Johnathan Bowes – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Tue, 12 May 2015 04:58:08 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Johnathan Bowes – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Generations of nonconsent: The problems of germline modification https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/11/generations-of-nonconsent-the-problems-of-germline-modification/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/11/generations-of-nonconsent-the-problems-of-germline-modification/#respond Tue, 12 May 2015 04:58:08 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1100801 Time may bring new research to light that allays the medical concerns that germline genome modification present. But no matter what new advances come with germline modification, its medical use can never involve informed consent. And such nonconsensual use cannot be ethically sound.

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Last month, the news broke that a research team at Sun Yat-sen University, in Guangzhou, China, succeeded in editing the genomes of live, though inviable, human embryos. Their process, a specific instance of germline modification (or germline genome modification), uses a technique called clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) with the Cas9 protein to cut and modify human DNA in an embryo’s nucleus. This technology is similar to that of somatic (body) cell genome editing carried out here in the U.S. in order to fix, delete or replace genes that contribute to disease in adult humans.

The Chinese researchers specifically edited the gene that contributes to the blood disorder β-thalassemia in roughly 48 percent of the experimental embryos — not quite effective enough yet for clinical use. Improvements on this yield, however, could encourage other researchers to use germline modification to combat more diseases targeted by somatic cell modification, including HIV/AIDS, assuming those researchers live in countries without bans on germline modification in research or medicine.

But while the standard somatic cell modification makes changes to a person’s genome in ways that cannot be passed down to offspring, germline modification does. And excluding issues of efficacy, therein lie the major problems that many leading bioscientists and bioethics have with pursuing germline modification as a potential new type of gene therapy. These problems include the “slippery slope” aspect of the technology when it comes to genetically engineering our children, but more importantly, germline modification also poses a threat to our conception of informed consent.

Some thinkers who have expressed concerns about the technology, including Stanford professors Paul Berg and Henry T. Greely, want to handle germline genome modification cautiously and, importantly, ethically. In a piece published in the journal Science, they propose continuing “transparent research” into the clinical applications and effects of such modification while actively and “strongly discourag[ing]” clinicians from jumping the gun and bringing the technology into medical use too soon. They propose that, before such medical use begins (if it ever does), experts, regulators and members of the public sort out the ethical issues posed by germline modification — and how both law and society will manage its use.

Others have already begun to weigh in on the ethics of the technology, specifically looking at the potential for both harmful medical outcomes and a “slippery slope” of undesirable social outcomes from allowing its use. Medically speaking, the technology works less effectively than somatic cell modification techniques — and with a seemingly higher chance of causing random, unplanned mutations in a cell’s genome that could prove harmful or even lethal. If such mutations didn’t kill an embryo in utero, they could negatively impact a person’s health or the health of their children, grandchildren, etc.; that door opens when modifying the hereditary DNA of the germline instead of the non-hereditary DNA of somatic cells. Socially speaking, they worry that the ability to edit genes that are problematic for medical reasons could help encourage such editing for genes that are “problematic” in non-medical ways; that kind of editing could include anything from engineering children to look a certain way to full-on genetic femicide.

These concerns are crucial in looking at the technology, but they only form the tip of the iceberg of problems that medical use of germline modification brings with it. More deeply embedded in that use is the issue of informed consent.

Since the release of the Belmont Report 36 years ago, the idea of informed consent has formed a cornerstone of modern medical practice and research. At its core, the concept holds that patients and research participants not only get to decide what happens or does not happen to them, but that they get to do so based on accurate and complete information about what their decision means.

Applying the doctrine of informed consent becomes tricky when children are involved, however. Legally speaking, people below the age of 18 cannot decide for themselves about their own medical care; instead, their guardians have that decision-making power. Such power, however, does not automatically extend more than one generation out; people do not have guardianship of their grandchildren, regardless of the age of their children, without a court’s intervention.

By choosing to use germline modification on their would-be children, parents would also inevitably choose to subject their grandchildren, great-grandchildren and so on to the same genetic editing. But while they may exercise their rights as parents to consent to such a treatment for their children, those rights (as they are currently constructed) do not extend any further down their bloodline. It doesn’t matter what sorts of fixes could be engineered into an embryonic genome; at a very basic level, even using germline modification solely for clinical purposes would violate the right of informed consent every future person holding those engineered genes.

Time may bring new research to light that allays the medical concerns that germline genome modification present; someday, for instance, a technique for such modification could target and correct only the disease-related gene with total efficacy. The same could happen with the “slippery slope” concerns with appropriate legal and social protections. But no matter what new advances come with germline modification, its medical use can never involve informed consent. And such nonconsensual use cannot be ethically sound.

 

Contact Johnathan Bowes at jbowes ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The boon of GE food https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/27/the-boon-of-ge-food/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/27/the-boon-of-ge-food/#comments Tue, 28 Apr 2015 04:35:24 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1100006 Before pundits and politicians reduce the questions and solutions posed by GE crops and GE agribusiness down to sound bytes and slogans, we must realize just how powerfully positive the effects of genetically engineering our food can be if handled correctly.

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TV personality Dr. Mehmet Öz (known more commonly just as Dr. Oz) has garnered a fair amount of controversy over his medical advice and claims since rising to prominence on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show in 2004. Recently, a group of physicians (including the Hoover Institution’s Dr. Henry Miller) sent a letter to Columbia University asking for Dr. Oz’s removal from the faculty of its medical school—in part due to his stance on “the genetic engineering of food crops.”

In recent years, ultra-specific types of genetic engineering through restriction enzymes has given us the power to introduce individual genes into the genomes of the plants we use for food. This has led to the creation of crops known as genetically engineered (GE) plants or, misleadingly, genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The misleading part of the moniker GMO comes from the fact that, at a very basic level, every type of food produced on a farm for the last 12,000 years is genetically modified. Human beings have genetically modified plants and non-human animals since the dawn of the Neolithic Age, albeit through the crude and inexact method of selective breeding. Our modern methods have only turned such modification into a more exact science.

It is this modern type of GE food plants that Dr. Miller supports, Dr. Oz wants labelled out of existence and consumers around the country eat in large quantities each year. Already, our country’s legal system has changed due to the influence of figures like Dr. Oz, with Vermont on track to become the first state to require mandatory labeling of ‘GMOs’ in 2016. Such labeling in Europe and other parts of the world has led to the disappearance of products branded as “containing GMOs” from their markets entirely.

But before the rest of us have the political debate about labeling GE products in our food, though, we should step back and evaluate the ethics of those products in the first place. The genetic engineering of food products is an important technological advancement worth keeping in our supermarkets and on our dinner plates, and intriguingly, both consequentialist (i.e. results-based) and deontological (i.e. rightness-based) perspectives on the issue make this fact plain.

From a consequentialist standpoint, genetically engineering food plants makes sense. The types of GE crops that have found their way onto farms so far have provided a high degree of utility with only a handful of mitigating factors.

One of the major goals of genetic engineering for agriculture, for example, is to improve how crop plants resist herbicides or pests, and GE crops seem to have delivered on that goal. Many common crops, particularly soybeans, have been engineered to resist the herbicide glyphosate, a chemical that EPA and USDA scientists call “less toxic to humans and not as likely to persist in the environment as the herbicides it replaces.” Replacing conventionally genetically modified plants with glyphosate-tolerant ones seems to not only create healthy and successful plants for human consumption, but also helps to reduce the amount of more toxic and longer-acting herbicides used for conventional or even organic farming. In fairness, the actual amount of herbicide use has risen since the introduction of GE food plants, but the kinds used for such plants seem to have less of an impact on the environment than previously more-common pesticides when used to the same degree.

A deontological lens on the technology allows for even deeper considerations, though. Such a lens fundamentally rejects the ‘ends-justify-the-means’ mentality that can define consequentialist utilitarian ethics, and as such, deontologically evaluating the technology allows for a separation of the idea of GE foods from their current implementation. In other words, we can oppose current (and problematic) ways that the business of GE agriculture handles the technology while still supporting the use of that technology in the first place. The problems that opponents of GE foods often have concerns about about, such as the behavior of Monsanto with its Roundup-ready crops towards farmers, become issues not inherently related to the idea of GE crops themselves. This allows for us to consider the agriculture industry on its own faults and genetic engineering on its own merits.

