Category: Health

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Down Syndrome Abortions

Down Syndrome Abortions
In February, Ohio governor John Kasich signed into law a measure relating to Down Syndrome abortions. Under the law, unborn children cannot be aborted because of a prenatal diagnosis of Down Syndrome.

Ethics professor Peter Singer of Princeton University and other leading atheists have tried to make abortion mandatory for babies who are known to have congenital birth defects. The usual reasons for such actions are the cost factor, refusal of insurance coverage, and refusing admission to state-funded schools and care centers. All if this, in the view of some, makes financial sense for aborting.

As the parent of a child born with multiple birth defects including blindness, cerebral palsy, and mental retardation I can understand the emotional and financial stresses involved. More to the point is the fact that a Down Syndrome child is a human being with a spiritual makeup. In a time of great emphasis on the value of diversity, it seems odd that a state would need to enact such a law. Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser says, “In a time of growing acceptance of human diversity and rejection of outdated biases against people with different abilities, such extreme intolerance stands out as a great injustice.”

Recently an abortion proponent suggested to me that autism should be eliminated by abortion, using the same argument as the proposal to have mandatory Down Syndrome abortions. The obvious implication of this is the “slippery slope” issue. Where do you stop? Racial and ethnic cleansing proponents can make the same argument.

The Christian view is that all humans are of equal value because we are created in the image of God. That means we treasure every life. We applaud the leadership in Ohio for their actions.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
Data from Citizen magazine, March 2018 page 9.

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Should Christians Get Tattoos?

Should Christians Get Tattoos?
Tattoos are nothing new. In 1991 tourists found a 5,300-year-old iceman mummy in the Italian Alps with 61 tattoos on his body. Recently archaeologists found tattoos on 5,000-year-old mummies in Egypt. Even though tattoos have been around for a long time, they have become very popular in the last few years. According to a Harris poll, currently, 21 percent of U.S. adults have at least one tattoo. The thing many people want to know is should Christians get tattoos?

There are disagreements among Christian teachers about tattoos. You can search the internet and find discussions on the topic, such as here and here. What does the Bible say? The passage that is often quoted is Leviticus 19:28. However, there is disagreement on exactly what it means. We don’t have room here to go into a lengthy theological discussion about whether or not tattoos are sinful. We will leave that to others. But there are some things we can say for certain about tattoos.

You may wonder why tattoos are so permanent when our skin cells, like other cells in our bodies, die and are replaced every few years. According to an article published on March 6 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, the reason has to do with our immune system. When the needle punctures the skin, immune-response cells called macrophages rush to the site and gobble up the foreign substance. After capturing the ink, they hold it until they die. When they die a cellular recycling system kicks into action. New macrophages take up the ink and hold it until they die. The process continues keeping the ink as a permanent part of the cellular network. Tattoo removal requires laser pulsing the macrophage cells that hold the ink coaxing them to release it into the lymph system of the body. This removal process can take years.

It is also safe to say that tattoos can cause serious adverse reactions. These can be short-term problems such as infections. They can be long-term problems including redness, swelling, and itching. In a random sampling of tattooed people in New York City, ten percent said they had some complications. Of that ten percent, sixty percent had chronic problems. Sometimes people develop allergies to the inks used, and sometimes that happens only after they get a second tattoo. The treatment for tattoo allergies may involve topical or injected steroids or surgical removal. Tattoo inks are not closely regulated, if at all. Unsanitary tattoo parlors or a tattoo artist who doesn’t use proper precautions can cause infections. Bacterial infections are the most common, but fungal or viral infections are possible. Tattoos can result in blood-borne diseases such as hepatitis B and C.

Another potential problem of tattoos is that they can hide health problems such as skin cancers of all kinds including melanoma. With skin cancer, as with any cancer, early detection is essential and even a dermatologist may not see early evidence if it is hidden by a tattoo. Tattoos can also increase your risk of the effects of Sun exposure. Yellow ink, which contains cadmium, is known to cause itching and redness when exposed to the Sun. Black or dark ink colors can absorb the Sun’s rays and cause overheating. Because black ink contains iron, it can also create problems if you have an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). Black ink contains iron, and the magnetic field can generate electric currents in the iron. That can cause burning, and the more black ink, the more danger in an MRI.

