In today’s news:
Even by the standards of Texas, where beef is no trivial matter, rancher Jose Antonio Elias Calles has coddled his cattle.
The animals imported from Japan are guarded by off-duty Texas Rangers and kept away from American bulls that might contaminate their coveted gene pool. They were meticulously reared for 12 years before a single hamburger could be sold.
Dude, it’s beef, not Scotch. Once it’s in steak form, it does not get better with age.
PETA just released its list of the world’s sexiest vegetarians (via Salon). Carrie Underwood nabbed the female title, beating out such luminary hotties as Alyssa Milano, Bryce Dallas Howard, Kristen Bell, Natalie Portman, Pink, Elle Macpherson, Joss Stone, and Naomi Watts, to name but a few.
Having been a vegetarian for eight burgerless years, I can honestly say that this news does not affect me at all.
Don’t get me wrong–factory farming conditions are atrocious and should be abolished, but we humans have canine teeth for a reason.
Instead of nitrous, patients at one dentist’s office got carbon monoxide this morning. That can’t be good for business:
Paramedics this morning have taken two dozen people from a Northeast Austin dental clinic to the hospital after they possibly suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning, authorities said.
John Wolfe, a paramedic for the Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services, said workers received a 911 call this morning saying that people in the Affordable Dentures office on U.S. 290 near Cameron Road were suffering from nausea, dizziness and headaches. Austin firefighters tested the air inside the business and found a high reading of a gas they think was carbon monoxide. They said they will need to conduct more tests to confirm the results.
I’m waiting for the part where the dentist asks “Is it safe?”
Numerous doctors throughout the United States are now refusing to utilize any products offered by the pharmaceutical industry, based on religious conviction that God will heal the faithful. A doctor recently responded to multiple complaints to the American Meidcal Association that his professional diagnosis for at least fifteen cancer patients was vigorous prayer. Incidentally, all of the patients succumbed to their illnesses.
Okay, to the best of my knowledge none of the stuff I just described has actually happened. I made the whole thing up (I hope).
But there are doctors who refuse certain types of treatment based on their own religious beliefs, and the law protects their right to not do their job. Now, if someone has a moral objection to a particular procedure and does not want to perform it, that is fine and dandy–so a person who morally opposes the morning-after pill might want to stay away from jobs where there is a high likelihood of treating recent rape victims. Likewise, someone who opposes contraception but really loves being a pharmacist might consider passing off those customers to another pharmacist.
It is also important to note that I am not even talking about abortion here, but rather contraceptive services, involving prevention of fertilization of an egg or implantation of a fertilized zygote. None of these events yet involve a distinct biological entity–I could go on about how many fertilized zygotes never actually reach their destination of the uterine wall anyway, so if keeping a zygote from implantation is murder, the Mother Nature is the greatest murderess of the all. But that is rather beside the point.
Generally, the women (it’s always women) who are denied services are allowed to seek treatment elsewhere, but they lose crucial time in seeking out a doctor or pharmacist who will leave the women’s decisions to herself and do his or her job.
I suppose an analogy in my own life, being a lawyer, might involve certain criminal offenses. I do not practice criminal law at all, but even if I did, I would be uncomfortable representing someone charged with, say, sexual abuse of a child. Nothing in my professional duties requires me to take this person’s case, but I also cannot do anything to delay him (or her) from seeking counsel elsewhere. The timeframe in law is also much longer than it often is in medicine, so this person would likely have time to find another lawyer–out of professional courtesy, I would probably provide names of some good criminal defense attorneys.
Maybe a better analogy is a doctor who holds deeply-held religious convictions that homosexuality is wrong and a mortal sin, etc., etc. If that doctor comes upon a homosexual who has been shot in the gut and is slowly bleeding to death, can that doctor just walk on and not render any sort of aid? Can that doctor refuse to treat that person if he/she is brought into his ER? How far as a society are we going to take the coddling of people’s religious beliefs when it conflicts with the jobs they studied, trained, applied, and interviewed for, and are quite frankly luck to have?