Those merits shine through this deontological lens. The fundamental impetus of genetically engineered agriculture is to provide more and better food for the hungry mouths of this world, which many would construe as part of the absolute duty of science to better our lives. And this mission has become broader than just promoting herbicide or pest resistance for the crops near and dear to our hearts here in the mainland US. Engineers working on such resistance have also turned their sights towards crops crucial to the people of Hawaii (papaya), sub-Saharan Africa (cowpea) and India (eggplant), and other groups focused on combatting malnutrition have worked to create the vitamin-A-enriched Golden Rice and BioCassava Plus plants for use in parts of Asia and Africa that heavily depend on the rice and cassava plants already.

These factors need consideration before the issue of GE foods goes any further in our country’s political process. Before pundits and politicians reduce the questions and solutions posed by GE crops and GE agribusiness down to sound bytes and slogans, we must realize just how powerfully positive the effects of genetically engineering our food can be if handled correctly.

 

Contact Johnathan Bowes at jbowes ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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Post and past Singer: Absolutism and animal rights https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/14/post-and-past-singer-absolutism-and-animal-rights/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/14/post-and-past-singer-absolutism-and-animal-rights/#comments Wed, 15 Apr 2015 04:11:55 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1098988 But in order to actually reach that end, where we as a culture cease to view most animals as means to our ends, we need to push past the limits of Singer’s arguments and take a more rights-oriented approach to our fellow animals.

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This past Wednesday, Peter Singer (the most famous or, at least, the most controversial bioethicist of our time) came to speak here at Stanford. Though he talked to the sold-out audience of students, faculty and visitors about the effective altruism movement, the ideas that brought him to prominence — animal rights — cropped up at various points during his talk.

Singer’s “Animal Liberation,” published in 1975, argues that humans should recognize the equality of nonhuman animals because of their ability to suffer and experience pain. We humans are just animals, after all, and all sentient beings seek to avoid suffering. This means that, in the jargon of ethicists, all sentient beings have an interest to not suffer. Our species’ failure to recognize that interest simply because its holders aren’t human comes from a place of what Singer and others call speciesism. Such an attitude exists in the same category as the other -isms that our society grappled with most widely in the ’70s, namely racism and sexism.

Many people today, both here at Stanford and around the world, see such ideas as either too preposterous or too radical to fathom. Nonetheless, the modern animal liberation movement has grown up around Singer’s ideas, and various jurisdictions around the world have even put some of those ideas into law, including California with the new state requirements for chicken cage sizes that became fully implemented earlier this year.

At a basic level, the ideas of Singer and other animal liberation thinkers make sense. However, the foundations of those ideas become more than slightly shaky when viewed through the lens of Singer’s utilitarianism alone. Working to protect the welfare of our fellow animals instead requires the consideration of a more fundamental, deontological approach; without that consideration added to the mix, it will likely prove difficult to effect lasting change for the benefit of all animals.

The main crux of Singer’s argument, the idea of animal equality, comes with the idea that we as humans should make it our goal to minimize suffering — particularly the suffering that we cause. And the suffering of nonhuman animals at our hands is undeniable. Whether through factory farming practices, puppy mills or overly restrictive amusement parks, we humans have found a myriad of ways to physically and psychologically damage other animals. The sentience of those animals (specifically, their ability to feel pain) should form the only basis necessary for human beings to consider them as equal moral actors, which Singer explains.

But taking this from theory to practice causes the idea of animal equality to run into problems, especially in the context of the United States. The basis of ethical decision-making from a utilitarian standpoint like Singer’s involves a need to weigh out all of the competing interests involved in a situation and decide based on those interests alone. Doing so can (and unfortunately often does) ignore the concept of rights, particularly at the individual level. Instead, the idea of the greater good takes precedence.

This lack of acknowledgment for individual rights bodes ill for the cause of animal equality in the U.S. After all, the entire basis of our governmental and legal system rests on Enlightenment ideas about rights endowed by our Creator. Our culture as a country has steeped itself in those ideas for the past 239 years. Simple appeals to utilitarian calculation may successfully disabuse the average U.S. human of some speciesist ideas, but doing so could never cause a great deal of social change to favor the liberation of other animal species. The ease with which we as a culture default to individual liberties — and the fact that doing so is nearly always ethically correct — has largely doomed such efforts from the outset.

But that doesn’t mean that we should abandon the Singerian approach to animal equality altogether. Instead, Singer’s frameworks from “Animal Liberation” and his other works on animal welfare should inform how our society moves to recognize some rights for nonhuman animals, using the idea of sentience, for instance, as a guide.

Taking that idea and morphing it into a construction of true animal rights requires only a small leap; if nonhuman animals already are entitled to the ethical consideration of their interests, it logically follows that they could have a right to such consideration under, at the very least, natural law. From there, it becomes relatively easy to formulate and justify a whole host of derived moral rights for nonhuman animal species based on their interest against suffering. For instance, taking that consideration as a right would lead us to recognize other animals’ right to life, from which we could define derivative rights as varied as a right to not be tortured and a right to not be consumed for food could, depending on the strength of the cases made in their favor.

Regardless, that is the path that animal equality campaigners must follow — the path of actual recognition of animal rights. Peter Singer gets us much of the way down that path through how his arguments build the case for considering animal interests in the first place. But in order to actually reach that end, where we as a culture cease to view most animals as means to our ends, we need to push past the limits of Singer’s arguments and take a more rights-oriented approach to our fellow animals.

Contact Johnathan Bowes at jbowes ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Live and let die: A case for death with dignity https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/30/live-and-let-die-a-case-for-death-with-dignity/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/30/live-and-let-die-a-case-for-death-with-dignity/#comments Tue, 31 Mar 2015 04:51:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1097919 In the interest of increasing patient autonomy, opening the doors to true forms of euthanasia goes too far. Physician-assisted suicide, therefore, exists as the only viable option. Ethically indistinguishable (at worst) from current medical practices, dying with dignity needs to become a legally acceptable option for terminally ill people.

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The story of Brittany Maynard (the terminally ill East Bay woman who moved to Oregon in order to end her life legally) has gained a great deal of national attention recently, reigniting the debate about a person’s right to die with help from a doctor. Known as “death with dignity” to proponents, the issue of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) comes down to the fundamental question about what people should be able to decide about their own lives.

PAS exists as part of a larger spectrum of medically assisted death, which ranges from patients refusing ventilation tubes and other life-saving treatments to euthanasia (when a physician actively kills a patient rather than letting them die). The process of dying with dignity falls closer to the former part of this spectrum, just shy of true acts of euthanasia, and consists of patients administering lethal drugs prescribed to them by a physician rather than the physician themselves administering the drugs. Only patients who have terminal illnesses, good mental health and short prognoses become eligible for PAS; other people, including those who suffer from depression, are excluded from seeking PAS to prevent its abuse as a method of care.

Only five states, like Oregon, currently allow this kind of death with dignity, either by law or by court decision. But, California and 20 other jurisdictions currently have pro-PAS bills under consideration. California’s, modeled on Oregon’s law, nonetheless faces stiff opposition from both physicians’ and religious groups. The Medical Oncology Association of Southern California (MOASC), for example, asserts that the very idea of PAS “is against everything a physician stands for,” and organizations like the California Catholic Conference argue against suicide in any form on moral grounds.

But these specific points of opposition to PAS fail to understand a critical distinction in how the right to die is legally constructed. While terminally ill people must make the decision to “die with dignity” or “die naturally” using their own moral compasses, their right to do so must not be infringed. At the end of the day, no government in the United States has the standing to deny people their right to die via PAS because of the idea of personal patient autonomy.

