octuplets and all :)

Here's a piece from today's Toronto Star (they're using quite a bit from an interview they did with me, so it's probably ok to dump it into my blog):

Patients have the right to help guide their own medical treatment, ethicists agree, but there are limits. And the case of a California woman who used a fertility clinic to have octuplets – on top of the six children she already has – goes way, way beyond any reasonable confines, they agree.

"This is the most bizarre case of patient autonomy I have ever seen," says medical ethicist Udo Schuklenk, a philosophy professor at Queen's University.

Schuklenk has been following the case with personal and professional interest since Nadya Suleman gave birth to the octuplets two weeks ago, months after visiting a fertility clinic telling the doctors there that she wanted to have more children.

"This is one where all the ethicists, for a change, seem to all agree."

Schuklenk says that whatever Suleman's motivation is in wanting more children, her doctors had a duty to refuse her request, calling it "irresponsible" for them to simply comply with her wishes.

"Somebody needs to slap these people," Schuklenk says. "A statutory body should seriously look into the conduct of the health care professionals in that clinic."

Some of the doctors' colleagues would seem to agree.

"This makes our jaws drop," Dr. Mary Hinckley, a physician with the Reproductive Science Center in San Francisco, told a local paper. "It violated all of our standards here in the United States."

A 2005 study by Toronto's Joint Centre for Bioethics ranked doctor-patient disputes over treatment plans the top ethical challenge facing medicine today, ranking above such issues as waiting lists and doctor shortages.

"Thirty years ago, the issue was when patients could say no (to a doctor). Now it's when can a doctor so no (to a patient)," says Jonathan Breslin, co-author of the report.

Such questions are not limited to fertility issues, but also to cancer or HIV treatments, the continued use of life supports, cosmetic surgery, what medicines to prescribe (or not prescribe), participation in other therapies, and more, the study says.

Last month, a study in the American Journal of Bioethics examined what might be the most extreme example of patients seeking medical care they don't need: people demanding that a perfectly healthy arm or a leg be amputated.

People with body integrity identity disorder become convinced that an appendage such as an arm or a leg should not be there, and demand that it be amputated to fit their image of themselves. Such a person believes he or she was meant to be, say, a one-legged person, but was born with two legs by mistake.

For those with the disorder, it can be very frustrating. If thwarted, they will sometimes injure themselves to force an amputation.

While the study's author, German ethicist Sabine Müller, comes out against cutting off healthy limbs, there is no consensus on the issue.

Schuklenk counts himself among those sympathetic to patients who, despite having two arms or legs, feel they really should have only one.

"That falls into the same category as transsexuals and sex change operations," says Schuklenk, adding that a generation ago, the idea of a man trapped in a woman's body was not as widely accepted as today.

Schuklenk is not aware, however, of a similar disorder driving women to have multiple children to fulfil their personal self-image.

And if Suleman did feel a need to have a lot of children, he points out, "she already had six kids."

Schuklenk is glad the paternalistic days when doctors had almost complete say about treatments are largely a thing of the past.

Patients have much of value to add to their treatment plans, he says. "Patients often know more about their conditions than their doctors."

That's because patients often have time to research their ailments in greater depth than a general practitioner who treats a variety of patients with myriad complaints.

Books, newspapers, the Internet and even television commercials have educated patients about their health, making them more informed when they go to the doctor.

But that can also lead to a greater sense of entitlement, Schuklenk says, and a growing tendency to treat doctors like any other service provider – there to take orders and not ask questions.

"They see something on TV and think, `That sounds like me.' So they go to the doctor and demand a prescription," he says.

Schuklenk fears that's what might have happened in California. The doctors, he says, had a responsibility to set aside benefits they might receive – fees and fame – and confirm that Suleman could afford to raise the children and had the emotional strength and family support to do so.

"In her case, the answer each time would be no, no, no," he says.

Breslin says the doctor-patient relationship also can often be the place where issues such as limited health care resources or long waiting lists are played out, complicating the relationship.

Shawn Winsor, a bioethicist at the Joint Centre for Bioethics, uses dispute resolution strategies much like those used in legal circles to navigate the often tricky waters of the doctor-patient relationship.

"It's about helping them through the process," he says. "In the end, the doctor-patient relationship is a collaborative one."

Not all philosophy is pointless - action against extreme poverty

Philosophers have a bad name in society. It's mostly well-paid academics going on about stuff that serves no real point, and certainly no real people. Most mainstream philosophers happily repay this compliment by talking down to colleagues concerned with real-world problems such as poverty, public health issues and such topics. Real philosophy, to them, to be good, has to be inconsequential, but inconsequential in a formally elegant way.

Well, the good news is, and I'm trying to rehabilitate practical philosophy here, that an ever-growing number of philosophers disagrees with such sentiments. A trail blazer for useful applied philosophy has been the Australian utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer. Singer is the author of countless books, some of which made it even on to the New York Times bestseller list. His most recent project is very much worthy of support.

He is responding to a growing debate among philosophers about how we ought to respond, as citizens of the wealthiest parts of the world, to the continuing occurrence of extreme poverty. Political philosophers such as Thomas Pogge came up with a couple of grand theoretical ideas, including a rejigging of the world economic order and the institutions that support them. It goes without saying that their impact on the real world outside academic talkfests has been non-existent (much as I would also like to see some of the changes Pogge and his acolytes are aiming for - albeit for different reasons, I'm a closetted philosopher after all).

Singer is not so much concerned with building grand theoretical edifices and singing the song of human rights and ever growing human dignity, he's concerned about practical changes that would immediately benefit real people.

Coinciding with the launch of his latest book he also started a campaign trying to get as many of us to pledge to donate immediately a percentage of our annual income to charities that have a proven track record at improving the living conditions and quality of life of those of us living in extreme poverty. I urge you to check it out and consider supporting a charity that has an immediate positive effect on the living conditions and quality of life of those living in extreme poverty.

This should not prevent you from participating in academic philosophical talkfests on poverty reduction of course, just don't delude yourself into thinking that that in itself would make any discernible difference to anyone at all.

Benedictus is @ it again

Ex Hitler Youth Catholic head honcho Pope Benedict, fresh from revoking the ex-communication of a holocaust denying bishop, is at it again. He just appointed as new archbishop of Linz Mr Gerhard Wagner. Wagner's main claim to fame is that he declared the Harry Potter books to be satanic, and, for good measure, that hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for a city that was 'sinful'. Archbishop Wagner found evidence for his Katrina related claim in the fact (if it is one) that five reproductive health clinics and several nights clubs were destroyed in New Orleans. He also saw God's miraculous hand in the timing of the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia. He told his flock that definitely it wasn't coincidental that the catastrophe happened around Christmas, just when rich Westerners go to poor Thailand to escape winter (no doubt that's bad, sinful and all). I like this old man, his penchant for going in drag (including red Prada shoes), his clearly pathological hatred of homosexuals, and now his hard work on remaking the organisation that he's running into a small right-wing and somewhat nuttish sect. Good on ya Benedictus. I can't wait for your next move, Sir!

Medical professionalism and religious prejudice

There we go again. Two Canadian lesbians reportedly have been denied medical services by an Egyptian born medical doctor who told them that homosexuality was against her religion and that (unsurprisingly, seeing her professed prejudices) she had no experience treating lesbians. Thankfully, Canada being Canada, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, has stepped in and promised to train international medical graduates working in the country better. Its CEO stated: "I will certainly see what I can do to make sure the college puts this on a higher burner. This is a serious issue. It's a breach of our code of ethics. We don't ever want to see this happen again."

What is interesting is that the doctors' lawyer tried to put a spin on the good medic's behavior that probably falls squarely into the category of digging yourself even deeper into the hole that you're already in. He went on record saying, ""Dr. Elias felt she should disclose to them her personal religious views. That was for the purpose of allowing them to make a decision of whether or not that might be relevant to them wanting her to become their doctor or not. That was perceived as a refusal to treat. I think that was unfortunate because that was not the intention." Clearly neither the doctor nor her good lawyer seem to appreciate that religion is a private matter. The doctor's religion based prejudices simply do not belong in the consultation. It does not matter whether Elias holds particular religious ideas or none, the point is that whatever her stance is on non-reality based matters, it must not ever impact on the provision of professional care. Things are that simple. Religious freedom does not entail the freedom to discriminate in your professional life.

