Check Out the New Secondhand Smoke Look

The transition of SHS to the First Things family of blogs will soon be upon us. To see what it will look like, you can go to FT's new home page--still only partially constructed--and then hit the blogs link. Secondhand Smoke will appear. Hit that link, and you will find me, or actually SHS as it looked a week or so ago. (They have not yet transferred the latest posts to the FT site). Or go there directly from here.

I will not be using Blogger once the transition is completed, but you should be able to access SHS the same old way--you won't have to go through FT. I still intend to permit comments. My hope is that the added viewership will make things even more interesting around here than they already are.

Thanks to all for your viewership and participation.

UK Doctors Should Put NHS in Proper Order Before Enlisting in Fight Against "Global Warming"

Calling global warming, "our era's cholera," a UK greenie named Muir Gray is urging doctors to get involved in stopping climate change (as if they don't already have enough to do). From the column:

Climate change will hit the poorest nations hardest, but it will affect us too. In the summer of 2003,...an unexpected heatwave, killed 14,000 elderly people in France.

Yes, well that was because of a lack of air conditioners, which global warming ubber alles types like Gray want to do away with. Also, during the heat wave, most of France was on vacation and too few people were checking on the old people to see how they were doing as the vaunted safety net of France failed miserably. (If Bush had presided over such a debacle, the screaming would never have stopped.)

Ignoring the fact that anti global warming activism may well impede the development of sufficient electrical resources to keep people from dying during a bad heat wave, Gray pushes beyond the boundary of reasonable discussion:

Smoking, Aids, swine flu? They all pale into insignificance compared to climate change's threat to health. That proposition will instantly provoke a hostile reaction from the diminishing band [me: actually, I think skepticism is growing] of climate-change sceptics. But as a doctor of 40 years' standing who has been involved in running public health services for 30 years, I know that the evidence is good enough to make action, not inaction, the sensible choice. An empirical view of the data shows that delay will not just increase the amount of preventable harm, it may take us past a point of no return.

Get a grip: Millions of African children die now--not in some computer program projection's simulated crisis--of measles and malaria, not to mention malnutrition, the effects of unclean water, and improper sanitation. As many as one in four people in some African countries have HIV. These existing crises are more than enough to take up the time and attention of the public health sector and physicians without also jumping into the questionable campaign to stop global warming.

And--oh gosh--more to worry about: The NHS's carbon footprint is too high!

But the medical profession needs to put its own house in order too. I was in a hospital last month that is doubling its electricity supply "to meet demand", with no thought about the future...The NHS is gigantic and has a carbon footprint that is nearly one twentieth of the whole UK's footprint--1.3 million staff each with their own footprint, the drugs bought, the buildings, the transport, the water and the food, too much of it thrown away. Now is the time for the profession to mobilise and show the passion that took them into medical school but is then so often extinguished

By neglecting the needs of current patients whose proper care requires most of that electricity?

Gray is something called the Public Health Director of the Campaign for Greener Healthcare. But I think my idea about all of this is better than his: Before UK doctors pour their energies into practicing and promoting greener health care, they should first focus on providing better health care. Considering the chaotic and incompetent mess that is the NHS, doctors let the environmentalists worry about pushing the green, and instead, put first things, first.

Persona Non Grata People May Hold Key to Cance Cure

Well this is ironic: People with Down syndrome--against whom a concerted pogrom is being waged to wipe off the face of the earth via genetic testing and eugenic abortion or infanticide--may hold the key to an effective treatment for cancer. From the story:

Scientists may have solved the mystery of why people with Down's syndrome seem to have a lower risk of some cancers.

The extra copy of chromosome 21 which causes Down's appears to contain a gene that protects from solid cancerous tumours, tests on mice suggest. The gene seems to interfere with signals a tumour relies on to grow. The finding raises hope of new ways to prevent and treat cancer.

At least some catch an important ancillary point to this story:

Writing in the journal, the researchers, led by Dr Sandra Ryeom, said: "It is, perhaps, inspiring that the Down's syndrome population provides us with new insight into mechanisms that regulate cancer growth and, by so doing, identifies potential targets for tumour prevention and therapy."

Will that slow down our drive to identify and destroy these precious human beings before they can be born? Not a chance. We talk a good game of "diversity," but we don't really mean it.

Biological Colonialism "Comedic Tour de Force"

Secondhand Smokette and I went to a Barnes and Noble this morning and I stumbled upon a new book: Larry's Kidney: Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China with My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant--and Save His Life, by Daniel Asa Rose. Great: A comedic tale of biological colonialism and exploitation, I thought. Just what the world needs.

So, I have perused a few reviews. Here's a sample:

This book is a side-splitting tour de force that whisks readers off to China on a quest to get a transplant for the author's cousin Larry. Second-time memoirist Rose recounts their exploits with an insuperable wit that will appeal to readers who crave unrelenting humor. In a more serious vein, Larry's challenging journey to China will resonate with readers who are rightfully concerned about the plight of American patients who may be relegated for years to an organ transplant waiting list. -- Library Journal, May 1, 2009

Yes, all that matters is what happens to Americans and our organ shortage. But here's the thing: Some poor Chinese prisoner was almost surely tissue typed to match Larry and then killed for his kidney. That's how it tends to work when Americans with plenty of cash in their pockets go to China to buy organs. In this vein, please read Smokette's powerful "American Vampire," about this same topic, in which she wrote:

But just as it is wrong for Americans to die waiting for organs, it also is wrong for prisoners to die because an American needs a liver, or for a child to die because his mother sold her kidney. And it is beyond reason that in a country that passes numerous regulations on the feeding and care of livestock, people don't want to judge those who, like vampires, troll for organs in the Third World.

But Larry is such a character and Rose is such a good writer--and no doubt, he opposes water boarding--so who cares? I am sure the "donor" literally had a "side-splitting" good time. Hilarious.

Cutting Off Healthy Limbs to Treat BIID Coming Closer to Reality

There is nothing these days that can ever be safely considered to be permanently beyond the pale, unthinkable, flat-out undoable--and that apparently includes cutting off healthy limbs of patients with BIID.

When I first heard of body integrity identity disorder--BIID--in which sufferers have a powerful compulsion to become amputees (hence the nickname for the term, "amputee wannabe"), the idea that cutting off healthy limbs would ever be considered a legitimate treatment option seemed ridiculous. No longer. An influential psychiatrist is using the power of analogy to push us toward that very end. From the story:

"It actually sounds a lot like another condition which we already do recognize called gender identity disorder--where, for example, people are born as a male, but feel they're really a woman trapped in a man's body," said Dr. Michael First, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University in New York City, who has been studying this rare condition since 1999. "Typically it's more common legs than arms, there are people who want bilateral amputations, and I actually know of someone who has achieved that," he added.

Achieved multiple amputations! Can you imagine describing a maiming in that positive way?

First says in the story that he coined the term body integrity identity disorder with the explicit purpose of linking the condition to gender disorders--the treatment for which includes surgeries to amputate healthy breasts and genitalia. Indeed, once we opened the door to surgically removing or altering healthy body parts based on mental compulsions or desires, what made anyone think that there would ever be a stopping point?

BIID is not recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders (DSM-IV-TR), a book published by the American Psychiatric Association and regarded by most of the mental health community as the bible of identified mental illnesses. But First, as editor of the last two editions of the DSM, is working to change that, in an effort to create a reference for mental health professionals to use in identifying and treating the condition.