Approaching the intersections of bioethics and law primarily from a deontological (or absolutist) standpoint usually requires looking at such patient autonomy as sacrosanct. This follows the precedent of the Belmont Report, which established the idea of informed consent in medicine in part because of the importance it placed on autonomy. The commission that drafted that report in 1979 was created in response to the previous several decades’ bioethical travesties, the most infamous of which was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study; that federally funded study spanned four decades, during which researchers used black men as guinea pigs to study the effects of syphilis on the body, even to the point of ordering local doctors to withhold antibiotics from participants. Other context cases for the Belmont Report include that of Henrietta Lacks (the poor, black woman from whom doctors created the first immortal human cell line without her knowledge) and the Willowbrook State School (where mentally handicapped children were deliberately infected with hepatitis in order to develop a hepatitis vaccine). Such cases looked at people as (discardable) means to ends rather than as ends in and of themselves, inherently violating their autonomy.

In the case of Maynard and other terminally ill patients, the state denies them true autonomy to choose the manner of their care. Current law in most states restricts the options of patients like Maynard to two: either succumbing to their disease over the course of several months or entering palliative care with the eventual purpose of inducing a coma and “pulling the plug.”

For some people, those options are appropriate, and they should continue to exist as possible paths for terminally ill people to take in their final days. But since they both often involve an incredible amount of suffering and, for the latter, expensive medical bills, not everyone sees those two options as viable for their situation despite being forced to choose between them. Furthermore, both require physicians to sit by and not intervene to prevent the death of their patients —which, by the misguided logic used by MOASC, also goes against the dogma of physicians to prevent death or harm. At the very least, this puts the current practice of patients refusing treatment on the same ethical level as PAS.

Considering the issue of harm, however, makes the more extreme measures of euthanasia ethically unfeasible. Anything that requires the physician to actively cause the death of a patient (even with the informed consent of that patient) ceases to be an issue of personal autonomy. Instead, such cases enter the realm of the Harm to Others Principle, outlined by John Stuart Mill. This principle says that an individual’s rights can face restrictions if their exercise would cause harm to other people. Euthanasia, as such, violates the norms and ethics of good medicine by entering into this territory.

So in the interest of increasing patient autonomy, opening the doors to true forms of euthanasia goes too far. Physician-assisted suicide, therefore, exists as the only viable option. Ethically indistinguishable (at worst) from current medical practices, dying with dignity needs to become a legally acceptable option for terminally ill people.

Contact Johnathan Bowes at jbowes ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Fight the foolish: Tackling the vaccination crisis https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/23/fight-the-foolish-tackling-the-vaccination-crisis/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/23/fight-the-foolish-tackling-the-vaccination-crisis/#comments Tue, 24 Feb 2015 06:31:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1096392 So in the grand scheme of things, small groups of faith-healing fundamentalists do not pose a threat to public health. Trying to coerce those groups to violate their religious beliefs, therefore, cannot be reasonably necessary to curb the re-emergence of vaccine-preventable disease. The opposite holds true, though, for anti-vaxxers who abuse philosophical vaccine exemptions.

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Back in 1998, a British doctor named Andrew Wakefield published a study linking the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism in young children. Though quickly discredited and repeatedly refuted, the study had lasting effects on health in the UK by decreasing vaccination rates below the threshold required for effective herd immunity. As a result, outbreaks of measles have reappeared in the UK. The same thing is currently playing out here in the US: Though Jenny McCarthy has tried to backtrack on her anti-vaccination stances, the effects of her movement against vaccines helped create the environment that allowed the Disneyland measles outbreak.

Perhaps the easiest way to counteract the force of fraudulent science and self-proclaimed experts when it comes to vaccinations would be to universalize the mandate that every child receive the MMR, DTaP and other vaccines. Every state currently has some sort of mandate for childhood vaccinations, and every state likewise has some collection of exemptions that they allow. Though all states have exemptions for children who cannot get vaccines due to valid medical reasons, all states except for Mississippi and West Virginia also allow exemptions for religious or philosophical reasons. That latter category, also known as “personal belief” exemptions or PBEs, is the one most often exploited and abused by the self-righteous disciples of Wakefield and McCarthy, to the detriment of people around them.

But though an exceptionless mandate for vaccinations (like that of Mississippi or West Virginia) might be the easiest way to get people vaccinated, it is by no means the most ethical. Instead, where education and reason fail, legislators around the country should restrict or remove only the oft-abused PBEs that have spurred recent outbreaks — all while protecting religious exemptions to vaccines.

Ethical justifications for removing both religious and personal belief exemptions would have to rest on one of the most important ideas in ethics: the Harm to Others Principle, as described by John Stuart Mill. In essence, the principle holds that a person’s rights and freedoms can only be curtailed through coercion if doing so would be reasonably necessary to prevent that person from harming another (or create an undue amount of risk of harm to another). Coercion, in the context of this ethical precept, includes legal mandates and only becomes justifiable when no other option would work.

By the logic of those supporting a stricter vaccination mandate, allowing people to opt their children out of vaccines in today’s social environment creates a huge risk of harm. The sheer number of people who have opted out makes this the case: Here in California alone, the vaccination rate has fallen to just over 90 percent (with herd immunity from vaccines requiring about 92 to 94 percent). Combining that with the fact that many people who have received their vaccines are still susceptible to infection, the utter foolishness of anti-vaxxers warrants an undue risk of harm to millions of people in California alone. The target of any action to restrict vaccine exemptions should focus on counteracting this temporary societal foolishness.

Religions that oppose vaccination, however, do not fit into that larger plague of scientific folly. While the Jenny McCarthys of the world misunderstand the terror of preventable diseases and the science of vaccines, adherents of the handful of fringe sects that benefit from the religious exemptions do not. Instead, those groups lack faith in modern biomedicine because they believe in the healing power of faith. Also unlike the Jenny McCarthys of the world, these groups cannot convert people by the thousands to oppose vaccines. After all, vaccines are hardly their main focus, and some (like Christian Scientists) can barely seem to convert anyone anymore.

So in the grand scheme of things, small groups of faith-healing fundamentalists do not pose a threat to public health. Trying to coerce those groups to violate their religious beliefs, therefore, cannot be reasonably necessary to curb the re-emergence of vaccine-preventable disease. The opposite holds true, though, for anti-vaxxers who abuse philosophical vaccine exemptions. Not only do they pose a substantial threat to public health, but we have seen that coercion of some form has, in fact, become necessary to negate that threat.

Back in 2012, California Governor Jerry Brown approved Assembly Bill 2109, which took effect at the beginning of 2014. The bill required that anyone seeking a PBE from vaccines for their children first consult with a physician about those vaccines, then have that physician sign the PBE form. Requiring this informed non-consent to vaccines certainly helped matters somewhat here in California, but even still, we still have vaccination rates lower than where they need to be. And in addition to the Disneyland measles outbreak, which began nearly a full year after AB 2109 came into effect, many elementary schools around the state still have abysmal rates of vaccination for the disease.

Going after religious groups at the fringes of their faiths makes little sense in the context of vaccine exemptions; we as a society can afford to leave them well enough alone. The consequences of doing the same with anti-vaxxers claiming PBEs, conversely, would simply become too costly.

Contact Johnathan Bowes at jbowes ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Right idea, wrong response: Correcting the FDA’s misstep with 23andMe https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/09/right-idea-wrong-response-correcting-the-fdas-misstep-with-23andme/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/09/right-idea-wrong-response-correcting-the-fdas-misstep-with-23andme/#respond Tue, 10 Feb 2015 06:15:42 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1095355 The absolute best option for the FDA in the case of 23andMe is to consider medical processes using medical devices as inherent enough in those devices to warrant their regulatory oversight.

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Founded in 2006, 23andMe has become the only major direct-to-consumer (DTC) genomics company left in the market. Initially, the DTC services they offered gave customers information about their ancestry as well as health — from likely drug sensitivities to predispositions to illness. But in November of 2013, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) specifically targeted 23andMe with regulations that prevented them from offering any health data based on their testing. Since then, though they have abided by the FDA’s mandate here in the United States, the company has offered abridged versions of their previous health services to customers in Canada and the UK, with the blessings of regulators in those countries.

Thanks to the benefits of hindsight, the FDA’s decision to step into the regulatory waters surrounding 23andMe’s specific brand of DTC genomics services here in the US seems, in principle, like a good decision. Nonetheless, they went about doing so in a flawed way.

