Do Dogs go to Heaven?

Do Dogs go to Heaven? Hysterical! Absolutely unreal that this actually happened! These two churches face each other across a busy street

World's most expensive dog: Tibetan Mastiff sold for $1.5 million

A male Tibetan Mastiff puppy has created a stir in the dog breeding world and gained the title of the world's most expensive dog after being sold in China for a record 10 million yuan ($1.5 million).
The 11-month-old Tibetan Mastiff male puppy named 'Big Splash' and 'Hong Dong' is red in color, a rarity in the breed. He was purchased by a Chinese coal baron who will reportedly use him for breeding, earning as much as $100,000 yuan in stud fees for each female bred to the pricey pooch.
Big Splash took the coveted title of most expensive dog from another Tibetan Mastiff pup that was sold last year for $600,000, as reported by Digital Journal.
"The Tibetan Mastiff, also known as Do-khyi , meaning 'home guard' has been used for centuries to guard herds of domesticated farm animals, villages, monasteries, palaces and private homes," according to Wikipedia. The males can grow to heights of 31 inches tall and can weigh as much as 275lbs.
The dog is considered a primitive breed with a temperament that can vary from one dog to another. They are considered to be both 'noble and impressive animals', said the AKC.
"According to legend, both Genghis Khan and Buddha had them, and they are known to be great guard dogs. They are rarely found outside Tibet and China, making them an especially exclusive breed. In China, they are considered a state protected animal, and there are reportedly just 15,000 in the country, most belonging to the wealthy," reports Yahoo's The Week.

Butt Power

Butt Power by drallah

'Three-parent' mitochondrial IVF technique to be assessed

Scientists have been invited to advise whether the new "three-parent IVF" procedure should be approved to help couples affected by devastating conditions.
An expert panel from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) will consider its safety and effectiveness before reporting to Health Secretary, UK Andrew Lansley.
The technique could help couples have healthy children even if they are affected by mitochondrial diseases.
At present, babies born with one of the rare diseases can suffer fatal liver, heart and neurological disorders.
Mitochondria are located in every human cell and act as "power houses" to provide the energy for cells to function.
Mitochondrial DNA is not present in the nucleus of a fertilised egg, meaning scientists could extract the nucleus and place it into another egg from a donor.
The resulting embryo would have almost 100 per cent inherited genetic material from its mother and father.
Alison Murdoch, head of the department of reproductive medicine at Newcastle University, which has developed the technique, said: "We are not ready to do this in patients now but the science is progressing very rapidly and we need to get Parliament to discuss this again now.
"We anticipate that the process of review could take about a year so we are asking for this process to start now.
"Of course there is no guarantee that we will have all the evidence we need to secure a licence in a year but we need to anticipate that we may have and prepare accordingly.
"We recognise this process is necessary and will co-operate fully.
"As doctors we have a duty to treat disease and where possible to prevent disease. With diseases for which there are no treatments the imperative to develop new treatments is even greater.
"Of course no treatment is ever risk free and if there are risks we will need to quantify these so that doctors can discuss the relative risks and benefits with patients and their families."
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "We have asked the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to co-ordinate an expert group to assess the effectiveness and safety of a new technique to treat mitochondrial disease.
"This is in response to a request from researchers asking the Department of Health to make new regulations under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act to allow this treatment.
"This treatment is not currently possible under current legislation.
"We welcome scientific innovation and this group will investigate the safety of this technique reporting back to us.
"When the group reports back, and based on the evidence available, we can decide whether it is the right time to consider making these regulations."

How the inventor of the pill changed the world for women

Among certain people – Catholics, moralists, social conservatives – the urge to make Carl Djerassi regret his invention seems to be overpowering. He brought us the pill. The more you think about it, the more crucial it has been to the world as we now know it. We used to talk about it as the facilitator of promiscuity, the chemical agent behind sexual liberation. That's just the warm-up act. The rest is monumental: women taking on professional identities, waiting longer to become mothers, ageing populations, smaller families – every stamp of the household of the developed world can be traced back to this discovery. Furthermore, every new direction of the fertility industry – which, after the postponement of death, is the major focus of medical enquiry – can be attributed to this breakthrough. No one would be researching egg storage or ICSI (fertilising an egg with a single implanted sperm) or IVF if it weren't for this discovery.

