It was only a matter of time before people started to come up with “evidence” that swine flu is all a hoax cooked up to allow the lizard illuminati Bildeberg New World Order freemasons to take over the world… and it’s happening now - this time courtesy of someone using the same name as a BMJ reporter (I’m not sure that it is the same person - but the page I’ve cited here makes the link).

(Actually, come to think of it, we’ve been here before… remember this?)

Here’s a sample of the claim: more…

For the few reprobates among our blog readers who are not regular visitors to our parent journal’s web-site I thought that I should point out that this months issue of the JME contains the first instalment of our new medical ethics “soap” Eyewitness in Erewhon academic hospital

So, if you think that moral philosophy is too dry and complicated click on http://jme.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/35/7/400

The Institute of Medical Ethics is currently revising the Core Curriculum in Medical Ethics and Law. This is arguably the only document laying out in any kind of detail what medical students in the UK should learn about ethics in medical school, and is therefore not unimportant!

A consultation on the revision in now open (until 31.07.09) and the draft Core Curriculum and consultation document can be found at: http://www.instituteofmedicalethics.org/edu_consult.php

So, provide your comments now to the IME or forever be silent (or at least be silent until the next revision).

Rowan Williams, Vincent Nichols and Jonathan Sacks wrote to the Telegraph on Tuesday to voice opposition to the Coroners and Justice Bill currently making its way through Parliament.  They allege that the amendment dealing with assisted suicide introduced by Lord Falconer (and reproduced here, on the Dignity in Dying website) is a step on the road to legalisation of euthanasia:

Now, by way of an amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill, the legality of assisting people to end their own lives is once again to be debated. The proposed amendment seeks to protect from prosecution those who help friends or relatives to go abroad to commit suicide in one of the few countries where the practice is legal.

It would surely put vulnerable people at serious risk, especially sick people who are anxious about the burden their illness may be placing on others. Moreover, our hospice movement, an almost unique gift of this country to wider humankind, is the profound and tangible sign of another and better way to cope with the challenges faced by those who are terminally ill, by their loved ones and by those who care for them.

This amendment would mark a shift in British law towards legalising euthanasia. We do not believe that such a fundamental change in the law should be sought by way of an amendment to an already complex Bill. It should be rejected.

I’m not backwards in coming forwards in my support for the legalisation of euthanasia - but the C&J Bill, if it really is a step in that direction, is a very small one indeed.  So, while the Bill is very compex - “sprawling” would be a better word - that the amendment concerning assisted suicide is really not nearly as big a deal as I think the trio makes out.  Nor is it clear to me that there would be any greater risk to the vulnerable generated by the Bill than there is already.

n top of that, it’s curious how these men of the cloth have very little regard for the plight of those who are not vulnerable - for those, that is, who have simply had enough and would like help in bringing about an end to a life that is no longer worth the fight.

Little regard?  What about the reference to hospices?  Well, that’s just it.  Hospices are great things - but the letter commits the fallacy of thinking that hospices count as a cure-all for the distress of the dying.  They aren’t.  Some people have just had enough, and pointing out how great the hospice movement is misses the point, because for them, hospice treatment would not be the better option.  Worse, to shunt people towards hospices when hospice care is not what they want is good neither for the patient nor the hospice - and it ignores the distinct possibility that the people who are being so shunted are, by the letter’s own lights, likely to be vulnerable.  If it’s the unwelcome pressure that is the backbone of the Archbishops’ and Rabbi’s concern, then pressuring the ill into a care pathway that they do not want seems like a very strange way of going about things indeed.

Just as a point about the rhetorical strategy adopted, I’d add to these points that using the word “Surely” is frequently a shorthand for “I have this gut feeling but I can’t be bothered trying to present an argument for its plausibility” - and the use of the word in the letter here strikes me as conforming to the rule.  And the patriotic appeal to the “almost unique gift of this country to wider humankind” (is that “almost unique” as in “not unique”, then?) is simply nauseating.

Incidentally, a letter to The Times from a number of members of the House of Lords deals with the possible legal and jurisprudential implications of the amendments.  It’s still against the amendments - but it is so in a much more considered manner.

Wouldn’t you know it, my favourite religious commentator (and I favour one religious commentator over another in the sense that I favour a hangover over a migraine or burst aneurysm) George Pitcher has pitched into the prayer on the wards coverage.

Guess what?  His opinions aren’t impressive. more…

Via the Press Association, the BBC has been reporting the motion to be discussed by the BMA conference that would explicitly seek to allow doctors to offer to pray for their patients.  The full text of the motion is available via the Christian Medical Fellowship’s website.

Right.  Go and make a cup of tea.  We could be here a while.

more…

Details here.  As David mentioned before, he, Søren and I are all going to be giving papers.

Obviously, a lot of the world’s attention is currently on Iran and the political turmoil there.  I don’t think that this blog is the place to make comments about the disputed presidential election - but I am reminded of a story from a couple of years ago, and it’s worth airing here.

One of the characteristics of the Islamic Republic is that it’s much more complicated than a lot of the Western media would have us believe.  (For example, I once ended up in conversation in a Tehran park near the old American Embassy Den of Espionage with a member of the Baseej* about the comparative merits of British and Persian women - I’d tried to explain political correctness to him, but he didn’t get it.  Wouldn’t you know it: even the fanatics are human.)  Nevertheless, you’d expect the Ayatollahs to have a certain set of fairly predictable ideas about sex, and for those ideas to be fairly rigid and unforgiving.

