Dutch army brings in yoga teacher to help soldiers de-stress

DutchNews, October 19, 2016

Photo: American Forces Press Service 

The Dutch armed forces have brought in a yoga teacher to see if yoga exercises can help soldiers process stress and traumatic experiences, according to the AD. 

Johan Noordloos will focus primarily on teaching army sports instructors to incorporate yoga into their programmes, the paper said. 

Noordloos told the AD that yoga and being trained to kill are not incompatible. 

Dutch soldiers do kill, but they do that to protect others, he said. ‘This is the world we live in,’ he said. ‘But I can help people who have been trained to deal with war to experience peace.’ 

The lessons will be voluntary and no soldier will be forced to take up yoga, although officials say they do believe the practice will be useful. 

‘Being in the army puts soldiers in stressful situations,’ spokesman Jeroen de Vries told the paper. ‘Yoga can help restore the balance in their lives. We want to find out if it helps them deal with difficult situations more easily.’ 

Jean Debie, head of the VBM military union, has welcomed the move. ‘Why not learn the technique if it helps your relax and beat stress,’ Debie said. 

According to the AD, yoga is already used in by the British and US armed forces.

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"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems  (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it),  Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse),  Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

“… "Wow, Kryon, how long is that going to take?"

The Humans in the room control that and those listening later and reading. When you leave this room, what are you going to do? Go home, report this, rub your hands together, and wait for it to happen? It won't. For the Humans in the room and the old souls hearing and reading have got work to do, and I've told you this before. You've got work to do.

There's an alliance that you're going to have to create with one another and with another group - the young people of Earth. The youth of this earth are changing the way things work. Can you see it? You're not supposed to sit around and watch them either, because they need you, old soul.

It's time for you to align with the indigos and the concepts of the youth of the planet. Do not think for a moment that their age shows their wisdom. These two attributes are not commensurate with one another; they're not linear. These young people may be older souls than you are! Don't think that because they've got technology that you don't understand that you can't be one with them. Their technology is social networking, the very thing we are talking about, where everyone can talk to everyone. The new consciousness on the planet starts in two areas - the children and the old souls.

Conclusion

This is the message of the day. The recalibration of awareness is going to change systems, education, government and finance. Those who don't choose to be spiritual at all will still move with a new awareness, for they will be aware of something that they are not aware of now - a softer way of living.

We close with a trite statement that we've given before, but that many have stated in jest: "If women ran the world, they would never send their sons to be killed on a battlefield."

Many laugh. How trite, how simple minded. Indeed, there have been women leaders who have put wars together; they had to. They sent their sons, so that's not really a correct statement. However, it's more right than you may think, dear ones.

So now I will make the statement I have made over and over in these recalibrated channellings: "When recalibrated Humans run the world, there will come a day when they will never send their sons into the battlefield." You see, awareness will change all of that. They will eventually see the wisdom of unification, new ways to settle issues, and the intuitive attribute of putting things together instead of tearing them apart.

There will be a time when government armies will not need to be large, and weapons will not be as powerful. Slowly, government won't need them. Slowly, slower than you want, these things will happen as the old soul carries his light and looks at the masters of the planet and emulates them.

You've all heard it: There will come a time when the masters will come back to Earth, and there are many who are waiting for this. However, it has already happened! They couldn't come back until the alignment was right and now it is right. This is what you are feeling in 2012 and beyond. It's starting to happen, and they're back. But they're not back as corporeal Human Beings. They're back as the energy of recalibrating of the awareness of God.

I wouldn't say these things unless they were true. Watch for these things, dear ones. Remember where you heard them first and when some of them start to occur in your news. And when you see the earth working in this fashion, dear one, maybe you'll realize that what I have given today is real.

Be circumspect. There is no perfect timing. Humans will create all this at their own pace. Do not be in fear of the things that might follow, for I say it yet again that the old energy will show itself soon in survival mode and it won't be pretty.

In this beginning of new energy, stand tall and turn on your light. Darkness will shirk before you. That is the truth of the day.

I am Kryon, in love with humanity.

And so it is.

KRYON.

Coconut Oil and Alzheimer’s Disease

ANH-USA, October 5, 2010

How worried should drug companies be about supplements eating into their monopoly profits? A lot—as this story will show. Please share it with anyone you know who is suffering from Alzheimer’s or is worried about it.

