The Tebow ad, Continued…
So here it is, as it aired:
Not much controversial material there (viewers were told to visit Focus on the Family’s website for the full story, including Christian references and anti-abortion argument), but we’ve all heard plenty about the ad’s intent by this point.
But there’s more to debate here than the ad’s propriety - what about the validity of the argument? The argument being made is a version of the famous “Beethoven example” used by the pro-life community:
“About the terminating of pregnancy, I want your opinion. The father was syphilitic. The mother tuberculous. Of the four children born, the first was blind, the second died, the third was deaf and dumb, the fourth was also tuberculous. What would you have done?”
“I would have terminated the pregnancy.”
“Then you would have murdered Beethoven.”
Convincing, eh? Had Tebow’s mother made what many pro-choice advocates suggest is the “right decision,” we wouldn’t have her successful son Tim. Richard Dawkins rebuts this logic, reminding us that by the same reasoning, we should equally condemn each act of abstinence; after all, every decision NOT to have procreative sex deprives the world of a potential genius. Also, in order for Tim to exist, some 40 million rival sperm lost out in the race to an egg. One of those sperm could have grown up to cure cancer. Is Tim Tebow the man who prevented that cure? These thought experiments are quite interesting, and worth thinking about if we want to get our logic straight on abortion.
(That’s setting aside the factual inaccuracies of the example, as Beethoven was the eldest child, none of his siblings were blind, deaf, or dumb, and his father did not have syphilis).
-Colin
Vaccines and Autism
Bad science and good PR
Over the past few years, there has been a building movement against vaccinations in the U.S. on the grounds that they are either ineffective, harmful, or perhaps even part of an insidious government plot. This isn’t coming from the usual anti-science suspects, either - it’s largely coming from Hollywood: comedian Bill Maher has said he “would never get a vaccine,” and that he doesn’t trust the government, especially with his health. Maher believes that vaccines are a “Western” misunderstanding of health, and that a natural, healthy diet and lifestyle will ward off most maladies.
Actor Jim Carrey and former Playboy centerfold Jenny McCarthy are the most prominent among the anti-vaccine crowd, warning primarily of a link to autism. Autism rates have increased rapidly during the same period of time that vaccines have become widespread, they say. But the Carrey/McCarthy camp was dealt a serious blow last week when the British medical journal Lancet retracted a 1998 paper linking vaccines to autism by Dr. Andrew Wakefield.
Can government ban fast food?
After writing this week about the perfectionism-neutrality debate, I came across an interesting and related article in the Washington Post on a lawmaker that wants to prohibit Prince George’s from issuing new licenses to fast food restaurants in areas with high disease rates. Not surprisingly, opponents argue that what people eat is a matter of personal choice. But supporters claim that there are clear connections between poverty and fast food eating and between fast food and obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. The article cites a state study that found nearly 40% of Prince George’s county children under 11 were overweight and that most came from lower-income families. Indeed, one third of children in Prince George’s eat three or more fast food meals a week.
So, should government get involved in determining what food options are available? And if so, is it possible to make the case on a neutral basis?
Dealing with death
The New York Times has a nice update to an issue I discussed months ago - end of life decisions in health care and the angst that accompanies them. Official guidelines call on doctors to begin “the conversation” (about how a terminally ill patient would like to spend their final days) at about 1 year away from estimated death. But it seems that there are diverging opinions on the viability of these guidelines; this “conversation,” after all, is perhaps the most difficult a person will ever face and such emotionally taxing questions are sometimes as difficult for doctors to broach as they are for patients to digest.
One one hand, there’s our desire to remain hopeful as long as possible, if not to the end. Many patients - even when faced with dire forecasts - demand that doctors continue chemotherapy and other intensive (and expensive) treatments even when their effectiveness has worn off. They want to live like Sisyphus, knowledgeable of their unwinnable predicament yet committed to fighting ’till the end.
But of course, fighting costs money, time, and diverts resources away from others, and when patients request major surgeries and experimental treatments in the face of extremely low or impossible odds, utility seems to demand that they be overridden. Can we do so, however, without succumbing to the “death panel” argument? Is there something just inherently wrong about telling the terminally ill to give up?
