Wanting to Marry a Cartoon Character

This is very sad but I think it qualifies as a form of the profound anti-humanism that is running rampant in the world. A man in Japan wants to marry a cartoon and has started a petition drive to pressure the government to permit it. From the story:

A Japanese man has enlisted hundreds of people in a campaign to allow marriages between humans and cartoon characters, saying he feels more at ease in the "two-dimensional world".

Comic books are immensely popular in Japan, with some fictional characters becoming celebrities or even sex symbols. Marriage is meanwhile on the decline as many young Japanese find it difficult to find life partners. Taichi Takashita launched an online petition aiming for one million signatures to present to the government to establish a law on marriages with cartoon characters.

Within a week he has gathered more than 1000 signatures through. "I am no longer interested in three dimensions. I would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world," he wrote

The petition drive may be (I hope) tongue in cheek:

But some people signing the petition are true believers. "For a long time I have only been able to fall in love with two-dimensional people and currently I have someone I really love," one person wrote. "Even if she is fictional, it is still loving someone. I would like to have legal approval for this system at any cost," the person wrote.

Well, until transhumanism's unlikely success, after which these sad people could perhaps upload their minds into a cartoon world on a computer, I am afraid they are stuck in the three dimensional world with the rest of us.

But I think we need to take a long, hard look at why so many want out of the real world and waste the precious time of their actual lives dreaming of living in fantasy lands or becoming extraordinary without having to exert the effort that makes one truly unique. (I wrote about this phenomenon in a review of the television program The 4400.) There is a decadence here, that I haven't quite got my mind around yet.

Australia: Children With Down Syndrome Not Wanted

This is shameful eugenics, morally akin in my view, to laws in the USA that barred disfavored nationalities and Jews in the years running up to World War II. A German family has asked for permanent residency in Australia and the country said no because their son has Down syndrome. From the story:

A German doctor hoping to gain permanent residency in Australia said Friday he will fight an immigration department decision denying his application because his son has Down syndrome.

Bernhard Moeller came to Australia with his family two years ago to help fill a doctor shortage in a rural area of Victoria state. His temporary work visa is valid until 2010, but his application for permanent residency was rejected this week. The immigration department said Moeller's 13-year-old son, Lukas, "did not meet the health requirement."

"A medical officer of the Commonwealth assessed that his son's existing medical condition was likely to result in a significant and ongoing cost to the Australian community," a departmental spokesman said in a statement issued Thursday by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. This is not discrimination. A disability in itself is not grounds for failing the health requirement--it is a question of the cost implications to the community," the statement said.

Of course it is discrimination, the new eugenics bigotry justified by "health care costs."

If you think not, let's try a mind experiment: Would Australia ever deny permanent residence to a family whose child had HIV? The outcry would be heard in the States.

This eugenic tide is flowing, not ebbing, and people with Down are prime targets; of eugenic abortion, of medical neglect after birth, of infanticide, of health care rationing, of futile care theory, and now of refused immigration. Such are the consequences of rejecting human exceptionalism and embracing the bigotry intrinsic to the "quality of life" ethic.

NHS Meltdown: Kidney Cancer Patient Have to Wait Months to Decide Whether They Can Receive New Chemotherapy

This is the way things go with socialized medicine. The health care rationers are going to take months to decide whether to cover a new chemotherapy. From the story:

Kidney cancer patients will have to wait months for the NHS drugs rationing body to decide if they can have new drugs after guidance was delayed.

In one of its most criticised decisions so far, the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) said in draft guidance that patients with advanced kidney cancer should not receive new drugs that could extend their lives. During the consultation on the draft guidance new evidence has been submitted and now Nice has delayed issuing another draft until well into 2009.

Imagine yourself with the cancer having to wait until the big brained decide whether your quality of life is worth the money spent on extending your time on earth.

NICE is controlled by utilitarian bioethicists. This is our future too if we go down the same road. Frankly, utilitarian bioethicists are the last people I want in charge of my health care.

Peter Singer Values Thriving

I try to be a realist and an idealist. I promote human exceptionalism, knowing that as an imperfect species, we are unlikely to ever fully achieve the dream of universal human equality. But the only way to get very close, it seems to me, is for our reach to exceed our grasp. That's my idealism.

My realist side tells me that this ideal has been almost universally rejected at the level of the intelligentsia, and that our betters among the big brained intend to move us to a "quality of life" culture that will literally become a culture of death for the weak and vulnerable.

This is epitomized by the advocacy of Peter Singer. Alas, being a realist, I have to admit that Singer's anti-human values are triumphing and becoming increasingly mainstream among society's movers and shakers. Witness the appalling success of the Great Ape Project, about to become a legal reality in Spain only 15 years after it was launched. Witness the increasing respectability of infanticide, with the notion of killing babies for eugenic purposes not only occurring regularly in the Netherlands, but touted as a matter of respectable consideration in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Hastings Center Report, and the New York Times, among other places.

