Right Wing Nut House

I want a new drug
One that won’t make me sick
One that won’t make me crash my car
Or make me feel three feet thick

I want a new drug
One that won’t hurt my head
One that won’t make my mouth too dry
Or make my eyes too red
(Huey Lewis and the News)

God I miss getting high.

And drunk. And stoned. And wired. And Buzzed.

I miss getting wired and playing quarter poker for 36 hours straight.

I miss getting stoned at 8:00 AM on Sunday morning and watching cartoons.

I miss getting high and watching hockey on TV.

I miss doing a few lines and walking into a bar feeling like I was goddamn Richard Gere, Tom Cruise, and Superman all rolled into one.

I’ve done ‘em all. Anything I could swallow, smoke, snort, eat, or wear.

And there’s no way I’d still be doing them because if I kept doing what I was doing, I’d be the very first pajamahadeen live blogging the afterlife. (Might do wonders for my ecosystem rankings).

What brought this on was a pretty wild rant by Jeff Harrell at Shape of Days who was responding to a laughably naive NY Times Op-Ed by John Tierney on how interesting it would be to legalize drugs. And fun. And how much better off we’d be because the war on drugs isn’t working besides most drugs aren’t that bad for you they just seem that way and even if they are bad for you what the hell business of it is the government’s and just think we could go after all the murderers and rapists if they weren’t too busy busting teenagers for having a roach in the ashtray and yadayadayada…

In an over the top reaction, Bill Ardolino takes a few pounds of flesh off of Mr. Harrell:

What extra-special brand of scribal Tourette’s is required to author a screed like this?

I may have to go back on my declaration that the lefties exclusively dominate the blogosphere’s nasty discourse, as avowed righty Harrell’s piece - in both its rhetorical style and illogical, absolutist, moonbat reasoning - is one of the most oddly harsh things I’ve read in quite some time.

The Tourette crack was uncalled for. Ardolino was correct in pointing out it was absolutist, illogical and nasty. But I think even Bill would recognize in that searing rant an emotionalism so irrational that Mr. Harrell would have been better off if he had not hit the “publish” button so soon. I know I’ve done something similar in the past. Thank God it passed under the blogosphere radar at the time. Jeff wasn’t as lucky.

As for Tierney’s column, it could have been worse. He could have said something really stupid like marijuana isn’t bad for you.

As someone clinically diagnosed as addicted to marijuana (Cannabis Dependent Syndrome or CDS) , I beg to differ. Anyone who says that marijuana isn’t a dangerous drug doesn’t know jack about it. It’s only been the last 25 years that serious scientific work has been done on marijuana and what they’re finding shows that people who say marijuana is harmless are idiots. The value of these studies is that they’ve disproved much of the early research that showed marijuana was as addictive as heroin, or caused irreversible brain damage, as well as studies that showed it to be harmless to the cognitive centers of the brain and completely non-addictive.

Marijuana can be a contributing factor to clinical depression, schizophrenia, and over production of serotonin, a brain chemical that regulates mood. Addiction can cause anxiety attacks, withdrawal symptoms, and loss of long term memory. To sum up, given the short and long term effects observed in the laboratory, heavy use of marijuana is about as bad as heavy use of alcohol, or amphetamines, or just about any other drug.

I describe the effects of marijuana because this is the drug that most of my libertarian friends throw in my face when talking about decriminalizing drug use. And while there may be some merit to the idea, as usual the libertarians are walking in the clouds while the rest of us have to exist here on planet earth.

Decriminalization would not rid us of the scourge of gang warfare over lucrative drug turf nor will it eliminate meth labs. It won’t stop the narco terrorists from funding Bin Laden or the Shining Path. And it won’t necessarily empty out the jails or unclog the courts because law enforcement will be free to go after anyone and everyone who deals the stuff.

All would be true unless you just want to go ahead and legalize the whole shebang. This would be absolutely fascinating to watch someone try and put into practice in the real world. In fact, it would be of such entertainment value that I would start a new humor blog just to write about the effort.

Because legalization would bring government into the previously illegal drug industry with both feet. And that’s something I would pay to watch.

Can you see the Feds negotiating with Peruvian drug lords for the best price on this year’s coca harvest? Or Afghan warlords for access to their poppy fields? Of course, there are limited supplies of both drugs grown for medicinal purposes but the expansion of fields and factories dedicated to satisfying market demand would be far bey0nd our present capability to meet. We’d have to deal with the thugs.

And the bidding war among the suits at Smith-Kline, Pfizer, Lilly, Baxter, and a whole host of pharmaceutical companies would be great theater.

It will never happen, of course. Most people have more sense than your average libertarian. Where the RINO’s are correct is in their critique of what the war on drugs has done to civil liberties and the madness in our criminal justice system. For that, the solution may in fact involve some form of decriminalization. Hell, if Bill Buckley can come out for decriminalization, how bad can it be?

The real problem with drug addiction is how to cure it. Currently, only some variation of the 12-step program initially used with alcoholics has proven even partially effective. There are some promising drugs in testing as I write this but even such a “magic bullet” does not address the underlying psychological issues that lead to addiction in the first place. Recidivism rates are astronomical for cocaine and heroin - approaching 95% after two years. That means that 95% of patients going through a treatment program will be using the drug 2 years later.

And part of that is a statistical problem. About 60% of the people receiving in-patient treatment aren’t there because they want to be, they’re in treatment because they had a choice to make between going into a hospital or going to jail. Crimes as various as domestic violence to attempted murder are taken off the court dockets by shuffling the perp off to a drug treatment center for a month. The only thing the perp is interested in is doing his time at the center, playing nice and trying to fool the counselors. I know because I’ve seen it. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

This leaves no empty beds for the people who really do want to quit, who are personally motivated to get the monkey off their back. People who have hit bottom are ready to turn their lives around. If there are no beds available, the chances are next to nothing that the addict will succeed on their own.

The answer here is obvious; stop court ordered drug treatment. A much better place for an addict to quit is in jail - as long as we spend gobs of money on facilities that are combination treatment centers and prisons. As it stands now, drug treatment in prison is a national disgrace. Prison treatment centers are for the most part ineffective because they don’t segregate the patient from the general population. And clinical progress is not tied to the length of a prisoners sentence, a motivational aspect of prison drug treatment most professional advocate.

Then there’s the personal liberty issue. Here’s a good summation of the libertarian position:

Let me tell you where I stand. Drugs are bad, mmmkay. The biggest problem with drugs are not their long-term effects, but their near term effects. That is, people do things under the influence of drugs that they normally wouldn’t do. I have a problem with that.

But, just because drugs are bad does not mean that they should be illegal. Stupid things that harm others ought to be illegal, not stupid things that harm yourself. And if the worst bads associated with drugs are when you do stupid things to others, then, well, we already have laws to cover those.

DUI, child abuse, etc.–all presently illegal, and rightly so.

The most common bads associated with drug use are not illegal nor should they be. Work absenteeism, poor relationship skills, and the most common one–stupid judgement in sexual relations–are all rightfully legal.

It’s an emotionally satisfying argument albeit one shot full of ethical loopholes and intellectual solipsism. The potential for harm to another human being as a result of drug abuse and addiction is not addressed satisfactorily. By saying that killing someone under the influence of crack cocaine is already covered under the criminal justice system - the extreme of what Dr. Shackleford is saying - and then say that society has no business taking the cocaine away from the murderer or keeping him from getting the drug in the first place is wrong.

Yes people who take drugs are only hurting themselves physically. But when they take a few other people down to the sewer with them - people who are completely innocent and wouldn’t ordinarily take the same fall as the druggie - then we have a problem. I can’t believe Dr. Shakleford and other libertarians are simply throwing up their hands and saying “tough luck” to those who find themselves in a situation where they’re dependent on an addict. That’s why I think there is a role for government in both interdiction and enforcement. A reduced role, yes. One cognizant of civil liberties yes. But a role nonetheless.

I tend to favor a more local solution. If someone is going to harm themselves by taking drugs, clearly we must get innocent bystanders out of the way. The problems associated with government taking away children from crack-addled parents are too numerous to go into here. Suffice it to say that the system is so broke that any additional stress could cause it to collapse altogether. The only way to fix it is to spend massive amounts of tax dollars as Children and Family Service Departments are woefully underfunded and understaffed nationwide. In a city like Chicago, it’s a disgrace.

