Legalized assisted suicide costs us the presence of good people, who had they been given emotional support to help them not commit suicide in their time of health extremis, would be so glad to be alive. I have written frequently of my last hospice patient, Bob, who had been suicidal for 2 1/2 . . . . Continue Reading »
What was the nineteenth century’s worst invention? Choosing just one isn’t an easy task, but one that should be near the top of the list is . . . sexual identity. Few modern creations have wreaked as much havoc on individuals and culture as this medical concept. In a fascinating . . . . Continue Reading »
Recently the World Jewish Congress held a conference in Jerusalem at which famous Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky gave the keynote address. In it he maintained that people need both to be free and to belong. If people lack liberty it leads to tyranny. If people lack identity it leads to decadence, . . . . Continue Reading »
In his much-discussed column last month highlighting Christian Smith’s much-discussed sociology of young adults , David Brooks laments that young adherents of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism aren’t even that moral. “Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now . . . . Continue Reading »
Penn bioethicist Art Caplan and I have had some vocal disagreements over the years, but we tend to think very similarly about organ transplant issues. Now Art and four other bioethicists have an opinion column in The Lancet calling for a boycott of Chinese scientists over its barbaric human . . . . Continue Reading »
If you read George Washington’s Farewell Address and take seriously his view that religion likely is necessary to maintain our Republic are you a “Christianist” or a “dominionist?” These devil-words are vague enough to be hard to refute, but seem to mean that one wishes . . . . Continue Reading »
In a case similar to the lawsuit filed against Microsoft for indirect support of the Family Research Council, Canada’s National Post has recently apologized for running an ad bought by the Institute for Canadian Values that questions Canada’s curriculum requiring young children from . . . . Continue Reading »
A new study finds that people who respond like utilitarians to the ” Trolley Problem ” have a strong link to “personality styles that were psychopathic, Machiavellian or tended to view life as meaningless.” Although that probably doesn’t surprise those of us who are . . . . Continue Reading »
Sign of the times of the day: “Approximately 92% of the 174 songs that made it into the [Billboard] Top 10 in 2009 contained reproductive messages,” says SUNY Albany psychology professor Dawn R. Hobbs in Evolutionary Psychology. That’s right—“reproductive . . . . Continue Reading »
Surprise! The mock “Ecocide Trial” about which I wrote the other day, found the CEO of the companies developing the tar sands of Alberta into usable oil to drive the world’s economy, was found guilty of “ecocide”—and in only 50 minutes. From the . . . . Continue Reading »
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