Lift Up Your Hearts!

Economists are accustomed to drawing conclusions from statistical studies and aggregations of data. It's hard to reduce economic behavior to controlled, double-blind studies, and laboratory rats aren't necessarily a good model for corporate rats. So it came as no surprise to me that some Cornell University economists thought they might get a handle on the elusive cause of childhood autism by studying rainfall and the availablity of cable television. Working from the assumption that children spend more hours watching television in households that have cable TV, and in locations where high rainfall keeps them indoors, and observing significantly higher rates of autism in communities with a confluence of those conditions, the researchers suggested early television viewing as a possible trigger for autism spectrum disorders.

When I first read about the study, I was reminded of a story Peter Drucker tells, in his marvelous, autobiographical, historical commentary, Adventures of a Bystander, about an outstanding statistics teacher at the University of Minnesota.

A little bald-headed bearded man, almost a dwarf, he ran a doctoral seminar in which he projected tables and graphs onto a screen without any legend or explanation. "Look at the figures," he'd say, "and tell me what they tell you." The students would point out this irregularity in a distribution or that periodicity, this pattern or that internal contradiction, and the little man would nod, smile, argue, and get across a great deal about numbers as a grammar without even belaboring the point. Then he'd flash on the screen two series of figures that obviously belonged together; they showed a close correlation, almost one to one, over long time periods. "Clearly," all the students said, "these two series are causally related." "That's what every statistician would say," the little man responded, "but perhaps you can tell me what the relationship could be. This series," pointing to the table on the left, "is the annual herring catch off Newfoundland; and that one," pointing to the right, "is the number of illegitimate children born the same year in North Dakota."

It may be that the Cornell professors' study has produced only a "correlation" of this type. However, the really interesting story is not the report, but the reaction to it. Television promoters and viewers are digusted; parents of autistic children are offended; and the study has been mocked, ridiculed, and satirized. It is not true because it cannot be true. Let someone report a study that indicates one race or sex might be inherently predisposed to excel another in some area, and he will find he has called the Furies down upon his head. Dare to suggest that day care might be harmful to children and your research will be attacked, because such a conclusion hits us in our most vulnerable place. The famed science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, showed no patience for those who base their beliefs on faith rather than on objective science; nonetheless, I heard him say that he believed the universe to be cyclical, ever expanding and contracting, rather than a single expansion after one Big Bang, solely because he did not want to believe that the universe would ever come to an end. Modern American society does not want to believe that television might be harmful; therefore any such suggestion must be laughed out of court.

With my own anti-television bias, I must be careful to resist the temptation not to recognize the limitations of such statistical research. I will, however, state that it should not be laughed at. No one else has come up with a convincing explanation for the alarming rise in autism cases, and the researchers' ideas deserve serious consideration—especially in light of their observation that the Amish, whose distinctives include not watching TV, have unusually low rates of childhood autism. This study does not prove that allowing young children to watch television for long hours increases their risk of developing autism. But it is a possibility worth further investigation.

Many years ago the folks who were then our medical practicioners strongly urged me to go on hormone replacement therapy drugs, stressing that it was the best thing I could do for my heart, even more effective than losing weight and getting in shape. I declined, having no wish to take any drugs that were not absolutely necessary. Now that HRT has been linked with serious problems—especially for the heart!—I feel justified in my reluctance.

No one has yet suggested I take Fosamax or any other drug that targets osteoporosis, but I foresee it coming, given my age and sex, and find myself skeptical once again. So I was not surprised last week during a visit to the dentist, when I was handed a paper with the impressive title, Bisphosphonate Medications and Your Oral Health, which I was able to find online as well. The article begins with the following warning:

If you use a bisphosphonate medication to prevent or treat osteoporosis (a thinning of the bones) or as part of cancer treatment, you should advise your dentist.

It seems that in rare instances these drugs can cause osteonecrosis of the jaw, severe loss or destruction of the jawbone. No doubt these drugs do much good in many cases, but it's important to understand the risk that something we take to strengthen our bones just might have the opposite effect.

