The Miracle Drug

“Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.” — John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law — 1765

Every so often I review one of “This Day in History” site to see what happened or who was born or died on this day. Today I was fascinated too see that on this day in in 1899, the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin registered Aspirin, the brand name for acetylsalicylic acid, on behalf of the German pharmaceutical company Friedrich Bayer & Co.

Have you ever had a headache? Chances are you have; almost all of us do once in a while. And chances are you took some kind of medicine to ease your headache. That medicine was most likely a relative of aspirin.

You may also have taken aspirin or its relatives for other problems, like inflammation (swelling of joints or other parts of the body) or fever. But did you know that about 80 billion aspirin tablets are taken per year for these problems, as well as many others? For example, millions of people take aspirin to help prevent heart attacks. There are good reasons a doctor might say, "Take two aspirin and call me in the morning."

Now the most common drug in household medicine cabinets, acetylsalicylic acid was originally made from a chemical found in the bark of willow trees where it was used by Druids in England to relieve pain by chewing the bark. In its primitive form, the active ingredient, salicin, was used for centuries in folk medicine, beginning in ancient Greece when Hippocrates used it to relieve pain and fever. Known to doctors since the mid-19^th century, it was used sparingly due to its unpleasant taste and tendency to damage the stomach.

In 1897, Bayer employee Felix Hoffman found a way to create a stable form of the drug that was easier and more pleasant to take. (Some evidence shows that Hoffman's work was really done by a Jewish chemist, Arthur Eichengrun, whose contributions were covered up during the Nazi era.) After obtaining the patent rights, Bayer began distributing aspirin in powder form to physicians to give to their patients one gram at a time. The brand name came from "a" for acetyl, "spir" from the spirea plant (a source of salicin) and the suffix "in," commonly used for medications. It quickly became the number-one drug worldwide.

Aspirin was made available in tablet form and without a prescription in 1915. Two years later, when Bayer's patent expired during the First World War, the company lost the trademark rights to aspirin in various countries. After the United States entered the war against Germany in April 1917, the Alien Property Custodian, a government agency that administers foreign property, seized Bayer's U.S. assets. Two years later, the Bayer company name and trademarks for the United States and Canada were auctioned off and purchased by Sterling Products Company, later Sterling Winthrop, for $5.3 million.

Bayer became part of IG Farben, the conglomerate of German chemical industries that formed the financial heart of the Nazi regime. After World War II, the Allies split apart IG Farben, and Bayer again emerged as an individual company. Its purchase of Miles Laboratories in 1978 gave it a product line including Alka-Seltzer and Flintstones and One-A-Day Vitamins. In 1994, Bayer bought Sterling Winthrop's over-the-counter business, gaining back rights to the Bayer name and logo and allowing the company once again to profit from American sales of its most famous product.

One of the first and most influential physicians, Hippocrates, wrote about a bitter powder extracted from willow bark that could ease aches and pains and reduce fevers as long ago as the fifth century B.C. In the 1700s, the scientist Reverend Edmund Stone wrote about the success of the bark and the willow in the cure of the "agues," or fevers with aches. With a bit of chemical detective work, scientists found out that the part of willow bark that was (1) bitter and (2) good for fever and pain is a chemical known as salicin.

This chemical can be converted (changed) by the body after it is eaten to another chemical, salicylic acid. It was a pharmacist known as Leroux who showed in 1829 that salicin is this active willow ingredient, and for many years it, salicylic acid (made from salicin for the first time by Italian chemist Piria), and close relatives were used at high doses to treat pain and swelling in diseases like arthritis and to treat fever in illnesses like influenza.

The problem with these chemicals was that they upset the user's stomach quite a bit. In fact, some people had bleeding in their digestive tracts from the high doses of these chemicals needed to control pain and swelling. (This is also the case today and why doctor’s prescribing aspirin for cardiac patients if they experience any bleeding,) One of these people was a German man named Hoffmann. His arthritis was pretty bad, but he just couldn't "stomach" his salicylic acid. Enter this man's son, German chemist Felix Hoffmann, who worked for a chemical company known as Friedrich Bayer & Co. Felix wanted to find a chemical that wouldn't be so hard on his dad's stomach lining; reasoning that salicylic acid may be irritating because it is an acid, he put the compound through a couple of chemical reactions that covered up one of the acidic parts with an acetyl group, converting it to acetylsalicylic acid (ASA). He found that ASA not only could reduce fever and relieve pain and swelling, but he believed it was better for the stomach and worked even better than salicylic acid.

Unfortunately, Hoffmann had to wait for fame. He finished his initial studies in 1897, and his employers didn't pay much attention to it because it was new and they were cautious — they didn't think it had been tested enough. By 1899, though, one of Bayer's top chemists, a scientist named Dreser, had finished demonstrating the usefulness of the potent new medicine and even gave it a new name: “aspirin”. It is believed that the name comes from a plant relative of a rose that makes salicylic acid (several plants make this compound, not just the willow). The Bayer Company could then support the tested medicine; they spread the word and marketed the new pill widely.

Over the next hundred years, this medicine would fall in and out of favor, at least two new families of medicines would be derived from it, and innumerable research articles would be published about aspirin. Thousands have been published in the past five years alone! One of the most important pieces of research about aspirin came in the early 1970s, when a British scientist named John Vane and his colleagues showed how aspirin works. His work was so important that he and his colleagues were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1982. Dr. Vane was even made a British knight for his work!

How does this miracle drug relive pain?

Pain is really something you feel in your brain. For example, let's say you hit your finger with a hammer (please don't try this at home). The part of your finger that is damaged has nerve endings in it — these are little detectors in your joints and your skin that feel things like heat, vibration, light touch from things like the computer mouse you're holding, and, of course, big crushing shocks like being hit with a hammer. There are different receptors for each of these types of sensations. The damaged tissue in your finger also releases some chemicals that make those nerve endings register the crushing shock even stronger — like turning up the volume on your stereo so you can hear it better. This is the “ouch” @#$&* factor. Some of these chemicals are prostaglandins, and working cells in the damaged tissues make these chemicals using an enzyme called cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2).

Because of the prostaglandins, the nerve endings that are involved now send a strong signal through nerves in your hand, then through your arm, up your neck and into your brain, where your mind decides this signal means, "HEY! PAIN!" The prostaglandins seem to contribute just a portion of the total signal that means pain, but this portion is an important one. In addition, prostaglandins not only help you to feel the pain of the damaged finger, but they also cause the finger to swell up (this is called inflammation) to bathe the tissues in fluid from your blood that will protect it and help it to heal. Remember this is a simplified version of the pain story; lots of chemicals seem to be involved in this process, not just prostaglandins.

This pathway works very well as far as telling you your finger is hurt. The pain serves a purpose here: It reminds you that your finger is damaged and that you need to be careful with it and not use it until it's healed. The problem is that, sometimes, things hurt without the hammer or for any other good reason. For example, sometimes you get a headache, probably because your scalp and neck muscles are contracted from stress or because a blood vessel in your brain has a spasm. Many people have arthritis, which is swelling and pain in the joints such as the knuckles or knees, and this problem can not only make people uncomfortable, it can damage the joints permanently. And many women have pain in their abdomens during their periods, usually known as cramps, for no known useful reason. These processes appear to involve prostaglandins as well.

