Do Prisoners Have the Right to Starve Themselves to Death?

The bioethicist Art Caplan has argued against a court order requiring prison authorities to force feed a prisoner named William Coleman, who is on a hunger strike. It is against his autonomy, Caplan opines. From his column:

Recently, he took a turn for the worse. Prison officials, fearing for his life, sought and received a court order giving them the right to force-feed Coleman by giving food and water intravenously. They are wrong. Competent prisoners should not be fed medically against their will.Feeding Coleman or any other prisoner will require a doctor, nurse or other medically-trained prison worker to use restraints while inserting needles carrying artificial nutrition into the body. Feeding of this sort, as the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in the 1990 case of Nancy Cruzan, a young woman in a permanent coma whose relatives wished to discontinue her feeding tube, constitutes medical treatment. And that makes force-feeding any competent adult against their will unethical.

I think Caplan is looking at this from the wrong end of the telescope. First, this isn't a case of a sick or disabled person refusing medical treatment in the usual sense. The harm being ameliorated is self-caused. Would Caplan similarly claim that if a prisoner hanged himself and left a note that authorities were not to revive him, that the direction should be followed? Indeed, would he argue that about anyone who attempts suicide? I would hope not, and it seems to me the only difference is that Coleman's self destruction is occurring in slow motion, while other forms are generally quicker. Second, Coleman is a prisoner and has hence lost significant autonomy rights. Third, prison authorities have the duty to protect the health and safety of those in their charge--including against self harm. That is surely why the court granted the authorities' request for the court order. Finally, prison officials also have the duty maintain good order. Imagine the potentially disrupting impact that could arise were prisoners able to kill themselves by self starvation.

Caplan has anticipated some of these arguments, and in response claims that even if Coleman dies, his act would be protest, not suicide:

Some would argue that refusing food and water is an act of suicide and prisons do not have to accept suicides on the part of inmates. But a hunger-strike is not a suicide attempt. It is an act of protest. Coleman himself says he does not want to die, but he is willing to in order to draw attention to what he believes is his unjust conviction. Risking death is a means to an end. The end may be horrific, but even prisoners have the right to refuse medical care to make their point.

No they don't. Prisoners are not free. They don't have full first amendment rights of protest. Indeed, had Coleman decided to immolate himself as a form of protest--as Buddhist monks did during the Vietnam War--rather than go on a hunger strike, should that also be permitted?

Sometimes Caplan is right--as in his good thinking about the ethics of organ transplantation. But sometimes his pugilistic political liberalism leads him terribly astray. In my view, this is one of those times.

Washington Medical Association Brochure Against I-1000 and Assisted Suicide

The Washington State Medical Association has come out against legalizing assisted suicide and passing I 1000. From its brochure:

This fall Washington voters must decide whether to support or oppose Initiative 1000. It may help to know that the Washington State Medical Association strongly opposes Initiative 1000. Doctors oppose I-1000 because our training and experience in the practice of medicine directs us to heal and comfort,
not to cause death.

The WSMA believes physician assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the role of physicians as healers. Patients put their trust in physicians and that bond of trust would be irrevokably harmed by the provisions of this dangerous initiative.

Indeed. Add in futile care theory and there would be a perfect storm of mistrust created with the most vulnerable patients perceived to be pushed toward death--one way or the other.

Martin Sheen Ad Against Washington's I-1000

Martin Sheen--known to be a left handed hitter politically--has a radio ad out against the assisted suicide legalization initiative, I-1000. This is important because despite the broad and diverse coalition against legalizing assisted suicide that cuts diagonally across the nation's usual political and cultural divides, the media continue their myopic ways by reporting that conservative pro lifers are the primary opponents to assisted suicide.

Here is what Sheen said his reasons were for agreeing to participate in the No on I-1000 campaign:

"I try to work when I'm not on the screen to help improve conditions for the most vulnerable people in our country--low wage workers, immigrants, the disabled and the poor," Sheen said. "We have a health care system where the more money you have, the better medical care you receive. Initiative 1000 is a dangerous idea--because so many people do not have the money necessary to get the care they need. When I heard about Initiative 1000, I wanted to help stop it before it harms people who are at risk."

No lie. Recall that Oregon has offered to pay for the assisted suicides of poor people after refusing to fund their chemotherapy.

To hear the ad, follow this link and then click on the audio file.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is Disgracefully in the Tank With Big Biotech

Arnold Schwarzenegger, who alas is my governor, was elected to produce fiscal responsibility in California. Well, that didn't work out: This year alone, we are about $17 billion in the hole and counting.

That aside, Schwarzenneger first violated his fiscal responsibility raison d' etre for running for governor by supporting California's going $6 billion deeper into debt--at a time when our streets weren't being repaired and our hospitals were cracking under fiscal burdens--to pay the private sector and their university business partners to conduct human cloning and ESCR. This was back when he was really popular. Before his support, Proposition 71 was under 50% in the polls. Afterwards, it soared to victory.

This year, when the CIRM paid $270 million this year to buy the most expensive buildings that the most expensive of the world's architects could design, Arnold cheered.

And now, when the California Legislature actually passes a bill with huge bipartisan support to hold the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine to its campaign promises to share the benefits of its grants with the people of CA, Arnold vetoes the bill! From the story:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed SB 1565, aimed at making stem cell therapies and diagnostics funded by California's multibillion-dollar stem cell research agency affordable and accessible.

The bill also would have made it easier for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to fund research beyond politically charged embryonic stem cells. In vetoing the bill Saturday, Schwarzenegger said SB 1565 would have undermined "the express intent of Proposition 71," which California voters approved in 2004, setting up a $3 billion agency with state bonds.

But the field has changed dramatically. Cloning is not working and IPSCs are! Good GRIEF (a term to which I seem increasingly resorting to avoid using stronger language)!

Arnold is so in the tank with the Establishment types that control the CIRM that it is sickening. Plus, the CIRM is being mismanaged to the point that the Little Hoover Commission is having to investigate. From the story:

Despite Schwarzenegger's veto, another key provision of the bill will become reality. California's Milton Marks, or "Little Hoover," Commission on California State Government Organization and Economy last week said it would examine CIRM and ICOC, with an eye to determining what, if any, conflicts of interest are posed by the current governance of the state stem-cell agency.

Little Hoover's first hearings on CIRM will be held Nov. 20 with another likely Jan. 22, Stuart Drown, the commission's executive director, told California Stem Cell Report, a blog focused on public policy related to the stem cell agency. Drown also told the Report the commission may go beyond governance issues: "The commission has been asked to look at governance and transparency, but may look at other issues as well, including a discussion on ways to insure the most effective use of bond money."

Across the breath and scope of the USA, way beyond the issues we address here at SHS, we see corruption, incompetence by "the experts," and abject failure after failure to lead. The CIRM and Governor Schwarzenegger are abject cases in point.

Swamps Now Have "Rights" in Ecuador. Literally

The picture above, if it were taken in Ecuador, would be the image of a rights-bearing entity, with constitutional rights co-equal with those of "people" and "persons." Yes, as expected, the people of Ecuador have passed their new constitution, which as I wrote in an earlier SHS post contains the following provision:

Persons and people have the fundamental rights guaranteed in this Constitution and in the international human rights instruments. Nature is subject to those rights given by this Constitution and Law.

The only way to read that provision is that nature and all aspects thereof--rocks, dirt, pond scum, mosquitoes, lizards, trees--is and are co-equal with humans since "nature rights" are the same as those of people, a provision that is now the supreme law of Ecuador. Good GRIEF! John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King--with all the greats who believed so fervently in promoting human welfare and freedom through constitutions are spinning like centrifuges in their graves.

Let's consider briefly what this might mean: Swamps, which are part of nature, now have rights in Ecuador, potentially meaning that if a poor Ecuadoran wants to drain one on his property--can property be owned anymore since people can't be owned?--he could theoretically be stopped by the government for violating the rights of the swamp, its constituent parts, and its denizens, the mosquitoes, snakes, pond scum, rats, spiders, water, and fish. And if the government fails to protect the rights of the swamp, the constitution explicitly allows non Ecuadorians to come in to the country and bring lawsuits and otherwise pressure the government to protect the swamp's rights.