There's nothing like good news in the morning! Stop a moment, go fix yourself a nice cup of tea, then come back and read yet another news story about the benefits of drinking tea.

The results of a double-blind experiment conducted by researchers at the University College of London indicate that drinking black tea helps people recover more quickly from the stresses of life. Volunteers were given either a tea-laced concoction or one that was identical but without the tea ingredients, and subjected to stressful situations. Stress levels, both subjective and measured, rose for all participants, but the tea drinkers recovered significantly faster. For example, their blood cortisol (stress hormone) levels had dropped an average of 47% after 50 minutes, compared with 27% for the non-tea drinkers.

Next step: researching my own favorite form of relaxation: a cup of tea, a comfortable chair, and a good book.

Advocates of home birth complain that doctors and hospitals view childbirth as a medical procedure rather than a natural event. Today's Orlando Sentinel adds to the evidence for their position, reporting that photographing a birth is now forbidden at most local hospitals.

"You don't go into the operating room and take pictures of surgical procedures," said Pat DuRant, Florida Hospital's assistant vice president of women's and medical-surgical services.

Not only do they consider childbirth to be akin to surgery, but apparently their primary concern is that there not be any video evidence to bolster a malpractice suit if someone makes a mistake.

Hospitals: You can't live with them, and you can't live without them. A trip to a hospital can add years of health and wholeness to your life. Or, it might shorten your life dramatically, thanks to errors, incompetence, and hospital-acquired lethal infections. The decision as to when to seek medical care and when to trust a less interventionist approach is tricker than it once was. "Wait and see" can save you from huge medical bills, needless pain and suffering, and maybe even from death. But that attitude can also kill you.

Today's news highlights another disturbing piece of the puzzle. Hospitals, doctors, and government agencies are not just offering medical services, but compelling them, as in this story of an Irish hospital that forced a Congolese immigrant to undergo a blood transfusion against her will. It is tragic enough that others have the authority to force medical procedures on children against the wishes of their parents, but this case show that even conscious, cognizant adults are at risk.

The Coombe, one of Ireland's major maternity hospitals, said its policy was to do all it could to save a patient's life—and to go to court if necessary to do it.

Caveat emptor.

I should be happy that the New York Times is highlighting the importance of breastfeeding. But this article on the difficulties faced by nursing mothers in lower-income jobs is disturbing in ways the author did not intend.

Poor women, and their children, suffer because their employers are not as sympathetic to their need to pump milk for their babies as are the employers of professional women. Thus they are less likely to breastfeed their children, and when they do it is not for as long a time, in yet another case of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

All too true. But the idealized portrait of the corporate "lactation room" supplied with pumps, telephones, Internet connections, CD players and reading material neglects a major component of the advantages of breastfeeding. Yes, the milk itself is perfectly designed for human beings and superior in countless ways to the best possible artificial formula. However, just as the formula-makers try to isolate and imitate what they consider to be the important components of human milk, the proponents of workplace lactation are focusing nearsightedly on one part of the breastfeeding relationship—the milk—and ignoring or minimizing the human factors. Nursing is a relationship, a two-person job, an intimate interaction between mother and child. Milk that is mechanically pumped, far away from the sight, sound, smell, and touch of the baby; refrigerated, stored, and dispensed in plastic bottles by someone who is not the baby's mother—this cannot come close to providing the benefits of an on-demand, skin-to-skin, eye-to-eye mother/child connection.

It may be the best that can be done in difficult circumstances, and it's certainly better than the same non-interaction using commercial formula. But it's time to stop pretending such substitutes are anything more than second best. One mother is quoted in the article as saying, of pumping milk for her son, "There is a lot of satisfaction in knowing I am doing right by him." She's doing better than she could be, and perhaps the best she can—that's not for me to judge. But she's not doing what's best for her son, and she shouldn't be beguiled into thinking she is.

Inexpensive prints of famous art works are a boon and a blessing, opening a world of beauty to many who could never see, let alone own, the originals. But no one pretends that a photo of the Mona Lisa is da Vinci's masterpiece, and someone who attempts to pass an imitation off as the real thing is normally considered a criminal.

