“
Bed the woman until neither of you can walk, and get her out of your system. Remember, no matter what they are or where they come from, all women have one simple birth defect. BPD.
BPD?
Bitch Personality Disorder.
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Acheron (Dark-Hunter, #14))
“
Thickly forested regions of Phuoc Tuy including the Rung Sat swamps and farms considered to be controlled by the Vietcong, were regularly sprayed by defoliants including “Agent Orange” using aircraft. This was both an inhumane and unsuccessful strategy which only destroyed enough food to feed 245,000 Vietnamese people for a year resulting in a propaganda gift to the Vietcong. (Ham, 2007). Given that defoliation did not uncover the enemy, who kept on fighting from jungle, caves and tunnels, the whole defoliation programme must be considered a failure. Given also, that birth defects and other health problems associated with defoliants can be directly blamed upon “Agent Orange”, it stands to reason that the allies in the Second Indochina War who sprayed it upon villages and farms can in fact be said to be, “Guilty of War Crimes!
”
”
Michael G. Kramer (A Gracious Enemy)
“
If another woman had been around, this would never have happened."
"Whatever you're trying to say, just spit it out."
"Come on, Heath. I'm not blond, leggy, or stacked. I was the default setting. Even my fiance never said I was sexy."
"Your ex-fiance wears lipstick, so I wouldn't take that to heart. I promise, Annabelle, you're very sexy. That hair..."
"Do not start in on my hair. I was born with it, okay. It's like making fun of someone with a birth defect.
”
”
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Match Me If You Can (Chicago Stars, #6))
“
Is there something I can help with?”
“No,” Kat said petulantly. “You’re a man and I hate all of you right now.”
He took two steps back. “Fair enough. Since my presence is obviously causing you pain, I’ll take my manhood outside to the terrace, where you can join me if you can overlook my obvious birth defect.
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Devil May Cry (Dark-Hunter, #11))
“
Jesus never met a disease he could not cure, a birth defect he could not reverse, a demon he could not exorcise. But he did meet skeptics he could not convince and sinners he could not convert. Forgiveness of sins requires an act of will on the receiver's part, and some who heard Jesus' strongest words about grace and forgiveness turned away unrepentant.
”
”
Philip Yancey (The Jesus I Never Knew)
“
In Olga’s heart there was a pin-sized hole of infinite depth that made every day slightly more painful than it needed to be. She thought of it, this hole, as a birth defect. The space where, in a normal heart, a mother’s love was meant to be.
”
”
Xóchitl González (Olga Dies Dreaming)
“
She was a defective child-bearing machine. She destroyed herself automatically while giving birth to Dwayne.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Breakfast of Champions)
“
One naive pro-natalist assumption is that because death is a bad thing, procreation, which can be considered the antonym of death is a god thing, but the naive defect in that assumption is that it ignores the obvious fact that procreation is an essential (and the ultimate cause) of death
”
”
Jiwoon Hwang
“
It is one of the supreme ironies of history that the blessed birth of an only son should have proved the mortal blow. Even as the saluting cannons boomed and the flags waved, Fate had prepared a terrible story. Along with the lost battles and sunken ships, the bombs, the revolutionaries and their plots, the strikes and revolts, Imperial Russia was toppled by a tiny defect in the body of a little boy.
”
”
Robert K. Massie (Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty)
“
Could there be grief so unresolved and potent that it continued on, flowed into the next life as powerfully as a birth defect or a birthmark, where still it could not be shaken?
”
”
Sharon Guskin (The Forgetting Time)
“
The techno-medical model of maternity care, unlike the midwifery model, is comparatively new on the world scene, having existed for barely two centuries. This male-derived framework for care is a product of the industrial revolution. As anthropologist Robbie Davis-Floyd has described in detail, underlying the technocratic mode of care of our own time is an assumption that the human body is a machine and that the female body in particular is a machine full of shortcomings and defects. Pregnancy and labor are seen as illnesses, which, in order not to be harmful to mother or baby, must be treated with drugs and medical equipment. Within the techno-medical model of birth, some medical intervention is considered necessary for every birth, and birth is safe only in retrospect.
”
”
Ina May Gaskin (Ina May's Guide to Childbirth)
“
A misbegotten hatchling of consciousness, a birth defect of our species, imagination is often revered as a sign of vigor in our make-up. But it is really just a psychic overcompensation for our impotence as beings. Denied nature’s exemption from creativity, we are indentured servants of the imaginary until the hour of our death, when the final harassments of imagination will beset us.
”
”
Thomas Ligotti (The Conspiracy Against the Human Race)
“
The word “autistic” is accurate. But so are other words that we no longer use to describe people: spinster (unmarried woman), hobo (migrant worker), cripple (person with a physical handicap), and so on. The fact that a person is unmarried or has sustained a mobility-reducing injury or birth defect certainly figures into their life experiences, but it does not define their character—unless they or we let it.
”
”
Ellen Notbohm (Ten Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew)
“
Cousin-screwing. It is not totally safe. It raises the risk of birth defects slightly. But I was reading in a book for history that there's, like, a 99.9999 percent chance that at least one of your great-great-great-grandparents married first cousin.
”
”
John Green (Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances)
“
The Author To Her Book
Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth did'st by my side remain,
Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad exposed to public view,
Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
The visage was so irksome in my sight,
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could.
I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.
I stretcht thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet.
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save home-spun cloth, i' th' house I find.
In this array, 'mongst vulgars may'st thou roam.
In critic's hands, beware thou dost not come,
And take thy way where yet thou art not known.
If for thy father askt, say, thou hadst none;
And for thy mother, she alas is poor,
Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.
”
”
Anne Bradstreet (The Works of Anne Bradstreet (John Harvard Library))
“
No," Kat said petulantly. "You're a man and I hate all of you right now."
He took two steps back. "Fair enough. Since my presence is obviously causing you pain, I'll take my manhood outside to the terrace, where you can join me if you can overlook my obvious birth defect.
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Devil May Cry (Dark-Hunter, #11))
“
During those times, they'd stand there watching me watching them. I'd pray, please. Put a pillow to my face. Clench a hand around my throat. Stab me. Shoot me. Put me out of everyone's misery.
Why did you give birth to such a loser? Why didn't you admit I was hopeless and fat and stop trying to make me fit in? This world wasn't meant for me. I was born too soon or too late. Too defective.
I wish I could tell my parents, "If you want to help me, help me die."
I wonder, Are they required to fill out a 24-hour suicide watch form? Is the Defect at home? Check. Is It alive? Check.
Why did they bother with the constructive surgery on my throat anyway? Waste of money. They threw away or hid from me everything with sharp edges or breakables. Picture frames. Pottery. Did they think they could suicide-proof this place?
I want to tell them, "Chip, Kim, there is no way to suicide-proof a person
”
”
Julie Anne Peters (By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead)
“
Love equals a morbid and relentless fear of losing the other person. It’s a freak-accident fear, a piece of space junk falling from the sky and obliterating him, leaving nothing but his smoking boots. It’s the unfortunate-organ-defect fear—suddenly, on his thirtieth birthday, the little crack in his heart that’s been there since birth will rear its ugly head and take him in his sleep while he’s spooning you. It’s the only way to know you’re really in love, when you ask the question would it be harder to watch him die, or to know he’ll watch me die? Is there more mercy in being the one who does the watching or in being the one who does the dying? It’s when you realize what mercy-killing actually means, it’s when you actually care to the point of tormenting worry. It’s not roses and white horses, it’s fucking brutal and it can send a person running for the hills. To love is brave and Will was the bravest person I knew.
