Today is "Terri's Day:" The Fourth Anniversary of the Death of Terri Schiavo

Today is "Terri's Day." It is the fourth anniversary of the end of Terri Schiavo's ordeal of death by dehydration. This cruel end was not a necessary death. It was forced upon her by judicial fiat even though she was not terminally ill, did not require a respirator or kidney dialysis, and had a loving family eager to care for her for the rest of her natural life.

Terri's family believed and believes that she knew when they visited and reacted with joy. But even if she was unaware, she remained a beloved daughter and sister, fully worthy of life and care.

The Schindler family has marked this sad day with the following statement:

Four Years Ago Today, Terri Schiavo Dies After Almost Two Weeks Without Food or Water.
Four years ago today Terri Schiavo died. By the order of Judge George W. Greer, Terri died a slow barbaric death by starvation and dehydration over a period of almost two weeks. We have been posting stories of the events that occurred on each of those days not only in respect for Terri's memory, but a reminder that in this moment countless people are suffering slow, agonizing deaths in hospice, nursing homes, and hospitals in America and around the world.

I wish that Terri's death had convinced people that dehydration is wrong--at least when it has not been explicitly and knowingly requested in writing by the patient ahead of time. Alas, it does not appear to be so. But we can say this: Nobody can ever say again about the dehydration deaths that are happening in all fifty states and around the world as you read these words, "I didn't know." I believe we are all morally accountable for the positions we take on this important ethical issue.

"The Last Great Act of Living," or How My Dad Taught Me How to Live by Showing Me How to Die

The always wonderful Canadian bioethicist Margarette Somerville has a terrific and thoughtful article about dying, disability, and the great meaning that can be found in these times of difficulty. It's a long piece and I can't do justice to it--for that you will have to read it for yourselves. But we can present the gist as an appetizer.

She first identifies one of the driving forces behind the euthanasia movement. From her column:

Euthanasia allows people to feel that although they can't avoid death, they can control its manner, time and place. It's a terror reduction or terror control mechanism that operates at both the individual and societal level. So if we believe legalizing euthanasia would be a very bad idea, we need to develop and communicate other ways to deal with our fear of death.

An answer to terror is unleashing "the human spirit:"

It's a term I use in a religiously neutral sense, in that it can be accepted by people who are not religious and those who are, and, if religious, no matter what their religion. By it I mean the intangible, immeasurable, numinous reality that all of us need access to in order to find meaning in life and to make life worth living; that deeply intuitive sense of relatedness or connectedness to all life, especially other people, to the world, and to the universe in which we live; the metaphysical--but not necessarily supernatural--reality which we need to experience to live fully human lives...

The key is finding hope:

Hope is the oxygen of the human spirit; without it our spirit dies, with it we can overcome even seemingly insurmountable obstacles...Even terminally ill people can have hope--what we can call "mini-hopes"--for instance, to stay alive long enough to see a grandchild born, to attend a daughter's wedding, to see an old friend the next day or to see the sun rise and hear the birds' dawn chorus.

But ensuring hope requires action from us:

We must accept old or dying people's gifts, especially those gifts that are of the essence of themselves, recognizing that they and the person who gives them are unique and precious, as are their lives or last days on earth. In confirming the worth of these gifts we confirm the worth of the giver, and the old or dying person needs that confirmation.

Somerville concludes:

The challenge is to maintain death as the last great act of human life, a final human act through which we can still find meaning and, I suggest most importantly, pass meaning on to others. In other words, in our dying, we need to be given the opportunity to leave a legacy of meaning. .

I saw Somerville's vision vividly brought to life when my father fell badly ill, declined, and then died from colon cancer. I watched an already wonderful man-- grow. Through the crucible of failing health, Dad strived boldly to develop a secure sense of himself that had escaped him during his difficult youth, the horrors of war, and even the success of having become a mechanical engineer despite never having gone to high school.

As he struggled with cancer, he sat day after day overlooking his beloved cactus garden contemplating the meaning of it all. He had no formal religion, and kept his thoughts in this regard to himself. Once, when I asked him what he believed, he would only say, "I have my beliefs." And he never lost touch with life. For example, this was the time when I was transitioning out of active law practice--foregoing a very good living for a time of great financial insecurity--and Dad was not amused. I was called to account and we had a profound conversation over a lingering lunch at a Pasadena restaurant about life and its purpose.

Dad had his bad moments, of course. And I am sure there were tears and fears he expressed in private to my mother. But mostly what I saw was fortitude. It didn't come easily: He worked to achieve it, aided immensely by the gratitude he felt at being loved by family and friends. I saw him rally and experience a year of health his doctors said he wouldn't have. And, when that time passed, I saw him decide to stop fighting and let nature take its course. Dad died in a Veteran's hospital hospice on Lincoln's birthday in 1984, a better man than he had ever been on the day that was his last.

The idea of assisted suicide and euthanasia wasn't even considered by our family. At that time, it wasn't even an issue in the public's consciousness. But, there is no way Dad would have gone that route. He found his dignity, his transcendence, by finding hope and purpose in his dying, just as Somerville describes.

I only hope that when my time comes, I have it within me to emulate my father. This much I know: The way Dad died was the last of his many great gifts to me. I still love him so much and miss him every day.

(The photo is of my parents in 1945 upon Dad's return from World War II)

Idaho SB 1114 Futile Care Theory Authorization Bill Is Apparently Dead for This Year

Great news from a behind the scenes source: I have just been told that SB 1114, the bill that would have explicitly legalized futile care theory in Idaho, has died for the year. It almost snuck by, but when opponents learned about it, they mounted an 11th hour campaign to prevent passage. That campaign seems to have succeeded.

More details when I know more, but I have this on very good and trustworthy authority. It's a shame that some good things got delayed, but we cannot permit "optional" bioethics committees to force people off of wanted life-sustaining treatment--indeed, overturn explicit written instructions by the patient in an advance directive--based on the institutional culture or the committee's or physician's values.

I am told conversations will continue to make the bill acceptable. That's fine with me. But in the meantime: Huzzah!

Upside Down Medicine in Oregon: Paying to Kill, but Not to Extend Life

Oregon's Health Services Commission has published the list of covered treatments under the state's rationed Medicaid law. Comfort care is high on the list, and includes assisted suicide. But the overseers of rationed care explicitly state that treatment to extend life if the prognosis for living five years is poor, will not be covered. From the Prioritized List, page SI-1:

COMFORT/PALLIATIVE CARE It is the intent of the Commission that comfort/palliative care treatments for patients with an illness with <5%> expected five year survival be a covered service. Comfort/palliative care includesthe provision of services or items that give comfort to and/or relieve symptoms for such patients. There is no intent to limit comfort/palliative care services according to the expectedlength of life (e.g., six months) for such patients, except as specified by Oregon AdministrativeRules.

It is the intent of the Commission to not cover diagnostic or curative care for the primary illness or care focused on active treatment of the primary illness which are intended to prolong life or alter disease progression for patients with <5%> five year survival.

Examples of comfort/palliative care include:..

5) Services under ORS 127.800-127.897 (Oregon Death with Dignity Act), to include but not be limited to the attending physician visits, consulting physician confirmation, mental health evaluation and counseling, and prescription medications.

Such is the compassion of the culture of death--and the future of all health care if the utilitarian health care rationers ever are put in charge.

Vulture: Nitschke to Create Overdose Testing Suicide Kit for Use in UK

Philip Nitscke is the Australian answer to Jack Kevorkian who has spent years as a media darling opining that "troubled teens" should have access to suicide pills, teaching people how to commit suicide, creating the "peaceful pill," a concoction of everyday products that can kill, and selling plastic Exit Bags for use in suicide--which I helped induce the government bring to an end when I exposed his little marketing scheme in The Australian during a 2001 anti euthanasia national speaking tour in Australia.

Now, he is invading the UK with his ghoulish proselytizing. From the story:

Australian pro-euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke plans to launch testing kits for people to check the strength of drugs they have bought to commit suicide in the UK this year, a British newspaper has reported.

Quoting Deliverance, the newsletter of Dr Nitschke's organisation, Exit International, The Observer said the kits, which have chemicals that change colour when mixed with lethal barbiturates, would be released in May. The launch coincided with Dr Nitschke's planned tour of Britain, and the kits would be available for about STG35 ($A72). "We decided to launch in the UK because of its enlightened attitude; many of the things we can do in the UK are banned in Australia," the paper quoted Nitschke as saying.

People like this should be shunned. But media love him. I once debated N long distance on CNN. Before the program, the producers were tripping over themselves in embarrasingly gushing language and excited tones to thank him, thank him, for deigning to be on their program. His ego stoked, he benignly told them they were quite welcome.

In my view, he has buckets of blood on his hands.

SHS Continues to Grow

I thought I would look at a few of the statistics for SHS this evening. I am pleased. In the last 30 days, we have had more than 45,000 visits by some 36,000 distinct visitors. That's about the size of a good crowd at Dodger Stadium. And the dailies are up a couple of hundred a day over a month or two ago.

Since I put up the flags a little more than three months ago, we have been visited by people from 167 countries out of 192 or so in the world. Our newest addition is Angola. So, we are definitely international. I also receive some very nice private correspondence these days reacting to SHS from all over the world.

Tell your friends and neighbors to jump on in: The water's fine. Thanks to all for supporting and contributing to the success of SHS.

"Man" to Have Twins

I know it is considered rude to point out in our postmodern times when facts are contrary to the narratives. And we have been through this before with greater fanfare. But having resisted posting the "story," it finally became too much when I saw it reported again today for the umpteenth time in the last week.

Yes, another transsexual"man" is pregnant (don't forget, the first one is pregnant again)--only this time with twins! Call Oprah! Back in the real world, no man is giving birth, much less to twins. A woman is. From the story:

A 25-year-old transsexual man in Barcelona has announced that he is pregnant with twins, prompting debate in Spain about the ethical use of reproductive technology.

Ruben Noe Coronado Jimenez, who is reportedly nine weeks pregnant, interrupted hormone treatments and postponed plans to have a full sex-change operation in order to get pregnant because his 43-year-old girlfriend could no longer have children.

You couldn't make up that last paragraph. But here's the point: He may be legally a man (although in this case I don't think that has happened yet,) but biologically where reproduction does not depend on narratives--only organs, hormones, and gametes--she is a biological woman. Women give birth every day. No story!

Forced Speech: Pushing Against Conscientious Objection by Medical Practioners to Abortion in California

The following post will be about abortion and conscientious objection thereto by medical professionals. But it could just as easily be about assisted suicide, or using embryonic stem cell therapies, or pulling feeding tubes, because the principles are the same--as are the reasons for the attempted coercion of medical professionals to cooperate with life terminating medical procedures.

I have been reporting that doctors and other medical professionals who wish to hold to an orthodox Hippocratic view of medical professionalism are going to increasingly be forced by law to either be complicit in these actions or become podiatrists. The most blunt method of destroying Hippocratic medicine in this manner is the new Victoria, Australia law requiring doctors to either perform an abortion upon request, or find another doctor for the patient who will. That requires a doctor to have blood on his or her hands (from the conscientious objector's POV) regardless of their moral beliefs regarding abortion.

A more common form of coercion is to require doctors to provide information to patients about the availability of procedures that intentionally kill a human being. The latest example of such legislation is SB 374 in California, that would make it a crime not to provide patients with information about the legality or availability of abortion, and which could also be grounds for stripping the doctor or nurse practitioner of their license to practice. Worse, if the professional has a conscience objection, he or she must still participate in ensuring that the patient receives detailed information about deciding whether or not to have an abortion. From the legislation:

SEC. 4. Section 123462 of the Health and Safety Code is amended to read:...(e) Each physician and surgeon, nurse practitioner, and physician assistant described in subdivision (d) has an affirmative duty of reasonable disclosure to his or her patient of all available medical choices with respect to the patient's personal reproductive decisions. Failure of a physician and surgeon, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant to fulfill this duty shall constitute unprofessional conduct and grounds for suspension of the licensee's license, unless all of the following circumstances exists: (1) The licensee refuses on moral or religious grounds to provide disclosure pertaining to an available medical choice. (2) The licensee immediately informs the patient, either orally or in writing, that other medical choices may be available.(3) The licensee promptly assists the patient in finding a licensee who will fully fulfill the duty of reasonable disclosure to the patient.

Let's skip the preliminaries and get right to the real point: The purpose of such legislation is not to make sure women know they have the right to an abortion. How can anyone not know? Besides, a woman need only look in the Yellow Pages, go to a Planned Parenthood or high school health clinic, or do a Google search to find more information about abortion than can be absorbed. And don't be surprised if we follow the lead of the UK, where abortion clinics may soon be allowed to advertise on television.

No, this bill isn't about informing patients. Rather, its coercive purposes are (at least) threefold: First, to control thinking. Second, to drive Hippocratic professionals out medicine and sweep aside the penetrating message their non cooperation in killing in the medical context sends. Third, to win an important battle primarily about the symbolism that a victory achieved over dissenters would send to medical professionals and the society alike. And don't be surprised when laws are passed preventing the medical professional from giving an opinion about the moral propriety of such decisions. I mean, if you are going to control speech, control speech.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The culture of death brooks no dissent.

And Now for the Important Stem Cell Work: Increasing Bra Cup Size

Well, it was bound to happen. Adult fat stem cells are going to be used to increase breast size. From the story:

A stem cell therapy offering "natural" breast enlargement is to be made available to British women for the first time.

The treatment could boost cup size while reducing stomach fat. It involves extracting stem cells from spare fat on the stomach or thighs and growing them in a woman's breasts. An increase of one cup size is likely, with the potential for larger gains as the technique improves.

A trial has already started in Britain to use stem cells to repair the breasts of women who have had cancerous lumps removed. A separate project is understood to be the first in Britain to use the new technique on healthy women seeking breast enlargement.

It beats silicone, but really. And it sure shows how therapy quickly morphs into "enhancement." There are also potential risks. And ponder this: What if abundant curves go out of style again? Breast reduction surgery?

Another Final Exit Death Reported

Apologists for assisted suicide, such as the Los Angeles Times editorial board, pretend that the Final Exit Network is a fringe group that does not reflect mainstream assisted suicide advocacy, rather than, as I have clearly demonstrated here, at SHS, within the very heart of the assisted suicide movement. FEN activists have been arrested in one case, and new deaths undertaken with their participation are coming out all the time.

Here's the latest, of a depressed elderly man tired of living. From the story:

Max Lom was depressed. His eyesight had failed. Simple tasks, like reading the newspaper, had become an exercise in futility.The 88-year-old Sarasota man wanted to die, although physically, he was healthy, according to his daughter.

Last May, he swallowed a handful of pills in the hope of never waking. It didn't work, but the suicidal thoughts lingered, his daughter said.Shortly after, Lom began communicating with Final Exit Network, a national organization whose members provide support to those seeking a "peaceful end." Lom was found dead Jan. 4 from breathing helium gas with a plastic bag over his head, a Sarasota County Sheriff's Office report said. Family members are outraged at the group, as Lom wasn't terminally ill or suffering...

Lom's daughter, Helen Lom, believes the group essentially convinced him to take his life. Final Exit Network officials have denied any involvement in Lom's death."They might not have put the hood over his head, but they basically gave him the recipe book," said Helen Lom, who lives in Switzerland.

How is this facilitated suicide any different than what happens in Oregon, Washington, and now Montana? Lom used helium and a bag, in Oregon death doctors prescribe intentional overdoses of drugs. Different medium, same result.

Don't give me that nonsense about Lom not being terminally ill. That limitation is a stage managed pretense to get people to accept the principle that having doctors (or others) assist the suicides of people based on "choice" and killing as an acceptable answer to human suffering. As a logical species, once that principle is swallowed by the population, the pretense of terminal illness is quickly forgotten and you get the Netherlands and Switzerland--in which the depressed and mentally ill people are allowed assisted suicide, and doctors even give out a book teaching patients how to kill themselves when they don't technically qualify for euthanasia.

The real debate we should be having is whether suicide clinics should be legalized help anyone with a non transitory desire to be made dead. Everything else--as so much of our corrupted public discourse these days--is disingenuous and a premeditated act of intentional misdirection.

Fetal Farming is Not a Pipedream: History of Living Fetal Experiments

I have written here often that the embryonic stem cell debate is merely the opening stanza of a much broader agenda that would instrumentalize unborn human beings for use in experiments, treatments, and for body parts. Alas, using fetuses in such a crassly utilitarian way has already been done. Back in the late 1960s, there were a series of experiments on living fetuses--to the general applause of the scientific community.

I learned of this horror from a wonderful book by Pamela Winnick called A Jealous God: Science's Crusade Against Religion. Lest you think it is a religious attack on science, Winnick is a self-described secular Jew, who sees science--better stated scientism--attacking the very concept of intrinsic human dignity.

A Jealous God should send chills up the spine of anyone who believes in human exceptionalism and the sanctity/equality of human life. In a discussion germane to the subject of this post, she writes on page 24 of her book:

In a 1968 study called the "Artificial Placenta," a twenty-six week old fetus, weighing more than a pound, was obtained from a fourteen-year-old girl, presumably from a therapeutic abortion. Along with fourteen other fetuses, it was immersed in a liquid containing oxygen and kept alive for a full five hours.

She then quotes from the study itself

For the whole 5 hours of life, the fetus did not respire. Irregular gasping movements, twice a minute occurred in the middle of the experiment but there was not proper respiration. Once the profusion [pumping in of oxygenated blood] was stopped, however, the gasping respiratory efforts increased to 8 to 10 per minute…After stopping the circuit, the heart slowed, became irregular and eventually stopped…The fetus was quiet, making occasional stretching limb movements very much oke the ones reported in other human work…[T]he fetus died 21 minutes after leaving the circuit.

Winnick then reports that rather than being appalled, the scientists lauded this living fetal experimentation:

The study won the Foundation Prize Award from the American Association of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

These experiments were stopped because an outraged Congress--led by Senator Ted Kennedy--reacting to an outraged public, outlawed such a crassly instrumental use of fetal human beings. But today, with human exceptionalism under siege, the opening of the drive to revoke the Dickey Amendment, which would allow federal funding of the creation and destruction of embryos for research, the assertion throughout secular bioethics that "personhood" rather than "humanhood" is what counts morally, with "the scientists" trumpeting the potential CURES! CURES! CURES! that could flow from the instrumental use of nascent human life--and relevantly, people with significant cognitive impairments--it is all too easy to see Congress easing the prohibition against living fetal experiments once human cloning is perfected and an artificial uterus devised so that scientists could experiment on developing human life.

And the justification for these experiments would be the same ones we hear today with regard to ESCR: They will be tossed out anyway, so we might as well get some use out of them; they will never be born anyway, so what's the harm? They aren't persons, so we should have no moral qualms.

Come to think about it, the scientists who took that poor, potentially viable fetus and stuck him or her in a tank rather than providing life-sustaining treatment after the therapeutic abortion--which would seem to have had to have been via induced labor, since the delivered baby was alive and intact--probably said, "Oh well, it's being aborted anyway: We might as well get some good use out of it." Come to think of it further, if this is true, it wasn't fetal experimentation at all, but living infant experimentation.

A Jealous God is highly recommended reading for all SHSers. Here's my book review published in First Things.

(The footnote for the study quote is: G. Chamberlin, "An Artificial Placenta," American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, vol 100, no 615 (1968.)

Decrying Too Much Suicide Details in Media

I agree with the perspective of this column in the Guardian. But it is missing a crucial element. From the column "Warning: Media Reports on Suicide Can be Fatal," byline Ben Goldacre:

[O]ne important cause of suicide seems to have been missed...[I]t has been shown repeatedly that suicide increases in the month after a front page suicide story. There is also evidence that the effect is bigger for famous people and gruesome attempts.

Overdoses increased by 17% in the week after a prominent overdose on Casualty (watched by 22% of the population at the time). In 1998 the Hong Kong media reported heavily on a case of carbon monoxide poisoning by a very specific method, using a charcoal burner. In the 10 months preceding the reports, there had been no such suicides. In November there were three; then in December there were 10; and over the next year there were 40.

And it's not pie in the sky to suggest the media should be careful in how they discuss suicide. After the introduction of media reporting guidelines in Austria, there was a significant decrease in the number of people throwing themselves under trains.

So organisations such as the Samaritans suggest that journalists avoid crass phrases such as "a successful suicide attempt". They suggest that journalists avoid explicit or technical details of suicide methods, for reasons you can now understand. They suggest that journalists include details of further sources for help and advice, since an article about suicide represents a great opportunity to target people at risk with useful information. And they recommend avoiding simplistic explanations for suicide.

That's fine, as far as it goes. But something very important is missing in this analysis.

