Maia Caron interviews Udo Schuklenk

Grin, here's a nice interview by Maia Caron with myself. Enjoy (or not, as the case might be). In case you are interested or can be bothered, here and here are discussions of the views expressed in the interview. I have not corrected the few mistakes that can be found in the original text below. You might want to note that I am not author of the volumes mentioned, but usually a co-editor. In case you want to know what it is that I have written or edited during the last 10 years or so, go here.

Interview with Udo Schuklenk

Posted By Maia Caron on January 14, 2010

I’m hosting an interview series with prominent atheist and skeptic authors called Conversations with Freethinking Authors.

Today, I’m talking to Udo Schuklenk, co-editor with Russell Blackford of 50 Voices of Disbelief, Why We Are Atheists. Udo is also author of The Power of Pills: Social, Ethical and Legal Issues in Drug Development and The Bioethics Reader.

MAIA: Welcome Udo, and I appreciate you taking the time to talk about your and Russell Blackford’s book. I very much enjoyed reading these essays. Not only was it an opportunity to hear favorite atheist authors air recent thoughts on their personal realizations on what it means to be an atheist, but it also introduced me to other areligious authors and their books. It’s a compelling read and a powerful argument for atheism. Thank you for compiling so many excellent essays.

In the introduction to 50 Voices of Disbelief, you and Russell Blackford write that, “Religious dogmas and organizations are legitimate targets for fearless criticism and satire” and “There must not be special treatment for religious ideas of any kind.” I couldn’t agree more. You also mention the importance of Voices of Reason being heard at this point in our history. Why now more than ever?

UDO: I think there are several good but also quite varied reasons for this. One reason is that the religious backlash against humanist thinking is becoming ever more virulent. The UN Human Rights Council has decided to encourage the organisation’s member states to introduce blasphemy laws. I have argued in THE ECONOMIST magazine, ‘freedom of speech “must include the right to ‘defame’ religions” (“The meaning of freedom”, April 4th). The UN Human Rights Council, which adopted a resolution decrying religious defamation as an affront to human dignity, is controlled mostly by countries that are among the most prolific violators of civil rights, including the right to speak one’s mind.

The blasphemy document itself is remarkable in its scope and deliberate vagueness. Notorious civil-rights violators like Iran and Saudi Arabia will now be able to claim with some confidence that the UN is on their side when they clamp down on liberal-minded or secular Muslims. Western countries will also be happy to note that the council thinks the human right to free speech is not violated when they enforce their own, less draconian, blasphemy laws. The UN has firmly established itself as a body that is not even prepared to defend the basic principles enshrined in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights.' This then is the first answer to your question: Religious institutions and the states they control move ever more viciously against freedom of speech to protect themselves from legitimate criticism. We must not allow this to stand. Religious beliefs, ultimately, can only survive if our right to question and criticize them can be efficiently curtailed. If I am right, and we are at some kind of strategic inflection point as far as the influence of organized religions in the Western world is concerned, their fight to maintain their special rights and status will become ever more vicious. Hence, it is important right now for us to speak out and not leave that to very few atheist cheer leaders.

I also happen to think that it is important to demonstrate to the wider public that atheists can think for themselves and that our views about many issues are very diverse. We don’t do ourselves any favors at all by leaving people with the impression that our capacity to think independently is reducible to Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens. We are not a hierarchical religious outfit after all. Our book, the 50 Voices of Disbelief demonstrates just that beautifully.

MAIA: I couldn’t agree more that atheists and anyone who cares about freedom of speech and human rights must act rather than remain silent. In your introduction, you reference contributing essayists, saying: “… some are even wary of the words atheism and atheist words that can carry unwanted connotations in many social contexts.” This is a theme also picked up in Michael Shermer’s essay in the book. He wrote, “Words matter and labels carry baggage,” going on to say that people associate atheism with “… communism, socialism, or extreme liberalism,” and that “… we can try redefining the word in a more positive direction.” There’s an ongoing debate among atheists/skeptics/agnostics/freethinkers/rationalists as to what an unbeliever should be called. Do you think the word “atheist” is a viable term? Or should a new name be coined that would more accurately represent the areligious?

UDO: That’s a very good question. I hold it with Karl Popper on labels really. It’s unimportant to me what label we use as long as it is clearly defined (and packs a punch in the public arena). To me it matters not at all what label it is, but it would be nice to have not too many competing such labels about as they only distract from the main messages and are indicative of sectarian scheming and territory marking. You might recall in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, there is this scene where our would-be liberationists sit in an arena introducing themselves to each other. They all follow pretty much closely aligned (albeit not exactly aligned) agendas and have nearly all the same name bar some small difference in labeling. They go on arguing forever about their small differences and miss the bigger picture as a result of that. I think we would be well advised to go about this more professionally by surveying which label the wider public would be most comfortable with, take that label and move on from there. A good example of how successful this is is the self-labeling of anti-choice campaigners in the context of reproductive rights. They call themselves ‘pro-life’ which clearly sounds much better than ‘we-don’t-care-about women’, or ‘we decide for pregnant women’ or ‘anti-choice’, which is what they really are. Marketing in this context clearly matters, unless we think that our agenda is entirely theoretical and inconsequential.

MAIA: I’ll have to watch Life of Brian again for that scene you descsribe. Good analogy for what goes on in the many-labelled freethinking/atheist community. In your introduction you also write, “It is high time we took charge of, and responsibility for, our own destinies without God, or God’s priestly interpreters, coming between us and our decision-making.” It’s a theme that Ophelia Benson picks up in her essay when she writes: “I refuse to consider a God ‘good’ that expects us to ignore our own best judgment and reasoning faculties.” Do you see more people taking responsibility for their own destinies? And what is the danger when they do not?

UDO: The fact that the number of people clearly affiliated with mainstream religions has been decreasing in the West for more than a decade by now indicates that more and more people have begun thinking for themselves. I suspect, ironically, this is even true for many religious people who confronted the atheist challenge, and on reflection decided to remain with their God. Reflecting on these issues is a good thing. We can only truly live our own lives if we make a considered choice as to the values (and basis of those values) that guide our lives. If we don’t, if we follow religious (or other authority) blindly, we live an other-directed life, and in that sense we don’t actually live our own lives. The ongoing public exchanges between non-religious people and people believing in some kind of higher being actually serve that purpose.

MAIA: “Other-directed life” is an excellent way of putting it. I couldn’t agree more that ”otherness” is a foundational problem, and many individuals don’t realize how thoroughly they are plugged into “they” and “we.” In 50 Voices of Disbelief, a common recurring theme among the atheist contributors (yourself included) is an early questioning of the status quo of the religion you were brought up believing. Why do you think some people believe willingly, accepting without question their entire lives, and others question early, and reject the façade of belief?

UDO: You are asking an empirical as opposed to a philosophical or ethical question. I’m not trained to address this question as a professional. I can think of only one good reason for why someone might decide (unconsciously, if there is such a thing as an unconscious decision), and that is that there is quite a lot of comfort one can take from believing in a higher being. This comfort might be mistaken if there is no such being, as we atheists happen to think, but surely one got to acknowledge that confidence in an afterlife will make it easier for many religious people to cope with miserable lives. This is especially true for miserable lives that seem to have no end. I have always thought, call it arrogant, that those who are stronger willed or stronger minded are more likely to question this comfort and its pseudo-answers than people who are psychologically weaker. Surely there is comfort in knowing that a good, all-knowing entity is watching over you. It’s delusional, no doubt, but believing this must give you a warm and fuzzy feeling, and possibly the strength to deal with life’s adversity.

MAIA: In your own contribution to the book, an essay titled Human Self-Determination, Biomedical Progress, and God, you raise what I think is a very important issue, writing, “Political correctness today seems to demand that progressive intellectuals pretend that the barbarism that pervades many Islamic countries is not happening.” Political Correctness has become pervasive. Do you think that in general, atheists should be more aggressive in criticizing Islam?and exposing harmful religious ideologies?

