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]

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]

And you thought you’d had enough of the Tiger Woods business. Now comes word that one of his mistresses, a porn star by the name of Joslyn James, claims to have become pregnant twice by the golf champ.

One pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, the other in an abortion, she alleged, and both occurred at the same time as Woods’s wife Elin was expecting his children Sam, now 2, and Charlie, 1.

“I feel bad for Elin. She didn’t deserve this and she didn’t deserve being humiliated,” Ms James told the primetime programme in an interview aired today.

Woods, 34, was unaware of either of his mistress’s pregnancies, she said.

“Actually, the day I was going to tell him, I had a miscarriage,” she said of her first pregnancy. “After I lost the baby I didn’t want to talk about it.” Sex was “never protected” and contraception was “never talked about”, she told the programme.

“The first [pregnancy] was when Elin was pregnant with Sam,” Ms James said, adding that when she found out she was pregnant again in 2008 she arranged an abortion without telling Woods. “Elin was pregnant with Charlie at that time. I just didn’t want to ruin anything,” she said.

Of course. Because abortion doesn’t ruin anything. What a world.

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Andrea adds: And because sleeping with a married man doesn’t ruin anything, either. She feels bad for Elin? Clearly not, otherwise she’d get out of her chosen “line of work.”

Joking about Down Syndrome. How hilarious.

Fox could be heading to Sarah Palin‘s doghouse after the animated show “Family Guy” appeared to mock her son’s Down syndrome on Sunday night.

In the taste-challenged episode, one of the show’s characters dates a woman who apparently suffers from Down syndrome. The woman makes comparisons to Palin’s 22-month-old son, Trig.

“My dad’s an accountant, and my mom’s the former governor of Alaska,” the mentally disabled character said, without mentioning any names.

One day someone will explain to me why it’s apparently OK to step way the heck over the line when making a show of disliking Sarah Palin, right? Good. Because I really don’t get it.

Well, maybe not. But as these folks remarked, the Super Bowl Dove ad at least gets points for understanding (and not distorting) basic human biology. Yay.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuexzKkMIDc&feature=player_embedded]

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Patricia adds: I have been hearing an abbreviated version of this Dove ad on the radio and wondering if it signals a cultural shift towards a slightly more vigorous masculinity.  This despite the fact that it’s for a soap – I mean, what real man cares what kind of soap he uses?

Here is the Tim Tebow ad that ran during the Super Bowl last night.

That’s it? I don’t mean to sound like an impossible-to-please critic, but that’s not exactly a very controversial ad, is it? But it was enough to cause panic among pro-choicers? Wow. They really are a fragile bunch.

For what it’s worth, I found this ad, for Google, more pro-life than the Tebow one:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU]

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Andrea adds: It’s amazing to behold. NOW is absolutely intent on helping get further traction and positive exposure for Focus on the Family:

NOW president Terry O’Neill said it glorified violence against women. “I am blown away at the celebration of the violence against women in it,” she said. “That’s what comes across to me even more strongly than the anti-abortion message. I myself am a survivor of domestic violence, and I don’t find it charming. I think CBS should be ashamed of itself.”

(h/t)

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Brigitte can’t believe it: That’s a joke, right? NOW can’t be that dumb? Can it?