In "The Descent of Man", Darwin tried to explain why the science of animal husbandry should never be used on humans.
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See Orac's critique here

Bill Maher, primarily known for his anti-religious views, also harbors deep seated anti-science views. From medicine to HIV, and yet he is apparently being given a Richard Dawkins Award.

Note one of the major criteria for the award: “Advocates increased scientific knowledge.” Certainly Maher earns an EPIC FAIL on that aspect, at least. Given that Richard Dawkins made an excellent two-part documentary about pseudoscience for the BBC, entitled The Enemies of Reason, the second part of which was primarily about quackery and medical pseudoscience, you’d think that he’d be unhappy about having an award bearing his name be given to a person who would not have been out of place as one of the quacks that Dawkins skewered in the second half of his documentary, The Irrational Health Service.

From here He is also apparently part of the Reason Project

This echoes a common theme that is written about much here in this blog, with regard to Animal Rights activists .

"The part of other people that has emotional relationships is not part of me." - Dr. Temple Grandin

Dr. Temple Grandin is a much celebrated expert in animal behavior and an equally celebrated advocate for people with autism. Having autism herself, she has a unique perspective on a variety of scientific and philosophical issues because of her remarkable photographic memory (which she likens to random access movies that can be played, paused, rewound etc.), her hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli, and her complete lack of interest in emotional social relationships.

In Dr. Grandin we have a unique opportunity to observe the life of a scientist who truly has absolutely no attachment to any emotionally charged political bias. This is not to say she is not emotional, but that her emotion is generated from within – emotional relationships are foreign to her. (During lectures she will occasionally deliver a line that will make the audience laugh, yet she remains detachedly deadpan.) Accordingly, her beliefs and her lectures tend to be marked by an utter lack of political banner waving, groupthink, or hyperbolic emotion. Notably, she is recognized as a leading advocate for animal welfare, yet is perfectly comfortable working for factory slaughterhouses (and is welcomed by representatives from both groups). Her ethics are driven by her own knowledge and experience – ideologues and fanatics will likely be frustrated by attempts to recruit her for their cause.

Pragmatic, logical, flexible, and viscerally uninterested in ideology or orthodoxy. Exactly what a scientist should be.

Enjoy her unique perspective on some issues of a telic nature.

In 2007 scientists found a way to induce pluripotency in adult somatic cells. There were just two problems. First, it was a slow process. Second, the cells were modified via a virus delivery system which increased the risk of cancerous mutation in the future. Yesterday the second problem was solved as it was announced that scientists had found a way to induce pluripotency similar to that of embryonic stem cells without the use of viral delivery systems.

From the abstract:

The resulting induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells resemble embryonic stem cells in their properties and potential to differentiate into a spectrum of adult cell types.

It appears to be a seamless process which can produce all the variety of tissue types that embryonic cells are capable of right from the patients own skin cells, without the risks incurred by viral alteration. The only thing left is to find a way to improve the efficiency of the process, thus potentially ending the controversy over embryonic stem cells research.

Last week the Obama administration promised to move soon to repeal the funding ban on embryonic stem cell research. It will be interesting to see if this monumental scientific breakthrough will alter Obama's course of action.

Last year, The New York Times asked disability rights critic Peter Singer to eulogize disability rights activist Harriet McBryde Johnson. Just after Christmas, they published Singer's obituary which was insultingly titled "Happy Nevertheless".

Paul Longmore, Director of the Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University sent a letter to the Times which expressed his outrage. The Times didn't respond.

The letter is below the fold.
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Mother of Six has Octuplets

I presume everyone here has heard about the birth of a litter of eight to a 33-year old woman in California who already has six children ranging in age from 7 to 2-year old twins. The babies – 6 boys and 2 girls – were delivered 9 weeks prematurely and weigh anywhere from 1 pound 8 ounces to 3 pounds 4 ounces, all but one are breathing on their own. All are receiving fluids, proteins and vitamins intravenously, and all are expected to survive.

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Chuck Colson wrote a commentary titled The Proper Role of Science. Although I agree with his general thrust I have some minor reservations about it. For example, increased grants for research go beyond embryonic stem cell research although that is included. Since abortion was recently debated in another thread I wish to focus the attention of this blog entry on other points. I know stems cells and abortion can be debated separately but the same underlying values mark the differences of the two sides. Quoting Colson:

As Nancy Pearcey and I write in our book, How Now Shall We Live?, scientism has its roots in Darwinism. Tufts University professor Daniel Dennett writes that Darwinism, rightly understood, is a “universal acid” that dissolves away all traditional moral, metaphysical, and religious beliefs. For if humans have evolved by a material, purposeless process, then there is no basis for believing in a God who created us and revealed moral truths, or imposing those moral views in any area of life.