"Number one--for the people who have it--there's a whole issue of labeling something as a disorder, and there are pros and cons labeling," he said. "The disadvantage of labeling is stigma. We're basically saying this is a mental illness--this is a sickness. But the advantage of having it in the book is twofold. It might encourage more work on treatment by getting it on the map and getting therapists and people aware of it."

Mark my words, even though today virtually all of these unfortunate people get through life without chopping off their own limbs, we will eventually see BIID sufferers receive amputations. And once amputation is deemed to be a legitimate treatment for BIID, it will be harder for sufferers to fight against actually doing the deed. Oh, and surgeons who don't want to participate in removing healthy body parts had better hope that conscience clauses are put into effect, since there are already proposals on the table to require their participation or referral.

But here's the thing: Once amputations become as routine as surgical sex reassignments, we will "discover" another, even more extreme condition, that will also have to be accommodated. You see, there is no limit to how far into the macabre and harmful that terminal nonjudgmentalism has the power to take us. We are falling into a bottomless pit.

First Washington Legal Assisted Suicide: Compassion and Choices Immediately Issues Press Release

The first Washington State legal assisted suicide has happened. C and C, of course, promptly issued a press release. From the story:

The woman, Linda Fleming, 66, of Sequim, Wash., on the Olympic Peninsula, died Thursday evening after taking lethal medication prescribed by a doctor under the law, according to a news release by the group, Compassion and Choices of Washington. The release said the woman received a diagnosis of Stage 4 pancreatic cancer a month ago, and “she was told she was actively dying.”

Ms. Fleming was quoted in the release as saying: "I am a very spiritual person, and it was very important to me to be conscious, clear-minded and alert at the time of my death. The powerful pain medications were making it difficult to maintain the state of mind I wanted to have at my death."

Often early pain control can cause these symptoms, but as the body acclimates, often more cogency returns.

Be that as it may, once again we see that assisted suicide isn't about suffering that can't otherwise be alleviated. That is just the baloney C and C slices to sell the agenda. If Oregon is the template, once people have swallowed the hemlock, that justification evaporates into the ether as the death group facilitates the overwhelming majority of the hastened life endings regardless of the potential for effective palliation and available interventions that can help with the important issues of emotional distress and mental health.

Right of Medical Conscience to Go to Court

In Louisiana, a nurse who was demoted for refusing to participate in dispensing the morning after pill due to religious objections, has won the right from the state supreme court to sue her former employer for religious discrimination. From the story:

The Louisiana Supreme Court has declined to hear a hospital's appeal in a case brought by a nurse who claims she was demoted after she refused to dispense the "morning-after" pill. A state judge refused in 2007 to throw out Toni Lemly's lawsuit against St. Tammany Parish Hospital. The hospital appealed, but the Supreme Court declined Friday to review the judge's ruling.

The hospital hired Lemly in 2003 to work in its Community Wellness Center. Several months later, the hospital contracted with the state to provide counseling to patients about emergency contraception. The hospital offered Lemly a part-time position after she objected to distributing the morning-after pill, but she turned down the offer and sued, alleging religious discrimination. A lawyer for Lemly says the Supreme Court's decision clears the way for a trial.

I think the key to this case is that the hospital changed Lemly's job description from working in wellness--which is consistent with a pro life religious belief--to forcing her into a position for which she had never signed on, thereby requiring her to choose between her beliefs and her work.

This occurred back in 2005 before the Bush conscience clause was in effect. Today, this nurse would be protected. Tomorrow, when and if Obama actually revokes the Bush policy, who knows?

If we are going to live in a morally and culturally polyglot society, people like Lemly will have to be reasonably accommodated. Otherwise, many good medical professionals will be driven out of medicine--as some have already called for--and many institutions may close. Surely, we can all just get along?

Legislation Proposed in Canada for Suicide on Demand Assisted Suicide

More proof--as if it were really needed--that the assisted suicide movement believes in death on demand for any non transitory physical or mental condition perceived by the suicidal person as causing unbearable suffering. From the bill (C-384):(7)

Despite anything in this section, a medical practitioner does not commit homicide within the meaning of this Act by reason only that he or she aids a person to die with dignity, if (a) the person (i) is at least eighteen years of age, (ii) either

(A) continues, after trying or expressly refusing the appropriate treatments available, to experience severe physical or mental pain without any prospect of relief, or

(B) suffers from a terminal illness.

Note that the patient does not have to be physically ill--mental pain will do. Note also that even if the patient could have suffering reduced through proper treatment or care, he or she is still eligible to be aided in suicide by choosing death over treatment. Finally, there is no definition for what is meant by "death with dignity" or "aid in suicide," and hence, I believe that this bill could be interpreted to authorize doctors to administer the death causing agent.

Repeat after me: Assisted suicide is not about terminal illness. Assisted suicide is not about terminal illness. Assisted suicide is not about terminal illness.

Media Again Misuse the term "Brain Death"

Sigh. We have repeatedly discussed the sloppy language used by media to discuss crucial moral issues--which is important because of the power of lexicon to materially impact our views. Now, the BBC is the latest media outlet to misuse the term "brain death," to apply to a South Korean patient in a PVS whose life support removal has been authorized by the country's supreme court. From the story:

South Korea's Supreme Court has upheld a landmark ruling giving a brain-dead woman the right to die. The court agreed to a request from the family of the 76-year-old woman, who has been comatose for a year, to remove her from life support. It is the first case of its kind in South Korea and follows a series of legal challenges...

South Korea's top court said that the sustained treatment of terminally ill patients such as in this case potentially violated a patient's dignity. "Whether to continue artificial life support and feeding for comatose patients is a matter that should be considered carefully," said the Supreme Court ruling. "If it is obvious that the patient in question will soon die judging from her conditions, we can conclude that she has already entered a phase of death. In this case, continued hospital treatment only serves to hurt her human dignity."

The title of the piece is, "South Korea Court Grants 'Right to Die." Huh? If someone is already dead--which is what brain dead is--how can she be described as "terminally ill" and granted "a right to die?" (This case is really about the right to remove unwanted life-sustaining treatment.) Also the children say this will relieve their mother's pain (from the AP story linked below). But if she's in pain, she isn't dead. (And if she's truly unconscious, she's not in pain.)

The use of brain dead to identify living cognitively devastated patients is not only unconscionably sloppy, but is just another way of dehumanizing those who are already way too dehumanized.

But kudos to the AP for correctly reporting the story.

Gallup "Moral Propriety" Poll Generally Supports Human Exceptionalism

Gallup has issued its annual poll on what Americans think are morally appropriate behaviors, some of which deal directly with the issues about which we grapple here at SHS, and some of which don't. My last post on the poll covered issues dealing with the use of animals. Now, we turn to bioethical and biotechnological issues.

From the poll:

Suicide: Only 15% think that suicide is morally proper, unchanged from last year.

This result illustrates why assisted suicide advocates have worked so hard to engineer the language. Gooey euphemisms such as "aid in dying" are intended to mask the real subject at hand.

Cloning human beings, 88% think it is improper and only 9% proper, down from 11% last year.

The massive popular opposition to human cloning is also why research cloning advocates--with the willing complicity by a biased media--pretend that cloning isn't cloning and redefine and basic biological terms to give themselves political cover. While I have no doubt that if the poll had asked whether it is morally proper to create human cloned embryos for use in research, the numbers would have moved, I still believe that a majority would oppose--as they have in previous polls. This seems especially true when 64% oppose animal cloning. I think people are just very wary of science moving into areas that have such an explosive potential to dramatically alter the natural world.