We stopped at a Ruby Tuesday restaurant on our way through North Carolina. There we were delighted to order the bison burger, described in their online menu as "range-fed bison cooked just the way you like it."

Not in North Carolina. When we ordered ours rare, the waiter apologized, citing a state law mandating all burgers be cooked to nothing less than medium.

I might be tempted to appreciate the state's attempt to protect us from the dangers of our modern agricultural and meat processing and delivery practices, were it not for the shocking discovery that North Carolina still allows smoking in its restaurants!

The bison burger tasted good anyway.

You have to bear in mind that the study was done in Britain, and was funded by the Tea Council, but it's still nice to hear more evidence of the health benefits of tea.

The actual research article in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, at least according to this abstract, is less effusive than the popular press version, but it hints at possible benefits in the areas of colorectal cancer, bone density, and dental health. Much clearer evidence associates drinking three or more cups of tea per day with a significant decrease in coronary heart disease risk.

However, the best news as far as I am concerned was learning that tea is as good for hydration as water is. Apparently the idea that tea dehydrates you is just a myth! That misconception never stopped me from drinking tea, but it did make me feel somewhat guilty, so I feel better now. The facts also conform to my experience; it was hard to believe I wasn't being hydrated when it sure felt as if I was, even if that did contradict conventional wisdom.

Imagine this scenario: After two devastating miscarriages you get pregnant, and you, your husband, and your children begin to dare to hope again. Then at five and a half weeks you have stomach pains and go to the doctor just to be sure. They do an ultrasound and tell you: No heartbeat, baby is dead, check into the hospital for a D&C to get all cleaned out. Numbly, you comply, and go home to grieve with your family.

Three weeks later you return to the doctor because you still feel pregnant. Another ultrasound: Oops, guess we made a mistake, baby is fine and growing well. Sorry about that.

That's what happened to Julie Brown, in Scotland. Thrilled of course that her baby is alive, she's naturally worried, having undergone a violent, invasive procedure, with anesthesia, pain medication, and antibiotics, and stopped taking normal pregnancy precautions (like folic acid supplements), not to mention having subjected the baby to a flood of stress (distress) hormones, all during the very critical first trimester of pregnancy.

So I'm not surprised she is "considering legal action." What does surprise me is the attitude of some commentators that she should just get over it, be happy she still has her baby, and understand that mistakes will happen. Huh? I deplore the lawsuit-happy culture more than most, and fully appreciate that in life there will be mistakes, and accidents, and troubles, and risks. But this isn't just a little mistake, it's a HUGE error. It indicates something is wrong, not with one particular ultrasound reading, but with the larger system that obviously doesn't have enough checks and balances where life and death matters are concerned. It's the equivalent of declaring a patient dead and wheeling him off to the morgue, only to have him sit up and start talking three days later.

It's also one more indictment of the industrialized, technological, interventionist approach to obstetrics we have come to consider normal.

Serendipity. Searching for one thing and finding another. And another. The Internet is a beachcomber's delight. While researching my Johari Window post, I found information on Duen Hsi Yen's commentary, which led me to his article on education, which in turn took me to another of his sites, which was chosen in May of 1999 as the Natural Child Project's Parenting Site of the Month. Investigating the Natural Child Project site led in turn to this month's honored parenting resource, Parents for Barefoot Children.

(This is beginning to sound like something from A Fly Went By: "The fly ran away in fear of the frog, who ran from the cat, who ran from the dog. The dog ran away in fear of the pig, who ran from the cow, she was so big!")

I don't know when I first rediscovered what every child knows about the joys of barefoot living. I do remember the first time I thought consciously of what shoes can do to feet besides protect them. In one of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, the dectective concludes that a footprint belongs to a native of a primitive culture, because the shape of the foot and the toeprints revealed a foot that had never been confined to a shoe.

