The Life Challenges Podcast
Modern-day issues from a Biblical perspective.
The Life Challenges Podcast
What’s Trending? Assisted Suicide Implant, Artificial Blood, RFK Jr. and the Vaccine “Establishment” and more
Modern medical advances often solve one ethical dilemma while creating new ones. The question isn't just whether we can implement cutting-edge technologies, but whether we should—and what considerations must guide these momentous decisions.
Consider Japan's promising artificial blood trials, a direct response to their dramatically aging population and declining birth rates. With younger generations shrinking and fewer blood donors available, this innovation could extend blood shelf-life from weeks to years. Yet at $5,000-$9,000 per unit compared to $215 for donated blood, such solutions highlight healthcare disparities between wealthy and developing nations where blood supplies may only reach 40% of needed amounts.
Meanwhile, the average age of American mothers has risen to 27.5 years—reflecting a societal shift toward delayed parenthood. This seemingly innocuous trend carries sobering consequences: maternal mortality rates quadruple after age 40, infant mortality increases by 50%, and severe health complications rise significantly. Beyond statistics lie family dynamics as well—when parents have children later, grandparents may lack the energy to provide much-needed childcare support, creating cascading effects across generations.
Perhaps most disturbing is Philip Nitschke's latest proposal—an implantable chip allowing early-stage dementia patients to end their lives before cognitive decline progresses. This device would require daily deactivation, raising profound questions about autonomy, memory, and what constitutes informed consent when someone's mental capacity fluctuates. Is forgetting you once wanted to die a problem requiring technological intervention, or a blessing that allows continued experiencing of life?
These technological developments reflect deeper societal values. Whether discussing artificial blood, delayed parenthood, or end-of-life technology, we face fundamental questions about how we value human life at various stages and conditions. Join us as we navigate these challenging ethical intersections with compassion, critical thinking, and consideration of both scientific evidence and spiritual values.
SHOW NOTES:
Assisted Suicide Implant for Dementia Patients: https://tinyurl.com/22dcf5u2 accessed 6-7-25
Trials for Artificial Blood: https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/japan-to-begin-clinical-trials-for-artificial-blood-this-year/
Average Age of U.S. Moms Giving Birth Rises: https://tinyurl.com/23fxth87 accessed 6-16-25
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On today's episode with everybody. But they're not being generally replaced or supplemented by children being born. They have a very low fertility rate not the lowest, but very low, very much below replacement levels and generally speaking, it's younger people who donate blood, which means that as the population ages, there's going to be a much greater desire or need for donated blood than there will be people around to donate that blood.
Paul Snamiska:Welcome to the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. People today face many opportunities and struggles when it comes to issues of life and death, marriage and family, health and science. We're here to bring a fresh biblical perspective to these issues and more. Join us now for Life Challenges.
Christa Potratz:Hi and welcome back. I'm Krista Potratz and I'm here today with Pastors Bob Fleischman and Jeff Samuelson, and today we're going to talk about our monthly what's Trending, our current events episode. We wanted to just start with the we talked about it a few months back a Georgia woman who was on life support but was pregnant, and we touched on the implications of that. But she's now, since has delivered her baby or they've delivered it in the hospital, definitely a passive situation there. Yeah, so through C-section she has now had the baby.
Jeff Samelson:And again, as of today, I have a feeling, by the time this airs, things will have changed. Today, you know, I have a feeling, by the time this airs, things will have changed. Now they're at the point of deciding okay, what do we do as far as um, disconnecting her from, from the life support which, uh, last I saw they no decision had been made yet, although it seems inevitable, given that she's been declared brain dead and has been so for quite a few months now. Obviously, the family that she has is still very much holding on, and now they have the you know something joyful to attach to that. They have a new child to love and to care for, just as that woman would have loved to care for that. That child and I that's, that's one of the real nice bright spots here is at the hospital. Even though it was not technically required to, it still made sure that that child had a chance at life and that honored the mother's wishes and desires, even though she was brain dead.
Bob Fleischmann:Yeah, and even though the child was delivered quite premature, the child lives and would not have lived otherwise.
