CNN had an lead article today describing the retraction of the study that started the whole thing. In short, they describe it as an “elaborate fraud.”

Check it out here:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/index.html?hpt=T1

Then go be sure your vaccines are up to date!

Every December of my childhood was heralded by a tin that arrived from my paternal grandmother, stuffed full of the most wonderful, buttery, crumbly, amazingly textured Scottish Shortbread you’ve ever put in your mouth. I’d sneak into the kitchen at odd hours to sneak a peice of the snow-white goodness, which was cut into tiny square morsels, since its richness rivaled that of fudge. There was just something about the texture, and the butter…in a large family, it disappeared fast!

Decades later, I inherited the recipe from my grandmother, and began to bake massive amounts of it myself each December. I was still a sleep-deprived medicine resident when I began—resurrecting the tradition and mailing tins of the concoction to each of my siblings and extended family, then packing little boxes of it to gift to friends in town. I realized after that first December baking marathon that I’d need to package the stuff immediately to prevent consuming large quantities of it myself. In fact, I hold these cookies to be largely responsible for the “residency twenty” (much more difficult to deal with than the undergrad “freshman fifteen”)

The original recipe is something of a family secret, so I can’t share it. But this little variation I’ve developed is distinct enough from the original to share. The rice flour lends a unique crumbly texture, and the canola oil helps to lighten the cookie. Enjoy!

1/2c softened unsalted butter

2/3c (4oz) canola oil

2/3c +1T (4oz) sugar

2/3c (4oz) rice flour

2 c (6oz) flour

1/4 c maple syrup

1/4 c walnuts, chopped

1. Preheat oven to 325 F
2. Cream butter and sugar in mixing bowl, then add canola oil and maple syrup.
3. Add the rice flour to bowl and mix. Once well-blended, slowly add all-purpose flour in small amounts until just combined, scraping down sides as needed. Dough will be crumbly but stick together when squeezed. Add walnuts and mix.
4. Form into a large rectangle, about 1/2 inch thick, on a wax-paper lined cookie sheet.
5.  Bake on top shelf of 325F oven until edges are light golden brown, about 15-20 minutes.
6. Cut while still warm into little squares about 1 inch wide.

Cut along scored lines once slightly cooled.

Edie at one of my favorite blogs “Life in Grace” is hosting the  Christmas Cookie Exchange, 2010. I love cookies, and a whole bunch of tried and true recipes is so exciting. Go check it out! Thanks for hosting Edie!!

Turns out that my friendly crockpot has more to offer than soups, stews, and sunday dinners!

The nice thing about cooking granola in the crockpot is that its a lot harder to burn, and it makes the house smell fantastic.

I’ve developed this base recipe to which you can add whatever you want. The base has no trans fat, is low in sugar, and is loaded with whole grain goodness and nutty protein.

Base Recipe:

5 cups rolled oats

1 cup nuts (I like slivered almonds in mine)

1/4 cup canola oil

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/8 cup cinnamon (or more if your taste buds desire)

Throw it all in the crockpot and cook on low for a few hours, maybe 3 or 4. It’ll start to toast up. Try to stir every 30 min to an hour. I like to set the oven alarm to remind me. The almonds are the only part that might be prone to burning, so sometimes I wait to add them until an hour before the end. The granola crisps up a lot after as it cools, so don’t try to cook it until it’s crunchy. Just let it go a few hours and then let it cool. It’ll keep for at least two weeks in a sealed container. But it probably won’t last that long! If you like raisens, add a cup or so after it’s done cooking. Dried fruit might shorten the shelf life, however, so you might want to add it into your bowl right before eating.

Variations: other nuts, other dried fruits, shredded coconut, wheat germ, flax seed, chia seed, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, etc. For the fruity moist stuff, add it at the the end. For the nuts and seeds, add them earlier on.

We love to eat our granola in parfait form: I use plain Fage Greek Yogurt sweetened with my homemade fruit jellies, or honey. Yumm!

