Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

I saw an article on LifeSiteNews the other day about an abortionist who, in the midst of extracting the parts of an 18 week old baby she had just killed, felt her own 18 week old baby kick in her womb for the first time.  She describes how tears just started to flow down her face.  The whole article is about her admission of the violence of abortion and its negative impacts on abortionists. She mentions:

“serious emotional reactions that produced physiological symptoms, sleep disturbances (including disturbing dreams), effects on interpersonal relationships and moral anguish.”

If one only quickly skims the article he might leave with the impression that this is a confession of a repentant abortionist.  It is not.  Rather,  the article, it seems to me, is an attempt to bring the suffering of abortionists into the public sphere in the vain hope that public expression of the truth of the violence of abortion will some how provide healing to those who continue in the destruction of unborn lives.

This article, it seems to me, is this doctor’s attempt to justify what she realizes at some pre-conscious level to be a grave moral transgression.  However, it is more effective in revealing the tortuous thinking that our times have brought us.  She relates an experience of running from a D&E abortion where she had just reassembled the parts of the baby she had dismembered, to another room in which she was trying to help save the life of a premature baby of the same age.  She asked the question about the moral difference between the two situations, in which she said it would be unthinkable to do to the prematurely born baby what she had just done to the unborn one.  Her answer was based upon the location of the baby and, “most importantly,” the hopes and wishes of the mother for the baby.

It is the mother’s will which determines whether it is legitimate to kill a child or not.  Instructive also is that this doctor talks about the discord between her experiences of abortion and her chosen values:

“caught between pro-choice discourse that, while it reflects our values, does not accurately reflect the full extent of our experience of abortion and in fact contradicts an enormous part of it, and the anti-abortion discourse and imagery that may actually be more closely aligned to our experience but is based in values we do not share.”

This doctor’s axiology is very post-modern.  It is the mother’s will that determines the status of the baby.  It is this capriciously chosen value disconnected from a contradictory reality, even when that reality is confirmed by her own personal experience, that allows this tormented soul to justify continuing to destroy lives: those of the unborn, of the mother, pf the father, of their families, and of all of those involved in the abortion industry.  This is indeed, a very perverse axiology and this is the value system of those who are trying to bring us “humane” healthcare reform.  Be afraid…be very afraid…

A good friend of mine who is a PA has been keeping tabs on the attack on conscience of both health care providers and patients in the health care industry. He recently pointed to two medical news outlets (Today In Medicine & Medical Watch) which carried a New York Times article about studies looking at the relationship between end of life decisions and religious belief.

The NYT entitled the article: “Religious Belief Linked to Desire for Aggressive Treatment in Terminal Patients,” while the medical news aggregators used the title, probably having picked it up from another source: “Devout terminally ill patients may be more likely to seek aggressive, life-prolonging treatment, study suggests. ” The NYT is well known for its promotion of culture of death ideology and this article is no exception. However, it is a report about a study which is to be published in JAMA.

The med news aggregators assembled the story from a variety of sources, who had expounded upon the NYT piece and here is what they came up with:

Devout terminally ill patients may be more likely to seek aggressive, life-prolonging treatment, study suggests.

The New York Times (3/18, A18, Rabin) reports, “Terminally ill cancer patients who drew comfort from religion were far more likely to seek aggressive, life-prolonging care in the week before they died than were less religious patients.” According to research team member Holly G. Prigerson, MS, PhD, of Harvard University and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the finding seems to contradict what some people tend to generally accept as true: “Spiritual patients are more likely to say their lives are in God’s hands.” But, “to religious people, life is sacred and sanctified,” Prigerson maintains.

In fact, she says, “there’s a sense that by not going for life-prolonging care, they’re letting God down,” the Los Angeles Times (3/18, Kaplan) adds. A number of “other recent studies have made similar connections.” For example, “religious cancer patients who had unsuccessful chemotherapy treatments were twice as likely to want heroic end-of-life measures, according to a report last year in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.” And, a “2005 study in Annals of Behavioral Medicine found that patients with advanced-stage lung or colon cancer were more likely to want life-preserving CPR, mechanical ventilation, and hospitalization if they believed in divine intervention.” The current study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, adds to the assertion that “faith in a higher power can often lead to more aggressive treatment than is medically warranted.”

In fact, the study reveals that the highly devout patients they interviewed “were three times more likely than others to receive intensive, invasive medical procedures,” USA Today (3/18, Szabo) reports. They “also made fewer preparations for death, such as filling out ‘do not resuscitate’ orders, writing living wills, or giving someone power of attorney, according to the study of 345 patients” recruited from medical facilities throughout the country between 2003 and 2007. The participants were predominantly Christian.

