Monday, June 20, 2005
The virtues of dirt
By Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a Chicago oncologist and bioethicist. He is the co-author of "No Margin, No Mission."
Published June 20, 2005
We now live in an antiseptic society. We have become phobic about bugs and germs.
Go to the supermarket and you are greeted with wipes to remove the bacteria from the handles of the shopping cart. Antibacterial soaps and dishwashing liquids proliferate. Children at day-care centers are constantly getting their hands splashed with antibacterial gels that require no washing to keep them germ-free. You can buy antiviral facial tissues--let's leave aside that they don't work.
Being clean and hygienic to a degree is certainly important and adds to health. Communal hygiene improvements, largely through better housing and sanitation, in the late 19th Century dramatically increased life expectancy in the U.S. And certainly having physicians and other health-care workers not carry bacteria from one patient to another is essential.
But when cleanliness tips over into an obsession, into an all-encompassing war to protect us against coming into contact with every bacterium and virus, it may well pose serious long-term dangers.
A growing body of data is intimating the long-term consequences of this antiseptic craze, particularly if it is exercised among young children. A recent study showed that people who grew up with brothers and sisters in the first six years of life were much less likely to develop multiple sclerosis, a disease that is probably the result of an autoimmune response against one's own nerve tissue. Indeed, so protective were siblings, that having contact for five out of the first six years of life with a sibling almost eliminated the risk of getting multiple sclerosis.
These data are epidemiological associations, not causally proven by randomized trials, and therefore controversial. But similar findings have been reported for a range of allergic and autoimmune diseases such as asthma, allergies, type 1 diabetes, polio and even some cancers of the blood and lymph system.
Are brothers and sisters protective against disease? What a new twist to sibling rivalry! It is unlikely that genes are a large part of the explanation, mainly because people who migrate from places with low rates of these allergic and autoimmune diseases quickly come to have the higher rates of their new home.
A growing body of evidence suggests that the likely explanation is, as every parent knows, that bothers and sisters bring home infections. They are a veritable cesspool of viruses and bacteria. And this, it appears, is a good thing!
Why is having an infection seemingly good for children?
The explanation is all part of what is called the "hygiene hypothesis," which really should be called the "dirt hypothesis." Studies suggest that infections early in life seem to add an element of better control or regulation of the immune system. Viruses and bacteria seem to stimulate the production of special immune regulatory cells whose effect goes beyond killing the germs to dampening overactive immune responses. This is just a hypothesis and still subject to controversy, but there is considerable animal research and epidemiological data supporting it.
One way to get more mild infections is to have more siblings who bring the little germs home from day care, school, the playground or their friend's house. Just playing with many more children--that cesspool of viruses and bacteria--is another way to get more infections. Another way is not to be treated with antibiotics for every viral infection--a bad practice for a number of reasons, including breeding resistance among bacteria and maybe even increasing the chances of autoimmune diseases. The lesson: More germs early in life appear to protect against the dreaded autoimmune diseases later in life.
Scientists have theorized that smaller families--therefore fewer siblings and fewer infections early in life--have led to increases in multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases. By adding all these antigerm gels, soaps, creams, tissues and wipes, we are really trying to raise our children in an antiseptic society and this may well have its own long-term consequences for increasing the rate of autoimmune diseases.
This seems like it could be a repetition of the fast-food craze of the 1960s and 1970s. So desirable at the start: novel, convenient, tasty--especially with all that salt--and slickly marketed to make us think eating fast will make us efficient and happy. But then it becomes ingrained in everyday activities where the adverse consequences, which are initially hidden, finally become magnified and obvious. Junk food has led to an epidemic of terrible nutritional habits and obesity, imposing social costs related to health care, farming, changes in seat sizes and other aspects of public facilities that far outweigh short-term corporate profits.
Instead of cleaning surfaces with antibacterial wipes and squirting antibacterial gel on children's hands, we should celebrate dirt. Encourage your children to play with other children, and get runny noses and other mild infections. It is likely to be good for them. Better a mild cold or cough than asthma, multiple sclerosis, diabetes or cancers later in life.
Published June 20, 2005
We now live in an antiseptic society. We have become phobic about bugs and germs.
