UN Human Rights farce continues unabated

Hey, now I can be certain, my views on organized religion are unequivocal human rights violations at least according to the UN Human Rights Council. The UN Human Rights Council, an outfit today dominated by Muslim nations, has issued a resolution today that resolves that criticizing organized religion constitutes a human rights violation. In Resolution A/HRC/10/L.2 the UN states under the - as usual - misleading title 'RACISM, RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, XENOPHOBIA AND RELATED FORMS OF INTOLERANCE, FOLLOW-UP AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE DURBAN DECLARATION AND PROGRAMME OF ACTION' the following niceties: It recognizes 'the valuable contribution of all religions to modern civilization' (among those contributions were the crusades, the slaughtering of children by the Maya, the killing of innocents in the name of Allah, and the list goes on and on and on).

Anyhow, that's neither here nor there, I suppose. In other bits of the resolution the UN stresses that 'defamation of religions is a serious affront to human dignity'. Agh, there we go again, 'human dignity' (a short for, 'I don't like what you're saying or doing, but have no good reasons for that'). They also want 'all States to provide, within their respective legal and constitutional systems, adequate protection against acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation and coercion resulting from defamation of religions, and incitement to religious hatred in general, and to take all possible measures to promote tolerance and respect for all religions and beliefs.' What's religious hatred? Anything that 'defames' religion (like saying that God doesn't exist, Allah is a fiction, stuff like that). How can we figure out whether something is seriously defamatory? Because religious folks dance in the streets and randomly kill folks they happen to disagree with (a not uncommon pastime in some Islamic countries these days). So, it seems that I have just incited you to 'religious hatred'. Truth be told, in centuries gone by, this would have been called blasphemy. Whoever thought we had left those dark ages behind where criticism of religion could lead to serious forms of state sponsored punishments was obviously mistaken.

Here's another gem, aimed at internet and other media censorship: 'Deplores the use of the print, audio-visual and electronic media, including the Internet, and any other means to incite acts of violence, xenophobia or related intolerance and discrimination towards any religion, as well as targeting of religious symbols and venerated persons'. So, from today you better don't take the mickey out of religious symbols or folks like "don't use condoms in the midst of an AIDS pandemic" Pope Benedict, no matter how idiotic they might be, because otherwise, you guessed it, you'd violate 'dignity' (and so some kind of alleged human right of religious folks not to offended).

The UN Human Rights Commissioner is ordered in the resolution to develop initiatives aimed at 'the prevention and elimination of all such forms of incitement and the consequences of negative stereotyping of religions'. There we have it, the 'negative stereotyping of religion' (as in, saying in public that monotheistic religions usually aim at prohibiting women from exercising their reproductive rights, being good buddies with some of the worst totalitarian regimes in power today, the stoning to death of gay men that's a fav pastime in some Islamic countries, stuff like that) will soon be met by a vigorous human rights/dignity based response from the UN.

'Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance to report on all manifestations of defamation of religions, and in particular on the serious implications of Islamophobia, on the enjoyment of all rights by their followers, to the Council during its 12th Session.' Cool, with a bit of luck our 50 Voices of Disbelief book project might soon find itself in an official UN Human Rights 'report' as defaming religious people, symbols or non-reality based ideologies in general. Kinda cool, we'd find ourselves in suitably good company, just think of Voltaire's Candide, undoubtedly another prime candidate for inclusion in the report. Because the Council is controlled these days by Islamic countries, despite its misleading title, the prime objective of this document seems to be to isolate Islamic theocrats and adherents from any kind of criticism of this particular ideology.

Scary stuff, but thank goodness, like most UN human rights stuff, it's non-binding. The real problem is, of course, that the totalitarian regimes that sponsored the resolution will probably use it to come down hard on opponents inside their countries.

It goes perhaps without saying that the same document stresses the compatibility of this witch-hunt with freedom of expression. Bollocks.

Medical journal primadonnas - the end (not)

I have reported a short while ago (you might want to re-read this before continuing this blog posting) how editorial staff at the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) seemingly bullied Dr Leo after he disclosed in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) an undisclosed conflict of interest of authors of a study JAMA published.

Here now, without further ado, the end of the saga. It's been reported on the websites of the WSJ, JAMAs as well as Dr Leo's. My analysis will make use of content (analysis) provided by subscribers to a bioethics discussion list hosted by the Medical College of Wisconsin.

JAMA's editors have not exactly helped their case. They effectively admit contacting Leo's Dean to complain about his conduct (ie publishing his conflict of interest allegations - 5 months after bringing them to the attention of JAMA's editorial staff) on the BMJ website. They deny having bullied the Dean as well as Leo. However, the Dean confirmed that the gist of the JAMA editors' complaint about Leo contained a threat to the school. Here's an excerpt from said bioethics discussion list: '"In an interview Friday, Dean Ray Stowers said Dr. DeAngelis “flat out” threatened him and attempted to bully him during the conversation. The telephone call was followed by an email exchange. In a March 11 email, Dr. DeAngelis wrote to Dr. Stowers: “As I’ve already expressed to you, I don’t want to make trouble for your school, but I cannot allow Jonathan Leo to continue to seek media coverage without my responding. I trust you have already or soon will speak with him and alert me to what I should expect.” Dr. Stowers responded the next day by saying he couldn’t find any fault in Dr. Leo’s actions and pressed JAMA editors for more specifics on what they believed was wrong with Dr. Leo’s writing or actions. “I think this can be worked out without your continued threats to our institution which are not appreciated and I believe to be below the dignity of both you and JAMA,” he wrote. Dr. Stowers says he has not heard from JAMA since sending that email.'

