Eideard

Germany’s parliament agreed in a conscience vote on Thursday to allow the limited use of genetic testing of human embryos.

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) — in which a cell or two are extracted from a developing embryo to test for genetic disorders — has divided governments around the world, with many people opposing it on religious and ethical grounds, or arguing that it would let parents choose a “designer baby.”

The new law will allow screening embryos of parents who have a predisposition to severe genetic disorders, where a pregnancy would be likely to result in either stillbirth or miscarriage.

Existing German law did not fully regulate PGD and the German high court last year ruled that parliament should take up the issue with respect to serious genetic defects…

Labor Minister Ursula von der Leyen, from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative party, told ARD television before the vote that concern over the issue of “designer babies” was unfounded.

“So-called ‘designer babies’, which would be musically gifted or athletic or have blue eyes, are a fantasy,” said von der Leyen, a physician and mother of seven. “It’s about severe illness of individual cases…”

Kerstin Janich, a woman from near Munich whose four-year-old son Louis died of a genetic disease, told Reuters Television in a recent interview there was little public understanding of why some parents who struggle to have children go through screening.

“It’s not about allowing a ‘designer baby’ with blond hair and blue eyes or a sick child not deserving to live,” she said. “It’s about the suffering of an entire family, for siblings and relatives and friends.”

Under the new law, parents will have to undergo counseling and an ethics panel must approve the procedure to select a developing embryo that tests negative for certain anomalies before it is implanted in the womb.

Overdue.

Once again, the political nannies camp on the Right Bank of the river of life no matter how loud they may declaim their commitment to liberty. The only surprise – for an American looking over the pond – is witnessing a broad coalition from Liberal to Libertarian willing to take leadership.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

A year after his resignation plunged Belgium’s Roman Catholic Church into a crisis, the former bishop of Bruges provoked almost universal condemnation on Friday, this time by admitting that he had abused a second nephew – and insisting that he was not a pedophile.

In a television interview late Thursday that reopened deep wounds, the bishop, Roger Vangheluwe, 74, recounted with apparent lack of contrition events leading up to his resignation as bishop of Bruges last year, when it emerged that nearly 25 years ago he had abused a boy who was later revealed to be one of his nephews.

Those revelations prompted hundreds of people to come forward, claiming that they, too, had been victims of priests, and forced Belgium’s Roman Catholic Church into its deepest crisis of recent times.

In a broadcast from a location in France, Bishop Vangheluwe, dressed in an open-neck shirt, suggested that the 13-year relationship revealed last year had not been opposed by his nephew, and, in an unexpected new twist, he admitted having abused a second nephew for a much shorter period…

Bishop Vangheluwe is not facing criminal charges because of Belgium’s 10-year statute of limitations, and the Vatican says he is receiving “spiritual and psychological treatment” outside Belgium…

During the interview, to which Bishop Vangheluwe had agreed only on the condition that it would be broadcast live, he denied that he had been driven by sexual motives…the abuse had been restricted to the touching of genitals…

Um, the Pope said – well, the Pope said nothing. When the abuse became public he condemned the police for searching church property and took the Bishop’s fate into his own hands. Since then – well, the Pope said nothing.

Larry Ellison
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

SAP AG must pay Oracle Corp $1.3 billion for software theft, a jury decided, awarding damages that could be the largest-ever for copyright infringement.

The decision, by a U.S. district court jury in Oakland California, drew a gasp from the courtroom and prompted hugs and handshakes among Oracle’s legal team, which has pursued their case for years…

While SAP could appeal, Oracle attorney David Boies said, that would raise the possibility of a retrial. “If I were SAP, and I’m not, but if I were SAP, I’m not sure I would want to have another trial,” Boies said.

At the outset of the trial, the German company acknowledged that its TomorrowNow subsidiary had wrongfully downloaded millions of Oracle’s files.

With the admission of liability, the issue before the jury was how much Oracle was owed in damages. SAP said no more $40 million, while Oracle at least $1.65 billion…

The U.S. government is also conducting a criminal investigation into the events surrounding TomorrowNow but has not disclosed details. SAP said it has been cooperating with Department of Justice investigators.

You have to wonder what would be the realistic chance of reducing the penalty for a crime you already admitted to?