Medical research on stem cells taken from human embryos: 57% believe it is proper, down five points from 62% last year, with 36% believing it is
improper.

While this question could technically apply to therapeutic cloning, it probably reflects the "leftover embryo" scenario that proved so politically successful in garnering public support for ESCR. The significant reduction in support--five points in one year--probably reflects the success of IPSC research as well as the growing understanding that adult stem cells are performing much better than expected when the great stem cell debate began.

Abortion: Only 36% believe that abortion is morally proper, down from 40% last year, while 56% think it is morally inappropriate.

This is the third major recent poll (Pew and a different Gallup) showing people moving in a generally "pro-life" direction on abortion. The reduced number of abortions each year may actually reflect the ongoing change in people's attitudes.

All in all, it seems to me that people are increasingly concerned with the equality/sanctity of human life. Hopefully, someday that will be better reflected in our country's public policies. The increasing divide the poll shows between Republicans and Democrats also reflects, I think, a worrying trend in that it is hard to have a true society when its members view some of life's most important moral issues in such diametrically different ways.

Gallup Poll on What is "Morally Acceptable" Reflects Significant Concern for Animals

Human exceptionalism is not only about human rights, but also human duties, including never using human beings as mere objects and the need to treat animals properly and humanely. The new Gallup Poll about what Americans consider morally acceptable behavior is interesting in both regards, and thus worth our pondering. (Part of the poll measured matters beyond our scope here at SHS, and these issues will not be addressed. The poll was also promoted by Gallup as showing Republicans growing increasingly "conservative." We don't do partisan politics here, and moreover, what some call conservative, I think of as liberal--such as opposing assisted suicide. So, let's ignore those matters, too.)

For ease of reading, in this post I will look at the questions that dealt with the treatment of animals, and in the next, activities exclusively involving human beings. From the poll:

Buying and wearing clothing made of animal fur: 61% to 35% think it is morally acceptable--with the "acceptable" figure up from 54% last year

Fur is the most publicly controversial use of animals, what with the seal clubbing and the scent of luxury it implies. I think that animal rights and welfare activists should actually be quite proud that 35% of the people believe that what was once seemed unremarkable is now considered morally unacceptable. But the increase in the "acceptable" category might reflect animal rights exhaustion, that is, people are tired of the preaching:

Medical testing on animals--57% think it is right and 36%
wrong. This figure is basically unchanged from last year.

Medical testing is probably the use of animals that provides humans the greatest benefit. That 36% of the people think it is wrong, is an alarming indication that the research community has not done a good job of educating the public of the importance of their work and the lengths to which researchers go to treat the animals in their care humanely.

I also think it is notable that the numbers who consider fur and animal research to be morally improper are nearly identical. If this is an increased sensitivity based on animal welfare thinking, I am cool with that, with the understanding that one can have great concern for animals and support research and fur. But if it reflects an acceptance of the ideology, values, and beliefs of "animal rights," it is cause for great concern:

Cloning animals: Morally wrong 63%, to 34%.

I have no problem with animal cloning because it doesn't impact human exceptionalism and potential great good could come from it for us. But I think the 34% figure is another example of a significant minority of the people having great concern for either the proper and humane care of animals, or animal rights. Again, if it is the former, good. If the latter, not good.

In the next post, we'll look at issues touching more directly on human life.

Oklahoma Funds Science and Stem Cell Ethics

The Oklahoma Legislature having voted unanimously to outlaw all human cloning--still no word on what the governor will do with the bill--state bureaucrats are now putting $5.5 million into adult stem cell research over the next five years. From the story:

The Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust board voted Monday to contribute $5.5 million to adult stem cell research. The board committed $500,000 for a yearlong planning phase to decide how the money should be distributed, followed by $1 million in grants each year for five years.

The action was taken after presentations on adult stem cell research under way in Oklahoma. Adult stem cells could someday be used as "regenerative medicine" to treat or cure many ailments such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, said Dr. Stephen Prescott, president of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation.

He said Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation scientists are working to "back up" progression of adult cells so they return to a state where they can be reprogrammed for specific uses. Patients could be treated with their own cells to avoid rejection

That's smart. Not too much money, no debt incurred--as we have here in the California Titanic--and proper ethics. Now, that makes good governance sense.

Politicized "Science" Advocates Want to "Shut Down" Dissenting Voices

This blog does not get into the specifics of global warming, but it does discuss how science is being corrupted by politics--mostly from the left--transforming the method into an ideology sometimes called scientism. Thus, in the stem cell debate, clear biological definitions have been altered, not due to new scientific understandings, but to better present a political point, while ethical objections to certain approaches have been demagogued as "anti science."

In the global warming arena, a campaign to stifle legitimate opposition to the mainstream view has been launched to the point that Al Gore imperiously decreed the debate over--when very credible meteorologists and other scientists dissent from the idea of catastrophic, anthropomorphically caused "climate change" (a term Secondhand Smokette hilariously branded "global warming during a blizzard.")

A brouhaha in Louisianna illustrates vividly how the politicized scientism sector seeks to stifle open debate and shut down the democratic process in the global warming arena. From the story:

After a presenter at last week's Public Service Commission meeting asserted that global warming is a hoax, Commissioner Foster Campbell said Tuesday he plans to introduce a motion at the June meeting requiring most people testifying before the commission to do so under oath..."Requiring witnesses to swear an oath to the truth will bring more credibility to their testimony and the Commission's deliberations," said Campbell, of Bossier City. It will "make speakers think twice before injecting political agendas into our meetings."

Last week, Campbell invited Louisiana State University professor David Dismukes to make a presentation about how "cap and trade," a system for setting a national cap on carbon dioxide emissions and allowing companies to trade allowances for pollution, works to control global warming and how current proposals in Congress would affect Louisiana. But Dismukes was upstaged by a guest invited by Mandeville Commissioner Eric Skrmetta who asserted that global warming doesn't exist...

Campbell ... criticized Boissiere for not shutting down Morano's presentation. "The testimony was taken like this guy was a credible witness," Campbell said. "I was waiting for the chairman to say, 'Hey, wait a minute, we need to talk about facts.' "

Boissiere said the commission is an open forum, and since no votes were required on the cap and trade agenda item, he saw no reason to shut down Morano's presentation. As for putting speakers under oath to keep commission business serious, Boissiere said he is concerned that such a move would make people feel like they can't approach the commission without consulting a lawyer. "I want it to be a people's commission," Boissiere said. "If you go under oath in a public forum like that, you'll deter comment rather than encourage it

Well, that's the idea. Indeed, when I testified a few years ago against an assisted suicide bill before the California Senate Judiciary Committee, one sponsor (Lloyd Levine) demanded (unsuccessfully) that the chairman end my testimony. Of course, that was when I knew I was drawing blood.

We increasingly see intense efforts to prevent heterodox opinions from being uttered where they might have real impact. But attempting to stifle debate about the facts and the best policy about scientific matters is the true anti-science. I guess the value of speaking truth to power depends on which side is in control.

Outsourcing of Ethics: Biological Colonialism Approved by FDA

Cynical me believes that if this rule had come down when Bush was president, the media would have been all over it--although I am sure he wouldn't have been aware of it any more than President Obama is. In a move geared to permit exploitation of the world's most destitute people, the FDA has apparently permitted drug companies to conduct research overseas that would be barred from the USA under pertinent ethical guidelines. From the story:

[T]rials performed outside the United States will no longer have to conform to the Helsinki Declaration even though they will be used to support licensing of drugs in the United States. Instead they will be regulated by the Good Clinical Practice guidelines: not an aspirational ethical code but a manual describing existing procedure for industry sponsored trials. This double standard could give the impression that the FDA "is more interested in facilitating research than respecting the rights of people who are subjects of research".

