Watching the World
Churches and Tobacco
● While some church groups are beginning to speak out against smoking, “North Carolina churches, unlike many of their counterparts across the nation, are steering clear of the issue of tobacco and smoking,” according to The Sentinel of Winston-Salem. The reason? “Economics has kept this one off the front burner in all churches in the state,” said an official of the Baptist State Convention. Other denominations, including the Presbyterians and the Methodists, have likewise avoided the issue. “If we’re going to take a stand against tobacco,” a Methodist minister says, then “we’d better find another source of income.” North Carolina is the leading tobacco producer in the US.
Fetus Has Rights
● A US federal judge in Connecticut has ruled that an unborn fetus has the legal rights to sue. The particular case involves a nine-month-old boy and his mother. The mother was allegedly beaten by a police officer when she was five and a half months pregnant with the boy. The suit claims that the beating resulted in physical injuries to the fetus, and the boy’s legs apparently were damaged because of it. The ruling denied the defendant’s request to dismiss the case and it is viewed as precedent setting. The federal judge said that his decision is based on “recent and well-established trends in the state courts,” which have “expanded the legal rights of the viable fetus in a wide variety of contexts,” according to an Associated Press dispatch.
Asbestos Deaths
● The British Health and Safety Commission announced that in 1980 more than 500 asbestos workers died from cancer of the lining of the lungs and the abdominal cavity. This is a threefold increase since 1968, when records were first kept, in spite of the passage of government regulations in 1969. Some specialists believe that the real figures might be much higher because of the difficulty in detecting the disease. In addition, there were 150 deaths from asbestosis, a lung disease caused by the inhaling of asbestos fibers. Officials fear that deaths due to exposure to asbestos will continue to increase for another decade before leveling off.
More Women Ministers
● Since the ordination of the first woman minister in 1853 in a small rural Congregational church in South Butler, New York, there has been a steady rise in the number of women ministers. Soon, it appears, more women than men will be ordained in a number of the denominations. For example, 52 percent of students currently enrolled in the Master of Divinity program of the United Church of Christ (offshoot of Congregational Churches) are women. One year ago 46 percent were women and five years ago only 30 percent. Similar trends are seen in seminaries of other Churches: Unitarian Universalist, 50 percent; Disciples of Christ, 34 percent; United Methodist and United Presbyterian, 32 percent; American Baptist, 29 percent; Lutheran Church in America, 26 percent.
Number One Son
● The centuries-old Chinese custom of favoring sons over daughters is putting the Beijing government’s population-control policy of one child per family to a severe test. The pressure for the first child to be a son is so strong that, according to China’s Health News, some pregnant women take fetal tests, and if a girl is predicted they have an abortion. Sometimes things take an even uglier turn—the unwanted daughters are abandoned, or worse, drowned. More common, however, is mistreatment of the mothers with beatings or divorces, resulting in nervous breakdowns and suicides. The government fears that in just a few years such practices will upset the male-female balance in the population.
Abuse of Antibiotics
● Antibiotics such as penicillin and tetracycline are gradually losing their effectiveness against gonorrhea, leprosy and other dreadful diseases “for no better reason than saving a few cents a pound in the price of meat,” says The New York Times. The reference is to farmers’ “routine addition of clinically useful drugs to animal feed” to stimulate growth. A report in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that such indiscriminate use encourages the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can pass on the resistance to other bacteria infecting humans. In 1977 the Food and Drug Administration proposed banning the practice, but farm and pharmaceutical lobbies influenced Congress to block the proposal.
Historic Hydraulics
● An ancient canal system along the arid coast of Peru is found to employ “concepts of fluid dynamics that Western hydrologists only began to implement during the last 100 years,” according to engineer Charles Orloff of the General Electric Company. The system, about 400 miles long, was built by the Chimu civilization between 500 CE and 1200 CE. It irrigated 35 to 40 percent more land than the canal system in use now. However, due to movement of the earth’s crust, the ancient canals were cut off from their source of water in the Andes. Scientists believe that the resultant loss of crop land, along with periodic floods, probably accounted for the demise of that ancient civilization.
