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The next battlefield in the evolution of warfare won't be in physical space. It'll be in cyberspace.
Today, President Obama will announce a civilian office to protect the nation's computer networks. Meanwhile, backstage, the U.S. military is preparing its own cyber-defense organization. If you haven't taken cyberwar seriously as a threat, it's time to start thinking about it. This morning's New York Times story is a good place to begin. Here are four points worth gleaning from it.
1. Cyberspace is a new dimension of battlespace. According to the story, U.S. officials now see
cyberspace as comparable to more traditional battlefields. "We are not comfortable discussing the question of offensive cyberoperations, but we consider cyberspace a war-fighting domain," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. "We need to be able to operate within that domain just like on any battlefield, which includes protecting our freedom of movement and preserving our capability to perform in that environment."
Wars used to be two-dimensional, confined to land and sea. Air power added a third dimension. Cyberspace adds a fourth. It has spatial properties, such as freedom of movement, but it isn't necessarily affected by events in physical space. I can invade your cyberspace and cripple your forces without controlling any other dimension of the war.
2. It defies national boundaries. As the Times notes,
the military debate over whether the Pentagon or the [National Security Agency] is best equipped to engage in offensive operations ... hinges on the question of how much control should be given to American spy agencies, since they are prohibited from acting on American soil. "It's the domestic spying problem writ large," one senior intelligence official said recently. "These attacks start in other countries, but they know no borders. So how do you fight them if you can't act both inside and outside the United States?"
Exactly. And this is just one of many puzzles created by the nonoverlap of cyberspace with physical space. How can defense and intelligence forces organized by nationality and territory patrol, hunt, and fight across computer networks that transcend such boundaries? We'll have to rethink the whole notion of domains.
3. It empowers nonstate actors. One major factor in the rise of terrorism over the last decade is the proliferation of physically destructive technology. Cyberspace multiplies that problem by allowing ubiquitous information technology to become destructive in a different way. It lowers the barriers to military entry, enabling mischief by individuals, small groups, and loose networks. According to the Times, our civilian cybersecurity office will be "responsible for coordinating private-sector and government defenses against the thousands of cyberattacks mounted against the United States—largely by hackers but sometimes by foreign governments—every day." Are the hackers less dangerous than the governments? Don't count on it. And they're certainly harder to pin down.
4. It facilitates economic destruction. The civilian office will report "to both the National Security Council and the National Economic Council" and will "protect systems that run the stock exchanges, clear global banking transactions and manage the air traffic control system," says the story. Why the focus on commerce and finance? Because that's how you bring a country to its knees in this century. It's one reason why the 9/11 terrorists targeted the World Trade Center.
To hit our financial system in physical space, al-Qaida had to get 19 guys through airport screening. And that was before we beefed up security at our airports and borders. But borders and screeners no longer protect us, because cyberspace dissolves distance.
In the old days, you needed physical reach to cripple your adversary's livelihood. It took an invasion or massive bombing to devastate his manufacturing base. An information economy enjoys no such buffer. It can be hit instantly through the computer networks that sustain it.
Over the last couple of months, we've talked about some of the incremental steps through which the physical and digital worlds are beginning to converge and blur. One is physical hyperlinks, which assign a digital incarnation to each physical object. A second is the integration of physical perception with 3-D digital maps. A third is the convergence of the phone and the Internet device with the universal remote.
Cyberwar is part of this revolution. We'd better wake up to it.
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Lots of readers responded to yesterday's piece on the transformation of marijuana. I had focused on the drug's evolution from an herb to a powder, a capsule, and finally a spray. But Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project says the spray has already been eclipsed by a better way to filter and deliver the drug's therapeutic benefits: vaporization.
Mirken points to several recent studies exploring the vapor method. First, a 2006 article from the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences:
What is currently needed for optimal use of medicinal cannabinoids is a feasible, nonsmoked, rapid-onset delivery system. Cannabis "vaporization" is a technique aimed at suppressing irritating respiratory toxins by heating cannabis to a temperature where active cannabinoid vapors form, but below the point of combustion where smoke and associated toxins are produced.
Second, a 2007 report in Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics
on the absorption of THC from marijuana inhaled via the Volcanos vaporizer system compared to smoking marijuana cigarettes. We found that THC levels were generally similar over 6 h for the two types of delivery. The vaporizer was associated with higher plasma THC concentrations at 30 min and 1 h compared to smoking at each THC strength, suggesting that absorption was faster with the vaporizer.
Absorption rate is important because it helps you control the drug's effects. The more quickly you feel the effects of an initial dose, the more quickly and accurately you can figure out whether you need more to get the requisite pain relief and, if so, how much. Otherwise, you might overdose before you realize it (although, even in that event, a THC overdose isn't that bad).
The 2007 paper continues:
Whereas smoking marijuana increased CO [carbon monoxide] levels as expected for inhalation of a combustion product, there was little if any increase in CO after inhalation of THC from the vaporizer. This indicates little or no exposure to gaseous combustion toxins. Combustion products are harmful to health and reflect a major concern about the use of marijuana cigarettes for medical therapy as expressed by the Institute of Medicine. Although we did not measure other combustion products such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and oxidant gases, the observation of little or no CO exposure suggests little or no exposure to these other compounds. The vaporizer was well tolerated, with no reported adverse effects. Most subjects preferred the vaporizer compared to marijuana smoking, supporting its potential for medical therapy.