Go to the supermarket and you are greeted with wipes to remove the bacteria from the handles of the shopping cart. Antibacterial soaps and dishwashing liquids proliferate. Children at day-care centers are constantly getting their hands splashed with antibacterial gels that require no washing to keep them germ-free. You can buy antiviral facial tissues--let's leave aside that they don't work.
Being clean and hygienic to a degree is certainly important and adds to health. Communal hygiene improvements, largely through better housing and sanitation, in the late 19th Century dramatically increased life expectancy in the U.S. And certainly having physicians and other health-care workers not carry bacteria from one patient to another is essential.
But when cleanliness tips over into an obsession, into an all-encompassing war to protect us against coming into contact with every bacterium and virus, it may well pose serious long-term dangers.
A growing body of data is intimating the long-term consequences of this antiseptic craze, particularly if it is exercised among young children. A recent study showed that people who grew up with brothers and sisters in the first six years of life were much less likely to develop multiple sclerosis, a disease that is probably the result of an autoimmune response against one's own nerve tissue. Indeed, so protective were siblings, that having contact for five out of the first six years of life with a sibling almost eliminated the risk of getting multiple sclerosis.
These data are epidemiological associations, not causally proven by randomized trials, and therefore controversial. But similar findings have been reported for a range of allergic and autoimmune diseases such as asthma, allergies, type 1 diabetes, polio and even some cancers of the blood and lymph system.
Are brothers and sisters protective against disease? What a new twist to sibling rivalry! It is unlikely that genes are a large part of the explanation, mainly because people who migrate from places with low rates of these allergic and autoimmune diseases quickly come to have the higher rates of their new home.
A growing body of evidence suggests that the likely explanation is, as every parent knows, that bothers and sisters bring home infections. They are a veritable cesspool of viruses and bacteria. And this, it appears, is a good thing!
Why is having an infection seemingly good for children?
The explanation is all part of what is called the "hygiene hypothesis," which really should be called the "dirt hypothesis." Studies suggest that infections early in life seem to add an element of better control or regulation of the immune system. Viruses and bacteria seem to stimulate the production of special immune regulatory cells whose effect goes beyond killing the germs to dampening overactive immune responses. This is just a hypothesis and still subject to controversy, but there is considerable animal research and epidemiological data supporting it.
One way to get more mild infections is to have more siblings who bring the little germs home from day care, school, the playground or their friend's house. Just playing with many more children--that cesspool of viruses and bacteria--is another way to get more infections. Another way is not to be treated with antibiotics for every viral infection--a bad practice for a number of reasons, including breeding resistance among bacteria and maybe even increasing the chances of autoimmune diseases. The lesson: More germs early in life appear to protect against the dreaded autoimmune diseases later in life.
Scientists have theorized that smaller families--therefore fewer siblings and fewer infections early in life--have led to increases in multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases. By adding all these antigerm gels, soaps, creams, tissues and wipes, we are really trying to raise our children in an antiseptic society and this may well have its own long-term consequences for increasing the rate of autoimmune diseases.
This seems like it could be a repetition of the fast-food craze of the 1960s and 1970s. So desirable at the start: novel, convenient, tasty--especially with all that salt--and slickly marketed to make us think eating fast will make us efficient and happy. But then it becomes ingrained in everyday activities where the adverse consequences, which are initially hidden, finally become magnified and obvious. Junk food has led to an epidemic of terrible nutritional habits and obesity, imposing social costs related to health care, farming, changes in seat sizes and other aspects of public facilities that far outweigh short-term corporate profits.
Instead of cleaning surfaces with antibacterial wipes and squirting antibacterial gel on children's hands, we should celebrate dirt. Encourage your children to play with other children, and get runny noses and other mild infections. It is likely to be good for them. Better a mild cold or cough than asthma, multiple sclerosis, diabetes or cancers later in life.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Darwin Fundamentalists
Thoughts on the Existence of God
Paul Johnson, 06.20.05, 12:00 AM ET
Of all the fundamentalist groups at large in the world today, the Darwinians seem to me the most objectionable. They are just as strident and closed to argument as Christian or Muslim fundamentalists, but unlike those two groups the Darwinians enjoy intellectual respectability.
