Tony – Page 53 – Rolling Doughnut

A dose of common sense.

Newsweek interviewed Dr. John Bartlett, chief of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins, for its article “2007: Another Year of AIDS“. I know, with a title like that, how could the reader not be optimistic? Anyway, I think this is useful to note:

So how are we faring in lowering HIV transmission rates?
There are some promising studies that have been done or are being done now. The circumcision and the antiretroviral therapy for [HIV-positive] breastfeeding women [to prevent transmission to the baby] studies were a great success. Though, while circumcision might be very good at lowering the rates in places where not a lot of circumcisions are being done now, that’s not the case in the U.S. or in many other countries …

Advocates of forcing circumcision onto sexually-inactive infant males to prevent HIV always notice the first part of Dr. Bartlett’s statement and ignore the qualification that the U.S. does not meet the criteria from the studies everyone is now touting.

And notice the use of “might be very good” for non-circumcising nations, an acknowledgment that (voluntary, adult) male circumcision is not a vaccine. Looked at honestly, circumcision is little more than a distraction from the problem and its real cause(s).

There is no right to designer children.

Via multiple sources, but with public commentary from Rogier van Bakel, here’s a maddening story with at least one comparison I will make.

DEAF parents should be allowed to screen their embryos so they can pick a deaf child over one that has all its senses intact, according to the chief executive of the Royal National Institute for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People (RNID).

Jackie Ballard, a former Liberal Democrat MP, says that although the vast majority of deaf parents would want a child who has normal hearing, a small minority of couples would prefer to create a child who is effectively disabled, to fit in better with the family lifestyle.

Ballard’s stance is likely to be welcomed by other deaf organisations, including the British Deaf Association (BDA), which is campaigning to amend government legislation to allow the creation of babies with disabilities.

A clause in the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, which is passing through the House of Lords, would make it illegal for parents undergoing embryo screening to choose an embryo with an abnormality if healthy embryos exist.

To fit in better with the family lifestyle. The similarity to permitting parents to surgically alter the healthy genitals of their male children for any or no reason is exact. Harming the child – and cutting off healthy bits of his genitals or deliberately selecting an embryo because she will be deaf is harm – so that he or she meets the parents’ expectations of valid physical characteristics is immoral. It should not be allowed.

As Mr. van Bakel wrote¹:

For about two seconds, I tried to apply some libertarian gloss to the situation — parents making up their own minds about their offspring, how bad can that be? — but it just wouldn’t stick. Um, what about the right of the child to be normal (no, that’s not a pejorative word) and healthy?

Indeed. In a world of individual rights, the child matters first and only.

He continues:

These people are truly a bunch of, hell I’ll say it, immoral imbeciles. They want a child with a deliberately-bred disability because junior would “fit in better with the family lifestyle”? Great. It follows … that we should defer to legless parents who decide to have their obstetrician snip a couple of limbs off the foetus.

As one commenter at Nobody’s Business noted, we already (irrationally) defer to parents who decide to have their doctor² snip the healthy foreskin off their newborn son. There is an obscene, ongoing precedent for such abomination.

Only people who offer a different option are lobbyists.

When I’ve looked at our candidates for president, I find little to be happy about. The only candidate I can moderately stand is Sen. Obama, and I’ve already discussed more than enough issues (no means yes, school “reform”, economic illiteracy, and catering to special interests) with his candidacy to demonstrate that I will not vote for him. That said, I suspect he’s the least bad choice out there. That should not be construed as anything as complimentary as back-handed praise. A vote for Sen. Obama is a vote for little more than more of the same, but with a smiley stamped on the decree.

