Health and Medicine

Falsely Describing Bad Research To Advocate Irresponsible Policies Is No Way To Serve On The Supreme Court, Justice Jackson…[Corrected And Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

UPDATE: A critical Ethics Alarms reader informed me that in his view the text of this post was too similar to that of its main source, The Daily Signal, in an article by Jay Greene. Although I linked to the piece and also credited Greene with a quote, upon reviewing the post I agree that it included too many substantially similar sentences and phrasings. I apologize to the Daily Signal, Jay, and Ethics Alarms readers. I was using several articles in preparing the piece (including one from another source that was also extremely close to the Signal article), and for whatever reason, did not notice that I had leaned so heavily on Green’s phrasing. It has happened before over the past 13 years, though not often, and never with the intention to deceive. Thus I have revised the post; in the future, if anyone feels that an Ethics Alarms article does not properly credit sources or seems insufficiently original, the favored response is to alert me, rather than to accuse me in obnoxious terms of “plagiarism.”

Fans of affirmative action reacted to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s depressing defense of racial discrimination by praising her remarkably hypocritical dissent in the recent 6-3 decision by the Supreme Court declaring Harvard’s and the University of North Carolina’s admission policies unconstitutional. Those who believe that Justices should base their analyses on law rather than group loyalties were appropriately critical. Both, however missed some really ugly trees for the metaphorical forest, as Jackson injected false statistics into her dissent. They were, of course—we’re used to this phenomenon—uncritically accepted and used in subsequent media propaganda condemning the decision.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in part,

“Beyond campus, the diversity that UNC pursues for the betterment of its students and society is not a trendy slogan. It saves lives. For marginalized communities in North Carolina, it is critically important that UNC and other area institutions produce highly educated professionals of color. Research shows that Black physicians are more likely to accurately assess Black patients’ pain tolerance and treat them accordingly (including, for example, prescribing them appropriate amounts of pain medication). For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die.”

Wow! Racial discrimination saves lives! The problem, or rather problems, are that as Jay Greene of the Daily Signal points out, 1) the claim that survival rates for black newborns double when they have black physicians attending is based on a misleading analysis 2) Even if the results of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study were as Justice Jackson claimed, they are unbelievable and 3) even if Jackson had described the results of the study accurately, and even if those results were credible, they still wouldn’t justify the use of racial preferences in medical school admissions.

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“Curmie’s Conjectures”: Another Case from Yale, This One with a Twist

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

by Curmie

I had a post about half-written, talking about the fact that SCOTUS justices are nominated and confirmed (or not) primarily for their adherence to certain political principles rather than for their integrity, judgment, legal expertise, or temperament. 

‘Twas not ever thus.  In my lifetime, five SCOTUS Justices were confirmed by a voice vote and three others received all 100% of the votes. Another seven received at least 80% of the votes.  But of the current members of SCOTUS, only Chief Justice Roberts received majority support from Senators of both parties… and that was by a single vote.  Justice Thomas, who’s been around the longest, is the only currently-serving member of the Supreme Court to have been confirmed by a Senate controlled by the party not in the White House at the time.

This, I was about to argue, makes the process depressingly predictable: liberals over here, conservatives over there, with Roberts as the closest thing to an unreliable vote for “his side.”  I was getting around to talking about the allegations against Justice Alito: did he really do something wrong, or is furor mostly partisan in nature?  Answer to both questions: yes. 

But then, despite the predictable split in the two Affirmative Action cases, we also see Gorsuch writing a scathing dissent on Arizona v. Navajo Nation, Barrett and Kavanaugh voting with the liberal bloc on Moore v. Harper, and Jack saying pretty much what I would have said about the Alito case.  I may want to return to the general outline of my half-written essay at some point in the future… but the timing isn’t right, now.

So let me go off in a different direction and talk about a faculty member dismissed from an elite university for her political statements.  The headline on the FIRE article begins “Yale shreds faculty rights to rid itself of professor…”  Certainly we’ve seen a fair amount of that kind of fare here on Ethics Alarms.  What’s different is what follows in that title: “…who called Trump mentally unstable.”  Well, that sure goes against the whole “universities are cesspools of Woke indoctrination” mantra, doesn’t it?

