Embryo wars - science, morality and a Bill ...

The Embryo Bill finally gets its second reading in Parliament today. The three main questions put to MPs will be:
Hybrid embryos: scientists want to create embryos that are over 99% human for research into stem cells by implanting DNA from an adult human nucleus into a cow or rabbit egg.
Access to IVF for lesbian couples: the bill changes the wording of the current act to remove the "need for a father" provision for children conceived by IVF.
"Saviour siblings". The circumstances in which children genetically matched to a sibling with a genetic disease can be created by IVF are to be relaxed.

Tory MP Nadine Dorries has also tabled amendments to reduce the limit for abortions to 20 weeks instead of the current 24. For more on the proposals see the Guardian.

the debate:

I don’t think there’s been a reasoned debate in the media about the Bill. There’s been hyperbole from Cardinal Keith O'Brien warning against ‘Frankenstein science’, there’s been the question of allowing a free vote on certain aspects but not the entire Bill, but no debate. I wonder how MPs have taken a decision on how to vote on the legislation. What did they read? Whom have they consulted? What principles have they applied?

It is a moral issue. However, as usual, the more liberal voices do not make the news. I believe morality has a place within liberalism (as a philosophy, in fact I believe liberal ideas are fundamentally moral ideas. I would thus welcome moral issues being discussed in the public arena from a liberal point of view, which is what I try to do on this blog. (See BBC on previous stem cell research controversy).

the morality:

Scientific and technological advancements are increasingly entering the sphere of morality. Whilst some neglect the moral implications of medical or scientific research, some others are monopolising the moral discourse and firmly grounding it along absolutist lines, such as embryos having equal value to human beings and so on. I’m not clear what the official or unofficial position of the various groups is as the debate on abortion has been added to the issue of stem cell research and the issue is getting rather muddled.
From my perspective, morality being ‘not in heaven’, but down here, where there are real situations, benefits, harm, good and evil, all at the same time, it cannot be reduce to black and white. It is about choosing what is best, or better or, sometimes, just the lesser evil. There are various interpretations of ‘life’ (especially when it starts and ends) and there are many aspects to its sanctity. This is why you need flexibility, which makes Judaism complex, but isn’t life complex?

From a ‘moral point of view’, I believe society should pursue the common good. Human beings are partners in creation with God and are under moral obligation to fight injustice and suffering, be that coming from our own actions or the natural environment. From the point of view of ‘moral liberalism’, we should strive to reconcile the pursuit of the common good with individual freedom. General moral principles, however, such as the ‘sanctity of life’, require interpretation in the light of knowledge of facts.

science & morality:

In this instance, hybrid embryos are considered by the scientific community to be an avenue to find a cure for diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. There might not be the only one, but a pretty good one. It is true that it is now possible to employ adult stem cells, however this is so because scientists have developed the necessary knowledge based on their research on embryonic stem cells. As such, the case for the pursuit of the common good is, I believe, quite clear. The present Bill seems to be putting in place the right safeguards while allowing research that can save many lives. The Bill does not allow the creation from scratch of embryos, nor are the hybrid embryos allowed to develop after 14 days or to be implanted.

In Judaism (see, for example, Orthodox site Aish), life does not start at conception, but later on. This is mostly derived by the pecuniary sanctions imposed on someone who unintentionally causes a miscarriage by striking a woman (Ex.21,22). It is not a capital crime.
The foetus becomes a full human being once it’s born. Nevertheless, it is protected during the pregnancy and abortion ‘on demand’ is not halachically permitted. There need to be serious grounds for abortion to be allowed, which vary depending on the specific situation. They tend to include psychological trauma to the mother, rape, incest and, for some, disability. Opinions vary, however, on what constitute legitimate grounds, not only between Reform Liberal and Orthodox Judaism, but also within each movement. Most importantly, it cannot be regulated according to general principles; rather it needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

That’s why most Jewish leaders from across the religious spectrum have supported the Bill.

Maidenhead Synagogue Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain said:

“Judaism is just as concerned at the sanctity of human life as Catholicism but strongly differs from Cardinal Keith O'Brien's Easter sermon against the Embryology Bill. The creation of human-animal hybrid embryos for medical research is not to be condemned as 'Frankenstein science' but welcomed as a life-saving development that uses our God-given skills in the noblest of causes.
Crossing boundaries always carries risks, but providing safeguards against abuse are put in place, there is no need to fear the future and it is irresponsible to hold-back the progress that could benefit so many lives. The Cardinal is accusing scientists of creating monsters, but maybe it is even more monstrous to obstruct possible cures.”

Bloody Liberals

I don’t know how Americans have come to restrict their vocabulary so much, but the dichotomy Liberals (which in the US is taken to mean left, from centre-left to loony-left) and Conservatives (meaning right-wing) seriously distorts any meaningful understanding of political science. Such acception empties the term ‘liberal’ of its authentic meaning. Liberal does not mean lefty!!!
When such flawed terminology is applied to morality is epistemologically wrong and just bonkers. It leads to the endorsement of an old-fashioned political duality left/right (what about the true liberals?), which in ethics becomes Manichean. In short: it’s nonsense.
The culprit this time are a group of ‘moral psychologists’, including Professor Jonathan Haidt, who has caused me great irritation by entering the world of political theory, philosophy and theology with the instruments of biology. It's a bit like analysing a poem with a ruler.
I’m not against moral psychology per se. It seems obvious to me that human beings, as part of the natural world, would have biological traits that would support the development of ideas and morality. You can’t play music without an instrument (I include the voice as instrument). I have no problem even accepting that some people might have a certain predisposition to behaving in a ‘moral’ way, such as giving to charity, having compassion of others etc. This is why, at least in Judaism, charity is charity when it involves a ‘sacrifice’, when it ‘pains’ you in some way. But this stuff is seriously flawed.

