Watching the World
Religious Freedom Upheld in India
“The Supreme Court of India has held that no one can be forced to join in the singing of the national anthem, if the person has a genuine, conscientious religious objection,” reports India Abroad. The court ordered that the three children of Jehovah’s Witnesses who were expelled from school for not singing the anthem be readmitted. The judges observed that the children always stood and listened respectfully when the anthem was sung but did not participate in singing “because their religion does not permit them to join any rituals except it be in their prayers to Jehovah, their God.” The expulsion of the children, said the court, was a violation of their constitutional right to religious freedom. The Supreme Court added: ‘Our tradition, philosophy and Constitution teach and practice tolerance. Let us not dilute it.’
Inconsiderate of the Elderly
“Before the vacation trip starts, the dog is put into the public dog kennels and grandfather into the hospital.” This is how Peter Breitenfellner, assistant medical director of a hospital in Linz, Austria, characterized a new trend. According to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, hospitals registered an increased number of elderly patients during vacation time this summer. In several cases, the elderly were deliberately made sick. “Sometimes a diabetic was not given his daily insulin so that he had to be hospitalized. Or we had cases when heart medication was withheld from old people to ensure hospitalization,” said the doctor.
Firearms Peril
“The advisability of keeping firearms in the home for protection must be questioned,” says an article in The New England Journal of Medicine. Why? In reviewing the 743 gun-related deaths that occurred in King County, Washington, during a six-year period, it was found that 54 percent of them took place in homes where a firearm was kept. Of these 398 deaths, only 18 involved self-defense or the killing of someone who was engaged in a felony. The vast majority were suicides, homicides, or accidental deaths of someone in the household. About half of all United States homes are said to have at least one firearm.
Burnout Syndrome
What is “burnout syndrome”? It is “a symptom that appears when dedication to a goal is not rewarded” and that shows up with feelings of exhaustion, failure, and self-hatred, says Japan’s Mainichi Daily News. When 498 Japanese doctors and nurses were surveyed with regard to their mental health, the results showed that about 37 percent of the nurses had some sort of mental disorder and almost 32 percent were suffering from burnout. Among the doctors, psychiatrists were the most seriously affected. Almost a quarter of them “were in a state of serious burn-out,” reports the paper.
Counterfeit-Proof Paper
Will counterfeit-proof paper spell the end of photocopy fraud? Bankers and businessmen are hoping so, reports The Sunday Times of London. According to Lloyd’s shipping information services, £4 billion a year is lost worldwide through forgery. Some banks lose more money through photocopied checks and bonds than in armed robbery. Book and sheet-music publishers have also lost fortunes because of piracy. The new “Laserprint Security Paper” is forgery proof, says the article, because it “incorporates an optical illusion that is invisible to the naked eye but which, if photocopied, shows the word COPY on the paper. Each sheet of paper also contains an elaborate watermark and a serial number.” If successful in Europe, the new paper will be sold worldwide.
Airport Malaria
Over the past few years, “airport malaria” has been observed in several countries. Five customs officers in Belgium recently came down with it, and one of them died. “Plasmodium, the parasite responsible for malaria, is injected by the female of the anopheles genus,” explains the French daily Le Figaro. A tropical mosquito from a contaminated area and carrying plasmodium may enter the airplane on arrival and bite someone at the airport. Or a European or American mosquito may bite someone who has malaria, draw off the plasmodium, and infect another person.
New Aspects of AIDS
Health experts attending the second international congress on AIDS, held in Paris last June, stated that various types of viruses exist for the disease, requiring a specific new vaccine for each type. Two of the specialists compared AIDS with influenza. Comments French weekly Valeurs Actuelles: “Influenza viruses are particularly unstable, . . . so a new ‘vaccine cocktail’ has to be prepared each year in a given area in order to deal with them. As AIDS viruses are much less stable than influenza viruses, an infinitely greater variety of ‘cocktails’ will have to be concocted at a faster pace.” The World Health Organization estimates that there are some one hundred thousand AIDS cases worldwide at present, with one to 3 million AIDS carriers in the United States and 10 to 15 million in Africa. The future looks dark considering that “four to seven percent of carriers develop AIDS annually.”
