No joke: Italian photographer publishes calendar of hot priests

December 30, 2013 • 9:58 am

The Local, a site covering Italian news in English, has a story about photograph Piero Pazzi, who has, for 11 years, produced an annual calendar depicting “hot priests”:

The Italian photographer behind a calendar of brooding priests told The Local his portraits are more about “informing people about the Vatican” and less about showcasing the most beautiful men within the Catholic Church.

It is officially called the Calendario Romano, or Roman Calendar. But on the streets of Rome, the annual line-up of strapping young men of the cloth is better known as the “hot priest calendar”.

Tourists can often be seen expressing dismay as they stumble across the calendar adorning gift stands close to the Vatican, before snatching a peek, handing over €10 to the vendor and scurrying off.

But the Venice-based photographer behind the calendar, Piero Pazzi, insists the portraits are purely intended to promote the Eternal City and inform visitors about the Vatican.

Yeah—who’s gonna believe that?

They are all genuine priests, usually snapped in Rome during Holy Week, he tells The Local.  He also travels to Seville to capture clergymen during the Spanish city’s Holy Week procession.

If you hunger for this kind of stuff, here are Mr. September and Mr. December (or should I say “Father September and Father December”). You can see the whole calendar here.

And remember, these guys are celibate.

Mr. September

Deember

~

Is morality innate? A debate in the NYT book review

December 30, 2013 • 6:34 am

UPDATE/CORRECTION: I’ve heard via email from Paul Bloom, who sent me a correction that I requested permission to post.  Having gotten permission, I’m putting Bloom’s email below, and apologize if I misrepresented his argument (I was more or less riffing on a review of a book I hadn’t read—but will).

I enjoyed your discussion of JB on WEIT, but you end with this:
And the rapidity of such changes imply, contra Bloom, that many of our moral sentiments are not hard-wired.
This isn’t contra Bloom at all; I argue in considerable detail that many of our moral sentiments are not hard-wired, and actually give some of the same examples that you do. (Pinker’s new book had a big influence on me.) In fact, one main theme of the book is that our innate morality is tragically limited — we are, by nature, savage to strangers; an inclusive morality is the product of cultural innovation; it’s not in our genes.
_________________

In Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, University of Cambridge psychology professor Simon Baron-Cohen reviews Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom’s new book, That book, Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, contends that much of human morality is innate, and therefore likely produced by natural selection. (That itself presumes, if morality is a genetic adaptation, that individuals with more “moral” feelings and actions left more descendants.) Baron-Cohen is highly critical of this view, for he sees the evidence as thin:

Is morality innate? In his new book, “Just Babies,” the psychologist Paul Bloom draws from his research at the Yale Infant Cognition Center to argue that “certain moral foundations are not acquired through learning. . . . They are instead the products of biological evolution.”

He describes a study in which 1-year-olds watched a puppet show where a ball is passed to a “nice” puppet (who passes it back) or to a “naughty” puppet (who steals it). Invited to reward or punish the puppets, children took treats away from the “naughty” one. These 1-year-olds seem to be making moral judgments, but is this an inborn ability? They have certainly had opportunities in the last 12 months to learn good from bad.

I suppose this depends on whether parents actually instruct children less than one year old in how to behave, and that’s an unknown, for of course children can pick up subliminal cues. Ideally, of course, the decisive experiment would be to bring up children without any instruction in “good” versus “bad” behavior, but that’s impossible as well as unethical. As Baron-Cohen notes:

Proving innateness requires much harder evidence — that the behavior has existed from Day 1, say, or that it has a clear genetic basis. Bloom presents no such evidence. His approach to establishing innateness is to argue from universalism: If a behavior occurs across cultures, then surely it can’t be the result of culture. An example he provides is that young children in many cultures expect to be treated fairly — they get upset, or even spiteful or vengeful, when faced with inequality. Supporting Bloom’s claim is the fact that similar behaviors can be seen in other species: Researchers report that a dog that gets a smaller share of a treat appears vexed. Dangers of anthropomorphism aside, this hints at nativism.

I’m not sure what Baron-Cohen is getting at with his accusations of “anthropomorphism” and “nativism,” for one can certainly observe wild animals—or captive animals that haven’t been “instructed” in morality—and see if they have behavior that appears to reflect a sense of “fairness.” Frans de Waal has written extensively about this, and made this video (which I’ve discussed before) of capuchin monkeys demonstrating what looks for all the world like a sense of fair play:

It’s hard to look at that and not agree with Darwin that some of our “moral sentiments” are present in our relatives.

