The Bridge: An appreciation of George Gershwin

George Gershwin in 1937. Photo by Carl Van Vechten.

Presented to the Club  on Monday Evening March 19, 2018 by Albert
E. Easton

The Triborough Bridge connects the Bronx, Manhattan and
Queens. Basically it’s a bridge from the Bronx to Manhattan, with an offshoot
connected to Queens. George Gershwin built a bridge too, basically from popular
music to classical, but connected in is a bridge that already existed from
popular music to jazz. We wouldn’t be at all surprised today if a classical
piano program included some pieces by Gershwin, and we could probably stand the
shock if there was a little jazz thrown in.

Gershwin’s parents came to the United States in the 1890’s
from Saint Petersburg, Russia. Rose Burkin came first and was living in
Manhattan when a couple years later, Moise Gershowitz (who later changed his
name to Morris Gershvin) arrived and asked her to marry him. Both came from fairly
well off families in Saint Petersburg and had known each other there. They
married in 1895, and in December 1896, their first son Israel (who later
changed his name to Ira) was born. Almost two years later, in September 1898,
their second son Jacob, who was always called George, was born.

The Gershwin family was fairly well off, and always had a
maid. Morris was an entrepreneur at heart and bought and managed several
businesses: cigar store, restaurant, several Turkish baths and many others. Each
time he took on a new business, he moved his family to be near it. If I told
you George Gershwin was a product of the lower East Side, like so many famous
Jewish Americans, I wouldn’t be lying because he did live there sometimes, but
he also lived lots of other places. In all, the Gershwins had over 20 addresses
in Manhattan and three in Brooklyn while George was growing up. Religion and
Jewish tradition did not play a very important part in their lives, although
they always celebrated the seder at Passover.

One of the Gershwin boys was a model student, always
carefully studying his lessons and earning high marks. That was Ira, of course,
the serious one. George was more-or-less the opposite. More interested in
having fun than in studying, he played hooky at times, and his grades were less
than outstanding. Only Ira received a bar mitzvah, George never had one,
perhaps because he was reluctant to undertake the necessary study of Hebrew.

As an example of George’s personality as a young boy,
there’s a story that he asked his father for ten cents to see a movie. When he
was refused, he took off his shoes, went out in the street, and began telling
passing strangers that he was a very poor boy and hoped they could spare a few
cents. He got to see his movie.

In 1910, Morris Gershwin purchased a piano, with the thought
that his serious son Ira, could become proficient at it. Of course, that’s not
what happened. As soon as the piano arrived, 12 year old George sat down and
began playing some popular music of the time. He had already encountered a
piano at a friend’s house, and had learned to play there, something his father
was not aware of. The piano quickly became a very important part of George’s
life.

George loved that piano, and he spent as much time as he
could with it, sometimes to the detriment of his schoolwork, which he never
cared much about anyway. He went enthusiastically each week to lessons with his
teacher, Charles Hambitzer, an accomplished pianist who even did some composing
of his own in the classical realm. Hambitzer wrote of his student: “The boy is
a genius, without a doubt. He wants to go in for this modern stuff, jazz and
what not. But I’m not going to let him for a while. I’ll see that he gets a
firm foundation in the standard music first.”

George had the two things anyone needs to excel in any field
– natural ability and a genuine love for what he was doing. By the time he was
15 he could play any music that was put in front of him, transpose it to any
other key, and improvise on it. This talent got him a job at the Jerome Remick
music publishing house working with the “song pluggers.” A song plugger was
expected to pick up any music Remick wanted to push, and have it played for the
visiting talent looking for songs they could add to their act, in whatever key
they found comfortable.

Remick music had gotten its start on west 28^th Street, the street known at the time as “Tin Pan Alley” for the jangling sound
of the many pianos all being ponded at once, although they later moved uptown
to West 46^th Street, an area that even today is the cradle of
popular music. George being on Tin Pan Alley was too much for Charles
Hambitzer, and his piano lessons ended at this point, but Hambitzer encouraged
him to take music theory lessons from a Hungarian named Edward Kilenyi. Kilenyi
was sympathetic to his desire to work with popular music. And at Remick he
began to make friends with people who would later play an important part in his
career. For example, young Fred and Adele Astaire came looking for material for
their vaudeville act, and he became friendly with them. The pay for ten hours a
day of pounding the piano in a small cubicle was $15 a week.

It doesn’t seem to be possible to tell any American story
without mentioning the influence of race on American history. The public was
beginning to become aware of a very original American type of music. Black
music, in the form of jazz and ragtime, had come on the scene. Black musicians
were emerging from the deep south and performing in northern venues. Syncopated
rhythms (ragged time) hadn’t quite made it to popular music, but ragtime
pianists, notably Scott Joplin had quite a following. George Gershwin was
fascinated by this music and spent hours listening to ragtime piano in cafes
and bars.

By 1915 his skill at the piano had earned him such a
reputation that he was able to get a job recording piano rolls. For this he was
paid a fee of $35 for six rolls, which he could polish off easily on a Saturday
afternoon. Over the course of several years he recorded a total of 130
different songs. Most of the piano rolls available on the internet that were
recorded by Gershwin are in later years, recordings of his own compositions,
but I did find one - Havanola by HugoFrey – that was recorded in 1917. Very definitely classic ragtime.

Gershwin clearly couldn’t
be satisfied forever with plugging only songs written by others, but Remicks
wouldn’t allow him to plug his own songs. So his first published song “When You Want ‘Em You Can’t Get ’Em, When You’ve
Got ‘Em You Don’t Want ‘Em” was published by the Harry von Tilzer company. For
this he was paid five dollars. But it was a start.

After hearing some of his
tunes, Gershwin formed a firm friendship with Jerome Kern, who was by then a
well established composer. As an established composer, Kern generally had a
musical on Broadway. In those days, it was not uncommon for a song by an
unknown composer to be interpolated into a show most of whose songs were by an
established composer, and Gershwin was able to do some of this. By 1918, he had
enough of a reputation to place five songs in a revue called Half Past Eight,
but that closed after a week’s tryout. He then wrote the complete score for a
musical called La La Lucille, which ran for a while but was not a major
hit. But he was about to have a major hit.

By 1919, he had formed a
partnership with lyricist Irving Caesar. The two wrote a number of songs
together, among which was a song called Swanee.
The song was included in a revue that wasn’t too popular. But that wasn’t the
end of Swanee. Gershwin’s reputation
was such that he was invited to a party by Al Jolson at Bessie Bloodgood’s
whorehouse in Harlem, and he was invited to play a few numbers. When Jolson
heard Swanee he asked to interpolate
it into his own review, Sinbad, which was currently running on Broadway.
The combination of Gershwin’s music and Jolson’s delivery proved magical. It
was the biggest hit ever for both of them. Jolson’s recording sold over two
million copies and the sheet music outsold even that. Suddenly, Gershwin was
rich from the royalties. A total of over $10,000 – an enormous sum in 1919.

At the same time as he was
writing Swanee, Gershwin was still
taking theory lessons from Kilenyi. As part of his lessons, he wrote a movement
for a string quartet. This was performed by a few of his friends during his
lifetime, but never published. It was revived after his death. It’s been given
the name Lullaby and has now beenperformed by many quartets and string orchestras. It was his first venture into
classical music. 