Aspirin helps these problems by stopping cells from making prostaglandins. Remember the enzyme, COX-2? It is a protein made by your body's cells whose job is to take chemicals floating around in your tissues and turn them into prostaglandins.

COX-2 can be found in lots of normal tissues, but much more of it is made in tissue that has been damaged in some way. Aspirin, it turns out, sticks to COX-2 and won't let it do its job; it's like a lock you put on your bicycle. The bicycle won't move with the lock on, and COX-2 can't work with aspirin stuck in it. So by taking aspirin, you don't stop the problem that's causing the pain, like the tight muscles in your scalp, or the cramping in your abdomen, or the hammer-damaged finger. But it does "lower the volume" on the pain signals getting through your nerves to your brain.

One common question about aspirin and other medicines is, "How does it know how to get to where the pain is?" The answer is that it doesn't! When you take aspirin, it dissolves in your stomach or the next part of the digestive tract, the small intestine, and your body absorbs it there. Then it goes into the bloodstream and it goes through your entire body. Although it is everywhere, it only works where there are prostaglandins being made, which includes the area where it hurts. This is the miracle part.

You may ask, "How come I have to keep taking aspirin if it works so well?" As with almost all chemicals, your body has ways of getting rid of aspirin. In this case, your liver, stomach, and other organs change aspirin to Salicylic acid. This chemical then slowly gets changed a bit more by the liver, which sticks other chemicals onto the salicylic acid so that your kidneys can filter it out of your blood and send it out in your urine. This whole process takes about four to six hours, so you need to take another pill at that time to keep the effect going.

The problem with the fact that aspirin goes through your entire bloodstream is that your body needs prostaglandins for some reasons. One place they are useful is in the stomach; it turns out another enzyme called COX-1 makes a prostaglandin that seems to keep your stomach lining nice and thick. Aspirin keeps COX-1 from working (it keeps most prostaglandins from being made equally well — it's "nonselective"), and your stomach lining gets thin, allowing the digestive juice inside to irritate it. This is probably the biggest reason why aspirin and its relatives upset stomachs (not only because it's an acid, as Hoffmann had thought).

COX-2 also works in some normal tissues like the brain and kidney; at normal amounts, one dose of aspirin probably doesn't affect these areas much. And there are other places in the body where prostaglandins have a job in normal tissues, such as the blood.

In the last few decades, it has been found that aspirin's action of stopping prostaglandin production has effects on things besides pain, inflammation, and the stomach.

For example, some types of prostaglandins cause tiny particles in your blood (known as platelets) to stick together to form a blood clot. By inhibiting prostaglandin production, aspirin slows down clot production. Although this can be bad, such as with a bloody nose — in which case you want a clot to form — blood clots can be damaging as well, such as in causing heart attacks by clogging the blood vessels that bring oxygen and energy to the beating heart. For this reason, many adults now take aspirin to prevent heart attacks, and it also helps people who have already had a heart attack stay alive. Surely Hoffmann (and the Bayer Company) could never have predicted this effect. And as noticed at least as far back as Hippocrates in ancient Greece, aspirin and its relatives also lower fevers; this seems to be an effect on a part of the brain known as the hypothalamus, which controls temperature (as well as other body functions).

A lot of research is being done now to find out if aspirin can be used for other problems; it has already shown some promise in helping with problems as diverse as cataracts in the eyes, some cancers, gum disease, and high blood pressure during pregnancy.

Just like all medicines, aspirin isn't all good. It has effects on the body that you and your doctor don't want (side effects). Some of them have already been mentioned; for example, if you hit your finger with a hammer and it's bleeding, an aspirin may help the pain and swelling, but the wound may take longer to clot and stop bleeding. Also, it can be very upsetting to the stomach, especially at the high doses often used in arthritis.

Aspirin also isn't used as much for fevers in children since research has suggested that aspirin given to kids with flu, chicken pox, or other viral sicknesses may cause a potentially deadly problem called Reye syndrome.

Aspirin also changes the way your kidneys make urine, can cause some people to have trouble breathing (rarely), and can be dangerous at very high doses.

For these reasons, chemists have found other chemicals closely related to aspirin that have some of its good effects and lack some of its bad effects. For example, ibuprofen and naproxen (or Motrin and Naprosyn, respectively) also treat pain, swelling and fever, but they seem to have less of an effect on platelets than aspirin does. These medicines are called the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) because they decrease swelling but they aren't steroids, which are the most potent anti-inflammatory chemicals we have. Another family of medicines related to aspirin includes acetaminophen (or Tylenol), which decreases fevers and pain, but it doesn't affect either swelling or your stomach as much as the true NSAIDs do. Excedrin is a combination of 250 mg acetaminophen, 250 mg aspirin and 65 mg caffeine. This over the counter pain reliever also has other formularies for migraines and muscle pains.

Felix Hoffmann was sure that aspirin would make a good drug for arthritis. But as he struggled to prove it to his cautious employer, how could he have known it would save lives, and in so many ways? So the next time you get out the hammer, think of Felix and set aside an aspirin or two. He deserves the tribute, and it's best to be prepared for hitting the wrong nail. This miracle drug. like many others, was not discovered by the government, but by the diligent work of chemists, scientist, and doctors working in a free market system of capitalism.

Rachel Carson — Environmental Hero or Fraud

“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?” — Thomas Jefferson letter to James Smith — 1822.

On September 2, 2010 I posted a blog about Environmental Extremists in which I took a very negative view of Rachel Carson. Its rime to update that post in the light of several children’s books that have been released praising the work of this hero of the environmental movement.

The left wants to tell children a story about the founding of modern environmentalism, but their fairy tale version ignores the grim reality.

Storybooks abound about Rachel Carson, the marine biologist who wrote “Silent Spring” nearly 50 years ago. In fact, there are 130 children’s books about her available through Amazon.com that teach children to idolize Carson and how to become liberal activists, but without telling them the lives that could have been saved by DDT. Some of those books even promoted left-wing environmental groups like the George Soros-funded Natural Resources Defense Council.

The books are pro-environmentalist propaganda, sometimes targeted at toddlers and young children who would more typically be looking at books about animals and cars. One such picture book by Laurie Lawlor, called “Rachel Carson and Her Book That Changed the World” tells little ones: “No one had taken a stand against big business, federal agencies that approved chemical use, or universities that performed shoddy research about the effects of chemicals. She knew she was walking into dangerous territory.”

“Rachel Carson and Her Book That Changed the World,” released in February, is just the latest of many books for children of all ages about the lefty environmental “hero.” Left-wing eco-activists laud Carson as the foremother of today’s environmental movement. Former vice president Al Gore even wrote the introduction to a 1994 edition of “Silent Spring,” and credited her as his inspiration to become an environmentalist.

Gore wrote: “Rachel Carson was one of the reasons why I became so conscious of the environment and so involved in environmental issues.” Of course, the environmentalists who idolize Carson and her 1962 book ignore the negative impact it. Without it, DDT could have been used to help prevent millions of people from dying a miserable death from malaria.

