April 2, 2009
Following up on my SHS post from earlier today that disagreed with Sally Satel’s push to legalize a market in live kidney donation to ease the organ shortage, I did a little digging on the risks. Although the surgery is … Read More
January 20, 2009
The agitation to increase the pool of potential organ donors by allowing people who are unquestionably not dead, but who have profound cognitive disabilities, to be killed for their organs continues. An article in the American Medical News, primarily concerned … Read More
December 15, 2008
It is interesting how some things never change. In the 1990s, Jack Kevorkian’s death circus lit a wildfire of debate over assisted suicide, with the default position being that since “terminally ill” people are going to commit suicide because the … Read More
December 9, 2008
Media is so pornographic these days, and not just about matters sexual. A Brit tabloid has published photos from an assisted suicide, depictions taken from a soon-to-be-aired television show. From the story: It will be the first time an assisted … Read More
December 8, 2008
And the tales of medical woe continue to mount in the UK as the NHS collapses. Now, there is a serious shortage of emergency room doctors. From the story: The College of Emergency Medicine has issued a report calling for … Read More
December 5, 2008
The New York Times has noticed the crass utilitarianism that permeates the UK’s NHS–run by the Orwellian-named bioethics board National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)–and seems to be softening the ground for our accepting similar utilitarian overlords here. … Read More
December 4, 2008
Dick Sosey is an American professor who teaches at the University of Alberta, Canada, and is an expert on issue of discrimination against people with disabilities. In response to a story published in the Denver Post about the murder of … Read More
December 2, 2008
A disturbing column in today’s LA Times has a woman wanting to “let” her Dad go by removing his feeding tube–which would really be to make him go, since there could only be one outcome from such a decision. Dad … Read More
December 1, 2008
One of the great difficulties we have in debating important cultural and ethical issues is the lack of a common frame of reference. Or to put it another way, when language is used very sloppily–whether negligently or intentionally–it becomes almost … Read More
November 21, 2008
Italy regulated IVF, only permitting 3 to be created at once and requiring that all embryos that come into being in the procedure be implanted. Had the USA implemented such a policy, we wouldn’t have 400,000 embryos in deep freeze. … Read More
November 20, 2008
Comment Visions, an international on-line debate forum, asked my view on the following question: Biotechnology has been hailed as the wonder industry of the 21st Century, but are we capable of controlling it? Here is my reply: Biotechnology offers tremendous … Read More
November 13, 2008
All of the advocacy and tub thumping promoting the euphemist phrase “death with dignity,” accompanied the widespread media and the public support for the suicides of people with disabilities or serious illnesses, sends the insidious message to similarly situated people … Read More
November 10, 2008
After Washington voters passed I-1000 legalizing Oregon-style assisted suicide, First Things asked me to weigh in with some analysis. I look at the matter from two angles. The first is political. I noted that the assisted suicide movement had been … Read More
October 31, 2008
I try to be a realist and an idealist. I promote human exceptionalism, knowing that as an imperfect species, we are unlikely to ever fully achieve the dream of universal human equality. But the only way to get very close, … Read More
October 29, 2008
Why do media so often describe non-dying people who want assisted suicide as terminally ill? Is it on purpose? Mostly, I don’t think so. I think they have accepted a false premise; that assisted suicide is about terminal illness. So … Read More
October 29, 2008
Debby Purdy, the UK woman struggling with progressive MS, went to court seeking an order assuring her that should she want to die, that her husband could assist her and face no legal consequences. (This case was similar to that … Read More
October 28, 2008
Barbara Wagner was refused life-extending chemotherapy by Oregon Medicaid but explicitly told that the State would pay for her assisted suicide. That is the future if we accept the death agenda. In this No on I-1000 Ad, Barbara Wagner–who has … Read More
October 27, 2008
For years we have been warned that there would be a “brain drain” if we did not pour billions into ESCR and human cloning research. I have called this the “blank check” demand. Meanwhile, in Brave New Britain–the country that … Read More
October 26, 2008
This is so typical. A Swiss gynecologist death doctor named Alois Geiger admits helping with the suicide people outside his medical specialty. He is a gynecologist. From the column: Should one not be allowed to make use of medical means … Read More
October 26, 2008
A disturbing study has been published indicating that many doctors prescribe placebos instead of efficacious medications to their patients. From the story: Many rheumatologists and general internal medicine physicians in the US say they regularly prescribe “placebo treatments” including active … Read More
October 25, 2008
I have warned against this from time to time, but it always bears repeating. The hype tossed around so casually in the great stem cell debate–mostly but not exclusively by ESCR proponents–has raised hopes so high that some people are … Read More
October 24, 2008
The NEJM has an editorial out in which it claims to tackle the three “inconvenient truths” about health care. From the editorial: 1. Over the past 30 years, U.S. health care expenditures have grown 2.8% per annum faster, on average, … Read More
October 23, 2008
Here’s an exciting animal experiment. Scientists found an adult prostate stem cell in mice and one cell grew an entire new prostate gland. From the story. Here we identify CD117 (c-kit, stem cell factor receptor) as a new marker of … Read More
October 23, 2008
One of the disturbing areas of biotechnology that deserves more scrutiny than it has heretofore received is the “savior sibling” concept. A savior sibling is created via IVF and tested prior to implantation to match the DNA of a born … Read More
October 22, 2008
I have always said that if you want to see why things seem to be going so wrong in bioethics, just look at the professional literature at the most elite levels, in which a more candid view is presented than … Read More
