Month: March 2008

More reckless irresponsible callous pro-disease intervention from Catholic clerics and MPs.

The Government is braced for further criticism today when the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor signals that Catholic MPs should vote against the legislation…“There are some aspects, not all, of this Bill for which I believe there ought to be a free vote because Catholics and others will want to vote according to their conscience.”

Catholics and others will want to vote ‘according to their conscience’ to reject medical research on frivolous willful sanctimonious trivial grounds. ‘According to their conscience’ means pretending to think a pre-embryonic cell is the exact equivalent of a developed human being – and they seem to be proud of this, rather than hotly ashamed, which is what they should be.

Former cabinet minister Stephen Byers:

On some of these issues, like whether we should allow the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos, I remain undecided. There is a strong case that can be made on both sides of the argument: On the one hand the desire to be able to tackle diseases like MS and Alzheimers, on the other hand respect for the dignity and sacredness of all human life.

The second one is not a strong case – it’s an absurdity. You might as well talk about respect for the dignity and sacredness of all human eyelashes, or dandruff, or spit. Does Stephen Byers stage a funeral when his dentist pulls one of his teeth? Does he collect the stuff the dental hygienist scrapes off his teeth and keep it in a little shrine? Dignity and sacredness bullshit – suffering is important, artificial pseudo-reverence for human cells is just self-flattery.

[T]he health minister Ben Bradshaw hit back at the bishops…Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions he said: “If it was about the things the cardinal referred to, creating babies for spare parts or raiding dead people’s tissue then there would be justification for a free vote. But it’s not about those things. He (Cardinal O’Brien) was wrong in fact, and I think rather intemperate and emotive in the way that he criticised this legislation. This is about using pre-embryonic cells to do research that has the potential to ease the suffering of millions of people in this country. The Government has taken a view that this is a good thing. The Government is absolutely right to try to push this through to the potential benefit of many people in this country.”

Suffering. Well you see suffering is not what they care about – what they care about is sacredness.

What was that that Dr. Mark Sawyer said?

“Most of these parents have never seen measles, and don’t realize it could be a bad disease so they turn their concerns to unfounded risks. They do not perceive risk of the disease but perceive risk of the vaccine.”

Yeah. Catholic clerics do something very similar and Catholic MPs follow suit. Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh:

I believe that a greater challenge than that [man, woman, marriage, children – ed] even faces us – the possibility now facing our country is that animal-human embryos be produced with the excuse that perhaps certain diseases might find a cure from these resulting embryos.

The ‘excuse.’ Mark that. The ‘excuse’ that diseases might be cured as a result of embryo research – it’s just an excuse for researchers’ unholy desire to create embryos and then torture them or eat them or have sex with them or wear them as party favours in their hats. Or perhaps not. What does the archbishop think the real reason, as opposed to the excuse, is that researchers want to do research with embryos?

It is difficult to imagine a single piece of legislation which, more comprehensively, attacks the sanctity and dignity of human life than this particular bill. With full might of government endorsement, Gordon Brown is promoting a bill that will allow the creation of animal-human hybrid embryos…He is promoting a bill allowing scientists to create babies whose sole purpose will be to provide, without consent of anyone, parts of their organs or tissues.

No; not babies; of course not babies; obviously not babies; not babies, embryos. Bad archbishop. Tell the truth, archbishop.

This bill represents a monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life.

Why? Why? Why? How? Why and how is this research an attack on human rights dignity and life? And what about the real, existing. sentient, conscious people who suffer from horrible diseases that could be cured with this research? Why does the archbishop worry about the insentient unconscious embryos instead of the real people with horrible diseases? He might as well worry about a fingernail clipping; it makes as much sense. Why does the archbishop worry about the wrong thing? Why does the archbishop huff and puff with moral outrage over the wrong thing? What is the matter with him? What is the matter with all of them? Why do they get it so backward, and make such a virtue of it?

Oh, so this is where ‘respect’ for ‘beliefs’ gets you.

While many parents meet deep resistance and even hostility from pediatricians when they choose to delay, space or reject vaccines, they are often able to find doctors who support their choice…“I don’t think it is such a critical public health issue that we should force parents into it,” Dr. Sears said. “I don’t lecture the parents or try to change their mind; if they flat out tell me they understand the risks I feel that I should be very respectful of their decision.”

Why? Why does Dr Sears feel he should be very respectful of parents’ stupid, misinformed, dangerous to their child and other children decision? What exactly is it about a decision of that kind that Dr Sears feels he should respect? Its selfishness? Its irresponsibility? Its lack of evidence? Its ignorance? Its cluelessness? What is there to respect? If the parents told him they let their child rollerskate on the freeway, would he respect that? Why respect a decision not to vaccinate?

In a highly unusual outbreak of measles here last month, 12 children fell ill; nine of them had not been inoculated against the virus because their parents objected…Every state allows medical exemptions, and most permit exemptions based on religious practices. But an increasing number of the vaccine skeptics belong to a different group — those who object to the inoculations because of their personal beliefs, often related to an unproven notion that vaccines are linked to autism and other disorders.

‘Personal beliefs’ that are not religious beliefs (which I don’t think should be ‘respected’ on medical issues anyway) but just plain old beliefs, and wrong ones at that. That’s a stupid reason for an exemption.

“The very success of immunizations has turned out to be an Achilles’ heel,” said Dr. Mark Sawyer, a pediatrician and infectious disease specialist at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego. “Most of these parents have never seen measles, and don’t realize it could be a bad disease so they turn their concerns to unfounded risks. They do not perceive risk of the disease but perceive risk of the vaccine.”

They ignore the real risk and fret about the bogus one. And Dr Sears feels he should be very respectful of that. Whatever.

Interesting.The producer of ‘Expelled’ interviews Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott, and PZ Myers for his movie, having misled all of them into thinking it was a movie about the conflict between ID and science as opposed to a pro-ID movie. Then he throws PZ out of the theatre before a screening of the movie. (He would have thrown Dawkins out too, of course, had he recognized him there in the line with PZ, but he didn’t, which certainly makes a good joke.) First he interviews PZ for the movie, then he expels him from the theater before he has a chance to see the movie he is in. I think Mark Mathis needs to take a refresher course in PR.