The War as We Saw It

New York Times:

What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense. A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families. As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias...

...[W]hile creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave. ...

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side. ...

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run. ...

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

This account, by a group of active duty soldiers, is far more compelling than the think tank deception published by the Times several weeks back. These guys get past the rhetorical fog and carefully manipulated show and tell to some hard realities: we really have no idea of the ultimate loyalties of the Iraqi soldiers and police we are training and arming; our soldiers are mostly place-holders, merely delaying (at great cost in lives and treasure) the ultimate confrontation among uncompromising factions with dubious loyalty to any shared conception on an "Iraq". This is, virtually by definition, a losing game, and one in which our ultimate influence will be limited. As the authors recognize, "it will happen on Iraqi terms," not on ours. How many lives are we prepared to sacrifice simply to delay the ultimate reckoning, and for what?

The Founders Had an Idea for Handling Alberto Gonzales

New York Times: By Adam Cohen

The founders did not want impeachment to be undertaken so casually that, in James Madison’s words, the president and other officers effectively served at the “pleasure of the Senate.” But they also did not want to limit it to a few specific offenses. The phrase “other high crimes and misdemeanors” was intended to give Congress leeway. Impeachment was one of the important checks and balances the founders built into the Constitution. At state ratification conventions, it was promoted as a tool for Congress to rein in any officeholder who “dares to abuse the power vested in him by the people.” Impeachment of Mr. Gonzales would fit comfortably into the founders’ framework. ...

If the House began an impeachment inquiry, Mr. Gonzales would most likely resign rather than risk the unpleasantness of the hearings, and the ignominy of being removed. Congress should think of it as a constitutional tap on the shoulder, to let the attorney general know that the time has truly come for him to go. If Mr. Gonzales did resign, this Congress would most likely be more gracious than the one in 1876, which ignored Mr. Belknap’s hurried resignation and impeached him anyway.

I'm not so sure about the prediction, but with Rove on the way out, maybe W is ready to clear the deck of his present set of personnel headaches. After all, he has a wedding to plan now.

Rich Pickings: Kicking Rove...

New York Times: By Frank Rich

...the Republican reaction to Mr. Rove's departure is more revealing than the cries from his longtime critics. No G.O.P. presidential candidates paid tribute to Mr. Rove, and, except in the die-hard Bush bastions of Murdochland present (The Weekly Standard, Fox News) and future (The Journal), the conservative commentariat was often surprisingly harsh. It is this condemnation of Rove from his own ideological camp — not the Democrats' familiar litany about his corruption, polarizing partisanship, dirty tricks, etc. — that the White House and Mr. Rove wanted to bury in the August dog days. What the Rove critics on the right recognize is that it may be even more difficult for their political party to dig out of his wreckage than it will be for America....

Every poll and demographic accounting finds the Republican Party on the losing side of history, both politically and culturally. Not even a miraculous armistice in Iraq or vintage Democratic incompetence may be able to ride to the rescue. ... Such is the political legacy for a party to which Mr. Rove sold Mr. Bush as "a new kind of Republican," an exemplar of "compassionate conservatism" and the avatar of a permanent Republican majority. ...That sales pitch, as we long ago learned, was all about packaging, not substance. ...

"The face of the Republican Party in Iowa is the face of a losing party, full of hatred toward immigrants, lust for government subsidies, and the demand that any Republican seeking the office of the presidency acknowledge that he's little more than Jesus Christ's running mate."

That face, at once contemptuous and greedy and self-righteous, is Karl Rove's face. Unless someone in his party rolls out a revolutionary new product, it is indelible enough to serve as the Republican brand for a generation.

The Politics of God II

New York Times: By Mark Lilla

The complacent liberalism and revolutionary messianism we’ve encountered are not the only theological options. There is another kind of transformation possible in biblical faiths, and that is the renewal of traditional political theology from within. If liberalizers are apologists for religion at the court of modern life, renovators stand firmly within their faith and reinterpret political theology so believers can adapt without feeling themselves to be apostates. ...