Gershwin’s passion, however, was still the Broadway musical.
Producer George White was anxious to produce a revue that would compare to
Florenz Ziegfeld’s Ziefeld Follies. The first edition of George White’s
Scandals was produced in 1919, with composer Richard Whiting, who was hired on
the strength of his major hit Till We
Meet Again. White wasn’t satisfied with Whiting, however, and for George
White’s Scandals of 1920, he hired George Gershwin as the composer.

George White’s Scandals were mostly to showcase beautiful
girls, and Gershwin realized that they were not a good vehicle for his best
material, so he provided music that was mostly pretty pedestrian. Lyrics were partly
by Ira and mostly by another well known lyricist, Buddy De Sylva. Gershwin was
the main composer for the Scandals for five years, ending in 1924. One of the
compositions he included in George White’s Scandals was a one act operetta Blue
Monday. Blue Monday featured jazz music and was intended to be sung
by African-American actors. As such, it was a precursor to Porgy and Bess.

One of the popular songs that emerged from the Scandals of
1924 was Somebody Loves Me. Somebody
Loves Me includes what’s known as a “blue note.” A blue note is a note that
isn’t in the major scale, but inserts a note from the minor scale into the
song. It can’t be played on the white keys of the piano. It’s characteristic of
Afro-American music and is used to produce a sad feeling – the blues. “Somebody
loves me, I wonder who”  “Who” is the
blue note. George Gershwin certainly didn’t invent the blue note, but he used
it extensively, and you find them in many, if not most, of his most popular
songs.

In January, 1924, Gershwin was taking a break from working
on the last of George White’s Scandals, when his attention was called to an
article in the New York Tribune that mentioned “George Gershwin is at work on a
jazz concerto.” He was stunned, since he hadn’t begun any work on such a piece,
although he had told his friend Paul Whiteman that he hoped to do this soon. Whiteman
was anxious to present a concert featuring American music, and had attempted to
book Carnegie Hall for the purpose. When Carnegie Hall was booked for the date
he wanted, February 12, he switched the venue to the smaller Aeolian Hall. Whiteman,
of course, was the source of the press release in the Tribune.

Accounts differ as to the length of time it took Gershwin to
write Rhapsody in Blue– anywhere from
eight days to three weeks. He wrote the score as a two piano piece, intending
that one piano would be orchestrated and replaced by Whiteman’s band. He would
play the solo piano. For his later works, he did his own orchestration, but this
one was handled by Whiteman’s orchestrator.

Gershwin was quite well satisfied with his work, and by the
day of the concert he was confident that it would be well accepted.  The Rhapsody was placed nearly at the end of
the program, which generally went quite well, but Gershwin’s music and his
piano playing far eclipsed everything else. The applause was frenzied. Whiteman
wrote later “At half past five on the afternoon of February 12, we took our
fifth curtain call.” Whiteman had hoped that the Aeolian Hall concert would
help to define American music, but instead it became known as the concert that
launched Rhapsody in Blue. It was the
one item that occupied music critics and journalists in the weeks that
followed, because it established that the jazz idiom had a place on the
classical music stage.

The Rhapsody in Blue
that was performed that day was sixteen minutes long, but it includes a lot of
repetitive passages, and is often edited down. Performances of the Rhapsody can
be anywhere from five minutes to sixteen and still include all its beautiful
themes. I grew up listening to the very popular Victor recording featuring
Gershwin playing and recorded on the two sides of a 12 inch 78RPM disc. For
many years I thought that’s all there was to Rhapsody in Blue.

Through the 1920’s Gershwin claimed a premier place on
Broadway, and most of his greatest songs come from the shows that he
contributed to.  For Swanee and others of his early songs, he had used Irving Caesar as
a lyricist, and after that he frequently teamed with Buddy De Sylva. But most
of his great songs were written with lyrics by his brother Ira. George and Ira
made a good team. George composed a tune, Ira then supplied lyrics. It’s not
really as simple as that, of course; there had to be a lot of back and forth. But
that was easy for two brothers used to getting along with each other.

I’m going to list some of his most popular shows, and the
songs from them that have become standards. The list isn’t inclusive, and I
apologize if I’ve left out one of your favorites:

1924 Lady Be Good – Oh Lady Be Good and The Man I Love.

1925 Tip Toes – Looking for a Boy and Sweet and Low Down.

1926 Oh Kay! – Do, Do, Do and Someone To Watch over Me.

1927 Funny Face – He Loves and She Loves, How Long Has This Been Going On, and ‘S Wonderful

1928 Treasure Girl – Feeling I’m Falling and I’ve Got a Crush on You

1929 Show Girl – An American in Paris Ballet and Liza (An American in Paris was originally published as a separate
orchestral piece and interpolated into Show Girl)

1930 Strike Up the Band
– Soon and Strike up the Band

1930 Girl Crazy – Bidin’ My Time and I Got Rhythm (I Got Rhythm
made Ethel Merman’s Career. She was a virtual unknown until she held a high C
for 16 bars of orchestration)

1931 Of Thee I Sing – Of Thee I Sing, Love Is Sweeping the Country, and Who Cares

In other words, for these eight years, George Gershwin had a
hit on Broadway every year and one or more hit songs. His share of the box
office as well as his royalties from sale of sheet music and recordings left
him quite well off financially. Financial stability leads to the question: Why
didn’t he marry? Well he probably intended to someday, but meanwhile he was
having way too much fun being a bachelor. He dated lots of chorus girls and
other women, never getting too serious about any one although one biographer
says the love of his life was Paulette Godard. Another biographer claims that
he had an illegitimate son by a chorus queen named Margret Manners (stage name
“Mollie Charleston.) Others say this is somewhere between highly speculative
and ridiculous.

Following the success of Rhapsody
in Blue, Gershwin began to write separate concert pieces establishing
himself in the classical field. These included An American in Paris, Concerto
in F, Second Rhapsody, Cuban Overture, and Variations on I Got Rhythm, all of which have been performed and
recorded many times. As Irving Berlin said “He was the only songwriter to
become a composer.”

Gershwin had long entertained the idea of writing an opera,
and had contact with the Metropolitan Opera. In 1933, he acquired the rights to
DuBose Heyward’s play Porgy, which he had long considered might be a
good vehicle for the kind of opera he had in mind. He worked with Heyward in
adapting the play, and finally produced his masterwork Porgy and Bess. He
decided to have the Theater Guild produce it rather than the Metropolitan,
since a Metropolitan production would run only a few times during the season,
whereas a Theater Guild production would run continuously. He insisted on an
all black cast (no black-face), which created some difficulty since the opera
world had not developed many black artists at the time. The production, which
include some of his best songs, like Summertime,
I Got Plenty o’ Nothin’ and It Ain’t
Necessarily So was critically acclaimed, but only a modest success on
Broadway. During the period while he was writing Porgy and Bess, he
solidified his financial status by producing a radio program Music by Gershwin. A few episodes have survived. 

By 1930, the motion pictures known as “Talkies” had come
into their own. Beginning in 1929 with Al Jolson’s appearance in The Jazz
Singer, movie goers were treated to music that came with the movie. Gershwin
was not particularly interested in movies, but in 1930 he got an irresistible
invitation from Fox Studios for him and Ira - $70,000 and a reserved coach from
New York to Hollywood. The film – Delicious didn’t produce any hits. George
enjoyed the sunny climate that winter of 1930, but decided Hollywood was not
for him.

