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Plan B First, Cancer Vaccine Next...
And HIV Vaccines eventually. Reuters reports:
A former U.S. Food and Drug Administration official who quit the agency because it failed to make a "morning after" contraceptive available without a prescription said on Wednesday she fears other health advances could also be sidetracked.
Susan Wood, who headed the FDA's Office of Women's Health, said she was "very worried" political pressure on the agency from the same conservative groups who opposed wider availability of the contraceptive could also result in a delay for a new vaccine that protects against cervical cancer...
She said some of the same forces who opposed over-the-counter sales for Barr Pharmaceuticals' Plan B emergency contraceptive are suggesting that reducing one of the risks involved in sexual contact could lead to promiscuity among young women -- the same argument they used against Plan B.
"That appalls me." she said. "I also worry when and if we reach an HIV vaccine" that the same argument will be raised, she said.
Whole article here. My own earlier worries about the FDA's new efforts to regulate morality here.
Hakluyt|11.17.05 @ 1:14PM|#
"I also worry when and if we reach an HIV
vaccine"...
If the Catholic Church holds to form they'll oppose just like they
opposed anti-syphilis drugs.
|11.17.05 @ 1:21PM|#
I guess it's time to rename the FDA the FDMA--the Food, Drug,
and Morality Administration.
larry
|11.17.05 @ 1:23PM|#
Here's a thought: If AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality
as the Fundies claim, then how is that we mere humans can thwart an
omnipotent deity's will if we are able to develop a vaccine?
Oh! I get it! Satan must have provided the information to those
devious atheist scientists who serve the Gay Agenda, right?
Then again, that would mean that Satan is stronger than God, which
again calls into question His alleged omnipotence.
Religion makes my head hurt.
|11.17.05 @ 1:28PM|#
Of all the sins, why do they always focus on sex? If fatties
keel over from eating too many bacon triple cheeseburgers, isn't it
God's will and who are we to have blood pressure medication,
cholesterol lowering medication, heart bypass surgery etc.?
Probably shouldn't give them any ideas.
Trying to delay or prevent that cancer vaccine is one of the
sickest things I've ever heard. It's depraved. I'm not sure I'm
ever going to be able to vote for a Republican again. Used to but
can't abide the fundies.
|11.17.05 @ 1:30PM|#
If we live in a world of government research grants, I'd much
rather see a targeted approach. It seems to me that we'd want to
start with diabetes. Why don't we take a huge whack at that for a
few years instead of throwing money around so that the money is so
diluted we don't make headway anywhere. You can't win a fight
against multiple opponents by just throwing jabs at each one. If
you knock one out of commission, you are back into a managable
situation.
Start with the big dogs that kill the most Americans and maybe see
if there are any quick hits. Six sigma seems to work everywhere
else, why not here?
|11.17.05 @ 1:31PM|#
Just a reminder. Five GOD DAMNED catholics on the supreme
court. yee haw.
If only there were some kind of "religious test for office" that
could prevent this kind of thing from happening.
|11.17.05 @ 1:34PM|#
Of all the sins, why do they always focus on sex?
Personally, I think the more important question is: Why is sex
considered a "sin" in the first place?
(Yeah, yeah, I know. This from a guy who hasn't been on a date in
eight years.)
Hakluyt|11.17.05 @ 1:35PM|#
BTW, everyone should be getting a few bottles of beaujolais nouveau for the weekend.
|11.17.05 @ 1:36PM|#
Brian, they focus on sex because it's the only way they have of
actually letting out all that pent up sexual frustration.
One upon a time, a fundy snake-handler type told me that the band
Jars of Clay was Satanic, and then launched into a five minute
spiel about a picture on the cover of one of their albums that
showed, horror of horrors, a woman's breast! And that this
hot...er...horrid display of womanly hotnes...er...shame, was an
obvious attempt to send us all straight to H E L L
!
M1EK|11.17.05 @ 1:36PM|#
KERRY WOULD HAVE BEEN WORSE! Because, uh, he would have put a
liberal in charge of the FDA who would have liberally stopped drugs
from being released. Or something.
If I was female, I'd have the urge to find one of those "no
difference between Bush and Gore" Nader voters and kick them in
their gonads and strife.
|11.17.05 @ 1:39PM|#
Getting slightly off topic, but only slightly, when I Google
FDA's Office of Women's Health the first link is a Welcome
to the Office of Women's Health. Where do I go for the FDA's Office
of Men's Health? I am somewhat knowledgeable of anatomy, don't men
have unique health issues just like women?
When I was a kid I asked my mom why there is a Mother's Day and a
Father's Day (stop me if you've heard this before) but no
Children's Day. She said that every day is Children's Day. I guess
we need an Office of Women's Health since every other office is
already the Office of Men's Health. Oh well, at least research
money goes equally to breast cancer and prostate cancer.
|11.17.05 @ 1:40PM|#
M1EK, your posts might actually be worth reading if you'd stop
engaging in what is commonly known as "False Dichotomy."
It's wearing thin, dude.
|11.17.05 @ 1:46PM|#
Its not like they will actually keep it out of people's
hands.
No, but it does make it damn near impossible to get.
Once I think I visited every drugstore in a major (huge!)
metropolitan area before I finally got my hands on Plan B at a
Planned Parenthood. Probably one of the most humiliating, insulting
experiences with authority I've been subjected to as an adult. Not
to mention the risk that I wouldn't get the drug in time before the
(assumed) zygote implanted itself.
|11.17.05 @ 1:49PM|#
I really think that this denial of cervical cancer drugs and Plan B (well, along with wage disparity) is the saddest manifestation of misogyny today. Oh, and add religion to that list.
|11.17.05 @ 1:54PM|#
Why is sex considered a "sin" in the first place?
That's a good question, Akira. I've often wondered about that
myself. It seems to common in different cultures, but not all. My
guess would that it grew out of the wife=property concept, and like
everything else, accumulated dogma and superstition over the
generations.
|11.17.05 @ 1:59PM|#
Of all the sins, why do they always focus on sex?
Same reason most people who bitch about censorship only give a
rat's ass about protecting speech when involves showing nekkid
people - sex is interesting.
|11.17.05 @ 2:01PM|#
I really think that this denial of cervical cancer drugs and
Plan B (well, along with wage disparity) is the saddest
manifestation of misogyny today.
Which part of misogyny is the huge disparity between federal money
spent on breast cancer research and federal money spent on prostate
cancer research?
|11.17.05 @ 2:04PM|#
If the Catholic Church holds to form they'll oppose just
like they opposed anti-syphilis drugs.
That's interesting. Hak, can you point me in the direction of more
info? I did a Google, and couldn't find anything about the RCC
opposing drugs that treat syphilis. All I found was that the RCC
opposed the use of condoms as a method of avoiding the contraction
of syphilis in non-monogamous sex situations, as opposed to the
"don't have sex outside of marriage" strategy that the RCC
advocates. And there was a rather nasty pronouncement by a pope
around 1829 to the effect that if you fool around and get a disease
you deserve it, so only a sinner would use a condom to avoid
syphilis.
I read the article, and all I actually see is some projection and a
pre-emptive strike. I didn't see a quote from any Religious Right
figure opposing the drug. I just saw a quote from someone who was
"very worried" that someday such opposition might be raised.
I don't know about other religious groups, but Catholics are most
likely to oppose Plan B on the grounds that it can be an
abortaficent (by preventing the implantation on the uterine wall of
an already fertilized egg). Concerns that Plan B would promote
promiscuity are pretty peripheral to that abortion-related.
