Archives for February 2010

Identify and explain five (5) elements of gender architecture and how they apply to your everyday life.

Failing that, read this amusing piece by Tasha Kheiriddin and chuckle to your little heart’s content.

An update on a story I mentioned in November:

LONDON — It was heralded as a medical miracle. After spending more than two decades in a coma, Rom Houben, a Belgian man in his mid-forties, was suddenly able to communicate, news reports trumpeted last November.

Other experts questioned the method Houben that was apparently using to communicate. The technique is known as “facilitated communication,” in which the patient supposedly directs the hand of a speech therapist who typed out his thoughts.

Houben’s doctors said it seemed to be genuine. Until now.

Dr. Steven Laureys, a neurologist at Liege University Hospital in Belgium, one of Houben’s doctors, now acknowledges the technique doesn’t work and that while Houben is conscious, he is not communicating.

“We did not have all the facts before,” he said Friday. “The story of Rom is about the diagnosis of consciousness, not communication.”

If I understand correctly, the patient has more brain activity than other doctors had thought, but is not really able to communicate.

[h/t]

What a weird (and ultimately good) story:

Mechelle Hall dabbed tears from her eyes Tuesday as she pleaded guilty to second-degree assault for brandishing a knife and threatening a woman who urged her not to get an abortion.

Yet, she revealed later, she never got it.

[…]

The surprise came when Hall was reached by phone at her Superior home Tuesday evening. She said she never had the planned abortion. Hall said she decided to keep the baby after being confronted by anti-abortion protesters Leah Winandy and her mother, Sarah, on Nov. 24. She said she was stressed out and they made her realize that she didn’t want to end the life she was carrying inside her.

Hall was asked if there was anything she’d like to say to the Winandys.

“Thank you for being there,” she said. “If they weren’t there, I probably would have gone through with it and regretted it for the rest of my life. It probably would have gone the other way. I’m sincerely sorry for doing that to her.”

[h/t]

You can see my talk about why being pro-life is a pro-woman stand, here.

Thanks again to the students for having me!

A friend draws attention to this (apparently left-wing/libertarian) argument against assisted suicide and euthanasia. I’m not sure I see what’s left-wing or libertarian about it, but OK, it’s still early in the day, there’s still some hope for me. It’s not an uninteresting piece, except for this part, which made me jump out of my chair some:

But the problem arises when campaigners call upon society not only passively to accept that these acts of humanity take place, but actively to welcome them, to sanction them, even to celebrate them. Gosling and some of his supporters in the assisted suicide lobby say they want to bring these acts ‘into the open’, to raise awareness about them, and to encourage society to create new rules outlining when it is acceptable to help end someone’s life. But such acts do not belong ‘in the open’. If society were to legalise assisted suicide, it would send the very profound message that death is an acceptable solution to life’s trials and traumas. At a social level, it would elevate hopelessness and fatalism above the cultural affirmation of living, loving, fighting for another day, week, month or year.

Not sure on which planet this fellow lives, but down here it so happens that death has already been declared an acceptable solution to life’s trials and traumas.

Interesting story about aid shipment to Haiti allegedly delayed because of a massive stock of condoms clogging up storage facilities (I say “allegedly” because the story came from one eyewitness, and we know what can happen when we’re too quick to believe everything). Anyway.

The flow of medical supplies waiting to be distributed to tens of thousands of earthquake victims in Haiti was delayed for weeks by a massive supply of condoms dominating the space of the main storage facility there, an eyewitness with insider information has told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN).

The central pharmaceutical supply center, known as PROMESS (Program on Essential Medicine and Supplies), is home to the operations of the World Health Organization (WHO)/Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in the area. “Without PROMESS we would have had a second catastrophe,” Dr. Alex Larsen, Haitian Minister of Health, said at the PROMESS warehouse recently.

However, the glut of condoms at that same warehouse delayed the massive influx of aid pouring in from around the world, according to an inside source, and may have cost lives. The source reported that shipping containers of medical supplies were unable to be unloaded, sorted and distributed since an enormous supply of condoms clogged the facility till early February, when the condoms could be removed.  The condoms were estimated to take up about 70% of the space in the 17,000 sq. ft. warehouse.

Will you think badly of me (more than usual, I mean) if I tell you I laughed when I saw the story?

[h/t]

I was going to say in response to this article that if we stopped using euphemisms, then this mother wouldn’t be forced to field terrible, offensive questions. Her son has Downs Syndrome, and other parents apparently have the audacity to ask: Why didn’t you get prenatal testing? Which is the same as asking Why didn’t you abort the fetus? Which is the same as asking Why didn’t you kill your child?

Now most of us feel that’s not the way we want our culture to go, but not, apparently everyone. Check the Globe’s comment section. The discussion quickly becomes one of the burden  Downs children place on all of us, and how they would be better off dead. We all would be really, because the cost of treating them and educating them is high.

So this mother (and parents of children of varying abilities everywhere) need all the support they can get. Because she’ll be fielding the “why didn’t you kill your child?” question for some time to come.

(Filed under our “eugenics” category.)

_______________________

Patricia adds: My daughter is five years old and I still get the “did you know she had DS” question. It’s especially disheartening when it comes from a medical professional; I always wonder if what they’re really asking me is whether I want her treated or would I prefer that she go quietly into that good night?

The comments section of the Globe piece was similarly disheartening. Even assuming that people with Down Syndrome impose a higher cost on the public purse, I always thought that, as a society, we were supposed to care for the “weak”. Isn’t “helping widows and orphans” the irrebuttable argument in favour of taxation? Isn’t that what the public purse is for? I realize I have a vested interest in this point of view, but wouldn’t you rather your tax money go to speech therapy or a special education teacher for a child with Down Syndrome or autism than to any number of half-baked government schemes that it is routinely poured into by the bucketful?

But I’m not even prepared to concede “high cost to society” argument. My law school education was heavily subsidized and I’m not sure exactly what obvious benefit to society that provided. I suspect the same could be said of many other highly subsidized higher educations. My daughter won’t be draining the public purse for that purpose. She won’t be seeking a massive bail-out of her automobile company. Nor will she be seeking billions of dollars for wind-power development.

She is however highly functional and industrious, even at five. (You should see her scrub floors.) Everyone who meets her, loves her. (Admittedly, she’s five; not many five year olds aren’t likeable.) She turns the rough and tumble little boys in her class into gentle caregivers – when she’s not playing dragon with them. She says “hi” to the old man having coffee by himself at the next table at the local cafe. I’m guessing she brings some joy to the cashier at our local No Frills because that cashier always makes a point of coming over to talk to her. I don’t know what she’ll end up doing, but I suspect her net contribution to society will be far greater than that of most people so niggardly in their view of life that it would even occur to them to ask how she came to see the light of day.

________________________

Véronique adds: Patricia, your post about the public purse and the potential of people with DS reminded me of a newspaper ad I cut out to show my bioethics students. It showed a boy with Down Syndrome and the caption was (paraphrasing): “He will probably never be Prime Minister or cure cancer. But neither will you.”