This is rank biological colonialism, permitting human research ethical rules to be ignored if done overseas, but then allowing the company to use the test results to justify its application for a license from the FDA approval for clinical use of the products at home.

The FDA excuses this rule on the basis that it has no jurisdictional control overseas. That may be true, but it can--and should--refuse to consider giving its approval to any product or drug that has not been tested under USA standards of ethics for human subjects--and animal care for that matter.

This "outsourcing of ethics" (a term I believe was coined by my friend William Hurlbut) says, in essence, that people in foreign countries have less value and moral worth than Americans and can be used in ways in which we would not treat our own people. The FDA's unethical move needs to receive so much adverse publicity that the FDA quickly changes course--before Obama finds out.

SHS Funnies

Can you find SHS in this clever cartoon?

Assisted Suicide as a "Prophylactic" Against Future Suffering

The media repeatedly pound home the false meme that assisted suicide is only about people diagnosed with a terminal illness. True, some American activists make that argument. But the "terminal illness limitation" is unquestionably the minority view within the movement.

Case in point: On April 15, 2009, Ruth von Fuchs, a leader in the Canadian Right to Die Society told Canada AM (CTV) that she supports Betty Coumbias--the Canadian woman who is not sick, but who wants to travel to Switzerland with her terminally ill husband to commit assisted suicide. From the transcript (no link):

RUTH VON FUCHS: Anyhow, the thing with Betty Coumbias I think will be an extension, because it will show there is no duty to live, that life is not an obligation, it's a right but not an obligation. It will also show, I think, that it's rational and sensible to take steps to avoid oncoming suffering or misery. Betty is virtually certain that if she had to live without George she would suffer from intractable depression.

[AM Canada Host Seamus ] O'REGAN: She's anticipating that she will be depressed from loneliness.

RUTH VON FUCHS: Yes...And people say she could be wrong, and I suppose that's true. But she's not a young woman and she's thought about this for a long time. It's possible that she is correct.

It's also possible that the tribunals in Switzerland will rule that some sort of wait-and-see policy is required. But then there would be a promise to her that if indeed she's right and is wretched without George, then at the end of a certain time--a month, for instance [Me: Grief doesn't end in a month!] she could receive assistance then.

I am sorry, what kind of husband would support his wife throwing herself, figuratively speaking, on his cremation pyre? That question goes unasked. Instead, Von Fuchs sees assisted suicide as not just about ending actual suffering, but as a proper "prophylactic" against feared future suffering:

O'REGAN: So, what she's trying to do is not only -- I mean, I guess there's a political element here, do you think? I mean, does she want to make a statement? Obviously, does she want to carry this through in a public way?

RUTH VON FUCHS: I think she's ahead of her time, in a way. So, she's trying to lead her society into questioning some of the old assumptions that life is a duty, that we must not anticipate, that we must start to suffer. But we don't take that attitude in other areas of life. We think it's very wise to do things like buckling up your seat belt to prevent being thrown from your car. Prophylactic measures are considered very sensible in many areas of life.

Assisted suicide analogized to buckling one's seat belt: The truth about this movement is there for everyone to see--if they will only look. Von Fuchs isn't on the fringe of the assisted suicide movement, she's the mainstream.

"Happiness Inequality" and the Politicization of Science

A Pew Poll measuring the "happiness" of the American people is out, and good news for me, people get happier as they age. But that is not why I brought it up. Rather, I was taken by the analysis of the poll presented by science writer Robert Roy Britt, Editorial Director of the on-line science journal LiveScience.com, which, I think, indirectly illuminates the left wing politics that I worry now permeates the science sector to the detriment of both science and society.

Britt mostly focuses on how happiness is aided by material prosperity, which is undoubtedly true, but which I doubt is the primary source of life satisfaction and joy. (According to a 2006 Pew Poll other factors include religious belief, marriage, living in sunny climes, etc.) But this is the paragraph that hit me as decidedly odd. From the column:

Now for the good news: A study in January found that key groups of people in the United States have grown happier over the past few decades, while other have become less so. The result: Happiness inequality has decreased since the 1970s. Americans are becoming more similar to each other on the happiness scale.

I'm sorry? We should be pleased that some people have grown unhappier so that we now have less happiness inequality?

Not to make too big a deal out of this, but the zeal for equal outcomes--in contrast to equal opportunity--has become a hallmark of the political left. If I am right about the increasing left wing political tilt of the science sector, we will need to be on guard to ensure that "scientific" findings and recommendations upon which policies are often based aren't skewed to promote desired radical egalitarian ideological outcomes.

Update: 13-Year Old Isn't Father: 15 year-Old Is

Alfie Patten, the 13-year-old boy who made a such a big, hand wringing splash in the UK by claiming to have fathered a child with his 15-year-old girlfriend--who was sleeping with a few other boys, as well--turned out not to be the father after all. From the story:

DNA tests have revealed that a 13-year-old British boy who claimed to have fathered a child with his 15-year-old girlfriend was not the dad, according to a court judgement made public Monday. Claims that baby-faced schoolboy Alfie Patten made Chantelle Steadman pregnant when he was aged just 12 triggered national soul-searching about Britain's high level of teenage pregnancies.

But the story, reported in February just days after the birth, sparked claims from other boys who lived nearby that they could also be the father and social workers organised a DNA test. The results, revealed in a high court judgement last month which was only made public Monday, showed the father was 15-year-old Tyler Barker, who lived on the same housing estate as Steadman in Eastbourne in southern England.

Alfie just lost a big payday from the tabloid press, but other than that, the problem remains the same: The hedonism brought to us by the coup de culture that is afflicting Western culture encourages children to yield to every urge and hormonal impulse, resulting in teenage parenthood, abortion, and chaotic lives. And in that decadence are found seeds of eventual societal destruction.

Nietzsche Opposed Human Exceptionalism Too

The nihilism unleashed by Nietzsche has caused more harm and suffering than can ever be measured. It turns out that much of the themes of anti-human exceptionalism we see today come right out of his playbook. For example, last week I criticized a University of Wisconsin professor named Deborah Blum for not knowing whether we--or hyenas--are the moral species. From my post:

Blum clearly yearns for animal "morality" to be something more: "My only complaint is that the book [her review of which I was quoting] is overly careful. The authors try too hard to keep their conclusions non-threatening. I wish they'd attempted to answer that tricky question that nags at me whenever I study a captive animal. As I stand on the unrestricted side of a fence watching a hyena, and it watches me back with deep, wary eyes, which one of us is really the moral animal?"

It turns out Nietzsche said the same thing as Blum a hundred years ago:

Humanity--We do not regard the animals as moral beings. But do you suppose the animals regard us as moral beings?...An animal which could speak said: "Humanity is a prejudice of which we animals at least are free."

Denying human exceptionalism leads to darkness, suffering, and death. It is very disturbing that Friedrich Nietzsche, in his growing darkness, espoused the very anti-humanism that has entered the scientific/bioethical mainstream.

