Principles in Practice: The Blog of the Objective Standard

Principles in Practice: June 2006

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

On a Deluded America

Posted by John David Lewis at 9:26 AM

Diana West has written a fiery op-ed that, on its face, seems to provide a well-needed antidote to the moral platitudes that are preventing America from ridding the world of savage brutes ("Deluded America," Washington Times, June 23, 2006). Certainly the defenders of America will be energized to read:

If we still valued our own men more than the enemy and the "civilians" they hide among—and now I'm talking about the war in Iraq—our tactics would be totally different, and, not incidentally, infinitely more successful. We would drop bombs on city blocks, for example, and not waste men in dangerous house-to-house searches. We would destroy enemy sanctuaries in Syria and Iran and not disarm "insurgents" at perilous checkpoints in hostile Iraqi strongholds.

Ms. West sees the central judgment that is needed to win a defensive war: that our people—our soldiers in particular—are worth more than savages and the "civilians" hiding them. The enemy of rational judgment, and a paralyzing moral premise, is egalitarianism—the idea that all people, cultures, and ideas are equal in value. Ms. West rails against this, but then—unfortunately, sadly, tragically—accepts this same premise herself. In World War II, she writes, we were forced to use horrific violence to defeat the Nazis:

For example, bombing cities, even rail transportation hubs, lay beyond civilized conventions, but these were tactics the Allies used to defeat Hitler. However justifiable, civilization crossed a previously unimagined and uncivilized line to save, well, civilization. Then there was Hitler's Holocaust—an act of genocide of previously unthinkable scale and horror. Who in the civilized world before Hitler had ever imagined killing 6 million people? And who in the civilized world retained the same purity of mind afterward? Civilization itself was forever dimmed.

To Churchill's great worry, which she remembers as "that if the civilized society is to prevail over the barbarous one, it will necessarily and tragically be degraded by the experience as a vital cost of victory," she says, emphatically and pessimistically, yes.

Civilization was forever dimmed-by whom? Both by the actions of those who gassed "inferior" races and by those who killed the gassers and set the victims free. What greater statement of moral equivalency between good and evil has ever been made? Civilization is dimmed by Auschwitz and the Third Army, by Hitler as well as Patton. "Civilization itself is forever dimmed—again" she writes of the brutal beheadings of two American soldiers by the jihadists—the "again" referring to Treblinka and Dresden, the Bataan Death March and Hiroshima. Aggressors and defenders—those killing to enslave the world and those killing the killers to set it free—each is degrading, because each breaks "the rules" of civilization.

This does not mean that we should not do what is needed to win, writes Ms. West; win we must. But at what price? "Do such tactics [such as torture of prisoners, or bombing civilians] diminish our inviolate sanctimony? You bet. But so what? The alternative is to follow our precious rules and hope the barbarians will leave us alone, or, perhaps, not deal with us too harshly. Fond hope." Do what is needed, she says, because that is the practical thing to do. To be moral is to follow rules that are supremely impractical.

To the "morally superior"—to those who agree that we are degraded when we resort to violence to end violence, but do not wish to be immoral—Ms. West's message is: get over it. Accept some degradation, because this is necessary in the world we are in. The conclusion is inescapable: we—all of us—are debased creatures, doomed by the very act of defending ourselves to fall to the same level as our attackers. The morally sanctimonious, of course, will answer that they would rather die than be immoral.

Unfortunately, even if written sarcastically—and morality is too important to be discussed in sarcastic terms—it is to the sanctimonious left that Ms. West grants the title "morally superior." This is a sanction they do not deserve. Their moral doctrine of egalitarianism elevates the evil over the good—which is why they rant with greater vehemence against an American soldier who humiliates a jihadist than against a jihadist who uses a pocketknife to behead an American. Why? Because they think that the soldier is worse than the jihadist. Why worse? Because the soldier is an apostate from the civilized (i.e., egalitarian) world, a superior fighter who fell from grace by using violence to end the jihad—which is the very premise that Ms. West accepts.

Man, then, has a choice: to die by failing to fight the jihadist, or to fall to the jihadist's level in order to live. We are failing to prosecute the war vigorously, Ms. West writes, because we want to be moral. But winning will require us to sacrifice our moral goodness, and to take a piece of civilization with us.