The ‘fun’ part are the tests. Haidt has researched the phenomenon of disgust, but his interpretation of the term is a bit off the wall and its application in the tests simply puzzling. I mean, one might not find eating paper disgusting, but if the question asks you to choose between a piece of fruit and paper, isn’t the one who chooses paper just an eejit?
It turns out my ‘disgust’ scale is higher than average. For Haidt this should mean that I have a strong sense of purity/sanctity, which is linked to mortality, the body, blood etc. I take it to mean that I have good manners!
They are clearly (badly) designed for Americans and many questions just don’t make sense. For example:

- Say something bad about your nation (which you don't believe to be true) while calling in, anonymously, to a talk-radio show in a foreign nation.

Err, just read my blog! I do mean what I say though when I write about Italy and the UK. I do not, however, ascribe the problems I encounter with both countries to inherent characteristics of the (ever changing) populations. I'd like to think my whinges are analyses of the socio-political situation at the present moment.

- Curse the founders or early heroes of your country (in private, nobody hears you).

If it’s in private and if they are dead, what’s the point of cursing them? Seriously, in Europe this doesn't make any sense. Besides, what is a 'curse'? A complaint? An insult? A shout for help? An attempt to break free from authority and affirm one's personhood?

- Renounce your citizenship and take one of another country.

I am a EU citizen, which means there’s no point in changing it to another European national citizenship. I wouldn’t give up my EU citizenship because it gives me more rights than probably any other. Besides, giving it up would require moving or applying for permanent leave and so on. I'm, of course, culturally European but citizenship is a legal category.


The problem with Haidt’s theory. These tests seem to aim to identify a 'instinctive' morality, however morality is contextual. There are always
conditions one is in and consequences for one's action. That's why biology can't measure it.
Haidt has developed the psychological understanding of morality from matters of harm, rights and justice to include other categories such as loyalty and authority, thus going beyond the individual. He claims that there are five psychological foundations for the world’s many moralities: harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity.
He also claims “Cultures vary on the degree to which they build virtues on these five foundations. As a first approximation, political liberals value virtues based on the first two foundations, while political conservatives value virtues based on all five. A consequence of this thesis is that justice and related virtues (based on the fairness foundation) make up half of the moral world for liberals, while justice-related concerns make up only one fifth of the moral world for conservatives.”

Haidt misses the point. He wants people to get on so if liberals and conservatives could understand each other a bit more, the world would be a better place. The point of Liberalism (European acception) is that you do not impose your morals on others. I might be part of a religious/political/cultural community, but I have the right to criticise it, act according to what I think is right, not just what the group or authority decides. So Haidt’s harm and fairness should be replaced with freedom of choice.

1. Language: Haidt makes assumptions about the meaning of the words he employs. This is evident in the tests, where one needs to apply their intended meaning and restrict one’s answers. For example, he mentions chastity in relation to purity/sanctity, what does it mean? To me, chastity can refer to many things, not just sexuality. When referred to sexuality, I interpret it as sex in a respectful and meaningful relationship, since I believe that there is something sacred about (respectful) relationships, love and sexuality (this interpretation of chastity is also part of the Vatican thinking). I would not interpret it, however, as ‘no sex before marriage’. However, I fear that Haidt attaches that narrow meaning to the world. Not to mention ‘purity’ which in Judaism is a rather difficult concept best explained as immanence. It follows that it gets interpreted and re-interpreted according to the context. Haidt’s rigidity of interpretation makes the whole exercise pointless.

2. Liberalism vs. Communitarianism: Haidt could have referred to the dichotomy of liberalism/communitarianism (which might require some political science). Of course, in this context, liberals are NOT Haidt’s lefties. In fact, arguably, many concerns of social justice come from the communitarian tradition rather than the liberal one. Haidt mentions policies of positive discrimination which are clearly not policies descending from liberal philosophy (although they might be adopted by liberal parties). As a liberal, I have some problems with communitarianism, however I believe that my liberalism comes from my morality and that our rights and freedoms are dependent on us living in a society. If I were on a desert island, I wouldn’t have any rights or duties, although I could play lots of records without bothering colleagues ;) (sorry, a Radio 4 moment).

3. Liberalism: real liberalism, unlike Haidt’s broad coalition of lefties, rests upon the idea of individual autonomy above community. It does not however mean that the individual is not in the community. Therefore, individual claims need to be adjusted to the ‘claims’ of the community. The idea of authority also presents difficulties. In traditional societies, the male ‘elders’ might have been the authority dictating the rules of behaviour, but we no longer live in a traditional society. The democratic ideal has sunk deeply into our conscience and ‘traditional authority’ has waned. However, if by ‘authority’ we mean legitimate ‘power’ such as the legal system, we are bound by it.

4. Utilitarianism: Haidt’s lack of political analysis seems to justify a utilitarian position with a streak of relativism. He argues that for those of conservative views, their attachment to order and perceived lack of change serves a human need. Morality goes beyond usefulness. You cannot justify harm or injustice on the basis of usefulness. Human beings are not pawns of society. This is fundamental to religion and to liberalism and this is why I think liberalism has moral foundations.

5. Modernity: personal autonomy is a modern philosophical category (and reality!). This means that I might consider the Talmud or the Bible authoritative, however I would interpret its teaching in the light of the ethical principles I derive from my tradition. This means that I don’t read the Bible literally, which is a relatively recent (200yrs) trend anyway!

6. Morality is contextual: in order to understand a situation in its ethical perspective, one needs to consider the conditions in which of the moral agent acts, the likely consequences, what brings the moral agent to act in a certain way. E.g. we can say that adultery is wrong, but if the adulterer has suffered domestic violence for years and fears leaving the spouse, is most definitely not the same. As I argued before, a moral dilemma is NOT about right and wrong, but wrong and wrong (with a bit of right on both sides probably).

