In their closing statement, the United Methodist Church has adopted by a vote of 836 for and 28 against, for their book of resolutions, their statement titled Repentance for Support of Eugenics. The resolution passed at their General Conference on April 30,2008. this makes the United Methodist Church the first denominational church in the U.S. to openly repent of their support of or involvement in the early eugenic movement in the U.S.

Here’s how they wrapped up their 9 page resolution:

Repentance for Support of Eugenics
The United Methodist General Conference formally apologizes for Methodist leaders and Methodist bodies who in the past supported eugenics as sound science and sound theology. We lament the ways eugenics was used to justify the sterilization of persons deemed less worthy. We lament that Methodist support of eugenics policies was used to keep persons of different races from marrying and forming legally recognized families. We are especially grieved that the politics of eugenics led to the extermination of millions of people by the Nazi government and continues today as “ethnic cleansing” around the world.”

Ryan T. Anderson has an interesting entry over at the First Things blog about an ethics conference he attended at Princeton. It makes for sobering reading. He begins with a quote from Princeton philosophy professor Elizabeth Harmon. From his column:

Look, when we think about ending an early human life, this is something that is really bad for the embryo or early fetus that dies, it’s losing out tremendously–I agree with that as I already said…I think it’s really dangerous to slide from noticing that something is bad for something, to thinking that that gives us a moral reason [not to do the bad thing]. And just to prove that that doesn’t follow, think about plants. So lots of things are bad for trees, and plants, and flowers, and often that gives us no reasons whatsoever, certainly no moral reasons. In my view, fetuses that die before they’re ever conscious really are a lot like plants: They’re living things, but there’s nothing about them that would make us think that they count morally in the way that people do.”

Harmon has clearly not yet read the Swiss ethics report establishing plant “dignity,” but no doubt she will get on board as the plant rights train picks up steam. Beyond that little jibe, note how accepting her anti-human exceptionalism values literally opens the door to using unborn humans as if they were mere natural resources, such as for experimentation, fetal farming, and the like. And that is precisely where many of the biggest brained among us wish to go.

Ryan reports that Peter Singer took his utilitarian thinking even farther, to perhaps permitting not just the killing of supposedly human “non persons” such as infants, but also adult human persons:

The intrinsic value of Jane’s life may be an important reason, or may not be, depending on the circumstances.” For example, Jane’s life does not produce a net increase of value in the world if “Jane’s death is a necessary condition for Helen, who will live a life of even greater value than Jane.” This could justify aborting a genetically defective child to conceive a healthy replacement (Singer’s own example)–but also justify killing some adults. The relevance of Singer’s fourth consideration also varies, since, he argues, some chimpanzees are “certainly more self-aware than some humans, and more self-aware than fetuses or, for that matter, newborn babies.”

I have always said, that if moral distinctions can be made between so-called human non persons and persons, why not also within the person category? And that is precisely where Singer seems to have gone in his presentation.

Ryan thinks the discussion was important both to expose the Singer-type advocacy to public scrutiny and to help the church get its act together. He opines that bringing “disagreements” out into the open is a very good thing because it alerts people to the consequences of ideas. That is idealistic and nice, but perhaps this work is making me cynical: I am not sure that most people care.

Beyond that, I am frankly, appalled. These ideas should be rejected out of hand. And indeed, it is a mark of how far the intellectual elites have taken us down the moral abyss already that the propriety of infanticide, fetal experimentation, and killing one adult to benefit another must now be seriously debated.

Or to put it another way: The problem is that this discussion explicitly treats such ideas as if they were legitimate and no different say, from a debate about whether a 20% or 30% capital gains tax would be best. Indeed, Singer was brought to Princeton–our most prestigious university–not in spite of these views, but because of them. Princeton’s faculty thus acted shamefully in approving the appointment that they wouldn’t someone else with the same academic credentials (Singer doesn’t even have a Ph.D) who wasn’t so “cutting edge” in his thinking, thereby granting Princeton’s imprimatur of respectability to infanticide (which it would never do if Singer were promoting the same agenda only based on racism.)

