True Friendship
"A friend loves at all times"1.
I remember years ago how a friend said that some people are "cursed with the affliction to give advice." I had no idea what he meant. Sure sounded strange to me. Now I understand. He was talking about unsolicited advice; that is, giving advice where it is neither asked for nor wanted.
According to Webster's Dictionary, people "offering unwanted advice or services" are officious. I think that word is close to "obnoxious." Such advice can be thinly veiled criticism.
I'm not talking about going to a lawyer, an accountant, a car mechanic, or whatever when we need professional advice. What I'm talking about is when we share our struggles and feelings with a friend and they have a compulsion to tell us what we should or shouldn't do, or how we should or shouldn't feel. They are in fact putting us down in that they are assuming that they know our needs and understand our situation better than we do ourselves.
Even when some people want advice about a personal issue, it is more effective not to give it to them, but help them come up with their own options and solutions.
A good counselor doesn't tell people what they should or shouldn't do. He helps them see for themselves what they need to do.
What I want from a friend when I am feeling in the pits, is someone to listen to me with their heart, to give me their presence, and accept me as I am, and let me know that they care—not try to fix me—or someone who will weep with me when I weep. Such friends may be rare but they are worth their weight in gold.
In his book, Out of Solitude, Henri Nouwen wrote, "When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."
Suggested prayer: "Dear God, please help me to be a true friend and to be there for those who are hurting, not to give them advice or try to fix them or resolve their problems, but to listen to them, accept their feelings, give them my presence, love them, and be as Jesus to them. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."
1. Proverbs 17:17 (NIV).
Politics & FDA clearance of 2 stem cell clinic COVID-19 efforts
ReplyDeleteFDA is doing better job on unproven stem cell clinics, but it has cleared many INDs, some iffy, for stem cell and cellular medicine trials for COVID-19.
The FDA and its CBER branch have been doing a good job overall in the last 3+ years to tackle the unproven stem cell clinic problem, but lately on the stem cells for COVID-19 front there is reason for real concern.
I believe the agency is taking on major risk overall by clearing a vast number of cell therapy trials for COVID-19 mostly without much data, but the clearance of a few programs by for-profit stem cell clinics is especially problematic in my view.
FDA on the ball more generally on clinics
For background and on the positive, the FDA is taking the problem of the stem cell clinic industry very seriously and taking action on clinic firms that are injecting patients with unapproved stem cell drugs.
It has sent off dozens of untitled and warning letters to clinic firms pitching unproven stem cells and other regenerative biologics like exosomes. The agency’s biologics branch called CBER is really on the ball on this these days. Its Director Peter Marks deserves big kudos for the serious commitment and marathon work here over many years to make things happen on this problem. Dr. Marks was the subject of an interesting piece in the WaPo by Laurie McGinley recently: Meet the most important federal official you probably don’t know — the man who holds the fate of the coronavirus vaccine in his hands.