Hard News: Medical Matters
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Science is a belief structure.
Rich you've assumed science can measure all things, which it can't & so is not absolute - that be vodka.
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so is not absolute - that be vodka.
Yes ..__please__. I'd like a double :-)
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But things that have been through the science process are surely things that we 'believe' to be true, based on scientific testing, observation, review etc. Scientists often seem to use the phrase 'as far as we know'.
When a scientist says 'as far as we know' the 'we' in that sentence is all humanity. They are stating the limits of human knowledge at that point of time. You see to become a scientist the learning vast amounts of stuff is just the necessary gruntwork. The peak of the mountain, the ultimate goal is true ignorance, to arrive at the place where the answer to the question is: we do not know. At that point you can roll up your sleeves and get to work. Some of course toil a few steps back jumping up and down on some squidgy bits of the mountain testing how firm they really are.
None of that is about belief, it is about knowing. Knowledge and belief are not the same things. I know that quartz is made of silicon and oxygen, I fail to believe crystals of it have paranormal powers.
My belief is that the scientific method is the best route we have to verifiable, firm, bounded knowledge. That belief is tested and confirmed regularly.
Like
here where over 20 years they have sampled mutations to every base in the bacterial genome and witnessed evolution in action.Comparing that to 'beliefs' just conflates far, far too much to be tenable.
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Tim:
Something being human doesn't necessarily mean it can be described as having humanity. Easy to say skin cells are human, hard to say they have the property of humanity or personood.
From this I take it you also have accepted that at conception we have life and humanity. I also assume you believe that those two facts do not make the offspring of human beings also a person. What evidence do you have to support this?
Note that I have already specified that personhood only applies to people and that I only claim babies are people based on life and humanity. If you think I am arguing personhood for anything else then you are wrong. I do not claim personhood for hair, skin, viruses or anything else that is not the product of conception and born of the union between a man and a woman.
Steven:
What are you talking about? Either you believe the Chinese government has made it illegal to have brothers and sisters or you don't. Either you believe they force women to have abortions or you don't. What possible point could you have based on me being an organ donor or not..? -
Grant Dexter's comments about a conceptus being a baby, just a very small one shows he is still thinking like someone from the Middle Ages and that sperm are just little scrunched up homunculi and the man plants this as a seed in the woman.
We should be nice and emphathic and feel deep sympathy for someone so completely cut off from centuries of biological discoveries and understanding. Don't worry Grant, we have arranged for a Physic to visit and let some of your overheated blood. He may employ mercury as an emmetic. I am sure these treatments will act in sympathy with your worldview and exert a curative effect.
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Peter Ashby - I almost never use webspeak/geektalk/whatever but your last post was ROTFLMFO...or (weakly) something like that..
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as in, made me laugh, made my evening, made my day (wipes tears of laughter away but rejoices in the laughing-crying-) -thanks!
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You are welcome Islander, we aim to please ;-)
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I am aware, that the Chinese Government asserts authority over some of it's citizens reproductive systems. Kind of like, what your arguing for the right to do.
:squint: You'll have to point out exactly where I have suggested that women with a child should be forced to terminate a subsequent pregnancy because I certainly do not remember posting such a thing.
But unlike the Chinese government, your argument is egocentric.
How is it egocentric to point out facts? I get the distinct impression you do not like the fact that a baby at conception is alive and human. Perhaps if you ridicule me a little more the facts will go away?
So how do you feel about donating one of your kidneys, to a human person that's going to die if you don't?
OH! I see where you're going with this now. Please excuse my slowness. I usually need five minutes warning before anyone changes the topic.
If someone needed one of my kidneys to survive I might donate it. I might not. Would it not be my right to decide what happens with my body?
How does this stack up against a Chinese regime that forces women to have abortions? Do you consider that a reasonable thing for a government to do?
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Peter Ashby - I almost never use webspeak/geektalk/whatever but your last post was ROTFLMFO...or (weakly) something like that..
I think ROFLLMAO is the one you're looking for.
My son uses ROFL rather than ROTFL, and indeed Wikipedia advises that:
The term has almost been completely replaced by ROFL, which is used much more often. ROTFL is still accepted, however, but used where Internet slang is not used as often.
I suspect ROFL has won out because, like LOL, you can say ROFL. Again, I defer to my son, who pronounces it to rhyme with "waffle", with a slight Scooby Doo inflection.
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If someone needed one of my kidneys to survive I might donate it. I might not. Would it not be my right to decide what happens with my body?
Irony alert!
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Don't worry Grant, we have arranged for a Physic to visit and let some of your overheated blood. He may employ mercury as an emmetic.
