Twenty reasons not to feel too down about NZ losing the first cricket test

OK. It was a pretty dismal batting display. Granted. How could we be bowled out for 68 at Lords when we needed only 239 runs to win?

But as Kiwis and Black Caps supporters we need to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and look for the positives.

And for that we need to indulge in a little cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help us believe that things could actually have been a lot worse.

So here are twenty things about the game to be thankful for (in no particular order but the second to last is definitely the most satisfying!) J

Yes of course I concede that this is really scraping the barrel and that not all relate to cricket, but hey, so what!

The key thing is that if you are a Kiwi you will feel better after reading this list.

1. We were still in the game after three days until we starting batting this morning

2. This was not our worst test performance this year. We only scored 45 in the first innings of the first test in South Africa in January.

3. Tim Southee (pictured) bowled well and became only the second New Zealander (after Dion Nash) to claim a ten-wicket haul in a Test at Lord's. 

4. None of the England eleven could score a century against us and they could only manage a total of 445 runs in two innings.

5. After Joe Root’s 71, Taylor’s 66 and Williamson’s 60 in the first innings were the second and third highest scores in the match.

6. Our 68 in the fourth innings was more than twice our worst ever test total of 26 (also against England) in Auckland in 1954-5.

7. We managed to take 20 wickets for the first time in a test since playing Sri Lanka last year.

8. We have scored lower totals at Lord’s against England on three previous occasions (47 in 1958 and 67 in 1958 and 1978).

9. We did not score fewer runs than the highest ever total by a Kiwi number 11 batsman (Collinge’s 68no against Pakistan in 1972-3 in Auckland which I personally witnessed).

10. No Kiwi batsman scored a pair in the match (unlike Prior). OK I concede that Boult didn’t score any runs but he was not out in the second innings.

11. Anderson in the first innings and Broad in the second were in scintillating form and would have given anyone trouble. English captain Alistair Cook called it the best fast bowling he had ever seen and Broad said it was his best bowling ever. Kiwi skipper Brendon McCullum called it 'an hour of madness'.

12. England had to bat twice to beat us which South Africa did not have to do in either test in January.

13. We still drew with England in a three match series down under earlier this year so this is the first time they have managed to beat us in four attempts.

14.  It’s not like cricket is our premier sport – we are 8^th in the world rankings whilst England are 2^nd so they should rightfully thrash us.

15. We beat them by 189 runs in the Hamilton test in the 2007-8 season in New Zealand so a 170 run victory is nothing to brag about.

16. There are three New Zealand teams in the top six of the super fifteen after this weekend’s matches and we are still the rugby world cup champions.

17. We have just won the 2013 IRB rugby sevens for the 11^th time in 14 attempts with one tournament to spare.

18. We were the only football team to come home from the last world cup unbeaten. Not even the eventual winners Spain could match that.

19. We bowled England out for 64 in the final innings of the 1978 test in the Basin reserve when they only needed 137 to win the game. On that occasion Richard Hadlee took 6 for 26 against a team that included Boycott, Botham and Willis.

20. It’s only cricket!

Lord Falconer is seeking to overturn the Hippocratic Oath and change 2,400 years of history

'I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.'

So reads the Hippocratic Oath, which until recently used to be taken by all graduating doctors. 

Hippocrates of Cos (c. 460 BC – c. 370 BC) was an ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles (Classical Greece), and is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine.

His oath at the time it was drafted was revolutionary.

Previously doctors had had the power to prescribe both remedies and poisons. But Hippocrates, recognising their great power and the potential for abuse, demanded that they should dedicate themselves solely to healing. 

Along with the Judeo-Christian ethic the Hippocratic Oath has formed the basis of every code of medical ethics since 400 BC; that is until now.

Lord Falconer, who has just introduced his ‘Assisted Dying Bill’ into parliament this week (see timetable here), is seeking to change 2,400 years of history.

His bill would make it legal for doctors to help mentally competent adults with less than six months to live to kill themselves. Two doctors would need to agree that a patient met the criteria and the option would not be open to minors, people without mental capacity or those who are not terminally ill.

