Wednesday, February 22, 2006

I'm part "Crunchy Con!"

There's a great controversy building about atypical (at least to some non-conservatives) conservatives. There's a great discussion about it over at National Review OnLine.

What does this have to do with Bioethics?

Well, if you think of yourself as conservative while at the same time, you see the protection of the environment as part of your life, if you believe "you are what you eat," if you nursed your babies and/or insisted on natural childbirth, if you don't buy everything the American Medical Association tells you and are just a little skeptical about vaccinations and medications, you may be a "Crunchy Con."

Guilty! As a former member of La Leche League, 2-natural-births-1-homebirth-mom, breast-feed'em-till-they-can-reason, long-time-reader and pick-and-chooser from Organic Gardener and Prevention Magazines, I
am a "Crunchy Con," at least some of the time. I do own Birkenstock clogs. Two pair (one for the garden, one for when I go out in public).


It is consistent to me to protect human life at all stages and to avoid using poisons against animal life (when it doesn't put people at danger) or to recycle in order to keep my world a better place for the people who come after me. And "use original container" as well as "nature knows best" worked for feeding and nuturing my family. I read real-time stories on the hazards of interfering with the diversity of microenviroments and wiping out entire genomes by big agriculture in the '70's and '80's. Although much of what I read about DDT was wrong, the '70's information about Folate and neural tube defects - which I first read in Prevention magazine - prooved true.


And I keep these lessons in mind when counseling my patients and evaluating the scientific, bioethic, and medicine literature.



Hey, Progressives - we're not stereotypical! People rarely are.

I'm sure we're just not "their kind" of "Crunchy."

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