Scientists see nothing wrong in cousins getting married

By Neharika Sabharwal
Published on December 26, 2008


London, United Kingdom, December 24: Even in the age of sexual liberation, both from a social and scientific perspective, marriage between cousins has been frowned upon.

An International team of scientists discovered that giving birth to children with genetic defects as a result of wed lock between cousins was no greater risk than in case of women becoming pregnant after 40 years.

Professor Diane Paul of Massachusetts University and Hamish Spencer of the University of Otago in New Zealand, leaders of the study, said "Women in their forties are not made to feel guilty about having babies and the same should apply to cousins who want to marry."

The scientists believe that the laws against cousin marriage are based on false fears. An over all review of the studies show that birth defects in children of cousins is significantly smaller than the general assumption.

Spencer clarified that, “Neither the scientific nor social assumptions behind such legislation stand up to close scrutiny. Such legislation reflects outmoded prejudices about immigrants and the rural poor and relies on over-simplified views of heredity. There is no scientific grounding for it."

Both the scientists reported that birth defects are 1.7 percent to 2 percent higher in children born to first cousins than the risk of congenital defects in the general population. Though, there is a 4.4 percent higher risk than the usual of dying in childhood, it still does not justify the ban. This was approximately, the same risk women take to bear children when in their forties and no one ever “suggests they should be prevented from reproducing.” more

Assisted Suicide

Daniel James, 23, travelled to Switzerland with his parents last month to die – 18 months after he lost the use of his body from the chest down when a scrum collapsed on top of him during a practice session in March 2007. Sources close to the young player suggested that his condition was improving. He could eat and dress himself and there was a possibility that he might have been able to walk again with the use of calipers.

But yesterday, Daniel's parents, Mark and Julie, said that their son had become determined to die and had attempted suicide on several occasions. It is thought that friends and relatives of Mr James had known about his plan to die in Switzerland.  more 

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MS sufferer loses assisted suicide case

Wed Oct 29, 2008 11:45am GMT

 

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LONDON (Reuters) - A woman with multiple sclerosis lost her High Court bid on Wednesday to clarify the law to ensure her husband would not face prosecution if he helped her to commit suicide abroad.

Debbie Purdy, 45, from Bradford wanted the court to force the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to give assurances her husband would not be prosecuted if he helped her go to a euthanasia facility in Switzerland at some stage in the future.

The law states that assisting suicide is a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.

But since 1992, almost 100 British citizens have ended their lives at the Dignitas facility in Switzerland -- where assisted suicide is legal -- without their relatives being prosecuted.  more

Right to Die

We all have a right to die with dignity

Fiona Phillips 4/10/2008

At times I really wanted to kill my mum.

She actually died two years ago, but only after suffering the tortures of one of the worst chronic diseases, Alzheimer's.

Which is why I often wanted to kill her. She couldn't walk, talk, swallow. She had no dignity, no life, no point. So what is the point of that? Always glamorous and smiley, my mum would light up a room when she walked in.

If she'd known how she would end up, she'd have wanted a dignified way out.

Often when I was in her room in a nursing home - somewhere she always said she'd "hate to end up" - I could have put a pillow over her face to end her misery.

I could have, but I didn't relish the idea of a murder trial. That's why Debbie Purdy, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, is battling in a test case in the High Court.  more 

Let this woman die as she chooses, not in a death plant

Debbie Purdy says the present legislation on assisted suicide is cowardly. She's wrong - it's barbaric

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• 
• • Catherine Bennett
  • The Observer, 
  • Sunday October 5 2008
  • Article history

The last time assisted suicide was debated at Westminster, the Bishop of Portsmouth, the Rt Rev Kenneth Stevenson, explained that death is too important to leave to dying people. 'Dying,' said the bishop, disclosing that he had been diagnosed with leukaemia, 'is not an entirely individual matter. It is corporate.' In the case of Debbie Purdy, it could hardly be more so.

The whole country now knows that Ms Purdy, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, has thought in detail about when and how she wishes to die. When the pain of her illness becomes intolerable, she would like to have the choice, as the able-bodied do, of taking her own life. For her, physical incapacity may mean that she needs help to do this. Although suicide is legal in Britain, assisting suicide remains a crime which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years.

The most recent attempt to reform this law as it relates to terminally ill people, in a bill brought by Lord Joffe, was wrecked in the upper house two years ago after a debate in which successive men and women of faith proclaimed the sanctity of life. Lord Ahmed, for instance, could not countenance dying people, of any description, defying a section of the Koran in which it says: 'Do not kill yourselves. For verily God Almighty has been most merciful to you.'

