Why the sad death of a pregnant woman has caused a stir in Ireland

Hundreds of pro-choice protesters gathered at short notice outside the Dáil to call on the Government to legislate for abortion when the mother’s life is at risk, following the death of Savita Halappanavar. She was found to be miscarrying when admitted to University Hospital Galway last month, and died of septicaemia. It's the big talking point in Ireland tonight.  I expect there'll be a massive demo in Dublin on Saturday.

For the background see Irish Times  Woman 'denied a termination' dies in hospital.

The trigger for the protest came this morning when Savita Halappanavar's husband spoke out.
The Irish Times reporters say Mr Halappanavar has claimed that following several requests by his late wife for a termination, they were told: "This is a Catholic country."
   
A tweet from ‏@k_tten asks "Were any of Savita Halappanavar's doctors involved in this Pro-Life symposium 2 months ago?"

Savita Halappanavar died of septicaemia at University Hospital Galway. Tonight several hundred protesters gathered outside the Dáil.
(Photo: Brenda Fitzsimons/The Irish Times)

The questions

The questions about this case, which various enquiries will need to answer, are:

(1) Would a termination have saved Savita Halappanavar's life?

(2) If yes, which of the following three scenarios applies?

      (a)    Medical error - doctors didn't realise this until too late

      (b)    The doctors did know it; and failed to follow hospital protocols due to personal religious or ethical scruples

      (c)    The doctors did know it; but hospital protocols were unclear and the doctors were prevented by uncertainty as to the law and fear of prosecution
 
Mr Halappanavar is a credible witness, I heard him on the radio today, and tonight's demonstrators clearly believe him, and think they know the answer: it's either 2(b) or 2(c). 

Listen to him on this RTÉ page. Search for “Praveen Halappanavar”.
 
But the Pro-Life Campaign claims it's “deplorable” that this tragic death is being used to promote a change in abortion legislation, and that Medical Council Guidelines are clear that women in pregnancy must be given all necessary medical treatment.  See Irish Catholic.

Catholics benefit from my advice

As it happens I read this paper every week. It gives extensive coverage to the pro life campaign and opposition to introducing any abortion legislation. A recurring theme is that research shows Ireland to be the safest place in the world for women to give birth; and that availability of abortion causes, rather than prevents, harm to women. 
 
Another recurring theme is deploring the trend to a secular society.
 
There's an irony here. The “safest place in the world for women to give birth” argument is secular, not religious.  What if the Savita Halappanavar case undermines it?
 
Catholics would be better advised, in my humble opinion, to abandon prudential reasoning based on scientific research, and stick instead to the sanctity of life, sin, ethics and church teaching. 
 
Last March, the editor of The Irish Catholic was good enough to publish a letter from me along these lines. I suggested they may find that adopting secular arguments, when they happen to be opportune, is a short-sighted policy.

In case you need it, I've made a short note on why abortion legislation is on the agenda in Ireland. 

I read "The Collar" by George Herbert

My Metaphysical poets book. A bit grubby as I had it at school.  We studied these poets for A-level.  It's the Penguin Poets edition (reprinted 1964), price 5/-. That’s pronounced 5 shillings. And now a reading of my favourite poem from it.  I perfected reading it aloud - but only in an empty room if I recall. Now 47 years later I've made this recording which is, I think, a faithful rendering of my 17-year old self in 1965.

If the SoundCloud widget doesn't show below, click here. If it shows but without a play button at top left, then hit the SoundCloud link at bottom right.

The Collar by George Herbert (1593-1633)

   I Struck the board, and cry’d, No more.
                       I will abroad.
       What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
   My lines and life are free; free as the rode,
      Loose as the winde, as large as store.
               Shall I be still in suit?
         Have I no harvest but a thorn
       To let me bloud, and not restore
   What I have lost with cordiall fruit?
                Sure there was wine
   Before my sighs did drie it: there was corn
           Before my tears did drown it.
           Is the yeare onely lost to me?
           Have I no bayes to crown it?
   No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted?