The JAMA editorial suggests, mistakenly, that Leo was under confidentiality related obligations not to publish his letter to the BMJ until after JAMA had completed its investigation. It's entirely unclear why this should be the case. Leo is perfectly entitled to publish anywhere (as he did) allegations of conflict of interest. After all, everything he reported is a matter of public record (accordingly there were plenty of others who would have been witness to the conflict of interest). What is particularly amusing, perhaps, is that the journal objecting to Leo blowing the whistle on the conflict of interest it omitted to report, had not hesitation to blow the whistle on him (by calling his superior, the Dean of the school). Obviously, one standard for authors, another for editors...

JAMA claims in its editorial that Leo's disclosure of his allegations would hamper its ability to undertake its own investigation. As it happens, however, according to JAMA's own reported timeline, it actually completed its investigation some time before Leo's letter in the BMJ was published. The journal claims, however, that it was unable to publish the subsequent 6 line conflict of interest declaration (even on-line) that it received some time in January until some time in March due to space considerations. Of course, there are no on-line space considerations, as everyone knows. In addition to this, the editors were capable of rushing their above mentioned editorial on-line within about a week. Not overly credible the editorial explanation of space constraints here...

JAMA's new policy on this issue is truly pointless. It aims to enforce censorship on people reporting potential omissions of conflicts of interest declarations to the journal and expects them to keep quiet until it has investigated the matter. Anyone who goes instead directly to the news media would accordingly be in the clear as far as the new JAMA policy is concerned. The solution then would be, instead of waiting for JAMA's breathtakingly long 'investigation' of a simple matter (did you omit to declare a potential conflict of interest?), to issue a press release straightaway, or to write a letter to a different medical journal (as Leo did).

Significantly, the BMJ that published Leo's complaint has refused to withdraw his letter, because, according to the BMJ editor, the complaint was factually accurate.

It is deeply disconcerting that a leading biomedical journal such as JAMA tried to bully an academic as well as a medical school dean for doing nothing other than report the omission of a conflict of interest declaration. A clear abuse of the powers that journal editors are invested with by virtue of the job they hold. This is what really is at issue here!

A step closer toward our species' demise

For awhile there was some hope that as a species we might be able to survive a tad bit longer. Courtesy of the world economic crisis car production went down dramatically, oil consumption plunged to new lows - good news all round, in other words. Unfortunately, in that sparsely populated country called India some company called Tata has decided to do something about this. It has just brought to market the world's cheapest car. Ain't that fantastic news? It's hailed on the news as a great great success story. India, instead of building appropriate and efficient public transport systems (should be an economic walk in the park, seeing the population density in that country!), is getting a billion small cars to clog up its already choked-up streets. Hurray, we're well back on the road to our permanent exit. Indeed, economic growth is predicted to return in a couple of months. Sorted!

Gambia's crackpot leader is at it again

I have written before about the amazing leadership qualities of Gambian President Yahya Jammeh. Last time I wrote about this African leader I noted that his claim to have personally found a cure for AIDS might have been ever so slightly mistaken - well, I used more drastic words. Since then a reader of this blog alerted me to information about the latest travails of Gambia's leader. Yahya Jammeh had about 1000 villagers abducted by his special forces and rounded up in camps where 'witch doctors' beat the living hell out of them and forced them to drink all sorts of noxious substances. Reason being: the cause of death of the great leader's aunt was alleged witchcraft. So the Pres imported 'witch hunters' from neighbouring Guinea and had them have a go at about 1000 randomly chosen Gambian villagers. Amnesty International reports 'Many said they were then forced to confess to being witches. In some cases, they were also allegedly severely beaten, almost to the point of death. ... Villagers said they had been held for up to five days and forced to drink unknown substances, which they said caused them to hallucinate and behave erratically' I thought the Roman Catholic Church had a monopoly on these sorts of activities, but no, Muslim leader Jammeh seems to be operating in the same vein. Never mind that this kinda stuff is happening today, a few hundred years after the Catholics fought 'witchcraft' and burned to death a lot of people all over Europe.

Meanwhile, the leader of said Church, Pope Benedict (of ex-Hitler Youth fame) went out of his way to contribute to the AIDS crisis on the African continent by telling the locals in Cameroon that condoms contribute to the AIDS pandemic and that people should not be using them. I'm sure Benedict (whose penchant for wearing red shoes and colorful dresses is well-known and well-documented) is not using condoms either.

It's amazing what kind of things religious folks get up to when given half a chance, it seems. I wonder how long it will take until reality based policies will take hold in such godforsaken (pun intended) places. In any case, the African continent seems to be today's preferred playground for crackpots of all shades and colors. I wonder why...

Yay, our forthcoming book already on amazon

There you go, the official publication date of our up-coming anthology '50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists' is known, September 10, 2009. It's already on amazon. You can even register there to be notified when the book is out! Cool how quickly the Wiley-Blackwell folks have moved in terms of promoting the book. We even have our own facebook site with more than 500 members (and counting). Yay!

