Tag Archives: Coronavirus

Avoiding Therapeutic Tyranny

Bioethics, Conscience, , ,

Because of the atrocities that were carried out under the Third Reich, there was a global awareness of the dignity of the human person especially when it comes to performing medical experiments. Experimentation today is mostly benign because of the fact that the war crime tribunal of Nuremberg articulated 10 standards by which researchers must conform when performing medical experiments on human subjects. These standards have now been adopted throughout the world and form the basis of our clinical trials system.  The first of these standards was that “[T]he voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision.”  The Principle of Free and Informed Consent as it has come to be known has been included in nearly every code of medical ethics throughout the world.  It is meant to protect human beings from a medical totalitarianism by which people are treated as guinea pigs.  Tyrants always try to control the population and, thanks to medical technology, the temptation to chemically control them is greater than it was even 75 years ago. 

The Principle of Free and Informed Consent

Although this principle has been articulated in secular code only recently, the Magisterium of the Church has taught this principle throughout the history of the Church.  Her teaching has been summarized succinctly in the Charter for Health Care Workers that was promulgated in 1994 by the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers

“To intervene medically, the health care worker should have the express or tacit consent of the patient.  In fact, he ‘does not have a separate and independent right in relation to the patient. In general, he can act only if the patient explicitly or implicitly authorizes him.’…Besides the medical relationship there is a human one: dialogic, non-objective. The patient …‘should be called upon to share in the improvement of his health and in becoming cured. He should be given the opportunity of personally choosing, and not be made to submit to the decisions and choices of others.’  So that the choice may be made with full awareness and freedom, the patient should be given a precise idea of his illness and the therapeutic possibilities, with the risks, the problems and the consequences that they entail.  This means that the patient should be asked for an informed consent.”

Charter for Health Care Workers, 72

While the principle of free and informed consent is fairly straightforward, in practice it can be difficult to secure fully informed consent.  The response to a given medical treatment varies greatly from individual to individual.  This means that it is often impossible to explain to someone all of the possible complications involved in a given treatment modality.  Some complications may be extremely remote and a listing of all possible complications may only serve to frighten them away from participation.  At other times, not all of the related hazards are known. 

Free consent is somewhat easier to achieve in practice because it is essentially consists in a negative.  Any sort of coercion ought to be completely rejected.  Because the goal of the research study is therapeutic in nature, this therapeutic benefit should be sufficient “payment” for their participation.  They must remain free to determine whether the personal benefits outweigh the burdens.  Likewise, there must be no “outside” coercion from either public or private institutions that threaten the person in some way.

For this reason, the principle of free and informed consent should really be interpreted as requiring “reasonably” free and “adequately” informed consent as governed by the a “Medical Golden Rule.” The US Bishops in their Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services stated the principle in this way: “Free and informed consent requires that the person or the person’s surrogate receive all reasonable information about the essential nature of the proposed treatment and its benefits; its risks, side-effects, consequences and cost; and any reasonable and morally legitimate alternatives, including no treatment at all” (27).

Why the Principle Matters Today

What makes this principle particularly important is that we are in the midst of the largest medical experiment in human history.  No matter where you stand on the Covid vaccine—its safety or its effectiveness—you should be appalled at the gross violation of this principle. 

First of all, the vaccines are advertised as “safe and effective”.  They may yet prove to be so, but at this point to make such a claim is really unsubstantiated.  Before such a claim can be made, there must be thorough risk-benefit analysis done.  Other than the J&J vaccine, this has not occurred.  They also have not been forthcoming with the data.  Why, for example, when we are concerned about getting people vaccinated, would the CDC not report hospitalization and death data comparing the vaccinated and unvaccinated? It gives the appearance of hiding something.  In fact, even if they aren’t hiding anything, it does gives credence to those who are concerned about a conspiracy. 

What about the rates of adverse events?  To say they are rare lacks a precision that they can readily quantify.  This is vitally important when different subpopulations have greatly different risks from Covid.  When, for example a 20-year-old already has a rare chance of suffering death or long term effects from the virus itself, why should they take a vaccine that also has rare side effects?  How can someone compare them without anything more than the vague designation of rare?  To appeal to public health is a two-edged sword as there is also a drain on public health should the person suffer one of said rare side effects.  Public health is far more than just the elimination of communicable diseases and people are far more than incubators. 

