Qualify for government subsidy: become a(n involuntary) unionized government employee

 Next up: doctors, section 8 housing owners, ????? Grocery stores, drug stores???

A year ago in December, Ms. Berry and more than 40,000 other home-based day care providers statewide were suddenly informed they were members of Child Care Providers Together Michigan—a union created in 2006 by the United Auto Workers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union had won a certification election conducted by mail under the auspices of the Michigan Employment Relations Commission. In that election only 6,000 day-care providers voted. The pro-labor vote turned out.

Many of the state's other 34,000 day-care providers never even realized what was going on. Ms. Berry tells us she was "shocked" to find out she was suddenly in a union. The real dirty work, however, had been done when the state created an "employer" for the union to "organize" against.
Of course, Michigan's independent day-care providers don't work for anybody except the parents who were their customers. Nevertheless, because some of these parents qualified for public subsidies, the Child Care Providers "union" claimed the providers were "public employees."
Michigan's Department of Human Services then teamed with Flint-based Mott Community College to sign an "interlocal agreement" in 2006 establishing a separate government agency called the Michigan Home Based Child Care Council. This council was directed to recommend good child-care practices—and not coincidentally, to serve as a "public employer." Although the council had almost no staff, no control over the state subsidies and no supervision of the providers' daily activities, it became the shell corporation against which the union could organize.
Thus the state created an ersatz employer and an ersatz "bargaining unit" against which what was essentially an ersatz union could organize.
Today the Department of Human Services siphons about $3.7 million in annual dues to the union—from the child-care subsidies. The money should be going to home-based day-care providers—themselves not on the high end of the income scale. Ms. Berry now sees money once paid to her go to a union that does little for her. She says she is "self employed and wants nothing to do with the union."

No Connection - Hasting Center Essays Miss the Mark

The Hasting Center has published an online collection of essays called"The Values and Health Care Reform Connection" allowing the public to comment on health care and "American Values." You have to admire the awareness of the academics - not only have they noticed that the conservative, pro-life, religious “American” is concerned with values, but they are trying very, very hard to appeal to those of us with a Judeo-Christian background. I’ve only skimmed a couple of the essays so farm but I have found a glaring inability to stay on task or a basic lack of understanding of the world view of the intended target, uh, audience.

For example, in “Stewardship: What Kind of Society Do We Want?,” Len M. Nichols misses the mark in spite of peppering the essay with terms like “stewardship,” “abundant life” and “covenant” and appeals to the writings of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson.

 (Skip over the use of a faulty, biased 2009 Institute of Medicine report on the consequences of lack of universal health care insurance in the U.S., already thoroughly debunked by Steven Malloy’s “Junk Science” blog.)

In his appeal to “American Values,” Nichols attempts to define “stewardship” to include a “covenant” as a duty of property owners to ensure that the poor have food to eat. He refers to the book of Leviticus and Jewish Law that land owners leave “the corners” of their fields for the poor to glean, rather than going back to harvest all that is there.  While noting that the rule was propagated the “other books that Moses wrote,” Nichols explains that only adult males could own land "in ancient Palestine." He would have been better off referring to the “Torah” or “the Law,” which was given by G_d, not Moses, and to the Nation of Israel, since there was no “Palestine” at that time.

Nichols almost persuades me that he “gets it” in his discussion of the basis for rights: the belief that humans are created in the image of G_d. However, he asks what good is the right to life or the pursuit of happiness without access to essential health care and quotes Jefferson’s comparison of liberty with health. He does not seem to understand that both Locke and Jefferson described these as negative rights: the right not to be killed, and the right not to be enslaved or have ‘the fruit of one’s labor” forcibly taken. In other words, no one has the right to cause another to be sick, but there is no right to medicine or medical care.

Nichols does not resort to the usual call for Christians to remember the Good Samaritan. In fact, he turns to an argument that might be more appealing to Libertarians, whom he calls “a tiny group of argumentative people.” His discussion of rights and stewardship by is converted to support for the rationing of health care, noting that Leviticus does not require the landowner to bring the poor person home and cook him a meal. In this, too, he demonstrates his lack of understanding of the Judeo-Christian world view. The covenant to care for the sick and poor is between individual believers and G_d. Government hasn’t proven itself to be trustworthy enough for me to assign my duty to G_d over to its stewardship.

