Bioethics, healthcare policy, and related issues.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 5/10/2005]
Yes, the “defense of traditional marriage” is certainly doing lots of good for lots of people.
Recently in the news is the case of a North Carolina Sherriff’s dispatcher who was fired when the Sherriff discovered she was living with a man without being married to him. His claim was that this was technically illegal under an 1805 law still on the books in that state – notwithstanding that over 140,000 couples are currently violating that law and the state proscecutes about 4 of them a year (and doesn’t even know how many were convicted). The ACLU is representing her in a bid to get the law overturned, on grounds that, since recent Supreme Court rulings have held that the state cannot criminalize private sexual relations, the state has no business dictating marriage relations either.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 4/27/2005]
You just can’t discover how low the Republicans will go – on anything. They invent new ways to be petty, childish, false, and meanspirited almost daily.
Now they have taken to rewriting Democratic language in a Congressional committee report, inserting inflammatory words to make them look bad. This is about at the level of schoolyard graffiti – but it’s the actual behavior of leading Republican Congressmembers as they go about the people’s business.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 4/25/2005]
Thanks to Joe Carter, at evangelical outpost, for an unintentional conservative self-parody. He’s got a solution to the task of reducing unwanted pregnancies. It tells you all you need to know about the anti-choice movement.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 4/22/2005]
Jodi Enda has an excellent historical review of the struggle for abortion rights in the US, and the current state of the law and politics on this issue, at The American Prospect. This story has been told many times, but I urge readers to take a look at her piece. I thought I knew the issue well, but I learned aspects of the history that I had never heard of. She also does a good job reviewing the series of strategies by anti-choicers, and failures to counter them by pro-choicers, that have put women on the defensive and allowed the momentum of early women’s rights gains in reproductive health to slip away.
There’s too much there to summarize or excerpt easily. Read the whole thing – it’s worth it. (more…)
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 4/8/2005]
Eric Rudolph, suspect in a string of abortion clinic bombings, the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing, a bombing of a gay bar in Atlanta, and other crimes, has reportedly pled guilty to 4 bombings in which he killed two people and wounded over 100 others. He will receive 4 life sentences, escaping the death penalty.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 4/8/2005]
Wonkette’s butt-boy Greg Beato nails Mel Martinez today on his attempts to duck responsibility for the “Schiavo memo” distributed by his office. It turns out that he habitually issues inflammatory and offensive statements, then blames them on unnamed staffers.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 4/7/2005]
It’s not only religious nutter pharmacists who are holding up women’s access to emergency contraception – the US government is doing its best to do the same. The FDA has been stonewalling approval of sale of EC (the “morning after pill,” or “Plan B”) “over the counter”, without a prescription, for more than a year. Its own scientific advisory panel recommended approval by a vote of 23-4 in 2003; such votes are usually the deciding factor in approving or disapproving drug scheduling. Predictably, religious conservatives have been pressuring the Agency to refuse approval of anything that might give women more sexual security and autonomy. Having no scientific grounds for disapproving the drug, the FDA has simply refused to issue any ruling at all.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 4/6/2005]
Crispin Sartwell, working philosopher, has an opinion piece in today’s LA Times, on the subject of “conscience clause” refusals by pharmacists to provide medications to women whose sexual behavior they disapprove of. Sartwell is full of sympathy for the pharmacists, but displays a strangely cramped and cold moral imaginaion in respect of the other parties – invisible in his article – to the question.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 4/5/2005]
David Corn has the best comment on Bill Frist’s unprofessional display during the Schiavo hearings:
Bill Frist. He’s supposedly another contender [for President]. I don’t think he looked so good in the Terri Schiavo affair…with that long-distance diagnosis he made. But I hear he has a new gig. He’s going to be guest-hosting Dionne Warwick’s Psychic Friends Network….Yes, Bill Frist, he sees things.
Heh.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 4/5/2005]
The Republican leadership has been backpedaling like mad since the first polls showed widespread opposition to their meddling in the Terri Schiavo fiasco.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 3/30/2005]
Peter Robinson, of “The Corner” at NRO, asks whether anyone can fill him in:
Do med school students still take the Hippocratic Oath when they graduate? If so, has anyone addressed the conflict between the Oath and physician-assisted suicide? Perhaps a medical board of ethics in Oregon (which of course already has an assisted-suicide law) and Vermont (which seems to want one)?