Finally, Mirken cites a 2007 study in the Harm Reduction Journal, showing
that respiratory symptoms like cough, phlegm, and tightness in the chest increase with cigarette use and cannabis use, but are less severe among users of a vaporizer. ... The odds ratio suggests that vaporizer users are only 40% as likely to report respiratory symptoms as users who do not vaporize, even when age, sex, cigarette use, and amount of cannabis consumed are controlled. The use of cigarettes in conjunction with cannabis exacerbated symptoms, as found in previous work.
So that's the case for vaporization. As to GW Pharmaceuticals' claim that its spray formulation helps patients "obtain symptom relief without experiencing a 'high,'" Mirken cites the spray's package insert, which says:
SATIVEX has two principal active components: THC and CBD. ...THC is a psychotropic agent which may produce physical and psychological dependence and has the potential to be abused. ... THC has complex effects on the central nervous system (CNS). These can result in changes of mood, decrease in cognitive performances and memory, decrease in ability to control drives and impulses, and alteration of the perception of reality, particularly altered time sense.
The company's argument is that Sativex
is composed primarily of a 1:1 ratio of two cannabinoids—CBD ... and THC. ... The CBD:THC formulation is believed to enhance the pain relief of THC while modulating the unwanted psychotropic and other THC-related side effects, such as tachycardia. The spray delivery system keeps THC from entering the blood too rapidly and also minimizes the development of unwanted psychotropic effects.
I don't see a claim here that the 1:1 ratio in Sativex has any direct effect on whether you get high. The effect seems to be through ad hoc dosage control by the patient, known as self-titration. And if that's the case, then preventing "THC from entering the blood too rapidly" is problematic, since, as we discussed above, it makes it more difficult to monitor and adjust your dosage.
I'll let science sort this one out. Thanks for the studies comparing marijuana vaporization to smoking. Vapor wins. Now let's see studies comparing vapor with spray.
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GW Pharmaceuticals, a British company, has just requested European approval of Sativex, a "cannabinoid pharmaceutical product." ... Drugs can be, and are being, reengineered every day. Nicotine and caffeine appear in new forms. Cannabis is an herb, then a powder, then a capsule, and now a spray, with significant chemical adjustments along the way. How do you fight an enemy that keeps changing? How do you recognize when it's no longer your enemy?
More here.
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Look out, fat folks. As we learn more about the intractability of your condition, the good news is that people may stop expecting you to diet or exercise your way to a thinner body. The bad news is, they may start expecting you to go under the knife.
More here.
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"Cheers!" say the astronauts.
"Cheers!" shout the engineers watching from mission control.
They all hoist their brew. The engineers down it. The astronauts sip and smile. "The taste is great," exclaims one astronaut.
The video, filmed aboard the International Space Station and posted on NASA's Web site, looks like a beer commercial. Or maybe a plug for Tang, the powdered soft drink made famous by the U.S. space program. But it's neither. It's an ad for what everybody in the video is drinking: recycled urine.
Mmmmmm. Urine.
Three years ago, this was part of NASA's plan for "Environmental Control and Life Support Systems." Today, it's the "Water Recovery System." According to the Associated Press, "When six crew members are aboard it can make about six gallons from urine in about six hours." NASA explains:
A distillation process is used to recover water from urine. The process occurs within a rotating distillation assembly that compensates for the absence of gravity, aiding in the separation of liquids and gases in space. Once distilled, the water from the urine processor is combined with other wastewaters and delivered to the water processor for treatment. The water processor removes free gas and solid materials such as hair and lint, before the water goes through a series of filtration beds for further purification. Any remaining organic contaminants and microorganisms are removed by a high-temperature catalytic reaction. These rigorous treatment processes create water that meets stringent purity standards for human consumption.
In case the astronauts' smiles don't convince you, the space station's lab manager points out something else: "Some people may find the idea of drinking recycled urine distasteful, but it is also done on Earth, but with a lot longer time between urine and tap."
That's right: You already drink toilet-to-tap water. Urine evaporates, rain falls, rivers flow. And that's not even counting the free-flowing sewage. As proponents of water recycling elegantly put it: What happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas.
The space station is just a smaller world. There, the Water Recovery System "is tied into the station's Waste and Hygiene Compartment toilet" directly. It's a microcosm of what happens naturally on Earth—and what we'll increasingly have to accelerate, through artificial filtering, as we overtax our planet's fresh water supplies.
That's why those astronauts in the video are effusing about the taste of recovered water and wearing goofy, happy-customer grins. They really are making a commercial. It's for the water of the future, in space and here on Earth.
Tang, anyone?
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It looks like those high-tech swimsuits that have been breaking world records for the last couple of years might finally be banned.
Is that a good thing?
FINA, the world's swimming competition authority, has just begun to issue rulings on which suits can or can't be worn in races. The criteria are thickness, buoyancy, and permeability. Let's consider the arguments for regulation, as put forth this week in Agence France Presse and the New York Times.
Reason No. 1: They tilt the playing field. This is the standard metaphor for fairness in sports. Swimsuit regulation should put all athletes "on a level playing field," says one top racer.
This argument makes sense only because the new suits are expensive, costing hundreds of dollars. If the prices came down to where everyone could afford them, I don't see a problem. Nobody bans composite tennis racquets just because they're better than aluminum.
Reason No. 2: They cancel out talent gaps. The suits are "enabling athletes of lesser ability to compete on equal terms with the best-conditioned, hardest-working athletes in the sport. That is why the mandate for change was clear," a FINA executive tells the Times. A top swimmer complains: "A lot of old records that were really, really good are being taken down by people you never heard of."
