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Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen, Nobody Knows but Jesus: A Meditation on a Grief Observed By: Msgr. Charles PopeAs a follow-up to the recent post on comforting the sorrowful, I was led to consider the grief of my parents and the difficulties they faced in raising a daughter with serious mental illness.My father died eight years ago, and except for essential papers related to his estate, I simply boxed up most of his papers and stored them in the attic of my rectory for future attention. At long last I am sorting through those boxes. Among his effects were also many...

California's measles outbreak has climbed to 91 confirmed cases, prompting a vicious attack from USA Today contributor Alex Berezow against "anti-vaxxers." He blames them for the epidemic that CDC officials say was introduced at the Disneyland theme park by a person infected with measles overseas. Berezow's knee-jerk reaction is to declare, "Parents who do not vaccinate their children should go to jail." He erroneously maintains that measles could not spread in a fully vaccinated society and discredits as "ludicrous" concerns regarding the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. Claiming there is a "mountain of data" proving otherwise, his one and only...

Erin Brodwin Januaty 5, 2015This CDC map shows the percentage of visits to outpatient providers that are for flu-like symptoms. States with "high" activity (up to 6%) are shown in red; states with "low" activity (2% or less) are shown in green. Everyone around you seems to be coughing and sneezing, and all you can think is, I should have gotten a flu shot. Good news is, it's not too late. Simply getting vaccinated — albeit late in the game and with an imperfect vaccine — will still dramatically reduce your chances of getting sick or infecting someone around you....

In Flight Nightmare - US Airways Plane Grounded by Sick Passengers and Crew by Joe Piazza What would you do if the passenger next to you began vomiting? It was the movie “Airplane!” come to life. Sixteen people, fourteen passengers and two crew members simultaneously began vomiting on a U.S. Airways plane from Israel to Philadelphia on Friday, forcing the pilot to make an emergency stop in Rome. Various news reports identified a foul odor in the cabin which caused the domino effect of illness.

The Middle Seat The Trouble With Keeping Commercial Flights Clean With the Ebola Crisis in the Background, Standards for Disinfecting Planes Vary Based on Time, Class Just how clean are airplanes? Do they really get scrubbed down after each flight? WSJ's Scott McCartney joins Tanya Rivero on Lunch Break with the answers. By Scott McCartney Updated Sept. 17, 2014 The Ebola crisis and heightened concerns about the risk of spreading disease during air travel have focused concern on what airlines do to keep planes clean. It's a murky area without clear regulatory standards. The Federal Aviation Administration says it doesn't...

Dr. Jane Orient, Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, reported that the government has been “real tight-lipped” about the mysterious respiratory illness that has struck children in the United States, expressed concern that the illegal immigrant minors from Central America could be the source, and argued that the government should devote more resources to border security to combat the spread of disease on Wednesday’s “Laura Ingraham Show.”

Students at Sand Creek High School and their parents have mix reactions to their homecoming court after a transgender female was crowned the 2014 homecoming princess. Scarlett Lenh, who was born Andy Lenh and began identifying himself as a....

Hundreds of children have been hospitalized across several states with a respiratory illness that seems like a cold but can grow far worse, CNN reports. Colorado, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma have already called the CDC for help in tackling an enterovirus that appears to be EV-D68. The current hospitalizations may be "just the tip of the iceberg in terms of severe cases," says a CDC director. "We're in the middle of looking into this. We don't have all the answers yet." The virus itself resembles a bad cold (nasty summer colds are often...

Lauren F FriedmanMay 16, 2014, 1:01 PM Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), an often deadly respiratory illness that's related to the infamous SARS, first emerged in humans in Saudi Arabia in 2012. (Scientists believe it jumped from camels.) But since March 2014, there's been a sharp rise in the number of cases, including two recently diagnosed MERS patients in the United States. "With more deaths in a single month than in the previous two years combined, no one is certain how people become infected," notes Marjorie P. Pollack, of ProMED-mail, and the virus has no vaccine or cure. Here's what...

Some of the elderly to whom I bring Communion as well as the sick express regret that their age or illness makes it difficult for them to pray.  In years gone by they were busy at work and raising kids and prayer was difficult then. But now that they have the time they regret they cannot concentrate enough to pray. Others struggle to be able to read any longer. Still others find that their memory has faded and prayers, once well known, are now gone and requests for prayer cannot be remembered.Indeed as the mind grows weaker prayer becomes difficult...

