Homo economicus’ Weblog

There is an issue about assisted suicide. Being able to see what that entails for loved ones is one thing that needs to kick start a debate in the UK. Which makes assisted suicide illegal here but will allow travel to Switzerland as long as there is no public interest in prosecuting travelling companions. Such a journey, and moment of death, was televised last night.

How long the House of Commons will duck the issue, time will tell. Gordon Brown, when not saving the world, announced that biased pressure from others means he is against. I would suggest maybe increasing hospice care would be one consideration – and that going to a foreign land to die, in unfamilar terroritary is the pressure of suffering with death the only release.

Right now the “not in our back yard” approach is the symptom of a government that needs an election to help it on it’s way. They are not prepared to tackle these issues or have a debate. Leadership has to go beyond the one financial dimension of the Prime Minister.

Yet we need to see what the process is like, both in the travel and the reality of assisted suicide. I would welcome comments on whether the program succeeded in that.

The Pregnant Man

This is a program I am currently watching. The narrator is the same guy for “Make Me A Christian” on Channel 4. As my review of that show suggests I have not high hopes for this.

A woman (Tracy) that has hormone treatment to become more mascaline (legally a man named Thomas), and a double masectomy, decides to concieve when their female partner cannot.

Granted most couples cannot resort to the husband as a way of bearing children. However, I find it very difficult to get wound up about this. Given the situation it seems one way round it.

With easy money from the media, that insist it is the first man giving birth, to set the family up – good for them. As far as I can see they are not hurting anyone.

As to the environment the daughter will grow up in – well the fact that they want the child is actually a rather good indication. Two devoted loving parents I can settle for. The documentary will not answer that, as I doubt it would on any couple, as we see YouTube videos dennouncing Thomas and the couple hiding out from a German documentary crew.

I would be more impressed by the science if someone born a man became a woman and then pregnant.

At work all people could talk about was this program; not the issue of assisted suicide. One issue is more important to society than another.

Till then we wait for the first Sea Horse carrying Homo sapien, let alone an artifically inserted reproductive system. And for a debate by Parliament on how we can choose to die.

You will learn nothing about Jesus with the show

Episode 3

We start off episode 3 in a run down church. Joanne tries to get Aaron to realize that it is about getting the church running for the last part of the series rather than the long term future. Aaron’s mum told him at the start that she had not brought him up to “believe that crap”. Father John visits the Mum (Michelle) at her pub, who has been ill (possibly cancer), to get the family on side – starting by giving them all rosaries.

Father John reckons that the Virgin Mary appears to people even now. It is not about proof but experience of faith according to Father John. Which is one of those circular reasons that means anything can be considered true. Father John sends a letter to Michelle saying he has prayed for her and he is not trying to convert her or her family. She invites Father John back – who suggests the anointing of the sick.

She receives the sacrament of the sick at Father John’s church in Manchester. He says that God does work in our lives otherwise he would be mad doing what he does. It is a pity he feels that the work he does in his community would only make sense with a God (perhaps the dressing up only does with one). A week later Michelle gets the all clear.

Martin has decided to not attend a Sunday service – seeing it as a waste of his time. He spends his time constructively down the greasy spoon (it is implied he is here during the service but maybe that is not the case). During the service Kevin raises his hand to receive a brochure – the singing has really inspired him. Laura made a joke about communion last week (I was hungry) but the service has made her feel bad about having done that. I must have missed that because that was not included in previous episodes – you begin to wonder how much of the experience has been edited out.

Laura has found a London church that accepts homosexuality. George is not convinced because it denies the power of god to change sexuality to what it was in the first place (presumably to make babies). Now a flash back to Kevin and his fornicating ways – now they have sent him to a Christian group rather than the usual night clubbers.

Going bowling Kevin asks one of the women how she controls her urges, to which she has no answer as she drinks her Red Bull. Kevin has left his girl friend in ignorance of his infidelity. George and Wale have told him to sit down with Lindsey and tell her what has been going on. It is not made clear how that encounter goes.

Laura has gone to the church she has found. A match made in heaven where faith and her lifestyle go hand in hand. The Reverend states that Jesus never said that a woman cannot love a woman – but Laura has doubts over which version of faith has it right and remains at cross roads. Joanne sends her to a convent; hoping that the silence will help her listen rather than bombard with questions. The idea is retreat as Laura chooses which way to go; rather than being in a community of sexually repressed women.

