As Yogi Berra once said, “It’s deja vu all over again.” Representatives Diana Digette (D-CO) and Charlie Dent (R-PA) have introduced a mendacious bill requiring the federal government to conduct and support for stem cell research. It also provides a guarantee of funding for embryonic stem cell research.

But I think the real point is to sneak funding of human cloning research into the mix. At the very least, it would legalize human cloning via somatic cell nuclear transfer. From H.R. 2433:

SEC. 498G. PROHIBITION AGAINST FUNDING FOR HUMAN CLONING.

(a) Prohibition- The Secretary shall not use any funds for the conduct or support of human cloning….

(c) Definitions- In this section, the term “human cloning” means the implantation of the product of transferring the nuclear material of a human somatic cell into an egg cell from which the nuclear material has been removed or rendered inert into a uterus or the functional equivalent of a uterus.

How many times must it be repeated, implantation of a cloned embryo (the “product” mentioned above) is not the act of cloning any more than implanting a fertilized embryo is fertilization!

Also note that the stem cells taken from “products” might not be considered “embryonic” under the legislation, thereby requiring federal support and funding. Indeed, since ESCR is already funded, I warrant that sleight of hand is the point of the bill!

How can anyone respect the federal government when so many legislators use phony definitions as a tactic to legalize the very thing they purport to be outlawing? 

I have written often here of the meltdown being experienced by the NHS. The cause? Centralized control that deprofessionalizes physicians, rations healthcare, and turns the system into a bureaucratic nightmare. 

Tellingly, the NHS was the model for many Obamacarians–particularly the centralized control part. This despite the fact that NHS quality of care is in free fall. And now, there are apparently bureaucratic coverups–coupled with suppression of a whistleblower–under way to protect the dysfunctional system. From the column by the splendid Melanie Phillips:

So now, having had the inquiry into the inquiry that suppressed facts about the failure of the original inquiry, there is to be a further inquiry into the bullying of the woman who tried to blow the whistle on the uselessness–and worse–of the inquirers. Really, the saga of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has progressed from tragedy through scandal to farce, and has now plumbed astonishing new depths of moral and political squalor. For at the weekend, after the revelations of the cover-up over deaths from negligence at Morecambe Bay hospitals, we learned just what happened to Kay Sheldon, a non-executive director at the CQC, when she tried to bring to light failings at the regulator which were putting patients’ lives at risk.

And now we also know–just as had been suspected from the start–that the culture of bullying, intimidation and lies in the NHS reached to the very top.

Hmm. Sound familiar?

Worse, centralized control can kill:

The ensuing debacle was not just the result of a botched merger: it reflects an NHS culture which is profoundly, systemically and almost certainly irredeemably rotten. At the very root lies an appalling litany of serial incompetence, indifference and even cruelty by front-line staff. Let us not forget the dreadful events themselves in Morecambe Bay hospitals, where at least 16 babies and two mothers are estimated to have died through neglect. And in Mid Staffs, neglect and cruelty reached such a pitch that patients drank from flower vases to relieve their thirst. Now, 14 more hospitals are being investigated for unusually high death rates. And we know from example after sickening example that too many elderly patients are treated all too frequently with a callousness that defies belief.

While thousands of NHS staff are highly professional and dedicated, far too many have simply lost the ethic of caring. And these failings are not being addressed; because what rules in the NHS, from top to bottom, is a culture of ruthless unaccountability in which the buck stops nowhere.

The problems of the NHS may seem very far away. But they are our future unless we prevent the Obamacare debacle from fully taking hold. 

When Vermont unwisely legalized physician-prescribed suicide, the law allowed an opt-out for hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, etc. Some are taking advantage of the conscience protection. From the Brattleboro Reformer story:

Vermont’s smallest hospital has become the latest medical facility to opt out of the state’s new aid-in-dying law. But the decision, rendered by the Grace Cottage Hospital board of trustees on Friday, was deemed “temporary.” Hospital administrators expect to revisit the matter in no more than 90 days, and in the meantime they’ll work out the complex details of accommodating terminally ill patients who request lethal doses of medication. “Opting out doesn’t mean that we are not going to implement the law,” Dr. Maurice Geurts, Grace Cottage medical staff president, said in a statement issued after the vote.

Let’s hope Grace Hospital has the guts to hold firm. After all, suicide in a hospital affects other patients as well as the one who died.