When Culture of Death first came out, my bioethicist critics claimed that it was all Peter Singer all the time and that he was a fringe thinker. That was bunkum, as I demonstrated in a letter reacting to one particularly caustic review. I wrote in part:

I am also criticized for quoting extensively from Joseph Fletcher and Peter Singer. I do make much of Fletcher, and with good reason. Based on the flow of events, it seems to me that he was, perhaps, the most influential American philosopher of the last half of the 20th century. (Would that Paul Ramsey had had such influence! Bioethics would have taken a far different path.) I am faulted for calling Fletcher the "patriarch of bioethics." But I am not the first person to make that assertion. I was quoting Al Jonsen from his book on the history of bioethics. As to Peter Singer (who I like to call Son of Fletcher), he is probably the most publicly known and influential modern-day bioethicist, as painful as that may be to others in the movement. That is why he was brought from Australia to Princeton University, despite advocating the right of parents to kill unwanted infants during their period of nonpersonhood, among other travesties.

But to claim that I dwell almost exclusively on Fletcher and Singer is to do a real injustice to my work. I make it very clear that as important as these two are, they are not the sum and substance of bioethics. Indeed, I explore the thinking and advocacy of many prominent bioethics practitioners, including Callahan, Veatch, Harris, Glover, Beauchamp, Childress, Hardwig, Dworkin, Frey, Arnold, Youngner, Agich, and Caplan, among others. Most of these promote at least some "death culture" policies to one degree or another.

For example, while Callahan opposes assisted suicide, he is the nation's foremost proponent of healthcare rationing and strongly supports futile care theory, both of which lead, at least implicitly in my view, to a duty to die. Meanwhile, Hardwig posited an explicit positive duty to die in a cover story for the Hastings Center Report. Battin also has supported the odious notion, among others. Frey believes that if we are going to vivisect animals we had better also be willing to vivisect those humans who have a lower moral status than animal subjects based on an inferior quality of life. Youngner believes in doing away with the dead donor rule in organ procurement. Veatch accepts redefining death to include a diagnosis of permanent unconsciousness. (I guess if such a person awakens, we would have to call it a resurrection.) Frankly, many among the general public are shocked and deeply disturbed when they learn that these are deemed respectable subjects in bioethics discourse.

If that was true then, it is even more true today. Indeed, proving the point, Singer will give the keynote address at the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH), the primary professional organization in the field. This validation of Singer by the most important bioethics society in the country illustrates the radical direction in which the field is increasingly going. Fringe character my removed tonsils!

The answer, of course, is to never give up, but keep striving to let the greater population understand the wickedness that this way comes. As I alluded to in my letter, our hope lies in the common sense and decency of Main Street. The universities and similar environs are the problem, and are not likely to be the solution any time soon.

Alas.

Granting Zombies Death With Dignity

In these darkening days, a little humor is always useful. With Halloween (my least favorite holiday) fast approacing, this primer in surviving zombie attacks is timely. My favorite part is the advice to kill infected friends "with dignity."

The Anti-Human Exceptionalism Began Early in Modern Primatology

Jane Goodall the primatologist (and novelist since so much of her work is anthropomorphic, a charge she readily admits), along with fellow primatologist Toshisada Nishida, have won the coveted Leakey Prize, named after Louis Leakey, the famed anthropologist who sought to prove that humans first arose in Africa. Well good for them. But a small bit of the history of Goodall's relationship with Leakey leaped out at me. From the story:

Since her groundbreaking work in Tanzania, when she observed chimpanzees using twigs to fish for termites, Goodall has become a rock star of primatology, with revelatory and sometimes controversial work showing chimpanzees hunting for meat, maintaining lasting relationships, expressing distinct personalities and even waging war.

Her work prompted Leakey to proclaim at the time: "Now we must redefine tool, redefine man or accept chimpanzees as humans."

What? Chimps use sticks to poke for termites and we have to admit they are equal to humans? I think not. And redefining man is what this whole anti human exceptionalism agenda is all about, for reasons that have little to do with science and everything to do with ideology.

In this early quote, Leakey showed the game that was afoot even back then: Destroy human exceptionalism. That drive eventually coalesced into ideological campaigns like the Great Ape Project to have all apes made members of the "community of equals" with people. (Of course, we would be the only ones with the duties arising out of such a categorization. Our "equals" would be utterly oblivious since they could not even comprehend the concept.) That goal is moving closer to fruition: Spain is now on the verge of legalizing the GAP.

Goodall has been on that bandwagon from the start, even joining with Peter Singer to boost the GAP and promote other anti-human exceptionalism agendas, indifferent (or in agreement?) to his support for infanticide. No wonder she is the toast of the intelligentsia.

Media Myopia on Assisted Suicide--It's a Reflex

Why do media so often describe non-dying people who want assisted suicide as terminally ill? Is it on purpose? Mostly, I don't think so. I think they have accepted a false premise; that assisted suicide is about terminal illness. So when someone who is not dying wants assisted suicide, it's like a reflex, and very soon the suicidal person is described as terminally ill even though they aren't actually dying.

