David Ancell / Monday, February 19, 2007 / Comments(0)
I read with interest the article by Fr. Euteneur on proposals to make the HPV vaccine mandatory. He obviously opposes making the vaccination mandatory, but he does explain that use of the vaccine is not in and of itself sinful. I recommend reading the comment below the article by MaryViolet for another, equally valid, perspective.
I have mixed feelings about the vaccine. For one thing, any new drug carries risk. It may be found out well in the future, after millions of vaccinations have been given, that the contents of the vaccine are sufficient to cause cervical cancer. I doubt this will happen, but it could. The disease in question is almost entirely preventable by living a chaste life. It’s much different from measles or mumps where being in the presence of an infected person can cause one to contract the disease.
However, it isn’t immoral to use this vaccine. As MaryViolet said, one of her daughters may marry a man who has HPV from a sin he long repented of. When the means to keep him from infecting his wife is there, why not use it? Sexual assault is a real problem on college campuses. I don’t think that this vaccine will be quite the enabler of promiscuous behavior that it sometimes is painted as. I am far more worried about the morning-after pill than I am the HPV vaccine.
Still, I agree with Fr. Euteneur that this vaccination absolutely should not be made mandatory. Simply put, if you have rampant HPV infections, then you have a rampant problem with promiscuity. Given this, the decision to vaccinate can safely be left entirely to the young woman, her physician, and her parents. There are legitimate reasons to use it, in my opinion, but not to mandate it.
I recently went to a continuing education conference where this, and other things, were discussed. It reminds me of how we seem to be trying to stomp out all the symptoms of a big elephant-sized problem in our living room. The problem with this is that no one seems to have the courage to address the root of all this. I’ll explain what I mean in a later post.
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David Ancell / Sunday, February 11, 2007 / Comments(0)
The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute has requested signatures on this petition asking the United States Senate not to ratify the CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) treaty. Please sign this as soon as possible. Simply put, this treaty has been used to advance a pro-abortion agenda.
You can read the petition at the site, but one part I found especially disturbing was this one:
The CEDAW Committee went so far as to criticize the country of Belarus for establishing Mother’s Day, what the Committee referred to as a “negative cultural stereotype.”
Did it ever occur to people that, without this “negative cultural stereotype,” they wouldn’t exist? Well, anyway, I’m wondering if this is one of the petitions that was present at an Amnesty International table during either my freshman or sophomore year in college. I remembered that I asked if this could be used to establish a “right” to abortion, and I was told that it was quite likely. Well, at least the guy was honest. I refused to sign and was essentially told that I was “not interested in human rights” (after having signed everything else on their table) and that I needed to open my mind. Before that, the guy mentioned the overpopulation problem (now known to be nonexistent) and that, if I was concerned about the pain [experienced by the unborn], well, whales feel a lot of pain when killed.
I am thankful to God that I realized what I was doing before I put my signature on such a satanic petition as was presented then. I just signed the petition linked to in this e-mail now, and I hope that everyone reading will do so also. Remember, most, if not all, forms of discrimination against women are already illegal in this country.
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David Ancell / Wednesday, February 07, 2007 / Comments(0)
I have removed the link to Dr. Marcellino D’Ambrosio’s Crossroads Initiative from my site. His site has often been informative. The actual articles on the faith are perfectly fine, and this is not my problem. However, I discovered something, in my professional judgment as a pharmacist, I cannot endorse. I certainly don’t want to link this to the Catholic faith.
In the latest newsletter, a link was provided to “health and wellness” products that he apparently sells from his site. I place the link here so that you can see that I’m not making this up. They all appear to be combination products that will supposedly improve your memory, reduce effects of aging, allow muscle-building, and improve your metabolism to help with weight loss. This is legal to claim under current dietary supplement regulations, but that doesn’t mean that those claims are substantiated.
His site says that the listing in the PDR for Non-Prescription Drugs and Dietary Supplements is a “guarantee” that they are made according to the same stringent standards as prescription drugs. I do not agree. Actually, you’d need to have United States Pharmacopoeia endorsement to have that guarantee, and I did not see that logo on either Dr. D’Ambrosio’s site nor the official site of Wellness International Network. The information in the PDR has long been known to have been paid for and provided by the manufacturers.
With herbal preparations, there’s another problem. For example, let’s take the product St. John’s Wort. Even if you can guarantee how much St. John’s Wort is in a product, you still can’t guarantee the consistency of the active ingredient. In most herbals, the active ingredient has never been isolated. Now, we all have variations on, for example, how much of a certain hormone our bodies will produce. How can we be sure the same thing isn’t true of herbals? Therefore, a set amount of St. John’s Wort may still vary outside of acceptable standards in terms of the active ingredient.