I once used this as a hypothetical of what might occur if “pro-lifers” get their way, and now it’s apparently real. From Pandagon, a woman in Pittsburgh has been charged with concealing the death of a child for not seeking medical treatment for a miscarriage (she was about 4 months along when the miscarriage occurred). The ME determined that the fetus died of natural causes.
The statute involved here requires concealment “so that it may not come to light, whether it was born dead or alive or whether it [the child] was murdered or not.” Note the use of the pronoun “it.” The statute clearly requires a birth. Generally speaking, a miscarriage is not considered a birth.
This is not about protection of life, it is about control of women, period.
…so I suppose I don’t fully understand the apparent controversy over this menstruation-blocking drug.
Volokh Conspiracy has an interesting thread about it, and on Fox News the opponent of the drug comes across as completely batshit here:
“More babies! More babies!” Wha???
I had to read this several times to really believe it. Texas State Sen. Dan Patrick has introduced a bill that would basically authorize the state to pay women to give their babies up for adoption:
Under Patrick’s SB 1567, AKA the Texas Baby Purchasing Act of 2007, women would qualify for a $500 payment from the state within 60 days of signing away all parental rights to their newborn children.
The full text is available here.
Lest you wonder if the Sen. Patrick is asking the state to engage in an illegal form of baby brokering, he has covered all the bases. The bill provides: “Section 25.08, Penal Code, does not apply to the grant or acceptance of money under this section.”
Penal Code Section 25.08 provides as follows:
§ 25.08. SALE OR PURCHASE OF CHILD.
(a) A person commits an offense if he:
(1) possesses a child younger than 18 years of age or has the custody, conservatorship, or guardianship of a child younger than 18 years of age, whether or not he has actual possession of the child, and he offers to accept, agrees to accept,
or accepts a thing of value for the delivery of the child to another or for the possession of the child by another for purposes of adoption; or
(2) offers to give, agrees to give, or gives a thing of value to another for acquiring or maintaining the possession of a child for the purpose of adoption.(b) It is an exception to the application of this section that the thing of value is:
(1) a fee or reimbursement paid to a child-placing agency as authorized by law;
(2) a fee paid to an attorney, social worker, mental health professional, or physician for services rendered in the usual course of legal or medical practice or in providing adoption counseling;
(3) a reimbursement of legal or medical expenses incurred by a person for the benefit of the child; or
(4) a necessary pregnancy-related expense paid by a child-placing agency for the benefit of the child’s parent during the pregnancy or after the birth of the child as permitted by the minimum standards for child-placing agencies and Department of Protective and Regulatory Services rules.(c) An offense under this section is a felony of the third degree, except that the offense is a felony of the second degree if the actor commits the offense with intent to commit an offense under Section 43.25.
Now I have no idea how much of a shortage there is for adoptable children (although here are some statistics), but there is something downright creepy about this. Leaving aside the issue of abortion as a possible alternative to the baby being, uh, placed through the Adoption Incentive Program, how is this different from selling one’s baby into adoption in a way that does violate the above-quote Penal Code section? Well, the answer is because Sen. Patrick (and possibly the Texas Legislature) says so. Here’s another question: how does this fit in with Republicans’ general preference for privatization? Republicans want to limit spending, downsize the government, and turn as many functions over to the private sector as possible (at least, you say so in your 2004 party platform, pp. 22-23). I mean, really, in for a penny, in for a pound, right? How about we create baby rescue societies? It has worked as a means of relieving the burden on our publicly-funded animal shelters. Those tend to be nonprofit ventures, though, providing no incentives for providing the merchandise to the organization (in this case, dogs, but it could be anything, really).
Of course, you want to make sure an adequate market exists for all the new babies you will be acquiring. One of the most important rules of business is to never acquire inventory you don’t know you can move. Maybe it is time to loosen some of those restrictions on who may adopt. Heck, if we get lucky, maybe the state of Texas will be collecting perpetual royalties from its very own Truman Show!
On the other hand, I may be full of shit and SB 1567 may be a terrible idea. Besides, who wants to run the risk that the biggest cutomer might be this guy?
