Health and Medicine

Does The Medical Profession Think That “Shoulder Width Reduction Surgery” Is The Ethical Practice Of Medicine?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Shoulder width reduction is an extreme form of surgery designed to allow men transitioning to glorious womanhood look the way they feel. The procedure involves a surgeon sawing sections of the patient’s clavicle off and  fusing the remaining pieces back together with a metal plate. The surgery generally costs  thousands of dollars;  you can see it being performed here. There is also the reverse procedure for women who have decided to be male, or who want to look like Joan Crawford.

Once upon a time, before the medical profession was completely perverted by fear of lawsuits and the love of money, surgery that served no functional purpose was regarded as unethical. The gold mine that is cosmetic surgery changed all that, along with greasing many slippery slopes. If a teenage girl’s parents felt she would be more popular and happy with a cute little turned up nose, then that was sufficient benefit to make the surgery ethical. Next it was just a few slips down the slope to similarly justify surgery to give some whacko pointy ears like an elf, or a split tongue like a lizard, or to make someone look like a doll…

Or a cat….

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Fad Ethics, 2022

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Fads occur when the culture embraces a concept for emotional, selfish, foolish or otherwise irrational reasons. Usually they are harmless; sometimes they are not. This meme crystalized the reality of a current fad, an especially destructive one being advanced in pursuit of a social and political agenda, so deftly that Ethics Alarms is momentarily suspending its opposition to memes.

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Pointer: Powerline

A Language Ethics Quiz: Regarding “Groomer”

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Conservatives have been using the word “groomer” this year to describe advocates of teaching school children (as young as third grade in some cases) about LGTBQ sexual practices and relationships, while presenting them in a positive light. Targets of the word have ranged from defiant LGTBQ teachers exposed by The Libs of TikTok, to libraries promoting drag readings for kids, to the advocates for “gender-affirming therapy” for teens and younger without parental approval, to Disney’s recent obsession with injecting gay sexual issues into its films and TV offerings.

R.L. Stoller objects. He says he is a “child liberation theologian” (?), and a child and survivor advocate with “a Masters in Child Protection”—okey-dokey, let’s take that as genuine authority arguendo. He objects to the use of “groomer” in the current trend, writing in part,

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Empathy And Compassion Are Ethical Values But This Idiot Deserves Neither

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

…unless, of course, we should have compassion and empathy for unapologetic, self-destructive idiots like Anaya Peterson.

Peterson is a mother of five and—KABOOM!—a law student, but nonetheless thought it would be a good idea to get her eyes tattooed. After all, Australian model Amber Luke tattooed her eyes a vivid blue and only went blind for three weeks! That was good enough for Peterson, whose seven-year-old daughter cautioned her that the procedure was too risky. “What if you go blind?” the kid asked? Oh pshaw, Mom answered; adults know best.

Now it looks as if Mother may go blind after all. “I don’t have 20/20 vision anymore. From a distance, I can’t see features on faces,” Peterson told the media. “If I didn’t have my eyeballs tattooed, I wouldn’t be having this problem. Even today I woke up with more floaters in my eyes. And that is dangerous.” Continue reading →

“You’re The Dog”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto—how I miss his blog!— famously wrote of accusations that something was a “racist dog whistle”:

“The thing we adore about these dog-whistle kerfuffles is that the people who react to the whistle always assume it’s intended for somebody else. The whole point of the metaphor is that if you can hear the whistle, you’re the dog.”

Bingo. In the last week we have seen two particularly vivid examples of this phenomenon. The most recent is peak Great Stupid: the World Health Organization announced  that it will begin referring to monkeypox as “mpox.” Why? Well, there were complaints that its name constituted “racist and stigmatizing language.”  Yes,  all it takes to make WHO jump is complaints from morons, or perhaps power-seeking activists who want to see how easily they can bend organizations to their will, just to prove they can. Continue reading →

“Bias Makes You Stupid,” Senior Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

That’s Dustin Hoffman in “Little Big Man” above, which he narrates as “Jack Crabbe,” a 121-year-old survivor of Custer’s Last Stand.

It is amazing to me that anyone seriously argues that elected officials, judges and other individuals with challenging jobs should NOT be required to retire at a reasonable age. [Yes, I omitted “not” in the original post. Idiot.] Many do so argue, however, especially those who are past that reasonable age, whatever it may be. Here’s a letter in the New York Times today; let’s call the writer “Jerry”….

Re “Biden Facing a Big Decision on His Future” (front page, Nov. 14):

Yet another article casting doubt on President Biden’s fitness to run again because of his age: 80 this coming Sunday. On the front page no less, as we celebrate his key role in dodging the predicted red wave.