This argument sounds confused. Why is it wrong to let swimmers of "lesser ability" compete "on equal terms"? Isn't that a way of leveling the playing field? Are the traditional top swimmers the "hardest-working" ones? Or are they just genetically lucky? And aren't the swimmers "you never heard of" the ones least likely to have the money for fancy suits? What's so righteous about freezing them out?
Reason No. 3: They change the sport. They "make a muscled and stocky body as streamlined as a long and lean one," the Times observes. "With the body riding high on the water like a racing hull, it changes a swimmer's relationship with the water, influencing everything from how vigorously the swimmer has to kick to the rhythm of the stroke."
So what? Metal and composite racquets did the same thing to tennis. Pads have changed who can play football. Equipment alters the body requirements for sports all the time. Often, in retrospect, we like the change, in part because it opens the game to a wider range of people.
Reason No. 4: They're consuming the sport. "In 2008, an unprecedented 108 world records were set, the majority by athletes wearing the [LZR] suit made by Speedo," the Times notes. This year, "18 world records have been broken by swimmers wearing suits with fewer panels and seams and more polyurethane" than the LZR. Last year, Speedo was the big story, but by the latest count, "22 manufacturers ... have entered the swimsuit race."
To me, this is the most powerful argument for cracking down. It's no longer a question of helping everyone buy the 2008 LZR, as I naively proposed last year. As the Associated Press notes, that suit has already "been outstripped by polyurethane models." The decisive race today isn't between the swimmers; it's between those 22 manufacturers. When the engineers are overshadowing the swimmers, the sport isn't just changing. It's disappearing.
"It's the athlete that is making the difference. The suit is not breaking the records," one swimmer tells AFP. But that's not true. The new suits are turning the same athletes from losers into winners:
[Rafael] Muñoz, a 21-year-old Spaniard, did not advance past the preliminary heats in the 100 butterfly at the Olympics in August, but this year ... [h]e has lowered his time from Beijing more than two seconds, to 50.46, which is two-hundredths faster than what Michael Phelps swam in winning the gold. Then there is the 24-year-old Brazilian Henrique Barbosa, who finished seventh in his preliminary heat in the Olympics in the 100-meter breaststroke in 1:01.11. Nine months later, with his hulking 6-foot-4 frame wedged into one of the new suits, he posted the fastest time in the world this year, a 59.03.
This is a controlled experiment: The same athletes, with less than a year to improve their conditioning, are cutting their times precipitously, thanks to innovations in suit technology.
If you want to pick a good suit and put everybody in it, fine. But we can't have an ongoing arms race among manufacturers that determines all the records and who sets them.
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Lots of talk yesterday about President Obama's commencement address at Notre Dame. The main topic was "common ground" on abortion. I'll post some thoughts on that later today or tomorrow. But one thing is worth pointing out now: It's a bit odd to see abortion being treated by activists and the press as an issue separate from the economy. In real life, women who get pregnant think hard about their financial circumstances. They try to figure out whether they can afford to raise a child. That's what is happening right now in Singapore, according to Agence France Presse:
Despite a national campaign to boost the birthrate, Singapore has one of Asia's most liberal abortion policies and the global financial crisis could be prompting more women to terminate pregnancies. A Ministry of Health spokeswoman said there were 12,222 abortions in the city-state last year, compared to 11,933 in 2007. No official figures are available for 2009. Gynaecologist Saifuddin Sidek said his private practice had recorded a 20 percent rise in abortion patients so far this year compared with the same period last year. "A lot of them are because of the current economic climate," he said.
The same logic applies to the United States. If you look at the chart on Page 9 of last year's report by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, "Trends in the Characteristics of Women Obtaining Abortions, 1974 to 2004," you'll see that the "abortion ratio per 100 pregnancies" rose from 1974 to the early 1980s and then steadily fell, except for the first couple of years of the 1990s and 2000s. That roughly correlates with economic indicators. The better the economy, the more likely women are to go through with their pregnancies.
At Notre Dame, Obama talked about adoption, pregnancy prevention, and other things the government can facilitate to lower the abortion rate. Good for him. But don't be surprised if abortion trends during his presidency end up having little to do with his abortion policies and a great deal to do with his management of the economy.
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Will the global recession push more people to sell their organs? Apparently, the answer is yes.
Here's the question as I posed it two months ago:
You don't normally think of selling your body's parts or products. But bad times can make you think hard. One reason you might not have thought of selling something from your body is that the idea felt unnatural or somehow made you uncomfortable. But for $5,000, with bills to pay and no other income prospects, you decide you can get over those feelings. ... The next question is whether money can persuade you to donate not just a body product, but a body part.
And here's an initial answer, courtesy of Agence France Presse:
The economic crisis has forced dozens of "desperate" people in Spain to put their organs up for sale on the Internet, a consumers association said Tuesday. The association, FACUA, told Spanish authorities it has detected "31 announcements of organ sales" on 13 Internet sites by Spaniards and Latin American immigrants. "These are offers of kidneys, lungs and bone marrow, by persons who say they are going through economic difficulties and asking for sums ranging from 15,000 to one million euros (19,000 to 1.3 million dollars)," FACUA said.
The trend is all too logical: As the recession takes away the external assets of more and more people, they'll be forced to sell what's left.
