Tag Archives: medicine

Investigating NFP: How Effective is It?

You know what they call people who use Catholic-Church-Approved methods of birth control?

“Parents”

– comment on a Championable post

Boy, I’d love to have a dollar for every time I’ve heard that. Studies have been done before that have shown the periodic abstinence aspect of NFP to be as effective or more effective than artificial means of birth control. However, those studies weren’t widely accepted because they were regarded as Church propaganda. It seems that secular science has finally come to the Church’s defense, though.

Natural family planning as good as pill, study finds

The Catholic-backed sympto-thermal method of natural family planning has been found by a German study to be as effective in preventing pregnancies as the contraceptive pill, with researchers also surprised to find a low rate of unintended pregnancies among women who had unprotected sex during their fertile period.

The study was published on 21 February in an online report in the European reproductive medicine journal named “Human Reproduction Today” by researchers from the University of Heidelberg, Earthtimes reports.

NCBC Bioethics Challenge

The National Catholic Bioethics Center, which is notable for its training programs in healthcare ethics and its fine quarterly publication, has an anonymous donor who has issued a matching grant (the 2007 Challenge Fund) as the Center works to pay off the mortgage on its new office in Philadelphia. Your donations count double if you mark off the box that says it’s for the challenge fund on the donation form.

I’ve been a member for two years, and they’ve impressed me as technically proficient thinkers who are rigorous with the science, philosophy and theological problems underlying bioethics. If you, like my wife or myself, watched House, MD and were angered by how he handled that pregnant rape victim, give your upset a productive vent by making a donation in House’s name to the NCBC. 🙂

One of America’s Great Student Newspapers

The Pitt News bills itself as “one of Amercia’s great student newspapers”. If only it were. Then again, maybe it is. *shudder*

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.

Utilitarianism 101 for Animal Liberation

The famous utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer became an early darling of the animal rights movement for his book, Animal Liberation. Imagine, then the betrayal that some felt when Singer came out in favor of not just any animal research, but primate research.

This should not be too surprising if one has studied a bit of utilitarianism, which measures actions by their ends, not their means–it is a consequentialist philosophy, after all. Therefore, while animals do sometimes trump human babies in Singer’s calculus most of the time (which is one reason why many folks detest him), it need not be always the case. In fact, as I recall, Singer did concede in Practical Ethics that in some cases humans could justifiably eat animals if there were not other viable food source (e.g., the Gobi desert or the Arctic circle, I would suppose, where edible plants are in short supply). I guess the animal lib types were too busy hyperventilating about Singer’s otherwise strong support to notice that little fly in the ointment.

Take home message: it’s really hard to pin anyone down if he’s a utilitarian, because if society wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and decides that a particular minority has too much property or is otherwise cramping the style of the majority…well, I mentioned something about the ends justifying the means, yes?

Atrocities have been and will be committed by people of all philosophical and ideological stripes, but perhaps we can at least steer clear of philosophies (like Singer’s) that threaten to hopeless muddle any and all moral lines and let us lie to ourselves about what’s really going on? In this regard, I stand with the animal lib types, though I’m not against animal research per se.

Plan B: Literature Review (Part II)

The first post in this series can be found here.

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)

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