CMA Physicians: Without Strong Conscience Protections, Bill Imperils Poor Patients

Washington, DC, March 22, 2010–The nation’s largest association of faith-based physicians, the 17,000-member Christian Medical Association (CMA), today lamented the passage of a sweeping healthcare overhaul bill that lacks strong conscience protections, saying the gap could lead to a crisis of health care for poor patients.

“Millions of poor patients and those in medically underserved areas currently depend on care from faith-based hospitals, clinics and physicians who follow life-affirming ethical standards such as those found in the Hippocratic oath and the Judeo-Christian Scriptures,” noted CMA CEO Dr. David Stevens.

“National polling reveals that 95 percent of faith-based physicians say they will be forced to leave medicine without conscience protections. Since the bill passed by Congress does not include strong conscience protections, it opens the door to an increase in discrimination against physicians, hospitals and clinics that decline to participate in abortion and other morally controversial procedures.”

While several longstanding federal laws passed on a bipartisan basis over the past 35 years have offered strong conscience protections, President Obama has announced plans to rescind the only federal regulation that implements those laws. The Senate bill passed by the House on Sunday does not prohibit discrimination by the government or healthcare facilities against healthcare professionals who attempt to follow their conscience on abortion and other morally controversial procedures. The Senate had declined to pass a strong conscience-protecting amendment offered by one of its two physicians, Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn.

Dr. Stevens added, “The last-minute deal for an Executive Order relating to abortion and conscience—the deal that changed the ‘No’ votes of pro-life Democrats to ‘Yes’–was like trading a birthright for a mess of pottage. The executive order, which added no additional conscience protections whatsoever, can be changed tomorrow by this President, or later by any subsequent President, with the stroke of a pen. The healthcare bill, meanwhile, becomes permanent law.”

CMA summarized its position on other aspects of the healthcare bill, including government funding of abortion, in a recent letter to Congress. CMA also coordinates the Freedom2Care coalition of 50 organizations supporting conscience rights in health care.

Um, yeah. I was kinda kidding about the global warming.

This past weekend saw the heaviest snowfall Charleston had seen since the winter after Hugo hit in 1989.

We awoke this morning to over 2 inches of snow in a thick carpet on everything we could see outside. Happily we were up early before any of the neighbors and saw our yard in pristine form. We’d enjoyed a fire last night while it fell, venturing to the front porch sporadically as it accumulated. It was almost beyond belief to see it here, in Charleston of all places! We woke our daughter early (7:15! –yes that’s early for her, thanks babywise) for a good play in the yard. She was in shock at the site of the stuff. We constructed a petite snowman complete with carrot nose and raisened eyes and buttons, and then we loaded up into the car, eager to see the city under the white powder.  Through an incredibly icy west ashley we slowly rolled in the tahoe, with a camera out the window at every landmark, crossing the bridges with care. It was barely 8am by this time, and we made it to the pennisula before much melting began.  To to see Charleston’s high battery in snowy splendor is a rare treasure. We took a zillion photos all over downtown: the benches and famous pinapple fountain at waterfront park, a fluffy white Rainbow Row, famous iron gates across the city gilded in snow, windowboxes heavy with it. We peeked into countless of our favorite walled gardens, lingering on Legare Street, glimpsing hedges and ornate sculptures covered in snow. After downtown began to drip, we jumped back into the tahoo and slowly made our way over the Cooper river on the icy bridge. The temp was 10 degrees colder on the other side, as the penisula is always the warmest spot in town. We got coffee and warm chick-fil-a biscuits (the place was packed) and arrived at IOP (Isle of Palms for those of you non-locals) to find it was a winter wonderland too. Snowy beaches! Very weird.

Our back yard, complete with snowy palmetto:

What city is this?

