Too bad you can't read anything on Andrea Clark on the major news outlets, print, internet or television broadcast.

That's right. Deciding to kill someone for monetary considerations isn't big news. But checking CNN.com, you can read about dolphins drowning on a coast of Africa, a Daytime Emmy awards party, or a story about a former gold medalist being arrested.

And I want to say, that this matter on Andrea Clark makes me so mad, so indignant, that I feel like bringing my fist down into my hand - how can something so wrong be so quietly abdicated by an ethics committee meeting without legal representation from the family?

Can you feel the forces of the strong being brought against the forces of the weaker? A woman lies face up, breathing via respirator, struggling in and out of consciousness, being told when she comes about only that she has a matter of days before her care is summarily ended, and she is made to be no more on earth and this means... no more than thousands of dollars to St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital! This woman, who said she wanted a hamburger the last time she was awake, who turned to crying and hysteria after being told that the insurance company and hospital had determined to pull her life support the following week. Can you imagine?!?!

This is wrong. So wrong. It cries to Heaven for vengeance, and how will that come about? What can be done to stop this?

Who stands up for those who cannot stand up for themselves?

By the way, should you wish to email the hospital, do so here:

generalinformation@sleh.com

More information:

We've just received breaking news from a representative of the family of Andrea Clark about incredible and reprehensible actions underway by St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital in Houston, Texas.

The family learned of a facility in Illinois that is willing to accept Andrea and offer her the opportunity to live, an expensive move that would require Andrea to be far removed from her family.

However, placing corporate greed ahead of all patient interests and the interests and wishes of the family, St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital has just notified the family that they are willing to pay the almost $17,000 to move Andrea to Illinois if they will immediately - that's TODAY, move Andrea out of St. Lukes to the Illinois facility. If the family waits until tomorow to decide, St. Lukes will only pay half. And if the family can't make a decision by tomorow, the hospital may consider to pay absolutely nothing. In other words, the hospital is attempting to force Andrea out of the hospital in order to stop the financial drain of the cost of her care.

Meanwhile, the family is struggling to find a facility in Texas that will accept Andrea, who has insurance, but is being squeezed also by the insurance company. Is this fair?

The family needs time to make such a momentous decision, one that places their mother and sister far away from them and a patient that needs her family far removed from home. Although moving Andrea to Illinois is better than the alternative - essentially being euthanized by St. Lukes Hospital in Texas under an incredible law that encourages murder for profit, the family deserves time to descide.

Another email I just sent:

To whom it may concern:

I find it dispicable that St. Luke's Hospital would use a law that exists in Texas to euthanize a patient who, very recently, vehemently expressed a strong desire to continue living. People go to hospitals for health care, not physicians who decide it's cheaper to let the patient die!

As a Houston resident, be assured that I and my family will stridently refuse to EVER go to your hospital should you lapse in your mission to protect and serve the healthcare needs of your patients in such a tragic and appaling manner. Believe me, I am very outspoken and involved in student life at Rice University. I can see to it that public opinion in my social circle of your facilities are rightly brought low if you should choose to abuse the trust that patients explicitly put in your hospital.

I'm not sure what is more horrifying, the fact that your hospital would rather kill her because her life costs money, or the fact that this is happening literally mere feet and yards away from where I work as a graduate student at Rice University.

I implore you to feel some compassion and have mercy, even should it cost your hospital dear financial resources, and not allow the untimely and deliberate death of this woman. Please consider if it were your mother, your child...

I recently read that St. Luke's Hospital now is forcing Andrea's family to choose IMMEDIATELY a tremendous and risky transfer to a different healthcare facility (one that is willing to actually give her healthcare and not kill her) or else refusing to assist in the cost of what is sure to be a complicated move.

Why must your hospital do this? Are you so appalled by her presence, are you so without mercy that you'll help pay $17,000 to just get the poor woman away from your hospital? What kind of hospital is this? What kind of ethics does your hospital run on? This is utterly unacceptable, in every way that I can possibly express.

Please, reconsider what you are doing to this poor woman and her family, please imagine what some compassion and caring could do rather than catering to the common fiscal denominator.

If the hospital believes me to be in error in my feelings, please respond with the hospital's statement on the issue, their response to the allegations that they are, in fact, deeming the death of this woman is better for them fiscally than her continued healthcare.

Good day,

Christopher Holterhoff

Biochemistry and Cell Biology Graduate Student
Rice University

Connect the dots.