Today, a few voices are calling for just this kind of renewal of Islamic political theology. Some, like Khaled Abou El Fadl, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, challenge the authority of today’s puritans, who make categorical judgments based on a literal reading of scattered Koranic verses. In Abou El Fadl’s view, traditional Islamic law can still be applied to present-day situations because it brings a subtle interpretation of the whole text to bear on particular problems in varied circumstances. Others, like the Swiss-born cleric and professor Tariq Ramadan, are public figures whose writings show Western Muslims that their political theology, properly interpreted, offers guidance for living with confidence in their faith and gaining acceptance in what he calls an alien “abode.” To read their works is to be reminded what a risky venture renewal is. It can invite believers to participate more fully and wisely in the political present, as the Protestant Reformation eventually did; it can also foster dreams of returning to a more primitive faith, through violence if necessary, as happened in the Wars of Religion.

Perhaps for this reason, Abou El Fadl and especially Ramadan have become objects of intense and sometimes harsh scrutiny by Western intellectuals. We prefer speaking with the Islamic liberalizers because they share our language: they accept the intellectual presuppositions of the Great Separation and simply want maximum room given for religious and cultural expression. They do not practice political theology. But the prospects of enduring political change through renewal are probably much greater than through liberalization. By speaking from within the community of the faithful, renovators give believers compelling theological reasons for accepting new ways as authentic reinterpretations of the faith. Figures like Abou El Fadl and Ramadan speak a strange tongue, even when promoting changes we find worthy; their reasons are not our reasons. But if we cannot expect mass conversion to the principles of the Great Separation — and we cannot — we had better learn to welcome transformations in Muslim political theology that ease coexistence. The best should not be the enemy of the good. ...

We have little reason to expect societies in the grip of a powerful political theology to follow our unusual path, which was opened up by a unique crisis within Christian civilization. This does not mean that those societies necessarily lack the wherewithal to create a decent and workable political order; it does mean that they will have to find the theological resources within their own traditions to make it happen. ...

The Politics of God I

New York Times:

So we are heirs to the Great Separation only if we wish to be, if we make a conscious effort to separate basic principles of political legitimacy from divine revelation. Yet more is required still. Since the challenge of political theology is enduring, we need to remain aware of its logic and the threat it poses. This means vigilance, but even more it means self-awareness. We must never forget that there was nothing historically inevitable about our Great Separation, that it was and remains an experiment. In Europe, the political ambiguities of one religion, Christianity, happened to set off a political crisis that might have been avoided but wasn’t, triggering the Wars of Religion; the resulting carnage made European thinkers more receptive to Hobbes’s heretical ideas about religious psychology and the political implications he drew from them; and over time those political ideas were liberalized. Even then, it was only after the Second World War that the principles of modern liberal democracy became fully rooted in continental Europe.

As for the American experience, it is utterly exceptional: there is no other fully developed industrial society with a population so committed to its faiths (and such exotic ones), while being equally committed to the Great Separation. Our political rhetoric, which owes much to the Protestant sectarians of the 17th century, vibrates with messianic energy, and it is only thanks to a strong constitutional structure and various lucky breaks that political theology has never seriously challenged the basic legitimacy of our institutions. Americans have potentially explosive religious differences over abortion, prayer in schools, censorship, euthanasia, biological research and countless other issues, yet they generally settle them within the bounds of the Constitution. It’s a miracle.

Seeing Is Believing

New York Times: By Thomas Friedman

“My fellow Americans, ask yourselves this: What will convey to you, in your gut — without anyone interpreting it — that the surge is working and worth sustaining?” My answer: If I saw something with my own eyes that I hadn’t seen before — Iraq’s Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni leaders stepping forward, declaring their willingness to work out their differences by a set deadline and publicly asking us to stay until they do. That’s the only thing worth giving more time to develop.