From beautifully illustrated picture books to young reader’s books, there is plenty of pro-Carson (anti-chemical) propaganda available to children. Many of these books come complete with sections dedicated to Gore and “An Inconvenient Truth” along with suggestions for how small children can become eco-activists.

“Rachel Carson” by Marie-Therese Miller, part of a book series called: “Conservation Heroes”, is aimed at older grade school children. Gore also has a book in this series. This book outlined the lefts vision of what Rachel Carson accomplished and her history. In the final chapter dedicated to Carson’s supposed legacy, the author failed to mention the real lasting impression of Carson — a continual state of environmental hysteria.

“Who on Earth is Rachel Carson? Mother of the Environmental Movement” by Glenn Scherer and Marty Fletcher, indoctrinates grade school children into thinking that population growth is bad. They wrote, “Rachel also saw what happens to nature when the human population increases rapidly and development takes place with little or no control.”

After sharing one-sided tales of Carson the hero, both “Rachel Carson” and “Who on Earth is Rachel Carson? Mother of the Environmental Movement” teach kids how to become environmentalists like her. Both books end with suggestions on where a child can go to get involved in the environmental movement. A child could visit the website for Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a Soros-funded environmental extremist group, or they could get involved at their local Sierra club.

Henry Miller, scholar at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, argued in a Sept. 5th op-ed for Forbes.com called “Rachel Carson’s Deadly Fantasies” that Carson’s real legacy lie in her disingenuous claims that stopped a useful life saver around the world.

“DDT was used with dramatic effect to shorten and prevent typhus epidemics during and after WWII when people were dusted with large amounts of it but suffered no ill effects, which is perhaps the most persuasive evidence that the chemical is harmless to humans,” Miller wrote.

Miller continues:

“We recently passed the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s best-selling book, “Silent Spring.” Widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement, it was an emotionally charged but deeply flawed denunciation of the widespread spraying of chemical pesticides for the control of insects. Today, the book is still revered by many, but its legacy is anything but positive.

As detailed by Roger Meiners and Andy Morriss in their scholarly yet very readable analysis, “Silent Spring at 50: Reflections on an Environmental Classic,” Carson exploited her reputation as a well-known nature writer to advocate and legitimatize “positions linked to a darker tradition in American environmental thinking.” The book “encourages some of the most destructive strains within environmentalism: alarmism, technophobia, failure to consider the costs and benefits of alternatives, and the discounting of human well-being around the world.”

Carson’s proselytizing and advocacy raised substantial anxiety about DDT and led to bans in most of the world and to restrictions on other chemical pesticides. But the fears she raised were based on gross misrepresentations and scholarship so atrocious that, if Carson were an academic, she would be guilty of egregious academic misconduct. Her observations about DDT have been condemned by many scientists. In the words of Professor Robert H. White-Stevens, an agriculturist and biology professor at Rutgers University, “If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth.”

In 1992, San Jose State University entomologist J. Gordon Edwards, a long-time member of the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society and a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, offered a persuasive and comprehensive rebuttal of “Silent Spring.” As he explained in “The Lies of Rachel Carson,” a stunning, point by point refutation, “it simply dawned on me that that Rachel Carson was not interested in the truth about [pesticides] and that I was being duped along with millions of other Americans.” He demolished Carson’s arguments and assertions, calling attention to critical omissions, faulty assumptions, and outright fabrications.

Consider, for example, this passage from Edwards’ article: “This implication that DDT is horribly deadly is completely false. Human volunteers have ingested as much as 35 milligrams of it a day for nearly two years and suffered no adverse effects. Millions of people have lived with DDT intimately during the mosquito spray programs and nobody even got sick as a result. The National Academy of Sciences concluded in 1965 that ‘in a little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million [human] deaths that would otherwise have been inevitable.’ The World Health Organization stated that DDT had ‘killed more insects and saved more people than any other substance.’”

In addition, DDT was used with dramatic effect to shorten and prevent typhus epidemics during and after WWII when people were dusted with large amounts of it but suffered no ill effects, which is perhaps the most persuasive evidence that the chemical is harmless to humans. The product was such a boon to public health that in 1948 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Dr. Paul Müller for his discovery of the “contact insecticidal action” of DDT.

….

The legacy of Rachel Carson is that tens of millions of human lives – mostly children in poor, tropical countries – have been traded for the possibility of slightly improved fertility in raptors. This remains one of the monumental human tragedies of the last century. It is shocking that Dunn, an assistant professor of biology, remains ignorant of Carson’s shortcomings, and deplorable that university students are exposed to a scientist who manifests such ignorance and failure to respect the norms of science. Likewise, Nature’s decision to publish Dunn’s commentary reflects either an antiscientific bias or a failure of peer-review.”

Henry I. Miller, a physician, is the Robert Wesson Fellow of Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover institution; he was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Gregory Conko is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

Another expert, Dennis Avery, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute, said Carson is indirectly responsible for millions of preventable deaths noting “The absence of DDT had led to the needless deaths of at least 30 million people from malaria and yellow fever in the tropics — most of them were helpless African children.

On April 13, 2007 Dennis Avery wrote in the Canada Free Press “Rachel Carson and the Malaria Tragedy.” In his article he stated:

“If Rachel Carson were still alive, April 12 would have been her 100th birthday. All over the Western World well-meaning, but misguided, souls marked that day with choruses of praise for the woman who almost singly-handed created the modern environmental movement. Her book, Silent Spring, warned us that man-made pesticides would kill our kids with cancer and eliminate our wild birds.

Since Silent Spring was published, of course, massive testing has documented that synthetic pesticides are no cancer threat to humans. Dr. Bruce Ames, who received the National Science Medal from President Clinton, has found that 99.999 percent of the cancer risks in our food supply come from natural pesticides which Nature has put in the fruits and vegetables to ward off the pervasive insects, fungi and diseases. Even so, the one-fourth of our population which eats the most fruits and vegetables has half the cancer risk of those who eat the least produce. So much for the toxicity of pesticide traces.

Rachel Carson's major impact on the planet has been to discourage the use of a safe, cheap pesticide called DDT to suppress disease-bearing mosquitoes. North America and Europe used DDT to eradicate malaria. After our children were safe, we told the Third World not to use it because it might harm their bird populations.

The absence of DDT has led to the needless deaths of at least 30 million people from malaria and yellow fever in the tropics. (Five times as many as Hitler killed in his concentrations death camps, albeit inadvertently). Most of them were helpless African children. In addition, malaria has been allowed to blight the lives of perhaps 1 billion chronic malaria sufferers, who are too often unable to work and further erode economic resources by requiring family nursing care. The millions of malaria cases in the tropics may, just by themselves, explain half of the poverty and human degradation on the planet today.

It's not widely known that Ms. Carson originally had a co-author for Silent Spring. His name was Edwin Diamond, and he had been Science Editor of Newsweek. Early in the drafting of the book, he resigned from the project. He declared later that Silent Spring was an "emotional, alarmist book seeking to cause Americans to mistakenly believe their world is being poisoned."

….

One of the most effective Third World uses of DDT is to spray the inside of homes. It's the most cost-effective mosquito repellent known. Instead of a mosquito entering the home; biting someone; spreading the disease; and dying hours later, the mosquito never comes in. One application every six months is enough to reduce malaria rates by 60 percent. DDT is the only highly effective strategy we have for suppressing this massive problem. If malaria made a comeback in America, the EPA would have to re-register DDT.

