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This is the weblog of
Raymond Powers.
Here I will be sharing what I find of import, humor, concern, inspiration and on the transformational edge
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A Quote:
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. (Mark Twain)
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Raymond lives in Ojai, where the time now is:
09:56PM
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use. Thus the license here would best be described as:
Primarily Public
Domain.
Please ask permission if there is any question in
regards to public domain usage.
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| Monday, June 30, 2003 |  |
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 30 Jun 2003 @ 06:43
This is definitely a good first step to peace of mind and heart. A bit obvious, however advertising firms have done a good job at influencing our diets. Add to that the disconnect most urbanites have to the earth, the education process might have to start with , "Twinkies aren't REAL food." Let's teach the children by example, buy local, visit your farmer's markets.
Recently a friend of mine found himself behind bars and it seems that the "system" purposely, with calculation, does all it can to keep those incarcerated emotionally unstable or numb, serving "dead" food and handing out sedatives like candy. Classism and racism at it's finest. Humanitarian sabotage.
Though this study is from the UK, I imagine all I said above still applies.
Here's a thought, fruit trees, gardens....oh silly me.
Anti-Social Conduct May Be Linked To Diet, Says Study
By James Meikle
The Guardian
Wednesday June 26, 2002
Improving the vitamins, minerals and fatty acids in the diets of young offenders appeared to reduce their anti-social behaviour dramatically, according to a Home Office-backed study.
Yesterday it prompted calls for further research into the impact of nutrition on crime.
Results of trials in one maximum security institution for 18-to 21-year-old men suggested that inmates who took special supplements committed more than a quarter fewer disciplinary offences while serving their sentences than those who were unknowingly simply taking dummy pills.
Significant infringements of discipline, including violence, fell by 37%, according to authors of the study, which was organised with the help of the Home Office and prison service.
The results will be published soon in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Hugh Montifiore, former bishop of Birmingham and chairman of Natural Justice, the charity behind the study at the young offenders' institution in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, suggested that there was a correlation, if not a direct connection, between the rises in fast food consumption and youth crime.
"More and more fast food is being consumed. More and more made-up dishes are sold in supermarkets. School meals are a matter of choice, the less nutritious they [pupils] like best, and there is less and less cooking with proper ingredients.
"None of us claims that lack of proper nutrition is the sole cause of anti-social behaviour. But the evidence does show that it is an hitherto unknown major contributor."
Bernard Gesch, who led the study while he was at Surrey University, Guildford, said: "The supplements just provided the vitamins, minerals and fatty acids found in a good diet which the inmates should be getting anyway. Yet the improvement in behaviour was huge."
It was not necessarily long-lasting, however. Shortly after the experiment ended staff reported that violence against them rose by 40%.
Mr Gesch is now a research scientist in physiology at Oxford University as well as director of Natural Justice, which investigates causes of criminal behaviour.
His team pointed out nutrients were crucial ingredients in the biochemical processes that produced brain transmitters like seratonin and dopamine, which affect mood.
Giving all prisoners an improved diet of micronutrients might cost about £3.5m a year, against an overall prison service budget of nearly £2bn.
Mr Gesch added: "This approach needs to be retested, but it looks to be cheap, highly effective and humane."
The results might be even better in adolescent children, he suggested.
Sir David Ramsbotham, former chief inspector of prisons, said the Home Office should carefully consider the implications of the study.
Alan Simpson, Labour MP for Nottingham South, called for other studies to be conducted in schools and hospitals.
He said: "We may be sitting on a timebomb which it is entirely within our ability to defuse. If we choose to feed up our kids rather than just bang them up, we may also discover we have found a better way of bringing them up."
The government is trying to find ways of changing people's eating behaviour without acting like a nanny state. Healthy eating messages appear to be quite well understood but are far from widely converted into action.
More >
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| Saturday, June 28, 2003 | |
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 28 Jun 2003 @ 15:54
This type of research always intrigues me. One of my favorite books is The Molecules of Emotion by Candace Pert.
PAIN REALLY IS 'ALL IN THE MIND'
By Andy Coghlan
June 23, 2003
Doctors and nurses have known for many years that some people are more sensitive to pain than others. Now brain scans of people experiencing the same painful stimulus have provided the first proof that this is so. But the scans also suggest that how much something hurts really is "all in the mind".
