Herpes, Circumcision and Alzheimers – Was Rabbi Tendler Right?

A new study seems to show that the herpes virus of cold sore and metzitza b’peh (MBP) infamy may play a role in the contracting, r"l, of Alzheimers Disease. LiveScience.com reports:

New research supports growing concerns that herpes plays a role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia.

The latest work, announced today, shows a link between a gene and herpes simplex 1, or HSV. The form of the ApoE gene called ApoE-4 is the leading known risk factor for Alzheimer’s. And HSV is the form of herpes that causes cold sores around the mouth. More than 80 percent of Americans are infected with HSV.

The researchers, at the University of Rochester Medical Center, found that ApoE-4 effectively puts out a welcome mat for the herpes virus, allowing it to be more active in the brain.

“The data suggest that ApoE-4 may support the ability of HSV to be a more virulent pathogen,” said Howard Federoff, lead author of the research published online in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.…

HSV is a chronic infection that lives in people for a lifetime, periodically flaring up. The virus is usually latent, locked inside cells, but occasionally stress, fatigue, certain foods and even sunlight can spark the virus into an active phase that damages cells and causes cold sores.

The alert among us may recall that Rabbi Dr. Moshe Tendler suggested that herpes transmitted through MBP, which is  known to cause severe brain damage, might also adversely (or "sub-clinically") impact the brains of newborns, causing learning disabilities and even mild retardation. His educated guess may not be far off.

How Difficult Is It To Be Disabled In Israel? Very

According to Access Israel:

…95 percent of the cafes don’t have accessible bathrooms and only five beaches are accessible.

There are problems with post offices and stores as well." He says only 26 percent of 500,000 handicapped people are employed in any way…

This is despite years of pleading by Diaspora Jews and the intervention of people like Isaac Stern. If you were to check shuls and yeshivot, I think the number inaccessible would approach 100%.

There is no excuse for this. The number of wounded Israeli soldiers who are unable to go to shul or a café is heartbreaking. And no one really cares.

Use It Or Lose It

Responding to news of a new study showing moderate consumption of Cabernet Sovingion wine appears to lower the risk of getting Alzheimers Disease, Hadassah University Medical Center metabolism expert Prof. Elliot Berry:

…who has long advocated moderate consumption of red wine, said he recommended it for preventing various ills. “Even though not everything that works in mice works in humans, it’s wonderful, but I don’t want people to become alcoholic. People should not drink on their own and not before they drive; it also should not be consumed with a small number of medications. To reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s, one should also do mental exercise regularly – whether it is playing bridge, doing crossword puzzles, solving sudoku puzzles or studying Talmud.”

Use it or lose it.

Woman In PVS Aware Of Surroundings, Scientists Find

The New York Times reports:

A severely brain-damaged woman in an unresponsive, vegetative state showed clear signs on brain imaging tests that she was aware of herself and her surroundings, researchers are reporting today, in a finding that could have far-reaching consequences for how unconscious patients are cared for and how their conditions are diagnosed.

In response to commands, the patient’s brain flared with activity, lighting the same language and movement-planning regions that are active when healthy people hear the commands. Previous studies had found similar activity in partly conscious patients, who occasionally respond to commands, but never before in someone who was totally unresponsive.

Neurologists cautioned that the new report characterized only a single, perhaps unique case and that it did not mean that unresponsive brain-damaged people were more likely to recover or that treatment was possible. The woman in the study could not communicate with the researchers, and there was no way to know whether her subjective experience was anything like what healthy people call consciousness. The woman was injured in a traffic accident in England last year.

