Helmintholog

Much is now being written and recycled about John Paul II’s supposed “failure to understand” the nature of western liberal society. In reality he understood the dynamics of society in western Europe or north America quite well, but disliked much of what he saw there. In return, he was disliked – sometimes detested – by reformers within or outwith the Church, who were also shocked by the materialism of their own societies but who could only understand his refusal to liberalise the church as brutal, reactionary authoritarianism.

On his first visit to the United States, John Paul II was confronted by an impressive, widespread campaign which begged him to reconsider the ordination of women. The campaign produced evidence (how solid I do not know) to suggest that the majority of American Catholics favoured the change. The pope was completely unimpressed by this reasoning. Afterwards, a columnist suggested that he had been the first world figure to tell the American public that wanting something in a majority did not mean they ought to have it.

Neal Ascherson, writing on OpenDemocracy.net. The site is currently being edited by Isabel Hilton, Mrs Ascherson in civilian life, which probably explains why they got such a very good piece. Anyway, it’s thoughtful, elegant and profound, as you’d expect, and probably won’t be noticed as much as it deserves. Hence this link.

I looked up the obituary of the Belfast doctor who invented the portable defibrillator, and who died in January this year. I did so because it seemed obvious that a lot of suffering is caused by rescuing heart attack victims and other people who never really come back from the emergency room. Of course, that’s no real argument against defibrillators and similar techniques: just an indication that they have some costs as well as benefits. The great majority of decisions about life and death don’t involve removing tubes, but calling an ambulance in time. By their nature, they are taken very quickly, and without any conscious deliberation.

Still, you’d have thought that the man who invented these devices was in favour of life at almost any cost, and in fact he had survived a terrible time as a Japanese PoW after the fall of Singapore: “Of his group of 7,000, only a few hundred survived. Pantridge himself suffered from prolonged and near fatal cardiac beriberi but was possessed of a fanatical will to live. He never forgave the Japanese for what he saw them do to soldiers and civilians alike.”

None the less, the obituarist also recorded that during the retreat of his batallion through the Malayan jungle, “Pantridge, in common with other medical officers, ensured that those so severely wounded that they could not be evacuated would never see the enemy.”

Were all those lives he later saved a way of making up for this?

From Billmon, a sighting of a sentimental crusader. The really awful thing, when I look at this story, is that I know what the cries of a PVS patient sound like. In the Cheshire Home where I met my first wife, there was a stroke patient who had almost reached that state. She could, just, swallow for herself. To feed her, you would sit for an hour or so every day, putting teaspoons of goo in her lips and saying, over and over again “swallow, Molly”. Sometimes, she would swallow.

She was kept propped up on pillows, though her head always sagged, so that it seemed to anchored to the pillows by a long silvery plait of drool whenever I looked in the room.

Her face was very sweet. Her eyes were sometimes open, and bright blue, like anemones. She never focussed and never spoke, but when we shifted her to tend the bedsores on her withered legs, she would howl feebly so it seemed to come from very far away. These noises haunted me for years.

They seem to haunt the torturer who is trying to keep Terri Schiavo alive. But how could he hear those voices, and not the ones of his victims, who must have been much stronger and more conscious of their agonies, at least when he started his work?

John Brockman, who is, amongst other things, the agent of both Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett, explains his religious views:

I would never say I’m an atheist. But I mean – it’s the word. I don’t believe: I’m sure there’s no God. I’m sure there’s no afterlife. But don’t call me an atheist. It’s like a losers’ club. Well, it is: it’s like – when I hear the word atheist, I think of some crummy motel where they’re having a function and these people have nowhere else to go. That’s what it means in America.

From an upcoming Guardian profile.