ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

"The sanctity of human life has always been one of our most cherished heritages. The family unit is the foundation of our society. The devotion and sacrifice of mothers over the years and the continual care and concern for their unborn has been the cornerstone of the family. On this Mother's Day 2007, we wish to express our gratitude to all mothers for their unselfishness in our behalf. As health-care professionals, we call upon the American people to once again reaffirm the right to life for future generations of the unborn and join with us in our efforts to restore respect, dignity and value to each human life—born or unborn."

The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

The Agriculture Department tests fewer than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.

The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.

The former head of China's food and drug administration was sentenced to death Tuesday for taking bribes to approve substandard medicines - including an antibiotic blamed for at least 10 deaths.

Seeking to address broadening concerns over food, the government also announced plans for its first recall system for unsafe products.

The developments are among the most dramatic steps Beijing has publicly taken to address domestic and international alarm over shoddy and unsafe Chinese goods - from pet food ingredients and toothpaste mixed with industrial chemicals to tainted antibiotics.

...

According to the official magazine Outlook Weekly, a survey by the quality inspection administration found that a third of China's 450,000 food producers had no licenses, and 60 percent did not conduct safety tests or have the capability to do so.

Court Protects Gender Discrimintion
As Ruth Bader Ginsburg notes, the evidence of gender discrimination in the case of Ledbetter v. Goodyear, decided today by the Supreme Court, is unambiguous:

Lilly Ledbetter was a supervisor at Goodyear Tire and Rubber's plant in Gadsden, Alabama, from 1979 until her retirement in 1998. For most of those years, she worked as an area manager, a position largely occupied by men. Initially, Ledbetter's salary was in line with the salaries of men performing substantially similar work. Over time, however, her pay slipped in comparison to the pay of male area managers with equal or less seniority. By the end of 1997, Ledbetter was the only woman working as an area manager and the pay discrepancy between Ledbetter and her 15 male counterparts was stark: Ledbetter was paid $3,727 per month; the lowest paid male area manager received $4,286 per month, the highest paid, $5,236.


Despite this, and contrary to the judgment of the EEOC, the Court by a bare 5-4 majority threw out the discrimination claim she brought under the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The Court--in an opinion, natch, written by its arch-reactionary newest member--argued that Ledbetter failed to challenge the initial discriminatory pay decision within the required 180 days, and the ongoing pay discrimination did not constitute an "unlawful employment practice."

A Long Island woman and her husband are suing a Park Ave. fertility clinic for allegedly inseminating her with the wrong man's sperm.

After struggling to conceive their second child, Nancy Andrews and her husband, Thomas, turned to New York Medical Services for Reproductive Medicine for in-vitro fertilization treatments, according to a lawsuit.

Andrews soon became pregnant and the couple was overjoyed. They only discovered the clinic's "colossal blunder" after Andrews gave birth to her daughter Jessica, court papers charge.

"While we love Baby Jessica as our own, we are reminded of this terrible mistake each and every time we look at her," the Commack couple said in documents filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. "It is simply impossible to ignore."

Thomas Andrews is white and his wife is Dominican. But Jessica, who was born Oct. 19, 2004, has darker skin than either of them as well as "characteristics more typical of African or African-American descent," the lawsuit states.

The couple tested their daughter's DNA using a home kit and later with two more sophisticated methods. All three of the tests confirmed their suspicions - the tot has a different father.

What's distinctive about the Andrews case is that the parents... tried to cite... Jessica's pain and suffering for having to endure life as a black person. The Andrewses expressed concern that Jessica "may be subjected to physical and emotional illness as a result of not being the same race as her parents and siblings." They are "distressed" that she is "not even the same race, nationality, color...as they are." They describe Jessica's conception as a "mishap" so "unimaginable" that they have not told many of their relatives. (Telling the tabloids all about it must have come easier.) "We fear that our daughter will be the object of scorn and ridicule by other children," the couple said, because Jessica has "characteristics more typical of African or African-American descent." So "while we love Baby Jessica as our own, we are reminded of this terrible mistake each and every time we look at her...each and every time we appear in public."

