I think a new malaria vaccine is a better example of what Pinker is discussing. It's the first one targeting a parasite. In early trials it was so effective they took some shortcuts to accelerate development such as administering it to all participants, but at different times after exposure instead of a control group that receives a placebo. Turns out the efficacy rate is only 25 - 36%, but it could still produce a major reduction in the spread of the disease. Should we stop and fret about whether the vaccine causes autism for say five years with 600K deaths per year or should we move forward?

 

how is that different from a married partner donating her dead spouse's remains to a university for research?

I

Amazing. Simply amazing.
The ethics of some disbelievers:

Interbane didn't think there might be a 3rd choice - adoption, rather than life or its destruction.
If he did, it wasnt worth mentioning.

Geo sees no difference between donating a person's body - who actually experienced some personhood but becuase of illness or calamity could no longer experience it, and an aborted infant who never got a chance at personhood.

Very cool calculating ethics being expressed here by, who exactly, disbelievers? Humanists, Secularists?
Ethicists?

Meanwhile the God of the OT still tortures our world with a monsterous unsympathetic attitude . Lets remind all those illogical Christians theyre foolish for being Believers. They deserve that label.

ant wrote: 

how is that different from a married partner donating her dead spouse's remains to a university for research?

I

Amazing. Simply amazing.
The ethics of some disbelievers:

Interbane didn't think there might be a 3rd choice - adoption, rather than life or its destruction.
If he did, it wasnt worth mentioning.

Geo sees no difference between donating a person's body - who actually experienced some personhood but becuase of illness or calamity could no longer experience it, and an aborted infant who never got a chance at personhood.

Very cool calculating ethics being expressed here by, who exactly, disbelievers? Humanists, Secularists?
Ethicists?

Meanwhile the God of the OT still tortures our world with a monsterous unsympathetic attitude . Lets remind all those illogical Christians theyre foolish for being Believers. They deserve that label.

I do see a difference, but I was thinking about a scenario in which a fetus has to be aborted for medical reasons. But no matter.

ant wrote:Interbane didn't think there might be a 3rd choice - adoption, rather than life or its destruction.
If he did, it wasnt worth mentioning.

How about the fourth choice? Which one do we pick on the mother's behalf? Do we require her to pick one?

I think it should be required for anyone recently deceased to donate their body parts. I have that box checked on my license. When I'm done with my body, I'll be damned if they feed it to worms or burn it. Use it to save someone else's life, perhaps a young boy or newly married young man. Isn't the moral consequence of organ donation so positive, so powerful, that it should be required?

Reading between the lines, you know you won't stop abortion, but you speak out about how the aborted fetus is used. You want it thrown away. Throwing it away is better than using it to save lives. Something has to be done with it. Yes, it's disgusting and abhorrent, and I suspect that revulsion fuels the larger part of your moral outrage, rather than any reasoned response.

There is dignity and sanctity to an unborn fetus. But there is more dignity and sanctity to the mother. I do not have the right to speak on behalf of the fetus and overrule the mother. I could say her choice is immoral, but it is not my right to stop it, because it is her body. Although it doesn't have its own dignity and sanctity, a kidney is more similar to a fetus than a human. A pink mottled lump of flesh that may be living, but is dead if you remove it from the adult. Sure, we could require the woman to give birth and risk all the associated health complications. But is it our right to require that of another person?

I understand the anti-abortion position, but to me it smacks of misogyny. That others have the right to tell a woman what to do with her body. Yes, even other women are included in this group, and that makes it more disgusting, not less.

Here is a related article from Nature mag

http://www.nature.com/news/bioethics-ac ... NatureNews

Here's another from Nature

http://www.nature.com/news/bioethics-ac ... NatureNews

I think its incredibly naive and a total disconnect to not see that the humanities do play and should continue to play a large role in bioethic issues.
A large part of this is Science and men like Pinker engaging in scientism wherein science is seen as tbe only discipline capable of informing mankind adequately.
What science and apparently naive scientists like Pinker can not do is provide us with as much wisdom as we need to balance our newfound scientific advances.

