Transcript: The Briefing 10-24-14

The Briefing

 

October 24, 2014

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

It’s Friday, October 24, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) As Ebola persists in America, important to remember and pray for the many afflicted in Africa

At 10 o’clock yesterday morning Dr. Craig Spencer, a medical doctor who been treating Ebola patients in West Africa, reported in New York City that he feared had developed the symptoms of the Ebola disease. By later that morning he was at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital, a hospital designated by New York authorities for Ebola patients, or potential or suspected patients. By 9 o’clock last night the mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, was facing his city in a public address seeking to calm fears and also to describe, in some detail, how the city of New York was responding to this new crisis.

Dr. Spencer becomes the fourth patient in the United States to develop Ebola and the very first in New York City, but Dr. Spencer’s case also raises several very troubling developments. In the first place, even though he knew he’d been exposed to the disease and had been treating patients with Ebola in West Africa, Dr. Spencer was reported to have gone to a bowling alley in New York City, to have ridden a cab, and also to have ridden on the city subways. That has immediately led to a grave concern of a further risk of the spread of the deadly disease.

Dr. Spencer is certainly to be credited with medical and personal courage for his willingness to go to West Africa to treat Ebola victims, but the fact that he was traveling around New York City, even when he knew he had potentially been exposed to the disease, raises a host of very difficult questions. It also is tied to the fact that another medical doctor – well-known in America – had also violated the terms of a voluntary quarantine, which is raising the question of just how effective any voluntary quarantine can be. And keep in mind that Dr. Spencer is a medical doctor, well aware of the risk of the Ebola virus and exactly how it is transmitted.

The other medical doctor who violated the quarantine was NBC medical editor Nancy Snyderman, also a medical doctor. As David Bauder, the Associated Press reported earlier this week,

“The quarantine against possible Ebola exposure ends this week for Dr. Nancy Snyderman, but the troubles clearly aren’t over for NBC News’ chief medical editor.

An admitted lapse [he writes] in the quarantine, combined with a curiously imprecise explanation, unleashed a furious response.”

Bauder when on to write,

“NBC must now decide whether Snyderman’s credibility is too damaged for her to continue [to report] on Ebola or other medical issues and, if so, for how long.”

Snyderman has spent 17 years as medical correspondent for NBC News first and then at NBC since 2006. She’s been covering Ebola outbreak in west Africa. She also worked with the cameraman who has caught the virus and is being treated for it currently in the state of Nebraska. New Jersey health authorities ruled that her quarantine should be mandatory – that came after the voluntary quarantine was violated – when Snyderman and her crew were spotted getting take-out food from a New Jersey restaurant.

In light of the fact that she violated this voluntary quarantine  – which she should well understand – some medical ethicists and journalistic ethicists are wondering whether she should be fired and also whether her medical license should be revoked. Kelly McBride, an expert on journalism ethics quoted in the Associated Press report said that her arrogance and dismissiveness crates a huge public relations a credibility problem for NBC. She went on to say,

“People are so freaked out about Ebola that the problem NBC has now is that whenever they put her on the air, some news consumers are going to see the woman who put others at risk, rather than the reporter and professional with great experience.”

On the other hand, Susan Dentzer, also a health journalist – she works for National Public Radio and the PBS news hour program – said the people to keep in mind that Snyderman and 13 put themselves at risk covering Ebola virus in Africa. She went on to say,

“She and her team clearly should have observed the terms of their quarantine, and she has said clearly that they made a mistake…But let’s put it in a broader perspective.”

That broader perspective is exactly the difficulty. It’s hard to know exactly what the perspective should be. Americans are being told that they shouldn’t fear – indeed, they shouldn’t enter into a panic over the Ebola crisis. At the same time, the deeply troubling aspect of these two stories is that the quarantines in this case were violated not only by American citizens, but by medical doctors who knew the risk and took the risk, even in light of the fact of their exposure or potential exposure to the disease.

We can certainly hope the Nancy Snyderman and her team are free the virus. But when it comes Dr. Craig Spencer we now know that he has the Ebola disease. Dr. Spencer’s diagnosis in the deep concern it has caused in New York City and beyond came a day after federal health officials said that there were now to be new restrictions on travelers from West African countries. They were to enter into a 21 day watch period, and were also being limited to five United States airports for their entry into the country.

