Adelaide.  The town's claim to fame happened on 20 March 1942, when the Commander of the Forces in the Pacific, General MacArthur told waiting media on the Terowie railway station "I will return" but he never did.  Historic Terowie has five museums and is popular with historians, photographers and railway buffs.

But Terowie has a dark side, they have an asbestos dump, open to the air, that has been there for forty years. It's not illegal, it belongs to the South Australian government, yet there are no fences around it and no warning signs.  Roof sheeting and broken pieces of asbestos line a popular walking trail belonging to a camping site and it's not far from the local school.

In the 1970s, the town died when the train station was abandoned and dismantled, but they didn't take the rubbish away, they just left it there in a heap, and it's been blowing around in the wind ever since.

So what do the authorities say?  The asbestos pieces are safe and non-friable, they say, which means they cannot be broken up or crumbled.  So why are they having a meeting this week to discuss the problem? The Environment Protection Authority and the SA Environment Department should hang their heads in shame, they've had forty years to clean it up.

Main street, 1938

But Terowie doesn't just have the asbestos problem, you can't drink the water because it contains high levels of lead and e-coli.  So why on earth would anyone want to live there?  Curious, I looked up Terowie Real Estate and found this house with the following description. 

Possibly the best stone cottage available in Terowie.  This 3 bedroom stone cottage has been tastefully updated to include a modern kitchen and bathroom with 3 spacious bedrooms.  The slate features throughout the home grab your attention with large fireplaces and pot belly stove in the kitchen area.  Outside is a rear pergola and neat yard with a garden shed and open front garage. Only $128,000

So is it enough to temp you to move..... no I didn't think so.

Bastoy Island prison, Norway

On Bastoy Island in Norway, prisoners are treated with respect, even rapists and murderers.  Although some inmates are segregated, the rest live in small, separate communities which sets them apart from the harsh prison subculture that occurs in traditional prisons.  And it's paid off - Norway has the lowest re-offending figures in Europe.  Only 16 per cent of prisoners released from Bastoy Island re-offend.

Inmates live in small wooden houses that accommodate up to six people.  Every man has his own bedroom and they share the kitchen and other amenities.  Only one meal a day is provided in the dining hall.

The men earn $9 a day and get an allowance of $103 per month to buy food for their own breakfasts and evening meals.  There are phone boxes where they can call family and friends and weekly visits take place in private family rooms and conjugal relations are allowed.  It has a small community feel with a church, school and a library.

The working day begins at 8.30am on the farm tending sheep, cows and chickens or in the vegetable gardens growing fruit and vegetables. Other jobs available are in the laundry, looking after the horses, the bicycle repair shop, ground maintenance and the timber workshop.

All Norwegian prisoners can apply for transfer to Bastoy when they have up to five years left to serve, and rapists and murderers are not excluded.  There is only one requirement - they must show a determination to live crime-free when released.

There are only three rules that must be obeyed at Bastoy - no violence, no alcohol and no drugs.

But there could be another reason why the Norwegians are having such success.  It takes three years to train a prison guard in Norway and only six weeks in Australia and Britain.

Danthonia Christian Commune, Inverell

There was a fascinating article in the Sun Herald yesterday by Eamonn Duff about the Danthonia Christian community near the small country town of Inverell.  Some might describe the people who live there as Christian extremists, but if they are not hurting anyone, surely they have the right to have their beliefs and live in peace.

They wouldn't be in the news at all if it wasn't for an American doctor who belonged to the commune.  He is to appear before a tribunal for allegedly committing a serious offence - denying his mother a hospital visit that could have saved her life, signing her death certificate, burying her on commune ground, and not informing police or the coroner of her death.

Danthonia is a small Christian community of around 170 people near the NSW country town of Inverell.  They are part of the Bruderhof movement which was founded by Eberhard Arnold in Germany in 1920: Expelled by Hitler in 1937, exiled to Paraguay in 1941 because they were the only country that would take them, moving to the USA in the 1950s, to Britain in 1980s, to Inverell Australia in 1999 and returning to Germany in 2002.  

They are theologically linked to Hutterite, Mennonite and Anabaptist denominations.  Danthonia tries to follow the practices of the very early Christian Church in Jerusalem with a strong focus on Acts of the Apostles.  Individuals hold no private property and all income is pooled for the common good.  They are pacifists and members do not join the armed forces.

Dr Chris Maendel arrived at Danthonia from America in 2005 and became the commune's resident doctor.  His American mother Irene was on holiday at the commune when disaster struck - she suffered a stroke in October 2011.  