I know others have criticized de Waal for relying largely on anecdotes to support his views of the evolution of specific moral judgments, and I’m not sufficiently familiar with the literature to evaluate this criticisms.  But those anecdotes seem to have added up to at least intriguing speculation that some of our innate moral feelings were inherited from common ancestors.

Baron-Cohen is, however, properly critical of other studies in humans cited by Bloom as evidence of innate morality, some of which seem dubious from the outset.

Baron-Cohen implies that morality is purely learned, and that its “universality” simply reflects simply cultural inheritance from and between human ancestral groups.  In that case its only “innateness” is the evolved ability of humans to learn from others.

But there is another possibility, one not explicitly discussed, but subsumable under Bloom’s notion that “moral foundations” are innate. This is the view that humans have an innate ability to learn morality—a “morality module” that differs from our simple ability to learn. Such a module would resemble the “language module”: our innate (and presumably adaptive) ability to learn languages and use syntax. In that case the ability itself is presumably genetic, but the specific language we learn depends on our culture.  Similarly, a “morality module” would reflect our ability to quickly grasp what is “right and wrong” in different societies, but would involve parts of the brain different from those involved in learning other language and other things. This might explain that although moral sentiments are universal, the particular sentiments differ widely among cultures.

I don’t find that idea completely satisfying, since in our primate relatives some moral feelings do seem innate—or at least unable to be taught. It’s hard to avoid feeling that tendencies toward preferential treatment of one’s children and group-mates as well as reciprocal altruism within small groups and wariness toward strangers, would be subject to direct selection in our ancestors. Nevertheless, much religiously-based “morality” is surely learned: I doubt that we’re born with an innate hatred of gays (remember “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” from the musical South Pacific?) or an aversion to contraception.

I remain open about how many of our moral feelings and behaviors are “hard-wired” versus culturally inherited versus the combination encapsulated in the “moral module” I suggested above.  But there’s certainly no evidence to support Francis Collin’s suggestion of an innate “Moral Law” in all humans that was bestowed by God; for that presumes (leaving God aside), a morality that is not only universal, but inborn—i.e., genetic.

Baron-Cohen’s conclusion is a bit unsatisfying, for it’s bloody obvious:

But to the extent that we have an innate moral sense, he [Bloom] concludes, humans are not prisoners of it. We can use our capacity for reason to override our emotions, our inclinations toward racism or revenge. “We are more than just babies,” he writes. “A critical part of our morality — so much of what makes us human — emerges over the course of human history and individual development. It is the product of our compassion, our imagination and our magnificent capacity for reason.” This is an optimistic view of human nature. The sobering message for me is that our abhorrent, corrosive emotions like racism or revenge will inevitably resurface, so we will always need to be on guard.

All this says is that some people are good and others are bad, and that will always be so. Insofar as Baron-Cohen suggests that we have “free will” to override our emotions, I won’t have any part of that.  Yes, people can behave in ways that counter not only whatever morality has evolved, but also whatever morality is learned. But that doesn’t mean that such “overriding” is a choice.  It could result purely from deterministic effects of our genes and our environments.

Finally, Baron-Cohen is overly pessimistic, for I agree with Steve Pinker that some corrosive emotions (or at least behaviors) will eventually be gone for good, at least as social norms. Those include the feeling that it’s okay to have slaves and kill your unwanted children, as did the Spartans. Others, like discrimination against gays and women, are on the way out. Pinkers’ last book, The Better Angels of our Nature, describes the huge changes over the last five centuries in what has been considered moral (or at least appropriate) behavior—behavior towards other people, towards women, towards children, and towards animals. These changes have occurred far too rapidly to be explained by genetic evolution.

Contra Baron-Cohen, once these forms of discrimination are gone (granted, some individuals will always be homophobic and misogynistic), I suspect that we won’t see their widespread recurrence.  And the rapidity of such changes imply, contra Bloom, that many of our moral sentiments are not hard-wired.

Muncie Star-Press’s biggest stories of 2013 omit the Ball State ID affair

December 30, 2013 • 4:38 am

Reader Amy sent me the list of this newspaper’s top stories of the year. As you may remember, Muncie, Indiana was where Ball State University (BSU) canned Eric Hedin’s “science” course on Intelligent Design (ID), a victory in the battle against creationism. That story was covered extensively by the Muncie Star-Press and got national attention, not to mention riling up the Discovery Institute when President Gora of BSU unequivocally declared that ID would not be taught at BSU.

