Life and Death

Polish President and top officials die in Plane Crash

2010-04-10T23:58:00.001-07:00

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — He died en route to the most sensitive mission possible — a visit to the place that has driven a wedge between Poles and Russians for three generations.

The death of Lech Kaczynski, Poland’s president and dozens of his high-level countrymen in a plane crash, and the purpose behind the journey, laid bare the deep divisions that remain between two nations still struggling to be more than uneasy neighbors who watch each other with skepticism and suspicion.

Saturday’s planned visit to the Katyn forest was somber in purpose but underscored his suspicious eye of the massive neighbor and former taskmaster to the east. The memorial service was to mark the 70th anniversary of the killing of thousands of Polish officers and intellectuals by the Soviet secret security during World War II.

Katyn. The site of the massacre of Polish military officers, priests, shopkeepers. Men shot in the back of the head by Josef Stalin’s NKVD, the precursor of the KGB.

“It is an accursed place,” former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski told TVN24 after the crash.

Janusz Bugajski of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that Saturday’s crash has put Katyn at the center of Polish-Russian relations.

“It brought to the forefront again an event that Moscow would like to forget or, if not to forget, to sideline,” he said, noting that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took a significant step by attending the Katyn commemorations last Wednesday with Polish counterpart Donald Tusk.

The ancient city of Smolensk has long played a significant and somewhat symbolic role in Russian-Polish relations.

Russian and Polish rulers fiercely fought over it for centuries, as well as over other contested territories in today’s Ukraine and Belarus, and the Russian takeover of the city in the mid-17th century preceded Moscow’s takeover of eastern Polish lands.

Earlier this week, Poles took deep satisfaction in Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s presence at the memorial for the 22,000 killed there.

Sadly, Mariana Bridi da Costa has passed away

2009-01-25T18:59:00.000-08:00

20 year old Mariana Bridi da Costa was a model with a promising future, until she got an infection. Mariana was misdiagnosed with kidney stones, and she fell very ill on December 30, 2008. An attempt was made to save her life by amputating her hands and feet after she developed septicaemia. Sadly, Mariana had further complications, and her health continued to deteriorate.

The strange thing about this story is that late last year a friend of mine was holidaying in Greece when she was struck with a sudden illness, and she died from speicaemia. My friend was over 60, and Mariana was just 20.

This story has a little bit of "duh" information - or I told you so

2009-01-25T17:39:00.000-08:00

According to this report the number of abortions performed on teenage girls who have had at least one termination of pregnancy has risen by something like 70% "fuelling fears that terminations are being carried out for lifestyle reasons"

In 2007 5,897 teenage girls had their 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th termination, which is an increase from the 2,934 girls who had repeat terminations in 1991.

As far as I am concerned, it is 5,887 abortions too many, and this itself is due to the belief that terminations themselves are harmless.

What would be a better statistic right now is how many of these same young women who have been so foolish as to find themselves pregnant in the first place (discounting rape victims) have in fact being able to have a live birth or have children years after they had an abortion.

There are other issues at stake here. Issues such as the increased consumption of alcohol by teenage girls. I think that this is a separate and a side issue with regard to unexpected pregnancy because the girls have behave in an uninhibitative manner. In other words there is more than one issue that needs to be tackled.

There is a good example within the article of a young woman by the name of Lucy Lanelly. She has had 4 abortions under the age of 19. What is really bad about this report though, is that her mother and grandmother arranged for the terminations to take place. Another really bad thing is the age when she first became pregnant. A girl of 12 is too young to be engaged in intimate relations. Lucy blames the lack of sex education. I would say that sex education has in fact been playing a role - but not the reason given (in other words, the type of education given seems to be leading to widespread experimentation). Other possible reasons for this result could be the lack of moral direction in Lucy's life.

The increase in 2nd and third time abortions is most likely due to several factors and among them are:

"the inevitable fruit of a society that makes an idol of sexual pleasure" (Norman Wells)
"abortion has become more acceptable, easer to access for all age groups, better funded by the NHS" (Ann Fruedi)

Obviously the funding of abortion clinics has an impact on society, since people allow the breakdown of moral practices. One thing leads to another, and abortion clinics only serve to condone sexual immorality at higher and higher rates such that young girls are no longer innocent.

The test increases miscarriage risks but it helps cheating women

2009-01-25T15:59:00.001-08:00

Abortion fears over cheating women who use paternity tests to identify their baby's father | Mail Online

In some ways I think that the development of this test is totally scandalous. It has been introduced as yet another reason for abortion. Since abortion has been liberalized it seems that women are no longer capable of thinking about the consequences of their actions prior to going ahead and cheating on their spouses or lovers.

In my view abortion on demand has always been a slippery slope, and from this same angle I see the pill in the same light. These are things that see women degrade themselves by indulging in illicit activity. They seem unable to bear the consequences of their own bad behaviour so they make the decision to abort the innocent life that has been created.

What is really wrong about the whole situation is the introduction of these paternity tests because they also increase the risk of miscarriage - especially when taking amniotic fluid.

Black Box confirms bird strike

2009-01-19T01:51:00.001-08:00

The flight data recorder has been examined and has confirmed the story of the pilots that a bird-strike caused the double engine failure which led to the crash landing on the Hudson River.

photo courtesy BBC NEWS

You can read the story here.

photo courtesy BBC News

New York hails pilot who landed jetliner in Hudson River

2009-01-19T01:19:00.001-08:00

The Hudson River New York has been the scene of a dramatic landing for a stricken aircraft. The pilot, Chesley B. Sullenberg III, an ex-USAF fighter pilot and a professional pilot for 40 years, made what has been described as a text-book landing, thus saving the life of all 155 on board the A320 Airbus.

The plane had just taken off from La Guardia airport, when it crossed the path of a flock of geese. There was a thud and both engines lost power. The geese also hit the windshield of the aircraft. The captain of the plane took the controls from the co-pilot so that the co-pilot could concentrate on trying to restart the engines. Sullenberg notified the control tower that there had been an incident and that both engines had lost power. They briefly discussed action to be taken for a landing. Sullenberger ruled out returning to La Guardia and then ruled out Teterborough airfield in New Jersey. There was a high risk of a greater tragedy by attempting either landing. The only avenue left was to attempt the landing on the water.

Sullenberg knew that he had to get this landing right, and he narrowly missed a bridge as he approached a point an area of the river that would mean the best chance of a rescue. He managed to do everything necessary to execute the perfect landing on water such that the airplane did not break up on landing. The passengers were ordered to brace for a hard landing, and they did. The cabin-crew gave quick instructions before sitting and bracing for the landing on the water. Unfortunately one member of the crew has been injured. As soon as the plane landed the cabin crew and passengers went into action. Women and children were the first to exit, followed by the other passengers, and finally the captain of the aircraft. He paced the length of the aircraft twice before leaving, making sure that no one was left on board the sinking plane.

The crash is now the subject of an investigation. The investigation will include what went wrong – why did the engines lose power? In other words verifying that there was a double bird-strike. It will also investigate what went right during the flight and subsequent landing and rescue of the passengers.

There are lessons to be learned from every aircraft accident. This one is different because a tragedy was prevented. No doubt pilots will now practise in their flight simulators the steps taken by Sullenberg to safely land his bird on the water. In the past few days comparisons have been made between this landing and that of the plane that crashed off Ethiopia. The footage of the Ethiopian crash shows that the plane had banked before it hit the water – in other words it was not absolutely straight. However, in that incident the cabin crew were most likely fighting with the hijackers who were on board, and therefore the pilot did not have the ability to be able to straighten the plane prior to the crash into the sea. It is in fact not a very good comparison because of the extraordinary circumstances.

It is a miracle that no one died as a result of this incident and calling it a miracle does not in any way discount the actions of the aircrew as well as that of the passengers, and the rescue workers. What we saw was a well coordinated effort that saved 155 lives. The man who made that happen is Chesley B. Sullenberg.

Dramatic video of crash landing in the Hudson River NY

2009-01-19T00:51:00.000-08:00

BBC NEWS | Special Reports | A pilot's eye view of NY crash flight

It is worth checking out this dramatic footage of the landing of the Airbus A320 in the Hudson river. The passengers are seen scrambling out of the emergency exits within seconds of the landing on the river.

Two Deaths in the Family

2008-04-07T21:22:00.000-07:00

This is a difficult subject not from the point of view of the sadness because of the loss of family members but a result of the timing of the death of each family member, right down to the timing of the funerals. This time around it is hard to be serious!!

My dearly loved uncle Bill, - Robert William Buckley - passed away in the early hours of Sunday morning at the age of 87 or perhaps 88. He was my mother's oldest brother and a bulwark to our family in more ways than one. When I was growing up I loved my uncle Bill so much and there are so many funny stories about the way he used to kid around with us... yes lots and lots of stories to tell about my favourite uncle.

My cousin, Peter Allan MacGregor Henderson, was the oldest son of my late father's brother, and he died at around 7.00 am on Sunday morning, April 6, 2008. In the early days our families were close but there was a rift after Peter's sister, Dorn, was kidnapped, raped and murdered before she reached her 21st birthday. My remaining cousin on that side of the family, Neroli had been like a little sister to me. It is for her sake that I will be attending his funeral.

It is hard to imagine a situation where there are members on two sides of the family have passed away within hours of each other on the same day. In the past, when my father died, my mother's cousin Stella passed away 2 days later, but not on the same day.

The funeral arrangements now in place and both funerals are on the same day. I want to attend both funerals and I live interstate so timing is critical as far as I am concerned. So here comes the funny part of the coincidence. My uncle's funeral will come first. It will begin at 10.00 am at St. Michael's Ashburton in Melbourne Victoria. Like the other 3 who are being buried this week, my uncle had been an active member of that parish and probably a founding member of the parish as well. Yes, four of them in one week!!!! After the Mass we will proceed to the Springvale cemetary for the burial. My cousin's funeral is at 1.15 pm in a chapel at the Springvale cemetery. The irony of this situation and funeral arrangements has not escaped past me. Yes, I can laugh about the way it has panned out.

My uncle Bill had always been "there" when we needed a helping hand. When I lived not very far away and my oldest son had come down with a fever, and I was without a car, it was my uncle Bill and aunt who came to give me much needed assistance. They took me to Box Hill hospital where I remained until the fever had subsided. This is only one story, one very precious memory of my uncle.

The years had not been so kind to uncle Bill, especially after his brain injury when he fell out of a tree. The last time that I saw him he was showing the signs of old age in more ways than one. My cousin Dorothy had been looking after her parents and it must have been hard for her and Keith to make the decision to move uncle Bill into a nursing home. It was a brain aneurysm and internal bleeding that took a toll and so my uncle has passed peacefully.

My cousin Peter was diagnosed with inoperable cancer and he only told his younger sister in late March that he was going to die. My sister had given me the news and I was expecting his death and expecting to attend his funeral, but I was unprepared for hearing that he had passed away on Sunday. My cousin had moved back to his old home after his father had died so that he could care for his ailing mother. This is of course an act of charity that many do not carry out in their lives, and for this act alone I need to honour the memory of Peter Henderson. He suffered prior to death, but his death was also peaceful. Prayers that he have a happy and peaceful death were answered.

French cold cases about to be solved?

2007-11-28T16:28:00.001-08:00

BBC NEWS | Europe | France holds man over 18 murders

The French police have arrested and are holding for questioning a 68 year old man in relation to 18 unsolved murders, of mostly homosexual men between 1980 and 2002. The suspect, Nicolas Panard is alleged to have killed 11 people in the Alsace region, four others in neighbouring Franche-Comte and three near Paris. His alleged accomplice Slim Fezzani is currently serving a 20 year prison sentence for a separate murder.

The pair are being held for questioning in the Franche-Comte town of Montbeliard, where the deputy state prosecutor has told the AFP newsagency that the two men denied the allegations and that there is "no formal proof" linking them to the crimes.

According to a local L'Alsace newspaper, the arrests were the result of a 2 year investigation by a police officer based in Montbeliard who had originally only been investigating a murder in 1991 in Sochaux. By using the police crime database, the officer found mentions of Mr. Panard's name in the case files of several unsolved murders. The officer also discovered several common features in the murders, including the following:

the victims had been killed by blows to the head;
the victims had multiple knife wounds;
the victims were found partly naked but with their faces covered.

Mr. Panard has a criminal record for burglary, and is said to have frequented the homosexual scene where he worked as a female impersonator.

During the 1980s there was a spate of unsolved murders of homosexuals across the border from Mulhouse in the French-speaking part of Switzerland.

UK gives superbug alert outside of the hospital environment

2007-11-27T23:22:00.001-08:00

The BBC reports that experts are warning that bugs such as MRSA have been spreading in the wider community environment. They want doctors to be alert to the most dangerous form of MRSA that can attack the lungs and may strike young people in particular.

Panton Valentine leukocidin (PVL) strains of community-acquired MRSA can cause a condition called necrotizing pneumonia, which destroys lung tissue.
This only affects a minority of those infected, but can be deadly.

"These new strains of bacteria appear to be able to stick to damaged skin and airways better than the hospital MRSA strains, and they can also multiply at a faster rate," says Dr Marina Morgan, of the Royal Devon and Exeter Foundation NHS Trust.
So far these strains are mainly spreading in the US, where 12% of all MRSA cases are community-acquired, but the UK has seen an increasing number of cases.
It is unclear why children seem to be at particular risk, but the speculation is that older people in the community have fewer cuts and abrasions - a key transmission route - and have less contact with other people.

Nursing home threat
Meanwhile, Irish researchers are examining a new breed of bacteria which carry enzymes called extended spectrum beta lactamases (ESBLs), which are capable of destroying a many common antibiotics.
They include a strain of E. Coli, which is spreading into nursing homes and communities across Europe.
This was held responsible for a severe outbreak of cystitis, a bladder infection, in the UK between 2003 and 2004.
"Although cystitis is not life threatening, it is the most common form of urinary tract infection, and the economic consequences of failing to treat an outbreak quickly and properly are considerable," said Dr Dearbhaile Morris, of the National University of Ireland.
"In severe infections, patients may suffer serious complications if the first antibiotic given to them does not work."
Mark Enright, professor of molecular epidemiology at Imperial College, said he was "not surprised" by the findings.
"The emergence and spread of ESBL E. Coli does give physicians problems in providing proper initial care for some patients especially those with urinary tract infections."
He added: "The control of infections in many nursing homes is inferior to hospitals despite the medication and specialist care required by some residents."

4 infants died - the police case against the mother collapses because of inadmissible evidence

2007-10-24T21:30:00.001-07:00

Has Justice been served for this mother, who had 4 children and lost all of them for an unknown reason?