"We saw a huge variation between responses to the same stimulus," says project leader Bob Coghill of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. "The message is: trust what patients are telling you."
Coghill tested the pain tolerance of 17 healthy volunteers by applying heat to the back of their calves. He varied the heat from around body temperature to 49 °C, the temperature of very hot washing-up water.
Volunteers asked to rate the pain on a scale of zero to 10 showed huge variations. One resilient volunteer rated pain at the hottest temperature at just over one, whereas another could scarcely bear it at all, rating it at almost nine.
Stark differences
Then Coghill repeated the experiment when the volunteers were in MRI brain scanners. The scans revealed stark differences that reflected each individual's sensitivity to pain. The volunteers least able to bear pain showed more activity in the cerebral cortex, the region of the brain associated with higher cognitive function. Specific areas activated included the prefrontal cortex -- linked with attention, working memory and emotion -- and the anterior cingulate cortex, a region already linked with pain. Finally, the "leg" region lit up on the primary somatosensory cortex -- a pain "map" of the body.
None of these areas lit up in the resilient individuals. But an area called the thalamus, which receives pain messages from the spinal cord and peripheral nerves, was active in all 17 volunteers. This suggests that the pain signal was not dampened on its way to the brain in any of the volunteers, so all the differences must be down to what happens in the brain itself.
"Once the signal arrives, the cerebral cortex interprets and colours the information based on prior experience, emotion and expectation, and that's when the differences kick in," says Coghill.
Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1430684100)
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| Monday, June 23, 2003 | |
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 23 Jun 2003 @ 03:06
The Organic Consumers Assocation is emailing you this important action as you have offered to help with legislation.
The meat industry lobby is working to kill the Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) law. Contact Congress and tell them to Protect the COOL law!
The 2002 Farm Bill requires the U.S. Department of Agriculture to write rules for "country of origin" labeling of beef, lamb, pork, fish, fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables, and peanuts. The label would be found on foods sold in grocery stores, and would state the food's country of origin (for meat, the animal would have to be born raised and slaughtered in the U.S. to get the "Product of U.S." seal.)
Organic Consumers Association supports the COOL law because it helps shoppers select domestically grown food, and prevents undercutting of local farmers by cheaper, unlabeled imports. Also, by tracking the origin of cattle, it would prevent an outbreak of Mad Cow Disease in the U.S. from imported animals. If a diseased animals was found, it could easily be tracked back to its country of origin, and imports from that region or country could be suspended. See Organic Consumers.org
Nevertheless, on June 17, the House Agricultural Appropriations Subcommittee voted to stop all funding for the implementation of COOL for meat. (Is that crazy or what?)
The full House Appropriations Committee will take up the bill next. They can restore the COOL funding by eliminating the Bonilla amendment. The House Appropriations Committee vote may occur as early as the week of June 21-25, 2003.
ACTION: Call the Commitee members in your state. MESSAGE: 1. Tell them that you want them to oppose Rep. Bonilla's amendment to the Agriculture Appropriations bill that will prevent the US Department of Agriculture from implementing the COOL law. Say you strongly support the Country of Origin Labeling law. 2. Also tell him or her to vote against the Bonilla amendment when the Agriculture Appropriations bill comes before the Appropriations Committee and the full House. (The Agriculture Appropriations bill could be voted on in the next week or two.)
Background: The 2002 Farm Bill requires the U.S. Department of Agriculture to write rules for "country of origin" labeling of beef, lamb, pork, fish, fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables, and peanuts. The label would be found on foods sold in grocery stores, and would state the food's country of origin (for meat, the animal would have to be born raised and slaughtered in the U.S. to get the "Product of U.S." seal.)
The mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) are supposed to go into effect in September 2004. Small farmers and ranchers have given the agency lots of ideas for making COOL a simple process that will help them distinguish themselves in the market, and give concerned consumers information they need to buy food produced closer to home.
But unfortunately, USDA seems to be taking its lead from big agribusiness, with industry players like Tyson Foods and the American Meat Institute whining that COOL is too expensive. Opponents of COOL don't want consumers to know where their food comes from or to give ranchers and farmers a desperately-needed way to identify their crops and livestock as products of the U.S. They seem to be nervous that consumers won't agree with their vision of shifting food production to the developing world, where labor and land are cheap, and environmental, worker safety, and pesticide rules are more lenient.