"For the last 50 years, the leitmotif was contraception. The present 50 years, it's conception," says Djerassi, 88, as though it's the simplest leap in the world, which in a sense it is. Medicine follows the money – once people knew how not to conceive, the issue became how to conceive. It wasn't just ageing parity – women waiting until their mid-30s to have a child – that forced the change. The smaller, deliberated families of the developed world, post-pill, lent cultural credence to the idea of a child as a right and a necessity.

But besides the technology, it is also a conceptual leap larger than the fall of communism, larger than the advances in communication that we hold so vital. Women were hitherto enslaved by biology; and suddenly we weren't. To be in the presence of Djerassi, emeritus professor of chemistry at Stanford University, is so momentous that I fancy at one point I've gone a bit deaf in one ear.

And yet precisely because the world has changed so much, hinged on one discovery, what you want to know is: has he any regrets? Knowing how much can be attributed to his work, at 26 years old, 60 years ago, is there nothing he would change? "To me, the greatest disadvantage is what it has done in the 80s, 90s, perhaps not so much recently: modern, intelligent men won't take responsibility, wouldn't even use condoms. They shrugged and said: 'All women are now on the pill, I don't need to bother.' This has become another woman's burden."

How burdensome is it, though? He wonders, would women believe a man, if he said he'd taken the pill? That's a moot point, since this hassle has now ossified into a fact of life. "Of the 20 largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, not one is working on male contraception. They wouldn't touch it with a 10ft pole. The first question a man would ask is: would it affect my potency? There have been clinical trials – it has no effect on potency. The second question is erection. The third one is prostate cancer. There would be questions we would not be able to answer. Medicine is mainly geared towards geriatric concerns, Alzheimer's, cancer, anti-inflammatories, and people there are not concerned about side effects. No cancer patient has ever sued for vomiting during chemotherapy or losing their hair. But if you lost your hair because of your oral contraceptive, male or female, I can assure you that there would be lawsuits."

This is where we are (literally, not culturally): Austria-born Djerassi has a flat in London. It's beautiful: the corridors and landings could hold a diplomatic reception. The flat itself is laden with art (he is the largest private collector of Paul Klee in the world – those are at his San Francisco estate). The bookshelves are full of Frankfurt School Marxists and science giants. He is a theoretically impossible person: entirely erudite, and nevertheless still concerned about whether or not people can have sex without negative consequence.

"How many acts of sexual intercourse would you guess occur every 24 hours?" he asks. "I often do this with my students, and they say a billion. I say: 'No, no, no, you're dreaming. There are six billion people. Well, you need two for sexual intercourse, so there are only three billion. And some of them are five years old, so they're out.' So then they say a million. Well, now you're underestimating, because you're sitting here and you're not having sex. It's actually 100m, every 24 hours. And they produce about a million conceptions, about half of which are unexpected. Of the 500,000, half of them are unwanted. As a result, every 24 hours, 150,000 abortions occur; of these, over 50,000 are illegal." He doesn't labour the point; rather, leaves a moment for it to sink in, how much squalor and danger still surrounds unwanted pregnancy, even so long after its means of prevention should be universal.

Naturally, though, there are countries such as the UK and the US that have moved on, where the pressing issue is conception. He is droll on the subject of egg freezing and casts himself as a 20-year-old woman: "So, I am a young woman, I collect my eggs – I haven't the foggiest idea yet whether I want children, I have not yet met the man with whom I would like to have children, I do not know yet whether I want to be a single mother, I have not made up my mind yet but I have it in the bank. Men could do this, but men don't do this unless they have testicular cancer, because we produce sperm all the time."

Ultimately, while he admits to some slight reservation about sex selection, he is clear, in his creative writing (taken up over the past 20 years), in his lectures, in everything he does: sex and reproduction have been severed. This is the future – you freeze your material, then get yourself sterilised. It looks a little bald written down. But when you think about it, you want to stand up and cheer.

Zoe Williams,The Guardian,UK

Diet Plan With Hormone Has Fans and Skeptics

Every morning, Kay Brown engages in a ritual similar to a heroin addict’s, or a diabetic’s: she sticks herself with a syringe. Only hers contains hCG, a pregnancy hormone.

Ms. Brown, 35, is not taking hCG to help her bear a child. She believes that by combining the hormone injections with a 500-calorie-a-day diet, she will achieve a kind of weight-loss nirvana: losing fat in all the right places without feeling tired or hungry. “I had a friend who did it before her wedding,” Ms. Brown said. “She looks great.”