Are there any more sensationalized suicides in the world today than assisted suicide of people who are ill or disabled? Good grief: We repeatedly see detailed and justifying depictions of assisted suicides--even actual footage of the deaths themselves--not to mention overt proselytizing for assisted suicide by advocates for "death with dignity" in the media. Press conferences called by assisted suicide advocates to extol the self killings of people who were dying or disabled receive wide and uncritical coverage. Relatives often flock to the microphones to compliment their loved one's fortitude. How-to-commit suicide gurus are given celebrity status and kid gloves treatment by press from here to Timbuktu. The language is even euphemized to make the these suicides more acceptable to the general public, as in, "It isn't suicide, it's aid in dying."

I went into Greenacre's archive and looked back more than a year: Nothing about that at all. The omission of any mention of these glaring examples, many of which took place just within the last few months in the UK--while discussing copycat suicides from more than a hundred years ago--is troubling. But it points up a profound disconnect in the media that threatens people who are ill or have disabilities as surely as the celebrity suicide threatens impressionable youth.

Resurrecting the "Useless Eater" Approach to Health Care: Don't Let Consciousness Get in the Way of the Dehydration Agenda

So, now that we know that many people thought to be unconscious--are actually awake and aware--some might think that would cause bioethicists to step back from the dehydration agenda. As I have long predicted, not on a bet! An article published in the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy by Oxford bioethicists Guy Kahane and the always crassly utilitarian Julian Saveulescu, makes it clear that demonstrable awareness should be no bar to ending the lives of these disabled patients.

This is a 22 page article, and I obviously can't post it all here, even if there weren't copyright issues. But here is the gist: From their article's abstract:

Neuroimaging studies of brain-damaged patients diagnosed as in the vegetative state suggest that the patients might be conscious. This might seem to raise no new ethical questions given that in related disputes both sides agree that evidence for consciousness gives strong reason to preserve life. We question this assumption... We argue that enjoyment of consciousness might actually give stronger moral reasons not to preserve a patient's life and, indeed, that these might be stronger when patients retain significant cognitive function.

Who are these conscious people who should die? Those in what has come to be called the mimial conscious state. From the body of the article (no link available, my emphasis):

Such patients have, at best, only the most rudimentary desires, and they clearly do not have enough sapience to enjoy most objective goods--the goods of friendship, knowledge, achievement, and the like. Do they at least have experiential interests?...It is, however, plausible to assume that such patients do feel pleasure and pain--that they do have experiential interests...

Would this, in itself, be a reason to keep this patient alive for as long as we can? ... Such a patient clearly benefits from going on living in the sense that this means that, over time, she will enjoy more experiential goods. But this patient does not possess self consciousness or a desire to go on living, and little to no psychological connectedness over time. It is thus not clear that she would be significantly harmed if her life ended earlier than was possible. And, given that, considerations of distributive justice may tell against continuing to sustain the life of such a patient at great cost.

They thus claim that even if Terri Schiavo wasn't in an unconscious state, she was killable:

In the final month of her life, the parents of Terry Schiavo insisted that she was in MCS, not VS. But we have argued that the discovery of consciousness in patients diagnosed as in VS hardly settles the ethical questions on the side of continuing life-sustaining treatment. If the patient is in the MCS, it might rather be that we have no or only weak reasons to sustain her life, and some further positive reasons not to sustain it.

But what about patients who can communicate and are clearly aware, sometimes called the "locked in state?" Their lives are even less worth living because of possible mental anguish!

Kahane and Saveulesku are resurrecting the odious concept of the useless eater. If they get their way, tens of thousands of people around the world will be dehydrated or lethally injected to death.

The Curtain Opens on Act II of the Great Stem Cell Debate: Now Pay Us to Create and Destroy Human Embryos

I have written repeatedly in the last two weeks about how "the scientists" are moving their duplicitous anything-goes-in-biotech campaign to the next stage, now that the curtain has come down on Act I with the slaying of the hated Bush funding restrictions. In the opening of Act II, we will see intense lobbying for the Feds to fund the creation of embryos for use in research--meaning that human life would be brought into being solely for the purpose of being destroyed--a first in human history.

Standing in the way is the Dickey Amendment, a provision that is passed yearly as part of the budgetary process. The Dickey Amendment prohibits federal money from being used to create embryos for research, or in their destruction. President Obama just signed the budget bill that contained Dickey, but next year might be different. As I have reported here at SHS, the NYT and Nature have both editorialized for the end of Dickey. And now a story in Science strongly hints at the same agenda in an otherwise forgettable report about where all the research money will come from to fund the Center for Regenerative Medicine now that we Californians can't sell our junk bonds.

From the story (no link--CIRM Close-Hauled, Seeks Bonds to Sustain Headway, Constance Holden, Science 27 March 2009: Vol. 323. no. 5922, pp. 1660 - 1661):

The Center for Genetics and Society, a public interest group in Oakland, California, has hinted that the state may find better ways to spend its money now that the economy is tanking and NIH is no longer inhibited by the Bush policy. But scientists point out that as long as NIH has to comply with the Dickey-Wicker Amendment prohibiting research with human embryos, federally funded researchers will have to look to private or state-supported sources like CIRM for new ES cell lines. They also argue that in California, as elsewhere, a strong local establishment makes scientists more competitive when it comes to getting federal grants.

Well, that's a patently false statement. Under Obama the Feds can fund research on any ESC lines that are made from whatever means: We just can't fund creating embryos for research, or the destruction of any embryo.

But inaccurate reporting aside, the question before the house is why "the scientists" want federal money to create and destroy embryos. Or to put it another way, what's up here?

At least two things: First, in a word; cloning. ESCR with "leftover" embryos was merely the launching pad for using developing human life as a natural resource. The Brave New World agendas of genetic engineering, fetal farming, transhumanist recreationism, familial anarchy, generally will require human cloning to perfect. Human cloning is proving very difficult to work out. It will be very expensive to perfect.

Second, societal approval: Federal funding would give society's explicit imprimatur to this instrumentalization of embryos (and later, fetuses), thereby allowing "the scientists" to feel good about what they are doing as they cash the checks that finance the work. (One reason the Bush policy was so reviled is that it sent a powerful implicit message that destroying human life for use in research is morally wrong.) Indeed, even more than money, it seems to me that the science leadership insist that they be looked up to and adored. Having us all pay to custom make embryos via fertilization and/or SCNT cloning for research would restore the relationship between the science sector and society to the "proper" place, from "the scientists'" POV: They do whatever they think is right, they decide what is ethical, and we pay them to do it.

Oregon Study Proves That People Who Want Assisted Suicide Need Care, Not Kevorkianism

A new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, illustrates--yet again--that assisted suicide in Oregon has not been about unbearable suffering that can't be controlled--as the scaremongering of its salesmen and women would have it, but fears about the future. From the Abstract:

Fifty-six Oregonians who either requested PAD [physician assisted death] or contacted a PAD advocacy organization completed a survey indicating the importance of 29 reasons for their interest in PAD on a scale where 1 was not important and 5 was very important; 28% of people referred from the PAD advocacy organization enrolled in the study.

Results Forty-one patients died by the end of the study; 18 received a prescription for medication under the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, and 9 died by lethal dose of medication. The most important reasons for requesting PAD, all with median scores of 5, were wanting to control the circumstances of death and die at home; loss of independence; and concerns about future pain, poor quality of life, and inability to care for one's self. All physical symptoms (eg, pain, dyspnea, and fatigue) at the time of the interview were rated as unimportant (median score, 1), but concerns about physical symptoms in the future were rated at a median score of 3 or higher. Lack of social support and depressed mood were rated as unimportant reasons for requesting PAD.

These are important issues that need to be addressed with committed compassion. But assisted suicide does the opposite: physicians who write lethal prescriptions confirm the patient's worst fears, and thereby abandon the patient. Add in that 88% of these deaths are facilitated by the zealous assisted suicide boosters of Compassion and Choices, who often refer suicidal patients to ideologically death doctors who are not there to treat or palliate the patient, but write a lethal prescription--rank Kevorkianism--almost always without reference to a mental health professional for suicide prevention--and the abandonment becomes nearly complete.

The article suggests a better answer:

At the time they express initial interest in PAD, Oregonians are motivated by worries about future physical discomfort and losses of autonomy and function. When confronted with a request for PAD, health care providers should first work to bolster the patient's sense of control and to educate and reassure the patient regarding management of future symptoms.

Or to put it more polemically, care yes, Kevorkianism, no.

Medical Elite at War With Hippocratic Oath

Yes, yes, I know: Very few doctors take the Hippocratic Oath anymore--which I have repeatedly written about here at SHS and elsewhere--because it interferes with modern cultural norms (and that includes the Hippocratic proscription against having sex with patients). But surely, physicians who still adhere to orthodox Hippocratic values should be able to practice medicine in the specialty of their choosing under what was until not very long ago, the expected approach for all doctors.

Apparently not--at least according to the medical elite. The New England Journal of Medicine has become the latest publication to publish an opinion piece that, in essence, tells physicians who don't want to violate the Hippocratic Oath to get out of areas of medicine where non Hippocratic procedures are now allowed. From the column by Julie D. Cantor, M.D., J.D. attacking the Bush conscience clause regulations:

Medicine needs to embrace a brand of professionalism that demands less self-interest, not more. Conscientious objection makes sense with conscription, but it is worrisome when professionals who freely chose their field parse care and withhold information that patients need. As the gatekeepers to medicine, physicians and other health care providers have an obligation to choose specialties that are not moral minefields for them. Qualms about abortion, sterilization, and birth control? Do not practice women's health. Believe that the human body should be buried intact? Do not become a transplant surgeon. Morally opposed to pain medication because your religious beliefs demand suffering at the end of life? Do not train to be an intensivist. Conscience is a burden that belongs to the individual professional; patients should not have to shoulder

Why do I suspect she wouldn't be opposed to futile care theory? But that aside, the hubris is palpable--particularly the thinly veiled attack on Catholicism and the canard that the faith "demands suffering at the end of life." Also, realize that if the issue is a physician refusing to participate in assisted suicide--which the Bush conscience regulations also protect--it would mean that any doctor who didn't want to help kill patients might have to become podiatrists.

Cantor, M.D., J.D. concludes:

Health care providers already enjoy broad rights--perhaps too broad--to follow their guiding moral or religious tenets when it comes to sterilization and abortion. An expansion of those rights is unwarranted. Instead, patients deserve a law that limits objections and puts their interests first. Physicians should support an ethic that allows for all legal options, even those they would not choose. Federal laws may make room for the rights of conscience, but health care providers--and all those whose jobs affect patient care--should cast off the cloak of conscience when patients' needs demand it. Because the Bush administration's rule moves us in the opposite direction, it should be rescinded.

I italicized the key phrase that I think should be carefully pondered when thinking about this post: Cantor would seem to support the government legally forcing physicians who practice OB/GYN to perform abortions. That same coercive principle could also force internists, family care specialists, oncologists, hospice physicians, cardiologists, anesthesiologists, etc., to perform assisted suicide wherever that non medical act is redefined as a legal "treatment."

I keep saying it: The culture of death brooks no dissent. But there is no reason why Hippocratic doctors have to cooperate with their own undoing. One antidote I suggest: Mass public recitations of the principles of the Oath by physicians to prove they are not cowed by the likes of Dr. Cantor, M.D., J.D.

Lead Into Gold: No Thanks to Obama, Another IPSC Breakthrough

Meanwhile back on the ranch, scientists continue to progress with the development of induced pluripotent stem cells, an ethical "alternative" to ESCR--because no human life is destroyed in the derivation of the cells. Now, using human tissues, IPSCs were created without potentially dangerous viruses and genes by none other than James Thomson, the first scientist to derive human embryonic stem cells. From the story:

By reprogramming skin cells to an embryonic state using a plasmid rather than a virus to ferry reprogramming genes into adult cells, the Wisconsin group's work removes a key safety concern about the potential use of iPS cells in therapeutic settings.

The new method, which is reported in today's (March 26) online issue of the journal Science, also removes the exotic reprogramming genes from the iPS equation, as the plasmid and the genes it carries do not integrate into an induced cell's genome and can be screened out of subsequent generations of cells. Thus, cells made using the new method are completely free of any genetic artifacts that could compromise therapeutic safety or skew research results, according to the Science report...

The resulting cells, says Thomson, are remarkably similar to embryonic stem cells and show the same capacity to proliferate indefinitely in culture and diversify into all the cell types of the human body.

Under President Bush's 2007 executive order, this type of research was required to be federally funded as a way to surmount the bitter cultural divides over biotechnology and its impact on the intrinsic importance of human life. In other words it was pro ethics and pro science. This is the very kind of policy President Obama promised that he would pursue as president--but instead, he stealthily broke that promise by revoking the Bush order.

Human IPSCs were only announced in November 2007. The advances made since then have been breathtaking, with some of the most notable scientists in biotechnology--Thomson, Ian Wilmut (of Dolly the sheep fame), Yamanaka--in the field. Let's hope they and/or other alternatives someday render ESCR scientifically superfluous.

Here's a link to the Abstract of the paper.

Scottish Assisted "Narrow" Assisted Suicide Bill Again Demonstrates That the Movement is Not About Terminal Illness

There is a bill pending in the Scottish Parliament to legalize assisted suicide. It's author recently "narrowed" the bill to protect the vulnerable. But the narrowed bill would explicitly legalize assisted suicide for people with disabilities, once again clearly demonstrating that the "death with dignity" movement is not about a "choice" for the dying. From the story:

Ms MacDonald has narrowed her proposals to cover only three specific categories of people who believe their lives have become intolerable. It includes those with a progressive, degenerative conditions; those who have suffered a trauma such as crashes or sports injuries, leaving them entirely dependent on others; and those with terminal illness.

No wonder the disability rights community is up in arms about assisted suicide

Also note that the story contains not one quote from anyone opposed to assisted suicide. Opponents are merely mentioned as having somehow skewed a constituent canvas that the bill's author took.

Typical.

Poverty is the Answer: Radical Environmentalism Leading Us to a New Form of Human Sacrifice

I have written how radical environmentalism is becoming distinctly anti-human. With the fervent ideology of Deep Ecology, it is explicitly stated. But some of what we are witnessing among the neo Greens is a drive to sacrifice human flourishing and prosperity--without the explicitly stated misanthropic dogmas.

This willingness to sacrifice human welfare is reaching a fever pitch among those who believe that global warming is a crisis of unimagined proportions--a belief that can border on quasi-religion or pure ideology. An article by David Owen--pushing the importance of economic decline to saving the planet--in the New Yorker illustrates the point. From his column:

[T]he world's principal source of man-made greenhouse gases has always been prosperity. The recession makes that relationship easy to see: shuttered factories don’t spew carbon dioxide; the unemployed drive fewer miles and turn down their furnaces, air-conditioners, and swimming-pool heaters; struggling corporations and families cut back on air travel; even affluent people buy less throwaway junk.

Most of us view our current economic crisis with alarm. Apparently, Owen sees it is a positive:

The environmental benefits of economic decline, though real, are fragile, because they are vulnerable to intervention by governments, which, understandably, want to put people back to work and get them buying non-necessities again--through programs intended to revive ordinary consumer spending (which has a big carbon footprint), and through public-investment projects to build new roads and airports (ditto).

And the answer, apparently, is more of the same decline we are now experiencing:

The ultimate success or failure of Obama's [anti-global warming] program, and of the measures that will be introduced in Copenhagen this year, will depend on our willingness, once the global economy is no longer teetering, to accept policies that will seem to be nudging us back toward the abyss.

So, people need to be poorer, with all the concomitant increase in human suffering and shorter lives that would result from lower levels of prosperity. And remember, he only writes here about the well off areas of the world. But you can bet that he and his co-believers would strive mightily to stifle development in now destitute areas of the world--dooming perhaps billions of people to lives of continued squalor, disease, and lower life expectancies.

More to the point of what we discuss here at SHS, human beings are a logical species: We take our ideas where they lead! (Thus, once Americans accepted the verity of Jefferson's "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal..."it doomed slavery, because servitude and equality are incompatible.) For the same reason, once we accept the fundamental premise of the piece--that we must sacrifice human prosperity to "save the planet"--the misanthropic ideology of Deep Ecology--humans as a viral infection afflicting Gaia--with radical depopulation as the cure--consider the genocidal implications--become a logical next step

And thus we see how the healthy environmentalism that cleaned up filthy rivers and reduced Los Angeles air pollution is quickly mutating into an implicit and explicit anti-humanism that is in danger of leading to becoming so degraded in our self perception, that we could reach the point of being urged (forced?) to become human sacrifices on Gaia's altar.

Unlimited Appetite: More Pressure from "The Scientists" for Feds to Fund Embryo Creation and Destruction for Use in Research

The appetite from some sectors of the biotechnology community for funding and ethical license, is never satiated. Only days after President Obama euthanized President Bush's ESCR policy--and in the wake of the New York Times calling for revocation of the Dickey Amendment that prohibits the Feds from paying for the creation and destruction of embryos in research--the prestigious science journal Nature has added to the political pressure. From its editorial:

When US President Barack Obama lifted the funding ban for research on human embryonic stem cells earlier this month, he did not mention the Dickey-Wicker amendment--legislation that forbids the use of federal funds for research that destroys or creates embryos. It was a missed opportunity to begin a necessary conversation.

There was no ban, but never mind. The point is that Nature wants to destroy Dickey:

In force since 1996, the Dickey-Wicker amendment badly needs updating to fit the current research reality, if not outright repeal...Both the Dickey–Wicker amendment and the new guidelines on human embryonic stem-cell research being drawn up by the National Institutes of Health merit an intense national conversation. In particular, that dialogue should thoroughly explore attitudes towards studying different types of embryos--not just those left over from fertility procedures, but also those that might be specially created for research.

See, the assurances--oft stated--that all "the scientists" want are "leftover" embryos that were "going to be destroyed anyway" was always hogwash, part of a sophisticated propaganda campaign intended to unfetter biotech from any meaningful limitations on the instrumental use of nascent human life. Yet, despite these editorials, the "leftovers" meme will continue to drive most media reports.

Nature also wants to continue the word engineering project we have discussed here over the last several years:

A key requirement for productive dialogue is a common frame of reference. Here, the [me: scientifically accurate] word 'embryo' is a stumbling block. This term refers to everything from a newly fertilized single-celled egg to millions of cells organized into eyelids, ears, genitals and limbs. Yet the latter form, which is present some eight weeks after fertilization, is not only ethically unacceptable for research but also far too old to yield embryonic stem cells.

Why is it ethically unacceptable? Nature doesn't say. And why should anyone believe that embryonic stem cells are "all" that "the scientists" are interested in? I mean, why would anyone believe this platitudinous assurance, when the "leftovers only" promise proved so patently false?
Indeed, some studies indicate that germ stem cells, that develop at about 6 weeks, might be better than embryonic stem cells. We have already seen calls for using fetuses as sources of organs and fetal farming, which would be even more pronounced if cloning were added to the mix to do away with the immune rejection issue. Beyond that, imagine the potential for testing drugs in fetuses,particularly fetuses genetically engineered to have certain medical maladies. Anyone who thinks that embryonic stem cells are the ultimate goal of all of this just hasn't been paying attention.

Here's the bottom line: Now that Big Biotech and its supporters in Big Science and the MSM believe they are in the driver's seat with regard to ESCR, they are intent on pushing the boundaries to the next of many stages--federal funding for the creation and destruction of custom made embryos, including via cloning. But of course, that was the plan all along.

PETA Kills More Animals Than Ever

As we have discussed here at SHS, PETA has killed tens of thousands of dogs and cats at its Norfolk, VA headquarters in the last ten years--apparently including adoptable animals. But based on public records studied by the non profit, food industry-financed Center for Consumer Freedom, the animal rights organization has increasingly resorted to killing and decreasingly to adoption, as the years have gone by.

the CCF is PETA's worst nightmare. Its workers are as edgy and creative as are PETA's activists--giving back to the animal liberationists some of the same grief they give to others. And it has a budget, permitting it to monitor what animal rights group do and say very closely. Understanding that the organization has a bias, over the years I have found its information to be accurate and reliable--the same about which can definitely not be said for PETA. (The PETA employees mentioned in the article linked above, were were eventually convicted of littering when they dumped the animals they killed in containers, which was later overturned on appeal.)

In the past, PETA has been exposed for killing animals transferred from shelters to its headquarters in Norfolk. Some, perhaps many, of these euthanasia deaths may well have been necessary due to the poor condition of the animals. But the number of kills versus adoptions may indicate something else is at work, particularly since its kill to adopt ratio is widening. From the CCF press release:

PETA's "Animal Record" report for 2008, filed with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, shows that the animal rights group killed 95 percent of the dogs and cats in its care last year. During all of 2008, PETA found adoptive homes for just seven pets. Just seven animals -- out of the 2,216 it took in. PETA just broke its own record.

