An Ethical Question: Does a Nazi Deserve a Place Among Philosophers?
Published: November 8, 2009
By PATRICIA COHEN
For decades the German philosopher Martin Heidegger has been the subject of passionate debate. His critique of Western thought and technology has penetrated deeply into architecture, psychology and literary theory and inspired some of the most influential intellectual movements of the 20th century. Yet he was also a fervent Nazi.
Now a soon-to-be published book in English has revived the long-running debate about whether the man can be separated from his philosophy. Drawing on new evidence, the author, Emmanuel Faye, argues fascist and racist ideas are so woven into the fabric of Heidegger’s theories that they no longer deserve to be called philosophy. As a result Mr. Faye declares, Heidegger’s works and the many fields built on them need to be re-examined lest they spread sinister ideas as dangerous to modern thought as “the Nazi movement was to the physical existence of the exterminated peoples.”
First published in France in 2005, the book, “Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy,” calls on philosophy professors to treat Heidegger’s writings like hate speech. Libraries, too, should stop classifying Heidegger’s collected works (which have been sanitized and abridged by his family) as philosophy and instead include them under the history of Nazism. These measures would function as a warning label, like a skull-and-crossbones on a bottle of poison, to prevent the careless spread of his most odious ideas, which Mr. Faye lists as the exaltation of the state over the individual, the impossibility of morality, anti-humanism and racial purity.
The book is the most radical attack yet on Heidegger (1889-1976) and would upend the philosophical field’s treatment of his work in the United States, and even more so in France, where Heidegger has frequently been required reading for an advanced degree. Mr. Faye, an associate professor at the University of Paris, Nanterre, not only wants to drum Heidegger from the ranks of philosophers, he wants to challenge his colleagues to rethink the very purpose of philosophy and its relationship to ethics.
At the same time scholars in disciplines as far flung as poetry and psychoanalysis would be obliged to reconsider their use of Heidegger’s ideas. Although Mr. Faye talks about the close connection between Heidegger and current right-wing extremist politics, left-wing intellectuals have more frequently been inspired by his ideas. Existentialism and postmodernism as well as attendant attacks on colonialism, atomic weapons, ecological ruin and universal notions of morality are all based on his critique of the Western cultural tradition and reason.
Richard Wolin, the author of several books on Heidegger and a close reader of the Faye book, said he is not convinced Heidegger’s thought is as thoroughly tainted by Nazism as Mr. Faye argues. Nonetheless he recognizes how far Heidegger’s ideas have spilled into the larger culture.
“I’m not by any means dismissing any of these fields because of Heidegger’s influence,” he wrote in an e-mail message referring to postmodernism’s influence across the academy. “I’m merely saying that we should know more about the ideological residues and connotations of a thinker like Heidegger before we accept his discourse ready-made or naïvely.”
Although the English text published by Yale University Press won’t be out in the United States for a few weeks, it is already making waves, as signaled by an essay in The Chronicle Review, the opinion and ideas journal of The Chronicle of Higher Education. In an essay titled “Heil Heidegger!” Carlin Romano, a critic for The Review, called Heidegger a “Black Forest babbler” and fraud who was “overrated in his prime” and “bizarrely venerated by acolytes even now.”
Few people have read the book, but the article has generated more than 150 online comments from vehement advocates and detractors, more than any other piece The Review has printed this year, said Liz McMillen, the editor. Others joined the fray.
Ron Rosenbaum, the author of “Explaining Hitler,” even extended the argument to the German Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, a former student and lover of Heidegger’s. Citing a recent essay by the historian Bernard Wasserstein, Mr. Rosenbaum wrote in Slate.com that Arendt’s thinking about the Holocaust and her famous formulation, “the banality of evil,” were contaminated by Heidegger and other anti-Semitic writings.
Commentators heatedly rejected the notion that significant ideas could not be distilled from vile ones. Writing for The New Republic’s Web site, tnr.com, Damon Linker declared it was “absurd” to “implicate Heidegger’s entire philosophical corpus.
He and others echoed the views of the influential American philosopher Richard Rorty, who once wrote in The New York Times, “You cannot read most of the important philosophers of recent times without taking Heidegger’s thought into account.” Mr. Rorty added, however, that “the smell of smoke from the crematories” will “linger on their pages.”
In Mr. Faye’s eyes Heidegger’s philosophy cannot be separated from his politics in the way, say, T.S. Eliot’s poetic skills or D. W. Griffith’s cinematic technique might be appraised independently of his own beliefs. While he doesn’t dispute Heidegger’s place in the intellectual pantheon, Mr. Faye reviews his unpublished lectures and concludes his philosophy was based on the same ideas as National Socialism.
Without understanding the soil in which Heidegger’s philosophy is rooted, Mr. Faye argues, people may not realize that his ideas can grow in troubling directions. Heidegger’s dictum to be authentic and free oneself from conventional restraints, for example, can lead to a rejection of morality. The denunciation of reason and soulless modernism can devolve into crude anti-intellectualism and the glorification of “blood and soil.”
Passions about Heidegger have simmered for years. He joined the Nazi party in 1933 when he became rector of Freiburg University and oversaw the dismissal of all Jewish professors. After the war Heidegger was banned by a de-Nazification tribunal from teaching. In the 1950s Arendt re-established ties with him and labored to revive his reputation.
Heidegger was a critic of modern technological society and of the Western philosophical tradition that gave rise to it. He argued that we must overcome this tradition and rethink the very nature of human existence or being.
His prose is so dense that some scholars have said it could be interpreted to mean anything, while others have dismissed it altogether as gibberish. He is nonetheless widely considered to be one of the century’s greatest and most influential thinkers.
Theologians have used his critique of reason to explain the leap of faith; architects have been inspired by his rejection of conventional rules to introduce a buffet of new styles, materials and shapes to building design. His criticism of mechanistic technology has attracted environmentalists and planners.