But by 1936, Broadway seemed to have dried up for him. He
returned to Hollywood (where Ira had stayed) and wrote some of his best songs
for three very successful movies – Shall We Dance, A Damsel in
Distress, and Goldwyn Follies. Songs from these movies included: Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off, They All
Laughed, They Can’t Take That Away from Me, A Foggy Day in London Town, Nice
Work If You Can Get It, Love Is Here To Stay, and Love Walked In.

In June, 1937 he began to have agonizing headaches. He was
diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain tumor and died on July 11, only 38 years
old. His brother Ira survived him until 1983 and devoted himself to keeping the
very considerable Gershwin legacy alive. In 1990, Warner Communications paid a
total of 200 million dollars to acquire the rights to the Gershwin catalog.

Read More

Fur Seals of Alaska (an 1892 paper by Henry Laurens Dawes)

Alaska Fur Seal — photo by US Fish & Wildlife Service — Used under Creative Commons license

One of the members of the Club in its early years was Henry Laurens Dawes, United States Senator representing Massachusetts, who lived in Pittsfield. Dawes himself was the subject of this 2015 paper.



Here's a paper by Dawes, delivered to the Club in 1892, entitled "Fur Seals of Alaska." The original is among the Dawes papers in the National Archives. Dawes himself was the subject of this 2015 Club paper.

Fur Seals of Alaska on Scribd

Read More

Fatal Choice: Choosing no longer to live

Photo by Alberto Biscalchin, used under Creative Commons Licens

Presented to the Club on Monday evening, Dec. 4, 2017 by William P. Densmore

One day in March, 1981, a short obituary appeared in the Chicago Tribune about a fatal choice — the suicide of Earl Russell Marshall, of Tulsa, Oklahoma. It mentioned that Mr. Marshall was a supervisor at the Tulsa maintenance base of American Airlines.



Colleagues of Mr. Marshall at American Airlines had also made a fatal choice two years earlier, a choice primarily responsible for the deaths of 271 people.



Those 271 people had been passengers May 25, 1979 on an American DC-10 jumbo jet which dropped an engine and crashed on takeoff from Chicago O’Hare International Airport. The engine had been worked on at American’s Tulsa maintenance two months earlier. The day after his death, Mr. Marshall, then 47, was to have been questioned by lawyers for the aircraft maker.

The airline said Marshall had no involvement with the accident aircraft. The Tulsa World newspaper talked to Mr. Marshall’s widow in 2004, 25 years later. “He had very bad guilt feelings, and the accident gave him something to attach his feelings to,” Marilyn Marshall to the daily. ‘He was a casualty of that crash.”



DC-10 maker McDonnell Douglas Corp. and American sued each other after the crash and the National Transportation Safety Board investigated. The companies and the government learned that a maintenance work shift ended on one of the nights the DC-10 was in Tulsa and the crew left a 15,300-pound wing engine and attached pylon hanging overnight partially disconnected from the wing – and supported only by the forklift’s hydraulics. The result – a hidden, 13-inch crack formed in one of the three attachments of the engine to the wing.



During the O’Hare takeoff roll at the start of a Los Angeles flight, normal engine thrust broke the attachment, the engine shot forward, rotated over the top of the wing and separated from the aircraft – severing lines of all three independent hydraulic systems vital to control. The plane rolled to the left and crashed. It remains today the highest death toll of any single U.S. aviation disaster.



It was a fatal choice that American Airlines made, to remove the 13,477-pound GE jet engine and 1,865-pound pylon in a single procedure, because it saved 200-man-hours per aircraft engine overhaul, and reduced to 27 from 79 the number of disconnects of lines and cables.



McDonnell Douglas didn’t recommend it, but it also didn’t tell American not to do it that way.



Another fatal choice



I know all this because I was an editor for Chicago Lawyer magazine in 1980 and 1981 and I covered the lawsuits about the crash – I still have hundreds of pages of moldy legal depositions in our basement that contain detailed testimony about the forklift procedure. And ever since, I’ve been fascinated by the safety decisions we make and do not make, and the consequences, and how we assess or become even aware of those consequences.



As a nation, and species, we make policy decisions that involve fatal choices.



For example, we make the fatal choice to allow global climate change to progress, and already we can see migrations, floods, arctic melt, atmospheric and food-security challenges arising. Each of us can think of more such choices for humankind. It seems as if the more distance the policy from our own personal lives and the more people who are at risk, the more likely a fatal choice is made almost without transparent forethought or balancing of costs and consequences.



Another choice. Predawn on Dec. 2, 2017, the United States Senate cobbled together a 500-page document of tax changes, and some completely unrelated matters, scribbled amendments in illegible page-border handwriting, and approved and sent it to the House on a 51-49 partisan vote. There were little or no committee hearings and no time between amendments and a final bill.



One of the provisions of the bill, if it becomes law, is predicted to result over time in 13 million Americans losing their current health-insurance coverage. That’s clearly another fatal choice. Because some of those 13 million Americans are likely to die, or at least die sooner, as a result of coverage decisions by governments and health insurers. Has the United States Senate just become a “death panel”?



It is here – in the domain of health and medicine – that I want to dwell a bit tonight to consider a fatal choice that will affect us all. Some of us will leave here tonight believing the particular fatal choice I’m thinking of is ours to make. Others may well think it should be – indeed is in fact — up to a higher power. I want to argue that the truth lies somewhere in between, that the truth will be different for each of us, and that the sooner we think about it for us and our loved ones, the better – for us and for society.



I’m talking about how we exercise compassion and care near the end of life – a point we shall all reach, perhaps unexpectedly, but more likely with some warning and time for thought and reflection.



Each of us has the opportunity to make a fatal choice about the time and manner our life is to end. Thankfully, life is good enough that most of us don’t choose suicide as did American Airlines supervisor Earl Marshall. But we do make make choices in daily life which could be fatal. We engage in hazardous sports or recreation, unhealthy or excessive eating or drinking. We smoke or become addicted to pain-killing drugs. We own guns.



As we age, there will inevitably be things that will draw us nearer to death. As much as we make decisions as a society, and live as individuals in ways that involve fatal choices, why wouldn’t we do the same as the very real probability of death draws near? At the point where we draw nearer to God, we seem oddly to be more willing than ever to suspend any consideration of whether and on what terms we choose to be alive.



Now, there are people in this group — clergy — who have spent infinitely more time than I thinking about divine intervention and life. So I just have to credit and borrow from a Nov. 7 sermon by The Rev. Sarah Stewart of the First Unitarian Church of Worcester, Mass., whose sermons, by family connection, I receive by email. It helps me to illustrate the fatal-choice nuance I’m driving at.



Rev. Stewart wrote about God’s hand in retelling this joke:

Once upon a time, a man was shipwrecked and flailing around in the sea. He kicked his feet and waved his arms and cried, "O God, save me! I'm going to drown!" And lo and behold, a helicopter spotted the wreckage and flew in low over the man. A ladder uncoiled from the belly of the copter and a rescue worker made his way down. "Grab my hand!" the rescuer shouted.



