Watching the World
Adventist Controversy Sharpens
◆ “Plagiarism by foundress rocks Adventist Church,” declared a headline in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. The controversy centers around recent findings regarding the writings of the Church’s main founder, Mrs. Ellen G. White. She had claimed that her writings, from 1844 to 1915, were based on the many visions she had in which God’s voice supposedly instructed her on everything from Bible doctrine to matters of diet and dress. However, Adventist scholars have discovered that in her writings she had copied various other sources “more extensively than we had previously believed.” Desmond Ford, who was recently stripped of his ministerial credentials by the Church for challenging Mrs. White’s writings, said: “Her teachings have been misused as a basis for doctrine, almost as a substitute for the Bible.”
Former Adventist minister Walter Rea, who also was ousted after finding extensive evidence of her plagiarism, declared: “She copied and borrowed for almost everything. Some of this was known before, but not the immense extent of it. What we’ve now discovered magnifies it tremendously, much of it at the very heart of her theology.” He noted that a “shocking amount” of the plagiarism is being concealed from lay members of the Church, adding: “This [concealment] is more damaging than simply telling the truth. It’s not going to go away. It’s going to get worse.”
Save Your Wife—Don’t Smoke
◆ Results of Japanese research indicate that nonsmoking wives exposed to their husbands’ cigarette smoke developed lung cancer at a much higher rate than did those whose husbands did not smoke. Death rates from lung cancer were twice as high for nonsmoking wives of husbands who were heavy smokers. Where the wives also smoke, the incidence of lung cancer and diseases such as emphysema, bronchitis, heart trouble and pregnancy complications increases.
War Madness
◆ According to “World Military and Social Expenditures,” an annual survey by various groups, the nations spent more than $500 billion (U.S.) last year on armaments. The two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, already have about 50,000 nuclear weapons between them, enough to destroy the world many times over. Yet together they spend over $700 million a day to build up their arsenals.
‘Bad Guys Winning’
◆ “The brutal truth about crime in New York is that the police, the courts, and the prison system have given up,” claims New York magazine. It says that New York “is now an open city for criminals. There is no sustained, realistic enforcement of law left. The sheer number of crimes committed has overwhelmed a police department whose manpower has been cut by close to one-third since 1970. Criminals abound, and there are simply not enough cops to catch them, not enough prosecutors to charge them, not enough courtrooms in which to try them, and not enough jails to hold them.”
Statistics would seem to bear out these contentions. Murders jumped from 390 in 1960 to 1,787 in 1980. They increased 60 percent in the last decade, while the city’s population declined by one million. New York city now leads the nation in the number of violent street crimes and muggings, with 82,572 a year—226 a day. And more than 500 burglaries are committed daily.
The magazine adds: “Increasingly, radio cars are so overcommitted responding to shootings, stabbings, and armed robberies that victims and potential witnesses of other violence simply get tired of waiting and go home.” Appalling as the crime statistics are, it is pointed out that many more crimes are committed, but many victims feel it is pointless to report them.
Well-behaved Children
◆ Writing from Peking, a New York Times correspondent reported: “American visitors to China are continually impressed, indeed often amazed, by the almost universal good behavior of Chinese children. They are quiet, obedient, quick to follow their teachers’ instructions, and they seldom exhibit the boisterous aggressiveness or selfishness of American children. Nor do visitors often find the typical signs of anxiety and tension that many American children show. The Chinese children do not cry, whine, throw tantrums or suck their thumbs.”
How do the Chinese get their children to be so submissive? It is thought that this stems from the sense of closeness parents develop with their children. Also, the generally crowded living conditions make the child less independent. And early school training inculcates in them a greater tendency toward conformity and acceptance of authority. American psychologists who have visited China feel that parents and teachers tend to be warm, kind and attentive, but they train the young to be part of the group rather than just to act for their own benefit.
Reducing Heart Attacks
◆ Heart attacks kill more men in the Western world than all forms of cancer combined. The Lancet, a British publication, says that men who engage in vigorous exercise obtain significant protection against coronary heart disease. Over an eight-year period, men who exercised were found to have less than half as many heart attacks as did those who did not exercise. Also confirmed were other studies that show heart disease increasing with age, smoking and obesity. Just how does the exercise help? New Scientist comments: “As yet, there are few direct clues as to the mechanism of the protective effect. The current view is that peaks of high-intensity exercise may help to prevent the build up of obstructions in the vital coronary blood vessels or to increase the release into the blood stream of beneficial high-density lipoproteins.”
