Soma May be Closer Than You Think

Aldous Huxley was one powerful prophet. Back in 1932, in Brave New World, he warned us that in the future, rather than experience true emotions, humanity would instead opt for the feel good drug soma. ("Was and will make me ill, I take one gram and only am.") Imagine: No more grief; no more anger; no more disappointment, but also, no more excitement, no more courage, no more love, e.g., no more truly human living.

My friend Caille Millner, an author and editorial writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, has a good piece about all of this in today's paper regarding a drug that may dull the intensity of human living. In "Drugging Our Memories," she writes:

RESEARCHERS claim this drug isn't like the ones in "Men in Black" or "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," but it seems awfully similar: a beta-blocker that's being studied for its ability to disrupt painful memories as they're being made. It's called propranolol, and at the moment it's just used to fight hypertension. Scientists noticed, however, that it also had the effect of inhibiting the chemical rush of adrenaline that makes intense memories--good and bad--cling to our minds with such force...The idea of the propranolol is to render those events--just the worst ones, researchers hope--less vividly.

Millner explains why this concerns her:

It takes hard work to build happiness amid a world gone mad. In the instance of grief and trauma, it takes patience, time and a life full of pain and sadness until those feelings transform into things that are different and more complex -- and not necessarily free of pain, either. In the land of the quick fix, the get-rich-quick scheme, the 4 a.m. wish-your-way-to-weight-loss infomercial, popping a pill seems more attractive.

The problem of human suffering is one that matters a lot. One of our human duties, it seems to me, is to help each other carry our heavy burdens (and share in each other's joys). But moving toward the "soma solution" would not only be to take us off of the hook for caring for each other, but could doom humanity to infantilization, since it is through our reaction to pain that we often grow and gain wisdom. Millner concludes:

A large part of what makes us human comes from the lessons we choose to take from our emotional experience--how it shapes our values, refines our beliefs and motivates us to make changes in our lives. It's the touchstone for how we tell right from wrong--the horrible things that we do to each other only become horrible once we remember our emotional responses to them. If we can't remember how horrible things are, we'll be less motivated to make--and be--the changes we need.

Chimp Denied Legal Guardian

Thank goodness. An Austrian judge refused to appoint a guardian for a chimpanzee in a court case. From the story in Nature Network:

An Austrian judge turned down a request this week to appoint a woman as legal guardian of a chimpanzee. The decision is a blow to a growing movement in Europe attempting to give apes some of the legal rights of humans, such as protection from being owned...In a trustee court hearing on 24 April, the judge denied the request. She said that if she appointed a legal guardian for a chimp, then this might create the public perception that humans with court-appointed legal guardians are at the same level as animals.

But of course, that is precisely what animal liberationists believe. Moreover, just because one judge had good sense, doesn't mean that the nation of Spain does. As the story notes, that country may be on the verge of granting human-type rights to great apes. If so, legal attempts such as this failed one, would only multiply. And remember, a Brazilian judge recently awarded a (dead) chimpanzee a writ of habeas corpus.

Animal liberationists and others are ideologically driven to destroy human exceptionalism as the reigning value of organized society. Expect continued efforts to elevate animals to the level of humans in courts, legislatures, and among the folk, and actions large and small, legal and illegal, to impede the proper and humane use of animals by humans. This struggle--which is really about human self definition since the animals don't even comprehend what is going on--has barely just begun.

Yes, of course, there will be an appeal.

Adult Stem Cells Also Good for Basic Research

One of the arguments made in favor of human cloning research, is that we need to be able to make cloned human embryonic stem cells in order to study disease processes. Frankly, this is the best argument for permitting cloning, rather than the CURES! CURES! CURES hype--which may well never materialize. However Big Biotech's propagandists know that advocating for bench science won't overcome people's unease with cloning human life; hence the misdirection into cloning as a "self repair kit," to quote Ron Reagan's ridiculous speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention.

It is in this context that I bring up an interesting experiment in which Canadian scientists created "leukemia stem cells" from normal human blood and injected them into mice to study the disease (again showing the necessity of medical research with animals). From the story:

Imagine if scientists could peer into the blood and see the very first aberrant cells that will give birth to leukemia and then watch as the disease slowly progresses and takes over the body. Well, Canadian researchers have done just that--converted normal human blood cells into leukemia stem cells, then transplanted them into lab mice and witnessed the disease unfold...

The groundbreaking research involved infecting cells from umbilical cord blood with a virus engineered to carry one of the genes known to cause certain types of leukemia. The genetic alteration created primitive leukemia stem cells, which were then injected into specially bred lab mice. All of the animals--bred with no immune system, so their bodies do not reject human cells--developed leukemia with the same characteristics and patterns experienced by people with the disease, say the researchers, whose study was published Thursday in the journal Science. "We actually created leukemia stem cells," said Dick. "And we could show that they actually arose, at least in this model, from a very primitive cell."

I am not asserting that adult stem cells will be able to do anything and everything that cloned embryonic stem cells theoretically could. But I am saying that this experiment clearly demonstrates that adult stem cells are not only beneficial for potential regenerative therapies, but also basic bench science about disease processes. This clear truth should now be plugged into the overall ethical analysis about the propriety of human cloning research.

The New Eugenics: Eventually No Babies Will Be Allowed to be Born

My partially tongue in cheek headline is in reaction to a story--yet again from Brave New Britain--of embryo screening employed to prevent a child from being born who might contract adult onset cancer--in this case, of the breast. Look how fast we have gone from using genetic selection to prevent birth defects and disease in infancy, to sex selection, to seeking to control fates in adulthood.

One can certainly understand and empathize with the desire to prevent a daughter from ever suffering breast cancer. But eventually we may be able to identify gene defects in each and every human being that increase the likelihood that he or she will eventually contract some dread disease. Not to mention, other conditions the "pain" caused by which some parents might not want their children to experience, such as propensity to obesity, diminutive stature, mental illness, Alzheimer's, Type 1 diabetes, homosexuality, etc. etc.

If this eugenic attitude continues, we could get to the point that we permit no babies to be born at all! After all, unless we are hit by a truck early on, we will all suffer--whether from a serious illness, a disability, or, perhaps, existential angst due to an inherent biological characteristic. I was teased mercilessly as an early adolescent because I was "husky." This was one of the most painful times of my life. Should my parents have prevented me from being born, if my propensity to gain weight is genetically based, to ensure that I would not experience the anguish of crying myself to sleep at night because my peers--worse, girls!--laughed at me? In the alternative, should I have been genetically engineered so I didn't have the propensity to, shall we say, "expand?" I say not: The awful experience of being a chubby and non athletic boy--which at the time I would have given anything to change--ultimately proved one of the most beneficial of my life: All that pain tempered my personality and gave me the gift of empathy.

Behind all of this, particularly among the biotechnologists, is there not a certain hubris, a desire to hyper-control every aspect of human life? But this desire to control the future--rather than live it--is ultimately doomed to failure. We are all born to die. Each of us is "defective" in some manner. Each of us, whether healthy or ill, able bodied or disabled, developmentally disabled or genius--plays a vital part in the human saga. Engaging in the new eugenics of embryo quality control is dehumanizing and an explicit denial of the joy and vitality of human diversity.

