Watching the World
Doctors Learning
● “Trauma specialists are learning,” says an article in The Medical Post of Canada, that blood values do “not have to be up at normal levels for patients to do well after recovering from trauma or surgery.” The article entitled “Jehovah’s Witnesses give lesson” quotes Dr. Robert Darrow, a governor of the American College of Surgeons, who said: “Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, who refuse to take blood transfusions, often do amazingly well even with extremely low hematocrits.”
Dr. Darrow explained: “As long as the volume is there and the cardiac output is there circulating that volume apparently we really don’t need what we consider as a normal blood count. We can get away with amazingly little blood if there is volume.” In an interview with Awake!, Dr. Darrow also noted that “there is some work coming out of the children’s hospital in Seattle where they are working with very low hematocrits and they do better this way because the less thick the blood the quicker the circulation and the kids do beautifully.”
‘Human Life Scorned’
● At least two million people have been executed over the past 15 years without due process of law—the right to choose their own lawyer, have a fair trial and the right to appeal—a recent report to the United Nations Human Rights Commission has disclosed. According to The New York Times, the report stated that “officially inspired executions, ranging from scattered murders to mass purges of political opponents, have been reported in 37 countries.” Speaking of “the growing scorn for human life,” the commission’s special reporter, Amos Wako, said that the point has been reached where “it could become an international problem and countries should act quickly to confront it.”
Bible Translations Increase
● The Bible continues to be the most widely translated book. According to the American Bible Society, at least one book of the Bible has been printed in 1,763 languages—up 24 from the 1981 figure. About 500 of these languages are currently being offered by Bible societies, as many have fallen into disuse. Complete Bibles can be chosen from a list of 279 languages, an increase of 2 from 1981. It is estimated that over 3,000 languages and distinct dialects are in use around the world today.
Baby Exports
● “Babies have become the latest export commodity in a number of developing countries where organisations engaged in unscrupulous adoption practices have mushroomed,” says the magazine India Today. “The middle class childless couples in many West European countries, notably the Federal Republic of Germany, have found a convenient way to fulfil their lifetime ambition to have a child—they simply adopt one from poor countries like India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Thailand.” The orphan population in India alone, says the article, is “large enough to cater to the needs of childless couples in the entire West,” and “displaying a dark-skinned child in a family group picture has become the ‘in’ thing in many Nordic countries.” Also accounting for the “flourishing trafficking of babies,” says India Today, is the ease of obtaining a child through unofficial agencies—a few weeks compared with up to two years and an “entire mountain of paperwork.”
Pony Express Revived
● The ten volunteer Pony Express Riders came dressed in original Pony Express uniforms replete with Stetson hats, red shirts and bandannas, blue jeans and cowboy boots. As before, each rider carried a pistol and a Bible. “We don’t have to read it, just carry it,” said one. The group offered their services after a huge landslide blocked off the main highway between California’s Lake Tahoe and Sacramento. Mail trucks faced a very long, winding alternate route. So six days a week, until the slide could be cleared away, the riders delivered an average of a thousand pieces of first-class mail each day along a 40-mile (65-km) trail. “It’s fast, much faster than regular delivery,” said one user.
“Promised Land”?
● “Don’t look to Sweden,” says an editorial from the Detroit News. It notes that many “experts” who “argue against telling parents their children are using contraceptives” often look to Sweden, with its liberal laws and contraceptives “available to youngsters, freely and confidentially,” as the “Promised Land.” But the editorial continues: “What else does Sweden have? Sweden has one of the highest abortion rates in the world. One of every two pregnancies is aborted. One third of all Swedish births are illegitimate. That’s roughly three times the illegitimacy in the United States. The Swedish divorce rate is now 60 percent higher than the U.S. rate, which itself is shockingly high by historical standards.” The editorial concludes with a caution to “regard ‘experts’ warily, especially when their alien notions, however trendy, represent a coarse and destructive intrusion into family life.”
Exemplary Officials?
● In an article entitled “Are MPs [Members of Parliament] sober enough to judge,” Dr. Colin Brewer of London’s Westminster Hospital says that the House of Commons is “awash with alcohol” and that if “some Members drank rather less” they would behave better in the House. One MP denounced the article as “grossly offensive” and sent a copy of it to the Speaker of the House. Since then Dr. Brewer, who stood ready to defend his article, has received a reply from the Speaker saying “there was no case for Dr. Brewer to answer,” reports London’s Daily Telegraph.
