Veteran journalist Juan L. Mercado Gets DOST Award

Mindanao Examiner and Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist Juan L. Mercado receives the “50 Men and Women of Science” award from Secretary Estrella Alabastro and her staff at Manila Hotel ceremonies. The awards formed part of the Department of Science and Technology rites to mark its golden anniversary.

DOST selected 50 men and women who made significant contributions to the development of science and technology in research, education, communication. Others journalists and educators who received the award along with Mercado were the late Jose Burgos Jr, Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Queena Lee Chua, Ateneo University’s Bienvenido Nebres, SJ, marine biologist Angel Alcala of Silliman University, economist Arsenio Balisacan of UP and mangrove scientist Jurgenne Primavera. (Mindanao Examiner)

OPINION

CLOTHESLINE SIGNAL By Juan Mercado

Kids’ school uniforms, flapping on clotheslines, don’t raise eyebrows. Except when they’re strung in ghettos of indigenous tribal people, like Atis in Sitio Bolabog on glitzy Boracay. “That’s something I didn't see before,” emailed former World Health Organization’s Rabin Sarda.

“Those uniforms are indicators of hope,” says Dr Sarda, who shuttles between Miami and Boracay, yet wedges time to help the once-nomadic Atis. Those clotheslines say: “More Atis are now in school --- and getting a chance to break out of penury.”

Progress inches forward despite relentless pressure, by tax-declaration waving claimants, to shove out Atis from what they say is home. The Catholic Church’s commission on indigenous peoples backs the Atis’ December 2001 claim for a certificate of ancestral domain title. And Senator Jamby Madrigal blasted those shoving Atis out with threats and P2,000 handouts and feet-dragging by government agencies.

“The beautiful white beaches can not disguise the disgusting reality of a concentration camp being built among Boracay’s tourist attractions,” she wrote. Daughters of Charity nuns, who live among the Atis, were “judiciously using a medicine fund provided by private citizens", Dr Sarda noted.

They first use donated drugs, before drawing from the fund “More individuals and organizations contribute time and in kind,” including help to repair typhoon damaged homes. “Contributions to a feeding program, to tamp down malnutrition, have stabilized. An informal education program for youth is ongoing. In school year 2007/2008, two Atis will enter college with scholarships from self-effacing benefactors.”

A February bonus was a mass wedding for 18 couples. An upscale hotel even provided the banquet.”If we keep sprigs of hope in our hearts,” the Chinese say, “the singing bird will come.”

From Emory University Hospital in Atlanta Georgia, Patrick H. O'Brien reacts to an earlier Inquirer column (“Reading beyond Labels”) that reported: A US Food and Drug Administration study, on the military’s $1-billion medical stockpile, found drugs remained effective even 15 years beyond expiry dates.

(I’m) a US pharmacist who worked with eight medical / surgical missions to the Philippines,” O’Brien emailed. “Two were to Tagbilaran City in 1992 and 1994. And I applaud the common sense and non-political approach to the issue of expiration dating on medications in this unbiased column.

"As with most things, expiration dates are simply guidelines to be used. Medications are more affected by storage conditions than by a simple date. How many of us have gotten relief from a headache from a Tylenol that passed its expiration date? How many of us actually look?”

"The well intentioned Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFAD) advises that medicines, imported by foreign medical missions, must have at least a one year expiration date. That may be appropriate for international pharmaceutical companies' imports. But it puts an enormous burden on medical mission donations. They receive most of their donated drugs with a short expiration date of two to six months. How can I request donations, and then demand a one year expiration date?

"Our mission group will leave for a surgical mission to Roxas City. We accumulated medicines that are not expired but lack BFAD's one year required dating. Worse, efforts to contact BFAD to arrange an inspection, by e-mail, regular mail and phone, all went unanswered. Maybe they're busy dreaming up other rules?

From Las Vegas, Nevada, Bunny Arville emailed: A recent lead story, on TV Patrol newscast on Filipino Channel, was a beauty pageant that shocked: a beauty pageant of grandmothers or Lolas in a province.

A few did not apparently have bathing suits. So, they wore skimpy materials that seemed, from my vantage point, like underwear. Many in the audience were seen ridiculing this spectacle. “It was despicable beyond belief. It certainly didn't speak well for those responsible for this project. But then, isn't ratings (translation: money) always the deciding factor in lousy decisions?”

”In Pilipino culture, calling someone ‘Lola’ is a sign of respect -- unlike the Western world that holds getting old is a negative thing. Age comes with honor in our culture. Our grandmothers are those who toiled and loved us. They deserve better.

“In TV, the line between news and entertainment has long vanished. News isentertainment and the death of Anna Nicole Smith (or Kris Aquino’s heartbreak?) Is more entertaining maybe a higher IQ is better than a bigger bosom. To idolize people who use cleavage, as a tool to get ahead in life, is really sick.”

From Elizabeth, New Jersey, Dr Jose Chua writes: “I read the Inquirer column “Mixed Bag”. Here is my experience: I left the Philippines in 1974 as a 27-year old youngster. Now, I’m almost 60. And it is not yet possible for me to return or retire. I’m still doing everything to ensure my family’s welfare. “I am a doctor. I enjoy financial stability. However, my nephews are already college graduates. Yet, they can not support their families, even if they have jobs. So, they still get a subsidy from me.

Probably I am an enabler. But they’re still hard-up. “That was the same plight I found myself in then. At that time, I was already a physician. In addition, I taught in the medical school of a major Manila university. Yet, my income then could hardly support my family. Is there any chance the Philippines will improve?

OPINION

WEEKEND CHOICES By Juan Mercado

"On a relaxed weekend, you may want to idly kick around some questions that bug people," my friend Jerry Salvosa e-mailed. Like what?

"Like what’s the difference, for example, between bigamy and monogamy." That's a snap the author, Oscar Wilde, answered that one before. "Bigamy is having one wife or one husband too many," Wilde wrote. "And monogamy is the same."

"But I think polygamy is trigonometry," jokes Manila Bulletin’s Napoleon G. Rama.