What I would like to say to Ms. West is that there is an alternative. It is not true that we must either degrade our own lives by saving them, or lose our lives in order to avoid debasement. We can save our own lives as an act of moral goodness. To do that we must withdraw the unearned sanction that was unjustly hijacked by the sanctimonious protectors of the jihadists. We must say loudly and clearly that their claims to moral superiority are a sham, and that they are immoral.

There is an alternative, a morality that truly values human life, and pours its outrage and its weapons against the enemies of human life; it is called rational egoism. According to this code, acting to win a defensive war by any means necessary is a sublimely moral act—not a compromise with morality that is needed to remain alive, and not an act of debasing civilization in order to save it. It is morally good to destroy those who would start a global jihad to enslave millions to a dark-age theocracy, and to do so with the least possible risk to our own, valuable, people.

Those who would end this war quickly, with overwhelming force, should stand up with proud moral certainty, and proclaim their moral rightness. We do not stoop to the jihadist's level when we kill him—we rid the world of him in the only way open to us, and make clear to his supporters the true meaning of jihad. It is only on these terms that civilization can flourish.

The idea that America descended into barbarism in the act of saving civilization is not true. It was the Japanese and the Germans who for three generations built societies based on military glory, and started world wars to aggrandize the state, the emperor, and the race. They had fallen into a state of moral debasement long before they bombed Warsaw and Nanking—and without any help from us. It was their ideas that degraded them and led to the war—not the other way around. The benefits to millions that followed the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima—including the utter rejection of war by both societies—are available for all to see. The American victories, and the actions taken to achieve them, were good, morally good.

As I wrote in my article "The Moral Goodness of the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima":

There can be no higher moral action by a nation than to destroy an aggressive dictatorship, to permanently discredit the enemy's ideology, to stand guard while a replacement is crafted, and then to greet new friends on proper terms. Let those who today march for peace in Germany and Japan admit that their grandparents once marched as passionately for war, and that only total defeat could force them to re-think their place in the world and offer their children something better. (The Undercurrent, April, 2006)

I wonder if Ms. West is being ironic at times. If she is saying that we descended into barbarism since 1946 by adopting a morally paralyzing sanctimonious egalitarianism, then I am with her—for moral egalitarianism is true barbarism. The practical result has been our unwillingness to beat the jihadists. But the cause of our moral paralysis is not our concern for morality, but rather our acceptance of the wrong morality. To save our own lives—and, incidentally, civilization—we need not less morality, but more. We must recognize a morality that values life enough to end the existence of those dedicated to its destruction.

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Tuesday, June 27, 2006

It's Religion and Altruism, Stupid: Take Two

Posted by Craig Biddle at 12:53 PM

Here is another good piece by Diana West, in which she correctly notes that

If we still valued our own men more than the enemy's and the "civilians" he hides among—and now I'm talking about the war in Iraq—our tactics would be totally different, and, not incidentally, infinitely more successful. We would drop bombs on city blocks, for example, not waste men in dangerous house-to-house searches. We would destroy enemy sanctuaries in Syria and Iran, not disarm "insurgents" at perilous checkpoints in hostile Iraqi strongholds.

That is the closest I've ever seen a conservative come to advocating proper (i.e., total) war against our enemy. Ms. West also correctly identifies, in part, what is stopping us from taking such action:

In the 21st century, however, there is something that our society values more than our own lives—and more than the survival of civilization itself. That something may be described as the kind of moral superiority that comes from a good wallow in Abu Ghraib, Haditha, CIA interrogations or Guantanamo Bay. Morally superior people—Western elites—never "humiliate" prisoners, never kill civilians, never torture or incarcerate jihadis. Indeed, they would like to kill, I mean, prosecute, or at least tie the hands of anyone who does.

What Ms. West does not realize—and the reason she does not put scare quotes around "moral superiority" as she should here—is that the problem is not only Western "elites" (i.e., liberals), but Western altruists. What Ms. West wants is a self-interested war as opposed to a self-sacrificial war, but unless one recognizes selfishness as moral and selflessness as immoral, one can neither consistently advocate nor intellectually defend such a position.