The final step would involve a doctor (or nurse) hand-delivering lethal drugs to the patient at a time and place of their choosing and staying with them while they took the drugs and until they were dead.

Falconer has some supporters within the medical profession.

Twelve retired senior doctors have today send a letter to the Times (£) backing his bill. And in the last few years a new organisation, Health Professionals for Assisted Dying (HPAD), has set itself up under the auspices of the Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society).

But as an article in the Times (£) accompanying the above letter notes, the British Medical Association and almost all Royal Colleges are opposed to a change in the law. In fact about two thirds of doctors are opposed.

Interestingly, the Times newspaper, is in agreement with them.

In its editorial (£) today it says it would be ‘wrong to legislate’ and that ‘the law that Lord Falconer now wants is a step too far’.

The current blanket prohibition on assisted suicide keeps the numbers low, as evidenced by the very low numbers of people travelling to Dignitas facility in Switzerland to kill themselves.

Furthermore the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) already has discretion not to prosecute in hard cases and the authority to temper justice with mercy. But he is particularly tough on doctors, because of the power they have, as recognised by Hippocrates.

‘There is a danger’, argues the Times, ‘that a codified law that attempted to replace such difficult and nuanced judgments with statute would produce two problems.’

‘The first is a large increase in assisted suicides as it becomes more legally straightforward. This is the reason why many lobbyists for the disabled oppose the Bill, concerned that people will be put under pressure to end their lives.’

‘The second danger is, oddly, an increase in prosecutions for assisting suicide, as the discretion of the old system is replaced by a more formulaic approach. This may be the reason why doctors are, in general, against a new law. And why they are right to be.’

It is significant that the Times, which backed a change in the law at the time of Falconer’s last attempt to alter it in 2009 has now changed its position.

But it has done so on the basis of good evidence.

Jurisdictions which have legalised either assisted suicide or euthanasia, have seen a steady increase in case over subsequent years and the widening of criteria to include categories of people for whom it was never intended.

This pattern of incremental extension is seen in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Oregon and Belgium and extension beyond mentally competent adults has been clearly seen in both the Netherlands and Belgium.

Our current UK law is clear and right and does not need changing. The penalties it holds in reserve act as a powerful disincentive to exploitation and abuse, whilst giving both prosecutors and judges discretion to temper justice with mercy in had cases.

It may not be perfect, but we tamper with it at our peril.

And Hippocrates was right about doctors too. They are too powerful and too human to be given the power and authority to kill.

Time lapse imaging of embryos – exciting breakthrough or just eugenics by another name?

Various media outlets (including The Times (£), The Telegraph, BBC, The Independent and The Guardian) have published articles reporting on how fertility specialists from Nottingham have developed a radical technique that will ‘dramatically improve’ the chances of IVF couples having a baby.

The original research appears in Reproductive BioMedicine Online.

About one in eight couples have trouble having children through natural conception and around 48,000 women currently undergo IVF treatment each year resulting in about 12,200 IVF births, an overall success rate of 25%.

This failure rate of 75% causes immense emotional upset to affected couples, many of whom have paid between £5,000 and £10,000 for each treatment cycle.

However the new  procedure, which uses ‘time-lapse imaging’ to monitor the health of embryos by taking thousands of digital pictures to identify ones that are developing well, could raise the chance of a live birth to 78%, about three times the national average.

The new technique identifies the ‘best embryos’ to be implanted into the womb based on the time it has taken to develop between two key stages in the early life-cycle of the embryo.

Thousands of time-lapse pictures taken during the first few days of an IVF embryo's life are used to identify the time between the first appearance of the fluid-filled cavity, called the blastula (normally 97 hours), and the full blastocyst (122 hours).

In embryos at high risk of aneuploidy (extra chromosomes) these steps occurred about 6 hours later on average. Aneuploidy is the single biggest cause of IVF failure.

