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Euthanizing Children

I guess we should be pleased that the euthanasia death of a seventeen-year-old remains at least mildly controversial. But it is clear that the culture of death, if allowed to progress further, will eventually consider such deaths routine. Continue Reading »

Laboratory Limits that are not Limits

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 »

Euthanasia by Organ Harvesting

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 »

Biotech: What to Expect

Over the past fifteen years, the pro-life movement has succeeded in enacting some modest limitations on embryo-destructive research. Passage of these depended heavily on Republican control of the Congress, and their defense in the past eight years depended heavily on a Republican president willing . . . . Continue Reading »

The Very Autonomous Steven Pinker

In May, Steven Pinker published in the New Republic a jeremiad against dignity as a tool of thought in bioethics. Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, works at the interface of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and psychology. He is, like most of that kind of psychologist, a . . . . Continue Reading »

Worrying About the "Bioethics Crisis."

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 »

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