"No, God will save me!" the man replied. No matter what the rescuer said or did, the man refused to take his hand and be pulled to safety. The rescuer watched in utter dismay as the man slipped beneath the waves. The man came to his senses in Heaven. Dry, warm, and comfortable, he walked toward God, who was hanging out in her favorite chair by the fire. "Hey God!" the man said. "I prayed! I was faithful! Why didn't you rescue me?!"



"Buddy," said God, "who did you think sent the freaking helicopter?"

Here’s why I like Rev. Stewart’s retelling of that story. Because it teaches that God works in many ways, and in ways that you may not even see as divine in the moment. And it teaches that God works in ways that may appear patently secular – the rescue helicopter. And in ways that you have to choose to actively embrace – take hold of the rescuer’s hand.

I think that’s an important aspect of what happens as we age. We may think we will be OK if we just go about our life and assume that God will take care of everything. There will be no pain, no reckoning with family, no diminished quality of life, and if there is, that’s what God intended. That sounds too much to me like the man who just waited in the water until he drowned.



So that’s my little sermon, and I tell it, because the rest of this talk, which is about choice, and a fatal choice at that, is about something still controversial and I want you to know my point of view so you can filter what you hear. My view is that active personal engagement with our fate, whether or not in consultation with God, is appropriate in politics, in life, and in the lead up to death.



A couple of months ago, I wrote an op-ed piece in The Berkshire Eagle. The headline was shortened a bit for space, and it was fine, but the one I had proposed was this: “Right-to-die debate about four words – burden, control, religion and choice – not suicide.” A surprising number of people spoke to me about that piece and how they had been moved to thought by it. It was published Sept. 26, 2017, the same day the Massachusetts Legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Health conducted a hearing on Beacon Hill on Senate Bill 1225 and its twin, House Bill 1194: “An Act Relative to End of Life Options.” Sometime before Feb. 7, 2018, the committee will have to decide if it will refer the bills to the House and Senate for floor votes. It has refused to do so for many years, just letting it lapse.



On Saturday, something happened which may cause the bill to be voted on. At their fall meeting, the Massachusetts Medical Society house of delegates voted 152-56 to end the society’s long-standing opposition to what it has called “physician-assisted suicide” and to adopt a neutral stance. Now, it is calling it “medical aid in dying” and the resolution adopted says that “the act of a physician writing a prescription for a lethal dose of medication to be used by an adult with a terminal illness at such time as the patient sees fit will, if legalized, be recognized as an additional option in the case of the terminally ill.” It says it will train doctors.



The medical society acted after it conducted and reported results of an online survey of a statistical sample of its nearly 25,000 members. A total of 12% responded. Sixty percent of the survey respondents supported “medical aid in dying” . . . the practice of physicians giving terminally-ill adults prescriptions for self-administered lethal medications. The same percentage – 60% — wanted the society to stop opposing physician-assisted dying.



You notice I just said physician-assisted dying, not suicide. Much as in the history of the abortion debate, that one-word shift in terminology is at the center of polarized views. Massachusetts Citizens for Life and the Catholic Church use “suicide.” The Denver-based Compassion & Choices group (formerly the Hemlock Society) and Portland, Oregon-based Death With Dignity National Center -- the two advocacy nonprofits in favor of letting physicians prescribe fatal medication to a willing and competent patient with six months or less to live — both avoid the word suicide.



That’s worth a digression. What do we mean by suicide? That’s simple, you might say. It’s the willful taking of your own life by some overt means. There is no other single English word for that act. “Took her own life,” perhaps. What if you willfully do something very dangerous and it results in your death – driving way too fast as an example? Would your death be deemed a suicide, or an accident? Does intent matter?



If it matters, then we need a new word, or a new understanding of suicide that is without judgment, spiritual or otherwise. Because as our society ages, there will be many people for whom active management of their end of life trajectory could seem appealing. We choose medical procedures, or not, as the man in the joke chooses to reach for the rescuer’s hand, or not.



Did the man in the water commit suicide by not reaching for the rescuer’s hand? He must not have thought so. Interestingly, on Oct. 30, the American Association of Suicidology, whose membership includes mental health and public-health professionals, came out with a policy statement saying that medical aid in dying “is distinct from the behavior that has been traditionally and ordinary described as suicide.”



Colleen Creighton, the suicide-prevention group’s executive director had this to say: “The American Association of Suicidology is dedicated to preventing suicide, but this has no bearing on the reflective, anticipated death a physician may legally help a dying patient facilitate.” She added: “We believe that the term ‘physician-assisted suicide’ constitutes a critical reason why these distinct death categories are so often conflated, and [the term] should be deleted from use . . . in suicide, a life that could have continued indefinitely is cut short. PAD is not a matter of life or death; it is a matter of a foreseeable death occurring a little sooner but in an easier way, in accord with the patient’s wishes and values vs. death later in a potentially more painful and protracted manner. In PAD, the person with a terminal illness does not necessarily want to die; he or she typically wants desperately to live but cannot do so; the disease will take its course.”



Use of the word “suicide” implies an ethical or spiritual judgment of intent by the speaker. I say: “Judge not that ye be not judged.”



The judgment varies around the world. Of 28 developed countries, seven permit some sort of assisted dying and three – Belgium, The Netherlands and Columbia, do not forbid euthanasia – the medical killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or in an irreversible coma. The District of Columbia and five states, California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Vermont – have enacted laws making doctor-assisted dying by prescription legal. (SEE MAP) Montana did so by court decision. Some 34 other states are considering it. In Massachusetts, governments in Amherst and Northampton last month adopted assisted-dying resolutions. Cambridge and Provincetown did so last year.



Two U.S. Supreme Court actions are relevant here. In 1997, in Vacco vs. Quill, the court ruled 9-0 – with six separate opinions. It upheld a New York state law making doctor-assisted death illegal, distinguishing it from palliative care to alleviate pain that has the ancillary effect of hastening death. The 1997 opinion did not rule on the opposite – a state affirmatively permitting doctor-assisted dying. In the second action, the U.S. Supreme Court this fall declined without comment to review a state appeals court ruling in a Minnesota case which fined Final Exit Network Inc. $30,000 for violating a state statute. The action let stand a lower-court interpretation of the Minnesota law to prohibit the giving of written information to 57-year-old Doreen Dunn that she allegedly used to learn how to take her own life using a helium hood. Final Exit is a nonprofit that for decades has been providing information and support to people who wish to end their own life. By not taking the case, no legal precedent is established. Says Final Exit’s attorney Robert Rivas, who provided a copy of his organization’s Supreme Court appeal: “Until our case in Minnesota, every case on point has held that pure speech cannot sustain a conviction for assisting in a suicide.”



The Mass. Medical Society change in position is similar to what happened in California before that state enacted, and Gov. Jerry Brown signed in 2015, the California End of Life Option Act, making California the fifth state to legalize doctor-assisted death. The California law took effect June 6, 2016, and in its first six months, 258 individuals started the end-of-life option process — 191 were prescribed life-ending drugs and 111 used them. That’s out of 183,265 deaths in California during the same period. That 0.0006 of total deaths – or six-one-hundredths of one percent.