Transplant Community Should Stop Blaming Others About Public's Doubts About Organ Donation

A poll has come out about the public's attitudes toward organ donation that allegedly shows us as ignorant and unduly distrustful of the system. I think this requires a closer look. From the story "Lingering Myths Discourage Organ Donation":

Only 38% of licensed drivers have joined their states' organ donor registries, with many deterred by long-held misconceptions about how the transplant system works, according to poll results released in April. The survey of 5,100 American adults, conducted on behalf of the organ-donation advocacy group Donate Life America, found that:

50% think that registering as organ donors means physicians will not try as hard to save their lives.

Perhaps that is because people realize that medical ethics have taken a distinct utilitarian turn in recent years, what with futile care theory and health care rationing in the offing. Knowing that people with severe cognitive disabilities are being disdained by some as "non persons" and looked upon as potential natural resources, adds to the fear. It is unreasonable to expect folk to compartmentalize organ donation from the rest of the problems with health care.

44% say there is a black market in the U.S. for organs or tissue.

That's because some people like Mickey Mantle seem to be able to avoid the triage system. Besides, there is a black market overseas at which some Americans go shopping.

26% believe that patients determined to be brain dead can recover from their injuries.

Perhaps that is because the criteria utilized to declare death by neurological criteria are not uniform throughout the country and in at least a few cases, supposedly brain dead people "woke up." Also, too many people in the media use the term "brain death" far too loosely, such as calling Terri Schiavo brain dead, when, before she was dehydrated to death, she was clearly alive.

Rather than look in the mirror for the causes of these "myths," the medical community seems to blame Hollywood:

Many in the transplant community blame the popularity of these misconceptions on Hollywood movies and TV shows that wrongly portray the organ donation and transplantation process...Susan E. Morgan, PhD, professor of communication at Purdue University in Indiana, has done extensive research showing how these story lines affect people's views of organ donation. She said the transplant community needs to tackle these myths head-on in its publicity campaigns, instead of focusing primarily on the benefits of transplantation.

Physician heal thyself: If the transplant community got its act together across the country--and adamantly shot down the many proposals made in the world's most respected medical journals to open the door to killing for organs--the public might be less wary.

Should Medical Associations Be Allowed to Sanction Physicians for Participating in Executions?

I have long marveled at the adamant efforts of many bioethicists and physician leaders to prevent doctors from participating in executions--while, ironically some of these same advocates promote the propriety of doctors engaging in assisted suicide--which is no more a legitimate medical act than execution. In North Carolina, the state medical association went so far in trying to prevent doctor involvement in executions that it threatened to make it a subject of professional discipline--a policy now overturned by the state supreme court. From the story:

The North Carolina Medical Board exceeded its authority under state law when it adopted policy threatening disciplinary action against physicians who take an active role in executions, the Supreme Court of North Carolina ruled in early May. The 4-3 decision appears to end the board's policy barring doctors from participating in executions, the only one of its kind in the country...

The board adopted its position in January 2007, prompting a lawsuit from the state's corrections department, which argued that the policy deterred physicians from participating in executions. In 2007 the N.C. medical board banned doctors from participating in executions. The relevant state law, adopted in 1909, says a physician should be present at the execution and "certify the fact of the execution."

In its policy, the board attempted to reconcile medical ethical standards and state law by saying physicians could be present at executions in a professional role, but that "any verbal or physical activity ... that facilitates the execution" might be grounds for discipline. In the majority opinion, Associate Justice Edward Thomas Brady wrote that for the medical board "to assert that the physician is to merely occupy space in a nonprofessional capacity is simply illogical and renders unintelligible the requirement that 'the surgeon or physician of the penitentiary' be present."

The case's outcome is significant because an execution protocol announced in February 2007 said lethal injections should be administered by personnel qualified to "administer the preinjections, insert the IV catheter, and perform other tasks." The protocol says "medical doctors" are among those "deemed qualified to participate in the execution procedure." The purpose of the new protocol is to ensure that condemned inmates do not suffer unnecessarily during the lethal injection process.

I think this is right, but only because it is a licensing board making the determination that a physician could be punished for engaging in a legal procedure that is not a medical act. I think voluntary medical associations--such as the AMA--should have every right to exclude physicians who participate in the non medical act of execution.

I also think that no doctor where assisted suicide is legal should be professionally disciplined for engaging in that non medical act (assuming the law is followed). However, voluntary associations should be able to so exclude physicians. Yet, under the assisted suicide laws of Oregon and Washington, even voluntary associations are prevented from excluding or disciplining participating physicians--another way in which the culture of death brooks no dissent. I think these laws violate the First Amendment's right to free association and I hope that one day a death doctor will be so sanctioned by a voluntary medical association and the matter brought to the U.S. Supreme Court to validate the right of the group to make that decision.

Calgary Cataract Wait Shows Peril of Nationalized Health Care

I once supported a single payer health care plan for the USA and considered Canada to be the ideal model. I changed my mind after I went on a speaking gig to Ontario and the local newspaper headline screamed that 900,000 Ontarians could not find a primary care physician due to doctors refusing new patients. Then, I began noticing the long waits for surgeries, women being sent to the USA to give birth, and other antitheses of the easy access to care that the vast majority of Americans take for granted.

Here's a case in point: Cataract surgery is readily available in the USA, but in Calgary, they are now very difficult to obtain. From the story:

Calgary ophthalmologists say waiting times for cataract surgeries in the city have skyrocketed since the cash-strapped Alberta superboard slashed the number of the procedures it purchased this year.

One major Calgary clinic, Gimbel Eye Centre, said the number of cataract patients on its waiting list doubled to 2,290 from 1,124 six months ago. A second facility, Mitchell Eye Centre, said delays were growing so long it had to cancel all mild and moderate cataract cases and is now concentrating only on nearly blind patients.

"About a year ago, we had almost no waiting list. It was terrific,"said Dr.Robert Mitch-ell, an ophthalmologist who owns the Calgary clinic. "It's a bit scary how fast that can turn around . . . We only now book the severe cases."

The main problems in the USA--and they require remediation--are insurance company cherry picking, the people who are involuntarily without health insurance, and the insecurity people feel about losing health insurance if they become unemployed.

But required universal access or a single payer system are not the answers. Rather, experience shows that they would make matters worse by inverting the problem.

A Few More Photos of Pescadero, Plus

I have been asked in repeated communications to post a few more photos from my recent short R and R to Pescadero. It only takes one, if that! So, here is an encore:

These were some of the most beautiful flowers I have ever seen:



A pumping station in the wetlands that has seen better days:



This mini birdhouse was on a beautiful bush. I like the color contrast:



This is Chester, who rules the neighborhood with an iron fist:

Obama Calls for "Conscience Clause" Rights While His Administration Destroys Existing Conscience Clause Rights

President Obama spoke at Notre Dame today, an invitation that created divisions within the Catholic Church that are beyond our scope or concern here. But in reading about the president's speech, I was reminded of how adept Obama is in saying one thing while doing just the opposite; such as claiming in his speech to support a conscience clause for health professionals on the issue of abortion (which would also apply to assisted suicide, etc.). From the story:

He called for an effort to "honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women," Obama said.

Obama plans to revise a Bush-era "conscience clause," which would cut off federal funding for hospitals and health plans that didn't allow doctors and other health-care workers to refuse to participate in care they believe conflicts with their personal or moral beliefs. Women's health advocates and abortion rights supporters say it creates a major obstacle to family planning and other treatments.

No, Obama--or at least his administration (is there a difference?) plans to revoke the Bush conscience clause, not revise it. That is hardly honoring heterodox thinkers' consciences.

