Dear Ms. Brinker,

As one who has been at odds with SGK over your organization’s funding of Planned Parenthood, I write today to offer you my heartfelt gratitude and congratulations for the principled and prudential position that you have taken in defunding Planned Parenthood.

Having lost many family members to cancer, and having several close friends experience the ravages of breast cancer, I’ve experienced this issue intimately and laud you for making good on your deathbed promise to your sister, Susan. You have done what so many researchers could only dream of.

You have rallied an entire nation around women and the disease that strikes fear not only into their hearts, but into the hearts of the men who love them passionately. You have raised hundreds of millions of research dollars and in so doing have advanced the understanding of molecular medicine in the field of oncology far beyond where it would be today, but for your foundation’s single-mindedness of purpose.

In all of that focus on research, you have not forgotten the women of today who lack the means for appropriate breast screening utilizing state of the art mammography, and the need for younger women to be educated in prevention. Toward that end, it is my understanding that you and Planned Parenthood saw a shared mission and purpose in the field of women’s health where breast cancer screening and prevention were concerned.

Many of us heard of your largesse in funding breast screenings at Planned Parenthood, screenings which we were told included mammograms. Tragically, we have come to know that Planned Parenthood lied about performing mammograms, and in so doing took money from SGK that might have otherwise benefited women through mammography elsewhere, or through additional research.

Over the past few years, repeated sting operations have time and again caught Planned Parenthood acting with treachery:

Lying about performing mammograms.
Aiding in what they perceived to be the sex trafficking of minors.
Suborning lies from perceived minors to skirt reporting of statutory rape.
Lying about the developmental status of the baby they were about to abort.

And on, and on…

SGK’s February 1, 2012 statement of clarification speaks very clearly as to why the defunding took place:

We are dismayed and extremely disappointed that actions we have taken to strengthen our granting process have been widely mischaracterized. It is necessary to set the record straight.

We regret that these new policies have impacted some longstanding grantees, such as Planned Parenthood, but want to be absolutely clear that our grant-making decisions are not about politics. Throughout our 30 year history, our priority has always been and will continue to be the women we serve. As we move forward, we are working to ensure that there is no interruption or gaps in services for the women who need our support most in the fight against breast cancer.

Indeed your stringent criteria leave little room for organizations that are repeatedly caught in sting operations either lying to, or suborning lies from young people. Such criteria also no doubt would require an organization such as Planned Parenthood to actually perform the mammograms they claim to perform, or at the very least, set the record straight when others make such false claims on their behalf.

So now you are being assailed by Planned Parenthood and their devotees for being…

…what?

Anti-women’s health?

That’s a tough narrative to sell where SGK is concerned.

If the word circulating on the internet is true, Planned Parenthood has raised over $400,000 in response to your withdrawal of funding. This is indeed good news all around. Planned Parenthood has demonstrated repeatedly that when monies are withdrawn they have the capability of stepping up and doing the necessary fundraising to offset and replace the lost income. That is a cardinal sign of a strong and financially healthy organization. It means that SGK can give their support elsewhere, confident in knowing that Planned Parenthood can thrive without your support.

You have acted here with the highest integrity and moral courage. Your manifest integrity should serve as a beacon to corporations that currently fund Planned Parenthood, and who might fear the backlash and vilifying you have been receiving should they similarly redirect their money. I would encourage those corporations to fund real women’s health initiatives by funding Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Such a move would indemnify themselves against Planned Parenthood’s predictable allegation of hating women and not supporting women’s health. It would also increase your efficacy in accelerating the arrival of that day when this terrible scourge becomes a thing of the past. Perhaps corporations switching their support might in conjunction with SGK establish a program of purchasing and donating mammogram machines to areas of need, especially for low-income women.

For now, Ms. Brinker, my heartfelt congratulations and gratitude once again for your principled leadership in upholding your exacting standards with equally rigorous equanimity, regardless of the consequences. Through your principled leadership, many more women’s lives will be saved, and many more women made whole once again.

God Bless You,

Gerard M. Nadal, Ph.D.

The first paper I ever wrote in graduate school was a review of the literature on Leprosy. It is a disease transmitted by contact that we now know to be caused by a close first cousin of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, and can be cured using the same antibiotics that we use against TB. This miracle of 20th Century medicine has emptied the leper colonies, arresting and eliminating the disease in its earliest stages before it maims and disfigures its victims.

Sunlight seems to be having the same salutary effect on the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and they have elected to leave the leper colony, as Planned Parenthood languishes with the increasing ravages of their disfigurement, unwilling to take the medicine that would end the insideous effects of their disease. It’s actually too late for Planned Parenthood, but for Komen, there is yet hope.

The sunlight began to pierce the darkness back in 2007, when Dorinda Bordlee, Vice President and Senior Counsel of the Bioethics Defense Fund met Eve Sanchez Silver who told her about her about the Komen-Planned Parenthood funding link. Silver, a breast cancer survivor and charter member of Komen’s Hispanic/Latina Advisory Council, resigned from Komen, stating,

As a Christian and life affirming citizen I can not reconcile the Foundation’s decision to affirm life with one hand and support its destruction with the other.