To test the system, the doctors ran the program on time-lapse images of 88 embryos that had been recorded previously for 69 couples at the clinic. Some 61% of the embryos ranked as low risk for abnormal chromosomes led to live births, compared with none of those ranked as high risk.

Around a dozen private and NHS clinics are currently using time-lapse embryo imaging. It costs around £750 in addition to about £3,000 for IVF.

The £750 cost compares favourably with the current cost of £2,500 for Pre-implantation Genetic Screening, an invasive test which removes cells from the early embryo for analysis.

If the new imaging test proves to be effective in larger trials it seems likely that it will be used much more widely.

What is singularly lacking from any media coverage of this research however is any discussion of the ethics.

Not only does it seem to be taken for granted that the improved success rates override any ethical objection. There is simply no ethical objection even considered.

But let’s think about what is actually happening here.

Embryos are being created in a laboratory and those with aneuploidy are being identified and discarded.

Some of these will have the commoner trisomies (three rather than two copies of a particular chromosome) – Down’s syndrome (trisomy 21), Edward’s syndrome (18) and Patau’s syndrome (13) – where affected babies are often born alive.

Some will have other trisomies (like trisomy 15, 16 and 22) and inevitably will either fail to implant or result in miscarriages.

So is it right to implant those embryos more likely to survive and throw away the others?

Well that surely depends on what these tiny organisms actually are.

They are undoubtedly individual human lives, but what status do they have? Are they potential human beings or are they human beings with potential?

Philosophers like Singer, Glover and Harris will tell you that they are alive but non-persons because they do not yet have functioning nervous systems.

But others, who would argue that human life from the time of fertilisation should be shown the utmost respect and afforded protection would say that every living human organism – no matter how young, old or disabled and regardless of its intellectual capacity – is also a human person with rights.

I know what I think, but what do you think and why? They are either persons or not persons. Which is it?

Is this new technique the 'most exciting breakthrough in IVF treatment in 30 years'? Or is it just eugenics by another name?

It makes all the difference in the world.

Embryonic stem cells from cloned human embryos – six reasons for caution

The newspapers are full today of the news that scientists in the US state of Oregon have produced embryonic stem cells (ESCs) using the same cloning technology (somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT)) that created Dolly the sheep.

The original paper was published in the scientific journal Cell (Reuters and Nature give helpful reviews).

Shoukhrat Mitalipov and his colleagues took skin cells and transplanted their nuclei into eggs from paid donors from which the nuclei had been removed. Some resulting embryos were grown to the blastocyst stage (about 150 cells) at which point embryonic stem cells were harvested and developed into stem cells lines from which a range of more specialised body cells were derived.

Some are claiming that this might be the first step in producing stem cells that can be used to treat conditions in which there is cell loss like Parkinson’s, diabetes and spinal cord damage.

The huge media coverage this story has generated is due to the obsession of the British media with embryonic stem cell technology, the fact that this is the first time embryonic stem cell lines have been derived from cloned human embryos and the emotion generated by conditions for which there is currently no cure.

Amidst the hype let me register six reasons for caution.

First, what many news outlets do not make clear is that these embryonic stem cells have been produced by the cannibalising of cloned human embryos, a process that results in their destruction. This is a huge ethical barrier to the technology for those who believe, as I do, that human life begins at conception.

Second, the paper discloses that ten women were paid to ‘donate’ more than 120 eggs in the course of the research. The primary means by which these eggs are procured is ovarian hyperstimulation which is associated with serious health risks in both the short and long term. Egg donors for the experiment received US$3,000–7,000 in compensation. This is expensive and risks creating an organ trade that preys on the poor, especially students. Jennifer Lahl’s excellent book ‘Eggsploitation’ spotlights the booming business of human eggs told through the tragic and revealing stories of real women who became involved in selling their eggs.

Third, the method used to create these embryos is identical to that used to create cloned adults. If someone were to implant one of these embryos in a woman it could theoretically be grown into a cloned baby. Such portakabin technology is extremely difficult to police and some like Dr David King, from the campaign group Human Genetics Alert, are saying for this reason that it should not be done at all.  

