Tag Archives: books

God Rest His Soul

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It’s sad when the Lord calls someone so young home, especially when they had a difficult
life. Mattie Stepanek, and others like him, are shining examples of how to live
lives full of faith, hope, and love.

“I am very human. Some people think I am always brave. I try to be, but I cry
like the next person sometimes. I am needle phobic and pain phobic, so that doesn’t
help,” he said on the Web site. “But even if I get upset, or think, ‘I
can’t do this anymore,’ I get myself together and pray or play or talk with my mom
or a close friend, and I get beyond that tough time. I might say, ‘Why me?’ But
then I say, ‘Why not me? Better me than a little baby, or a kid who doesn’t have
strength or support.’ ”

Teen’s
Advocacy, Poetry Touched Many Hearts
By Patricia Sullivan, Washington Post Staff Writer

Matthew Joseph Thaddeus Stepanek, 13, the cheerful, bespectacled child poet who
charmed Oprah and sold more than 500,000 books of dreamy verse, died yesterday at
Children’s Hospital in Washington. He had a rare form of muscular dystrophy that
affected his breathing, digestion and heart rate.

Refreshing Honesty in the Stem Cell Debates

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Generally I have found the media pretty servile in their coverage of stem cells:
they cannot mention adult stem cells without saying that some people do not think
them as versatile as embryonic stem cells, even though adult stem cells have treated
patients successfully and embryonic stem cells have yet to do so anywhere. There
is also the fact that you see people like Christopher Reeve and Michael J. Fox pressing
hard to get funding for embryonic research, implying
that wondrous cures are just around the corner if only obstructive politicians would
get out of the way. This is despite the fact that this technology is, well,
pretty embryonic itself, and candid scientists will admit that we’re decades from
any real treatment from embryonic cells.

Well, in the wake of Mr. Reagan’s passing, Wired
and the Washington
Post have more honest appraisals of what embryonic cells could really do for
Alzheimer’s disease. The Post is particularly valuable in that they bring attention
to the fact that Alzheimer’s destroys the architecture of the brain–how can one
unscramble an egg, and even if you do replace the tissue with normal brain tissue,
will the patient still have his or her own personality and memories? Perhaps even
more importantly, the Post shows how scientists and celebrities have manipulated
the public in order to get more funding–for this and other examples of journalistic
objectivity that I rarely see in papers like the NY Times, I am becoming quite a
fan of the Washington Post!

I just read an excellent story (“Presence”, by Maureen F. McHugh) about
a near-future family, where a wife watches her husband change after an experimental
Alzheimer’s treatment, and it deals with just this question, how regenerating someone’s
brain will inevitably alter their personality. You can read “Presence”
and a number of other excellent stories in Gardner Dozois’ Twentieth Annual The
Year’s Best Science Fiction. It is a very sensitive story about a woman’s
courage and love in dealing with a horrible illness that took her husband.

Science and Religion

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There aren't any Amazon reviews of this book yet, so I don't know if it's any good, but I like the premise. A book like this might have gotten me out of my agnostic phase sooner.

Author Helps Science-Minded Skeptics Discover Well-Reasoned Faith
By Jim Brown
June 8, 2004

(AgapePress) – A new book written by a Texas Technological University professor trained in empirical science targets the strong-willed, spiritually-challenged person who has a hard time arriving at faith.

Silly Vegetarians

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New Bible-based diets preach healthful eating

SHELBY, N.C. – The Rev. George Malkmus often preaches about how he believes the
world of proper eating began.

This diet isn’t just quackery, it’s bad theology.

The next day, as they were on their journey and coming near the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray, about the sixth hour. And he became hungry and desired something to eat; but while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance and saw the heaven opened, and something descending, like a great sheet, let down by four corners upon the earth. In it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air. And there came a voice to him, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” But Peter said, “No, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” And the voice came to him again a second time, “What God has cleansed, you must not call common.” This happened three times, and the thing was taken up at once to heaven.” – Acts 10:9-16 (RSV)

More on the “Right” to Die

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A recent articles in the New York Times examines the practice of assisted suicide in Oregon(registration required).

The article is pretty standard for the media’s coverage of suicide. In the beginning, they show a patient, nominally undepressed, who clearly states why he wants to die. The dissenting physician profiled just said that he didn’t go into medicine to kill people, which I agree with as a medical student, but it is hardly something to convince the public that this law is a disaster. The citing of religious reasons for avoiding suicide is also par for the course, and in a pluralistic society, cannot carry much weight.

As if to soften the blow, the author is careful to note that very few people have committed suicide under the Oregon law. Moreover, the patients who have killed themselves were described by their doctors as "feisty" and "unwavering" in a survey cited by the NY Times, despite the fact that physicians have a bad track record of spotting depression in any patient, and Oregon’s psychiatric safeguards for physician assisted suicide are spotty at best.

For a more complete picture of the realities of assisted suicide in Oregon and elsewhere, check out Foley and Hendin’s The Case Against Assisted Suicide.The book also presents the hospice movement and positive alternatives to assisted suicide.

You may notice that I reviewed this book on Amazon. It was the NY Times article that upset me enough to finally finish writing the review. Assisted suicide is a symptom of how much we really have to learn about disability and pain, and this book is part of the cure.