Is anyone surprised? According to the British Medical Association Journal 10%–a likely under count–of suicides involve people with physical illnesses.  The Telegraph has this excerpt:

Here’s a link to the extract (BMJ 2011; 343:d5464:

Do we want to increase this appalling number?  If so, we couldn’t do a better job than we are, what with assisted suicide advocates, law enforcement, and media increasingly winking at–and even endorsing–suicide to alleviate physical suffering.  Unless we reverse course and aggressively engage in suicide prevention no matter what the cause–not just some so-called “irrational suicides”–this woeful count will only grow.

Wayne Pacelle is the head of the Humane Society of the United States.  He is very slick, sophisticated, and runs HSUS as if it is only about animal welfare.  I don’t believe it for a second.  HSUS works diligently to make meat raising more expensive and morally marginalized, without vocally pitching the animal rights dogma.  It’s a tactic, not a true belief in the principle of animal welfare.

Toward that ultimate end, Pacelle has explicitly embraced human exceptionalism. From an article in Prism, an evangelical magazine, “A Call to Compassion From Our Brothers the Animals:”

Wayne Pacelle, CEO and president of the HSUS, explains why it encourages animal welfare instead of animal rights: “I think it’s a recognition that we are special and exceptional,” he says. “All these creatures are at our mercy…The rights language suggests that that there’s something inherent in them, and I think it’s more about us.”

Well, I can agree wholeheartedly with that.  Human exceptionalism is why we have duties to animals.  That is what I preach here every day and indeed is the core thesis of my book A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy.  (Funny, I missed that rave review from Pacelle.)  Indeed, that is the core animal welfare principle.  We have a right to use animals instrumentally, so long as we balance the human benefit with the best and proper methods for attaining humane care.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t for a second believe Pacelle means what he said.  He’s an old animal rights radical, a belief system predicated on the concept of “speciesism,” which explicitly holds that HE is unwarranted discrimination against animals.  Moreover, while HSUS implicitly endorse humane meat, I perceive it as obfuscation.  Indeed, HSUS’s VP stated in 2006:

For all of us, our goal is to reduce the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest number of animals. We don’t want any of these animals to be raised and killed. But when we’re talking about numbers like “one million slaughtered in the U.S. in a single hour,” or “48 billion killed every year around the world,” unfortunately we don’t have the luxury of waiting until we have the opportunity to get rid of the entire industry.

Oops, that let the cat, er chicken, out of the old bag.

And speaking of cats, back in his more candid days before becoming head of HSUS, Pacelle said he would prefer see no more felines or dogs born. Asked by the author of Bloodties: Nature, Culture, and the Hunt, “What about pets, Wayne? Would you envision a future with no pets in the world?” Pacelle said that would be his personal preference. which is a classic, if rarely expressed, animal rights view (Animal rights activist, Gary Francione, has a similar outlook). From page 266 of Bloodties:

“I wouldn’t say I envision that, no. If I had my personal view that might take hold. I don’t want to see another cat or dog born.  It’s not something I strive for, though. If people were very responsible, and didn’t do manipulative breeding, and cared for animals in all senses, and accounted for their nutritional needs as well  as their social and psychological needs, then I think it could be an appropriate thing.  I’m not sure. I think it’s one of those things that we’ll decide later in society. I think we’re still far from it.”

“Decide later,” meaning that ending pet ownership comes at the culmination of the animal rights multi-generational campaign to end all domestication, not now.  Besides, dog and cat lovers donate millions to HSUS and PETA, and it wouldn’t be prudent to openly advocate that ultimate goal.

Pacelle also analogizes between slavery and the instrumental use of animals (pp 253, 259)–a classic animal rights approach.  And, of course, he says on page 251–contrary to the title of his current book, that he doesn’t actually feel “bonded with any nonhuman animal” and “There is no special bond between me and other animals.”  Ah yes, discussing fauna in relation to humans as “other animals,” a way of subtly erasing the moral distinction between us and them–another classic animal rights meme.  Pacelle certainly won’t be caught being that candid these days about what he really believes!