The leader of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, is a hard Leftist who is extremely close to the equally or more hard Left wing head of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. So this is what the emerging radical Left that is gaining power in various places around the world, is producing--and fast; the personalization of nature, which will redound to the terrible detriment of people, particularly the poor.

Some might say that Ecuador is a small country with little influence internationally. But the anti-human exceptionalism Left is on the march elsewhere too. Remember, the Socialists and Greens in Spain are about to make apes co-equal members of the moral community with humans by passing the Great Ape Project. Switzerland has also lost its mind, with a constitutional provision requiring that the dignity of plants and animals be protected, that has begun a process that had already declared the intrinsic dignity of individual plants, which could mark the emergence of plant rights in Europe. The European Court of Human Rights will decide whether a chimpanzee is a person.

The consequences that will befall suffering humanity as this bitterly anti-human exceptionalism agenda picks up more steam are profound. Our self definition and self perception will change radically. Our ability to exploit natural resources and thrive will be handcuffed. This could really harm the poor and destitute, the very people the Left beats its collective breast about and whose needs and interests it claims to champion. Indeed, the total consequences of granting rights to nature are so profound and potentially unlimited, that for the moment they are probably beyond our comprehension.

I am beside myself, squared: First, because this is happening. Second, because so few people seem to think it is important.

The New Slavery: Chinese Style

Standing up for human exceptionalism means fighting slavery and other forms of naked human exploitation. In this regard, Peter Hitchens, the UK writer, has a very disturbing piece out about how the Chinese are exploiting the poorest in Africa in what can charitably be called a new colonialism, and perhaps more realistically, a new slavery. From the story:

These poor, hopeless, angry people exist by grubbing for scraps of cobalt and copper ore in the filth and dust of abandoned copper mines in Congo, sinking perilous 80ft shafts by hand, washing their finds in cholera-infected streams full of human filth, then pushing enormous two-hundredweight loads uphill on ancient bicycles to the nearby town of Likasi where middlemen buy them to sell on, mainly to Chinese businessmen hungry for these vital metals.

To see them, as they plod miserably past, is to be reminded of pictures of unemployed miners in Thirties Britain, stumbling home in the drizzle with sacks of coal scraps gleaned from spoil heaps. Except that here the unsparing heat makes the labour five times as hard, and the conditions of work and life are worse by far than any known in England since the 18th Century. Many perish as their primitive mines collapse on them, or are horribly injured without hope of medical treatment.

Many are little more than children. On a good day they may earn $3, which just supports a meagre existence in diseased, malarial slums. We had been earlier to this awful pit, which looked like a penal colony in an ancient slave empire. Defeated, bowed figures toiled endlessly in dozens of hand-dug pits. Their faces, when visible, were blank and without hope.

Who is doing this to these people?

I can give you no better explanation in miniature of the wicked thing that I believe is now happening in Africa. Out of desperation, much of the continent is selling itself into a new era of corruption and virtual slavery as China seeks to buy up all the metals, minerals and oil she can lay her hands on: copper for electric and telephone cables, cobalt for mobile phones and jet engines--the basic raw materials of modern life. It is crude rapacity, but to Africans and many of their leaders it is better than the alternative, which is slow starvation.

It is my view...that China's cynical new version of imperialism in Africa is a wicked enterprise. China offers both rulers and the ruled in Africa the simple, squalid advantages of shameless exploitation.

Where are the protests in the streets? Where are the screams for international justice? Oh. This isn't Bush's fault. Never mind.

Persuasive academics advised me before I set off on this journey that China's scramble for Africa had much to be said for it. They pointed out China needs African markets for its goods, and has an interest in real economic advance in that broken continent. For once, they argued, a foreign intervention in Africa might work precisely because it is so cynical and self-interested. They said Western aid, with all its conditions, did little to create real advances in Africa, laughing as they declared: 'The only country that ever got rich through donations is the Vatican.

It's a long and disturbing article. The utter corruption and brute force that that is loose in the world on so many fronts, with China--the human organ merchants so often, it seems, in the lead--is taking my breath away.

Adult Stem Cells Effectively Treat Liver Disease

In a human trial using patients' own bone marrow adult stem cells, alcohol-caused cirrhosis of the liver has been treated and the patients improved. From the story:

All patients tolerated the procedure well and over 12 weeks of follow-up there were significant decreases in serum bilirubin. A significant reduction in levels of alanine transaminase and aspartate transaminase was seen 1 week after the transfusion and showed improvement through the study period.

Seven of the patients showed an improvement in Child-Pugh scores, and on imaging at 12 weeks, three patients showed a complete resolution of ascites and two had a significant reduction.

"This is an area of medicine where there is tremendous progress day by day," concluded Dr. Habib. "We hope that stem cell therapy will help many patients with liver disease."

Oh hum: Another day, another adult stem cell success.

Court: Suicide Assisters Can Inherit

This is definitely bad policy, but it was probably the right decision by the court: A Wisconsin Court of Appeals ruled that a relatives who may have assisted a suicide can still inherit from his estate. From the story:

The wife and daughter of a Wisconsin man who committed suicide can inherit his estate even if they assisted him in the act, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

A Wisconsin law prevents anyone who "intentionally kills" another from inheriting from the person but the District 4 Court of Appeals said that does not extend to those who assist in suicide. "A person who assists another in voluntarily and intentionally taking his or her own life is plainly not depriving the other of life," Judge Margaret Vergeront wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. "We do not agree that 'killer' is commonly understood to mean the person who provides the means that enable another to kill himself or herself."

Wisconsin Right to Life, which opposes assisted suicide, immediately blasted the ruling, saying it gives a financial incentive for people to help relatives die prematurely...

The two admitted they drove him home from the hospital on a one-day pass the day he committed suicide but they denied assisting. The other children alleged the two knew he wanted to commit suicide, drove him to a cabin on the property, helped him inside, gave him a loaded shotgun and left. For the purposes of deciding the dispute, the court assumed those facts were true but still ruled in their favor. "Providing Edward with a loaded shotgun did not deprive him of his life: he deprived himself of life by shooting himself with the shotgun," Vergeront wrote.

Wisconsin Right to Life, good people who I know very well, are absolutely correct. The problems with permitting those who assist suicide to inherent from the dead person are so obvious that I need not belabor them here.

But it isn't up to the court to decide proper policy. It is up to the court to apply the law. And given the facts of this case, and the wording of the law, at least as described in the story, I think the court is probably right that these people did not actively kill the decedent.

That said, the legislature should immediately and forthrightly close this loophole in civil law.

Genetically Altering Pigs to Find Cure for Cystic Fibrosis

This is an example of how animal research can lead to tremendous alleviation of human suffering. Pigs are being genetically altered to have CF and cloned for use in research. From the story:

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is triggered when a person inherits two copies of a faulty gene carried by about one in 25 of the population. The disorder causes widespread damage to internal organs, especially the lungs and gut, by clogging them with thick, sticky mucus.

Now a team at the University of Missouri has developed a pig which appears to closely mimic the disease. The striking similarities suggest that the pigs will help improve understanding and may also speed discovery of new treatments.

Animal rights activists would say that the pigs lives are as important and valuable as all those people with cystic fibrosis, and hence, this kind of research should not be done. They are wrong.

Lead Into Gold: IPSCs Pass Another Hurdle

IPSCs were first created in humans only about 10 1/2 months ago. Yet, hurdles to their full use in regenerative medicine fall at a rate not seen with ESCR or, for sure, therapeutic cloning. And now another one. From the story:

Scientists are reporting today that they have overcome a major obstacle to using a promising alternative to embryonic stem cells, bolstering the prospects for bypassing the political and ethical tempest that has embroiled hopes for a new generation of medical treatments.

The researchers said they found a safe way to coax adult cells to regress into an embryonic state, alleviating what had been the most worrisome uncertainty about developing the cells into potential cures. "We have removed a major roadblock for translating this into a clinical setting," said Konrad Hochedlinger, a Harvard University stem cell researcher whose research was published online today by the journal Science. "I think it's an important advance."

