Word: fatalism
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...list of diseases that have been troublesome to Americans lately, swine flu ranks somewhere below spring fever. Only three cases have been discovered since the flu-related death last year of a soldier at Fort Dix, N.J., and none was fatal. In fact, the massive swine flu vaccine program proved to be more of a threat than the disease: it has been implicated in nearly 400 cases of a little-understood, usually temporary paralysis called Guillain-Barré syndrome. Yet last week, while acknowledging the risks, federal authorities ordered a partial resumption of the on-again, off-again swine flu program...
...biography accurately describes Les Fleurs du Mai as an "anatomy of addiction"-of men and women hooked on drugs, alcohol and every variation of sex. Baudelaire himself drank to the brink of alcoholism and took 150 drops a day of laudanum-twice the dose fatal to a nonaddict. Yet the drug Baudelaire was most addicted to was hope: luxe, calme et volupté-the elegance of Islamic paradise, a Christian's heavenly peace and a pagan bliss of the senses. Baudelaire chanted of this blessed trinity while he suffered the diseases of the age: poverty, rage and soul-withering...
...everyone else who ever wanted to trade the land for the wind. Here is Simon Magus, an early Roman necromancer who rose skyward (possibly by means of a balloon) before a crowd that included St. Peter. To the relief of the early Christian spectators, Magus suffered an instant-and fatal-crash. Haining wistfully relates the tale of Bladud, a doomed 9th century British king, who borrowed a page from Greek mythologies and perished like Icarus with a pair of feather-and-wax wings. George Faux, a 19th century English eccentric was more fortunate. In 1862 he jumped from a roof...
...their fellow nurses' performance. But they were far less enthusiastic about the level of psychological support that the doctors give the sick; as many as 77% of the nurses assessed the doctors' performance in that area as either fair or poor. The most startling figure involved fatal accidents: 42% of the nurses said they knew of deaths that could be attributed to doctors' mistakes; 15% noted that they had witnessed such tragedies more than once. In her hospital, one nurse reported, a general surgeon lost eight patients over eight years through sheer ineptness.She added, "A psychiatrist...
...Fatal Risks. The next problem: If God, then which God? Küng takes a far more positive view of non-Christian religions than does traditional Catholicism, but he still finds Christianity to be superior. Küng insists that it is possible to doubt the authenticity of many New Testament stories, as many Bible experts do, and still learn enough about Jesus to believe in him. Küng himself doubts many of Christ's miracles and considers the story of his birth largely legendary. For him, the center of faith is not Christmas but Easter. He vividly...