Thursday, July 27, 2006

The Adirondack Daily Enterprise

The Adirondack Daily Enterprise

Taking your medicine at the point of a gun

By Jack Phillips

The state of Virginia is threatening Abraham Cherrix, a 16-year-old, with torture — chemotherapy — that he doesn’t want and that his parents do not want for him. His oncologist insists that this is what he needs, despite the fact that a previous series of chemotherapy treatments which supposedly “got it all” actually didn’t. What they did do was leave him so debilitated that his father had to carry him out of the hospital after treatment. He says, “I studied. I did research. I came to the conclusion that chemotherapy was not the route I wanted to take.” Another round at higher doses “would kill me.”

Nevertheless the Virginia Social Services Department, on the complaint of his attending physician, dragged his parents into court, where Judge Jesse E. Demps issued a temporary order finding his parents neglectful for not forcing their child to take more chemotherapy. They now share custody with the Accomack County Department of Social Services. Medical expenses involved with cancer treatments are substantial. Adding legal expenses on top of them is obscene. This family is now in debt to the tune of $100,000!

The Department of Social Services is willing and able to bankrupt this family to satisfy their physician. Furthermore, that department intends to appeal the case to a higher court if they lose, to insure that this family goes deeper into debt. Do we really need this kind of social service? And do we really want physicians to be able to call in the troops to enforce their orders against our judgment of what is best for our children? This case indicates that the mantra, “Doctors know best,” which might have been true in the past, may no longer be valid. Whatever happened to “FIRST, DO NO HARM!”

Unfortunately, there are abused children who need protection, and it is necessary to have something like Social Services to provide this. However, reports that about 100,000 of our children are disappearing without a trace yearly indicates that Social Services is not doing its job. Nevertheless, they find time to harass good people who are trying to do what they think best for their children — for example, the family of Katie Wernecke in Texas, who was forced to live with foster parents and have her immune system disabled with chemotherapy before the court would allow her parents to provide her with immune-system-enhancing vitamin C infusions. A recent Canadian Journal of Medicine reported several cases of cancer cured with vitamin C infusions, which works by reinforcing the immune system so that the body can heal itself as it was designed to do. Disabling Katie’s immune system with chemotherapy before vitamin C infusions was irrational.

These bureaucrats are very aggressive; one of my acquaintances almost lost custody of his six children in Connecticut while driving home through that state because five of them refused to talk to strangers (Social Services personnel) while he was in a hospital making sure that one of them was not seriously ill.

Our servants in Washington, D.C. and in statehouses across the country have woven a cocoon of laws around us to empower their minions, and government employment keeps increasing. There is no constituency for saving money in our government, but there are incentives for spending more. Borrowing money from foreigners to have it misspent by Social Services departments makes no sense. It seems to me that our “servants” need to be informed that this has to stop. At the very least, we need to have freedom of choice in medical care. Getting medical care at the point of a gun is not acceptable. This freedom of choice would have been part of our Constitution if George Washington’s surgeon general had had his way.

There are informed people in this country who believe that chemotherapy is barbaric and that oncologists are jackals among men. While chemotherapy does kill cancer cells, collateral damage to healthy cells and the immune system is substantial. Many successful treatments for cancer have been developed over the years which are far kinder and gentler, but they have been suppressed by the medical establishment. For example, low-dose, whole-body radiation treatments, successfully tested at Harvard Medical School in 1975 and again in 1977, cured non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In more recent times, Dr. Sakamoto ran a similar test in Japan, and about 84 percent of his patients were living 13 years after the treatment. When he himself was diagnosed with colon cancer, after surgery, he gave himself two courses of these treatments and recovered fully with no metasteses. I wonder how many physicians willingly undergo chemotherapy.

After Christopher Bird published his book about Gaston Naessen’s cancer research, and persecution and trial in Canada, many American physicians called him for his suggestions on cancer treatments. According to his notes, he asked why they didn’t want to use the approved therapies that they gave patients on themselves or their loved ones, and they answered that they didn’t work.

We have wasted billions of dollars and years of effort on cancer research with little to show for it. It seems to me that people need to start insisting that they get something more from their government than increasing debt and harassment. Let your representatives know what you think. Your vote is a powerful weapon if used properly. But remember Joseph Stalin’s dictum: “It is not who votes, but who counts the votes that counts.”

The Abraham Cherrix Defense Fund is administered by the R.B.C. Centura Bank at 2422 Princess Anne Road in Virginia Beach, VA 23456, for those who might wish to contribute.


Well said, Mr. Phillips. It's time for We the People to put our collective foot down and tell these jackals in the government to back off and leave families alone.