So unless the law is changed before she is in unbearable pain, Ms Purdy will need to arrange her death in conformity with the wishes of God Almighty, as relayed to the House of Lords. 'My dearest wish,' she said last week, 'would be to die with dignity in my own home, with my husband and loved ones around me.' Instead, she will have to travel to Switzerland, to the peripatetic Dignitas facilities, recently located next to a brothel on an industrial estate near Zurich. Here, in exchange for £1,255 (not including services of a doctor, registry, cremation, accompanying visitors etc), she will be handed a lethal dose of barbiturates.

But what if Purdy's husband, Omar Puente, helps organises this suicide in Switzerland? Would not that make him her suicide assistant? On this, British law is stubbornly unclear and Ms Purdy would like it, for her husband's sake, to be clarified. 'For 13 years, I've been in love with this man, he's everything to me,' she said, 'and I'm not about to see him take a risk of prosecution.'  more 

In India Homosexuality a criminal offence Punishable with life imprisonment

Homosexuality a criminal offence: Govt tells court

Friday, 26 September , 2008, 21:08

New Delhi: The government on Friday told the Delhi High Court that it is not scrapping the present law on homosexuality as it is a "criminal offence" and would "disturb the law and order situation and create unnecessary problems in society." Additional Solicitor General P P Malhotra said the government was not in a position to scrap the law at this time. "It (homosexuality) is a criminal offence," he said. “If we scrap section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (that makes homosexuality an offence), then it will disturb the law and order situation and might create unnecessary problems in the society,” Malhotra said before a bench of Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah and Justice S Muralidhar. The IPC at present holds homosexual acts as an offence and section 377 provides a punishment of up to life imprisonment for indulging in it. ...>more

'End-of-life' debate

LONDON- Forty years after the concept of brain death was established, the Vatican City has reopened the debate over whether the cessation of all brain functions marks the definitive end of life. The Roman Catholic Church had adopted brain death, and not the absence of heart beat, as the "true criterion for death" in 1985 after scientists at the Harvard Medical School published the universally accepted definition in 1968. But, 23 years on, a front-page editorial in official Vatican newspaper, theL'Osservatore Romano , has suggested that life might continue even after the brain dies.  "The assumption of brain death is in contradiction with the concept of the person according to Catholic doctrine, and therefore in contradiction with the Church's directive on persistent comas," British newspaper The Daily Telegraph quoted the editorial as saying.  But the arrival of the Harvard definition enabled the Church to sanction life-support machines being switched off. However, the key beneficiary of the brain-death definition has been organ transplantation, according to the article. Read more

The law of conservation of violence By Edward S. Herman

The law of conservation of the level of violence thus rests on the structure of power and its reflection in politics. If you want to compete in politics in the militarized America of today you can't scrimp on money for "national security" and you need to display a readiness to exercise a "muscular" foreign policy. If you call for reduced forces in one country, you must urge their increase in another. Keep those muscles in shape and bombs dropping.

One of my favorite quotations from the Vietnam War era was: "I think maybe today we create many Vietcong," spoken by a Vietnamese collaborator and helicopter pilot when answering a question by Master Sergeant Donald Duncan while both were on a plane that had just dropped bombs on a Vietnamese target. The Vietnam War was a murderous capital-intensive war, with millions of tons of bombs dropped on villages deemed supportive of the indigenous enemy, along with napalm, phosphorus, and crop-destroying chemicals. (Napalm and rice-killing chemicals were used exclusively in the South, which we were allegedly "saving" from the North's "aggression.") In any case, this murderous behavior killed vast numbers, but also made any Vietnamese previously harboring doubts about the ongoing struggle extremely hostile to the United States and its local puppets. We had mastered the art of creating enemies.


 Read more

Limits of Power: A contemporary take on Niebuhr

Andy Lang introduces Andrew Bacevich to Confessing-Christ group:


Andrew Bacevich is a Vietnam veteran, retired U.S. Army colonel and professor of international relations at Boston University. His son died in Iraq last year.
Bacevich uses what he describes as a "Niebuhrian" perspective in his recent book, "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism." Bacevich begins his book, with an epigraph taken from the Bible: "Put thine house in order." In his interview given to Bill Moyers' "Journal" he explained his choice to Bill Moyers:

Read it all here



Read the full introduction to the Limits of Power

Also read from Moyers' Journal Bacevich's lecture on "Illusions of Managing History: The Enduring Relevance of Reinhold Niebuhr."

Most unsafe abortions in India - The Hindustan Times

The Hindustan Times - Indian Newspapers in English Language from three editions

Most unsafe abortions in India

Namita Kohli, Hindustan Times
New Delhi, August 09, 2008
First Published: 23:36 IST(9/8/2008)
Last Updated: 23:45 IST(9/8/2008)







The Mumbai High Court judgment disallowing the abortion of a 26-week-old foetus has sparked off a nationwide debate on abortion and a woman’s right of choice. But for a majority of Indian women, ‘medical termination of pregnancy’ (MTP, the medical term for abortions) remains largely unsafe.

Unsafe abortions are those performed illegally, by untrained practitioners with faulty equipment, leading to injuries, infections and even death.