I've had visitors from North America, South America, Africa, Europe and Asia. :)

Missing Antarctica, I suppose.

Mark Shea, a Catholic apologist has a pretty cool blog entry today on the virginity of Mary, among other things:

The average modern reader of Matthew assumes Joseph disbelieved Mary and wanted to divorce her as an adulteress. Pictures come to the mind very easily of a Mary "pregnant out to there" and fumbling to explain to a skeptical Joseph that, well, it's not the way it looks and there was this angel, you see...

But surprisingly, there's another view of Joseph, one which Scripture supports better than the "Suspicious Joseph" portrait commonly accepted by modernity. In fact, it's a way of viewing Joseph's actions that was shared by such Church Fathers as Jerome, the greatest biblical scholar of antiquity.

Put yourself in Joseph' s shoes. You are a first century Jew, not a 21st-century materialist. Not just God, but angels, the afterlife, miracles, visions, and the whole supernatural world is, for you, as normal and real as daylight and sun on the flowers. Mary is a deeply godly woman you have known extremely well for years whom you both love and trust. She tells you she received a Visitation from an angel, not months after she becomes pregnant, but hours—perhaps minutes—after the angel has departed. She is breathless and astonished. But she's not given to hysteria or tall tales and she's dead serious. She tells you the angel said she would bear a son by the Holy Spirit. She's not "pregnant out to there" when she says this. She just says it. Perhaps she's not even sure she's pregnant, since the angel has given no timetable on when this shall happen. There's no guilt or shame in her eyes. And given all you know of her, the idea of her a) sleeping around (with who? This is a small town!) and b) coming up with this sort of story to cover it up is about as likely as Mother Teresa visiting some secret lover and then trying to cover it up by claiming she was impregnated by aliens. It's simply beyond her character to create such a wild story. So, to your amazement and fear, you find Mary's story is less incredible to you than the proposition of Mary's unchastity.

Especially since that's not all Mary says. She also reports that the angel said her aged cousin Elizabeth is pregnant too. There's been no news from Zechariah and Elizabeth for several months. Then, a few days later, word comes from the Judean hill country: Elizabeth is pregnant despite her advanced age. The hair stands up on the back of your neck. And as weeks and months roll on, you find your beloved Mary is indeed pregnant too. She looks at you with absolutely honest eyes and says, "Remember what I told you about the angel and his message?"

If you have 10 minutes and the interest, there's some really, really good stuff here: LINKAGE!

I just emailed the following to my boss:

Subject: I respectfully ask for a moment of your time, sir.

Message:

The right good and honorable Big Chris, with all due respectfullness and becoming that suits the graduate student addressing his right honorable advisor, Danio Wagner, respectfully wishes to point out that temperature in "his" half of the laboratory fluctuates between 25.4 C and 26.1 C (77.7 to 79 degrees Fahrenheit) depending on the time of afternoon of data collection.

Whereas common laboratory protocol, as is rightful and befitting for this laboratory to follow, commonly hold the term "room temperature" to be between 21 and 23 C,

And whereas numerous people make bothersome comments about the room "being fucking hot,"

And whereas Christopher might sometimes agree with said colloquial references and classification of the situation, if not the profane and disrespectful manner of such vocalization,

And whereas the right honorable Big Chris wishes for embryos that are being placed our in "his" half of the lab receive the bona fide "room temperature" incubation that their owners implicitly seek,

And whereas the current temperature regulation prohibits all from accomplishing these goals,

And whereas the honorable Big Chris wishes to respect the sensitivities and desires of his right honorable advisor, Danio Wagner, who initially set and evaluated the thermoregulation of said room, and who may have set the temperature to agree with his humours and sensitivities,

Big Chris HEREBY respectfully petitions the powers that be that a precise recalibration and reestablishment be made to the thermoregulatory instruments as they exist and control thermal conditions in "his half" of the lab to best serve the needs and comforts of all users of said room if those adjustments will not upset the sensitivities of the right honorable Danio Wagner.

Please advise.

;)

"PS #2: There have been conflicting reports about whether Andrea can actually speak. Melanie said that she's had a trach and because of that, she has to mouth her words. So, she can clearly make her wishes known, but she can't actually speak out loud."

From here.

How could you kill a woman who is sentient... and wants a burger? My God this is horrible...