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Judge Orders Teen to Cancer Treatment - Forbes.com

Judge Orders Teen to Cancer Treatment - Forbes.com

A judge ruled Friday that a 16-year-old boy fighting to use alternative treatment for his cancer must report to a hospital by Tuesday and accept treatment that doctors deem necessary, the family's attorney said.

The judge also found Starchild Abraham Cherrix's parents were neglectful for allowing him to pursue alternative treatment of a sugar-free, organic diet and herbal supplements supervised by a clinic in Mexico, lawyer John Stepanovich said.

Jay and Rose Cherrix of Chincoteague on Virginia's Eastern Shore must continue to share custody of their son with the Accomack County Department of Social Services, as the judge had previously ordered, Stepanovich said.

The parents were devastated by the new order and planned to appeal, the lawyer said.


So this young man, who in two years will be considered adult enough vote isn't adult enough to know what's best for his own body? What the hell is wrong with these government people? Who gave them the authority to tell families what to do, and people what to do with their own lives? Where do they get off playing God with this young man's health and family life? So what if he's a "minor"? He's old enough to drive a car, for fuck's sake! A century ago, he would've been a man and had a family of his own. This is just too much.

Friday, July 14, 2006

Gary Leupp: "Just a Goddamned Piee of Paper"

Gary Leupp: "Just a Goddamned Piee of Paper"

Doug Thompson, publisher of Capitol Hill Blue, says he's talked to three people present last month when Republican Congressional leaders met with President Bush in the Oval Office to talk about renewing the Patriot Act. That act, passed by legislators who hadn't read it, in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 (when most people were shell-shocked and lawmakers in particular disinclined to use their brains), has of course been criticized as containing unconstitutional elements. All three GOP politicians quote their president as saying: "Stop throwing the Constitution in my face! It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"...

So our Commander in Chief shows his true colors! Those words are treason!

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Liberal Christianity is paying for its sins - Los Angeles Times

Liberal Christianity is paying for its sins - Los Angeles Times

Out-of-the-mainstream beliefs about gay marriage and supposedly sexist doctrines are gutting old-line faiths.
By Charlotte Allen, CHARLOTTE ALLEN is Catholicism editor for Beliefnet and the author of "The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus."
July 9, 2006

The accelerating fragmentation of the strife-torn Episcopal Church USA, in which several parishes and even a few dioceses are opting out of the church, isn't simply about gay bishops, the blessing of same-sex unions or the election of a woman as presiding bishop. It also is about the meltdown of liberal Christianity.

Embraced by the leadership of all the mainline Protestant denominations, as well as large segments of American Catholicism, liberal Christianity has been hailed by its boosters for 40 years as the future of the Christian church.

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Instead, as all but a few die-hards now admit, all the mainline churches and movements within churches that have blurred doctrine and softened moral precepts are demographically declining and, in the case of the Episcopal Church, disintegrating.

It is not entirely coincidental that at about the same time that Episcopalians, at their general convention in Columbus, Ohio, were thumbing their noses at a directive from the worldwide Anglican Communion that they "repent" of confirming the openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire three years ago, the Presbyterian Church USA, at its general assembly in Birmingham, Ala., was turning itself into the laughingstock of the blogosphere by tacitly approving alternative designations for the supposedly sexist Christian Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Among the suggested names were "Mother, Child and Womb" and "Rock, Redeemer and Friend." Moved by the spirit of the Presbyterian revisionists, Beliefnet blogger Rod Dreher held a "Name That Trinity" contest. Entries included "Rock, Scissors and Paper" and "Larry, Curly and Moe."

Following the Episcopalian lead, the Presbyterians also voted to give local congregations the freedom to ordain openly cohabiting gay and lesbian ministers and endorsed the legalization of medical marijuana. (The latter may be a good idea, but it is hard to see how it falls under the theological purview of a Christian denomination.)

The Presbyterian Church USA is famous for its 1993 conference, cosponsored with the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and other mainline churches, in which participants "reimagined" God as "Our Maker Sophia" and held a feminist-inspired "milk and honey" ritual designed to replace traditional bread-and-wine Communion.

As if to one-up the Presbyterians in jettisoning age-old elements of Christian belief, the Episcopalians at Columbus overwhelmingly refused even to consider a resolution affirming that Jesus Christ is Lord. When a Christian church cannot bring itself to endorse a bedrock Christian theological statement repeatedly found in the New Testament, it is not a serious Christian church. It's a Church of What's Happening Now, conferring a feel-good imprimatur on whatever the liberal elements of secular society deem permissible or politically correct.

