Editorials

...The facts are grim...

...In voting as it did, the advisory panel wrongly makes abortion a normal part of medical practice...

...Others die of common childhood illnesses, measles and chicken pox, because AIDS cripples their ability to fight them...

...Another account: About two years ago, Msgr...

...Preposterous...

...Why not...

...Two accounts illustrate how important and how painful that effort can be...

...Fortunately, not all children who test positive for the AIDS antibody will get the disease...

...Unlike chemical fertilizers, it would not pollute the environment, neither would it pose health dangers to field workers nor persist as residue in crops...

...But worse, the nature of the appearances at the Queens high school and other Catholic institutions seemed to imply a "Catholic" blessing that we doubt any of them meant to give...

...It has canceled the Christmas Eve reception for Israeli and Palestinian officials as well as the Boy Scout Parade...

...in some cases they also have AIDS, some have already died of it...

...And then they often become attached to the children, many of whom die, while others are moved to foster homes...

...it is a moral evil...

...Next thing you'll be dragging in the Nazi medical experiments...

...Presumably there was a standing invitation to both candidates to speak to the student bodies of these schools, invitations that the Dukakis campaign apparently did not take advantage of...

...This is not introducing students to complex public-policy issues about which honest people disagree...

...we are there as friends, holding, playing, giving one-on-one care...

...We were particularly struck toward the end of the campaign with the number of Catholic universities, colleges, and high schools that appeared as backdrops to the Bush campaign...

...Yet, for many Americans, abortion entails the taking of human life...

...Still others die of heart attacks, pneumonia, and other ailments common to adult AIDS patients...

...Often one or both of . the parents are addicted to drugs...

...190 of them have already died...

...A lot of young professionals," says program director Shelly Raffle...

...And that is the beginning of a sometimes protracted, sad story about which statistics tell only a part...

...Even many who would not make abortion illegal recognize that it remains-and should remain-in a morally perilous category apart from other medical procedures...

...With proper early care, it is possible for a child's developing immune system to fight off the virus...

...Meanwhile the number of children with AIDS is growing rapidly and inexorably...

...ANOTHER MODEST PROPOSAL What if some years from now it is found that human fetal remains are a highly effective and efficient fertilizer-that its use would triple the rice and grain harvests of China and India, and double U.S...

...BETHLEHEM CANCELS CHRISTMAS The town government of Bethlehem has decided not to hold its official celebration of Christmas this year...

...The Brooklyn Tablet in an editorial took particularly strong exception to Bush's performance at Christ the King High School, where the cheering high schoolers seemed to join the candidate's support of the death penalty and where he used the appearance to receive a number of police-group endorsements...

...there will be no lights in Manger Square and the forty-foot Christmas tree will remain bare...

...Volunteers can also act as an advocate for a child, reporting to their program director any problems with nutrition, cleanliness, or medical attention...

...But while the bishops were prudent, it is not so clear that others were...

...As the experimental and potential use of fetal tissues and organs grows, the NIH appointed a twenty-one member advisory panel to take a look...

...We are at the beginning of a process that is likely to end with the widespread use of fetal remains for a variety of experimental and, inevitably, therapeutic uses...

...The panel concluded its work in November, voting 13-3 (with five members absent) to recommend the acceptability of the experimental use of fetal tissues and organs...

...you insist...

...Learned skills, walking and talking for example, disappear with the onset of dementia...

...Fetal tissues are particularly manipulable and fast growing, and researchers are eager to acquire ready access to them...

...AIDS is now a leading contributor to the city's rising infant mortality rate...

...Since abortion is legal, most proponents of fetal research argue that there is no reason to treat these fetal remains any differently from the remains of miscarried fetuses or stillborn infants where parents are free to consent to their medical use...

...If they do not, President Reagan or, after him, George Bush should issue an executive order banning the practice...

...Such celebrations, of course, are not at the heart of the Christian understanding of Jesus' coming, but the reason for their cancellation is a powerful reminder of how elusive is that peace his coming promised.at peace his coming promised...

...Who volunteers...

...Some children suffer from malabsorption-the inability to draw nutrients from food-and slowly starve to death...

...By 1991, it is estimated that 20,000 children may be infected-mostly by their parents, who contracted the virus through intravenous drug use...

...Last January, 260 children in the city were reported to carry the AIDS virus...

...It isn't easy work...

...And, of course, for a time they will be-for just about as long as it takes researchers to successfully treat Parkinson's or AIDS or some other serious disease with fetal tissues or organs...