CAROL Matthey entered the Supreme Court yesterday charged with murdering her four small children, one by one, over five years.
Police said she deliberately suffocated them, partly in order to sustain her troubled relationship with her husband, Stephen Matthey, the children's father.
But yesterday, the criminal case against Mrs Matthey, who has always denied she harmed her children, collapsed.
Fifteen minutes after she arrived, Mrs Matthey left the court free, cheerfully accepting congratulations. In an extraordinary end to one of the most dramatic cases in Victorian legal history, prosecutors dropped the charges because much of the evidence gathered against her was ruled inadmissible.
A case that involved a three-year police investigation, thousands of pages of statements and 160 witnesses — and a case that dominated four years of Carol Matthey's life — was suddenly over before it reached trial.
After she left the court, Mrs Matthey walked along William Street smiling, declining to answer reporters' questions until this one: "Are you not guilty, Carol?"
"No," she said firmly.
The reporter pointed out the double negative and asked for clarification. Did she mean she was innocent? "Yes," she said, chuckling, amused at the misunderstanding. Then she walked off the public stage and into the rest of her life.
The Supreme Court case against Mrs Matthey ended as a result of pre-trial hearings before Justice John Coldrey. In a complex 94-page judgement on October 12, he found most of the proposed evidence inadmissible under the law.

In legal terms, this is not an acquittal. A defendant against whom charges are withdrawn is not protected by double jeopardy and, theoretically, faces the prospect of another trial if new evidence emerges.
Mrs Matthey, 27, of Geelong, lost four children between 1998 and 2003. Jacob was seven months old, Chloe nine weeks old, Joshua three months and Shania three years and four months. At her committal hearing in March 2006, Mrs Matthey's defence argued there was no physical evidence of harm done to any of the children. Her lawyers said it was possible the children shared an as-yet-undiscovered gene that caused a medical condition, such as a fatal cardiac arrhythmia, that led to their deaths.

Police yesterday declined to comment. The acting director of public prosecutions, Jeremy Rapke, QC, said the case was irreparably damaged when the judge deemed inadmissible much of the medical evidence.
Initially, Jacob and Chloe Matthey were found to have died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and Joshua of klebsiella septicaemia. A police investigation began after the death of Shania, who was too old to have died of SIDS, and for whom no cause of death could be found. At the committal hearing, experts acknowledged SIDS was a "diagnosis of exclusion" — the cause of death used for babies when no other cause can be found. They said there were often no forensic clues that would differentiate natural SIDS from deliberate suffocation.
This left much of the expert medical evidence at the committal heated and contradictory. Four local forensic pathologists strongly argued the autopsies revealed no scientific evidence of harm to any of the children.
But a pediatrician from South Australia who specialized in SIDS, Dr Susan Beal, and a forensic pediatric pathologist from the US, Dr Janice Ophoven, were equally vehement homicide was the most likely explanation.
They argued that "scientific" evidence included the lack of risk factors for SIDS in some of the children; the rarity of four such deaths in one family; the troubled marriage; and the fact that the children had experienced "ALTEs" — apparent life-threatening episodes in which they stopped breathing or were found unconscious.
Dr Beal said: "ALTEs are not a predictor for SIDS; they're a predictor for (homicide)."
Justice Coldrey ruled out most of the evidence of these two witnesses.
The conflict between the experts meant the Crown case relied on other evidence, such as Mrs Matthey's relationship with her husband and children.
Justice Coldrey said the Crown had submitted that, particularly at times of ALTEs or deaths among the children, the marriage was under severe strain.
"Moreover, it is asserted that the relationship of Mrs Matthey to her children, evinced by unwanted and unplanned pregnancies, mediocre parenting and indifference to their deaths, would enable a jury to infer they were the unfortunate pawns in this strategy to bolster her marital situation," he wrote.
Justice Coldrey found there was no discernible link between the timing of marital crises and the ALTEs or the deaths: "There is no foundation for the contention that the killings were designed to win back Stephen Matthey's love and affection."
While there was evidence of poor mothering, the judge wrote, other reports painted a picture of a woman "who was a concerned, caring and loving mother during the children's lives, and a distressed and grieving one when they died".
Mrs Matthey's lawyer, Paul Lacava, SC, said there were no winners in the case. "Mrs Matthey and her husband have lost their children and their sadness is profound and ongoing.

I find it very strange that it used to be accepted if one baby died from SIDS then there was a chance that further babies could die from SIDS, yet these two women "experts" on a mission claim that it is impossible and that the deaths must be homicide. If this mother did in fact kill her children, then both of these "experts" have done a lot of harm to the prosecution case. The local pathologists, who had more than likely examined the bodies of the babies indicated that there was no scientific evidence of harm being done to the children. Why then should the Prosecution be allowed to build a case based upon the evidence of "experts" who had not performed any forensic pathology on the children. The Judge did the right thing striking down the charges. Carol Matthey does not walk away from the court as a totally free woman, because she could be charged again, but at least justice is seen to be done when a case that is not based upon fact, but upon "experts with a mission" has been struck down because of the lack of real evidence that would lead to a conviction.

Miraculous survival of Australia's smallest baby

2007-10-17T21:52:00.001-07:00

Mario Xuereb
October 18, 2007

WHEN she was born, Elora De Bondi's arms barely spanned the length of her mother's finger.

The baby was born on January 29 weighing 319 grams, making her possibly the smallest baby born alive in Australia.

Before she was delivered 16 weeks' premature, doctors at the Royal Women's Hospital doubted she would live. But her mother, Adele, even after being told by doctors that they held no hope, never lost her own hope.

Ms De Bondi, 29, learnt that her pregnancy was in trouble during an ultrasound scan. Her baby was too small and her pregnancy would most probably end within a month.

"Basically, I was 20 weeks pregnant but the baby was about 17 weeks in size," Ms De Bondi said yesterday.

Doctors gave her a course of steroids in the hope of stimulating Elora's growth. Her lungs had scarcely developed.

After two weeks, doctors told Ms De Bondi that her placenta was dying and, with it, Elora.

Undeterred by the prognosis, Ms De Bondi demanded a caesarean section despite the risks of losing not only her child but her fertility and her own life.

Elora was born after only 24 weeks in the womb. She spent seven months in intensive care attached to ventilators.

Ms De Bondi, from North Balwyn, says Elora came close to dying countless times: she battled infections, renal failure and the stress of her surroundings. Many times doctors advised Ms De Bondi to switch off Elora's life support. Her mother remained steadfast, trusting that her fragile daughter, who she had barely touched, would pull through.

After months in a critical condition, Elora grew to 4.4 kilograms. She left hospital on August 27, astounding doctors with her survival.

Elora's pediatrician said her story was "miraculous but the journey is long and uncertain for extremely tiny babies".

"Families, and the staff who care for such premature babies, have faced the most difficult decisions of survival and quality of life," said Sue Jacobs, director of the Royal Women's neonatal services.

Before Elora, the smallest surviving baby at the Royal Women's was Adriana Cassar, born 13 weeks premature, at 374 grams, eight years ago.

Elora faces many hurdles. She is fed through a gastronasal tube and her immune system is weak. While her lung disease is expected to clear in childhood, doctors will wait at least two years before giving the all-clear.

Australia. She weighed 319 grams when she was delivered in January." src="http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2007/10/17/N_BABY_wideweb__470x299,0.jpg" width="406" align="center">

Elora de Bondi is possibly the smallest baby born alive in Australia.

Determining a brain-injured patient's prognosis

2007-10-16T19:43:00.001-07:00

This is an article from the New Yorker about brain scans of persons in low conscious and/or vegetative states; that there may be quite a bit going on in there:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/15/071015fa_fact_groopman

Silent Minds

What scanning techniques are revealing about vegetative patients.

by Jerome Groopman October 15, 2007

Ten years ago, Adrian Owen, a young British neuroscientist, was working at a brain-imaging center at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, at the University of Cambridge. He had recently returned from the Montreal Neurological Institute, where he used advanced scanning technology to map areas of the brain, including those involved in recognizing human faces, and he was eager to continue his research. The imaging center was next to the hospital’s neurological intensive-care unit, and Owen heard about a patient there named Kate Bainbridge, a twenty-six-year-old schoolteacher who had become comatose after a flu-like illness, and was eventually diagnosed as being in what neurologists call a vegetative state. Owen decided to scan Bainbridge’s brain. “We were looking for interesting patients to study,” he told me. “She was the first vegetative patient I came across.”

For four months, Bainbridge had not spoken or responded to her family or her doctors, although her eyes were often open and roving. (A person in a coma appears to be asleep and is unaware of even painful stimulation; a person in a vegetative state has periods of wakefulness but shows no awareness of her environment and does not make purposeful movements.) Owen placed Bainbridge in a PET scanner, a machine that records changes in metabolism and blood flow in the brain, and, on a screen in front of her, projected photographs of faces belonging to members of her family, as well as digitally distorted images, in which the faces were unrecognizable. Whenever pictures of Bainbridge’s family flashed on the screen, an area of her brain called the fusiform gyrus, which neuroscientists had identified as playing a central role in face recognition, lit up on the scan. “We were stunned,” Owen told me. “The fusiform-gyrus activation in her brain was not simply similar to normal; it was exactly the same as normal volunteers’.”

Excited by this result, Owen resolved to try to conduct brain scans of other vegetative patients in the Cambridge area. Since 1997, he has studied several dozen people, though he decided to use speech sounds rather than photographs to stimulate their brains. (Owen was concerned that showing images of faces might not be a reliable way to test recognition, since the eyes of vegetative patients often wander. “We shifted to auditory responses because you can always put a pair of headphones on the person and know that you are transmitting sound,” he said.) Three years ago, he began using a functional MRI (fMRI) scanner, which is faster than a PET scanner, capturing changes in blood flow in the brain almost as they occur. The patients’ brains were scanned while they listened to a recording of simple sentences interspersed with meaningless “noise sounds.” The scans of some of the patients showed the same response to the sentences as scans of healthy volunteers, but Owen wasn’t sure that the patients had understood the words. “So we went the next step up the cognitive ladder, to look at comprehension,” he said.
Psycholinguists have shown that when we hear a noun at the beginning of a sentence we tend to associate the word with its most common meaning. For example, Owen said, most people hearing a sentence that begins, “The shell was . . .” think of an object typically found at the beach. But if the sentence is completed by the phrase “fired at the tank,” the listener quickly corrects himself, a process that is evident on a brain scan. “You can actually see it happening and image it on the scanner,” Owen said. “The beautiful thing about the psychological task is that we just do it automatically. When you play ambiguous sentences, areas in the inferior frontal lobe and in the posterior temporal lobe become activated, and these areas are very important for speech comprehension. They show that you understand the meaning of the word: it’s not just about perceiving speech; it’s about decoding. Your brain somehow appreciates that there are two meanings to a word like ‘shell.’ ”

Owen eventually identified two vegetative patients whose brains showed the same activity in response to ambiguous sentences as the brains of healthy volunteers. He also took brain scans of healthy physicians, who were presented with the ambiguous sentences while under general anesthesia. Owen found that, as the effects of the anesthesia increased, the physicians showed less activity in the brain regions associated with comprehension. “That, of course, is in keeping with our personal experience of consciousness, which is that as you sort of drift into sleep you understand less and less of what is around you,” he said. (An article about this experiment appears this week in PNAS, the journal of the National Academy of Sciences.)
Owen’s final experiment was the most ambitious: a test to determine whether vegetative patients who seemed able to comprehend speech could also perform a complex mental task on command. He decided to ask them to imagine playing tennis. (“We chose sports, and tried to find one that involved a lot of upper-body movements and not too much running around,” he said.) First, he took brain scans of thirty-four healthy volunteers who were instructed to picture themselves playing the game for at least thirty seconds. Their brains showed activity in a region of the cerebrum that would be stimulated in an actual match. “This was an extremely robust activation, and it wasn’t difficult to tell whether somebody was imagining tennis or not,” Owen said. He then repeated the experiment using one of the vegetative patients, a woman who had been severely injured in a car accident. The woman had to be able to hear and understand Owen’s instructions, retrieve a memory of tennis including a conception of forehand and backhand and how the ball and the racquet meet and focus her attention for at least thirty seconds. To Owen’s astonishment, she passed the test. “Lo and behold, she produced a beautiful activation, indistinguishable from those of the group of normal volunteers,” he said. (Another vegetative patient, a man in his twenties, also passed the test, though Owen, having learned that the man was a soccer fan, asked him to imagine playing that sport instead of tennis.)
In September, 2006, Owen, along with Martin Coleman, a neuroscientist at Addenbrooke’s, and four other researchers, published an article about the tennis experiment in Science and ignited a vigorous debate. In letters to the journal, some neurologists argued that the woman must have been misdiagnosed a claim that Owen disputed. “She fulfilled all of the internationally agreed-upon criteria, and there wasn’t anything that she did that would lead anybody to say she wasn’t vegetative,” he told me. “Now, naturally, in hindsight she wasn’t vegetative; she was actually conscious. It’s a very interesting issue, because it means that she was in fact misdiagnosed, but not misdiagnosed in the sense that somebody made an error. Clearly, she is consciously aware of things around her. So something is missing in the diagnostic criteria.”
For decades, doctors assumed that patients who have been diagnosed as vegetative lack any capacity for conscious thought. Most are previously healthy people who suffered a traumatic brain injury, or oxygen deprivation after a heart attack or stroke, and have been regarded more or less as zombies: patients whose bodies continue to function sometimes for decades but whose minds are incapable of willed activity. (The term “vegetative” was proposed in 1972, by Bryan Jennett, a neurosurgeon, and Fred Plum, a neurologist, who chose it based on a definition in the O.E.D: “an organic body capable of growth and development but devoid of sensation and thought.”) In the occasional newspaper stories about someone who suddenly recovered consciousness after spending years in a vegetative state, the event was invariably described as a medically inexplicable “miracle.” The Mohonk Report, a paper prepared by a group of experts in brain injury and presented to Congress last year, cited estimates suggesting that there are approximately thirty-five thousand Americans in a vegetative state and another two hundred and eighty thousand in a minimally conscious state a less severe condition, in which patients show erratic evidence of deliberate behavior, such as responding to a simple command or focusing on a person or an object for a sustained period. Because insurers typically won’t pay for rehabilitation, on the assumption that such patients are unlikely to improve, most are given little in the way of therapy. “These people with brain trauma are out of our view,” Joseph Fins, an internist and medical ethicist at Weill Cornell Medical College, in Manhattan, and a member of the Mohonk group, told me. “We ignore them, and we sequester them in places where we can’t see them, usually in nursing homes.”
According to several American and British studies completed in the late nineties, patients suffering from what is known as “disorders of consciousness” are misdiagnosed between fifteen and forty-three per cent of the time. Physicians, who have traditionally relied on bedside evaluations to make diagnoses, sometimes misinterpret patients’ behavior, mistaking smiling, grunting, grimacing, crying, or moaning as evidence of consciousness.

Doctors can also miss signs of consciousness in vegetative patients, according to the British and American studies. Ten months after Owen and his colleagues completed the tennis experiment with the vegetative woman, she was brought back to the imaging center and placed in an MRI machine. “We were absolutely dismayed, because we scanned her and there was nothing,” Owen recalled. The team tested the woman again the next day. This time, in response to a command to play tennis, her brain showed normal activity in the regions that mediate arm movements. Owen now repeats scans for each patient, conducting them twice a day for three days. Patients with brain injuries have “seriously impaired attention capabilities and their levels of general arousal are likely to be shot,” he said. Recent research by Owen and other neuroscientists may eventually help make diagnoses more accurate, but it is not yet clear how the new brain-scan data will affect the medical understanding of consciousness.

