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Media Watch for January 2008 (Issue 74)
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome claims the lives of about 2,400 babies in the U.S. each year. Hardoin surveyed parents whose children died of SIDS and found that 21.8 percent of those who responded had premonitions about their babies’ death. In a control group of 625 people whose babies did not die, only 2.4 percent had premonitions.
Hardoin hopes his book, The Voice Within: Premonitions of Sudden Death of Children,” will help those who have had these experiences begin to heal. Hardoin says, “Many people who have had premonitions keep it inside … When they find thousands have had these, they can feel comfortable and maybe know that their child is safe with a higher being.” From: The Facts, http://thefacts.com/story.lasso?ewcd=f841176be37225ed , “Institute founder writes of SIDS dreams,” by Jason Smith Physicians and Dying Patients: Physicians say that talking about death with a patient is not easy. In addition, death often symbolizes a doctor’s failure. While medical tradition says a doctor should not get too close to their patients, studies show that’s not what happens. A University of Pittsburgh study looked at the emotional reactions of 188 doctors who cared for patients who died at two U.S. hospitals and found that the longer the doctor cared for a patient the stronger the doctor’s emotional reactions to the patient’s death was.
Experts say it’s okay to show feelings, but not at the expense of compromising clinical care. Porter Storey, executive vice president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, says that “Patients pick up on physicians comfort or discomfort and they appreciate being cared for, but they also want you to be the doctor. To maintain that balance is tricky.” Research like that published in February in the New England Journal of Medicine found clinicians, who had proactive communication and spent more time with the family, lessened the burden of bereavement.
Dr. Back, who has taught doctors how to communicate in end-of-life situations, says that doctors give a variety of reason for avoiding goodbyes. They worry that the patient will feel abandoned or too sad. They may feel uncertain about what to say and feel unprepared to handle a patient’s emotions. Many feel that it is unprofessional to show that they are upset or sad. But Dr. Back says that saying nothing leaves patients and families feeling perplexed and abandoned. Saying goodbye can allow the physician to bring the relationship to a close and give the patient a sense of being valued. The goodbye gives the patient a chance to say thank you and lets the physician say how the patient contributed to the physician’s learning. From: AMNews, “The last goodbye: Comforting your dying
patient,” by Damon Adams,
U.S. Life Expectancy Slipping: Americans are living longer but people in forty-one other countries beat the US in life Expectancy. Japan and most of Europe rank higher. A baby born in the United States in 2004 will live an average of 77.9 years. That life expectancy ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to international numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics. Dr. Christopher Murray of the University of Washington says, “Something’s wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries.”
Many factors have contributed to the fall in Life Expectancy. Forty-five million Americans lack health insurance while Canada and many European countries have universal health care. Adults in the U.S. have one of the highest obesity rates. There are racial disaprities with Black Americans having a life expectancy five years shorter than white Americans. Also, a relatively high percentage of babies born in the Untied States die before their first birthday, compared with other industrialized nations. Murray says that “The starting point (to improving) is the recognition that the U.S. does not have the best health care system. There are still an awful lot of people who think it does.” From: “Americans Drop Down The Age of Death Ranking, www.afterlifenews.com/a/1391.html Intercessory Prayer: David R. Hodge of the College of Human Services, on the Arizona State University’s Campus, has conducted a meta-analysis on the effects of intercessory prayer or prayer offered for the benefit of another person. Some studies in this area have found positive results while others have found no effect. Hodge looked at the entire body of empirical research in this area, seventeen studies, and found that prayer offered on behalf of another yielded positive results. From: Research on Social Works Practices, “A Systematic Review of the Empirical Literature on Intercessory Prayer,” by David R. Hodge, 3 2007; vol. 17: pp. 174 - 187 Genes Show Loneliness: Lonely people are more likely to become sick and researchers say they may have found out why–their immune systems are not functioning properly. The study done by molecular biologist Steve Cole at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that people who are chronically lonely have distinct patterns of genetic activity almost all of it involving the immune system. The study does not show which came first, the loneliness or the physical traits, but it may be the next step in finding a treatment. From: Reuters, “Sick? Lonely? Genes tell the tale,” by Maggie Fox.
Another Study on Loneliness: Research coming out of the University of Chicago on college students and adults, age fifty to sixty-eight, show that being lonely takes a toll on the body that seems to accelerate with age. Loneliness had little effect on the health of younger subjects. Older subjects, who considered themselves to be lonely, had higher blood pressure, lower levels of “good” cholesterol and higher levels of the “fight or flight” hormone epinephrine compared to their more social peers. Sheldon Cohen, a psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University, says “there are roughly twenty large-scale epidemiologic studies now and they all show that the more socially integrated you are, the longer you live.” From: AARP Bulletin, October 2007.
Volunteer and Live Longer: A study done by Doug Oman at the University of California Berkeley, over a five year period on two thousand individuals, found that those who volunteered for two or more organizations had a forty-four percent lower likelihood of dying. Another study by Marc Musick, at the University of Texas, Austin, found that individuals over age sixty-five who did volunteer work were less likely to die over the next eight years than those who did no volunteer work. From: Why Good Things Happen to Good People: The Exciting New Research that Proves the Link Between Doing Good and Living a Longer, Healthier, Happier Life, by Stephen Post (Author), Jill Neimark (Author), www.whygoodthingshappen.com/main.php?section=science
Permission to Reincarnate: Tibet’s living Buddha’s have been banned from reincarnating without the permission of China’s atheist leaders. It is the latest in a series of measures by the Communists to tighten their grip over Tibet and the exiled god-king, the Dalai Lama. Reincarnated lamas, known as tulkus, often lead religious communities and have enormous influence over religious life in the Himalayan region. The ban excludes the Dalai Lama from recognizing any new living Buddha. China has virtually given the Government the power to ensure that no new living Buddha can be identified, sounding a possible end to a mystical system that dates back as far as the 12th century. From: The TimesOnLine, “China tells living Buddhas to obtain permission before they reincarnate,” www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2194682.ece
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Mother’s
Premonitions: Pediatrician Richard Hardoin, while doing a study of
sleep patterns in babies, was told a story that later inspired him to
write a book. Hardoin, founder of the Southwest SIDS Institute, heard
the story of a mother who had a vision of her baby’s death before it
happened. While putting her baby’s clothes away, wide awake, she had a
vision of her baby in a white casket. The woman threw the clothes on the
ground, hysterical because of what she had seen. Her baby did die
shortly after she had this premonition.
