Health and Medicine

Ethics Quiz: Virginia’s Forced Vasectomy

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments
"Well, they can't all be "shouting fire in a crowded theater," Oliver. So you had an off day....it happens.

“Well, they can’t all be “shouting fire in a crowded theater,” Oliver. So you had an off day….it happens.

One of the skeletons in the Old Dominion State’s closet is the 1924 “Virginia Eugenical Sterilization Act,” a  law allowing the sterilization of citizens adjudged to be in a long line of mentally deficient idiots. The law was upheld in the infamous  1927 Supreme Court opinion in Buck v. Bell, in which the great Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, to his undying shame, wrote,

“It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

So approved, Virginia’s eugenics law lasted into the 1970s, allowing the state to sterilize more than 7,000 people in mental institutions. The law was repealed in 1979, and victims are seeking reparations. Now the ghost of that law is hovering over the resolution of a current case.

The only thing Virginian Jessie Lee Herald has done on his 27 years more than get in trouble with the law is have children: so far he has had seven (with six mothers) and his current wife says she wants more. He recently fled the scene of a car crash with his injured 3-year-old son. Herald pleaded guilty to felony child endangerment, felony hit-and-run, and misdemeanor driving on a suspended license. Investigators who went to his home found his child to have been neglected, with, among other things, shards of glass in his diapers.

A Shenandoah County prosecutor, Illona White, proposed a plea deal that would reduce Herald’s prison sentence to just four years: he would have to agree to a vasectomy. He took the deal, which also requires him to pay for the operation.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

 Is it ethical for a state to make a convicted felon choose between prison time and sterilization?

Continue reading →

Some Ethics Comments On The SCOTUS Hobby Lobby Decision

/ Jack Marshall / 71 Comments

Hobby-Lobby1. First, read the decision, here. When you do, you will be disgusted at the blatant exaggerations and outright misrepresentations by various pundits, advocates, activists and reporters. In the case of the latter, this is incompetence and a breach of duty to the public. In the case of the rest, it is either dishonesty and willful deception, or stupidity. For example, as an exercise, count the number of misrepresentations and misstatements inherent in this tweet, from MSNBC ‘s Cenk Uygur:

 “I love that conservatives are now on the record as against contraception. Brilliant move to be against 99% of women!”

I count five, but I could be off by one or two. Is this genuine misunderstanding, or just intentional rabble-rousing? Who can tell, with shameless partisans like Cenk? Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “US Priorities: Make War On Cheese, Not On Drugs”

/ Jack Marshall / 47 Comments

smoking_weedThe articulate squid commenter, Extradimensional Cephalopod, weighed into the contentious discussion over the wisdom of pot use and government approval there-of with this thought-provoking piece.

Here is his Comment of the Day on the post: US Priorities: Make War On Cheese, Not On Drugs.

I’ll have a few comments at the end.

Full disclosure: I have not used marijuana, but I have had its effects described to me in detail by people who have. My understanding of it is that it has at least two separate and notable effects, which can vary based on the particular strain. One of them is a relaxing effect, although some strains actually increase anxiety at some point after use. However, the relaxing effect makes it suitable for medical purposes such as treating seizures. The other effect I am aware of is an increase in the brain’s divergent thinking patterns; that is, it increases random association, enhancing creativity and making experiences more vivid. A user can increase this effect deliberately by increasing the quantity inhaled or ingested to the point where coherent thought is difficult, but this requires very high levels of intake. I am told that it is not chemically addictive, or toxic except inasmuch as inhaling smoke in general is toxic, but more on the level of incense rather than cigarettes.

In my opinion, people have a right to use the substance provided they do not take actions that put others at risk by doing so, such as driving. I see no reason to ban the substance, but one can certainly ban taking actions that become dangerous under its effects. As a transhumanist, I see nothing inherently wrong with using a form of technology to alter one’s mental state artificially. Marijuana does not seem like a harmful or dangerous way to do so, as long as one is responsible. I agree that people who use marijuana, or alcohol, for that matter, can become very boring and less able to have interesting conversations, although sometimes the opposite happens; it depends on who the person was to begin with and how they react.

