God's Bioethics (or the "Progressives" are scared of "religious conservatives")

The Women's Bioethics Project ^ | November 10, 2005 | Kathryn Hinsch

[hocndoc]

Bioethics and Public Policy: Conservative Dominance in the Current Landscape Overview The rapid advance of biotechnology is quickly outpacing our ability as a society to absorb the effect it will have on our lives. Scientific and medical complexities, combined with real-life scenarios that were beyond our collective imagination a decade ago, leave many of us struggling to comprehend and evaluate the implications that these advances may have on daily life. Fundamentally, people fear change, suffering, and death—and these fears are at the heart of most bioethical issues. From embryonic stem cell research to the Terri Schiavo case, a whole new world of bioethical questions are arising. The fact that bioethics has indivisible ties to public policy adds another layer of complexity. Currently the opportunity to set the direction of public opinion is up for grabs. To date, only extremely conservative and overtly religious groups have devoted substantial resources to affecting bioethics public policy. They, therefore, are actively driving the bioethics agenda. This briefing memo includes an analysis of the conservative and progressive organizations that are working in the arena of bioethics and public policy, a summary of key findings, and a list of potential opportunities to influence the issues.

...............

The institutions on which we have traditionally relied for guidance on difficult moral issues—whether organized religion, government, or the academy—have failed to keep pace with the science or societal implications underlying the issues. Political alliances are blurred. For example, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, the well known pro-life conservative, came out in favor of stem cell research. In the Schiavo case, well-known opponents Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, and Rush Limbaugh all took the same side. The complexity and implications of bioethical issues are scrambling alliances and positions. What’s more, the media is having a difficult time figuring out how to cover bioethical issues. Should health editors cover them? Or do they belong in the technology section? Should religious columnists write about them, or are they the beat of business and political reporters? When it comes to bioethics there are few acknowledged leaders or spokespeople to whom the public can turn. Because of this confusion, disarray, and public policy flux, the opportunity to influence the direction of public opinion is up for grabs. Essentially, whoever gets there first will frame the debate on these issues and will affect us all for decades to come.

[hocndoc]

The front page at the Women's Bioethics Project has a link to "God's Bioethics," a .pdf file.

Essentially, the women are concerned that people who believe in what they conspicuously place in quotation marks: the belief in "human dignity."

There is more information at my blog, LifeEthics.org. The Permanent Links are http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/2005/11/get-in-on-bioethics-god-bash.html http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/2005/11/gods-bioethics-expose-exposed.html http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/2005/11/anti-life-anti-religion-bioethics.html

[hocndoc]

These women are very afraid of "religious conservatives." And, either did not do their research or "chose" to ignore donations by George Soros and the Robert Wood Johnson money for "right to life."

[roylene]

"Progressives" are scared of "religious conservatives"

As well they should be!

[little jeremiah]

later read/ping/

[MHGinTN]

Doesn't look like Hinsch read America, We Need To Talk, but then who would expect it?

[hocndoc]

I should have thought to ping you because the WBP is connected to the Progressives, Glenn McGee of the American Journal of Bioethics, and wrapped up with the Humanists.(Am I remembering correctly that you have shown interest in that group in the past?)

The founder spoke at the opening of the humanists' bioethics center, and they share board or advisory members and interests:

Speech to the International Humanists and Ethical Union> Appignani Humanist Center for Bioethics at the UN

By Kathryn Hinsch: Founder of the Women’s Bioethics Project Friday, April 22, 2005

"First I’d like to take a moment to congratulate Louis Appignani for having the vision to fund the Humanist Center for Bioethics at the UN Plaza, and to thank Dr. Ana Lita for inviting me to speak today. It’s an honor to be on the conference agenda with so many luminaries in field of bioethics, especially Glenn McGee, who helped move the dialogue forward with his pioneering bioethics blog. I’m a big fan of his. I’d also like to welcome the many friends of mine who are here today to support the work of the Women’s Bioethics Project.

"My talk will describe the state of bioethics public policy today and the role that extremely conservative and religious right forces are playing. I’m not going to take you through bioethical policy minutia; instead, I want to spend some time putting the efforts of the extremely conservative and religious right in a bigger picture context, raising your awareness to the key players, and describing their underlying philosophical approach. I will also highlight the opportunities for offering an alternative vision, and present the Women’s Bioethics Project view."

[M. Dodge Thomas]

Here’s a question came up in a discussion recently:

If (as seems increasing likely) the propensity for transcendental (including religious) experience has at least in part an identifiable neurological basis, and if the genetic basis of this propensity could be identified, should parent have the right to utilize genetic testing in an attempt to produce a child more or less likely have such experience?

For example, shroud be religious parents be allowed to abort a child neurologically unable to have such experience, and thus doomed to eternal damnation, or should an atheist be allowed to abort a child likely to have such experience?

What if such screening could be performed *prior* to conception?

[hocndoc]

No one should abort a child intentionally.

The "Left temporal lesion" thing is a favorite talking point of the anti-religious. Show me a proportional relationship that I can predict, that other observers can replicate in other experiments, then I'll consider such speculation a little more seriously.

The more pertinent fact is the near-universal craving for ultimate love, truth, beauty, and justice. Even small children know when "That's not fair!"

On the other hand,the ability to love and crave our Creator would only be natural. The most highly held values of humans are love and mercy, which is an outgrowth of love. It's likely that we are made that way.

The Creator, in His love and mercy for us, came to be "God among us." Jesus died for our sins, "while we were still sinners!"

[Ma3lst0rm]

What are they afraid of? That controls be put in place to stop further reproductive abuses from becoming mainstream? I find it horrible that restrictions weren't put in place earlier. Now it is the norm that we have women purposely depriving their children of fathers via sperm banks. It will soon be possible for homosexuals to have biological children through the use of a surrogate mother in the case of two men and some biological tinkering using a donated egg cell combined with some of the techniques used in cloning.

That is just the beginning, wait until doctors begin offering sex selection and trait selection as a part of fertility clinic services. Imagine the types of child abuse that could be inflicted on unborn in the name of the wishes of not so well intentioned parents and unscrupulous doctors. Just imagine male children that have all their maleness stripped away or female children that have all their femaleness stripped away? Already with ADHD you see male traits being defined as a disease and not coincidently you find boys being diagnosed with such disorders in disproportionate numbers to girls. Just wait till the establishment backed up by increasingly lazy parents and a restrictive mommy state have biological tools that can make everyone "get along better". It is not a pleasant picture especially if it is discovered how to hardwire behaviors into the genetic code so that people will become instinctively imprisoned at a genetic level to a political persuasion.