But it may just be too late. Had the surge happened in 2003, when it should have, it might have prevented the kindling of all of Iraq’s sectarian passions. But now that those fires have been set, trying to unify Iraq feels like doing carpentry on a burning house.

I’ve been thinking about Iraq’s multi-religious soccer team, which just won the Asian Cup. The team was assembled from Iraqis who play for other pro teams outside Iraq. In fact, it was reported that the Iraqi soccer team hadn’t played a home game in 17 years because of violence or U.N. sanctions. In short, it’s a real team with a virtual country. That’s what I fear the surge is trying to protect: a unified Iraq that exists only in the imagination and on foreign soccer fields.

He's back

I was away for about a week at the National Havurah Committee Summer Institute in New Hampshire, studying the Dead Sea Scrolls with a Catholic scholar from the Vatican, changing patterns of and approaches to Jewish mysticism and kabbalah with a longtime friend probably not best described as a Reform rabbi, and teaching a series of workshops on the Conservative responsa and proposed takannot on gay and lesbian issues--as well as filling my near-depleted spiritual tank to overflowing. Imbibing wisdom--and comradeship-- proved easier in the absence of a computer.

I'll be returning to teaching this fall, and coping with a number of other demands on my time and energies. I suspect my blogging will take a big hit, perhaps to re-emerge in a somewhat different form or format, probably with fewer entries and reduced effort to keep up with so many different topics of interest. We'll see how it goes. Meanwhile, I've just posted a number of items that attracted my attention over the past week or so.

Dear Cindy: Please Don't Run

The Nation Blog: By Katha Pollitt

On July 25, Cindy Sheehan announced that since Nancy Pelosi failed to move to impeach Bush and Cheney by Sheehan's deadline two days earlier, she will run as an independent for Pelosi's seat in Congress. I have a lot of respect for Sheehan, but I hope she'll reconsider.

First of all, should impeachment really be a litmus test? Sure, it would be emotionally satisfying to haul the president before the Senate--look how much fun the Republicans had with Clinton. I understand why some of my Nation colleagues are so keen on it. But it's not going to happen--the numbers in Congress and Senate aren't there , and I don't care how many people sign petitions and call their congressperson, that is not going to change. ...But to insist that they work themselves into a lather for what is essentially a symbolic gesture with no chance of success? I don't see the point of that.

Second, Sheehan's run is futile. There's a place for outsider candidates, even longshots. ... Nancy Pelosi has been a cautious -- too cautious -- leader, and if a lefter candidate could take her seat, fine. But let me go out on a limb here: Sheehan has no chance of defeating her ... Thus, instead of showing the Democrats how strong is the threat from the left, it will show them how weak it is.

Third, and most important, Sheehan already has a crucial role in our politics: as an activist. More than any other single person, she changed the discourse about the war. She put a middle American face on the antiwar movement at a time when it was widely caricatured as a ragtag collection of hippies , Stalinists, and movie stars. She forced the media--and the country -- to acknowledge that antiwar feeling was widespread and growing and included even red staters, even military families. By her simple demand that Bush meet with her and explain why her son died, she pointed up the president's evasions and befuddlement and arrogance -- the ban on photographs of coffins, his seeming lack of concern for the deaths of soldiers, his basic refusal to engage. No matter that she sometimes seemed to be conducting her political education in public. She was a mother wrenched out of her ordinary life by tragedy -- that is a very powerful and inspiring symbolic role....

Still, the place for symbolic protest is in protest movements. Elections are about something else and are played by different rules. There, symbolic figures are mostly wasting their time, and tend to emerge smaller than they went in.