Guard Geese
The U.S. Army’s 32nd Air Defense Command in the Federal Republic of Germany has “recruited” a gaggle of geese for guard duty. According to the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, eventually the Army plans to engage 900 geese to watch its communications, radar, and air-defense equipment in the Federal Republic of Germany. “They are to serve as a natural warning system,” said the Command’s spokesman in Darmstadt, Major Joe Padilla. “Whenever they notice something strange close by, they raise a lot of noise.” Geese have an acute sense of hearing and sound the alarm by loudly hissing and honking and flapping their wings. The cost of the entire goose patrol is said to be less than that of a single trained guard dog.
Death by Passive Smoking
The family of a nonsmoking woman has been awarded compensation by Sweden’s Insurance Court of Appeal after it ruled that passive smoking had been “the probable cause” of her death. This is “a first decision of its kind,” states World Health magazine. For almost 20 years, Mrs. Gun Palm shared an office in Stockholm with smoking colleagues. In 1980, at age 53, she developed lung cancer of a type that usually only smokers contract. She died in February 1982. The director of Sweden’s National Smoking and Health Association said that the decision will “effectively contribute to strengthening the measures to create smoking-free environments.”
Heading for Six Billion
Earth’s population passed the five billion mark in July 1986, reports The New York Times. Werner Fornos, president of the Population Institute in Washington, D.C., was quoted as saying that the birth of the five billionth person was “a sobering symbol of the shocking rapidity at which the world’s population is multiplying.” It took until 1850 for earth’s population to reach one billion. It passed the second billion in 1930, the third in 1960, the fourth in 1974, and now, just 12 years later, it stands at five billion. If the population continues to increase at the present rate, the six billionth person will be born before the 21st century.
Do You Have Trouble Sleeping?
About 30 percent of older people complain they have trouble sleeping, reports The New York Times. “Yet some who think they have sleep problems may simply be experiencing the normal changes in sleep patterns that accompany aging.” While a child of four sleeps an average of ten hours nightly, teenagers nine hours, and young adults seven or eight, the elderly normally sleep four to six hours, and many get along fine on just three or four hours each night. “Sleep becomes lighter and more fitful with age,” the article adds. “This is neither good nor bad; it is simply normal.” For persons who persistently have trouble sleeping at night, moderate exercise at least two hours before bedtime, a relaxing bath, cutting down daytime naps, watching eating habits, and avoiding caffeine are among the things suggested. Reminds sleep expert Dr. Nathaniel Kleitman: “No one ever died of insomnia.”
90-Year-Old Mother
Last July “a 90-year-old woman Luxmi, wife of 92-year-old Asha Ram, gave birth to a baby girl” in the Indian village of Kalwasia, reports the Bombay newspaper Times of India. The newborn infant died soon after birth.
Overbreathing
Overbreathing, or hyperventilation, can bring on the symptoms of heart attack, impending stroke, or stomach disorder, reports Asiaweek magazine. It may also induce anxiety, phobias, sweating, palpitations, chest pain, visual disturbances, dizziness, asthma, gastric upsets, migraine, mental disorientation, numbness, and loss of concentration. Some people take 20 or 30 breaths a minute, while 12 to 14 is the norm. Athletes, actors, singers, wind instrumentalists, and compulsive people are most at risk. Yet, according to chest specialist Dr. Claude Lum, three out of four patients who hyperventilate can be taught to breathe correctly. Trying breath control through yoga, though, would be “swapping one extreme for another,” doctors warn.
The Earlier the Better
“By junior high, it is probably too late” to teach children effectively the dangers of smoking, says a manual prepared by Japan’s Education Ministry. The ministry is trying to counteract the recent increase in minors who smoke. The manual is designed to be used in elementary school and includes facts and figures proving the dangers of smoking. The manual, however, appears to be somewhat ambiguous because it emphasizes that children should not “pass judgment on smoking as a social evil.”