Yet the study so drastically contradicted the woman’s diagnosed condition that it exposed the limitations of standard methods of bedside diagnosis.…

Stealing Bodies To Prevent Autopsy Permitted On Shabbat

From DailyHalakha.com:

…There is a case recorded of a Jew who died in a hospital on Shabbat and the doctors prepared to perform an autopsy on the body. Rabbi Chayim Elazar Shapiro of Munkatch (Hungary, early 20th century) instructed his students to steal the body from hospital to prevent this degradation to the deceased. Although a corpse is deemed Muktzeh and forbidden to be handled on Shabbat, the Rabbi of Munkatch ruled that for the purpose of preserving the honor of the deceased Halacha would allow transporting the body. (There was an Eruv in the area, and so the Torah prohibition of carrying in a public domain on Shabbat did not apply.)…

I imagine this ruling must be the basis (or at least the partial basis) for the current haredi practice in Israel.

A Moral Question

I sometimes shop in a grocery store that has a program to aid various charities and schools. You deposit your receipt in a box labeled with the name of the particular charity, and a percentage of your purchase is donated to that charity. Now the question:

In effect, a donor is confronted with 10 simultaneous requests for money. Among the schools and organizations that benefit humans, like the Alzheimer’s Association, for example, is the Humane Society. Can one, all financial needs being roughly equal, donate to the Humane Society, in effect helping animals before humans? Or must one donate to the organizations that help humans, preferably selecting those with the best track records and most pressing needs?

Readers?

Doctors of Death

From the July 21, 2006 Wall Street Journal:

A medical resident — we called her “Dr. Death” — at the Intensive Care Unit at Long Island’s North Shore Hospital chased us down the hallway.

“Your husband wants to die,” she told my mother, again. Just minutes before I had asked her to leave us alone.

“He can’t even talk,” I reminded her.

“He motioned with his hands when we tried to put in the feeding tube,” she said.

… A new resident appeared the next day, this one a bit more diplomatic but again urging us to allow my father to “die with dignity.” And the next day came yet another, who opened with the words, “We’re getting mixed messages from your family… [My father] was not in a “persistent vegetative state” (itself a phrase subject to broad interpretation), that magic point at which family members are required to pull the plug — or risk the accusation that they are right-wing Christians.

I complained about all the death-with-dignity pressure to my father’s doctor, an Orthodox Jew, who said that his religion forbids the termination of care but that he would be perfectly willing to “look the other way” if we wanted my father to die. We didn’t. Then a light bulb went off in my head. We could devise a strategy to fend off the death-happy residents: We would tell them we were Orthodox Jews.



My little ruse worked. During the few days after I announced this faux fact, it was as though an invisible fence had been drawn around my mother, my sister and me.…

Though my father was born to an Orthodox Jewish family, he is an avowed atheist who long ago had rejected his parents’ ways. As I sat in the ICU…the irony struck me: My father, who had long ago rejected Orthodox Judaism, was now under its protection.

As though to confirm this, there came a series of miracles. Just a week after he was rushed to ICU, my father was pronounced well enough to be moved out of the unit … A day later he was off the respirator…He still mostly slept, but then he began to awaken for minutes at a time… A day later, we walked in to find him sitting upright in a chair, reading the New York Times.

I’ve never been one of those Jews who makes facial contortions at the mere mention of the Christian Right; I actually agree with them on some matters. And this experience with my father has given me a new appreciation for the fight many evangelicals have waged against euthanasia.…

I would add Agudath Israel of America and the RCA have done some very good work on this as well. So have Dr. Fred Rosner, Marvin Schick, Rabbi Dr. Moshe Tendler, and Rabbi Dr. J. David Bleich.

[Hat tip: Professor Gershon M. Ahmed.]

Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle

Upton Sinclair‘s The Jungle, the book that in large part created the US Meat Inspection Act of 1906 is available free online.

Is That Dog In Your Hamburger? The Answer Is “Yes” If George Bush Gets His Way

In a further degradation of food safety standards, the Bush Administration’s USDA is now allowing rabbit, cat and dog meat to be mixed with ground beef and sold. Andrew Martin of the Chicago Tribune reports:

A short notice from the United States Department of
Agriculture has created a stir-and perhaps a wave of nausea-among the
nation’s meat inspectors.

Called “FSIS NOTICE 15-06: Use of Non-Amenable Animal Tissue in
Inspected Products,” the notice essentially says that animals that you
wouldn’t normally associate with hamburgers can be “included in
amenable meat or poultry products produced in official establishments.”