Of course, just about everyone worries about Alzheimer’s. It currently afflicts 5.2 million people in the US and is the seventh leading cause of death. The cost of treating it is estimated at $148 billion.

Mary Newport, MD, has been medical director of the neonatal intensive care unit at Spring Hill Regional Hospital in Florida since it opened in 2003. About the same time the unit opened, her husband Steve, then 53, began showing signs of progressive dementia, later diagnosed as Alzheimer’s Disease. “Many days, often for several days in a row, he was in a fog; couldn’t find a spoon or remember how to get water out of the refrigerator,” she said.

They started him on Alzheimer’s drugs—Aricept, Namenda, Exelon—but his disease worsened steadily. (It should be noted that the latest research shows that the various Alzheimer’s drugs, like Aricept, have proven disappointing, with little real benefit and often distressing side effects.) When Dr. Newport couldn’t get her husband into a drug trial for a new Alzheimer’s medication, she started researching the mechanism behind Alzheimer’s.

She discovered that with Alzheimer’s disease, certain brain cells may have difficulty utilizing glucose (made from the carbohydrates we eat), the brain’s principal source of energy. Without fuel, these precious neurons may begin to die. There is an alternative energy source for brain cells—fats known as ketones. If deprived of carbohydrates, the body produces ketones naturally.

But this is the hard way to do it—who wants to cut carbohydrates out of the diet completely? Another way to produce ketones is by consuming oils that have medium-chain triglycerides. When MCT oil is digested, the liver converts it into ketones. In the first few weeks of life, ketones provide about 25 percent of the energy newborn babies need to survive.

Dr. Newport learned that the ingredient in the drug trial which was showing so much promise was simply MCT oil derived from coconut oil or palm kernel oil, and that a dose of 20 grams (about 20 ml or 4 teaspoons) was used to produce these results. When MCT oil is metabolized, the ketones which the body creates may, according to the latest research, not only protect against the incidence of Alzheimer’s, but may actually reverse it. Moreover, this is also a potential treatment for Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease), drug-resistant epilepsy, brittle type I diabetes, and type II (insulin-resistant) diabetes.

So Mr. Newport, not being able to get into the drug trial, started taking the coconut oil twice a day. At this point, he could barely remember how to draw a clock. Two weeks after adding coconut oil to his diet, his drawing improved. After 37 days, Steve’s drawing gained even more clarity. The oil seemed to “lift the fog,” and in the first sixty days, Dr. Newport saw remarkable changes in him: every morning he was alert and happy, talkative, making jokes. His gait was “still a little weird,” but his tremor was no longer very noticeable. He was able to concentrate on things that he wanted to do around the house and in the yard and stay on task, whereas before coconut oil he was easily distractible and rarely accomplished anything unless he was directly supervised.

Over the next year, the dementia continued to reverse itself: he is able to run again, his reading comprehension has improved dramatically, and his short-term memory is improving—he often brings up events that happened days to weeks earlier and relays telephone conversations with accurate detail. A recent MRI shows that the brain atrophy has been completely halted.

Let’s take a moment to consider what actually happened here. Synthetic (patentable) Alzheimer’s drugs have failed. A drug company reluctantly decides to put a non-patentable natural substance (medium-chain triglycerides derived from coconut or palm) through an FDA trial. It works. But, darn it, a smart doctor figures out that a natural food can be substituted for the super-expensive drug. Not only that, the ketones from natural coconut oil last in the body longer than the drug version—eight hours instead of three hours. This is enough to make a drug company start worrying about its future. What if this natural health idea really catches on? Goodbye to monopoly profits!

Coconut oil can be found in many health food stores and even some grocery stores. One large chain sells a non-hydrogenated (no trans-fat) brand of coconut oil in a one-liter size (nearly 32 ounces) for about $7. It can be purchased in quantities as small as a pint and up to five gallons online. It is important to use coconut oil that is non-hydrogenated and contains no trans-fat. We would also strongly encourage the use of virgin oil (chemicals used to extract non-virgin oil are potentially dangerous, and better still, virgin organic, still quite reasonably priced.)