”
”
Renee Carlino (Sweet Thing (Sweet Thing, #1))
“
it's going great. Two months in, and I've created three apps."
"Apps?"
"For people who buy my book as an e-book --which will be everybody. The first is called Don't Look. It's for the overly sensitive. It blurs and turns the type red when a dog dies or a baby is born with a birth defect. Stuff like that. My second is It's Not Okay When You Say It, and it delivers an electrical zap if the reader laughs at a racial slur. My third is Jesus Thesaurus, which replaces explicit sexual language with church words. So, when one of my characters 'saints' a guy's 'disciple', He'll beg her to 'cavalry' his 'Baptists' and 'shout amen'.
”
”
Helen Ellis (American Housewife)
“
The fancies that take their monstrous birth from the spinelessness and boredom of usurped wealth bring in their wake every defect ... and though rich men's crimes escape the law, protected as they are by the cowardice of governments and people, Nature, more real than society, sets her anarchic example by abandoning the wretched time servers of Capital to the shame and madness of the worst aberrations.
”
”
Jean Lorrain (Le crime des riches suivi de Paris forain"" (French Edition))
“
Brace yourselves, girls: Soda is liquid Satan. It is the devil. It is garbage. There is nothing in soda that should be put into your body. For starters, soda’s high levels of phosphorous can increase calcium loss from the body, as can its sodium and caffeine. [Cousens, Conscious Eating, 475] You know what this means—bone loss, which may lead to osteoporosis. And the last time we checked, sugar, found in soda by the boatload, does not make you skinny! Now don’t go patting yourself on the back if you drink diet soda. That stuff is even worse. Aspartame (an ingredient commonly found in diet sodas and other sugar-free foods) has been blamed for a slew of scary maladies, like arthritis, birth defects, fibromyalgia, Alzheimer’s, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and diabetes.2 When methyl alcohol, a component of aspartame, enters your body, it turns into formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is toxic and carcinogenic (cancer-causing). 3 Laboratory scientists use formaldehyde as a disinfectant or preservative. They don’t fucking drink it. Perhaps you have a lumpy ass because you are preserving your fat cells with diet soda. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has received more complaints about aspartame than any other ingredient to date.4 Want more bad news? When aspartame is paired with carbs, it causes your brain to slow down its production of serotonin.5 A healthy level of serotonin is needed to be happy and well balanced. So drinking soda can make you fat, sick, and unhappy.
”
”
Rory Freedman (Skinny Bitch: A No-Nonsense, Tough-Love Guide for Savvy Girls Who Want to Stop Eating Crap and Start Looking Fabulous!)
“
I can think of no sadder example of our food paradigm than two posters taped to the window of a California IHOP. One is a colorful photo of pancakes heaped with bananas, strawberries, nuts, syrups and whipped cream with the caption, 'Welcome to Paradise.' Lower down, an 8x10 photocopy states: 'Chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects or other reproductive harm may be present in food or beverages sold here.' Such signs are posted on many fast-food outlets. Heaven isn't a place on earth, at least not at these drive-throughs.
”
”
Adam Leith Gollner (The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce, and Obsession)
“
There are people whose defects become them, and others who are ill served by their good qualities. —La Rochefoucauld
”
”
Stacy Schiff (A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America)
“
the God of birds and trees would have to be also the God of birth defects and cancer.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever)
“
And that’s okay. I’m always going to be the sister of a kid with a birth defect: that’s not the issue. I just don’t always want to be defined that way.
”
”
R.J. Palacio (Wonder)
“
Last night I heard lepers
Flinch like birth defects
Its musk was fecal in origin
As the words dribbled off of its chin
Which said "I'm lost, I'm lost
”
”
Cedric Bixler-Zavala
“
I'm always going to be the sister of a kid with a birth defect: that's not the issue. I just don't always want to be defined that way.
”
”
R.J. Palacio (Wonder)
“
Even worse than that, in the late seventies she’d sat here in her living room and watched a fellow Vietnam vet claim on television that Agent Orange had given him—and thousands like him—cancer. I died in Vietnam; I just didn’t know it, he’d said. Not long after that, the world had learned that the herbicide also caused miscarriages and birth defects. Most likely it had caused Frankie’s miscarriage.
”
”
Kristin Hannah (The Women)
“
The lack of balance between the birth-rate of the "unfit" and the "fit," admittedly the greatest present menace to the civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. The example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken, should not be held up for emulation to the mentally and physically fit, and therefore less fertile, parents of the educated and well-to-do classes. On the contrary, the most urgent problem to-day is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.
”
”
Margaret Sanger (The Pivot of Civilization)
“
Anatomy and biological process aside, creating life is a miracle, and should stay that way. Yes, we can—and we should—use our knowledge and our technology to insure the health and safety of the mother and child. Eliminate birth defects and disease whenever possible. But crossing that line into designing babies? Manipulating emotions, physical appearance, mental capacity, even personality traits? That’s no miracle. It’s ego.” The
”
”
J.D. Robb (Origin in Death / Memory in Death / Born in Death / Innocent in Death / Creation in Death (In Death #21-25))
“
It’s a congenital birth defect called phocomelia,” she’d told me, as though she’d said it a million times before, even though I hadn’t asked. “It’s a known side effect of the anti-nausea drug thalidomide, but was just a genetic luck of the draw in my case.
”
”
Shawn McGuire (Kept Secrets (Whispering Pines Mystery #2))
“
A child conceived on Christmas Eve is considered unlucky and will later resent his parents for their unholy transgression, their lack of control and piety. The child may be deformed with a harelip or be cursed with the ears and head of a wolf. Or the infant may be born a werewolf.
”
”
Jody Shields (The Fig Eater)
“
When she was pregnant with her second child, a midwife asked if Catherine had any unspoken fears about anything that could go wrong with the baby - such as genetic defects or complications during the birth. My sister said, 'My only fear is that he might grow up to become a Republican.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
“
The American West is the playground for the country's obsession with exploitation and destruction, with most extractive economies near Native American reservations. There are increased rates of birth defects, higher rates of cancer. Violent people who mimc the violence done to the land.
”
”
Taylor Brorby (Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land)
“
. . . rubella does not seem to invoke the fascination of thalidomide despite the fact that in a single epidemic in the United States it caused more birth defects in one year than thalidomide did during its entire time on the world market. —William S. Webster, University of Sydney Medical School, Australia, 1998
”
”
Meredith Wadman (The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics, and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease)
“
She was a defective child-bearing machine. She destroyed herself automatically while giving birth to Dwayne. The printer disappeared. He was a disappearing machine.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
“
We are starting to slide when we start to judge our brother’s motives by whether or not he experiences the same gut response of reactive compassion to the outrage we are assigned to deal with. But a Christian nurse in Romania who has dedicated herself to caring for abandoned orphans with birth defects may never have heard of Roe v. Wade. She doesn’t need to.
