In response to Cassandra’s post...

The article you suggested doesn’t appear to be available on line yet,

but there is an interview with Michael Specter:  http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/articles/060313on_onlineonly01

& a related commentary on the Mass Media Funk site: 

http://skepdic.com/refuge/funk52.html

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The following is an excursion, but I’m trying, man...

One has to wonder if, above the din of science and technology’s more common parallel trials and difficulties ~~ the lab, the notion, the proof, the trade, there lies another...

more insurmountable animal/obstacle/opponent/rival...stopper to a resurgence

of wonder in the hands of God’s most endeavored creatures.  A “do over”,

if you will.  Occasionally I find myself wondering if our societies will

eventually bring back...the RACK, the BLOCKS in the town square,

the guillotine &...the Bastilles, the oubliette, the wheel, the burn-witch-burn...

all in the name of “see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil” economics....

Might the ideas present in Cassandra’s suggested reading be a present obstacle in the path of the most benevolent medical advancements, a new age of wonder, an age of great human healing in the hands of endeavored humanity?  Or are these illnesses, anomalies,

viruses, even the alarm of pandemic plagues...an ironic boon somehow?  Too much so to be given their leave ~~ shuffled off to other corners of the universe where they can toy-around in vitriol with the lives of people and things still caught-up in the windings of greed & supremacy in the name of Creation?

Is it not the same Christianity setting this “new” precedence that said something to the likes of, “The cross shall displace the gibbet”?  & isn’t the suppression of “excellent” science, ...in an era pocked with the undeniably harsh effects of environment & some of man’s inventions on our air and water and bodies...a kind of public execution of many who might otherwise have been healed by mankind’s most endearing scientific efforts?  Is the point of science now only weaponry and class wealth?

How long before we see a formal national espousal of "the inviolability of human life!"?

I’m not a scientist, ...a legislator or an executive accountant...so this is only a thought: 

If, through the ages, we have attained the wisdoms & intelligence to chose right from wrong thinking & we chose wrong thinking for sake of “one class” or one “religion”

of people...or some parallel doctrine, ...then aren’t we all, as a civilization, in violation of every benevolence; the golden rule, every sect & scenario of healthy spirituality, our best notions of family & society, even our most altruistic philosophies of health & fitness, ........God’s law, All Creation?

&, if so, then what of the “God faithful” legislators who sign-onto these policies?

Please feel free and take this drivel to a higher plane; ...in words...on this forum...

so that I may find conception in your eloquence....

"For in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow" Ecclesiastes 1:18

Go on dbers, ...serve-us-up a little grief....