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New York City Health Commissioner Tom Frieden has just been named to head the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In announcing his new job, the White House touts his expertise in health care reform, swine flu, and tuberculosis. But Frieden's distinctive expertise isn't in infectious diseases. It's in chronic diseases associated with eating. Frieden is the world's most ambitious innovator in redefining unhealthy foods as not really food. By rhetorically pushing these items out of the category of sustenance, he's paving the way for more aggressive regulation of what you eat.
First Frieden went after trans fats. There, he had a good case that the targeted ingredient was industrial, not nutritional. But he wasn't shy about exploiting that angle. In its two documents explaining the city's ban on trans fats, Frieden's health department uses the word artificial 77 times.
Then he went after salt. Only 10 percent of the salt we consume "is found naturally in food," the health department declared in a bulletin devoted to topic. The vast majority was "processed" and "packaged" by "manufacturers." Frieden used this point in his campaign to pressure food companies to halve the salt content of high-sodium foods.
Then, last month, Frieden and Kelly Brownell, the director of Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, propose a penny-per-ounce excise tax on "sugared beverages." Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, they rejected the notion that soft drinks were sacred "because people must eat to survive." On the contrary, they argued, "sugared beverages are not necessary for survival."
I'm not saying these initiatives are out of line. I detest trans fats, soda, and excess salt. But let's be clear about what's going on: We're recategorizing things so we can get away with aggressively regulating them.
Americans don't like the idea of bureaucrats banning or restricting unhealthy food. We tend to think it's none of the government's business. But food-related disease, particularly obesity, has become a huge problem for any government agency charged with disease control and prevention. If Frieden can persuaded us that trans fats are artificial, sweet drinks aren't necessary for survival, and most of the salt we eat is unnatural, then maybe we can accept restrictions on them as akin to regulation of tobacco or additives, not a jackbooted assault on eating in general. And if we do, I'll be curious to see what Frieden goes after next.
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Does surveillance of individual drug abuse bother you? How would you feel if the surveillance were collective?
Thanks to increasingly sophisticated detection methods, we can now track drug abuse city by city, simply by monitoring the air and water. Here's a report flagged in Human Nature two years ago:
The test ... seeks out evidence of illicit drug abuse in drug residues and metabolites excreted in urine and flushed toward municipal sewage treatment plants. ... Preliminary tests conducted in 10 U.S. cities show the method can simultaneously quantify methamphetamine and metabolites of cocaine and marijuana and legal drugs such as methadone, oxycodone, and ephedrine. ... "Because our method can provide data in real time, we anticipate it might be used to help law officials undertaking surveillance to make intervention or prevention decisions or to decide where to allocate resources. ..."
Last year, Italian scientists found ways to detect metabolites for cocaine in the Po River, giving law enforcement officials more accurate estimates on cocaine use in the area. The U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy has obtained samples from a dozen different waterways in an effort to assess illegal drug use, as well.
And here's an update posted Wednesday by Agence France Presse:
Spanish scientists have detected the presence of cocaine in the air of Madrid and Barcelona. ... The scientists looked for 17 components in five different types of illegal drugs—cocaine, amphetamines, opiates, cannabinoids and lysergic acid. The results revealed cocaine is the predominant drug in the air of the two cities, the CSIC institute said. ... The study is the result of the first use of a new method for the detection of drugs in the air. ...
Such mass sampling can reveal behavioral trends, as the AFP report notes:
The scientists also reported a higher concentration [of drugs in the air] during the weekend, "suggesting higher consumption this time."
... while at the same time "preserving the anonymity of individuals," according to water surveillance experts.
I don't see a problem with this. In fact, it strikes me as a welcome alternative to more intrusive detection methods. Do any of you libertarians disagree?
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A month ago, when advocates of a federal soda tax laid out their case, revenue generation was a secondary point. Today, as Congress looks for ways to finance universal health care, it's front and center. At a Senate finance committee hearing this week, proponents argued that a soda tax would help fund medical care while improving public health.
How much money would a tax bring in? The Congressional Budget Office says a tax of 3 cents on each 12-ounce container would generate $6 billion per year; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities claims a penny-per-ounce tax would produce $10 billion per year.
Will Congress agree to such a tax? According to the Wall Street Journal, "Senior staff members for some Democratic senators at the center of the effort to craft health-care legislation are weighing the idea behind closed doors." But Politico reports:
There appeared to be a bubble of support among the experts for taxing bad behavior, including a $2 tax on a pack of cigarettes and a higher excise tax on alcohol. But soda and sugary drinks found a friend Tuesday in Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking member on the Finance Committee. He categorically rejected the idea during a conference call with reporters. "No," he said swiftly, when asked if there was any chance of taxing it. "I think, quite frankly, the only reason it's being brought up is to get it shot down early so it doesn't become part of the debate. I don't think it's going to have any legs at all."
Human Nature's interest in this subject isn't about the money. It's about how we think about food, drink, and drugs. Why do we treat marijuana, but not alcohol, as a forbidden drug? Why do we regulate nicotine but not caffeine? And how do we reshuffle these categories? How do we recast french fries as a dangerous substance? How does soda, which used to be a drink, become a target of sin taxes, like alcohol and tobacco?
Our sister publication, The Big Money, has a good post on the soda tax debate that illustrates this struggle to reframe food. Dan Mitchell notes that the American Beverage Association is calling the chief soda-tax advocacy group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a branch of "the food police" who "make their living ... by bashing foods and beverages." Mitchell replies that "people in the food industry make their living ... by persuading Americans to consume a lot of crap."
