Monday, October 6, 2008

David Pescovkov: Who is "essential" during a pandemic?

Original: Link

The Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics published new research on who should be considered "essential" in the event of a pandemic flu outbreak. Of course, medical workers and firefighters are on the list but so are a surprisingly diverse group of other folks who often go unrecognized in keeping us alive and happy. From a press release:

follow a 2006 study published in another journal, Psychopharmacology, in which 60 percent of a group of 36 healthy, well-educated volunteers with active spiritual lives reported having a "full mystical experience" after taking psilocybin...

Fourteen months later, (Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Roland) Griffiths re-administered the questionnaires used in the first study -- along with a specially designed set of follow up questions -- to all 36 subjects. Results showed that about the same age when they became infamous: Lee at 24, Tonya at 23. And they have similar facial features. Kennedy doesn't look like Kerrigan, but Kerrigan looks a bit like Jackie Kennedy. Perhaps God's joke is that JFK, the womanizer, should return in a body resembling his own wife.
Tonya Harding Is Lee Harvey Oswald (tonyahardingshotjfk.com, thanks Vann Hall !)