Good and not so Good News from the Messaiahs

Barack Obama is living up to some of his election promises. There's plenty to celebrate for reality based people. Embryonic stem cell research can finally continue without government regulations interfering with sensible, ethical research projects aimed at relieving human suffering. Overseas health aid projects will finally be able to aim at desirable health outcomes unhindered by abstinence only and similarly failed policies that were a hallmark under Obama's God guided predecessor. Obama also promised to close Guantanamo Bay. I wonder how, practically, he plans to do so. He also declares - seemingly without if's and but's - that the torture condoning policies of his predecessor are a thing of the past. Yet, doubts have already been raised, given that Obama pointed out that he will be guided by the army manual on this issue (as opposed to the CIA's). From what I gather, this manual is far from satisfactory on the torture front.

Still, a week in the game, plenty of plain ludicrous policies by born again Christian ex-Pres Bush have been reversed. Praise the Messaiah!

In other news: various other Messaiah reps have issued as ever enlightened decrees. Ex Hitler Youth Pope Benedict has revoked the ex-communication of a right-wing Bishop who insists that Jews were not killed in German concentration camps. Smart move Benedictus! Well executed. That should endear you to plenty of Jewish folks (mind you, and reasonably so, many many others) who have a bone to pick with your organization over its tacit support of the Nazis. - Never one's to let a chance pass by to look stupid, Islamic authorities in Indonesia and Malaysia, meanwhile, decreed that certain bits and pieces of Yoga practices are sinful and prohibit Muslims in those countries from practicing them. Reality based folks meanwhile failed to compete completely on the idiotic decree front. No news there either.

Obama - Hail the Messaiah

I hope you will forgive me for being my usual cynical self, even when it comes to the one who can walk on water and offers change that we can believe in. I am always fascinated by how low the standards are in terms of expectations when it comes to the USA. I mean, fair enough, Bush has been an unmitigated nightmare, arguably he and his cronies ought to be prosecuted on more than one count (don't expect the one who walks on water to hold his predecessor and his cabinet responsible for the war crimes they presided over, for lying to the world in order to get a coalition of the willing together to topple Saddam... and the list goes on and on and on).

Still, I am puzzled why anyone could think Obama is a terribly progressive character. Better than Bush, yes, but what kind of yardstick is that? Why is the world celebrating him as if he was some kind of Messiah. Leave that poor sucker alone. He speaks like a midwestern US preacher, isn't reality based (God guides him), and by continental European standards he's at best a conservative. Is that a crime? No, far from it, but surely that kind of deal doesn't justify the hype and the quasi-religious elevation of this guy. It might surprise you to learn that Mr Obama goes to the loo, just like you and I (at least when he isn't walking on water and offers change that we can believe in).

In fact, being slightly more realistic about what can reasonably be expected of him might help him from a too steep fall from grace when people discover that ... well, he's just human after all.

Oh yes and before you go on and on about African American and that this shows everyone can be anything in the USA. You might want to have another look at his social class background. That should settle that question fairly quickly, too. Sure, if you come from a privileged family and you end up doing law at Harvard, you probably can be anything in America, even if you are African American, provided your competitors hail from a party that is politically dead in the water. Yep, if those conditions are met you can beat your geriatric competitor and his barbie doll companion by a small margin...

I might regret having written this in a minute or two after posting it, but this completely unjustified attempt at using a wealthy Harvard law graduate who's become US President as evidence that the country isn't fundamentally class based, is intellectually dishonest, no matter how much we like to enter into a quasi-romantic relationship with him and the rest of his family.

Other than that, good success to you Mr Obama. Our neighbours to the south could have made a choice far far worse... after all, imagine Sarah Palin being a heartbeat away from the Presidency of the USA!

Up-date on Iranian HIV/AIDS doctors' persecution

(Cambridge, MA)— Drs Kamiar and Arash Alaei—Iranian brothers who are known worldwide for their work as HIV/AIDS physicians – are among the four Iranian citizens cited today by Iranian authorities as attempting to overthrow the state, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Human Rights Watch (HRW), and International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRCI) have learned from reliable sources.

According the Islamic Republic News Agency, Iranian Judiciary spokesperson Ali-Reza Jamshidi told a news conference today that four Iranian citizens had been arrested and brought to the court on charges of “communications with an enemy government” and seeking to overthrow the Iranian government under article 508 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code. Speaking at a press conference, Jamshidi claimed: "They were linked to the CIA, backed by the US government and State Department... They recruited and trained people to work with different espionage networks to launch a velvet overthrow of the Iranian government". Jamshidi added that further details of the case would be forthcoming in the next two days.

PHR, HRW, and ICHRI believe the charge of plotting a coup is being brought unfairly, without the brothers being given the chance to adequately defend themselves. Their trial was marked by clear violations of due process. The Alaeis’ human rights have been violated and their commitment to public health worldwide has been misrepresented by the Iranian Government as a threat to their regime.

"To all appearances, the arrest and now the trial of these two prominent and widely-traveled AIDS doctors seem to be an effort to shut the door on medical and public health collaboration on global health crises...a policy that is dangerous for the well-being of the Iranian people and for global health,” said Frank Donaghue, PHR CEO.

PHR, HRW, and ICHRI have spoken out repeatedly about their concern that these serious charges had been levied without due process. The verdict in the case of the Drs. Alaei is expected this week, following a one-day trial in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court on December 31, 2008, on charges of communicating with an “enemy government”. At the trial, the Iranian prosecutor also informed the court of additional, secret evidence which the brothers’ attorney had no opportunity to refute, because the prosecutor did not disclose them.

“Their prosecution is truly a witch hunt; it is completely unacceptable to bring such charges against the Alaei brothers. Everything they did was transparent with full knowledge and permission of the Iranian government, including participation in an exchange program on public health in November 2006 in the United States,” said Hadi Ghaemi, spokesperson for International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

Over the last week, more than 2,000 people from around the globe contacted the Iranian Mission to the UN in New York City, demanding the Alaeis’ release. In addition 3,100 doctors, nurses and public health workers from 85 countries have signed an online petition demanding their release, which can be viewed at IranFreeTheDocs.org. Leading physicians and public health specialists and numerous medical and scientific organizations have publicly called for the brothers’ release, including HIV/AIDS and health experts luminaries: Global Fund Executive Director Professor Michel Kazatchkine; Partners in Health co-founder Dr. Paul Farmer; 2008 MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant recipient Wafaa El-Sadr, MD, MPH; Hossam E. Fadel, MD, of the Islamic Medical Association of North America; 1993 Nobel Laureate in Medicine Sir Richard Roberts PhD, FRS; and Ugandan AIDS pioneer Dr. Peter Mugyenyi.

“This case is just one more example of how under President Ahmadinejad’s administration, Iran’s human rights record has reached new lows” said Joe Amon, Director of the HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. “Ahmadinejad’s presidency has created an intense atmosphere of fear and intimidation felt even by those working on the expansion of HIV/AIDS services.”

Dr. Kamiar Alaei is a doctoral candidate at the SUNY Albany School of Public Health in Albany, New York and was expected to resume his studies there this fall. In 2007, he received a Master of Science degree in Population and International Health from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

Dr. Arash Alaei is the former director of the International Education and Research Cooperation of the Iranian National Research Institute of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. Since 1998, the Drs. Alaei have been carrying out HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programs, particularly focused on harm reduction for injecting drug users.

In addition to their work in Iran, the Alaei brothers have held training courses for Afghan and Tajik medical workers and have worked to encourage regional cooperation among 12 Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries. Their efforts expanded the expertise of doctors in the region, advanced the progress of medical science, and earned Iran recognition as a model of best practice by the World Health Organization.

Hope for Zimbabwe - Robert Mugabe is gone

... sadly only for a month. Mugabe is gone on a 92,000 US$ junket shopping trip (courtesy of funds from the Zimbabwean Central Bank) to Malaysia and Singapore with his wife and kids. Quite remarkable, considering that the death toll resulting from an entirely preventable cholera outbreak is ever increasing. While there are food shortages in the country, caused by Mugabe and his cronies' idiotic policies, he and his spendthrift wife will burn thru taxpayers' monies in Singaporean shopping malls. To describe all of this as shameless is probably an understatement. It is a sad indictment of these countries that they welcome international pariahs such as Mugabe and his wife.

More on Iranian AIDS doctors

I mentioned this issue before on this blog, so here's an update from Physicians for Human Rights on the story about Iranian AIDS specialists Dr. Arash Alaei and Dr. Kamiar Alaei.

