Today on "Kresta in the Afternoon" - March 20, 2012

Talking about the "things that matter most" on March 20

4:00 – Kresta Comments

4:40 – Study Gives New Insights into “Persistent Vegetative State”
An article in the July 2011 issue of Discover magazine, and the November release of the study that the author investigated, prompted Bobby Schindler to comment that misdiagnosis was used to “deliberately kill my sister.” They may have been right, considering the results of the study that was published in the online edition of the medical journal, The Lancet. According to the summary, researchers from the University of Western Ontario in Canada found that three of 16 patients with PVS diagnoses were aware of their surroundings and could respond to instructions. Previous but smaller studies at New York University School of Medicine and Weill Cornell Medical College, both in New York City, also detected meaningful brain activity in people diagnosed with PVS. The latest investigation is the largest and has generated new comments and concerns in secular, medical and religious circles. Father Tad Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center is here to analyze.

5:00 – Kresta Comments

5:20 – Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution
Secular and religious thinkers agree: the sexual revolution is one of the most important milestones in human history. Perhaps nothing has changed life for so many, so fast, as the severing of sex and procreation. But what has been the result? In a ground-breaking book by noted essayist and author Mary Eberstadt she contends that sexual freedom has paradoxically produced widespread discontent. Adam and Eve after the Pill examines as no book has before the seismic social changes caused by the sexual revolution. In examining human behavior in the post-liberation world, Eberstadt provocatively asks: Is food the new sex? Is pornography the new tobacco? She joins us.