Tags: Rome, Roman Empire, Babylon,
AIDS, HIV, HIV positive, Joycelyn Elders, condoms, Bill Clinton, Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, American Medical Association, National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases, Department of Health and Human Services, National Cancer Institute,
abstinence, Family Research Council, International Conference on AIDS, World Health
Organization, penicillin, microbes, overprescription of antibiotics, bacteria,
Streptococcus pneumoniae, super bugs, antibiotics, Enterococcus faecium, Staphyloccus
aureus, Joshua Lederberg, bubonic plague, depression, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry,
National Institute of Mental Health
Plagues
The sixth angel blew his trumpet, and
I heard a voice coming from the horns of the golden altar that is before God. It said to
the sixth angel who had the trumpet, "Release the four angels who are bound in the
great river Euphrates." And the four angels who had been kept ready for
this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. The
number of the mounted troops was two hundred million. I heard their number.
The horses and riders I saw in my
vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as
sulfur. A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that
came out of their mouths. The power of the horses was in their tails; for their tails were
like snakes, having heads with which they inflict injury. (Rev 9:13-19 niv)
The people of Rome paid dearly for their
disobedience to the truth that had been laid before them. Plague and famine depopulated
rich provinces as one inhabit of the empire after another fell to the judgment that
befalls any society that will not repent of its wicked ways. We are seeing this develop in
our own society today.
* * *
On September 25, 1993, Entertainer Gary
Collins found he was in need of an AIDS test. Apparently there was an on-air mix-up where
he and Home show hostess, Sarah Purcell were given flu shots with the same syringe. Dr.
Edward Gilbert who administered the injections lamented, "I am not a person who has
ever been called upon to perform in front of cameras."
So this is how it is in Hollywood today.
It is an era when co-workers must live in suspicion and distrust. They know how they each
are. They are certain that their friends are living the same immoral lives that they are.
They cannot be sure what they will pick up if they come into too close of contact with
each other. The plague of AIDS has hit modern Rome.
Primarily AIDS was transmitted though
sinful activities; promiscuous sexual activity, homosexuality and drug needles. Though the
government was insisting that transmission of the disease came from only these limited
circumstances, there was no telling where you could pick it up. It might attack you in the
dentist office. That is what Kimberly Bergalis discovered as she died at the age of 23,
infected by her dentist, Dr. David Acer. He had already infected six of his patients in
what was called "one of the most disturbing unsolved mysteries in the annals of
medicine." Some wondered if it was in fact murder.
Dr. Stanley Turetzky, who practiced in
1993 in Hicksville, N. Y. evidently thought so. "How else could it happen except by
some deliberate method?" he asked in an interview. "Everybody seems to think
that, but no one has proof."
But what many were beginning to think is
that legislature must be written to restrict the ability of health-care workers to
practice medicine. The crisis got the nation raging in fear.
World health officials had reported that
about 12 million men, women and children throughout the world were infected with the AIDS
virus by the beginning of 1993. In the United States alone, at least 1 million were
infected at that time. America's death toll from AIDS was 152,545, roughly three times
higher than the number of American lives lost in the Viet Nam war.
The complication of AIDS was the root
cause of an increased spread of tuberculosis by 1.5 in the United States in 1992. It was a
20 percent jump in TB cases since 1985. "That's not acceptable," complained Dr.
Lee Reichman, president of the American Lung Association. "This is a preventable
disease, this is a curable disease and it's a fatal disease." Indeed, continued
hostility towards God was claiming America's lives.
AIDS in fact, by June of 1993, surpassed
accidents, cancer, and heart disease as the leading killer of young adults in the nation's
cities. The findings of Dr. Richard Selik and colleagues at the National Centers for
Disease Control in Atlanta professed a grim portrait of AIDS in America. "The health
crisis of AIDS-HIV is of immense significance in the United States and will remain so
beyond this millennium," wrote DR. Sten Vermund of the National Institutes of Health
in Bethesda, Md.