The family having been asked to host a community BBQ. The idea is extending brotherly love by loving thy neighbour. After a slow start, in one hour it is busy and people seem to be having a good time.

The group go to a crematorium to ponder the question of whether death is he end of it. Belief in god, and the supernatural is often based on this question. They are shown remains from the other day – Laura dives straight in to pick up some bone. Martin says when you are dead you are dead; but he could be wrong. There is no discussion accept being left with do you want this life to be all there is? Which is not the same as saying how can you possibly know anything beyond death with any certainty.

Wale wants to show Martin that religion is more then talk, taking him to a salvation army. The idea is Martin helping out for the day with the elderly. Despite his misgivings he has some banter with them as he picks them up then serving them food. For Martin helping people is good and Christians doing that cannot be knocked. George suggests visiting a dentist (Martin has a phobia to a point of using pliers; and has no front teeth). He ends up with false teeth and Martin is happy that George arranged that for him.

We come finally to the service at the church that has been closed for ten years – and they invite people in the neighborhood. All the participants are involved and give their own testimonials on the experience. Martin has been more open. Laura is now more worried about the things she does understand and thinks there is a higher power. Faye feels more humbled and wants to keep in touch with the mentors. Kevin feels more respectful of women.

Joanne wanted to be left out of the series

Review of the series

The presentation of this show leaves a lot to be desired. About a fifth of the time is spent going back on what has been done before. Understandable for later in the series for people that have missed previous episodes – but this was the format in the very first episode. It seemed more about filling in time and hopefully catching people channel flicking to see what followed after the commercials.

This was plainly not a documentary. There was never any captions on screen. So ironically while you were constantly reminded what the participants had been doing (and having their stereo types reinforced) it was not always clear where they were or even who they were talking too. This fitted the reality TV style of the show – all we needed to know was the Reverend was a lesbian rather than what her name was.

Rev Joanne wanted her contribution to the series to be pulled. Laura has complained in the comments on previous blogs that it did not show her conversations with the mentors about the issues she had. The series was fixated on sex and telling people how they should live their life rather than suggesting that Christianity was a community way of living. The series never attempted to answer Martin’s question in the first week why he should accept anything in the Bible being true.

They only showed three testimonials at the end, while the narrator suggested that they all had done. One wonders whether that was because the ones shown were positive, and the others were not or if it was done for editorial reasons. Whatever they were, not interviewing all the participants at the end or even the mentors did not make sense if we wanted to see how far in making people a Christian the show had succeeded.

This seems to have been about entertainment rather than serious look at Christianity in the twenty first century. Each episode started with suggesting that Britain had an epidemic of sex and lawlessness sweeping the land. All the show proved was that being a part of the community, taking an interest in the vulnerable and neglected, and having positive self esteem were important. Not for one moment did this show that it needed Christianity to make these things necessary.

The mentors made clear that what Christianity was necessary for was salvation, and acceptance of Jesus as the Son of God. It was not clear whether that part of the show was accepted by one an all. What was on display was that George and Wale were obsessed by sex, Joanne wanted people to understand the purpose behind things and Father John found a connection with people through his faith.

This show may have been different if it had just been Joanne and Father John. Virgin Hester coming to the show seemed to be the focus on sex – yet with Pick-me-up-sticks instead of foreplay and suggesting to Kevin that his behavior was about excess energy. She was sent up by the production team. A nice looking girl waiting for marriage before having sex. Fine if that is her choice, but she was made to look a fool. Giving them “The Game of Life” would have been a good one (while that is a rather secular game, I supposed pick-me up-sticks is too).

This was a missed opportunity. The characters looked self absorbed by the experience, rather than as a community answering questions together. The mentors looked like religious reps in a holiday village keeping people in line, rather than actually going one on one with people about questions of faith.

George came across as an arrogant, sexist, homophobic. He did one good turn for Martin with the false teeth, though Martin seemed to be the only person in the group challenging the validity of belief. That part of make me a Christian was not answered. It seemed to boil down to accepting the dogma that someone had; and the volunteering as a justification for having that dogma.