UDO: Oh, absolutely. As writers like Henryk Broder have rightly pointed out, what we see across the Western world is the political left and political liberals continuing their arguments with Christians, but not with the arguably much greater threat to secular multi-cultural societies, that is conservative Islam. The UN Human Rights Council has already decided to deliberately muddy the waters by claiming that Islamophobia is a form of racism. How offensive is that to anyone who has ever been attacked or otherwise discriminated against because of their ethnicity? People choose these religious ideologies, you don’t choose the color of your skin. – As an aside, if these people argue that they have not even consciously made the choice to be Muslim (or Christian, or Scientologist or Aquarian for that matter), there is even less reason to take their religious convictions seriously, because they’re not meaningfully their own. – I think the conflation of such issues is deliberate.

There is also this continuing stuff about how peace loving Islam and its adherents are, yet most acts of religiously motivated violence we have seen across the world during the last decade or two were motivated by the ideology of Islam. We have all seen time and again on TV how adherents to this ideology have burned effigies of leaders of Western countries where cartoonists ridicule their God. What makes them think that their strongly held beliefs, baseless as they clearly are, deserve special respect? What makes them think that there is some divine right of Muslims not to be offended by people who disagree with their beliefs? I am offended all the time by their views on a lot of normative issues. Do I go out and burn effigies of Islamic countries’ leaders or prominent religious figures? No. Do I bomb Iran’s airline? No. There is no special moral entitlement of Muslim or other religious folks not to be offended by someone who disagrees with the ideology they hold dear to their heart. Protecting religious ideologies from the same acerbic wit that other ideologies (communism, capitalism, liberalism etc etc) have to endure is mistaken. This is what the rough and tumble of liberal democracies is all about. It is important for us as atheists to protect these freedoms against the onslaught of religious (and other) ideologies.

MAIA: I agree with you whole-heartedly on that. In your essay, you also bring up a very important point about the special rights that health care professionals have under “conscientious objection,” that if they “strongly hold personal religious beliefs that are in conflict with what would normally be required of them as a health care professional, they can “legitimately object to providing such professional services on grounds of personal conscience.” This practice is reprehensible and as you write, “It is arguable that, if individuals abuse that privilege by discriminating against particular patients because of their personal convictions, they violate basic standards of professional conduct.” This sort of thing goes on, and yet atheism is considered the unethical force. As you say, “religious consciences are reaching arbitrary conclusions about what is right and what is wrong.” Do you see the need for atheists to organize a more united front and demand that this kind of unfair practice be controlled by government legislation?

UDO: I have written on this issue on my blog and various articles during the last few years. I do believe we should do away with the right to conscientious objection in medicine altogether. Here are my reasons for this: Usually in the context of the abortion controversy, religiously motivated health care professionals claim the moral (and often legal) right to conscientious objection to the provision of certain health care services. The basic idea is that if, say, Christian doctors and nurses object for religious (conscience) reasons to abortion they should not be forced to provide such services. On the face of it this seems uncontroversial. I think both accepting such conscience based refusals to provide health care services as well as assuming that such decisions are uncontroversial is mistaken. Let me explain why.

First things first: health care professionals such as doctors and nurses are first and foremost called upon by us as members of society as professionals and not as members of the Communist Party, the Klu Klux Clan, the local chess club, or a particular church. They provide a public service. In return for this we as society grant them a monopoly on the provision of such services (eg doctors have a monopoly on the provision of many health delivery services, including the prescription of drugs). We as society also invest substantial amounts of public funds into their training.

In many countries abortion is legal to some extent or other. In other words, societies have decided that it is ethically acceptable for women to make such choices (usually within certain well-defined limits). In societies providing public health care, women are entitled to receive abortion services through health care professionals that are publicly funded. These professionals are seen by pregnant women for the purpose of having an abortion. They are sought out as professionals and not at all as private individuals with their own private views on the morality or otherwise of abortion. I think it is preposterous to suggest that such professionals could kind of opt-out of the provision of some services because they feel strongly about such services. Religious provisions are more or less arbitrary. Some make sense, others don’t, and among religions there is little consensus on what is and isn’t ethical. To permit the delivery of health care to be controlled by what amounts essentially to a lottery is unacceptable.

Patients treated by a public sector doctor belonging to Jehova’s Witnesses wouldn’t get blood transfusions, those falling into the hands of an adherent to the Scientology Church won’t receive antidepressants, the list is endless. It’s easily imaginable that a racist doctor belonging to a suitably racist church could refuse to provide life-preserving services to patients from ethnicities other than her own. The conscientious objection to abortion crowd might not like to hear this, but there is no in-principle difference between their objection and that of the medic belonging to the Aryan Nation Church of Jesus Christ Christian. They will, of course, claim that they have ‘better’ reasons and that the competing church (ie the smallish racist outfit) is either not a ‘real’ church or that the racists are ‘wrong’ etc. The thing is, strictly speaking, none of this can be shown to be true, because, as it happens all monotheistic religions depend on untestable claims about the existence of ‘God’.

A reliable delivery of health services (and this includes equitable access) depends on guaranteeing timely access based on health need. Conscientious objections are a serious threat to precisely that. If you are a pregnant woman living in a rural area with a limited number of predominantly conservative Christian or Muslim doctors you might well not be able to execute your legal right to have an abortion at a certain point in time, if respect for conscientious objections was considered to be of greater importance than your access to services.

This argument is very powerful indeed, when you consider the dearth of health care professionals serving the public sector in developing countries. So, the sooner we get rid of the right to conscientious objection, the better for us, the public. And to be clear, if health care professionals feel strongly enough about this matter, they should be invited to leave the profession and do something else with their lives. We cannot reasonably permit a pick-and-choose type interpretation of professionalism to become the norm. As someone who has taught for many years in medical schools, I can testify to quite a number of people who have chosen dentistry over medicine, for instance, because they did not wish to ever have to face the moral conflicts that come into play in the abortion controversy or end-of-life decision-making. In all honesty, these professionals deserve our respect for what I think is a grown-up understanding of what it means to be a professional. I think a strong case can be made for atheists targeting this serious problem policy wise.

MAIA: In Michael Tooley’s essay, he writes, “Most people in the world accept the religious beliefs of their parents with relatively minor changes, and never think critically about those beliefs.” He asks an important question: “Can anything be done to enable ordinary people to step back from their religious beliefs and to consider whether those beliefs are really true?” This question is echoed by many other atheist contributors, among them: Julian Baggini: “Why do intelligent people continue to believe?” Susan Blackmore: “God and the paranormal …. inspire deeply held beliefs and have spawned highly evolved memeplexes that are very infectious and difficult to root out once they are installed in the human mind,” Dale McGowan: “How do we go on, century after century, skating on the thin ice of a system so self-evidently false and self-contradictory?” and Ophelia Benson: “A lot of people think they know things about God which seem to be contradicted by everything we see around us. It’s odd that the discrepancies don’t interfere with the knowledge.” Because the theme of questioning is prevalent in my own book, I’d like to hear what you think can be done to turn the penchant of humans to believe rather than question. Is it possible?

UDO: Another empirical question. I suspect as atheists we probably need to offer an alternative to the needs ‘God’ satisfies (well, doesn’t satisfy in reality, but psychologically – you know, the afterlife, redemption for wrong-doing, some good all powerful big guy watching over you, that kinda stuff). We need to show that a life without ‘God’ can be meaningful and satisfying. I think humanist groups presiding over non-religious weddings and funerals have made a good and quite successful start in many countries on this front. Beyond that, it’s up to each of us individually to provoke believers into explaining themselves and their beliefs. After all, as Dawkins (yes, Dawkins) said once, ‘There is more to vicars than giving tea parties, there are evil consequences.’ US evangelicals were by and large behind attempts to introduce the death penalty for certain homosexual sex acts in Uganda.

I think it might well be worth re-focusing humanist efforts, like the religious organizations have done for many many decades, on developing countries, supporting free speech and liberal causes and their supporters there more pro-actively. The fights humanists have on their hands in places like Nigeria, India and other such countries is arguably of much greater significance than the skirmishing we engage in with Christians in the developed world.

MAIA: Thanks for joining me today, Udo. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to address these topics. If you’d like to know more about Udo Schuklenk, please visit his website. And if you haven’t read 50 Voices of Disbelief, I highly recommend it. Let’s raise our disbelieving voices and be heard.