Speaking from personal experience, taking drugs feels too good to stop for no reason. This is why we’re never going to “solve” the drug problem in any meaningful way. Decriminalizing drugs is not the answer. In fact, in my opinion it would be worse than what we have now because it simply doesn’t address the ancillary problems that drug addiction causes. It merely gives us the illusion that something is being done. From a civil libertarian standpoint, I buy the argument on a psychic level. But it’s a pointless intellectual exercise when children are starving to death because their mother spends money to feed her drug habit rather than her children.

I agree with Ann Althouse on this one: Is this for real?

IN THE presidential campaign, a new threshold in church-state relations was crossed when Catholic bishops threatened to exclude Senator John Kerry from the Eucharist because of his support for Roe v. Wade. The Senate Judiciary Committee is now fully justified in asking these bishops whether the same threats would apply to Supreme Court nominee Judge Roberts, if he were to vote to uphold Roe v. Wade.

The bishops have made this question legitimate because Americans no longer know whether a Catholic judge can hear abortion cases without an automatic conflict of interest.

Asking the bishops to testify would be healthy. If they rescinded the threats made against Kerry, then Roberts would feel free to make his decision without the appearance of a conflict of interest, and Catholic politicians who support Roe v. Wade would gain renewed confidence in their advocacy. If the bishops repeated or confirmed their threats, the Senate Judiciary Committee should draft legislation calling for the automatic recusal of Catholic judges from cases citing Roe v. Wade as a precedent.

That’s right. The author of the article Christopher Morris is advocating a law be passed to automatically mandate the recusal of a judge based solely on his religious beliefs.

Actually, this opens up some marvelous opportunities for legislative mischief aimed at miscreant judges. Imagine being able to bar minority judges from ruling on civil rights cases. Or white judges from ruling on reverse discrimination cases. Or women judges from ruling on gender equality cases. Or Quaker judges from ruling on death penalty cases.

While we’re at it, why don’t we make Catholic judges sew a great big red “C” on their cloak and make them clean the Supreme Court bathrooms?

A little too much hyperbole for you this early in the morning? Try not to choke on your danish when reading this:

One would think Catholic judges would want such a measure in place as a means of honoring their own convictions. That this proposal will no doubt be controversial should not be a reason for failing to pursue it: Political advocacy by religious organizations is on the rise and will only become stronger. If the subject is ducked this time by the Senate Judiciary Committee, it will only come up later in a more aggravated form.

It’s time to have this dialog. Without it, the decisions of our highest court, already tainted by the Bush-Gore election, will increasingly be perceived as self-serving, political, and illegitimate.

I like Dale Frank’s take on this:

Why, you know I hadn’t thought about that before. But, while we’re on the subject, maybe Jews could be forced to wear yellow stars, so they can more easily identify their fellow co-religionists in public. I mean, you know, they’d feel so much more secure if they could look around in a crowd and see a fellow landsmann, wouldn’t they?

Please note that all decisions of the Court have been “tainted” for their defiance of the Democratic party in upholding state election law in Florida which was passed by state legislators who were voted in by the people of the State of Florida. It’s amazing that to this day, liberal partisans like Mr. Morris are still grumpy over the fact that the Supreme Court refused to nullify state law and dictate to the state of Florida how the people’s representatives should conduct the business of elections.

But, hey! Why let a little thing like, you know, the law stand in the way when there are Christians to be publicly gored:

In theory, the same Holy Spirit that made evangelicals born again could also move them to change a social or political view at any time. (In drafting mandatory recusal legislation, senators should probe the foundations of these beliefs and persuade themselves that evangelicals retained a meaningful, not just a technical, choice.) Inquiry into Judaism, Islam, and other religions should also focus on whether any of them make threats against members who hold particular views about abortion.

In other words, in order to see if our Christian judge “retained a meaningful, not just technical choice” in their ability to change their minds about Roe V Wade, we should delve deeply into their religious convictions by asking them all sorts of personal questions not related to their ability to carry out their duties as impartial jurists.

Mr. Morris is not a serious man. He is instead, in need of attention. I recommend his mommy come to his home in Vermont and deliver a few well aimed whaps to his backside and give him the love and consideration he so obviously missed out on as a child.

If it’s attention he seeks, Mr. Morris has got it. And perhaps a little history lesson is in order for Mr. Morris and anyone else who seeks to revive religious litmus tests for any issue and for any public servant whose personal beliefs may conflict with the law.

The anti-Catholic bigotry that roiled this country’s politics for more than 300 years reached a zenith of sorts in the election of 1928 which saw Democrat Al Smith, a Catholic, face off against Herbert Hoover. The nauseating display of ant-Catholic bigotry which directly led to Smith’s defeat convinced both parties that nominating a Catholic for high office was the kiss of death.

This all changed in the election of 1960. Historians have long pondered the reason for the dissipation of anti-Catholic sentiment in the electorate that finally allowed for a Catholic to be elected President. At first, as historian Thomas Carty points out, there was even a high level of anti-Catholic bigotry among liberals:

Author James A. Michener recalled feeling quite startled when guests at publisher Bennett Cerf’s early 1960 dinner party challenged John F. Kennedy’s presidential candidacy on religious grounds. In an educated, professional crowd, Michener encountered “American liberals [who] … had the most serious and deep-seated fears of a Catholic in the Presidency.” One individual called the Vatican “dictatorial, savage[,] … reactionary … [and] brutal in its lust for power.” Others feared that clerical pressures would determine Kennedy’s political decisions. One colleague declared that “Irish priests” would manipulate a Catholic president “as if he were their toy.” A Catholic at Michener’s table characterized her church as antidemocratic and incompatible with church-state separation and religious liberty. According to Michener, these individuals claimed to know many other ideological liberals who mistrusted Catholic presidential candidates.

Kennedy had to prove to Kingmakers - even Catholic ones like Mayor Richard Daley in Chicago - that his Catholicism would not be a liability in a general election. The first test of his viability was in the West Virginia primary where his main rival, Hubert Humphrey, tried to play the old “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion” card with elliptical references to Kennedy’s faith.

Kennedy fought back with both political savvy and a few dirty tricks of his own, trying to tar Humphrey as a draft dodger during WW II (he served variously as state director of war production training and reemployment and State chief of Minnesota war service program in 1942 and assistant director of the War Manpower Commission in 1943) while addressing the issue of his Catholicism head on.

In what author Theodor H. White pointed to as a public appearance almost as important as JFK’s speech at the Ministerial Association of Greater Houston, Kennedy was asked point blank at a press conference about his religion. Rather than remain silent on the issue as he had in Wisconsin two weeks before, Kennedy framed the issue as one of fairness. He said “I do not believe that forty million Americans should lose the right to run for president on the day they were baptized.” In short, Kennedy challenged voters to prove they were not bigots by voting for him. It was a brilliant political stroke and Kennedy’s subsequent win effectively ended Humphrey’s challenge.

Later that fall in Houston, Kennedy buried the issue before one of the most conservative Protestant organizations in the country, the aforementioned Ministers group. In one of the more memorable lines, Kennedy once again, gives people a reason not to use anti-Catholicism as a reason to vote against him:

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials — and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

On election day, the American people made a conscious choice to elect a Catholic President not because of his religion, but in spite of it. Now Mr. Morris would have us choose judges for exactly the opposite reason. In Mr. Morris’ world, either Catholic judges need not apply or they should be hamstrung with litmus tests and background checks and God knows what else. Once you let loose the dogs of legislation on judicial qualifications, we’ll have litmus tests for all sorts of issues; gay marriage, school prayer, eminent domain, and on and on.

For a country founded both because of religious freedom and in spite of religious differences, we’ve done remarkably well in tolerating one another’s religious viewpoints. But politics is another matter. There are still barriers to high office for people of certain faiths that need to come down.

Mr. Morris isn’t helping matters any.

As promised, I will not say another word about the ID vs. Evolution debate. I wll however, publish in its entirety, a comment left by my blogbuddy, fellow “24″ fanatic, and Wide Awakes comrade The Maryhunter.

His is a muscular Christianity. He’s also a scientist. And besides that, goddamnit, he’s a helluva writer and makes some sense on this issue.