But should Christians get tattoos? For a Christian, there are more things to consider before getting a tattoo. Why do you want one? Is it to glorify God, or is it to draw attention to yourself? Is it an act of rebellion? How will friends and family react? Will it be a stumbling block for other Christians? Will this tattoo be appropriate for me 30, 40, or 50 years from now? Will it make it hard for me to get a job? (Many employers do not want their employees to have visible tattoos.) Is this the best stewardship of money which could be used to spread the gospel or help others in need? (Tattoos are expensive, but removal is much more expensive and painful.) What does the tattoo say about me? Does it convey the kind of message I want to present as a Christian?

Let’s go back to the original question. Should Christians get tattoos? If you are a Christian, a better question to ask is, “Should I get a tattoo?” As you ask that question remember “you are not your own” and “your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) Finally read Romans 14:22-23 and consider, “…everything that does not come from faith is sin.”
–Roland Earnst © 2018

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Infertility and Desire for Motherhood: Our Recommendation

Infertility and Desire for Motherhood
Yesterday we looked at the problem of infertility and desire for motherhood. We dealt with several causes of the problem. We looked at the possible solutions of adoption, test-tube babies, and surrogate motherhood. We have more thoughts to add, and we want to share our recommendation.

Before going any further let me say that no matter what you do, no situation is fool-proof. My wife and I adopted a baby boy who was examined at birth by three doctors, one of whom was our family doctor. My son Timothy was deemed a ”normal newborn.” The biological mother had no special medical problems, and the father was unknown. When the baby was six months old, some medical problems became obvious. To make a long story short, my son Timothy was found to be mentally challenged, had a form of muscular dystrophy which made leg braces and wheelchairs necessary. He also had a form of cerebral palsy which led to tremors and visual problems which eventually left him blind at age 16.

The Roman Catholic Church has taken a strong position opposing surrogacy. The Conference of Catholic Bishops has declared, “Because of the dignity of the child and of marriage and because of the uniqueness of the mother-child relationship, participation in contracts or arrangements for surrogate motherhood is not permitted. Moreover, the commercialization of such surrogacy denigrates the dignity of women, especially the poor.”

The National Catholic Bioethics Center said, “…children are not engendered by technology or produced by an industry. Children should arise from an act of love between a husband and wife in cooperation with God. No human being can ‘create’ the image of God.” We suggest that this statement is not true. No matter how a baby is conceived, he or she is in the image of God. God places the soul in the child whether it is in a test tube or in a woman’s body. No human is an android no matter how conception takes place.

There is no question that the ideal way for a child to be born is the old-fashioned way. The problem is that for many young couples that just isn’t possible. Should the fact that a woman had cancer stop her from ever becoming a mother? Many women face the problem of infertility and desire for motherhood. My wife was a full-time mother. Her three children were all chosen children.

The dangers of surrogacy are huge. Abraham, Sara, and Hagar are the biblical example of those dangers. We will let the theologians argue about the ethics issues. For us common people, I suggest that adoption is the best solution for both the abortion issue and the needs of women facing infertility and desire for motherhood.

Many women have had babies but are not really mothers. The mother is the one who changed the diaper, read Bible stories to the child, took the child to the doctor, bandaged the cuts, and kissed the bruises. No matter how the child came into this world, it is a child with a soul created in the image of God. Every child needs the love only a mother can give.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
Data from Christianity Today, March 2018, Pages 28-35.

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Infertility and Desire for Motherhood: The Problem

Infertility and Desire for Motherhood
What does a married couple do when they want to have a child but are unable to do so? There are many reasons for the problem of infertility and desire for motherhood. A woman who has had cancer and yet desperately wants a child even though the chemo has made her unable to conceive is very common. Male infertility is a major cause of couples not being able to conceive a child. Diseases like diabetes may make it impossible for a woman to conceive or to carry a pregnancy to birth. My wife was an insulin-dependent diabetic from age ten, and the disease made it impossible for her to conceive a child even though she desperately wanted to be a mother. There are several movie stars who don’t want to have their physical appearance disturbed by pregnancy, or maybe they don’t want to spend nine months carrying a child. The list goes on.

