Hypocrisy, as I've said before, is a matter of degree. Take the Terri Schiavo saga, for example. At every turn, the party of state's rights couldn't even let Schiavo's home state decide what was right and wrong. What's worse, the same president who barely lifted a finger when the terrible tsunami struck across the globe moved heaven and earth to interfere with Schiavo's final wishes. But something that got lost in the shuffle of an entire nationwide political apparatus injecting itself into one family's private affairs was the spectacular hypocrisy surrounding Tom DeLay, one of the biggest advocates for needlessly keeping Schiavo alive. DeLay, if you'll recall, was faced with a similar decision nearly 20 years ago. In that case, with his own father ailing, DeLay agreed to end his father's life. I wonder what those protesting outside of Schiavo's hospice would have thought of DeLay's behavior? Of his moral scolding despite his ties to forced prostitution and forced abortion in the Northern Mariana Islands. Of the fact that, about what was occurring there, DeLay said, "You represent everything that is good about what we are trying to do in America."
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Stories are not the enemy of good science and evidence-based medicine. Physicians make crucial but subtle changes in their practices based on individual experiences. Scientists all use intuition and inductive reasoning in the nascent period of an investigation. But anecdotes cannot substitute for either ethnography or controlled study. When Terri Schiavo became the world's test case for diagnosing persistent vegetative state (PVS), the emotional intonations about Ms. Schiavo waking up began to sound like Intelligent Design.
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I heard he once stepped on a sea turtle egg on the beach at Fernando Po. The hypocrite.
Is there any other party, anywhere? :-)