From: "JOHNANDRUTH"<JOHN-RUTH@HAWAII.RR.COM>

To: "Roger Rochat" <rochat@rocketmail.com>; "Dan Mittelstadt" <dmittelstadt@ptc.com>; "Jenifer Mittelstadt" <Jleemittel@hotmail.com>; "Marilee Mittelstadt" <mjmittel@attbi.com>; "Richard Mittelstadt" <rmittel@attbi.com>;"David Weeks" <db.weeks@starband.net>; "Suzette Mignon Rochat Harris" <sharris@arthritisfoundation-epa.org>; "Mary Rochat" <mrochat@bmi.net> Cc: "Charles Hardwick" <chip@napc.org>; "Henderson"<bob_henderson_pfr.parti@pcusa.org>

Sent: Sunday, September 22,20021:48 PM

Subiect: Re: religion and child health 09 22 2002 p. 1

Hi Roger,

Religion and child health: what an interesting, helpful, and mostly overlooked topic. Good idea!

How about involving some experts in the social sciences and religion fields? Would a professor of comparative religions or perhaps an anthropologist to refine the populations and issues being studied be helpful? (As you may remember, our pastor is a published anthropologist. He worked in Papua New Guinea when Barth Reller was there. He published, among other things why tribal peoples fight. I would be curious what he might say about this.) I would also be interested in Wayne Sherman's comments. He has had a good deal of personal interest in religion and social behavior.

I am impressed how the majority of my patients have religious-moral feelings regardless of their affiliation. I believe that these feelings are not their own, but (not surprisingly) from our Judeo- Christian heritage. I think the ripples of the Pope's ideas have a huge impact on people's in Hawaii even

among the non-Catholics and the "unchurched". The concept and the exact phraseology of a pregnancy being "the gift of God" regardless of outcome is common. There are young people with

social and moral mores so far from mine, yet in issues such as birth control, and especially abortion, they will have emotional, gut level responses coming from their youth. These responses seem to be rooted in religious and moral tenets that are not necessarily church institution connected. The feelings on abortion are certainly not based on an understanding of the Bible, our judicial system, or behaviors in our own society. I also believe that these common threads of behavior and belief are not universal across the globe, and not inherent to humanity or to Christianity.

Your question, as I understand it, has to do with behavior. I know that you know about the health- religion concepts of the Old Testament: i.e. promises of good health when following God. This may not have a high impact on behavior, but is of interest in the framework of the Judeo-Christian community. I believe the spirit, if not the letter of these laws is widely held among religious circles today.

With regard to the Bible, I have always thought that the promise of Deuteronomy 7 was based, not on the supernatural, but on laws of the universe that are within the context of public health. God's early

blessings to mankind were to give us good public health! He blessed us through the Jews with the concepts of aerosol borne disease, fomites of disease, disease passed by touch, the danger of human waste, etc.

(I believe the line of thought that there are laws to the universe, and certainly that there is a supreme being, is Judeo-Christian in origin and is anti-pragmatist. As I understand it, a pragmatist, such as Darwin, believes that the universe was formed merely by random events occurring often enough to bring

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