The harbor on the Ashley:

Our favorite bench at Waterfront Park:

More photos from the harbor on the Ashley:

The Pinapple Fountain at Waterfront:

Charleston’s Battery:

A Charleston Garden entrance

This kid doesn’t look like he likes the snow; he’s used to his Charleston garden being sunny:

The snowy marsh:

A snowy dune on Isle of Palms:

In our climate of increasingly complex biotechnology, there are a lot of boundaries being pushed. There are more Christians in recent years who don’t have a problem with embryonic stem cell therapy “if it helps someone.” Maybe it doesn’t occur to them that one of the first “life-saving” therapies created with a dead fetus is a skin cream? No, I’m not making that up, though I wish I were. It’s called Neocutis.

Is this really the “nobel cause” for which our culture is turing human life into a commodity? FEWER WRINKLES?? Frankly it makes my stomach turn just writing this. They’ve tried to reassure the public in numerous ways that fall flat. Things to the effect of: “But we only used ONE terminated fetus!” “But it started out for burn victims and then we found out it helps WRINKLES!” Oh, and don’t get me started on how much money they are making off the life they turned into a commodity–this stuff is pricy.

I’ll take crow’s feet any day, thank you very much.

More and more people, even in the church, are pursuing ethically problematic means of reproduction. By the way, note the difference here between the use of the word “reproduction” (like an assembly line)–the word typically used within the medical community for the range of services including IVF, called “reproductive technologies , and the fading use of the word procreation, which seems to insinuate even within the word that there is something being created.

So many people have frozen their embryos that there are literally hundreds of thousands of what some term “extra” embryos in fertility centers in our country alone. And yes, you can actually adopt them. We offered a free speaker from this life-honoring group to the OB-Gyn student interest group at a local medical school. But apparently talk of “adopting” in the same sentence as the word ”embryo” is much too controversial for them. Nevermind that they can train in abortion if they so choose.

When we ponder the incarnation, we realize that from the first moment that Mary was pregnant, she had within her a being that was diven yet human. The tiny cell had two sets of DNA, and even then had the distinct identity of Christ, even causing his cousin to jump when they “met” in utero. It is our creation Imageo Dei , and the act of the incarnation of Christ in our flesh that endowed on our human race sanctity. But he did not suddenly inhabit a baby at birth–he was incarnate in the conception, in the earliest stages of developement, before even that fertilized egg divided into two cells. He bestowed even the earliest stage of humanity with dignity.

Probably my favorite Bioethics book currently is Bioethics: A Primer for Christians by Gilbert Meilaender. In one of the early chapters, he has a lot to say about Bioethics in general, and how a Christian should think about these complex issues.

The never-ending project of human self-creation runs up against the limit that is God. It will always be hard to state in advance the precise boundaries that ought to limit our freedom, but we must be prepared to look for them. We must be prepared to acknowledge that there may be suffering we are free to end but ought not, that there are children who might be produced through artificial means but ought not, that there is valuable knowledge that might be gained through use of unconsenting research subjects but ought not.                                                                                                   -page 5

I agree with him in the fact that is is not acceptable for us to blindly oppose the forward progress of medicine. Rather, we should fight disease with all of our minds’ might, following Christ’s charge to “heal the sick” (Matt 10:8).  Yet we must acknowledge God has a sovereign purpose in suffering that we cannot understand any better than Job. There are lines we ought not cross in the relief of human suffering, specifically, lines that involve the wronging of human life. As Meileander concludes his Primer he writes:

This need not and should not mean a rejection of the penultimate healing that scientific and clinical medicine offer us. The best physicians know, however, that their art at its highest must cooperate with powers beyond their own. We should give them our respect and our gratitude, but not our devotion–and they, of course, should seek no more. Instead we place our ultimate hopes for Health and Wholeness in the God who himself has been broken by death–and who nevertheless lives.             -page 124

A couple of years ago, my husband gave me a tagine for Christmas. We had a number of medical friends who had just spent time in Northern Africa treating the ill and loving the lost (and ended up immunizing sheep as well!). Between my husband’s hospital requirements and my pregnancy, neither of us were able to join them that particular year, but the stories they brought back inspired prayer for the few Christians that do live and labor there.