As Owen put it, “The thought of coma, vegetative state, and other disorders of consciousness troubles us all, because it awakens the old terror of being buried alive. Can any of these patients think, feel, or understand those around them? And, if so, what does this tell us about the nature of consciousness itself?”

Owen’s article in Science was accompanied by an editorial by Lionel Naccache, a neurologist at the Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière, in Paris, who called the results of the tennis experiment “spectacular.” “Despite the patient’s very poor behavioral status, the fMRI findings indicate the existence of a rich mental life, including auditory language processing and the ability to perform mental imagery tasks,” Naccache wrote.

Yet he cautioned against drawing general conclusions about vegetative patients from a single case, and asked, “If this patient is actually conscious, why wouldn’t she be able to engage in intentional motor acts, given that she had not suffered functional or structural lesion of the motor pathways?” Prompted by questions like this, Naccache and several of his colleagues are conducting brain-imaging experiments with the goal of identifying objective indicators of consciousness, and thus enabling doctors to better evaluate patients who are unable to communicate their awareness of themselves or their environment.

We assimilate information unconsciously all the time; at any given moment, we process thousands of stimuli, of which we pay attention to only a few. As you read this sentence, you may not be aware of the birds singing in the back yard, but your brain has analyzed the sound and concluded that it poses no threat to you. In the past several decades, scientists have uncovered particularly dramatic examples of unconscious processing. In the early seventies, researchers at M.I.T. studied four patients who had experienced trauma to an area of the brain involved in vision and had been found to have a condition that was later called “blindsight.” These patients’ eyes functioned normally, but they did not perceive much of what was in their field of vision. When the researchers flashed a light at the patients and asked them to describe what they saw, the patients reported that they had seen nothing. Yet the researchers noticed that their eyes often located the source of the light. In a second experiment, a blindsight patient was shown pictures of faces displaying happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. The patient said that he could not see the faces, yet he was frequently able to correctly identify the emotions. The researchers concluded that, despite the patient’s injuries, pathways in his brain had been preserved which allowed him to process at least some visual data, even though he wasn’t consciously aware of doing so.

In the early nineteen-hundreds, the Austrian neurologist Hermann Zingerle described patients who, because of tumors or other abnormalities of the parietal lobe on the right side of the brain, ignored the left side of the body and objects in the left field of vision. (The right side of the brain controls awareness of the left side of the body.) For example, some of these patients would shave only the right side of their faces, since they were unaware of their left cheeks. In the nineteen-eighties, researchers determined that patients who had the syndrome now called “neglect” could process some objects in the left field of vision. In one experiment, a patient was shown two pictures of a house. The images were identical except that, in one, flames were emerging from a window on the left side of the façade. The patient said that she couldn’t see any difference between the images, but, when she was asked which house she would want to occupy, she almost always chose the one that was not on fire. “This is more complex than blindsight, because it means that the patient was unconsciously able to interpret and understand the symbolic meaning of the pictures,” Naccache said. “It is a powerful experiment to demonstrate that unconscious perception and unconscious cognition can reach upper levels of the brain.”

From these and other recent experiments, including his own, Naccache and his research team are developing a working medical definition of consciousness. “When we are conscious, the key property is our ability to report to ourselves or to others the content of the representations when I say, for example, ‘I am perceiving a flower,’ or the fact that I am conscious of speaking with you now on the telephone,” Naccache told me. “You have patients who are conscious, or who are able to make reports, but you can prove that some stimuli escaped their conscious reports, as in the case of blindsight or neglect. You can study the neural fate of these representations by showing that, even if the stimuli were not reported by the subject, they were still processed in the brain.” He added that, in the case of Owen’s vegetative patient who imagined playing tennis, it’s impossible to know whether she reported the event to herself which would suggest that she is capable of conscious thought or whether, as in the case of the blindsight and neglect patients, she had no subjective awareness of the experience. However, Naccache believes that consciousness also requires an ability to sustain a representation over time, which Owen’s patient clearly was able to do. “In assessing apparently vegetative patients who are unable to speak, and thus report, the direction of research should be to look for sustained representation,” he said. “If we can prove by neuro-imaging techniques that this person is able to actively maintain a given representation during tens of seconds, it provides strong evidence of conscious processing.”

Naccache has recently incorporated a third neurological feature into his definition of consciousness: broadcasting. In a person who is conscious, he explained, information entering the brain is processed in a few areas and then distributed or broadcast to many others. “It’s as though there is a kind of ignition in the brain, and then information is made available to a very rich number of regions,” Naccache told me. “And that makes sense, that the information is initially represented locally and then made available to a vast network, because the person has this ability to maintain the representation within the network for a long time.”

In 2005, Naccache conducted an experiment whose outcome suggested the importance of broadcasting as a marker of consciousness. First, he and his research team presented a series of words to three epileptic patients, who had had electrodes implanted temporarily in various brain regions, in an effort to locate the source of their seizures. The electrodes enabled doctors to record the activity in a given region. Some of the words, such as “blood” and “rape,” were chosen for their negative emotional connotations. The rest of the words, which included “chair” and “house,” were considered neutral. Each word was shown to the patients for twenty-nine milliseconds and then replaced with an image of a geometric figure, such as a rectangle. The patients reported seeing only the geometric figures. However, Naccache’s team discovered that in each patient the amygdala, a brain structure that is associated with strong negative emotions, such as fear, displayed much more activity in response to the negative words than to the neutral words.

“The picture we have now is that, unconsciously, many areas of the brain can process information, and that unconscious representation can be very abstract and very rich much more than neuroscientists thought some decades ago,” Naccache said. “But now we can begin to identify some limits of unconscious cognition. The activation picked up by the electrodes is not only evanescent but restricted to the amygdala and a few other regions, without broadcasting and amplification through the brain.”

Owen’s tennis-playing patient may have been broadcasting information during the experiment, Naccache said, though he added that he is uncertain whether her diagnosis should be upgraded from vegetative to minimally conscious. Moreover, he said, brain-scan research cannot yet tell us much about such a patient’s prospects for improvement.

The J.F.K. Johnson Rehabilitation Institute, in Edison, New Jersey, is among the world’s largest centers for the treatment of brain injuries and one of the few places where patients suffering from disorders of consciousness participate in research studies and receive innovative therapy. In 2002, Joseph Giacino, a neuropsychologist at the institute, was the co-chair of the Aspen Work Group which was made up of experts in brain injury and helped formulate the criteria for diagnosing a minimally conscious state. “I think the rehabilitation field was ahead of the curve in understanding that there were subpopulations of patients who were not in a coma, were not in a vegetative state, but really were not conscious, at least in the way we think about normal consciousness,” Giacino told me. “In the medical literature, these patients were lumped together with everybody else.”

The techniques that Giacino uses to diagnose patients require no sophisticated technology. He recalled making rounds at the institute with two eminent neurologists and stopping at the bedside of a woman who had had a brain hemorrhage. The neurologists examined the woman, who lay with her eyes half closed and did not respond to the doctors’ commands. The neurologists concluded that she was in a vegetative state. “So I sort of sheepishly said, ‘Let me show you what happens when we stimulate her,’ ” Giacino recalled. He had been using a technique called “deep-pressure stimulation,” which involves squeezing a patient’s muscles with force and precision.

Giacino started with the woman’s face and worked his way down to her toes, pinching her muscles between his fingers. As he explained, the nerve endings of the muscles send impulses to the brain stem, which relays them to other brain structures and rouses the patient to consciousness. “I did a cycle of deep-pressure stimulation, and within a minute or so she was talking to us,” Giacino said. “The neurologists were flabbergasted.” The woman was able to say her name and her husband’s name, and answer simple questions, such as “Is there a cup at your bedside?” After a few minutes, however, she became unresponsive again.

The woman had what Giacino calls a “drive disorder,” in which a patient is unable to speak, move, or, possibly, think unless physically stimulated by touch. Doctors believe that such disorders are caused by damage to the limbic lobes or to other parts of the brain that trigger and sustain behavioral responses. Some patients with drive disorders respond to drugs that increase brain levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is associated with arousal.

“Imagine if the woman were in a nursing home,” Giacino said. “Somebody would stop by for three minutes, check her bedpan, and present simple commands like ‘Squeeze my hand,’ ‘Close your eyes,’ and ‘Open your mouth.’ She is not going to do any of those things, but she clearly had a significant amount of preserved function. It had to be harnessed externally.”

At J.F.K. Johnson, patients with drive disorders receive behavioral and drug therapy. (Some patients improve, but prospects for recovery are largely determined by the extent and nature of the damage to the drive system.)

Since 2002, the institute has been experimenting with using brain scans to assist with diagnoses. Giacino cited the case of a male patient whose condition had been diagnosed as vegetative but who appeared to have strong emotional responses to people around him. “If a nurse came in to do his care, it looked like he was screaming silently,” Giacino recalled.

“His mouth would be wide open, and he had an agonized, contorted face, like the one in Edvard Munch’s painting ‘The Scream.’ The expression would occur if there was a lot of noise around him, or if he was being physically handled, but then his mother would come into the room, lower the lights, talk with him in a soothing voice, and it would just go away.”

When doctors scanned the man’s brain, they discovered that portions of the right hemisphere involved in emotional processing were intact. (Other parts of the right hemisphere were damaged.) “This shows you how treacherous diagnostic assessment can be,” Giacino said. “One can retain one piece of a network but be disconnected from other structures and other networks, so that there is almost no subjective awareness associated with this complex behavior. I’ve seen other patients with other behaviors that seem to be outside the scope of a vegetative state. Then you image them and you find out some circuits are still relatively preserved, while most of the rest of the brain is not.”

However, brain-scan technology has also helped doctors identify one patient at J.F.K. Johnson as a candidate for an experimental therapy. The patient, a thirty-eight-year-old man who suffered a head injury and had been living in a nursing home for six years, arrived at the institute in 2004. He appeared to be minimally conscious; he occasionally mouthed single words when prompted, but he was unable to respond reliably to simple questions, or to chew and swallow. (He had a feeding tube.) In 2001, PET and fMRI scans had been taken of the man’s brain, and, according to Giacino, one of many researchers involved in the case, “the findings were totally unexpected. The PET scan showed little metabolic activity, but the fMRI scan showed that the region of the cortex involved in processing language functioned in a fairly normal way.”

The researchers speculated that, because of damage to the man’s frontal lobe, thalamus, and brain stem areas involved in regulating arousal the nerve signals in his brain were muted. As Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medical College who led the study of the man’s brain, put it, “It’s as if a radio were turned to such a low volume that you couldn’t hear the music distinctly.” He added, “The scans confirmed our expectation that this patient had a greater capacity for language than he demonstrated.”

In August, Schiff, Giacino, Joseph Fins, and Ali Rezai, a neurosurgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, along with twelve other researchers, published an article about the case in Nature. The researchers described implanting electrodes in the man’s thalamus, which, by stimulating the brain tissue, had enabled him to regain considerable physical and mental function.

“Deep brain stimulation can promote significant late functional recovery from severe traumatic brain injury,” they wrote. When the electrodes were turned on in the man’s thalamus, his speech improved, his movements became more fluid, and he was able to chew and swallow. When the researchers turned off the electrical stimulation, the man soon relapsed. He is now being given regular doses of electrical stimulation and is able to speak in short sentences and to chew and swallow. The researchers concluded that the case “challenges the existing practice of early treatment discontinuation” for minimally conscious patients who show some “interactive behaviors.”

Few vegetative or minimally conscious patients ever recover fully, and many are unlikely to improve. (Some neurologists estimate that an adult who has been vegetative for six months following a traumatic brain injury has only a twenty-per-cent chance of regaining consciousness.)

For the past three years, Schiff and Fins have been studying the brain of Terry Wallis, a forty-three-year-old man in rural Arkansas who had been the subject of national news stories in 2003, when it was reported that he had begun to speak after spending nineteen years in a nursing home, in a minimally conscious state. Schiff and Fins contacted Wallis’s family and offered to help him obtain medical care during his recovery, and to use brain scans to document his progress.

In 1984, Wallis, a nineteen-year-old truck mechanic, had been in a car accident and sustained a severe brain injury; he was also paralyzed. Wallis’s father had asked the nursing home to arrange an evaluation of his son by a neurologist, but was told that such an assessment was too expensive and, in any case, would not be useful.

In 2003, when Wallis began to speak, he received twelve weeks of physical therapy, which was covered by Medicaid, but the Arkansas Department of Health and Human Services rejected his request for further treatment, concluding that he had not made sufficient progress.

One day, in 2005, Fins, who had contacted Wallis’s congressman to solicit his help in obtaining additional medical care for Wallis, asked Mrs. Wallis for her son’s Social Security number. “I was on the phone, and Mrs. Wallis said to Terry, ‘What’s your Social Security number?’ ” Fins recalled. “He gives his number, and I write it down. And I said, ‘Mrs. Wallis, was that Terry?’ And she said, ‘Yup. The first time he told us his Social Security, we thought he was wrong. But we looked it up, and he was right.’ ”

Fins was astonished. Not only has Wallis recovered memories from his life before the accident but, Fins said, “he is picking up American culture. He now knows the song ‘Bad boys, bad boys, what are you gonna do.’ Why is that important? It’s important because that song didn’t exist in 1984, so Terry is laying down new memories. It shows sustained improvement.”

In 2006, Schiff arranged for Wallis to be taken to Weill Cornell Medical College, where he examined his brain using a sophisticated technique called diffusion tensor imaging, which assesses the number and health of axons, long fibres that transmit nerve impulses from one brain cell to another. The scans suggested that the axons in Wallis’s brain were growing and forming new connections a finding that contradicts the long-standing assumption that a damaged brain is incapable of healing after such a lengthy period.

“We need to do longitudinal studies, to see if these kinds of changes are accruing over time, whether they happen frequently or infrequently, and what their association with the patient’s level of function is,” Schiff told me. In some cases, he speculated, the brain may sometimes be able to bypass an injured area and devise novel ways of connecting axons. Still, he went on, much about Wallis’s recovery and the neurological developments that are driving it - remains a mystery. “After nineteen years, Terry spoke a few words, but within seventy-two hours he recovered fluent, expressive, and receptive language,” Schiff said.

Kate Bainbridge, the first vegetative patient that Adrian Owen studied in Cambridge, has also made considerable progress, recovering the use of her arms, and much of her mental function, although she is unable to walk. She still has difficulty talking, and uses a letter board to communicate with people who are not used to her speech. “Most scans show what is wrong with your brain, which doctors need to know,” Bainbridge wrote to me in an e-mail. “But Adrian Owen’s scans show what is working. I say they found parts of my brain were working. It really scares me to think what might have happened to me if I had not had the scans. They show people it was worth carrying on even though my body was unresponsive.”

The death of so Many patients could have been avoided

2007-10-14T03:20:00.001-07:00

C.diff death scandal could have been avoided
By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor

Last Updated: 3:06am BST 12/10/2007

Commentary

This is by far the worst single outbreak of a hospital infection and the fact at least 90 people probably died as a result is a scandal.