On the other hand, the ethics system that I subscribe to and through which I come to the above conclusions is based on promoting consciousness. One of the root problems with this world is that humans get very easily addicted to mindsets, experiences, or control. Addictions are blind spots, limitations that a consciousness has picked up that allow it to be manipulated by the world instead of being its own master. An addiction occurs when a mindset, experience, or form of control automatically becomes a person’s first priority in certain situations even where the person would intellectually judge it to be subordinate to a more important goal. It is possible to get mentally addicted to pretty much anything: alcohol, marijuana, candy, sex, adrenaline, attention, solitude, et cetera. To a certain extent we all have addictions in that when our lives are changed we feel uncomfortable and stressed, but toning addictions down is part of empowering ourselves.

That being said, my ethics system leads me to disapprove of the use of marijuana (or other drugs, for that matter) as a means to induce apathy to escape the stress that would otherwise lead a person to self-improvement. My worldview draws a distinction between joy and well-being. Joy is a positive feeling towards one’s current circumstances. Well-being, however, I define as regularly developing new abilities or improving one’s point of view, or any sort of change that results in a person having a more harmonious relationship with the world and being able to promote harmony for other individuals. Here is where the “it’s the journey, not the destination” cliche comes in. Joy may be the destination that people try to reach because it is associated with a state of increased harmony, but consciousness, the process by which people try to reach asymptotically-increasing states of harmony, is what makes us people in the first place, with all the associated awareness and abilities, and it is consciousness that I prioritize.

Long story short: it’s okay to use drugs to augment one’s ability to improve oneself (especially if one has a disability that requires the use of drugs to bring mental functions within human normal), as a tool (yes, sometimes a crutch) to access mindsets you want to use but can’t invoke at will, or as a neutral form of recreation. Using drugs as a substitute for self-improvement so that one can stagnate without feeling bad about it is pathetic and not empowering at all.

I hope this post has been coherent, but I have an internal vocabulary that has developed in partial isolation, so if there is any confusion that you want resolved, please let me know.

It’s me again. Just a few notes:

  • One thing I always appreciate about EC is that he never makes a typo. I am awash in envy.
  • I have been shocked at how many commenters on the main post never have used pot. Either I am not as strange as I always thought I was, or this blog does not attract anything close to a representative cross-section of America.
  • I should have mentioned in the original post that the Federal government still regards pot as illegal. However, with its first confirmed former pot-head as President ( Clinton didn’t inhale, remember), and the “base” of the Democratic party as well as most reporters clearly in favor of Stoned America, I think the eventual legalization is a certainty.
  • Alcohol is not chemically addictive either, except for the minority of the population that doesn’t metabolize booze properly, those we call alcoholics. However, there are many alcohol addicts who are not alcoholics, and they are psychologically addicted, and seriously so. Psychological addiction to a drug can be and often is both indistinguishable from the physical kind, and just as destructive to them and those who depend on them.
  • I am dubious about the substantive beneficial effects of pot, John Lennon and Timothy Leary notwithstanding. The use of marijuana for genuine palliative purposes is obviously valid; it is also obviously being abused.
  • I endorse the Squid’s penultimate sentence, but I think that this kind of drug use should never be discussed without the adjective “irresponsible” prominently displayed. For this is why discouraging such use is a legitimate, indeed crucial, government function, and a function the government cannot perform while approving the conduct, and, as we all know is coming, profiting by it. The government has to promote responsible conduct from its citizens, because irresponsible conduct does material harm to society.

The Mind Of The Unethical Advocate: 41 School Shootings Just Isn’t Enough—Let’s Pretend There Are More

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Shootings

You have probably seen this map; it went viral on the internet almost immediately after it was first published on Twitter last week by  and editor at The Huffington Post. It purports to show the locales of the “1.37 deadly school shootings per week,” 74 in all,  that have occurred since the December, 2012 Sandy Hook massacre according to Everytown for Gun Safety. That is an anti-gun activist organization founded by Michael Bloomberg and Shannon Watts, and its release that “there have been at least 74 school shootings in America” since Newtown was just what the doctor ordered for the languishing gun control forces.

It’s an intentionally misleading number. Journalist Charles Johnson checked the facts, and these are not all “school shootings” in the sense that the public now understands the term and how honest journalists use it—episodes where someone brings a gun to a school and starts shooting teachers and kids. At least 33 of the “school shootings” just fit the conveniently broad definition used by Everytown for Gun Safety so as to make the strongest impression, fairness and truth be damned. They include not just Columbine and Newtown-type episodes, but also assaults, homicides, suicides, gang fights, and accidents involving guns that happened “inside a school building or on school or campus grounds.” Continue reading →

US Priorities: Make War On Cheese, Not On Drugs

/ Jack Marshall / 93 Comments

wisconsin-cheese-headsUSA Today reports that the increase in state-approved marijuana use is being accompanied by an increase in pot-related auto fatalities.