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Dispatches From The Trans Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

[ Rose’s breast-baring at the White House will serve as the regular graphic accompanying this topic in the future, because it perfectly symbolizes the attitide of these activists toward the public,

The Tran Ethics Train Wreck was made official back in February, and in retrospect Ethics Alarms should have designated it much earlier. An ethics train wreck is a continuing and evolving situation involving ethics issues and dilemmas that entice anyone becoming involved in them to end up looking foolish at best, misguided at worst, and in between, subject to anger and abuse. Latest developments:

  • The University of Wyoming’s Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority is being sued for allegedly changing the definition of ‘woman’ to accept a trans member, a biological male with equipment intact who is 6’2″ and 260lb. She has been accused of ogling her “sisters” with a full erection, among other issues. The suit alleges that the sorority’s leadership  bullied and intimidated member to accept Artemis Langford. The current and altered sorority rules only require  that a member “identify” as female. KKGs lawyers argue that the definition of “woman” has evolved since the sorority’s founding 150 years ago”The term (woman) is unquestionably open to many interpretations,” the sorority’s filing claimed. I question whether a law suit can prevail here, as clear as it seems that the complaining members were subjected to a bait-and switch. If they cannot get the sorority to agree to a policy they find tolerable, and if they really have been subjected to bullying, I suggest that they quit.

  • AMC Theaters  canceled screenings of a documentary film showcasing the experiences of de-transitioning transsexuals following an aggressive campaign by a group called the Queer Trans Project which sends “Build-a-Queer kits” to “transitioning” LGBTQ+ individuals. The kits include chest binders and tucking tape The online activist group encouraged protesters to send letters to AMC executives to block the screening of the documentary titled “No Way Back: The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care.”  The film shares the stories of five young transsexuals regretting their decision to cross gender lines as well as critical commentary from medical experts. Once AMC announced that it would not show the film, the group posted: “We did it! Our community’s swift action is a testament to the power of advocacy and the importance of raising our voices against harmful content. Your collective efforts have made a significant impact, and the decision to pull No Way Back from AMC theaters is a step towards fostering a more inclusive and respectful environment. Thank you for your dedication and commitment to creating positive change.” AMC claims that the decision was based entirely on poor advance ticket sales.
    And absent leaked documents or emails, there is no way to determine which story is true, or if reality is some mixture of both. The activist group would try to take credit regardless the actual impact of its lobbying, and AMC would never admit to suppressing speech and art because of political pressure.

  • This doesn’t help: New Hampshire’s first transgender state representative, Stacie-Marie Laughton has been arrested and charged with multiple counts of distributing child sexual abuse images. Laughton’s girlfriend was also arrested on the same day on one count of sexual exploitation of children, and one count of distribution of child pornography. She was working at a daycare called Creative Minds and is accused of taking pictures of the children in her care. 

That’s quite a role-model you have there, Trans World! Continue reading →

Epiphany: Ted Kaczynski Was Substantially Right, And I’m Beginning To Understand Sweeney Todd, Too

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The death of “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski once again reminded me that his “manifesto” about how technology was progressively making life unbearable was, yes, crazy, but he had a valid point. [You may consider today’s post a second installment to this one, from 2017]. I have long believed that the up-tick in seemingly random mass shootings is the predictable result of those who inject technology into our lives just because they can, selfishly making just getting through the day brain-killingly complex for people somewhere in the lower third of the intelligence scale, and a lot of people who are better off than that too. At some point, the anger and frustration reaches the point where you want to grab a rifle, find a tower, and start shooting.

This is essentially what happens to Sweeney Todd in the Sondheim musical of the same name, as he explains in the show’s first act finale why serial killing is logical:

We all deserve to die
Tell you why, Mrs. Lovett
Tell you why
Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief
For the rest of us, death will be a relief
We all deserve to die!