The (manufactured) Stem Cell Debate at Dartmouth

I don't believe I've ever seen a report on a presentation that allowed half the space for "debate," after the fact.

The Stem Cell Debate at Dartmouth

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. was recently invited to give a lecture entitled “Stem Cells and Cloning: Understanding the Scientific Issues and the Moral Objections” at Aquinas House, in observance of the Feast of St. Luke, the patron saint of medical professionals. Pacholczyk, or Father Tad as he encourages his audience members to call him, is the Director of Education for the National Catholic Bioethics Center. He arrived at this position after receiving degrees in philosophy, biochemistry, molecular cell biology, and chemistry, a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Yale University, and years of research in molecular biology, bioethics, and dogmatic theology. In a free public lecture lasting more than two hours, Pacholczyk outlined both the scientific and ethical considerations of human embryonic stem cell research and to a lesser extent cloning, giving justifications for the Catholic Church’s positions on these technologies.

After giving an in depth layman’s version of the science involved in stem cell research and a history of both scientific milestones and relevant policy decisions, Pacholczyk corrected what he believed were some of the most pervasive myths about stem cell research. He believes that individuals and organizations within the media and others who engage in expensive advertising campaigns have deliberately misled the American people in an effort to reframe the debate over the use of human embryos for research.

**************
The Dartmouth Review understands that this is an issue on which reasonable moral people can disagree, and so Michael S. Gazzaniga ‘61, Ph.D., Director of the Sage Center for the Study of Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara was asked to explain some of the ethical justifications. He indicated that, “The handling of human tissue has always commanded the respect of the biomedical community and always will.” However, Gazzaniga does not consider an embryo to be in possession of the same moral status as an adult human, while acknowledging that the issue has “deep meaning to millions of people.”

The Review has raised several ethics questions regarding the virtual debate they created by interviewing Dr. Gazzaniga after Dr. Pacholczyk's talk.

Will they seek out opposing views in the future or is it only Catholic priests who require such answers? Will they now give Dr. Pacholczyk an opportunity to respond?

In addition, Dr. Gazzaniga finds the determination as to when a human being becomes a human being fairly simplistic:

Asked the basic question underlying this debate and that about abortion, when a human embryo becomes a human being, Gazzaniga called it a “social decision, not unlike the kind a society makes about when to call someone legally blind.”

Does Dr. Gazzaniga's emphasis on contrasting "adult" human beings with embryonic human beings indicate that he finds differing moral values in the lives of infants, children, and "adults," does he extend these differences to the state of function of the brain, and can he justify these variations at least as well as we can our culture's definition of "legally blind?"

Colorado's Human Life Amendment

Although Time Magazine, the Denver Post and the blogs insist on calling it the "fertilized egg rights" law, Colorado's State Supreme Court has approved the wording for a proposed "Human Life Amendment." The proponents of the amendment need 76,000 signatures in order to get the initiative on the November, 2008 ballot.

The Chicago Tribune reporter at least understands that after fertilization we are talking about an "embryo." The Trib even found three ethicists who agree that the human embryo is alive. Which puts them in opposition Justice Blackburn’s opinion ( which medical school did he go to, anyway?) in Roe v. Wade that no one knows when life begins.

Unfortunately all three of those ethicists are much more worried about the definition and description of the qualities and abilities of those living humans they deem worthy of “personhood” than whether or not it is acceptable to discriminate between which humans are persons or not. Their main objection seems to be that protection of the inalienable right not to be killed, enslaved or treated as research material “would cause a lot of problems." (I'll bet that they disagree with the Dred Scot opinion, though. Overturning that one sure caused a lot of problems.)