Oh well.   The next time animal rightitsts yell at me about the hubris of human exceptionalism, I’ll tell them to go complain to Wayne Pacelle.

Good grief.  I was hoping the Feds would come to their senses and drop this case, but as I learned while actively practicing law, once bureaucratic prosecutors go into action, they never let up.  Common sense has nothing to do with it.

Jeremy Hill shot and killed a 2-year-old male grizzly that entered his yard with a mother and her cub–while his children were outside playing there too (and then, self reported).  There can be no more dangerous scenario when encountering a bruin than a mother with offspring.  From the story that gives the local prosecutor’s (not involved in the legal case) factual allegation. 

Hill was showering. His wife, not able to sleep, looked out her bedroom window and spotted the bears an estimated 40 yards from where the kids were playing. She ran outside, shouting for the kids to get in the house. Hill, finishing a shower, heard the screams and looked outside. Seeing the bears, he grabbed the only weapon at hand, a rifle, which was wrapped and unloaded. He found three bullets, loaded the weapon and raced outside. He didn’t know where his children or his wife were exactly, but could hear his wife’s panicked screams. He stepped out onto the back deck from their bedroom and saw one of the bears climbing halfway up the side of a pen for the children’s pigs. He ran out and fired a shot at the bear closest to him.

The mother and cub ran away.  But the shot bear kept coming.

The grizzly on the fence was hit, and he tumbled off, then got up and ran off, limping slightly. The family dog went after the injured bear, which was heading in the same direction the other two had fled. The bear, only a few yards from the house, turned and charged straight toward where Hill was standing by a large basement window under the deck. Fearing there was nothing but him and a large pane of glass to keep the wounded bear out of his house, Jeremy took aim and fired again…he looked out and saw that the bear, already shot twice, was trying to crawl to the woods. The animal stopped behind a tree, wounded but not dead, and Hill took up the rifle again, carefully walked over to the bear, unsure if it was dead or alive, but knowing that a wounded grizzly bear posed a significant threat. Using the last bullet, he fired a final shot, putting the bear out of his misery and ending the threat, Douglas said.

No one is happy about the dead bear, but good grief!  If this is any way an accurate depiction of the facts, why are the Feds are prosecuting?  This is just blind, obtuse, bureaucratism, tinged with radical environmentalism.  Protecting endangered species is a good thing, but not at the expense of a real potential for loss of human life.

I once saw an IMAX movie that depicted grizzly bears as akin to cows.  Pure propaganda.  In fact, grizzlies are very dangerous predators that can run as fast as a race horse.  (I saw one in Yellowstone last year chasing a wolf off an elk carcass.  An awesome and truly frightening sight!).  Relevant to this discussion, two hikers have been killed in Yellowstone this year by grizzly bears, one by a mother bear with cubs.

Human life is priceless.  Bear life is not.  If in doubt, shoot the bear.

I regularly comment on issues of relevance to the futuristic social movement that goes by the name of transhumanism. I am not impressed, both sharply disagreeing with its fervent anti human exceptionalistic/eugenic mindset, and finding its yearning for corporeal immortality rather sad.  As I have written, transhumanist remind me of the great old Woody Allen joke:  Mable has gone to a new restaurant and her friend Edna asks how it was.  “Terrible,” Mable responds, “The food was awful–and such small portions!”  Similarly, transhumanists think we are not smart enough, strong enough, beautiful enough, or diverse enough–and we all die so soon!

But the would-be post humanists are not my prime focus here at Secondhand Smoke.  For those hankering for more, the New Atlantis runs a blog dealing with all things transhuman called Futurisms, described as “critiquing the project to re-engineer humanity.”  That’s a good thing.  Here’s the link if you want to check it out.