In all it was at least more watchable than big brother but a missed opportunity. With fewer participants (who wanted to become Christians) and a focus on the title rather than gimmicky tasks this had a promising premise that was left in the wilderness for too long never reaching the promised land.

Episode 2 can be read here.

Episode 1 can be read here.

In a Q&A someone addressed Richard as Professor Darwin

God Strikes Back

Dawkins outlines that for him the scientific explanation of life, for example evolution, made him reject supernatural explanations. This led to him being an atheist and never looking back. Further that a life without religion does not lack a positive outlook on life. The end of the programme has Richard talking to Dan Dennett who describes humans as the nervous system that developed for the earth. Through the decoding of DNA we have proof of how we are interlinked on the tree of life on earth. We get to find out how things are in the world around us, new discoveries and to make a contribution to our society.

While that does not get me waking up singing “Oh what a beautiful morning” it is a response to the supposed vacuum in your life. However, how do you answer people who keep saying that there is no fossils that suggest a  link of intermediaries between species (there is) or that there are gaps in evolutionary theory (and other misconceptions) and will say this over and over when you point out the evidence. Enough to perhaps make you stay in bed.

Dawkins shows his way to deal with this is with a sense of humour. He reads out some of the hate mail he gets sent by those professing faith. The writers make use of profane, insulting and threatening language. Dawkins smiles while reading them out, at one point drawing much needed breath reading out a sentence that avoids punctuation.

He talks to a group of science teachers. Earlier he has mentioned about presenting evidence to school children but allowing them to draw their own conclusions. Here though he wonders why the teachers are so unprepared to challenge religious views that contradict science. The teachers suggest that their pupils have their own interpretation of truth via culture and religion. Dawkins rightly mentions there is no alternative truth to how old the world is. The teachers agree but suggest that such views need to be respected, and it is not up to them as science teachers to tackle that. Here is where Dawkins is against the multiculturalism that allows such false views about the world we live in to go unchallenged.

Richard is not wrong about how he is treated at atheist conferences almost like a rock star- not just with high esteem but with genuine affection. There is an appreciation for his books (The God Delusion is not the only book to judge him on as a writer) as well as tackling how people use religion in classrooms and society generally. Also he is not afraid to challenge them in terms of how they campaign and what they decide to make issues.

The Archbishop of Canterbury almost provides an example of verbal hyperbole when answering Dawkin’s question on his belief in the Virgin birth. It seems to rely on not providing a yes or no answer, but suggesting a poetic context to it that makes it true. He has though said that science does not contradict God – he set things in motion and then stayed away from further creation. Such moderate views are not a problem although for Dawkins letting in science and scientific reasoning should lead to challenging the supernatural elements of religious faith.

The “lets teach the controversy” argument for equal time is really a red herring. The controversy exists because people see Darwinism as a threat to their religious belief and that the natural world gives praise to god. Though as Dawkins highlights with nature red in tooth and claw, and the redundancies that species are left with as they develop having to use what they have to build on, natural selection is a theory that explains what is going on – the fact of evolution.

Some more video clips of Dawkins talking about Darwin can be found on this link from the Cheltenham Science Festival.

Episode 2 (with link to Epsiode 1) review here.

The mentors, left to right: Rev George Hargreaves, Rev Joanna Jepson, Pastor Wale Babatunde and Father John Flynn.

The review of episode 1, with Laura posting in the comments, can be read here.

[Review of episode 3 and the whole series can be found here]

We start with Faye (lap dancing) and her boyfriend being visited by 20 something virgin Hester who tells them to avoid cheekiness, and gives them the game pick-up-sticks to play. However eating spicy Fajitas has caused Faye to be on heat. Separate bedrooms is the answer – but the loneliness leads to loving.

So if you have not realized that this is reality TV using some people’s version of Christianity to entertain us now is the time.

Kevin last time did not do well with not lusting after other women. Hester visits the morning after some exuberance. To go a few rounds at the local boxing ring. The idea is to burn off the excess energy. Which kind of misses the point that his libido is not linked to energy levels. Kind of shown when after ten minutes he is knackered.

Laura is now up. Wale is determined to help her change her lesbian ways by going to the fair to see family life in action. Opening up to Jesus would give her the power to change her life he thinks. Which misses that sexuality is about being open to who you are.