Christa Potratz:So I just wanted to give an update on that story, and so another one that we wanted to talk about was assisted suicide implant for dementia patients, and, bob, this is one that you had brought to our attention, and I think it was in the article to the same person that was behind the pods that we had talked about in a previous episode too.
Jeff Samelson:No relation to podcasting, just to be clear. No.
Christa Potratz:But these so-called death pods where you could go in and, I guess, push a button and gas would be released, and so this, I think, came from the same person.
Bob Fleischmann:Yeah, philip Nitschke created the death pod and that was in Switzerland. It was used at one time we covered that on an earlier story and Switzerland now has forbade its use. But he has been proposing an implantable chip for people who have maybe early onstage dementia. So the concern is that, before it gets too bad, they want to give these people the right to have this chip released like a poison or something to bring an end to their life. They're bringing an end to their life and there's a lot of ramifications, for how do you make something like that work, and you know the safety precautions of what they have integrated into it, but it's showing you the direction that everything is going. There's a couple of things of concern Now.
Bob Fleischmann:Those of you who know me well know I'm a big, very big fan of technology. I love technology. There's people always concerned about the fact that you know you have devices on your arm and in your pocket and in your home that listen to you and give you the weather and the time and you can order things and all that kind of stuff. Well, they've been talking about implantable chips for years. You know, you just have to. You don't have to carry a wallet, you just, you know, wave this, you know, chip in your arm over the sensor and you've paid for your purchases. And if you got kidnapped or lost, we could find you. They already do it with pets and so forth.
Bob Fleischmann:So for Nitschke to have come out and said you know, I think we should be able to put these chips in people so that their life can come to an end. They don't want to see it deteriorate with advanced dementia, I think he's going to find again a circle of people who are going to like the idea. I'd read deeper on his plans and how he was going to do this. He's going to use himself as a guinea pig, but he's only going to use it with a saline or a salt solution.
Bob Fleischmann:And what it does is you know, you get this inserted in you and then every day it sets off a little bit of an alarm. So you have to tell it no, no, not today. You know, and you keep doing this down the line. And then it even has safety precautions that if you forget, like I didn't hear the alarm, you know, can you imagine? You know the panic. Well, I didn't hear the alarm, I don't want this to go off, but he's going to do that, and then one day he's just going to let it go off and see if that automatically releases the it.
Jeff Samelson:So right now this sounds like Twilight Zone nutcase, but I can guarantee you 10 years from now it's going to land in some legislative initiative someplace described it, his latest invention would be implanted into the person's body, most likely in the leg, and fitted with a timer that admits a beeping sound and vibration as a daily reminder to deactivate it. And before I read any further, I was just like, oh, I can't imagine anything that could go wrong with that I know, especially since you're giving these to dementia patients.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, well, I mean old people. They're hard of hearing, they've got all sorts of different pains, especially since you're giving these to dementia patients. Protagonist wakes up groggy and finds out that he's been implanted with this thing and it's like if you don't do what we say and check in every 12 hours, we're going to set this off and you're going to die. It's like, okay, maybe that's the kind of thing where he got the idea.
Jeff Samelson:But the thing is, it's one of these things where it's a solution looking for a problem, even if you accept the premise that no longer wanting to live, but being prevented from taking your own life that that's a real thing or should be. If someone has reached a stage of dementia where he or she is no longer aware or has forgotten the desire that he or she once had to not live this way, then there is no problem. Once had to not live this way, then there is no problem because there is no disconnect between the individual's desires and the individual's reality. It's not a problem. It's only a problem for the past self, not for the present self. But again, what Bob mentions like get people talking about it. Eventually they get used to it.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, I think too.
Christa Potratz:The paragraph that jumped out at me too was when Nischke it says says the proposal is meant to address a growing problem Individuals with early stage dementia who support assisted suicide but fear they will lose capacity before being able to act, and kind of you know like what you were saying too, like this growing problem that's out there, that these people are going to just forget, oh, that I wanted to die, and that it's our job, as like the good Samaritans or society, to remind them that they really wanted to die this way that they wanted to have that control, that today was the day I was going to kill myself.
