You are currently browsing the daily archive for October 11th, 2008.
I love TIME Magazine photo shows. They’re always weird and fascinating. Everything from stills from old science fiction movies to the history of OJ Simpson gets covered, and it’s always a treat to see what their archivists have cooked up. Today, it’s a photospread of early cigarette print advertisements, most of which feature doctors.
O.K., hindsight is 20/20, and when this ad was created in 1946, the link to lung cancer wasn’t totally set in stone. But the curator of the exhibition, Dr. Robert Jackler, not incidentally the Chair of the Department of Otolaryngology, Head & Neck Surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine, still thinks it egregious. “The ads were intended to reassure a worried public about a product even known back then as ‘coughin nails’,” he says. What’s more reassuring than the small town doctor? “The response of the organized medical community was to do nothing, because the ads showed doctors looking wise,” adds Jackler. (Note the unintended irony in “Camels, Costlier Tobaccos.”)
I’ve been thinking for some time, as evident in this blog, I assume, about the state of the economy both now and in the future, and one thing I keep returning to is what the Catholic response to this should be. By that, I most certainly don’t mean to ask what sort of statement the US Council of Catholic Bishops should issue, or governmental programs that Catholics should support and argue for, but instead, what the stupid little quotidian response should be.
The future inevitably contains dramatic job loss and and more and more people on the street because they’ve defaulted on their mortgage. While the homeless and poor have always demanded a response from the Church Christ built us into, this is a distressing situation and the people of God need to step up to try and help where we can, and shouldn’t be ashamed to receive help when we need it.
So, what are some of the little things you’re doing or thinking about doing to help people struggling and suffering in this? Or, if you’re one of them, what sort of help do you need? How can the economy of love help lift you up, how can the work of the Spirit in the Church give you a hand?