When she collapsed, instead of taking her immediately to hospital, her son decided that she should stay at the commune.  She died six days later but he didn't tell anyone, and buried her within the commune grounds.

When her US-based family found out that Irene didn't receive medical attention at a hospital, they contacted NSW police.  Coroner Michael Holmes said that treating an immediate family member and signing the death certificate was a breach of Medical Board policy.

When Dr Maendel was asked why his mother didn't receive a CT scan or specialist treatment, he allegedly replied that Danthonia was located "deep in the Australian outback" and the journey to a "small country hospital" would be hours "over rough terrain."   He felt she would be better cared for by the brothers and sisters "surrounded by the love of Jesus."

When the family in America looked up Danthonia on the Internet, they discovered it was only a 30 minute drive to the Inverell Hospital on a sealed road.  Then they received a handwritten letter from one of the Danthonia sisters, Dorrie Rhodes.  She described Irene as awake, alert and full of life in the days before her death.  She wanted to get up and have a shower and kept asking "What happened to me, am I sick?"  

After seeking legal advice, Dr Maendel declined to be interviewed by police but an exhumation order was issued and the presence of morphine was found in her body.  It seems that Irene was a healthy, fit 70 year old who could have been air-lifted to a state-of-the-art teaching hospital within an hour. 


Danthonia Designs is an internationally recognised designer, manufacturer and supplier of handcrafted signs like this one.

The Health Care Complaints Commission tribunal for Dr Maendel will begin in Sydney on March 4, 2013.

Edit March 10, 2013:  The Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) brought Dr Maendel before a tribunal in Sydney's District Court. On Friday - the third anniversary of Mrs Maendel's death - Judge Michael Elkaim ruled that, while two lesser penalties of unsatisfactory professional conduct had been established, Dr Maendel should not be found guilty of the professional misconduct complaint that could have led to him being deregistered.

Public servants get compo for stress

Government insurer Comcare had to pay a dozen bureaucrats an average of $251,000 for mental stress this year.  They were initially denied compensation but took their case to the ATT (Administrative Appeals Tribunal) and it paid off for them big time.

The Department of Human Services - which includes Centrelink, Medicare and Child Support Agency - will pay the highest premium to Comcare this year - $61 m - but the Tax Office, Police and the Defence premiums are also up to alarming levels.

It's no wonder workers in the private sector resent public servants, they always seem to come out on top, and details of these actual case studies are a joke.

CASE STUDIES

A Tax Office data analyst was punched on the arm when he flicked coffee over a workmate's face and shirt in a cafe.  Months later, he claimed the punch had caused a whiplash neck injury.  The ATT ruled that the coffee-shop punch was not work related but still awarded him compensation for "psychological injury" due to his perception that colleagues were "ganging up on him" at work.

An Austrade grants auditor was paid compensation for an "adjustment disorder" and "depressed mood".  She complained when her manager told her that claims applicants couldn't understand her because English "was not her first, nor second language."

A frontline Centrelink worker was compensated for an "adjustment disorder" after management told her she must work more than one day a week. She claimed she was unable to deal with 70 per cent of enquiries, that customers often became agitated or abusive while waiting to be served, and that her team leaders often gave her "dirty looks." Comcare blamed her stress on her personal life but the ATT ruled that the job had contributed to the "adjustment disorder."

So we have the government insurance company Comcare trying to save us money on the one hand, and the ATT doling it out on the other. And if the above examples are typical of what the ATT consider justifiable compensation claims, we're in big trouble.

British Muslim terror gang convicted

Irfan Khalid and Irfan Naseer at Birmingham airport en route to Pakistan

Unemployed gang leader Irfan Naseer 31, is a "mummy's boy" according to his mother.   He's also a pharmacy graduate.  Police have recordings of him saying "They wanna have sex like donkeys in the street, they wanna club, act like animals and why shouldn't we terrorize them, tell me that?  You think about it, if someone came into your house, yeah, and started dancing throughout the night and started basically having orgies and smoking drugs and stuff... you would terrorize them, innit."

Irfan Naseer

Irfan Naseer 31, Irfan Khalid 27 and Ashik Ali 27, all from Birmingham, were convicted of plotting to kill as many British people as they could, by placing bombs in shopping centres and railway stations across the UK.

Irfan Khalid

They were inspired by hate preacher, American-born Anwar al-Awlaki's online sermons.  Two men went to Pakistan to learn how to make the bombs, then came home to their council-funded flat in Birmingham, to make them.  

