Accidental Blogger

The AMA questions US government policies towards gays

The American Medical Association (AMA) has just concluded its bi-annual policy conference in Houston during which the organization addressed public health policies including the cost and management of medical care in America. This year the AMA has come out in favor of health care and insurance reform. Also, it has weighed in on gay marriage and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy of the US military. The AMA favors the former and opposes the latter. According to the largest physicians' group in the US, denying marriage (or legal partnership) rights to gay Americans and requring them to conceal their sexual orientation while serving in the armed forces, jeopardize their health. 

Weighing in on two contentious gay-rights issues, the nation's largest group of doctors sent the message Tuesday that government policy is hazardous to homosexuals' health.

The policy-making arm of the American Medical Association, wrapping up its four-day biannual meeting in Houston, adopted one resolution saying that bans on same-sex marriage contribute to health care disparities, and another calling for a repeal of the military's “don't ask, don't tell” policy because the AMA says it's detrimental to the health of gay and lesbian individuals in the service.

“The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force thanks the AMA for taking these positions today,” Rea Carey, executive director of the Washington-based advocacy organization, said in a statement. “The AMA is making it clear that these discriminatory policies pose significant, real-life threats to the health and well-being of thousands of people across the country.”

Jenny Tyree of the Christian advocacy group Focus on the Family responded that the same-sex marriage resolution seemed based on information drawn from gay rights groups and reflected that “political agenda.” She said such disparities are a health insurance problem, not a marriage problem, and added that the insurance problem “should be fixed rather than mess with marriage.”

The AMA took no position on whether gay marriage should be legal.

(cartoon by Tom Toles)

"I am them!"

Sounds like something straight out of ancient Hindu philosophy. Well, you realize you are drunk, you are driving and not very well; naturally, it's time to lapse into metaphysics or at the very least, some commendable drunken clarity.

Don't get battered; don't get pregnant.

We have all heard about cancer, heart disease, diabetes and even mental illness creating road blocks for people trying to get health insurance. Guess what else can qualify as a "pre-existing condition" for some insurance companies to deny you coverage? The possibility of becoming pregnant and being the victim of domestic violence!

When Peggy Robertson went shopping for a more affordable health insurance plan for her self-employed husband and two young boys, she ran into an unexpected problem: the birth of her son Luke in 2006 by caesarean section.  The healthy young mother was shocked when the Golden Rule Insurance company denied her coverage due to the C-Section birth of her son.  "I called Golden Rule and they said that if I would get sterilized, they would then be able to offer insurance to me."

and ---

With the White House zeroing in on the insurance-industry practice of discriminating against clients based on pre-existing conditions, administration allies are calling attention to how broadly insurers interpret the term to maximize profits.

It turns out that in eight states, plus the District of Columbia, getting beaten up by your spouse is a pre-existing condition.

Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you're more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.

Midweek Linkery

Swine Flu Once Again:

This came to me via e-mail - a doctor's guide to protect against the influenza virus, H1N1included. The doctor is Indian born and you will note that his pointers are almost identical to my own advice, posted here a couple of months ago.  

The only portals of entry of the H1N1 virus are the nostrils and mouth/throat. In a global epidemic of this nature,  it’s almost impossible not coming into contact with H1N1 in spite of all precautions. Contact with H1N1 is not so much of a problem as proliferation is.

While you are still healthy and not showing any symptoms of H1N1 infection, in order to prevent proliferation, aggravation of symptoms and development of secondary infections, some very simple steps, not fully highlighted in most official communications, can be practiced  (instead of focusing on how to stock N95 or Tamiflu):

Texas Governor Rick Perry's Arson On Decency and Compassion:

Rick "Goodhair" Perry, the governor of my state has chalked up several despicable antics on his right wing resume. He opposes health care reform, federal subsidies for job creation (although he used federal dollars to repair the governor's mansion) and Obama's speech to school children. He supports teaching creationism in science classes, prayer in public schools, every gun law favored by the NRA and paranoid vigilantes and had at one time threatened to secede from the nation. These days however, Perry is feeling a bit hot under the collar. An investigation is currently under way to determine whether the governor is culpable in the wrongful execution of a man. Even in execution-happy Texas, the case is drawing a lot of attention. Perry has impeded the investigation by firing three members of the panel looking into the charges.  

A report concluding a faulty investigation led to a Texas man's execution won't be reviewed by a state board as planned Friday after Governor Rick Perry abruptly removed three people from the panel, forcing the meeting's cancellation.

Perry replaced the head of the Texas Forensic Science Commission and two of its eight other board members Wednesday. The upheaval on the commission came just 48 hours before it was to consider a report critical of the arson finding leading to Cameron Todd Willingham's execution for the deaths of his three daughters in a 1991 fire.

Baltimore-based arson expert Craig Beyler, who was hired by the commission, concluded the arson finding was scientifically unsupported and investigators at the scene had "poor understandings of fire science." His report has bolstered arguments from advocacy groups that Willingham was innocent and wrongly executed.

The Flushing Brides of India:

In the northern Indian state of Haryana, some prospective brides are calling the shots in what used to be a wholly male dominated marriage market. The power reversal may have come to pass partly due to the fact that Haryana is also one of the states which now has an unnaturally skewed male : female ratio (males outnumbering females) due to widespread selective abortions of female fetuses. No, it is not about dowry. The young women are concerned about personal hygiene and convenience - they want to marry men who can provide them with indoor plumbing. The girls' serious battle cry is, "Show us the loo, before I say 'I do.'"

Courtship can be an intricate business in India, but the mothers of the northern state of Haryana have a simple message for men who call on their daughters: “No toilet, no bride.”

The slogan - often lengthened in Hindi to “If you don't have a proper lavatory in your house, don't even think about marrying my daughter” - has been plastered across villages in the region as part of a drive to boost the number of pukka facilities. In a country where more households have TV sets than lavatories, it is one of the most successful efforts to combat the chronic shortage of proper plumbing.

That is probably partly because of the country's skewed sex ratio, with 8 per cent more men than women, leading to a “bride shortage”. Woman generally have also become more vocal in their resentment at having to relieve themselves outside, giving brides more leverage in premarital bargaining.

The Supercollidor That Is Saving Us From A Terrible Fate By Shutting Down:

I will let D explain this one. (But read it anyway)

Desperately seeking happiness

I don't want to come across as cynical or grumpy. In fact, I am for the most part a happy person and have nothing against other happy people. After all, most human enterprises, be it work, pleasure or leisure, are geared toward increasing the happiness quotient in our life's ledger book. Civilizing efforts through the ages - family, community, religion, philosophy, scientific and technological advances, medicine and government were organized and operated around the notion that we should employ these entities to identify what is "good" for us and what make us happy.