Airport security

I'm sure I am missing something here. We've had the shoe bomber, trying to set alight an explosive substance hidden in his shoe, some 8 or so years ago. The bloke travels without luggage and on a one-way ticket. Ever since we have been terrorised by security experts taking away our perfumes (ie perfumes bought prior to entering the duty free area), water (yes, water!), coke, fruit juices and any number of other substances that are utterly safe. Hectoliters of these fluids were destroyed for no good reason at all. Then, 8 years later comes an explosives laden guy who flies on a one-way ticket, without luggage from Yemen to Europe to the USA. Nobody notices anything. His water they might have taken away from him, but not his explosives!

Rightly so comedians such as Jon Stewart made light of the fact that the most recent case mimicks more or less the case we've had 8 years ago. What fascinates me, however, is that we have screening mechanisms in place that manage to succeed in finding a bottle of water on me, but that fail (8 years later) to find explosives. Makes you surely wonder what those gazillions of $$ were spent on during those years. I can't help but think that the primary objective was psychological, namely to hope that actual terrorists wouldn't call the security agencies' bluff (ie their continuing inability to reliably identify oddball travelers like our would-be terrorist and, most bizarre to my mind, their continuing inability to identify explosives on the traveling public). There we queue for all those hours, are unable to take toothpaste onto planes, yet would have no serious difficulty taking explosives along. Is it just me who thinks 'incompetent'?

No doubt we will soon be terrorized by ever more inane procedures. I've heard that I won't be able to go to the loo an hour before landing, there won't be blankets (on those bloody cold overnight flights). There will be never-ending security this-n-that's on flights to the USA (could please the rest of the world retaliate and ask the same of US travellers, so they must also wait forever), and that's about that. Oh well, when you thought things couldn't get much worse in terms of international air travel.

Creationist 'Discovery Institute' caught red-handed

The creationist 'think' tank Discovery Institute (bankrolling such intellectual luminaries as WJ Smith) has been caught red-handed. Check out this youtube video. It's self-explanatory. Enjoy.

Dignity's 'wooly uplift'

I have been sufficiently concerned for awhile about the more or less random deployment of terms such as 'human dignity' for and against any and all kinds of normative positions that I have done a bit of research on it while I was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London's Graduate School last term. Here's a pre-print of an Editorial I jointly wrote with Anna Pacholczyk, a graduate student at Manchester University for the journal BIOETHICS (2010; 24(2): ii. There's also a longer article forthcoming in the first issue of the JOURNAL OF BIOETHICAL INQUIRY in 2010 that I wrote on my own. Check it out and let me know what you think about it.

DIGNITY'S WOOLY UPLIFT

A. J. Ayer was famously and predictably dismissive of terms such as 'human dignity', referring to them as a kind of 'wooly uplift'.¹ Despite the pervasive presence of appeals to dignity in medical ethics and the common use of this term in professional codes, constitutional texts and various human rights instruments², both the moral basis as well as the meaning of this term continue to remain nebulous at best. Ruth Macklin suggested that we can do without dignity.³ Christian anti-choice campaigners, worried that a term as hegemonic as 'dignity' might be used by their opponents in the context of arguments about assisted dying, are staking their claims as to the true meanings of the term.⁴

Recent empirical research focuses on the importance and meaning of dignity to terminally ill patients. Dignity here, however is little other than an umbrella term for various patient needs being satisfied.⁵ This place-holder function offers us nothing by way of addressing the crucial normative questions that usually give rise to the deployment of 'dignity' in bioethics and biopolicy, such as for instance the moral permissibility or otherwise of assisted dying.

Given that the concept of dignity is not a primitive term of ethics, despite vague noises to the contrary⁶, invoking dignity without clarifying its basis and reach is mere sloganism – an ethical conversation stopper of a kind.⁷

Ethics is commonly and quite rightly so understood as having two primary functions: to guide our actions as moral agents and to provide us with justifications for the guidance provided. Can a hydra-like notion of dignity serve this purpose? In the context of assisted dying, appeals to dignity are used on the both sides of the fence. For instance, the Roman Catholic Church considers euthanasia to be a 'violation of the divine law, an offence against the dignity of the human person.’⁸ On the other hand, organizations campaigning in favour of the decriminalization of assisted dying in its varying forms do not hesitate to campaign in the name of 'human dignity', too.⁹ The situation in the legal context is not much better. When in September 1993 the Canadian Supreme Court issued a ruling on the terminally ill Sue Rodriguez's petition to declare invalid s 241 (b) of the Criminal Code¹⁰ - which criminalizes assisting people to commit suicide – both the majority and minority opinions employed the argument from ‘human dignity’ to support their views. ¹¹

Some scholars accept that we cannot reasonably 'expect dignity to have only one, clearly delineated meaning.'¹² Doris Schroeder argues that this is no reason to get rid of the concept altogether. She maintains that 'dignity is a slippery idea, but also a very powerful one and the demand to purge it from ethical discourse amounts to whispering in the wind.'¹³ A recent defense of the UNESCO Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights against its critics, asserts that 'human dignity' and other such principles could 'function as guidelines for reviewing or reorganising research practices'.¹⁴ That is a troubling proposition.

The current state of affairs seems to be that, notwithstanding the dubious normative merits of 'human dignity', the fact that it is commonly used is sufficient reason to continue using it. This proposition is evidently flawed. We surely can do better than this.

1 A. J. Ayer. (1947) Language, Truth and Logic. London: Victor Gollancz.

2 C. McCrudden. Human dignity and judicial interpretation of human rights. European Journal of International Law 2008; 19: 655-724.

3 R. Macklin. Dignity is a useless concept. BMJ 2003; 327: 1419-1420.

4M. Somerville, “Defining human dignity”, 22 November 2009, The Gazette (Montreal), online: . Accessed 29 November 2009.

5 H.M. Chochinov. Dignity and the essence of medicine: the A, B, C, and D of dignity conserving care. BMJ 2007; 335: 184-187.

6R. Goddin, “The political theories of choice and dignity” (1981) 18:2 American Philosophical Quarterly 96.

7 R. Van Der Graaf & J.J.M. van Delden, “Clarifying Appeals to Dignity in Medical Ethics from an Historical Perspective” (2009) 23:3 Bioethics 151.

8 F. Cardinal Seper. Declaration on Euthanasia. Acta Apostolicae Sedis 1980; 72: 542. Available at: Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19800505_euthanasia_en.html [Accessed 29 Nov 2009].

9 D. Hillyard & J. Dombrink. 2001. Dying Right: The Death With Dignity Movement. New York: Routledge.

10 R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46.

11 Rodriguez v. British Columbia (Attorney General), [1993] 3 S.C.R. 519.

12 D. Schroeder. Dignity: Two riddles and four concepts. Camb Q Healthc Ethics 2008; 17: 230-238: 237.

13Ibid: 237.

14 M. Levitt & H. Zwart. Bioethics: An export product? Reflections on hands-on involvement in exploring the “external” validity of international bioethical declarations. J Bioeth Inq 2009; 6: 367–377:370.

New York, New York

I am currently attending the American Philosophical Association's Eastern Division's meeting in New York. I am not exactly what you'd call an avid conference goer, so - believe it or not - this is my first philosophy conference. We got an unwieldy conference program (a book of some 200pp). The variety of what's on offer is truly impressive. To my surprise, more than a fair number of contributors to our recent volume 50 Voices of Disbelief are presenting here, including Philip Kitcher and John Schellenberg. I went to a panel yesterday, chaired by my good friend Rosamond Rhodes, on health care reform in the US and heard Norm Daniels as well as the Hastings Center's Daniel Callahan speak. Impressive people. Daniels, in response to a question from an audience member, replied that the health care reform package should not be permitted to fail over the troublesome exclusion of abortion related medical services. I wondered about this very same question. Clearly what happened there is appalling, but within the political constraints of the votes available to progressive agendas in the US Senate, what's currently on the table probably is the best that can be done. To argue that it's better not to achieve small progress in order to avoid the political sell-out on the abortion front, seems short-sighted. Daniels called that one right, I think. Callahan wrote a thoughtful, critical commentary recently on the Hastings Center's website that is quite critical of the liberal embrace of stem cell research. Check it out if you feel like. I also attended a meeting with fellow journal editors, primarily aimed at an exchange of views. I was pleased to learn that Hypatia, the feminist philosophy journal moved over to Wiley-Blackwell, the publisher of two journals that I jointly edit. Last but not least I had a congenial lunch with Jeff Dean, the commissioning editor for Wiley-Blackwell's philosophy books. All that done in a day. It's worth attending conferences after all, if yesterday's outcome is anything to go by. Well, I better get my own acts together for my talk tomorrow morning. I also need to get going to be able to catch up this morning with Mary C Rawlinson, the Editor of The International Journal on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics. Not that you likely care, but it's the coldest day in New York City this winter, and stormy weather at that. Bummer.