The U.S. Agency for International Development is now offering modest funding for the indoor use of DDT in poor tropical countries--30 years late. Happy Birthday, Ms. Carson.”

Dennis t. Avery was a senior policy analyst for the U.S. State Department, where he won the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement. He is the co-author, with atmospheric physicist Fred Singer, of the book “Unstoppable Global Warming—Every 1500 Years”, available from Rowman & Littlefield.

In July 2007 National Geographic Magazine published a feature article on the increase of Malaria throughout the world. The article states; “The global eradication effort did achieve some notable successes. Malaria was virtually wiped out in much of the Caribbean and South Pacific, from the Balkans, from Taiwan. In Sri Lanka, there were 2.8 million cases of malaria in 1946, and a total of 17 in 1963. In India, malaria deaths plummeted from 800,000 a year to scarcely any.”

"In several places where malaria had been on the brink of extinction, including both Sri Lanka and India, the disease came roaring back. And in much of sub-Saharan Africa, malaria eradication never really got started. The WHO program largely bypassed the continent, and smaller scale efforts made little headway.”

"The ban on DDT," says Dr. Gwadz of the National Institutes of Health, "may have killed 20 million children."

I August, 2006 Brian Handwerk wrote an article for National Geographic News stating that DDT to return as weapon against Malaria:

“DDT, a notorious symbol of environmental degradation, is poised to make a comeback.

International experts are touting the widely banned pesticide as a best bet to save millions of human lives threatened by malaria.

The disease, which kills mostly children and pregnant women, is largely spread by mosquitoes.

The overwhelming majority—90 percent—of malaria victims live in Africa, where the disease plagues both human and economic health (Africa facts, maps, more).

In May the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) endorsed the use of DDT for indoor antimalarial treatment in the developing world.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is expected to do the same in short order, according to a comprehensive report published in the current issue of the journal Nature Medicine.

The chemical's return is sure to raise some eyebrows, but people on the front lines of the malaria fight generally support the decision.

"It's about 20 years too late, but it's a good thing," said Don Roberts, a professor of tropical public health at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.

"I think it's going to make a huge difference in the health of people at risk of malaria."

I spent over a year working on a World Bank funded project in Sri Lanka, Two of the largest health concerns in that popular tropical island nation were malaria and dengue fever — both caused by virus carried by mosquitos. Dengue fever also known as breakbone fever, is an infectious tropical disease caused by the dengue virus. Symptoms include fever, headache, muscle and joint pains, and a characteristic skin rash that is similar to measles. In a small proportion of cases the disease develops into the life-threatening dengue hemorrhagic fever, resulting in bleeding, low levels of blood platelets and blood plasma leakage, or into dengue shock syndrome, where dangerously low blood pressure occurs.

Dengue is transmitted by several species of mosquito within the genus Aedes. The virus has four different types; infection with one type usually gives lifelong immunity to that type, but only short-term immunity to the others. Subsequent infection with a different type increases the risk of severe complications. As there is no vaccine, prevention is sought by reducing the habitat and the number of mosquitoes and limiting exposure to bites.

Treatment of acute dengue is supportive, using either oral or intravenous rehydration for mild or moderate disease, and intravenous fluids and blood transfusion for more severe cases. The incidence of dengue fever has increased dramatically since the 1960s, with around 50–100 million people infected yearly. Early descriptions of the condition date from 1779, and its viral cause and the transmission were elucidated in the early 20th century. Dengue has become a global problem since the Second World War and is endemic in more than 110 countries.

The only sure-file way of eradicating mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, and dengue fever is to kill the carriers. The most effective means of killing mosquitos is with DDT.

So, thanks to the environmental extremism of Rachel Carson and her fellow travelers in the press and the environmental movement millions of people — mainly children — have painful deaths from mosquito-borne diseases. For this reason Rachel Carson was a fraud who should not be eulogized and glamorized to our children. So when your child comes home from school with a book praising Rachel Carson tell him or her the truth.

Will We Have To Buy Broccoli?

"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain." — Frédéric Bastiat (The Law)

"Liberal commentators were shocked this past week when in three days of oral argument in the lawsuits challenging ObamaCare, five Supreme Court justices — a majority — asked questions strongly suggesting they think the legislation is unconstitutional. The justices are not the only federal officials who take an oath to uphold the Constitution. So do the president and vice president, Cabinet members and other appointees, and every member of Congress. That means that every federal official has an obligation to act in line with the Constitution as he or she understands it. And that doesn't necessarily mean obeying Supreme Court decisions. Clearly the two parties are divided on the constitutionality of the ObamaCare mandate. Polls have shown large majorities of voters (We The People) think the provision is unconstitutional, though one can wonder whether many have given the matter much thought. But they're certainly giving it more thought after this week and will likely give it more when the decision comes down. Voters can reasonably ask candidates for Congress their views on this and other constitutional issues and call on them to vote against measures they consider beyond Congress' constitutional powers.

Finding herself with a bit of time on her hands, Justice Ginsburg swung by Cairo last month to help out the lads from the Muslim Brotherhood building the new Egypt: 'I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012,' she advised them. Instead, she recommended the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the European Convention on Human Rights. That's why the fate of the republic will come down to a 5-4 vote. Because four-ninths of the constitutional court thinks the American constitutional order is as out dated as a 2006 BlackBerry. If the establishment wants to invent a new 'right' — i.e., yet another intrusion by government — it goes ahead and does so. If it happens to conflict with this year's constitution, they rewrite it. The United States is the only Western nation in which our rulers invoke the Constitution for the purpose of overriding it — or, at any rate, torturing its language beyond repair. Thus, in [the] debate on whether ObamaCare is merely the latest harmless evolution of the interstate-commerce clause, the most learned and highly remunerated jurists in the land chewed over the matter of whether a person, simply by virtue of being born, was participating in a 'market.' Had George III shown up at the Constitutional Convention to advance that argument with a straight face, the framers would have tossed aside the quill feathers and reached for their muskets."

Paul Krugman is no beginner when it comes to economic fallacies. From calling for a Federal Reserve-engineered housing bubble to bring the U.S. out of the dot-com recession to actually declaring that there is a free lunch to be enjoyed with money-printing, the Keynesian bulldog has proven himself totally ignorant of the concept of scarcity.

Scarcity, of course, is the sole reason why men economize and produce. It is the means to achieve food, water, shelter, and all other goods which allow the species to survive. If there is no scarcity, there is no market economy. Scarcity implies opportunity costs, as nothing comes without a cost in terms of time and quantity. Purchasing an ice cream cone on a hot day means that money spent can't be used for anything else. Going for a drive on a Friday afternoon means that time spent driving can't be spent enjoying other activities.

Scarcity is a simple concept with broad implications. When a Nobel Prize-winning economist appears incapable of understanding it, one must question the true intent of his writing or the value of a Nobel Prize.