Terri Schiavo's brother speaks out:

“It is fascinating to see the ways [the media] can report a story to over-simplify it. The media misreported and didn’t report an enormous amount of facts in the case.”

He stated it was rarely reported, for example, that there were 25 national disability groups standing with the Schiavo family trying to stop the killing of Terri, for the media did not want to recognize her as a disabled person.

Instead, he said, they consistently applied the label of Persistent Vegetative State to her condition which he considers absolutely false. “We never for a moment believed that Terri was in a PVS condition.”

“PVS is something that needs to be abolished… It is a completely subjective diagnosis, based entirely upon the interpretation of the doctor.” To drive this point home, Schindler referred to a recent British study which concluded that PVS is misdiagnosed 43 % of the time.

The media also repeatedly referred to Terri as being on artificial life support. “This confused the public” said Bobby. “They never said that she was receiving food and water. In the eyes of the law in our country, food and water are now considered medical treatment, extraordinary care. Feeding tubes are now seen as other than basic care.”

Link.

I can't believe what's going on here. From another blog:

"the hospital ethics committee met the day before yesterday and concluded that Andrea's treatment (respirator and dialysis) should be discontinued. We have ten days to move her from that hospital or they will 'pull the plug' and let Andrea die."

Obviously this is a pretty involved story so you will have to read the whole post. I can't pretend to know all sides of this.

John called the sister, Melanie, and was told: "her sister [Andrea] recently had surgery for a heart condition. After surgery, she developed an infection and that's why she's so weak and needs a respirator to breathe. Again, her sister is not brain damaged, she can speak, and she does not want the hospital to let her die."

"If what Melanie Childers has told me is correct," writes John, "we've got a situation where a hospital that claims to provide 'ethical, compassionate and quality care' is pulling a woman's respirator and dialysis against her wishes and the wishes of her family after a doctor at their facility has said she might be able to recover.

Link. If this is anything close to the truth of what is going on, it's a very frightening demostration of the weak being put behind the able. Any time money is the lowest common denominator the interests of selfishness will be served.

And to think. St. Luke's is right across the street. This poor woman is lying in a bed with a 10 day countdown going on her only several hundred feet away from me. And she doesn't want to die...

Working now?

So many good points in this opinion piece. Steyn is still the man.

Linkzorz!

It's kind of surreal (at the very least, it makes me uncomfortable) to see this kind of thing receive a voice of advocacy on an international source of news and opinion like Forbes.

It's been said before by people a lot smarter than me that the USA is closely mirroring the Roman and Greek (and many other) empries in its development, adolesence and perhaps decrepecy and death.

In some ways this is more apparent than others. For example, in both ancient Rome and Greek cultures, the struggle between moralist pagan cults and cults centered specifically around decadence and self-glorification, homosexuality and general immorality were in constant political contention. Particularly in Rome, the weakness and inability and unwillingness of Rome to stand up to her enemies can be directly compared to the heights to which her culture's decadence climbed and depths to which her morality fell. Ultimately this fragility lead to Rome being sacked by a bunch of wussy Germans.

I believe this draw towards violent entertainment could be a meme that seems to be a social constant, a barometer for guaging any culture's health by guaging their respect for life and ability to not be blood thirsty animals looking anywhere - even at murder - for entertainment.

The point I'm trying to make is that at one point in time in Rome, gladatorial combat was very much an issue that was being discusses in the pulic discourse. There were people on both sides of the issue. But then it became acceptable. And then it became indispensible. If you cater to and breed a mindset in a society of people that life is so bad that you should go watch other people kill each other, you're creating myriad problems that aren't easily solved. During the most successful time of the Roman Empire, gladiatorial combat was supressed and eliminated. The opposite was true for much of the wrong-headed rule of the emperors. Cause and effect are often difficult to sort out in history, but correlations can still be easily observed in hindsight, and avoided in the execution of our own public social policy.

And of course I could just be wrong; perhaps there's nothing wrong with millions of Americans entertaining themselves by watching men (and womyn, afterall any government-regulated entity should be non-discriminatory) kill each other with weapons.

This is just really interesting. I've said it before and I'll say it again - if I had more guts I probably would have liked to become a theoretical physicist. It borders on philosophy. So interesting.

How do we work, afterall? What keeps the sub-sub-atomic energies together, progessing through space-time? What determines physical constants in our reality, and how were they established, how are they changing?

Et cetera...