Brief hiatus

I am traveling to the American Philosophical Association's Eastern meeting in New York tomorrow. Will be blogging likely from NYC, but who knows. Don't be too surprised if there's a week's silence :). In case you happen to be there, too, give me a shout!

Udo

And the weekend good news: Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is dead

I like the hypocrisy of people insisting that we must never speak bad of the dead. Why not? If the dead were bad people, what's wrong with wishing them good riddance. A case in point is Manto Tshabalala-Msimang (better known as Dr Beetroot), the former South African health minister. Her policies and that of her boss Thabo ('I don't know anybody who died on AIDS in South Africa.') Mbeki led to about 300,000 preventable deaths among infected people. Beetroot insisted that it ain't clear that HIV causes AIDS, and claimed that anti-retrovirals for Africans were an evil scheme by the CIA and the pharmaceutical industry to poison Africans. Those suffering from, and dying on AIDS she offered, well, you guessed it, beetroot, lemon juice and garlic. Moron that she was she thought nothing of it to jump the waiting list for organ transplantations in order to grab a liver when her old failed as a result of her marriage to alcohol. Excuses were found for why this woman, in her 60s at the time, was deserving of the liver (ie public sector clinicians, working for her, colluded in lies about her legitimate rank on the waiting list). During the time it became public knowledge that as a hospital doctor in Botswana she was convicted of stealing patients' property while they were in surgery. It didn't occur to the ANC and its senior officials to fire Dr Beetroot. Well, I was elated when I found out that the transplant liver crapped up on her, and the system refused to offer her yet another one. Good riddance Dr Beetroot. Thabo, we're waiting for you to join her. After all, you also like your booze and there's some 300,000 people who are dead today because of you. Why don't you also call it a day?

On a slightly more analytical (as opposed to purely angry) level (even though my anger about these two South African politicians' murderous policies knows few boundaries, I have admit): What is of interest is that there's a pattern of colonial mentalities in play in South Africa as well as in Uganda. In South Africa, black nationalist politicians happily ganged up with Western crank scientists against their own people, because they were suspicious of mainstream Western science and knowledge. White Westerners taught them stuff that translated into genocidal policies costing about 300,000 predominantly black people's lives in that country alone. The attempted political emancipation drove these black nationalists straight into the hands of crackpots, that's how substantial their concern was that hooking their people onto life saving medicines was just another ruse by the West to poison and keep Africans down and dependent on the West. Incomprehensible. As good nationalists are wont to do, they insisted on 'local solutions', hence beetroot, garlic and lemon juice. African scientists and medical doctors standing up to them were fired and bullied sufficiently that Stalin could have taken a page from that book (Beetroot managed this without actually killing the scientists, she simple removed them from jobs and funding).

Uganda is another example. It has become clear by now, that draconian anti-gay legislation, threatening gays with the death penalty, was inspired by US evangelicals, white US evangelicals. How ironic that Africans, busily trying to assert themselves against 'evil Western values', are being goaded by other Westerners (crazy ones) to implement seriously civil rights violating policies against their own people ... bizarre stuff. The only good news is that they're being opposed frequently by younger generations of Africans who won't stand for that sort of crap.

Anyhow, Manto is gone, let's go and drink to her demise :).

Solidarity with BA cabin staff

UNITE, the union of the BA cabin staff have called a strike, lasting from December 22 to January 02. Hey, let me declare a conflict of interest. I am scheduled to fly on BA on December 23 from LHR to JFK. I was looking forward to catching up with secular friends in New York to get over the painful sickening sweetness that comes with Xmas. I was also looking forward to giving a talk on December 30 at the APA Eastern meeting in New York, and to a lively discussion about my paper (the joys of the academy).

Well, I may or may not get to New York, who knows. I can't rebook my flight, because it's a return leg, so in a sense I am on the road and can't easily change horses in the middle of the race (or so my booking agent, AA, told me - I had some hope they'd help me, being gold member [pun intended] and all). So, I am likely to be well and truly stuck in London unless BA and UNITE reach an agreement, or unless the UK Supreme Court forces UNITE to back down for the time being. I shall see.

What irks me about the public debate on this is the nasty response by the wider traveling (even the not traveling) public. There we hear stories about priests not being able to return to Africa (to do what, propagate the death penalty for gays in Uganda as they're wont to do? surely they're not doing anything really useful there anyway!), married couples not being able to go on a honeymoon in Florida (at least you won't be eaten by the crocs that are everywhere in that state), and so on and so forth. Some of the stories are truly sad, BUT, surely the point of a strike is to put pressure on your employer. What's the point of striking if nobody notices (us academics faces this problem just about all the time, especially in the context of strikes :-)? So, here's my first point: you can't blame cabin staff for striking at peak season, because this is the best time of the year to go on strike, from a strategic perspective.

BA and the sorry British public opinion on this matter also go on about their cabin staff being paid better than anywhere else in the industry. The company churns out press releases using their (arguably overpaid) inflight directors' long-haul salaries to show how well paid their cabin staff are. Of course, starting salaries for current flight attendants they're proposing now are a fraction of those directors' salaries! They're barely a living wage. Bizarrely the published opinion on the matter points out that Virgin Atlantic cabin staff already are being paid these miserable salaries for the hard work they're doing. What kind of argument is that? Since when has the lowest salary in the industry established what is reasonable? I kid you not, this is the level of public debate in this country!

Then there is people going on how miserable BA's service is. Well, for better or worse, I like the company's economy and premium economy better than that of many other carriers. Compared to Air Canada, for instance, BA's performance is way better. Admittedly, BA's long-haul business class is a bit of a joke (the in-flight service, not the seats). I would not ever fork out my own hard-earned cash for a seat in the far front of their planes, sorry to say.

Either way, good success to their cabin staff, don't let published public opinion in papers like the Daily (Hate) Mail drag you down! You're right to fight for better working conditions (or at least to prevent a further deterioration). I for one don't go on Virgin Atlantic anylonger because I know that their arguably superior service is paid for by greedy ol Richard Branson's miserable pay conditions for his staff.

Open Letter to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Uganda

I am reproducing an open letter my colleague John-Stewart Gordon has written to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the dismal situation of gays in Uganda.

Dear High Commissioner Navanethem Pillay:

my name is John-Stewart Gordon (Germany) and I am currently visiting
professor at Queen's University Kingston, Canada, conducting
a research project on human rights in bioethics.

Even though you are certainly aware of the current situation
concerning gay rights in Uganda (and other countries in Africa:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/13/death-penalty-uganda-homosexuals?CMP=AFCYAH),
I wonder whether there is anything
what you can do about this serious human rights violation.

I am not gay but I do care for other people and I am a professional
philosopher who notice when serious changes in communities effect the
lives of innocent people. You can certainly call this a "sex-related
genocide" that has to be stopped immediately. The situation is grim,
the social climate is poisoned and hatred crimes happen on a daily
basis. I am deeply concerned about this situation and I want you to
take any possible action in order to end this humiliating tragedy.
This seems to be only the beginning of a cultural change
concerning minorities in Africa and in other countries etc. Once
again, I urge you to act now or to contact the relevant human rights
bodies that might be of any help. Please, use all your authority to
end this "war against gay people".

If I can be of any help, please, let me know and I will be there for
your assistance.

