Video: Laugh, then help a big Catholic family win $25k

From Marcel LeJeune of the MarySaggies blog:

Some friends who have a wonderful Catholic family of 9 kids, all home-schooled, are in the final 10 of a $25,000 college scholarship contest (and the parents are Aggie Catholics if you needed more incentive). They created a great video, but now need your votes to help them win. Go here to vote for them (yes, you have to fill out a short registration).

Hey, it's worth the time. If you're feeling industrious, consider blogging it or sending out an email!

New Missouri bill proposes tax deductions for stillborn infants

STLToday:

Lawmakers have proposed a measure that would allow parents of stillborn children to claim them as dependents for one year when filing tax returns.

... "This bill recognizes that the person was a child of this state, a child of a family of this state," he said.

Dempsey noted that the Legislature passed a measure in 2004 that allowed parents of stillborn children to receive a birth certificate. The state tax deduction, he said, is the next logical step.

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Tom Dempsey, R-St. Charles, has a 100% rating from Missouri Right to Life. Missouri Family Network, similarly, is associated with many pro-life causes.

I'm all for inventive ways to work around Roe v. Wade. And it is interesting to note that Missouri already grants birth certificates to still-born children. I wonder if they would grant a birth certificate to a child that survives a botched abortion attempt only to die soon after? Sadly, the law has already demonstrated a sustained ability to ignore paradoxes like that one presents.

[ph/t: feministing]

What is causing the depopulation in Russia?

This no longer qualifies as an "offbeat" story. The following is a demonstration of the critical depopulation situation in Russia caused by rampant contraception, sterilization and abortion (there are, for instance, more abortions than live births in Russia each year - 13:10).

Reuters:

The governor of a central Russian province urged couples to skip work on Wednesday and make love instead to help boost Russia's low birth-rate.

And if a woman gives birth in exactly nine months time -- on Russia's national day on June 12 -- she will qualify for a prize, perhaps even winning a new home.

"It's normally something for the home -- a fridge or a television set," Yelena Yakovleva at the Ulyanovsk regional administration press office, said.

"It doesn't matter if it's a girl or a boy."

...This year a record 78 babies were born on June 12 at the main hospital in the regional capital of Ulyanovsk, beating the 2006 total of 26, said chief doctor Andrei Malykh.

...A mass wedding and special lessons for children at school on how to deal with having a brother or sister are also planned in Ulyanovsk city, which is about 900 km (560 miles) from Moscow.

At the town's central post office, a sign urges locals to write love letters for free to anywhere in Russia, with postage pre-paid.

This week First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, a possible successor to President Vladimir Putin, said he wanted to stabilise the population at about 142 million by 2015 and boost it back to 145 million by 2025.

But I ask you, to what factors does Reuters attribute the problem of underpopulation?

Russia wants to reverse a trend in which the population is shrinking by about 700,000 people a year as births fail to outpace a high death rate boosted by AIDS, alcoholism and suicide.

This is what the AP says:

Russia's population has dropped since the 1991 Soviet collapse, fed by declining birth rates, a low life expectancy, a spike in emigration, a frayed health care system and other factors. The country — the world's largest — now has just 141.4 million citizens, making it one of the most sparsely settled nations. And experts estimate the population could fall below 100 million by 2050.

At least this paragraph mentions "declining birth rates", although it fails to explain the causes for this phenomenon that I mention.

How bad is the situation?

Last year, President Vladimir Putin called the demographic crisis the country's most acute problem and announced a broad effort to boost the birthrate, including cash subsidies for couples giving birth to more than one child. Women who give birth to their second or third child receive $10,000 vouchers to pay for education or home repairs.

More acute than global warming? My, that's saying something.

The Moralities of House (3x21, "Family")

"Nothing like a dead patient to send you back to your choir boy roots." - House to Foreman

A few days late with this week's House M.D. review. Sorry, some other topics crowded this one out!

As I explained a couple weeks ago, I intend to write a short summary of the moral issues in House, M.D. for the remaining episodes in the season. Last week I did 3x20 "House Training" and the week before that, 3x19 "Act Your Age."

First things first - *spoiler warning*. I'm writing with the presumption that readers are either familiar with the show, have seen the episode in question, or are not worried about having plot arc points given away. Also, House treats of fairly explicit themes often ("viewer discretion advised"), so be warned. Enough said ...