But the biggest jumps in new AIDS cases
for the first time in the epidemic in 1992 were women who were infected more through sex
than drugs. "It's a continuing evolution of the epidemic," said Dr. John Ward,
the CDC's chief of AIDS surveillance. "They need to know their sex partners, and they
need to know the drug and sex practices of that partner so they can. . . make a more
informed decision about whether to have sex with that person."
Our women are the ones who just decades
ago were hallmarked for their chastity. Now we were warning them just to be
"careful." However, the way things are going, it is doubtful that any sex will
be safe in the near future.
In April of 1993 it was reported that
the number of Americans with AIDS had increased at a surprising rate when more than 35,000
new cases were reported during the first three months. This increase by 21% doubled the
rate for the same period in the previous year, according to DR. John Ward, chief of the
AIDS Surveillance for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was "higher
than we expected. Some of that 21% is a sign that the AIDS epidemic is continuing to
grow." The majority of these people were from the ages of 25-44, the group that made
up most of the nation's workforce.
Not only was the disease targeting the
working class, it was leaving children without parents. On December 23, 1992 it was
predicted by the researchers of the American Medical Association that the number of
children orphaned by AIDS would double by 1996, and reach more than 80,000 by the turn of
the century, threatening to create social catastrophe.
"These numbers will just keep
growing," assured the reports chief author, David Michaels." Most of these
affected people, the authors agreed, would be from poor and black communities least
equipped to care for them. "Unless increased attention and resources are devoted to
this vulnerable population," they wrote, "a social catastrophe is
unavoidable." So, once again the government was called to come to the rescue of a
people who would not initiate moral accountability in their lives, and you know who would
be called upon to fit the bill.
But the question remains that, given the
nature of this particular disease and the moral condition of our society, would a cure be
discovered in time to avoid a national disaster? It is true that scientists knew more
about HIV than about any other virus in history. It didn't seem to be enough, as it was
becoming more-and-more evident to researchers just how insidious the virus that causes
AIDS really is.
"Despite the high-powered arsenal
of contemporary biology, there is nothing on the horizon remotely resembling a cure for
AIDS," reported the Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, on 5/28/93. "Nor is there anything like a workable vaccine."
"This disease has been trying to
tell us for a long time that it's complex," commented Anthony Fauci, head of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the lead agency in the U. S.
Government's war on AIDS.
There was the hope that the drug AZT
would provide some answers for the problem. But early in 1993, a large European study cast
doubt on the idea that this drug had any effect upon those who had the virus with no
symptoms of the disease. This study of 1,749 volunteers discovered that those patients who
got AZT were just as likely to succumb to the disease or die as those who had received a
placebo.
Nick Partridge, director of the Terrence
Higgins Trust in Britain described the results as "very depressing" for infected
people who are well. "It rocks the foundation of the small house of believers for
using early intervention and shows how far away we are for adequate treatment of
HIV." It appeared this plague would be with us for quite a while.
Leave it up to the American bureaucracy
to come up with a solution. "Let's just spend money on it," they reasoned. So,
the Clinton administration proposed $2.7 billion on AIDS research, prevention and
treatment in 1994. Then just appoint an AIDS czar and the problem will eventually be
resolved! So, upon the appointment of Kristine Gebbie, the president announced, "We
will ensure that one person in the White House oversees and unifies government-wide AIDS
efforts. She has my full support in coordinating policy among all the various executive
branch departments."
And what did the one whom the president
so overwhelmingly endorsed have in mind? It was announced on June 30, 1993 that the new
federal AIDS coordinator planned to take a more liberal approach than what the Republicans
before her had devised. In that vein she endorsed needle exchanges for drug addicts but
stopped short of urging condom distribution in schools. That ball was taken up by U. S.
Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders who already, before her appointment, freely
distributed defective condoms to Arkansas teenagers without telling them.
The Knight-Ridder News Service reported,
"The federal government is planning a dramatic -- and controversial -- shift in its
attack against teenage pregnancy and the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases among
adolescents.