A verbal brawl over Heidegger’s theories should not be surprising, though. After all, the classic American position on how liberal societies should treat dangerous ideas is with more discussion.
That is precisely what Mr. Faye says he wants. In his view teaching Heidegger’s ideas without disclosing his deep Nazi sympathies is like showing a child a brilliant fireworks display without warning that an ignited rocket can also blow up in someone’s face.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Saturday, November 7, 2009
several bioethics stories
British mother asks court to turn off her infant's machine
Nov 07, 2009
"Amicably separated" parents in Britain are at loggerheads over whether to let their disabled 13-month-old son die. RB, as the boy is called to protect the family's privacy, has congenital myasthenia syndrome, a rare neuromuscular condition that prevents him from breathing on his own and severely restricts his power to move his limbs. The British health service has applied to the High Court in London to allow life-saving care to be withdrawn.
His doctor, who cannot be named, has described the child as at the "most severe end" of physical disability. He lacks the ability to cough or swallow and must be moved every two hours to prevent pressure sores. The mother believes that her child will be better off dead. But the father contends that he should have a tracheotomy so that he can be cared for at home. Unlike many children with severe developmental disorders, RB may have normal intelligence. The father contends that he can see, hear, feel, and recognise his parents and deserves to live.
Although most of the media presented a very dark picture of RB's future, the Daily Mail published an open letter from the mother of a 10-year-old with a similar condition who went on to have a tracheotomy. He goes to school in a wheelchair and is a popular and well-loved child. "Today I look at my gorgeous, funny, cheeky little boy and I am endlessly grateful we gave him a chance to live," writes Niki Shisler. She says that doctors are normally cautious and pessimistic and speculates that they may be too concerned about the cost of care. -- BMJ, Nov 4
Aborted foetus cells used to make beauty cream
Nov 07, 2009
A San Francisco cosmetics company, Neocutis, has admitted that it used cells from an aborted male foetus as an ingredient in a beauty cream. The Swiss product is manufactured from patented processed skin proteins (PSP), and is used for conditions such as psoriasis and eczema, and, unsurprisingly, ageing. It is controversial because the proteins were obtained from a postage stamp-sized rectangle of skin taken from a terminated 14-week old male foetus in Switzerland.
Anti-abortion groups were particularly scandalised by the company's brazenness in defending the use of aborted tissue in beauty creams. Neocutis contends that harvesting the skin cells was responsible and ethical. "The small skin donation" taken to develop this cosmetic treatment "originated from a single terminated pregnancy that could not survive to term and that was deemed medically necessary by the attending physicians." The company compared this use of foetal tissue to the 1954 Nobel Prize, which was awarded to "researchers who utilized fetal kidney cells to develop the polio vaccine."
The PSP is used in Neocutis bio-restorative skin cream, Journée bio-restorative day cream, Lumière bio-restorative eye cream and Bio-gel bio-restorative hydrogel. The Neocutis website says that "Through years of research, physicians [have] discovered fetal skin has a unique ability to heal wounds without scarring."
The moral status of foetal material is widely disputed. For some, as an entry in the American Journal of Bioethics Blog suggests, "foetal proteins in a face cream aren't any different from animal or plant protein because for them the moral status of the aborted foetus doesn't have the moral status to give one concern if consent to both abortion and research took place."
On the other hand, the Vatican discussed the use of "biological material of illicit origin" in its recent statement on bioethics, Dignitas Personae. This insisted that "The corpses of human embryos and fetuses, whether they have been deliberately aborted or not, must be respected just as the remains of other human beings." ~ Washington Times, Nov 3,
My genes made me do it, says Italian murderer
Nov 07, 2009
An Italian of Algerian descent who stabbed a man to death in 2007 has had his sentence reduced because he has a gene which predisposes him to violence. Abdelmalek Bayout originally received a relatively mild sentence of 9 years and 2 months because he had a psychiatric illness. But his lawyer succeeded in knocking another year off by pointing out that he had gene variants linked to aggression, notably the gene encoding the neurotransmitter-metabolizing enzyme monoamine oxidase A (MAOA). A molecular neuroscientist and a cognitive neuroscientist testified that this would make him more prone to violence when provoked.
This is not the first time that MAOA has been invoked as a defence in criminal law. In the last 5 years, it has come up more than 200 times in US trials, according to Nita Farahany, of Vanderbilt University. She specialises in the ethical and legal perspectives on neuroscience and is sceptical of the "my genes made me do it" defence. "The point is that behavioural genetics is not there yet, we cannot explain individual behaviour, only large population statistics," she told Nature News.
Genetic determinism is far from being a dogma amongst geneticists. "90% of all murders are committed by people with a Y chromosome -- males. Should we always give males a shorter sentence?" says Steve Jones, of University College London. "I have low MAOA activity but I don't go around attacking people." -- Nature News, Oct 30
Genetic tests used to prove nationality in UK
Nov 07, 2009
British immigration officials want to use genetic tests to determine the nationality of asylum seekers, a move which scientists have criticised as "fundamentally flawed science". "Genes are not aware of national borders," said Sir Alec Jeffreys, a geneticist at the University of Leicester. "Nationality is a legal concept, and it's got nothing to do with genetics at all."
And bioethicist John Harris, of Manchester University, commented: "Genetic testing may be able to tell you where somebody's ancestors started out, but it doesn't tell you where they're from. It won't give them anything worth knowing, and it's very likely that what it will give them is misleading."
The United Kingdom Border Agency launched a pilot project in September because it feels that many African asylum seekers are claiming that they have come from a dangerous and war-torn country like Somalia or Sudan rather than a relatively peaceful place like Kenya. The refugees are asked to give a voluntary cheek swab or hair or nail sample which the Agency says yields valuable, if not conclusive, evidence about their country of origin. So far the tests are only being used on people who claim to come from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Uganda and Sudan.