Thank you Rick, for launching this valuable debate, and the other commentators. I especially thank folks like Jay, Thomas (really spot on, Tom!), Cap’n Wolff, and my colleague Bergbikr, who held firm and argued their reasonable points against the buffets and spitting from those who dismiss ID as kookish at best, and scientific blasphemy at worst.

I am a molecular biologist, an honorary medical geneticist, and a dedicated Roman Catholic, who sees Genesis stories as just that: valuable myths told to Man by God about his origins, the right story at the right time. (Plenty of other cultures have their parallel creation stories, and all in context.) What has unfolded as Scientific Objectivity vis a vis Man’s growing capacity to understand his own vast domain called Universe has, basically since the enlightenment (give or take), increasingly striven to deny God a role in this Universe other than perhaps a silent observer. (Though Darwin and Einstein, the two fathers of 20th Century science, were fierce believers, if I’m not mistaken.)

To deny God a role in Creation is, for a Believer, illogical. And, there are ever so many believers out there… so what to do? Simply find that all believers must be illogical? Are we all wrong, because there is no “objective” proof of God’s existence? (Yea, and I’d like to see some objective proof for String Theory, or it’s latest mathematical enabler, Membrane Theory.) Or shall we believers simply hush up, go underground, pretend there is no God when it comes to Science?

Methinks we who care about this issue should, as Bergbikr suggests, go read Teilhard. Me also thinks, as Rick does, that biomedical science is clearly the very backbone of our economy ca. 21st Century.

However, as a scientist I see utterly no threat from ID. The argument that fundamentalist zealots will undermine science education is hogwash. Science is about being excited by your world and wanting to learn more. Both my children are terribly fascinated with their world, as my wife and I were as kids, and we both read plenty of Bible Stories as children… as ours do now.

Maybe it’s because I’m a Believer that I have faith in Mankind’s power to put the puzzle together in the ways that are necessary to cure cancers, better understand what genetics are behind predisposition to heart disease and stroke, help the Parkinson patient to walk again, create bioprocessors far faster than silicon chips, engineer crops to feed a hungry third world (if the freaking moonbats will let us do it, that is!).

And improbable as it may seem to some, I guarantee it’s true that none of this future technological glory will be threatened or precluded by a belief that God Himself intervened with that last, crucial step that got those monkeys to figure out that the bone was a tool, after all. Because that’s what I see this whole argument is about, after all: becoming human. And human pride.

Do I resent those who have summarily dismissed me and my brethren as ignoramii? Not really. The intellectual challenge is fun (more so when free of insults, but no matter). Rather, I am cheered to imagine God smiling down, watching with love and pride as we little humans, with all our egos, pick around His wondrous creation and piece the puzzle together, in between bickering.

I’m also pleased to know of so many biologists, physicians, chemists, engineers, and mathematicians who are Believers and even still don’t let it get in the way of their goal: to be the very best they can be at pushing back the frontiers of the Scientific Enterprise.

God, how I hate this war.

Even though I still believe that it was right decision to liberate Iraq. Even though I still support the reconstruction efforts going on in that tragic, bloody, terrorist infested, miserable strip of land where the killing goes on and on. And even though I still support the President and his announced policy of bringing democracy to Iraq in the belief that the autocratic and dictatorial regimes elsewhere in the Middle East will come crashing down as ordinary people realize that ultimate power rests in their hands.

After saying all of that, I now believe it’s time to bring to account those who through their brutish and beastial treatment of prisoners, have besmirched the name and reputation of the United States and brought shame and ignominy to their comrades in arms and their fellow citizens.

This piece in the Washington Post, based on eyewitness accounts, classified documents, and interviews with investigators, paints a picture so at odds with what America should stand for - even in a brutal war for survival - that it should give all of us who still support this war and its objectives pause to reflect on a fundamental question: Is this really what we want our soldiers doing in our names to protect us?

Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush was being stubborn with his American captors, and a series of intense beatings and creative interrogation tactics were not enough to break his will. On the morning of Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again.

It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents.

What this article makes crystal clear is that these methods of interrogation are not the product of the sick imaginings of a few sadistic soldiers. They did not spring into being in a vacuum. What the reports make unambiguously clear is that the soldiers believed the interrogation techniques were approved - approved at the highest levels in their chain of command.

The implications of this are too horrible to contemplate. It means that these are not the “isolated incidents” that I and most others who have been defending our detention policies over these many months have been excusing. It also means that there have been deliberate and systematic violations of both US law and the Geneva Conventions in the interrogations of prisoners.

And it means that those responsible for these policies must be brought to justice. Not just the perpetrators of the torture, but those who formulated and approved whatever guidelines the soldiers were using to justify these barbarous and unholy acts.

No matter where it leads. No matter who is involved. Justice must be done in order to restore some honor to the good name of the United States and its military. To do less dishonors the memory of those who have already died in this war as well as all those who we ask to put their lives on the line in order to protect us.

My own role as an enabler of this behavior has been unconscionable. By turning a blind eye to previous intimations of this organized and approved assault on simple human decency, I have, in a small but significant way, empowered those who have cynically used my support for the war and the President’s policies to literally get away with murder.

No longer. I am not going to give the benefit of doubt to an out of control interrogation process that treats human beings - even terrorists - as beasts to be beaten and murdered and pass it off as national policy. I didn’t sign on for that. I’m sure you didn’t either.

It’s one thing to be hard in war. It’s one thing to be pitiless in the prosecution of it. But its quite another thing to violate all tenets of civilized behavior in acheiving your objectives. Even in war, the ends cannot justify the means. If you believe that it does, then ask yourself what kind of country you will have at the end of it? Will it be the kind of country you can live in with pride? Or will history itself remember us with scorn and derision for abandoning the very principals we were fighting to protect.

There may be extreme circumstances where torture is justified. This incident wasn’t one of them. And if, as I now believe, these violations occur routinely and as part of a sanctioned interrogation process, then it is past time for a thorough, impartial, and independent investigation of the facilities where we house the prisoners, the soldiers and intelligence agents who carry out the questioning of detainees, and the interrogation policies and procedures formulated by the military and civilian elements in our government.

If the only way to make such an investigative body truly independent would be to allow international representation then reluctantly, I would have to agree with that stipulation. What’s at stake here is the very soul of America and in a larger sense, the values for which we in the west are fighting to preserve. And while I doubt such a body could remain above the political fray given the explosive nature of the subject matter and the division in our national polity, it must nevertheless go forward. Let the American people and indeed, the rest of the world decide who is playing politics and who is seeking the truth.

John Cole, who has been out front on this issue since reports of the torture and mistreatment of prisoners first began to surface, sums up the problems:

I really want to believe that this is just a few rogue soldiers in all of these cases, but the evidence keeps pointing back to approved interrogation techniques (and in fairness, much of this went well beyond approved methods), a sense of ‘anything goes’ because of the muddled legal status of the detainees, a general disregard in the chain of command, a chain of evidence linking policies to different detainment centers, willing participation by clandestine services working in concert** with military intelligence officers and being given free reign with prisoners and junior level enlisted men, and it stinks. It smells like institutional rot, and at the very least a pattern of negligence and callous disregard, something even the military appears willing to admit.

I’m forced to agree with Mr. Cole that what we’re looking at is nothing less than an institutional problem in the military. I cannot believe that all of these soldiers and CIA agents are members of some sadistic cult. They simply must be enabled by a culture that either approves of these methods or turns a blind eye during the practice of them. Either way, it’s high time we tear the whole rotten system down and put something else in its place. Anything - even turning the detainees over to civilian control - would be preferrable to this canker on the body politic that, if it continues to fester, will prevent us from winning this war and at the same time, inure us as a people to the brutality practiced by our sons and daughters in our name.

UPDATE

Attention trolls: I have an extremely thin skin on this issue. Any personal attacks, any off topic comments, any gloating, anything that I don’t much care for will be deleted and the commenter banned. You can disagree with what I’ve written. If you can’t do it in a civil manner, don’t bother to comment.

It’s my blog. If you disagree with this policy. Get your own damn site.

When is the killing of helpless infants justified and when should it be considered infanticide?

Jim Holt’s excellent article in the New York Times places that question in both an historical and religious context and asks “Are we humans getting more decent over time?”