Disagreement is good. Getting our big brained betters to reveal their true agendas is, alas, now a necessity. But be very clear: The most of the influential institutions of society–perhaps other than the churches which are rapidly losing influence and in some cases cannot be distinguished in their views from those promoted by the big brained–are now controlled by those who utterly reject human exceptionalism. Worse, this isn’t just a mind game to them: They want their ideas implemented, a goal they are pursuing come hell or high water. Learned debates will not cause them to pause for a split second.

It will be up to the average folk to thwart the new eugenics that, like Sauron in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, is re-manifesting and threatens to bring much darkness into the world.

Recently a baby with two faces – two pairs of eyes; two pairs of lips, two noses and one pair of ears – was born in India. Were they devastated? No. Indeed, the female infant, Lali, is seen as being a reincarnated god or goddess (variations due to differing news sources).

The report in The Guardian states

The child’s 19-year-old mother, says that she has “accepted the way she is and so will the rest of the world. Why should [I regret], after all God formed her features and it is he who decided how she should be.” The family, who are poor and largely illiterate, do not believe modern science can help their child and are already building a small temple to the girl in the village.

So here is a newborn with a markedly abnormal appearance (Craniofacial Duplication) received as a gift by a poor and apparently illiterate family. The hand that rocks the cradle of this baby is pleased to do so.

This stands in marked contrast to typical American norms. Only a short while ago at a conference within the confines of our shores, I heard one health care provider’s response to a discussion of Huntington’s Disease. This disease is an autosomal dominant one, in which only one copy of the gene is needed to produce disease. Huntington’s Disease typically appears in mid-life, and is characterized by a progressive neurological deterioration till death. When this particular individual realized that a blood test could diagnose the presence of the gene, he was very pleased. If preimplantation genetic diagnosis (available for embryos formed through in vitro fertilization) is used, those embryos could not be implanted. If the test were done as a prenatal screen, then those fetuses could be aborted. For those people already born, they could simply be prevented from reproducing. Within a short while, “we could eliminate this entire population!” the man exulted.

How do we process this well? Is life a gift to be received? Or is this concept relegated peculiarly to the “poor and largely illiterate populace”? Is it only the “normal” life that is to be received with thanksgiving? Then, of course, the question becomes, “Who defines ‘normal’?” Is normal equal to “without disease or abnormality”? If so, when? Is normal to be born without disease, or to be born with no disease or disorder present at birth, AND no genes for known disorders that will develop later in life, like breast cancer, familial polyposis of the colon, or Huntington’s Disease?

When the majority of the human genome was published in February 2001, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, Francis Collins, compared the genome to a multi-purpose book: “It’s a history book - a narrative of the journey of our species through time. It’s a shop manual, with an incredibly detailed blueprint for building every human cell. And it’s a transformative textbook of medicine, with insights that will give health care providers immense new powers to treat, prevent and cure disease.”

Francis Collins was correct: knowledge of the human genome — through use of genetic testing — does indeed “give health care providers immense new powers to treat, prevent and cure disease.” Yet in our quest to alleviate suffering, how far do we go? Does eliminating suffering include eliminating the sufferer, or an entire population of sufferers? I am particularly concerned that the line between normality and suffering will in actuality be an ever-decreasing diameter of a circle, which will define who is “in,” and irrevocably, who is “out.” If we do not proceed wisely, it will be no longer the hand that rocks the cradle, but the hand of the one who interprets the genetic test, that rules the world.

In 1911, the influential geneticist Charles Davenport published Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, advancing his ideas of how genetics would improve society in the 20th century. It became a college textbook and a foundation for the widespread eugenics movement in the United States. Although the eugenic ideals of the early part of the 20th century have long been rejected, many of the issues raised by Davenport are still being debated nearly 100 years later. (EurekAlert)

The findings “suggest that in a sub-population with a traditional son preference, the technologies are being used to generate male births when preceding births are female,” co-authors Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund said of their findings, appearing in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Associated Press)

It is a bitter irony that even as we are enlarging our commitment to human equality in many areas, we are turning our backs on it in others. In particular, we may be about to eliminate from our society people with Down syndrome (DS) and other genetically caused disabilities. (Weekly Standard)

Not content with thousands of euthanasia and assisted suicide deaths a year, the Dutch are about to have access to a suicide guide. From the story:

A scientific guide to DIY suicide is to go on sale in the Netherlands to help people end their lives quickly and painlessly…It contains detailed information on using drugs as well as committing suicide by starvation, including the quickest and least painful way to do it.