I'm not ready to dismiss this as hysteria/paranoia and
misunderstanding yet. But at this stage, it's as if someone had
voiced concerned that "environmentalists might be opposed to the
development of hybrid cars, because that would only foster the
continued spoiled, self-centered, lazy, high-tech-addicted,
resource-consuming, car-dependent lifestyles that were some of the
reasons that radical environmentalists oppose SUVs."
And then suddenly we'd have 100 posts jumping all over the Sierra
Club for its (presumed) stupid opposition to hybrid cars.
It seems a little premature to me, is all I'm saying.
jimmy|11.17.05 @ 2:05PM|#
interesting how this susan wood fails to identify a single person of group applying this "pressure." not denying the presuure exists, but it's getting increasingly easy to simply set up straw men for the pro-abortion crowd to then scream at (like, e.g., 20-year old legal memos). can we maybe pressure the FDA to grant over-the-counter status to drugs that actually save lives instead of merely getting rid of inconvenient pregnancies? can we agree that abortion is not the most important issue in the world and tell both the choice and life crowds to shut the hell up?
|11.17.05 @ 2:06PM|#
My guess would that it grew out of the wife=property
concept, and like everything else, accumulated dogma and
superstition over the generations.
Armchair Behavioural Geneticist that I am, Im going to say it sex
as sin is a meme developed to keep your wife from procreatin' with
genes other than your own, thereby increasing the chance you raise
your own genes, not anyone elses. Which manifests in wife=property,
religious shame, etc etc.
|11.17.05 @ 2:09PM|#
Which part of misogyny is the huge disparity between federal
money spent on breast cancer research and federal money spent on
prostate cancer research?
Tampa, from your comments I can only infer you believe that the
health and well being of breasts is strictly of interest to
women.
|11.17.05 @ 2:12PM|#
Stevo and jimmy:
You might want to take a look my earlier post to which I link
because it does quote at least one guy (Hal Wallis) from the
religous right who thinks that the new cervical cancer vaccine
might "send the wrong signal."
|11.17.05 @ 2:13PM|#
"Why is sex considered a "sin" in the first place?"
I think it's because historically, population growth has been a
threat to the viability of human societies. It's been a continuous
struggle to adapt to the pressure population growth puts on human
resources. One way to adapt to that pressure is through economic
and technological innovatation. Another is to construct social
norms that help regulate reproductive behavior. Hence, the
devaluation of women and disproportionate restrictions on female
sexuality -- because the birth rate depends on the number of
sexually active women rather than men.
In capitalist societies, the whole problem of population tends to
diminish because more people can be sustained economically and
because individual women tend to reproduce less. Thus, in these
societies it is less necessary to control female sexuality and
social norms regarding women become less restrictive.
|11.17.05 @ 2:19PM|#
I can only infer you believe that the health and well being
of breasts is strictly of interest to women
If radical mastectomies were common among stripper and porn-star
aged women then I would demand that the federal government put down
everything it was doing until breast cancer was eliminated. But
they are not...
As a father of two daughters and a husband I have a profound
interest in at least certain women's health. As the grandson of a
man with prostate cancer I also value men's health. My point is
that regardless of whether it is fundamentalists or ACT UP, the
various health-related agencies within government have never been
rational when it comes to spending research money in an equitable
manner. As such Plan B is only symptomatic of what happens when
politics determines spending rather than the market.
|11.17.05 @ 2:20PM|#
"Its not like they will actually keep it out of people's
hands."
Actually, they probably would. I have a really difficult time
imagining someone starting a lab in their basement to make cervical
cancer vaccine.
|11.17.05 @ 2:32PM|#
It's all, like, politics, man.
Withholding drugs because they'll keep people who don't love Jesus
enough from getting sick...recalling drugs that cause people to
have heart attacks...it's all, like, the same thing.
A pox on both their houses.
|11.17.05 @ 2:35PM|#
Ron, thanks for that reference.
So now I have reason for mild concern that some members of the
Religious Right (but not Catholics) will oppose the development of
the vaccine.
But I'm still even more worried that radical environmentalists will
try to block the development of hybrid cards. I found a
quote:
Another interesting tidbit of information (i got this off a
NOVA program that we watched in Environmental science): The process
of making a car releases as much waste (including greenhouse gases
and smog producing gases) as the car will produce in it's lifetime
(this is an average car). So, all in all, cars are not good for the
environment, some cars are better (hybrid, biodiesel, etc.) but
it's much more environmentally sound to walk, ride the bus (a lot
of big cities are actually running their buses off of biodiesel now
because it's so much cheaper for the to do so, and they get tax
incentives), or ride a bicycle.
True, this is just a
forum post from nobody special, but I'm worried it's just a
matter of time before the Sierra Club stumbles upon this
information! It causes as much pollution to manufacture a car in
the first place as to operate it over its liftime -- holy cow!
That's quite a bombshell.
I am sure it's only a matter of time before the Sierra Club calls
for the outlawing of individual cars in favor of wholesome, healthy
walking, bicycling and rapid, efficient, public mass transit
powered by electricity. (Which will be generated by clean,
environmentally friendly coal plants. Oops, I mean atomic energy. I
mean windmills! Or acres of solar panels.)
|11.17.05 @ 2:36PM|#
Regarding breast cancer v. prostate cancer research funding, one
reason for the disproportionate spending is probably because more
people die at a much younger age of breast cancer than of prostate
cancer. Here's a link from someone who's arguing that death rates
from breast cancer among younger women are actually low.
Nevertheless, from the data he shows, breast cancer deaths among
women aged 35-54 are about double those from prostate cancer among
men in this age group.
http://www.menweb.org/throop/health/stat/breast-prostate.html
The data are a bit old (1992), but not too old.
Whether or not it's appropriate to discriminate based on death
rates by age, or to what extent the discrepancy in funding reflects
the discrepancy in death rates, are other questions.
|11.17.05 @ 2:37PM|#
hybrid cards = hybrid cars
I would like to report a defect in your forum software. It somehow
makes typos invisible in the "preview" fuction, so they can only be
detected after actually posting.
|11.17.05 @ 2:45PM|#
mmm i think this is pretty stupid...i mean i can't get
anti-biotics and steriods over the counter becouse of leftist
conservative groups...why suddenly are we up in arms becosue of
blan b?
what exactly has changed?
|11.17.05 @ 2:50PM|#
joe, I'm pretty sure that the only person arguing anything even remotely close to what you're ridiculing is tampa. Everyone else seems fairly unhappy about the situation at best. Why you gotta alienate potential allies like that? Why you gotta hate?
|11.17.05 @ 2:50PM|#
jimmy,
The anti-cervical cancer drug does save lives. Opposition
to Plan B I can understand a little more because, like Stevo said,
it can be an abortaficent. I don't oppose it myself, but I can see
someone who is pro-life having a problem with it and not being
completely insane.
Opposition to the anti-cervical cancer drug, otoh, is basically
being pro-death. It's utterly bonkers that the FDA might
be listening to input from people who think that it's a bad thing
to have medicine to treat illnesses or injuries that result from
behavior that they don't approve of.
And Brian, right on. Not that I want to generalize, but judging
from some pics I've seen of Christian Right adherents, gluttony is
not one of the sins they worry too much about. :)
|11.17.05 @ 3:16PM|#
Stevo,
I wouldn't worry about those guys - they will soon be
extinct.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2005/11/16/gree.DTL
|11.17.05 @ 3:16PM|#
At the risk of deeming discourtious, I'd like to repost a post I
made in the last tiem we discussed it. I think the conversation was
dead by the time I made it.
I think that we libertarians and statists like joe are arguing
at cross purposes:
Joe is arguing that the FDA mostly does a good job and that any
organization regulating drugs would be subject to simmilar
political pressures. Others are arguing that the FDA is an evil
organization that routinely prevents good drugs from getting to
market.
The problem is not that the FDA exists. Certainly there is a need
for regulatory bodies that inspect and audit drugs. Prior to the
existence of the FDA, this function was carried out by the A.M.A.
and Consumers Union (the guys who today publish Consumer
Reports).
The problem with th FDA is that its edicts have the power of law.
If the FDA does nto approve of a drug, if someone tries to use,
manufacture or sell the substance, people will kidnap him, steal
his stuff and stick him in a cage. By comparison, should a private
group, like Consumer Union, recommend against a drug or even a
particular manufacturers formulation, the consumer still is free to
purchase or not purchase the drug as they desire.
This is the heart of the problem with the FDA. It eliminates our
control over the health of our bodies. This loss of control has
deadly results. For example, my employer's flagship drug product is
not approved in the US. but is approved in Europe, Canada,
Australia and Japan. As such hundreds of kids in the US with a
particular genetic disorder are doomed to live short lives full of
agony while other children accross the border have a chance at an
almost normal life. The reason for the disapproval was a serious
gap in our quality systems that could have, but never did impact
the quality of our product. Thus many parents who would choose to
risk the drug to give their beloved children a chance to live into
adulthood and a childhood free of pain are denied the freedom to
make that choice.
Additionally, the FDA has perverse incentives not to view drug
safety and efficacy as its primary concern. If the FDA goofs and
allows anothe Massengil debacle does it suffer? Not a whit. If they
make a mistake, the rules and laws will be changed, and they will
be given more money and a greater bureaucracy to command. The FDA
only needs to keep a few senators and representatives in a
particular comitee happy and it will continue to get funding. They
could do this by approving safe and efficacious drugs, or they
could do it by banning drugs that a powerful senator frowns upon.
They do not directly answer to the consumer.
On the other hand, let us assume a group like Consumer Union makes
the mistake. Well, people will start ignroing its recommendations.
Then it will have trouble raising money. Moneyed individuals who
are dissatisfied with the performance of the testing will look for
alternative organizations. If one is not available some critic will
start this own. It is highly unlikely that it wil get this far;
Underwriter Laboratories (the UL sticker on your appliances) has
been certifying electrical appliances fro I think over a century
now, and I can find no complaints about its performance. The
insurance companies who bankroll it have found it quite beneficial
in reducing their costs.
To me, the performance of the FDA is irrelevant. It is the fact
that I have no recourse when I disagree with it that is the
problem.
|11.17.05 @ 3:16PM|#
Opposition to Plan B I can understand a little more because,
like Stevo said, it can be an abortaficent. I don't oppose it
myself, but I can see someone who is pro-life having a problem with
it and not being completely insane.
I know that I'm about to be ostricized as a troll for what I'm
going to say next, but I don't really care. People who oppose Plan
B are completely insane. It is just another method of
birth control. If you took all of the millions of religious people
who don't understand what this pill does and who think it is
"abortion in a pill", and educated them so they learn it is really
another method of birth control, there would be a lot less
opposition, I think. Or whatever opposition remained would be the
exact percent of people who think all birth control is
immoral and wrong. Flushing an unimplanted trespasser from a
woman's body is no different than wearing a condom for a man.
[/throws myself to the wolves]
|11.17.05 @ 3:18PM|#
Why is sex considered a "sin" in the first place?
Actually, Matt's right. It was originally an attempt to prevent
bastardy by cutting off the problem at it's source. If you look at
cultures that have strong taboos against children being born out of
wedlock (eg; any semitic one, for starters) they also tend to have
strong prohibitions against any form of sexual relations outside of
a strict marital relationship. Compare this with areas like
northern Europe in the prechristian age, where bastardy was, if not
accepted, then at least not seen as a massive, unforgivable sin,
and consequently sexual attitudes were much more permissive. An
additional illustration of this was in Puritan societies in the
1600s, where as many as 70% of first births to married couples took
place within 8 months of marriage. As long as the two were married,
no sin was considered to have been committed.
I think it's because historically, population growth has been a
threat to the viability of human societies. It's been a continuous
struggle to adapt to the pressure population growth puts on human
resources.
I'm sorry but this is just wrong. For human history up to 100 years
ago infant mortality rates were extraordinarily high, and so
population growth was seen as being a benefit for just about
everyone concerned. This attitude didn't change until modern
methods made it possible to understand the connection between large
populations and catastrophic events like diseases, an understanding
which coupled with improved medicine to make large families
unpopular. And, as for the Capitalist argument you make in your
second paragraph, I have to point out again that many societies
that never so much as heard of capitalism were extraordinarily
permissive of sex throughout history. Not everything can be
justified by economics, especially not when it comes to human
behavior.
|11.17.05 @ 3:20PM|#
Stevo,
I wouldn't worry about those guys - they will soon be
extinct.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2005/11/16/gree.DTL
|11.17.05 @ 3:20PM|#
I would like to report a defect in your forum software. It
somehow makes typos invisible in the "preview" fuction, so they can
only be detected after actually posting.
Also, ironically, "fuction" should be "function."
For the sake of efficiency, can we set up a thread dedicated
entirely to me correcting my typos?
Also: See the thread above where Osama bin Laden calls for the USA
to sign the Kyoto accords. I just knew the Sierra Club was
in league with radical forces advocating a return to medieval
levels of civilization!
DAMN that Sierra Club!
|11.17.05 @ 3:33PM|#
Smacky-I agree with you, but I think your response is perhaps a
bit too glib. If one holds to the sort of principles many orthodox
Catholics seem to have, one can make the argument that Plan B is
much worse than any other form of birth control, as it actually can
cause a fertilized egg to be prevented from implanting, whereas a
condom or diaphragm prevent the sperm and egg from ever meeting,
meaning that pregnancy can never occur. The fact that they see the
use of either one as a sin shouldn't be confused as them seeing it
as the same sin.
Although, I admit to being mystified at the fact that they see both
sins as being more or less equal to each other. One would think
that an item that could prevent an abortion would be seen as better
than one that could make an abortion take place immediately, but
there it is.
|11.17.05 @ 3:34PM|#
Stevo,
We can make one for you in the grylliade.org bulletin board. How
does this sound:
"Stevo Darkly's Thread For Improving Typing Skillz and Eliminating
Typos"
|11.17.05 @ 3:43PM|#
Shem,
I'm sorry, but I don't believe I was being glib at all. It's just
that rather than waste my breath trying to explain the same logic
of what a pregnancy is over what a pregnancy isn't over
and over, I was simply stating the facts, regardless of how a
religious person sees it.
One would think that an item that could prevent an abortion
would be seen as better than one that could make an abortion take
place immediately, but there it is.
That's tricky of you, and I have to correct you on that. A
fertilized egg is not a fetus and is therefore not a pregnancy,
much less an embryo. Therefore no abortion takes place. It
is more of a forced mestruation than anything else. And, if the
fertilized egg has already implanted itself into the walls, it's
not effective -- and the woman is then pregnant.
If you're going to define an abortion (wrongly) as anything
expelled from a vagina, well, I'm due for my monthly abortion in a
few weeks, so can you pick me up some tampons while you're at the
store?
|11.17.05 @ 3:47PM|#
smacky,
I don't think you're being a troll, and I basically agree with you.
I admit, I'm pretty ignorant about Plan B. Stevo and Shem have both
suggested it can be an abortaficent, however, so I was just saying
that it makes sense that pro-lifer would have a problem with it.
And I know people who are pro-life but not anti-birth
control.
Being pro-life and anti-birth control does strike me as
nuts. The whole point of birth control is to prevent a pregnancy
from ever occurring, so an abortion won't ever be necessary.
Regardless, I certainly don't oppose it either way.
But the anti-cervical cancer drug is another story. It saves lives,
doesn't just prevent pregnancy -- you'd think someone who is
ostensibly "pro-life" would support it.
|11.17.05 @ 3:47PM|#
"political pressure on the agency from the same conservative
groups who opposed wider availability of the contraceptive could
also result in a delay for a new vaccine that protects against
cervical cancer..."
How is this alleged "pressure" applied? Sounds like BS to me.
|11.17.05 @ 3:51PM|#
tampa,
Without checking what the FDA's Office of Women's Health actually
does, there are significant disparities that could justify paying
special attention to women's health in prescription drugs. At its
simplest, women can get pregnant, so there are fewer legal drugs
for them.
All drugs must undergo testing. If you test a drug on a pregnant
woman, there is some chance that she will miscarry as a result. No
matter what waiver of liability anyone may sign, would you as a
pharma executive want to put that one in front of a jury?
Therefore, at the margins, fewer drugs are tested on pregnant
women. The same applies to getting doctors to prescribe these drugs
(Who wants to be in that malpractice trial? "You gave her a drug
that was never tested on a pregnant woman?!").
I am told, but I have not verified, that the same logic applies to
any pre-menopausal woman. Rendering someone unable to become a
mother is a huge potential risk, because that one is going in front
of a jury that hates big pharmaceutical companies. While this
should also apply to men, the perceived risk of a jury empathizing
with him is lower. Maybe a crying woman evokes a larger response
than a crying man, or at least a different one that leads to larger
civil penalties. Actually, it does not even need to be true: so
long as relevant people believe it, at the margins, fewer drugs
will be tested for women.
So there are some special issues in testing that the FDA may have
an interest in considering, given our legal system.
|11.17.05 @ 3:51PM|#
"Stevo Darkly's Thread For Improving Typing Skillz and Eliminating Typos"...and stuff.
|11.17.05 @ 3:51PM|#
A fertilized egg is not a fetus and is therefore not a
pregnancy, much less an embryo. Therefore no abortion takes
place.
Smacky,
I agree with you, but for some people a fertilized egg is a
fetus(and a fetus is a child, etc.). Their argument with plan B is
the same as is for birth control pills.
Oh, and tampons might as well be called abortion pillows.:)
But the anti-cervical cancer drug is another story. It saves
lives, doesn't just prevent pregnancy -- you'd think someone who is
ostensibly "pro-life" would support it.
That's because they're not "pro-life", they're really just worried
that their god will punish them for "allowing" the sins of
others.
|11.17.05 @ 3:52PM|#
smacky,
Just read your last post, and clearly you know what you're talking
about more than I do about this drug:
A fertilized egg is not a fetus and is therefore not a
pregnancy, much less an embryo. Therefore no abortion takes place.
It is more of a forced mestruation than anything else. And, if the
fertilized egg has already implanted itself into the walls, it's
not effective -- and the woman is then pregnant.
If that's the case, then I stand corrected.
Anyway, my point wasn't to defend banning or making Plan B hard to
get. I think it oughta be available over the counter.
|11.17.05 @ 4:05PM|#
Stevo and Shem have both suggested it can be an
abortaficent, however, so I was just saying that it makes sense
that pro-lifer would have a problem with it.
No, that is incorrect. And I see in your last post you realized
that. To correct Stevo and Shem, no, Plan B is not an
"abortificant". That is a fancy buzzword that someone must have
picked up somewhere from a rabid pro-life whackjob.
I agree with you, but for some people a fertilized egg is a
fetus(and a fetus is a child, etc.). Their argument with plan B is
the same as is for birth control pills.
Yes, and for some people in means out and up means down. If we're
going to redefine what a pregnancy is, then you'll have to outlaw
condoms and sponges and diaphragms, etc. Just because the sperm and
egg have been in contact with each other doesn't mean anything.
There are plenty of couples who can't get pregnant specifically
because the fertilized egg won't implant in the womb. *yawn*
|11.17.05 @ 4:08PM|#
I admit, I'm pretty ignorant about Plan B. Stevo and Shem
have both suggested it can be an abortaficent
I'm not suggesting that it is an abortifacient. I'm suggesting that
it can reasonably be seen as one. Check your definitions
again smacky; an abortion can be carried out on an embryo or a
fetus, and an embryo doesn't become a fetus just because it
implants. It's an embryo until it's eighth week. Catholics who
believe that life begins at conception will always believe that it
causes abortion. I don't agree, but given the fact that I don't
have any way to conclusively say where a fetus becomes a person, I
think that their argument is perfectly rational, if, by my
reckoning, incorrect. I ask, can you address this point in a manner
which will provide an exact time upon which reasonable people can
hang their hats? Because if you can't then you were being
glib, and frankly making life more difficult for the people who
want to find some common ground.
|11.17.05 @ 4:10PM|#
A fertilized egg is not a fetus and is therefore not a
pregnancy, much less an embryo. Therefore no abortion takes
place.
I hate to get all Jesuity, but if a person believes that life
begins at conception (that is, when the egg is fertilized)
as almost all abortion-abolitionists do ... and consider it a human
being from that point on .... then they also have to consider
deliberate human action to prevent its further development and
expulsion as a deliberate abortion.
On a less controversial note:
We can make one for you in the grylliade.org bulletin board.
How does this sound:
"Stevo Darkly's Thread For Improving Typing Skillz and
Eliminating Typos"
Alas, until further notice, I can't join grylliade's site because
at the moment my only access to the Internet is at work, and the
corporate firewall prevents me from receiving the e-mail that tells
me how to set up my participation or whatever.
(I was going to make an analogy that the e-mail I am sent is
prevented from implanting itself in my in-box, but it can still be
considered a fully formed e-mail even if I never get to see it or
react to it. But then I decided that was stupid.)
I will eventually have Internet access at home, but have many other
competing priorities in the meantime.
OT, but the best vanity license plate I ever saw said: EDITER
|11.17.05 @ 4:18PM|#
I was going to make an analogy that the e-mail I am sent is
prevented from implanting itself in my in-box, but it can still be
considered a fully formed e-mail even if I never get to see it or
react to it. But then I decided that was stupid.
But then, you did it anyway. Bravo ;)
|11.17.05 @ 4:21PM|#
Check your definitions again smacky; an abortion can be
carried out on an embryo or a fetus, and an embryo doesn't become a
fetus just because it implants. It's an embryo until it's eighth
week.
Shem,
A fertilized egg isn't even considered an embryo until it's
implanted. What Plan B expels isn't even an embryo yet, and if
it is, it physically can't expel it. Hang your hat on
that.
Moreover, why are there so many apologists for right-to-lifers? I
didn't think that libertarians were for the idea of might makes
right. So many people think wrongly. That doesn't make it
right. Hasn't anyone ever critically questioned the pro-lifers
obsession with life? What I mean to ask is, if destroying two
gametes (the fertilized egg) is considered a mortal sin, then how
do they view a typical death? Isn't death the greatest sin of all
to the same people, by their logic? Just because some time has
passed (one year, ninety years) shouldn't make it ok by that line
of reasoning. Why aren't there pro-lifers marching around
cemetaries with picket signs? Where is their respec' for
life!?!
|11.17.05 @ 4:39PM|#
Shem:
"It was originally an attempt to prevent bastardy by cutting off
the problem at it's source."
I definitely don't discount the desire of males to avoid having
their wives impregnated by other men as a factor in norms about
female sexual behavior, but his argument was one of biological
reductionism. He was saying that cultural norms about female
sexuality are a result of men acting in the service of their DNA.
But I think humans are much more complex than that. Men don't want
their wives impregnated by other men because they want to know that
the children they're working to raise are actually theirs. Sounds
reasonable to me. But to describe a norm as a "meme" is too
simplistic. Human norms around reproduction are not explainable in
the same way as male cats fighting over access to a female. Norms
are intellectual constructs that regulate behavior. They are not
products of instinct and they do not equal behavior.
"If you look at cultures that have strong taboos against children
being born out of wedlock (eg; any semitic one, for starters) they
also tend to have strong prohibitions against any form of sexual
relations outside of a strict marital relationship."
Well sure. I don't see any reason these two wouldn't go hand in
hand, as out-of-wedlock births would have a strong and meaningful
correlation with out-of-wedlock sex. But are you saying that one is
causally related to the other? If so, which way does that causal
relationship go?
Generally speaking, it's not very useful to try and explain one
attitude by its relationship to another attitude. There needs to be
something to explain why attitudes exist at all. And I do think it
comes down to survival -- our survival as individual organisms but
also as societies, since living in societies increases our chances
of surviving as individual organisms. That's another reason why
economic explanations of human behavior are higher on the scale
than biological reductionist ones, the primary reason being that
human behavior is not controlled by instinct (rendering other
reasons superfluous, actually.)
"For human history up to 100 years ago infant mortality rates were
extraordinarily high, and so population growth was seen as being a
benefit for just about everyone concerned. This attitude didn't
change until modern methods made it possible to understand the
connection between large populations and catastrophic events like
diseases, an understanding which coupled with improved medicine to
make large families unpopular."
For most of human history, people lived in hunting and gathering
societies whose continued existence was precarious and who could
easily be wiped out during famines. Under such circumstances,
population size had to be controlled. This did not necessarily mean
"zero population growth" all times, but it did mean there had to be
some mechanism in place to repress population growth in times of
particularly scarce resources. Often in these societies, the
mechanism was infanticide, specifically preferential female
infanticide -- because again, population growth depends on having
more women to conceive and incubate babies and not on having more
men to impregnate women.
|11.17.05 @ 4:43PM|#
First of all, being lockstep with libertarian principles is not
a requirement to read this site. I wish people would stop trotting
out "I thought libertarians *liked Ayn Rand, were pacifists/in
favor of self-defense, were objectively in favor of eating
puppies* as an all-purpose denunciation. I don't even like
capitalism, I just don't have any better ideas. Please don't assume
I or anyone else are all that good of a libertarian.
That being said, I'm not in favor of might makes right, I just am
in favor of not being a jackass to people I disagree with. Not all
those people are as hard-line as you think. Some of them can even
be convinced, but not if you start your argument with something
that's guaranteed to immediately put them on the defensive. Not
only does it ruin your chances, but it makes it that much more
difficult for people who are interested in being reasonable.
As for the embryo/fertilized egg argument, I'm not even going to
address it any further, mostly because we already more or less
agree with each other, except to ask if you can provide me with any
substantive difference between the embryo that implanted and the
fertilized egg that didn't, other than the fact that one made it's
way to the uterine wall? I ask because the realization that I
could not was what made me more willing to view people who
believed life began at conception as not necessarily religious
whack-jobs, even if I still found them to be incorrect. Maybe you
see it differently. I must say I'd like to hear what information
you have that makes you so capable of speaking with the conviction
of a martyr.
|11.17.05 @ 4:43PM|#
Stevo,
"Alas, until further notice, I can't join grylliade's site because
at the moment my only access to the Internet is at work, and the
corporate firewall prevents me from receiving the e-mail that tells
me how to set up my participation or whatever."
You may want to check the spam folder. That's where my notification
ended up.
|11.17.05 @ 4:44PM|#
I just remembered something that makes me not want to pound this
particular sore spot anymore, so I'm going to withdraw from this
thread. It's about to turn into a debate on when life begins, and
the amorality of natural events vs. the morality of human action
and I don't want to get into that stuff again. I'm also starting to
get a vibe that I'm on the verge of personally agitating a good
person to no good end, and I don't want to do that either.
---------------
Anyway, in my earlier satirical posts, note that I:
1) Lumped the fringe of a movement with its more mainstream
elements;
2) Jumped to conclusions;
3) Fixated upon one particular reason as the only possible
rationale for a group's actions, while refusing to consider other
possible, perhaps more reasonable motives; and
4)Condemned a particular organization and its members for holding
views that they aren't actually known to hold.
Those are bad things, and we shouldn't do them.
|11.17.05 @ 4:46PM|#
You may want to check the spam folder. That's where my
notification ended up.
Alas, I don't have a spam folder at work. Or rather, I probably do,
but only in the form of a giant mass corporate spam-dumpster that I
personally don't have access to.
M1EK|11.17.05 @ 4:56PM|#
'M1EK, your posts might actually be worth reading if you'd stop
engaging in what is commonly known as "False Dichotomy."'
Try "True Dichotomy", because, in fact, the "Kerry would have been
worse" argument comes from H&R regulars who aren't me.
|11.17.05 @ 4:59PM|#
"Kerry would have been worse" is almost always a joke on
H&R.
It's gotten old too, so hardly anyone uses it anymore.
|11.17.05 @ 5:01PM|#
I just am in favor of not being a jackass to people I
disagree with.
Really? That's good to know. But the religious zealots don't seem
to have a problem with it. I'm just returning the favor.
Not all those people are as hard-line as you think.
I don't think anybody ever proclaims their platform as "Hardcore
Ignorant".
I'm not even going to address it any further, mostly because we
already more or less agree with each other, except to ask if you
can provide me with any substantive difference between the embryo
that implanted and the fertilized egg that didn't, other than the
fact that one made it's way to the uterine wall? I ask because the
realization that I could not was what made me more willing to view
people who believed life began at conception as not necessarily
religious whack-jobs, even if I still found them to be
incorrect.
Shem,
other than the fact that one made it's way to the uterine
wall: You can put it that way, but by wording it that way,
you're unfairly discounting that event. Phrasing it that way is
ignoring a pretty huge fact, though: namely, if it hasn't attached
itself to the wall, it isn't part of the woman. By the
same false rationale, if I have sex with a guy, he is "a part of
me". Why? Well, it's in there, isn't it? Obviously, this is not
true. It's not reasonable to fault the woman for being the place of
fertilization. Once the fertilized egg is
conceived, i.e. become a part of the mother where it has a
place for nourishment, then I could see how it is considered
"life". Have you ever gotten a fertilized chicken egg in a carton?
Did you cry about it? I'm wondering.
|11.17.05 @ 5:02PM|#
On the topic of Plan B, I will only observe that there is a
difference between opposing something because you think (however
rightly or wrongly) that another person (or proto-person, or unborn
angel, or whatever) is hurt, versus opposing something because it
might remove an adverse consequence from a choice that you
oppose.
Disagree all you want with the Plan B opponents, disagree with
their premise about the status of a fertilized egg, but
under their premises they are arguably
opposing the use of coercion against a human being. They may be
wrong about what constitutes a human being and what constitutes
coercion, but at least there's an element of respectable reasoning
in there.
The people who oppose vaccines against cervical cancer, however,
are just plain fucking nuts! I can find nothing worth playing
Devil's Advocate over. Their stance is just totally insane, there's
no way to spin it as defending innocent life, it's just plain
control freak shit. End of story.
Besides, under an ethos of "hate the sin, love the sinner", even if
one believes that promiscuity is a sin, why should one want those
sinners to die as a consequence? Isn't it better that they live
long enough to see the error of their ways and then accept Jesus
and spend the rest of their lives tithing to a fundie
congregation?
Save the sluts--they might join us some day!
:)
M1EK|11.17.05 @ 5:04PM|#
'"Kerry would have been worse" is almost always a joke on
H&R.'
There are still people who say it, paraphrased of course, and do so
seriously. There are many more people who say that there's only a
trivial difference between Bush and Kerry (or Gore). Same thing
applies to them.
|11.17.05 @ 5:06PM|#
M1EK-
To be fair (I'm playing Devil's Advocate again), one could think
that the overall difference between two people is trivial, but that
the differences on particular issues are stark. Average a bunch of
positive and negative numbers with random distributions and you get
something close to zero.
Or, one could think that one is worse overall, but acknowledge that
on specific issues he's better.
I'm not saying that's my stance, but it is possible for a logical
person to think that way.
|11.17.05 @ 5:08PM|#
After I made my last post and read everyone else's, including Stevo's, I concur that I see where this thread is headed. I don't really have the time or inclination to spend any more time today debating when the particular moment is that life is conceived. For what it's worth, this wasn't meant as a religious tirade but a feeble attempt to convince more people that keeping Plan B illegal is a horrible idea, especially for those who are pro-life. Because if I'm a woman who feels she's made a consequential mistake that she's not ready for and can't get her hands on some Plan B, next stop is abortion clinic. That is all.
|11.17.05 @ 5:16PM|#
smacky-
Here's a start toward a pragmatic reason why even people who think
Plan B causes abortion might rethink opposition:
My understanding is that preventing implantation is only one of the
effects of Plan B. Plan B can also prevent fertilization in a
number of ways.
As Smacky said, not every fertilized egg implants. Does anybody
know what factors affect the odds of implantation? Do other
medications, stress, diet, exercise, alcohol, or other factors play
a statistically significant role?
If it could be shown that some lifestyle factor affected the
probability of implantation, would the Plan B opponents argue that
a woman should take precautions after sex to improve the odds of
implantation? (In their eyes, after all, any deliberate act that
inhibits implantation is an abortion.)
I'm guessing that this question has been researched. Probably not
from the abortion angle, but by fertility researchers trying to
help couples who have difficulty with the implantation stage. The
only thing that scares me is the possibility of a law mandating bed
rest (or exercise, or a special diet, or whatever) for women who
have just had sex.
Maybe it would be better if nobody tries to research this
issue.
|11.17.05 @ 5:40PM|#
Part of the Plan B problem is misinformation (duh!). Many folks writing about it confuse it with RU-486, the abortion pill.
|11.17.05 @ 5:43PM|#
Besides, under an ethos of "hate the sin, love the sinner",
even if one believes that promiscuity is a sin, why should one want
those sinners to die as a consequence?
Bottom line, these fundies aren't so debased as to wish cancer on
their worst enemies. No, they just wish it on anyone who doesn't
conform to their concept of righteousness.
|11.17.05 @ 6:32PM|#
I think the solution is to make Plan B over-the-counter, but
make it so that only pharmacists can sell it. Also, the users will
have to show government ID to buy the drug and sign a police
logbook (so that the police can make sure that you aren't buying
too many contraceptives and reselling them).
Such a plan should be acceptable to the right. And I'm sure that
there will be no objections from the left, since this is what my
blue state is doing to cold medicine, with unanimous approval.
|11.17.05 @ 6:50PM|#
First of all, being lockstep with libertarian principles is
not a requirement to read this site. I wish people would stop
trotting out "I thought libertarians...
Especially when most of the time it's trotted out, it's to express
the non-libertarian commentor's inability to square his/her
simplistic take on what libertarians think with what libertarians
actually think.
Sandy|11.17.05 @ 7:34PM|#
smacky:
Have you seen the "five test tubes versus one baby" argument? It
directly challenges right-to-lifers on their belief that a
fertilized egg is a child. It goes, suppose you have sextuplets.
Five are upstairs and one is downstairs. A fire breaks out, and you
can either save the five, or the one. Which do you save? Most would
say the five. Now suppose you have five fertilized eggs in test
tubes in a fridge upstairs, and your infant daughter downstairs. A
fire breaks out, and you only have time to save either the five
test tubes or the baby girl. Which do you save? Any sane person
says the baby girl--and right there they either have to demonstrate
themeslves as completely out of touch with reality or agree that a
fertilized egg is not the same as a baby girl.
Rereading the thread, I think you're mistaking channeling the
thinking of abortion opponents with 'support' for them. I go
further than most and think that life begins only when a fetus is
developed enough for an independent life outside the mother with
only food, water, shelter, and air. But having lived in South
Carolina, I know that most anti-abortion wackos think that their
god watches to see when one cell penetrates the wall of another and
delivers the soul at that point.
So I can see why they might get upset with Plan B (shhhh...nobody
tell them about taking 4 normal birth control pills). I still think
they're wack jobs, but you have to understand the enemy's argument
in order to defeat it. And once you understand it, then apply the
five-test-tube-test and you can shave off enough wackos to stop
some of the worst abuses.
Disclaimer: I built Plan B's new website that they never got to
launch. I even created a database of pharmacies willing to dispense
it without a prescription--but you can't see it now because the FDA
would not approve the content of the site (and the FDA regulates
all public statements about such drugs).
|11.17.05 @ 7:38PM|#
She said some of the same forces who opposed
over-the-counter sales for Barr Pharmaceuticals' Plan B emergency
contraceptive are suggesting that reducing one of the risks
involved in sexual contact could lead to promiscuity among young
women -- the same argument they used against Plan B
Perhaps someone could point me to where anyone -- ANYONE! --
directly involved in the FDA's decision making has actually stated
that they opposed Plan B because of promiscuity concerns. The guy
talking about God guiding his minority report doesn't count, since
it's just as likely, if not more likely, that he opposed it because
it prevents implantation (ie, induces abortion).
|11.17.05 @ 7:50PM|#
smacky,
A fertilized egg is not a fetus and is therefore not a
pregnancy, much less an embryo. Therefore no abortion takes place.
It is more of a forced mestruation than anything else.
Especially when you're talking about such crudely defined terms as
"fetus" and "embryo", the terminology we choose for a thing does
not determine what that it is. It is what it is. "A rose by any
other name would still smell as sweet..."
|11.17.05 @ 7:53PM|#
Really? That's good to know. But the religious zealots don't
seem to have a problem with it. I'm just returning the
favor.
I just think that I should hold myself to a higher standard than
they do, I suppose.
It's difficult for me to address your points, mainly because, as I
have stated repeatedly, I agree with you. More or less
completely in fact. But, the fact that I agree with you doesn't
mean that the opinions of the people who disagree with us are
somehow not internally consistent. If one accepts the premise that
life begins at conception, then Plan B is taking a life, and
therefore wrong. Other than the fact that I believe it to be
incorrect, there is nothing about the argument that precludes a
sane, rational person from taking it. And, I don't believe that the
fact that somebody might be wrong ought to be justification for
using personal attacks against them.
At any rate, Stevo has, I thin we can agree, served as the voice of
reason. It would probably be better to drop this now.
|11.17.05 @ 8:04PM|#
since it's just as likely, if not more likely, that he
opposed it because it prevents implantation (ie, induces
abortion).
True enough, but as I've said before I think we all know that the
real underlying motivation is primarily opposition to abortion.
Though I think many of the same people who are most opposed to
abortion are likely to be at least receptive, and/or willing to
use, arguments about promiscuity.
But that aside, what authority does the FDA have to decide anything
because its members believe abortion is wrong?
|11.17.05 @ 8:07PM|#
Sandy,
You're making the same mistake as Ron Bailey makes on this one.
Your argument depends on the assertion that if a being is a person,
we will automatically consider it worthy of saving (or mourning, in
Bailey's example). A few easy examples show this assertion to be
fallacious.
For example, let us consider a similar situation. Again, there are
six infant children trapped in the building, five upstairs, one
downstairs. The twist is, that the five are not your children,
while the one is. Would you allow your child to die so that five
others could live?
Does a person who says that they'd save their own child think that
other people's children are not persons, and have no right to life?
No -- they are merely proving that our emotions cause us to favor
those to whom we are attached, even if doing so is illogical. It's
hard to get attached to an embryo in a test tube, whether it's a
person or not.
Sandy|11.17.05 @ 8:30PM|#
No, crimethink, I specifically reduce it to being ceteris
paribus. The only thing different about the five versus the one is
their test-tube status. It's not news that we value our own
children above other people's. It would be news if we favored one
of our own over a greater number of our own. So the news is that,
all other things being equal, they do not value that life as highly
as the post-natal.
Otherwise, as Bailey points out, you'd have to have a funeral every
time a fertilized egg failed to implant. So this pretty much points
out that whatever their objection to abortion is, it has nothing to
do with Plan B.
Further, a lot of people would even say that a good Christian
should indeed save the five upstairs, even if they're not yours. So
even if I were wrong about controlling for other emotional
variables, that objection doesn't necessarily hold.
But I'm not wrong, and an easy example will show this. You've got a
five year old upstairs and a baby downstairs. You can only save
one. You save the five year old. Does either Pat Robertson or NARAL
condemn you? Or you choose the infant. Does either condemn you? No
in both cases, because whether or not you're a religious wacko,
post-natal children are considered essentially equal regardless of
age and equally worthy of protection. Neither would condemn you if
you chose the infant. Because they're equal. Only the test-tubes
aren't equal, so you'd give up five of them for one live
child--even Pat Robertson would, were he sane.
|11.17.05 @ 9:30PM|#
Sandy-
One could always argue that even if the baby and the test tubes are
all yours, maybe the quality time you've spent with the baby has
instilled a bias that blinds you to the moral status of the
fertilized eggs.
So let's say it's a baby that you've never met (and you've never
met the parents either), vs. 5 test tubes belonging to somebody
that you've never met. That way there's no bias based on experience
with the baby, and the decision really comes down to the moral
status of the baby vs. the moral status of the embryos.
My hunch is that even the Pope would rescue the baby.
|11.17.05 @ 9:36PM|#
Even better, Sandy, leave the test tubes as test tubes, but replace the infant with a puppy. Ten bucks says most people, including most "pro-lifers," rescue the puppy.
|11.17.05 @ 9:40PM|#
Even better, Sandy, leave the test tubes as test tubes, but replace the infant with a puppy. Ten bucks says most people, including most "pro-lifers," rescue the puppy.
|11.17.05 @ 9:43PM|#
I think Sandy is right in that using your own child versus
someone else's distorts the issue because of the immense value a
parent places on his or her own child. Regardless of what a parent
would do, we all recognize that from an objective standpoint if you
are faced with the choice of saving five (or even two) children or
saving one child, you would save the greater number.
The question I would ask is how many fertilized eggs would have to
be upstairs before you would save them instead of the child? A
thousand? A million? A billion? For me there is no quantity of
fertilized eggs that would induce me to preserve them instead of
the child. So I guess, for me, a fertilized egg's "relative life"
value is exactly zero. But if you believe it has some non-zero
relative value then it seems there must be a point at which there
are enough of them upstairs that you would save the fertilized eggs
and sacrifice the child.
Or another question - say there is a single fertilized egg upstairs
and a dog downstairs. Do you save the fertilized egg and let the
dog burn to death? A cat? Does the fact that one is conscious and
can suffer and the other isn't, carry moral weight? I'm very
tempted to say yes and save the dog. I'd be curious who thinks the
answer is obvious one way or the other and why.
On this last point I see Phil already posed the question, but since
I was just about to his post when I noticed that I'll leave
it...
|11.17.05 @ 10:11PM|#
With the fertilized egg and the dog, I guess it would depend on
how desperate we were for kids. If that test tube was, for whatever
reason, the only hope of having a kid (or the only hope short of
another very long, difficult, and expensive treatment that might
not even work), then I could see saving the egg instead of the
dog.
I don't know enough about fertility treatments to know if the egg
would really be so precious, but since we're exploring hypothetical
possibilities I'll toss that out there. Indeed, out of compassion
for others I might even save another person's egg if I knew that
the egg was that person's only chance of having a kid.
But if it was just some random egg with no compelling story behind
it vs. a dog? Definitely the dog.
|11.18.05 @ 12:01AM|#
At its simplest, women can get pregnant, so there are fewer legal drugs for them.
What about postmenopausal, infertile, sterilized, or hysterectomized women? Can they be in the trials, at least?
|11.18.05 @ 9:53AM|#
OK, how 'bout if there are ten senior citizens upstairs, and one
child downstairs (none of whom are related to you). Which do you
save? If you would save the child, which I think most people would,
does that mean that senior citizens have no moral status?
What if there are ten "premies" with only a 50-50 chance of
survival, in high-tech incubators upstairs, and you have equipment
to remove all ten incubators in time to save them -- at the cost of
the life of the child downstairs. Again, do premies have no moral
status?
The problem with Sandy's and Bailey's args is that we decide whom
we will save and whom we will mourn based on the subjective value
we attach to a being. To claim, as they do, that a being is only a
person if we feel it worthy of saving or worthy of mourning, is
nothing more than a restatement of the absurd credo that a fetus is
a person only if the mother wants to give birth.
|11.18.05 @ 10:03AM|#
crimethink-
With the child and the senior citizens, there's the added
complication that some of the senior citizens themselves might
prefer that you save the child.
I don't know that these examples prove anything, but they
can be useful to think about.
Hakluyt|11.18.05 @ 10:19AM|#
They show what Judge Posner discussed so eloquently a few years ago - despite all of our rhetoric to the contrary, we have scorecards when it comes to the valuing of "life."
|11.18.05 @ 11:05AM|#
Especially when you're talking about such crudely defined
terms as "fetus" and "embryo"
Call them crude if you want, crimethink. That only shows that you
were never properly taught about sex education or human biology. If
you're going to call these terms "crude" or "undefined", how would
you feel if, for example, you were having an operation on your
lower intestine and instead they remove part of your upper
intestine? It's the same thing, right? It's a "crude" term, but I
think you'd want your doctor to be precise. It's not convincing to
be vague about science and simple cell biology.
How about a roach? Would you save the roach? :)
Hak,
*snicker*
|11.18.05 @ 11:10AM|#
Many people seem to be operating on outdated assumptions of how
Plan B works and confusing it with drugs that cause a medical
abortion. The best and most recent scientific evidence we have
indicates that the morning-after pill serves to block
fertilization, while having no effect on implantation. That makes
it contraception, not abortion. It prevents abortion rather than
causing it.
Judy Peres and Jeremy Manier of the Chicago Tribune reported
recently the consensus among experts that "there is no scientific
evidence the pills prevent implantation--and considerable evidence
they work mainly by blocking the release of an egg from the woman's
ovary, so no embryo is formed." Studies by the Karolinksa Institute
and Eastern Virgian Medical School have separately found no
evidence that Plan B is an abortificent.
|11.18.05 @ 11:15AM|#
And if every fertilized egg is a human being, Catholics and others who believe so must be in constant mourning because even under normal circumstances with no drug, 1 in every 2 fertilized eggs fails to implant. And of those that do implant, 1 in 4 spontaneously abort. That's a hell of a lot of death that they don't seem to be much concerned about. They don't even bother to provide religious ceremonies to mark the loss.
|11.18.05 @ 11:27AM|#
smacky,
A fertilized egg, a fetus, and an embryo are the same creature at
different stages of development. The boundaries between these
stages are crudely drawn (as they must be) -- an 8-week fetus, for
instance, is far more similar to a 7-week embryo than to a 30-week
fetus.
To use your operation analogy, the section of intestine which is to
be removed may be easily referred to as "part of the lower
intestine", but it is not just any part -- it is a
specific section of intestine which happens to be below the line
where medical terminology places a boundary. The surgeon will be
careful to remove that particular part; you would probably be quite
angry if another "part of the lower intestine" was removed.
In other words, things are what they are, not what we call them.
It's kind of ironic that I, who am often accused of basing my args
on semantics, have to be pointing this out...
Hakluyt|11.18.05 @ 11:35AM|#
crimethink,
The issue is if there is a reason to enclose embryos within our
moral universe the same way we do a post-birth human. I'm not
convinced that there is a reason to do so. Then again, I don't
believe in things like souls, etc.
|11.18.05 @ 11:35AM|#
Serafina,
I'm not sure where you're coming up with those numbers -- once an
embryo implants, the mother's body will start 'acting pregnant', so
are you saying that 1 in 4 detectable pregnancies
naturally end in miscarriage?
In any case, though, you're falling in to Bailey's
emotional-reaction worship, which is strange to find at a site
called "Reason." Were Bailey consistent, he would have considered
mostly brain-dead Terri Schiavo to have personhood, given all the
fuss that people made over her.
Hakluyt|11.18.05 @ 11:37AM|#
crimethink,
Oh, and I don't want to here anything about Aristotle and oak
trees.
|11.18.05 @ 11:39AM|#
Hakluyt,
It depends on whether you think that a being's residence in our
moral universe is decided by us or not. I would claim it is not,
that a being is or is not a person, regardless of what we
think.
|11.18.05 @ 11:44AM|#
crimethink-
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Serafina's numbers are
right. Or at least let's just take it as a given (for the sake of
argument) that a significant fraction of fertilized eggs fail to
implant.
If there should happen to be drugs out there (now or in the future)
that enhance the probability of implantation, would failure to take
those drugs be akin to not throwing a flotation device to a
drowning person? Would sexually active women have an obligation to
take such drugs?
What if a study showed that certain foods or other lifestyle
factors could significantly affect the probability of implantation?
Would a sexually active woman have a moral obligation to eat the
right diet or whatever?
(Note that I didn't say anything about whether such an obligation
should be enforced by law, I'm just asking about what the most
ethical course of action would be.)
Hakluyt|11.18.05 @ 11:49AM|#
crimethink,
BTW, we are going to make the decision. Arguing that its God's
decision or what have you simply ignores the practical reality of
the situation.
|11.18.05 @ 12:13PM|#
Here, here,
"In the normal course of human reproduction, about 60 percent of
embryos spontaneously abort and are simply flushed in the course of
the menstrual cycle. In in vitro fertilization, about 75 percent of
the blastocysts either fail to implant or are lost through
spontaneous abortions."
That's an overwhelming loss of life, if you truly believe that a
fertilized egg is a human life. I just think that it's strange that
religious groups like Catholics claim equivalency of life yet have
no formalized traditional rituals for marking or commemorating
these daily deaths. That would be a rational position for them to
take, but they don't, and I find it curious.
|11.18.05 @ 12:17PM|#
Every zygote's sacred,
Every zygote's great,
If it's not implanted,
God gets quite irate.
|11.18.05 @ 3:18PM|#
OK, how 'bout if there are ten senior citizens upstairs, and
one child downstairs (none of whom are related to you). Which do
you save? If you would save the child, which I think most people
would, does that mean that senior citizens have no moral
status?
No, it doesn't mean they have no moral status any more than saving
two children upstairs means the one downstairs has no moral status.
It just means that relatively speaking the moral status of the
child is greater than the 10 senior citizens in this example. But
presumably the senior citizens moral status is great enough that
saving SOME number of them equals a child. In other words, if you
could save 100 senior citizens or the child what do you do? A
thousand? Clearly there is some "price" if you will, at which you
choose to save the senior citizens instead of the child. But I
suspect that no number of fertilized eggs would ever motivate
someone to save them instead of the child. If that is true, then
the moral value of the fertilized eggs is zero while that of the
senior citizens most certainly is not.
Also, going back to address a point thoreau made, I am talking only
about the value of the life of the egg itself, not how difficult it
is for a couple to conceive that fertilized egg. Assume that
whoever it belongs to can create them relatively easily, so that is
not a factor in their value any more than the difficulty a couple
faces in having another child would change the relative value an
objective outsider places on the child in the basement.
|11.20.05 @ 6:12PM|#
I had to return for this:
Many people seem to be operating on outdated assumptions of how
Plan B works and confusing it with drugs that cause a medical
abortion. The best and most recent scientific evidence we have
indicates that the morning-after pill serves to block
fertilization, while having no effect on implantation. That makes
it contraception, not abortion. It prevents abortion rather than
causing it.
Serafina -- thank you, thank you, thank you for that
clarification!
Because Plan B can be taken up to 72 hours after intercourse, I was
under the mistaken impression that it had to work by preventing
fertilized eggs from being implanted. In fact, I think I looked
this up and read that this was the case. Surely any "damage"
(fertilization) that's going to take place, will have taken place
sooner than 72 hours -- I thought.
I was so very wrong! I followed up you explanation by
looking further and read more at
www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,67432,00.html (warning: the 2nd
page of the article won't open for me for some reason, but I think
I've read enough on the 1st page).
It turns out that after intercourse, the little sperm bastard
swimmers can live for up to five days. And Plan B works by blocking
the release of eggs, so they can't get fertilized by any persistent
spermatozoa that are still hanging around. That's what Plan B
does.
However, if a woman has already released an egg prior to
taking Plan B, it can still get fertilized and the woman can still
get pregnant -- because Plan be does not prevent
implantation.
If all this is true, then Plan B can not be considered an
abortaficient, even by hardline life-begins-at-conception
folks.
And no woman who ever took Plan B ever needs to fret that she might
have had an abortion under any definition of same, if she were ever
so inclined.
Fucking WHEW!
Apparently the mechanism of how Plan B works was not well
understood earlier. Now that we know better, if this mechanism were
explained better, then the "abortaficient" controversy evaporate.
Expending energy on arguing "fertilized eggs don't matter anyway"
just continues to obfuscate the issue in this case.
I apologize for doing my part to further the confusion.
|11.20.05 @ 6:14PM|#
However ...
And if every fertilized egg is a human being, Catholics and
others who believe so must be in constant mourning because even
under normal circumstances with no drug, 1 in every 2 fertilized
eggs fails to implant. And of those that do implant, 1 in 4
spontaneously abort. That's a hell of a lot of death that they
don't seem to be much concerned about. They don't even bother to
provide religious ceremonies to mark the loss.
This, on the other hand, is just plain silly. Crimethink has
repeatedly made this point very well -- our emotional reaction to a
death is no gauge of whether the entity that died is human or not.
And it's rather dopey to keep returning to the argument that it
somehow is.
Looky, approximately 155,000 people died in the past 24 hours.
That's a typical day. Most of the rest of us, Catholics or not,
feel no mourning for these lost lives except in the most abstract
sense. And most of us won't be attending their funerals.
Funerals aren't for dead people -- they're already gone. They are
for the living. The social purpose of funerals is to mourn our own
loss of connection with someone who is no longer around, and to
comfort the other survivors who feel a similar loss. That's why we
don't hold or attend funerals for perfect strangers -- including
zygotes that haven't developed to the point where we had a chance
to have a relationship with them.
If an entity is human and entitled to human rights, then this must
be determined by some intrinsic trait of that entity -- not by how
other people react to it. Not by whether other people feel
compelled to attend its funeral. Not by how much people feel
compelled to rescue it. But by some trait within the entity
itself.
"When does life begin?" is a difficult enough question, without
trying to divert it into the question of "When does life begin
begin to matter to me?" Can y'all stop doing that,
please?
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