Thoughts on Eating Living Things

"Almost a third of Americans, 32%, believe animals should be given the same rights as people, while 62% say they deserve some protection but can still be used for the benefit of humans. The strong animal rights view is up from 2008 when 25% thought animals' rights should be on par with humans'."

Rebecca Riffkin, "In U.S., More Say Animals Should Have Same Rights as People," Gallup.com, May 18, 2015

My wife, Mary, has discovered cooking for family gatherings is not what it once was.

In my youth it was simpler. My father, who taught general semantics, believed "food dislikes" were a symptom of ignorance of general semantics principles. If someone might say, for example, "I don't like spinach," he would respond, "But you haven't even tasted this spinach; you're just reacting to the word, the label. Taste what's on your plate and see; maybe you'll like it."

After months of "tasting" everything on our plates our food dislikes diminished and then disappeared -- which created another problem. We very rarely went to a restaurant, but a family story is told of one such occasion before I was 10 years old. After everyone else had ordered, I was still studying the menu. Urged to hurry up, I blurted out, "That's what you get, Dad, for teaching us to have no food dislikes!"

A doctor gave me an allergy test, and reported I was allergic to a dozen or more items -- including corn (hard to avoid in Iowa) and wheat (requiring my loving mother to bake rye bread for the family). After a summer on my aunt and uncle's farm, playing in the corn bin and eating wheat bread, with no apparent ill effects, that was the end of my allergies.

No one I knew refused to eat GMO food, was on a "gluten free" diet, "lactose intolerant," or allergic to peanuts (we lived on peanut butter sandwiches).

To borrow Garrison Keillor's phrase, our mothers just "put the hay down where the goats can get it." "Food" was cooked, put in bowls on the table, transferred to our plates, and consumed -- usually meat, potatoes and gravy, two or three vegetables, and a little salad -- dessert if we'd been good, and were lucky.

When we were young there were few, if any, vegetarians, let alone vegans, among the children of beef, hog, dairy and chicken farmers. Now our family gatherings include representatives of virtually every food preference group, each with their own special meals. (This includes the "lactose intolerant" and "gluten free" at our table.)

Of course, those with real medical problems must be respected. But the varieties of beliefs about eating once-living things also need to be respected.

I'd extend this to attitudes about abortion. If someone truly believes that aborting a fetus is "murder," it makes their "right to life" opposition to abortion more understandable -- especially if they only apply the belief to themselves and do not insist the government impose it on everyone else.

I'd also be tolerant of what superficially, initially, appear to be inconsistencies: those who favor the availability of abortions, but believe it is morally reprehensible to eat a fish; or those who believe no one should be permitted to abort a fetus, but join the 62% of Americans (87% of Republicans) who favor the death penalty for adults. ["National Polls and Studies; Huffington Post, January 2014," Death Penalty Information Center.]

"China, together with Iran, North Korea, Yemen and the US (the only G7 country to still execute people) carried out the most executions last year." "Death Penalty Statistics, Country by Country," The Guardian. Only 58 of the 195 U.N. nations still have the death penalty. "Capital Punishment by Country," Wikipedia.org.

We come by our beliefs regarding diet, including eating once-living things, from our parents, experience, culture, religion, education; also our moral, philosophical and ethical beliefs. And so long as our beliefs and actions don't have an adverse impact on others we are all stronger for this diversity. [Photo credit: unknown; beef cattle feedlot]

I started down the road now revealed in this blog post as a result of a conversation today regarding vegetarians and vegans. It seemed useful for me to try to think through where I come out.

I am neither a theologian nor a research scientist. All I know -- or suspect or believe -- is what I have been reading in books like, Frans de Waal, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (2016); Jonathan Balcombe, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins (2016); Jennifer Ackerman, The Genius of Birds (2016) -- and even, most recently, Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate (2015). There are undoubtedly research scientists who attempt to refute the assertions of these authors; if so, I have not read their works. After all, I'm just reading books that interest me; I'm not engaged in research for a doctoral dissertation.

I am even less well educated about the human biome, but further humbled and fascinated with the idea that I am carrying more cells of microbes and bacteria in and on my body than human cells (perhaps 100 trillion of theirs to 37 trillion of mine).