Michigan Poll: People Oppose All Human Cloning--But Just You Wait

This poll, published by the Michigan Catholic Conference, asked 500 likely voters in Michigan, their views on human cloning. The results were an overwhelming repudiation of cloning human life.

Not so fast, some might say. It is, after all, a Catholic-sponsored poll. But I believe the results are a consequence of accurate language in the poll questions--notoriously lacking in many polls sponsored by mainstream media outlets. In any event, here are a few results, and then a final comment:

The poll, which was taken April 15-16, 2007, revealed the following:

1. "Would you vote yes or no on a proposal that would eliminate Michigan's ban on the cloning of human embryos?" -Yes: 32 percent -No: 65 percent
   
2. "Do you support or oppose stem cell research that clones human embryos so the stem cells can be removed?" -Support: 34 percent -Oppose: 59 percent
3. "Do you support or oppose stem cell research that kills the human embryo so the stem cells can be removed?" - - Support: 25 percent - Oppose: 70 percent
4. "While I think we need to find cures for horrible diseases, I worry about the future if the cloning of human embryos is allowed" - Agree: 73 percent - Disagree: 22 percent

Michigan currently outlaws all human cloning, and as SHSers know, Big Biotech is mounting a major political campaign to reverse such state laws, having recently succeeded in Iowa. Legislation is currently pending in the MI legislature to this effect, but my sources tell me that it has little, if any chance, of passage.

The likely future scenario is a statewide initiative akin to Proposition 71 and Amendment 2. In this regard, opponents of human cloning should not take comfort in the poll. Remember, Big Biotech will pour tens of millions into a disinformation campaign to convince people that cloning isn't cloning and a cloned human embryo isn't really an embryo. The mainstream media will play Ginger Rodgers to BB's Fred Astaire. Michael J. Fox and other celebrity disease victims will pour into the state and children in wheelchairs will be presented on television begging for cures.

Still, the truth shall set us free. Despite a $30 million + campaign, Amendment 2 nearly lost because the people finally began to hear facts about human somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning instead of misleading spin. Still, MI opponents of human cloning should not be sanguine. I believe that a well-funded (easier said than done) pre-emptive and very public--and scientifically accurate--educational campaign should begin as soon as practicable before Big Biotech's Circus comes to town spreading misinformation and the hyped promise of CURES! CURES! CURES!

Talking Horse Sense About Adult Stem Cells

Bone marrow stem cells have apparently been helping to repair injuries in horses for some time. They are about to be tried in humans now. From the Reuters story in the Washington Post (good for it):

Stem cell therapy may be controversial in human medicine but in the world of horse racing it is becoming the odds-on favorite for tackling tendon damage, which accounts for one in three race course injuries.

An odd sentence for a story about adult stem cells, which are not at all controversial. But rather than go into conspiracy theory mode, let's continue:

In contrast to the controversial field of embryonic stem cell research, which involves the destruction of days-old embryos, the focus in the orthopaedic area is on adult mesenchymal stem cells that are found in bone marrow. These immature versions of normal cells can morph into different forms of tissue, such as bone, cartilage and tendon.

In the case of horses, Smith has developed a technique to extract stem cells from the animal's own sternum and then purify and multiply them in a laboratory. After two or three weeks they are injected back into the horse's tendon, where they regenerate new tissue that fills up ruptures caused by excessive exercise.

Amazing, those adult stem cells. Simply amazing.

ESCR: The Real Agenda Behind the Hype and Money

This strong editorial written by mainstream bioethicist Jonathan Moreno and colleagues at the well-funded and very left-leaning think tank, Center for American Progress, call for the overturning of President Bush's funding restrictions, giving several reasons for their call. The authors grouse that only some 20% of public funding of stem cell research goes to embryonic approaches and that the Bush policy causes researchers to engage in unnecessary redundancies to keep approved and disapproved stem cell lines separate.

Fair enough, I suppose. But much of this has to do with ethical controversies seen as significant to tens of millions of people, worries that the authors care about not a whit, as well as insufficient existing infrastructure, patent disputes that impede research, and the number of qualified grant applications received by the NIH. Moreover, the success of adult stem cell research--already in human trials in many areas--may also have much to do with this. Do the authors suggest diverting funds from research already showing great signs of success and into the more speculative, not to mention, controversial realms? It would seem so.

But this proposal for federal action really gave me a (bitter) laugh. Moreno and friends advocate:

The federal government should act quickly to create uniform regulatory guidelines and standards for stem cell research. Those guidelines should closely match those proposed in the National Academies (of Sciences) Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research.

Of course they do, since the NAS approach is essentially "anything goes," including creating natural and cloned embryos for use and destruction in stem cell research--as I detailed here in the Weekly Standard.

Here's the bottom line: The Feed Me $! crowd will never be happy until ESCR and human cloning are fully funded by the Feds and states, with no meaningful limitations on what can be done experimentally, and no more grousing about the moral value of nascent human life. They will not rest until those of us who worry about using embryos--and eventually cloned fetuses--as mere corn crops ripe for the harvest are marginalized to the sidelines so that the Brave New World project can really get into gear.

There is a lot of money pushing this advocacy, including for the CAP Bioethics Project. The mainstream media is completely in the tank. All the advocacy money has spooked politicians into stampede mode. States are competing with each other to see which can throw the most taxpayer dollars at this morally contentious and speculative research--based primarily on business concerns.

But in the end, I don't believe this controversy is really about the proper levels of public funding or the bother of having to use older stem cell lines in federally supported embryonic stem cell research. These are merely stalking horses for the real issue that drives nearly every bioethical controversy we examine here at SHS: Which value system--sanctity/equality of life or explicit/implied utilitarianism--will ultimately prevail in determining our values, our laws, and our private and public modes of conduct.

Brit Analysts Worry About Future Dominated by Utilitarian Bioethics

The Development Concepts and Doctrine Center, an independent think tank within the UK Department of Defense, has issued a paper predicting the challenges of the future. It is wide ranging, dealing with climate change, anti-Americanism in the context of a rising multi-polar world, and the impact of technology and bioethics on the future and the culture.

I found this paragraph on page 82 very interesting and prophetic:

A more permissive R&D environment could accelerate the decline of ethical constraints and restraints. The speed of technological and cultural change could overwhelm society's ability to absorb the ethical implications and to develop and apply national and international regulatory and legal controls. Such a regulatory vacuum would be reinforcing as states and commercial organisations race to develop and exploit economic, political and military advantage. The nearest approximation to an ethical framework could become a form of secular utilitarianism, in an otherwise amoral scientific culture.

The study doesn't get deeply into the potential consequences of such an ethical paradigm. But consider: If an unholy marriage of amorality/utilitarianism/commercialism becomes the reigning paradigm, the prospects for exploiting and oppressing the weakest and most vulnerable among us becomes a paramount concern. Already, a few rich buy organs from the poor; the parameters of what is considered "human" is being narrowed for political rather than scientific reasons, and the scientific/industrial complex has our major universities in the hip pocket of Big Biotech.

I remain optimistic, however. Human exceptionalism and the concomitant sanctity/equality of human life ethic is the antidote to amoral scientism and its attendant human reductionism that provides the rationalization for human commoditization. Let us attend.

