vaccine mandates

I once respected Anthony Fauci. But, during the Covid pandemic, I believe his power and the astonishing international celebrity generated by a fawning media went to his head. Worse, his hubris brought great disrepute on public health institutions and harmed the nation and its people.

But mainstream bioethicists — mostly political progressives who deploy their supposed authority as experts to push mostly left-wing health and political causes — see Fauci as one of their own. With the doctor now in some hot legal water, and his reputation visibly tarnished by recent disclosures from his diary and text messages, prominent bioethicists have published an open letter telling us to leave Fauci alone. From the “Open Letter of Support for Anthony Fauci from the Bioethics Community,” published in Bioethics Today (emphasis within the text):

As individuals concerned with ethics in science, medicine, and public health, we wish to express our dismay at the approach taken by Senate leaders to pursue an unwarranted, ill-advised, and frankly bizarre vendetta against a scientist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, rather than making a sincere effort to learn from the painful experiences of the pandemic to improve national preparedness. No human is perfect, but Dr. Fauci deserves appreciation for his decades of service to American science, and he deserves respect for taking on the difficult work of advising federal policy makers during the worst plague of this century. We condemn the decision to hold him legally in contempt of Congress as the outcome of a staged public persecution, and we fear the future implications of politically and legally targeting scientists who advise the government.

Hardly a “persecution,” and Fauci’s status as a “scientist” is irrelevant.

For some, questions of religious liberty seem abstract. For us and our families, they are deeply personal. I (Arina Grossu Agnew) taught at an Archdiocese of Washington school for a year, the very school where my young son was later accepted for admission. As Catholics committed to raising him in the faith, my husband and I assumed he would attend. Instead, we ultimately declined his acceptance because the Archdiocese does not recognize religious objections to its vaccination policy, even though the state of Maryland does. We enrolled him in a secular private school that respects Maryland’s religious exemption and our sincerely-held convictions. My experience is not unique. My co-author, Jay Richards, has faced similar choices with his family. Catholic schools Read More ›

The push to impose rule by “scientific consensus” continues apace — even as the American people clearly rejected that view in the last election (thanks in no small part to how the public health consensus blew the Covid response). But the science powers that be refuse to learn. In fact, they appear to be doubling down. Now, Ethan Siegel, an astrophysicist and award-winning science writer, advocates for criminally and civilly punishing violators of the “scientific consensus.”

First, Siegel defines what he means by “scientific consensus.” From, “4 Key Steps to Transform the USA Back into a Scientific Nation:”

Only in the presence of decisive evidence can consensus be achieved. Consensus is not “the end goal” of science, but rather a starting point for future advances: the foundation of what is not just known, but is widely accepted for good reason, at present. Consensus is, to be blunt, what the overwhelming majority of professionals have concluded is already strongly established by the existing evidence so far.

But conformity of belief does not make it right. The supposed scientific consensus can be more ideology than science. Take eugenics. For decades in the early 20th century, the scientific consensus supported dividing human beings into the “fit” and “unfit.” That consensus became so motivating that many states passed laws requiring involuntary sterilizations, a pernicious policy supported by an 8-1 decision in the Supreme Court, with Buck v Bell (1927) becoming one of history’s great injustices.