"As of 2014, it was often reported in popular media and in the scientific literature that there are about 10 times as many microbial cells in the human body than there are human cells; this figure was based on estimates that the human microbiome includes around 100 trillion bacterial cells and an adult human typically has around 10 trillion human cells. In 2014 the American Academy of Microbiology published an FAQ that emphasized that the number of microbial cells and the number of human cells are both estimates, and noted that recent research had arrived at a new estimate of the number of human cells at around 37 trillion cells, meaning that the ratio of microbial to human cells is probably about 3:1. In 2016 another group published a new estimate of ratio as being roughly 1:1 (1.3:1, with 'an uncertainty of 25% and a variation of 53% over the population of standard 70 kg males.')" Human Microbiome Project," Wikipedia.org. See also, NIH Human Microbiome Project; Karen Weintraub, "Findings From the Gut -- New Insights Into the Human Microbiome," Scientific American, April 29, 2016.

Frans de Waal (Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?) argues (if I read him correctly) that humans are mistaken to evaluate how "smart" animals are by comparing their cognitive abilities with our own.

Webster's defines "cognitive" as "activity such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering." "Definition of Cognitive," Merriam-Webster. Thus, Jonathan Balcombe's (What a Fish Knows) observation that "A small squid can learn mazes faster than dogs do, and a small goby fish can memorize in one trial the topography of a tide pool by swimming over it at high tide -- a feat few if any humans could achieve" could be considered examples of "cognitive ability" in animals.

Actually, other species can often best our ability to do something. As I have written of squirrels, "Much as we may squirm to avoid admitting it, an honest evaluation of the data compels the conclusion that squirrels do, in fact, have a superior intelligence to humans. They also have more patience and determination. More willingness to work at, and stick with, problem solving. More commitment to scientific experimentation. And, not incidentally, an athletic prowess -- not to mention courage -- that puts our Olympic athletes to shame by comparison. As the clerk put it to me with commendable candor when I asked about a squirrel-proof bird feeder, 'Look, mister, there ain't no squirrel-proof bird feeders. There are just squirrel-resistant bird feeders.'" "The Natural Superiority of Squirrels" in "UI Held Hostage Day 498," June 3, 2007

Mammals, fish, birds, insects, microbes -- and trees -- may need to communicate (and do); they do not need to speak English or solve the New York Times' crossword puzzle. The standard he says we should use is to ask, "Are their cognitive abilities sufficient to insure the survival of their species?" (not a direct quote).

Measured by de Waal's standard, any honest, open minded inquiry into the cognitive and other abilities of species other than our own will leave the reader humbled, in awe, and filled with respect for the wide range of abilities of our plant and animal "cousins." Sufficiently so -- at least for me -- that when it comes to what I will and won't eat, I am unable to distinguish between the life force present in a chicken and a fish, a carrot and a shrimp.

Which, of course, brings me back around to the oft-heard inquiry, "So, what's for dinner?"

If one wishes to avoid killing and consuming plants and animals that possess not only a "life force" but sufficient cognitive ability to keep their species alive for millions of years, there is virtually nothing left on the menu.

No one needs to live to eat, but everyone needs to eat to live. The variation of "necessity is the mother of invention" is that "mother is the invention of necessity." Eating is also the invention of necessity. Confronted as I am with the necessity of eating, what should I do?

I have finally come around to the wisdom of many of the only true "Americans," those who were here when our ancestors arrived. I may have romanticized the teaching I received from a Meskwaki elder, but not by much. Without disclosing any of the details he shared in confidence, the general idea involved a respect for the Earth and living in harmony with all of its plant and animal inhabitants. One imposes as light a footprint as possible on the Earth, taking only the minimum one needs for food.

So that will be my creed. Eat only what I need (which, as a side benefit, won't do my waistline any harm), going especially light on eating anything I would not have been willing to kill, and insofar as possible not contributing to that 40% of the food Americans buy and then throw away.

I'm neither advocating this analysis for others nor criticizing others' different choices. It's a personal matter everyone can think through for themselves (or not). Moreover, I may change my mind. But, for now, these are my "Thoughts on Eating Living Things."