HT: BioEdge

"Dignitas" To Finish Hate Crime With Assisted Suicide

The Swiss assisted suicide group that calls itself Dignitas--which helps kill you for a fee--has agreed to assist the suicide of a man who became quadriplegic in a hate crime. The man is depressed and wants to die--which ironically, would finish the job that the neo Nazis started when they attacked him. From the story:

A British construction worker who was paralysed from the neck down after being attacked by neo-Nazis near Berlin 11 years ago has announced plans to take his own life by the end of the year.

Noel Martin, 47, who rammed his car into a tree after far-right extremists hurled a 44lb concrete block at him in Mahlow, south of Berlin, has outlined his wishes in his autobiography, Call It My Life, to be published in Germany this week.

Martin told The Observer by telephone from his home in Edgbaston, Birmingham, that he felt he had nothing left to live for because his life had been reduced to being confined to a wheelchair and reliant on round-the-clock care.

'It's not a life, it's an existence,' he said. 'I can't feel anything, so I can't touch the world and can only watch as it passes by.'

Martin, a Briton of Jamaican origin, said that he had contacted Dignitas, the assisted-suicide clinic in Switzerland. 'They assessed my case and agreed that, based on my condition, my wish to die is justified.'

Assisted suicide is not about terminal illness when nothing else can be done to alleviate suffering. It is agreeing that others have lives not worth living or protecting. Worse, it is about giving moral permission to commit suicide and then facilitating the act. That's not compassion. It is abandonment. Let's hope that suicide prevention and disabled activists are able to intervene and dissuade Mr. Martin from allowing Dignitas to complete the earlier attempted murder that was perpetrated against him.

Assisted Suicides: "The Three Cs"

Assisted suicide advocates like to use that sound bite of all sound bites: "Choice." But there are three other "C-words" I like to focus on too: Context, consequences, and compassion--in the true root meaning of that wonderful word, which means to "suffer with."

This is a context moment: The USA is doing a terrible job, it seems, in regulating nursing homes and preventing our senior citizens from abuse. From the New York Times story:

Federal health officials impose only minimal penalties on nursing homes repeatedly cited for mistreatment of patients, Congressional investigators say in a new report. As a result, they said, some nursing homes cycle in and out of compliance with federal standards and pose a continued threat to the health and safety of patients.

"Some of these homes repeatedly harmed residents over a six-year period and yet remain in the Medicare and Medicaid programs," said the report, to be issued next week by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress.

The Department of Health and Human Services "fails to hold homes with a long history of harming residents accountable for the poor care provided," the investigators said.

If government cant protect seniors from abuse, how will it protect against abuse in assisted suicide? Indeed, how will doctors even know abuse is happening when many, if Oregon is any indication, will barely know the patient for whom they are writing a poison prescription? (Statistics indicate that some doctors knew their assisted suicide patients for two weeks or less before prescribing.)

The answer is: It won't. Indeed, based on Oregon's law and legislation in California, actual protections aren't the point. Seeming to protect: That's the political ticket.

Context. We definitely need to keep it in mind when debating assisted suicide.

Wife Swapping--Kidneys That Is

Two men needed kidneys. Their respective wives matched the other. Deal struck: Wife one gives a kidney to husband two, and wife two gives a kidney to husband one. We've discussed this kind of organ bartering before. I just hope that all four do well.

Murder of Virginia Tech Students Compared to Poaching Elephants

Talk about human reductionism and diminishing the reality of a profound evil: The following quote is from poet Nikki Giovanni, at the memorial service for the murdered at Virginia Tech:

We are Virginia Tech. We are sad today and we will be sad for quite awhile. WE are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech. We are strong enough to know when to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again. We are Virginia Tech. We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did not deserve it but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, but neither do the invisible children walking the night to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community devastated for ivory; neither does the Appalachian infant in the killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy. We are Virginia Tech. The Hokier Nation embraces our own with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness. We are the Hokies. We will prevail, we will prevail. We are Virginia Tech.

I have absolutely no problem with the allusion to victims of AIDS or children hiding from militias. But the seeming comparison to these murders with elephant poaching is to diminish the evil of the mass murders and engage in outrageous moral relativism. To equate the reaction of a baby elephant with the grief experienced by the victims' families and school community, was unncessary and gratuitous.

This is not to say, of course, that poaching elephants for their ivory isn't very wrong. But killing elephants is not morally equivalent to the murder of human beings. If we lose sight of that, we discard human exceptionalism and diminish the perceived value of all human life. This statement was an unintended insult to the students and professors killed at Virginia Tech.

Canada Rejects "Presumed Consent" for Organ Donation

There are many proposals to overcome the organ shortage. One well-meaning but misguided suggestion is "presumed consent," under which each of us would be presumed to want our organs donated unless we explicitly direct otherwise. In other words, rather than signing an organ donor consent form, we would have to sign a document akin to a non-consent form if we did not want to donate.

The problem with this is that with most of us presumed to consent, upon suffering a serious injury or illness, especially to the brain, the (perhaps unconscious) temptation would be to view a patient's organs as being more valuable than the patient, leading, perhaps, to medical care more geared toward preserving organs than preserving life.

This is one reason that Canada seems to have rejected the concept. Good. Having policies that border on coercive would not increase organ donation: They would undermine public confidence in the organ transplant system.

Culture of Death Brooks No Dissent: A Continuing Saga, Belgium Chapter

Belgium legalized euthanasia a few years ago, and has already descended into infanticide. Now euthanasia proponents in the parliament want to legally force hospitals to carry out euthanasia in their facilities even if the patient's own doctor refuses. From the story:

The Flemish liberals do not object to physicians having the right to refuse to perform euthanasia, but in such cases the hospital itself must ensure that the patient's request is carried out by another doctor.

Flanders is the closest culturally to the Netherlands, which is probably why euthanasia advocacy is most strident in that section of Belgium.

HT: Alex Schadenberg

Baby Emilio Hearing Postponed

Baby Emilio Gonzales will continue to receive life-sustaining treatment, at least until May 8, as the hearing to obtain a permanent injunction against the imposition of a futile care withdrawal of treatment has been postponed.

More on "Non Controversial" Biotech

Given the heat and extent of the public debate, it is tempting to view cloning and stem cell research as the be all and end all of biotechnology. But so much is happening that is not deeply ethically contentious. (Yes, Yes: Scientists could find a cure for cancer and a few would complain that oncologists are out of work.)

This is why I like to occasionally put the spotlight on biotechnology about which few will complain. This story seems one such experiment. And here's an added bonus, adult stem (progenitor) cells are part of the story:

Researchers in Germany have hidden vaccine-grade measles virus inside artificially generated blood cells in order to devise a search-and-destroy therapy for human brain cancer that can't be "seen" by the immune system.

They say their mouse experiments show a proof of principle that this non-pathogenic virus can attack glioma by getting inside tumor cells and replicating, destroying the common brain tumors from the inside out. This and other so-called "oncolytic" viruses are already being tested in clinical trials, but their effectiveness has been limited by an immediate human immune response, the researchers say...

To trick this immune surveillance, the researchers generated blood outgrowth endothelial cells (BOECs), which are produced outside of the body using human blood bathed in a cocktail of growth factors. "They do not naturally occur in the blood, but they are derived from endothelial progenitor cells, rare cells that are produced in the bone marrow and shed into the blood," Dr. Beltinger said.

