Author: Danielle Levy

Back in the sixties when the environmental movement was a budding idea, population growth was talked about, and zero population growth—ZPG—a goal for many. Then the religious right came to the fore and rightly or wrongly ZPG came to be associated with birth control, abortions and other measures many felt were against their faith. The rationale was that the Bible said “Be fruitful and multiply”, The Lord would provide ergo population control was therefore an issue for liberals and other secular humanists. Now, decades later with deeper understanding of several issues including what threatens the environment, with a new emphasis on carbon footprints, water scarcity and food shortages, the issue of overpopulation—slated to be 9 billion by mid century—is once more gaining traction. Some even call it the elephant in the room.
It’s a hopeful sign. Let’s hope the traction gains momentum.

More and more would be employers are using credit checks to determine the fitness of a potential employee. Sometimes a stack of resumes can be quickly whittled after credit checks are run on applicants, discarding those with too much debt, a bankruptcy filing or the like. Those who believe in their use say credit checks indicate whether the potential employee exercised good judgment. Others are challenging the relevance of a credit check to positions like lifeguard or customer service where it is far from the skills required to be able to do the job. Not only has it become a discrimination issue, it has acquired a sense of urgency in an economy with high unemployment, where often those who need jobs the most are turned down based on their credit check.
Any index used in a punitive manner is bound to be discriminatory. Even if it reveals a problem in the history of a given employee, oughtn’t people to be entitled to second chances?

If anyone of us were to encounter a dying person on a road and demand payment in order to help them, we would be the object of scorn and criticism. When pharmaceutical companies withhold medication to HIV/AIDS patients, which is certainly a parallel, most of us accept it.
Former president Clinton has announced a deal with major U.S. drug companies to supply much cheaper HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis meds to developing countries. The HIV/AIDS drugs will be packaged together and sold for $425 a year starting in 2010, 28% lower than the current lower priced alternative. Another company will sell the tuberculosis drug rifabutin at $1 per dose for a six months treatment.
We can hail the Clinton Foundation for working to equalize the effect of a wrong, but it’s hard to praise the pharmaceutical companies for something they should have done long ago, done on their own, or done better.

The nursing wing of a convent in Rochester, New York is giving us much to think about in terms of end of life decisions. Most of the sisters there face death openly by refusing certain type of treatments when those treatments would not necessarily improve their condition. “We approach our living and our dying in the same way, with discernment,” the congregation’s president says. Because a convent is a specialized environment, some of its conditions cannot always be replicated in the world at large. Still, the Sisters of St. Joseph can be an example since studies have shown many of the factors involved contribute to “successful aging and a gentle death.” These include, a social network, intellectual stimulation, continued engagement in life, spiritual beliefs, and health care that is guided by palliative care principles.
Some of the sisters do struggle and request surgeries which will not really help, but most in the nursing wing accept death with openness. “It’s much easier to guide people to better choices here than in a hospital,” says the doctor who treats the sisters, “and you don’t get a lot of pushback when you suggest that more treatment is not better treatment.”
Perhaps as these ideas continue to move from the fringe to the mainstream, the sisters’s example will be routine for more and more people.