Biden’s transition team on Monday tapped Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who advised the Obama administration on health policy, to join a team of other public health experts in crafting a response to the pandemic. Emanuel, who chairs the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, has previously written that health care, in the event of rationing during the pandemic, should be prioritized for those who would most benefit from it.
He also authored a 2014 piece in The Atlantic “Why I Hope to Die at 75,” where he called “living too long” a “loss” and a state which renders persons “if not disabled, then faltering and declining.” Charles Camosy, a theology professor at Fordham University, said that Emanuel’s appointment to the board is troubling given that he has seemingly argued that the lives of the elderly do not matter as much as others. Emanuel’s philosophy—and those of a similar mind as his—represents a shift away from the fundamental equality of persons in health care ethics, Camosy said, promoting a theory of “Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALY).”
This theory, Camosy told CNA, could be used to justify denying health care to the elderly sick or the disabled in the event of rationing, as they might have less of a chance of survival than a younger, healthier person or a lower QALY score.
“He’s just displayed a kind of consequentialism that’s deeply, deeply troubling,” Camosy told CNA, “a kind of consequentialism that is ableist, ageist, and denies the fundamental premise that every human life is equal because every human life is made in the image and likeness of God.”
Tapping someone who believes that a disabled life is not as worth living as an able-bodied one for such a prominent medical position is deeply troubling. I hope his opinions will be counter-balanced by those of his colleagues.
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According to NBC, the LGBT movement had a good night last Tuesday:
Voters in six states handed eight transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming candidates victories in state legislatures this week. These candidates were on the ballot in at least 13 state House and Senate elections Tuesday. Three of the country’s four current transgender state legislators — Brianna Titone of Colorado and Gerri Cannon and Lisa Bunker of New Hampshire — all won re-election. The fourth, Virginia Delegate Danica Roem, who in 2017 became the first openly transgender person elected to a state legislature, is up for re-election next year.
Perhaps one of them will be able to explain what nonbinary means.
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On the transgender front, the relentless legal war continues:
Three families with transgender children filed a lawsuit against the Arizona Department of Health Services in federal court on Nov. 4 demanding the state agency allow them to change the gender listed on their children’s birth certificates without needing to have gender-affirming surgery performed. Arizona law requires that a person prove they have undergone a “sex change operation” to be able to change their gender on their birth certificate.
A 13-year-old transgender boy and two transgender girls who are 10 and 6 are represented through their legal guardians. The children are not named. The suit comes months after an August lawsuit where transgender teens have sued AHCCS for not covering gender affirmation surgery.
Lizette Trujillo, one of the parents involved in the lawsuit, said the law harms people like her son who identified as male from an early age, took medicine to stop puberty and consequently doesn’t want or need surgery.
One of these days, a case like this is sure to end up in the Supreme Court. At that point, Gorsuch and Roberts will probably hand the trans activists everything they want, as per the Bostock ruling.
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This story, from Barbara Kay, is incredibly disturbing—a medical student in Canada was expelled for refusing to repudiate his pro-life beliefs. Do take a moment to read the whole thing.