But Americans are deeply troubled and are deeply troubled about the potential for the disease and there also very deeply troubled by the fact that are very advanced medical system seems to be breaking down at some of its most crucial points; at institutions such as the Centers for Disease Control and other federal agencies, and international organizations such as the World Health Organization. They have been very generally faulted for inadequate response, and in the case of the Centers for Disease Control, of a not only disorderly response, but one that actually violated some of its own procedures and policies.

When it comes to these two medical doctors, we now see that the voluntary quarantine doesn’t turn out to be much of a quarantine at all; even when the persons being quarantined are medical professionals indeed, medical doctors who know and understand the risk. Some of the same people who are telling Americans not to panic are now violating the very quarantines that are supposed to be one of the reasons for the absence of that panic. There of course is still no reason for a panic, but there is reason for deep concern. And from a Christian worldview perspective, there is also the deep an urgent understanding that even the most advanced medical society in the world is still dependent upon human beings who are, after all, the medical practitioners. As it turns out our advanced medical science and technology is only as advanced as the human beings who were behind it and the practitioners who put it into action. The outbreak of the Ebola virus shows medical professionals at their very best not only competent, but also unspeakably courageous. But the incidents with these two medical doctors also demonstrates the fact that courage isn’t always translated into right decision-making, especially when it comes to something termed like a voluntary quarantine .

The outbreak of the Ebola virus in the United States still with only a handful of patients –and for that we should be very thankful – has also required a rethinking of some principles of medical ethics. As Lawrence K. Altman of the New York Times reports some medical ethicists, including Dr. Joseph J. Fins are beginning to wonder, and wonder out loud, if the outbreak of the Ebola virus will not require some change in the ethics of general medical practice, especially when it comes to CPR, cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

As Altman reports, there is now the realization that any medical professional offering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation or for that matter, even the chest compressions common to CPR might actually serve to spread the disease. And furthermore at a time when it is extremely unlikely that CPR will be in any way effective or efficacious. This has led Dr. Fins to suggest that this will require some change in the way medical ethics is applied to Ebola patients. And his concern was echoed by Lawrence McCullough, a clinical ethicist at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas who said the Dr. Fins’s argument was “very well-reasoned.”

He went on to say that his argument,

“reminds us that there are justified limits on the risk to health and life that health care professionals are expected to take in the care of patients…Self-sacrifice by health care professionals [he said] that results in no offsetting clinical benefits for the patient…is not required by the professional virtue of self-sacrifice.”

Others, such as ethicist Arthur Caplan often cited in journalistic reports, are not so convinced arguing that even Ebola patients or suspected Ebola patients deserve the full range of care. This is going to be very lively debate and there are deep worldview considerations at stake here, but the very fact that this debate is now taking place in the realm of medical ethics tells us just how serious the issue of Ebola is, and how seriously it is now being taken by a wide range of medical professionals as well as government officials.

But while Americans are understandably concerned about the latest news, the reality is that the vast impact of Ebola is taking place not in Manhattan, certainly not in the United States, but in those nations of West Africa, where the disease is still ravaging people not by the handful, but by the thousands, killing multiple thousands since the outbreak began just several months ago. Love of neighbor requires that we be very mindful and prayerful, deeply, urgently concerned for the people of West Africa who are facing this outbreak without the advanced medical technologies available here in the United States.

I was deeply touched by an article written by Michel du Cille, a photographer for the Washington Post, who wrote about seeing the helpless and hopeless faces of so many children now orphaned because their parents have died of Ebola. He then wrote these very moving words;

“In one of the most emotional encounters I faced in Liberia, I photographed a family that accompanied a sick woman who seemed near death as they sought treatment. She was bleeding from the mouth and her breathing was shallow; she was not ambulatory. As the husband, a sister, a brother and a friend descended from the van, each wore large plastic bags around their hands, feet and bodies, trying to protect themselves from infection with makeshift coverings. They knew it was the only way to get their very ill relative to the Doctors Without Borders Ebola treatment unit…..At one point, [he writes] I approached the woman’s sister, who had secluded herself against a wall away from the others and her sister fading away in the van. Standing at a safe distance, I asked her how long her sibling had been sick; she said about a week… As we tried to converse, neither fully understanding the other’s dialect, our eyes did the talking. To me, her eyes said, “This is the end.” I looked at her and said, “You know she is very, very sick.” She said, “Yes, I know.” As I tried to continue our fruitless conversation, my voice broke and suddenly tears came involuntarily.”