I’m always interested in encouraging conservatives who don’t seem to be assholes or willfully uninformed, so I’ve responded to Robinson, then thought that since I’d done all that typing I’d post it here. Herewith, here, posted.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 3/30/2005]
There is building commentary over the latest minor move in the Schiavo case: the 11th Federal Circuit Court of Appeals granted permission to file a late request for an en banc hearing on the Schindlers’ so-far-failed second attempt to get a temporary restraining order and reinsert Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube. In fact, this is a very insignificant procedural question which arises only as a special favor to the Shindlers after they themselves gave up on their request and did not bother to file for a full-court hearing before the deadline several days ago.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 3/25/2005]
There has been a lot of discussion of the affidavit of Dr. William P. Cheshire, brought in by Florida Governor Jeb Bush at the last minute to argue that Terri Schiavo was never really in a “persistent vegetative state” but was merely in a “minimally conscious state.” (more…)
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 3/22/2005]
Things are still getting a bit out of hand regarding the Texas “medical futility” statute that I mentioned in my previous post. [see below] (more…)
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 3/20/2005]
Among the splashback from coverage of the Schiavo case is a growing spate of stories about hospitals moving to terminate care of patients unilaterally – i.e., against the patients’ or families’ wishes – when the cases appear hopeless and the patients have “run out of money.” (more…)
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 3/20/2005]
Andrew Cohen, legal analyst for CBS News, is beside himself – and rightly so – over Congressional maneuvering to retry the Schiavo case in federal court. His discussion of the issues raised by the last-minute federal legislation is excellent, and highlights the truly dangerous feature of this latest move. Not only are the Congressional Republicans attempting to void the principle of patient autonomy in end-of-life issues by giving third parties the right to override a court’s decision in favor of the patient’s preferences, but they are aggrandizing to themselves the right to overturn any court decision – even non-federal cases – they personally disapprove of, thus completely voiding the separation of powers at the heart of our Constitutional system. (more…)
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 3/17/2005]
The insanity of the rabid “pro-life” community seems immeasurable.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 3/15/2005]
I have blogged already [see below] about the recent move by Leon Kass, Chair of the President’s Council on Bioethics, to head an overt drive to push Congress to enact his prefered extremist reactionary positions on sexual health, research ethics, and other social-policy issues. Kass’s thin pretence of neutrality as Chair of the Council has been abandoned as he retains his official position but uses his prominence to lobby for the very policies he is supposed to be evaluating, to the very agencies he is supposed to be advising. Others have taken note of the same problem.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 3/8/2005]
Leon Kass, the loose-cannon Chair of the President’s Council on Bioethics, has long been a spearhead of the anti-science, anti-sex, anti-modern right wing. In his position on the governmental Council he was forced to play a somewhat evenhanded role, but the Council was notable for its unmistakable anti-technology slant, and for the degree to which its work and its output reflected Kass’s personal obsessions (as well as for the frequency with which phrases and passages from Kass’s writings appeared in its reports). It was long remarked in bioethics circles that the Council was a stalking horse for Bush’s own religious-conservative proclivities, and that its pretense at objectivity was belied by its actual performance.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 3/4/2005]
The Bush Administration lost on one procedural move today, but otherwise has succeeded in derailing a UN-sponsored conference on women’s issues by injecting right-wing ideology on abortion (inevitably), women’s rights, sex, and, bizarrely, economic globalization.
(more…)
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 3/1/2005]
Sharon Lerner has a story in The Nation describing the incredibly personal invasion perpetrated – and then politicized – by a local Catholic church in Boulder, Colorado.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 2/7/2005]
The anti-choice blogosphere is all a-flutter over this report of a recent preliminary decision in an Illinois lawsuit. A couple sued an IVF clinic which inadvertently destroyed some stored, frozen conceptuses, on grounds of wrongful death. The judge in the case denied (apparently – the article couldn’t be bothered to provide actual details) a motion to dismiss on grounds that non-persons can’t be wrongfully dead, (more…)
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 12/22/2004]
It turns out anti-choicers are good for something after all – they can be put to work making money for Planned Parenthood.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 10/21/2004]
Phillip Johnson – self-appointed fundamentalist scourge of science everywhere – is off on another ignorant rampage, this time directed at the “sweet racket” of the worldwide AIDS conspiracy. He is not just wrongheaded and wrongly-informed; he has allied himself with a crank theory on the fringes of (what you can barely call) science, and is championing not only crackbrained conspiracy theories of his own, but the literally deadly fantasies of some of the world’s most irresponsible people involved in the global AIDS effort. His recent article is nominally about procedural problems in the estimation of the total prevalence of AIDS in Africa. But he uses this point to slip in some unexplained hints that the entire scientific underpinning of AIDS research is faulty, and to extol the ravings of near-lunatics who have almost destroyed AIDS work in Southern Africa. When Johnson was merely blathering about evolution, his ignorance was ignorable; when he tries to inject himself into medical treatment for a desperate population suffering lacerating resource shortages, he is unforgivably irresponsible.
[This post originally appeared at Lean Left, a general-issues blog KTK also contributes to. The founders of Lean Left graciously allowed me to re-post it here to bring all my health-related posts into one place. Original posting: 9/27/2004]
One of the few decent things in Bush’s speech at the Republican Convention this month was his promise of $1 billion in new funds to provide healthcare to uninsured children. Inevitably, when Bush promises money for something, you have to look for the way he is simultaneously undercutting his own promise. In this case, he has ordered the withholding of $1.1 billion in unspent funding for the same children’s health insurance program he promised to fund, meaning that if his promise of future funding is ever kept (they rarely are), his new funding will still represent barely 90% of the money he could provide right now if he chose to do so.