That's the cultural struggle underway as Congress looks for revenue sources to fund health care. Can Republicans and the beverage industry protect sugary soft drinks from being lumped in with booze and cigarettes as a deserving tax target? And as money gets tighter and Americans get fatter, how long will that defense last?
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Steve Sailer has replied to my last comment on our differences over racial inequality. He accuses me of triangulating against him. He's right. The only part he left out is that sometimes you get triangulated because you're actually wrong.
Here are three passages that crystallize where we disagree. First:
To Saletan, my having spent years toiling at the unpopular task of correctly figuring out one of the central conundrums facing modern America—how race, IQ and public policy interact—makes me a bad person.
Stop right there. Race and genes interact. Genes and IQ interact. But to say that race and IQ interact, without even mentioning genetics or environment, is a scientific and moral mistake. It's like saying that race and criminality interact, without acknowledging any intervening variable. Race is not a causal unit.
Second:
For purposes of sensible public policy, arguing over whether genetics plays a role in racial differences in achievement is a red herring. What's crucial to understand is that racial differences—for whatever reasons—are unlikely to vanish Real Soon Now, as all right-thinking people are supposed to assume.
Say it's discovered in 2010 that the entire cause of the black-white IQ gap is some hitherto unknown micronutrient needed by pregnant women that African-Americans don't get enough of, and a crash program is put into place immediately to solve the problem. If that happened, the IQ gap among working-age adults still wouldn't disappear until the late 2070s. ...
Of course, if there really are genetic differences in average intelligence among the races, that would make the "disparate impact" notion look silly. But it's not actually necessary to know that. It's merely enough to know that fair and valid predictors of future job performance have routinely found substantial gaps for decades.
That's a pretty clear statement that public policy has no responsibility to redress any cause of racially unequal outcomes. Hey, I'm all for colorblindness. But segregation? Denial of schooling? Some injustices demand redress. Sailer's argument rationalizes too much. Did childhood poverty deprive you of equal educational opportunity? Did Jim Crow impair your family's ability to accumulate financial and cultural assets? Too bad. You and the other kids screwed by this legacy have flunked "fair and valid predictors of future job performance." Here, take this mop. And hang onto it, because your kids will need it.
It's one thing to say we can't affect the distribution of talent. It's quite another to say we have no responsibility to affect or compensate for the distribution of resources.
Third:
As long as legal immigrants are carefully selected for optimum benefit to current American citizens, as well as (to quote the Preamble to the Constitution) "our posterity", and are quite limited in number, then I don't see much reason to consider race in choosing legal immigrants.
Others would disagree. Overall, it's not a particularly big issue as long as we change the law from the current system of "family reunification" chain migration.
Don't see "much" reason? Not a big issue?
What reason would there be to consider race in choosing immigrants? And if we did that, are you saying you wouldn't mind?
Sailer and other exponents of "human biodiversity" seem to want more attention and respect than they've been getting. Here are two ways they can earn it. First, show as much interest in biodiversity within racial and ethnic groups as in biodiversity between them. And second, take into account the reality of racism, not just the reality of race. That's part of human nature, too.
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What do Ross Douthat, Steve Waldman, and I have in common? Answer No. 1: None of us has a uterus. Answer No. 2: We're all noodling prospects for an abortion compromise. What better way to salute Slate's new website, Double X, than to add a male point of view. Or two. Or three ...
Steve and I have been discussing the merits of reducing the number of abortions (the approach favored by the Clintons, Third Way, and Barack Obama) versus reducing late abortions and facilitating earlier ones. Steve prefers the latter approach. In his latest post, he argues that
focusing on timing—as the Europeans do—ultimately is a better approach for the simple reason that it actually comports with the way most people make the moral calculation. Insisting on "rare" as a goal accepts the purist pro-life argument that any abortion is equally tragic. But most people do not believe that expelling a zygote in the first week is horrendous. So remind me: politically speaking, why must those types of abortions be rare? Most voters would trade a myriad zygote expulsions for a meaningful reduction in second or third trimester abortions.
Conversely, given the revulsion most people feel about "partial birth abortion" in most circumstances, having them be "rare"—instead of non-existent or virtually eliminated— is morally unsatisfying, too.
Morally, my feelings differ from Steve's. I'm more uncomfortable with early abortions than he is. At the same time, I'm more uncomfortable with government interference in late abortions than he is. Steve is right that earlier is better. But pointing out that truth, or even preaching it, is very different from criminalizing, investigating, and prosecuting abortions. My wager is that such laws would create a nightmare of moral crudity, hypocrisy, deceit, interrogations, and amateur surgery. Women make these decisions better than cops, judges, and lawmakers do.
So I'm against this trade-off on moral and policy grounds. But is Steve right about the politics? Would slamming the door on late-term abortions satisfy more Americans than an overall reduction in abortions would?
That's where Douthat comes in. Unlike Steve and me, Ross is a real pro-lifer. He's been a very fair listener to my arguments for shifting the anti-abortion cause from prohibition to reduction. But ultimately, I've hit a wall with him because I won't ban pre-viability late-term abortions. In his latest column, he writes:
Nothing that emerges from this White House is going to look like a genuine legal compromise—which would require the rollback of Roe's near-absolute guarantee of abortion rights, and a move, at the very least, toward the restrictions on second-trimester abortions that roughly two-thirds of American support.