This adoption rate is the mirror opposite of the local SPCA, according to the press release.

The CCF also created a chart showing the number of animals PETA has received, killed, transferred, and adopted since 1998. For example, in 2000, PETA received 2,681 animal, of which 2,029 were euthanized, 28 transferred, and 624 adopted, for a 75.7/23.27% rate of kill to adoptions. In 2004, the ratio was 85.9% killed and 13.60% adopted. In 2008, only 0.32% were adopted. That's hard to imagine if the animals' welfare was truly the purpose of PETA's work.

Why might PETA be increasingly resorting to the poison injection? In the past, PETA has said that "many" of the animals are not adoptable. That isn't the same thing as all as saying none were.

Having watched PETA closely now for several years, I suspect that at least part of this seemingly inexcusable kill rate has to do with PETA's ideology that perceives human ownership of domesticated animals as, per se, causing suffering--as a consequence of which, PETA may believe the animals are better off dead than adopted into non animal rights households. The CCF hypothesizes it may be a reluctance by PETA to spend money advertising to the wider community--despite a $32 million budget--that there are animals available for adoption.

Whatever the cause, these kill to adoption numbers may be an indication that there is something very twisted about PETA, and that whatever that something is, it is getting worse.

"Single Embryo" IVF May Work Better

Among the downsides of IVF has been the overproduction of embryos, that were then put into the deep freeze. Because most of these nascent humans will never be gestated to birth, they are now looked upon as mere things to be used in research.

The reason we have about 400,000 embryos in cold storage is that docturs used to believe that creating many and implanting multiple embryos were necessary to maximize the potential of a successful birth. Moreover, creating many embryos could make it less likely that to the woman being treated would have to be repeatedly super ovulated--which carries distinct risks.

But now, studies show this may be wrong. From the story:

The research contradicts the widely-held view that implanting multiple embryos during in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) is more cost-effective, and improves a woman's chances of becoming pregnant. "At a time when there is an intense debate in many countries about how to reduce multiple pregnancy rates and provide affordable fertility treatment, policy makers should be made aware of our results," said the study's lead researcher Hannu Martikainen of the University of Oulu in Finland. "These data should also encourage clinics to evaluate their embryo transfer policy and adopt elective single embryo transfer as their everyday practice for women younger than 40," she said in a statement....

The study, published by the reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction, found that the live birth rate was five percent higher for women who had only one embryo implanted at a time. The single embryo procedure was also cheaper, especially when health complications due to multiple births were taken into account. "We found that a baby born alive at term using single embryo transfer was, on average, 19,899 euros (26,825 dollars) less expensive than babies born as a result of double embryo transfer," Martikainen said.

Some countries limit the number of embryos that can be created and implanted, and the time has come for the USA to begin to regulate the field.

But don't expect it to be easy. As we have discussed previously, some wish to make embryos for use in research. Some want multiple births. Some fertile people want to use IVF--coupled with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis--to prevent babies from being born with health diseases, for purely cosmetic culling, or sex selection.

But if we moved to a more limited license for creating and implanting IVF embryos, there would be fewer women afflicted with serious side effects, no need for "selective reduction," e.g. aborting one or more of multiple fetuses, no storing of "unneeded" embryos in the deep freeze bringing with it the temptation of objectification, and less likelihood of eugenic selection of which babies should be born.

Still, we have become a society in which very powerful forces think that the right to have a child through any manner desired--or abort a child at almost any time and for any reason--are connected and should be absolute. They will fight tooth and tong to ensure that the current dysfunctional and unethical "anything goes" US approach doesn't change.

Obama Press Conference: Once Again the President is Disengenuous on Embryonic Stem Cell Research Policy

I was just watching President Obama's press conference and noticed that he once again dissembled on his answer regarding embryonic stem cell research. From the transcript:

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. In your remarks on stem-cell research earlier this month, you talked about a majority consensus in determining whether or not this is the right thing to do, to federally fund embryonic stem-cell research. I'm just wondering, though, how much you personally wrestled with the morality or ethics of federally funding this kind of research, especially given the fact that science so far has shown a lot of progress with adult stem cells but not a lot with embryonic?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Okay. No, I -- I think it's a -- I think it's a legitimate question. I -- I wrestle with these issues every day. As I mentioned to -- I think in an interview a couple of days ago, by the time an issue reaches my desk, it's a hard issue. If it was an easy issue, somebody else would have solved it and it wouldn't have reached me.

Look, I believe that it is very important for us to have strong moral guidelines, ethical guidelines, when it comes to stem-cell research or anything that touches on, you know, the issues of possible cloning or issues related to, you know, the human life sciences. I think those issues are all critical, and I've said so before. I wrestle with it on stem cells; I wrestle with it on issues like abortion.

Except that Obama stated during the campaign that he supports the Freedom of Choice Act that would apparently end any and all regulation on abortion through the ninth month, whether at the federal or local levels. He also refused to support the Illinois version of the Infant Born Alive Protection Act when he was a state senator. He is actively seeking to dismantle the Bush "conscience clause" regulation that protected health care workers with moral qualms about procedures like abortion. If he really wrestled with abortion, he lost the bout!

Back to the president:

I think that the guidelines that we provided meet that ethical test. What we have said is that for embryos that are typically about to be discarded, for us to be able to use those in order to find cures for Parkinson's or for Alzheimer's or for, you know, all sorts of other debilitating diseases, juvenile diabetes, that -- that it is the right thing to do. And that's not just my opinion. That is the opinion of a number of people who are also against abortion.

It seems to me his ESCR policies are almost as wide open as his abortion policies. For example, there was no requirement in the recent EO that the Feds only fund stem cell lines that came from "leftover" embryos. This means the NIH could, theoretically, fund stem cell lines taken from embryos created explicitly for the purpose of being destroyed--an approach the ethics opinion of the National Academy of Sciences supports as perfectly fine and proper.

And by the way, Alzheimer's is not the kind of a disease likely to be cured by embryonic stem cell infusions because it is caused by plaques that attack the whole brain. Why do some believe it is? Because, despite it not being true, as one ESCR-hyping scientist put it several years ago, "People need a fairy tale."

Cue the POTUS:

Now, I am glad to see progress is being made in adult stem cells. And if the science determines that we can completely avoid a set of ethical questions or political disputes, then that's great. I have -- I have no investment in causing controversy. I’m happy to avoid it if that's where the science leads us.

Then why rescind the 2007 Bush order requiring that the Feds fund research into non controversial "alternative" methods, the very kind of policy geared toward bridging our bitter cultural and political divides, a matter he has now twice kept quite mum about--here and in his stem cell speech.

Obama continued:

But what I don't want to do is predetermine this based on a very rigid ideological approach. And that's what I think is reflected in the executive order that I signed.

But that is what he did, base his order on a very rigid ideological approach that views nascent human life is so much chopped liver. Indeed, as far as I can tell, he took federal funding just as far as the law allows, and only expressed an ethical qualm about the only limit he seems to have placed on anything only an ethical qualm about reproductive cloning, a matter with which he is unlikely he to have to deal directly in his term of office due to profound technological challenges that stand between here and the hypothetical birth of the first baby gestated from a cloned embryo.

Sigh. Definitely not the straight talk express.

Deep Ecology Misanthropy Moving Into Mainstream Environmentalism

Deep Ecology is a neo earth religion, the ideology of which holds that nature should be given equal consideration with people--a concept sometimes called ecological egalitarianism. The explicit rejection of human exceptionalism led adherents into a profound nihilism and anti-humanism in which deep ecologists yearn for a radical human depopulation to under 1 billion.

It is one thing when the fringe speaks in this manner. But as we have noted here at SHS before, such thinking is moving into the popular culture with movies such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, and also, closer to the environmental mainstream with its growing obsessions over climate change and limiting human prosperity. Now, a major UK environmental adviser wants to see his country cut its population in half. From the story:

JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown's leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.

Porritt's call will come at this week's annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which he is patron. The trust will release research suggesting UK population must be cut to 30m if the country wants to feed itself sustainably. Porritt said: "Population growth, plus economic growth, is putting the world under terrible pressure"...

Porritt is winning scientific backing. Professor Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum, will use the OPT conference, to be held at the Royal Statistical Society, to warn that population growth could help derail attempts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Rapley, who formerly ran the British Antarctic Survey, said humanity was emitting the equivalent of 50 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. "We have to cut this by 80%, and population growth is going to make that much harder," he said.

There are decidedly genocidal and tyrannically eugenic implications in such advocacy. Porritt, for example, has called for the UK to adopt a 2 child policy. But that would, at most, keep the population roughly static--assuming immigration was limited. It would not cut the population by half--the UK currently has about 61 million people--meaning much harsher measures would have to be taken than exerting social pressure or enacting legal requirements to restrict family size.

It is of great concern that a key adviser to the government seems to have swallowed the deep ecology poison and still be considered a respectable spokesperson for environmentalism.

Ignorant Independent Science Reporter Accuses Others of Ignorance

A science reporter named Steve Connor in the UK, has written a diatribe against opponents of ESCR in the Independent. Part of his critique is an unoriginal cheap shot at the Catholic Church and the issue of ensoulment--which is way beyond our jurisdiction here, and moreover, as far as I know, has not been a major part of the debate anywhere. But then Connor goes on to defend the so-called "14-day rule," which permits embryos to be maintained for 14 days for purposes of experiments. From his column:

The reason why it was decided to allow research on human embryos less than 14 days old was because the ball of cells within the developing embryo that actually becomes the baby--as opposed to the placenta and amniotic sac--does not itself develop until after the 14th day.

Embryologists call this tissue the "primitive streak" and its non-existence in IVF embryos younger than 14 days old was why the 14-day limit on researching and growing human embryos is enshrined in British law. We can thank the Warnock Committee, which sat more than 20 years ago, for this insight. It has proved a remarkably robust argument against those who hold the view that a human being with a soul begins at conception.

Again, most of the people who want to argue about ensoulment are advocates who come from Connor's side of the street. It is the instrumental use of human organisms, nascent human beings, that is morally objectionable. And as we have reported here, embryology text books clearly state that human life begins with the completion of fertilization, not after two weeks when the embryo implants or when the primitive streak emerges.

More to the point, Connor gets his science wrong. Some of the cells in the blastocyst--the embryo at about 1 week--do indeed develop into placenta--which is a vital embryonic and fetal organ necessary for its nourishment and development. But some of the cells--remember these are the pluripotent stem cells that are so coveted by scientists because in theory they can become any cell in the body--become the developing baby's liver, skin, blood, etc. They might not have known that 20 years ago when the Warnock Commission sat, but they sure do now.

Moreover, the primitive streak, which is the beginning of the nervous system, is merely the first visible sign of differentiation, that is, the transformation of the preexisting pluripotent stem cells into specific tissue types. But the streak itself is not what becomes the other tissues.

Beyond that, why would the presence of some differentiated cells increase the moral worth of the embryo? It wouldn't, of course. This is just a false line to be used for now to give the masses the illusion of ethical control. But remember, at least for now, human embryos can't be maintained past 10-14 days in the Petri dish. Thus, as we see so often, the 14-day rule is just another example of "the scientists" being willing to prevent only that which cannot yet be accomplished technologically. Besides, we already see advocacy for fetal farming among some bioethicists, as we have pointed out here at SHS.

Finally, the Warnock Commission was led by Baroness Warnock, a crass utilitarian eugenicist, who has made many outrageous claims on the bioethical front, including supporting a duty to die.

Before Connor calls others ignorant, perhaps he should make sure he is not the pot calling the kettle black.

Biological Colonialism Alert: Cash for Organs Plan in Singapore

If organs can be purchased, it seems obvious to me that the rich will buy and the poor will sell. Singapore's plan to open the door to this form of biological colonialism has raised this very concern. From the story:

Plans by Singapore to allow payments to living organ donors have run into opposition from some lawmakers who fear they may draw indebted foreign workers, according to press reports Tuesday.

One deputy, Halimah Yacob, said the large pool of unskilled foreign workers affected by the financial crisis may turn to donating organs to pay off debts they incurred to get jobs in this affluent city-state...

The issue was debated Monday in parliament where Halimah, a ruling party lawmaker, said some foreign workers "will become a ready, vulnerable pool of organ donors to be exploited and abused."

"To a desperate foreign worker, even a reimbursement of 10,000 (Singapore) dollars (6,600 US) would be attractive compared to going home empty-handed with a huge debt waiting for him," she was quoted as saying by The Straits Times.

Of course that would happen. The problem is, too many of the people who could benefit--and have the power--don't care.

I have always worried that we are heading toward what I call a Blade Runner world: the masses living in quasi anarchy, as the rich and powerful live lives of luxury behind high walls , marked by eugenics and the ability to exploit the weak. Setting up a commodities market in organs is a step down that path.

Leon Kass Awarded National Endowment for Humanites Most Prestigious Honor

Good for Leon Kass and well deserved! The country's most eloquent and articulate defender of intrinsic human dignity will be giving the NEH Jefferson Lecture, the Endowment's most prestigious honor. From the press release:

Dr. Leon R. Kass, a widely published author, award-winning humanities teacher, and one of America's leading moral philosophers and experts on medical ethics, will deliver the 2009 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced today. The annual NEH-sponsored Jefferson Lecture is the most prestigious honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.

"Leon Kass is an outstanding scholar, a gifted teacher, and one of our nation's leading humanists," said NEH Acting Chairman Carole M. Watson. "He has brought the wisdom of the humanities to bear on many topics, from bioethics to courtship, and his dedication to undergraduate teaching in the humanities has benefited a generation of students."

Kass was vilified by utilitarian bioethicists during his tenure as head of the President's Council because he opposes human cloning and stands up for human exceptionalism. In an age when the social outlaws and radicals get most of the attention, it is gratifying to see one of the true greats receive the credit he deserves.

It's About the $: Libertarians Discover Futile Care Theory

I have crossed pens occasionally with Reason writer Ronald Baily and debated him (and others) at CUNY about transhumanism and other brave new world agendas. Well, Baily just [update, actually in 2006] learned about a Texas futile care case that, he writes, led to scorched earth commentary from the Left. (As regular readers of SHS know, it is legal in the Lone Star State to impose futile care upon unwilling patients.) From his column:

I somehow missed the culture war moment last month when it was reported that Baylor Regional Medical Center in Plano, Texas, disconnected a dying, uninsured cancer patient, Tirhas Habtegiris, from the ventilator that was keeping her alive. The 27-year-old abdominal cancer patient was conscious and did not wish to be disconnected because she hoped that her mother would arrive from Africa for one last visit before she died. The hospital warned the patient and her family that it would keep her on the ventilator for just 10 more days. Ms. Habtegiris died 16 minutes after the ventilator was shut off on December 14, 2005.

I hadn't heard about that one either, but I am not surprised.

Bailey says the Left was up in arms when the story became public because the cutoff seems to been motivated by money. Ya think? And he wonders why the political right didn't also jump all over the case. Perhaps they didn't know about it--as I didn't. However, if Bailey had done a little digging, he would have learned that pro lifers and others on the right have coalesced with disability rights leaders and others on the left to oppose futile care theory wherever it rears its ugly head. Indeed, this strange political bedfellow coalition has stopped the advance of Idaho's S. 1114, a bill that would legalize Texas-style futile care theory.

Meanwhile, Baily exhibits his usual terminal nonjudgmentalism about such moral issues, but notes that the issue of futile care is definitely about money:

Critics of Baylor's decision should also bear in mind that it's not as though Habtegiris did not receive medical care. She was admitted to one of the finest hospitals in America, which did treat her illness. We know that she was in intensive care at the hospital for at least 10 days and probably more. A recent study of intensive care using a ventilator calculated the cost at $2,255 to $3,040 per day, so her stay at Baylor cost the hospital at least $22,550. That's $22,550 that someone else's insurance or taxes will have to cover through increased costs....

Perhaps it was wrong for Baylor to pull the plug in this instance, but it is clear that in the real world of limited medical resources that the "authorities," whether private or governmental, will unavoidably be making similar life and death decisions in the future.

Maybe resistance is futile. But then again, maybe not: If we can alert the public to this danger, we may be able to prevent the agenda from sinking into the bedrock of medical ethics and economics.

Update: I didn't notice that Bailey's article is from 2006. It doesn't change the thrust of the post, but we strive to be accurate. Thanks, and sorry for any inconvenience caused to any SHSer.

Softball Interview With Accused Final Exit Network Accused Felon Ted Goodwin

The media love social outlaws, particularly those involved with assisted suicide, and rarely challenge them in interviews or journalistic profiles--a phenomenon I have discussed here at SHS before. That could explain why Ted Goodwin, the former head of Final Exit Network and vice president of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies, sat down with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for a chat, despite being under indictment: He knew he had nothing to fear.

True to form, Goodwin is not challenged or pressed. I mean catch the first question! From the interview:

Q: Tell me about the first "exit" you participated in. Were you scared?

Compassionate Ted was apprehensive, we learn, but his first suicide thought he was an "angel," and so a life's purpose was found.

Asked if he is religious, Goodwin soothes:

Every day of my upbringing my parents taught me decency and generosity and compassion for others. And so that's my spirituality. I look upon what we do as a ministry.

The tough interlocutor then asks how Goodwin "feels" when someone he has just been talking to expires:

This is a very difficult job to be able to befriend someone, to visit them sometimes four, five and six times--talk with them over the phone--and then to know that someday you're going to be in attendance when they end their own lives. It takes a real mental strength to be able to deal with that and not emotionally dissolve...

But he has what it takes and selflessly carries on. And here's a question that begged a follow up, which unsurprisingly, was never asked:

Q: Why do you accept people who are not terminal?

A: Why should we make that decision for someone, that their suffering is any less than those that have, by the grace of God, a time limit on their suffering?

I wonder why the interviewer didn't ask Goodwin why FEN cleans up after the suicide, removing the helium canister and the bag used to cause death. I wonder why he didn't bring up the Phoenix case in which a mentally ill woman was, it is suspected, "counseled" by FEN representatives. I wonder why he didn't mention that the man he is accused of assisting in suicide had been successfully treated for cancer.

Oh never mind: I am spitting into the wind.

The "Philosophy" of Climate Change?

I have been saying that science is becoming a religion (scientism), but this is ridiculous. A climate change parishioner has been found to have been wrongfully fired in the UK over his "philosophical belief" in global warming. From a column by the Telegraph's ever politically incorrect Christopher Booker:

A London employment tribunal has ruled that Tim Nicholson... was wrongly dismissed as a property firm's "head of sustainability" because of his fervent commitment to "climate change". Mr Nicholson had fallen out with his colleagues over his attempts to reduce the company's "carbon footprint". The tribunal chairman David Neath found the company guilty of discriminating against Mr Nicholson under the 2006 Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations, because his faith in global warming was a "philosophical belief".

Recalling how "eco-psychologists" at the University of the West of England are pressing for "climate denial" to be classified as a form of "mental disorder", one doubts whether the same legal protection would be given to those who fail to share Mr Nicholson's "philosophical belief".

Yes indeed. The double standards cut across many areas of social concern beyond what we deal with substantively here at SHS.

Booker also notes that current measurements show that the Arctic ice is thickening, not thinning. But there is a remedy for that heresy: He can always be involuntarily hospitalized for mental health observation for his denial psychosis.

"Suicides R Us" Franchises Soon to be Available: Former UK Health Minister Wants to See Suicide Clinics

I remember seeing the movie Soylent Green in the early 70s. One of the shocks of the film has E.G. Robinson's character leaving a note to Charlton Heston that he was "going home," which turned out to be death via a euthanasia clinic. As I recall, the idea that society would become so crass and abandoning as to permit clinics where people would go to be killed was seen as beyond the pale.

Well, in the 1990s, Kevorkian urged the establishment of suicide/euthanasia clinics. Many laughed that off as advocacy from a fringe kook--even though he had better poll numbers than Barack Obama does today.

Now suicide clinic promotion has entered the mainstream of politics. None other than Patricia Hewitt, the former Health Minister in the Blair Government, wants to see them established in the UK. From the story:

Suicide clinics should be set up in the UK and "assisted suicide" legalised, Patricia Hewitt said yesterday.

The ex-Health Secretary will try to change the law next week so people who take terminally ill loved ones abroad to die cannot be jailed. But she eventually wants to go further and legalise assisted suicide. Ms Hewitt said she had been "quite troubled by the issue for several years". She added: "My own view is that we should have a law for people who are terminally ill but also mentally competent of making that very grave decision."