Although some “79 percent of patients reported that religion helped them cope to some extent,” just one-third “of highly religious patients had a do-not-resuscitate order, compared with half of patients who weren’t as spiritual,” Bloomberg News (3/18, Lopatto) points out. Instead, “they wanted physicians to take ‘heroic measures’ to keep them alive.”
Meanwhile, “the researchers also observed that positive religious coping was significantly associated with being black or Hispanic, and that those with a high level of positive religious coping tended to be younger, less educated, less likely to be insured, less likely to be married, and more likely to have been recruited from sites in Texas than those with low levels of religious coping,” according to Medscape (3/17, Nelson).

The “mechanism underlying the association between religious coping and aggressive life-saving measures is unclear,” MedPage Today (3/17, Neale) reported. The investigators hypothesized, however, that “highly religious patients ‘may choose aggressive therapies, because they believe that God could use the therapy to provide divine healing, or they hope for a miraculous cure while intensive medical care prolongs life.’”

Duke University Medical Center psychiatrist Harold Koenig, MD, told WebMD (3/17, Boyles) that “the study underscores the importance of discussing religious beliefs within the medical setting.” Even though another “recent study” showed “that only about seven percent of physicians actually talked to their dying patients about religious or spiritual issues,” Dr. Koenig says that “there is also research finding that when doctors engage in discussions about spirituality with cancer patients, the patients trust them more.” In addition, “incorporating spiritual counseling into end-stage medical care results in better quality of life and less aggressive medical intervention prior to death.” Prigerson agreed, noting that “aggressive end-of-life medical interventions have costs that go far beyond patient quality of life.” Not only do aggressive treatments “have huge costs for society,” she contended that “many of these interventions” also “result…in more patient suffering.”

The Boston Globe (3/18, Cooney), Ohio’s Columbus Dispatch (3/17, Crane), BBC News (3/17), AFP (3/18), CBC News (3/17), and HealthDay (3/17, Gordon) also covered the story.

The focus of the article appears to make the point that doctors need to be vigilant about people exhibiting a strong faith because they are draining society of resources that might go to more productive people. A couple of things to note here. The author is concerned first, with the economic impacts to society of what she considers to be unwarranted, aggressive treatment. Second, she is concerned with “more patient suffering.”

This, I suspect, is utilitarianism at its finest. As the summaries do not indicate the nature of what is considered “aggressive treatment” it is hard to know what the author means. However, feeding tubes and breathing assistance are now considered extraordinary care in some cases. Even actively taking a life is being euphemistically referred to as “being allowed to die.”

The economic value of the life versus the cost to society has become a primary concern for too many responsible for giving “care”. This eugenic mindset is a frightening trend that seems to be gaining traction in the medical community. Of course, it is being couched also in the pseudo-compassionate concern for ending suffering as a further justification for eugenic murder. In fact, the “choice” to end suffering is the main plank in the strategy. However, lurking not far off in the shadows are the bean-counters who seem itching to put on price on everyone’s head.

A second consideration is the reason for highlighting being religiously devout. It is not clear what this even means. It clearly does not provide anything insightful, as if being religiously devout refers to a monolithic set of beliefs. The summaries show that there are also other factors that are correlated as well such as age, economic status, level of education, marital status. Why do not one of these not merit top billing?

I suspect that what we have here is a utilitarian, eugenic mindset that naturally is going to see people of faith as those opposed to their attempts to establish as a “good death” framework for parceling out care and ending “senseless” suffering. This thinking is not new. However, what only a few years ago was on the fringe has become mainstream in Europe and with the ascendancy of a europhile Congress and presidential administration the push to go mainstream in the US is sure to heat up. This will be especially true as the new administration moves to establish a state run heathcare that will not bust the budget.

The eugenicists are right in recognizing that their foes will be people of faith, which is why it will become more are more challenging to be an faithful Catholic in the years to come.

It seems that there are always numerous stories floating around that manifest the great dangers a society faces when it has rejected sound, classical philosophy. Modern philosophy, with its foundation in Cartesian doubt, has left the average person who has thought about it with the impression that philosophy is to be equated with sophism.

Modern philosophy has also undermined our ability to any longer distinguish right from wrong. For centuries the Christian ethos in the West held at bay the deleterious effects of the loss of classical metaphysics, philosophical anthropology and practical philosophy (politics, economics, and ethics). The West, by and large, is now post-Christian. The Christian ethos is lost and now we are drifting free in Nietzsche’s great sea of endless possibilities that he waxed on about in his Gay Science. Unfortunately the sea he envisioned will be found to be the “lake of fire” St. John saw in his vision.

We now have medical ethicists who, if not morally sound, at least are honest. Two of them recently published an article in the NEJM, as reported by LifeSiteNews, in which they admit that brain death and cardiac death are fictions. These “ethicists” support the donation of vital organs and are left undeterred by the prospects for donations even though they admit we cannot reliably determine death before needing to harvest vital organs. LifeSiteNews quotes the two doctors:

Troug and Miller suggest that, rather than insisting on dead donors, “ethical requirements of organ donation” should be looked at “in terms of valid informed consent under the limited conditions of devastating neurologic injury.”