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| Saturday, June 21, 2003 | |
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 21 Jun 2003 @ 23:53
Belated Father's Day Article....
More U.S. Dads Balance Laptops, Kids on Laps
By Julie Shields - WeNews correspondent
(WOMENSENEWS)--Now is the perfect time to go back to the roots of Father's Day in the United States and celebrate and support what is called "involved fatherhood."
Few know that Father's Day in this country arose out of a daughter's desire to honor her father, a widowed single Dad who raised six children--including a - newborn--on a Spokane, Wash., farm. Sonora Smart Dodd, so the story goes, heard a Mother's Day sermon in 1909 and wondered why fathers like hers were not similarly celebrated. In 1910, Dodd organized the first such celebration in Spokane on June 19, a date she chose because her father was born in June. Dodd believed her father courageous and strong because he made sacrifices and behaved selflessly while she and her siblings grew up.
In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge advocated for a national father's day to help establish better relations between fathers and children and to remind fathers of their responsibilities. In 1966, Lyndon Johnson proclaimed the third Sunday in June a national holiday, making it official.
This Father's Day, we should support fathers who have followed in the footsteps of William Jackson Smart, Dodd's father. We sit on top of what could be a watershed moment in fatherhood. All kinds of evidence document a zeitgeist shift for modern fathers. The recession and altered views about men, women and work bring us to a point where real economic and family change can occur--and has occurred--quickly.
Feminists, economists, legal thinkers, and practical folk everywhere have long recognized that women will never achieve equality outside of the home until men become equal partners inside the domestic sphere. On average, U.S. women earn 78 cents for every dollar earned by U.S. men. The gender wage gap occurs in part because of the disproportionate family, child rearing, and household responsibilities that mothers bear. Current statistics indicate that, until they have children, women earn roughly the same as men. Often, as women's family involvement intensifies, mothers' work-force participation--and income--diminishes or ends altogether. Many argue that the glass ceiling is in the nursery.
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| Tuesday, June 17, 2003 | |
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 17 Jun 2003 @ 12:04
DRUG TURNS CRIME VICTIMS INTO ZOMBIES
By Phil Stewart Reuters June 17, 2003
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - The last thing Andrea Fernandez recalls before being drugged is holding her newborn baby on a Bogota city bus.
Police found her three days later, muttering to herself and wandering topless along the median strip of a busy highway. Her face was badly beaten and her son was gone.
Fernandez is just one of hundreds of victims every month who, according to Colombian hospitals, are temporarily turned into zombies by a home-grown drug called scopolamine which has been embraced by thieves and rapists.
"When I woke up in the hospital, I asked for my baby and nobody said anything. They just looked at me," Fernandez said, weeping. Police believe her son Diego was taken by a gang which traffics in infants.
Colorless, odorless and tasteless, scopolamine is slipped into drinks and sprinkled onto food. Victims become so docile that they have been known to help thieves rob their homes and empty their bank accounts. Women have been drugged repeatedly over days and gang-raped or rented out as prostitutes.
In the case of Fernandez, the mother of three was rendered submissive enough to surrender her youngest child.
Most troubling for police is the way the drug acts on the brain. Since scopolamine completely blocks the formation of memories, unlike most date-rape drugs used in the United States and elsewhere, it is usually impossible for victims to ever identify their aggressors.
"When a patient (of U.S. date-rape drugs) is under hypnosis, he or she usually recalls what happened. But with scopolamine, this isn't possible because the memory was never recorded," said Dr. Camilo Uribe, the world's leading expert on the drug.
Scopolamine has a long, dark history in Colombia dating back to before the Spanish conquest.
Legend has it that Colombian Indian tribes used the drug to bury alive the wives and slaves of fallen chiefs, so that they would quietly accompany their masters into the afterworld.
Nazi "angel of death" Joseph Mengele experimented on scopolamine as an interrogation drug. And scopolamine's sedative and amnesia-producing qualities were used by mothers in the early 20th century to help them through childbirth.
Finding the drug in Colombia these days is not hard.
The tree which naturally produces scopolamine grows wild around the capital and is so famous in the countryside that mothers warn their children not to fall asleep below its yellow and white flowers. The tree is popularly known as the "borrachero," or "get-you-drunk," and the pollen alone is said to conjure up strange dreams.