These cells are well suited for cancer therapy for two reasons, he said. If a vaccine measles virus is tucked within them, it can't be reached by the immune system's neutralizing antibodies. Also, they are endothelial progenitor cells, which are recruited in the body wherever new blood vessels are formed.

"Tumors need vessels to grow, hence they recruit these blood progenitor cells," Dr. Beltinger said. "That makes them home to the tumors."

Here's hoping!

I Was Wrong: Partial Birth Abortion Ban Upheld

Back at the first of the year, I peered into my obviously on-the-fritz crystal ball and predicted that Justice Kennedy would reverse his earlier position and vote to strike down the federal partial birth (intact dilation and extraction, or D & X) ban. Boy, was I wrong. Not only did he not change his position, he wrote the majority opinion affirming it! (Here is the decision in full.)

I have read the majority opinion. Here are the sections I see as the heart of the ruling:

The principles set forth in the joint opinion in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992), [contained] a premise central to its conclusion--that the government has a legitimate and substantial interest in preserving and promoting fetal life--would be repudiated were the Court now to affirm the judgments of the Courts of Appeals [overturning the federal ban].

But, this interest in protecting fetal life does not mean that the esssential holding of Roe v. Wade--that there is a constitutional right to abortion before viability--has been undermined:

We assume the following principles for the purposes of this opinion. Before viability, a State "may not prohibit any woman from making the ultimate decision to terminate her pregnancy." 505 U. S., at 879 (plurality opinion). It also may not impose upon this right an undue burden, which exists if a regulation's "purpose or effect is to place a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability." Id., at 878. On the other hand, "[r]egulations which do no more than create a structural mechanism by which the State, or the parent or guardian of a minor, may express profound respect for the life of the unborn are permitted, if they are not a substantial obstacle to the woman's exercise of the right to choose." Id., at 877. Casey, in short, struck a balance. The balance was central to its holding. ...

What does this mean? Roe v. Wade has been re-reaffirmed. On the other hand, while I am no expert on this area of jurisprudence, the following assertions seem to be a stronger affirmation of the moral value of nascent human life than has heretofore found its way into most Supreme Court jurisprudence:

The government may use its voice and its regulatory authority to show its profound respect for the life within the woman. [Citing Roe. v. Wade.] This was not an idle assertion. The three premises of Casey must coexist...The third premise, that the State, from the inception of the pregnancy, maintains its own regulatory interest in protecting the life of the fetus that may become a child, cannot be set at naught by interpreting Casey's requirement of a health exception so it becomes tantamount to allowing a doctor to choose the abortion method he or she might prefer. Where it has a rational basis to act, and it does not impose an undue burden, the State may use its regulatory power to bar certain procedures and substitute others, all in furtherance of its legitimate interests in regulating the medical profession in order to promote respect for life, including life of the unborn.

It is also interesting to note that the Court made a pretty big deal out of Nebraska's unconstitutional PBA ban using the term "kill[s] the unborn child," and the constitutional federal ban using the term "fetus." It also discusses differing types of abortion as "concerning the way the fetus will be killed," which the Court ruled "is of legitimate concern to the state."

So what is the bottom line? Here's how I see it at first blush:

1) Roe is not in any danger of being overturned as the Court is currently constituted;
2) Casey, not Roe, is now unquestionably the reigning case in abortion jurisprudence;
3) Restrictions and impediments to later term abortions will be permitted, if they are narrowly and precisely written, using medical rather than polemic/advocacy lexicon;
4) The intrinsic value of human life has been boosted. Abortion is unique in this regard because the fundamental issue of the woman's personal autonomy is seen as a conflicting value to protecting embryonic/fetal life. Outside of the abortion context, however, it seems to me that this case could be construed as a strong affirmation of the State's interest in protecting fetal, and perhaps even, embryonic human life.

All in all, a good decision, it seems to me.

Putting Children's Lives at Risk by Impeding Vaccines

This is really a bad idea: A Missouri legislator named Dr. Rob Schaaf wants the state to stop buying and distributing important vaccines that are crucial to maintaining the health of children because they were derived from the cells of aborted fetuses. But how is that any different from harvesting and transplanting an organ? If the patient were killed for the purpose of organ procurement, it would be wrong. Likewise, if a fetus was aborted for the purpose of using the body in experiments and for vaccines, it would be wrong. But that isn't what happened in the development of these vaccines. Moreover, as the story points out:

Scientists aren't using any new fetal tissue--the vaccines come from the original 1960s cell line, which has been frozen.

There are certainly very important issues that need to combat the use of human beings instrumentally. But this isn't one of them.

Chimps More Evolved Than Humans?

It is a continuing source of astonishment and concern to me that so many "scientists" so fervently wish to knock human beings off of the pedestal of exceptionalism, and transform us into merely another animal in the forest, just one of the fauna, if you will. I bring this up because of the reaction to a paper presented to the National Academy of Sciences, as described in Technology Review, that claims chimps to be more evolved than humans:

With our big brains, capacity for speech, and upright stance, humans have long assumed that our species must have hit the genetic jackpot. But a controversial new study challenges the idea that we sprinted along on the evolutionary fast track while our chimp brethren were left swinging in the trees.

A comparison of thousands of human and chimpanzee genes suggests that chimps have actually evolved more since the two species parted from a common ancestor approximately five million years ago, according to Jianzhi Zhang, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who led the research.

Mutations happen spontaneously, and most are neutral or bad, says Zhang. But sometimes a beneficial mutation occurs in an individual and spreads throughout the population over time, a process known as positive selection: the genes carrying these good mutations confer evolutionary advantages that allow organisms to adapt and thrive. The changes thus become "fixed" in the genome...Chimps had 233 positively selected genes while humans had just 154, implying that chimps have adapted more to their environment than humans have to theirs.

I beg your pardon? Do chimps live and thrive in the Sahara Desert, Antarctica, the tundra, the rain forest, and the Himalayas? To claim that chimpanzees have adapted more to their environment than we have is ridiculous on its face. But here is the reason I bring this up. Note the gleeful reaction by a scientist who is more than eager to knock humans off the pedestal of exceptionalism:

"It's human egotism to put us on a pedestal," says molecular anthropologist Morris Goodman of Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit. "I was attracted to the paper because it seemed to be chipping away at this desire to make us all that extra-special. At the molecular level, humans are not necessarily exceptional in terms of the adaptive changes."

Who cares? At the carbon molecule level we are not more exceptional than carrots. This desire to destroy our self-perception will not redound to the benefit of the world, but to its detriment. After all, if we are not exceptional, why should we act beneficially toward the planet, other species, and each other as if we are?

HT: Mere Orthodoxy

Trouble in Prop. 71-Land

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine is again having trouble. It's president and chief scientific officer, Zach Hall, has resigned for health reasons, while at the same time, its head consultant on funding construction projects has also quit. Beyond these personnel issues, there is apparently some ongoing turmoil behind the scenes and all is not sweetness and light in Human Cloning Land. From the story in the San Francisco Chronicle, byline Carl T. Hall:

The surprise departures raise new questions about the ability of the Prop. 71 program to move forward with a $3 billion research effort authorized by California voters in the November 2004 election. The latest dispute centers on the pace of awarding grants to expand laboratory facilities, which stem cell officials say are badly needed to carry out Prop. 71-backed research...