There are examples abound in his recent New York Times column "Broccoli and Bad Faith." With the Supreme Court hearing arguments over the constitutionality of President Obama's keystone health care law, Krugman is worried that the high court may strike down the bill over its breaching of Constitutional authority by mandating U.S. citizens purchase health insurance.

But being a big-government cheerleader, Krugman has no qualms about whether the law is Constitutional or not. His only worry is the downtrodden being incapable of making their own decisions. He writes:

“Removing the mandate would make the law much less workable, while striking down the whole thing would mean denying health coverage to 30 million or more Americans.”

Striking down the law denies coverage? In non-Orwellian terms, what Krugman means to say is that by not forcing individuals to purchase health insurance, they are denied such coverage. To understand this claim, just apply Krugman's logic to any economic sphere. Say the government could force everyone to buy food under penalty of imprisonment or death in order to cease starvation. Regardless of the kinds of unintended consequences that would follow such legislation, Krugman could then argue that abolishing such a measure would deny millions from having a full stomach. I refer to Bastiat’s quote above …” It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain." Perhaps Krugman should read something besides Moore’s Utopia of Hobbes’ Leviathan

This is an appropriate point in this blog to insert a little video clip of Milton Friedman taking the lefty progressive Phil Donohue to school. Click here to view this interesting and informative video/

Friedman was a giant. His arguments are simple and concise, which certainly are a requirement to help Liberals like Donahue understand that their thought processes are hopeless. Clearly the vitriol that spews out when they have no arguments left to justify their positions is standard procedure. Yes, every college student, Union Member & Teacher should read Friedman’s writing.

Back to Krugman

It's funny how reasoning works when applied to its full extent.

Krugman proceeds to try to differentiate between broccoli as a good and health insurance as some type of otherworldly service:

“Let's start with the already famous exchange in which Justice Antonin Scalia compared the purchase of health insurance to the purchase of broccoli, with the implication that if the government can compel you to do the former, it can also compel you to do the latter. That comparison horrified health care experts all across America because health insurance is nothing like broccoli.

Why? When people choose not to buy broccoli, they don't make broccoli unavailable to those who want it. But when people don't buy health insurance until they get sick — which is what happens in the absence of a mandate — the resulting worsening of the risk pool makes insurance more expensive, and often unaffordable, for those who remain. As a result, unregulated health insurance basically doesn't work, and never has.”

Pay attention to what Krugman is saying here. When someone buys broccoli from his local grocer, he in no way prevents others from buying broccoli. To believe this, one would also have to believe that broccoli is then in itself not scarce. After all, if Krugman's argument were true, you and I could both walk into the same grocery store, proceed to the produce section where broccoli is available and purchase the exact same piece of the vegetable at the same time. Only under that scenario would my purchasing broccoli not make it unavailable to you. Such is a fantasy ideal, and only possible in the utopia known as the Garden of Eden, where scarcity is nonexistent.

Broccoli, like all consumer goods, requires time, land, labor, and capital to produce. It does not fall from the sky. Farmers who grow broccoli can't in turn use their land to grow other produce. They can't invest their time in other endeavors. The whole market process is based on this state of affairs, where producers are sent signals via consumers by the pricing system so that investment goes into those industries or goods in high demand. This signaling process is necessary because of scarcity. It guides producers toward the most efficient use of resources.

Even an individual mandate for people to buy health insurance doesn't fix this problem. My getting treatment by a doctor means that same doctor is unavailable to offer treatment to you. However, this doesn't validate Marxism, which holds that a market economy is a struggle between exploiters and saps. The market ensures that those who need goods and services most urgently are able to get them through the pricing process and through bidding up the purchasing price. It is a peaceful process as long as private property rights are recognized and upheld. Consumers are free to pay what they will for goods and services, while producers are free to accept the price at their given preference level.

The absence of an uninhibited market is the true disease that plagues the health care industry. Krugman can't admit this, as it flies in the face of his pro-government and devoutly Keynesian ideology.

The individual mandate is ultimately a coercive measure which distorts the harmony of the market process. Try as he might, Krugman can't argue away scarcity with scare-mongering and illogical examples involving free broccoli for all.

Lebens Unwertes Leben

“Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression." — James Madison

The phrase "life unworthy of life" (in German: "Lebensunwertes Leben") was a Nazi designation for the segments of populace which had no right to live and thus were to be "euthanized". The term included people with serious medical problems and those considered grossly inferior according to racial policy of the Third Reich. This concept formed an important component of the ideology of Nazism and eventually helped lead to the Holocaust.

This Nazi policy was the off shot of the Eugenics Movement. At its peak of popularity eugenics was supported by a wide variety of prominent people, including Winston Churchill, Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes, H. G. Wells, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, John Harvey Kellogg, Linus Pauling, and Sidney Webb Many members of the American Progressive Movement supported eugenics, seduced by its scientific trappings and its promise of a quick end to social ills. Its most infamous proponent and practitioner was, however, Adolf Hitler who praised and incorporated eugenic ideas in Mein Kampf and emulated Eugenic legislation for the sterilization of "defectives" that had been pioneered in the United States.

Eugenics became an academic discipline at many colleges and universities, and received funding from many sources. One of the leading schools in the United States was the University of Indiana. Three International Eugenics Conferences presented a global venue for eugenicists with meetings in 1912 in London, and in 1921 and 1932 in New York. Eugenic policies were first implemented in the early 1900s in the United States. Later, in the 1920s and 30s, the eugenic policy of sterilizing certain mental patients was implemented in a variety of other countries, including Belgium, Brazil, Canada, and Sweden, among others. The scientific reputation of eugenics started to decline in the 1930s, a time when Ernst Rüdin used eugenics as a justification for the racial policies of Nazi Germany, and when proponents of eugenics among scientists and thinkers prompted a backlash in the public. Nevertheless, in Sweden the eugenics program continued until 1975.

Since the postwar period, both the public and the scientific communities have associated eugenics with Nazi abuses, such as enforced racial hygiene, human experimentation, and the extermination of "undesired" population groups. However, developments in genetic, genomic, and reproductive technologies at the end of the 20th century have raised many new questions and concerns about what exactly constitutes the meaning of eugenics and what its ethical and moral status is in the modern era. [Source: Wikipedia]

Eugenicists advocate specific policies that (if successful) they believe will lead to a perceived improvement of the human gene pool. Since defining what improvements are desired or beneficial is perceived by many as a cultural choice rather than a matter that can be determined objectively (e.g., by empirical, scientific inquiry), eugenics has often been deemed a pseudoscience. The most disputed aspect of eugenics has been the definition of "improvement" of the human gene pool, such as what is a beneficial characteristic and what is a defect. This aspect of eugenics has historically been tainted with scientific racism.

