From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Nov 14 2002 - 09:31:47 MST
Reason writes
> Well, I seem to recall threatening to do this
> (http://www.bioethicssucks.org) a few months back, while I was so poverty
> stricken, I couldn't even register a domain name. Heh. So now I'm recovered
> and in a sufficiently belligerent mood, I thought I'd put something up
> there.
That's great!
> For the record, my stance on it all -- which should come through fairly
> clearly once I'm done tinkering with text -- is that bioethics is:
>
> a) Irrelevant.
> Everything that people are worried about when they think of medical
> research is already covered by common laws on violence, theft and fraud. If
> every bioethicist went on a permanent vacation tomorrow, there would be no
> sudden outbreak of Nazi-style medical experimentation (as some people seem
> to think). Everything that is informed and non-coercive is a simple private
> contract between consenting adults and should be treated as such.
Shocking. "Bioethics is irrelevant". I sure hope that I can't
think of any counterexamples. What a great claim/insight!
> b) A slow, stealthy assault against our lives
> To my mind, there is little difference between shooting a healthy person,
> and actively keeping the medicine away from a sick person who would
> otherwise be able to obtain it. Most bioethicists advocate murder in my
> eyes. On a vast, staggering scale in some cases. If Kass and Fukuyama were
> Rulers of The World, the death tolls directly attributable to their reign
> would beggar the imagination.
As agitating as is your first sentence, I am gradually forced to agree.
> Of course, I'm very libertarian. I don't think that the State has any
> business telling anyone what they can do or not do with their own body if it
> hurts no-one else. I think that what makes me the most angry is that most of
> these bioethicists are clearly just justifying their own comfort level.
In more ways than one! They are so "disturbed" (their favorite word)!
They always find the ethical implications "disturbing".
They might be significantly more disturbed if they spent some time
visiting dying patients who could have been saved by treatments they
suppress.
> They are the worst form of human political beast; lying to slightly
> improve their own comfort at huge cost to others, quite prepared to
> dictate death to millions without blinking an eye, believing it is
> right to be able to tell others what to do at gunpoint.
Just where are they lying? I've looked into it about 1% of the degree
to which you evidently have, but accusations of *lying* usually turn
out to be exaggerated when there are deep philosophical or political
differences, as is the case here.
Lee
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