Forget the nonsense about terminal illness. As we have noted often, the Swiss suicide clinics that receive "suicide tourists" from the UK and elsewhere are not so constrained either in law or in practice.

It has been reported that the Dignitas suicide clinic in Switzerland turns a pretty penny offing people. But at least we can take comfort that when chain suicide clinics are established, the efficiencies of scale should bring the price of dying down to a level everyone can afford. Hey! In the USA, the billions or trillions (whatever) being spent from money borrowed from China to pay for the stimulus bill could provide the financing! You too could start a whole new career in the fast growing industry of suicide facilitation.

Culture of death? What culture of death?

Regulate IVF in an Age of No Boundaries? Not a Chance

Will Saletan of Slate writes an always thought provoking column that is a favorite of SHS's. The gold of Saletan's approach is that he takes a step back and expertly points out problems with, and logical outcomes of, behavior or policies--although he never seems to promote any real solutions. I suspect that he doesn't see that as his job.

Having previously discussed the slippery slope of IVF, in this column Saletan warns of another "slippery slope" on the side of the hill that would regulate IVF and related technologies. His column illustration is a pending Georgia bill that once sought to limit the number of IVF embryos that could be implanted--which, as I predicted, was hammered so hard that it had to be amended. The current bill would ban all human cloning--hooray--and would only permit IVF for the treatment of infertility.

Sounds reasonable to me, but Saletan notes that the bill could be construed to prevent fertile couples from using IVF coupled with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD)--genetically testing the embryos for eugenic purposes prior to implantation to weed out the unacceptable--in order not just to have a baby, but to have the kind of baby (whether based on health or cosmetic desires) they want. From his column:

I don't know whether the bill will pass the Georgia House. But this is just the beginning. The bill is part of a nationwide project to regulate the emerging industry of embryo production. In one state or another--and then another and another--legislation will be filed to restrict IVF. Based on the Georgia experiment, these bills will probably make exceptions for infertility but not PGD. The battles, then, will be fought over which uses of PGD are acceptable. And these fights will be every bit as ugly as the preceding fights over abortion.

This column is dedicated to making us look at ugly facts and moral problems we don't want to see. For several years, one of these problems has been the slippery slope of PGD. Now we'll have to face, in all its ugliness, the slippery slope of regulating it.

I think Saletan gets a few things wrong in his piece. First, not all pro-lifers oppose IVF per se. The Catholic Church does, but that isn't the same thing.

More to the point of this post, the idea that in this day and age we will ever reach sufficient societal consensus to constrain our growing sense of entitlement to hyper control every and all aspects of our reproductive lives--regardless of the moral costs or the deaths caused thereby--is to miss the ocean in which we currently swim. And even if we did, I doubt the judiciary, which increasingly conflates the policy desires of the Liberal "choice ubber alles" Elite with the requirements of the U.S. and state constitutions, would permit these laws to stand.

But this is the real point behind the point: While I support legislation such as the one in Georgia, in the end, law alone is not the answer. What we really need is self restraint. But how is that promoted when any and all criticisms of anyone's "choices" are hammered as insensitive moralism? Until and unless we can escape the black hole of terminal nonjudgmentalism and reach social norms about these matters to which all are expected to abide, the "edges" will continue to be pushed, and those who do the pushing will continue to be celebrated on toxic shows like Oprah and in the even worse celebrity magazines, as the rest of us wring our hands about the collapse of our culture. Which is too bad: My hands are already pretty badly chaffed.

Governor Palin's Address To The 2009 Special Olympics Shows the Beauty of Unconditional Love

In light of the President's unthinking slight ot the athletes who participate in the Special Olympics--and keeping in mind the 90% eugenic abortion rate that sadly belies our supposed commitment to "diversity"--I thought it would be worthwhile to post Sarah Palin's address to the Special Olympics given a few weeks ago. Whatever one might think of Palin's politics, her family's joyful acceptance of Trig into the core of their hearts illustrates the power of unconditional love. Her statements in support of the Special Olympics--which I believe the Kennedy Family played a key role in establishing-- shows that some things transcend--or at least, they should transcend--our divisions. What a gracious presentation.

SHS Funnies

I feel Goat's Pain.

Biologically, A New Human Life Begins When Fertilization is Complete

This argument wouldn't have to be made, but for science becoming post modern in some circles so that narrative counts more than facts. This has certainly been true with regard to biotechnology because some want to use human embryos instrumentally. But rather than just admit that and justify it ethically, definitions were changed, for example, claiming that an embryo only comes into being upon implantation, rather than at its beginning at the completion of fertilization. In that way--presto-chango--embryos in petri dishes could be used as so many kernels of corn.

But I looked into this issue when I was researching Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World. Every embryology text book I reviewed retained the non political definition of when human life begins, e.g. at the completion of fertilization. One is The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology (6th Ed.) (Keith Moore and T. V. N. Persaud, W. B. Sanders Company, Philadelphia, PA, 1998), which asserts:

Human development is a continuous process that begins when an oocyte is fertilized by a sperm. (page 2)

More to the point, the authors write:

Human development begins at fertilization [with the joining of egg and sperm, which] form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized...cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.(page 18)

The authors of another embryology textbook (Ronan O'Ramilly and Fabiola Muller, Human Embryology and Teratology, (Third Ed.), (Willey-Liss, New York, NY, 2001), also state on page 8 that upon the completion of fertilization:

a new, genetically distinct human organism is formed.

Since some don't want to call embryos what they are, as I pointed out in an earlier post, some politicized scientists use the word "pre embryo," as if it were something different in kind than an embryo after it implants. But scientifically, biologically, there is no such thing as a pre-embryo. Thus, the authors of Human Embryology and Teratology, in the name of scientific accuracy, place the term "pre-embryo" under the categorization, "Undesirable Term in Human Embryology," further asserting that "embryo" is the accurate and hence, "preferable term." They write further on page 88:

The term "pre-embryo" is not used here [in their book] for the following reasons: (1) it is ill-defined; (2) it is inaccurate...(3) it is unjustified because the accepted meaning of the world embryo includes all of the first 8 weeks; (4) it is equivocal because it may convey the erroneous idea that a new human organism is formed at only some considerable time after fertilization; and (5) it was introduced in 1986 "largely for public policy reasons."

But of course, such objective scientific analysis doesn't serve the polemic needs of some ESCR and cloning advocates.

Terri Schiavo Was Not a Carrot

The use of the "V-word" continues to be used in the most "enlightened" places. Today, it is an interview with health author Jane Brody in the NYT about her new book on planning for death. From the interview:

Q: When is the right time to start planning for death?

A: Start thinking about it when it's unlikely to happen any time soon. It's much easier to do it then. It's less painful. Get it out of the way. Many people are saying, "I'm going to take action now while I still feel good and I'm still healthy." You don't have to be old. If you recall, Terri Schiavo was 26 when she suffered a heart attack that deprived her brain of oxygen and left her a living vegetable for 15 years, at great cost and trauma to her family.

Terri Schiavo was not a carrot or a turnip. She was a human being with a profound cognitive disability. Calling her a "V" demeans her and dehumanizes her moral worth as a human being--just as the odious "N-word" does people with dark skin. It should never be used among enlightened people. Indeed, we need to grow as a culture so that anyone using it is treated with the same disdain by polite society as we do now to anyone who uses the crude "N" epithet.

Second: Terri's family was certainly grief stricken over her injury--the precise cause of which will never be known. But that is not what so badly traumatized them, and it is not what extracted a "great cost." Those inflictions came from the horror they felt--and still feel--because they were not permitted to care for her for the rest of her life in order to, instead, slowly dehydrate her to death by court order to the applause of much of society.

Brody needs to get a clue as to both her facts and her lexicon.

Hubris and "Endarkenment" in Science Editorial

As someone once accused by bioethicist Alta Charo of promoting an "Endarkenment" because of my views on ESCR--at least she did it to my face--I have to say that a recent Science editorial extolling President Obama's stem cell speech, demonstrates the very unenlightened approach it accuses former President Bush of pursuing. Oozing the hubris we have come to expect from the politicized science sector, and referencing Bush's late ESCR funding policy, the editorial (no link) states:

The authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were children of the Enlightenment. They understood the power that flows from combining human reason with empirical knowledge, and they assumed that the political system they were creating would thrive only in a culture that upheld the values of the Enlightenment...

Recently, however, the precepts of the Enlightenment were ignored and even disdained with respect to the manner in which science was used in the nation's governance. Dogma took precedence over evidence, and opinion over facts. Happily, as was made clear by two policy announcements by President Barack Obama on 9 March 2009, the break in the traditionally harmonious relationship between science and government is now ending.

What garbage. President Bush's ESCR policy was long on facts and long on ethics. He acknowledged that an embryo is a human being. That's basic biology. He stated that because embryos are human beings, they should not be used as instrumentalities with government money. That is good ethics and it reflected existing federal law (Dickey Amendment)---indeed a law that President Obama just renewed with his signature. One can disagree with Bush's conclusion about how to best promote science within a proper ethical parameter. But he took an ethical position that specifically reflected "a combination of human reason with empirical analysis."

In fact, if any side of this debate has been anti-science, it has been the pro ESCR side. Anti science is redefining basic biological terms for a political purpose, as in the trope that an embryo that was not yet implanted, sometimes called the "pre embryo," is not a human life. None other than Princeton biologist Lee Silver admitted this was being done by his side in his pro cloning and genetic engineering book Remaking Eden, page 39, as quoted in my Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World (my emphasis):

I'll let you in on a secret. The term pre-embryo has been embraced wholeheartedly...for reasons that are political, not scientific. The new term is used to provide the illusion that there is something profoundly different between what we nonmedical biologists still call a six-day old embryo [the blastocyst] and what we and everyone else call a sixteen-day old embryo [an embryo that has begun to develop differentiated tissues].

The term pre-embryo is useful in the political arena--where decisions are made about whether to allow early embryo (now called pre-embryo) for experimentation--as well as in the confines of a doctor's office, where it can be used to allay moral concerns that might be expressed by IVF patients. "Don't worry," a doctor might say, "it's only pre-embryos that we're manipulating and freezing. They won't turn into real human embryos until after we've put them back in your body."

That's corrupting science because it is explicitly intended to prevent rational debate by obfuscating the facts about the humanity of the early embryo in order to reach a predetermined "ethical" conclusion, not based on facts but a junk biology narrative.

Science's editorial continues:

The president has taken a large and inspiring step to restore the historically beneficial balance between science and government; we should all now offer to help with the enlightened effort just launched.

Translation: We now have a rubber stamp back in office that will allow us to do whatever we want and will sign a blank check to pay for it. Talk about an Endarkenment!

President Obama Puts Foot in Mouth: Makes Offensive Remark About Special Olympics on Leno

This was gratuitously harmful politically to the president, and it reflects a thoughtlessness, I think, that belies his image as a sensitive egalitarian. President Obama has compared his poor bowling skills to the Special Olympics. From the story:

Towards the end of his approximately 40-minute appearance, the president talked about how he's gotten better at bowling and has been practicing in the White House bowling alley.

He bowled a 129, the president said.

"That's very good, Mr. President," Leno said sarcastically.

It's "like the Special Olympics or something," the president said.

Not to make too big a deal out of this, but all I can say is that if President Bush ever said something like that, the howling about how the remark reflected his inner anti-disability attitudes would never end.

Prostate Screening Unncessary! Prostate Screening Will Save Lives!

How can anyone trust anything written today about science? In an earlier SHS post, I touched on how a pair of new studies--we were told by the Washington Post--demonstrated that routine prostate screening for cancer isn't worth doing. The point of that post was not so much to focus on the findings but to criticize an American Cancer Society spokesperson for accusing those who get screened annually of pursuing a medicine of faith rather than evidence.

Imagine my jaw dropping, then, when I checked the Telegraph as I do every evening and the headline stated that the one of same studies cited in the Post story showed that routine prostate screening could save thousands of lives! From the story:

The European Randomised Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC), which looked at 182,000 men aged between 50 and 74, found that screening them for the disease could cut the number of deaths by 20 per cent.

If the trial's results were replicated it would mean up to 2,000 lives could be saved in the UK every year. Any national programme could follow the pattern for that of breast cancer screening, which tests women between 50 and 70 and saves an estimated 1,400 lives a year.

Screening would involved men reaching middle age being asked to attend a local clinic every few years to have a blood test. This would check for high levels of a protein called Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA), which increases in people who have a tumour. If the results suggested prostate cancer, a biopsy would be taken and, if the cells appeared dangerous, the patient would undergo surgery or be monitored until intervention was appropriate.

My head is spinning. Back to the Post article:

The PSA blood test, which millions of men undergo each year, did not lower the death toll from the disease in the first decade of a U.S. government-funded study involving more than 76,000 men, researchers reported yesterday. The second study, released simultaneously, was a European trial involving more than 162,000 men that did find fewer deaths among those tested. But the reduction was relatively modest and the study showed that the tests resulted in a large number of men undergoing needless, often harmful treatment.

Together, the studies--released early by the New England Journal of Medicine to coincide with presentations at a scientific meeting in Stockholm--cast new doubt on the utility of one of the most widely used tests for one of the most common cancers.

How are these two diametrically opposed accounts of the same basic story to be reconciled? It looks like the difference arises from the choice of "experts" the respective journalists interviewed to interpret the findings. In the Telegraph, the emphasis was on the number of lives that could be saved with universal screening. In the Post, the experts emphasized the supposedly low utility of lives saved versus the costs in reduced quality of life for those being treated when the cancer is discovered.

Let's consider this: The same data was used by two different newspaper reporters to promote two opposite conclusions for readers to reach from the stories. Or to put it in the vernaculr, each report spun the same story in a different directon.

Will Rodgers once famously said: "All I know is what I read in the newspapers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance." He didn't know the half of it.

Desire to Detect Prostate Cancer Early Disdained as "Religious" Pursuit by American Cancer Society Spokesman

I never cease to be amazed at the sense of superiority that drips from the pores of some people who work in the sciences. I find this quite irritating, which was brought to a head for me this morning when I read a story about prostate cancer screening.

For years, we have been told repeatedly and often to get screening tests for cancer because, logically enough, the earlier you catch the disease the greater the likelihood of surviving. That remains true of cancers such as of the breast--get those mammograms--and the colon--get those colonoscopies. But apparently, research increasingly indicates that this general rule may not necessarily apply to the early detection of prostate cancer.

Whether this is true or not is worthy of reasoned discussion. But catch this looking-down-his-nose comment by a representative of the American Cancer Society about men and doctors who seek to detect prostate cancer early through PSA blood testing. From the story:

"Americans have been getting screened for prostate cancer because there is this religious faith that finding it early and cutting it out saves lives," said Otis W. Brawley of the American Cancer Society. "We've been doing faith-based screening instead of evidence-based screening. These findings should make people realize that it's a legitimate question about whether we should be screening for prostate cancer."

Yes it is a legitimate question, but deciding to screen is hardly irrational, which is what Brawley was saying by calling prostate screening a "religious faith." Indeed, the question has been--and remains--unsettled. For example, last year the Annals of Internal Medicine published this recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force about prostate screening:

Current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of screening for prostate cancer in men younger than age 75 years (I statement). Do not screen for prostate cancer in men age 75 years or older. [Me: This is because prostate cancer grows so slowly in elderly men that the patient is likely to die from other causes long before the disease becomes life-threatening.]

Whether or not to conduct PSA tests for prostate cancer is a questions men and their doctors should carefully explore. But just because a few studies now show that it may not extend lives doesn't mean that anyone who elects to get a PSA screening is engaging in an irrational medical practice.

NHS Meltdown: Paying Weight Watchers but Rationing Care

The NHS disarray continues. In the scheme of things--with people in the UK unable to get good pain control and hospitals having receptionists examine patients--this is small. But it is symbolic of what happens in socialized systems. From the story:

The Health Service has paid out more than £3 million to the two biggest slimming firms in the country, Weight Watchers and Slimming World, for providing classes to overweight people referred to them by GPs. Since 2006, primary care trusts have bought vouchers entitling more than 70,000 people to free slimming classes.

New NHS fat camp for obese families in Rotherham. While the companies were paid upfront, less than 60 per cent of those who were referred by their GP stuck with the 12-week course, which cost £65 for classmates paying from their own pockets.

Critics lambasted the state-funded schemes as an "appalling" use of taxpayers money by a health service which rations treatment and life-extending drugs for patients with cancer. Meanwhile, obesity experts warned that diet classes were less likely to work if people did not attend them of their own volition, and commit their own money to their efforts.

In 2006, the NHS's rationing body, the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence, recommended that GPs send people to free slimming classes, because it was cheaper than weight loss pills or stomach stapling. Since then, Slimming World has sold more than 53,000 vouchers costing £45 to the NHS at a total cost to the taxpayer of more than £2.3 million.

I know weight control is important to good health, but Weight Watchers is not medical treatment. Moreover, if these people were morbidly obese, they should have received real medical help, not small prepackaged meals or aerobics classes.

Oversight boards like NICE are disastrous on more levels than can be counted. We have to make sure that no equivalent central control is ever imposed on Americans.

"Stem Cell Debate is Over Ethics, Not Science"

I have a piece in today's Sacramento Bee rounding out my critique of the Obama ESCR policy and his rescission of the Bush executive order requiring the Feds to fund alternative sources for funding of pluripotent stem cells. Some of this will be familiar to SHSers, but I think the points I make in the column are too little heard in the world beyond this blog. From my piece:

From the moment President George W. Bush imposed federal funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, Big Biotech, patient advocacy groups, celebrities and the media have been obsessed with eviscerating the policy. Indeed, although the Bush administration funded about $175 million in grants for human embryonic stem cell research, and despite the literally billions poured into the field from public and private sources such as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, or CIRM, and philanthropists, the public was continually warned that embryonic stem cell research in the United States was in danger of withering on the vine due to Bush.

With such abundant funding, that wasn't true. Nor was the charge that Bush's policy was "anti-science" because it funded only research on stem cell lines in existence as of Aug. 9, 2001. But the controversy was never a science debate. It was--and remains--an ethics debate that impacts directly on the importance and meaning of human life. Indeed, the question raised by embryonic stem cell research is whether it is morally right to treat and exploit human life--even at the nascent stage--as a mere natural resource.

I discuss the point that President Obama's new policy--he says--will also involve ethical controls:

Last week, the new president kept a campaign promise to free up federal funding for all embryonic stem cell lines whenever derived. But he also told the country that ethics still matter, stating: "We will support it (embryonic stem cell research) only if it is both scientifically worthy and responsibly conducted. We will develop strict guidelines, which we will rigorously enforce, because we cannot ever tolerate misuse or abuse."

How is that different in kind from what Bush did? Are ethical constraints "anti-science" only if one disagrees with where the lines are drawn

And I get into the Obama and CIRM hypocrisy over resisting legal requirements for the funding of "alternative" sources of pluripotent cells, such as IPSCs, and suggest that there is a reason for pushing embryonic methods:

If pursuing the best and most ethical science were truly the goals, why deflect increased support for this promising research to which no one objects? Perhaps it is because this debate involves more than stem cells taken from embryos "left over" from in-vitro fertilization--as the argument is usually couched--which brings us back to ethics. In the wake of the Obama changes in federal policy, the New York Times editorially threw down a gauntlet, calling for both the rescission of the Dickey Amendment and federal funding of human therapeutic cloning research. Now that the Bush restrictions are history, look for these battles--which again are not science debates--to flare in the years to come. In this sense, embryonic stem cell research threatens to become a launching pad to an ever-deepening erosion of the unique moral status of human life.

That's my story, anyhow. And I'm sticking to it.

SHS as Source for Anti Human Exceptionalism Column Ideas? Fetal Farming Pushed in Huffington Post

I wasn't going to run with this because bioethicist Jacob M. Appel seems to be following the same business model to career success as Julian Savulescu and others: stake out the most wild and radical positions conceivable and you are sure to get attention--and perhaps big speaking fees--as Peter "Professor Infanticide" Singer's $20,000 per pop illustrates. (As I have previously noted here, Appel has supported assisted suicide for the mentally ill, genetic engineering of progeny, and the acceptability of bestiality.)

But this fetal farming boost appeared in the Huffington Post, perhaps the most influential blog on the Left, with millions of readers. And it is pernicious in the extreme. From Appel's column:

Opponents of reproductive choice will object to such a market on the grounds that it will increase the number of abortions -- which will indeed be the logical result. However, such a market might also bring solace to women who have already decided upon abortion, but desire that some additional social good come from the procedure. Like the families of accident victims who donate the organs of their loved ones, these women could well find their decisions fortified by the public benefit that they generate. An additional economic incentive would further assuage any doubts, and might even make the procedure more palatable to otherwise equivocal spouses or partners.