Infanticide — the deliberate killing of newborns with the consent of the parents and the community — has been common throughout most of human history. In some societies, like the Eskimos, the Kung in Africa and 18th-century Japan, it served as a form of birth control when food supplies were limited. In others, like the Greek city-states and ancient Rome, it was a way of getting rid of deformed babies. (Plato was an ardent advocate of infanticide for eugenic purposes.) But the three great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all condemned infanticide as murder, holding that only God has the right to take innocent human life. Consequently, the practice has long been outlawed in every Western nation.

Holt then outlines the practice of the Groningen Protocols that provide legal guidelines to physicians for ending the life of a suffering infant. But when is it ever morally correct to kill a live baby? Mr. Holt gives a fair definition of the “sanctity of life’:

At first blush, a call for open infanticide would seem to be the opposite of moral progress. It offends against the ‘’sanctity of life,” a doctrine that has come to suffuse moral consciousness, especially in the United States. All human life is held to be of equal and inestimable value. A newborn baby, no matter how deformed or retarded, has a right to life — a right that trumps all other moral considerations. Violating that right is always and everywhere murder.

That would be the absolutists view - a view held by many social conservatives. But living as they do in the real world, doctors and parents must sometimes deal with tragic circumstances that make the absolutist view ring hollow:

Take the case of a baby who is born missing most or all of its brain. This condition, known as anencephaly, occurs in about 1 in every 2,000 births. An anencephalic baby, while biologically human, will never develop a rudimentary consciousness, let alone an ability to relate to others or a sense of the future. Yet according to the sanctity-of-life doctrine, those deficiencies do not affect its moral status and hence its right to life. Anencephalic babies could be kept alive for years, given the necessary life support. Yet treatment is typically withheld from them on the grounds that it amounts to ”extraordinary means” — even though a baby with a normal brain in need of similar treatment would not be so deprived. Thus they are allowed to die.

Clearly, there are exceptions to the sanctity of life precept. But is it morally right to cross the line between allowing a baby to die and doctors and parents actively participating in the killing of the infant? Holt frames the question fairly:

The distinction between killing a baby and letting it die may be convenient. But is there any moral difference? Failing to save someone’s life out of ignorance or laziness or cowardice is one thing. But when available lifesaving treatment is deliberately withheld from a baby, the intention is to cause that baby’s death. And the result is just as sure — if possibly more protracted and painful — as it would have been through lethal injection.

And that’s the dilemma that Groningen is supposed to “solve.”

My own view is that while the morality of the Groningen Protocols can be justified in extremely rare cases, the potential for abuse of its guidelines is so great that adoption of its rules will be fraught with danger.

The problem arises when there is a conflict between a Doctor’s obligation to his patient (the suffering infant) and his desire to serve the interests of the parents. It may be difficult and painful to contemplate, but the fact is that there are some parents who would view a malformed child as a burden they would not wish to bear or worse, an inconvenience they could do without.

At one time, there were federal guidelines regarding such cases that prevented Doctors from allowing these infants to die. Called “Baby Doe Guidelines,” they mandated giving life sustaining care to infants with Downs Syndrome, Spina Bifida, and other non-fatal conditions. The Supreme Court eventually struck down some of the guidelines, rejecting the Reagan Administration’s arguments that they were a civil rights matter. The medical community has since generally followed the guidelines but many pediatric professionals believe them to be too constraining and, in many cases, simply ignore them.

And this brings us to what Mr. Holt calls “passive euthanasia.” The case that precipitated the Baby Doe Guidelines is a good example:

A famous test case occurred in 1982 in Indiana, when an infant known as Baby Doe was born with Down syndrome. Children with Down syndrome typically suffer some retardation and other difficulties; while presenting a great challenge to their parents and families, they often live joyful and relatively independent lives. As it happened, Baby Doe also had an improperly formed esophagus, which meant that food put into his mouth could not reach his stomach. Surgery might have remedied this problem, but his parents and physician decided against it, opting for painkillers instead. Within a few days, Baby Doe starved to death.

Another grey area would be the condition known as spina bifida. The condition occurs approximately once in every 2,500 live births. There are 4 different types of spina bifida, ranging from the mildest form where there are few complications, to the most severe type that is painful for the infant and would entail a lifetime of intense and constant care by the parent. The fact is, that nearly 9 out of 10 spina bifida patients will survive if given the proper care and treatment. Surgery is mandated for the most severe cases. The point is, that it is treatable 90% of the time.

My concern with the adoption in the United States of any Groningen-type guidelines is that the decision to euthanize a child - either passively or otherwise - will have input from the Doctors and parents, which is well and good.

But who speaks for the child? Who stands up for the innocents to insure that both the parents and Doctor are truly acting in the interest of the infant? And while wide latitude must be granted the family and their primary physician in any decision like this, the sanctity of life doctrine demands the maximum protection for any life - be it a week old or a century old - be maintained. The question that I’m asking is before any decision to end life is made, who represents the weakest, the most vulnerable members of society - those who cannot speak for themselves?

I don’t know the answer or even if there is one. All I know is someone from a higher pay grade than I should be asking before we adopt the Groningen Protocols or something similar here.

UPDATE

My blogbud Raven who blogs at And Rightly So gives some valuable input in the comments section below (#2). Raven has extensive experience in this field and is a compassionate, caring person who asks some of the same questions I do:

Who answers for the one who stands to lose it all?

We place a higher value on the life of others by deciding that if they aren’t LIKE US, they wouldn’t want to be alive. Who are we to do this?

This is the issue that I believe our liberal and libertarian friends tend to dance around and not address. If you’re an atheist like me, the kind of moral authority to end life comes from the collective conscience of society. This collective conscience is expressed in a variety of ways, most notably by decisions of the courts or by legislation. But what if the majority believe one thing and the courts and legislative bodies express another?

In a case like that, shouldn’t we fall back on - dare I say it - tradition? I don’t want to hear about polls or surveys that show “X” percentage of Americans support this or that. Everyone reading this knows that those polls can be radically skewed by the way the question is framed. I would hazard a guess and say that if an infant’s condition is treatable, the overwhelming majority of Americans would be in favor of life rather than passive euthanisia or some kind of Groningen type solution regardless of the “burden” on the parents or society.

Recent hearings by the Judiciary Committee looking into the legal situation of detainees at Guantanamo revealed what Senator Arlen Specter has called a “crazy quilt” of regulations and overlapping jurisidctions that have made it virtually impossible to determine what precisely the legal rights of the enemy combatants being held in Cuba are.

Some of the testimony given by Administration officials is almost surreal. What it demonstrates to me, a strong supporter of the War on Terror and Administration policies in general, is that after more than three years, very little thought has been given to the legal status of the terrorists. This has left the Administration and by extension, the United States, wide open to propaganda assaults by both their political foes and our enemies.

It didn’t have to be this way. And the problem has much more to do with bureaucratic inertia than anything else. Apparently, the Justice Department and the Department of Defense have never been able to get together and agree on either a system to judge the terrorists in anything like a timely manner or even agree on what, if any, rights the terrorists will have during any such proceedings.

Granted - and this is something the left and their allies fail to comprehend - this is a conflict with no parallel in human history. We’re making the rules up as we go along. Ostensibly, this is why there’s so much confusion. Rulings by the courts, opinions from the Justice Department, and the exigencies of interrogating the enemy in time of war have all combined to make Guantanamo and other detention centers holding the terrorists a legal quagmire.

Testimony at the hearing given by Michael Wiggins, Deputy Associate Attorney General sought to outline the history of Guantanamo and the evolution of the legal standing of the terrorists being held there:

1. “Such detention is not for criminal justice purposes and is not part of our Nation’s criminal justice system. Rather, detention of enemy combatants serves the vital military objectives of preventing captured combatants from rejoining the conflict and gathering intelligence to further the overall war effort and to prevent additional attacks.”

2. “Each Guantanamo Bay detainee has received a formal adjudicatory hearing before a Combatant Status Review Tribunal (”CSRT”). Those tribunals, established pursuant to written orders by the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Navy, were created specifically “to determine, in a fact-based proceeding, whether the individuals detained . . . at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are properly classified as enemy combatants and to permit each detainee the opportunity to contest such designation.”

During the CSRT proceedings, each detainee received substantial procedural protections modeled upon an Army regulation that governs hearings under Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention. Among other things, each detainee received notice of the unclassified factual basis for his designation as an enemy combatant and an opportunity to testify, call witnesses, and present relevant and reasonably available evidence. Each detainee also received assistance from one military officer designated as his “personal representative for the purpose of assisting the detainee in connection with the CSRT review process.”