The point is that all of this and more makes it practically impossible to give informed consent.  But more disconcerting is the growing attacks on free consent.  The amount of coercion has reached a fever pitch.  Federal agencies, universities both private and public and private companies have all instituted mandatory vaccination.  Public officials have offered to pay people to be vaccinated and even have offered a lottery system that rewards one lucky winner a million dollars.  All of these forms are coercion are morally reprehensible and should be of grave concern to us all.  Mandatory vaccines today, mandatory sterilizations for the “public good” tomorrow.  Once the principle of free and informed consent is no longer recognized, there is nothing to keep it from becoming a therapeutic tyranny. 

The Covid vaccine might prove to be a good thing (that is why we are performing an experiment), but public health is not an element of the common good.  It is essentially a private good because not everyone shares in it equally.  Elements of the common good, as the name suggests, are shared equally among all the members of society.  Freedom of conscience (properly understood). on the other hand, is part of the common good.  To coerce vaccination, whether it is “safe and effective” or not is ultimately harmful to the common good and therefore must be opposed by even those who are personally in favor of vaccination.

The Tyranny of Sophistry

Abortion, Culture, Marxism, Science, , , , , ,

In his book Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power, Thomist philosopher Josef Pieper comments that the battle against sophistry is a perennial problem.  Satan’s primordial sophistry escaped the gates of Eden and has plagued mankind ever since.  Progress, especially when it is not matched by moral progress, only causes sophistry to grow.  Sophistication, Pieper says, usually entails greater degrees of sophistry.  What the sophist seeks to do is to shut down all pursuit of the truth by playing with words, usually by inventing catch-phrases that slide off a forked tongue and convey some half-truth that is cleverly dressed up as the whole truth.  It is most certainly an abuse of language; for the proper use of language is to convey ideas and tell the truth.  But sophistry uses language in order to manipulate people.

The Sophistry of Today

The problem of sophistry in our own age is particularly acute.  You might say that we are living under the tyranny of sophistry in which any objection to a sophist shibboleth is met by stupefied hostility.  “Pro-choice”: how could you not be in favor of a woman’s right to choose?  “Black lives matter”: so, you think Black lives don’t matter?  The objection is not with the half-truth, but with the half-falsehood that is dressed up by the slogan.  In other words, the objection is with the sophistry that manipulates language to hide what is really going on. 

In general, we should all be pro-choice, but in particular it totally depends on what the object of choice is.  If you are choosing to kill an innocent baby, then no, in fact we should not “Pro-choice”.  Of course, Black lives matter.  But what the honest person objects to is dressing up the Marxist aims of the further destruction of Black lives and society as a whole in this truth.  It is sophistry plain and simple.  And anyone who insists otherwise is a language tyrant.

Following the Science

There is a new slogan that is being peddled by the tyrant—“follow the science”.  Science is a great weapon in the hand of the sophisticated tyrant because it can be made to say anything you want it to say.  It is presented as somehow being about objective truth gathered by running controlled experiments in an unbiased setting.  The  method may be reliable, but the scientist himself is a fallen human being.  He is prone to biases, lapses in attention, ignorance, faulty design and even outright lying.  It does not help that his so-called peers who review his work also suffer from the same inherent problems.  It is also not immune to the “Cancel Culture” with many scientists handcuffed by a cultural confirmation bias.  All of this leads to what scientist Stuart Ritchie in his book Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth calls a “replication crisis” in modern science.  Experiments are run all the time.  But the true test is when an experiment is replicated.  Almost none of the so-called “science” has been replicated and very often is exposed as flawed when honest scientists attempt to do so.  Like Ritchie we should not be anti-science but instead to use it in a manner that discovers the truth without succumbing to the sophist’s tactic of inventing it.

As I said, science is a powerful tool in the arsenal of the sophisticated tyrant because it can be used to say whatever they want it to say.  Herein lies the half-falsehood found within “following the science”.  Science itself can never lead to certainty.  To assert otherwise is to turn science into a religion that must be governed by faith.  “Follow the science” is a credal statement.

Why is it that science can never lead to certainty?  In short, science, because it deals in material being, always deals with contingencies and therefore only leads to contingent truth.  The truth of what is being asserted always depends on certain conditions also being true.  The point is that when “Science” is presented as certain, without any discussion upon the conditions in which the thing also depends, it is a manipulation. 