"We probably should put some sort of fence up," jokes biologist Gustavo Morales at Bogota's botanical gardens, eyeing children playing with borrachero seeds everywhere.
"If you ate a few of those, it would kill you."
Although scopolamine can be easily extracted from the seeds, experienced criminals hardly ever bother with them, police say.
Pure, cheap scopolamine is brought across the border from neighboring Ecuador, where the borrachero tree is harvested for medical purposes, Uribe said. The alkaloid is used legally in medicines across the world to treat everything from motion sickness to the tremors of Parkinson's disease.
The use of scopolamine by criminals appears to be confined to Colombia, at least for now, and it's not clear why the drug is such a rampant problem in Colombia. Some analysts blame it on a culture of crime in the Andean nation, home to the world's largest kidnapping and cocaine industries, not to mention Latin America's longest-running guerrilla war.
There are so many scopolamine cases that they usually don't make the news unless particularly bizarre. One such incident involved three young Bogota women who preyed on men by smearing the drug on their breasts and luring their victims to take a lick.
Losing all willpower, the men readily gave up their bank access codes. The breast-temptress thieves then held them hostage for days while draining their accounts.
The U.S. Embassy in Bogota takes scopolamine very seriously and offers staff tips on how avoid being drugged. One piece of advice may seem obvious: Don't let your drinks out of your sight when at a Bogota bar or nightclub.
Still, at least three visiting U.S. government employees here have been drugged and robbed over the past two years. Other American victims from time to time appear at the embassy seeking help, still shaking off a scopolamine hangover.
"I remember one case, an American reported being drugged," an embassy official said. "He says to his doorman 'Why did you let them walk out with my stuff.' The doorman says, 'Because you told me to.'" More >
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| Sunday, June 15, 2003 | |
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 15 Jun 2003 @ 12:08
Brain Scans Show That Buddhists Really Are Happy
5-22-3
LONDON (Reuters) - Buddhists really are happy, calm and serene people -- at least according to their brain scans.
Using latest scanning techniques, neuroscientists have discovered that certain areas of the brain light up constantly in Buddhists, and not just when they are meditating, which indicates positive emotions and good mood.
"We can now hypothesise with some confidence that those apparently happy, calm Buddhist souls one regularly comes across in places such as Dharamsala, India, really are happy," Professor Owen Flanagan, of Duke University in North Carolina, said on Wednesday.
Dharamsala is the home base of exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama.
The scanning studies by scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison showed activity in the left prefrontal lobes of experienced Buddhist practitioners. The area is linked to positive emotions, self-control and temperament.
Other research by Paul Ekman, of the University of California San Francisco Medical Centre, suggests that meditation and mindfulness can tame the amygdala, an area of the brain which is the hub of fear memory.
Ekman discovered that experienced Buddhists were less likely to be shocked, flustered, surprised or as angry as other people.
Flanagan believes that if the findings of the studies can be confirmed they could be of major importance.
"The most reasonable hypothesis is that there is something about conscientious Buddhist practice that results in the kind of happiness we all seek," Flanagan said in a report in New Scientist magazine.
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 15 Jun 2003 @ 12:08
Ehrlich Signs Medical Marijuana Bill Into Law
TheWBALChannel.com May 22, 2003
BALTIMORE -- Gov. Robert Ehrlich's decision to sign a medical marijuana bill strongly opposed by the Bush administration will help many patients end their suffering, supporters said Thursday.
"These are people who are suffering. They're dying. It will help those people," said Delegate Dan Morhaim, D-Baltimore County, a sponsor of the bill and an emergency room doctor at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore.
Despite opposition from some Republicans, Ehrlich had indicated support for the bill early on because of his belief that people can differentiate between legalizing the drug and allowing those dying of chronic illnesses to alleviate their pain.
"This is a position I've had for many, many years," Ehrlich said at Thursday's signing ceremony. "It is not without controversy. It's not without controversy across parties, across chambers, across states, across the country."
Ehrlich, however, said he didn't think signing the bill would damage his relationship with the White House.
"Certainly we received a lot of pressure from the administration," the first-term governor said. "This is an issue I have dealt with for a decade. My views are well-known."