Hmm. That sounds familiar. One week before Appel posted his column, I sarcastically wrote much the same thing here reacting to calls by UK scientists for using abortions as source of organs. From my post of March 11, "Fetal Farming, Here We Come: UK Scientists Say to Use Aborted Fetuses as Sources of Organs":

Hey, I know: When a woman wants an early term abortion, we can pay her to gestate a couple of extra months so her fetus can be of societal use! And imagine the possibilities when artificial wombs are created: We can gestate fetuses to order. The road to fetal farming is already being paved.

I am beginning to think Appel uses SHS as a source of ideas and then restates what I criticize as a positive. Let's look at Appel's conclusion, which reinforces the last point:

Someday, if we are fortunate, scientific research may make possible farms of artificial "wombs" breeding fetuses for their organs -- or even the "miracle" of men raising fetuses in their abdomens. That day remains far off. However, the prospect of fetal-adult organ transplantation is a much more realistic near-term possibility. A market in such organs might benefit both society and the women who choose to take advantage of it.

Again, I don't intend to react to every Appel column because that would support his business model. But that the Huffington Post considers this a legitimate and acceptable argument to run on its site--it would never countenance a racist utilitarian rant--shows, in my mind precisely the dark place where the utilitarian Left is more than happy to go. And it reminds me of the wisdom of the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, who once wrote:

Thousands of medical thicists and bioethicists, as they are called, professionally guide the unthinkable on its passage through the debatable on its way to becoming the justifiable, until it is finally established as the unexceptionable.

That was true when he wrote those words for Commentary in 1988. It was more true when I used this quote in Culture of Death in 2001. And it is true in spades and exclamation points today.

Irresponsibility in Reporting of Natasha Richardson Tragedy

I have been very unhappy about the lurid headlines in the New York Post and elsewhere about the gravely injured Natasha Richardson being "brain dead." That is not only insensitive to her devastated family, but the term is thrown around all too loosely.

Brain death is a popular term for "death by neurological criteria," in which various tests and patient history show that the brain and each of its constituent parts have ceased all functions as a brain. (It does not mean that every brain cell is nonfunctional.) It often gets conflated with a diagnoses of permanent unconsciousness--but is not the same as having a catastrophic brain injury. It is dead.

More responsible press reports have described Richardson as being in very critical condition or having suffered a devastating brain injury. No doubt that is true. And it is clear that irresponsible sources have used the term to reporters, as vulture like, they worm their way into a major celebrity story. But to call someone dead when it isn't clear that her demise has actually taken place, is not only wrong, it is cruel.

And Yet Still More Bad Management at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine

The CIRM, which doles out $300 million of borrowed money on Californians' credit card each year, has been a disaster from the start. We have seen mismanagement, conflicts of interest, hundreds of millions paid to buy the most expensive buildings designed by the most costly architects, etc., and other follies. And it seems to have become a personal power center for Robert Klein, who authored and penned the deceptive Proposition 71 and has run it ever since as a personal fiefdom.

Among the biggest boosters of the CIRM has been the editorial page of the Sacramento Bee. Now even the Bee seems to have had it up to its figurative neck with Klein and the CIRM's methods. From a Bee editorial:

A 29-member panel called the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee supervises California's $3 billion stem cell research institute. The committee's name was misleading from the start. It's even more so now. Last week, this supposedly "independent" committee met to decide on a new vice chair. The contenders were Art Torres, a former state senator, and Duane Roth, a San Diego Republican with ties to the biotech industry...

So what did the institute's overseers do? They split the difference. In an 11th-hour move on Thursday, the committee decided to create co-vice chairs and appoint Torres and Roth to the positions. They also voted to grant a $75,000 yearly salary to Torres, even though the previous vice chair, Ed Penhoet, had declined one.

Then the editorial gets around to Klein, whose leadership is so reminiscent of the entire financial mess at the federal level in a microcosm--remember Klein wanted $500,000 a year to run CIRM when the state was drowning in a $42 billion deficit--but selflessly settled for $150 K to work part time:

If the stem cell institute had a normal structure, with a strong president handling administrative duties, the selection of the institute vice chair would be less consequential. But because Chairman Robert Klein has such broad authority (Klein wrote the ballot initiative that created the stem cell institute), the vice chair can serve as an essential check on the chair's power.

With its decision Thursday, the oversight board has effectively agreed to subdivide the vice chairs' authority, giving Klein more power than ever. It's a further demonstration that the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee is neither independent, nor a group of citizens, nor much of an overseer of $3 billion in public monies.

The CIRM soap opera reminds me so much of the AIG mess and the broader financial debacle through which we are struggling in a microcosm--pigs feeding at the public trough without a modicum of common sense or understanding of public responsibility.

Klein said during the campaign that he pushed Proposition 71 to find a cure for his son's diabetes. But the way he has run the agency points toward egoism as having subsumed altruism. If Klein is really only about finding cures, he will resign and let a competent manager take the reins of the CIRM.

Come to The Second International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

The Second International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide will be held near Dulles Airport on May 29-30. I'll be there (although I don't like the photo in the ad), also Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, Rita Marker, head of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, Attorney Margaret Dore from Washington State, who has jumped into the fray big time in the last year, Diane Coleman of Not Dead Yet, Bobby Schindler, Terri Schiavo's brother, William Toffler from Physicians for Compassionate Care, Peter Saunders from the UK's Care Not Killing, and many more. Here's a link for more information.

Be there or be square.

NHS Meltdown: Appalling Hospital Conditions

The collapse of the NHS is a horror to behold. Now, stories are coming out of what can only be described as appalling conditions in one hospital. From the story:

The full extent of the horrific conditions at an NHS hospital where hundreds may have died because of 'appalling' care was laid bare yesterday. Dehydrated patients were forced to drink out of flower vases, while others were left in soiled linen on filthy wards. Relatives of patients who died at Staffordshire General Hospital told how they were so worried by the standard of care they slept in chairs on the wards. The 'shocking' catalogue of failures was released yesterday after an independent investigation by the Healthcare Commission...

Among the findings of the report were:
-- Receptionists carrying out initial checks on patients;
--Two clinical decision units--one unstaffed--used as 'dumping grounds' for A&E patients to avoid missing waiting targets;
-- Nurses who turned off heart monitors because they didn't understand how to use them;
-- Delayed operations, with some patients having surgery cancelled four days in a row and left without food, drink or medication;
-- Vital equipment such as heart defibrilators was not working.

The BBC has further details:

About 400 more people died at Stafford Hospital between 2005 and 2008 than would be expected, the Healthcare Commission said. It said there were deficiencies at "virtually every stage" of emergency care and managers pursued targets to the detriment of patient care.

Can you imagine?

Defeat for Futile Care in New Jersey

A case in NJ (Betancourt v. Trinitas Regional Medical Center, Docket No. C-12-09), in which the family of a 73-year-old man diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative state sued a hospital attempting to unilaterally withdraw extensive life support, has been decided by a judge. Properly, the trial court ruled against the hospital based on patient autonomy, which the judge ruled, cannot be usurped by the courts or the hospital or doctors, but belongs properly to the patient or his/her surrogate decision maker. From the court ruling:

The decision to continue or terminate life support systems is not left to the courts. The position of the hospital argues that the court take the role of surrogate decision maker. The hospital seeks to have the court exercise its judgment in determining the proper course of treatment for Mr. Betancourt, a task...outside the role of this court.

The court concludes that Mr. Betancourt is in a persistent vegetative state and unable to communicate his wishes with respect to the continuation of life supporting treatment. Accordingly the appointment of a guardian is required. The court grants the application of plaintiff Jackqueline Betancourt to be the guardian of her father...As guardian for Mr. Betan court, Ms. Betancourt is his surrogate decision maker. The plaintiff's application to restrain the defendant from discontinuing treatment of Mr. Betancourt is granted. The guardian is authorized to make decisions respecting medical treatment of Mr. Betancourt.

The treatment the guardian seeks is in furtherance of the quintessential purpose of medicine; extending the life of the patient. In this sense, it is non elective and the hospital seeks to stop it--not because it won't extend Mr. Betancourt's life--but because it probably will. Hence, the treatment is fulfilling its purpose. If the hospital won the case, doctors and bioethicists would, in effect, have been given the right to declare that the life of a patient diagnosed in a PVS is futile, and once that principle became well established in law and medical ethics, such ad hoc health care rationing wouldn't end with catastrophically ill people such as this patient.

Please be clear: I am not saying that I would have made the same decision under the same circumstances if it were my mother--who has made very clear to me in an advance directive what she would want and not want. I am saying it is the family's and the patient's values that matter--not the doctors' or hospital staff's, or as the court properly ruled, a judge's.

HT:I learned of this story from the blog Medical Futility, run by Thaddeus Mason Pope, a law professor at Widener University Law School. Pope is a futilitarian and I profoundly disagree with him on this issue. But I know of no better site covering medical futility on a consistent basis than Pope's--and that includes SHS. And he does so in an even-handed and accurate manner, while still making his own views quite clear. If you want to see what is happening in the field of futile care theory, Pope's blog is a must.

Idaho Futile Care Bill S. 1114 Stalled in House Committee--For Now

This is a follow up report about an urgent futile care threat we warned against twice last week at SHS (here and here): After being caught flat footed with the passage of S. 1114 through the Idaho Senate--a bill that would, in part, legalize futile care theory in Idaho and specifically authorize doctors to disregard a patient's advance written directive wanting life-sustaining treatment--opponents have gotten in the saddle. My sources tell me that real damage has been done to the futile care provisions as people began to look at what is really being proposed. As a consequence, a hearing that had been set in the House Health and Welfare Committee has been postponed.

That's good, but the bill--or at least the futile care part of it, since it is an omnibus involving many matters--isn't dead yet. (This is why I hate bills like this, the good has to be stalled to prevent the bad.) Now is the time to finish it off: All who oppose futile care in Idaho have to put their shoulders to the wheel and write their legislators opposing passage in its current form, send letters to the editor of local newspapers warning of the dangers to vulnerable patients, call talk radio, engage Internet chat rooms--any or all would be helpful. Tell your friends. Alert your colleagues. It's Paul Revere time.

I did thirty minutes on the radio to Idaho on the bill today, a good interview. But more needs to be done to spread the word since the Idaho media has not yet leapt to cover the controversy. Meanwhile, I am told, intense conversations are ongoing behind the scenes.

I think the futile care part of this bill can be killed with some more effort. That would be good for medicine, for vulnerable patients, and for the people of Idaho.

Assisted Suicide Group Admits to Undermining Proper Hospice Care

Compassion and Choices, the assisted suicide advocacy group, has admitted to undermining proper hospice care. That's not how they put it, of course. It brags that nearly 100% of Oregon assisted suicides last year--88% with which their representatives were involved--were in hospice. From the C and C press release:

Compassion and Choices, the nation's largest advocate for end-of-life care and choices and steward of the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, today noted that nearly 100% of terminally ill individuals using the law in 2008 were enrolled in hospice. Hospice enrollment among those using the Act increased to 98%, with 59 of the 60 individuals enrolled. Over the prior 10 years of the Act's existence, 86% of patients using the Act were enrolled in hospice, in itself a very high rate of use.

They should be ashamed, not proud. This press release is essentially an admission that its representatives interfere with the proper provision of hospice care, since an essential service of hospice is suicide prevention.

The published statistics from Oregon, for what they are worth, state that only two of the people about which the press release referred, were directed to a mental health consult, which is not the same thing as treatment. In 2007 there were zero referrals. This indicates that the patients who committed assisted suicide received no formal intervention for suicide prevention.

How is withholding suicide prevention is any different than providing inadequate pain control? Hence, Compassion and Choices undermines and interferes with the application of full and proper hospice care. I don't see any other way of looking at it.

Spanish Animal Rights Activists Go Nude to Protest Canadian Seal Hunt

What is it with animal rights activists and nudity? Spanish liberationists have gone naked to protest a Canadian seal hunt. From the story:

Around 100 people stripped naked and lay on the ground in a central Madrid square on Sunday as part of an international day of protest against Canada's annual seal hunt, due to resume next month. The members of animal rights group Equanimal smeared themselves in red liquid to signify a "massacre" of seals by Canada, where the annual seal hunt is due to resume in April. Some wore red underwear, others were totally nude. "We want to sensitise people to the fact that animals are capable of feeling and suffering like us, and to protest against the massacre of hundreds of thousands of seals which is about to begin in Canada," said spokeswoman Silvia Toval

No. That's a protest that will have zero impact on the Canadian hunt. This is about gaining attention in a sophomoric way. It is nothing but an antic. I think Gary Francione is right when he says such nudity events undermine the seriousness of the movement--which I admit, is fine with me.

The Oregon Compassion and Choices Assisted Suicide Enabling Act: C and C "stewarded" 88% of Oregon Assisted Suicides in 2008

The assisted suicide law called the Oregon Death with Dignity Act--as if dying without poisoning yourself to death isn't dignified--should instead be called the Oregon Compassion and Choices Assisted Suicide Enabling Act. It turns out that representatives of the assisted suicide advocacy organization--formerly the Hemlock Society-- are involved with the great majority of the assisted suicide deaths that take place in Oregon.

Physicians for Compassionate Care former president Kenneth Stevens, MD, has gone through the statistics and come up with some startling--and telling--numbers. From his report:

Officers of the assisted-suicide-proponent organization Compassion in Dying/Compassion and Choices of Oregon are authors of Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law and self-proclaim they are the stewards of the PAS law. They have reported that their organization has "participated in more than three/quarters of the state's cases of doctor-assisted suicide." (The Oregonian, March 10, 2005, "Pharmacy Board with review failed assisted suicide" by Don Colburn)

Here are the numbers, tallied by year, and note that last year C and C's rate was a record was 88%:

1998 -- 69%
1999 -- 67%
2000 -- 78%
2001 -- 81%
2002 -- 82%
2003 -- 81%
2004 -- 78%
2005 -- 66%
2006 -- 67%
2007 -- 65%
2008 -- 88%

Total 1998‐2008 --75%

It is important to remember while pondering these figures, that C and C is a very ideological organization that has been using Oregon--and by extension, the people who died under the "C and C Assisted Suicide Enabling Act," for political purposes in its national assisted suicide legalization advocacy campaigns. So the next time you hear one of its representatives soothingly assuring that everything is under control, realize that they are right--it is under their control. Or to paraphrase the opening of old TV show The Outer Limits : They control the horizontal, they control the vertical, they control almost all that you see and hear about assisted suicide in Oregon.

NHS Meltdown: Scandalously Few Pain Control Specialists in UK--and Some Want to Legalize Assisted Suicide?

The deficiencies in the UK's health system are varied and many. And still, euthanasia advocates there push for assisted suicide to be legalized. But the Guardian--a left-wing paper--has just reported that the inability of UK patients to gain access good pain control is scandalous. From the story:

Thousands of Britons are enduring unnecessary pain because of a lack of specialist clinics to ease their suffering, the government's chief medical officer will warn this week in his annual report.

Professor Sir Liam Donaldson will argue that many people are forced to put up with pain which may prevent them working, disturb their sleep, trigger depression and wreck their quality of life when it could have been alleviated with the right help. Almost eight million Britons suffer chronic pain persisting for more than three months, including back pain, migraine and pelvic pain caused by gynaecological conditions, as well as suffering associated with terminal illness. Yet Britain currently has only one pain management specialist for every 250,000 citizens, meaning only one in seven sufferers ever gets to a specialist.

Legalizing assisted suicide in the face of such bad palliation isn't going to solve the problem, it will surrender to it. The reporter even got the connection.

Asked whether better pain relief could, as some anti-euthanasia supporters argue, reduce the demand for doctor-assisted suicide from people with terminal conditions, Donaldson said: "I think this concept of a good death is very bound up with the lack of pain and the sort of serene quality that people enter when they are free of pain, so I guess all of the feelings that surround that are bound up to a large extent with pain."

Good for the reporter of this story for asking the question.

Coup de Culture Alert: Bioethicist Defends Bestiality

Apparently every aberrant behavior is to be normalized, including sex with animals: First it was Peter Singer claiming that bestiality was just two animals rubbing body parts. Then a movie was released sympathetic to the cause. Now, bioethicist Jacob M. Appel, who has called for allowing assisted suicide for the mentally ill and mandatory eugenic genetic screening, also defends bestiality--or perhaps better stated, opposes its legal prohibition--claiming that it might not be abuse, and indeed, "may well be neutral or even pleasurable for the animals."

I have publicly opposed bestiality as a matter of defending human exceptionalism, an issue to which Appel takes specific exception without mentioning me by name. From his column:

Opponents of bestiality often describe themselves as advocates of "human exceptionalism" and express the belief that intercourse with animals debases the dignity of human beings by blurring the lines between people and animals.? (They fail to explain why sex is unique in this manner--why playing Frisbee with a dog, or eating a corned beef sandwich, does not also blur such boundaries). [Me: Surely Appel understands the profound symbolic and intimacy differences between playing frisbee with a dog and having sexual intercourse with her (or him).]

Of course, nobody is suggesting that these critics be forced to sleep with animals, anymore than we would force vegetarians to eat lamb. However, the burden should be placed upon the prohibitionists to explain why a small minority of individuals with non-mainstream sexual interests pose a threat to our overall societal welfare. I leave open the question of how many zoophiles actually live in the United States: The research of sexologists such as Kinsey, as well as a brief survey of the Internet, suggest a considerable number. Needless to say, public animosity--and criminal statutes--likely keep them in the shadows.

Gosh, in the shadows! How cruel.

Sarcasm aside, my one serious foray into this "field," came in the Weekly Standard, in response to objections to legislation in Washington to outlawing bestiality filed in the wake of a man being killed whilst having sex with a horse. If you read the whole thing, I criticized Peter Singer's okaying bestiality and did indeed posit that the real reason for outlawing the practice--beyond the real issue of "abuse" and the surreal concern that "animals can't consent"--is that sex with animals unacceptably undermines human exceptionalism. Here's my conclusion in that regard:

The great philosophical question of the 21st Century is going to be whether we will knock humans off the pedestal of moral exceptionalism and instead define ourselves as just another animal in the forest. The stakes of the coming debate couldn't be more important: It is our exalted moral status that both bestows special rights upon us and imposes unique and solemn moral responsibilities--including the human duty not to abuse animals.

Nothing would more graphically demonstrate our unexceptionalism than countenancing human/animal sex. Thus, when [Washington State Senator Pam]Roach's [anti-bestiality] legislation passes, the law's preamble should explicitly state that one of the reasons bestiality is condemned through law is that such degrading conduct unacceptably subverts standards of basic human dignity and is an affront to humankind's inestimable importance and intrinsic moral worth.

Appel, quoting Brandeis, says outlawing bestiality violates the "right to be left alone." I say permitting it promotes social anarchy, moral disintegration, and a view of humans that is inherently degrading, thereby harming the common good.

In good taste please, what say you?

News Blockade: MSM Ignores Adult Stem Cell Human Trial Success in Treatment of Acute Spinal Cord Injuries

Geron recently obtained FDA permission to try using a potentially risky embryonic stem cell derived treatment developed to treat acute spinal cord injury in a human trial to test the safety of the product. But it turns out that a patient's own adult stem cells appear to already provide the same kind of benefit, and without the risk of tumors found in ES cells. From the story in Science Daily:

Researchers from DaVinci Biosciences, Costa Mesa, California, in collaboration with Hospital Luis Vernaza in Ecuador, have determined that injecting a patient's own bone marrow-derived stem cells (autologous BMCs) directly into the spinal column using multiple routes can be an effective treatment for spinal cord injury (SCI) that returns some quality of life for SCI patients without serious adverse events...

In eight patients who received BMC transplants through various routes and followed for two years, the scientists reported several functional improvements, perhaps the most important of which was improved bladder control. Finally, the researchers noted that one of their cases suffered a gunshot wound and that their study marked the first time a gunshot wound victim had received BMC transplants through multiple routes. "It is important to note," concluded Dr. Silva," that all of our patients with acute injuries improved significantly with no signs of deterioration or impediment of presumed spontaneous recovery."

Excuse me, but why isn't this a headline story? I did a Google search and this, published yesterday, was the only one I could find.

Geron's future human trial made huge news. It's rodent experiments made huge news. But a successful human treatment for the same condition has been ignored by the MSM--as was another promising human trial for chronic spinal cord injury reported previously.

Why the news blockade? Wrong kind of stem cells, apparently: Doesn't make Bush look bad. So typical. So wrong.

