April 2012

Eggsploitation @ Stanford

Event InformationMay 1 @ 4:15pm Bechtel International Center Assembly Room584 Capistrano WayStanford, CA 94305 The Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University is presenting a screening and panel discussion of the documentary film, Eggsploitation, which blows the whistle on the deceptive practices of the infertility industry to exploit young women for their eggs. Profiling […]

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An Answer

By Jennifer Lahl and Matthew Eppinette Recently, Dr. Summer Johnson McGee, Co-Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Bioethics, posted on the journal’s blog a very brief and highly dismissive review of / comment on our film, Anonymous Father’s Day. The substance of her criticism, entitled “Are ‘Anonymous Fathers’ Really A Problem?” is that our organization, […]

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The Three Stooges Euthanasia Subplot

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC So, a pal and I go to see The Three Stooges last night: Woob! Woob! Woob! Woob! I just wanted to forget the world and revisit my long lost boyhood when my friends and I would roar at the Stooges on TV after school. The […]

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Consumerist Reproduction

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC A Canadian pundit named Kelly McParland has a good critique of how IVF has devolved procreation into consumerist reproduction. He writes in reaction to an American IVF clinic advertising sex selection, meaning that all embryos of the “wrong sex” become medical waste based on eugenic […]

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That Unrepentant Bigotry

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC I have a piece out in the Human Life Review decrying the “unrepentant bigotry” that allows people with profound disabilities to be denegrated as “skin bags” (as one example), or if profoundly cognitively disabled, as mere flora. From “That Unrepentant Bigotry”(citations omitted): “Stop the hate!” […]

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National Advance Medical Planning Day: Pushing People to Say “No”

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC Today is National Sign an Advance Directive Day, or something like that. And the stories are out trying to stimulate us to action. As I have noticed when proposals to legalize assisted suicide are reported, they are all the same. It’s cookie cutter journalism: Start […]

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Tiny, Happy People

By C. Ben Mitchell, Ph.D., CBC Board Member Just when you think you have heard it all, someone pushes the envelope. According to three ethicists writing in the journal Ethics, Policy and the Environment, because geoengineering might be too risky a way to combat global climate change, we should alter the human species instead. Here […]

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Tiny, Happy People

By C. Ben Mitchell, Ph.D., CBC Board Member Just when you think you have heard it all, someone pushes the envelope. According to three ethicists writing in the journal Ethics, Policy and the Environment, because geoengineering might be too risky a way to combat global climate change, we should alter the human species instead. Here […]

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Quebec Short Shrifts Senior Care As Euthanasia Pushed

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC It never ceases to amaze me how people fail to connect dots. In recent weeks, we’ve seen a big push to legalize euthansia in Quebec. Yet, as a medical advisory counsel has recommended turning killing into a legal “medical treatment,” the province is is short […]

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Rewarding Biological Colonialism

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC We shouldn’t always get what we want — particularly when it comes at the cost of exploiting the world’s destitute or taking advantage of despotic circumstances to benefit personally. But we do. Westerners increasingly go to poor countries and use the living bodies of people […]

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Reproductive Coercion and the New Eugenics

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC Bioedge published a good article this week discussing the claim by some bioethicists that parents be required to use pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to eradicate unwanted heritable conditions. From “Parents Have a Duty to Use IVF, Say Bioethicists:” Janet Malek, of East Carolina University, and Judith […]

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Ding Dong, VT Assisted Suicide Bill Dead

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC I predicted the outcome in my annual predictions: VT has killed the assisted suicide bill. From the Burlington Free Press story: For nearly two hours Thursday afternoon, the Vermont Senate focused on legislation that would allow people with fewer than six months to live to […]

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Pluripotent Stem Cells? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Pluripotent Stem Cells

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC Yes,the headline is hyperbole, but scientists may be closing in on a method of “direct reprogramming” that could change one type of cell into another without first going through the “stem cell” stage. Specifically, scientists made nerve cells out of skin cells. From the Phys.Org.com […]

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China Breaks Promise to Halt Unethical Biotech

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC The other day, I opposed Texas’ plan to allow doctors to charge for conducting human experiments with unapproved and still uncertain adult stem cell therapies. No matter how well “regulated” I don’t see how it would be that much different from what is happening in […]

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Deadly Potential of Live Organ Donation Should Preclude Market Approach

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC Some people believe that all of us have an obligation to participate in live organ donation, that is, giving one of our two kidneys or a lobe of liver. While I certainly admire those who risk their lives and health to help others, I don’t […]

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Countering Brave New World Thinking

Thank you for your personal interest in the Center for Bioethics and Culture (CBC). I deeply appreciate your commitment to helping make a difference in a world where Brave New World thinking is threatening human dignity. So much is at stake as we are watching many seek to redefine even life itself. The last few […]

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Countering Brave New World Thinking

Thank you for your personal interest in the Center for Bioethics and Culture (CBC). I deeply appreciate your commitment to helping make a difference in a world where Brave New World thinking is threatening human dignity. So much is at stake as we are watching many seek to redefine even life itself. The last few […]

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Texas Should Not Let Doctors Charge for Adult Stem Cell Research

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC I oppose off-label prescribing. I oppose states legalizing medical marijuana when it should be done by changing the Controlled Substances Act. I oppose novel interventions upon the disabled, such as “Ashley’s Treatment,” without proper regulatory studies and approval. I would certainly oppose a state allowing […]

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