This is the mental quagmire in which many people on the Right find themselves today, and the only way out of it is to renounce altruism and embrace egoism. Ms. West even acknowledges this quagmire, but not the fact that conservatives are in it too. Speaking of the Western "elites," she writes that their

smugness masks a massive moral paralysis. The morally superior (read: paralyzed) don't really take sides; don't really believe one culture is qualitatively better or worse than the other. They don't even believe one culture is just plain different from the other. Only in this atmosphere of politically correct and perpetually adolescent non-judgmentalism could anyone believe, for example, that compelling, forcing or torturing a jihad terrorist to get information to save a city in any way undermines our "values." It undermines nothing—except the jihad.

While the Left is paralyzed by altruism in the form of non-judgmentalism and relativism, the Right is paralyzed by altruism in the form of non-judgmentalism and religion. Who said "Judge not that ye be not judged"? Would Jesus advocate dropping bombs on city blocks or killing civilians or torturing jihadists?

It is not only the Western "elites" who are paralyzed by altruism; it is everyone who accepts the notion that being moral consists in being selfless. For a full explanation of how altruism is retarding our ability to "destroy enemy sanctuaries in Syria and Iran," read "Just War Theory" vs. American Self-Defense. Tell your friends to read it, too. If enough active-minded people read it, we might be able to save civilization.

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Thursday, June 22, 2006

Of Mice and Men

Posted by Craig Biddle at 7:06 AM

More excellent news about stem cell research, this time from John's Hopkins University:

Stem cells taken from mouse embryos have helped paralyzed rats move again, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

The study was the best evidence so far that controversial embryonic stem cells might be used to treat people with spinal cord and other traumatic injuries, the researchers said.

"This study provides a 'recipe' for using stem cells to reconnect the nervous system," Dr. Douglas Kerr of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine said in a statement.

"It raises the notion that we can eventually achieve this in humans, although we have a long way to go … We found that we needed a combination of all of the treatments in order to restore function."

Kerr and colleagues used a soup of compounds called growth factors to cause stem cells from the mouse embryos to develop into a type of nerve cell called a motor neuron.

Writing in the Annals of Neurology, they said the transplanted cells, combined with the right mix of compounds, helped paralyzed rats regrow some of their nerve cells and use their hind legs.

"This work is a remarkable advance that can help us understand how stem cells might be used to treat injuries and disease and begin to fulfill their great promise," said Dr. Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, which funded the study.

Stem cells are the body's master cells and can be found circulating in the blood and in tissues. Scientists hope to learn to use them to regenerate cells, organs and tissues.

It's good to play God.

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Tuesday, June 20, 2006

It's Religion and Altruism, Stupid

Posted by Craig Biddle at 11:57 AM

In an article titled "It's an Islamic jihad, stupid," Diana West wonders why the Bush administration "keep[s] things vague and indirect," pursuing a "war on terror" rather than a war on "Islamic jihadists." Ms. West notes that

without understanding the religious nature of jihad (holy war), along with its sister institution of dhimmitude (inferior status of non-Muslims under Islam), there can be no triumph over jihad and no avoiding dhimmitude. There can also be no understanding of the religiously rooted attitudes toward jihad movements among even non-violent Muslims, generally ranging from a tacit ambivalence to wild adulation.

This is true, and it points to a deeper fact that Americans need to face. Either faith—i.e., the acceptance of ideas in support of which there is no evidence—is a valid means of knowing the truth, or it is not. The Islamists have faith that they are right and good and that Americans are wrong and evil. If faith is a valid means of knowing the truth—as many Americans continue to believe—then how can anyone say that the Islamists are wrong? What Americans need to face is the fact that faith is invalid. Man's only means of knowledge is reason. The true and the good and the right can be known only by means of observation and logic and recognition of the requirements of human life on earth. If Americans want to name and defeat their actual enemy, they must lose religion; they must embrace reason.

Ms. West further wonders why "we repeatedly send our military on dangerous house-to-house missions with restrictive rules of engagement rather than using air power." The cause of this insanity is another sacred cow that Americans need to reject: altruism. Either being moral consists in being selfless, or it does not. If it does, then such policies are perfectly moral. After all, what could be more selfless than sacrificing our sons and daughters to the enemy? If sacrifice is moral, then losing loved ones is virtuous.