Darwinians and their allies dominate the scientific establishments of the West. They rule the campus. Their militant brand of atheism makes them natural allies of the philosophical atheists who control most college philosophy faculties. They dominate the leading scientific magazines and prevent their critics and opponents from getting a hearing, and they secure the best slots on TV. Yet the Darwinian brand of evolution is becoming increasingly vulnerable as the progress of science reveals its weaknesses. One day, perhaps soon, it will collapse in ruins.
Weak Underpinnings
Few people today doubt the concept of evolution as such. What seems mistaken is Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, whereby species evolve by infinitesimally small stages. Neither Darwin nor any of his followers--nor his noisy champions today--was a historian. None of them thought of time historically or made their calculations chronologically. Had they done so, they'd have seen that natural selection works much too slowly to fit into the time line allowed by the ages of the universe and our own planet. The process must somehow have been accelerated in jumps or by catastrophes or outside intervention.
There are five other weaknesses the Darwinians cannot explain away either. The best summary of these can be found in Richard J. Bird's Chaos and Life (Columbia University Press, 2003), page 53. Warning: This book is tough going but will reward the persistent.
If the theory of natural selection is incorrect, then the Darwinians' view that there is no need or place for God in the universe is itself weakened, though not necessarily overthrown. Physics, however, increasingly tends to suggest that there is a God role, particularly with regard to the origin of the universe. We now know this occurred about 13.7 billion years ago, and our knowledge of what happened immediately afterward is becoming increasingly detailed, down to the last microsecond.
Few now doubt there was a Big Bang. We know when it occurred and what followed. But we are just as far as ever from understanding why it happened or what--or who--caused it. Indeed, all calculations about the Big Bang are based on the assumption that nothing preceded it. It took place in an infinite vacuum. There was no process of ignition, or traces of it would have been left. Hence, this fundamental happening in history seems to conflict with all the laws of physics and our notions of how the universe operates. It was an event without a cause.
It also produced something out of nothing. More: It produced everything out of nothing. The expansion of the universe has proceeded ever since, and all the creative processes involved in it--including Earth and homo sapiens--were written into the laws laid down in that first tremendous explosion. We do not have to believe in an entirely deterministic universe to see that the first microsecond of history foreshadowed everything that has followed over the last 13-plus billion years.
If the laws of physics cannot explain how and why this event occurred, we must invoke metaphysics. And that means some kind of divine force. I've been rereading what Sir Isaac Newton wrote about God in the second edition of his Principia (1713). Newton saw God not as a perfect being--or any kind of being at all--but as a power, what he termed a "dominion." "We reverence and adore Him on account of His dominion," he wrote. This power was exercised "in a manner not at all human … in a manner utterly unknown to us." Newton knew God only through His works. "He is utterly void of all body and bodily figure, and can therefore neither be seen, nor heard, nor touched." Our knowledge of Him is limited "by His most wise and excellent contrivances of things."
"...and the Word Was God"
This notion of God as an impersonal power or force, wholly outside the laws of physics, fits with the role assigned him as author of the Big Bang. And since that primal event there has been no need of further intervention by God in the affairs of the universe.
Or has there? I've also been reading Guy Deutscher's The Unfolding of Language (Metropolitan Books, 2005) and reflecting on the nature of words. Speech is the greatest of man's inventions and the mother of all others. Yet, in truth, nobody invented it. Its emergence and evolution proceeded in ways that are still almost a total mystery. It is as close to a miracle as anything associated with human beings.
Both the Hebrews and the Greeks, in different ways, believed there was something divine about "the word," or logos. The Greeks thought the word was the abstract principle of reason exhibited by an orderly universe. The Jews thought it the image of God, the beginning and origin of all things. It is possible, then, that the giving of the word to humanity was the second intervention of the metaphysical force or dominion in the process of history. That, I think, is the conclusion I have come to in these difficult matters. What will be the third, I wonder?
Paul Johnson, eminent British historian and author
Paul Johnson, 06.20.05, 12:00 AM ET
Of all the fundamentalist groups at large in the world today, the Darwinians seem to me the most objectionable. They are just as strident and closed to argument as Christian or Muslim fundamentalists, but unlike those two groups the Darwinians enjoy intellectual respectability.
Darwinians and their allies dominate the scientific establishments of the West. They rule the campus. Their militant brand of atheism makes them natural allies of the philosophical atheists who control most college philosophy faculties. They dominate the leading scientific magazines and prevent their critics and opponents from getting a hearing, and they secure the best slots on TV. Yet the Darwinian brand of evolution is becoming increasingly vulnerable as the progress of science reveals its weaknesses. One day, perhaps soon, it will collapse in ruins.