Grace isn’t alone:

It comes less than two weeks after Brattleboro Memorial Hospital’s board of directors also opted out after what was called a “thoughtful and contentious discussion.” “The staff thinks the hospital is a facility people come to for healing, and the intent of the law is not to make the hospital a place where people come to die,” Dr. Kathleen McGraw, BMH chief medical officer, said of the June 11 vote. Vermont’s largest hospital, Fletcher Allen in Burlington, also has opted out. But in a June 5 post on the hospital’s website, Fletcher Allen Chief Medical Officer Stephen M. Leffler said the exemption was enacted “on an interim basis” to give administrators the opportunity to “develop a thoughtful, compassionate policy that will respect our patients and providers.”

More of this please. And make the opt-outs permanent.

Just because a state legalizes assisted suicide, that doesn’t mean it has to be facilitated. The only way to prevent the USA from jumping off the same vertical moral cliff as the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland already have is to keep assisted suicide from becoming culturally accepted.

In this regard, medical professionals and facilities in states where doctors can help kill patients have a major responsibility to keep that “acceptance” from occurring. Refusing to participate is a splendid way to do that. It sends a powerful message: “It may be legal, but it is still wrong.”

The Louisiana Legislature recently passed a bill that threatened to transform the state into our version of India–a country in which destitute and desperate women are exploited for their gestational capacities by a surrogacy industry and its foreign customers (discussed here previously). Good news: Governor Jindal has vetoed. From the Business Report story:

Jindal vetoed a bill that would have set a new legal and regulatory framework for surrogacy births in the state. The surrogacy bill was one of the more contentious bills of the session because religious groups raised ethical and moral concerns. Louisiana law currently has few regulations governing surrogacy.

This is a quote from Jindal’s Veto Message, as reported by The Advocate:

Creating a state sanctioned regulatory structure for contracts pertaining to the birth of children has a profound impact on the traditional beginnings of the family and is an important topic worthy of heightened scrutiny and consensus.

To say the least. For example, I would be very interested in studies analyzing the impact of surrogacy on adoption. 

In any event, I am utterly opposed to surrogacy-for-hire. As the old rock song had it, “You can’t always get what you want.” In our times the living human body and its biological parts and functions are being reduced to the status of natural resources for the well-off to exploit, plunder, buy, and rent. Political actions that blunt this objectification of humanity are to be applauded–including Jindal’s veto. 

I reported the other day that the Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) now justifies the infanticide of seriously ill and dying babies as a means of ending the parents’ suffering. Now, we see that the purpose of the new guideline was to induce doctors to report their baby killing to the authorities. From the British Medical Journal report:

The Royal Dutch Medical Association has published professional standards to try to clarify the line between palliative care of terminally ill newborn babies and deliberately killing them. Driving the move is the apparent failure of doctors to report cases of mercy killing of newborn babies to the government’s expert review committee of physicians, lawyers, and ethicists, to which all such cases are meant to be reported. As with the Dutch policy on euthanasia, doctors who report and adhere to guidelines will not be prosecuted. However, since its launch in 2006 the Central Experts Committee has received only one case involving a newborn baby. Originally up to 20 reports a year were expected

You see, when it comes to doctor-administered death in the Netherlands, what matters is doing the killing visibly, not the fact that babies are being killed.

The report also celebrates how ultra sound has successfully allowed doctors to target babies with spina bifida for eugenic abortion, apparently making infanticide less necessary. This is blatant bigotry against the disabled. Yet, Netherlanders perceive themselves as oh, so compassionate!

A story in the Telegraph claims that Japanese scientists may soon grow human organs in animals–made from human stem cells–for later use in transplant surgery. I am dubious. From the story:

A panel of scientists and legal experts appointed by the government has drawn up a recommendation that will form the basis of new guidelines for Japan’s world-leading embryonic research. There is widespread support in Japan for research that has raised red flags in other countries.

Scientists plan to introduce a human stem cell into the embryo of an animal – most likely a pig – to create what is termed a “chimeric embryo” that can be implanted into an animal’s womb. That will then grow into a perfect human organ, a kidney or even a heart, as the host animal matures. When the adult creature is slaughtered, the organ will then be harvested and transplanted into a human with a malfunctioning organ.

Well, that certainly presents a host of ethical issues, doesn’t it? I can think of four off the top of my head: First, there is the question of what kind of stem cell. Second, the issue becomes whether creating an animal that has a human organ is ethical from the human exceptionalism angle. Third, some will object creating animals for the purpose of slaughtering them for human organ harvesting. And finally, there are significant safety concerns, e.g., whether the patient or society could be put at potential risk via a porcine virus crossing species barrier through the transplanted organ.