Bitter Irony: Washington Suicide Prevention Program Recognized

Here's a bitter irony: A suicide prevention program from the State of Washington has been nationally recognized as an effective resource in saving lives. From the story:

A Washington curriculum for suicide prevention has been recognized by a national resource center as a model program.

The Help Every Living Person curriculum teaches high school students about suicide prevention. It helps students learn to recognize if a friend is thinking about suicide and helps them work on communication skills. The program was created in 2006 by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction with $100,000 from the state Legislature. Washington 9th and 10th graders have been using the curriculum for the past few years and now kids around the country are being exposed to the program.

Too bad the state's voters decided that terminally ill people don't qualify under the category of "every living person." No, for those people who become suicidal, facilitation, rather than prevention, was legally declared a right and proper course. Talk about sending the kids a mixed message!

What I've Been Saying: LA Times Columnist Calls on Animal Rights Movement to Condemn Violence

Ever since the animal rights movement came onto my radar, I have urged its leaders to condemn the terrorists within their midst. With the exception of Gary Francione and a few others, the silence among most leadership--particularly from the PETA folk--not to mention the rank and file, has been deafening.

Now, in the wake of further "direct actions" against UCLA animal researchers, LA Times columnist Timothy Rutten has taken note and called, as I have, for action by peaceable rightists to step in and exercise some control. From his column:

Knowledgeable authorities believe a relative handful of people are actually involved in the terrorist acts. A larger group shows up for the marginally peaceful demonstrations, and a slightly larger one provides various kinds of material support. Behind them is a far larger group of individuals who purport to be peacefully concerned with animal welfare, but say they "understand" how some frustrated confreres can be driven to extremes by society's indifference to what they deem a moral imperative.

This sort of wink-and-nod morality is all too familiar to anyone who's had contact with the fringe of the antiabortion movement. The truth is that we here in L.A. are just one psychotic sartori away from the night one of these goofballs decides that a researcher's life is worth less than a white rat's or a monkey's and decides to redress the imbalance...

At the end of the day, though, two things need to happen: Law enforcement officials need to step up their attention to this investigation, because there's a tragedy in the offing if they don't. And L.A.'s extensive network of animal welfare advocates need to make it clear that they repudiate not only the terrorists but all who provide them material and tacit support of any sort.

More should indeed be done from the law enforcement angle, but if I were Rutten, I wouldn't hold my breath for any meaningful condemnation from other animal rights activists. After years of making similar calls, I have concluded reluctantly that arson, vandalism, intimidation, death threats, and other such crimes in the name of animal rights just doesn't upset all that many people within the movement.

Hit and Run Injuring Humans or Animals the Same?

The drive to create moral equivalencies between human beings and animals continues. In California, a bill has been introduced that could treat leaving the scene of an accident involving a car and an animal, the same as a hit and run involving a human being. From AB 1224, authored by Assemblyman Mike Eng:

Existing law requires the driver of any vehicle involved in an accident resulting in injury or death to another person to immediately stop the vehicle at the scene of the accident and to fulfill specified requirements. Under existing law, a violation of this provision is either a felony or a misdemeanor.

This bill would declare the Legislature's intent to enact legislation to include animals, pets, and livestock under the basic "hit and run" statute in order to fine drivers who leave the scene of an accident without trying to contact the owner or local authorities or render aid to the injured animal, pet, or farm animal.

Of course people should notify owners of pets and other animals if they injure them. But trying to render aid to an injured dog could get your hand seriously bitten. And should it be a felony to accidentally kill a cat and move on? Are we going to have to file police reports like we do with humans? Oh well, at least Eng's bill acknowledges that animals are "owned."

Dishonesty Piled Upon Dishonesty by Obama Administration on Stem Cells

It wasn't bad enough that President Obama stealthily removed a pro science/pro ethics pluripotent Bush stem cell policy, pretending that he was fighting the forces of anti-science. Now Melody Barnes, the president's domestic policy adviser, has written an article extolling the President's decision. That's fine. But what is quickly becoming the norm for this administration, it is deeply disingenuous, based on crucial factual omissions and straw man put downs. From her column:

From this time forward, decisions about federal funding of stem cell research will be based on scientific principles. In the Obama administration, the scientific community will be empowered, but not unaccountable. Scientists who wish to conduct stem cell research must do so in a responsible manner and the president Obama will not allow scientists to leave our shared values at the laboratory door. But unlike the past eight years, political ideology will no longer trump sound science.

Get it? When they agree with an ethical regulation, it supports science. When they don't it is anti science.

Then she mentions adult stem cell research, leaving out the thousands of human trials for all ranges of diseases and afflictions that are showing such great promise.

We have already seen the benefits of cell-based therapies in areas such as bone marrow transplantation. Today, we do not know and should not overstate the full potential of this research, but we have an obligation to move forward. We have an obligation to our parents and grandparents who suffer from degenerative conditions such as Parkinson's disease. We have an obligation to our children who suffer from chronic diseases such as juvenile diabetes. We have an obligation to veterans who suffer from spinal cord injuries they sustained defending our nation. Stem cell research could cure Parkinson's and diabetes, and help those who thought they would sit in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives walk again.

The clear implication here is that bone marrow is fine, as far as it goes. But to get the real cures we need ESCR--leaving out the fact that adult stem cells have shown tremendous promise in early human trials for most of the conditions she mentions.

Then she seems to be tough on preventing ethical slippery slopes:

The president will vigorously oppose cloning for human reproduction. It is dangerous, it is wrong, and it will not be tolerated. The National Institutes of Health will continue to be prohibited from funding research during which an embryo is destroyed.

Reproductive cloning can't be done yet, and besides, that isn't a ban on cloning. Moreover, the NIH remains "prohibited from funding research during which an embryo is destroyed," not because of Obama's policy, but because it is against existing federal law (the Dickey Amendment) that he didn't have the power to change via executive order. Notice she does not promise a veto of any attempt to change that law, which as I noted in an earlier post, is already being advocated by the Left's primary media outlet, the New York Times.

Then comes the straw man:

Americans may never reach a unanimous decision on the best way to fight disease and improve the health of all Americans, but doing nothing while millions suffer and die is not an acceptable option.

Who ever advocated "doing nothing?"

This administration promised to be transparent: Instead it is opaque. It promised to heal divisions: Instead it is worsening them. It promised honesty, but its policy arguments are profoundly misleading to the point of mendacity.

The only reason he can get away with it is that the media remains immersed in the tank. If that ever changes, Obama could be in deep political trouble.

Deconstructing Obama's Stem Cell Policy

I have been mouthing off at President Obama's stem cell actions all week, particularly with regard to his silent evisceration of the "alternative methods" federal funding requirement. Toward that end, I did what I do when steam is coming out my ears; wrote a piece for the Daily Standard. From my column:

The mainstream media--still obsessed with discrediting all things "Bush"--focused gleefully on the expected rescission of the restriction that under Bush limited federal funding to embryonic stem cell lines in existence on August 9, 2001. But opening up all existing and future embryonic stem cell lines to federal funding is not all that Obama did. While he made no mention of it in his widely covered East Room speech, a quiet press release issued on Monday stated that in addition to the above change, "Executive Order 13435 of June 20, 2007, which supplements the August 9, 2001, statement on human embryonic stem cell research, is revoked."

That opaque notice tells us absolutely nothing. But a little research makes clear why the administration was so terse: The 2007 executive order required the government to make a point of funding what are known as "alternative methods" for obtaining pluripotent stem cells. These are procedures that don't require the destruction of embryos to derive these powerful cells, which are theoretically able to become any tissue in the body. It is this capacity that scientists say makes embryonic stem cells so valuable.

The hypocrisy of taking away a policy that specifically bridged the bitter divides he promised to heal--pro life versus pro choice, liberal versus conservative, pro ESCR and anti ESCR--led me to this conclusion:

President Obama's silent revocation of alternative-methods funding as a special project of the federal government betrayed the concerted attempts made over the last eight years to find a common way forward in one of the most ethically contentious areas of biotechnological research. So much for bridging the country's cultural and political divides. So much for transparency in governance. So much for taking the politics out of science.

I am sure that this two-faced approach of saying one thing but doing the opposite will be a hallmark of the Obama Administration, at least with regard to issues we deal with here at SHS. For whatever it is worth, I will be deconstructing his policies all along the way.

Oprah Culture Strikes Again

Oprah Culture, named after the hyper successful daytime television powerhouse Oprah Winfrey, is soap opera in real life--which in the cause of destroying moralism so that nobody feels badly over their various dyfunctions--extols people pushing the envelope of cultural values, those involved in the most egregious personal irresponsibility, even criminality.

Oprah Culture permeates the entire media. For example, the media helped hide Kevorkian's macabre goals by focusing obsessively on "suffering" during his nearly decade-long assisted suicide rampage, culminating with Time inviting him to its big 75th anniversary gala a decade ago where Tom Cruise--himself an A-List member of OC--ran up to shake his hand.

Oprah has been guilty repeatedly of pushing Oprah Culture, for example cooing over the "man" who was pregnant. When I was in the UK recently, a "13-year-old father" was all over the front pages for people to stare at like a zoo specimen. Demonstrating the terminal nonjudgmentalism that has grabbed us by the throat, his mother wouldn't comment about her son because she didn't want to interfere with his "business interests." (The boy was marketing his story at the time.)

And now Dr. Phil, Oprah's acolyte, joins the club by holding a televised baby shower for Nedya Suleman who has given birth to 14 babies conceived through IVF even though she is not apparently infertile. From the story:

The Southern California mother of octuplets was given a baby shower of sorts on television's Dr. Phil show, with cribs, bunk beds, upgrades to her new home and nursing help to care for her 14 children - all provided free of charge. Various providers appeared before McGraw's applauding studio audience to pledge their help creating a safe, clean home for Nadya Suleman's 14 children.

I nearly wretched in a grocery checkout line recently when I saw her as the cover story on US magazine.

I am not against assisting Suleman. She needs all the help she can get. But do it privately, and don't put her on television for the enrichment of Dr. Phil, the voyeuristic pleasure of the viewing audience, and as an inspiration to those sad people who, desperately craving celebrity, may come to see the fulfillment of their dreams in acting so irresponsibly they become news!

These anything goes values are part of the coup de culture, hedonism division. And they are not limited to the realm of extreme personal behaviors. The corrupting rot has spread throughout the various levels of our culture--politics, business, science, medicine, journalism, education, etc.--to the point that responsible people feel like suckers. No wonder the roof is falling in.

Fetal Farming, Here We Come: UK Scientists Say to Use Aborted Fetuses as Sources of Organs

Tell me we aren't on the path to using human beings as mere produce: A UK bioethicist has called for using fetal organs from abortions in transplantation. From the story:

Kidneys and livers from aborted foetuses could be given to the desperately ill and ease the organ donor shortage, a leading scientist has claimed. Professor Sir Richard Gardner, an Oxford University stem cell expert, said foetal tissues may offer a more realistic solution to the lack of organs than other technologies being developed.

Realize this would require later term abortions. But that's okay, according to another "expert:"

But Professor Stuart Campbell, who has argued for the abortion time limit to be lowered, had no ethical objections to the proposal. He said many babies were aborted quite 'and if they are going to be terminated, it is a shame to waste their organs'.

Where have we heard that before? It sounds just like "these leftover embryos are going to be tossed out anyway, so we might as well get some use out of them."

Hey, I know: When a woman wants an early term abortion, we can pay her to gestate a couple of extra months so her fetus can be of societal use! And imagine the possibilities when artificial wombs are created: We can gestate fetuses to order.

The road to fetal farming is already being paved.

Feed Me! For Some Bioetech Scientists It is Never Enough

The sense of entitlement is so thick, so embedded within the genome of the biotech research community, that apparently no matter the extent to which they are catered, it is never, ever enough. Only days after they got virtually all they claimed they wanted from President Obama, some scientists are already whining that they might receive less money from other sources that have so far bounteously funded ESCR. From the story, "Stem Cell Descion Worries Some Scientists" in the New York Times:

While praised by scientists, President Obama's decision to lift restrictions on federal financing of embryonic stem cell research could cause state governments and philanthropists to pull back on billions of dollars they have pledged for such work.

A number of states and philanthropies rushed in to fill the gap after President George W. Bush imposed the restrictions in 2001..."If the federal government starts meeting its responsibilities, then there's really less reason for the state governments to step in," said Dr. John A. Kessler, director of the stem cell institute at Northwestern University.

Fiscal headaches have already caused New Jersey to reduce planned spending on stem cell research, and Massachusetts has trimmed overall life-sciences spending. And California's program may run out of money by the end of the year because the state, hurt by turmoil in the financial markets and its own budget crisis, cannot issue bonds at a reasonable rate. Further, portfolios of wealthy individuals and philanthropies are suffering from the pounding taken by the stock market, a development that could mean a decline in donations from those sources as well. "Hopefully that won't happen, but we have to be ever vigilant, especially at this time where there are fewer and fewer dollars," said Susan L. Solomon, chief executive of the New York Stem Cell Foundation. Because it takes time to win a federal grant, scientists who have access to donated money often achieve research results more quickly, Ms. Solomon said.

Well, then they should have defended the Bush plan! They were overflowing with money and they had a convenient scape goat on which to blame their every failure. They had the best of both worlds!

And here's an interesting note: This is the first time I have seen the billions in funding received by embryonic stem cell scientists reported in a major news outlet. All we have heard before now has been the meme that the industry was staaaaaarving on the vine for cash because of Bush's heartlessness.

Perhaps these scientists haven't noticed but the financial structure is crashing around all of our heads and everyone faces cutbacks. Why should they be exempted? Honestly. They remind me of voracious baby birds always screaming, "Feed Me!"

SHS Spike in Growth Indication of Increased Interest in Issues Bioethical?

We've had a real growth spurt here at SHS. In the last month. We have gone from about 30,000 visits and 25,000 discreet visitors every thirty days to nearly 40,000 visits from about 31,000 visitors. And the last few days have had about 2000 visitors a day. We're not the Daily Kos or Little Green Footballs, but we're not chopped liver either, as the old saying goes. Add in the other blogs reporting on what we do here and some direct media use of my commentary, and the SHS project can only be called a success.

I think we should attribute much of the recent growth to the news:The Final Exit Network suicide arrests, the Obama embryonic stem cell funding change, futile care rearing its ugly head in Idaho, etc. But it could also indicate a more general interest in all things bioethical. I hope so, because the matters with which we grapple here are among the most important facing our society and the world.

Whatever the cause, I am gratified. There may also be a change in the works, that if it pans out, could increase traffic dramatically. More if and as that potential develops.

Should I Have Mentioned That Bush Dared to Call Human Embryos "Human Life?"

I am applauded and criticized for my comments about President Obama's rescission of the Bush "alternative method" executive order over at Belief Net--from the version of the criticism I posted on the First Things blog, which contained slightly different language than I put here on the same topic. Thus, David Gibson wrote:

Why didn't Obama say more about the promise of adult stem cells--and do something to promote that promise? He said that the administration will support "promising research of all kinds, including groundbreaking work to convert ordinary human cells into ones that resemble embryonic stem cells." And yet his executive order yesterday also revoked Executive Order 13435 of June 20, 2007, which provided federal backing for promising adult stem cell research. At First Things, Wesley J. Smith slams this dumb rejection of easily occupied common ground.

ADDENDUM: As a commenter rightly noted in the combox, Obama had to reverse Bush's EO 13435 because of language tacked on to it about embryos as human life etc. (A nice little time bomb left behind.) And Wesley Smith could have and should have noted that. But Obama could easily have included Bush's language, or his own, regarding funding and support for adult stem cell research promotion. Easy, and would have been important in concrete and symbolic terms.

I beg your pardon? Human embryos are human life! That's basic biology. And the post is about alternative methods of obtaining pluripotent stem cells, not adult stem cells. (I know this gets confusing.)

Here's the offending clause from the Bush EO:

(d) human embryos and fetuses, as living members of the human species, are not raw materials to be exploited or commodities to be bought and sold.

So, Obama "had" to rescind the order because the foregoing clause was factually correct? And, to add a point, is also wholly consistent with current federal statutory law? Gee, I'm really sorry I didn't mention that.

But Gibson is also correct: If telling the biological truth in an EO so seared the delicate Obama sensibility, he could have immediately reissued the EO without the offending facts, and publicized it as proof he is trying to cross the cultural divides that rend this country. But, of course, he didn't do that because he's not.

The Great Obama Straddle: Oxymoronic Stem Cell Speech

I'm finally getting around to reading President Obama's stem cell speech. It contains the usual bromides about how we are in danger of falling behind in science, yadda, yadda, yadda. But it also seems oddly oxymoronic to me. First he said:

I can also promise that we will never undertake this research lightly. We will support it only when it is both scientifically worthy and responsibly conducted. We will develop strict guidelines, which we will rigorously enforce, because we cannot ever tolerate misuse or abuse. And we will ensure that our government never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction. It is dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society, or any society

But then in the very next paragraph, he said:

This Order is an important step in advancing the cause of science in America. But let's be clear: promoting science isn’t just about providing resources--it is also about protecting free and open inquiry. It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient--especially when it's inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda--and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.

But by instituting "rigorous guidelines"--I'll believe that when I see it--he is tying scientists' hands, if you want to look at it ethical constraints in that way, just as Bush did. He just has drawn the line in a different place, apparently at reproductive cloning.

He also seems to be leaving the real dirty work--allowing federal funding for the creation and destruction of embryos and for therapeutic cloning, to Congress--as advocated, not coincidentally, in today's New York Times. Look for that story to develop as the year progresses.

He also said he supported funding of alternative methods:

...by supporting promising research of all kinds, including groundbreaking work to convert ordinary human cells into ones that resemble embryonic stem cells.

But what he did in his executive order signed just after the speech was rescind the very Bush executive order requiring the government to make a point of funding that alternatives research.

So what we had on vivid display yesterday was what I call the Great Obama Straddle: He spoke out of both sides of his mouth within seconds. But always remember, actions speak louder than words, and on issues of concern to SHS, he is quickly moving from very bad to flat out awful.

Taking the Next Bite of the Apple: New York Times Proves That Voracious Research Ambition Not Limited to "Leftover" Embryos

The New York Times' editorial extolling the lifting the Bush stem cell funding policy--as it ignores the purely gratuitous trashing of the Bush order requiring funding for "alternative sources"--is the usual mix of ignorance and ideology that typifies its side's method of arguing this issue. First, it accuses Bush of having appointed "scientific" advisers on the issue based on ideology rather than expertise. But this has always been an ethical debate, not a science debate. Besides, Leon Kass not an expert in both science and ethics? William Hurlbut not an expert? Please.

But here is the point of this post: Note that now it has obtained its way on ESCR funding, the NYT wants to take the next bite of the apple, calling for the rescission of the Dickey Amendment that prevents destruction of embryos with federal money. (The Obama directive allows all stem cell lines created to qualify for federal funding after their creation. He could do no more because the Dickey Amendment would be violated--and this is a law signed each year by Presidents Clinton and Bush since 1996. Obama has not publicly called for it to be rescinded.) From the editorial:

Other important embryonic research is still being hobbled by the so-called Dickey-Wicker amendment. The amendment, which is regularly attached to appropriations bills for the Department of Health and Human Services, prohibits the use of federal funds to support scientific work that involves the destruction of human embryos (as happens when stem cells are extracted) or the creation of embryos for research purposes.

Until that changes, scientists who want to create embryos--and extract stem cells--matched to patients with specific diseases will have to rely on private or state support. Such research is one promising way to learn how the diseases develop and devise the best treatments. Congress should follow Mr. Obama's lead and lift this prohibition so such important work can benefit from an infusion of federal dollars.

Well, that is false. There is plenty of public support--as in my state California that borrows hundreds of millions each year for the research even though we are drowning in red ink.

But let me translate the opaque NYT position: The Times wants scientists to go way beyond the so-called "leftover" embryos, which I have repeatedly written is only the launching pad of the voracious biotech agenda. Indeed, the editorial wants the Feds to fund scientists creating new embryos for use and destruction in research. This is a first in human history--creating human life for the sole purpose of using it as a natural resource and destroying it.

Beyond that, the comment about "specific diseases" is a typically veiled reference to human cloning research. Yet, the editorial doesn't mention that the IPSCs have already done that very thing and that the lines are now being used in drug testing, etc.

And please do not make the naive mistake that it would stop with embryonic stem cells taken from custom made embryos. There are many valuable embryonic and fetal tissues to be studied or used as potential treatment modalities. There is no way that a newspaper that represents--and drives--the views of the Liberal Intellectual Elite will draw any reasonable line over any research on such tissues. Once the artificial womb is perfected that would permit embryos to be implanted and gestated, it will be Katy bar the door!

