Health and Disease

» Health authorities in Loudoun County, Virginia, have discovered malaria-carrying mosquitoes several miles from where two teens became ill with the rare disease over the summer. The finding marks the first time in at least 20 years that mosquitoes carrying the parasite have been identified in a U.S. community where humans were also infected with malaria.

» The World Health Organization reports that crime and domestic violence are the world's number one public health threat, rivaling tuberculosis and malaria as the leading causes of death and disability. Partner violence and murder studies from Australia, Canada, Israel, South Africa, and the United States show that 40?70% percent of female murder victims were killed by their husbands or boyfriends.

» Recent Canadian research shows adolescent smoking increases the risks of pre-menopausal breast cancer by 70%. Smoking is known to cause cancers of the lung, throat, kidney, bladder, pancreas, larynx, cervix and stomach, as well as leukemia and heart disease, but links with breast cancer have remained disputed until now. According to Action on Smoking and Health, more than 80% of smokers start the habit as teenagers.

Japan and Suicide

The World Psychiatric Association recently awarded Japan the dubious distinction of "Suicide Capital of the World." According to Japanese statistics, 31,402 people committed suicide there last year, 915 more than in 2000, making the fourth consecutive year that the number had topped 30,000. Religion probably plays a role, says psychiatrist Kazuo Yamada. "Christianity slows down the rate of suicide. People are regarded as unethical if they take the body God has given them and destroy it without His approval. Japan doesn't have any of that. If anything, Buddhism, with its emphasis on reincarnation, encourages suicide. And the culture that glorifies hara-kiri continues to exist today. Japanese have no ethical brake when it comes to suicide." Men in their 40s and 50s account for about 40% of all Japanese suicides, primarily because of health and financial problems.

South Africa

Unfortunately for South Africans, the taking by force of white-owned farmland by blacks has begun. The African National Congress (ANC), South Africa's leading political party, has set a series of laws in place to allow blacks to confiscate white-owned farms, just as has been happening in Zimbabwe and most recently in Namibia. "Basically, the new ANC laws say that any black can make a verbal claim to white-owned farmland by saying their ancestors were taken off that land by force. It is up to the white farmer to prove that he owns the land," a representative of white farmers said. The Pan African Congress, a radical black Marxist group, has ordered the ANC to begin Zimbabwean-type land reform by April of 2003. However, it appears that some in South Africa are unwilling to wait that long, as squatters in Hout Bay, a seaside community near Cape Town, recently stormed the Cape High Court last week carrying Zimbabwean flags and demanding white-owned land.

Cloning

Whether or not they admit it, biomedical scientists are having to come to terms with the fact that they cannot improve on God's creation. A study performed at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Boston found that cloning to create new animals almost always produces an abnormal creature. In this study, one in every25 genes was abnormal in placentas from cloned mice, jeopardizing the integrity of the animals' entire genetic makeup. Whitehead Institute admits that the study proves that, no matter how normal a cloned animal may look at birth, it will likely develop health problems later in life.

Education

On college and university campuses everywhere, a common buzzword is "diversity." Even though diversity means "multiplicity" or "variety," it is ironically manifested in our institutions of higher education as race, gender, and sexual- orientation quotas. However, to guarantee this politically correct ideology for our youth, ideological and political diversity cannot be tolerated. Instead, ideological and political uniformity and consistency are preached. American Enterprise (September 2002) says little or no ideological diversity exists in American higher learning. At Brown University, only 5% of the faculty were members of a conservative political party; at Cornell it was 3%; Harvard, 4%; Penn State, 17%; Stanford, 11%; UCLA, 6%; and UC Santa Barbara, 1%. In the 2000 presidential election, 84% of Ivy League faculty voted for Al Gore, 9% for George Bush, and 6% for Ralph Nader, whereas in the general electorate the vote was split at 48% for Gore and Bush, and 3% for Nader.