A higher good can be a slippery slope

There are a lot of third rails in my experience. The biggest and most consistent one has always been abortion, because women are never supposed to be against the right to choose (to kill your unborn child).

That parenthetical signals why it's been a third rail: people who disagree with me don't think that the fetus is a child, and some of them question whether it's even human.

Some others don't want the headache of having to deal with angry women, particularly politicians begging for votes, so they try and avoid the subject altogether. No one wants to be electrocuted near the ballot box.

Another third rail is the MeToo movement, or rather, the use of sexual assault to gain political and social advantage at the expense of due process. Men are hesitant to question the veracity of a woman's story of abuse if it hasn't actually been proven beyond "but I said it happened!," and women who question it get vitriolic messages about "betraying the sisterhood." I have the third degree burns to prove it.

This week, though, I encountered a third rail that I didn't even know existed, namely, Dr. Mengele. When news leaked that Dr. Anthony Fauci had facilitated the funding of horrific experiments on puppies, I posted this on Facebook:

"Dr. Mengele: Follow the science. Dr. Fauci: Okay, will do."

I expected that people would be angry about the attack on Fauci, who is venerated in some circles even though his halo has dimmed over the past year and a half. Personally, I admired the man a great deal until I realized that he was much too concerned with pleasing politicians of a certain ideology and less concerned with following that blessed, pure and uncontroverted science he keeps using as a Super Hero force field. When he was being questioned by another scientist, Sen. Rand Paul, MD, Fauci tried to make it seem as if the guy who went to medical school before he went to Congress didn't know a viral load from a viral tweet.

But I digress. The real reason that I've soured on Dr. Fauci is that he's been, to use as kind a word as I can find, disingenuous. Many of the things that he's said about wearing masks and the need for boosters and whether Santa is going to be coming down the chimney in a hazmat suit have been changed and revised so many times that I'm beginning to look at his words as suggestions.

That, and the fact that he gave money to people who torture puppies in the name of science. While the information was leaked back in August, it only went mainstream this week, when Rep. Nancy Mace authored a letter signed onto by both Democrat and GOP colleagues asking the doctor for clarification about why drugged puppies were placed in cages with their heads immobilized so that hungry, infected sand flies could have at them.

An added horror was that the puppies' vocal cords were cut so they couldn't yelp or cry out in pain, thereby saving the "scientists" engaged in the experiments from being annoyed.

I didn't think it was a stretch to compare these acts to the horrific abuse of "science" employed by Jozef Mengele on the victims of the Holocaust. It's not about the victims, it's about the diabolical ability of "scientists" to justify torture in the name of medical progress (or whatever they're calling it these days).

I've also made the same comparison when discussing the experiments taking place at the University of Pittsburgh, where the scalps of aborted human children are grafted onto mice. It's real, and it's happening, and the university has even boasted about it. One of the only reasons we know about it is because of the courageous work being done by my friend Dan Bartowiak and his colleagues at the Pennsylvania Family Institute. Don't believe me? Check out this website:

https://www.ncregister.com/blog/how-aborted-children-are-used

For some reason, though, the use of Mengele in connection with research on puppies struck that third rail I was talking about, and I had some Jewish friends reach out to me to express their dismay at the connection. And then there were the folks on Twitter who called me an anti-Semite, which I suppose I get to add to my arsenal of collected bigotries.

I think I understand their position, and why they view any use of Mengele in a context separate and apart from the Holocaust as diminishing the horror of what happened in Nazi Germany.

But, with all due respect and an understanding of history, the abuse and misuse of science to advance some goal that those same scientists consider a higher, social good is a very slippery slope. It is a very easy thing for the researchers at the University of Pittsburgh to pretend that they have nothing in common with Kermit Gosnell, let alone Dr. Mengele, in taking the scalps and back flesh of aborted babies to create hybrid creatures because they are trying to find cures for disease. They can do it, because they are blinded by ambition and nihilism.

It is equally easy for the scientists who tortured puppies to pretend that they were doing it for some greater, unidentified good (and do it on our taxpayer dime) but we should not do it, and we should hold Anthony Fauci responsible for allowing it to happen on his watch.

The unmistakable theme in all of this is that vulnerable innocents are being harmed in the name of what some call science, some call progress and others justifiably call sadism. To make that connection is not to dishonor the victims of the Holocaust, at least not in my opinion.

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Others will likely cling to the belief that I am a bigot, or that at the very least I'm too stupid to understand the difference between captive human beings, unborn children and animals.

I can't change their minds. But I will say this: Any time one group decides that another group, another person, another entity, another race, another religion, another gender or even another sentient creature is less important than its need to advance its goals, desires and peculiar narratives, we are on a slippery slope.

And at the end of that slope is an electrified rail, which will destroy the thing that makes us better than any single scientific principle: Our humanity.

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Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer and columnist.