According to AP, the agency originally planned to use the tests as definitive proof of nationality, but retreated after scientists protested. Now the agency declares that they will only be used in combination with other ways of determining a refugee's nationality, such as language analysis and interviews. ~ AP, Nov 6
British IVF clinic makes worst mistake possible, says industry watchdog
Nov 07, 2009
A serious error in a British fertility clinic's screening processes has led to concerns about the safety of IVF procedures. The London Women's Clinic (LWC) was found this week to have produced a large quantity of embryos using unscreened sperm. The sperm had a serious chromosomal abnormality which could be passed on to any of the unborn children, the Independent newspaper found. The mistake led to a miscarriage for at least one of the couples to whom these embryos were donated. Twenty-two other embryos resulting from the sperm were destroyed.
The incident could spark more investigation into the practices of British IVF clinics and the industry's current regulatory system. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the UK's fertility industry watchdog, has stated that it will name and shame similar errors in future. The LWC's mistake has been described as the worst possible for a fertility clinic.
Current HFEA figures reveal that there have been 182 "incidents" in British fertility clinics in 2008, eight of them "serious". But lawyers are sceptical of these figures and say that the actual numbers could be far higher. A number of affected couples are initiating legal proceedings.
The LWC was pulled up earlier this year in an HFEA inspection, after the required number of "witnessing stages" crucial to correct screening procedures, was not carried out. However, the clinic was found still producing embryos using unscreened sperm in June, according to some prospective parents.
The couple later demanded compensation from the LWC. "It made us so aware that IVF is a business and it all comes down to money," the couple told the Independent. They were eventually remunerated; the LWC sent them abroad for fertility treatment; and they are now expecting a child. ~Independent (UK), Nov 1
Oklahoma abortion reporting law "misrepresented"
Nov 07, 2009
A new law affecting patient privacy has become the centre of political controversy in Oklahoma. As reported last week in BioEdge, abortion advocates complained that women could easily be identified using the information gained from a new questionnaire. But the state chairman of Oklahomans For Life, Tony Lauinger, says that this misrepresents the new abortion-reporting law.
He says that new law actually repeals the existing law's requirement for identifiable residential information. The legislation reads: "Nothing in the Individual Abortion Form shall contain the name, address, or information specifically identifying any patient." However, the form is highly comprehensive. Doctors are required to tick about 37 boxes, many of which are comprised of several (in one instance around 40) sub-questions about the patient's reasons for abortion, number and nature of past abortions, method of payment, as well as the mother's race, age, marital status and other details. The new legislation also requires information about abortion complications.
Lauinger points out that the abortion industry, particularly the Guttmacher Institute (formerly the research arm of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America) already collects and publishes demographic information through annual surveys.
Medical privacy is a major concern in the age of the internet. As the amount of publicly available information grows, medical information can be increasingly matched to demographic data. Latanya Sweeney, of Harvard's Center for Research on Computation and Society, says that "policies on data sharing are not very good, and the result is that data tend to flow around and get linked to other data." ~ BioEdge, Oct 30 , National Right to Life Committee Oct 21, Harvard Magazine Sept-Oct 2009
New suicide drug available next year, says Nitschke
Nov 07, 2009
A "peaceful pill" for people who want to commit suicide will be made available by mail order in 2010. The pill is a stable solid form of the barbiturate Nembutal. Developed by the euthanasia group Exit International, it is designed to withstand transport and can be stored for up to 50 years. Customers will only have to mix it with water. An activation kit with the chemicals for reconstitution and a test kit to check the strength of the resulting product are nearly finished so that the pill can be distributed.
Dr Philip Nitschke, a leading right-to-die advocate and director of Exit International, said "Exit believes that all seniors of sound mind should have the option of a peaceful death at the time of their choosing should this be their wish - this Exit Pill will go some way to ensuring this." Nitschke is set to hold instructional suicide talks in San Francisco this Sunday. ~ Assisted-Suicide Blog Oct 30, CBC News Nov 4
Next year, says Geron, embryonic stem cell trials will begin. We hope
Nov 07, 2009
One of the most convincing advocates of human embryonic stem cell research, quadriplegic actor Christopher Reeves, died without seeing any substantial progress towards a cure for spinal cord injury. However, he was buoyed up by the hope that hESC research at Geron Corporation might help him walk again. Geron has announced many times that it would soon start human hESC trials -- but so far no trials have begun. The latest announcement came last week when it announced that the trials would begin next year. Its share price rose 4.2% at the news.
Dr David Prentice, of the Family Research Council, a critic of embryo research, has been logging Geron's announcements since 2002 and found that trials were going to begin "next year" every year since 2004. He argues that "the obsession with embryonic stem cells has obscured the real hope for patients-adult stem cells. Peer-reviewed evidence of adult stem cell success for spinal cord injury patients has already been published by groups in Portugal, in Australia, in Ecuador,and in Brazil". The trials with embryonic cells have usually been delayed over safety concerns, as they could cause tumours. --Forbes, Oct 30
Nov 07, 2009
"Amicably separated" parents in Britain are at loggerheads over whether to let their disabled 13-month-old son die. RB, as the boy is called to protect the family's privacy, has congenital myasthenia syndrome, a rare neuromuscular condition that prevents him from breathing on his own and severely restricts his power to move his limbs. The British health service has applied to the High Court in London to allow life-saving care to be withdrawn.
His doctor, who cannot be named, has described the child as at the "most severe end" of physical disability. He lacks the ability to cough or swallow and must be moved every two hours to prevent pressure sores. The mother believes that her child will be better off dead. But the father contends that he should have a tracheotomy so that he can be cared for at home. Unlike many children with severe developmental disorders, RB may have normal intelligence. The father contends that he can see, hear, feel, and recognise his parents and deserves to live.