Dennett is using a common tactic—using science as a weapon to shoot down religious faith. The standard assumption is that science is objective knowledge, while religion is an expression of subjective need. Religion, therefore, must subordinate its claims about the world to whatever science decrees.

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Princeton Professor of Bioethics Peter Singer recounts his association with Harriet McBryde Johnson (who died earlier this year) in an article for the New York Times. Singer found enough in common with McBryde to form a congenial relationship over the years (both were politically liberal atheists) but McBryde argued very effectively against Singer's utilitarian philosophy advocating the killing of children with serious disabilities. She recounted her own impressions of the meeting in the Times back in 2003.

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This is a long article, but worth the time to read it:

The tragic view comes closest to describing how I now look at Peter Singer. He is a man of unusual gifts, reaching for the heights. He writes that he is trying to create a system of ethics derived from fact and reason, that largely throws off the perspectives of religion, place, family, tribe, community and maybe even species — to "take the point of view of the universe." His is a grand, heroic undertaking.

But like the protagonist in a classical drama, Singer has his flaw. It is his unexamined assumption that disabled people are inherently "worse off," that we "suffer," that we have lesser "prospects of a happy life." Because of this all-too-common prejudice, and his rare courage in taking it to its logical conclusion, catastrophe looms. Here in the midpoint of the play, I can't look at him without fellow-feeling.

It has sadly reached the point that my ancient 'pooter and cranky dial-up connection simply cannot load the On Holocaust Memorial Day thread anymore. I've had to follow comments from the admin board, and I can't post from there.

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Writing in Nature, professor of biology Chris D. Thomas bemoans the environmental damages caused by human activity. But not to worry, he says. In a few million years, humans will be extinct.

The geological perspective of Terra is bizarrely reassuring. Humans will presumably be gone within a few million years, perhaps sooner. If the past that Novacek describes is a guide to the future, global ecosystem processes will be restored some tens of thousands to a million years after our demise, and new forms of life over the ensuing millions of years will exploit the denuded planet we leave behind. Thirty million years on, things will be back to normal, albeit a very different 'normal' from before. It is good to be optimistic. The problem is living here in the meantime.

Robin Hanson wonders: "Yet if a plague, for example, were to produce this outcome within the next ten years, I'm pretty sure most everyone would see this as a catastrophe of the highest possible order. So how does this become a good thing if it happens in the next million years?"

More on scientists cheering for the death of humans here.

[Check out the trailer for my book here]

Recently, scientists created a transgenic "supermouse." The researchers were studying the gene for phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEPCK-C), a metabolic enzyme that is expressed in the liver, kidneys, and adipocytes. Using standard techniques in genetic engineering and stem cell technology, they were able to express this gene is skeletal muscle with remarkable consequences:

The mouse can run up to six kilometres (3.7 miles) at a speed of 20 metres per minute for five hours or more without stopping. Scientists said that this was equivalent of a man cycling at speed up an Alpine mountain without a break. Although it eats up to 60 per cent more food than an ordinary mouse, the modified mouse does not put on weight. It also lives longer and enjoys an active sex life well into old age "“ being capable of breeding at three times the normal maximum age.

and

Animal behavior studies later demonstrated that the PEPCK-Cmus mice are seven times more active in their home cages than controls; in addition, the mice were also markedly more aggressive. "The enhanced level of activity noted in the PEPCK-Cmus mice extends well beyond two years of age; this is considered old-age for mice," the researchers said.

The mighty mice also provide much food for thought. Consider some of the issues their existence brings to the table.

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Some time ago, I warned that James Watson was a modern day eugenicist.

He has now taken it a step further:

One of the world's most eminent scientists was embroiled in an extraordinary row last night after he claimed that black people were less intelligent than white people and the idea that "equal powers of reason" were shared across racial groups was a delusion.

On the back of Barbara Forrest's & Paul Gross' anti-ID polemic is a blurb by prominent evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson, praising the book for exploring the struggle between "religion-based tribal values and science-based universal values."

Physician Alexis Carrel and aviator Charles Lindbergh did superb scientific work, designing pumps to keep organs alive outside the body. Let's see what these great intellectual minds can teach us about "science-based universal values". From the New York Time's review of The Immortalists by journalist David Friedman:

The scientific success only fueled Lindbergh and Carrel's philosophic zeal: if immortality was indeed on the horizon, it certainly should not be for everyone. In his 1935 best seller "Man, the Unknown," Carrel urgently argued for the creation of biologic classes, with the weak and sick at one end, and the strong and fit (long might they live, propagate and receive new organs as needed) at the other. The sorting was to be accomplished by a council of scientific experts much like himself.

Lindbergh, meanwhile, suffering through the kidnapping and murder of his oldest son, and the miserable press orgy that followed, became less and less inclined to tolerate any part of the common man. Living in Europe to avoid the paparazzi in the United States, he was soon vocally admiring the order and precision of Nazi Germany.

(HT: John Hawks)