Link Roundup

I was on a semi-vacation last week, so this week's link roundup is a bit larger than normal. Enjoy!

Howard Zinn is adding to his People's History of the United States with a new graphic novel, A People's History of the American Empire. Read about it at Tom Dispatch, and check out this Viggo Mortensen-narrated clip featuring Mike Konopacki's artwork and Zinn's words. 

Fantastic review of Eboo Patel's Acts of Faith at Beliefnet. And don't miss Patel's excellent post on pluralism vs. diversity over at OnFaith.

...[I]t’s not about whether diversity is good or bad. Diversity is a fact, and in America it's not going away. The question is how to best engage the fact of diversity in a way that builds social capital and increases civic engagement. And when the pluralists don't engage diversity by building positive social bonds, then we leave a vacuum that is often filled by extremists or bigots.

In light of the recent Obama/Wright controversy (read Chris Bracey's take at BlackProf), Terri Gross talked with James Cone, author of Risks of Faith: The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation, 1968-1998, about Black Liberation Theology. Also listen to the other interview from that show, with Rev. Dwight Hopkins, for a better understanding of the context Rev. Wright's comments were ripped from.

Kai Wright is in the American Prospect on starting over in AIDS research and in the Dallas Morning News about the danger of the high rate of teen STDs.

Penny Coleman attended the Winter Soldiers' conference, and her thoughtful analysis is appearing on Alternet. Be sure to check out her article about Stop/Loss: "Pentagon Holds Thousands of Americans 'Prisoners of War'."

Rabbi Arthur Waskow urges Jews and others to observe a green Passover.

Kevin Jennings, author of Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son, is a hockey fan. And he doesn't appreciate the homophobic atmosphere at Rangers games.

 

On Human Guinea Pigs

by Carl Elliott

In his 1967 book, Human Guinea Pigs, Maurice Pappworth tells the story of a poor student who had volunteered for a number of medical experiments in exchange for cash. As the student was undergoing a highly complex cardiac catheterization, he went into profound shock and his heart stopped. Only after several minutes was the researcher able to resuscitate him. Pappworth wrote, "The experimenter then continued with the experiment as though nothing had happened." Then the researcher turned to all those present and said, "He must be a fool to repeatedly come back to us."

I have heard that thought expressed many times, although not quite so bluntly. Why does anybody take untested drugs for money, much less earn their living by doing it? Clinical research is regulated far more strictly now than it was in 1967, but it still rests on the willingness of thousands of human subjects to test the safety of new drugs. Many of these subjects are guinea pig pros, who spend a good part of each year in private, for-profit research units, submitting themselves to invasive medical procedures in exchange for cash. Nobody today calls them fools, of course. But many observers assume that guinea pig pros must have something wrong with them -- that they are psychologically disturbed, or that they like to live on the wild side, or as the current jargon has it, they enjoy "engaging in risk-seeking behavior." Nobody seems to consider the more obvious explanation: that they are desperate for the money.

The Psychological Trauma of War

by Margot Adler

It's not something you read in a newspaper or hear on an ordinary news show; it's only on the comedy shows like Real Time with Bill Maher where you hear it whispered: the idea that John McCain has PTSD, and that it would be scary to have his finger on the button. Whether or not this is the same kind of slur we hear from those who say Barak Obama was schooled in a madrassa, it seems perfectly reasonable to wonder if anyone who spent five years in a tiger cage might have some remnants of PTSD - even decades later.

So when I heard it on Bill Maher the other night, it reminded me that we are living in a society where thousands of young men and women, our very future, are returning home every day scarred from battles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of those scars are painfully visible; many others are not. Few people are really looking deeply at what this means for families and relationships, even what it means for our daily lives as Americans. Only one person that I know of in the mainstream media has delved deeply and movingly into this issue. For more than a year, in a series of searing pieces, Daniel Zwerdling at NPR has chronicled the plight of military personnel to get the mental health care they need. In many cases, veterans with PTSD have been kicked out of the military for bad behavior and are unable to access mental health services.

Ten years ago, I wrote a book called Heretic's Heart about my own life during the 1960's. Several chapters of that book were letters between me, as a twenty-year-old University of California - Berkeley student and activist, and Marc Anderson, a soldier fighting in Vietnam whom I met through the mail after he wrote a letter to the campus newspaper that could only be described as a cry from the abyss.

Drug-Free School Zone

By Chris Mercogliano

I am in absolute agreement with Bruce E. Levine: it isn’t ODD at all that our society has stepped up its efforts to pathologize young people with biopsychiatric labels like Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD), when they either cannot or will not march in step with the majority culture, and then dose them with the corresponding biopsychiatric drugs.