They base their “ethics” on a synthesis of Mills’s utilitarianism and Nietzsche’s will to power. If one does not have the prospects of an “adequate” quality of life (i.e. a devastating neurologic injury) then someone (Danger! Danger! Will Robinson) can choose (ala Nietzsche) to kill that person in order to harvest his organs. This is perfectly in line with our culture of comfort and choice.

It seems so reasonable because choosing to be comfortable is the only non-negotiable “value” that we seem to have left. Thus, choice becomes the only absolute moral norm. Good is the right to choose, bad is anything that conflicts with this “right.” How about when two choices for comfort conflict? Well, Barack Obama provides us the answer using this neo-Western ethic.

Last week LifeSiteNews ran a story about Senator Obama’s radical position on abortion and his work in killing (sardonic pun intended) the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection bill. The details are curious. Issues of his integrity in owning up to what he actually did with this bill aside, one thing really stands out to me. The Illinois bill copied language from a congressional bill that passed, that included a so-called neutrality clause. The language of this clause is enough to make one shudder:

‘‘(c) Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being ‘born alive’ as defined in this section’’

Look at the stark language which wishes to exclude from the bill, any change in legal status or legal right of “a member of the species homo sapiens” before he is born alive. In other words, those drafting this bill who support the “right” to choose (i.e. abortion) have to have carefully considered how to separate members of the same species from one another with respect to legal rights. We have seen this happen in many different ways in the past. We can see it in the U.S. slavery episode, we can see it with the way aboriginal people were often treated, and we can see it in the systems of totalitarian collectivism of the 20th century in Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, China, North Korea, etc.

Here is the philosophical problem with pro-abortion thinking in terms of the above clause. They have chosen the criteria of passive potency in order to distinguish between members of the same species. Passive potency is essentially all of those possibilities of changes that can be done to a human being from the outside (without killing him). They do not seem to have the sense of active potency, those things that a human being already inherently has and can do by virtue of his nature as being human, but has not yet manifested.

What I mean by this is that they do not seem to recognize that everything that a human being will become, he has already in himself, in seed-form if you will, from conception. In other words, after conception, from the perspective of nature, a man gains nothing new. He simply is able to manifest inherent capabilities at different stages of maturity, that already exist in him as “potency.”

All human attributes, for those who reject classical philosophy, seem to become passive potencies–they are given from the outside–somehow. That is why they think that the status of a member of a species can change when some new attribute is manifested or hidden. The problem with this is that there is no way to decided then which attributes are necessary to be manifested, or even how they should be manifested, in order to change the status of a member of the species from one who deserves no protection under the law to one who now is given rights that can come at the expense of the unprotected class (see list of abuses above).

The underlying danger with this type of thinking is that when choice becomes the absolute moral norm, there is no way of ultimately deconflicting the choices of groups or individuals. The atheist phenomenologist Jean Paul Sartre saw this clearly–that is why he so coldly proclaimed that “hell” is other people. The mere existence of others denies one the absolute liberty to do as he wishes. This explains why the Liberté of the French Revolutionaries turned into totalitarian bloodshed. It also explains why “liberal” political movements such as Nazism, Fascism, and Bolshevism become totalitarian. It helps us to understand why modern liberalism also moves in the direction of media censorship and thought censorship (e.g. Canada’s Human Rights Commissions, the modern liberal mind’s proclivity to legislate against “hate speech,” this movement’s move to do away with medical practitioners’ conscience clauses when it comes to “choice” issues such as abortion and contraception, etc.).

This, I fear, is also behind Senator Obama’s rhetoric about getting beyond the debate about abortion. For him the debate is over, even though in reality it is just beginning to turn against abortion “rights.” The debate must end because the supporters lack the intellectual resources found in classical philosophy to defend their positions and they are now coming to terms with the fact that their arguments leave them in self-contradictory, and thus intellectually indefensible, positions. The only option left to them is the “will to power.” They must gain power in order to exert their will upon others–i.e. to end the debate. If this comes to pass, anyone familiar with history must be aware of the dangers which lie ahead.

Shy of the re-Christianization of the West, we need to re-appropriate the self-consistent philosophical framework of classical philosophy in order to facilitate lucid and fruitful public debate on these life and death issue; that is, if we are to turn back the lemming-like march toward liberal totalitarianism. It appears, however, that at this point a Christian West is the more realistic of the two possibilities.

Update: Senator Obama’s campaign now admits that the “people” whom Obama had accused of lying about his part in voting down the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection bill . . . was Senator Obama.  It appears that Obama did indeed take the position that he now says “defies common sense.”  One wonders what position he really holds with respect to infants born alive as is clear that one cannot reliably discern this based upon his words.

LifeSiteNews is running an article about the near harvesting of the organs from a 45 year old man in Paris who later recovered from what was thought to be a fatal heart attack. After the “standard” protocol, he was apparently declared “brain dead” by the attending physicians. It seems to me that this is just one more case which calls into question the position of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences acceptance of “brain death” as a legitimate determination of death.

