Friday, March 23, 2007

Yesterday, Belgian Archbishop Godfried Danneels visited the Catholic University of Leuven to give a lecture on health care and religion, entitled “Care for the body, care for the mind”. Some 120 people, mainly professors at the University Hospitals, but also clerics and students, attended the conference and following piano recital.

In his introduction speech, Dean of Medicine Bernard Himpens reminded the audience how much the art of medicine had changed since the time of Andreas Vesalius, probably the Faculty’s most famous scientist. The Dean stressed the important role of the Hospital’s Biomedical Ethics Committee, but added that religion continues to be important.

“Some people even believe that good ethics must be carried by faith, and any profound ethics should result in faith,” the Dean noted. He asked the question where the evolution of a merely “passive tolerance for the Christian starting points” would lead the health care system.

In his lecture, the Archbishop acknowledged that the technical aspects of health care were probably the most important to achieve results, but that on the other hand, the medical-technical approach by itself could not guarantee the happiness of the patients.

Wikinews asked Professor Martin Hiele, Chairman of the Commission for Medical Ethics, if he felt there was a need for a lecture on the subject of religion and health care. He replied that

Prof. Bernard Spitz, from the University’s Department of Developmental Biology and head of the Hospital’s Obstetrics Department, told Wikinews that

The lecture was organised by the DeGroof Bank and the Faculty of Medicine. It is the first of three lectures on the subject of religion, spirituality and ethics in health care.

Monday, August 4, 2008

Sixteen policemen were killed by unidentified assailants in Kashgar, in the predominantly Muslim Xinjiang region of China. Another sixteen officers were wounded in the attack, in which two attackers drove a lorry into the station. The government of the People’s Republic of China has repeatedly warned of unrest leading up to the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Xinhua News Agency reports that the attackers drove a dump truck into the police officers during the officers’ morning exercise at about 8:00 am local time (0:00 GMT), then threw grenades into the police barracks and attacked with knives. The BBC reports that fourteen of the police deaths occurred at the scene, with two more dying en route to hospital. They also report one of the alleged attackers received a leg injury. The attackers were arrested, according to police.

After they were arrested by the police, the assailants were described as being 28 and 33, and of the Uyghur minority, a Turkish speaking people who reside primarily in the Xinjiang region. The police found an additional 10 explosives in the truck as well as what was described as a “home-made gun.”

The autonomous Xinjiang region of China is a large, sparsely-populated territory in the north-west of the country. The population includes many groups, but the largest is the Turkic peoples including the largely Muslim Uyghurs. Kashgar is an oasis city at an important junction of trade routes, near China’s western borders, and was a part of the historic “Silk Road.”

Saturday, September 3, 2016

On Wednesday, English football club Manchester City F.C. announced that they had loaned their goalkeeper Joe Hart to Italian club Torino F.C. till the season end.

Hart joined City from Shrewsbury Town F.C. in 2006. Since then, he has won four Premier League Golden Gloves for keeping most clean sheets in a season, which is a League record. In a decade at the Etihad Stadium, Hart has won two Premier League trophies, two Football League Cups and one FA Cup.

Hart debuted for England at the age of 21, and has represented the country at UEFA Euro 2012 and 2016 and FIFA World Cup 2014.

Signing the contract, Hart said, “I am very excited to compare myself in an important and beautiful League such as Serie A.”^{((it))Italian language: Sono molto felice di potermi confrontare in un campionato bello e difficile come la Serie A.}

Goalkeeper Joe Hart’s move away from Manchester City came about a week after Pep Guardiola signed Chilean goalkeeper Claudio Bravo from FC Barcelona.

A compilation of brief news reports for Tuesday, January 13, 2009.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Fears of contaminated bone and skin grafts are being felt by unsuspecting patients following the revelation that funeral homes may have been looting corpses.

Janet Evans of Marion Ohio was told by her surgeon, “The bone grafts you got might have been contaminated”. She reacted with shock, “I was flabbergasted because I didn’t even know what he was talking about. I didn’t know I got a bone graft until I got this call. I just thought they put in screws and rods.”

The body of Alistair Cooke, the former host of “Masterpiece Theatre,” was supposedly looted along with more than 1,000 others, according to two law enforcement officials close to the case. The tissue taken was typically skin, bone and tendon, which was then sold for use in procedures such as dental implants and hip replacements. According to authorities, millions of dollars were made by selling the body parts to companies for use in operations done at hospitals and clinics in the United States and Canada.

A New Jersey company, Biomedical Tissue Services, has reportedly been taking body parts from funeral homes across Brooklyn, New York. According to ABC News, they set up rooms like a “surgical suite.” After they took the bones, they replaced them with PVC pipe. This was purportedly done by stealth, without approval of the deceased person or the next of kin. 1,077 bodies were involved, say prosecuters.

Investagators say a former dentist, Michael Mastromarino, is behind the operation. Biomedical was considered one of the “hottest procurement companies in the country,” raking in close to $5 million. Eventually, people became worried: “Can the donors be trusted?” A tissue processing company called LifeCell answered no, and issued a recall on all their tissue.

Cooke’s daughter, Susan Cooke Kittredge, said, “To know his bones were sold was one thing, but to see him standing truncated before me is another entirely.” Now thousands of people around the country are receiving letters warning that they should be tested for infectious diseases like HIV or hepatitis. On February 23, the Brooklyn District Attorney indicted Mastromarino and three others. They are charged with 122 felony counts, including forgery and bodysnatching.

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

A car accident involving the car occupants and a dentist’s office happened on Sunday night in Santa Ana, California. A white Nissan sedan which was apparently driving too fast hit the raised concrete median on the road, after which it was launched into the air, slamming straight into the wall of the second floor of a two-story dental practice building, where the car got wedged.

According to the police, the car approached from a side street. The room of the dental office penetrated by the sedan was used as a storage space. A fire department crane was used to extract the vehicle from the building, which took several hours.

There were two people in the sedan. One of them managed to escape from the hanging vehicle on his own, while the other one remained trapped inside it for over an hour. They were both hospitalized with minor injuries, according to the Orange County Fire Authority (OCFA). According to the police, the driver of the car admitted narcotics use, and after toxicology tests the case is to be submitted to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.

The moment of the accident was captured by surveillance video from a bus which the car narrowly missed when becoming airborne.

According to OCFA spokesperson Captain Stephen Horner, there was a small fire after the crash, which was extinguished quickly.