U.S. law, based as it is on “unalienable rights” mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, should absolutely prevent courts, laws and ethicists from infringement of the right not to be killed or enslaved. Ethicists – of all people – shouldn’t need a lawyer to understand that the full exercise of unalienable rights affects infants, children, the mentally disabled and the mentally ill. Parents have special duties to their children and children can't claim the same expression of liberty (drinking, driving, entering into contracts) that their parents do. There are legal precedents for dealing with the “problems” posed by the varying abilities of the mentally ill and disabled as well as for minors – including very young infants who can legally be restrained against their will (in a crib, playpen or car seat).

The “ethicists” in the Tribune article, as well as readers' comments in both papers and in blogs all over the internet, bring out every pro-abortion objection except the coat hanger. They warn us that fertile women will be “monitored,” that women who miscarry or who drink a glass of wine will be prosecuted. They insist that if State law recognizes the human being as a person from fertilization, we’ll have to decide whether to try to save every child at miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy or fail to enforce the law. Elective intentional abortions and manipulation that is intended to end the organization of an embryo - are acts which may be prohibited under law and the State Medical regulations. Spontaneous abortions (miscarriages), and stillbirths, like so many natural deaths, are impossible to prevent and cannot be prohibited.

Since US Supreme Court rulings (Roe v. Wade and Casey, among others) all base the “right” to an abortion on the autonomy of the mother and while affirming the right of the State to protect the child in certain cases, the “extracorporeal” embryo should be protected, somehow, even in current law.

It might be worth noting that the law requires determination of the cause of death of everyone who dies, and that Texas requires a special review of children under 6 and those of any age who die within 24 hours of admission to the hospital. Texas also names a “person” as living human individual from fertilization to natural death through our Penal Code. The 2003 Prenatal Protection Act allows criminal charges when a third party causes the death of an unborn child while exempting the actions of the mother or deaths due to legal medical procedures with the consent of the mother.

In fact, 3 men have been convicted of capital murder under our 2003 Prenatal Protection Act. The convicted men were abusive, the father, and intended to kill the child(ren). One killed twins at 5 months gestation but not the mother, the other two each killed mother and child. One man received the death penalty for killing a teenaged girl he'd gotten pregnant. There are charges pending in at least one more case, a drive-by shooting that caused the death of a pregnant woman.

Last month, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in favor of the conviction of a man who killed one of two women he was sleeping with after the first told him she was pregnant. He told his second girlfriend that he would take care of the pregnancy of the first, and shot the first woman 3 times with a shotgun, once in the face.

As for "monitoring the actions of women:" a couple of county District Attorneys in Texas have tried to turn the law into an excuse to lock up mothers for endangering their unborn children. The outcome was similar to the cases in South Carolina a few years ago, when women were arrested after being tested as part of their pregnancy screening, required by that State’s Medicaid regulations. One lawyer made a speech to a group of lawyers that the Act could be coordinated with our State's Consent Laws to charge doctors with capital crimes. Texas State Attorney General has given an official statement on the intent of the Legislature that exempts mothers and doctors.

The handling of an ectopic pregnancy is well established under the doctrine of self-defense. With our current medical technology, the child cannot be saved and he or she is a direct danger to his mother’s life.

While we can’t verify the soul, we can verify which embryos are organisms: techs do it all the time in labs. The embryo, unlike the sperm, egg, and transplanted organs, is an organized organism. It's easy to tell within a day whether the oocyte is fertilized and which are not. It's also easy to tell the difference between embryonic stem cells and an embryo.

Give me liberty or give me condoms!

Where are the condom squads who go around making sure that every grocery store, drug store, and 24 hour convenience store stocks latex condoms and the appropriate lubricants, "at all times"? Condoms are a much more basic public health issue than Plan B, which only works (when it works) for about 5 days in the woman's cycle.

Siricou Raven is keeping the conversation alive as to whether or not pharmacists should be forced to stock and dispense all legal medicines. She asks,

What is the difference between a pharmacist refusing to distribute contraception because it offends his own morality, and one refusing to dispense HIV medication because it offends his own morality?

Treating disease has never been controversial. Have you ever heard of a doctor or pharmacist who refuses to treat syphilis, gonorrhea or chlamydia? Have you noticed any that have ceased doing Pap smears since we learned that abnormal Paps are due to a Sexually Transmitted Disease, Human Papilloma Viruses that are only transmitted by sexual contact?

