Bioethicist Margaret Somerville Asks, "Do Apes Have Ethics?"

Those biologists and philosophers intent on destroying human exceptionalism often argue that apes have ethics, albeit more rudimentary, just like people, and thus we must disabuse ourselves of the unique nature of human life.

Not enough energy has been invested in pushing back against these subversive arguments. I am happy to see that one of my favorite bioethicists, the Canadian Margaret Somerville, is manning the fire hoses. In a long piece published in today's Montreal Gazette (you should read the whole thing), she recounts participating in a round table on the issue as the only dissenter to the premise that apes have ethics, which her co panelists were convinced is genetically determined. From her column:

Ethics require moral judgment. That requires deciding between right and wrong. As far as we know, animals are not capable of doing that. There's a major difference between engaging in social conduct that benefits the community, as some animals do, and engaging in that same conduct because it would be ethically wrong not to do so, as humans do.

To get from here to there requires some redefinition--kind of the way some atheists support their thesis that religion has caused most of the world's woes by labeling communism a religion. Somerville sees it and parries:

Definition is a problem here: If ethics are broadly defined to encompass certain animal behaviour, they are correct. But if ethics are the practical application of morality, then to say animals have ethics is to attribute a moral instinct to them.

Somerville is a human exceptionalist--only one of the reasons I like her. She writes:

I believe that humans are "special" (different-in-kind) as compared with other animals and, consequently, deserve "special respect." Traditionally, we have used the idea that humans have a soul and animals don't to justify our differential treatment of humans and animals in terms of the respect they deserve. But soul is no longer a universally accepted concept.

Ethics can, however, be linked to a metaphysical base without needing to invoke religious or supernatural features or beliefs--it could be of a secular "human spirit" nature or, as German philosopher Jurgen Habermas describes it, an "ethics of the human species." I propose that ethics necessarily involve some transcendent experience, one that humans can have and animals cannot.

Well yes, if she means by that term to rise above and beyond what can be measured in the physical realm. Hence, we have duties, which are immaterial and are morally based--whether they arose when we became conscious in some blind evolutionary process or otherwise. But no animal has a duty and no animal can be held morally accontable. Similarly, genetic determinism reductionism notwithstanding to the contrary, we have free will and rationality and animals do not. That too separates us from every other known species. One way this expresses is that we have the capacity to act upon nature and bend it (to some degree) to our will, while animals in their natural state are always purely within nature, acted upon and reacting to it.

This issue of human exceptionalism could not be more important to the future of human rights and our thriving as a species. Somerville understands:

The argument that it's dangerous to abandon the ideas of human specialness and that a moral instinct and search for ethics is uniquely human, was greeted with great skepticism by my colleagues, who seemed to think that only religious people would hold such views.

To conclude, how we answer the question, "Do ants have ethics?" - that is, does the behaviour, bonding and the formation of community in animals have a different base from that in humans - is of immense importance, including because it will have a major impact on the ethics we hand on to future generations.

Indeed. And the time has come to take this discussion out of the ivory tower and bring it to Main Street. Otherwise, the elites will pull universal human rights out from under us and we will find ourselves in a world of new eugenics and sacrificing human welfare and prosperity "for the animals" or "to save the planet." In other words, we will be engaging in a self-destructive form of human exceptionalism on the ironic basis that we are not exceptional.

Brave New Parenting: Using Genetics to Determine Which Sport Our Child Should Play

It used to be that the parental ideal was to expose one's children to many and varied activities so that they could discover for themselves the avocations and activities that most suited them. But apparently that's too messy and time consuming for some. A company is now offering to test children's genes to determine which sport they will be best at so that parents can cut through the dross and put them directly in that activity. From the story:

When Donna Campiglia learned recently that a genetic test might be able to determine which sports suit the talents of her 2 ½-year-old son, Noah, she instantly said, Where can I get it and how much does it cost?

"I could see how some people might think the test would pigeonhole your child into doing fewer sports or being exposed to fewer things, but I still think it's good to match them with the right activity," Campiglia, 36, said as she watched a toddler class at Boulder Indoor Soccer in which Noah struggled to take direction from the coach between juice and potty breaks. "I think it would prevent a lot of parental frustration," she said.

Yes, well we wouldn't want you to be frustrated. But maybe you should love your kid enough to give him the room to take some wrong turns, have some rough patches, and fall on his butt a few times until he finds his own way. After all, that's part of what childhood is for. Sure it hurts, but the tough times strengthen us and help us not only become individuals. but mature adults.

Besides, genetics isn't destiny. What a child might seem predisposed genetically to be best at--these things will always be uncertain--are not what he or she will necessarily like or want to do. But we are becoming such control freaks we want everything wrapped in a neat package. But that leads away from freedom.

Such thinking is the start of what Huxley warned against in Brave New World. If we keep going in this direction, it isn't going to make us stronger, it is going to make us weaker.

Swiss to Surrender to Heroin Addiction

The country that has declared a constitutional right to assisted suicide for the mentally ill, and put the dignity of individual plants into its constitution, is now about to formally ratify prescribing and giving addicts their heroin. From the story:

Dr. Daniele Zullino keeps glass bottles full of white powder in a safe in a locked room of his office. Patients show up each day to receive their treatment in small doses handed through a small window. Then they gather around a table to shoot up, part of a pioneering Swiss program to curb drug abuse by providing addicts a clean, safe place to take heroin produced by a government-approved laboratory.

The program has been criticized by the United States and the U.N. narcotics board, which said it would fuel drug abuse...Swiss voters are expected to make the system permanent Sunday in a referendum prompted by a challenge from conservatives...

Patients among the nearly 1,300 addicts whom other therapies have failed to help take doses carefully measured to satisfy their cravings but not enough to cause a big high. Four at a time inject themselves as a nurse watches. In a few minutes most get up and leave. Those who have jobs go back to work. "Heroin prescription is not an end in itself," said Zullino, adding that the 47 addicts who come to his office receive a series of additional treatments, such as therapy with a psychiatrist and counseling by social workers. "The aim is that the patients learn how to function in society," he said, adding that after two to three years in the program, one-third of the patients start abstinence-programs and one-third change to methadone treatment. "Thanks to this policy we don't have open drug scenes anymore," said Andreas Kaesermann, a spokesman for the Social Democratic Party, part of the coalition government.

Typical, only one side is presented in the story and so we aren't told why "conservatives" forced this matter to a vote. I am noticing that tactic increasingly in the media across the depth and breadth of issues we deal with here at SHS.

But even so: Think about the language used--the poison heroin given to addicts so they can shoot up described as "treatment." No, it is the opposite of treatment. It is to enable the addiction, apparently primarily as an aesthetic matter so people don't have to see the desperate addicts in their midst shooting up.

And who is to say that these addicts don't just go out and score more drug to get that extra high? But why ask such questions when none of that matters. This is the state to which we are brought by terminal nonjudmemtalism. In our desire not to moralize, in our desire to be tolerant, we stop solving problems and surrender to them instead and call it progress.

Still, the Swiss do seem unduly cruel: Addicted people have to shoot themselves up. If we are going this route, why not just have the nurses do it so their arms will be less bruised?

It's Time for the CIRM Wolves to be Denied Funding

During the campaign over Proposition 71, I warned that even if the Golden Gate Bridge fell into the ocean and an earthquake devastated Los Angeles, "the scientists" would be constitutionally entitled to $300 million of borrowed taxpayers' money each year. The media was so caught up in "thwarting Bush," it never reported these kinds of problems until after the election! But what else is new?

