Study: Killing kittens cuts cancer risk

Gentlemen, you may have heard that every time you pleasure yourself sexually, God kills a kitten. The guys from XXXChurch remind us of this reality -- based on the biblical story of Onan, whom God deemed wicked for "spilling his seed" so his brother's widow would not become pregnant -- in the PSA above.

What then to make of this report from the BBC that masturbation "may" cut cancer risks?

Men who ejaculated more than five times a week were a third less likely to develop prostate cancer later in life. ... Dr Giles said fewer ejaculations may mean the carcinogens build up.

"It's a prostatic stagnation hypothesis. The more you flush the ducts out, the less there is to hang around and damage the cells that line them."

A similar connection has been found between breast cancer and breastfeeding, where lactating appeared to "flush out" carcinogens, reduce a woman's risk of the disease, New Scientist reports.

Another theory put forward by the researchers is that ejaculation may induce prostate glands to mature fully, making them less susceptible to carcinogens.

To be sure, the next study on this topic will likely report auto-stimulation increases the risk of heart disease. Circumcision, for example, is a practice that, though conversely biblical, has been found to reduce the transmission of AIDS in Africa and to have little medical benefit; it depends on who performs the study.

Baby with two faces worshipped as Hindu diety

Amazing story from the AP in Saini Sunpura, India, via CNN.com:

A baby with two faces was born in a northern Indian village, where she is doing well and is being worshipped as the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess, her father said Tuesday.

The baby, Lali, apparently has an extremely rare condition known as craniofacial duplication, where a single head has two faces. Except for her ears, all of Lali's facial features are duplicated -- she has two noses, two pairs of lips and two pairs of eyes.

"My daughter is fine -- like any other child," said Vinod Singh, 23, a poor farm worker.

Lali has caused a sensation in the dusty village of Saini Sunpura, 25 miles east of New Delhi. When she left the hospital, eight hours after a normal delivery on March 11, she was swarmed by villagers, said Sabir Ali, the director of Saifi Hospital.

"She drinks milk from her two mouths and opens and shuts all the four eyes at one time," Ali said.

Rural India is deeply superstitious and the little girl is being hailed as a return of the Hindu goddess of valor, Durga, a fiery deity traditionally depicted with three eyes and many arms.

Just simply: Why?

The Press-Telegram has an unbelievably powerful op-ed by the surgeon who tried to save the life of an 11-year-old boy gunned down Sunday. The story is awful in its evocativeness and it fully sapped the energy out of me, bit by bit as I read on.

I just finished sewing up a dead boy.

I pronounced him dead at 10:34 p.m. Sunday. It's now 11:27 p.m. I know I won't be able to get to sleep for a long time. I feel like I shouldn't.

I'm a trauma surgeon at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach. I was sulking in my call room on Palm Sunday because I missed yet another important moment in my 5-year-old son's life. A tarantula crawled all over him at his best friend's birthday party, and my wife had e-mailed me a glorious photo of this big, hairy arachnid on my son's face. The phone rings, and I am summoned to the ER for a "gunshot wound to the chest." That's bad, but around these parts, sadly not a surprise. Then the ER secretary adds, "... in a 12-year-old." That changes things a bit. As I hurry down to the Emergency Department, I play out several horrific scenarios in my head - a mental exercise in preparation for what certainly was to be a difficult situation.

I arrive to a room filled to capacity with doctors, nurses, techs, volunteers, firemen, policemen and paramedics. The strictly medical people are swarming around an impossibly small figure, in a flurry of needle sticks in search of a vein, monitor-pad placement in search of a vital sign, stethoscopes vainly searching for a breath sound or a heartbeat. The non-medical personnel had formed a concerned and curious peanut gallery. One ER doctor blurts out the important points, "GSW to the chest, pulses in the field but ... ," while another ER doctor is prepping this small chest for an ER thoracotomy. In English, an "ER thoracotomy" is where you flay open a chest in a soon-to-be-dead patient, in the hopes of finding a hole you can quickly but temporarily fix. Once that is done, it gives you a chance to give the patient necessary things like blood and IV fluids (where they now will not simply flow out of those repaired holes), and get him to the OR so you can fix him properly. It is the trauma surgery equivalent of a Hail Mary football pass. This is not a "difficult situation"; this is a nightmare.

The ER doctor hands me the knife, as if to say, "Here. It's yours." I think the kid is dead, or if not dead, then he certainly is "unsalvageable," which is a horrible word to use for a human being. I don't think he's fixable. However, if he is to have any hope of survival, the only way to save him is to crack him open and try to plug up the holes. Cracking open an 11-year-old boy (he was two months shy of his 12th birthday) is going to tear my own heart in half, I think to myself, but this is part of what I do, so I slip the gloves on and take the knife.