In recent years, the concept of happiness has spilled over from the confines of philosophy, literature, religion and the psychologist's office - from the merely personal to a collective concept. I first wrote about the broader definition of happiness when I introduced here a very interesting book by Anthony and Charles Kenny a few years ago. Government agencies too are now concerning themselves with happiness, going beyond economic indicators such as the GDP or the magic of the free market. Cut and dried number crunching is giving way to assessing the more nebulous Well Being Indices.  Leading the way in diagnosing national cheer was the tiny country of Bhutan. I wrote about it here and the New York Times had a four page article on Bhutan's attempt at redefining prosperity based not merely on wealth but also the happiness co-efficient and coining the new political phrase Gross National Happiness.  

Bhutan, the king said, needed to ensure that prosperity was shared across society and that it was balanced against preserving cultural traditions, protecting the environment and maintaining a responsive government. The king, now 49, has been instituting policies aimed at accomplishing these goals.

Now Bhutan's example, while still a work in progress, is serving as a catalyst for far broader discussions of national well-being.

Around the world, a growing number of economists, social scientists, corporate leaders and bureaucrats are trying to develop measurements that take into account not just the flow of money but also access to health care, free time with family, conservation of natural resources and other noneconomic factors.

The goal, according to many involved in this effort, is in part to return to a richer definition of the word happiness, more like what the signers of the Declaration of Independence had in mind when they included "the pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right equal to liberty and life itself.

It is not surprising that Bhutan, a Buddhist country, is astute enough to appreciate that happiness  goes beyond personal material wealth. Now French president Nicolas Sarkozy is seeking the help of three Nobel winning economists to educate his own country on what constitutes a healthy and happy society.

So far so good. But what about the quest for individual happiness? Americans have for long relentlessly pursued personal fulfillment (gratification?) as defined by religious leaders, inspirational speakers, media personalities, financial institutions and peddlers of products and services. Do happiness seeking individuals add up to a happier society overall?  Not necessarily, says an article in Newsweek. Paradoxically, the obsessive pursuit of personal happiness may in the end, prove to be an obstacle to the very state of over all bliss people seek, say some observers of social trends. The anxiety to be happy (Oprah style) may in fact make us somewhat self obsessed and detract from collective contentment. The article makes some good points but I am afraid that in comparing Americans to Europeans or other "happy" people, there may be some risk of conflating complacency with good spirits.  I am copying Julie Baird's article in its entirety below the fold because Newsweek items have a tendency to "disappear" after a while. The most cogent point about happiness appears at the very end. It is attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, a remarkable woman, who obsessed very little about her own happiness and made improving the happiness index of others her life's mission. She is said to have observed that happiness "is not a goal, it's a byproduct."

Egypt's Folly - Health Measure Was Hogwash

Superstition ridden medieval Europe condemned cats as witchs' agents and slaughtered them. Nature's pay back for that brutal and dastardly act came in the form of the Black Plague when the rat population proliferated in the absence of a natural feline pest control. A similar but less deadly fate may be in store for Egypt whose president Hosni Mubarak, in a heartless, mindless and misguided moment of inspiration, ordered all pigs killed in order to protect the nation from swine flu. The streets of Cairo are now awash in stinking garbage. The pigs used to consume organic trash in large quantities and helped keep the city  partially clean. Now they are all gone due to the stupid step taken by ignorant, cowardly politicians and the rubbish is piling up. So, Egyptians are protected from swine flu (they wish!) but are sure to suffer from other more easy to spread infectious diseases that the putrid waste will help breed. And they had been warned of the consequences of the idiotic measure. The story in the New York Times.   

Lose your mind; become one with the cosmos (D)

Sometimes man stumbles upon great truths entirely undeservedly. Kamerlingh Onnes just happened upon superconductivity while twiddling around with mercury and refrigerators; Roentgen was playing with himself in electrical ways and realized to his shock that he could see through his skin. Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard neuroscientist, woke up one morning with headache, a stroke and noble sentiments. Her discoveries are even more astounding.

As preliminary, recall that blood clots in the brain can cause loss of language, memory, or face recognition, paralysis, personality changes and the like. What had hitherto gone unsuspected is that certain parts of the brain actively hinder us from realizing our potential. Blood clots in such undesired parts (the stodgy and linear left hemisphere, specifically) instead improve us! Indeed, they cause us to Awaken to our full, true nature, as the unshackled remainder reveals what had previously been blocked off.

Now, it is hardly surprising that no scientist has predicted this - why would large parts of the brain be actively engaged in keeping us from Truth? And yet, why should it be otherwise? After all, do we not function better without an infected appendix? Surely the loss of what forces us into dull, methodical, detail-oriented, negative-energy patterns might have similar effects! Taylor's work is being widely celebrated; she has written a bestseller, appeared on Oprah, and is recognized by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Here is a colloquium where she presents her findings (a twenty minute video, but well worth the trouble. Do wait for the standing ovation she justly receives):

Her testimony is fascinating and jarring, even humbling. With bad brain gone, she found the boundaries between her body and the rest of the universe dissolving into the common Energy Field of which she discovered she was made, like everything else, and experienced herself connected, perfect and together, brother and sister with the Whole, beautiful whole. She lost all sense of her day-to-day life and work and relationships, which she found was quite compatible with Oneness. She saw the stranger in her body, that tiny, detached bit of universal consciousness, and wondered how she would ever contain such enormous vastness of being into a mere meat-brain. She realized, somewhere in the buzzing blooming confusion, that she was rising above her parochial, linear need to parse time into past, present and future and saw it pictorially, complete. As she says, she achieved Nirvana, energy lifted and spirit surrendered to the nurturing womb we all emerge from.

The connections she draws to eastern contemplative practice are perceptive and profound. Also eerie, almost frightening - how could those sages from ages ago possibly have adumbrated what materialistic Science is only now coming, dimly, to appreciate? Now, it is a bit troubling that that the path to becoming one with everything involves losing your mind. That seems to suggest something rather peculiar about what we are to unite with. But brain as yet unmutilated, we miss the brilliance of the insight: this is precisely the sort of distracting, bad-karma-thought sprit-strokes rid us of!