This year, Oregon marked the 20th anniversary of its law taking effect. Over the 20-year period, only about 2,000 Oregonians have requested a prescription. One of them was Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old California educator who moved to Oregon to take advantage of the law when she was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. She was very public about her fatal choice, which drew international attention. Her mother is now on the Death with Dignity board, and her widower husband testified on Beacon Hill in September.



Oregon annually surveys the use of its law and over 20 years it has determined that of four end-of-life issues, pain control was the fourth-most cited reason for choosing medical aid in dying (25.2%). The other concerns were losing autonomy (91.6%), loss of dignity (78.8%), and less ability to engage in activities making life enjoyable (89.7%).



Unless you believe that suicide is an eternal sin, and that hastening your certain death with a pill is in fact suicide, as judged by others, you may have a fatal choice to make. Death and dying are profoundly personal challenges and one needs to appreciate the love and compassion expressed by those with many views, including our families. But we certainly can plan our options for time and manner of death.



It is no longer a taboo subject. In 2014, the state of Massachusetts adopted regulations requiring doctors, nurses, nursing homes other health-care providers to be equipped to provide end-of-life counseling. The Department of Public Health published the seven-page: “Know Your Choices: A Guide for Patients with Serious Advancing Illness.”



Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Massachusetts is a key backer of a nonprofit initiative called the Massachusetts Coalition for Serious Illness Care (maseriouscare.org), which meets annually. And longtime Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, was among founders of The Conversation Project, dedicated to helping people talk about their wishes for end-of-life care. Doctors, hospitals and estate lawyers can help with advanced-care planning concerning the timing of palliative care, hospice care and life-sustaining treatment options. 

For physicians, the fatal choice is not so simple professionally, even assuming that prescribing death-inducing medication is legalized in Massachusetts. The oldest versions of the Hippocratic Oath say, in common translation from Greek, “Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.” However, the vast majority of U.S. medical schools do not ask their graduates to subscribe to a version with words anything like that. And some ethicists argue even the little-used version is mis-understood. Ethicists note that heavy, constant doses of morphine to reduce severe pain – often prescribed for patients with terminal illnesses -- is justified because the main purpose is to relieve pain, with the deadly effects of morphine an ancillary result.



For physicians personally, the fatal choice appears easier. Surveys and reports find that physicians, faced with intrusive, death-prolonging care with no hope of beating a terminal illness, opt out of such care for themselves. This inclination was summarized in a 2011 essay by a University of Southern California family-medicine professor, Ken Murray, MD, who wrote: “[D]octors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little . . . I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me, in words that vary only slightly, ‘Promise me if you find me like this that you’ll kill me.’ ”



In the Berkshire Eagle op-ed, I spoke of four words – burden, control, religion and choice. I wrote about my father’s 2013 death, and his wish to not become a burden on his family. That’s something that weighs heavily on the elderly.



Concerning control -- the author and research physician Atul Gawande, in his PBS Frontline[1] documentary aired in 2015 — and in his book, "Being Mortal" — talks about the fears we all face as we confront the possibility of our own death. One of the greatest is the fear of losing control – your body or mind gives out and you can no longer do the things in life that give you pleasure. Is it OK to make the fatal choice if you feel you are burdening others and you don’t want to be? Should you decision be intertwined with faith and religion?



The fourth word I talked about in The Eagle was choice.



On Oct. 5, 2015, when Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., a former Catholic seminarian, signed the California law, he wrote at the end of his signing statement these words:

In the end, I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death. I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain. I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill. And I wouldn't deny that right to others."

More than 15 years ago, I visited a dear elderly friend – the wife of a former co-worker who had been a widow for many years. She was bedridden in a local nursing home. She could no longer live home alone, had been a vigorous, independent walker and couldn’t any longer. I had been encouraged by her daughter to stop in. As we talked, an aide brought her a plate of food and my friend actively waived her off. It was obvious to me that she did not want to eat. She was cheerful and peaceful. I spoke with her daughter, who spoke with the nursing home. A few weeks later, she died. Voluntary stopping eating and drinking – VSED – is one way to go which doesn’t require drugs or anyone’s permission.



While our corporations, our government, our society, make choices in war, health care, aircraft maintenance, the environment . . . without the best consideration of the fatal consequences, at the end of life, let’s all resolve to equip ourselves with the knowledge and support of our loved ones, and our own information resolve, to each make our own . . . fatal choice – with or without divine intervention.

Read More

In Memoriam: Robert Henderson, 1923-2017

Robert Maurice Henderson passed away in Lenox, Massachusetts, on October 16, 2017, the morning of his 68th wedding anniversary. Wife, Aleva, and son, Jack, were by his side. He was four days shy of his 94th birthday.



Born in Livingston, Montana, October 16, 1923, and raised just over the mountains in Bozeman, Bob was a consummate cowboy. Raising and caring for horses in his early years gave him compassion for animals and a high regard for nature and all its wonders. Bob's father, Maurice's career in public service, ultimately retiring as city manager of Bozeman, MT and Colonel in the Montana National Guard as well as the example of his mother, Grace, a former school teacher and community volunteer, taught Bob the value of hard work and sound ethics. Throughout his life people turned to Bob for good advice and leadership. Bob attended Montana State College (now MSU). He paused his education during WWII for service in the Army Air Corps but returned to MSC to complete his engineering degree and as he would always be first to acknowledge, most fortunate to meet the young nursing student who would become the love of his life, Aleva Benjamin. Aleva ultimately attained a degree in dietetics and Bob in mechanical engineering. They married in Bozeman, MT, October 16, 1949.





Bob started his career at Westinghouse in Portland, OR, where four of his five children were born but moved to Massachusetts to work at Dalton's E.D. Jones Division of Beloit Corporation in large paper machinery sales and engineering. His success in sales could be attributed to his adeptness at listening and his ability to provide and execute solutions for his customers' needs. Their fifth child was born in Pittsfield.



Bob stayed in paper machinery sales and engineering with ED Jones/Beloit Corporation then went to Bielomatic, a German enterprise and finally, Clark Aiken, Lee, MA, where he bought the business which he eventually sold to a German concern. Bob never really retired, always dabbling in some project or another. He and Aleva lived on Main Street, Stockbridge and were active in the community for over 40 years.



He thoroughly enjoyed his compatriots in the Monday Night Club, The Lenox Club, Monday Lunch Bunch, the Sweater Club and the Stockbridge Golf Club. He sang in the choir at his beloved First Congregational Church of Stockbridge for many years serving as Moderator and supported its varied causes.



He was predeceased by his parents and his sister, Jean Brickley, of Coronado, California.



Bob leaves behind a large, loving family; Wife Aleva, Children: Shelly (Ray); Lexington, MA; Jack, Stockbridge, MA; Chuck (Barb), Ithaca, NY; Sheryl (Bob), La Jolla, CA; Rob (Ali), West Linn, OR, 11 Grandchildren: Sarabeth, San Diego, CA; Kane, West Linn, OR; JB, Boston, MA; Shannon, Denver, CO; Annie, San Francisco, CA; Jessica, West Linn, OR; Eva, San Francisco, CA; Graeme, San Diego, CA; James, Los Angeles, CA; Rori, Ithaca, NY; Matthew Gabler, San Francisco, CA; Nephew, James Robert Brickley, Dana Point, CA; Niece, Joanne Brickley Conroy (James), Stockbridge, MA.