Early eugenicists were mostly concerned with perceived intelligence factors that often correlated strongly with social class. Many eugenicists took inspiration from the selective breeding of animals (where purebreds are often strived for) as their analogy for improving human society. The mixing of races (or miscegenation) was usually considered as something to be avoided in the name of racial purity. At the time this concept appeared to have some scientific support, and it remained a contentious issue until the advanced development of genetics led to a scientific consensus that the division of the human species into unequal races is unjustifiable. This was one of the theories advanced by Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood

Eugenics has also been concerned with the elimination of hereditary diseases such as hemophilia and Huntington's disease. However, there are several problems with labeling certain factors as genetic defects. In many cases there is no scientific consensus on what a genetic defect is. It is often argued that this is more a matter of social or individual choice. What appears to be a genetic defect in one context or environment may not be so in another. This can be the case for genes with a heterozygote advantage, such as sickle-cell disease or Tay-Sachs disease, which in their heterozygote form may offer an advantage against, respectively, malaria and tuberculosis. Although some birth defects are uniformly lethal, disabled persons can succeed in life. Many of the conditions early eugenicists identified as inheritable (pellagra is one such example) are currently considered to be at least partially, if not wholly, attributed to environmental conditions. Similar concerns have been raised when a prenatal diagnosis of a congenital disorder leads to abortion.

After the end of the Second World War and details of the Holocoust and the Nazi policies of extermination became well known promoters of Eugenics became less and less.

Today with the constant push for abortion we have entered a new era where Eugenics for financial or social reasons is gaining open support.

Two ethicists working with Australian universities argue in the latest online edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics that if abortion of a fetus is allowable, so to should be the termination of a newborn.

Alberto Giubilini with Monash University in Melbourne and Francesca Minerva at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne write that in “circumstances occurring after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.”

The two are quick to note that they prefer the term “after-birth abortion“ as opposed to ”infanticide.” Why? Because it “emphasizes that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus (on which ‘abortions’ in the traditional sense are performed) rather than to that of a child.” The authors also do not agree with the term euthanasia for this practice as the best interest of the person who would be killed is not necessarily the primary reason his or her life is being terminated. In other words, it may be in the parents’ best interest to terminate the life, not the newborns. (Note the change in language from infanticide to after-birth abortion)

The circumstances, the authors state, where after-birth abortion should be considered acceptable include instances where the newborn would be putting the well-being of the family at risk, even if it had the potential for an “acceptable” life. The authors cite Downs Syndrome as an example, stating that while the quality of life of individuals with Downs is often reported as happy, “such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care.”

This means a newborn whose family (or society) that could be socially, economically or psychologically burdened or damaged by the newborn should have the ability to seek out an after-birth abortion. They state that after-birth abortions are not preferable over early-term abortions of fetuses but should circumstances change with the family or the fetus in the womb, then they advocate that this option should be made available. In essence “Lebensunwertes Leben”

The authors go on to state that the moral status of a newborn is equivalent to a fetus in that it cannot be considered a person in the “morally relevant sense.” On this point, the authors write:

“Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’. We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.

[...]

Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life. Indeed, many humans are not considered subjects of a right to life: spare embryos where research on embryo stem cells is permitted, fetuses where abortion is permitted, criminals where capital punishment is legal.”

The authors go on to state:

The authors go on to state that the moral status of a newborn is equivalent to a fetus in that it cannot be considered a person in the “morally relevant sense.” On this point, the authors write:

“Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’. We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.

[...]

Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life. Indeed, many humans are not considered subjects of a right to life: spare embryos where research on embryo stem cells is permitted, fetuses where abortion is permitted, criminals where capital punishment is legal”

Giubilini and Minerva believe that being able to understand the value of a different situation, which often depends on mental development, determines personhood. For example, being able to tell the difference between an undesirable situation and a desirable one. They note that fetuses and newborns are “potential persons.” The authors do acknowledge that a mother, who they cite as an example of a true person, can attribute “subjective” moral rights to the fetus or newborn, but they state this is only a projected moral status.

The authors counter the argument that these “potential persons” have the right to reach that potential by stating it is “over-ridden by the interests of actual people (parents, family, and society) to pursue their own well-being because, as we have just argued, merely potential people cannot be harmed by not being brought into existence.”

And what about adoption? Giubilini and Minerva write that, as for the mother putting the child up for adoption, her emotional state should be considered as a trumping right. For instance, if she were to “suffer psychological distress” from giving up her child to someone else — they state that natural mothers can dream their child will return to them — then after-birth abortion should be considered an allowable alternative.

The authors do not tackle the issue of what age an infant would be considered a person.

The National Catholic Register thinks that these authors are right — once you accept their ideas on personhood. The Register states that the argument made by the ethicists is almost pro-life in that it “highlights the absurdity of the pro-abortion argument”:

“The second we allow ourselves to become the arbiters of who is human and who isn’t, this is the calamitous yet inevitable end. Once you say all human life is not sacred, the rest is just drawing random lines in the sand.”

First Things, a publication of the The Institute on Religion and Public Life, notes that while this article doesn’t mean the law could — or would — allow after-birth abortions in future medical procedures, arguments such as “the right to dehydrate the persistently unconscious” began in much the same way in bioethics journals.

The editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics today defended his decision to publish an article in which two ethicists advocated “after-birth abortion.” What was truly surprising about the article, editor Julian Savulescu writes, is not that the authors find infanticide morally permissible — but, rather, that opponents to infanticide would react to the article with vehemence. From Savulescu’s defense:

“What is disturbing is not the arguments in this paper nor its publication in an ethics journal. It is the hostile, abusive, threatening responses that it has elicited. More than ever, proper academic discussion and freedom are under threat from fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society.

What the response to this article reveals, through the microscope of the web, is the deep disorder of the modern world. Not that people would give arguments in favour of infanticide, but the deep opposition that exists now to liberal values and fanatical opposition to any kind of reasoned engagement.”

Note his reference to a “liberal society.” Savulescu might have a point that some of the responses to the article crossed the line. Of those he quoted, a couple were overtly racist and at least one was an outright death threat to anyone who would willingly perform an “after-birth abortion.” But that he doesn’t see the arguments forwarded by the authors as evidence of “the deep disorder of the modern world” is far more disturbing than comments thoughtlessly dashed off by justifiably outraged opponents of infanticide.

Sir Thomas More wrote in his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean where the people lived in a utopian society. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt to create an ideal society, and fictional societies portrayed in literature. More described Utopia as being a place where masterminds made all of the decisions and where the old and infirm were urged to commit secede as their lives no longer had a value to the community and were a drain on the community’s resources. The masterminds also allowed a limited number of children in order to control the population so they could maintain the quality of life on the island.

Once upon a time, abortion advocates would accuse pro-lifers of “slippery slope logic” when those pro-lifers suggested it was only a matter of time before someone would use the abortion advocates’ arguments to defend infanticide. According to Savulescu, that began to happen a long time ago — and it continues to happen today. Turns out, it is a slippery slope, after all. If humans don’t have a right to life from the moment of conception, when does the right to life kick in? The moment a human becomes a person? When is that? Who determines when? The standard becomes movable — and, consequently, impossible to uphold.

Tyranny vs. Religion

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”. — John 3:16

Mark Levine writes in in latest bestselling book Ameritopia:

“Tyranny, broadly defined, is the use of power to dehumanize the individual and delegitimize his nature. Political utopianism is tyranny disguised as a desirable, workable, and even paradisiacal governing ideology.”

Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Marx’s workers’ paradise are utopias that are anti-individual and anti-individualism. For the utopians, modern and olden, the individual is one-dimensional—selfish. On his own, he has little moral value. Contrarily, authoritarianism is defended as altruistic and masterminds as socially conscious. Thus endless interventions in the individual’s life and manipulation of his conditions are justified as not only necessary and desirable but noble governmental pursuits. This false dialectic is at the heart of the problem we face today.

