Why the Return of “Curable” Diseases?

 

 A HOME has just been thoroughly cleaned. As the days, weeks, and months pass, however, the dust and dirt gradually reappear. One thorough cleaning, therefore, is not enough. Continual upkeep is essential.
For a time it seemed that modern medicine had thoroughly cleaned out malaria, TB (tuberculosis), and syphilis. But necessary upkeep through research and treatment was too often neglected. Now the “dust and dirt” have reappeared. “Globally, the malaria situation is serious and getting worse,” says Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima of WHO (World Health Organization). “People have to realize that TB is back—and back with a vengeance,” warns tuberculosis specialist Dr. Lee Reichman. And The New York Times announced early in this decade: “New cases of syphilis are at the highest level since 1949.”

Malaria—Threatening Almost Half the World
 
Now, almost 40 years since it was declared nearly eradicated, malaria poses a serious threat in Afghanistan, Brazil, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, and various parts of Africa. “Two children die of the infection every minute,” reports the French newspaper Le Figaro. The yearly death toll is two million—far more than are killed by AIDS.

Close to 270 million persons are infected with the malaria parasite, but 2.2 billion are considered to be at risk. “How is it that malaria, once eliminated or largely controlled for 90 per cent of the world’s population, now threatens more than 40 per cent of us?” asks Phyllida Brown in New Scientist. The reasons are many.
Deforestation and colonization. The settlement of mosquito-infested rain-forest areas has stirred an outbreak of malaria in Brazil. “What we had was an invasion of the house of the mosquito,” says immunologist Claudio Ribeiro. Settlers, he says, “had no experience with malaria and no resistance to the disease.”

Immigration. Job-hunting refugees from Myanmar flock to the gem mines of Borai, a small town in Thailand. “Their constant movement makes malaria control all but impossible,” reports Newsweek. Some 10,000 cases of malaria are recorded monthly—just among the miners! Tourism. Many who visit malaria-infested areas return home infected. Thus, in 1991 some 1,000 cases were diagnosed in the United States and 10,000 in Europe. Annually hundreds of tourists and overseas workers return to Canada infected. In a tragic instance, two children developed a fever soon after the family returned from Africa. The doctor did not suspect malaria. “By the time the parents took them to hospital, it was too late,” reports the Toronto Globe and Mail. “They died within hours of each other.”

Drug-resistant strains. WHO reports that drug-resistant strains of malaria have spread to all of tropical Africa. In Southeast Asia, says Newsweek, “drug resistance is advancing so rapidly that some strains could soon be untreatable.” Lack of resources. In some places clinics lack the equipment to perform a simple test known as a blood smear. In others a large portion of the health budget is needed for other emergencies, resulting in a shortage of insecticides and medicines. Sometimes it is an issue of profit. “There is no money in tropical diseases,” admits New Scientist, “because, by and large, those who are affected cannot afford medicines.”

Tuberculosis—An Old Killer With New Tricks
 
Streptomycin, the drug that promised to bring tuberculosis under control, was introduced in 1947. At the time, it was thought that tuberculosis would be eliminated once and for all. But a rude awakening has come to some lands: TB rates have increased markedly in recent years. “In pockets of poverty in America,” reports The Washington Post, “TB rates are worse than those of the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa.” In Côte d’Ivoire there is what one journal calls “a brutal reawakening of tuberculosis.”
Dr. Michael Iseman laments: “We knew how to cure it. We had it in our hands. But we dropped the ball.”

What impeded the fight against tuberculosis?
 
AIDS. Since it leaves a person defenseless against infection, AIDS is considered a major cause of the TB resurgence. “If they don’t die of something else first,” says Dr. Iseman, “virtually 100 percent of AIDS patients carrying TB bacteria will develop the illness.” Environment. Prisons, nursing homes, shelters for the homeless, hospitals, and other institutions can become breeding grounds for tuberculosis. Dr. Marvin Pomerantz relates that one hospital’s use of an aerosolized treatment increased pneumonia patients’ coughing and thereby created a virtual TB epidemic among the staff.