I began reflecting on both Ted and Sweeney when I tried to register for the Massachusetts Bar before they suspended me for non-payment of my 2023 annual dues. You have to do it online, and one reason I was late was that I hate the Mass. Board of Bar Overseers website, which always breaks down.

First, the site makes you log in. It wouldn’t let me, even though the password was correct and supposedly filled in automatically. The BBO can’t be bothered to have the feature that lets you see the letters and numbers so only little black dots appear. I had to ask to “reset” my password. Since I couldn’t see the figures, it took two tries to match the the thing, and then I was transferred to a page informing me that I could not move on to filling out my dues sheet until I had completed a “demographic survey.” I’m tempted to put it up: you wouldn’t believe it. If you didn’t type in a date in the right format (I eventually realized that tiny print AFTER each question told you what was acceptable) the question would register as “incomplete” when you selected “Done” at the end. The survey asked me to choose my “preferred” race and ethnicity from umpteen options and also asked which “sex or gender” I “identified” as. (In the comments section, I wrote that who or what I chose to have sex with, or not, and how, was none of the BBO’s business whatsoever.) The survey form was clumsy as well as insulting, it kept flagging reasons a response wouldn’t be accepted, and it took so long to load when it finally passed muster that I thought the program had broken down.

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More Gallup: On The Transgender Fad, The Public Is Ethically, But Predictably, Confused, Mostly Because It Is Ignorant

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Gallup’s’ latest survey results are affirmatively strange, but then the topic is strange: American attitudes towards transgender issues. I believe the survey intersects with the one EA discussed yesterday, indicating that conservative self-identification was ticking up. It would have been stunning it it didn’t tick up, considering that the political and social Left has thrown all caution and moderation to the four winds and is openly advocating the most extreme and viscerally (as well as ethically) disgusting policies and beliefs imaginable, from 9 month abortions to legalizing theft. The unexpected Woke World obsession with transsexual “transitioning” is another example, though most Americans haven’t thought about it very carefully or thoroughly yet as Gallup’s polling makes clear.

The above survey, for example, is bizarre. I don’t see what morality has to do with an adult individual’s decision regarding transsexual surgery, non-surgical treatment, or “identification,” unless one is a Christian Scientist who opposes medical intervention, or someone who still subscribes to ancient religious taboos on all non-conforming sexuality and relationships. Obviously most American aren’t in either group. Those polled, and apparently those doing the polling, were seemingly using “moral” as a synonym for “ethical,” because most American are no longer taught what ethics is. They don’t know what “moral” means either.

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Ethics Alarms Challenge! Provide A Sincere, Persuasive Ethical Argument Why This Isn’t An Epic Example Of ‘The Great Stupid’

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

(Yes, it made my head explode.)

Hot on the heels of the news this week that owners of the 1,921-room Hilton San Francisco Union Square, San Francisco’s largest hotel, occupying an entire city block, is being abandoned by its owners because that woke city has become such a hopeless hell-hole that they can’t see the convention and tourism business rebounding comes New York City’s health officials installing the city’s first free drug paraphernalia vending machine in Brooklyn. It features all sorts of goodies for users and addicts, like crack pipes, “Safer Sniffing” kits, drug testing kits and the anti-overdose medication Naloxone. The vending machine also has hygiene kits for the special problems addicts face (like cracked lips) and safe sex kits. Anyone with a New York City ZIP code can claim any of the contents for no charge. The Brooklyn vending machine is the first of four machines that will be installed in neighborhoods that were hit hardest by the opioid crisis.

Wow, what a great idea. I think it’s a great idea. Don’t you think it’s a great idea?

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Me: “Berkeley Law School Hiring Chesa Boudin Is Unethical!” Harvard: “Hold My Beer…”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I’m not sure Harvard’s hiring of failed Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot is quite as outrageous and incompetent as Berkeley hiring the pro-criminal ex-DA who helped turn San Francisco into a close approximation of Frank Miller’s “Sin City,” but it’s close enough to make me sick to my stomach.

