Skepticism

Opponents of the Kyoto accord or the teaching of evolution to school children sometimes claim to ground their opinions in healthy skepticism, pointing out that the holdings of scientist do shift over time as deeper understandings displace shallower ones. Well skepticism is great, and the best of scientists are always skeptical, but this skeptic's eyebrows are raised far more by the claim that human activity is not the major contributing factor to the current rate of global warming, than by the much more widely accepted claim that it is.

As Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate writes:

Absolute credence in one obscure publication while distrusting mountains of 'mainstream' papers is a sure sign of cherry picking data to support an agenda, not clear-thinking scepticism.

The quote works just as well in reference to supporters of the teaching of Intelligent Design. Schmidt's worthy article draws on the logic of one of my own favorite skeptics of the last century, Bertrand Russell.

Sure the Kyoto Accord had flaws, and yes it would be foolish to sign onto it and believe our job was done. But to defiantly refuse to sign it with dismissive rhetoric, given the difficulty of getting multiple nations to agree to any small positive steps, is the height of irresponsibility. Fortunately numerous American cities are going around our now fully regressive federal government and instituting emission limits on their own.

I was reminded of RealClimate by a newly discovered site What is Liberalism? after one of its writers, Lawrence Krubner, was kind enough to drop by and leave a comment on Choosing Hope related to the shocking injustice being perpetrated on Cory Maye in the state of Mississippi. And yes Lawrence, I will be doing something with one of Laura's buttons in the very near future. Unfortunately, Cory Maye's is but one of many cases of prosecutorial misjustice involving a capital case. Tonight PBS's NOW featured the case of Anthony Graves in Texas. It's bad enough that these people are not freed tomorrow -- that they are on death row is an utter outrage. Fodder for another post, but more importantly a call to action. Stay tuned.

Who Said It?

In reaction to Friday's resignation of Food and Drug Administration chief Lester Crawford, one U.S. Senator remarked:

In recent years, the FDA has demonstrated a too-cozy relationship with the pharmaceutical industry and an attitude of shielding rather than disclosing information. Now is the time to reform the FDA's culture and reassert that the agency's top priority is what's good for John Q. Public when it comes to reviewing drugs in the marketplace and making new miracle medicines available.

One of those anti-corporate liberal Democrats, you ask? Nope.

I wonder about the relationship between Crawford's resignation last Friday, and the resignation of Susan F. Wood, three weeks earlier in exasperation over the FDA's decision to further delay a ruling on whether the morning after pill should be made more easily accessible. Her comment at the time:

I can no longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been overruled.

When I was a boy in school in the sixties, in the conservative South, my interest in science was universally regarded as a good thing. Do parents these days pray that their youngsters won't be corrupted by their secularist science teachers?

Does Wood now regret her resignation? Did hers in some way contribute to Crawford's decision last week? Anybody have the "inside dope" at the FDA?

It's not Really about Stem Cell Embryos

Oh sure, there is a relatively small percentage of true believers who see any fertilized human egg as the moral equivalent of an adult human being. They earnestly oppose not only Embryonic Stem Cell Research (ESR), but In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), the morning after pill, or any process in which a fertilized human egg is not allowed every chance to mature into a human. But most opponents of ESR fall into one or more of four categories. They are ignorant of the facts; they fear the "slippery slope"; they fear that any worthy research use of fetal or embryonic matter legitimates abortion, or, if they are politicians, they are pandering to a certain constituency.

My first question to anyone decrying the immorality of ESR is "Are you working just as hard or harder to ban in vitro fertilization?"

In vitro fertilization was certainly not without controversy when it was first introduced 27 years ago. Not only was there concern about fertilized eggs that wouldn't make it, but real questions about the role of science and technology in procreation, where it would stop, and concerns about the health of children brought into the world in that way. That last concern has been largely allayed, as many children now have come into being through IVF who are perfectly healthy and happy. Worries about "playing God" persist, and no one disputes that some fertilized eggs become waste in the process of IVF. That ship has sailed, however, and even opponents realize they won't be stopping IVF anytime soon.

Those who claim that ESR is a dangerous extension of IVF are either misinformed or being dishonest. While it is true that the "lives" of the otherwise discarded eggs are kept alive for an additional four days, embryos at that stage have not developed a nervous system, so claims of pain and suffering are simply not valid. If there is a wrong in having produced the eggs, that was a result of IVF, while ESR only provides hope that those eggs will serve a benefit far nobler than providing an infertile couple with genetically related progeny.

And yet IVF gets mentioned in a minority of any media reports on the matter, and not at all, as far as I can tell, by the political opponents making sanctimonious statements about "creating commodities out of embryos". If these politicians were truly grieving for the discarded eggs, they would be focusing their attention on IVF instead. But politicians are little inclined to fight losing battles, and so they pander to their constituents outraged by a procedure few understand fully, by feigning outrage themselves. And the media dumbly relays the political posturing of the "latest" controversy, rarely connecting the scientific dots for the under-educated public.

In fact, I would argue, that it is precisely the nobler purpose of finding cures for disease which really threatens opponents of this technology. Once science establishes a popular moral underpinning for technologies which opponents believe to be immoral, then the moral upper hand is lost in the larger battle against abortion or against science "playing God". It is rather akin to something I noticed during the cold war with leftist governments around the world. There were many two-bit tyrannical states around the world, and especially in Africa, which called themselves communist or socialist, but the left leaning nations that the U.S. government took interest in undermining were precisely those which had the noblest beginnings, such as the democratically elected government of Allende in Chile. Now much of that also had to do with economic connections and the relative interests of big corporations, but I'll wager the threat of legitimacy being lent to a socialist state played a big factor. In similar fashion, abortion foes are most threatened by the likelihood that embryonic stem cell research puts a humanitarian face on a procedure which consumes fertilized eggs.

One may legitimately believe that it is always wrong to fertilize a human egg in the foreknowledge that some of them will be destroyed, but I'll have more respect for those who acknowledge that if that is going to happen, science should be allowed to make beneficiary use of that otherwise discarded material, rather than insisting on cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. As biological technology advances, ethical questions will remain front and center in the debate over what to pursue and what to disallow, but the more that all the facts are put out in the open the more likely we are to arrive at reasonable compromises which consider both ethics and scientific reality.

Wangari Maathai

There's so much to moan about with respect to the powers that be, that it's a blessed delight to realize that there is also much to celebrate on this planet. Powerful and inspirational people abound, and it's vital to rekindling hope to shine a bright light upon as many of these luminaries as possible.

Wangari Maathai, one such uplifting figure was interviewed tonight on PBS' NOW by David Brancaccio. Educated in biological sciences in the States and Germany in the sixties, Maathai, recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, returned to her native Kenya where after holding prestigious positions in Veterinary Anatomy at the University of Nairobi, she helped found the Green Belt Movement, assisting women in planting over 20 million trees on farms and school and church compounds. In 1986 the Movement founded a Pan African Green Belt Network, expanding the program across that troubled continent.

In her address accepting the Nobel Prize, Maathai intoned:

In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other.
That time is now.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has challenged the world to broaden the understanding of peace: there can be no peace without equitable development; and there can be no development without sustainable management of the environment in a democratic and peaceful space. This shift is an idea whose time has come.

Not every effort will meet with success, but tireless individuals such as Maathai inspire us to keep trying.

Tipping Points

Here is an article which has a ring of truth to it. It has long struck me that we ignore that which is either uncomfortable or difficult to understand, in favor of the less important issues with easier solutions. It's part of what I was trying to get at in my earlier post. [End of Post]