Here, then, are the paper’s top stories:

Top storiesWhat kind of paper would judge the opening of a Panda Express more important than a serious clash over science right next door?

A lame paper, that’s what.

The Discovery Institute, on the other hand, has ranked the Ball State affair as #4 in their “top 10 evolution stories of 2010”.  I’m not going to give the link, since I’m tired of giving them traffic, but you can find them at The Sensuous Curmudgeon‘s post.  The Curmudgeon is covering the DI’s entire “top 10” list, which is largely a tale of how they’ve failed push their agenda. Combining that with the failure of Texas creationists to get their views represented in public-school biology textbooks, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History’s removal of a donor’s plaque calling animals “God’s creatures,” I’d say it’s been a good year for evolutionary biology.

If you want a lift, reread President Gora’s short statement on the intellectual worthlessness of Intelligent Design, which contains this statement:

Teaching intelligent design as a scientific theory is not a matter of academic freedom – it is an issue of academic integrity. As I noted, the scientific community has overwhelmingly rejected intelligent design as a scientific theory. Therefore, it does not represent the best standards of the discipline as determined by the scholars of those disciplines. Said simply, to allow intelligent design to be presented to science students as a valid scientific theory would violate the academic integrity of the course as it would fail to accurately represent the consensus of science scholars.

Hili dialogue: Monday (my birthday) and extras

December 30, 2013 • 1:27 am

Big celebrations in Dobrzyn! Hili is celebrating by eating from one of the presents I brought her: a special cat bowl emblazoned with her name, pictures of me (so she doesn’t forget Uncle Jerry), and pictures of me holding Hili (s0 she doesn’t forget our special relationship):

Hili: Oh Jerry! What a beautiful present you gave me for your birthday! And it’s not too small at all.
Jerry: I’m glad that you like it.
Hili: I’m going to sing “Happy birthday” for you as soon as I finished eating.
1555537_10202420923471719_951868978_n
In Polish:
Hili: O, Jerry, jaki piękny prezent mi dałeś na twoje urodziny i wcale nie jest za mały.
Jerry: Cieszę się, że ci się podoba.
Hili: Zaśpiewam Ci Happy birthday jak tylko zjem.
Extras: When I woke up this morning, I found this as the Google Doodle:
Screen shot 2013-12-30 at 5.13.14 AM
I can’t find any information about why this is there, so I’m forced to conclude that Google is celebrating my birthday. [UPDATE: Google does indeed know it’s my birthday, as a commenter indicated, and I’ve added the picture with the wish you get when you move the cursor over the image. It’s a bit scary.]
And my presents: A cat calendar and two tins of my favorite “boiled sweeties” from the UK (mint humbugs and blackcurrent with licorice) from Grania, and two jars of homemade cherry jam from Andrzej, Malgorzata, and Hili, all with cards:
Presents
This card was from Hili:
Hilicard1
which contained the inscription:
Hilicard 2
Finally, a portrait of the Queen I took yesterday:
Hili
I don’t have to ask, on this day, “Will you still feed me?”, as we’re going out to a restaurant for a big Polish feed tonight.

Readers’ wildlife photos

December 29, 2013 • 2:05 pm

Reader Stephen Barnard sends us a Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) with the note:

Looks like there’s a mated pair. I’m looking forward to more holes in my siding.

Isn’t this a lovely bird? The peacock-like spots on the breast are particularly striking.

RT9A5007

Flickers are, after all, woodpeckers—and the only woodpeckers that feed on the ground.

Here, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is their range map:

cola_aura_AllAm_map

Finally, individuals of this species have four types of calls, which you can hear here. I find the “wicka wicka” call particularly soothing.

Atheist-bashing roundup

December 29, 2013 • 11:22 am

‘Tis the Christmas season, which means that it’s time for atheists to lecture other atheists on how we should be softer on religion. One might call it “The War on Atheism.” The sad thing is that both sides in this fracas are atheists, with one telling the other that They’re Doing it Rong.

Over at the Guardian, columnist Suzanne Moore joins the trend with her piece “Why non-believers need rituals too” (subtitle: “To move many away from religion, atheism has to weave itself into the social fabric and shed its image of dour grumpiness”). The article was apparently written for New Humanist and then republished.