I agree, Peter: one of Grant's humours is awry. Perhaps a course of leeches? Or a pilgrimage to an appropriate relic?
Last night, I read a sobering NYT article by a doctor who used to care for women after their botched illegal abortions. Did someone link to it earlier? Anyway. Never again.
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Here's the NYT article about the days before Roe v. Wade. It's linked a couple of times upthread too,but way, way back.
It's not just Grant's humours that are awry, Danielle. He's like a small child, banging on a drum, shouting the same thing over and over and over, and not at all aware that the adults simply don't think that anything he's saying adds any value to the conversation they're attempting to have.
There's several large holes in his argument, and one huge assumption that he hasn't addressed yet, but it's not worth posting it, because it will only lead to more drum banging.
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danielle:
Never again.
amen.
and that is only one of the gross hardships and inhuman outcomes of such pro-lifers forcing their__beliefs__ upon humanity.
and we haven't even got to overpopulation yet. in many ways we seem to be as similar to locusts as any other lifeforms.....
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Science is a belief structure.
This is an 'absolute' statement. You have provided no argument or debating points.
So I respond as I did before: "science is not a belief structure". And we are back where we started, neither of us shifting from our trenches.
Rich you've assumed science can measure all things, which it can't & so is not absolute - that be vodka.
This isn't a particularly helpful statement, as clearly we can't measure everything. Your statement is so self-obviously 'true' that it gives us nothing to engage with.
But within our own relative frame of reference, we measure stuff, relative to other stuff.
The cop sitting 'stationary' in his car with a radar gun measures the speed of a 'moving' vehicle out on the road, and based on whether the radar indicates an excessive speed, issues a ticket.
Clearly this is all 'relative': we've assumed the cop is stationary, and the speed measurement is 'relative' to his/her stationary point. But we're not stationary, because we're all sitting on a rock speeding through space at many hundreds of thousands of km/h, 'relative' to the 'fixed' point of our sun. Which is itself not 'fixed' or 'absolute' as our solar system and thousands of others form part of a spiral arm of a galaxy which is rotating around a 'fixed' centre. The galaxy itself being one of many hundreds of galaxies in our universe, all of which are moving relative to one another.
None of which changes the fact that we can measure a lot of stuff relative to a lot of other stuff.
To expand on Peters mountain example: we can measure the height of the mountain (relative to an arbitrarily chosen base). We can measure the speed of the wind flowing over the sides of the mountain (relative to the mountain itself, which we have assumed is stationary). We can measure the amount of rain that falls on the mountain and say whether it is a 'dry' year or a 'wet' year (both relative terms).
Scientists tend to get more than a little twitchy about statements like: "Science is a belief structure" because this is the sort of statement that plays into the hands of, for example, creationist idiots who can then turn around and argue that because biology is part of a 'belief structure', equal weight should be given to teaching intelligent design in the classroom.
As Peter has pointed out, evolution can be measured, 'relative' to a 'fixed' starting point. Intelligent design can't.
And if you're buying, I'll have a double, too.
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and we haven't even got to overpopulation yet. in many ways we seem to be as similar to locusts as any other lifeforms.....
And with life form, who wrote the list that put human species at the top? I often have people tell me that my dog is not equal to me,(human;-)) I don't get that.
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I often have people tell me that my dog is not equal to me,
Can I also point out ,others ask what I have done to have such a well behaved dog.I have only ever spoken to her as I do anything else (laptops too!)
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I read Deborah's long post linked to a while back and recommended as a worthwhile read. Deborah said that abortion was morally permissible:
because a fetus is not a full human being, and it does not have the same moral standing as full human beings. A full human being, even quite a small one, has hopes and dreams, thoughts for the future and the past, it can conceive of itself as existing in relation to itself, in relation to other people.
I have a one week old baby son, who I very much doubt has “hopes and dreams, thoughts for the future” and most definitely cannot “conceive of itself as existing in relation to itself, in relation to other people”. According to Deborah's logic, it would be okay to abort my week old son, and okay until he is a bit older. I beg to differ, very strongly. That is just repugnant thinking, appalling. If you read some of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's musings on abortion you come away with the same impression.
How it is that in the year 2008 when we are so concerned about everyone’s and everything's rights, yet we can be so casual about ending the life of an unborn baby? It is a huge contradiction in much of prevailing modern thought. Is it the self-absorbed, narcissistic me!! me!! me!! culture that we live in? I don't know. But look at a 3-D ultrasound past the first trimester and tell me that that isn’t a baby that deserves to be cared for and protected.