And lest you think I exaggerate, remember New Jersey has already legalized cloned fetal farming. The Feds outlawed it, but that isn't remarkable since the only things that actually get outlawed are those areas of research that can't yet be done. Besides, the prohibition--always subject to rescission when "the scientists" are ready to enter the field--does not apply to embryos and fetuses gestated in artificial uteruses.

There are powerful forces among us who insist on no brakes in biotech. They want unborn life to be considered the equivalent of chopped liver. If their views prevail, human exceptionalism will be flushed down the toilet and we will cease to have the right to call ourselves a moral society.

The Untold Story: Radical Obama Also Rescinds Executive Order for Alternatives to ESCR

We all know that President Obama rescinded the Bush funding restrictions for ESCR. But that isn't all he did. He also rescinded Executive Order 13435 of June 20, 2007.

What is that? Of course, the Administration didn't have the candor or courage to publicize this part of his nasty work, but the now dead order explicitly required funding for "alternative methods," such as the new IPSCs, which offer so much promise without the ethical contentiousness. For more on that late executive order, see SHS, "Bush to Fund Stem Cell 'Alternatives' Research.) Alternative methods are one of the few areas in which we can all row in the same direction, which I thought this president wanted to do.

I can think of only two reasons for this action, for which I saw no advocacy either in the election or during the first weeks of the Administration: First, vindictiveness against all things "Bush" or policies considered by the Left to be "pro life;" and second, a desire to get the public to see unborn human life as a mere corn crop ripe for the harvest.

So much for taking the politics out of science!

Idaho Futile Care Bill: Doctors Can Unilaterally Decide to Push People into the Grave

I have looked more closely at the awful Idaho futile care bill, S 1114, which I first addressed earlier today. Here are two more extremely objectionable clauses that show the intent to create a duty to die for the most infirm--and expensive for which to care--among us. From section
394504A (6) of the bill:

If an ethics committee has determined that the requested treatment is medically inappropriate or futile, but the patient is later readmitted to the health care facility within six (6) months following such ethics committee determination, the attending physician may rely on the prior ethics committee determination and withhold or withdraw treatment consistent with the prior ethics committee determination if the attending physician and one (1) physician member of the ethics committee determine that the patient's condition either has not improved or has deteriorated since the prior ethics committee determination and that the prior ethics committee determination still applies to the patient's condition, and they document their conclusion in the medical chart.

Thank about that! If a patient survived five or six months post ethics committee meeting declaring futility, doesn't it prove the committee was wrong?

But don't worry: The due-process-of-law-denying ethics committee process itself is a sham: It isn't even mandatory:

(8) The ethics committee review as provided in this section shall be purely voluntary. Nothing in this chapter shall require a health care facility to establish or utilize an ethics committee, nor shall this chapter require a health care provider or surrogate decision maker to submit a matter to the ethics committee before withdrawing or withholding health care to a patient.

I guess that means the doctor has the right to just say no based on his or her own biases regarding the "quality" of a patient's life!

Doctors should not have the right to decide whose life is worth living. As German physician Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland stated back in 1806, which I quoted in Forced Exit:

It is not up to [the doctor] whether...life is happy or unhappy, worthwhile or not, and should he incorporate these perspectives into his trade...the doctor could well become the most dangerous person in the state.

That was true then, and it is true now. We give physicians the literal power over life and death at each of our perils.

Duty to Die in Idaho! Legislature Close to Passing Futile Care Bill

The legislative process has become so overwhelming, that unless one hires a professional lobbying group to keep track, laws can pass quietly without any public attention at all.

That seems to be the case in Idaho, where the Senate has passed a Texas-style futile care bill. The bill is so bad, it permits doctors who want to refuse wanted treatment to violate a patient's written advance directive. From the bill, S. 1114, section 394504A (4):

If the ethics committee agrees with the attending physician that the treatment requested by the patient, the patient's advance directive or surrogate decision maker is medically inappropriate or futile, the attending physician and health care facility shall take reasonable action to assist the patient or surrogate decision maker to arrange the patient's transfer within fifteen (15) days to another health care provider selected by the patient or surrogate decision maker who is willing to assume the treatment of the patient. The health care facility shall provide reasonably necessary lifesustaining treatment within the capacity and capability of the health care facility until the patient is transferred or until the expiration of the fifteen (15) day period described above, whichever occurs first. Following the patient's transfer or upon expiration of the fifteen (15) day period described above, whichever occurs first, the attending physician and health care facility shall not be obligated to provide additional treatment that has been determined to be medically inappropriate or futile by the ethics committee. The patient or his surrogate decision maker shall remain responsible for the costs incurred in transferring the patient to another health care provider in addition to the cost of any health care provided prior to the transfer.

So what precisely is care deemed medically futile or inappropriate? The term isn't defined precisely, meaning it is what the doctors or ethics committees say it is.

But catch this part of the bill authorizing guardians to refuse or withhold life-sustaining treatment if:

The respondent is in a persistent vegetative state...which is irreversible and from which the respondent will never regain consciousness;(b) The respondent is chronically and irreversibly comatose; (c) The provision of such treatment would merely prolong dying, would not be effective in ameliorating or correcting all of the respondent’s lifethreatening conditions, or would otherwise be futile in terms of the survival of the respondent; or (d) The provision of such treatment would be virtually futile in terms of the survival of the respondent, and the treatment itself under such circumstances would be inhumane.

This idea of "prolonging the dying," used to be called extending life. If that is what the patient wants, it is the quintessential purpose of medicine! If this section of the bill is found to apply to the futile care portion of the proposal, imagine the possibilities to force the most weak and vulnerable out of the lifeboat. Duty to die--here we come!

Obama: No Clones? Not Really.

President Obama lifted the Bush ESCR restrictions--unleashing gushing hyperbole in the media and among "the scientists" about the technology that I frankly don't have time to deconstruct. But Drudge is touting his promise of no cloning. From the story:

President Barack Obama says human cloning is "dangerous, profoundly
wrong" and has no place in society. Obama made the comments as he was signing an executive order that will allow federal spending on embryonic stem cell research. Some critics say the research can lead to
human cloning. Obama said the government will develop strict guidelines for the research because misuse or abuse is unacceptable. He said he would ensure that the government never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction.

This is the typical misdirection we have seen on this issue for years. I predict Obama's opposition to cloning is merely the same old smoke and mirrors, razzle-dazzle, game of hide the ball--choose your cliche.

When the president speaks of "reproduction," he means a born baby. Thus, I predict he will support and sign a bill to explicitly legalize human SCNT--the actual act of human cloning--as has been proposed for years by my Senator Dianne Feinstein and Utah's Orin Hatch, about which I have written previously.

Human SCNT for research, if it can be done in humans, literally creates new human life for the purpose of destroying it--perhaps a first in history. Over time, should the technology become "safe," it will lead to reproductive cloning. But that is years away. In the meantime, President Obama and the rest of the brave new world crowd will redefine--or better stated, misdefine--cloning and outlaw their straw man so they can pretend that cloning has been made illegal when it has been explicitly legalized on the way toward federal funding.

And all along the way, they will unctuously ooze assurances that everything is under control. And they will be right--just not in the way they pretend.

Cynthia Tucker Illustrates the Reason Why Society is Spinning Out of Control

Terminal nonjudgmentalism and a refusal to do anything concrete lest one be thought mean or worse, conservative, is a problem that leads to a wide range cultural subversions--from the suicide counseling of the Final Exit Network to the new eugenics of destroying embryos that tests show will be born with the wrong color eyes or skin shade. This kind of squishy amoralism is quickly leading us toward the coup de culture in which anything goes from reproductive cloning, to the duty to die, to using people with profound cognitive disabilities as sources of organs or medically experimenting on Alzheimer's patients, all of which are already being promoted in the most prestigious medical and bioethics journals.

The opinion columns of Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Constitution Journal provide vivid illustrations of the subversive power of moral paralysis. Writing to oppose Georgia legislation seeking to prevent another Nadya Suleman, who has given birth to 14 children via IVF, Tucker predictably pours on the castigation, sarcastically calling the bill's sponsors, "instant experts on fertility, motherhood and medical ethics" for wanting to actually regulate the out-of-control industry. And what is her answer? From her column:

It's not that Suleman's excesses have been ignored. Her case is already attracting attention from the proper authorities, who have started a healthy (if belated) debate over wayward fertility clinics and their costs, financial and moral. The California Medical Board has started an investigation of Michael Kamrava, Suleman's fertility doctor, who apparently ignored all guidelines for best practices.

Last year, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine adopted guidelines advocating the transfer of only one embryo for women under 35 (Suleman is 33) and no more than two for any woman, except in extraordinary circumstances. Those extraordinary circumstances include older women, for whom the guidelines permit more embryos--but no more than five regardless of age or other factors. The guidelines followed years of pressure from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and medical ethicists, who cited the risks of multiple births.

Gee, that and $2.00 will buy you a small cup of coffee at Starbuck's.

Guidelines are not legally enforceable and mean nothing in a society in which principle takes a back seat to "choice." Moreover, Italy, Ireland, and Germany have legally instituted reasonable regulations over IVF: If they can do it, why can't the State of Georgia? Moreover again, the bill is based on the very guidelines Tucker extols, so what's her beef?

I guess we are supposed to wring our hands, "debate" the matter, but never actually do anything because that smacks of moralism and an actual belief in right and wrong. Cynthia Tucker continually exhibits the kind of mushy thinking that hates the solution more than the problem, a phenomenon that paralyzes effective action on important moral issues, bringing us to the brink of the ethical abyss.

Media/Obama Conflate Ethics Disputes with "Science"

The media--and I must say, the new Administration--continue to confuse and conflate policy differences with science. And the lifting of the Bush funding restrictions on ESCR is providing the excuse. From the story:

The decision by President George W. Bush to restrict funding for stem cell research has been seen by critics as part of a pattern of allowing political ideology to influence scientific decisions across an array of issues, from climate change to whether to approve the morning-after pill Plan B for over-the-counter sales.

Those are all policy disputes--which belong in the political realm--not science issues. ESCR restrictions were based on important ethical issues. So too Plan B. There isn't a "science" position on whether a powerful contraceptive should be able to be purchased by teenagers as easily as candy and aspirin. The closest to a bona fide science dispute in the above examples is global warming, but the people who are the most "political" are those who say there is no further scientific debate on whether it is happening and whether it is human-caused--when that is patently false.

The MSM and the Science Establishment are part of the Liberal Establishment that wants to take us in certain directions politically and culturally. That's fine, if they were only honest about it. But they don't have the candor to admit they are as political and ideological as their opponents. Instead, they pretend they are objective, indeed, scientific. That may be a good political tactic, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Another Indiciation That Assisted Suicide Isn't Really About Terminal Illness

Don't get me wrong: I would object to assisted suicide even if it were ever going to be truly restricted to people with terminal illnesses. But of course, that isn't the goal, and it sure isn't the reality. The Final Exit Network illustrate this--although most of the obtuse or biased media continually miss the point, such as Time's hopelessly incompetent reporting

As I have written, FEN has never advocated restricting assited suicide to the terminally ill. The only major American group that does is The Hemlock Society. It didn't used to, but there was a takeover in which the former crackpot model of advocacy led by Derek Humphry--with suicide machine conventions, etc.--was replaced by the smooth and well tailored professional model led by Barbara Coombs Lee and Kathryn Tucker.

With the professional look came a new euphemistic name--Compassion and Choices--more abundant funding, including polling, focus groups, professional PR, etc. C and C now claims to want to restrict assisted suicide, which its focus groups and polling told them to call "aid in dying." But I have yet to see condemnation from Lee or Tucker about the FEN activities that always went well beyond the terminally ill. Moreover, C and C is a member in good standing of the Federation of the World Right to Die Societies, which as I have noted here, does not have a terminal ill restriction in its advocacy statements, and of which one of the arrestees, Ted Goodwin, is vice president.

A recent NPR report--in which a law enforcement agent but no opponents of assisted suicide appeared, which is now real a trend in media--illustrated the vagueness with which the C and C representatives and others have reacted to the FEN charges. From the report (no link):

[NPR correspondent Kathy]LOHR: Another group, Compassion and Choices, lobbies for physician-assisted suicide laws. President Barbara Coombs Lee says outdated laws criminalizing assisted suicide are to blame for this group's practices.

Ms. BARBARA COOMBS LEE (President, Compassion & Choices): People of the Final Exit Network are, kind of testing the boundaries of what is acceptable and unacceptable in these very vague, broad assisted suicide laws. But there are better ways to make laws, you know, than to wait and see what people do on their own, and then go to a court and a trial and a jury and see if that broke the law or not.

Realize that even if an Oregon style law had been in effect in Georgia, John Celmer's alleged assisted suicide would still have been a crime. Hence, FEN would still have been in business to "serve" those for whom the law did not allow legal access to doctors, since it rejects the terminal illness limitation and John Celmer was not dying. Thus unless the assisted suicide license was open to virtually anyone with other than a transitory desire to die, the FEN's of the world would continue their "counseling," and Coombs Lee's statement is nonsensical.

If Coombs Lee really believed her own advocacy meme, she would condemn FEN for both acting outside of the law and in cases well beyond the situation of terminal illness when nothing else can be done to alleviate suffering, the only category for which she claims "aid in dying" is appropriate in her political agitation about the issue.

Sometimes silence is louder than words.

Time Magazine Stinks: Refuses to Get Facts Right About FEN Assisted Suicides

Is it ignorance, laziness, bias, or ineptitude, or all of the above? Not Dead Yet's Stephen Drake exposes why so many people no longer trust so much of what media report: Journalists just can't--or won't--get the facts right, at least about cultural flash issues such as assisted suicide.

Drake, who was interviewed for the article, points out that Time's writer Paige Bowers stated that Kevorkian assisted the suicide of the "terminally ill," when as I have written about so many times, he never once claimed that his assisted suicide activities would be so limited. Moreover, none of the first three assisted suicides were terminally ill as that term is usually defined. Indeed, Marjorie Wantz's autopsy, K's second assisted suicide, showed she (along with at least four others) was not sick at all.

As we have also discussed here at SHS, the FEN explicitly offers to "counsel" suicidal people who are "chronically ill." And yet, Time's reporter made the same false "terminal illness" claim about the group as she did about K. Moreover, as Drake points out, and I have here, the case for which the arrests were made involved a man who had been successfully treated for cancer! From NDY's blog, quoting Drake's letter to Time seeking a correction:

This article could have been something to present a real debate rooted in the current news--whether or not one's perception of one's "quality of life" is a reason for suicide. Instead, the issue has been totally misrepresented as a case in which a group has "helped" terminally ill people in their "right to die" in states that haven't legalized the practice.

In fact, the kind of people this group helps wouldn't be eligible for assisted suicide in Oregon or Washington State...Time magazine failed miserably in its duty to present basic facts accurately. The debate that followed within the article was worthless since it had nothing to do with the story it was supposed to be covering.

I think the public deserves better. Everything I've read about journalist ethics would support that view. I hope that you agree.

I just checked the story to see if it had been corrected. Whaddya know! It has not. From the Time story:

Rather, the group argues that it merely provides a "compassionate presence" for terminally ill people, giving them information about suicide if they request it.

Drake's hope is in vain: Apparently Time's editors don't think the public deserves better.

Pushing Eugenics as "Smart Science"

Bioethicist Jacob M. Appel, who has written that mentally ill people should not be denied the "opportunities" to commit assisted suicide, now pushes mandatory pre-implatation genetic testing in all IVF fertility treatments in order to weed out the unfit (my term) and for whom care would be expensive. But don't call it eugenics! From his column:

The most obvious advantage of mandatory screening is that it will reduce the long-term suffering of the children who are spared disease. At the same time, preventing future cancers will certainly save tax dollars. These savings could be redirected toward researching new therapies and providing quality care for current patients. The money might also help to defer the enormous public costs of fertility therapy, coverage for which a growing number of states now require of private insurance plans...While similar screening cannot realistically be imposed upon individuals conceiving "the old-fashioned way," for obvious reasons of logistics and privacy, these invasive aspects of screening do not apply to IVF.

Opponents of mandatory screening will likely point out that such a rule significantly limits the reproductive autonomy of parents. This is certainly true. However, Western societies have long acknowledged that parental authority cannot undermine the medical interests of a child. Jehovah's Witnesses may not deny their children blood transfusions; Christian Scientists cannot substitute prayer for life-saving antibiotics. As United States Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge wrote in the landmark case of Prince v. Massachusetts, "Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves, but it does not follow that they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children."...

Such crass utilitarian utopianism is precisely what eugenics was all about. And its message is insidious: Those with expensive disabling conditions and diseases are a burden on society and you should not be allowed to be born--as a favor to you!

Then Appel makes a huge gaffe:

The fear expressed by many opponents of genetic screening, both elective and mandatory, is that our civilization is sliding down a slope toward selecting embryos for their skin complexion or their eye-color.

No, the won't do that in the future. No way. They are doing it today!

If IVF can be coupled with mandatory PGD, then every pregnancy can be coupled with mandatory prenatal testing to be sure we weed out all children who are not optimal to the new eugenicists via abortion. Indeed, such mandatory pre natal testing is already being pushed.

And if all else fails, there is always infanticide, as is happening in the Netherlands, with support from some mainstream bioethicists.

Appel is a mainstream bioethicist who is a university professor and has been published in the Hastings Center Report with his call for assisted suicide for the mentally ill. And some bioethicists wonder why I am so worried about the direction in which the bioethics movement seems intent on taking us.

HT: Alice Hatch

Lead Into Gold: IPS Cells Making ESCR "Obsolete?"

The remarkable advances of IPSCs are beginning to subsume ESCR, even among some within the science community. Thus the former head of the NIH and American Red Cross, Bernadine Healy, wrote in U.S News and World Report that IPSC and adult stem cell research successes have "diminished" the prospect that ESCR is the future of regenerative medicine. From her column entitled, "Why Embryonic Stem Cells are Obsolete:

Scientists may be growing impatient, but President Obama has been rightly taking his time in addressing a campaign promise to lift the ban on federal funding for research using new lines of stem cells to be taken from human embryos. Even for strong backers of embryonic stem cell research, the decision is no longer as self-evident as it was, because there is markedly diminished need for expanding these cell lines for either patient therapy or basic research. In fact, during the first six weeks of Obama's term, several events reinforced the notion that embryonic stem cells, once thought to hold the cure for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and diabetes, are obsolete.

Some new achievements support this proposition. The newest is the creation of patient specific, tailor made neural cells made from Parkinson's disease patients--and without the viruses used in their creation that some feared could cause cancer. From the story:

Borrowing a biological cut-and-paste trick from bacteria, scientists have created the first personalized stem cells for patients that are free of the cancer-causing viruses and genes needed to make them, according to a study published today in the journal Cell.

The stem cells, derived from skin samples provided by five patients with Parkinson's disease, were first transformed back to the undecided state of cells in an early embryo. Then they were used to make the dopamine-manufacturing neurons that are lost to disease.The technique removes a key barrier to using a special class of stem cells called an induced pluripotent stem cell, or iPS cell, to create replacement parts for patients that could be transplanted without risk of rejection -- the ultimate goal of regenerative medicine. "This is a major advance in the field," said Dr. Marius Wernig, an assistant professor at the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, who wasn't involved with the study.

Since IPSCs are pluripotent, we still need to worry about teratoma tumors. But with IPSCs being easy to create and not morally contentious--and adding in the remarkable adult stem cell advances--we might just be able to have a morally uncontentious, medically efficacious regenerative medical sector--and without the brave new world threats posed by human cloning.

Why Can't Society be Unequivocal in Opposing Suicide?

Relativism is the bane of our times, although it is still selectively applied. We tell teenagers to try not to have sexual intercourse, but if you do--which we know you will--then please use a condom. Yet, we still know how to be unequivocal in some areas: We tell kids, "Don't smoke,!", not, "Don't, smoke--but if you do, only use filter-tipped cigarettes," because we know that if we did that it would only result in a lot of tobacco smoke being inhaled.

It seems to me that well meaning people are being seduced into an equivalent stance on suicide, and it would just result in more suicides. Case in point is the column by Atlanta Journal Constitution pundit Jay Bookman, who in supposedly opposing the Forced Exit Network defendants, has fallen for their basic premise that bad health or disability can justify society facilitating suicide in some cases. From his column:

[S]o do my inalienable rights as a human being extend to the right to self-destruction? If my life is truly my own, shouldn't I be able to end it as I see fit? Personally, I think the answer is almost always no. Societal consensus, backed by medical research and experience, dictates that a person in decent physical health who wants to commit suicide is by definition mentally ill--no fully sane person would make such a decision.

