We’ve had to talk a lot about coronavirus vaccines in the past year, both here and elsewhere. But there are other infectious diseases in the world, and other vaccines being developed to prevent their spread. One of the bigger challenges, both in terms of numbers of infections and difficulty in developing a vaccine, is malaria. A variety of malaria vaccine approaches have been proposed and developed. The best result to date was a finding of 55% efficacy in a large scale trial, meaning vaccinated individuals were a little less than half as likely to become infected. Now, a new study of a different vaccine demonstrated 77% efficacy in a moderate scale test, comparable to a phase II trial. While the findings are reported in a preprint with further review pending, and a large scale trial is still forthcoming, this is an encouraging result for a significant public health challenge.
[Read more…] about Science Corner: Good Vaccine News from Another Vector
Malaria
Finding Calcutta: Find yourself in doing, not criticizing
Questions on the table:
- What are the spiritual principles for our attitude and our actions in pursuing God’s calling?
- How are attitude, action and audience part of our calling?
The Attitude of the Called
Our eyes and our heart should be on our God. Criticism and cynicism do not have a place in our calling.
Mother (Teresa) believed that criticism weakens our will to obey, and that our will is the only thing that God will not take from us. Mother Teresa wrote to her sisters, “It is much easier to conquer a country than to conquer ourselves. Every act of disobedience weakens my spiritual life. It is like a wound letting out every drop of one’s blood. Nothing can cause this havoc in our spiritual life as quickly as disobedience” (Mary Poplin. Finding Calcutta: What Mother Teresa Taught Me About Meaningful Work and Service. InterVarsity Press. 2008, 64).
After the above statement, Mary Poplin presents her insights into the damage rebelliousness caused in her spiritual life. [Read more…] about Finding Calcutta: Find yourself in doing, not criticizing