"The Clinton administration plans
to revise the 12-year-old Republican message of 'Just Say No' to premarital sex by placing
greater emphasis on birth control and disease prevention, in effect adding a new line,
'But if you say 'yes,' be sure to use a condom.
"For the past several months, the
Department of Health and Human Services has been developing a proposal that could funnel
millions of dollars (perhaps as much as $7 billion) into comprehensive health services for
the nation's 35 million 10- to 9- year-olds.
"The plan would provide more money
for sex education, birth control counseling, health care contraceptives at clinics in or
near public schools, said HHS officials who described it on the condition that they not be
identified.
"'It's a huge change,' said Lisa
Kaeser, a policy expert for the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a leading reproductive health
research group in New York City.
"A major force behind the change
and the official who likely will champion the new approach is Dr. Joyce Elders, an
outspoken former Arkansas health director."
Indeed, the government wanted to solve
the AIDS crisis by putting a condom in every pocket. This, of course, could only be
message of false hope. The condom is a poor contraceptive at best, and a worse deterrent
to disease. Truly, it is not unlike the government to propose a solution that encourages
the very activity responsible for the dilemma!
In spite of the impotence of condoms in
relation to stemming the spread of AIDS, apparently the initial efforts of Elders and crew
to propagate sex in America was working quite well in the high schools. In 1993, after
surveying 16,285 high school students in cities across the nation, the CDC found that
national about 53 percent of teenagers had had sex. Out of these, 37.6 percent were still
active, in spite of the AIDS threat.
On August 15, 1995, columnist Mona
Charen divulged, "More that 50 percent of the fathers of babies born to mothers
between the ages of 15 and 17 are adults aged 20 or older. According to a California study
of 47,000 teen-age births in 1993, two thirds of the babies were fathered by men beyond
high-school age.
"The California study found that
among mothers ages 11 to 15, only 9 percent had had sexual relations with classmates.
Forty percent had been impregnated by high school boys, and 51 percent of the fathers were
adults.
"That ought to give pause to those
who believe that handing out condoms in schools will stem unwed pregnancies." It
ought to also declare how fruitless the effort to pass out condoms in schools is in the
battle against AIDS.
It appears there were some of our young
who were not allowing themselves to be the governments' patsies, nor did they want to risk
their lives for the sake of promoting the immoral agenda of the liberals. On November 20,
1992, the Associated Press reported that the number of teenagers engaging in sexual
activity had dropped. In a study by the CDC in 1991, 54% of the teenagers they questioned
had sexual intercourse, down from 59% in 1989. Thirty-five percent said they had two or
more partners, down 40%, and nineteen percent reported four or more partners, down 24%
from 1989.
It appeared at the time that the
"just say no" message was working. It was the only real solution to a plague
that had in its very inception a cause that generates from sexual immorality. But if
liberal America continues to refuse to bend its ear to principle of holy living, they will
just have to pay the price of their defiance. Figure it out!
The despair of the situation was so
rampant that President Clinton asserted on 12/2/92, "For too long America and the
world have faced this epidemic divided and frightened. Today we must pledge to work
together in the research and prevention programs that will make the AIDS epidemic a part
of our past."
By November 23, 1995, it appeared that
governmental efforts at solving the AIDS dilemma were going nowhere. The centers for
Disease Control and prevention announced that AIDS in 1993 had become the No. 1 killer of
people between ages of 25 to 44. Indeed, by 1995, one out of every 92 young American men
between the ages of 27 to 39 were battling the AIDS virus. According to Philip Rosenberg
of the National Cancer Institute, if the trend continued, "the threat of AIDS may
become a rite of passage."
Would a cure be found in spite of the
millions and billions of dollars the government was sure to pump into the project? Not if
liberal America had anything to say about it! They would keep on promoting their failed
proposals.
On November 30th 1995, it was announced
that a barrage of governmental spots would be aired on TV to promote the demise of AIDS
through the use of condoms and telling someone if he/or she is infected before having sex,
and abstinence. These MTV-style spots depicted scenes from dance clubs, Greenwich Village
and a drug store.