Well, that kind of a crisis has hit California, metaphorically speaking. Meanwhile, the mutual backscratching at the CIRM continues--fancy building being paid for, conflicts of interest rife--and the agency doesn't even blush. Finally, we are seeing a reaction. Yesterday, the Merced Sun-Star editoralized that the time has come to substantially restructure the agency. From the editorial:

On Thursday, the Little Hoover Commission held its first hearing into the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the quasipublic agency financed with $3 billion in bonds that voters approved in 2004. The hearing revealed, once again, that this institute's 29-member governing board is rife with potential conflicts; that it is overly large and unwieldy; and that it awards multimillion-dollar grants in a manner that favors secrecy over accountability.

The most striking testimony came from Kenneth Taymor, executive director of the UC Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy. Taymor, who has been watching the institute's operations for three years, noted that nearly everyone on the institute's governing board--medical school deans, university officials--has some sort of financial interest in the grants being awarded. Even with officials recusing themselves, the board's deliberations, he said, have the feel of "a club that was allocating money among themselves" based on preordained decisions.

Ponder that truth in light of the larger financial corruption we are seeing from top to bottom in this country. The hyper rich are feeding beyond anything we have ever seen before and we are paying the price.

The editorial continued:

Experts at the hearing also testified about the unusual executive structure of this institute, in which operational duties are shared between the institute's president and its chairman. Each position has its own staff and reports back to the governing board.

But because of the way Proposition 71 was written (by developer and stem cell activist Robert Klein II), the governing board can't fire the chairman or have control of his staff or operations. Klein, of course, designed this structure for a reason: He alone has served as its chairman.

But this is what happens when rich men are allowed to buy laws.

What really needs to be done in this crisis is to find a way to halt the borrowing of money by our bankrupt state. We are running a $28 billion deficit and counting. Our bond debt is already approaching $60 billion, with another $70 billion or so already committed! And I don't think that includes interest. The CIRM should be cut off from this borrowing at least for as long as the financial debacle ongoing in California lasts. But that would take common sense, a commodity that, alas, is in very short supply in the country these days.

And so we go right down the drain, and we only have ourselves to blame.

Animal Rights Raid on Egg Farm Kills Thousands of Chickens

In Finland, some ALF-type activists raided a chicken farm and killed thousands of chickens in the process. From the story:

Suspected radical animal welfare activists raided a poultry farm in Narpio in the southwest of Finland Thursday night. The raiders broke eggs, and destroyed electric equipment, causing the ventilation system to break down. Up to 5,000 of the 26,000 chickens are believed to have died for lack of air.

Graffiti left on the wall of the farm contained the letters EVR, the Finnish abbreviation of the Animal Liberation Front.

Of course, they won't care that the chickens died. In other similar situations, animal rightists claimed that death was better than lives lived in torture.

On a more macro level, we are seeing increased viciousness in political activism from the Left, in animal rights to be sure, but also in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8 in California with some now targeting people who supported the measure for blacklisting and job losses (let's not discuss the gay marriage issue here), and in the language of vituperation that is becoming increasingly commonplace in political discourse. This all bodes badly for democracy.

Newest "What It Means to be Human" Podcast: The Abandonment Ethic of the Culture of Death

In my newest What It Means to be Human podcast, I discuss some United Kingdom cases suicide and assisted suicide cases and how the culture of death ethos they epitomize how current trends lead to the abandonment of the despairing. Here is the homepage for all of my podcasts.

Embryonic Stem Cell Method Denied Patent in EU Due to Embryo Destruction

Well, well, well: We are told that only the desire to impose religious belief stands in the way of the development of a thriving embryonic stem cell regenerative medical sector. That has always been wrong, but now there is vivid proof: The EU patent office has rejected a patent request for the primary method of deriving human embryonic stem cells. From the story:

This application describes a method for obtaining embryonic stem cell cultures from primates, including humans, and was filed by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) in 1995.

In 2006, the Technical Board competent for the case referred legal questions to the EBoA, in order to obtain clarity on a number of points. Decisive in the EBoA ruling was the application's claim regarding human stem cell cultures. The EBoA decided that under the EPC it is not possible to grant a patent for an invention which necessarily involves the use and destruction of human embryos. The EBoA stressed, however, that its decision does not concern the general question of human stem cell patentability...

The EPC does not allow patenting inventions whose commercial exploitation would be contrary to public order ("ordre public") or morality. Furthermore, the Convention prohibits patenting on uses of human embryos for industrial or commercial purposes.

Yes, using nascent human life as a natural resource should be considered against good public order and morality. And yes, the industrial use of embryos should not be protected by intellectual property law.

This doesn't outlaw ESCR, of course. But it sure will send a chill to those who would use embryos commercially, including I think, human cloning researchers. In any event, let us hear no more about religious zealots imposing their will on rational modernists. Europe is as secular a culture as you will find in the world. And as we have written here before, given that billions have already been poured into ESCR through private, philanthropic, and public means, patent disputes--and technological difficulties--have been the primary causes of the sector's stunted growth.

Expect this news not to be reported widely in the MSM. Gets in the way of the narrative, don't you know.

What We Are Becoming: Husband Wished to Help Wife Kill Herself

This is what we are becoming. Valerie Myer was disabled by Parkinson's disease and wanted to commit suicide. That was apparently okay with her husband, who is furious he couldn't assist her. I will let the story speak for itself:

Mr [Michael] Grosvenor Myer described his wife's decision as "rational and courageous" and said that she had wanted him to be with her at the end. Valerie Grosvenor Myer was a novelist, literary critic, biographer, poet, playwright and teacher. She died at the age of 75 at the couple's home in Haddenham, Cambridgeshire, on Aug 9 last year.

She took an overdose of paracetamol after three previous attempts to take her own life. "She was a distinguished woman but Parkinson's disease had robbed her of the power of speaking articulately.

"Her beautiful italic handwriting was nothing but a bitter memory. She kept falling over and injuring herself. She knew when she had degenerated as much as she was prepared to put up with. When the day came I agreed to invent an unnecessary day's work at the university library so that she could get on with it. I don't regret it: it was what she wanted.

"My regret is only that because of the idiocy of the present law, my precious only heart's darling had to die a horrible, lonely death all alone here in the house instead of having me here to help and comfort her, which was what she wanted," said Mr Grosvenor Myer in a letter to a newspaper.

Mr Grosvenor Myer said that after a previous, unsuccessful suicide attempt his wife had gone into a coma and he had to call doctors. A consultant then threatened to section her to stop her committing suicide. Mr Grosvenor Myer said: "I told him outright that was the remark of a fool and a bully."

I shudder for our civilization.

Australia Allows Family With a Child With Down Permanent Residency

This is a follow up of an earlier post discussing Australia's refusal to grant a German physician and his family permanent residency because his son has Down. Well the light of publicity apparently so embarrassed the country that the decision has been reversed. From the story:

A decision to deny a German doctor and his family permanent residency because his son had Down syndrome has been overturned by the immigration minister.

Bernhard Moeller, a specialist physician, moved his family to Horsham, in Victoria's west, two years ago to help fill a doctor shortage. But the Migration Review Tribunal (MRT) yesterday upheld the immigration department's decision to deny Dr Moeller's permanent visa application because his 13-year-old son has Down syndrome and was deemed a potential drain on the health system.

Dr Moeller's case generated public outrage, putting pressure on immigration minister Chris Evans to intervene in the case.

Bravo. However, the effort it took to reverse this injustice got me wondering how many other such families are being discriminated against by immigration authorities, but have no redress because publicity of this kind is hard to generate.

Student Support for Cystic Fibrosis Charity Dropped Because Disease is too "White"

When this story was thrown through the proverbial transom, I thought it must be from The Onion. Alas, no. A student organization at Carleton University has dropped supporting cystic fibrosis charities because the disease is not diverse enough. I kid you not. From the story:

The Carleton University Students' Association has voted to drop a cystic fibrosis charity as the beneficiary of its annual Shinearama fundraiser, supporting a motion that argued the disease is not "inclusive" enough. Cystic fibrosis "has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men" said the motion read Monday night to student councillors, who voted almost unanimously in favour of it.