The latest is in the Debby Purdy case, which I have written about here previously. Purdy has MS, which is generally not a terminal illness. She has said she wants assisted suicide when her disability increases to the point that she can't take it anymore, not if she is ever diagnosed as dying. And yet, guess how she is described? From the story, byline Nick Allen, in the Telegraph:

A terminally ill woman who wants her husband to help her die lost her landmark legal bid to clarify the law on assisted suicide but welcomed a High Court ruling that suggested Parliament should review the issue.

Why can't media be accurate? It makes me want to pull my hair out.

The same phenomenon squared was and is seen with Jack Kevorkian. How often is he described in the press as the retired doctor who helped terminally ill people kill themselves? Yet, in reality, most of his assisted suicides were not dying when they went to Michigan to die in his rusty van or other such places, while five weren't even sick according to their autopsies. Yet getting media to change their wording about Kevorkian--which I have often worked at--is almost always very tough going.

Like I said, sometimes it's bias, but most of the time I think it is an unthinking reflex. But when you think about it, which is worse?

The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network Promotional Vid

I am a special consultant to the CBC and proud of it. This new promo video only tells the half of the energetic engagement with bioethical issues in which the CBC engages. A certain gray haired/bearded rapidly aging fellow even makes a brief appearance. Check it out.

UK Court Refuses to Impose Assisted Suicide

Debby Purdy, the UK woman struggling with progressive MS, went to court seeking an order assuring her that should she want to die, that her husband could assist her and face no legal consequences. (This case was similar to that of Diane Pretty a few years ago.) The trial court refused. From the story:

Debbie Purdy, 45, had launched a High Court challenge to determine whether her husband would face prosecution if he helped her end her life before her conditioned worsened.

Purdy told reporters she was "disappointed and surprised" that the judges refused to interpret the 1961 Suicide Act, which says assisting someone in a suicide is a crime punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Purdy, speaking from a wheelchair beside her husband Omar Puente, said she would appeal. She has said she wants the option of assisted suicide if her pain one day becomes unbearable.

Her case asked the judges to tell her at what point her husband would be breaking the law if she committed suicide with his help. "I'm not prepared for Omar to break the law," she said. "How can we make sure that we act within the law without potential prison sentences if they won't tell us under what circumstances they would prosecute?"

These cases tug at our hearts, but not in the right way. By applauding her right to "choice," we abandon her to the worst fears she may have about her future, and indeed, agree that her life will not be worth living, that she will be a burden, etc. Our effort toward Purdy should be just the opposite, to support her in living, to continually reaffirm her value, in suicide prevention so that she hopefully loses the desire to kill herself. Indeed, I find it interesting that these stories never say what, if any, such help she is receiving, or indeed, whether she has refused such assistance. Why the lack of curiosity by journalists?

Besides, the issue is far larger than her individual desires. Purdy's activism--and the public support she receives--sends an insidious message to other people struggling with difficult diseases and conditions, that their lives are not worth living and not worth protecting. And wider society gets the message too. Moreover, if killing is acceptable for a woman because she has MS, why not include any other serious condition that causes despair, including existential agony? As we have seen in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Kevorkian, etc., that's precisely what happens. In the words of the late, great Dutch anti-euthanasia activist Dr. K.F. Gunning, once we accept mercy killing as acceptable in one circumstance, we will soon come to accept it in one hundred.

May Purdy receive the loving and compassionate care of her community, may she come to see her life as worth living regardless of her physical circumstances, but for her sake, that of other people with disabilities and serious illnesses, and that of society--may she unequivocally lose her case on appeal.

Barbara Wagner Urges Washingtonians to Vote No on I-1000

Barbara Wagner was refused life-extending chemotherapy by Oregon Medicaid but explicitly told that the State would pay for her assisted suicide.

That is the future if we accept the death agenda. In this No on I-1000 Ad, Barbara Wagner--who has since died--urges Washingtonians to vote no. May they heed her call.

Stem Cell Brain Drain in UK--Due to ESCR!

For years we have been warned that there would be a "brain drain" if we did not pour billions into ESCR and human cloning research. I have called this the "blank check" demand.

Meanwhile, in Brave New Britain--the country that never says no--scientists wanting increasing funds warned that unless they received all of their demands, stem cell scientists would flee to the USA when President Bush leaves office and the policy changes. And now, a brain drain may have begun in the UK--only it is over the country's insufficient support for adult stem cell research. From the story:

A leading British scientist is leaving the country to work in France after claiming that British science gives too much priority to embryo experiments over "more ethical" alternatives.

Colin McGuckin, professor of regenerative medicine at Newcastle University, believes that more funding should be given to work with adult stem cells. He is quitting after just three years with one of his most senior colleagues to go to an institute in Lyons.

McGuckin was part of the first team to grow liver tissue using adult stem cells taken from blood in the umbilical cord. Some scientists believe that it is more ethical to use adult stem cells, as research work on cells from human embryos destroys the embryo...