Take, for example, the contention that “masks work”.  This is most certainly not an absolute.  What are the conditions under which they work?  To mandate mask wearing without any reference to the conditions under which they work, is not about safety but control.  If you want to keep people safe, then you will school them in the art of wearing the mask.  If you want to control them then any mask will do.  Likewise, the push for vaccination.  What are the conditions under which the vaccines “work”?  What are the conditions under which they don’t, or might even be harmful?  Are we to believe that a vaccine was developed at warp speed that covers every contingency?  To say they are “safe and effective” without observing a multitude of contingencies is not science but scientism.  To even mention those contingencies is sacrosanct and will likely get you censored. 

Science can say whatever I want it to say simply by playing with those contingencies.  I simply design my experiment so that it leads to a positive result.  Then I get peers to agree with the way it was run—never mind that these peers also have a vested interest in toeing the party line.  If it leads to a negative result anyway, I simply put it in the file cabinet.  Whenever you hear some scientific “fact” presented in some absolute manner, always seek the contingencies.  Who or what does this apply to?  When doesn’t it apply?  When someone tells you that it applies across the board, they are presenting something that has some degree of uncertainty as certain.  We may be willing to accept that degree of uncertainty and treat the proposition as true, but it is not anti-science to demand further uncertainty be removed.  But either way, certainty will never be achieved.

In classical Greece, the sophists threatened to take over society until the likes of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle stepped in.  They were unafraid to call sophistry what it was.  But that was not enough for them.  They also rescued the victims of sophistry by teaching them how to reason.  Perhaps in our own sophisticated age, we could do the same.

Masking and the New Religion

Apologetics, Church and State, Church Authority, Conscience, Culture, Human Dignity, Magisterium, Marxism, Moralilty, Natural Law, New Age, Paganism, Politics, Sacramentals, Sacraments, Virtue, , , ,

We have been hearing for decades that we are living in a post-Christian society.  This has mostly been a way to describe the fact that Christian values have been in decline.  But Christianity has still been the dominant religion; dominant, that is, until the Covid-19 crisis hit.  The arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in our society marked the official changing of the guard.  While we have been hearing about the emergence of a post-Christian society for decades, Christianity was still the dominant religion.  No longer is this true, however.  Christianity has been toppled and replaced by a new Gnosticism that we call Science. 

To be clear, the issue is not against science per se, but what is more accurately described as religion masquerading as science.  After all, as Aquinas says “He who neglects the experimental order in natural science falls into error” in all aspects of knowledge.  To solve the Covid-19 crisis, natural science plays a necessary, although not sufficient, role.  The peddlers of the new religion, would have us believe that it is sufficient because all we need to do is “trust the science.”  We are saved by faith, not in Christ, but in Science.

The New Priesthood

Nor should we be quick to dismiss expert opinion.  But expert opinion is not fact, it still must be based on solid reasoning.  The problem is that expert opinion is often treated like dogmatic truth because the Scientific Elite are the new priests.  Based on their secret knowledge that only “experts” such as themselves can understand, they dictate religious dogma.  Spoken word becomes fact.  Thus says the Scientist—“Masks don’t work” and it is so.  Thus says the Scientist two months later—“Masks do work” and it is so.  The Shepherds have spoken and the Sheeple must follow suit.  Laws are made to punish heretics who dare to question the spoken word.

This, by the way, is why masks have elicited such a strong response.  The High Priest initially said that they don’t work.  Then he spoke again saying they did and that the Priests lied because they were worried about a shortage.  But if a person unapologetically lies once, how do you know they are telling the truth now?  Actually, a leading Priest at Johns Hopkins says, it wasn’t lying but that “[A]t first, researchers and scientists did not know how necessary mask wearing would be among the general public. Now we are aware that wearing masks is an effective way to help prevent spread of this coronavirus” (Emphasis added).  Given the timeframe and the rather dramatic shift from no-mask to mask, where did this awareness come from? Changing your mind is fine. But changing your mind without a change in the data is based not on science, but fiat.  If you search prior to the dogmatic declaration, scientific opinion for the most part deemed them ineffective.  The fact is that the Priests exercised their hidden knowledge (because there was no new data) and declared them so.  I would probably be clothed in a scarlet mask for this statement alone, but let me go a little further as a statistician and speak about what a reasonable approach to this question would look like.