One story our friends told was described by one of the missionaries who live in the region. He and his wife had come to North Africa to spread the Good News of the gospel of Christ. But their first weeks and months were frought with struggle, pain, and discouragement. She had fallen and been seriously injured, and the challenges to building relationships, not to mention sharing Christ, had seemed almost impossible. One day, a local villager they had been able to befriend wanted to show the missionary his garden. Intrigued by the possibility of anything green growing in the rocky, barren and dry landscape, the missionary followed him. Assured the spot was not far away, the villager led him several miles before they finally stopped at the villager’s home. He waved his arm to indicate the hill behind his home and proudly indicated that the hillside was his garden. The missionary looked, and saw that the dusty hillside had been carefully cleared of every rock. The ground had been broken up and plowed, the hostile soil carefully furrowed. But not a single spot of green or color broke the expanse of dry ground. He could see nothing growing. He turned to the villager, confused. 

“But is it dry, and nothing is growing.”

The villager looked at him with confidence, “Yes, right now it is dry. But one day, perhaps it will rain. When it does, my garden is ready.”

The missionary returned home stunned by the blind faith of preparing a garden in what could only be currently described as a desert, and in a moment of clarity saw the allegory the villager had painted, unknowingly, to the missionary. He and his wife were preparing a garden in the desert as well, and finding the soil to be rocky, dry and unwelcoming did not mean that the rain would never come. 

Those missionaries and many others labor in dark places to till the soil, remove the rocks, and plant the seeds, as they wait and hope for the rain to come, for Hope to spring forth from the barren ground. They covet our prayers.

My little family has “international night” every couple of weeks or so, when I prepare the food of a particular part of the world, we pray for the people there, missionaries we know and those lost in darkness, and try to educate ourselves a little more about what that country is like. As our daughter grows older we hope to cultivate a love for the nations through exercises like this.

This past weekend I cooked Moroccan, and even had plenty to share with friends. Of all the Moroccan tagines I’ve cooked, I think this time I uncovered my favorite combination of spices and ingredients. Moroccan cuisine is known for the sweet taste of fruit and the savory warm spices. It’s not a hot type of spicy, so if you are aren’t into your mouth being on fire don’t worry, just keep the cayenne pepper to a minimum.  If you don’t have a tagine, the traditional moroccan oven of choice, you could easily cook this in a covered non-stick pot on the stovetop. I’ve also heard of people using slow-cookers for moroccan dishes.

This recipe is an absolute MUST to try. It is sweet, savory, and quite healthy. It is perhaps my new FAVORITE dish to make. If you don’t own some of these spices, they are worth the investment, since you’ll make this dish over and over again! Everyone loved it, including my 15 month old!

Moroccan Tagine

1. Heat the olive oil over medium high heat in a large non-sticking pot (or tagine base). Brown the garlic, chicken, and onion, until the onion is soften and the chicken browned on all sides, about 10 minutes

2. Once the onion is soft and the chicken browned, add the butternut squash, garbanzo beans, tomatoes and juice, broth, lemon juice, and apricots. Add the rest of the spices listed above, and mix well.

3. Allow the mixture to come to a boil, then adjust the heat to a low simmer. Cover and allow to cook slowly until the vegetables are soft and the chiken done. This will take around 30 minutes.

You can serve this by dishing it over some plain cooked couscous, or just rice. In Morocco, people eat this sort of thing with their bare hands, but you can use a fork and spoon. To complete the Moroccan theme enjoy some mint tea after dinner. To learn more about Morroco and other coutries at your own family’s “international night,” Operation World has a great website with details to help you pray for each country. Just click on the continent and choose the country.

