Insight on the News

Flesh and Blood for Sale

“Cornea for sale . . . Please call working days.” So read an advertisement in a Rio de Janeiro newspaper. And that was not an isolated incident. On a recent Sunday one paper carried 10 advertisements offering kidneys and three offering corneas for sale. Another paper had three cornea advertisements and five for kidneys. What is happening? Apparently Brazil’s 120-percent-a-year inflation and widespread poverty are forcing the poor to sell parts of their body to make ends meet. “I know I am risking my life,” said one who advertised, “but I see no other way. . . . This is the only thing left.”

Many of the poor and unemployed also sell their blood regularly, some as often as twice a week, to support their families. Hundreds of commercial blood banks buy blood from individuals at $3 or $4 a half liter (1 pint) and sell it for $60 (U.S.) to hospitals and clinics. In several documented cases, individuals sold so much of their blood that they actually collapsed and died while shopping for food with money from the sale.

Clearly, these people have become helpless victims of Satan’s oppressive, greedy and corrupt world system. What is happening is very much like what the prophet Micah observed in his days. Then men were spoken of as “haters of what is good and lovers of badness, tearing off their skin from people and their organism from off their bones.” (Micah 3:1, 2) For such “badness,” Jehovah God brought that unjust system to an end in 607 B.C.E. Likewise, he will bring to an end the present oppressive system and usher in a new order of righteousness.​—2 Peter 3:13.

Writership of Genesis

A team of researchers at the Technion Institute in Haifa conducted a linguistic analysis of the book of Genesis by feeding its 20,000 words into a computer programmed to study word usage and occurrence. The results touched off a new debate on the writership of the book. For years Biblical scholars have held to the so-called documentary hypothesis​—that Genesis was not written or compiled by one person, Moses, but by several writers, some of whom lived long after Moses’ time. The researchers, however, reported that the computer study indicated an 82-percent probability that the book was written by one person and that it revealed the stylistic “fingerprints” of only one writer.

Though unconvinced, Professor Moshe Weinfeld of Hebrew University acknowledged that the study “perhaps has proven” that the documentary hypothesis “was not correct in asserting that portions of the Book of Genesis were probably written in the modern era.” Another professor conceded that the study “may show that some areas of the hypothesis have to be reinvestigated.”

Regardless of what further evidence the computer experts may turn up, true Christians agree with Jesus Christ who attributed the compiling of the Law, including the book of Genesis, to Moses.​—Luke 24:27, 44; see also 2 Timothy 3:16.

Curbing Crime “Epidemic”

“Crime is an American epidemic,” said President Ronald Reagan in a speech to the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics show that a total of 13,295,400 serious crimes were reported in 1980, averaging one every 2.4 seconds!

Talking about proposals to curb the “epidemic,” the president continued, “It is ultimately a moral dilemma, one that calls for a moral or, if you will, a spiritual solution. . . . In the end, the war on crime will only be won when an attitude of mind and a change of heart takes place in America.”

Will such a “spiritual solution” and “change of heart” ever take place? Not if we look to human governments or agencies. However, concerning such a change, the prophet Isaiah wrote: “They will not do any harm or cause any ruin in all my holy mountain; because the earth will certainly be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters are covering the very sea.” (Isaiah 11:9) In God’s promised new order and under the messianic Kingdom, “the knowledge of Jehovah” will bring about the needed change in all then living, for a crime-free and peaceful world.​—See also Isaiah 9:6, 7.