McGuckin says Newcastle University and the government's funding bodies give too much preference to embryo experiments. He told Times Higher Education that France had kept a "much more reasoned balance". He added: "[France] is very supportive of adult stem cells because they know that these are the things that are in the clinic right now.

"A vast amount of money in the UK from the government has gone into embryonic stem cell research with not one patient having been treated, to the detriment of [research into] adult stem cells, which has been severely underfunded."

I believe that ethical research is also the best science since it permits the kind of societal consensus necessary for long term support of the scientific enterprise.

Here is the story on the successful liver experiment referenced in the story, which I wrote about in the NRO.

"Walden Pond" Interview Link

I tried to link my interview with Shelton Walden on Pacifica's WBAI in NYC over the weekend, and the archive was, shall we say, dysfunctional. I now have the right link. If you would like to hear the interview, in which Walden and I talk at length about human exceptionalism, animal rights, nature rights, and all that jazz, here is the right connection.

Gynecologist Assists Suicide for Person with Neurological Disease

This is so typical. A Swiss gynecologist death doctor named Alois Geiger admits helping with the suicide people outside his medical specialty. He is a gynecologist. From the column:

Should one not be allowed to make use of medical means to release oneself from suffering? The wish to commit suicide is most understandable when it develops over time, rather than overnight. Only a doctor with a medical practice can prescribe strong sleeping medication. For me there is no question about writing such a prescription in a tragic situation, knowing that it cannot help his illness but will help him realise his wish for a self-determined suicide...

The other day a patient came to me suffering from a spreading neurological disease that was increasingly paralysing his muscles. He lived alone, had no family responsibilities. As a doctor I have seen many people in worse conditions and who none the less were ready to carry on living with their suffering and disabilities. Is it my right, or even my duty as a doctor to turn down a prescription for NaP for this man and make it very difficult for him to end his life--just because somebody in a similar situation is prepared to live longer? Does the opinion of other people overrule one's own sense of worth?

Just now, there was another conversation with him. He is not wheelchair-bound yet. With a stick he can still climb a few stairs. He is missing everything that he has lost through illness--his career, his walking, climbing, driving a car. He will not be able to take care of himself much longer, already depends on outside help. And there is the nub--he does not want to be ever more dependent on other people...He needs me for that slip of paper. Is it correct to deny him the indisputably most humane means to determine the end of his life? If I do not help him, do I not play God, taking away from him the option of a gentle and, in his eyes, a rational death?

So, Geiger helps kill patients whose conditions are outside his area of specialty based on ideology and his determination that the suicide is rational. Death on demand

This is pure Kevorkianism, a doctor consulted, not for treatment or palliation, but death. Recall that Kevorkaian was a pathologist who never treated a living patient after his medical residency. Yet, he was a doctor and he believed that gave him the authority to decide who to allow access to assisted suicide--even though he hadn't the slightest idea about new techniques that might help the patient not want to die.

In Oregon, we see a similar phenomenon, doctors prescribing to patients who they have not cared for with condition outside their specialty, consulted for the sole purpose of getting the coveted signature on the prescription pad. There is an oncologist, a favorite of Compassion and Choices (formerly Hemlock Society) who assists the suicides of non cancer patients, for example, I recall one specifically had Lou Gehrig's disease.

The media should make a stink! But they won't. They are in the tank. And as the Fourth Estate snoozes away or roots for the new compassion to take hold in Washington State with I-1000, people who might have been helped to live are abandoned onto death. And the same doctor shopping will happen there too if the initiative passes, but all we will hear are that things are peachy keen.

That's what happens when the intrinsic value of human life loses its potency as a fundamental principle of society.

Revisionism Alert! Trying to Explain Away Changes in the Hippocratic Oath

This is revisionism on steroids. The Hippocratic Oath is no longer taken by most doctors because it has some politically incorrect clauses, such as barring physicians from mercy killing patients, abortion, and sex with patients. I have written about those matters here at SHS before. But now an ethicist writing for the BBC tries to tell us that the Oath really didn't ban assisted suicide or abortion. From the article:

The next part seemingly concerns euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide, saying: "And I will not give a drug that is deadly to anyone if asked, nor will I suggest the way to such a counsel."

Two leading scholars of the Oath, Littre and Miles, have however suggested that this passage alludes to the then common practice of using doctors as skilled political assassins. Steven Miles notes: "Fear of the physician-poisoner may be traced very close to the time of the Oath." The word "euthanasia" (meaning "easeful death") was only coined a century after the writing of the Oath.

The text continues: "And likewise I will not give a woman a destructive pessary." This passage is often interpreted as a rejection of abortion.

However, abortion was legal at the time and the text only mentions pessaries (a soaked piece of wool inserted in the vagina to induce abortion), not the oral methods of abortion also used in ancient Greece. As pessaries could cause lethal infections, the author of the Oath may have had a clinical objection to the method, rather than a moral objection to abortion itself.