And to think, we each may possess such knowledge, for the contemptible price of keeping golf-ball sized clots in our heads! Taylor does say she lost the ability to read, speak, and move, and that it took her eight years to recover. Still, who among us wouldn't be tempted by the thought of even a few moments of perfect clarity? Would not viewing visvarupa compensate for blindness before and after? As she says,

"Who are we? We are the life-force power of the universe, with manual dexterity, and two cognitive minds, and we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here, right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere, where we are - I am - the life-force power of the universe. I am the LIFE-FORCE POWER of the fifty trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form! At one, with all that is!"

THIS is what we miss by retaining left-brain. Effulgent, incandescent truths are offered us. Shall we fail to confront them?

Time to boycott Whole Foods?

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's answer to Health Care Reform sounds awfully like "It's your fault if you are sick or dying."  The rest is all about letting private insurance companies do their thing without government mandates. The last few paragraphs are especially irritating.

Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.

Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.

Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age.

America's Health Care Options

Paul Krugman sums it up.

Swine Flu and Common Sense

The news outlets are full of reports about the impending global epidemic of swine flu. With cold weather on its way in the northern hemisphere and regular flu season beginning around September, we are being warned about a sharp uptick in the spread of the H1N1 (aka swine flu) virus. Drug companies are scrambling to produce a vaccine against the virus.  Mass vaccination was earlier expected to be in full swing by the middle of October. Now US health officials are saying that the vaccine supply will fall short of their earlier estimate thereby delaying the vaccination campaign.

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials Monday said they had slashed their estimate of how many swine flu vaccine doses will be available for the start of a mass vaccination campaign in the fall. Citing delays in manufacturing and packaging the vaccines, the Department of Health and Human Services said only 45 million doses of the new H1N1 vaccine would be on hand in mid-October, instead of the 120 million previously forecast.

The revised delivery guidelines would push back a government estimate that all those requiring vaccinations be immunized by the first week of December.

"Our latest information from the manufacturers tells us that we now expect to have about 45 million doses by October 15 with approximately 20 million doses being delivered each week Thereafter, up to the 195 million doses that we have purchased," Bill Hall, an HHS spokesman, said in an e-mail.

The Geneva-based World Health Organisation declared H1N1 a full pandemic in June, and the virus has spread to about 180 countries. World health officials have said people should receive the two-dose swine flu vaccination as well as the single-dose seasonal flu vaccination this year.

Now, I don't mean to come across as dismissive of the dangers of a swine flu outbreak. If I had young children of school age or family members with respiratory conditions like asthma, I would be concerned. However, having grown up in a country with rampant infectious agents in the environment, in an era when few vaccines were available, I am a bit more realistic about what can or cannot be done during the spread of a contagious disease. When I was a child in the 1950s, we lived amidst routine outbreaks of small pox (this scary disease would be controlled and eradicated only a couple of decades later), cholera, typhoid, whooping cough, malaria, measles, mumps, jaundice, dysentery and flu. Tuberculosis was widespread in the population. Leprosy victims sat at street corners and came to one's front door to beg for food and money (leprosy is not contagious in the short term). One never knew what one would be exposed to on stepping out of the home and being in crowded places. Almost every place in India is a crowded place.

My sister and I grew up in the care of an intelligent and hygienically cautious mother. From early childhood we were trained to acquire some common-sensical habits without becoming unduly paranoid. Our mother taught us to:

• Avoid touching surfaces (hand rails, eg.) in public places that many others are likely to have touched.
• To always carry a handkerchief to cover the mouth and nose when others coughed or sneezed around us and also when we did.
• Not share food or drinks with others when saliva too is likely to be shared.
• Above all, to wash hands with soap many times during the day, especially before eating.
• We were regularly vaccinated whenever a vaccine became available.

My sister and I were very healthy children and have remained mostly disease free well into our middle age. Perhaps we are blessed with good immune systems or it is pure dumb luck. Or it could be that our mother's training bore fruit.

To protect yourself and your kids against swine flu (or any other flu) during the high flu season, you should do all the things that my mother taught me and some more.

• Stay in touch with your doctor regarding the availability of the vaccine and sign your children up as candidates.
• Avoid unnecessary contact with other people. For example, tell your children that instead of high fiving with open palms, they should celebrate an exuberant moment with a fist bump.
• Refrain from practices such as drinking from a shared bottle.
• Minimize time spent in closed places (movie theaters, planes) as far as possible.
• Always pack a bottle of Purell or some other hand sanitizer for frequent use when soap and water are not accessible.
• Carry a clean napkin or handkerchief (sterile masks if you are really concerned) to cover the nose and mouth around people with persistent coughs.
• At the first sign of flu like symptoms, please visit the doctor. Early intervention is the best line of defense.

I am sure most of you are aware of these precautions and probably the steps are already in place for your family. I am reinforcing them as a mature person who knows from experience that simple cautionary steps help even in panicky times.

There is another preventive measure that my mother taught us which you may not know and I have never seen it mentioned anywhere in public health guidelines. Gargling and irrigating the nasal passages with warm saline water is a stunningly effective way to destroy pathogens in our respiratory tract. During cold season when respiratory diseases are common, this practice (once or twice a day) can ward off many infections as well as any medication available at the pharmacy. I am not sure if this method will work against the H1N1 virus. But there’s no harm trying. See if you can inculcate this habit in your kids and yourself. Good luck and stay well.

(For more swine flu related cartoons from all over the world, see here)

A Birthday Message For President Obama

"If you wish to win public support for your healthcare plan, please stop calling it Healthcare Reform and instead try selling it as Health Insurance Reform. Americans like the health care they are getting for the most part but are tired of being jerked around by insurance companies.  Best of luck!"  

A minimalistic approach to happiness

In a blog post in the NYT travel writer Pico Iyer describes life in a small apartment in Japan as his route to finding peace and happiness. Says Iyer:

So — as post-1960s cliché decreed — I left my comfortable job and life to live for a year in a temple on the backstreets of Kyoto. My high-minded year lasted all of a week, by which time I’d noticed that the depthless contemplation of the moon and composition of haiku I’d imagined from afar was really more a matter of cleaning, sweeping and then cleaning some more. But today, more than 21 years later, I still live in the vicinity of Kyoto, in a two-room apartment that makes my old monastic cell look almost luxurious by comparison. I have no bicycle, no car, no television I can understand, no media — and the days seem to stretch into eternities, and I can’t think of a single thing I lack.