3. “Since the founding of our Nation, the U.S. military has used military commissions during wartime to try offenses against the laws of war. Congress has recognized this historic practice and approved its continuing use in both the Articles of War, enacted in 1916, and their successor, the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld the use of military commissions in the 20th century against a series of legal challenges, including cases involving a presumed American citizen captured in the United States.”

4. “Under the Military Order, a military commission may not exercise jurisdiction over a detainee unless certain preconditions have been met. First, the detainee must be a non-citizen and the President must determine that (1) there is reason to believe that the detainee (i) is or was a member of al Qaida, (ii) has engaged or conspired to engage in acts of international terrorism against United States interests; or (iii) has knowingly harbored a member of al Qaida or someone otherwise involved in international terrorism against United States interests; and (2) it is in the interest of the United States to subject the detainee to the President’s Military Order.”

So far so good. The government established that these stateless terrorists were not uniformed soldiers engaged in fighting US forces but rather murderous criminals whose freedom could facilitate further attacks against us. The classification of “enemy combatants” is confirmed by a CSRT proceeding modelled after Geneva Convention protections. And what appears to be a necessarily broad but nevertheless fair definition of an enemy combatant is used to determine status.

Here’s where it gets muddled.

The Supreme Court ruled a year ago that the terrorists have the right to an attorney and that habeas corpus petitions can be litigated by the appeals courts. This has muddied the waters considerably as 95 habeas corpus petitions have been filed on behalf of more 200 terrorists. In addition, lower courts have ruled that the terrorists may be entitled to rights under the 5th amendment. Those issues are still making their way through the courts but as they do, the military tribunals cannot go forward. This has allowed lawyers for the terrorists to file a host of motions from asking courts to prevent additional interrogations of terrorists to lawyers in one case filing an emergency motion seeking an order requiring the Government to allow them to show detainees family videos on DVD. Others have filed motions objecting to the speed of mail transmission to and from the Naval Base and to the quality of the internet connection they are provided when visiting.

The narrowness of the Supreme Court ruling has thrown the entire legal status of the terrorists into chaos. This has not been helped by what apparently is a difference of opinion between the Justice Department and the military on exactly what rights the terrorists are entitled to. The military wants the terrorists rights hazily defined for good reasons. Ill-defined rights will make it more difficult for the terrorist’s lawyers to seek remedies in US courts. And while the Justice Department generally agrees with that notion, furthering a definition of terrorist’s rights will assist them in their court cases.

It’s past time for Congress to step in and define the legal rights of the terrorists. Senator Specter has a bill languishing in the Senate that would do just that. By defining what rights these enemy combatants are entitled to, we will make it easier to determine how many, if any, of the detainees at Guantanamo should be repatriated and how many should be kept there for the rest of their lives.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin:

The reason for using military tribunals is that the alternative–civilian trials–is fraught with peril. Even former President Clinton admitted as much when he lamented recently that prosecuting terrorists sometimes requires “the presentation of evidence which would reveal the identity of the intelligence source, compromise the life of the intelligence source, maybe risk the life of the intelligence source, but more importantly dry up what we thought we were finding out about terror networks.”

What kind of mess are we in when Bill Clinton makes more sense than the Adolf Eichmann-invoking John McCain?

If the Supreme Court upholds some lower court rulings that give terrorists at Gitmo 5th amendment protections, we might as well open the doors and let them go. As Michelle points out, much of the evidence against these murderous thugs is extremely sensitive, much of it gleaned from NSA intercepts. Even a closed trial would be disasterous for our security given the sympathies of the lawyers who would be granted access to this sensitive intel.

Would you trust some of those moonbats not to reveal what they learn in classified sessions?

The Terri Schiavo autopsy report that was made public yesterday has many in the shadow media gloating and some, like myself and a few other secular social conservatives, reflecting on what the fight meant then and what it will mean for the future.

Who was right? Who was wrong?

First, the particulars of the autopsy show that Terri was indeed probably in a persistent vegetative state. While this is something that can’t be determined for certain after death, given the state of her brain (not liquified) and the “loss of neurons”, it seems more than likely that Terri didn’t have either the capacity or potential for rational thought. It appears also that the vision cortex was totally disabled making her blind. And her ability to swallow was extremely limited, thus ruling out the possibility that any food or water could have been administered sans feeding tube.

In addition, the report showed no evidence of abuse by Michael Schiavo. However, it also found no evidence of any eating disorder that would have explained her initial collapse. Nor did the autopsy address the strange deterioration of Terri’s brain over a 3 day period in March of 1990 where she went from being in a coma with near normal brain function to her being in a persistent vegetative state. This is the basis on which Michael Schiavo received his settlement from the doctors, the hospital, and the ambulance service and the autopsy could not determine how her deterioration occurred.

These facts show that hope for any improvement in Terri’s condition was misplaced and that her husband Michael did not abuse her while she was in the hospice. She died of dehydration.

Do I still believe that Terri Schiavo died needlessly? The answer is a qualified yes. I also believe that this debate over what to do about people like Terri is just getting started and I hope we’ve all learned some valuable lessons. I hope we’ve learned how easy it is for this kind of ethical debate to be hijacked by those on both sides of the issue with personal agendas. I hope we’ve learned that if we’re ever going to come to a consensus that we must somehow learn to talk to each other rather than past each other. And I hope we’ve learned that whatever side of this issue you came down on, the person on the other side was not wearing horns and sprouting a tail or trying to enslave all humanity in some kind of theocratic nightmare of a world that would take away your access to internet porn or ban your Girls Gone Wild videos.

It was a remarkable experience re-reading the dozen or so posts I wrote on the Schiavo matter. I was surprised at the depth of feeling, the emotional temperature of the articles. I remember some of them were extremely easy to write because the feelings the Schiavo matter engendered made the words flow from a place I had never written from - the heart. For a someone who considers himself something of a rationalist, this is unsettling. I found that I cared about “big things” - things that poets and novelists spend a lifetime trying to capture and put on paper. For instance, here I tried to distill 2000 years of western civilization’s thinking on life into a couple of paragraphs:

The rules that societies set up nearly two thousand years ago to take the decision to end life out of the hands of humans and place it in the hands of the almighty were a radical departure from classical societies in the past. Both the Greeks and Romans routinely murdered the weak, the lame, even the sickly. Female children have been the target of post natal murders for thousands of years with the Chinese government going so far as feeling it had to issue an edict against the practice within the last two years.

But the radical values of Christianity that posited the notion that God was in every human being not just up on a mountain or in the sky started to mitigate against the wanton slaughter of the helpless ones. When nation states formed in the late middle ages, the strictures against these kinds of killings were put into law.

But the real answer has to do with what’s unfortunately come to be known as “secular humanism” or more accurately, ” human centrism.” This idea that we are the supreme arbiters of the universe (or at least this insignificant little corner of it) took hold at the turn of the 20th century as progressives fervently believed that both science and government, if used properly, could make this planet a secular Eden.

I can say with certainty that I’d never written anything like that before, although I must have had those thoughts for years. In a similar vein, I wrote this:

Human beings are the only creatures on this planet who are capable of contemplating their own death. This quirk of evolution has allowed us to create a grand mystique around a perfectly natural biological process that otherwise would remain, as it does in the rest of the animal kingdom, an instinctual matter. The problem is, no one wants to either contemplate it very much or talk about it. Most of us take the attitude that “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Well, we better start thinking about it. As it stands now, the advocates for throwing away human beings as if they were nothing more than garbage bags full of rancid water and smelly old bones are winning. And the reason they’re winning is simple; very few people are paying attention.

My point then and now is simple: A dramatic change has occurred over the last 25 years that has radically altered the very definition of life. I wrote about here:

As monstrous as the rationale given by the granddaughter sounds, the outrage being committed here and elsewhere in the United States is not by confused, grieving, or even inconvenienced or greedy relatives; the crime against human dignity here is being committed by a medical community who has decided that their ever narrowing definition of what “life” is has gone beyond the simple mechanics of how the human body works and entered a metaphysical realm that used to be reserved for priests, shamans, rabbis, and philosophers.

