With so much humanity-altering power being developed, where are the democratic debates about whether we should permit human beings to be designed, manufactured, and subjected to methods of quality control? Continue Reading »
When it comes to the end of life, “moral complexity” tempts us to recast our tendency to shrink from commitment to the truth as a kind of sophistication. Continue Reading »
Laboratory researchers have been able to extend the time they can keep a human embryo alive in the lab from nine days to 13 days. Now many are asking, “Why not go beyond the 14-day-post-fertilization limit that has governed this research to date?” Why, indeed? If the embryonic human being—in . . . . Continue Reading »
Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.—Leon Kass The ethics of medicine aren’t what they used to be. Sanctity of life? That’s so passé. The Hippocratic Oath? Fuggettaboudit! The modern healthcare system is expected to embrace properly utilitarian perspectives.Take . . . . Continue Reading »
God may not be dead, but considering the imago Dei in philosophical discourse and public policy certainly is. Not only that, but the rational reasons for acknowledging the exceptional dignity of humans are wrongly denigrated as merely reflecting our religious past in which rigid moralism supposedly trumped reason. Continue Reading »
An article has been published in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) entitled “Bioethics Crisis Looms Unless NIH Changes Course, Critics Warn,” byline Richard Monastersky. Bioethics crisis? Apparently, practitioners believe we need more bioethicists to tell us what . . . . Continue Reading »
Sometimes I think that to some bioethicists, it’s all a mind game. The latest example is an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are on a hunger strike, and the authors are upset because army doctors are helping to force feed them. . . . . Continue Reading »
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