Religion, blind faith and lost beauty

I find John Gray’s critical review of the new ‘atheists’ a little sweeping and weak. He rightly points to their lack of self-understanding and their little knowledge of religion and indeed science and liberalism. That’s the easy bit though. What the article lacks, although admittedly it would have become an essay, is a deeper understanding of what religion is; what faith is and why it’s coming back; and the difference between religious faith and ‘blind faith’. For the record, ‘blind faith’ is NOT faith in something that cannot be proven. Blind faith is belief in something about the physical world despite contrary evidence.
Gray suggests that religion is back due to the retreat and defeat of XX ideologies, such as fascism and communism. More to the point, ideologies replaced religion, albeit for a relatively short period of time.
Now religion is back, although it’s difficult to tell what shape it’ll take. It is back because people need meaning and answers in front of the confusion that is enveloping our world. We’re possibly at the climax of a technological revolution, which is shattering our convictions and identity just as much as the Industrial Revolution did.
The Industrial Age ushered a new world where power was reinterpreted (Marx), where society was dissected (Weber) and where even our inner self was analysed (Freud). In such an uncertain multifaceted world, people sought certainties and unity. Fascism and Communism dominated our understanding of modernity while threading upon dissent and liberty.
People need again certainties and meaning. Perhaps there will always be people, be it Grayling, Dawkins, Dennett or religious fundamentalists, who need dogmatic certainties. It matters little whether such dogmas have a religious or ‘scientific’ flavour. In actual fact, I don’t particularly mind other people’s dogmas as long as these are not imposed on others.
Personally, I thrive in doubt. I like complexities and don’t mind contradictions because this is life. Life goes beyond categories. This, I believe, is what it means to be liberal: to continuously challenge oneself and one’s understanding of the world and morality. Liberal theology has no dogmas and liberal science has no forgone conclusions. Of this mysterious world the dogmatic mind most resents its poetry and contradictory truths that cannot be categorised and labelled. Let’s hope this new revolution will not be dominated by dogmatic minds. Let's hope they will not succeed in taking away our sense of beauty. For all, then, would be lost.

Science, religion and the Golden Compass

This was one of those times when I wondered why I still bother going to the cinema at all. The Golden Compass is visually unimaginative, the acting is perfunctory, the script is bland and the morale utter trash.
The experience is made worse by the tendency of cinema theatres to keep the volume ridiculously high. I’m not sure whether that is done to compensate for lack of substance or to keep you awake.
The fuss about GC is in its ‘morale’, which is an unsophisticated whinge against authority. I understand the book (Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights) is supposedly critical of the Catholic Church for abusing its authority by keeping people in the dark. The film tones it down into a lacklustre opposition to authority.
When I sat in the cinema and watched the never ending nonsense, I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about. Not having read what it was meant to be about, I was interpreting the inadequate script as a dumbed down version of the creation story. Accordingly, human beings transgressed authority and, as a result, evil becomes present in the world tempting people. The ‘authority’, aiming to keep people in their childhood ignorance and innocence, capture children before temptation can lead them astray.
One could even interpret it more blandly as a metaphor for history: a successive series of conquering what is perceived as evil, be it poverty, powerlessness, injustice and captivity, regardless of the means and oppression of others.
No such luck. The Golden Compass is paranoid fear of religious authority. Perhaps someone should point out to Pullman that the Catholic Church, and most other religious ‘authorities’, have lost their authority and power long time ago. I suppose it’s easier to look into the past (about 200 years in fact) and cover one’s eyes to our 21st century’s challenges.
Even so, the script is full of mistakes, using words inappropriately and confusing concepts such as ‘freedom’ with ‘free inquiry’ and ‘free will’. These are three separate concepts bundled together in the film by sheer ignorance.
Pullman seems to argue that authority wields power over people taking their ‘free will’ away, (by which he probably means free choice instead) and impedes free inquiry, such as the pursuit of knowledge, which he identifies it with modern science.
Free will is a philosophical category; it generally means choosing between good and evil, not what you’re having for lunch! Authorities, let alone the Catholic Church, have never taken away one’s free will. They have taken away one’s freedom by imprisoning and killing, and free choice by censoring books or people.
Pullman is stuck in the past when the Catholic Church waged war against modern science. Aside from the fact that history is much more complicated than this, the Catholic Church, at least, accepts of the theory of evolution and wields very little power, if any.
Pullman’s ignorance leads him to confine free inquiry to scientific research and to call scientific knowledge ‘truth’. Oopsy daisy!
The pursuit of the truth, being transcendent, is primarily philosophical and religious and is beyond the scope of scientific inquiry which concerns itself (or should concern itself) with objective reality.
Such incompetent ‘defenders’ of scientific inquiry feel under attack (not sure why since the bio-sciences get most of research funding) and launch an anachronistic tirade against an authority that is no more. If Pullman feels so strongly about authorities deciding for the rest of us, he should look elsewhere, at the new elites wielding power over knowledge.

What is intelligence?

Professor Flynn’s ‘What is intelligence?’ is not a book about intelligence. It’s a book about IQ. The Flynn effect deals with the rise of average IQ test scores (see below for more info).
The problem is that IQ scores do not measure intelligence. Flynn himself argues that IQ tests measure only a minor sort of "abstract problem-solving ability" with little practical significance.
The problem is that people see numbers and think them as ‘authoritative’! There is a tendency at wanting everything to be quantifiable and ‘scientifically proven’. Frankly, this undermines science itself.
1. There are no innate intellectual abilities, including logic, that are not conditioned by one’s environment, culture and educational experience. One might have a predisposition for logic or other ways of processing information, but, ultimately, one’s knowledge and practice will allow that predisposition to grow or stale. That’s why the best way to develop one’s logical abilities is through the study of latin, greek and algebra.
2. IQ tests are dependent on the people who devise them, and what they think counts as intelligence. It’s about what questions they ask and how they ask them.
3. There is no space for insight and understanding.
IQ tests can tell us something very valuable, however. They correctly identify egotistical eejits who think intelligence can be quantified.

