Letters: Fighting with spiritual strength; Alarming statistics show toll of Alzheimer’s in PA
Fighting with spiritual strength
In the face of the invasion of Ukraine, Christ advocates non-retaliation and then remembering Ukraine’s traditional bonds of friendship and brotherhood with Russia. Then with your heart open God will fight for you and bring justice.
It is as the old story of the crusader and the Saracen — the crusader splits a wooden table with the thrust of his sword. But the Saracen drops a silk handkerchief on the blade of his sword, whose sharpness cuts it in two. Fight then with the spirit, not brute force.
It would take a culture steeped in the Sermon on the Mount, or the nonviolence of India, to act this way.
The world says, “If you strike me, I’ll strike you back 40 times harder.”
Most follow the world that says if Gandhi faced Hitler rather than the British he would have failed.
Martin Luther King followed Gandhi’s nonviolence as gospel love.
In the fact of Russian bombs perhaps this is nonsense.
Always it requires greater spiritual strength; practiced it could abolish war.
Alarming statistics show toll of Alzheimer’s in PA
The Alzheimer’s Association 2022 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures report illustrates the continued burden of Alzheimer’s in our country, and in Pennsylvania.
An estimated 6.5 million Americans age 65 and older are living with Alzheimer’s, including 280,000 in Pennsylvania — a number expected to increase to 320,000 by 2025. Across the commonwealth, 401,000 caregivers, often friends and family members, provided more than 642,000,000 hours of unpaid care, valued at more than $10 billion.
The report also shines a light on the alarming lack of familiarity of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and MCI due to Alzheimer’s disease. Many Americans confuse MCI with normal aging. MCI can be a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease affecting 12% to 18% of individuals age 60 and older. And, 77% of primary care physicians report MCI due to Alzheimer’s being difficult to diagnose, with 51% who do not feel comfortable diagnosing the disease.
The report underscores the urgency for our country and state to further its investment in Alzheimer’s research to advance treatments that can alter these trends.
We must also advance public policies, expand support programs, and bolster the public understanding of MCI and Alzheimer’s to help those impacted by the disease.
Parallels between DDT and coyote killing contests
DDT is an insecticide. In 1948 Paul Müller received the Nobel Prize for “(sic) his discovery of DDT as a poison against (insects)”. Notably insects responsible for spreading malaria and typhus. A ban on agricultural DDT began in 2004. DDT was found to bio-magnify up the food chain, be an endocrine-disruptor and carcinogen. Before reading below about coyote killing contests, please consider the decades of praise bestowed upon scientists and farmers for protecting people and food with DDT.
Coyote killing contests (CKC) commonly award cash prizes for the most coyotes killed. Thirty-four will take place in Pennsylvania between January-March. Communities developed traditions rooted in contests protecting their farm communities. In recent decades, game commissions and ecosystem researchers are alerting us to human and habitat impacts of these contests: Coyote packs destabilized by indiscriminate killing disperse, increasing domestic-animal predation threats, and an increased prevalence of small mammals harboring tick-borne diseases.
It’s tempting to be indifferent to killing animals known as predators, just as we might be toward malaria-spreading insects. Others may cringe at dumpster piles of coyotes after these contests. Please encourage our local newspapers and public broadcasting stations to respectfully educate civic discourse about CKC origins and societal impacts. Public health, hunting and habitats are now safer without DDT. Thankfully, resorting to demonizing scientists and rural-America was wisely not the approach taken back then. With respect to coyote killing contests, demonizing neither people nor animals will make for a humane society now.