It’s Wesley J. Smith day here at Sufficient Scruples! [See further, below.] I don’t know why - I just kept finding one more thing to comment on at his blog . . . (one of which I actually agreed with).

The last thing that caught my eye at Wesley Smith’s blog was the absurdly long subtitle/disclaimer printed in the top banner. Among many other things, it declares that:

My views expressed here . . . reflect my understanding that the philosophy of human exceptionalism is the bedrock of universal human rights. Or, to put it another way: human life matters.

“[T]he philosophy of human exceptionalism is the bedrock of universal human rights. Or, to put it another way: human life matters.”

Hmmm.

Technically, he’s making a logical equivalency there: “human life matters” is just “another way” of putting his claim that “yadda yadda human exceptionalism yadda yadda”. Which is to say that:

“T]he philosophy of human exceptionalism is the bedrock of universal human rights.”

means the same thing as

“[H]uman life matters.”

Except it doesn’t. (Mean the same thing, that is.) At all.

I gather that by “the philosophy of human exceptionalism” he means something like the claim that humans are unique in morally significant ways. (This would help explain why one of the other issues mentioned in his encyclopedic subtitle is “the dangers of animal rights/liberation”.) I am exasperated by people who use the word “philosophy” to mean “proposition” or “set of beliefs”, but never mind that now. His meaning - clearly apparent from his words here and the general tenor of his remarks on various issues - is that only humans hold a certain moral stature, because of facts about humans that make them different from other creatures. Well enough - many people agree.

But what he claims that proposition is equivalent to is merely that “humans matter”, which means no such thing at all. Humans could certainly “matter” even if they were different in no morally significant way from many or all other creatures, or indeed even if they held an inferior (but not negligible) moral status. And, the fact that some or most humans are morally distinct from all non-humans (if it is a fact) does not lead to a position of universal human rights, since virtually any feature of humans that would grant distinct moral status is a feature that not all human beings share (hence the debates over the criteria for, and limits of inclusiveness of, moral personhood within the human species).

He could, as many religious conservatives do, assert that the distinct feature of humans that all humans necessarily share is that they are human (often evidenced with dubious references to DNA). But this is no more than a claim that “humans are human” - which is tautologously true but is not only not equivalent to, but does not even support, the claim that “humans matter”.

Finally, he could simply assert that “humans matter” as a stipulative moral definition, but, aside from being implausible, that does not incorporate a claim of “human exceptionalism” except by way of the fact that “humans matter” - it is thus tautologous as a moral claim in the same way that “humans are human” is tautologous as an empirical claim.

The fact that he could be this confused in the title of his blog bodes ill for whatever he might have to say in the content.

Shockingly even to me, I find myself in agreement with Wesley Smith on this post on PETA and other animal-extremist groups:

PETA has settled a lawsuit (perhaps to avoid discovery where its files would have been thrown open to lawyers), and agreed to a court order not to infiltrate a medical testing company it had been seeking to harm. The order lasts for five years. Suing animal liberationist harassers–but only when the suit is justified–could be an effective tool to keep the movement within proper parameters. . . . Hopefully, spankings by the law–civil in the case of PETA, criminal against terrorists like SHAC and the ALF–will convince animal liberationists to stay within proper legal parameters.

This is certainly correct.

What catches my attention about this, though, is the statement that the non-infiltration agreement lasts for five years. A court actually accepted a settlement whereby they would agree to obey the law temporarily? That stipulation should be made permanent - with strong action in the form of contempt-of-court arrests upon any violation.

I may be misreading this - it is possible that “infiltration” means things like taking jobs there under false pretenses in order to gain access to files or information, rather than actual trespassing or vandalism. Such things, however, are also illegal - recall the network news-magazine show that was fined for sending a reporter into a dirty meat-processing plant posing as an employee. Though that is a tort rather than a crime, it is still prohibited, and it is still outrageous that a judge would actually allow a settlement of one tort suit with what amounts to a promise to commit more torts after a specified waiting period. A court judgment is not a penalty time out like in a hockey game - it is a finding of legal guilt. No such judgment should be entered that does not plausibly seek to put an end to the prohibited behavior - not simply regulate it. (And, as Smith points out, the last time PETA entered into such an agreement, the harassment activity was immediately taken up in physically violent form by the parallel organization SHAC, with PETA’s explicit endorsement. Promises from this crowd are of no value.)

For that matter, I wish the plaintiffs had pursued the case to trial, whether or not they thought they could get a better judgment. Putting PETA’s files in the public record would be a step toward ending their nonsense.

Wesley Smith attempts a defense of Leon Kass’s past proclamations that IVF is unjustified due to risks to the fetus - hanging his argument on the slim thread of a recent study showing that IVF embryos have high rates of genetic defects.

[S]ome bioethicists have chided [Kass,] the former chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics[,] for having worried decades ago that IVF might pose risks to the children created thereby. . . .

Well, lo and behold: Studies now show Kass was right. Betcha the deriders won’t apologize.

However, this means little for the question of the risk of actual birth defects 9 months down the road, for several reasons. Shamelessly ripping off my own comment on Smith’s post, here’s why:

Actually, they laugh at Leon Kass for a whole lot of reasons.

As for the studies you cite, they report only genetic defects identified in in vitro IVF embryos by pre-implantation genetic diagnosis - not birth defects in children born through IVF. The article itself points out that many such defects are fatal to the embryo. In other words, these defects are likely a cause of the high rate of embryo failure in IVF; the article offers no evidence that they are a source of birth defects in children. The fact that the researcher was able to more than double the rate of healthy pregnancies by screening these defective embryos out before implantation suggests that they would not have resulted in compromised pregnancies or infants with birth defects even if they had been implanted.

As to the question of birth defects among children actually born through the various assisted reproductive technologies, research seems to show a small increase in birth defects among that population, but the results are not clear. Some relatively small studies have shown birth defect rates among “IVF babies” about 1.5 - 2 times as high as in the general population; a CDC review of over 100,000 US ART births showed an overall birth-defect rate lower than that in the non-ART population. (Summaries here and here.) However, even if the effect is real these studies cannot determine whether the defects are the result of ART procedures themselves, or from factors relevant to the parents (who, by definition, suffer fertility problems of some kind to begin with). Your linked article notes that defects were observed more commonly among embryos from couples actually seeking ART than in a control group from donors who are not fertility-compromised, which is direct evidence that it is the underlying fertility problem, not the ART, that is the cause of at least some of these defects.

In short, there is at best ambiguous evidence that ART is associated with even a minimal increase in birth defects and no evidence that it is the cause of them, while the study you cite in defense of Kass actually provides evidence that the defective embryos identified before implantation are not likely to result in infants with birth defects, and that those defects that do occur are not necessarily the result of ART. It does not even address the point Kass actually raised - the risk to children - making it rather a weak crutch in the first place.

Sadly, Kass still looks like a nutter from here.

This appears to me to be a classic case of finding one seemingly-helpful study and then proclaiming that everything you’ve ever said has been proven true. (Smith goes on to imply that Kass’s fears about cloning should also be given credence now that he has been “proven right” about IVF.) In this case, the study in question does not even address the point Kass was making, and falls far short of offering even indirect evidence that he might have been correct. Even if you’re going to claim victory from one report, this one’s a non-starter.