Jeff Samelson:But I got up and there was this thing that needed to be done and this other thing, and then I got interested in this thing and you know what, by the time I got to the end of the day, I had forgotten I wanted to kill myself. We would count that as a win, a great big positive, not a problem that she forgot she wanted to die. But what's true with this 25-year-old apparently isn't true with a dementia patient that if they wanted to die and they forgot it, that's a problem.
Bob Fleischmann:Now, one of the problems you get with assisted suicide mentality is a lot of times even well-meaning Christians will buy into the notion that, well, it's not for me. But if they want to be that way, then fine, we can make it legalized. If they want to off themselves, let them go ahead and do that. First of all, please don't be so simple as to think that way. You create a tenor in society when this kind of stuff goes on.
Bob Fleischmann:You know, when Jack Kevorkian created this dumb little three-bottle contraption, you know, and created this dumb little three-bottle contraption, you know, and led Janet Atkins into the back of the van back in I think it was 1990 or 91, so that she could end her life. I mean, it was the stuff of jokes. People joked about it because everything about it was a rundown van. He slept on a mattress on the floor. I remember reading the article in the Detroit Free Press. But the reality is today, not only do we have a number of states that have legalized assisted suicide, maybe sanitized it to some degree, but now you get people, good people, christian people, who begin to start buying into the mentality. It has zero support in Scripture. No one's bothered to ask what God thinks about this, but instead the religion that Nishke is part of, which is humanism it's all about us just keeps pushing their religion on all of us and then in the end we're going to find people led astray.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, it'll be interesting. I thought we had seen it all with the death pods. What comes next here? Well, another article that we wanted to talk about was one that Jeff had brought up, with trials for artificial blood that are being done, I believe, in Japan, right.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, this was interesting. It's not something I had heard about before and I realized I should have heard about this. This seems like a pretty natural kind of thing for people to be looking into. No-transcript are pretty good about donating blood and it's fairly well distributed, although from time to time there are going to be shortages or they're not going to have enough of the special type that certain people need and things, but generally speaking, it's not at a crisis stage, but generally speaking, in lower income nations, fewer people donate their blood and so those nations have to ration it. They don't have enough. They can't give it to all the people who might otherwise benefit from having it when they're in the hospital or having surgery or they've had an accident or something like that.
Jeff Samelson:The reason why Japan in particular, is looking into this is what I found particularly interesting, which is that Japan and I believe we've mentioned this on this podcast before they are aging rapidly and what that means is that people are getting old, which happens with everybody, but they're not being generally replaced or supplemented by children being born. They have a very low fertility rate not the lowest, but very low, very much below replacement levels and generally speaking, it's younger people who donate blood, which means that as the population ages, there's going to be a much greater desire or need for donated blood than there will be people around to donate that blood. And so by creating this artificial blood they're going to assuming that it works, whatever they're going to be able to solve the problem of not having enough to do this and one of the nice things, at least one of the particular trials they're trying it won't even matter what type of blood you need, which will be a real benefit as well.
Bob Fleischmann:Typical blood can be stored 21 to 42 days and there is another, a second procedure for creating what they call artificial blood, which involves taking cells out of the bone marrow. And the problem with that is, again, it only has a shelf life of 21 to 42 days. This new Japanese approach involves literally almost like freeze-drying it and it has a shelf life of as little as two years to several years. And the only negative really of it now from the way that they're promoting it typical blood costs about $215, and the comparative amount of the artificial blood is about $5,000 to $9,000. But they feel that with making more of it at one time it's going to come along. I think it has real promise and I liked when at one time it's going to come along. I think it has real promise.