For more on Flynn, see

Flynn effect - University of Indiana

Flynn effect - Wikipedia

Science and prejudice

James Watson, Nobel prize for discovering DNA (thanks to Rosalind Franklin’s research), got himself in trouble by suggesting in an interview with the Independent that blacks are less intelligent than whites. This is only the latest in a series of very unscientific statements. As detailed in the Independent,

In 1997 he suggested in a newspaper interview that a woman should have the right to abort a foetus if it was found to be carrying a "gay" gene. His attempts to justify his stance only made matters worse. He had been speaking in favour of choice for women, he said, but added "because most women want to have grandchildren ... it's common sense". …
Then in 2000 in a lecture at Berkeley University, after showing images of women in bikinis and veiled Muslim women, he suggested that there is a link between exposure to sunlight and libido. "That's why you have Latin lovers," he said. "You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient." He then went on to show a photograph of Kate Moss and assert that thin people are unhappy and therefore ambitious. "Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them," he added. Fat people may also be more sexual, he suggested, because their bloodstreams contain higher levels of leptin. …
He has talked about a gene for stupidity and suggested that stupid people should be aborted.

Watson sees the world through a deterministic kaleidoscope that makes him misunderstand genetics itself. He might think that he’s a free thinker, a real scientist who questions morality, culture, politics in the light of … that is the problem. There are no facts supporting his views only prejudice. In this latest episode, Watson equates intelligence with IQ tests, a culture specific measurement of certain abilities, which leave out intelligence that is difficult when not impossible to measure. All this stuff is very similar to the countless research done trying to find genetic, and presumably unalterable, differences between men and women. In reality, genetics is predicated upon mutability, upon the interaction between environment and genotypes. This pseudo-science of seeing genetics as some sort of pre-ordained system determining one’s abilities runs contrary to evolutionary theory and enlightenment philosophy.
Therefore, the Science Museum was quite right to cancel Watson’s talk. Watson’s comments were bad science and bad morality, but there’s more. If perverting science in order to justify and rationalise prejudices wasn't enough, help is at hand from people such as Professor Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council and a professor of neuroscience at Oxford University, who defend Watson’s ‘freedom of speech’, clearly not understanding science, ethics and freedom of speech.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding here. Freedom of speech is not at stake. Watson can say and write what he wants, and we are free to say he’s an eejit. More to the point, if an educational institution, such as the Science Museum, engages a scientist to give a talk about science and he turns out not to be the brightest torch in the box, the institution would be quite right to decide to spend their money in a better way!
But, indeed, there would be a better way: just get them all back in the classroom to write "I'm thick" on the blackboard 100 times.

Liberal? It's all in the mind err... brain!

Research by psychologist David Amodio found that a specific region of the brain's cortex is more sensitive in people who consider themselves liberals than in self-declared conservatives. As reported in the Chicago Tribune:

The brain region in question helps people shift gears when their usual response would be inappropriate, supporting the notion that liberals are more flexible in their thinking. "Say you drive home from work the same way every day, but one day there's a detour and you need to override your autopilot," said Amodio, a professor at New York University. "Most people function just fine. But there's a little variability in how sensitive people are to the cue that they need to change their current course."
That "cue" is processed in a part of the brain known as the anterior cingulate cortex, and Amodio was able to monitor its electrical activity by hooking his subjects up to electroencephalographs (EEGs) while they performed laboratory tests.

I wouldn't make too much of this, but I would definitely say that some people are very rigid in their thinking, be they rightwing or leftwing. They think in black & white terms and cannot manage complexities. It’s all for or against, soft or tough, with no understanding of the issues and no clue on how to solve it. Their brain’s ‘wiring’ might make it more difficult to see the issue from different perspectives and take into account variables and consequences, but surely not impossible. Attributing too much importance to biology risks obfuscating our human nature, which is indeed very complex and dependent on many factors. It is those who make too much of our biological/genetic/chemical make up, as determinant of behaviour and ideas, that might have an inflexible cortex. But then again, I'm liberal!

The Century of the Self

I watched the documentary The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis the other day. It’s fascinating, yet Adam Curtis treats human beings as those irrational beings whose minds Edward Bernays wanted to control. In summary, Bernays invented advertising by using his uncle Freud’s ideas about the unconscious. He associated products with desires and got everybody hooked on consumerism. After Nazi Germany, Bernays thought necessary, in order to maintain democracy, that the masses had to be manipulated. Satisfying their desires would have kept their irrational unconscious forces at bay. The equation: consumerism = democracy, was soon advocated by many. In the 1960s, the idea was challenged and psychotherapy was advocating the expression of the inner self. Needless to say that ‘power’ exploited this celebration of the self by tailoring advertising to the ‘Me Generation’. In the final episode, the documentary applies the theory to politics seen more as a victim of the ‘me me me’ mantra trying to give people what they wanted through spin and polls. Curtis seems to think that politics by applying psychology has stopped being about rational debate and has regressed to emotions.
It’s a long documentary so I’ll make only few comments.

1. Adam Curtis’ paranoia: there is no place for complexity and contradictions. There are the good people like Roosevelt who fought against the unrestrained capitalism of the market and the conspirators (= big business, CIA, Bernays, Anna Freud?) who want to control people’s minds, albeit to ensure the preservation of democracy. Err, businesses just wanted to sell more cars!
2. Irrational unconscious desires: only sex, money and power figure as unconscious desires. Leaving aside the definition of unconscious (vs. subconscious and so on), whatever happened to the desire for justice, love and respect? Too noble to be seen as emotions? This twisted idea that human ‘rationality’ is superior to our ‘irrationality’, i.e. feelings, is reminiscent of misogynistic Greek thought. It’s never clear what this phantom rationality is (being able to do sums?) and feels rather reductionist and materialistic.
3. Politics: Curtis seems to regret the fact that politicians have sold their souls to the devil (psychology & spin presumably) and have abandoned rational debate. Once more he implies that emotions are bad and shouldn't be listened to. Whilst I agree that emotions run the risk of turning politics into demagoguery, politics is about ideas and about how you feel about them. There’s no equation to prove ideas’ ‘objectivity’. I believe that individual rights and freedoms are paramount because I’ve always had. Politics is about ideas, symbols (NHS, schools…), identity and many other things, not about what is more practical. In politics, you’re dealing with people’s lives. The practical details can be up for discussions (mostly among civil servants), but people vote for a vision, not a manual. Emotions might be difficult to handle but this is what human beings are made of. Managing expectations and people’s emotions is what makes politics challenging and rewarding.