The author is a true villain in the modern story of euthanasia and assisted suicide, a psychiatrist who assisted the suicide of a grieving mother–leading to the Dutch Supreme Court’s ruling that validated assisted suicide for the depressed:

Author and psychiatrist Boudewijn Chabot said: “Doctors learn little about this subject during their training. This book is for people who want to make their own decisions about ending their own lives.”

The Dutch have a high suicide rate already:

There are about 4,400 suicides a year [which I assume excludes the thousands of euthanasia deaths] in Holland, broadly the same as in England and Wales, even though it has barely a quarter of the population. Euthanasia is now legal there but with strict rules.

Strict rules!? Oh, my head hurts.

And the moral of the story? The culture of death is like heroin: Once you start to mainline, it is never enough.

The plan comes as India, which has a population of 1.1 billion people, is trying to encourage people to have smaller families to ease poverty. (AFP)

Now, what makes the moral issues, the ethical issues in newborn screening difficult to grapple with is, as Adam correctly points out, that there is a plurality of issues pulling our judgment in different directions. There is in the first place the issue of informed consent, then the putative right of an individual “not to know.”

There’s also the traditional principle that interventions are justified only if they directly benefit the patient, which it seems is not the case in all of the possible outcomes of screening of newborns. There’s also the potentially harmful effects of having screened a newborn for conditions for which there is no treatment, and also or finally, the negative consequences of genomics, perhaps issuing in eugenicide —a word, I don’t know, invented, perhaps, by our staff— eugenicide , which is aptly described as purifying future generations of their undesirable members. (President’s Council on Bioethics)

Deaf campaigners say that this is eugenics. Wrong. The aim is to prevent eugenics, a warped eugenics that deliberately selects deafness. The law forbids parents with a political or cultural agenda from screening the embryos and then perversely ensuring that their child cannot hear. I am afraid that making such a choice is child abuse. (Times Online)

We have discussed the issue of a deaf couple wanting to use embryo selection to choose a deaf child before, and now the issue is again being discussed in connection with the UK’s hopeless mess of a bill that seeks to regulate all human reproduction. The issue is important on several levels and I think worth revisiting. From the story:

Like any other three-year-old child, Molly has brought joy to her parents. Bright-eyed and cheerful, Molly is also deaf - and that is an issue which vexes her parents, though not for the obvious reasons. Paula Garfield, a theatre director, and her partner, Tomato Lichy, an artist and designer, are also deaf and had hoped to have a child who could not hear.

‘We celebrated when we found out about Molly’s deafness,’ says Lichy. ‘Being deaf is not about being disabled, or medically incomplete–it’s about being part of a linguistic minority. We’re proud, not of the medical aspect of deafness, but of the language we use and the community we live in.’

Now the couple are hoping to have a second child, one they also wish to be deaf –and that desire has brought them into a sharp confrontation with Parliament. The government’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology (HFE) bill, scheduled to go through the Commons this spring, will block any attempt by couples like Garfield and Lichy to use modern medical techniques to ensure their children are deaf.

And here is the crux of the issue:

‘Paula is now in her early 40s,’ says Lichy. ‘Our first daughter was born naturally, but due to Paula’s age, we may need IVF for the second.’ The trouble is that, according to clause 14/4/9 of the bill, the selection of a hearing child through IVF is permitted, but embryos found to have deafness genes will be automatically discarded. ‘This sends out a clear and direct message that the government thinks deaf people are better off not being born,’ says Steve Emery, a sign-language expert at Heriot-Watt University.

This point is backed by Lichy. ‘It is a cornerstone of modern society and law that deaf and hearing people have equal rights. If hearing people were to have the right to throw away a deaf embryo, then we as deaf people should also have the right to throw away a hearing embryo.’

Her logic is impeccable. The evil act is automatically discarding certain categories of embryos because they aren’t deemed good enough. This is eugenics, pure and simple, and it is evil in that, as the woman said, it presumes some lives have greater value than others. And in an age of radical individualism, if eugenics is good from one angle it is just as good from another.