Gee…who could have seen that coming? Well, I did, among others, but never mind: far worse lies ahead. The consensus of American society is now that being able to get stupid for recreation is worth more death and addiction, and our cowardly political leaders have neither the wit nor the fortitude to swat away the lame rationalizations that have driven that position–“Hey, alcohol is worse, so why not add another destructive, useless drug to our societal pathologies?”—that have led to the dawning of a perpetually stoned America.

But not to worry: when the threat to our health posed by other non-essential pleasures looms, the government nannies are on it like piranha. The FDA, for example, has moved to make sure American can’t buy and eat cheese aged on wooden boards, because it, well, there really isn’t a good reason. Because they can, I guess. It couldn’t be because board-aged cheeses cause automobile accidents, workplace deaths and kids to fail at school, because we know our culture no longer cares about any of that.

Cheese-heads are out, pot-heads are in.

Cool.

It’s comforting that we have our priorities straight.

__________________________

Sources: USA Today, Overlawyered

Texas Republicans Forfeit All Claims To Respect

/ Jack Marshall / 151 Comments

 

Old-Rotten-PlanksIt would be an Unethical Quote of the Month, if it weren’t also so stupid. As it is, the newly minted endorsement of  conversion therapy for gays in the party platform serves to remove any reason to respect the Texas Republican Party, and like a projectile vomiting episode, contaminates anyone who identifies with the GOP, not just in Texas, but anywhere.

This despicable and ignorant platform states:

“We recognize the legitimacy and efficacy of counseling, which offers reparative therapy and treatment for those patients seeking healing and wholeness from their homosexual lifestyle. No laws or executive orders shall be imposed to limit or restrict access to this type of therapy.”

This was composed by bigots, enacted by fools, and adopted by intellectually lazy and mean-spirited dolts. Continue reading →

Birding Ethics vs. Education Ethics: One Applies Common Sense, The Other Doesn’t Apply It, Or Sunscreen Either

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments
"Don't worry, Mr. Sapsucker---the birders are looking out for you. Just be grateful you don't go to public school in San Antonio."

“Don’t worry, Mr. Sapsucker—the birders are looking out for you. Just be grateful you don’t go to public school in San Antonio.”

In the intense avocation of bird-watching, a code of ethics reminds practitioners of common sense. In public school education, there is no accepted code of ethics. And there is precious little common sense.

Cornell University’s Macaulay Library contains more than 200,000 bird call recordings, and 150,000 of them can be downloaded onto smartphones and other electronic devices. This allows canny bird-watchers to play the calls in the wild, attracting rarely-seen species.

Unfortunately, these realistic calls, experts say, can stress birds, including endangered species. Thus there is a code of ethics for the recreation of birding, The American Birding Association’s Principles of Birding Ethics, and it states,

 “Limit the use of recordings and other methods of attracting birds, and never use such methods in heavily birded areas, or for attracting any species that is threatened, endangered or of Special Concern, or is rare in your local area.”

It’s a well-conceived code that gives behavioral guidance where guidance is needed.

Now let’s look at a profession where most of us would say common sense is essential, and where the lack of it leads to  unethical and unacceptable conduct born of institutionalized incompetence. No, this time I’m not talking about our government. I’m talking about the educational profession, and the public schools. Continue reading →

“It’s Not The Worst Thing”: Slate’s Jamelle Bouie Delivers A Virtuoso Performance Of The Worst Rationalization Of Them All

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments
"Obamacare is a success, and even if it's not, it's not worse than nuclear war. So there."

“Obamacare is a success, and even if it’s not, it’s not worse than nuclear war. So there.”

This is excellent: I always am looking for the most extreme example of any kind of misconduct, lie, rhetorical fallacy or rationalization, so I have something to measure all others against. Jamelle Bouie, the resident Obama flack at Slate, just delivered a dandy for my future scale of infamy for Rationalization #22 on the Ethics Alarms list, the Bottom of the Barrel, the favorite excuse of the shameless, the ethics-challenged and the desperate sociopath, “It’s not the worst thing,” or “The Comparative Virtue Excuse.”