India has the highest number of unsafe abortions in the world. According to government estimates, 8.9 per cent of maternal deaths in India every year — around 15,000 — are caused by unsafe abortions. The irony is apparent when doctors say MTP, if done right, is among the safest medical procedures.

Of the 6.4 million abortions performed in India in 2002 and 2003, 56 per cent or 3.6 million were unsafe, says the Abortion Assessment Project I, 2004. The study — one of the largest in recent times — was managed by the Mumbai-based Centre for Equity into Health and Allied Themes and Healthwatch Trust. It included qualitative and quantitative studies across various states by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), researchers and healthcare professionals.

It also pointed out problems of reach and access with public investment in abortion facilities being woefully inadequate. Only 25 per cent of abortion facilities in the organised sector are government-owned; the rest are private clinics. These are so expensive that they completely exclude the poor sections.

“There’s inadequate, inequitable distribution of facilities for safe abortions. Contraceptive usage is low in India, hence the great demand for safe abortion services,” said Dr Jaydeep Tank, chairperson of the MTP Committee at the Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India (FOGSI). Besides, only six per cent of India’s 23,000 primary health centres (PHCs) provide abortion services.

“Besides risk to life, unsafe abortions have serious long-term repercussions like life-long disabilities and reproductive tract infections,” said Sushanta Banerjee, senior advisor at Ipas, an NGO.

For a country with a ‘liberal’ law on abortion, Banerjee said awareness about it is extremely low even three decades after it was enacted. “In Jharkhand, for instance, we found that 82 per cent of women didn’t even know abortion was legal,” he said. In a related study by the Population Council in Rajasthan in 2002, the figure was 84 per cent and in Maharashtra at least 37 per cent of those who had had abortions thought they were illegal. This misconception leads many women to unqualified professionals. Other barriers to safe abortion are “social stigma and myths attached to MTP”, said Tank. “Awareness about abortion through drugs like Mifepristone and Misoprostol is also low, despite they being legal and easily available.”

Social barriers like spousal consent and judgmental doctors are also deterrents, though the law requires no such consent. Under the government’s Reproductive and Child Health Project, safe abortions are a key concern and some progress is being made — maternal mortality due to abortion was 11 per cent in 2001. “We need to generate awareness at the community level about contraception and safe abortion, in both rural areas and urban slums,” said Thomas Chandy, CEO, Save The Children in India. Ipas also advocates training of mid-level service providers like nurses and non-allopathic doctors in remote areas where access to trained doctors is a problem.
(non-text potions removed)

Smoking Causes Cancer

Sci. & Tech.
Researchers pinpoint how smoking causes cancer

Although it has been known that smoking causes cancer new research shows how it happens

PORTLAND, Ore. – Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute researchers have pinpointed the protein that can lead to genetic changes that cause lung cancer, says eurekalert press release.

Researchers discovered that the production of a protein called FANCD2 is slowed when lung cells are exposed to cigarette smoke. Low levels of FANCD2 leads to DNA damage, triggering cancer. Cigarette smoke curbs the production of ‘caretaker’ proteins, like FANCD2, which normally prevent cancer by fixing damages in DNA and causing faulty cells to commit suicide.

Research has shown that smoking is strongly linked to lung cancer, but this discovery may help scientists improve treatments for lung disease in the future.

“These findings show the important role FANCD2 plays in protecting lung cells against cigarette smoke, and may explain why cigarette smoke is so toxic to these cells,” said lead author Laura Hays, Ph.D., research assistant professor of medicine (hematology/medical oncology) and member of the OHSU Cancer Institute.

Senior author, Grover Bagby, M.D., further stated that: “Dr. Hays’ work shows that FANCD2 is an important protein in protecting against cancer, and cigarette smoke knocks out its production. Although there are probably other proteins involved in this process, we know this is a key one because cells with very high levels of FANCD2 were resistant to the toxic effects of the smoke.” Bagby is the founding and past director of the OHSU Cancer Institute and professor at the Northwest Cancer Veterans Affairs Research Center at the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

The authors created an artificial windpipe in the lab to replicate the environment of a smoker’s lung. They then studied the effects of cigarette smoke on different proteins in cells and found that FANCD2 levels were low enough to allow DNA damage.

FANCD2 is part of a family of proteins involved in an inherited condition called Fanconi anemia. People with the condition are more likely to develop cancers at a young age and have low levels of these proteins.

Lesley Walker, Ph.D., director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, said: “This interesting piece of science adds to our understanding of why smoking is so deadly. Smoking is the single biggest preventable cause of cancer and causes nine out of 10 cases of lung cancer.

“But the good news is that quitting works – after five years without smoking, your risk of a heart attack will have fallen to half that of a smoker. And after 10 years, your risk of lung cancer will have halved too.”

Lung cancer is the most common cancer in the world, with 1.3 million people diagnosed every year.