The problem it seems for the participants is the modern world and all its temptations. Retreat is the answer. Which starts with eating off the land. Martin (atheist) wonders whether hippie living is part of the Christian life – he wants meat. Absence is making the heart grow fonder for Laura. The rain comes down and Joanne is trying to sing to raise dampen spirits. Kaye and Aaron (expectant unmarried) have brought bread, not quite enough for 5,000 but welcome compared to the nettle soup being prepared.

Whether as revenge or pre planned George has told Kaye and Aaron they are not sleeping together on the retreat. Aaron is not impressed at this. He and Kevin go out in the early hours waking someone up at 2 am. The homage to Little Britain did not go down well. Aaron and Kaye leave the next day off to the pub.

Will – who converted to Islam – is praying with Martin keeping him company as he explains what he is saying. Neither of them went in to York Minister in the first episode, but Martin is responding to a friendly offer to observe rather than George’s listen I am right approach.

George is not happy that Islam has been introduced in the group and tells Will, who humbly apologies. George wants Jesus to be the focus but Will by his nature has just gone up in my stock. Kevin however is now revealed that he did more then just snog the girl at the club. Praying for forgiveness with George earns Kevin a well done.

George now moves them all to the town center to offer to wash people’s feet. George and Will wash each other’s which helps their standing with each other. Kevin is shown washing several ladies feet – one hopes that he is learning humility as George intends rather than further techniques with the ladies.

Laura talks to a previous gay man – Simon after being introduced to the bible, opening apparently at random 1 Corinthians 6:9,10. Which made him mad, go to a gay club, but found men did not have the same appeal. He met his future wife at a Christian meeting and is now a vicar.

Joanna now takes them to a soup kitchen – meeting god in other people. The experience is uplifting for everyone and Aaron makes the point that this rather than being told the teachings is what he appreciates. Helping other people.

Father John is with Faye talking about self image. This includes a spiritual cleansing and blessing of her and the house – with Father John dressed for the part. Considering her interest in Occult and Wicca the ritual of Catholicism could well be a good way to open her up to Christianity.

Once again this has been about confronting people with the bible saying what they are doing is wrong. On the odd occasion though being about self empowerment – the soup kitchen and foot washing. Whether this is part of a serious journey into what religion offers people seems to be instead that you need to fit in to a pre determined way of life to fit. As such this has involved scare tactics and making people feel demeaned. Which in many ways is the hall mark of religion.

Charity, compassion and consideration are virtues – and that rather than the dogma of Christianity seems to be the message that the participants are responding too. Building up those virtues by good works would seem the best way to improve people’s lives. Rather than 1 Corinthians 6:9,10.

Decency, respect, moderation – Britain built on christian values – the Channel 4 programme was about bringing people the message of faith to answer problems of modern living and transform the life of volunteers with three mentors of different denominations headed by George who backed firefighters in Scotland refusing to hand out leaflets at a Gay Parade, started the Christian Party, and in a previous life wrote the song “So Macho” below

The people chosen are:

• a biker who’s a tattooist and a militant atheist (Martin)
• a young man who was brought up Christian until he was 12, and now has a girlfriend who is 10 weeks’ pregnant
• a lap-dancing manager who can’t live without continually acquiring expensive designer shoes (Faye)
• middle-class parents who are so professionally busy that they have hardly any time to spend with their children
• a man in his 20s who, unbeknown to his girlfriend, goes out every week drinking and womanising (Kevin)
• a man who found Christianity unfulfilling and has converted to Islam
• a lesbian who sometimes sleeps with men (Laura).

These individuals are up for conversion – or at least not be the same after three weeks with the mentors. The start is York Minster, where they are told that god loves you no matter what you have done and we are a christian nation. I will allow you to guess which one of the above did not go in who thinks it was built to keep the peasants in line.

The word of god and the person of Jesus – now at the teaching centre in Leeds and Martin is very much making himself felt with a joke that the last thing Jesus will want to see again is another crucifix; and disrupting proceedings by asking questions. The reason given that we should believe the Old Testament is because Jesus believed it. George deals with Martin by shouting over him and telling him to listen rather than ask questions.

Next off to their homes to remove anything which may be a hindrance to living a good life. The family household have 6 televisions in the house; the suggestion of family time together seems like a winner (even if bible reading). Laura has DVDs and art which reflects her sexuality (“The big book of Lesbian Horse stories”) which is removed from the house.