● “The head of the Montreal police drug squad has been arrested on a drug trafficking charge,” says The Toronto Star. The arrested officer is a 25-year veteran policeman who had also served as the head of the organized crime and holdup squads. He is said to be well respected as one of the police department’s most experienced detectives. The arrest was made after a two-week investigation ordered by Montreal’s police chief. No contest is expected.
● Milan’s newsmagazine Panorama recently reported on what a three-volume rule book for Italian judges and magistrates has to say about their moral conduct. According to the report, the code spells out that “it is a punishable offense to try to embrace a stenographer, trying to overcome her resistance by force, [or] to engage in similar behavior with any other woman lured into one’s chambers on any pretext.” It also outlaws “initiating an amorous relationship with a person bringing a bankruptcy case” and “frequently visiting a municipal brothel in one’s judicial district, using one’s position to gain free entry.”
Nondrinking Alcoholic
● A man in the United States has finally convinced doctors that he could get drunk simply by eating a carbohydrate-packed meal. “Every specialist I went to eventually lost interest in me—they assumed I was lying,” he said. “The more my wife, Betty, and I insisted I didn’t drink, the more convinced doctors became that I was a hopeless case.” Now, after 37 years of repeated drunkenness, a specialist has discovered that the man is a victim of a rare disease, Meitei-Sho, previously diagnosed only in Japan. As reported in Britain’s Yorkshire Post, great quantities of a yeastlike fungus growing in his intestines converted carbohydrates into alcohol, so that he “reeked of alcohol, slurred his words, wobbled on his feet—and sometimes became a nasty drunk.” Doctors now wonder how many other “alcoholics” are actually just suffering from an intestinal ailment.
Check Those Sunglasses!
● Many of the sunglasses sold in stores do not significantly filter out the sun’s ultraviolet rays, says Anthony Cullen, professor of optometry at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. According to Cullen, an expert on optical radiation hazards, this may lead to the development of cataracts or other vision problems later in life. Usually, people squint to protect their eyes from bright sunlight. But because sunglasses make the light appear less bright, wearers tend to keep their eyes wide open, allowing the invisible ultraviolet light to enter and possibly damage the eyes.
Monkeyshines
● Uncontested, a group of temple monkeys won a court case in Alleppey, India, when neither the petitioner nor his counsel showed up. The petitioner, representing students at a medical college, alleged that the monkeys created havoc, taking what they wanted from the college storeroom and dining hall, attacking and biting 15 students. The students’ demand that the temple monkeys be removed and caged was opposed by local residents. ‘No petitioner? Case dismissed.’
● Meanwhile, at Manmad, India, a fierce, grieving monkey held the entire town at bay for a week when it went on a rampage, injuring at least 15 people—even a police constable, who lost his ear. The four-foot-(1.2-m-)high monkey made motorcycles its special target, after one reportedly had hit and killed its mate. Police finally cornered the animal in a saloon and waited patiently for six hours until it could be lured out and into an iron cage, to be handed over to the District Forest Department.
● At a railway station near Amravati, India, a monkey caused the town to be without electric power for three hours. The simian climbed onto a power station transformer, making faces at a dog that had chased it there. Officials shut off the power after managing to drive the dog away but could not persuade the monkey to come down. Finally, someone came up with the idea of luring the monkey down with a basket of fruit, and while the monkey ate contentedly power was restored.
Ill Designed
● An interior designer, who says his mission is “to create an environment that relaxes the morality of people,” has been hired to redesign a large hotel-casino in Atlantic City, U.S.A. Enlisting the aid of an “environmental psychologist,” he came up with the following, as reported in The Wall Street Journal: A “majestic marble lobby with its Roman statues” to lure gamblers and “funnel them through carefully placed lights and open spaces into the casino”; lobby windows “replaced by sheets of creamy Italian marble” so that “people won’t be able to relate to time”; materials in the casino that “enhance” noise because “noise creates excitement”; and lighting at gambling tables that envelops the player but excludes spectators so as not to “interrupt his sense of security.”
Even restaurants will be decorated to “suggest a kinship between gambling and royalty,” and to impart warmth and “sensuality.” Complimentary rooms given to big-spending gamblers will be designed so that “the occupants will practically run to the roulette wheels.”