Women like Ms. Brown are streaming into doctors’ offices and weight-loss clinics all over the country, paying upward of $1,000 a month for a consultation, a supply of the hormone and the syringes needed to deliver it. More than 50 years after a doctor at a Roman clinic began promoting hCG as a dieting aid, it is as popular as ever, even though there is scant evidence that it makes any difference.

The regimen combines daily injections with a near-starvation diet, and patients, mostly women, are often enticed by promises that they can lose about a pound a day without feeling hungry. Perhaps even more seductively, they are frequently told that the hCG will prompt their bodies to carry away and metabolize fat that has been stored where they least want it — in their upper arms, bellies and thighs.

In response to inquiries stirred up by the diet’s popularity, the Food and Drug Administration warned in January that “homeopathic” forms of hCG, like lozenges and sprays, sold over the Internet and in some health food stores, are fraudulent and illegal if they claim weight-loss powers.

The injectable, prescription form of hCG, human chorionic gonadotropin, is approved as a treatment for infertility and other uses, and it is legal for doctors to prescribe it “off-label” for weight loss.

But the F.D.A. has also reiterated a warning, first issued in the mid-1970s, that is required on hCG packaging: It has not been shown to increase weight loss, to cause a more “attractive” distribution of fat or to “decrease hunger and discomfort” from low-calorie diets.

The F.D.A. recently received a report of a patient on the hCG diet who had a pulmonary embolism, said Christopher Kelly, a spokesman for the agency. He said the hormone carried risks of blood clots, depression, headaches and breast tenderness or enlargement.

Dr. Pieter Cohen, an assistant professor at Harvard medical school who researches weight-loss supplements, said that aside from the issue of side effects, the use of hCG as a diet tool was “manipulating people to give them the sense that they’re receiving something that’s powerful and potent and effective, and in fact they’re receiving something that’s nothing better than a placebo.”

But unlike other popular diet supplements, hCG, which is derived from the urine of pregnant women, has acquired an aura of respectability because the injections are available only by prescription.

Ms. Brown’s physician, Lionel Bissoon, a well-known society doctor with an office off Central Park West, charges $1,150 for his hCG program, which covers an examination, injection training, a month’s supply of the hormone and syringes, and blood work to monitor for possible trouble.

“From an anecdotal point of view,” Dr. Bissoon said, “physicians all around the country have seen people losing a tremendous amount of weight with this stuff, and you cannot afford to ignore that.”

Another New York doctor, Scott M. Blyer, offers the hCG diet as an adjunct to his cosmetic surgery practice, working with Jacqueline Fulop-Goodling, an orthodontist, out of her office in Midtown. Dr. Fulop-Goodling does not prescribe hCG, but she counsels patients. They charge $800 for a 40-day course of therapy, half-price for repeat rounds; they also require an EKG to make sure the patient has no heart trouble.

One of Dr. Blyer’s patients, a 30-year-old business consultant named May, who asked that her last name not be used because she was embarrassed to be considering the diet, described herself as an “emotional eater.” She is 5-foot-3 and 130 pounds, but said she hoped to shed 20 pounds in time to be a bridesmaid at an April wedding. “So I have just six weeks,” she said.

Dr. Blyer looked uneasy. “Your legs are thin, your face is thin,” he told her. “You’re a very attractive woman.” But he reassured her that she would lose weight where she wanted to, in her stomach. The hCG, Dr. Blyer said, “tricks your body into a state of pregnancy; it burns off fat so the fetus can get enough calories, but it protects muscle.”

May eventually decided that she did not need to lose much weight and did not go through with the diet.

Dr. Blyer’s explanation of how the hCG diet works resembles a theory first popularized in the 1950s by A. T. W. Simeons, a doctor in Rome who said he had used it on more than 500 patients, and published a paper about it in The Lancet, the British medical journal, in 1954.

In 1995, a Dutch study in The British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology tried to resolve the question of whether the hCG diet really worked by analyzing 14 randomized clinical trials of the diet. Only two, including one co-written by an advocate of the diet, found that people on hCG lost more weight, felt less hunger and had an improved body shape, compared with people on the same 500-calorie diet who received a placebo, like saline injections.