                       All wasted?
        Not so, my heart: but there is fruit,
                And thou hast hands.
          Recover all thy sigh-blown age
   On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
     Of what is fit, and not. Forsake thy cage,
                   Thy rope of sands,
   Which pettie thoughts have made, and made to thee
             Good cable, to enforce and draw,
                   And be thy law,
   While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
                   Away; take heed:
                      I will abroad.
   Call in thy deaths head there: tie up thy fears.
                    He that forbears
           To suit and serve his need,
                  Deserves his load.
   But as I rav’d and grew more fierce and wilde
                    At every word,
     Me thoughts I heard one calling, Childe:
               And I reply’d, My Lord.

Another Metaphysical Poet was John Donne, perhaps the best known, and like Herbert an Anglican priest.  What are we to make of the poem’s title, The Collar? I've a feeling that in the early 17th century “collar” was not yet being applied to clothing. The original audience would have thought of a horse’s collar used to restrain the animal and force it to work; and they would also have been on the look-out for a pun and would have thought of “choler”. Tempting as it is to picture a clerical dog collar, this was not yet used, neither the expression nor the thing itself, which is Victorian.   

Additional note: The term metaphysical poets came into being a long time after the poets to whom it applies were dead. Samuel Johnson who coined it, did so with the consciousness that he was giving a kind of nickname (I'm quoting from the introduction to my Penguin Poets edition).  A quote our English teacher (oh that I could remember his name) advised us to learn was that Samuel Johnson said of these poets that “if they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they, likewise, sometimes struck out unexpected truth; if their conceits were far-fetched, they were often worth the carriage”.

Putative archbishop claims relgious views muzzled

Rt. Revd. Justin Welby Bishop of Durham

So the Rt. Revd. Justin Welby will be Archbishop of Canterbury.  The Daily Telegraph, which knows a thing or two about these things, calls him a worldly capitalist looking to spread the Word of the Lord.

Next Wednesday 14th November Welby is due to give a lecture called "Seen but not Heard – Should Believers have a Voice in the Polis?"  at Durham University.

He will claim that those who hold to religion are increasingly barred from airing their views in the public square. 

The advance publicity says the Bishop of Durham (as he still is) will explore the increasing tendency to suggest that those who hold faith based world views are disqualified from expressing any opinion in political life; or at the very least must excise such a world view from their minds when acting in public life. “To put it crudely” he will argue, the rule is “hold to any religion you like but don't let it affect your deeds.”

I think he exaggerates. Who says these things?  Church voices frequently assert that this is said, but is it said?  When? By whom? I wish I could be at the lecture to hear his case.

Admittedly the Irish politician Pat Rabbitte did say something like this not long ago. But he got scant support.

A word about that mitre thing

By the way the history of that mitre he’s wearing is instructive. It derives from a cap worn by officials of the Imperial Byzantine court. Or according to other sources, it's modelled on the ancient Byzantine imperial crown. More in Wikipedia. Or this website on Byzantine iconography (search for mitre.)

Planet with 4 suns? Asimov got there first

Nightfall 1990 edition

A couple of weeks ago I pondered how far astronomy could progress on a planet bathed in perpetual daylight, and now Denis has directed me to Isaac Asimov’s 1941 science fiction short story "Nightfall". It features the coming of darkness to the people of a planet ordinarily illuminated at all times on all sides. They have even more suns than the four which grace the recently discovered planet PH1. Asimov’s planet has six.

Total darkness is unknown, and as a result so are stars outside the 6-star system. Their scientists predict that once every 2049 years a brief “night” will occur. Since the current population has never experienced universal darkness, the scientists conclude that the darkness itself would traumatize the people, and that the inhabitants of the planet must prepare accordingly.

But when night falls the scientists themselves get a surprise. Together with the rest of the population they are presented with the spectacle of a black sky filled with hitherto-invisible stars. The short story does not dramatize subsequent events, but in 1990 Asimov (with Robert Silverberg) adapted it into a novel, in which civil disorder breaks out, cities are destroyed in massive fires, competing groups try to seize control, and civilization collapses.

