Call for papers: synchroblog on Christian approaches to health care

There is to be a synchroblog on “Christian approaches to health care” on Monday 31 August 2009.
That is when various people write blog posts on the same general topic at the same time, and put links to the other posts, so you can surf through them and see several different views.
Update: The Synchroblog is now [...]

Lobbying is theft

A couple of weeks ago I commented about the ethical assumptions that seemed to lie behind a statement I found on another blog, that “universal healthcare is theft”. Now Liz Dyer has drawn my attention to this:
Daily Dose – Lobbyists Spend Millions to Influence Health Care:
Drugmakers, hospitals and insurers continued to pour millions of dollars [...]

Self-evident truths and moral turpitude

“We hold these truths to be self-evident…” so said the framers of the US Declaration of Independence. And some of their fellow countrymen seem even today to hold certain beliefs as self-evident truths.
Here’s one I came across the other day:

Universal healthcare is theft
from A conservative blog for peace
Now it could be argued that such a [...]

Anargyri

The Orthodox Church has a category of saints called in Greek anargyri (silverless ones), usually translated into English as “unmercenary physicians”. They were medical doctors who did not charge for their services, and as such they are a living reproach to the ever-expanding cult of healthcare for profit.
As Monte Asbury puts it in his blog [...]

Gadarene swine flu

Yesterday while I was doing some routine tasks on my computer I had the TV news running in the background. Sky News had nothing but swine flu. As far as they were concerned, nothing else was happening in the world. I switched to CNN, and found much the same thing, though they had some reporing [...]

Christian responses to people suffering from HIV/Aids

This is old, but still worth reading.
His Beatitude Teoctist, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church: A message, urging to love and tolerance for those suffering from AIDS/
HIV
Romania, 27 January 2004
Beloved brothers and sisters,
We are still at the beginning of the year, at a time when each one of us looks forward to the things he [...]

Anglican Church dumps the dying

For many years the Anglican Church’s Tumelong Mission has served people in and around Tshwane, but now shortage of funds has forced it to retrench severely.

clipped from www.iol.co.za

‘I give the assurance before God that the (Tumelong) Mission is not closing, that no one has been dismissed and that there is no threat to any of [...]

Modernity, premodernity and traditional medicine

In a comment on an earlier post of mine, on Religion, spirituality and politics, Nic Paton said “Thats an interesting distinction between the post/modern “neopagan” and the premodern “paleopagan”… Do you see a role for the paleopagan in contemporary culture / spirituality?”
I referred to the recent comments of the Minister of Health on the possibility [...]

Stem cells from skin

A new breakthrough in creating stem cells from human skin could solve bioethical problems in stem cell research

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com

Researchers in Wisconsin and Japan said yesterday that they have turned ordinary human skin cells into what are effectively embryonic stem cells without using embryos or women’s eggs — the previously essential ingredients that have [...]

The church and money – healing

Here’s a spin-off from the Church and money Synchroblog: Monte Asbury writes in What everyone knows about health care: “the health care giants in the USA spend $300 billion on promotion. You’ll see their ads on TV tonight, won’t you? Enjoy them, ’cause they’re part of your health care bill.”
Even if that billion [...]