Sincerely
Professor Dr. John-Stewart Gordon

John-Stewart Gordon, Ph.D.
Visiting Professor

Area-Editor of The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Queen's University Kingston
Department of Philosophy
Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6
Canada
http://www.queensu.ca/philosophy/faculty.html

http://www.johnstewartgordon.com/index.html
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/search-handle-url?_encoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books-de&field-author=John-Stewart%20Gordon
http://www.amazon.de/Morality-Justice-John-Stewart-Gordon/dp/0739122991/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books-intl-de&qid=1240667047&sr=1-3

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) is currently looking for
authors with (great) proficiency in the field of Bioethics.
Please, have a look at the following topics, at:
http://www.johnstewartgordon.com/iep.html

'Where there is smoke, there is Pfizer'

I took this header from the hugely recommended and informative site my colleagues at noveltechethics.ca have put together. You might recall that it has been decided to appoint a Pfizer VP to the governing board of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The CIHR is a public agency funding biomedical research in the country. I have already pointed out elsewhere why such an appointment is untenable. It is untenable for one fundamental and one slightly more contingent reason. The fundamental reason is that the Pfizer VP has a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders of his company to maximise profits. He is by necessity unable to prioritise the public interest over the profit interest over his employer, hence he has a continuing conflict of interest that makes him eminently unsuitable for accepting such a post. Just to be clear, maximising the profits of his publicly listed employer in its own right is not objectionable, what is objectionable is that someone representing such interests should serve on the board of a funding agency aimed at maximising the public good. The second reason is that Pfizer has a dismal record in terms of its business ethics. As noveltech documents on its site, the company has been paying out billions of dollars to extricate itself from ethics failings and violations of the law. Sweet irony that the CIHR's ethics chap should be supportive of the appointment...

The Canadian government is keen to have someone with a background in product development (commercialisation in the widest sense) on the CIHR governing council to ensure that more of the biomedical research undertaken in Canada, that is funded by taxpayers, is subsequently commercially exploited. In its own right this isn't a bad idea, even though the immediate worry would be that commercial organisations (Pfizer comes to mind) would try to exploit taxpayer funded research as a shortcut to product development, with a pittance flowing back to the publicly funded research and the public being bilked for what it's worth by Pfizer for a drug that we paid already for as taxpayers who fund the CIHR.

Francoise Baylis at Dalhousie University has written a letter to Harvey Chochinov, the ethics member of the CIHR governing council. Chochinov has made himself a name by way of writing about something he calls dignity enhancing end-of-life care. His trivial insight is essentially that we should meet dying patients' needs better and that that would reduce the number of such patients who ask for assisted dying. He is, of course, right on both counts. Google him for fun to see how often he has published that very same insight in an avalanche of similar papers.

Anyway, I digress, Baylis asked Chochinov why he has supported the Pfizer appointment. To the crucial conflict of interest charge Chochinov replies: 'GC members are not there to promote their own vested interests or those associated with their specific geographic, financial, disciplinary or pillar based affiliations. [...] Rather, GC members are expected to place those personal agendas aside, and promote the best interests of CIHR, the broad research community and health related concerns of Canadians.' The trouble is that the Pfizer employee could not act in this manner due to his contractual obligations to his employer. He could not put his employer's commercial agenda aside even if he wanted to. So, Chochinov fails fully to address the issue at hand. In his reply to Baylies he argues that 'Members of the ethics committee have taught over the years that it is possible for people to reach different conclusions, in spite of following ethically sound processes. I believe the process of ethical debate in this instance has been sound, in spite not reaching consensus.' This statement is sufficiently bizarre that I tried to find his CV online in order to ascertain whether the CIHR's Chair of the Standing Committee on Ethics has any qualifications in ethics at all or whether we have here another physician with an urge to go on about ethics who has no formal training in ethics. I have got to be honest, despite trying for some time to trace his academic CV, I was unable to find it. He may or may not have had ethics training, I do not know. I am doubtful at the very least. His statement to Baylis constitutes a petitio principii. He is well and truly begging the substantive question by saying that reasonable people can legitimately disagree in matter of ethics. That's true, but surely only after the issues at hand have been addressed. His explanation for why the Pfizer VP would not face conflicts of interest is plain wrong. So, if on that basis he supports the appointment, the fact that some process was followed does not make his stance any more right. Ethics is not that relative! It's not a matter of having a chat and then it's a free-for-all.

Locker Room Etiquette

I know, I know, there is the climate thing in Copenhagen (even the man who walks on water is expected to say his HOPEful prayers and deliver suitably little, just before returning with his entourage, a squadron of vehicles and probably a few planes to where he came from). Goodness, what can I say, things are pretty obvious, I have little to add. I love the climate change denialists. Remarkable coalition of rightwingers and the usual rabble of fringe scientists. All quite funny, and boy, am I glad that I at least haven't bred. No kid to worry about too deeply when things go downhill. And I don't even drive or own a car... so I'm probably in the good books.

Now that that's out of the way, onto something slightly more serious. Gym locker rooms. No you gay guys, not that kind of locker room, go and rent your own video... - I mean real gym locker rooms. I went to the gym tonight, ran my 10k's, did weights, the lot. After about 2 hours I finally returned to the locker room, went to the locker, fiddled around with the combination lock and opened the locker. When I buy those combination locks each time I join a gym, I truly can't be bothered figuring out how to change the pre-set numbers. So, mine is always 000. Well, there I opened 'my' locker tonight. I ended up rumaging for awhile thru sort-of-interesting men's clothes, alas after awhile I realized that they were not mine at all. The number was right, the clothes were not. So, I ended up in another bloke's locker who obviously also couldn't be bothered changing his number. Being in a bit of a bind I tried to recall where I left my clothes this particular evening and settled for another locker. Same thing happened. Interesting clothes (lovely wallet, nice watch...), just not my stuff. Thankfully I got third-time lucky. I finally found my own stuff.

I was always suspicious about how many people can really be bothered to change those pre-set numbers, and by chance I discovered today that possibly not too many do. I am sure that what happened to me tonight happened to other folks, too (did you like my clothes by any chance? leave a note next time you accidentally drop in :).

So, how come that in all those many years I have not once had any of my property stolen in the gym. I had things stolen just about everywhere else, at home, from the hotel room, even in front of police stations, but never in the gym. Is it possible that folks who do the gym regularly and keep fit are nicer people? Are they in the average more ethical than folks doing no sport? Questions, and more questions, anyone up for a research project?

Open Letter to Canadian Health MInister

Dear Ms Leona Aglukkaq:

I am currently on a research assignment in Britain, hence I missed the uproar in Canada about the appointment of a Pfizer VP to the governing council of the CIHR. This open letter is in response to this growing scandal.

I am appalled that anyone should have considered appointing a representative of the pharmaceutical industry to such a position of influence, let alone a representative of Pfizer.

As to the former: Continuing conflicts of interest between the role the Pfizer VP would have to play in order to avoid breaching the fiduciary relationship the company and its employees have to its shareholders, and the public interest are inevitable. His role is to represent the interests of Pfizer and its shareholders, while the CIHR agenda surely is in the Canadian public's interest. There is no reason at all to assume that Pfizer's interests and those of the Canadian public necessarily are identical.

As to the second: Pfizer as a pharmaceutical company is probably the most egregious of the companies involved in terms of continuing breaches of ethics regulations. The company routinely and repeatedly pays out large sums to extricate itself from breaches of ethical guidelines, and frequently the law. I am flabbergasted that, of all companies available, a Pfizer representative should have ever been considered. Are you or your advisers unaware of any of this?

I urge you to intervene before it is too late. The CIHR is at great risk of losing credibility as a biomedical research funder by appointments such as these.

Sincerely,
udo schuklenk

Atheist bioethicists?