“Whether in monogamy, bigamy, or even polygamy, there are always two sides,” adds former UN economic Conrado Sanchez. “One is the right side. And the other is the husband.”

But Jerry Salvosa is persistent, if anything. He lobs yet another query. "We've all heard about people having guts or balls. Cojones is the Spanish word for that. In the lapdog Marcos Supreme Court, for instance, the tough independent Justice Cecilia Munoz Palma was spoken of admiringly as: 'The only justice con cojones.

But do you really know the difference between them? That one floors me. What's the diff? I ask. And Jerry replies: "Guts is when you arrive home late, after a night out with the boys. Your wife opens the door wielding a broom. If you have guts, you ask: "Are you still cleaning? Or are you flying somewhere?”

And balls? "Again, you come home late after a night out with the boys. You reek of perfume and beer. And there are lipstick smears on your collar. If you have balls, you whack your wife on her bottom and snort: "You're next."
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This should clear any confusion about the definitions, Jerry predicts. He has a caveat, however. "Medically speaking, there is no difference in the outcome. Both will ultimately result in death".

And speaking of death, he wisely adds: "When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming --- like all the other passengers in his car." That's nothing, my friend Eddie chimed in: "My wife told friends she learned how to swim when someone took her out in the deep waters and threw her off the boat".

I demonstrated saying: "Sweetheart, they weren’t trying to teach you how to swim.'" But weekends are also for yarn-spinning, Remy Laxamana from Daytona Beach in Florida writes. Like what? Like these contributions from colleagues in his profession.

Here are some items from this doctor: An obstetrician in San Antonio, Texas recalls: "A man dashes into the Emergency Room and yells: "My wife's going to have her baby in the cab!" I quickly grabbed my bag, rushed out to the cab ahead of him, quickly lifted the lady's dress, and began to take off her underwear. Suddenly, I noticed there were several cabs -- and I was in the wrong one".

An internist recalls she started examining patients just at the beginning of her 7 to 3 shift "I placed a stethoscope on an elderly -- and slightly deaf -- female patient's anterior chest wall. "Big breaths," I instructed. "Yes, yes, yes. They used to be," wistfully replied the patient.

Then, there was this medical school lecturer who tossed these items at pre-med students clustered before him.

"Ladies and gentlemen – When you will be assigned to emergency room duty, you will quickly discover, from the patients that the traffic cops wheel in, that there are two kinds of pedestrians – the quick and the dead. "

"Some of your over-speeding patients will have slammed their cars into a rut in the road. They will discover that the only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth."

"As for me”, the lecturer added, "I’ve discovered that life is sexually transmitted. And health is merely the slowest rate at which one can die. In fact, I used to eat a lot of organic and natural foods – until I learned that most die people of natural causes. So never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway."

A psychiatrist friend reminds me that disorders, in her field of specialization, can sometimes be tossed around as carols. Like what? Like these, she-emailed: Schizophrenia -- “Do You Hear What I Hear?”; Multiple Personality Disorder -- "We Three Kings Disoriented Are; Paranoia – "Santa Claus Is Coming --- to get me"; Dementia – "I Think I’ll Be Home for Christmas"; Narcissistic – "Hark The Herald Angels Sing --- About Me."

From Australia, Alfred Roces suggests a Sunday column can be rounded off by this simple "Planter’s Formula" “If you plant honesty, you will reap trust. But if you plant dishonesty, you will reap distrust. If you plant goodness, you will reap friends. But if you plant selfishness, you will reap loneliness.

If you plant humility, you will reap greatness. If you plant pride, you will reap destruction. And if you plant perseverance, you will reap victory. If you plant laziness, you will reap stagnation.

"So be careful what you plant now, it will determine what you will reap tomorrow, the seeds you now scatter, Will make life worse or better for you and those who will come after. Someday, you will enjoy the fruits -- or you will pay for the choices – that you plant today.

OPINION

STEALTHIER DANGER By Juan Mercado

CURBS ON AERIAL SPRAYING of Mindanao banana plantations recently hit the headlines. Hedge-hopping aircraft that spray pesticides make good photo ops. And the stakes are high. The Philippines exported 1.90 million tons of bananas last year.

But the more lethal threat is less visible and far stealthier. Some 13.5 metric tons of toxic mercury slosh yearly into major rivers from Naboc to Kinking, then build up to health-threatening levels, within fish schools, in the Davao Gulf.

Lead tailings poison Hijo, Matiao, Masara, Batoto to Manat Rivers. Mercury-laced waters, from Compostela Valley, seep into tributaries, as they drain into Butuan Bay. Mercury-stained stream sediments threaten the Agusan river.

In 1956, fish and shellfish, contaminated by mercury discharged by a chemical plant, poisoned 2,252 men, women and children in Minimata, Japan. “Minimata” disease resulted in brain lesions, tremors, paralysis and miscarriages. Over the past 36 years, 1043 have died.

So, will mercury, smuggled in by Davao gold panhandlers, poison the food chain here? Limited studies already track traces in school children, pregnant mothers and miners.

”There’s been no publicized mercury poisoning of humans” here, answer Dr Ed. B. Prantilla and Carmelita Martinez who’ve just completed a study titled: “Heavy Metals Contamination in the Davao Region”. “But In remote areas, there are few doctors and inadequate medical facilities. Mercury poisoning may be attributed to other causes.”

Prantilla and Martinez synthesized findings, by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, academics and other agencies, over 14 years. Two year infants in Tagum city, whose mothers were exposed to mercury, lagged in development and speech, they note. And new US research reveals striking similarity of symptoms of mercury poisoning with autism.

A former UN econometrician, Prantilla teaches development studies at University of Southeastern Philippines. Martinez is a faculty member in of the school of government and management. Their study focuses on the most problematic metals like mercury, lead and cadmium.

The ecological collapse of the 194 hectare Lake Leonard – or “Crocodile Lake” – in Compostela Valley Province pinpointed lead and cadmium as culprits. Once an excellent fishing ground, dumping of lead, in the late 1970s, “killed” the lake. Bureau of Fisheries found that fish samples registered lead, cadmium and copper contents breached critical tolerable limits.

