Divergence "...thanks to the efforts of the religious zealots and their allies, the money-hungry medical industry and the venal politicians they buy."

Ooops - on the back of this comment, I now withdraw my earlier statement that I thought your arguments were intelligent and well made. My mistake.

ScienceLaw,

You accept that consciousness distinguishes human tissue from a human person at the end of life by the brain death criteria. I am applying exactly the same criteria at the beginning. If you have religious reasons for not accepting this, that is fine, but you are the one being inconsistent here. If it is good enough for the end of life, why not the beginning?

The religious conservatives have lost, rightly or wrongly, on nearly every other issue besides euthanasia: contraception, divorce, abortion, gambling, Sunday trading, votes for women, you name it. According to the editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, Richard Nicholson (in 6/10/06 (London) Times Higher Education Supplement) half the money ever spent on an individual's health care is spent, on average, in the last six months of life. A recent news report (sorry, I didn't save the reference) said that 70% of the money spent on Australian public hospitals goes for people who will be dead within six months. Do you seriously think that the people who benefit from this enormous stream of money will not take steps to protect it, from euthanasia or even an effective right to refuse treatment?

"Why is consciousness the criterion for determining who is entitled to human rights"

Because without consciousness the entity has nothing to lose. We could use birth as a natural default, but we do know awareness , and viability precede that when we consider full term babies. Some regard "wakefulness" at the around the 28-30 week stage as the beginning of consciousness, whereas babies can apparently survive from 22 weeks in the case of premature birth.
Who let's an unwanted pregnancy get to 22 weeks?


Why do fanatical pro-lifers have to resort to such misinformation as provided by the likes of "silentscream.org" to defend their position. Isn't there any compelling real evidence?
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/local/scisoc/brownbag/brownbag0506/fetalpain.pdf

Ludwig

"A steady rate of new discussions is good. Broad variety is fine. But I think that obvious duplication is unfortunate."

I agree. In my effort to track both debates when those two Henson threads were running concurrently, I actually posted a considered response on the wrong thread. Even though the topic was the same, the post itself was out of context and referred to posters who weren't on that particular thread etc. I've never done that before or since and did find it quite annoying at the time.

"With regard to being able to fix typing errors after posting, if new posts appeared in different colour print or on a different colour background or with a notice attached, for the first 15 minutes or half an hour, thus indicating that they are open to alteration..."

As much as I would like this situation to exist when I personally stuff up, as above, I think it would slow, complicate and confuse the thread more than it's worth. I actually don't think it hurts to know there is no going back and that you have to consider your response carefully before you post. It helps keep the general standards up I think.

..."any thread that is below the first five doesn’t get seen on the main page, unless the reader expands the list to 20, 50, 100 or 200. How many readers think to do this? I’d reckon that a lot just don’t bother."

I always change it to 20 and occasionally to 50. Having it too long to begin with though would just add to the loading time every time you wanted to go to that section.

"Perhaps it would also be useful if older popular and active threads that slip right down the list could be brought up towards the top?"

I think it's important to keep the order so that the archive is a true record.

Sorry to dump on your good ideas, Ludwig! I relate to most points you've raised, but on reflection usually end up deciding that there are more reasons to maintain the status quo.

Excellent post, rojo, and a very interesting paper.

To continue with the argument for why strong pressure (beyond that of the Christian groups) was brought to bear on euthanasia, but not abortion, consider the Andrews Bill. It overturned the Northern Territory euthanasia legislation by a vote of 88 to 35 in the Lower House and 38 to 33 in the Senate. Opinion polls then and later showed 70-80% public support for voluntary euthanasia.

Even if we assume a 40% probability that a politician has strong convictions against euthanasia (and why should they think differently from everyone else on this?) the probability that, by chance, the bill would be passed in the House, even by a bare majority, was 0.6%. The probability that it would be passed in the Senate, by chance, even by a bare majority, was 3.6%. The probability of both these events occurring was 0.08%. (See any textbook on probability and statistics, and look up normal approximation to binomial distribution, assuming 149 Members and 78 Senators.)

Which is more likely? That this all happened by chance, or that there was strong lobbying from the pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment suppliers, and other groups who profit from end of life care? If the claim is made that the politicians are much more likely to be authoritarian Christians than the rest of the population, then why haven't they made abortion illegal, despite strong lobbying from the Religious Right?

Sorry folks, wrong thread. Ignore my last post which I'm sure you have