Bordlee began to research Komen’s grant database to confirm Silver’s claims. The most recent data available to her back then were the 2005 numbers which showed over $700,000 in grants made by certain Komen state affiliates to their local Planned Parenthood clinics. Subsequent grant totals can be read here at BDF’s site. BDF’s initial findings were picked up and pursued by a great many who then launched their own investigations.

It was discovered that Komen Founder, Nancy Brinker (Susan Komen’s sister), sat on the board of Planned Parenthood in North Texas. Jill Stanek wrote two great articles about the links between Komen and PP.

At the heart of the matter lies three essential issues regarding the deplorable decision by Komen to fund PP:

1. The causal link between breast cancer and abortion (ABC link).
2. The causal link between breast cancer and oral contraceptives.
3. The fact that Planned Parenthood does NOT do mammograms.

Yes the ABC link is hotly disputed, and only because radical proabort researchers have lied through their teeth about the literature. I’ve written 56 articles dealing with this link, which can be read here. Placing that contentious issue to the side, along with PP’s complicity in placing women at risk for breast cancer through their abortion services, we need to look at the role of PP in dispensing oral contraceptives, which have been well established causes of breast cancer.

In 2009, the same Dr. Louise Brinton who is Branch Chief in Epidemiology at the National Cancer Institute, and who chaired the sham 2003 workshop denying the ABC link, coauthored a 2009 paper in which she listed abortion and oral contraceptives under known or suspected risk factors for breast cancer. The reference for the paper follows at the end of the article.

In their paper, the authors list in Table 4. Multivariate adjusted case-control odds ratios for all breast cancer cases, triple-negative
and non-triple-negative cases, in relation to oral contraceptive risk factors, stratified by age at diagnosis under age 40 and
41-45 y, the following devastating information.

The risks for acquiring the deadliest, most aggressive and difficult to treat form of breast cancer, Triple Negative Breast Cancer based on age of first use of oral contraceptives is:

Age 22+: 250%
Age 18-22: 270%
Age Under 18: 540%

These numbers, from some of the finest minds in science, beg the question:

What would possess an organization such as Komen to ever fund an organization that dispenses birth control pills like candy? Could it be the claim that PP does life-saving breast screenings?

Certainly, Senator Barbara Boxer has been quite vocal about PP’s “mammograms”, as reported here.

In truth, PP does NOT perform mammograms. When one hears the term, “breast screening” or “breast cancer screening”, one tends to envision a mammogram. Instead, PP’s screening is a palpation of the breast, checking for detectable lumps. So, yes, if a lump is detected, and if the lump is cancerous, that could be lifesaving. But if no lump is detected? Is the woman given a referral for a mammogram?

It is the mammogram that is essential.

A woman’s best chances at beating her cancer are when the cancer is found through mammography before it is large enough to be palpated, or found through mammography in women whose breast density make it difficult to detect by palpation. By funding PP, Komen funded the abortions that lead to increased risk of breast cancer, the distribution of oral contraceptives which are well known to cause breast cancer, and the lie that women were receiving mammograms.

In an era where less than 10% of research grants are receiving federal money, there is no dearth of scientists in desperate need of funding for legitimate research purposes. One can barely walk the corridors of a university without bumping into them, so Komen should have no difficulty at all in finding and funding worthy Ph.D.’s and M.D.’s who simply cannot access the ever-dwindling supply of federal research dollars.

As far as funding prevention efforts, the neglect of the Dolle and Brinton study, or the many other papers showing oral contraception’s role in breast cancer is tantamount to a crime.

Komen is to be applauded for getting out of the leper colony and breaking its funding ties with one of the largest purveyors of death on the planet. The great work of antisepsis begun by Eve Silver and Dorinda Bordlee that was picked up and furthered by thousands will help Komen more fully achieve Nancy Brinker’s deathbed promise to her sister to do all she could to find a cure. Now that Komen is out of funding causality and lies, they may see a more robust financial future, which we all pray may help speed the end of this scourge which afflicts so many of our wives, mothers, sisters, friends, and other loved ones.

As for Planned Parenthood the mask has been ripped away, in no small measure by Lila Rose and her associates, revealing the true face of the leprosy lurking under the guise of women’s healthcare.

Reference:

Risk Factors for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer in Women
Under the Age of 45 Years

Jessica M. Dolle,1 Janet R. Daling,1 Emily White,1,3 Louise A. Brinton,4 David R. Doody,1
Peggy L. Porter,2 and Kathleen E. Malone1,3
Divisions of 1Public Health Sciences and 2Human Biology, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; 3Department of Epidemiology, University of
Washington, Seattle, Washington; and 4Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Rockville, Maryland

Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2009;18(4). April 2009

Hot on the heels of our medical conference last Saturday, Therapeutic Advances in Poor Prenatal Diagnoses, comes this letter from Archbishop Chaput to the people of his archdiocese. Opposition to this new eugenics is swelling all over the nation. Here is a bishop who makes me proud of my Church.

Earlier this week local media covered the story of Amelia Rivera, a young girl with Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome reportedly denied a kidney transplant by a local hospital. Amelia’s syndrome results in serious developmental delays, and according to her parents, the hospital declined a transplant due to her diminished mental ability and shortened lifespan.