In truth, man is naturally independent and self-reliant, which are attributes that contribute to his own well-being and survival, and the well-being and survival of a civil society. He is also a social being who is charitable and compassionate. History abounds with examples, as do the daily lives of individuals. To condemn individualism as the utopians do is to condemn the very foundation of the civil society and the American founding and endorse, wittingly or unwittingly, oppression. Karl Popper saw it as an attack on Western civilization. “The emancipation of the individual was indeed the great spiritual revolution which had led to the breakdown of tribalism and to the rise of democracy.” Moreover, Judaism and Christianity, among other religions, teach the altruism of the individual.”

For years the left through its political leaders and constant court cases has been attacking all forms of religion in the United States, especially Christianity in their push to create an egalitarian, secular utopia where the state is all powerful. This constant attack has numbed the American people to the fact that the left-wing progressive statist have slowly eroded our religious freedoms as granted in the First Amendment of the Constitution. They have claimed a “wall of separation” between church and state and have beaten us over the head with this argument on a daily basis.

They tell us we can’t have a nativity scene in the public square or a cross on the hill. They claim singing a Christmas song in school violates the rights of non-Christians. They spout off their anti-religious, anti-God whenever they get a chance and even go so far as to demand we trash the nation’s motto, “In God We Trust.”

Nowhere was this anti-Christian push demonstrated as forcibly as this week in Rhode Island, a state based on Roger William’s belief in religious freedom, this week when a group of Occupy Wall Street protesters disrupted a Right to Life rally and threw condoms on Catholic school girls inside the Rhode Island state capitol building.

Todd Starnes writes in a Fox News report:

“Barth Bracy, executive director of Rhode Island Right to Life, said their rally had to be cut short after the Occupiers began screaming and refused to allow a Catholic priest to deliver a prayer.

“This is their idea of civil speech but we believe it’s an outrage,” Bracy told Fox News & Commentary “They started heckling, chanting and blowing whistles. They shouted down a priest.”

Last week’s rally was held inside the rotunda of the state capitol in Providence. Bracy said the Occupiers, along with some pro-choice demonstrators, infiltrated the crowd of some 150 pro-lifers. He said the pro-life crowd was made up of senior citizens, mothers with young children, Cub Scouts, and school kids.

Bracy said one of the most egregious incidents occurred when an Occupier climbed to the third floor balcony and dumped a box of condoms on girls from a Catholic school.

“What kind of individual throw condoms at Catholic school girls,” Bracy asked.

Bracy said capitol police were outnumbered and overwhelmed by the protesters. At one point they even attacked State. Rep. Doreen Costa.

“This was one of the most disturbing sights I’ve ever seen,” Costa told Fox News & Commentary. “It was horrendous. “

Costa said a female Occupier hit her on the head with a sign and shoved her “moppy” hair in the lawmaker’s face.

“I told her that she really stunk bad and needed to take a bath,” Costa said.

Costa said she was “speechless” when they showered the young girls with condoms. So was Father Bernard Healey, the executive director of the Rhode Island Catholic Conference.

“It’s disgraceful behavior,” Healey said. “The week before, the pro-abortion people had their rally and no one bothered them. Apparently freedom of speech only applies to those who agree with you”

I’ll tell you the kind of people who do this. They are people who have been raised in a society where religious tolerance and acceptance is foreign to them. They have been brought up to believe that they are the masterminds and should not allow others with opposing views to exist in their utopia. They are the product of a state controlled society that will not accept an opposing view and have a deep hatred for those who challenge their conscience. They believe in their freedom, yet will not allow others to exercise their freedom.

The basis of their disdain of religion lays in their interpretation of the First Amendment which states:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Last week the Obama administration spit in the eye of the First Amendment, as it did Article 2, Section 2 and Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution with their so-called recess appointment to appoint Richard Cordray as head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) without securing the Senate confirmation that is required by the U.S. Constitution.

This latest defilement of the Constitution is Obama’s Catholic universities, hospitals and charities will be compelled to pay for health insurance that covers sterilization, contraceptives and abortifacients.

Ed Henry of Fox News writes:

“Catholics are fired up over new rules implementing Obama's health care reform law forcing Catholic universities, hospitals, and charities to provide insurance for their employees covering contraception -- even though that violates church teachings.

"When you push people of faith and you tell them the government is going to knock down the wall of separation of church and state and overreach like the Obama administration, you've got a war on your hands," Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, told Fox News.

In an extraordinary move this past weekend, New York Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan and other archbishops throughout the nation had their priests read letters denouncing the Obama administration policy from the pulpit at Sunday Mass.

"Never before has the government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience," Dolan said in a web video that takes the battle online. "This shouldn't happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights. How about letting our elected leaders know that we want religious liberty and rights of consciences restored and the administration's mandate rescinded? We can't afford to strike out on this one."

Pressed on the matter at his daily briefing Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney repeated several times the administration believes it struck an "appropriate balance" in crafting the policy.

"The administration believes that this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious beliefs and increasing access to important preventive services," said Carney. "We will continue to work closely with religious groups during this transitional period to discuss their concerns."

Even some Catholic Democrats are not buying that claim, however, with liberal columnist E.J. Dionne ripping the policy in a Washington Post column. Dionne charged Monday that the president "utterly botched" the issue and "threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus."

This past Sunday, January 29, Roman Catholic congregations were read letters opposing the Obama administration's demand that all Catholic universities and Catholic-based charities make sure they provide all employees access to health insurance providing artificial contraception, including abortifacients and sterilization services such as vasectomies and tubal ligations. The "morning after" pill is also included.

The clerics' fiery rebukes follow Pope Benedict XVI's January 19 speech in which he warned the Catholic Church of the increasing threats of radical secularism's intrusion into politics and culture. The Holy Father specifically mentioned the U.S. church's need to be afforded conscientious objection to the administration's demand for compliance within one year.

No serious observer can believe that the administration's real goal is to ensure the acceptance or availability of contraception.

Everyone knows that anyone who wants contraceptives has easy access to such measures even if he or she does not have a health plan that provides for them. The local friendly drugstore has aisles stacked to the ceiling with condoms and other "family planning" measures, while clinics such as Planned Parenthood hand out birth control pills and abortions with abandon — sometimes even to underage girls, as damning videos taken by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles have shown.

No, the real issue is not birth control or the provision of it.

The central issue is government intimidation of and control over religious institutions. It is government's overriding of the consciences of Catholics and members of other denominations who oppose abortifacients and sterilization.

The 2013 deadline for Catholic institutions to conform to the health care mandate is the proverbial governmental foot in the door for controlling religious institutions — actually, for controlling all people of faith who disagree with the administration's stance toward abortion.

For the truth of the matter is that the U.S. government's intrusion into religious organizations, if not halted at this stage, will continue to press even harder for even more sacrifices of conscience. The next step on the part of the government will almost certainly force all religious institutions to provide access to health care insurance that provides coverage of surgical abortions. The administration's demands are only the first salvo in what is bound to be a continuing battle between the federal government and churches if ObamaCare continues its trajectory and is not dismantled.