Fourth, we know already that cloned mammalian embryos are not normal because they do not grow into normal adults. It took 277 attempts to create Dolly the sheep and she was abnormal and died early. This raises the strong possibility that stem cells derived from cloned embryos may not be normal either. This means that they are very unlikely ever to be used in treatments but only in research. It is adult stem cells derived from sources like umbilical cord blood and bone marrow that hold the real promise, are involved in the overwhelming majority of clinical trials and are already being widely used in treatment of a wide range of conditions.

Fifth, there is already alternative stem cell technology available for research. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) (which can be made from reprogrammed adult cells without the need to create and destroy embryos) and for which Japanese researcher Shinya Yamanaka won a Nobel prize in 2012, have already led many researchers to abandon research using cloning methods. Although this research is still at an early stage iPS cells appear to have most of the properties of embryonic stem cells and their production does not involve the same ethical barriers.

Finally, this new research is at a very early stage and we need to beware of the huge media hype that will be generated around it by biotechnology companies and scientists who have financial and personal vested interests and a hotline to the media. We need to be wary that we are not being given an exaggerated account which is high on hype and plays down the real risks. 

The ‘Groningen protocol’ for euthanasia of disabled babies in the Netherlands

In an interview this morning on BBC Five Live (at 0705) on the Paul Lamb case (listen here) I was asked by the presenter Nicky Campbell about evidence for a slippery slope following the legalisation of euthanasia in other jurisdictions.

In my answer I mentioned the steady escalation in numbers of cases in Belgium and the Netherlands (see here and here) and said that one third of nurses had carried out euthanasia illegally in Belgium and that one third of cases in some parts of Belgium had been involuntary although the law did not allow this.

I also mentioned the ‘Groningen Protocol’ under which disabled babies had been given lethal injections in the Netherlands.

Campbell appeared not to know about this and asked me on air to email him information about it to which I agreed. Another BBC journalist phoned me after the interview to check my sources.

I sent her a link to the original paper on the ‘Groningen Protocol’ from the New England Medical Journal in 2005.

The full reference is ‘Verhagen E, Sauer P. "The Groningen Protocol—Euthenasia in Severely Ill Newborns." New England Journal of Medicine 2005; 352(10):959-62’

It says that ‘Twenty-two cases of euthanasia in newborns have been reported to district attorneys' offices in the Netherlands during the past seven years’ but also highlights underreporting:

‘Given that the national survey indicated that such procedures are performed in 15 to 20 newborns per year, the fact that an average of three cases were reported annually suggests that most cases are simply not being reported.’

The 22 babies killed all had spina bifida and/or hydrocephalus – conditions which many disabled people live with in Britain today (Here is another report on the protocol from CBHD citing the 22 documented cases).

Under the ‘Groningen Protocol’ the termination of a child's life (under age 12) is acceptable if four requirements were properly fulfilled:

1. The presence of hopeless and unbearable suffering
2. The consent of the parents to termination of life
3. Medical consultation having taken place
4. Careful execution of the termination

A more recent report suggests there has been a reduction in cases of direct newborn euthanasia in the Netherlands since 2005 because of 1. More efficient prenatal detection and late abortion 2. More use of ‘terminal sedation’ not recorded officially as euthanasia 3. Continued underreporting

Other issues I mentioned to the BBC in my email included:

1. Almost half of Belgium’s euthanasia nurses have admitted to killing without consent, despite the fact that involuntary euthanasia is illegal in Belgium and that nurses are not allowed to perform even voluntary euthanasia. 

2.  In Belgium, nearly half of all cases of euthanasia are not reported to the Federal Control and Evaluation Committee. Legal requirements were more frequently not met in unreported cases than in reported cases and a written request for euthanasia was absent in 88%.

3. A recent study found that in the Flemish part of Belgium, 66 of 208 cases of ‘euthanasia’ (32%) occurred in the absence of request or consent.