In other words, anything from deer to dog meat
can be ground into hamburger, as long as it meets state regulations,
which inspectors say tend to be looser than the federal government’s.

Martin asked Steven Cohen, spokesman for the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service, if dog meat really could be mixed with beef and sold to consumers across America:

“I don’t believe that it is illegal, but there is no
place that is producing dog meat,” Cohen said, adding that the
regulation fits a “very limited circumstance. “I don’t think there’s
anyone who is doing this on a commercial basis.”

But roadkill wouldn’t qualify because, since the animal wasn’t slaughtered, it would be considered adulterated, he said.

According to Martin, even migratory birds could be added to the mix:

Non-amenable animal tissue, as defined in the notice, is any tissue
from animals not subject to inspection under the Federal Meat
Inspection Act and the Poultry Products Inspection Act. It includes
edible tissue from exotic animals, rabbits, migratory birds and other
animals not under the scope of USDA inspection, like alligator and
kangaroo.

This is especially troubling because state inspections are often much weaker than the USDA’s – which itself has been weakened by the Bush Administration. With Bird Flu a real threat, allowing the admixture of migratory bird tissue with beef is asking for trouble – big trouble.

And how has this announcement affected the nation’s already disheartened Food Inspectors?

News of the notice swept through the community of meat inspectors
after one of them sent an email to USDA’s technical support center
asking for clarification. In response to a question, Kris Kenne, a USDA
staff officer, said someone could mix deer meat with pork and sell deer
dogs with a USDA logo as long as the ingredients were labeled and state
law allowed it.

Does this also mean that a slaughtered cat or dog can be added to sausage, Kenne was asked?

“Yes, that is a possibility should one wish to pursue to use them as
an ingredient in the product. Public perception may not be so
acceptable of the practice though,” Kenne responded.…

“Suffice it to say, this is bizarre to inspectors in the field,”
said Trent Berhow, president of the Midwest Council of Food Inspectors
locals…

Bird Flu In Israel

Bird flu appears to have reached Israel – Ha’aretz reports, as does the Jerusalem Post and Ynet.

Yigal Amir To Artificially Inseminate “Wife”

Should a prisoner, especially a prisoner in jail for a murder he admits committing, be allowed conjugal visits with his wife? If not, should he be allowed to artificially impregnate her? Israel Insider reports:

The jailed assassin of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has been
permitted to provide sperm samples for the artificial insemination of
his wife, the Prisons Authority announced Tuesday.

The prisoner, Yigal Amir, is serving a life sentence without parole
for the 1995 killing, and married an Israeli woman, Larissa Trimbobler,
by proxy in 2004.

Why should this be allowed? Readers?

Is Non-Jewish Life Worth Saving?

We now know that three non-Jewish African-Americans risked their lives to pull Ephraim Klein from his burning car to try to save his life.

Many readers of FailedMessiah.com openly contend Jews should not
risk their lives to save non-Jews. Some contend Jews should never help
non-Jews (unless all Jews everywhere are perfectly safe and
comfortable). Indeed, this may very well be the position of the next Chief Rabbi of the IDF, who openly asserts that, all things being equal, Jews should never
violate Shabbat to save a non-Jew’s life.

This appears to be the
normative Orthodox position, held by haredim and Modern Orthodox alike
– including Chabad. Chabad’s late rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson clearly asserted
that helping American Jews with their spiritual needs took precedence
over saving the lives of dying black Jews in Ethiopia. (That no halakhic [Jewish legal] source exists to support that contention did not stop the Rebbe from making it. This has led many to think the Rebbe secretly believed Ethiopian Jews were not Jewish. If so, they argue, teaching a Jew Torah in Minnesota certainly takes precedence over saving a dying non-Jew elsewhere.)

So, what is the correct approach? Do we view non-Jewish life as less (or ‘differently’) important? Is Shabbat more important than saving a non-Jewish life? Readers?