Russia and India: Defenders of Decency, Bogeymen of the Gay Lobby Russia remains stalwart in its laws that aim to curb the influence of the West's gay-friendly culture on Russian youth. Meanwhile, last week, in a stunning turn of events, India's high court reinstituted a nineteenth-century law against sodomy. On cue, the ligbitist kibitzers are going crazy in such homophile haunts as the New Yorker and the Guardian, expressing total outrage that there should exist, anywhere on the globe, nations that do not think it's normal or appropriate to subsidize and celebrate men sodomizing boys. I cannot blame Russia, India,...

Sue Hobart, a bridal florist from Massachusetts, couldn't understand why she suddenly developed headaches, ringing in her ears, insomnia and dizziness to the point of falling "flat on my face" in the driveway. "I thought I was just getting older and tired," said the 57-year-old ... Months earlier, in the summer of 2010, three wind turbines had been erected in her town, one of which runs around the clock, 1,600 feet from her home. "I didn't put anything to the turbines -- we heard it and didn't like the thump, thump, thump and didn't like seeing them, but we didn't...

... Patricia and Eduardo have three sons. Patricia: "Very healthy, happy, normal situation." But they started to notice something was different with their youngest, Manuel, before he was a year old.... With nowhere else to turn, they sought out a psychologist. They were told they had a transgender child... Rachel Sottile, YES Institute: "That's really at the source of everything, is fear. 'Does that mean my child is going to be gay? Does that mean my child's a freak?'" Rachel Sottile is with the YES Institute, a non-profit organization aimed at educating people on gender and orientation. She says kids...

Recently two high-profile people announced they are transgender. U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning is now Chelsea. And closer to home: Lieutenant Colonel James Pritzker is now Jennifer. But what is it like for adolescent children questioning their gender identity? Families in the Midwest now can turn to Lurie Children's Hospital for help. The Center for Gender, Sexuality and HIV Prevention provides safe and supportive services for kids and their families. It is one of only four youth gender clinics in the country. We take another look at two families who are clients. Sabrina is Ryan’s mom. She describes when she...

This is one brave woman, People like this put many of us to shame for our failure to act. Appropriately her last name means 'steel' in German. "Jennifer Stahl has been a strong advocate against the smart meter program in Naperville, Ill., for the last two years. The issue came to a head Wednesday afternoon when she was arrested while refusing to let the utility workers install the controversial device.... Stahl was at a friend’s house when she received the call from her husband that the utility workers had arrived. She was home within 15 minutes and saw they were...

Lawrence Auster, archon of the Traditionalist Christian Right, is very ill. We are sponsoring a global prayer vigil in intercession for him, on the evening of Sunday, January 13. More information on the event may be found herehttp://orthosphere.org/2013/01/06/a-prayer-for-lawrence-auster/ .

The U.S. has been hit with a particularly aggressive early flu season this year with widespread reports of the illness across the country, hospitalizing 2,257 people and leaving 18 children dead before the end of 2012. And health officials say the numbers haven't even peaked yet. 'I think we're still accelerating,' Tom Skinner, a Center for Disease Control and Prevention spokesman, told reporters.

All Signs Indicate That This Flu Season Is Going To Be Brutal Jennifer WelshDec. 4, 2012, 6:53 PMThe flu season could be especially bad this year, and is one of the earliest-starting flu seasons in a decade, said Thomas Frieden, Director of the Centers for Disease Control. "This is the earliest regular flu season we've had in nearly a decade, since the 2003-2004 flu season. That was an early and severe flu year," CDC director Thomas Frieden said in a teleconference yesterday Dec. 3. That season was very severe, especially for children, they said. This is much different than we...

Verizon Drops Muslim TV Channel Whose Owner Beheaded His General Manager Jim Edwards Febuary 24, 2012Bridges TV anchor Samatha Azzar Verizon will drop the Muslim cable channel Bridges TV on March 14, almost a year to the day after the channel's owner was sentenced to life in prison for beheading his wife, who was also the station's general manager. The murder occurred at Bridges TV's studio in 2009, six days after Aasiya Hassan told her abusive husband Muzzammil she was divorcing him. Muzzammil Hassan, the channel's founder, then lured his wife to the studio where he stabbed her 40 times...

The irradiation of vital organs is caused by incorporated radionuclides. If a cell is damaged, there are four possibilities for the cell. 1.: The cell dies instantaneously. 2.: The functionality of the cell is destroyed. 3. The cell degenerates and cancer occurs. 4.: The cell repairs itself. But this is only possible for adult cells. Cells in embryos have no such repair functions, children cells can't do that either. For them it's all about growing and dividing and only with time, the ability to repair themselves becomes existent. That's one of the crucial factors why children are especially in danger....