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To: epicure who wrote (7504)	3/4/2004 2:03:46 AM
From: cosmicforce	Respond to of 20773

I hope scientists have the same sense of humor: biomedcentral.com Bush dismisses council membersScientific groups angry at loss of Elizabeth Blackburn from group considering stem cells \| By Maria Anderson US President George W. Bush dismissed two members of his President's Council on Bioethics last Friday afternoon in a move that has been dubbed a “very ill-advised decision” by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) president Bettie Sue Masters. Elizabeth Blackburn, a University of California, San Francisco, biochemist and former president of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), and William May, a medical ethicist and former head of the Maguire Center of Ethics at Southern Methodist University, received notification last Friday that their service on the council was no longer needed. Blackburn told The Scientist that she received a call from the White House personnel office last Wednesday (February 28) requesting her to call them back on Friday afternoon. When she returned the call, she was notified of her dismissal. Although she and May frequently expressed views opposing those of the president and the council's chairman Leon R. Kass, she said that she had “no inkling” that a dismissal was imminent and that she has not been contacted by Kass at all. To replace Blackburn, May, and Stephen Carter, a Yale University law professor who left the council in September 2002, Bush appointed Benjamin S. Carson, the director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at John Hopkins and a vocal abortion opponent; Peter A. Lawler, head of the Government and International Studies Department at Berry College in Georgia; and Diana J. Schaub, head of the Political Science Department at Loyola College in Maryland. Bush established the council as a federal advisory committee in January 2002. The 18-person group, comprising scientists, lawyers, physicians, and others, published its first report, a recommendation for federal regulations on human cloning, in July 2002. Since then, the council has issued two more reports on biotechnology (October 2003) and stem cell research (January 2004), as well as a collection of readings about bioethics (December 2003). Bush renewed his executive order for the council in January when its first 2-year term expired. The council members' terms also expired in January; only Blackburn and May were not invited back. Coming on the heels of protests from the Union of Concerned Scientists and others that the White House has distorted scientific facts to support its policies on the environment, public health, and biomedical research, this latest action by the Bush administration has done more than raise a few eyebrows in the scientific community. Several professional organizations, including the ASCB and the ASBMB, have expressed their disappointment in Bush's decision, which will lower the fraction of research scientists on the council. “Even before Dr. Blackburn's dismissal, scientists were heavily outnumbered by nonscientists with strong anti-research ideological views,” said ASCB public policy chair Larry Goldstein in a statement. “Now it will be even more unlikely than before that the council will be able to make informed ethical decisions.” Many also believe that it is an effort to increase the number of conservatives on the council. Bernard Siegel, the Genetics Policy Institute's executive director, told The Scientist in an E-mail, “It is a shame that [Blackburn] is being replaced by outspoken foes of [somatic cell nuclear transfer] research. This is… another punch in the face to scientists and disease advocates by the folks more concerned about 'energizing their political base' than finding cures.” Kass responded to these criticisms in an editorial in today's Washington Post: “Our new members are all people of distinction, ethical seriousness and intellectual independence, with the sorts of competences we need for the new and different work ahead. Unfortunately, these membership changes were met with unfounded and false charges of political 'stacking' of the council. Such charges are as bogus today as they were when the council was formed.” Explaining the replacement of Blackburn with Carson, Kass wrote, “[T]his change reflects the changing focus of the council's work, as we move away from issues of reproduction and genetics to focus on issues of neuroscience, brain and behavior.” Blackburn pointed out that the council already has “two fine psychiatrists,” Charles Krauthammer and Paul McHugh, and one cognitive neuroscientist, Michael Gazzaniga, so she doesn't think Kass' explanation is valid. “Two dissenting voices are now not on that council,” she said. “Now I fear it's very lopsided.” She said that with the current ratio of scientists to nonscientists, the President's Council on Bioethics is “not an ideal council.” While it's necessary to have a variety of viewpoints, “it is bioethics, after all.”