“Heavy Metals” begins from the path-blazing 1982 analysis, by Rosita Fundador, who documented mercury contaminating some Davao Gulf fish and seashells.

The survey includes the 2006 study, by the Health Department’s Region XI, which found:“Fish samples from Davao Oriental, Davao del Sur and Davao City markets…had mercury contents higher than the allowable limit of 0.3 micro grams.” But the DOH study didn’t pinpoint where those fishes were caught. Hence, it has not been released so far.

Prantilla and Martinez also indicate research gaps: “The heavy metals content of freshwater fish, in contaminated rivers and lakes of the Davao Region, as well as plants consumed by people” has not been studied so far. Even more worrisome is failure to track mercury seepage into aquifers, recharged within mining and gold processing areas.

Mercury levels in animals are a festering question. In the 1990’s, carabaos keeled over mysteriously in Barangay Naboc. There’s suspicion that belief mercury and cyanide, in irrigation water, caused those deaths.

Illegal mercury supplies seep through Davao’s porous borders. “The one major source of mercury pollution is gold ore processors,” they write. They cluster in (a) Diwalwal, Compostela Valley Province, (b) Kingking, Pantukan, Compostela Valley Province, and (c) Apokon, Tagum City, Davao del Norte Province.

Most of 796 operations get mercury illicitly. “Annual mercury consumption of Davao Region, due to gold processing, amounted to 13,524 kilograms of mercury.” But this can be curbed from “the user side”, i.e. government imposing strict compliance with environmental laws. That would include small artisan miners.

Government could clamp the condition that polluters pay for damage they incur. Pollution taxes should be paid to repay those whose health has been impaired. There is need, too, cleansing polluted seas and water systems. Heavy metals ought to be factored into wastewater discharge fees.

“Government action on high levels of mercury in certain species of fish caught in Davao Gulf is long overdue.” Inaction has serious health implications “especially because those fishes with high level of mercury are eaten by a large portion of the Davao Region population.”

Drs. Nelia Maramba and Cristina S. Dablo earlier found elevated mercury levels in, the blood and urine of 114 school children and 70 miners they examined. Further studies, however, are needed to get a more detailed insight into the health issues.

Many remain unaware of the dangers posed by heavy metals pollution. An information campaign by government, academe and civil society is urgent. But the dangers have been played down with arguments cautioning against .economic disruption in mining.

But there’s is a need to consider the long-run effects and economic costs of neglecting the problem, Prantilla and Martinez argue. The present ambiguity merely turns a blind eye and covers up the effects of heavy metal pollution. It limits vision only to short term benefits “(But) available studies are already a cause for alarm.”

BUZZ WORD FOR SUICIDE By Juan Mercado

PUERTO PRINCESA, Palawan: Huddled along 17,460 kilometers of coastline, fisher folk remain among the poorest in a country whose seas were once the marine counterpart of the Amazon forests in stunning richness of biodiversity.

“The Philippines paradoxically is simultaneously a hotspot and a mega-diversity country”, UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Joaquin Cortez told an International Cooperatives Fisheries Organization seminar here. Seventeen mega-diversity nations have 67 percent of the world’s biological resources. The Philippines, and six of these 17, are in Asia. Our seas held more than 950 commercial species of fish, plus 561 kinds of corals.

This wealth, however, is being dissipated relentlessly. Among the world’s ecological hotspots, the Philippines ranks second to Madagascar, Oxford University’s Norman Myers notes. Number three is a trio: Sumatra, Java and Borneo.

The world center of marine biodiversity is a “triangle”, fishery planning officer, Cortez told 49 seminar participants Luzon’s northernmost tip is the apex. And it runs down to the Cocos Island of Australia, and then bounces to Papua New Guinea. And within this “Indon-Malay- Philippine Archipelago” the country is “home to the top 10 percent of concentrated diversity”.

This richness stems from Pleistocene sea level changes 55 million years, argue Drs Victor Springer of Smithsonian Institution and Kent Carpenter of International Union for Nature Conservation. Shifting of tectonic plates jiggled land masses, with their plant, animal and marine life, and Dr Robert Hall’s study of Southeast Asian plates indicate.

“Only Palawan, Mindoro and Panay existed then,” Cortez said. Cebu and Negros emerged from the crumbling land masses, says the “West Visayas Small Islands Survey”. “Neither Tablas nor Siquijor were connected to the greater Pleistocene islands.”

Geological history’s roll of the dice resulted in a mind-boggling variety of often unique plants and animals. And marine life abounded since the Philippines ended up with the most basins and many bays: Calauag, San Miguel, Tayabas, Sorsogon, Ormoc and Panguil, among others.

The biological diversity stunned scientists, from Silliman University’s Dr Arturo Rabor to Drs L.R. Heaney and E.A. Rickhart. “Large number of species occurs nowhere else in the world,” they observed. In Panglao, Bohol, University of San Carlos scientists, working with French counterparts, are continuing to turn up new species. “When I consider the work of Thy hands,” the Psalmist wrote, “what is man that Thou art mindful of him?”

Filipinos haven’t drawn adequate sustenance from the seas and land, despite lavish Providence. Less blessed nations, in contrast, built thriving fisheries while conserving this resource. Those who net fish for our dinners, have little to eat. Eight out of every 10 coastal fisher folk scrounge below poverty lines. Penury in seven fishing bays “is the highest in the country,” an Agriculture Department survey found.

Population, meanwhile, builds up on the “seam between land and water” – the coastlines. Six out of every ten Filipinos today are crammed into 10,000 coastal villages. They rely on increasingly polluted seas for about 10 percent of their protein. And when the catch falters, their need for protein is dumped on farms often eroded from deforestation.

Is this mess due to our welshing as stewards for our grandchildren? Did we become predators instead?

Only four percent of our reefs – aptly called “rainforests of the sea” -- remain in pristine condition today. Dynamited reefs in Panay Gulf and the Bohol Sea yield only four to five metric tons per square kilometer yearly compared to its original potential of 15 metric tons. “Malthusian over fishing”, in the words of a Swedish Royal Academy study, depleted fish stocks in the Sulu Seas and Moro Gulf. In just four decades, almost 60 percent of mangroves were cut or asphalted over, notes Jurgenne Primavera, the leading Filipina scientist on wetlands.