Lack of resources. As soon as it looked as if tuberculosis was under control, funding dried up, and public attention went elsewhere. “Instead of eliminating TB,” says Dr. Lee Reichman, “we eliminated tuberculosis programs.” Biochemist Patrick Brennan says: “In the early 1960s I’d worked intensively on TB drug resistance but decided to get out of it because I thought TB was cured.” Thus, the return of tuberculosis caught many doctors unawares. “During one week [in the fall of 1989],” said one physician, “I saw four new cases of the illness that my medical school teacher said I’d never see again.”

Syphilis—A Deadly Comeback
 
Despite the effectiveness of penicillin, syphilis is still widespread in Africa. In the United States, it is making its strongest comeback in 40 years. According to The New York Times, syphilis is now “fooling a generation of doctors who have rarely, if ever, seen a case.” Why the resurgence? Crack. Crack addiction has propelled what one doctor calls “marathon binges of cocaine use and sex.” While men often steal to support their addiction, women are more likely to trade sex for drugs. “In crack houses,” says Dr. Willard Cates, Jr., of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, “there is sex and multiple partners. Whatever infection happens to be prevalent in those environments is going to be the one that gets transmitted.”

Lack of protection. “Despite the ‘safe sex’ campaign,” reports Discover, “teenagers are still lackadaisical about using condoms to protect themselves from disease.” A study in the United States revealed that only 12.6 percent of those with risky sexual partners used condoms consistently.
Limited resources. States The New York Times: “Budget cuts have strapped the public clinics where most syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases are diagnosed.” Furthermore, testing methods are not always accurate. In one hospital a number of mothers gave birth to infected babies, yet the mothers’ previous blood tests gave no evidence of syphilis.
An End in Sight?
Man’s battle against disease has been a long and frustrating one. All too often success in fighting some ailments is offset by failure in fighting others. Is man doomed to a perpetual war that he can never win? Will there ever be a world without disease?

The Ravages of Syphilis
 
SYPHILIS is caused by Treponema pallidum, a corkscrew-shaped spirochete, and is usually contracted through the sex organs. The spirochete then enters the bloodstream and spreads throughout the body.
  Several weeks after infection, a sore called a chancre appears. It usually forms on the sex organs but may instead appear on the lips, tonsils, or fingers. The chancre eventually heals without leaving a scar. But the germs continue spreading through the body until secondary symptoms appear: skin rash, sore throat, aching joints, hair loss, lesions, and inflammation of the eyes.

  If untreated, syphilis settles into a dormant phase that may last for a lifetime. If a woman becomes pregnant during this stage, her child may be born blind, deformed, or dead.
  Decades later, some will move on to the later stage of syphilis, in which the spirochete may settle in the heart, brain, spinal cord, or other parts of the body. If the spirochete lodges in the brain, convulsions, general paralysis, and even insanity may result. Eventually, the disease may prove fatal.

“A Great Mimic”
THAT is what Dr. Lee Reichman calls tuberculosis. “It can look like a cold, bronchitis, flu,” he says. “So unless a doctor is thinking about TB, he or she may miss the diagnosis.” A chest X ray is needed to confirm the infection.
  Tuberculosis is passed from person to person through the air. A cough can create particles that are tiny enough to enter the lungs. However, the body’s defenses are normally strong enough to contain the infection. Dr. Reichman explains: “It is only [those] who have enough of the bacillus in their chest cavities—100 million organisms as opposed to less than 10,000 for inactive carriers—[who can] spread the disease.”

Global Warming and Malaria
MALARIA could not begin without the infecting Anopheles gambiae mosquito. “Change the vector [insect] population and you change the incidence of the disease,” observes The Economist.  Laboratory experiments have shown that small increases in temperature can greatly affect the insect population. Thus, some experts conclude that global warming may have a grave impact on the incidence of malaria. “If the overall temperature of the Earth increases even one or two degrees Celsius [two to four degrees Fahrenheit],” says Dr. Wallace Peters, “it could increase the breeding areas of mosquitoes so that malaria could become more widely distributed than it now is.”