Herewith my comment, republished from The Nation site:

Katha poses a number of significant points, which I see somewhat differently. I agree that based on what we now know, successful impeachment of Bush and/or Chaney is unlikely (Gonzales may be a different case). But I disagree over what follows from that. It is unlikely that Congress--given the Senate rules and closeness of the partisan split there, as well as Bush's veto--will accomplish much in the way of an affirmative legislative agenda. (How much of Pelosi's vaunted first 100 hours shtick will actually find its way into law?). To the extent this Congress can make a contribution, it will come through checks and balances on the prospective Bush agenda (is there one?), and re-establishment of oversight on executive power. That process has begun, and has made some impact. However, the executive branch is doing all it can to frustrate the oversight process and run out the clock. It is yet to be determined how aggressive Congress will be in pursuing its subpoenas and other demands for documents and testimony, and asserting its contempt power. Litigation in the courts will be a slow process at best, and will require complex balancing judgments that may be difficult to predict. In contrast, by launching impeachment inquiries, Congress maximizes its core Constitutional interest in and ability to compel production of documents and witnesses, to investigate the manifest abuses of power in this Administration, and to dramatize, for press and public, this Administration's record of shame.

What higher purpose, or set of accomplishments, is realistically available to this Congress? What else should it be doing in preference to this? Will an impeachment inquiry set back those efforts, or more likely improve their prospects? If the objective is to end the war, or at least force Bush to move more quickly in that direction, is there a better way than this?

That is my most important difference with Katha's analysis. On Cindy Sheehan, I'm inclined to agree with Katha that she is more impressive as an activist/public symbol than as a prospective legislator or policymaker (and that it is worth underlining this distinction), and is more likely to leave the electoral arena diminished than enhanced (if, indeed, her time in the spotlight has not already passed). While I am not a special fan of how Nancy Pelosi has conducted her speakership thus far, it seems to me that a nasty dustup primary contest is unlikely to be terribly productive in either electoral or symbolic terms.

I would like to see the Dems consolidate their position as a governing party before commencing their traditional inclination to eat their own.

Posted by THE WISE BARD 08/17/2007 @ 3:16pm

Hillary Pushes the Button

The Nation Blog: By Robert Scheer .

What in the world was Sen. Hillary Clinton thinking when she attacked Sen. Barack Obama for ruling out the use of nuclear weapons in going after Osama bin Laden? And why aren't her supporters more concerned about yet another egregious example of Clinton's consistent backing for the mindless militarism that is dragging this nation to ruin? So what that she is pro-choice and a woman if the price of proving her capacity to be Commander in chief is that we end up with an American version of Margaret Thatcher?
In response to the 9/11 hijackers, armed with weapons no more sophisticated than $3 box cutters, American military spending, with Senate Armed Services Committee member Clinton's enthusiastic support, has catapulted beyond cold war levels. Senator Clinton has treated the military budget as primarily a pork-barrel target of opportunity for jobs and profit in New York state, supports increased money for missile defense and every other racket the military-industrial complex comes up with, and still feels no obligation to repudiate her vote for the disastrous Iraq war.
Given her sorry record of cheerleading the irrational post-cold war military buildup, do we not have a right, indeed an obligation, to question whether Clinton is committed to creating a more peaceful world? Don't say that we weren't warned if a President Hillary Clinton further imperils our world, as she has clearly positioned herself as the leading hawk in the Democratic field. What other reason was there for first blasting Obama for daring to state that he would meet with foreign leaders whom Bush has branded as sworn enemies, and then for the attack on Obama's very sensible statement that it would be "a profound mistake" to use nuclear weapons in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the attempt to eliminate bin Laden?

You know, I'm really fed up with the "positioning oneself as tough" motif--as Jon Stewart would--or perhaps did--say, "I will eat their testicles." (Probably not the wisest choice of metaphor for a Clinton.) And Obama has done some of it himself. But is it really disqualifyingly naive to say that I would be open to meeting with our adversaries to see if we can improve our relationship after years--or decades--of fruitless and unproductive (or counterproductive) impasse, or that I would not employ nuclear weapons to resolve a political difference of limited magnitude (or megatonnage)? Who is really impressed by the silly, bellicose rhetoric? (Yeah--I'll cover your torture and raise you three Gitmo's! Fix that petfood and unpaint those silly dolls or I'll blast you back to the Stone Age!)