Here are my initial thoughts–and this is very much a matter of first impression:

• If it were an adult stem cell, say a progenitor kidney stem cell, etc., that would pass muster with me.
• IF all that was created was a pig with a human kidney, that would be acceptable from the human exceptionalism angle. The pig would remain a pig in the same way as if a human organ were grafted into it and matured before slaughter.
• I would also enthusiastically accept using and killing pigs as organ farms. I don’t see the difference with eating bacon. Indeed, the justification–again, if it worked, about which I have serious doubts–would be more urgent.
• The potential devastation of an outbreak of a porcine virus for which we have no resistance could be devastating. I would want a very high level of evidence that the risk is extremely remote.

Again, this is a first impression. I would be interested in reader comments.

So Apple is putting a suicide prevention function into Siri, the ”personal assistant” installed in the i-phone. From the ABC story:

Apple’s snarky assistant has been updated with a helpful, serious feature.Siri will now respond to suicidal statements with useful suicide prevention information. Prior to this week if you had told Siri “I want to kill myself” or “I want to jump off a bridge,” the service would either search the web or worse search for the nearest bridge. Now, Apple has directed the assistant to immediately return the phone number of the Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

“If you are thinking about suicide, you may want to speak with someone at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline,” the service says aloud in response to “I want to kill myself.” Siri then asks if you would like to call the number. If you don’t respond for a short period of time, it automatically returns a list of local suicide prevention centers. Click on the results and it will show you them on a map.

Great. Except, I hear, that assisted suicide advocates have insisted that Apple ensure that Siri’s GPS function first determine whether the user is in Oregon, Washington, or Vermont. If so, she will ask whether the phone user has cancer or some other terminal illness. If the answer is yes, Siri won’t refer to prevention resources but instead assure users that they aren’t really suicidal but merely contemplating ”death with dignity.” 

Update: Several people have contacted me about this post for more details about the Siri instructions regarding suicidal people in WA, OR, and VT. Just to be clear: I am being sarcastic to illustrate a point. The fact that the post was believed by my correspondents illustrates the utter sophistry of the assisted suicide activists’ pretense that the suicides they promote aren’t really suicides. In other words, the sarcasm worked. 

Colin Brewer, who disgustingly called for the infanticide of disabled infants some time ago, is apparently under police investigation for those comments. From the Independent story:

A councillor who compared disabled children with deformed lambs that are dealt with at birth by “smashing them against a wall” is being investigated by police over his comments, it emerged. Brewer also claimed in an interview there were good arguments for killing some disabled babies with high support needs because of the cost of providing them with services…

He added: “We are just animals. He obviously has got a point – you can’t have lambs running around with five legs and two heads. It would be put down, smashed against the wall and be dealt with.” When asked if he believed there was not much difference between putting down a lamb and a child with two heads, he said: ‘I think the cost has got to be evaluated. It is not something I would like to do but there is only so much in the bucket.”

Despicable. But let me be clear: I oppose criminalizing loathsome speech such as Brewer’s. It’s the First Amendment in this American’s blood, and moreover, I think it best to see these guys coming.

But I have to wonder: Is it just the crude way in which Brewer expressed his support for infanticide that brings in the authorites?  I mean it can’t be advocacy for killing disabled babies itself that matters–otherwise the Oxford publishers and authors of the infamous “after-birth” pro-infanticide article in the Journal of Medical Ethics would also be threatened with the dock. They shouldn’t be, of course. But I guess it isn’t what you say and advocate that matters regarding infanticide advocacy, but how you say it.

Oh, and this is disturbing. Brewer was recently reelected, despite–or perhaps, because of?–his odious comments. 

Patient autonomy is fast becoming a one-way street. Choose to die by refusing life-sustaining treatment–sacrosanct! Want to live with life-sustaining treatment?  Not your call.

I recently helped successfully fight an attempt in Texas (SB 303) to legalize no consent DNRs. But they have been passed in VT and MD. From Thaddeus Pope’s Medical Futility blog:

In both Maryland and Vermont, a clinician can write a POLST order indicating “no CPR” even without patient or surrogate consent.  Regulations in both states authorize the entry of a “do not attempt resuscitation” order on a POLST on the basis that CPR would be “futile” or “medically ineffective.” This “no consent” option is clearly printed right on the POLST form.  

