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Jud Newborn, a Holocaust scholar who lives in Plainview, was doing research in Munich as a graduate student in the early 1980s when he became intrigued with the story of the White Rose resistance movement. The small, student-based group wrote and printed anonymous anti-Nazi leaflets in Munich and distributed them in that city and beyond before its key members were captured and executed in 1943. Dr. Newborn, who earned a doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago, is the co-author with Annette Dumbach of a book on the White Rose and has developed a multimedia lecture on the subject. In recognition of Holocaust Remembrance Day (April 8 this year), he will present the lecture at two Long Island synagogues. The lecture will be accompanied by nearly 80 historical images, including photographs, posters and newspaper articles, as well as recorded music. Dr. Newborn may also occasionally speak with a mock-German accent when quoting Nazi officials, in the service of his White Rose presentation. (The second half of the program focuses on more contemporary figures who have acted heroically against great odds.)

'If you met me, you'd never know I was mentally ill. In fact, I've gone through most of my adult life without anyone ever knowing - except when I've had to reveal it to a doctor. And that revelation changes everything. It wipes clean the rest of my résumé, my education, my accomplishments, reduces me to a diagnosis. I was surprised when, after one of these run-ins, my psychopharmacologist said this sort of behavior was all too common. At least 14 studies have shown that patients with a serious mental illness receive worse medical care than "normal" people. Last year the World Health Organization called the stigma and discrimination endured by people with mental health conditions "a hidden human rights emergency." If you met me, you'd never know I was mentally ill. In fact, I've gone through most of my adult life without anyone ever knowing - except when I've had to reveal it to a doctor. And that revelation changes everything. It wipes clean the rest of my résumé, my education, my accomplishments, reduces me to a diagnosis. I was surprised when, after one of these run-ins, my psychopharmacologist said this sort of behavior was all too common. At least 14 studies have shown that patients with a serious mental illness receive worse medical care than "normal" people. Last year the World Health Organization called the stigma and discrimination endured by people with mental health conditions "a hidden human rights emergency." I never knew it until I started poking around, but this particular kind of discriminatory doctoring has a name. It's called "diagnostic overshadowing." According to a review of studies done by the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, London, it happens a lot. As a result, people with a serious mental illness - including bipolar disorder, major depression, schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder - end up with wrong diagnoses and are under-treated. That is a problem, because if yo

'PORTLAND, Ore. - Four summers ago, on her first day as an administrator at Roosevelt High School here, Charlene Williams heard that the Christians were coming. Some members of an evangelical church were supposed to be painting hallways, repairing bleachers, that sort of thing. The prospect of such help, in the fervently liberal and secular microclimate of Portland, did not exactly fill her with joy. In truth, the connection between SouthLake and Roosevelt very much fit into a plan. It was a plan devised by an especially odd couple - Sam Adams, the first openly gay mayor of Portland, and Kevin Palau, the scion of an evangelical association created by his father, Luis. And their plan has delivered thousands of evangelical volunteers not only to Roosevelt, but also to scores of other public schools in the area and to public agencies dealing with homelessness and foster care. Getting Christian boots on the ground was the easy part. Restraining those boots from proselytizing was the challenge. The very essence of being evangelical, after all, is spreading the good news of the Gospel. Every virtuous act is meant to glorify God. Mr. Adams pointed out to Mr. Palau that service organizations like Rotary and Kiwanis assisted in city programs with the understanding that they would not recruit new members in the process. Mr. Palau said he could abide by such a tacit policy. The mayor took the risk of trusting that promise. "The vast majority of people," Mr. Palau put it recently, "have enough common sense to know that when you're in a school serving a child, that's what you're supposed to do. Trust God that if something is meant to be, it will just emerge." '

'Some atheists have even gone public with their own prayer-for-health's-sake practice. Sigfried Gold, (recent subject in Washington Post) is a thoughtful, articulate 50-y.o. man who lives in Takoma Park, Md., He long ago decided that there was no stuff in the universe that was not physical - no supernatural, no divine. So he joined a 12-step program to control his food addiction. One of the steps is to turn your problem over to a higher power. So Mr. Gold created a god he doesn't believe exists: a large African-American lesbian. Every day Mr. Gold dropped to his knees to pray, and every day he spent 30 minutes in meditative quiet time. These days Mr. Gold, who calls himself a "born-again atheist," doesn't smoke. He doesn't drink. And, at 5 feet 7 inches, he weighs 150 pounds. So is there a downside? There were times when people got so engrossed with prayer that they seemed almost addicted - so compelled to pray that they could not stop. Some called this "puking" prayer. Whom does this intense imaginative immersion put at risk, and when? A study of the popular Internet game World of Warcraft suggests an intriguing answer. The anthropologist Jeffrey G. Snodgrass and his colleagues set out to study this complex social world. They found people who were relaxed and soothed by their play: "Sometimes I just log on late at night and go out by myself and listen to the soothing music." Others felt addicted: "Once I start playing it's hard to tell whether or not I'll have the willpower to stop." What made the difference was whether people found their primary sense of self inside the game or in the world. When play seemed more important than the real world did, they felt addicted; when it enhanced their experience of reality outside the game, they felt soothed. Prayer works in similar ways. When people use prayer to enhance their real-word selves, they feel good. When it disconnects them from the everyday, as it did for the

'Faisal bin Ali Jaber stood face to face with Representative Adam B. Schiff - a California Democrat who had carved out 20 minutes between two votes on natural gas policy - to tell his story: how he watched in horror last year as drone-fired missiles incinerated his nephew and brother-in-law in a remote Yemeni village. 'Neither of the victims was a member of Al Qaeda. In fact, the opposite was true. They were meeting with three Qaeda members in hopes of changing the militants' views. '"It really puts a human face on the term 'collateral damage,' " said Mr. Schiff, looking awed after listening to Mr. Jaber. 'A gaunt civil engineer with a white mustache, Mr. Jaber spent the past week struggling to pierce the veil of secrecy and anonymity over the Obama administration's drone strike program.... He did not have much luck. 'He met at length with a half-dozen members of Congress, as well as officials from the National Security Council and the State Department. Everywhere, he received heartfelt condolences. But no one has been able to explain why his relatives were killed, or why the administration is not willing to acknowledge its mistake. 'It was an error with unusual resonance. Mr. Jaber's brother-in-law was a cleric who had spoken out against Al Qaeda shortly before the drone killed him. The nephew was a local policeman who had gone along in part to offer protection....'

'...the Cochrane Collaboration reported last year that patients who used tools to guide their decisions had a better grasp of their choices and risks. They were also more likely to select less intense or invasive treatment when considering major elective surgery, though results were mixed for other decisions. The influence of decision aids on adherence to medication or overall costs was "inconclusive," according to the report. 'But that uncertainty does not reduce the ethical obligation to better inform patients, or lessen the promise of tools that help patients understand their options and identify their values, some doctors say. "It is the right thing to do," said Dr. Victor Montori, associate director of the Health Care Delivery Research Program at the Mayo Clinic Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery....'

Palliative care program at Montefiore Hospital

letters re Montefiore palliative program description in NYTimes

Republicans need to figure out where they stand on children's welfare. They can't be "pro-life" when the "child" is in the womb but indifferent when it's in the world. The good news is that last year the National Center for Health Statistics reported that the rate of premature births fell in 2008, representing the first two-year decline in the last 30 years. The bad news is that, according to the March of Dimes, the Republican budget the House just passed could do great damage to this progress, including: $50 million in cuts to the state-based prenatal care programs and services for children with special needs; and nearly $1 billion in cuts to CDC's preventive health programs, including its preterm birth studies.