Ehrlich's former GOP colleagues in the House of Representatives are acting to take drug enforcement money from state and local police officers in states where marijuana for medical use has been legalized.
The new law does not legalize marijuana, but reduces the penalty to a maximum $100 fine with no jail time. Defendants, however, must convince a judge they need marijuana for medical reasons. Previously, possession or use of marijuana brought penalties of up to a year in prison or a $1,000 fine.
Eight other states -- Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, Nevada and Maine -- have medical marijuana laws.
Backers of the legislation say smoking marijuana can ease the symptoms of serious illnesses such as cancer, HIV or AIDS, multiple sclerosis and Crohn's disease, and help patients suffering from nausea hold down food and medications.
Opponents, including White House drug czar John P. Walters, have been pressuring Ehrlich to veto the measure, which they say offers a false and illegal remedy to the sick.
"I suspect that Gov. Ehrlich acted with the best of intentions, with an honest desire to help people, but it looks like he may have been misled on the actual science and public health issues here," Walters said Thursday in response to the signing. "It would be truly unfortunate if today's actions led, however unintentionally, to greater use or availability of dangerous drugs in Maryland."
Joe McGeeney, Elks State Drug Awareness chairman for Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia, said he was disappointed in the governor's decision to sign the bill and vowed to help repeal it.
"It's sending the wrong message to our kids that it's OK to use because there is medicinal powers," he said. "Other states that have approved [similar bills] have seen a sharp increase in the youth smoking marijuana."
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| Friday, April 25, 2003 | |
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 25 Apr 2003 @ 00:31
THE DREAMCATCHER
By Barbara Kiser
New Scientist
We live in mad times. The WHO (World Health Organization) predicts depression will soon rank second in the global disease burden, suicide rates are rising, and the trauma caused by war, conflict or domestic abuse is everywhere. The toll is horrific: mental illness costs Britain alone £32
billion a year. And people looking for therapy face a tower of psychobabble, with 400-plus often warring schools. Enter Joe Griffin , who says there is away to lift depression in a day, and told Barbara Kiser he can prove it.
Full Story
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| Wednesday, April 9, 2003 | |
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 9 Apr 2003 @ 18:00
This comes from Dr. Leonard Horowitz who has created a website called SARS Scam
He is a Harvard graduate in public health, and expert in the fields of medical sociology, behavioral science, and emerging diseases, I am best known for my work exposing the man-made origin of HIV/AIDS in the national bestselling book, Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola—Nature, Accident or Intentional? (Tetrahedron Press, 1998; 1-888-508-4787)
"I have dedicated this website to examining the social and political implications, as well as the correlates (i.e., things related to) and antecedents (i.e., factors or events that predated or precipitated) this new SARS pandemic. By examining this illness’s etiology, which lies more in the realm of global politics, corporate profits, and population control, than elsewhere, this information offers educated people an alternative to the fright and irrational behaviors promulgated by “mainstream” propagandists including news sources and health officials better known as “spin doctors.”
Most intelligent persons will conclude from the following information that this new microbial attack was premeditated and precedent-setting. In other words, SARS is a well orchestrated social experiment.
Who is behind this SARS madness? I accept the risk of triggering your “conspiracy theory” buttons by identifying the widely recognized “global military–medical–petrochemical–pharmaceutical cartel” as the only suspect that can wield the powers necessary to effect these frightening outcomes.
Although you may find it comforting to simply consider this a conspiracy theory, I view SARS is a huge conspiracy with very few witting villains. Clearly, what you are witnessing is a well organized terror campaign carried out by mostly well-meaning, yet grossly ignorant, “authorities”—medically indoctrinated and virtually hypnotized “Manchurian candidates” if you will allow me to postulate."
The entire website makes a strong case. Why not take a look?
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| Sunday, March 30, 2003 | |
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30 Mar 2003 @ 10:50
Check out Letecia Layson's blog article about the affects of geomagnetic, sun spots and solar flares on biological sytems, i.e. terrestial life. This is one of the first evidentiary studies that I have seen that clearly explains some of the whole body/mind xhanges that cyle periodically.