The Iranian government's December 31 trial of Dr. Arash Alaei and Dr. Kamiar Alaei - Iranian brothers who are known worldwide for their work as HIV/AIDS physicians - denied fundamental requirements of due process because, according to reports received by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), the prosecutor refused to disclose all the charges against the accused and denied their right to confront and defend themselves against their accusers. The trial today also sends an ominous signal regarding the Iranian Government's crackdown on international scientific exchange.

The doctors have been held in Tehran's notorious Evin prison since late June 2008. They were indicted in December on charges of communicating with an "enemy government" according to their attorney, Masoud Shafie.

On December 31, the Iranian prosecutor tried the brothers in Tehran's Revolutionary Court on these charges, and also informed the court of additional, secret charges which the brothers' attorney had no opportunity to refute, because the prosecutor did not disclose either the charges or the evidence on which they are based.

"Iran's failure to reveal the nature of the secret charges against the doctors makes it impossible to determine if the charges have any factual basis," stated PHR's CEO Frank Donaghue. He added, "To all appearances, the arrest and now the trial of these two prominent and widely-traveled AIDS doctors seem to be an effort to shut the door on medical and public health collaboration on global health crises...a policy that is dangerous for the well-being of the Iranian people and for global health."

PHR stated that the publicly announced charges are illegitimate and without credible foundation. PHR noted that there are clear violations of due process in this case. In order to have a fair trial according to the standards of international human rights law, Iran must safeguard the doctors' right to know the evidence against them and their right to confront and cross-examine their accusers. A defendant's right to hear and confront witnesses against him is a fundamental guarantee of life and liberty. Without knowing the evidence or even the charges against him, an accused person has no opportunity to help his attorney make his defense or challenge the evidence's relevance or reliability.

"Iran should free these brothers immediately, so that they can continue their life-saving public health work for the benefit of the people of Iran and the world," stated Donaghue.

The brothers have already been detained two months longer than Iranian penal code allows, Shafie said earlier this month, in an exclusive interview with the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. According to Shafie, Articles 30-34 of the Code of Penal Procedure of the Islamic Republic of Iran allow for detentions but require that the investigating judge issue such detention orders for one month at a time and for no longer than four months.

The brothers are also legally eligible for bail, but the judge in the case has not issued bail nor held a bail hearing.

Over 3,100 doctors, nurses and public health workers from more than 85 countries have signed an online petition demanding their release, which can be viewed at IranFreeTheDocs.org. Leading physicians and public health specialists and numerous medical and scientific organizations have publicly called for the brothers' release.

Dr. Kamiar Alaei is a doctoral candidate at the SUNY Albany School of Public Health in Albany, New York and was expected to resume his studies there this fall. In 2007, he received a master of science degree in Population and International Health from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

Dr. Arash Alaei is the former director of the International Education and Research Cooperation of the Iranian National Research Institute of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. Since 1998, the Drs. Alaei have been carrying out HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programs, particularly focused on harm reduction for injecting drug users.

In addition to their work in Iran, the Alaei brothers have held training courses for Afghan and Tajik medical workers and have worked to encourage regional cooperation among 12 Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries. Their efforts expanded the expertise of doctors in the region, advanced the progress of medical science, and earned Iran recognition as a model of best practice by the World Health Organization.

Another AIDS denialist bites the dust - AIDS related death

Schadenfreude is that uniquely German expression describing the pleasure someone derives from watching/enjoying someone else's misery. Of course, we should not really enjoy someone else's misery, even less so someone else's premature, preventable death. Sometimes though, especially when the harm is self-inflicted and very predictable, one can't help but feel somewhat schadenfreudig.

Well, on this occasion, another HIV denialist bit the dust. Christine Maggiore died of an AIDS related illness (a typical AIDS indicator disease, pneumonia) late December. Maggiore's main claim to fame (other than founding the Italian design company Allessi) was that she was HIV positive but refused to take any anti-HIV medication. She belonged to a small band of HIV denialists who continue to insist that HIV has nothing to do with AIDS.

Worse than her harming herself, however, being pregnant twice, she also refused to take HIV mother-to-child-prevention medication during pregnancy, with the result that one of her kids became HIV infected, and eventually died on AIDS. All of this she did in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence of the life-preserving capacities of standard HIV medicines. The coroner in the US, at the time, declared the child's death to be AIDS related. A HIV denialist retained by Maggiore (a veterinary toxicologist of all things) declared that her daughter died as a result of an allergic reaction to amoxicillin. Maggiore lived a 'healthy life', ie a life without any drugs. According to the denialist community she should have been able to live forever, sadly at the age of 52 she died a premature death caused by AIDS.

Well, what can one say other than that stubbornness in the face of overwhelming evidence is a pretty silly thing. One got to give her credit tho for sacrificing her life in order to be able to stick credibly to her obviously false beliefs on HIV.

Cult of Misery Latest: Pope Delivers Annual Message of Hate

The famously dress wearing Pope, in an early release of his annual message of hate to the world, declared today that stopping homosexual behaviour is as important as stopping the destruction of the rain forest. The BBC News, in a remarkable display of analytical insight and critical thinking skills noted that the Pope hadn't referred to homosexuals as 'sinners'. Strangely, the BBC News didn't note that the Pope might be in need of professional psychological help to deal with his homophobia. Strangely, nobody of the usual politically correct crowd insisted that anti-hate speech legislation be properly applied and the Pope and/or his senior executives be prosecuted.

Happy hol's everyone. I'm away till early January trying to escape Xmas (not an easy task...).

Complete list of civilised countries now available

Very interesting stuff: the UN (that beacon of hope for human rights - NOT) voted on a resolution demanding basic civil rights for gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered (lgbt) people. Some 66 countries supported the resolution, and not unexpectedly, to quote Donald Rumsfeld, Old European countries with their respect for civil rights feature prominently on the list. No surprise, unfortunately, that thuggish places like Saudia Arabia, Russia, Jamaica and others are missing in action. No surprise either that the USA and the Vatican cannot be found on the list of supporters of the human rights of lgbt people. No surprise also that South Africa, sliding ever faster itself into a Zimbabwe type failed state, is absent among the signatories of the resolution, despite the fact that the country's progressive constitution binds the government of the day to recognize the rights of lgbt folks.

It's probably useful to reflect on this also in the context of high hopes that people have for the incoming Obama administration in the USA. This guy (leaving aside for a moment the fact that he doesn't even support the idea of universal health care in the USA) has announced today that a known homophobic evangelical preacher will hold the sermon during his inauguration ceremony.

Here then the complete honor list (keep em in mind, next time you plan a vacation!):

Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Gabon,
Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guinea-Bissau, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Montenegro, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, United Kingdom, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

The UN statement, which includes a call for the decriminalisation of homosexuality worldwide, was read by Argentina.

Here's a Background briefing from IDAHO, the organisation that launched a campaign to get this resolution off the ground:

On May 17 2006, the International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO), the IDAHO Committee launched a campaign « for the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality », and published a list of the first signatories, which include several Nobel Prize winners: (Desmond Tutu, Elfriede Jelinek, José Saramago, Dario Fo, Amartya Sen), entertainers (Merryl Streep, Victoria Abril, Cyndi Lauper, Elton John, David Bowie), intellectuals (Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, Bernard-Henri Lévy), and humanitarian organisations like ILGA, Aids International and the FIDH. On IDAHO 2008 (17 May this year) the French government announced that it would bring a LGBT human rights statement to the General Assembly of the United Nations. The text was read today in New York, and was supported by 66 countries in the world, and it clearly inscribes sexual orientation and gender identity as human rights.

The IDAHO Committee is the NGO coordinating the International Day Against Homophobia. This day is celebrated in more than 50 countries in the world, and is officially recognised by the European Union, Belgium, United Kingdom, France, Mexico, Costa-Rica, etc. These actions support international campaigns, like the call launched in 2006 "for a universal decriminalisation of homosexuality"
http://www.idahomophobia.org/

Call for an End to Sharia Courts

For your information, from me as one of the signatories of the Call for an End to Sharia Courts, the press release of the group that initiated this campaign.
udo schuklenk

Press Release
CALL FOR END TO SHARIA COURTS AFTER REPORT SHOWS WIDESPREAD INJUSTICE
December 16, 2008

A new report showing that Muslim women are discriminated against and encounter gross bias when they subject themselves to Sharia adjudications was welcomed today (news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7783627.stm) by The One Law for All Campaign, which is supported by a variety of organisations and individuals.