”
”
Douglas Wilson (Skin and Blood)
“
Our leaders may proffer various explanations about protecting us from terrorism, but the fact is that these leaders are worshiping a monstrous deity. Through the Oligarchical Cartels, as well as Corporatism (such as the Rockefeller Corporations) and through the Queen of England personally, a deliberate depopulation policy is being enacted. They are using substances such as depleted uranium in various United States international conflicts which result in severe birth defects. This increases the death rate through various radiation induced diseases, causing the men and women to become infertile. The result is that the family is broken apart, and the species becomes weak. Therefore, reproduction is severely reduced.
”
”
Laurence Galian (666: Connection with Crowley)
“
Dutiful
How did I get so dutiful? Was I always that way?
Going around as a child with a small broom and dustpan,
sweeping up dirt I didn't make,
or out into the yard with a stunted rake,,
weeding the gardens of others
-the dirt blew back, the weeds flourished, despite my efforts-
and all the while with a frown of disapproval
for other people's fecklessness, and my own slavery.
I didn't perform these duties willingly.
I wanted to be on the river, or dancing,
but something had me by the back of the neck.
That's me too, years later, a purple-eyed wreck,
because whatever had to be finished wasn't, and I stayed late,
grumpy as a snake, on too much coffee,
and further on still, those groups composed of mutterings
and scoldings, and the set-piece exhortation:
somebody ought to do something!
That was my hand shooting up.
But I've resigned. I've ditched the grip of my echo.
I've decided to wear sunglasses, and a necklace
adorned with the gold word NO,
and eat flowers I didn't grow.
Still, why do I feel so responsible
for the wailing from shattered houses,
for birth defects and unjust wars,
and the soft, unbearable sadness
filtering down from distant stars?
”
”
Margaret Atwood (The Door)
“
Shame ruptures our connection with life and with our soul. It is, indeed, a sickness of the soul. When feelings of shame arise, we pull back from the world, avoiding contact that could cause or risk exposure. The last thing we want in times of excruciating self-consciousness is to be seen. We find ourselves avoiding the gaze of others, we become silent and withdrawn, all in hopes of slipping under the radar. I remember sharing with the audience that the goal of the shame-bound person was to get from birth to death without ever being an echo on the radar of life. My tombstone was going to read “Safe at Last.” Gershon Kaufman, one of the most important writers on shame, has said that shame leaves us feeling “unspeakably and irreparably defective.”29 It is unspeakable because we do not want anyone to know how we feel inside. We fear it is irreparable because we think it is not something we have done wrong—it is simply who we are. We cannot remove the stain from our core. We search and search for the defect, hoping that that, once found, it can be exorcised like some grotesque demon. But it lingers, remaining there our entire lives, anxious that it will be seen and simultaneously longing to be seen and touched with compassion.
”
”
Francis Weller (The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief)
“
Annie's message is timeless, her shining spirit and healing gift from the Spiritual Universe will capture your heart. She was born with birth defects in a time when special children and their mothers were put to death or banished. But have things changed really that much? Have they changed enough? "No!" Bullying, abuse, ridicule, and inequality thrives in the lives of women and children in our global modern society, just as surely as it did in the mid-1600s Colonial America. Based on factual research.
”
”
Deborah A.Bowman
“
Every person’s story contains chapters of pain and loss, victory and defeat, love and hate, pride and prejudice, courage and fear, faith and self-distrust, charity and kindness, selfishness and jealously. Every person’s story also contains folios of hopefulness and truthfulness, deceit and despair, action and change, passion and compassion, excitement and boredom, birth and creation, mutation and defect, generation and preservation, delusions and illusions, imagination and fantasy, bafflement and puzzlement. What makes a person’s selfsame story unique is how he or she organizes the pure and impure forces that comprise them, how they respond to internal and external crisis, if they act in a safeguarding and humble manner, or lead a self-seeking and destructive existence.
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
On the left, the antiscience tends to extend worries about health and the environment into areas that are not supported by the evidence, claiming nevertheless that, as in Silent Spring, there are hidden dangers to our environment, our health, or our spirits. Examples include the ideas that cell phones cause brain cancer; that Wi-Fi and other electromagnetic fields cause cancer, birth defects, or allergies; that vaccines cause autism; that genetically modified crops are unsafe to eat; and that fluoride in water is unsafe to drink.
”
”
Shawn Lawrence Otto (the war on Science)
“
Pet raccoons, birth defects, hybrid corn, and a massive typhus outbreak: the first season was padded with distractions. It ended with a log-splitting competition, showing off Landon’s pectoral muscles to advantage. His chest would become a primary visual motif, as the television Charles Ingalls frequently found cause to remove his shirt, baring a clean-shaven and well-oiled expanse. As for Pa’s beard, Landon sloughed that off as well, a publicity release solemnly announcing that he “just did not look good” with facial hair.78 When Landon had starred as Little Joe Cartwright in Bonanza, his hindquarters had been a staple of the teen fan magazine Tiger Beat, so he wore no underwear under Pa’s tight trousers.79
”
”
Caroline Fraser (Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder)
“
I say, it sounds like some dangerous psychotic killer wrote this, and this buttoned-down schizophrenic could probably go over the edge at any moment in the working day and stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-180 carbine gas-operated semiautomatic. My boss just looks at me. The guy, I say, is probably at home every night with a little rattail file, filing a cross into the tip of every one of his rounds. This way, when he shows up to work one morning and pumps a round into his nagging, ineffectual, petty, whining, butt-sucking, candy-ass boss, that one round will split along the filed grooves and spread open the way a dumdum bullet flowers inside you to blow a bushel load of your stinking guts out through your spine. Picture your gut chakra opening in a slow-motion explosion of sausage-casing small intestine. My boss takes the paper out from under my nose. Go ahead, I say, read some more. No really, I say, it sounds fascinating. The work of a totally diseased mind. And I smile. The little butthole-looking edges of the hole in my cheek are the same blue-black as a dog’s gums. The skin stretched tight across the swelling around my eyes feels varnished. My boss just looks at me. Let me help you, I say. I say, the fourth rule of fight club is one fight at a time. My boss looks at the rules and then looks at me. I say, the fifth rule is no shoes, no shirts in the fight. My boss looks at the rules and looks at me. Maybe, I say, this totally diseased fuck would use an Eagle Apache carbine because an Apache takes a thirty-shot mag and only weighs nine pounds. The Armalite only takes a five-round magazine. With thirty shots, our totally fucked hero could go the length of mahogany row and take out every vice-president with a cartridge left over for each director. Tyler’s words coming out of my mouth. I used to be such a nice person. I just look at my boss. My boss has blue, blue, pale cornflower blue eyes. The J and R 68 semiautomatic carbine also takes a thirty-shot mag, and it only weighs seven pounds. My boss just looks at me. It’s scary, I say. This is probably somebody he’s known for years. Probably this guy knows all about him, where he lives, and where his wife works and his kids go to school. This is exhausting, and all of a sudden very, very boring. And why does Tyler need ten copies of the fight club rules? What I don’t have to say is I know about the leather interiors that cause birth defects. I know about the counterfeit brake linings that looked good enough to pass the purchasing agent, but fail after two thousand miles. I know about the air-conditioning rheostat that gets so hot it sets fire to the maps in your glove compartment. I know how many people burn alive because of fuel-injector flashback. I’ve seen people’s legs cut off at the knee when turbochargers start exploding and send their vanes through the firewall and into the passenger compartment. I’ve been out in the field and seen the burned-up cars and seen the reports where CAUSE OF FAILURE is recorded as "unknown.” No, I say, the paper’s not mine. I take the paper between two fingers and jerk it out of his hand. The edge must slice his thumb because his hand flies to his mouth, and he’s sucking hard, eyes wide open. I crumble the paper into a ball and toss it into the trash can next to my desk. Maybe, I say, you shouldn’t be bringing me every little piece of trash you pick up.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
“
The telegram offered the promise that if Mexico allied itself with Germany, then Germany would help Mexico “regain by conquest her lost territory in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico.” It went even further, suggesting that Germany and Mexico also reach out to Japan, and encourage that country’s defection from the Allied camp by “mediating a peace,” while offering to let the Japanese join in the spoils taken from the breakup of America’s presence along the Pacific.