Taking a deontological standpoint, the FDA has assigned itself an absolute duty to ensure the “safety, efficacy, and security” of medical products thanks to the stated goals and responsibilities inherent in their continued existence as a regulatory body. Prior to November 2013, 23andMe consistently (and forcefully) advertised their genetic health information to potential users as accurate medical information that could benefit customers in planning for their future health needs, especially regarding sensitivities and reactions to specific medications. Unfortunately, though, according to the FDA, the company has not provided sufficient evidence to show that their claims have some sort of medical validity.

As such, the idea of FDA oversight of the company is valid. The actual methods that the Administration used to implement and justify that oversight in 2013, though, are tenuous at best. The FDA’s own definition of medical devices, for instance, in no way suggests that a webpage containing health information (regardless of that information’s validity or accuracy) can fall into the classification of a device. 23andMe’s presentation of that data in no way constitutes “an instrument, apparatus, implement, machine, contrivance, implant, in vitro reagent, or other similar or related article” — in other words, a device in and of itself — despite the fact that the company presented users’ health-related information in a way that obviously suggested its use in preventing and treating illness. The FDA’s move to block 23andMe’s distribution of health data by deeming it a medical device seems to misunderstand the the information presented to 23andMe customers at some level — it would only make sense if 23andMe had included it as a fundamental, structural part of the code for the company’s website (and thus turned their site eo ipso into a medical device). Since 23andMe did not, the FDA has no basis for classifying the element of the company’s personal genomics services they blocked as a medical device.

The conflict between these two ideas (that the FDA has a moral/organizational obligation to regulate 23andMe’s genomics testing services and that those services cannot seriously be called medical devices) leaves the FDA in a precarious position as it continues to block 23andMe’s health data. As such, a determined, ethical move seems necessary to resolve this issue in the best, most sound manner possible. Two options that seem both ethical and potentially effective are available to the FDA at present: asserting a right to oversee the process by which 23andMe derives the health information they provide to customers, or asserting a right to treat science-based information meant for health purposes as they currently treat devices.

The latter option might seem tempting to some at the FDA who want the organization to have a larger and more powerful role nationwide as the arbiter of good and bad in the medical context. Non-physician access to science-based medical information has only proliferated in recent years, meaning that pursuing that route of regulation would have profound and far-reaching consequences across the healthcare industry, potentially affecting everyone from WebMD to individual physicians or clinics. But despite those temptations, the FDA should avoid this route without specific Congressional approval for doing so. Simply put, taking that path would be too large of a divergence from current policy to stand up to legal and political scrutiny. And ultimately, such an overreach in this situation could prove deleterious for the FDA’s long-term regulatory abilities in cases where such regulation is actually warranted.

As such, the option of regulating 23andMe’s actual testing processes makes the most ethical (and also practical) sense. Those processes likely already involve tools that qualify as medical devices, meaning that the FDA would have had to approve them in the first place. It is only a small logical leap to go from regulating the design of a device to regulating its use, especially in the context of health and medicine. Doing so also continues to affirm the FDA’s commitment to helping the general public in the United States get accurate science-based information for the purposes of improving or maintaining their health. So with its deontological duty to move forward in some direction and the consequentialist warning not to proceed with regulation of the information itself, it seems that the absolute best option for the FDA in the case of 23andMe is to consider medical processes using medical devices as inherent enough in those devices to warrant their regulatory oversight.

Contact Johnathan Bowes at jbowes ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Keystone XL: A pipeline to a new future? https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/19/keystone-xl-a-pipeline-to-a-new-future/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/19/keystone-xl-a-pipeline-to-a-new-future/#respond Tue, 20 Jan 2015 05:44:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1094042 Super Tuesday columnists Johnathan Bowes '15 and Matthew '18 take on the hot button political issues of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Bowes argues that if developed ethically and with respect to landowners and Native American nations, the pipeline is a net positive for the US. Cohen suggests that the risk of affecting the American water supply and the overall increased production of oil should make us wary.

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President Obama should veto the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Approving the pipeline is extraordinarily unsafe and sends a message that the United States is not serious about fighting climate change.

The Keystone XL pipeline is the fourth and final phase of the already existing Keystone pipeline network, and it will be constructed on highly sensitive land. This network goes from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast and is used to transport a dirty and carbon-heavy form of petroleum, known as tar sands. The biggest question we face when deciding whether to approve the pipeline or not will be: Do we want to risk permanently contaminating one of the world’s largest fresh water supplies?

Unlike the other phases of the Keystone project, the XL pipeline will traverse highly sensitive land and thereby make an oil spill all the more severe. While TransCanada has redirected the route away from the Nebraska Sandhills in an effort to appease environmentalists, the proposed pipeline would go over the Ogallala Aquifer, which lies undermost of Nebraska. This aquifer provides nearly 2 million people with fresh drinking water and supports $20 billion in agriculture. Unlike other sources of fresh water, this aquifer is very close to the surface, so any spill would most likely contaminate a large section of this aquifer. A report from the Nebraska Wildlife Foundation noted, “Some portions of the aquifer are so close that any pipeline leak would almost immediately contaminate a large portion of the water.” The pipeline also crosses seismically active areas that have experienced as powerful as a 4.3 earthquake as recently as 2002.

Oil pipelines, in general, will inevitably leak. In fact, the first phases of the Keystone pipeline had 14 leaks in its first year, and even a pin-sized hole in a pipeline can result in thousands of gallons of spilled oil. In addition to this inherent risk of using pipelines to transport oil, TransCanada does not intend to use the latest safety technology that would detect oil leaks. A company unwilling to take these necessary precautions should not be given permits to build a risky pipeline that could have extremely dangerous consequences.

Lastly, the first three phases of the Keystone pipeline are operational and currently deliver oil from Alberta to the Gulf Coast. The XL pipeline would merely expedite that process by taking a shortcut through the Ogallala Aquifer. Risking contamination of the aquifer for expediency is irrational, to put it generously.

However, approving the Keystone XL pipeline not only risks our water supplies, but also our planet’s health in the future. According to the overwhelming judgment of science, nearly 33 percent of this planet’s oil must stay untouched, in the ground, if we want to effectively tackle climate change. Approving Keystone XL sends a message that the United States is not serious about meeting this goal. The United States should take the lead on solving climate change to show the world that our actions match our rhetoric and that pursuing environmentally friendly policies does not weaken economic growth.

Proponents of the Keystone XL pipeline argue that it will create jobs and promote economic growth. Analysis has shown that there may be a few construction jobs created, but after the pipeline is built, the project will only leave several dozen permanent jobs. Contrary to popular belief, the refined oil from the Keystone XL pipeline would most likely go outside of the United States to foreign countries, like China. Constructing the pipeline will produce few direct benefits for the U.S. economy.

Furthermore, advocates of the pipeline will argue that the oil will be pumped regardless of whether the XL pipeline is built. This may be true, but it will be pumped at a slower rate because transporting oil via train and other segments of the Keystone pipeline is slower than transporting it via the XL pipeline.

Keeping as much oil in the ground as possible and for as long as possible is important. The planet is at a tipping point, and the United States should be vigorously trying to negate the effects of climate change.

Senator Boxer was correct in saying that XL means “extra lethal.” The proposed XL pipeline has a very high likelihood of damaging one of the most important aquifers in the United States. Meanwhile, the benefits are minimal. If the XL pipeline was built, the winner would be China because it would not incur any risk and yet gain more access to oil. President Obama should reject the planned pipeline not only to send a message, but to also prevent an ecological catastrophe.

Contact Matthew Cohen at mcohen18 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

For the last six years, the Keystone XL pipeline debate has dragged on to the point of silliness. As even Jon Stewart points out, TransCanada’s proposed final addition to their existing international pipeline system has become the entrenched battle we see today due more to environmental activists turning it into a cause célèbre than to actual concerns about the pipeline itself.

At long last, though, it seems that some sort of final resolution of that fight might come soon. The State Department has given other agencies until February 2 to give feedback on the current iteration of the Keystone XL plan, now that the route snakes around the Sandhills and most of the Ogallala Aquifer. The Obama administration will have little excuse to delay a decision on the pipeline expansion much longer at that point, particularly given two looming decisions that could sidestep the administration altogether. The Republican-controlled Congress wants to bypass the President and approve the plan on its own, but TransCanada may bypass the U.S. altogether by building a bigger, Canada-only pipeline called Energy East to bring Alberta’s bitumen (or oil/tar sands) to New Brunswick for refining.