The campaign's spokesperson Maryam Namazie said: 'This research reinforces our own findings that Sharia Councils and Muslim Arbitration Tribunals are discriminatory and unfair. However, the solution to the miscarriages of justice is not the vetting of Imams coming to the UK as the report has recommended but an end to the use and implementation of Sharia law and religious-based tribunals.' She added: 'At present these Sharia-based bodies are growing and appear to have some sort of official backing. But they are leading to gross injustices among women who are often unaware of their rights under Britain's legal system.'

This perspective was reiterated in the One Law for All Campaign's launch on December 10, 2008 in the House of Lords at which Maryam Namazie and campaign supporters Gina Khan, Carla Revere, Ibn Warraq and Keith Porteous Wood spoke; the meeting was chaired by Fariborz Pooya, head of the Iranian Secular Society.

Gina Khan, a secular Muslim, said: 'Under British law we are treated as equal and full human beings. Under the antiquated version of Sharia law that Islamists peddle, we are discriminated against just because of our gender. These Islamists use our plight by meddling in issues like forced marriages, domestic violence and inheritance laws for their own political agenda. To allow them to have any sort of control over the lives of Muslim women in British communities will have dire consequences.' She added: 'Sharia courts must be a pressing concern not just for Muslims but for all those living in Britain. Anyone who believes in universal human rights needs to stand united against the discrimination and oppression visited upon Muslim women.'

Carla Revere, Chairperson of the Lawyers' Secular Society, said: 'Such self-appointed, unregulated tribunals are gaining in strength; they increasingly hold themselves up as courts with as much force as the law of the land, but are not operating with the same controls and safeguards. They appear to be operating in the area of family law and some even in criminal matters, where they have no right to make binding decisions as they claim to do. Even if the decisions were binding, UK courts do not uphold contractual decisions that are contrary to UK law or public policy. We call on the Government and legal establishment to stand up for the vulnerable and tackle this significant and growing problem, rather than ignoring it.'

Writer Ibn Warraq said: 'Sharia does not accord equal rights to Muslim women- in regards to marriage- she is not free to marry a non-Muslim, for instance; in regards to divorce, custody of children, inheritance, the choice of profession, and freedom to travel, or freedom to change her
religion. In other words, Great Britain in allowing Sharia courts has contravened the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, and all the other more legally binding United Nations' Covenants on Discrimination and the Rights of Women... Multiculturalism is turning communities against each other, it is fundamentally divisive. We need to get back to the principles of equality before the law, principles that so many people fought so hard to achieve for so long.'

Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society, said: 'Sharia is becoming a growth industry in Britain, putting growing pressure on vulnerable people in the Muslim community to use Sharia councils and tribunals to resolve disputes and family matters, when they could use the civil courts. Sharia law is not arrived at by the democratic process, is not Human Rights compliant, and there is no right of appeal.'

Writer Joan Smith who was unable to speak at the launch sent the following message: 'This campaign is very important because many people in this country - including politicians - have yet to realise the isolation of many Muslims, particularly women, from the wider society. Some of them are already under intolerable pressure from their families, and the principle of
one law for everyone is a protection they desperately need. That's why I give this campaign my whole-hearted support.'

To find out more or support the One Law for All Campaign against Sharia Law in Britain visit www.onelawforall.org.uk.

• You can also listen to Maryam Namazie's debates with Sidiqqi, head of the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, on BBC 5 Live and with Muslim lawyer Aina Khan on BBC Radio 4 Women's Hour here: http://www.onelawforall.org/mediacoverage.html
• To listen to Gina Khan's speech at the December 10, 2008 One Law for All Campaign against Sharia law in Britain launch, click here: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=J6mvv2ZCTKs&feature=channel_page
• To listen to Maryam Namazie's speech at the December 10, 2008 One Law for All Campaign against Sharia law in Britain launch, click here: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=I_GIdnJGKEQ
• To listen to Carla Revere's speech at the December 10, 2008 One Law for All Campaign against Sharia law in Britain launch, click here: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=gDgMB6URugg&feature=channel
• To listen to Ibn Warraq's speech at the December 10, 2008 One Law for All Campaign against Sharia law in Britain launch, click here: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx8sO6c5JcY&feature=channel_page
• To listen to Keith Porteous Wood's speech at the December 10, 2008 One Law for All Campaign against Sharia law in Britain launch, click here: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=CMg49Smhj1k&feature=channel_page

Some of the signatories to the Campaign

Nazanin Afshin-Jam, Coordinator, Stop Child Executions Campaign, Canada
Mina Ahadi, Spokesperson, Council of Ex-Muslims of Germany; Coordinator, International Committee against Stoning, Köln, Germany
Sargul Ahmad, Activist, Women's Liberation in Iraq, Canada
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Writer, Washington, DC, USA
Mahin Alipour, Coordinator, Equal Rights Now - Organisation against Women's Discrimination in Iran, Stockholm, Sweden
Homa Arjomand, Coordinator, International Campaign against Sharia Courts in Canada, Toronto, Canada
Farideh Arman, Coordinator, International Campaign in Defence of Women's Rights in Iran, Malmo, Sweden
Abdullah Asadi, Executive Director, International Federation of Iranian Refugees, Sweden
Ophelia Benson, Editor, Butterflies and Wheels, USA
Susan Blackmore, Psychologist, UK
Nazanin Borumand, Never Forget Hatun Campaign against Honour Killings, Germany
Roy Brown, Past President, International Humanist and Ethical Union, Geneva, Switzerland
Ed Buckner, President, American Atheists, USA
Marino Busdachin, General Secretary, Unrepresented Nations and Peoples
Organization, Netherlands
Center for Inquiry, USA
Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, UK
Council of Ex-Muslims of Germany, Germany
Council of Ex-Muslims of Scandinavia, Sweden
Caroline Cox, Peer, House of Lords, London, UK
Austin Dacey, Representative to the United Nations, Center for Inquiry-International, USA
Shahla Daneshfar, Central Committee Member, Equal Rights Now - Organisation
against Women's Discrimination in Iran, London, UK
Richard Dawkins, Scientist, Oxford, UK
Patty Debonitas, TV Producer, Third Camp against US Militarism and Islamic Terrorism, London, UK
Deeyah, Singer and composer, USA
Nick Doody, Comedian, UK
Sonja Eggerickx, President, International Humanist and Ethical Union, Belgium
Afshin Ellian, Professor, Leiden University Faculty of Law, Leiden, Netherlands
Equal Rights Now - Organisation against Women's Discrimination in Iran, Sweden
European Humanist Federation, Belgium
Tarek Fatah, Author, Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, Toronto, Canada
Caroline Fourest, Writer, France
Tahir Aslam Gora, Writer and journalist, Canada
AC Grayling, Writer and Philosopher, London, UK
Maria Hagberg, Chair, Network against Honour-Related Violence, Gothenburg, Sweden
Johann Hari, Journalist, London, UK
Christopher Hitchens, Author, USA
Farshad Hoseini, Activist, International Campaign against Executions, Netherlands
Khayal Ibrahim, Coordinator, Organization of Women's Liberation in Iraq;
Arabic Anchor for Secular TV, Canada
International Committee against Executions, Netherlands
International Committee against Stoning, Germany
International Humanist and Ethical Union, UK
Iranian Secular Society, UK
Shakeb Isaar, Singer, Sweden
Maryam Jamel, Activist, Women's Liberation in Iraq, Canada
Keyvan Javid, Director, New Channel TV, London, UK
Alan Johnson, Editor, Democratiya.com, Lancashire, UK
Mehul Kamdar, Former editor of The Modern Rationalist, USA
Naser Khader, Founder, Association of Democratic Muslims, Denmark
Hope Knutsson, Chair, Sidmennt, Icelandic Ethical Humanist Association, Iceland
Hartmut Krauss, Editor, Hintergrund, Germany
LAIQUES - Région PACA, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France
Stephen Law, Editor, Royal Institute of Philosophy journal, London, UK
Shiva Mahbobi, Producer, Against Discrimination TV Programme, London, UK
Houzan Mahmoud, Abroad Representative, Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq, London, UK
Doreen Massey, Peer, House of Lords, London, UK
Anthony McIntyre, Writer, Ireland
Caspar Melville, Editor, New Humanist magazine, London, UK
Bahar Milani, Activist, Children First Now, London, UK
Tauriq Moosa, Writer, Capetown, South Africa
Reza Moradi, Producer, Fitna Remade, London, UK
Douglas Murray, Director, Centre for Social Cohesion, London, UK
Taslima Nasrin, Writer and activist
National Secular Society, London, UK
Never Forget Hatun Campaign against Honour Killings, Germany
Samir Noory, Writer; Secular TV Manager, Canada
David Pollock, President, the European Humanist Federation, London, UK
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, Pakistan
Fahimeh Sadeghi, Coordinator, International Federation of Iranian
Refugees-Vancouver, Vancouver, Canada
Michael Schmidt-Salomon, Chief Executive Officer, Giordano Bruno Foundation,
Germany
Udo Schuklenk, Philosophy professor, Queen's University, Canada
Sohaila Sharifi, Editor, Unveiled, London, UK
Issam Shukri, Head, Defense of Secularism and Civil Rights in Iraq; Central Committee Secretary, Left Worker-communist Party of Iraq, Iraq
Bahram Soroush, Founding member, Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, London, UK
Peter Tatchell, Activist, London, UK
Hamid Taqvaee, Central Committee Secretary, Worker-communist Party of Iran
Union des Familles Laïques - section Arles-Istres, France
Union des Familles Laïques - section Marseille-Aix-en-Provence, France
Afsaneh Vahdat, Coordinator, Council of Ex-Muslims of Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden
Marvin F. Zayed, President, International Committee to Protect Freethinkers, Ottawa, Canada

