The Week

It's difficult for me to pick my 'favourite' news item this week to blog about. Two stand out, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and the latest news from spokespeople of the cult of misery as my good friend Russell Blackford likes to call the Roman Catholic Church. The study in the NEJM was mistaken by large media organisations to further substantiate the claim that folks diagnosed to be in persistent vegetative state (PVS) or minimally conscious state (MCS) actually are not in such states, but rather that they're fully conscious persons trapped in a completely unresponsive body. Researchers in Belgium and France measured brain reactions in 54 such people in both countries and discovered to their surprise that some of them had the same brain regions light up that did light up in the healthy control group. This does indeed suggest that there's a possibility that in those folks a functional brain capable of understanding and responding to questions is kind of stuck in an unresponsive body. That is scientifically truly interesting and deserves further research. However, it's worth noting that despite the media hype (and hype by 'pro-life' activists) of the 54 PVS participants only a 5 responded in the manner I have just described, and 'in three of these patients, additional bedside testing revealed some sign of awareness, but in the other two patients, no voluntary behavior could be detected by means of clinical assessment.' The researchers sadly failed to ask how these 'responsive' people felt about being stuck in an unresponsive body, whether they wanted to continue living, questions that have been for a long time central in ethical and policy debates about the proper treatment of people in such states.

Stan Terman, MD, PhD of Caring Advocates commented (sensibly): "The finding that while bedside behavioral testing detected NO awareness (the hallmark needed for the diagnosis of Permanent Vegetative State), a high tech scan (fMRI) allowed one patient (out of 23) [not 4] to answer five simple Yes-or-No questions such as, “Is your brother’s name Alex?” Sensational news reports claimed that technology allowed this patient “to communicate for the first time since [the accident].” This may be an overstatement in terms of what we mean by “communication.” While the authors intend to ask patients about pain in the future, they did not suggest posing the ultimate existential Yes-or-No question, “Do you want to live in this state?” Surveys indicate that most people answer “No,” but there are still some who may this limited finding as a reason to never give up hope. Family members of patients with severe disorders of consciousness, especially if they are people of faith may use this finding to bolster their argument to continue to provide aggressive medical care and tube feeding when physicians consider such medical treatment to be futile. In addition, powerful faith-based health organizations, that determine their institutions’ policies regarding refusal of medically administrated food and water, may cite this result from one patient to continue tube feeding, indefinitely. Yet there is something I do not hear: So far, no professional has proposed, based on the finding that fMRI could help NONE of the patients whose PVS resulted from loss of oxygen (as opposed to physical trauma), it is therefore now both morally and ethically correct to withdraw feeding tubes from those PVS patients. I suppose the news media would prefer to report findings as providing hope—that’s what people want to hear. Unfortunately, bolstering false hope could lead to an inappropriate allocation of scarce medical resources." Stay tuned for more to come on this issue. I suspect the debate is far from over!

Well, then there are my friends from the Roman Catholic Church. Reeling from - by now - substantial numbers of (sexual) abuse cases involving children in their care across the globe, the organisation is being hit with the same scandal in Germany, where the number of abuse cases has reached more than one hundred (and counting). Of course, this ain't really newsworthy, we're used by now to the fact that some of its celibate staff are anything but celibate, particularly so when kids are about. Since 1995 about 100 of them were investigated in the context of child abuse allegations in Germany alone. Quite a number! As usual senior management tried as long as possible to protect its staff from prosecution - while busy preaching to the rest of society what proper sex and morals are all about. It is this bit that annoys me ever more. I do not understand why anyone in this day and age would even bother listening to representatives of this organisation the moment they say 'ethics' or 'morality'. Routinely historical truth is being mutilated in the name of the ideological cause, when bishops declared at one point or other that the holocaust is abused as a propaganda instrument by Jewish people, and, of course, that abortion is akin to genocide (tell that to the folks who were slaughtered in Rwanda, for instance). Incidentally, Christians fanatics from a southern state of the USA have been on the road again, in good colonial style, to grab kids in third world countries. It looks like in Haiti a whole bunch of them will be prosecuted for kidnapping kids (whose parents and/or relatives are alive and kicking). The official version is that they planned to hand them over to adoptive parents in the USA. It goes without saying that it all was a misunderstanding now. I pray to the non-existing Gods that they will be sentenced and put in Haitian jails and won't be simply extradited to the USA. There got to be some justice in this world every now and then.