POLST stands for Physician Order for Life-Sustaining Treatment. Laws that regulate POLSTs are increasingly authorizing doctors to unilaterally overturn surrogate wishes and patient advance directives with POLST orders. (This varies widely from state-to-state). It would be tragic if a form designed to improve the care of patients became a tool for overturning autonomy.

Not coincidentally, Vermont has a single payer healthcare plan it can’t pay for. Some have called for the cost savings to come from assisted suicide legalization–now done–and healthcare rationing. This abuse of POLSTs fits that “show me the money” paradigm.

Euthanasia activists are mounting a two-front pro-suicide offensive. First are the legalizers, those who seek to open the door to doctors (or others) legally assisting suicide/administering euthanasia for some–the terminally ill, seriously disabled, chronically ill, and/or mentally ill. They often pretend that suicide isn’t suicide, by calling it “aid in dying.”

Then, there are the wildcatters (let’s call them)–led by Philip Nitschke and Derek Humphry–who basically believe that suicide is an absolute autonomy right. The wildcatters teach how-to-commit-suicide classes, sell suicide devices–with some attending the suicides of people they have “counseled” as supporting witnesses” to self destruction.

The legalizers and wildcatters are really two sides of the same coin since both lead to the same ultimate place–the acceptance of suicide/euthanasia as a routine answer to the problems of human suffering, despair, or boredom. And the wildcatters serve the legalizers by letting them pose as the “reasonable center.”

Wildcatters demonstrate that no matter how loose the assisted suicide/euthanasia laws and practices become, it is never enough. Thus Exit Europe–a part of Philip Nitschke’s Exit International–is going to present how-to-commit suicide classes in Amsterdam (!) among other European sites. From its advertising material:

Exit Europe “Nitro & Nembutal” Workshops:

MaxDog Nitrogen arrives in Europe

• See how the MaxDog system can provide a peaceful, reliable death that is uniquely undetectable

Testing the Purity of Powder & Liquid Nembutal to Ensure Potency

• Laboratory testing using immuno-assay, melting point, water absorption & micro-titration techniques
• Demonstration of the new Exit Home ‘Dilution Purity Test’ for Quantitative Testing

How to Obtain the best end of life drug – Nembutal

• Sterile veterinary grade liquid from Mexico & South America
• Pharmaceutical grade from the US
• Chinese powdered Nembutal on the Internet

People die because of these ghouls. And in the Netherlands, if doctors believe the patient isn’t qualified for euthanasia–an-ever-shrinking category in that death culture–they are permitted to refer their patients to “how to” seminars like this. Paint me utterly disgusted.

Now the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has misled the public about the nature of Quebec’s proposed euthanasia legalization bill.

First, there is the headline: “Anti-Euthanasia Doctors Hostile to Quebec’s Assisted Suicide Bill,” and lede paragraph:

Quebec’s bill to legalize medically assisted suicide has the support of all four parties in the province’s national assembly. However, support for Bill 52 is far from unanimous, especially among doctors who would be expected to act on a patient’s request for help in dying.

No, it’s not “assisted suicide,” which involves a patient killing him or herself. It is euthanasia, which has the doctor performing the lethal act, or to put it another way, killing the patient. From the legislation:

If a physician determines, subsequent to the application of section 28, that medical aid in dying may be administered to a patient requesting it, the physician must administer such aid personally and take care of the patient until their death.

In other words, no assisted suicide allowed–intentional wording because Canadian federal law criminalizes assisted suicide but supposedly not “euthanasia.”

Moreover, the story reports that doctors aren’t required to participate. This is misleading. Doctors must do the killing, if killing is to be done. And if they won’t kill a qualified patient, they must be complicit by referring the patient to a supervisor who will find a doctor willing to kill:

30. A physician practising in a centre operated by an institution who refuses a request for medical aid in dying for a reason not based on section 28 must as soon as possible notify the director of professional services or any other person designated by the executive director of the institution and forward the request form given to the physician, if such is the case, to the director of professional services or designated person. The director of professional services or designated person must then take the necessary steps to find another physician willing to deal with the request in accordance with section 28.

If the physician who receives the request practises in a private health facility and is not associated with a local authority for the administration of medical aid in dying, the physician must as soon as possible notify the director of professional services or any other person designated by the executive director of the local authority, and forward the request form given to the physician, if such is the case, to the director of professional services or designated person. The steps mentioned in the first paragraph must then be taken.

So, to repeat: If the bill becomes law, ALL Quebec doctors must be complicit in killing patients, if asked. Or to put it another way: No conscience allowed. 