So what was the big breakthrough?

Scientists last year shook up the scientific and political landscape by discovering how to manipulate the genes of adult cells to revert them into the equivalent of embryonic cells--entities dubbed "induced pluripotent stem" or "iPS" cells -- which could then be transformed into any type of cell in the body. Subsequent work has found that the cells can alleviate symptoms of Parkinson's disease and sickle cell anemia in mice.

But the first iPS cells were created by ferrying four genes into the DNA of adult cells using retroviruses, which can cause cancer in animals. There was also concern because the viruses integrated their genes into the cells' DNA in the course of transforming them. In the new work, Hochedlinger and his colleagues used a different type of virus, known as an adenovirus, which does not integrate its genes into a cell's DNA and therefore is believed to be harmless, to ferry the same four transformative genes into the DNA of mouse skin and liver cells.

"The adenovirus will infect the cells but then will clear themselves from the cells. After a few cell divisions there are no traces of the virus in the cell," he said. "You can't tell the virus was ever there."

This does not resolve the problem with all pluripotent cells, e.g., they cause teratomas--a different tumor issue than the cancer fear with IPSCs that seems to have been overcome. But boy, is this field moving fast.

Succinct Wisdom Against Court Imposed Assisted Suicide Legalization

As I reported here at SHS, Compassion and Choices (formerly the Hemlock Society)--the leaders of which are all so supportive of respecting the political process about assisted suicide in Oregon--at the same time are attempting to trash the right of Montana to outlaw assisted suicide via its political processes by seeking a court decree that the law in the Big Sky State is unconstitutional--a tack that has failed previously in Florida and Alaska.

I haven't seen all the briefs, but I do have one from the State of Montana, and it makes a cogent point about the debate beyond the court case. The brief notes that promoters of assisted suicide are long on emotion and ideology in their pursuit of state-sanction facilitated suicide, but short on facts. From its Reply Brief (no link, but can supply):

Plaintiffs continue to deal in undefined abstractions like "how one will cross the threshold to death" instead of explaining in detail why physicians must intend to cause a patient's death in order to relieve suffering or promote dignity at the end of life. (Pls.' Reply at 3.) Plaintiffs' basic failure to move past these platitudes and into attractable definition of "aid in dying" confirms the true breadth of their claim: a dying process altogether "free from government control," ending in a patient dead and a physician immune from prosecution. (Pls.' Reply at L) There is no precedent for such a right.

Indeed. Rarely has the entire agenda been so accurately and succinctly stated.

And with that wide-as-the-ocean-objective, how can any such "right" be limited to those who are diagnosed with a terminal illness (who may, in the end, not die of their disease if allowed to run its course). It won't be. For once the right to have medical killings facilitated is defined merely as a medical treatment, the next cases will be filed claiming that the restrictions on lethal treatment to alleviate suffering cannot be limited to the dying any more than any other form of palliation. If assisted suicide ever becomes widely accepted in this country, bet on it.

Sarah Palin Psychosis: Shoot and Eat a Moose--Support Killing Jews?

Sarah Palin psychosis continues undiminished: Now, Democratic Representative Alcee Hastings told a Jewish audience that Sarah Palin is probably a threat to Jews and blacks--because she hunts. From the story:

"If Sarah Palin isn't enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention," Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida said at a panel about the shared agenda of Jewish and African-American Democrats Wednesday. Hastings, who is African-American, was explaining what he intended to tell his Jewish constituents about the presidential race. "Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through," Hastings added as the room erupted in laughter and applause.

Very funny. To think, this man was once a judge.

Hastings' incendiary and outrageous demagoguery--he essentially accused Palin of anti-Semitism and racism, after all--is worrying because of what it might portend for the balance of the campaign. Still, I am sure PETA would agree with Hastings since it once asserted that eating meat made one the moral equivalent of an SS guard at Auschwitz in the infamous Holocaust on Your Plate Campaign, and that animal husbandry was the moral equivalent of lynching in its odious Animal Liberation Project.

Ecuador to Vote Sunday on Granting Rights to "Nature"!

A radical environmental group called the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is the brainchild behind a constitutional proposal, to be voted on Sunday, that would grant rights to "nature." From the proposal:

Persons and people have the fundamental rights guaranteed in this Constitution and in the international human rights instruments. Nature is subject to those rights given by this Constitution and Law

The purpose of this is to permit ideologues to sue and for nature, or aspects thereof, to have standing as litigants in court:

Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms.* The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution. [The word "organisms" means government bodies and courts.]

Do we need any further proof of the game that is afoot around the world to turn nature and animals into the moral equals of people--of course with only people having any obligations. In essence, this is the worship of nature transformed into an established religion.

To show you how far this kind of thinking is spreading--and how radical the MSM has become--the LA Times , in effect, praised the measure by refusing to take a position on giving rights to trees!

It sounds like a stunt by the San Francisco City Council. But Ecuador is engaged in nothing less than an effort to redefine the relationship between human beings and the natural world...

No other country has gone as far as Ecuador in proposing to give trees their day in court, but it certainly is not alone in its recalibration of natural rights...Ecuador is codifying this shift in sensibility. In some ways, this makes sense for a country whose cultural identity is almost indistinguishable from its regional geography--the Galapagos, the Amazon, the Sierra. How this new area of constitutional law will work, however, is another question. We aren't ready to endorse such a step at home, or even abroad. But it's intriguing. We'll be watching Ecuador's example.

If this passes, I will write further. But for now, let us be clear: This isn't promoting a human duty to treat the environmental correctly--a matter the Times editorialists are too woolly headed to understand. By granting nature equal rights, human needs and welfare will have to be sacrificed! Those most hurt will be the poor looking to develop their countries! This radical deconstruction of the importance of being human should concern everyone who believes in human prosperity and the importance of the concept of distinctly human rights.

And don't say, "It can't happen here," or I'll scream!

SF Chronicle Opposes Proposition 2

The SF Chronicle's editorial page hews distinctly left--with Secondhand Smokette providing an alternate view on the op/ed page. That is why I was struck by the paper coming out against Proposition 2, the HSUS sponsored initiative to ban caging egg chickens. And the editorial board seems to have done its homework. From the editorial:

We heard from the advocates of both sides, and perhaps the most persuasive testimony against the measure came from Steve Mahrt, a Petaluma farmer who specializes in organic, cage-free eggs. Mahrt suggested the rigid language of Proposition 2 would make cage-free operations such as his "uncompetitive" with farmers from other states who could house their hens in greater density. He also suggested that his quarter-century of experience in the egg business - all cage-free - convinced him that the birds were healthier, and happier, in environments where they were packed closer together than would be allowed under Proposition 2.

My biggest concern is the cost to consumers. I was at the store Monday and bought eggs labeled as cage free--at a cost of $2.00 per dozen higher than unlabeled eggs, which presumably came from caged chickens. The editorial also tackles this issue:

Also, as Mahrt noted, cage-free eggs are considerable more expensive than the mass-production variety--but he made a good case that it is more labor intensive and difficult to raise egg-laying hens outside cages. Proponents of Proposition 2 have suggested that the additional cost would amount to only about a penny an egg.

The one cent more line was pushed here too by a HSUS representative, and I am sorry, I don't buy it. The prices at the store demonstrate that it is false.

The editorial also opines that initiatives are not the way to go in passing animal welfare laws such as Proposition 2, and I agree. This was written by a special interest group that I believe seeks the ultimate end of all domesticated animals, although it doesn't overtly push that animal rights party line. Yet, I have never seen HSUS admit that any use of animals is necessary for human prosperity or welfare. Thus, rather than pass a law written by one side, I would prefer to see legislative proposals in this field in which HSUS's voice is heard, but so too are industry voices and those of consumers. As the editorial noted:

The case against battery cages is neither as simple nor as overwhelming as supporters would want you to believe. This is an issue that cries out for balance between the call for concern for the conditions of animals and the interests of those who produce one of the staples of our food supply. The ballot box is not the place to regulate this aspect of California agriculture. Voters should reject Proposition 2.