This right to have the baby we want, or not have the one we don’t, includes the killing of viable late gestational babies. Indeed, one disgusting doctor is making an international practice of what amounts to infanticide:

This point is demonstrated, somewhat unexpectedly, at Dr Warren Hern’s clinic in Boulder, Colorado. Hern is one of a handful of specialists worldwide willing to perform abortions beyond 24 weeks’ gestation, the legal cut-off point in most of Europe for terminating a pregnancy. And he is increasingly seeing British women for terminations that would be against the law in their home country, despite the fact that British providers–nervous of entering a legal grey area–refuse to refer them to him.

This is all very disheartening. We are fast becoming a society permeated in ME! I! ME! I!–and it is driving us toward the culture of death. Booth Gardner wants to legalize assisted suicide in Washington, yelling in speeches, “MY life! MY death! MY Choice!” A deaf couple wants their children to be deaf because it fulfills their desire to be part of a subculture, so out go their other embryonic offspring into the medical waste container. Other parents demand a child without disability–even if it means resorting to late term abortion or infanticide. If someone experiences a profound brain injury, we take away their food and water based on their quality of life, and call it medical ethics.

What is being lost in all of this solipsism and neurotic obsession with control is the concept of true community. We are not islands onto ourselves but part of a whole. Some of the best things that happen in life turn out to be those things we didn’t want and didn’t expect. Each and every one of us belongs. None should be considered discardable refuse.

Individual freedom is a very important part of liberty, but it brings with it responsibility. We also have to consider our place within the greater whole. And that seems to have been lost in the stampede to fulfill ourselves no matter what it might to do the weak and vulnerable–even our own children.

Culture of death? It is found at the crossroads of solipsism and radical individualism.

I am still taken aback by the Hastings Center Report publishing a pro infanticide article–bringing that agenda into the heart of the bioethics mainstream. As is my wont, I wrote about it. This is a piece just published in the Center for Bioethics and the Culture’s weekly newsletter. Here is an excerpt:

The article assumes that guidelines will protect against abuse, but infanticide is by definition abuse. Moreover, even if undertaken in good faith, Dutch euthanasia guidelines for adults and teenagers have continually been violated without legal consequence for decades, and so why would any rational observer expect anything different from infanticide regulations? Even the authors understand that mistakes will happen and, typical of the mindset, assume that if murder of the helpless is committed in front of an open window it is somehow more acceptable:

Determining in an instant case whether the protocol is applicable will always require judgment, and because the stakes are inordinately high no matter what is decided, the judgment must be made with fear and trembling. That said, however, we believe that transparency in the deliberations concerning the ending of an infant’s life–which is just as important as it is in the deliberations concerning euthanasia in adults–is adequately promoted by the protocol’s requirements.

It wasn’t many years ago that almost everyone accepted that infanticide is intrinsically and inherently wrong. Clearly, this is no longer true. With growth of personhood theory that denies the intrinsic value of human life, and with the invidiously discriminatory “quality of life” ethic permeating the highest levels of the medical and bioethical thinking, we are moving toward a medical system in which babies are put down like dogs and killing is redefined as a caring act. But bigotry is bigotry and murder is murder even if you spell it c.o.m.p.a.s.s.i.o.n.

The new eugenics is growing at a horrifying pace. In the UK, a House of Lords, member argued that disabled children should be aborted for their own good. From the story:

Seriously disabled children should be considered non-persons and would be better off having been aborted, according to a Peer speaking in the House of Lords Tuesday. Attempting to couch her assertion in terms of children’s “rights”,

Molly Baroness Meacher told the Lords that children born with severe disabilities are “not viable people”. The comments came as the Lords debated an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, put forward by Lady Swinton, Baroness Masham of Ilton, that would have protected unborn disabled children from abortion after the 24 week gestational time limit. The amendment was defeated by 89 votes to 22.

Under Britain’s abortion law, children judged to have some form of disability, including such comparatively minor disabilities as club foot or cleft palate, can be aborted up to the time of natural birth.

Referring to two children she knows who were born prematurely with severe cerebral palsy, Baroness Meacher said, “They were natural births. Those two children cannot breathe naturally; they have to be helped to breathe. They will never talk. They lie on their backs and can do nothing. My belief is that there are children, born at those very early ages, who are not viable people. It would be in their best interests to have been aborted.”