One featured Dwayne, a gay man who
cheerily insisted, "If I'm going to have sex it's going to be protected. . . I'm HIV
negative, and I intend to stay that way."
Another showed Vivian unabashedly buying
condoms to say, "If you have a condom and you partner doesn't, you just say, 'Here,
put this on.'"
"Nobody ever knows I have AIDS
unless I tell them," proclaimed Carol.
A woman named Lynn C. admitted that her
steady boyfriend "never used a condom" even though he knew he had AIDS. "I
never thought it could happen to me," she admitted.
"Secondary virginity is what I
practice," revealed Tami. "The next time I have sex will be when I get
married."
The Family Research Council branded all
the spots except the abstinence one. Gracie Hsu declared that others "begin with the
flawed premise that there is nothing wrong or harmful about teenagers having sex as long
as they use a condom." She asserted that the government should not "give its
imprimatur for teens to have sex."
November 12, 1996 brought some apparent
help to AIDS researchers. It was announced that thalidomide, a horrific drug that caused
thousands of birth defects more than thirty years before, would again be released in the United
States. The drug, once sold in 48 countries as a sleeping pill and morning sickness cure,
was banned worldwide in 1962 after some 12,00 babies were born with missing or malformed
limbs, serious facial deformities and defective organs. However, the drug showed some
promise in fighting some AIDS-related disorders so the Food and Drug Administration
brought it back into the country.
It was incredible the risks that liberal
America was willing to take in order to continue to support homosexuality and promote
their so-called safe-sex scheme. They were willing to risk the lives of innocent children
in order to support the sin of sexual morality that they had given themselves over to
since the sixties. Yet the continued pro-abortion stance of liberal America clearly had
demonstrated that they had more regard for hedonistic pleasure than the lives of children.
"We never thought there would be
another generation of thalidomiders," lamented Canadian Randy Warren as his voice was
choked with emotion. Warren was born with no hips and malformed legs as a result of the
drug.
According to J. David Erickson of the
Centers for Disease Control and prevention this reintroduction of thalidomide could expose
as many as 500 pregnancies a year. He concluded, "If thalidomide is allowed on the
market, there will be failures."
However, liberal America was not at all
worried about the consequences of the drug. They had already invented a solution to birth
defects -- abortion. Indeed, there was a definite link between the AIDS safe-sex crowd and
the culture of death.
On May 4, 1997 AIDS researchers found
out that the abortion procedure might help their cause. They determined that success in
treating sickle cell anemia, leukemia and AIDS could be greatly improved by using bone
marrow transplants from fetuses. The researchers utilized the bone marrow of fetuses from
miscarriages and transplanted them into baboons with positive results. The avid
abortionist, President Clinton, early in his administration, had lifted the ban on federal
funding of research into medical uses of fetal tissue from induced abortions.
The ethical problems involved with the
research were vast. Maria Michejda, one of the researchers, declared that there was a
possibility of creating the potential for "fetal farming," when a woman gets
pregnant so that she could sell the fetus for bone marrow. "When women conceive and
abort at the optimal time to get tissue, this is a very dangerous situation." However
in light of the profusion of abortions already in the country, such an unthinkable act
laid right on the horizon.
The AIDS dilemma was beginning to take
on a new ominous presence in the country. Nonetheless, the president remained optimistic.
He determined that he could end the AIDS problem by issuing a directive. Hence, on May 19,
1997 President Clinton set a deadline for an AIDS vaccine before 2007. "If the 21st
century is to be the center of biology, let's make an AIDS vaccine its first great
triumph," he declared.
In spite of humanism's great hope that
its proponents could continue to dodge the AIDS bullet, there was little-or-no progress in
tracking the disease down. This was rather frightening in light of the fact that on
November 26, 1997 it was declared that the AIDS epidemic was worse than originally
thought. A U.N. agency reported that more than 30 million people worldwide had been
infected with the deadly disease. About 16,000 were infected daily, and one in every 100
sexually active adults under the age 49 worldwide had HIV. "The main message of our
report," Peter Piot, director of UNAIDS, divulged, "is the AIDS epidemic is far
from over. In fact, it's far worse." The report revealed that if the current trend
held, those infected with the virus "will soar to 40 million" by the year 2000.