On Haiti

An OpE I did for a local student paper... on Haiti

Here is the good news, this commentary won't be accompanied by photos of a crying black baby or a maimed granny. I'm sure those few who have watched TV programs other than ET or TMZ will have noticed that an earthquake hit Haiti a week or so ago, killing scores of people and destroying much of what was left of the dilapidated infrastructure of the country. I don't know whether you cried while helplessly watching the tragedy unfold. I did.

And yet, much of the mayhem that ensued outside Haiti sickened me in equal proportion. There we had aid agencies vying desperately for our hard earned cash. It goes without saying that they were all 'leading' or 'spearheading' the efforts in Haiti – when clearly there wasn't much leadership to be seen for about a week. It seems their TV commercials were faster produced than the actual humanitarian response. What's news? The aid industry is immensely lucrative. The monies donated in the aftermath of the tsunami in Southeast Asia have still not been spend. Do-gooders are still living off the interest generated from our (well, mea culpa, I did actually donate at the time) donations. Worse still, a lot of the donations will go this time around to ideologically motivated do-gooders. Religious organizations trying their best to convert Haitians to their particular ideology rightly see a unique growth opportunity. And yes, before you ask, they will donate rice and build a well. Their multi-colour brochures will show you that much, just in case you had any doubts. There will also be a generous amount of images of black babies randomly splashed across their fund-raising literature. The cash you're going to send will to a significant extent be utilized to grow their infrastructure and ideological power-base in Haiti, including for instance the building of schools aimed at indoctrinating Haitian kids in their particular religious beliefs. You can see how successful they have been, when you watch Haitian folks on the telly, who have lost EVERYTHING, and who thank their 'creator' for being alive, as opposed to BLAMING their 'creator' for inflicting that much pointless suffering even on innocent babies. The 'creator' inexplicably even managed to sink the local Cathedral together with his local CEO, it seems. So, here's my first message to you: Do NOT donate to aid organizations that also have an ideological agenda that goes beyond providing aid, unless you also happen to believe that abusing the desperation of the Haitian people in this manner is fair game. Be more discerning with regard to who gets your hard earned money.

Well, from what I gather from the news today, the gazilion $$ international effort aimed at rescuing people from the rubble translated into 150 or so people rescued. Good for those who were rescued. However, it is worth pointing out that the same $$ amounts could have preserved many more lives – even in Haiti – if they had been used differently. There is another important lesson in this and my second message to you: Ask yourself – before you donate – whether, in catastrophic circumstances and in terms of lives preserved, your particular donation, no matter how large or small it is, is likely to make the largest possible impact. Not every aid program is as good as any other (e.g. an US based aid organization's request that we donate for solar powered audio bibles seems frivolous). The same do-gooders cashing now in on Haiti have withdrawn any assistance from Somalia, a desperate and hugely violent country with about the same population size as Haiti. Darfur slipped off the do-good radar, and the list goes on and on and on. Shame Anderson Cooper couldn't make it there. I wonder whether we REALLY need a natural disaster a year to spur us into humanitarian action? What does this tells us about our common humanity? Nothing too confidence-inspiring, this much is certain.

Last but by no means least, do not loose sight of the bigger picture here. The same earthquake in Japan would not have led to tens of thousands of deaths (possibly many more than that). The reasons for the large number of deaths are directly linked to the poverty in that country. Building standards have been low to non-existent. The last hurricane that destroyed large parts of Haiti led to negligible international aid efforts. Nobody cared. And yet, a simple case for reparations can be made in favour of Haiti. Countries like its former colonial masters as well as the USA have interfered with the country's governance throughout its history. Surely this wretched nation is owed compensation for the damage the colonial powers' policies have caused. Compensation that is morally owed as opposed to a result of Bono type do-gooding. It will be interesting to see whether those countries that are largely responsible for the plight of the Haitian people will step up to the plate and do what needs to be done in order to repair the damage their policies have caused. Or will 'aid' be all that is left, organized by window-dressing organizations such as the UN (and its fleet of Toyota land-cruisers) and of course the international do-good industry.