Adam Curtis forgot that we can choose and we do choose. That’s why businesses had to change tactics and products to make them more personal, what we want rather than what is cheaper to produce. They are ahead. Government is starting to catch up now and move to personalised services because, guess what, people are complex and are not all the same!

Circumcision - what's your view?

The FT magazine today carries an article on the potential health benefits of circumcision. The author stays clear from taking a side in this rather controversial topic. I won’t comment on the religious meaning of it, partly because I believe that most religious practices are vested with religious meaning once they have become customary for whatever reason (political, sanitary, social …). Circumcision, dietary laws, dress (of whatever religion) were not ‘invented’ by a religion, rather they were employed by the religious authorities/community and have thus received spiritual meaning. This does not mean that I consider them devoid of religious meaning or value. I just think that it’s up to you! And I won’t state where I stand personally (and theologically) because I’m not that sure and as I’m female I don’t need to worry!
There are Jews and Muslims, though, who would advocate circumcision on hygienic grounds rather than religious grounds. I believe this is an apologetic stance aimed at rationalising something that touches one’s emotions deeply. So what’s the evidence?

"In March, the World Health Organisation and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAids) urged countries to consider implementing circumcision programmes to combat Aids. The scientific basis for that statement was the combined evidence from three substantial clinical trials conducted in Africa that compared the rate with which circumcised and uncircumcised heterosexual men contracted HIV. The studies – one in South Africa, another in Kenya and a third in Uganda – showed that men who had been circumcised had a roughly 60 per cent lower risk of becoming HIV positive than their uncircumcised counterparts."

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, yes, but as Tim Hargreave, a urologist from Edinburgh, who has written the WHO/UNAids manual on performing circumcisions, explains in the article:

“In countries with high prevalence of HIV, cost-benefit analyses would suggest circumcising this group is the most cost-effective thing that can be done.”

What about Western countries?

"Most mainstream medical societies’ positions on the practice broadly agree: in the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and elsewhere, the relevant bodies say that, for the most part, there is no good clinical reason to subject infants to it. “There is no medical indication for routine neonatal circumcision,” the Royal Australasian College of Physicians says, although it adds that circumcision significantly reduces the risk of urinary tract infections (which affect fewer than 2 per cent of boys) and penile cancer, which affects one in 100,000 men in developed countries. Balanced against a complication rate from circumcision of up to 5 per cent, the Australian doctors say, it just isn’t worth it."

Percentages aside, what is interesting is that there are very strong views on both sides. It is also interesting to note, as the article mentions, that the prudish Victorians were quite keen on circumcision as they turned against the foreskin with vengeance and blame it "for everything from syphilis to masturbation and bed-wetting."
In my view, in the context of a contemporary Western liberal democracy, circumcision has very little to do with health and very much to do with religion and sexuality, gender and identity. But I'd like to hear your view.
That aside, it seems rather obvious to me that better hygiene, starting from the regular use of the bidet, is essential. I wonder whether there’ll ever be a study establishing the percentage of risk as a result of poor hygiene. In the meantime, wash your bits!

Faith, religion and violence to language

Here we go again. Here is yet another in a seemingly endless string of 'authors' taking advantage of the public's renewed interest in religion in order to sell books.
Christopher Brookmyre rightly observes that “belief in spite of an absence of proof or even in the face of compelling contrary evidence … needs not merely to be challenged, but to be given the full point-and-laugh treatment”. He will thus be pleased that his faithful claim that “no belief in the afterlife equals no suicide bombers” qualifies for such treatment. Mr Brookmyre strangely connects spiritualism with religious faith to discredit the whole of religious faith. Belief in the afterlife does not imply belief in the possibility of communicating with the other side. That is why spiritualism and magic have been systematically condemned by main religions since biblical times. On the contrary, one does not need to be religious to believe in an afterlife or magic.
More worryingly, Mr Brookmyre seems to ignore the meaning of the words he so clumsily employs. First of all, faith and belief are not necessarily confined to the realm of the transcendent. As such, faith in matters related to the physical world, such as mid-nineteenth century’s biological beliefs about race, can be subject of scientific inquiry and when disproved should indeed be rejected.
Physical laws, by contrast, cannot be applied to mysticism. However, depending on the discipline, different forms of evidence can be applied in order to establish the veracity or likelihood of a thesis, such as documentary and testimony evidence in legal cases.
Finally, it is not clear how Mr Brookmyre puts forward his argument that faith in the afterlife leads to suicide bombing. If this was the case, our streets would be crowded with suicidal murderers of all sorts. Like Jenni Russell before him, he confuses metaphysical beliefs, term she invents and that means nothing, I presume she means beliefs such as the Trinity and afterlife, with ethics, which is the philosophy of morality.
What most of us find abhorrent is not the suicide bombers’ belief in heaven, rather it is their unethical disregard for life. It is with concern, however, that one notices yet another savage attack, not so much on religion, to which we have become accustomed in these troubled times, rather on language. I believe there is now abundant evidence to support the use of a dictionary before any more innocent ink is spilled.

Science and religion - where are the liberals?