Needless to say, Moore is an atheist. And she makes the remarkably obtuse claim that atheists must adopt religious-like rituals to shed our public image as joyless automatons.

One of the problems I have with the New Atheism is that it fixates on ethics, ignoring aesthetics at its peril. It tends also towards atomisation, relying on abstracts such as “civic law” to conjure a collective experience. But I love ritual, because it is through ritual that we remake and strengthen our social bonds.

. . . When it came to making a ceremony, I really did not want the austerity of some humanist events I have attended, where I feel the sensual world is rejected. This is what I mean about aesthetics. Do we cede them to the religious and just look like a bunch of Calvinists? I found myself turning to flowers, flames and incense. Is there anything more beautiful than the offerings made all over the world, of tiny flames and blossom on leaves floating on water?

How many of you have participated in humanistic funerals or weddings? I know from readers’ comments that they are many.  The ceremonies I’ve attended include recitations, poems, songs, sundry celebration, and, of course, noms.  So much for austerity!

I agree with Moore that ceremonies and formal celebrations are inherent in humanity, for they help us mark the big transitions in our lives: marriage, birth, death, and special birthdays (the latter are not really transitions, but arbitrary points in time). Atheists do all these things in a secular way. On my 60th birthday, there was a lovely party, with tons of food, friends, and good wine, and I was given a lovely a book containing letters and comments from absent friends. Those absentees included Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Steve Pinker—atheists who supposedly ignore “aesthetics.” Some Calvinists!

What we don’t need are weekly supplications to a divine being. And I, personally, don’t need no stinking incense. Further, something within me quails at the trend toward weekly secular services, including songs and recitations of Darwin. Do we really need those? Do any readers participate in atheist churches and actually think they’re useful? I suspect most of us would avoid them like the plague. To each their own, but Moore doesn’t speak for me.

And in her drive to decry the so-called “coldness” of atheism, Moore compares us to—wait for it—the faithful (my emphasis):

Already, I am revealing a kind of neo-paganism that hardcore rationalist will find unacceptable. But they find most human things unacceptable. For me, not believing in God does not mean one has to forgo poetry, magic, the chaos of ritual, the remaking of shared bonds. I fear ultra-orthodox atheism has come to resemble a rigid and patriarchal faith itself.

This is what the Germans call Wahnsinn. For those rigid and patriarchal faiths are precisely the ones that most rely on poetry, incense, wafers, candles, wine, and group prayer.  (You won’t find that stuff at a Quaker meeting.) What is more ritualistic than Eastern Orthodox ceremonies?

Once again we see an atheist decrying other atheists for being too much like believers, but in this case the accusation is ludicrous. And really, we forgo poetry and magic and bonding? What about Dawkins’s The Magic of Reality? I would bet that most of us know more poetry than the average believer. What we don’t do is believe poetry that peddles delusions.

. . . What, then, makes ceremony powerful? It is the recognition of common humanity; and it is very hard to do this without borrowing from traditional symbols. We need to create a space outside of everyday life to do this.

. . . In saying this I realise I am not a good atheist. Rather like mothering, perhaps I can only be a good enough one. But to move many away from religion, a viable atheism has to weave itself into the social fabric and shed this image of dour grumpiness. What can be richer than the celebration of our common humanity?

Frankly, I’m tired of people like Moore extrapolating from her own personal needs as an atheist to instruct the rest of us to be more like her.  I am happy to attend a secular wedding, and I don’t need candles or incense. Being with friends who are joining in matrimony is sufficient. Yes, humans need ceremonies, but do we really need to borrow their elements from religion?

As for the “dour grumpiness” of atheists, that is a fiction concocted by the religious and perpetuated by faitheists like Moore. In fact, some atheists go out of our way to assure others that we’re really a happy and well-adjusted group (think “The Friendly Atheist”). I find that a bit unseemly. Let others learn on their own that we are generally a well-adjusted and amiable group, attuned even more keenly to the pleasures of life because we know that this life is all we have. Do we really have to add, “Look, I’m a normal person”?

So, Ms. Moore, by all means enjoy your floating flowers and incense, but don’t try to tell the rest of us what we need. As for trying to convince the faithful that we’re not a bunch of miserable nihilists, I find such activity beneath us. Let us first convince the faithful that they’re wasting their lives in pursuit of a delusion, and perhaps then they will accept us as fully human.