For my wife and I, the answer to this problem was adoption. We adopted three wonderful children, and that in my mind is the best option. But there are complications and issues in adoption. Some couples desperately want the child to be from the husband’s sperm and the wife’s egg. “Test tube babies” where fertilization occurs in a petri dish and the egg is implanted in the woman are very common. However, the failure rate is high, and some women simply cannot carry a child.

In this latter case, what a couple sometimes does is hire a surrogate. A surrogate mother is a woman who will allow the baby to be implanted in her womb and carry the child to birth, but the child will legally belong to the couple. The surrogate mother is, in essence, an incubator and has no claim to the child, but is paid for her services. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine says that 2807 babies were born that way in 2015. That is four times more than in 2014, and when data becomes available for 2017, it will probably be well over 8000.

The issue becomes very complicated when the woman is not producing any viable eggs or if the man is sterile. You then are dealing with donated eggs and sperm which means the genetic background of the baby may be unknown creating all kinds of implications. When a genetically carried disease shows up in the child, there have been lawsuits.

There is no simple solution to the problem of infertility and desire for motherhood, but we will continue our discussion tomorrow.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
Data from Christianity Today, March 2018, Pages 28-35.

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Human Vanity Causing Human Suffering

Human Vanity Causing Human Suffering
We probably get more email about the issue of human suffering, than any other single faith issue. Why does God allow the pain and the tragedies that all of us seem to encounter in life? We don’t pretend to have an answer to every case, but atheism offers no answer either. We have to consider how much of human suffering is caused by human vanity.

Perhaps the most difficult question is why an innocent baby should be born with a plethora of problems. As the parent of a child born with multiple birth defects, I have a personal struggle with this issue. Even though I have written a book about my son Timothy detailing our personal struggle, there are people who have far worse issues.

The big question for all of this discussion is, “What we can reasonably expect God to do?” The Bible tells us that God created humans in perfection. It was the deliberate rejection of God’s commands (sin) and selfish exploitation of the resources God gave us that have caused the problems. One area of our failure in today’s world is the chemicals we use to promote our physical appearance.

In 2017 a dozen health advocacy groups and individuals petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban lead acetate from hair dyes. Lead acetate is readily absorbed through the skin and is a neurotoxin. In 2011 the National Toxicology Program declared formaldehyde a human carcinogen. This and triclosan, phthalates, and parabens are still allowed in U.S. cosmetics even though they have all been linked to cancer, impaired reproductive ability, and compromised neurodevelopment in children. Cosmetics contain these chemicals in moisturizers, makeup, hair products, skin lighteners, and hand soaps.

The European Union has banned more than 1300 chemicals from personal health or cosmetic products, but little has been done elsewhere. Our vanity and emphasis on physical appearance contribute to the pain and suffering we experience. Add to that the war and violence that appalls most of us, and you have a huge percentage of the pain and suffering we see all around us.

Proverbs tells us “Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting” (Proverbs 31:30). In 1 Timothy 2:9 Paul says that women should “dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with prepared hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds…” The cost of human vanity is not just in dollars, but also in human suffering caused by the chemicals used to preserve and advance our physical appearance.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
Reference: Scientific American, November 2017, page 10.

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God’s Natural Cloning

Natural Cloning of Crayfish
When scientists reach a new accomplishment, they sometimes discover that God has already done it. The marbled crayfish (Procambarus virginalis) has been reproducing by cloning for more than 20 years. Natural cloning, or parthenogenesis, is one of the tools of God for species reproduction.

Someone caught a female slough crayfish (Procambarus fallax) in the Florida Everglades in 1995. A hobbyist bought it for a pet. For an unknown reason, it became a new species called the marbled crayfish and started cloning itself. The hobbyist could not take care of the increasing numbers of crayfish, so he took them to a pet shop where others bought them for their aquariums. A German aquarium owner bought a bag of these mutant crayfish from an American pet trader and found his tank overrun with female crayfish. The marbled crayfish are all female clones from the one female crayfish. The number has gone from one to billions around the world today.

Crayfish are at the bottom of the food chain for freshwater ecosystems, and with this new method of reproduction, the supply of crayfish can be good even with heavy predation. These crayfish can adapt to so many kinds of environments that scientists are concerned about them becoming an invasive species in various areas. Researchers have recently sequenced the genome of the marbled crayfish to learn more about this creature. They are suggesting that study of marveled crayfish reproduction may give clues to how tumors develop and grow.

