A Simple Way to Fight H.I.V. and AIDS
In
any
given year, perhaps a third of the people infected with
hepatitis C and more than 15 percent of those with AIDS spend time
behind bars. With infection levels far higher than in the outside
world, the jails and prisons are a potential public health menace.
No one knows for sure how many people pick up
H.I.V. while
incarcerated. But a 2002 survey of prisoners' own estimates found that
about 44 percent of the
inmates were probably participating in sex acts. Researchers suspect
that about 70 percent had their first same-sex experiences in prison.
If those estimates are anywhere near accurate, the risk of infection
behind bars is substantial, and the men who contract H.I.V. in prison
return home to infect wives and girlfriends. Still, condoms are barred
or unavailable in 95 percent of the country's prisons.
The
national picture could well change if the California Legislature passes
a timely bill, introduced by Paul Koretz, a Democrat from West
Hollywood, that would require California's corrections system, the
nation's largest, to allow public health and nonprofit groups to
distribute condoms. Corrections
officers usually support the programs once they have been proved to be
effective.
nytimes.com 4/29/05
An Evangelizer on the Right, With His Eye on the Future
VATICAN
CITY—Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger was such a close ally of Pope John Paul II that he could have
easily chosen the name John Paul III.
But those who expect the 78-year-old Pope Benedict
XVI simply to follow
in the footsteps of his predecessor may be in for a surprise, say those
who know him. They say that he
knows he may have a short papacy and that he intends to move quickly to
put his own stamp on the Roman Catholic Church and to reverse its
decline in the secular West.
As
John Paul's alter ego, the new German pope has been training for this
role for decades and knows how all the levers of Vatican power work.
"This man is not just going to mind the store," said George
Weigel, a
conservative American scholar. "He
is going to take re-evangelization, especially of Europe, very seriously."
Sandro Magister, a Vatican expert at the Italian
magazine L'Espresso,
said he expected a thorough housecleaning not unlike the Gregorian
reforms of the church begun under Pope Gregory VII, who ruled from 1073
to 1085. Those reforms led to the end of both the married clergy and
the buying and selling of spiritual favors like indulgences.
Cardinal Ratzinger had spoken and written
forcefully about his sense of
the threats to the church, both internal and external. Whether they are
dissident theologians, pedophile priests, "cafeteria Catholics" who
disregard the ban on artificial birth control, or "celibate" third
world clergy who keep mistresses, the
new pope's solution is likely to be a more forceful reiteration of the
church's creed and the necessity
of either living by it, or leaving it.
"How much filth there is in the church, even among
those who, in the
priesthood, should belong entirely" to God, he said in Rome on Good
Friday last month.
He has singled out the spread of "aggressive
secularism," especially in
Europe and North America. In the homily he gave Monday, just before the
cardinals entered the conclave in which he was chosen, he warned about
rival forms of belief, from "a vague religious mysticism" to
"syncretism" to "new sects," a term that Catholics in Latin America use
to refer to evangelical and Pentecostal churches.
The new pope is not likely to yield on the primacy
of the Roman
Catholic Church, whether dealing with other Christian denominations or
Islam. In a document issued in 2000, "Dominus Jesus," the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith that Cardinal
Ratzinger headed said the Catholic Church was the only true path to
salvation and called other faiths "gravely deficient."
In choosing the name Benedict, this German
theologian linked himself
not only to a long line of former popes but also to St. Benedict, the
founder of Christian monasticism, who was proclaimed by Pope Paul VI in
1964 to be the "patron and protector of Europe." The monasteries that
St. Benedict founded - and for which he wrote the "Rule," the basic
guide to monastic living - became the keepers of culture and piety in
medieval Europe.
Church
scholars suggested that Pope Benedict XVI may be positioning himself as
the new savior of Europe,
rescuing the Continent from what he called in his homily on Monday "the
dictatorship of relativism."
nytimes.com 4/19/05
Tracking the Uncertain Science of Growing Heart Cells
In
April
2001, researchers from the New York Medical College and the
National Institutes of Health announced electrifying news for heart
surgeons and their patients: stem cells from bone marrow, injected into
the damaged hearts of mice, had morphed into the special cardiac muscle
cells that the body cannot replace after a heart attack.