Jeff Sheehy, a member of the stem cell board as well as the real estate advisory panel, said that health and retirement plans aside, Hall also got fed up attempting to placate warring factions. Recent disputes have pitted leaders of UC campuses and scientists, who tend to favor rapid expansion of research capabilities [Me: Are we surprised?], against patient advocates who are urging more time to study how construction projects would dovetail with taxpayer interests and research priorities. "Zach identified a cultural divide that existed between the scientist members and the patient advocates, and he didn't want to straddle it anymore," Sheehy said.

John Simpson, who has been monitoring the stem cell program on behalf of a Santa Monica nonprofit called the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, said the two resignations made public Tuesday clearly signaled problems in one of the most critical aspects of the stem cell program. "I'm troubled by the way all this seems to have exploded," he said.

Perhaps it is just all that money floating around, but I have long believed that the human cloning project will somehow generate more confusion than elucidation, more heat than light. Time will tell whether I am right.

Euthanasia as Source of Organs?

There is a proposal in Russia to permit euthanasia. One opponent. a doctor and member of the Duma, warns that legalizing euthanasia would be a way of "seizing organs:" From the story:

If a law allowing euthanasia appears in Russia, the risk of criminal seizure of human organs sharply increases, Member of the Russian State Duma, Doctor of Medicine, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences academician Sergey Kolesnikov (United Russia) told a REGNUM correspondent commenting on Senator Valentina Petrenko's initiative to draft such a law. "I respect Valentina Petrenko very much, but I do not understand what caused the initiative: either by willingness to draw attention or by some other reasons. I strongly oppose legalization of euthanasia. Corruption and crime rates in this country make me take such initiatives very seriously. So, it will become one of legal ways to seize property of an individual, depending on how the procedure is stated by the law," Kolesnikov believes. "It is no secret that there is a practice of signing contracts with elderly people on using their organs after their death. In this case it would be legal," he said.

Interestingly, we don't have the same level of corruption, but some--and not just Jack Kevorkian,but mainstream bioethicists--here have suggested coupling euthanasia/assisted suicide with organ procurement. This isn't being done, as far as I can tell.

In this regard, it is also worth noting that, despite trying, I have found no evidence that euthanasia and organ harvesting are coupled in the Netherlands. On the other hand, I am not sure the question has ever been formally studied.

Futile Care Theory on the March: Imposed Do Not Resuscitate Orders

One of the most momentous decisions in medicine is the "do not resuscitate" order, or DNR. This doesn't mean no treatment, nor does it mean no life-sustaining treatment. It means that if a patient suffers cardiac arrest, no CPR will be administered.

Because DNR's basically mean that medical personnel will not prevent imminent death, it has always been the patient/family/surrogate that has had the exclusive power to authorize the placing of a DNR on the chart.

This may soon change in Veteran's hospitals. A long article in the Archives of Internal Medicine by members of the Veterans Health Administration National Ethics Committee advocates giving power to hospital ethics committees to place a DNR on patient charts over the objections of the rightful decision makers about such matters. (Hit this link to see the Abstract)

Yes, yes, the claim is that it should be reserved for "exceptional" circumstances and that there will be many procedural steps to be taken before the ethics committee can vote a patient out of the life boat. But it should also be noted that one of the reasons given for the policy is resource management, and what could turn into an invidious form of discrimination based on state of health or ability:

Autonomy may also conflict with responsible stewardship of finite resources..Futile care provided to one patient inevitably diverts stall time and other resources away from other patients who would likely benefit more. This is especially the case for VHA, which operates within a fixed budget of appropriated funds.

I believe there are times when CPR is medically inappropriate, that is, when the patient is so far gone that there is virtually no chance of saving life, and great chance of doing harm in the process (broken ribs, etc.). If such cases occur, the proper place for the decision is in the light of day, not behind closed doors. Courts can be asked for permission to place the DNR on the chart, with proper independent investigations given, and the public defender or other paid for counsel for family who object.

Letting ethics committee members make these decisions without a public record, the right to cross examination, and appeals--especially in light of the recent scandals in the VA about quality of care--is no way to inspire confidence. Futile Care Theory should not be imposed upon our veterans after all they gave to their country.

Post Script: I just noticed that the article is a few years old. This doesn't mean it is irrelevant, however, because it shows where the bioethics movement wants to take us.

Should Doctors Have the Right to Say No to Abortion?

We hear from some, such as Dr. Sherwin Nuland, that what a doctor does or does not do at the bedside should be determined by the individual practioner's personal conscience. This usually cuts from the side of permitting acts such as euthanasia--as Nuland asserted in the New England Journal of Medicine--and to justify futile care theory.

On the flip side, some have said that pharmacists should be able to refuse to fill a prescription for contraception and RU 486. Along this line, there is a growing revolt among doctors in the UK about performing abortions. From the story in the Daily Mail:

Rising numbers of doctors are refusing to carry out abortions, leading to a crisis in NHS provision. The stance by staff, taken on ethical grounds, has led to a doubling of abortions carried out by private clinics, according to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

The swell of medical staff joining the unprecedented moral revolt means that there may soon not be enough doctors to carry out sufficient terminations to meet the public demand...

James Gerrard, a GP in Leeds, said: "Out of the six doctors in our practice, three of us object to abortion. I had made up my mind on abortion before entering the medical profession. I feel the foetus is a person and killing that foetus is wrong."...

Staff at the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth in North London is introducing a code of ethics for its resident GPs and other staff. Anyone working there will not be able to offer any service which conflicts with Catholic teaching on the value of human life or sexual ethics.

If this spreads to the USA, expect a huge battle with some advocating that doctors be required to perform abortions or not practice medicine--or at least ob/gyn--which I believe is already proposed in New York. Others will promote professional "choice" in all aspects of care, from assisted suicide to acceding to the requests of "amputee wannabes."

In a morally polyglot society, it is hard to know what the right answer is. As for my opinion, if a medical procedure is legal--it is legal. At the same time, I support conscience refusals so long as notice is given to patients in advance--unless doing so would endanger life (as in an ectopic pregnancy) or lead to serious health risks for the patient. What say y'all?

Doing the Stem Cell Pivot

Now that Big Biotech has won elections in CA and MO, and the Bush funding policy is on the ropes, Big Biotech and their boosters in the media are changing their stories. Whereas before, it was about direct CURES! CURES! CURES!, now it is about basic research, which is touted as just as good--with nary a word of criticism for the earlier, shall we say, misdirection. Along these lines, a front page story in the San Francisco Chronicle touts a research success using ES cells from mice:

One argument for [embryonic] stem cell research is that it might generate fresh replacement cells for those destroyed by such horrific diseases as ALS, the paralyzing nervous system disorder popularly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The latest research suggests those predictions might be unrealistic...The findings may be the most dramatic example yet of the idea that stem cells are more valuable as a "disease model"--used to study disease--rather than a simple source of replacement parts...

The new studies, done in mice specially bred to mimic a form of ALS, implicate a soluble toxic factor, not yet identified, that appears to be leaching out of disease-causing astrocytes, selectively killing off any motor neurons in the area. "The cells that surround the neurons don't sit back and do nothing," Przedborski said in a telephone interview. "You have to take into account the overall situation. There's a neighborhood effect--a good guy in a bad neighborhood has a greater chance to turn bad."