Yesterday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal ran a story by Patrick McGroarty in which he reports of this outbreak of orphans now in the nation of Liberia. He writes,

“Tragically, orphanages are again a growth industry in Liberia.

In the aftermath of civil war in the country between 1989 and 2003, which was broken only by a two-year lull, the government and international organizations worked to resettle many children orphaned by the violence.

With their success…the number of orphanages in the country fell from nearly 120 after the war to just over 80 today.”

After the last war orphans left one facility in 2011, it was transformed into a day care center and a home for a woman with 11 children. Now that woman and the remaining orphanages are preparing to handle the survivors of Ebola’s onslaught. The outbreak of the Ebola virus in the United States is a very significant, indeed a historic challenge to America’s public health system and to America’s medical ethics. But the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa is a dire human emergency that should call out, by love of neighbor, our deepest concern and there we should focus on the fact that Ebola, long-term, may actually reshape nations. May create thousands of orphans and may represent – indeed almost now surely will represent – one of the great humanitarian challenges of our lifetimes.

2) Attacks in Canada expose the myth of inevitable human progress

And this challenge comes as other challenges continue. Many Americans, including baseball fans in Pittsburgh have been singing of Canada in solidarity with our Canadian neighbors to the north. And as the Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote yesterday, what we’re now seeing is the reality that no Western city is safe.

There is also the realization that Canada, along with every other advanced Western nation is facing the realization that Islamic terrorism is not just something that takes place a long way away, or many years in the past, but something that is now looming as an even larger crisis and challenge than it heretofore been understood. As a matter fact, even as Canada’s reeling from two different terror attacks – both of them deadly – and even as there’s the realization for instance, that the soldier killed in the nation’s War Memorial on Wednesday was a man who was a single father leaving behind a five-year-old son, as the editors a Wall Street Journal report, on Tuesday – that’s the day before, indeed, just hours before the deadly shooting in Ottawa – the Canadian government had raised its internal threat level due to what was described as ‘an increase in general chatter from radical Islamist organizations.’

On October 8, just earlier this month, a report in Canada’s National Post said that Canadian security officials were investigating 63 national security cases linked to terrorism involving at least 90 suspects.

And as the editors wrote,

“This follows this month’s arrest of five young Muslim men in London on charges they were plotting “to shoot, to kill, police officers or soldiers on the streets of London.””

They then wrote,

“All of which is a reminder that what was once called the Global War on Terror remains very much global. The war now being half-heartedly waged against ISIS and other jihadist groups is not some faraway struggle, but part of a war also being waged on Western streets.”

The editors concluded,

“Meanwhile, maybe the Secret Service can draw some lessons about what the attacks in Ottawa suggest about the vulnerability of U.S. government buildings, starting with the White House.”

The last sentence is very chilling;

“The terror in Canada is a reminder of the threat the free world still faces, whichever way the tide of war is supposed to be going, and the shared responsibility of facing it down.”

But as other news reports make very clear, facing this challenge down isn’t something that just points to other nations. It points to our nations and to those within our own nations also seeking to join the international jihad.

Yesterday, the New York Times ran an article by Mark Santora, in which he wrote,

“In recent months, more than 100 Canadians have sought out conflicts in foreign lands from Somalia to Syria,”

That according to the Canadian government report. He then wrote,

“The threat was brought home for Canadians first on Monday, when a man who was inspired by Islamic extremists based overseas used his car to run down and kill a soldier in Quebec.”

Then came the deadly shooting Wednesday in Ottawa. The New York Times report then continued,

“The threat of a “lone wolf” attack is a top concern for Western security agencies, including Canada’s.”

Steven Blaney, who is Canada’s Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, back in October issued reported in which he said terrorism remains the leading threat to Canada’s national security. The report also said,

“As of early 2014, the government was aware of more than 130 individuals with Canadian connections who were abroad and who were suspected of terrorism-related activities.”

But the report also made clear that the real danger here in the United States and in Canada from these lone wolf attackers is not out in the global arena, but right here when they come home.

When you add together the challenges of Ebola and the outbreak of global terrorism now increased in the year 2014, we come to realize that the myth of inevitable human progress is just that: it is a myth. The current crises point to the profound fact that evil is still very present among us in the form of a deadly virus and the virus of deadly terrorism.

For Christians these two challenges call out not only the keenest biblical and worldview thinking, but also the deep reservoir and reflex the biblical theology that reminds us at the end of the story, to pray very strategically. To pray very sincerely, even so Lord come quickly.