In short, they see themselves as a new strata of healers, a class of medical High Priests whose knowledge and experience regarding human health are now augmented by insight into the mysteries of consciousness itself. They are aided and abetted by ethicists that justify their actions, scientists who support their conclusions, lawyers who keep the legal ground from turning into quicksand beneath their feet, and a certain segment of the population that puts their faith in the ability of humans to glean eternal truth from empirical observation

This last was written when an Alabama woman was dumped into a hospice by her granddaughter despite a treatable condition. The woman, Mae Magourik, died a couple of months later. This fact doesn’t obviate the need to search our hearts on these matters and try to come to a consensus as a society about some very fundamental issues. What is life? Do we ration life giving care? Who is worth saving? Who makes that decision? Should we embrace euthanasia?

As I reread what I wrote about the Schiavo matter, I realize that, in a purely selfish way, the debate allowed me to know myself a little better. But was I right?

Clearly those who believed that Michael was the devil incarnate and that Terri had a chance for some kind of recovery were wrong. However, I find the gloating on that score this morning despciable and only confirms my belief that there were many who saw this issue as a way to bash the Christian right. That said, I can see where my initial unease with getting the Congress involved (though I supported it at the time as necessary) was well justified. I should have realized what would have happened when politics was added to this mix. Nitroglycerine added to gasoline is never a good idea especially when there were so many standing by with lit matches. I believed prior to Congressional interference (and still believe) that given the initial circumstances, I was right to join this fight.

Jody, who blogs at Steal the Bandwagon and is of one mind with Beth at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy echoes that thought:

I don’t want to name names but some people hijacked a wonderful purposed group and created a screaming parade of psychotic idiots who were emotional and crazed and blind to the law. And honestly, I was one of them. I backed off when someone asked me, what do you want them to do, storm the nursing home and kidnap her like they did Elian Gonzalez…oh…and something sunk in my heart because I knew I was losing a battle.

Please don’t take this as a criticism toward Blogs for Terri as a blog or even as a group, I just feel that it got a bit “crazy” toward the end. Sometimes when someone believes something so much they become zealous and blind to anything but their end goal, usually when that happens, they fail to change minds because people just turn off. Are you surprised to hear me say this? Maybe.

I’m not surprised that someone like Beth, whose initial advocacy for Terri is what got me involved in the first place, would reach this conlcusion. The Randall Terry’s of this world were the ones that made me realize how much of a circus the battle had become. And when self-aggrandizing charlatans like Terry (or some of the self-important, Christian bashing strutting peacocks who came down on the opposite side of this issue) push themselves to the forefront of a debate like this, all hell can break loose. And it did.

Some bloggers have been fairly mild in their criticism this morning. Bill Ardolino:

This doesn’t critically undermine many of the ethical arguments on either side of the issue, but it certainly kills much of the over-the-top hyperbole and inaccuracy surrounding her condition.

Surprisingly understated and well said. I wish John Cole had been as circumspect:

Terri Schiavo had to be kept alive because of THEIR moral beliefs, not hers and her husbands. And because we didn’t allow or accept a political (and had they had their way, a judicial) assault on the most personal aspect of someone’s existence, their mortality and how to handle their end-of-life decisions, we are to be shamed. Because we didn’t have the necessary arrogance to tell Terri and Michael Schiavo to live by someone elses definition of life, we are villains. Because we felt that personal decisions should remain personal (to the extent that the Florida legal system allowed them to remain personal), we support a culture of death. It is nonsense, it is offensive, and it can’t go unchallenged.

And that is all I am going to say about Terri Schiavo, absent some egregious silliness popping up. It is over. Let the women and her husband and her family rest in peace. I am sure you all will find someone else to use to your political ends in little or no time, but, for now, it is time to let Terri Schiavo be

I think that John is using a broad sword here when he should be using a scalpel. First and foremost, government does indeed have an interest in insuring that viable life is protected. In the case of protecting life, there is no such thing as personal. I believe that government should protect any life that’s viable outside of the womb. I also believe that government has a right to protect people at the end of life who may be afflicted with a variety of ailments, but are nevertheless capable of feeling love and giving affection in return. The elderly who are summarily dumped in hospices and left to die because they suffer from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease are being, in my opinion, murdered. There is no ethical rationale for this practice. And it’s only going to get worse.

That said, I think Mr. Cole is correct in saying that politics should be kept out of these decisions. The problem, of course, is that’s extraordinarily naive. Living in a free society, the confluence of government and politics assures that these issues will take on a political character. Should individual cases be splattered all over the news? There I agree with John and hope from here on in the debate on these matters can be kept in the realm of the general rather than the specific.

Perhaps what surprised me most about the Schiavo matter was the depth of feeling it aroused on both sides. Yes there was a lof of ignorant Christain bashing as there was some unconscionable name calling and moral posturing on the right. But by and large, this was the result of strongly held personal beliefs reflecting the cultural, religious, and political realities of the individual. And if, like me, it made us think about these issues and learn something about ourselves, an enormous amount of good came of it.

UPDATE

There were a couple of other reactions I wanted to get. First, the Captain:

What we have left are the issues that started the debate in the first place. Unlike today’s New York Times editorial’s assertion on the subject, this was not a “right to die” case. Terri had never requested to die, not with any transparency or formality. All we had for witnesses on her state of mind was a husband who waited until after he had won a substantial lawsuit to recall a conversation in which Terri made an offhand comment about not wanting to live on a respirator, and two of his relatives who corroborated him. The husband had a conflict of interest in the matter, having started a new relationship with another woman and fathering two children. On the other side, Terri’s parents and siblings were willing to take over her medical care and the responsibility for its costs.

Amd most of all, as the coroner affirmed yesterday, Terri was not dying.

Despite all of this, Florida decided that it would deliberately kill Terri on the basis of her husband’s wishes, without any living will or formal indication of her state of mind. As Rick Santorum said yesterday, such a ruling should have been allowed to receive a de novo hearing in federal court for a review, just as any death-penalty case would get. Without that, essentially Terri’s fate rested on two men, Michael Schiavo and Judge George Greer, who refused to release the case to another court at any point in order to get a new hearing on the merits in front of another judge. And when the state decides to kill someone who isn’t dying on their own — as opposed to stopping artificial breathing/cardiac support for those who lack any ability to survive without it — it should have more substantial oversight before doing so, and it should have more to rely on than an estranged husband’s belated recollection of a superficial, general conversation as its basis.

I agree with the Captain for the most part. The problem of judicial oversight of such cases is that it’s impossible to prove conflict of interest. In the Schiavo matter, Michael also had the diagnosis of recognized medical experts (who turned out to be for all intents and purposes, correct) on his side.

I agree that it should have come down to the fact that Terri’s family was willing to assume the burdens outlined by Mr. Morrisey. Why Michael did not take this easy and obvious avenue of escape will remain for me the biggest mystery.

LawShawn Barber:

For me, the whole tragedy surrounding Terri and the people who wanted her dead didn’t hinge on how severely brain-damaged she was. She was alive and wasn’t on life support, and her husband’s credibility was extremely low, too low to trust his assertion that Terri wanted to die if ever severely brain-damaged. Forget about what you’d want if you were ever in the same condition. Take yourselves out of the equation.

The way they killed her was appalling, and I was angry for a long time afterward. I’m giving you a heads-up. Don’t be alarmed or disgusted by the liberal media and liberal bloggers (and some conservatives, too) declaring that Terri’s wayward husband is somehow “vindicated” by the autopsy report. The doctor-induced starvation was immoral.

I agree. Michael was in no way “vindicated” by the autopsy report. If you believe he was incorrect in seeking Terri’s death in the first place, there’s no vindication or justification for that matter possible.

Michelle Malkin has done a thorough examination of the autopsy report:

Michael Schiavo and his supporters and doctors have long maintained that Terri suffered from an eating disorder. In interviews with Larry King, in countless newspaper articles over the past 15 years, and during his successful malpractice trial against Terri’s primary care physician, Michael Schiavo stressed his wife’s bulimia-related low potassium level as the cause of her initial collapse. Schiavo won $1 million in damages on the grounds that Schiavo’s obstetrician had failed to diagnose bulimia.

Unquestioning journalists ran dozens of stories echoing the claim: “Eating disorder is real issue in Schiavo case,” “Terri’s life a lesson in dangers of bulimia,” “The lost lesson of Schiavo case: the dangers of eating disorders,” etc.