Bob Fleischmann:And I liked when Jeff sent the note around for us to look at because he wrote it was a little bit obscure. It was kind of like. I kind of liked the fertility angle or something. And so I'm reading the article expecting to see something on, you know, like a boosted sperm rate or something like that. But no, it's actually it's because it's a very practical problem and you see it especially in underdeveloped countries where they only have about a 40% stock of what they need. I guess in developed countries it's right around 70% or 80%, but in undeveloped countries it's like 40% stock percent, but in undeveloped countries it's like 40 percent stock, and so a product like this and then you combine that with like a South Korean problem, which has the lowest fertility rate, or Japanese problem, or even a US problem because we have a below replacement rate birth rate, this holds a lot of promise. This is kind of one of those advancements that you get kind of excited about.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, no, it was really interesting and I think too like was it in the article as well, like it said, you know, because in Japan specifically, it was like how you mentioned, like for 65 and up, is where they primarily use the blood for those individuals, and I think was it like underdeveloped countries or in different places where it's typically like you use the blood for kids, that are five and under right, and so that was just real interesting as well.
Christa Potratz:But I think you know another article then that we also wanted to touch on that deals a little bit with the fertility rate and different things too is that the average age of US mothers now giving birth is rising. So I believe it maybe was about, or closer to, 25 years of age back in I don't know maybe like 10 to 15 years ago, but now it has risen and is getting a little closer to 30, right.
Bob Fleischmann:Yeah, it's up to 27.5. And I think one of the things to remember is that when the average age is 27.5, that tells you you've got an increasingly large number of mothers in their 30s and even into their 40s. And it raises questions about problems. Now, back when we were starting a family, everyone was talking about. You know, it gets really dangerous after 35 to have a child, because it can create problems for the child and it creates added risk for the mother. And that's where we are, because a lot of people have wanted to get their career on board, they've wanted to get to know each other better before they have children. You know even couples, when they you know we've talked before about people who don't want children but a growing number of couples us pastors, when we've done pre-marriage counseling, we've all heard it you know where they. Well, okay, we want to start a family, but not yet. You know those kinds of things and you've got to remember that waiting quantifiably comes with risks and you have to ask yourself you know, how far am I willing to go with the risk? And the risk is both to child and to mother and there are obviously different kinds of risks, but they do affect both and the numbers are astounding really. They've always said that the benchmark is under 30 or under 35. You know, that's kind of like normal. And they say that infant mortality for birth mothers 35 to 39 goes up to 6.5 deaths per 1,000 births. Okay, and then if you're a birth mother between 40 to 49, that number rises almost 50% to 9.3.
Bob Fleischmann:But let's talk maternal mortality. If you're a mother, the chances of you dying in childbirth between the ages of 25 and 39 is 3.1 out of 10,000 births. So it's pretty nil. If you're over the age of 40, that now rises to 13.9 out of 10,000 births. So that number quadruples really. And then severe maternal morbidity, which is like really health complications. From 35 to 39, a mother has 17.9 out of 1,000 births. She's going to have some problems. If she's 40 to 44, that jumps to 23. So the numbers are always going up and you have to be aware of it.
Bob Fleischmann:And the statistics in this case statistics don't lie. You either live or you die. Either the baby is born alive or the baby dies. Either the mother dies or the mother lives or the mother has complications. These are fairly solid statistics. I'm not aware of anybody questioning them. That depends on whether it was a full moon or a half moon or all sorts of other crazy things, and so it's alarming. And as a father who had all of his children young, you know my five daughters were born before I was 30. I'm having a grand old time with my grandchildren who are already in high school. I mean it's just, it's a fun experience. So I mean there is that added incentive to still have them young. I would say I got my career pretty much on track still with that kind of schedule. The point is is that we're interested in doing what is safe, and this is something you have something to do about. I mean, you make a conscious decision to wait and you've got to balance it out. Is it at what cost decision to wait?
Jeff Samelson:and you got to balance it out. Is it at what cost, chris? I mean I think we can assume you're probably a bit more likely to be in tune with younger women and what they're thinking and such. Do you think that it's generally understood or even known by you? Know women age 25 and older how much the risks increase when they put off having children until later?
Christa Potratz:And so as I started kind of nearing that age with my final pregnancy and had other friends in similar areas and stuff, then you are more aware of that, you like see more celebrities like having babies later and stuff, you just kind of think, oh, you're not really thinking about the risk. And that's not really something that I think people that is made known to people.