Maybe folks are ready for someone showing quiet confidence, problem solving inclination and ability, and an interest in building constructive relationships. Too bad the someone won't be a female, at least this time around.

The Reality-Based Community: Rove's disciple

: By Mark Kleiman

The Clinton campaign, both the candidate and the surrogates, have been going after Barack Obama hard and personally. He's 'naive' and 'irresponsible,' too inexperienced to trust as Commander in Chief. Now Obama says that, largely through no fault of her own, Clinton is not the best person to bring the country back together. The Clinton campaign's reaction: accusing Obama of 'attack politics.' The lie, and the projection, are transparent. But that's not to say that those tactics won't work. After all, they elected George W. Bush, didn't they? It's not easy to figure out which candidate this year could be the legitimate heir of FDR. But it's not hard to figure out which campaign carries the DNA of Karl Rove.

I didn't say it myself, but I will post it. I think it's largely true, and I don't want 4, or 8, more years of it. Unless the alternative is worse.

A Fundamental Truth, Even in Virtual Reality

Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch - New York Times:

"It’s quite possible they would have moral prohibitions against simulating people, although the fact that something is immoral doesn’t mean it won’t happen.”"

Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch

New York Times:

Dr. Bostrom assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or “posthumans,” could run “ancestor simulations” of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems. Some computer experts have projected, based on trends in processing power, that we will have such a computer by the middle of this century, but it doesn’t matter for Dr. Bostrom’s argument whether it takes 50 years or 5 million years. If civilization survived long enough to reach that stage, and if the posthumans were to run lots of simulations for research purposes or entertainment, then the number of virtual ancestors they created would be vastly greater than the number of real ancestors. There would be no way for any of these ancestors to know for sure whether they were virtual or real, because the sights and feelings they’d experience would be indistinguishable. But since there would be so many more virtual ancestors, any individual could figure that the odds made it nearly certain that he or she was living in a virtual world.

I'm very fatigued, spaced out, and feeling really virtual as I contemplate this.

Who's Sorry Now?

The Nation: By Katha Pollitt

In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, there was no more effective intellectual spokesperson for war than then-Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff. Not for him the contemptuous brawling of Christopher Hitchens or the smooth triumphalism of William Kristol. Pained, sensitive, with the star professor's gift of seeming to wrestle with his thoughts right there in front of you, Ignatieff made the case for war as a humanitarian and human-rights mission: We had to save the Iraqis from Saddam. For supporters of democracy and idealists of all stripes, this was a very persuasive argument. Four years, four months and seventeen days after bombs began falling on Baghdad, Ignatieff, who left Harvard to become deputy leader of Canada's Liberal Party, has finally joined the long parade of prowar commentators who've publicly acknowledged their mistake. On August 5 The New York Times Magazine carried his long, woolly, pompous pseudo-confession 'Getting Iraq Wrong: What the War Has Taught Me About Political Judgment.' Wandering among references to Isaiah Berlin, Churchill, Roosevelt, de Gaulle, Beckett, Burke and Kant, Ignatieff distinguishes between the experimental, enthusiastic mindset natural to academics (himself then) and the "good judgment" and "prudence" required of political leaders (himself now). He thought politics was about all that high-minded stuff he taught at Harvard and let himself get carried away by his sympathy for Iraqi exiles. In other words, Michael Ignatieff supported the war because he was just too smart and too good for this fallen world.

And then Katha really says what's on her mind...

Ignatieff was, without question, the proponent of taking down Saddam's regime that I found most persuasive in the months leading up to the war. His reasons were not Bush's--he was more of a humanitarian interventionist, who advocated selective use of military power to curb genocidal tyrants. I doubt his concept of what the intervention should be, or of what the aftermath should look like, bore much relationship to what actually ensued. But the war was not carried on subject to his direction, and the results have been catastrophic. His recent mea culpa was called for, and probably overdue. That said, I think Katha herself overdoes her critique (especially in parts of the article not reproduced here). Calls for intervention in cases of humanitarian disaster are typically not easy to make, and we have gotten them wrong in both directions (Rwanda? Darfur? vs. Somalia? Iraq?) Ignatieff has tried, more than most, to find a sensible path through, and stumbled badly on Iraq. But not, I think, for the same reasons as the neocons, and not with the same culpability.