Filipinos are innovative. But did we bargain for what the UN Environment Programme reported “Squirting cyanide to stun fish originated in the Philippines and Taiwan in the 1960s...In the mid-1980s, more than 80 percent of all fish harvested in the Philippines and for aquarium trade were collected using cyanide.” Poisoning decimates marine populations. Misuse of cyanide spread to Asian countries, then leapfrogged to the Maldives, then to the Seychelles…”

They dub this trend as “unsustainable”. It’s the polite word for suicide. There has, therefore, been a growing recognition of the need for more than knee-jerk demands: whether for more patrol boats (the 96 Bantay Dagat vessels have helped) or yet more laws.

Top-down centralized measures failed to evolve into modern systems of fisheries management, Masahiro Yamao of Hiroshima University notes. And Asian nations are groping for systems where fisher folk have a say on decisions.

Here, the need is for effective enforcement of the 1991 Local Government Code, 1998 Fisheries Code and 1997 Agriculture and Fishery Modernization Act where it matters: at sea and in fishing villages. As the Puerto Princesa seminar stressed: more attention must be given to decentralized management of coastal resources with fisher folk co-managing with government.

It’s their next meal and their children’s future at stake, after all. Ecological suicide is not inevitable. “The fault my dear Brutus does not lie in our stars/but in ourselves – that we are underlings.”

OPINION: "FOOLING OURSELVES BLIND" By Juan Mercado

ANYONE KEEP TRACK OF BILLS, creating new cities that jack-knifed their way through Congress before it adjourned?

In 1991, we had 60 cities, many of dubious viability. By 2003, the number almost doubled to 114. After Taguig, Santa Rosa and Meycauayan joined the club, the total rose to 117,

This “strained the national government’s ability to finance such local government units,” the World Bank and Asian Development Bank noted. But “the small size of LGUs prevents them from generating their own resources.”

This Congress instead approved 12 more “city candidates” : Bogo and Carcar ( Cebu ); Baybay ( Leyte); Catbalogan ( Samar ); Lamitan ( Basilan ); Tandag ( Surigao del Sur ); Batac ( Ilocos Norte ); Bayugan ( Agusan del Sur ); Cabadbaran ( Agusan del Norte ) and Borongan ( Eastern Samar ).

These 12 will slice bigger Internal Revenue Allotments ( IRAs ), chortled Senator Alfredo Lim. “If these municipalities can not even manage to meet the basic income requirement, ( set by Republic Act 9009 ) how can they be expected to perform and deliver as cities”?, the League of Cities of the Philippines snapped back. “The vested interests of a few are the only ingredients needed to derail a rational and sensible law”

The 12 got this far because Congress watered down RA 9009’s criteria for minimum economic tools. Entrance fee to “the club” rose from P20-million to P100 million in –- mark this well –- locally-generated income.

Taguig, Santa Rosa and Meycauayan meet standards on generating local taxes without a whimper, thereby creating a larger economic pie. The 12 will help themselves from the common IRA larder. But that extra will be dunned from the IRAs of others: financially-strapped Muslim provinces or four and fifth class towns. This is “beggaring your neighbor” policy.

IRAs are not a permanent crutch, a UN study points out. They’re to give elbow room for LGUs to flex their local revenue collecting muscles. But IRAs proved addictive and the reverse happened. IRAs used to cover half of local budgets. Today, they account for 63 centavos of every budgeted peso.

“Unconditional grants” invariably sap accountability. And IRA is not linked to performance. Thus, the share of locally-raised taxes has shriveled: from 31 centavos out of every peso, in the mid-1980s, to only 20 centavos today. And it is still shrinking.

Few shell cities become “engines of growth”. Instead, they remain hooked on IRAs and slurp from national pork barrels. Already, these cities are hard pressed to provide residents with even basic services, since they’re loath to tax idle land and raise levies from business.

Population meanwhile ratchets the pressure. Migrants fleeing rural penury flood into their slums. In 2005, six out of every ten Filipinos lived in urban sprawls. By 2030, urban residents could crest at 85 million. .

Mumbling “equal protection of law” Congress exempted the 12 from complying with RA 9009’s criteria for high performance. It gutted standards down to mediocrity. Is this just the election year virus? Or is it a deeper national canker?

Do we meet the demand for high performance by lowering hurdles instead? A shortage in classrooms was “solved” by juggling statistics on class sizes. In National Elementary Achievement Tests, poor performance led to scaling the passing mark down to 50%, then doling a “bonus’ of 60 points. “This meant the criterion passing score was 37.5 percent,” Philippine Human Development Report notes. “Who are kidding?

Self-delusion sells short the efforts of other cities that, by dint of hard work and performance of its officials and citizens, are emerging as “development path-blazers”. For it’s packages of best governance practices, Bacolod, Naga and Iloilo are cited in the latest Asian Development Bank study of ‘urbanization and stability” in 12 Asian countries.

Among “key lessons” these three cities offer, the Bank cites the following: “Strict enforcement of the rule of law is common to the three cities” (No vigilantes for summary execution, as in Davao and Cebu)

“All three cities underscore the active role of civil society in undertaking numerous development projects with local governments. (They systematically used ) policy instruments, such as the Local Government Code and city ordinances, to open avenues, not only for citizen participation but also for encouraging private sector development”.

Naga City’s “Citizens Charter” increased transparency and accountability of government. Procurement bids are publicized and officials respond, instead of ignoring, questions by citizens. Local revenues increased 12 times. Bacolod whittled down IRA dependence by increasing its tax base. Infant and maternal mortality are down. And so is the crime rate. And the Iloilo Metropolitan Development Council, through patient consultative efforts over a decade, put into place a coherent development plan.

Reforms were possible through vision and commitment of local chief executives. But they were not “Lone Ranger” type mayors or governors. “Citizens empowerment was part of the agenda of the three city governments.”