***

Over at The Daily Beast, writer Michael Schulson—apparently a nonbeliever—condemns Peter Boghossian’s new book, A Manual for Creating Atheists, for being just as dogmatic as fundamentalist Christianity (is this refrain becoming familiar?). A few snippets:

The loose ensemble known as the “New Atheists” have always had a weirdly evangelical streak, with their emphasis on faith as the essence of religious practice, and with their implication that the entire world would be better off if everyone would start thinking exactly as they do.

What a boring place the world would be if everyone thought alike! Without arguments, there would be no way to approach the truth. But the arguments must be rational ones. Still, I think the entire world would be better if nobody based their opinions on unevidenced and transcendent beings. Evangelicals, on the other hand, believe precisely the opposite.

. . . But Boghossian is hardly an isolated voice. His book has endorsements from a number of prominent atheists, including Shermer, Richard Dawkins, and the University of Chicago biology professor Jerry Coyne. “Since atheism is truly Good News, it should not be hidden under a bushel,” writes Dan Barker, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, in his endorsement of Boghossian’s book. For this small but high-profile representatives of activist atheism, the word of no God is a new gospel—one that’s eager to condemn those who don’t embrace its message.

I am glad to find myself in good company!  Once again we have an invidious comparison between New Atheism and religious gospel.  Thick-headed writers like Schulson, however, simply can’t fathom that being passionate about reason is different from being dogmatic about delusion. They think that using the word “gospel” is sufficient to dismiss atheism. Deeply subtle questions like “what are they trying to say?” and “what is the evidence?” escape people like Schulson. For him, and other lazy atheist-bashers, it’s always about tone.

. . .As a result, we can see in the writing of Dawkins and Sam Harris, and certainly in A Manual for Creating Atheists, a disdain for the whole idea of a pluralistic society—a disdain, tellingly, that they share with conservative evangelicals.

Yes, I happen to think, along with other atheists, that the world would be better off if religion were gone, or at least those theistic religions that can’t keep their beliefs to themselves, but want to impose them on the rest of us through law and morality. As for pluralism of culture, food, politics, and so on—bring it on!. But I have no respect for pluralism of beliefs if that includes irrational belief.

. . . Movements don’t radicalize when they start having crazy ideas. Movements radicalize when their members become unable to have ordinary interactions with people different from themselves. We need strong, persuasive secular voices, who can explain the power and advantages of non-belief, and draw intelligent comparisons between their own ways of seeing the world and the ways of faith.

As far as I know, Dawkins and others have plenty of ordinary interactions with people different from themselves. Didn’t Richard have regular discourse with the Archbishop of Canterbury, for crying out loud? And New Atheists regularly reach others—not only the choir but the faithful and the doubters—through their writings.  In fact, unlike Schulson, the New Atheists are strong secular voices, and have been enormously successful. That’s why they’re so often attacked by either believers or jealous unbelievers like R. Joseph Hoffmann.

****

In another festive pieces of atheist-bashing (read this one only if your digestion is quite sound), the website Catholic Stand is asking “Is atheist Richard Dawkins being sufficiently responsible in his statements?” (The answer, of course, is “no.”) He calls Richard “Dawk,” which should tell you all you need to know.

Poland I: I have landed

December 29, 2013 • 7:55 am

It was a grueling trip to Poland: the flight was delayed, long, and there were lengthy waits for the bathroom (I conclude that Poles micturate more often than do other nationalities). Further, over the Atlantic some woman began screaming in the rear of the plane. I couldn’t see what was happening, but the blood-curdling screams went on for half an hour before they stopped.  When we landed in Warsaw, there were further delays as medics came aboard and removed someone on a stretcher before we were allowed to disembark. I don’t know if it was that woman, or if someone else was ill or had even died.

Though it was 2 p.m. when we landed, the sun was barely over the horizon; I had forgotten how far north we are (Chicago is 42° north, Warsaw 52°).  I was greeted by biology student and aspiring journalist Justyna, a protegée of Andrzej and Malgorzata. She was wearing a festive holiday hat and sporting a brand-new tattoo:

Justyna

Yes, it’s a Darwin fish:

Tattoo

Justyna kindly escorted me to the station, where I got a bus to Płock (2 hours), followed by a 40-minute drive to Dobrzyn with my hosts Andrzej and Malgorzata.