Here’s some more on the global-warming-as-somehow-anti-Christian front–I consider it good news:
The board of the National Association of Evangelicals has rebuffed leaders of the Christian right who had called for the association to silence or dismiss its Washington policy director because of his involvement in the campaign against global warming.
Prominent Christian conservatives like James C. Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, and Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, had sent a letter to the association’s leaders this month accusing the policy director, the Rev. Richard Cizik, of “using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time,” which they defined as abortion, homosexuality and teaching children sexual morality and abstinence.
Yes, because as we all know, hordes of gay commandos are at all times massed at the Canadian border, waiting to loose their gay all over everyone, stop all the breeding, and offer fact-based sex ed to the nation’s teenagers (with a catchy techno backbeat). Gay is most commonly transmitted through phlogiston, a little-known fact. Gay also causes hurricanes, tornadoes, and microphone feedback. The Minoan civilization was destroyed by a giant explosion of gay. Thank goodness some people still understand that this is the greatest crisis America now faces.
Say, did anyone notice Baghdad is on fire?
The more I read about Rick Perry and Merck, the more I get suspicious about graft & such, but doing the right thing for the wrong reasons still involves doing the right thing. And opposing the right thing for the wrong reason (when there are better reasons) is still…you get the idea.
From Bill Maher, courtest of Salon.com:
March 2, 2007 | New Rule: If you don’t think your daughter getting cancer is worse than your daughter having sex, then you’re doing it wrong. Last year, science came up with a way to greatly reduce cervical cancer in young women. It’s a vaccine that prevents women from getting HPV, which is a sexually transmitted disease that acts as a gateway to the cancer. And the vaccine is so good, it could wipe out HPV. I keep a stockpile near my hot tub, and I can tell you, that tingling sensation means it’s really working. And I’d say that even without the endorsement deal.
Now for the bad news: Not everyone is pleased with this vaccine. That prevents cancer. Christian parent groups and churches nationwide are fighting it. Bridget Maher — no relation, and none planned — of the Family Research Council says giving girls the vaccine is bad, because the girls “may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex.”
Which is really a stretch. People don’t get the vaccine for typhoid and say, “Great, now I can drink the sewer water in Bombay.” It’s like saying if you give a kid a tetanus shot she’ll want to jab rusty nails in her feet. It’s like being against a cure for blindness because it’ll encourage masturbation. It’s like being for salmonella poisoning in peanut butter because it’ll discourage weirdos from spreading it on their ass and calling the dog.
And yet, the anti-vaccine folks seem to think that if a teenage girl feels a little prick, she’s gonna want to feel a whole lot more. But HPV shots don’t cause promiscuity. Tequila shots do. Everything your kids buy is sold to them with sex. The vaccine doesn’t make them want to screw: MTV does. And hormones. And having moron parents they want to escape from. Hey, when you’re 15 years old, breathing encourages sexual activity.
But let’s be frank: These Christian groups aren’t just against the HPV shot; they’re against family planning and condoms and morning after pills — they want to make sure sex is as dangerous as possible, so that kids know, if they sleep around and get an STD, that’s God teaching them a lesson. And the lesson is, you should never have tried out for “American Idol” in the first place.
There’s only one kind of medical science that excites Christians, and that’s anything that proves life begins earlier and earlier in the womb. If you could use stem cells to prove that life begins at foreplay, the pope would turn the Vatican into a lab. These people don’t really want to see a cure for anything, except homosexuality.
But as a parent, if you’re so obsessed with abstinence you’d risk your kid’s health, there’s a word for what you are, but it’s not “follower of Christ.” It’s not “moral.” It’s not “Christian.” It’s not even “logical.” So just admit it. You hate sex. It’s OK to say you hate for the sake of hating. It hasn’t hurt Dick Cheney.
I hate to tell you this, Mrs. Maher, and anyone else who thinks a vaccine gives your girls a “license to have sex”: Your daughter knows she doesn’t need a license for sex. She’s already on the Internet exchanging bondage fantasies with a German boy she met on MySpace. Forget HPV; she’s already on to S/M. We all know, there’s only one 100 percent proven method to make a woman abstinent — marry her.
