Human identity & our bacteria

NYTimes

In 2008, Dr. Khoruts, a gastroenterologist at the University of Minnesota, took on a patient suffering from a vicious gut infection of Clostridium difficile. She was crippled by constant diarrhea, which had left her in a wheelchair wearing diapers. Dr. Khoruts treated her with an assortment of antibiotics, but nothing could stop the bacteria. His patient was wasting away, losing 60 pounds over the course of eight months. “She was just dwindling down the drain, and she probably would have died,” Dr. Khoruts said.

Dr. Khoruts decided his patient needed a transplant. But he didn’t give her a piece of someone else’s intestines, or a stomach, or any other organ. Instead, he gave her some of her husband’s bacteria.

Dr. Khoruts mixed a small sample of her husband’s stool with saline solution and delivered it into her colon. Writing in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology last month, Dr. Khoruts and his colleagues reported that her diarrhea vanished in a day. Her Clostridium difficile infection disappeared as well and has not returned since. [...]

Doctors don't report troubled colleagues

Google News

CHICAGO — Your doctor could be drunk, addicted to drugs or outright incompetent, but other physicians may not blow the whistle.

A new survey finds that many American physicians fail to report troubled colleagues to authorities, believing that someone else will take care of it, that nothing will happen if they act or that they could be targeted for retribution.

A surprising 17 percent of the doctors surveyed had direct, personal knowledge of an impaired or incompetent physician in their workplaces, said the study's lead author, Catherine DesRoches of Harvard Medical School. [...]

Abuse: Belgian Clergy Inquiry

NewYorkTimes

WESTVLETEREN, Belgium — Behind an aggressive investigation of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Belgium that drew condemnation from the pope himself lies a stark family tragedy: the molestation, for years, of a youth by his uncle, the bishop of Bruges; the prelate’s abrupt resignation when a friend of the nephew finally threatened to make the abuse public; and now the grass-roots fury of almost 500 people complaining of abuse by priests.

The first resignation of a European bishop for abusing a child relative came unexpectedly on April 23. At 73, the Bruges bishop, Roger Vangheluwe, Belgium’s longest-serving prelate, tersely announced his retirement and acknowledged molesting “a boy in my close entourage.”

The boy, not named, was his own nephew, now in his early 40s.

Home computers are educational disasters for low income families

NYTIMES

MIDDLE SCHOOL students are champion time-wasters. And the personal computer may be the ultimate time-wasting appliance. Put the two together at home, without hovering supervision, and logic suggests that you won’t witness a miraculous educational transformation.

Still, wherever there is a low-income household unboxing the family’s very first personal computer, there is an automatic inclination to think of the machine in its most idealized form, as the Great Equalizer. In developing countries, computers are outfitted with grand educational hopes, like those that animate the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which was examined in this space in April. The same is true of computers that go to poor households in the United States.

Economists are trying to measure a home computer’s educational impact on schoolchildren in low-income households. Taking widely varying routes, they are arriving at similar conclusions: little or no educational benefit is found. Worse, computers seem to have further separated children in low-income households, whose test scores often decline after the machine arrives, from their more privileged counterparts.[...]

Lashon harah:Outing the transgendered?

NYTIMES The Ethicist

I am a straight woman, and I was set up on a date with a man. We got along well initially, but I grew concerned about how evasive he was about his past. I did some sophisticated checking online — I do research professionally — and discovered that he is a female-to-male transgender ed individual. I then ended our relationship. He and I live in Orthodox Jewish communities.  (I believe he converted shortly after he became a man.) I think he continues to date women within our group. Should I urge our rabbi to out this person? [...]

Abuse: Bullies & cyberbullies - what to do?

NYTIMES

What do you do if your child is traumatized by online bullying? And what can be done to help bullies understand the impact of their actions? Those are among the questions about cyberbullying readers asked our expert, Elizabeth K. Englander. Dr. Englander is a professor of psychology and the founder and director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center at Bridgewater State College, which provides anti-bullying and anti-violence training programs and resources to schools and families.[...]

CNN drops senior editor for praising Hezbollah leader

New York Times

CNN on Wednesday removed its senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs, Octavia Nasr, from her job after she published a Twitter message saying that she respected the Shiite cleric the Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who died on Sunday.

Ms. Nasr left her CNN office in Atlanta on Wednesday. Parisa Khosravi, the senior vice president for CNN International Newsgathering, said in an internal memorandum that she “had a conversation” with Ms. Nasr on Wednesday morning and that “we have decided that she will be leaving the company."

Ms. Nasr, a 20-year veteran of CNN, wrote on Twitter after the cleric died on Sunday, “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah … One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”

Does G-d cause sexual abuse & transgression?

I am looking for examples where G-d causes someone to be sexually abused or to be involved in sexual transgressions. The following are some examples.

1) Esther

2) R' Meir sister in law was Divinely punished to be a prostitute

3) Dovid was forced in relation with Batsheva to encourage baaeli teshuva

4) Yehuda and Tamar

5) Dina and Shechem

6) Lot & his daughters necessary for Moshiach

7) Yael & Sisra

Ever a good idea to cover up sexual abuse?

