Watching the World

Teen-Age Surgeons

◆ Sterilization is a means often used in efforts to curb the rapidly growing population of Bangladesh. Now, according to a volunteer nurse who worked there, even that country’s teen-agers are successfully sterilizing women by means of tubal ligation on a wide scale. She writes in England’s Nursing Mirror that, although some of the youths cannot read or write, they are trained to sever and tie a woman’s fallopian tubes while she is undergoing abdominal surgery and is under local anesthesia.

Heavy Breathing

◆ “All residents of Mexico City,” says the local director of Forensic Medical Services, “have pulmonary problems due to the high level of air pollution.” Autopsies of 7,500 cadavers in 1977 revealed this fact. The city’s 60,000 industries and 1.5 million automobiles are said to pour 650 tons of pollution into the local atmosphere each day. Fumes from many 20- to 30-year-old cars are responsible for much of the pollution.

Fat on Foot?

◆ According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the average American man weighs four pounds more than he did in a survey taken 10 years before the most recent one. The average American woman weighs a pound more. Men are said to be an average of 20 to 30 pounds overweight and women an average of 15 to 30 pounds overweight in various age categories. Heart disease, diabetes and some respiratory disorders are often the consequences of extra weight.

Fastest Train

◆ The Japanese National Railway has completed what is said to be “the world’s first successful test run of a linear motor [rail] car,” says Tokyo’s Daily Yomiuri. By magnetic repulsion, the train is floated above and propelled along a single rail. Since there is no track friction, much higher speeds are attainable, up to about 500 kilometers (300 miles) per hour, whereas conventional trains are limited to about 300 kilometers (180 miles) per hour. It is hoped that the speedy train will be competitive in cost with conventional air and rail transport.

Music or Madness?

◆ A 19-year-old Japanese girl recently was crushed to death when 2,000 screaming fans rushed toward a British rock group performing in Sapporo. Others were injured. “I saw some people about 17 to 18 rows from the front toppled over like dominoes,” said a guard.

Unusual Birth

◆ A healthy baby was recently born in Amarillo, Texas (U.S.A.), to a mother who was unconscious during the last three weeks of pregnancy. The woman had suffered a heart attack, which left her in a coma with severe brain damage, according to doctors. She was kept alive in intensive care after the attack.

Mining the Sea

◆ In what is claimed to be a first, Japanese scientists report success this year in extracting lithium from seawater. The Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute says that there are 250 billion tons of this lightest of metals in the sea, at a concentration of about .1 gram (.004 ounce) per ton. Japan must now import over 3,000 tons of carbonic lithium a year.

Success in extracting strontium from seawater also was achieved, and it is hoped that working plants to do this on a large scale will be operational by 1985. Yearly, Japan imports about 1,000 tons of this material for use in radio and television manufacture and fireworks.

Death by Error

◆ “Despite precautions and protocols,” says the Canadian medical magazine Dimensions in Health Service, “errors in blood banking whether administrative or technical result in serious incompatible transfusion reactions or death. The mortality rate from such errors in the United States has been estimated to be one death per 1,000 transfusions.”

“Transfusion errors carry more serious consequences than other forms of drug therapy,” continues the journal, “as it is virtually impossible to remove incompatible blood from the body once it has been administered.” One safeguard against such errors, the magazine notes, is to reduce the total number of transfusions by paying particular attention “to the justification of single unit transfusions.”

Music and Muscles

◆ Former professor of psychiatry Dr. John Diamond has found that in over 90 percent of persons that he tested electronically a certain rock rhythm instantly caused more than two thirds of their normal muscle strength to be lost. The rhythm, called “stopped anapestic,” is said to be found in about half of rock songs that become hits. Dr. Diamond believes that the rock beat, being the exact inverse of the heart and arterial rhythm, may upset brain synchronism, thereby inducing temporary weakness​—the “Diamond Effect.” Now, according to the Medical Tribune, Dr. Diamond is investigating “the industrial ramifications of the Diamond Effect after reading that productivity increased 15% and error declined 15% when a Yonkers, N.Y. [U.S.A.], factory switched its background music from rock to easy listening.”

Black Rings

◆ The recently discovered rings around the planet Uranus caused quite a stir among astronomers. However, the rings will be very hard to observe. Recent attempts to photograph them reveal “only the slightest suggestion of a ring image,” according to New Scientist magazine. Unlike the reflective water-ice-coated particles in Saturn’s beautiful rings, the particles in the rings of Uranus are thought to be dark and composed of bare material similar to the surface of that planet’s moons.

Heart Attack?​—Cough!