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences met both in 2005 and 2006 to reassess their acceptance of brain death. As with their initial acceptance, there was also much controversy about these meetings. The earlier meeting’s papers were not published by the Academy while the 2006 papers were. A 2007 CNS news story summarizes the controversy when members of the 2005 meeting decided to publish the earlier meetings papers on their own. In a nutshell, those who were involved in the publishing of the 2005 papers, in a document entitled Finis Vitae, were critical of the Academy’s position. This group includes physicians, theologians, philosophers, and two bishops.

As a result of the 2006 meeting, the Academy reaffirmed its 1985 and 1989 positions that brain death is a valid determination of death (N.B. the CNS article ascribes the Academy’s position to the “Vatican;” this is not only misleading, it is wrong and they should know better. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences does not have magisterial or even executive authority).

The position of those who reject the Academy’s position can be found here. Here is the summary of their conclusions:

1. On the one hand the Church recognizes, consistent with her tradition, that the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural end must absolutely be respected and upheld. On the other hand, a secular society tends to place greater emphasis on the quality of living.

2. The Catholic Church has always opposed the destruction of human life before being born through abortion and she equally condemns the premature ending of the life of an innocent donor in order to extend the life of another through unpaired vital organ transplantation. “It is morally inadmissible directly to bring about the disabling mutilation or death of a human being, even in order to delay the death of other persons.” “It is never licit to kill one human being in order to save another.”

3. “Nor can we remain silent in the face of other more furtive, but no less serious and real forms of euthanasia. These could occur for example when, in order to increase the availability of organs for transplants, organs are removed without respecting objective and adequate criteria which verify the death of the donor.”

4. “The death of the person is a single event, consisting in the total disintegration of that unitary and integrated whole that is the personal self. It results from the separation of the life-principle (or soul) from the corporal reality of the person.” Pope Pius XII declared this same truth when he stated that human life continues when its vital functions manifest themselves even with the help of artificial processes.

5. “Acknowledgement of the unique dignity of the human person has a further underlying consequence: vital organs which occur singly in the body can be removed only after death–that is, from the body of someone who is certainly dead. This requirement is self-evident, since to act otherwise would mean intentionally to cause the death of the donor in disposing of his organs.” Natural moral law precludes removal for transplantation of unpaired vital organs from a person who is not certainly dead. The declaration of “brain death” is not sufficient to arrive at the conclusion that the patient is certainly dead. It is not even sufficient to arrive at moral certitude.

6. Many in the medical and scientific community maintain that brain-related criteria for death are sufficient to generate moral certitude of death itself. Ongoing medical and scientific evidence contradicts this assumption. Neurological criteria alone are not sufficient to generate moral certitude of death itself, and are absolutely incapable of generating physical certainty that death has occurred.

7. It is now patently evident that there is no single so-called neurological criterion commonly held by the international scientific community to determine certain death. Rather, many different sets of neurological criteria are used without global consensus.

8. Neurological criteria are not sufficient for declaration of death when an intact cardio-respiratory system is functioning. These neurological criteria test for the absence of some specific brain reflexes. Functions of the brain not considered are temperature control, blood pressure, cardiac rate and salt and water balance. When a patient on a ventilation machine is declared “brain dead,” these functions not only are present but also are frequently active.

9. The apnea test–the removal of respiratory support–is mandated as a part of the neurological diagnosis and it is paradoxically applied to ensure irreversibility. This significantly impairs outcome, or even causes death, in patients with severe brain injury.

10. There is overwhelming medical and scientific evidence that the complete and irreversible cessation of all brain activity (in the cerebrum, cerebellum and brain stem) is not proof of death. The complete cessation of brain activity cannot be adequately assessed. Irreversibility is a prognosis, not a medically observable fact. We now successfully treat many patients who in the recent past were considered hopeless.

11. A diagnosis of death by neurological criteria alone is theory, not scientific fact. It is not sufficient to overcome the presumption of life.

12. No law whatsoever ought to attempt to make licit an act that is intrinsically evil. “I repeat once more that a law which violates an innocent person’s natural right to life is unjust and, as such, is not valid as a law. For this reason I urgently appeal once more to all political leaders not to pass laws which, by disregarding the dignity of the person, undermine the very fabric of society.”

13. The termination of one innocent life in pursuit of saving another, as in the case of the transplantation of unpaired vital organs, does not mitigate the evil of taking an innocent human life. Evil may not be done that good might come of it.

I seems to me that the Academy falls into a reductionist presupposition. What I mean is that while there are certainly empirical manifestations of life, life, and so death, are ultimately philosophical issues. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences seems though, to equate brain activity (and here it is certain brain activity) with the presence of the soul. However, human life is more than brain activity; it is dogmatically defined to exist when the body is informed by the soul. As well, death occurs when the soul leaves the body. The soul is immaterial and as such, it is not directly empirically accessible and so empirical science can only indirectly assist in the determination of death. While the Academy would most likely agree with this, they seem either to overestimate the insights of modern science and/or reduce the soul to its manifestation in brain activity, a reductionist presupposition.

