More evidence that IVF makes things weird

A recent court case involves a young girl who was conceived by IVF two years after her father died. The mother wants the child to collect survivor's benefits from her father's Social Security. On the one hand, we all have sympathy for the mother and the child, and this is not about that. I am willing to bet that the family has basically sound ethical principles and is acting according to what they believe to be right. On the other hand, it smells an awful lot like -- in the hands of the unscrupulous -- a way someone can abuse the system.

Normally, survivor benefits are for people who survive the death of a parent or spouse. So, normally, one has to be alive before one can be a survivor. The benefits are to help reduce the financial burden that the survivors are experiencing due to the loss of the wage-earning family member. Many states have laws permitting survivor benefits only if the child was conceived while the deceased was still alive. This child, however, experienced no loss of anything she had, because she was conceived and born in a particular and known economic situation, two years after the man's death.

Some states permit widows to conceive by their late husbands through artificial means up to two years after the man's death, for the children to qualify for survivor's benefits. So, the law has a cut-off, but how long will that last? Seriously, what is the difference between a child born within 24 months and one born within 25 months? The cut-off seems arbitrary and in principle cannot stand. Every child that is recognized as the deceased's offspring should qualify for benefits, regardless of when he was conceived. That would include children conceived by the widow, as well as any other woman, because illegitimate children also get survivor's benefits.

I have to admit that I do not know enough about how Social Security benefits work. Is there a certain amount that gets divided among surviving children? Or does each survivor get a certain amount, and more survivors that get conceived later (see how weird that is?) will get the same amount? It's probably the latter up until a certain maximum is reached, after which they split the maximum evenly. Well, then, there's an incentive to have as many posthumous kids for your husband, up to the maximum benefit. If there is no maximum, you can see how this could become a way of working the system.

And how does this apply for widowers, using their late wives' frozen ova for IVF? Just a question.

At any rate, IVF makes things weird. Like the 4-1/2-year-old kid who survived hurricane Katrina 6 years ago. They named him Noah. I'm glad he survived and that he's in the world, but you have to admit that it's just plain strange to be a survivor of something that happened two years before you were born.

Yet ANOTHER Reason Embryonic Stem Cell Research Is Obsolete

The reason ESCR is obsolete is that we do not need embryonic cells to obtain the therapeutic goals that are so desired.

First, there are adult stem cells in your body right now that could be used for therapies. Those adult stem cells can be induced to the pluripotent stage, such that they could become any cell necessary for a medical treatment. Work still needs to be done, but the obsolescence of ESCR is clear from adult stem cell research alone.

Now researchers have found that amniotic fluid is a rich source of stem cells that exhibit properties of both embryonic and adult stem cells. These cells are already demonstrating therapeutic promise in early animal studies. Plus, they are an abundant source of cells for banking for use later on in life by the person who was in the amniotic fluid prior to birth.

So, why are people still pursuing ESCR? Because of MONEY. Don't believe the rhetoric about therapies. Other sources of stem cells are ALREADY being used for a multitude of therapies, and any therapeutic potential of ESC can be satisfied by these other sources.

It's scam, and it's all about the money. Human beings are being created and destroyed for research grants to study a therapeutic dead-end. If anyone knows of another reason, please tell me about it.

Thoughts on male contraception

I like the Second Hand Smoke blog on the First things website, and there's an interesting discussion going on over there about the prospects of new kinds of hormonal male contraception. These products (I refrain from calling them medicines) will use hormones to prevent sperm production or at least result in damaged sperm that cannot cause fertilization or result in a viable embryo.

Wesley Smith rightly points out that male contraception will not suffer from the same pitfalls as female non-barrier methods. I quote Smith:

• There would be no arguments about whether the technique was an abortifacient, since the medication prevents sperm from forming or maturing sufficiently to fertilize an egg.
• There would be no argument about whether the contraception prevented ovulation or implantation, as with the female birth control pill.
• There would be no arguments, as often now rage about female birth control that prevent implantation, as to whether creating an inhospitable uterine environment takes the life of an early embryo.
• There would be no arguments about whether a woman carrying an embryo in her fallopian tube is yet actually pregnant.
• Finally, I think a male contraceptive would promote greater societal comity since fewer pharmacists would presumably object to dispensing the male contraception, than female forms such as the “morning after pill,” since by doing so they would not possibly be complicit in the taking of a nascent human life.