The technocracy wants to instill “science” as the primary principle in setting public policy–in other words, scientism. We see this in the global warming and embryonic stem cell debates, as just two examples.

I bring this up because of an article in Science reporting how the UN may soon create a “human right to science.” But the purported “rights” are contradictory and substantially intended to benefit “the scientists.” From the June 14, 2013 article (subscription required):

The SR report identifies four core components of the right: (i) access by everyone, without discrimination, to the benefits of science and its applications, including scientific knowledge; (ii) opportunities for all to contribute to the scientific enterprise and the freedom indispensable for scientific research; (iii) participation of individuals and communities in decision-making about science and the related right to information; and (iv) development of an enabling environment fostering the conservation, development, and diffusion of science and technology (S&T).

Think about the bureaucratic and sovereignty busting possibilities!

But I want to focus on two of the purported new rights, which I underscored in the quote above. First, they don’t really mean # 3 unless we agree to whatever the Science Establishment decides. Recall that when “individuals and communities” participated in the “decision-making” about embryonic stem cell research–actually an ethics issue–opponents of federal funding and treating nascent human life as a corn crop were castigated as “theocrats” and branded “anti-science.” They claimed we wanted children to suffer and paralyzed people to remain using wheelchairs! They also repeatedly lied about the science making it all but impossible to have a rational ethics debate, a tactic still deployed. We see the same kind of castigation and obfuscation in the global warming hysteria and freak out over challenges to neo evolution. Just ask my Discovery Institute pals.

Second, # 2 seeks to create a virtually absolute right to do whatever research scientists want–obviating number 2 because it would grant them a ”right to research” without hindrance from the public at large. We see that claim already being made here in the USA, with advocacy for a First Amendment right to research, for example.

The bottom line is that “the scientists” believe that only they have the right to decide what is done or not done in science, and they want to be at the top of an international technocracy that controls the entire public/science paradigm around the world. 

Despite infanticide still being murder under (the rarely enforced) Netherlander criminal code, the Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) has issued an ethics opinion holding that doctors may euthanize dying babies to end the parents’ suffering. From the story (Google translation):

When parents [of a dying child] can not stand it anymore, physicians may hasten death, the KNMG decided. On this issue existed for years ambiguity. Doctors should accelerate death in a dying child [using] muscle relaxants if the death takes so long that it is better for the parents not to see severe suffering.

It’s about real life without newborns for whom further treatment by doctors is seen as meaningless.In these infants, the ventilator stopped. Most children then die quickly, but some will remain a life time and suffering. Once a doctor administering muscle relaxants, however, the baby dies within minutes. Criteria are established in the report Medical-life decisions in newborns with severe abnormalities of doctors organization KNMG, published today.

The KNMG also okays dehydrating dying and severely disabled babies to death by withholding milk. It is also worth noting that under the infanticide bureacratic check-list–the Groningen Protocol–Netherlander doctors may euthanize babies who would live with serious disabilities if the doctor thinks the life would involve too much suffering. 

This is what happens in a society that sees preventing suffering as the ultimate purpose of society. Eliminating suffering easily morphs into eliminating the sufferer. Then, what constitutes “suffering” becomes very elastic, as in this case, killing a baby because the parents are suffering.

I would like to see an official English translation of the whole opinion, because from my Google translation version, it appears that the question of withholding care and/or terminating the baby is based on what doctors decide, not the family.

More details over at Bioedge.

I previously weighed in on the controversy over force-feeding Guantanamo prisoners. When their health is seriously deteriorating–but not before–forced feeding is right. Here is part of what I said then:

Look at it this way: If an inmate hanged himself and the guards could save him, should they instead stand back and let him swing?  Should doctors refuse to resuscitate a self-hanged prisoner because he clearly “wanted to die” or left a note refusing treatment?  Or, if prisoners decided to bash their heads repeatedly into a wall as a means of protest, should officials be prevented from restraining them and doctors be ethically prohibited from stanching the bleeding and binding up their wounds?  Of course not.

If that is true, it seems to me that the same rules apply to hunger strikes when they reach the point of health/life endangerment. And claiming that the strikers are not committing suicide, but willing to die to attain their political purpose–which would be political suicide–seems to me to be a distinction without a practical difference.

After my original post appeared, I was invited to debate the issue on BBC World Service. During that exchange, my doctor debate opponent said that Guantanamo doctors should actively assist hunger strikers by palliating their discomfort and otherwise help them keep the strike going without harming their health.