Although most of the media presented a very dark picture of RB's future, the Daily Mail published an open letter from the mother of a 10-year-old with a similar condition who went on to have a tracheotomy. He goes to school in a wheelchair and is a popular and well-loved child. "Today I look at my gorgeous, funny, cheeky little boy and I am endlessly grateful we gave him a chance to live," writes Niki Shisler. She says that doctors are normally cautious and pessimistic and speculates that they may be too concerned about the cost of care. -- BMJ, Nov 4
Aborted foetus cells used to make beauty cream
Nov 07, 2009
A San Francisco cosmetics company, Neocutis, has admitted that it used cells from an aborted male foetus as an ingredient in a beauty cream. The Swiss product is manufactured from patented processed skin proteins (PSP), and is used for conditions such as psoriasis and eczema, and, unsurprisingly, ageing. It is controversial because the proteins were obtained from a postage stamp-sized rectangle of skin taken from a terminated 14-week old male foetus in Switzerland.
Anti-abortion groups were particularly scandalised by the company's brazenness in defending the use of aborted tissue in beauty creams. Neocutis contends that harvesting the skin cells was responsible and ethical. "The small skin donation" taken to develop this cosmetic treatment "originated from a single terminated pregnancy that could not survive to term and that was deemed medically necessary by the attending physicians." The company compared this use of foetal tissue to the 1954 Nobel Prize, which was awarded to "researchers who utilized fetal kidney cells to develop the polio vaccine."
The PSP is used in Neocutis bio-restorative skin cream, Journée bio-restorative day cream, Lumière bio-restorative eye cream and Bio-gel bio-restorative hydrogel. The Neocutis website says that "Through years of research, physicians [have] discovered fetal skin has a unique ability to heal wounds without scarring."
The moral status of foetal material is widely disputed. For some, as an entry in the American Journal of Bioethics Blog suggests, "foetal proteins in a face cream aren't any different from animal or plant protein because for them the moral status of the aborted foetus doesn't have the moral status to give one concern if consent to both abortion and research took place."
On the other hand, the Vatican discussed the use of "biological material of illicit origin" in its recent statement on bioethics, Dignitas Personae. This insisted that "The corpses of human embryos and fetuses, whether they have been deliberately aborted or not, must be respected just as the remains of other human beings." ~ Washington Times, Nov 3,
My genes made me do it, says Italian murderer
Nov 07, 2009
An Italian of Algerian descent who stabbed a man to death in 2007 has had his sentence reduced because he has a gene which predisposes him to violence. Abdelmalek Bayout originally received a relatively mild sentence of 9 years and 2 months because he had a psychiatric illness. But his lawyer succeeded in knocking another year off by pointing out that he had gene variants linked to aggression, notably the gene encoding the neurotransmitter-metabolizing enzyme monoamine oxidase A (MAOA). A molecular neuroscientist and a cognitive neuroscientist testified that this would make him more prone to violence when provoked.
This is not the first time that MAOA has been invoked as a defence in criminal law. In the last 5 years, it has come up more than 200 times in US trials, according to Nita Farahany, of Vanderbilt University. She specialises in the ethical and legal perspectives on neuroscience and is sceptical of the "my genes made me do it" defence. "The point is that behavioural genetics is not there yet, we cannot explain individual behaviour, only large population statistics," she told Nature News.
Genetic determinism is far from being a dogma amongst geneticists. "90% of all murders are committed by people with a Y chromosome -- males. Should we always give males a shorter sentence?" says Steve Jones, of University College London. "I have low MAOA activity but I don't go around attacking people." -- Nature News, Oct 30
Genetic tests used to prove nationality in UK
Nov 07, 2009
British immigration officials want to use genetic tests to determine the nationality of asylum seekers, a move which scientists have criticised as "fundamentally flawed science". "Genes are not aware of national borders," said Sir Alec Jeffreys, a geneticist at the University of Leicester. "Nationality is a legal concept, and it's got nothing to do with genetics at all."
And bioethicist John Harris, of Manchester University, commented: "Genetic testing may be able to tell you where somebody's ancestors started out, but it doesn't tell you where they're from. It won't give them anything worth knowing, and it's very likely that what it will give them is misleading."
The United Kingdom Border Agency launched a pilot project in September because it feels that many African asylum seekers are claiming that they have come from a dangerous and war-torn country like Somalia or Sudan rather than a relatively peaceful place like Kenya. The refugees are asked to give a voluntary cheek swab or hair or nail sample which the Agency says yields valuable, if not conclusive, evidence about their country of origin. So far the tests are only being used on people who claim to come from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Uganda and Sudan.
According to AP, the agency originally planned to use the tests as definitive proof of nationality, but retreated after scientists protested. Now the agency declares that they will only be used in combination with other ways of determining a refugee's nationality, such as language analysis and interviews. ~ AP, Nov 6
British IVF clinic makes worst mistake possible, says industry watchdog
Nov 07, 2009
A serious error in a British fertility clinic's screening processes has led to concerns about the safety of IVF procedures. The London Women's Clinic (LWC) was found this week to have produced a large quantity of embryos using unscreened sperm. The sperm had a serious chromosomal abnormality which could be passed on to any of the unborn children, the Independent newspaper found. The mistake led to a miscarriage for at least one of the couples to whom these embryos were donated. Twenty-two other embryos resulting from the sperm were destroyed.
The incident could spark more investigation into the practices of British IVF clinics and the industry's current regulatory system. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the UK's fertility industry watchdog, has stated that it will name and shame similar errors in future. The LWC's mistake has been described as the worst possible for a fertility clinic.
Current HFEA figures reveal that there have been 182 "incidents" in British fertility clinics in 2008, eight of them "serious". But lawyers are sceptical of these figures and say that the actual numbers could be far higher. A number of affected couples are initiating legal proceedings.
The LWC was pulled up earlier this year in an HFEA inspection, after the required number of "witnessing stages" crucial to correct screening procedures, was not carried out. However, the clinic was found still producing embryos using unscreened sperm in June, according to some prospective parents.