Oh, please. First, note that when the Oath switches topics from mercy killing to abortion, the use of the segue word, "likewise." How can the anti mercy killing issue refer to assassination when, by using the word likewise, the author is clearly saying "in the same manner, I will not use a pessary to cause abortion." He wouldn't be assassinating the woman!

Moreover, euthanasia means "good death," not "eased death," and up until the late 19th Century it meant dying at home, pain free, in a state of grace, surrounded by family. It was one of the first words co-opted by the then nascent mercy killing movement to change the language to make killing easier to accept. (See Ian Dowbiggin's A Concise History of Euthanasia.)

Trying to pretend that today's medical ethical milieu is still "Hippocratic" is nonsense--particularly when there is a movement afoot to force doctors to perform or be complicit in abortions and assisted suicides--and when physicians are no longer scorned for affairs with their patients.

SHS in the Air

I recorded an interview with Shelton Walden a bit ago for his program Walden's Pond on WBAI, 99.5 FM in New York. It airs today at 1 Eastern, or can be streamed here. This is a Pacifica radio station, on the left of the political spectrum as well as the radio dial, and so I was very pleased to be able to reach an audience than in my usual media appearances.

Our topics were animal rights, human exceptionalism, human rights, much of the spectrum we cover here at SHS. Walden was a good interviewer and the format allowed us to go into depth.

There is a permanent stream of this show in the archives. Go to October 26, 2008 at 1:00 PM. But if you have the inclination and are not otherwise occupied, check it out.

Ethics Alert: Many Doctors Prescribe Placebos

A disturbing study has been published indicating that many doctors prescribe placebos instead of efficacious medications to their patients. From the story:

Many rheumatologists and general internal medicine physicians in the US say they regularly prescribe "placebo treatments" including active drugs such as sedatives and antibiotics, but rarely admit they are doing so to their patients, according to a study on bmj.com...

The authors report that among the 679 physicians (57%) who responded to the survey half of them said they prescribed "placebo treatments" on a regular basis. Most physicians (62%) believed the practice to be ethically acceptable and were happy to recommend or prescribe placebo treatments.

The most commonly used placebo treatments prescribed in the past year were over the counter painkillers (41%) or vitamins (38%). Some of the physicians reported using antibiotics (13%) and sedatives (13%) as placebos, only 3% reported using sugar pills.

Interestingly, among those who prescribe placebo treatments, most doctors (68%) said they typically describe the placebo treatments to patients as "a potentially beneficial medicine or treatment not typically used for their condition", only rarely did they admit to explicitly describing them to patients as "placebos".

Man, there are a whole heap of problems here, the following of which leap immediately to mind. First, this is lying to patients and it interferes with informed consent and refusal. Second, patients are receiving drugs that may cause side effects for no purpose other than to think they are receiving treatment. Third, patients are paying for drugs they don't need. Fourth, such "treatments" can cause harm, such as increasing the likelihood of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Fifth, it is a way of shining patients on without finding out their real underlying issues. (Why do I think this might happen to women more than men?) Sixth, it could lead to patients thinking they were nuts when they still had symptoms, perhaps preventing them from seeking further help.

Yes, I know there is such a thing as a placebo effect, which is why they are used in human medical trials, where they are appropriate. But even if this does work once in a while, it is wrong.

The Peril of "Stem Cell Tourism"

I have warned against this from time to time, but it always bears repeating. The hype tossed around so casually in the great stem cell debate--mostly but not exclusively by ESCR proponents--has raised hopes so high that some people are rushing for unproven stem cell treatments in places like India and China. I worry that this is quackery. Remember, ES cells cannot be used safely in humans and most adult stem cell treatments remain at the clinical trial stage.

An Australian woman was recently taken in and feels cheated. From the story:

A NEW type of traveller dubbed the stem cell tourist is worrying Australian scientists and doctors who say the vulnerable ill are being duped. Australians with debilitating and sometimes terminal diseases are spending tens of thousands of dollars for unproved stem cell treatments in Third World countries.

Many, such as Townsville paraplegic Asti Poole, are coming home out of pocket, and extremely let down, after seeing little or no improvement in their conditions. Ms Poole, 28, went to an infertility specialist's clinic in India last year for two months of embryonic stem cell treatment.

Four other Australians were also at the clinic receiving treatment for spinal cord injuries. None has shown significant improvement. "We'd all joke that we were getting our dose of water for the day," Ms Poole recalls. "It just looked like they had filled a needle up with water. We used to joke that we were all being conned. None of us are miraculously walking."

It's better that they were conned than actually injected with embryonic stem cells. Otherwise, they'd have to worry about dying from tumor formation.

Please. Please. Anyone thinking of obtaining stem cell therapies, do so through a reputable doctor or via a certified human trial. Otherwise, you might not just get cheated financially, you could put your heath at material risk.

Misplaced Upset: Do Animals Matter More Than People?