In case you want to know who the 50 (there's a few more actually) voices are, here's a list of contributors: Here's a complete list of contributors and essays:

Unbelievable! — Russell Blackford; My “Bye Bull” Story — Margaret Downey; How benevolent is God? – An argument from suffering to atheism — Nicholas Everitt; A Deal-breaker — Ophelia Benson; Why Am I a Nonbeliever? – I Wonder... — J. L. Schellenberg; Wicked or Dead? Reflections on the moral character and existential status of God — John Harris; Religious Belief and Self-Deception — Adèle Mercier; The Coming of Disbelief — J.J.C. Smart; What I Believe —Graham Oppy; Too Good to Be True, Too Obscure to Explain: The Cognitive Shortcomings of Belief in God — Thomas W. Clark; How to Think About God: Theism, Atheism, and Science — Michael Shermer; A Magician Looks at Religion — James Randi; Confessions of a Kindergarten Leper — Emma Tom; Beyond Disbelief — Philip Kitcher; An ambivalent nonbelief — Taner Edis; Why Not? — Sean M. Carroll; Godless Cosmology — Victor J. Stenger; Unanswered Prayers — Christine Overall; Beyond Faith and Opinion — Damien Broderick; Could it be pretty obvious there’s no God? — Stephen Law; Atheist, obviously — Julian Baggini; Why I am Not a Believer — A.C. Grayling; Evil and Me — Gregory Benford; Who’s Unhappy? — Lori Lipman Brown; Reasons to be Faithless — Sheila A.M. McLean; Three Stages of Disbelief — Julian Savulescu; Born Again, Briefly — Greg Egan; Cold Comfort — Ross Upshur; The Accidental Exorcist — Austin Dacey; Atheist Out of the Foxhole — Joe Haldeman; The Unconditional Love of Reality — Dale McGowan; Antinomies — Jack Dann; Giving up ghosts and gods — Susan Blackmore; Some thoughts on why I am an atheist — Tamas Pataki; No Gods, Please! — Laura Purdy; Welcome Me Back to the World of the Thinking — Kelly O'Connor; Kicking Religion Goodbye … — Peter Adegoke; On credenda — Miguel Kottow; “Not even start to ignore those questions!” A voice of disbelief in a different key — Frieder Otto Wolf; Imagine No Religion — Edgar Dahl; Humanism as Religion: An Indian Alternative — Sumitra Padmanabhan; Why I am NOT a theist — Prabir Ghosh; When the Hezbollah came to my school — Maryam Namazie; Evolutionary Noise, not Signal from Above — Athena Andreadis; Gods Inside — Michael R. Rose and John P. Phelan; Why Morality Doesn’t Need Religion — Peter Singer and Marc Hauser; Doctor Who and the Legacy of Rationalism — Sean Williams; My non-religious life: A journey from superstition to rationalism — Peter Tatchell; Helping People to Think Critically About Their Religious Beliefs — Michael Tooley; Human Self-Determination, Biomedical Progress, and God — Udo Schuklenk.

Remarkable tourism ad taken in Singapore

I took this photo in a MRT station in Singapore in March 2009, the Chinese (PR that is) tourism people advertising occupied Tibet's Lhasa as a Chinese tourist destination.

Medical journal primadonnas

Interesting story on conflict-of-interest reporting in biomedical journals. As you may or may not know, most leading biomedical journals require their authors (as well as peer reviewers and editors) to declare any kind of conflict of interest that they might have with regard to the manuscript/content under consideration by the journal. JAMA, the high-impact journal of the American Medical Association published a piece on the use of a particular anti-depressant in stroke patients. The study duly underwent anonymous peer review, passed peer review and so it went into print. Standard operating procedure as far as as biomedical peer reviewed content publishing is concerned.

The Wall Street Journal health blog reports an interesting fall-out between a neuro-anatomy professor in the USA and some of JAMA's editors. What happened, according to the WSJ blog is this: Jonathan Leo, the neuro-anatomy professor in question, published a letter on the website of the British Medical Journal's website alleging that the authors of the study in question failed to disclose a financial conflict of interest. Turns out that the allegations were correct. JAMA published in its March 11, 2009 issue an erratum including the omitted conflict of interest declaration as well as an apology from the study's lead authors.

What's interesting, however, is what happened in-between. Jonathan Leo, a professor at a small college in Tennessee received shortly after publication of his letter on the BMJ website a call from one of the editors of JAMA. He claims that that bloke threatened him this way: 'He said, ‘Who do you think you are,’ ” says Leo. “He then said, ‘You are banned from JAMA for life. You will be sorry. Your school will be sorry. Your students will be sorry." That's the story according to Leo. JAMA claims, not unexpectedly perhaps seeing the inappropriateness of this, that Leo's recollection of the conversation was incorrect.

Leo gets a second call from another editor at JAMA, someone even higher up than the first caller. Things didn't exactly improve... - Here's what the WSJ reports: 'The call from Fontanarosa was followed up by one from JAMA editor-in-chief Catherine DeAngelis to Leo’s superiors, Leo says. He said she asked his superiors to get him to retract his article in the BMJ. Leo says he decided to call DeAngelis directly to find out what, in particular, she might be objecting to. He said she was “very upset” but didn’t make specific complaints about the article. In a conversation with us, DeAngelis was none too happy to be questioned about the dust-up with Leo. “This guy is a nobody and a nothing” she said of Leo. “He is trying to make a name for himself. Please call me about something important.” She added that Leo “should be spending time with his students instead of doing this.”When asked if she called his superiors and what she said to them, DeAngelis said “it is none of your business.” She added that she did not threaten Leo or anyone at the school.'

So, clearly it's a he says - she says story but it's not insignificant that Leo seems to have received two critical calls from JAMA editors. As it turns out, however, his claims in his letter on the BMJ website were actually substantively correct.