Not always.

Consider the case of Maryam Khatoon Molkara.  She used to be a man.  Remarkably, her sex-change operation came with the blessing of the religio-civil authorities, who

[are] starting to recognise people with sexual-identity disorders and allowing them to have sex-change operations and obtain new birth certificates. Some [people] are now even recommended for treatment by clerics and the government helps fund operations.

It’s not quite the vision of Islamic theocracy that we might have expected, is it?

[W]hen the chance to have gender-swap treatment arose in the 1970s, she went to see Ayatollah Behbehani, one of the leading religious figures in the country. He performed a typical Iranian religious ceremony, an istikhareh - letting the Koran fall open and interpreting her problems according to the page that was revealed. It was the sura of Maryam, the verses in the Koran that tell the story of Jesus’ mother Mary. Ayatollah Behbehani said he thought this meant that her life would be like Maryam’s - a struggle.

“He said it meant I should have the operation but he said I should write to Ayatollah Khomeini, who was then in Iraq and was one of the leading Shia religious experts. Khomeini decided then that it was a religious obligation for me to have the sex change because a person needs a clear sexual identity in order to carry out their religious duties. He said that because of my feelings, I should observe all the rites specific to women, including the way they dress.”

It wasn’t until the late 1990s that surgery became even a possibility, but - all the same - the story is surprising and gives a glimpse into the regime in Iran.  Grim and stony-faced it may often be, but that’s not the whole story.  And even if you think that the Ayatollah’s judgement was based on the silliest of arguments - and, frankly, I do - it’s still interesting to see someone coming to the right sort of decision for the wrong sort of reason.

And, of course, the story gives us a nice example of the danger of ad hominem reasoning.  People - even Koranic literalists - are often very surprising.

There’s more on transsexuality in Iran here, here, and here, and lots more via Google and YouTube.

*ERRATUM: It was a member of the Komitè, the religious police.  Meh.  Tomayto tomahto.

A little while ago, I mentioned Jamie Ross’ admirable Cancerous Capers blog.  Well - for all the best reasons - there won’t be any more updates.  His reason?  Having cancer was tedious enough; but with radiotherapy over, banging on about not having it would be even more tedious.  Assuming he gets the all-clear in a couple of months, there’ll be nothing more to add.

Good.  I wish him well.

I can stop, you know.  Any time.  Honest.

Perhaps as something of a counterbalance to the generally pro-decriminalisation stuff I’ve been posting for the past couple of months, it’s worth pointing to Alexandre Erler’s piece on the issue on the Practical Ethics blog.  The tone of the post is thoughtful and more sympathetic to the current state of affairs than the kind of thing I’ve been citing so far, admitting that

there might be something to the idea that decriminalizing the use of cannabis (and other drugs) would send the wrong message: presumably, we wouldn’t want a substance to be made freely available if its only possible use was to allow those who purchased it to kill themselves. And there is some scientific evidence that cannabis is actually more harmful than tobacco. Suppose this evidence were conclusive: it might then be argued that a state’s commitment to liberal principles cannot justify its endorsing the use of just any substance by its citizens, no matter how harmful it might be. A limit must be placed somewhere, and one might argue that cannabis (and “tougher” drugs), but not tobacco, goes beyond that limit. This line of argument might be the best way of developing idea that decriminalizing cannabis “would send the wrong message”. But even if it is, its proponents need to clearly present it in an open debate, and they might also need further scientific evidence to back up their claims about the harmfulness of cannabis use. The term “drug” is not a magic word that can justify prohibiting the use of any substance it is properly applied to.

There’s a lot that’s right about this - especially about the (mis)use of the word “drugs” and the way it gets used in a morally (and moralistically) loaded manner.  Just as there is no such thing as a bad food, there is no such thing as a bad drug - it’s what you do with it that makes the difference.  (The Greeks knew that: their word “pharmakon” was wonderfully equivocal.  A poison is just a drug you can’t handle.)

I’m not so sure about the safety restriction, though.  I can think of plenty of people who’d insist that there is no limit to the idiocy that people should be allowed to commit, as long as it’s an “authentic” action on their part, and noone else - or, at least, noone who hasn’t consented - is hurt.  Often, these people cite R v Brown as a paradigm example of the law getting things wrong (or protesting a wee bit too much): it should, they say, have been much more permissive.  Though I’m not much of a fan of Mill, I have to admit that something like the Harm Principle is, at least pragmatically, attractive: the Brown ruling does seem to me to hit the wrong note.  This being the case, it’d be harder to accept the assumption about the free availability of deadly substances; and, mutatis mutandis, the same would apply to drug policy.

The real question concerns the unconsented harm to others that may be caused, and how to balance that with the demands of liberty.  On this, it would seem that there is an argument of at least some sort against cannabis use: but even there, it’s only limited.  We’d have to say, I think, that public cannabis use ought to be restricted for just the same reason that public smoking or drink-driving ought to be - but that’s really no big deal, and concerns the circumstances of cannabis use more than cannabis use in itself (or harder drug use, for that matter), which would remain something of which we might disapprove, but not something that we’d be entitled to ban outright.

So the end point would seem to be that we ought to be careful about these things.  It’s remarkably trivial.