An ad on Craigslist offers to euthanize pets at a discount, upsetting animal lovers. From the story:

The person who posted the ad on Craigslist said he or she has a "military background" and is "very good at what I do. All work is carried out at my private home in Federal Heights," the ad stated. "I can promise your pet a quick and painless death. I have had experience with everything from cows and horses to dogs, snakes, parrots and even a few whole litters of unwanted kittens."

This is probably a hoax, but if not, it is wrong and if being carried out the perpetrator should be prosecuted.

But the story got me to thinking. This is precisely the kind of ad Jack Kevorkian put in the newspapers to get his first assisted suicide clients. And now he gets $50,000 a speech and recently was invited to speak at Harvard Law School.

So, offer to kill animals on the cheap, create a firestorm. Offer to do assisted suicide for free and become an international celebrity. Such are the times in which we live.

SHS Funnies

What this has to do with me, I don't understand:



Bad pun, good point:


HT: Miguel Zambrano

New England Journal of Medicine Avoids Real "Inconvenient Truths" of Health Care Reform

The NEJM has an editorial out in which it claims to tackle the three "inconvenient truths" about health care. From the editorial:

1. Over the past 30 years, U.S. health care expenditures have grown 2.8% per annum faster, on average, than the rest of the economy. If this differential continues for another 30 years, health care expenditures will absorb 30% of the gross domestic product¹ — a proportion that exceeds that of current government spending for all purposes combined...

2. Advances in medicine are the main reason why health care spending has grown 2.8% per annum faster than the rest of the economy...

3. Universal coverage requires subsidies for the poor and those too sick to afford insurance at an actuarially appropriate premium; it also requires compulsion for those who don't want to help pay for the subsidies or who want a "free ride," expecting that they will get care if they need it.

As true and inconvenient as these might be, the NEJM still misses discussion of the core inconvenient truths that will result in impasse. Here's how I see it:

1. Will a national plan cover elective abortion? Say yes, and you lose half the country, say no and you lose the other half. The result will be impasse.
2. Will a national plan cover illegal aliens? Some 8 million of the 47 million who are uninsured in this country have no right to be here. If a plan decides to subsidize their non emergency care, there will be a rebellion. Refuse to cover them and others will cry xenophobia. The result will be impasse.
3. Will a national plan be Cadillac or Yugo? A Cadillac plan will cover areas of expensive care beyond the basics such as mental health, dental, and etc. That will break the bank. A "Yugo" plan is bare bones requiring all of us to obtain private supplemental coverages. Try and exclude an area from coverage will enrage one segment of society, putting in all the extras will (further) bankrupt us. Result? Impasse.
4. Will a national plan include rationing? The NEJM is right about the costs going out of sight. For some, this means rationing. But advocates for those who will be discriminated against in a national rationed plan--people with disabilities, AIDS patient advocates, etc.--will ensure that their cadre are not rationed. Result, impasse or rationing only against the politically weak.

Until and unless we come to grips on these issues, the talk about dramatic health care reform will be just talk. Areas of compromise are obvious. But we are so divided, I don't think compromise is possible. Now, the coming election may provide such massive majorities on one side of the issue that certain agendas can be imposed. But that too will just explode the country into mutual hatred, recrimination, and political agitation.

This is what happens when a culture loses a common frame of moral reference.

Single Mouse Adult Stem Cell Grows New Prostate Gland

Here's an exciting animal experiment. Scientists found an adult prostate stem cell in mice and one cell grew an entire new prostate gland. From the story.

Here we identify CD117 (c-kit, stem cell factor receptor) as a new marker of a rare adult mouse PSC population, and demonstrate that a single stem cell defined by the phenotype Lin^-Sca-1⁺CD133⁺CD44⁺CD117⁺ can generate a prostate after transplantation in vivo. CD117 expression is predominantly localized to the region of the mouse prostate proximal to the urethra and is upregulated after castration-induced prostate involution—two characteristics consistent with that of a PSC marker. CD117⁺ PSCs can generate functional, secretion-producing prostates when transplanted in vivo.

It's a very long way from human application, obviously, but another example of the need for animal research and the potency of non controversial biotechnology.

How Far Should We Go in Permitting Creation of "Savior Siblings?"

One of the disturbing areas of biotechnology that deserves more scrutiny than it has heretofore received is the "savior sibling" concept. A savior sibling is created via IVF and tested prior to implantation to match the DNA of a born child with a disease that could benefit from tissue donation, such as bone marrow. The UK specifically permits this in the new embryo bill.

But how far does the savior sibling license go? An earlier version of an AP story sent to me on the matter described it this way:

The House of Commons also clarified laws which allow the screening of embryos so parents can produce babies with specific characteristics to help a diseased older sibling through tissue or organ donation.

Organ donation! So I looked up the AP story, and it is now changed. From the story:

The House of Commons also clarified laws that allow the screening of embryos to produce babies with suitable bone marrow or other material for transplant to sick siblings.

I suspect the earlier story took a leap of logic too far based on the actual wording of the statute. (If any SHSers have the details, I would appreciate info.)