That is one reason why I do not think much of the loudmouths that "debate" these issues from a supposedly scientifically informed position. You can quickly tell they are just being haughty and overly presumptuous. That means a shortage of thoughtful wisdom.

Interbane wrote:There is dignity and sanctity to an unborn fetus. But there is more dignity and sanctity to the mother. I do not have the right to speak on behalf of the fetus and overrule the mother. I could say her choice is immoral, but it is not my right to stop it, because it is her body.

I think there is a problem here Interbane. As long as the unborn baby is in the woman's womb it is the woman's choice and you don't have the right to speak on behalf of the fetus.
Yet once the baby is born society speaks and says you can not take that baby's life arbitrarily,and this is upheld by law.
In fact a very good reason would be required for taking this life.
We can speak for babies outside but not inside the womb apparently. And the fetus is not just a part of a woman's body but another human life in her body.

Interbane wrote: Although it doesn't have its own dignity and sanctity, a kidney is more similar to a fetus than a human. A pink mottled lump of flesh that may be living, but is dead if you remove it from the adult.

There's an obvious difference between a kidney and an unborn human child. A kidney may be donated for transplant and it's doner still live and that would be the choice of the doner but the unborn baby loses it's life and future and has no choice in the matter.

Interbane wrote: Sure, we could require the woman to give birth and risk all the associated health complications. But is it our right to require that of another person?

It is widely accepted that where the mother's life is gravely endangered then of course termination may be necessary to protect the mother's life.

Interbane wrote:I understand the anti-abortion position, but to me it smacks of misogyny. That others have the right to tell a woman what to do with her body. Yes, even other women are included in this group, and that makes it more disgusting, not less.

I think it can be misused in a misogynistic way but the moral issue would be the same if men were the ones who became pregnant.
You say on another thread that it would be evil to treat chickens cruelly and wonder how you square these things ethically?
As you say many women and some atheists do not accept this so called right to end the life of unborn babies.
But they give reasons for this as this sample shows.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFfNUBypo2k

As long as the unborn baby is in the woman's womb it is the woman's choice and you don't have the right to speak on behalf of the fetus.

You emphasized the wrong part of my sentence. It's not that I don't have the right to speak on behalf of the fetus. It's that I don't have the right to overrule the mother. If some doctor requested permission to torture a fetus, and for some reason a mother said yes, I do think society has the right to overrule the mother's decision. The line is drawn somewhere.

Digging deeper into why we draw the line where we do, I wonder what you think about right-to-die laws. Does someone with a terminal illness have the right to die with dignity, if he or she chooses?

What of the POW who has been held prisoner for a decade, and is routinely tortured. Is anything held against him for killing himself?

I believe life is sacred, but not infinitely sacred. There are greater evils, and there are greater goods, than one man's life. The line separating these things isn't clear cut an obvious. For someone with religious beliefs, the sanctity of life is obviously weighted much higher than other good things, such comfort or freedom from pain. Perhaps this has something to do with the self-flagellating nature of religion.

The impact of the unborn fetus on the life of the mother is so great, that the decision lies with the mother up to a certain point. At some point, the sanctity of the fetus' life crosses a threshold, beyond which we collectively say it's protected.

My point, and the point of Pinker, is that when you try to justify drawing that line at conception, there is nothing solid for you to appeal to. Appealing to "sanctity" alone isn't enough. It doesn't outweigh the impact on the mother, and the fact that the fetus is still essentially a part of her body, utterly reliant upon it for life. You are appealing to religious belief, whether it's conscious or not.

I believe the right place to draw the line is where the baby is able to experience pain. I know there's been recent controversy over this, all the way up to the nimrods in DC. I also think this is where other atheist's moral emotions kick in. Drawing the line at conception is silly, since there is no single decisive point where life starts. We hold the concept in our heads as a dichotomy, but it's really not. There is a grey area during gestation.

Meanwhile scientists are largely silent on issues like fetal tissue:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/virginiahughes/ ... etal-cells

Is there no objective ethic here?

Has Pinker read Orwell's 1984?

We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create nature. Men are infinitely malleable.