3x21, "Family"

Here's the TV preview spot for this episode:


PoliteDissent provides a weekly plot recap of each episode, and then (helpfully) evaluates the medical claims made by the show.

The Moralities:

This week's episode was, as PoliteDissent notes, much more an episode about ethical dilemmas rather than interesting medicine, playing upon the fact that House's team is trying to save a boy by operating and experimenting on his brother (and vice versa).

House: Is back to his regular abuse of patients and especially their parents, who he tries to browbeat into giving him the permission slips he needs. Again, “giving parents the option of making a bad choice is a bad choice.” House believes its better to circumvent their consent and go for what he sees as objectively the best medical course of action. His blowup with Wilson in the hallway is uncalled for, and completely typical. He does apologize, but in his own way. He also orchestrates a one-on-one conversation with a the leukemia brother, in order to convince him to give up his life for his brother.

Chase: “And it’s Tuesday. It’s the day I remind you I like you and I want us to be together.”

Cameron: *sputter*

Foreman: Is having a tough time getting over the patient he lost in last week’s episode. The main thing that irks him is how he lost the patient by, in his mind, acting like House would have, coldly calculating the odds. His worry about the possibility of losing another patient prompts him to go behind everyone’s back and talk to the parents about the option – a very irresponsible action. And of course, the most shocking moment of the episode, where Foreman plunges a needle into the healthier brother’s bone marrow without anesthesia, is a show-stopper. But morally? I guess you can weigh on the one hand the incredible pain of being stabbed against saving the life of that person’s brother. But what is most troubling is that as Foreman is doing this the boy is screaming for him to stop! I can’t help but think this is poor writing and that in real life such an action would result in the immediate suspension and criminal prosecution of Foreman. At any rate, the way the episode treats it is that Foreman is becoming more and more like House, and is so scared of becoming him that he’d rather submit his resignation. We’ll see if he goes through with it by season end, but of course, it’s very doubtful.

Wilson: I think House’s withering criticism of Wilson has some foundation, namely, that Wilson believes so much in patient autonomy because he’s unwilling to live with the guilt of advising someone wrongly. He councils the family to “protect themselves as a whole” and choose a surgery that hurts one brother but saves the other simultaneously. Wilson continues to demonstrate his effective way of dealing with House’s pathological social problems. “You’re Pathetic, I didn’t mean that.” “Yes you did.” “Times infinity.” “Yes you did… you’re pathetic.”

The Parents: Come across very well in this episode. They do defer very often to Wilson when the situation quickly becomes tangled. The hardest choice they face is whether to intentionally infect one son with a disease in order to discover how to heal the other before he dies of it. House puts it this way: “you either leave with one dead son or two.” The parents simply refuse this option. They won’t give up on either son, especially if saving one means intentionally destroying the (admittedly slim) chances of one.

The Patients: The brothers are good figures, who, at 10 and 14, are willing to sacrifice their lives for one another, with the stated reason that “you’d do the same for me.” I appreciate that leukemia brother reaches a point where he starts talking about “it’s my time to go”, and then has his life saved at the 11th hour. It’s not over till it’s over, especially for a fourteen-year-old.

The Big Morality: The main question in this episode is to what degree you can intentionally sicken one patient in order to derive benefits for another person. It starts with intentionally weakening the immune system of one brother to more quickly ferret-out his illness (with the intention of curing it). The second major stage comes when they consider open heart surgery on the healthier brother to (it gets complicated) provide healthy bone marrow to the one with leukemia. “Either we cripple one son or kill the other.” Matters reach a fever pitch when House suggests transplanting the sickness from the healthier brother to the sick one, effectively using him as a live Petri dish to quickly discover what is killing the healthier brother. The moral question becomes to what degree, and for what foreseeable benefits, one can intentionally sicken someone for another person’s benefit? Clearly the brother with leukemia was not “doomed” to dying, because he in fact survives, and therefore the argument for making him worse (that he could not get better anyway) evaporates. There’s much to consider here.

Oh, and … the dog?!

Next Week:

Here's the TV preview spot for next week's episode:

More House resources:

• If you want to catch up on House, Amazon has the First and Second seasons on DVD.
• The official House website at Fox.
• Wikipedia page for House, with brief episode summaries.

Legalize: All pictures copyright FOX and found here.