(I do know a pulmonologist - a lung specialist - who will not take on patients who smoke. I could draw all sorts of parallels between sex and smoking, but I'll leave that to you.)

At issue is the very basic question is that of the "unalienable" individual right to liberty, expressed as following the conscience.

As Judge Lawrence wrote in the Injunction, the Washinton State law is very clear on the right to conscience and freedom to practice religion.

There is no reason to carve out contraception and "reproductive health" (a Newspeak term, if I ever heard one) as a special, protected class of medicines, devices and procedures.

For that matter, why on earth would any woman who doesn't want to become pregnant have sex without two or more contraceptives in hand/body before the act itself and/or know her fertile periods? If men didn't have the back up insurance of abortion, I'd bet they would be more careful, too. (Rape is an Emergency Room issue - the ER doc and SANE nurse can dispense and counsel on fertility risk, right along with prophylaxis for STD's).

While I'm ranting:

Ethics lesson 1: Life trumps liberty, since pretty much everything else depends on being alive.

Ethics lesson 2: The only reason the State should force action from a citizen is in cases of life and death. Each law that is enforced puts the citizen's life and liberty at risk, since the enforcement will involve the real and virtual guns of the State. There is a long history of recognizing the relationship between the right to own property and the right to liberty. If the State may take the property or restrict the livelihood of a person, the person is at risk of prison or hunger and is not free.

Ethics lesson 3: People who will do acts that they believe morally wrong for any reason other than to save lives (to stay out of jail, keep their jobs or avoid controversy) are either unethical people or insane. And I'm not too sure about the people who would force them, either.

Conservative vs. Progressive (no adjectives)

Once again, we're reminded about the great gulf between perception and reality (just look at the repetition of the names of authors whose ethics comments are published in the "mainstream" science and bioethics journals and explore the political and religious viewpoints of those authors and editors), between the idea that all humans are people possessing rights endowed by "their Creator," and the difference between exercising those rights and the restrictions and privileges afforded by government. And we see another example of projection, re-definition to attack pro-life conservatives.

(Go ahead and read the Declaration of Independence (Here's another text version). I believe it's a good primer for understanding conservativism.)

The latest American Journal of Bioethics includes a silly little target article, "Biotechnology and the New Right: Neoconservatism's Red Menace," (the abstract is free, the rest is behind a pay-wall. Let me know if you want to read it) by Jonathan Moreno, Ph.D. and Sam Berger. Both "progressives" are mouth pieces a Senior Fellow and a (former?) Research Assistant at the Progressive Bioethics Initiative. The PBI is an off-shoot of the "Center for American Progress," a far-left think-tank started by John Podesta.

Moreno and Berger look at the fathers of some men that opponents have named "neocons," and build upon the argument that

"Although the neoconservative movement has come to dominate American conservatism, this movement has its origins in the old Marxist Left. . . . By not acknowledging and embracing their intellectual roots, neoconservatives are left with a deeply ambivalent and often confused view of biotechnology and the society that gives rise to it."

The "Open Peer Commentary" pieces are written by volunteers who review and argue the target article. Remember the Womens Bioethics Project and their "God's Bioethics" expose'? (Read more about that here and here.) The Commentary "Responding to Neocon Critiques of Biotechnology: A Progressive Agenda" (sorry, another pay-to-read) by Kathryn M. Hinsch, and Robin N. Fiore, Ph.D., of the Women's Bioethics Project should offend conservatives of all ages and progressives as well.

In order to overcome what they see as impediments to their goal of ". . . attempting to construct a coherent consensus “progressive view” that could be acceptable to the wide range of extant progressive views (plural)," (sic) they suggest that Progressives work on the following problems:

1) Widespread scientific illiteracy permits the substitution of rhetoric about vague but disquieting threats to human nature, engenders distrust of the scientific enterprise and its products, and sanctions relativism with respect to non-scientific and pseudoscientific explanations and justifications for empirical claims. For example, neocons have successfully exploited the public’s lack of understanding with respect to the differences between therapeutic and reproductive cloning in order to pursue a ban on all forms of embryo research.