Ashik Ali

The gang had a vivid imagination.  They thought about mixing poison into creams like Vaseline and Nivea and smearing it on car door handles.  Another plan was to weld knife blades onto the front of trucks and run into groups of people.

They raised money for their cause by posing as charity workers but lost it all playing foreign currency markets and had to take out loans.

Prosecutor Brian Altman QC told the jury:  "The defendants were proposing to detonate up to eight rucksack bombs in a suicide attack and/or detonate bombs on timers in crowded areas in order to cause mass death and casualties."

The CIA killed their hero Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone attack in 2011 but he still speaks from the grave, his videos were found across Britain in private homes and bookshops.  Anwar Awlaki was also responsible for persuading Nigerian Omar Farouk Abdulmuttalab to put explosives in his underwear and blow up a plane en route to America on Christmas Day 2009.  

 Anwar al-Awlaki

But nobody from the Muslim community told authorities what was going on.  We know they knew because the families of four other men who were recruited and sent to Pakistan for terror training, all intervened and brought their sons home to England immediately they  found out the real reason they were sent there.

But nobody came forward to tell police what they were planning - to kill as many Britons as they could.

Japanese whaling ship strikes back

A Japanese ship has rammed two protest boats belonging to the anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd, but for now, the slaughter has stopped.

Whales are being illegally killed in Australian waters off Antarctica near the David Research Base.  Environment Minister Tony Burke said "It doesn't matter what part of the ocean it is in, Australia's view is that it is just as illegal, that's why we have taken Japan to the International Court of Justice."

But nothing is happening in the courts and the government appears too timid and frightened to send Navy ships to Antarctic waters, they just keep saying it's up to the courts.  If it wasn't for the Sea Shepherd group getting in their faces and driving them crazy, hundreds more whales would be dead by now.

The Japanese continue to use the ridiculous loop hole in the law to justify the slaughter - they are killing whales for scientific research - when everyone knows it's a lie.  They have succeeded in organizing a warrant for the arrest of Paul Watson but they should realize that there are plenty of others ready to take his place.

Yesterday there was another confrontation when the Nisshin Maru rammed two protests boats the Steve Irwin and the Bob Barker.  Even though the Bob Barker was taking on water in the engine room, Captain Watson said "both vessels continued to hold their position" and crew have now stopped the water coming in.

Speaking from the Steve Irwin Watson said the Bob Barker, with 38 crew aboard, was hit a number of times as they tried to stop the Nisshin Maru from refueling, which is illegal in the Southern Ocean.  
The ship lost power, toppled the main mast and smashed up the deck. The Japanese ship rammed the protest ships to move them out of the way, so they could get to the refueling tanker and accidentally hit the Korean-owned fuel tanker, the Sun Laurel.  But they didn't wait around to offer assistance, they just left.  The Sea Shepherd is now escorting the Sun Laurel, as its lifeboats were damaged in the incident.

So is the Sea Shepherd an innocent protest group doing no wrong? Of course not, they have rammed Japanese ships many times, but for now, the cull has stopped.

This month, the US Supreme Court upheld an injunction ordering Sea Shepherd to keep away from Japanese whaling ships in the Southern Ocean.  But this incident happened inside Australian waters and inside the international Antarctic Whaling Sanctuary so sorry people, this is simply not on.

Edit February 22, 2013:  A report released today says that sending a fleet of ships to the Antarctic  every winter to hunt whales costs the Japanese taxpayer about $10 million dollars a year and without government subsidies, the industry would collapse.  Last year $20 million earmarked for reconstruction of the region devastated by the 2011 tsunami, went on whale hunting instead. With thousands of tons of whale meat left unsold amid a dramatic decline in consumption, it’s thought that the government can never hope to recoup its investment. Whaling is an economic loser in the 21^st century. 

Schizophrenic patient fell through the cracks

Everyone loved Anthony Waterlow before he got sick.  At first he started smashing up things like walls and doors but as his condition worsened, he started hurting people.  He had a string of AVOs,
and good behaviour bonds which finally ended when he stabbed his father and sister to death.  They paid the price for the incompetence of the mental health professionals who could have saved their lives.

His family and friends tried for years to get help for Anthony's slide into schizophrenia but when mental health experts were asked what happened, they have no answers, he just fell through the cracks of the system.

Father, Nick Waterlow

In November 2009 he went to visit his sister, a mother of three, at her home at Clovelly.  His father also went there, they were hoping for a family reconciliation, but their love and concern cost them their lives. He stabbed them both to death in a psychotic frenzy.

