Most of us instinctively agree that the human brain and the computer are qualitatively different—that the difference between human and computer intelligence is one, not of degree, but of kind. If you were wondering, however, why this is true, Ari N. Schulman at the New Atlantis has a wonderful . . . . Continue Reading »
Remember when we were told that IVF, coupled with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), would only be used to prevent serious genetic health maladies from being passed to the next generation? That was never true, of course. The intent was to get people to accept the principle that parents should . . . . Continue Reading »
President Obama still hasn’t rescinded the Bush stem cell policy. He will, but it may matter a lot less than people once thought. The IPSC advances continue, opening the door possibly for a way forward in biotechnology that all Americans can support. And, it is reported in the Washington Post! . . . . Continue Reading »
The announcement in November of 2006 that researchers in the United States and Japan had succeeded in turning skin cells into what appeared to be the equivalent of embryonic stem cells transformed the landscape of stem cell science, and the related ethical debate. If Democrats in Washington ever . . . . Continue Reading »
This is how bad things have become: “They associated us with the cookies and the camping, and those were both scary concepts,” said Amelia de Dios Romero, the Girl Scouts’ multicultural marketing manager. “Selling cookies, to them, meant going door-to-door to strangers, and . . . . Continue Reading »
I knew the assisted suicide crowd would try to make the four defendants in the assisted suicide of a man who had been treated successfully of cancer, but was undergoing difficult reconstruction surgery and needed a hip replacement, into some kind of civil rights-type heroes. Toward this end, some . . . . Continue Reading »
There’s a new fund, established at Notre Dame, under the Center for Ethics and Culture, called “The Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life.” It’s a little hard to find through the man pages of the Notre Dame website—and why, exactly, is that? why isn’t the school . . . . Continue Reading »
The political scientist Francis Canavan died on Thursday , February 26, at the age of ninety-one—yet another of the great good ones lost to us in recent months. Among his works for First Things were: ” The Popes and the Economy ” in 1991, ” Letting Go How We Die ” in . . . . Continue Reading »
John Celmer, the man whose death is the subject of the Final Exit Network assisted suicide criminal charges, was not terminally ill. Indeed, he had apparently beaten his cancer. From the story: John Celmer was making what his doctor considered “remarkable progress” last spring after two . . . . Continue Reading »
Assisted suicide advocates pretend that they support hospice, but their work undermines the entire concept, or at least, twists it into something that would be unrecognizable by its creator, Dame Cecily Saunders. But now a lawyer named Michael Kaminkow, who is defending two of the Final Exit Network . . . . Continue Reading »
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