For more information, see Dr. Newport’s website. Sadly, you will not find any information on ketones, or the use of coconut oil or MCT oil, on the Alzheimer’s Association website.

Coconut oil is not the only natural product that has the potential to turn Alzheimer’s around. We will cover some other ones, and drug industry efforts to steal some of them, in a future issue.

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Sixth sense really does exist: Research shows how brains of couples in love 'work together'

Daily Mail, by RICHARD SHEARS, 26th September 2010

An extraordinary scientific study has proved that a sixth sense between two people really does exist.

In sync: Dr Trisha Stratford's research
shows how the brains of couples in love
work together

Dr Trisha Stratford, an expert on the how the brain behaves, has spent five years monitoring the way couples interact in a non-physical manner.

If they are close to one another mentally, particularly when they are in love, their brains appear to work together, the neuropsychotherapist has found.

Dr Stratford, who conducted her research at Sydney's University of Technology, concluded that two people can become physiologically aligned - with parts of their nervous systems beating in harmony - despite having no physical contact with each other.

'This study gives us a deeper understanding of what happens when people interact, including when a couple falls in love,' she said today.

She suggested that her research could provide clues about how to communicate with a potential partner using sixth sense, which she said had long been suggested but never extensively identified in science.

Dr Stratford told Fairfax media in Australia that an American psychiatrist, Carl Marci, had established a connection between two people, but his study in 2007 was limited and he called for more research.

By then, Dr Stratford had already started her own studies into the phenomenon, replicating Dr Marci's research, 'but then I froze that point of two people becoming one and looked at what was happening in the brain,' she said.

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'It was very exciting. When we're in this moment of oneness, or an altered state, the most exciting thing is that a part of the brain called the parietal lobe is fired into action.

'When this happens we can read each other's brains and bodies at a deeper level - a sixth sense.'

Her studies included looking at the behaviour of 30 volunteers aged from 21 to 65, who were assessed by six therapists who worked at lining up their own thoughts and emotions with those of the 'patients'.

The volunteers were all suffering from some kind of anxiety. Their 'body signals' were monitored by electrodes that were placed around the head to monitor brain waves in four different areas, while other monitors recorded heart and body movements.

Brain power: Dr Stratford said her research
could provide clues about how to communicate
with a potential partner using a 'sixth sense'

At the end of the sessions, the patients were shown to have lower anxiety levels and lower heart rates and all agreed they had benefited from the 'connection' with the therapists.

One of Dr Stratford's colleagues, Sara Lal, a senior lecturer in the unversity's molecular biosciences department, agreed that the visual and audio face-to-face communication between therapists and volunteer patients had resulted in the alignment of what is known as their autonomic nervous systems.

'It really is quite eerie when you see the traces on the screen start to match each other as they come into alignment,' Dr Lal told Fairfax media.

Researchers observed how the patients' body language changed as alignment of the nervous system occurred. Their eyes changed their focus and the patients become oblivious to their surroundings.

One of the scientists involved in the Australian research, psychotherapist Alan Meara, said sixth sense wasn't a magical occurrence.

'It is something that the human brain is wired to do,' he said. 'The research shows that we do have the capacity to understand people at a deeper level than we normal do in general conversation.'

So how does one communicate with a stranger - chat up a potential partner, perhaps?

'You need to give them your total, undivided attention,' said Dr Stratford.

'Listening is better than talking about yourself and the state of one-ness becomes strongest after two or three meetings.'

Top Harley Street psychiatrist 'preyed on patients for sex and groomed suicidal woman'

Daily Mail, By FAY SCHLESINGER, 3 August 2010

A 'predatory' Harley Street psychiatrist seduced a suicidal patient before warning her not to tell anyone and destroy his career, a hearing was told yesterday.

Hearing: Dr Theodore Soutzos is accused
with having sexual relations with two
vulnerable patients, including one who had
suicidal tendencies

Dr Theodore Soutzos, 45, allegedly told her that doing so would 'kill his mother'.

The patient then threw herself in the Thames, jumped in front of a police car and took five overdoses in 18 days.

The private consultant also had 'improper' relationships with two other patients - an 18-year-old and a woman of 23 with bulimia who he took on holiday to Athens, it was alleged.

In each case he was said to 'elicit personal information' from the women and shower them with compliments before arranging to meet at the National Gallery or Tate Gallery in London.