It’s unwise to assume that news media get all the details of a story like this right, or that the motives of an entire hospital’s leadership and staff are as unfeeling as an individual doctor might seem. Nonetheless, a couple of things are worth noting. First, Amelia’s parents are persons who love their daughter zealously for who she is, and who know the beauty and dignity of her life despite her disability. Second, the habit of treating genetically disabled children as somehow less worthy of life is growing across the country.

A number of my friends have children with disabilities. Their problems range from cerebral palsy to Turner’s syndrome to Trisomy 18, which is extremely serious. Prenatal testing can now detect a high percentage of pregnancies with a risk of genetic problems.

The tests often aren’t conclusive. But they’re pretty good. And the results of those tests are brutally practical. Studies show that more than 80 percent of unborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome, for example, now get terminated in the womb. They’re killed because of a flaw in one of their chromosomes – a flaw that’s neither fatal nor contagious, but merely undesirable.

The older a woman gets, the higher her risk of bearing a child with special needs. And so, in medical offices around the country, pregnant women now hear from doctors or genetic counselors that their baby has “an increased likelihood” of a genetic flaw based on one or more prenatal tests. Some doctors deliver this information with sensitivity and great support for the woman. But, as my friends know from experience, too many others seem more concerned about avoiding lawsuits, or managing costs, or even, in a few ugly cases, cleaning up the gene pool.

In practice, medical professionals can now steer an expectant mother toward abortion simply by hinting at a list of the child’s possible defects. And the most debased thing about that kind of pressure is that doctors know better than anyone else how vulnerable a woman can be in hearing potentially tragic news about her unborn baby.

I’m not suggesting that doctors should hold back vital knowledge from parents. Nor should they paint an implausibly upbeat picture of life with a child who has a disability. Facts and resources are crucial in helping adult persons prepare themselves for difficult challenges. But doctors, genetic counselors and medical school professors should have on staff – or at least on speed dial – experts of a different sort.

Parents of children with special needs, special education teachers and therapists, and pediatricians who have treated children with disabilities often have a hugely life-affirming perspective.

Unlike prenatal caregivers, these professionals have direct knowledge of persons with special needs. They know their potential. They’ve seen their accomplishments. They can testify to the benefits – often miraculous – of parental love and faith.

Expectant parents deserve to know that a child with special needs can love, laugh, learn, work, feel hope and excitement, make friends and create joy for others. These things are beautiful precisely because they transcend what we expect. They witness to the truth that every child with special needs has a value that matters eternally.

Raising a child with special needs can be demanding. It always involves some degree of suffering. Parents grow up very fast. None of my friends who has a daughter or son with a serious disability is melodramatic, or self-conscious, or even especially pious about it. They speak about their special child with an unsentimental realism.

It’s a realism flowing out of love – real love, the kind that forces its way through fear and suffering to a decision, finally, to surround the child with their heart and trust in the goodness of God. And that decision to trust, of course, demands not just real love, but also real courage.

The real choice in accepting or rejecting a child with special needs is never between some imaginary perfection or imperfection. None of us is perfect. No child is perfect. The real choice in accepting or rejecting a child with special needs is between love and unlove; between courage and cowardice; between trust and fear.

That’s the choice we face when it happens in our personal experience. And that’s the choice we face as a society in deciding which human lives we will treat as valuable, and which we will not.

This Sunday, January 22, marks the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legitimized permissive abortion around the country. More than 45 million abortions later, the damage of that decision continues to grow — undermining our reverence for the life not just of unborn children but of the mentally and physically disabled as well.

We need to understand that if some lives are regarded as unworthy, respect for all life is at risk. We should pray that Amelia Rivera gets the help she needs, and that God surrounds her parents with the support they need.

And especially this week, more than ever, we should recommit ourselves to defending the dignity of all human life, no matter how “flawed” it may seem in the eyes of the world.

File this one under, “Thinking Out Loud.”

As years go 2011 has by all measures been a deeply challenging year for me. In the tragedy department, this year has been one that makes the law of averages work, making up for the many years of relatively smooth sailing. A recap and an analysis seem to be in order.

I’ve been to the funerals of five close friends this year; buried my Godmother and last surviving maternal aunt; traveled the road with my sixteen year-old niece who was left paralyzed from the waist down after a devastating accident in September; buried Kortney Blythe Gordon, her baby Sophy, and Jon Scharfenberger after the horrific accident that claimed their lives in October; two weeks later buried my brother-in-law, Joe Calo, who leaves behind fifteen and seventeen year-old daughters; and currently have my best friend, Father Steven Clark, recuperating from open heart surgery three weeks ago.

It’s been one year I hope never to repeat. Some might be tempted to curse God, or at least to question where He was when faced with this kind of year, and there are many who have faced a similar year, and many who have faced worse. The answer is not to curse God when we experience loss, but to redouble our praise and thanksgiving. That seems counterintuitive.

Great loss points to great blessing, which points to the loving providence of God. None of the great people in my life has been my doing, but God’s. They are like the threads of a tapestry which intersect my life for a time (some for a very long time) and then end. What the final image will look like is only God’s to know, but as I look at the many beautiful people who are no longer with us, I come to appreciate more and more God’s admonition that His grace is sufficient for me.