Father John however brings something for the house of the expectant family – a picture of the Pope and a crucifix. The lap dancer manager Faye however is into Wicca books and memorabilia. George declares this as engaging in demonic powers and declares her a witch. Thankfully a lecture on bible teaching rather than a burning ensues. Perhaps more interesting is how much she is spending on designer gear for her self image (the mentor helpfully suggests she is on the road to hell).

The issues that seem to be coming up are not explicitly ones to do with faith, but rather well known psychological issues and things that people do. The programme annoyingly keeps telling you what they are doing at the end of every commercial break and recapping what has already been shown. It looks like the repetition of a central message – but it gets a tad annoying.

Now on to “Lynx lad” Kevin who is being visited by the female Anglican vicar Joanna – unlike George that gave Faye a hard time about sex, her concern is him being unfaithful and the recreational use of sex. She goes through his phone and deleting said ladies’ numbers on his phone.

A saviour forces us to deal with our sins; the christian life cannot be led with a life of sin and George is having problems with Martin over this. Revelry, fornication, adultery, abortion, drunkenness – George suggests avoiding these in the next three weeks.

So off we go to an abortion clinic – where the number of those that die from unprofessional abortions is mentioned. Vicar Joanne mentions Isaiah where god would not break a reed because he cares for the vulnerable (1 Samuel 15 and the instruction by god to Saul to commit genocide and kill babies?). Kevin is now set up to be tested for STDs – to be confronted with possible consequences of his behaviour which includes not practising safer sex with multiple same partners. The answer is the bible rather than safer sex and perhaps just getting an early night alone. George helpfully suggest that he will have Aids by 30 and gives him a mantra for when he starts lusting on his night out. If only Kevin had said the problem with the women is because he is so macho.

There is nothing like empowering people’s self worth, showing them the need for change and how it will benefit them and their family. But this programme is not about that, and if George is going to be the head liner for Christianity on TV Christians up and down the country may be tempted to throw themselves to the lions.

[EDIT review of episode 2 here]

[EDIT review of epsiode 3 and entire series here]

Thanks to Fiona for giving me a heads up about the programme.

An eagle eyed friend of mine mentioned that on Channel 4 tonight at 9 pm will be “Stephen Hawking – Mater of the Universe”. The one hour programme promises to discuss his life and work and tonight looks at the quest for the theory of everything, and is the first of two.

I think it is true what they say – economists do wish they were physicists!

Below is a brief biography that appears on Stephen Hawking’s website. What follows is a discussion of his disability that is also on his site:

Biography

Stephen William Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 (300 years after the death of Galileo) in Oxford, England. His parents’ house was in north London, but during the second world war Oxford was considered a safer place to have babies. When he was eight, his family moved to St Albans, a town about 20 miles north of London. At eleven Stephen went to St Albans School, and then on to University College, Oxford, his father’s old college. Stephen wanted to do Mathematics, although his father would have preferred medicine. Mathematics was not available at University College, so he did Physics instead. After three years and not very much work he was awarded a first class honours degree in Natural Science.

Stephen then went on to Cambridge to do research in Cosmology, there being no-one working in that area in Oxford at the time. His supervisor was Denis Sciama, although he had hoped to get Fred Hoyle who was working in Cambridge. After gaining his Ph.D. he became first a Research Fellow, and later on a Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College. After leaving the Institute of Astronomy in 1973 Stephen came to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and since 1979 has held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. The chair was founded in 1663 with money left in the will of the Reverend Henry Lucas, who had been the Member of Parliament for the University. It was first held by Isaac Barrow, and then in 1669 by Isaac Newton.

Stephen Hawking has worked on the basic laws which govern the universe. With Roger Penrose he showed that Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity implied space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes. These results indicated it was necessary to unify General Relativity with Quantum Theory, the other great Scientific development of the first half of the 20th Century. One consequence of such a unification that he discovered was that black holes should not be completely black, but should emit radiation and eventually evaporate and disappear. Another conjecture is that the universe has no edge or boundary in imaginary time. This would imply that the way the universe began was completely determined by the laws of science.

His many publications include The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime with G F R Ellis, General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey, with W Israel, and 300 Years of Gravity, with W Israel. Stephen Hawking has three popular books published; his best seller A Brief History of Time, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays and most recently in 2001, The Universe in a Nutshell. There are .pdf and .ps versions of his full publication list.