The couple later demanded compensation from the LWC. "It made us so aware that IVF is a business and it all comes down to money," the couple told the Independent. They were eventually remunerated; the LWC sent them abroad for fertility treatment; and they are now expecting a child. ~Independent (UK), Nov 1
Oklahoma abortion reporting law "misrepresented"
Nov 07, 2009
A new law affecting patient privacy has become the centre of political controversy in Oklahoma. As reported last week in BioEdge, abortion advocates complained that women could easily be identified using the information gained from a new questionnaire. But the state chairman of Oklahomans For Life, Tony Lauinger, says that this misrepresents the new abortion-reporting law.
He says that new law actually repeals the existing law's requirement for identifiable residential information. The legislation reads: "Nothing in the Individual Abortion Form shall contain the name, address, or information specifically identifying any patient." However, the form is highly comprehensive. Doctors are required to tick about 37 boxes, many of which are comprised of several (in one instance around 40) sub-questions about the patient's reasons for abortion, number and nature of past abortions, method of payment, as well as the mother's race, age, marital status and other details. The new legislation also requires information about abortion complications.
Lauinger points out that the abortion industry, particularly the Guttmacher Institute (formerly the research arm of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America) already collects and publishes demographic information through annual surveys.
Medical privacy is a major concern in the age of the internet. As the amount of publicly available information grows, medical information can be increasingly matched to demographic data. Latanya Sweeney, of Harvard's Center for Research on Computation and Society, says that "policies on data sharing are not very good, and the result is that data tend to flow around and get linked to other data." ~ BioEdge, Oct 30 , National Right to Life Committee Oct 21, Harvard Magazine Sept-Oct 2009
New suicide drug available next year, says Nitschke
Nov 07, 2009
A "peaceful pill" for people who want to commit suicide will be made available by mail order in 2010. The pill is a stable solid form of the barbiturate Nembutal. Developed by the euthanasia group Exit International, it is designed to withstand transport and can be stored for up to 50 years. Customers will only have to mix it with water. An activation kit with the chemicals for reconstitution and a test kit to check the strength of the resulting product are nearly finished so that the pill can be distributed.
Dr Philip Nitschke, a leading right-to-die advocate and director of Exit International, said "Exit believes that all seniors of sound mind should have the option of a peaceful death at the time of their choosing should this be their wish - this Exit Pill will go some way to ensuring this." Nitschke is set to hold instructional suicide talks in San Francisco this Sunday. ~ Assisted-Suicide Blog Oct 30, CBC News Nov 4
Next year, says Geron, embryonic stem cell trials will begin. We hope
Nov 07, 2009
One of the most convincing advocates of human embryonic stem cell research, quadriplegic actor Christopher Reeves, died without seeing any substantial progress towards a cure for spinal cord injury. However, he was buoyed up by the hope that hESC research at Geron Corporation might help him walk again. Geron has announced many times that it would soon start human hESC trials -- but so far no trials have begun. The latest announcement came last week when it announced that the trials would begin next year. Its share price rose 4.2% at the news.
Dr David Prentice, of the Family Research Council, a critic of embryo research, has been logging Geron's announcements since 2002 and found that trials were going to begin "next year" every year since 2004. He argues that "the obsession with embryonic stem cells has obscured the real hope for patients-adult stem cells. Peer-reviewed evidence of adult stem cell success for spinal cord injury patients has already been published by groups in Portugal, in Australia, in Ecuador,and in Brazil". The trials with embryonic cells have usually been delayed over safety concerns, as they could cause tumours. --Forbes, Oct 30
Friday, November 6, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
H1N1 Vaccine Safety
Read this article and watch this youtube video, and then respond to the following prompt:
Considering the widespread reach and severity of the H1N1 pandemic, vaccinations have been rushed through the manufacturing process to the public by the government. The first round of people are about to receive vaccines right now, and it should be available to the general public by the end of this month. Considering that the potential side effects are unknown in scope and severity, is it best for the government to act deontologically and release an untested vaccination? Or is it in the best for the government to act from the standpoint of utilitarianism and not side-step all health and safety precautions pertaining to this vaccine?
(Submitted by Nikhil Shah)
Considering the widespread reach and severity of the H1N1 pandemic, vaccinations have been rushed through the manufacturing process to the public by the government. The first round of people are about to receive vaccines right now, and it should be available to the general public by the end of this month. Considering that the potential side effects are unknown in scope and severity, is it best for the government to act deontologically and release an untested vaccination? Or is it in the best for the government to act from the standpoint of utilitarianism and not side-step all health and safety precautions pertaining to this vaccine?
(Submitted by Nikhil Shah)
Friday, October 30, 2009
Clinical Studies and Doctors
After participating in and critiquing the NIH training, this article is an interesting one.
After reading, do you think it is morally right or wrong for doctors to bend the rules of clinical studies in order to help their patients? Why or why not?
(Submitted by Caren Steinway)
After reading, do you think it is morally right or wrong for doctors to bend the rules of clinical studies in order to help their patients? Why or why not?
(Submitted by Caren Steinway)
Monday, October 26, 2009
Direct to Consumer Fertility Tests
Warning on self-test fertility kits
20 October 2009
By Rebecca Robey
Appeared in BioNews 531
Women have been warned against relying on 'over-the-counter' home fertility tests to gauge whether they can afford to delay starting a family. Scientists and doctors cautioned that such tests may provide false hope, encouraging women that they have several years of fertility left without looking at all the important factors.
Women are born with their complete supply of eggs for their lifetime contained within their ovaries. Over time this supply steadily diminishes, eventually leading to the menopause when the supply is exhausted. Home fertility tests, or 'ovarian reserve' tests, cost as little as £25 to £180 and use a blood or urine sample to estimate the number of eggs a woman has left by measuring her levels of a hormone called follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH). As the number of eggs falls, the level of FSH in the woman's blood rises, and so the information can be used to predict how many child-bearing years a woman might have left.