As we approach the real beginning of the election process in Iowa, it’s important to focus on the lack of change offered in promises of change. Sen. Obama spoke in Iowa yesterday. (Text via Andrew Sullivan) A few highlights:

At this defining moment, we cannot wait any longer for universal health care. We cannot wait to fix our schools. We cannot wait for good jobs, and living wages, and pensions we can count on. We cannot wait to halt global warming, and we cannot wait to end this war in Iraq.
…

Most of all, I believed in the power of the American people to be the real agents of change in this country – because we are not as divided as our politics suggests; because we are a decent, generous people willing to work hard and sacrifice for future generations; and I was certain that if we could just mobilize our voices to challenge the special interests that dominate Washington and challenge ourselves to reach for something better, there was no problem we couldn’t solve – no destiny we couldn’t fulfill.

We know the solution, right? It’s the one we allegedly haven’t tried yet. It involves hope, even though Bill Clinton ran on that in 1992. Hope expressed through government. For example:

I’ve heard from seniors who were betrayed by CEOs who dumped their pensions while pocketing bonuses, and from those who still can’t afford their prescriptions because Congress refused to negotiate with the drug companies for the cheapest available price.

Please provide examples of the former rather than the same “corporations are evil” rhetoric. Please explain to me how the drug companies would not be a special interest in “negotiations” with Congress. And where in the Constitution does it say that the government is responsible for either of these?

Just two weeks ago, I heard a young woman in Cedar Rapids who told me she only gets three hours of sleep because she works the night shift after a full day of college and still can’t afford health care for a sister with cerebral palsy. She spoke not with self-pity but with determination, and wonders why the government isn’t doing more to help her afford the education that will allow her to live out her dreams.

No one is owed a college education, period, but especially when individual life steps in the way. I sympathize with this woman’s plight and admire her willingness to push through to achieve everything she values. But it is not my responsibility to pay for that. If she can’t afford college and caring for her sister through work, the solution is to drop out of college right now if paying for that interferes with paying for what she must pay for or deems more worthy of receiving her personal financing. Yet, Sen. Obama pushes more government intervention in education, as if the existence of grants and federally-subsidized loans don’t exist, or that they’re not already increasing the cost of education. How is a group of individuals like this woman not a special interest if it leads to more government intervention for a preferred-by-some outcome?

You know that we can’t afford to allow the insurance lobbyists to kill health care reform one more time, …

Who might prevail, then, if not a universal health care lobbyist? Sen. Obama is not against lobbyists if they advocate his government solution. If you want change, run on removing the perverse incentive that ties insurance to employment without creating a perverse incentive that ties insurance to citizenship. One size does not fit all, of course, and being practical, shifting the cost from the individual in some form is never a good idea.

…and the oil lobbyists to keep us addicted to fossil fuels because no one stood up and took their power away when they had the chance.

This is immature and the type of soundbite nonsense that proves Sen. Obama is a politician first. Anyway, who is the lobbyist “keeping us addicted” to <insert government program/subsidy> and why are we not standing up to them, too?

But that’s not what hope is. Hope is not blind optimism. It’s not ignoring the enormity of the task before us or the roadblocks that stand in our path. Yes, the lobbyists will fight us. Yes, the Republican attack dogs will go after us in the general election. Yes, the problems of poverty and climate change and failing schools will resist easy repair. I know – I’ve been on the streets, I’ve been in the courts. I’ve watched legislation die because the powerful held sway and good intentions weren’t fortified by political will, and I’ve watched a nation get mislead into war because no one had the judgment or the courage to ask the hard questions before we sent our troops to fight.

Why no mention of Democrats standing in the way? Beyond that, how exactly does Sen. Obama expect to achieve that change in Congress while sitting in the White House? The only tool at his disposal to achieve what he is promising is the veto. Yet, he ignores that and pretends as though he can make all of this magically appear. Can he not grasp that government involvement always leads to special interests, favored and non-favored? He’s engaged in enough of it in this speech to convince me that he grasps the concept quite well. He’s not selling change, only his chosen winners and losers. And we know who “wins”. The same person who always win in this collectivist idiocy.