But several studies concluded that the ritual of the daily injection and the instant gratification of quick weight loss helped motivate people to stay on the diet.

However arcane the theory, some doctors say it is theoretically plausible that hCG would create a more toned body, because it can induce the production of male hormones and increase muscle mass.

“There’s a reason Manny Ramirez took it,” said Dr. Martin Keltz, director of the division of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at St. Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital Center in Manhattan. Mr. Ramirez, the baseball star, was suspended for 50 games in 2009 after evidence surfaced that he had used hCG, which is banned by Major League Baseball.

Dr. Keltz said he thought it was possible to redistribute fat with hCG, but, he added, “there are risks, like cardiovascular risks.”

“I would shy away from them,” he continued.

Then there are the nutritional concerns about a diet that some say mimics anorexia. “The average person is going to eat 1,800 to 3,000 calories,” said Kristen Smith, a bariatric surgery dietitian at Montefiore Medical Center.

“I don’t think it promotes healthy long-term eating habits,” she added.

Doctors who prescribe hCG for dieting say that experience is in their favor, even if the research is not. They point to women like Guldal Caba, a 53-year-old psychologist from Toledo, Ohio, who traveled to New York for treatment from Dr. Bissoon. “It was the fat that needed to go — you know behind my bra, that back fat, my belly,” Dr. Caba said.

Ms. Brown, a theater administrator who is 5-foot-8, said she was thrilled to lose six pounds in seven days, and hopeful about reaching her goal of losing 30, which would bring her close to her ideal weight of 135. She said she did not feel hungry and did not obsess about food as she had years ago, when suffering from anorexia.

“A lot of people have a lot of opinions,” Ms. Brown said, “but I don’t want to be a person who feels like my weight is not under my control.”

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
Published: March 7, 2011
The New York Times

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

S'pore MD gives up 5-figure salary to be Mister Mum

This couple believe that a maid can never be a substitute for parents.

Especially when their offspring are twins conceived by in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment.

It was a painful process and a difficult pregnancy for Madam Rachel Foo who was 33 when she gave birth to a pair of non-identical twins on June 29, 2005.

The couple, who married in 2001, named their boy, Aston, and their girl, Chelsea.

But when it came to the crunch on whether it would be Madam Foo, 39, or her husband, Mr Peter Chua, 56, who should stay home to look after their precious twins, the decision wasn't easy.

He was older. And he had a successful career.

Mr Chua was the managing director (Asia Pacific) of a US company in the cruise and resort industry, earning more than $10,000 a month.

On the other hand, the wife, who was then working as an executive assistant to the manager in a finance company, was earning about $4,000 a month.

But Madam Foo felt that she was not as patient as her husband and she did not like to stay at home.

The couple then decided that Mr Chua would stay home in their four-room HDB flat in Punggol, to look after the children while the wife would be responsible for bringing home the bacon.

Mr Chua said: "Rachel has a career to build. I think I have done enough in my career. To stop working and stay home to look after the children is just sacrificing my income.

"Our children are our primary concern..."

Open-minded

"To me, I want to spend more time with my children."

Madam Foo agreed, saying: "I told my husband that maids can never substitute us as parents.

"Peter is very open-minded and he didn't mind. He really looks after the kids very well. And I respect him for his sacrifices."

The first few years were tough as the couple struggled a little to make ends meet. They had to plan for everything that they were going to spend on. It also meant shorter holidays to places like Hong Kong and Macau and eating out less.

Madam Foo said: "It helped that we were staying with my mother while waiting for our new flat in Punggol."

But six years on and the couple are still very happy with the arrangement. Their twins are now six years old and attending pre-school.

Madam Foo has since joined a fund investment firm as a business manager and earns more than $5,000 a month.

She pays for her children's school fees and household expenses such as utility bills and groceries. When Aston and Chelsea were born, they spent three and five weeks respectively in the intensive care unit in the hospital.

"They were so tiny and it was not easy to care for them," Mr Chua recalled.

The couple had to hire a maid to do the household chores so that Mr Chua could fully concentrate on looking after the twins.

With the role reversal, Mr Chua was the one who woke up in the middle of the night to feed the twins and changed their diapers.

Now that the twins are in pre-school, Mr Chua begins his day by waking up at 6.30am to get them ready. He drops them off before taking his wife to the MRT station where she takes the train to work.

Before picking up his kids at 11am, Mr Chua goes grocery shopping or dabbles in stock trading activities.