In a broad endorsement of federal power, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress has the authority under the Constitution to allow the continued civil commitment of sex offenders after they have completed their criminal sentences…

The federal law at issue in the case allows the government to continue to detain prisoners who had engaged in sexually violent conduct, suffered from mental illness and would have difficulty controlling themselves. If the government is able to prove all of this to a judge by “clear and convincing” evidence — a heightened standard, but short of “beyond a reasonable doubt” — it may hold such prisoners until they are no longer dangerous or a state assumes responsibility for them.

The challenge to the civil commitment law was brought by five prisoners. The case of Graydon Comstock was typical. In November 2006, six days before Mr. Comstock was to have completed a 37-month sentence for receiving child pornography, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales certified that Mr. Comstock was a sexually dangerous person.

Last year, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., unanimously ruled that none of the powers granted to Congress in the Constitution empowered it to authorize such civil commitments. But the decision was stayed, and Mr. Comstock has remained confined in a federal prison.

At the argument of the case in January, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, now President Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court, said the law was needed “to run a criminal justice system that does not itself endanger the public.” She said 105 people had been confined under the law.

Ms. Kagan pointed to the Constitution’s “necessary and proper” clause as granting Congress the power to pass the law, though the clause is not ordinarily thought of as a source of free-standing authority. The clause gives Congress the right “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution” its other powers

Two of the most right-wing justices on the court wrote the dissent. The one I would agree with. Because it comes closest to my personal understanding of the Constitution.

We’re witnessing Congress – as it often does – committing an opportunist and cowardly act. Afraid to pass laws that fit the crime as they see it, they enable a judge to take the responsibility they have abdicated – on a case by case basis. Which is a further piece of antidemocratic behavior.

Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, dissented in the case, United States v. Comstock, No. 08-1224.

“The fact that the federal government has the authority to imprison a person for the purpose of punishing him for a federal crime — sex-related or otherwise — does not provide the government with the additional power to exercise indefinite civil control over that person,” Justice Thomas wrote.

Yes, as someone who has dissented loudly and publicly from some policies of this nation over several decades – I consider myself at equal risk of extra-legal penalties like this – for political reasons. Something that would hardly be news in the good old USA.

Martin Amis told the Guardian: “What we need to recognise is that certain lives fall into the negative, where pain hugely dwarfs those remaining pleasures that you may be left with. Geriatric science has been allowed to take over and, really, decency roars for some sort of correction.” He said his comments were meant to be “satirical”, rather than “glib”.

His stance on euthanasia had hardened since the deaths of his stepfather, Lord Kilmarnock, the former SDP peer and writer, in March aged 81, and his friend Dame Iris Murdoch, the novelist, in 1999, aged 79, two years after her husband revealed that she was suffering from Alzheimer’s.

“I increasingly feel that religion is so deep in our constitution and in our minds and that is something we should just peel off,” he said. “Of course euthanasia is open to abuse, in that the typical grey death will be that of an old relative whose family gets rid of for one reason or another, and they’ll say ‘he asked me to do it’, or ‘he wanted to die’, Amis said. “That’s what we will have to look out for. Nonetheless, it is something we have to make some progress on…”

In his interview, Amis said his step father had died “very horribly”. “He always thought he was going to get better. But he didn’t get better and I think the denial of death is a great curse.”

He said Iris Murdoch, whom he had known for a very long time , was “a friend, I loved her. She was wonderful. I remember talking to her just as it started happening, and she said, ‘I’ve entered a dark place’. That famous quote. Awareness of loss is gone, the track is gone. You don’t know the day you’ve spent watching Teletubbies; it just vanished.”

The pro-euthanasia pressure group Dignity in Dying said: “Like all too many people in the UK, Martin Amis has witnessed the bad death of a loved one.” But, it added: “Dignity in Dying’s campaign for a change in the law is not about the introduction of ‘euthanasia booths’, nor is it in anticipation of a ‘silver tsunami’. Our campaign is about allowing dying adults who have mental capacity a compassionate choice to end their suffering, subject to strict legal safeguards.”

Hear, hear.

I also suggest checking out the website of the Dignity in Dying campaign if you’re in the UK. In the U.S., there is Death with Dignity. Pretty much spot on.

We consumers seem to becoming pawns in the power struggle between internet behemoths Google and Microsoft. To Google, we are “products” to be sold to highest bidding advertiser and to Microsoft we have been reduced largely to a software license. The battle these two corporate superpowers are undergoing leaves me feeling awed, and puny.