◆ California heart researchers have reported to the American Heart Association that coughing may aid a person undergoing a heart attack to remain conscious until medical help arrives. Their studies indicate that coughing at one- to three-second intervals may help to maintain cardiac blood flow. “It’s conceivable that this technique could have wide applicability among cardiac patients at high risk of sudden death,” one of the researchers told a Medical Tribune reporter. “We would speculate that a patient, recognizing that he was going into ventricular fibrillation [resulting from a heart attack]​—that ‘sinking feeling’—​could cough his way to a phone and call for help​—and continue coughing until help arrived.”​—Jan. 25, 1978, p. 1.

“Gay Victory”?

◆ When the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed homosexuality from its official list of disorders, homosexuals hailed the move as “the greatest gay victory.” However, according to the Washington Post, there has been continuing debate among psychiatrists as to whether the APA action was based more on homosexual pressuring than on scientific evidence. A new survey by the magazine Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality indicates that this may be so. To the question “Is homosexuality usually a pathological [diseased] adaptation (as opposed to a normal variation)?” almost 70 percent of the first 2,500 psychiatrists who responded said “yes.” The Bible agrees, calling homosexual practices “abnormal and unnatural.”​—Rom. 1:26, 27, Phillips.

New Pyramid?

◆ Work has begun to level the site for a new pyramid modeled after the great pyramid of Cheops. The Egyptian government gave permission to Japanese archaeologist Sakuji Yoshimura to build a one-fifteenth scale replica about four miles (6 kilometers) south of the original. “There are thousands of theories about how they were built and what was their purpose,” observed the program producer for Nippon Television, which is sponsoring the project. “But no one has tried before to find out by the use of his own muscles.” Stones will be hand cut and dressed with tools similar to those of the ancient Egyptians, but fork-lift trucks will put them in place. The replica is to be demolished after studies and photographing are completed.

Witch Doctors Upgraded

◆ The African Kingdom of Swaziland has given “‘witchdoctors’ the same status as Western-trained medical men,” reports the London Daily Telegraph. The UN-affiliated World Health Organization has encouraged such recognition, noting that adequate health care cannot be achieved in Africa without the help of such “traditional healers.” “A move is under way to give witchdoctors professional status” in Zambia, says the Telegraph, and “Nigeria has also decided to build a joint school of traditional medicine and a normal teaching hospital in Lagos.”

Acacias for Chad

◆ The Central African country of Chad was hard hit by the long drought a few years ago. One program launched to help to restore the dry, denuded land was an acacia-planting project. Until now, 8,750 acres (3,540 hectares) of these hardy trees have been planted, and farmers are learning to appreciate their value. “The acacia was chosen because it is an extraordinarily suitable tree for semi-arid lands,” notes the London Times. “The tree has a reverse deciduous cycle and gives shade and humus to the soil when everything else is long since dead and parched and it remains leafless when other vegetation is available as fodder.” No doubt such qualities made acacia wood one of the major building materials available to the Israelites for construction of their portable tabernacle in the wilderness of Sinai.​—Ex. chaps. 25-27, 35-38.

$5,000 Meal

◆ Until this year, the world’s most expensive meal was eaten in France two years ago by New York Times food critic Craig Claiborne and a friend. Cost: about $4,000 (U.S.). But on December 14, 1977, New York restaurant owner Peter Cipolla and a companion consumed $5,004.20 worth of food and drink at New York’s Palace restaurant, establishing a new cost peak. New York magazine observes than the $5,000 dinner, “by even the most liberal calculations, ran nearly $1,000 above what it costs to feed a family of four in the United States for an entire year. . . . Further, out of the 158 world nations, 136 have a family per-capita yearly income of less than $5,000.”

Church ‘Ambiguous on War’

◆ In a speech to cardinals, bishops and laity assembled for a World Day of Peace observance, Roman Catholic sociologist Gordon Zahn “blasted church leadership for what he called a ‘confused and ambiguous performance on the issues of war and peace.’”​—National Catholic Reporter, Jan. 27, 1978, p. 20.

The Catholic newspaper also reported that “Zahn declared instruction and training in the arts of war, such as ROTC [Reserve Officers’ Training Corps] programs, at Catholic colleges should be ‘as unthinkable as instruction and training in techniques of abortion.’”

Italian Priests Strike

◆ Fifty priests recently went on strike to protest a Vatican order transferring their four churches to another diocese, arousing old regional loyalties. “I’m at home and I am abstaining from work,” said one of the striking priests. “I’m not ringing the bell. I don’t say mass. Only in rare cases do I go to visit the sick.”

Teen-Agers in the Kitchen

◆ With over 50 percent of mothers in the United States working, more and more teenage girls are in the kitchen, taking over some of their mothers’ chores. More than 10 million teen-age girls prepare an average of 11 meals a week for their families and themselves. About half of the teenagers work up their own menu.