Weak Underpinnings
Few people today doubt the concept of evolution as such. What seems mistaken is Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, whereby species evolve by infinitesimally small stages. Neither Darwin nor any of his followers--nor his noisy champions today--was a historian. None of them thought of time historically or made their calculations chronologically. Had they done so, they'd have seen that natural selection works much too slowly to fit into the time line allowed by the ages of the universe and our own planet. The process must somehow have been accelerated in jumps or by catastrophes or outside intervention.
There are five other weaknesses the Darwinians cannot explain away either. The best summary of these can be found in Richard J. Bird's Chaos and Life (Columbia University Press, 2003), page 53. Warning: This book is tough going but will reward the persistent.
If the theory of natural selection is incorrect, then the Darwinians' view that there is no need or place for God in the universe is itself weakened, though not necessarily overthrown. Physics, however, increasingly tends to suggest that there is a God role, particularly with regard to the origin of the universe. We now know this occurred about 13.7 billion years ago, and our knowledge of what happened immediately afterward is becoming increasingly detailed, down to the last microsecond.
Few now doubt there was a Big Bang. We know when it occurred and what followed. But we are just as far as ever from understanding why it happened or what--or who--caused it. Indeed, all calculations about the Big Bang are based on the assumption that nothing preceded it. It took place in an infinite vacuum. There was no process of ignition, or traces of it would have been left. Hence, this fundamental happening in history seems to conflict with all the laws of physics and our notions of how the universe operates. It was an event without a cause.
It also produced something out of nothing. More: It produced everything out of nothing. The expansion of the universe has proceeded ever since, and all the creative processes involved in it--including Earth and homo sapiens--were written into the laws laid down in that first tremendous explosion. We do not have to believe in an entirely deterministic universe to see that the first microsecond of history foreshadowed everything that has followed over the last 13-plus billion years.
If the laws of physics cannot explain how and why this event occurred, we must invoke metaphysics. And that means some kind of divine force. I've been rereading what Sir Isaac Newton wrote about God in the second edition of his Principia (1713). Newton saw God not as a perfect being--or any kind of being at all--but as a power, what he termed a "dominion." "We reverence and adore Him on account of His dominion," he wrote. This power was exercised "in a manner not at all human … in a manner utterly unknown to us." Newton knew God only through His works. "He is utterly void of all body and bodily figure, and can therefore neither be seen, nor heard, nor touched." Our knowledge of Him is limited "by His most wise and excellent contrivances of things."
"...and the Word Was God"
This notion of God as an impersonal power or force, wholly outside the laws of physics, fits with the role assigned him as author of the Big Bang. And since that primal event there has been no need of further intervention by God in the affairs of the universe.
Or has there? I've also been reading Guy Deutscher's The Unfolding of Language (Metropolitan Books, 2005) and reflecting on the nature of words. Speech is the greatest of man's inventions and the mother of all others. Yet, in truth, nobody invented it. Its emergence and evolution proceeded in ways that are still almost a total mystery. It is as close to a miracle as anything associated with human beings.
Both the Hebrews and the Greeks, in different ways, believed there was something divine about "the word," or logos. The Greeks thought the word was the abstract principle of reason exhibited by an orderly universe. The Jews thought it the image of God, the beginning and origin of all things. It is possible, then, that the giving of the word to humanity was the second intervention of the metaphysical force or dominion in the process of history. That, I think, is the conclusion I have come to in these difficult matters. What will be the third, I wonder?
Paul Johnson, eminent British historian and author
Huffington
chicagotribune.com
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0506140152jun14,0,7939984.story?coll=chi-newsopinioncommentary-hed
THE HUFFINGTON POST
Blog, blah, blog, blah, blog ...
Tribune Media Services
June 14, 2005
Sign 'em up
For April, the active-dutyArmy was short of its recruitment target of 6,600 by 2,779. We are at war, we have a population of over 290 million people, and we can't get 2,779 people to join the fight? Wow.
We would have an easier time convincing parents to send their kids to the Neverland ranch for a sleepover party.