At last I was ensconced at my adoptive home, and greeted with a stupendous meal of beef, potatoes, and salad, washed down with a fine Chianti (no fava beans). I was not permitted to photograph the meal as it wasn’t deemed sufficiently aesthetic, but these restrictions were lifted for dessert.

To be precise, six desserts. Clockwise from lower center, they are makowiec, an iced poppy-seed cake (a Polish specialty), sernik, toffee-covered cheesecake (a stupendous treat), both from bakeries, and then two cakes made by Malgorzata: keks (Swedish fruitcake) and miodownik (honey cake), babka, a yeast cake, and ciastka, Polish cookies.  In the background you can see Hili, who is, as one reader described, “filling out nicely.” I, too, will fill out nicely if I continue to eat desserts like these:

Desserts

Hili, was of course in attendance, and nommed a can of gourmet cat food I brought her from the States. She looks well pleased.

Hili

A welcome sight at bedtime. Sadly, the editor-in-chief hasn’t yet deigned to sleep with me, but perhaps I can lure her into the sack with some noms.

Bedtime

Finally, we are all back at work this morning, the routine we will keep up until I leave.

working

A preprandial walk to the river. Hili tagged along (she needs the exercise), as did Emma the d*g (not shown).

Walk

Hili points out a flock of cormorants over the Vistula. She wishes she had wings—or that the cormorants were flightless. 

Cormorants

Animal camouflage: can you spot the cat? (The white markings are maladaptive.)

Hidden

Islamic radicals kill more polio workers

December 29, 2013 • 5:42 am

One of the most pernicious effects of religion is the opposition of some faiths to modern health care. I’ve posted on this frequently, especially about American religious sects which prohibit health care, vaccination, and blood transfusions for children, children who have no ability to make medical choices. As a result, many of those children have died. Although these faiths might be considered “extreme,” the rest of us have made the laws that exempt their adherents from the necessity to take proper care of their children.

Even more horrible is the tendency of militant Muslims, particularly the Taliban, to murder those who are trying to vaccinate children against polio. This is happening in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and parts of Africa. It’s not just the shots, either—oral polio vaccines are considered just as un-Islamic.

The Guardian, the New York Times, and Jihad Watch report that another five vaccination workers—all Pakistanis—were killed in the last two weeks. As the Guardian notes:

Five female health workers vaccinating children against polio have been shot dead in Pakistan in a series of attacks blamed on Islamist militants. One victim was a 17-year-old schoolgirl volunteer.

Four of the killings, which officials said were carried out by masked men on motorbikes, took place in the southern city of Karachi, Pakistan’s commercial capital, on the second day of a drive to eradicate the disease from the country.

The fifth, of the schoolgirl, occurred in the violent western city of Peshawar. According to some reports, a sixth health worker, a man, was also killed in Karachi.

It was not clear who was behind the shootings, but Taliban insurgents have repeatedly denounced the anti-polio campaign as a western plot.

The anti-Islamophobes can thus blame this on colonialism, but that’s a stretch, for anti-Westernism is a characteristic of Islamism (read The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright). And if that’s not enough, there are more explicit religious motivations for Islamic anti-vaxers. (By the way, midwives have also been killed.) As Jihad Watch notes:

The Times says that the Taliban “accuses the United States of using a drive to eradicate polio in the country as a cover for spying,” but that isn’t the only reason why they’re murdering polio workers. A Pakistani Muslim cleric has said that polio vaccinations are un-Islamic. And such “extremist” clerics are not just in Pakistan: in Nigeria, a Muslim cleric was arrested for playing a role in sparking the murders of polio workers.

From USA Today:

In Pakistan’s Northwest territories, where Taliban clerics have significant influence, polio vaccination teams are maligned as un-Islamic or Western purveyors of poison meant to sterilize Muslim women.

Without this Muslim opposition, the world was poised to eradicate polio from the planet, just as we have eradicated smallpox.

The Guardian adds:

Statistics released in October showed an improvement in the polio situation in Pakistan, with 47 children paralysed by the disease in 27 districts compared with 154 cases in 48 districts in 2011. However, in 2005 only 28 new cases were registered.

Just ponder what it’s like to be a paralyzed child.  When I was young, and polio vaccines were new,  we were often frightened by pictures of afflicted children confined in iron lungs. Only  47 paralyzed children may be an “improvement,” but those are 47 lives severely and unnecessarily damaged. And since polio is transmitted only between humans, the diseased are a reservoir to keep the virus alive,  leading to a serious danger of outbreaks in the Middle East.