The two distinctive groups of defenders

 

While harshly criticized by many, the decision by Ashley’s parents and the special ethics committee of the hospital was also strongly defended by some professionals. I imagine that’s how people remember the controversy two years ago. But were those defenders all really unbiased or uninterested “professional”s? Reviewing who they are, I find two distinctive groups among them.

 

1.      a group of transhumanists.

 

George Dvorsky : He made that famous (or infamous) “grotesque” remark about full-grown women with mental disabilities and quoted in Ashley’s father’s blog. In the father’s blog and the BBC story(January 4, 2007) where he was interviewed, he was introduced as an executive director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. What’s IEET? Visit its website and you’ll find it to be one of the spin offs of the World Transhumanist Association. He is a cofounder and the president of the Tront Transhumanist Association. He also runs the transhumanists’ blog, Betterhumans. You can read his Ashley posts in his blog “Sentient Developments: Transhumanist perspective on science, philosophy, ethics and the future of intelligent life” from here.

 

James Hughes : He was also introduced as the director of IEET when he defended the case in the CNN Nancy Grace program on January 4, 2007. Dr. Hughes was serving as the executive director of the World Transhumanist Association then, but it was not mentioned in the program. In his book, “Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond To The Redesigned Human Of The Future,” he categorizes the mentally disabled under “the disabled citizenship” along with great apes.

 

Julian Savulescu : Bioethics Professor of Oxford who coauthored the essay,” The Ashley Treatment: Best Interest, Convenience, and Parental Decision-Making,”  Hastings Center Report March-April, 2007, which defended the growth attenuation part of the case. Dr. Savulescu’s full CV is here. He is a very strong proponent of eugenics and use of drugs in sport as you see here. Dr. Savulescu joined this debate in New York last year and argued for performance-enhancing drug use in sports. Another of the three-men team was Dr. Norman Fost who had defended the Ashley case most strongly as I point out below. 

 

Mark Sheehan,:  He is one of the authors of the above mentioned Hastings Center Report article about the Ashley case. We don’t know much about him. But visiting his homepage, you may find his way of thinking pretty transhumanistic.

 

Peter Singer: I’m not really sure if he should be categorized as a transhumanist. But as one of the transhumanists writes “Peter Singer-style ethics are sometimes invoked in transhumanist discourse” here, he seems to share some of his values with those extremists. The OP-ED Dr. Singer wrote about the case for the NY Times is here. Dr. Singer recently commented on the case again last year. You will find a YouTube video of his presentation where he mentioned the Ashley case in a conference ”Cognitive Disability: A Challnege to Moral Philosophy” at Stony Brook University last September here.

 

 

2.      a group of friends of the hospital

 

Benjamin Wilfond : Dr. Wilfond defended the case in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer story of January 5, 2007, saying Ashley’s surgery was no different from a cleft palate surgery. Dr. Wilfond was introduced in the story as the director of the Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics “at the University of Washington”. It is actually a center at the Seattle Children’s Hospital, the same center where Dr. Dikema serves as the director of education. A very much interested party for that matter. That makes it strange that Dr. Wilfond was not quoted as an insider of the hospital in the earlier part of the story where Dr. Gunther was quoted but in the latter part where outside professionals’ comments were introduced.

 

Joel E. Frader : He was quoted in some news stories (AP story of January 4, the Gazette-Times of January 6 and maybe some others), saying “This particular treatment, even if it’s OK in this situation, and I think it probably is, …….” without providing with any reasons why he thinks it “probably OK” only in the Ashley case. He is actually criticizing the treatment while defending this particular case alone. An interesting fact is that he had been invited to the 2006 Pediatric Bioethics Conference of the Seattle Children’s hospital for a presentation just six months before the controversy broke out. Curiously, he seems to be increasingly more often invited to speak at seminars and conferences at the Saettle Children’s for the last couple of years.  

  

Lainie Ross : She defended the case along with Dr. Wilfond in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer story of January 5, 2007, and said, “Ashley’s parents should be commended for what they did.” She was quoted in some other news stories .  Dr. Ross is an associate director at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital and one of the star speakers who has been regularly invited to the pediatric bioethics conferences of the Seattle Children’s Hospital. Listening to the webcast of the July 14 panel of the 2007 conference, she sounds pretty close to Dr. Norman Fost who is also a regular big shot speaker of the conference.

  

Norman Fost : He defended the case most strongly and most radically. He appeared in Larry King Live of January 12, 2007 where Dr. Diekema also joined the debate, and very strongly defended the case as if he was, unlike Dr. Diekema, an uninterested third party ethicist. Dr. Fost is professor of pediatrics and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin where Dr. Diekema and Dr. Wilfond had studied during their residency. Dr. Diekema, acting as an MC at the 2007 bioethics conference of the hospital, introduced Dr. Fost as “mentor of mine.” Dr. Fost is, like Dr. Lainie Ross, one of the regular star speakers of the conferences. Listening to the webcasts of his presentations at the conferences, you’ll find him a very radical bioethicist with strong opinions supporting futile care law such as the one in Texas and performance-enhancing drug use in sport. Actually he joined the three-member team along with Dr. Savulescu in the drug use debate in NY last year. There is so much more to be said about him. More will follow about him in future posts.

 

Finally, I’d like to call your attention to a very curious e-mail discussion held on the Scientific American. com site on January 5, 2007. “The Pillow Angel Case—Three Bioethicists Weigh In: We asked three of the country’s most esteemed bioethicists to give their professional opinion – was the “Ashley Treatment” a wise decision?” by Christoper Mims. The story first gave a short explanation of the case and wrote “In order to cut through the noise, we asked three bioethicists – doctors not unlike those who, as members of a medical ethics board, authorized the treatment in the first place – to relate their professional opinion of the case. All three bioethicists came down firmly on the side of the parents and the decision of the original ethics board—but with a few reservations.” Who were the three bioethicists? Dr. Joel E. Frader, Dr. Norman Fost and Dr. Benjamin Wilfond. Wow….