Clostridium difficile is a common hospital infection and poses a far greater threat to health services than the more notorious MRSA.

It is extremely infectious and the spores can live on surfaces, door handles, lavatory seats, bed rails and the like for days or weeks.

Hospital hygiene practices play an enormous role in preventing an outbreak emerging from a single infected person.

However, a clean hospital will still have problems with infections and gimmicks such as doctors wearing short sleeves and no ties can only go so far.

Good nursing care is essential so it is vital that hospitals have enough staff.There needs to be the time and space for cleaners to decontaminate beds between patients.

This is where Government targets are said to have hampered infection control measures because the pressure has been on to admit people from A&E before their four hour waiting time is up and to get patients in for surgery and off the waiting lists.

Doctors have also been too willing to prescribe broad spectrum antibiotics and at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust patients at risk of C.diff were given unsuitable medication that made it easier for the bug to take hold.

Using antibiotics sparingly means it takes longer for the organism to become resistant to the drug which makes it more difficult to treat.

Some degree of resistance is inevitable and hospitals will never be completely clear of infections.

What makes this case so horrifying is the sheer scale of it and the lack of action by mangers despite repeated warnings from staff and patients.

The fact some people came into the hospital with entirely curable conditions, only to contract C.diff and die is utterly tragic and should never be repeated.

A Scandal erupts in UK hospitals - hundreds of patients die from Clostridium Difficile bug

2007-10-14T02:54:00.001-07:00

The UK government has released a report concerning the deaths of hundreds of people who have died in hospital as a result of contracting what is known as the super bug Clostridium Difficile. These deaths are the direct result of some extraordinarily poor health practices on the wards of hospitals in the U.K. Is it a matter of staff being stressed out because of too much work, or is it a matter of poor training in the first place? Certainly there should be no excuse for the discovery of dirty sinks in a ward:

Case studies: Wretched death of C.diff victims

By Gordon Rayner, Stephen Adams, Lucy Cockcroft and Laura Clout

Last Updated: 3:07am BST 12/10/2007
Families of some of the 331 patients whose deaths have been linked to Clostridium Difficile in Britain's worst hospital superbug outbreak welcomed the findings of yesterday's Healthcare Commission report which disclosed the scale of the scandal.

A sink in a cleaning room at Maidstone Hospital
Several of the relatives spoke to The Daily Telegraph to share their experiences of the shocking conditions, to expose the chronic understaffing which many say is to blame, and to express the devastation of seeing a loved one die in such circumstances.
FLORRIE FIELD
A healthy 86-year-old who worked part-time in a clothes shop, Florrie Field contracted C.diff at the end of March this year after being admitted to Maidstone Hospital with an eye infection.
Doctors told her family that the chronic diarrhoea she suffered after being given anti-biotics was just a reaction to the drugs. She was sent home after two weeks.
It was only when she collapsed at home and a GP visited her that C.diff was diagnosed. She was taken to the Kent and Sussex Hospital for treatment but died on May 27.
Her daughter, Brenda Charlton, said she saw staff at Maidstone Hospital failing to wash their hands or change aprons as they went from patient to patient. Three times they told Mrs Field to wet her bed, saying they didn't have time to take her to the bathroom or bring a bedpan.
Mrs Charlton's husband Tony, 63, said: "You would have thought someone at the hospital would have recognised the symptoms, but there was a failure of procedure and it wasn't noted."
RANJIT GOSAL
John Gosal is planning to sue Maidstone Hospital for a catalogue of errors which he says led to the death of his mother from C.diff.
Ranjit Gosal, 71, who was being treated for ovarian cancer, caught the bug in May last year and died the following June after what her son describes as "shambolic" treatment, including doctors prescribing antibiotics that made her condition worse.
Mr Gosal said: "The conditions in Maidstone Hospital were appalling. There was dust everywhere and it smelled. One patient who had diarrhoea was on the ward with just a curtain separating her from the other patients.
"Though the hospital was in the middle of the outbreak, they didn't check my mother had C.diff and it was only diagnosed after she died."
JOSEPH NIXON
The 87-year-old Dunkirk veteran died a wretched death last July after catching C.diff at Maidstone Hospital.
His daughter Jackie said the former officer with the Metropolitan Police was appalled by the conditions at the hospital where "hour by hour his soul was being stripped".
Mr Nixon, who caught the superbug after a bowel operation, asked his daughter: "What have I done to deserve being trapped in this awful place?"
Mrs Nixon, who took her father home to die, said there was little the nurses could do because the wards were so chronically understaffed.
"I ended up having to change my father's bed for him the whole time because otherwise he would be left lying in his own soiled sheets for three to four hours at a time," she said. "Keeping hospitals clean is basic. But there aren't enough nurses to do it properly."
DOREEN FORD
After being given chemotherapy at Maidstone Hospital for a tumour under her arm, Doreen Ford, 77, a retired civil servant, was told she did not have to go back to the hospital for six months.
But Mrs Ford had been given a blood transfusion as part of her treatment, during which she contracted C.diff. She died five weeks later, in October last year. Her family was unaware she had the superbug until they saw it on her death certificate.
Her stepson Steve Stroud, 55, said: "When we asked the hospital about the C.diff she had contracted there was a bit of a silence there.
"They didn't seem to want to talk about it. We had to have our house fumigated to kill off the C.diff spores which can last for six months, but we were told the disinfectant which was used in our house is 100 per cent effective, so we wanted to know why the hospital wasn't using the same chemicals. They wouldn't answer."
Mr Stroud's wife, the former Bucks Fizz singer, Cheryl Baker, later called for Maidstone Hospital to stop admitting patients likely to be vulnerable to the C.diff bug.
MARY HIRST
Having broken her hip in a fall, Mary Hirst, 83, was told by doctors at Maidstone Hospital that she would be home in a week.
But shortly before she was due to be discharged she began suffering from diarrhoea, and seven weeks later, on May 24 last year, she died, having contracted C.diff and MRSA.
Her daughter, Jackie Stewart, said: "She used to be fighting fit. She looked after a three-bedroom semi, did the gardening and hadn't seen a doctor in years.
"Everything was going well, the hip was fixing, then four days after her operation to mend her hip we were told she had diarrhoea. As far as we knew that's all she had. We were not told that she had C.diff.
"She was left in her own soiled sheets and was sobbing because nobody had cleaned her up. Her treatment was appalling. She was not being fed properly, not being cleaned, and there was only one commode between six patients. She didn't die of a broken hip, she died of hospital neglect."
Mrs Stewart said she was considering suing Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. She said she was "not surprised" by the Healthcare Commission's revelation of so many deaths from C.diff.
"They seemed to be taking bodies away every five minutes," she said.

Every single case that has been highlighted in this story involves an elderly patient, and it is almost as if the staff at these hospitals were deliberately not caring for these elderly patients. I would not like to think that this was true, but it seems that there is a pattern to this neglect. Leaving patients in soiled sheets is downright disgusting. Refusing to take them to the toilet is an abuse of the elderly patient. The staff at these hospitals have been behaving in a very abusive way towards elderly patients. They try to hide behind the mask of not having enough staff to cope on the wards. Does the buck stop with the hospital? Does it go further and implicate a lack of proper government funding? Or is it pointing to the flaw of having a totally public hospital system that relies upon government funding, where there is not enough funds being allocated in the right way so that elderly patients receive the correct form of care? Or is it a case of hiring third world staff who do not know enough about personal hygiene, thus risking the lives of patients who are being admitted to hospital wards that are being kept in third world conditions?

Qian Xun Xue returns to China with mum's ashes

2007-10-09T01:02:00.001-07:00

Qian Xun Xue returns to China with mum's ashes | NEWS.com.au

Little Qian Xun Xue has returned to China with her grandmother and her mother's ashes. The grandmother is grateful for the help that has been offered by the New Zealand government that allowed her to gain custody of Pumpkin within a short period of time. Pumpkin's half-sister is allowed full access through emails and visits to either China or Pumpkin travelling to New Zealand. The little girl will probably return to either New Zealand or Australia for a part of her education.

I am happy for little Qian, that she has been placed with family and that she will receive good care provided by her grandmother. It is a blessing that she will be allowed to see her half-sister, Grace, and I hope that they will forge a good relationship with each other in the future.

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Now the Portuguese police say Madeleine died in a fall on a staircase

2007-10-08T23:51:00.001-07:00

Now the Portuguese police say Madeleine died in a fall on a staircase | the Daily Mail

It seems that I missed blogging about this particular allegation from the Portuguese police, for not only has it been claimed that Madeleine was over-sedated by her mother, but now it is claimed that the child died after a fall down some stairs at the apartment where the McCann family was staying:

Now the Portuguese police say Madeleine died in a fall on a staircase

From VANESSA ALLEN in Praia da Luz - More by this author » Last updated at 15:29pm on 1st October 2007

Comments (6)

Accused: Kate McCann leaves church in Rotheley, Leicestershire yesterday - still clutching Madeleine's favourite toy Cuddle Cat

Madeleine McCann died in a fall down a flight of stairs at her parents' holiday apartment, Portuguese police claimed yesterday in the latest leak from inside the investigation.

A police report has pinpointed a set of ten stairs leading up to the McCann family apartment's patio doors, it was claimed.

The report was based on the findings of two British sniffer dogs which allegedly found the "scent of death" and microscopic traces of blood inside the apartment and on Kate McCann's clothes.

Detectives have also been looking at another theory - that a former maid at the resort where the family were staying abducted Madeleine.

Portuguese and British police have been told that the woman was sacked from the Mark Warner resort in Praia da Luz a few days before Madeleine went missing on May 3.

They are working on the theory that the woman - whose name they have been given - may have taken Madeleine as a form of revenge against her former employers.

The tip-off was passed to British and Portuguese police this week, after it was initially sent by email to the Prince of Wales's website.

Detectives think the informant was impressed by Prince Charles' public support for the McCanns.

A source revealed: "It appears that the email came from somewhere in the Iberian peninsular. The information does appear to check out.

"Whoever sent this email might not have wanted to trust it in the hands of the Portuguese police. They may well have thought that in order for people to take notice, they should sent it to Prince Charles.

Claims that Madeleine fell down the stairs at the McCann's apartment were made by allegedly highranking police sources to the Portuguese newspaper 24 Horas.

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Portuguese police reportedly believe Madeleine died after falling down this flight of stairs at the holiday apartment in Praia da Luz

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The sources were reported as saying there were "strong suspicions" the girl smashed the back of her head against tiles on the steps.

"The only thing to investigate is how the body disappeared," said one.

Mrs McCann has already faced accusations that she and her husband Gerry covered up their daughter's accidental death after they sedated her so she would sleep while they went out for dinner.

Fearing a post-mortem would lead to accusations that they drugged their children, they hid the body and later moved it in their hire car and dumped it, it has been claimed.

Madeleine has been missing for 150 days

The Policia Judiciaria also believe Mr and Mrs McCann, a GP, may have been helped by their holiday friends, the so-called Tapas Nine.

Detectives want to re-interview all of the Tapas Nine and the newspaper 24 Horas said it was "highly possible" that some of them could be made official suspects, or arguidos.

Friends of the couple accused police of inventing theories. One said: "How can you tell what anyone died of without a body? There appears to be leak after leak to smear the name of the McCanns."

The McCanns' spokesman Clarence Mitchell added: "Some of the leaks that appear on a daily basis are hurtful, surely it is time to stop."

The couple are increasingly frustrated that they cannot campaign on Madeleine's behalf or defend their reputations because their arguido status means they are banned from speaking out.

Mrs McCann was reported to have said she was willing to risk a 12-month jail sentence under Portuguese judicial laws if it kept people looking for her daughter.

She told close friends: "What does any of it matter if it helps find Madeleine?"

The McCanns, both 39, marked the 150th day since Madeleine vanished by going to church in their home village of Rothley, Leicestershire.

Sir Richard Branson, defended the couple against the barrage of slurs from Portuguese police.

Speaking for the first time since it emerged he had donated £100,000 to their legal costs, the Virgin billionaire said: "The Portuguese press have behaved abysmally, fed inaccurate stories by the Portuguese police, which all turned out to be a load of garbage."

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Madeleine: New DNA evidence 'provides fresh link to parents'

2007-10-08T23:42:00.001-07:00

Madeleine: New DNA evidence 'provides fresh link to parents' | the Daily Mail

Yet another report claiming that DNA evidence points the finger at the McCanns in the disappearance of their daughter. To be honest the Portuguese police have been relying upon methods that can only be considered the gathering of circumstantial evidence. It is now claimed that they can tell the difference between Madelaine's DNA and that of her siblings and parents. I thought that the sample would only be reliable if it was 100 per cent accurate, and so far I have seen nothing about a sample that is such a perfect match.

The case that is being built up is still full of holes, and certainly I think that Madelaine's disappearance should be investigated as part of a new investigation into the disappearance of another child (whose mother was beaten into admitting that she killed her daughter by the same Portuguese police). If there is a link between the disappearance of these children then that link needs to be established.

This case has always reminded me of the nightmare endured by Lindy Chamberlain, but now I am reminded of some other cases that have not as yet been fully resolved. The first one is the disappearance of the Beaumont children at an Adelaide beach. Their bodies have not been found, yet it is possible that the man most likely to have committed the crime of abduction and murder of the children is behind bars. The second case is that of Linda Stillwell from St. Kilda (or was that Elwood) beach, and again her body has not been found. There is a third case, that of Eloise Worledge, who disappeared from her bedroom in Beaumaris. I have never heard whether or not this disappearance was ever solved (there is no link established to the same man who could be responsible for the disappearance of the Beaumont children and Linda Stilwell). There are parents here who have not had the mystery surrounding the disappearance of their children resolved. They faced the same nightmare that the McCanns are facing now, but the difference here is that the parents were not blamed when the children disappeared, except for Azaria Chamberlain, where Lindy was charged with a murder she did not commit. There is one more case in WA, Australia that has not been resolved, that of an 11 year old boy, who had been with his brother before he disappeared, and then his body was found - he had been abducted and raped. That abduction and murder has not been resolved, and that child was once my next door neighbour. I still feel for his parents and siblings and yes I still remember when they lived next door to us in Canberra, and how they had played with my own sons after school.

Is Madelaine alive? Is she dead? I do not know, but I do wish that everyone would stop trying to blame the parents unless someone comes up with a body of a child and it was proved that she died according to what is still being claimed. The scenario that has been built up is very flimsy because the police have been claiming that the child's body was hidden in a freezer somewhere and then removed several weeks later. Really? The smell of death coming from the freezer or refrigerator would have been so strong that the evidence would be a lot more than circumstantial by now.

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BBC NEWS | Europe | Lost Romanov bones 'identified'

2007-09-29T19:16:00.001-07:00

BBC NEWS | Europe | Lost Romanov bones 'identified'

At last the Romanov family can be put to rest in a proper way. The recent find of bones has been proved to be highly likely the two missing children, Alexi and Maria. I hope that their remains will be placed with the remainder of the family.

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Madeleine McCann: 'No proof she was killed' - Telegraph

2007-09-15T00:35:00.001-07:00

Madeleine McCann: 'No proof she was killed' - Telegraph

The whole case that is being concocted against the McCanns is circumstantial. There is no body, just information that the little girl disappeared.