”
”
Arthur Herman (1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder)
“
And any form of philanthropy that forgets the doctrine of the common good for the false principle that society is a new entity for which individuals must be sacrificed, sooner or later will be advocating elimination of the unfit; the murder of defective infants — and then we shall have once more a paganism in which mothers will throw their children from Tarpeian Rocks,4 and in which new Herods will arise to practice birth-control as he did — even with the sword.
”
”
Fulton J. Sheen (Old Errors and New Labels (Fulton J. Sheen))
“
Chirality matters. In the curious case of the artificial fragrance limonene, the right-handed form smells like an orange, whereas the left-handed version of this simple ring-shaped molecule smells like a lemon. The smell receptors in your nose are sensitive to chirality, so right- and left-limonene transmit slightly different signals to your brain. Taste buds are less sensitive to the differences between right- and left-handed sugars. They both taste sweet, but our body’s fine-tuned digestive system can process only the right-handed forms. The artificial sweetener tagatose, a zero-calorie left-handed sugar substitute, exploits these properties. The tragic story of thalidomide also rests on handedness. The right-handed version of this drug alleviated morning sickness in pregnant women, but the left-handed variant that inevitably tagged along caused birth defects. Today the FDA imposes strict requirements for chirally pure drugs—regulations
”
”
Robert M. Hazen (The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet)
“
So oft it chances in particular men That, for some vicious mole of nature in them, As in their birth,— wherein they are not guilty, Since nature cannot choose her origin,— By the o’ergrowth of some complexion, Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason; Or by some habit, that too much o’er-leavens The form of plausive manners; — that these men,— Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, Being nature’s livery or fortune’s star,— Their virtues else, — be they as pure as grace, As infinite as man may undergo,— Shall in the general censure take corruption
”
”
Kamala Subramaniam (Mahabharata)
“
VIRGINIA 1/20/2020:
The right to self defense is inalienable from the right to life. Weaken one and the other is devalued. Surrender your arms today and forfeit your life tomorrow.
It is by no coincidence that a morally bankrupt man is behind the violation of the 2nd Amendment in the State of Virginia: Governor Northam, a man otherwise known for his support for after birth abortion and the wearing of "black face." someone with a defective moral compass, who does not know the sanctity of life, can't very well be expected to know the value of defending it.
”
”
A.E. Samaan
“
Two-thirds of the emigres returned to France during 1804 and 1805, and almost every exile from the Marquis d’Esgrignon’s province came back to the land of his fathers. There were certainly defections. Men of good birth entered the service of Napoleon, and went into the army or held places at the Imperial court, and others made alliances with the upstart families. All those who cast in their lots with the Empire retrieved their fortunes and recovered their estates, thanks to the Emperor’s munificence; and these for the most part went to Paris and stayed there.
”
”
Honoré de Balzac (Works of Honore de Balzac)
“
Government By The Industry, For The Industry Vice President George Bush sat in his chair across from four Monsanto executives. They had come to the White House with an unusual request. They wanted more regulation. They were venturing into a new technology, the genetic modification of food, and they were actually asking the government to oversee their emerging industry. But this was late 1986. Ronald Reagan was president and the administration was busily deregulating business. Bush needed convincing. “We bugged him for regulation,” said Leonard Guarraia, one of the executives at the meeting. “We told him that we have to be regulated.”[1] Monsanto was about to make a multibillion-dollar gamble. With this new technology, they could engineer and patent a whole new kind of food. Later, by buying up seed companies around the world, Monsanto could replace the natural seeds with their patented engineered seeds and control a hefty portion of the food supply. But there was fear among Monsanto’s ranks—fear of consumers’ and environmentalists’ reactions. Their fear was borne of experience. Years earlier, Monsanto had assured the public that their Agent Orange, the defoliant used during the Vietnam War, was safe for humans. It wasn’t. Thousands of veterans and tens of thousand of Vietnamese who suffered a wide range of maladies, including cancer, neurological disorders, and birth defects, blame Monsanto.
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Jeffrey M. Smith (Seeds of Deception)
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What no one then, of course, knew was that as female children of the tsaritsa, one or all of the sisters might be carriers of that terrible defective gene – a hidden time bomb that had already begun to reverberate across the royal families of Europe. Alexandra’s elder sister Irene – who like her was a carrier and who had married her first cousin, Prince Henry of Prussia – had already given birth to two haemophiliac sons. The youngest, four-year-old Heinrich, had died – ‘of the terrible illness of the English family’, as Xenia described it – just five months before Alexey was born. In Russia they called it the bolezn gessenskikh – ‘the Hesse disease’; others called it ‘the Curse of the Coburgs’.66 But one thing was certain; in the early 1900s, the life expectancy of a haemophiliac child was only about thirteen years.67
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Helen Rappaport (The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra (The Romanov Sisters #2))
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For me, in that moment …” He paused. “It’s as though time has stopped. All the humors of the body, all the blood and bile and vapors that make a man; it’s as though just at once all of them are working in perfect harmony.” He smiled. His teeth were slightly crooked, the only defect in his otherwise perfect appearance. “Or as though they’ve stopped altogether. I often wonder whether that moment is the same as the moment of birth, or of death. I know that its timing is different for each man … or woman, I suppose,” he added, with a courteous nod to me. “But just then, for that fraction of time, it seems as though all things are possible. You can look across the limitations of your own life, and see that they are really nothing. In that moment when time stops, it is as though you know you could undertake any venture, complete it and come back to yourself, to find the world unchanged, and everything just as you left it a moment before. And it’s as though …” He hesitated for a moment, carefully choosing words. “As though, knowing that everything is possible, suddenly nothing is necessary.” “But … do you actually do anything?” I asked. “Er, pray, I mean?” “I? Well,” he said slowly, “I sit, and I look at Him.” A wide smile stretched the fine-drawn lips. “And He looks at me.
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Diana Gabaldon (Outlander (Outlander, #1))
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One of the most astonishing and precious things about motherhood," writes Kathleen Norris, "is the brave way in which women consent to give birth to creatures who will one day die."
I am not so brave. Far more frightening to me than the threat of interrupted plans or endless to-do lists is the thread of loving someone as intensely as a mother loves her child. To invite in to the universe a new life, knowing full well that no one can protect thatl ife from the currents of evil that pulse through our world and through our very bloodstreams, seems a grave and awesome task that is at once unspeakably selfish and miraculously good. I am frightened enough by how fervently I love Dan, by my absolute revolt against the possibility -- no, the inevitable reality -- that he will get hurt, that he will experience loss, and that one day he will die. I'm not sure my heart is big enough to wrap itself around another breakable soul.