Makes you wonder about JAMA's ethics standards. It is quite remarkable - in a bad way - to call a biomedical scientist who correctly flags the omission of an important conflict of interest disclosure with regard to a paper your journal published 'a nobody and a nothing'. Seriously, JAMA, you'd reconsider how you deal with such matters!

Ethics expendable in times of economic crisis?

I'm not suggesting that my two anecdotes can prove anything one way or another, but I wonder nevertheless whether it's purely coincidental that in times of economic crisis ethics, and more specifically bioethics is on funders' chopping blocks. At the University of Tennessee Health Science Center the Department of Human Values and Ethics, one of the oldest medical ethics programs in North America has been proposed by the medical school dean to be closed down. Its three faculty would likely lose their jobs if this came about. The dean proposed that their teaching and research be taken over by interested medical school faculty or medical practitioners. The university's endowment lost a lot of cash in the current economic meltdown, so money needs indeed to be saved, it seems. The idea though that ethics is something that could 'just' be taken over and done by someone with a strong interest or strong feeling about medical ethics is remarkable.

On last count we've had some 34 or 35 ISI (Web of Science) listed peer reviewed English language journals (and many more in other languages) serving the highly prolific academic research community in bioethics. Some of these journals have higher impact factors than biomedical journals of good international standing. Indeed, the number of excellent submissions received by some of these journals is so high that these journals publish on a monthly basis high quality peer reviewed bioethics content. Yet at the University of Tennessee a medical school dean believes work in this area could be done by someone with some kind of interest in medical ethics. It is somewhat doubtful that a similar attitude would be taken if it was pathology or surgery that's on the line. Ethics, in other words, seems to lend itself more easily to taking short-cuts when money is in short supply.

Well, in New Zealand the government announced that it will disbandon its National Bioethics Council to save money. The country's small bioethics council has produced during its life-time a whole range of excellently researched position papers on a whole range of different contentious issues, usually taking well-informed and sensible positions. I wonder whether it's really a money issue here that's at play or whether someone in power is using the economic crisis to get rid of folks saying things that the powers that are are uncomfortable with?

Cult of Misery at it again

in Brazil this time around. Quite remarkable story, and yet in line with the Roman Catholic Church's complete and utter disregard for anyone alive and kicking (as opposed to the oh-so-infinitely-valuable 'unborn'). Here's what happened:

Medical doctors assisted a 9 year old girl with having an abortion. She had been raped by her stepfather over several years, eventually resulting into a pregnancy (with twins). The young girl would have been unable to give birth to the twins even if she had wanted to do so. Her doctors pointed out that the girl's uterus was plain too small to permit her to give birth to one child, let alone twins. The Cult of Misery's ideology wants it that pregnant women will - in case of conflict - be sacrificed for the sake of the great 'unborn', so no big surprise that the church organization worked tirelessly to prevent the abortion from taking place.

Brazil currently has pretty much a stone age type legislation in place with regard to reproductive health issues. Abortions may only happen legally in Brazil if one of two conditions are met: a) the pregnant woman's life is at risk, and/or b) rape has taken place. In the tragic case under consideration both conditions were sadly met, and accordingly doctors were permitted to undertake the abortion.

The Cult of Misery's local representatives, probably deeply concerned about the raped survivor's life having been preserved by the medical intervention, have since decided to punish those concerned with the decision making and execution. Their harshest punishment is deployed against the medical professionals as well the young girl's mother: excommunication. In case you're not a member of the Cult, you need to understand that if you're excommunicated you won't go to heaven and you won't enjoy eternal life. That's the deal on offer from the Cult for its members.

What's interesting about this case is this: the decision to excommunicate the doctors and mother (recall that their call on the abortion issue preserved the rape survivor's life) goes hand in hand with another decision made also by the church hierarchy, namely to revoke the excommunication of a holocaust denying catholic bishop. Gives you a fair idea why so many refer to the Roman Catholic Church as the Cult of Misery. The organization seems to have a knack for spreading misery, a lot of it.

And that was the week...

Yay, a truly hectic working week is finally over. I spent all day today running around taking pix of the latest Singaporean skyscrapers. Even bumped into the world's largest cruise liner in the harbor.

I spent 5 out of 5 days regaling high school students with tales of cloning and animal experiments, A*STAR scientists with insights into academic publishing rules (and ethics), as well as staff at the Singapore General Hospital with a workshop on publishing ethics. Last but not least I gave a colloquium in the philosophy department at the National University of Singapore. The paper I presented was co-authored with Christopher Lowry. Chris is currently a doctoral student at Queen's and soon to be an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (yep, he is one of the few who managed to score jobs in the current climate). Probably didn't hurt that he published quite a bit of peer reviewed content during the last year and a half!

Anyhow, Russell Blackford with whom I currently edit a volume on atheist thought, and I managed to send the corrected manuscript back to the copy-editor, so it should soon enter the typesetting stage. Quite excited about this piece of work. Look out for the book, it's gonna be called '50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists'. It's coming with Wiley-Blackwell in a few months time.

Talking about Wiley-Blackwell, on Monday I will meet Cindy Chong, the Production Editor here in Singapore of two journals I co-edit for said company. It's funny how this stuff is being put together by diligent people literally all over the world. Our authors work in the most far flung corners of the world, and even us at the editorial side of things are in North America (yours truly, Ricardo Smalling), Europe (Ruth Chadwick, Clancy Pegg, Celia White and colleagues), Latin America (Debora Diniz) and Asia (Cindy Chong and colleagues). Without the advent of the internet that plain would not be possible. It's a remarkable thing really, when you think about it.