But wait, it might not just be white men that suffer from the disease!

The rationale for dropping cystic fibrosis as the beneficiary is not correct, she said. CF is diagnosed just as often among girls as boys, although the health of girls deteriorates more rapidly, she said. It is commonly considered an illness that affects Caucasians, but that includes people from the Middle East, South America, North Africa and the Indian subcontinent."'Caucasian' as we understand it isn't just white people," said Ms. Morrison. "It includes people with a whole rainbow of skins."

One of the councillors who voted in favour of switching the charity said Monday night that the information provided to the panel prior to the vote was factually incorrect, and he will be seeking support from other members to hold an emergency meeting to reconsider their decision. "After seeing all the reaction today, I definitely think it should be revisited and reconsidered," said Michael Monks, who represents Carleton's business students for the student council.

I've been to Canada often. I like Canadia. I know these kinds of attitudes don't come from the water. They come from political correctness that subverts reason and the ability to think critically.

I can't stand it!

The Illiberalism of the Left's Eugenics Prejudices

I am a man with deep connections to the political left, for example, writing four books with Ralph Nader. But those Movement (not Nader) ties frayed and then snapped, first due to the Left's embrace (before the disability rights movement engaged the issue) of assisted suicide, reinforced subsequently by its (general) support for eugenics ideas and disdain for what I now call human exceptionalism.

These prejudices have infected the health care and governmental systems in the West, as we have discussed here repeatedly, a point also made in a column published in the very left wing UK newspaper The Independent by a columnist who tends to push against the leftist tide. In "Shame on the doctors prejudiced against Down Syndrome,"Dominic Lawson writes:

For make no mistake: despite all the progress which children with Down Syndrome are now making in schools and homes up and down the country, the medical profession in general still has a visceral bias in favour of eugenic termination, which its practitioners are often startlingly crude in expressing. This is not based on a realistic and up-to-date assessment of the possibilities open to those with Down Syndrome, still less of the happiness which such people can and do bring to families and even communities as a whole: it is a function of the fact--which is undeniable--that people with Down Syndrome are likely to cost the NHS more in subsequent medical treatment than a child without any disabilities.

Yes! And while the Left complains when corporate medicine exhibits such attitudes, nationalized health care also boosts eugenics thinking.

There are other reasons the Left has drifted toward eugenics, primarily I think, having to do with its now core foundational values of utilitarianism, hedonism, and anti-human exceptionalism, which adherents perceive as the antithesis of Judeo/Christian moral philosophy (and its moralizing), values that I believe now provide the emotional fuel that drives the Left. (Never mind that Judeo/Christian philosophy provided the intellectual foundation for universal human equality, as in the Abolitionist and Civil Rights Movements).

But make no mistake: Eugenics attitudes--not just government action in pursuance thereof--are decidedly illiberal and should be so denounced. Good for Dominic Lawson.

NHS Meltdown: Insufficient Training in End of Life Care

The NHS is collapsing from top to bottom. Now, we learn that its medical personnel have insufficient training in end of life care. From the story:

Many terminally ill patients who want to die at home are being needlessly admitted to hospital, a public spending watchdog said on Wednesday. It said the majority of National Health Service doctors and nurses lack training in end-of-life care.

The National Audit Office (NAO) said in a report that up to three quarters of people near the end of their lives had expressed a preference to die at home. But it said a lack of support services meant that many people died in hospital when there was no clinical reason for them to be there. "Dying people are often not being treated with the dignity and respect they deserve and their wishes are often disregarded," said Edward Leigh, chairman of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. "They and their carers can be put through unnecessary stress at what is already an extremely emotionally demanding time."

The report also found staff lacked skills to care for the dying, with only 29 percent of doctors and 18 percent of nurses having received pre-registration training in end of life care.

That's shameful in a country whose late, great Dame Cecily Saunders created the modern hospice movement. Indeed, when I interviewed her in preparation for writing Culture of Death, I was shocked to hear that much of the budgets for hospice had to come from private sources because of insufficient NHS support.

HIV to Disappear? Hopefully, but Stop "Safe Sex" Misnomer

A study has predicted that HIV could be wiped out within a decade. From the story:

The virus that causes AIDS could theoretically be eliminated in a decade if all people living in countries with high infection rates are regularly tested and treated, according to a new mathematical model.

It is an intriguing solution to end the AIDS epidemic. But it is based on assumptions rather than data, and is riddled with logistical problems. The research was published online Tuesday in the medical journal, The Lancet.

"It's quite a startling result," said Charlie Gilks, an AIDS treatment expert at the World Health Organization and one of the paper's authors. "In a relatively short amount of time, we could potentially knock the epidemic on its head."

Sometimes I think these studies are published just to get the authors in the news. First, that strategy has been tried in the USA. And while it has--thankfully--transformed AIDS from a devastating and all-too-quickly terminal illness into more of a chronic condition, the number of new infections (some 56,000 last year) has remained relatively constant. Second, that kind of intense and expensive medical and social intervention is just not going to happen in poor African countries where perhaps 1 in 5 adults--or more--are infected. Third, the "safe sex" mantra isn't accurate and it strikes me that disease cannot be fought with one politically correct arm tied behind our proverbial backs.

As we all know "safe sex" is supposedly sex with a condom. But condomized sex (if I might) isn't really safe. To be truly safe from HIV, sex must be between mutually monogamous uninfected partners. Thus, to be accurate, unprotected sex should be described as "unsafe" and sex with a condom as a "less safe." Perhaps one day promoting social agendas, the reasons for using inaccurate or pabulum euphemisms, will take a back seat to accuracy and candor founded in love for all people in fighting this disease. Respect people enough to tell them the truth. Otherwise, I am convinced that barring a medical super breakthrough--for which we all earnestly hope--AIDS will, at most, be kept relatively at bay here and will continue to ravage in countries with poor public health systems.

Rights of Conscience: The Threat of the Freedom of Choice Act

I have been asked to comment on the Freedom of Choice Act, that would seek to impose a single federal standard on abortion regulations. I have not done so until now because I did not know enough about the details and wanted to wait until and unless it became a likely law.

I still don't know much about the FOCA, but a columnist in Slate named Melinda Henneberger, discussing recent speeches by Catholic Hierarchs about an Obama Administration seeking to force Catholic hospitals to violate Catholic moral teaching, worries that passing the FOCA would blow up in all of our faces. From the column:

And the most ludicrous line out of them [the speeches], surely, was about how, under Obama, Catholic hospitals that provide obstetric and gynecological services might soon be forced to perform abortions or close their doors. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Chicago warned of "devastating consequences" to the health care system, insisting Obama could force the closure of all Catholic hospitals in the country. That's a third of all hospitals, providing care in many neighborhoods that are not exactly otherwise overprovided for. It couldn't happen, could it?

You wouldn't think so. Only, I am increasingly convinced that it could. If the Freedom of Choice Act passes Congress, and that's a big if, Obama has promised to sign it the second it hits his desk...Though it's often referred to as a mere codification of Roe, FOCA, as currently drafted, actually goes well beyond that: According to the Senate sponsor of the bill, Barbara Boxer, in a statement on her Web site, FOCA would nullify all existing laws and regulations that limit abortion in any way, up to the time of fetal viability. Laws requiring parental notification and informed consent would be tossed out. While there is strenuous debate among legal experts on the matter, many believe the act would invalidate the freedom-of-conscience laws on the books in 46 states. These are the laws that allow Catholic hospitals and health providers that receive public funds through Medicaid and Medicare to opt out of performing abortions. Without public funds, these health centers couldn't stay open; if forced to do abortions, they would sooner close their doors. Even the prospect of selling the institutions to other providers wouldn't be an option, the bishops have said, because that would constitute "material cooperation with an intrinsic evil."