The site says that the products are used by the staff at Crossroads. I won’t question them on this. However, the gold standard for how well a product works is what we call a randomized, controlled, double-blind trial. In other words, they give some people the drug and others a placebo. No one knows which they are taking. Many times, diseases will respond to placebo. I’ve heard rumors of even cancer responding to placebo. Without comparing them to a placebo in this manner, it is hard to say if the product is really producing the effect, or if it is all in their minds.
As a Catholic pharmacist, I would not want to take the chance that someone may view the use of these nutritional supplements as something Catholic. It will either discredit us, or it will cause people to start taking things they shouldn’t. As a pharmacist who is strongly against the use of those products, I cannot endorse a Catholic site that is promoting their use. I do have anything against Dr. D’Ambrosio’s Catholic articles, but I feel obligated in conscience to stick to my professional opinion as a pharmacist. In any case, there is no substitute for a healthy diet and exercise in maintaining health.
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David Ancell / Wednesday, February 07, 2007 / Comments(0)
I was playing with an open-source text editor on my iMac, and I came across this gem.
The author of this software is obviously a Mac fan. Then again, after seven months of using a Macintosh, I tend to agree.
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David Ancell / Saturday, February 03, 2007 / Comments(0)
Today, my paperwork that says I have a Missouri license showed up in the mail. I don’t know what I will do yet, but I am definitely going to need to think and pray about this. This Friday, I take the test to get a license in Kansas. This will mean that I am licensed in four states (Tennessee and Mississippi are the others.).
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David Ancell / Wednesday, January 31, 2007 / Comments(0)
I just checked the State of Missouri’s database of license holders, and I found my license to practice pharmacy was finally listed. I had taken the test in late December, and I’m glad to see that everything is finally there.
On February 9th, I will take the jurisprudence exam for Kansas, and hopefully it will result in another license being issued. I found something interesting in the regulations as I was looking through them and downloading them. Assisting in a suicide is actually listed as grounds for disciplinary action against one’s license. I’m glad to see this one.
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David Ancell / Tuesday, January 30, 2007 / Comments(0)
If I had to recommend one book on relationships, it’s Christian Courtship in an Oversexed World by Fr. TG Morrow. This book is very thorough in its treatment of the topic, and it teaches chastity without teaching prudishness.
Fr. Morrow goes into the purpose of love, gives tips for courtship, and even gives some marriage advice for people to start thinking about beforehand. He tells it like it is, giving both the spiritual and practical consequences of not being chaste. He even does all of this without getting into the “don’t even shake hands until you are married” prudish approach that some books on courtship go into. In other words, develop the genuine virtue of chastity.
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David Ancell / Saturday, January 27, 2007 / Comments(0)
I just got a bill from one of my credit cards for negative three cents. Yes, you saw that right. I hadn’t used this card in a long time, so it has long had a zero balance. Apparently, there was a class-action suit against the company, and so I was awarded three cents. Now, if only the penny bubble-gum machines would start accepting credit cards, I could reap the fruits of membership.
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David Ancell / Wednesday, January 24, 2007 / Comments(0)
I just read this review of Windows Vista. I doubt that Vista would impress me. The review suggests that it isn’t bad, but it isn’t exactly a compelling upgrade, either. That’s too bad considering it has been five years since the last major upgrade. This was my favorite line:
Compared with Mac OS X 10.4, Windows Vista feels clunky and not very intuitive, almost as though it’s still based on DOS (or at least the internal logic that made up DOS).
Of course, Mac OS X is based on Unix, which I believe is older than DOS, but Apple really does seem to put good features into it. Mac OS X Leopard is showing that it will have some visible new features. That’s what I plan to spend money on.
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David Ancell / Tuesday, January 23, 2007 / Comments(0)
Okay, I’ve decided to talk about what I do have these days. For one thing, I’ve bought a Sirius radio. I’m now addicted to EWTN radio. We don’t have a station in Memphis, so I’ve never had it before. It’s great. In fact, I think I like it better than their television. Then again, we don’t exactly have that on basic cable either. There is a station, but it is shared with the “higher education” channel.
I’ve been doing recordings, both of my own stuff and of RCIA, as a hobby for some time now. I’ve gone from hooking up a standard PC microphone straight into a laptop to using real professional or at least prosumer equipment. I can’t believe what I’ve learned. Lately, I’ve been playing with a Mackie Satellite. It’s great for me to record my podcast and then take the pod to record something at a church.
My wish list item that I will share with you is an 80 GB iPod. I’ve almost filled up the 20 GB. Since it looks like there isn’t going to be a new iPod other than the iPhone for a while, I may eventually stop holding out for an iPod with a user-replaceable battery. Why would I need 80 GB? I download a lot of talks that are an hour or so long, and they take up more space than an individual song does.
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