Despite pleas to doctors from family and friends two years before the murders, he was never scheduled or forced to take his medication.  The inquest into the deaths heard that it "beggars belief" that doctors didn't act to hold him as an involuntary patient - they couldn't make up their minds whether to keep encouraging him to take his medication, or simply lock him up.  Their indecision cost two good people their lives.

Sister, Chloe Heuston

An emotional Dr Alistair Peter McGeorge, one of the psychiatrists who treated Anthony, said yesterday that his patient was reluctant to take anti-psychotic drugs. Fighting back tears he said "Considering the awful tragedy that eventually occurred, you think about what else you might have done yourself."

Yes indeed.

British backpacker lost in outback Queensland

An 18 year old British backpacker, Sam Woodhead, had a near death experience recently in the Queensland outback.  He'd been working for a few weeks at the Upshot cattle station, 90 miles from Longreach, helping the owners who were struggling with a severe drought.

On his first day off, he decided to go for an Army-style run carrying a heavy backpack.  His ambition is to become an Army officer at Sandhurst in 2014 and he loaded his rucksack with 33 lbs of clothing for weight. But he only took a 1 litre bottle of water.

I was hot, about 40C, so he set off in the late afternoon, around 4pm, but before he knew it, he'd lost his bearings.  Not phased, he  felt confident that he would find his way back tomorrow, so he curled up and went to sleep.

By now, a massive search and rescue operation was under way, funded partly by his family, and planes and helicopters started to fly overhead, but although he could hear them, they couldn't see him because of the trees.  He tried to find water but he knew there wasn't any, he could see where the streams had been but now there was no water, just dry, cracked dirt.

Sam's father had put 120 saches of saline solution for contact lenses in his rucksack.  His water was gone and he wondered if he dare drink it. He knew it contained a high concentration of salt but on the packet it said that the solution contained 69 per cent water so he tried one to see if it had any affect, and when it didn't, he drank the lot.  The total amount was only around 200 ml, a can of Coke, but it was enough to revive him.  But then he came across his own footprints, and realized he'd been walking around in circles.

After an entire day without water, he started to hallucinate about dingoes - he could hear them all around him in the dark.  There had been dingo attacks at the homestead where he worked, and he knew what damage they could do.

On the third day he had to resort to drinking his own urine.  He collected it in the empty water bottle but after a few attempts, decided he couldn't do it, and threw it away.

Towards the end, he woke up with flies in his mouth, he could no longer keep it closed.  On Friday morning he could barely crawl and just lay in the shade of a tree.  After three grueling days, he was rescued, only 5 kilometres from the homestead.

He made a huge SOS out of his clothing in a clearing but the search planes and helicopters didn't see it. It was only when a helicopter came down so low that the rotors caused some of the clothing to blow up into the air which caught the pilot's attention, and they swung back for another look.

When the British newspaper The Daily Mail heard about his ordeal, they tied him up for a lucrative exclusive, and he intends to donate all the proceeds from the story back to the organizations who helped find him.  

Oscar Pistorius arrested

The famous sporting icon of South Africa, Oscar Pistorius, has been arrested for the murder of his partner, the beautiful model, Reeva Steenkamp. 

It was a brutal death, he is reported to have bashed her with a cricket bat, crushing her skull, before shooting her four times.  Police suspect the first shot, in the bedroom, hit her in the hip and  she ran and hid in the toilet... and then he fired three more shots.  

Yet her father has no hatred in his heart towards the man who killed his beloved daughter, and seems to have sympathy for Pistorius, saying he must be going through a difficult time.  "We ask the Lord every day to help us find a reason why this should happen to Reeva."

Henke Pistorius speaks to his son in court

But Oscar Pistorius' family has a completely different view of what happened.  His father, Henke Pistorius said he had "zero doubt" his son has mistaken Steenkamp for an intruder, and it was a tragic accident.

His parents divorced when he was 6 and he has had a strained relationship with his father ever since.  His mother died when he was 15.

After the farce of the OJ Simpson case, we know that fame and fortune can buy you freedom and Pistorius is also a sporting hero with plenty of money.  He has some very good lawyers lined up to help his case, including Kenny Oldwage.  Mr Oldwage defended a driver who killed Nelson Mandela's great grand-child Zenani, and the defendant was acquitted.  He also has medical specialists and public relations experts on his defence team.

Famous celebrities have a history of buying their way out of trouble and it will be interesting to see South African law in action and how they handle this high profile, tragic case.



Edit June 2, 2013:  Photo of Oscar Pistorius' bathroom, released today.