I have seen a couple of stories lately on a radical new last ditch cancer treatment involving extensive surgery and then a 90 minute bath directly on organs of hot chemotherapy. Significant questions remain about efficacy. A column in the NYT discusses the history of severe cancer treatments in history, and concludes with an assertion with which I agree. From “The Annals of Extreme Surgery” by Barron H. Lerner:

Cancer patients and their families, desperate for anything that might work after exhausting all other treatment options, are also part of the problem. But the history of cancer treatment provides a crucial cautionary tale for both those seeking out and those providing heated chemotherapy today. Doing more for cancer patients has often served a cultural as opposed to a scientific purpose, reflecting more the desire to defeat the cancer enemy than to take care of sick patients. Hospitals should offer heated chemotherapy — and insurance companies should pay for it — only after controlled trials have proved its effectiveness.

In the meantime, we should remember not to conflate our efforts with our achievements.

This isn’t rationing. And it isn’t a quality of life refusal. Experimental treatments should not be automatically covered until proved beneficial. This is what controlled studies are for.

The abortion industry often operates under clinical standards lower than that for outpatient or cosmetic surgical standards. That may soon change in VA and pro choice advocates are screaming. From the Virginia Pilot story:

Perhaps most worrisome to clinic operators is a mandate that they must meet building standards set forth in a 2010 industry manual on the design and construction of health care facilities. Those guidelines would take precedence over the state building code. Under the regulations, examination rooms at clinics must contain at least 80 square feet of clear floor space; some operating rooms must have at least 150 square feet; and public corridors must be at least 5 feet wide – 6 feet if patients are wheeled through them on stretchers. Freund said the regulations would allow clinics to ask the state to waive operating room construction standards.

Abortion rights advocates say the regs will put several clinics out of business. But why can’t they raise their standards? And since abortion is an invasive and potentially dangerous procedure, why shouldn’t clinic safety be equivalent to other out patient surgical centers? Abortion may be legal, but its practitioners shouldn’t be specially priviledged in law.

Society is oozing “compassion” as a reason to kill these days.  Self starvation is being promoted in the NYT. Assisted suicide is treated by many commentators and advocates as a necessity. And now a mother who killed her healty 8-year-old says she was justified in killing him to prevent his father from abusing the lad. From the WSJ story:

“Jurors are stuck in a position today of punishing too much or lying,” he said. “A jury must either convict a mother who has committed altruistic filicide with all the stigma and ramifications that come with the conviction or they must…cut her a break and find her insane despite the evidence to the contrary.” So she said she killed her son to save him from a lifetime of sexual abuse by his biological father, whom she believed would fight for custody and win after her death, her lawyers say in court papers. Ms. Jordan has accused the boy’s father of sexual abuse, but he was not charged.

“When you first hear Gigi’s story, you say to yourself, ‘How did all these factors coalesce? This is Calamity Jane on steroids,’” Mr. Dershowitz said. But, he said, the account “is true.” In court papers and in person, Ms. Jordan, a single mother, has claimed that she expected to be murdered because of the tangled business and financial relationship she maintained with her ex-husband. He is not the boy’s biological father.

So she said she killed her son to save him from a lifetime of sexual abuse by his biological father, whom she believed would fight for custody and win after her death, her lawyers say in court papers. Ms. Jordan has accused the boy’s father of sexual abuse, but he was not charged. ”Being dead is not as bad as having that continue for the rest of his life. It’s not as bad. It’s a horrible, horrible choice. But the choice was there,” Ms. Jordan said in an interview at Rikers Island.

Some experts are excited. So-called experts will be the destruction of decent society. But don’t be surprised if this flies one day.

This season’s Torchwood, which was once fun science fiction–a spinoff of Dr. Who–has this season, become great science fiction.  Shades of Death Takes a Holiday, the plot line has human death suddenly stopping, beginning with a child sexual predator/killer who survives his execution–played with magnificent smarminess by Bill Pullman, and then spreading to everyone in the world–except Captain Jack who is immortal, but has now been made mortal.

The story line is a quest by the remade Torchwood team to find out who has done the dead, how, and why.  Along the way, the show deals with how society copes when people can still be catastrophically injured or ill, but no one can die–and it isn’t pretty.  “Category 1″ people are dead, but not because they can’t die.  So, it is cremation to dust.  A nihilistic social movement starts.  The child killer becomes a mega celebrity after “apologizing” on television complete with tears.  Boy, does that catch our current emotional-narratives-are-king scene!