As most readers of this blog will know, I am an atheist. I am also a bioethicist (everyone needs a job, so don't hold that one against me), and a journal editor. I came across a semi-interesting blog entry where someone was critical of Russell Blackford and myself for 'coming out' as atheists in our book 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists. The gist of the blog entry (written, I hope I'm not getting the minutiae wrong, by a woman who once was a Reverend of sorts and quit her Reverend day job because she realised that the admission of women to Reverend jobs is mistaken) was that it's a bad idea for bioethicists to admit to being non-religious. The reason given was that this would give bioethics a bad name in the USA where people don't like non-religious folks and where many have become suspicious of non-God based bioethicists anyway. My good mate, the creationist Discovery Institutes propaganda chief on bioethics, Wesley J Smith could probably take some credit for this, assuming the empirical claims made are correct to begin with. Of course, our ex-Reverend has no evidence for her claim one way or another. She may or may not be right about US Americans' attitudes to bioethicists. It's probably fair to assume that among conservative religious people like herself that view might be somewhat more prevalent. You know, the types of people who refer to married gay couples as 'family' in inverted commas, who really really really hate hate crimes legislation, and who tend to subscribe to the view that abortion is akin to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.

The question though is not unreasonable to ask: Should bioethicists who happen to be non-religious try to hide that view in order to avoid putting off creationists? Or even just putting off people who are vaguely religious? You can also turn that question around and ask whether bioethicists who happen to be religious should try to hide that view in order to placate non-religious people who can't handle any more 'God' business? So, if they submit an article to the journal that I edit, should they hide their views in order to make what they conclude palatable to me?

In Bioethics (one of the journals that I edit), kindly and rightly identified as a leading journal in said critical blog entry, we had articles by openly religious people arguing their case. Even stuff on a thomistic understanding of personhood (ie what someone who believes St Thomas Aquinas is a brilliant guy makes of modern notions of personhood in the context of that thinker's theology). Basically, as a journal editor you try to ensure that you're fair to content submitted to your journal. Surely that wouldn't be achieved by sending a piece that's situated in the context of Catholic moral theology to the atheist Russell Blackford for review. But that's about as far as it goes.

It's unclear though, why I as editor of the journal should not be entitled to hold my own views on the God question and why I should not be permitted to publish those views. Strategic views about the status of bioethics among evangelic Christians in the USA notwithstanding, the objective of any paper surely should be to make the strongest possible argument for one's case. Ideally you'd try to persuade both those who come from an ideological basis similar to yours, as well as those who com an entirely different angle of your views.

So, to sum up: Journal editors are entitled to hold strong views on matters affecting their field. They must not permit those views to prejudice fair process for submitted content that is in conflict with their strongly held opinions. Concerns about how that goes down with a particularly partisan section of the wider public are irrelevant.

50 Voices of Disbelief on 2009 Tree of Knowledge :)

Just saw this on facebook :). Nice.

Members of the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia erect the third annual Tree of Knowledge on the south lawn of the Chester County Courthouse.

Farewell Borders

The bookseller Borders went into administration in the UK today (I assume its operations in other countries are not - yet - affected). I truly regret that this happened. I loved their stores. When they came onto the scene (outside the US that is), I lived in Melbourne. There was a big outcry by the literati and the snobbish published opinion that is alive and kicking in that city. Their big stores would kill small independent booksellers and all that. To be honest, I don't know whether small independent booksellers didn't make it as a result of Borders creating their massive store in Melbourne. I'm not sure I care a great deal, especially given that Borders served customer needs more efficiently. The store was fantastic. The first bookstore I had ever seen that had a coffee shop (yes, sadly Starbucks, but hey). So you'd browse books before deciding whether you'd buy them (try that on Amazon). They organised readings by great authors. Most importantly, they had a breathtaking selection of magazines and newspapers, both Australian as well as international. If you were interested in progressive politics, probably Borders was the only place offering you a huge selection of magazines and papers, both mainstream as well as distinctly warped stuff that I never saw in any other newsagent... I loved the place!

When I went to Glasgow some years later (work again), to my delight I found a superb Borders shop on the high street. Again, a lovely coffee shop inside (mind you, at the time the competition had realised that this brings customers into shops, so they all had them, too), the usual magnificent selection of magazines. The particular Glasgow store was price winning, the building was stunning... it seems it all was too expensive. The photo I include with this blog entry shows the back entrance of the Glasgow store. The idea behind Borders was brilliant to my mind.

RIP Borders.

Preserve the planet, eat fewer animals says... the UK government

Here's a not so new take on the animal ethics debate. What makes it newsworthy is that it is underwritten by the UK government. In a nutshell, the argument is that we should reduce the number of animals we produce in the context of generating food for us. The UK government experts conclude that a 30% reduction should have a significant positive impact on global warming. Here's the gist of the study as reported in today's Evening Standard:

'Scientists behind the report also hope the move will mean a dramatic reduction in the beef, lamb and pork consumed in households across Britain. It is aimed at helping to cut the UK's carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2030, in line with current targets.

Recent UN figures suggest that meat production is responsible for about 18 per cent of global carbon emissions, including the destruction of forest land for cattle ranching and the production of animal feeds such as soy.

On average, a British person currently eats 50g of protein derived from meat each day - the equivalent of a chicken breast or a lamb chop.

The report, entitled Health and Climate Change and which will be published in The Lancet today, says: "If [a 30 per cent reduction in livestock] translates into reduced meat consumption, the amount of saturated fat consumed would drop sharply, which would have positive effects on health through reductions in heart disease."'

So, even if you don't buy into the argument that we should not force sentient beings (such as higher mammals) unnecessarily (we can live healthier without eating them), there's an argument from environmental necessity and from moral responsibility to leave a livable planet behind for future generations.

In unrelated news, religious folks in Nepal - Hindus, I'm told - have begun their traditional animal massacre whereby about 250,000 (!!!) animals including sheep, goats, cows etc are being slaughtered in a major bloodbath for the purpose of ... well, something with Gods and blablabla.

More Science by Press Release - the wrongly diagnosed PVS patient

I'm sure you've seen it on TV. A man was reportedly misdiagnosed as being in persistent vegetative state (PVS) and ones a brilliant scientist discovered that he wasn't he began communicating with the folks around him. The thing is though, according to the very same media reports he's unable to speak, or move any part of his body (and that includes then, of course, his arm, fingers etc). Well, if you watched the same reporting that I saw you will have seen him writing the story of being trapped in his motionless body on a touchscreen computer. His motionless body (in this case a finger) was kindly guided by a woman who held his hand and tipped the letters on the screen.

Really? How did she know which letter to tip? If the facts that have been reported in the papers and on TV are correct, he would not have been in a position to actually tell the woman in any way which letter to touch on the computer touch screen. Despite this glaring question-mark, swallowed whole by gullible journalists, serious questions remain about the misdiagnosis of patients believed to be in PVS. The doctor who claims to have discovered this misdiagnosis has not actually published any details about the case, so we need to take him on his word as opposed to scientific evidence - hence science by press release. This all matters, because the story in question gains much of its power from the patient's reported recollection (typed kindly by someone else's helping hand) of how life was for his mind trapped but fully conscious in his body.

It goes without saying that the Christian ethics crowd has happily exploited this case for its own agenda. Wesley J Smith who can be relied on to twist facts according to whatever it is that suits his employer's (neocon 'non-partisan' yet happily creationist 'think tank' Discovery Institute) ideological agenda declared that training permitted the patient to begin typing - well, according to the same evidence that he and I have access to, this is patently untrue. Catholic bioethics writers were all too happy to accept the story at face value because it suited their ideological interests. The less said the better.

Science by press release (and family video, in this case) is not a good thing, no matter what ideological side you happen to be on!

Civilisation: 1 - Jamaica: 0 - Beenie Man concerts cancelled

Latest result in the ongoing match between Jamaica and civilisation. We won, Jamaica lost. Here from a circular Peter Tatchell just posted:

Beenie Man concerts axed in Australia & NZ

Big Day Out organisers faced storm of protest

Tour cancellation sends warning to all murder music singers

Beenie Man incited the murder of lesbians and gays

London, UK - 16 November 2009

All of Beenie Man's Australian and New Zealand concert dates have been cancelled. This follows protests by gay rights groups, including the Australian Coalition for Equality. It also follows representations to the tour organisers by Peter Tatchell of OutRage!, acting on behalf of the international Stop Murder Music campaign.

"These concert cancellations will hit Beenie Man hard in the pocket. He has lost tens of thousands of dollars. The success of this campaign sends a warning message to all murder music artists: inciting homophobic violence will cost you money. You will lose out big time," said Mr Tatchell.