Recent polling suggests that 57 percent of people in the US (and about two-thirds of people in both the Midwest and South, where the pipeline would run) support the Keystone XL plan, and the State Department has estimated that the Keystone XL pipeline would create about 42,000 jobs here in the U.S. Taken with the fact that blocking it would do nothing to prevent bitumen extraction in Alberta with TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline on the horizon, the pressure is on the White House to do the right thing by permitting the project.

But Obama’s decision on Keystone XL shouldn’t be the end of the story. After all, we still have to build the thing — and that puts thousands of miles of private property and sacred lands right in the crosshairs of TransCanada. And those need to be taken into consideration before a single section of the new pipeline goes into the earth.

In building another part of the wider Keystone pipeline system, TransCanada has taken advantage of a special exception written into state laws that allows firms building “common carrier” pipelines to seize private land via eminent domain. While some landowners have successfully fought off the seizure of their land, they are the exception rather than the norm. And along the path of the XL extension, TransCanada intends to use the same eminent domain power even as landowners are already bringing them to court.

Additionally, sixteen Native tribes have asked the Obama administration to either delay deciding on Keystone XL until an authority in South Dakota investigates the latest route for the pipeline or reject the pipeline outright. They hold that the plan as it is now would harm sacred and other culturally significant sites for their peoples.

When it comes to Keystone XL, or any significant infrastructure project requiring governmental input, the actual or potential effects on the people who live, work or worship in the path of the project should be considered just as important as factors like the cost, environmental impact and public opinion. After all, those are the people who most directly have to live with the consequences of a project like Keystone XL for generations. Ethically speaking, those people (in this case, the landowners and Native peoples whose lands are at risk of seizure) need as large a voice in proceedings as TransCanada or President Obama.

So far, they haven’t had that voice — or if they have, it hasn’t been heard. And that needs to change.

First and foremost, TransCanada needs to get that message. While an outright rejection on ethical grounds might seem an appropriate way to do so, it would probably encourage the development of Energy East more than spark consideration of individual property rights and the free exercise of religion, if it does the latter at all. Instead, the Obama administration should look at the specific concerns raised by the tribes in South Dakota and the landowners in Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Montana and grant TransCanada a conditional approval of the pipeline — conditional on an agreement between the company and those groups that each finds acceptable. Such a provisional approval would hopefully provide enough of an assurance to TransCanada that they wouldn’t abandon Keystone XL for Energy East, but at the same time, it helps to keep the rights of our First Peoples and Midwest landowners at the forefront of the conversation.

But that process would only be a first step. These issues about the improper use of eminent domain and about the rights of Native American nations will keep coming up unless we make a commitment to deal with them them. Moving forward, people throughout the country (and particularly, it seems, in the Midwest and South) should take a closer look at our states’ eminent domain laws and make sure they strike the right balance between the rights of individuals and actual public good. Moving forward, our courts should reexamine the precedent set by Lyng vs. Northwest Indian CPA and start considering Native religions on their own terms rather than those of the Old World. Moving forward, we need to make sure that the next time some big project comes down the pipe, we’re ready to handle it ethically.

Contact Johnathan Bowes at jbowes ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stone by stone: Refocusing the Ferguson protests https://stanforddaily.com/2014/12/02/stone-by-stone-refocusing-the-ferguson-protests/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/12/02/stone-by-stone-refocusing-the-ferguson-protests/#comments Wed, 03 Dec 2014 04:46:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1092902 At this point, though, shouting “Shut it down for Michael Brown!” while parading through shopping malls in St. Louis or while chained to the BART train is a fairly meaningless and insignificant act. Protesting against a grand jury’s decision as a way to achieve some sort of betterment for the situation of black people vis-à-vis violence or the police will ultimately change nothing about those situations.

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Over a week has passed since the grand jury decision in Ferguson, Missouri that has led to mass protests, looting, and transportation chaos in the days surrounding Thanksgiving, but nonetheless, protests continue, and the anger over the decision has not dissipated. But there’s a critical problem with these protests: the anger that has caused them is misdirected.

Right now, the protests reacting to the Ferguson decision have done only that — they have merely reacted to the decision without pushing for any specific change. But though the Michael Brown – Darren Wilson case doesn’t perfectly fit the mold of a true violation of rights case, it seems that a good number of people, around the country and here on campus, have become fed up with the problems that black people and their communities face on a daily basis through watching the case unfold.

We have an incredible problem in this country when it comes to violence both in and against the black community, as well as in how the police relate to that community. As of last school year, for instance, black people in this country were murdered four times as often as should be expected given the national average, and despite accounting for less than 15 percent of the general population, black people (and predominantly black males) account for about 37 percent of our prison population.

At this point, though, shouting “Shut it down for Michael Brown!” while parading through shopping malls in St. Louis or while chained to the BART train is a fairly meaningless and insignificant act. Protesting against a grand jury’s decision as a way to achieve some sort of betterment for the situation of black people vis-à-vis violence or the police will ultimately change nothing about those situations.

Even protesting for something as abstract as the concept of racial justice won’t really help stop these problems at this point in time. If asked, the vast majority of people would probably agree that black lives matter, but it would be hard to find a majority who believe shutting down public transit for several hours or boycotting Black Friday will help society move towards a more-equitably just way of operating — and the protests have not changed that at all. If anything, getting in people’s way, especially during the busiest shopping day of the year, will encourage people to close themselves off to any message the protesters want to send. It also seems to encourage people who think of “an eye for an eye” justice as something desirable to join in, which could account for people thinking that burning down pizza places counts as a move towards justice.

In order to actually achieve some meaningful change in our society, the people who have protested peacefully over this last week should actually adopt a concrete, achievable goal. After all, the problems of violence against and criminalization of black people is a mountain of a problem; it’s simply too big to tackle all at once.

So rather than protests calling for something that protests can’t solve, let’s see some protests calling for the demilitarization of the police force. If anything encourages otherwise-good police officers to use excessive force in situations that don’t warrant it, having stockpiles of military-grade weaponry would. We’d already started to see this trend by the time Wilson shot Brown, like with the case of the Atlanta SWAT team who threw a grenade at a two-year-old while looking for a drug dealer. There are few cases when a police officer justifiably needs gear beyond what is standard-issue, and there are no cases when police officers absolutely need tanks and anti-helicopter guns.

Let’s see some protests calling for mandatory body cameras for police officers. Unlike private citizens, police officers do not have a right to privacy while on-duty. So just as people can, and should, film police officers in the course of their duties as a form of accountability, police departments themselves should, through required body cameras, do so too. It’s not a perfect solution by any means, but by knowing that a camera catches everything a police officer does, requiring cameras on cops should help to prevent police brutality — and help to bring about justice when it happens.

Let’s see some protest calling for the decriminalization of drugs. Drugs tend to be the cash cows for gangs, and for people trying to escape poverty, getting involved in the drug trade through gangs could be a risk worth taking. Those gangs bring the lion’s share of the violence to black communities, as well as the increased scrutiny of the police. The end of alcohol prohibition saw the downfall of the mob in many ways, just as the few instances of marijuana prohibition’s end have already started curbing the power of the drug cartels. If the gangs lose their power, excuses for police brutality will rapidly disappear.

So instead of shutting it down for Michael Brown — which does nothing more than shout at the mountain — let’s start pulling that mountain down stone by stone.

Contact Johnathan Bowes at jbowes ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Super Tuesday: Should we attack ISIS? https://stanforddaily.com/2014/09/29/super-tuesday-should-we-attack-isis/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/09/29/super-tuesday-should-we-attack-isis/#comments Tue, 30 Sep 2014 01:20:14 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1088561 Super Tuesday columnists Veronica Anorve '17 and Johnathan Bowes '15 debate strategies to attack ISIS. Both support limited airstrikes, but Bowes warns especially of action in Syria.

