Bioethics

Unclean! Unclean!

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Megan McArdle’s post on the resurgence of measles due to a lack of vaccinations prompted me to think about the modern moral and legal ramifications of someone choosing to go about unvaccinated.

When a person becomes infected with a lethal contagious disease, the disease microbe turns their body into a biological warfare factory churning out billions of weapons which automatically seek out and attack other people. If a person infected themself on purpose and then went about their daily life, we would regard it as a form of lethal violence against everyone they came in contact with. How then should we regard those who fail to take simple, cheap and low-risk steps to prevent such an occurrence by accident?

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WWPZD?

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Again, from the usual source: with reference to this … TBN is a sewer, Crouch is a parasite, and Stein is upholding the finest tradition of Hollywood celebrities, and I mean that in the worst possible way.

Lots of other people, I hope, will be quoting Jacob Bronowski today, from the “Knowledge or Certainty” episode of The Ascent of Man:

It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That’s false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
 
Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken.”
 
I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.

I’m not finished. I know PZ Myers. I’ve corresponded with him, spoken with him, and been a guest in his house. Nor was I there under false pretenses; he knows exactly what I am. I can think of few contrasts sharper than that between the way atheist liberal blue-state biology professor PZ Myers treated evangelical libertarian red-state corporate slug Jay Manifold and the way PZ is getting treated by these cretins.

It’s about time somebody started a “Christian Fans of PZ Myers” club, complete with WWPZD bracelets.

Did I mention that TBN is a sewer?

How I Learned to be the Adult – And Why I Often Forget – 2 –

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May 10 update: Instapundit links to another discussion of Rubin by Will Wilkinson in The Economist.

May 9 post:

When I started my little business, I despaired when a large chain opened down the street two weeks before we did. What I should have recognized was that large chains & naïfs could see our college town needed copy shops. We survived for quite a while. Tired and worn out, both from a pregnancy in my forties and a series of rather stupid business moves on my part, I sold out years later to a locally run company. We were doing several times the amount of business we had that first year and, while some such shops had come and gone during thirteen years, several survived, making varying but real profits.

I was wrong, but I was working from the gut. Paul Rubin’s “Evolution, Update: Immigration and Trade” points to why I felt as I did and why I was wrong. Just as it is probably not always wise to do what both villains & heroes do in adventure dramas head for the high ground we retain instincts that once helped us survive.

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Imagine Insanity

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In reading Ginny’s post below as well as the posts and comments of the sites she links to, I note a strong presumption among most that in the case of mental illness we should err on the side of under-treating rather than risk over-treating someone. Dr. Jonathan Kellerman makes this observation:

Talk to anyone who’s tried to commit a dangerously violent child or parent for even a few days: A stranger with a law degree will show up at the hearing and paint you as a fascist. So it’s far too much to expect anything resembling a decisive approach to those whose level of threat remains at the verbal level.

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