This summary is from Physcian’s First Watch , a medical journal news service to which I subscribe.

The study, conducted in mice, appears online in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Researchers exposed normal mice and AD-transgenic mice to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) for 2 hours each day, for 7 to 9 months, at frequencies equivalent to typical cell phone use. When the researchers compared these mice with unexposed mice, they found that EMF exposure protected against cognitive impairment and reversed AD-like neuropathology in transgenic mice, as well as improved cognitive performance in normal mice. 

The authors, who advise caution when applying these findings to humans, propose several potential mechanisms of action, including increased amyloid-beta clearance from the brain and increased cerebral blood flow with EMF exposure.

This January I’ve started a two-year plan to read through the Bible chronologically. Reading it over two years as opposed to one allows for time to stop and dig deeper into passages, and allows time for catch up when I get behind, but still keeps me on track to get through the whole thing. I also love the idea of reading through the Psalms David wrote while reading through the events of his life, and reading the four Gospels accounts in parallel.

I’m excited about the plan. Hopefully I’ll still be when mired deep in Leviticus. I’m glad a friend of mine is doing it at the same time. There are some parts I really hope to delve into, for example, the creation account of Genesis. I had a high school biology teacher who had previously been an atheist and evolutionist. When he became a Christian, as an adult, he decided he needed to understand as much as possible about how God created. He studied the Hebrew text of Genesis and a lot of books about creation, and in the end became a full-fledged-young-earth-six-literal-day creationist. Then he taught every student he had what he’d learned, and how he’d arrived at those conclutions, including the Hebrew word studies. To this day I have not heard a better in depth walk through the creation account, and God used it to keep me firm in my faith as I went through all my training in the evolution-heavy fields of science and medicine. I’ve always meant to sit down and go through it in depth again, compile all my notes, and maybe write it out so other people can glean from it too. It really brought me great joy to see what was there, under the surface I’d previously just skimmed as I’d read the account before.

 Since reading through Genesis is more than anything an opportunity to worship, I’m posting some of my notes here as I go along, in hopes the greatness of God boggles your minds as it does mine. So, with no further ado, here are my little thoughts (and questions) on the great events described in the first three verses of Genesis.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.” -Genesis 1:1-3

“In the beginning…”

The account starts with “In the beginning,” which is a reference to the concept of time. Did God have any need for time before creation? Isn’t it possible that the very concept of time itself, the very measurement of moments, days, and nights did not happen before this first event of creation? We note the creation account later repeatedly states “and there was morning and there was evening” and then in verse fourteen, God places lights in the heavens “…for seasons and for days and years,” in other words, to chart the passage of time, among other things. Perhaps the finite mind of man is limited to the extent that we NEED time, and God knew it, so he started the Clock of Time here in Genesis, not for Him, but for us. God cannot be limited by the confines of time. He’s simply too magnificent.

“…God…”

The word used for God here and throughout the creation account in Chapter One is the plural form, “אֱלֹהִים” or  El-o-heem. El is the singular form of this noun, Ella means two, but Eloheem is the plural form meaning three or more! Thus, the concept of God as trinity is introduced immediatly. The Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit were all part of the creative act.

“…created…”

When God creates “the heavens and the earth” here in Genesis 1:1, what exactly is the verse describing? Is this some kind of summary of what Moses is about to describe in the creation account over the next few verses, or is this a description of what was created before anything else. A look at the original Hebrew sheds light on this. 

“…the heavens…”

According to Strong’s, the original Hebrew “שָׁמֶה שָׁמַיִם” or, “  shaw-meh’” used here means “… the dual [plural form] of an unused singular; from an unused root meaning to be lofty; the sky (as aloft; the dual perhaps alluding to the visible arch in which the clouds move, as well as to the higher ether where the celestial bodies revolve):—air, X astrologer, heaven (-s).” 