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| Saturday, March 22, 2003 | |
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 22 Mar 2003 @ 17:28
Back Pain Linked To Brain Shrinkage - Study
By Merritt McKinney
3-22-3
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People with chronic back pain may experience shrinkage in the 'thinking' part of the brain, according to preliminary results of a small study presented this week at a meeting of the American Pain Society in Chicago.
The decrease in brain tissue remains a chicken-or-the-egg question for researchers, since they do not know which comes first -- the back pain or the shrinkage.
But if chronic pain turns out to cause parts of the brain to shrink, "the urgency to cure chronic pain becomes more important," according to Dr. A. Vania Apkarian at Northwestern University in Chicago, who heads
the ongoing study.
In previous research, Apkarian and his colleagues uncovered evidence that people with chronic pain may experience changes in brain tissue called gray matter. Unlike white matter, which mainly holds the brain together, gray matter contains active "thinking cells" that are involved in processing information and memory. It makes up the largest proportion
of the brain.
In the new study, Apkarian's team continued to study the brains of people with chronic pain, in this case 10 people with chronic back pain. The researchers measured gray matter in the brains of people with chronic back pain and compared them to a group of 20 people who did not have chronic pain.
The measurements revealed that people with chronic pain had less gray matter -- overall and in a part of the brain called the thalamus. Not only was there less gray matter in terms of volume in pain sufferers, but the tissue was also less dense, Apkarian said.
The changes in people with chronic pain, Apkarian told Reuters Health in an interview, were particularly noticeable in parts of the gray matter that are known to be important in making "emotional assessments," including decision making and control of everyday social behavior.
"We have shown that brain chemistry is abnormal in chronic back pain patients," Apkarian said. He cautioned however, that "we have no idea" whether the shrinkage causes the back pain or vice-versa. The two phenomena could also be unrelated, he said.
The research raises "a whole new set of questions" about chronic pain, Apkarian said. "This is just the beginning at looking into the brain at what chronic pain really is."
Right now, Apkarian and his colleagues are still recruiting people with chronic back pain, as they would eventually like to measure gray matter in 20 people with pain, he said.
The Chicago researcher said that he would like to follow a group of people with chronic pain to see whether the changes in gray matter progress. If gray matter continued to shrink as the pain continued, it would support the idea that the shrinkage is caused by chronic pain, he said.
One question Apkarian would like to see answered is whether treating the pain can reverse the damage to the brain's gray matter, although he said such a reversal is unlikely.
Apkarian noted that even though "a lot of work" needs to be done in studying the relationship between gray matter changes and chronic pain, the possibility that pain can cause parts of the brain to shrink highlights the importance of treating chronic pain.
Apkarian noted that in another study that has yet to be published, he and his colleagues found that people with chronic pain have "a very specific" type of decline in the ability to make emotional decisions. More >
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| Saturday, March 15, 2003 | |
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 15 Mar 2003 @ 15:04
This comes from Jock Doubleday,author and founder of Natural Woman, Natural Man,Inc. , a California Non-Profit corporation.
He distributes his NWNM newletter occassionally and this time the topic rides piggyback on my previous post about the physical and psychological risks of circumcision.
One thing he asks is "Where is the men's movement's voice when it come to circumsion. Seemingly quiet.
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Welcome to another issue of NWNM Today!
This issue is concerned with the myriad hazards of circumcision and the myriad benefits of keeping the male foreskin intact.
"Savages?"
Many people think that ritual genital mutilation is practiced only by ignorant tribes deep in uncivilized territories of the world.
But here in the United States, and in many other Western nations, genital mutilation is practiced on a daily basis. 3,300 baby boys are wounded every 24 hours.
Infant males are routinely circumcised as part of the hospital birth process--for the ostensible purpose of helping them keep their penises clean and free from infection in their later years.
To medical people, circumcision makes everybody a winner. The boy gets a smooth and easy-to-clean penis and "gets to look like his dad." The fee-for-service surgeon gets a paycheck. The hospital coffers are replenished.
In the upside-down world of modern-day medicine, it makes more sense to cut off parts of babies that might become dirty or infected than to expect parents to teach their children good hygiene.
I wonder what the culture of the Western world would look like today if half of its members were not brought into the world in pain.
Following is the chapter on circumcision from my upcoming book "Spontaneous Creation: 101 Reasons Not To Have Your Baby in a Hospital."
Read on... More >
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Sounding Circle - Category: Health & Well Being