Running a city is more than just having IRAs prop up a “city” shingle. “Cities are changing the social fabric and culture of nations,” the ADB study notes. “It is unstoppable and changing people’s lives…It has elements of unpredictability and chaos.” To cope with those changes requires more than our wont for self delusion. (Mindanao Examiner)

OPINION: "TO JUNK OR NOT TO JUNK?" By Juan Mercado

LIKE A BUM CHECK, this old story keeps on bouncing. Only the names, places and time change. And it pivots around an old issue:Do expiration dates on medicines really mean anything?

The latest version happened in Talisay City. “Some medicines distributed to indigents during a medical-dental mission were already expired”, the papers reported.

The 34-year old polio victim said medicine she received, in February 2007, had expiry dates for March 2006 The chair of the Talisay health committee was “disgusted”. And the Bureau of Food and Drugs threatened legal action.

Isn't this old hat? Critics earlier raked fund-strapped V. Luna military hospital for accepting donations of drugs nearing expiry dates. Our soldiers deserve better than lapsing — and “ineffective” — medicine, the argument went.

So, do you trash expired medicine? Or don’t you? Expiration dates, which started in 1979, “stand for something,” Harvard University’s Medical School says in its Family Health Guide. “But (it’s) probably not what you think it does.” The article is part of updating literature” for all US doctors, I wrote earlier.

Excerpts: Most of what is known today about drug expiration comes from a question that the Pentagon tossed to the US Food and Drug Administration: Should the armed forces junk it’s over $1-blllion stockpile of medicine every two or three years?

In response, FDA studied more than 100 drugs in military pharmacies, it found that 90 percent of both prescription and over-the-counter medicines were perfectly good to use -- even 15 years after the expiration date.

“Expiration dates don’t indicate a point at which the medication is no longer effective or has become unsafe,” the Harvard note states. “This is the date at which the manufacturer can guarantee full potency and safety of the drug.”

“Many drugs, stored under reasonable conditions, retain 90% of their potency for at least 5 years after the expiration date on the label , and sometimes much longer”, notes Birgham Young University Health Center.

A simple device, such as “placing a medication in a cool place, such as a refrigerator, will help a drug remain potent for many years”.

Some medicines that FDA tests found effective after their expiration dates include, among others: Bayer’s anti-biotic Cipro and aspirin; Smith Kline Beecham PLC’s Thorazine, a tranquilizer. Wyeth-Ayert’s antidote to chemical poisoning was still effective 15 years beyond the expiration date.

FDA’s findings saved the US military $263.4 million on its initial grant of $78,000 for the study. We extended shelf lives instead of “destroying large quantities of still-useful medical products,” says Francis Flaherty who oversaw the FDA testing program This has implications for the Philippines and other poor nations.

Here, government clinics are perennially drug-short, from simple aspirins to anti-tuberculosis drugs. “TB or not TB is the congestion,” Woody Allen once wisecracked. But TB is no joking matter here. TB incidence in the Philippines is triple that of Thailand.

But many turn down drug-company donations, if they’re within a year of expiration dates. Is misinformation depriving sick people of medicine? “Is there no balm in Gilead?” cried the ancient writers.

“Unless you have nitroglycerin, insulin and liquid antibiotics, you can pretty much be assured that your medication expires years beyond the date it says it does,” notes Dr Joseph Mercola.

“The major tragedy is many Third World countries needlessly discard the drugs that… could actually be saving lives due to lack of appreciation of this concept,” adds this author of Total Health Program. So, are expiration dates just a marketing ploy? “Look at it another way,” the Harvard note suggests.

“Expiration dates are very conservative to ensure you get everything you paid for. If a manufacturer had to do expiration-date testing for longer periods, it’d slow their ability to bring you new and improved formulations”. Drug-industry officials don’t dispute the results of the FDA’s testing, within what is called the Shelf Life Extension Program, reports Wall Street Journal’s Laurie Cohen.

“They agree expiration dates have a commercial dimension. But they say relatively short shelf lives make sense from a public-safety standpoint, as well”. “Two to three years is a very comfortable point of commercial convenience,” Cohen quotes Mark van Arandonk, senior director for pharmaceutical development at Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc.

“It gives us enough time to put the inventory in warehouses, ship it and ensure it will stay on shelves long enough to get used.” But companies uniformly deny any effort to spur sales through planned obsolescence. U.S. Pharmacopoeia is a non-profit scientific group.

It urges pharmacists to peg expiration dates at no more than one year, if drugs are dispensed in containers other than the original packaging. “New containers may let in more moisture and heat than the container the manufacturer used for the stability study,” says the USP General Counsel Joseph Valentino.

The one-year rule is “motivated by product integrity and not by profit.” When faced by the drug expiration date dilemma, the Harvard note suggests a rule-of-thumb: If the expiration date passed a few years ago and it’s important that your drug is absolutely 100% effective (as for stroke, cancer, etc.)

“You might want to consider buying a new bottle”. Or ask your ask your pharmacist. Indeed, health is better than hard cash. “If you don’t have a cold,” the Chinese say, “you will not be afraid to eat watermelons.

OPINION: FEAST OF THE THREE KINGS, GASPAR, MELCHOR, BALTAZAR WHO? By Juan Mercado

To close off the Christmas season, we mark Sunday the feast of “The Three Kings” who upset Herod with a request for directions : “Where is the newborn king of Jews?. We have seen his star rising in the east and come to honor him.”

Matthew didn’t call them “kings” but “magis”— scholars who studied the stars and gained insights into earth. Was the star Halley’s Comet, estimated to have appeared in 12 B.C.? Was it light from that comet, flashing with blinding speed through thousands of years that the Magi saw? “Suppose your car travels at the speed of light,” Steven Wright wisecracks. “Would your headlights work?”

The people of Bethlehem were blind to what the Magi saw beyond the star. But prophecies came to pass. Psalm 72: “The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall being presents.” And Isaiah: “They shall bring gold and incense and they shall show forth praises of the Lord.”

Year after year, that story triggers exactions that range from the thoughtful to the hilarious. It depends on the teller’s background.