Here's what I'd like to know: Would Ross go for Steve's idea? Would Steve offer him a good enough deal on restricting late abortions to win a truce, and possibly a stable consensus, on the legality of early ones? How far into the second trimester would that deal extend? And is this just three guys talking, or would our countrymen and countrywomen go along?
How about you, XXers? Katha? Emily? Christine?
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It's hard to keep your mind on work when your favorite sports team is playing out of its mind. My team, the Houston Rockets, lost its star guard, Tracy McGrady, midway through the season. Then it lost its backup center, Dikembe Mutombo. Then, three days ago, it lost its center, Yao Ming. Yao and McGrady are done for the season; Mutombo is done for good. You might as well ask a country to fight a war without its army, navy, and air force. But on Sunday afternoon, the Yaoless, McGradyless, Mutomboless Rockets—a bunch of role players who'd been shrugged off by general managers around the NBA—stomped the Los Angeles Lakers, this year's front-runners for the league title. Their playoff series stands tied at 2-2.
Why am I bringing this up in a science blog? Because we've been talking lately about stereotypes, and the subject came up in a New York Times account of a confrontation between the Rockets' Ron Artest and the Lakers' Kobe Bryant during the series. Artest was angry that Bryant
had elbowed him near his neck. He jawed angrily at Bryant, at close range. Then, having made his point—and having been ejected by the referees—Artest calmly walked off the Staples Center court. ... Artest's turbulent past—a blur of technical fouls, scuffles, a smashed television camera and a domestic violence arrest—is fading but not forgotten. The consensus among the Rockets was that the Game 2 ejection stemmed not from Artest's actions but his résumé. Artest joked that it was akin to racial profiling—"past history profiling," he said with a chuckle.
"The thing about Ron is, he will never get the benefit of the doubt again," [Rockets forward Shane] Battier said. "Any questionable situation, people will automatically stereotype and refuse to give him the benefit of the doubt."
I love these guys. But there's no such thing as stereotyping a man based on his own past. Stereo means more than one person. Being judged by your own behavior is the opposite of stereotyping. And "racial profiling," as defined by the ACLU, means "targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual's race, ethnicity, religion or national origin." If Artest were being targeted based on race, Battier would be getting the same treatment. But Battier gets the opposite treatment: If your grandmother bumped into Battier while asking for his autograph, she'd be whistled for a charge.
It seems a bit unfair that Battier gets the benefit of the doubt and that Artest doesn't. Referees, like the rest of us, are influenced, often unconsciously, by opinions they've formed about each player. Battier has earned a reputation for lawyerly adherence to the league's rules. Artest has earned a reputation for hotheadedness. For this reason, Artest is far more likely than Battier to be deemed guilty of a foul, even in identical circumstances.
Is this kind of discrimination wrong? If so, you'd better take it up with Martin Luther King Jr. His dream was that people would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Character isn't whatever you did just now. It's the pattern of your life: your personality, your reputation, your profile. Judging a man by his character means taking account of that pattern. "Past-history profiling," the neologism Artest coined in jest, is actually a pretty good translation of what King envisioned.
So don't fret about the profiling, Ron. The civil rights generation fought for your right to be judged on your own history. The rest is up to you.
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Should possession of a switched-on cell phone while driving be illegal?
A trolley crash in Boston on Friday night is raising that question. First there was last year's train crash near Los Angeles, with 25 dead and 130 injured. In three hours of work before the crash, the engineer received 28 text messages and sent 29 more. He sent his last message 22 seconds before impact, just after passing a signal that would have alerted him to the disaster ahead.
Now comes the Boston crash, in which one trolley went through a red light and rear-ended another. Forty-nine people were injured—none of them gravely, but "more than a few were bloodied," according to the Globe. Officials say the operator of the second trolley "was text-messaging his girlfriend" and "was looking down at his phone and could not apply the brakes quickly enough when he looked up and saw the trolley in front of him."
If texting can cause crashes on train tracks, which prevent lateral drift, think how much more dangerous it is to text while driving a car. Only 10 states outlaw this practice, but I suspect that's largely a matter of legislators being slow to catch up with evolving technology. You can't drive while looking down and typing a message.
How about holding a phone and talking instead of typing? That way, your eyes can stay on the road. But your hand is still occupied with the phone, and you might be distracted by punching in somebody's number. Hence the push in many states to restrict cell-phone use to hands-free operation.
Still, that leaves your brain occupied by the phone conversation. And this arrangement isn't safe, either. That's why the National Safety Council wants a nationwide ban on using, not just holding, your phone while driving.
Boston's transit authority already forbids cell phone use by train and trolley operators. (Such phones aren't needed for job-related communication, since the trains have radios and emergency call buttons.) But it has let them carry their phones, and over the last three years, some four dozen train operators and bus drivers have been cited for using their phones on the job. The carry-but-don't-use policy hasn't worked.
On the heels of Friday's crash, the transit authority has announced the next logical step. It will "ban on-the-job possession of cell phones" by train operators and "fire anyone caught carrying a phone, pager, or similar device," the Globe reports. The authority's general manager puts it this way:
Leave it at home. Leave it in your car. Leave it with a friend. Leave it in a locker. But you are not to get on board that bus or [train or trolley] and have a cell phone on your person or in the cab. Period. This is going to be a zero-tolerance policy.
Massachusetts' transportation secretary thinks other states will adopt the same policy for transit operators. I bet he's right. States can justify and enforce such a policy because transit operators are on the clock working for the government.