So much for the sexual revolution.
AIDS came to us from deep within the hot
fertile jungles in Africa. It was an organism that originally existed benignly in monkeys.
But it leaped its way into humans. In spite of the fact that decades had passed since it
was first identified, science had yet to find a cure.
What is particularly frightening about
this virus is that it carries an enzyme called reverse transcriptase that allows it to
copy itself right into the inner machinery of a living cell -- the DNA. Once this occurs,
the virus becomes so immersed in the human cell that it cannot be destroyed without the
destruction of the entire cell itself.
"We're matching wits, but ours have
not been good enough so far to beat AIDS," mourned Lederberg. "It's the
structure of evolution, the survival of the fittest, and in this war the ones that grow
the fastest are proving the most fit."
At the 10th International Conference on
AIDS during the summer of 1994, Dr. Peter Pilot stood up to warn of the "naive
optimism" on the part of science which contended that the epidemic could be
controlled any time soon. In light of the fact that 17 million were infected with HIV
worldwide, the doctor noted that efforts to create drugs to treat AIDS and vaccines to
prevent it had largely failed.
"After an era of naive optimism
about what science and technology can achieve overnight, and after a period of equally
unfounded pessimism, it is time for this conference to be one of realism," this
president of the International AIDS Society spoke. He proclaimed that the world ought to
face up to the fact that AIDS is no longer an outbreak. Rather it has become entrenched
and "will be an integral part of the human condition for a very long time to
come.”
Therefore, the conclusion of researchers
by April of 2001 was that an AIDS cure just was not in the cards. The new drug cocktails,
though they were amazing in their results, could not get rid of the virus. It was admitted
that even if all signs of the virus disappeared in a treated patient, HIV would be lurking
somewhere.
This lack of success was in spite of the
fact that researchers knew so much about how AIDS worked. For they knew that HIV latched
onto human blood cells, oozing inside and killing them. But they also realized that HIV
would burro in for the long haul in an infected patient. The virus lies silent inside
cells that are programmed to do nothing but sit and wait. These memory T cells’ only
job was to store a record of the germs they encounter, keeping the body prepared for the
next time it sees the germs. These cells are literally the immune system’s memory, so
they must survive for a long time. This is what helps the body fight a disease that has
already attacked the body.
HIV lies inside these sleeping cells,
dormant but dangerous. This means that HIV infection will last a lifetime because it is
hidden in the everlasting cells that are suppose to protect the body from disease.
Therefore, HIV infection will last for the entire life span of the infected individual.
This latently infected reservoir was the single biggest obstacle to getting rid of AIDS.
According to Dr. Robert Siliciano of Johns Hopkins University, “It’s the thing
that keeps us from curing this.”
“. . .What HIV has done is tap into
the most fundamental aspect of the immune system, and that is its immunological memory.
It’s the perfect mechanism for the virus to ensure its survival.”
Therefore, science began to give up on a
cure in order to aim for a goal that was less ambitious. Since it was believed that HIV
eradication was unlikely, most scientists contended that the next best thing would be to
train the body to control the virus in order to help patients live with the disease.
Indeed, scientist had developed a
multitude of AIDS drugs to treat the disease symptoms, lifting up hopes that it would be
finally of no consequence in the human experience. However, on December 18, 2001 it was
revealed that the vast majority of HIV patients in America carried a form of the disease
that was able to resist one or more of the AIDS drugs that had been developed by that
time. This suggested to alarmed doctors that the epidemic could take a deadly turn.
“We could be right back where we
were in 1984, when the virus was unstoppable,” warned Larry Kessler, executive
director of the AIDS Action Committee of Boston. “This is something that we really
have been worrying about, dreading.”