That impressed me, but I never really questioned my footwear until I developed an affliction of the skin of my feet. No doctor ever came up with a definitive diagnosis, though that did not stop them from suggesting various medications, which either worked or didn't according to some random factor I never discerned. What unequivocally did work I discovered myself: shedding my shoes. If I kept my feet unshod whenever I could, they obliged me by enduring occasional imprisonment with good grace.

Since then I've been happy to remove my shoes when entering a home, and I've noticed in recent years many people are discovering that shoes left at the door don't bring dirt into the house. In this we are only a few thousand years behind the entire country of Japan.

Naturally an organization calling itself Parents for Barefoot Children (PFBC) intrigued me. So, too, did the Society for Barefoot Living, which (no surprise) I found through a link from the PFBC site. The latter takes barefooting a lot further than I thought possible. Along the way I learned several new things, from the many health benefits of walking sans shoes to the surprising legality of driving barefoot.

Although I am in sympathy with both organizations, especially when it comes to children's feet, two issues concern me that I have not seen addressed. The more trivial (though still important) one is that if one goes barefoot everywere, one has nothing to take off that will leave the dirt at the door of the house. Perhaps we should reinstate the Biblical custom of footwashing for guests!

What bothers me most is the chemical soup to which we would expose our feet by walking barefoot most of the time. The barefooting advocates address the issues of dirt, bacteria, and parasites, but what I worry about is what is laid down on our roads, sidewalks, business floors, and even public parks by automobile exhaust and tires, chemical spills, cleansers and polishing materials, herbicides, insecticides, and the other fallout from a modern industrial society. Everything from heavy metals to toxic organic compounds lies in wait to be absorbed through innocent skin, a special worry in the case of children. I don't want this to be a problem; I hope research will reveal an escape clause that will assure me it isn't harmful. But the issue needs to be addressed, not ignored.

The joys of free and unfettered childhood feet should not be yet another casualty of modern times!

Let me make clear up front that I'm glad our grandchildren are on schedule for most of the currently-recommended childhood vaccinations. I can be pleased with that because their parents have taken the time to research the issues, and decide which vaccines they think are worth the risk, and which are not, and are willing to pay the extra costs—in money and time—to spread the vaccinations out rather than subject their children to the assault on the immune system caused by receiving many vaccines on the same day. Moreover, the children are breastfed, which helps their immune systems deal with the vaccines.

Vaccines have prevented much suffering and death, and they do work; witness the frightening polio outbreaks in Africa when immunication efforts were hindered by Muslim clerics skeptical of both the vaccines and the good will of the vaccinators. But they are far from risk-free, and the government and the medical community are doing parents a disservice by pushing vaccinations as if they were entirely safe and absolutely essential for their children's health.

"Informed consent" does not mean handing your patient a long form, full of legal and medical terms, to sign on the day of vaccination, along with another sheet describing possible side effects. It means addressing the issue far in advance, with both pros and cons, admitting controversy and uncertainty, and pointing the parents to sources of further information.

Parents, too, have the responsibility of seeking out information on their own, to be better prepared to discuss the issue with their physicians. My doctor may have forgotten more about medicine than I'll ever know, but no doctor knows everything, and the best ones are always open to new information, carefully and respectfully presented.

Above all, avoid jumping on bandwagons. Don't vaccinate just because your doctor expects you to, and don't avoid vaccination just because that's what your friends are doing. Just as there are risks to vaccinating, and actions we can take to mitigate those risks, there are also risks to not vaccinating, and precautions that can help protect the unvaccinated child. One helpful, and reasonably balanced, resource is Aviva Jill Romm's Vaccinations: A Thoughtful Parent's Guide: How to Make Safe, Sensible Decisions about the Risks, Benefits, and Alternatives.

One of the hazards of being unvaccinated is catching a "childhood disease" later in life, when the body is often less able to handle it. One example made the news today, in this WebMD report on an outbreak of measles in 2005, the largest in the United States in a decade. A 17-year-old girl caught the disease in Romania and passed it to members of her church when she returned. Thirty-two of the 34 who caught the disease had never been vaccinated.