If you believe, then we can stop making promises to America’s workers and start delivering – jobs that pay, health care that’s affordable, pensions you can count on, and a tax cut for working Americans instead of the companies who send their jobs overseas.

I am part of America, too. I do not want promises. I do not want the government to “deliver” me a job, health care, pensions, targeted tax cuts, or any other illegitimate present. That is the current way of doing things. Wrapping them in bromides is not change.

I’m still not voting for Sen. Obama.

Whither common sense?

The article I cite here is from the 19th. I wrote this entry last week, but left it to marinate in my brain because I wasn’t sure I said anything worth publishing. This needs to be fleshed out more, and I’m not sure I’ve convinced even myself. I’m posting it raw for future possibilities to build on the idea.

Megan McArdle asks a question:

Assume, for the nonce, that come January 2009, there will be a Democrat taking the oath of office. What will the blogosphere look like?

Compared to the netroots, right now, the rest of the political blogosphere is a demoralized and listless place. Libertarians are abandoning their mild preference in favor of Republicans, not for the Democrats, but for despair. On the conservative side, even ardent supporters of the president have tired of him. Everyone is out of plausible policy proposals. What is there to be in favor of? More tax cuts? An even more aggressive foreign policy?

Her answer is good and worth reading. Blogging is mostly a response, so it’ll morph into something new and interesting as the world changes. I think mostly is the key, though. What will blogging do to politics.

If nothing else, blogging has better shown how ridiculous political debates are, how unprincipled the arguments and, particularly, how despicable the players are as leaders. There is no audience that won’t be sold to a higher bidder. Only the most rabidly blind partisan doesn’t know that. (Admittedly, that’s a large-ish group, but the point is basic.)

What is there to be in favor of? This concerns me. I think we’re already seeing the future of this problem, represented by Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, and Barack Obama. Not all of this is bad, probably, but the potential is dangerous.

Candidate Huckabee is a creation of the blogosphere. Without a swell from whatever corner his support crawled¹ out of, his candidacy wouldn’t be news. He’d still be a no-name governor from a bottom-ranked state who pedals too much Jesus and too much nanny-state socialism. In the end this will probably be his undoing, as the blogoshpere invokes some of the corrective potential inherent in the American readiness to knock down those it builds up. A little extra light shows him to be the calculating politician he clearly is. And there’s a large segment of the population that hasn’t seen his shtick up close yet. (The blogosphere giveth, the nation taketh away?)

Ron Paul is a more compelling example. He is selling a set of solutions, which too much of the blogosphere is buying without sufficient skepticism and investigation. Too many of his ideas are simply wrong (gold standard) or worse, morally indefensible (immigration). The blogosphere is not as good at delayed, thought-out responses as it is at offering immediate, emotional defensiveness. The latter builds short-term momentum.

Carried on for too long, this becomes a phenomenon. I don’t think we’re there yet in the blogosphere’s influence, but it could happen. Support for the candidate centers on what his supporters claim he represents, not what he offers. With Ron Paul, he is the libertarian candidate while holding very few libertarian positions. His appeal rests on a dream of what might result that is neither claimed nor implied by what he’s saying. Unintended consequences fall on non-sober, well-intentioned dreams as easily as they fall on sober pandering.

Barack Obama is the most compelling example of what might happen, although compelling does not necessarily mean good. He’s changing the rhetoric of our current political climate by focusing more on optimism and change. That’s a winning formula, as the blogosphere’s reaction seems to embrace his effectiveness at speech-making with little-to-no concern for the sense of what he’s actually saying. His policies are little different from any of the other Democratic candidates, yet he gets a free pass on dumb. The search for the appearance of leadership explains this, I fear.

What is there to be in favor of? Huckabee’s supporters look to his faith in Jesus. They do not worry that saving people from themselves and for Jesus isn’t the job coming open next November. Paul’s supporters look to his lack of faith in the federal government. They do not worrying that he’s not against the states violating the rights the federal government violates. Obama’s supporters look to his faith that government can help people if it has the right leaders willing to solve the problems. They do not worry about how much this will cost or that it be the most efficient solution as long as the leader makes the government appear to care more. None of these approaches is good for us.