Whether that would happen, of course, would depend on whether the administrators of Catholic hospitals would truly have the courage of their convictions, or whether they would be swayed by counter arguments that the harm of going out of business would be greater than acquiescing to the law. Frankly, I think that the emphasis in Catholocism on social justice is so strong, that many Catholic hospital administrators would find ways around the problem, with a wink and a nod from the government.

But surely some institutions would close their doors. Thus, I think Henneberger is right: Whatever one thinks about abortion rights, FOCA is certainly a bad idea merely from a practical sense.

But that might not dissuade the new Democratic majorities from passing it. I believe there is a drive gaining energy within some ideological quarters to force people of certain moral persuasions to either be complicit in what they perceive to be a culture of death or force them out of health care altogether--as we have seen already in Australia on abortion and in California regarding euthanasia-related proposals.

Then there is the foolishness of attempting to shut down democratic discourse about profoundly morally contentious issues, which never works--as Dred Scott, and Roe v Wade clearly demonstrated. If President Elect Obama truly wants to "bring us together," the FOCA is exactly the wrong way to go about it. It would cause an explosion of dissent.

New Edition of What it Means to be Human

My newest "What It Means to be Human" podcast--this edition on "nature rights" in Ecuador--is up at the Discovery Institute site. Here is the link.

Haleigh Poutre in Video

Hit this link view an important video of Haleigh Poutre brushing her hair and sitting up in bed. I am not totally pleased with the narration ('she spends most of her day in a wheelchair, but Haleigh Poutre is very much alive"), however good for the station for airing this important story and discussing that her life support was almost removed.

Still, the depiction underplays the seriousness of the situation: Haleigh came very close to being dehydrated to death. Doctors called for removing all life support only 10 days after her injury. The Massachusetts Supreme Court approved her dehydration. But someone saw signs of reaction just in the nick of time, and her life was saved.

Imagine if the process had moved a few weeks faster. She would be dead today, dehydrated to death by the state as a supposed act of compassion.

Please, everyone view the video and learn the lesson of Haleigh. None of us is discardable. None of us is beyond all hope.

HT: Don Nelson

Women Beginning to Reject Eugenic Abortion

Here's a little good news out of Scotland. Women whose fetuses test positive for Down syndrome are increasingly rejecting abortion. From the story:

More babies are being born with Down's syndrome than before pre-natal screening for the disorder was introduced at the end of the 1980s, it was revealed yesterday.

Parents appear more willing to bring a Down's child into the world than they used to be, research shows. Many are taking the decision because those affected by the syndrome are more accepted in society today and their quality of life has improved, according to a new survey...The findings show that while religious or pro-life beliefs counted in about a third of cases, many parents felt that life and society had improved for people affected by Down's. Others said their decision was influenced by the fact that they knew people with Down's or other disabilities.

This news confirms a few things I believe are very important to keeping the lights on in these darkening days. First, human exceptionalism is the key to a more moral society. When we accept the equal moral value of people with disabilities, people who are elderly, people who are ill or dying, death is less likely to be seen as the answer to their problems and those of society. Second, modeling lives lived in love does more to help others find the same virtues than a whole lot of tub thumping, albeit advocacy remains an important factor. Third, if people are given full information rather than being pushed toward eugenic options, fewer people are terminated. Fourth, if we commit to helping each other, both societally and as individuals, the despair that can result in eugenics choices will abate.

The people with Down and other developmental disabilities don't drag society down, they lift it up. Let us hope that one day they will all be welcomed into life in love and unconditional acceptance. Let us hope that one day no one will be considered--or consider themselves-- a "burden"

I Blow My Top at Princeton for Appointing Peter Singer

About 6 or 7 years go, I gave a lecture at Princeton University about bioethics. This was just after Peter Singer received his tenured chair at Princeton and the appointment was still a matter of heated controversy.

As a planned part of the lecture, I discussed Princeton's then newest professor and his advocacy of infanticide. I just learned that someone posted that part of the speech on YouTube.

At the end of my discussion about Singer, I went, shall we say, off script and lost my cool. I found it (and still find it) utterly appalling that PRINCETON would bring somebody who advocates the killing of babies to the country's most prestigious university.

Part of me regrets the outburst. And part of me doesn't. It isn't what I said that bothers me, it was how I said it. I have come to believe that anger doesn't generally work well in communicating, even though it can feel good at the time.

In any event, I post it for your consideration, warts and all.

If You Are Interested in SHS Issues, You'll Want to Read Your Heart Belongs to Me by Dean Koontz

One of the perks of being friends with a world famous author is that you get to read advance copies of his books. Last month, I had that great pleasure with Dean Koontz's newest novel, Your Heart Belongs to Me.

I knew going in that the story is about a man who needs a heart transplant. It is that--and much more. A real thriller in the Koontz mold, and without ruining any surprises--of which there are many--let me just say that Dean grapples with (and tears at) some of the matters we discuss here at Secondhand Smoke. Along the way, he also explores the seductive power of paranoia, the nature of evil, the importance of trust, and how profound difficulties test our character.

I am not saying I liked the book, mind you. But I reached the climax just as the plane I was traveling in landed at Oakland Airport. My eyes were racing across the page because I wanted to know what would happen. I felt like yelling at the pilot, "Once more around the Bay, please!"

For those who are interested, this link will take you to the Amazon page, which contains a short interview with Dean about the book. (Funny, Amazon never gives me that kind of star treatment.)

Human Cloners Whining About Wanting to Buy Eggs Again

"The scientists" are whining--are these people never satisfied?--again! This time it is about their inability to buy human eggs, a "problem" they complain is impeding human cloning.

A story in the San Diego Union Tribune, carries the scientists' complaint. (Kudos to the reporter, Terri Somers, for writing a generally accurate and complete report about the science and risks to women involved in egg extraction, rather than just swallowing whole the PR pitched to her as many of her press colleagues on the biotech beat so often do.) From the story:

State laws that are aimed at putting California at the global forefront of stem cell science are stymieing a promising avenue of research by creating a shortage of human eggs.

The state's $3 billion taxpayer initiative to fund stem cell research prohibits paying women to be egg donors. But to work on therapeutic cloning, an area of research that might make patient-specific therapies possible, scientists need human eggs. "This is what I call the great stem cell debacle, and it's ridiculous," said Dr. Samuel Wood, who founded Stemagen, a San Diego biotechnology company that is trying to create human embryonic stem cells through therapeutic cloning. "The people of California passed Proposition 71 to fund billions of dollars worth of stem cell research including (therapeutic cloning) and then the legislators and leaders of the stem cell institute put guidelines in place that greatly hamper, or virtually eliminate, the possibility of this being successful."

An Oregon scientist also gets in on the whining:

It's clear that without having access to resources, in this case human oocytes [eggs], we cannot move forward," said Shoukrat Mitalipov, a University of Oregon scientist considered a leader in therapeutic cloning. Mitalipov led the only team known to have successfully conducted therapeutic cloning using monkey cells. He is a member of a San Diego-based team whose grant application proposing to translate his work into human cells was rejected

(Query: If an Oregon scientist receives CIRM money, does that not violate Proposition 71's requirement that the funded work be exclusively from California concerns? Might be worth a lawsuit if it does.)

But I digress: What's ridiculous is scientists expecting women to line up and risk their health, fecundity, and even their lives in order for "the scientists" to potentially gain world fame and huge dollars from their biotech companies from human cloning.

The story claims that there are no statistics on the side effects. But that isn't true. About 5% of women who go through the egg extraction process--which is accurately depicted in the piece--suffer side effects that have included in the last few years, death, loss of fertility, paralysis, infection, blood clots, and other serious problems. Hands Off Our Ovaries, an alliance between pro life and pro choice feminists to prevent scientists from being able to buy eggs has many details.

The story also claims that the going rate for egg extraction will be about $3000. That's not much for such a risk, and given the thousands and thousands of eggs that would be needed to perfect human SCNT--if it can be done at all--expect the law of supply and demand to kick in and the price to shoot up if the market ever materialized.

