Danielle Levy

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.

In South Florida you can ostensibly get fired for marrying someone in the porn industry. Scott Janke was fired “without cause” for just that. In the same way he’s been for years in both Florida and Alaska, he was the town manager of Fort Myers Beach, a town of about 6500. Last October he married Anabela Mota, a porn star. But the city’s mayor, Larry Kiker, only now realized what Mrs. Janke does. Kiker said that Janke had done a good job, but was concerned that the situation would be a distraction for the town and keep him from being effective in the future.
It’s possible that Kiker’s argument may have come to pass. More than likely, other scenarios may have developed. Perhaps an initial hubbub would have eventually petered out. Regardless, it does raise the issue of a double standard. Given how many people are consumers of the porn industry, was the problem that all 6500 resident object to porn and abstain from being consumers? Was the problem that some of the residents had seen Mrs. Janke in one of her movies and could not separate the sex-actress from the person? Were they concerned that their children would be led astray in some way they wouldn’t know how to explain? Would they have made the same decision if she had worked in a nuclear power plant where the risk of an accident is always a possibility? Whatever the mayor’s or the town’s reasons, it does make one wonder about people who have a double standard.