September 25, 2024
(Associated Press) – A federal judge is allowing more than 8,000 Catholic employers nationwide to reject government regulations that protect workers seeking abortions and fertility care. In a sharply worded order, U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor, of Bismarck, North Dakota, … Read More
September 20, 2024
(The Hedgehog Review) – During the last fifty years, the field of medical humanities—particularly the subfields of bioethics, narrative medicine, and social justice—has tried to help doctors deal with some of these issues. But the new environment in which doctors … Read More
September 4, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – What will the roadway scruples of AI look like? Artificial intelligence will hold sway on our roadways as we edge closer to fully self-driving cars—a shift that many carmakers say will make driving safer. David Margines, … Read More
August 23, 2024
(The Atlantic via MSN) – Rejoice offers conventional IVF, but it more routinely performs mini-IVF, in which a patient receives oral fertility medications and only a few days of low-dose hormone shots. The clinic also offers natural-cycle IVF, which uses … Read More
August 23, 2024
The Linacre Quarterly (vol. 91, no. 3, 2024) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
August 21, 2024
(Axios) – Minnesota first lady Gwen Walz disclosed new details about the family’s fertility story this week, clarifying that they did not use in-vitro fertilization, as previous comments had implied. Why it matters: As both governor and the vice presidential … Read More
August 9, 2024
(New York Times) – Dr. J. Robin Warren, the Australian pathologist who shared a Nobel Prize for discovering that most stomach ulcers were caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori — and not, as had been widely believed, stress, alcohol or … Read More
August 9, 2024
(Popular Mechanics via MSN) – An American computer scientist-turned-futurist, Kurzweil has long believed that humanity is headed toward what’s known as “the singularity,” when man and machine merge. In 1999, Kurzweil theorized that artificial general intelligence would be achieved once … Read More
August 8, 2024
(Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) – It is often said that autonomous weapons could help minimize the needless horrors of war. Their vision algorithms could be better than humans at distinguishing a schoolhouse from a weapons depot. They won’t be … Read More
August 5, 2024
(The Guardian) – Sam Altman’s ChatGPT promises to transform the global economy. But it also poses an enormous threat. Here, a scientist who appeared with Altman before the US Senate on AI safety flags up the danger in AI – … Read More
August 1, 2024
(New York Times) – With years of fractures, surgeries, hardware and pain, Olympians can list their injuries as readily as their achievements. Wear and tear naturally degrades human bodies, even the most talented ones. But performing at the elite level, … Read More
July 24, 2024
(CBC News) – Nearly 45,000 Canadians died through MAID between 2016, the year it became legal in Canada, and 2022. It has been widely discussed and debated, and continues to be controversial, especially as eligibility has expanded. But an often … Read More
July 23, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – The White House’s voluntary AI commitments have brought better red-teaming practices and watermarks, but no meaningful transparency or accountability. One year ago, on July 21, 2023, seven leading AI companies—Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft,and OpenAI—committed … Read More
July 18, 2024
(Aeon) – Selfishness channels ambition, envy drives competition, pride aids the win. Does it take a bad person to be a good athlete? Globally, there are 567 track and field athletes currently ineligible to compete in the sport due to … Read More
July 16, 2024
(MedPage Today) – Peter Buxtun, the whistleblower who revealed that the U.S. government allowed hundreds of Black men in rural Alabama to go untreated for syphilis in what became known as the Tuskegee study, has died. He was 86. Buxtun … Read More
July 12, 2024
(BBC) – Members of an Australian religious group have gone on trial accused of killing an eight-year-old diabetic girl by denying her medical care and offering prayer instead. Elizabeth Struhs was found dead at a home in Toowoomba – about … Read More
July 9, 2024
(Christianity Today) – Francis Collins, the former longtime head of the National Institutes of Health and founder of BioLogos, has seen deaths in his work as a physician and researcher. But some of those have been personal: He watched his … Read More
July 9, 2024
(GEN) – Porteus is a scientific co-founder of CRISPR Therapeutics, the company that launched the exa-cel CRISPR trial that culminated in the approval of Casgevy in December 2023. With the latest companies he has co-founded—first Graphite Bio, now Kamau Therapeutics— … Read More
June 20, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – A resolution affirms the moral goodness of new life, but not of all means to achieve it. The Southern Baptist Convention—whose nearly 13 million members make it the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.—is often described … Read More
June 17, 2024
(New York Times) – Dr. Walker, 39, first publicly opposed in vitro fertilization five years ago, co-writing an article titled “Breaking Evangelicalism’s Silence on IVF” for the website of the evangelical organization the Gospel Coalition, which ran a companion essay by a … Read More
June 14, 2024
(WBUR) – When news broke last June that bodies donated to Harvard Medical School were stolen and sold, it instantly became a scandal. But roll the tape back a few hundred years, and grave robbing, body stealing and the ravaging of cadavers were commonplace … Read More
June 14, 2024
(Associated Press) – Pope Francis challenged leaders of the world’s wealthy democracies Friday to keep human dignity foremost in developing and using artificial intelligence, warning that such powerful technology risks turning human relations themselves into mere algorithms. (Read More)
June 13, 2024
(Wired) – Ray Kurzweil rejects death. The 76-year-old scientist and engineer has spent much of his time on earth arguing that humans can not only take advantage of yet-to-be-invented medical advances to live longer, but also ultimately merge with machines, … Read More
June 12, 2024
(Android Authority) – Speaking with Mr. Astray, we learned his intentions behind submitting his photo to an AI photo contest. It’s pretty much what you’d expect: “Of course, I feel bad about leading the jury astray, but I think that … Read More
June 12, 2024
(New York Times) – Southern Baptists, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, voted on Wednesday to oppose the use of in vitro fertilization. The vote was an indication that ordinary evangelicals are increasingly open to arguments that equate embryos with human … Read More