I admit I’m cynical about politicians and what they promise. But I can still react to what they say with a fair analysis of each proposal. On solving the issues, every candidate is awful. Of course I’m biased in thinking that the government shouldn’t be involved, but supporters of the government intervention every candidate promotes² should explain why each solution is the best solution, with details that do not rely on moral platitudes involving the poor, the rich, public health, family values, or our children. How will each solution help individuals without doing so at the expense of another?

Instead, each part of the blogosphere is promoting an atmosphere of unquestioning built on receiving from the Dear Leader it chooses. As I mentioned, I think there’s a corrective built into the American psyche. But I’d be happier if we engaged pro-actively in solutions rather than reactive adaptations to flawed ideas after they’ve come into ugly, morphed reality.

¹ Maybe I shouldn’t use a term that implies evolution. Without a wave of His finger from the entirety of Heaven that God created Huckabee’s support in His universe, to enable the Huckabee/Christ ticket…

² Spare me the rhetoric about how Rep. Paul is not promoting government intervention.

The ability to vote does not qualify the voter as an entrepreneur.

Consider this another reason I neither live in the District of Columbia nor have my business registered there.

The District could become the second U.S. city to require employers to provide paid sick leave to all workers, a move advocates say could protect employees from having to choose between keeping themselves healthy and keeping their job. Opponents say such a law could prompt businesses to reduce benefits and lay off workers.

The D.C. Council is scheduled to vote on the measure Jan. 8 after several months of negotiations.

Under the bill, large businesses, defined as having 51 employees or more, would have to provide up to seven days of paid leave. Small businesses — those with 10 or fewer workers — would have to offer up to three days. Two other categories of employers would fall in between, and part-time workers would get half the number of days.

What makes the D.C. city council so confident that it knows better how to run the businesses in its borders than the owners of those businesses? More importantly, what makes it believe that it has the right to dictate its opinions on proper compensation packages?

Employers would pay an average of $10.35 more a week per employee to be in compliance, said Ed Lazere, executive director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, which studies the District’s finances. “It’s not nothing, but it’s not huge,” he said. “It’s not as big and scary as they think.”

Does the business owner think $10.35 more per week per employee, with no increase in productivity or revenue, is not huge? She bears the cost. Her opinion should matter exclusively, in anticipation and response to what her employees demand.

To put this in perspective, we must consider what that $10.35 means in practice, not in subjectively judged theory. Assume the minimum business required for full compliance, 51 employees. The cost is expressed as $10.35 because it appears insignificant. But the first thing the business owner will do is multiply $10.35 times 51 employees times 52 weeks. The result is a $27,448.20 increase in expenses for the employer. What could $27,448.20 buy instead? I’ll guess employee number 51 in my scenario, although the logic holds whether we’re talking about employee number 51 or employee number 63.

The first city to engage in this:

The D.C. measure falls short of a law on sick leave in San Francisco, which became a pioneer when 61 percent of voters approved a 2006 ballot initiative to require that employers of 10 or fewer workers provide five days of paid leave and that larger employers give nine days. The law went into effect in February.

How many of those 61 percent of ~~voters~~ malcontents run a business? Mob rule (allegedly) seeks to raise everyone up to a higher standard, but serves little purpose other than to bring everyone down to a base level. Aside from its illegitimacy, it is cruel. I doubt seriously that the employee who might’ve earned $27,448.20, or the customers who will now be asked to pay the expense, would prefer the sympathy over the money.

The clowns are piling into their car in preparation.

Who said this?

“If players believe they are wrongfully accused in the report,” [he] told the paper, “they are welcome to volunteer and we’ll take it under consideration. But as I understand it, all these players had a chance to cooperate [with Mitchell], and everyone declined to cooperate.

