"I am the left, I mean "Progressives," hear me, hear me, hear me! (Just try not to hear me.)" This is my summary of the reviews of the "Center for American Progress" conference titled "Is there an ethicist in the House?" (PDF file).
The title is a quote in Nature from Arthur Leonard Caplan, PhD, the current Chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania:But the progressive group hopes to emulate the conservatives' success in influencing public policy. Conservative bioethicists have set up a network of think-tanks and journals that issue position papers, book media appearances and hold meetings with politicians.
Progressive bioethics has to talk about those who are left out.
These strategies have shaped the Republican response in debates over stem-cell research and the right-to-die case of Florida's Terri Schiavo. Caplan and others were outraged when Republican leaders fought to keep Schiavo on life support against her husband's wishes. 'Nothing could make clearer the difference between progressive and conservative bioethics,' says Caplan.
For more coverage, William Saletan has this on Slate
You can find links to the video and transcript of the conference (and praise!) at the American Journal of Bioethics blog.
Be sure and note the Chairs and Directors who self identify as "Progressives" and simultaneously complain of being powerless.
In fact, there is a very real divide between the left and the right in Bioethics: The left chooses to use the full potential of the field to decide who is worthy of life and who is not. And they claim to be powerless.
Unfortunately for those of us who prefer to choose life, and in direct contradiction to Caplan's claim, the left is firmly in control of the Academic and media forces of bioethics -- which is neither "ethics" nor "medical ethics." Currently, there is an Administration (due to an election, the ultimate poll of US opinion) that picks representatives of the "right," but the voices that we hear and the words we read in the science and medical journals and in the popular press.
More later on the actual power of the left in US Bioethics.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
"Terri...difference between progressive and conservative bioethics"
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3 comments:
So, there are good bioethicists? I doubt it. Snuff artists, charlatans, and quacks are bioethicists, and vice versa. Bioethicists and neurologists HAVE NOT A CLUE as to life and death. The accuracy of their predictions is APALLING; when they are wrong, it is nothing more than standard operating procedure, and business as usual. They go on collecting unconscionable fees for producing murderous falsehood, as if nothing had happened. There is no policing of it, there is no conscience to it, and there is no use for it - bioethics.
Bioethics is not a science, more a black religion seeking to domicile all useless eaters over 62 in their convenient hospice profit centers.
When disabled persons, having been pronounced dead by neurologists and bioethicists, STOP WAKING UP, stop mysteriously regaining their faculties, and stop repeating what was said in the room with them - WHILE THEY WERE DEAD - bioethics will STILL NOT BE A SCIENCE.
Layer seven: no one has claimed that bioethics is a science. It is fairly obvious that bioethics has no great predictive powers, but that can also be said of sciences to do with health like epidemiology. No bioethicists are guilty of the crimes in your rant; they may be guilty of other things, but that would require you to seek the nuances, and stop the ranting. Either lose the straw man, or seek therapy.
The contradictions of the left are nothing compared to the contradictions of this blog.
First read the mission statement: "Our intent is to be more proactive than reactive and to remain neutral as to politics and religion."
Then read the comment in this post: "In fact, there is a very real divide between the left and the right in Bioethics: The left chooses to use the full potential of the field to decide who is worthy of life and who is not. And they claim to be powerless.
Unfortunately for those of us who prefer to choose life, and in direct contradiction to Caplan's claim, the left is firmly in control of the Academic and media forces of bioethics -- which is neither "ethics" nor "medical ethics." Currently, there is an Administration (due to an election, the ultimate poll of US opinion) that picks representatives of the "right," but the voices that we hear and the words we read in the science and medical journals and in the popular press."
Just dripping with neutrality.
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