These things being true, will male contraception therefore be ethical? Saying so presumes that the reason other forms of contraception are unethical are because of the outcomes affecting fertilized ova. Four of Smith's points above pertain directly to such outcomes.

Smith wonders if male contraception might be acceptable to the Catholic Church. The position of the Catholic Church is that contraception is immoral because of what contraception is within the sexual act, and not what it does downstream after the act. Barrier methods also avoid the pitfalls that Smith lists above, but they are still contraception.

Contraception alters the sexual act by depriving it of its intrinsic power to result in new life. The act itself still means procreation; it is the reproductive act -- the act by which humans reproduce -- and remains so even with contraception. But contraception robs it of one of its intrinsic purposes, and the purpose that actually defines its nature. It reduces it to a source of pleasure only. It is like turning a blind eye to the full truth of a political candidate and focusing only on the qualities one likes. One can do that, but it would be at least dishonest and it makes the candidate not to be who he (or she) really is, but who one wants him to be. Contraception does that to sex. And, sex is a special case because new human life hangs in the balance, so it is not like other human pastimes or actions.

That does not rely on any religious opinions on beliefs. So it applies to everyone, not just Catholics.

Contraception also impedes God's providence through the sex act, and sets up one's own desires pertinent to having contracepted sex as the rule that judges whether or not it is a good thing. Now, sin requires the knowledge that a particular act is a sin, so it may be that some people truly do not sin in using contraception. But for a believer, contraception has at the very least a subconscious determination that "I" know best what is a good outcome of the sex act. Knowing a thing to be a sin includes whether we rationalize and convince ourselves that what we want to do is okay by God.

So it is not likely that male contraception will be "approved" by the Catholic Church. Because it is not a pronouncement by the Church that "contraception is wrong" that makes contraception wrong. Rather, it is the intrinsic nature of contraception that is wrong and upon which the Church has made its pronouncement.

Hell is a place of mercy

Hell is not really a bioethical issue, at least not directly. Hell is the negative reinforcement, the deterrent factor, in having a workable ethics. We naturally want to do what is good and right – but why do we want to avoid what is evil and wrong? If there is no hell, there is no reason to “do good and avoid evil,” the very first principle of anything that can be called “ethics.” Hell is life opposed to good. If there is no hell, then there is nothing opposed to good.

There is a new book out about hell, written by Protestant pastor, Rob Bell. Bell basically thinks hell is on earth, and that everyone will be saved and go to heaven. He has a hard time accepting that a loving God would “send” anyone, anyone at all, to a place of eternal torment.

Unfortunately, justice is a part of love. If everyone gets to heaven, regardless of the evil perpetrated in earthly life, then there is no justice and no love. If there is no recompense for evil actions, there is no reward for good.

Without hell, there is no need to do good and avoid evil, because the outcome is the same. Self-sacrifice is meaningless. Suffering is meaningless. Not indulging oneself regardless of who it hurts or what the outcomes are is meaningless. Murder, genocide, global warming, Ponzi schemes, exploitation, dishonesty – it’s all meaningless because you go to heaven anyway.

Likewise, even if there is neither heaven nor hell as atheists believe, then there is also no reason to do good and avoid evil. You die, and that’s it. You no longer exist. So why bother about what your reputation will be when you’re gone? Why not live entirely for yourself, even if it hurts others along the way? It seems unconscionable, but think about it. Once you die, neither you nor the people you use and hurt matter any longer. You cannot be harmed by other people's hate and their hatred has no object. Whether or not they are harmed is irrelevant, because you're dead and they'll eventually die, too.

Now, I don’t know many atheists who would agree with that, as many do try to lead good lives. But I’m talking about the ethical principles at work. Why do they try to lead good lives? Without hell and heaven, there is no ethical principle higher than “what I want for myself.” And that might include being kind to people and accepting a loss of a personal good for the sake of something greater. However, it would be a totally personal choice. It would be “good” because it is what you want. If God doesn't exist, there is no universal and objective good or principle of behavior that demands assent. And some people could quite ethically choose to please themselves and hurt others. We might disagree with it, but we can't say it's “wrong” or “evil.”

Atheists and relativists I think have a hard time accepting the notion of hell because they feel entitled to define things like “love” and “good” for themselves. “If God is 'love' (the way 'I' define it), then there is no hell.” Well, who can argue against that? If you define love to exclude the possibility of hell, then you have to be right—if “love” is actually something you can define for yourself.

