A neurologist named Dr. Rohan Ramakrishna tells of a potential treatment for persistent vegetative state.  From the MSNBC report:

Researchers from the University of Munich recently reported that they were able to awaken an 82-year-old woman who’d been in a persistent vegetative state by using injections of her own immune cells. The woman, who had suffered a stroke, had been cared for at home by her family and a home health nurse — for nine long years. Then her doctors proposed an experimental new treatment, offering to give the octogenarian intramuscular injections of her own immune cells, specially activated in the laboratory to produce substances thought to modulate brain activity.

Remarkably, after starting the weekly injections, the patient began to respond to commands and even regain some movement in previously weakened limbs. She opened her eyes and turned toward people entering the room, grabbed the hands of her grandchildren (with both hands) and looked at them, and would voluntarily move her tongue when her teeth were brushed. Although she’d been on a feeding tube for years, her swallowing reflex even began to return. The implications of her awakening are truly astounding.

Great news, right?  Not necessarily to the doctor.  He notes the patient died by aspirating–which is not really relevant to the issue of stem cells helping revive unconscious people.  But then, note this disturbing text:

It also reopens the debate regarding the care of patients in coma. For example, is a person really alive if they are unable to meaningfully interact or comprehend the outside world? How you answer that question is a topic of much controversy, as it brings in religion, politics, medicine and culture (the Terri Schiavo case is a perfect example of how complicated — and heated — this issue can become).

Another pertinent question: Is being alive the same thing as being human, a sentient being? If it isn’t, how do you reconcile the societal cost of medical care for persons who are alive but no longer awake? How do you reconcile the human cost? Does your answer to these questions change if there is a treatment that offers a tiny chance of improving the patient’s comatose condition?

It is not the doctor’s job, much less society’s, to determine whose life is and isn’t worth living.  Indeed, go down that discriminatory utilitarian road and it will be impossible to maintain a moral and ethical health care system.

We are individuals, not statistics. But don’t tell that to the healthcare technocrats, who are now strongly urging that the NHS give all people over 50 prescribed statin drugs to lower the risk of heart attack–even people who don’t have any apparent need for the drugs.  Why?  Because overall, it will save money.  From the Telegraph story:

National guidelines should be amended to lower the threshold for treatment to those with a one-in-10 risk over a decade, the experts said. As the majority of people in their fifties would qualify for statins under this criteria, it would be cheaper and easier to implement a blanket policy to save money on screening tests — which cost up to £700 per patient — to identify them, it was argued.

The cost of statins, £1 for a month’s course, would also be offset by the savings they would bring to the NHS in preventing costly operations, medical procedures, rehabilitation and by freeing ward space and places in care homes.

Medicating healthy, asymptomatic people–whether they need it or not–because statistically, some unknowns will benefit: Talk about depersonalizing health care!

But if drugging the healthy will often take the place of screening to identify those patients who actually need treatment, some people with heart disease–and remember, statins aren’t cure alls–won’t be diagnosed, meaning whatever the statistics say, individuals will be hurt, and perhaps die, if this policy is implimented.

Besides, statins, such as the widely prescribed LIPITOR, are far from risk free.

LIPITOR (atorvastatin calcium) tablets can cause serious side effects. These side effects have happened only to a small number of people. Your doctor can monitor you for them. These side effects usually go away if your dose is lowered or LIPITOR is stopped. These serious side effects include:

• Muscle problems. LIPITOR can cause serious muscle problems that can lead to kidney problems, including kidney failure. You have a higher chance for muscle problems if you are taking certain other medicines with LIPITOR.
• Liver problems. LIPITOR can cause liver problems. Your doctor may do blood tests to check your liver before you start taking LIPITOR, and while you take it.

Call your doctor right away if:

• You have muscle problems like weakness, tenderness, or pain that happen without a good reason, especially if you also have a fever or feel more tired than usual
• You have allergic reactions including swelling of the face, lips, tongue, and/or throat that may cause difficulty in breathing or swallowing, which may require treatment right away
• You experience nausea and vomiting
• You pass brown or dark-colored urine
• You feel more tired than usual
• Your skin and whites of your eyes get yellow
• You have stomach pain
• You have an allergic skin reaction

In clinical studies, patients reported the following common side effects while taking LIPITOR (atorvastatin calcium) tablets:

• Diarrhea
• Upset stomach
• Muscle and joint pain
• Alterations in some laboratory tests

The following additional side effects have been reported with LIPITOR (atorvastatin calcium) tablets:

• Tiredness
• Tendon problems

It used to be that we only received medication that was medically needed.  But the technocrats who are taking over our health care don’t see us as individuals, and increasingly, they don’t want our doctors to treat us as individuals patients either. Rather, we are just drones. What happens individually doesn’t matter so much as overall outcomes.

They may be able to lead patients statistical units to prescribed statins, but they can’t make us take them.

Interestingly, I did an interview with a Polish magazine today that dealt precisely with the problem of abandoning the elderly to the abuse of euthansia and medical neglect of “quality of life” refusals of treatment.

The former leader of the Catholic Church in the UK, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, issued a cogent warning about how society’s views on the elderly endanger their well-being and lives. From the Telegraph story:

In a wide-ranging lecture at Leicester’s Anglican Cathedral, he spoke of a   “deep unease” in western society, the importance of the family unit,   religious freedom and questions such as assisted suicide. He warned of a tendency to view human beings as a “product” or a “commodity”   resulting in people ultimately being viewed as “disposable”. “Instead of regarding the elderly as a source of value in their own right, a   resource for families and communities especially in an increasingly   fragmented social and cultural world, we view them as a problem or a   threat,” he said. “We have lost that deep reverence for humanity in all its different conditions.”

He quoted Cicero to illustrate that debates about care for the elderly date back millennia. “An ageing population certainly presents its challenges – not least to our   prejudices – but it is also an extraordinary gift,” he continued. “When society only sees age as an expensive inconvenience, a threat to   resources and lifestyles, it no longer sees a person but a problem. “This permits a slow erosion of dignity; subtly and silently the process of   dehumanisation has begun.” He went on: “A symptom of this is the violence against the vulnerable elderly   now documented in a number of independent studies and reports and the   neglect which many have to endure. “You do not care for what you do not cherish.”

“If we load the elderly, or indeed any group, with fears – the fear of dementia and Alzheimer’s, the fear of growing dependence and the loss of   autonomy, the fear of exhausting resources – you sanction violence against them. “This need not only be physical, it can take other forms: it can be cultural   in the way in which we dismiss their views or blame them; it can be   political in the ways in which we justify withdrawal of vital services or quietly and privately deny their right to life.”

It’s not just the UK.  You don’t have to be Catholic, Christian, or even religious to understand the truth of the Cardinal’s words. The danger is real, the problem well stated.

I agree with Tom Hartsfield, a physics Ph.D. student writing in Real Clear Science, who writes that the National Science Foundation grants should be reserved for “science,” not “social science.” From, “NSF Should Stop Funding Social Science:” 

By forcing research to be conducted in a manner that is repeatable, exact and quantitative, science has succeeded brilliantly at furthering human conditions and knowledge. This success rests on the fact that within its framework, experiments may be repeated over and over by many people to make sure that they are accurate and correct. Science does not long harbor falshehoods. It enforces a rigorous ethics of truth, of fidelity to nature. Science is defined by this trait, which also restricts its application to those problems which we are clever enough to formulate within its structure.

Political “science” however plays by a separate set of rules. There is often no way to irrefutably prove or disprove, agree or disagree with the claims and conclusions presented. There is little quantifiable truth and much subjectivity. This is not to discount the value of work in this field or others like it. The study of life and society as well as art, literature, history and other things unquantifiable certainly has value and has a place in our consciousness. I simply contend that it does not fall under the jurisdiction of science. It does not and cannot follow the rigorous requirements of reproducibility, testability and objective truth required of science.

Well, too often–as we have often discussed here–that which passes for “science,” really isn’t, and “ethics” isn’t science, but provides a badly needed check and balance to its pursuit.

But let’s not quibble. Hartsfield is exactly right.  These subjective fields are better considered part of  ”the humanities.” Sure, they sometimes inform us about ourselves.  But political science isn’t really “science.”  Neither is sociology.  Indeed, psychology often isn’t science.  And those tilling these particular fiends frequently have an ideological ax to grind–which true science should never have (which, of course, isn’t to say that scientists shouldn’t investigate hypothoses–even heterodox approaches that make “consensus” scientists furious. They should just be willing to accept whatever their data show.)

Let’s leave science funding for truly scientific research.  And let’s stop pretending that everything that calls itself “science,” is actually akin to that powerful method of learning.