Beenie Man had been scheduled to perform in January 2010 at Big Day Out concerts in the Australian cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth and in the New Zealand city of Auckland.

The organisers have now confirmed that he will not be in the concert line-up:
http://www.bigdayout.com/news/pressreleases.php?PressReleaseId=52

For more information about the concert cancellations in Australia, contact Big Day Out organiser, Susan Forrester, in Melbourne: 00 613 9820 4677 and susan@bigdayout.com

Ms Forrester contacted Peter Tatchell of the gay rights group OutRage! seeking his advice on whether to go ahead with the Beenie Man booking.

Mr Tatchell replied to her, urging Big Day Out to cancel Beenie Man's concerts. He wrote to Ms Forrester as follows:

"Beenie Man is clearly unrepentant. He has never apologised for urging the killing of gay people. In fact, he put out a statement and hit song called 'I no apologise'. You would not consider hosting Beenie Man if he was a white racist singer who had called for the murder of black people. You would dump him. There should be no double standards when it comes to singers who incite homophobic violence," wrote Mr Tatchell.

"Beenie Man is one of Jamaica's leading reggae stars. He has had hit tunes which incite the murder of lesbians and gay men. It is a tragedy that he has not used his undoubted musical talent to promote the true reggae message of justice, harmony, peace and love.

"Although Beenie Man made an agreement to cease his murder music, he has since reneged and denounced the agreement. He went on to release a song: 'I no apologise,'" confirmed Mr Tatchell.

In his hit tune Damn, Beenie Man sings: "I'm dreaming of a new Jamaica, come to execute all the queers."

Another of his popular recordings, Bad Man Chi Chi Man (Bad Man Queer Man), instructs listeners to kill gay DJs and boasts that people would gladly go to jail for killing a queer:

"If yuh nuh chi chi (queer) man wave yuh right hand and (NO!!!) / If yuh nuh lesbian wave yuh right hand and (NO!!!) / Some bwoy will go a jail fi kill man tun bad man chi chi man!!! / Tell mi, sumfest it should a be a showdown / Yuh seem to run off a stage like a clown (Kill Dem DJ!!!)".

Chi Chi Man is a very offensive Jamaican patois homophobic slang insult, equivalent to the insulting words queer, poof and faggot.

Promises, promises, promises - when will Rupert Murdoch DO as opposed to promise

Rupert Murdoch, proprietor of right-wing propaganda outlets such as the SUN and New York Post newspapers, and not to forget Fox 'News' promised the world that he would remove content from these and his other media from google. I think that's excellent news.

There is always the risk that accidentally I click a link found on google news and suddenly find myself on a New International site, thereby being inadvertently subjected to News Corp propaganda as opposed to actual news. If Rupert was to remove this challenge in order to charge (laughter) for access to his agitprop, he would do the world a BIG favour. Please Rupert, go for it...

Pfizer is at it again

I am reproducing a news wire from AP that I came across today. Watch out for the publication of the analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine. As ever Pfizer is the culprit. No wonder they are busy sponsoring ever more bioethics positions... unsurprisingly there are also happy takers among universities. I sometimes wonder whether there is any kind of cash that they would not take! Interesting that Pfizer's spin doctors would describe the peer reviewed publication in the leading medical journal as unable to pass the threshold of 'credible scientific research'. Clearly the reviewers and lawyers the journal employed to determine the value of the report thought differently.

First, here are the findings from the abstract of the report: 'We examined reporting practices for trials of gabapentin funded by Pfizer and Warner-Lambert's subsidiary, Parke-Davis (hereafter referred to as Pfizer and Parke-Davis) for off-label indications (prophylaxis against migraine and treatment of bipolar disorders, neuropathic pain, and nociceptive pain), comparing internal company documents with published reports. Results We identified 20 clinical trials for which internal documents were available from Pfizer and Parke-Davis; of these trials, 12 were reported in publications. For 8 of the 12 reported trials, the primary outcome defined in the published report differed from that described in the protocol. Sources of disagreement included the introduction of a new primary outcome (in the case of 6 trials), failure to distinguish between primary and secondary outcomes (2 trials), relegation of primary outcomes to secondary outcomes (2 trials), and failure to report one or more protocol-defined primary outcomes (5 trials). Trials that presented findings that were not significant (P0.05) for the protocol-defined primary outcome in the internal documents either were not reported in full or were reported with a changed primary outcome. The primary outcome was changed in the case of 5 of 8 published trials for which statistically significant differences favoring gabapentin were reported. Of the 21 primary outcomes described in the protocols of the published trials, 6 were not reported at all and 4 were reported as secondary outcomes. Of 28 primary outcomes described in the published reports, 12 were newly introduced.'

Here the AP summary as well as the usual talking head one-liners toward the end, exasperation and all...

'Analysis of a dozen published studies testing possible new uses for a Pfizer Inc. epilepsy drug found that reporting of the results was often misleading, indicating the medicine worked better than internal company documents showed.

According to the report, when a company-funded study's primary finding wasn't favorable, that result was usually buried and something else positive was highlighted, without disclosing the switch.

The documents used in the review were obtained by lawyers suing Pfizer for refunds on prescriptions paid for by insurers and consumers. The lawyers, who are seeking class action status for the cases, claim Pfizer concealed evidence the epilepsy drug Neurontin didn't work for those unapproved uses, including nerve pain, migraines and bipolar disorder.

One of the report's authors is an expert witness for the plaintiffs; another has received fees from the lawyers.

Pfizer disputes the report's conclusions, saying the company never "attempted to mislead the medical community about the effectiveness" of the drug for certain uses.

"We believe the review suffers from significant bias, insufficient data, poor methodology, and cannot pass the threshold of credible scientific research," Pfizer said in a statement.

The report, by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, comes two months after Pfizer was fined a record $2.3 billion — including an unprecedented $1.2 billion criminal fine — for illegally marketing other blockbuster drugs.

The report appears in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Sidney Wolfe, head of health research at consumer group Public Citizen, called it the first comprehensive look "at studies in which a company and people working for it so maliciously manipulated the data to make a drug look more effective than it actually was."

"In every instance, the published article made the drug look better than it would have," said Wolfe, a member of the Food and Drug Administration's drug safety advisory committee. "This results in harm."

Neurontin was approved by the FDA a decade ago for treating seizures and later for pain caused by shingles — but not for other conditions. Its potential side effects include suicidal tendencies and depression.

While doctors can prescribe drugs for unapproved, or off-label uses, drug companies are legally barred from promoting their products for such uses. Drugmakers often test drugs for additional conditions and publicize the results. But they don't always seek approval for those new uses, particularly if the new findings aren't convincing.

Experts believe most Neurontin sales were for off-label uses — the ones in the reviewed studies. Sales peaked at $2.7 billion in 2004, when Pfizer paid $430 million in government fines to settle allegations it improperly marketed the epilepsy drug for unapproved uses. By last year, Neurontin sales fell to $387 million due to cheaper generic versions sold as gabapentin.

For the new review, the researchers examined 20 patient studies funded by New York-based Pfizer and its Parke-Davis unit on use of Neurontin for preventing migraines or treating nerve pain or bipolar disorder. The studies were published in medical journals or presented at conferences, mostly over the last decade.

In eight of the 12 published studies, the main outcome listed in internal documents differs from the one later given in the published report. In half the cases, a new primary outcome was substituted and in others, the original main outcome was instead reported as a secondary measure or wasn't disclosed at all.

The authors cited some limitations to their review, including not knowing who made the changes.

"We cannot be certain that selective reporting was a decision made by employees of Pfizer and Parke-Davis, since the authors of the published reports included nonemployees," the researchers wrote.

Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics, called the report "one of the most ethically disturbing papers I've read in some time" and "an indication that people have been playing fast and loose with studies," particularly industry ones.

Caplan said the FDA should have the power to audit industry drug studies. Wolfe said there should be bigger fines and jail terms for manipulating study data, plus tougher rules for studies being published in journals.

Medical journals in recent years have required that studies be listed on a federal Web site, http://www.clinicaltrials.gov, to be eligible for publication. That move was made partly to make it harder for industry to hide studies on products that don't pan out and only publish those with good results. The study descriptions also list their primary and secondary outcomes.