The failure to understand the limits of science in this matter is a major problem in the struggle to protect life today. Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz makes the observation that there seems to be a dichotomy between the Academy’s position that the lack of brain function can be used as a determination of death and the Church’s position that the destruction of human embryos, who do not yet have a developed brain, is a moral evil. Perhaps there is also a logical fallacy at play in the Academy’s rationale?

It is true that the presence of cognitive functions in the brain necessitate the presence of the soul but it is a logical fallacy to assume that the lack of that activity necessitates the departure of the soul. Now this Parisian case would seem to verify that brain activity alone is insufficient to determine death.

This is not a minor issue. Modern medicine, as the minority report points out, is not so concerned with the value of life itself as it is with the quality of life. In its triage/utilitarian mentality, it is too often motivated to harvest organs from those whose chances for an “adequate quality of life” are much less than those who could benefit from the organs. In other words, they are not so concerned with knowing if the person is actually alive, just what they believe the patient’s chances are of recovering in order to lead what they would find to be a sufficiently happy life.

What the delegitimization of “brain death” might mean for organ donation could be significant. I suspect that it is this concern that causes the Academy to err on the side of the status quo. However, I think that it is an issue that the Pontifical Academy of Sciences needs to readdress in light of this event. Even more so, I think that it is an issue that requires Magisterial comment, at least of caution, lest the faithful consider the Academy’s problematic position as authoritative.

“The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit:” - Cathechism of the Catholic Church 364

Denied a Catholic wedding by a Mexican dioceses, a surgically altered woman (the one with the beard) went ahead with a civil ceremony where she “married” a male “bride“ in celebration of International Day of Action Against Homophobia. A proposed “Gender Equity Initiative” in Mexico City’s legislative assembly hopes to permit transgender and transsexual persons to modify their legal identity on their birth certificate and force public hospitals to perform sex-change surgeries with taxpayer money.

Despite the misinformation spread by a couple of flawed interpretive studies which have erroneously claimed that some individuals are born with the “wrong” body, evidence supports the belief that Gender Identity disorder is brought on by an individual’s response to an emotionally painful experience which typically include rejection, lack of acceptance, hatred of their bodies, or the intense fears of being betrayed or hurt. Ironic, how individuals who are traumatized through rejection, go on to reject their own bodies; those who feel “unaccepted”, do likewise to the identify of their own bodies. It then, must also make sense for the fearful to desecrate and defile that which they believe could ultimately bring about their own betrayal and destruction.

Paul McHugh, a Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, has studied patients who underwent “transgendered” surgeries who were outwardly satisfied with their new appearances but continued to present with the same pre-surgical mental and emotional problems which manifest itself in maintaining poor relationships, having work related problems and problems with their emotions. He concluded that “to provide a surgical alteration to the body of these unfortunate people was to collaborate with a mental disorder rather than to treat it.”

Source:

LifeSite

Catholic Culture

Monica posts some interesting news on the recently reported monkey embryonic stem cell research advances and a recent surprise by the researcher who brought us Dolly the cloned sheep.

We mentioned a little while back that Monica had begun the Adult Stem Cell Awareness blog. She has arranged to have Dr. Dan Pepin write a regular Q&A column for ASCA. Dr. Pepin is professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Edison College in Naples, FL; instructor of Human Biology at North Central Michigan College in Petoskey, MI; and Consultant on Bioethics for the Dioceses of Venice, FL and Gaylord, MI.

So, if you have questions about stem cells, Monica has given you the venue to get them answered. Go over and ask Dr. Dan your questions.

LifeSiteNews reports on a Norwegian pre-school operator, backed by child psychologists, who are pressing to encourage kindergarten children to dance naked and masturbate. The psychologist fears that unless these children learn to their sexuality, “thing can go very wrong.” He doesn’t seem to have a clue though, that their is a wrong way and a wrong time to try to learn it. However, I must admit that these would be child abusers are not without any restraint. They say:

“… their sexuality must also be socialized, so they are not, for example, allowed to masturbate while sitting and eating. Nor can they be allowed to pressure other children into doing things they don’t want to,

Sure, I can see that. Eating and masturbating would just be plain impolite. The article reminds of a German government education pamphlet from earlier this summer in which the German Ministry for Family Affairs encouraged parents to sexually massage their children, for fathers to pay attention to their young daughters’ genitals, and for parents to teach their children the movements done in copulation.

Recently the APA released a report on the dangers of early sexualization of children. At least some professionals are still able to see clearly enough in this country to realize that children need to be protected from sexualization. However, given the way that we follow Europe in the slippery slope to social mayhem, I would not be surprised if the APA doesn’t reverse themselves on this in the not too distant future. Remember, this is the group that allowed activist pressure to force them remove from their list of sexual disorders same sex attraction disorder such that now any doctor who tries to treat it as a disorder is in danger of being punished or expelled for “unethical” practices.