I've taken this from the plot summary in Wikipedia. I must get hold of this story.

NASA's latest polar sea ice images, north and south

Sea ice September 2012. Arctic summer, Antarctic winter. Yellow outlines indicate previous averages.
Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio and NASA Earth Observatory/ Jesse Allen

NASA doesn't only explore the solar system, it has an Earth monitoring programme and employs climate scientists. A few days ago they issued two striking images of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice.  Enlarged images available on NASA Earth page.

September 2012 witnessed two opposite records.

Left: the Arctic Ocean's ice cap experienced an all-time summertime low for the satellite era.

Right: Two weeks later, Antarctic sea ice reached a record winter maximum. (In extent, though not thickness.) 

The yellow outlines are for comparison, indicating recent averages. In the Arctic image, average sea ice minimum extent from 1979 to 2010. In the Antarctic image, median sea ice extent in September from 1979 to 2000.
 

Dr James E. Hansen

NASA says that sea ice in the Arctic has melted at a much faster rate than it has expanded in the Southern Ocean, as can be seen in this image by comparing the 2012 sea ice levels with the yellow outline.

Dr Claire Parkinson, a climate scientist with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is quoted saying : "There's been an overall increase in the sea ice cover in the Antarctic, which is the opposite of what is happening in the Arctic. However, this growth rate is not nearly as large as the decrease in the Arctic.”

Lest we take the Antarctic image as a hopeful sign, she cautions that some areas of the Southern Ocean cooling and producing more sea ice does not disprove a warming climate.

"Climate does not change uniformly: The Earth is very large and the expectation definitely would be that there would be different changes in different regions of the world.  That's true even if overall the system is warming.”

Another recent NASA study showed that Antarctic sea ice slightly thinned from 2003 to 2008, but increases in the extent of the ice balanced the loss in thickness and led to an overall volume gain.

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies is led by James Hansen, a noted climatologist who has become a hate figure for oil companies due to his warnings about human-induced climate change.  

6 years for seismologists? What about economists?

The earthquake in L'Aquila destroyed the city and
killed more than 300 people in 2009. (Irish Times)

Let’s talk about the six Italian seismologists and a civil servant who this week face 6 years jail for failing to give adequate warning of a deadly earthquake. 

Best tweet so far is from Ursula ‏@UrsulaWJ :

what, seriously, they've sentenced scientists to jail for failing to predict an earthquake? I'm off to round up the economists.

Yet defence of the convictions - if not the sentences - is coming in from surprising quarters. (For a catch-up on the story so far, see foot of this post.)

New Scientist says that whilst it's easy to feel outrage at the jail terms - how could anyone hope to have predicted the earthquake? – the fact is that failure to predict is not what the seven men have been convicted of. The prosecution case was about poor risk communication; it was built on an accusation of giving out "inexact, incomplete and contradictory information".

Likewise Stuart Clark in a Guardian blog asks: was this trial about science or communication? Whilst the media is filled with stories about science being on trial, claiming that the scientists have been convicted of failing to predict the earthquake, he says the conviction was actually for errors in communication.

Still and all, I think we ought to contribute to the defence fund, which I haven't seen notice of yet, but I'm sure we shall very soon.

I'm not a seismologist but I think it's a fair bet that “inexact, incomplete and contradictory” would pretty well describe the state of that science. The lesson: they ought to have issued a statement saying WE CAN’T PREDICT EARTHQUAKES, submitted their expenses claims, and gone home.

Italian science on trial again?

Stuart Clark draws a parallel with the Galileo trial and says that, too, has been misinterpreted: the Vatican wasn’t against astronomy, just about the way Galileo communicated it.  Galileo was arraigned for communicating too much, the seismologists for too little.

To digress, Stuart illustrates his blog with the famous picture by Cristiano Banti  "Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition" (1857):

This is 19th century romanticisation, I fear. Galileo’s demeanour at his trial was very far from the defiance depicted here. More like grovelling actually.

The story so far

The controversial earthquake sentence was handed down Monday by an Italian court sitting in L’Aquila, the city destroyed on April 6th, 2009, with more than 1,000 people injured, and hundreds of others killed in their sleep.