I was once waiting in an airport next to a woman whose six-year-old daughter suffered from a rare heart defect that could take her life at any moment. In spite of mounting medical bills and the pressures of raising both a child with special needs and another younger daughter, the woman said she and her husband planned to adopt a boy from Ethiopia later that year.
"What made you want to grow your family in the midst of all this turmoil?" I asked.
"Why did the Jews have children after the Holocaust?" she asked back. "Why do women keep trying after multiple miscarraiges? It's our way of shaking our fists at the future and saying, you know what?--we will be hopeful; things will get better; you can't scare us after all. Having children is, ultimately, an act of faith.
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Rachel Held Evans (A Year of Biblical Womanhood)
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Again you must learn the point which comes next. Every circle, of those which are by the act of man drawn or even turned on a lathe, is full of that which is opposite to the fifth thing. For everywhere it has contact with the straight. But the circle itself, we say, has nothing in either smaller or greater, of that which is its opposite. We say also that the name is not a thing of permanence for any of them, and that nothing prevents the things now called round from being called straight, and the straight things round; for those who make changes and call things by opposite names, nothing will be less permanent (than a name). Again with regard to the definition, if it is made up of names and verbal forms, the same remark holds that there is no sufficiently durable permanence in it. And there is no end to the instances of the ambiguity from which each of the four suffers; but the greatest of them is that which we mentioned a little earlier, that, whereas there are two things, that which has real being, and that which is only a quality, when the soul is seeking to know, not the quality, but the essence, each of the four, presenting to the soul by word and in act that which it is not seeking (i.e., the quality), a thing open to refutation by the senses, being merely the thing presented to the soul in each particular case whether by statement or the act of showing, fills, one may say, every man with puzzlement and perplexity.
[...] But in subjects where we try to compel a man to give a clear answer about the fifth, any one of those who are capable of overthrowing an antagonist gets the better of us, and makes the man, who gives an exposition in speech or writing or in replies to questions, appear to most of his hearers to know nothing of the things on which he is attempting to write or speak; for they are sometimes not aware that it is not the mind of the writer or speaker which is proved to be at fault, but the defective nature of each of the four instruments. The process however of dealing with all of these, as the mind moves up and down to each in turn, does after much effort give birth in a well-constituted mind to knowledge of that which is well constituted.
[...] Therefore, if men are not by nature kinship allied to justice and all other things that are honourable, though they may be good at learning and remembering other knowledge of various kinds-or if they have the kinship but are slow learners and have no memory-none of all these will ever learn to the full the truth about virtue and vice. For both must be learnt together; and together also must be learnt, by complete and long continued study, as I said at the beginning, the true and the false about all that has real being. After much effort, as names, definitions, sights, and other data of sense, are brought into contact and friction one with another, in the course of scrutiny and kindly testing by men who proceed by question and answer without ill will, with a sudden flash there shines forth understanding about every problem, and an intelligence whose efforts reach the furthest limits of human powers. Therefore every man of worth, when dealing with matters of worth, will be far from exposing them to ill feeling and misunderstanding among men by committing them to writing. In one word, then, it may be known from this that, if one sees written treatises composed by anyone, either the laws of a lawgiver, or in any other form whatever, these are not for that man the things of most worth, if he is a man of worth, but that his treasures are laid up in the fairest spot that he possesses. But if these things were worked at by him as things of real worth, and committed to writing, then surely, not gods, but men "have themselves bereft him of his wits".
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Plato (The Letters)
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Since my presence is causing you pain. I'll take my manhood outside to the terrace. Where you can join me if you can overlook my obvious birth defect
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Acheron (Ash) Parthenopaeus/ Dark-Hunter Series
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Despite Carson’s warnings in Silent Spring, studies in Europe, Canada, and the United States showed that DDT didn’t cause liver disease, premature births, congenital defects, leukemia, or any of the other diseases she had claimed. Indeed, the only type of cancer that had increased in the United States during the DDT era was lung cancer, which was caused by cigarette smoking. DDT was arguably the safest insect repellent ever invented—far safer than many of the other pesticides that have since taken its place.
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Paul A. Offit (Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong)
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THESE FOUR MIND-CHANGING REFLECTIONS—OUR PREcious human birth, impermanence, the law of karma, and the defects of samsaric conditioning—turn our lives toward the Dharma, toward discovering the nature of our minds. These reflections begin to break apart the clouds of confusion and help us see the truth of our lives more clearly, help us let go more completely. Without them we are carried along on the powerful current of habitual action; with them, we enter into a timeless stream of awareness.
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Joseph Goldstein (One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism)
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An ASD is an atrial septal defect. It is a hole in the heart. It is supposed to close at birth, but in some people it stays open. It causes low oxygen blood that is returning to the heart to mix with high oxygen blood. ASD’s can damage the lungs in the long term and can cause hypoxic blood to occur!
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Steven Magee (Magee’s Disease)
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This was a boon for profits, but a disaster for society. Toxoplasmosis is a dangerous disease, particularly for pregnant women, the elderly and AIDS patients. Left untreated, it can lead to seizures, paralysis, blindness, birth defects and even death. It was so serious that the World Health Organization (WHO) included pyrimethamine (the chemical name for Daraprim) on its ‘List of Essential Medicines’.
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Alex Edmans (Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit – Updated and Revised)
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Sexual selection has also made male bodies grow according to a higher-risk, higher-stakes strategy. For males there is a higher incidence of birth defects, more death in infancy, higher mortality at every age, earlier senescence, and greater variation in health, strength, body size, brain size, and intelligence. This risky, go-for-broke strategy suggests that sexual competition among males was often a winner-takes-all contest. It was better to take a big gamble on producing the most attractive image during a short peak, rather than aiming to create a mediocre impression over a long period of time.
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Geoffrey Miller (The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature)
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Poor Bastards,” Evan muttered as he moved closer to the road. His eyes dwelled for a moment on the cart with the children, then he turned away. Even in the years when he lead the Pirates, he got used to the terrible deformities that were appearing more and more in the diminishing number of live births of the few surviving men and women. These children in the carts were no exception: Only one looked close to normal, all the other seven had defects ranging from a few extra fingers on each hand to hideously stunted bodies, to limbless trunks, to hornlike growth on lead-colored skin. Evan saw that two of the women were pregnant, and wondered, as he had done before, what could drive them to bear children with the hopeless testimony of children riding in the cart.