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Three Chechen Girls Die Entering Poland

2007-09-15T00:22:00.001-07:00

A Chechen mother lost three of her baby girls.

The mother and two year-old were rescued by Polish guards. (EuroNews)

Three Chechen girls, the youngest aged 6, were found dead in the Bieszczady Mountains by Polish authorities today. They were trying to enter Poland after escaping the poverty and violence in Chechnya.
The BBC reported:

Polish border guards have found the bodies of three Chechen sisters - the youngest aged six - who died in the mountains on the border with Ukraine.

The guards found their exhausted mother on Thursday clutching a fourth daughter - a two-year-old - near the border.

They had been trying to enter Poland illegally. They had spent four days in the cold and wet, the woman said.

Ria Novosti added this:

"The woman told the border guards that three other children were stranded several kilometers from where she was found. The guards searched the High Bieszczady Mountains and discovered the bodies of three girls, aged six, 11 and 13," a border guards spokesman said.

The 36-year-old woman and her surviving child have been hospitalized, and her serious condition has prevented the police from questioning her yet.

According to the border guards, the dead girls were dressed in summer clothing, and one was found barefoot.

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Doctor sacrifices life for unborn daughter

2007-09-14T01:05:00.001-07:00

Doctor sacrifices life for unborn daughter | NEWS.com.au

This lady was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer when she was pregnant. She was given a low strength dose of chemotherapy but the cancer became more aggressive. Her little daughter was delivered on 20 August and was 9 week premature. However, Ellice Hammond lost her battle with cancer. If the baby survives then the new life takes the place of the one who has passed on.

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Six-year-old girl sexually assaulted, hanged in Texas

2007-09-13T01:56:00.001-07:00

Six-year-old girl sexually assaulted, hanged | NEWS.com.au

The authorities are not giving much away about this case. The town is nervous because there is a predator on the loose.

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Dr. Sanity: DOCTORS, SADISTS, AND THE BEASTS OF RADICAL ISLAM

2007-08-29T22:49:00.001-07:00

Dr. Sanity: DOCTORS, SADISTS, AND THE BEASTS OF RADICAL ISLAM

At the end of June the world was shocked by the news that several doctors of Indian, Jordanian and Iraqi origin had participated in a bomb plot in London and at Glasgow airport. During the investigation the net was cast into Australia, and several Indian doctors were rounded up for questioning. One Indian doctor, by the name of Mohammed Haneef was arrested at the Brisbane airport as he was trying to make a hasty exit from Australia. He had a ready made excuse that he was going to visit his wife and child. (more about this story in another post because it is still developing). What is so stunning though, is that men and women who undertake study for the purpose of saving lives actually participate in the culture of death.

These doctors are the tip of an iceberg with a profession that has almost abandoned the old principles that are associated with the Hippocratic oath that is meant to uphold the life of the patient.

"Doctors are in a position to do both great good and great harm. Understanding a little of their own darker motivations can be helpful in keeping them from becoming monsters like Dr. Mengele or Dr. Zawahiri or Dr. Shipman (who has the distinction of being the most prolific serial killer of all time) --but that potential certainly lies within every physician--to a degree that is likely significantly greater than most other humans.

When those of our profession who have taken the Hippocratic Oath to "do no harm" are involved in incidents like the recently attempted terror bombings in England and Scotland, the horror experienced by all prospective patients who put their lives in our hands is palpable. When a terror plot is hatched in a hospital; and when some doctors who give into that dark side of themselves and find enjoyment, meaning or even religious awe by causing death instead of preventing it--it seems far more terrifying than any actions by your typical run-of-the-mill barbarian thug. After all, one expects a certain repellant style of behavior from barbarian thugs. It is extremely shocking to discover that the same repellant style can also exist in members of a profession that prides itself in saving human life."

Doctors who involve themselves in terrorist jihad are abandoning the Hippocratic Oath. What is truly shocking about the attempted bombings is that the participants showed little or no regard for human life. They have acted in a contradictory manner, forgetting that they joined a profession that is supposed to uphold the principle of the right to life.

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Toll climbs in Greek fires - World - theage.com.au

2007-08-27T19:23:00.001-07:00

Toll climbs in Greek fires - World - theage.com.au

Whilst I am not concerned about the original site of the Olympics, since I do not hold such things as sacred, I am concerned that a person or persons unknown have deliberately started fires in Greece, especially in the Peloponnese and that almost 60 people have lost their lives as a result of this tragedy. This kind of thing is as bad as a government that has a deliberate euthanasia policy. By this I mean that the arsonist has behaved in a most reprehensible way because of his or her lack of care about the lives of others.

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Life for serial killer Dupas - National - theage.com.au

2007-08-27T19:18:00.001-07:00

Life for serial killer Dupas - National - theage.com.au

I can remember hearing about the murder of Mersina Helvagis at the Fawkner cemetary. The 25 year old was taken from this world when she was in the prime of her life. Mersina was engaged to be married, and it was her fiance who found her body near the grave of her grandmother. It took a long time to get a breakthrough in this case, and at last justice has been done.

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The Ethics of Designer Babies

2007-01-21T00:12:00.000-08:00

With the advent of IVF parents are now seeking to pick and choose the features that they want in their babies. There are serious ethical problems when people seek to play God by testing embyroes to see if they have certain features and discarding the embryos that do not have the desired features in the baby. In fact such picking and choosing sounds extremely callous.

A part of the services offered to prospective parents is the testing for genes or extra chromosomes that could cause miscarriage or defects so severe that the baby is not able to survive. However, there is another side to this testing that raises new ethical questions.

Prospective parents who have dwarfism or who are deaf are also seeking to have children with the same features as themselves. The question here is whether a person who is a dwarf should be regarded as being "disabled" or an undesirable birth defect. What could be possibly wrong for dwarf parents wanting to make sure that their children are also dwarfs? Well, dwarfism does come with some other forms of disabilities. It would seem that ethicists have no problem with the idea of killing the embryo if the testing indicates that there is a "birth defect" that is not necessarily defined, but they raise questions regarding the desire of people who see themselves as being normal, even though they are dwarfs, desiring to have children with the same genetic traits.

Clearly, we can argue that the advances in genetics have in fact gone too far and that the world has travelled back to the 1920s and 1930s when eugenics was all the rage. There has always been discrimination against children with birth defects, and society as a whole should hang its head in shame over the way in which deformed children have been treated in the past. If we are supposedly more civilized than the ancient Greeks (especially the Spartans) who left their children in the open to die if they had birth defects, why do we permit this form of discrimination?

A sad Australian week - vale Steve Irwin and Peter Brock

2006-09-08T01:56:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact that I was not enarmoured of Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter, I do have to acknowledge his tragic death at the age of 44. In fact it was with a shock on Monday that I first read the news on the Internet that the man known as the Crocodile Hunter, who made Australians sound so ridiculous with his "crikey", was dead as a result of the barb of a sting-ray entering his heart. He did not stand a chance in the attack because the toxin of the barb is deadly.

Today, I learned, also via the Internet, the shocking news that my favourite racing car driver, Peter Brock, also known as Peter Perfect, was dead, as a result of a car crash in a rally in West Australia. Who would think that the man who believed in preaching the gospel of safe car driving would die in a car accident. It looks like he swept the bend too wide and the car went out of control on a slippery surface.

These two popular figures in Australia made an impact with people in all walks of life. Peter Brock tried to bring happiness to children, and Steve Irwin did the same. Each man made an impact in his own chosen field. They were dedicated fathers to their children, and that is just so apparent in the way that Steve Irwin was pictured with his children and wife. He showed no fear towards the animals that he cared about in his Australian zoo. He was passionate about caring for the environment and especially the animals. His legacy will live on.

Peter Brock's legacy is different because he was a racing car champion, having won the Bathurst 500 (miles) and 1000 (kms) 9 times, as well as winning other driving championships. He used the number on his car to drive home the message about .05 as the blood alcohol level. He was always very safety conscious and that is what makes his death, as the result of a car accident all the more shocking.

I am not even into motor sports, but when it comes to Peter Brock, well I used to watch in fascination, and hope that he would be the winner. Now I have learned more about the man, and how he always signed autographs for his fans, even when all other drivers had disappeared from the track. I have learned about how he encouraged our Olympic team in Athens, and about some of the larrikin things that took place in Athens (via Laurie Lawrence). I have learned so much more about this man who dedicated his life to bringing home the message on how to drive safely. Yet, his seat belt and safety helmet could not save his life.

It has been a very sad end to a week that started out in a sad way. My God keep both of these men safe in His arms, and may their families be consoled in their grief.

The "Azzam" Threat: A prelude to Future Jihad in America

2006-09-04T01:18:00.000-07:00

Counterterrorism Blog: The "Azzam" Threat: A prelude to Future Jihad in America

There has been a new twist in the fight against Jihad in America. Al Qaeda have introduced the Tokyo Rose of Jihad. His name is Adam Gadahn and he has made a vide in which he has issued the obligatory request for Americans to convert to Islam. This is a very serious threat and it cannot be underestimated as far as the wide ranging implications of this latest development.

Forget all the mushroom fodder about American and British foreign policy. That is only a pretext for furthering the Jihad movement without raising suspicion from the moonbats on the left wing side of politics, who are falling all over themselves in their own fight against the American President.

Walid Phares from the Counter-Terrorism blog has noted the following:

1. The hand behind the message: The message is indeed "American". The message is directed to the American and Canadian people at the hands of a traitor American.

2. Who is it destined to? It is basically addressed to those who will carry a "jihad in America", possibly asserting Adam Gahdan as their leader. This move has pierced the linguistic shield of America's media and reach US citizens directly, as a way to spread confusion amongst those who do not understand the real meaning of JIHAD.

3. The ideological platform: Al Qaeda's movement is world wide and in the United States is seeking total annihilation or conversion of the enemy: American and other democracies.

4. Argumentation tactics: the speech writer is appealing to all who hate Bush and Blair.

5. The enemies of Jihad: the speech writer names a number of intellecutal enemies including Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer. He praises the Dhimmi and brainless George Galloway.

There are some more troubling aspects to the message in relation to the claim that there are jihadists at work in the armed services. However, what is more typical in the message is that the west is to either convert to this facist Islam or face the fire.

There are journalists who remain steadfast enemies of western civilization. They are fools because they cannot see what they are doing in their zeal for the Islamic cause. They are dangerous and they are traitors to all of our western countries.

Islamic facism remains a culture of death. They care nothing for the lives of others which is the antitheis of the love of life that comes from being one with God who is LOVE and Mercy.

Age-old objections must not be allowed to delay this revolution - Opinion

2006-07-24T21:53:00.000-07:00

Age-old objections must not be allowed to delay this revolution - Opinion

Bob Carr offers his somewhat erroneous opinions about why cloning and stem cell research should go ahead. It would seem that Mr. Carr is very much caught up with the bruaha that the use of embryonic stem cells for cloning and research is going to be the future panacea for all forms of illnesses.

However, Mr. Carr is very wrong in his opinions. What he does not seem to understand is that the future for research lies not with embryonic stems cells but with adult stem cell research. At the present time the embryonic stem cell research has not shown any form of promise. On the other hand, there is a problem with the growth of tumors in cells that have been developed in this way. The adult stem cell research, and the use of umbilical cord blood has been much more successful, and the future is with these forms of research.

We have no guarantee that scientists will be able to produce the cures for all sorts of disease. Sometimes we need to rely not upon science but upon God. Scientists tend to rely too much upon their own resources and they tend to negate the Creator. Embryonic stem cell research also negates the Creator.

BBC NEWS | Health | Harvard starts human cloning work

2006-07-19T00:20:00.000-07:00

BBC NEWS Health Harvard starts human cloning work

In an attempt to force the issue of funding for stem cell research, Professor Lawrence Summers of Harvard University has decided to step out and begin human cloning work.

Professor Summers was associated with the disgraced Hwang from South Korea. However, Professor Summers is undeterred by the publicity over the fact that Hwang had faked his results. Instead he has decided to trot out the following statement:

"While we understand and respect the sincerely held beliefs of those who
oppose this research, we are equally sincere in our belief that the
life-and-death medical needs of countless suffering children and adults
justifies moving forward with this research."

It is the good old nutshell hard sell for Professor Summers, that the research will lead to a cure for such illnesses as diabetes, Alzheimers, Parkinson's Disease (and the list grows). Unfortunately, to date there has been nothing substantial to emerge from the research that has been completed to date. Rather, what has occurred is that the results have shown that the use of embryonic stem cells rather than the stem cells that come from the placenta cause tumors.

Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah and the culture of death

2006-07-17T01:53:00.000-07:00

Once again Israel has decided that enough is enough, and that it is time to tell Hezbollah that they do not rule Lebanon. The crisis began when Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, whilst the Hamas also kidnapped an Israeli soldier on the Gaza strip. These actions have in turn been fuelled by the call to arms by none other than one of the most wicked men in the Middle East – the elected leader of Iran. It should be no surprise to learn that the kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers had followed a war conference in the Middle East where Iran was encouraging other Arab nations to go to war and remove Israel from the map.

Will the left wing in politics continue to keep their heads in the sand and will they continue to blame Israel for everything? Without a doubt most of us feel total disbelief as we heard about the bombing of the Beirut airport. We feel the pain of the families for the victims who have died in Lebanon. What I do not understand is why the press has not bothered to mention that Hezbollah not only hit the Israeli warship, but that they also sank an Egyptian boat at the same time. Has there been yet another cover up within the MSM?

No matter what our politics, we have to look at this situation from the point of view of Life and Death. Too many young lives are being lost because of the crisis in the Middle East. Too many lives have been lost in Iraq, and now Lebanon is under attack once again. Yes, Lebanon is under attack, but this did not need to happen. If the Lebanese government had not been sympathizing with Hezbollah, and had the government of Lebanon been strong enough to round up the Hezbollah terrorists, instead of turning a blind eye to those activities, then perhaps Israel might not have needed to use strong arm tactics. At least that is what I would like to believe.

However, there is another reality to analyse in this situation. Where did Hezbollah get the rockets and missiles that have been launched against Israel? The backers of both the Hezbollah and Hamas are of course, Syria and Iran. Yes, Iran. The finger is pointing directly at Iran. The madman who is currently the leader in Iran has been breathing fire against Israel. He has openly made threats against the state of Israel, and he continues to state that he wants to see Israel wiped off the map. It is only logical that under such threats that Israel would choose to use military might to bring Hezbollah under control.

The constant cry for war is wearisome to say the least. How can these people say that they are doing the will of God when all they do is kill people? The Hamas and Hezbollah are well entrenched members of the culture of death.

Part of me died when I saw this cruel killing - Sunday Times - Times Online

2006-05-07T15:02:00.000-07:00

Part of me died when I saw this cruel killing - Sunday Times - Times Online

When I saw this article, I feel so much hurt and I want to cry for the sake of the family. However, this reporter's life and death is not in vain. She is the true martyr, and not those who blew up the Golden Mosque, or who have blown themselves up in the belief that they gain glory and eternal life. For these people there can only be eternal damnation, for those who killed this journalist are the wicked who are so aptly described in the Scriptures.