There is precious little skin to cut through, and I'm in the chest in a few seconds. His chest cavity is filled with blood, which spills out of his chest like a macabre waterfall to the floor. There's a shredded tear in his lung, and a big, ragged hole in his heart. All the IV fluids that my associates are pouring into the patient are flowing out this hole and on to my shoes. I put my finger in this hole - such a big hole in such a small heart - but blood and fluids still flow unfettered. My other hand finds another, larger hole on the other side of his heart. My fingers touch. His heart is empty. Mine breaks.

I've read C.S. Lewis' "The Problem of Pain," and I know that God is wise beyond ways and endlessly merciful and just. But could somebody please explain to me again the mysteries of theodicy?

Kevin Everett walks, even if it's not on water

It's difficult to imagine Kevin Everett, the Buffalo Bills tight end who was paralyzed only three months ago, recovering any quicker than he has. Some might call it a miracle. Whether divine intervention or medical innovation, Everett knows whom to thank:

If he has despaired, he does not admit it. Instead, he describes only a transforming strength that has come with his injury. "I look at my life in a whole new fashion," says Everett. "You realize how blessed you are. You thank God even more when you wake up in the morning and for every little thing you have. I thank God for sparing my life and letting me be here for my family and my fiancée. I've been able to see how much people love me, and how much I love them."

That's from a long story Sports Illustrated published online yesterday, complete with a photo gallery that shows Everett walking in the park and working out at the gym. This for a guy who couldn't even twitch a few days after incurring his injury in the season opener. Here's how it begins:

Every step is precious now. Every movement is a gift. Every morning brings another sunrise, full of sweet promise. When Kevin Everett was a little boy growing up in Port Arthur, Texas, he would sit with his grandpa James Nico, and the older man would explain to him life's lessons. One of them was this: Don't ever be bitter. Just keep doing your best, even when things aren't looking so good.

Even when you are lying, helpless and twitching, on the floor of a football stadium, unable to move your limbs and unable to take a deep breath. Even when you drift to the surface from a deep, chemically induced sleep two days later and find yourself in a hospital bed, with tubes in your throat and in your groin and machines beeping in every corner of the room and your mother gently rubbing your forearm, asking you through her tears, Baby, can you feel this? Please blink your eyes once if you can feel this.

You know I love you, don't you, baby? Please blink once if you know. And you slowly blink once, though you don't remember it.

Even when you're at a rehabilitation hospital almost a month later and an occupational therapist puts a tiny, one-pound weight in your right hand and asks you to do one biceps curl with the same arm that once blocked NFL linebackers on Sunday afternoons. And you just can't do it. Even when your life is unfathomably changed at the age of 25. Even then.

Here is Kevin Everett now, sitting at a breakfast table in a corner of the house the Buffalo Bills' tight end bought last year for his family in the Houston suburb of Humble. His fiancée, Wiande Moore, a sprinter whom Kevin met when both were athletes at the University of Miami, sits to his left, and the two of them pick at the remnants of supper. His mother, Patricia Dugas, is in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on a Christmas gingerbread house with Kevin's youngest sister, Davia, 11. His other two sisters -- Herchell, 15, and Kelli, 14 -- are sitting nearby on family room couches in front of a wall-mounted TV tuned to MTV but muted because Herchell is tapping out a social studies paper on her laptop. It is a family place at a family time.

"I'll tell you what," says Kevin. "I'm still trying to figure out everything that's happened in my life lately. But I don't think anybody has life figured out. I know you've got to take the good with the bad, and you've got to be strong. Plain and simple. Just because you get knocked down doesn't mean you've got to stay down. That's what I feel about all of this. If you get knocked down, you've got to get back up."

So he gets up. He rises from his chair and walks easily to the kitchen, opens the refrigerator and takes out a drink. Then he walks back. Simple as that. And yet not simple at all.

Former Pepperdine ballplayer the face of 'Crazy Robertson'

The religion angle here is tenuous -- the subject once played on Pepperdine's baseball team -- but the Wall Street Journal has a story today about one of L.A.'s most recognizable homeless men, John Wesley Jermyn. He's known as the "Crazy Robertson," and this year an overpriced clothing brand was created in his honor (that might not be the right word).

Among locals and online, there's much speculation about Mr. Jermyn's personal history, including one oft-repeated rumor that he's a secretive millionaire.

In a plot twist worthy of Tinseltown, Mr. Jermyn now has a clothing label named after him. Since it was introduced last month, "The Crazy Robertson" brand of T-shirts and sweatshirts, created by a trio of 23-year-olds, has flown off the shelves at Kitson, a haunt of tabloid stars like Paris Hilton. The clothes feature stylized images of Mr. Jermyn, including one design -- available on a $98 hoodie -- that has a graphic of him dancing and the phrase "No Money, No Problems" on the back. At the largest of Kitson's three boutiques on Robertson, shirts bearing Mr. Jermyn's likeness are sold alongside $290 "Victoria Beckham" jeans and $50 baby shoes designed by pop star Gwen Stefani.