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Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (False Dawn)
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Arrhythmias are additional common causes of problems and death, and the heart can also be damaged by infections, birth defects, drugs, and faulty wiring. But atherosclerosis is by far the leading culprit, and chronically high blood pressure, hypertension, is a close second. Hypertension is a silent condition that relentlessly strains the heart, arteries, and various organs. At least 100,000 times a day, the heart forces about five liters of blood through thousands of miles of arteries that resist each squeeze, generating pressure. When we exercise, blood pressure rises temporarily, causing the heart’s muscular chambers to adapt, mostly by becoming stronger, larger, and more elastic so it can pump more blood with each stroke.30 Just as important, arteries also adapt to exercise to keep blood pressure low, primarily by expanding, multiplying, and staying elastic.31 However, when blood pressure is chronically high, the heart defends itself by developing thicker muscular walls. These thicker walls stiffen and fill with scar tissue, and eventually the heart weakens. A vicious cycle then ensues. As the heart’s ability to pump blood declines, it becomes harder to exercise and thus control high blood pressure. Blood pressure may rise as the heart progressively weakens until the failing heart cannot support or sustain a normal blood pressure. Death usually ensues. Coronary artery disease is ancient and has even been diagnosed in mummies.32 But research on nonindustrial populations provides powerful evidence that coronary artery disease and hypertension are largely evolutionary mismatches. Although many medical textbooks teach doctors that it’s normal for blood pressure to rise with age, we have known since the 1970s this is not true among hunter-gatherer populations like the San and the Hadza.33 The average blood pressure in a seventy-year-old San hunter-gatherer is 120/67, no different from a twenty-year-old. Lifelong low blood pressure also characterizes many subsistence farming populations. My colleagues Rob Shave and Aaron Baggish and I measured more than a hundred Tarahumara farmers of every age and found no difference in blood pressure between teenagers and octogenarians.34 By the same token, blood pressure can also stay normal into old age among industrialized people who eat sensibly and stay active.35
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Daniel E. Lieberman (Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding)
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Meantime, I underwent another echocardiogram and a CT test with dye. Turns out, my condition had zero to do with diet or behavior. I was born with a congenital heart defect known as a bicuspid aortic valve, the valve that transports blood flow from the heart. It’s an inherited form of heart disease in which two of the leaflets of the valve fuse together in the womb. It is the most common cause of heart disease present at birth and affects between 1 and 2 percent of adults. The walls of the aorta are typically strong enough to tolerate the stress of blood flow from the heart. Aneurysms—which develop in about half of all patients with bicuspid valves—occur when the walls weaken. As the weakened wall deteriorates, it leaves behind damaged tissue that grows in size, heightening the risk of a serious tear. The aortic valve is supposed to be three centimeters. Mine? The size of a can of Coca-Cola. So that’s why time was of the essence.
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Jon Dorenbos (Life Is Magic: My Inspiring Journey from Tragedy to Self-Discovery)
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This is a reminder of the injustices black and brown women, and all women of color in the system face. The hospital simply attributed their deaths to pregnancy complications and childbirth. The babies were believed to have died from lung problems, birth defects, and heart and brain issues as well. But one thing we know is that ignoring these women’s concerns and subjecting them to unfair conditions also contributed to their untimely and scary deaths. This hospital needs to be shut down until they can come clean about their evil doings,” Yamileth continued.
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Lydia V. Simms (Solana)
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Taking my hand, she walked out of the room where we found Vaughn and Judd playing pool in the dining room. The guys were deep in silent competition, so we admired their hot bodies quietly. Our giggling finally drew their attention.
“Where are we eating?” Vaughn asked, hitting a ball.
“We should eat somewhere that preggos can’t enjoy,” I suggested and Tawny grinned. “I think they can’t eat deli meat, but I don’t want that crap.”
Tawny searched info on her phone then smiled. “Sushi is supposed to be iffy.”
“Barf,” Vaughn said and Judd grimaced.
“We should go to a fish place and share a little sushi to celebrate our powerful birth control.”
Judd smiled at this comment. “Poor Aaron.”
“Screw Aaron,” I grunted. “Lark’s the one carrying two babies.”
Vaughn and Judd looked at each other then burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“He hooks up with a chick whose birth control is defective and ends up with twins,” Vaughn said, walking to me. “Dumb fuck probably didn’t know what hit him.”
“He gets to spend his life with an amazing person. Fuck you for laughing at his good luck.”
“Don’t go big sis on me, daffodil. One day, I’m knocking you up with twins too. No harm in making double the hot kids.”
“I’m still mad.”
“Wanna make a baby right now?” he whispered in my ear.
“Sushi first.”
“Barf.”
“We’ll see.”
Thirty minutes later, Vaughn proved me wrong. He hated sushi and nearly threw up after trying a bite. Watching him freak-out nearly killed me. I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe. Tawny was also in hysterics. Like any good friend would, Judd took a picture of a gagging Vaughn with his phone.
“Sent it to the crew. You’re welcome.”
“Jackass,” Vaughn said, wiping his tongue with a napkin.
Calming my laughter, I stroked his ponytail. “Poor baby. I’ll make it up to you later.”
Vaughn’s horrified expression immediately shifted into a smirk. “Yeah, you will.
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Bijou Hunter (Damaged and the Outlaw (Damaged, #4))
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When the church realizes that she is not without power against birth defects, she will arise out of her subdued apathy. It starts by believing the gospel above your experience and above your circumstances.
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Andy Hayner (God Heals Birth Defects: First Fruits)
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God is raising up a worldwide army that is rallying together for a simple reason— that the Lamb of God receive the reward for which He suffered at the whipping post in the lives of every person, especially those who were born with birth defects. An avalanche of miracles is beginning to rumble through the earth as children diagnosed with down syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, and other birth defects are being healed before our eyes.
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Andy Hayner (God Heals Birth Defects: First Fruits)
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If you have a child born with birth defect, Jesus Christ has redeemed you to be a vessel of God on the earth. God wants to flow through you in same way that He flowed through Jesus Christ. You are the light of the World. You are called to shine forth the light and glory of God in this dark world by healing birth defects by the power and authority of God’s Kingdom!
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Andy Hayner (God Heals Birth Defects: First Fruits)
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All children are a blessing from the Lord, including those born with birth defect. They are wonderful blessings! They enrich our lives and bring the blessing of their love and joy into this world. However, the disease and defect that is afflicting them is not a blessing. It’s robbing them of huge portions of their strength, their abilities, their health, and their peace. Like Jesus, we want to bless the children. Seeing them cured and walking in perfect health is a blessing. God is our help in times of trouble. He’s not our trouble.
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Andy Hayner (God Heals Birth Defects: First Fruits)
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When Jesus calls His disciples, “the light of the World” Jesus is giving us His own identity as agents called to demonstrate the Kingdom of God, which includes healing birth defect! God wants us not only to see the light of His glory but also to receive it, be filled with it, and pour it out. God wants to put Himself on display through our lives just as He did through Jesus. For this to happen, we must embrace God’s identity for us as His image bearers on the earth and become people who heal birth defect.
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Andy Hayner (God Heals Birth Defects: First Fruits)
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The cross of Jesus Christ, not our circumstances, is the place we must look to see God’s love for us. If you want to see how much God has blessed you, you don’t look at your wallet or bank account! You look to the Word of God that declares that in Christ you have already been blessed “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” (Eph. 1:3) Every blessing heaven has to offer is already yours and constantly at your disposal.
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Andy Hayner (God Heals Birth Defects: First Fruits)
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If for some reason we’re not seeing the healing Jesus paid for, that’s no reason for us to start evaluating ourselves. Why start questioning ourselves based on the work of the enemy, when God wants us to know ourselves according to the work of Jesus Christ?
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Andy Hayner (God Heals Birth Defects: First Fruits)
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In Christ, we see clearly that the Father is always willing to heal whoever needs healing whenever they come to Him. Indeed, “Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (2Cor. 6:2) This is good news indeed! God is not the cause of prolonging sickness or delaying healing.