* * *
The problem of disease is not limited to
the AIDS front. When one considers all of the venues where disease is getting out of
control, the possibility of plague that lies in the horizon of mankind is virtually
unnerving! "We have reached the stage in evolution where we have no other competitors
except microbes -- bacteria and viruses," revealed Dr. Joshua Lederberg, a research
geneticist and Nobel Prize winner. "We think of ourselves as being at the top of the
food chain, but these tiny bugs are predators on us. The competition is fierce and there
is no guarantee we will be the survivors."
"Modern medicine truly began with
the discovery of penicillin," instructed Dr. Joyce Johnson, infectious disease
specialist at Kern Medical Center and an associate professor at UCLA. "I can't even
imagine doing major surgery without antibiotics to prevent infection."
But the overprescription of antibiotics
has created serious problems. Now, many physicians in the United States are beginning to
realize the ramifications of the overuse of penicillin and its descendants. The
ever-changing bacteria have learned to outsmart many antibiotics. The probe to find new
drugs is barely keeping pace.
For example, the germ that most commonly
causes pneumonia and ear infections in children -- Streptococcus pneumoniae -- has become
resistant 50 percent of the time to typical antibiotics. The problem has become so serious
that many experts now believe a major medical disaster is on the horizon.
"We are entering a post-antibiotic
era, where our children will be defenseless against the same diseases that our
great-grandparents were unless prevention is done now," warned Dr. Mitchell Cohen,
director of the division of bacterial disease at the Centers for Disease Control.
"I've been trying to sensitize
people for 25 years now to the evolutionary skill of these germs," added Lederberg.
"I work in the lab and see in an overnight experiment how they undergo massive
changes.
"But the attitudes of complacency
have made it very hard to get people to listen. It's like telling them an earthquake will
happen -- no one cares until their house tumbles down."
On May 16, 1995 American health experts
were contending that common bacteria turned vicious through antibiotic resistance posed a
great threat to American's health. Dr. Mitchell Cohen of the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention explained that bacterial infections, many of them common in hospitals, were
arising that could not be treated by the current antibiotics at all.
While demonstrating that drug-resistant
strains of bacteria were becoming more-and-more proliferate as the germs genetically
changed, Cohen contended, "The problem can become very serious. We already have some
untreatable infections and some bacterial strains are just on antibiotic away from being
untreatable."
As a result of the concern, it was
reported on September 19, 1995 that hospitals throughout the country were restricting the
use of their most potent antibiotics and isolating their sickest patients to stop the
development of "super bugs". These were germs that had become resistant to all
known drugs. Of particular concern was the emergence of resistance to vancomycin which was
an antibiotic used against the most lethal microbes.
The relatively-harmless form of bacteria
called Enterococcus faecium had become resistant to all antibiotics. But far more
threatening was the common hospital-spread germ called Staphyloccus aureus. This bug
caused infections after surgery and also caused pneumonia and bloodstream infections. This
staph germ was many times fatal unless killed with drugs. The only medicine that would
control it was vancomycin. If that drug became ineffective the number of hospital deaths
would become astronomical.
"The worst fear we have has not
happened yet, but there is no guarantee it won't," explained Dr. Clyde Thornsberry,
director of MRL pharmaceutical Services in Franklin, Tenn.
The spread of "super bugs"
became the number one topic among 12,000 infectious-disease experts and the Interscinece
Conference on Antimicrbial Agents and Chemotherapy held in September 1995. "We really
are running out of therapeutic options for common diseases," revealed Dr. Michael
Scheld, the conference's program chairman.
With the world becoming smaller due to
the mobility of people, airplane travel, and changing agricultural practices, previous
unknown germs enter the human population and multiply.
"I call it the Future Shock of the
germ world," described Stephen Morse, a colleague of Lederberg. "We are making
ecological changes in a far greater scope and number than ever before. We're cutting down
rain forests, building roads, climbing every mountain. And as a result, we're coming into
contact with viruses and disease that we never did before, that we have no immunity to and
no cure for."