But generally in these matters "the scientists" get what they want. Egg selling is apparently going to be reconsidered by the CIRM:

The state stem cell institute remains committed to therapeutic cloning, said chief scientist Marie Csete. The institute's standards committee will meet in February to discuss egg payments, Csete said.

Wood plans to attend. He wants to talk about using excess eggs obtained for fertilization. Another option, Wood said, would be to use grants to reimburse fertility doctors who would reduce their rates to women donating eggs for research. In the United Kingdom, regulators overcame the egg shortage by allowing women to receive in vitro fertilization for half the normal price if they agreed to give half of their eggs to research.

No they didn't "overcome" the egg shortage with these pittances. Indeed, the lack of human egg availability in the UK is precisely why the government authorized scientists there to use cow eggs now in human SCNT, raising the prospect of human/cow hybrids.

Perhaps instead of whining about not being able to get their hands on enough eggs to do cloning research, these scientists should switch their emphases to more ethical and safer alternatives.

Remembering the Victims of the Euthanasia Holocaust

German historians are compiling the names of the people with developmental disabilities murdered (in addition to tens of thousands of people with physical disabilities) in the German Euthanasia Holocaust circa 1939-1945. From the story:

German historians have started compiling a central register of 9,000 mentally ill people murdered as part of the Nazis' euthanasia policy, most of whom were previously unidentified. More than 100,000 people are believed to have been killed during a drive inspired by Hitler that was carried out in six extermination centres in Germany between 1940 and 1945.

The idea of a Nazi euthanasia campaign, backed by propaganda films portraying the mentally handicapped and incurably ill as "useless mouths to feed", was first outlined in Hitler's 1924 book "Mein Kampf" and became known as Operation T4.

A correction is needed here. Hitler didn't inspire it, he was inspired by the pre-existing eugenics movement to boost it. Indeed, in Mein Kamph Hitler discussed these ideas, which he did not generate, but that were already in the public discourse raging in Germany, the USA, and the UK. Suggested Reading: The Nazi Doctors by Lifton and Death and Deliverance by Burleigh, War Against the Weak (about the USA eugenics movement) by Black.

Lauren Richardson: A Life Saved

Readers of SHS may recall the Lauren Richardson situation: Lauren experience a catastrophic brain injury and was diagnosed as in a persistent vegetative state. Her mother wanted to remove her tube sustenance and her father resisted. Litigation ensued. At the 11th hour, Lauren's parents have come together in agreement to her live. From the story:

After gaining nationwide attention nearly a year ago as the focus of a court battle between her estranged parents--with her father arguing for her right to life and her mother countering that her final wishes were being violated--the 24-year-old severely brain-damaged woman will be going home with her father.

Her parents, Randy Richardson and Edith Towers, resolved their differences and ended their nearly two-year legal battle amicably with a joint guardianship agreement. "This resolution does exactly what we wanted all along," said Randy Richardson. "It gives Lauren a chance. We get to take care of her and give her the opportunity to heal."

Towers said she never wanted to pull life support from her daughter, but felt bound by a promise she made to Lauren. Before Lauren's August 2006 heroin overdose that caused her brain damage, Towers said her daughter asked her not to allow such measures if she ended up in a vegetative state.

In January 2008, the Delaware Court of Chancery awarded guardianship to Towers because of testimony about Lauren's wishes.

Richardson, fearing for his daughter's life, then took his case public with the help of pro-life groups. After a report in The News Journal, other news outlets followed, with nearly all noting the similarities to the 2005 Florida legal battle over Terri Schiavo --where Schiavo's husband wanted to remove a feeding tube, citing his wife's wishes, while her parents opposed ending life support.

What a wonderful result. And this points to the value of the struggle to save people like Lauren from dehydration. Sometimes circumstances change--as in the Jesse Ramirez case. And sometimes hearts and minds change, as here.

Bravo to Lauren's parents. Our most fervent best wishes to them and their daughter in the years to come.

SHS Funnies

When a transhumanist finally dies:

What We Are Becoming: Dehumanization in Cyberspace

One tragic suicide and one ridiculous story in the last week illustrate the impact that cyberspace is having on our interconnectedness and mutual concern. The first is the horrible case of a college student who committed suicide in front of his webcam so it could be witnessed by the multitudes. From the story:

A college student committed suicide by taking a drug overdose in front of a live webcam as some computer users egged him on, others tried to talk him out of it, and another messaged OMG in horror when it became clear it was no joke. Some watchers contacted the Web site to notify police, but by the time officers entered Abraham Biggs' home a scene also captured on the Internet.

What a horror for the young man and his folks. Beyond the personal tragedy, it seems that for increased millions, life has become profoundly voyeuristic, with hours and hours of one's life that can never be regained watching others live their lives (and die their deaths) through the proverbial uncurtained window, people who usually know they are being watched and are happy to put on a show.

Then there is the sad story of the couple who are divorcing because the husband cheated on the wife in a "Second Life" fantasy. From the story:

A woman in Cornwall, England, has filed papers to divorce her husband on the grounds of "unreasonable behavior" after she discovered that his character in the online role-playing game Second Life had been having an affair.

Amy Taylor, 28, whose online alter ego is named Laura Skye, said that her husband's virtual infidelity exacted a pain that cut as deep as any extramarital liaison. "It may have started online, but it existed entirely in the real world and it hurts just as much," she said. "His was the ultimate betrayal. He had been lying to me."

So many of us are now apparently so dissatisfied with real life that we prefer to live in two-dimensional fantasy worlds, which eventually catches up with--and harms--the people who seek to escape reality in cyberspace.

I think this also explains the appeal of entertainment depicting average people who become extraordinary by taking a magic pill or being injected with an elixir, such as brilliantly warned against in the science fiction program The 4400. Fantasy Land used to be a fun section aimed at younger children in Disneyland. Now, it is the way many people live their lives.

Spamalot

Secondhand Smokette and I are taking a brief sojourn in Missoula, Montana--cold and beautiful--meaning my access to the computer has not ongoing since we are trying to have some fun. And of course, that is precisely when SHS got spammed in the comment sections. My apologies.

This isn't the first time and it makes me wonder whether I should set up a firewall so that I have to approve all comments before they appear. But I am reluctant. One of the things that pleases me about SHS is that our commenters, with very few exceptions, are mature and capable of debating respectfully no matter how sharp the disagreements That makes my life much easier, believe me.

So, for now I am going to keep things the way they are asking that nobody support the spammer by going to the link that was provided. Let us ignore the spammer and hope he/she/it goes away.

If not, I can take steps. But for now, I we will carry on as before.

Thank you. We now return to our regular programming.

Embryo Adoption in the News

Italy regulated IVF, only permitting 3 to be created at once and requiring that all embryos that come into being in the procedure be implanted.

Had the USA implemented such a policy, we wouldn't have 400,000 embryos in deep freeze. Some look at these nascent humans as a natural resource for use in research. Others, on the other hand, feel called to "adopt" these excess embryos and gestate them to birth.

This procedure is known as "embryo adoption," and it is beginning to gain a lot of attention, evidenced by a front page story in today's Seattle Times. From the story:

The day the frozen embryo arrived via FedEx was the day Maria Lancaster began experiencing firsthand what she had always believed: that human life begins at conception.

Lancaster was 46 and, after having three miscarriages, she and her husband, Jeff, longed for a child. One day, they heard about "embryo adoptions"--where couples who've gone through in vitro fertilization donate any leftover embryos to infertile couples. Several months of soul-searching later, they received a frozen embryo from a North Carolina clinic--cells that were thawed and implanted in Lancaster's womb. Now Lancaster looks at her 5-year-old daughter Elisha--lively and precocious--and thinks: miracle. "It was a demonstration to us that every embryo is a complete, unique and total human being in its tiniest form," Lancaster said.

