Worst Case: Choosing Who Survives in a Flu Epidemic

New York state health officials recently laid out this wrenching scenario for a small group of medical professionals from New York-Presbyterian Hospital:

A 32-year-old man with cystic fibrosis is rushed to the hospital with appendicitis in the midst of a worsening pandemic caused by the H1N1 flu virus, which has mutated into a more deadly form. The man is awaiting a lung transplant and brought with him the mechanical ventilator that helps him breathe.

New York’s governor has declared a state of emergency and hospitals are following the state’s pandemic ventilator allocation plan — actual guidelines drafted in 2007 that are now being revisited. The plan aims to direct ventilators to those with the best chances of survival in a severe, 1918-like flu pandemic where tens of thousands develop life-threatening pneumonia.

Because the man’s end-stage lung disease caused by his cystic fibrosis is among a list of medical conditions associated with high mortality, the guidelines would bar the man from using a ventilator in a hospital, even though he is, unlike many with his illness, stable, in good condition, and not close to death. If the hospital admits him, the guidelines call for the machine that keeps him alive to be given to someone else.

Would doctors and nurses follow such rules? Should they? Continue Reading »

Schools in South Africa are bursting with hopeful students, but the education system often fails those who most need it to escape poverty. Despite last year’s violent episode, students seem to feel genuine affection for their school and speak of their hunger for knowledge and their faith in education to bring a better life.

Sometimes there are those teachers who really, really understand:

Arthur Mgqweto, a math teacher, teaches more than 200 students each day for a salary of $15,000 a year. His students describe him as a friend, a mother, a father, a guide. “He comes early every, every, every day,” Blondie said. “He comes here early at 7 o’clock and he’s the last one to leave. He’s given himself to us.”

Mr. Mgqweto grew up in the countryside during the apartheid years, ashamed to go to school because he had no shoes. He finished high school in his 30s, sitting in class with children half his age. His only son was stabbed to death at age 21 in a nearby township. “I always explain to them, life is very hard,” he said. “They must get educated so they can take care of their families when they grow old.”

His students bake chocolate cakes with him on their birthdays. Dozens come an hour early on weekdays and for Saturday morning sessions with him. He is paid nothing for those extra hours, except in their gratitude. “I love that teacher,” said Olwethu, the student leader. “I love him.”

I highly recommend reading the New York Times articke by CELIA W. DUGGER (here)

This is an embarrassment and an insult to human intelligence.

It is now even more evident that Obama is actually the only hope for such a mindless mob.

Watch this footage (click here).

You’ll laugh. Then cry.

Image provided by NASA, released Sept. 9, 2009, taken by the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope! (click here for images from The Age)

Michael Jackson as a father (link)

Michael with his children

Does it matter where babies come from?

(See prior article “India’s surrogate mother industry” October 13, 2008)

• by Sharon Gray, March 16, 2009

Like most two-month-old babies, Luke sleeps a lot, waking only to blink at the world and feed. He does not yet know that according to the Australian High Commission in New Delhi, he is the first Australian baby to be born of an Indian surrogate mother…

Continue Reading »

National Gallery of Victoria researchers are now confidant that a mystery painting they’ve held for 43 years is a portrait of Lucrezia Borgia by Italian Renaissance painter Dosso Dossi (circa 1486-1542).

Read article

In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.

“Talking with complete sentences there and also too talking in a way that ordinary Americans like Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder can’t really do there, I think needing to do that isn’t tapping into what Americans are needing also,” she said.

Millions of Americans who watched Mr. Obama’s appearance on CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday witnessed the president-elect’s unorthodox verbal tic, which had Mr. Obama employing grammatically correct sentences virtually every time he opened his mouth.

But Mr. Obama’s decision to use complete sentences in his public pronouncements carries with it certain risks, since after the last eight years many Americans may find his odd speaking style jarring.

According to presidential historian Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota, some Americans might find it “alienating” to have a president who speaks English as if it were his first language.

“Every time Obama opens his mouth, his subjects and verbs are in agreement,” says Mr. Logsdon. “If he keeps it up, he is running the risk of sounding like an elitist.”

The historian said that if Mr. Obama insists on using complete sentences in his speeches, the public may find itself saying, “Okay, subject, predicate, subject predicate — we get it, stop showing off.”

The president-elect’s stubborn insistence on using complete sentences has already attracted a rebuke from one of his harshest critics, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

Andy Borowitz is a comedian and writer whose work appears in The New Yorker and The New York Times, and at his award-winning humor site, BorowitzReport.com.