SERVICES: Celebration of Life to be held Friday, November 24th, 4 P.M., First Congregational Church of Stockbridge, 4 Main Street, Stockbridge, MA. Reception immediately following.



In lieu of flowers, please donate to a charity of your choice.



In life, Bob most loved his family, animals, the great outdoors, music and ice cream but nothing will compare to the love he had for Aleva.

Read More

Ethics: Our evolving understanding of animal rights

Photo by Rick Eh? — Used under Creative Commons License

Presented to the Club on Monday evening, December 15, 2003 by William A. Selke



In May [2003], a letter appeared in The Berkshire Eagle as part of a continuing debate as to whether the Housatonic should be stocked with trout or with smallmouth bass. While other writers had argued about the sporting merits of the different breeds, and which fish would survive long enough to be caught, this letter spoke of the "standard of ethical treatment of the stocked trout." Then, a few weeks later, a letter appeared decrying the exploitation of animals in circuses, the writer identifying herself as a member of People for the ETHICAL Treatment of Animals. Was the re-appearance of that word, ethical, coincidence, or was it a manifestation of a vast animal rights conspiracy? This is a report of my findings. That key word, ethical, is defined as: "pertaining to or dealing with morals or the principles of morality: pertaining to right and wrong in conduct." The writers using it were presumably among a growing number who feel, deeply, what is moral and what is right-and-wrong in our relationships with other creatures. Their position has evolved over a considerable period, not steadily, but, it seems, in fits and starts.



Humane folk have probably always been kind to their own animals, and sometimes encouraged others to do the same. Concern about the mistreatment of livery horses led to the founding of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in England in 1824. Right-thinking Americans traveling in England noted the success of that organization, and copied it with the founding of the ASPCA shortly after.



Legal actions in that early period by Henry Berg, a pioneer animal welfare activist, were significant in themselves, but also foreshadowed the philosophical basis of the movement of today. With his urging, the state of New York enacted laws against cruelty to animals. Then in, in 1874, he successfully pressed for the prosecution of an offender. The animal that had been maltreated happened in this case to be a young boy! This incident lead to the formation of the SPCC. But what is significant in the present context is that the law, probably unintentionally, did not distinguish humans from other species as the animals to be protected.



While there was no defense for the starving of horses, some activists moved animal protection in a direction which was not generally acceptable. In Britain in 1975 a militant group founded the Society for the Protection of Animals Liable to Vivisection_ They immediately pushed through Parliament the Cruelty to Animals Act. Though at the time it looked as though the anti-vivisectionists had won, in retrospect, it was fortunate. It brought peace for a number of years to a troubling issue with an act which acknowledged the vital role animals must play in research and in education and is moderate and reasonable. It imposed strict standards, both for the value of the experiments being performed and for the avoidance of needless suffering by the animal, but laboratory practices adapted to them, and there have never been prosecutions under the act.



And so it was for more than half a century. But as medical research intensified in the mid-20th century, and the need grew to test pharmaceuticals, so did the criticism of the increased use of animals in the laboratories. Again the movement starts in England, but the methods used represented a sharp departure from those of the relatively civilized Victorian anti-vivisectionists. A group calling itself the Animal Liberation Front (ALS) took to raiding laboratories, sabotaging experiments, and, in 1972, settling fire to a Hoecht research facility. The leader — one Ronnie Lee — was sentenced to two years in prison for his part. In 1982, an American offshoot — calling itself the Band of Mercy — won the designation of "terrorist" from the FBI.



I recall visiting a cancer research laboratory near Harrogate, England in November in 1978. There was a strange sense of excitement. Workmen were finishing the installation of bars on the windows. Our host explained that several laboratories, including that one, had received warnings that they were to be attacked by protestors. A sign was prominently displayed at the front door reminiscent of those displayed in cars parked in Manhattan reading—"No radio in this car" This sign announced that there were no dogs or cats in the laboratory. Apparently, in the United Kingdom, the intensity of outrage among protestors would depend on the species of the animals whose wellbeing was threatened, with the strongest feelings being for dogs, followed — somewhat diminished — by children, other primates, cats, horses and, far down he list —rodents, which happened to be what were used in that lab. One would wonder how, if the ALF had attacked, the Syrian Golden Hamsters would have enjoyed being liberated in autumn in the West Riding of Yorkshire.



Animal welfare had become a rough game. The goals of these groups were very different from those of the SPCA and Humane Societies. Some of what was appearing was destructive, some seemed silly, and there did not appear to be a clear central principle behind these actions.



In the early seventies, books and papers were published postulating radically new structures of the relationship between humans and animals. In 1975, this lively discussion was crystallized with the publication by Peter Singer, an Australian, now professor of bioethics at Princeton of Animal Liberation, the book which appears to be the bible of the movement. In it, he offers an audacious philosophical basis for the entire field. He wrote that with black liberation, gay liberation and women's liberation, we might have thought we had come to the end of the road. But, "a liberation movement demands an expansion of our moral horizons, so that practices that were previously regarded as natural and inevitable are now seen as intolerable."



In the preface he writes: "This book is about the tyranny of human over nonhuman animals ... causing an amount of pain and suffering that can only be compared with that which resulted the tyranny of white humans over black humans." He decries the sharp difference in our regard for humans and for non-humans. He argues — or his style suggests that he reveals — that all sentient creatures should be treated equally, and that rights we regard as human rights belong to all animals — human and non-human. To set special standards for humans constitutes "speciesism," another unacceptable –ism. He extends protection to octopuses, for certain, and will include jellyfish if research shows them to be deserving. This principle leads to Singer's opposition to any use of animals as food, for entertainment, or as medical laboratory models.



Singer, who is said to approach any subject with "almost adolescently fierce purity," exhibits a certain consistency in applying the idea that humans should not be favored just for being members of that species. Invitations for him to speak at German universities were withdrawn when it was realized that he openly advocated euthanasia for humans who don't measure up, mentally. They saw this as uncomfortably similar to some of the policies of the Third Reich.



Most of us do make a sharp distinction between the rights we grant to humans and those for other species. Even though, by the latest calculation, 98.5 percent, of the DNA of chimpanzees is identical to ours — up from an earlier calculation of 94 percent — we employ chimps in medical research in ways unthinkable for humans.



Speciesism is, indeed, implicit in our ethical judgments. One of the scientific magazines recently told of an entrepreneurial biologist who thought there would be profit to be made with laboratory technique he was developing. He proposed that by uniting humans and chimpanzees in trans-species hybrids he would have a source of more acceptable replacement body parts than those harvested from pigs. He knows that this would not be countenanced on ethical grounds, but he gives, facetiously, as his reason for not proceeding with the business, that he feared being burdened legally to provide education — K through 12 — for such animals.



Singer clearly has honed his responses to what we might regard as flaws in his thinking. When it is pointed out that predators eat other animals, he excuses them on the basis of the digestive limitations of true carnivores. While nature may seem harsh, the zebra, eaten by the lion, suffers only in its dying moments. It thus has a much better life than the endless boredom and discomfort experienced by a pig in a factory farm.



He defends his not pressing for porcine suffrage. He acknowledges that Congress may direct the Department of Agriculture to take steps which influence the lives of pigs, but pigs have insufficient understanding of the platforms of the political parties for them to be able to vote in their own interest. Displaying that consistency for which he is notorious, he states that humans with limited understanding shouldn't be allowed to vote, either.