So when I read the plethora of opinions the experts are spinning about whether Bing is better than Google, I wonder what “Judy Consumer” thinks. I suspect the subtleties of the technology are probably lost on her.

What the “Judy Consumers” of the world do know is that the new Bing advertising campaign promises that Bing is not only a search engine but a decision engine. I can imagine the agency/client meetings assessing this positioning vs. that one. I can hear the focus group comments that came from the testing that no doubt went into the creation of this campaign. And I can certainly feel the excitement (maybe even a little tension) as the agency reported on the research results in support of the recommended campaign. Been there, done that…

So then I went to look at how Bing does deliver in its decision-making promise. I did the first search that came to mind: I searched my name. And Google did much better and was more accurate than Bing by far. In fact, I could compare results very efficiently via a site called bing-vs-google.com that David Pogue of the New York Times introduced to readers.

Try it yourself!

Maybe I am not looking hard enough and I certainly did not put it through its paces as David Pogue did. Or just maybe the differences are too subtle for “Judy Consumer” to notice. Or maybe most people don’t care enough about search to look for these extra features. And this is where Bing is at a distinct disadvantage: It takes a lot to overcome inertia.

I don’t proclaim to know how this war will end but I hope “Judy Consumer” makes up her own mind and doesn’t rely on either Microsoft or Google to make her decisions. Or the pundits either for that matter. They know too much.

I pretty much agree with Judy. I thought back to the days of AltaVista and Yahoo and starting up with Google – and why I changed gradually to the latter. It had to do with more than search.

Not a solution I ever got from Microsoft.

Roy Keane has resigned as manager of Sunderland after 27 months in charge.

Keane, 37, took over in 2006 but chose to step down with the club lying 18th in the Premier League following five defeats in six matches.

“Roy’s decision sums up his desire to always do what is best for the club, despite the club’s efforts to keep him,” said chairman Niall Quinn. “Roy deserves huge respect for his contribution and the manner in which he guided the club from the depths of the Championship back to the Premier League.

“His winning mentality and singled mindedness were just what this club needed. Even in his departure he has been more concerned for the welfare of the players and his staff than himself.

I’ve just had to call my wife at work and pass along the sad news.

We’ll miss you, Roy. Hopefully, not for long.

One product from Tiajuana trumps all others in terms of shock value: death in a bottle.

The drug, pentobarbital, literally takes a person’s breath away. It can kill by putting people to sleep, and it is tightly regulated in most countries. But aging and ailing people seeking a quick and painless way to end their lives say there is no easier place on earth than Mexico to obtain pentobarbital, a barbiturate commonly known as Nembutal.

“It is Mexico where Nembutal is most readily available,” says “The Peaceful Pill Handbook,” a book that lays out methods to end one’s life. Co-written by Philip Nitschke, founder of Exit International, an Australian group that assists people who want to end their lives early, the book is banned in Australia and New Zealand. In the United States, though, it is only a few mouse clicks away online.

The book, as well as seminars that Nitschke offers, lays out strategies for dying. The most trouble-free and painless form of suicide, he contends, is to buy Mexican pentobarbital, which goes by brand names like Sedal-Vet, Sedalphorte and Barbithal.

Those in search of the drug, so-called death tourists, scout out the veterinary pharmacies that abound in Tijuana. Nitschke’s book, however, provides glossy photos of the many versions of pentobarbital that are most suitable for suicide. Buying it can be as easy as showing the pictures to a clerk and paying as little as $30 for a dose.

Morality Nazis will piss and moan over suicide as they always do.

My answer is the same as it for abortion: Not in favor? Don’t try it!

The Supreme Court has declared for the first time that the Constitution protects an individual’s right to have a gun, not just the right of the states to maintain militias.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in the landmark 5-to-4 decision, said the Constitution does not allow “the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home.” In so declaring, the majority found that a gun-control law in the nation’s capital went too far in making it nearly impossible to own a handgun.

But the court held that the individual right to possess a gun “for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home” is not unlimited. “It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” Justice Scalia wrote.

I doubt if this will be a long-standing decision – in the sense of carrying forward for decades. Not at 5 to 4.

Sooner or later, a more broadly-based court will decide thoroughly to support or revise today’s opinion.