December 5, 2023
(Vox) – Despite the past two decades of research documenting the tight relationship between psychedelics and meaningful experiences, we still know surprisingly little about what’s actually going on in the brain when psychedelic-assisted meaning sets in. In a paper published … Read More
November 21, 2023
(The Guardian) – Patients who refuse curative treatment often do so based on their values while their flummoxed doctors act from a place of rationalism. Could I have met her expectation of some divine benediction with my grounding in science? … Read More
September 15, 2023
(CNN) – “Previous studies have found that individuals with more purpose are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias,” she said in an email. “Here we look at the relation between purpose and cognitive impairment in the other … Read More
August 14, 2023
(Wired) – Yet the tension between Athens and Jerusalem is like a two-body problem: We can at least understand their interaction. The secular versus religious “culture war” debate is familiar to us; we can predict the shape and sound of … Read More
July 3, 2023
(Gizmodo) – The Vatican is getting in on the AI craze. The Holy See has released a handbook on the ethics of artificial intelligence as defined by the Pope. The guidelines are the result of a partnership between Francis and … Read More
June 30, 2023
Christian Bioethics (vol. 29, no. 1, 2023) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “Why Biblical Arguments for Abortion Fail” by Calum Miller “Christianity and Psychedelic Medicine: A Pastoral Approach” by Bryan McCarthy “What Does it Mean to be … Read More
June 12, 2023
(Gizmodo) – You can ask ChatGPT to construct its own toneless version of the hymn Amazing Grace that replaces any mention of God and religion with computer processes and code (“Amazing grace! How great the code, that processed data and … Read More
June 7, 2023
The Linacre Quarterly (vol. 90, no. 1, 2023) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “Speaking from the Heart—Pastoral Care for Those Suffering from Infertility” by Marie Cabaud Meaney “Did Jesus Die by Suffocation?: An Appraisal of the Evidence” … Read More
May 8, 2023
(Wired) – An advocacy group suing the federal government in a bid to limit nationwide access to the abortion drug mifepristone has wrestled for a decade to conceal the influence its religious beliefs exert over its public policy pursuits. The doctor-focused organization, … Read More
March 30, 2023
(Associated Press) – Growing mental health distress in the ranks carries such grave implications that the U.S. chief of naval operations, Adm. Michael Gilday, answered “suicides” when asked earlier this year what in the security environment kept him up at … Read More
March 27, 2023
(Associated Press) – United States Catholic bishops have issued guidelines that seek to stop Catholic hospitals from providing gender transition care, a move LGBTQ advocates say could harm the physical and emotional health of transgender people within the church. The … Read More
February 2, 2023
(NPR) – Polls show opinions on abortion, like in other faith groups, are deeply divided. According to a survey conducted last March by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, 56% of Muslim Americans think abortion should actually be legal … Read More
December 28, 2022
(ABC News) – Critics of religious freedoms laws often argue they are used to discriminate against LGBTQ people and only protect a conservative Christian worldview. But following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in June, religious abortion-rights … Read More
November 9, 2022
(Associated Press) – Mindfulness meditation worked as well as a standard drug for treating anxiety in the first head-to-head comparison. The study tested a widely used mindfulness program that includes 2 1/2 hours of classes weekly and 45 minutes of … Read More
November 2, 2022
(Associated Press) – The recent explosion of Ebola virus cases in a Ugandan rural community began when defiant residents exhumed a body at night, undoing the work of a safe burial team in order to give the deceased man a … Read More
September 6, 2022
(NPR) – Last week, students returning to campus at Oberlin College in Ohio got a shock: A local news outlet reported that the campus’ student health services would severely limit who could get contraception prescriptions. They would only be given … Read More
August 8, 2022
(NBC News) – A Minnesota jury ruled Friday that a pharmacist who refused to fill a prescription for a morning-after pill because of his “beliefs” did not violate a woman’s civil rights under state law but inflicted emotional harm and … Read More
July 25, 2022
(NPR) – Experiences like Schiefer’s aren’t uncommon. Researchers have found that between 10 and 20% of people who have a documented cardiac arrest — that is, when their hearts stop — will report a near-death experience, says Dr. Bruce Greyson, … Read More
June 21, 2022
(Wired) – Lemoine is a scientist: He holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in computer science from the University of Louisiana and says he left a doctoral program to take the Google job. But he is also a mystic Christian priest, … Read More
May 13, 2022
(Associated Press) – A recently leaked Supreme Court draft opinion suggests that a majority of the nine justices are poised to reverse the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision – a move that would allow individual states to outlaw abortion. Some … Read More
May 10, 2022
(Associated Press) – America’s faithful are bracing — some with cautionary joy and others with looming dread — for the Supreme Court to potentially overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and end the nationwide right to legal abortion. … Read More
March 2, 2022
Journal of Medical Ethics (vol. 47, no. 12, 2021) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “Disclosure of Non-Recent (Historic) Childhood Sexual Abuse: What should Researchers do?” by Sergio A. Silverio, et al. “Audio and Panoramic Video Recording in the Operating … Read More
February 23, 2022
(ABC News) – A dozen U.S. Air Force officers have filed a lawsuit against the federal government after the military denied their religious exemptions to the mandatory COVID-19 vaccine. The officers, mostly from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, … Read More
February 14, 2022
(Associated Press) – Religious exemptions like the one Buffo obtained are increasingly becoming a workaround for unvaccinated hospital and nursing home workers who want to keep their jobs in the face of federal mandates that are going into effect nationwide … Read More
January 19, 2022
(Wall Street Journal) – At Rush University Medical Center, nurses still talk about their feelings of guilt from the early months of treating Covid-19 patients. How they hadn’t known how to best treat desperate patients. How worried they were about … Read More