Therefore, on January 16, 1996, it was
announced that the U.S. death rate from infectious diseases rose 58 percent between 1980
and 1992. According to Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg, the world was becoming "more
vulnerable" than ever before as, globally, infectious diseases became more resistant
to the human means initiated to destroy them.
The development of antibiotics had once
prompted doctors to predict that infectious diseases would be conquered by the late
twentieth-century. But Lederberg lead the new cry as he testified, "We have the
rumble of volcanoes that are going to erupt. We don't know if the eruption will be
tomorrow or. . . in 30 years, but the scene is set for any number of outbreaks."
On September 17, 1996 it was divulged
that, during the previous five years, disease-causing fungi had begun to grow impervious
to common drugs. The development set off a rush among pharmaceutical companies to find new
drugs as the old ones became worthless. "It is historically unprecedented to see this
level of resistance," admitted Dr., Thomas Walsh of the National Cancer Institute.
Just 10 years ago, textbooks said it was rare. This is an area of great concern."
Then, on July 20, 2001 Harvard
researchers described in The Lancet medical journal that a new type of antibiotic, Zyvox,
had been beaten by the staph supergerm a little more than a year after the drug was
introduced. The victor in the drug battle, Staphylococcus, was considered the most
successful of all bacterial germs because it produced such a wide range of infections in
so many people. “It’s a heads up that you have to keep an eye on it,”
revealed Dr. Mary Jane Feraro, director of microbiology at Massachusetts General Hospital
in Boston.
* * *
The bubonic plague wiped out a fourth of
Europe in the 1300's. As the 21st century appeared in the near future, it looked like the
devastating disease might raise its ugly head up once again. On September 3, 1997 it was
reported that, for the first time, scientist had found a strain of the plague that was
resistant to all the antibiotics normally used to prevent the disease. Drs. David Dennis
and James Hughes of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated, "If
resistant strains spread in rodents, the public health implications could be
substantial." Indeed, plague was considered to be a re-emerging disease by the World
Health Organization.
In 1918-1919, influenza wiped out 25
million people worldwide. According to Morse's book Emerging Viruses, this created more
devastation to humanity than any other single event. What lies on the horizon for mankind
might well dwarf anything he has yet seen.
In March of '94, the United States stood
on the edge of another white plague, the return of TB. But this time it was predicted the
cost might be higher than before.
"We dropped our guard,"
admitted Dr. Richard Thorsen, director of infectious disease control at the Kern County,
Ca. Health Department. "Right now is a very critical time for the whole country, and
we have a window of opportunity to try and control TB as completely as we can.
"Otherwise, we will have a medical
disaster on our hands."
The problem had become so bad in California
that state health officials issued a 45-page strategy for combating the disease.
Kern Medical Center lung specialist, Dr.
Augustine Munoz warned that if something was not done by the year 2000, it would cost $1.7
billion a year in California to curtail the problem.
It was a situation that was devastating
the East Coast. In Washington D. C., more than 40 percent of the new TB cases demonstrated
resistance to standard treatments. The disease had mutated into its new deadly and evasive
form.
In the middle of May, 1995, the world
became aware of a virus that was re-emerging in Africa which made AIDS look like a walk in
the park. Ebola, which had no vaccine or cure, kills 80 percent of those who came in come
in contact with it, usually within days. The virus slowly dissolves organs, blood-clotting
cells and tissues. Victims suffer from violent vomiting to finally dieing with blood
oozing from their mouths.
The last time the virus had been
detected was in 1967 and 1976. But by May 16, the deadly virus was looming over the
capitol of Zaire with 6 million people at risk. Officials were struggling to contain the
disease to the city of Kikwit, where the outbreak had began in March. Neighboring Angola
sealed its border with Zaire and sent troops to patrol the jungle between the two
countries. The United States began to check up on every one who entered their borders from
Africa.
However, changes in worldwide
agricultural practices and the intrusion of cities and roads into underdeveloped areas
were making it increasingly difficult to contain the spread of disastrous diseases. Joshua
Lederberg, a research geneticist and Nobel Prize winner commented that the world is now a
global community.