I have little sympathy for a lawsuit that has been filed against the California Transplant Donor Network. Apparently, it received consent from a family for limited organ retrieval, but may have gone further than the family wanted or agreed to. And now, in the unfortunate American tradition, they have sued. From the Courthouse News story:

A family says the California Transplant Donor Network pressured them into donating the organs of a recently deceased relative, then mutilated the body so badly they could not have a viewing at the funeral.      After George Eisenbeis died on Apr. 30, 2011, the California Transplant Donor Network repeatedly contacted his family “for the purpose of inducing and/or coercing plaintiffs to donate all, or portions of, Mr. Eisenbeis’ remains,” according to the complaint in San Joaquin Superior Court.      Though the family agreed to “a limited donation of portions of Mr. Eisenbeis’ remains,” they claim to have insisted that the company restore the remains “with dignity and respect so that the family could have a viewing at the funeral.”

It sounds like the corneas were taken, because evidence of the the taking of vital organs could be hidden by clothes.

And where did the Courthouse News come up with the term “organ  mill,” which was not in quotes but seems to have been a characterization by the reporter:

They claim that the transplant mill’s actions violated California’s health and safety codes, resulting in the mutilation of Mr. Eisenbeis’ corpse. Though the family admits to giving their consent for “a limited recovery,” they says they never consented to any procedure that would conflict with their intent to have the body viewed at the funeral.

That was an unfair characterization without evidence to back it up in the story. And in this field, we shouldn’t be unnecessarily provocative because lives are at stake in the decisions made by families about whether to donate.

Obviously, what we had here was a failure to communicate.  And that can happen. The organ professionals are certainly intent on obtaining organs.  The health and lives of very sick patients hang in the balance.  At the same time, these things often involve a sudden catastrophe, and the family is in a state of stun, shock, and grief.  That can easily lead to miscommunication.

I once sat in on an organ consent conference with the permission of all parties.  I was very impressed with the professionalism of the transplant professionals and the caring of the family, which in their grief, were thinking of other people and seeking to apply the values of their deceased loved one.  It is an intense time, and the questions asked on the consent forms are very specific.  But as I said…

Clearly, organ procurement networks should never go beyond the scope of the consent given.  If the California Network did, I suppose there should be a cost to pay, although I can’t see the damages as being particularly high.  The donor wasn’t actually hurt.  And how much damages should be paid because the family had a closed instead of an open coffin funeral?

But that point aside, even if the procurement was wrongly conducted, it was not “mutilation” of the body.  It was using proper surgical techniques to retrieve still viable tissues to help living patients.

The Final Exit Network “counsels” suicidal people on how to kill themselves with helium and a plastic bag.  They also “attend” the suicides and apparently “clean up” afterwards so that investigators are unaware of the helium element in the deaths.

This has led to indictments for the suicide of a mentally ill woman in Phoenix, with two guilty felony pleas and an acquittal of one of FEN’s Big Heliums because he wasn’t there and because the judge did not let the jury learn the victim was mentally ill.  Also, indictments in Georgia that were thrown out when the ridiculously worded law against assisted suicide was rightly declared unconstitutional, a problem since remedied.

Now, an indictment in Minnesota. From the Star Tribune story:

A national right-to-die group is headed for a court battle in Dakota County after investigators pieced together evidence linking it to an Apple Valley woman’s suicide nearly five years ago. Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom announced Monday that a local grand jury had indicted the Final Exit Network and four of its members on 17 counts of assisting a suicide and interfering with a death scene.

The network faces four counts, two of them felonies. Altogether, the grand jury returned indictments on nine felonies related to assisting in a suicide and eight gross misdemeanors for interference in a death scene. “If the people of our state wish to authorize assisted suicide, this should be done through clearly defined laws enacted by the Minnesota Legislature with proper restrictions and requirements to ensure the protection of a terminally ill patient and the direct involvement of the patient’s physician and immediate family,” Backstrom said during a news conference at the county law enforcement center in Hastings.

Please, Mr. Prosecutor, assisted suicide is not about terminal illness!  This alleged victim wasn’t apparently terminally ill. Neither were the victims in the Georgia and Phoenix cases. And even if a law were passed allowing assisted suicide for the terminally ill, the FEN ghouls would still do that helium voodoo to those unqualified to be made dead by doctor-prescribed suicide.  But he’s quite right about the necessity of following the rule of law–a societal problem on this issue since the Kevorkian days.

If FEN members were there and cleaned up the helium apparatus as charged, leading to a wrong coroner’s report, I don’t see how they get out of the conviction. Time will tell. But if they did the deed, I hope they serve time.  Good for the prosecutors for bringing this case!

Anyone who is somewhat familiar with my work knows I defend human exeptionalism from distinctly non religious/theistic bases.  Some people disagree with me about HE, of course.  But some who accept HE disagree that it can be rationally defended, seeing religion as a necessary predicate to the principle.

This post is not about whether HE should be accepted, but whether it can be defended from a non religious perspective.  First, a bit of history: In the Fall Human Life Review, I published an article about the dangers of a bioethics that rejects intrinsic human dignity.  My article was not “about” this issue, but I did make a point of noting that HE does not rely on religion. From. The Bioethics Threat to Universal Human Rights:”

Happily, human exceptionalism does not require belief in a transcendent God, or indeed, spiritual allusions of any kind if we understand that what matters morally is not the capacities of the individual—which, after all, are transitory—but our intrinsic natures as human beings—which are innate. We, and only we, in the known physical universe, are hard wired—whether through creation, intelligent design, or random evolution—to be moral beings.

Consider: Animals certainly have exceptional capabilities, e.g., the bat’s sonar or the gorilla’s strength. But these are mere physical distinctions that have no more significant moral implications than my having less value to someone with 20/20 vision because I wear glasses. In contrast, humans are exceptional in ways that separate us morally—rather than physically—from fauna, e.g., rationality, creativity, abstract thinking, moral agency and accountability—the list is long—which arise from our natures and are possessed by all of us unless interfered with by immaturity, illness, or disability. As the philosopher Hans Jonas put it, so well, “something like an ‘ought to’ can issue only from man and is alien to everything outside him.”

My position generated some push back from the religious community, as it often does.  An Anglican Fellowship priest and religious studies professor named W. Ross Blackburn wrote a very respectful and earnest rebuttal to the proposition of a secular HE in the current (Winter) Human Life Review.  The article has now also been published in Crisis. Here is part of what he wrote:

In the end, Smith’s argument is rooted in an a priori presupposition, indeed a metaphysical presupposition, which not all share and which cannot be proven. My point here is not that Smith is wrong, but only that he argues religiously. Metaphysics, by definition, deals with first principles, unproven presuppositions upon which an argument or a worldview is built. Logically speaking, God is a metaphysical presupposition. So is not-God. And, I would argue, so is the exceptionalism of mankind. Calling a perspective “secular” does not make it irreligious, it only alerts us that the metaphysical presupposition of the perspective excludes God…

Instead of acquiescing to the implicitly held notion that Christian ideas are based on faith, while secular ideas are based on rationality, we should make it clear that everyone reasons from faith, from presuppositions which cannot be proven but are held nonetheless. Such questions counter the defensive posture that many Christians reflexively take when confronted by rules of secular argument, and free us to think more clearly, creatively, and boldly.

The HLR thought this was such an important and interesting topic that the next issue will have a symposium on whether human exceptionalism can be defended without resort to God, for which I replied to Professor Blackburn at some length. Here is a preview of coming attractions:

There is an important difference between “belief” and “faith.”  The former is often derived by weighing argument, reviewing evidence, observing, researching, etc..  Perhaps human exceptionalism can’t be “proved” to a metaphysical certainty, but it can certainly be discovered and demonstrated.  In contrast, faith is belief that “does not rest on logical proof or material evidence,” or as the author of Hebrews so eloquently put it, “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  That is a distinction with a real difference in the context of this discussion.  We can ascertain and study the many ways in which human nature differs from animal nature. Not so the existence of a soul or the reality of salvation.

It is my burning desire to stimulate a debate about human exceptionalism internationally because I perceive it as the crucial issue of the 21st Century, with direct consequences to liberty, the right to life, and human economic and cultural thriving. There will be many good advocates weighing in on both sides of the product, HE amiable argument.  When the issue comes out, I’ll let y’all know. Thanks to HLR and Professor Blackburn for taking the issue with the seriousness it requires.

A BBC commenter and religious leftist named John Bell went on a sexist tirade that was remarkable in its vitriol. He makes a point that people will do in groups what they would never do as individuals, which has long been known as mob psychology. No argument there. But the biogoted sexism is really over the top.   From “John Bell’s Screed Thought For the Day:”

Because we live in a broadly patriarchal society, we should not be surprised that the culture which brought about the worldwide financial meltdown was overwhelmingly masculine. But consider also that the people who are most vocal in denying human responsibility for the disastrous effects of climate change are mostly male.

The people who control factories of wage slaves in the developing world are almost exclusively men, as are the commanders of terrorist regimes. Leaders who threaten or declare war are mostly men as are those involved in paedophile gangs. While there are women who have been found guilty of this activity, to the best of my knowledge there have been no prosecutions of gangs of women. But there are untold networks of men who organise systematically the abuse of children…

The mystery of the evil that men can do collectively peppers sacred history. The Old Testament Israelites and the Christian crusaders mercilessly slaughtered innocent people in the name of God. It was a cabal of men who engineered the crucifixion. It was men – who hugged their wives and kissed their children – who herded human beings into Nazi gas chambers.

Good grief.  The valid point about mob psychology could have been made without resort to misandry.

Men are people.  Some are saints, some are devils, and most are in between–just like women. Misandry, like misogyny, is anti human exceptionalism.

I was pretty teed off about the Canadian doctors trying to force Hassan Rasouli off of wanted life-sustaining treatment. Then, when I found out that even though they were absolutely wrong in their “certainty” that he would never wake up, they still were considering trying to force him off of treatment, I took to the Daily Caller to describe the case, but more broadly, to warn a popular audience about the danger Futile Care Theory poses to the ethics of medicine and patient autonomy.

Here are some summarizing points.  From, “‘Futile Care’ Duty to Die May Be Coming to a Hospital Near You:”

At this point, several important points need to be made about futile care:

1. Futility is not a medical determination; it is a value judgment. Treatment is refused  based on “quality of life” judgmentalism and/or “cost-benefit” analysis.

2. Futility makes patient autonomy a one-way street. For years, we have been told that patients should state in writing what they want or don’t want in the event they become incapacitated. Futile Care Theory makes refusing treatment binding for  patients who want to die, but allows doctors/bioethicists the final say over the care of patients who expressed a desire to live.

3. Futility strips  from patients and families the power to make medicine’s most important health  care decisions and give it to strangers: That’s precisely what is happening in the Rasouli case.

4. Futile Care Theory is only the first step toward a coming duty to die. Think of Futile Care Theory as ad hoc health care rationing. Once Obamacare is  up and running, centralized boards will create cost-benefit bureaucratic boards  that could systemize Futile Care Theory into mandatory refusals or outright  health care rationing based on patients’ quality of life. Indeed, rationing has repeatedly been endorsed by notable publications such as The New England Journal of Medicine and The New York Times

Enough can’t be said or written about this topic. People need to be prepared.

What hubris. Shawn Lawrence Otto, of Science Friday on NPR, suggests that science has just outgrown democracy, don’t you know.  We need the experts to be in charge.

Otto lists some of the outstanding benefits society has unquestionably received from science, and then more than suggests that science may have outgrown democracy. From “Has Science Outgrown Democracy?”

Using science, we are just now coming to understand complex systems and how to manage our power in more sustainable, responsible ways. But with a democratic form of government that relies on the votes of the people, we’ve been increasingly unable or unwilling to enact regulations that help us act responsibly in our use of power.  We have created a global economy with no global regulatory system and placed our corporations in a feudal chase after the cheapest labor, the least-restrictive environmental regulations, and the easiest methods of exploiting natural resources.

Funny, when I look around, I see a lot of regulations that are choking wealth creation, muffling employment, and keeping prices high.  But that is beside the point.  Who decides what are ”responsible” uses of power? And how do we know whether it is right or wrong for corporations to engage in a “feudal chase,” neither of which are even “science” questions.

What Otto is really saying here is that he supports a particular form of liberal social justice politics, but wants to support it with the veneer of scientific authority.  In other words, scientism.  I see a lot of liberals smugly attempting that little bait and switch maneuver.  And here’s where we get to Otto’s inner hubris:

In the next 40 years, we are poised to create as much new knowledge as we have acquired in the last 400.  Imagine the policy challenges that new knowledge will create as we master genomics, neuroscience, and nanotechnology –  just to name a few emerging fields that have huge public policy implications.

So what’s the answer?  Has science outgrown democracy?  Should candidates for public office be required to have degrees in science?  Should we require everyone to have more science education?  Even when they do have an adequate foundation of science knowledge, why do so few people seem to understand how important science is?  Should we have science-civics classes?  Or do scientists simply need to be more communicative?

But science, like any powerful institution requires checks and balances.  It needs ethical parameters beyond which it is not allowed to stray.  Scientists will usually admit this, but many think they should decide for the rest of us what those parameters are.  But pure self regulation isn’t a check and balance at all.

There is a method to this anti-democratic scientism advocacy.  The science establishment has been seduced into becoming one of the Left’s many politically liberal constituency groups.  These advocates believe sincerely that creating a benign technocratic state in which the most important decisions are made by “experts” will lead to a better, more peaceful world.

They are wrong.  Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  We need limited government, not greater technocracy. Scientists may have more knowledge in their arcane fields, but as history shows, they are certainly not wiser.  I’ll take “we the people” over “we the experts” every day of the week.