Talking about the net. I joined - ugh, terrible to admit, Facebook. Actually, it's an amazing site/ Within a week or two I gathered some 100+ 'friends', that's people making contact with you and ask that you kinda add them as 'friends'. Turns out to be an excellent tool to track 'lost ones'. I was found by folks who I haven't heard off for oodles of years. Bit of a waste of time otherwise. Would you believe that I posted a thing saying that I enjoyed Tim Tam's. I mean... please!

In case you're really bored, here's a link to images taken during my various 'performances' (there were stages on some occasions :).

Friends in Need - why not lend em a helping hand...

To our colleagues in bioethics:

We need your help. We need you to write letters, and we need it fast.

Here at the University of Tennessee medical school, the Dean has informed us that he intends to eliminate our entire department. Last summer he informed our chair, Dr. Terry Ackerman, that he wanted to do this, and now the machinery to effect his plan is in motion.

Earlier today the UT Board of Trustees approved a revised policy for "discontinuing academic units," thereby activating the process in earnest. A final decision about us will ultimately require the approval of the Chancellor at this campus, the President of UT, and finally the Board of
Trustees.

UT's medical ethics department ("Human Values and Ethics") is one of the oldest in the country. It began as a program in the mid-'70s and became a full-fledged department of the medical school in the mid-'80s. All three of us (Terry Ackerman, Carson Strong and Haavi Morreim) are tenured at the rank of professor and, other than "for cause," the only way that tenured faculty
can be removed is if their positions are eliminated.

Here are the dean's exact and complete words, as communicated to the Trustees, for including our department in his list of units to be discontinued:

"Primary goals of this department are to teach and do research to increase awareness of ethical and moral issues associated with healthcare. Human Values & Ethics, with 3 tenured faculty, is under consideration for discontinuation as it has minimal funded research programs and limited
teaching of medical students. Training of human values and ethics is necessary in medical school; however this will continue to be done primarily by experienced physicians as students go through clinical rotations. Immediate plans call for retaining one faculty at half-time to
coordinate this training. Long-term effects of discontinuance on UT and the State of Tennessee are anticipated to be minimal."

First problem: the Dean's proposed alternative is a clear violation of LCME standards (Liaison Committee on Medical Education) for accrediting medical schools. In ED-23 and ED-17A (http://www.lcme.org/functions2008jun.pdf,), LCME requires that students receive ethics instruction in preclinical years, and *formally* during clinical rotations. The dean's plan eliminates preclinical instruction and provides only informal teaching during clinical
rotations. To our knowledge, there are no MDs or other PhDs who have any advanced qualifications in ethics at this institution.

Second problem: contrary to the Dean's statement, our primary goal is not merely to "increase awareness." We co-teach a required course for the first- and second-year students that has a major ethics component; conduct seminars for third-year students rotating through pediatrics and ob/gyn; and participate extensively in clinical teaching during regular patient-focused rounds and conferences for such departments as pediatrics, ob/gyn, and internal medicine. We also have a substantial involvement in teaching residents.

Third problem: the dean's comment on research does not discuss the quality of our work, only its lack of extramural funding. We have informed him that funding for research in bioethics is very limited, particularly as compared to the monies available for medical research; also, that much of what is available is directed toward social science exploration of topics of
relevance to ethics (e.g. empirical studies of informed consent), rather than the more purely philosophical and ethics-oriented research that this department has historically produced.

We ask you to write letters to the Chancellor, to the President and to the Trustees. Their names and addresses are just below‹one letter will do it for all the Trustees. We have known our campus' Chancellor, Dr. Pat Wall, to be a fine human being with a strong sense of value and priorities. He is no moral coward. We believe he in particular will take seriously your
thoughtful expressions. Letters to the President and Trustees will provide him with important reinforcement.

The content of the letter can be the same for each recipient, but: *sending one letter to one person will not be as helpful as sending that letter to all three (Chancellor, President, Trustees);
*sending one letter from a department/program as a whole is good, but not nearly as good as if each willing member of the department sends letters.

We would deeply appreciate an earnest letter explaining why saving money by eliminating ethics is unwise for a medical school. It would also be helpful to comment on our national reputations, as that is one of the factors to be considered.

Please help. We send our heartfelt thanks to you all.

Terry Ackerman
Carson Strong
Haavi Morreim

==============================

==========

Chancellor:
Pat Wall, M.D.
Chancellor, UTHSC
409 Hyman Administration Building
University of Tennessee Health Science Center
Memphis, TN 38163

President:
Jan Simek, Ph.D.
Interim President, University of Tennessee
Office of the President
831 Andy Holt Tower
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-0180

Trustees:
You can use one letter for all trustees. When your letter is received in the
Trustees' office, they'll scan it an email it to all members.

Address:
Board of Trustees Office
University of Tennessee
719 Andy Holt Tower
Knoxville TN 37996-0170

If you wish to do so, it would be helpful to us if you would send a copy of
your letter to:
Dr. Terrence F. Ackerman
Chair, Dept. of Human Values and Ethics
910 Madison Avenue, Suite 311
University of Tennessee Health Science Center
Memphis TN 38163

A380 and such

Yours truly is currently in Singapore, on a work visit to the NUS bioethics centre. Will also be giving a talk here in the philosophy department. You might hear from me, on and off, but don't expect too much, the weather is such that I'd rather be outside than to go on blogging...