“That’s political activism, not medical ethics!,” I exploded. “Helping hunger strikers strike is not a doctor’s job.“

An article just published in the New England Journal of Medicine against forced feeding Guantanamo hunger strikers is also political, indeed, one aimed at influencing U.S. policy generally beyond the reaction to the hunger strike. From, “Guantanamo Bay: A Medical Ethics-free Zone?” by George J. Annas and others:

Guantanamo is not just going to fade away, and neither is the stain on medical ethics it represents. U.S. military physicians require help from their civilian counterparts to meet their ethical obligations and maintain professional ethics. In April the American Medical Association appropriately wrote the secretary of defense that “forced feeding of [competent] detainees violates core ethical values of the medical profession.” But more should be done. We believe that individual physicians and professional groups should use their political power to stop the force-feeding, primarily for the prisoners’ sake but also for that of their colleagues. They should approach congressional leaders, petition the DOD to rescind its 2006 instruction permitting force-feeding, and state clearly that no military physician should ever be required to violate medical ethics. We further believe that military physicians should refuse to participate in any act that unambiguously violates medical ethics.

Military physicians who refuse to follow orders that violate medical ethics should be actively and strongly supported. Professional organizations and medical licensing boards should make it clear that the military should not take disciplinary action against physicians for refusing to perform acts that violate medical ethics. If the military nonetheless disciplines physicians who refuse to violate ethical norms when ordered to do so, civilian physician organizations, future employers, and licensing boards should make it clear that military discipline action in this context will in no way prejudice the civilian standing of the affected physician.

Guantanamo has been described as a “legal black hole.” As it increasingly also becomes a medical ethics-free zone, we believe it’s time for the medical profession to take constructive political action to try to heal the damage and ensure that civilian and military physicians follow the same medical ethics principles.

I am aware that Annas’ opinion reflects the views of the bioethics and medical establishments. But urging military doctors to violate orders is no small thing–particularly since this isn’t a Mengele-type situation, where such refusal would be morally required. Indeed,the intervention is only necessary because of self-inflicted harm and the feeding seeks to prevent death and destruction of health, not cause it. In this sense, it is not the same thing at all as a cancer patient refusing chemotherapy.

Moreover, in this situation, Annas is urging that military doctors help the striking prisoners–at least some of whom are implacable enemies of the United States. This isn’t a case of tree sitters at Berkeley. 

Here’s my bottom line:

1. The significant policy questions some raise about Guantanamo Bay are legitimate.
2. But Guantanamo inmates (and other prisoners generally) are not fully autonomous.
3. Prison authorities are responsible for the wellbeing of those under their authority. 
4. Hunger striking is a legitimate political method of protest.
5. A prison doctor should not use her or his professional skills to facilitate such a strike to make it more effective–nor impede it–until and unless the prisoner’s life or health is at significant risk.
6. Forced feeding to prevent death is a legitimate medical act in the same way preventing a suicide attempter from dying is a legitimate medical act.
7. Allowing a striking prisoner to die would be unethical.
8. Prison authorities have the duty to maintain proper order within the facility, including, if necessary, force feeding hunger-striking prisoners in the most humane way practicable.
9. If that requires physician participation, so be it.

In short, nothing Annas and his co-authors wrote changed my mind.

Nancy Pelosi calling late term abortion “sacred space” fits right into my bi-weekly First Things column, in which I point out that Roe v Wade could well be overturned from the pro abortion side to preclude any regulation at all.

I came to this insight listening to a panel of pro life lawyers discuss the current state of abortion jurisprudence. Roe and its progeny cases allow limited regulation and restrictions. But there is a strong undercurrent of anger at any legal inhibitions that make abortion more difficult to obtain. From my piece:

Almost as an aside, one of the seminar presenters noted the implacable opposition of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to this limited right to regulate status quo. Ginsburg believes adamantly that women are denied “equal citizen stature” by boundaries placed around access to abortion. Not only that, but in an angry dissent to the 2007 Supreme Court ruling upholding the federal ban on partial birth abortion, she (joined by Justice Breyer among the current justices) railed against the majority allowing “moral concerns” to “override fundamental rights.” 

That sounded to me as advocacy for an unfettered right to abortion at any time and for any reason.

I interviewed an expert in this field, Clarke D. Forsythe of Americans United for Life, who confirmed that Ginsberg (and clearly Pelosi) would hold that view. I then recalled the accelerating drive in bioethics to install “personhood” in place of ”humanhood” as the morally relevant status for deserving a right to life:

Many powerful voices no longer consider “human life” to be a morally relevant category. For example, the mainstream bioethics movement argues that what matters morally isn’t being “human” but possessing sufficient mental capacities–as being self-aware–be considered a “person.” In this view, only persons have a right to life. Since a fetus does not possess personhood capacities at any time during gestation–contrary to Roe–the state has no interest in protecting fetal life even after viability.

