10/6/23 Yes, it has now been 22 years since my son's death. I came back here today for the first time in months, and then I went back and read what I wrote about the book "The Organ Thieves." I also noted that it had almost 800 views, which may or may not mean anything, but it would be my hope that it means there are lurkers reading what I write. But then, I wish everybody would read everything I write.
These days I am torn between writing about brain death and organ donation and writing about LGBTQiA+ issues which I have now been studying and following for over 30 years. I think the transgender issue is taking our society in the wrong direction.
Most recently, I've read the books "The Coddling of the American Mind" and "Irreversible Damage," both of which I have critiqued in the same manner that I critiqued "The Organ Thieves."
My husband and I have now been married for 55 years, and I just recently celebrated my 75th birthday. My gait has changed a bit, and I am a couple inches shorter than I used to be, but other than that I guess I'm fine. (I say "I guess" because I still haven't been to a doctor in years.)
More later, Kathy , aka KATHY_OAK 3/23/23 Blessed to be a Blessing (with lyrics) Scott Wesley Brown - Bing video
Before my family and I split from the United Church of Christ, I sang with the choir and as soloist at our church, and one of the songs I first sang at Thanksgiving one year was "Blessed To Be a Blessing" and I just now found the lyrics to it on-line and decided to post it here, with Scott Wesley Brown singing it.
Also, this a re-post from one of my previous forums: So, what exactly is "social justice" in the Biblical sense of the term? I found this website: http://www.gotquestions.org/social-justice.html and within its explanation, it refers to various Scripture, including the oft-cited "love your neighbor as yourself." Quoting from the New International version, Matthew 22:36-40: "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.' " For a long time whenever I heard or read this passage, I thought it was just telling me to love the Lord completely. But then one day the emphasis changed and it suddenly became a commandment that was telling me to, yes, love the Lord completely, but more precisely to love Him with all of my own heart, soul and mind, at which point "And love your neighbor as yourself" became "And leave everyone else to do the same." It made perfect sense to me, too--because I was taught that God wants each of us to have our own personal relationship with Him, and in the process of developing that relationship with Him, we're not always, or necessarily ever, going to be exactly where anyone else is in their journey to Him or their relationship with Him, and that's fine with Him, and it should be fine with everyone else and would be fine with everyone else IF we loved everyone else enough to leave them as free to develop their own personal relationship with God as we want to be. ("Love your neighbor as yourself.") This doesn't mean that we can't share our personal testimony with others. It just means that we shouldn't judge others who don't believe exactly as we do. Indeed, the Book of Matthew as a whole says a lot about judging others and hypocrites.
2/24/23 A few days ago, I went to my local public library's website to see if it had Bret Baier's book "Special Heart" about his first-born son's multiple heart defects and subsequent surgeries, including multiple aorta transplants. Though I have never read the book, I've heard a lot about it from his interviews about it, and in one of those interviews, he talked about the donors being children who "didn't make it," at which point I seem to recall him saying words to the effect that he wasn't sure he would be able to do it (donate his child's organs) if the shoe was on the other foot. More specifically, I seem to recall that he was being interviewed by Brit Hume when he said this. Yet such a statement doesn't appear in either the transcript of that or any other interview I've ever been able to find, so even though I'm sure I heard someone say this, I've never been sure it was him. So, finally I decided to see if my local library had the book to see if he says anything like this in the book itself. But my local library didn't have the book, so I decided to see if it had any other newer books on brain death or organ donation--and up came the book "The Organ Thieves: [sub-title] "The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South," by Charles "Chip" Jones, published in 2020. (I found it odd that I had never even heard of this book before, given my special interest in the subject and the attention I usually pay to anything that anybody ever says about brain death and organ donation.)
Since then, I got the book from my local public library, and it is now sitting on my desk waiting for me to start reading as soon as I finish typing this, and as I read it, I will be posting my comments about it in my forum in the folder "Recommended Reading."
The book flap of The Organ Thieves reads as follows: On May 25, 1968, a fifty-four-year-old African American factory worker named Bruce Tucker arrived in the emergency ward at the Medical College of Virginia (MCV). He was unconscious after sustaining head injuries that would prove fatal. What no one could have predicted was that when his dead body was later sent to the funeral home, it would be missing its heart. Since the mid-1960s, a race had transfixed the international medical scene. Who would be the first to successfully transplant a human heart? From New York to San Francisco to Richmond, Virginia, to Cape Town, South Africa, the world's best and brightest surgical minds worked frenetically to achieve this prestigious feat. Could a donated organ save a patient racked by heart disease? And was it ethical to tamper with the organ that many see as the seat of our human emotions? Enter Drs. Richard Lower and David Hume, two transplant pioneers at MCV. The day Tucker was admitted to the hospital, they saw an opportunity to make history. But Tucker's family, unaware of the doctors' plans for Bruce's heart--would be horrified and traumatized by the ensuing series of events. Without permission from any family members, Tucker's heart was taken from his body and put into the chest of a successful white businessman. Four years later, future first African American governor L. Douglas Wilder, then just a young attorney representing the Tucker family, faced off in court against these same transplant pioneers, MCV, and the full apparatus of the medical and political bodies of Richmond. Wilder's case became the latest episode in the long history of mistreatment of African Americans in Virginia's medical community, going back to the nineteenth-century "anatomical men," whose midnight grave robberies supplied anatomy classes with cadavers. Written by award-winning journalist and history writer Chip Jones. this explosive story shines a light on issues of race and medical ethics that still resonate today. Richly researched and compellingly told, The Organ Thieves is a cautionary tale about the human price of progress, scientific ambitions, and the pursuit of professional fame. | |