Aderet (Me’ane Eliyahu #32 1895): A disgusting event occurred here in the Mir community. A young man, the son of the tailor, fell in love with a servant…however she was not interested in him and rejected him. One Shabbos night after the meal, she went for a walk with one of her relatives outside the city and he accompanied them. When they were far from other people, they were suddenly attacked by two young men. These assailants threatened to stab the two men who had accompanied her - if they attempted to put up any resistance. Out of fear for their lives the two men who had accompanied her ran away – and she was left alone with the assailants. They grabbed her and raped her – despite her struggling against them with all her strength they overpowered her. They severely beat her despite her screams for help. After the brazen assailants fled, the two young men returned to her and brought her wounded and beaten to a doctor for treatment. The community was outraged by this act. Her relatives wanted to press charges with the police so that the assailants should be properly punished. They came to me and I spoke with them to quiet the matter so that it should not disgrace the Jews in the eyes of the non‑Jews by the wanton act of our youth that they would rape, transgress Shabbos and threaten to kill.  There was also the danger that could result from  going against these brazen youth. The relatives listened to me and did not go to the police. However it seemed that the whole thing was plotted by the youth that was in love with her. He apparently hoped that by degrading her she would finally accept him. Therefore an agreement was worked out with the relatives of the girl, this youth and the relatives of her assailants. The rapist would pay 100 rubles as a dowry, the youth who loved her would marry her as soon as possible lest he find her disgusting because of the rape. Finally the father of the youth signed a promissory note to provide two hundred ruble only after they got married. However a question arose how she could get married immediately since the halacha seemed to require that she needed to wait 3 months to make sure that she wasn’t pregnant from the rapist….

American opposition to building mosques after 9/11

FoxNews

They're separated by thousands of miles, but they share a common controversy: Mosques.

Murfreesboro, Tenn., has joined a growing list of midsized towns in the U.S. that are embroiled in conflicts over proposed mosques being built or bought in their neighborhoods.

Including Murfreesboro, residents have risen up against mosques in two other Tennessee towns; in Staten Island, N.Y.; Sheboygan County, Wis.; and the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn, as well as the proposed mosque and Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero, which has garnered some of the most heated battles.[...]

Technology that elicits emotional bonding

NYTimes

Nothing Eileen Oldaker tried could calm her mother when she called from the nursing home, disoriented and distressed in what was likely the early stages of dementia. So Ms. Oldaker hung up, dialed the nurses’ station and begged them to get Paro.

Paro is a robot modeled after a baby harp seal. It trills and paddles when petted, blinks when the lights go up, opens its eyes at loud noises and yelps when handled roughly or held upside down. Two microprocessors under its artificial white fur adjust its behavior based on information from dozens of hidden sensors that monitor sound, light, temperature and touch. It perks up at the sound of its name, praise and, over time, the words it hears frequently.

“Oh, there’s my baby,” Ms. Oldaker’s mother, Millie Lesek, exclaimed that night last winter when a staff member delivered the seal to her. “Here, Paro, come to me.” [...]

Ben Gurion U professor dismissed for offending gay students

YNET

Ben-Gurion University cancels bioethics course after Dr. Yeruham Leavitt says children of same-sex couples deprived of 'normal' upbringing. Lecturer: Personal opinions allowed in ethics courses. [...]

YNET

Ben Gurion University's dismissal of Dr. Yeruham Leavitt, a lecturer and resident of the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba who made anti-gay remarks during class, sparked outrage among many groups in Israeli society Sunday. [...]

4th of July: Gratitude for America's freedom & laws

NYTIMES

LISTVYANKA, Russia — On the edge of this Siberian village is a resort with a veiled guest list and armed guards at the front gate. When local officials have expressed unease about what goes on inside, the reply has always been the same: do not interfere.

Two and half years ago, the village’s mayor, Tatyana Kazakova, had enough. A major construction project at the resort had exposed a hot water main, threatening the heating supply for the entire village as temperatures plunged to 30 degrees below zero.

Ms. Kazakova was not a typical bureaucrat. She was one of the most successful businesswomen in this vast region, a real-estate magnate with a blond ponytail who represented a new breed of Russian entrepreneur.

She filed a lawsuit against the resort, and asked the regional prosecutor to open a criminal inquiry.

A criminal inquiry was indeed opened — against Ms. Kazakova.

The resort belongs to the F.S.B., the main successor to the Soviet-era K.G.B., and the F.S.B. arrested her and had her prosecuted.

Personal safety - Talking to our children

Jewish Press by Bracha Goetz

Here are signs to protect our children from danger: In 95% of cases, the molester's not a stranger. He's someone you know and respect.  He's disarming. He is drawn to children.  And he's awfully charming.

 This is a handy little jingle for parents to keep in mind, but even though it's short, my rhyme is not for little children.  In order to adequately prepare our children, however, first we need to be aware of the red flags ourselves.  Then we simply need to schedule an "annual check-up" time to clearly and calmly bring up the subject of personal safety with our children. [...]