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Execution of Troy Davis

September 24, 2011, 11:00 a.m.

Don't Blame the Courts
Troy Davis has been executed, notwithstanding the protests of thousands of citizens around the world, with and without name recognition or celebrity status. [Photo credit: Erik S. Lesser/AFP/Getty Images/Time.]

Kim Severson, "Davis is Executed in Georgia," New York Times, September 22, 2011, p. A1 ("Proclaiming his innocence, Troy Davis was put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday night, his life — and the hopes of supporters worldwide — prolonged by several hours while the Supreme Court reviewed but then declined to act on a petition from his lawyers to stay the execution.").

Although I claim no expertise with respect to criminal law, or criminal procedure, it is a case worth reflection by all of us. Especially is this so as we mourn the loss of my colleague, personal friend, and internationally recognized true death penalty expert, David Baldus, and prepare for a conference and memorial service this next month to honor his lifetime achievements.

Some object to the death penalty as a punishment in any criminal case. Others were objecting to its use in this case, either because they were convinced he was the wrong defendant, that he had done no wrong, or because they believed there was sufficient doubt about his guilt to be troublesome.

Actually, I think my wife, Mary Vasey -- who is vigorously opposed to the death penalty in any case -- has this one right: if you, too, are troubled by the prospect of future Troy Davis cases, and the possibility of additional state-sanctioned killings of innocent men and women, what needs to change are not so much reviews of individual death penalty cases prior to executions, but repeal of the laws permitting the death penalty in the first place.

I have no firsthand knowledge of the events, did not serve on the jury, was not present at the trial, and have not read the transcript, judicial opinions, and other documents related to the case. Whatever I may suspect the facts might have been, I do not -- indeed I could not possibly -- "know."

So what was "the truth" in the Troy Davis case?

There are many definitions of “truth.” A scientific discovery -- such as this week's revelation that scientists at CERN may have propelled a particle at speeds in excess of the speed of light -- only becomes a scientific truth once carefully recorded experimental data has been peer reviewed and found to be capable of duplication. On the other hand, a religious truth may be whatever a religious leader proclaims it to be. An athletic truth is measured in strokes of a golf club, or the minutes and seconds -- even one-hundredths of seconds -- it takes the winner to run around a track, or ski down a hill.

On the other hand, the legal truth is whatever a jury's verdict proclaims it to be, whatever the jury says it is.

What is the truth regarding the allegations that O.J. Simpson murdered his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman? Whatever the real-world space-time-events, or "facts" in that sense, may have been, the legal truth, according to the jury verdict in his 1995 criminal trial, was that he was "not guilty." (Of course, that's not the same as saying "he didn't do it;" it's just saying that during this criminal trial the prosecutor failed to meet his or her "burden of proof" that he did it. Indeed, subsequently in the 1997 civil trial for "wrongful death," the plaintiffs' burden of proof was less, was met, and the "legal truth" for purposes of that trial was that "he did do it.")

Once the jury has rendered its verdict, and no executive (the president, or a governor) has intervened, the decision to execute a defendant rests with the appellate courts. And thus to criticize the execution of Troy Davis is to appear to criticize the appellate courts’ (including the Supreme Court’s) handling of the case.

However, if you want to avoid –- to use the popular characterization -– “judges legislating from the bench,” it’s hard to criticize them for following the law.

What can appellate courts do in death penalty cases? New trials can be ordered if the defendant did not have competent representation by counsel, if evidence was admitted that was prejudicial and should have been excluded, if defense counsel was prevented from striking a prejudiced juror when the jury was selected, if the judge’s instructions to the jury were not proper, among other examples. But if everything proceeded as the law provides, the appellate courts are largely bound by the findings of the jury and the sentencing by the trial judge.

Indeed, that’s precisely what those who wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights sought to accomplish. If the appellate courts can overturn a jury’s “guilty” verdict merely because, had they been jurors, they wouldn't have voted that way, they can also overturn a jury’s “not guilty” verdict, and impose the death penalty, as "super jurors." However inadequate a jury system may be, the drafters felt that for all its faults they would rather trust their fate to “a jury of their peers” than a potentially arbitrary, tyrannical, unelected judge.