We still have a lot to learn about these cloned crayfish. There are other organisms in which natural cloning occurs without male participation. Study of this design feature may lead to more advances in the areas of food production and health.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
For more on marbeled crayfish click here. For more on how cloning might be used to protect an endangered species click here.

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Circumcision Health Benefits

Circumcision Health Benefits
There have been continuing discussions concerning circumcision health benefits. Iceland’s Parliament is considering a bill that would impose a six-year jail term on anyone who “removes part or all of a child’s sexual organs for non-medical reasons.” Silja Dogg Gunnarsdottir who presented the measure said that a 2005 bill banned female genital mutilation. She felt that there was no male equivalent, so she introduced this bill.

Atheists and skeptics have attacked the Bible because they say that circumcision is an unnecessary and barbaric religious tradition, so there is atheist support for Gunnarsdottir’s proposal.

The problem in the whole discussion of circumcision is that legislators are ignoring the scientific evidence and making a judgment based on emotions rather than facts. Here are some statements of evidence:

1-According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, uncircumcised boys are more likely to get urinary tract infections than circumcised boys, and penile cancer is more prevalent in uncircumcised males.

2-Studies in multiple African countries showed that male circumcision reduced the chances of getting HIV by over 50% and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that “the protective efficacy of male circumcision increases with time from surgery.”

3-The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases reported that circumcision reduces the rate of HIV, HPV, and genital herpes.

Jewish and Islamic leaders are claiming that outlawing circumcision is an attack on their faith. We would suggest there is a medical, hygienic reason related to infection, cancer in their wives later in life, and prevention of disease that must be considered in approaching this subject. Female genital mutilation is a completely different issue, with no beneficial side effects at all.

The bottom line is that scientific studies indicate that there are circumcision health benefits in today’s world.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

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Human Greed Causes Human Suffering

Human Greed Causes Human Suffering
We are all familiar with the history of cancer and tobacco, where evidence that smoking caused cancer was suppressed by the tobacco industry to avoid losing money. Now evidence has been uncovered showing that the sugar industry suppressed data showing a correlation between sugar and a number of health issues. It’s another example where human greed causes human suffering.

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an article titled “Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research: A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents.” It said, “Early warning signals of the coronary heart disease (CHD) risk of sugar (sucrose) emerged in the 1950s.” It goes on to say that the Sugar Research Foundation (a project of the sugar industry) sponsored its first research project in 1965. They “singled out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of CHD and downplayed evidence that sucrose consumption was also a risk factor.”

The article went on to say that “the industry sponsored a research program in the 1960s and 1970s that successfully cast doubt about the hazards of sucrose while promoting fat as the dietary culprit in CHD.” According to industry documents, a study commissioned in 1968 showed that animals fed sucrose (table sugar) produced high levels of an enzyme linked to hardened arteries and bladder cancer. The study was never published because the sugar industry stopped the study and suppressed the data. Dr. Stanton Glantz, one of the authors of the article, says, “This is continuing to build the case that the sugar industry has a long history of manipulating science.”

The problem here is not the natural materials, but the human chemical alteration of the natural product. Pure sucrose is not found in nature. Human greed has once again connected the profit motive and human suffering. The writers of the JAMA article stated the obvious fact that “Policymaking committees should consider giving less weight to food industry-funded studies.”

Those who blame God for the suffering that exists in the world need to realize that, more often than not, human greed causes human suffering.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
Reference: The Week December 8, 2017, page 8, and JAMA November 2017.

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Peaceful Death and God

Peaceful Death
One of the things that old age brings you is that you are constantly brought face-to-face with death. Since the start of 2018, eight people that I knew well have died. The most recent was my younger brother who died from a combination of cancer and Parkinson’s disease. All eight of those people died slowly over a period of months. All of them were aware of their impending death within their last week of life. None were sudden deaths due to an accident or an unexpected stroke or heart attack. Discover magazine (March 2018, pages 66-68) published an article about the connection between spirituality and peaceful death. It tells about a radiation oncologist named Tracy Balboni who is a researcher at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. A major part of the thrust of Dr. Balboni’s work is helping patients make important decisions about the end of life. They can choose whether to use every possible medical technique to prolong their life, or they can decline major interventions and use hospice care and medication for pain control.