Lancaster has now started her own embryo adoption service.

I wrote about embryo adoption and a similar service called "Snowflakes" in Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World, in which I interviewed both adopting mothers and the donors. The donor was thrilled her son was brought to birth, and the boy's parents were absolutely ecstatic about their growing family. During our interview, I heard the baby crying and marveled that he had been in the deep freeze only a little while before.

There are debates in some circles about the morality of this. I think this flows from opposition to the IVF procedure per se. Others may object to one woman carrying the baby of another. And still others may resent the pro life message as presented in the story. As for me, regardless of what one believes about any of that, bringing the child to birth is in keeping with the reason the embryo was brought into being in the first place. It isn't the answer to the embryo surplus because there are so many in cold storage. But surely, it is one answer.

Charo Appointed to Obama Team as Patient's Own Adult Stem Cells Make New Windpipe

The new Obama Administration is going to push full speed ahead pouring money into ESCR--and I worry, human cloning research. This concern is heightened by the appointment of Alta Charo to the transition team. I know Alta, and we get along fine personally. But we clash. (She once called me a leader of the "endarkenment.") Charo, like so many academics, is very radical (from my perspective) on these and most other bioethical issues, and so--as I have said previously--we are entering very dark days. (I privately predicted Charo would head the Obama bioethics council--which will be a stacked deck without the protests in the bioethics industry and in the media about deck stacking that we saw with the Kass-led Council, even though it wasn't one. However, this early appointment might mean a high post in the Department of Health and Human Services.)

Meanwhile, ethical stem cell research continues to advance exponentially. Now, scientists grew a new windpipe for a woman from her own stem cells, and successfully transplanted it into her body. From the story:

A 30-year-old Spanish woman has made medical history by becoming the first patient to receive a whole organ transplant grown using her own cells. Experts said the development opened a new era in surgery in which the repair of worn-out body parts would be carried out with personally customised replacements.

Claudia Castillo, who lives in Barcelona, underwent the operation to replace her windpipe after tuberculosis had left her with a collapsed lung and unable to breathe. The bioengineered organ was transplanted into her chest last June at the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona. Four months later she was able to climb two flights of stairs, go dancing and look after her children – activities that had been impossible before the surgery. Ms Castillo has also crossed a second medical frontier by becoming the first person to receive a whole organ transplant without the need for powerful immunosuppressant drugs.

Doctors overcame the problem of rejection by taking her own stem cells to grow the replacement organ, using a donor trachea (lower windpipe) to provide the mechanical framework. Blood tests have shown no sign of rejection months after the surgery was complete.

Stopping human cloning in an Obama Administration may be difficult. But I think that the more stories like this come out, the more likely it will be for us to generate sufficient public opposition that maybe, just maybe, that agenda might stall.

Schadenberg: "Death on Demand No Worthy Goal for Society"

Alex Schedenberg, the head of Canada's Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, has a very good piece about the passage of I 1000 in today's Calgary Herald. He points out the truth the media generally refuse to report, that Oregon's guidelines are often violated and that most assisted suicides there are facilitated by Compassion and Choices (formerly the Hemlock Society). He also notes that other assisted suicide advocates are already stating that permitting assisted suicide for the terminally ill doesn't go far enough--which anyone paying attention knows is the goal of the wider movement. Here's the link. Check it out.

Can Biotechnology be Controlled?

Comment Visions, an international on-line debate forum, asked my view on the following question:

Biotechnology has been hailed as the wonder industry of the 21st Century, but are we capable of controlling it?

Here is my reply:

Biotechnology offers tremendous promise and peril. The peril arises, in my view, from a general lack of humility within the sector and a professed unwillingness among some of its leaders to accept that there are any ethical lines that must be respected other than their own. More importantly, many have discarded the belief in the intrinsic equal moral worth of all human beings. As a consequence many in the field have come to look upon nascent humans as mere natural resources that can be used instrumentally. Most of this discussion now centers on early embryos. But the emerging predominate value system within the biotech sector--which denies intrinsic human worth and advocates for establishing moral value based on capacities--would just as easily justify using living fetuses in experimentation (which was done in the USA in the late 1960s), and even people born with profound cognitive impairments, a proposal already being voiced in some of the world's most prestigious bioethical journals.

The problem isn't that scientists and ethicists want to improve human health and wellbeing. We all want that (just not at any price). The problem, as I see it, is an emerging utopian attitude that threatens to make something of a religion out of science and accepts a utilitarianism that could devolve into a new eugenics. So, while we are certainly capable of controlling biotechnology, alas, I do not see a sufficient willingness among the leadership of the science and biotech sectors to do so. This not only bodes poorly for the weak and vulnerable but risks unleashing a popular backlash against science for refusing to adhere to reasonable societal norms.

The responses were supposed to be brief, and whole books could be and have been written on the subject, but that sums my thoughts up pretty well.

National Kidney Foundation Apparently Considering Supporting Organ Market

The National Kidney Foundation is apparently considering supporting a market in organs. This is a very bad idea. It is taking a public survey. If you wish to weigh in, here's the link.

UK Official Denigrates Elderly with Profound Cognitive Impairments by Using the Hateful V-Epithet

Sickening. Just sickening. A public official in the UK who is "Labour's czar for the elderly," posits a duty to die by having society refuse to medically support demented patients, and denigrates them with the V-Epithet to boot. From the story:

Dame Joan Bakewell says she does not want people to be kept alive because of machinery when their 'identity has ceased to exist.' Old people should be allowed to die if they become 'vegetables', Joan Bakewell has said. Labour's czar for the elderly said she had made a living will that will mean she is 'not kept alive if I'm a vegetable'.

She added that people should not be helped to go on living by machinery if they had outlived their normal lifespan. The 75-year-old television presenter also called for laws that would allow terminally ill patients to be given fatal doses of drugs.

The controversial call for assisted dying and allowing people with dementia to die came a week after Dame Joan's appointment as the 'voice of older people'. It comes at a time of growing pressure from supporters of euthanasia and assisted dying for legislation to allow the elderly and disabled to be helped to die when they become too sick to look after themselves.Dame Joan told the Daily Telegraph: 'Everybody fears becoming unable to speak, unable to communicate. That's a really alarming prospect and I think it is quite a good idea to give thought to it now and to write a living will and to make provision, tell your nearestand dearest what you want.'

She added: 'I don't want people to be kept alive simply because there is a lot of enormous machinery that can keep them pumped up and with all the organs going, when in fact their identity has ceased to exist.'

She doesn't want people kept alive. Well, tough toenails. I support advance directives, but this is promoting futile care theory based on her values and who she thinks have lives worth living.

When a public official with such a denigrating mentality toward people with disabilities and the elderly is appointed to high office, when she openly disparages the helpless with a hateful epithet intended to dehumanize and degrade, when she promotes euthanasia and what can only be called a duty to die--and she is considered the voice of the elderly!--well, the UK is in very big trouble. But we already knew that, didn't we?

Bakewell should be fired for hate speech and for clearly indicating that she will not fight for the equal moral worth of those in her public policy charge. She should be stripped of her portfolio immediately.

Speaking Truth to Power: European Cases Presage Huge "Conscience Rights" Bioethics Fights to Come

Expounding further on a theme I began yesterday: Western culture is profoundly--and I think on several important bioethical issues. implacably--split about what is right and what is wrong. These issues range from abortion, to euthanasia, to embryonic stem cell research, to removing feeding tubes from people with cognitive disabilities, to personhood theory, to human exceptionalism.

The intellectual elites and the holders of the leverages of political power (generally) support these agendas and activities, while opponents (again generally) tend to be from Main Street, faith communities, and constitute a minority within the health care professionals. Some disputants take their stand based on religious belief--or lack thereof--while others (including this writer) are adamant that universal human rights are literally at stake.