Hey, on the bright side, the dreaded flight on BAs 777 to Singapore from London turned out to be a Qantas A380 trip. The plane, according to its pilot, is a mere 4 weeks old. And guess what, it worked a treat. Being 'just' an academic, I flew of course torture class, and had it not been for an exit row 'window' (there's no window) seat and 7mg of diazepam I probably would have 'died'. Well, so I slept roughly 10 out of the 12 hours and am reasonably fit. Funny enough, these meds are not supposed to be used for this purpose. Btw, you probably don't want to go for the exit row seats in BA 777 fleet's economy section, just about all their monitors were broken. I wonder why. They fall back and hit people's knees all the time. They eventually upgraded me to Premium economy. Seems well worth it, to be honest. Lufthansa's business class just a few years back would have been what premium economy is today on most carriers. OH well, enough of this babble, I have this obsession with comparing airline services (well, disservices these days, mostly). I am pleased to report, however, that I avoided again Air Canada, so arrived on time without hick-up's.

Singapore is still as crazily efficient as it has been 10 or 15 years ago when I ventured here first time round. No queues at customs, luggage waiting, clean reliable taxi taking me to my residence, security waiting to take me to my lil flat (which turns out to be huge, 2 bedrooms and no less than three bathrooms...). Funny enough, I ended up in the supermarket next door to buy some of life's basic necessities, only to be told that they're not taking credit cards (in hi-tech Singapore of all places).

On that note, enjoy your day. I will do the same :).

Defending freedom of speech against religious fundamentalism

I'm reproducing here a piece by Johann Hari. Johann is a columnist with the British Independent newspaper. He wrote there a piece on how Western liberal democracies continue to ever reduce their citizen's freedom of speech in order to accommodate the otherwise 'hurt' feelings of religious people. In fact, he reports on how the UN Human Rights Commission has been perverted into a tool aimed at censoring religion critical speech of free-thinking people (I blogged about the same issue in April 2008.) Since then his piece was reproduced by a leading Indian paper. True to form religious fundamentalists demanded that paper's editor resign. She was eventually arrested. How dare you to offend non-reality based folks... tsk tsk tsk. Well, here's Johann's piece. It also includes a link to his original piece in the Independent newspaper. Well worth a read. I'm flabbergasted that nobody seems to appreciate that one of the main reasons for protecting freedom of speech is to protect someone's right to offend someone else without the state stepping in and incarcerating that person. There's no point in protecting the freedom to say things that ruffle no one's feathers... -

Despite the Riots and Threats, I Stand By What I Wrote

Last week, I wrote an article defending free speech for everyone -- and in response there have been riots, death threats, and the arrest of an editor who published the article.

Here's how it happened. My column reported on a startling development at the United Nations. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights has always had the job of investigating governments that forcibly take the fundamental human right to free speech from their citizens with violence. But in the past year, a coalition of religious fundamentalist states have successfully fought to change her job description. Now, she has to report on "abuses of free expression" including "defamation of religions and prophets." Instead of defending free speech, she must now oppose it.

I argued this was a symbol of how religious fundamentalists -- of all stripes -- have been progressively stripping away the right to freely discuss their faiths. They claim religious ideas are unique and cannot be discussed freely; instead, they must be "respected" -- by which they mean unchallenged. So now, whenever anyone on the UN Human Rights Council tries to discuss the stoning of "adulterous" women, the hanging of gay people, or the marrying off of ten year old girls to grandfathers, they are silenced by the chair on the grounds these are "religious" issues, and it is "offensive" to talk about them.

This trend is not confined to the UN. It has spread deep into democratic countries. Whenever I have reported on immoral acts by religious fanatics -- Catholic, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim -- I am accused of "prejudice", and I am not alone. But my only "prejudice" is in favor of individuals being able to choose to live their lives, their way, without intimidation. That means choosing religion, or rejecting it, as they wish, after hearing an honest, open argument.

A religious idea is just an idea somebody had a long time ago, and claimed to have received from God. It does not have a different status to other ideas; it is not surrounded by an electric fence through which none of us can pass.

That's why I wrote: "All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don't respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don't respect the idea that we should follow a "Prophet" who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him. I don't respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don't respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice.... When you demand "respect", you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade."

An Indian newspaper called The Statesman -- one of the oldest and most venerable dailies in the country -- thought this accorded with the rich Indian tradition of secularism, and reprinted the article. That night, four thousand Islamic fundamentalists began to riot outside their offices, calling for me, the editor, and the publisher to be arrested -- or worse. They brought Central Calcutta to a standstill. A typical supporter of the riots, Abdus Subhan, said he was "prepared to lay down his life, if necessary, to protect the honour of the Prophet" and I should be sent "to hell if he chooses not to respect any religion or religious symbol... He has no liberty to vilify or blaspheme any religion or its icons on grounds of freedom of speech."

Then, two days ago, the editor and publisher were indeed arrested. They have been charged -- in the world's largest democracy, with a constitution supposedly guaranteeing a right to free speech -- with "deliberately acting with malicious intent to outrage religious feelings". I am told I too will be arrested if I go to Calcutta.

What should an honest defender of free speech say in this position? Every word I wrote was true. I believe the right to openly discuss religion, and follow the facts wherever they lead us, is one of the most precious on earth -- especially in a democracy of a billion people rivven with streaks of fanaticism from a minority of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. So I cannot and will not apologize.

