December 5, 2007
Robert Latimer murdered his 12-year-old-daughter Tracy in 1993 because she was disabled by cerebral palsy. (The picture is of Tracy and her father.) While many Canadians supported Latimer as a loving father who put his daughter out of misery, he … Read More
December 4, 2007
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, once dedicated to funding human cloning and ESC research, has shifted gears. Now, it is going to also fund alternative research that does not create or destroy human embryos. From the story: California’s stem … Read More
December 3, 2007
The New York Times Magazine article about assisted suicide, byline Daniel Bergner, continues to amaze because his analysis actually looks behind the curtain of gooey euphemisms and blithe paeans to “choice.” The article, which I first referenced this weekend, is … Read More
December 2, 2007
With a government like this, terminally ill people don’t need enemies. Back in the late 1990s, federal bureaucrats began an assault on hospice known ridiculously as “Operation Restore Trust.” The idea was this: If a hospice patient on Medicare didn’t … Read More
December 1, 2007
Booth Gardner, former governor of Washington and a very rich man, intends to buy a law for Washington legalizing assisted suicide. His opening salvo comes in an extended piece in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. The piece is actually … Read More
November 30, 2007
More trouble in Proposition 71-Land: The California State Controller–in what I must say is a gutsy move given the politics of the matter–has ordered an audit of the CIRM citing charges of conflict of interest. From the story: California’s top … Read More
November 30, 2007
Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist who favored ESCR funding but also saw that the scientists would never be satisfied with being limited to leftover embryos, has a column on the great iPSC breakthrough. He writes (prematurely in my view) … Read More
November 29, 2007
I have this theory, which as I have said previously, isn’t even that–at best a notion or a wisp of a thought–that anyone seriously involved with human cloning will have it turn to dust in his or her hands. And … Read More
November 28, 2007
Over at The Corner, Ramesh Ponnuru exposes some hypocricy from a Newsweek science reporter named Sharon Begley. When Bush limited funding, it was taking the last hope away from sick and dying patients. Now that iPSCs have been discovered, stem … Read More
November 27, 2007
If anyone thought that the pro human cloners would fold up their tents and steal away after the news was released that patient-specific, pluripotent stem cells had been derived from normal skin cells, they just didn’t understand how fervently some … Read More
November 25, 2007
Kathryn Tucker, the lawyer for Compassion and Choices (formerly Hemlock Society) and I debate assisted suicide (which she insists on calling “aid in dying”) Tuesday night at the Holocaust Museum of Houston. Our presentations are part of a much larger … Read More
November 25, 2007
60 Minutes and Anderson Cooper did a good job tonight on the hope that now clearly exists for at least some patients in a minimally conscious state. The show focused on the Ambien awakenings, which we have discussed here many … Read More
November 25, 2007
The New York Times has a humongous but very disappointing editorial in today’s paper about the various issues we will have to address as a nation to keep health care costs down. Unfortunately, the editorialist ignores the big issues and … Read More
November 23, 2007
California is once again sinking into the quicksand of red ink. Latest estimates show that the state must cut its budget by $10 billion! This will come out of the hides of university students, poor people needing health care, and … Read More
November 22, 2007
As we celebrate the creation and potential of induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, adult stem cell research continues to bear fruit in animal and human studies. The latest is a truly exciting find out of Stanford University: Blood stem cells taken … Read More
November 21, 2007
The NRO has published a mini-symposium containing the views of William Hurlbut, Jennifer Lahl (of the CBC), Carter Snead, and other notable commentators about the great stem cell breakthrough. They are all worth reading. But I thought Leon Kass’s perspective … Read More
November 19, 2007
Why don’t the American media report these stories (as if I didn’t know)? A new experimental gene therapy treatment seems to alleviate symptoms in Parkinson’s disease. From the Telegraph story: Evidence that a breakthrough has been achieved in gene therapy … Read More
November 18, 2007
The cultural ethic of “choice ubber alles” is growing increasingly radical. We have seen previously, that a few bioethicists have advocated that doctors be permitted to cut off healthy limbs of people suffering from Body Identity Integrity Disorder (BIID), also … Read More
November 16, 2007
Well, this is some unexpected good news: Ian Wilmut is turning his back on human cloning. Wilmut has had several positions on this morally contentious and volatile issue. In his book The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological … Read More
November 14, 2007
What a dumb headline from the AP: “Court Clears Way for Egg Rights Showdown.” No, there is no attempt to give eggs any rights. The story actually involves the court’s approval for backers of an initiative in Colorado to obtain … Read More
November 12, 2007
Debra J. Saunders, the syndicated columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle (better known as Secondhand Smokette), had a good column in yesterday’s paper (“”American Vampire””) about the growing problem of buying and selling human organs. (This follows up on a … Read More
November 12, 2007
This story in The Independent could mean that the attempt to clone human embryos–so far pretty much a bust–could get a big boost: A technical breakthrough has enabled scientists to create for the first time dozens of cloned embryos from … Read More
November 12, 2007
A few years ago, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a non-binding (as are all UN pronouncements) resolution urging all member nations to outlaw all human cloning. But now, UN bureaucrats ignore this approach–the only one that would truly … Read More
November 10, 2007
For years now, I have been arguing that the siren song of human cloning has led many among “the scientists” to dream the dreams of the omnipotent, to toss aside the ethical beliefs of the society they are supposed to … Read More
November 9, 2007
We, the rich (compared to the rest of the world), the lovers of “choice,” the oh, so liberal and enlightened, seem to be moving toward a new form of colonialism. Only this time, it isn’t about copper mines or timber … Read More