One potential way of co-existing in such a splintered moral milieu is to permit conscientious objectors to refuse to participate in what they (and I) believe is an emerging culture of death. And indeed, the issue of "conscience" is likely to become one of the most heated bioethical controversies in the years to come.

The USA is one of the prime battlefields over conscience clauses--as in the fight over Bush Administration plans to protect conscience rights of health care workers to not participate abortion. But the issue also is heating up around the globe. Case in point: A recent Italian court ruling permitted a father to remove the feeding tube of his daughter who has been in a diagnosed PVS for more than 15 years. But the nuns who run the hospice where she resides want no part of the dehydration. From the story:

Last week the Court of Cassation court upheld a ruling in July by a lower court in Milan allowing for the removal of feeding tubes connected to Eluana Englaro, who has been in a coma since a 1992 car accident in the northern city of Lecco in Lombardy.

However no Italian doctor has yet agreed to remove the feeding tubes, including staff at the hospital in Lecco where she is cared for. Roberto Formigoni, President of the Lombardy region, warned that doctors performing such a procedure would face disciplinary action for "failing to honour commitments to the well-being of their patients."

Medical authorities and health officials in other northern regions such as Piedmont and Friuli--where the Englaro family comes from--have also refused. Vladimiro Kosic, head of health for Friuli-Venezia Giulia, said "Our hospitals are places of life, not death".

Here's another example that just came to light: In Serbia, an abortion doctor named Stojan Adasevic found religion, (the particulars of which are beyond our scope here). After participating in a particularly gruesome procedure, he refused to perform any more abortions. There was hell to pay. From the story:

After this experience, Adasevic "told the hospital he would no longer perform abortions. Never before had a doctor in Communist Yugoslavia refused to do so. They cut his salary in half, fired his daughter from her job, and did not allow his son to enter the university."

Similar acts against dissenting medical professionals--although not their families--are now threatened throughout the West. Indeed, the issue of conscience is quickly coming to a head. Expect increasing attempts in coming years to pass laws and promulgate regulations designed to coerce dissenting health care professionals to be complicit in death-causing procedures under threat of loss of professional employment, with the intention, I believe, of driving people of certain faiths and moral persuasions out of the health care professions. This aggression has already begun. Australia has already passed such a law about abortion.

I strongly support the rights of conscience for health care professionals regarding elective procedures, that is procedures that are not necessary to save life or to prevent serious physical health consequences for the patient. Such accommodations would seem to be in keeping with a multicultural and tolerant society. But the culture of death is not about tolerance: It is about cultural hegemony. Once its supporters perceive they are in control, they will work hard to punish dissenters because refusing to participate sends a clarion message that certain activities are just plain wrong. And that is a truth spoken to power that they simply will not tolerate.

Expect the fight over conscience to become a political conflagration.

"Brain Dead" Boy "Dies"

The case of M.B., the 12-year-old boy whose Orthodox Jewish parents sought to have his life support continued after he was declared dead by neurological criteria, is over. From the story:

The boy had already been declared brain dead, but some adherents of Jewish religious law say death occurs only when the heart and lungs stop functioning. The family had asked a judge to prevent further tests for brain activity. The hospital argued that its "scarce resources" were being used "for the preservation of a deceased body."

For the parents and those who do not accept "brain death" it means MB has actually died. For those who accept the concept, it means his body could no longer be kept functioning--which almost (but not) always happens with the bodies of those declared dead by neurological criteria.

After my earlier post about this matter, I received some serious private blowback because I accepted the concept of brain death, assuming proper diagnosis. My critic believes that brain death is a utilitarian fiction designed to permit organ harvesting. Because I deeply respect the blowbacker (if you will), I checked with my medical and ethics sources again about this issue, and found continued support for the concept of brain death. Our private dialogue continues.

We will discuss this issue further because it is becoming a source of renewed controversy. Some of the attacks on brain death are coming from utilitarian bioethicists and organ transplant ethicists--who are saying, in essence, that since we are killing some patients for their organs--the so-called brain dead who they claim are alive--why not also allow access to unquestionably living patients with irreversible catastrophic brain damage? Stopping this agenda remains my prime concern in this area.

But some, who are anything but utilitarian, also believe that these patients are not dead. Rather than allowing patients with lesser brain damage to be organ sources, these advocates argue, such people are not bodies but patients, and as such they should not be used as donors at all until they are declared dead by cardio/pulmonary criteria. If brain dead is not really dead, they are right.

But let's leave the matter be for now. A young boy has died leaving rending grief in the tragedy's wake. Our deepest sympathies to M.B.'s family who unquestionably tried to do right by their boy. May he rest in peace.

Depression in Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia Patients

The abandoning ethic of assisted suicide is demonstrated by studies showing depression in many patients requesting hastened death. This point is commented upon in a letter to the editor in the British Medical Journal by Thomas Koch, a Canadian professor at the University of British Columbia. There is no link (BMJ 2008;337:a2479), so I am quoting it in full (citations omitted):

Nobody should be surprised at the prevalence of depression and anxiety in Oregon patients requesting physician assisted suicide. This was the pattern of euthanasia’s expansion in Holland--a movement for relief of unbearable suffering in terminal cases became a means of termination for those whose problems were often more existential, or psychological, than physical. In Holland the critical case in law and ethics was the
Chabot case, in which a divorced woman with clinical depression after the death of a son asked for, and received, euthanasia. [Me: Actually, the deaths of two sons and she received assisted suicide.] In another case, a request for euthanasia by a young woman with anorexia later was granted.

A retrospective study of deaths attributed to Dr Jack Kevorkian found none with end stage disease and several in whom necropsy revealed no clear organic dysfunction. [Me: End stage disease, probably so. But to avoid confusion, about 25% of Kevorkians assisted suicides had been diagnosed with terminal conditions.]Again,what was publicly proclaimed as an end to suffering became a matter of termination of people whose physical or psychological suffering was not correctly palliated or treated.

Depression attends generally to cases of physical limit and chronic disease. The focus on euthanasia rather than on treatment, and state support for palliative and psychological treatment makes premature physician assisted death a default option. This ignores in the name of autonomy a wealth of evidence that argues that most of those with chronic limits and progressive conditions may, after an initial period of anxiety and depression, find a worthiness to life so long as physical and
psychological treatment is provided. It similarly ignores the potential for fruitful life with both aggressive palliative care and psychological support.

The same is true of people diagnosed with a terminal illness. Assisted suicide uses the language of "compassion," but it really is a form of giving up on the patient. Worse, when the state explicitly authorizes it, the messages are sent that dying naturally is not dignified, and moreover, that killing oneself is at least as good a choice as allowing nature to take its course. That "approval" may provide the tipping point--which is why assisted suicide advocates work so hard to prevent any nay saying by relevant medical professionals to patients once it becomes law, and try to change the language from "suicide," which has a negative connotation, to the euphemistic "aid in dying," which seems benign, and is what hospice does, after all.

But it strikes me that unequivocal societal disfavor of these actions--while not disfavoring any patients, and in fact, supporting suicidal people--would mean fewer suicides all the way around.

Let's Do What is Right Regardless of What Governments Tell Us is Right and Wrong

There was a column in yesterday's SF Chronicle that dealt with the mortgage crisis. That issue is way beyond our scope here, but one point made by the writer hit my SHS nerve endings. From the column, "Are You an Idiot to Keep Paying Your Mortgage?":

But what about the moral obligation to pay off a debt?

Elected officials have been chipping away at that by blaming the foreclosure crisis largely on predatory lenders. In a campaign fact sheet, President-elect Barack Obama says he "recognizes that the real victims in the subprime mortgage crisis are not the lenders, but the millions of borrowers who followed the rules and whose only crime was taking out mortgages that lenders told them they could afford."

That should be irrelevant. Whatever the government's policies, we should do the right thing if we can--in this example, keep our word. What others do or that which government permits is irrelevant.

