It seems Tyson has taken his number from a 1996 study mentioned here:

http://pewforum.org/Science-and-Bioethics/Scientists-and-Belief.aspx

More than 80 years later, Edward Larson, a historian of science then teaching at the University of Georgia, recreated Leuba's survey, asking the same number of scientists the exact same questions. To the surprise of many, Larson's 1996 poll came up with similar results, finding that 40% of scientists believed in a personal God, while 45% said they did not. Other surveys of scientists have yielded roughly similar results.

Fair enough.

>> ^Kofi:

My best friend has MS. I have a form of Parkinsons. I have had cancer and survived.
I am also studying bioethics at Monash.
Judging by your overly defensive nature even before any retorts you are clearly not at ease with the ethical decisions you have made. I won't lecture you. Rather I will just say that you value certain things above others that have limited ethical grounding.


Then there's a pretty good chance that at some point you have taken something that was first tested on animals. While I find the video bittersweet because of what it represents, we all benefit from the involuntary sacrifices these animals are forced to make. It's terribly sad but if we want to continue to benefit from medical discoveries, all we can do is treat them as best as possible and give them the best quality of life before, during and after their terrible but crucial service.

My best friend has MS. I have a form of Parkinsons. I have had cancer and survived.

I am also studying bioethics at Monash.

Judging by your overly defensive nature even before any retorts you are clearly not at ease with the ethical decisions you have made. I won't lecture you. Rather I will just say that you value certain things above others that have limited ethical grounding.
>> ^MycroftHomlz:

Do you have friends that have AIDS or HIV? Do you know someone (or know someone that knows someone) suffering MS? Parkinsons? Dushanes? Has anyone you known every gotten cancer and survived? Are you vaccinated? Do you take antibiotics when you get sick? Do you know anyone who has been the recipient of an organ transplant? Do you upvote Michael J. Fox videos?
Ask yourself these questions before you question how I sleep...
I think it is naive and hypocritical to on one hand use modern medicine and curl the other to a fist to bash its teeth in. You can't have it both ways. Sure it is sad that we have to use animal models. The best we can hope for is that they are treated as humanely as possible and their use is tightly regulated. All of which is true in the current paradigm.
>> ^Kofi:
Whatever helps you sleep at night.

@chilaxe

Nearly every medical association in the world disagrees with you (read the page on the Bioethics of Circumcision that I linked to above). There is no conclusive evidence that it causes any decrease in sensitivity or pleasure. If convincing empirical evidence arose in the future, I'd agree with you entirely--it needs to be banned. But until such evidence arises, any law attempting to stop circumcisions doesn't have a leg to stand on.

@Lawdeedaw

I believe I answered your question multiple times, most specifically in my response to hpqp above. Circumcision is more than just a cosmetic adjustment. But, as I've said in other responses, I wouldn't personally be against parents choosing to make other cosmetic adjustments to their children so long as there was no evidence of permanent harm being done. I think most doctors would agree that cutting off someone's earlobes will cause lasting medical harm. According to Wikipedia:

Since the earlobe does not contain cartilage it has a large blood supply and may help to warm the ears and maintain balance.

So, cutting someone's earlobes off seems at the least potentially likely to kill them (through massive blood loss) and may impair both ear and balance functioning. Plus it doesn't seem like it would prevent any illnesses either. That's why I find it a red-herring argument when discussing circumcision. It's a nice emotional visual, I'll give you that. But it's irrelevant to whether circumcisions should be legally banned or not.

EDIT: Sorry, didn't finish my response to chilaxe before I hit submit. Plus fixed some typos/tags.

>> ^hpqp:

Cosmetic/aesthetic (non-medical) procedures that modify a person's body should be that person's informed decision/choice, and no one else's. How hard is it to grasp such a simple ethical concept?


It's not a simple ethical concept at all because it is not simply a modification to a person's body. From the Wiki Bioethics of Circumcision Page:

The practice of medicine has long respected an adult's right to self-determination in health care decision-making. This principle has been operationalized through the doctrine of informed consent. The process of informed consent obligates the physician to explain any procedure or treatment and to enumerate the risks, benefits, and alternatives for the patient to make an informed choice. For infants and young children who lack the capacity to decide for themselves, a surrogate, generally a parent, must make such choices.