The UK legislation aside, this whole concept raises many important issues. Here are a few:
1. Consent. A child has no capacity to consent to being used as a tissue donor. And obtaining tissues or bone marrow carries risk, even if it is small. Organ donation would carry a huge risk, although I will bet that is not specifically permitted in the law. So, can the parents alone consent to expose one child to risk to save another child? What extent of risk should a savior sibling be forced to assume before the law says no? Should a court have to give consent before permitting a child to be put at risk and suffer discomfort to save the life of a sibling--I sure think so. What should the limitations be, if any?

2. What if the child isn't wanted other than as a donor? The few savior siblings born so far were also wanted by the family. But what if parents were not interested in the child except as a donor? What if they chose to give birth, obtain the tissue, and then give up the child for adoption? Or, what if they decided to implant, gestate and abort once the kind of tissues they wanted would be obtainable? Laws permitting unlimited choice for late term abortion wouldn't prevent such an atrocity, and personhood theory would find it perfectly acceptable because the fetus as a non person is an unter menchen.

3. Don't forget the embryos that don't make DNA muster are usually discarded. So, we see human life created for instrumental purposes and tossed like non conforming fruit if they don't meet the needs.

The savior sibling is the kind of issue that leads off ethical cliffs. It tugs at us powerfully to help save the life of a sick child. But it also openly instrumentalizes human life. Once we start down certain roads, there seem to be no logical way to say, "Here and no farther."

Brave New Britain: You Can Be Cloned Without Consent in the UK

This is just unbelievable, or better stated given the UK's history in this field, it is all too believable. At the last minute, the Parliament in the UK added a provision to its omnibus embryo bill--that among other things permits human/animal hybrid cloned embryos to be manufactured--that if the bill passes into law as expected, permits the DNA of people to be used to clone embryos without consent. From a column about the story:

How would you feel if your DNA were used without your permission to produce cloned human embryos for medical research? Regardless of whether it is right or wrong to experiment on human embryos, creating them would require either giving women high doses of drugs with unknown side effects to produce the large numbers of eggs needed for cloning research, or the placing of your genes inside cows' or pigs' eggs to produce human-animal hybrid embryos.

So you might well expect to be asked to give your explicit permission before such a morally fraught procedure is carried out using your tissue, but the government doesn't see the need for this. At virtually the last minute, ministers added amendments to the human fertilisation and embryology bill which will receive its final vote in the Commons today, that will allow researchers to use the DNA of tissue donated anonymously in the past to create cloned human embryos. Other amendments would permit the genes of children or of mentally incapacitated adults to be used in similar ways.

The UK's Parliament should have a slogan--what the scientists want, the scientists get. Not surprising in a country where its biomedical ethics are dominated by naked utilitarianism, such as the Orwellian-named National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), that pushes health care rationing, futile care theory, and etc. This is just the latest example.

Our Sunday Visitor Clues Readers to Dangers of Anti-Humanism

An article in Our Sunday Visitor, a Catholic publication, warns readers about the dangers of radical environmentalism and animal rights--epitomized by Spain's pending enactment of the Great Ape Project and Ecuador's granting rights to "nature" in its new Constitution. The byline is by Thomas A. Szyszkiewicz, who has been very good on these issues, and was kind enough to include my views. From the story:

Catholic teaching is clear that the created order is made by God for our use, but that humans have a responsibility for caring for it. "Man's dominion over inanimate and other living beings granted by the Creator is not absolute; it is limited by concern for the quality of life of his neighbor, including generations to come; it requires a religious respect for the integrity of creation" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2415).

But efforts to raise nature to a godlike status is dehumanizing. According to Smith, there is a concerted effort to lose what he calls "human exceptionalism," the idea that humans are unique in all of creation. Human exceptionalism, he said, expresses "the idea that human beings have unique moral value and moral worth. We are the only moral species and the only species that has a concept of rights."

If we are made equal to nature, he said, "then universal human rights go out the window."

"The logical consequences of this law are impossible to comprehend. If nature is a person, then viruses and bacteria are persons as well, since they are part of nature. So what happens then?" Smith said.

Szyszkiewicz warns that this amounts to a new pantheism, which sounds close to me, at least attitudinally. Check out his article, it's worth reading.

New Blog Blurb for SHS

Some more observant SHSers may notice that I changed the descriptive blurb of this blog from, "Your 24/7 bioethics seminar," to "Your 24/7 seminar on bioethics and the importance of being human." It's not quite as pithy, but we do deal with issues that extend beyond the far edges of bioethics now, so I think it is more descriptive.

The Call for "Organ Conscription" Begins

I have always said that if you want to see why things seem to be going so wrong in bioethics, just look at the professional literature at the most elite levels, in which a more candid view is presented than may appear in popular media. The bioethics blogs can also be illuminating.

Case in point, a blog out of Oxford called "Practical Ethics," which is the name of a truly ghastly Peter Singer book, although there appears no connection to Singer, except on the idea level.

