Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was looking over the news wire and noticed this little tidbit from the Reuters news wire: Religious bias colors doctors’ views: survey.

That seems, to your Maximum Leader, to be a rather stupid headline. The very premise of it is quite silly in fact. This has always been a peeve of your Maximum Leader. One would think that anyone who is serious about their religion would have biases that are informed and shaped by their religious experience. If religion predisposes a person towards a particular set of moral beliefs - and one would certainly think it would; then one can’t help but act according to their religion in the performance of their daily routine.

An interesting portion of the article:

They [the researchers] found that 85 percent of those surveyed believe religion or spirituality is generally positive, but only 6 percent say it often changes “hard” medical outcomes, reflecting some sort of miraculous healing.

About three quarters of those surveyed say spirituality helps patients cope and believe it gives them a positive state of mind. About 7 percent, however, said it often causes negative emotions such as guilt and anxiety and some 4 percent think patients use spirituality to avoid taking responsibility for their health.

Your Maximum Leader found that last line interesting. 4% using religion to avoid taking respoinsibility for their health. Your Maximum Leader knows some people like that. Indeed, if one queries your Maximum Leader’s good friend the Smallholder, he (Smallholder that is) would possibly weave a story for you about your Maximum Leader’s fatalistic streak concerning organ transplants and such. (Your Maximum Leader, while an organ donor himself, feels that he would not likely accept an organ donation in the event that he should need one. Now there are many extenuating circumstances that could affect this completely hypothetical situation, but the broad statement is correct. Additionally, your Maximum Leader would not accept genetic treatments that would allow him to live a longer and healthier life. Perhaps this is a subject for another post…)

But your Maximum Leader digresses…

It seems odd to your Maximum Leader that people would assume that some sort of professional, like a doctor, would not allow his religious beliefs to affect his work. Of course, no conversation on this topic would be complete without discussing that most inane subset of politicians. You know the ones who are “Catholic” but support abortion rights. It seems to your Maximum Leader that such political types should go either one of two ways. The first is to admit that they are not a particularly good Catholic because they disagree with the Church’s moral teachings on this matter. The second is to say that they are against abortion and would act accordingly insofar as the office they hold and influence such things.

Carry on.