I’m no Buddhist monk, and I can’t say I’m in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I’ve written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn’t want or need, not all I did. And it seemed quite useful to take a clear, hard look at what really led to peace of mind or absorption (the closest I’ve come to understanding happiness). Not having a car gives me volumes not to think or worry about, and makes walks around the neighborhood a daily adventure. Lacking a cell phone and high-speed Internet, I have time to play ping-pong every evening, to write long letters to old friends and to go shopping for my sweetheart (or to track down old baubles for two kids who are now out in the world).

I like Pico Iyer's writings. I do not share his views on happiness entirely but some observations struck a chord.

My life is very different from Iyer's. Unlike him, having left the work force long ago I have not felt the urgent need to run away from the stresses of a busy professional life.  But one's personal fantasies about attaining that contented state of peace and happiness are not bound by what we do and where we are. Like Iyer, my day dreams too occasionally take me to Japan.

In my moderate travel experience through world cities, three left magical impressions, each for different reasons - San Francisco, Barcelona and Kyoto. Of these, the only one where I have imagined myself living is Kyoto. The existence I conjure up is very similar to what Iyer is currently living. But add to mine a view of the wavy, crenellated tiled roof of a Buddhist temple from an upstairs window and high speed internet.

I doubt that the Japanese are happier than the rest of the world. But for some reason, I can see myself feeling at peace in Japan, my lack of mastery over the local language notwithstanding. It is one place where I imagine that isolation from the outside chatter will not make me feel left out or lonely. It is of course all a fantasy with no real life experience of an extended stay to back up its veracity, arising solely out of some moments of exceptional calm that I have felt during my travels there even though my Japanese itineraries were always packed and hectic.

I am old enough to know that contentment and peace of mind are hardly ever wholly contingent upon our relationship with a person, possession or place. Like refreshing coastal showers they can come upon us suddenly at the least expected moment and in an unlikely setting. But it is still fun to dwell upon an imaginary escape hatch to serenity.  

I have occasionally written about Japan on A.B. touching upon one experience or the other. My last post on Japan was a pot-pourri of a few such observations. See here. That trip in the autumn of 2006 is nearly three years in the past. It may be time to plan another trip.

(The link to Iyer's article is via Namit Arora. The content of my post here is a modified version of the comment I left on Namit's blog)

Transformation Through Language

Sharon Begley in Newsweek:

When the Viaduct de Millau opened in the south of France in 2004, this tallest bridge in the world won worldwide accolades. German newspapers described how it "floated above the clouds" with "elegance and lightness" and "breathtaking" beauty. In France, papers praised the "immense" "concrete giant." Was it mere coincidence that the Germans saw beauty where the French saw heft and power? Lera Boroditsky thinks not.

A psychologist at Stanford University, she has long been intrigued by an age-old question whose modern form dates to 1956, when linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf asked whether the language we speak shapes the way we think and see the world. If so, then language is not merely a means of expressing thought, but a constraint on it, too. Although philosophers, anthropologists, and others have weighed in, with most concluding that language does not shape thought in any significant way, the field has been notable for a distressing lack of empiricism—as in testable hypotheses and actual data.

That's where Boroditsky comes in. In a series of clever experiments guided by pointed questions, she is amassing evidence that, yes, language shapes thought. The effect is powerful enough, she says, that "the private mental lives of speakers of different languages may differ dramatically," not only when they are thinking in order to speak, "but in all manner of cognitive tasks," including basic sensory perception. "Even a small fluke of grammar"—the gender of nouns—"can have an effect on how people think about things in the world," she says.

As in that bridge. In German, the noun for bridge, Brücke, is feminine. In French, pont is masculine. German speakers saw prototypically female features; French speakers, masculine ones. Similarly, Germans describe keys (Schlüssel) with words such as hard, heavy, jagged, and metal, while to Spaniards keys (llaves) are golden, intricate, little, and lovely. Guess which language construes key as masculine and which as feminine? Grammatical gender also shapes how we construe abstractions. In 85 percent of artistic depictions of death and victory, for instance, the idea is represented by a man if the noun is masculine and a woman if it is feminine, says Boroditsky. Germans tend to paint death as male, and Russians tend to paint it as female.

Being fluent in three languages (speak, read, write, think, quarrel), I can attest to the truth of this. Indeed, objects and ideas do often take on different forms and nuances in our minds depending on the language we assign to them. But can language shape our bodies? Some silly people seem to think so, without quite explaining how!

The Philosophy of Motorcycle Maintenance

A very interesting article in the New York Times about the joys of manual labor. (link via Leiter Reports) The author of the piece has a Ph.D in philosophy. He runs a motorcycle repair shop in Virginia. 

The television show“Deadliest Catch” depicts commercial crab fishermen in the Bering Sea. Another, “Dirty Jobs,” shows all kinds of grueling work; one episode featured a guy who inseminates turkeys for a living. The weird fascination of these shows must lie partly in the fact that such confrontations with material reality have become exotically unfamiliar. Many of us do work that feels more surreal than real. Working in an office, you often find it difficult to see any tangible result from your efforts. What exactly have you accomplished at the end of any given day? Where the chain of cause and effect is opaque and responsibility diffuse, the experience of individual agency can be elusive. “Dilbert,” “The Office” and similar portrayals of cubicle life attest to the dark absurdism with which many Americans have come to view their white-collar jobs.

Is there a more “real” alternative (short of inseminating turkeys)?

High-school shop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s as educators prepared students to become “knowledge workers.” The imperative of the last 20 years to round up every warm body and send it to college, then to the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy. This has not come to pass. To begin with, such work often feels more enervating than gliding. More fundamentally, now as ever, somebody has to actually do things: fix our cars, unclog our toilets, build our houses.

When we praise people who do work that is straightforwardly useful, the praise often betrays an assumption that they had no other options. We idealize them as the salt of the earth and emphasize the sacrifice for others their work may entail. Such sacrifice does indeed occur — the hazards faced by a lineman restoring power during a storm come to mind. But what if such work answers as well to a basic human need of the one who does it? I take this to be the suggestion of Marge Piercy’s poem “To Be of Use,” which concludes with the lines “the pitcher longs for water to carry/and a person for work that is real.” Beneath our gratitude for the lineman may rest envy.

