Komen has surrendered and kissed the abortion ring.

But that’s okay.  I think the pro choice fury directed at Komen was a huge PR debacle for PP and its supporters.  For years, the organization has used ancillary services such as breast cancer screening–which does not include actually performing mammograms–as the benign pretext to justify receiving bounteous taxpayer funding and good PR among the media, big corporations, and politicians.  To be sure, Komen’s financial support furthered that message.  But losing the money temporarily need not have stripped that false facade.  PP should have just thanked Komen for its years of support and wished the group well in the common cause of fighting breast cancer.   The story would have gone quickly away.

Instead, PP roared in rage, bringing intense attention to its true nature. PP actively sexualizes young teens with its graphic sex education program–which some pro lifers see as a way of creating a demand for abortion.  It protects rapists of the statutory kind, interferes with parent/child relations, and uses its fat money pot as a political hammer to promote 60s sexual mores and cultural values. And all the while it receives bounteous tax payer support for its non abortion services, allowing the inherent fungibility of money to support its primary raison d’etre, which is precisely and adamantly pro abortion.  If all it did was dispense birth control and provide PAP smears, there would be little controversy.

PP’s false facade presented a daunting political problem to its critics, because when they went on the attack, they, rather than PP, often appeared to be the ideological fanatics.  That’s what made the furious reaction to the withdrawal of less than a million dollars such a blunder.  As I wrote earlier, PP’s supporters have now shown that abortion matters more to them than fighting breast cancer.  So much for the sisterhood.

But Komen couldn’t stand the heat, and has abjectly reversed course.  From the Guardian Story:

Susan G Komen for the Cure, a Dallas-based organisation, has announced that it will honour existing grants to Planned Parenthood and allow the organisation to continue to apply for future funding – a U-turn from its earlier decision to cut its annual $650,000 provision. Nancy Brinker, who set up Komen as a pledge to her dying sister to work to end breast cancer in the US, together with the foundation’s board of directors, put out a statement in which they apologised to the American public “for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives”.

Oh brother.  I think this decision reflects the cultural segregation of our society.  The same cultural elites tend to participate in leadership and fundraising for PP and for big non controversial establishment charities.  It is hard to really upset one’s own social set.

This whole brouhaha was a choice–a stupid choice–by PP and its minions, and its bullying victory was pyrrhic. Perhaps that was because the truth hurts.  Komen’s temporary withdrawing of support was seen by many as a tacit agreement with the tens of millions who disdain PP as a toxic cultural force engaged in a profoundly immoral and destructive enterprise.

Bottom line:  Komen has badly hurt itself through erratic management and cowardly caving.  Bad for it and for the fight against breast cancer.  But PP has been seriously wounded because it showed its true face.  Good.  Corporations will now think many times before beginning to support the disgusting organization because the message here is once you start, you can never stop.  Moreover, the day is coming–hastened by this controversy, I believe–when it will be completely defunded by taxpayers. The courts won’t be able to protect it forever.

The good people at To The Source asked me to expound further on the thesis enunciated in my NRO article of a few days ago, accusing the Obama Administration of a full frontal assault on freedom of religion by trying to substitute the far more restricted concept of “freedom of worship” in its place.  Happy to do so.  From “The First Freedom:”

The federal government is wielding autocratic bureaucratic power under Obamacare to force religious organizations to pay for insurance covering contraception, sterilizations, and other “reproductive services”–even if the group is religiously opposed. But this rule isn’t really about birth control, or even health care.  Rather, by forcing religious organizations to comport with secular values, the government is attempting to limit religious liberty to the confines of church, synagogue, mosque, temple, or monastery.

I won’t expound any further on this for now, since anyone interested can read the whole thing, except to say that I think this rule is the most egregious assaults on the First Amendment that we have seen in a long while in this country.  To the legal mattresses!

I told you so. The scientific/bureaucratic complex, I warned in the Weekly Standard, now losing their fight to control the world’s economy in the global warming fight, would soon turn their attention to obesity and propose the same kind of “remedies” to control what we eat as they do carbon dioxide emissions. Tax!  Ban! Regulate! Control!  And then, tax some more!  Oh, and use some of those taxes to fund unending studies, staffers for government committees, bureaucratic paychecks, UN (live-high-on-the-hog) symposia, books, studies, inspectors, and an entire sector of food police to tell us what we can and can’t eat–all for our own good, of course, whether we want it or not.

Now, three scientists want to regulate sugar in foods in the same way we control alcohol and cigarettes, which would be an enormous undertaking.  They start by showing the scope of their ambitions.  From “The Toxic Truth About Sugar” (Abstract link only):

The UN announcement targets tobacco, alcohol and diet as the central risk factors in non-communicable disease. Two of these three — tobacco and alcohol — are regulated by governments to protect public health, leaving one of the primary culprits behind this worldwide health crisis unchecked. Of course, regulating food is more complicated — food is required, whereas tobacco and alcohol are non-essential consumables. The key question is: what aspects of the Western diet should be the focus of intervention?

How about none? Educate, sure. Regulate? Enough already!

But they have no intention of not trying to take control.  The authors urge that governments and international bureaucrats target sugar:

Passive smoking and drink-driving fatalities provided strong arguments for tobacco and alcohol control, respectively. The long-term economic, health-care and human costs of metabolic syndrome place sugar over-consumption in the same category

Once you centralize health care, costs of disease become the excuse to regulate anything and everything.  So, the authors argue, treat sugar like alcohol:

How can we reduce sugar consumption? After all, sugar is natural. Sugar is a nutrient. Sugar is pleasure. So too is alcohol, but in both cases, too much of a good thing is toxic. It may be helpful to look to the many generations of international experience with alcohol and tobacco to find models that work.So far, evidence shows that individually focused approaches, such as school-based interventions that teach children about diet and exercise, demonstrate little efficacy.

Gee, how about that? And, we have learned that where school diets are too stringent, the kids create a black market in verboten foods.  But never mind.  They then propose taxing many, if not most, of the processed foods sold today:

We propose adding taxes to processed foods that contain any form of added sugars. This would include sweetened fizzy drinks (soda), other sugar-sweetened beverages (for example, juice, sports drinks and chocolate milk) and sugared cereal.

Please, that’s not even the beginning of the list.  Pasta sauce often has added sugar, for example.  Not to mention frozen dinners, deserts, some breads, etc., etc., etc.  These, the authors urge, should be taxed to the hilt!

Statistical modelling suggests that the price would have to double to significantly reduce soda consumption — so a $1 can should cost $2.

Yes!  Let’s double the price of many foods.  Good grief.  And the control won’t stop with taxes:

Other successful tobacco- and alcohol-control strategies limit availability, such as reducing the hours that retailers are open, controlling the location and density of retail markets and limiting who can legally purchase the products.

A reasonable parallel for sugar would tighten licensing requirements on vending machines and snack bars that sell sugary products in schools and workplaces. Many schools have removed unhealthy fizzy drinks and candy from vending machines, but often replaced them with juice and sports drinks, which also contain added sugar. States could apply zoning ordinances to control the number of fast-food outlets and convenience stores in low-income communities, and especially around schools, while providing incentives for the establishment of grocery stores and farmer’s markets.

They even argue for placing age restrictions on the purchases of food with added sugar and–typically of the mindset–restrictions on speech.

Government-imposed regulations on the marketing of alcohol to young people have been quite effective, but there is no such approach to sugar-laden products. Even so, the city of San Francisco, California, recently banned the inclusion of toys with unhealthy meals such as some types of fast food. A limit — or, ideally, ban — on television commercials for products with added sugars could further protect children’s health.

San Francisco should never be a model for anything.  Besides, the regulation is a joke: McDonald’s just started charging 10 cents for the toy. No impact.  But it made the politicians feel important.

Here’s a novel idea for a real change in society:  Help us control our blood pressure. No more lifestyle bureaucrats and scientists trying to take over nearly everything we do and eat. Or to put it more plainly: Go away! Leave us alone! Amscray! Hit the road, Jack, and don’t you come back no more!

This is rather stunning.  The Hill is reporting that Rep. Jackie Spier is leading the charge for liberals to abandon the Susan G Komen For The Cure charity because it has stopped funding Planned Parenthood.  From “House Dem Abandon Susan G. Komen After Planned Parenthood Decision:”

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) on Wednesday morning said she would no longer support the Susan G. Komen Foundation because of that organization’s decision to no longer provide funding to Planned Parenthood. “I have been a big booster of the Susan G. Komen organization,” Speier said on the House floor. “But not anymore.” On Monday, Speier tweeted “Komen’s decision hurts women – it puts politics before women’s health. @komenforthecure should be ashamed.”… Speier closed her remarks by asking women to call the Komen Foundation and tell it to stick to its work fighting cancer. “I ask you to call them, at 1-877-465-6636, and tell them that you want them to stick to what they know,” she said. “Let’s not make this a race to the political bottom.”

But isn’t Speier “hurting women” by leading the charge for others to withhold support for the nation’s most prominent breast cancer charity?

Meanwhile, the Baltimore Sun has editorialized that Komen has somehow struck a blow against abortion.  From “Komen’s Attack on Abortion Rights:”

But it also should be noted that Dallas-based Komen last year hired Karen C. Handel as senior vice president of public policy. Ms. Handel, who grew up in Upper Marlboro, served as Georgia secretary of state and ran for governor of that state as a staunchly pro-life candidate who opposed federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

Has Komen adopted an anti-abortion stance, too? Given the obvious political motivations behind the Stearns investigation [in Congress], it’s hard not to see the decision as announcing that. According to Planned Parenthood, Komen is the first private organization to withdraw funding on the grounds of the congressional investigation. One can only assume that this outcome, if it stands, will motivate Congress to pursue all sorts of investigations against all sorts of controversial organizations.

Wow.  The editorial speaks of breast health, but the core anger seems to be about abortion.

As I stated in my own post about this event, Komen shouldn’t have funded PP in the first place because–as a general charity–funding the country’s most prominent abortion provider enraged pro lifers who make up about 40% of the country.  But now, some supporters of abortion may harm the search for a cure by abandoning Komen.  Once Komen strayed into this most intense cultural battlefield, there was no way to keep everyone happy.

The Star Ledger gets that point, but is wrong about the timing. From “Komen Decision to Defund Planned Parenthood Politicizes Breast Cancer Prevention:”

The Komen foundation put its stamp on breast cancer research with its pink ribbon campaign and other events, raising funds and consciousness about the disease. It created a community of women and men with a single goal: to find a cure. Breast cancer strikes everyone, no matter your race, ethnicity or political affiliation. Now that sense of unity has evaporated.  People are taking sides. Many who once supported Komen say they’ll take their donations elsewhere and plan to drop out of other Komen activities. It’s hard to see who the winners are in this mess. As so often happens when their bodies become a political battleground, women ultimately lose. 

No.  Breast cancer was politicized when Komen cut its first check to PP. Now, it is reaping what that original decision sowed.

This is a lesson I learned at Ralph Nader’s knee: If a charity or advocacy cause doesn’t have to enter a battlefield of the culture war, it should stay as far away from the fray as possible. It is foolhardy to cause needless offense when you are seeking broad financial or ideological support.  This is a classic case in point.

Update: Howard Dean wants a corporate boycott of Komen to drastically cut its funding until the organization once again funds PP.  Yea, that will really help women. Good grief.

Further Update: Komen kissed the abortion ring after all.  Here’s my reaction in which I call it a pyrrhic victory for PP.

We hear much talk about how the health care system should take “quality of life” of the patient into account in medical decision making.  This issue is discussed in the Health Blog over at the WSJ today.  From “Informed Patient: Taking Quality of Life into Account in Health Decisions:”

Quality-of-life questions are becoming increasingly important in medical care, especially when it comes to helping patients make decisions about treatments, today’s Informed Patient column reports. Since the 1970s, researchers have  been using quality-of-life measurement tools for a wide variety of medical conditions, primarily in population studies and clinical trials. Outside the U.S. they are often used by national medical systems to help determine payment policies for more costly drugs or treatments.

And that’s why the concept has been given a bad name.  But now, researchers are looking for ways measure quality of life for use in increasingly clipped interactions between physician and patient:

At Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, which uses surveys from QualityMetric in clinical care, researchers are also developing their own quality measurement tools including one that uses a “feeling thermometer” to compare how doctors and their patients perceive the impact of Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel condition, on health-related quality of life. A study published in 2010 found that two questions using the feeling thermometer provide a quick and accurate assessment of the burden of the disease on patients, and that physicians’ perceptions of the burden of disease was similar to that of their patients.

Gastroenterologist Corey Siegel, a co-author of the study, says he is eager to get the tool into practice. For patients, while the “burden of symptoms” may go down, the “burden of treatment” — including routine lab tests, frequent colonoscopies, regular injections or IV infusions and 20 or more pills a day — might go up. “The ideal is a low burden of symptoms and treatment, but realistically there are trade-offs that need to be made,” Siegel says. “The optimum use of this tool would be for patients to track the burden of symptoms and treatment so that their providers can understand how they are really doing overall as opposed to focusing on symptoms alone — which is only part of their experience with chronic disease.”

The problem with “quality of life” in medicine isn’t taking it into account, but using it as an invidious method of discriminating against “expensive” patients.  Assuming this approach isn’t abused to push for a desired result, these surveys could become legitimate parts of the informed consent process so long as doctors always remember that one patient’s “unacceptable quality of life” is another’s “glad to be alive.”

The sense of entitlement of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and its supporters would choke a cow.  California is about to run out of cash!–and its supporters worry that it might lose the ability to borrow even more money to bury my state under an even bigger mountain of debt.  From Nature’s story:

Given that California is facing severe budget shortfalls, several billion dollars more for stem-cell science may strike residents as a luxury that they can ill afford. It may also prove difficult for CIRM’s supporters to point to any treatments that have emerged from the state’s investment. So far, the agency has funded only one clinical trial using embryonic stem cells, and that was halted by its sponsor, Geron of Menlo Park, California, last November.

Yet the institute has spent just over $1 billion on new buildings and labs, basic research, training and translational research, often for projects that scientists say are crucial and would be difficult to get funded any other way. So the prospect of a future without CIRM is provoking unease. “It would be a very different landscape if CIRM were not around,” says Howard Chang, a dermatologist and genome scientist at Stanford University in California.

Oh, cry me a river. Our schools are in terrible trouble. Medicaid is being cut.  Infrastructure is becoming pot hole central. Cities are going bankrupt.  The worries about well paid university stem cell scientists and adminstrators at CIRM making huge salaries are pretty low on the list–particularly given the billion dollar endowments many of these universities have.  They have plenty of money.  They don’t need more from those who couldn’t afford the tuition at places like Stanford–even if their children could get in.

If the CIRM is so important, let private philanthropists foot the bill:

CIRM is developing plans to help its grantees to continue their work if the agency closes. One option is a non-profit ‘venture philanthropy’ fund that would raise money from private sources to support stem-cell research. The agency is also writing a strat­egic plan for the rest of its ten-year mandate that focuses on translating research into the clinic, acknowledging that CIRM’s best shot at survival — and at sustaining future funding for stem-cell researchers — could come from a clinical success.

That’s why it started funding adult stem cell research–even though its legal charter is supposed to “give priority” to forms of research for which there are restrictions from the Feds–meaning embryonic and human cloning.  BUT let me be clear–even if the CIRM promised never to fund another embryonic stem cell study or human cloning research initiative, it should still go out of public business.  California can’t afford to pay for very expensive and theoretical research when so many other immediate priorities and necessities are going wanting.

Many in the pro life community are celebrating the decision by the breast cancer charity, Susan G. Komen For the Cure, to break financial relations with Planned Parenthood. From the NYT story:

In a decision that is inflaming passions on both sides of the abortion debate, the world’s largest breast cancer organization, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, is cutting off its financing of breast cancer screening and education programs run by Planned Parenthood affiliates.  The move will halt financing to 19 of Planned Parenthood’s 83 affiliates, which received nearly $700,000 from the Komen foundation last year and have been receiving similar grants since at least 2005.       

PP is complaining about pressure from pro lifers, but Komen says otherwise:

A spokeswoman for the Komen foundation, Leslie Aun, told The Associated Press that the main factor in the decision was a new rule adopted by Komen that prohibits grants to organizations being investigated by local, state or federal authorities. Ms. Aun told The A.P. that Planned Parenthood was therefore disqualified from financing because of an inquiry being conducted by Representative Cliff Stearns, Republican of Florida, who is looking at how Planned Parenthood spends and reports its money.       

Recently, it was learned that very few PP offices offered mammograms, an issue we discussed here.

Here’s my take: It was a mistake for Komen to fund PP in the first place, After all, why–as a general charity–offend about 40% of the population with an unnecessary affiliation with a (from pro-lifers’ view, notorious) abortion provider?  It wouldn’t surprise me if the administrators finally figured out that being part of the sisterhood wasn’t as important as maximizing donations to increase the chance of helping to fund a cure.

And this is beyond the pale:

Leslie Durgin, senior vice president of public policy for Planned Parenthood’s Rocky Mountain affiliate, said the Komen decision would cost three of the organization’s health centers in Denver and one in Glenwood Springs about $165,000. Ms. Durgin said the money paid for hundreds of breast exams each year, as well as mammograms and other services… “Any kind of impediment for women, including a referral to go someplace else, will mean that women delay getting further screenings and women who may have cancer will discover it later than they might otherwise,” Ms. Durgin said. “A lot of our clients are just one hassle away from not getting services at all.”

Who is kidding whom?  PP is rolling in dough. If they stop offering breast cancer screenings because of this funding loss, it will just prove that pro lifers have been right all along that the non abortion services PP offers is just so much window dressing to pretty up its real raison d’ etre.

Reason’s science correspondent, Ronald Bailey, has an interesting article out about the ethics of exploiting the natural resources of other worlds.  From “Does Mars Have Rights?”

Does Mars have rights? What about Europa, Ganymede, and Titan—the moons of Jupiter and Saturn that may be home to rudimentary extraterrestrial life? The 1967 Outer Space Treaty requires spacefaring nations to conduct exploration of the moon and other celestial bodies “so as to avoid their harmful contamination and also adverse changes in the environment of the Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter.” The goal of the treaty is to prevent both back contamination (the introduction of extraterrestrial life to Earth) and forward contamination (the introduction of Earth life to extraterrestrial environments).

Of course, there are abundant reasons for caution, which Bailey explains. But he supports full exploitation of “dead” or what could be callled near dead planets for reasons with which I agree:

Dead planets and moons are not intrinsically valuable. And as fascinating as they might be, Martian microbes are not moral agents, any more than are terrestrial microbes. They simply do not have an ethical point of view that we must consider. On that account, there is no good moral reason why humans should limit the expansion of terrestrial life, including themselves, throughout the solar system.

But let’s take it farther. What if we find intelligent life at the level of, say, dinosaurs or mammals?  Does that mean we should not exploit the riches to be found for human benefit?  I would think not, although it would certainly impose very serious duties upon us to exploit the resources without unduly damaging flora and fauna.

What about exceptional life akin to humans?  That would be different.  In other words, it seem to me that our rights and obligations on Mars or other planets would be the same as they are here.  So, no to “Mars rights.” Yes, to human duties.

If this pans out, it will be a big WOW!  Endocrine Today is reporting that umbilical cord blood stem cells have enabled diabetes patients to reduce insulin intake. From the story:

Umbilical cord blood stem cells have been successful in the treatment of type 1 diabetes, according to a press release from Cord Blood America Inc. The stem cells have been used to re-instruct T cells so that the pancreas will begin producing insulin again, thereby reducing the amount of injected insulin needed. According to the release, the treatment was successful in long-time diabetes patients believed to have no insulin-producing ability.

Results from a phase 1/phase 2, open-label clinical trial published in the January issue of BMC Medicine demonstrated that Stem Cell Educator, an in vivo cord blood stem cell treatment, reversed autoimmunity and promoted the regeneration of islet beta cells in patients with type 1 diabetes. “Successful immune modulation by cord blood stem cells and the resulting clinical improvement in patient status may have important implications for other autoimmune and inflammation-related diseases without the safety and ethical concerns associated with conventional stem cell-based approaches,” the researchers wrote. The study, conducted in China, included 15 patients at a median age of 29 years and a median diabetic history of 8 years.

This is very exciting, but remember, it is a small, preliminary study.  Let’s hope this apparent success pans out in further research.

I have become increasingly convinced in recent years that the political Left isn’t concerned with liberty as much as power.  Obamacare is a classic case in point.  Mandate, after mandate, after mandate–and as I have said, using the regulatory power assumed by the Feds to reward friendly political constituencies.  The “Free Birth Control Rule,” which includes many other procedures and services, was a case in point.

But now, that rule has been finalized and Obamacare is being wielded as a spear to frontally assault the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion by precisely, explicitly, and intentionally, forcing religious organizations (mostly Catholic in this case) to violate their own beliefs.  That put me in mind of the events in the pre-Constantine Roman Empire. From my NRO piece, “Free Birth Control vs. Freedom of Religion:”

When Pliny the Younger was a provincial governor in the Roman Empire, he wrote a letter to Emperor Trajan asking whether he should execute Christians who refused to burn incense in worship of the emperor.  Pliny, in keeping with the customs of the empire, did not care about forcing Christians to believe that the emperor was a god. But in public they had to behave as if they did. Thus, the Christians were in the dock not so much because of their faith in a risen Christ as over their willful refusal to declare themselves part of the reigning social order

So what’s the connection? The distinction–then  and now–between “freedom of worship,” and “freedom of religion:”

I thought of Pliny when I read that the Obama administration, in creating specific rules to implement Obamacare, will require all employers (with a very narrow exemption discussed below) to offer their employees health insurance that provides FDA-approved contraception, female sterilization, and other “reproductive” services free of charge — even if the employer is a religious organization and doing so violates its doctrine. I also recalled the times that President Obama and other members of his administration have supported “freedom of worship.” However, as in Pliny’s time, “freedom of worship” is not the same thing as “freedom of religion.” The former means that one may believe whatever one wants and worship privately without interference, whereas the latter allows one freedom to live in the world at large consistent with one’s faith tenets, even if they are not endorsed by the state.

This is different than the conflicts over medical conscience cases that have arisen heretofore when general rules and laws conflict with individual beliefs:

Rather, the rule targets the right of religious organizations to conduct their public activities consistently with their religious dogma and moral values — except within the narrow confines of an actual church, synagogue, mosque, temple, or monastery…Lest there be any doubt of the limited nature of the exemption, the proposed rule states, “Specifically, the Departments seek to provide for a religious accommodation that respects the unique relationship between a house of worship and its employees in ministerial positions.” Thus, the group health insurance covering nuns in a Catholic religious order would probably not have to cover contraception. But insurance provided by the same order’s elementary school probably would. Ditto a hospital established by the nuns.

Not only does the rule impose “a legal duty on faith organizations to comply with the values of the state whenever they engage in public action or charitable enterprise among the general society,” but HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius plans to force houses of worship to engage in speech to which they would object!

From Sebelius’s official statement about the promulgation of the new rule:

We intend to require employers that do not offer coverage of contraceptive services to provide notice to employees, which will also state that contraceptive services are available at sites such as community health centers, public clinics, and hospitals with income-based support.

Thus, the Obama administration is attacking even freedom of worship by forcing exempt organizations to tell their employees where and how they can violate church teaching.

I conclude:

The birth-control rule is the latest and most egregious example of government forcing religious organizations to conform their operations to reigning secular moral values. In this sense, faith organizations are being compelled to participate in a metaphorical Caesar worship. As in the Roman Empire, the government will allow religious organizations general freedom of worship, but, increasingly, not freedom of religion. Pliny would approve.

Nor is this akin to a religious organization taking state money on condition of playing by the state’s rules.

So here we go again to the Supreme Court. And it was completely aviodable: Obamacarians could easily have exempted heterodox-believing religious organizations from the Free Birth Control rule.  But Obamacare is about more than health care. It is about the exercise of power–and now, the hegemony of secularism everywhere outside “houses of worship,” and as we have seen, even within them.  Thus, Obama does not seek to unite, but divide.