I don't tend to follow newspaper editorials when deciding how to vote. But this one may be an exception.

(The Chronicle published an alternative view on the op/ed page today by Bill Niman, the founder of Niman Ranch, a raiser of humane meat, that focused solely on the humane aspects of the argument. Here is the link. I wonder of Niman knows that animal rights activists would like to drive him out of business?)

PETA a Joke: Wants Ice Cream Made From Human Milk

I can't tell you all how often I ignore PETA's ridiculous antics. They are addicted to publicity--any publicity--to promote their zealotry and I am loath to lend any hand in that enterprise. But sometimes a story comes along that so succinctly illustrates the group's idiocy that it is impossible to resist: PETA wants Ben and Jerry's to make ice cream from human milk. From the story:

"PETA's request comes in the wake of news reports that a Swiss restaurant owner will begin purchasing breast milk from nursing mothers and substituting breast milk for 75 percent of the cow's milk in the food he serves," the statement says.PETA officials say a move to human breast milk would lessen the suffering of dairy cows and their babies on factory farms and benefit human health.

Women as so many dairy cows: If a right wing group suggested something like this the sisterhood would explode. More to the point, PETA knows the proposal is beyond stupid. How many millions of gallons of ice cream does Ben and Jerry's sell a year? That requires millions of cows putting out more milk each day than women do. You also need to pasteurize the milk, etc. etc. etc.

The restaurant aspect of the story is just another indication that the Swiss are losing their minds, what with their biggest brains promoting plant rights and all. But PETA's leaders will latch onto anything--no matter how inane--to anthropomorphize animals and get the group into the klieg lights. But then, the group rakes in millions each year from people who dig into their own pockets "for the animals." So, apparently its leaders have found that stupid sells.

Guilty as Charged for Murdering Daughter With Cerebral Palsy: But Would She Have Received Slap on Wrist if "Compassion" Was Defense?

I reported a little while ago about Joanne Hill, who murdered her daughter with cerebral palsy. Now, she has been found guilty. From the story:

A mother who drowned her disabled daughter in a bath after drinking wine was convicted of murder yesterday and sentenced to life in prison.

Joanne Hill, 32, from Connah's Quay, Flintshire, north Wales, admitted killing four-year-old Naomi by drowning her in November last year. She had denied murder but pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. However, the jury at Chester crown court, which had heard Hill was embarrassed about her daughter's mild cerebral palsy, rejected this plea and found her guilty of murder after deliberating for an hour-and-a-half. She will not be eligible for parole for at least 15 years.

Her estranged husband, Simon Hill, 38, told a press conference he would never be able to come to terms with what had happened. His daughter "lived life to the full and was an inspiration", he said.

Judge Elgan Edwards told Hill: "There can be no excuse for what you did."

The judge said: "You killed your own daughter because you could not cope with her disability. You had other pressures upon you, a disintegrating marriage, and you decided to kill your own daughter by drowning her."

Good. Killing children should be beyond excuse.

However, I can't help but think that Ms. Hill's lawyer chose the wrong defense strategy. Recall Robert Latimer, the Canadian who murdered his daughter Traci because she had cerebral palsy--an act supported by his wife after the fact and applauded widely in Canada. Latimer's defense was he was doing it for Traci, as a compassionate and loving act. He got off with a several years in prison, and the jury didn't even want him to serve that much time.

So, this is apparently the moral of the story: Murder your daughter because you are embarrassed that she has cerebral palsy; go to jail for life. But murder your daughter because she has cerebral palsy and excuse it as a loving act to put her out of her misery; do very little time and get good poll ratings. It isn't the act, it's the feelings of pity that can be generated among the populace that really counts. Such are the times in which we live.

Lack of Physician Empathy: Another Cause of Popular Distrust in Medicine

In a recent previous post, we discussed the reasons why many patients no longer trust the medical system. A disturbing study that found too little empathy from doctors toward their cancer patients could also be a contributing cause. From the story:

U.S. researchers who assessed interactions between a small group of people with lung cancer and their doctors found physicians provided little emotional support even when patients seemed to be searching for it.

When patients made comments on topics like the personal impact of cancer, their diagnosis and treatment and struggles with the health care system, doctors responded with words of empathy only 10 percent of the time, the researchers said.

This was a small study -- appointments between doctors and 10 patients at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Houston were audio taped and analyzed for whether the physicians provided empathy for the plight of these people with a deadly illness.

But Dr. Diane Morse of the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, New York said the findings reinforce other research showing doctors fall short in the simple act of acknowledging the emotional difficulties of their patients' predicament.

In their defense, doctors are under tremendous financial pressure from managed care economics to push the patients through their offices assembly line style. And as the story discussed, the study was small. But clearly, the milk of human kindness should be a crucial part of medicine and despite the pressures they are under, doctors will have to do a better job.

Big Bailout Will Sink National Health Insurance

With the national financial artery severed due to moronic mortgage mismanagers--even I knew these no interest, no down payment mortgages would result in foreclosures, so why didn't the big salaried?--it seems to me that any chance for a fully funded national health insurance is quickly fading. We are just too broke.

At the same time, with insurance companies increasingly cherry picking and raising premiums through the roof, a pure market system won't work either. Thus, it seems to me we should begin to focus on ways to make private health insurance--subsidized and regulated some by the government, a la the Medicare Drug Plan--more accessible and affordable. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Eliminate state-by-state markets and permit national coverage to facilitate greater spreading of the risk.
2. Create 10 national private plans akin to the Medicare Drug Plan, an approach which I like, to allow freedom of choice, but also set floors of coverage.
3. Have the government guarantee catastrophic care, which should help keep the pressure off of premiums.
4. Permit high deductibles and copays to discourage over utilization.
5. Encourage health savings accounts and permit tax deductions (or perhaps credits) for the price of premiums.
6. Permit people to buy into Medicare at age 60.
7. The basic plan will have to only cover the basics; limited mental health, no dental, no elective abortions, only partial prescription payments. If people want those kinds of elective coverages or greater protection, they should pay for it themselves.
8. Increase the uses of physicians assistants, certified nurse practitioners, and properly licensed midwives--under the direction of a physician--for primary care and obstetrician services.
9. Encourage price competition in both the funder and service provider sectors. This should include increasing the doctor pool to allow the law of supply and demand to click in.
10. Sorry, but to qualify for coverage, someone will have to be a citizen or legal resident.

Of course, that is pie in the sky, since we are so divided politically and culturally from each other that those fights will probably prevent any solution--whether nationalized or primarily privatized--from taking hold. Plus, for even a partially government funded program to work, we will have to triage government and ruthlessly cut in other areas. So, I am not holding my breath.

But the status quo will not hold. So, unless we want a total collapse, we'd better learn to work together and reacquire the ability to compromise.

And as for fighting global warming--if it exists--fuhgataboutit.

New Diagnostic Techniques to Reduce Forty Percent PVS Misdiagnosis

The Times of London reports that scientists hope to be able to reduce the 40% misdiagnosis of PVS. From the story:

Ten years ago, Kate went into a deep coma and was on a ventilator for several weeks. She had suffered severe brain inflammation after contracting a viral infection. When she came out of the coma, she opened her eyes and could breathe naturally, but she was unresponsive to speech and visual stimuli, and appeared to lack all conscious awareness. She was still in this condition four months after falling ill, and was later diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative state, or PVS: in other words, persistently unaware. But the diagnosis was wrong.

Although Kate could not speak, or hear properly, or make any kind of signal, or take in sustenance except through a tube into the stomach, she was sometimes aware of herself and her surroundings. She had a raging thirst that was not alleviated by the ward staff. She was racked with pain. Sometimes she'd cry out, but the ward staff thought it was just a reflex action. Kate suffered so much pain and despair that she tried to take her own life by holding her breath.

Then a Cambridge neuroscientist called Dr Adrian Owen put her in a special kind of scanner and performed an unprecedented experiment. It revealed evidence of fluctuating levels of brain activation when she was presented with pictures of her parents. From that point, she started her long journey back into the world.