And if we are going to base policies on "sound science," how about starting with the biological fact that embryos and fetuses are living human organisms? Alas, during the campaign, then Senator Obama said such determinations are above his "pay grade." (Not anymore, they're not.) Pretending that human embryos and fetuses are not "human life" (what are they, Martian?) may not resolve these contentious ethical issues, but if our policies are going to reflect "sound science," so that we can create policies based on "clear ethics," then the biological facts should quit being fudged.

Perhaps the administration will change from the radical course it has steered to date on these important matters. More likely, Obama will continue to say moderate things--to great cheering in the media--while his administration acts immoderately; as in the revocation by Obama not only of the Bush ESCR funding policy, but also, the requirement that the government fund "alternatives" to using embryos in finding pluripotent stem cells, which has been bearing great fruit in the induced pluripotent stem cell field.

So far, the president has had at least two great opportunities to steer a moderate course--first by maintaining required funding for alternatives research, and second, in maintaining formal policies that fully honor the consciences of those with whom he disagrees on human life issues--and he rejected the moderate course each time. Which brings to mind another trite old saying; talk is cheap.

The Beauty of the Pescadero, California

Secondhand Smokette and I needed to get away and relax: So, we escaped to a coast town south of San Francisco called Pescadero for a night of Bed and Breakfast. I have a new camera, so I thought I'd see what it could do. Here are a few of the pics with which I am most pleased. I hope you are too.

Flowers were everywhere:


Seagulls and fog:


As I began shooting, this horse kept putting his head in and out of the window--almost as if he was showing off.


A tree grows in the wetlands:

Oklahoma Legislature Votes Unanimously to Outlaw All Human Cloning

Oklahoma's Legislature has voted unanimously to outlaw all human cloning from the state, and prohibit the importation of the product of human cloning. From the story:

Legislation to ban human cloning easily cleared both the House and the Senate on Friday and heads to the governor. House Bill 1114 would make it illegal "for any person or entity, public or private, to perform or attempt to perform human cloning; participate in an attempt to perform human cloning; ship, transfer, or receive the product of human cloning for any purpose; and import the product of human cloning for any purpose."

Knowing that the devil is in the details, I looked up the bill (H.B. 1114), and here is how human cloning is defined: .

"Human cloning" means human asexual reproduction, accomplished by introducing the nuclear material of a human somatic cell into a fertilized or unfertilized oocyte whose nucleus has been removed or inactivated to produce a living organism (at any stage of development) with a human genetic constitution.

Good. This is the first true human cloning ban to pass in a long time. Unless the governor vetoes the bill and that veto is upheld, it looks like Oklahoma has pushed back against brave new world.

More Final Exit Network Busts--This Time, for Manslaughter

Final Exit Network was strongly suspected of assisting the suicide of Jana Van Voorhis, a severely mentally ill woman in Phoenix. The MSM ignored the story, but it was pushed strongly by New Times, an alternative newspaper. Now, its journalism seems to have helped lead to indictments. From the story:

Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas announced a few minutes ago that investigators from his office have busted four people on murder [actually, manslaughter and conspiracy to commit manslaughter] charges in the 2005 "assisted suicide" death of a seriously mentally ill Phoenix woman...

The four defendants -- who include retired Scottsdale resident Frank Langsner, a retired college professor -- have been charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Langsner and Wye Hale-Rowe, another so-called "exit guide" from the Final Exit Network (a national assisted suicide outfit based in Georgia), also are facing manslaughter charges.

Phoenix police records (and reporting by New Times) showed Langsner and Hale-Rowe, both in their 80s, were present when 58-year-old Jana Van Voorhis...killed herself by inhaling helium through a hose, with an oxygen-eliminating hood snugly over her head. Langsner and Hale-Rowe (a retired family therapist and great-grandmother from Aurora, Colorado) then staged the scene at Van Voorhis' Phoenix condo to make it look as if the woman had just gone to sleep in her bed and died of unknown causes.

As much as this law enforcement attention is to be applauded, Final Exit Network isn't doing anything different than what Kevorkian did, and indeed, is eerily similar to the approach to assisted suicide by Dignitas in Switzerland (except FEN makes house calls) and what happens under the Dutch euthanasia laws. In fact, as I have discussed, FEN's death on demand views reflect the mainstream of the assisted suicide movement--demonstrated by its former leader being elected vice president of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies.

More as the story develops.

Still Time to Sign Up for "Never Again" International Anti-Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide Symposium

The date is fast approaching for the Second International Symposium on Assisted Suicide being held at the National Convention Center near Dulles Airport in Virginia on May 29-30. I'll be there listening and speaking, as will Rita Marker, Alex Schadenberg, Diane Coleman, Margaret Dore, Bobby Schindler, Ian Dowbiggen, William Toffler, and more. Be there or be square. Here's the link for more information.

Gallup Poll: Majority of Americans Now "Pro Life"

A few weeks ago I posted about a surprising Pew Poll that reported a dramatic shift toward the pro life position on abortion in the last year. Now the respected Gallup Poll has reported similar findings and discovered that for the first time, a majority of people identify themselves as "pro life." From the poll:

A new Gallup Poll, conducted May 7-10, finds 51% of Americans calling themselves "pro-life" on the issue of abortion and 42% "pro-choice." This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995.

The new results, obtained from Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs survey, represent a significant shift from a year ago, when 50% were pro-choice and 44% pro-life. Prior to now, the highest percentage identifying as pro-life was 46%, in both August 2001 and May 2002.

Deeper in the poll, we find that 53% believe abortion should be legal in "some" circumstances, while 23% say it should never be legal and 22% believe it always should be legal. The "some" circumstances would, of course, include for the life of the mother, as well as rape and incest, so I am not sure how to evaluate that.

As I looked through the poll, it seems the conservative views have moved more towards pro life--up 5 points from 66 to 71% in the last year--as well as "moderates"--up a whopping 7 percent, from 38-45% toward the pro life view.

Why has this happened at a time when the newly elected government would appear to fall into the abortion should be legal in all circumstances camp? For one thing, abortion did not drive the election. But more to the point, the extreme (to use Gallup's term) views on abortion of those now in charge may be the reason for the shift that clearly seems to have taken place. People understand that abortion is an important moral issue, and they push against those who see it as akin to an appendectomy. However, I also think that if the government were conservative and trying to eliminate all abortion rights, you might see the same dramatic shift in attitudes from the other direction.

The important question is what this means, if anything: With two respected polls showing a distinct move in the pro life direction, I think the government will try to keep the matter as a low priority concern among voters. If I am right, look for the Freedom of Choice Act--which would eliminate all state and federal restrictions on abortion--to remain moribund, at least until after the 2010 midterm elections. On the state level, where most pro life battles are fought, pro life political activists may have an opportunity in many states to further their cause--but they should also be careful not to overplay their hand.

Pushing Health Care Rationing by Misdirection

I have noticed lately that the political left, which most supports health care rationing (and which, ironically, yells the loudest about HMO care restrictions), argues disingenuously for the agenda through the time-tested tactic of blatant misdirection.

Classic example, the fuzzy and reliably emotive Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman. In her most recent column, "A Rational Talk About Rationing Care," Goodman illustrates her thesis by citing the the non-rationing example of President Obama's late grandmother, who decided to receive a hip replacement after a fall even though she was terminally ill. From Goodman's column:

I was also struck by the way the president framed Toot's treatment as one of the "difficult moral issues" surrounding healthcare costs. Indeed, folks on the right saw this story as Obama's warning about rationing ahead. But aren't there places at the end of life where ethics and economics, compassion and cost, dovetail rather than conflict?

