Magic Statistics

Necrotizing fasciitis, commonly known as “flesh-eating disease”, is a rare but serious inflection of the skin that inflicts terrible damage on its victims.  About 30% die, while survivors suffer disfigurement.

A new medical study has uncovered a reason why the “flesh-eating” bacteria are so relentless.

Emanuel Hanski, a microbiologist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and colleagues have found that the success of group A Streptococcus is due in part to a protein that blocks the immune system's distress calls. The findings, published in the October 4, 2006, issue of the EMBO Journal, could lead to new strategies for treating necrotizing fasciitis and halting its rapid destruction of tissue.
. . .
The bacterium, group A Streptococcus, wreaks destruction on muscle and skin tissue in the form of necrotizing fasciitis, which kills roughly 30 percent of its victims and leaves the rest disfigured. Antibiotics and surgical interventions, the known treatments, often fail. Necrotizing fasciitis is a serious but rare infection of the skin and the tissues beneath it.

Early medical intervention is essential because the disease progresses swiftly once it takes hold.  Untreated cases are virtually always fatal.

Former Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard lost a leg to necrotizing fasciitis in December 1994.

h/t: Faith-Science News

The Western Catholic Reporter covered this story three weeks ago, then I blogged it last week, and now the Globe and Mail picks it up.  (Not that I'm suggesting a causal connection.)

A woman in London, Ont., wants the Ontario Court of Appeal to recognize her as the third parent of a boy she's raising with her lesbian partner.

The application, if allowed, would be believed to mark the first time in Canada a child would legally have more than two parents, and would fundamentally change the definition of the word "family."

The biological father and mother and her female partner must remain anonymous because of a court ruling protecting their identities.

"The family has evolved over the years in a way that the law should recognize the reality of this little boy," said the father's lawyer, Alfred Mamo, "his reality being that he's got two mothers and a father with whom he thrives. They all want this for their son."

That's the biological father's lawyer talking, not the lawyer for one of the women involved.  That the father thinks it's fine for his son to have two lesbians for “mothers” speaks powerfully against permitting unrestricted artificial insemination.  (But maybe that's just me.)

The request was rejected by a lower court, but the applicant launched the inevitable appeal.

The applicant appealed, arguing that she was in a special situation because same-sex couples require assisted human reproduction.

So if the law does not allow for three parents, it is a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantee of equality, she argued.

Her quarrel, of course, is not with Canadian law; it's with nature and the One who made nature.

The application is being challenged by, among others, the Alliance for Marriage and the Family, representing several Christian and pro-family groups.

"Our position is that under family law in Canada, children can only have two parents and that has been the situation even with adoption or divorce and remarriage," said Janet Epp Buckingham, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada's director of law and public policy. "This would be a fairly significant change to the law and it wouldn't be appropriate for the court to do this. You would need to have the full hearings in the provincial parliament and it should be a legislated change."

But outside the courtroom yesterday, the applicant spoke out against the AMF's views.

"To completely misapprehend what it is to be in a conjugal lesbian relationship and to compare that to being somebody's grandmother or to being somebody's step-parent — it was completely out of line," she said.

More obfuscation from the applicant.  Granting, for the sake of argument, that the relationship of the two women is "conjugal", the situation of step-parents is an apt analogy, for step-parents are in "conjugal" relationships with biological parents.

"To be fair, they just don't get it."

That's fair?  I'd hate to hear what she says when she's being unfair.  In any case, we'll see who doesn’t get it.

Previous related post: Can a child have three parents?

No, not losses of members.  Membership in the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) has been falling for decades, but so far nothing has been done specifically to address that problem.  We're talking about more important losses here: losses of money.  Now that is serious, and so the ACC has leapt into action as only Anglicans can: A committee has been struck.

A recently-formed committee that is examining the work of the Anglican Church of Canada’s national office against a background of declining revenues will present some of its findings on Tuesday, Oct. 3 to staff in Toronto, said general secretary Michael Pollesel.

