A trio of thought-provoking articles this past week

In the U.K., Human-pig hybrid embryos given go ahead:

"A licence to create human-pig embryos to study heart disease has been issued by the fertility watchdog.

This marks the third animal-human hybrid embryo licence to be issued by Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the first since the Commons voted in favour of this controversial research last month.

An HFEA spokesman said it had approved an application from the Clinical Sciences Research Institute, University of Warwick, for the creation of hybrid embryos..." Full article accessible here.

From Uganda's leading website: Genital Mutilation - Women Grapple With a Deadly Tradition - "In the scorching afternoon sunshine, Philis Yapchemusto stands in the compound of a tiny building that houses the headquarters of Reproductive, Educative and Community Health (REACH) programme. The community-based programme was established in Kapchorwa to improve reproductive health conditions and stop female genital mutilation." Full article can be read here.

From Scientific American: What is self-awareness?
"Can a lobster ever truly have any emotions? What about a beetle? Or a sophisticated computer? The only way to resolve these questions conclusively would be to engage in serious scientific inquiry—but even before studying the scientific literature, many people have pretty clear intuitions about what the answers are going to be. A person might just look at a computer and feel certain that it couldn’t possibly be feeling pleasure, pain or anything at all. That’s why we don’t mind throwing a broken computer in the trash." Rest of the story here.

Is prettiness your best standard?

There is a pretty spirited debate about male circumcision going on at a NYT blog.

This was partially inspired by a recent blog post supporting female genital mutilation.

Your opinion on whether these are reasonably comparable issues will depend on your moral/ethical framework - comparative harms, consent, cultural relativism, aesthetics, etc. Personally, I subscribe to consent as the paramount value in this situation up until urgent, life-threatening conditions require immediate action. The supposed benefits in STI prevention are not compelling enough to me to justify permanent prophylactic removal of a part of an organ, and the aesthetic concerns expressed by people (especially women) are downright appalling.

One thing I do find interesting is that nary an anti-HPV-vaccination brawler has made a move to oppose circumcision because of the purported benefits in preventing STI transmission. If it is a priority to prevent our girls from turning into wanton harlots because of a vaccine against one STI given at a young age, shouldn't we also be concerned about our boys turning into the same thanks to the magical disease-defying benefits of circumcision, provided at *gasp* infancy?

UN Panel on HIV/AIDS and female Genital Mutilation

Who: IHEU -- Appignani Center for Bioethics, Population Communications International and Femmes Afrique Solidarite

What: UN Panel on Health and Empowerment: The Impact of HIV/AIDS and FGM

Where: 777 UN Plaza, New York City

When: Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2007 12:00 PM-1:45 PM

Contact: 212-687-3324 (tel) | 212-661-4188 (fax) | www.iheu.org/bioethics | E-mail: AnaLita@iheu.org

On Wed, Feb. 28, 2007 a panel of bioethicists, physicians and activists will discuss "Health and Empowerment: The impact of HIV/AIDS Epidemic Worldwide and Female Genital Mutilation in African Diaspora Communities" at the United Nations under the auspices of the Division for the Advancement of Women, Commission on the Status of Women.
The panel will discuss the health and empowerment of women, focusing on the international HIV/AIDS epidemic, female genital mutilation (FGM) in Africa and immigrant communities living in Western nations.

Although the practice of FGM is viewed by many within the international community as a human rights violation, FGM is reportedly still performed on three million women annually. It is estimated that 130 million girls alive today have undergone FGM.

The U.N. has challenged the world to fulfill eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015 that would drastically improve living standards around the world. The panel will address FGM within the context of these goals, FGM's relationship to the HIV-AIDS epidemic and directions for the future.

Speakers include:

Wayne R. Cohen, M.D., Ph.D is chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Jamaica Hospital NY, visiting professor Dept. of Ob--Gyn and Women's Health at Albert Einstein Bronx, NY. He was the Obstetrician and Gynecology-in-Chief Sinai hospital of Baltimore Maryland. He wrote an important book entitled Complications in Pregnancy, published by Lippincott Williams&Wilkins 2000 (the 5th edition).

Adrian Sângeorzan, M.D., a specialist obstetrician and gynecologist and a full-time attending and faculty adviser at Jamaica Hospital, New York. A graduate of the Medical School at the University of Cluj, Transylvania, Sângeorzan worked as a doctor in Romania until immigrating to the United States in 1990. His prizewinning, best-selling volume of memoirs and fiction, ,Between Two Worlds-- Tales of a Women's Doctor, is published in Romanian and English.

Zeinab Eyega, M.Sc, executive director and founder of Sauti Yetu, an organization seeking to empower women to exercise, advocate and protect their rights based in New York City. Previously she was a program director for the African Immigrant Program at Research, Action and Information Network for the Bodily Integrity of Women (RAINBO), a program that examined the needs of circumcised women and girls in New York City. In addition to teaching and public speaking, she has facilitated numerous cross-cultural competency workshops for health care providers and reproductive health promotion seminars for African immigrant and refugee communities throughout the U.S.