It's always "just a reflex." When families or nurses report signs of cognizance, it is often, "They are only seeing what they want to see."

But that may change:

The team is now experimenting with drawing parallels between scanners and EEG machines, which measure brainwaves. It is possible that EEG "markers" can be created that are identical to crucial brain locations found only by scanning techniques. The plan is to be able to make functional brain tests at the patient’s bedside that preclude the high cost and massive bulk involved in Pet and MRI scans. This should lead to "tailor-made" rehabilitation based on highly refined external observations in combination with precise interior knowledge of an impaired brain.

The story also discusses the problem of putting the disabled person out of our misery:

"Imagine the case of this family who, after several years, want to finally grieve and get their lives back. Mr K has a new partner, their son plans to go to Australia, and their daughter has moved to Scotland. Their hospital visits have dwindled to once every three months. They've made their decision to apply for withdrawal of feeding and allow Mrs K to die. What if a scan now finds a trace of minimal awareness? The withdrawal will obviously be halted, there will be new feelings of guilt to be dealt with, and the family's life is back on hold.

Decisions about patients' deaths should not be made on the basis of family impact. Besides, in the US at least, conscious patients are dehydrated all the time.

I strongly believe that it should not matter whether a patient is in a PVS or not in the sense of their right to life, and care, and moral worth. Barring an advance directive in writing, their food and water should not be removed on the decision of others based on quality of life judgments. But using these tests to determine the extent of the brain insult can lead to better treatment and improved conditions. The question will be raised, of course about the price tag. But are we really willing to abandon these patients because we don't think their lives are worth living?

Fraud Pays: Hwang Gets Patent for Nonexistant Cloned Embryonic Stem Cells

Sometimes I am just amazed. Hwang Woo suk is a charlatan. Readers of SHS and others will recall that, a few years ago, he created an international media sensation by claiming to have created the first cloned embryos from which he obtained patient specific, tailor made, embryonic stem cells. He was lying. An investigation showed he had faked the research.

But now, the Australian government is going to give Hwang a patent on cloned embryonic stem cells! From the story:

Australian patent authorities will likely grant a patent to disgraced Korean stem cell researcher Hwang Woo-suk for a cloned human embryonic stem cell. "Once the registration process is over, Dr. Hwang can collect royalties on the proceeds from the sales of new medicine developed with his technology. His technology will equal the patent on the cloned sheep Dolly," the foundation said.

Well, I guess he can patent the technique--which didn't work--but there are no cloned stem cells to patent. Ridiculous.

On the plus side, Hwang's patent could serve to further impede the development of human cloning, since he might begin demanding payments from anybody who tries. Indeed, that is a major factor that impeded the development of embryonic stem cell research.

The Tide Turns: James Thomson to Pursue Non Embryonic Stem Cell Research

I can't think of any more vivid example of the dramatic change in the scientific and political paradigms regarding stem cell research than James Thomson, the discoverer of human ESCs--moving away from embryonic stem cell field and into IPSCs. From the story:

With their field riding a wave of discovery and change, researchers, financiers and policy-makers from around the world will arrive today for the 2008 World Stem Cell Summit in Madison, the city where James Thomson started a scientific revolution almost a decade ago. If any need confirmation of the rapidly changing landscape, it should come with this announcement planned for the summit: The two Madison companies co-founded by Thomson have merged and shifted their focus to products involving non-embryonic stem cells.

We know why, of course. Cloning hasn't exactly panned out, besides which it would be far more contentious, dangerous for women due to egg procurement, complicated, and expensive. But IPSCs have really changed the paradigm:

Ever since the reprogramming breakthrough, researchers have published a stream of papers using the new technique to rescue mice with sickle cell anemia and to create human cell lines from people with a host of different diseases. The cell lines hold the promise of allowing scientists to gain a new window into the disease process and a powerful new tool for testing drugs. Longer term, the new technology may allow doctors to use patients' own cells to treat genetic and other ailments.

I have always admired Thomson. I didn't agree with him on the ethical issues, but he never pretended embryonic stem cells didn't come from embryos. He never pretended that somatic cell nuclear transfer didn't create an embryo (KC Star and Kit Wagar, hello!), and he never denied that there weren't serious moral concerns with the entire embryonic field of research.

May he live long and prosper and may the IPSCs and other ethical means of regenerative medicine succeed beyond all of our wildest dreams.

Have Microphone: Will Talk..And Talk...And Talk

I was honored to appear on Friday the 19th of September before the Connecticut Council on Developmental Disabilities, as part of its series on "Life Threatening Public Policy." My presentation is a bit lengthy--more than an hour--during which I focus on human exceptionalism, human equality, universal human rights, bioethics, personhood theory, infanticide, the odious promotion of harvesting organs from the people with profound cognitive disabilities, futile care theory, and the duty to die.

If what I had to say is of interest, hit this link and listen in to the whole program, including comments about the series and introductory remarks. Thanks to all, particularly Ed Preneta of the CTCDD for hosting me (and for the beer), and to Dan Caley of the Rhode Island Developmental Disabilities Council for posting the presentation on-line. And special thanks to Jo Massarelli of the Social Role Valorization Implementation Project for making my several appearances last week in New England possible, and most especially for her and her colleagues' concerted and selfless commitment to protecting the most weak and vulnerable among us.

Confusion: FDA to Treat Genetically Engineered Animals as Drugs

The FDA has decided to regulate genetic engineering of animals. And it looks to be confusing. From the story:

The agency has premised the rules on an unusual reading of the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, saying that the inserted DNA used to modify an animal can be regulated as a "new animal drug" under the 1938 law from which the agency draws much of its regulatory clout. Under this interpretation, the same gene inserted into two different animals of the same species on separate occasions creates two different entities to regulate, because DNA integrates itself into the genome pretty much at random. However, the offspring of genetically modified animals will be, in regulatory terms, the same thing as their parents...

The new regulations are unlikely to have an impact on most bench scientists. The agency says genetically engineered laboratory animals are a "principal" case where it would exercise its discretion not to regulate. "In general we are not interested in having an application from every postdoc and grad student making a knockout mouse for this that or the other thing," said Rudenko. The agency says it will also take what some would see as a light touch in not requiring foods from genetically engineered animals to be labelled as such unless the engineering was specifically designed to change their nutritional values, or if it did so by chance.

Not surprisingly, the industry is cheering and consumer groups are not amused:

The biotechnology industry, which has long urged the agency to issue such rules, praised the draft. Barbara Glenn, the managing director for animal biotechnology at the Biotechnology Industry Organization in Washington DC, says that about a dozen of her group's 1,200 member companies are currently developing genetically engineered animals. "The guidance is going to ensure that we can reach the very compelling benefits of genetic engineering of animals," she says. "It simply allows industry to move forward."

Consumer groups, by contrast, were highly critical. They said that the guidance was far too vague, leaving consumers to trust that FDA will conduct adequate assessments of animals' environmental and safety impacts.

It sounds to me as if Congress should revisit the law and grant the FDA more specific authority based on current science. But considering the Congress we have, they might make it worse instead of better.

Of course animal rights activists would prefer we receive no benefit from these genetically modified animals. But then, they don't want us to benefit from the use of animals at all.

Pushing the Duty to Die in the UK

I am concluding a very successful trip to MA and CT, giving a series of speeches to advocates for, and defenders of, people with developmental and cognitive disabilities, in which I have warned against utilitarian bioethics and its explicit and implicit push toward the so-called "duty to die." This view is even more pronounced in the United Kingdom, where one of the most prominent ethicists is a woman named Baronness Warnock. As reported by the Telegraph, Warnock has recently called on dementia patients to kill themselves to spare society the burden of their care. From the story:

Elderly people suffering from dementia should consider ending their lives because they are a burden on the NHS and their families, according to the influential medical ethics expert Baroness Warnock.

The veteran Government adviser said pensioners in mental decline are "wasting people's lives" because of the care they require and should be allowed to opt for euthanasia even if they are not in pain. She insisted there was "nothing wrong" with people being helped to die for the sake of their loved ones or society.