I think of the Apostles on the mount during the Transfiguration, how they never wanted to leave that place, that vision, that beauty. The Transfiguration was meant to be instrumental and not aesthetic. It was a foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven for the Apostles who would all (save one) be martyred as they brought the Gospel to the lost.

The beauty of our loved ones produces transfigurations in our own lives, and like the Apostles we can get fixed on the beauty of the moment and lose sight of the instrumentality that such beauty is meant to have in our lives.

We never want it to end. Given a choice between the foretaste of Heaven or the ultimate reality, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’d like to settle for the bird in the hand. It’s all that I’ve ever known. I suspect that God understands that pretty well. So, faced with the loss of such great beauty I reflexively thank God for blessing me with such beautiful family and friends, for all of the good in me that has come from their influence.

On the brighter side, my niece continues to slowly regain sensation and some movement in her legs. If Father Clark has had a rough surgery, I can’t escape the fact that when the surgeons went in, they found that he had huge blood clots in BOTH atria of his heart, and his continued presence is attributable to God alone.

I look at how Joseph is growing beautifully in Boy Scouts, how his social skills are growing there at an accelerated pace, how he is forming good bonds with other men who are excellent mentors and role models.

I look at the avalanche of trophies and awards all three of my children have earned in competitive bowling, how they are all developing as dancers.

Most of all for the children, they are growing in their faith, in their scholastics, and in their love for one another and their family.

And then there is Regina’s love.

Looking at the events of a year is ultimately a misleading exercise, as a year is nothing more than one revolution of our planet around a star. The focus needs to be on our lifetime, and the impact of God’s blessings over the course of that lifetime’s continuum.

When I do that, the sorrow of loss gives way to a whole new transfiguration.

To say that it’s been quite a year would be an understatement. Looking back over the year, I’ve looked at Coming Home’s statistics to see what the top ten blog posts were in terms of traffic. Almost all were articles dealing with priest’s travails: Father Corapi and Father Pavone. Rather than leaving it at that, I’ll compress the posts on each priest and report the most viewed one for each so that we may look at what else has grabbed people’s attention. We’ll start with #1.

#! Prayers for Jon Scarfenberger. I’m still completely at a loss for words at the magnitude of this tragedy and the impact it has had on me. Let’s all continue to lift the Scarfenberger, Blythe and Gordon families in prayer.

#2 Freeing Father Pavone!

#3 Susan G. Komen Gives Million$ to Planned Parenthood.

#4 Father Corapi and March Madness

#5 Pepsi, Aborted Babies, Ethics, and Tasteful Research

#6 Pro-abort’s Lies Written by my ten year-old daughter, Elizabeth; it’s the eigth highest all time on the blog. (Proud Papa smiling!)

#7 Pro-Life Academy. Biology: Cells (III) This is surprising, as it’s an article written in January 2010 when the blog was three weeks old. Who says pro-lifers aren’t science-oriented!!

#8 Exorcists Shutting an Abortion Mill

#9 Pope Benedict XVI: Love & Truth

#10 Post-Abortion Agony

Topically, that represents a nice distribution of science, human pathos, ministry, healing, and theology. In short, it captures the breadth and complexity of who we are and what we do.

I have no idea what lies in store in 2012. I only know that I am so very blessed to be walking the road with everyone here at Coming Home. My prayers for a healthy and prosperous New Year for all.

God Bless.

It was two years ago today that I began this undertaking with great trepidation and an even greater assurance that nobody would ever discover the blog.

Jill Stanek, who knew better, along with her moderators Bethany and Carla really encouraged me to step out of the boat. Jill gave Coming Home a beautiful write-up two weeks later on Christmas Eve, and the rest has been the Holy Spirit of God.

In the past two years, this blog has covered a great deal of ground. 633 Posts and 370,000 hits later, I feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface.

Many on the other side have criticized the tag line:

“Science in Service of the Pro-Life Movement.”

I think that line is misunderstood, and I’d like to clear that up. I’m not distorting science in order to service the pro-life movement. It’s quite the opposite.

After 40 years of abortion, after 50 years of the sexual revolution, the casualties can no longer be swept under the rug with the rhetorical broom of the Culture of Death. The pile of human debris has turned into a mountain, and every shred of credible science shows as much.

Science done properly and well serves the truth, and the truth consistently emerging from credible science serves the pro-life argument.

Science validating the truth of life, the truth of God’s creation. That leads to the second great criticism of this blog:

The blending of science and religion, especially Catholicism, is seen as discrediting the science.

Nothing could be further from the truth!

Living an integrated life, in part, means taking truth from science and applying that truth to the contentions of faith and vice-versa, and looking for the areas of agreement. Science is increasingly demonstrating the benefits of a life lived according to God’s wise design. That’s why I get hammered. The Culture of Death is terrified by that prospect.

And of course, I would be having a conversation with myself, but for all of the good people who have stopped, read, contemplated, responded, encouraged and challenged me, and spread the word about what Coming Home has been bringing to light:

The wondrous nature of God’s creation, and the consequences of disregarding the revealed plan for that creation.

My heartfelt thanks and prayers to all who have spent their time here and who have spread the good news that the systematic study of God’s creation has validated his wise design for that creation.