What if love is an objective reality, not subject to idiosyncratic definitions? What if it has its own attributes and properties, that we must recognize and accept if we call ourselves reasonable and open-minded?

Justice has to be a part of love, because it means given each one his due, be it reward or punishment. It is out of love for persons that we strive to give each his due. 

But, if justice is a part of love, then some people go to hell. God loves himself after all, and he loves human beings. God is love, and he is what he does. Can he love himself –can he be love – if he rewards hate, and in particular hatred of himself? Can people who hate him be in a mutual relationship of love with him, which is what heaven is? Can a square be a circle?

If everyone goes to heaven, then the people who hate God must at some point come to love him. If that does not happen before the end of their earthly life, then it has to happen after death. I suppose it is possible. But there are only two ways it can happen. One is, God reveals himself to those about to die, and the true, loving nature of God melts the cold, hateful heart of those who hate him, and they come to love him. And this happens without fail in every case. The other is, God more or less forces the hateful person to love him. Some people do not distinguish the two.

The second at any rate does not happen, because we are free and we cannot be both free and subject to that kind of force. Besides, a loving God would not use that kind of force. And, it is not love if it is forced out of us, it has to be freely given. Being free makes the first unlikely, too. In seeing the true nature of God, there will surely be those who hate him all the more, because in creating them as finite and frail humans, he deprived them of being gods and caused all the hardships in their earthly lives. Seeing his majesty and goodness, such persons would resent him. They would hate him for not sharing his divinity with them.

Ironically, heaven is a participation in the divine nature. Those who hate God could have had it, if they only loved God instead. But they hated him. If such hatred persists after death as it seems it must, there is a hell. It is what such people want and deserve after all. 

However, hell is eternal. Is that really just? Is that loving? I say it is. I say hell actually is a place of mercy. 

Whoever hates God as described has achieved an evil that is in some respect infinite. It is infinite insofar as the hated object is infinite, and it is infinite because the person has refused to change. Therefore, the punishment, which the person freely prefers over being with God, has to have a dimension of infinity as well.

A punishment has two dimensions. One is duration. The other is severity. Since the punishment lasts forever, we know that the duration is infinite. However, the severity need not be. In fact, it cannot be infinite, or else it would annihilate the person. Perhaps the sufferings of hell are not even as intense as the person deserves them to be, because God in his mercy can make them less intense. There is no need for them to be overly severe, because there is no escape from them.

And in that sense, hell is a place of mercy.

It is like the criminal court judge sentencing a serial killer who deserves the death penalty. Would it not be an act of mercy to give him life in prison instead? Either way, his life in society with good people is over forever. Yet it is a mercy to let him live.

The question some might have is the purpose of the sufferings of hell. Punishment is usually ordered to correction of behavior, which would be out of love of the guilty party in some way. Sometimes it is for retribution, which in some respect reflects love of the injured party. Neither applies to hell, because the person cannot change his ways after death, and because God needs no retribution nor do the human victims once they are in heaven. In some respects, the sufferings simply are – suffering is the way things are apart from God.

The sufferings of those in hell might serve other purposes for those not in hell as well, so that some good might come from it. The sufferings inspire the good to be good and to repent of their evil while they can. That is the deterrent factor. 

The sufferings can also be looked at like this. Most people who hate God love themselves more. They have chosen themselves (or some other creature) as their own gods, and in death they realize that they are not and can never be gods. And so the horrors of hell are: The realization of how pathetic their gods are, being doomed to serve the pathetic gods they chose in life, and seeing the infinite good that they have forsaken forever in favor of the infinitesimal good they preferred.

These things will surely torment someone forever.

God cannot change the fact that hell has torments. God is Truth, and it is against the nature of truth to make that which is true to become untrue. Rejecting and hating God means accepting and preferring torment to heaven. God can mitigate those torments and order those torments to the good of those not in hell, which are acts of mercy. So hell does serve God’s mercy, even for those in it.

To deny the existence of an eternal hell is to deny the attributes of justice and mercy to God. Justice, because evil earns the same eternal reward as good. Mercy, because if there is no possibility of punishment, than there can be no mitigation of punishment. 