Professor Hawking has twelve honorary degrees, was awarded the CBE in 1982, and was made a Companion of Honour in 1989. He is the recipient of many awards, medals and prizes and is a Fellow of The Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

Stephen Hawking continues to combine family life (he has three children and one grandchild), and his research into theoretical physics together with an extensive programme of travel and public lectures.

Reprinted from here.

ALS

I am quite often asked: How do you feel about having ALS? The answer is, not a lot. I try to lead as normal a life as possible, and not think about my condition, or regret the things it prevents me from doing, which are not that many.

It was a great shock to me to discover that I had motor neurone disease. I had never been very well co-ordinated physically as a child. I was not good at ball games, and my handwriting was the despair of my teachers. Maybe for this reason, I didn’t care much for sport or physical activities. But things seemed to change when I went to Oxford, at the age of 17. I took up coxing and rowing. I was not Boat Race standard, but I got by at the level of inter-College competition.

In my third year at Oxford, however, I noticed that I seemed to be getting more clumsy, and I fell over once or twice for no apparent reason. But it was not until I was at Cambridge, in the following year, that my father noticed, and took me to the family doctor. He referred me to a specialist, and shortly after my 21st birthday, I went into hospital for tests. I was in for two weeks, during which I had a wide variety of tests. They took a muscle sample from my arm, stuck electrodes into me, and injected some radio opaque fluid into my spine, and watched it going up and down with x-rays, as they tilted the bed. After all that, they didn’t tell me what I had, except that it was not multiple sclerosis, and that I was an a-typical case. I gathered, however, that they expected it to continue to get worse, and that there was nothing they could do, except give me vitamins. I could see that they didn’t expect them to have much effect. I didn’t feel like asking for more details, because they were obviously bad.

The realisation that I had an incurable disease, that was likely to kill me in a few years, was a bit of a shock. How could something like that happen to me? Why should I be cut off like this? However, while I had been in hospital, I had seen a boy I vaguely knew die of leukaemia, in the bed opposite me. It had not been a pretty sight. Clearly there were people who were worse off than me. At least my condition didn’t make me feel sick. Whenever I feel inclined to be sorry for myself I remember that boy.

Not knowing what was going to happen to me, or how rapidly the disease would progress, I was at a loose end. The doctors told me to go back to Cambridge and carry on with the research I had just started in general relativity and cosmology. But I was not making much progress, because I didn’t have much mathematical background. And, anyway, I might not live long enough to finish my PhD. I felt somewhat of a tragic character. I took to listening to Wagner, but reports in magazine articles that I drank heavily are an exaggeration. The trouble is once one article said it, other articles copied it, because it made a good story. People believe that anything that has appeared in print so many times must be true.

My dreams at that time were rather disturbed. Before my condition had been diagnosed, I had been very bored with life. There had not seemed to be anything worth doing. But shortly after I came out of hospital, I dreamt that I was going to be executed. I suddenly realised that there were a lot of worthwhile things I could do if I were reprieved. Another dream, that I had several times, was that I would sacrifice my life to save others. After all, if I were going to die anyway, it might as well do some good. But I didn’t die. In fact, although there was a cloud hanging over my future, I found, to my surprise, that I was enjoying life in the present more than before. I began to make progress with my research, and I got engaged to a girl called Jane Wilde, whom I had met just about the time my condition was diagnosed. That engagement changed my life. It gave me something to live for. But it also meant that I had to get a job if we were to get married. I therefore applied for a research fellowship at Gonville and Caius (pronounced Keys) college, Cambridge. To my great surprise, I got a fellowship, and we got married a few months later.

The fellowship at Caius took care of my immediate employment problem. I was lucky to have chosen to work in theoretical physics, because that was one of the few areas in which my condition would not be a serious handicap. And I was fortunate that my scientific reputation increased, at the same time that my disability got worse. This meant that people were prepared to offer me a sequence of positions in which I only had to do research, without having to lecture.