I have never asked for money to help sustain me and my family, considering the time this blog consumes, and I never will.

God has sustained us, and He always will.

For all who responded to my request for the money and prayers we needed to bury Kortney, Sophie and Jon in October, my eternal gratitude. The outpouring of love and support were a healing balm for Ben Gordon, the Scharfenberger family, and the family at Students for Life. This was the pro-life family in our finest hour.

God Bless you all, and please be assured of my ongoing prayers for all as we soldier on together.

Over a year ago, friend, Catholic blogger and co-founder of KIDS (Keep Infants with Down Syndrome), Leticia Velasquez asked if I would be interested in contributing a chapter to an anthology of stories by parents of special needs children, A Special Mother Is Born. It was a book a couple of years in the making, and I agreed. I thought the title bemusing for a dad as contributor, but Leticia assured me that Senator Rick Santorum had contributed, as had Patrick Coffin. We three would be in the great company of some truly great women.

This book addresses one of the burning issues of our day. With prenatal diagnostics leading to the abortions of the less-than-perfect among us, with parents who are frightened into paralysis by these diagnoses and a medical establishment increasingly surrendering to the cowardice of eugenics, over thirty mothers and three fathers of special needs children have stepped forward to share their journeys.

If one is looking for a feel-good easy read, this book isn’t it. This book tells the story of fear, bewilderment, broken hopes and dreams, and the triumph of love in all of its raw and untamed beauty. It is a window into the human soul, into souls that have been forever transformed by children whose needs call forth what love demands most:

Sacrifice.

For those of us who have known the unspeakable beauty of being loved by another, we know that the love we have experienced has come at a cost to the one who has loved us. They have given us their time, attention; material, spiritual and emotional substance. They have accepted us with our strengths and pursued us in spite of our weaknesses–even because of our weaknesses. They have wrapped us in their love and esteem, and lifted us to heights we never could have attained by our own efforts.

That is the sort of love that flows through this book like a rampaging river, overflowing the banks that would contain it, and flooding the surrounding countryside. It is the sort of love that is desperately sought after in a world desperate for authentic love, and purpose, and meaning.

The stories in this book are the stories a frightened and weary world needs to hear, a world that has bought into the counterfeit culture for so long it mistakes love’s essence–sacrifice–with servility, and fails to see its reciprocity. Here’s a teaser from Chapter 13.

Mary von Schlegell is in her eighties and is the mother of Tony, who has Down Syndrome and is in his forties. Born in the age before the therapies that now advance these children as far as college graduation, the only word Tony has ever spoken is “Mama”. Here is Mary’s poem to her beloved son:

Tony

As you, my child, are the limitation
So are you the sweetest consolation of my life
And imitation of our Lord.

Oh how can we ever fathom
The strange economy of a loving God?
Why does our trust so often fail,
With salvation springing even here along our path?

Mary’s sentiment is shared throughout this book. Our special children have been our salvation. We perfect ourselves as humans to the degree that we empty ourselves for another. The movements of the parents in this book go from joyful anticipation, to shock and despair, to fear, and finally to the triumph of love and our personal salvation.

The children mentioned here span the spectrum of poor prenatal diagnoses and other challenges, from the trisomic conditions, to autism, to tracheoesophageal fistulas, to brain tumors, Type 1 diabetes, epilepsy, and ADHD.

There are the stories of the doctors who along with family and friends brought relentless pressure to abort, and of the resistance by men and women who felt the depths of betrayal, isolation, and abandonment in that relentless pressure.

Through it all, these are the stories of grace and triumph in the face of cynical abandonment and despair. These are the stories that needed to be told, that need to be heard, that need to be shared. These are the stories that medical students need to read and carry with them into their practice of medicine. So vital are these experiences to our physicians in training, that I will see to it that every medical student who wants a copy of this book will have one.

Next year, for the entire year of 2012, Medical Students for Life, in conjunction with the Family Research Council and KIDS will be hosting a series of medical, psychological, and services conferences addressing the many facets of treating patients with poor prenatal diagnoses and their families. We will be educating the medical students, resident physicians, nurses and the public in a series of live webinars and conferences in the treatment, care and therapeutic management of these special children, and how to advance them as far as technology and therapy will permit.

This book is already getting our year off to a jump-start with pre-publication orders and sales skyrocketing. Books may be purchased by clicking here at aspecialmotherisborn.blogspot.com

In this book, Leticia Velasquez has succeeded in tearing away the veil of silence surrounding the mounting eugenic pursuit of perfection in medicine, and in shining the light of truth on the reality that parents not only survive, but thrive as they pour themselves out for their special children. If we are to stop medicine’s slide into soulless oblivion, we must plant our flag on this hill and defend it at all cost.

Leticia Velasquez has done so, commandingly. The stories are so compelling that I could not put this book down and read it in one long sitting.

If there is one book that points the way forward in reclaiming a culture of life, this book is it. It is triumphal, but not at all in the way the world would expect. It needs to be read, and contemplated, and then acted upon. It needs to be shared and its stories celebrated. Most of all, it needs to be a source of strength and hope to other parents who are facing or will face similar diagnoses.