It also, in a way, denies God’s power. For if there is no eternal, inescapable hell, then no one needs to be saved from it. God lets everyone into heaven because he has no power to keep them out.

Hell therefore affirms God’s existence, complete with his perfect power, justice, and mercy.

GPS for bioethics

When we go on a trip, we put our destination into the GPS, click Go, and it we have our route laid out. Once in a while after we start going, we realize that we put in the wrong destination, so we pick the right destination and turn aside from the first one.

A recent post at Secondhand Smoke talks about how permitting assisted suicide quickly evolves into promoting it. I certainly agree. It's time to take a look at the destination keyed into the bioethics GPS and pick a new one.

Wesley Smith makes a great observation that I will not soon forget: How heartbreaking it must be for a terminally sick or injured person to say to his loved ones that he's thinking of ending it all, and they agree it's a good idea.

Chilling. Creepy. But it happens.

Surely, the sick person wants to hear, "NO! NEVER!! C'mon, Dad/Mom/Sis/Granny, we LOVE you, we want you around as long as possible! I know you're suffering, but we NEED you!! The kids need you!!! I'll talk to the doctor about pain medication for you, we'll do everything we can to make you comfortable. BUT DON'T LEAVE US!!!"  Even if the sick person is adamant about ending his life, surely it must be a huge slap in the face to have no resistance.

It must equally hurt to have only token resistance, fake but polite, like a friend resisting when we offer to pick up the tab at lunch. We appreciate a sincere, "No, let me pay my share," but more often than not it's just his way to say Thank You, and our guest would feel slighted if we agreed to let him pay for his food. We're duty-bound to follow through on our offer.

But when we offer to kill ourselves? "Well, Dad/Mom/Sis/Granny, we want you around, but if that's your decision..." Surely if our loved ones -- our reasons for living -- indicate that they endorse our decision, we really have no reason left to live except selfishness. We would feel duty-bound to die as soon as possible.

So our loved ones' attempt at neutrality fails. Their lack of resistance is tacit endorsement.

Neutrality is simply illusory in these sorts of issues. Not stopping someone from killing himself is endorsement of the deed. We can be neutral about buying a car: "It matters not to me if you buy this one or that one." But neutrality fails when a life is at stake: "It matters not to me if you kill yourself." That is clearly a statement of the lack of worth of the life in question. The same applies to law. A law that permits a thing endorses it. It is seen as a Good Thing To Do.

The article at Secondhand Smoke references a news story about the possibility of Vermont joining Oregon and Washington in permitting assisted suicide. The news article is far from neutral.

It seems that apparent neutrality is really endorsement. And endorsement becomes pressure to those not considering it. Smith argues in part that our society, our culture, must always and actively discourage suicide and voluntary euthanasia, or else we start down the path of duty-bound suicide and involuntary euthanasia.

If we start down a road that leads to a particular destination, we are not obliged to arrive at that destination if we stop or turn off along the way. But if we do not stop, we cannot claim to be surprised if arrive at the destination.

We are on the road to enforced euthanasia according to the bioethics GPS. Faux neutrality is the on-ramp. We've already missed the exit before Assisted Suicide. We really should turn back.

How to Defeat Death Panels

Government death panels are not all-powerful.  The one in Canada that has been holding Baby Joseph’s life in its hands has been defeated. Fr. Pavone from Priests for Life has arranged for Baby Joseph to be transferred to a Catholic, charitable children’s hospital in St. Louis.

St. Louis, the city, is named after King Louis IX of France, who had 11 children. He became king at age 9 under a regent, and reigned from the age of 19 until his death at 55 in 1270.

As for the death panel, the Priests for Life website notes, "The medical board overseeing his case is apparently convinced that giving proper care to 'Baby Joseph' is futile. They don’t mean that the medical care won’t help him. They mean his life in its current condition isn’t worth the trouble."

Baby Joseph is not likely ever to recover from his neurological disease. His life will be short. According to the Canadian death panel, the kid’s life is a waste of time and resources. That is what happens when health care is rationed artificially. 

What Priests for Life has done is to ensure he will be given humane care until the end.

It's MARIO Day!

It has nothing to do with bioethics that I know of, but it is nonetheless an interesting thing.

The Tenth of March, when written MAR 10, looks a lot like MARIO.

So it's Mario Day.

Do something nice for anyone you know named Mario.

And I'm sure you know someone named Mario... Don't you?