This seems to be a moment when the useful arts have an especially compelling economic rationale. A car mechanics’ trade association reports that repair shops have seen their business jump significantly in the current recession: people aren’t buying new cars; they are fixing the ones they have. The current downturn is likely to pass eventually. But there are also systemic changes in the economy, arising from information technology, that have the surprising effect of making the manual trades — plumbing, electrical work, car repair — more attractive as careers. The Princeton economist Alan Blinder argues that the crucial distinction in the emerging labor market is not between those with more or less education, but between those whose services can be delivered over a wire and those who must do their work in person or on site. The latter will find their livelihoods more secure against outsourcing to distant countries. As Blinder puts it, “You can’t hammer a nail over the Internet.” Nor can the Indians fix your car. Because they are in India.

The article is six pages long. Do read the whole thing.  Matthew Crawford, Ph.D in philosophy, fascinates with his perspective on work and satisfaction with life. The paradox here of course is that had Crawford not gone through the initial "safe" life trajectory of higher education and cubicle jobs of "ideas," he wouldn't probably have developed such a carefully weighed and regret-free appreciation for manual labor and nor perhaps the facility with words to make his case so succinctly for the cost-benefit of the informed choice he made. 

Crawford begins his piece with a reference to a television show.  That reminded me of another TV show, also to do with jobs. I am not much of a TV watcher. But during our brief stay in Germany in the early eighties, I used to watch a fair amount of TV with my two small children partly out of boredom and partly in order to get a grip on the German language. A game show called "Was bin Ich?" (a spin off of the American game show, What's My Line?) used to air on German TV in those days.  I remember noting with interest that some of the hardest vocations for the hosts to guess were manual jobs, even though one would think that such work would offer up more concrete clues than amorphous intellectual pursuits.  But then as Crawford notes, inseminating turkeys is working with your hands but who would ever guess that someone actually does it?  Similarly, I remember that on "Was bin Ich?" one guy's job completely stumped the hosts and he ended up earning a sizable prize for keeping them in suspense for the entire episode. He turned out to be a "Totenkopf Maler." ( see translation) Evidently, there is a market for painted skulls - at least, there must have been one in Germany!

Where Life Is Good ....

That would be in Japan and the European micro-nation of San Marino, according to a recent WHO report.  The two top the list for the highest life expectancies in the world - Japan for females and San Marino for males.

A girl born in Japan today will likely live to celebrate her 86th birthday, the longest life expectancy anywhere in the world. Men fare best in the tiny European nation of San Marino, where the average boy will live to 81, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

The West African country of Sierra Leone has the shortest life expectancy for men — just 39 — while Afghanistan fares badly for both sexes, with men and women living on average to 41 and 42 years respectively.

The figures in WHO's annual World Health Statistics report are from 2007, the latest year available.

They show that some countries have made remarkable progress in increasing life expectancy since 1990 — partly by ending wars, partly through successful health initiatives.

Eritrea increased its average life expectancy by 33 years to 61 for men, and by 12 years to 65 for women. In Liberia the figure for men jumped 29 years to 54, and rose 13 years to 58 for women. Angola, Bangladesh, Maldives, Niger and East Timor also increased the average life expectancy for men and women by 10 years.

Other countries showed a sharp decline over the same period.

Women's life expectancy in Zimbabwe fell by 19 years to 44; Zimbabwean men live to 45 on average, compared to age 57 in 1990. Lesotho recorded a 16-year drop for both men and women to 43 and 47 respectively. Women in Swaziland live to 49 on average, a drop of 14 years. Men's life expectancy in the southern African country declined by 12 years to 47.

Botswana, Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Zambia also reported significant drops in life expectancy for both sexes.

In the United States, the life expectancy for men rose to 76 from 72 years, and for women to 81 from 79 years.

The most significant indicators for lower life span and higher infant mortality continue to be poverty, war and disease. Cessation or control of any of those circumstances improves the lives of people.  The report also found the following:

Recycling In The Sky : Let's Drink To That

I am sure everyone saw this item in the news yesterday on TV or on the web. There is really nothing chemically or nutritionally  yucky here. I guess one just has to get used to the idea.

At the international space station, it was one small sip for man and a giant gulp of recycled urine for mankind.

Astronauts aboard the space station celebrated a space first on Wednesday by drinking water that had been recycled from their urine, sweat and water that condenses from exhaled air. They said "cheers," clicked drinking bags and toasted NASA workers on the ground who were sipping their own version of recycled drinking water.

"The taste is great," American astronaut Michael Barratt said. Then as Russian Gennady Padalka tried to catch little bubbles of the clear water floating in front of him, Barratt called the taste "worth chasing."

He said the water came with labels that said: "drink this when real water is over 200 miles away."

The urine recycling system is needed for astronaut outposts on the moon and Mars. It also will save NASA money because it won't have to ship up as much water to the station by space shuttle or cargo rockets. It's also crucial as the space station is about to expand from three people living on board to six.

The recycling system had been brought up to the space station last November by space shuttle Endeavour, but it couldn't be used until samples were tested back on Earth and a stuck valve was fixed on Monday.

So when it came time to actually drink up, NASA made a big deal of it.

The three-man crew stood holding their drinks and congratulated engineers in two NASA centers that worked on the system.

"This is something that had been the stuff of science fiction," Barratt said before taking a sip.

NASA deputy space shuttle manager LeRoy Cain called it "a huge milestone."

Good news about the economy. (Joe)

Pig flu is on the march!

Now, if you were recently laid off, and you probably were, unless you're only about to be laid off in which case congratulations for making it this far, you might be wondering how the march of the pig flu is good news. 

Well, it's not.  Obviously.  Even the bird flu was the cause of the Iraq War, and the pig flu is much more terrifying than that because it's new and exciting and the next big pandemic threat to end the world as we know it.  Think about it: are you more afraid of a couple of diseased Chinese chickens, or a global pandemic that could mean the end of the BLT and which has already destroyed Mexico and moved on to terrorizing schools in New York, a city which, as 9/11 conclusively proved, lies at the center of the lives of Real Americans in Texas and Alaska and maybe even Missouri?  Right, you're afraid of the second one, the one that was probably created by those terrorists that Obama insisted on releasing on account of we'd tortured 'em enough.  (Obviously, we hadn't.)

But didn't I just call it "good news"?  The words are right there, in the title!  Nope -- I said that the global pig flu pandemic is good news about the economy.  And it is.  If you're worried that you're going to catch the pig flu and die, or if you're convinced that the world is about to self-destruct, or if you're excited about scapegoating Mexicans, or if you're just easily distracted by whatever is dominating the news, you're definitely not worrying about that other crisis.  See?  You've already forgotten it was ever a concern!  And if that's not good news, I don't know what is!

(Yes, really I just wanted to use the phrase pig flu.  Too heavy-handed?)