2) Social arrangements structured by historical gender, race and class inequities continue to appropriate women’s sexuality, their reproductive capacities, and their labor. Progressives as well as conservatives often neglect analyses of (current and potential) distributions of power and privilege. For example, neither conservatives nor progressives address caregiving in ways that acknowledge the increasing dependence on uncompensated care
by women in families and the impact of caregiving burdens on women’s own well-being. The President’s Council on Bioethics issued a lengthy report that finally concludes with a recommendation (sigh) that yet another commission be appointed to study this issue (President’s Council on Bioethics 2005).

3) Progressives are identified as being more concerned with social justice and conservatives as more concerned with human dignity — 45 million uninsured Americans rebut both propositions. On questions of access, disparities in healthcare and medical entrepreneurship,
progressives have failed to distinguish themselves. Conservatives offer a dystopian vision of a future gerontocracy and blame ill health on the personal irresponsibility of the medically least well off. Mainstream bioethicists have offered arguments from“justice” about individuals’ duty to refuse expensive medical interventions
after a “fair” share of normal life expectancy, but have been unable or unwilling to specify a “fair” profit margin for entrepreneurial healthcare systems and insurers.

4) Moreno and Berger (2007) suggest that the neocon attempts to ban whole sectors of biotechnological research and commercialization — particularly those that implicate reproduction — stem from neocon’s understanding of “people” (scare quotes added for emphasis) as too weak, imperfect, and immoral to make certain weighty decisions. This view of moral agency has, of course, been routinely applied to women and other infantilized social actors, particularly with respect to individual decisions regarding sexuality and reproduction. In Gonzalez v. Carhart, the Supreme Court of the United States justified upholding the ban on late-term abortion in part by invoking gender stereotypes and claiming that women needed to be protected from poor decision-making. As Justice Ginsberg pointed out in her dissenting opinion, this decision could have been accomplished by strengthening informed consent rather than depriving women of the right to autonomous choice. Conservatives are now attempting to limit forms of medical progress that have implications for the moral agency of previously privileged social actors. For example, Francis Fukuyama and Leon Kass, both members of the President’s Council on Bioethics, support legislation that would criminalize the prescription or utilization of treatments developed (anywhere in the world) from cloning technology.
A progressive alternative to technology embargoes and diminished moral scope might focus on developing programs to enhance technological information literacy, critical thinking and decision-making skills and supports, as well as broadening opportunities for community participation. Such efforts may nourish solidarity and ground more substantive forms of autonomy.
5) The patenting of drugs, devices and other medical technologies both stimulates innovation and deprives the medically indigent, creating special interest wealth at the expense of life and health. In contrast, Benjamin Franklin refused a patent on his design for an improved wood stove, preferring that all people benefit from it.
Ultimately, progressives must engage the difficult problem of ensuring that the benefits of the new biology and medical advances are distributed as broadly as fairly as possible.

Both the Progressives and the Women would do well to consider what it means to believe that the right to "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" are endowed on all humans, rather than legislated and regulated. So many of the misconceptions outlined above are answered anew by this simple philosophy. No matter who your father was.

Note: Post was edited 11/2/07, because of an error in Ms. Hinsch's name.

Ethics statments from the AMA and CMDA

Last month, I wrote about the Christian Medical and Dental Association's ethics statements. There's a comment about them in last weeks' CMDA "News and Views." See Dr. Robert Scheidt's comments, with the links to the three ethics statements that were approved at this year's CMDA House of Directors. This week, we have the NEJM article on "Futile care."


elow is what I believe are the pertinent section from the AMA Ethics "Policy Finder." (See E-10.05, 3c)