For more information, please contact Maryam Namazie, email:
onelawforall@gmail.com, telephone: 07719166731; website:
onelawforall.org.uk.

Buch's administration responsible for policies that led to torture of detainees

This needs no further comment!

AP by Joby Warrick

WASHINGTON - A bipartisan Senate report released today says that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials are directly responsible for abuses of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and charges that decisions by those officials led to serious offenses against prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere.

The Senate Armed Services Committee report accuses Rumsfeld and his deputies of being the principal architects of the plan to use harsh interrogation techniques on captured fighters and terrorism suspects, rejecting the Bush administration's contention that the policies originated lower down the command chain.

"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," the panel concludes. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees."

The report, released by Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz., and based on a nearly two-year investigation, said that both the policies and resulting controversies tarnished the reputation of the United States and undermined national security. "Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority," it said.

"Our values and the laws governing warfare teach us to respect human dignity, maintain our integrity, and do what is right," wrote Petraeus, who at the time was the top U.S. commander in Iraq. "Adherence to our values distinguishes us from our enemy."

Fascinating background on Nobel Prize money

The German language weekly broadsheet DIE ZEIT has published an interesting backgrounder on the Nobel Foundation, ie the organisation bankrolling the 1 mio $ per pop Nobel prizes. It turns out that the foundation's investment people burned a lot of its money by means of investing in hedge funds instead of safer shares. The initial donor who established the foundation, Alfred Nobel, insisted that the foundation invest the money only in 'safe shares'. A Swedish radio station did the maths and reported that it is in serious doubt these days whether there's enough cash left to fund the generous prize monies that the winners have grown accustomed to.

There are also questions to do with good judgment when the committee chairs of several of the foundation's selection committees went on luxury junkets to China (ie business class fares, luxury hotels, that sort of thing), while being quizzed on what China would need to do in order to score nobel prizes. Quite amusing in a way, one is used to endless corruption when it comes to that Olympic farce and its committee, but nobody probably expected similar conduct from chairpersons of nobel prize selection committees. Anyhow, as to China, that country routinely censors information about the nobel peaze price winners from its bulletins, because it is too concerned that its name might once again be mentioned by the winners in the context of civil rights violations or cosying up to dictators in Zimbabwe, Sudan and Burma. The kind treatment meted out to nobel committee bigshots might explain why there was no nobel prize for Chinese human rights activists this year.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, given this context of clearly less than transparent activities, it turns out to be the case that the largest commercial sponsor of the foundation's commercial arms (nobel media and nobel web) is the pharmaceutical multinational Astra Zeneca. The discovery made by this year's nobel prize winner in medicine (namely that the sexually transmissible HPV causes cervical cancer) has led to a somewhat controversial vaccine against that virus. There is some argument ongoing whether the side-effect profile of the vaccine is too significant and its efficacy too low to justy using it in every teenage girl prior to her becoming sexually active. It turns out to be the case that the owner of the patents to the vaccine is no one other than Astra Zeneca. So, the largest commercial sponsor of the foundation's activities also happens to market the product that was made possible by the discovery of this year's winner. Having said that, the nobel prize winner well and truly deserved the price (as arguably many others for different discoveries in medicine), and he personally does reportedly not financially benefit from any sales Astra Zeneca makes.

Still, it seems that not all is nobel in the house of Nobel ...

Economic crisis leads to even more good news

The economic crisis that Anglosaxon style capitalism has brought us into might not only herald the end of those dreaded US car manufacturers (here's wishful thinking), no, there's more good news: this could even herald the end of Formula 1. Yes, the end of men driving around in circles in gas guzzling racing cars for no good reason at all. Honda has already withdrawn from sponsoring a Formula 1 racing team, and rumours have it that there will be more to follow. Stay tuned ... and fingers crossed.

Bizarre system of democracy in Canada's constitutional monarchy

A farce - by the standards of most, if not all, liberal parliamentary democracies - has just taken place in Canada. A couple of weeks ago a minority government under the conservative PM Stephen Harper took office. The thing is, as it goes with minority governments in democracies, only a minority of Canadians actually support the government. The opposition parties consisting of the Liberals, the leftish NDP and the Quebec based nationalists have a comfortable majority in parliament over the Conservatives. So, most sensible minority government PMs would have navigated compromise courses to ensure that their government is not brought down by the parliamentary majority. Sensible politics and Stephen Harper is well and truly a contradiction in terms. So, very quickly he pissed off the parliamentary majority to such an extent that they clubbed together, signed a deal and declared that they'd oust his government.

In most liberal democracies (probably all West European ones) the president or governor general (if it's a former British colony of sorts), if there's a working majority in parliament, would task the majority coalition formally with forming government within a certain period of time. That failing there will be elections.

Now, you might think this German-Australian expat shouldn't be that judgmental about the banana republic equivalent machinations of Canadian politics. So for what it's worth, Ed Shreyer, a former governor general of Canada, had this to say on the same matter: "I'll put it this way and I will make this a plain-spoken sentence. Nothing should be done to aid and abet the evasion of submitting to the will of Parliament. I think one can stop there. It's about as basic as that."

Hey, not so in Canada. Here, bizarrely, the governor general can suspend parliament for weeks in a row for no good reason. And that exactly is what she did! Now the minority government can continue for another couple of weeks time, despite the fact that the majority of elected parliamentarians declared in writing that they (representing their electorate, ie the majority of Canadian voters) do not support the government. As if this complete disregared for democratic process wasn't enough, the governor general can also decide, after the suspension of parliament (if the recalcitrant majority still insists on electing a new government) to call a new election. Again, why bother taking the views of the democratically elected representatives of the people seriously? No need in Canada.

Genocidal duo's body count comes to light

According to a study published by Harvard University AIDS specialists the surplus deaths caused by the HIV denialist policies of former South African President Thabo Mbeki and his quack doctor and health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang stand at more than 350,000 lives lost. More than 350,000 impoverished South Africans lost their lives because of the genocidal policies Mbeki and Tshabala-Msimang enforced in the country. These policies, driven by the conviction that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, meant that even rape survivors were unable to access postexposure prophylaxis. That in a country were rape is endemic, and where the HIV prevalence stands at about 20 percent or thereabouts. I reviewed the moral implications of these policies here. Medical doctors were forced out of their public sector hospital jobs by ANC ministers, for no other reason than that they provided rape survivors with postexposure prophylaxis, in violation of the monstrous government policies Mbeki and his health prevbention side-kick implemented.

What I can't get my head around is that nobody in South Africa seems to think these days that it might be a good idea to hold both Mbeki and Tshalabala-Msimang personally accountable for these policies, and to prosecute them on genocide charges. Why do politicians seem to get away with murder (that's what their omission to act when they should amounts to)? Even in the USA these days a discussion has begun on whether the Bush administration officials responsible for war crimes (including the torture of enemy combatants) should be prosecuted. Not so in South Africa.