Daniel McNamara, for example, is an Ateneo de Manila university astrophysicist. The Magi were “men acquainted with the heavens”, he writes in Windhover.” They would not have known these “supernovas…are recognized today, by modern science as generators of the chemical elements, born in the stars, 14,000 billion years ago. These make life possible on earth…

“The physical life that the Magi and we live is based on the chemical residues of these stars,” he adds. “These same elements form the body of the Babe born of Mary. As he designed to partake of our elements, He invites us, through a living faith….to follow the brightest nova, Himself…

For the Magi, “the star calls them to leave their comfort zone and journey in faith, as Abraham did…When the Star disappears, they are on their own and must use their own resources. They are in a strange land at the mercy of powers they can not control. So, submit they do, always guided by their trust in the tar’s guidance.”

The star triggered Herod’s massacre two year olds in Bethlehem, after the Magis refused to say where the Child was. They “returned to their country by another way” Herod was attracted by what John the Baptist proclaimed, a friend from Malaysia reminded me. But Herod’s greed squelched that opening to light.

“Remember what the old Indian chief told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people, like you and me. ”Son, the battle is between two 'wolves' inside us all,” he said.

“One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, and ego. And the other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, generosity, truth, compassion".

The grandson mulled this over. Then, he asked: "Which wolf wins?" The old man simply replied: "The one you feed."

Reaction from a former lady UN colleague in Paris was lighter: “This is the time of year when many people think back to when Gaspar, Balthazar and Melchor knelt before the Babe and”presented unto Him gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh," a former lady UN colleague in Paris emailed.

“But there’s no mention of wrapping paper in Matthew’s account. He would have written: "Lo, the gifts were inside 600 square cubits of paper” Joseph was going to throw it away but Mary protested: “Saveth it for next year!'

“The first Christmas gifts were not wrapped. Why? Because the Magi were: (a) wise; and were (b) men. “Men are not gift wrappers. They don’t understand putting paper on a gift just so somebody can tear it off. This is not just my opinion. It is a scientific conclusion, validated by a statistical survey of two friends – both men.

“My point is: gift-wrapping is a skill like having babies. It comes more naturally to women than to men. So, I counsel men friends: When possible, buy gifts already wrapped. If the recipient doesn’t recognizes it, just say : “It is myrrh”.

“Remember: The important thing is not what you give, or how you wrap it. The critical thing, during this very special time of year, is that you save the receipt. Author Unknown (but definitely male)”

But what if you were 21 years old and just equaled Jose Rizal’s grades at Ateneo?

A young Horacio de la Costa did those 55 years ago. A brilliant legal or literary career awaited him but he joined the Jesuits and in the Novaliches novitiate wrote: “The Secret of the Star”:

“I do not think the Three Wise Men / Were Persian kings at all. / I think it much more likely they / Set sail from our Manila Bay, / in answer to the call.

“And though the great historians/ May stare at me, and frown, / I still maintain the Three Wise Men / Were Kings from my hometown.

“And if you ask why I affirm/ That Melchor was King of Tondo, / When Gaspar ruled Sampaloc, / And Baltazar Binondo.

“We will not argue. We will walk / The streets on Christmas Eve, / And I will show you the poor man’s rafter/ Where hangs the Star the Kings sought after/ High above Christian prayer and laughter -- / You will see it, and believe.

“For when they crossed the sea again/ From Bethlehem afar, / They lost their camels in the sea, / And they forgot the Christmas tree. / But they brought back to you and me/ The secret of the Star.”

OPINION: SPRIGS OF HOPE by Juan L. Mercado

“Make sure the poor have reason for hope.” - 1999 Nobel Economics Laureate Armatya Sen.

Nine out of ten Filipinos entered the New Year with hope rather than fear, Social Weather Station concludes from a nationwide survey. “Are we the hopeful of the hopeless?” a friend in Jerusalem emailed? Or is there hard-nosed basis for this rosy forecast?

Our “elites” scoff at ordinary – and largely poor – people as “passive”. It’s their code word for less-than-bright. Yet, before 2007 started, ordinary citizens trashed the attempt by the House of Representatives, backed by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, to castrate the 1987 Constitution and tighten their grip on power. Earlier, people beat down military buccaneers and political “outs” to clamp on juntas. And they stonily ignored the call by ex-president Joseph Estrada, a fragmented opposition and radical left, to boil into the streets. .

These were crossroads choices. “Passive” citizens made them without the usual massing on Edsa’s well-beaten path. Was this “People Power” in a previous forgotten format? And in 2007, will this power zero in a tainted Commission on Elections that a spineless Ombudsman has refused to straighten out?

Discerning the future has never been one of man’s special strengths. How do you factor in the unpredictable? “Crystal-balling” is about making educated guesses of what lies beyond the horizon. From today’s realities, one sifts the trends likely to endure -- and reshape tomorrow. “In today, tomorrow already walks.”

Looking ahead is demanding. Many of our leaders’ mindsets extend only up to the next elections. And few have the vision that goes beyond one, let alone two or three generations. For example, flushing aquifers, contaminated by salt due to over-pumping, as in Cebu, can take two centuries or more.

Those who’d push horizons further out, do so for their grandchildren. When the future finally arrives, most will be in their graves .Nonetheless, the drill to glimpse ahead usually reaches fever pitch on New Year. “If you could look into the seeds of time / and say, which will grow and which will not”, Banquo tells Macbeth.

Solita Monsod concisely summed positive gains posted by the economy did in 2006.—which gives hope. In 2007, will these gains translate beyond repaying IMF into more fully in alleviating misery of the poor? Out of every 100 Filipinos, 38 remain handcuffed to a daily income of P98. “Hope is the poor man’s income”, the old Danish proverb says.

But the blight resulting from skewed wealth of moneyed oligarchies is patent. The number of Filipina mothers, who die at childbirth, crests at 200 for every 100,000 pregnancies, UN Human Development Report notes. Compare that to Malaysia’s 41. And chronic hunger stunts 32% of our children, compared to 2% for Singaporeans. Communication is a key to development. The 54 out of every 1000 Filipinos who hefts a cell phone looks impressive -- until you realize that 109 Thais do.