Being moral does not consist in being selfless; it consists in being selfish—i.e., acting in a rational, life-promoting manner as a matter of unwavering principle. Accordingly, acting morally with regard to the Islamist threat means swiftly eliminating the regimes that support the movement—especially those in Iran and Saudi Arabia—using the full force of our military. It means destroying these regimes, not by sending soldiers into close-range combat, but by launching big bombs from high altitude and long distance—as we are perfectly capable of doing. But in order for Americans to see the morality of taking such action, they would have to be willing to challenge the dogma of altruism—something that few Americans today have the independence or courage to do. Thus, we relentlessly engage in acts of blatant stupidity and court our own destruction. As Ms. West notes:

In a war in which an interrogation could save a city, we rewrite our interrogation rules to make sure that it won't. "If this debate were limited to what's best for interrogation purposes, the decision (about whether to soften interrogation techniques) would be pretty easy," a senior Defense Department official told The New York Times. "But then you have to look at what we lose diplomatically.'"

Why? What are we, Liechtenstein? We sure act like it. The Washington Times' Tony Blankley recently noted the defeatism in America's about-face with jihadist Iran—the looming front in the war. By offering non-military nuclear technology or else threatening non-military sanctions, the Bush administration seems to have acquiesced to what Blankley describes as "the only 'respectable' position" among both European and American elites: namely, "the absolute exclusion of a military option."

If true, this would mean that the already inadequately titled "war on terror" would no longer refer to "war" at all. And that would leave only….

Indeed, it would. So long as Americans embrace religion, faith, and altruism, we will suffer the consequences. What will it be, America?

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Thursday, June 15, 2006

Somalia and Our Tragic Flaw

Posted by Alan Germani at 5:51 PM

Our policy in Somalia is but a small part of the absurdly-named "War on Terror"; however, a June 14th New York Times article entitled "U.S. Calls Hasty Meeting to Seek Somalia Solution" provides a good example of the tragic flaw that pervades all of our efforts in the battle against Islamic terrorists:

The State Department is trying to wrest control for Somalia policy from the Central Intelligence Agency, on grounds that an approach that has consisted largely of C.I.A. payments to Somali warlords has been counterproductive.

That reality came into stark relief last week when the American-backed warlords fighting a proxy war for the United States against Islamists believed to be harboring Al Qaeda operatives were run out of Mogadishu by those same Islamists….

American officials have maintained that Islamic leaders in Mogadishu are sheltering Al Qaeda leaders who were indicted in the 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Since that bombing, American officials have been tracking an Al Qaeda cell whose members are believed to move freely between Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and parts of the Middle East. The American payments to the warlords were intended, at least in part, to help gain the capture of these terrorists.

And this article shows what we're left with now that the warlords we paid are gone:

Mogadishu is now largely ruled by the Islamic Courts Union, a powerful movement that advocates a strict version of sharia law, including public executions, and has alleged ties to al-Qaida terrorists. The Horn of Africa, say some analysts, has just acquired its own Taliban….

"This is worse than the worst-case scenarios—the exact opposite of what the US government strategy, if there was one, would have wanted," said Ken Menkhaus, associate professor of political science and Somalia expert at Davidson College, North Carolina.

Not only is this outcome not what the U.S. government had hoped for, but achieving what the government had hoped for—catching a few Al Qaeda operatives in Somalia—would have made scant progress toward ending Islamic terrorism. Similarly, Americans are negligibly safer because of the recent killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Even the death or capture of Osama Bin Laden will not substantially reduce the threat we face. Why? Because these popular terrorists are merely pawns, not the primary source of terrorism against the West.

The tragic flaw inherent in the "War on Terror" is its focus on individual enemy combatants. We are wasting money, munitions—and, worst of all, American soldiers—trying to eliminate these combatants while ignoring the states that produce and sustain them (primarily Iran and Saudi Arabia). As long as these regimes and their supporting populations believe that they can triumph over the West, there will be an endless supply of terrorists to fill the sandals of the few that we're able to track down and kill.

From Iran to Afghanistan, from Palestine to Saudi Arabia, from Sudan to Somalia, we have given militant Muslims cause to believe that Islamic world domination can be realized. While the Bush administration has been trying to fight "terror," the militant Islamists have scored major victories, including the establishment of new theocracies in Afghanistan and Iraq, the election of Hamas in Palestine, and the furtherance of Iran's nuclear capabilities. And these victories follow nearly 30 years of American inaction in the face of Islamist threats, hostage-takings, and bombings. When the most powerful nation on earth does virtually nothing to stop a fantasy-driven third world foe, it is not a stretch of the imagination for militant Muslims to feel confident that Allah's omnipotence is working in their favor.