The story of the torture and death of Atwar Bahjat is probably one of the most sickening of stories that has ever been released. It is a story that was captured on a mobile telephone that was held by her captors. The battle fatigues of her tormentors were meant to implicate the Iraqi National Guard, and there has been a story that the Shi'ite Badr Brigade were responsible for her death. However, the nature of the torture and the manner in which her head was chopped off links her death to the orders of Zarqawi.

I am blogging this story here because I want my readers to read about the brutality of Al Qaeda, and how they are killing Muslims, including women. This Muslim woman was a very devout Muslim. She was half Sunni and half Shi'ite. When she was kidnapped and tortured, she had appealed to the crowd that surrounded her crew, but no one present would help when the truck containing two men pulled up and took Atwar away.

Atwar's death, as it was recorded on the cell phone, was very slow. She was seen to be stripped semi naked with blood trickling down her body. A man, who was the butcher, took a knife and he slowly slit her throat. Then, he stood aside as another man stamped on Atwar's stomach to make sure that the blood spurted forth. The butcher then finished the job of cutting off Atwar's head and placing it on top of her trunk. This form of murder is the hallmark of the butchers of Al Qaeda. They used the uniforms of the National Guard to disguise who they really were, and then they attempted to set up the Badr Band to make it look as though they had participated in her murder.

If the details of this woman's death is not enough, the writer in this Times story also details how Atwar's body had been bored by a drill. Her arms and legs had the holes of a drill and yes it is hard to imagine the torture that she endured before she was martyred.

This brave journalist was friendly with the Badr band, and I doubt that they would have been responsible for her kidnap and martyrdom. She reported the events in Iraq in a fair manner and she had been living with the threats on her life for some time before these monsters finally rounded her up and then tortured and murdered her for telling the truth about what was really happening in Iraq.

What really stands out here is that the people who were with Atwar as she attempted to report on the blowing up of the Golden Mosque were not prepared to help this woman escape from the men who had come to kill her. Was someone in that group complicit by informing of her presence in the area?

The level of the brutality against this innocent woman, and then the attempt to murder her family as they attended her funeral indicates that the forces behind this martyrdom belong to the culture of death.

In the long run we should be praising the work of this brave Muslim woman who was humiliated by her torturers as they stripped her naked and did indescribable deeds against her body. Her humiliation though, is akin to the humiliation that was endured by Jesus, and even though she is a Muslim, this devout woman will find herself being rewarded in Heaven. What she went through prior to her most disguting and painful death was sufficient for her to have gained Eternal Life. She gave her life for the sake of her country, and for this Atwar will be remembered and honoured.

Public Outcry saves two under a death sentence in Texas

2006-05-03T04:40:00.000-07:00

There are two patients in Texas hospitals who had been placed under a death sentence due to the law that was signed by George W. Bush in 1999. Both patients are alive today because of the public outcry against the death sentence that was pronounced by the ethics committees of their respective hospitals.

Andrea Clark's health is improving since she was transferred to the care of a new doctor. Yenlang Vo, who is a patient at St. David's North Austin Medical Centre has been given an additional 30 days to locate another facility for treatment. Both patients were designated for death via the removal of life sustaining equipment under a law that allows an ethics committee to determine whether or not a patient will live or die.

According to Jerry Ward, the new attending physician would not have known about her case if it had not been for the public outcry and the newspaper publicity.

What is happening in Texas is simply not good enough. The ethics committees in these hospitals are abusing the legislation that was put in place. They are using it to sentence people to death in what appears to be something that is based up pecuniary interests.

For the moment both women remain alive, and hopefully for one of them, Andrea Clark, there is the possibility that her improving health will see her coming off the life support equipment because she is able to breathe etc on her own, and not because of an ethics committee that uses the false criteria of quality of life.

Prosecution of Midwife Casts Light on Home Births - New York Times

2006-04-05T01:46:00.000-07:00

Prosecution of Midwife Casts Light on Home Births - New York Times

The profession of midwife has existed for a very long time. The debate these days is about whether a mother should deliver her baby at home with a mid-wife or whether the birth should take place in a hospital. There are risks involved if there is a home birth, but there are equal risks from having a hospital birth.

In some states within the USA, giving birth at home in the presence of a midwife who does not have medical training is illegal. I believe that this is fair enough. The midwives do a good service but if they are untrained with regard to medical skills then there is a higher than average risk of something going wrong. The women who have given birth at home would disagree with me on that issue.

The story that is highlighted here is a home birth death. The midwife was very professional and yes she did everything that is right, but she is practising without a licence. It is something that needs to be rectified in the state of Indiana. There are a lot of good reasons for making sure that the midwives are licensed, and the major one is ensuring that there is always professional conduct involved.

The battle between nurses and doctors on the one hand and midwives on the other, is being characterised as one that is due to money. However, I wonder whether that is totally true, given the risks involved in giving birth. An uncomplicated pregnancy and delivery can be handled at home. However, would a midwife practitioner be willing to call in a doctor if there are complications beyond her skills? What if the cord is wrapped around the baby's neck? What if there is some other medical emergency?

Having licensed mid-wife practioners is a far better scenario than having a situation where the mid-wife in attendance is afraid of sending the mother and baby to hospital out of fear of being arrested for illegal practice of midwifery. It would bring the profession out into the open and make the midwives more accountable for their practices.

Is there professional jealousy that has prevented the mid-wives from practising in these states? I doubt that professional jealousy and a motive for earnings are true reasons for the current situation. I think that it might be a case of looking into the historical background as to why it was necessary to enact these laws in the first place. The standards of practise need to be very high to ensure the safety of both mother and child.

Iraq Files Genocide Charges Against Saddam - Yahoo! News

2006-04-04T23:40:00.000-07:00

Iraq Files Genocide Charges Against Saddam - Yahoo! News

In a move that will be repeated in the near future, Iraq has filed new charges of genocide against Saddam Hussein. The charges relate to Hussein's crackdown against the Kurds that killed an estimated 100,000 Kurds, over and above those who were killed via chemical warfare.

The prosecutors allege that Saddam Hussein sought to exterminate the Kurds with his actions against them during the 1980s. The charges relate to Operation Anfal where the clear intention was to get rid of the Kurds out of the northern regions of Iraq.

The move to indict Saddam Hussein for attempted genocide might be considered controversial by some, but I believe that most will see this as a move in the right direction as the growing body of evidence of the brutalities of this former dictator are exposed to the light.

Saddam Hussein was an extremely brutal dictator and he killed anybody who got in his way, including the members of the parliament that he killed as a result of the coup that got him into the powerful position of leader. He is also responsible for the attempted genocide of the Shia and others in Iraq. I see no reason why he should not stand trial on all of these charges and that he should be convicted of the attempted genocide of whole populations of Iraq.

The baby MB judgment

2006-03-20T19:44:00.000-08:00

Family Law Week: An NHS Trust v MB & Anor [2006] EWHC 507 (Fam)

The case of baby MB is heart wrenching. At the age of 7 weeks his parents noticed that something was wrong with their newborn son, and they took him to the local children's hospital. He has been in the hospital ever since it was discovered that he has SMA type 1 - spinal muscle atrophy. The baby is on a ventilator and he is fed via a PEG tube. He is given intensive around the clock nursing, and he receives regular physiotherapy to help with his condition.

The case went to court because the baby's doctors want to end his life by withdrawing the ventilation, and the parents disagreed with the doctors. Thanks to the journalists at the BBC new the case was made public and so we, the public, have been kept informed about the burdens and the benefits faced by Baby MB on a daily basis. The baby's doctors and medical team believed that the best option available was to removed the ventilation and end his life. The medical experts brought in by each side, as well as the appointed guardian, all believed that based on the "iffy" notion of quality of life, a decision should be made to end his existence.

In a somewhat lengthy judgment, Justice Holman disagreed with the conclusions of the medical team, concerning what is meant by quality of life and whether or not the burdens of this baby's life outweigh the benefits. In part Justice Holman said:

30. There is thus a very formidable body of medical evidence of very high quality in this case which is all without exception, to the same effect. Although there is much detail in the various individual reports and also in the considerable oral evidence which I heard, I believe that the summary under the heading "Present Condition", and one or two further quotes from the first part of the Joint Expert Report gives a fair overall summary of the medical opinion.

Present Condition
M has lived for a long time for a child with his condition (type 1 spinal muscular atrophy). The main reason for this is the very high standard of care he has received from his family and hospital staff. The experts believe that the continuous bowel antibiotics that he has been receiving may have played an important role in his long term survival. He is not in a persistent vegetative state. He is able to make some very limited voluntary responses to his environment. It is not possible to give an opinion about his cognitive function as this is impossible to assess. His responses vary both during the day and from day to day. These minor changes are not clinically significant and do not change the conclusions of our report. Most children with his condition would have normal cognitive function. Four of the experts had reviewed a recent video, which documents some movements in M. The presence or absence of these movements does not change our conclusions below. These movements are not a useful prognostic indicator for the long term and do not alter the long term natural history of the condition. It is very difficult to assess how much discomfort or distress M experiences. It is inevitable that some interventions particularly blood sampling, deep endotracheal suction, physiotherapy and bagging are uncomfortable for him. An assessment of his quality of life is very difficult. Two of the experts noted that assessment of quality of life in people with neuromuscular disorders by health professionals is often pessimistic…
We do not believe that medication (either anticonvulsant medication or analgesic and sedative medication) is impairing his awareness, responsiveness or motor abilities.
We were agreed that M's prognosis is very poor and that death is inevitable. We were agreed that a management choice should not prolong any distress and if possible be acceptable to the family."
Under the heading of "option 4", to which I will later refer, but which is the option of withdrawing ventilation and allowing him to die, the Joint Expert Report says "The experts all agreed that if only M's interests were being considered then this option would be in his best interests."

The judge has been very thorough in considering the evidence before him, and despite the overwhelming evidence of all of the experts in the case, as well as the conclusions of the guardian ad litem, he concluded that in this case, since baby M was cognitive then his life must have some value, and that includes the interaction that he has with his parents. In other words Justice Holman has disagreed with the experts that baby M would be better off dead and that the ventilation should be withdrawn. At the same time he stated that should the baby’s condition continue to deteriorate and further invasive procedures were required, then the doctors do not have to go ahead with such procedures, allowing the child to die naturally, rather than forcing his death because of the withdrawal of his ventilation.

This judgment on baby M is very sound. It is a judgment that is based upon case law, not just what is before the judge. Justice Holman even considered the case of Charlotte Wyatt and whether or not her case fitted the circumstances of baby M. He also considered a variety of other cases that had been brought before the British justice system, and he used as a part of his decision-making these other cases that have provided procedures for medical staff in hospitals where they are faced with patients who have no chance of recovering from their condition:

1

2. Of the many reported authorities which have been placed before me, the two which, in different respects, may most nearly approach the circumstances of the present case are Re C (A baby) [1996] 2 FLR 43 decided by Sir Stephen Brown P on 3rd April 1996, and Re C (A minor) (Medical treatment) [1998] Lloyd's Law Reports Medical, page1, decided by Sir Stephen Brown P on 18th November 1997. In the first case he did make an order giving approval and permission for artificial ventilation to be discontinued to a baby of 3 months, which would result (as in the present case) in immediate death. But in that case, as a result of meningitis, the baby had suffered "a serious degree of brain damage" and was "subjected to repeated convulsions due to the brain damage". She had what was described as "cerebral blindness" and could not see or hear in any normal sense of those terms. Sir Stephen said "It is almost a living death. She is not in a coma as medically defined; she has a very low awareness of anything, if at all". I could not use that description of M. Further, in that case the parents themselves agreed with the decision (see page 45 C).
13. In the second case, the child concerned, like M, suffered from Type 1 SMA. She, like M, was conscious. Further, she was able to recognise her parents and to smile. However, unlike M, she was only on intermittent positive pressure ventilation. The doctors considered, and the parents agreed, that she should be weaned off that ventilation before she became fully dependant upon it. The issue was whether, if or when she suffered a respiratory arrest, positive pressure ventilation should be restarted. The parents sought an order that it should be, but Sir Stephen Brown P declined to grant one, in part because of the well established principle that a court will not order a doctor to undertake a course of treatment which the doctor is unwilling to do (see page 5, left hand column); but also because Sir Stephen expressly held that it was in the best interests of the child not later to reimpose ventilation if needed (page 5, right hand column). Since the doctors considered that a respiratory arrest would be inevitable (see page 3) the case is very close to the present one. But it did not involve or contemplate the immediate death of the conscious child; and the actual withdrawal of intermittent ventilation was agreed to, and supported, by the parents.

There were other cases that were also considered by justice Holman in his decision. In each case there has been an established principle that the treatment is not invasive and that it will not have the effect of prolonging life in a very hopeless situation. Take for example the situation where someone presents to the emergency department and is at the point of being clinically dead at the time of presenting for treatment. The question has to be how far will the doctors go in prolonging life in such a situation because of the nature of the medical equipment that is available today? There are times when such procedures might be considered excessive, with the end result that a brain dead person is attached to a machine, and a relative has to give permission for the machine to be switched off. There are two legal implications that must always be considered: (1) has the action led to the death of the person via intentional homicide that would lead to charges for criminal behaviour; and (2) is the action likely to be seen as negligence by the patient’s family?

There are times when the prolonging of a life is an unnecessary burden upon the patient. Take for example the case of an elderly woman who is nearing her 99th birthday. She begins to have a series of heart attacks that are in effect the signaling of the end of her life. In such a situation there is a need to consider how far the medical team should go in attempting to revive this elderly patient before the lack of intervention might be considered negligent. At what point in time in this case would it be considered the revival of the patient to include procedures that are invasive and burdensome. There has to be a point in such a case where common sense prevails for the patient is at the end of her life, and invasive procedures should not necessarily be used if they are in fact a burden to the patient.

Keeping this in mind, one can see how Justice Holman has considered all of the angles relating to baby M’s condition and his prognosis. The NHS trust wanted to discontinue the treatment. The expert witnesses and the guardian ad litem agreed with the doctors and medical team of the case, that according to their standards the baby’s life is intolerable and therefore they should be allowed to remove the ventilator thus causing baby M to stop breathing. However, what was more important in this case is that baby M is cognizant. This has led Justice Holman to reach the conclusion that quality of life issues should not be clouded by the opinions of others with regard to what is to be considered tolerable or intolerable. As a result he concluded that the present treatment was to remain intact, but if the baby’s condition reached further deterioration such that he has a heart attack, then the doctors do not have to initiate invasive treatment for the heart attack, thus allowing the baby to die from natural causes rather than from a contrived cause, which is what the NHS trust had requested.

Two more deaths after RU-486 in US

2006-03-18T01:10:00.000-08:00

Two more deaths after RU-486 in US

Once again we hear of more deaths because women have been misled into believing that RU486 is a safe and effective alternative to surgical abortion. Even after the announcement of two more deaths there is an unwillingness to accept that RU486 is neither a safe or an effective alternative for women who insist upon going through with an abortion.