4. According to a recent report Belgium is now the ‘world leader’ in organ removal after euthanasia with at least nine cases since 2005 but suggestions are that there would have been many more had more euthanasia patients had transplantable organs.

5. The stunning 5,000% increase in Belgian euthanasia cases in eleven years since legalisation.

6. Summary of recent developments in Netherlands documenting a 15-20% increase in euthanasia cases per year since 2006 (gives good overview of overall situation).

7. The latest Lancet paper on the subject giving 12.3% as the figure for terminal sedation deaths in the Netherlands and summarising other past papers in NEJM/Lancet

I gather that Nicky Campbell has since agreed on twitter with my opponent in the interview (Andrew Copson of the British Humanist Association) that I was ‘a past master in extreme and irrelevant claims’ (I'd be interested to hear his evidence for that btw) but at least he will be able to verify the truth of my claims about euthanasia in Belgium and the Netherlands from the links given above. 

Culture Wars – the old right/left divide has gone

The 20th Century was defined by economic and class-based divisions between socialists and capitalists. But with the main political parties now increasingly embracing free market capitalism and in the absence of an argument about economic management, culture rather than economics will be the future's defining political divide. The 21st Century will be defined by cultural and social divides, between liberals and conservatives.

American culture wars are already being fought. Liberals embrace abortion, gay marriage, drug legalisation, sexual permissiveness, embryo research, euthanasia, easy divorce, cohabitation, political correctness, positive discrimination, government interference, and higher taxes and spending to pay for welfare; Conservatives most likely go to church and oppose all of the above. The best predictor of whether a white American voted Republican in 2000 was church attendance more than once a week – 79 percent of this group voted Bush.

By contrast, British liberalism reigns largely unchallenged. Small victories are won – the government defeat over the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, and the rejection of the Joffe Bill – but the general policy thrust, both Conservative and Labour, is liberal. Daily, the headlines are dominated by yet another liberal triumph. Cohabiting couples are to have equal rights as the married; churches and mosques are to be forced to rent out their premises to homosexuals; under-age sex is actively encouraged by the media; single parent families are to be admired as much as married families; drug-taking celebs are condoned; Christian teaching is thought freakish and extreme; and the Human Rights Act makes a mockery of the criminal justice system to the point of virtual collapse of law and order.

The British liberal establishment is now so powerful that it is a wonder we keep winning the euthanasia vote. Government departments, institutions, the media, and even medical journals and organisations like the BMA are increasingly influenced by powerful liberals. As a result, Christians are increasingly marginalised, left without a voice, by the new establishment.

Many UK Christians will have reservations about some of the issues supported by our brethren in the US. Christian morality is in some ways a strange mixture of right and left wing politics – mixing traditionally left wing concerns for the poor, disabled, ethnic minority groups and developing world with a more traditionally right wing opposition to abortion, euthanasia and sexual immorality. The common factors we would want to emphasise are a concern for the vulnerable and marginalised, and recognition that those most easily exploited need to be both strengthened and protected.

But following in the footsteps of Christ in these days involves both the willingness to speak out on behalf of the voiceless, and the willingness to suffer and expend energy on their behalf. And to do that effectively, we need to be involved at every level of society, not only at the grassroots, but also in the media and institutions.

Reproduced from Triple Helix

Don’t be fooled by Lord Falconer’s ‘modest’ assisted suicide proposals

Lord Falconer has finally announced that his long awaited assisted suicide bill will be tabled in the House of Lords next week on Wednesday 15 May.

It is then that we will finally see the full text of the bill which will then proceed to second reading (debate stage) sometime in June, or possibly in the autumn.

According to the BBC and Telegraph the bill will be based on the Oregon model – assisted suicide for mentally competent adults who have less than six months to live.

The timing has been carefully planned. On 13 and 14 May the Court of Appeal will be hearing the case of Paul Lamb, a 57 year old man with quadriplegia, who is seeking permission for a doctor to kill him by means of a lethal injection.