But I do know that a big part of the problem (the biggest part?) are men who want to get their leg over without caring to take precautions and having no intentions of taking responsibility for their actions. For that reason alone abortion needs to be legal, but it should be earlier rather than later. Viability is just way too far along.
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Sofie, I'm sure your dog is a lovely dog, but is she spayed? If so, did you ask her permission? If not, have you let her keep all her puppies? The answers to these questions sound very different when applied to even an intelligent animal versus a human.
I think there's a risk of confusing the issues at stake when we veer into arguments about animal rights and overpopulation. Pro-lifers say pro-choicers don't respect human life; it's almost a fair accusation if the arguments we raise compare humans with locusts and dogs. I'd rather we respected human intelligence.
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You're absolutely right, James. The position I take could justify infanticide too, 'though you'll note that I make exactly the same sort of move that you do, pushing the 'line' for abortion back just to be on the safe side. I think also that there even if infanticide might be justifiable on the grounds that I propose for abortion, there are plenty of other reasons to reject infanticide.
You do have to be careful of the 'yuck' reaction. Sure, virtually everyone thinks that infanticide is 'yucky'. That's not an argument, 'tho. It's just a gut reaction, which should invite us to think about why we have the reaction, whether we have good reasons for it, whether our reasons are consistent with the sorts of reasons we have for holding other moral positions. If we simply go by gut reactions, all we are saying is "Hurray for this view" or "Sucks to that view." If that's the way we want to 'do' morality, then we might as well just take votes, rather than trying to think the issues through.
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James - your baby son's helplessness and marginal awareness of what's going on around him don't seem to fit that definition, which is why I'm not convinced of that definition's usefulness as a bright line distinction. It's a balancing act - you're entitled to surrender responsibility for his care just as a pregnant woman is entitled to stop providing life support for a fetus, but after a baby has been born, it's possible to transfer a baby's care to another person who's willing to take it up.
The viability line is somewhere around 24 weeks - most abortions are performed before 10 weeks and the later ones are almost always about serious danger to the health of the mother or severe abnormality to the fetus. While transferring care is theoretically possible there (from the pregnant woman to the incubator) it's usually not practicable for those reasons. There are certainly plenty of cases of birth being induced early because of the health risks of continuing a nearly completed pregnancy. Sometimes even that is too unsafe for the mother. Women have died in recent years while doctors have tried (against the woman's wishes) to save the fetus.
You're in the US - many parents and doctors there consider it's appropriate for their baby sons to be circumcised without anaesthetic on the basis that they're too young to remember the pain. That doesn't seem like a strong recognition of their personhood to me.
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How it is that in the year 2008 when we are so concerned about everyone’s and everything's rights, yet we can be so casual about ending the life of an unborn baby?
OK. James, this is where I get stuck -- I'm not seeing anyone being particularly casual here, let alone advocating abortion as extreme contraception for narcissistic bitches who didn't want a baby bump putting crimp in their lifestyle. My sample is hardly a scientific one, but it's waaay more complicated that ideologues on either side want to acknowledge.
But since Deborah has poked her head in, I'd love to get a feminist perspective on abortion being used to get rid of 'useless' and unwanted girls.
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Not being Deborah, I could still have a stab at the latter - it's slightly better than female infanticide being used to get rid of useless and unwanted girls. I think we underestimate the degree to which infanticide or infant negligence (baby farming etc) was used as population control in pre-surgical societies.
That's one of those complicated situations, like overpopulation, where the explicit choices of individuals add up to a societal cost that's probably greater than the individual benefits. I understand India has attempted to ban sex selection abortions, but that's not easy to enforce. Black markets always pop up when there's unmet demand and an artificial choke on supply. The longterm solution should be in changing the demand rather than making it harder to meet. I suspect that anyone wanting grandchildren in those societies might reconsider as the impact of widespread sex selecton plays out on demographics.
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I wasn't going to wade into Deborah's Blog post lauded by Russell.
Now in the light Deborah confirms her stance could 'justify' infantacide, do we have a similar show of support?
I did think it was bad tast to reffer to your kids as livestock after that post, but to follow through with this is gob-smackingly inane.
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She's not saying she *agrees with infanticide*, for goodness' sake.
But since Deborah has poked her head in, I'd love to get a feminist perspective on abortion being used to get rid of 'useless' and unwanted girls.
What are we other feminists in here, chopped liver? ;)
If you're functioning within a society in which women are consistently undervalued, then individual actions like sex-selection abortions do, as B says, end up having a societal cost - and a bias. If you change the 'value' of women, you change the abortion patterns. Easier said than done, of course.
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