I watched my brother die, and I have observed the difference between his dying and the death of atheists I know who died with similar ailments. Every atheist that I have observed exhausted every medical resource possible in an attempt to stay alive. Not only was it expensive, but it brought much suffering to them and anxiety to their family members. One man told me “If this life is all I have been given, then I want to hang onto it as long and as hard as I possibly can.”

In my brother’s case, two years ago this past November I baptized him into Christ. That was the culmination of a great struggle between the atheistic traditions he had grown up with, and the influence of his wife and myself encouraging him to embrace spirituality. When he accepted Christ, he was not facing death, but his mortality was obvious. In the last three months of his life, he became very weak, and his quality of life deteriorated significantly. In the last three weeks, he and I talked extensively. He was resolute in his determination to have no more medical treatments and to be in hospice. His death was a peaceful death.

Balboni has received a two-million-dollar research grant designed to put spirituality on solid ground. To those who would complain that you are measuring nothing in such studies, Balboni says: “No, no, no. There are too many associations that we’re seeing to say it’s spurious and meaningless. That argument doesn’t hold if you care for dying patients.”

A patient’s spirituality gives huge support at the end of life. In our day of rapidly expanding medical technology, faith is a very important tool for peaceful death.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

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Anatomical Bible Words (Part 2)

Anatomical Bible Words
Yesterday we began to examine anatomical Bible words. We talked about what it means to take the Bible “literally.” We said that taking it literally means to look at who wrote the passage, to whom it was written, why it was written, and how the people of the day in which it was written would have understood it. We looked at the Hebrew word for “kidneys” which is kelayot.

Another anatomical Bible words example is the word leb, which occurs 853 times in the Old Testament. It means “heart,” and that is the way it is translated even though it doesn’t refer to the physical organ. We all know that the heart is the organ that pumps blood through our body, but the word leb is seldom used in that way. First Samuel 25:37-38 says that Nabal’s “heart failed him and he became like a stone. About ten days later, the Lord struck Nabal, and he died.” The word “heart” is used in many different ways in the Bible. Psalms 27:14 tells us that God may strengthen one’s heart–meaning to give courage. Proverbs 23:17 tells us that mood or temperament arise in one’s heart. First Samuel 27:1 and Genesis 17:17 tell us that the heart is a place for thinking and inner reflection.

The New Testament was written in Greek, and the Greek term for heart is kardia. That word is used in the New Testament to refer to various intellectual activities. (See Romans 1:21, 1 Corinthians 2:9 and 4:5, 2 Corinthians 3:15 and 9:7.) Jesus uses “heart” in the same way in Matthew 15:18-19 and Mark 11:23. In Luke 5:22 Jesus accuses the Pharisees of “thinking these things in your hearts.”

Also in the New Testament the Greek word splagchnon, translated “bowels” is used to refer to the intestines in Acts 1:18 and to the seat of emotions in many other passages. (See Colossians 3:12; Philemon 7, 12, 20; Philippians 1:8, 2:7). It is translated “bowels” in the King James Version but usually heart, mercies, or emotions in newer translations.

These biblical passages were written to common people in an ancient time, not to cardiologists or other medical doctors living in the twenty-first century. But let me ask you a question. Have you ever referred to someone having a “broken heart?” Have you talked about sadness as “heartache?” Did you ever refer to having a “gut feeling?” I am sure that you know these emotions do not come from those organs of the body. Did you and those who heard you understand what you were saying? How can we criticize the Bible authors for using language that people in ancient times could understand when we use the same expressions today?

Robert Branson in an excellent article in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (Volume 68 Number 4, December 2016, page 229-236) says it this way:

“…God accommodates His message of salvation to the ability of humans to understand. Cultural factors such as language, view of the physical world, and political practices are not overridden or corrected.”

The Bible is the perfect guide for how to live and how to have a restored relationship with God. We have to spend some energy making sure we understand its message, and we have many tools to help us do that. In today’s world, it is easier than ever to read and understand the Bible. There is no need for us to get hung up on anatomical Bible words. “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12) involves “rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15), and that means understanding the intent of the passage.
–John N. Clayton and Roland Earnst © 2018