Thus, much of what we do and don’t like about the judicial system can be, and should be (up to when Constitutional provisions intervene), resolved by legislative bodies (Congress for the federal courts, and state legislatures for state courts).

The death penalty is something many countries have long since abolished, consider barbaric, criticize America for, find a violation of basic human rights, and as the Innocence Project has repeatedly documented, is often wrongly applied (and may well have been in the case of Troy Davis).

If you believe Troy Davis was not guilty of the crime for which he was executed, and you live in a state that still has the death penalty, do something about it. Write your elected officials and tell them to abolish it. Join with others and the organizations that are working to bring our country into compliance with the standards of civilized nations.

On the other hand, if you think the death penalty is an appropriate punishment -– at least in some circumstances -– just hope and pray that you, your family members and friends never find yourselves wrongly accused.

Although if you do, probably you can at least count on the anti-death-penalty folks to petition on behalf of saving your life as well.

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David Baldus

June 15, 2011, 8:30 a.m.

1935-2011
A great and decent man has died; scholar, researcher, teacher, colleague and friend, David Baldus. He and his wife, Joyce Carman, were special friends of Mary and me. And the memories I like to recall at this time are not just of our conversations in his office or mine, or when waiting for the coffee to brew in the faculty lounge, but of our times together each summer on their pontoon boat on the Coralville Reservoir.

But his life was also such as to be memorialized in the pages of everything from the New York Times, immediately below, to his university's paper, The Daily Iowan, below that.

[Hopefully, both papers will recognize this reproduction of their stories as Fair Use. If not, their emailed requests that their stories be removed from this blog entry will be promptly honored.]


David C. Baldus, 75, Dies; Studied Race and the Law
Adam Liptak
New York Times
June 15, 2011, p. B13
David C. Baldus, whose pioneering research on race and the death penalty came within a vote of persuading the Supreme Court to make fundamental changes in the capital justice system, died on Monday at his home in Iowa City. He was 75. [Photo credit: Tom Langdon, University of Iowa.]

The cause was complications of colon cancer, his wife, Joyce C. Carman, said.

Professor Baldus’s work was at the center of a 1987 Supreme Court decision, McCleskey v. Kemp, which ruled that even solid statistical evidence of racial disparities in the administration of the death penalty did not offend the Constitution. The 5-to-4 ruling closed off what had seemed to opponents of the death penalty a promising line of attack.

The Supreme Court had reinstated the death penalty in 1976 in Gregg v. Georgia after a four-year moratorium. Georgia and other states had in the meantime enacted provisions meant to address discrimination in capital punishment.

“It seemed to us that Gregg had indulged the assumption that race had been flushed out of the system,” said John C. Boger, who argued the McCleskey case for the defendant and who is now dean of the University of North Carolina School of Law.

Professor Baldus, a longtime faculty member at the University of Iowa College of Law, and two colleagues, Charles Pulaski and George Woodworth, set out to test that assumption. Their study examined more than 2,000 murders in Georgia, controlling for some 230 variables.

The study’s findings have often been misunderstood. They did not show that blacks were significantly more likely to be sentenced to death than whites. What the study found was that people accused of killing white victims were four times as likely to be sentenced to death as those accused of killing black victims. In other words, a death sentence often hinged not on the race of the defendant but on the race of the victim.

Professor Baldus’s work was meticulous, said Anthony G. Amsterdam, a law professor at New York University and an authority on the death penalty. “Dave had a unique genius for digging into masses of messy factual information and discovering crucial human forces at work behind the purportedly impersonal administration of criminal law,” Professor Amsterdam said.

The study was presented to the Supreme Court by lawyers for Warren McCleskey, a black man sentenced to die for killing a white police officer. “David was really the whole foundation of the case,” Dean Boger said.

But Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., writing for the majority, said individual criminal cases cannot be decided on the basis of social science research, however sound.

“In light of the safeguards designed to minimize racial bias in the process, the fundamental value of jury trial in our criminal justice system, and the benefits that discretion provides to criminal defendants,” Justice Powell wrote, “we hold that the Baldus study does not demonstrate a constitutionally significant risk of racial bias affecting the Georgia capital sentencing process.”