– American Academy of Pediatrics: Circumcision Policy Statement

Parents have a right to make decisions for their children that they believe will improve their children's future. They're not just doing it because they think it looks nice. Here are the issues that most parents consider:

1) They belong to a group where this is the norm and they want their child to fit in socially. By doing it while the child is still a baby they ensure that the child will have no recollection of the procedure. Furthermore, the child is obviously not sexually active yet. Delaying the procedure until age of consent (which I assume you define as sometime after puberty) guarantees that the person will have to abstain from sexual actions while healing takes place and that they'll have full memories of both the procedure and the subsequent recovery pain.

2) Circumcision will guarantee that the child does not ever have to deal with an infected foreskin. Although proper cleaning can help prevent such an infection in non-circumcised males, only circumcision guarantees (100%) the child will never have to deal with it. The medical research waffles a lot on the reduction of penile cancer and AIDS transmission rates, but the medical consensus is still that circumcision may help in both of these areas.

Given these two facts--and the lack of any conclusive evidence that the procedure is harmful--I see no reason to deny parent's the right to choose to have the practice done on their own child. If they think it will benefit their child, then they should feel free to do so.

Does that answer your question?

@chilaxe

Like I said to Lawdeedaw, I don't agree with the analogy of cutting ears off. It's a red herring argument in my opinion. At best, I think you could say it is equivalent to shaving some skin off the ear lobes--it would leave no permanent damage to the function of the ear, though it would change the appearance slightly. If some culture in the world did that as a means of showing "belonging" and if, additionally, it was shown to be a medically useful procedure in preventing ear illnesses in some people, then I guess I'd have to say I'd have no problem with it being performed on babies.

I notice you left out a very important sentence from your quote (the very next one in fact).

Non-surgical restoration is inexpensive, relatively easy, and gives good results. It is not surgery, and it is not classified as a medical treatment.

They explicitly state that when done correctly the procedure should be painless, though it does take time. There is no conclusive medical evidence that having a foreskin makes sex more pleasurable (see the link to the Bioethics of Circumcision) although there are anecdotal reports from adults who have the procedure done that supports all three views (i.e. some say sex got better, some say sex got worse, some say there is no difference).

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not saying everyone should be circumcised. I'm saying it should be the parents' choice. It should certainly be an informed choice based on all the latest information--they should know for instance that the vast majority of people who go uncircumcised don't have any problems. But they should also do what they think is best for their child. Maybe they're wrong--it turns out eventually that the procedure isn't best for their child. But it's certainly not all that harmful either, judging by the evidence we have.

As parents, we do this on a daily basis--we make decisions that seriously affect our children's future long before they have the aptitude to make the decisions for themselves. And sometimes we make the wrong decisions. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have the right to make the decisions in the first place. Those against circumcision have to unequivocally prove that it is harmful to the child before they can take away parents' rights to choose to have the procedure done. And quite frankly they haven't done that yet, which is why this law will fail. You, personally, can find the practice distasteful (as I do). And you, personally, can choose not to have your male children circumcised (as I have). But our distaste alone doesn't entitle us to stop other parents from having the procedure done on their own children.

In time, I predict this practice will die out. Religious attendance is on the decline and in many countries like the U.K. male circumcision has virtually disappeared. Coincidentally, what led to the dramatic decline in the U.K. and other countries was insurance deciding it was an elective procedure and not paying for it anymore. I think the protesters in San Francisco would be better served by trying to lobby insurance companies not to cover it anymore than to try to pass a law against it.

Wow, that was the longest edit I've ever written. Sorry.

The Wikipedia entry on the Bioethics of Circumcision is surprisingly good. If you're interested in this topic, I'd consider it a must-read. My own opinion is in line with Holm (2004) who states that in regards to this issue, what people couch as ethical questions really often is just a mask for their cultural prejudices.

>> ^chilaxe:
Embryo potentiality? Given the right conditions, any cell in our bodies can be the germ for a new, unique person. (Cloned humans are just twins separated by time, and even twins are unique.)
Embryos do this "naturally," but the modern world is built on bending natural phenomenon to what benefits humankind, whether it's breeding wild plants and animals into the strains we know today, alloying metals, or intervening with medical treatments.


