Watching the World
Evangelist’s New Appeal
● In his latest fund-raising letter, TV evangelist Oral Roberts says that in a seven-hour conversation, Jesus told him: “I was going to give you a plan that will attack cancer in both a physical and spiritual way.” This “breakthrough” is to be realized in a yet unfinished 20-story research tower, part of Roberts’ $150-million City of Faith Medical Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, built with donations he solicited after his alleged vision two years ago of a 900-foot-tall (274 m) Jesus. Now, to finish the research center, Roberts says that Jesus’ instruction was: “Ask each friend and partner for $240 to be given now or to send $20 a month for the next 12 months. Do this until the full $240 is planted. Do as I tell you. Obey me.”
A cancer patient who received a copy of Roberts’ letter said she was “deeply disturbed by Roberts’ attempt to capitalize on the fears of those of us who are faced with a terminal disease. In my opinion it is both immoral and un-Christian.”
Lawyers’ Obligations
● The American Bar Association recently adopted an amendment to its code of legal ethics, requiring lawyers to keep their clients’ secrets even when they know their clients are committing fraud and crimes short of murder and bodily harm. Opponents protested that the new rule “offended ‘common sense and common morality’ and would aggravate the public reputation of lawyers as mouthpieces for crooked clients,” reports The New York Times. But lawyers in favor of the amendment argued that clients will not confide in their lawyers unless they know that the lawyers will not reveal their secrets. However, there are exceptions. Lawyers can disclose secrets if they are sued for malpractice or if a client refuses to pay his bill. “Thus,” says U.S. News & World Report, “the lawyers took care of their own interests, as they usually do when they act en masse, but the public comes out much worse off than ever.”
What Cost Armaments?
● The nations spend about $600,000,000,000 a year on armaments, according to the United Nations. To give some meaning to this colossal figure, Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar drew some comparisons:
“It cost WHO [World Health Organization] less than $100 million to eradicate smallpox.” This is considerably less than the amount spent on the development of an advanced air-to-air missile system.
“One half of one per cent” of that figure “would pay for much of the farm equipment needed by low-income and food-deficit countries to achieve self-sufficiency.”
“The price of two strategic bombers of the latest type, approximately $200 million, could sustain a world-wide literacy campaign.”
The total expenditure averages out to $112 for each person on earth. “This is more than the per capita gross domestic product of some developing countries.” It also works out at more than one million dollars a minute.
England’s Unreported Crime
● “Britain’s crime rate is a staggering four times higher than official figures,” reports the Daily Post of Liverpool. According to the recent British Crime Survey, people actually report to police just one out of five cases involving injury, robbery or sexual attacks. Many of those surveyed felt that police could do little to help.
No Rest in Hospitals
● Common sense would tell us that what a hospital patient needs most is rest and sleep. Yet a recent study, conducted by an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia School of Nursing, found that in a 24-hour period, patients in a respiratory intensive-care ward averaged only five and a half hours of sleep and experienced 40 disturbances. Patient-care procedures make up a large portion of the disruptions, the study found, but the majority (54 percent) of sleep disturbances were due to hospital noises, which include staff conversations (the single largest category), equipment alarms, intercoms, phones, doors, and so forth. Is all of this necessary? “With a little more awareness,” says the professor, “many of the problems could be reduced.”
Bird “Population Crash”
● About 14 million sooty terns, 1.5 million wedge-tailed shearwaters and about one million birds of 16 other species have either died or left Christmas Island, a mid-Pacific atoll, leaving thousands of nestlings to die. Though the exact cause is unknown, authorities surmise that El Niño, the abnormal weather system that lashed California and South America recently, has caused both the level and the temperature of the sea in the area to rise. This, in turn, has driven away the fish and squid that are the principal food supply of the birds. “The ‘population crash’ is probably the largest of its kind ever recorded, and the first near-total disappearance of a major bird population recorded on a tropical island,” says The Washington Post.
Children’s Language
● “The use of bad language by primary school children has ‘exploded,’” reports New Zealand’s Auckland Star. Describing the strong language of seven- or eight-year-olds as “much more explicit,” the liaison officer of the Auckland Federation of Parent Teachers Association said: “The words are used freely and with great skill. You would almost expect the children to know what the words mean.” Parents blame the schools, saying that their children pick up such language in the classrooms. School officials put the blame on parents who “are too lazy to correct their children’s language.” And everyone blames television: “Many of our children are seeing programmes that simply were not designed for them.”