The story fails its readers by not reporting how the measles sufferers fared. Do the parents regret their decision not to vaccinate? I had measles as a child, and it was a relatively minor affair, easier for me than chicken pox, which itched like crazy. There can be serious complications, however; were there any in this epidemic, or was it relatively mild? That's important information.

Because 20 of the cases were homeschooled children, Amy Parker of the Centers for Disease Control stresses the importance of promoting immunization among homeschoolers. If she means educating people about the risks and benefits of vaccination, I'm all for it. But buried in the article is this chilling statement:

Proof of measles vaccination is required for children entering school, but West Virginia is the only state in the U.S. with a similar requirement for homeschooled kids.

This should frighten every homeschooler in the country. Requiring immunizations for admission to public schools is understandable, as long as certain exemptions are allowed, because of problems inherent in the confining of large populations to small spaces for long periods of time. But what is the concern that causes the West Virginia government to want to impose immunization on homeschoolers as well? If it's the fear that a homeschooler taking a public school class might pass a disease on to fellow students, how can that occur if the rest of the students have been vaccinated?

It appears the source is actually worse than that, and should frighten everyone, not just homeschoolers. There are those in the West Virginia government (and elsewhere!) who believe the primary responsibilities and rights when it comes to raising children belong not to the parents, but to the state. If the state decides universal vaccination is desirable, parents should have no choice but to go along.

The Internet is a wonderful tool for finding information; it is less useful when it comes to updates to that information. In 2004 the West Virginia legislature attempted to pass a bill expanding the immuization requirements and exacting severe penalties for noncompliance. Whether the bill succeeded or not I was unable to determine. If it did, it was apparently weakened, because the requriements I found through the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources mandate fewer vaccines and impose smaller penalties. Nonetheless, it's chilling enough. State Code 16-3-4 deals with "compulsory immunization of school children" but apparently they mean all children of "school age," not just children in the public schools.

Any parent or guardian who refuses to permit his or her child to be immunized against diphtheria, polio, rubeola, rubella, tetanus and whooping cough, who cannot give satisfactory proof that the child or person has been immunized against diphtheria, polio, rubeola, rubella, tetanus and whooping cough previously, or a certificate from a reputable physician showing that immunization for any or all is impossible or improper, or sufficient reason why any or all immunizations should not be done, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and except as herein otherwise provided, shall, upon conviction, be punished by a fine of not less than ten nor more than fifty dollars for each offense.

Unlike every other state except Mississippi, West Virginia makes no provision for religious or philosophical exemptions to its immunization laws.

UPDATE:  Please see the first comment, below.

A U. S. Department of Agriculture study has determined that watermelons stored at room temperature^* are far more nutritious than those stored in the refrigerator. Apparently its power-packed carotenoids, lycopene and beta-carotene, continue to develop after a fully-ripe melon is picked, but the process is slowed by refrigeration. What's more, refrigerated watermelons spoil faster.

The news about watermelons makes me wonder if a similar process is going on with tomatoes, which are another rich source of carotenoids. Conventional wisdom says tomatoes should be stored at room temperature rather than in the refrigerator. This means we have to eat them rather quickly here in Florida, but I can attest to the superiority of their unrefrigerated flavor.

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^*70 degrees Fahrenheit, which according to the article is "room temperature in an air-conditioned home." I wonder whose home they are talking about, and what their power bills might be. Ours is now set at 78 degrees, a real luxury considering for years it was 84, but we're older, more self-indulgent, and (most of all) this overall setting keeps the computer rooms at a bearable level. Not that 70 degrees wouldn't be really nice....

In 1971 I worked with researchers at the University of Rochester who were studying the algae blooms that were making a mess of Rochester, New York's Irondequoit Bay. At the time, the limiting factor for algae growth in the lake was phosphorous, and household use of detergents containing phosphates had fueled an algal population boom. Thanks to such research, low-phosphate detergents soon became. I presume the effect on the Bay was salutory, though I graduated and lost track of the researchers.

That was 35 years ago, but apparently we are still learning the same lessons. Please take time to read the long, but worthwhile, article from the Los Angeles Times on the frightening overrowth of toxic algae and other primitive organisms in our oceans.