The Statistician Speaks

First, proving a negative is extremely difficult.  To conclusively say “masks don’t work” is a practical impossibility.  Having said that, there is little data to suggest that they do work (a complete summary that is thoroughly documented can be found here).  There have been studies in the last few months that have suggested they might, but these are inconclusive at best.  They are all very poorly done because they are being done in the midst of the crisis.  To study the problem properly you need to set up what would be something akin to a clinical trial in which you had a placebo group to compare it to.  But you also have the problem that mask usage is almost certainly confounded with social distancing.  Is social distancing the thing that helps, or is it masks, or is it both?  You’d have to set up a study to separate them.  Secondly, not all masks are created the same or are equally effective.

Carnegie Mellon tracks (among many other things) mask compliance here.  Notice that many places are in the high 80ish% for compliance and yet “cases” continue to increase in all of those areas.  If any intervention works, then you should expect the slope of the line of increase to decrease (“flatten the curve”).  But the data suggests that the lines are actually steeper.  For example, see the plot below of my home state of North Carolina which instituted a Mask Mandate on June 26th and has had above an 85% mask compliance rate (currently 91%).  North Carolina is far from unique in this regard and you can find similar data for all your favorite states.

If we were true to “Science” we would look at this medical intervention and determine that it does not work.  A drug company running a clinical trial (where they are using their own money) would stop the trial and might even decide that the intervention is actually making it worse.

This might mean that…wait for it…masks are making it worse.  You would again need to study this, but it is a reasonable supposition given the data.  It also makes sense in that it could easily be creating a false sense of security or become a petri dish of germs just waiting to be deposited on someone else or an aritficial barrier suppresses the body’s natural barrier of the immune system.  To be sure though, if we were testing a drug and the data looked like this, we would stop giving it to people.

This tangent was necessary because it speaks to the reasonableness of mask mandates.  Law, according to St. Thomas, is “an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community and is promulgated.”  Any law that does not fulfill those four requirements—reasonable, aimed at the common good, proper authority, and made known—is not, properly speaking, a law.  Therefore, because they are not reasonable (or at least can not be proven to be at this point reasonable) we have no obligation to obey them.  As true Shepherds of the Flock, Bishops and Priests need to stop being so deferential to mask mandates precisely for this reason.

The New Sacrament

The revolt against masks then is really a revulsion to what they symbolize.  They have been made into sacraments through the words of the New Priests.  They are said to protect and so therefore they do.  Those who do not want to subscribe to this religion therefore will not want to wear them.  It seems like a small thing to do, but it plays a key role in the overall narrative that Science can save us.  As a sacrament it symbolizes the fact that the Coronavirus is a serious threat to our overall well-being.  If you are tempted to think “well 99.99% of people that get this will survive”, then you only have to look around at everyone wearing a mask to tell you that you should be scared anyway.  The smiling face of your neighbor, which would normally comfort you, is now hidden from your sight.  The masks will permanently disfigure us because when the next virus comes along, and it will, they will tell us “this is more serious than the Coronavirus (which it likely will be) you must put the mask back on.” 

By blessing the mask, the Priest also makes it into a Secular Scapular.  Through the words of Mary to St. Simon Stock, we know that the Brown Scapular helps to save you eternally.  Through the words of the Scientist, the mask saves us from Covidoom.  The Brown Scapular is an aid to our growth in virtue, the Covid Scapular signals that we have virtue.

One of the things that the totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century was their exaltation of Science as the new religion.  Lenin, Stalin, Chiang Kai-Shek, and Hitler all committed their atrocities using “Science” as their justification.  Had someone stood up to them early on, one has to wonder whether things would have been different.