Soutzos, who charged up to £450 a session and also worked at The Priory, in Roehampton, faces a misconduct hearing over his 'improper emotional and sexual relationships' between 1999 and 2006.

Sarah Plashkes, representing the General Medical Council, told the London hearing: 'This matter concerns Dr Soutzos, a psychiatrist, serially... abusing his position of trust.'

Soutzos was working at Guy's Hospital, south London, when a 37-year- old woman referred to as Miss A was admitted to a psychiatric ward in January 1999.

The 'talented' former illustrator had nearly been killed by her violent ex-husband, was a heavy drinker and was suicidal, the hearing was told.

During their first consultation, the psychiatrist was ' fascinated' by the woman and 'unable to take his eyes off the patient', Miss Plashkes said.

Two months later, Soutzos met her at the National Gallery as part of a 'subterfuge' to take 'another small step which breached the doctor-patient boundary'.

He met the woman several times before telling her he had ' borderline girlfriends' to 'groom her for a physical relationship'.

He allegedly touched her when they went swimming and, after driving her to his flat in St John's Wood, north London, walked around in his underwear.

The pair then allegedly had sex at his apartment. Afterwards, Soutzos said he had to pick up his mother on the way to driving the patient back to her ward, it was claimed.

Miss Plashkes added: 'When they reached the hospital, [the woman] asked him whether they were in a relationship.

'He replied: "How can we be? I am a doctor and you are my patient." He said that they needed to defuse the sexual tension that had built up... She was numb, traumatised, confused and disorientated.'

The following month Soutzos phoned her 'almost hysterical', saying it would 'kill his mother and destroy his career if the details of their relationship came out', the hearing was told.

The patient eventually told police in 2005, after her unsuccessful suicide attempts.

An expert psychiatrist told officers that the consultant's behaviour was 'predatory'.

Soutzos wrote in his notes: 'The psychiatric problems she has developed during her childhood trauma have made her vulnerable to exploitation in every sphere of her life.'

The hearing was also told that the psychiatrist kissed an 18-year-old patient referred to as Miss B and sent her ' inappropriate' text messages.

The student, who was receiving treatment for panic attacks and agoraphobia at the Bowden House Clinic in Harrow, north London in 2003, displayed an attraction towards 'elder men', the doctor noted in his records.

In 2006 the teenager wrote in her diary: 'Theo has a very strong ability to make me equally excited and nervous.'

After kissing him, she added: 'Now it is a matter of waiting to see if I was a conquest.'

Soutzos allegedly began a six-month relationship with Miss C, a 23-year-old bulimia sufferer, in 2006.

At Easter 2007 the pair went on holiday to Athens and Soutzos talked about marriage. But the woman ended the relationship.

About six months later, she was admitted to the Priory Hospital and came across Soutzos again.

After being ignored by him, she complained to her new therapist and the hospital began an investigation.

In 2008 he apparently told The Priory's director he never had a relationship with a patient.

The consultant denies the bulk of 32 charges against him. He denies having a relationship with Miss A but admits meeting her to go to art galleries, and denies a relationship with Miss B but admits sending her inappropriate text messages.

Soutzos admits an affair with Miss C but claims it started after she was discharged.

The hearing continues.

Mental health a growing concern after Gulf spill

Reuters, By Matthew Bigg, VENICE | Sun Jul 11, 2010 3:26am EDT

Shrimpers separate their catch at a processing plant at Joshua's Marina in Buras, Louisiana May 17, 2010. (Credit: Reuters/Hans Deryk)

Louisiana (Reuters) - Gulf Coast native Kindra Arnesen is so anxious about the effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill she is packing up her family and leaving town.

"Stress? Dude my clothes are falling off me (because of weight loss). The level of stress here is tremendous. My husband has aged 10 years in two months," Arnesen said on Friday as she loaded possessions into a van outside her trailer home in Venice.

Fears are growing of an increase in stress-related illness and mental health problems from the BP Plc spill. Anecdotal evidence abounds but mental health officials say they lack data about the scale and scope of suffering.

Arnesen recently set up the Wives of Commercial Fishermen network to respond to pressures in the community. Two days ago, a friend told her he was so upset about his failure to get hired by BP's cleanup program he was considering suicide.