Off the back of media coverage of this case, Falconer, who is being backed by Dignity in Dying (the former Voluntary Euthanasia Society), will argue that his proposal is modest in comparison.

Lamb is not terminally ill and wants a doctor to give him a lethal injection (euthanasia).  Falconer however is only asking for people who are terminally ill to have the right to receive help to kill themselves (assisted suicide).

This model, he will argue, will be safer for vulnerable people and will have ‘upfront safeguards’ to stop abuse.  

According to House of Lords calculations in 2005 a Dutch-type law (such as Lamb is seeking) would mean 13,000 euthanasia deaths a year in Britain, but an Oregon-type law (like Falconer’s) would mean only 650.

Falconer is thereby attempting to position himself as the reasonable middle ground between those who wish to keep euthanasia and assisted suicide illegal and those who want extensive decriminalisation.

We should not be fooled by this ploy and the situation in Oregon is already ringing loud alarm bells.

Members of the House of Lords should note that statistics released just earlier this year (full report here) show that the number of assisted suicide prescriptions and deaths in Oregon, once again, increased in 2012 and has now reached an all-time high. 

There were 59 assisted suicide deaths in Oregon in 2009, 65 in 2010, 71 in 2011 and 77 in 2012; a 30% increase overall in just four years. 

The number of prescriptions for assisted suicide was 95 in 2009, 97 in 2010, 114 in 2011 and 115 in 2012; 115 in 2012; a 21% increase since 2009.

Overall assisted suicides have gone from 16 in 1998 to 77 in 2012, an overall increase of 381% (see chart above).

This pattern of incremental extension is similar to that seen in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium, other countries that have changed the law.

A major factor fuelling this increase is suicide contagion - the so-called Werther effect. This is particularly dangerous when assisted suicides are backed by celebrities as they are here and given high media profile as they are frequently by the BBC. 

The Oregon numbers may not seem large but we need to remember that Oregon has a very small population relative to the UK and that they may well be an underestimate as they are based on physicians' self-reporting. 

But for argument's sake let's simply take them at face value. How would they then translate to Britain?

Back in 2006, and based on Oregon’s total of 38 assisted suicide deaths in 2005, the House of Lords calculated that with an Oregon-type law we would have about 650 cases of assisted suicide a year in Britain. 

But as the numbers in Oregon have since doubled to 77 the UK equivalent would now be 1,300.

We should learn from the Oregon experience and be resisting these moves. 

Any change in the law to allow assisted suicide (a form of euthanasia) would inevitably place pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives so as not to be a burden on others and these pressures would be particularly acutely felt at a time of economic recession when many families are struggling to make ends meet and health budgets are being slashed. Especially when fears about the NHS are actually fuelling support for assisted suicide. The so-called right to die can so easily become the duty to die.

And once legalised there will inevitably be incremental extension as we have seen in Oregon, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands. Legalisation leads to normalisation. New hard cases will brought to bring pressure to widen the existing criteria to allow extension to ‘Gillick competent’ minors, people without mental capacity who ‘would have wanted it’ and those who are ‘suffering unbearably’ but are not terminally ill.

I have previously blogged about the shroud of secrecy which surrounds assisted suicide practice in Oregon, the worrying trends in neighbouring Washington state, which enacted a similar law more recently and the way the Oregon law steers people toward suicide. 

Also deeply concerning are reports of depressed patients being killed without being treated, doctor shopping, deaths taking place without witnesses present (raising questions about elder abuse) and the fact that 44 of the 77 who died last year (57%) said that they were concerned about being a burden on family, friends and caregivers. 

The lessons are clear. Let’s not go there.

The best system is what we have already – a blanket ban on both assisted suicide and euthanasia which provides a strong deterrent to exploitation and abuse whilst giving discretion to both prosecutors and judges to temper justice with mercy in hard cases.

Under this the number of people going to the Dignitas facility in Switzerland to end their lives remains a trickle of about 15-20 per year.

So let’s keep that system in place and concentrate on providing the best possible care to people who are dying. Let’s major instead on killing pain without killing the patient.