Gordon Lynch complains that the ‘God-buster’ troops led by Dawkins, Dennett and Co. ignore religion and theology. Yep! True, one would expect a little bit of research on the subject matter the author is writing about, but perhaps this is too sophisticated for pop-lit. What is symptomatic of the age and most worrying is these pop-scientists lacking understanding of philosophy of science. Science is the real victim here. In their flawed attempt to elevate it to universal and, in some cases, transcendent truth, science is being reduced to dogmatic scientism. On the other hand, the image most people have of religion comes from the unsavoury politics of theo-con activism. Religion and theology, especially in their liberal forms, have been largely confined to the academia. Any political success the theo-cons achieve will cost liberalism and liberal religion dearly. This is why it was religious groups who took up the lawsuit against creationism in Arkansas in 1981. They defended their right to interpret scripture and derive morality from it. The march of theo-cons aims to monopolise morality, in particular religious morality. Politics is about morals, yet liberal-minded religious people are not making their voices heard fearing our secular society’s misgivings about religion. For the sake of religion, for the sake of science and, above all, for the sake of our (sacred!) liberties and rights, liberal theologians need to leave their dusty libraries and engage in the debate.

Sunshine - mission on the cheap

A few months ago I went to see the film Sunshine. The reviews were excellent, so much that I wonder whether I saw a different film.
Nigel Andrews from the FT: "Even watching in a preview theatre, one spends one's time being walloped by light - flash-floods of molten gold, tidal waves of searing silver - and cowering rapturously at the boom-channel crashes and vibrations." I thought it looked more like a disco.
Whilst watching it I found it incredibly irritating, boring and pure nonsense. In retrospect, I can't help finding it very funny, despite the author's real intentions.
It's the story of a crew of astronauts sent to space to re-ignite the dying sun by detonating a super nuclear bomb and sneak away in time not to be wiped out. A previous mission mysteriously failed leaving no trace of the spaceship called Icarus I. You would, at least, think of changing the name of the second one, but no, they leave superstitions aside and call it Icarus II.
The structure of the film is the usual copy & paste from Alien, Kubrick's 2001 and so on. The characters have no roundedness or depth.

The plot is superb in its absurdity.
The astronauts come across Icarus I and think it might be a good idea to de-tour and give them a hand as there seems to be life there. A little bit of not too deep discussion ensues and the option of democratically decide what to do is discounted because the decision needs to be 'informed'. That really annoyed me. The point of democracy is, or at least should be, that decisions are taken by the majority on the basis of informed debate, not by an appointed authority. The crew, instead of being able to express their opinion, reason about the problem and participate in the decision-making, prefer letting the Captain decide. However, given that hierarchy is not good enough and they are all scientists and therefore knowledge is the most important thing, the Captain delegates the decision to the far too young to be a physicist Capa (Cillian Murphy). Capa stands in his disco room asking the computer questions and finally brings back the responsum "heads or tail". The oracle of Delphi would have been clearer but there you go. So the decision is sort of ... well, we might as well go!
And there they go, in true RAC style, they change the route to pick up the hitchhikers from the broken down Icarus I.
The guy who changes the route forgets about the position of the sun and the ship gets damaged. He cries hysterically that there were many calculations to make and he made a mistake. Why does this very expensive, state of the art spaceship, with lots of bright lights, not have a sat-nav? Couldn't they just set the new destination avoiding the toll-road? No, they have to calculate things themselves and get them wrong. Alas, all those years of study come to nothing when they actually need to put notions to use.
So the ship needs some fixing and the Captain pops out to sort it out, a bit of hammering here and polishing there, it'll be like new! While he's at it he can't resist the attraction of the sun that will soon be in trajectory. From inside, the crew shout at unison to get back, but you know what is like, you're out there floating in space with the sun shining ... Captain is wiped out by the wind of the sun, which proves my point that hierarchy is too often a result of power structures than rational decision.
Then four of the crew board Icarus I, but there's a problem with the two ships attaching to each other, so they need to jump back inside Icarus II to get back. Yep! The whingy one gets the protective space gear, the brave one stays behind and the other two cover themselves in kitchen foil ready to jump. Needless to say one doesn't make it.
Several problems and deaths later, the computer tells Capa that there's an extra crew member on board. Instead of telling the remaining crew, he pops around to see who it is. He doesn't even have the time to put the kettle on and comment on the weather that he is attacked. The attacker was one of the Icarus I crew who took too much sun and, aside from a very bad sunburn, he's become a bit of a 'sun fundamentalist', preaching that if the sun is dying is the will of God and he's God-like because he's survived being sunburnt etc. He also transforms himself into the only other remaining crew member, which I assume comes with the nutrient properties of the sun.

The meaning, if there ever was one, is supposed to be around self-sacrifice to save the rest of humanity and whether their attempts are nothing but hubris against God. Needless to say the film does not really explore the theme and does not espouse any argument coherently. It rests on too many assumptions and superficial understanding of faith, science and hubris. It seems to portray the clash between the 'rational scientist' who constructs the means to re-ignite the sun and therefore ensure the continuation of life on earth and the fatalist religious fundamentalist who views the death of the sun as God's judgement of humanity. Another flood, one might say, but in the story of the flood, Noah, his family/clan and all species of animals are saved to ensure that life continues. Sunshine's interpretation of hubris seems to be the challenging of nature/God through personal self-destruction, necessary in order to save life.
The point of the story of Icarus, however, is also to build better wings, not simply not to fly. The meaning of hubris is lack of humility and placing oneself or one's belief at centre of the universe, kaleidoscope through which everything is understood. Hubris is solipsistic consciousness that shuts out doubt, that reduces the universe to object of observation et rien plus!
Most importantly, it is about endowing oneself or one's belief as ultimate legitimate authority, a point which the film totally misunderstands.
The fact that the crew dispenses with democracy and relies on hierarchical authority and the hierarchical authority delegates to the 'rational authority' is very significant. Who decides who the authority is? Why a physicist and not a mathematician or a theologian, for that matter? Underlying this decision there's a belief in authority on the basis of a specific knowledge that is valued at a moment in time. This is the problem with pop-scientists, such as Dennet and Dawkins, and with religious fundamentalists. They are guilty of hubris when declaring that science or their particular image of God is all that there is, the truth and, therefore, the supreme legitimate authority from which everything originates and is ordained. Once you do away with liberalism and the ability of each individual to participate in society and decision-making, you descend in authoritarianism.

