Tonight's NBC "Law & Order, SVU" rerunFollow

I'd seen this one before, but again it struck me how incongruous it is for the doctor in this episode to make such a strong stand against "torture-lite" as being unethical because of the physician's Hippocratic Oath of do no harm, while not being the least aghast that doctors kill unborn babies by the millions in this country- particularly in New York, a bastion of a woman's body, her choice, unborn babies be damned.

I know, I know, this whole subject has been hashed and rehashed on this board, but there are some here (s'up Flea?) who watch this show regularly. Any particular thoughts on this dichotomy?

Totem

Torture methods used by the "evil US Government" that were labeled "ok" because they did not leave any lasting physical harm. It revolved around positioning a detainee in such a way where they could never be comfortable. It would be conducted with a physician present so they could make sure that the person was not being harmed.

In the episode, some guy died while being lightly tortured because he had a preexisting heart condition.

Okay. I knew what it meant in that sense but didn't know that they were dealing with it in SVU these days.Bummer for him.Yeah. The show's writers didn't care. If you want, pretend that the character stays up at night wailing over the unborn souls. Dichotomy solved.

Edited, Jan 30th 2008 7:24am by Jophiel

nah, law and order is fine its the SUV that gets a bit nuts and torture-esk

What cynicism? They have an hour to get through the plot. What purpose would a discussion on abortion have served to advance the plot?

You say it's a male doctor and the only recurring medical doctor is the black pathologist chick so I assume the doctor was a one-shot throw away character. So we can't even claim "character development".

Having not seen the episode in question, I dunno.

Hell, apparently I even have the doctor wrong.

The question arises from the nature of personhood, the concept of which can and does very between individuals. A fetus is in the unique position of having vastly different legal, personal, and societal identities which conflict with one another. Doctors can be as ambivalent about that nature as anyone else, yet still feel that torturing a person is an absolute wrong. The point in question is who and what qualifies as a person.

Read my sig. perhaps.....

Morals don't know what borders are.


This is the embrace of sadism and cruelty for their own sake, and for no other end whatsoever.

You missed the point entirely. Shocker, I know...


The moral issue is valid, but that's not the thrust of the international debate on the issue right now. It's about legality. And legality most definitely knows about borders and it knows about conditions and qualifications and legal nuances.


Trust me. The objective of this story (from a writing perspective) was not to address the moral issue of the interrogation technique in question, but to support the false assumption that the US government picks people off of street corners in the US and subjects them to this form of interrogation. Seriously. That's the goal here. The wrangling over the morals of interrogation as a whole is window dressing.

It's what I call an "assumptive argument". Where the argument is about one thing, but the argument itself assumes some conditions that the arguer wants people to assume are true. By presenting cases in this fashion, you can plant that assumption into peoples heads without ever actually debating it or arguing it.

It's what I talk about when I respond to arguments that Bush lied because Iraq didn't have WMDs. The argument assumes about 3 separate things about WMDs and Iraq that aren't true.


Heck. The entirety of social liberalist ideology is based on an assumptive (and rhetorical) argument. The position is summed up in the question: "How can we consider ourselves to be a free, equal, liberalist society if not everyone in the society can fully enjoy the fruits of our society's prosperity?". Upon being presented with this question, most people immediately "assume" the answer "well, gee... I guess we can't" and proceed to embark upon a lifetime of supporting causes that involve the agenda of wealth redistribution in order to correct for this problem.

Of course, the assumption is that a lack of equally distributed wealth in any way makes us a less free, equal, or liberalist society. A wonderful example of this is the use of the fact that the "gap between rich and poor is growing" as support for some additional argument. Um... Doesn't that assume that having a large gap is wrong?


I could sit here all day long listing off (mostly liberal) arguments that use this style. It's the same thing here. The argument appears to be about morals, but it's really about making sure that people assume the underlying condition at hand is real. It plays wonderfully into current far left arguments against "torture". Heck. Even calling it "torture-lite" as though there isn't already an existing definition of torture works into this agenda.

Criminal Intent should feature a show about indicting their producers. The plots on that show are boring and everyone's ugly.

OOOH let's get into the fur argument: "It's okay to take their kidney because they were already dead".

I'll side with Demea here and say that a person is, oh, allowed to think that a doctor injecting someone with sodium thiopentol and potassium chloride to kill them is fine but flushing out a thumbnail size body that could not possibly survive outside its host is morally objectionable. People are funny that way.

Edited, Jan 30th 2008 8:01pm by Atomicflea