There are "difficult moral issues" ahead. But is this one of them? Is a healthcare system that offers "everything" to everyone--hip replacements to terminally ill patients--morally superior? Or suspect? Can't we decide when more is not more?

I won't second-guess decisions in those last weeks of Toot's life any more than I would second-guess my own family's decisions as the avalanche of choices rolled toward us in my mother's last months. But I do think that what our system may need is not more intervention but more conversation. Especially on the delicate subject of dying.

Oh, so wise! I'll brew the coffee. But what has that got to do with rationing?

Today more than one-fourth of Medicare dollars are spent in the last year of life. Most people want to die "peacefully" at home but 80 percent die in hospitals. So, much of our money goes to the kind of death we don't want.

I am not sure her statistics are right, but even so, what has that got to do with rationing?

It's true that the financial incentives of our medical system are geared toward intervention, but so are the emotional incentives. Doctors are in the business of fixing, trained to write "hope" on the prescription pad. These professionals are often uncomfortable amateurs in the business of talking about their "failure": death.

I am sorry, but doctors should offer hope. Moreover, Goodman is behind the times about financial incentives. But again, what has any of this got to do with rationing? Ah, here it comes:

In the wake of the Terri Schiavo case, the "living will" became a common document. On websites now, "The Five Wishes" are downloaded as family talking points that go beyond "pulling the plug." But denial is still the default position. And maybe the destructive position.

It turns out that end-of-life discussions between doctors and patients do not produce fear and depression. Recent research shows these conversations result in less aggressive treatment, lower stress, a better quality of life for dying patients and comfort for those who will mourn them.

If this is rationing, I call it rational.

Read my lips: That's not rationing. Rationing is when you want care and are refused it due to age, state of health or disability, or perhaps for committing lifestyle crimes such as smoking or being overweight. And here comes the the usual pabulum we see too often these days:

Doing everything can be the wrong thing. The end of life is one place where ethics and economics can still be braided into a single strand of humanity.

More like a single strand of emotional mush. If and when Goodman really wants to have a direct discussion about the hard and discriminatory realities of health care rationing, I'm game. But this column isn't it.

Dueling Texas Futile Care Bills Once Again Cause Gridlock

I wrote earlier about my worry that two competing bills filed in Texas about the state's discriminatory futile care law--one to put on a few bows of surface reform, the other to end the right of hospitals to refuse wanted life-sustaining treatment--would end up in gridlock. This wasn't prescience, it was precisely what happened two years go.

Alas, history is repeating itself. From the story:

Those who want to extend the time some hospital patients may live before their life support is cut off are worried that their proposal is running into a wall at the Capitol. Legislation by state Rep. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, would require life-sustaining treatment to continue for patients whose condition is deemed futile by doctors until a transfer to another medical facility can be arranged, if their family requests it.

Currently, hospitals can stop life support after 10 days in certain cases if the patient is terminally or irreversibly ill and cannot express treatment wishes. "No other state in the country has a law that Draconian," Hughes said. "The balance of power is completely shifted against the patients and the families."

Extending the time families have from ten to more days--as the phony "reform" bill would do--would accomplish nothing other than to validate futile care theory. More to the point, it would be an almost pointless exercise since Texas hospitals seem to have a tacit understanding that they will honor each other's futile care determinations. If that is true, it wouldn't matter whether the time was ten days or six months. What is required is for hospitals that wish to overrule patient/ family values be required to continue treatment pending transfer--otherwise as cost containment becomes increasingly the watchword, the futile care law could be used to dump patients due to their expense of their care.

But the medical establishment wants their raw power to tell patients and families, in effect, "We reserve the right to refuse service," to remain unimpeded. And catch the typical disingenuous misdirection of the law's defenders:

While critics call the Texas law extreme and restrictive, doctors and hospitals describe it as useful and unique. Among other things, doctors say, it addresses the details of advance medical directives and holds officials accountable for honoring living wills.

"We knew it was a groundbreaking statute. It does so many neat things for patient care," said Dr. Robert Fine of Dallas, who testified against the bill. He represented the Texas Medical Association and Baylor Health Care System.

No, the part of the law under attack permits physicians and bioethics committees to overrule patient advance directives. As for establishing "so many neat things for patient care," that is true--if you believe in the duty to die.

The time has come to litigate this injustice vigorously, and for lawyers to get into the files of these hospitals and bioethics committees and expose the dirt!

SHS Funnies

Once we have national health insurance, the Death Angel will be given a medal instead.

Changes Coming to SHS

In the next few weeks, if all goes according to plan, you will notice some changes around here at SHS. My site will be added to the First Things family of blogs, which should increase our already steadily growing traffic and may--I'm not sure about this--change our look. I believe the site will still be accessible at http://www.wesleyjsmith.com/, but there will also be a link for FT surfers to get to us. I will also post some of what I do here at the FT Blog, often in an abridged entry, as I have been for the last few weeks.

I am most pleased about this: The more of us talking and pondering human exceptionalism and the other issues we deal with here, the more people with which to interact, and I hope, the better your blog-perusing experience will be.

Stay tuned...

Mother "Sacrifices" Herself: Delays Cancer Treatment to Have Her Child

This is a sad but glorious story of selfless maternal/paternal love, but I think that at one time, it would have been the expected course: A doctor recounts the decision of a woman diagnosed with brain cancer to delay surgery in order to bring her baby to birth. From the story:

For the neurosurgeon, the verdict was clear: An immediate operation was needed to remove the growing tumor. The invasive and complicated surgery -- under many hours of general anesthesia -- was likely to greatly increase the risk of fetal injury or death...

The oncologist said that if the surgery were delayed until the child was ready for life outside the womb, the cancer would probably be untreatable. The obstetrician said that if the mother-to-be agreed to the recommended surgery and subsequent chemotherapy, the fetus was unlikely to survive. The woman was faced with a heartbreaking choice -- her own survival or her child's.

The young couple spoke quietly to each other in their native language for a few minutes as the specialists waited. Even I, who had chosen to study pediatrics because I loved children, reluctantly acknowledged that the woman's care was the medical priority. Wouldn't I -- wouldn't everyone? -- opt for life-saving intervention for myself? Wouldn't we all yield to the natural instinct to survive?

The young woman's voice was firm as she turned back to the specialists. She wanted to delay surgery for four weeks, until after her baby could be born with the odds in its favor.

No not everyone would. I have a friend who was diagnosed with breast cancer during a pregnancy. She delayed treatment for several months until her child could be born. She died nine years later from the disease, never once regretting her decision.

Back to the doctor's reminiscence: The woman fell into a coma and the baby was delivered at 28 weeks. She had the tumor removed and lived long enough to see her baby:

One morning, a week later, I was overjoyed to see the young woman, her head shaved and bandaged, make her way into the NICU and approach her baby's incubator, step by careful step as she leaned on her husband's arm. After tenderly gazing at the tiny girl, she reached in to stroke her baby's soft, thin skin. Her hand inched toward her daughter's. The baby responded by clasping her mother's outstretched finger, bringing tears to her parents' eyes -- and ours. The new parents didn't need to know that the grasp was an involuntary reflex; to the young mother, it was a sign that her baby had felt her love.

The headline described the young woman as a "mother to be." That is flat-out wrong: She was already a mother, which was why she decided that her baby's life was most important.