Credit Line; the above picture credits goes to ommrudraksha.com

Abortion’s Tragic Toll

 

 FROM 50 million to 60 million unborn babies perish each year by abortion. Can you comprehend that number? It would be like sweeping the entire population of the Hawaiian Islands off the map every week!
Exact figures are difficult to gather because most governments do not keep careful records of abortions. And where abortion is restricted or illegal, experts can only hazard a guess. But the global abortion profile looks something like this:

In the United States, abortion is the second most common surgical procedure, next to tonsillectomy. Annually, over 1.5 million abortions are performed. The clear majority of the women are unmarried—4 out of 5. Single women terminated their pregnancies twice as often as they gave birth, while, on an average, married women gave birth ten times as often as they had an abortion.

In Central and South America—largely Catholic—abortion laws are the most restrictive in the world. Nevertheless, illegal abortion abounds, presenting serious health hazards to women. Brazilian women, for example, underwent about four million abortions last year. Upwards of 400,000 of them had to seek medical treatment due to complications. In Latin America about one fourth of all pregnancies are terminated.
Across the Atlantic on the continent of Africa, the laws are also stringent. Injuries and deaths are common, especially among poor women who seek the aid of illegal practitioners.
Throughout the Middle East, many countries have strict laws on the books, but abortions are still widely sought and obtained by those women able to afford the high fees.

Most of Western Europe permits some abortions, Scandinavia being the most liberal. Britain’s National Health Service has kept track of abortions ever since the procedure was legalized in 1967. It observed a doubling of the number of abortions along with an increase in illegitimate births, sexually transmitted diseases, prostitution, and a host of reproductive disorders.

Eastern Europe is currently in a state of flux, and so are abortion laws there. In what was the Soviet Union, abortions are estimated at 11 million annually, among the highest number worldwide. With contraceptives scarce and economic conditions poor, an average woman in that region may undergo from six to nine abortions in her lifetime.

Throughout Eastern Europe the trend is generally toward liberalization. A dramatic example is Romania, where the former regime actively proscribed abortion and banned contraception in order to encourage population increase. Women were compelled to bear a quota of at least four children, and by 1988, Romanian orphanages were overflowing with abandoned youngsters. Thus, since the revolutionary government of 1989 dropped these restrictions on abortion, 3 babies of every 4 are aborted, Europe’s highest ratio.
Asia accounts for the largest number of abortions. The People’s Republic of China, with its one-child policy and compulsory abortions, leads the list, reporting 14 million per year. In Japan women decorate tiny statues with bibs and toys in memory of their aborted children. The public has high anxiety about birth-control pills, and abortion is the primary method of family planning.

Throughout Asia, and particularly in India, medical technology has created an awkward predicament for female-rights activists. Such techniques as amniocentesis and ultrasound can be used to determine the gender of a baby at earlier and earlier stages of pregnancy. Oriental culture has long valued sons over daughters. So where both sex-determination procedures and abortion are easily available, female fetuses are being aborted in large numbers, unbalancing male/female birth ratios. The feminist movement is now in the paradoxical position of, in effect, demanding the female’s right to abort her female fetus.

What a Mother Feels
 
As with other medical procedures, abortion carries with it a measure of risk and pain. During pregnancy the mouth of the womb, or cervix, is tightly closed to keep the baby safe. Dilation and insertion of instruments can be painful and traumatic. The suction abortion may take 30 minutes or so, during which some women may experience moderate to intense pain and cramping. With saline abortion, premature labor is induced, sometimes with the aid of prostaglandin, a substance that initiates labor. The contractions may last hours or even days and may be painful and emotionally draining.

