Thursday, June 16, 2005

House Votes to Limit Patriot Act Rules (AP). AP - Advocates of rewriting the USA Patriot Act are claiming momentum after the House, despite a White House veto threat, voted to restrict investigators from using the anti-terrorism law to peek at library records and bookstore sales slips. [Yahoo! News: Top Stories] The Patriot Act is a bad piece of legislation, passed during a very emotional time by people that had very significant things to gain by seeing to it that it was passed.  Perhaps, in the cold reality, four years later, the legislators are beginning to see the problems and the errosion of rights that the Act introduced. 8:36:44 AM    comment []

Schiavo's Parents Not Swayed by Autopsy (AP). AP - An autopsy that found Terri Schiavo suffered from severe and irreversible brain-damage has done nothing to sway her parents' position that she deserved to live and may have gotten better with therapy. [Yahoo! News: Top Stories] I guess the moral of this story is that some people cannot be told the sky is blue, even when they are forced to see it for themselves.  Along the same lines as some people still believe that Iraq had something to do with September 11. 8:34:13 AM    comment []

Necktie Makers Fear Japan's New Dress Code (AP). AP - The idea might have been to help slow global warming, but Japan's necktie makers fear a government campaign to get people to wear light clothing and turn down the air conditioners during the summer could be seriously bad for business. [Yahoo! News: Top Stories] Casual Friday comes to the last great economic power.  Now if they would only adopt the 8 hour work day, things might actually start to change. 8:27:18 AM    comment []

Woman kept alive in hopes of saving baby. A 26-year-old pregnant woman with cancer whose brain function ceased last month is being kept alive with a respirator in hopes ... [USATODAY.com Nation - Top Stories] This story is riddled with so many ethical and moral questions that I just do not know where to begin.  I can only shake my head at the husband's decision, but, like the Schivo case, he has the right to make the decision. That the story involves those of the Catholic religion should not surprise you.  What should surprise and make you question is that man (or in this case medicine) is using her as a husk, a carrying case, because she herself is worth so much more.  That her husband feels this way indicates to me that this was not an easy decision for him.  What we should all be thinking about is what are the real ramifications of technology.  Not even 20 years ago, this woman would have died and we would not even be having this conversation.  Medical ethicists will have to wrestle with the implications of what this sort of decision really means, but it brings to my mind the sort of cloning that was done by the Bene Tleilax in the Frank Herbert Dune novels.  For those who do not read science fiction or have not read beyond the first book, the Tleilax grow their clones (called ghola) in axlotl tanks.  Frank Herbert may or may not have had in mind what the tanks were, but by the end of the series written by his son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson, we learn that an axlotl tank is nothing more than a brain dead woman. If you do not find this disturbing, think about this.  Frank originally wrote Dune in the late 1950s.  Finally, consider this.  He also wrote a book of bio-terrorism 30 years before we even considered some of the consequences.  If you can find The White Plague I encourage you to read it.  If you have not already read Dune and the prequels to Dune, you cannot begin to image what sort of issues Jason Torres decision brings into focus. 8:23:53 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 David Lane.