3) ‘Ratings creep’ in movies reveal a progressing desensitization to sin

Finally, the patterns of seduction and temptation in the modern world came very clearly into view in an article that ran on October 20 in the Washington Post. The title, “The violent ‘Taken’ movies are rated PG-13. Do ratings make sense anymore?” Reporter Cecilia Kang writes about the phenomenon of “ratings creep” – something is been taking place in terms of Hollywood movies for the better part of the last three decades.

But she also writes something that from a Christian perspective should be even more deeply troubling. She cites the fact that the rating system was put in place by the demand of parents largely; parents who wanted some kind of warning system some kind of precautionary policy to keep children, young children and teenagers from seeing movies that are extremely violent, profane, and sexualized. But Kang’s article points to a recent report indicating that parents themselves might well be part of the problem, a big part of the problem now. Because even as it was parents who were demanding the rating system, an increasing number of parents now seem to want movies – even more sexualized, profane, and violent movies – to be accessible to their children, even rather young children.

The vast increase in terms of Hollywood products has been towards the PG-13 category, that now is the vast representation of the majority of Hollywood films. And the PG-13 label was put in place in order to warn parents about movies that were just shy of the R rating. As it turns out now in the economy of Hollywood, an R rating is largely prohibitive in terms of the entry of a lot of young adolescents and children into the movie theater.

But as it turns out now many if not most of the movies in 2014 rated PG-13 would 20 years ago clearly have been rated R. There’s been a creep in terms of the morality, a creep down from the R movies – and R movies down from the X movies – now from the R movies to the PG-13 category. But as Kang reports recent research indicates that parents largely are becoming themselves desensitized to the very moral concerns that led a previous generation of parents to demand the rating system in the first place.

She cited a recent study entitled parental desensitization to violence and sex in movies. It was published by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“In the study [according to Kang], 1,000 parents were randomly shown several short clips with violence and explicit sexual content from top-grossing movies such as “8 Mile,” “Die Hard,” and “Taken 2.” Early in their viewing, parents said the movies were only appropriate for older audiences and on average the films were appropriate for viewers 17 years old. But the more clips the parents watched, the more they began to assign lower ages and ended up saying most of the material was appropriate for PG-13 audiences.”

The lead researcher for the project said that this result may point to the fact that parents themselves are becoming desensitized to the mature content after repeated exposure.

“And this is significant [Kang writes], because it’s often parents who watch movies and assign MPAA ratings in the first place.”

The next paragraph is also very telling. She writes,

“The MPAA {that by the way, is the Hollywood agency. It’s an insider agency in Hollywood assigned the task of rating films] declined to comment for the story but has pointed to some academics and studies that show parents have indeed become more tolerant of mature content over time, a reflection [she writes] of evolving cultural attitudes.”

She also points out the PG-13 rating was first created in 1984 after parents complained about one specific movie. It might seem almost anachronistic now to point out the fact that movie was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. That movie if rated today almost surely wouldn’t even rate the PG-13. It would be PG if anything.

What we’re looking at here is a moral lesson the Christian should well understand. The word here is used in the article. It’s used repeatedly in the research, and that word is ‘desensitization.’As it turns out we can grow accustomed to send we can go very accustomed to sin even in the form of violence, profanity and sexuality. The more we see the less sinful it appears. And even parents become part of the problem when they themselves are desensitized.

The old Puritans used to speak openly about what they called the ‘exceeding sinfulness of sin.’ The problem is, of course, that sin becomes so less sinful once we see so much of it, and once we see it in the form of entertainment. And that’s exactly what Hollywood is counting on Hollywood’s also counting on the fact that as the PG-13 category has become the most lucrative in terms of its own productions in business, more parents of become increasingly desensitized. That’s a warning to all of us; to parents when it comes to children and Hollywood, to parents when it comes to their own consumption of Hollywood products, and to all of us when we consider not only Hollywood and not only entertainment, but sin in every conceivable form.

The more we see it, the more we expose ourselves to it, the more desensitized we become to the sinfulness of sin. Just consider the headlines on so many issues that are driving contemporary conversations. Are we not seen the very same pattern writ large across our entire culture and sadly across so many of our churches? We’re becoming increasingly desensitized to sin. And that’s not just a Hollywood problem. That most of all is a theological problem.

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boyecollege.com. I’m speaking to you from Palm Beach, Florida and I’ll meet you again on Monday for The Briefing.