Out of every 100 grade school kids here, 75 finish Grade V. But 92 in Indonesia do. The implications of a half-educated people are chilling. “All democracies live in fear of the ignorant,” Harvard University’s John Kenneth Gailbraith said. “There must be a knowledgeable electorate…or surrender to the voices of ignorance…”

We have to make up for lost time. Korea started to pull ahead of us in the 1960s. Today, Korean GDP is five times that of Filipinos. Over the last 25 years, Filipino incomes grew by only 2.6 per cent. That’s “cadaverous when compared to Thailand’s eight times”, says UP’s Dennis Mapa. And that sound of racing footsteps is Vietnam which could overtake us next.

Yet, we will stumble into 2007, as we did in 2006, without an approved national budget, warns Joker Arroyo, one of our better senators. Both Senate and House have been unable to agree on the appropriations bill. So, future government operations will be strapped into a budget for a vanished past. “You can never plan the future by the past”, the statesman Edmund Burke once said. But then Burke never saw our Congress.

“In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of,” Confucius writes in the Anaclets. “But in a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.” And that’s why the Philippines is lagging in meeting the Millennium Development Goals of reducing poverty, infant mortality and other threats.

Look at the past. Those who gave us hope were not those who occupied official positions. They were mostly being ordinary men and women, self-effacing individuals, in our communities, who poured themselves out for others. Some have been recognized. For marshalling private resources and government cooperation to build homes for the poor, Tony Meloto of Gawad Kalinga richly deserved the Magsaysay Award.

All of us can draw personal lists of many others who work with little notice. Some nuns, I know, scrounge for medicine, soap, food for hundreds of prisoners, write to their families, and seek scholarships for their children. A Cebuana physician ministers, as a Medical Mission sister, to lumads in Bukidnon. A woman-lawyer spends time giving free legal counsel to the poor. Some friends help patients and families in the leprosarium.

The list is of such people is long. They give fretful people like us reason for hope. “And if you keep green boughs of hope in your heart,” the old Chinese proverb says, “the singing bird will come.”

OPINION: “OUR SOLITARY BOAST” by Juan L. Mercado

(New Year’s Day is more than just firecrackers, horn-tooting and booze swiggling. It is also about a Jewish mother, revered over the centuries, by Muslims and Christians alike. And the column is about this Lady, who is specially honored on January 1 – Juan L Mercado)

Time magazine titled a recent cover story “Hail, Mary”. It devotes eight pages to Jesus of Nazareth’s mother. “A Mary for All” was how the Economist bannered an earlier report. Life magazine led off with: “The Mystery of Mary”. And shortly thereafter, Time did a two-page spread: “Mary, So Contrary.”

What’s going on here?

After centuries of “sullen neglect… Christians of all denominations are finding their own reasons to venerate Mary”, Time reports. Families, pastors and theologians, notably within U.S. Protestant churches, are re-discovering the Virgin.

Harvard University minister Peter Gomes pinpoints this trend in a joke about a Protestant pastor at heaven’s gates. “Ah, Professor, I know you’ve met my Father,” Jesus says in making the introductions. “But I believe you don’t know my mother.”

New appreciation of Mary stems from the very arena in which Protestants historically pride themselves most: careful and full reading of Scriptures.

Mary stood by the Cross. And she figures in “a skein of appearances longer and more strategically placed than any other character in scriptures”, Princeton University professor of New Testament literature, Beverly Gaventa, points out.

“She is present in all key situations: at Jesus birth, at his death and in the Upper Room,” Gaventa writes in “Personalities of the New Testament”. Whether in Egypt, Nazareth or Cana, “there isn’t a figure comparable to her”.

The new thinkers are exploring the implications of Mary’s excruciating presence at the crucifixion. “(She) witnesses almost single handedly Christianity through its darkest moment.”
There are critics, Time notes. Southern Baptists Convention leaders complain their colleagues are “guilty of over-reaching”.

That would baffle Muslims. Mary is Islam’s most honored woman, the Economist notes. “(She’s) the only one to have an entire chapter named after her in the Koran. Christians and Muslims alike see in Mary an affirmation that there is no limit to proximity of God that any human can attain,” the report asserts. “Surely, that is reason enough, for people of any faith, to feel reverence for history’s foremost Jewish mother.”

The Economist cites the “wisdom” texts in Jewish and Christian scriptures and the Eastern Church’s lesser-known Gospel by James. It reviews studies by Methodists Hebrew scholar Margaret Barker to Jaime Moran, religion and psychology writer.

Muslim and eastern Christians “cherish the story of Mary’s childhood in a place of supreme holiness. Both name Mary’s guardian as the priest Zechariah or Zakariya.”

“Catholics would tell you, rather firmly, that Mary is not a goddess,” the Economist notes. “She is not worshipped but rather venerated: a human being with a unique role in praying for and protecting the human race.” That hews closely to Muslim belief too.

The wisdom texts speak of a “woman clothed with the sun”. And down the centuries, “heart-stopping turns of phrase” have been applied to Mary, the Economist notes. “Our tainted nature’s solitary boast” was the way one poet put it.

“Shortly after Vatican II, a period of Marian silence descended,” recalls Catalino Arevalo, SJ, of Ateneo University. “We, in the Philippines, did not go through that phase.”

“Churches in former communist Eastern Europe have not experienced the ‘eclipse of Mary’ either,” notes this Filipino theologian. “What strikes a mainland China visitor, who gets in contact with Catholics there, is that veneration of Mary has never been stronger.”

That “Marian silence” and “de-christianization” of Europe led the German theologian Karl Rahner to write: “Many Catholics today are going through a winter of belief.”

Once known as “Christendom” Europe built the Continent’s loveliest cathedrals from Chartres to Notre Dame. Now, Europe suffers from a “vacuum of faith”, Los Angeles Times notes. The Gallup Millennium Survey reveals barely 20 percent of West Europeans attend church services once a week.

“When the new springtime of faith comes…the cult of Mary the Mother of God, will return,” Rahner added. “In fact, it will be its surest sign. Its form may perhaps be different, but if Christian tradition is valid, it will return.”