Warnock's views could just as easily apply to those with developmental disabilities or those who have suffered serious brain injuries. And don't think that her views are materially different than some--although certainly not all--bioethicists here in the USA. She's just more blunt and candid.

Barach Obama Apparently Doesn't Know the Difference Between a Fetus and an Infant

Barach Obama has been accused of opposing the Infant Born Alive Protection Act, which requires hospitals and doctors to treat the survivors of attempted abortion. He denies this despite having refused repeatedly to vote for the Illinois versions.

This 2001 transcript, pp.86-87, is telling. Expressing a hyper-legalism to avoid grappling with the issue, Obama argued against the legislation, stating:

The second reason that it would probably be found unconstitutional is that this essentially says that a doctor is required to provide treatment for a previable child or fetus, however way you want to describe it. Viability is the line that has been drawn by the Supreme Court to determine whether or not an abortion can or cannot take place. And if we place the burden on the doctor, that says you have to keep alive even a previable child as long as possible and give them as much medical attention--as is necessary to try to keep the child alive, then we're probably crossing the line in terms of unconstitutionality.

"A previable child or fetus, however way you want to describe it"? Once the child is delivered, he or she is an infant, not a fetus. And the requirement that a living baby be treated once delivered, has nothing to do with abortion or the woman's right to the same. So, it seems to me that the only way to read Obama's statement is that he doesn't believe that abortion survivors should have to be treated as fully human beings.

And how's this for leadership? After making his statement, after asserting that the bill is unconstitutional, Obama said:

I think that we will probably end up in court once again, as we often do on this issue. And as a consequence, I'll be voting Present.

The courage to lead!

HT: Yuval Levin

Scientists to Study Near Death Experiences

I am not sure this kind of thing can be studied scientifically since the reports of such experiences are so ad hoc. In any event, scientists are going to try and find out if out of body experiences reported by people who have had full cardiac arrest can be validated: From the story:

People who report seeing bright lights or tunnels as they leave their bodies in near-death experiences are having their claims treated seriously in a hospital study.

Doctors in hospitals in Britain and the US will study 1,500 heart attack patients to see if people with no heartbeat or brain activity can have "out of body" experiences. Some people report being able to soar out of their bodies and look down on themselves and medical staff.

The study at 25 UK and US hospitals will include doctors placing images on shelves that are only visible from the ceiling to test the theory. Dr Sam Parnia, an intensive care doctor who is heading the study, said: "If you can demonstrate that consciousness continues after the brain switches off, it allows for the possibility that the consciousness is a separate entity.

That would certainly challenge materialistic thinking, wouldn't it? However, I believe such studies have been tried before; no dice. Perhaps this one will be different, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

New Attempt to Impose Assisted Suicide by Court Fiat in Montana

Assisted suicide advocates are very directed. Kathryn Tucker, attorney for Compassion and Choices (formerly the Hemlock Society) tried and failed to obtain a U.S Supreme Court ruling creating a constitutional right to assisted suicide. That failed 9-0. Then, she tried in Florida, having a state constitutional right declared in the courts. That failed. Then, she tried in Alaska. That failed. Now, it is Montana with a court case coming next month. From the story:

A lawsuit to help terminally ill patients with the right to assisted death will go before a Montana judge next month. The suit was filed in October 2007 on behalf of two terminally ill patients, one from Billings and another from Livingston. Both want the right to die with dignity...

The complaint is based on rights guaranteed in the Montana Constitution, the right of privacy, individual dignity, due process, equal protection of the law and the right to seek safety, health and happiness in all lawful ways. Attorney Mark Connell of Missoula said it is the patient's right to choose how and when they die, not the government's right to forbid it.

That "news" story reads like it came off the Compassion and Choices press release, including the use of the euphemistic term "assisted death." Par for the course.

I wrote a more detailed analysis of this suit when it was filed, including a prediction that this case would be forthcoming in the Weekly Standard, accessed here.

Sign of the Times: Stifling Suicide Web Sites

To paraphrase an old joke: I believe in human exceptionalism, it's people I don't like. Well, people who would put how-to-commit suicide instructions on the Web for use by vulnerable people. Now, the UK is thinking of cracking down. From the story:

The law on "suicide websites" is to be rewritten to ensure people know they are illegal, the government has said. It follows concerns people searching for information on suicide are more likely to find sites encouraging the act than offering support.

It is illegal under the 1961 Suicide Act to promote suicide, but no website operator has been prosecuted. The law will be amended to make clear it applies online and to help service providers police the sites they host.

Justice Minister Maria Eagle said there was no "magic solution" to protecting vulnerable people online. She said: "Updating the language of the Suicide Act, however, should help to reassure people that the internet is not a lawless environment and that we can meet the challenges of the digital world. "It is important, particularly in an area of such wide public interest and concern, for the law to be expressed in terms that everyone can understand."

Well, good luck with that since the creeps will just go elsewhere.

And then there is this: Dutch doctors are boosting "autoeuthanasia," e.g. the a group of Dutch doctors--approved by the Dutch Medical Association--has posted how-to-commit-suicide instructions on the Web, which doctors then give to their suicidal patients who aren't otherwise qualified for euthanasia. So, how are they any less odious? I submit they are not.

Is there any doubt that suicide is seducing many in the West as somehow being a "freedom" agenda item? Is there any doubt that nihilism is having a field day?

Protecting the Vulnerable in Hospitals by "Valorizing" Their Moral Worth

I am currently in Worcester, MA for a series of speeches in MA and in CT. My primary sponsor is the Social Role Valorization Implementation Project (SRVIP). From an article about SRV:

The basic premise of SRV is that people are much more likely to experience the "good things in life" if they hold valued social roles than if they do not. Therefore, the major goal of SRV is to create or support socially valued roles for people in their society, because if a person holds valued social roles, that person is likely to receive from society those good things in life that are available to that society and can be conveyed by it, or at least the opportunities for obtaining these.

The SRVIP, among other matters, trains people to serve as advocates for people with disabilities when they are hospitalized. In essence, they literally stay with "devalued" patients--primarily people with cognitive or developmental deficits--to ensure that they are treated properly--and not, for example, given medically unwarranted morphine drips. The stories I have been hearing from these valiant advocates would curl your hair, with some successes in saving lives, and some outrageous losses. I won't repeat them here since they are hearsay, but I am sure you can imagine.

I have heard many such stories as I travel and in private communications. I still believe (hope) they are the exception, and without question must be prevented and punished. In any event, this idea of a creating a cadre of trained advocates and protectors for the devalued in the health care system is a very good one. I would love to see the concept spread throughout the country.

The Ugly Discriminatory Face of Medical Futility

This story out of the UK illustrates the ugliness of medical futility. Under the theory, medicine is being devolved from a life-saving enterprise to a life-saving enterprise if we approve of your life's quality. But if we don't and you want to live (or your family wishes you to continue on)--then medicine becomes the decider that it is your time to die. From the story:

A couple fighting for their daughter's right to live were yesterday celebrating her return home from hospital.Amber Hartland, six, suffers from Infantile Tay-Sachs, a rare incurable brain disorder that has left her paralysed.

She is back with her family after being treated in hospital for a chest infection. Doctors say it is time for Amber to die and are taking legal action to stop her going to intensive care again. Mr Hartland, of Cwmbran, SouthWales, said: "She should live while she's comfortable."

Can you imagine doctors suing to keep from having to treat a sick patient?

This isn't the first time in the UK, either. When the parents of David Glass brought him to the ER for resuscitation, because the boy had developmental and physical disabilities, the doctors not only refused, but put him on an unnecessary morphine drip clearly intended to end his life. The parents saved their son's life--no thanks to the doctors--and then sued for the right to have their son treated if there were another medical emergency. And the doctors won the right in court to say no!

The new theory seems to be that if you are going to die in a few months, why not get it over with? And if you don't agree: Tough toenails. And they wonder why people are losing trust in medicine.