Singer's basic principle picks up all the old animal welfare issues, including that perennial — vegetarianism. It has had prominent exponents over the years — George Bernard Shaw, Percy Byshe Shelly, as well as, of course, Mohandas Ghandi. Members of my generation [Selke was born in 1922.] were likely to have known young people — perhaps among their own children — who adhered at least temporarily to the restrictions, usually through the influence of a contemporary. That influence in some cases seemed to reflect a reordering in importance of the two basic biological drives. In the public at large, avoidance of cholesterol may be of greater influence than concern for its source.



But it is not the eating of meat that Singer opposes most strongly, rather it is the practices of factory farms, where animals spend their whole short lives penned up, converting feed into saleable flesh. He is surprisingly tolerant of bull-fighting. Unlike beef steers, the fighting bulls enjoy a relatively free and happy life before they enter the ring, and there is always that chance that they can hook a horn into a deserving tormentor.



A baffling number of organizations were formed to bring the world into compliance with the ideal set forth by Singer, but one dominates all others, People for the Ethical Treatment of animals PETA (knowing no better, I'll pronounce the acronym with a long E, both because of the capitalization and because they are opposed to the keeping of pets.) [In 2003] PETA has a membership of 3/4 of a million and an annual budget of 10 million dollars.





Their prominent stands have polarized the public. During the current war, our Navy has been assisted by dolphins and sea lions in safely moving through the Persian Gulf, delivering humanitarian aid to the port of Umm Qasr. These creatures had been trained to find mines and mark them with buoys without coming in contact with them. Twenty-two mines have been detected and destroyed, sparing our vessels. The dolphins are paid 20 pounds of fish each day for their effort. PETA protested placing them in harm's way: the dolphins knew nothing of Iraq, or of Saddam Hussein, and they had not volunteered for that service. More troubling is PETA's raising of a similar objection to the guiding of blind people by dogs.



To influence an impressionable group, PETA has have set up a web-site, PETA Kids. It recently featured items on Tofurky for Thanksgiving, Vegan Candy, and an article on the Young Hero of the Month — a Nevada girl who saw her biology grade fall from A to C when she refused to dissect an earthworm. Her protests to the state legislature led to dissection becoming optional in her school.



The PETA Kids introduction to activism seems more that of a teenage celebrity fan-club than realistic training in influencing a government. They provided to their readers the mail address of the British Prince William — St. James's Palace — so that letters could be sent to him urging the outlawing of fox-hunting. It should be noted that the House of Commons had in June voted overwhelmingly against the sport.



The PETA Kids probably don't share my amusement by one of the listings Google provides when one searches for P-E-T-A. It is "PETA- People who Eat Tasty Animals."



PETA's annual campaign against the use of animals in circuses emphasizes the fact that non-human performers did not choose those jobs. Skeptics might point out that humans — especially young ones — don't have complete choice of their activities, either. In my childhood, piano lessons were imposed on the unwilling by denial of more pleasant activities — playing outside. It seems unlikely that this punitive approach would be effective for training seals. When they are learning to play "America" — or, in the U.K. learning "God Save the Queen" — surely they must be rewarded with fish. Incidentally, I've attended circuses in other lands, but they never featured the virtuoso skills of marine mammals — could it be that other cultures don't have a song which played arythmically would be widely recognized?



Some of PETAs actions seem deliberately confrontational. They petitioned the Florida Department of Education to ban milk drinks from school vending machines, reversing that welcome reform, the elimination of soft drinks. PETA urges die-hard meat-eaters to help save animals by scouring the streets for roadkill. They tout its nutritional benefits — no growth stimulants, no hormones, and none of the antibiotics present in the products of some factory farms.



What more appropriate basis for an ethical principle than the Bible, itself. A group called Fishing Hurts holds that Jesus probably was a vegetarian. They state that he would not fall outside the technical definition of vegetarian by multiplying pieces of fish which were already dead, to feed people who aren't opposed to eating fish. They then state that pre-Gospel account of the miracle mention only bread, as does Jesus himself, as quoted in Mathew, Mark and John. They suggest that fish was added by Greek scribes because, as you recall, the Greek word ixous is the acronym for Jesus Christ Son of God Savior. But was Jesus really a vegetarian? Leonardo didn't show any meat on that long table, and the Gospels make no mention of his eating meat until after the Resurrection, and Fishing Hurts suggests that the accuracy of that observation may not be correct.



PETA didn't reach its position among the many organizations dedicated to animal welfare without some aggressive actions, including a corporate "hostile takeover" which would be admired in a field without the principles we expect in non-profit organizations. The New England Anti-Vivisection Society had an endowment of $8 million dollars. PETA bought 300 voting memberships at $10 each, paid plane fare for members to attend an annual meeting, and ended up the owner. [Editor’s note: If this effort actually took place, it apparently did not succeed. The New England Anti-Vivisection Society is still in business and still has assets worth about $8 million according to their federal Form 990 filed annually.



PETA acknowledges its instigation of some attacks on medical research laboratories. In a New York Times. interview, Alex Pacheo, its cofounder, paraphrased Barry Goldwater, saying, "Arson, property destruction, burglary and theft are acceptable crimes when used for the animal cause."



In the public relations war, they started on some soft targets. Cosmetic companies checked new products for potential irritation with what is called the Draize test in which the products being tested — mascaras, eye shadows — were placed in rabbits’ eyes and the irritation observed for four days. The sympathy that PETA was able to generate with pictures of sweet-looking , unhappy bunnies being used for such frivolous purposes generated anger which was spread against more serious studies.



PETA provides unpublicized support for the ALF, the British group of terrorists, which has announced that its intention is to "economically sabotage the industries of animal exploitaton". Over $45,000 of contributions to PETA by animal lovers was used in the legal defense of one Rodney Coronado, on trial for fire bombing a medical research facility. He was convicted and spent more than four years in prison. ALF burglarized laboratories at the University of Pennsylvania where work was done on head injuries, taking six years of data and vandalizing equipment. When a U of Penn veterinarian not associated with the project spoke in its defense, his office was vandalized. PETA announced that it was "an example to persuade other vivisectionists that it doesn't pay off."



The outlandishness of some of the program of animal liberation is merely entertaining. Citizens were little inconvenienced when the governments of seven states decreed that, henceforth, the purchaser of a dog license is designated the dog's guardian, not its owner. But some see Singer, PETA and their like thinkers as serious threats to our society. One who has sounded the alarm is Kathleen Marquart, founder of PPF, Putting People First, and author of the rather shrill and angry tract, "Animal Scam.” She writes "Though clothed in the moral armor of self-righteousness, animal rights activists show contempt for the lives of people."



She takes no issue with the traditional animal welfare groups, such as the Humane Society and the ASPCA, but warns that unless we resist current trends, medical research will suffer, there will be no guide dogs for the blind, and that untrapped rats will bring back the bubonic plague.



