November 1, 2024
(Christianity Today) – November 1 marks All Saints’ Day on the church calendar, when many denominations remember the communion of all believers of all time, including the faithfully departed. That the church instituted this holy day should come as no … Read More
October 31, 2024
(Science) – Revised Declaration of Helsinki stresses need for equity, protection of vulnerable groups, and research integrity The Declaration of Helsinki—a foundational text that outlines international ethical principles for medical research—has undergone one of the most extensive revisions since it … Read More
October 21, 2024
(Aeon) – While Chalmers’s p-zombie is a part of a philosophical hypothetical concerned with the nature of mind and consciousness, the non-philosophical take on people as NPCs is deeply morally worrying. Having taught and written for a number of years … Read More
October 14, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Yann LeCun, an NYU professor and senior researcher at Meta Platforms, says warnings about the technology’s existential peril are ‘complete B.S.’ Yann LeCun helped give birth to today’s artificial-intelligence boom. But he thinks many experts are … Read More
October 8, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist whose pioneering work on deep learning in the 1980s and ’90s underpins all of the most powerful AI models in the world today, has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in … Read More
October 7, 2024
(CNN) – The 2024 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to US scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their work on the discovery of microRNA, a molecule that governs how cells in the body function. Their … Read More
October 7, 2024
(New York Times) – After I spent more than 50 years chasing and fighting viruses, one fought back and nearly took me down. I speak of the West Nile virus, delivered by the deadliest animal on the planet: the mosquito. … Read More
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