Attempt to ID Babies With Down For Eugenic Abortion Costing Other Babies Their Lives

According to a UK study, the concerted drive to prenatally detect Down syndrome or other anomalies through genetic testing aimed at eugenic abortion is also causing the deaths of babies who have no disabling condition through miscarriage. From the story:

Two healthy babies are miscarried for every three Down's Syndrome babies that are detected and prevented from being born, research has suggested...

DSEI chief executive Frank Buckley and Professor Sue Buckley, who conducted their research using a database at London's Bart's Hospital, also point out that 95 per cent of women deemed to be high risk by the blood test will not be carrying a baby with the disorder, yet most go on to have the tests.

"The screening for Down's syndrome has consequences for every pregnant woman," they said. "You cannot look at it as just a search-and-destroy mission focused on babies with Down's alone."

Although they admit that their ratio is only an estimate, they are backed by a number of independent experts who fear inexperienced practitioners may also be to blame. Professor Kypros Nicolaides, head of the Harris Birthright Centre at King's College Hospital in south London, said the loss of healthy babies was "completely unacceptable"

"Search and destroy," yup that's a good description of an ugly process, with the unaffected babies apparently the collateral damage.

Here's an idea: How about not trying to destroy these babies in the first place and then the others will be safe, too.

Attacking Sarah Palin for Supporting Wolf Predator Control

This YouTube video demonstrates the garbage thrown by animal rights activists and those who make a quasi-religion out of the environment.

Governor Sarah Palin does indeed, support aerial hunting of wolves. But not for fun (and she has never done it). The point is predator control, as an article in Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2199140) points out that aerial hunting is against federal law and is only permitted to control predators. Moreover, in Alaska permits are given only "in select areas" where moose and caribou populations are threatened. The article says this leaves more meat for human hunters. I don't doubt that, and I see nothing wrong with it. Subsistence hunting is a mainstay for some Alaskans' diets. But it would also seem that the hunts, which have controlled numbers of permitted kills, are also conducted as a matter of proper ecosystem management.

Losing Trust in Medicine

People are losing trust in medicine. This is a very bad thing. And doctors are taking note. From a column by a surgeon named Pauline Chen published in the New York Times:

"I don't rely on the doctor anymore. These days, you have to look out for yourself."

Those words, and the smell of grilled meats, wafted by me at a recent potluck dinner party. My husband and I had tagged along for a summer reunion, where my sister-in-law and her husband joined a group of 40-, 50-and 60-somethings who were visiting their hometown, eager to catch up on their childhood buddies’ lives.

The chatter started as one would expect--five-minute recaps of work, children, parents and summer plans. But as the evening progressed, the gossamer conversations of this boomer crowd seemed to spin into one thread: the state of one's health. Or our parents’ health. Or our children’s health.

And no matter the specifics of each story, they all seemed to revolve around one theme: that as a patient or the family of a patient, you would feel at odds with the very people who were supposed to care: the doctors...

More and more Americans feel disconnected from their doctors, especially compared to a generation ago. And they certainly have less confidence in the profession as a whole. In 1966, a Harris Poll found that almost three-quarters of Americans had “a great deal” of confidence in their health care leaders. That number has steadily dropped over the last four decades, so that today only slightly more than a third feel the same way, the same poll shows.

Alas, the column doesn't really explore the reasons for this verity, although she hopes to have further conversation about that with readers of the NYT Web site.

I suggest the conversation could look into these issues for a start:
1. The erosion of Hippocratic values caused by the influence of utilitarian bioethics leading toward a "quality of life" ethic that devalues the sickest patients and those with cognitive and developmental disabilities.
2. The erosion of Hippocratic values caused by the influence of HMOs and the capitation system of medical economics that result in hospitals and doctors losing money on the sickest patients or those with the most serious disabilities.
3. Bioethics agenda items like futile care theory in which people see stories of doctors trying to refuse wanted life-sustaining treatment.
4. The drive for health care rationing that would be medical discrimination by a more polite name.
5. The erosion of trust in ethical end of life care sowed by the assisted suicide movement.
6. Controversies like the Terri Schiavo case in which some people see a helpless woman dehydrated to death by doctors who willingly remove sustenance and others see a woman forced to remain alive against her wishes in a condition they dread befalling themselves or their loved ones.

I am interested in any of your thoughts on this important matter.

Rita Marker Tells It Like It Is About Oregon Assisted Suicide

Rita Marker is primarily responsible for dragging me kicking and screaming from pursuing Naderite endeavors to fighting against euthanasia and assisted suicide. I have worked with her closely for 15 years and have seen her dedication and intelligence first hand. If any single person can be credited, among the many able people who fight the death culture agenda, in materially slowing the spread of euthanasia/assisted suicide, it is Rita Marker.

Rita probably knows more about assisted suicide/euthanasia than any other person on either side of the issue. Her depth of understanding is abundantly displayed in a very good piece in The American Thinker.about the Oregon law in the context of Washington's I-1000--dealing with issues studiously ignored by the MSM. She deals with the story of Oregon offering Medicaid patients assisted suicide after refusing life-extending chemotherapy, a matter we have covered here at SHS. She also exposes the utter unreliability of the Oregon annual statistical reports. She writes:

[U]nder Oregon's law doctors participating in assisted suicide must file reports with the state. So the only physicians providing data for official annual reports are those who actually prescribe lethal drugs for patients. First, they help the person commit suicide and, afterwards, they report whether their actions complied with the law. Then, that information is used to formulate the state's official annual reports. However, according to American Medical News, Oregon officials in charge of issuing the reports have conceded that "there's no way to know if additional deaths went unreported." (The official number of reported assisted-suicide deaths in Oregon is 341.)

Indeed, the official summary accompanying one annual report noted that there is no way to know if information provided by the physicians is accurate or complete. But, it stated, "[W]e, however, assume that doctors were being their usual careful and accurate selves." The reporting agency also acknowledged that it has no authority or funding to investigate the accuracy of those self-reports. It would be nifty if the Internal Revenue Service allowed such unverified and unverifiable self-reporting.

I submit that transparency and accurate information are not the point of the Oregon guidelines: Giving false assurance is the purpose--just as in the Netherlands.

Case in point: Marker notes that vulnerable patients are totally unprotected once the lethal prescription is written:

Moreover, neither Oregon's law nor Washington's proposal has any type of protection for the patient once the prescription is written. While the requests for assisted suicide are to be made knowingly and voluntarily, there is no provision that the patient must knowingly and voluntarily take the lethal drugs. Dr. Katrina Hedberg, the lead author of most of Oregon's official reports, acknowledged that there is no assessment of patients after the prescribing is completed. She said that the "law itself only provides for writing the prescription, not what happens afterwards."

The dangers of such a system is easily discernible in the Kate Cheney case.

Read the whole thing. Rita really knows her stuff!

Will Saletan on Our Bionic Elders

Slate's Will Saletan is an interesting (and sometimes maddening) writer who writes about the raging bioethics/biotech debates from a uniquely oblique angle that often exposes the surrealism of modern times. Case in point, an op/ed piece in yesterday's Washington Post. He begins:

Twenty-four years ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in "The Terminator," a movie about a cyborg--part man, part machine--sent back in time from the year 2029. He was young and buff, and the movie became his shtick...Today, Schwarzenegger is 61, and the joke's on him. The cyborgs have arrived, and he's one of them. He has had a hip and two heart valves replaced, plus a femur repaired with screws, cables and a metal plate. "This is what happens when you are the Terminator," he quipped. "They switch body parts."

In real life, cyborgs aren't studs from the future. They're old folks. As we age, our parts wear out. That used to mean immobility or death. Today, we can replace them.

There's money in them thar hills from replacing body parts:

The [artificial body parts] industry is booming because it combines two things. One is the innovation of high-tech engineering. The other is the world's most powerful desire: to live longer and more comfortably. The market for replacement body parts is like the market for car or computer parts, except that your body is paramount, and you can't get a new one.

This raises new questions. How will it be paid for? What about when these devices wear out? Is turning off a life-saving appliance as unwanted medical treatment tantamount to killing?