Ignatieff's NYT confessional struck me as "off," probably in some of the ways identified by Pollitt, but there is room for a re-telling more probingly critical than Ignatieff's own, but more empathetic than Pollitt's. I haven't quite figured it out--let me know if you find it.

The religious state of Islamic science

Salon Books: By Steve Paulson

Turkish-American physicist Taner Edis explains why science in Muslim lands remains stuck in the past -- and why the Golden Age of Mesopotamia wasn't so golden after all.
In October, Malaysia's first astronaut will join a Russian crew and blast off into space. The news of a Muslim astronaut was cause for celebration in the Islamic world, but then certain questions started popping up. How will he face Mecca during his five daily prayers while his space ship is whizzing around the Earth? How can he hold the prayer position in zero gravity? Such concerns may sound absurd to us, but the Malaysian space chief is taking them quite seriously. A team of Muslim scholars and scientists has spent more than a year drawing up an Islamic code of conduct for space travel.

This kicks off a long and interesting--and likely to be controversial--conversation on scientific thinking, past and present, in Islam. Taner Edis argues that the "science" of medieval Islam (especially mathematics and astronomy, to which Muslims made enormous contributions) bears little, if any, relationship to modern science (from which contemporary Muslims are largely absent, except as basic science transitions into applied technology, including engineering and medicine). Modern science, on this account, is much harder to reconcile with Islamic (and perhaps more generally religious) modes of thinking.

I should note, by the way, that there is a considerable Jewish literature on the religious/halachic issues posed by space travel. Here, as elsewhere, there are interesting occasions for productive conversation between adherents of these faiths. Well, maybe "productive" is not the best choice of adjective, but I already used "interesting".

Churchgoer Tips God For Excellent Week

The Onion :

CHARLESTON, SC—Churchgoer Brad Thaden, 48, reportedly tipped God a little something extra Sunday, claiming that the Almighty had done a better job than usual that week, especially with the weather and his children's behavior.

Glad to hear it. I could use a better week, too. Is that what it takes?

William Gibson on emergent technology

blog.bioethics.net: By Greg Dahlmann

At the end of an otherwise ordinary 'so, you have a new book' interview in Salon, sci-fi author William Gibson drops this remarkable take on emergent technologies: I think what scares people most about new technologies -- it's actually what scares me most -- is that they're never legislated into being. Congress doesn't vote on the cellular telephony initiative and create a cellphone system across the United States and the world. It just happens and capital flows around and it changes things at the most intimate levels of our lives, but we never decided to do it. Somewhere now there's a team of people working on something that's going to profoundly impact your life in the next 10 years and change everything. You don't know what it is and they don't know how it's going to change your life because usually these things don't go as predicted. ... I find that both dreadful and exhilarating.

This is precisely the story of assisted reproductive technologies, and to a lesser degree other developments in biomedicine. Maybe even more so, since cellular telephony requires a system, a network, and some planning (even if not governmental or with other forms of democratic accountability), while many innovations in biomedicine (outside the sphere of FDA regulation) just kind of happen, and spread. My own view of bioethics rests largely on the recognition that we can (and sometimes should) buy time to think some things through a bit better than might otherwise be the case, even though it is rare that scientific development can be halted by public or governmental fiat.

