Incredibly, there is an industry developing within the United States that centers in the trafficking of organs from unborn babies!! It involves a network of abortion clinics and medical researchers. It involves non-profits like Anatomic Gift Foundation (AGF), based in Maryland, and at least five other US organizations that collect, prepare, and distribute to medical researchers fetal tissue, organs and body parts that are the products of voluntary abortions. A probe by WORLD magazine (23 October 1999) unearthed grim, hard-copy evidence of the cross- country flow of baby body parts, including detailed dissection orders, a brochure touting "the freshest tissues available," and price lists for whole babies or parts. One 1999 price list from a company called Opening Lines reads: Skin $100. Limbs $150. Spinal cord $325. Brain $999. How should we think about this?

• It does reflect the total disregard and lack of respect for human life. It is a gruesome development in our culture of death for profit!! When we fail to see life as sacred and of worth and value to God, the sale of death for profit results. This is the slippery slope of desensitizing of the culture that began with Roe v. Wade in 1973. It is the culture of death gone to seed!
  
  
• This culture of death gained ground in 1993 when President Clinton signed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Revitalization Act, lifting the ban on federally funded research involving the transplantation of fetal tissue. The result was firms formed relationships with abortion clinics.
  
  
• The Uniform Anatomic Gift Act makes it a federal crime to buy or sell fetal tissue. What seems to be occurring here is that these organizations are doing legal end-runs around the law. The parties claim there is no buying or selling of fetal tissue but the reality is that is what is going on!!
  
  
• Reps. Tom Tancredo, Joseph Pitts, and Chris Smith introduced a resolution calling for an investigation and hearings into these "possibly illegal" activities. The hearings will take place next year in the House Commerce Committee. The truth, I hope, will then be exposed for all the world to see. This is a despicable and repulsive practice that offends God and all of those who are intellectually honest. It is a national sin that must be stopped.

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THE POKEMON CRAZE

• Pokemon is a name short for pocket monsters. The monsters have no sexual identity and are as cute as they are shrewd and problematic.
  
  
• Pokemon is a multi-layered phenomenon involving a website, games, Game Boy, a TV series, a new movie "Pokemon the First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back"; and most of all a trading card hysteria that has parents baffled and perplexed. What is driving the craze is acquisitiveness the more Pokemon you have, the greater power you possess (the slogan is "You Gotta Catch 'em All"). The object of the Pokemon games is to collect all the monsters. (At last count there were more than 150 of them). That goal is reached by arranging fights among Pokemon and trading with other Pokemon trainers for new ones. The more the Pokemon fight, the more they develop their skills, which help them transform into stronger, more powerful monsters.
  
  
• The cartoon is steeped in traditional Japanese values responsibility, empathy, cooperation, obedience, respect for elders, humility that go far beyond the obvious references to things Japanese.
  
  
• Ash, Misty and Brock are the central human characters of the show and they all understand that capturing a Pokemon is not enough. Becoming a real trainer takes compassion and responsibility. The relationship between Ash and Professor Oak, the ultimate authority on Pokemon, is very much like that of deshi to sensei, or student to teacher, the junior-senior relationship that pervades Japanese institutions. The older sensei offers friendship, advice and guidance to the deshi, who returns it with gratitude, respect and loyalty.
  
  
• Unknown to Nintendo (the producer of much of the Pokemon computer games), the founder Satoshi Tajiri, added a new twist in the Pokemon programming: a mysterious monster known as Mew, who plays a big part in the new movie. You must acquire Mew through interacting. Without trading, you can never get Mew. This has heightened interest. Further, a yellow pip-squeak named Pikachu is a thunder mouse who is Ash's sidekick. His popularity has drawn even more kids into the phenomenon.

Several concluding comments:

1. It is a fad and will pass.
   
   
2. It gets kids interacting and playing together. That is good.
   
   
3. The characters are not particularly any more evil than lots of other toys and cards out there.
   
   
4. What concerns me is the nature of the games and the phenomenon itself. It produces a drive in kids that they must have the Pokemon all 150 of them!! Without all of them, you do not have the ultimate in power or its potential. We have enough of this already in our culture.
   
   
5. It does focus on responsibility and respect but the acquisitiveness that the phenomenon produces overshadows some of the positive Japanese values that we could benefit from.
   
   
6. It is a fad but it is one which will yield Nintendo, Burger King and many other businesses a great deal of money. It is a phenomenon that does not produce contentment in our children- a value Paul makes a virtue in Philippians 4. Pokemon does not cultivate contentment and that is something all Christians, especially children, need. Contentment means to be satisfied with what God has given and to trust in Him for everything else. It is not the monster nature of Pokemon, nor the bizarre characters that frighten me about Pokemon; it is the drive to acquire and the drive to master. If these drives are not tempered by godly righteousness, they become vices. We have too much of these vices already. Children are vulnerable and open to manipulation. Pokemon can be intensely manipulative.

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