But there are even worse consequences if the government continues to try to coerce the church against its conscience and doctrines of faith and practice. If the push to force the churches into positions compromising its rules of faith and practice succeeds, and the church capitulates, there is absolutely no church or church institution the government will not seek to control completely.

By insisting that the state override matters of conscience and faith established by the Church, the U.S. federal government will have followed the examples of tyrannous regimes which have sought to seek to establish government power over the Church. It will essentially be requiring what totalitarian regimes everywhere require of the Church — namely, no separation of Church and state. There will be only the State.

The present pope, formerly Cardinal Ratzinger of Germany, has fully understood from the experiences of his youth while in Nazi Germany — and from the experiences of his good friend and predecessor Pope John Paul II while under Nazi rule in Poland during WWII and under Soviet Communism during the Cold War — just what happens when the state dictates its policies to the Church. Both popes knew what it was like to live under a regime which reversed the roles of Church and state. Both saw the Church crushed under oppression.

The Christian view of the Church is that it must act in freedom. It must be free to stand apart from the government and act as the conscience of the state and its citizens. The state is never to act as the arbiter of the conscience of the church. The Church renders to Caesar what is Caesar's, and nothing more, as all else is rendered to God. The Church remains transcendent as God's kingdom, above all earthly powers.

Otherwise, when Caesar controls the Church and its entire hierarchy of bishops, cardinals, and even popes, all are forced to salute and to submit to the state, as this famous photo of Catholic clergy offering Nazi stiff armed salute to Hitler illustrates.

If they do not rise up in civil rebellion against this administration's demands, what will become of the Catholic Church and other denominations in America?

The answer to that question is as follows: they will cease to be the Church in any significant way.

And without the Church and people of good faith everywhere in all denominations acting as the conscience of our nation, our constitutional Republic will also cease to exist.

Day Eight and Nine of Our Lincoln Highway Road Trip

These would be two days of visiting my niece Cindy and her husband Vic and son Paul at their home in Cicero, New York. We had been looking forward to this visit for the last five days and were anxious to spend time with them and catch up on family issues.

Before we arrived at their home we made two stops. The first was to visit the 1812 battlefield of Sackets Harbor just east of Watertown and the second stop was at an urgent care center. I’ll begin with the visit to Sackets Harbor.

This day was day was another gorgeous day with clear blue skies and mild temperatures. Sackets Harbor sits on the southern shore of Lake Ontario and was the site of a land and naval battle between the U.S, Navy and the British and Canadian forces in the war of 1812. Sackets Harbor is also the site of some beautiful homes, pleasant streets and a marina.

Kathy and I spent about an hour walking the entire state park and taking photos of the historic homes, monuments, informational plaques, and the burgeoning fall colors. The red barn set against the blue sky and lush green grass was especially impressive.

After leaving Sackets Harbor we wandered the back roads of Jefferson County past the farms and neat homes along the country roads. The fresh air and smells of freshly cut grass brought back memories of living in the outskirts of Cleveland and wandering the roads of Cuyahoga County in the autumn. It was a great experience.

Returning to Watertown we stopped at a Target store to see if the pharmacist could give Kathy something for her eye that was irritated and red. The Pharmacist told her eye was infected and she needed to see a physician. But, before leaving the store I picked up a calculator so Kathy did not have to long hand division to calculate our gas mileage and one of those magic window cleaners to keep our windshield sparkling.

Thanks to the GPS we located an urgent care facility in Watertown and after navigating the meandering city streets we found the urgent care facility. We walked in and were greeted by a helpful receptionist who took down all of Kathy’s information and medical insurance information. We had no problems with the medical insurance and after about a 20 minute wait we saw a physician’s assistant named Kerri who immediately diagnosed the problem as an eye infection (red eye) and prescribed some antibiotic eye drops which we purchased at the local Walgreens pharmacy for $40.00. Kathy has to use one drop in each eye three times each day for eight days and make sure she keeps her hands clean with antiseptic hand cleaner. After one day I can already see an improvement in her eye.

We left Watertown and drove for just over an hour to Vic and Cindy’s home in Cicero, NY. They have a great home on 12 acres right off State Route 31. The home is set back about 100 yards off the road and is surrounded by big trees.

Vic, Cindy and Paul greeted us with enthusiasm and made us feel right at home. When we arrived Vic and Paul were building their hot tub enclosure at the rear of the house. Vis is a military engineer who works on defense projects for Navy, but he finds time to serve as a Boy Scout Leader, volunteer fireman, carpenter, brick mason, tile layer, and general all around handyman. He has boundless energy and, along with Cindy and Paul, he has built most of his house. I envy him his talent and energy.

Vic is not only a great builder he also does a lot of the cooking and baking. He made us delicious lasagna on Saturday night along with an apple pie from scratch. This morning he got up early and whipped up some omelets for us. I always knew Cindy married well.

Paul is an Eagle Scout and a senior in high school. He hopes to get into Ohio State to study aerospace engineering. I am sure he will do well in whatever he does. He is a great young man who is well grounded thanks to the great parenting of Vic and Cindy. I wanted to mention he should look into civil engineering due to his love of building stuff and Ohio State has a good CE program. That will be up to Paul to figure out and I am sure he will choose his passion.

After a very hospitable stay with Vic, Cindy and Paul (oh I almost forgot Midnight, their black Lab) we departed for York, Pennsylvania at 10:00 am. Our first stop was a car wash to get all of those Canadian bugs off of the car. Then Dunkin Donuts for a coffee for the road. We took I-81 south and headed for York, PA. The drive was easy, but the traffic was heavy, it looked as though everyone was on the road this Sunday, Perhaps it was the weather and the thought that this might be the last good weekend of the year. On our drive south on I-81 we passed two Tim Hortons in New York, I thought we saw the last of them in Canada, but obviously the Canadians have invaded New York once again. No, we did not stop at Tim Hortons, we had enough of them. Instead we stopped at a Subway for a meatball sandwich for lunch. Fortunately I had loaded up with antacids for the trip. The sandwich was good, but it lasted for a long time.

The fall colors are just now coming into full bloom and we are finally seeing the reds of the oaks. When we crossed in Pennsylvania we began to encounter the usual construction zones with their forest of orange barrels. If you want to make some good investments look for companies that make those barrels. You will not go wrong. When we got around Harrisburg it got squirrely with the construction, detours and constant turnoffs. Vic warned me that road work in Pennsylvania was never done and he was right on.

We arrived at our Super-8 in York PA at 16:30 and got settled in before looking for a dinner spot. The Indian desk clerk recommended the Round the Clock Diner just up the road from the hotel. The food was good and the prices very reasonable. After returning to the hotel we watched the Cardinals and Jets lose and now I am watching the Packers and Falcons. I think the Falcons will win, but you will know if I was correct when you read this blog. Since this was a bye week for the Rams I did not have to get frustrated today.

Tomorrow (Monday) we will begin our trek along the Historic Lincoln Highway. I hope we have the same weather we have had so far and I have good luck finding the historic places I have marked on my maps.

You can see all of my pictures by clicking here. Don’t forget to click the “Slideshow” button at the upper right to view the largest image.

Till Monday night.