In the USA the abortion mills that are run by Planned Parenthood are the main sources of providing women with this chemical cocktail that can lead to certain death. Planned Parenthood is not interested in saving lives. It only wants to kill the child within the womb, and it would seem that if the mother just happens to die as well, then let's just pass the buck.

I remain totally against abortion on demand, but if so long as this evil is legally sanctioned, then the means of carrying out the grisley task of killing babies must be done in such a way that the mother's life is not in jeopardy. The abortion drug RU486 fails to meet the safety criteria and it should be pulled from the market.

As far as Australia is concerned, the female members of the parliament who were so stupid that they voted in favour of making a change to the main safeguard against allowing maternal deaths to rise, need to think carefully about what they have done. Do they really think that they are advancing the rights of women by trying to force this unsafe abortion alternative into the Australian abortion mill market? For shame on both the women and men who thoughtlessly voted to take this power away from the Minister of Health without even checking the safety record of RU486.

Addenda: Since I wrote this post the FDA have announced that in the case of these two women, one woman's death was not related to RU486. The other case is still under investigation. However, they also claimed that there was no link between RU486 and the bacteria C. sordellii. The way in which this lack of a link was determined is questionable. In this case the FDA tested for bacteria in batches of Mifepristone and Misoprostone. The reason that it is questionable is that the bacteria itself is naturally occurring within some women. It is because Mifepristone works to suppress the immune system that a woman who has this bacteria anyway is at a greater risk than a woman who does not have the bacteria.

What this means therefore, is that the FDA have sought a way to be able to claim the lack of a link by doing an unnecessary test that was likely to give a negative result. This kind of testing is totally unprofessional.

Jihad and Islamism

2006-03-12T14:11:00.000-08:00

Hyscience

Eurabia has reported on the threat to Spain, Denmark and Italy. All of these countries are targets for the Islamic extremists for a variety of reasons.

Denmark has become a target because of the publishing of cartoons that are alleged to be representing Mohammed. The reason that the cartoons were published in the first place, was not to make fun of Muslims, but to let them know that freedom of expression in Denmark is not going to be suppressed as a result of the efforts of the Islamists to silence all opposition. The cartoons were inoffensive, for I have seen and heard about cartoons that are much worse that have been published in student papers within Canada. The Danish government correctly, in my view, refused to intervene and to force a retraction and apology from the editor of the paper concerned. The stance in Denmark, that is a people who refuse to become Dhimmis and to appease the Islamists, is one that is strong, and I believe that we should all take the same attitude. The more we appease, the stronger they become, because in their eyes rolling over and being appeasers does not bring about respect for the other person.

Spain is a target because Islam continues to fight a war that ended in the 16th century when the Islamists were defeated and removed from Spain. Let us not forget that the Islamists have always been territorial and that they seek to take what does not belong to them - namely Spain.

The Spanish Inquisition happened for a reason. It was designed to flush out those who were giving financial support to the Islamists, as well as flushing out those Jews who were seeking power by pretending to have converted to Christianity.

Italy is a target because Rome is the seat of Christianity. The aim of the Islamists is to destroy the Vatican and to take over Italy. If they were successful in such an endeavour then they would have struck a serious blow to Christianity, thus subjecting the balance of the non-Muslim world to their form of domination. This is the true One World Order that we often hear mentioned but few understand its implications.

Sick Baby's Dad Says His Son's Life Is Worth Living :: Life Issues :: Hyscience

2006-03-08T15:33:00.000-08:00

Sick Baby's Dad Says His Son's Life Is Worth Living :: Life Issues :: Hyscience

This is the latest on baby MB. The father and mother, who are Muslim, believe that their baby's life is worth living. They believe that their baby son is a gift from God. They told the court that doctors should not be deciding when their son should die.

BioEdge 194: Stem cell researchers propose international guidelines

2006-03-07T21:33:00.000-08:00

BioEdge 194: Stem cell researchers propose international guidelines

After the disgrace of the South Korean stem cell research debacle, a group of doctors, philosophers, lawyers, editors and others have banded together to propose international guidelines for stem cell research.

Whilst this seems to be a reasonable reaction to the growing demand for stem cell research, one has to look a little harder at what is being proposed, because the Hinxton group is not proposing something that will put an end to the attempt to clone embryonic stem cells. It is in fact an attempt to push for the easing of restrictions in countries where this research is being carried out.

A group of 60 scientists, doctors, philosophers, lawyers, editors and
others have put forward a proposal for international guidelines for stem cell
research.

"Inconsistent and conflicting laws prevent some scientists from
engaging in this research and hinder global collaboration," the Hinxton Group
complains. The thrust of the declaration is very supportive of cloning for
research and embryonic stem cell research.
This is described as "an immense promise for good" which will increase knowledge of human biology and which may lead to new treatments for disease and injury.

The group's steering committee is largely British, and overwhelmingly skewed
toward utilitarianism. It includes the controversial ethicists John Harris, of
the University of Manchester, and Julian Savulescu, of Oxford University.
The committee argues that restrictions on research should be minimal and flexible enough to accommodate rapid change. Scientists should be free to do work abroad which is banned in their own countries. (German scientists, for instance, can be
prosecuted for working on projects abroad if these would be illegal in Germany.)

The Hinxton Group began its work before the Korean stem cell scandal. That
debacle has now strengthened the hand of opponents of destructive embryo
research and research cloning. However, the Group's 15 principles and strategies
may help to establish a united front for its supporters and give stem cell
research an ethical foundation.

The guidelines mention, but take no position on, two cutting-edge developments in stem cell research: the creation of human-animal hybrids and of gametes from stem cells. ~ Washington Post, Mar 2; Hinxton Group declaration

Judge Rules Doctors Must Let Baby Charlotte Die :: Life Issues :: Hyscience#more

2006-02-26T18:03:00.000-08:00

Judge Rules Doctors Must Let Baby Charlotte Die :: Life Issues :: Hyscience#more

Charlotte Wyatt was only 458 grams when she was born about 11 weeks premature. Since her untimely birth, Charlotte's parents have had to battle with the doctors at the local hospital, as well as with the courts, because the doctors keep seeking permission to be able to not give Charlotte life saving treatment if she needs it.

This little girl had already proved that the doctors were wrong about her will to live, and despite the court ordered DNR, little Charlotte had battled on until she was taken home last October. Now Charlotte is facing a new battle in her will to live because once again the doctors at the local hospital do not want to save her life. Charlotte is gravely ill because of an infection. According to available information, her health has deteriorated considerably. The same judge who had previously sentenced this baby to die, has done it again, and he has ordered that no life saving measures are to be taken for Charlotte.

I take it that Justice Hedley has never heard the parable of the unjust judge!!!!

Fatwa Me!

2006-02-08T23:35:00.000-08:00

Fatwa Me!

This is a little bit different from my usual style of blog. However, I do believe in freedom of expression. The current round of riots, embassy burning, the inevitable deaths due to the riots, is sufficient reason for me to speak up and pass on this URL for those who are interested in joining in the Internet protest against one group of people thinking that they can whip others up into a frenzy and hence stifle freedom of expression.

The cartoons that have inspired this outrage are in fact quite inoffensive. They do point out the truth about Mohammed, who was the original terrorist who roamed the countryside forcing citizens to join Islam or be killed.

Islam, as it was practised by Mohammed, and how the imams and mullahs attempt to disguise it, is not a religion of peace. It is a religion, or political system that involves enslavement of the people. It is extremely stifling. The women within Islam suffer horrendous injuries at the hands of their husbands.

Most of the followers of the radical imams are so brainwashed by what they are hearing that they become willing to kill themselves for the sake of something that is nothing more than the silver lining in the clouds. The woman who joined with her husband in killing so many in Jordan proved this when she went on the TV and one could see the glazed look in her eyes as she showed no expression and no remorse for what she had done to others. It did not worry her that there were children who would become victims of the bomb that was strapped to her body.

Although this is slightly different from my other posts it is indeed relevant to the issue of the Culture of Death.

Life and Death have meanings of hidden dimenson

2006-01-31T18:10:00.000-08:00

There is more than one dimension to the meaning of “life” and “death”. We think of life in terms of our mortal lives – that is we are the centre of the very existence of life, and we have a finite beginning and end. Yet, our worldly life and death is only one dimension for the meaning of what is life and death.

I have repeatedly asked Fundamentalists to explain what is meant by these terms. I never seem to get a response from them relating to the state of the soul. Yet this is how we are viewed by God. Each time we sin, we begin to slowly die inside of ourselves. Another dimension of Life is that it is the grace or the very breath of God, existing within us, so that we, in turn exist in the world. The flip side of the spiritual life is spiritual death. It is the withdrawal of grace – a free gift from God that feeds and nourishes us on a daily basis – that causes the death of the soul because of sin.

I had my own brush with what it means to come face to face with my own mortality last year when my next oldest sister was suddenly diagnosed with bone cancer and died. She did not make it to her 53rd birthday. It is a shock when someone so close in age suddenly dies like that and it causes one to recognize the reality that we are only here for a short time. Yet, her spiritual existence continues even though her flesh has been consumed in the fire from a cremation.

Christians sometimes tend to negate that the animals, birds, and even the flora are the creation of God, and that it is God that gives life to these things. We have the superior intellect and the superior soul, but these other creations of the Creator also have their own form of soul. How Christians view the souls of animals is a juxtaposition of the way in which an atheist sees the life of an animal.

As I digress for a moment, I want to briefly consider the views of the Greens and their counterparts who seem to think that animals have feelings on the same level as humans. For this reason, they demonstrate against cooking live lobster because of the sounds that come from a cooking pot. They are blissfully unaware of the fact that God created these creatures so that we would have food. They also get uptight about cutting down a tree, sometimes behaving in a way that suggests that they worship trees as though the trees are gods. Their sense of proportion with regard to human life and the lives of these other creatures is truly distorted. To highlight their inconsistency, I point to the fact that this same group are the ones who promote the murder of the unborn on the grounds that a foetus is not legally recognized as having a life.

The abortion debate centres upon when life begins, but this debate has implications that is infringing upon giving justice to the unborn and to the parents of the unborn when a child has been killed as a result of a car accident. A recent decision in Hawaii has led to a further denial of the rights of the unborn and a man has been allowed to get away with the manslaughter of an unborn child because of the lack of a legal definition of when life begins. It would seem that the activist judges have outsmarted themselves because now it is possible for irresponsible drivers to escape prosecution when the victim is an unborn infant. Once again we see an overwhelming sense of a lack of justice that has been allowed to permeate the world, in the name of feminism, modernism and political correctness.

Another debate that rages in this modern world of ours is that of the concept of the Immaculate Conception. The reforming fathers such as Martin Luther believed that Mary was in fact conceived without the stain of original sin. The problem centres upon the philosophy that has stemmed from the age of the “Enlightenment”, as well as anti-Catholic rhetoric and bigotry. The Fundamentalists and Evangelicals who are so keen to deny the Immaculate Conception fail to see that they are in fact denying that Jesus is the Christ through their very failure to accept the Immaculate Conception. This dogma, which centres not upon Mary, but upon the origins of Jesus Christ, states that Mary is the woman with whom Satan has enmity. If she had sinned, then she would be a friend of Satan, and she would not have grace within, yet the angel gave the greeting: “Hail, Full of Grace”, (which also bestows upon Mary, the TITLE – “Full of Grace” – according to the Will of God.)

The denial of the life of an unborn infant has now spread to the point that people are willing to deny the life of those who are incapacitated. The danger to the incapacitated is that there are family members and unscrupulous lawyers who act as public guardians who want the people dead. The Terri Schindler-Schiavo story is in fact the tip of the iceberg. This was a case where hard evidence was not provided and the outcome has the potential of affecting millions of the incapacitated every day of every year. The life safeguards were further eroded by the refusal to properly evaluate the case and Greer’s decision making.

Who cares if Haleigh lives or dies?

2006-01-23T01:23:00.000-08:00

Catholics in the Public Square">Haleigh Poutre is only 11 years old, and she has been on life support since she was nearly beaten to death last September. Ever since she was rushed to hospital by her relatives, it is as if no one has cared about whether Haleigh lives or dies, except for the man who is accused of beating her to the point of near death. Up until now he has been the lone family voice who has been advocating for her life, which is in stark contrast to the child's real mother.

Haleigh's short life has not been a picnic. She had been neglected by her biological mother, so she was removed and given to her aunt, who did adopt Haleigh. However, the aunt then met and married the man who has been acting as Haleigh's stepfather, (and dare I call him her advocate for life?). The department of social services was informed of charges of neglect and abuse against the aunt, but they failed to act. After Haleigh ended up in hospital, having being bashed within an inch of her life, the aunt and stepfather ended up being arrested over the bashing. Two days after being released from jail, Haleigh's adoptive mother, and grandmother were found to be shot dead. Mr. Strickland faces fresh charges of murder if Haleigh dies, and so he has a vested interest in keeping her alive (but really is that such a crime, that he does not want her to die in such a fashion as having her nutrition and hydration withdrawn?)

Haleigh has been made a ward of the state, and the officials of the department sought to have a DNR placed upon her charts, and they sought permission to withdraw all life support. Haleigh's biological mother joined with the departmental officials who are seeking to end Haleigh's life. What kind of mother would respond to her child's desparate situation by making the following statement?:

CBS reporter SHARYN ALFONSI: This is Haleigh Poutre before, before her teeth were broken, before her tiny body was burned and before she was beaten, doctors say, into a vegetative state. You're her mother.
Ms. ALLISON AVRETT (Biological Mother): Yes.

ALFONSI: What do you want for her?

AVRETT: I want her to rest.

ALFONSI: And right now?

AVRETT: She's not. Being kept like that is not a life.

So it would seem that Ms Avrett sees her daughter in terms of what is, and what is not a life. Her comments point to a woman who does not love her daughter, and who wants her dead.

However, Haleigh, it seems has other ideas because no sooner did the courts decide against Mr Strickland and said that the life support could be withdrawn when Haleigh began to show signs of coming out of her coma. The doctors who have written off Haleigh have not been doing their work as doctors because they have been more interested in ending her life, than they have been in rehabilitating this child, and giving her a chance to live a normal life.

This child is too young to be able to tell anyone what her end of life wishes might be. An adult has to make the decision for her. As usual the court has refused to listen to the one person who wanted them to err on the side of choosing life. It would seem that the court decided against the petition of Mr. Strickland because of his vested interest in keeping the child alive. The case sounds like Maria Korp and Terri Schiavo redux. Only this time it is the mother who wants her child to die.

Even after Haleigh has shown signs of coming out of the coma, it would seem that her mother is intent upon giving the all too famous line from the culture of death: "the movements that you have seen is nothing more than a reflex action".

Well there are people who care if Haleigh lives or dies. Michelle Malken has spoken up and is advocating for Haleigh's life, and there are others in the blogosphere who care about whether or not this child is given the opportunity to live a full life.

Haleigh is an innocent child. She is not a criminal and she does not deserve to have a death sentence. It is truly amazing that the more liberal types in the community will raise their voices in protest over the impending death of a criminal who has been sentenced to death because of crimes committed against others, but their silence in the case of innocent disabled people being condemned to death is totally deafening. It is about time that these Hollywood activists were called into line and forced to get their act together with regard to priorities.