We were also fortunate in housing. When we were married, Jane was still an undergraduate at Westfield College in London, so she had to go up to London during the week. This meant that we had to find somewhere I could manage on my own, and which was central, because I could not walk far. I asked the College if they could help, but was told by the then Bursar: it is College policy not to help Fellows with housing. We therefore put our name down to rent one of a group of new flats that were being built in the market place. (Years later, I discovered that those flats were actually owned by the College, but they didn’t tell me that.) However, when we returned to Cambridge from a visit to America after the marriage, we found that the flats were not ready. As a great concession, the Bursar said we could have a room in a hostel for graduate students. He said, “We normally charge 12 shillings and 6 pence a night for this room. However, as there will be two of you in the room, we will charge 25 shillings.” We stayed there only three nights. Then we found a small house about 100 yards from my university department. It belonged to another College, who had let it to one of its fellows. However he had moved out to a house he had bought in the suburbs. He sub-let the house to us for the remaining three months of his lease. During those three months, we found that another house in the same road was standing empty. A neighbour summoned the owner from Dorset, and told her that it was a scandal that her house should be empty, when young people were looking for accommodation. So she let the house to us. After we had lived there for a few years, we wanted to buy the house, and do it up. So we asked my College for a mortgage. However, the College did a survey, and decided it was not a good risk. In the end we got a mortgage from a building society, and my parents gave us the money to do it up. We lived there for another four years, but it became too difficult for me to manage the stairs. By this time, the College appreciated me rather more, and there was a different Bursar. They therefore offered us a ground floor flat in a house that they owned. This suited me very well, because it had large rooms and wide doors. It was sufficiently central that I could get to my University department, or the College, in my electric wheel chair. It was also nice for our three children, because it was surrounded by garden, which was looked after by the College gardeners.

Up to 1974, I was able to feed myself, and get in and out of bed. Jane managed to help me, and bring up the children, without outside help. However, things were getting more difficult, so we took to having one of my research students living with us. In return for free accommodation, and a lot of my attention, they helped me get up and go to bed. In 1980, we changed to a system of community and private nurses, who came in for an hour or two in the morning and evening. This lasted until I caught pneumonia in 1985. I had to have a tracheotomy operation. After this, I had to have 24 hour nursing care. This was made possible by grants from several foundations.

Before the operation, my speech had been getting more slurred, so that only a few people who knew me well, could understand me. But at least I could communicate. I wrote scientific papers by dictating to a secretary, and I gave seminars through an interpreter, who repeated my words more clearly. However, the tracheotomy operation removed my ability to speak altogether. For a time, the only way I could communicate was to spell out words letter by letter, by raising my eyebrows when someone pointed to the right letter on a spelling card. It is pretty difficult to carry on a conversation like that, let alone write a scientific paper. However, a computer expert in California, called Walt Woltosz, heard of my plight. He sent me a computer program he had written, called Equalizer. This allowed me to select words from a series of menus on the screen, by pressing a switch in my hand. The program could also be controlled by a switch, operated by head or eye movement. When I have built up what I want to say, I can send it to a speech synthesizer. At first, I just ran the Equalizer program on a desk top computer.
However David Mason, of Cambridge Adaptive Communication, fitted a small portable computer and a speech synthesizer to my wheel chair. This system allowed me to communicate much better than I could before. I can manage up to 15 words a minute. I can either speak what I have written, or save it to disk. I can then print it out, or call it back and speak it sentence by sentence. Using this system, I have written a book, and dozens of scientific papers. I have also given many scientific and popular talks. They have all been well received. I think that is in a large part due to the quality of the speech synthesiser, which is made by Speech Plus. One’s voice is very important. If you have a slurred voice, people are likely to treat you as mentally deficient: Does he take sugar? This synthesiser is by far the best I have heard, because it varies the intonation, and doesn’t speak like a Dalek. The only trouble is that it gives me an American accent.

I have had motor neurone disease for practically all my adult life. Yet it has not prevented me from having a very attractive family, and being successful in my work. This is thanks to the help I have received from Jane, my children, and a large number of other people and organisations. I have been lucky, that my condition has progressed more slowly than is often the case. But it shows that one need not lose hope.

For more information on Motor Neurone Disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, as well as other progressive conditions, please follow one of the links below:
The Motor Neurone Disease Association (UK)
International Alliance of ALS/MND Associations on the internet

There is also a helpline on 0345 626262 (Monday to Friday 9.00 – 22.30, calls charged at local rate within the UK).

Reprinted from here.