In the 11 years I’ve been in Pittsburgh, I’ve watched the quality of writing and journalistic integrity of the Pitt News wax and wane with the arrival and graduation of classes. When it’s good, it’s no worse than any other small paper. When it’s bad, it’s awful. Sadly, it’s been bad more often than it’s been good. There have been years when the only feature I looked forward to reading was the comics page. Some years even that sucked. I’ve read articles that would make the journalism department go apoplectic - if Pitt had a journalism dept.

In the last couple years, though, I think the paper inproved a great. Perhaps there was an editor that was more interested in relatively unbiased news than sensationalism and sex columns. Those halcyon days may be over, though. Observe exhibits A and B:

Prices up for birth control

Joseph Mance remembers a time when packets of birth control pills cost $8 each. Today he is trying to spread the word to his student clientele that prices have hiked up once again, this time to the $40 range. “I hate telling these kids, ‘We’re raising your pill price,’” he said with a troubled look. “It’s like pulling a gun on them.”

Telling kids their birth control pills will cost more is “like pulling a gun on them”? First of all, if they’re kids, they’re too immature to be having sex. Secondly, what ever happened to advising people to keep their hormones in check? If expensive birth control is either going to majorly disrupt students’ lives or result in a lot of unintended pregancies, Pitt has much biggers problems than government economic policies. Granted, the Pitt News can’t be faulted for Mance making an ass of himself by allowing himself to be quoted uttering that nonsense, but the article is entirely one-sided. The entire front-page piece is written from the point of view that the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which is responsible for the price hike, is a bad law, at least as it pertains to offering cheap birth control for the masses. Reporting on the price hike is just fine and a public service announcement, but the second half of the article pertains to the politics of birth control discounts, which should have been presented in a more balanced fashion.

Gay sheep should look to Jesus, not science for cure

…[S]cientists have attempted to change the sexual orientation of sheep to help farmers, who have accused gay sheep of causing them financial loss. The scientists gave the sheep injections, adjusting the hormone levels in their brains and, amazingly, some previously gay rams became attracted to female sheep. Naturally, the gay and lesbian community was not happy. Their fear is that this success could be a gateway to experiments involving human sexuality and may one day be used to “breed out” homosexuals entirely. Personally, I think this experiment is debauchery. The scientists responsible should be tarred and feathered - or maybe tarred and wooled. Altering sexuality is a very slippery slope. But it seems as though these scientists have forgotten an important fact: If those sheep would just accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior, they could easily overcome their homosexuality.

At least this tripe was printed as opinion rather than news. Still, any newspaper that would print this should be embarassed and ashamed. It’s a sophomoric attempt at satire of Christian bioethics that reads like a secular Jack Chick’s poor imitation of a “A Modest Proposal”. The kind of Christian presented in this article is straw man. Sure, there are Christians like the charicature the author presents; after all, stereotypes don’t appear out of thin air. Still, the author needs to realize that we’re not all fans of the 700 Club, any more than all gays are fans of Will and Grace.

You don’t have to be Fred Phelps to think active homosexuality is wrong. You also don’t have to hate or fear science if you’re a Christian. Heck, you can even believe that homosexuality has a biological component and still think it’s wrong to perform homosexual acts.

Christianity aside, arguing that a disorder of lower animals is natural and therefore acceptable in humans is ridiculous. Lots of lower animals practice cannibalism and incest. Will it soon be PC to defend those behaviors?

In summary, this article isn’t just bad satire, it’s ironically full of the kind of disgusting malice and prejudice that seems to have offended the author, and the ignorance and denial he specifically mentions.

Be sure to let the editor of the Pitt News know how you feel about these articles. Regarding the latter, you might want to let ACLJ and the Catholic League know, too.

There’s a popular doctrine in the churches today, although it is rejected by the leadership of most churches. This doctrine is based on falsehoods, causes non-Christians to reject Christianity, Christians to lose their faith, and causes its followers to lie? Judging by the fruits of this doctrine, would you say this is of God or of something else?

The particular doctrine he’s asking about is Creationism. What are your thoughts?

Last time I looked at a couple literature reviews about the methods of action of Plan B emergency contraception (levonorgestrel, LNG). This time I’m presenting On the the mechanisms of action of short-term levonorgestrel administration in emergency contraception (Durand, et al., 2001)

Experimental Design

Forty-five healthy, surgically sterilized women, aged 29 years to 35 years old (mean age 31 years), with regular menstrual cycles (cycle lengths between 25 days and 32 days) were recruited for this study. None had used hormonal contraception or any other medication within 6 months prior to the study. Participants were in good health as determined by medical history, physical examination, and routine screening laboratory tests, including Papanicolaou smear. Body weight, height, and blood pressure of each participant were registered by one investigator. Participants were issued a menstrual calendar on which they recorded details of all bleeding episodes throughout the study.

This bit tells us that were these women not surgically sterilized, we would have no reason to not expect that they were capable of both ovulation and, under the right circumstances, pregnancy.

The study was conducted in two consecutive cycles. Cycle was defined as the time elapsed from the first day of a spontaneous menstrual bleeding until the day preceding the next menses.