The Tyranny of the Hopeless

End of Life, Grace, Heaven, Last Things, Virtue, , , , , , ,

Around the year 251, the Roman Empire began to be ravaged by a plague.  Historians estimate that up to 5000 people died per day in Rome alone.  As Eusebius recounts, the pagans of Rome ran, quite literally, for their lives, shunning “any participation or fellowship with death; which yet, with all their precautions, it was not easy for them to escape” (Book VII, Ch. 22).  It was the Christians that stepped forward and were “unsparing in their exceeding love and brotherly kindness. They held fast to each other and visited the sick fearlessly, and ministered to them continually, serving them in Christ. And they died with them most joyfully, taking the affliction of others, and drawing the sickness from their neighbors to themselves and willingly receiving their pains. And many who cared for the sick and gave strength to others died themselves having transferred to themselves their death…Truly the best of our brethren departed from life in this manner, including some presbyters and deacons and those of the people who had the highest reputation; so that this form of death, through the great piety and strong faith it exhibited, seemed to lack nothing of martyrdom” (ibid).  Despite being viewed as the scourge of the Roman Empire, the Christians were the only ones who stepped forward when Rome was scourged.  This event was no historical accident but instead a blueprint for how Christians should respond in a time of plague.  Throughout history, we find similar responses.  Whether it was Justinian’s Plague of the late 6th Century plague in Rome that Pope St. Gregory expelled with some help from St. Michael and friends or the Black Death in which the mortality rate for priests was 47%, the Church has always viewed plagues as a time to let her light shine before men.

One might be quick to dismiss these historical precedents as irrelevant to our own times.  Society is structured such that plagues and their treatment are very different.  Christians are no longer needed to be de facto First Responders.  The State provides those.  Instead Christians should get out of the way and let the professionals do their job.  It is time to put said light under the bushel basket so that the contagion not spread.  But this would be a misreading of the events and a misunderstanding of what it means to be a Christian.

The Christian Response

Playing armchair epidemiologists, we might comment that the Christians probably made the problem worse.  That many of them died along with the sick would naturally support this fact.  And herein lies the problem.  A natural reading of these events reveal them to be failures, but a supernatural reading of them changes everything.  It is precisely in times of calamity that Christians need to become supernatural storytellers, not primarily by their words, but in their actions.

What made the Christians during those catastrophes exemplars was not that they ran to the front lines and tended to the wounded, but that they were beacons of hope.  They were beacons of true hope, not the optimism of only “two more weeks” but the hope that says “death is not the end”.  The light that they shone was Christian hope, a light that enabled everyone in society to realize that dying well is the meaning of life.  They tended to the spiritual wounds, they were really a Field Hospital and they remained open. 

They didn’t just talk about Christian hope, but they showed it by their actions.  The difference between true Christians and those who are not comes down to one thing—fear of death.  It is the fear of death that keeps people trapped within the clutches of the devil.  But it is Christ Who “freed those who through fear of death had been subject to slavery all their life” (Hebrews 2:15).  Each one of the cornerstones upon which the Church has been built did not fear death and each stone that is added to the edifice is free from the same fear.  The Apostles had seen their Teacher and Lord die, but then He was alive.  Freed from death, He promised them the same power.  That was the basis of their hope and it was the source of their freedom to live for the Glory of God and the salvation of souls even if it cost them their lives.

The Cost of Hope

Like the Apostles and Martyrs, sometimes witnessing to hope cost the Christians living in the times of plague their lives.  That too was necessary because it testifies to the fact that the world can offer no fountain of youth, no immortality.  Still its inhabitants remain locked in fear of death.  Only the Christian is truly free from the fear of death and it is this that sets them apart.  But it wasn’t that they “visited the sick fearlessly, and ministered to them continually,” but also that they “held fast to each other.” 

In short, hope was made manifest by the fact that they continued to meet with each other.  They showed no fear of death because spiritual death is far worse.  The danger of spiritual death is ever-present, plague or not.  They met because they needed to constantly feed the hope that was in them.  Only a hopeless lot would give up the Sacraments or treat that only as a life insurance policy. 

You might think they were naïve, but they were far wiser than we; they knew that if Christians were going to rebuild society after the plague, they would need to build up the spiritual strength now.  They knew they would only build as reservoirs of grace, filling up society with the overflow of divine life they received from the Church and her Sacraments.  With greater knowledge they may have taken more precautions, but they would have ultimately thrown caution to the wind because of the value of a single soul. 

Living as we now do under, what Bishop Schneider has dubbed, the “dictatorship of the sanitary” the Church needs to shine forth as a beacon of hope.  What this might look like once prudent precautions are taken isn’t entirely clear, but it has been made abundantly clear both by history and the present moment what it wouldn’t look like.  When the Church responds exactly the same way the world does to a crisis then something is wrong.  The tyranny of the hopeless shuts down everything, the liberality of hope opens wide the doors.  Christians must be witnesses to hope, especially in ages such as we are living.