Future IDF Chief Rabbi: “The life of a non-Jew certainly has value … but the value of Shabbat is more important”

The leading candidate to become the IDF’s (Orthodox) chief rabbi, Colonel Rabbi Avi Ronsky (Res.) has this to say about violating Shabbat laws to save non-Jewish lives:

"The life of a non-Jew certainly has value … but
the value of Shabbat is more important," said Ronsky. "When there is a
clash between a directive in the spirit of the [IDF ethical] code and
an order of Jewish law, it is clear that one must listen to the opinion
of Jewish law."

While the context of this statement is the saving of a non-Jewish terrorist’s life, Rabbi Ronsky clearly does not differentiate in his reasoning between that case and the case of a friendly non-Jew. And Rabbi Ronsky, a settler, is widely considered a moderate.

Should a non-Jew’s life be saved on Shabbat when that saving entails violation of Shabbat law? And if the answer to that question is no, why should non-Jews ever bother to save Jewish lives? Keep in mind this question applies to all areas of medicine and emergency response. Readers?

Haredim: Metzitza B’Peh Equal To Shabbat, Not Enough Risk To Stop

Agudath Israel of America’s Rabbi David Zwiebel explains Agudath Israel’s view on MBP’s risk to Steven I. Weiss:

We neither accept nor reject that metzitzah b’peh is a health risk – we haven’t been privy to the evidence on which the Health Department bases its claim. What we do know is what we hear (and what the Health Department has heard) from pediatricians who serve the communities where the practice is routinely performed: that any incidence of neonatal herpes after metzitzah b’peh is extremely rare, and that any incidence of serious harm is rarer still.…Given that testimony, and given the fact that we’re talking about an essential religious practice, we feel it was inappropriate for the Health Department to issue this type of public warning.

What level of demonstrated risk would justify such a public warning or a ban? Dunno, but I’d imagine that if that level of risk existed, the religious leaders of the community would beat the Health Department to the punch.

Weiss then interviews Rabbi David Niederman of the Satmar-controlled Central Rabbinical Congress, whose beit din (religious court) was charged by the city with investigating MBP, but missed it’s deadline to rule. Rabbi Niederman explains "that level of risk":

So what level of risk would the CRC consider necessary to trigger a ban or limitation of the practice? "The same level of risk…the metzitzah b’peh is the same mitzvah as other mitzvos of the Torah, nothing less than shmiras Shabbos…for this mesorah, we are ready with mesiras nefesh." The standard would be "the same pikuach nefesh for a doctor on Shabbos."

Of course, following that ‘logic,’ dozens of babies will have to die or be maimed before the CRC will act. And that’s just fine with Rabbi Niederman who, when asked about potential AIDS transmission (to the mohel) from MBP, had this to say:

"[H]ow do you compare AIDS that is a killer…AIDS that is overwhelming evidence that certain behavior contributes to that," to the case of neo-natal herpes and metzitzah b’feh, about which he claims there’s no such evidence.

Neonatal herpes is fatal in almost 30% of cases. But why let fact interfere with Rabbi Niederman’s ‘logic’?

Weiss then asks about the December 1 deadline the CRC missed:

"[I]t’s basically we said that we feel that we will have our investigation of Fischer done by that time…we have since indicated that we will not be done by that deadline" as they’re being careful "because pikuach nefesh is so important to us."

"We take this very seriously…if there’s any safek of pikuach nefesh, we’ll be the first to say no…the Torah says…even the slightest, we take this issue very seriously," he said, adding "the commissioner himself said take this very carefully…so we’re taking the time to make sure that no stone is unturned." Meanwhile, "Fischer [the mohel who apparently infected several babies with herpes, one of whom died] has done brisin all over the globe, so we have to go all over these places and do the investigation in addition to the medical investigation."

NYC should ban MBP outright and impose criminal penalties on those who perform it. Will haredim do MBP underground? Yes they will. Will babies still die? Yes they will. But some mohels will be caught and others will be too frightened to do MBP. More babies lives will be saved this way than by ‘working’ with recalcitrant haredi communities.