That was in 1968. Today, Rahner’s comments resound in essays by, among others, Lutheran Carl Braten: “I can’t predict exactly how the (Mary re-discovery) will happen. Some of it will be good, and some may be bad. But I think it’s going to happen”.

Some 38 years after Rahner wrote of this “second spring”, Father Arevalo notes, “this appears a remarkably prophetic text”.

This comeback of Our Lady is seen on the dateline of stories from new Marian shrines: Medjugorje in Yugoslavia; Akita in Japan; Kibeho in Rwanda and Cuenca in Ecuador. “News accounts fueled renewed interest in the Marian movement.”

Then, there was Pope John Paul II. “No pontiff in the entire history of Catholicism has had so strong and articulates a devotion to Mary.” He willed that her logo be carved on his plain cedar coffin.

If Karl Rahner was right, then perhaps the current cover stories may be more significant than they appear, Fr Arevalo says. Are they buds of the “the new springtime of faith,” which, Rahner foresaw, “is about to begin”?

OPINION: POST CHRISTMAS "BURPS" by Juan L. Mercado

POST CHRISTMAS "BURPS" by Juan L. Mercado

Amidst the litter of a Noche Buena dinner table, empty bottles and ripped gift wrappers, the guest burped: "Christmas is indigestion". Want another viewpoint? Try walking, on Christmas morning, through the children’s charity ward of a government hospital. The wife and I did.

Star lanterns and wreaths deck "Pediatrics" at the Cebu City Medical Center. But it's a different universe of match-stick limbs, emaciated features and whimpers. Each of the over 30 beds are crammed with two ill kids each – plus an anxious parent or sleepless watcher squeezed in between.

Like other fund-short and over-crowded public hospitals, CCMC serves the poorest. Patients limp in from dengue-infested slums where clean water, unlike shabu, is hard to come by. Others come from hunger-strapped barangays. This ward reminds one of what the deaf and sightless educator Helen Keller (1880-1968) once said: "The only really blind person on Christmas day is he who does not have Christmas in his heart."

Half of Bed 19 is occupied by a skin-and-bones infant, attached to an IV tube. Even the untrained eye can see the kid may not pull through. The mother grips a stack of heavily-creased prescription slips for urgently needed medicines. But the hospital pharmacy is perennially short of drugs. And she has exactly twenty pesos.

Across the aisle, the other half of Bed 8 has a four year old boy, down with pneumonia. He needs anti-biotic. "He hasn't gotten a single injection," the distraught father, a jobless laborer, explains. The little money we share with patients in Beds 19 and 8 is all we have, we explain to five others who desperately cluster around.

Yet, this is a country with of persons with great wealth. "If you know how rich you are, you are not rich," Imelda Marcos once said. "But me, I am not aware of the extent of my wealth. That's how rich we are." But our definitions of what is “necessary” are changing, says an earlier UNDP Human Development Report. "Distinction between what is luxuries and necessities is blurring." Is Viagra a necessity while anti-biotic turns into a luxury? What is human can be overwhelmed by appetites not shaped by the Christmas vision….

But "trend is not destiny". It is also possible to correct. Our distorted priorities which cause food, medicine, supplies, and even human warmth, to perennially run short. "There is enough for man's needs," Mahatma Gandhi pointed out. "But there is never enough for his greed."

A Christmas morning visit gives a "human face" to sawdust-dry data you've glanced at, between Inquirer deadlines. In infants, up to two years of age, anemia "continued to increase and is alarmingly high" (53 percent) the 6th National Nutrition Survey says – a study crippled by congressional fund cuts. Out of every ten infants, six months to one year old, six suffered from debilitating anemia.

Most of these kids are here because they lack what we take for granted: three square meals a day, clean water, a roof over our heads, schools -- even reserved plots in grass trimmed memorial cemeteries. Our children are routinely vaccinated against TB, measles, hepatitis, etc. and have orthodontists squeeze in "tin-grin" braces. Can the Christmas manager teach them to share with those who lose out in this "ovarian lottery"?

Stemming from poverty, chronic hunger unleashes anemia among pregnant and breast-feeding mothers. Almost half (44 percent) of women, on the family way, are anemic, the nutrition survey found. So, are 4 out of every 10 who breastfed. You saw them in Bed Nos. 11 and 18.

"Four times now, I've poured the water of emergency baptism on dying kids in Pediatrics, I wrote in August 1988.”I'm afraid they'll not be the last." Yesterday, a mother, by Bed No. 14, urgently tagged at my sleeve: "Please, sir. My child is very ill". Ego te baptizo….Her son was the fifth.

"Like runners, generations pass on the torch of life," Lucretius once wrote. But they also hand on the frailities. Lack of Vitamin A, iron and iodine, in mothers, saps intelligence quotients of the babies in their wombs or suckling at their breasts. IQs of poorly nourished children can be whittled down by 10 to 14 percent says the Asian Development Bank. "Cognitive loss" is 10 percent for stunted individuals and "4 percent for iodine deficient victims". Worse, that loss can not be recovered. It is irreversible.

Reduced mental capacity is not visible. So, it rarely trigger alarm bells but doors in the future slam shut for children as their learning capacities are stunted. "Their elevators don't go all the way to the top floor," the wry comment goes. But it's no laughing matter when our kids come in 37th, out of 38 countries that signed up for the International Mathematics and Science Examinations?

Exiting from "Pediatrics" into the Christmas morning sunlight, we recalled an earlier visit where we chanced across an almost totally-blind girl, singing softly to herself. She was all of five – too young to sing "of old unhappy far off things and battles long ago." Early treatment could have saved her sight, the emaciated mother explained.

But somehow, they could never scrape up enough coins for the jeepney fare to bring her to the hospital. One eye had given way; now, the second was now in danger of going.

"Christmas is the day that holds all time together", Alexander Smith writes. It also helps lift our eyes to see beyond our narrow lives. For nothing is more pathetic than those unable to see the difference between pebbles and diamonds. (We are happy to announce that Mr. Juan Mercado accepted our invitation to write for the Mindanao Examiner. He also writes for the Bohol Chronicle and many other reputable newspapers in the Philippines. Ed)