Arnesen has her own worries. Her husband cannot work as a shrimper because authorities have closed swathes of Gulf waters to fishing and her children and other relatives have fallen sick from what she believes are airborne toxins from the leak.

"The mental health impact here ... (and) the level of uncertainty is taking a toll on people and that's a huge, huge concern," Arnesen said. She declined to say where she and her two children would settle but said her husband would stay behind to work for BP on the cleanup.

Thousands of Gulf Coast fishermen face financial ruin because of the spill. Some say the stress is worse than after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005.

Then it was possible to get back to work despite the destruction. Now it is impossible to say when waters will reopen especially since oil continues to gush into the Gulf.

At the same time, many fishermen now rely on BP's cleanup program as a financial lifeline and while that has provided a windfall for a few, others have yet to find employment.

FINANCIAL STRAIN

"We hear it over and over again," said environmental scientist Wilma Subra of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, a nonprofit group with deep community roots. "It is the stress because of the possibility of not being able to earn a living and pay their bills."

Some experts caution it is possible to falsely perceive an uptick in a health phenomenon just by looking for it.

But crisis counseling teams working with Gulf fishermen say anecdotal reports point to increased anger and anxiety and "a lot of marital discord," said Acquanetta Knight, director of policy and planning at the Alabama Department of Mental Health.

Data on the problems should be available in the next two weeks, she told reporters on Friday.

Residents suffering mental distress may hesitate to seek help because of a fiercely individualistic culture and strong ethic of self-reliance on the Gulf, where many earn their living working long hours alone on the water.

"This is sometimes a population that's not so accustomed to utilizing traditional services," said Pamela Hyde, administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Hyde said her agency, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, is looking at national suicide and domestic violence hotlines and state mental health agency reports to find data.

Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi state mental health agencies have requested millions of dollars from BP to help pay for expanded mental health monitoring and services.

In a June 28 letter to the energy company, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals asked for $10 million and warned that health effects from the spill will be an "ongoing challenge."

The department first requested funds for mental health care on May 28. BP has not yet responded to the request.

(Additional reporting by Emma Ashburn in Washington; Editing by Bill Trott)

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Scientists propose big experiment to study Gulf oil spill

Relaxed people 'heal twice as quickly'

Being relaxed could be the key to healing quickly, scientists have discovered.

Telegraph.co.uk, 7:30AM BST 10 Jun 2010

Laid-back people can heal up to twice as rapidly as those who are very stressed, research indicates.

Scientists inflicted small ''punch'' wounds on healthy volunteers whose levels of life stress were assessed using a standard questionnaire.

Changes in levels of the stress hormone cortisol reflected the differences in healing speed.

A similar pattern emerged from an analysis of pooled data from 22 studies by different research groups examining stress and wound healing.

Professor John Weinman, from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, presented the findings at the Cheltenham Science Festival.

Previously, he showed that wound healing can be enhanced by psychological help aimed at addressing emotional stress.

Prof Weinman said: ''My overall research interests are focused on investigating and assessing how patients perceive illness and treatment, and how this affects the way they respond to and recover from a range of physical health problems.

''These studies focus specifically on how the life stresses people experience can impact on their ability to recover from different types of wound, such as those caused by surgical procedures and by different medical conditions, including venous leg ulcers.

''I hope that these findings can now be used to identify psychological interventions to help speed up the recovery and healing process.''

'Green' exercise quickly 'boosts mental health'

BBC News

Green space is important for mental health

Just five minutes of exercise in a "green space" such as a park can boost mental health, researchers claim.

There is growing evidence that combining activities such as walking or cycling with nature boosts well-being.

In the latest analysis, UK researchers looked at evidence from 1,250 people in 10 studies and found fast improvements in mood and self-esteem.

The study in the Environmental Science and Technology journal suggested the strongest impact was on young people.

The research looked at many different outdoor activities including walking, gardening, cycling, fishing, boating, horse-riding and farming in locations such as a park, garden or nature trail.

The biggest effect was seen within just five minutes.

With longer periods of time exercising in a green environment, the positive effects were clearly apparent but were of a smaller magnitude, the study found.

Looking at men and women of different ages, the researchers found the health changes - physical and mental - were particularly strong in the young and the mentally-ill.