The picture underscores the embedded cultural oddities of this case, the invisibly shifting boundaries of how we see race, extend intimacy, name "difference." According to the Post, Mrs. Andrews is "Hispanic" and apparently, by the paper's calculations, one Hispanic woman plus one white man equals "a white pair." The mother is "a light-skinned native of the Dominican Republic," seeming to indicate that while she may not be "white," she's also not "black." Each narrative implies that if the correct sperm had been used, the Andrewses would have been guaranteed a lighter-skinned child. But as most Dominicans trace their heritage to some mixture of African slaves, indigenous islanders and European settlers, and as dark skin color is a dominant trait, it could be that the true sperm donor is as "white" as Mr. Andrews. But that possibility is exiled from the word boxes that contain this child. Not only is Jessica viewed as being of a race apart from either of her parents; she is even designated a different nationality--this latter most startling for its blood-line configuration of citizenship itself.

By logical extension of the principles enunciated by the courts in New York that the birth of an unwanted but otherwise healthy and normal child does not constitute an injury to the child's parents, and that even parents of a child with a serious disease cannot recover for emotional injury for the birth of that child, plaintiffs in this case cannot recover for mental distress arising from having a child who is not Mr. Andrews' biological offspring.... Plaintiffs cannot recover damages based upon their claim that they were deprived of the opportunity to have a child of their own genetic makeup. The Court of Appeals has rejected as too speculative a claim that is " . . . based essentially on "wrongful nonbirth", the deprivation of an opportunity by a woman to have a child by her husband.

Is it wrong to make a child deaf by design? If so, what makes it wrong -- the deafness or the design? Suppose, for the sake of argument, that deafness is not a disability but a distinctive identity. Is there still something wrong with the idea of parents picking and choosing the kind of child they will have? Or do parents do that all the time, in their choice of mate and, these days, in their use of new reproductive technologies?

Not long before the controversy over the deaf child, an ad appeared in the Harvard Crimson and other Ivy League newspapers. An infertile couple was seeking an egg donor, but not just any egg donor. She had to be five feet, ten inches tall, athletic, without major family medical problems, and to have a combined SAT score of 1400 or above. In exchange for an egg from a donor meeting this description, the ad offered payment of $50,000.

Perhaps the parents who offered the hefty sum for a premium egg simply wanted a child who resembled them. Or perhaps they were hoping to trade up, trying for a child who would be taller or smarter than they. Whatever the case, their extraordinary offer did not prompt the public outcry that met the parents who wanted a deaf child. No one objected that height, intelligence, and ahletic prowess are disabilities that children should be spared. And yet something about the ad leaves a lingering moral qualm. Even if no harm is involved, isn't there something troubling about parents ordering up a child with certain genetic traits?

Some defend the attempt to conceive a deaf child, or one who will have high SAT scores, as similar to natural procreation in one crucial respect: whatever these parents did to increase the odds, they were not guaranteed the outcome they sought. Both attempts were still subject to the vagaries of the genetic lottery. This defense raises an intriguing question. Why does some element of unpredictability seem to make a moral difference? Suppose biotechnology could remove the uncertainty and allow us to design the genetic traits of our children?

In his legal action against IBM, James Pacenza admits that he spent time in chat rooms during work hours, but claims his behavior is the result of an addiction and that IBM should have offered him counseling instead of firing him. Employees "with much more severe psychological problems, in the form of drug or alcohol problems ... are allowed treatment programs" at IBM, Pacenza argues in his lawsuit.

[...]

In his suit, Pacenza says his use of Internet chat rooms is a form of "self medication" he uses to treat post-traumatic stress disorder suffered as a result of combat experience in Vietnam. On the day before he was fired, Pacenza says he wrote a letter to a fallen Vietnam comrade lamenting his death. Afterward, he ventured into an Internet chat room "as a brief diversion from work," according to court papers.

“The society and country are not set up to take care of handicapped people. Emmanuel has tenacity, endurance and he has a strong heart to do the things that he is doing and to use what he has done as an example for other disabled people. We will support him and tell the government that they are also part of us—they may be physically challenged, but mentally and intellectually they are the same as us.”