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Breastfeeding magic, File under Bollocks!

Here we go again with another surreal claim according to which breast-fed babies are more socially mobile than bottle-fed babies.
For how long are we to endure this pseudo-science?

1. If you take a big enough sample of the population and 1 factor (breastfeeding or bottle-feeding) you can make all the connections you want. What about all the other factors to the equation?

2. The sample population in this case were people born in the 1920s and 1930s. Presumably these people have also experience the war and its impact on social mobility.

3. err, actually it's not significant at all, says researcher!

Richard Martin, reader in clinical epidemiology at the University of Bristol, who led the new research, admitted that the findings should be treated with caution as there was only a small difference between the chances of moving up a social class - with 58% of those who were breast-fed moving up a social class compared with 50% of those who were bottle-fed.

4. What's intelligence?

"One of the most consistent findings in the published literature on the long-term impact of infant-feeding is that breastfeeding is associated with improved neurocognitive development, which could influence future educational and occupational success and hence social mobility" the researchers write.

err, no actually! This is today's ideology and nostalgia. There are associated benefits with breastfeeding, although for up to 6 months not over, but intelligence is a far more complex quality. This fantasy comes from the study published on Lancet (not a very serious journal, I'm afraid) claiming that breast-feeding increased IQ by five points in preterm babies. However,

'research published last year by the Medical Research Council indicated that the reason breastfed babies were more intelligent was because of other factors such as a more stimulating home environment.'

The problem is that IQ does not tell you whether a person is intelligent. I'm afraid intelligence (which means linking together) is not quantifiable and has many different aspects. The attempt to measure one's intelligence is clearly an indication of idiocy.

Sexuality & God

What has God got to do with sex? Sexuality has been treated with suspicion when not rejected altogether by religious authorities throughout the ages. ‘Primordial’ fears of the body, its functioning and sexuality have led to a rigorous control and even regulation of sexual activity. Sexuality has thus been socially constructed in, primarily, a negative way. Women’s bodies were often seen with disgust (and I assume it still happens in many quarters), with rabbis referring to the womb as ‘place of rot’, not to mention patristic misogyny. Women have been associated with sexuality and have come to represent ‘the body’ and thus despised, needing regulation. They have been kept at a distance from … anything really! From the ‘sacred’ so that it would not be ‘defiled’, from political and economic power and, of course, from the intellectual sphere.
Those who wielded power created a ‘space’ for women and endowed them with domesticity. The traditional female role was (and still is) a self-denying one, at the service of others. The regulation of sex has been vital part of this process of ‘putting women in their place’. (By the way, the rejection of homosexuality falls under this category for it represents a challenge to heteropatriarchy, the gendered structures of power).
It was oppression, but it was dressed up as tradition and tradition was mistaken for authenticity. What I most object to is the fact that religious authorities used God to justify their prejudice that women were something apart. They thus sanctified oppression.
Many still think in this way, that there are ‘natural’ gender characteristics, that women are best at nurturing, caring and bringing up children. This obsession with establishing difference comes up every now and then. I wonder why people are so afraid of freedom, of being able to shape their lives without complying with mythical gender (or other) stereotypes. Why are people so keen for society to decide who they are?
But God has to do with the body. After all, it is through our body that we relate to others and it is through relationships that we encounter God. Me thinks God is a feminist! :)

The usefulness of freedom

I’ve come across a few news items on Latin lately. Yesterday, Mary Beard (Prof. In classics) defended the non-elitist nature of the study of Latin on the pages of the Guardian, and previously its usefulness on the Times.
However she might be one of very few voices on the ‘side’ of Latin. Tim Harford’s column ‘Dear Economist’ in the FT, in response to a letter from an Italian student complaining about the study of Latin, dismissed Latin in favour of Chinese and blamed a phantom teachers’ lobby for pressurising for the teaching of Latin in Italian schools. This particular column is indeed light-hearted, but this shouldn’t be an excuse for getting things wrong. Latin is still taught (alas less and less) because Italian is a Latin language and Italian, and indeed European, culture comes from the Graeco-Roman world.
To add insult to injury, an Italian student from a classical lycee and with a CV which includes excellent results from Harvard and other reputable universities, was discourage from applying to Cambridge on the grounds that a ‘classical’ preparation was not good enough for a scientific course. Indeed Latin and ancient Greek do not provide you with scientific notions but with the means to understand them and to find new ones. One would expect Cambridge to understand this and know where science comes from. It sounds like it's time for the Dons to go back to Virgilius as T S Eliot suggested.
Sadly, the educational system as a whole seems to have followed an idea of 'usefulness' in choosing to 'ease Latin out'. In our technological and scientific culture, Latin provides a non-quantifiable and non-applicable knowledge that is therefore deemed of no use. But who decides what knowledge is useful? Latin and ancient Greek are essential in developing logical and critical thinking and knowledge can only be advanced by those who can think.
And thinking is what makes you free, by the way. It is thus regrettable to see that the educational establishment is more interested in forming individuals to be useful to society rather than in aiding individuals to be free and thus model society.

Gendered brains & the accountant gene

Now that feminism and critical theory are gone, biological determinism with its gender bias makes its return. What is fascinating is that, notwithstanding the lack of systematic hard data, notwithstanding the significance of all the other aspects of life that have an impact on human behaviour (culture, upbringing, society, and also one’s own experiences), there’s always a bunch of eejits who make the illogical jump between one’s biological make-up and professions. Interestingly, they do not touch on genetics, I was hoping for the discovery of the ‘accountant gene’. But let’s start from the research. A rather comprehensive article appeared on the Economist last August.