Bob Fleischmann:And people do play the odds. I mean they. And then, plus, to just remember this, a lot of the celebrities they didn't have, their babies, just remember this a lot of the celebrities they didn't have their babies.
Christa Potratz:They hired somebody to have their babies. No, and what we kind of maybe forget too with with like younger people I mean people that are in their twenties and like early twenties and stuff too those people are amazing. They can just do more. I could do more when I was in my 20s and so raising kids and going to school or raising kids and having a, starting your career and that type of thing those people are amazing and they have. They have the energy to do it too, and so they're just. There is more, more energy. I think that the younger moms have too.
Jeff Samelson:And just connecting some, some dots here. Bob talked about, you know, having kids young enough to now. You know he. You know, before he's a too much of a geezer he can still play with his.
Christa Potratz:Those were your words, right.
Jeff Samelson:You know, enjoy the company of his grandchildren. That's another one of the things that people are not forgetting, because it's not just that as you age, you get less energy. Your parents definitely have less energy, and one of the things the article mentioned was that lack of childcare is one of the things that, or affordable childcare is cited as one of the reasons that people put off having kids Because it's like, well, we can't afford it when we're too young. But the thing is, by waiting so long to have children, you eliminate having your parents, the kids' grandparents as help for your child care situation, because they no longer have the energy to watch your kids the way they would have if you had had your kids when they were still in their 50s or early 60s. I don't see those dots connected very often and they probably should be.
Bob Fleischmann:There's not a biblical mandate that says by a certain age you should have children. But when we gather this kind of information, we become aware of it. You know, we just kind of ask ourselves you know, kind of it's kind of everything else. I mean, you use some logic when you decided to wait having children because of my career, okay, well then that same logic has to scoop in the additional information that it becomes more dangerous for you and the child. And right now we're just sharing this with you, so you know.
Christa Potratz:The last thing that we kind of wanted to touch on today too, was what RFK Jr is doing to the vaccine establishment. So I think our listeners will be interested to know what's going on with that.
Jeff Samelson:Those people who are vaccine skeptics are probably cheering all of this. But we're not vaccine skeptics here. We are certainly in favor of being careful, being well-informed and such, but a lot of the things that people point to to say, aha, this is why vaccines are bad, this is why nobody should have them, or why all these recommendations are off. A lot of that's based on either no science at all or bad science and in many cases also bad theology and not maligning anybody who has strong feelings or convictions about these things. People can make their decisions or whatever. But when we're talking at the national level of policy and what is not simply just what is provided by the government, but also what is what information the government puts out there, what recommendations it's able to make and things like that what it's able to make possible or available, that's not just a decision you're making for yourself, I mean, that's made for everybody. And so it's of concern that a lot is being done right now to undo what has been put into place in the past for the nation's good.
Bob Fleischmann:You know it's interesting because during the pandemic and everything, when we at Christian Life Resources released our statement on vaccines, a lot of terrible things were said and got a lot of bad mail and that kind of stuff.
Bob Fleischmann:I don't retract any of it that we wrote in it, but at the same time I do find it interesting sitting in the bleachers watching this going on in Washington, because I try, and a lot of people, because everyone either reads what I write or listens to what I say and develops a kind of a bias as to how they think I am. I think I'm far more objective than most people would give me credit for, and that is so. I'm watching this and I'm going. So what if RFK is right? Let's just say he's right. So first thing he does is he fires the 17-member advisory panel. Okay, so I did a deep dive on the 17-member advisory panel. Do you know? You can hardly identify who they are. It's almost like a secret, and some of them were on the payroll for some pharmaceuticals, which, of course, isn't part of the controversy that's going on now with publishing papers and finding out that you were being funded and stuff by a pharmaceutical. My point is okay, he may have had an argument that we need to clean house Now it wasn't like he replaced them with experts on vaccines and immunology and that kind of stuff. Not all of them were.