I bring this up because I fear we are heading into very dark days in which the government may legalize or tacitly approve many things that promote human unexceptionalism, abandonment, and death causing. This will not mean that these policies and actions or omissions are right, or that we should individually acquiesce simply because the government has smiled upon them.

For example, assisted suicide can and should be resisted in Washington and Oregon--by physicians refusing to participate, families refusing to agree with a despairing loved one that poison is the answer, friends who refuse to support a desire for assisted suicide rather than assuming that saying anything other than "youe choice" is judgmental and unloving, and by patients who reject that their lives are not equally worth living as those of others, and let all support that realization unequivocally and unconditionally.

We will also have to protect physicians and other health professionals who may become early martyrs of the emerging nouveaux regime. As I have noted repeatedly, the culture of death brooks no dissent and eventually will seek to make resisting doctors complicit in the killing by, for example, requiring them to find a compliant doctor for the patient if they say no to the death request. Such an active referral obligation is required in Australia's new abortion law, even though it permits termination through the ninth month. This tack was also taken in the original version of AB 2747, which would have permitted patients with 1 year to live to demand palliative sedation as a back door method of assisted suicide, with doctors who said no required to refer. (This entire section was gutted from the bill that eventually passed.) Or, it may involve facilities being prohibited from denying access to assisted suicide on premises, attempted already in one of California's failed assisted suicide legalization attempts.

Or it may come in the form of private voluntary associations refusing to countenance members participating in these agendas. The Oregon and Washington assisted suicide laws prohibit any sanction by any organization against doctors who participate (or refuse to participate) in the killing. Resist! If a member of Physician for Compassionate Care, for example--a wholly voluntary organization--assists a suicide, he or she should be given the boot regardless of the law. Then, if sued, that section should be attacked as an outrageously unconstitutional violation of the guarantees to freedom of association in the Constitution.

In writing this post, please don't misunderstand: I am not saying that the culture of death has won the day and we should just fold our tents and steal away. But reality is reality. The new administration and many states will be, at best, indifferent to the official SHS positions, and most likely implacably hostile. My job--and that of those who agree with me--will be to stand tall and "speak truth to power" (unlikely to be celebrated in the media anymore), accepting the brickbats that will follow as we await a better day. But each of us will also have to strive to the best of our ability to live our lives consistent with the morals we espouse. Indeed, doing that in love--which is the why, more than the how--may be the most powerful antidote to the culture of death.

China Orders Forced Abortion of Viable Fetus

China is a true tyranny. And now, it has ordered a Muslim woman to abort her viable fetus or face the loss of her home. From the story:

Chinese authorities have ordered Arzigul Tursun, who is 26 weeks pregnant, to abort her unborn child because she has two other children. She is under watch at the Municipal Watergate Hospital in Yining in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, which is populated heavily with Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority. Supporters are concerned a forced abortion at such a late stage could threaten Arzigul's health.

According to the Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project, Arzigul and her husband, Nurmemet, fled their village when she became pregnant, but returned after officials warned their house and property would be seized if Arzigul did not have an abortion. "We considered our two girls," said Nurmemet. "If the house and properties were taken away, how would they live? So my wife came back and went to the hospital." US Representative Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican, wrote to China's ambassador to Washington, Zhou Wenzhong, last week to demand the forced abortion not be carried out.

China has had 400 million abortions in the last three decades, many of them coerced or forced. That's more than the population of the USA. Infanticide of girl babies has been widely reported, pushed by the one child policy. It also been credibly accused of killing Falun Gong and selling their organs--although the charge has not been proven conclusively. We do know it has killed other prisoners and then sold their organs. China also has an explicit eugenics policy in place. Then there's Tibet...

And we keep them in business by using the country as our manufacturing base. Reminds me of the Northern merchants who fought against the fight against slavery because of the money they made from the Southern slave holders.

Ecuador's Folly: "Why We Call Them Human Rights"

I have a piece in the current Weekly Standard about Ecuador granting "rights" to nature. (I wrote this several weeks ago, but for obvious reasons having to do with all of the political news lately, it was delayed until now.) From my column:

Rights, properly understood, are moral entitlements embodied in law to protect all people. They are not earned: Rights come as part of the package of being a member of the human race. This principle was most eloquently enunciated in the Declaration of Independence's assertion that we are all created equal and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

This doctrine of human exceptionalism has been under assault in recent decades from many quarters. For example, many bioethicists assert that being human alone does not convey moral value, rather an individual must exhibit "relevant" cognitive capacities to claim the rights to life and bodily integrity. Animal rights ideology similarly denies the intrinsic value of being human, claiming that we and animals are moral equals based on our common capacity to feel pain, a concept known as "painience."

These radical agendas have now been overtaken by an extreme environmentalism that seeks to--and this is not a parody--grant equal rights to nature. Yes, nature; literally and explicitly. "Nature rights" have just been embodied as the highest law of the land in Ecuador's newly ratified constitution pushed by the country's hard-leftist president, Rafael Correa, an acolyte of Hugo Chávez.

I quote the relevant provisions, analyze how the "rights" of nature might be implemented and the potential anti-human consequences thereof, and recap other anti-human exceptionalism agendas being adopted in Spain (Great Ape Project) and Switzerland (individual plant "dignity). I conclude:

Some might say that Ecuador is a small country not worth much concern. But the concept of nature possessing rights seems to be spreading. The CELDF--which was only founded in 1995--brags that it is fielding calls from South Africa, Italy, Australia, and Nepal, that last of which is crafting its own leftist constitution.

Others might say that worrying about nature's rights should take a back seat to less abstract concerns such as the financial crisis and the war on terror. But consider this: The central importance of human life is the fundamental insight undergirding Western civilization. This tenet is now under energetic, and increasingly successful, attack. If such antihumanism prevails, we won't have to worry about nature having rights, but about human beings losing them.

There is a profound malaise and nihilism loose in the West,and it is causing us to turn away from the values that bring human freedom and prosperity. It isn't too late to revere course, but that will be hard since so many remain inaware that these potentially epochal changes are even taking place.

Embattled Oxford Animal Research Center Opens

It wasn't easy, a thicket of opposition, sometimes very threatening, from animal rights activists, impeded progress, but the new Oxford animal research center has finally opened. From the story on BBC:

Four years ago, Cambridge University cancelled plans for a primate research centre, because of concerns over spiralling security costs linked to animal rights. It marked a huge victory for animal rights protestors, who then moved their campaign to Oxford.

The vast majority of protests have been entirely lawful. But the police say a small minority of extremists have carried out acts of arson and vandalism against the university, building contractors and anyone they suspected of being linked to the new laboratory.

In 2004 the contractors pulled out citing intimidation. Shareholders had been sent hoax letters urging them to sell. The government introduced new legislation making "economic sabotage" linked to animal research a crime. Ministers promised to help with the security costs.

After a 16 month delay work resumed, with building workers covering their faces to avoid identification. A court injunction limits protest outside the building to four hours every Thursday afternoon.

Amanda Richards is one of many who turn up each week. She says the SPEAK campaign believes in lawful protest and that it is crucial that someone represents the animals."We are here to highlight that Oxford University are mutilating animals on a daily basis. Our intentions are to continue campaigning to persuade them to change this from an animal torture to a lab which is looking at the alternatives which will drive medicine forward."

SPEAK says animal research is not just immoral, but worthless.

It is defamatory to claim that these animals are being "mutilated" for no good purpose. It is to denigrate people who are really trying to improve the human (and animal) condition by adherents of an explicitly and implictly anti-human ideology that has short-circuited their critical faculties. Animal research may be many things, but "worthless" isn't one of them--as we have repeatedly discussed here at SHS.

Good for Oxford University for continuing forward with this important project in the face of baseless vituperation and intimidation. May we all benefit from the medical and scientific advances that these animals will help effectuate.