Did PETA save animals or kill them?

For years, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have set themselves up as the ultimate spokespeople for animals in their interactions with humans. They have attacked celebrities who wear fur, they have criticized pet owners, and they have lambasted meat-eaters as mass murderers. Now, a new report is questioning this stand by noting how few pets turned over to PETA survived the experience.

According to public records from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, PETA killed 2,124 pets last year and placed only seven in adoptive homes. Since 1998, a total of 21,339 dogs and cats have died at the hands of PETA workers.

Despite having a $32 million budget, PETA does not operate an adoption shelter. PETA employees make no discernible effort to find homes for the thousands of pets they kill every year. Last year, the Center for Consumer Freedom petitioned Virginia’s State Veterinarian to reclassify PETA as a slaughterhouse.

It should be noted this release was NOT from an uninterested third-party, but rather an organization that has attacked PETA in the past. Still, the report appears to be quite damning.

A root of many kinds of evil

More and more these days, it is clear that money is an illusion - an artificial means of tracking value that is more game than reality. So why do we remain obsessed with money? Why are so many willing to do evil things to get more of it? New studies indicate that love of money really is about making yourself God... which cuts you further and further off from your fellow man.

Vohs suggests there is a simple dynamic at work here. "Money makes people feel self-sufficient," she says. "They are more likely to put forth effort to attain personal goals, and they also prefer to be separate from others." The touchy-feely social side of us may disapprove of such behaviour but it is useful for survival...Numerous psychological studies have found a general trade-off between the pursuit of so-called extrinsic aspirations - such as wealth, but also fame and image - and intrinsic aspirations, such as building and maintaining strong personal relationships. People who report a focus on the former score low on indicators of mental health, and those strongly motivated by money are also more likely to find their marriage ending in divorce.

If Embryonic Stem Cells are okay, why isn't Cloning?

Maybe I have read too much science fiction, but President Obama's latest order on stem cells seems self-contradictory to me. On the one hand, he endorses the use of embryonic stem cells - a moral issue for those who believe embryos are "human life" where embryos may be created and destroyed to harvest stem cells. On the other hand he condemns the use of stem cells for human cloning.

Obama also said the stem cell policy is designed so that it "never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction." Such cloning, he said, "is dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society or any society."

The statement that cloning is "profoundly wrong" is made without any defense or philosophical rationale. He simply assumes it is obvious. But it is not. If you are not worried about "human life" in embryos, how is cloning different from producing twins from current fertility techniques? (*cough* octo-mom *cough*) Can anyone out there explain this to me logically?

Or is it just that to Barack Obama stem cell research "feels right" and cloning "feels wrong"?

Removing the Moral Dilemma to Stem Cells

When George W. Bush announced a freeze on Federal support for Stem Cell research in 2000, he was roundly condemned by the medical establishment who accused him of "wanting Alzheimer's patients to suffer." But at the time, Pro-life advocates were already pointing to sources of stem cells which did not require the death of an embryo - fetal cord blood, for example. Now, scientists have announced they have found a way to produce stem cells without embryo death from any patient! A mere 8 years - when added to a little political pressure - was enough to completely free the way for future stem cell experimentation.

In a breakthrough that could have huge implications, British and Canadian scientists have found a way of reprogramming skin cells taken from adults, effectively winding the clock back on the cells until they were in an embryonic form...

Because the cells can be made from a patient's own skin, they carry the same DNA and so could be used without a risk of being rejected by the immune system.

So, not only is it a morally-defensible solution for Pro-Lifers, it is actually a better solution medically because it uses the patient's own cells and obviates the need for anti-rejection drugs (which suppress the immune system in general). In my ever-so-humble opinion, this justifies GWB's decision from 8 years back.

Teen Pregnancy and Abortion

An article about the upswing of student pregnancies at Gloucester (Massachusetts) High School has me thinking about pop culture and the current impact on abortion. Since Roe v. Wade, pop culture has been pushing the mantra, "pregnant and don't want to be, get rid of it". With the rise in celebrity pregnancies and movies about less than ideal pregnancy situations, could the upswing be that abortion becomes less tolerated by our nation? Or are we moving towards an era where teens get pregnant and have babies because they're "fun" and college+ adults get abortions because they're "convenient".

Why ethicists needs to watch Star Trek

I have gotten grief over the years for my enjoyment of science fiction. Many see it as an art form devoid of maturity, suitable only for adolescent boys seeking wish fulfillment. But the fact is that science fiction is the story form of the moral dilemma. It allows one to put a character into extreme situations where ethics are pushed to their limit, and it works out the proper course of action. From 1984 to Star Trek (Guardian on the Edge of Forever) to The Matrix, it helps us to find the edges of our morality and find the human answers to hard questions.

The reason I bring this up is a new report from the American College of Chest Physicians which attempts to figure out how to properly triage patients during a worldwide pandemic. In an attempt to provide objective, universal guidelines, they have laid out an Orwellian nightmare where doctors are choosing which of us have more or less value. The old, the handicapped, and those with mental diseases are to be put to the bottom of the list. Is it reassuring to know that John McCain (old man), FDR (paralyzed from the waist down), and Abe Lincoln (extreme, crippling depressioN) might be left to die under these guidelines?

But science fiction has crossed this rubicon many times, in many different short stories, novels, television shows, and movies. The real human method of triage is simple and the same one used in battlefields all over the world. Treat the patient LEAST likely to die first, then the next, and so on. The only judgement required here is medical in nature, not ethical, and thus no doctor or medic is forced to make the impossible choices of whether a retarded boy, an old woman, or a seriously injured soldier is more "worthy" of treatment. The only question to ask is, "Who am I mostly likely to be able to save.