This is a mess. It’s also one of the thorniest questions in vaccination medicine to have surfaced in a long time. From the outset, it must be clear that I am neither endorsing, nor dismissing the question of vaccinating boys. Get a cup of coffee, and let’s kick this one around for a bit.

The issues here are many, so let’s start with some straightforward infectious diseases epidemiology.

Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) is the most prevalent of the sexually transmitted pathogens. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have an excellent fact sheet which is a must-read. Click here.

From a strict infectious diseases perspective, the goal of public health is to certainly limit the pool of pathogen within a population, and to eradicate it if at all possible. This was done successfully with smallpox through a determined and aggressive campaign of world-wide immunization. From a strictly scientific perspective, the same makes sense with HPV. Why not shoot for eradication?

Of course, smallpox and HPV are very different diseases, both in their lethality and in their mode of transmission. The smallpox virus is spread through saliva droplets and remains alive for anywhere between 6-24 hours on contaminated surfaces. Someone might have sneezed into their hand, touched an object in the office such as a phone receiver, and thus facilitated transmission to others touching that object.

HPV requires sexual contact. It is that dimension of personal behavior, of choice, that leads to disease transmission and the current debate.

Certainly, as Cardinal O’Connor used to say, good morality is good medicine. Virginity followed by fidelity in both parties to a marriage obviates the need in that couple for any immunization against STD’s. For the rest of the world, we have an imperfect reality. Let’s consider the parent who does not want their child immunized (and we’ll get to the vaccine safety issues shortly).

Regina and I will stress virtue in our children, and would hope that they remain virgins until marriage. Assuming all goes well, there is no guarantee that their spouses will be virgins, despite assurances given verbally. Therein lies the danger. With well over half of the population infected, the probabilities of even the most virtuous among us encountering HPV are astronomical.

Given that the vaccine is only effective before one is exposed to the virus, the question of when to vaccinate becomes a real concern for parents. Children from the best and most faith-filled families succumb to peer pressure and have sex. Many identify virginity with vaginal intercourse and settle on oral and anal sex as compromise activities that bring about orgasm while ‘preserving’ their virginity, such as they define it.

The problem is that HPV can be spread from the genitals to the mouth and oropharynx, with 35% of all throat cancers being caused by HPV. HPV can also be spread from the mouth to the genitalia.

It’s a mess.

In the strictest sense, vaccinating our children against this pathogen can save a great many women from cervical cancer, males from penile cancer, and both women and men from throat cancer. That’s simply a fact.

The problem comes in with some 68 reported deaths from Gardasil given to girls, and tens of thousands of reported adverse side-effects. Still, when one considers the following ANNUAL numbers from CDC:

Cervical cancer. Each year, about 12,000 women get cervical cancer in the U.S. Almost all of these cancers are HPV-associated.

Other cancers that can be caused by HPV are less common than cervical cancer. Each year in the U.S., there are about:

1,500 women who get HPV-associated vulvar cancer
500 women who get HPV-associated vaginal cancer
400 men who get HPV-associated penile cancer
2,700 women and 1,500 men who get HPV-associated anal cancer
1,500 women and 5,600 men who get HPV-associated oropharyngeal cancers (cancers of the back of throat including base of tongue and tonsils) [Note: Many of these cancers may also be related to tobacco and alcohol use.]

The question arises: What is an acceptable risk in vaccinating?

No vaccine is 100% safe. Ever. Period.

People get sick and people die from vaccines. It’s a numbers game. It’s a cost-benefit analysis. If all of the reported adverse effects of Gardasil are actually true, they still represent a drop in the bucket compared to the numbers of HPV-associated cancers reported above. In the cold calculus of public health, it seems an acceptable risk.

Enter again the behavioral component of disease transmission, and the clarity of acceptable risk immediately becomes foggy. Were smallpox once again in the population, I wouldn’t hesitate to accept these numbers as an acceptable risk, precisely because one cannot see the disease coming.

However, people contract HPV through willful behavior. They will the behavior that carries the risk of transmission. In that light, here is the dilemma faced by Regina and me:

Do we risk our children’s lives and health today in an attempt to hedge our bets on their behavior years down the line, or of their future spouses’ premarital behaviors?

Even if our children remain virgins, there is no guarantee with their future spouses. Do we risk their lives to attenuate a possible case of HPV in a future mate?

If Gardasil is good enough for girls, then it’s good enough for boys.

The question is whether it’s good enough?

I honestly don’t know.

This isn’t how we hoped this novena would conclude. Jon entered his eternal rest yesterday. The need for prayers for the victims continues. Four human beings perished as a result of this accident. Two others face a long road back to health, and countless others have been shattered by the experience. We know that God is always with us and that one day this side of eternity will all pass away.

We conclude our novena grateful for Jon’s ultimate healing, while at the same time bewildered and filled with inexpressible sorrow.

We gather in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

DAY NINE

O glorious Mother of God, to you we raise our hearts and hands to implore your powerful intercession

in obtaining from the benign Heart of Jesus all the graces necessary for our spiritual and temporal welfare, particularly for the grace of a happy death. O Mother of our Divine Lord, as we conclude this novena for the special favor we seek at this time.