Saletan concludes:

Twelve years after "The Terminator" came out, another actor, Al Franken, offered a modest proposal: "Why not shoot the elderly into space?" That way, we could explore without worry. "I'm not saying we don't try to get them back," he joked. "We just don't make such a big deal about it." Today, another 12 years later, Franken, like Schwarzenegger, is an aging politician. And here's the punch line: We're not shooting the elderly into space. We're shooting them into time. We're testing cyborg gadgetry on them because they're the ones whose parts have worn out. If it works, they're exploring the future. And if it doesn't, no big deal.

Quoting the always nasty Al Franken is an iffy proposition, but I take Saletan's point. This much is sure: How we work through these matters could not be more important to the maintenance of a moral and ethical society.

SNL Takes Down Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton

This very funny satirical sketch takes down the two most notable women in contemporary American politics.

The Triumphs and Tribulations of Rasing a Down Child

The Washington Post has a sobering front page story about what it is like to raise a Down child: Credit the selection of Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential candidate for the interest shown. I was heartened by some of what I read, and very much appalled. From the story:

But the parents of children who have Down syndrome say that raising a child with a disability can also unlock profound and uplifting truths about themselves, their children and the value of life in ways that others could never see..."People keep asking me, 'So what do you think?' I keep saying, 'What is it exactly you want my opinion about?' '' Pedlikin said. "People are paying much more attention to us. . . . Before, kids would stare, but not adults. Everybody's curious: 'What's it like to have a kid with Down syndrome?' "

For Pedlikin and her husband, Philip, raising a boy with Down syndrome can be trying. They love their son deeply, act as forceful advocates for him and say his birth has changed their worldview in a positive way, but they acknowledge that their lives are much harder, more emotionally wrenching and often lonely...

Many parents also talk about how the phone never rings with invitations for a play date for their children or an offer to help carpool. Sometimes, they find themselves answering people who suggest that their child should never have been born

The sheer cruelty of this really set me back on my heels:

"My sister looked at me and said, 'Why didn't you abort her?' " Marsili recalled.

Can you imagine an aunt asking why her niece was permitted to be born? The answer was right on the money:

"I said, 'What? Because we love her, and she's my baby, and we love her!' 'But you knew,' my sister said. . . . It was pretty shocking. Even people that close to me."

I recall during the height of the Civil Rights Movement and in the years thereafter, we in the white community were urged to defend African-Americans as we lived our everyday lives, for example, by not laughing at racist jokes and speaking against racial stereotypes whenever we heard them. And over time, that made a huge difference. I am happy to say I don't remember the last time I heard a racist joke

Alas, as we emerge from the thrall of one form of bigotry, another seems to be growing--aimed particularly at people with profound cognitive or developmental disabilities. The best way to combat the new eugenics is to do what we know works; individual activism during our everyday lives in defense of our brothers and sisters with disabilities. The bigotry and social isolation of the kind depicted in the story can be overcome--as racism is being--if we commit ourselves to vocally and visibly disapprove of discriminatory statements and attitudes toward those with cognitive and developmental disabilites.

Veganism May Shrink the Brain

Well, this explains a lot. (Just kidding.) There is a theory that eating meat is one reason why human beings developed our bigger brains. Now, credence might be added to that hypothesis with a study that shows non meat eating might actually shrink the brain. From the story:

Scientists have discovered that going veggie could be bad for your brain-with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage.

Vegans and vegetarians are the most likely to be deficient because the best sources of the vitamin are meat, particularly liver, milk and fish. Vitamin B12 deficiency can also cause anaemia and inflammation of the nervous system. Yeast extracts are one of the few vegetarian foods which provide good levels of the vitamin.

The link was discovered by Oxford University scientists who used memory tests, physical checks and brain scans to examine 107 people between the ages of 61 and 87.

When the volunteers were retested five years later the medics found those with the lowest levels of vitamin B12 were also the most likely to have brain shrinkage. It confirms earlier research showing a link between brain atrophy and low levels of B12.

Although, as the story states, supplements are available, according to The Vegetarian Society, they have not been proved to be effective, which is why the Society recommends lacto/vegetarianism as the best way to not eat meat while maximizing health.

This study would seem to validate that meat is a natural food for humans, and moreover, it is good for us.

Palin Derangement Syndrome Continues

The kind of vitriol still being aimed at Sarah Palin, as I have said previously, is not because of energy policy. It is because she has become a cultural symbol that some hate so deeply they are even willing to politically harm their own candidate in what appears to be a vain effort to destroy "the other." (Read this Peggy Noonan column about how columns such as those discussed below actually hurt Obama.) They must know this. But they are so unhinged they can't help themselves.

To cases: Andrew Sullivan over at the Atlantic, appears to want to launch a veritable Inquisition into Sarah Palin and her family's personal lives. And to make a subliminal point, he even republishes the old photo of the very pregnant Palin during her first pregnancy that was used as part of the fraudulent smear begun at the Daily Kos--and later pursued by the MSM--to support the lie that she is not Trig's mother--perhaps evidence of a continuing Sullivan obsession about that particular lie. From his column:

[W]hen you agree to run for vice-president of the United States, you surrender any zone of privacy. Al Gore's sometimes wayward son; Dick Cheney's daughter and now granddaughter; Dan Quayle's wife; George H. W. Bush's extensive clan: all these families have been an "open book" to the press. In saying yes to John McCain, Palin said yes to the natural inquiries that come with it. I don't mean utterly gratuitous stuff, like the Starr Report's detailing of the precise positions Lewinsky and Clinton enjoyed sexually. I don't mean by the standards of the Republican party. I mean by the standards of a robust and inquisitive and fair press.

But that isn't even true. The Gore's son drug use was never dug into, and properly so. Only when he was arrested was it reported. John Edwards was rightly castigated for bringing up the lesbianism of Cheney's daughter in a debate. Chelsea Clinton was strictly off limits. Always. The press tried to embarrass Bush's daughters over college drinking but soon backed off.

But Sullivan wants gossip, he wants embarrassing family facts, he is after figurative blood--even if it is that of Palin's children:

It seems to me that if you are on record saying that your life is an open book, and you have a state-run web-page about your infant son, and your own children's travel is paid for by the state, and you presented your infant son at a convention televised across the entire world, and you sent out a press release outing your own daughter's current pregnancy, then it is not despicable, evil, vile or outrageous for the press to ask factual, answerable questions about Sarah Palin's experiences as a pregnant and non-pregnant mother and about her marriage and about her parenting of her children. Palin herself just said so.

She most certainly did not. Palin's statement that when you run for office your "life is an open book" was, 1) a certain statement of a certain reality, but 2) referred to her and the study of her past--such as being a beauty queen. It is not to hand the media a key to try and find family dirt.

And to think, I used to really admire Sullivan.

Meanwhile, a Palin-hater named Katha Pollitt, writes at CBS that she wants the media to sail a different tack in the urgent task of taking down Sarah Palin. (Pollitt's bio says she is known for her sense of humor. Not in this diatribe!) In "Lipstick on a Wingnut." (Pollitt should look in a mirror), the venom flows like a stream. From her column:

She talks incessantly about being a mother of five and uses her newborn, Trig, who has Down syndrome, as a campaign prop. If you wonder how she'll handle all those kids and the Veep job too, you're a super-sexist...

Indeed, Palin, who went back to work when Trig was three days old, gets nothing but praise from Phyllis Schlafly, James Dobson and the folks at National Review, who usually blame all the ills of modern America on those neurotic, harried, selfish, frustrated, child-neglecting, husband-castrating working mothers. Even stranger, her five-months-pregnant 17-year-old, Bristol, gets nothing but compassion and respect from Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and others who have spent their careers slut-shaming teens for having sex - and blaming their parents for letting it happen.

She brought Trig to the convention with all of her children. Other than that, he has not been on the campaign trail, much less used as a "prop." Moreover, her rant merely underscores the kind of two-dimensional caricature seen so often of people deemed by the media elite to be the great unwashed.

Pollitt continues with the rant, you can read if you would like, and demands that she to be asked probing questions--some of which are falsely premised and others which are just plain insulting. You can cut the snobbery with a knife.