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Dear Friends For Life,
Boycott Pepsi? Dozens of pro-life groups have recently called for a boycott of Pepsi because of information just revealed that shows its satellite company Senomyx has been using human embryonic kidney cells from an electively aborted baby to produce taste receptors in the course of the manufacturer of Pepsi Cola. "The Overpopulation Scare Continues". The present world population is about 6.8 billion people. In 1990 it was estimated that the world could feed up to 35 billion people. In the face of this, and analyzing worldwide birth rates, it looks as though the global population will level out at about 9 billion in the year 2050 and then start to decline. Indian economist Raj Krishna has estimated that India alone is capable of increasing crop fields to the point of providing the entire worlds food supply. The problem then is not food, but more efficient distribution. God Bless,Jerry Novotny, OMI
(A Thought) "Let us preach Jesus Christ with all the energy of our lives. And let us support each other – whatever the cost – so that when we make our accounting to the Lord, we will be numbered among the faithful and courageous, and not the cowardly or the evasive, or those who compromised until there was nothing left of their convictions; or those who were silent when they should have spoken the right word at the right time." – Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. CAP.
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For clear thinking about crucial issues, visit LifeIssues.net
(Due to volume of spam received, do not reply to this message but instead send all emails to jerry@shirt.ocn.ne.jp. Thank you!)
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Lifeissues.net Newsletter #541
September 4, 2011
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2. Vital organ transplantation — not truly dead
3. Tae-Ho's story
4. The decline of Asian marriage
5. The gut-wrenching dilemmas of "foetal reduction"
6. A race against time for Down syndrome research
7. NY Times columnist attacks "liberal bioethics"
8. More Unwed Parents Live Together, Report Finds
9. The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy
10. Why Marriage Matters: Thirty Conclusions from the Social Sciences
11. Analysis: The Problem With the UN's New Fertility Forecasts
12. Letting Doctors Make the Tough Decisions
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(FOCUS ON ASIA): "AIDS epidemic at critical juncture in Asia-Pacific region" – The AIDS epidemic in Asia and the Pacific is at a crossroads, says a United Nations report released today, which adds that while the region has seen impressive gains in the HIV response, greater and sustained efforts will be needed.
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ITEM #1: Abortion, Depression and the Impact on Later Children
An interesting news article recently reported that researchers at the University of Montreal found that children whose mothers struggled with depression had physical changes in their brains. While the research was not related to abortion, other studies have found that abortion is not only linked to depression in mothers, it is also linked to poor maternal-child bonding, parenting problems and behavioral problems among subsequent children.
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ITEM #2: Vital organ transplantation — not truly dead
The August 29, 2000 Address of Blessed John Paul II is often quoted by those in support of obtaining vital organs for transplantation, but other statements by Pope John Paul II and a more recent statement by Pope Benedict XVI are ignored.
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ITEM #3: Tae-Ho's story
Meet Tae-Ho of South Korea. He is now 11 years old and miraculously overcame multiple disabilities with grace and courage.
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ITEM #4: The decline of Asian marriage
According to a survey this year, far fewer Japanese women felt positively about their marriage than did Japanese men, or US men or women. Employment offers women the alternative of a single life over the drudgery of a traditional marriage.
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ITEM #5: The gut-wrenching dilemmas of "foetal reduction"
Foetal reduction is the dark side of the moon of fertility treatment. All too often women who become pregnant have twins or triplets. Since this involves medical and social risks, one or more of the foetuses are "reduced", ie, aborted. It is a procedure which few outside the industry are aware of. Freelance journalist Ruth Padawer has just written a feature in the New York Times Magazine shedding light on its bioethical dilemmas.
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ITEM #6: A race against time for Down syndrome research
Is it possible to cure Down syndrome? Alberto Costa, a 48-year-old physician and neuroscientist at University of Colorado-Denver School of Medicine, thinks so. He has started a clinical trial on young adults with Down syndrome to see if the drug memantine helps them become "smarter". It is the first randomized clinical trial ever to take a drug that worked in mice with Down syndrome and apply it to humans.