I did not write a sectarian attack on any particular religion of the kind that could lead to a rerun of India's hellish anti-Muslim or anti-Sikh pogroms, but rather a principled critique of all religions who try to forcibly silence their critics. The right to free speech I am defending protects Muslims as much as everyone else. I passionately support their right to say anything they want -- as long as I too have the right to respond.

It's worth going through the arguments put forward by the rioting fundamentalists, because they will keep recurring in the twenty-first century as secularism is assaulted again and again. They said I had upset "the harmony" of India, and it could only be restored by my arrest. But this is a lop-sided vision of "harmony". It would mean that religious fundamentalists are free to say whatever they want -- and the rest of us have to shut up and agree.

The protesters said I deliberately set out to "offend" them, and I am supposed to say that, no, no offense was intended. But the honest truth is more complicated. Offending fundamentalists isn't my goal -- but if it is an inevitable side-effect of defending human rights, so be it. If fanatics who believe Muslim women should be imprisoned in their homes and gay people should be killed are insulted by my arguments, I don't resile from it. Nothing worth saying is inoffensive to everyone.

You do not have a right to be ring-fenced from offense. Every day, I am offended -- not least by ancient religious texts filled with hate-speech. But I am glad, because I know that the price of taking offense is that I can give it too, if that is where the facts lead me. But again, the protesters propose a lop-sided world. They do not propose to stop voicing their own heinously offensive views about women's rights or homosexuality, but we have to shut up and take it -- or we are the ones being "insulting."

It's also worth going through the arguments of the Western defenders of these protesters, because they too aren't going away. Already I have had e-mails and bloggers saying I was "asking for it" by writing a "needlessly provocative" article. When there is a disagreement and one side uses violence, it is a reassuring rhetorical stance to claim both sides are in the wrong, and you take a happy position somewhere in the middle. But is this true? I wrote an article defending human rights, and stating simple facts. Fanatics want to arrest or kill me for it. Is there equivalence here?

The argument that I was "asking for it" seems a little like saying a woman wearing a short skirt is "asking" to be raped. Or, as Salman Rushdie wrote when he received far, far worse threats simply for writing a novel (and a masterpiece at that): "When Osip Mandelstam wrote his poem against Stalin, did he 'know what he was doing' and so deserve his death? When the students filled Tiananmen Square to ask for freedom, were they not also, and knowingly, asking for the murderous repression that resulted? When Terry Waite was taken hostage, hadn't he been 'asking for it'?" When fanatics threaten violence against people who simply use words, you should not blame the victim.

These events are also a reminder of why it is so important to try to let the oxygen of rationality into religious debates -- and introduce doubt. Voltaire -- one of the great anti-clericalists -- said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." If you can be made to believe the absurd notion that an invisible deity dictated The Eternal Unchanging Truth to a specific person at a specific time in history and anyone who questions this is Evil, then you can easily be made to demand the death of journalists and free women and homosexuals who question that Truth. But if they have a moment of doubt -- if there is a single nagging question at the back of their minds -- then they are more likely to hesitate. That's why these ideas must be challenged at their core, using words and reason.

But the fundamentalists are determined not to allow those rational ideas to be heard -- because at some level they know they will persuade for many people, especially children and teenagers in the slow process of being indoctrinated.

If, after all the discussion and all the facts about how contradictory and periodically vile their 'holy' texts are, religious people still choose fanatical faith, I passionately defend their right to articulate it. Free speech is for the stupid and the wicked and the wrong -- whether it is fanatics or the racist Geert Wilders -- just as much as for the rational and the right. All I say is that they do not have the right to force it on other people or silence the other side. In this respect, Wilders resembles the Islamists he professes to despise: he wants to ban the Koran. Fine. Let him make his argument. He discredits himself by speaking such ugly nonsense.

The solution to the problems of free speech -- that sometimes people will say terrible things -- are always and irreducibly more free speech. If you don't like what a person says, argue back. Make a better case. Persuade people. The best way to discredit a bad argument is to let people hear it. I recently interviewed the pseudo-historian David Irving, and simply quoting his crazy arguments did far more harm to him than any Austrian jail sentence for Holocaust Denial.

Please do not imagine that if you defend these rioters, you are defending ordinary Muslims. If we allow fanatics to silence all questioning voices, the primary victims today will be Muslim women, Muslim gay people, and the many good and honourable Muslim men who support them. Imagine what Europe would look like now if everybody who offered dissenting thoughts about Christianity in the seventeenth century and since was intimidated into silence by the mobs and tyrants who wanted to preserve the most literalist and fanatical readings of the Bible. Imagine how women and gay people would live.

You can see this if you compare my experience to that of journalists living under religious-Islamist regimes. Because generations of people sought to create a secular space, when I went to the police, they offered total protection. When they go to the police, they are handed over to the fanatics -- or charged for their "crimes." They are people like Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the young Afghan journalism student who was sentenced to death for downloading a report on women's rights. They are people like the staff of Zanan, one of Iran's leading reform-minded women's magazines, who have been told they will be jailed if they carry on publishing. They are people like the 27-year old Muslim blogger Abdel Rahman who has been seized, jailed and tortured in Egypt for arguing for a reformed Islam that does not enforce shariah law.

It would be a betrayal of them -- and the tens of thousands of journalists like them - to apologize for what I wrote. Yes, if we speak out now, there will be turbulence and threats, and some people may get hurt. But if we fall silent -- if we leave the basic human values of free speech, feminism and gay rights undefended in the face of violent religious mobs -- then many, many more people will be hurt in the long term. Today, we have to use our right to criticise religion -- or lose it.