-- Paul Rieckhoff is the executive director and founder of Operation Truth, America's first and largest Iraq Veterans group.
What's with the hatin'?
Here comes Hillary, which reminds me: What is it, honestly, about her that's so deeply hateful to the conservative right? She is bright and articulate in a way that comes along rarely in a generation; she's thoughtful, efficient, political, ambitious, confident, unapologetic, possibly ruthless. She believes in God. Of course her stands on the issues are of her party, but so were Dick Gephardt's. I don't believe he was often used to rally the conservative faithful.
-- Stephanie Sandberg is president and publisher of The New Republic magazine.
How's your job?
It was a rainy day yesterday in San Francisco, but not nearly as dreary a day as it was for workers at General Motors learning about 25,000 good American jobs from the GM economy heading overseas.
On average, jobs leaving America pay $22,457 more than the jobs being created. Tell that to your kid.
We are in the midst of the most massive transformation of our economy in history, and there is no road map.
-- Andy Stern is president of the SEIU, the largest and fastest-growing union in the AFL-CIO.
Let that fox into the henhouse!
Why are we pussyfooting around about this John Bolton guy? You know what? We really do need some tough reforms at the UN, and this cat seems like just the one to do it. There's a lot of things over there that need to be reformed, and it's high time somebody with a backbone and a supercool mustache reformed them.
Can I get a harrumph? Thank you. Now, let the reforms begin!
OK, first of all, did you know that there's a lot of people in that building who don't even speak English? That people actually have to translate what is being said for them? I say that if Bolton comes around to your office and you can't hold a five-minute conversation with him about what bad shape the UN is in and what a waste of time you are for being there, then he has the right to toss your other-language-speaking butt out onto the street. And he'll do it too. Have you seen the guy yell? That's just the tip of the iceberg, friend. When Hurricane Bolton reforms you, you stay reformed! Harrumph!
Secondly, let him chop off about 10 stories from the place like he wants to. In fact, chop off another 10. That building completely blocks a really nice view of the water.
Third, change the name of the place. "United" Nations? That's a little too close to United States for my tastes. Hey, we named our country first, you bunch of copycats. Is it that hard to find another word for "United"? You know, you might not have this useful little book in your native country but here in our country it's called a "thesaurus." Check it out, Monsieur/Herr/Senor Plagiarist.
Fourth, I haven't even heard of about half of the countries that are members of the UN. I mean, who the heck is Andorra, Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Gabon, Kiribati, Malawi, Mauritius, Sao Tome, Seychelles and Vanuatu, fer cryin' out loud? If a Princess Cruise ship doesn't stop there, then your country doesn't exist as far as me and my man Bolton are concerned. So either get a better-known name for your country or pack your bags and head back to it.
And, finally, I've seen a real dearth of American flag lapel pins on a lot of you. Hey, if I was in your country, I'd wear a pin on my lapel of your country's flag. Um, or . . . uh, actually I wouldn't. But you're in my country now and so you'd better play by my rules. Got that, comrade? "Love it or leave it," you know what I'm saying?
So, get ready, all of you over there on First Avenue between 42nd and 48th Streets. There's gonna be a new sheriff in town and he's been feelin' pretty grouchy about all of ya since he was in college. You can run, but you can't hide.
-- Paul Feig is the two-time Emmy nominated creator of the series "Freaks and Geeks."
Split the difference
When my dear friend Janet Grillo parks her car in front of my house, I never worry about her "Recall Bush" bumper sticker sullying my reputation in the neighborhood. Likewise, she stomachs the "Refuse to Choose" pro-life sticker on my bumper.
Instead of arguing about the right to abortion, we need to come together and address the needs of single moms; we need to become big sisters to at-risk teens. We can disagree about the death penalty (I'm anti, she's pro), but we can get together on supporting women in prison and their families. Instead of arguing about how long you should keep someone on life support, we should work to give disabled persons representation in our community and in our stories.
-- Patricia Heaton appears on the sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond." She is the author of "Motherhood and Hollywood--How to Get a Job Like Mine."
Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0506140152jun14,0,7939984.story?coll=chi-newsopinioncommentary-hed
THE HUFFINGTON POST
Blog, blah, blog, blah, blog ...
