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Current leaders are ‘not your daddy’s Republicans’
To the Editor:
What’s worse than a “tax-and-spend” Democrat? A “cut-taxes-and-spend” Republican.
George Bush inherited a record surplus six years ago and has turned it into a record national debt. Anyone in the world of business would have been fired, but he remains unaccountable by Congress and continues getting us further in debt. For some reason Bush seems to think the invasion of Iraq was in the national interest and an important cog in the war on terror. Frankly, his approach to the war on terror is rash, ill-conceived and just plain dumb.
That war has cost us, at last count, nearly $300 billion, with no end at sight. We’re spending more than $1 million an hour on a war Dick Cheney told us would be “measured in weeks rather than months.” It’s interesting that Haliburton, Cheney’s old company, received a $12.2 billion no-bid, no-audit contract for Iraq. At the same time, American troops, chiefly National Guard reserves, are poorly paid and often poorly equipped, while “security” in Iraq has been outsourced to private companies that provide an additional 50,000 personnel, some earning up to $150,000 a year. Blackwater USA, a private “security” company, charges the government $600 per person, per day, with a 36-percent markup for expenses, including housing, ammunition, insurance and travel. This has become a war run by the hired help, and we are footing the bill.
My dad always voted Republican. He voted Republican even when he happened to admire a Democratic candidate. He said it was because the Republican party could always be counted on to be “fiscally responsible” and keep national spending in control. Sadly, that is no longer the case. I have no doubt at all the war on terror is in the interest of national security and should very much be a national priority, but Iraq is a black hole. Bush is terribly misguided.
While Congressman Charles Taylor may attempt to link his challenger Heath Shuler to “tax-and-spend” liberals form up North, big labor, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi and Barbra Streisand (I’ve yet to figure that one out), the plain fact is that Taylor has supported the Bush administration at every turn in its disastrous foreign policy and reckless spending. So have Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr.
These are not your daddy’s Republicans.
Mike Jones
Sylva
Values and treatment of human bodies – dead or alive
To the Editor:
As I continue my talks with community members, my concern about Western Carolina University’s research on “body decomposition” has deepened and moved toward concerns about ethics and human values. I see no valid justification for the “body farm” and the exploitation of vulnerable students.
Imagine that a research proposal that comes before you proposes the idea that observing dead bodies provides students with a learning experience that prepares them to be “death investigators” (not medical examiners). The challenge of the student to observe corpses is not an issue for mature students, yet it can be argued that this research raises ethical questions because of the unconvinced purpose underlying the research design – the why question, and ultimately, so what? What does it tell you?
In a current report, Dr. Bill Bass acknowledged that “after 29 years of trying to figure out what happens to (dead) people” it was the “maggots that told you something. That is, he continues, “most of the characteristics used to determine length of time since death are determine by insect activity” and that’s where the maggots “play a big part.” Bass says the justification for the program is simply that “it’s unique” and, thus sidesteps ethical questions such as “right of self-determination after death” and the “danger of exploiting other people’s suffering when using case studies of the dead for classroom entertainment.” One might draw the inference that the insect activity is now the new purpose underlying the research design, with the dead body serving as a nesting habitat for the maggots. The justification for the program, however, still remains very obscure.
An issue that has more subtle ethical implications is the exploitation of undergraduate students. In research proposals, little effort is made at serious evaluation of the student’s psychological readiness to participate in a research program. My concern is that in recruiting undergraduate students, the program director doing admissions does not include a pre-screening method to screen out students not emotionally prepared to deal with death and the repeated experiences of dead bodies.
In a recent survey involving parents, a colleague of mine conducted interviews with 20 parents of high-school graduates (college bound). Armed with newspaper reports, my colleague presented the WCU forensic program, and 95 percent of the parents reported anxiety and 19 (of 20) responded “no” to the question, “Would you send your student to this university?” Their primary complaint was not being informed completely and honestly about the role and function of the “death educator” nor the nature of the student training experience associated with observing un-embalmed bodies.
A good reminder of the importance of dignity for the body is The President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Behavioral Research, which warns review boards that there are two dangers with research on dead bodies – the disturbing effect such research could have on family members and the violation of “commonly held convictions about respect for the dead.” That respect for the body can not be overstated as Jackson County Sheriff Jimmy Ashe revealed in a report of “dead bodies” found in the Tilley Creek area and his worry about appropriate concerns that “persons had not taken appropriate actions to ensure the integrity of the (anthropology research) project.”
I realize, of course, that the introduction of ethical issues is inconsistent with scientific research aims and that it is incompatible with the mind of a Bill Bass but, on the other hand, the community should understand the mindset of Bass, the modeler of WCU’s program. He dismisses ethical values and the reverence for the dead; he does not believe in the afterlife (or God ) but then, no problem – he is not ever planning to be an experimental subject on the Body Farm, either.
“Once upon a time I believed in an afterlife,” he said, “and now nothing I’d grown up believing about God and heaven made any sense to me any longer. We’re organisms and we decay ... and as we decay, we feed the bugs and bacteria.” And, as to donating his body to the body farm, he agrees, that I (Bass) deserve “a more dignified final resting place.” Besides, he adds, “I can’t forget how much I hate flies.”
William Chovan
Cullowhee
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