Moral issues

Holy Archangels’ Monastery near Prizren, Serbia

Neda doesn’t like talking about the rift with her parents. The denim-clad 24-year-old bows her head and shrugs; she cannot understand why her family disapproves of her lifestyle.

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Christianity Today Nigel M. de S. Cameron April 27, 2006

For years, some of us have been saying that the issues raised by advances in biotechnology will dominate the 21st century—not just because new technology is always fascinating, but also because they will become the key issues in our culture and our politics. Think of the culture war over abortion, and then think much, much bigger. We will move from taking human life to making and finally faking human life—by design.

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BBC April 24, 2000

Russia’s population fell by more than half a million, or 0.3%, in the first eight months of the year, new statistics show.
Figures from the State Statistics Committee predict a further population decline of 11 million, to about 134 million, in the world’s largest country by 2015.

“It’s altogether a pretty terrible situation,” said Moscow-based journalist Oleg Glebov.

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San Francisco Chronicle Bob Egelko April 18, 2006

UC Hastings College of the Law is entitled to deny funding and official recognition to a Christian student group because it bars gays, lesbians and non-Christians as members, a federal judge ruled Monday. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White rejected the Christian Legal Society’s arguments that Hastings’ denial of student activity funds and its refusal to let the society use the school name and certain facilities at the San Francisco campus violated freedom of speech, religion and association. Hastings’ nondiscrimination policy, which the school cited in denying recognition to the religious group, “regulates conduct, not speech,” White said.

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Townhall.com Randy Hall April 7, 2006

Legislation approved Wednesday by the California Senate Judiciary Committee is “a sexual-agenda bomb dressed up as a child-caring Easter egg,” a conservative group charged.

SB 1437, which would amend the state’s education code by adding the words “gender” and “sexual orientation” to its anti-discrimination policy, would force school districts to “teach school children as young as kindergarten to accept and embrace transsexuality, bisexuality and homosexuality in all its forms,” according to Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families (CCF).

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MosNews

The Moscow Patriarchate has suspended relations with the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Sweden after it decided to establish an official ceremony to bless homosexual couples, the Interfax news agency reported on Tuesday.

“We have received with great disappointment and grief the news that not only does the Lutheran Church of Sweden not oppose so-called homosexual marriages, but has even ruled to establish an official blessing ceremony,” the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church said in a statement at a session in Moscow.
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By Scott Carney

India has been the focus of medical research since the time when sunburned men with pith helmets and degrees from prestigious European medical schools came to catalog tropical illnesses.

The days of the Raj are long gone, but multinational corporations are riding high on the trend toward globalization by taking advantage of India’s educated work force and deep poverty to turn South Asia into the world’s largest clinical-testing petri dish.

The sudden influx of drug companies to India resembles the gold rush frontier, according to Sean Philpott, managing editor of The American Journal of Bioethics.

“Not only are research costs low, but there is a skilled work force to conduct the trials,” he said. In the rush to reap profits, Philpott cautions that drug companies may not be sensitive to how poverty can undermine the spirit of informed consent. “Individuals who participate in Indian clinical trials usually won’t be educated. Offering $100 may be undue enticement; they may not even realize that they are being coerced,” he said.

For decades, pharmaceutical research in India didn’t rely on clinical testing. Scientists mostly reverse-engineered drugs already developed in other countries. But in March, everything changed when India submitted to pressure from the World Trade Organization to stop the practice and implement rules that prohibit local companies from creating generic versions of patented drugs.

Now, pharmaceutical companies can rest assured they won’t lose profits to a domestic market, and India is suddenly a profitable location for performing the expensive tests required for Food and Drug Administration clearance of any drug. Though it is still too soon to tell how much the legislative change has boosted drug development, observers say the number of studies conducted by multinational drug companies has sharply increased since March.

Given the rising cost of drug research in the United States and Europe, more and more drug companies are conducting clinical trials in developing countries where government oversight is more lax and research can be done for a fraction of the cost. According to a 2004 study by Rabo India Finance, a subsidiary of the Netherlands-based Rabo Bank, clinical trials account for more than 40 percent of drug-development costs. The study also found that performing the studies in India can bring the price down by about 60 percent.

By 2010, total spending on outsourcing clinical trials to India could top $2 billion, according to Ashish Singh, vice president of Bain & Co., a consulting firm that reports on the health-care industry.

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This is the outline of a story in the last issue of “National Review.” Unfortunately I cannot find the story online. All the media missed it. Read it the next time you are at B&N.

In a remarkable article in a recent issue of National Review, Lou Dolinar, a retired Newsday reporter, provides an account of rescue operations in Katrina’s aftermath. He indicates more than 50,000 people were saved by boat or helicopter during Katrina Week. He states that the lower-than-expected number of casualties was due to the effectiveness of these rescue operations.

He cited a Washington Post poll that indicated 40 percent of survivors who had relocated to Houston– which extrapolates to about 40,000-50,000 people– had been rescued.
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Wall Street Opinion Journal John Fund Monday, September 26, 2005

In Katrina’s wake, Louisiana’s political culture needs a cleanup too.

Perhaps no footage from Hurricane Katrina was replayed more often than the “Meet the Press” clip of Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, La., telling Tim Russert that bureaucrats had “committed murder” in the storm’s aftermath. He sobbed as he told about a colleague’s mother drowning in her nursing home after begging her son on the phone for four days to save her from the rising waters. Talk show host Don Imus said he had never seen such gripping testimony on TV in his life.

But MSNBC.com later found the story didn’t hold up. Eva Rodrigue, the 92-year-old mother of Thomas Rodrique, the parish’s emergency services director, did drown–but not because federal or state officials failed to rescue her. Mr. Rodrique said his mother died the day of the hurricane because the nursing home’s owners ignored commands to evacuate. The owners are now under indictment for negligent homicide. Mr. Rodrique says his mother never spoke with him, and he can’t explain why his boss, Mr. Broussard, got it so wrong.
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