You want to have gay sex? Be a female bishop? Change God's name to Sophia? Go ahead. The just-elected Episcopal presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, is a one-woman combination of all these things, having voted for Robinson, blessed same-sex couples in her Nevada diocese, prayed to a female Jesus at the Columbus convention and invited former Newark, N.J., bishop John Shelby Spong, famous for denying Christ's divinity, to address her priests.

When a church doesn't take itself seriously, neither do its members. It is hard to believe that as recently as 1960, members of mainline churches — Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and the like — accounted for 40% of all American Protestants. Today, it's more like 12% (17 million out of 135 million). Some of the precipitous decline is due to lower birthrates among the generally blue-state mainliners, but it also is clear that millions of mainline adherents (and especially their children) have simply walked out of the pews never to return. According to the Hartford Institute for Religious Research, in 1965, there were 3.4 million Episcopalians; now, there are 2.3 million. The number of Presbyterians fell from 4.3 million in 1965 to 2.5 million today. Compare that with 16 million members reported by the Southern Baptists.

When your religion says "whatever" on doctrinal matters, regards Jesus as just another wise teacher, refuses on principle to evangelize and lets you do pretty much what you want, it's a short step to deciding that one of the things you don't want to do is get up on Sunday morning and go to church.

It doesn't help matters that the mainline churches were pioneers in ordaining women to the clergy, to the point that 25% of all Episcopal priests these days are female, as are 29% of all Presbyterian pastors, according to the two churches. A causal connection between a critical mass of female clergy and a mass exodus from the churches, especially among men, would be difficult to establish, but is it entirely a coincidence? Sociologist Rodney Stark ("The Rise of Christianity") and historian Philip Jenkins ("The Next Christendom") contend that the more demands, ethical and doctrinal, that a faith places upon its adherents, the deeper the adherents' commitment to that faith. Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, which preach biblical morality, have no trouble saying that Jesus is Lord, and they generally eschew women's ordination. The churches are growing robustly, both in the United States and around the world.

Despite the fact that median Sunday attendance at Episcopal churches is 80 worshipers, the Episcopal Church, as a whole, is financially equipped to carry on for some time, thanks to its inventory of vintage real estate and huge endowments left over from the days (no more!) when it was the Republican Party at prayer. Furthermore, it has offset some of its demographic losses by attracting disaffected liberal Catholics and gays and lesbians. The less endowed Presbyterian Church USA is in deeper trouble. Just before its general assembly in Birmingham, it announced that it would eliminate 75 jobs to meet a $9.15-million budget cut at its headquarters, the third such round of job cuts in four years.

The Episcopalians have smells, bells, needlework cushions and colorfully garbed, Catholic-looking bishops as draws, but who, under the present circumstances, wants to become a Presbyterian?

Still, it must be galling to Episcopal liberals that many of the parishes and dioceses (including that of San Joaquin, Calif.) that want to pull out of the Episcopal Church USA are growing instead of shrinking, have live people in the pews who pay for the upkeep of their churches and don't have to rely on dead rich people. The 21-year-old Christ Church Episcopal in Plano, Texas, for example, is one of the largest Episcopal churches in the country. Its 2,200 worshipers on any given Sunday are about equal to the number of active Episcopalians in Jefferts Schori's entire Nevada diocese.

It's no surprise that Christ Church, like the other dissident parishes, preaches a very conservative theology. Its break from the national church came after Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican Communion, proposed a two-tier membership in which the Episcopal Church USA and other churches that decline to adhere to traditional biblical standards would have "associate" status in the communion. The dissidents hope to retain full communication with Canterbury by establishing oversight by non-U.S. Anglican bishops.

As for the rest of the Episcopalians, the phrase "deck chairs on the Titanic" comes to mind. A number of liberal Episcopal websites are devoted these days to dissing Peter Akinola, outspoken primate of the Anglican diocese of Nigeria, who, like the vast majority of the world's 77 million Anglicans reported by the Anglican Communion, believes that "homosexual practice" is "incompatible with Scripture" (those words are from the communion's 1998 resolution at the Lambeth conference of bishops). Akinola might have the numbers on his side, but he is now the Voldemort — no, make that the Karl Rove — of the U.S. Episcopal world. Other liberals fume over a feeble last-minute resolution in Columbus calling for "restraint" in consecrating bishops whose lifestyle might offend "the wider church" — a resolution immediately ignored when a second openly cohabitating gay man was nominated for bishop of Newark.

So this is the liberal Christianity that was supposed to be the Christianity of the future: disarray, schism, rapidly falling numbers of adherents, a collapse of Christology and national meetings that rival those of the Modern Language Assn. for their potential for cheap laughs. And they keep telling the Catholic Church that it had better get with the liberal program — ordain women, bless gay unions and so forth — or die. Sure.


Any church that denies the divinity of Christ and calls God Sophia is no church I'll associate with.