America Has an Incest Problem

By Mia Fontaine
The Atlantic
Originally posted January 24, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

Here are some statistics that should be familiar to us all, but aren't, either because they're too mind-boggling to be absorbed easily, or because they're not publicized enough. One in three-to-four girls, and one in five-to-seven boys are sexually abused before they turn 18, an overwhelming incidence of which happens within the family. These statistics are well known among industry professionals, who are often quick to add, "and this is a notoriously underreported crime."

Incest is a subject that makes people recoil. The word alone causes many to squirm, and it's telling that of all of the individual and groups of perpetrators who've made national headlines to date, virtually none have been related to their victims. They've been trusted or fatherly figures (some in a more literal sense than others) from institutions close to home, but not actual fathers, step-fathers, uncles, grandfathers, brothers, or cousins (or mothers and female relatives, for that matter). While all abuse is traumatizing, people outside of a child's home and family—the Sanduskys, the teachers and the priests—account for far fewer cases of child sexual abuse.

The entire article is here.

Prolonging Life: Legal, Ethical, and Social Dilemmas

The Nour Foundation
Exploring Meaning and Commonality in Human Experience




An absolutely fascinating discussion on end of life issues.

Watchful Eye in Nursing Homes

By Jan Hoffman
The New York Times
Originally published November 18, 2013

Here are some excerpts:

In June, Mike DeWine, the Ohio state attorney general, announced that his office, with permission from families, had placed cameras in residents’ rooms in an unspecified number of state facilities. Mr. DeWine has moved to shut down at least one facility, in Zanesville, where, he said, cameras caught actions like an aide’s repeatedly leaving a stroke patient’s food by his incapacitated side.

The recordings can have an impact. Based on Ms. Racher’s videos, one aide pleaded guilty to abuse and neglect. The other appears to have fled the country. Similar scenes of abuse have been captured in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and other states by relatives who placed cameras in potted plants and radios, webcams and iPhones.

(cut)

But the secret monitoring of a resident raises ethical and legal questions. Families must balance fears for their relative’s safety against an undignified invasion of their privacy. They must also consider the privacy rights of others who pass through the room, including roommates and visitors.

Proponents of hidden cameras argue that expectations of privacy have fallen throughout society: nanny cams, webcams and security cameras are ubiquitous.

The entire article is here.

How Ayn Rand ruined my childhood

By Alyssa Bereznak
Salon.com
Originally published April 4, 2013

My parents split up when I was 4. My father, a lawyer, wrote the divorce papers himself and included one specific rule: My mother was forbidden to raise my brother and me religiously. She agreed, dissolving Sunday church and Bible study with one swift signature. Mom didn’t mind; she was agnostic and knew we didn’t need religion to be good people. But a disdain for faith wasn’t the only reason he wrote God out of my childhood. There was simply no room in our household for both Jesus Christ and my father’s one true love: Ayn Rand.

You might be familiar with Rand from a high school reading assignment. Perhaps a Tea Partyer acquaintance name-dropped her in a debate on individual rights. Or maybe you’ve heard the film adaptation of her magnum opus “Atlas Shrugged” is due out April 15. In short, she is a Russian-born American novelist who championed her self-taught philosophy of objectivism through her many works of fiction. Conservatives are known to praise her for her support of laissez-faire economics and meritocracy. Liberals tend to criticize her for being too simplistic. I know her more intimately as the woman whose philosophy dictates my father’s every decision.

What is objectivism? If you’d asked me that question as a child, I could have trotted to the foyer of my father’s home and referenced a framed quote by Rand that hung there like a cross. It read: “My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

The entire story is here.

Weight Loss Surgery Benefits Entire Family

By Anahad O'Connor
The New York Times - Health

Having gastric bypass surgery has a ripple effect that causes family members to lose weight, eat better and exercise more, a new study shows.

The research found that spouses, relatives and even the children of patients who underwent the procedure dropped significant amounts of weight, doubled their activity levels and had other improvements that were still evident a year after the surgery. The findings suggest that doctors who perform gastric bypass operations may want to look at the procedure as a way to bring about change in entire families in need of help with their weight and exercise habits, said Dr. John Morton, the director of bariatric surgery at the Stanford School of Medicine and an author of the study, which appeared in The Archives of Surgery.

“If you have a committed and involved family,” he said, “you’re going to have better outcomes for the patient, and also by the same token, the family members can have a collateral benefit.”

(cut)

“Obesity is a family disease,” he said, “and we do need to treat everyone involved and start thinking about bariatric surgery as a platform for change.”

The entire story can be read here.