Immediate complications from abortion include hemorrhage, damage or tears to the cervix, puncture of the uterus, blood clots, anesthesia reaction, convulsions, fever, chills, and vomiting. Danger of infection is especially high if parts of the infant or placenta remain in the womb. Incomplete abortion is commonplace, and surgery may then be necessary to remove decaying tissue left behind or even the uterus itself. Government studies in the United States, Britain, and the former Czechoslovakia suggest that abortion greatly increases the later chances of infertility, tubal pregnancy, miscarriages, premature birth, and birth defects.
Former U.S. surgeon general C. Everett Koop observed that no one had done “a study on the emotional reaction or the guilt of the woman who has had an abortion and now desperately wants a baby that she cannot have.”
Studies of abortion should have included in their control groups chaste young Christians who remain virgins out of respect for life and God’s laws. Such studies would have found that these enjoy healthier relationships, greater self-esteem, and lasting peace of mind.

What an Unborn Baby Feels

How does it feel to an unborn baby to be nestled securely in the warmth of its mother’s womb and then suddenly be assaulted with deadly force? We can only imagine, for the story will never be told firsthand.
Most abortions are performed in the first 12 weeks of life. By this stage the tiny fetus practices breathing and swallowing, and its heart is beating. It can curl its tiny toes, make a fist, turn flips in its watery world—and feel pain.

Many fetuses are wrenched from the womb and sucked into a jar by a vacuum tube with a sharp edge. The procedure is called vacuum aspiration. The powerful suction (29 times the power of a home vacuum cleaner) tears the tiny body apart. Other babies are aborted by dilation and curettage, a loop-shaped knife scraping the lining of the womb, slicing the infant to pieces.

Fetuses older than 16 weeks may die by the saline abortion, or salt poisoning, method. A long needle pierces the bag of waters, withdraws some of the amniotic fluid, and replaces it with a concentrated salt solution. As the baby swallows and breathes, filling its delicate lungs with the toxic solution, it struggles and convulses. The caustic effect of the poison burns away the top layer of skin, leaving it raw and shriveled. Its brain may begin to hemorrhage. A painful death may come in hours, though occasionally when labor begins a day or so later, a live but dying baby is delivered.

If the baby is too developed to be killed by these or similar methods, one option remains—hysterotomy, a cesarean section with a twist, ending life instead of saving it. The mother’s abdomen is opened surgically, and almost always a live baby is pulled out. It may even cry. But it must be left to die. Some are deliberately killed by smothering, drowning, and in other ways.

What a Doctor Feels

For centuries physicians have embraced the values expressed in the venerated Hippocratic oath, which says in part: “To none will I give a deadly drug, even if solicited, nor offer counsel to such an end, and no woman will I give a destructive suppository [to produce abortion], but guiltless and hallowed will I keep my art.”
What ethical wrestlings confront doctors who terminate life in the womb? Dr. George Flesh describes it this way: “My first abortions, as an intern and resident, caused me no emotional distress.

 My discontent began after many hundreds of abortions.  Why did I change? Early in my practice, a married couple came to me and requested an abortion. Because the patient’s cervix was rigid, I was unable to dilate it to perform the procedure. I asked her to return in a week, when the cervix would be softer. The couple returned and told me that they had changed their minds. I delivered their baby seven months later.

“Years later, I played with little Jeffrey in the pool at the tennis club where his parents and I were members. He was happy and beautiful. I was horrified to think that only a technical obstacle had prevented me from terminating Jeffrey’s potential life. I believe that tearing a developed fetus apart, limb from limb, simply at the mother’s request, is an act of depravity that society should not permit.”

A nurse who stopped assisting with abortions told about her job in an abortion clinic: “One of our jobs was to count the parts. . . . If the girl goes home with pieces of the baby still in her uterus, there can be serious problems. I’d take the parts and go through them to make sure there were two arms, two legs, a torso, a head.  I have four children. . There was a huge conflict between my professional life and my personal life that I couldn’t reconcile. Abortion is a hard business.”
Note; the above picture the credits goes to  wikimedia.org