I can't help but wonder whether even black people have got used to the idea that their lives just are not worth enough to bother... How else could one possibly explain the South African people's inaction on this issue? Indeed, how else can one explain that someone with a proven track record in terms of maximising the number of black lives lost to ideological fanaticism remains the official representative of the AU in Zimbabwe. Mbeki, here too, happily goes over the dead bodies of an ever growing number of black people in order to support his fellow lunatic Robert Mugabe.

Honor Roll: Voices of Disbelief

Russell Blackford and I have been working frantically during the last year or so to put together an anthology of Voices of Disbelief. We basically asked well-known to famous philosophers, public intellectuals, scientists, science fiction writers, even a magician to explain why they do not believe in God. In these times of ever increasing religiously motivated violence it seemed to us that publishing voices of reason could be a worthwhile exercise. Authors from all over the world readily agreed to contribute to what we think is a powerful statement of diverse humanist thought. The essays range from personal statements to philosophical argument - and in-between. It's going to be out some time in the second half of 2009 with Wiley-Blackwell, and it's going to be a great read! We are just about to pass a very important milestone in the production process of this volume. We will be sending it off to the publisher on Monday!

Here's the list of contributors:


1. Peter Adegoke
2. Athena Andreadis
3. Julian Baggini
4. Gregory Benford
5. Ophelia Benson
6. Russell Blackford
7. Susan Blackmore
8. Damien Broderick
9. Lori Lipman Brown
10. Sean M. Carroll
11. Thomas W. Clark
12. Austin Dacey
13. Edgar Dahl
14. Jack Dann
15. Margaret Downey
16. Taner Edis
17. Greg Egan
18. Nick Everitt
19. Prabir Ghosh
20. A.C. Grayling
21. Joe Haldeman
22. John Harris
23. Marc Hauser
24. Philip Kitcher
25. Miguel Kottow
26. Stephen Law
27. Dale McGowan
28. Sheila A.M. McLean
29. Adèle Mercier
30. Maryam Namazie
31. Kelly O’Connor
32. Graham Oppy
33. Christine Overall
34. Sumitra Padmanabhan
35. Tamas Pataki
36. John P. Phelan
37. Laura Purdy
38. James Randi
39. Michael R. Rose
40. Julian Savulescu
41. J.L. Schellenberg
42. Udo Schuklenk
43. Michael Shermer
44. Peter Singer
45. J.J.C. Smart
46. Victor J. Stenger
47. Peter Tatchell
48. Emma Tom
49. Michael Tooley
50. Ross Upshur
51. Sean Williams
52. Frieder Otto Wolf

Peaceloving religion of Islam once again triggers mass murder

Fair enough, I am an atheist, so you'd probably expect me to pounce on the carnage currently going on in India. In case you've lived in a cave or had no access to the world for some other reason: a bunch of Islamic militants have, among other things, attacked tourists at hotel pools in India's largest city, Mumbai; in reportedly selfless acts of Islamic martyrdom they also threw hand grenades into crowds of passengers waiting to board their trains in the city's main railway station. These brave warriors even succeeded in murdering a bunch of Jewish people in a synagoge.

I can see already the voices saying that we should not confuse that wonderful peaceloving ideology of Islam with these murders. After all, there's another billion of Muslims who just don't do these things. Indeed, Muslim organisations the world all over have quickly condemned these attacks - as they well should have.

My problem with this analysis is that it is both correct, and clearly seriously flawed. At this point in time we have substantial numbers of Muslims thinking nothing of killing unarmed tourists, train passengers, cartoonists, office workers in the world trade center, commuters on trains in Spain and the UK, as well as fellow Muslims, all in the name of Islam. Well, here's my problem, IF that religion was as peaceloving as its adherents routinely claim it is, how come it routinely motivates quite some of its followers to commit mass murder of innocents? How can it be explained, if the ideology of Islam really has nothing at all to do with the continuing carnages the world all over, that not similar carnages are being committed in the name of the unitarian church or the metropolitan community church or in the name of atheism?

If Islam is being misused here by fanatics, one would surely expect that atheism or humanism would also be misused by fanatics to kill - say - religionists. Yet, this never seems to have happened, at least to my knowledge. Naturally, this makes me wonder whether the obvious correlation between Islamic faith and a growing number of crimes against humanity might actually be more than just a coincidence.

In case you're in doubt about the militants' honorable motives: reportedly they carried out the attacks in order to stop further Hindu violence against Muslims in India. I think we can be confident that they have successfully achieved the opposite. No doubt, innocent Muslims will suffer at the hands of vengeful Hindus, and so the inter-religious violence will happily continue, only briefly interrupted by on-and-off random killings of tourists at their hotel pools.

I just saw the other week the movie RELIGULOUS with Bill Maher. I thought it showed quite nicely how monotheism breeds intolerance and hatred. The current outpouring of Islamic barbarism is not that dissimilar to the barbarism committed by Christians during the crusades. The only surprising thing really is that this is happening in the 21st century. Even more surprising that there still seem to be people who think religion got nothing to do with it. Religions are at the heart of the problem. The sooner we get over them , the better we will be for it

Bizarre Canadian court ruling on airfares - celebrating your obesity!

The Globe and Mail reported a day or two ago that a Canadian court has ruled that Air Canada (the yuk factor outfit still operating as Canada's flag carrier) and Westjet (another Canadian airline), can't charge disabled people two airfares if they require their carers to fly with them. I think one can argue about this, but at least I can see how the court could reach the conclusion that charging such passengers two airfares is probably unjust.

What bugs me is that the same ruling is also seen to apply to seriously overweight people. The judgment is basically this: if you are too big for one regular seat, the airline must provide you free of charge with two seats. This is the most bizarre judgment I have ever seen (I'd love to know the judge's weight on this one ...). Here's the problem: for most overweight people (if not for all of them), the decision to eat too much or too many fattie things has resulted into them being overweight. They are by and large responsible for their predicament. Disabled people cannot usually be held responsible for their disability.

So, what would be unjust about charging the overweight crowd for the extra space that they need, and possibly even for the extra fuel needed to transport their fat around the world in an aeroplane? At the end of the day what we are doing as airline passengers is to purchase SPACE on a plane going from A to B (frequently via C, D, and E), as well as the right to truly horrendous 'service', food for purchase, the right to look at armrests and similarly amazing goodies.

My view on this issue would be that if you need more space than the average passenger you ought to be charged for the extra space. Some accommodation is frequently rightly made for very tall people (they didn't choose to grow that tall), so we often find them sitting in emergency exit rows. All that is sensible, but why people's wrong eating habits should be beneficial to them in terms of the space airlines must now provide to them without being permitted to charge them extra, completely escapes me.

Wrong verdict, and wrong message sent out to society. I need to reconsider, obviously. Perhaps I should aim to gain quite a bit of weight before I board my next intercontinental flight, so that even in economy an airlines must provide me with plenty of space. All that this means, in the real world, is that people of average size must subsidize the space overweight people require (free of charge). That is unjust. It is so evidently unjust that one wonders in which dreamworld the judges reside that passed this judgment. If anything, as a society we have a strong public health interest in encouraging people to lose weight. It's good for them and it's good for our health care bill. Perhaps uncomfortable plane seats could be a good start!

Beware of Jacob Jensen products

I bought this watch a year or two ago on an international flight. I always fancied Jacob Jensen's simple and clean designs. It's a really nice piece,titanium casing, sapphire glass, basically it's a good quality piece at a - well - good quality price.

Well, here's my warning then to anyone reading this blog: these time pieces have a serious design flaw and Jacob Jensen got to be asked whether he knows and has factored this design flaw into his time pieces as a continuing source of income. The rubber arm wrist lasts just a bit more than a year. So, basically with the close to non-destructable titanium casing and the virtually unscratchable glass you bought a watch that could last for a very long time. How convenient then that Jacob Jensen forces his customers to purchase an expensive new wristband every single year (that's the half-life of these wristband in my experience).

I wrote to Jacob Jensen to complain about this, but duly got embroiled in fights over receipts and warranties. This, of course is missing the point. Say you got a 1 year warranty, that would give you at best one wristband free of charge (or none, if it lasted slightly more than a year). The wristband are designed in such a way that no regular wristband from your local watch dealer would work, it got to be the branded Jacob Jensen wristband.