*Note - NewScientist has been pretty biased and wrong on several things that I've read them talk about where I knew a lot about the subject matter. I know almost nothing about physics, so I guess take what they're saying with a grain of salt. Incredibly intereseting regardless.

"Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them."
-Paul, writing to the Ephesians (5:11)

Evil flourishes when it is hidden; injustice festers when the victim is unseen.

Sam Heller (interesting name), lawyer for the Center for Reproductive Rights eagerly says that:

"It is the first ruling recognizing the United States Constitution gives protection -- constitutional protection -- to the informational privacy rights of young people in health care," Heller said.

Sure. And it helps 13 year old kiddies abort their children. It's not about privacy, it's about abortion, and it effects only abortion.

Should a 13 year old be the manager of their health history? Do they have their own health insurance? Do they get to call the shots with the doctor on what surgery is best for their condition? I'm sorry, I think their parents are better suited at protecting and ensuring that their long-term interests are protected - not a Planned Parenthood clinic that takes that kid's allowance money all the way to the bank, or a frightened 13 year old who has just found out she is pregnant.

The center sued in 2003 on behalf of a group of obstetricians and gynecologists, nurses, psychologists, social workers, a family practice doctor, and a sex education teacher.

Take a second and think about that little list of people - notice one thing in common? They make money and have a vested interest in increasing the number of "private, surgical procedures" (aka abortions) procured by all people as well as maintaining easy access to such "care." Caring about the kids? Doubtful. Caring about their business? More likely in my opinion.

To assume a priori that abortion is a simple medical procedure that does not kill a human being that has innate and ever-retreating inalienable human rights is tragic on a cosmic scale, and is exactly what this law does.

The farce is so large that it's not funny. The labor of exposing the evil is ever-increasing as the barriers and obstructions keeping the act of abortion from the public conscience are reinforced and encased again and again behind the shiny armor of a codified law that makes absurd assumptions (namely, what I describe above - that a young person is not a human person).

Sorry, all you children that are going to be aborted. We're trying. If only they knew better.

I'mma gonna make you,
Shake you, take you,
I'mma gonna be the one who breaks you.
Put the screws into ya, yeah my way,
Yeah, come on, come on, come on and make my day.

Got some hell to pay ya, I steal your thunder,
The joy of violent movement pulls you under,
Oooh bite the bullet well hard,
Yeah but I bite harder, so go too far.

Oooh, I can't hear ya,
talk to two-by-four.

-Metallica, 2x4

Sorry, it's just playing now, and it's a good, gritty song for a good, gritty subject.

Well, I haven't been posting much lately. Guess I'm busy with things right now.

Last night, South Park tried to show an image of Mohammed and it was censored by Comedy Central.

This one is great.

What the hell are they thinking? Argh!

At some point a critical mass is reached, and the vacuous espousement of abortion "rights" is revealed to be cosmically and egregious contrary to any kind of conceivable natural order where human life in any form has any meaning.

The link, talks about:

Research to be presented at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health's annual conference later this month shows babies born at 25 weeks or under cost almost three times as much to educate by the time they turn six as those born at full term.
In its response to an in-depth inquiry into premature babies by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, the RCOG writes: "Some weight should be given to the economic considerations (of neonatal intensive care) as there is a real issue in neonatal units of 'bed blocking', whereby women have to be transferred in labour to other units, compromising both their and their babies' care. One of the problems of the 'success' of neonatal intensive care is that the practitioners are always pushing the boundaries. There has been a constant need to expand numbers of cots to cover the increasing tendency to try to rescue baby at lower and lower gestations."

According to another blogger: "A person's a person, no matter how small — unless he or she is using valuable resources that could be used to support a better-abled individual, according to Britain's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists."

Baby steps towards eugenics - starting with the weak babies of course. Babies that take up money that could be used to help the stronger and more deserving healthy children. Bed-blocking is the popular term that is starting to be given to them, even by the commonwealth governmental healthcare system.

The really bizarre part, the part that frames the entire issue so completely, is the fact that the gov't institution, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health pays state funds for women to have abortions up to 24 weeks of gestation - a time equal or beyond when these premature babies are now being born. In the one case you have a baby being impaled and decapitated in the dark of the womb; and in the other case you have a bright hospital ICU full of outstandingly educated health professionals giving their all to save the lives of identicle children...