A recent entry discussed organ donation. First, look at what the author considered to be a "spurious" concern:

It is also easy for debate about organ donation to be side-tracked by spurious issues or concerns. So some people fear that they will not receive full treatment by doctors so that their organs can be used to save others.

Given the "quality of life" ethic that seem to be gaining momentum in bioethics and medicine, along with futile care theory and the drive for health care rationing, that hardly seems to be an irrelevant concern.

Then the author opines that we should permit killing for organs, perhaps even organ conscription:

There are two alternatives. If consent for organ donation is as important as it is made out to be, then debate about organ donation should be welcomed. There should be a detailed information available to the community about the circumstances in which their organs may be donated, and what that involves. The community should be reassured that decisions about the declaration of death and the withdrawal of life support are made independently of decisions about eligibility for organ donation. To both respect patient autonomy, and allay community concern, individuals could be given several options about organ donation, including alternatives not currently available such as donation of organs prior to death. This would allow them to have greater control over the process of their death and the use of their organs.

Alternatively, we may come to think that the benefit of organ donation is so great that we should reject the the current charade of informed consent for organ donation. After all, at present thousands of patients per year die for want of an available organ. Yet every day potentially life-saving organs are buried or burned because their owners did not make their wishes clear during life, because their families could not come to terms with the idea of donation, or because doctors failed to approach families to ask them for permission. Consent is relevant to what happens to us while we are alive. But once we are dead, our organs cannot benefit us, while they could save the lives of up to 6 others. Perhaps it is time to contemplate mandatory organ donation after death?

I believe and hope that this remains a minority view. But the fact that it is considered a matter of respectable discourse is cause for concern. If you want to destroy the people's faith in the entire system, this is how to do it.

"Getting an Earful From Your Veggies"

Al Martinez, an LA Times columnist (the newspaper that declared "nature rights" in Ecuador to be "intriguing), has caught up with the plants rights movement. In "Getting an Earful From Your Veggies," he writes:

It is not enough to worry about the economy, the political impact of Sarah Palin's wink on the voting population of Nebraska, and the planet melting away under our feet. Now I am told that vegetable plants love life, feel pain and scream when they are torn from the ground to be eaten. Oy vey!

I get this from one Roy Mankovitz, who has more academic initials after his name than I have letters in mine. He wrote to me, I suppose, to prepare me for his soon-to-be-published book, "A Rocket Scientist's Blueprint for Health."...

Composed in the vernacular of an outraged purist, he writes that...there is the pain they [plants]endure before even making it to the produce stands. "Vegetables," Mankovitz declares, "have emotions." This is something I would rather not think about, but the man persists: "It is well documented that plants produce electrical signals (perhaps analogous to screams) when they are cut, and if they survive they can even identify the human that did the cutting!"...

While researching Mankovitz's claim, I came across a paper written by one Dr. Frank Dainello, a "vegetable specialist" at Texas A&M University. He agrees with Mankovitz in many ways and adds in passing that "plants such as the tomato also have been known to abort their young."

Plants are not moral agents capable of cognitive choices! Good grief.

I wonder if Martinez knows that Switzerland has declared the intrinsic dignity of plants? Probably not, since he tries to get off the hook of this issue's import:

So before the armies of pro-life veggie marchers hit the streets, I will simply thank Dr. Mankovitz and professor Dainello for their input and ask them politely to hereafter remain completely out of my life. I have too much to worry about already. I'm not going to add screaming beans and aborting tomatoes to that list. I'll leave that to God and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Were it that easy. Human exceptionalism is under committed attack. Pretending it is all surreal will , alas, not make it go away.

American Suicide Rates Increasing

American suicide rates are increasing. From the story:

The rate of suicide in the United States is increasing for the first time in a decade, according to a new report from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Injury Research and Policy. The increase in the overall suicide rate between 1999 and 2005 was due primarily to an increase in suicides among whites aged 40-64, with white middle-aged women experiencing the largest annual increase. Whereas the overall suicide rate rose 0.7 percent during this time period, the rate among middle-aged white men rose 2.7 percent annually and 3.9 percent among middle-aged women. By contrast, suicide in blacks decreased significantly over the study's time period, and remained stable among Asian and Native Americans. The results are published online at the website of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and will be published in the December print edition of the journal.

I can't prove that this is a factor, but are we surprised when the concept of "rational suicide" is being widely pushed, assisted suicide is being called "aid in dying" so as to make people more comfortable in deciding to kill themselves, and self destruction is being shrugged off as merely a "choice?"

Campaign Continues to Permit Killing for Organs

Some organ transplant doctors and ethicists continue their campaign to get the people to accept killing for organs. This time the scene is Australia. A transplant physician now says that brain death can't be known, nor heart death. The answer, obviously, is to kill for organs. From the story:

A DOCTOR claims most organ donors are not dead when their organs are removed. In an article in the Journal of Law and Medicine, Melbourne specialist Associate Professor James Tibballs argues it is "impossible to be certain" that the brain and circulation have ceased "irreversibly" before organ