Why limit the killing of the disabled to abortion? Why not kill babies that make it to birth with serious disabilities like they do regularly in the Netherlands? Indeed, why limit the killing to babies? After seriously injured or ill patients become non viable people let’s just put their heads on the chopping block, so to speak, and put us, er I mean them, out of our, er I mean, their misery?

There was a time when such bigoted sentiments would have led to shunning. People saw it for the naked bigotry that it is. No more. These attitudes permeate the elite and medical intelligentsia and are seeping into society. The only antidote is to say, “Not on my watch,” and mean it.

In the Netherlands, doctors sometimes euthanize babies born with spina bifida. There (and here), doctors sometimes refuse to treat them so that they will die. But now, a new journal article calls expose these lethal actions and non actions as the bigotry (my term) that they are. Writing in Childs Nervous System (2008; 24:13-28), T. H. Rob de Jong A Dutch pediatric neurosurgeon writes:

There is no evidence that newborns with MMC and hydrocephalus do either ’suffer’ unbearably or hopelessly and certainly not without the prospect to relieve this suffering by standard care. ‘Suffering’ itself is a nonconclusive,and in newborns, inapplicable denominator that should not be used anymore in this debate. Although they will in their future life be confronted with handicaps,sometimes very severe, their future prospects and their actual experienced quality of life cannot be predicted with such certainty at birth that their lives can be regarded as hopeless or meaningless (’quality of life judgments’ as such being unacceptable in this decision making). Possible discomfort in these newborns can easily be treated in a straightforward way by active treatment (closure of the defect and shunting the hydrocephalus) and, when necessary,by the use of a professional pain/symptom protocol.

The decision not to treat such a newborn, when based on expected handicaps, possibly violates the ‘non-discrimination’ principle (Dorscheidt, 2006).When not being treated, they are not terminally ill because of the MMC and/or hydrocephalus per se; they are ‘terminally ill’ because of this nontreatment decision. Not being terminally ill, it is not ‘humane’ or ‘merciful’ to terminate their life, this also being not in accordance with international legislation and international medical
recommendations…

Such a child can and should be cared for in a respectful and dignified way, providing all its actual needs (which apparently is not death itself). This being the case, there is no indication whatsoever for the deliberate termination of the life of children born with MMC.

But that takes true compassion, which means to suffer with. Too often, in our utilitarian times, it is deemed better to just do away with the problem by doing a way with the patient–a false compassion.

But at last: A learned and ethical answer to the benighted drive in the Netherlands to permit infanticide against babies with spina bifida. Hooray.

INEVITABLY, whenever the term “designer babies” is used in a report on genetic screening or embryo testing, the anti-IVF loonies come out of the asylum screaming about Nazi eugenics. (Daily Telegraph)

My headline is the title of a must-read book about the eugenics movement by Edwin Black entitled War Against the Weak. Well, it’s ba-aa-aak! A pernicious new eugenics that is arising and already lashing out at the helpless and most vulnerable among us on several fronts, as it also threatens a regimen of human enhancement and genetic engineering that would instill discrimination and obliterate the equality of life ethic in which we are each deemed to have equal moral worth. Should that happen, the ideal of universal human rights would be shattered on the rocks of history.

As with the first eugenics, medicine is a major front of this ongoing war against the weak. The latest battle is over the life of a disabled baby born in Samoa. From the story:

A badly deformed Samoan baby denied entry to New Zealand for surgery has been offered hope by an Adelaide church. The South Pacific Islands Community Christian Church in Adelaide plans to bring the girl to Australia for treatment.

When Miracletina Nanai–known as Baby Miracle–was born in a Samoan village about four months ago, doctors initially told her parents not to feed her because she wouldn’t live. But after food was smuggled into the hospital for her she survived against the odds and is now home in the care of her parents…

New Zealand medical experts who reviewed Baby Miracle’s case said at the time that the prognosis was “extremely poor” and the girl was expected to die. “I do not think that any intervention could be offered by New Zealand that would change the long-term prognosis for Miracle,” said Dr Rosemary Marks of Auckland’s Starship hospital.

