Nearly two months ago, I posted an entry about the science journal Nature Neuroscience’s unfair editorial attack on Dr. Maureen Condic because she dared to question embryonic stem cell research dogma that ES cells offer the best hope for treatments, in the religious journal First Things. . . . . Continue Reading »
No, not the one in London: In Los Angeles, where animal rights terrorists claim to have planted a bomb under the car of a UCLA primate researcher. From the L.A. Times story:The FBI and the Los Angeles Fire Department are investigating an anonymous claim that animal rights extremists placed an . . . . Continue Reading »
The creativity of biotechnologists sometimes astounds. In this instance, as reported in Scientific American, scientists transformed one type of bacteria into another by transferring the latter’s total genetic makeup into the former. Why transmute one species into another?As radical as this . . . . Continue Reading »
Keep in mind this isn’t peer reviewed, hasn’t been replicated, and was released as part of a PR move, but get this:From May 2006 to January 2007, 25 patients with SCI were treated at Luis Vernaza Hospital in Guayaquil, Ecuador. They were treated with autologous bone marrow stem . . . . Continue Reading »
The Hastings Center Report is probably the most prestigious bioethics journal in the world. Thus, when an opinion article appears in its pages, the ideas expressed are definitely in play among the bioethical elite. I bring this up because an article appeared in the May-June edition advocating . . . . Continue Reading »
I have been watching this case since it first hit the news in Arizona. On May 30, Jesse Ramirez was arguing with his wife when their SUV rolled over. He was left unconscious. The doctors said his case was “hopeless,” that he would never wake up. The wife moved him to a hospice and had . . . . Continue Reading »
We often think of “suicide tourism,” as sick or despairing people traveling to a suicide friendly venue like Switzerland to have help shuffling off this mortal coil. Several years ago, George Exoo, then a Unitarian minister, did the suicide circuit in reverse. Admitting to running the . . . . Continue Reading »
The UK’s National Health Care service is such a mess that some are now openly calling for explicit health care rationing. (Of course, ad hoc or sub rosa rationing already exists within the NHS.) One idea, according to this article in the Scotsman, is to make up a list of treatments that would . . . . Continue Reading »
Some of our discussions here at SHS about human exceptionalism have considered the prospect for Artificial Intelligence (AI), and engaged the advocacy by some that such intelligent computers or robots—meaning those that had attained true consciousness—be declared persons and accorded . . . . Continue Reading »
A Canadian woman with MS traveled to Switzerland with her husband for assisted suicide. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has demanded a legal investigation. I doubt that will happen, but I post this story because I want y’all to look at the way in which the reporter romanticized family . . . . Continue Reading »
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