Food of good intentions

H₂OM - a blessed beverage, Intentional Chocolate - a snack that is "imbued" with a monk's meditation, Creo Mundi - a protein mix that has been praised loudly.  How much will you pay for these "good feeling" (not just feel good) foods? An article in the latest issue of Time magazine reports that some are shelling out generously for foods which are embedded / infused / imbued with good intentions, on the assumption that nourishing powers of edibles are enhanced by good thoughts.  

Move over, organic, fair trade and free range--the latest in enlightened edibles is here: food with "embedded" positive intentions. While the idea isn't new--cultures like the Navajo have been doing it for centuries--for-profit companies in the U.S. and Canada are catching on, infusing products with good vibes through meditation, prayer and even music. Since 2006, California company H2Om has sold water infused with wishes for "love," "joy" and "perfect health" via the words, symbols and colors on the label (which "create a specific vibratory frequency," according to co-founder Sandy Fox) and the restorative music played at their bottling warehouse. At Creo Mundi, a Canadian maker of protein powder, employees gather around each shipment and state aloud the benefits they hope to imbue it with for their consumers--increased performance, balance and vitality. Intentional Chocolate, founded in 2007 by chocolatier Jim Walsh, uses a special recording device to capture the electromagnetic brain waves of meditating Tibetan monks; Walsh then exposes his confections to the recording for five days per batch.

We hear your eyes rolling. But some claim there's actually something to the idea that humans can alter the physical world with their minds, and they offer research to prove it. Dean Radin, a senior scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, Calif., conducted a test in which, he says, subjects who ate Intentional Chocolate improved their mood 67% compared with people who ate regular chocolate. "If the Pope blessed water, everyone wants that water. But does it actually do something?" Radin asks. "The answer is yes, to a small extent."

James Fallon, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the University of California at Irvine School of Medicine, is skeptical. "So I take a rutabaga and put it close to my head, and it somehow changes the food and improves the mood of the person who ate it?" he asks. "Nah."

Gimmick or not, in this economy any product that promises a spiritual pick-me-up could be in high demand. Since the recession, says Phil Lempert, editor of health-food site Supermarketguru.com "everyone is ready to jump off a bridge." With the right marketing, he says, embedded foods "could be huge."

Still, not everyone is keen on the idea of packaging spirituality. Once the profit motive comes into play, "it's difficult to keep things pure," says George Churinoff, a monk at Deer Park Buddhist Center in Oregon, Wis., who was involved with Intentional Chocolate in its early stages. "Then [the product] may not be blessed in any way with motivation except maybe to make money."

Like the Navajos, I too grew up in a culture where food is routinely imbued with spirituality and blessings, not so much by humans but by gods. (see prasad) I have therefore consumed large quantities of "embedded" foods, mostly from the household shrines of my mother and other relatives. The divine fare was always delicious and I don't know if the goodies imparted any special benefits because of the worthy intentions infused in them. I however remember my mildly observant but  supremely hygienic mother's cautionary words regarding the consumption of blessed foods outside the home : "Eat only the whole fruits, not the sliced ones;  take very small amounts of cooked food and only if it is still warm; stick mostly to dry items; avoid all cold liquids, milk based products and especially the holy water; do not consume anything in a large communal place of worship." I may have ignored her advice a couple of times - once for a delectable helping of suji halwa in a large, crowded Gurudwara and on another occasion, when I ate some pre-sliced coconut in a South Indian temple. Given the frequent cases of food poisoning, hepatitis and other nasty outcomes of eating in public holy places, it was amply clear to me that the blessings of the gods didn't always protect against earthly maladies.

The foods described in the Time magazine article of course pose few such disease causing threats. What is suspect is their ability to transmit the good intentions and peaceful vibes via the gastrointestinal pathway. If a controlled study can be done to prove their efficacy, perhaps such fare can be of greater use than just soothing the nerves of antsy individuals. How about India and Pakistan sharing "laddus" of peace?  Israelis and Palestinians feasting on falafel of harmony? The whole world exchanging grains of accord and amity? The placebo effect alone may be worth the trouble.

The Torment of Solitude

The US has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. One recent report puts the number of people behind bars at slightly higher than 2 million (including local jails). That translates to nearly one out of one hundred American adults. Of these, many are in Supermax penitentiaries where prisoners are kept under lock-down 23 hours a day . Inmates who are deemed especially dangerous are kept in solitary confinement where there is no interaction whatsoever with another human being.  The living conditions in the SHU (Security Housing Units), the prison cells designed to create complete isolation, have raised the concern of human rights groups. A UN task force investigating torture argued that the punishment meted out in the SHU is "inhumane and degrading."  Dr. Atul Gawande, the excellent writer of medical matters in the popular media, agrees. In an article in the New Yorker he calls such prison cells "hellholes" and argues that prolonged and forced solitude may be tantamount to torture.

Human beings are social creatures. We are social not just in the trivial sense that we like company, and not just in the obvious sense that we each depend on others. We are social in a more elemental way: simply to exist as a normal human being requires interaction with other people.

Children provide the clearest demonstration of this fact, although it was slow to be accepted. Well into the nineteen-fifties, psychologists were encouraging parents to give children less attention and affection, in order to encourage independence. Then Harry Harlow, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, produced a series of influential studies involving baby rhesus monkeys. .....

We have been hesitant to apply these lessons to adults. Adults, after all, are fully formed, independent beings, with internal strengths and knowledge to draw upon. We wouldn’t have anything like a child’s dependence on other people, right? Yet it seems that we do. We don’t have a lot of monkey experiments to call upon here. But mankind has produced tens of thousands of human ones, including in our prison system. And the picture that has emerged is profoundly unsettling.

Among our most benign experiments are those with people who voluntarily isolate themselves for extended periods. Long-distance solo sailors, for instance, commit themselves to months at sea. They face all manner of physical terrors: thrashing storms, fifty-foot waves, leaks, illness. Yet, for many, the single most overwhelming difficulty they report is the “soul-destroying loneliness,” as one sailor called it. Astronauts have to be screened for their ability to tolerate long stretches in tightly confined isolation, and they come to depend on radio and video communications for social contact.

The problem of isolation goes beyond ordinary loneliness, however. Consider what we’ve learned from hostages who have been held in solitary confinement—from the journalist Terry Anderson, for example, whose extraordinary memoir, “Den of Lions,” recounts his seven years as a hostage of Hezbollah in Lebanon......