Tribune Media Services
June 14, 2005
Sign 'em up
For April, the active-dutyArmy was short of its recruitment target of 6,600 by 2,779. We are at war, we have a population of over 290 million people, and we can't get 2,779 people to join the fight? Wow.
We would have an easier time convincing parents to send their kids to the Neverland ranch for a sleepover party.
-- Paul Rieckhoff is the executive director and founder of Operation Truth, America's first and largest Iraq Veterans group.
What's with the hatin'?
Here comes Hillary, which reminds me: What is it, honestly, about her that's so deeply hateful to the conservative right? She is bright and articulate in a way that comes along rarely in a generation; she's thoughtful, efficient, political, ambitious, confident, unapologetic, possibly ruthless. She believes in God. Of course her stands on the issues are of her party, but so were Dick Gephardt's. I don't believe he was often used to rally the conservative faithful.
-- Stephanie Sandberg is president and publisher of The New Republic magazine.
How's your job?
It was a rainy day yesterday in San Francisco, but not nearly as dreary a day as it was for workers at General Motors learning about 25,000 good American jobs from the GM economy heading overseas.
On average, jobs leaving America pay $22,457 more than the jobs being created. Tell that to your kid.
We are in the midst of the most massive transformation of our economy in history, and there is no road map.
-- Andy Stern is president of the SEIU, the largest and fastest-growing union in the AFL-CIO.
Let that fox into the henhouse!
Why are we pussyfooting around about this John Bolton guy? You know what? We really do need some tough reforms at the UN, and this cat seems like just the one to do it. There's a lot of things over there that need to be reformed, and it's high time somebody with a backbone and a supercool mustache reformed them.
Can I get a harrumph? Thank you. Now, let the reforms begin!
OK, first of all, did you know that there's a lot of people in that building who don't even speak English? That people actually have to translate what is being said for them? I say that if Bolton comes around to your office and you can't hold a five-minute conversation with him about what bad shape the UN is in and what a waste of time you are for being there, then he has the right to toss your other-language-speaking butt out onto the street. And he'll do it too. Have you seen the guy yell? That's just the tip of the iceberg, friend. When Hurricane Bolton reforms you, you stay reformed! Harrumph!
Secondly, let him chop off about 10 stories from the place like he wants to. In fact, chop off another 10. That building completely blocks a really nice view of the water.
Third, change the name of the place. "United" Nations? That's a little too close to United States for my tastes. Hey, we named our country first, you bunch of copycats. Is it that hard to find another word for "United"? You know, you might not have this useful little book in your native country but here in our country it's called a "thesaurus." Check it out, Monsieur/Herr/Senor Plagiarist.
Fourth, I haven't even heard of about half of the countries that are members of the UN. I mean, who the heck is Andorra, Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Gabon, Kiribati, Malawi, Mauritius, Sao Tome, Seychelles and Vanuatu, fer cryin' out loud? If a Princess Cruise ship doesn't stop there, then your country doesn't exist as far as me and my man Bolton are concerned. So either get a better-known name for your country or pack your bags and head back to it.
And, finally, I've seen a real dearth of American flag lapel pins on a lot of you. Hey, if I was in your country, I'd wear a pin on my lapel of your country's flag. Um, or . . . uh, actually I wouldn't. But you're in my country now and so you'd better play by my rules. Got that, comrade? "Love it or leave it," you know what I'm saying?
So, get ready, all of you over there on First Avenue between 42nd and 48th Streets. There's gonna be a new sheriff in town and he's been feelin' pretty grouchy about all of ya since he was in college. You can run, but you can't hide.
-- Paul Feig is the two-time Emmy nominated creator of the series "Freaks and Geeks."
Split the difference
When my dear friend Janet Grillo parks her car in front of my house, I never worry about her "Recall Bush" bumper sticker sullying my reputation in the neighborhood. Likewise, she stomachs the "Refuse to Choose" pro-life sticker on my bumper.
Instead of arguing about the right to abortion, we need to come together and address the needs of single moms; we need to become big sisters to at-risk teens. We can disagree about the death penalty (I'm anti, she's pro), but we can get together on supporting women in prison and their families. Instead of arguing about how long you should keep someone on life support, we should work to give disabled persons representation in our community and in our stories.
-- Patricia Heaton appears on the sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond." She is the author of "Motherhood and Hollywood--How to Get a Job Like Mine."
Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune
