….I have a few comments on this video from Megyn Kelly’s show, now showing on the Wuhan Virus Ethics Train Wreck:
Health and Medicine
ProPublica (aka. Progressives) Believe That Foster Parents Should Not Be Able To Legally Intervene To Stop Birth Parents From Regaining Custody Of Children Removed From Their Care. I Don’t.
I’ll go farther than that. I don’t believe that parents who have had children removed from their care for neglect and being unfit parents should ever be allowed to regain custody, if the original removal was justified.
To consider and discuss the ethical issue, read this article, ProPublica’s “When Foster Parents Don’t Want to Give Back the Baby: In many states, adoption lawyers are pushing a new legal strategy that forces biological parents to compete for custody of their children.” It’s too long and detailed for me to summarize fairly, and make no mistake, it’s an excellent overview of the ethical dilemmas and conflicts involved even if the author’s bias is clear.
The author focuses on a particular conflict between birth parents and foster parents in Colorado while also revealing the different approaches taken by various states. I learned a lot: for example, having adopted our son Grant as an infant in Russia in 1995, I exhaled a long “whew!” after reading this:
“…It has become harder and harder to adopt a child, especially an infant, in the United States. Adoptions from abroad plummeted from 23,000 in 2004 to 1,500 last year, largely owing to stricter policies in Asia and elsewhere, and to a 2008 Hague Convention treaty designed to encourage adoptions within the country of origin and to reduce child trafficking. Domestically, as the stigma of single motherhood continues to wane, fewer young moms are voluntarily giving up their babies, and private adoption has, as a result, turned into an expensive waiting game. Fostering to adopt is now Plan C, but it, too, can be a long process, because the law requires that nearly all birth parents be given a chance before their rights are terminated. Intervening has emerged as a way for aspiring adopters to move things along and have more of a say in whether the birth family should be reunified.”
The article attempts to focus on what the author apparently believes is an especially sympathetic couple (above) trying to regain custody of a child placed in a foster home:
Comment Of The Day: “Abortion Confusion Ethics: What Should We Call This?”
This story, which I was hoping would spark more discussion here than it has so far, would be an excellent starting point for a question in a presidential candidates debate, or indeed any debate regarding the proper status of abortion in the law and our societal ethics. Right now, the negligent killing of two fertilized eggs that a married couple regarded, with considerable justification, as “their babies” is treated with less seriousness than if someone had murdered the family’s puppy. What is a fertilized egg, a zygote, a fetus, an embryo, and a newborn baby? It can’t possibly be that their true nature as human beings (or not) with the right to be protected (or not) under the law is magically altered according to what the mother chooses to believe, or what a legislature decrees…can it?
Here is James Hodgson’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Abortion Confusion Ethics: What Should We Call This?”:
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Negligent homicide by the staff, and strict financial liability for the corporation, are evident here, in my view. I know this sounds harsh to some, but so is the killing of an unborn child.
Over the past decade, my wife and I caught several errors in prescription fulfillment in our own meager regimes of pharmaceuticals. This happened at three of our previous insurance-preferred pharmacies. It is also reported anecdotally by a number of people I know.
Fortunately for us, we detected the errors before taking any wrongly prescribed drugs, and we learned to double-check everything, every time. (These errors also gave us more motivation to improve our nutrition and fitness in order to escape prescription drugs altogether.)
Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Quiz: The Rehabilitated Brain-Eating Cannibal”
I did not, when I decided that the saga of Tyree Smith justified an ethics quiz, foresee that the story neatly dovetailed into a larger theme covered extensively by ethics alarms of late, the untrustworthiness of “experts” and the danger of blindly accepting their pronouncements, influenced as they too often are by ideological biases and political agendas. Longtime commenter Michael R., however (3, 425 comments since October 26, 2012!) managed to connect the dots.
Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Quiz: The Rehabilitated Brain-Eating Cannibal”:
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This is why it is time to remove the monopolies these professional groups have on essential services. The psychiatrists and psychologists have a monopoly on confining people for mental illness and, in this case, releasing the criminally mentally ill. How many times have they failed in this? James Holmes (above), the 2012 Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooter, is a good case in point. He had been banned from seeking psychiatric help because he was deemed too dangerous, but the very establishment that deemed him too dangerous to be around THEM, refused to sign papers that would let the police involuntarily confine him. At least they successfully determined he was a danger to those around him, they just refused to help the general public. We have them pushing puberty blockers and surgical sterilization on children with no evidence this will help. In fact, the actual ailments they suffer from were probably caused by the very ‘experts’ that get to decide the ‘treatment’.
Let’s look at medicine next. The medical associations regulate themselves and are calling for ideological conformity in all physicians. Anyone who disagrees about COVID masks, vaccinations, DEI, affirmative action, etc can’t be a physician. Pharmacists can refuse to fill prescriptions if they don’t agree with the physician’s treatment, or diagnosis, or they think the person looks sketchy. Medicine is an essential service. We can’t have such groups dictating if we can get care or not.
The Best Summary Of The Wuhan Virus Ethics Train Wreck And Its Many Villains Yet, From City Journal
And, as a bonus, a satisfying validation of Ethics Alarms’ decision to always refer to the “Wuhan virus” rather than “Covid.”
James Meigs, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the former editor of Popular Mechanics has written a thorough, fair and objective account of the entire pandemic fiasco, which the Axis of Unethical Conduct still is trying to deny. Here’s his final paragraph:
When scientists craft their scientific conclusions to political ends, they are no longer practicing science. They have entered the political fray. They shouldn’t be surprised when the public begins suspecting political motives behind their other claims, as well. Public health officials let political concerns and institutional biases influence their statements and policies throughout the pandemic. And the media eagerly served as handmaiden to these efforts. Americans started the Covid-19 pandemic ready to make enormous sacrifices to protect their own health and that of others. But our political leaders, health officials, and media squandered that trust through years of capricious policies and calculated dishonesty. It could take a generation or more to win it back.
The essay is long, but essential reading for any informed American. I recommend sending it to all of your smug progressive friends, especially any of the mug-using persuasion, and even more-so to the idiots still wearing masks while alone in their cars.
Literally none of the information included in the article is new to me, nor should it be news to anyone who has read Ethics Alarms over the past three years. (The tag “Wuhan Virus Ethics Train Wreck” will take you to almost all of the posts on the subject.) However, relatively few members of the public read City Journal, (which is routinely superb), much less Ethics Alarms. As I read this piece I was infuriated all over again, not just at being reminded of how the nation came to cripple itself economically, financially, educationally and socially ( never mind how it came to wreck my personal business and financial security), but because this wasn’t written by the “investigative journalists” of the New York Times or Washington Post and featured as a front page story.
Here is another memorable selection from the article, also a depressing one:
The Covid-era collapse in ethical standards in science, government, and journalism might have brought a period of re-examination and reflection. For example, Watergate, 9/11, and the 2008 financial crisis all led to major investigations and reforms. So far, however, the pandemic’s polarized battle lines remain intact. Rather than re-examine their mistakes, in fact, some elite institutions seem eager to institutionalize the excesses of the period. In August, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study titled “Communication of COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media by Physicians in the US.” The JAMA study examined various Covid claims made by several dozen doctors with large social media followings and bemoaned “the absence of federal laws regulating medical misinformation on social media platforms.” It suggested that doctors who propagate misinformation should be subject to “legal and professional recourse.”
What were the types of misinformation that might require such a heavy-handed response? The study quoted some extreme anti-vaccination theories and other far-out claims. But many of the topics it flagged as “misinformation” fell well within the range of normal scientific or political discourse. The authors wrote, for example: “Many physicians focused on negative consequences related to children and mask mandates in schools, claiming that masks interfered with social development.” The JAMA authors also objected to the assertion that health officials “censored information that challenged government messaging.” Of course, as the Facebook and Twitter documents showed—and the U.S. 5th Circuit recently concluded—that’s exactly what the government did. Finally, the JAMA study flagged as misinformation the claim that Covid-19 originated from a Chinese laboratory, which, it limply objects, “contradicted scientific evidence at the time.” Imagine if the JAMA authors had their way and medical experts were professionally and legally enjoined from contradicting the scientific consensus on major health questions. Without the ability to challenge popular viewpoints, scientists can’t advance our state of knowledge. In such a world, the germ theory of disease might still be dismissed as misinformation; doctors might still be relying on leeches and neglecting to wash their hands.