It’s a deft turn, and a welcome one: so much attention is being lathered on the prisoner exchange fiasco that the parade of other Obama Administration-created ethics train wrecks are being ignored for the nonce…and perhaps that was the objective. The late Mike Kelly, the sharpest conservative political analyst the Washington Post has ever featured on its pages, half-seriously suggested that seeding so-called scandal fatigue was a conscious strategy of the ethically corrupt Clinton White House, and Obama has taken this to levels then unimagined. Among other, the Obamacare Ethics Train Wreck barrels on at an impressive clip. Yesterday, for example, it was revealed that yet another flaw in the enrollment process has left 2,000,000 Americans who think they have insurance at risk of finding themselves uncovered.

To unconscionable fake-journalists like Bouie, however (a real journalist is one who follows the facts to where they lead; a fake one cherry-picks the facts that take him where he wants to go), it doesn’t matter: the Affordable Care Act, he tells his gullible or retching readers…

“…looks like a success. Between the state exchanges, healthcare.gov, and the Medicaid expansion, an estimated 17.2 million people have received health insurance under the law. In turn, according to Gallup, the percentage of Americans without health insurance has dipped to 13.4 percent, down 3.7 percentage points from where it was at the end of last year.”

This species of argument, which has become the standard practice for the Obama Is A Great President Despite All Evidence To The Contrary League, is one of two things, and two things only: proof of mental deficiency, or conclusive evidence of dishonesty. Either one, I would argue, should disqualify someone from writing commentary in Slate, or for that matter, Weekly Reader. Continue reading →

Hurricane Ethics: Bias, Bias, Who’s Got the Bias?

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments
"So 'Hurrucane Snoopy' it is, right?"

“So ‘Hurrucane Snoopy’ it is, right?”

Here we have a bias study that appears to have been infected with bias, designed to show bias, with no useful use for the data—even if it is valid, which is dubious—except to encourage bias!

Researchers  at the University of Illinois and Arizona State University examined six decades of hurricane death rates according to gender, spanning 1950 and 2012. Of the 47 most deadly hurricanes, the female-named  produced an average of 45 deaths compared to 23 deaths in male-named storms, or almost double the number of fatalities. They felt this was indicative of the fact that masculine-named storms were scarier to those in its path, so the female storms caused more death and destruction due to the trusting, sexist fools who didn’t take them seriously.

The problems with this study are legion, beginning with the fact that older hurricanes caused more damage than those of recent vintage (Katrina was left out of the study because it was deemed an outlier. It also would have blown up the data so completely that the study’s pre-cooked conclusions would be even less credible than they are.) when male names were used for the first time.  Do you think advances in medicine, storm warnings and other factors contributed to the reduction in death totals since male-named storms were introduces? Naaaah! Continue reading →

Zeynep Tufekci Thinks We Should Trust Journalists To Protect Us From Mass Murderers Like Elliot Rodger, And Yet Restrain Themselves From “Protecting” Us From Other Things They Don’t Want Us To Know. And She Is A Fool.

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
Zeynep Tufekci: so thoughtful, so gentle, so concerned, so dangerous, so terribly, terribly WRONG.

Zeynep Tufekci: so thoughtful, so gentle, so concerned, so dangerous, so terribly, terribly WRONG.

Zeynep Tufekci is a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, an assistant professor at the School of Information and Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, and a faculty associate at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She wants  journalists to censor the news and information they publish for our own good, to protect us from mad killers like Elliot Rodger. Because she has surfaced again, as before, to spread her “solution” to mass killings, this well-meaning, sensitive, smug and utterly deluded academic is once again getting respectful quotes, interviews and nods of approval from the likes of The Atlantic, Vox and National Public Radio. Since the hysterics can’t seem to take down the Second Amendment, now they want to use the latest mass shooting (it was a stabbing too) to wound the principles underlying First.

I have been waiting for someone with more influence than me to point out how dangerous and wrong-headed her “solutions” are. So far, nothing. I guess I have to do it myself.

Tufekci laid out her plan in detail two years ago, and it is being resurrected now. In an article for the Atlantic, she opined that the media is complicit in mass murders like the Santa Barbara shooting, because such deranged killers are primarily seeking fame and publicity as they exit this cruel world in blood and bullets. For the sake of time and argument, let us accept her dubious premise that this is indeed the driving motive behind these incidents. (I am sure that this is the motive in some such cases; it is certainly not the motive in all of them, as with the University of Texas tower shooter Charles Whitman.)

Here were her five recommendations: Continue reading →