The Wall Street Journal announced in its November 14th edition that a miraculous bass-baritone named Thomas Quasthoff has appeared on the music scene. On earlier visits, wrote the Journal, Mr. Quasthoff "filled Alice Tully and Avery Fisher concert halls with the full range of color and dynamics of his incredible instrument." In October when he appeared as soloist in the opening concert of Carnegie Hall with the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra, his voice soared "through the hall with the dark gleam of patinated bronze." The Journal also reported that Mr. Quasthoff was born as a Thalidomide baby with rudimentary arms, malformed legs and a dwarf's torso.

In the August 2nd issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, the 90,000-member American College of Physicians, second only to the AMA in size, officially opposed the practice of assisted suicide. In so doing, it joined the American Medical Association, the American Nurses Association, and the American Geriatric Society. Assisted suicide is practiced, maintained the ACP, because doctors and nurses have not bothered to learn methods of palliative care. Said Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, the author of the report, "We must solve the problems of inadequate care at the end of life, not avoid them through practices such as assisted suicide."

...And how ironic are the works of death's bearers
As hundreds of New Yorks' policemen, firefighters, and rescue personnel worked frantically to save the lives of any survivors of the September 11th terrorist attack on the World Trade Towers, Planned Parenthood of New York City announced its own contribution. It would, it proclaimed in a press release, offer complete reproductive health care, free of charge, from September 18-22. Among its offered services were birth control, contraception, and surgical abortion.

Pro-abortionist Kate Michelman has a new-speak term for the death of a child in partial birth abortion. The baby "undergoes demise," she says. (Quoted by George Will in "When a Fetus is a Patient," Washington Post, July 26, 2001.)

"Once life is special-ordered rather than conceived, 'human life' will never be the same again. Cloning brings conception and gestation 'into the bright light of the laboratory, beneath which the child-to-be can be fertilized, nourished, pruned, weeded, watched, inspected, prodded, pinched, cajoled, injected, tested, rated, graded, approved, stamped, wrapped, sealed, and delivered'--all in order to satisfy someone else's need, or someone else's sense of what is socially desirable." (Leon Kass of the University of Chicago, as quoted by George Weigel in Catholic Standard, June 21, 2001).

But the Word of our God shall stand forever
"Man is more than a tiny vagary of whirling electrons or a wisp of smoke from a limitless smouldering. Man is a child of God, made in his image, and therefore must be respected as such…And when we truly believe in the sacredness of human personality, we wont exploit people, we wont trample over people with the iron feet of oppression, we won't kill anybody." (Martin Luther King, Jr., in a 1967 Christmas sermon).

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings. (Isaiah 52:7).

• Elizabeth Achtemeier is retired adjunct professor of Bible and Homeletics at Union Seminary in Richmond and a member of the PPL Board of Reference.

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