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ITEM #7 NY Times columnist attacks "liberal bioethics"
From embryo experimentation to selective reduction to the eugenic uses of abortion, liberals always promise to draw lines and then never actually manage to draw them. Like Dr. Evans, they find reasons to embrace each new technological leap while promising to resist the next one — and then time passes, science marches on, and they find reasons why the next moral compromise, too, must be accepted for the greater good, or at least tolerated in the name of privacy and choice. You can always count on them to worry, often perceptively, about hypothetical evils, potential slips down the bioethical slope. But they're either ineffectual or accommodating once an evil actually arrives. Tomorrow, they always say — tomorrow, we'll draw the line. But tomorrow never comes.
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ITEM #8: More Unwed Parents Live Together, Report Finds
Out-of-wedlock births among white women with a high school diploma rose more than sixfold in recent decades, the report said, jumping to 34 percent in the late 2000s, from 5 percent in 1982. In contrast, the rate for white college graduates stayed flat at about 2 percent. While births to white women in cohabiting relationships rose by about two-thirds from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s, the proportion jumped by about half for black women and nearly doubled for Hispanic women, though that increase was affected by a large influx of immigrants.
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ITEM #9: The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy
As the doctor inserted the needle into Jenny's abdomen, aiming at one of the fetuses, Jenny tried not to flinch, caught between intense relief and intense guilt.
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ITEM #10: Why Marriage Matters: Thirty Conclusions from the Social Sciences
"In a striking turn of events, the divorce rate for married couples with children has returned almost to the levels we saw before the divorce revolution kicked in during the 1970s. Nevertheless, family instability is on the rise for American children as a whole. This is mainly because more couples are having children in cohabiting unions, which are very unstable. This report also indicates that children in cohabiting households are more likely to suffer from a range of emotional and social problems – drug use, depression, and dropping out of high school – compared to children in intact, married families.
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ITEM #11: Analysis: The Problem With the UN's New Fertility Forecasts
The UN has reversed a decade of speculation about a demographic winter in the West, and now says that every country will achieve replacement fertility by 2100 resulting in a global population of 10 billion. The problem is there is no basis for their turnabout. UN agencies are hailing new numbers as evidence of overpopulation in the developing world and vindication of decades of anti-natal policies in the West, but the scientific basis of the latest UN forecasts is slim.
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ITEM #12: Letting Doctors Make the Tough Decisions
Comment: It's very hard to die of dehydration when someone is not dying and especially when conscious so it is not unusual when sedatives and/or pain medicine are prescribed. Remember that In the Terri Schiavo case, the euthanasia groups tried to reassure the public that Terri couldn't feel anything because she was "vegetative" so that her death would be "peaceful"? That was disputed by her family and others who saw her during her long dehydration ordeal.
Now we have terminal sedation with dehydration and this "voluntary stopping eating and drinking" for the conscious that Compassion and Choices promotes (at least until lethal overdoses become legal and are then seem as much more "humane").
Not surprisingly, concerns by institutions or health care professionals are dismissed as "Those who oppose the act for religious or ethical reasons (or fear of lawsuits) can throw up roadblocks." The patients' "right to die" is always considered by euthanasia groups to trump conscience rights or traditional medical ethics regarding suicide.
Cases like this one build on and expand the so-called "right to die" which is really the right to medically kill oneself or others. It is ironic that the NYT and others who decry the death penalty as cruel and detrimental to society even if the convicted person wants it nevertheless have no problem supporting this kind of assisted suicide death penalty. [Nancy Valko, RN]
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YOU CAN CHANGE SOCIETY:
I'm Deacon John, age 86, ordained 4/25/87 as a Permanent Deacon for the Diocese of Brooklyn.
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