The existentialist in us says that we can come to terms with our finality without falling into despair, but something tells me that doctors don’t read Camus in medical school.
-Colin
Lights, camera, health care reform?
Should the final round of health care negotiations be televised?
C-SPAN President Brian Lamb is asking to film the remaining health care negotiations. Is Lamb’s request reasonable, or would television cameras simply turn important negations into political theater?
Under normal circumstances, when there are substantial differences between versions of a bill in the House and Senate, some members of each chamber meet to resolve the differences in conference committee meetings that are open to the public. However, to prevent Republicans from using their formal powers to stall a formal conference committee meeting, Democrats will instead resort to a series of more informal private meetings and send the bill back and forth between the chambers until differences are resolved. Read more
Montana allows assisted suicide
Last Thursday, the Montana Supreme Court found that there is no law prohibiting patients from seeking physician-assisted suicide, making it the 3rd state to allow the practice (after Oregon and Washington). The Court focused not on finding a right to assisted suicide, but on failing to find a legal prohibition against it in Montana law. Assisted dying, they argued, can be seen as an extension of patient autonomy and personal responsibility for crucial, life and death decisions.
Two judges dissented, however. Here’s Justice Jim Rice:
Until the public policy is changed by the democratic process, it should be recognized and enforced by the courts. In my view, the court’s conclusion is without support, without clear reason, and without moral force.
This is a Scalia-esque argument for judicial restraint on difficult moral questions. But sometimes rhetoric about “judicial activism” acts as a smokescreen for smuggled-in moral assumptions. When speaking of basic “rights” (and liberals are often inclined to think that the right to die is among them), it’s convenient to use the language of established public policy when it’s in your favor and protest “overreaching activism” when the perceived rights are not currently recognized. Meanwhile, actual moral argument regarding the demands and limits of autonomy when it comes to end-of-life decisions is pushed aside.
But perhaps that’s a good thing - Justice Rice would likely suggest that we ought to hash the issues out in public, through the political process, and in this way morality is not swept under the rug for the ease of legalistic maneuvering. The spectre of Roe v. Wade haunts us still!
-Colin
Can the Senate pass permanant legislation?
The Independent Medicare Advisory board is making the rounds on the blogosphere. Reactions range from the hilarious to the sober, with the former category represented by the Weekly Standard (via Yglesias).
Democrats are protecting this rationing “death panel” from future change with a procedural hurdle. Could it be because bureaucratic rationing is one important way Democrats want to “bend the cost curve” and keep health care spending down?
The policy justification for the panel is to remove cost decisions from the political process, where they will be subject to strong lobbyist pressure. If costs are ever really going to go down on a per-procedure basis, such an independent voice is likely necessary. Controversially, there are provisions included that make it procedurally difficult or impossible to amend or repeal this provision.
But Megan McArdle at the Atlantic has an important process-oriented objection.
But process matters. What if your select commission runs amok? Or what if 80-90% of Americans simply hate it and don’t want it? It is neither practically nor ethically desirable to appoint a dictator. Nor is any man so wise that he should be able to enshrine his preference into unchangeable law for all time.
Luckily, a friend who has covered senate procedure in other contexts assures me that this probably will not work: as a law, it’s unconstitutional, and Senate rule changes require a 2/3rds majority that they are not going to get.
Although I doubt that Reid’s objective is a diabolical means of making his agenda permanent, I do think there are real dangers with senate rule changes like this; permanent legislation would remove all democratic accountability from the commission as well as hamstringing ability to redress unforeseen policy concerns. The risks run more towards slippery slope as opposed to present dangers of the provision at hand, but they exist all the same.
Indeed, the objections seem so obvious it’s really surprising that the language was included in the bill, critical as it may be. Maybe there is something to be said for the conspiracy theories asserting that the bill’s great length hides all sorts of diabolical provisions. (Probably not.)
-John
Image courtesy Wiki Commons
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