The key phrase in what you said is "given the right conditions." The embryos are already in fact growing into humans, whereas the skin cells on the end of your finger after picking your nose are not. Saying potentially, under the right conditions, those skin cells could become a human needlessly confuses the argument. In the embryos the process of new life has already begun. In the skin cells on your fingernail it has yet to begin. Like I said before, it's apples and oranges. It reminds me of the old Biblical argument against male masturbation: the idea was that you were killing off thousands of potential children every time you "spilled your seed upon the ground." But of course that view is entirely wrong since sperm in and of themselves cannot sprout new children (nevermind the fact that biologically the testes are constantly replacing old sperm all by themselves).

Your statement that cloned humans are just twins separated by time is interesting. Isn't an embryo then a fully formed human being just separated by time? That's really the big argument that's going on here.

Finally, I'm a bit chilled by how casually you threw out your last statement about "bending natural phenomenon to what benefits humankind." Certainly there must be limits to this. Are you implying that anything is ethical if it benefits humankind in some way (see below)?

>> ^drattus:
The best argument for stem cell research I can think of is that we're already destroying more than we'd ever need as medical waste from fertility treatment. The choice to me is more one of do we make use of what's already being incinerated as waste or do we try to save some lives with it instead? No need to get into the rest of it, it's a distraction.


You should read the President's Council on Bioethical Research Transcripts from 2002: http://bioethics.gov/topics/stemcells_index.html

and in particular, this transcript where a similar argument is made by Dr. Outka: http://bioethics.gov/transcripts/apr02/apr25session3.html

One of the doctors on the council astutely points out that the Nazi's used the same exact logic to experiment on Jewish prisoners. To put it bluntly, they were going to die anyway so at least they might contribute to science in some way before they did.

Again though, it all goes back to defining at what point a human being is (or ceases to be) a human being. The President's Council has pretty much stated that biology can't answer the question. It'll be up to philosophers, ethicists, lawmakers, and the citizens themselves to come up with an answer.

Well said, peretz.

I may have raised the abortion angle in post #62 or #65, but the artificial insemination angle of posts 72-77 was just too juicy to pass up, so I dropped it.

DavidM

I would point you to
http://stemcells.nih.gov/ for information that is more critical and thorough. Christian bioethics advocacy groups have their pluses and are easier to Google, but the stemcellresearch.org site is a bit undernourished on critical analysis.

Has your tax money been earmarked for the drug companies? I am pretty bitter that my taxes have gone to pay for (now unused) barbed wire fences in Sadr City, Iraq and single-source contracting with Halliburton. But such is a big Fed. It is the fairly minimal individual cost of being a citizen of a great (new AP ranking #7) and affluent nation.

I do hate the libertarian or NIMBY argument that you advance against government sponsored scientific research. To wholly privatize something like stem cell research, you would invite two substantial problems into the field:

1) Intellectual property issues - A lawyer's feast for bottomfeeders like me to be sure, but these issues won't help patients.

2) Profit - Research would be driven by profit alone which would cut off many avenues and possibly limit the pool of persons who ultimately benefit.

Public-Private competition (as was found with the human genome project) is probably the most beneficial state of affairs.

stemcellresearch.org is a front for the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity which is a christian bioethics organization. So it must be unbiased right??

That neuroscientist paints Fox as partisan for the Democrats which is just not true.

That's a good link rickegee, I already learned a lot about stem cell research.

"If you believed that the earth was flat, does that mean the earth is flat?"
The problem with that line is that the Earth has been proven to be, in fact round. It has also been proven that an egg that has been fertalized with a sperm has the same potential to become a human being as any other fertialized egg that the egg and sperm do not possess seperately. Both zygote cells are in fact living cells but they don't have the potential to become living human being until they are combined i.e. fertalized.

"If you're against ESC research because you believe life begins at conception, then do you believe that conception can occur in a test tube? I believe conception occurs in the womb, not a test tube."

That's a perfectly valid and respectable position to take. If that's your belief then you're entitled to it. But hypotheticlly speaking, if an embryo in created invitro and grown into an independantly living infant in a labratory, is that that not also considered life as opposed to an invitro fertilization that was implanted into a uterus that also results in an infant? Bear in mind that this is a hypothetical situation and only one part of the growing debate of bioethics.

To reitterate for amxcvbcv and Dag, I don't subscribe to the Catholic belief that "every sperm is sacred", because by themselves, a sperm and egg cannot create life seperately, but the human species was created/evolved (pick one or both)in a way that an egg and a sperm are combined expressly for the sole purpose of creating life and propogating the species and in my opinion, not for experimentation.