If you are appalled by the erosion of secularism across the world and want to do something about it, there are a number of organizations you can join, volunteer for or donate to.

Some good places to start are the National Secular Society, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason, or - if you want the money to go specifically to work in India - the International Humanist and Ethical Union. (Mark your donation as for their India branch.)

Even donating a few hours or a few pounds can really make a difference to defending people subject to religious oppression - by providing them with legal help, education materials, and lobbying for changes in the law.

An essential source of news for secularists is the terrific website Butterflies and Wheels.

Good ol British hypocrisy

There it is the land of the free, the defender of freedom of thought and speech, notorious for tolerating people with quirky habits and beliefs... that is, unless you're criticizing Islam. Why did I add hypocrisy in the title of today's post? Well, there's different standards for different people. A notorious, rightwing Dutch MP by the name Geert Wilders called the Koran a 'fascist book' in an anti-Islamic video some time ago. As we know by now, many Muslims respond to this sort of stuff with mayhem - you know, burning effiges of people who are not Muslims, killing other Muslims while they're at it, that sort of thing. So, one arguably over-the-top and offensive statement by Wilders leads to an even more problematic and out of proportion response by Muslims. Wilders, an EU citizen, wanted to visit the UK but has been banned by the UK Home Office on the grounds that his presence would threaten 'public security'. So, the presumed Muslim response determines whether one of Islam's critics may enter the country. It would follow then that the more out of proportion Muslims' responses to critics' views of that ideology is, the less likely it is that people who publicly hold such views would be permitted to enter the UK.

Here's the bit that really interests me in this: The UK Home Office also permits Caribbean singers to enter the UK, even though these shady characters routinely call for violence against gays and lesbians in their songs (including the murder of such people, just for good measure). It seems to me as if gays and lesbians are well advised to go on the streets, burn cars and create a lot of mayhem, because according to the screwed logic of the UK Home Office, that would then constitute a sufficient reason for not letting such 'artists' enter the country. If on the other hand you protest peacefully, 'public security' is not threatened and people advocating violence against gays and lesbians may freely enter the country.

QED

ps, in case you care to find out... here's an ineresting piece Russell Blackford wrote on the same issue: http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2009/02/geert-wilders-refused-entry-to-uk.html

Darwin Award competition continues

Four other serious contenders for the Darwin Awards, this time in South Korea. People there celebrate Lunar New Year by, among other activities, burning a large pile of dried grass to the ground. In this instance, ie in Changnyeong, about 275 km (170 miles) southeast of Seoul, they carefully chose to burn it surrounded by fields of even more dried grass. Gusty winds developed as the show was on the road, and the meager fire-proof fencing didn't do the trick. Guess what: the fire spread quickly, killing at least four on-lookers, leading to a stampede among the folks attending the event. Clever, clever.

2009 season contenders for the Darwin Awards

A group of particularly idiotic fishermen and women in the US. They entered a frozen iceshield on a lake in the USA, happily drilling holes thru the ice in order to fish thru the holes. Well, the whole iceshield broke off the shoreline, including the bunch of fishermen and women, their equipment, cars, tents, the lot. At least one of them is a serious contender for the actual award as he died as a result of exposure to the icy water. A massive rescue operation and concomitant wastage of resources took place in order to rescue those fools lest their genes would otherwise also be withdrawn from the gene pool for good.

Here is some background on the Canadian runners-up in this competition.

Vatican governs Italy

Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's best-known playboy, has officially been appointed to be the Vatican's permanent representative in his own government. According to reports in THE GUARDIAN newspaper today, after frantic forth and backs with Vatican officials, he is aiming to change Italy's laws in order to prevent doctors from executing a Supreme Court of Italy approved case of removing life-sustaining medical care from a woman in persistent vegetative state. This saga reminds very much of the Bush meddling in the Schiavo case a few years back in the USA.

Here are the basics of the case: Eluana Englaro is a 38-year-old woman who has been in a coma for the past 17 years. She was left in a persistent vegetative state after a car accident. Her family wanted her life-preserving care removed from her, both because that is what Ms Englaro would have wished, and also because her brain injuries are such that there is no chance she will ever rejoin us in this life. She will not ever be able to live a life worth living again.

Eventually after a long long march thru the legal instances the Italian Supreme Court granted the family's request. Doctors have begun to reduce her nutrition since. Her PVS means that she won't feel any of this happening. The 'v' in PVS really means that her state of consciousness is vegetable like. Veggies don't feel pain or suffer.

Well Italy's first playboy, after consulting Italy's governor general, the Pope, declared that this court decision was akin to murder and issued an emergency decree aiming to prevent the withdrawal from life-sustaining medical care. One of his - on the record - rationales was that she is still physiologically capable of making babies...

Reports THE GUARDIAN: Giorgio Napolitano, Italy's president, has refused to sign the decree, but if it is ratified by the Italian parliament doctors may be obliged to resume the feeding of Eluana early this week. One can only hope that the Italian parliament will show more insight and realise that there is nothing to be gained by this patient remaining in PVS for another few decades. As the anaesthetist caring for her, Professor Antonio de Monte, said: "Eluana died 17 years ago."

UPDATE: Eluana has died yesterday peacefully.

On another note, commiserations to my Melbourne based compatriots. The scale of the catastrophe in Victoria truly boggles the mind! Just read that among the people who perished were Brian Naylor and his wife.

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.