The New Grim Reapers - Practitioners of bioethics say who should live -- and who should die

They are deemed experts in matters of morality simply because they claim to be experts. Unlike lawyers, physicians, or for that matter, hairdressers, it takes no formal education, training or licensing to become a bioethicist. The status is achieved through a bootstrapping process of studying or teaching bioethics, being published in professional journals, writing books or lecturing -- and then being quoted by others engaged in the same endeavors.

Bioethicists often state that bioethics has no ideology or generally agreed- upon world view. But that isn't true.

While bioethicists certainly do argue with each other -- sometimes quite vehemently -- their disputes are usually about how to best apply an agreed- upon set of moral values to a given bioethical issue rather than over what the values of bioethics should be. In this regard, bioethics discourse is more akin to Catholics arguing with Baptists than to Catholics or Baptists arguing with atheists -- the disputes are generally about details and emphasis, not fundamental beliefs.

What makes bioethics scary is that the prevailing thinking in the movement rejects the fundamental principle necessary for true freedom: a belief in universal human equality. This point is clearly visible in an essay published in the influential Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal in September 1999. John Harris, director of the Institute of Medicine, Law and Bioethics at the University of Manchester, England, a leading voice in the bioethics movement, wrote:

"Many, if not most of the problems of health care ethics presuppose that we have a view about what sorts of beings have something that we might think of as ultimate moral value. Or, if this sounds too apocalyptic, then we certainly need to identify those sorts of individuals who have 'the highest' moral value or importance (emphasis added): a moral value or importance comparable to that to which we believe ourselves entitled.

Ponder these words for a moment. Had Harris written that health-care ethics presupposes a view about "which race has the highest moral value or importance, " he would be dismissed as a mindless bigot. Mainstream beliefs in bioethics are just as discriminatory -- they merely threaten different victims.

Here's the nub of the problem: Many bioethicists believe that basing moral value and legal rights solely upon being human is capricious, religion-based and irrational. Many go so far as to contend that granting special status to humans simply because they are human is itself an act of discrimination against animals, a concept that has been given the bizarre name "speciesism."

For example, Princeton University's Peter Singer -- probably the world's most famous bioethicist -- wrote in "Animal Liberation" that determining moral worth based on species "is no more defensible than racism or any other form of arbitrary discrimination."

To avoid the odor of speciesism, bioethicists often assert that what counts morally is not being "human" but being a "person," a status earned by possessing identifiable mental capabilities such as being self-aware or having the ability to engage in rational behavior. While the exact criteria for determining who is and who is not a person are still being debated, most bioethicists agree that there are human beings who are not persons.

So who are they? Generally, such unfortunates include all embryos and fetuses, because they are not capable of rational thought. But other forms of human life, such as infants, are also denigrated as nonpersons for the same reason. (Some bioethicists call infants "potential persons.") Other designated human nonpersons include advanced Alzheimer's patients, people with serious cognitive disabilities, such as the comatose and those in near-coma, and those having significant developmental incapacities.

At the same time, some bioethicists -- and this is where it really gets weird -- believe that intelligent animals, particularly chimps, apes, dogs, dolphins, elephants and pigs, are persons. According to this view, these animal-persons have greater moral value than do human nonpersons. This means some animals should be treated with greater respect than some people are.

(A minority of bioethicists disagrees with so-called personhood theory. Most of these dissenters come from an explicitly Christian or other religious perspective. Not surprisingly, these bioethicists generally have little influence within the movement as a whole. The secularist Leon Kass, recently appointed by President Bush as the director of the President's Council on Bioethics, also disagrees with those who advocate personhood. Whether his appointment will make a difference in the direction of bioethics remains to be seen.)

Relying on personhood instead of humanhood as the fundamental basis for determining moral worth threatens the lives and well-being of the most defenseless and vulnerable humans among us. Here's why: In personhood theory, taking life is only wrong if the being killed was a "person" who wanted to remain alive. Thus, in the same article quoted above, John Harris asserted:

"Personhood provides a species neutral way of grouping creatures that have lives that it would be wrong to end by killing or letting die. Persons who want to live are wronged by being killed because they are thereby deprived of something they value. Nonpersons cannot be wronged in this way because death does not deprive them of something they can value. If they cannot wish to live, they cannot have that wish frustrated by being killed."

Basing public policy on such theories leads to very dark places. Some bioethicists justify the killing of Alzheimer's patients and infants born with disabilities. Others suggest that people in comas can be killed and their organs harvested if their families consent, or used in medical experiments in place of animals.

The best-known proponent of such views is Peter Singer. He is world famous (or infamous) for advocating that parents should have a period of time to decide whether to keep or kill their newborn infants. His support for infanticide is founded on personhood theory. Since infants aren't persons, he believes, they are "replaceable" -- and hence killable -- like all other "non self-conscious animals." Thus, he has written, in "Practical Ethics": "Since neither a newborn infant nor a fish is a person, the wrongness of killing such beings is not as great as the wrongness of killing a person."

To make his view more acceptable, Singer almost always advocates infanticide in the context of a baby born with a disability. Using the example of an infant born with hemophilia, Singer wrote:

"When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of the happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if the killing of the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others it would be right to kill him."

Consider what this would mean in practice. The distraught teenage mother who painlessly killed her newborn and then threw the infant into the trash would have done nothing more serious than catching a mackerel from the Pacifica pier.

In a better world, Singer's advocacy would make him an intellectual outcast. To some degree, he is a pariah in Germany and Austria, where he cannot speak without generating angry protests from those with memories of the Holocaust, in which hundreds of thousands of disabled people were murdered.

Certainly not everyone in bioethics advocates infanticide, but Singer's opinions are hardly beyond the pale. Singer is no fringe character. He is invited to speak at seminars and conventions throughout the world. He is a past president of the International Association of Bioethics. He is so mainstream that he wrote the essay on ethics for the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Not only does personhood theory suggest there are people whom we can kill and still get a good night's sleep, but by allowing use of "nonpersons" as involuntary research subjects or sources of organs, it threatens to reduce some people to the status of a natural resource akin to timber or cattle. Were such ideas promoted by a hate group, they would be rejected without a second thought. But because they come from an "enlightened" elite, the danger goes largely unnoticed.

Bioethicists are, for the most part, good and earnest people striving to improve society. The issues with which they grapple are important and compelling. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see where their rejection of universal human equality leads.

History teaches us that judging human worth based on subjective criteria -- race, sex, sexual orientation, tribe, religion, nationality or personhood -- invariably results in the oppression, exploitation or even killing of those deemed by the powerful to be less worthy of respect. And considering that many of the people denigrated by bioethics as nonpersons, not coincidentally, also happen to be the most expensive to care for in the age of the HMO when cost-cutting is king, bioethics presents an acute danger to the lives, health and well-being of millions of people who are elderly, disabled, newborn and cognitively or developmentally impaired. Since in the end this could include any one of us, we ignore the threat of bioethics at our own peril.

Consumer advocate and attorney Wesley J. Smith is the author of "Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America."

SOURCE

More and more, when I hear the word "bioethics," I'm reminded of the word "eugenics."

I think that it's just another word to help hide their true colors.

Mark

Why is it that bioethicists rarely have any ethics?

Why is it that bioethicists rarely have any ethics?

Which requires more education: determining that a Bouguereau painting is more beautiful than a Polluck painting, or deterining that a Polluck painting is more beautiful than a Bouguereau?

The former requires no education. The latter requires a lot of "education" to destroy the good artistic sense that people are naturally born with.

Bioethics is the antithesis of ethics for the same reason.

marking

ping

bttt

You asked the million dollar question.

Terri ping! If anyone would like to be added to or removed from my Terri ping list, please let me know by FReepmail!

sad commentary on our times. It will be a uphill battle, that we MUST fight!!!!

Chilling.

More and more, when I hear the word "bioethics," I'm reminded of the word "eugenics."

That seems to ring true alright!

They are deemed experts in matters of morality simply because they claim to be experts.

I remember an Irish political show called Questions & Answers, where an Irish pro-life campaigner Dana Rosemary Scallon was debating embryo research with a geneticist, an she came out good in the argument, but the following Sunday, I read an article in the Sunday Independent, which has to be said is generally a good newspaper, by a columnist called Declan Lynch, where he sneered at Dana for arguing with someone who is an expert - what was his point? Can we not argue with experts on moral issues - can we not question such things as embryo research and global warming, just because we aren't qualified to know the details? Can we not simply do some research ourselves in case the argument gets technical?

It's all typical of the flawed debate that has allowed to enter Western Society, 'I have a PHD, you don't', or 'I have traveled, you haven't', or to quote one personal example where I was 'debating' abortion with a woman who said: "What would you know?" - just because I am male! This is what they want - an intellectual elite governing an unquestioning (and apathetic) underclass - we must therefore try and restore reasoned and rational debate: how do we do that? Keep arguing!!!!

"University bioethicists teach ethics to the doctors and nurses of TOMORROW. (emphasis mine)"

This is the scarry part - they are teaching TOMORROW's doctors and nurses.

"More and more, when I hear the word "bioethics," I'm reminded of the word "eugenics."

I think that it's just another word to help hide their true colors."

Yes, bioethics = eugenics

the have "ethics" but no morals.

ping

Dr. Cranford co authored books on this Soros PDIA project. He was one of the expert testimonies in Terri's case. What is interesting was the educational trips to Cuba.

Cuba has a number of labs that are recipients to the aborted materials from the human trafficking programs.

Another woman is being hydrated and starved to death. For those who don't know background, story is at end of contacts.

Also, see this thread: http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/post?id=1379016%2C591

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Here's the background for those who don't know:

To view ENTIRE article, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/a...RTICLE_ID=43688

Thursday, April 7, 2005
MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH
Granddaughter yanks grandma's feeding tube
81-year-old neither terminally ill, comatose, nor in vegetative state
Posted: April 7, 2005
7:33 p.m. Eastern

By Sarah Foster
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

In a situation recalling the recent death of Terri Schiavo in Florida, an 81-year-old widow, denied nourishment and fluids for nearly two weeks, is clinging to life in a hospice in LaGrange, Ga., while her immediate family fights desperately to save her life before she dies of starvation and dehydration.

Mae Magouirk was neither terminally ill, comatose nor in a "vegetative state," when Hospice-LaGrange accepted her as a patient about two weeks ago upon the request of her granddaughter, Beth Gaddy, 36, an elementary school teacher.

Also upon Gaddy's request and without prior legal authority, since March 28 Hospice-LaGrange has denied Magouirk normal nourishment or fluids via a feeding tube through her nose or fluids via an IV. She has been kept sedated with morphine and ativan, a powerful tranquillizer.

Her nephew, Ken Mullinax, told WorldNetDaily that although Magouirk is given morphine and ativan, she has not received any medication to keep her eyes lubricated during her forced dehydration.

"They haven't given her anything like that for two weeks," said Mullinax. "She can't produce tears."

The dehydration is being done in defiance of Magouirk's specific wishes, which she set down in a "living will," and without agreement of her closest living next-of-kin, two siblings and a nephew: A. Byron McLeod, 64, of Anniston, Ga.; Ruth Mullinax, 74, of Birmingham, Ala.; and Ruth Mullinax's son, Ken Mullinax.

Magouirk's husband and only child, a son, are both deceased.

In her living will, Magouirk stated that fluids and nourishment were to be withheld only if she were either comatose or "vegetative," and she is neither. Nor is she terminally ill, which is generally a requirement for admission to a hospice.

Magouirk lives alone in LaGrange, though because of glaucoma she relied on her granddaughter, Beth Gaddy, to bring her food and do errands.

(Excerpt)