I note that Roe was intended to end all debate over abortion in this country. That effort failed, but that remains the dream of the adamant pro abortion side. And I get into New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to allow viable fetuses to be aborted to protect the “health” of the mother–which means almost anything in abortion jurisprudence. I conclude:

Finally, assume a United States Supreme Court in which Justices Clarence Thomas and/or Antonin Scalia have been replaced by Ginsburg-thinking replacements. A new 5-4 or 6-3 majority could then exist to make equal protection the primary pillar supporting the abortion license, perhaps also installing “personhood” in place of “humanhood” as the relevant legal standard for applying a right to life.

That would restore the law to the total license that Roe (when coupled with Doe v. Bolton) envisioned. I am not predicting that will happen. But it definitely could. All the talk about reversing Roe isn’t necessarily a one-way street.

Canada’s premier national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, has now also committed journalistic malpractice describing Quebec’s euthanasia bill. It accurately reports that the law would allow doctors to commit euthanasia–e.g., directly kill the patient–but it continues the pretense that the lethality would be limited to the “dying:”  From the story:

Quebec has entered unchartered waters in becoming the first province to propose legislation that allows a dying patient with an incurable disease “at an advanced state of irreversible decline” and suffering “unbearable physical and psychological pain” to decide their moment of death. Strict protocol and criteria are outlined in the bill that calls for continuous medical supervision of patients who must meet specific conditions in order to be eligible for end-of-life treatment. For instance, a paraplegic, despite suffering intolerable pain, would not be admissible.

False! The conditions are not specifically identified. The guidelines aren’t “strict,” and they are certainly not limited to the “dying.” Nor must the suffering be a result “unbearable phyisical AND psychological pain.” Rather, as you will see below, it is “unbearable physical OR psychological pain,” a hugely different thing! 

Once again, here are the guidelines as written in Bill 52:

26. Only a patient who meets the following criteria may obtain medical aid in dying:
(1) be of full age, be capable of giving consent to care and be an insured person within the meaning of the Health Insurance Act (chapter A-29);
(2) suffer from an incurable serious illness;
(3) suffer from an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability; and
(4) suffer from constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain which cannot be relieved in a manner the person deems tolerable.

Paraplegics could most certainly qualify: It could be deemed an “incurable illness” that has led to “irreversible decline in capability” and which causes “unbearable physical or psychological pain” that cannot be relieved “in a manner the person deems tolerable.”

If the authors wanted the law to be limited to dying patients, it would say so in the bill. It doesn’t. Stating otherwise is journalistic malpractice. 

As I reported here previously, Quebec will be debating the legalization of euthanasia–not assisted suicide–a bill that does not limit medicalized killing to dying patients.

But don’t tell that to so-called journalists, who are busily about the task of badly misstating what the proposal would permit. I mentioned a Toronto Star example in my original post. Now, AFP has also misreported the story:

The government of Canada’s mostly French-speaking Quebec province on Wednesday unveiled legislation allowing terminally ill patients to kill themselves with a doctor’s help. The bill, expected to be passed into law as early as September, would make Quebec the first province in Canada to effectively legalize assisted suicide and set the stage for a jurisdictional row with Ottawa.

No! The bill allows those with “an incurable serious illness” to be killed by doctors, which is not a synonym for ”terminal illness.” From the legislation:

26. Only a patient who meets the following criteria may obtain medical aid in dying:
(1) be of full age, be capable of giving consent to care and be an insured person within the meaning of the Health Insurance Act (chapter A-29);
(2) suffer from an incurable serious illness;
(3) suffer from an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability; and
(4) suffer from constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain which cannot be relieved in a manner the person deems tolerable.

And it isn’t assisted suicide, during which a patient self-administers the poison. Rather, it is euthanasia, which is administered by the doctor–e.g., a lethal injection. From the bill:

29. If a physician determines, subsequent to the application of section 28, that medical aid in dying may be administered to a patient requesting it, the physician must administer such aid personally and take care of the patient until
their death.

In other words, the doctor has to kill the patient!

So, as we so often see in the reporting of euthanasia, cloning, abortion, and other contentious social issues, the media either can’t–or won’t–get it right.