Really, that's just creepy as all hell. In what repugnant and inverted reality does that situation have legs of logic to stand upon? Ah, of course - our own modernity! Freedom to choose our own lifestyles at the expense of some weaker creature, at the expense of some higher purpose besides "our personal happiness." And what's the cost? Almost nothing: self-seeking and self-worship, idolization of freedom from responsibility and from our human essence and human nature, denial of our unique place in the world as humans, donning self-imposed blinders to keep us from seeing and worrying about what is beyond our present existence, our present salary, our present hedonism.

So now that I think about it, let's not be biased, and let's keep this in perspective and really empathize with the person desiring an abortion: these fetuses are definately not human, ya know? Why waste money on them when they're better off put into a biohazard baggie?

"If the U.N. found it, it must be pretty damned obvious."

Link.

United Nations officials investigating Iran's nuclear programme say they have found convincing evidence that the Iranians are working on a secret uranium enrichment project that has not been officially declared.

How convincing?

How convincing does it have to be?

How convincing does it have to be to warrent... action...?

Put a new song up there to the right. A click on the song name should let you download the .mp3 file to listen to. Cuban music for the win!

From Wesley Smith, this morning I'm reading a story about - get this! - a scientist at UT Arlington who gave a "Doomsday Talk" at the 2006 Texas Academy of Science (I've volunteered for this organization previously, back when I was an undergrad in San Antonio) conference.

What's so big about this? Well, to start with, he dismissed the idea of anthropocentrism, the idea that man has a special quality or place in the world. Okay, no biggie. A good three-quarters of my professors probably feel the same way, or think they do. But... he espoused the idea that man is very bad for the environment and for Earth, that ~90% of the population should be disposed of, hopefully by an airborn Ebola-variant in order to bring us into check.

Still saying "so what?" Yeah, there may be a few utterly evil individuals out there that would be excited by the prospect of 5 billion people dying a most agonizing death of Ebola infection. (You know, where blood oozes from all of your orifaces and membranes, eventually destroying your internal organs among other things...) But why get worked up over a little talk?

I guess the kicker is that this scientist - Dr. Pianka - received a standing ovation from his professional scientist peers in the Texas Academy of Scientists after the talk, and then hours later accepted the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist award from the Academy. Sounds like a pretty big honor to me.

It's all the more interesting when you read that:

Something curious occurred a minute before Pianka began speaking. An official of the Academy approached a video camera operator at the front of the auditorium and engaged him in animated conversation. The camera operator did not look pleased as he pointed the lens of the big camera to the ceiling and slowly walked away.

Yeah... wouldn't want the non-Ph.D. general public to catch wind of your wish to have 90% of them dead, you know what I mean?

You gotta read the rest...

Fundamentalism is bad. Fundamentalist theocracies such as the corrupt Catholic Church of the pre-Reformation, fundamentalist athiest states like communist China or U.S.S.R., and here we see fundamentalist positivism and naturalism fitting right in with their ideological brethren. Fundamentalism invariably places sole emphasis and value on the ends, completely ignoring the means. Don't want a child? Abort it! Don't want dissenting citizens? Hang them! Think human beings are wasteful? Kill 5 billion of them by releasing a specialized Ebola virus! It's in the name of the cause; ergo, it's not just a good idea, it's your duty!

From Wesly Smith, this morning I'm reading a story about - get this! - a scientist at UT Arlington who gave a "Doomsday Talk" at the 2006 Texas Academy of Science (I've volunteered for this organization when I was in school in San Antonio) conference.

What was so big about this talk? Well... He espoused the idea that mankind is currently bad for the environment, and that ~90% of the population should be disposed of, hopefully by an airborn Ebola-variant.

So what? Yeah, there are a few nutjobs that would be excited by the prospect of 5 billion people dying a most agonizing death. I guess the kicker is that this scientist received a standing ovation after his talk, and then five hours later received the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist award from the Academy.

If you're worried about fundamentalist takeovers and the like, the real danger is in fundamentalist positivists/naturalists (of which a lot of academic scientists are). They're the fuckers that think all of us are no more important than the bug they squashed on their way to work, or a paramecium in a swamp. If they ever manage to execute some kind of power-grab, who knows what would happen, what works they would wreak in the name of science and progress?

I'm still waiting for a visitor from Africa or South America. C'mon already! hahaha

I finally got a visitor from Australia!

In other news, our latest grant resubmission went out this last weekend. We could really use the lab. It'd make Dan so happy - and me as well, indirectly.