Pfizer said it now has 1,245 company-sponsored studies listed on the Web site.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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  Pharma Times - 3 hours ago
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something light for the weekend

courtesy of the huffington post

Stand up, stand up, against Jesus

Civility has its uses, but we should not be afraid of satire and mockery as weapons against religious power

• Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 November 2009 10.30 GMT

The question: Is there an atheist schism?

Religious teachings promise us much — eternal life, spiritual salvation, moral direction, and a deeper understanding of reality. It all sounds good, but these teachings are also onerous in their demands. If they can't deliver on what they promise, it would be well to clear that up. Put bluntly, are the teachings of any religion actually true or not? Do they have any rational support? It's hard to see what questions could be more important. Surely the claims of religion — of all religions — merit scrutiny from every angle, whether historical, philosophical, scientific, or any other.

Contrary to many expectations in the 1970s, or even the 1990s, religion has not faded away, even in the Western democracies, and we still see intense activism from religious lobbies. Even now, one religion or another opposes abortion rights, most contraceptive technologies, and therapeutic cloning research. Various churches and sects condemn many harmless, pleasurable sexual activities that adults can reasonably enjoy. As a result, these are frowned upon, if not prohibited outright, in many parts of the world, indeed people lose their lives because of them. Most religious organisations reject dying patients' requests to end their lives as they see fit. Even in relatively secular countries, such as the UK, Canada, and Australia, governments pander blatantly to Christian moral concerns as the protection of religiously motivated refusals to provide medical professional services demonstrates.

In a different world, the merits, or otherwise, of religious teachings might be discussed more dispassionately. In that world, some of us who criticise religion itself might be content to argue that the church (and the mosque, and all the other religious architecture that sprouts across the landscape) should be kept separate from the state. Unfortunately, however, we don't live in that world.

When religion claims authority in the political sphere, it is unsurprising — and totally justifiable — that atheists and skeptics question the source of this authority. If religious organisations or their leaders claim to speak on behalf of a god, it is fair to ask whether the god concerned really makes the claims that are communicated on its behalf. Does this god even exist? Where is the evidence? And even if this being does exist, why, exactly, should its wishes be translated into law?

In many situations, it is better to be civil, as Paul Kurtz has pointed out, but satire and mockery have traditionally had a legitimate place whenever absurd ideas are joined to power and privilege. Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire often used mockery to show the absurdity of ideological stances — including religious ones — that were considered sacrosanct. Mockery is one way of saying that a view does not deserve to be taken seriously. Religious views are fair game if one can also show, on a more serious level, why the view in question does indeed not deserve serious respect.

Perhaps some rationalist or humanist organisations, such as Kurtz's venerable Center for Inquiry, do have good reason to maintain a scholarly and dignified brand image. But there is also room for the younger, brasher atheists whom Kurtz inaccurately brands as "fundamentalists", and, in any event, there is a world of difference between appropriate civility and keeping quiet.
In the US, unfortunately, some atheists appear to have concluded that even civil and thoughtful criticism of supposedly "moderate" religion (i.e., almost anything that does not dispute evolutionary theory) should be discouraged.

These "accommodationist" atheists tend to be focused on science advocacy, particularly the teaching of evolution in public schools. In seeking public support for their positions, they think it prudent to take the various American demographics as they are. Since they want to sell evolutionary science to very large numbers of pious Americans, the last thing they want is to see it linked with atheism.

Once you think in that way, from a kind of marketing perspective, it can take over your approach to what you think you ought to say. Sincerity goes out the window, and everything must be "framed" to please the audience. We doubt that this strategy can work.

Religion cannot be eradicated — that is not a realistic goal — but the many problems with religious dogma can and should be highlighted. As atheists, we should state clearly that no religion has any rational warrant, and that many churches and sects promote cruelty, ignorance, and civil rights abuses.

There are harmful consequences to real people in the real world if the views of churches and sects are enshrined in law or given undue social deference - the acceptance even in liberal secular societies of conscientious objection as a legitimate reason for health care professionals and even civil servants to refuse to provide professional services to certain citizens is a case in point. For these reasons it is important that we should speak out and publicly contest the special authority that is accorded, all too often, to pontiffs, imams, priests, and presbyters. Religious leaders are not our moral leaders, much as they clamour to be, and however much the politicians flatter them. These spiritual emperors have no clothes, and we shouldn't flinch from saying so.

Bizarre commentary by Jamaican literature prof on violent lyrics

I'm sure many of you have heard about how homophobic Jamaica is, all the way up to the murder of gays and lesbians. Part of the responsibility for this, it has been suggested by some, are antigay violent lyrics by local artists calling in their songs for the murder of gays and lesbians. Here's the take of a local academic arguing that gays and lesbians who call for such artists' concerts to be canceled and boycotted are 'pathological'. Check out her take on the issue first, and then read my commentary below. Turns out to be the case that she attended the latest CD launch of the artist who called in past lyrics for the murder of gay people. I sent the below reply to the newspaper that published her OpEd; realistically you won't see my riposte there, though. Jamaican public debate is sufficiently incestuous to prevent that from happening. -

To whom it may concern:

Professor Cooper's editorial, well-intentioned and unusually considerate (by Jamaican standards) doesn't add up. She complains essentially that a Jamaican singer whose repertoire included a song calling for the killing of gay people is still subjected to boycott campaigns by gays and lesbians in other countries. She calls such campaigns 'perverse'. Cooper considers the offending song's lyrics 'infamous', however anyone not wanting the singer to perform in their neighbourhood is acting under a 'particularly perverse pathology'. Really, is my attempt at keeping such artists out of my country sick, Professor Cooper? So, our Jamaican artist sings infamous songs, while those who would be at the receiving end of his murderous art are sick (aka pathological). Nice touch professor, truly a well-balanced statement. You should be safe in homophobic Jamaica (whatever that means these days).

What reasons has Professor Cooper on offer for her take on the issue?

Well, for starters, she points out that our artist hero hasn't sung the song in question for awhile and launched recently a CD hoping it would be bought by amongst others gays, lesbians, and - guess what - even slim people. Let me just say that to the best of my knowledge, he has not yet apologized and retracted the song in question. That a more market savvy performer tries to increase market share is understandable, but surely shouldn't be seen as evidence for a changed mind set.

Comes the professor's next reason: the US based ACLU is defending the artist's 'right' to perform. The ACLU, of course, also defends the KKK's right to propagate its racist views in public. It's the result of a particularly silly bit of US Constitution that puts virtually no limits on speech acts, unlike any other country in the world. You could not make such statements anywhere in Europe (neither the Jamaican artist's 'lyrics' nor the KKKs racist rabble-rousing). The result is that such societies are more cohesive and peaceful than the USA.

And another lost-case type argument from our literary professor. She claims, citing an unsubstantiated statement from an ACLU activist, that there is no causal evidence that hate speech calling for violence against minority groups leads to such violence. There is an obvious reason for this: actions usually have multiple causes, some conscious, others unconscious. We do know that propaganda works; why it shouldn't work in a pathologically homophobic place such as Jamaica remains a mystery to me. Gay people have experienced time and again spikes in anti-gay violence following high-profile homophobic statements by artists or politicians and the like. Equally, many minority ethnic people in Britain were deeply incensed when the BBC permitted recently the BNP leader Nick Griffin to speak on a program. They pointed out that the mainstreaming of racism will undoubtedly lead to an increase in racist violence. I wonder whether Professor Cooper fully appreciates the implications of her feeble attempt at denying the link between homophobic statements calling for violence against gays and lesbians and the occurrence of such violence.

Her last unsubstantiated claim is that fans potentially engaging in homophobic violence would not do so after dancing to artists' tunes encouraging them to kills gays and lesbians. Is she seriously suggesting that there might be people out there who were considering killing gays and lesbians and then these folks get prevented from doing this because they attend a concert with an artists calling on them to go through with their tentative plans? What can I say, this surely is a breathtaking empirical claim without any basis in fact.

So, there you go, now you know why us folks outside your island go out of our way to have your violence and art kept where it belongs, namely on your island - as your problem, not ours. Let Buju apologize for this song and we will welcome him with open arms.