The show has also caught the eye of an author named Stephen Cave, who writes an interesting piece in the NYT asserting that the search for immortality actually drives civilization.  From “Imagining the Downside of Immortality:”

The problem is that our culture is based on our striving for immortality. It shapes what we do and what we believe; it has inspired us to found religions, write poems and build cities. If we were all immortal, the motor of civilization would sputter and stop.

I am not sure about that.  I think that our desire for an afterlife built religion, and religion helped build society.  But look at the Romans and the Greeks.  With the exception of rare heroes, the afterlife was considered pretty grim for everyone, not at all the Christian concept of paradise.  Julius Caesar wanted to be remembered forever–he succeeded–and I suppose that is a form of immortality–and he was certainly driven.  But still, I think many other factors drive society beyond the desire to never die.  And communism certainly was a driving force–and its materialistic ideological drive was wall about the ere and now, not forever after.

But here, I think, Cave is very right:

The real question posed by the “Torchwood” scenario is: what would happen to all our death-defying systems if there were no more death? The logical answer is that they would be superfluous. We would have no need for progress or art, faith or fame. Suddenly, we would have nothing to do, yet in the greatest of ironies, we would have endless eons in which to do it. Action would lose its purpose and time its value. This is the true awfulness of immortality. Let us be grateful that the elixir continues to elude us — and toast instead our finitude.

Agreed. Here’s looking at you, kid.

I think that prisoners should have a less robust right to refuse medical treatment than the rest of us because they, by definition, have lost their right to personal autonomy.  This isn’t to say it shouldn’t exist, but it is to say that prison officials should have a limited ability to overrule the prisoner’s refusal, say when the prisoner’s decision affects good order or is intended to cause self harm.  Thus, I believe prisoners on hunger strikes should be able to be force fed if their health begins to deteriorate.

Mentally ill prisoners should have even less say in this regard, particularly with regard to refusing anti psychotic medications.  Jared Lee Loughner, the Tuscon shooter illustrates why–and good for the Court for permitting officials to forcefully medicate him.  From the AP story:

The man accused in the Arizona shooting rampage that critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords kept himself awake for 50 hours after an appeals court halted forced medication. He walked in circles until he developed sores then declined antibiotics to treat an infected foot. Already thin, he stopped eating and shed 9 pounds. U.S. District Judge Larry Burns described Jared Lee Loughner’s behavior to explain his refusal to overrule prison doctors who decided to resume forced medication July 18. The drugging, he said, “seems entirely appropriate and reasonable to me.”

It’s a parody.  It must be.  A normal hurricane, not huge as these things go and the first to hit the USA in three years, takes an unusual–but certainly not unprecedented–path up the East Coast’s most populated areas, and the hysterics start screaming about global warming.  From hysteria central, aka, the New York Times:

The scale of Hurricane Irene, which could cause more extensive damage along the Eastern Seaboard than any storm in decades, is reviving an old question: are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change? The short answer from scientists is that they are still trying to figure it out. But many of them do believe that hurricanes will get more intense as the planet warms, and they see large hurricanes like Irene as a harbinger.

Harbinger?  Ludicrous.  The gist of the story is that there is disagreement among the climate modelers, who don’t have a good record of accuracy in any event.  And no one can say Irene was “caused” by global warming.  But why let a good storm go to waste?

Please.  The reason I even exist, or better stated, the event that set the wheels in motion for my eventual birth, was the big hurricane of 1938–much larger than Irene at a Category 3– that did far more damage than this Category 1.  My mother and her family lived in Rhode Island.  The storm so freaked them, they decided to see what California was like.  So, they visited, liked what they saw, and moved.  That’s when my mother met my father, after he took a temporary job where she worked while on leave from the army.  And the rest, as they say, eventually became my history.

Back to Irene and global warming, is it any wonder people increasingly roll their eyes as every weather event is turned into GWH?