It seems to me that when someone suffers a serious illness or injury, the benefit of doubt should be given to life. This isn’t to say that life support should never terminated (although I certainly think it is immoral to remove a feeding tube based on “quality of life” . . . . Continue Reading »
I could spend all of my time here at Secondhand Smoke illustrating how media refuses to report stories about biotechnology accurately. But that would get old and there are many other things to write about. But this story is just too much: The AP has produced a story, byline Sam Hananel, that makes . . . . Continue Reading »
A UK woman named Maureen Messent has come forward to admit that she murdered her great aunt in the 1960s, stating she was right because the aunt, Eileen O’Sullivan, was near death from lung cancer. This is a typical apologia for euthanasia that appears regularly in the media, which are somehow . . . . Continue Reading »
There was a time when people who wanted to hurt themselves were protected from self destructive behavior. No more. Today, we facilitate self harm, as indicated by this story in which UK nurses want to distribute sterile blades to people who want to cut themselves. . . . . Continue Reading »
It seems that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has donated $100 million to support embryonic stem cell research. This is being touted in the media as somehow opposing President Bush’s embryonic stem cell policy (which provides federal funding only for stem cell lines already in existence on . . . . Continue Reading »
I hope this story has it right: Apparently in the wake of the Woo-suk Hwang scandal, South Korea is musing with outlawing all human cloning. Good. Cloning is immoral and an affront to human dignity. Moreover, once we start down the cloning road, the experiments would not long be restricted to cloned . . . . Continue Reading »
One of the misperceptions that arose out of the Terri Schiavo case is that people have to be permanently unconscious before having their tube feeding withdrawn. Not true. Conscious cognitively disabled patients are dehydrated to death in this country all of the time. It is one thing if a person . . . . Continue Reading »
Now, they are looking into the illegal purchase of eggs in the Hwang scandal. Meanwhile, there are legislative proposals to ban the sale of human eggs here in the states. But as seen in an article on egg extraction in the New England Journal of Medicine, some bioethicists promote the purchase and . . . . Continue Reading »
As to be reported by the Journal of the American Medical Association, in human trials, people with severe lupus have received substantial benefit from their own bone marrow stem cells. This can be a risky procedure because part of the therapy is destroying the immune system with chemotherapy before . . . . Continue Reading »
It appears that Haleigh, the 11-year-old girl who was beaten nearly to death and then deprived of the right to fight for life by court-sanctioned removal of her feeding tube, may have a second chance. She will be reexamined to measure her current apparent responsiveness.But be warned: Just because . . . . Continue Reading »
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