Next month I turn 84. I still work at my computer every day, practice yoga regularly and ride my bike 10 to 20 miles a week. For sure, I can’t run as fast, or recall every name with the same ease, but in my mind I still feel young most days. And I’m far from alone among my cohort.

Eighty is the new 60. We need to get used to it as the baby boomers begin to turn 80 in just three years.

When we pick a presidential candidate, age is less important than character, experience, wisdom, judgment, kindness, resilience, mental health and track record, to name a few. Every candidate will have his or her flaws, but it’s insulting and foolish that someone should be disqualified simply based on age.

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Unethical Pro-Abortion Quote Of The Year: Actress Ann Hathaway

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“…Abortion can be another word for mercy.”

—Actress Anne Hathaway, revealing her ethical deficits and intellectual limitations while appearing on “The View”

Oh, hell. I’ve always liked Ann Hathaway. Now I have to continue liking her despite knowing she’s a brain-dead, self-awareness-lacking, ethics dummy.

Just so I’m not accused of misrepresenting Hathaway’s moronic and offensive claim, here is her full sentence:

“[In] my own personal experience with abortion and I don’t think we talk about this enough, abortion can be another word for mercy. We don’t know. We don’t know. We know that no two pregnancies are alike, and it follows that no two lives are alike, it follows that no two conceptions are alike. So how can we have a law, how can we have a point of view on this that says we must treat everything the same?”

Someone can only make such an absurd statement by refusing to acknowledge what an abortion is, and that two lives are involved, not just one. If she were arguing for abortion when a fetus is hopelessly deformed or certain to have devastating maladies, that’s a legitimate ethical debate to have. Abortion then might be described as merciful. (But some advocate aborting Down Syndrome babies as similarly “merciful.”) Hathaway wasn’t considering the unborn at all, however. In her warped (but too common) view, it is mercy for the mother to allow her kill the child for her own benefit.

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Horrifying Or Hilarious? Joy Behar Delves Into Medical Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Even though more than the usual number of mainstream media lackeys have been willing to suck it up and admit that the Fetterman-Oz debate last night was a disaster for Democrats, enough integrity-free hacks have reached for way to blame everyone but the candidate. But as Leo Bloom memorably said when his scheme failed in “The Producers,” “No way out…no way out….” This can’t be blamed on anyone but John Fetterman, his party and his staff. He should have withdrawn after his stroke in May. He should have been transparent about his medical condition. If he couldn’t talk right, and couldn’t process what he heard, then he should have just said he wasn’t capable of debating, and let voters deal with that as they chose. Instead, he subjected listeners to these painful moments:

I was preparing a post on the absurd lengths Democrats and journalists are going to try to minimize the damage., and then stumbled upon what Joy Behar added to the whitewash effort on “The View.” This deserves a special spotlight. It is not only the dumbest attempt to help Fetterman, it is not only peak commentator stupid, but it is peak “The View” stupid and peak Joy Behar stupid as well.

Today she said—I wouldn’t kid you:

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Translation: “Our Candidate Is Going To Stink In The Debate, But Pay No Attention.” What IS This?

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Honest? Sad? Desperate? Hilarious?

I’ve never seen anything like the memo above sent via Twitter by the John Fetterman Campaign in advance of tonight’s only debate between the GOP and Democratic candidates for U.S. Senator, and I don’t mean just in politics. The Philadelphia Phillies are preparing to play the American League Houston Astros in the World Series, and are obviously out-matched: the Astros were the best team in their league and have won every post-season game so far. The Phillies didn’t even win 90 games (the Astros won 106) and finished third in their own division. Yet the team hasn’t issued a press release saying, “The Astros are the superior team, so we don’t want baseball fans to expect very much from the Phillies. Frankly, we’re just not that good.”

Here is the memo’s equivalent effort at lowering expectations…to the floor:

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Hypocrisy Check: If You Think Suffering Lingering Effects From A Stroke Disqualifies John Fetterman For The U.S. Senate, How Can You Support Herschel Walker?

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Those who fervently believe that it is important to the future well-being of the nation to get the U.S. Senate out of clutches of the Democrats understandably regard the U.S. Senate race in Georgia, where ex-football hero Herschel Walker is attempting to knock Sen. Ralph Warnock out of office using celebrity, Donald Trump’s endorsement, an “R” next to his name and little else, as a crucial battleground. However, one can’t espouse ethical principles and discard them when they become inconvenient. (Well, one can, but it is dishonest and wrong.) The same people who rightly insist that John Fetterman’s lingering disabilities resulting from a May stroke make it irresponsible for him to continue running for Senator in Pennsylvania are choosing to ignore Herschel Walker’s claims that he has been “cured” of dissociative identity disorder (DID), aka. multiple personality disorder, that favorite mental aberration of Hollywood horror movies. Continue reading →