E-10.05 Potential Patients

(1) Physicians must keep their professional obligations to provide care to patients in accord with their prerogative to choose whether to enter into a patient-physician relationship.
(2) The following instances identify the limits on physicians’ prerogative: (a) Physicians should respond to the best of their ability in cases of medical emergency (Opinion 8.11, "Neglect of Patient"). (b) Physicians cannot refuse to care for patients based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or any other criteria that would constitute invidious discrimination (Opinion 9.12, "Patient-Physician Relationship: Respect for Law and Human Rights"), nor can they discriminate against patients with infectious diseases (Opinion 2.23, "HIV Testing"). (c) Physicians may not refuse to care for patients when operating under a contractual arrangement that requires them to treat (Opinion 10.015, "The Patient-Physician Relationship"). Exceptions to this requirement may exist when patient care is ultimately compromised by the contractual arrangement.
(3) In situations not covered above, it may be ethically permissible for physicians to decline a potential patient when: (a) The treatment request is beyond the physician’s current competence. (b) The treatment request is known to be scientifically invalid, has no medical indication, and offers no possible benefit to the patient (Opinion 8.20, "Invalid Medical Treatment"). (c) A specific treatment sought by an individual is incompatible with the physician’s personal, religious, or moral beliefs.
(4) Physicians, as professionals and members of society, should work to assure access to adequate health care (Opinion 10.01, "Fundamental Elements of the Patient-Physician Relationship").* Accordingly, physicians have an obligation to share in providing charity care (Opinion 9.065, "Caring for the Poor") but not to the degree that would seriously compromise the care provided to existing patients. When deciding whether to take on a new patient, physicians should consider the individual’s need for medical service along with the needs of their current patients. Greater medical necessity of a service engenders a stronger obligation to treat. (I, VI, VIII, IX) Issued December 2000 based on the report "Potential Patients, Ethical Considerations," adopted June 2000. Updated December 2003. * Considerations in determining an adequate level of health care are outlined in Opinion 2.095, “The Provision of Adequate Health Care.”



E-10.015 The Patient-Physician Relationship

The practice of medicine, and its embodiment in the clinical encounter between a patient and a physician, is fundamentally a moral activity that arises from the imperative to care for patients and to alleviate suffering.

A patient-physician relationship exists when a physician serves a patient’s medical needs, generally by mutual consent between physician and patient (or surrogate). In some instances the agreement is implied, such as in emergency care or when physicians provide services at the request of the treating physician. In rare instances, treatment without consent may be provided under court order (see Opinion 2.065, "Court-Initiated Medical Treatments in Criminal Cases"). Nevertheless, the physician’s obligations to the patient remain intact.

The relationship between patient and physician is based on trust and gives rise to physicians’ ethical obligations to place patients’ welfare above their own self-interest and above obligations to other groups, and to advocate for their patients’ welfare.

Within the patient-physician relationship, a physician is ethically required to use sound medical judgment, holding the best interests of the patient as paramount. (I, II, VI, VIII) Issued December 2001 based on the report "The Patient-Physician Relationship," adopted June 2001.

E-9.12 Patient-Physician Relationship: Respect for Law and Human Rights

The creation of the patient-physician relationship is contractual in nature. Generally, both the physician and the patient are free to enter into or decline the relationship. A physician may decline to undertake the care of a patient whose medical condition is not within the physician’s current competence. However, physicians who offer their services to the public may not decline to accept patients because of race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, or any other basis that would constitute invidious discrimination. Furthermore, physicians who are obligated under pre-existing contractual arrangements may not decline to accept patients as provided by those arrangements. (I, III, V, VI) Issued July 1986; Updated June 1994.

"The tie goes to the speaker, not the censor"

Whether you see today's ruling as "weakening" or "slapping," or "trimming"

the McCain/Feingold campaign laws, you've got to appreciate the simplicity of this statement by Chief Justice Roberts:

"Discussion of issues cannot be suppressed simply because the issues may also be pertinent in an election," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. "Where the First Amendment is implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor."

Who would have thought? Free speech in elections!!!

More equal or less?

A self-defined troll, Siricou Raven, asks,

Merely being human genetically isn't enough - so what do humans have that makes them protected over all other species? And when do they aquire whatever this is?

SR, I don't have to weigh, measure and evaluate - you do. You are the one asserting that "being human genetically isn't enough."

Why isn't being human enough?