Read it all. Circulate widely.
An Ethics Estoppel Classic: This Op-Ed Heads Straight To The “Pot Calling The Kettle Black” Hall Of Fame…
How incapable of self-awareness must an extreme abortion advocate be to accuse abortion opponents of manipulating the language to mislead the public about what they are really talking about? The entire pro-abortion movement has been built on linguistic deceit of the most flagrant kind for decades, with abortion being referred to as “choice.” This is deliberate deception, as if proposals to prevent the killing of nascent living human beings have as their objective a broad rejection of autonomy, rather than an ethical respect for human life, no matter how early in that life an individual may be.
More On The Unethical “Stand Up For Science” Mug (I Can’t Help It…I’m “Triggered”)
The asinine “Stand Up For Science” mug I wrote about earlier today still rankles, and I just realized that a video that surfaced this month is relevant to it. I had seen a recently released TEDTalk given in 2013 by S. Matthew Liao. He is the Director of the Center for Bioethics and Affiliated Professor in the Department of Philosophy at New York University, and has previously been on the faculty of Oxford, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, and Princeton. He’s also the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Moral Philosophy. Several conservative commentators had freaked out over the video; naturally, the mainstream media buried it. They did that because it represents the outer limits of a climate change panic whackadoodle, and this guy is unquestionably not just a SCIENTIST of the sort that the mug-makers want us to fall down and worship as the all-knowing, all-seeing societal architects they are, but also an ethicist as well. I considered it as a post topic but decided against using it, because, well, it seemed too silly to have to point out how irresponsible Liao is.
Then came..the mug.
The ‘Great Stupid’ Woke Mug That’s Even Worse Than The ‘Great Stupid’ Woke Lawn Signs
This embarrassing thing has over 5,000 “likes” on Facebook, including many from friends of mine who I will henceforth have a hard time looking in the eye.
The mug, which is available free of charge “for a limited time only,” annoys me more than the “In this house we believe” signs with their fatuous virtue-signaling, generalizations (“Love is Love”) and rationalizations (“No Human Being Is Illegal”). because the game it plays is more sinister and confusing to the intellectually handicapped. It is a political propaganda device that deliberately uses false equivalencies in order to ridicule and denigrate legitimate dissent from current progressive cant.
The smug mug’s three statements of the obvious (“The Earth is not flat,” “Chemtrails aren’t a thing” and “We’ve been to the moon”) contradict fringe wacko conspiracy theories that don’t require debunking, since only a tiny and insignificant percentage of the public believes in them or ever has, and almost all of that group breathe through their mouths. However, mixed in among those topics as if they are in the same category are reductive generalizations about two public policy issues involving serious and valid controversies. That’s dirty pool, and worse, the statements aspire to end debates that they don’t even fairly reference.
And Speaking Of Not Being Able To Trust Public Schools …KABOOM!!!!
In Fairfield, Maine, Eric Sack father discovered a plastic baggie containing doses of prescription anti-depressants in the possession of his daughter. His daughter told him that the pills had been provided to her by the Bulldog Health Center, a School Based Health Center (SBHC) at Lawrence High School, where she is a student.
Yeah, right. I thought she was lying too, but the daughter wasn’t wasn’t. The federally funded health clinic that operates within the school gave the pills to her without his knowledge or consent.
How could this happen?
Pro Ethics Tip To Trump: If You Can’t Learn The Golden Rule, At Least Be Cognizant Of The Glass House Problem…
Donald Trump was on thin ice making fun of Chris Christy’s weight, but he just proved that he had better eschew impugning Joe Biden’s age-related cognitive decline as well.
Addressing the Pray Vote Stand summit in Washington, Trump said, “We have a man who is totally corrupt and the worst president in the history of our country, who is cognitively impaired, in no condition to lead, and is now in charge of dealing with Russia and possible nuclear war. Just think of it. We would be in World War II very quickly if we’re going to be relying on this man, and far more devastating than any war.”
Oopsie! Trump presumably meant (I hope!) World War III, not the conflict that ended in 1945. That was a Bidenesque gaffe, and the equivalent of a pundit making a grammatical error while writing about how current high school grads can’t write. And that wasn’t all. Later in the same speech, Trump started confusing Biden with Barack Obama.
Ethics Alarms 