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Pro-choice quandary


funscout

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Now you're dragging me into the weeds!

 

I suppose the best thing to do in such a circumstance is to ask a priest. They could tell someone far better than I on such a challenging question.

 

Doesn't it still go to the intent though, needed to sin. If the lady had chemo to stop cancer with a chance of killing the baby, she did not intend to kill it.

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http://www.johnankerberg.org/Articles/_PDFArchives/roman-catholicism/RC1W0501.pdf

 

The Church even says that if mitigating circumstances exist, not even the gravest sin

merits eternal punishment. It teaches that for a sin to be mortal, three conditions must be

met:

The sin must be serious. The evil act must be a grave offense against God or someone else.

The sinner must be aware. The one performing the act must have full knowledge that

what he is doing is grievously wrong.

The sin must be deliberate. The sinner must know he can resist the temptation, yet

willfully choose to do evil.

Should the sin not meet one of these requirements, it does not merit eternal punishment

no matter how evil the act might be.

In practice these conditions become ready-made excuses for lawlessness. Consider, for

example, a person who has displayed a low ability to resist a certain sin. According to

Roman Catholic theology, his sin may not be completely deliberate: The freedom of our

will can be impeded by our natural disposition, the influence of improper upbringing, internal or external compulsion, or the force of violent and sudden passion.7 If a person in

such a condition were to commit a gravely evil sin, therefore, it is not a mortal sin.

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Beavah, heartbeat isn't the definition of life. Death is currently defined as the irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain. We have the technology to keep hearts beating well after death.

 

Technology will keep changing the abortion debate, too. It should be possible in the future to freeze a fetus, or transplant it, or have it develop entirely in vitro.

 

Probably the best development would be to invent a form of contraception where everyone is normally infertile, and both the man and the woman have to take a pill to temporarily counteract it. That would end practically all unintentional pregnancies, pregnancies from rape, etc. and reduce abortions to almost none.

 

But since religious nuts are against vaccines that prevent cervical cancer on the basis that it might encourge women to have sex, I'm sure they'd be against this, too.

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I, as a religous nut, am against the cervical cancer vaccine because we do NOT know the long term repercussions. I simply ask for more information.

Also, when I refer to the "church" I refer to Christianity in general not the Roman Catholic Church since I am not Roman Catholic. I belong to a small, non-denominational, independent Christian church. (As in Dodge Memorial Christian Church...85 members).

 

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I guess I'm a religious nut, proud to be a Jesus freak with a bumper sticker on my car that says evangelical liberal democrat", so put me in any box you want but i probably won't fit.

 

However, as a family physician, i think the current cervical cancer vaccine is bogu since in only protrects against 70% of the HPV known to cause cervical cancer, has significant immediate post-vaccination reactions, and uncertain period of efficacy and absolutely unknown long-term consequences. Add to that advertising that says to young people that they are "protected" and we have a formula for disaster.

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pinkflame, what is "bogus" about vaccinating against 70% of the HPV known to cause cervical cancer?! Are vaccinations worthless if they're anything less than 100% effective or something? That's insane. Menveo is only about 94% effective, should we tell parents to not bother with it (and fail to prevent thousands of cases of Meningitis)? Should patients only have operations that have a 100% cure rate, and not bother with operations that are only 70% effective?

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70% for a vaccine is not good. If we were talking about something immediately lethal (say, if a bird flu vaccine were developed and there was an immediate threat of a bird flu epidemic which is known to have a high fatality rate and has no treatment except supportive care), then a 70% effectiveness rate (or even a 50%) might be acceptable. That was one of the debates about re-vaccination for smallpox a few years ago, although in that case the complications were known which made the discussion a bit more useful.

 

The diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine is almost 100% effective. As you stated, the meningococcal vaccine is >95% effective and meningococcal meningitis is a rapidly fatal disease even with antibiotcs. By contrast, cervical cancer is easily detectable and very treatable if caught in early stages thorugh the standard yearly screening recommended for sexually active women. The screening and treatment is easily available for most women (even with federal funding for many uninsured women, and tose to whom it is not available most likely would not ahve the funds to pay for the vaccine either)

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Medical research is a bit of a sticky wicket.

 

Thalidomide was sold and its use stopped after it was learned of the bith defect potential, that one was easy and traced back to inadequate tests before it was marketed.

 

Then there are the DES daughters, women who while in utero were exposed to the hormone DES their mothers took, it increases chances of Cancer, Birth problems, and organ shapment.

 

MRI is interesting in that we haven't used it for all that long. The basic operating principle in MRI is that the patient in placed in a highly magnetic field this tends to aline the electrons in the atoms of the body since the have a like electrical charge. After the scan is over, it is assumed that the electrons go back, and the atom does not suffer any damge. But if 99.999% of all atoms go back to normal, what about the remaining? What if we find that children of MRI paients have a greater chance, or almost certainty to develop some malady?

 

What if someone suggest I take a good slap in the face to get real and I don't want to slow down medical research or technology. The CT replaced pneunoencephlograms and for that reason alone Hounsfield deserved the Nobel Prize. I would not want that the Dr Damadian's of the future be ham strung with impossible research demands before a technology or biologic is let loose.

 

But I do think an honest explanation of risk benefit be explained to each patient, wait, its called "informed consent" what a concept! If the patient gives informed consent then they get the treatment. BTW, it also means if there is an averse reaction or result, and that result was talked about, no recovery of damsges is possible. if it's an unforseen complication that could not have been anticipated such as cancer in the daughters of DES patients, well, then, what do we do?

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OldGrayEagle,

 

MRI aligns most of the spins of nuclei in the body that possess a magnetic moment. The spins are distributed randomly before and after (in a few seconds at most) as has been determined by physics before Damadian invented the medical device. In fact, the technique is called nuclear magnetic resonance since the interaction is with nuclei. The electrons will be affected but the interactions are not sufficient to break chemical bonds so there should be no damage. The only element commonly found in the body that has a large magnetic moment is iron found in hemoglobin. Studies on blood found no adverse effects.

 

I do agree that many things in medicine may have unforeseen long term consequences. As a scientist, MRI may have an unforeseen negative effect but it is very unlikely.

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