She presents a frightening list of violent acts against medical researchers by a cluster of organizations. In 1981, Fran Trait, of Trans-Species Unlimited (TSU) was convicted of the attempted murder of US Surgical president, Leon Hirsh. ALF took 1000 animals from the University of California-Riverside and damaged computers. They took 264 animals from the University of Oregon. IDA — In Defense of Animals — was linked to threats against 40 university presidents. Northwestern had to provide a bodyguard for a professor of neurobiology. The head of the psychology department at the University of North Carolina received a letter saying "Your brain and your wife's brain will be burned and drilled like you are doing to our lovely animals." All together, over 100 incidents have been reported. These demonstrations and threats have cost medical schools $4.5 million and 33,000 labor hours over five years.



Marquart strongly objects to the Massachusetts law of 1987 which prohibits the release of cats or dogs from pounds except for adoption or return to owner. As an argument for its repeal, she cites the IIFAR — Incurably Ill for Animal Research —  finding that the annual national use of 104,000 dogs and 50,000 cats from pounds saves $80 million over breeding them for the purpose.



She scoffs at any of the betes noirs of the PETA crowd. Rodeos cause an injury rate for calves of only 0.5 percent, less than that of cowboys. She holds that the Eco-dykes are wasting their time protesting against lesbian rodeos. In defense of circuses, she points out that it wouldn't make good sense for owners to endanger animals in which they have much invested. Those animals have a good life, working only 15 to 30 minutes a day, and in the circuses animals live 60 percent longer than the same species does in the wild. Further, she states, circuses help the local economy, advertising in the paper, hiring security personnel and buying from local merchants. These were the reasons not to close down the contaminated spring in Ibsen's Enemy of the People.



Apparently not all Marquart's readers share her views. She stated that the liberationists claim that Adam and Eve wore fig leaves, but, in fact, God clothed them in animal skins. (In the margin of the page in the library copy I consulted, in bold strokes, was written, "Must Check" — now that there isn't a checkout card in the back of a book so without [U.S. Attorney General John] Ashcroft's help, there is no way to guess the identity of the skeptic. Really, the principal reason to miss those cards is that here could be no better recommendation than seeing that [fellow Club member] Jack Spencer had read a book already.) [Editor's Note: The Bible verse in question, Genesis 3:21, reads: “And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife, garments of skins, and clothed them.”]



Is the animal liberation movement, especially Singer's prohibition against favoring our own species, likely to bring about any lasting changes in our world? Moral philosophers hold that the chief test to be applied to any ethical system is to ask if it can be harmonized with what is called common-sense ethics, i.e., with those ethical judgments which, at our best, we feel constrained make, apart from philosophical argument, in our ordinary ethical thinking. In short, are people buying it?



One change we see, even if not wholly in accord with Singer's goals, is the widespread increase of expenditure on pets, lavish even in the new climate of affluence. Two aspects of this trend seem in accord with the blurring — indeed, the elimination — of distinction between people and their pets, or, as we have learned to say, between companions of different species.



First are the new standards of medical and surgical care. In earlier times, when pets became ill, the vet either cured the beloved swiftly and inexpensively, or told the "custodian" that Waggles had to be put down. A recent article in The New Yorker told of a kidney transplant operation performed on a formerly stray cat at the Animal Medical Center in the upper east side in New York . Noteworthy is the fact that the owners (there goes that improper word) of the cat were not wealthy, but they were paying over $5,000 out of their annual family income of less than $50,000 And this for a cat. On my aunt's farm, where I spent many months of my pre-teen summers, a dozen or so nameless barn dwellers earned an occasional dish of milk to supplement their diet of rodents. None of these was ever attended by a vet. For that matter, I'm not sure that any of the three house cats — Whitey, Speed, or Rico — who loitered all day, nibbling at their canned salmon, would ever receive professional attention. I should note that in later years I wondered how and why those three enjoyed the privilege denied the barn cats — surely they weren't the offspring of a feline Sally Hemmings.



Newsweek reported that the average household spent $257 for veterinary care of its dogs in 2001, a 95 percent increase from 1991. This reflects big spending at the likes of the Center for Specialized Veterinary Care in Westbury, L.I., where brain tumor surgery costs $1,650 and corneal transplants $812.



The second innovation is the emphasis on the psychological needs of pets — fulfillment. People see their pets as family members, complete with psychological lives and complexities. America has enriched its children generously with soccer and ballet and computer camp. It follows that dogs, too, should have every chance at fulfillment. In his book, Twelve Months, Four Dogs and Me, Jon Katz tells how each week he drives a couple hundred miles so that his border collies can embrace their destiny, herding sheep at a farm. He states that when he is there, scores of people show up with all sorts of dogs, from avid herding breeds to bewildered mutts. Their owners are all eager to permit them to exercise their atavism. Many owners feel guilty about not doing enough. One woman e-mailed the author: "Is it OK to have a dog and still go to work?” Dog day-care centers have sprung up so that owners can go to work feeling that Max or Maggie enjoy sufficient exercise, stimulation and companionship.



Another area of change is factory farming, and it is inconceivable that these changes will ever be reversed. Surprisingly, Europe has had standards more strict than American practice, and they seem likely to stay ahead of us in this regard. In the European Union, the sizes of cages for laying hens will be increased to 120 square inches, with a perch and a box to lay their eggs, by 2012. In the US, there are no regulations, yet, and the average space is 48 square inches — half the area of an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper. In a voluntary move, McDonald's has increased the standard for its suppliers 50 percent to 72 square inches. Burger King and Wendy's followed. Under pressure from PeTA, KFC has pledged to increase by 30 percent the space for each of the 350 million chickens they use each year. Penning of calves and an iron-free diet, already illegal in the UK, will be illegal in all of Europe by 2007, so veal will be less tender and less white. The flap about serving fois gras at Tanglewood was repeated across the country, so what is the future for an expensive delicacy if it is not politically correct? Those California farmhands who twice each day hold the open the beaks of each goose while dispensing a pint of gruel from a power hose should begin looking for new employment. This despite the appearance in California of tee-shirts saying "fight tofu abuse, eat fois gras."



It is likely that those using animals in research and in medical testing will continue to do so because there are not satisfactory alternatives. The importance of animals in research was underlined when Cambridge University announced that, despite protests by animal rights groups, a $50 million laboratory will be built on University land. There, primates will be used in studies of neuroscience, seeking understanding of the role of the brain's frontal lobes, leading, it is hoped, to new treatments for Alzheimers and Parkinson's diseases. Primates, unlike other laboratory animals, have frontal lobes similar to ours, and a highly developed cerebral cortex, and are essential for success of this research It had been proposed that the laboratory be located at the military facility, Porton Down, for protection against protestors. But the University finally decided that the planned research program is so important that it should not be hidden away.



Even though Mr. Blair upset party members by removing reference to fox hunting from the Queen's annual speech, Commons will probably override the current resistance in Lords and that sport — witheringly described by Oscar Wilde as the unmentionable in full pursuit of the inedible" — will be seen only on Masterpiece Theatre.



And so, although few may accept Singer's basic proposal — that humans shouldn't favor themselves at all— some of the ramifications of that principle seem to be part of out new ethos.



In recent years, aspirants to elected office have first had to avoid being charged with racism. Then, as half our population has been granted fuller rights, there was the additional requirement of abjuring sexism. If the animal liberation movement is successful, a third practice will have to be avoided: speciesism. It will be entertaining to see how candidates pander on that issue.

Read More