After a 12-hour meeting in Toronto on Sept. 25, the group, called the Prioritized Operations Plan (POP) subcommittee, reached several “guiding principles” that “will be a basis for future budget preparations,” said Archdeacon Pollesel in an interview.

The principles will encompass “the work of General Synod and how that is reflected in our different departments,” he said, adding that further details would be released on Oct. 3.

For three consecutive years, General Synod has spent far more than it took in.  Apparently, little or nothing was done to staunch the flow of red ink until last spring when a brick wall came into view.

Treasurer Peter Blachford told the Council of General Synod (CoGS) that the church cannot afford another deficit, since reserves have been used to bridge the gap, leaving only $200,000 in the coffers.

At this point, there would appear to be no way for General Synod to avoid deep budget cuts in the immediate future.

One hopes, however, that more thought and prayer will be devoted to increasing church revenues.  I humbly offer a constructive suggestion which could solve the twin problems of financial deficits and membership declines.  How about a renewed emphasis on proclaiming the gospel from ACC pulpits?  That seems to have worked wonders for church growth in the past.

Just a thought.

h/t: Binky

Previous related posts:

• Anglican decline not due to falling birth rate
• Church membership issue won’t go away
• Anglican Journal clarifies The McKerracher Presentation

The Conservative government announced spending cuts of $2 billion and the opposition parties promptly flipped out.  Check out this overwrought, not to say unhinged, rhetoric.

"The Prime Minister's thinking has evolved over the years, from Attila the Hun to something approaching Genghis Khan," Liberal finance critic John McCallum said yesterday during a raucous Question Period session where opposition MPs cast themselves as defenders of the cut's casualties.

Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan were fiscal conservatives?  Who knew?

Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson points out that Tory finance minister Jim Flaherty is only continuing down the road that Paul Martin travelled not so long ago.

There are certain things that opposition parties are simply expected to do. So it wasn't surprising that the Liberals were on their feet in the House of Commons yesterday denouncing the spending cuts imposed this week by the Conservative government.

But it's all claptrap. The Tories are acting with commendable fiscal responsibility, in the best Liberal tradition.

The Liberals should be gloating that the Tories are maintaining successful Liberal budget policies.  Instead, we get this from opposition leader Bill Graham:

Asked where Liberals would have cut $1-billion, Mr. Graham said his party might have spent more rather than less. "We might not have decided to make any cuts with a $13-billion thing [surplus]."

It’s easy to oppose but, when asked what he’d do instead, he doesn’t know.  How pathetic is that.

For access to John Ibbitson’s full column, click here.

Alberta has the hottest economy in Canada right now, but the Lower Mainland area of BC isn't far behind.

Lower Mainland employers will scramble even harder to fill new jobs next year as the regional jobless rate is forecast to hit a record low, creating virtual full employment.

A Credit Union Central of B.C. report Tuesday predicted the Lower Mainland unemployment rate will fall from 4.6 per cent this year to 4.1 per cent in 2007 and 4.2 per cent in 2008.

"Anything around four per cent is virtual full employment," Credit Union Central economist David Hobden said in an interview. "You're always going to have people out of work for a while because they're changing jobs or there's some mismatch between skills and demand."
. . .
Hobden said employers will be severely challenged to find workers to fill the new jobs, as net migration from other provinces and internal growth of the B.C. labour force won't be enough to fill the void.

The report foresees no slow-down in BC's housing market, which has been booming for over five years.  Strong increases in retail sales are also forecast.

If this economic forecast proves correct, then wages will almost certainly increase, enticing some high-school students to drop out before graduating.  The same thing is happening in Alberta.

The economy of the Lower Mainland accounts for about 60% of BC's GDP.

Previous related posts:

• Alberta’s economy strongest ever in Canadian history
• BC and Alberta to form united economic powerhouse