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For the past few weeks, ISIS has captured United States and global attention — and for good reason. The terrorist organization has wormed its way into our minds and augmented our worst fears by directly ordering its members to kill civilians and soldiers in the U.S. and in ally countries. As such, it incontrovertibly poses a threat to the homeland.

We have long faced threats from radical militants who pervert one of the world’s greatest religions. Yes, undoubtedly we have been proactive in targeting such threats, but in the past, we have often addressed such threats by ravaging the Middle East with ground troops and an unambiguous agenda. President Obama’s recent, detailed announcement to vanquish the ISIS threat with a clear, defined strategy of airstrikes, diplomatic alliances and support for Iraqi and ally ground forces is a mature and coherent action plan.

In his plan to obliterate ISIS, President Obama needs to address and consider a few points. Firstly, we cannot, nor should we, do it alone. The coalition already formed against ISIS is not an insubstantial one; thus far, more than 60 countries have joined in the effort against ISIS. Although the U.S. is the primary leader of the coalition, it is imperative that all member countries strive to contribute as much as they can. The U.S. itself should not bear the brunt of the financial and military costs that often fall on it.

On a related level, it is important that the coalition countries cooperate fully with each other and endeavor to set apart their differences for the sake of eradicating ISIS. In particular, the U.S. and its Western allies should attempt to facilitate collaboration with and between Iraq and Syria. Undoubtedly, the West has had its share of disputes with Iraq and Syria, and Iraq and Syria too have had a somewhat tumultuous relationship, what with Syria’s support of terrorists in Iraq. However, ISIS is a common enemy that threatens both Arab countries and the West. As such, the West should appropriate sufficient assistance for carrying out strikes in Syria and providing weapons and funding in Iraq.

Secondly, President Obama must work with the other coalition members to strangle ISIS’ funding. ISIS is a unique target not only because of its military acuity and overt brutality, but also because of its broad swath of resources, and particularly, its inordinate wealth (estimated around $2 billion). The Islamic State controls more territory than al-Qaeda ever had, and consequently has access to substantial pools of money that enable it to finance its terrorist objections. Key to annihilating the Islamic State is to dry up the black market for the oil that ISIS has been smuggling across the Middle East. By targeting the Islamic State’s illicit oil sources, the global counter-coalition can have a forceful impact on disrupting ISIS’ financing, as well as its mobility and assistance of the communities under its rule.

Finally, we should bear in mind that ISIS does not represent a temporary problem; rather, it represents a cancer that, although it likely originated in regional instability and dissatisfaction with governing leaders in the Middle East, has no doubt spread and grown in its malignance. As such, we should consider our approach to ISIS and its associates cautiously and carefully. The Islamic State is only a part of a network of militant groups who share a desire to undermine the U.S. and its allies. We cannot take a back seat in this issue, but neither can we strive to engage with ISIS in a protracted war, as we have in the past. Our airstrikes have to be strategic, intentional and accurate. Above all, we must target ISIS’ key leaders and erode the organization limb by limb, level by level, region by region in an expeditious, but calculated manner.

As 9/11 and countless other incidents since then have demonstrated, these radicals will stop at nothing to prove their point. The conflict with ISIS is not a clash of civilizations, nor of enemy countries. The conflict is one group against the world, and everyone has the moral responsibility to set aside their differences and unite in obliterating a common enemy, for the sake of the homeland and well-being of millions of innocent people. Although the War on Terror may remain an enduring issue for decades to come, we can take the right steps in undermining the strength of ISIS in numbers and resources by galvanizing global support and acting together with clear objectives and a strong will. ISIS is powerful, but it is not omnipotent; armed with our ideals and global alliance as our major weapons, we can and should defeat ISIS.

Contact Veronica Anorve at vanorve ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Earlier this summer, the United States began acting essentially unilaterally in Iraq to combat the group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS) and halt its persecution of the Iraq’s religious minorities. While we did coordinate with the Kurdish peshmerga (who have borne the brunt of the ground war thus far) as well as the failing state of Iraq itself, only warplanes stamped with the letters USAF roared through the skies over northern Iraq.

Recently, that has changed. Now, not only have we expanded the war into Syria — where ISIL’s strongholds lie amidst the ruins of that war-torn nation — we have created a coalition of other air-only allies: Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, the UAE, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and, most recently, our special friend, the U.K. While our European allies thus far have only committed to prosecuting the war over Iraq, the Arab states in our coalition have had fewer qualms about striking into Syria alongside us.

Due to this expansion and coalition-building, it looks like we have, once again, laid the groundwork for a long war trying to “solve” what Cards Against Humanity deems “the complex geopolitical quagmire that is the Middle East.”

As this war grows and continues, it will remain important to consider what brought us there in the first place — why we have, for the third time in our still-short lifetimes, gotten involved in an extended war in the Middle East: a sense of responsibility to defend persecuted minority groups in a state we only recently invaded. Continuing to use that motivation could cause us trouble in the future, but in this war, our initial stated mission is set in stone. That mission is the job we have “hired” ourselves and our allies for, and that job must be our first priority.

The expansion of our coalition’s airstrike zone to include territory nominally belonging to Syria simultaneously comes as promising and worrying news on that front.

Without going after ISIL in former Syrian territory, winning any conflict with them would be practically impossible. The capital and heart of ISIL’s legitimately evil caliphate, Raqqa, lies within territory ruled by Syria’s legitimately evil dictator, Bashar al-Assad, only a few years ago. The initial germ that became the plague of ISIL used the current Syrian Civil War as a way to grow and arm itself, morphing it into the blitzkrieging juggernaut that tore across Iraq this summer. Were ISIL forced back into the position of struggling jihadist group by an Iraq-only campaign, it’s almost certain that it could use its territory in Syria to rebuild and regroup before taking on Iraq, Turkey or any other state ISIL thinks should belong under its thumb. On top of that, the Kurds that have been our on-again, off-again allies in Iraq aren’t the only members of their people — Kurds also live as a minority group in Syria, where the combination of a smaller permanent Kurdish population and the influx of refugees from Iraqi Kurdistan makes them more vulnerable to ISIL.

But at the same time, the decision to start bombing targets in Syria puts us at the top of a very slippery slope, with the Syrian Civil War at the bottom. It will take much more than the bombing of a few oil fields and foxholes to destroy ISIL, and in our attempts to achieve that destruction, we have to be more conscious of how to prevent the fight from spawning the next Big Jihadist Threat in the Middle East. As such, somebody’s boots better be on the ground, and ideally, that somebody should be a person who lives in the Middle East. While the Kurds in Iraq have the reputation of freedom fighters in Washington, the Kurds in Syria have a more checkered standing that gives our military leaders pause. This may mean that, in order to really beat ISIL, we may have to cultivate a closer relationship with the Syrian rebel groups that have been fighting ISIL and Assad’s regime since the Arab Spring sprung a few months before most current seniors got accepted into Stanford. But once we have become dependent on those rebel groups, will the same compelling urge to protect that brought us to this point in the first place also bring us directly into the Syrian Civil War?

There’s no doubt that Assad needs to fall for Syria to move forward as a nation, but despite his evil ways, we need to remember that Assad, as of now, is not our problem. We’ve proven in the past that we don’t know how to replace ruthless Ba’athist dictators (i.e. Saddam Hussein) without creating more enemies and more problems for ourselves, so realistically, the Syrian rebels may be helped more by our absence from their fight than our presence in it.

Should it prove inescapably necessary to remove Assad to destroy ISIL, then — and only then — would it make sense for us and our coalition to actively pursue his destruction. But in the meantime, we need to keep focused on our initial mission in this fight: removing the evil of ISIL from the Earth. If we lose that focus, then all our efforts thus far will likely have been in vain.

Contact Johnathan Bowes at jbowes ‘at Stanford.edu.

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Super Tuesday: Should Rush Limbaugh be fired? https://stanforddaily.com/2014/09/22/super-tuesday/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/09/22/super-tuesday/#comments Mon, 22 Sep 2014 23:55:25 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1088082 Super Tuesday columnists Aimee Trujillo '15 and Johnathan Bowes '15 take perspectives on Rush Limbaugh's recent comments that 'no' can mean 'yes' if you know how to spot it. Trujillo argues that these comments have no place in the public sphere as they only perpetuate rape culture, while Bowes argues that firing Limbaugh would actually be counterproductive to those same aims.