An autistic teenager was murdered by his mother to “end his suffering. From the CBS Chicago story:

Cook County prosecutors said a west suburban woman and family caregiver planned for at least a week to kill the mother’s 14-year-old son, because they believed he wasn’t getting sufficient care for his autism…Prosecutors said the two women plotted for a week to kill Alex, who suffered from a severe form of autism, because they thought he had received inadequate medical care, and wanted to put him out of his misery.

Now, where might they have gotten the idea that an acceptable response to suffering is killing the sufferer?

I suspect many will be horrified–not by the killing but the method, and the unavailability of “death with dignity” euthanasia. Indeed, I recall when Canadian farmer Robert Latimer murdered his 12 year-old daughter Traci because she had cystic fibrosis. Rather than condemning the monster, many Canadians asked, “Why couldn’t a doctor have done it for him?”

A bill to legalize euthanasia in Quebec has been filed, and it is a radical disaster.

First, it would require that all “institutions,” e.g., hospitals, nursing homes, and residential care facilities ”provide” terminal sedation (put into a coma and dehydrated to death) or euthanasia, which are included in the bill’s definition of the term, “end of life care.” From Bill 52: 

8. Every institution must offer end-of-life care and ensure that it is provided to the persons requiring it in continuity and complementarity with any other care that is or has been provided to them.

As I understand the Canadian system, all hospitals, nursing homes, etc., are publicly funded, part by the province and part by the federal government. This would appear to mean that every taxpayer in Canada will be underwriting euthanasia, and moreover, that the provincial government of Quebec will require the killing of patients to be allowed in all publicly funded hospitals, residential care facilities and nursing homes.

Assisted suicide and intentional homicide are crimes in Canada, under the federal criminal code. But the provinces are in charge of regulating medicine. So, Quebec seeks to get out from under the federal criminal laws by redefining euthanasia as health care, e.g., the medical treatment of “aid in dying.” 

“Aid in dying,” in turn, is defined as one example of the medical application of “end of life care:”

3. (3) “end-of-life care” means palliative care provided to persons at the end of their lives, including terminal palliative sedation, and medical aid in dying.  

“Medical aid in dying,” is not limited to the terminally ill. Indeed, those who qualify to be euthanized could include people with serious disabilities, chronic illnesses that have advanced, even mental illnesses. And the suffering necessary to qualify for euthanasia is, essentially, whatever the patient determines is “intolerable”–even if the patient turns down treatment that could alleviate the symptoms they are experiencing:

26. Only a patient who meets the following criteria may obtain medical aid in dying:
(1) be of full age, be capable of giving consent to care and be an insured person within the meaning of the Health Insurance Act (chapter A-29);
(2) suffer from an incurable serious illness;
(3) suffer from an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability; and
(4) suffer from constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain which cannot be relieved in a manner the person deems tolerable.

People can also direct that they be killed in their advance directive.

True to form, media reports falsely state that the bill would “only” legalize assisted suicide for the “terminally ill.” From the Toronto Star story:

As early as this fall, Quebec could become the first province in Canada and one of the few jurisdictions in the world to permit terminally ill patients to end their suffering and their lives. Legislation introduced Wednesday by the Parti Quebecois government would allow doctors to administer lethal drugs to a exclusive group of patients whose lives are nearing the end and who are in excruciating pain that cannot be relieved by drugs.

Can’t reporters read? That’s a blatantly false description. No, it is journalistic malpractice. 

Look for yourselves. The wording of the bill does not require that a patient be “nearing the end” of life at all. Nor does it require that the patient be suffering from “excruciating pain that cannot be relived by drugs.” In fact, the bill would allow a broad killing license, with psychological suffering sufficient to be killed. 

Oxford Professor (of course!) Nick Bostrom, one of transhumanism’s founding would-be post humans, intends to be decapitated after death and have his head frozen so he can live forever. From The Independent story:

The belief that death is the only certainty in life is a concept senior academic staffs at an Oxford University Institute are hoping to dismantle, by paying to be cryogenically preserved and brought back to life in the future. Nick Bostrom, professor of philosophy at the Future of Humanity Institute [FHI] and his co researcher Anders Sandberg have agreed to pay an American company to detach and deep freeze their heads in the advent of their deaths.

Wait. I thought Bostrom was going to upload his mind into a computer. Oh, that’s the point:

Speaking to the Sunday Times, Sandberg said that life with just a head would be limited, but that he hoped by that point the process could involve downloading his personality and memories onto a computer.

Good thing these guys don’t have to make a living in the real world.