(skip)

Mr. Jermyn's slide into homelessness is a painful subject for his sister Beverly. And so is the clothing deal. She believes "The Crazy Robertson" founders are exploiting her brother's condition to build their brand. "I think these guys saw an opportunity and they took it," she says. "I am not happy with the arrangement."

Ms. Jermyn, who lives close to the alley where Mr. Jermyn sleeps, says her brother has a form of schizophrenia. He refuses to take medication, she says, despite suffering from fits of shouting and cursing. In the years since his condition began deteriorating in the late 1970s, "he slipped through my fingers like sand," says Ms. Jermyn, 64, who manages facilities for Oracle Corp.

In the late 1980s she testified in court in a proceeding to force her brother to seek help, but psychological evaluators found him "lucid and gracious," according to Ms. Jermyn. She has made countless attempts to provide him with shelter and therapy, and she still visits him twice a week with food. She also pays for his cellphone and collects his Social Security checks on his behalf.

(skip)

Mr. Jermyn was raised in Hancock Park, a historic L.A. neighborhood that's home to some of the city's wealthiest families. His father managed one of L.A.'s largest Chevrolet dealerships.

A star athlete in high school, Mr. Jermyn was selected by the Kansas City Royals in the 1969 Major League Baseball draft. He attended Pepperdine University and played a season for a Los Angeles Dodgers' minor-league team in Bellingham, Wash. (He hit just .205 and made 12 errors in 63 games, according to the Society for American Baseball Research.)

Joel John Roberts, chief executive of People Assisting the Homeless, which provides shelters for L.A.'s street residents, says the branding of Mr. Jermyn is "like designing a line of clothing patterned after Iraqi refugees fleeing the war."

Here is a video of Jermyn's dance-skating.



(Hat tip: LAObserved.)

Surgery for Indian girl with 8 limbs

From CNN:

Surgeons in India said a mammoth 40-hour operation on a 2-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs was going according to plan.

"So far, so good," Dr. Sharan Patil, the head surgeon, told reporters after 10 hours of surgery to separate Lakshmi Tatma from her "parasitic twin."

Here's the video.

(Photo: Heeb)

Was Pope John Paul II allowed to die?

An Italian doctor has the Vatican defending that Pope John Paul II was not allowed to kill himself by denying necessary medical treatment, which in his case was the administration of a feeding tube. The pope, who died in April 2005 after a long bought with Parkinson's, didn't receive a tube until three days before his death.

The physician leveling the mercy killing allegation, Dr. Lina Pavanelli, heads the intensive care medical school at Italy's University of Ferrara.

"The doctors had done something, the doctors didn't inform the pope completely, or the pope decided," Pavanelli told CBS News. "These are the three conclusions that I reached."

If true, such an action would violate the Catholic Church's own doctrine. During the Terri Schiavo drama the following winter, a Vatican bishop said: "The administration of food and water even by artificial means is, in principle, an ordinary and proportionate means of preserving life."

The problem is Pavanelli reached her conclusion with no more information than I had: Watching the pope's deterioration on TV. I'm probably being a cynic, but it sounds like a certain doctor was looking for some attention.

Christian insurance

From the depths of my e-mail inbox:

According to statistics released earlier this summer, religious books were the publishing industry's fastest-growing category last year, with Bible sales alone exceeding 25 million copies. And that's just the tip of the iceberg for the $4.5 billion Christian products industry, which runs the gamut from books and videos to toys, games and, now, even insurance.

Launched two years ago in select test markets, GuideOne Insurance's FaithGuard Auto and Home product is now offered to churchgoers in 19 states. FaithGuard offers customers a number of unique benefits including waiving policyholders' deductibles in crashes that happen on the way to church (or Sunday school) and doubling medical payments to persons injured during at-home church activities.

OK, there may be some benefit to having auto insurance that erases the deductible if you're driving home from church. But how common are at-home, church-related injuries?

Nevada blocks Christian-socialist health care

Marshall Allen is an old journalism friend of mine (by that I mean I've known him a little more than two years). He used to write about religion and crime -- saints and sinners -- for the Pasadena Star-News but moved last year to Sin City.

He has a story in the Las Vegas Sun that says the state insurance commissioner is shutting down Nevada operations a national Christian health care provider but they don't have an insurance license. The company, Christian Care Medi-Share, argues that it doesn't need a license because it's not an insurance company; it's a collective.

Medi-Share is a "mutually sharing ministry" among Christians who agree to help pay one another's health costs, Sullivan said. Medi-Share members pay monthly "shares," not premiums, ranging from $223 for singles younger than 40 to $459 for families. Members must profess to be Christians and adhere to a morally conservative lifestyle, including no tobacco and no abuse of drugs or alcohol. They risk having requests for money denied if their medical condition is the result of what is deemed a nonbiblical lifestyle.