After fetching the twins home, he ensures that Aston and Chelsea have a good bath and lunch before supervising them in their homework.

"After they have finished their homework, I play with them or read to them," Mr Chua said.

In the past six years as a house husband, Mr Chua has learned to be careful with his grocery spending as he would have to fork out the extra money whenever he exceeded the budget, he added jokingly.

"I did not have any training before, but I learned to bathe them, feed them and take care of them when they are sick.

"I call it a parent's instinct. Be it the dad or the mum, it is the parents' instinct to look after their children. I had learned to identify their cries, whether it was a cry that they had wet their diapers or a cry for milk," Mr Chua said.

As the twins grew older, Mr Chua attended toddler classes with them. It was inevitable that he received curious stares from other toddlers' mothers. But Mr Chua took the stares in his stride. He said: "I was the only man in my kids' class. And unlike them, I didn't just look after one kid, but two. I took the initiative to interact with them and even gave them some parenting tips that I had learnt."

Mr Chua said his family and friends supported his decision to care for the children, much to his surprise.

He said: "They told me that I have made the right decision and they actually envy me for being able to do it.

"There are always sacrifices in life. Sometimes money can create a lot of family problems, but I am glad that it has never been our problem.

"When Rachel and I decided on this arrangement, we knew what we were getting into. We had our little struggles and we don't envy others who are able to take their children on holiday during every school holiday. We need to strike a good balance."

On her part, his wife has never doubted his ability to take care of the children.

She said: "In my previous job, I would get very stressed out with the office politics and I would ask Peter if we could switch back our roles. But I also knew that I wouldn't last more than two months at home."

Madam Foo admits that her husband has done a better job than she ever could.

When Madam Foo returns home in the evenings, Mr Chua would patiently wait for her to settle down and have her dinner before lending her a listening ear.

He said: "I would listen to her talk about her work in the office and sometimes give her my advice. That's what a husband is for."

It is something his wife greatly appreciates.

Madam Foo said: "Sometimes I can get very carried away with my work and Peter is always there to remind me that our family is equally important."


Role reversal

With this reversal of roles, Mr Chua admitted he can now appreciate the role of a housewife better.

He said: "In our relationship, there is no one party who is superior to the other.

"Few men would like to do what I do. For it to work, you must believe in what you are doing and there needs to be trust between the spouses.

"If right now, I tell my wife that I would like to rejoin the workforce, she will support me in my decision.

"But now that I have grown so close to my children, it would be a huge sacrifice for me to go back to work and not be able to care for them.

"Unless the work is very challenging, I value my time with my children more than earning an income."

Wives: No respect lost for house hubbies

IF ONE party has to give up the job to look after the children, who should it be? Should it be dad or mum?

The New Paper on Sunday spoke to five couples who said that they have no issue with the man staying home to look after the children.

Most of them were more concerned with the loss of income of the party who needs to stay home, given the high cost of living in Singapore.

Typically, they felt that the person with the lower income should be the one to stay home.

Madam Jennifer Tan, 35, a sales executive, who gave birth to a son last week, said: "If the woman is earning $10,000 a month and the man is earning only $5,000 a month, then it makes more sense for the woman to keep her job to support the family."

Madam Tan's husband, Dr Andy Lee, 37, an entrepreneur, was asked if his wife would lose respect for him for if he stayed home to look after their baby.

Dr Lee replied: "I don't think so. If she wants me to be a stay-home dad, she can't say that I am worth nothing. I would have contributed by looking after our son."

Madam Tan said: "Why would I lose my respect for him? I feel it's a big sacrifice for the man to be able to do this. It just shows that he loves the family a lot."

Psychologist and family counsellor Richard Lim said there is a big jump in the number of wives who now earn the same, if not higher, salaries than their husbands. Often, this leads to unhappy situations at home.

Dr Lim said: "Regardless of what the initial arrangement was, it's hard for the man not to feel insecure. When the power shifts, it'll take for both the man and woman to adjust.

"Pride, which is an emotion, is not something that can be controlled."

Lawyer Steven Lam of JTJB has handled a few cases of wives divorcing their house husbands.

He said: "We're still an Asian society and the man is still regarded as the breadwinner. I have came across some cases where the woman had loved the man because of his status. And problems popped up when he became a house husband and she did not see him as capable as he used to be."