Pregnancy Illness for Men
● The Annals of Internal Medicine reports that a recent study finds that 22.5 percent of men with expectant wives suffer from the couvade syndrome—headaches, nausea, upset stomach, vomiting and cramps. Though the syndrome has been documented as far back as Roman times, it has traditionally been viewed as a rarity. Thus, the report suggests that physicians should be more aware of this fact in treating their male patients. In as many as 85 percent of the cases studied, the doctors had not been aware that the men were expectant fathers. If the facts had been known, a lot of unnecessary treatment could have been avoided.
Growing Space Sickness
● Amid all the clamor and glamor of spaceflights, few people are aware of a new problem that has space agencies, both American and Russian, worried—space sickness. Strangely, in the early days of spaceflights, few astronauts or cosmonauts ever got sick in space. With the Skylab project the number increased. By the time of the space-shuttle flights, two of the first three flights were plagued with sick astronauts. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration fears that half of all the astronauts it puts in orbit will become space sick in spite of careful selection and rigorous training.
Equality for Baldness
● “There has been a dramatic increase in hair loss among women,” said the managing director of an Australian firm that makes wigs for people who suffer from baldness due to medical reasons. Three years ago only 15 percent of the firm’s customers were women. Now they make up about 35 percent of the total. “It’s due mainly to the increase in stress-related disorders,” he said. “With all this equal opportunity, women are taking on tougher jobs and a greater role in business affairs.” Other reasons for clinical hair loss, according to the director, are accidents and burns, brain surgery, drugs and the side effects of cancer therapy.
Mother’s Rights
● For six days and six nights a mother of five sat outside her house in a lawn chair through heavy rain and 90-degree heat—on strike against her family. Why? “They forget to talk to me. They forget to kiss me. They didn’t think of me as a person. They thought of me as a mother, and, therefore, I owed them something.” The strike ended only when the last of the children, a sixteen-year-old daughter, gave in and signed mother’s list of demands, agreeing not to treat her as a taxi driver, loan officer or twenty-four-hour cook but to show affection and appreciation. But why had the daughter previously refused to sign? “Peer pressure,” said the mother. “Her friends were telling her that if their mothers did it, they wouldn’t sign. They’re making it difficult for her to give in.” Apparently the agreement worked. “Tommy brought me home a dozen long-stemmed roses and a card that said, ‘I’m glad you’re you,’” said the mother. “I cried for hours over that.”
“Holy” Tortilla
● One October afternoon five years ago, a Spanish woman in Lake Arthur, a small town in southeastern New Mexico, was making lunch for her husband. Suddenly, as the account goes, what looked like the face of Jesus appeared on a tortilla frying in her pan. Reckoning that a miracle had taken place, her husband told her to get the priest, who blessed the tortilla. Word soon got around, and people from far and near came to pay their respects and pray for their sick. To date, over ten thousand persons, some from as far away as California and Mexico, have come. And over a hundred letters, including a few from Europe, have been received, requesting prayers to be said for as many assorted ailments.
Cathedral of Athens Bombed
● A bomb exploded in the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Church of Athens recently, causing damage to glass panes of certain big icons. Despite intense efforts, police were unable to find those responsible. However, an organization called Iconoclasts-Nihilists took the responsibility for the explosion. A short distance from the point of the blast, the following words were written: “Down with despotocracy. We want pastors, not faithless persons.”
Computerized Taxis
● Taxi riders and drivers in four Canadian cities will no longer be troubled by the nerve-racking bursts from the dispatcher’s radio. Several lines have switched to computer dispatching, sending silent messages to the cabby on a video screen in the cab. By pushing a few buttons the driver gets on his screen a list of cab zones with the number of empty cabs in each. By pressing another button he then tells the computer which zone he is going to. When a call comes in, the exact location of the fare comes onto his screen and no one else’s—no danger of someone beating him to the fare. One channel on the computer can handle as many as 500 taxis compared with 150 on a radio channel. Taxi companies in the US are looking into the system.
Tea for Teeth
● Two dentists in Hamburg, Germany, have found that drinking tea without sugar can help fight tooth decay. The reason is that tea, especially the type grown in Java and Kenya, is rich in fluoride. They caution, however, that tea drinking is no substitute for brushing and checkups.