We pray that just as Jesus gave to Jon the ultimate healing yesterday, that you would intercede for Jon’s family and friends, that they be given the grace to bear this staggering loss. We pray especially for Jon’s parents and immediate family, and ask your maternal intercession on their behalf.

We feel animated with confidence that your prayers in our behalf will be graciously heard. O Mother of My Lord, through the love you bear to Jesus Christ and for the glory of His Name, hear our prayers and obtain our petitions.

O Brilliant star of purity, Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, glorious in your assumption, triumphant in your coronation, show unto us the mercy of the Mother of God, Virgin Mary, Queen and Mother, be our comfort, hope, strength, and consolation. Amen.

Our Lady of Lourdes , pray for us.

Saint Bernadette, pray for us.

Our other staff member injured in the accident that claimed Kortney and her baby, Sophy, is Jon Scharfenberger.

I’ve been in constant contact throughout the day with our SFLA staff getting updates.

It’s bad, and at 3 AM it turned really bad. It’s gotten worse throughout the day. At this point, we need a miracle for Jon to make it to tomorrow. If it’s God’s will, may Jon stay and grow old with us.

Please pray for this beautiful young man, and for his family who are beside themselves with grief and the hard work of keeping him alive. Jon’s mom is a nurse and at the hospital in Georgia. His dad is a physician and should be arriving there shortly, after coordinating efforts from their home here in New York.

Updates to follow, but for now, please pray!

UPDATE, 10/10/11, 11 PM, EST: Jon has pulled out of the steep decline he was in and has leveled off. That’s a major victory in and of itself. I won’t be posting details, at the request of the family. Each cessation of decline, each small improvement are huge victories. So, tonight will be the battle of maintaining Jon’s condition, and tomorrow will be the battles of maintaining, and improving that condition. We’re on square 1 of a 1,000-square board, with a long way to go, and much prayer and fasting to carry Jon and his family through. Starting at noon on Tuesday and every noon for 9 days, we’ll be praying the Lourdes Novena for healing of Jon and the others. Come and pray with us. Encourage others to do so.

NOVENA for Jon began today. Click Here.

UPDATE, 10/11/11, 1 PM EST: There is a ray of hope in the darkness. Jon’s neurological condition has stopped deteriorating and has held steady through the night and through the morning. From eye movements through his closed eyes, he is showing response to meaningful people in his life. Having lived through the day yesterday, and having no further decline today are very hopeful indicators, though he remains in extremely critical condition. The next 24 hours are crucial. I’m withholding specifics about John at the Family’s request. Please keep up the prayers. We’re praying the Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes every day here at Coming Home. Please join us. I’ll post further developments as I get them. God Bless.

UPDATE, 10/12/11, 12:15 PM EST: Jon has shown significant improvement by almost all parameters of his condition. Again, while I cannot give details, suffice it to say that he is trending in the right direction. His condition remains extremely critical. He pulled out of a steep dive two days ago, and within the last fifteen hours has begun to gain some altitude. Let’s continue to be the wind beneath his wings with constant prayer. The other two victims, whose names are being withheld, continue to progress in their healing.

UPDATE, 10/13/11 10:36 PM EST: Not long after posting yesterday, Jon went into some serious instability yesterday, and according to reports, we almost lost him. Things have once again stabilized. Jon’s condition remains extremely critical, as his stability has not been sustained. This is not at all unusual in an intensive care unit, and while we hope and pray, we may well see more of this see-saw battle in the days to come. Constant prayer for Jon is necessary, as it is for the other victims whose recovery remains on a stable trajectory, but will be long in duration.

UPDATE, 10/17/11, 7:30 AM EST: Late yesterday I received word that the physicians have induced a 72-hour coma in Jon. In the meantime, we wait, and hope, and pray.

UPDATE, 10/17/11, 5:20 PM EST: Jon has spiked a fever of 108 degrees F, which can be lethal. Urgent prayers are needed as this battle has taken a terrible turn for him.

Join in our vigil

10/18/11 It was a valiant struggle, Jon, and a life well lived. Pray for us.

Day 7

“See, my children, if we really wish to be saved, we must determine, once and for all, to labor in earnest for our salvation; our soul is like a garden in which the weeds are ever ready to choke the good plants and flowers that have been sown in it.”- St. Jean Vianney

O Holy Priest of Ars, the infamous attacks of the devil which you had to suffer and the trials which disheartened you by fatigue would not make you give up the sublime task of converting souls. The devil came to you for many years to disturb your short rest but you won because of mortification and prayers.

Powerful protector, you know the temptor’s desire to harm my baptized and believing soul. He would have me sin, by rejecting the Holy Sacraments and the life of virtue. But good Saint of Ars dispel from me the traces of the enemy

O most holy Saint John Vianney, you were a priest who was outstanding in pastoral zeal. May priests today be filled with that zeal, faithful to their calling, refreshed in their labors by the Holy Spirit, supported by their fellow workers and appreciated by those whose lives they touch. Dear Curé of Ars, pray for us, but especially for all priests!

Holy Priest of Ars, I have confidence in your intercession. During this novena, intercede for us that the Evil One not separate the faithful from their bishops, and that Father Pavone and Bishop Zurek be for us a model of charitable forbearance.

Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be.

