WASHINGTON (CNN) – Another major American industry is asking for assistance as the global financial crisis continues: Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion for a bailout of the adult entertainment industry.

“The take here is that everyone and their mother want to be bailed out from the banks to the big three,” said Owen Moogan, spokesman for Larry Flynt. “The porn industry has been hurt by the downturn like everyone else and they are going to ask for the $5 billion. Is it the most serious thing in the world? Is it going to make the lives of Americans better if it happens? It is not for them to determine.”

Francis said in a statement that “the US government should actively support the adult industry’s survival and growth, just as it feels the need to support any other industry cherished by the American people.”

“We should be delivering [the request] by the end of today to our congressmen and [Secretary of the Treasury Henry] Paulson asking for this $5 billion dollar bailout,” he told CNN Wednesday.

Flynt and Francis concede the industry itself is in no financial danger — DVD sales have slipped over the past year, but Web traffic has continued to grow.

But the industry leaders said the issue is a nation in need. “People are too depressed to be sexually active,” Flynt said in the statement. “This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex.”

“With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind. It’s time for congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America. The only way they can do this is by supporting the adult industry and doing it quickly.”

So far, there has been no congressional reaction to the request.
CNN

Two-thirds of American adults are overweight—more of them women than men—yet fewer than one-quarter are dieting. In 2004, the Centers for Disease Control found that women eat over 300 more calories a day than they did in 1971. Fewer than one-third of Americans get regular exercise.

Most Americans are fat and happy. Of course everyone would love to cut their cancer risk by one-third—unless it means skipping that extra scoop of ice cream, or jogging three times a week. Reducing cancer risk isn’t that important. Until you get it.

As Associated Press reporter Maria Cheng noted, there is a reluctance on the part of many doctors to make too much of this study: “Any discussion of weight and breast cancer is considered sensitive because some may misconstrue that as the medical establishment blaming women for their disease.”

No one should be “blamed” for getting a disease, but nor is it a good idea to simply ignore the person’s lifestyle choices that greatly increase their chances of getting that disease. If a person chooses an unhealthy lifestyle (smoking, poor diet, lack of exercise, etc.), doctors should not be shy about warning them the risks they are assuming.
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This is a tricky question, where science and religion often hide, or collide. It’s answered in a diversity of ways by different cultures at different times, by different physicians in different hospitals, different shamans in different tribes. Is it when your heart stops working (as in Japan and Shintoism)? When your soul leaves your body (as in Tibet and Buddhism)? When your brain stops working? When a certain part of your brain stops working? Who decides when you’re dead?

Can you be dead in body, but not in mind? Vice versa?

Cogito ergo sum?

A new study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine adds intriguing neuroscientific fuel to the fires already ablaze around these questions.

Typically, when a severely head-injured patient is checked for consciousness soon after his or her accident, the physician might look for the ability to track a moving item with the eyes or say “lift a finger if you can hear me,” and then if answered in the affirmative, maybe “lift two fingers for yes, one for no.” At some point over time, if there’s no response and apparent unconsciousness continues, the patient is considered to be in a ‘persistent vegetative state.’ Doesn’t sound too good, nobody’s happy. What to do?

Challenging enough question. But, now along comes Martin Monti and his colleagues in Belgium. They add a new test for consciousness, applied to fifty-plus folks in a proclaimed vegetative state. Monti et al., using an MRI machine (which monitors for active neurons in the brain), watch these folks’ brains when they are asked a question. And, amazingly a handful of the patients’ brains light up ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ just like your brain or mine would if we were asked a question.
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