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Insight on the News

“Open Marriage” Bursts

● The book “Open Marriage” became a long-lived best seller about six years ago when it suggested that extramarital affairs “may be rewarding and beneficial” for some couples. Was there any merit to this idea? Well, according to a Toronto, Ontario, premarriage counselor, “every couple we know of who went the open-marriage route busted up​—without exception.”

Now the authors of the book, Nena and George O’Neill, have published another book referred to as a “new call for sexual fidelity.” They admit that follow-up interviews with couples quoted in “Open Marriage” reveal that few who openly practiced adultery remained together. “I think the longest was two years,” said George O’Neill. And his wife stated that “the assurance of sexual fidelity is still an important attribute of most marriages.”

Thus, however much men attempt to stray away from the standards of the One who created marriage, true happiness comes only by following His advice: “Let marriage be honorable among all, and the marriage bed be without defilement.”​—Heb. 13:4.

Incomparable Brain

● Some 4,000 brain experts, the largest number ever convened, recently met in Anaheim, California, U.S.A. Their discussion made it clear that “the human brain is much more diversified and much more of a precise controller of behavior than scientists ever envisioned,” according to a New York “Times” report. The consensus among the neuroscientists was that brain function must be understood chemically. “Each neuron,” notes the report, “is capable of secreting its own chemical stream of messages that tell another neuron what to do.” Also, “the brain is so exquisitely sensitive that a change in only a couple of molecules can create a vast difference in behavior.”

“Perhaps the most interesting overall finding about the brain,” says the “Times” report, “is that most of the early mechanical versions of how it operates have now been completely abandoned.” The article observes that comparisons with a radio station, a telephone system, or even a computer have not “lasted very long because the brain proved to be so much more complex than the latest man-made machine. The new view is that nothing in technology can match the brain even metaphorically.”

Hence, our growing knowledge of this infinitely complex marvel only makes it more certain that blind evolutionary chance could not have produced it. Wise men give credit where it obviously belongs, as did the psalmist who said: “I shall laud you [Jehovah] because in a fear-inspiring way I am wonderfully made.”​—Ps. 139:14.

Surgeons Behind on Techniques?

● A person who recently underwent open-heart surgery complained to a medical advice columnist that she suffered from hepatitis after her release from the hospital. The columnist, Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, wrote that he was “not at all surprised that [she] contracted infectious hepatitis after open-heart surgery since the chance of developing this serious condition following blood transfusions is well known.”

Dr. Mendelsohn then noted that a “rather significant number of open-heart operations using blood substitutes have been performed on Jehovah’s Witness patients who reject human blood transfusions. I often have wondered why these same techniques have not been applied more widely.” One reason for surgeons’ failure to use such advanced techniques may be implied from Dr. Mendelsohn’s suggestion that people needing surgery should ask their surgeons “if they are familiar with these scientific reports [about bloodless surgery].” Apparently many are not.

If all surgeons were up to date on this matter, then, as Dr. Mendelsohn observes, “perhaps this can give all of us the same lower incidence of post-transfusion hepatitis and other advantages now enjoyed exclusively by the Witnesses.” It is as God told Joshua of old: If you “do according to all that is written” in the law of Jehovah, “then you will make your way successful and then you will act wisely.”​—Josh. 1:8.