That is, cycles were defined symptomatically, not based on the mythical average 28-day cycle. Two cycles were tracked for each participant, control cycle in which no drug was administered and a treated cycle in which LNG was administered.

All participants were admitted during the first 10 days of their menstrual cycle. Before the control cycle, women were randomly allocated into three different groups as follows: Group A women received two doses of 0.75 mg LNG (Postinor, Gedeon Richter, Budapest, Hungary) taken 12 h apart, with the first dose given on the morning of day 10 of the menstrual cycle; Group B women received the same dose of LNG immediately after positive LH [luteinizing hormone] detection in urine; and Group C women received the same dose of LNG 48 h after positive detection of urinary LH.

• Group A received the drug on cycle day 10, regardless of when they ovulated.
• Group B received the drug after the LH surge, which shortly precedes ovulation.
• Group C received the drug 48 hours after the LH surge, i.e., presumably after ovulation has occurred.

During both cycles (control and treated), all women were asked to monitor urinary LH every morning, starting on the 11th day of the menstrual cycle until the presence of LH was detected. At this time, transvaginal ultrasound was performed daily until follicle rupture (FR) was observed. This was established by the presence of at least three of the following findings: acute decrease in mean diameter or disappearance of the follicle, presence of thickened irregular borders, increased echogenecity within the follicle, and presence of free intraperitoneal fluid [16]…

The LH surge was used as an indicator of imminent ovulation. Ovulation was observed and timed via ultrasound. The determination that ovulation had occurred was made by observing the follicle (which had contained the ovum) get smaller, disappear, thicken, or show up more brightly in the image, or the presence of fluid in the abdominal cavity.

Daily blood samples were obtained from the day of positive LH detection in urine until the day menses began…The main purpose for measuring serum LH was to precisely determine, rather than based only on urinary LH detection, the actual time at which LNG was administered during the menstrual cycle. Follicular phase was considered from the first day of bleeding until the day of maximum serum LH concentrations and the luteal phase from the next day of serum LH surge until the day before menses began.

LH levels in urine served only as a rough indicator of the onset of ovulation. Blood tests were used to get a more precise indicator of cycle day. The first phase of the cycle, the follicular phase, was considered to be from the first day of menstrual bleeding until the day of the highest level of LH was measured in a blood sample.

In addition, endometrial biopsies were taken from all participants during both control and treated cycles on day LH + 9. This day lies within the implantation window, the time during which the endometrium has optimal receptivity to implantation…

[…]

Endometrial morphology was assessed by correlating the chronological date (day after LH surge) with the morphological endometrial characteristics of specimens as an indicator of hormone action. The dating of the endometrium was related to the serum LH surge, FR, and luteal concentrations of E₂ [estrogen] and P₄ [progesterone], rather than to the “ideal” 28-day cycle, as previously described [22]. The parameters examined were number of glands, stromal edema, and predecidual changes as evaluated by the presence of prominent spiral arteries…

On the ninth day of the luteal phase, a sample of the uterine lining was taken in order to access its receptivity to implantation (had there been an embryo implant).

Timing comparisons between serum with urinary LH demonstrated inconsistencies in 12 out of 90 studied cycles (13.3%). In four control cycles (8.8%) and eight treated cycles (17.7%), urinary LH did not correlate with the day of maximum concentrations of serum LH. In these cases, serum LH, along with E₂ and P₄ concentrations, were used rather than urinary LH for cycle dating. Thus, eight participants during the treated cycle were identified as not corresponding to the originally assigned groups. Therefore, in four participants originally included in Group B and four in group C, the administration of LNG took place 3 ± 1 day prior to serum LH surge and were reassigned into a new group (group D). This new group received LNG during the late follicular phase, a few days prior to the occurance of LH surge. Thus, the groups studied consisted finally of 15 participants in Group A, 11 in groups B and C, and 8 in Group D.

Like I said, urine LH level is just a rough indicator. As such, it led to premature administration of LNG in 8 cases. Rather than waste data, a fourth study group was formed.

"More and more couples are turning to an embryo-screening technique that allows them to choose the genetic makeup of their children, according to a survey released yesterday in the online edition of the journal Fertility and Sterility."

"Son, we love you, especially since you turned out just like the clinic promised you would."

Oh brave new world, that hath such people in't…*shudder* 

I love these things. Imagine: a plant so hateful that it felt the need to evolve a way to trap and kill animals. What stories would it tell us if it could speak? What blasphemous litany would it write? This plant refused to allow its vegetative nature to limit it. The venus flytrap overcame its base nature and raised itself unto the position of carnivore. No victim, that plant. I'm sure it's only the first step. Give these guys a few million years, and they'll be eating small rodents. Now that I'd like to see.

My new plant requires a name. Henceforth, let it be known as Steve.

I'm thinking about designing an experiment to determine if Steve can eat french fries. The way I figure, plants don't have hearts. What's cardiac disease to them? Just think, there could be a form of life that can eat french fries all day and suffer no detrimental health effects.

The venus flytrap could well be the ultimate form of life.