......On December 4, 1991, Terry Anderson was released from captivity. He had been the last and the longest-held American hostage in Lebanon. I spoke to Keron Fletcher, a former British military psychiatrist who had been on the receiving team for Anderson and many other hostages, and followed them for years afterward. Initially, Fletcher said, everyone experiences the pure elation of being able to see and talk to people again, especially family and friends. They can’t get enough of other people, and talk almost non-stop for hours. They are optimistic and hopeful. But, afterward, normal sleeping and eating patterns prove difficult to reëstablish. Some have lost their sense of time. For weeks, they have trouble managing the sensations and emotional complexities of their freedom.

For the first few months after his release, Anderson said when I reached him by phone recently, “it was just kind of a fog.” He had done many television interviews at the time. “And if you look at me in the pictures? Look at my eyes. You can tell. I look drugged.”

Most hostages survived their ordeal, Fletcher said, although relationships, marriages, and careers were often lost. Some found, as John McCain did, that the experience even strengthened them. Yet none saw solitary confinement as anything less than torture. This presents us with an awkward question: If prolonged isolation is—as research and experience have confirmed for decades—so objectively horrifying, so intrinsically cruel, how did we end up with a prison system that may subject more of our own citizens to it than any other country in history has?

The long article is worth reading.

Lust For Life

The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that terminal cancer patients with religious faith are more likely to resort to heroic measures to prolong life than their secular counterparts. (see the NIH publication, Medicine Plus) 

TUESDAY, March 17 (HealthDay News) -- People with advanced cancer who turn to their religion to help them cope are more likely to use aggressive measures to prolong their lives at the end, new research shows.

Published in the March 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study found that those who turn to their faith for comfort during their illness are significantly more likely to use intensive lifesaving measures, such as mechanical ventilation.

"In a large study of terminally ill cancer patients, we found that patients that rely more heavily on religion to cope are about three times as likely to get aggressive medical care in the last week of life," said study author Dr. Andrea C. Phelps, a senior medical resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Phelps said the study wasn't able to address the question of why people who rely heavily on their religion might be more apt to use any lifesaving measure available, but there are several possible theories. One is that, "they may be more optimistic because they have faith in God, and their religious faith may provide them hope near death," Phelps said. Another possibility is that those who lean on their religion "may want all measures to extend the length of their life because they believe in the sanctity of life." (emphasis mine)

Almost nine in 10 cancer patients involved in a recent multi-center study said that religion and spirituality were important to them in handling their diagnosis, according to background information in the study.

Intensive life-prolonging care was defined as the use of mechanical ventilation or cardiopulmonary resuscitation during the last week of life.

Those who reported a high level of religious coping were much more likely to use intensive life-prolonging measures than those with low levels of reliance on religion for coping -- 13.6 percent vs. 4.2 percent. Just over 11 percent of those with high levels of religious coping were placed on mechanical ventilation compared to 3.6 percent of those with low levels. The rate of resuscitation for those with high levels of religious coping was 7.4 percent compared to 1.8 percent of those with low levels of religious coping.

"Many people, within the framework of their belief system, want to make sure we're giving God every opportunity to see if something can change in the course of care," said the Rev. Percy McCray Jr., director of pastoral care and social services at Cancer Treatment Centers of America's Midwestern Regional Medical Center in Zion, Ill.

"People who are religious or faith-based don't want to prematurely give in to the idea of cancer. They want to know that they did everything they could do; they want the sense of having fought," he said. (emphasis mine)

Phelps said this study shows physicians how important religion can be to their patients. "Doctors need to recognize that religion is central in how many people make their decisions, and we need to be really sensitive to this and open to talking about it," she said. At the same time, she said, patients need to let their doctors know that faith is important to them and that it's playing a role in how they adjust to a terminal illness.

Interesting. One would have thought that a strong religious faith would in fact equip a devout person with greater strength and equanimity to face death than those with secular materialistic beliefs. So, why would the religious be more willing to prolong life? (Remember Terri Schiavo) The report speculates on some possibilities. I would like to add a few more.

• Religious people are more satisfied with their earthly lives and therefore more reluctant to let go.
• Afraid of death, many hold fast to the idea of eternal life but when faced with the impending end, begin to waver in their faith.
• Having internalized the concept of heaven and hell, perhaps some are just afraid that the neighborhood where their life after death will be spent lies on the wrong side of the celestial tracks.

More than the cup you crave

A small news item in today's local paper caught my eye. In these hard economic times, a coffee shop in Maine has won the battle with the local city council to employ topless wait persons to boost sales. (The G-rated video here)

VASSALBORO, Maine  — Cup size has more than one meaning at a new central Maine coffeehouse.

Servers are topless at the Grand View Topless Coffee Shop, which opened its doors Monday on a busy road in Vassalboro. A sign outside says, “Over 18 only.” Another says, “No cameras, no touching, cash only.”

On Tuesday, two men sipped coffee at a booth while three topless waitresses and a bare-chested waiter stood nearby. Topless waitress Susie Wiley said men, women and couples have stopped by.

The coffee shop raised the ire of dozens of residents when it went before the town planning board last month. Town officials said the coffee shop met the letter of the law.

Capitalizing on the female anatomy to sell consumer items from cars to cruises is not remarkable. Topless women serving food and beverages to attract hungry men are not uncommon either. What drew my attention to this little story is the presence of the bare chested male waiter. Is that a selling point too?  Does the sight of well sculpted manly pectorals act as an appetite enhancer - for women and gay men, for example? Or is the man shirtless only to prove gender equality so that the cafe is not accused of exploiting female sexuality?  It looks like the latter to me. If the man were also a sexual selling point on an equal footing with the women, why does the sanitized video show the female employee covered up for the cameras while the young man at the coffee machine is blithely bare?  

Valentine's Day Love Guide: Think International Relations

Forget chocolates, roses, baubles and bears. Don't fret over the perfect ambience for the candlelight dinner. Ignore Mars-Venus interpretations of the world. What you really need to pay attention to in a romantic alliance is diplomacy, negotiation and balance of power. So says Stephen M. Walt, professor of International Relations at Harvard. Believe me, as a long married person who has had to negotiate and re-negotiate terms of endearment over the years, Walt's perspective is closer to the truth than all feel-good psycho babble out there.  (via 3 Quarks Daily)

To begin with, any romantic partnership is essentially an alliance, and alliances are a core concept on international relations. Alliances bring many benefits to the members (or else why would we form them?) but as we also know, they sometimes reflect irrational passions and inevitably limit each member's autonomy. Many IR theorists believe that institutionalizing an alliance makes it more effective and enduring, but that’s also why making a relationship more formal is a significant step that needs to be carefully considered.