So once again his warning is worth
consideration: "We think of ourselves as being on the top of the food chain, but
these tiny bugs are predators on us. The competition is fierce and there is no guarantee
we will be the survivors."
The war on cancer began in 1971. In
spite of the utopian optimism that existed at the time and the latter expenditure of
thirty billion dollars by 1996 one third of Americans were getting cancer and a third were
dying from it. "Promises were made that could not be kept," revealed Richard
Klausner, director of the National Cancer Institute on June 6, 1996. "There was an
optimism of what we'd be able to accomplish that did not take into consideration how
little we knew. . .We have not cured cancer -- not because of a lack of will, not because
of misthought strategies, not because of wrong public policies. We have not cured cancer
because it is such and extraordinarily difficult and complex set of problems."
At the end of 1993, it was reported that
the annual cost of depression in America was $43.7 billion. This put the malady on par
with heart disease according to a study released in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
"What's striking is that the costs
of depression are comparable to those for other major diseases," said Paul Greenburg,
a health economist at the Analysis Group.
Dr. Frederick Goodwin, director of the
National Institute of Mental Health affirmed that among major diseases, depression ranked
second only to coronary heart disease. "Major depression is far more disabling than
many medical disorders, including chronic lung disease, arthritis and diabetes," he
related. "Depression tends to strike people in the most productive phase of life, and
the most productive people."
Well, with the threat of devastation on
the horizon as it is, if I did not have the True and Living God to trust in, I think I
would be pretty depressed too!
It said to the sixth angel who had
the trumpet, "Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates."
And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year
were released to kill a third of mankind. (Revelation 9:14-15 niv)
About the Author
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About the Author
Don Wigton
is a graduate of the prestigious music department at CSULB where he studied under Frank
Pooler, lyricist of Merry Christmas Darling, and sang in Pooler’s world renown
University Choir alongside Karen and Richard Carpenter. During this time Don was also the
lead composer of the band, Clovis Putney, that won the celebrated Hollywood Battle of the
Bands. After giving his life to God, Don began attending Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa to
study under some of the most prominent early Maranatha! musicians. Subsequently he toured
the Western United States with Jedidiah in association with Myrrh Records.
Eventually
Don served as a pastor at Calvary Chapel Bakersfield to witness thousands of salvations
through that ministry. As the music/concert director, Don worked for seven years with most
major Christian artist of that time while producing evangelical concerts attended by
thousands of young people seeking after God. Don’s Calvary Chapel Praise Choir
released the album Let All Who Hath Breath Praise the Lord on the Maranatha! label.
The next
years of Don’s life were spent as the praise leader of First Baptist Church in Bakersfield
during a time of unprecedented church renewal. Don teamed with the leadership to
successfully meld the old with the new through a period of tremendous church growth.
During this exciting time, Don’s praise team, Selah, produced the CD Stop and
Think About It.
Today Don is
the leading force behind Wigtune Company. This
webbased project located at www.praisesong.net has provided several million downloads of
Don’s music and hymn arrangements to tens of thousands of Christian organizations
throughout the world. More music can be found at Don's Southern
Cross Band website at www.socrossband.com.
The book Holy
Wars represents Don’s most recent effort to bless the church with biblical
instruction and direction in praise and worship. This heartfelt volume is an offering not
only to God’s people, but also to God Himself.
Connect With Don Online
Facebook - Southern Cross
Band
Facebook - Wigtune Company
Wigtune Blog
Smashwords |
was formed as a service to the body of Christ to encourage scriptural
worship. To accomplish this goal Wigtune Company offers free contemporary Christian praise
and worship music, contemporary Christian rock and hymn mp3 and chart material along with
a free on-line worship study book for personal devotions, Bible study groups, Sunday
schools, pastors, music ministers and ministry training. In order to bridge the gap
between the old and the new the worship study book gives solid theological and
historical support to the use of traditional Christian hymn-singing in conjunction with
praise chorus singing. 
Vision Statement 
Wigtune Story 
Check out this powerful Southern Cross song! 