When man forgets God, he becomes an enigma to himself and eventually turn on himself. This is what we are seeing today. Science has no resources for ascertaining morality, nor do they have the resources to understand the complete human person. Empirical data can and is interpreted in ways that support ideologies and so I would argue that because Europe has removed God from public life they have no defense against the implosion of their culture. Unfortunately, because our cultural “elite” in the entertainment and news media, and among social “progressives” are intent on following Europe in this secularization of public life, our hopes don’t look very promising either.

Monica mentioned to me yesterday that Bill Schneeberger would be on EWTN radio today with Teresa Tomeo (Shelray’s travel guide to the Holy Land). Well I missed it since she broadcasts at 8am central. Did anyone catch it?

Well who is Bill Schneeberger you might ask. He is the owner of BOGO wines, a winery that contributes from its proceeds to great Catholic, pro-life organizations:

Monica shared with me that he has developed a plan modeled after that of Susan Komen of the “pink ribbon” campaign. The focus of his plan is to generate awareness, interest, and funding for ethical stem cell research (adult, cord, autologous, etc). Monica writes:

He studied the Susan Komen plan to find out what made it so successful. You can barely buy a bag of chips now without inadvertently funding the the Komen foundation — it’s crazy – they are wildly successful at doing what they have done. I was at Target tonight w/ my husband and noticed they’ve got a whole “October is breast cancer awareness” promotion thing with all these pink products you can buy to help the Komen foundation. If Schneeberger’s initiative is only a fraction as successful as the Komen one, it will still do so much to help advance ethical research.

Schneeberger has obtained a patent trademark/logo for Adult Stem Cell Awareness. Yes, it is meant for car magnets – among other things, but please don’t think this is just about silly car magnets and even “Adult Stem Cell Awareness Month” . . . it’s about finding a way to get “adult stem cell awareness” into the world of the regular guy — and as small as it sounds, things like car magnets and awareness campaigns are incredibly effective. Well, just ask the Susan Komen foundation, right?

Now, it’s true, I’m hoping therapies such as autologous tissue engineering will help my child survive her heart defects, God-willing. But there are millions of people out here who stand to benefit from this kind of awareness campaign — not only because it is ethically sound, but because adult stem cells are really producing life-saving results. One of the orgs that this kind of campaign will help, certainly, is Dr. Moy’s John Paul II Stem Cell Research Institute. This is the kind of organization that we Catholics need to stand behind.

So, the goal is to try to get the info about the awareness campaign initiative in the hands of people who can really lobby for it. Politicians – for sure. I’ve already written my congressman. Unfortunately, it’s pretty slim pickings up here in terms of “pro-life” legislators. But can we be creative about who can help? Any ideas? What about professional societies who can lobby – how about Catholic hospitals? Catholic Universities?

In conjunction with Bill’s efforts, Monica has set up a blog which focuses on promoting Adult Stem Cell awareness. Go check out the blog, add it to your daily blog visits, and if you can get involved in some way, please contact Monica.

The number of girls and young women who have unexpectedly died after being injected with Gardasil has climbed to 11 with 3779 Adverse Reactions.  Judicial Watch filed a request with the FDA on August 20, 2007  for updated adverse event reports which was suspected to be only a “partial response”.  On October 3, 2007, Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit against the FDA.

LifeSite

US Government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database indicates that there have now been 7 deaths associated with administration of Gardasil with ages listed for four of the girls: 11, 12, 15 and 19. The general public can access vaccine related side effects on-line including Gardasil (ENTER HPV4 in the scroll down menu). Gardasil’s effectiveness beyond 4 years has yet to be established.

Gardasil offers protection from a subset type of cancer which currently accounts for less than 0.007 % of the new cancer cases and less than 0.006 % of cancer deaths that occur annually in the U.S.

H/T LifeSite

Now 1-800 End of Life Consultation service offers free counseling advice for suicide instructional sessions for terminally ill patients. The recent change in tactics by frustrated pro-suicide activists who have failed five times to legalize physician-assisted suicide through the California Legislature is to employ a “counseling” service in which “patients” can obtain information on such suicide methods as the use of plastic bags and stockpiling drugs. In my opinion, an assisted suicide public service based upon one’s own weaknesses and fear is  worthy of criminal prosecution.

With physician assisted suicide proving to be pretty much impossible to pass through the California state legislature, suicide assistance advocates are now switching their tactics by putting on a happy face through an “aid in dying” ministry. The bill would allow terminally ill California adults to have an option to attain a lethal prescription if they had a prognosis of less than three months to live.

Representatives of the new End of Life Consultation Service say they will advise the terminally ill on how to better access pain treatment and end-of-life care. Clergy and trained volunteer counselors also will advise the terminally ill against violent suicide, instead helping to identify a path to what they describe as a peaceful death.