The good news is that Starchild Abraham Cherrix and his family finally found a judge brave enough to lift the lower court order that would have forced him to undergo chemotherapy for his cancer. The bad news is that it's a temporary reprieve; he'll have to fight the battle again in court next month.

Abraham is not the only teen who has had to spend precious energy, resouces, and especially time fighting for the right to choose or refuse medical treatment. (See also Who Will Make Medical Decisions for You and Your Family?) That he has the full support of his family in his decision matters not to the social workers; they saw that as a reason to attempt to take custody of Abraham themselves.

This is not a diatribe against chemotherapy, which has been life-saving for many. But the right to make medical decisions, large and small, belongs to the individual, or in the case of a minor, his family. The courts should never have become involved in the first place, since Abraham and his family agree. Maybe they are wrong. Maybe their alternative treatment will lead to his death, and chemotherapy would cure him. But we have the right to be wrong. Even if a person chooses no treatment at all, prefering a shortened life to the agonies of therapy, that decision should be between him and his family.

If it weren't so serious, it would be amusing to consider the statements made by "experts" who insist that a 16-year-old is too young to make his own life-or-death decisions. You can't tell that to a genealogist. At that age, many of our ancestors were married, having babies, fighting in wars, and traveling thousands of miles away from home—and doing it quite capably, I might add.

How did we get to the point where our society can with one breath say a 12-year-old girl has the right to "control her own body" to the extent of having an abortion without so much as parental knowledge, let alone consent, and in the next deny a 16-year-old boy the right to refuse, with his parents' agreement, a painful and dangerous medical procedure?

From what I read, people are getting tired of hearing about the benefits of human milk for human babies. Let's stop making mothers who "must" feed their children artificial milk feel bad, they say. Just tell people "breast is best" if you can do it, but let it go at that, and support them in whatever decision they make.

Not an unreasonable attitude; I hate having the government or anyone else harangue me about about very personal choices. But we're missing an important point.

When we overemphasize the exceptions, we lose track of the normal, and engender dangerous attitudes. Try to view abortion as a private, agonizing decision to be left up to families faced with devastating circumstances, and suddenly you find yourself surrounded by people who want to make a horrific procedure into a good thing. Believe strongly that people with homosexual desires deserve as much respect, love, and protection of the law as anyone else, and you are pressed to agree that any sexual practice is a good and proper expression of love. Acknowledge that sometimes it is necessary for children to be cared for by people other than their own families, and soon you find that considered the norm, with researchers trying to prove it is actually better for babies to be away from their mothers.

No matter how many times we mouth "breastfeeding is best," if we continue to add, "but here's what you do if it doesn't work out," we set ouselves—and mothers—up for failure. It's not really the mothers we need to convince. What any nursing mother needs most of all is a supportive environment. When everyone's mother and sister and friends breastfed their children, nursing really could come "naturally." Now, however, with fewer role models, fewer people to say, "this is a minor glitch, you will get through it as I did," mothers are quick to believe they don't "have what it takes" to feed their babies as women have for millenia.

It's not primarily the women we need to educate. It's doctors who have no more breastfeeding experience than their patients and would rather offer the quick fix of formula feeding rather than help mothers find other solutions. It's fathers who have totally lost sight of the true purpose of human breasts (as someone put it, "Hello! We're mammals!") and view their wives'/girlfriends' breasts as merely decorative, or worse, their own possession (like the man—and I use the term loosely—who insisted his girlfriend feed their son artificially because, "No one touches your breasts but me!"). It's restaurants/churches/businesses that from some misplaced sense of propriety want to remove nursing babies from view. (Would you like to eat your meal in the bathroom?) It's everyone who will concede that breastfeeding is best for a brief time, but that a nursing toddler is somehow a perversion—as if bottles, cow's milk, and "pacifier face" were the more normal human condition.

I agree; let's not hound the mothers. Let's educate their support systems. We will never convince anyone of the value of breast milk and the nursing relationship as long as we continue to act as if breastfeeding were a difficult, arcane, and antiquated practice.