...But people-mostly middle-aged couples-continue to come forward to take a baby home as a temporary guest, to make room in their lives for a child who is suffering the loss of a mother and a family...

...you exclaim...

...Furthermore, since such remains are naturally and locally produced, the manufacturing process would be nonpolluting and low-cost, while distribution expenses would be minimal...

...Smoke and mirrors are a permanent feature of campaigns and Catholic institutions would do well to draw up guidelines that would protect their good names while allowing their students to hear and question the candidates...

...Some cynics argued that that was only because there were no Catholic candidates, especially there was no Mario Cuomo...

...The town lies within the Israeli-occupied West Bank...

...But most think that these matters can be regulated...

...But after the 1984 campaign with what seemed to be implicit endorsements by some bishops of Ronald Reagan and nearly explicit condemnations of Geraldine Fer-raro by others, the bishops may have realized just how counterproductive such strong actions could prove to their own work together and how imprudent it was to try to direct American Catholics so closely in their voting...

...The perfect fertilizer...

...and Canadian soybean output...

...Even those voting to approve the experiments agree that there are some ethical problems here, including the impropriety of buying and selling fetal remains...

...But it takes nearly two years for that system to develop fully, and newborns, unlike older children, seldom outlive the disease...

...For children with AIDS in hospitals and clinics, Northern Lights Alternatives has developed a program that enlists volunteers to give the kind and amount of attention that medical personnel are generally too overworked to offer...

...Because their parents are unable to care for them at home, healthy young children are being retained and HIV-infected children are increasingly being abandoned in urban hospitals...

...But the Bush campaign did take advantage, not only of the invitation but of the opportunity of seeming to appear as the "Catholic" candidate...

...We're not social workers or nurses or the parents...

...It is because of these deep disagreements on abortion, for example, that Congress passed and the courts upheld the Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortions...

...But the advisory panel's views are just that-advisory...

...Prevention and cure lie somewhere in the future...

...of researchers attempting to influence an abortion decision, for example, by encouraging a woman to prolong a pregnancy until a needed organ is optimally developed...

...The more fundamental issue at stake-abortion-hardly seems to enter the discussion...

...Spare me your slippery slope analogies...

...Perhaps they are right...

...and who may be suffering from AIDS...

...bishops kept a low profile for which many observers were grateful...

...Okay, let's just stand at the top of the slope and look...

...Fagan ran an ad in the New York Times asking for foster parents for these "little guys...

...Once AIDS develops, most children suffer irreversible brain damage...

...It's a valley of tears program," Fagan says, "everybody weeps: the parents, the foster parents, the babies, the nurses...

...First, volunteers have to pass through a long screening process required by the hospitals...

...That means playing with the babies or children and showing them affection...

...In New York City one of every sixty-one newborns tests positive for the AIDS antibody...

...Why not in the case of abortion as well...

...sometimes it means a trip to the circus...

...Society should not accept the experimental and therapeutic uses of fetal tissues and organs obtained from abortion...

...Medical facts tell part of the story as well...

...Over time, seven of those children showed symptoms of illness, were tested, and found positive for the AIDS virus...

...Two of the seven have died...

...This past spring when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) received a grant application to implant fetal brain tissue experimentally in people suffering from Parkinson's disease, a moratorium was ordered until the scientific, ethical, and legal issues could be fully studied...

...NIH officials can still bar these experiments by refusing to fund them with what after all is taxpayers' money...

...The official national count of children with AIDS is 1,000, but government health officials and many medical professionals believe the actual number is triple that...

...But consider: medical scientists now see fetal tissues as the potential medium for fighting a range of human miseries, including AIDS, Parkinson's disease, childhood diabetes, and other neural and immunological defects...

...Noncarcinogenic...

...Outrageous...

...EDITORIAL Wholly innocent AIDS has become the leading cause of death in women aged 25 to 34 in New York City...

...Deputy Mayor Hanna Nasser said this was a way of showing "concern for our dead and for our detainees...

...ET CETERA MORE ELECTION AFTERTHOUGHTS During the 1988 presidential campaign, the U.S...

...nonmutagenic...

...Medical research today, fertilizer tomorrow...

...this is taking advantage of the students' immaturity and enthusiasm...

...of women conceiving and aborting in order to provide a transplantable organ or to make money...

...To date the Little Guys program has placed 700 infants...

...John Fagan, director of Little Flower Children's Services of New York, developed a program to shelter temporarily infants whose mothers were cocaine addicts (these so-called "boarder babies'' were living in hospitals even though they were health-y) and eventually to find them foster care...

...So another important part of this AIDS story is told by people who are doing what they can for these children and their families...