Utilitarianism

Gingrich fails human ethics, human embryology

Even though we are the only species having this conversation, that doesn’t mean that we always get it right.

I was hoping that the recent Catholic conversion of Republican candidate for President Newt Gingrich would ensure that he is pro-life and would act correctly if he is ever elected to an office. Unfortunately, he doesn’t understand the basics of embryology. He fails human ethics and would end up charged with a Federal offense if he tried to make this argument to the Environmental Protection Agency about any animal on the Endangered Species List:

“Well, I think the question of being implanted is a very big question. My friends who have ideological positions that sound good don’t then follow through the logic of: ‘So how many additional potential lives are they talking about? What are they going to do as a practical matter to make this real?’

“I think that if you take a position when a woman has fertilized egg and that’s been successfully implanted that now you’re dealing with life, because otherwise you’re going to open up an extraordinary range of very difficult questions.”

“. . . In addition I would say that I’ve never been for embryonic stem cell research per se. I have been for, there are a lot of different ways to get embryonic stem cells. I think if you can get embryonic stem cells for example from placental blood if you can get it in ways that do not involve the loss of a life that’s a perfectly legitimate avenue of approach.

“What I reject is the idea that we’re going to take one life for the purpose of doing research for other purposes and I think that crosses a threshold of de-humanizing us that’s very very dangerous.”

via Gingrich Breaks from Some in Anti-Abortion Community on When Life Begins – ABC News.

Speaker Gingrich is absolutely wrong to say that we who hold the “ideological” position that human life begins at fertilization have not thought about the implications. If we hadn’t done so on our own, some utilitarian like the Speaker would have forced us to do so.

Just as with any other species, the mammal human embryo is the same species as the mother and father, and the one time when that life begins is at fertilization. What is it that implants? Would the technician in the in vitro lab or even the stem cell lab care what happened to the egg and the sperm if there is no fertilization?

Implantation is another step in that life that began at fertilization of the oocyte by the sperm.

Ectopic pregnancy is an event like cancer or heart attacks or kidney failure: when the normal process doesn’t go the way it should and people die. Because of the immediate and inevitable danger to the life of the mother and the unquestionable inability of human medicine to save the embryonic child, we don’t even count the procedures we do as “abortion.” when documenting abortion and maternal health statistics.

If we did call it abortion, it certainly would not be an “elective” abortion, but a procedure done to remove an eminent and known threat to the life of the mother who could die within minutes due to internal bleeding when the embryo grows too big for the fallopian tube at sometime between 6 and 8 weeks of age.

The sperm is not a life. Some do believe that any sexual act should be directly tied to and open to procreation, but not all Christians who object to abortion or other euthanasia agree agree on this point.

The least educated, lowest technician in the in vitro lab knows the difference between the sperm in the cup, the oocyte and the embryo. Within hours, they know whether the embryo is.

In vitro fertilization is an ethical problem when the embryos are not treated with the respect and care due the human dignity of all our children. The human embryo in the dish is the same species as the embryo in the fallopian tube. (See above.) Several countries have laws limiting in vitro fertilization, the numbers of embryos and some require that any embryo fertilized in the lab be implanted.

First, there is no way to obtain embryonic stem cells other than to destroy or endanger an embryo.The cells obtained from umbilical cord blood and the placenta are technically fetal, not embryonic stem cells. But, as the Speaker notes, no one has to die to obtain them.

And yes, our society has some tough decisions to make. Will we continue to refuse to provide the same protection for our own children that we give to a pelican or a sea turtle?

Sequenom to Sell Down Syndrome Test 2 Years After Pullback – Bloomberg

Note the pretty “terminating the pregnancy” phrase that’s used instead of aborting the baby (or even the usual term used, “fetus”).

This new test will, indeed “change the conversation about abortion.” This news story, including comments from utilitarian bioethicist, Art Caplan, Ph.D., will move the conversation much earlier into the pregnancy and remind us about the risk to healthy children in healthy mothers from tests for genetic markers. It will also stir the debate on late-appearing diseases like Alzheimer’s dementia and breast cancer.

(Who knows, we might be getting closer to tests for behavioral tendencies or even the “gay gene,” if one is ever found.)

Sequenom doesn’t indicate whether there are false positives or what the accuracy is in women who are not at “high risk” for having a Down’s Syndrome child.

