Watching the World
Distrust of Government
“People all over the world are losing faith in the system,” claimed The Washington Post recently, adding, “Everywhere, government is a dirty word.” Commenting on a number of public opinion polls taken in recent years, the paper noted: “From Canada to Japan and points in between, sometimes staggering majorities of citizens are telling polltakers that their country’s government can’t be trusted, that their nation’s economy is on the rocks and that things will only get worse, not better.” In France, for example, some 60 percent of those polled expected things to get worse in the future, while nearly the same proportion expressed dissatisfaction with the way the country is governed. In Italy about 75 percent felt that the State was not functioning as well as it was five or ten years ago. In Canada more than half felt that the next generation would be in even worse economic condition than their own.
The Power of Placebos
Medical researchers have long held that about one third of patients tend to show some improvement when given a placebo, a treatment with no real medicinal value. However, a new study has shown that placebos can have a much more powerful effect. The New York Times reported recently that scientists at La Jolla, California, U.S.A., studied nearly 7,000 patients who had been given new, experimental treatments that were later found to be medically useless. The study showed that two thirds of the patients improved, at least temporarily, in response to the treatments. While this placebo effect may, in some cases, involve an actual biological improvement, scientists caution that it sometimes reflects the patient’s own desire to please the physician by reporting improvement. Thus, some researchers cite this study as a reason to impose stricter testing on new medications.
Sniffing Out the Leaks
Tiny leaks in buried pipelines may not garner the publicity that major ruptures and spills do, but they still cost industry millions of dollars each year and cause “insidious, invisible pollution,” reports National Geographic magazine. One Canadian company has found an unusual solution to the problem—they use dogs, Labrador retrievers, to sniff out such pinhole leaks in pipelines carrying oil, natural gas, and chemicals. First, an especially foul-smelling chemical is pumped into a section of pipe suspected of leakage. Then the dogs go to work. Geographic reports: “They can sniff the chemical escaping from pipes buried as deep as 18 feet [5 m]. In a Louisiana swamp [the] dogs stood on small boats and detected the odor from leaking chemical lines under six feet [1.8 m] of water and five feet [1.5 m] of earth.” The magazine adds: “The dogs are on call worldwide.”
The Rain Gods Disappoint
Faced with severe drought, the government of the state of Andhra Pradesh in southeastern India recently resorted to an unusual tactic to bring rain. According to India Today magazine, the state government subsidized “the ancient Vedic ritual of propitiating the rain gods.” Reasoned the state’s Endowments Minister: “God will come to our rescue.” Priests from 50 selected temples performed the rites for 11 days. The result? India Today reports: “The gods were obviously not impressed. . . . Religion having failed, the Government has now decided to go the scientific way. It has taken steps to create artificial rain” in a cloud-seeding experiment.
Compromise Upon Compromise
Both the Lutherans in the United States and the Methodists in Britain have recently addressed the issue of homosexuality. In Britain, a Methodist Conference reached a decision of sorts. They determined not to ordain homosexual men and women as ministers; at the same time, however, they declared that the church “recognises, affirms and celebrates the participation and ministry of lesbians and gay men in the Church.” In the United States, a task force of the Lutheran Church released a 21-page report designed to be sent to the church’s 19,000 pastors for their response. According to the Associated Press, the report asserts that the Bible supports homosexual unions. The report also claims that masturbation is “generally appropriate and healthy.” In this assertion and in this claim, the report contradicts the Bible’s position in these matters.—Romans 1:26, 27; 1 Corinthians 6:9, 10; Colossians 3:6, 7.
Tobacco Business Thrives in Russia
The tobacco business is booming in Russia and other former Soviet territories, reports Maclean’s magazine of Canada. There are about 70 million smokers in the former Soviet Union, or some 25 percent of the population, and they consume 350 billion cigarettes a year. And since former Soviet laws forbidding cigarette advertising are no longer in force, Western tobacco companies have flooded the media—radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, and billboards—with ads for their products. Although Western brands may cost from two to four times as much as local brands, they are often sought out as status symbols. Notes Maclean’s: “Government statistics show that some 500,000 Russians succumb yearly to lung cancer and other smoking-related illnesses.”
Hospital on Wheels
An unusual hospital has been helping the sick in India: a train called the Lifeline Express. Manned by volunteer doctors, the train is “a virtual hospital on wheels,” reports Asiaweek magazine. It rolls into villages and stops, from a month to a month and a half, giving its surgeons time to treat at least 600 patients before it moves on to the next village. Run by a nonprofit group called the Impact India Foundation, the mobile hospital has so far helped some 400,000 people. Zelma Lazarus of Impact India reports: “This project has mushroomed out of proportion. Other countries are now asking us to set up a similar mobile hospital system.”
Calculating the Hell-Bound
The Southern Baptists of Alabama, U.S.A., came under fire recently when they published an official estimate suggesting that 46.1 percent of the state’s population may go to the Baptist hell. Their report, published in The Birmingham News, gave a county-by-county breakdown of the state, listing by percentage how many in each were “unsaved.” According to the Associated Press, the Baptists simply subtracted church membership figures from the population of each county, then applied “a secret formula” to determine the number of people from other religions that they deemed likely to go to heaven as well. Their report met with harsh criticism from readers of The Birmingham News. Wrote one: “It is the pinnacle of presumptuousness to construct a formula for quantifying the unsaved.”
Upbuilding Experiences Help to Keep One Healthy
“Grueling stress and emotional problems lower the body’s resilience, whereas joy and pleasure stimulate the immune system and strengthen the resistance to illness.” That is how the German newspaper the Nassauische Neue Presse summarizes the evidence gathered by the new science of psychoneuroimmunology. Negative influences at work or at home weaken bodily resistance. On the other hand, according to Dr. Anton Mayr, a professor and microbiologist, positive emotions and experiences have a strengthening effect. Some examples he cited: “Faith, hope, love, trust, security, communication, positive stimulus in life, recreation—and the will to live and to be healthy.”
Corruption and Confession
Two Italian writers, pretending to be politicians or businessmen, asked dozens of Catholic priests for absolution from sins of corruption. They then published what the priests had to say to them in the confessional. Reports the newspaper La Repubblica: “The church considers that [the writers] have committed a sacrilege, and they have already been attacked and probably excommunicated for it.” But the paper adds that these phony confessions “demonstrate the real confusion, inadequacy, and indulgence of a good part of the 36,000 Italian priests, who often seem more interested in sexual rather than social sins.” Pino Nicotri, one of the writers, found that of the 49 priests to whom he “confessed,” only one refused him absolution and told him to report his crime to the authorities. Commented La Repubblica: “As far as the others are concerned, either bribes are not a sin, or else it is useless to go to a judge, since what counts is pardon from God.”
High Rate of Recovery
“Brazil’s profile has changed in recent years. From being a route for [narcotics] traffic, the country has also become a consumer and a producer,” explains Arthur Guerra de Andrade, specialist in alcoholism and drug addiction. According to O Estado de S. Paulo, drug abuse “affects 6 to 8 percent of the population.” In addition, “among youths of 12 to 16 years of age, 90 percent have used alcohol at least once.” Andrade adds: “The number of persons who reveal physical and psychological problems because of alcohol has increased 50 percent in the last ten years.” Furthermore, “about 25 percent of work accidents taking place in Brazil are related to drug abuse, especially alcohol.” On the more positive side, though, Brazil “has one of the world’s highest rates of recovery—60 to 80 percent of alcoholic workers.”