January 13, 2007
You will probably have to be a lawyer to enjoy this post: The American political system is fascinating. Our founders established checks and balances and divided sovereignties to prevent any single governmental body or institution from gaining too much power. … Read More
January 12, 2007
Euthanasia activists in Belgium want to expand the law to permit the euthanizing of children and the mentally incompetent. Is anyone surprised?
January 12, 2007
This is rather shocking, but somehow, not surprising: According to an advocacy campaign to increase donations being mounted in Scotland by Enable Scotland, which helps developmentally and other disabled people live independent lives, animal charities help receive higher public support … Read More
January 12, 2007
This is so typical of the euthanasia movement: On one hand, they want doctors allowed to render what is essentially a non medical act–intentionally facilitating suicide–thereby slapping a patina of professional respectability upon the act. Then, on the other hand, … Read More
January 12, 2007
Charles Krauthammer is not pro life. He is not, as far as I know, religious. He is an MD and a psychiatrist, who became one of America’s most erudite pundits after becoming paraplegic in a swimming accident years ago. This, … Read More
January 11, 2007
The disability rights community is making things hot for the doctors who took out Ashley’s uterus, cut off her breast buds, and subjected her to two years of hormone injections to keep her small. Complaints are being filed, calls for … Read More
January 11, 2007
As expected, the House of Representatives passed the bill to overturn President Bush’s embryonic stem cell funding bill. But the last election only amounted to a gain of 15 additional votes in support of the bill, from the previous high … Read More
January 11, 2007
According to this story, Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) will vote against the bill to overturn President Bush’s policy that restricts federal funding of ESCR to cell lines created before 8/9/01. (Typically, the story gets it wrong by claiming that the … Read More
January 11, 2007
Here is some very good news: Robert Schindler, the father of Terri Schiavo, is improving. Bobby Schindler told me via e-mail: My father is in his first week of rehabilitation to help return the strength he lost on his right … Read More
January 11, 2007
What an irony: On one hand, society is getting pretty libertarian. We are not to judge or shun each other for personal behavior. On the other hand, this injunction does not apply to smokers, who can be castigated from here … Read More
January 10, 2007
This story out of the UK is of concern. Cloned animals are having, shall we say, troubles. No surprise there. Consequently, cloners are keeping some of them penned in and causing stress, leading to aggression, particularly among cloned pigs. Their … Read More
January 10, 2007
There has been tremendous interest in the media about Ashley and the decision by her parents to keep her small. Here is a radio interview I did today on The Eagle, KSSZ from Columbia, MO. The host is Derek Gilbert.
January 10, 2007
My wonderful and dear friend, Mark Pickup, has started a blog called Human Life Matters. I met Mark circa 1996 when we both appeared at an anti-euthanasia conference sponsored by the Compassionate Healthcare Network in Vancouver. We hit it off … Read More
January 10, 2007
A coroner’s inquest has determined that the elderly woman in the UK, whom some family members claimed was denied sustenance, died of natural causes. She was not provided a feeding tube, based on what seems to be very vague indications … Read More
January 10, 2007
I mean this only half facetiously: Apparently there has been another cloning scandal, as reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education (no link available). An unpublished study had claimed to have obtain embryonic stem cells from cloned monkey embryos. Not … Read More
January 10, 2007
Yuval Levin, the former White House policy guy for biotechnology, and now with the Ethics and Public Policy Center (which former Senator Rick Santorum just joined), has a fine piece in today’s NRO that bursts the bubble, in an entirely … Read More
January 10, 2007
The disability rights movement is really up in arms about the non therapeutic surgeries imposed upon Ashley. Not Dead Yet has weighed in with its own press release (released on the 6th but only linkable now). Here are a few … Read More
January 9, 2007
I am often asked how and why I became an activist on behalf of human exceptionalism. I sure never planned it! Nor, when I began this work, was I aware of the depth and scope of the issues in which … Read More
January 9, 2007
The never shy Steven Drake has blistered the doctors who performed the surgery on Ashley in an open letter. Here is what he wrote in full: I am writing to you wearing several hats. My first hat is as a … Read More
January 9, 2007
People rightly ridiculed then Senator John Edwards when he claimed that if people voted for Senator John Kerry, “people like [the paralyzed] Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.” This was rightly … Read More
January 9, 2007
Most of biotechnology is ethical, efficacious, and has nothing to do with embryonic stem cell research or human cloning. Here is one such area of beneficial research: Scientists have genetically modified skin, which can be applied when the burns are … Read More
January 9, 2007
I have spent the last few days doing a lot of media about Ashley, the disabled little girl subjected to invasive surgeries and hormone injections to keep her small and physically immature. I have been quite heartened that other than … Read More
January 9, 2007
This story out of the UK is disturbing and a warning about where the “quality of life” ethic can take us. A 91-year old had a stroke. Rather than treat her, her family charges, doctors instead let her lie in … Read More
January 9, 2007
This is very good news for dying patients and their families. A new study has been released demonstrating that pain control using opioids (narcotics) in end of life care “poses an extremely small risk of hastened death in this population … Read More
January 8, 2007
I am surprised and pleased: The story about the versatility of amniotic fluid stem cells was major front page news in today’s San Francisco Chronicle. The story, byline Carl Hall, also had one of the fairest presentations of the stem … Read More
