Annual Darwin Awards

Pajaronian
February 21, 2015
Laina Farhat-Holzman

Every year, I gather up notes on people so stupid that they should not add to the human gene pool. Alas, they do, but I would wish they wouldn't. Some of them are low hanging fruit, very obviously defective, but others really shouldn't be on this list at all. They ought to know better.

o     Boko Haram. Let us start with the low hanging fruit, which usually comes from the Muslim world. Boko Haram means: Western Learning is Forbidden. They believe the world is flat and water does not evaporate. They wave the Koran in the air (which they cannot read) and claim this makes them Muslim. Their talents include kidnapping schoolgirls and selling them in slave markets, which Sudanese Muslims run. They are also expert in decapitation and holding tourists for ransom. May they not reproduce and hopefully die off.

o     United Arab Emirates.   Their “General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment” issued a fatwa prohibiting any attempts to live on Mars as “un-Islamic.” Not that they have the capacity to do so, but “Such a one-way journey poses a real risk to life that can never be justified in Islam.” Let it be so.

o     Pakistan. Police booked a 9-month old baby boy for attempted murder, charging him along with his family, who happened to be poor. The baby cried when he was fingerprinted, and a good lawyer intervened when he took it to the press and the world laughed at them. Such is Pakistani justice. The attempted murders were slum dwellers throwing stones at the gas service trying to disconnect homes illegally hooked up.

o     Also Pakistan.  Two brothers were arrested for the second time because they dig up bodies, cook, and eat them. Pakistan has no law against cannibalism. But they do have laws against women, sentencing to death a woman accused of illegal sex. Much more important, they say.

Now, to the much higher hanging fruit, our own recent battle against the very science that has made our western civilization so wonderful!  Our public health: safe water, clean air, modern medicine including pasteurization, safe drugs and surgical practices, childhood immunization, the end to childhood diseases that used to terrify and kill us-----all under threat by not only Darwin Award candidates in the Muslim World but by our own, who should know better----this the stuff of nightmares!

Very stupid and evil Muslim clerics have been responsible for halting the program that came close to eradicating polio and even smallpox from the world forever. They have told ignorant women that Western medicines were plots to make their children sterile! They have murdered health workers bravely going into remote villages bringing the medicines that would let their children grow into healthy adults. Now, there will be another generation of dead or cripples haunting their villages. That is just fine with them.

But where can I put western educated women who read articles on the Internet touting a British article by a defrocked and disowned doctor who claimed in a stupid study that childhood inoculations cause mental retardation and autism? A mother might be frightened, but what is the matter with her doctor who does not tell her in no uncertain terms that this is rubbish! And even worse, what is wrong with the politician, such as New Jersey Governor Christie, who has the nerve to say that “Parents deserve choice” when it comes to a matter of public health?  Choice?  What kind of choice do they have over an issue that affects the entire community?  Do they have choice over water supply?  Over life or death of their neighbors' babies?

What is happening here is an attack on science. Some Darwin Award candidates have decided that Pasteur was wrong. There are no germs. There is no Global Warming, and even when the water rises under their noses, they will say science is wrong. Measles is a kiddie disease. Why the fuss? The moonshot was a conspiracy made on a back lot in Hollywood. Well, folks, ISIS is looking for recruits. They will welcome you.

675 words

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of God's Law or Man's Law.  You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.