“So, to an extent, that’s what they get.”

That would be Congressman Tom Davis, who I believe was sworn to uphold the Constitution when he entered office. Allow me to unpack his assumption of what is acceptable:

Absence of a trial by jury.
Absence of a trial.
Absence of an indictment.
Absence of criminal charges.
Absence of Fifth Amendment rights.

I’m reminded today of all the reasons I despise being represented by a moronic, meddling malcontent.

Top Ethical Breakthrough, circa 1776: Individual Liberty

Time announced its year-end list. While everyone else is in freak-out mode about Putin being named “Man of the Year,” I’ll be in my corner noticing the perpetuation of the same silly myths through omission and a refusal to question. The top “medical breakthrough” of the year:

Circumcision Can Prevent HIV

In December 2006, the National Institutes of Health halted two clinical trials of male circumcision after an early review of the data showed that the procedure dramatically reduced transmission of HIV. Early this year, the details of those studies were published in the Lancet: In the two randomized trials, which included 7,780 HIV-negative men in Rakai, Uganda, and Kisumu, Kenya, researchers found that medically circumcised men were at least 51% less likely than uncircumcised [sic] men to acquire HIV during sex with women. The editors of the Lancet called the discovery “a new era for HIV prevention.” Scientists don’t know yet whether male circumcision can also provide protection for female partners — a new study on the hypothesis is forthcoming next year.

Aside from the general [sic] surrounding “prevention” in the title of its story, Time’s joined the mass blindness and ignored the two key words in the study, voluntary and adult. The glaring ethical problem created from the ommission of those two words means nothing, apparently. Of course, neither does the truth that researchers do not know the specific cause of this alleged benefit for men who engage in unprotected sex with HIV+ women, so I’m not going to fake surprise at this reporting.

Time’s reporting also ignores the potentially greater benefit provided by safe-sex education and the inherent fallacy in looking at data from a 21-month period in which the circumcised men were asked to refrain from sex for 6 weeks after the surgery and the latency period for the disease is up to 6 months. What’s 7.5 months over the long stretch of 21 months?

Please note that Time ranks this revelation ahead of such breakthroughs as a Test for Metastatic Breast Cancer, First Human Vaccine Against Bird Flu, and Early-Stage Test for Lung Cancer.

**********

In related news, Time named this the top scientific breakthrough of the year. Now is a great time to mention how this improves the ethical debate. Instead of using human embryos, molecular biologist James Thomson figured out a way to create stem cells from “regular skin cells”. From Science Magazine (pdf):

Instead of cells from adults, Thomson and his team reprogrammed cells from fetal skin and from the foreskin of a newborn boy.

It’s a good thing we’ve resolved all the ethical issues in the stem cell debate, because taking the healthy skin of a living infant male is much better than taking cells from an embryo that will never be a living human. (Listen to an NPR interview on this story, with mention of Thomson’s use of an infant’s foreskin, here.)

Switch the gender. Would we accept this journalism?

Via Kevin, M.D., a doctor snapped a picture of his patient’s penis during surgery:

A Mayo Clinic Hospital surgeon in training used a cellphone to photograph a patient’s genitals during surgery and now may face disciplinary action and a patient’s attorney.

The doctor took the picture while installing a catheter in preparation of gallbladder surgery on the patient because the patient has “Hot Rod” tattooed on his penis. Obviously this is unprofessional conduct by the doctor and, in my opinion, deserves termination. But that’s just more “people are stupid” fodder. I’m more annoyed by a lack of maturity in the “journalism” surrounding the story:

After Hansen showed the photo to other members of the surgical staff, one phoned a Republic reporter on Monday and left an anonymous message about the incident.

Compare that to this sentence, also from the article:

Hansen told Dubowik that when he attached a catheter to the patient’s member, he had shot a picture.

