This Blog considers assisted suicide/euthanasia, bioethics, human cloning, biotechnology, radical environmentalism, and the dangers of animal rights/liberation. My views expressed here, as in my books and other writings, reflect my understanding that the philosophy of human exceptionalism is the bedrock of universal human rights. Or, to put it another way: human life matters. (The opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of any organization with which I am affiliated.)
I know this is getting old, but I wrote a wrap up piece for the Center for Bioethics and Culture newsletter about the Fox ads. I think it is a pretty good summary. Check it out.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 11:58 AM
4 Comments
I am a Senior Fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics at the Discovery Institute and the author of 12 books, including A Rat Is A Pig Is A Dog Is A Boy, which is relevant to the issues considered by this blog.
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4 Comments:
Good article, Wesley. But you pulled two punches.
1 - Do you really think Fox's overmedication was inadvertent?
2 - I remember the Washington Post article you talk about very clearly and I would have described it in much harsher terms. The purpose of the fairy-tale story wasn't to give people hope in a hopeless situation, which really isn't all that bad. It was to make people support the research the doctor wanted to do. He felt justified in lying about the possible uses for embryonic stem cells in order to get that support.
1. In such matters I like to give people the benefit of the doubt unless there is a compelling reason not to. Moreover, I think it would be foolhardy to overmedicate oneself, and I doubt whether Fox is foolhardy. That being said, I doubt the producers minded.
2. I interpreted it as biotechnologists permitting people to believe something that wasn't true to win a political debate.
Thanks, Laura (southernxyl).
I haven't been reading daily and I first was wondering if this was about Rupert Murdock's network, but it is about the actor with Parkinsons.
Laetrile also offered (and I would guess still offers) hope. It doesn't offer a cure.
But there is a dark side. There was a TV program called "Friday the 13th, the Series" which had nothing to do with the movies, but was about cursed antiques.
One was a glove that appeared to cure, but instead only transferred diseases. A TV Preacher found it and would cure someone - only to have to find a hobo who would die quickly and horribly of the disease. He ended up dying when he couldn't find a victim to transfer a "cure" to.
I almost want to see an ad where they discuss a cure for someone suffering like Fox and it comes down "I want the cure at any cost", whereupon they enter a room with a pentagram, candles, a very sharp knife, and a newborn baby wailing. The master of ceremonies assures the patient the baby has an incurable disease and will die in a few days anyway and was neither planned nor wanted.
Hope. Cure. Damnation.
That's okay. I put Mr. Fox's full name in the post to avoid that problem. I had someone write me the other day for objective information about breathing other people's cigarette smoke. She thought Secondhand Smoke was about secondhand smoke.
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