We must destroy this confidence. To do so, we must abandon the red herrings that are individual terrorists and provide the major terrorist-sponsoring regimes and their supporting populations with the proper, moral consequence for attacking the West: total war.

(For an excellent historical example of the effectiveness of total war, be sure to read John Lewis' article "William Tecumseh Sherman and the Moral Impetus for Victory" in the Summer issue of The Objective Standard.)

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Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Altruism: The Morality of Suffering and Death
(Exhibit 347R: Organ Donation)

Posted by Craig Biddle at 5:12 PM

The widespread acceptance of altruism (the fallacious notion that being moral consists in self-sacrificially serving others) causes continuous human suffering and death. Yet another example of this fact is illustrated in a recent article by Dr. Sally Satel (a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute). Because of the widespread acceptance of altruism in America, "it is against the law to receive money or anything of value in exchange for an organ, a principle set down in 1984 by the National Organ Transplantation Act."

Violators face fines of up to $50,000 and felony prison terms of up to five years. "Organ transplantation is built upon altruism and public trust. If anything shakes that trust, then everyone loses," says the [United Network for Organ Sharing] web site. But so many have lost already: eighteen people die each day while waiting for an organ and, without changes, the situation is virtually guaranteed to worsen.

Not only do eighteen people die each day while waiting for an organ; many people also suffer as they wait. Why are so many people suffering and dying while waiting for organs? Because the acceptance of altruism has convinced Americans that it is better for some people to suffer and die than it would be for others to donate organs for a profit. Profit is plainly selfish; thus, according to altruism, it would sully the whole "beautiful" altruistic "ideal" of people giving away organs for free.

Moreover, on the premise of altruism, it is wrong for those who possess more wealth or more virtue to benefit from that fact; thus, the authorities must see to it that the distribution of organs has nothing to do with who can afford to purchase an organ or whether the recipient is an innocent child, or a heroic soldier, or a convicted murderer.

To maintain the equal distribution of scarce organs, the argument goes, the community (e.g., UNOS) must exercise total control. According to Mark Fox, head of the UNOS ethics committee: "The prisoner in California gets the heart transplant because he needs it and is first on the list. It's blind to whether you're a saint or a sinner or a celebrity. That's key to maintaining the public trust."

God forbid we lose that "public trust."

What about the obvious fact that a free market for organs would create a much greater supply of organs than could ever exist when profiting from organ donation is prohibited? In other words, what about Economics 101? The answer is that given the fundamental role of morality in human thinking, even the most clearly relevant facts become irrelevant in the minds of those who accept the morality of altruism.

"Almost everyone agrees that an incentive program would encourage more donation than would a purely altruistic approach," says Adam Kolber of the University of San Diego Law School. "It is as if the institution of organ donation is being used as a means to further another goal, not specifically related to organ donation."

Yes, the institution of organ donation is being used as a means to further another goal—the altruistic goal of seeing to it that people suffer and die.

The problem is that the system itself may be the cause of the shortage it is charged with regulating. As nephrologist Benjamin Hippen has observed, the human cost of this is a system "degenerat[ing] into an equal opportunity to die on the waiting list."...

Yes, on one level, the system is the cause of the shortage it is charged with regulating—but the system is only the proximate cause, not the fundamental cause. The fundamental cause is the widespread acceptance of the morality of altruism—which is perpetuated by everyone who refuses to challenge the dogma that being moral consists in being selfless. The solution to such atrocities is for people to repudiate altruism and embrace egoism.

Comments:

From Justin Vogt, June 14, 2006

I am confused how offering someone incentive for their heart as opposed to just asking them to donate it would increase the number of hearts available on the market. The donor wouldn't exactly get a chance to enjoy that incentive, you know?

With other organs (i.e., kidneys, blood vessels, pieces of liver, skin), though, an incentive would result in more people donating, just as offering money for sperm and eggs results in large amounts of both being donated (although, in the case of sperm it's not exactly an invasive procedure).

So, I can see where allowing people to freely trade in organs could result in more of certain, but not all, organs.

From Craig Biddle, June 14, 2006

Dear Justin,

Thank you for your note.