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Sexual assault on college campuses has been making headlines recently as the number of reported assaults continues to rise every year. In response to these disturbing reports, the government took action by releasing a list of colleges under investigation for their handling of sexual assault claims. Consequently, many colleges on that list have begun to take concrete actions to both help better prevent and educate students about sexual assault. Ohio State University, as one of those schools, has reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education to meet the Title IX standards to “provide a learning, living and working environment that is free from sexual assault and sexual harassment.”

Despite Ohio State’s vigorous steps to keep its campus safe, its new policies became the punchline of the joke on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show on Sept. 15. Limbaugh attempts to make a mockery of Ohio State’s policies by implying that the need to affirmatively consent takes away from the fact that “seduction used to be an art.” In an effort to appeal to his heterosexual male audience he asks, “How many of you guys, in your own experience with women, have learned that ‘no’ means ‘yes’ if you know how to spot it?”

But “no” never means “yes” in any other context, so why should it have any other meaning in an intimate setting that requires such a great amount of trust between two people?

The greatest problem with Limbaugh’s argument for more relaxed sexual assault policies is his undermining of the trauma of sexual assault. The way we talk about things in society plays a great deal into our stereotypes and even how we act. Perpetuating sexist humor or phrases in fact actually justifies prejudice in settings much more serious than our jokes. Limbaugh does just this through his caustic humor by implying that seduction requires deceit and manipulation.

This is especially problematic amidst the growing number of college students who are reporting sexual assaults on campuses across the nation. Victims of sexual assault are already at a heightened risk of developing further psychological problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and depression. Depreciating the very real psychological trauma that can result from sexual abuse or assault only makes these problems worse.

While some may call upon Limbaugh’s unquestionable right to the freedom of speech, his derogatory comments cross the line from a mere statement of an opinion to the perpetuation of a dangerous rape culture. This is the very thing that American society needs to get away from. Denying the fact that sexual assault is so prevalent or trying to redefine assault as “seduction” is not only sexist and offensive but also blatantly false.

It is not acceptable to make comments like these solely for the sake of provoking a response from the public. The high potential for causing harm in this case has much bigger consequences for people’s lives than the potential monetary or publicity benefits that Limbaugh might get from his diatribe. There is a business choice that must be made in this situation, but there is only one moral answer.

Mr. Limbaugh could clearly learn a few things before deciding to impart his misogynistic criticisms on college sexual assault policies. First off, I myself would much rather attend a school where I felt safe that where I felt the so-called “art of seduction” was still alive. Campus safety is undoubtedly a much larger factor in college decision-making than “romance” culture is. Secondly, consent is sexy. Seduction and consent are not mutually exclusive, as he suggests in his tirade. A policy requiring expressed verbal consent does not signal the tragic end of romance. It signals the start of better communication and more equal dignity between women and men.

We cannot continue to make rape jokes or assume that women are incapable of expressing their true desires. There should never be any “blurred lines” in sexual interactions because no means no. Always.

Contact Aimee Trujillo at aimeet ‘at’ stanford.edu.

A recent change in OSU’s sexual assault policies has brought Rush Limbaugh into another pot of hot water; this time, progressive leaders and lay people want Limbaugh’s head over his comments about consent destroying the art of “seduction,” since he holds that “‘no’ means ‘yes’ if you know how to spot it.

Those of us who understand him know that Limbaugh enjoys controversy, though he generally creates it via blunt language or, less frequently, personal attacks. Such pot-stirring comments are essentially subjective, even if he later apologizes for their impact. It’s rare that Limbaugh sets off a wave of anger due to something objectively stupid.

Nonetheless, this is one of those times.

It unfortunately doesn’t go without saying that consent is crucial in sex/romance. Articles on the topic still open many eyes because of our rape culture. The idea that all partners should want what’s happening to happen sets apart abusive, traumatic and/or violating actions from those that aren’t. Barring circumstances where partners have already agreed to a different paradigm, “no,” in fact, never means “yes.”

Beyond this, his statements are also idiotic because they ignore that men can be sexually assaulted* and that rape is about power, not sex.

As such, Limbaugh’s comments on the not-so-blurred lines of sexual violence are at best naïve and at worst imbecilic. For many on the left, that’s the end of the story — after all, it’s Rush Limbaugh. When a right-of-center voice displays such incompetence on something like sexual assault, it’s more than enough for the left-of-center powers to campaign against them.

Conversely, true-blue Democrats who are sexual predators still get a platform*. Take Bill Clinton, who — despite abusing Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick — is still a major Democrat fundraiser.

In reality, though, ending the story there does nothing to actually combat rape culture or change ideas about sexual assault.

Since we live in a country that (usually, but not always) respects individual freedom, it’s important to realize that Limbaugh’s freedom to say stupid things enables our freedom to teach him, and others, why he’s wrong.

Simply shutting him up, as the left wants, doesn’t send the message that he’s morally incorrect; instead, it sends the message that he’s politically incorrect — something he has taught his listeners is a good thing for two decades. Political correctness is an inherently left-wing concern, while moral correctness is something that right-wingers and left-wingers both care about.

Just look at the vitriol that surrounded Limbaugh’s comments about Sandra Fluke. While left-wingers were too busy going apoplectic over his slurs, few focused on trying to explain their objections in a way that would actually sway people on the other side of the aisle; few successfully bypassed the tropes of the “war on women” to actually point out how they saw contraception as morally important. Thus, when Limbaugh did apologize to Fluke, he didn’t change his mind on the issue of contraception in Obamacare; he did so because he felt his words had been both inappropriate and too much like the standard progressive rhetoric. More importantly, his listeners didn’t change their minds either, given how favorable most Republicans view the SCOTUS decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby.

The targeting of Limbaugh then made him a martyr for the cause against contraception in Obamacare, which very well could happen with sexual assault if this most-recent battle in the war on Limbaugh continues to roll forward.

So where does that leave us on sexual assault? Regardless of political ideology, many of us here at Stanford and other universities are starting to awaken to the specific manifestations of rape culture in college, including universities that care more about damage control than helping survivors — thanks to Leah Francis ‘14 and the #StandWithLeah campaign that began last year.

Francis has taught so many because her voice was added to the conversation, not because her detractors’ voices were removed from it. The same can happen in our culture as a whole, too, if we refuse to silence people who need to be taught and instead focus our efforts on teaching them in the first place. Those of us in the position to do so must remind Limbaugh and others how their right to free speech, even when they say things that make no logical sense, is just as important as the right of everyone to feel safe and comfortable in their interpersonal (and especially romantic/sexual) relationships. We must still acknowledge the stupidity and danger in the idea that “no” can automatically mean “yes,” but it is of the highest importance that we do so in a way that actually causes a positive change.

*TRIGGER WARNING: the preceding link contains details of sexual assault.

Contact Johnathan Bowes at jbowes ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The (police) dogs of war https://stanforddaily.com/2014/08/18/the-police-dogs-of-war/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/08/18/the-police-dogs-of-war/#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2014 00:38:17 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1087572 Last week, President Obama announced the authorization of immediate, indefinite airstrikes against the Islamic State (of Iraq and the Levant, known varyingly as IS or ISIS/ISIL), bringing the U.S. military back into combat in Iraq for the first time since current seniors’ first quarter here at Stanford. Hoping to protect the nearly-independent Kurds as well […]

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Last week, President Obama announced the authorization of immediate, indefinite airstrikes against the Islamic State (of Iraq and the Levant, known varyingly as IS or ISIS/ISIL), bringing the U.S. military back into combat in Iraq for the first time since current seniors’ first quarter here at Stanford. Hoping to protect the nearly-independent Kurds as well as prevent the genocide of the Yazidis — a sect that ISIL sees as Devil-worshippers — the airstrikes come as Kurdistan wants to fight back, Iraq wants to implode and Obama wants to take another vacation.

In other words: S.N.A.F.U. The United States is again off to police a rogue “nation.” Uncle Sam still might as well be called Sammy Five-O.