Regulating nanotechnology

blog.bioethics.net: The FDA's Nanotechnology Task Force recently released a report laying out its take on regulation of products containing nanoscale materials. Here's a clip:

A general finding of the report is that nanoscale materials present regulatory challenges similar to those posed by products using other emerging technologies. However, these challenges may be magnified both because nanotechnology can be used in, or to make, any FDA-regulated product, and because, at this scale, properties of a material relevant to the safety and (as applicable) effectiveness of FDA-regulated products might change repeatedly as size enters into or varies within the nanoscale range. In addition, the emerging and uncertain nature of the science and potential for rapid development of applications for FDA-regulated products highlights the need for timely development of a transparent, consistent, and predictable regulatory pathway. The report includes a number of recommendations:

+ Consideration of guidance that would clarify what information manufacturers should give FDA about products, and also when the use of nanoscale materials may change the regulatory status of particular products.

+ That manufacturers contact the FDA early in the product development process. In addition, the report recommends that the agency should assess data needs for regulated nanotechnology products, including biological effects and interactions of nano-particles.

+ That FDA develop in-house expertise and ensure the consideration of new information on nanotechnology as it becomes available. FDA also should evaluate current testing approaches to assess the safety, effectiveness, and quality of nanoscale materials.

Anyone find anything new or surprising in most of that?

The Color of Health Care: Diagnosing Bias in Doctors

washingtonpost.com: By Shankar Vedantam

Long before word recently broke that white referees in the National Basketball Association were calling fouls at a higher rate on black athletes than on white athletes, and long before studies found racial disparities in how black and white applicants get called for job interviews, researchers noted differences in the most troubling domain of all -- disparities in survival and health among people belonging to different racial groups. Black babies, according to the federal government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have higher death rates than white babies. Black women are more than twice as likely as white women to die of cervical cancer. And in 2000, the death rate from heart disease was 29 percent higher among African Americans than among white adults, and the death rate from stroke was 40 percent higher.

Whether these troubling statistics are best understood in terms of physician bias is an open question, although bias--both intended and unconscious--almost certainly is part of the explanation.

D.C. Circuit Protects Terminally Ill Patients ... From Themselves

Alliance for Justice:

Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs vs. Food and Drug Administration - Decision 08/07/07 Abigail Burroughs was only nineteen years old when she learned that she had head and neck cancer. Eighteen months of painful chemotherapy and radiation did nothing to stop its growth. Her world-reknowned doctors told Abigail about two new drugs that could save her life. Unfortunately for Abigail, these drugs were still in the final stages of their Food and Drug Administration (FDA) trials and only available to a limited number of patients. Though both drugs were eventually approved, it didn't happen in time to save Abigail. Out of government-approved treatment options, Abigail died at the age of twenty-one.

I'll be taking a look at this. One's sympathies are naturally with the dying patient in cases like this (think also of marijuana use by dying patients sustaining the side-effects of chemotherapy). But not so long ago, there was a fair degree of consensus that dying patients, and their families, were subject to exploitation and disappointment of unrealistic--and perhaps manipulated--hopes (think apricot pits), and needed protection from charlatans and overzealous researchers eager to find credulous subjects. Much has changed in recent decades, in large part due to the (early stage of the) AIDS epidemic, the demands of AIDS activists, and the changes in attitude that followed in their wake.

The FDA once followed a policy of "compassionate use" exceptions in cases like Abigail's--I'm not sure from this account why that didn't happen here.

Scan sees brain activity in 2nd vegetative patient

Reuters: By Maggie Fox

Scans have shown near-normal brain activity in a second patient who is in a vegetative state, British researchers reported on Monday in a study that may show a way to predict who is likely to recover from the usually hopeless condition. And they said a woman who made headlines last year by playing a game of tennis in her mind has recovered somewhat from her vegetative state -- suggesting the theory may be correct.

More news on the minimally conscious front. This snippet is too sparse to tell much--I'll be looking for a fuller report. There are probably distinctions worth making among severely brain injured patients, which have so far proved elusive to our diagnostic protocols and technologies. Not every such patient is a Terry Schiavo, with overwhelming and irreversible brain destruction. The hard questions, for law and ethics, as well as medicine, are what should follow from that.