Of course, IR theorists have also warned that allies face the twin dangers of abandonment and entrapment: the more we fear that our partners might leave us in the lurch (abandonment), the more likely we are to let them drag us into obligations that we didn't originally foresee (entrapment). When you find yourself gamely attending your partner’s high school reunion or traveling to your in-laws for Thanksgiving dinner every single year, you’ll know what I mean.

Realists have long argued that bipolar systems are the most stable. So if any of you lovers out there are thinking of adding more major actors to the system, please reconsider. As most of us eventually learn, trying to juggle romantic relationships in a multi-polar setting usually leads to crises, and sometimes to open warfare. It's certainly not good for alliance stability.

IR theory also warns us that shifts in the balance of power are dangerous. There's an obvious warning here: relationships are more likely to have trouble if one partner's status or power changes rapidly. So that big promotion that you both celebrated may be a good thing overall, but it's likely to alter expectations and force you and your partner to make serious adjustments. The same is true if one of you gets laid off. Bottom line: it can take a lot of patience and love to work through a major shift in the balance of power within a relationship.

Buying Happiness (Joe)

Turns out, it's not a question of whether money can buy happiness (at least not directly); it's a question of what you should buy to maximize the amount of happiness purchased.  You'll buy more happiness, or maybe longer-lasting happiness, with a ski trip or concert tickets than a new big-screen TV.

It's NOT cheaper by the dozen... or Goodman and Good Sense # 7

As a concession to the grumbling GOP members of the Congress, President Obama dropped the provision for family planning and contraception for low income families from his economic stimulus package. Not that it did much to garner bipartisan support - no Republican voted for the bill.  The conservatives had argued that family planning is not a means of stimulating the economy. As usual, they are wrong. Helping low income families have fewer children may not be a direct way to boost the economy in terms of creating jobs but indirectly it is indeed a way to create prosperity by reducing costs in social services. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi points out in the article, savings too are good for the economy.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi-D-Calif., appeared to sidestep the question when she was pressed over the weekend to explain how family-planning money would boost the economy or create jobs.

"Well, the family-planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost," she said on ABC.

"The states are in terrible fiscal budget crisis now, and part of it, what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements, are to help the states meet their financial needs," she said. "One of those, one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception ... will reduce cost to the state and to the federal government."

Unfortunately, in the minds of conservatives any discussion of contraception and family planning here and around the world, is inextricably linked to just one thing - abortion. Every time the matter of limiting birth rate comes up, the specter of abortion becomes front and center. In their zeal to abolish abortion, the right wing often ends up opposing funding and education for any form of birth control.  There is much to be settled in the abortion debate. However, family planning is NOT abortion. If anything, proper contraception is a deterrent to abortion, making it unnecessary.

I was born in a country where overpopulation is the single most identifiable cause of poverty, infant death, poor maternal health and malnourishment of the young. Far be it for me to dictate who should have a baby and who should not. But it doesn't take much deductive power to figure out why large numbers of children around the world are condemned to a life of need and unrealized potential. Most of them are poor and often born in families with too many mouths to feed and too many minds to nurture.  One image of a perfect (or near perfect) world that I envisage is where most, if not all babies are born to responsible and willing parents who can provide them with the basic minimums of health, nourishment, emotional support and education. That of course, is an idealistic dream. Meanwhile, responsible governments everywhere should have that very goal in mind for their citizens as far as is practical. I am not for eugenics, communist China style punitive measures of limiting family size nor the coercive attempts at population control  that Indira Gandhi attempted in India in the 1970s for which she was rightly voted out of office. But what about common sense?  What is not desirable about educating people that given the limited global resources, small families are good for parents, children and the world at large and then aiding those who like the idea?

Of course, the right wingers who are perpetually on a warpath against abortion in particular and contraception in general to a large degree, hardly ever raise their voices at irresponsible child bearing. (How else can they maintain a steady pool of man power to do cheap labor and fight the wars? ) More often than not, we hear from them that "children are gifts from god." God or not, most children born to poor mothers without access to contraceptives, especially in underdeveloped countries indeed are born the old fashioned way. But that doesn't hold true for wealthier, developed societies. Medical science now plays a vital role in making childbirth possible for parents who otherwise would remain childless. Fertility drugs, in-vitro births, surrogate pregnancies etc. are now thriving businesses of birthing. The alarming case of Nadya Suleman, the 33 year old single, unemployed mother of six who gave birth to an additional set of octupulets recently, has focused the public's attention on the physical, social and ethical aspects of unbridled fecundity. When does someone else's personal choices become our business? What ethical guidelines are there in place for the fertility industry? What are the penalties for non-compliance?  Ellen Goodman explains with her usual aplomb.

"They bent down and listened to my heart,"

We have recently focused a lot on the greed and self absorption (here, here and here) of the wealthy and the powerful who even with plenty to spare, don't stop to think of others less fortunate than themselves. Here now for a refreshing change is the story of ordinary people who thought of the need of others even in a time of extraordinary grief. 

CLIFTON, N.J. — James O'Hea was told privately his failing heart gave him little more than a month to live. Terence Begley's diabetes meant more years of dialysis and deteriorating kidneys.  That was before a tragic event — the shooting of three people in a church last November — turned life-affirming through the quick response of one victim's family.

O'Hea, Begley and three other people received organs from 25-year-old Dennis John Malloosseril (mahl-LOO'-sir-ihl). He was shot and killed Nov. 23 as he tried to break up an argument between a fellow church member and her estranged husband, according to police and witnesses.

O'Hea, Begley and the other recipients — Malta Hameed, 40, of Clifton; Migdalia Torres, 52, of Cleveland, Ohio, and John Muscarella, 22, of East Newark — attended a memorial service for Malloosseril on Sunday at the St. Thomas Syrian Orthodox Knanaya (kah-nahn-NIGH'-ya) Church, where the shooting happened. Before the service, the recipients had an emotional meeting with Mallossseril's parents.

"They bent down and listened to my heart," O'Hea said. "I had tears rolling down my cheeks."

Torres, who has suffered for 25 years from lupus that has affected her kidneys, recalled jumping out of bed at 6 a.m. on the morning after the shooting when she received a call that an organ match had been found. Like the others, she admitted having mixed feelings about the events that led to her transplant.