Is it so complicated to use the accurate anatomical name for the body part? Is that low standard of maturity really too much to expect from a journalist and/or editor? Yes, member is a common euphemism for penis, but journalism should be above stupidity better suited to making a schoolboy snicker. Otherwise, I might believe that “members of the surgical staff” is meant to be hilarious.

How is Circuit City still in business?

I’m searching the Internets for a price on Season 1 of Heroes on DVD. This should be simple. At Amazon, one word – “Heroes”, obviously – typed into the search field and a quick press of the enter key and the results list Heroes as the number 1 result. Imagine that.

I tried the same approach at Circuit City, assuming it would result in something equally simple. Circuit City suggested 787 options. Heroes was not on the first page, although every version of Guitar Hero for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 2 appeared. “Go Pro Digital HERO 3 Digital Camera” was result number 1.

“Heroes dvd” gave me 14 items, none of which involved Heroes the television show. I was unhelpfully offered Heroes of Earth by Wang Leehom on CD as the first suggestion. The results decreased in relevancy from there, until reaching the end and a pitch for a Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite Console Bundle. Huh?

“Heroes” in Movies & Music faired no better. It’s mostly cartoons and John Wayne movies. “Heroes tv” returns “The Life and Works of Anton Dvorßk, Narration with Musical Excerpts” on CD, “In Search of Ancient Ireland” on DVD, and “Dynasty Warriors: GUNDAM” for PS3. A search for a few of the actors (Milo Ventimiglio, Adrian Pasdar, Ali Larter) suggests several B-movies and items available only for pre-order, but no Season 1 on DVD.

The only method I’ve discovered for finding the obscure little television show Heroes on the Circuit City website requires the following steps:

Click the “Movies and Music” category.
Click Movies.
Click TV Shows from the specialty items.
Scan the best sellers list down to the 15th item, which is Season 1 of Heroes on DVD.

Circuit City’s search functionality appears to have been designed by the hamsters deemed too incompetent to run on the wheel generating the power necessary to run its servers.

For what it’s worth, Amazon asks $41.99. Circuit City wants $49.99. Surprise. It costs real money to feed hamsters.

Subjective requirements have no standing.

Via Timothy Sandefur, here’s an interesting quote¹ from H.L. Mencken. The more robust excerpt that Mr. Sandefur presents deals with science versus religion, and how readily people of science submit to people of religion when truth exists solely on the side of science.

[I]t is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false. To admit that the false has any standing in court, that it ought to be handled gently because millions of morons cherish it and thousands of quacks make their livings propagating it—to admit this, as the more fatuous of the reconcilers of science and religion inevitably do, is to abandon a just cause to its enemies, cravenly and without excuse.

I would not use moron in my context (unthinking, maybe?), but this is spot-on as to why I refuse to bow before religion as a justification for infant male circumcision.

Religion is not an objective standard by which to judge anything, so excusing its invocation in the face of a healthy child lacking any and all medical need for surgical intervention on his genitals is absurd. Too many individuals correctly deem routine/ritual infant circumcision as a violation of the child’s rights, yet immediately clarify that they won’t judge if someone wishes to impose it as a religious requirement. I will judge, because the judgment is objectively valid.

Every person has an inherent right to remain free from harm without his explicit consent. No individual has a right to practice his or her religion on the body of another person who cannot (or does not) consent. Proxy consent assumes an implicit consent, if the parents even care what their son might choose. Regardless of the intent, such an undertaking is clear, identifiable harm. The body is healthy. There can be no way to confirm that the child would consent. Should he desire the unnecessary surgery for a ritual (or no) reason in the future, he retains that option. If it is forced on him, he is deprived of his option. The only reasonable assumption is that he would reject the surgery, even though we know that will not be unanimously true.

It is always better to offend the sensibilities of a cherished, mistaken notion than to permit an offense on the physical body of a non-consenting person to avoid offending the sensibilities of the offender.

¹ “Counter-Offensive,” reprinted in H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: Fifth Series 120-127 (1926).