Clever, hu? Your option is to either throw the thing out after slightly more than a year, or to become a permanent customer for Jacob Jensen's expensive wristband replacements.

For better or worse, I've thrown the watch out, and am getting even by trying to hurt his business just this little bit - by means of this blog posting. Don't buy Jacob Jensen products, there's probably a nasty catch!

WHO wastes scarce health funds on fashionable diseases

It is probably no secret to regular visitors of this blog that I tend to speak in the most scathing terms about the UN system and its associated freeloading agencies and staff. My favorite target tends to be UNESCO, because its overpaid Paris based staff is more often than not particularly incompetent and useless, certainly in my area of expertise.

I have, in the past held my fire when it came to WHO, even though I knew from personal experience with that outfit, that they're not much better. By and large bioethicists (such as Alex Capron) have performed pretty well there, hence the ethics unit seems to have been more or less closed down (ie exists only on paper or its website). The leading medical journal THE LANCET published this week an analysis of the budget allocations WHO has decided upon, and correlated those with the (mostly developing) world's disease burdens. (LANCET 2008; 372: 1563-9)

It turns out, in the words of the authors, "Three-fifths of WHO funds were spent on communicable diseases excluding HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria, which accounted for roughly 11% of global mortality. Conversely, non-communicable disease accounted for more than half of global mortality and almost half of global DALYs, but received roughly a tenth of all WHO funds. We recorded a similar disparity with injuries, which claimed 9% of global mortality and 12% of global DALYs, but received less than 1% of global funds. Further inspection of the WHO budget showed that the resources used for communicable diseases excluding HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria were mainly driven by WHO extra-budgetary funds for immunisation and vaccine development. WHO’s regular budget allocated US$14·3 million to this area of work, corresponding to 6% of WHO’s regular budget. By contrast, WHO’s extra-budgetary funds allocated $512·4 million, roughly 36 times as much as in the regular budget, corresponding to about 30% of WHO’s extra-budgetary allocations for infectious disease control."

The upshot of this is that WHO is clearly setting its eyes on fashionable diseases such as AIDS (much like Greenpeace is in the habit of rescuing cuties like wales but not gazillions of pigs in mass breedings factories), despite objectively more important disease targets. The maximisation of QALYs and DALYs per invested health care dollar should be the only criterion for deciding how to spend scarce resources. It is unethical to waste funds available for health care delivery and research on outcomes that are foreseeably suboptimal in terms of QALYs and DALYs. The criticism leveled here against WHO can arguably be made against private funders such as the Gates Foundation.

This all reminds me of the insanely wasteful NIH Fogarty International ethics programs in my own field. There's endless research ethics training in developing countries the world all over, as if these countries did not have substantially bigger fish to fry in terms of health issues.

Up-date on Lutz Heilmann vs wikipedia.de

Mr Heilmann has told wikipedia.de that since most of the incriminating claims about him had been removed from his entry, he's happy for wikipedia.de to be available to everyone with immediate effect. No doubt the internet community's massive email campaign directed at his parliamentary faction has had the desired impact. Nice lil victory for freedom of expression I suppose.

Lutz Heilmann, The Left Member of Parliament, ex Stasi operative

Truly in line with the traditions of the former East German secret service, the Stasi, its ex-operative Lutz Heilmann (photo to the left) is resorting to censorship to prevent nasty information about his past from reaching the public eye. Heilmann today 'serves' as a member of parliament in the Left faction.

Censorship in the 21st century you might say? Not really. This posting here then is part of the process of keeping information flowing freely. Feel free to reproduce it and post it elsewhere. Thankfully there is little our ex-Stasi operative can do about it outside Germany!

Here's what happened. The German version of wikipedia.org (wikipedia.de) has/had an item on Heilmann that included unpleasant information about his past full-time service in the Stasi. The main point of criticism is not so much that he was a Stasi operative as that is true for very many people in Eastern Germany, but that he tried to hide that information when he ran for higher office. In fact, in fairness to Heilmann, he seems to have worked for the Stasi straight after high-school for about 5 years, in a department responsible for the safety of the East German leadership. This really isn't the problem probably, what is the problem is that instead of rectifying whatever objective errors there were in his wikipedia entry, using the usual means within wikipedia to do so, he chose not do so, and instead to bring down the whole site by way of going to court. Talking about throwing the baby out with the bathwater...

Heilmann is unhappy about information concerning his past that was uncovered by DER SPIEGEL. The magazine reports that Heilmann lied about his past by claiming that he served in the East German army from 1985 to 1990 when really he worked for the Stasi. This and other unpleasant tidbits about Heilmann have been put together in an entry in the German wikipedia version. Heilmann sued and in effect forced the German version of the wikipedia off-line. www.wikipedia.de is currently offering its visitors a placeholder, informing them that unless it removes the offending item (about Heilmann) it has been ordered by a German court to stop the redirect to the US based servers that host www.wikipedia.de. Thankfully the German courts have no jurisdiction in the USA, and freedom of expression is taken a bit more seriously in that country (thank you First Amendment). It is here where the entry about Mr Heilmann is still available in its full glory.

Censorship in the 21st century... you got to be kidding Mr Heilmann.

In case you value freedom of expression, you might wish to consider donating to the German branch of wikipedia in order to support it in its legal battles with Mr Heilmann.

Tough luck GM, Ford and Chrysler

Guess this shows that I am a philosopher. I truly can't get my head around governments thinking that it is sensible policy to throw good money after huge amounts of bad money (aka the 'big three', GM, Ford and Chrysler). These companies have spent decades building insane cars - an example is shown above. Their quality sucks big time, their fuel economy is a joke, yet for some bizarre reason more likely to do with national pride than anything else, they keep getting propped up by our tax monies. To readers outside Northamerica ... these dinosaurs masquerading as cars are really everywhere. The question surely arises whether we as taxpayers should at least be adding conditions to such madness? Like: you get our billions only if you meet certain standards of fuel efficiency, the utilization of recycled materials, etc? Surely the argument from jobs can't be sufficient to justify burning billions of $$. It probably would be cheaper at this stage to simply pay these people their salaries without asking them to build cars that nobody sane could possibly want to buy to begin with! Actually, here's my suggestion: add the GM, Chrysler, and Ford workers to the government payroll and require them not to produce any further cars. Use the saved money to develop industries aimed at generating efficient public transport systems. Welcome to the 21st century.

Why Some HIV Transmissions Should be Punished

I am reproducing here a commentary that I wrote for the Bioethics Forum of the Hastings Center.

The Canadian legal system is currently bracing for another case in which a man is prosecuted for allegedly infecting multiple unsuspecting women with the HIV virus who had unprotected sexual intercourse with him. Two of these women have died of AIDS. Various other cases have successfully been prosecuted, usually involving men who knew they were HIV infected and who chose to have unprotected sexual intercourse with a number of women. (See Matthew Weait, Intimacy and Responsibility: The Criminalisation of HIV Transmission, Routledge, 2007.) Some of these women became infected, others did not. Either way, the HIV-infected men knowingly subjected these women to the risk of infection with a life-threatening illness.

Many liberal democracies have made HIV transmission a criminal offense, including the United States, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. In most countries, HIV-infected people have been successfully prosecuted for transmitting HIV to their sexual partners. The main reason for this is – obviously – that an HIV infection is harmful to the carrier of the virus. At this point in time it means the infection with a delayed-onset serious chronic illness that results into an, all other things being equal, excess number of deaths among those infected.

Some AIDS activists and their academic allies insist that criminalizing HIV transmission and punishing the perpetrators is not a sensible way for us as society to say that such conduct is unacceptable. In a recent commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Scott Burris and Edwin Cameron, both legal scholars, assert that “the use of criminal law to address HIV infection is inappropriate except in rare cases in which a person acts with conscious intent to transmit HIV and does so.” But the arguments brought against the criminalization of HIV transmission simply do not withstand critical scrutiny.

Silliest, perhaps, is the argument that criminalizing HIV transmission will not necessarily prevent people from transmitting the virus. On that logic we might as well do away with traffic regulations that punish people for speeding. Nobody is naive enough to assume that such rules prevent all people from speeding, but they might act as a deterrent in some or even many cases. It also sends a strong signal that we as a society think such harmful conduct is unacceptable. Another often-criticized argument is that the law is not an effective public health tool. Nobody in favor of criminalizing HIV transmission claims that it is, however. Criminalization might help in preventing some new infections, but we might also wish to deploy the law to punish behavior that led to significant harm to others.