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Andy Hayner (God Heals Birth Defects: First Fruits)
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Watch what happens when we keep the words exactly as they are, and simply adjust the punctuation. “Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents. (Period. Jesus begins a new sentence to launch into a call to action) But that the works of God might be displayed in him, we must work the works of Him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.” When you read the passage with this punctuation, Jesus doesn’t offer any explanation for the cause of the man’s blindness. He simply points out the errors in the disciple’s question, “Nobody sinned. Sin wasn’t the cause of the blindness.” Instead of offering an explanation for the man’s blindness, Jesus launches into a call to action! “If you want to see the works of God displayed in this man, we must work the works of God while we have an opportunity!
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Andy Hayner (God Heals Birth Defects: First Fruits)
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Some estimates show that, over the next twenty years, an incredible 16 to 18 percent of all health care costs will be consumed by health issues arising from excessive weight: not genetic misfortune, birth defects, psychiatric illness, burns, or post-traumatic stress disorder from the horrors of war—no, just getting fat. The cost of Americans becoming obese dwarfs the sum spent on cancer. More money will be spent on health consequences of obesity than education.
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William Davis (Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health)
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A mole or defect on a person is supposed to be caused by a fairy nipping him before birth. A matted lock near the neck of a sleeping child is called an elflock and is the deed of a mischievous fairy
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Astra Cielo (Signs, Omens and Superstitions (Folklore History Series))
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How many times have you heard people end their prayer for healing with the phrase, “IF it be Thy will” as if God’s will regarding healing is still in question? In many ways, they are as spiritually confused as Philip, who asked Jesus "Lord, just show us the Father, and it is enough for us." (John 14:8). Even though he had already walked with Jesus throughout His entire ministry. Jesus replied “"Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
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Andy Hayner (God Heals Birth Defects: First Fruits)
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Just as the cross reveals true value God places upon our salvation, His suffering at the whipping post reveals how much it means to God to heal us from sickness, disease, and pain. Our healing is extremely costly and extremely valuable. If Jesus suffered stripes at the whipping post to pay for our physical healing, how could it even be possible for God to refuse the healing the Son purchased for us? “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32)
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Andy Hayner (God Heals Birth Defects: First Fruits)
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We are quite comfortable with Jesus being amazing in the Bible, but we must expect Jesus Christ to be no less amazing as He lives through us. Many people will try to give you logical reasons why you can’t walk like Jesus Christ, but it’s just empty deceit. You’ll have to break with the traditions of your denomination, your family, and your culture to walk in the fullness of Jesus Christ, but it’s worth it!
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Andy Hayner (God Heals Birth Defects: First Fruits)
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the separation process, in which mercury and cyanide were used to extract the gold from the ore. It would be dumped straight into rivers and streams, poisoning fish and drinking water. Where rivers ran past Indian settlements downstream from gold strikes, ulcers and suppurating sores were the order of the day. So were birth defects. The grieving nurse in Gorotire had delivered two stillborn babies in her first three months on the job. The fetuses’ brains were growing outside their skulls.
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Scott Wallace (The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon's Last Uncontacted Tribes)
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Roundup is a herbicide that contains glyphosates. Glyphosates have been shown to cause birth defects among animals and humans. Glyphosates are also responsible for wiping out bee colonies. Bees are important because they pollinate plants. Lose the bees and we’re screwed.” I
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Steve Alten (Sharkman)
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What American would not want truthful and complete information about every product sold in the United States so that we can be more capable of making wise decisions concerning our lives and the lives of our loved ones? These are our friends and our family members suffering from so many forms of cancer, several diseases of the heart, emphysema, poor circulation, blindness, strokes, various skin disorders, bad breath, asthma, poverty, clogged arteries, disfigurement, rotting teeth and gums, birth defects, infertility, sexual dysfunction, high blood pressure, aneurysms, complications during pregnancies, and all too often a slow and painful death. These suffering people are also many of us.
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Earl Chinnici (Maybe You Should Move Those Away From You)
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Homologous recombination.” “Homo-what?” “It’s precision genetic engineering. Basically, two enzymes fix sections of broken DNA. They scissor out the broken section and replace it with a new chunk of DNA. No one knows how it works, but it happens occasionally in Petri dishes.” “Could that cure someone?” “Absolutely. Defective genes and gene mutations play a primary role in some of the worst diseases that exist today: heart disease, diabetes, immune system disorders, and birth defects.
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Hunt Kingsbury (Book of Cures (A Thomas McAlister Adventure 2))
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The EPA continues to classify Roundup as low-toxicity, despite numerous studies that have linked glyphosate itself or inert ingredients in Roundup to health problems, including birth defects.
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Judith D. Schwartz (Cows Save the Planet: And Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth)
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GOSPEL REDISCOVERY Along with extraordinary, persistent prayer, the most necessary element of gospel renewal is a recovery of the gospel itself, with a particular emphasis on the new birth and on salvation through grace alone. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones taught that the gospel emphasis on grace could be lost in several ways. A church might simply become heterodox — losing its grip on the orthodox tenets of theology that under-gird the gospel, such as the triune nature of God, the deity of Christ, the wrath of God, and so on. It may turn its back on the very belief in justification by faith alone and the need for conversion and so move toward a view that being a Christian is simply a matter of church membership or of living a life based on Christ’s example. This cuts the nerve of gospel renewal and revival.2 But it is possible to subscribe to every orthodox doctrine and nevertheless fail to communicate the gospel to people’s hearts in a way that brings about repentance, joy, and spiritual growth. One way this happens is through dead orthodoxy, in which such pride grows in our doctrinal correctness that sound teaching and right church practice become a kind of works-righteousness. Carefulness in doctrine and life is, of course, critical, but when it is accompanied in a church by self-righteousness, mockery, disdain of everyone else, and a contentious, combative attitude, it shows that, while the doctrine of justification may be believed, a strong spirit of legalism reigns nonetheless. The doctrine has failed to touch hearts.3 Lloyd-Jones also speaks of “defective orthodoxy” and “spiritual inertia.”4 Some churches hold to orthodox doctrines but with imbalances and a lack of proper emphasis. Many ministries spend more time defending the faith than propagating it. Or they may give an inordinate amount of energy and attention to matters such as prophecy or spiritual gifts or creation and evolution. A church may become enamored with the mechanics of ministry and church organization. There are innumerable reasons that critical doctrines of grace and justification and conversion, though strongly held, are kept “on the shelf.” They are not preached and communicated in such a way that connects to people’s lives. People see the doctrines — yet they do not see them. It is possible to get an “A” grade on a doctrinal test and describe accurately the doctrines of our salvation, yet be blind to their true implications and power. In this sense, there are plenty of orthodox churches in which the gospel must be rediscovered and then brought home and applied to people’s hearts. When this happens, nominal Christians get converted, lethargic and weak Christians become empowered, and nonbelievers are attracted to the newly beautified Christian congregation.
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Timothy J. Keller (Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City)
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I, like you, was not depraved or defected before birth but created to be magnificent, a wonderful and freeing realization - simple but explosive.
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David Walton Earle
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birth defects, as well as congenital heart problems, were elevated in communities served by a drinking water reservoir that had been contaminated with the herbicide atrazine. Atrazine, on the market since 1959 and banned for use in much of Europe, is the most popular pesticide used in the United States.