Lightfoot will teach a course at Harvard later this year on “Health Policy and Leadership,” she announced yesterday, saying, “I learned a lot over the past four years, and this gives me an opportunity to share my experiences and perceptions of governing through one of the most challenging chapters in American history.”

This is an interesting concept: hire teachers to teach what they proved to have no skill at or comprehension of when they had actual responsibility in that area. This is like hiring Mario Mendoza (lifetime batting average: .215) as a hitting coach. It gives Alissa Heinerscheid, the vice president of marketing for Bud Light responsible for the Dylan Mulvaney debacle, hope for a new career in academia.

Lightfoot demonstrated as Mayor of Chicago that she knew virtually nothing about leadership, policymaking or public health management, and now she’s teaching it. Perfect. Here’s how her hometown paper sympathetically describes her qualifications:

Early in the pandemic, when Black Chicagoans were dying at six times the rate of whites, Lightfoot and her team led by Dr. Allison Arwady …provided door-to-door outreach with masks and information in vulnerable communities and, when vaccines became available, prioritized them for South and West side residents. But Lightfoot also was slow to take action when the pandemic spurred Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker to close schools and businesses across the state, following along only reluctantly. She later clashed with the governor over bar and restaurant rules and battled the Chicago Teachers Union in a push to return to in-person learning, even as she faced blowback over keeping the lakefront closed too long…. Lightfoot also walked away from her campaign promise to reopen public mental health clinics closed by predecessor Rahm Emanuel. Lightfoot argued the city could better serve residents by giving money to vendors…

I wonder if Prof. Lightfoot will teach her students to accuse critics of sexism and racism when their policies crash and burn?

On the same pedagogical theory, she should team teach the course with ex-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who can explain what he learned by killing thousands of elderly nursing home residents by stashing pandemic victims in their midst.

Oh, all right, Berkeley hiring Boudin to head a new criminal justice center is more unethical than Harvard letting Lightfoot pollute student minds with her concept of leadership…after all, it’s just a single course, and the smart students can just skip it.

Ethics Dunce: Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy [Link Fixed]

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

There is no way not to take yesterday’s public warning from the nation’s top health official as ominous, indeed sinister. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy expounded on the risks of social media to children and teens, citing possible “harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.” The remarkable 19-page advisory, begins by acknowledging that the effects of social media on adolescent mental health are not well understood, and even that social media can be beneficial to “some users.” It then goes on to argue ,“There are ample indicators that social media can also have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.”

And thus the U.S. Surgeon General lays the groundwork for government censorship, despite admitting that there is insufficient hard data to support his conclusions. Parental supervision is not enough for this government, as we have already seen in multiple settings. After all, “it takes a village,” the village that one side of the current culture wars is trying to define includes treating words and expression as “harm” from which people must be kept “safe.” Predictably, the near-completely compliant national news media is behind such government appropriation of parental authority, in this as well as other matters.

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“Gee, What A Surprise: Pot Isn’t Good For Teenagers”…The Sequel

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

In the same vein as the rueful post from two days ago, Ethics Alarms offers this excerpt from today’s Sunday Times without further comment, because none should be necessary…

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Push-Up Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I don’t know why this took so long…

The Washington Post reports that there is a movement afoot to stop allowing young women to substitute so-called “girls’ push-ups” (with the knees on the floor) for the actual toes-on-the-ground exercise while males are still required to do the real thing. The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), which provides guidelines for exercise testing by fitness and medical professionals, still uses the modified push-up to assess women’s upper-body strength in its latest exercise testing textbook, published in 2021. Male strength is measured in part using the full push-up.

But Melanie Adams, a professor of exercise science at Keene State College in New Hampshire, told the Post that based on a 2022 study of female college students and push-ups that she led, the assumption that women could only do the weenie version was unwarranted. Some female college students could perform more than 20 full push-ups in succession, a total many men can’t match. Because the root exercise builds strong, important muscles in the upper-body and core, however, starting boys on real push-ups while girls are told to use the inferior version gives males a head start on superior strength that women will have a hard time overcoming.

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