Some have argued that there is no evidence of a deterrence effect from criminalization. It is difficult seeing how this evidence could be established to the point of it becoming uncontroversial, however. It has also been suggested that putting the onus of protecting their partners on an infected person, or even requiring them to advise their sexual partners of their HIV status, would have a detrimental effect on people’s willingness to get tested. The proposition here then is that that the criminalization of HIV transmission could actually yield harmful public health consequences. This argument might have had some currency when successful AIDS treatments did not exist. In those bygone times, people at high risk of HIV infection had little incentive to find out about their infection, given that there was very little that they could do about it if they tested positive. Today, however, life-preserving treatments exist. It strikes me as highly implausible that someone at risk of HIV infection would choose to forgo potential timely life-preserving care in order to be able to continue to have unsafe sex without worries about sanctions.

Another argument alleges that prosecutions of gay men who subjected their sexual long-term partners recklessly and knowingly to the risk of HIV infection demonstrates evidence of a homophobic legal system. This charge seems particularly baseless. A homophobic legal system would permit gay men to continue to engage in high-risk behavior. A society that cares about the well-being of its gay members will try to prevent new infections of gay men from occurring, even if it means prosecuting some of its gay citizens.

Then there is the racism charge. Having lived for a number of years in South Africa, I have come to appreciate that the prevalence of the virus is substantially different in different populations in different parts of the world. I am not surprised to see more African-born heterosexual men prosecuted than North American Caucasian men. The average South African heterosexual African male is substantially more likely to be infected with HIV than is the average Canadian-born, heterosexual Caucasian male. The prevalence of HIV in the former population is substantially higher. No big surprise then that among the few people prosecuted overall there should be an African face. None of that, in its own right, constitutes evidence of racism.

Another argument states that we should not criminalize HIV. Yes, the claim, published recently by legal minds in a leading American medical journal, is that we are criminalizing HIV if we punish people for transmitting it. This is a truly strange argument. If we punish people for transmitting HIV to their partners, who had no reason to assume that they were consenting to that risk when they had unsafe sex, what we criminalize is what people do with the virus, not the virus itself or even the people who happen to be infected.

There are reportedly about 60,000 HIV-positive people in Canada and about 1,000,000 HIV infected people in the USA. So far, very few have been prosecuted for allegedly transmitting HIV. The same is true for most other countries. I do not believe that we are sliding down a slippery slope, at the bottom of which we will launch legal proceedings against most infected people. One reason is that most infected people behave very ethically. The HIV-infected people I know personally prefer to forgo sex than to engage in unsafe sexual activities, even if their sexual partners insist. The thought of harming their sexual partners horrifies them. And so it should.

There is a much smaller number of infected people out there, however, who clearly could not care less about the well-being of people they profess and pretend to love and care about. It seems to me that virtually all of the cases that have been prosecuted so far, both in Canada and elsewhere, are about those sorts of cases, and not about people who acquired the virus during one-time sexual encounters with partners they knew little to nothing about. Most infections occur under the latter circumstances, and they are fairly straightforward cases of harm to self. The ethical and legal maxim volenti non fit iniuria should be applied here: if you consent, you cannot complain. There is little doubt in my mind this explains more than anything else why we have seen few prosecutions. The successful prosecutions so far in the United States, Canada, and Britain have focused on egregious cases of tremendously harmful wrong-doing.

It is the role of the state to use the criminal law to punish such wrong-doing.

Udo Schuklenk, professor of Philosophy at Queen’s University, holds the Ontario Research Chair in Bioethics and is Joint Editor-in-Chief of Bioethics, the publication of the International Association of Bioethics.

sez it all

Disabled kid can't sue the doctor responsible for the disability - in Canada

This is one of those 'I'm not a lawyer, but ...' type posts. Today's GLOBE&MAIL has a report about a court case in Canada. Basically a doctor prescribed an acne medicine that was known to lead to birth defects to a pregnant woman. The woman eventually gave birth to a disabled newborn (an ear missing, part of the newborn's face is paralysed).

The court's judgment rests on two claims: 1) 'because the woman and her fetus are one - both physically and legally - it is the woman whom the doctor advises and who makes the treatment decisions affecting herself and her future child.' This doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. 2) The second claim is that 'granting a child the right to sure doctors for damage caused before birth would also interfere with a woman's right to an abortion'. This seems truly implausible. One can hold consistently that fetuses do not have a right to be (ie grant women a right to abort for whatever reason they see fit), and at the same time that if the pregnant woman decides knowingly and voluntarily to carry it to term that certain duties of care are owed to it, eg the duty to offer it the best possible shot at a life worth living. Anita Kleinsmidt and I have advanced this argument (admittedly in a different context) in the American Journal of Public Health.

There is no contradiction in this point of view, because one can hold the view that moral standing begins at the moment of birth (or viability). However, if the pregnant woman decides not to avail herself of the option of abortion, it's highly probably that a viable child will be born. Any action undertaken by the mother that would reduce such off-spring's best possible shot at a life worth living would require very good reasons (eg the mother's life and future well-being at risk).

The doctor should have inquired whether or not there was a pregnancy prior to prescribing the medicine and/or it would have been necessary for him/her to inform the pregnant woman of the risk of birth defects in case the medicine is taken during pregnancy. The GLOBE&MAIL article seems to imply that the pregnant women did not give informed consent to this risk, because she wasn't informed as she should have been. The doctor clearly erred in his professional obligations both to the mother as well as to the fetus she decided to carry to term (unaware of the risk she subjected the fetus to, due to the doctor's negligence) if she/he failed to elicit informed consent from the pregnant woman at the time. For that reason it is surprising that the Court should have ruled that the child has no case against the doctor.

Christian weirdos in Kingston

Guess what, I went for a walk with two guys (one gay, one straight) along the shoreline of Lake Ontario in Kingston. Here is how we became victims of a vicious Christian ambush. Three youngish women (perhaps teenagers) surrounded us.

They had been thoroughly trained to identify 'sinners' and make them repent. So, they asked us whether we all believe in God (at which point my slightly smarter and faster German friend quietly disappeared in the direction of the water, aiming to demonstrate that he can walk on the same).

Well, I have lived in anglosaxon countries for a bit too long, so I am a tad bit politer, even when I interact with weirdos. Anyhow, the God gals went over their cue cards and explained to us that God loves us. They knew that they were speaking to gay guys, and we all know what God thinks of gay guys, don't we? Well, God supposedly loves us because God loves all sinners (to be fair, that makes sense to me, because - from what I gather - sinners live kinda more interesting lives then those who manage to live without sin, so why shouldn't God love the more adventurous crowd?). Well, eventually the God girls decided to go for the kill. They realised that probably the self-identified atheist gay guy (your's truly) might run away, screaming in mental anguish. So they resorted to grabbing my friend's and my hand. There we stood in a circle holding hands. (Honestly... I was looking for a hidden camera somewhere as it was all too farcical to be true!) Straight guys would probably have loved that scene, reasonably attractive young women holding hands with two guys they never met before in their whole lives, at the Lake shore, the sun going down, you get the picture. Back to the God squad going for the kill... - One of the girls started reading a kind of confession, and asked God for forgiveness from another one of her cue cards. She asked us every few lines to repeat after her. It was truly hilarious. I duly repeated after her the stuff about sinners and forgiveness and God loving me (I never met God, but they seemed quite certain that God really loves me, so who was I to argue with them???).

So, beware, if you're wandering along Lake Ontario in Kingston, Ontario, and you go peacefully about your business (eg enjoying the tranquility of the lake), there's odd Christian weirdos out there hassling you for no particular reason. They also think it's perfectly appropriate to invade your space and privacy. No big surprise in that, I suppose, seeing that were on a mission. They invited me and my friend to meet the rest of their forgiving crowd during church times. It didn't seem to occur to them that their sanctimonious self-rightous bull*#@# could sensibly be construed as highly offensive by halfway educated people who don't think about sex among consenting adults in terms of sin but in terms of fun. As most selfrighteous people, however, they seemed very comfortable about their own holiness.

Kingston beware! Nobody knows how many of them have been let loose by their local pastor. I think Tourism Kingston ought to warn visitors coming to town that there is Christians out and about that are on a mission. May be some kind of Christians-on-a-mission alert? Telling tourists that there is no need to call the mental health services or the police. These Christians are harmless. They will leave eventually.