Many people who have not chosen to donate their organs (including their heart) when they die would choose to do so if it meant that their families or loved ones would receive payment for the donation. So the argument does apply to all organs. For more on this subject, see this excellent op-ed by David Holcberg of the Ayn Rand Institute.

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Sunday, June 11, 2006

Terrorism and the Koran

Posted by John David Lewis at 2:44 PM

Many people in the West maintain that the Koran is opposed to terrorism: the initiation of violence against unarmed civilians to incite terror for a political cause. To many westerners, Bin Laden, et al are motivated by a totalitarian political ideology, not by Islam, and are "hijackers" of Islam, not genuine followers of the religion.

But the Koran, and many Middle-Eastern Muslims, say otherwise. Here, for instance, is what Egyptian MP Ragab Hilal Hamida, from the Muslim Brotherhood, said during a parliamentary session discussing the Inter-Arab Agreement on Combating Terrorism:

According to the shari'a, a Palestinian who is prepared to sacrifice his life deters the enemy, in the way [sanctioned by the Koran]: "Make ready against them your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah knows"….

[T]here are some ignorant Muslims who do not understand the tenets of their faith… It is [our] duty to repel any enemy of the Islamic and Arab countries, using "terrorism" rather than using violence….

I support all of bin Laden's and Al-Zawahiri's operations against occupation, but if they [ever] issue a fatwa [that condones operations] against civilians in some Arab or Muslim country, I will be the first to condemn them!

(See the full report here.)

Got it? 9/11 was not an act of violence; it was an act of terror, used legitimately to deter aggressors (such as the stockbrokers in the Twin Towers) in order to prevent violence. "Violence" can occur only in an Islamic country, and only against Muslim citizens. To a mentality such as this, there is no violence against Americans and Israelis; there is only "resistance" and "terror"—fully sanctioned by the Koran.

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Thursday, June 08, 2006

Sex-Changes for Freedom

Posted by Alan Germani at 3:46 PM

A story from an Arabic news site reports an interesting development in Saudi Arabia: female to male sex-change operations:

Reports reveal that in 2005, there were no less than five cases of women who underwent surgery to become men in the Kingdom, according to Al Watan….

Some Saudi officials have reportedly laid blame for the shocking phenomenon on the blasphemous influences of the West, as well as on "psychological defects" of those who underwent the surgery.

However, according to other sources, the women embarked on the painful and dangerous transformation as a way to overcome the severe oppression and inequality that they reportedly encountered in Saudi society.

By becoming men, the women believe, they would have the opportunity to enjoy those privileges denied them as Saudi females but allowed to Saudi males, including rights taken for granted in other societies, such as driving a car or even going to public places unaccompanied by a male relative.

Not being able to drive cars or move freely are minor examples of the oppression women face in Saudi Arabia and other Islamic theocracies. Arranged marriages, domestic abuse, and honor killings are regular aspects of Muslim women's so-called lives. When their alternative is to become a man or to suffer a lifetime of psychological and physical abuse, the big surprise is that more Muslim women haven't had sex-change operations. Then again, maybe they have. Osametta? Abu Musabina? Hey, it's worth an autopsy.

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Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Heroes at Harvard

Posted by Craig Biddle at 11:52 AM

While Bush and company scheme to provide the America-hating Iranian theocracy with nuclear technology, some people are thinking rationally and promoting human life. From the Boston Globe:

Harvard scientists announced yesterday that they are beginning an ambitious attempt to create the world's first cloned human embryonic stem cells, bringing the university into one of science's most ethically charged fields.

The goal of the research, they said, is to create a powerful new tool to explore the biology of, and hopefully find treatments for, a number of devastating diseases: juvenile diabetes, genetic blood disorders, and ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease….

The research is controversial because scientists destroy days-old embryos, which some opponents say is essentially taking human lives, and because the research uses human eggs, which can place donors at a slight risk of side effects.

But at a press conference yesterday, Harvard Provost Dr. Steven E. Hyman said the university had concluded that the research was ethically justified, following extensive reviews by eight committees over two years. Hyman said the scientists will be required to follow strict guidelines governing how eggs are obtained and what experiments can be done—but he said the work is too important to not do.

"We are convinced that work with embryonic stem cells holds enormous promise for developing treatments for a host of presently intractable adult and childhood diseases," Hyman said. "We have approved this work after the most extensive ethical and scientific review in recent memory here at Harvard."