Could they enforce a similar policy against you while you're driving your car? A law against having a cell phone in the seat next to you? I doubt it. But the logical progression is worth thinking about. First, ban texting at the wheel, because driving requires your eyes. Second, ban holding a phone, because driving requires your hands. Third, ban talking on a phone, because driving requires your brain. And fourth, if everybody's violating the ban on phone use and accidents are killing people as a result, then do what we do with alcohol: Adopt the equivalent of an open-container law for cell phones.
Open-container laws, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, "prohibit the possession of any open alcoholic beverage container ... in the passenger area of any motor vehicle that is located on a public highway or right-of-way." The equivalent in this case would be a powered-up cell phone. If phone use while driving really is as dangerous as being drunk at the wheel—which is what preliminary evidence suggests—would you oppose such a law?
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Based on the evidence so far, there's good reason to believe that genes influence everything and exclusively control nothing. Intelligence, in particular, is a field with lots of evidence for heredity but little evidence for the precise impact of any known gene. We're very early in this research. If you start poking around in scholarly debates over IQ and general intelligence, or "g," you start to realize how much the field resembles astronomy or particle physics, with entities and qualities being calculated from complex inferences rather than directly observed. That's not to say inferences and calculations aren't scientific. But we should beware mistaking them for unshakeable facts.
More here.
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My buddy Steve Waldman has a new idea for building consensus on abortion. He calls it "safe, legal, and early."
I get to call him my buddy for two reasons. One is that he's a good guy. The other is that there aren't a lot of people willing to seriously talk compromise on abortion. So we'd better stick together.
I like his idea. I don't think it stands on its own. But it fits a larger common approach: abortion reduction.
Waldman thinks a timing approach is different and better because later abortions destroy a more developed and therefore more fully human fetus. "Success would be measured on the basis of moving abortions earlier in the gestational cycle—even if that conceivably means more overall abortions," he explains. For example, "abortion reducers would likely oppose making RU-486 readily available on the grounds that it could lead to a dramatic growth in what is technically an abortion. But if the goal is have fewer late abortions, then promoting RU-486 makes great moral sense."
Actually, pro-choice advocates of reduction support RU-486 precisely for Waldman's reasons. Any woman who uses RU-486 has chosen and is going to get an abortion. RU-486 just makes sure the abortion is an early one. The reduction framework doesn't capture this benefit. The timing framework does.
But the timing framework has two problems. One is that conceptually, it's too complicated. A few years ago, I tried it out on some pro-choice thinkers who are pretty good at assessing political messages. My version was almost word-for-word the same as Waldman's: moving abortions earlier in gestation. (I tried a later version of it here.) They squinted politely. The backward-in-time idea, while logical, was a bit hard to get across in a pithy way, they explained. And less of a bad thing is easy to understand. But a bad thing in smaller bites? Without the "less" part, it's not particularly compelling.
The other problem is that people won't take the more-but-earlier-abortions deal. Yes, they prefer earlier abortions to later ones, as Waldman's poll data show. But those data say nothing about a trade-off for more abortions. So earlier timing isn't a substitute for reduction. It's an add-on.
In fact, the timing approach logically fits the reduction framework. A nine-week abortion is better than a 12-week abortion. A six-week abortion is even better. But eventually, this trajectory takes you all the way back before conception. That's not an abortion anymore. It's birth control or abstinence. In other words, it's reduction.
I'll tell you where I really like Waldman's idea. It's a good answer to abortion-delaying restrictions. Waldman notes:
Parental notification also sounds reasonable if your goal is reducing the overall number of abortions. But these policies may have a secondary effect: increasing the number of abortions that happen later. The 2006 Guttmacher survey found that among women who said they wished they could have had their abortions earlier, the most common reason they cited for delay was that it took a long time to make arrangements. Therefore, efforts to reduce the number of abortion clinics, cut off government aid to women who want abortions, or otherwise delay the decision may reduce the number of overall abortions but also make it more likely that those abortions that do occur will happen later. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, a requirement in Mississippi that a woman wait 24 hours between realizing she's pregnant and an abortion decision led to both a decline in the overall number of abortions and a rise in abortions performed after 12 weeks.
He's totally right about that. It's immoral, from an intelligent pro-life viewpoint, to impose restrictions that simply delay abortions, adding days or weeks of fetal development to what is already a tragedy.
But for the same reason, let's be careful about imposing such restrictions on a timing basis. Under Waldman's proposal, for instance, "Medicaid funding would be generous for first trimester abortions, minimal for second trimesters, and non-existent for the third." That sounds good. But suppose you're just past your first trimester. A second-trimester abortion is considerably more expensive than a first-trimester abortion, and now we've taken away your anticipated means of paying for it. Good luck raising the money from family and friends while your fetus develops and the eventual abortion becomes that much more awful.
I liked Bill Clinton's idea: safe, legal, and rare. I like Waldman's idea, too. Barack Obama has a task force working on such ideas. Safe, legal, early, and rare is a good place to start.
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The latest on marijuana, courtesy of the Associated Press:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says California should study other nations' experiences in legalizing and taxing marijuana, although he is not supporting the idea. He says it's time to debate proposals such as a bill introduced in the Legislature earlier this year that would treat marijuana like alcohol. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco Democrat, says taxing marijuana at $50 per ounce would bring more than $1 billion a year to the state. Schwarzenegger said during a Tuesday news conference that "it's time for debate" on the idea. But he warned against making harmful decisions just for the sake of raising money. He said some other nations have had negative experiences.