However, fertility experts are concerned as they feel these tests do not offer a complete picture. Such tests do not give any information about the quality of the eggs or other factors that may be crucial for fertility. Stuart Lavery, a consultant gynaecologist at the IVF (in vitro fertilisation) unit at Hammersmith hospital, London, explained: 'The concern with over-the-counter tests is that although they are helpful, because they focus the mind on fertility, they can also give false reassurance. If the fallopian tubes are blocked or the partner doesn't have fabulous sperm, it may be giving you false hope'.
These concerns were raised after research presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine's annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, US, provided evidence that the same tests may be useful indicators of the likelihood of successful IVF when used in a clinical setting. A study at the Advanced Fertility Centre of Chicago used FSH tests in conjunction with ultrasound examinations that also estimate the size of a woman's egg reserve to predict the fertility of 1,380 women under the age of 35 who were undergoing IVF. IVF was successful in 59 per cent of women with normal results in both tests compared to 35 per cent of women with abnormal FSH levels and just 9 per cent of women who had abnormal results in both tests.
Ovarian reserve tests are routinely used in women over 35 years old considering IVF in the UK, and the new study indicates it may also be useful for younger women to help them decide whether to pursue the often costly procedure. Dr Todd Deutch, managing director of the Advanced Fertility Centre of Chicago, emphasised that this did not mean the tests were good indicators for women trying to conceive naturally. He said: 'I think relying on these tests to gauge fertility generally... is not a good extrapolation of this data. These tests don't tell the whole story'.
RELATED ARTICLES FROM THE BIONEWS ARCHIVE
Increase in UK women over 40 seeking fertility treatment
11 June 2007 - by Danielle Hamm
Recent figures released by the UK fertility regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), show a tenfold plus increase in women over 40 seeking fertility treatment using their own eggs. The number of women over 40 seeking fertility treatment using donated eggs is not know, but...[Read More]
Over-the-counter fertility test to go on sale
05 January 2006 - by BioNews
Scientists at the UK's Birmingham University have developed a fertility test kit that can be bought over-the-counter at chemists and used by couples at home. The Fertell test, which will cost about £80, takes less than an hour to work and is said to give accurate results in nearly all...[Read More]
DIY fertility test
09 July 2001 - by BioNews
Doctors and scientists from the University of Birmingham and Genosis, a medical devices company in the UK, have developed a 'fertility test kit' that can be used - both by men and women - at home. The kit is called 'Fertell' and is designed to measure fertility levels in couples trying to...[Read More]
Test measures ticking biological clock
12 July 1999 - by BioNews
A fertility test that measures the viability of eggs in a woman's ovaries may soon give women the ability to tell the time on the proverbial biological clock. The test is the result of six years of work by Oxford scientists who discovered that levels of the hormone, inhibin B...[Read More]
SOURCES & REFERENCES
Doctors warn against over-the-counter fertility tests for family planning
The Guardian | 20 October 2009
High Street fertility tests could give wrong results, experts warn
The Daily Telegraph | 20 October 2009
Home tests on biological clock 'could give women false hope'
The Times | 20 October 2009
Why home fertility tests fail to deliver
The Daily Mail | 20 October 2009
20 October 2009
By Rebecca Robey
Appeared in BioNews 531
Women have been warned against relying on 'over-the-counter' home fertility tests to gauge whether they can afford to delay starting a family. Scientists and doctors cautioned that such tests may provide false hope, encouraging women that they have several years of fertility left without looking at all the important factors.
Women are born with their complete supply of eggs for their lifetime contained within their ovaries. Over time this supply steadily diminishes, eventually leading to the menopause when the supply is exhausted. Home fertility tests, or 'ovarian reserve' tests, cost as little as £25 to £180 and use a blood or urine sample to estimate the number of eggs a woman has left by measuring her levels of a hormone called follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH). As the number of eggs falls, the level of FSH in the woman's blood rises, and so the information can be used to predict how many child-bearing years a woman might have left.
However, fertility experts are concerned as they feel these tests do not offer a complete picture. Such tests do not give any information about the quality of the eggs or other factors that may be crucial for fertility. Stuart Lavery, a consultant gynaecologist at the IVF (in vitro fertilisation) unit at Hammersmith hospital, London, explained: 'The concern with over-the-counter tests is that although they are helpful, because they focus the mind on fertility, they can also give false reassurance. If the fallopian tubes are blocked or the partner doesn't have fabulous sperm, it may be giving you false hope'.
These concerns were raised after research presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine's annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, US, provided evidence that the same tests may be useful indicators of the likelihood of successful IVF when used in a clinical setting. A study at the Advanced Fertility Centre of Chicago used FSH tests in conjunction with ultrasound examinations that also estimate the size of a woman's egg reserve to predict the fertility of 1,380 women under the age of 35 who were undergoing IVF. IVF was successful in 59 per cent of women with normal results in both tests compared to 35 per cent of women with abnormal FSH levels and just 9 per cent of women who had abnormal results in both tests.
Ovarian reserve tests are routinely used in women over 35 years old considering IVF in the UK, and the new study indicates it may also be useful for younger women to help them decide whether to pursue the often costly procedure. Dr Todd Deutch, managing director of the Advanced Fertility Centre of Chicago, emphasised that this did not mean the tests were good indicators for women trying to conceive naturally. He said: 'I think relying on these tests to gauge fertility generally... is not a good extrapolation of this data. These tests don't tell the whole story'.