The autopsy report spends three-and-a-half pages debunking Schiavo’s claim, as well as the related claim that she had a heart attack (or, more medically precise, myocardial infarction). But if mentioned at all, the news reports I have seen have downplayed and buried these astonishing revelations (revelations which bear directly on Schiavo’s credibility regarding his claim that Terri would have wanted to die).

Viewing the issues in light of Michael’s misstatements about Terri’s “eating disorder,” I agree with Michelle that it calls into question other statements made by Michael. But as other commenters have pointed out, Michael’s claim that Terri wanted to die was buttressed by her best friend - Michael’s sister - and must be taken at face value.

I wanted to get the reaction of a blogger from the left but have been disappointed and outraged at the gloating and recriminatory tone used at the sites I’ve seen. If someone wants to point me to a site that treats this issue with the seriousness it deserves and in a non-political manner, I will gladly link to it.

UPDATE II: THE “ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE” EDITION

No sooner did I ask for a sensible post from the other side of this issue than Mona in the comments section of this post answers my prayer:

Mr. Moran, I volunteer in a program that services retarded adults, some of whom have IQs as low as 15. The profoundly retarded are entirely incapable of comprehending the purpose of a feeding tube, or what it would mean if it were removed. The highlights of one individual’s day is seeing his mother visit and he coos at her, and he also enjoys playing with his feces, which the staff seek to prevent his doing. The idea he could comprehend the implications of an order to remove a feeding tube and beg to live is absurd, and he HAS a measurable IQ. Terri had none at all.

Lies were told. Many of them. All buttressing an increasingly rancid attack on the Florida judiciary. Judge Greer had to begin living under armed guard.

Mr. and Mrs. Schindler can be entirely forgiven for deluding themselves that Terri was interacting and responding. But the cretins, legal and otherwise, who surrounded them and nurtured these fantasies and peddled them all over the media, can only be reviled.

I certainly hope that Mona is not advocating euthanasia for her young retarded charge. Are we going to define life now as reserved for those who can comprehend what it means to die? That’s a world I don’t want to live in and will fight to prevent. That said, please read Mona’s entire comment as she makes some excellent legal points.

If this little girl lived in Holland or had parents who didn’t care, she would have been euthanized long ago:

Imagine being frozen in time as a baby forever. It sounds impossible, but it describes Brooke Greenberg.

The Baltimore-area girl may look like a baby, but she’s nearly a teenager. In most respects, Brooke looks and acts like your average 6-month-old baby — she weighs 13 pounds and she is 27 inches long.

But Brooke is actually 12 years old, reported WBAL-TV in Baltimore.

As far as scientists and doctors can determine, Brooke is the only human being on the planet who has this as yet unnamed condition. And it hasn’t been any picnic for her parents. She’s had numerous health problems:

Her body may not be aging, but Brooke’s health is deteriorating. She is fed through a tube, and she’s had strokes, seizures, ulcers, severe respiratory problems and a tumor the size of a lemon.

The four times Brooke has come dangerously close to death, she bounced back and no one knows why.

Pakula points out that the girl has a strong sense of self and of sibling rivalry. Brooke has no language skills, but she does have enough motor skills to pull herself up in her crib or scoot across the kitchen floor.

Somebody please get me the address of this Dr. Pakula. After listening to medical “experts” for months tell us that human beings like little Brooke should be taken out with the trash, it’s so refreshing to find a Doctor who has this kind of an attitude:

Pakula said Brooke has thrived because of the support of her parents and three sisters.

“When one sees how much she has accomplished, it’s a wonderful reminder that even for someone who’s limited, it’s a wonderful world out there,” Pakula said

The point that little Brooke makes by being alive is very simple; being alive is better than the alternative. It sounds like an old joke but given the choice, also a truism. This little girl has battled odds greater than she should and has come up fighting each and every time. It doesn’t matter that she can’t understand what’s wrong with her. To come back from death like that takes a will - a free will - where a human makes a choice to live or die. If Brooke was one whit less feisty, one iota less determined to live, she would have passed on. But whatever spirit animates her, it’s not ready to go anywhere yet.

In Holland, the doctors would have shaken their heads, said to themselves what a terrible shame it was, and then tried to talk the parents into euthanizing the child. And I’m sure the temptation for some parents must be tremendous. But in the end, it appears that familial love won the day and little Brooke is still fighting.

Just a nice, uplifting story to start your weekend with.

NOTE: The link above to the Pittsburg TV station that carried the story no longer is valid. I got the link via Drudge so I’m assuming they didn’t want to pay the bandwidth costs.

UPDATE

My Wide Awakes bud Raven, who blogs at And Rightly So, weighs in by giving the benefit of her many years of experience of working with severely handicapped children:

This is typical with kids with developmental disabilties. They are often tiny and do not look their age. They hate it I work with several kids who are under 50lbs. but older than 16. One of my favorite “little guys” hates it when I call him that…he is 12 and weighs 40 lbs. Most of these kids have severe medical needs… not just g tubes, but PIC and Central Lines, IV, vac pumps and hemo pumps…chest drainage systems to keep their lungs clear; kids with intra-cranial shunts with tubes popping out to keep their skulls from expanding…. I work with the most profoundly disabled kids…very few of them have active trachs or use vents for breathing (that is usually for the brain injured kids and young adults). But they require body splints made of hard plastic just to keep them upright…because they have no ribs or only half a spine. It’s very sad in some respects-to watch these kids get by. But they are the happiest beings on planet. They really are.

This little girl is fortunate to have an actively involved family. Many are not involved and only wish to be called upon the death of their child.

Cross Posted at Blogger News Network

In Aldous Huxley’s “Brave new World,” the author posits a chilling future - a world of tomorrow in which capitalist civilization has been reconstituted through the most efficient scientific and psychological engineering, where the people are genetically designed to be passive and consistently useful to the ruling class.

I always tried to imagine what events and decisions led up to Huxley’s nightmare reality. Did the scientists know that the research they were doing would be used for the nefarious purpose of changing the essence of humanity? Did the people realize that the potential for this kind of mischief was present? What would the ethicists and guardians of faith and religion have had to say?

I bring this up because scientists are now initiating research projects using human stem cells injected into animal embryos with the dual goals of perhaps creating organs suitable for human transplant and the extraordinarily profitable enterprise of creating “cutting edge” lab animals for use in testing a wide variety of new drugs.

Both of these goals have exciting potential to yield benefits that would change the face of modern medicine and pharmacology. But at what price? And are there hidden dangers, unseen trap doors that scientists and ethicists either aren’t aware of or just not bothering to look for?

This project in Nevada, where sheep embryos were injected with human cells to create partially human organs, is not really a big deal. Scientists have been doing similar experiments with mice for more than a decade. What makes this experiment different is that the researcher, Jason Chamberlain, also injected human brain cells into the brain of the animal fetus:

As strange as his work may sound, it falls firmly within the new ethics guidelines the influential National Academies issued this past week for stem cell research.

In fact, the Academies’ report endorses research that co-mingles human and animal tissue as vital to ensuring that experimental drugs and new tissue replacement therapies are safe for people.

Particularly worrisome to some scientists are the nightmare scenarios that could arise from the mixing of brain cells: What if a human mind somehow got trapped inside a sheep’s head?

Such a possibility is extremely unlikely. But not so much out of the question that one ethics panel didn’t think carefully about a “what if” scenario:

In January, an informal ethics committee at Stanford University endorsed a proposal to create mice with brains nearly completely made of human brain cells. Stem cell scientist Irving Weissman said his experiment could provide unparalleled insight into how the human brain develops and how degenerative brain diseases like Parkinson’s progress.

Stanford law professor Hank Greely, who chaired the ethics committee, said the board was satisfied that the size and shape of the mouse brain would prevent the human cells from creating any traits of humanity. Just in case, Greely said, the committee recommended closely monitoring the mice’s behavior and immediately killing any that display human-like behavior.

At times, it seems scientists have never quite grown out of being the little boy or girl in the basement with a chemistry set who set out to mix two compounds together just to see what would happen and end up with either a toxic mess or a small explosion. This is not necessarily a bad thing as any good scientist will have that same insatiable curiosity as those children. The problem is, this attitude when carried into scientific undertakings with the most profound ramifications for humanity imaginable, should have the most stringent oversight imaginable. And at this point it’s not clear to me that this is the case:

Allegations about the proper treatment of lab animals may take on strange new meanings as scientists work their way up the evolutionary chart. First, human stem cells were injected into bacteria, then mice and now sheep. Such research blurs biological divisions between species that couldn’t until now be breached.

Drawing ethical boundaries that no research appears to have crossed yet, the Academies recommend a prohibition on mixing human stem cells with embryos from monkeys and other primates. But even that policy recommendation isn’t tough enough for some researchers.

“The boundary is going to push further into larger animals,” New York Medical College professor Stuart Newman said. “That’s just asking for trouble.”

Newman, along with bio technology gadfly Jeremy Rifkin, actually went so far as to patent a new life form - a combination human and chimpanzee they called a “humanzee” - that challenges the governments policy on both interspecies breeding and a corporation’s ability to patent life forms. The “humanzee” is theoretically possible so the patent office issued a ruling just this year denying their request on grounds that you cannot patent a human in that such a commercial venture would boil down to an issue of slavery.

I have nothing but admiration and respect for scientists like Chamberlain who are pushing the boundaries of human knowledge. My beef is that this is largely taking place below the radar of public discourse. As we seek to unlock the mysteries at the very heart of what it means to be human, are we in danger of redefining human life in ways that should be examined and agreed to by society in general?

Just recently, we got a taste of one kind of redefinition of human life in the Terri Schiavo matter. With little in the way of debate, scientists, ethicists, and proponents of euthanasia have quietly undermined the very concept of what it means to be human. The parameters regarding human life have been changed to include mythical criteria such as “quality of consciousness” and the medical costs associated with keeping someone like Terri alive. Despite almost total ignorance about what actually constitutes “consciousness,” we were told that Terri was less than human because her higher brain functions were disabled. Being less than human, she then became a piece of rotting meat, a sad sack of bones and water easily discarded by both the courts and her husband.

And now we’re faced with another ethical dilemma, this time regarding the very real possibility of human-animal hybrids being created so that we can harvest their body parts. While I’m not opposed in principle to the use of animals to save human lives, are we proceeding with all deliberate caution in this research effort? I’m heartened by the National Academies’ call for stringent oversight by sponsoring institutions of such projects. But the issue begs the age-old scientific question; just because we can do it, should it be done?

It used to be that an individual scientists’ ethics alone determined whether or not a scientific undertaking was moral. Reading about scientists like Robert Oppenheimer and Leo Szilard who wrestled mightily with their own consciences when it came to their work on the Manhattan Project and the building of the first atomic weapon, one is left with the impression that, in the end, the exciting science being done outweighed any moral ambiguity the project may have caused.

Today, ethics panels across the nation are empowered to examine scientific inquiry and determine whether or not moral guidelines are being violated. These panels are made up of people who’ve studied ethics for a living and can cite chapter and verse in subjects like metaphysics and moral philosophy. But is it enough? Or perhaps a better question, are the issues involved too complex, too morally ambiguous to be resolved in this manner?

I don’t know the answer, being a layman. I do know that I’m unsure if all the physical and ethical ramifications of this kind of research are under scrutiny as they should be.

We can only hope that there are people like Dr. Newman and yes, even the moonbat Jeremy Rifkin, who will be there to put the brakes on if we go too far too fast. Otherwise, when this Brave New World comes to pass, we’ll be cowering in the shadows afraid of whatever society we’ve created as a result of these truly wondrous advances in human understanding.

Religious conservatives are often accused of conducting a war on rationalism. Their opposition to the teaching of evolution, abortion and stem cell research, as well as a belief in the mystical are cited as evidence that the religious right is a danger to core secular beliefs of the rest of us; that somehow, by politicizing issues that the secularists have politicized for years, their advocacy represents a danger to democracy in America.

Hogwash.

In fact, Christian beliefs are completely compatible with rationalism. And while many of us may look in askance at some of the fundamentalist Christian more problematic positions on science and the law, nevertheless there is no inherent conflict between a belief in God and democracy. One look at our founding documents can tell you that. They were written by men who, at bottom, believed they were being guided by the invisible hand of God, that the creator actually willed American democracy into existence. These were not radical Christians or wild-eyed religious reformers. They simply accepted what to them was self-evident; God favored America and by extension, favored the formation of the republic.

There is no more implacable enemy of rational thought than the politically correct left. For more than 30 years, they have waged a guerrilla war against the culture, against religious observance, against free speech, and against common sense itself all in the name of a nebulous, ill defined concept that’s come to be called “multi-culturalism” - a term that has almost as many definitions as it has adherents.

For some, multi-culturalism is “a movement that insists that American society has never been white, but always in fact multiracial and diverse.” This movement seeks to preserve distinctly different ethnic, racial, or cultural communities without melting them into a common culture. Here the common culture is seen as white supremacy, a culture of bigotry and discrimination, and the remedy as an emphasis on the separate characteristics and virtues of particular cultural groups. This would be the “anti-melting pot” definition.

Then there are the nut cases, the proselytizers, the true believers who see multiculturalism as a club to beat white America over the head with:

Multicultural education is a progressive approach for transforming education that holistically critiques and addresses current shortcomings, failings, and discriminatory practices in education. It is grounded in ideals of social justice, education equity, and a dedication to facilitating educational experiences in which all students reach their full potential as learners and as socially aware and active beings, locally, nationally, and globally. Multicultural education acknowledges that schools are essential to laying the foundation for the transformation of society and the elimination of oppression and injustice.

The underlying goal of multicultural education is to affect social change.

This attack on tradition and history is what the Christian right is defending. Using “racism and oppression” as an excuse, the politically correct left has sought to undermine the foundations of American society in order to remake it in its own warped, irrational image.

The latest attack on sanity from this crew is not to be believed. Students at Everitt Middle School near Denver were saying the morning pledge of allegiance:

The students in Vincent Pulciani’s seventh-grade class were reciting the Pledge of Allegiance this week when they heard the voice over the intercom say something they’d never heard before, at least not during the Pledge.

Instead of “one nation, under God,” the voice said, “one nation, under your belief system.”

The bewildered students at Everitt Middle School in Wheat Ridge never even got to “indivisible,” according to Vincent’s mother, Christina Pulciani-Johnson.

The politically correct pledge was given by a guidance counselor, Margo Lucero, who was filling in for the principal, who normally led the morning ritual. Here’s her explanation for this inanity:

Mr. Kaufman said Miss Lucero had been spurred by the date, April 20, the sixth anniversary of the Columbine High School slayings. Both Columbine and Everitt are within the Jefferson County school district.

“The day was the sixth anniversary of Columbine, and she felt she should be all-inclusive, so she replaced the word ‘God,’” he said.

This is multiculturalism run amok. It isn’t enough that these philistines have tried for decades to call into question everything that American society and culture rests upon. That their efforts to denigrate our history, belittle our heroes, explode our most cherished myths, and rewrite the circumstances that led to our founding have done enormous damage to our spiritual underpinnings is self evident. The question is what can be done about it and more specifically, who is standing up to these anti-intellectual bullies?

The answer is not the libertarian Republicans who, while decrying these outrages, dither over what’s to be done like little old ladies at a quilting bee trying to decide whether to have crumpets or cake with their tea. Nor is much opposition to be found on the sane left who seem perfectly willing to use the multiculturalists as a club to beat their political opponents over the head.

The only effective opposition to these tyrants can be found on the religious right. And if it seems at times that the fundamentalist’s rhetoric is too apocalyptic for the timid libertarians who mean well but always appear to get their nose out of joint looking down on people of faith, I have a suggestion for my non-religious conservative and libertarian friends.

After you’re finished railing against the Republican party being taken over by the Christian right and bemoaning the influence of fundamentalists on public policy, please get off your high horse, stop your nauseating condescension toward these people of faith and join them in trying to save our culture from the intellectual Huns who are ravaging the foundations of American society right under your noses.

As it stands now, you’re part of the problem. Time to help define the solution.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin also blogs the story and reprints a hilarious “PC Pledge”"

I pledge [allegiance] some occasional recognition
to the [Flag] symbols of oppression

of [America] the land mass referred to by oppressive European conquistadors as “America”

Go read the rest.

New blog: Yippee-Ki-Yay finds the new pledge “distracting. (Heh)