1. The article starts by noticing that

which of the differences between the sexes are “biological”, in the sense that they have been honed by evolution, and which are “cultural” or “environmental” and might more easily be altered by changed circumstances, is still fiercely debated.

Please note the link between biology and evolution. Without going into Lamarckian theory, it is important to consider that biology has also adapted throughout history. This means that we are not the same we once were and that present and future challenges will determine biological differences.

2. The article then surveys relevant studies.

Simon Baron-Cohen and Svetlana Lutchmaya, two researchers at Cambridge University, found that boys exposed to relatively high levels of testosterone in the womb looked less often at their mothers' faces, made eye contact less frequently and had smaller vocabularies than those exposed to lower levels—though this study has yet to be replicated successfully by other researchers.

Please note the lack of further evidence and also the following:
a) “the results of hundreds of tests of vocabulary and reading comprehension show there is almost no gap between the sexes.”
b) Simon Baron-Cohen focussed on autism, which is an extreme example and is by no means relevant to the rest of the population.
c) “the problem with trying to argue that the male tendency to systemise suggested by Dr Baron-Cohen might lead to greater mathematical ability is that, in fact, girls and boys are equally good at maths prior to puberty.”

3. Differences between male and female brains (such as percentage of grey matter, white matter, synapses and so on) have been explored, however, “these examples show how tricky it is to find correlations between behaviour and differences in brain structure and brain activity. And even if a connection to brain structure is found, that does not mean it is innate. Most of these studies are done on adults, so it is not clear when differences start to arise. The brain is by no means immutable, even in adulthood. In the hippocampus, an area thought to be involved in spatial learning, new nerve cells can be born in an adult and hormones influence their birth and survival. Dr Shors says that her work has shown that the female brain, at least, is very plastic, changing dramatically during life in response to pregnancy and menopause as well as puberty.”

Please note that
a) no correlation between the brain structure and behaviour has been found;
b) the studies were done on adults therefore ‘environmental’ factors and their life experiences will have had an influence behaviour (and I would say the most significant influence);
c) the brain is not immutable. Shame that neuro-endocrinological research is still in its infancy, hormones clearly have an impact on us. But how much? And what kind of impact?
d) how much do environmental and personal experience change the brain?

4. However,

there are a number of problems with these studies. One, according to Dr Hines, is science's bias towards reporting positive results, so that research which shows no differences is likely to get lost. Another is that because differences between the sexes are so often popularised and played up in the popular media, people tend to pay them disproportionate attention.

Please note scientists are not free from cultural influence. I would also add that science has rarely been free from ideology, and that today there are numerous problems with the lack of transparency of the conduct and results of experiments (remember the BMJ protest?).

5. Going back to the ‘evidence’,

researchers use a statistical measure called d. … For behavioural and psychological phenomena, a value of d greater than 0.8 is considered large, of 0.5, moderate, and of 0.2, small. Any d less than 0.2 is a negligible difference. … Janet Hyde of the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to investigate just how different men and women are. She collected all the important meta-analyses that have been conducted on differences between the sexes. … Of the 124 effect-sizes she calculated, 30% had a value of d close to zero and in a further 48% of cases, d was small. In other words, only 22% of reported behavioural differences between the sexes are worth raising an eyebrow over. … The largest gaps were, not surprisingly, in physical attributes such as throwing velocity (d=2.14) and throwing distance (d=1.98). These closely reflect the difference in height between men and women.

Please note the finding of negligible difference in attitudes. Another consideration to be made is about statistics. Statistics is not an exact science (not all disciplines that use numbers are exact science), it’s based on the law of average. It follows that there cannot be any biological determinism: not all men and women have respectively ‘male’ and ‘female’ characteristics. Which explains why most of the women I know who took Simon Baron-Cohen’s test found they had a male brain.

6. There is little evidence to substantiate (statistical) difference in spatial ability, however "in this case the limited evidence available suggests the difference is related to the post-birth testosterone surge in boys.” Also, men do not excel in all spatial tasks”. Furthermore, abilities can be trained and this has been shown to work. “Spatial ability is amenable to training in both sexes.”

Conclusion

I do think this research is a waste of time and I was very reluctant to even mention this topic. The main difference between male and female are hormones. There are variances between hormonal levels between individuals, individuals are also affected differently. We are different. People might have different innate (inherited or not) abilities, but where do these abilities come from? Clearly not from gender. What impact socio-environmental factors have on abilities? Finally, abilities can be trained (genius included and it has been shown).

However the most stupid and surreal aspect of the ‘diatribe’ (or monologue), is the correlation between a biological ability, for which we have very little evidence, for which nobody has taken into account society and personal experience (which includes training), with someone’s ability to do a particular job. This pathetic non-evidence is supposed to account, at least in part, for fewer women in science or engineering and so on. How about plumbers then? Alleged biological differences have always been used to justify the social construction of femininity and women’s roles in society. Sadly, it appears that this is still the case. For both biological determinists and sociological determinists (where everything is determined by society), individual liberty is a delusion. If you’re such a miserable git, why should you make everybody miserable as well?
Fortunately, there have always been people who have gone against this dogmatic determinism and have fought to own their lives. The world is not divided between men and women, but sheep and dogs. Dogs might be loud and rebellious but they lead. The sheep only follow.

Tea is good for you!

I've grown up drinking large quantities of tea. I absolutely love tea. My favourite teas are keemun, prince of wales (which is very difficult to find in Britain!), china black and in the afternoon, when I feel I want something light and soothing, I choose jasmine or lady grey. For years I've been hearing from all sources how bad this habit was. It's dehydrating, it's diaphoretic, it makes you stressed, it makes you fat... Whatever! When I was working in the Assembly, I used to be met with intrigued looks while walking down the corridor with my treasured tea pot instead of those ghastly carton cups of coffee.
Now,Research from University College London has shown that stress hormone levels fell by nearly twice as much in tea drinkers compared with those given a tea-like drink, after all had been put under stress.
I feel rather vindicated that tea, after all, it's good for you! :)