We need to send these people the DVDs to Firefly. Seriously.

The complex morality of a sub-prime mortgage world

I have really been enjoying the reading over at The Consumerist over the last few weeks. It is a blog dedicated to consumer issues like bad customer service, extended warranties, and the like. Today, it has up an interesting article on the complex decisions facing a sub-prime mortgage home-owner as they face the choice of paying the mortgage and seeing the money lost as the house value drops, or not paying the mortgage and saving the money for themselves (knowing foreclosure is inevitable).

Sinclair: We went through months of being skinflints, because we knew that we were going into the red, so we didn't buy anything. All the sudden, we had a bank full of money and we're living rent-free, but we know that's not really our money.

Vigeland: How does that feel?

Esmeralda Sinclair: Great! Like he said, we were so tight with money...

Dan: It does feel great, because all the sudden, we feel like we have a little margin now where we can go out to dinner, get a babysitter...

Vigeland: But you're not paying your mortgage. You're not paying the biggest obligation you have. How does that feel good?

Esmeralda: We already went through the guilt. This is really what we need to do, not what we wanted to do, but what we need to do.

These are the situations where morality and law are more interesting. Are these people better off paying their mortgage in order to honor their contract, or NOT paying in order to have equity for their lives and children when their time runs out? Or is their bank better off declaring some kind of "mortgage payment holiday" in hopes that eventually they will come around and start paying again? Or at this point, have things gone too far to come back?

Moral Complexity in Sci-Fi

I just can't bother to comment on anything political...It's all so boring to me. But I do finally have something to say again =) It's always struck me that considering that science fiction is supposed to be morally complex and supposed to point us to our own humanity, it is often times terribly shallow. And no where does this show up more frequently than in the 'bad guys' in science fiction. Having a cardboard cutout baddie might be sufficient for a summer action flick. But when it comes to science fiction, it always struck me that the evil characters should really drive a lot of the moral issues. But this hasn't been the case, by and large. Instead, they are often times virtually just parodies. They are mostly corporate leaders of some massive conglomerate of the future, or alien invaders simply bent on taking over earth, or some other cheap and easy story.

But I've seen some changes recently. One of the first places I saw it was in Farscape. Scorpious was easily my favorite villian ever. He never did anything unless there were several reasons for it. His background story was compelling and his evilness came not from some desire to rule over the universe in some cliche manner but rather, to secure the saftey of his people. His evilness ultimately spawned from a misguided selfishness that allowed him to use anyone and everyone for his own means. For an alien, he was one of the most human bad guys to ever show up on the sci-fi channel.

Then came the remake of BSG. For whatever complaints there can be about this show, the Cylons are so well written that there are episodes in which they are my favorite characters. Especially in light of the season finale and the selection of who are apparently the remaining five, we've seen a "bad guy" that is equal with humanity in the ability to morally reason, to desire, and to act on those human impluses. And of course, there's Baltar who is consistently the best character anywhere on TV to watch. Many people hate him, but I believe that's as much a testament to the point I'm making as anything else. How many evil characters in science fiction have you really truly hated? Far too often, the evil characters in science fiction are just stock characters that are difficult to care about.

Heroes broke ground in this area as well. Fans across the globe fell in love with Sylar, many even rooting for him. His character is possibly the most compelling of the entire cast. I don't think I remember so many people rooting for the bad guy since the Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader finally taught his brat son a lesson. (I know, I just had to fit that shot at Luke in) Sylar's motivation is so dangerous becuase of his faith in what he is doing. Having been given a vision of his purpose in life, he is carrying it out with deadly efficiency. Remind you of anything we've heard about in our world lately?

And this brings me to the character who really got this ball rolling. And it's in about the last place I expected to find any sort of deep moral complexity. Sci-Fi's newest show "Flash Gordon" has managed to create a character who I have felt instantly drawn too. The movie version's Ming was a terrible (And somewhat racist) shallow image of a villan. He was about as serious an evil character as Christoper Walken is in "Balls of Fury." But the Ming in the new version is immediately an incredible character. We find out early on that Mongo was in terrible trouble, billions dying and chaos everywhere. Ming alone is able to bring order back. He single-handedly brings his people back from the brink. He is a hero to his people. However, survival in this world is a harsh affair and Ming will do whatever is necessary to ensure that the society he has helped save continues. This makes him tyrannical. His daughter says in the first episode, "Sometimes being a hero means being a tyrannt." It's an interesting moral statement.

The show has already given several chances for us to see this played out. For example, in one episode, a man is caught smuggling ice (An offense worthy of death in this world.) When Ming finds out that the man was doing so to save his daughter from a terrible fever, he promises the family that the girl will have all the water she needs and he makes sure she is saved. However, he still puts the father to death. When questioned by his daughter as to why he would be so inhuman, he argues that to allow this ice smuggling to unpunished would encourage others to do the same, threatening the balance of the society. "I have taken one life, and saved thousands. You would have me save one life to sacrifice thousands." We might or might not agree with his ultimate logic, but at least he's actually displaying some. The Ming of old would have simply killed the man for the fun of it.

Perhaps it's the morally complex time in which we live, perhaps it's just that sci-fi writers are really focusing on character development over silly plots, or perhaps it's something else altogether. For whatever the reason, I've seen a real maturation of the genre recently and I hope it continues on.