As Levine reminds us with his deft bit of historical research, America has a long tradition of marginalizing anyone who deviates from established norms—which currently are narrowing at an alarming rate. Or as French philosopher Michel Foucault pointed out in Discipline and Punish, the control of its citizens has always been a primary aim of the state, and what we are witnessing in modern times is the evolution of increasingly subtle ways in which to do so. Today, instead of relying on brute force as was the case in the days of pharaohs and emperors, social institutions like schools, the military, and the mass media subliminally enforce a conformity so pervasive that overt forms of control are no longer necessary. All who resist and refuse to take their places in the social and economic machine, according to Foucault in Madness and Civilization, are labeled with some form of abnormality, and then, as I argue in my book, Teaching the Restless, about the ongoing ADHD hoax, they are medicated with powerful psychotropic drugs that extend society’s control all the way down to the biochemical level.

This business of labeling and drugging kids who won’t sit still, can’t keep up, or don’t fit in became a deep concern of mine in my role as a teacher at the Free School, a noncoercive, democratic, inner-city school for sixty-five students ages two through fourteen in Albany, NY. In the early 1990s there was a sudden spike in the number of students who came to us having been labeled in their previous schools, and so, curious as to why, I embarked on an exhaustive review of the already considerable ADHD literature.

Link Roundup: UUs on Street Prophets, Human Guinea Pigs, Teaching Kids About Racism

A link rescue from the not-to-distant past: Carl Elliott, who has a forthcoming Beacon book about consumerism and corruption in the medical industry, had a harrowing piece in the New Yorker about professional human guinea pigs, which is now available on their website.

Most professional guinea pigs are involved in Phase I clinical trials, in which the safety of a potential drug is tested, typically by giving it to healthy subjects and studying any side effects that it produces. (Phase II trials aim at determining dosing requirements and demonstrating therapeutic efficacy; Phase III trials are on a larger scale and usually compare a drug’s results with standard treatments.) The better trial sites offer such amenities as video games, pool tables, and wireless Internet access. If all goes well, a guinea pig can get paid to spend a week watching “The Lord of the Rings” and playing Halo with his friends, in exchange for wearing a hep-lock catheter on one arm and eating institutional food. Nathaniel Miller, a Philadelphia trial veteran who started doing studies to fund his political activism, was once paid fifteen hundred dollars in exchange for three days and two G.I. endoscopies at Temple University, where he was given a private room with a television. “It was like a hotel,” he says, “except that twice they came in and stuck a tube down my nose.”

And one more link rescue, to a story that has timeless importance and made the rounds of AP newspapers a week or so ago: "Ignoring Racist Remarks Is Wrong Lesson For Kids." Many of us have been faced with an uncomfortable situation where someone has made a racially insensitive or offensive comment. Beverley Daniel Tatum, author of Can We Talk About Race, urges parents to broach the issue with the speaker,   but in a way that isn't accusatory or confrontational. The article is a great guide for how to teach children about racism and the importance of honesty, integrity, and diversity.

Over at Street Prophets, this week's Weekly Faith Roundtable is on Unitarian Universalism. Here are a few of the highlights from the discussion:

Lonespark's explanation that she picked the UU church because "I didn't fit into any other boxes."

On the plus side, I love being in a place where my agnostic husband would fit right in if he ever got up that early, where some of my favorite childhood hymns get performed, where all families are valued, where "service is our prayer," and where a dude in my covenant group is very interested in hearing about how I blot to Thor.

A lengthy discussion of where the Seven Principles originated and the possibility of being a "devout UU."

So here's a broader one. We lay claim--lightly--to all of human experience, all science, all scripture, all wisdom traditions as being the heritage of humanity. We draw from those and from individual, personal experience.

So...
    Scripture--check. Our canon is a shade larger and not sealed, however.
    Tradition--check. We see it not as a foundation, but rather as more of a sea anchor.
    Reason--check. Oh yeah. Fiercely. We're coming back around to a wary acceptance of the non-rational, but the irrational is going to be savaged--and that's tradition going back at least to Servetus.
    Experience--check. Very, very much so.

A selection of UU jokes

Great job on the part of Sister Quarterstaff, ogre, lonespark, and bleeding heart, who hosted the discussion.

An Overextended Prison Health System Loses its Mercurial Advocate

by Sasha Abramsky

In the years after World War II, California’s prisons were seen as being some of the most progressive correctional institutions in America. They were generally well funded, and the officials in charge of the system had a real interest in utilizing new rehabilitation tools within their facilities. In the late 1960s and 1970s, a wave of prison riots and rebellions put the skids on reform-based strategies. By the 1980s, when the first waves of the nationwide tough-on-crime, tough-on-criminals movement washed ashore, conditions in the prisons were deteriorating fast.