Bob Fleischmann:Personally, when I looked at the new panel, I'm not going to say I was too overly concerned. I think media made more of it than they should. But I do have a problem in that you know, when you walk into something presuming everything was fine and now you just came and screwed it up or everything was wrong and now you're coming in to make it better, you know finally, pretty much both sides are wrong. My flags go up whenever I see house cleaning, whenever they throw them all out. My flags go up whenever I see housecleaning, whenever they throw them all out, because I remember counseling a synodical president once. I just said to him I go, I think you should form a kitchen cabinet and I think you should put on it one or two people that you absolutely cannot stand. They're contrary to you on everything, because you need people like that to kind of keep you balanced.
Bob Fleischmann:And I do think you know the anti-vax people based on what they've written to me and stuff like that. Some of them are just, they lack logic, they lack foundation, they're more ideological than they are, theological, that kind of stuff. But at the same time some raise some interesting points and I think it's good to listen to him and I would hope that RFK Jr would kind of like he had a 17-member panel. I think he's down to an eight or a nine-member panel. It'd be nice if he brought back a couple of the other guys just to keep it balanced a little bit. On a subject like this, you want to have kind of a good knockdown argument about it. Again, I have not seen anything published that has made me want to take back what we wrote, what we released, but I do think that they've offered perspectives that need to be looked at and I think RFK Jr could do that if he's balanced. But we'll see. You know, I'm just I'm not convinced yet that he's going to be balanced.
Jeff Samelson:His past life does not give much of a hint of balance.
Bob Fleischmann:He's said some good things since coming in A few good things. But yeah, his past being I, was not in favor of his selection for it. But we'll see.
Christa Potratz:Do you think, just kind of like, given I don't know, I mean you know, I mean Trump came in, you know very much to going to clean house, going to just completely flip everything over, I mean, do you think that kind of played into some of this too? Or I mean, was that just kind of always how it was going to kind of go with him?
Jeff Samelson:I think it certainly kind of gave permission to him. You know the sense of well, they're doing this in all these other departments. I should be able to do it here. You know whether he would have done that regardless, I suspect.
Bob Fleischmann:That he probably still would have done it, but I think under the guise of Doge and stuff like that they were doing house cleaning.
Bob Fleischmann:There was enough outcry about vaccines that there does need to be more transparency. First of all, I wish some of the people who wrote me some very harsh and nasty letters would dig deeper. I did, because some of the stuff they wrote me was just plain, outright wrong and they were just overlooking or seeing what they wanted to see and ignoring what they should see. But at the same time, some of this information, like, for example, it bothered me greatly. Some of this information, like, for example, it bothered me greatly when I set out to find. I just wanted to know.
Bob Fleischmann:My question was who are the 17 people on the panel originally? Who appointed them and what ties did they have to companies, you know, pharmaceuticals or what? There were probably six or eight that I still could not find. It's just not out there. It's just not out there, it's just not readily available. That bothers me. I mean, I'm sure somebody, if they're listening to it, could probably find the list and give it to me and so forth. And there were some people who had some ties to pharmaceuticals. Nothing much but some ties. But you know, that's kind of like checking out on my objectivity on Scripture and finding out. If I have ties to a religious church body, of course you're going to have some ties to some degree, so that doesn't necessarily bother me. But the transparency part you know that I'm in favor of. The problem is if someone's going to come out against vaccines and so forth. You know I want the information so transparent out there that sometimes you have to dismiss some people as just not knowing what they're talking about.
Christa Potratz:That's all we have time for today. I want to thank you both for all the information on these different topics, and we thank all of our listeners too, for joining us, and if you have any questions on any of these topics, you can reach us at lifechallengesus, and we look forward to seeing you back next time. Thanks a lot, bye.
Paul Snamiska:Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it and sharing it with friends. We're sure you have questions on today's topic or other life issues. Our goal is to help you through these tough topics and we want you to know we're here to help. You can submit your questions, as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes, at lifechallengesus or email us at podcast at christianliferesourcescom. In addition to the podcasts, we include other valuable information at lifechallengesus, so be sure to check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit christianliferesourcescom. May God give you wisdom, love, strength and peace in Christ for every life challenge.