Reading this description of how “shamayim” may be translated introduces the possibility that perhaps, along with creating the concept of time, God also initially needed to create dimensional space. I’m not talking about “outer space.” rather, I mean room for all the other stuff He would create next, so really “inner and outer space”, to be exact. It’s hard to think outside of the constructs through which we commonly view the universe, but consider the possibility that God is not limited by any human dimension. Would He really need physical space to exist? Isn’t He grander even than that? So perhaps this is where He had to start first, to create “the visible arch in which the clouds move, as well as the higher ether where the celestial bodies revolve, air” and beyond that, our universe.

“…the earth.”

Also from Stong’s Concordance. The original Hebrew text translated “the earth” is “אֶרֶץ”, or  eh’-rets,  which is “From an unused root probably meaning to be firm; the earth (at large, or partitively a land):— X common, country, earth, field, ground, land, X nations, way, + wilderness, world” 

Here we note that Strong’s calls this root unusual, and says that it means to “be firm” in its most literal sense. So it sounds like He created the planet earth itself here, but couldn’t this also be when He created matter itself?

“The earth was formless and void…” 

Some argue that beteen Gen 1:1 and Gen 1:2, there was a spiritual war during which Lucifer fell, the “heavens and earth” mentioned in verse 1 were destroyed, and then verse two describes starting God starting over again to rebuild. A look at the original Hebrew used in the passage seems to make that theory (known as the “Gap Theory”) unlikely.

First note that the verb used here is “was” rather than “became”. Here Moses describes what the ”bara” or firmness God created looked like at this point. Looking at the Hebrew, I’m inclined to think about a lump of clay that has yet to be shaped by the sculpter. 

 The word “formless”, or “תֹּהוּ”, or  to’-hoo is, according again to Strong’s, “From an unused root meaning to lie waste; a desolation (of surface), that is, desert; figuratively a worthless thing; adverbially in vain:—confusion, empty place, without form, nothing, (thing of) nought, vain, vanity, waste, wilderness.” Then we read “and void”, which is “בֹּהוּ”, or  bo’-hoo, “From an unused root (meaning to be empty); a vacuity, that is, (superficially) an indistinguishable ruin:—emptiness, void.”

“…and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.”

 What is described during the second part of verse two is very interesting. A picture is painted here, of this dark mass of earth, where the Spirit (literal meaning of this particular word is wind or breath, at some points in Genesis translated “breath of life”) of God moving (literal meaning of this word “רָחַף” or raw-khaf’ , to brood; by implication to be relaxed:—flutter, move, shake.) upon the face of the deep. Moving like a chicken broods over it’s eggs to imbibe warmth. Then He speaks and commands light to appear, and it did. This conjures up memories of my college physics classes, where we discussed the association of movement with energy. That each atom, though we cannot see it, is moving: the negative charge of the electron is repelling the positive charge of the nucleus. And the attraction of the proton and neutron in each nucleus creates an energy so strong that humans have made great efforts to harness it. Light is a form of energy. So here we are in Genesis, at the beginning of time, and reading verse two of chapter one of Genesis, I find myself reading a description of what more than anything else seems to be the creation of energy itself.

“Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.”

Wouldn’t it be only natural that upon creating energy God would manifest it in the form of light, as described in verse three? Also, it’s interesting to me that the sun hasn’t been created yet on this day. From where, or what, is the light emminating? Could it be from God Himself? Reminds me a bit of Revelation 21:23: “…the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illuminated it, and it’s lamp is the Lamb.”

P.S…..As a side note, I am reading and quoting from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition. For my Hebrew word studies I used Strong’s Exhaustive Concordence. Lest you think I have piles of four- to six-inch books open around me as I study, I’ll tell you that while I love the smell and feel of real books more than any computer, I find I’m able to move much more quickly and efficiently with QuickVerse 2010 software, which is absolutely fantastic. For anyone desiring to do quick and easy word studies without buying software or twenty pound volumes, I’d recommend the blue letter bible’s concordance resources.