Samoa’s deputy prime minister, Misa Telefoni, attacked New Zealand authorities for refusing to grant Baby Miracle a visa. “The false perception the Nanai family and their supporters received, that if they raised $100,000, they get a medical permit for Aotearoa (New Zealand), is inexcusable,” he said in a newspaper column.

Think about the arrogance and the loathing of people with disabilities–and perhaps racism–on display here. This is not even a feeding tube case. Telling the parents not to feed the child was akin to urging that the baby be exposed on a hill to die as they once did with disabled babies in Rome. The child had to be snuck food! The doctors were wrong about the initial prognosis and yet, the child is still being rejected as a patient by medical professionals as a life not worth living.

The warning signs are everywhere. A new eugenics is arising and because it refuses to acknowledge the equal moral worth of all of us, if it prevails, in the end none of us will be safe.

We’ve heard stories like this before: In the UK, deaf parents want the right to ensure having deaf children through embryo selection. From the story:

DEAF parents should be allowed to screen their embryos so they can pick a deaf child over one that has all its senses intact, according to the chief executive of the Royal National Institute for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People (RNID). Jackie Ballard, a former Liberal Democrat MP, says that although the vast majority of deaf parents would want a child who has normal hearing, a small minority of couples would prefer to create a child who is effectively disabled, to fit in better with the family lifestyle.

Ballard’s stance is likely to be welcomed by other deaf organisations, including the British Deaf Association (BDA), which is campaigning to amend government legislation to allow the creation of babies with disabilities.

Some might say that the wrong here is producing children intentionally to have a disability. But the real wrong here is that children are becoming mere products ordered out of a catalogue–only worth bringing to birth if they suit parental desires and satisfy parental ‘lifestyles.” It marks the end of loving our children unconditionally.

Defenders of the proposal seem to be playing tit-for-tat:

A clause in the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, which is passing through the House of Lords, would make it illegal for parents undergoing embryo screening to choose an embryo with an abnormality if healthy embryos exist. In America a deaf couple deliberately created a baby with hearing difficulties by choosing a sperm donor with generations of deafness in his family. This would be impossible under the bill in its present form in the UK. Disability charities say this makes the proposed legislation discriminatory, because it gives parents the right to create “designer babies” free from genetic conditions while banning couples from deliberately creating a baby with a disability.

Two wrongs do not make a right. Designing children to be deaf is just as morally wrong as selecting embryos out because they will be hearing impaired. The proper course is to block the eugenic provision now in the bill, not add more such pernicious ingredients into an already noxious stew.

Brave New Britain is showing us the future of eugenic procreation unless we are very careful, the perceived right to only have children who pass health–and eventually attribute–muster. Where once pre-implatation genetic diagnosis was reserved to prevent babies from being born with terrible genetic conditions that would be immediately terminal, things are now moving toward weeding out those who would have a propensity to illness later in life. The latest “we never say no” UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) rubber stamp is to allow a couple to screen their IVF embryos for a gene that can cause heart disease in teenage or adult years. From the story:

A British couple have won the right to test embryos for a gene that leads to high cholesterol levels and an increased risk of heart attacks, The Times has learnt. The decision by the fertility watchdog will reopen controversy over the ethics of designer babies, as it allows doctors to screen embryos for a condition that is treatable with drugs and can be influenced by lifestyle as well as genes.

While the procedure is designed to detect a rare version of a disease called familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH), which often kills children before puberty, it will also identify a milder form that can be controlled by drugs and diet. Critics argue that the test will allow couples to destroy embryos that would have had a good chance of becoming children with fulfilling and reasonably healthy lives…

Its decision breaks new ground because it permits Mr Serhal to screen out not only the severe form of the condition but also the milder type, which is usually treatable.

The tragically ironic thing about all of this is that we have reached a point where we believe we are entitled to hyper control all aspects of human life. To paraphrase Lincoln: We can control some of life’s vicissitudes all of the time, or all of its vicissitudes some of the time, but we can’t control all of life’s vicissitudes all of the time. Talk about a doomed enterprise.

Aggressive cancer cells are about 70 percent softer than normal cells, according to research from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). The UCLA researchers are the first to mechanically probe the physical properties of live cancer cells taken directly from a patient. The researchers suggest that such nanomechanical tests of cancer cells might be incorporated into future cancer diagnosis and treatment. (Technology Review)