The researchers held out the hope that the
procedure could be applied
to people, too. The findings underlined a basic premise of stem cell
therapy, that it will work before the cells and their elaborate control
systems are fully understood - just put stem cells in the right place
in the body, and they will do the rest.
But
four years later, the treatment has yet to demonstrate whether it will
fulfill its promise. And it has
touched off a sharp difference of views among clinical doctors as to
whether the therapy is ready to be taken to people.
Ten human trials of the marrow-to-heart approach
have been completed in
clinics around the world, all but one with positive results. But the
overall degree of improvement in the patients' heart function has been
modest. At the same time, the
original research that provided the rationale for many of the trials
has come under severe criticism from scientists who have tried without
success to reproduce it.
The difficulties of the marrow-to-heart therapy do
not dash the hopes
for regenerative medicine or imply failure for the stem cell research
financing set up by states like California and New Jersey. But they do
suggest that successful stem cell treatments, whether with adult cells
or ones derived from embryos, may require many years to come to
fruition.
nytimes.com 3/14/05
Colorado Court Bars Execution Because Jurors Consulted Bible
DENVER,
March 28—In a sharply divided ruling, Colorado's
highest court on Monday upheld a lower court's decision throwing out
the sentence of a man who was given the death penalty after jurors
consulted the Bible in reaching a verdict. The Bible, the court said,
constituted an improper outside influence and a reliance on what the
court called a "higher authority."
"The judicial system works very hard to emphasize
the rarified, solemn
and sequestered nature of jury deliberations," the majority said in a
3-to-2 decision by a panel of the Colorado Supreme Court. "Jurors must
deliberate in that atmosphere without the aid or distraction of
extraneous texts."
The ruling involved the conviction of Robert
Harlan, who was found
guilty in 1995 of raping and murdering a cocktail waitress near Denver.
After Mr. Harlan's conviction, the judge in the case—as
Colorado law requires—sent the jury off to deliberate about
the death penalty with an instruction to think beyond the narrow
confines of the law. Each juror, the judge told the panel, must make an
"individual moral assessment," in deciding whether Mr. Harlan should
live.
In the decision on Monday, the dissenting judges
said the majority had
confused the internal codes of right and wrong that juries are expected
to possess in such weighty moral matters with the outside influences
that are always to be avoided, like newspaper articles or television
programs about the case. The jurors consulted Bibles, the minority
said, not to look for facts or alternative legal interpretations, but
for wisdom.
Legal experts said that Colorado was unusual in
its language requiring
jurors in capital felony cases to explicitly consult a moral compass.
Most states that have restored the death penalty weave in a discussion
of moral factors, lawyers said, along with the burden that jurors must
decide whether aggravating factors outweigh mitigating factors in
voting on execution.
Legal scholars say the connection between hard
legal logic and the
softer, deeper world of values is always present in jury rooms, whether
acknowledged or not.
Other legal experts say the Colorado decision
touches on an issue that
courts do not like to talk about: that jurors, under
traditions dating to the days of English common law, can consider
higher authority all they want, and can convict or acquit using
whatever internal thoughts and discussions they consider appropriate
nytimes.com 3/29/05
House Passes Bill Tightening Parental Rule for Abortions
WASHINGTON,
April 27—The House
passed a bill on Wednesday making it a federal crime for any adult to
transport an under-age girl across state lines to have an abortion
without the consent of her parents.
A vote on a similar bill is expected in the Senate later this spring or
early this summer, and backers say its chances are good.
The measure, the Child Interstate Abortion
Notification Act, passed 270
to 157 and was a victory for abortion opponents, who have been pushing
an ambitious agenda now that Congress is under greater Republican
control.