Vitamins, Minerals for Retarded
◆ Medical Tribune reports that in controlled experiments at Norfolk, Virginia, a team led by a research professor of psychology concluded that mentally retarded children made dramatic improvements in IQ, growth and vision after receiving a special supplement of vitamins and minerals for eight months. For example, one five-year-old child who formerly could say only single words such as “mama” was able to read a first-grade primer and recite from memory. Two children were transferred from programs for the mentally retarded to regular school grades. Of particular interest, says Medical Tribune, were the Down’s syndrome children whose physical appearance improved notably during the study. Favorable personality changes also took place. An unexpected result in four epileptic children was that not one of them had a seizure during the trial period. Further studies on the value of nutrition for such children are planned.
Credit Card Frauds
◆ A recent fradulent practice is for telephone solicitors to call people and offer them “vacation bargains” or various other products and services at low prices. The callers then agree to charge the items, and they ask the customer for his or her credit card number and expiration date. They then use this information, along with the name and address of the victim, to order products and services for themselves.
Childbirth Chair
◆ About 3,500 years ago, Israelite women used a “stool for childbirth.” (Ex. 1:16) For thousands of years, such stools or chairs were used when giving birth on the premise that women were intended to give birth sitting or squatting and not lying down. But in 1738 a French obstetrician proposed having women recline for delivery, and that system has been used in the West since then. However, the birthstool is making a comeback. It has been introduced at 150 hospitals in the United States. More doctors now recognize that delivering a baby in a position that makes use of gravity aids both the mother and the baby. The modern chair resembles a Danish molded chair set on a pedestal. A motor elevates, lowers and tilts the seat.
Dr. Warner Nash, of New York’s Lenox Hill hospital, stated: “Women naturally choose the vertical position, because that’s the way the expulsive forces of nature work. The sitting position is more comfortable, easier and faster. We have found that it shortens the second stage of labor—the delivery of the baby after the cervix is fully dilated—by 50 percent. Two-thirds of the women who have used it have pushed for less than 25 minutes, and most of the others for less than 45 compared to the hour or hour and a half it usually takes for a first birth.”
Japan’s Rising Delinquency
◆ Long noted for their disciplined society and low crime rate, Japanese authorities have expressed deep concern over the huge increase in juvenile offenders. Last year the number of young people who got into difficulty with the law reached 143,000, a record high over the past decade. For example, shoplifting offenses by minors jumped 30 percent over the previous year. Sexual offenses increased 74 percent. An editorial in the Daily Yomiuri commented: “Our social environment has spawned new types of crimes which are increasing. For example, 18,552 people were arrested for drug offenses last year and this is 11 times the number booked in 1970. . . . It is alarming that armed robbery, murder and arson committed by boys aged 14 or 15 showed conspicuous rises.” The newspaper cited the need to “keep our cities from turning into jungles like Western cities.”
Mother’s Milk Better
◆ Research at the Department of Biochemistry and Medicine at the University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee, found that human milk induces cells to make new genetic material (DNA) and to divide. However, milk substitutes tested had no effect at all on DNA synthesis.
Mechanical Bull Dangers
◆ In the United States, devices known as mechanical bulls have recently become more popular. The idea is to simulate a bucking bull ride as seen at rodeos. However, the mechanical bulls have begun to generate lawsuits from riders injured in falls. A Florida woman filed a $2-million lawsuit because she broke a vertebra in her neck when she fell from one of the devices. A Colorado man suffered a similar injury. Many others have suffered bruises and cuts.
Getting Second Opinion
◆ An eight-year study, headed by Dr. Eugene McCarthy of the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, revealed that when patients were required to get a second opinion regarding proposed surgery, one third of them were advised that surgery was not necessary. As a result, four out of five of these patients decided against the surgery first recommended by another doctor. McCarthy said that many of these candidates “would have represented needless surgery” had the original advice been taken. A Congressional study three years ago estimated that 2,400,000 Americans underwent unnecessary surgery each year at a cost of $4 billion and 11,900 lives lost.
However, this does not mean that getting a second opinion results in fewer overall cases of surgery. For example, in one Blue Cross survey, some 70 percent of the second opinions urged patients to go ahead with the surgery recommended by the first physician. Without that second opinion, many patients had been ignoring or rejecting the first doctor’s advice. Hopefully, the value of getting a second opinion lies in determining more carefully whether surgery is really needed.