So it would make no sense to go to the trouble of replacing dead or dying neurons in the nervous system of an ALS patient without first cleaning up the neighborhood. "If you take those healthy stem cells to try to repair the diseased system, you are going to implant those nice cells into a diseased environment, and they may not survive very well," Przedborski said.

Much such basic research, of course, could be conducted with Bush approved lines. But some couldn't. Since humans can't be bred to have specific diseases like lab mice can, human experiments would require stem cells derived from genetically altered embryos, or from those made to have a specific disease propensity using cloning, the latter point being specifically mentioned in the story.

What is not mentioned, however, is that stem cells have not yet been derived from cloned human embryos and indeed, that it may take many years and billions of dollars for researchers to learn how to clone human embryos reliably and derive ES cell lines from them. Plus, there is the egg issue, which we have addressed often here at Secondhand Smoke.

So this seems to be the bottom line: ESCR as direct cures seems to be losing steam--but this will not be admitted in any area where the controversy still rages. Expect the same intensity for ESCR as a basic research model as we have seen for direct cures. Human cloning, financed by taxpayers, is the ultimate goal, which, if successful, would then open many "opportunities" for experiments well beyond early embryos in Petri dishes.

Trading on the Female Body

This video produced by my pals at the Center for Bioethics and Culture is a somber warning against harvesting women so that their eggs can be used in human cloning research. Egg donation can lead to serious infections, loss of fecundity, and even death. Regardless of whether one supports or opposes human SCNT, this aspect of the cloning debate could not be more crucial.

"The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia"

I have a book review of The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia posted on today's First Things blog. The book is dry, but very good in its discussion of the legal issues, and not bad in explaining philosophical perspectives. I was disappointed, however, that the author Neil M. Gorsuch pretty much passed over the political side of the story and seemed to assume that the decision would be made by those in the ivory tower rather than in the public square. Here is how I concluded:

When Oregon voters passed Measure 16 (the Oregon Death with Dignity Act) in 1994 by a 51 to 49 percent vote, most informed observers on both sides of this contentious issue (including this writer) expected the assisted-suicide legalization agenda to sweep through much of the country. But it didn't. And even though the reasons assisted-suicide advocates have not succeeded in moving assisted suicide beyond its Oregon beachhead are relevant to the future of the euthanasia movement, Gorsuch does not substantially explore what didn't happen and why.

Had he done so, he would have uncovered one of the great political success stories of recent decades. When Measure 16 passed, the most vocal opponents of assisted suicide were pro-lifers in general and the Catholic Church in particular. As the vote in Oregon demonstrated, this political alliance was strong but not strong enough to hold back the tide. This dynamic changed dramatically in the mid-1990s, when disability-rights activists—who are overwhelmingly liberal in their politics, secular in their beliefs, and pro-choice about abortion--noticed that Jack Kevorkian was mostly assisting the suicides of depressed disabled people, to the applause of much of society. Convinced that disabled people were the primary targets of the euthanasia agenda, movement activists jumped into the fray like the cavalry riding to the rescue. Their vigorous and often angry advocacy changed the political paradigm profoundly, a blow from which euthanasia advocates have not yet recovered.

Today a diverse, if loose, coalition of politically strange bedfellows--disability-rights activists, civil-rights organizers, advocates for the poor, medical-professional organizations, the Catholic Church, and the pro-life movemen--stands as an effective bulwark against the spread of assisted-suicide legalization. Illustrating how successful this coalition has been, it defeated voter referenda to legalize assisted suicide in Michigan in 1998 and Maine in 2000. Last year, in a high-profile victory, assisted-suicide legislation in California died unexpectedly in a State Senate subcommittee. Serious efforts to legalize assisted suicide have also been turned back repeatedly in Vermont and (barely) in Hawaii.

But the euthanasia movement is strong, too. Its organizations are well financed, and its leaders and grassroots proponents are determined. Thus the only sure thing about the future of assisted suicide is that there will be political trench warfare over the issue for years to come. A thorough analysis of the "future" of assisted suicide in America will bring the same depth of research and analysis to the political dimension of the issue that Gorsuch so capably brought to his description of the trends in law and philosophy.

Tune In To "BioScience Views"

With the intrepid help of the Discovery Institute, I have just begun a new one minute radio commentary called BioScience Views, that is beginning to get around. We haven't created a dedicated Web page for it yet, but if you hit this link, you can find them.

Here are a couple of examples:

"Cruel and Unusual Death With Dignity;"

"How Infanticide Begins;"

"Scientism and the Struggle for American Values;"

"PETA's Grandstanding on Global Warming."

We are only on a few stations so far, but hope to grow. Stay tuned.

Should Infanticide be a Crime?

This terrible case of a girl giving birth and stabbing her baby to death raises a very important point. Some, like Princeton's Peter Singer, believe that a newborn is not a person and so infanticide should not be a crime. A regular commenter here at Secondhand Smoke recently stated that there is a moral distinction to be made between a neo-nate, a baby in the first 24 hours, and later aged babies, and that a newborn is more akin to a fetus than a baby.

So, here is where the rubber meets the road: With regard to a case such as this--let's not prejudge this particular allegation since people are presumed innocent until proven guilty, there may be mental illness issues, etc.--should the intentional killing of a newborn baby who is not wanted be a crime?

I say a newborn infant is a human being with full moral status, and that infanticide is murder most foul--regardless of the physical condition of the child. But some say infanticide isn't murder because the baby isn't a person or it might not be wrong depending on the physical state of the child. What say you? Please comment here and take the poll below.

If the mother of a newborn baby rationally believes it would be better if the child did not live, and she painlessly has the baby killed:
	A newborn baby is not a person and so infanticide is not wrong so long as it is done painlessly
	Infanticide is akin to abortion and should be legal so long as it is done within the first 24 hours of birth.
	Whether infanticide is right or wrong depends on the circumstances. If the neonate is profoundly ill or disabled, it should be allowed.
	A neonate is a full member of society and thus infanticide should always be a crime.
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Assisted Suicide: Refusing to Connect the Dots

The other day, the Sacramento Bee editorialized in favor of assisted suicide. Now, it runs this story about how state investigators are inadequately auditing nursing homes and busting unsafe operators. Here's the story:

The California Department of Health Services is underestimating the severity of safety problems at some nursing homes and fails to promptly investigate at least half of the thousands of complaints it receives about the facilities each year, the state auditor reported Thursday.

The Health Department is responsible for oversight of the 1,200 nursing homes in the state, and the department's duties include responding to complaints and conducting routine inspections.

The auditor's study also found that the department fails to communicate quickly with people who make the complaints and keeps poor records of investigations.

In a written response to the audit, the health department blamed a staffing shortage. There is a 16 percent vacancy rate for registered nurses who evaluate nursing homes, largely because the state has trouble competing with private health-care providers who pay more, the report said.

What the MSM continually refuses to do is connect the dots from stories such as this to the ridiculous premise that "guidelines will protect against abuse" in a legalized assisted suicide regimen. In Oregon, "regulators" from the State Dept. of Health admit that they have no authority or budget to investigate abuses: Mostly, bureaucrats merely compile data for publication from the lethally prescribing doctors, do a little spot checking, publish the data and then destroy all the supporting documentation. In other words, the guidelines are mere facades: They are not substantial protections.