The Cold War made it not only commonplace, but compulsory for the U.S. to intervene in foreign conflicts that were seen as conflicts between Good (republicans) and Evil (socialists). The lion’s share of U.S. foreign policy from Truman to Reagan focused on either containment or rollback of Evil Empire-brand communism/socialism. The political rhetoric of those decades fueled a cultural fire that supported interventionism as a way to maintain order — otherwise known as policing. Some wars of intervention back then were even officially called “police actions.”

That spirit didn’t disappear once the Berlin Wall fell, though, as Clinton’s various interventions in the disintegrating Yugoslavia showed. It’s then that our nation, the last superpower, started to become the de facto United States Police Department.

Even the tangible threat of al-Qaeda couldn’t diminish that constabulary élan following September 11; despite the ongoing war against the Taliban, the threat of Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons proved enough for Obama’s current Secretaries of State and Defense (Vietnam veterans John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, respectively) and a supermajority of other Senators to authorize war. And with Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama as Commander in Chief, we’ve already seen intervention in Libya against Gaddafi. And now, there’s the intervention against ISIL; the cycle continues.

But where does this cycle end?

So far, the United States Police Department has mainly enforced the U.N.’s Genocide Convention. Perhaps due to the horrors of the 20th century’s genocides (in Poland, Cambodia, Rwanda, etc.), the U.S. has come to especially abhor genocide to that point that we have made it our moral obligation to combat it. So when declaring that “it is our responsibility as Americans” to prevent a Yazidi genocide, Obama is (unusually) right. If the interests of the people in the U.S. are the interests of the U.S. itself, then preventing genocide is a “core” interest of the U.S. — meeting the standard used by both war-weary progressives and intervention-weary libertarians when arguing against more wars.

But what happens once stopping genocide isn’t enough? What happens when we decide that our moral authority extends to other matters, like combating terrorism on a global scale? It is not a huge leap of logic to say terrorism, while not as evil as genocide, is still a blight upon this world that we, as the USPD, need to remove. Our constabulary culture, the same one that has given us the warrant against genocide, could very easily come to a point where it gives us a warrant to exterminate terrorism once and for all.

It seems we’ve already reached that point. It has become an unfortunately common occurrence that “unnamed militants” or “suspected terrorists” are killed by U.S. Reaper and Predator drones in the Middle East in the name of fighting terrorism. While it’s possible that some of those killed were actual threats, it is certain that some of those killed were innocent civilians or even U.S. citizens who, regardless of their actions, remain entitled to constitutionally guaranteed rights to due process.

Despite leaders like Senator Rand Paul (literally) taking a stand against it, about 52 percent of U.S. citizens still support our practice of indiscriminate killing using drones; just like with the interventions of the Cold War, we see ourselves as occupying a moral high ground, giving the Obama administration carte blanche to fight its dirty war as it pleases.

So it seems we as a nation have another wolf by the ears. We can either start rejecting our position as a world police force and lose the culture that has allowed both the Drone War and the prevention of genocide to happen. Alternately, we can embrace our role as the watchers on the wall and continue to erode our founding principles because War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery and Ignorance Is Strength. The middle ground seems likely to disappear in the coming years, as our drones become all the more ubiquitous in the skies above Kabul and Islamabad.

When it comes to ISIL, Kurdistan and the Yazidis, our fate is sealed already. We have entered the fray, so we have a job to do and a people to protect. But while we let slip our police dogs of war, we need to start thinking how to stop crying “Havoc!” so easily.

 

Contact Johnathan Bowes at jbowes@stanford.edu.

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Vote for people, not names https://stanforddaily.com/2014/07/14/vote-for-people-not-names/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/07/14/vote-for-people-not-names/#comments Mon, 14 Jul 2014 23:42:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1086810 Almost as soon as the dust settled after the 2012 presidential election, many political commentators started talking about 2016, when we the people will (vote for the electors who officially) elect our next president. In the nearly two years since then, the political intelligentsia have used countless amounts of ink, pixels and bits to run […]

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Almost as soon as the dust settled after the 2012 presidential election, many political commentators started talking about 2016, when we the people will (vote for the electors who officially) elect our next president.

In the nearly two years since then, the political intelligentsia have used countless amounts of ink, pixels and bits to run through the roster of contenders for the Oval Office — everyone from the populist David in Elizabeth Warren and her establishment Goliath, Hillary Clinton, on the Democratic side to the filibustering firebrand Rand Paul and the across-the-aisle compromiser Chris Christie on the Republican side.

The same process of presidential election fervor has always started up again every four years. But what about the congressional elections that happen every two years?

While presidents inevitably become major political celebrities through the course of their campaigns, congresspeople usually do not. Local races do often generate local celebrities, but without the nationwide politicking that defines presidential races, casual voters won’t even hear about candidates in neighboring districts until they do something newsworthy, be it scandalous, sensational or both.

One of the major problems with that trend stems from how “celebrity” often becomes equated with “power” in our political system. Because of the celebrity status associated with the presidency, many people either forget or ignore a key facet of how our government should run according to the Constitution: The main power in the federal government should be Congress.

The way the Constitution sets everything up, Congress (literally) comes first, and of the three branches, it has more enumerated powers (18, compared to the presidency’s 3 and the Supreme Court’s 1). And any time a president has tried to expand his own power, like both George W. Bush and Barack Obama have, he has been at least accused of usurping power from Congress — since, in many cases, that’s exactly what he’s doing.

But even with all of that power, people don’t seem to care as much about Congress as they do the presidency, despite the extremely high percentage (over 75 percent) of people who actively dislike what Congress is doing. That’s a major reason that Congress can’t get its power back from the Presidency without SCOTUS intervening.

Midterm election years, like this year, are a prime example of Congress’ lack of cachet: Usually, such years see much lower voter turnout rates than years featuring the dog-and-pony show of presidential races. While presidential elections have had an average of 58 percent turnout since 1948, midterm elections since 1950 have only seen an average of 42 percent turnout. The highest a midterm election turnout has been in the last 50 years was 49 percent in 1966, when the Vietnam War was still young and the GOP was staging a comeback to oppose LBJ’s Great Society.

Even when people have shown up to the polls for congressional elections, the results have often been a foregone conclusion. Despite there being over 450 seats in Congress up for election every two years (one for every seat in the House of Representatives and for a third of those of the Senate), most of the same politicians fill those seats year in and year out.

In every election since 1964, over 50 percent of Senators up for re-election won another term; for Representatives, that figure has never fallen below 80 percent during the same time period.

In many cases, the cause of this staleness in Congress goes back to celebrity, albeit at the local level.

Since we live in a country in which people generally don’t pay much attention to Congress, elections can become a name game — especially for donors. Officeholders running for re-election often raise more money than their challengers, meaning they can pay for more signs and ads that make their names more familiar to casual voters. Though the Tea Party sought to defy that trend in 2010 with its mantra of opposing the political elite as much as Obama’s healthcare and tax policies, Congress is returning to its previous, stale state.

Paying attention to congressional elections won’t solve the entire problem, but it is a first step to help make sure that Congress never stays stale. And perhaps, with some new blood on Capitol Hill, we might see a Congress less willing to shut down the government as a political stunt and more willing to actually solve problems facing the country.

The great thing is, though, that it’s not too late to start paying attention in this election cycle. Granted, some primary elections have already taken place, including here in California.

However, just under half of the states and territories will hold their primaries in August and September — including Alaska, where the Senate race between incumbent Democrat Mark Begich and whoever wins the Republican primary will help decide which party controls the Senate. Even for races that have already progressed past the primary stage, the campaigns are only going to heat up in advance of the general elections, which will all take place on Nov. 4.

So start paying attention! Read news on Buzzfeed in addition to its cute animal lists, or better yet, read stories from both Fox News and Huffington Post to get a fuller perspective. Look up which congressional district you’re registered to vote in, and register to vote! And, most importantly, when you vote this year, make sure you vote for a person you’ve paid some attention to and have done some research on. Otherwise, you’re just voting for a name.

 

Contact Johnathan Bowes at jbowes@stanford.edu.

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