As the courts sent evermore prisoners into the prison system, even the massive prison-building spree California embarked on couldn’t keep up with the numbers. The prisons got more and more crowded, gyms were converted into dorms, access to medical, mental health, drug treatment, education, and job training services and programs declined. By the 1990s, the state prison system was being rocked by a series of scandals – guards beating inmates, seriously mentally ill inmates being placed in solitary, prisoners dying because they were denied adequate medical care.

A couple years back, the federal courts got so frustrated with the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s inability to deliver basic healthcare to the state’s 170,000 inmates that they hired an independent receiver to push through change. The receiver, Bob Sillen, used his office to force prisons to invest more in basic items, such as specialized vans to take sick prisoners to hospitals; and he also promoted more systemic changes – higher pay for prison doctors and nurses, the investment of tens of millions of dollars in on-site medical facilities.

Losing Sleep

by Kelly Bulkeley

Last night the students in my "Psychology of Dreaming" course at John F. Kennedy University turned in their first assignment of the quarter: a personal sleep history from childhood to the present. I like to begin my dream classes with a focus on sleep because it's a great way to jar people into taking a fresh look at the nocturnal dimension of their lives. Most people have never reflected on their sleep patterns or thought about sleep in relation to their life's development and growth over time. When they're encouraged to do so, the results are often startling. As soon as I opened the discussion in class last night, one of the students quickly raised her hand. I called on her, and with no further ado she declared:

"I'm 45 years old, and I just realized I've been sleep deprived for the last 40 years!"

Several other students followed with their own tales of sleepless woe, just like I've found every time I give this assignment in a class and just like I found in the research for American Dreamers. The conclusion is hard to avoid: We are becoming a chronically sleep-deprived nation. Problems with sleep afflict a surprisingly large number of people in contemporary American society, and we don’t really know how widespread these problems are or how they impact people’s long term health and well-being.

The Republican Candidates’ Abortion Problem: It's not Just about Abortion Anymore

by Carole Joffe

"I haven’t sorted out the penalties...of course there’s got to be some penalties to enforce the law, whatever they may be." So spoke George H.W. Bush, in one of the major gaffes of his first presidential run in 1988, during a debate with his opponent, Michael Dukakis. Bush, who had only recently begun to trumpet his antiabortion sentiments to dubious Republican social conservatives, was responding to a question about appropriate punishment for women who would obtain illegal abortions should Roe v Wade be overturned. The next morning, after frantic late night discussions, Bush’s handlers called the press for a "clarification." Bush meant to say doctors who performed abortions, not women who received them, should be jailed in such a situation.

Twenty years later, Mike Huckabee, running for the Republican nomination, makes no such missteps. With none of the discomfort that Bush I showed, Huckabee at his rallies gets the party line of the antiabortion movement right: if Roe is overturned, doctors who perform abortions should be punished, while the recipients of such abortions must be seen as "victims."

But Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher and the candidate of choice of evangelicals, is an exception in the clarity and consistency of his position on abortion. There is a long history of "evolution" on abortion from politicians in both parties. For example, Bill Clinton and Al Gore, both from Southern states, had mixed records of support for abortion early in their careers before they each went on to become staunch allies of the abortion rights movement. But in the campaign of 2008, it is mainly the Republican candidates who are squirming.

A Hajj for the Children of Mali

by Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur

As millions of Muslims around the world converge on Saudi Arabia to perform the Hajj, I want to share with you the story of millions of women in Mali, babies in tow, who recently made their own hajj.  Muslims go on Hajj to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, to save and purify their souls and to fulfill a major religious right.  These Malian women made a pilgrimage to health centers across Mali to get bed nets to save their childrens' lives.

Eid-ul-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice, marks the Hajj season. It commemorates the time that God, in the ultimate test of faith, asked the Prophet Ibrahim to sacrifice his son, Ismael. Ibrahim wrestled with God’s request of him, but when Ismael heard what had been asked of his father, he demanded that Ibrahim surrender to the God's will; as Ibrahim prepared for the sacrifice, Ismael comforted his father and encouraged him to close his eyes to make it easier. As Ibrahim touched the sword to Ismael’s throat, in an act of God’s infinite mercy, Ismael was transported to safety and a sheep was slaughtered in his place. Millions of Muslim slaughter animals during Eid-ul-Adha to remember Ibrahim and Ismael’s willingness to surrender to God’s will and God’s mercy.