If Haleigh is allowed to die at the hands of the state, then we will all be moving headlong along the slippery slope of destruction. It is time to wake up and it is time to stop the killing of innocent people in the name of the culture of death.

Liberals For Terri

2005-03-25T12:09:00.000-08:00

Liberals For Terri

For a conservative like myself to feel such warmth for the efforts of some very liberal people is saying something. This site is well worth visiting. The opinions to be found there are hard hitting, without the religious overtones and they rock.

S c h i a v o g a t e

2005-03-23T23:35:00.000-08:00

S c h i a v o g a t e

the people who have put this information have done an excellent job. It is well worth a read.

There is something very wrong when a two bit probate court judge can slap an injuction on the Governor of Florida and the President of the United States and can interfere in a government agency conducting an investigation into the abuse of an adult woman who has become incapacitated as a result of that abuse.

A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT

2005-03-19T19:16:00.000-08:00

A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT

There are some good articles on this blog. It is worth a read.

Catholic Fire

2005-03-19T19:00:00.000-08:00

Catholic Fire

There are some good points being raised here, and worth a read.

Irrevocable Choice: The New King George

2005-03-19T18:05:00.000-08:00

Irrevocable Choice: The New King George

This is an excellent opinion and worth the read.

Irrevocable Choice: In Florida, the Judicial Branch Assumes the Role of the Legislative and Executive Branches

2005-03-19T18:00:00.000-08:00

Irrevocable Choice: In Florida, the Judicial Branch Assumes the Role of the Legislative and Executive Branches

This is excellent and powerful opinion and well worth the read to get some idea of the issues that are involved.

Irrevocable Choice: Judge's Ruling Resulted in Death for Another Woman

2005-03-19T17:58:00.000-08:00

Irrevocable Choice: Judge's Ruling Resulted in Death for Another Woman

This is another good read and it tells us something about the character of George Greer with his attitude of "my decision rules and I listen to no one."

Straight Up with Sherri: What's REALLY Driving the Death Train for Terri! EXPLOSIVE Revelations About Judge Greer and Pinellas County "Guardians!"

2005-03-18T23:21:00.000-08:00

Straight Up with Sherri: What's REALLY Driving the Death Train for Terri! EXPLOSIVE Revelations About Judge Greer and Pinellas County "Guardians!"

This is a must read. There is something very rotten in the state of Florida and especially Pinellas county. Is there some kind of deal between Felos and Greer? Is there a secret agreement between Greer and Schiavo? I would hope that my question can be answered in the negative.

DaveTown: TERRI SCHIAVO MOVE BY CONGRESS

2005-03-17T23:54:00.000-08:00

DaveTown: TERRI SCHIAVO MOVE BY CONGRESS

I hope that this information is correct. It will take a real miracle at this point in time to keep Michael Schiavo from commencing the cruel execution of his wife.

Did she deserve to die?

2005-03-16T01:57:00.000-08:00

Upon reading Crystal's latest effort, I found myself remembering about the death of my cousin Dorn. The story is posted here:

http://sayingnotothecultureofdeath.blogspirit.com/trackback/71848

The defenceless disabled

2005-03-07T02:06:00.000-08:00

The battle that is being played out in Florida should be of concern to every believing Christian, no matter what the denomination. This is a matter of physical life and death for Terri Schindler-Schiavo. Sadly, it is also a matter of spiritual life and death for the people who are attempting to end her life by causing her to starve to death. There is no other way to describe what is being played out in the Florida courtroom of Judge George Greer than as very wicked. If Terri's parents lose this final battle, then the way will be opened for millions of defenceless human beings to be put down for no other reason than that they have suffered a brain injury that has caused incapacity, or they have been going senile because of age. At risk are all the disabled men, women and children, especially those who rely upon some kind of physical means, such as kidney dialysis, to keep them alive. The implications of this case are so wide ranging that the alarm bells should be ringing all around the world.

However, it is sad to admit that the case is not getting any form of attention in the main stream media. It is yet another case of the media not caring about a defenceless disabled woman who has for the last 15 years suffered from the manipulative abuse at the hands of her husband. Terri Schiavo-Schindler has become the face of all of the disabled who are meeting the every day challenge of overcoming discrimination from their able-bodied counterparts. She is the face of the brain injured who are fighting for recognition of their difficulties in functioning on the same levels that they once enjoyed. Terri is the face of the defenceless disabled who are not able to speak up for themselves regarding matters of life and death.

The insertion of a feeding tube is not a method of life support. When the feeding tube is removed the person will not automatically die, because the tube is not essential to the sustaining of everyday life. It is essential to prevent starvation and dehydration. It is interesting to note that Michael Schiavo did not make his request to have the tube removed until after legislation was passed in Florida stating that a feeding tube constituted the same form of life support as a dialysis machine. This is a bad law and it needs to be overturned, if not by the courts, then by the legislature or the executive arm of government.

There is no justification for the request that was originally made by Michael Schiavo to end the life of his wife Theresa. She was being rehabilitated until Michael won his lawsuit and then it seems that Theresa was no longer necessary, and that is when he started abusing his wife by withdrawing all forms of rehabilitation and doing things such as banning her from having medication for infections as well as a series of other actions that should have been investigated and as a result of such investigation Michael Shicavo should have been removed as Terri's legal guardian. The evidence strongly suggests that Michael Schiavo does not have the interests of his wife at heart, and any tears that might be shed are those of crocodile tears.

The unscrupulous behaviour of Michael Schiavo is a symptom of where society is heading unless of course the brakes are applied, forcing a reassessment of one's moral ideals. This case bears a lot of similarities with the case of Roe vs. Wade. The victim in that case was an unborn child. The woman at the centre of the case was used by the pro-choice people so that they could get legalized abortion by stealth. The pro-abortion lobby had a victory because the judge on the bench was willing to listen and attempt to change the law against abortion by the use of a judicial decision. The pro-euthanasia lobby is using Terri Schiavo in the same way as the abortion lobby used the unborn child in Roe vs. Wade. The Florida judge wants the fame of the moment by endorsing the slow death of a disabled woman because her husband wants her dead. No matter how one looks at this case, there is bias against what is the right thing for the daughter. Yet, the most sinister aspect about this case is the way in which Terri was removed from the rehabilitation centre and placed in a hospice where George Felos had served as chairman, and at the time when he was the chairman of the board of the hospital.

The order by Greer that the tube is to be removed on March 18 2005 is an order that must send shudders down the spine of those who are physically or mentally disabled. A physically handicapped person has the disadvantage of not always being able to help him/herself. A stroke victim, for example needs a high level of intervention, depending upon the actual physical and mental incapacities that was sustained as a result of the stroke. However, a stroke victim can be rehabilitated and there have been a lot of advances in the methods that are available to help those who have disability as a result of brain injury. Michael Schiavo and George Greer have denied Terri the right to have any rehabilitation given to her. The cover up in this case is the myth that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state. This is the story that is spread to the mainstream media. The idea that someone can persist in a lie about the condition of a disabled person in a court of law is something that I abhor.

How many other people all around the world are in a far worse condition than Terri Schiavo? What will be the result if the judgement of George Greer is allowed to stand? The disabled are not able to defend themselves from the tyranny of those who in fact want them to either be permanently out of the way or just plain dead because they are considered to be a reliability and not an asset to their families. It is like going back to the days when the children with cerebral palsy was sent to schools for the spastic. Some profoundly disabled girls and boys were institutionalized and the parents never bothered to visit them. They were neglected in those days. Many of them did not receive any treatment and they were left on their beds and in dormitories. The conditions of these hostels were quite horrendous.

Since the introduction of the compulsory wearing seat belts there has been a steady increase in the number of people suffering from injury as a result of whiplash. In the worst cases a person can be left paralyzed. Is that life to be considered as worthless? Should a person who has suffered brain injury be categorized as having a life that is not worth living? How devastating it must be for someone who is facing a life as a paraplegic or even a quadraplegic, when confronted with the do not care attitude of the pro euthanasia lobby.

Severely disabled people are entitled to have the knowledge that no matter what their physical condition that they are still loved. However, if the pro euthanasia lobby gets its way and manages to change the law within the USA then the pressure that will be placed upon the severely disabled amongst us will have increased to a new and unacceptable level.

A matter of LIFE and DEATH

2005-03-03T22:31:00.000-08:00

The meaning of Life and of Death

The words "Life" and "Death" have two meanings. There is the physical meaning that pertains to the body, to the very fact that we are moving, thinking human beings, and there is a spiritual meaning that is often overlooked, yes, even by fellow Christians.

I have been asking other Christians what do they understand to be the Scriptural meaning of Life and Death. I do not think that I have as yet had a satisfactory answer to my question. You see Christians skirt around the meaning of Life and Death because they want to accuse Catholics of such crimes (in their minds) as Necromancy or 'praying to the dead'. I do not know how many times that I have heard the chant that the dead know nothing, or that the saints cannot hear our prayers because they are dead.

How can we live a moral life in Christ if we do not understand the literal Scriptural meaning of Life and Death?What has this got to do with issues related to Euthanasia, Abortion and other associated matters? Everything. I contend that people who truly understand the meaning of life, as it is taught by Jesus Christ, could not possibly accept the proposals of the culture of death and the destruction that comes in the wake of "death".

In Scripture life has two meanings for their is our physical existence as it is recorded in the Scripture. In fact the Scripture is a testimony to the physical existence of Jesus Christ, whom we claim to be the Son of God, and who is also Son of Man. Yet, life, that is "Eternal Life" has a deeper meaning than mere physical existence because eternal life is final state for the soul after physical death. A person who walks with God has life, and will be led on to Eternal Life through constant nourishment from God's Grace.

It is the same with death, for there is the physical separation of the soul from the flesh, but there is also a spiritual death that separates a soul from God. When a soul is not being nourished because of that spiritual separation then it begins to slowly die as a result of sin.

The Woman at the Well

How does this relate to Terri? It is like this, when Jesus spoke to the woman at the well, the woman had a soul that was dying because of the lack of nourishment as a result of her many sins, known only to Jesus. Before that meeting her soul was parched through lack of nourishment that had resulted because the woman had been living with different men (and perhaps going as far as preventing any children from being born). When Jesus began speaking to the woman, she understood him as meaning the water that could be drawn from the well. However, what Jesus promised was far greater than the water in the well. He was making a promise to this woman of being able to receive the Living Water through Him.

Now, here is the parallel to Terri Schiavo, and the things that are being denied to her by the man who claims to be her husband. By requesting to pull out the feeding and nourishment tube from Terri, Michael is specifically attempting to kill his wife through the sanction of the state, by the refusal to allow her anything to eat or drink. At the present time Terri is being fed through a tube. It has been reported that this is for the convenience of the staff. Yet it is more than that because Michael Schiavo refuses to allow his wife to be fed via the mouth. In other words, from the physical point of view, Michael Schiavo is determined to cause the withdrawl of water and nourishment from Terri.

From the psychological point of view, Michael Schiavo has also been causing Terri's separation from her family by banning, at various times, the members of the Schindler family, plus he has caused Terri to be withdrawn from the world in general because of the lack of stimulus via his instruction to deprive her of all human dignity. It gets worse when it is realised that Michael Schiavo is also denying Terri the opportunity to be nourished by the Holy Spirit through reception of the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist. Jesus promised that we would be allowed to draw water from the well of salvation, yet this poor woman is being denied what rightfully belongs to her - LIFE - Physical, Psychological, and Spiritual.

The death that Michael Schiavo is trying to enforce upon his wife is not just that of a physical death that promises to be painful, but he is also enforcing a psychological death in order to force her to withdraw from the world per the exit protocol of L. Ron Hubbard, and a death in the spirit because of his determination to deny her the spiritual nourishment of the Eucharist.

Are the actions of Michael Schiavo, as endorsed by Judge Greer and also of his attorneys, George Felos and Deborah Bushnell, a glimpse into the future? What does the future hold for Christian believers if the culture of death is allowed to gain the ascendancy?

What is happening in Christian circles is that the preachers who state that the saints are dead and that they cannot hear our prayers, are in fact unwittingly participating in the culture of death. There is a subtlety about such a teaching that has escaped most Christians who have bought into that kind of statement. If the saints are "dead" then Jesus is a liar and He is not the Messiah after all. It would mean that for around 2000 years we have been duped into believing in the Resurrection of the dead, as well as the promise of Eternal Life - because if the saints are dead and cannot hear our prayers then there is no point in being a Christian at all. That is the reality for those who buy the argument of psuedo-Christianity. The subtlety comes about because once you accept such statements as "the saints are dead and they are of no help to you" then the outcome is that psuedo-Christians are also easily swayed into accepting the ideas of the culture of death.

The Hypnotic influence of repetition

The media has a very strong influence over public opinion and we see the consequences of this influence in the debates over both abortion on demand and euthanasia. Ever since the 1960s the media has been seeking to influence public opinion on these issues and to bring about their acceptance in the public psyche. To a certain extent the media has been successful in their goal since the surveys that have been taken have shown a distinct trend towards acceptance of the very things that lead to the culture of death.

Why has this happened? I believe that the reason for a more widespread acceptance of these things that are morally wrong, is that the media has indulged in a campaign that has had the effect hypnotic suggestion. In other words, if the idea is repeated often enough it will become more and more acceptable over time. This is precisely what happened in the debate over abortion on demand, and the same thing is happening with the issue of euthanasia.

In Terri Schiavo's case, it is the husband and his lawyers who have been successfully manipulating the media so that they are presenting a story that this woman is in a persistant vegetative state, and that she allegedly told her husband that she did not want to remain in that state. Schiavo has hired a team of lawyers who have an interest in pushing for the legalisation of euthanasia. If one pays attention to the language employed by Michael Schiavo and his lawyers, they are more or less implying that Terri is already dead. For example Michael, in an interview stated that:

"The reality is that Terri left us 13 years ago and none of us can bring her back."

Then if one studies the wording of George Felos there is a gruesome similarity in the language employed:

"There's no evidence of cerebral activity. She's not brain dead but she has no conciousness, no awareness and she never will."

and "no conciousness, no thought."

The chilling aspect of this case is the fact that Michael Schiavo has been able to prevent his wife receiving a proper assessment of her condition via the new imaging techniques that are available today, and also through a variety of cognitive tests that are needed to determine her true status. What is even more chilling are the parallels between the treatment meted out to Terri by Michael Schiavo, and the recommendations of L. Ron Hubbard for those who are considered to be non-persons by virtue of the fact that they are not able to earn an income. In terms of scientology Terri is not authentically alive.

In the meantime George Felos and Michael Schiavo continue their cover up for the real reason why they are fighting so hard to get court approval for the removal of the feeding tube. Instead of announcing the results of new tests and therapies, Schiavo is only interested in the date that has been given to him and that allows him to remove the feeding tubes. Terri has been abused because of the fact that she has been locked away in the hospice with guards present to ensure that she is not fed by mouth.

So why are there so many who are willing to believe the lies of Schiavo and his lawyers? Are their arguments compelling? You be the judge.