A counselor will remain present to comfort a terminally ill person taking their own life, however, if that person wishes, program representatives said.

“Volunteers will neither provide nor administer the means for aid in dying,” said The Rev. John Brooke, a United Church of Christ minister from Cotati. “Clients will obtain and self-administer these means. We will not break or defy the law.”

Putting all the manipulative jargon aside, this bill actually has the potential to be more sinister in it’s nature than physician assisted suicide, as it lends itself to opportunistic targeting of undesireable, terminally ill individuals. Countering the assisted suicide mentality, clinical studies have shown that some suicidal cancer patients who were treated for depression actually resulted in significantly decreased suicidal thoughts or totally alleviated their desire to die. Lastly, I’ve always wondered if people who fight for the right to take their own lives ever invested in something commonly called life insurance? My intention is not to judge the individual person choosing to take their own lives but the vanity and self-love that often goes along with suicide, and maybe it would be nice to leave those left behind a little more than just nice memories of a dignified patient who chose to do things their way.

For parents who buy into the hype of the drug companies (Merck) and school administrators who are pushing the drug Gardasil really need to stop and take the responsibility upon themselves to do what is in the best interest of their children. Whatever the reason behind the parents consenting of the HPV vaccine, there are some relatively significant and dangerous side effects that they nor the child is aware, and the overall benefits of this injection may fall well short of their original expectations.

Just to put the massive but deceptive marketing of Gardasil into perspective, an inoculated child may be protected from 4 (70% of cancer causing) out of the possible 200 strains of the virus for a yet to be determined amount of time (4 years?) from a type of cancer which make up about 0.007 % of new cancer cases and 0.006 % of cancer deaths that occur annually in the U.S. In return for these modest benefits of Gardasil in 2007, there have been (1) 5 deaths, (2) 31 life-threatening adverse events, (3) 1,385 required visits to the emergency room with (4) 451 of the girls not having recovered as of July 2007 , (5) with 51 of the girls resulting with a disability(source). To boot, a new analysis has provided statistically significant evidence for a previously denied association between Gardasil and Guillain-Barre Syndrome (OOPS! Permanent disability. There is no known cure!!!) when co-administered with other vaccines. What else don’t we know!? Convince me that any other non-sex, agenda driven pharmaceutical would get such a pass from the media or pharmaceutical watch dog organizations. Not that Gardasil is a bad drug onto itself (for married couples), but the means of it’s deceptive marketing nuances and dirty secret side effects marketed towards young teens is despicable.

In Canada, the Bishops are fighting the Ontario Liberal Government which has mandated that the vaccine be administered in all catholic schools. Their resolution proposes that the school board will not support the administration of the vaccine nor will it be permitted to be administered on the property.

Watch the Merck commercial – political or evidence based medicine?

Sources:

National Vaccine Information Center

The Real Ilena Rosenthal

The Catholic bishops of England and Wales publicly respond to the draft of a Government legislation to be debated by Parliament later this year where scientists will be given permission for the first time to create such (human-animal cybrid) embryos for research, as long as they destroy them within two weeks. The Human Tissue and Embryo Bill includes sections on test tube babies, embryo research and abortion. The Bishops oppose the creation of animal-human embryos, but also want to limit the destruction of such life once it had been brought into existence. If such creations of animal-human embryos (which would be more than 99 percent human) came into being, they argued that these “chimeras” must be regarded as human and a have a right to life and the genetic mother should be able to raise them as their own children if they so desire.

In their submission to the committee, they said: “At the very least, embryos with a preponderance of human genes should be assumed to be embryonic human beings, and should be treated accordingly.

“In particular, it should not be a crime to transfer them, or other human embryos, to the body of the woman providing the ovum, in cases where a human ovum has been used to create them.

“Such a woman is the genetic mother, or partial mother, of the embryo; should she have a change of heart and wish to carry her child to term, she should not be prevented from doing so.”

?!

In responding to Cardinal Pell telling Catholic state lawmakers that human cloning and the destruction of embryos for research was a “serious moral matter” and their votes would have “consequences” for their lives in the Church, a New South Wales politician responded by stating he would rather go to Hell rather than oppose legislation legalizing human cloning for embryonic stem-cell research.

“Maybe I’ll go to Hell, but if I go to Hell I’m going to do so by saving a lot of lives, because that’s what this bill is about,” said Tony Stewart. “We don’t need a religious leader telling members of parliament what should be done.”

The bill would permit “human-animal hybrids”, “fertilizing immature eggs from aborted girls with adult male sperm” to form new embryos, and “mixing the genetic material of more than two persons” and destroying them at 14 days for their stem-cells.

I don’t believe for a second any human being or politician who truly believed in hell would knowingly offer up their soul in exchange for scientific research. Hopefully, Stewart’s political hyperbole won’t end up being a self fulfilling prophecy.

In what may seem at times, as a hopeless battle to save God’s plan for life, we can take consolation in the fact that evil is by its very nature divisive and incapable of long-term stability or unity.