RELATED ARTICLES FROM THE BIONEWS ARCHIVE
Increase in UK women over 40 seeking fertility treatment
11 June 2007 - by Danielle Hamm
Recent figures released by the UK fertility regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), show a tenfold plus increase in women over 40 seeking fertility treatment using their own eggs. The number of women over 40 seeking fertility treatment using donated eggs is not know, but...[Read More]
Over-the-counter fertility test to go on sale
05 January 2006 - by BioNews
Scientists at the UK's Birmingham University have developed a fertility test kit that can be bought over-the-counter at chemists and used by couples at home. The Fertell test, which will cost about £80, takes less than an hour to work and is said to give accurate results in nearly all...[Read More]
DIY fertility test
09 July 2001 - by BioNews
Doctors and scientists from the University of Birmingham and Genosis, a medical devices company in the UK, have developed a 'fertility test kit' that can be used - both by men and women - at home. The kit is called 'Fertell' and is designed to measure fertility levels in couples trying to...[Read More]
Test measures ticking biological clock
12 July 1999 - by BioNews
A fertility test that measures the viability of eggs in a woman's ovaries may soon give women the ability to tell the time on the proverbial biological clock. The test is the result of six years of work by Oxford scientists who discovered that levels of the hormone, inhibin B...[Read More]
SOURCES & REFERENCES
Doctors warn against over-the-counter fertility tests for family planning
The Guardian | 20 October 2009
High Street fertility tests could give wrong results, experts warn
The Daily Telegraph | 20 October 2009
Home tests on biological clock 'could give women false hope'
The Times | 20 October 2009
Why home fertility tests fail to deliver
The Daily Mail | 20 October 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
choosing who should survive in a swine flu pandemic
Worst Case: Choosing Who Survives in a Flu Epidemic
James Estrin/The New York Times
Published: October 24, 2009
New York state health officials recently laid out this wrenching scenario for a small group of medical professionals from New York-Presbyterian Hospital: A 32-year-old man with cystic fibrosis is rushed to the hospital with appendicitis in the midst of a worsening pandemic caused by the H1N1 flu virus, which has mutated into a more deadly form. The man is awaiting a lung transplant and brought with him the mechanical ventilator that helps him breathe.
New York’s governor has declared a state of emergency and hospitals are following the state’s pandemic ventilator allocation plan — actual guidelines drafted in 2007 that are now being revisited. The plan aims to direct ventilators to those with the best chances of survival in a severe, 1918-like flu pandemic where tens of thousands develop life-threatening pneumonia.
Because the man’s end-stage lung disease caused by his cystic fibrosis is among a list of medical conditions associated with high mortality, the guidelines would bar the man from using a ventilator in a hospital, even though he is, unlike many with his illness, stable, in good condition, and not close to death. If the hospital admits him, the guidelines call for the machine that keeps him alive to be given to someone else.
Would doctors and nurses follow such rules? Should they?
In recent years, officials in a host of states and localities, as well as the federal Veterans Health Administration, have been quietly addressing one of medicine’s most troubling questions: Who should get a chance to survive when the number of severely ill people far exceeds the resources needed to treat them all?
The draft plans vary. In some states, patients with Do Not Resuscitate orders, the elderly, those requiring dialysis, or those with severe neurological impairment would be refused ventilators, or admission to hospitals. Utah divides epidemics into phases. Initially, hospitals would apply triage rules to residents of mental institutions, nursing homes, prisons and facilities for the “handicapped.” If an epidemic worsened, the rules would apply to the general population.
Federal officials say the possibility that America’s already crowded intensive care units would be overwhelmed in the coming weeks by flu patients is small but they remain vigilant.
The triage plans have attracted little publicity. New York, for example, released its draft guidelines in 2007, offered a 45-day comment period, and has made no changes since. The Health Department made 90 pages of public comments public this week only after receiving a request under the state’s public records laws.
Mary Buckley-Davis, a respiratory therapist with 30 years experience, wrote to officials in 2007 that “there will be rioting in the streets” if hospitals begin disconnecting ventilators. “There won’t be enough public relations spin or appropriate media coverage in the world” to calm the family of a patient “terminally weaned” from a ventilator, she said.
State and federal officials defend formal rationing as the last in a series of steps that would be taken to stretch scarce resources and provide the best outcome for the public. They say it is better to plan for such decisions than leave them to besieged health workers battling a crisis.
“You change your perspective from thinking about the individual patient to thinking about the community of patients,” said Rear Adm. Ann Knebel of the Department of Health and Human Services.
But some health professionals question whether the draft guidelines are fair, effective, ethical, and even remotely feasible.
Most existing triage plans were designed for handling mass casualties. They sort injured victims into priority categories based on the urgency of their medical needs and their potential for survival given available resources. Much of the controversy over the state plans focuses on two additional features.
These are “exclusion criteria,” which bar certain categories of patients from standard hospital treatments in a severe health disaster, and “minimum qualifications for survival,” which limit the resources used for each patient. Once that limit is reached, patients who are not improving would be removed from essential treatment in favor of those with better chances.
A version of these concepts was outlined in a post-9/11 medical journal article that suggested ways to handle victims of a large-scale bioterrorist event. The author, Dr. Frederick Burkle Jr., said he based his ideas in part on his experiences as a triage officer in Vietnam and the gulf war and on a cold war-era British plan for coping with a nuclear strike. Dr. Burkle said that during the gulf war he once instructed surgeons to halt an operation and work on another patient who was more likely to survive. Surgeons later returned to the first patient.
Dr. Burkle’s ideas were key aspects of guidelines Ontario authorities drew up after SARS to plan for avian flu and other pandemics. This approach and one by a team of Minnesota doctors were modified by groups developing similar guidelines in the United States.
There were important distinctions. Dr. Burkle’s original paper did not anticipate withdrawing care from patients and stressed the need to reassess the level of supplies “sometimes on a daily or hourly basis” in a fluid effort to provide the best possible care.
Some states’ triage guidelines are rigid, with a single set of criteria intended to apply throughout the severe phase of a pandemic. That disturbs Dr. Burkle. “I have said to my wife, I think I developed a monster here,” he said.
Recent research highlights the problem of a one-size-fits-all approach to triage. Many state pandemic plans call for hospitals to remove patients from ventilators if they are not improving after two to five days. Studies show that people severely ill with H1N1 flu generally need a week to two weeks on ventilators to recover.