Hallelujah! Kudos to Hyman and the whole team at Harvard (and hellfire to Bush and his fellow religionists who oppose such crucial research in the name of the same fantasy that prevents them from eliminating the Iranian regime).

As to the extreme value of this research:

Embryonic stem cells have the ability to become virtually any cell in the body, making them a valuable tool in scientific research. In the past, embryonic stem cells have been harvested from frozen early embryos—microscopic balls of several hundred cells—obtained from fertility clinics that would discard them otherwise. But these stem cells do not have the DNA that contributes to certain diseases, such as juvenile diabetes, which limits their usefulness in researching those diseases.

Cloning, also called somatic cell nuclear transfer, would allow new types of experiments by creating embryonic stem cells that have the same DNA as a patient with a particular disease.

To do this, the Harvard scientists will extract DNA from a patient's cells and place it into a donated egg cell that has had its own DNA removed. This new egg cell is then prompted to grow for several days in a laboratory dish, yielding the early embryo needed for embryonic stem cells.

These cloned stem cells can then be grown in the lab and in theory be manipulated to become different types of human tissue, such as the neurons that make up the brain….

Nuclear transfer would give [scientists] new ways to explore how the process of development goes awry in certain diseases, and perhaps suggest treatments that make use of the natural developmental potential of human cells.

The team led by [ Douglas] Melton and [Kevin] Eggan will initially focus on juvenile diabetes, but it also hopes to study neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and ALS.

For example, they hope to make batches of embryonic stem cells that have the DNA of patients with ALS. Researchers would coax the stem cells to grow into neurons, and compare the development of neurons made with the diseased stem cells to neurons made with embryonic stem cells produced with the DNA of a person without the disease.

"In essence, we can move the study of the disease from a patient to a Petri dish," said Melton, who is co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute….

The team led by [Dr. George] Daley wants to find treatments for blood-based diseases such as leukemia and sickle cell anemia, which is caused by a genetic flaw.

Using nuclear transfer, Daley said, the team would hope to create embryonic stem cells that are genetically matched to a patient. These embryonic stem cells would then be grown into precursors of blood cells, like those normally found in bone marrow, providing the patient with a bone marrow transplant with a minimal risk of rejection.

In cases of genetic diseases like sickle cell anemia, the same procedure could be used, with an extra step to fix the genetic flaw in the patient's cells before growing the bone marrow cells for transplant.

The heroic scientists leading this research—Douglas Melton and Kevin Eggan of Harvard University, and Dr. George Daley of Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston—deserve recognition for their heroism and an emphatic thank you from everyone who cares about human life.

Thank you, gentlemen!

(For more on the importance of this kind of research and on the religious crusade against it, read Alex Epstein's excellent article "Biotech vs. 'Bioethics': The Technology of Life Meets the Morality of Death".)

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Thursday, June 01, 2006

Legitimizing the Iranian Theocracy

Posted by Alan Germani at 11:53 PM

On Wednesday, Condoleezza Rice announced, in so many words, that the US will indefinitely suspend military action against Iran in favor of "diplomacy," giving the theocracy a fresh green light to fund Islamic terrorism and develop nuclear weapons.

Despite millennia of evidence to the contrary, the Bush administration clings to the belief that compromising with evil "works," and has therefore made the following offer to Iran: Temporarily stop your nuclear program, and we'll legitimize your theocratic dictatorship by having direct diplomatic talks with you—for the first time in 27 years. During such talks, the administration would offer them further legitimacy in the form of "incentives" to permanently halt their nuclear activities. When we realize that we've been had—that the Iranians are taking our money and still pursuing a nuclear weapons program—we will resort to the ultimate punishment: " tough U.N. Security Council action, possibly including economic or other sanctions."

For their part, the Iranians seem disinterested in the offer, asserting an ironically refreshing position regarding the purpose of their foreign policy:

The Iranian news agency said Iran accepts only proposals and conditions that are in the nation's interest. "Halting enrichment definitely doesn't meet such interests," IRNA said.

Perhaps we can learn something from Iran. If our "nation's interest" was the foundation of our foreign policy, we wouldn't empower the Iranians by legitimizing their theocracy with powwows and handouts. We'd reduce their capital to rubble.

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