Day: July 27, 2001

When a Mother Kills

Donna Laframboise wrote a perceptive article about the way violence by women is perceived differently than violence by men.

Laframboise notes that last summer there were two prominent Canadian domestic violence cases. In one instance a man from Pickering, Ontario, murdered his estranged wife and then killed himself, while in the otehr a man from Kitchener, Ontario killed his four children and his wife before killing himself.

This year, however, the Andrea Yates case is of course occupying the media, as is a Toronto case where police recently charged a woman with killing here two kids and then attempting to kill herself. But the public reaction is a bit different from the reaction to the male killers. According to Laframboise,

Radio station phone lines aren’t lighting up with people condemning anti-domestic-violence programs as inadequate. Governments, police and the courts aren’t being accused of doing too little to protect the vulnerable. No one is asking how many more innocent children have to die before these offences receive proper attention. The term “child abuse” is also noticeably absent from the discussion. We aren’t being inundated with statistics telling us how many children are killed by their parents — particularly mothers — each year.

Laframboise thinks the reason is that people are so used to hearing about violence against women that they immediately “slot” stories where women are the victims into that category, while the corresponding lack of publicity about violence where women are the perpetrators makes people see it as the exception to the rule (which perhaps explains why commentators often say they cannot imagine why a woman would kill her children, but rarely do such questions arrise when fathers kill their offspring).

Source:

Domestic violence isn’t a gender issue. Donna Laframboise, National Post, July 18, 2001.

The Pentagon’s Cover-Up of Its Missile Defense Failures

I am an ardent supporter of a national missile defense shield, but the latest spat between the Pentagon and MIT’s Theodore Postol is yet another example of why something this important cannot be left in the hands of the Pentagon.

Postol was the researcher who proved that the Pentagon flat out lied about the effectiveness of its Patriot anti-missile system during the Persian Gulf War. Last year, Postol analyzed a publicly available report about tests of the Pentagon’s anti-missile technology, and concluded that the Pentagon and TRW, which the Pentagon contracts with, distorted data to make it look like the system could tell the difference between a real missile and a decoy, when in fact it really could not.

After Postol circulated his analysis of the Pentagon/TRW report, the Pentagon had a change of heart — it suddenly decided that the data which Postol used to debunk the claims were mistakenly declassified, and promptly reclassified the data. The Pentagon now insists that circulation of Postol’s report constitutes a breach of national security. What it really appears to constitute, of course, is yet another Pentagon coverup of a failed weapons system (and you have to wonder — do these morons in the Pentagon think they’re helping move things along toward a national missile defense system by constantly relying on these sorts of lies and obfuscation)?

Anyway, the New York Times‘ story has a quote that only a Pentagon flak could say with a straight face, with Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, telling the Times that, “Just because it is made public doesn’t mean it’s declassified.”

Source:

M.I.T. Physicist Says Pentagon Is Trying to Silence Him. James Dao, The New York Times, July 27, 2001.

A Google Search Could Have Saved Woman’s Life

The media has often trumpeted the fact that there is a lot of health misinformation and downright quackery on the Internet, but today’s New York Times features a tragic story about a woman whose life might have been saved if medical researchers had only run a Google or other Internet search engine search.

Ellen Roche, 24, died while she was volunteering for a study on asthma being conducted at John Hopkins University. Researchers there wanted to test a theory that in asthmatics signals from the brain telling the lungs to expand get blocked somehow, keeping the lungs constricted.

To test this theory, on May 4, 2001 researchers had Roche inhale one gram of hexamethonium to cause her lungs to constrict. Shortly afterward Roche developed a cough, a runny nose, and fatigue. By May 12, Roche’s lungs were so damaged she had to be put on a ventilator. On June 2, her family gave approval to withdraw Roche’s life support and allowed her to die.

Of course it is standard procedure when designing a test like this to do a literature search for background information on the drug, but the researchers’ literature search turned up no studies on the risks of hexamethonium to lungs, even though a Google search turns up plenty of links to 1950s-era studies indicating problems with the compound (which was originally used to treat high blood pressure before being abandoned).

The third link that comes up, for example, is a bibliography of papers on the drug with titles like, “Hildeen T, Krogsgaard A R. Fatal pulmonary changes during the medical treatment of malignant hypertension. Lancet 1958; ii: 830-832.”

The review board that approve the experiment claims the 1950s studies wouldn’t have changed anything, which might be true but only because the review board failed to come close to fulfilling its due diligence to do a thorough review.