Such conditions raise a red flag for the Nevada insurance commissioner's office. For example, Medi-Share - whose guidelines are created by its members - provides coverage for pregnant married women but not for single mothers unless there's evidence of a rape that has been reported to police.

Medi-Share membership is not open to non-Christians or to Christians with preexisting medical conditions.

Church leaders may be called to verify the testimony of applicants, the guidelines say.

Here's my question: So say someone has a crisis of faith that becomes known to Medi-Share -- could they be barred from medical coverage?

Being your daughter's sister

That's the parental/sibling role a woman could find herself in if one day she uses the eggs her mother froze for her. The daughter is only seven now, but she has a genetic disorder that almost ensures infertility. So her mom decided to pioneer something bold. And, of course, the way to report this is to drum up the ethical controversy. Take it away, ABC News.

"I have great concerns about this development," said Dr. Jeffrey L. Deaton, a reproductive endocrinologist and medical director of Premier Fertility Center in High Point, N.C.

"If the goal is to provide her with a family, why not make it less ethically challenging and consider either donor eggs or adoption? Our technology is progressing more rapidly than our ability to understand the social, ethical and religious ramifications."

While some are bothered by the development, most ethicists and fertility experts say such concerns are largely unwarranted.

"The dilemma of giving birth to one's genetic sister I think is overdone," said Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

"I suspect parents will adapt quickly, as do adoptive parents who raise their sister's kids, or even a younger sibling."

"Those who object would probably have objected to the invention of fire by mankind hundreds of thousands of years ago, and they definitely would have had moral problems … with [in-vitro fertilization] in general when these shocking new ideas first came upon the scene," said Dr. Sherman Silber, the medical director of the Infertility Center of St. Louis at St. Luke's Hospital.

I'm not sure what "religious ramifications" Dr. Deaton is speaking of. This, I do believe, would be an order without precedent. Further, historical examples of children being born to a sibling mostly came from a son or father's fornicating heart. Think about Faye Dunaway's famous scene from "Chinatown." ("She's my sister." Jake Gittes slaps her. "She's my daughter." Another slap. "My sister, my daughter." Slap, slap. Gittes, "I said I want the truth!" Dunaway, "She's my sister and my daughter!")

The circumcision decision

As I noted last month, the story about how fewer American parents -- even among the covenant people -- are having their sons circumcised keeps popping up. Yesterday, CNN.com took a not-so-fresh scalpel to the ultimate evergreen story. This lede, however, deserves repeating:

On the eighth day of her son's life, Julia Query welcomed friends and family to celebrate his birth and honor their Jewish heritage.

But there was no crying, no scalpel, no blood, no "mohel" -- the person who traditionally performs ritual circumcisions in the Jewish faith. In fact, Elijah Rose's "bris" differed markedly from the ceremony long used to initiate Jewish boys into a covenant with God: There was no circumcision.

"I knew before I was even pregnant that I would not circumcise," said Query, 39, a San Francisco, California, filmmaker whose son was born in 2002. "It's not like you're just cutting a piece of paper off a pad -- there's no 'cut here' line. It's not made to be cut off, and I would never, ever do that to my baby."

Why it's not good to keep it in the 'family'

Polygamy is one of the dark not-so secrets of Mormon Church history. Until about 100 years ago, it was common practice. In fact, presidential contender Mitt Romney is the great-great grandson of a venerated polygamist martyr.

Only its fundamentalist break-away sect, lead by previously most-wanted Warren Jeffs, still practices polygamy, which has caused them plenty of problems, including health, according to ABC News.

In a dusty neighborhood under sheer sandstone cliffs studded with juniper on the Arizona-Utah border, a rare genetic disorder is spreading through polygamous families on a wave of inbreeding.

The twin border communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, have the world's highest known prevalence of fumarase deficiency, an enzyme irregularity that causes severe mental retardation brought on by cousin marriage, doctors say.

"Arizona has about half the world's population of known fumarase deficiency patients," said Dr. Theodore Tarby, a pediatric neurologist who has treated many of the children at Arizona clinics under contracts with the state.

"It exists in a certain percentage of the broader population but once you get a tendency to inbreed you're inbreeding people who have the gene there, so you markedly increase the risk of developing the condition," he said.

The community of about 10,000 people, who shun outsiders and are taught to avoid newspapers, television and the Internet, is home to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a sect that broke from the mainstream Mormon church 72 years ago over polygamy.

The group, who wear conservative 19th-century clothing, is led by Warren Jeffs, who was arrested in August and charged as an accomplice to rape for using his authority to order a 14-year-old girl against her wishes to marry and have sex with her 19-year-old cousin.