There is also controversy over what values and ethical principles should guide triage decisions, how to engage the public, and whether withdrawing life support in the hospital and withholding it at the hospital door are distinct.
Normally, removing viable patients from life support against their or their families’ will would be considered murder. The New York-Presbyterian Hospital employees who participated in the recent exercise said they would not comply unless given legal protection.
They also never figured out what to do with that hypothetical patient who had his own ventilator, said Dr. Kenneth Prager, a pulmonologist and ethicist. “The issue of removing patients from ventilators,” he said, “was so overwhelming that it precluded discussion of further case scenarios.”
James Estrin/The New York Times
Published: October 24, 2009
New York state health officials recently laid out this wrenching scenario for a small group of medical professionals from New York-Presbyterian Hospital: A 32-year-old man with cystic fibrosis is rushed to the hospital with appendicitis in the midst of a worsening pandemic caused by the H1N1 flu virus, which has mutated into a more deadly form. The man is awaiting a lung transplant and brought with him the mechanical ventilator that helps him breathe.
New York’s governor has declared a state of emergency and hospitals are following the state’s pandemic ventilator allocation plan — actual guidelines drafted in 2007 that are now being revisited. The plan aims to direct ventilators to those with the best chances of survival in a severe, 1918-like flu pandemic where tens of thousands develop life-threatening pneumonia.
Because the man’s end-stage lung disease caused by his cystic fibrosis is among a list of medical conditions associated with high mortality, the guidelines would bar the man from using a ventilator in a hospital, even though he is, unlike many with his illness, stable, in good condition, and not close to death. If the hospital admits him, the guidelines call for the machine that keeps him alive to be given to someone else.
Would doctors and nurses follow such rules? Should they?
In recent years, officials in a host of states and localities, as well as the federal Veterans Health Administration, have been quietly addressing one of medicine’s most troubling questions: Who should get a chance to survive when the number of severely ill people far exceeds the resources needed to treat them all?
The draft plans vary. In some states, patients with Do Not Resuscitate orders, the elderly, those requiring dialysis, or those with severe neurological impairment would be refused ventilators, or admission to hospitals. Utah divides epidemics into phases. Initially, hospitals would apply triage rules to residents of mental institutions, nursing homes, prisons and facilities for the “handicapped.” If an epidemic worsened, the rules would apply to the general population.
Federal officials say the possibility that America’s already crowded intensive care units would be overwhelmed in the coming weeks by flu patients is small but they remain vigilant.
The triage plans have attracted little publicity. New York, for example, released its draft guidelines in 2007, offered a 45-day comment period, and has made no changes since. The Health Department made 90 pages of public comments public this week only after receiving a request under the state’s public records laws.
Mary Buckley-Davis, a respiratory therapist with 30 years experience, wrote to officials in 2007 that “there will be rioting in the streets” if hospitals begin disconnecting ventilators. “There won’t be enough public relations spin or appropriate media coverage in the world” to calm the family of a patient “terminally weaned” from a ventilator, she said.
State and federal officials defend formal rationing as the last in a series of steps that would be taken to stretch scarce resources and provide the best outcome for the public. They say it is better to plan for such decisions than leave them to besieged health workers battling a crisis.
“You change your perspective from thinking about the individual patient to thinking about the community of patients,” said Rear Adm. Ann Knebel of the Department of Health and Human Services.
But some health professionals question whether the draft guidelines are fair, effective, ethical, and even remotely feasible.
Most existing triage plans were designed for handling mass casualties. They sort injured victims into priority categories based on the urgency of their medical needs and their potential for survival given available resources. Much of the controversy over the state plans focuses on two additional features.
These are “exclusion criteria,” which bar certain categories of patients from standard hospital treatments in a severe health disaster, and “minimum qualifications for survival,” which limit the resources used for each patient. Once that limit is reached, patients who are not improving would be removed from essential treatment in favor of those with better chances.
A version of these concepts was outlined in a post-9/11 medical journal article that suggested ways to handle victims of a large-scale bioterrorist event. The author, Dr. Frederick Burkle Jr., said he based his ideas in part on his experiences as a triage officer in Vietnam and the gulf war and on a cold war-era British plan for coping with a nuclear strike. Dr. Burkle said that during the gulf war he once instructed surgeons to halt an operation and work on another patient who was more likely to survive. Surgeons later returned to the first patient.
Dr. Burkle’s ideas were key aspects of guidelines Ontario authorities drew up after SARS to plan for avian flu and other pandemics. This approach and one by a team of Minnesota doctors were modified by groups developing similar guidelines in the United States.
There were important distinctions. Dr. Burkle’s original paper did not anticipate withdrawing care from patients and stressed the need to reassess the level of supplies “sometimes on a daily or hourly basis” in a fluid effort to provide the best possible care.
Some states’ triage guidelines are rigid, with a single set of criteria intended to apply throughout the severe phase of a pandemic. That disturbs Dr. Burkle. “I have said to my wife, I think I developed a monster here,” he said.
Recent research highlights the problem of a one-size-fits-all approach to triage. Many state pandemic plans call for hospitals to remove patients from ventilators if they are not improving after two to five days. Studies show that people severely ill with H1N1 flu generally need a week to two weeks on ventilators to recover.
There is also controversy over what values and ethical principles should guide triage decisions, how to engage the public, and whether withdrawing life support in the hospital and withholding it at the hospital door are distinct.
Normally, removing viable patients from life support against their or their families’ will would be considered murder. The New York-Presbyterian Hospital employees who participated in the recent exercise said they would not comply unless given legal protection.
They also never figured out what to do with that hypothetical patient who had his own ventilator, said Dr. Kenneth Prager, a pulmonologist and ethicist. “The issue of removing patients from ventilators,” he said, “was so overwhelming that it precluded discussion of further case scenarios.”
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