This is the logical next step toward legalization. As the Washington Post noted last month, pot is already "available as a medical treatment in California to almost anyone who tells a willing physician he would feel better if he smoked," and it's being "retailed over the counter in hundreds of storefronts" in Los Angeles alone. Furthermore, the state already "collects $18 million in sales taxes from marijuana dispensaries." But $1 billion? (Actually, state officials who support legalization estimate the take at around $1.3 billion.) Now you're talking.
You know how it is: Teenagers have trouble saying no to drugs; politicians have trouble saying no to money. But this is just another rationalization we're reaching for as we gradually concede pot's legality. By the time the "studies" invited by various governors are in, the revenue question will be less pressing, and the public will have become that much more used to the idea.
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We've already identified genes that correlate with traits and vary in prevalence between ethnic groups. Are you confident that intelligence will turn out to be exempt from this list? Confident enough to leave no backup plan, no understanding of equality that can withstand a partial role for heredity? Confident enough to keep tallying and reporting test scores by race? And if intelligence turns out not to vary genetically between groups, do you imagine that we'll get just as lucky with every other significant mental trait?
More here.
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Wasn't it just this morning that we were talking about the perils of classifying and treating people according to race?
Look at the news from China this afternoon. According to the New York Times:
The Chinese authorities have confined dozens of Mexicans to hotels and hospitals despite having no signs of human swine virus, Mexican consular officials said Monday. ... Since last Thursday, when an AeroMexico flight from Mexico City arrived in Shanghai with an infected man, Chinese health officials have been rounding up his fellow passengers as well as travelers on other flights who showed no signs of illness. But authorities also sequestered a number of Mexican passport holders who had not been home in months ...
This is exactly what I worried about in last week's discussion of thermal scanners:
If you think heat is a bad proxy for flu infection, ask yourself whether it's worse than nationality. Travel companies are canceling flights to Mexico. Today, Japan began denying visas to Mexicans on arrival. Governments and businesses want an easy way to identify, segregate, and scrutinize the people most likely to be carriers. Which group would you rather they target? People with excess body heat? Or Mexicans?
Looks like China has already decided to target Mexicans. And please don't try to defend this as a logical response to a flu that came from Mexico. When you're rounding up Mexicans who haven't been home during the flu's existence, logic is out the window.
Strictly speaking, this isn't inappropriate classification and discrimination based on race. It's inappropriate classification and discrimination based on nationality. But the point is the same: Beware the easy recourse to crude categories.
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People of your race may be on average faster, smarter, or more volatile than people of my race. But the opposite pattern may turn up if you and I are classified in some other way. ... The distribution question doesn't settle the framing question, because race is just one way in which ability can be unevenly distributed. To answer the framing question in the affirmative, you have to show something more. You have to show that classifying and comparing by race, rather than using some other classification system or judging each person as an individual, does more good than harm.
More here.
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Is the global market in womb rentals out of control? Does it need regulation?
I wondered about that three weeks ago when I saw this Reuters story: "Poverty Makes Surrogates of Indian Women in Gujarat." The $4,000 to $8,000 paid to successful surrogates in India is "a huge sum of money in a country where many live on less than $2 a day," Rina Chandran reported. But compared with U.S. rates, it's cheap. That's why foreigners have begun
to flock to [Nayna] Patel's clinic, drawn by the lower costs, relaxed attitude toward surrogates and lack of legislation. A draft bill on surrogacy is pending before parliament, and meanwhile, hundreds of clinics have mushroomed across the country, with critics saying touts promoting this "reproductive tourism" care little for the health or rights of the surrogates. ... Patel has a list of nearly 200 [would-be surrogates] and is seeing more women walk in everyday because they are feeling the pinch of the slowdown.
And yet, Chandran noted, Patel "draws the line at gay couples."
Cheap reproductive labor for wealthy foreigners, but no gay parents allowed? For the usual incoherent combination of lefty reasons—not enough private discrimination in working conditions, too much private discrimination in family values—I felt the urge to support regulation of the industry.
Then, yesterday, Reuters published another investigation of overseas surrogacy conditions, this time in China. "With China's rising affluence, increasing numbers of infertile couples have been seeking surrogate mothers," James Pomfret reported. "Surrogacy agencies have been recruiting girls, often from poor villages, to have babies on behalf of prospective parents."
Should the government do something about this? Actually, authorities are already on the case:
In the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, three young surrogate first-time mothers were discovered by authorities hiding in a communal flat. Soon afterwards, district family planning and security officers broke into the flat, bundled them into a van and drove them to a district hospital where they were manhandled into a maternity ward, the mothers recounted to Reuters. "I was crying 'I don't want to do this'," said a young woman called Xiao Hong, who was pregnant with four-month-old twins. "But they still dragged me in and injected my belly with a needle," the 20-year-old told Reuters. ... Another of the surrogates, who said she'd come from a village in Sichuan province, recounted how officers made her take pills then surgically removed her three-month-old fetus while she was unconscious.
This isn't the kind of policing liberals have in mind when they call for tighter regulation of the fertility industry. But the tricky thing about official intervention is that once the state gets its foot in the door, you don't necessarily get to dictate what it can and can't do.
Every time the global market in human body parts and rentals looks ugly enough to regulate, I'm reminded how much uglier things can get when the government steps in.