"This legislation will close a loophole that
allows adults not only to
help minors break state laws by obtaining an abortion without parental
consent, but also contributes to ending the life of an innocent child,"
said the chief sponsor, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican
of Florida.
The bill, intended to prevent minor girls from
going to different
states to circumvent more restrictive laws in their home states,
applies to adults who accompany girls 17 and under. It also, for the
first time, requires doctors who perform abortions on under-age girls
to comply with state notification laws, and in some cases to notify the
girl's parents in person. Violators could face a $100,000 fine and a
year in jail.
The bill also imposes a 24-hour waiting period for
young women who
travel to another state for an abortion, in some cases even if they are
accompanied by their parents.
Supporters characterize the measure as pro-family,
saying it will
prevent abusive boyfriends and others from taking vulnerable young
women across state lines to receive "secret abortions" against their
will. They say that the decision to have an abortion should rest solely
with the parents. Amendments that would have allowed grandparents or
members of the clergy to accompany the young women were rejected.
The measure has the strong backing of the White
House, which issued a
statement on Wednesday saying the bill "is consistent with the
administration's view that parents' efforts to be involved in their
children's lives should be protected and the widespread belief among
authorities in the field that the parents of pregnant minors are best
suited to provide them with counsel, guidance and support."
Opponents call the measure misguided and say it
would violate a Supreme
Court ruling that required state parental notification laws to include
alternatives, like permitting abortions with a judge's consent. And
they say it would put some young women, like those who are the victims
of sexual abuse by their fathers, in serious danger.
Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of
New Jersey, said the
bill was necessary to prevent "abortion mills" from luring young girls
across state lines by advertising in states like his, where there are
no notification laws.
nytimes.com 4/28/05
U.S. Denounces North Korea After Reports of Missile Test
WASHINGTON—North
Korea apparently launched a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan
on Sunday, a move likely to raise tensions on the eve of a United
Nations conference on nuclear nonproliferation.
Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of
staff, confirmed that a
missile appeared to have been fired into the sea between the Korean
Peninsula and Japan.
With the language used by both sides sharpening,
Mr. Card denounced the
North Koreans as "bullies" and called their leader, Kim Jong Il, "not a
good person."
His comment came a day after North Korea called
President Bush a
"philistine" and a "hooligan."
The reports of a missile test come at a time of maximum
scrutiny of the
North Korean nuclear program, and of growing frustration among outside
powers that North Korea has not returned to the six-nation nuclear
negotiations, stalled for nearly a year, even while making a series of
aggressive steps and statements.
Mr. Card, asked on Sunday if Kim Jong Il could
field nuclear-tipped
long-range missiles, said, "We don't know that he can, but there is
increasing evidence of capability."
nytimes.com 5/01/05
Florida Expands Right to Use Deadly Force in Self-Defense
MIAMI—Gov.
Jeb Bush signed a bill on Tuesday giving Florida citizens more leeway
to use deadly force in their homes and in public,
a move that gun-control groups and several urban police chiefs warned
would give rise to needless deaths.
The measure, known as the
"stand your ground" bill, lets people use guns or other deadly force to
defend themselves in public places without first trying to escape.
The National Rifle Association lobbied hard for
the bill's passage, and
Wayne LaPierre, the group's executive vice president, said it would use
the victory to push for similar measures elsewhere. The bill's sponsor,
Representative Dennis K. Baxley of Ocala, said it would curb violent
crime and make citizens feel safer.
John F. Timoney, Miami's police chief, called the
bill unnecessary and
dangerous. Chief Timoney, who has successfully pushed his police
officers to use less deadly force, said many people, including
children, could become innocent victims. The bill could make gun
owners, including drivers with road rage or drunken sports fans who get
into fights leaving ball games, assume they have "total immunity," he
said.
The measure codifies in state law what many courts
have already ruled
in Florida: that a citizen need not try to escape an intruder in his
home or workplace before using deadly force in self-defense.
The measure also goes a step further, letting "a person who is not
engaged in unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place
where he or she has a right to be" use
deadly force without first trying to flee.
nytimes.com 4/26/05