But how far does that line of reasoning extend? As a person's physical health declines, that once-bright line begins to blur for many of us. During the Terri Schiavo controversy, for example, I stumbled across the case of David Mack, a Milwaukee police officer who had been shot in the line of duty and lapsed into a vegetative state. Twenty months later, Mack miraculously returned to consciousness only to be horrified at his predicament. The shooting had left him totally paralyzed; he could communicate only by moving his eyes across a spelling board. He told his wife that he wished the bullet had killed him. He begged for a lethal injection or for feedings to stop. Using the spelling board, he would send the same message over and over: "I D-O-N-T W-A-N-T T-O L-I-V-E L-I-K-E T-H-I-S A-N-Y-M-O-R-E."

Of course, it never occurs to Bookman that Mack, who I don't know about, might one day change his mind. And in that assumption, we see vividly why the disability rights movement is so alarmed by assisted suicide advocacy.

Bookman exhibits the very discriminatory attitudes that could result in disabled people being killed, for by explicitly agreeing that life as a quadriplegic is so bad that it takes suicide ideation out of the "mentally ill" category and into the rational category, he has stated that their lives are not worth saving. Yet medical research actually shows that people who become quadriplegic, if given a chance and proper support services, exhibit no greater levels of depression than the general population five years post injury.

If we say some suicides are worth doing, and others worth preventing, we are both sending a message of abandonment to those we agree should be helped, and making it impossible to convincingly tell others that they shouldn't kill themselves, since by definition anyone who is suicidal finds life unbearable. Moreover, people with mental illnesses often suffer far more anguish than the categories for whom Bookman would apparently permit facilitation--which is precisely why both Switzerland and the Netherlands permit assisted suicide for the mentally ill who are otherwise healthy and able bodied.

Once we agree that society should facilitate the suicides of some people, suicide prevention as an effective intervention is effectively over. Bookman's column is the equivalent of telling teenagers not to smoke, but if they do, to use filter cigarettes.

Refusing to Prevent IVF Moral Anarchy

In his recent book, Imagining the Future, Yuval Levin succinctly identified the source of so many of our cultural problems today. It was a real "Bingo!" moment for me: Society has ceased to be primarily about promoting virtue. Rather, our primary drive as a culture today is to prevent all suffering. In that Quixotic quest, we have created an anything goes society driven by individual desire and yearning that tosses the principle of the common good to the wind.

IVF is a vivid case in point: In the wake of the birth of octuplets via IVF to Nadya Suleman--who had been implanted with six embryos, and due to twinning gave birth to eight babies--legislators in two states are finally seeking to rein in IVF with reasonable regulations based on already published professional ethical guidelines. And I am sure you will be shocked to learn that the efforts have hit the unlimited reproductive freedom wall. From the story:

Lawmakers in two states, outraged by the California mother of octuplets, are seeking to limit the number of embryos that may be implanted by fertility clinics.

The legislation in Missouri and Georgia is intended to spare taxpayers from footing the bill for women having more children than they can afford. But critics say the measures also would make having even one child more difficult for women who desperately want to become mothers. "What they are proposing is a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approach," said Dr. Andrew Toledo, medical director of Reproductive Biology Associates in Atlanta. "Not every couple and not every patient is the same."

Infertility doctors argue that decisions on how many embryos to transfer should be left up to medical experts familiar with a patient's individual circumstances.

Then shut up about Suleman and the doctor who implanted her. Just because you would have made a different choice doesn't give you the right to moralize.

Decades ago Leon Kass warned that IVF, originally created to help infertile married couples have children, would lead to an anything goes mentality. He was mocked, but he was right. We were told then, as we are being told now, that we didn't have to regulate the field because we should trust patients and doctors to make responsible choices.

The difference is that now we know we can't: Unregulated IVF led to overproduction, resulting in hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos. This led to our looking at nascent human beings as objects rather than subjects, natural resources ripe for exploitation in scientific and medical research.

Unregulated IV--ironically along with unlimited abortion--also contributed to the idea that there is an unlimited fundamental right to have a genetically related child--as perhaps millions of children can't find adoptive homes. This, in turn, led to ever more extreme methods to exercise that right--surrogate motherhood, paying eugenically correct young women to risk their lives and health to provide eggs for wealthy couples who want only the most intelligent and beautiful offspring, post menopausal motherhood, using poor women as if they were brood mares, discriminatory sex selection, the eugenic practice of testing and discarding embryos that don't fit our health or cosmetic desires, not to mention contributing to advocacy for human cloning, genetic engineering, and transhumanist utopianism.

This might not have happened had we controlled the technology instead of letting it control us. But now it is probably too late: We have become a society in which even the most reasonable efforts to promote the general welfare almost always lose to Oprah-style hyper emotionalism that focuses on the pain such restrictions might have on individuals rather than on the bigger picture. But the understandable tears of people desperate to have children have been used as the lubricant to produce a reproductive moral anarchy that now includes in that expectation, the right to not only have a child but the child we want, and it is driving us to a new eugenics in which 90% of Down children are aborted and people are throwing away embryos because they might get adult onset cancer or won't have the desired hair or eye color.

This is not to say that we shouldn't care about people's unhappiness and anguish. Of course we should. But their tears have driven us into terminal nonjudgmentalism that prevents us from hitting the brakes to keep from driving off a moral cliff.

The same phenomenon drives other issues of concern to SHS, as well. We are all Wile E. Coyote about to hit the desert floor.

Correction: Final Exit Network's Ted Goodwin Did Not Resign From The World Federation of the Right to Die Societies

A few days ago I wrote that Ted Goodwin, one of the Final Exit Network assisted suicide defendants, was a mainstream figure in the assisted suicide movement. He certainly is that. But I made an error by writing that he had resigned as vice president of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies. As far as I know he didn't. He resigned as head of the Final Exit Network. That means he is still in line to be the World Federation's president starting in 2010. Mea culpa.

Arrest in Thrown Away Baby Who Survived Abortion--Only to Die in Medical Waste Bag

Readers of SHS will recall the awful case of the baby who survived a late term abortion only to be--allegedly--put in a medical waste bag and literally thrown away. The abortionist already lost his license in the case, and now there has been an arrest. From the story:

An abortion clinic owner is accused of delivering a live baby during a botched procedure and then throwing the infant away. Belkis Gonzalez, 42, was arrested Tuesday and charged with practicing medicine without a license and tampering with evidence, both felonies, said Ed Griffith, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney's office. If found guilty, Gonzalez would face at least a year in prison and up to 15 years.

I was pretty outraged that the charges were practicing medicine without a license, etc. I thought they should include murder, or at the very least, manslaughter. But then I saw this part of the story:

Authorities were unable to definitively determine the cause of death--and Gonzalez's role in it--because the baby's body had decomposed by the time it was found eight days later, said Griffith, the attorney's office spokesman.

Covering up the alleged crime clearly paid in this case. I also hope the Feds weigh in with a violation of the Infant Born Alive Protection Act.

Intervention and Prevention: The Proper Response to Request for Hastened Death

The assisted suicide movement has the media eating out of the palm of its collective hand, by often getting reporters to adopt their lexicon--the euphemistic "aid in dying" as opposed to the accurately descriptive "assisted suicide"--and writing as if suicide were a necessity--even though the cases from Oregon show that almost all assisted suicides involve fears of loss of dignity or of burdening others, etc. And the media virtually never mention that proper hospice care includes intervention and prevention whenever a patient requests to end it all through suicide.

But some in the medical professions still understand the ethical and truly compassionate practice of medicine and nursing. An article in Oncology Nursing News about a continuing medical education class encouraged me. From the story:

Patient and family requests for hastened death usually reflect unmet needs rather than a desire to control the circumstances of death, Boston hematologist Janet Abrahm, MD, said during an education session on pain management and palliative care at the recent annual ASH meeting. The unmet needs often relate to a desire for increased communication with care providers, better symptom control, or acknowledgment of emotional distress or crisis. Clinician responses run the gamut and in some cases can even exacerbate the unmet needs.

That is certainly what I was taught as a hospice volunteer. And here's the kicker:

Regardless of personal or professional feelings about hastened death, providers must respond to such requests, rather than ignore or deny them.

Absolutely!

Dr Abrahm suggested a multistep response that would include the following: Acknowledge the request and make sure it has been understood: Clarify the underlying causes, just as a clinician would clarify causes of physical symptoms; Evaluate the patient's decision-making capacity; Evaluate the patient for depression and risk of suicide and determine whether the patient has a plan to hasten death; Be aware that an immediate psychiatric evaluation is indicated for any patient who has a death plan.

This last part is totally ignored by the "death with dignity" crowd. In Oregon in 2007, no requesters for assisted suicide were referred for a mental health consultation--and remember treatment is not required under the law. Last year, according to the newly published virtually worthless assisted suicide annual report from Oregon, only 2 out of a reported 88 requests and 60 assisted suicides resulted in a referral to mental health professionals. This despite only 3 of the requests involving worries about pain control.

For anyone interested in the report and its details, Alex Schadenberg presents an analysis on his blog.

Three Babies Born From Cloning?

I don't believe a word of it. The notorious Italian fertility doctor claims that nine years ago he was able to bring three cloned babies to birth. From the story:

A controversial Italian doctor known for his work allowing post-menopausal women to have children has claimed in an interview to have cloned three babies who are now living in eastern Europe. "I helped give birth to three children with the human cloning technique," Severino Antinori, a prominent gynaecologist, told Oggi weekly in an interview to appear Wednesday. "It involved two boys and a girl who are nine years old today. They were born healthy and they are in excellent health now." He did not provide proof of his claims, but said cells from the three fathers, who were sterile, allowed the cloning to be carried out. The women's egg cells were impregnated in a laboratory through a method called "nuclear transfer," he said.

So let me get this straight: Scientists all over the world have not been able to create cloned embryos and maintain them past the first few days of development. But nine years ago Antinori not only cloned successfully, but also implanted the resulting embryos for gestation and to birth, and moreover, unlike many animals, they have no health problems--and publicity hound that he is he kept quiet about it all these years?

Remember the Raelian's making fools of the media years ago when the group claimed the same thing? It was nonsense then, and this is nonsense now.

Hospice Organization Reacts to FEN Lawyer Slander

The other day I posted about how a lawyer for one of the Final Exit Network defendants said that hospice is just assisted suicide in slow motion. This is dangerous demagoguery that could convince people not to seek the benefits that hospice can provide. The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization has now issued a press release rebutting the baseless charge. From the release:

"Hospice compassionately cares for people who are near the close of life--but hospice isn't about how you die, it's about how you live. Hospice and palliative care focuses on how dying persons and their loved ones live each day, providing comfort and guidance along the way," said J. Donald Schumacher, president and CEO of National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. "The quote from that news article demonstrates a callous disregard for all those who receive care, including family caregivers, from our nation's hospice programs."...

- Hospice focuses on caring, not curing and, in most cases, care is provided in the person's home. - Hospice care also is provided in freestanding hospice centers, hospitals, and nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.
- Hospice services are available to patients of any age, religion, race, or illness.
- Hospice provides bereavement support to families for 12 months following the death of their loved one.
- Hospice care is covered under Medicare, Medicaid, most private insurance plans, HMOs, and other managed care organizations.
- Research has shown the Medicare beneficiaries that opted for hospice care as opposed to other medical interventions when faced with a terminal illness lived on average 29 days longer than those who did not receive hospice care.

I am aware of the stories of abuse in some hospice cases. They make me sick, but I don't believe they are typical. And there is a problem with whether tube-supplied food and fluids are considered comfort care or life-extending treatment--a matter the government should remedy by regulation.

But I have been a hospice volunteer. I have seen the tremendous good it does, including with my own father who died in hospice care from colon cancer. A wonderful friend who died of breast cancer a few years ago, received such good care she and her husband were able to enjoy a lingering lunch at her favorite restaurant with Secondhand Smokette and me only two or three days before she died at home surrounded by her family.

Hospice is important. It is truly compassionate. It must not be corrupted with the assisted suicide virus. I am glad that the NHPCO leadership felt strongly enough about this respond to that lawyer's nonsense.

Pushing to Experiment on Alzheimer's Patients

The Hastings Center published an article in its journal IRB: Ethics and Human Research ("Including Persons with Alzheimer Disease in Research on Comorbid Conditions," 31, no. 1 (2009): 1-6) that I found both alarming and a sign of the increased desire among some in the bioethics and science communities to instrumentalize the most weak and vulnerable among us. The article by Anji Wall, a student at the Center for Healthcare Ethics, Saint Louis University, is not about using Alzheimer's patients in experiments to understand the condition or find treatments for it. Rather, she wants to open up Alzheimer's patients to the study of "cormobid" conditions--that is the presence of two or more diagnosable maladies at the same time--such as heart disease, arthritis, diminution of vision, etc. that are not directly related to Alzheimer's.

Of course, the proposal is couched in terms of being beneficial to these patients since treatment of ancillary maladies experienced by Alzheimer's patients can improve the quality of their lives. (I am getting whiplash here. Other bioethicists have called for denying expensive interventions to Alzheimer's patients based on futile care type arguments and social justice rationing principles.)

However, I think this is actually a rationalization to gain access to a large cohort of compliant patients who can't decide for themselves, to study medical conditions that are not unique to Alzheimer's patients, and for which subjects can be found with decision making capacities to participate in human trials.

But the author writes as if excluding Alzheimer's patients from such research--again that is not related to understanding or treating Alzheimer's itself--is required as a matter of social justice, since these patients could conceivably benefit from therapies that are developed. From the paper (no link available):

The inclusion of individuals with Alzheimer disease in research studies on comorbid conditions is also required for scientifically valid trial design. Phase III and IV clinical trials are designed to include a sample of individuals that is representative of the population who might use the experimental treatment. Considering that the prevalence of Alzheimer disease is 5% in persons 65–75, and close to 50% in persons over 85, individuals with the disease constitute a significant proportion of the elderly population. Therefore, if a study involves a medication likely to be used by the elderly because it is intended to treat a condition common to this population, researchers should recognize that a significant proportion of the target population will have Alzheimer disease, and persons with the disease should be included in the trial in order to study a representative sample of the population. Thus, both the framework of social justice and scientific validity justify the inclusion of individuals with Alzheimer disease in research on comorbid medical conditions.

Never mind that these subjects could be at greater risk because of the inability to communicate well about what they are experiencing. The Nuremberg Code clearly states:

The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonable to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment.

Moreover, the subject has to be able to call a halt, which would not be true with Alzheimer's patients:

During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.

Alzheimer's patients are individuals, not part of a "group" that will unjustly benefit from treatments if they are not experimented upon. This is particularly true given that there is nothing unique about diseases that afflict the elderly such as glaucoma or congestive heart disease as they affect Alzheimer's patients vis-a -vis their non afflicted peers.

This article is just the latest in a growing chorus to instrumentalize the cognitively devastated, such as the call to use unconscious patients in animal organ transplant experiments. The issue isn't whether some Alzheimer's patients might be indirectly benefited along with other elderly people, from the treatment of heart disease or eye maladies. The issue is that they have no ability to defend themselves. No matter the soothing bioethicseze of "social justice" employed to rationalize the proposal, Wall's suggestion actually seeks to justify the instrumental use of the weak by the strong. As such, it should be rejected in the most blunt and unequivocal terms.

New Eugenics: Selecting Embryos for Eye and Hair Color

Remember when we were told that IVF, coupled with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), would only be used to prevent serious genetic health maladies from being passed to the next generation? That was never true, of course. The intent was to get people to accept the principle that parents should be able to design their children, and that kind of thing is best promoted via the example of serious illness--just as in assisted suicide.

But anyone who thought such restrictions were ever intended to--or would--remain in place other than as a temporary political expedient, please contact me so I can sell you a bridge known as the Golden Gate.

Predictably, once it was widely accepted that parents should be able to decide not only to have children via IVF fertility treatments, but to decide which they want and don't want, well why restrict the right to reject unwanted embryos to those with genetic illnesses? After all, cosmetics often matter to a person's success in the world. And who wants a child one doesn't find attractive? So why not toss embryos because they will have dark skin or the wrong color eyes to match with the house's decor?

But Wesley, no one would be that shallow about their own children! Oh no? From the story:

A US clinic has sparked controversy by offering would-be parents the chance to select traits like the eye and hair colour of their offspring. The LA Fertility Institutes run by Dr Jeff Steinberg, a pioneer of IVF in the 1970s, expects a trait-selected baby to be born next year.

His clinic also offers sex selection...

This involves testing a cell taken from a very early embryo before it is put into the mother's womb. Doctors then select an embryo free from rogue genes--or in this case an embryo with the desired physical traits such as blonde hair and blue eyes--to continue the pregnancy, and discard any others.

Dr Steinberg said couples might seek to use the clinic's services for both medical and cosmetic reasons. For example, a couple might want to have a baby with a darker complexion to help guard against a skin cancer if they already had a child who had developed a melanoma. But others might just want a boy with blonde hair.

So much for unconditional love of children.

We are constantly told that the right of a woman to reproduce is absolute, including getting pregnant, aborting if the pregnancy is ever unwanted, and now, genetically engineering progeny to order. But no "right" is absolute. The time has long since past to put some regulatory controls over the wild, wild west of IVF.

Lead Into Gold: IPS Cells Advances Continue

President Obama still hasn't rescinded the Bush stem cell policy. He will, but it may matter a lot less than people once thought. The IPSC advances continue, opening the door possibly for a way forward in biotechnology that all Americans can support. And, it is reported in the Washington Post! From the story:

Scientists have developed what appears to be a safer way to create a promising alternative to embryonic stem cells, boosting hopes that such cells could sidestep the moral and political quagmire that has hindered the development of a new generation of cures.

The researchers produced the cells by using strands of genetic material, instead of potentially dangerous genetically engineered viruses, to coax skin cells into a state that appears biologically identical to embryonic stem cells. "It's a leap forward in the safe application of these cells," said Andras Nagy of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, who helped lead the international team of researchers that described the work in two papers being published online today by the journal Nature. "We expect this to have a massive impact on this field."

The IPSCs are already being used in drug testing and etc. But can't be used in patients:

The alternative cells, known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, appear to have many of the same characteristics as embryonic stem cells but are produced by activating genes in adult cells to "reprogram" them into a more primitive state, bypassing the moral, political and ethical issues surrounding embryonic cells. Until now, however, their use has been limited because the genetic manipulation required the use of viruses, raising concerns the cells could cause cancer if placed in a patient. That has triggered a race to develop alternative approaches. "These viral insertions are quite dangerous," Nagy said.

Well, so are embryonic stem cells. Pluripotency itself is a problem due to potential tumor formation, and if the stem cells come from "leftover" embryos, immune rejection issues--which is why with the exception of the Geron approved trial, they haven't been used in humans. And the story doesn't get into the amazing adult stem cell successes in early human trials, which are patient specific and don't appear to pose the tumor threat.

Be that as it may, let us all hope the IPSC advances continue. If they work, it could bring about a rapprochement between both sides of the great ESCR debate, while not opening the door to human cloning.

World Federation of Right to Die Societies: Free the Final Exit Network "Georgia Four"

I knew the assisted suicide crowd would try to make the four defendants in the assisted suicide of a man who had been treated successfully of cancer, but was undergoing difficult reconstruction surgery and needed a hip replacement, into some kind of civil rights-type heroes. Toward this end, some assisted suicide promoters have labeled them, "The Georgia Four." Meanwhile, the Board of Directors of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies has issued the following statement, demonstrating that the movement does not want to limit assisted suicide to the terminally ill:

The Board of the World Federation of Right-to-Die Societies is very concerned by the recent arrest in Georgia of its Vice Chairman, Ted Goodwin, and others. Many of us have known Ted for several years and regard him as a most compassionate individual.

Regarding the possible reasons for his arrest, we want to stress that desperate terminally-ill individuals and those suffering greatly from incurable chronic illnesses often look for a peaceful death when their suffering is more than they can bear.

This is already legally possible in Oregon and Washington State, in the USA; and in Europe, in Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and soon in Luxembourg. In the absence of rational laws, organizations such as Final Exit Network sometimes may get close to the line in challenging the law, as perceived by opponents of the right to choose.

The Board of the World Federation of Right-to-Die Societies supports legal change so that those who are terminally-ill, or suffering greatly from incurable chronic illnesses, can obtain a legitimate way to achieve a dignified, humane death.

Oh, can the fake nobility. The "Georgia Four" weren't "challenging" the law, which is what is done in civil disobedience when one publicly disobeys a law considered to be unjust--and then takes the consequences. Whether they committed a crime or not, the "Georgia Four" skirted the law and then carefully covered their own tracks wherever they went. Nelson Mandella and Martin Luther King they are not.