From the creators of the reality series Big Brother is a controversial show called The Big Donor Show, where a 37 year old woman gets to choose which of three “contestants” will receive her kidney. Viewers will also be able to send in their advice by text message during the 80-minute show. Who knows, maybe they have some swell consolation prizes to give away as well.

Update: It seems it was a kind of publicity stunt to raise awareness for the need for organs. Thanks Monica.

Judicial Watch has attained information from the FDA under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act on adverse events of the HPV vaccine. Included were three deaths, two of which were teens, who died from cardiac events and/or blood clots. Other adverse events included spontaneous abortions, fetal abnormalities and a significant amount neurological disorders (Bells Palsy, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, speech disorders and seizures) – some of which were determined to be permanent disabilities. The adverse events were reported in girls as young as 7 years old with a significant majority of the events being reported on girls 17 years and younger.

According Merck’s safety profile in their package insert, they stated that there was no evidence of harm to the fetus, nor was their any mention of neurological adverse events – both of which appeared repeatedly on the adverse event reports. What is probably most disturbing is the prevalence of spontaneous abortions which have occurred on the same day of the patient receiving the HPV vaccine, but the bureaucrats at the FDA and CDC fail to see, or refuse to assume a possibility of a link between the drug and fetal destruction.

FDA spokesperson Karen Riley said the agency has been monitoring adverse events associated with Gardasil but has not “seen anything at this point that would suggest we’d make any changes in the product.” John Iskander, acting director of the Immunization Safety Office at CDC, said, “None of the information I’m aware of or have seen suggests that there’s any pattern here linking birth outcomes to the vaccine.” Iskander added that pregnant women who have received the vaccine should “make sure they’re enrolled in the registry and make sure they keep up with their routine prenatal care”

Of the 18 adverse events experienced by pregnant women, 16 involved miscarriages. Richard Haupt, executive director of medical affairs for Merck, said that Gardasil likely did not cause the miscarriages (even though a majority of cases occurred just hours after the HPV injection), adding that miscarriages are common during the first three months of pregnancy. According to the Journal, one pregnant woman was found to have an abnormal fetus and another woman’s fetus was found to have an increased risk of fetal defects; however, outcomes have not been reported in the two cases.

This drug was declared safe for pregnant women based on the studies of mice, and the employee from Merck making the asinine statement which minimizes the seriousness of miscarriages by calling them “common” during the first three months of pregnancy is irrelevant to the facts. There is just cause to, at the very least, issue a product warning for pregnant women.

The burden of this dangerous immunization (which is suspiciously dissimilar to it’s FDA approval safety profile) being assumed by young girls receiving the HPV vaccine, without any evidence of the vaccine’s efficacy beyond four years is, at the very least, irresponsible – bordering on criminal. Can you imagine being the parent whose daughter died at the age of 12 after learning it was fully effective for only 4 – 6 years from a cancer of which comprises of less than 1% of the total cancer deaths in woman?

H/T LifeSite

Kevorkian is scheduled to be paroled on June 1st, after serving just over eight years of his 10-25 year sentence for second-degree murder in the televised death of Thomas Youk. Kevorkian’s parole of two years includes the provision of banning him from attending any assisted suicides or acting as a caregiver for seniors or the disabled.  For those interested, you many want to read Wesley J. Smith’s rather disturbing piece on Kevorkian published in The Daily Standard.

 Kevorkian put his suicide machines to work terminating the lives of scores of disabled people. Indeed, about 70 percent of the nearly 130 people who died in Kevorkian’s rusty van or other venues were not terminally ill. Most were disabled and depressed. At least five had no discernible illnesses whatsoever upon autopsy.

This has been the truth about Kevorkian from the very start. In 1991, Kevorkian’s second victim, Marjorie Wantz, complained bitterly about unresolved pelvic pain. But she was an emotionally disturbed woman who had been in mental hospitals. Her autopsy showed no discernible pathology of any kind.

Kevorkian, who has claimed to have been responsible for approximately 130 deaths during the1990’s, is currently diagnosed with hepatitis C and diabetes, and has a life expectancy of less than one year. It just so happens, that he graduated from the same medical school, The University of Michigan Medical School, as our friend over at Scorpion Stalking Duck.

H/T: LifeSite

Please take a look at this you-Tube video. It will remind you that every human life is precious and that we can see this truth most clearly through the face of a helpless, innocent baby who can do nothing for us but allow us the opportunity to give ourselves to him in love. It teaches that joy comes through giving oneself to another for their own sake and that authentic joy can be experienced in the midst of difficulties and evenamidst tremendous sorrow. Mostly, it will reveal the heroic courage and life affirming witness that is possible for those open to and animated by the life of the Holy Spirit. Take a look but make sure you have your Kleenex ready:

Update: As requested by one of our commenters, this is the testimony of a young couple about their Trisonomy 18 baby.