Green and blue

A bigger effect was seen with exercise in an area that also contained water - such as a lake or river.

Study leader Jules Pretty, a researcher at the University of Essex, said those who were generally inactive, or stressed, or with mental illness would probably benefit the most from "green exercise".

"Employers, for example, could encourage staff in stressful workplaces to take a short walk at lunchtime in the nearest park to improve mental health."

He also said exercise programmes outdoors could benefit youth offenders.

"A challenge for policy makers is that policy recommendations on physical activity are easily stated but rarely adopted widely."

Paul Farmer, chief executive of mental health charity Mind, said the research is yet further evidence that even a short period of green exercise can provide a low cost and drug-free therapy to help improve mental wellbeing.

"It's important that people experiencing depression can be given the option of a range of treatments, and we would like to see all doctors considering exercise as a treatment where appropriate."

Mind runs a grant scheme for local environmental projects to help people with mental illness get involved in outdoor activities.

Scientists discover moral compass in the brain which can be controlled by magnets

Daily Mail, by David Derbyshire, 8:02 PM on 29th March 2010

The moral compass, technically named the right temporo-parietal junction, lies just behind the right ear in the brain

Scientists have discovered a real-life 'moral compass' in the brain that controls how we judge other people's behaviour.

The region, which lies just behind the right ear, becomes more active when we think about other people's misdemeanours or good works.

In an extraordinary experiment, researchers were able to use powerful magnets to disrupt this area of the brain and make people temporarily less moral.

The study highlights how our sense of right and wrong isn't just based on upbringing, religion or philosophy - but by the biology of our brains.

Dr Liane Young, who led the study, said: 'You think of morality as being a really high-level behaviour. To be able to apply a magnetic field to a specific brain region and change people's moral judgements is really astonishing.'

The moral compass lies in a part of the brain called the right temporo-parietal junction. It lies near the surface of the brain, just behind the right ear.

The researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used a non-invasive technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt the area of the brain.

The technique generates a magnetic field on a small part of the skull which creates weak electric currents in the brain. These currents interfere with nearby brain cells and prevent them from firing normally.

In the first experiment, 12 volunteers were exposed to the magnetic field for 25 minutes before they were given a series of 'moral maze' style scenarios.

For each of the 192 scenarios, they were asked to make a judgement about the character's actions on a scale of 1 for 'absolutely forbidden' to 7 for 'absolutely permissible'.

In the second experiment, the magnetic field was applied to their heads at the time they were asked to weigh up the behaviour of the characters in the scenario.

In both experiments, the magnetic field made the volunteers less moral.

One scenario described a man who let his girlfriend walk over a bridge he knew was unsafe. The girl survived unharmed.

Under normal conditions, most people rate the man's behaviour as unacceptable. But after getting the magnetic pulse, the volunteers tended to see nothing wrong with his actions - and judged his behaviour purely on whether his girlfriend survived.

Another scenario described two girls visiting a chemical plant where one girl asks her friend to put sugar in her coffee.

The friend uses powder from a jar marked 'toxic' - but as the powder turns out to be sugar, the girls if unharmed.

Volunteers with a disrupted moral compass tended to rate the girl's behaviour as permissible because her friend was not injured - even though she was aware the powder came from a jar labelled toxic.

Throughout the experiment, irresponsible or deliberate actions that might have resulted in harm were seen as morally acceptable if the story had a 'happy ending', they reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It's not the first time that scientists have found parts of the brain that specialise in ethics and morality. Last year American scientists claimed to have found a "god spot" - a region of the brain that controls religious belief.

Child abuse scandal shatters Irish faith in Catholic Church

CNN, by Richard Allen Greene, March 19, 2010

John Kelly says he was abused as a teen living at a reformatory run by a Catholic order in Ireland.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Recent report: Catholic Church in Ireland covered up child abuse by priests from '75 to '04
• "The church has lost working-class urban Ireland," Irish reporter says
• Man who advocates for victims: Religious brothers raped, beat me when I was a teen
• Irish reporter: Church deeply damaged because its behavior has been exposed as immoral

Dublin, Ireland (CNN) -- John Kelly was 14 years old when, he says, he lost his faith in God.