Ismael's mother also figures prominently in the primary text of Islam. Ibrahim was an elderly and childless man by the he time he took Hajar as a junior wife. When Hajar finally gave birth to their son, Ismael, the miraculous birth was received with great joy and happiness, but soon after God asked Ibrahim to leave Hajar and and the infant Ismael in a distant, isolated desert location. Mother and child quickly depleted their small supply of water and a few dates. Realizing that her life and the life of her baby depended on finding sustenance, Hajar called out to God for help. No answer. She ran to a nearby mountain named and called again to her Lord for help. She ran in the valley to the next mountain, , calling on God for sustenance. Seven times, she ran back and forth, praying all the while to God for help. At last, an angel appeared in human form and kicked his heels in the dry desert sand. Up from the spot he furrowed into the desert floor sprang a well of water, which immediately nourished Hajar and her son. The story is a powerful example of how a woman, relying solely on her faith in God, saved her life and the life of her son.

Et tu, Democrats?! Abstinence-Only Sex Education and The Politics of the Budget

by Carole Joffe

After nearly seven years of the George W. Bush presidency and its regressive sexual and reproductive politics, it is no surprise that this administration continues to staunchly support "abstinence-only sex  education."  The fact that study after study—including one commissioned by Congress itself has shown these programs to be ineffective does not trouble this president, who, in the face of inconvenient findings, has consistently allowed  ideology  to trump science.  Whether the issue is global warming or weapons of mass destruction or condom effectiveness, this administration is infamous for, as a Bush administration official—famously and unapologetically—put it, "creating its own reality." (New York Times magazine, October 17, 2004).

And it is no surprise that the Republican candidates for president support abstinence-only programs. This issue remains of great symbolic importance to the Religious Right base of the Republican Party. Though some observers say this movement is in decline, evangelicals remain very influential in the nominating process (witness Mike Huckabee’s recent meteoric rise), and candidates cannot afford to offend them on this issue. (And to be sure, abstinence-only is more than just symbolically important to many on the right; as The Nation so ably detailed, in "The Abstinence Gluttons," those  who receive  contracts to deliver these programs are raking in millions).

But Democrats supporting "abstinence-only," especially after the November 2006 election, when they regained control of the House and Senate?!  A powerful Democratic committee chair proposing to give even more to these programs than the Bush administration has asked for?!  No, this is not a Saturday Night Live or Jon Stewart parody. This is Washington politics. In a move that stunned advocates for "comprehensive" sex education—that is, programs that include discussion of both abstinence and birth control options—Congressman Dave Obey of Wisconsin, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, proposed increasing by $28 million the current abstinence-only allocation of $113 million. Obey made this move in order to lure Republican votes for Congress’s main domestic spending bill.    (In fairness, an equal increase was suggested for Title X, a federal family planning program that has been consistently under-funded during the Bush years.)

One Boy, One Gene, and The Purpose of Life

This week, we've been thinking about families, and in particular relationships between generations. Today, Clare Dunsford talks about the specific challenges and rewards of raising a child with special needs and his own special way of looking at the world.

by Clare Dunsford

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I ask my eighteen-year-old son with some hesitation one day, suddenly aware of his strong jaw with its newly fledged beard. Looking at my handsome son, I’m not so sure I want to hear the answer to my question. J.P.’s options for the future are limited by the genetic mutation that colors everything in his life. J.P. has Fragile X syndrome, a mutation on a gene on the X chromosome that suppresses the production of a vital protein, dubbed FMR-1. The lack of this protein causes a short attention span, speech and language deficits, behavioral problems, anxiety and unstable moods, and learning impairment, often resulting, as in J.P.’s case, in mental retardation.

On this particular day, my son startles me with his reply to my mundane question: “I want to be just who I am.”  I am used to his gnomic pronouncements—“my Zen-baby,” I used to call him when he was younger. But this time his words take my breath away.

"Compassionate Conservatism" and the "Undeserving Poor"

by Annelise Orleck

On Wednesday October 3, President George W. Bush vetoed a bill that allocated $35 billion over the next five years to expand the number of children eligible for the successful and popular State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) which presently provides the only access to medical care for 6.6 million of the nation’s poorest children. Both houses of Congress approved a bill late this September that would have added at least another 3.4 million children to the program, significantly reducing the number of children who presently have no medical coverage. The President’s veto threatens the survival of the program, as the legislation that originally created SCHIP has come due for reauthorization. If the veto is sustained, children currently covered under the program will once again be without insurance, and the number of children in the U.S. without access to a physician’s care and to vital medicines will continue to grow.