In 1991, after he retired, Justice Powell was asked whether there was any vote he would have liked to change.

“Yes,” he told his biographer, John C. Jeffries Jr. “McCleskey v. Kemp.”

Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired last year and who was one of the dissenters, wrote about the case in December in The New York Review of Books.

“That the murder of black victims is treated as less culpable than the murder of white victims provides a haunting reminder of once-prevalent Southern lynchings,” Justice Stevens wrote.

David Christopher Baldus was born in Wheeling, W.Va., on June 23, 1935. He was educated at Dartmouth College, the University of Pittsburgh and Yale Law School. He joined the University of Iowa College of Law faculty in 1969.

Professor Baldus wrote two books, “Statistical Proof of Discrimination” and “Equal Justice and the Death Penalty.”

Professor Baldus’s first marriage ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a sister, Sue Gittins of Port Charlotte, Fla.; two daughters from his first marriage, Katherine Baldus and Helen Baldus, both of Brooklyn; and four stepchildren, Jeffrey Carman of Paducah, Ky., Craig Carman of Iowa City, and Kate Robinson and Glen Carman, both of Chicago.

In a 1995 speech on what he called “the death penalty dialogue between law and social science,” Professor Baldus considered what had led the Supreme Court to allow executions to proceed in the face of his study.

“Perhaps most important, in my estimation,” he said, “is that race-of-victim discrimination does not raise the same sort of moral concerns as race-of-defendant discrimination — even though, from a constitutional standpoint, discrimination on the basis of any racial aspect of the case is illegitimathttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gife.”

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UI law prof Baldus passes away at 75
Brittany Trevick
The Daily Iowan
June 14, 2011, p. A1
David Baldus wasn’t afraid to break the rules.

On a hiking trip to Canada with his wife, the two of them entered a trail not recommended for groups of fewer than six because of bears.

Instead of turning back, they continued on and shouted to scare off the bears.

“He was walking in front and shouting parts of Shakespeare,” said his wife, Joyce Carman. “The little parts that he loved so much.”

Baldus, a Joseph B. Tye Professor in the University of Iowa College of Law, died Monday morning after a 15-monthlong battle with cancer. He was 75.

He was a nationally renown scholar and lawyer, whose empirical work analyzed race discrimination in the United States, especially with concerns to the death penalty.

“His empirical work related to race and the death penalty was of really singular importance,” said UI law Professor Gerald Wetlaufer. “We’ll miss him a lot.”

Baldus was born in Wheeling, W.V. in 1935. He received a B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1957. He loved traveling, sailing, and opera music, Carman said.

Baldus leaves behind two daughters, four stepchildren and eight grandchildren.

Daughter Katherine had planned to be married this weekend.

“He had hoped to be well enough to go to this wedding,” Carman said. “Truly one of his goals was to get to his daughter Katherine.”

Baldus came to Iowa in 1969 from a private practice in Pittsburgh. In 1976, he met Carman after friends set them up on a blind date. Four years later, they were married.

“[David] had a witty sense of humor … a lot of people didn’t see it, but when they did, it was quite effective,” Carman said.

During his time at the UI, Baldus published two books and many articles about race discrimination and the death penalty.

He was considered an expert in death-penalty law and litigation, said Eric Andersen, an associate dean of the UI law school and a close friend of Baldus’. He was continually asked to be an expert witness and was consulted in the world of law practice.

Baldus made an impact, not only in the academic world but also in his personal life.

“He has an infectious personality, he had a lively mind, and he had the ability to subordinate his own ego in order to get other people to work on a project constructively,” said Charles Pulaski, a longtime friend who cowrote several studies with Baldus.

And those close to Baldus said he left an impression not only in the courtroom but to those close to him.

“He is a great loss to those who knew him personally because he was an incredibly decent man, a wonderful colleague, a good friend and a giant of an intellectual leader,” said Arthur Bonfield, a UI law-school associate dean.

A funeral will be held at Lensing Funeral Home in Iowa City in July.

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