No Girls Allowed! Sweden Okays Gender Eugenic Abortion

Abortion was supposed to liberate women and protect them from unwanted pregnancies. But with prenatal testing and all, it is increasingly being used as a eugenic search and destroy tool to eliminate unwanted types of children prior to birth. In other words, eugenic abortion mixed with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis in IVF--and I believe, eventually infanticide--is transforming procreation from being about having children to about having only the kind of children we want.

One targeted class of this eugenic technique is girls. In India and China, ultrasound is used to identify female fetuses for elimination--a practice so ubiquitous that a huge disparity now exists between male and female demographics. Now, gender abortion has been approved in Sweden of all places. From the story:

Swedish health authorities have ruled that gender-based abortion is not illegal according to current law and can not therefore be stopped, according to a report by Sveriges Television. The Local reported in February that a woman from Eskilstuna in southern Sweden had twice had abortions after finding out the gender of the child.

The woman, who already had two daughters, requested an amniocentesis in order to allay concerns about possible chromosome abnormalities. At the same time, she also asked to know the foetus's gender.

Doctors at Malaren Hospital expressed concern and asked Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) to draw up guidelines on how to handle requests in the future in which they "feel pressured to examine the foetus's gender" without having a medically compelling reason to do so. The board has now responded that such requests and thus abortions can not be refused and that it is not possible to deny a woman an abortion up to the 18th week of pregnancy, even if the foetus's gender is the basis for the request.

How ironic: In the name of freeing women, Sweden allows open season to be declared on female fetuses (who, let's face it, will be the usual targets of gender selection). India and China have at least outlawed this eugenic cleansing, making those countries more advanced in protecting against gender based eugenics than "enlightened" Sweden.

And the USA? As I reported here at SHS, a bill has been introduced in Congress (H.B. 1822) to prevent gender and racially based abortions: It has no chance of passage.

Hyenas are People Too

Human exceptionalism is under furious assault on many fronts, with advocates who seek to dismantle it, zealously looking for any and every sign that we are no different, really, from animals.

One of the newest memes in this regard is that animals are moral beings--just like us. I bring this up because University of Wisconsin professor (of course) Deborah Blum in the New Scientist uses the vehicle of a book review to push the notion that animals are moral people too. From the review:

Wild Justice makes a compelling argument for open-mindedness regarding non-human animals. It also argues that social behaviours such as cooperation provide evidence for a sophisticated animal consciousness. In particular, the authors propose that other animal species possess empathy, compassion and a sense of justice--in other words, a moral code not unlike our own.

Well animals clearly cooperate, look at lions on the hunt and cape buffalo or bison making a circle to protect the calves from predators. But that is hardly a moral code, at least not in the human sense.

The book apparently views this so-called "moral code" (which may be Blum's term) as merely evolutionary behavior:

Their definition of morality is a strongly Darwinian one. They see moral actions as dictated by the behavioural code of social species, the communal operating instructions that bond a group safely together, the "social glue" of survival. They believe such codes are necessarily species-specific and warn against, for instance, judging wolf morals by the standards of monkeys, dolphins or humans.

Perhaps, but that certainly isn't true of human beings. We have many different societies with divergent moral codes and behaviors--ranging from flat-out pacifism and chastity, hardly conducive to raw survival--to cannibalism. And that is precisely because our morality is not wholly "dictated" by blind evolutionary forces.

The evolutionary argument seems reasonable, but Blum clearly yearns for animal "morality" to be something more:

My only complaint is that the book is overly careful. The authors try too hard to keep their conclusions non-threatening. I wish they'd attempted to answer that tricky question that nags at me whenever I study a captive animal. As I stand on the unrestricted side of a fence watching a hyena, and it watches me back with deep, wary eyes, which one of us is really the moral animal?

If Blum really doesn't know the answer to that question, I'll help: We are. Hyenas can never be held morally accountable for anything they do. But we can and should be so held. That is a distinction that no amount of anthropomorphizing can erase.

Fetal Farming Research Ongoing in Animals

I have oft asserted that the embryonic stem cell debate is not the far end of the instrumental use of unborn humans, but the launching pad. Once the principle is established that early embryos can be used as a natural resource, it won't be long until gestated nascent human life is also targeted.

I believe that most bioethicists and biotechnologists know this, but aren't candid about the prospect because of the political harm that would inflict on the brave new world project. For example, in 2002 the Stanford bioethicist Henry T. Greely, who served on a California bioethics board was challenged when he appeared at a neuroethics conference about the commission's recommended 14-day maximum limit for doing research on cloned embryos--which is now California law. As reported in my book Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World, a transcript of the event showed Greely stating that the limit was political and not meant to be permanent:

That qualification was driven, I think it’s fair to say, largely by two things: a very strong desire to have a unanimous report and the fact that it was fairly straightforward albeit very conservative place to stop, at least for now, based on our current state of knowledge. Before cells begin to differentiate in their functions, it seems very hard for anyone to argue that there is the remotest chance that sentience exists in that small ball of cells...But fourteen days was a good, easy, clear stopping point for now, based on our current understanding. We did not mean that fourteen days would always be the limit; that limit could be changed in the future based on new understandings that would likely come from neuroscience. [See, Neuroethics: Mapping the Field: Conference Proceedings, New York, NY The Dana Foundation, 2002), May 13-14.]

And of course, a few bioethicists have already called explicitly for fetal farming.

I bring this up because fetal farming research is ongoing in animals. The latest report involves using embryonic pancreatic tissue--not embryonic stem cells--taken from pigs to treat diabetes in monkeys. From the story:

By transplanting embryonic pancreatic tissue from pigs to monkeys, Israeli researchers report that they were able to reverse the primates' insulin deficiency. The key, the researchers say, is the embryonic tissue's ability to grow into a new pancreas that uses blood vessels from the host animal. The host blood vessels are not subject to the dangerous immune reaction that has always dogged xenotransplants of mature pancreatic material...

In an earlier study, the researchers found evidence that semiformed pancreatic tissue taken from pig embryos at 42 days of gestation appeared to offer the best combination of characteristics for xenotransplantation. According to Reisner, if they're harvested too early, there may not be enough partially differentiated pancreatic cells. But if taken too late, the tissues' ability to grow into a new organ is diminished, perhaps because they contain too few stem cells, while their ability to cause immune rejection increases.

While this study involves inter-species transplantation, it would be far more logical to use tissues from aborted fetuses or even aborted cloned fetuses intentionally generated for the purpose of transplantation to achieve the same end in humans. In this regard, note that it was necessary to wait until the 6th week to harvest the tissue.

If and when an artificial womb is created, and if and when scientists figure out how to clone human beings and gestate them beyond the first few days of development--the apparent current state of the technology--the pressure will be on to permit this research to proceed. And the arguments in its favor will be the same as those made today about ESCR and early human cloning research: A developed embryo or fetus isn't a "person;" the embryo/fetus will never be born so what does it matter; the embryo/fetus value isn't as important as Uncle Charlie whose Parkinson's we can cure," etc.

Believe me, if I get this, so do "the scientists" and their enablers in bioethics and Big Biotech. Indeed, I believe that they have no intention of ever permitting any reasonable permanent ethical parameters to be established that would limit the areas of research where this field can go. (They will sometimes agree to limit that which cannot yet be done technologically, but as Greely's comment reflects, those restrictions are always subject to change.) Moreover, it is worth noting that cloned fetal farming has been explicitly legalized by statute in New Jersey.

Since "the scientists" won 't engage in self restraint, it is and will be up to society to set those standards for them through democratic processes. Of course, if that happens, the next step will be lawsuits filed to establish a constitutional right to conduct scientific research.