Deserved Discrimination
● Now interest-free small-business loans will not be granted to smokers in Malaysia. What does smoking have to do with loans? ‘If they can afford to buy cigarettes and smoke their money away, they do not need the government loans,’ according to Sanusi Junid, minister of National and Rural Development. And the government will not take a loan applicant’s word for it. Medical tests will determine whether he uses tobacco.
“Honorable” Tax Evaders
● “In a sample of 400 [private-duty] nurses, more than 90% failed to report all their income [to the IRS (Internal Revenue Service)],” reports Time magazine. “The average nurse owes $3,500 in back taxes.” What kind of people are these? “We’re talking about hardworking people in an honorable profession,” said a New York City IRS official. This year many such “honorable” U.S. citizens, along with those not so honorable, will evade an estimated $100 billion in income taxes.
● Over in Sweden, says the Observer News Service of London, “the international image of the Swede as an honest, dependable, hardworking . . . citizen has taken a severe knock” with recent revelations of dishonesty. Adult Swedes reportedly cheat an average of $720 (U.S.) on their income taxes, and authorities are said to be complaining of an “economic crime wave.”
Rome Toppled by Lead?
● Lead poisoning may well have contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire, says Canadian medical researcher Dr. Jerome Nriagu. Roman food and wine contained so much lead, the researcher estimates, that the aristocrats, noted for their orgies and drinking matches, might daily have been consuming six or more times as much lead as modern safety standards would allow. He also points out that two thirds of the Roman emperors from 30 B.C.E. to 220 C.E. were afflicted with nervous and digestive disorders, arthritis or gout, inability to concentrate, poor memory, and even mental retardation, delirium and convulsion, all of which are symptoms of lead poisoning. The “coexistence” of these two factors, says Dr. Nriagu, “has not been previously recognized.”
Suicide in “Paradise”
● Though the idyllic islands of Micronesia may be many people’s idea of paradise, there is a more sinister side to them. There “young men are killing themselves at one of the highest rates in the world,” reports The New York Times. Males between the ages of 15 and 25 on Truk Island have a suicide rate of 250 per 100,000, which is 20 times the rate for youth in the United States. The suicides were often triggered by “crazy little things.” A 16-year-old boy hanged himself because his father would not give him one dollar, and a 13-year-old boy did the same after his mother scolded him. Though researchers are hard put to find an explanation for such actions, they note “a pattern of poor family relations,” and “a long-term intolerable situation.”
Millions More Addicts
● By government standards, many millions can be added to the list of drug addicts in the United States. A new pamphlet by the Office on Smoking and Health entitled Why People Smoke Cigarettes labels smoking “the most widespread example of drug dependence in our country.” As one proof, it points to continued massive use of tobacco despite public awareness of the health danger involved.
“Sick Joke”
● “It amazes me that this sick joke could happen,” said Wanda Ishmael, a 55-year-old schoolteacher, after five hours of emergency treatment at the hospital. “My face flushed and I couldn’t focus my eyes. I knew I was unable to walk out of the classroom. And then the horrible realization came to me. I had been drugged by one of my students.” The doctors confirmed that she had eaten marijuana-laced brownies served by her 10th-grade students. The occasion? A welcome-back party for the teacher who had just returned after undergoing major cancer surgery.
Better Sober Than Dead?
● A nation-wide drive to raise the minimum drinking age appears to be under way in the United States. Twenty states have already advanced the minimum age from 18 by one to three years, and this year 26 states will consider restoring the limit to 21. The reason? An average of 5,000 teenagers die each year in alcohol-related car accidents in the United States, and the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report shows that “young drivers (ages 16 to 24 years), constituting 17% of the U.S. population, were involved in accidents resulting in 48% of the fatalities.” The drive to raise the minimum drinking age has had “dramatic” results thus far, reports Time magazine. “In at least eight states, a higher drinking age was followed by a 28% reduction in nighttime fatal accidents involving 18- to 21-year-olds,” says the report.