The blood test is accurate in detecting Trisomy 21, the genetic chromosomal abnormality that most commonly causes Down syndrome, 99.1 percent of the time as early as 10 weeks into a pregnancy, the San Diego-based company said in a statement. The test, and others that will be able to identify genetic abnormalities early in pregnancies, will alter the debate over abortion, said Art Caplan, director of the center for bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

“For many people this test makes it morally, emotionally and psychologically easier to have an abortion,” Caplan said in an interview.

Caplan said future prenatal tests may be able to indicate if the fetus had biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease, or breast cancer, or other diseases. Those tests will raise questions about what issues will trigger potential parents to choose an abortion. A survey published last month in the American Journal of Medical Genetics showed that only 4 percent of parents with Down Syndrome children regretted having them.

Ethical Shift

“Ethically, we are now starting to see the shift in the issue of what counts as a medical disorder, what’s significant enough to test for, what’s a genetic disability or just a difference,” he said. “Many in the Down syndrome community would say it’s just a difference.”

via Sequenom to Sell Down Syndrome Test 2 Years After Pullback – Bloomberg.

Build a straw man, make him die

When will the progressive left admit that ObamaCare is just one version of “spread the wealth? Because the healthcare plan mandates coverage for all illness or healthcare from first dollar, rather than only spending money for the indigent and extremely sick. Worse, the mandate enforces taxes, rather than allowing charity or compassionate care.

Slate.com has a blog post concerning ObamaCare written by Jacob Weisberg, entitled “Let him die.” The author flatly implies that one or more of the Republican Presidential candidates would let a patient die if he can not pay for needed care.

Forget that none of the candidates said any such thing. One man in the audience at Monday night’s debate for Republican Candidates  in Orlando shouted “yeah!” when one of the moderators asked Ron Paul the question. There’s dispute about whether the shout came before or after Congressman Paul answered, “No.”

This incident is being cited as “playing the death card” by another blogger, at the University of Chicago School of Law’s Richard Epstein, who  is not satisfied with calling Republicans names. He suggests that rationing is reasonable:

One telling illustration about this example is that Weisberg does not tell us whether the individual who receives this care lives or dies when the treatment is over.  If we assume the latter, the initial question is whether intensive care at, say, $10,000 to $20,000 per day represents the best use of social resources.  A bit of simple arithmetic says that society has spent $1.83 million to $3.66 million on a venture that may well have kept this person alive in a comatose state or have subjected him to repeated invasive treatments when hospice care may well have been preferable.

(Try not to think about “death panels.”)

Hat tip to Texas Medical Association and Drs.

On human potential

“TheRealSasha” has commented, here, on my essay, “Why Ethics?”

From the comment:

However I believe the application of the argument is limited.. As it doesn’t address the contested questions such as definition of when life begins. As such your ‘hierarchy of importances’ only follows if the assumption is make that life begins at conception.

I think an issue the post doesn’t consider, is the greatest potential of the woman and man who will be caring after the child when they are born. If the child/fetus in the womb is found to be severely deformed and close to a vegetated state, which will involve a lifetime of the most basic care for their needs, it will mean the life of the carers will be such that the large part of it will have to be devoted to looking after a child that may not even comprehend who their own parents are.

I believe that taking your own argument of the greatest potential, it can be argued that the child given in the above example has less potential in having something resembling ‘life’, than the potential life/lives lost of their carers.

Science depends on the study of events that can be observed by different observers in different labs, under similar conditions.

The one-celled embryo, the zygote, is unique in that the products of two cell lines, a sperm and an egg, which are at the end of their life cycle, combine to form the beginning of a new life cycle. Any argument in favor of potential is only a personal belief, inconsistent with observable facts. We know that fertilization is a point that a technician can identify in the in vitro lab. No one implants unfertilized eggs. In fact, we can watch the changes by serial ultrasounds and blood hormone levels that result from the new embryo.

Philosophy can utilize the same criteria: what would happen in another place if the same value were given to another child at another age? Why not kill the child with less “potential” after birth?

Sasha gives a classic example of utilitarian ethics: the greatest good for the greatest number, without regard to individual, inalienable rights. Utilitarianism allows fickle, faddish and selfish motives or might makes right to determine the safety that each of us can expect from society and law.

Anyone is at risk of becoming like the human in the example Sasha gives: a fall, a bad allergic reaction, an assault could leave any of us at least temporarily or permanently dependent on others for “the most basic care for their needs.” Why not snuff out the life of these people?