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Sandra Steingraber (Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood (A Merloyd Lawrence Book))
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Unlike ivermectin, molnupiravir showed safety signals so alarming that some of its codevelopers at Emory University protested its introduction into human Phase I trials. Among other problems, they cite the possibility that it will cause birth defects.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
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In these cases, the birthmarks and birth defects can provide a concrete indication of a connection between the subject and the previous personality. Since they remain on the body, birthmarks and defects are not dependent on witnesses’ memories to be part of the case. When an autopsy report or a medical record of the previous personality is available, as it was in Süleyman’s case, researchers can objectively compare it to the birthmarks to see how well they correspond. Such birthmarks and birth defects are not rare among our cases. A third of the cases from India include birthmarks or birth defects that are thought to correspond to wounds on the previous personalities, with 18 percent of those including medical records that confirm the match. I should note that the actual percentage of all children reporting past-life memories who have birthmarks might be much lower. We often have to make decisions about which cases
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Jim B. Tucker (Before: Children's Memories of Previous Lives)
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the congenital disease that in those years afflicted the Venezuelan middle class: the defects of nineteenth-century white Venezuelans grafted onto the chaos of a mixed-race society. A country where women birthed and brought up children on their own, thanks to men who didn’t even bother pretending that they were stepping out for cigarettes when they decided to leave for good.
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Karina Sainz Borgo (It Would Be Night in Caracas)
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One can point to the confusion created by heretical concepts, such as those found in so-called Liberation Theology, promoted chiefly by the Jesuits, which became very popular and influential in Latin America.519 We know, of course, that Liberation Theology was pervaded with Marxist sentiment. Some ultimate insiders, such as Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the leading Romanian spy chief who defected to the West in the late 1970s, have gone so far as to claim that Liberation Theology was created by the KGB. “The movement was born in the KGB,” states Pacepa unequivocally, “and it had a KGB-invented name: Liberation Theology.” Pacepa, a very high-level Communist Bloc intelligence official, gave specific details: “The birth of Liberation Theology was the intent of a 1960 super-secret “’Party-State Dezinformatsiya [Disinformation] Program’ approved by Aleksandr Shelepin, the chairman of the KGB, and by Politburo member Aleksey Kirichenko, who coordinated the Communist Party’s international policies. This program demanded that the KGB take secret control of the World Council of Churches (WCC), based in Geneva, Switzerland, and use it as cover for converting Liberation Theology into a South American revolutionary tool.”520
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Paul Kengor (The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration)
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I think about all my patients who've died. Older people, most of them. But not all. Looking back, I try to remember if the young ones were marked somehow. Whether they might have done something to bring their fates down on themselves. But they didn't, Danny. One day God or Fate just said, 'I will not let you be happy. I will not give you children. I will not let you breathe another day. I will take away your ability to move."'"
"Warren-" "No, listen. This is important. I've tried to believe, all my life. To have faith that there was justice in life, some larger plan or meaning. But I can't do it any more. I've watched some of the best people I ever met get crippled or taken before they reached thirty, forty, whatever. Babies, too. I've watched babies die of leuke mia. I've watched infants die from infections, bleeding from their eyes and ears. Terrible birth defects...I look for a reason, a pattern, anything that might justify all that. But nothing does. Nothing does. Until I got sick myself, I played the same game of denial that all doctors do. But, Danny, my cancer ripped the scales from my eyes. I go to these funerals and listen to smug preachers telling grieving people that God has a plan. Well, that's a lie. All my life I've followed the rules. I've toed the line, given to the less fortunate, followed the Commandments . . . and it hasn't mattered one bit. And don't tell me about Job, okay? If you tell me God is testing me by killing me... that's like saying we had to destroy a village in order to save it. It's a cruel joke that we play on ourselves. And don't tell me it's all made right in the afterlife, because you know what? The agony of one infant dying senselessly mocks all the golden trumpets of heaven. I don't want to sit at the right hand of a God who can torture children, or even one who sits by and allows them to be tortured. Free will, my ass. I made no choice to die at thirty seven. This one's on God's account, Major. We look for meaning where there is none, because we're too afraid to accept randomness. Well, I've accepted it. Embraced it, even. And once you do that, the world just doesn't look the same anymore.
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Greg Iles (Third Degree)
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A 2017 report found that parts of India’s Chambal River now run ‘dark black water with streaks of red and an intense smell of rotting radishes’, thanks to carbon disulphide, a chemical routinely used in the production of viscose.40 Viscose waste has been linked to the death of fish and aquatic life, as well as myriad health problems including skin burns, Parkinson’s, heart attack, stroke, cancer and birth defects.
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Lauren Bravo (How To Break Up With Fast Fashion: A guilt-free guide to changing the way you shop – for good)
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mysterious illness dubbed “Gulf War Syndrome” plagued military personnel. Scores of soldiers were falling ill with a plethora of symptoms, the most common being gastrointestinal distress, fibromyalgia, and extreme, chronic fatigue. Years later, researchers would also observe what appeared to be a trend in birth defects in children of Gulf War veterans. The source of this illness, which has been devastating for those impacted and their families, remains somewhat of a mystery. Some suspect the use of chemical or biological weapons
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Hourly History (The Gulf War: A History from Beginning to End (Middle Eastern History))
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One hundred percent of the nearly 1 million pounds of chloroform released in Mobile County in 1988 was released in Africatown. Chloroform is classified as a probable carcinogen by the EPA. Chronic long-term exposure, such as one would experience living in the shadow of two paper mills, can cause liver disease and affect the central nervous system. One hundred percent of the chlorine dioxide in the county was released in Africatown. Nearly all of the 1.8 million pounds of hydrochloric acid released in the county in 1988 was released in Africatown. Nearly all of the acetone, methanol, xylene, chlorine, methyl ethyl ketone, and toluene released in the county were released in Africatown. The chemicals are linked to cancer, birth defects, fertility problems, kidney and liver damage, nose and throat irritation, asthma, and loss of hearing and color vision.
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Ben Raines (The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning)
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The history of religions, of the birth, grandeur, and the decline of the gods who had succeeded one another in human belief, is nothing, therefore, but the development of the collective intelligence and conscience of mankind. As fast as they discovered, in the course of their historically-progressive advance, either in themselves or in external nature, a quality, or even any great defect whatever, they attributed them to their gods, after having exaggerated and enlarged them beyond measure, after the manner of children, by an act of their religious fancy.
-Michael Bakunin
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S.T. Joshi (Atheism: A Reader)
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Dehumanizing a baby who would be valued if healthy hosts moral and scientific dilemmas.
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Jessica Marie Baumgartner
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There is a birth defect that is surprisingly common, due to a change in a key pair of
chromosomes. In the normal condition the two look the same, but in this disorder one is
shrunken beyond recognition. The result is shortened life span, higher mortality at all
ages, an inability to reproduce, premature hair loss, and brain defects variously resulting in
attention deficit, hyperactivity, conduct disorder, hypersexuality, and an enormous excess
of both outward and self-directed aggression. The main physiological mechanism is
androgen poisoning, although there may be others. I call it the X-chromosome deficiency
syndrome, and a stunning 49 percent of the human species is affected.
It is also called maleness.
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Melvin Konner (Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy)