Germany is creating a memorial to the 200,000 + victims of the euthanasia Holocaust, in which doctors enthusiastically killed disabled babies and adults between the years 1939-45. From the BBC story:

Work has begun on a memorial in Germany for the 300,000 people murdered by the Nazis for having mental and physical disabilities or chronic illnesses. A 30m (100ft) long glass wall is being built in the centre of Berlin, near the former site of the Nazi-era office that organised the “euthanasia” programme. “>In 1939, Adolf Hitler told officials that people “considered incurable” should be “granted a mercy killing”.

It is a misnomer to say that these helpless people were “Nazi” victims. The doctors who killed disabled people were not necessarily Nazis and certainly weren’t forced by the government into murder. Rather, they were eugenics enthusiasts who truly believed that killing was a “healing treatment” that was best for the patient, family, and Reich.

If that sounds familiar, it should. Today, the Netherlands permits the infanticide of babies because they are seriously disabled as an act of “compassion,” and “after-birth abortion” is promoted in the most respectable medical and bioethics journals. Eugenic abortion is an epidemic, with 90% of Down and dwarf fetuses never being permitted to see the light of day. We dehydrate to death people with profound cognitive disabilities by removing sustenance from them.

Suicide clinics are operating in Switzerland and in Belgium euthanasia is coupled with organ harvesting. Assisted suicide/euthanasia has been redefined into “aid in dying” or “death with dignity.” This would all be familiar territory for the eugenicists of the early to middle 20th century.

Calling the euthanasia Holocaust a “Nazi” issue is a defense mechanism that enables us to pursue pernicious policies–with some different motives and without the hate speech, to be sure–and not see that a log is also in our own eye. For as Dr. Leo Alexander–the noted psychiatrist and medical investigator at the Nuremberg Trials–warned in the 1949 pages of the New England Journal of Medicine:

Whatever proportions these crimes finally assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they had started from small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived. This attitude in its early stages concerned itself merely with the severely and chronically sick. Gradually the sphere of those to be included in this category was enlarged to encompass the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the racially unwanted and finally all non-Germans. But it is important to realize that the infinitely small wedged-in lever from which this entire trend of mind received its impetus was the attitude toward the nonrehabilitable sick…

The killing center is the reductio ad absurdum of all health planning based only on rational principles and economy and not on humane compassion and divine law. To be sure, American physicians are still far from the point of thinking of killing centers, but they have arrived at a danger point in thinking, at which likelihood of full rehabilitation is considered a factor that should determine the amount of time, effort and cost to be devoted to a particular type of patient on the part of the social body upon which this decision rests. At this point Americans should remember that the enormity of a euthanasia movement is present in their own midst.

And here’s an irony: The NEJM actively supports many of the policies against which Alexander warned. The utilitarian and eugenic “quality of life” attitudes that intellectually enabled the medical Holocaust–and indeed, which were advocated within the medical intellegentsia long before the Nazis were a dark cloud on the horizon–are more than present in our own midst. They are in danger of prevailing–and without the backing of a despotism. 

This is the third example of which I am aware of “double” euthanasia deaths in Belgium. The first were of an elderly couple. The second of disabled twins, who were going blind. And now the third, another elderly couple. From the Huffington Post story:

A Belgian couple that had spent the past 70 years together decided to end their lives the same way. Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad reports Leopold Dauwe, 90, and Paula Raman, 89, were euthanized Monday, surrounded by their children and grandchildren. The husband and wife, who had known each other for 70 years and were married for 64 years, said neither could envision a life without the other. “Together we walked the road. Together we left,” reads the powerful note on the pair’s memorial card, according to DeStandaard.

Since 2002, Belgium has allowed suicide with medical help for terminally-ill adult patients subjected to intolerable physical or mental suffering. Dirk Uyttendaele, the couple’s son-in-law, told DeStandaard that his relatives were severely ill and that there was no treatment available. Raman was suffering from heart problems and Dauwe was slowly turning blind and had a lung condition. “Neither of them wanted to stay behind when the other would die first, and they did not have any prospect of a dignified death,” Uyttendaele said. “They were tied to their beds, and their death struggle would only become more difficult over time. They chose to act before that. The entire family supported their decision 100 percent,” he added.

Of course they did. If that doesn’t give you the chills… 

This is what euthanasia consciousness brings. Culture of death, Wesley? What culture of death?

The NHS is melting down. As I have repeated posted about here, the Liverpool Care Pathway–intended to prevent patients from dying in agony–became instead a door to imposed back door euthanasia. So much easier to put patients into a coma and dehydrate them than provide individualized care.

NHS hospitals have so mistreated patients that thousands died who would have lived with proper care. Mothers have given birth in hallways. Emergency patients have been kept in ambulances for hours to ensure that ER rooms met their waiting time bureaucratic mandates. Etc., beyond etc. What a mess.

The magnificent Melanie Philips hits the nail about this in her latest column, “NHS has a Hole Where Its Heart Should Be:”

Harsh as this may sound, it is surely hard not to conclude that — whether through the LCP abuses or shocking standards of care — one way or another the NHS has turned into something akin to a national death service for those who are too vulnerable to resist.

This obscene brutalisation of attitudes cannot be addressed by tinkering with procedures, by yet more Whitehall directives, nor even by the firing of culpable staff (not that that last outcome ever seems to happen). We are simply facing nothing less than a moral breakdown: a fundamental collapse of decency, compassion and simple kindness.

The question is why the “collapse,” why the most caring profession can be transformed into its most callous, why as an American hospital psychologist friend told me recently, she sees a very real threat of “death squad medicine.”

There is much to consider. I have railed about how centralized control deprofessionalizes. And that is clearly true. When doctors and staffers practice to the memo, patients that don’t fit into the mold can seem a bother. This bureaucratic sclerosis is coming to the USA now thanks to Obamacare.

But I think more is involved. When preventing any and all suffering becomes the prime directive, eliminating suffering too easily morphs into eliminating the sufferer. And the very concept of ”suffering” itself becomes elastic, to the point that family suffering becomes germane and the patient is put out of their misery–and given the cost of care–ours.

At an even deeper level, the increasing inhumanity we see comes from rejecting human exceptionalism, and its corollary, the sanctity/equality of human life. If being human is morally irrelevant, when very prominent thinkers seriously assert that some human beings aren’t human (persons) anymore (or yet), and that their suffering and/or dependency is a pointless drag, that life without a “meaningful recovery” not worth living–it becomes all too easy to think that killing is the best option and that providing individualized care to certain classes of people is not worth our time or treasure.

The crisis in health care isn’t a cause, but a symptom.

The UK Health Minister is urging that neighborhood watch groups care for the local elderly. From the Telegraph story:

Norman Lamb warned that Britain’s attitude to the elderly was “uncivilised” and said the public must acknowledge that pensioners living nearby need their help. He wants neighbourhood watch groups to apply for “care status” and suggested that they could help wash and feed pensioners as well as provide companionship.

The plans, which have the approval of senior Government figures and have been welcomed by Neighbourhood Watch leaders, would help to reduce the number of pensioners forced into care homes, the Liberal Democrat minister hopes.“The truth is that many people in this day and age live miserable lives,” said Mr Lamb. “If someone lives on their own and has substantial care needs, and the extent of their life is getting out of bed, getting washed, sitting in a chair and going back to bed, with no one to see during the day, that is a miserable life.

That’s what churches used to do when families couldn’t. But anti-Christianity extracts a toll. With faith dying on the vine, what will take its place?

A medical system deeply dedicated to Hippocratic values of patient equality and uninfected by the “quality of life” virus would not need laws prohibiting discrimination against the sickest and most seriously disabled patients. Alas, doctors don’t take the Hippocratic Oath anymore and are under increasing pressure to consider costs when discussing treatment options. Moreover, Obamacare’s potent threat to establish future rationing of the kind seen in the UK threatens to institutionalize discrimination against the medically vulnerable. 

In such an invidious milieu, anti-discrimination laws that govern the practice of medicine, alas, become necessary. One was enacted recently in Oklahoma that seems a good model for the nation. From, the Non Discrimination in Treatment Act:

A. A health care provider shall not deny to a patient a lifepreserving health care service the provider provides to other  patients, and the provision of which is directed by the patient or a  person legally authorized to make health care decisions for the patient:
1. On the basis of a view that treats extending the life of an elderly, disabled, or terminally ill individual as of lower value than extending the life of an individual who is younger, nondisabled, or not terminally ill; or
2. On the basis of disagreement with how the patient or person legally authorized to make health care decisions for the patient values the trade-off between extending the length of the patient’s life and the risk of disability

Hopefully, this will make it much harder for hospital bioethics committees and doctors to force patients off of wanted efficacious life-extending treatment.

This is a body blow to Futile Care Theory, as futilitarian Thaddeus Mason Pope acknowledges. That is a necessary corrective, with so many attempts now in advance directive and POLST proposals that would allow doctors to overrule surrogate decision making–even a patient’s own advance medical directive.

These are the consequence of centralizing healthcare under bureaucratic control. Deprofessionalization. Medicine practiced by the numbers. The most weak and vulnerable victimized.

The tragedy of the Liverpool Care Pathway tells the awful tale. Originally designed to prevent NHS patients from dying in agony, the LCP was applied bluntly rather than in a nuanced and individualized manner. Patients were dehydrated to death. People were rendered unconscious who didn’t need that level of palliation. The well-intended LCP became a door for back door euthanasia.

Now, it is being euthanized. From the Telegraph story:

The controversial Liverpool Care Pathway used to “manage” the death of terminally ill NHS patients is to be scrapped following an official review, ministers will announce next week .Doctors are expected to be told that, rather than an inflexible national system, each patient in the final days or weeks of their lives should have a personalised treatment plan agreed with their families.

Good grief! That is how medicine is supposed to be practiced: Individually!

We in the USA have no grounds for looking down our noses. The same fate awaits us under Obamacare unless we dismantle its centralized control authority before it really begins to bite. 

AB 926 in California would permit Big Biotech to buy eggs from poor women to conduct human cloning and other experiments–potentially increasing the frequency of a practice commonly used in IVF that generally targets beautiful and brilliant college women. (New York already permits egg buying by biotech, resulting in the manufacture of the first human clones.)

Seller beware: Supplying eggs can be dangerous to health and fecundity. A former egg seller tells her story of such consequences in the San Diego Union Tribune. From, “Paying Women to Take a Big Risk:”

Six months later my body began to fail me. I had always been a healthy and active woman, but suddenly I was crippled by pain and unable to live the life I had once enjoyed. I was soon diagnosed with stage IV endometriosis, a disease my doctors now believe was pushed into overdrive as a result of the potent hormones involved in my egg donation protocols.

I quickly lost my own ability to conceive and spent the next three years fighting to regain my health. Five surgeries and approximately $50,000 later, I can finally say that I am no longer facing daily pain and illness. But I will never be able to retrieve what has been lost. I can’t say I regret my decision to donate, because doing so would mean regretting those two lives I helped bring into the world. But I can say that I have grown to deeply question the ethics and health risks involved in egg donation.

And catch this irony!

In fact, not long after my initial infertility diagnosis, the agency I donated through informed me they had a long history of working with former egg donors who went on to encounter their own fertility problems. They said they would love the opportunity to help me find an egg donor if I ever decided to pursue that path to family building.

So, because she was enticed to sell her eggs, she may have to rely on some other woman risking her health so she can become a mother? Good grief!

The moral of the story? Don’t sell your eggs for research or IVF. It’s not worth the risk.

Would you want this man in charge of caring for your elder loved ones?  I wouldn’t. A nursing home chain manager in the UK supports the creation of suicide clinics. From the Daily Mail story:

The UK could eventually have assisted suicide clinics like Dignitas in Switzerland, a care home boss has said. Dr Chai Patel runs a chain of more than 230 elderly care homes across the country. He says financial considerations should not drive the issue, but he acknowledges “what will be, will be”.

There’s money to be made off of suicide clinics. Perhaps the not so good doctor wants to get in on the ground floor. 

There’s too much anthropomorphizing in science reporting these days–thanks to (sometimes) fiction writer, Jane Goodall. Small case in point: An on-line science/futurist publication called, io9 We Come From The Future, posted an article claiming that scientists have found evil fish. From, “These Fish Are Evidence That Humans Aren’t the Only Evil Animals,” by Joseph Bennington Castro:

It’s a common (but evil) survival strategy in zombie movies: Injure somebody else and run like hell while they get eaten. But humans aren’t the only bastards who do this. Some shoaling fish also use this selfish tactic when they’re being chased by predators, according to new research…

Scientists often see passive, or indirect, selfish behavior in animals — for example, they may see an animal hide behind its neighbor to escape from a predator. “That’s common to observe,” says Robert Young, a biologist with the University of Salford Manchester in the U.K. “They may be hiding behind someone else, but they’re not actively pushing someone forward.” Active selfish behavior — where an individual benefits by injuring or exposing a group member to a predator — has never been recorded. Until now.

Interesting biology, but it’s not “evil.”

In its essence, evil is not just a brutal or selfish “action,” it is a moral judgment made about the action. “Doing evil” requires moral agency and the ability to choose to do “good” instead of evil–or at least refrain from wickedness–and to distinguish right from wrong. In short, it requires free will.

That is not at all what these fish are about. As the story said, the response is purely instinctive, based on chemicals.

Importantly, the fish exhibited this aggressive behavior from the very first active search predator trial, showing that the behavior is innate, not learned. However, the fish did chase and bite more with successive trials, suggesting, in a sense, that they could become better at evading predators in the wild over time. And tests showed that the fish did indeed release their alarm chemicals after getting bitten (note: the bites didn’t draw blood, they only removed scales).

Humans are the only evil animals. And, dogs aside–which we intelligently designed–we are the only good animals. Branding the fish in question “evil,” is a uniquely human judgment based on moral considerations that only exceptional humans are capable of making. 

A Canadian woman directed that she be refused medical treatment, and indeed, that she be euthanized if she had Alzheimer’s and could not recognize her children. She has the disease and is spoon fed.  But the family wants that stopped.. From the National Post story:

According to Ms. Hammond, she is lifted into and out of bed with a hoist, spends her time virtually motionless in a wheelchair and is kept alive only through regular spoon-feeding. “She’s not taking it by choice, that’s clear,” said Dr. Andrew Edelson, Ms. Bentley’s doctor, who suspects the whole feeding process is purely reflex. “She doesn’t have the ability to make choice and if she had the ability to make choice, she would refuse; she’d clamp her mouth shut and nobody would try to feed her,” he said.

Under typical circumstances, Ms. Bentley would already be dead. Metro Vancouver has no shortage of seniors who have drawn up explicit end-of-life directives and do-not-resuscitate orders, and those are usually respected, according to Dr. Edelson. “I’ve spoken with a fair number of health professionals about this case, and everybody is dismayed, to say the least; we’re shocked that this is happening,” he said.

Baloney. She isn’t being forced onto medical machines, given unwanted CPR, or indeed, being fed by tube. She is alive because her body hasn’t shut down and she can eat and drink. Under these circumstances it would be shocking–and criminal–if a medical team withheld food and water from a helpless woman capable of–and actually taking–nourishment.

This is a classic case of mixing apples and oranges. People have the right to direct that medical treatment be denied, but spoon feeding isn’t medical treatment. It is humane care–the least we owe everyone. 

Are we now going to allow vulnerable patients to be denied food and water when the can–and are–eating? And can you imagine forcing medical staffers to be complicit in an intentional starvation/dehydration under these circumstances?

If she eats, she eats. If she drinks, she drinks. Nobody should have the power to order themselves starved in advance when they can take food and water through natural means.

The headline says that starving her–again, when she is eating on her own!–would be to allow her to “die with dignity.” Culture of death, Wesley? What culture of death?

Two-dimensional advocates for abortion rights often make the stupid claim that “pro lifers care about fetuses, but not people after they are born.” Having hung around pro lifers for nearly twenty years now, I can state categorically that the assertion is a slander. Pro lifers generally put their actions where their mouths are–including adopting special needs children, foster parenting, caring for women thinking about or who regret their abortions, volunteering for hospice, etc.

A report in the Washington Times illustrates the point. A priest discovered that a couple, whose gestating baby was diagnosed with Down, were planning an abortion. He asked her to wait to see if he could find someone to adopt. She agreed and a life was saved. From the story:

The woman, who has not been identified for her privacy and her protection, was just shy of six months pregnant and lives in a state that prohibits abortions past 24 weeks — which meant he had a short time to find a family willing to make a lifelong commitment. So Father Vander Woude, the lead pastor at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Gainesville, Va., approached a volunteer who helped manage the church’s social media pages, and she posted an urgent plea on Facebook early Monday morning.

“There is a couple in another state who have contacted an adoption agency looking for a family to adopt their Down Syndrome unborn baby. If a couple has not been found by today they plan to abort the baby. If you are interested in adopting this baby please contact Fr. VW IMMEDIATELY,” the post read. “We are asking all to pray for this baby and the wisdom that this couple realize the importance of human life and do not abort this beautiful gift from God.” The post asked people to call the church’s office after 9:30 a.m. Monday or to email Father Vander Woude.

No one expected the response they received. “When we got in and opened up around 9:30, it was nearly nonstop. All day long, we were receiving phone calls from people who wanted to adopt the baby,” church staff member Martha Drennan said. “Father Vander Woude has gotten over 900 emails in regard to the baby.”

The only thing that surprises me is that anyone would be surprised. The outpouring of selflessness and love to save the baby’s life and commit to parenting him or her for the duration was entirely predictable. There are exceptions, of course, but from my experience, this is what most pro lifers see as their calling.  

Back when Proposition 71 was being pitched–which created the California Institute For Regenerative Medicine–opponents warned that making human cloning a state constitutional right would result in the exploitation of poor women for their eggs–needed in every attempt at SCNT cloning. Responding, supporters promised to prohibit egg buying as an expedient to pass the measure. 

Now, it’s promise breaking time!. Human cloning has been done and would-be cloners want eggs. 

Enter AB 926, which will legalize egg selling for biotech research–as well as purchase and sale of human embryos, e.g., nascent human trafficking. The bill was passed overwhelmingly in the radical left wing California legislature, and now sits on Gov. Jerry–the last adult state-wide office holder in California–Brown’s desk.

Here’s what I wrote about this awful bill earlier in the year in the Weekly Standard.

AB-926 aims to repeal the ban on paying women to supply eggs for research (beyond expenses) and allow university or other institutional review boards to establish compensation rates to pay women for their “time, discomfort, and inconvenience.” “Discomfort” is a tactful word for what women experience when submitting to mass egg extraction. The process—known as superovulation—requires administering supercharged doses of hormones that stimulate the ovaries to release 20 to 30 eggs in a cycle, instead of the usual 1 or 2. After that, the donor’s (or seller’s) eggs are harvested under anesthesia via a needle inserted through the vaginal wall.

Most extractions do not harm the egg supplier. But some women are wounded: Potential side effects include infection, the swelling of ovaries to the size of a melon, infertility, stroke, some cancers, and, in rare cases, even death.

This potential “Eggspolitation“–is driven by political left:

There’s an irony here. Those pushing for egg and embryo selling tend to be on the political left, e.g., politicians and advocates who claim to be most supportive of “choices” for women. Indeed, assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, the author of AB 926, claims that the bill is about guaranteeing “equal treatment” for women in research.

But establishing egg and embryo commodities markets would actually lead to unequal exploitation opportunities for buyers. Those lining up to be superovulated for pay are unlikely to be members of the professional class. Rather, they would primarily be the poor and/or unemployed, women in such dire financial need that they are willing to risk their health, fecundity, and lives for a relatively small stipend. The real money in the embryo/egg industry would be made by the companies and scientists who succeeded in using the reproductive substances of women and embryonic cells to achieve fame and fortune.

Talk about a war on poor women! Veto!

I have written often about the Liverpool Care Pathway and how it has led to backdoor euthanasia. Now, an official inquiry is being made into one death that may be LCP related. From the Telegraph story:

Jean Tulloch, 83, died in March last year at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh where she had been treated for a urinary tract infection. Her son Peter, from Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, believes there is evidence to suggest doctors actively attempted to hasten her death by withdrawing her food and fluids for 30 hours. He reported the matter to police and it is now to be investigated by the Scottish Fatalities and Investigation Unit (SFIU), a branch of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, which orders criminal prosecutions and investigates deaths.

The hospital has denied wrongdoing:

NHS Lothian has previously strongly denied allegations of wrongdoing, saying that the care Mrs Tulloch received in hospital was not “anything other than compassionate, professional and in her best interests”.

“Best interests” according to whom and judged by what criteria? Equality of life?  ”Quality of life”? Cost of care? In that term–contemporary events demonstrate–lurk a myriad of possibilities.  

Character is “out.” Diseases are “in.” Everything is being medicalized. Obesity is the latest example, with the AMA now supporting the idea that obesity is a “disease.”

Surprise, surprise: Redefining obesity into a “disease” allows the emerging technocracy to grow and gain power and control over our lives. From the AMA Medical News story:

Lawmakers introduced bipartisan bills in the Senate and House to lower health care costs and prevent chronic diseases by addressing the nation’s obesity epidemic. Although the timing was coincidental, observers say the declaration by the AMA House of Delegates meeting in June probably will have a significant impact in adding momentum to policy, research and treatment approaches to obesity — including a new dimension in exam room conversations between doctors and patients…

The declaration already is sparking discussions among medical organizations about the biologic, environmental and genetic factors contributing to unhealthy weight. Such conversations are important, because obesity long has been attributed to poor behavior, which fueled stigma against the disease, health experts say. “Many of us believe that this is going to propel a critical mass effect so that we will see a lot of action,” said Jeffrey I. Mechanick, MD, president of the American Assn. of Clinical Endocrinologists. He wrote the resolution on designating obesity as a disease with colleagues from his organization and others.

Declaring obesity a “disease” is part of an international effort, as I noted in the Weekly Standard some time ago, to transform the campaign against obesity into the new global warming. Indeed, the proposed policy remedies are nearly identical.

Sure, obesity can be caused by a bodily dysfunction. And we have genetic propensities. But mostly, we the overweight, are too heavy because of our own choices.  

That’s just crazy talk, Wesley! Taking a second helping of pasta or smearing three slices of dinner bread with butter, or enjoying a 3:00 PM ice cream cone, are merely “symptoms”of a “disease”–requiring “the experts” and “the scientists” and “the politicians” and “the bureaucrats”–to save us.

And in so defining the problem, character and self-discipline grow increasingly archaic concepts. Self-restraint and discipline are government-supplied through “programs.”  

This all comes at a very high cost: With the enervation of personal responsibility comes a concomitant stifling of personal liberty. Low expectations for individual behavior, it seems to me, is the real “disease” afflicting us in the modern age.

The NHS is melting down. Patient care is in an abysmal state. And what does the Senedd of Wales do in this distrustful and dangerous atmosphere? Sow more distrust by passing a “presumed consent” to organ harvesting law. From the BBC story:

Wales has become the first country in the UK to introduce a system of presumed consent for organ donation. After five hours of debate in the Senedd on Tuesday, assembly members voted in favour of the change. Some 43 voted in favour, with eight against and two abstentions. It will give doctors the right to remove people’s organs when they die unless they have registered an objection.

I am an organ donor on my license. We have an “opt-in” system–meaning your organs can’t be taken without explicit consent–and I trust my wife to ensure that I am really and truly dead before organ harvesting commenced. But if CA had a presumed consent law, I would “opt out” and ask my wife to opt me back in if I were truly dead. 

Why? I don’t trust presumed consent. Why? Blame the current atmosphere of health care. 

In this day of cost-cutting and utilitarian “quality of life” judgmentalism, a PC law makes it too tempting for medical personnel to (almost unconsciously) look upon the catastrophically ill or disabled as so many organ farms instead of patients with equal moral value. (I mean, look at the mess with the Liverpool Care Pathway, meant to ensure proper palliation, but which actually led to back door euthanasia!) 

In other words, presumed consent carries with it the very real danger of reducing some patients into the status of valuable natural resources to be exploited for the benefit of others. 

I keep warning that the environmental movement is growing increasingly radical and anti-human. The proposed international law of “ecocide,” would punish large scale development of resources as a crime akin to genocide. Example: A mock trial held in the chambers of the English Supreme Court found fictional CEOs of Alberta Tar Sands companies guilty of ecocide and subject to imprisonment.

Polly Higgins, the leader of the ecocide movement, now claims earth has a “right to life.” From an interview in Earth Island Journal:

We do have a duty of care for humanity. And if we look at our duty of care for humans at the very highest level what we have at the very core of this premise is the right to life. It is our most important right. In fact without that right no other human rights can exist. And on the other side of the coin of human rights are the duties and obligations that they give rise to. That’s governed by the recognition of crimes such as murder or homicide or genocide. These crimes create a legal duty of care so it is incumbent upon you to not to murder another human being.

It seemed to me that, in fact, we were failing to recognize the earth’s fundamental right to life as the most important one of all. Here we are destroying the earth at an enormous rate that is increasing everywhere and every day during peacetime, never mind wartime. If you recognize that the earth has a right to life then you have to create a kind of international crime of peacetime that protects this fundamental right.

Meaning the “right to life” of “earth” trumps the right to life of humans. 

Ponder that deeply. If the “earth” has a “right to life,” it means the end of the unique value of humans and the obliteration of human exceptionalism. It means the forced continued destitution of those in resource rich/economically poor nations, because the life of earth will matter more than those of desperate masses. It means the sacrifice of human thriving on the altar of a neo pagan concept of the earth as a living entity (Gaia), with us as just one species whose lives are of no greater value than any other. 

I never understood why patents were ever allowed for embryonic stem cells. They are not human inventions. They–like genes–are naturally occurring. 

Accordingly, the European courts have rejected stem cell patents. The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected gene patents. Now, challenges are underway against U.S. patents of embryonic stem cells. From the Chronicle of Higher Education story:

Two advocacy groups, buoyed by the Supreme Court’s ruling last month invalidating gene patents, on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to similarly forbid a patent on human embryonic stem cells held by the University of Wisconsin’s research marketing arm. The suit against the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation was filed by Consumer Watchdog and the Public Patent Foundation. It was made possible only after the plaintiffs finished slogging through years of appeals at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the advocacy groups…

 Loring said, a court victory involving human embryonic stem cells would make clear the breadth of the Supreme Court’s decision in the gene patent case that no forms of nature can be patented. “There is an argument to be made for letting the world know that this kind of thing is not allowed,” she said.

Politics aside, I don’t know how that possibly loses. But if there is one thing we have learned in the last fifteen years, when it comes to pro embryonic stem cell research, politics often trumps law.

Question: What about human clones? They don’t occur in nature. But they involve human life. Human life should also not be patentable. 

Opposing assisted suicide/euthanasia should be a top liberal agenda item. (For example, see Robert P. Jones, Nat Hentoff, Dr. Rex Green, and most disability rights activists–such as Diane Coleman.) Indeed, that was certainly the cut of my jib when I first got involved in the issue. 

But the harder the leftwingism of the political party, too often, the more enamored it is of the culture of death. So too, France, where Socialist Prime Minister Hollande wants to legalize euthanasia. From the Reuters story:

President Francois Hollande reaffirmed his aim to legalise voluntary euthanasia on Monday after a majority of France’s national ethics committee advised him not to let doctors help the terminally ill take their lives. Hollande said France would hold a national debate on the issue in coming months and his government would submit a bill in parliament by year’s end that would go beyond the current law that bars doctors from providing assisted suicide.

Looks to me as if Hollande isn’t much interested in facts and reasoning that a debate might educe. 

The pro choice movement is growing increasingly radical, to the point that it now emotionally supports the abortion of viable fetuses, aka babies–to the point that Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis filbustered for ten hours on behalf of infanticide–as Peggy Noonan put it. From the This Week transcript:

Here’s what — in the story of this young woman, she’s so spirited.  You know, she has such energy and she seems to have such commitment. But it seems to me — and I think it seems to many Americans — that what she is speaking for and standing for is something we would recognize as infanticide, late-term abortion, the taking of a little child’s life.  That is really, really serious.

If a woman’s health is adversely impacted by a late term pregnancy, or her life endangered, deliver–don’t abort–the baby. That’s consistent with Roe v. Wade, which is why I am increasingly convinced that pro abortion types would like to see it overturned in favor of something even more absolute.

In my biweekly First Things column, I point out the decidedly religious characteristics of transhumanism. From, “The Materialists’ Rapture:”

Transhumanism is becoming the world’s newest religion, offering adherents the kind of hope once within the exclusive province of faith—and without the humbling concept of an omnipotent God to whom one owes prayer and thanksgiving. No need for divine forgiveness. No karmic debts to be paid by reincarnation. No need to believe in any reality beyond the strictly material universe.

I note, for example, that the transhumanist Singularity is much like the Christian concept of Rapture. 

But more fundamentally, transhumanism offers a materialistic replacement for the psychic damage caused when religious belief is lost or evaporates. Indeed, it strikes me that the Singularity is a materialistic echo of the eschatological belief of some Christians in a pending “Rapture.” Consider:

• The Rapture and the Singularity are both supposed to occur at a specific moment in time.
• The Rapture and the Singularity ultimately lead to death’s final defeat.
• The Rapture heralds an Edenic age of peace and harmony for believers, lived in the “new Jerusalem.” So too the Singularity, albeit right here on terra firma.
• The Rapture brings an end to all suffering for believers, as does the Singularity. Indeed, the ultimate goal of transhumanism is to banish suffering and want from the experience of materialistic life.
• Raptured Christians expect to receive “glorified” bodies that are both real and immortal. Kurzweil’s promise of “non biological bodies” seems like a similar concept.

Transhumanism has terrible problems with its ethics. But I understand the appeal. For those who believe in nothing but molecules, it offers an alternative to oblivion.