In fact so many different things were done illegally in this case, that when Roche’s family eventually wins the inevitable lawsuit against John Hopkins, hopefully administrators there and at other research facilities will get the message that skimping on review boards is lousy ethics and lousy economics.

Two-Child Policy Proposed for Indian State of Gujarat

The BBC reported that the western state of Gujarat in India has proposed an expansive set of new laws that would provide special services for families with two or fewer children, while denying many common benefits to families with more than two children.

Gujarat’s population tops 50 million, and over the last ten years the state’s population grew by 22 percent. It would become the first state in India to penalize parents for having more than two children, though the northern state of Rajastahn is considering a similar proposal that would only apply to government workers.

Under the proposed legal changes, families with two or fewer children would have access to special facilities and benefits, while couples with more than two children would lose benefits including subsidized food, free education and health care. There is even speculation that maternity leaves and medical benefits might be denied for pregnancies in families that already have two or more children.

Women’s groups and some voluntary agencies opposed the law saying improved access to health care, education and an emphasis on family planning would do more than the proposed punitive measure.

Source:

Gujarat proposes to limit family size. The BBC, July 26, 2001.

Young Animal Rights Activist Has Second Thoughts

Over the past few years, animal rights activist Ryan Courtade has received a lot of media coverage largely due to the novelty of his age — Courtade was only 10 when he became an animal rights activist and started his group, Love All Animals. But Courtade is not likely to get much support from this animal rights friends for the e-mail he posted to an animal rights list on July 27 describing the second thoughts he’s having about the movement.

After describing criticism directed at him from within the animal rights community, Courtade writes,

From now on I will not classify myself as an animal “rights” activist. I will be an animal welfare activist. I’m tired of the infighting, and splitting, and I’m extremely tired of this violence.

Courtade has worked closely with In Defense of Animals and Courtade goes on to offer a criticism of animal rights violence very similar to that offered by IDA’s Elliott Katz:

We are supposed to be promoting compassion towards animals, but one needs to promote compassion toward all living things. You can go around talking to employees at HLS or Procter and Gamble, but when you go to their home or call them at home, that’s harassment, and we have no right to do that. That does not promote compassion and it changes the focus from animals to violence.

I’m very sorry that I have to do this, and I am prepared to suffer the consequences. I accept that I may lose your support, although I would still like to have your support. Because I will not be physophically [sic] changing due to this change in title, I just will not feel out of place calling myself something I’m not.

I think that the animal rights movement has gotten out of hand, violence to humans is not helping anything, it is giving a bad image to the public. I will do everything that I can to help the animals, but I will not harm another human being. I guess I’m just to compassionate to do that. Civil disobedience and violence is not acceptable, and it should not be used as a tool to attempt to force a change that may never come.

When Katz offered his critique of animal rights violence, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ Bruce Friedrich wrote an article savaging Katz for this view. One wonders if Friedrich will be up to the intellectual challenge of taking on a teenager’s rather eloquent argument against violence.

Source:

Change in Views (Last E-mail unless you make the move). Ryan Courtade, E-Mail Communication, July 27, 2001.

Dead Cow Dropped From Helicopter in Germany

This story is bizarre on a number of levels. Austrian “artist” Wolfgang Flatz recently gave a performance consisting of his assistants dropping a dead cow from a helicopter 130 feet in the air while Flatz was suspended naked from a crane, all the while striking a crucifixion pose.

Such a performance deserved to be protested for passing itself off as art, but instead animal rights activists sued to stop the performance on animal welfare grounds. Patrizia Strunz, 13, told a Berlin court that the spectacle of watching a dead cow plummet from a helicopter would induce “spiritual shock.” A small group of protesters showed up to the performance and unfurled a banner reading, “Animals have rights too.”

An unnamed city official quoted by Reuters had the most sanguine comment noting that nothing could be done to stop the cow drop because, “Throwing food around is not illegal.” The cow did have to be gutted and tested for mad cow disease, however.

Animal activist Claudia Pfister, however, insisted that the cow drop could lead to copycat animal droppings, with people mesmerized by Flatz’s “art” deciding to throw their dogs and cats out of windows and calling it art. Personally, I suspect the average pet owner has enough sensibility not to confuse Flatz with a genuine artist (in another stunt, Flatz was suspended upside down inside a bell, with his head bashing against the bell until he fell unconscious).

Source:

Berlin teen fails to stop flying cow spectacle. Alexander Scrimgeour, Reuters, July 20, 2001.