The seven, all members of an official body called the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, were accused of negligence and malpractice in their evaluation of the danger of an earthquake and their duty to keep the city informed of the risks.

The case has drawn wide condemnation from international bodies including the American Geophysical Union, which said the risk of litigation may deter scientists from advising governments or even working to assess seismic risk.

According to today's Irish Times, the speaker of the Italian senate, Renato Schifani, commented: “This is a strange and embarrassing sentence. In future, [experts] asked to serve on committees like this will simply refuse.”

And one of those sentenced, Prof Enzo Boschi, said he was “desperate”, claiming he had been expecting to be acquitted. “I don’t even understand what I have been accused of, I never issued any reassurance to anyone, not I. All I said was that earthquakes are unpredictable .... I would never have excluded the possibility of a major quake in the Abruzzo, I’d have to be mad to do that.”

At the heart of the case (says Reuters) was whether the government-appointed experts gave an overly reassuring picture of the risks facing the town, which contained many ancient and fragile buildings and which had been partially destroyed three times by earthquakes over the centuries.

The case focused in particular on a series of low-level tremors which hit the region in the months preceding the earthquake and which prosecutors said should have warned experts not to underestimate the risk of a major shock.

Planet with four suns – can they do astronomy there?

A discovery of a planet with four suns. It orbits one of a pair of stars and is in turn circled by a second pair.  Also in the news this week, an Earth-like planet discovered around the nearest star to our own Sun.

But it's the planet with four suns that interests me more. A pair of stars is called a binary star, and here's a graphic. It shows the two stars orbiting around their common center of mass.

In this case we have two binary stars, so four stars in all. Imagine each dot is itself a binary star. The recently discovered planet is a gas giant orbiting one of the stars. It's been called PH1.

So four suns light up its skies. 

Graphic showing planet PH1 in foreground and a binary star (two suns) in the distance. Pity it doesn't show all four suns.  The suns are imagined as rather feeble, permitting the sky to be full of stars. But what if the suns were stronger and blotted out all stars?   

Can they do astronomy?

Suppose beings inhabited this planet PH1. Which they can't as it's a gas giant, but lets suppose.  Would they experience night?  Perhaps never.  Perhaps there would always be at least one sun in the sky. Imagining this to be so, can we speculate what sort of astronomy the inhabitants of PH1 can do?  They would think the universe consisted of their planet and four suns. If there were one or more moons, they would be dimly aware of them perhaps, if on rare occasions they showed up in the perpetual daylight.

But the stars – these they would never see. Though the four suns might have numerous planets besides PH1, they would be unaware of these too.  Unless, like Venus, a planet occasionally showed up in the daylight sky.

Or suppose the PH1 beings experience an occasional brief night when all four suns happen to line up on the other side of their world. What an amazing spectacle for them!  Then they would briefly see the stars as pricks of light in a dark blanket and say to each other “what on PH1 is that?!”

But would the stars stay around long enough to prompt any investigation?  That's the question I'm posing.  Would they have time to notice that some of the stars behaved oddly and were planets?

Astronomy was born, I think, when sky watchers, having studied the heavens night after night, distinguished the wandering planets from the fixed stars, and charted the planets' courses.  And it came of age when Copernicus realised that the Earth is itself a planet.

So astronomy on PH1 would be depressingly limited.

No night sky, no Copernicus

If they had a Ptolemy, he would devise a fearsomely complicated scheme of spheres and epicycles to account for the movements of the four suns. If they had a Copernicus he would propose it would be so much simpler to imagine the suns orbiting each other and their planet orbiting one of the suns.

But wait! … could they have a Copernicus? I don't think so.

First Copernicus (our Copernicus I mean) had to know about planets. Then he was able make the leap that the Earth itself is one. But a Copernicus on PH1 could know nothing of planets. So how could he make that leap.

No. I fear PH1 astronomy would stop with Ptolemy.

No Copernicus, no Galileo, no Newton, no Einstein.