Today we begin the novena to Saint John Vianney for the intentions of Father Pavone and Bishop Zurek. We begin on the feast of another priest who was recalled for a time, Saint Padre Pio.

Day 1

“We have not deserved to pray – but God, in his goodness, has permitted us to speak with Him.” - St. Jean Vianney, the Cure of Ars

Saint John Marie Baptist Vianney you were born of a deeply religious mother; from her you received the Holy Faith; you learned to love God and to pray. At a young age, you were seen kneeling in the front of the statue of Mary. Your soul was supernaturally carried towards the things on High. Despite the high cost, you answered your vocation! Against many obstacles and contradictions, you had to fight and suffer to become the perfect priest which you were. But your deep spirit of faith supported you in all these battles.
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O most holy Saint John Vianney, you were a priest who was outstanding in pastoral zeal. May priests today be filled with that zeal, faithful to their calling, refreshed in their labors by the Holy Spirit, supported by their fellow workers and appreciated by those whose lives they touch. Dear Curé of Ars, pray for us, but especially for all priests!

Holy Priest of Ars, I have confidence in your intercession. Pray during this novena for the restoration of the father-son relationship between Father Pavone and Bishop Zurek, that strengthened in the priestly regard for one another the faithful may be strengthened in heart.

Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be

Day 2 here.

As the new National Director for Medical Students for Life of America, I have as my first priority the goal of establishing a chapter of MSFLA in every medical school in the United States. Our outgoing coordinator, Dominique Monlezun has gotten us off to a great start by helping to start fifteen chapters last year. With your help, we can double or even triple that number over the next twelve months. Here’s where you come in.

There are plenty of pro-life doctors, nurses and medical students out there, but many may feel isolated and alone. They need us. They need our support. They need to meet other pro-life medical students and physicians.

We need them to know who we are at MSFLA, and that there are a great many like-minded professionals such as themselves, and that there’s strength in numbers. If you know of any pro-life doctors, nurses or medical students, please tell them about us and ask them to contact me at my email address:

gnadal@studentsforlife.org

Other people who might know of medical students and pro-life doctors would be pastors, pre-med students, members of your church, college professors, family members and family friends, classmates, etc.

MSFLA exists to support the needs of pro-life physicians in training, and network them with other like-minded medical professionals. We also have a number of conferences and other events, all aimed at teaching, mentoring and supporting pro-life medical students and resident physicians.

As we all know, the best time for starting a student organization is at the beginning of the school year, which is already underway, so the quicker we can gather the names of pro-life medical students, or the doctors and nurses who may know them, the better we’ll be able to reach out to them and support them.

Looking forward to an avalanche of names!

Today I begin a new endeavor as the National Director of Med Students for Life of America, a division of Students for Life of America.

A few weeks ago, Kristan Hawkins contacted me about taking the helm of this growing organization of medical students across the country. The group has grown considerably under the leadership of Dominique Monlezun, who started his first year at Tulane University’s medical school last month.

There is much work to be done in cultivating a whole new generation of physicians who respect life from conception to natural death. A great many medical schools are hostile toward students who refuse to perform abortions as a routine part of training. The ethics in these schools and the approach to patients and human dignity needs to be addressed by providing students with access to pro-life physicians and ethicists as mentors.

In building on the great foundation already laid by Dominique, I’ll be busy rallying many of the pro-life physician, pharmacist and nursing organizations around our med students. There’s lots in the hopper, and I’ll be blogging about it all as we go along. For now, suffice it to say that Students for Life is a team of incredibly talented and visionary individuals, each one a leader, and I’m proud to be a part of their efforts.

I’m keeping this short because I’m dealing with a very fluid situation with my niece who suffered a bit of a set-back last night. AGAIN, Regina and I are so grateful for all of the prayers for Elise.

God Bless.

Yesterday was a big step forward, and a remarkable one at that. The surgeons removed her chest tube, drainage tubes from her back, arterial line, three IV’s, and sent her straight to a regular floor, skipping the step-down unit. Better still, the rehab doctors came in and ascertained that there is very slight sensation in the area around her left knee, and perceived very slight movement of her right thigh when asked to squeeze her knees together.

They are dim neurological flickers so very soon after two major operations. However, in the dark night of a young girl’s heart such dim flickers shine with a brilliant luminescence.

Elise has a very long way to go, but these developments are by all accounts nothing short of miraculous. I know that God is there with her, and that He will use this event in her life to great good for her. I just hope that in her heart she can begin to see this as well. The generous prayers of so very, very many people have lifted up our niece and sped her progress to date, and I have no doubt that they will carry her through. Regina and I have no words to express the depth of our gratitude for all of the prayers and support from so many. You are all in our prayers this weekend.

Yesterday, Elise posted the following on her FB account:

Everyone on my facebook and on my uncles facebook im so thsnkful for everything. it means the world to me what everyone has been saying. to everyone thats been calling my parents and me i love you all and really hope to see everyone very soon. ♥

Later this week, we’ll begin the journey into rehab. It is a journey that is not only profoundly grueling, it is also profoundly spiritual. Elise starts from a position of great advantage. Jefferson Memorial is one of the finest Neurological hospitals in the world, and their affiliate programs are no less spectacular.

And then there’s the love…