Full Speed Ahead to "Post Society:" Biotechnology May Permit Women to Become Biological Fathers

So, now researchers believe they can make sperm from a woman's bone marrow stem cells. And in this way, a woman may one day father a child. From the story in the Independent:

Scientists are seeking ethical permission to produce synthetic sperm cells from a woman's bone marrow tissue after showing that it possible to produce rudimentary sperm cells from male bone-marrow tissue.

The researchers said they had already produced early sperm cells from bone-marrow tissue taken from men. They believe the findings show that it may be possible to restore fertility to men who cannot naturally produce their own sperm.

But the results also raise the prospect of being able to take bone-marrow tissue from women and coaxing the stem cells within the female tissue to develop into sperm cells, said Professor Karim Nayernia of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne....

"Theoretically is it possible," Professor Nayernia said. "The problem is whether the sperm cells are functional or not. I don't think there is an ethical barrier, so long as it's safe. We are in the process of applying for ethical approval. We are preparing now to apply to use the existing bone marrow stem cell bank here in Newcastle. We need permission from the patient who supplied the bone marrow, the ethics committee and the hospital itself."

Swell. Call me a dinosaur (again), but it seems to me that some are so intent on destroying any commonality among us, all sense of normalcy, that if the current trends continue--uterus transplants for men have also been proposed seriously--we will just disintegrate like matter spun into space by a huge centrifuge. We may not be able to become post human the way transhumanists want us to, but the idea that we must cater to any and every individualistic desire can definitely make us post-societal.

Middle Ages Tech Support

This is slightly off point, but it is funny. So, I am exercising "Blogger's Priviledge" and posting it for SHSers to enjoy. Have a good laugh.

ESCR Funding Politics: It is About the Pork

Stock prices for embryonic stem cell research companies took a hit when the U.S. Senate failed to pass a bill to overturn President Bush's stem cell funding policy by a veto proof margin. Worcester, MA's, Advanced Cell Technology--which opened an office in California to try and take advantage of the cornicopia of Proposition 71 money--lost value, as did California's Geron. Some adult stem cell companies also lost ground, but others gained.

Well, the market doesn't lie: A big part of the drive to overturn Bush's policy is pure corporate welfare pork. Sooweeee!

Belgium Descends to Infanticide

It took the Dutch about 20 years to get to the point from accepting euthanasia to countenancing infanticide. It has only taken the Belgians a few years to jump off the same vertical moral cliff. Not unexpectedly--and this isn't the first such report--eugenic infanticide is now occurring in Belgium, some of it based on "quality of life" determinations. This is the moral equivalent of exposing disabled babies on hills.

No. There is no such thing as a slippery slope.

Insipid USA Today Interview of PETA Author

I wish I could say that I could not believe my eyes: Craig Wilson of USA Today interviewed PETA biggie Dan Matthews, and did not ask one substantial question. What about PETA's refusal to condemn violence in the name of animal liberation? Not asked. Are Matthews and PETA at all concerned about the tremendous harm that would be caused to humans if PETA got its way and we could not have any domesticated animals. Wilson probably never even considered the issue. What about the concept of animal/human moral equality promoted by PETA? Huh? Rather, we get the most unbelievably insipid, shallow, and vapid questions such as:

Q: Why did you decide to dress in a bunny costume for the book jacket of your memoir?

Q: Your press material calls PETA "one of the most enduring, powerful and annoying pressure groups in the world." I suspect you like the world annoying.

Q: What's the most memorable arrest?

Q: Where do you get the moxie to jump on Rose Parade floats and infiltrate corporate cafeterias to get your point across about animal cruelty?

Q: I understand Jennifer Lopez and Anna Wintour of Vogue are not fans. What's up with them?

Q: So, you dress up as a bunny, a priest and a carrot, yet you don't know how to tie a tie?

I would expect better of 8th Graders putting out a class paper as a class project. Sickening.

Hospice Care May Extend Life

This study demonstrates an important point: Hospice care can extend life because, relieved of much suffering by proper care, patients can actually live longer than if they were not receiving such treatment. From the story:

"This [the study's results] should be reassuring to those faced with life-threatening illness and their families who are considering hospice care," Dr. Stephen R. Connor of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization based in Alexandria, Virginia, told Reuters Health. Hospice care is not "giving up." It is choosing to live life fully to the end, he said.

Connor and colleagues analyzed the survival of 4,493 terminally ill patients who died within a 3-year period. A total of 2,095 of them received hospice care. Survival was measured as the time to death after a defined "indicative date" of the beginning of the terminal stage of illness. The team reports in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management that hospice patients lived an average of 29 days longer than non-hospice patients.

Yes, yes, I have heard the stories of hastened deaths occurring in hospices. But I remain convinced that while there are a few bad eggs, most hospices are dedicated to the proper care of their patients until natural death.

And this seems a good time to point out something about assisted suicide and hospice: If hospice is indeed "choosing to live life fully to the end," then when a doctor assists the suicide of a hospice patient, he or she is in complete violation of the hospice medical philosophy. Thus, when Oregon advocates for assisted suicide claim that patients were in hospice when committing assisted suicide, what they are really saying is that the facilitators of these suicides interfered with the proper application of hospice medicine--which explicitly includes suicide prevention in cases where patients become suicidal. But suicide prevention is not a required part of the Oregon law.

Wrongly Declared "Brain Dead"

This kind of story sends a chill. Doctors at a Fresno hospital wrongly declared a patient to be dead by neurological criteria (a.k.a. brain death) when he wasn't actually dead, resulting in a near harvesting of organs from a living patient. Luckily, the mistake was caught in time. The man died eleven days later.

There are several lessons to learn from such a story. First, organ procurement centers nation-wide need to create and agree to uniform and mandatory tests that are to be applied in determining death by neurological criteria. Second, the idea of having an organ donor card superseding advance directives needs to be rejected. Third, presumed consent to donate--wherein people would have to explicitly opt out of donating--needs to be rejected. The already required firewall between the medical team in charge of a patient's care and those who would be involved in procuring organs must be continually reinforced and maintained.

Public confidence in organ donation is an inch deep. To maintain trust, it is absolutely necessary that the public never come to believe that doctors take short cuts to brain death declarations and they must be assured that no medical person will ever perceive a patient's organs to be more valuable than their lives.

Bush Stem Cell Statement

Here is the statement issued today by the White House about the passage of Senate Bills 5 (overturn Bush funding policy) and 30 (fund "alternative" approaches). Agree or disagree with the Bush policy, I think this point made by the President is absolutely true:

My policy unleashed an unprecedented scientific effort using the stem cell lines my policy approved for funding. While encouraging--not banning-- research, my policy also ensures that federal funds are not used to create incentives to destroy, or harm, or create living human embryos for purposes of research...

Meanwhile, exciting and significant scientific advances have been reported over the past few years on uses of stem cells that do not involve the destruction of embryos. These advances using adult and other forms of stem cells are exciting. Some have even produced effective therapies and treatments for disease--all without the destruction of human life.

I believe that the President's policy helped create the environment in which these "alternative" advances have flourished, as well as boosting the drive to find adult stem cell therapies. But be that as it may, you have to say this for the President: He has remained steadfast in defending his principles and even though under withering political pressure, has been as good as his word.