"I was taken down these stairs. I only had a nightdress on. It was pulled over my head. I was left naked. This 6-foot, 4-inch [tall] religious brother stood on my hands... and another guy had a whip that we made ourselves, with coins in it. And he would run from a distance to flog me," Kelly remembers.

Kelly, now 59, spent much of his childhood living in institutions run by Catholic orders in Ireland. The abuse he remembers most vividly took place at a reformatory in Daingean, in central Ireland.

"It was a very significant night for me," he says. "I'd been raped and buggered previously by these religious brothers, and I'd been physically beaten and psychologically tortured for months -- I spent two years in the place."

But Kelly reached a breaking point as one Catholic brother held him down, another whipped him and two others looked on, he says.

"I begged God to take me away. I just wanted to die to get away from the pain. And God wasn't there for me," he says.

Kelly's "crime" that night, he says, was to have been named by another boy at the reformatory, falsely, as an accomplice in a plot to escape.

But Kelly did manage to escape from Daingean soon after, and spent more than 30 years in London before returning to Ireland. Now he is campaigning on behalf of victims of child abuse.

Those victims number in the thousands -- possibly tens of thousands -- three major investigations in the past five years suggest.

The most recent, the Murphy Report, found the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Catholic Church authorities in Ireland covered up child abuse by priests from 1975 to 2004. Child sexual abuse was widespread then, the report found.

Liam McGlynn, a retired public official, thinks that it was no accident that so many child abusers found their way into the priesthood in Ireland.

The prevalence of the problem, he says, suggests that there were "people who were aware that the best place to abuse children was under the cover of the church. What better cover could you hope for?"

He emphasizes that that's only his personal opinion, but he observes that an entire generation has been turned off by the scandal.

"Virtually no young people go to church. The main churchgoers would be my generation, still, and older," says McGlynn, who is 57. "The church has lost an entire generation."

"I haven't been to church for quite some time. My faith has been seriously damaged," he adds.

He's part of a much broader trend, says Patsy McGarry, religious affairs correspondent for the Irish Times newspaper.

More than 90 percent of Irish people attended mass at least once a week in the 1970s. Today the figure is about half that, he says.

"The church has lost working-class urban Ireland," he says.

The faithful were shocked and disgusted to learn that Irish bishops had covered up abuse in the name of protecting the church and its priests, he says.

For loyal Catholics, the most disappointing revelation, McGarry says, was "to have it exposed that bishops behaved in contravention of canon [church] law -- as was the case -- in contravention of civil law -- as was the case -- but also, and above all, in contravention of moral law. It blew them out of the water."

He saw proof of the change in attitude towards the Catholic Church just this week, he says, when he went to a St. Patrick's Day parade in his hometown in rural Ireland.

"There were two bishops, a retired one and his successor, and there was none of the deference [shown to them] that would have been there when I was growing up in that same small town. Deference to bishops has practically disappeared in Ireland," he says.

That's a very fundamental shift, he observes.

Once, bishops "had a unique status in Ireland, far higher than any government minister," McGarry says.

"The bishop was a supreme being. ... He had an unequaled and unchallenged status in Ireland," he says.

"It'll be quite some time" before the church regains its moral authority in Ireland, McGarry predicts. "I mean, this is a deeply damaged institution because its behavior has been exposed as immoral."

But the church will survive in some form, he says.

"If you're asking me, is this the end of Roman Catholicism in Ireland, it is not. What it is, is the end of a form of the Roman Catholic Church we've had in Ireland for about 150 years," he says.

From now on, the church will need to involve more women and more lay people, as opposed to clergy, in running its affairs, both as a response to the crisis and as a simple matter of demographics, given that a generation has turned its back on the church, McGarry says.

Pope Benedict XVI is due to intervene in the crisis within days.

He is expected to release his official statement on the abuse scandal Saturday, in the form of a pastoral letter to the Irish faithful.

Abuse victim John Kelly says the statement will need to be far-reaching indeed to satisfy him.

"We need him to say that he will get rid of all bishops and cardinals who were involved in the cover-up of the abuse of children and start again," he says.

"If it means all the bishops and cardinals have to go from Ireland, so be it," he says. "Ireland would be a better place for it, and the church would certainly be a better place for it."

Journalist Bridget Fallon in Dublin contributed to this report.

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