VirusHead - Mutating bits of contagious discourse, because language is a virus.

A Japanese women has died for lack of a blood transfusion after a Caesarean birth.
The hospital said it had agreed with the woman before the surgery that it would not administer a transfusion.
Although she bled a great deal after delivering the child, doctors only took steps to arrest the hemorrhaging. She died several days later, [...]

Happy Mother’s Day!
Social activist and poet Julia Ward Howe wrote the original Mother’s Day proclamation after the American Civil War as a powerful effort to unite women against war.
Mother’s Day Proclamation

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have great [...]

Marianne Meed Ward of the Toronto Sun has my admiration. She has written an opinion piece - in the Lifestyle Section, yet - that connects some of the dots in the conflict between the Jehovah’s Witness belief in the total abstention from blood and the welfare of children in cases where life-saving blood transfusions may [...]

Jean-Claude Lavoie, 26, is another victim of the Watchtower interpretation of the biblical command to abstain from blood. He died in late December after refusing a blood transfusion while being treated for an intestinal tumor.
His (former Jehovah’s Witness) brother, Jonathan Lavoie, has launched an Internet petition calling on the Canadian federal government to make it [...]

British Jehovah’s Witness Alison Mallinder (44) died as a result of refusing blood products. After years of abdominal pain, she was scheduled to have a hysterectomy. When the surgeon got in, he discovered that “some of her abdominal organs were stuck together as a result of a previous operation.” For three hours, four surgeons worked [...]

I was looking at my dissertation today, wondering if I can yet make a readable book out of it. Now that I’ve got a little distance from what was an agonizing process (at least until the last bit, when I actually started enjoying it), it seems better than I thought at the time. Today I’m [...]

Wired has a story about Hacker Adrian Lamo, who has refused to give blood for DNA testing on religious grounds. His lawyer declined to specify which religion, but the article notes:
In prior court cases, members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses have registered opposition to blood tests for alcohol content, based on certain passages in the Bible.
The [...]