Senate Stem Cell Votes

S. 5, the bill to overturn President Bush's embryonic stem cell funding policy passed, one vote (if everyone had showed up) short of a veto override margin. It also does not have enough votes in the House for an override, so it is not going to be enacted--for now. Eventually, when the Democrats decide they have gotten enough political hay out of the issue, they will attach it to a bill that the President cannot veto or which will make an override easier.

S. 30, the "alternatives" funding bill for deriving pluripotent stem cells without destroying nascent human life passed by 70-28. Since this is valid science and also uncontroversial from an ethical perspective, the Democrat opponents could fairly be labeled as "anti-science," or at the very least, more than willing to put politics over the potential for advancing knowledge and the search for medical cures.

How Embryonic Stem Cell Propaganda Campaign May Be Distorting Progress of Science

I checked the New York Times to see if they reported the great news that human diabetes patients have been effectively treated for their disease with adult stem cells. The Gray Lady only carried a muted report by the AP. Had this been an embryonic stem cell success, the story would have reaped huge headlines and an angry lead editorial decrying President Bush for his stem cell funding policy. (Remember, overturning the Bush policy is the prism through which the MSM reports almost all stories, and it explains the muted coverage of this very important story.) This is one form of media bias; substantially downplaying coverage of major adult stem cell breakthroughs so that it doesn't really sink into the public's consciousness. (Or, the MSM doesn't report it at all as happened last year when most media erected a news blockade around the peer reviewed report of paralyzed spinal cord patients having feeling restored with adult stem cells.)

But note this little item from the story explaining why the success happened in Brazil instead of the USA:

The research was done in Brazil because doctors in the United States were not interested in the approach, said one of the authors, Dr. Richard K Burt of Northwestern University's medical school.

Could it be that the research was not carried out because so much propaganda has gone into pushing ESCR? And due to this campaign, scientists may see most of the $$$$ coming in the ESCR field? And/or that ESCR is now so "in" that some scientists didn't see the potential for professional plaudits pursuing adult approaches?

I don't know the answer but I think these are questions we should ponder.

Leon Kass on What Makes Humans Special

Leon Kass's piece in Commentary, about which I posted earlier, also contains some very good prose about a philosophical approach to human exceptionalism. He writes:

It is indubitably clear, even to atheists, that we human beings have them [attributes of God in biblical religion such as "reason," "freedom," and the "powers of contemplation"],and that they lift us above the plane of a merely animal existence. Human beings, alone among creatures, speak, plan, create, contemplate, and judge. Human beings alone among the creatures can articulate a future goal and use that articulation to guide them in bringing it into being by their own purposive conduct. Human beings, alone among the creatures, can think about the whole marvel at its many-splendored forms and articulated order, wonder about its beginning, and feel awe in beholding its grandeur and in pondering the mystery of its source. Note well: These self-evident truths do not rest on biblical authority. Rather, the biblical text enables us to confirm them by an act of self-reflection.

Me: And this is true whether the awe comes from religion, philosophy, or atheism, as in Richard Dawkins' wonder at what evolution has produced. Moreover, from our recognition of human exceptionalism, we must then grapple with what that special status means.

In this regard, I spoke at a law school a few weeks ago about the animal liberation movement and its attack on human exceptionalism. One student angrily rejected the concept of exceptionalism because, he said, despite my repeated assertions that exceptionalism is what imposes duties on humans, such as treating animals humanely, it really means that we can do whatever we want to animals, however we want. And how dare we think we are "better" than animals!

So, I asked this student three times if being human isn't what gives us the duty to treat animals well, what does? No answer. And what answer could there be? Any moral duties we decide to impose upon our species flow directly from the fact of human exceptionalism. That being so, it is odd that some of those who speak the loudest about all of our moral duties to the planet, are also those most rejecting of the status of human beings as an exceptional species.

If you can, get a copy of Commentary and read the entire essay. Agree or disagree, pondering the wisdom of Leon Kass is always a good use of one's time.

Leon Kass in Support of Human Exceptionalism as Necessary to Proper Pursuit of Science

I believe Leon Kass to be one of our most profound and wise public intellectuals. He comes through again in the current edition of Commentary magazine (no link available) in an article entitled "Science, Religion, and the Human Future." Much about which he writes--the tension between religion and science--is not germane to our discussions here at Secondhand Smoke. But Kass also gives a strong apology for human exceptionalism and the reasons that the ongoing attempts at human reductionism are so very harmful--including to the scientific enterprise itself. Thus, Kass writes:

In order to justify ongoing [human cloning] research, these intellectuals and others like them today are willing to shed not only traditional religious views but any view of human distinctiveness and special dignity, their own included. They fail to see that the scientific view of man they celebrate does more than insult our vanity. It undermines our self-conception as free, thoughtful, and responsible beings, worthy of respect because we alone among the animals have minds and hearts that aim far higher than the mere perpetuation of our genes. It undermines, as well, the beliefs that sustain our mores, practices, and institutions--including the practice of science. The problem lies not so much with the scientific findings themselves as with the shallow philosophy that recognizes no other truths but these and, and with the arrogant pronouncements of the bio-prophets.

Kass later describes how the idea (as I put it) that humans are merely another animal in the forest can undermine science itself:

The possibility of science itself depends on the immateriality of thought. It depends on the mind's independence from the bombardment of matter. Otherwise, there is no truth, there is only "it seems to me." Not only the possibility for recognizing truth and error, but also the reasons for doing science rest on a picture of human freedom and dignity (of the sort promulgated by biblical religion) that science itself cannot recognize. Wonder, curiosity, a wish not to be self-deceived, and a spirit of philanthropy are the sine qua non of the modern scientific enterprise. They are hallmarks of the living human soul [which Kass does not use in the necessarily religious sense] not the anatomized brain. The very enterprise of science--like all else of value in human life--depends on a view of humanity that science cannot supply and that foolish scientistic prophets deny at their peril, unaware of the embarrassing self-contradiction.

In other words, human exceptionalism and the sheer importance of being human.

Kass continues, noting that "the overall ethical character of the scientific project, are not themselves the product of science."

Science is notoriously (and deliberately) morally neutral, silent on the distinction between better and worse, right and wrong, the noble and the base...It can offer no standards to guide the use of awesome powers it places in human hands. Though it seeks universal knowledge, it has no answers to moral relativism. It does not know what charity is, what charity requires, or even whether why it is good. Science cannot provide either confirmation of or support for its own philanthropic assumptions...

Many laymen, ignorant of any defensible scientific alternative to materialism, are swallowing and regurgitating the shallow doctrines of "the selfish gene" and "the mind is the brain," because they seem to be vindicated by scientific advance. The cultural result is likely to be serious damage to human self-understanding and the subversion of all high-minded views of the good life.

Kass's point is that there is more to what makes us human than that which can be measured, folded, spindled, and put under a microscope. If we come to believe that we are only what science tells us we are based on what can be measured, our very self perception will become so stunted that we could lose touch with those parts of ourselves that make the best of humanity--including science--possible. Kass is right. How we act is based in large part on our self perception. And without a firm grip on human exceptionalism, the arc of our future growth and advancement could become fundamentally stunted--if not scientifically, then certainly morally.

More to follow.