To: epicure who wrote (7504)	3/4/2004 6:04:11 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20773

Some should find this humorous... When marriage between gays was by rite -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RITE AND REASON: A Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St Catherine's monastery on Mount Sinai. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman pronubus (best man) overseeing what in a standard Roman icon would be the wedding of a husband and wife. In the icon, Christ is the pronubus. Only one thing is unusual. The "husband and wife" are in fact two men. Is the icon suggesting that a homosexual "marriage" is one sanctified by Christ? The very idea initially seems shocking. The full answer comes from other sources about the two men featured, St Serge and St Bacchus, two Roman soldiers who became Christian martyrs. While the pairing of saints, particularly in the early Church, was not unusual, the association of these two men was regarded as particularly close. Severus of Antioch in the sixth century explained that "we should not separate in speech [Serge and Bacchus] who were joined in life". More bluntly, in the definitive 10th century Greek account of their lives, St Serge is openly described as the "sweet companion and lover" of St Bacchus. In other words, it confirms what the earlier icon implies, that they were a homosexual couple. Unusually their orientation and relationship was openly accepted by early Christian writers. Furthermore, in an image that to some modern Christian eyes might border on blasphemy, the icon has Christ himself as their pronubus, their best man overseeing their "marriage". The very idea of a Christian homosexual marriage seems incredible. Yet after a 12-year search of Catholic and Orthodox church archives Yale history professor John Boswell has discovered that a type of Christian homosexual "marriage" did exist as late as the 18th century. Contrary to myth, Christianity's concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has evolved both as a concept and as a ritual. Prof Boswell discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient church liturgical documents (and clearly separate from other types of non-marital blessings such as blessings of adopted children or land) were ceremonies called, among other titles, the "Office of Same Sex Union" (10th and 11th century Greek) or the "Order for Uniting Two Men" (11th and 12th century). These ceremonies had all the contemporary symbols of a marriage: a community gathered in church, a blessing of the couple before the altar, their right hands joined as at heterosexual marriages, the participation of a priest, the taking of the Eucharist, a wedding banquet afterwards. All of which are shown in contemporary drawings of the same sex union of Byzantine Emperor Basil I (867-886) and his companion John. Such homosexual unions also took place in Ireland in the late 12th/early 13th century, as the chronicler Gerald of Wales (Geraldus Cambrensis) has recorded. Boswell's book, The Marriage of Likeness: Same Sex Unions in Pre- Modern Europe, lists in detail some same sex union ceremonies found in ancient church liturgical documents. One Greek 13th century "Order for Solemnisation of Same Sex Union" having invoked St Serge and St Bacchus, called on God to "vouchsafe unto these thy servants [N and N] grace to love one another and to abide unhated and not a cause of scandal all the days of their lives, with the help of the Holy Mother of God and all thy saints." The ceremony concludes: "And they shall kiss the Holy Gospel and each other, and it shall be concluded." Another 14th century Serbian Slavonic "Office of Same Sex Union", uniting two men or two women, had the couple having their right hands laid on the Gospel while having a cross placed in their left hands. Having kissed the Gospel, the couple were then required to kiss each other, after which the priest, having raised up the Eucharist, would give them both communion. Boswell found records of same-sex unions in such diverse archives as those in the Vatican, in St Petersburg, in Paris, Istanbul, and in Sinai, covering a period from the 8th to the 18th centuries. Nor is he the first to make such a discovery. The Dominican Jacques Goar (1601-1653) includes such ceremonies in a printed collection of Greek prayer books. While homosexuality was technically illegal from late Roman times, it was only from about the 14th century that anti-homosexual feelings swept western Europe. Yet same sex union ceremonies continued to take place. At St John Lateran in Rome (traditionally the Pope's parish Church) in 1578 as many as 13 couples were "married" at Mass with the apparent co-operation of the local clergy, "taking Communion together, using the same nuptial Scripture, after which they slept and ate together", according to a contemporary report. Another woman-to-woman union is recorded in Dalmatia in the 18th century. Many questionable historical claims about the church have been made by some recent writers in this newspaper. Boswell's academic study however is so well researched and sourced as to pose fundamental questions for both modern church leaders and heterosexual Christians about their attitude towards homosexuality. FOR the Church to ignore the evidence in its own archives would be a cowardly cop-out. That evidence shows convincingly that what the modern church claims has been its constant unchanging attitude towards homosexuality is in fact nothing of the sort. It proves that for much of the last two millennia, in parish churches and cathedrals throughout Christendom from Ireland to Istanbul and in the heart of Rome itself, homosexual relationships were accepted as valid expressions of a God-given ability to love and commit to another person, a love that could be celebrated, honoured and blessed both in the name of, and through the Eucharist in the presence of Jesus Christ. Jim Duffy is a writer and historian. The Marriage of Likeness: Same Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe by John Boswell is published by Harper Collins.