Tata Traore, director of intervention for the Bondala Department of the Harlem United Community AIDS Center, a community-based organization providing a unique continuum of care for over 2,300 clients per year. She works to integrate socially and economically disenfranchised people into a healthy and healing community, offering clients access to a full range of medical, social, and supportive services.

Ana Lita, Ph.D., director of the IHEU-Appignani Center for Bioethics in New York City. She holds a Ph.D. in Applied Ethics and Social Philosophy from Bowling Green State University. The author of numerous conference presentations and publications in the fields of education, ethics and bioethics, Ana Lita is a Women's Bioethics Project Scholar and
the recipient of a Soros Foundation Fellowship and a National Association Fellowship for International Scholars.

Michael Castlen, executive director of PCI --Telling Stories, Saving Lives in New York City. He has an extensive background building organizational capacity in non-profit organizations, specifically those involved in international development. He served as Chief Operating Officer at the Foundation for a Civil Society and worked with NGOs in the Czech Republic and Slovakia to strengthen civil society organizations and nurture local corporate philanthropy. At Holt International he worked in Romania on strengthening child-welfare.

The IHEU-Appignani Center for Bioethics focuses on raising awareness of bioethical issues confronting the international. The Center is a new initiative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), an international umbrella organization for humanist, ethical culture, rationalist, secularist and free-thought groups. IHEU holds a special consultative status with the U.N., a general consultative status with UNICEF and the Council of Europe as well as operational relations with UNESCO in Paris.

PCI -- Telling Stories, Saving Lives (Population Communications International) is dedicated to the promotion of education and health, including reproductive health and informed choice; sensitivity to national and local cultures; and the principles put forth by the U.N. Millennium Development Goals. PCI develops entertainment-education programs and social marketing strategies that support targeted health and poverty alleviation initiatives. For more than 20 years, PCI has worked in over 27 countries, producing more than 75 radio and television programs, training hundreds of individuals, providing technical assistance to more than 100 international organizations. Central to PCI's long-running Kenyan radio drama Ushiwapo Shikamana was a storyline about the health consequences of female genital mutilation (FGM).

In the fall of 2006, PCI and the IHEU-Appignani Center for Bioethics launched a new program, the Women's Health Center, aimed at supporting grassroots women's health organizations develop their own resources to address the global status of women's health. The Women's Health Center enables these organizations to merge their resources and develop new, innovative strategies to improve the lives of the world's most vulnerable women.

Words, War and Emotions...

In early September, 2005, the United Nations co-sponsored a conference entitled “Our Challenge: Voices for Peace, Partnerships and Renewal”. The conference assembled representatives from more than 2,000 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) from all reaches of the world. As the representative of the IHEU-Appignani Center for Bioethics, I presented at the workshop Words, War and Emotions- Communication Strategies to Bridge Cultural Differences. The presentation focused on the ethical question of genital mutilation - a practice common throughout Africa and parts of the Middle East. In some cultures genital mutilation, the removal of part or all of a woman’s genitalia, is considered a rite of passage to adulthood and a form of purification with a strong religious connotation. While cultural relativists are tempted to accept the practice as a culture-specific rite, human rights campaigners condemn it as a serious breach of the rights of women to self-determination. The situation is clearly alarming as genital mutilation can result in infertility and also death, not to mention excruciating physical pain and suffering. Genital mutilation complements the already dismal picture of a region dominated by disease, poverty, gender inequality, and injustice. Read more about the conference proceedings here.
[thanks Ana Lita!]

Another good reason to ban the barbarism of female circumsion...

A team of Swedish researchers have observed that female circumcision, or genital mutilation, could render affected females infertile. The study, the first of its kind, involved nearly 300 Sudanese women and controlled for potential variables, such as sexually transmitted infections, age, and socio-economic conditions. The researchers concluded that the 2 million females annually affected are five to six times more likely to be infertile than are their unaffected counterparts. Incidence of infertility appears to be greater depending upon the severity of the procedure, which can involve the removal part or all of a female's genitalia. Researchers attribute the increased risk to infection, inflammation, scarring, or resulting physical alterations. Practiced in more than 30 countries, mainly in Africa and sections of the Middle East, female circumcision has been performed on an estimated 135 million females, according to Amnesty International. Though human rights campaigners have called it "an atrocity against womanhood," female circumcision, which is often viewed as a tradition or rite of passage to adulthood, is controversial to address because of cultural relativism. The new research, published in then Lancet medical journal, may strengthen the voices of the opposition.

[Thank you and welcome to Ana Lita, one of our new guest bloggers! Ana, who holds a Ph.D. in Applied Ethics and Social Philosophy and an M.A. in Sociology and speaks five languages, is Director of the IHEU-Appignani Humanist Center for Bioethics at the United Nations in New York City. ]