The problem is more that you find it necessary to justify killing some humans and so you are the one looking for that something that makes some humans less "protected over other species." A more precise way to phrase your premise would be,

"[W]hat do humans have that makes them protected" - from other humans - "over other species," -- while still protecting yourself?

I, on the other hand, follow long-standing philosophic tradition that all humans have the right not to be killed, and the slightly less common tradition that every member of our species is human-enough to be protected from deliberate killing and enslavement. (As I say, "We're the only species having this conversation.")

I believe that anyone can come to the same conclusion - with a little study of biology, logic, history, and even some imagination.

The biology is self-evident. Follow the embryology, anatomy and physiology. The one-celled embryo is the same entity as the rational adult. Our repetitive discussions about "why" and "when" are simply more proof of the continuity, rather than any discrete discontinuities.

It goes against logic to proclaim that "Some of us are more equal than others."

And it requires a lot of energy to defend your philosophy. Energy used up in defining, renaming, listing characteristics and measurements. Then, you need convoluted laws, an army or police force trained to discriminate and protect the "special" people.

If you want to skip logic and efficiency, study the subject of human rights from a historical perspective: Historically, the more inclusive a society, the more freedom for all. Societies that discriminate spend too much energy protecting the special people and their "right" to kill and enslave others.

Even the societies with historical caste systems, where the discrimination is internalized all along the spectrum of human-ness, exposure to ideas about human rights - or the birth of a William Wilberforce, Susan B. Anthony, Ghandi or Martin Luther King, Jr. - weakens former "protections" for the privileged. Society changes. (Far too often, after a period of violence between the "more equal" and "less equal." The dispute about the humanity of embryos created in the lab won't follow this pattern.)

Failing logic, efficiency or the effort to study history and sociology, try imagination.

In the West, children who could have been legally aborted are questioning the assumptions of their mothers' generation about "personhood." They can imagine that they were at risk - they empathize with their missing siblings.

It's hard for me to avoid imagining the outcome of experimentation on the embryo. I've got the examples of how humans have exploited humans in the past. (Last night, I was reading about the Nuremberg trials.) For the imagination-deprived, try reading William Saletan's confused discussion about "Making Manimals," the current experimentation on human genetic material.

Or, you could read some of the wealth of Science Fiction speculation on the results of created-less-than-humans. Recently, there's "Never Let Me Go." For other speculative fiction on the use of human offspring by their creators, read Lois McMaster Bujold (Free Falling, or the Miles stories), or David Webber. One of my favorites is Nancy Kress' Beggars in Spain (a good review, here).

(wow - don't get lost following Nicholas Whyte's links - but do peek at this post, with a link to a page with a link to a 1927 "home movie" of a meeting between Madame Curie, Bohr, Eistein, and the gang.)

What kind of world do we want to live in?

A most appropriate question on this day, when the Supreme Court ruled that Oregon's laws allowing physicians to write prescriptions intended to cause the death of patients.

This time, the question is asked by Kathryn Hinsch,the founder of the Womens Bioethics Project, in her "guest column" in the Seattle Post Intelligencer. The subject of the column is the fraud of Korean veterinarian, Hwang Suk Wu, who falsely claimed to have cloned human embryos in order to harvest stem cells. She notes the temptation to "play G_d" with biotechnology and concludes that the decisions are "too important to leave to the bioethicists, the scientists or the politicians."


It may seem that each day brings a new crisis for those of us who view human life as something to be valued and protected, whether the human is very young and may not even be born yet, whether conceived naturally or by the use of complicated technology and in a lab, or very sick or very old, and dependent on even more medicine and technology.

There's only one subject, not many. Cloning, harvesting of embryos for their stem cells, abortion, euthanasia and so-called "physician-assisted suicide" are all basically the same thing: the division of humans into those who will be protected by society and those who will not. Once we agree that our fundamental principle is that human life is to be protected from deliberate killing by others and that humans should not be used for the benefit of others without consent and benefit to the one being used, we can see that all the crises are actually only one crisis.

I agree with Ms. Hinsch that it is time for each of us to have a voice.

It is time to call, write or email your Federal and State legislators, demanding protection of human life, at all stages of life.

Edited January 27, 2010